Thank you for correcting the text in this article. Your corrections improve Papers Past searches for everyone. See the latest corrections.

This article contains searchable text which was automatically generated and may contain errors. Join the community and correct any errors you spot to help us improve Papers Past.

Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image

JEWISH ASPIRATIONS

THE RETURN TO PALESTINE

AIMS OF THE ZIONISTS

The desire of the Jewish people to return to the land of Palestine and reestablish it as their national home seems, in view of General Allenby's recent signal victories over the Turks, to be well within early possibility of accomplishment. Not long ago Great Britain promised the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national centre, to which "Jews from all countries might unite in spreading the influence of Jewish thought and ideals from Palestine to other parts of the world, in complete harmony with other peoples." In November of last vear came the cheering news that' General Allenby had taken Jerusalem from the Turks, and still later, about the Passover season, 1918, a committee of representative Jews arrived in.Jerusalem to form the nucleus of a new Jewish republic. In June of this year, just forty years from the time when through the influence of Lord Beaconsfield the door of Palestine was reopened to the Jews, the Zionists held their twenty-first annual convention at. Pittsburg, U.S.A. This convention has attracted much, attention, and is said to have accomplished more than all, the preceding twenty conventions. In referring to the matter the Pittsburg 'Gazette-Times" remarked: '"The main obiect of the Zionist movement in the "United States is to aid in the -e-establishment of a Jewish .homeland in Palestine after twenty centuries of striving, thereby fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. There is no thought of any large number ot American and English Jews returning to this homeland, but rather the setting up of the ethical centre; the making of Jeiusalem a City of Prayer for all peoples, rather than a rallying point for political activities. One of the cherished hopes of some of the leaders is a World University for the study of spiritual questions, as distinguished from the purely intellectual or materialistic. The great war has given a wonderful impetus to the restoration of Palestine to the Jews, which is altogether different from the restoration of Belgium, Serbia, 'and Rumania to their respective peoples. The same world ovent is proving an emollient in. racial and sectarian affairs, and the times are more propitious for the Zionist movement than ever before, for this reason the Pittsburg Convention will attract tho attention and sympathy of a great mass of people who under different conditions would be less interested."

The final day of the convention, which was the most important and 'argrst that the Zionist organisation of America has ever held, was marked by tho completion of the amalgamation of the new national body, which will devote its efforts to the restoration of Palestine.

Principles of the Movement. "The Maccabacan," the official organ of the Zionist organisation of America, states the principles of the Zionist movement as follows: "In 1897 the first Zionist Congress at Basle defined the object of Zionism to be 'the establishment of a publicly recognised and'legally secured homeland for the Jewish, people in Palestine.' The recent declarations of Great Britain, France, Italy, and others of the Allied democratic States have established this public recognition of the' Jewish national homo as an international fact. Therefore ive desire to affirm anew the principles which have guided tho Zionist movement, since its .inception and which were ' the foundation of tho ancient Jewish State and of the living Jewish law embodied in the traditions of 2(110 years of exile:

"(1) We declare for the political ami civil equality, irrespective of race, sex, or faith, of all the inhabitants of the ■land.

"(2) To ensure in the Jewish national home in Palestine equality of opportunity we favour a policy which, with due regard to existing rights, shall tend to establish the ownership and control,by the whole people of the land of all natural resources and of all vniblic utilities.

"(3) All land, owned or controlled by the whole people, should be leased on such conditions as will ensure the fullest opportunity for _ development and continuity of possession.

"(4) Tho co-operative principle should be applied so far as feasible in tho organisation of all agricultural, industrial, commercial, and financial undertakings.

"(5) The system of free public institutions which is to be established should ombrace all grades and departments of education.

"(6) Hebrew, the national language of the Jewish people, shall be , the medium of public instruction."

Resources of Palestine. "Although Viscount Bryce is an acknowledged authority on Balkan and Near Orient questions, it is curious that he, too, is under the spell of the usual mistakes concerning Palestine," says the New York, "Globe." "If Viscount Bryco had said that the Palestine of the time of the Judges was us small as Massachusetts he would have been in the- right. But to say that this is the size of the kingdom of Solomon shows how little our land is known even to tbi best Biblical students. The Palestine of Solomon, as is well known, extends from the Brook of Egypt to tho River Euphrates, and embraces a stretch of land which equals, if it does not .surpass, the area of Italy, with over 100,000 square miles! ./Vr-ivo have reason to believe, the British Government intends, as soon as its armies have won the necessary victory, to lestore to the Jews the boundaries of King Solomon. Within this enormous area most of the land, although apparently desolate and barren, is really very productive, and it is only the Turkish Government that reduced the most fertile provinces to desolation. Most of the Jewish colonies, owing to the reluctance of the Government, as well as of the Arabs, to sell to the Jews cultivated land, have been founded in the midst of the desolated parte of the country, and at the outset no one believed that the Jews would be able to transform them into really fertile lands. But the British Army today, in its advance in Southern Palestine, has found that these colonics, surrounded as thoy are by rocks ?nd swamps, are the finest evidence of what the Palestine of the future will be. It is a known fact that out of a total area of at least 25,000,000 acres of workable land only two million are cultivated by the Arabs and a quarter of a million by the Jews. But once a stable Hebrew Government is established there with the help of the Allies, and irrigation methods comparable to those of Egypt introduced, the remainder of the land will be transformed into a wonderful farming region, especially if we consfder the fact that the Jordan, the Letani, the Auja, the Yabok, and Yarmuk, and the Arnon have, according to well-informed engineers, water for tho irrigation of many millions of acres. And the rainy sonson, which is nearlv tropical, provides the balance of the water necessary for a vast irrigation. It 1 is interesting also to note that most of the workable land does not belong to tho inhabitants themselves, but to the Government, and onco the Palestino State is established and the laud transferred to the new State, in accordance with international law, possibilities of life and work would be provided not for 600,000 as Lord Bryce suggests, but <w ten times as many."

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19181011.2.6

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 14, 11 October 1918, Page 3

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,194

JEWISH ASPIRATIONS Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 14, 11 October 1918, Page 3

JEWISH ASPIRATIONS Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 14, 11 October 1918, Page 3

Help

Log in or create a Papers Past website account

Use your Papers Past website account to correct newspaper text.

By creating and using this account you agree to our terms of use.

Log in with RealMe®

If you’ve used a RealMe login somewhere else, you can use it here too. If you don’t already have a username and password, just click Log in and you can choose to create one.


Log in again to continue your work

Your session has expired.

Log in again with RealMe®


Alert