WORLD ACHIEVEMENTS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12823, 18 August 1939, Page 2

WORLD ACHIEVEMENTS

SECOND HOME OF THE JEWS The Jews are a homeless race. Today their persecutions and sufferings have stirred the world. Jerusalem is their city of immemorial fame. Tel Aviv is an achievement of the last year or two. Only 30 years ago Tel Aviv was nothing but a little fishing village on the coast of the, Mediterranean and only a little north of Jaffa. Sand dunes were about it, find are still,. and here was peace indeed till suddenly the persecutions suffered by the Jews in Europe caused the village to become a town. To-day it has a population rising towards 200,000. It is the most influential town in Palestine, and it is 100 per cent Jewish. An achievement of no mean order is Tel Aviv.

Look back to 1908, for, then it had 60 families which had newly migrated from Jaffa. In 1921 it was still a suburb of the apcient seaport—a town of 424 houses and 306 6 people. In ,1926 it had a population of 38,000. In 1931 it had 41,000. Since then it has grown by leaps and bounds. Much can be said against it, but something must be said for the enterprise and industry of its tireless people, its people whom no persecution can long supress. It is not like other towns in Palestine —venerable, drenched with Time. It is modern—glaringly so, with hotels and houses and cinemas and libraries all on a grand scale. To have built so large a town in so- small a time is something to be proud of, surely?