A HOME IN PALESTINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 220, 14 September 1923, Page 3

A HOME IN PALESTINE.

THE DESIRE OF THE JEWS. PLACE TO CAIX THEIR OWN. °ne part of the misery of the world was said to he caused by lack of understanding, and three parts by a lack of the desire to undersUind, remarked Madame Hello Pevsner, in introducing to a large audience at the Town Hall concert chamber last night a fervent appeal for tlie interest and support of 4ueklanders in the Zionist movement. File lectures* thereupon entered on a. fervent and vivid sketch of the Jewish history, touching on the great features ol that people's national life in Rales-1 tine, wind, „ a ye to civilisation the laws [ and religion that became the foundaI tions of the world's progress and culture, the ideal on which was founded the j League ol" Nations. Proceeding to the j . days when the Jews became wanderers on the face of the earth, a nation with- : j out a home, she descrilied how they went ; "tit from the little land of Palestine 1 without any treasure, but with only two ! things—a little book, which had"sincel won translated into oCX) tongues, and a : great longing for the lime when they would "come back home again." The • lews did not want to build up an empire or a great political State: they only l wanted a spot on the earth they could call their own. For over twenty cen- j tunes the Jews, throughout the persecu- I tion of ail tlie nations, had carried in I their hearts this great longing for a home again in Palestine, where they migbt live and create and serve again i tin- ideals they had conceived at the birth of the nation. In all the past twenty centuries not a ; single jieople iiad received them as broI thers. The Jews had been harassed and I hunted and driven from pillar to post. | The world took everything from them—. j their songs and the teachings of their sages and prophets—and had given them | notiiing. The Jews were not a military people like the ancient Creeks and I ! Romans, yet the world admired the j Greeks and Romans, but rejected their 1 deities, while it despised the Jews and accepted their religion as the foundation of its civilisation. Vet the Jewish people could not lie wiped out or pushed off the globe, because they carried within them the great purpose to live, and loved with the young passion of an old people to . live, to light, and to challenge the world again, and to bring the best in humanity to their aid. Zionism was opposed by many people, stated Madame Pevsner, because they j did not know what it was. It was the highest expression of human longing for freedom to shape one's own fate according to one's own conception of truth and right. Palestine was situated near Mt. Zion. and that was why this movement of the Jews to get back to their own country was termed Zionism. There was a propaganda against the movement, and many things were brought against the Jews. It was said that Palestine was the home of the Arabs, who had been there about 1.100 years. The Arabs had a prayer in which they said the Jews would return to Palestine and inly back their land, and the money would enable the Arabs to go back to their own land in the Arabian Peninsula. The Arabs had done notiiing for civilisation, but the Palestine which tlie Jews bad left In land of milk and honey had tieen J devastated and impoverished. The oaks and cedars had been cut away, and the I country was a land of swamps, disease I and pestilence. In the last eighteen months the Jews had done great tilings in replanting oaks nnd cedars i and in reclaiming swamps, fur they were originally a people of the land, not traders. 11l concluding, Madame Pevsner made a plea for the recognition of Jews as I equals, and she reminded her audience ' of the paradox in the great meeting of the nations in France to decide and shape tlie fate of the world, witli all the i great ones of the earth there, and the I heads of countries like Ilayti amongst i them: while outside the gates stood the | ' people who had given the world this ' I ideal of j.eacc. waiting to lie admitted Ito plead that the butchery of their kin in Russia, Poland, Rumania and Hungary might bo stopped.