Palestine and the Jews

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 122, 16 February 1935, Page 20

Palestine and the Jews

44T0 TOT must turn t 0 Eul '°l )e t 0 discover the centre of the hurricane W I which is driving the Jews toward Palestine at a rate which would seriously embarrass the Palestinian Government unless ’ ’ it shielded itself behind a protective legislation. The driving dynamic of the .cataclysm is the Nordic madness of Germany and the godless obsession of Soviet Russia,” writes the Rev. Joseph Cooksey, in “World Dominion.” “But there is a deeper depth still to the terrible plight of the Jews in our day,” he adds. “The fugitives-from persecuting nationalism find, when they, reach Palestine, that they run into that from which (hey are fleeing. The first thing tliey learn is'the Zionist slogan. Aretz Israel Io Am Israel (the land of Israel for the people of Israel). They cannot but recall having heard Germans, Russians, Poles, Rumanians, Turks, Iraqis rind Others saying the same thing about their own countries when they .lived in them. ' “ “They find that Hebrew as a national language is being puslifully developed throughout the land as a pillar of nationalism, and that schools for teaching that tongue are far more in evidence than synagogues for divine worship in the one hundred and twenty Jewish colonies. “Rabbi Shaehter, speaking for the religious Jews of Palestine, warns his countrymen that, ‘The separation of the Torah (God’s Law) from Jewish nationalism forbodes the greatest danger to the development of that spirit of Israel in the name of which we have claimed the recovery of our rights as a national entity.’ In spite of all such warnings, Jewish nationalism, with the scantiest sub-structure of religion,, is the chiefest concern of Zionism. “The piety of the synagogue is quite overshadowed by cultural Zionism based upon the Hebrew university. This seat of modern learning has recently received a. great accession of prestige by the incoming of large numbers

of Jewish scientists and students; it has doubled its membership enrolment. Its humanism, based upon a liberal rationalism, deeply influence certain circles of intellectuals and promoters of science and the arts. “Nevertheless,. if is not within the walls of the university any more than in the synagogue that we shall feel the thrill of those national forces which are disturbing Palestine to-day and will disturb it more profoundly in the future. We shall experience this in the meeting rooms Of the Revisionists. This State party of advanced Zionists is the real driving force of Jewish nationalism, and it aims at the revision of the terms of the British Mandat* should this be necessary to reach its objective.

“For three years the Jews have refused to be represented on the Jerusalem Municipal Council along with Moslem members because of the alleged financial delinquency of the Moslem mayor. This person has now been removed, but still, at the recent Municipal election no Revisionists were among the Jews who took their seats on the Municipal Council. Their interpretation of the Palestine situation hardly permits them to do so. They argue their .case somewhat as follows:—

“The Jews, who are but 26 per cent, of the population, are the creators of the country’s modern prosperity; they conrlbute 50 per cent, of the axes; and have largely helped to assure a Government surplus of £3,000.000 ‘‘Their enterprise warrants a much' larger Jewish immigration, which they could readily absorb, but this’ the Government thwarts, while at the same time putting no effective cheek upon a clandestine infiltration of Moslems from Egypt, Syria, and notably the Hauran. who not only threaten the Jews with a permanent numerical inferiority, but by cheap labour are forcing them off the land into the towns of Judea and Galilee. Their representation on the Jerusalem Municipal Council is so feeble as to render them incapable of controlling the spending of a Moslem majority of the wealth they are creating.”