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Taranaki Daily News, 16 August 1933, Page 9

BACK TO PALESTINE

SCHEME FOR SETTLEMENT. SOUND POSITION CLAIMED. Dr. B. H. Shein, a representative of the World Zionist Organisation of Jerusalem, is visiting Australia. His mission is closely linked with current history in Europe, for the plight of German Jewry under the Hitler regime is adding impetus to the Palestine settlement scheme. Dr. Shein has come to Australia to explain the position of Jews in the modem world in general, and of the German Jews in particular. Dr. Shein studied medicine in South Africa, and after graduation served on the staff of a surgical clinic at Basle, Switzerland. Here he met many Jewish refugees from Central and Eastern Europe, and saw the sufferings to which persecution had subjected them. He had previously lived in Jerusalem, and had lectured on Zionist questions in South Africa. Early this year the World Zionist Organisation invited him to make a lecture tour in their interests through Australia, New Zealand, the East Indies, the Philippines, Japan and India; his present visit to Australia is the first stage of this tour.

“Palestine is now the only country with an open door for the refugee Jew,”. Dr. Shein said; “the country has been in a unique position during the last few years. The Government has had surplus revenue, and in place of unemployment, there has been more than once a shortage of labour.” This was due to three main things. First, under the British mandate which governs Palestine, a careful form of limited colonisation had been observed. Secondly, during the last 10 years over 45 million pounds of capital had been brought into the country by Jews. » “Thirdly,” Dr. Shein said, “the type of immigrant who has come in to Palestine has been not only a hard , worker, but an idealist as well. For his ideals he has been prepared to make sacrifices in order that his new land might progress.” The result had been a vital atmosphere of youth, energy and movement in the ancient land. Jew'ish’colonisation in Palestine had as its practical beginning the famous Balfour Declaration, under which Britain undertook to make such a plan feasible in the early post-war years. Dr Shein considered that it was yet too early to say what political form the venture would take. . Some Jewish residents in Palestine, he said, favoured the development of their territory as a British Dominion. At present the Palestine settlements comprise about 200,000 Jews. >