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Maurice Henry Blinken
Maurice Henry Blinken was the grandfather of Antony Blinken. He was an early backer of Israel who studied its economic viability.

Blinken was a New York State lawyer who founded the research organization American Palestine Institute (when what is now Israel was the British Mandate of Palestine), shortly after World War II. In 1946, under Mr. Blinken's direction, the institute initiated and financed Palestine: Problem and Promises, a study that an independent Jewish state of Palestine was economically viable. This countered existing British arguments that an independent Palestine could not support a large immigrant population. Some analysis concludes that the report helped convinve the United States Government to favor the establishment of the State of Israel. In 1946, he was appointed member of the Board of Directors of the Palestine Economic Corporation, created in 1926 to mobilize American capital for deployment in Mandatory Palestine (until 1948), Israel (from 1948).

Blinken was born in Kyiv, then in the Russian Empire, now Ukraine. He graduated from New York University in 1921 and from the NYU Law School in 1924. For much of his life he lived in Yonkers near New York City. He lived later in life in Palm Beach, Florida and died in West Palm Beach, Florida at 86 years old.