A JEWISH PALESTINE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3156, 7 August 1917, Page 3

A JEWISH PALESTINE

THE RETURN TO THE PROMISED LAND

WAR A? B 'fIR ZIONISTS

: (By H. Sadler, in the "Daily News.") In the eyes of all the world a Jewish i Palestine has now become practical politics. Dr. Weizmann, tho president of the . English Zionist Federation, has publicly . announced that tho British Government . stands for a .Tewish Palestine, and that tho head of the Catholic Churcii contemplates a Jewish Palestine with the utmost benevolence. To realise the aspiration has not been easy. There havo always been some Jews in Palestine since first their fathers entered the Promised Land; and as late as the'seventh century, certainly, the hope still lived of restoring the Jewish state by some swift stroko of arms. Tho Arab conqnest quenched it definitely, and from that time on whatever tho Jews could do or be in Palestine was dependent on the pleasure of the Mohammedan rulers of the country. On the whole, they were treated with no little consideration, but their numbers declined for many centuries, until, indeed, the early half of tho nineteenth century. It is noteworthy that the one slight attempt at Teviva'l during that long stretch of time was in. spired by the persecutions and expulsions from Spain. In the nineteenth century Jews began to drift into Palestine, mainly from Russia and South-eastern Europe, to study the Torah, to obtain tho peace of their souls, and to lay their bones in hallowed dust. In tho '50's Sir Moses Montefiore began to plan the settling of Jews upon the soil of Palestine as agriIn the 'CO's some Russian Rabbis initiated a project for colonising Palestine with Russian and Rumanian Jews, and in 1870 tho Alliance Israelite TTniverselle established a farm school 'near Jaffa. The first real colony was founded in 1878 neap Jaffa, and it is a happiness to record that two greathearted statesmen, Lord Shaftesbury and Laurence Oliphant, collaborated in the work. For at least one hundred years Englishmen have identified themselves with the resurrection, of a Jewish Palestine. The terrible pogroms of the '80's in Russia changed a trickle into a torrent. All over Russia and South-eastern Europe, and in a lesser degree in Western Europe, the traditional passion- for Palestine expressed itself in an effort to recreate in Palestine a hoitie not only for the Jew, but for the tortured soul of Judaism. Beginning in 1882. some thirty or forty colonies were founded, scattered over the whole eonntry. The men who camo were unused to the- land or the .climate, ignorant of agriculture, illequipped with money and material, and tney received no help from the Government. With one notable exception, until recent years, they got no appreciable aid from their Ticli brethren in the West. The exception was Baron Edmond do Rothschild, of Paris. The New Zionists. Jewish settlement in Palestine' was and is the purest of democratic movements, and only that quality and the fire of a great ideal carried it through the martyrdom of tho early years to assured success. AVhen tho war brokei out there were 100,000 Jews in Palestine, some 11,000 of them settled on the land. They constituted one-sixth or one-seventh of tho total population, and the one expanding, vital element. They had their trade unions, their co-operative societies, their banks, their 1 organisation for nationalising property in the land, their agricultural experiment station. They had doubled anil trebled the yield of the soil, they had drained fever pools, organised a scientific campaign against disease, improved the breed of cattle, established a monthly agricultural journal, introduced modern machinery and modern technical methods, and laid the foundations of new industries.

On spiritual side they have given a new life to tile Hebrew tongue. Hebrew has become the,vernacular of the Jewish youth of Palestine, and tho language in which the new Palestine publishes its newspapers and its books. Every colony and every urban centre has its Hebrew school, and there are several secondary schools where Hebrew is the language of instruction. On the eve of the war tho plans were almost completed for a beginning with, a Hebrew university in Jerusalem, which already possesses a scbool of arts and crafts that may become tho mother of a Jewish art. In their government the' Jewish colonies enjoyed fairly full autonomy, and rich and poor, men and women, had equal rights. Of the spirit of these new Jews those who know at first hand the men and the land speak with one voice.

Why lias it 'baton till tlie third year of the war for the Jewish nation to be recognised among tlie nations to whom justice must be done as a nation, tlie justice of a Jewish Palestine? One reason is plain—i'fc has taken three' years to complete the bankruptcy of oligarchy, and tlie little Jewish oligarchy or plutocracy which most non-Jews were content to accept as the mouthpiece of Jewry lias been east down by the same hurricane which has swept away the Grand Dukes. To-day the Jewish people speaks with its own voice. Another reason is that it has bnen a slo wwork to extricate from a mixture of motives the rights of nationalities as the dominant motive, and to appreciate what it truly implies. .A third reason is the coarse teaching of experience. The Allies committed themselves to the break-up of Turkey, and Great Britain to the conquest of Palestine. The futnre of Palestine was henceforth a question on the order of the day, and the promptitude witli which tlie Turks responded by the expulsion of Jewish colonists and tbe devastation _ of Jewish colonies made it as impossible henceforth for civilised men to burke the issfie a? it is now to burke the Armenian question.