REPATRIATION OF THE JEWS

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 4000, 21 September 1929, Page 4

REPATRIATION OF THE JEWS

“Time and again have the Jews been conquered, canned into captivity and finally, scattered and homeless, they have wandered over the face of the whole world. Yet this people made a contribution to world-religion which for ever sets .them apart as a chosen people,’’ says the Sydney Mail. “The inextinguishable spirit of the Jew burgeoned nto flower in the Zionist movement, which in its idealism, for ever confutes the unthinking verdict of the world on the Jew’s materialism. The Zionists have been active in promoting the return of Jews to Palestine. The aim of the movement is to procure permanent settlement and to establish a population of producers which shall be self-contained and independent. Lands are bought, money is loaned for the purchase of agricultural machinery and for Ibuilding, land drainage schemes are undertaken, waterworks established, roads built, sanitary systems installed; and all this is carried out with money subscribed by Jews throughout the world. To. the Western mind such an enlightened scheme of colonisation seems wholly praiseworthy. ‘The country, small thought it be, can, by the employment of scientific methods of cultivation, be made to support a population of at least two and one-half millions. At present there are about 700,000 Arabs and 100,000 Jews in Palestine, though the number of Jews is being added to annually by immigration.”

THE ARABS OF PALESTINE. Surveying the reactions of the Zionist movement, the Sydney Mail says the coming of the Jews has been an unmiixed blessing to both the Arab fellaheen, small farmers in village communities, and to the Arab working classes. The former have learned from them better methods of cultivation, have shared in the benefits of medical and veterinary services and especially of the building of roads, and have profited by. selling their surplus land to the Zionists. In the towns much employment has been created and wages have risen to unprecedented rates. The hostility of the Bedouins, nomad graziers, has not been assuaged by either the scrupulous fairness of the administration nor the payment of inflated pi'ices for land acquired by the Jewish colonists. The Arab intelligentsia, has always been definitely hostile to Briton and Jew alike. Undeir Turkish rule they wielded considerable local influence —to the enhancement of their prestige and the enrichment of their pockets. Under British rule they have lost in influence and in the opportunities for petty extortion and peculation. This they resent. To this class can be traced the source of the present trouble. The Bedouins would prove inflammable material ready to their hands, and when once the disturbances were under way it is quite understandable that the working classes in the towns would he ready to come to the aid of their co-religion-ists in the alignment of Moslem against Jew and Christian. The writer adds that in honouring the Balfour Declaration, we must not forget the rights of the Arab nor ■prove ungrateful for the services he ■rendered in the war, though he has already been- recompensed by his .present freedom from the Turkish yoke and by the rehabiltation of the ancient Arab Kingdom.