PROBLEMS OF ZIONISM.

Evening Star, Issue 17691, 18 June 1921, Page 2

PROBLEMS OF ZIONISM.

Next to the Jews themselves, perhaps even more than they, all instructed Christians must be supremely interested in their welfare. For if the latter accept their own Scriptures the world’s future prosperity is bound up with the future of the Jew. It is told of Dr Parker, the celebrated minister of the City Temple, London, that he was once walking down Princes street, Edinburgh, with a friend. They mot a Jewish pedlar. Parker took off his hat to him. Ilia friend asked him why ho did it. And Parker, in his somewhat grandiloquent style, replied: “To whom portaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promisee; whose are the fathers, and to -whom ns concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever" (Romans is., 4-5). “And if we are tempted to say," continued Parker, “ that the Jew has by his own failure forfeited all that, lot us hear the Holy Spirit saying to us through Paul: ‘Did God cast off His people which He foreknew? God forbid. And God at the coming of the Jew Imperial, our Saviour Jesus Christ, is going to restore His people and bring them into an earthly glory and leadership which no people on earth have ever yet known. Let us love and honor the Jew for what God has done and is going to do for them, and what He has done through them for us.’ ” If this be so, then the Jews’ welfare and future are matters of tiie deepest concern to the Gentiles. When the League of Nations gave Britain a mandate for the “ establishment of a Jewish national homo in Palestine,” according to the terms of Mr Balfour’s memorable pronouncement of the subject some time previously, it sent a thrill of gladness through the Jewish world. And those who were not Jews wore gratified to think that at last there was a sure prospect of justice being done to this homeless and muchsuffering taco. But it wouui appear as if the bright dreams of both threaten to dissolve into thin air and leave confusion worse confounded. »**»*»** A home implies 1 the homogeneity, if not the blood relationship, of all the inmates. If aliens in thought, sympathy, or ideals are admitted an ideal home is impossible. And that is where the trouble threatens in the execution of the British mandate over Palestine. In the Zionist movement there are three separate currents—the religious, the economic, and the political—whose fusion for the moment seems impossible. There are those who hold the religious faith of their fathers—the faith pntlined in the Old Testament. They arc not greatly concerned about secular matters. Their first consideration and allegiance are to Jelpovnh and His laws and promises. Given loyalty to these, the more material issues will evolve all right. There is, secondly, a group that takes little stock of religion. Its chief concern is economic. It wants to establish colonics of Jews, somewhat after the model of the Swiss cantons. It has already founded some forty of them in Palestine, embracing 13,000 souls. But it would not confine its operation to Palestine. It would seek to establish similar colonies in any other country willing to recognise them. This is practically the proposal of the eminent Zionist lender, Dr Weizmann. It might probably solve or seriously minimise the immediate peril that besots the settlement of the Jews in Palestine. It would probably be acceptable to that very considerable number of Jews who have no desire to go back to their native land, who wish to remain where they are, especially in Britain and America, where their freedom is assured and where they are not averse from ultimate absorption in the people amongst whom they dwell. But there is a third class, whose predominant idea is political, who want Palestine to themselves, and who demand that, the other races already there shall clear out and leave them in undisputed possession, These are the militant section of Zionism. And it is their claim that makes the difficulty and creates the peril. ******** Mr Israel Zangwill, the well-known litterateur, may be taken as the spokesman of this party, and a very able and fieryone ho is. His views have been propounded in a book published last year, entitled ‘ The Voice of Jerusalem,’ and also later in several articles in the Press of America as well as Britain. Mr Zangwill wants Palestine wholly for the Jews. Ho wants it to he a real homo, as Mr j Balfour promised and the terms of man-; date affirm. As we have said, a homo is impossible unless its inmates are homogeneous in blood and aspirations. But it L just hero the trouble emerges. Palestine is already in the hands of other races and creeds—Semitic, Persian, Greek, and Arab. Most of them are Moslems—about a million and n-half. Thera are over 60,(XX) Christians and about the same number of resident Jews. What is to be done with these? That is the thorny problem which Sir Herbert .Samuel, the Governor-General, has bo solve. Mr Zangwill demands either that Arabs should bo cleared out bag and baggage, with compensation, or that the Jewish colonists should be given complete control over them and over all the Holy Land. If this is not so, the idea of a Jewish home in their native land must bo abandoned. To produce it out of such conflicting elements is “a task not for a statesman, but a conjurer," and Sir Herbert Samuel is not that. As usual, British diplomacy suggests a compromise. These races cannot be thus dispossessed. Lot them remain, and let -Palestine bo administered in the interests of all as a Crown colony. It dees not seem a very hopeful solution, and it is not made any easier when Mr Zangwill writes in this strain : The interest of England in getting her now possession developed by Jewish capital and industry is outweighed if the Arabs are antagonised too deeply; and since, moreover, the Jews are the Uriah Keeps, and not the Oliver Twists, of politics, England may safely ride roughshod over them. In placing all their hope on a peaceful penetration, and in pretending that the Arabs can bo safely submerged, the Zionists have presumed fo know better than Jehovah, who protested : “ But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before yon: then it. shall come to pass that those which ye let remain of thorn shall become pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.” Is such a homo worth having? ***»**.*»' Mr Zangwill is so fond of irony and satire, and is siich a master of both, that one cannot always be quite sure whether ho is serious in all his contentions. He quit the Zionist movement on the death of its founder, Theodore Her/.1, and sought to organise a Jewish colonisation scheme in British East Africa. Ho has not, as far as we know, abandoned that idea; but he would appear now to support the Zionists who want to return to Palestine. But his support is saddled with such conditions as must create insuperable difficulties. One evidence of this is already apparent in the opposition of the Arabs.

