THE NEW PALESTINE

Waipa Post, Volume 49, Issue 3555, 8 December 1934, Page 3

THE NEW PALESTINE

NO UNEMPLOYMENT AND NO DEFICIT. Palestine as the " Switzerland of the Near East," with peoples from different countries in a happy progressive community under the auspices of the new Jewish Palestine and the aegis of the British flag, were feiatures of the verbal picture presented to Melbourne Rotary Club by Mr Ittamjar Ben-Avi, chief editor oi Palestine Daily Mail." In the course of an address atj the club luncheon, Mr Ben-Avi said 24,000 German refugees—including- many men of scholastic and commercial prominence—from Nazi persecutions had reached Palestine. Recalling- the British Greac War victories that gave Palestine her present freedom, and the historic Balfour declaration of seventeen years ago, the speaker paid a tribute to t'he soldiers of Australia and New Zealand. The " marriage " of the Hebrew-Judaean and British peoples at Palestine would surely last for ever. What would have been the use of V ne frepdom had the Jewish people not been able to live up to the promise given the Empire? It was now half a century since the first experiments of re-establishing Jewish Biblical history, and when the century of the new Palestine was being celebrated he felt sure that there would be a visit of a British duke. As to the Arab peoples, it was not the wish of the Jews that they should be driven away. The Jews had not returned to Palestine with the idea, of conquest. There was a future for the Arabs. They were already deriving benefit from irrigation works and other amenities of white 'civilisation. To make Palestine to the Near East what Switzerland was to Europe was the objective.