Last year there was a demonstration 20,000 strong in Jerusalem in opposition to political Zionism. A common misfortune produces curious associations, and in this ease the Christians in Palestine-some of them, anyway—seem to ho joining with the Moslems in their opposition to the Zionists’ claims; and there would appear to bo some justification for this strange and unnatural union. But the Zionists are badly wanting in tact, to say the least of it. if the statement in an article in the March issue of 1 Current Opinion' ho correct. It assorts that the " Council of Jerusalem Jews proscribed many sections of the population, including the British High School for Girls, the English College for Bovs, (ho Jewish ■ (but anti-Zionist) School for Girls, and many others conducted by convents and churches.” In this they may possibly bo within their rights. It is not unlike the attitude 'f the Roman Catholic authorities towards our ‘secular educational institutions hero. Bus when the Jewish Council warns parents arrainst sending their children to these schools on pnin of social and business boycott, then they are guilty of the same intolerance from which they have suffered themselves, and are returning evil for evil. This is a foolish and fatal policy. Yet it would appear as if the Jewish bodies in Jerusalem are committing themselves to it. The Hebrew daily paper in Jerusalem warned those who ignored it that they “ would bo put under the ban and persecuted, and all the people of the world shall know that there is no mercy in justice.” A month later, according to tflo article in ‘ Current Opinion,’ when it was discovered that certain Jews were defying the council and its proscription, the paper called for an order to be sent forth to the effect “ that doctors will not visit their sick; that assistance when in need, if they are on the list of the American Relief Fund, will not be given to them. . . . Men will cry to them ' Out of the way, unclean, unclean.’ , . . "hoy are in no seiicO Israelites.” The writer in ‘Current Opinion’ scarcely exaggerates when he pays tho spirit exhibited in these threats “is exactly the same spirit that Ims created hell upon earth for the Jews in so many lands.” But then it was shown against Jews of other races; hero it is shown against Jews by other . Jews. ***«•**«» This is tho terrible tangle of affairs that Sir Herbert Samuel has been sent to untwist. Nobody will envy him the task. Tho chaos is not so widespread ns that which his co-religionist Lord Reading lias to face in India, but the spirit of conflicting antagonisms is tho same. Se desperate is tho position that so sane an authority as the London ‘ Spectator ’ thinks tho whole scheme should lie abandoned. It formerly supported it. But it says: “Wo have drifted into a position which nobody fully understands, but which at any moment may bring us into world-wide odium, and create not stage enemies, but real enemies for this country throughout the habitable globe.” With the heat intentions wo promised the Jew a home in his native land, forgetting for tho moment that it was full of other races who had been there for centuries. It is true the Arab is totally unnrogressivo, and makes no good use of tho soil. But ho and the other races are in 'possession, and mean to stay; and to expropriate them by British bayonets it would bo (says tho ‘Spectator’) “an act of unspeakablewickedness.” Yet apparently Mr Zangwill will bo satisfied with nothing less than tho pound of flesh. As ho bitterly puts it, the Jew “will decline to crawl into a corner of his own land like a leper colony, warned to keep) off this and off that, or keep away from this Jew and that Jew, and thus repeating, on his own soil the subservience of 2,000 years of agony and ignominy.” So tho 1 Spectator’ thinks wo should frankly toll the Jew that wo promised, in tho flush of victory, what wo have since -discovered wo arc not able to perform ; otherwise we shall run the risk of deceiving him and turn him into a fierce hater of the British race. “Tho Jew is a dangerous man whon persecuted. Ho is an even more dangerous man when ho holds himself to have .been deceived, just because it is bo exceedingly difficult to take him in. But if, after trusting yon, ho thinks yon have taken advantage of him, whether his view is well founded or not, you have made a desperate fee.” ********

How the problem is to be solved wo do not know. But Christians who believe their own Scriptures can never cease to be interested in it. For these Scriptures seem everywhere to point to a future restoration of the Jews to their native land. Tho statements in tile Old Testament regarding this are so numerous, definite, and precise that it is impossible to gob away from them. Of course, it is said that they are not to bo interpreted literally ; the fulfilment of the promise is not to bo looked for in the material, but in tho spiritual, domain. It may be so, though one is inclined to be very sceptical of tho reasons urged in favor of this. Moreover, such prophecies are not confined to tho Jewish Scriptures. They are confirmed in the New Testament both by Christ and His Apostles. We seem to bo forced to the conclusion that the promises of the Jews’ restoration to. their native land are absolutely unconditional. They have never been abrogated, and they have never been fulfilled, Christians must either accept them and expect their fulfilment, or be impaled on tho other horn of a disquieting dilemma, with destructive results for faith. As a recent writer has put it; “ God’s promise, whether given to Abraham or David, is not to be set aside; and tho oath which ensures our salvation is no move valid than the one which ensures tho stability of David’s house, kingdom, and throne.”