The Holy Land and SyriaCarpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
Religion
The Holy Land and Syria
Carpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
Palestine -- Description and travel; Syria -- Description and travel
“We Jews have always hoped that Palestine would again belong to us.
This hope has lasted for more than two thousand years, and from time to
time various projects based upon it have been formed to repossess the
land. Nearly all of these have been visionary and many of them have been
founded upon the second coming of a Messiah who should suddenly rise and
lead us, in some miraculous way, back to our Mother Country. Many Jews
confidently believe that will occur. At present the Jews are scattered
all over the earth. There are more than fifteen million of them. About
ten million are in Russia and the other countries of eastern Europe. As
it is now, the Jews are congested in the large cities. London has many
times the number in the Holy Land, and there are at least twice as many
Jews in New York as the whole population of Palestine. Chicago has a
quarter of a million, and Philadelphia more than two hundred thousand.
New York City has the largest Ghetto of the world, and adds to it by
thousands of immigrants a year.
“We were once an agricultural and pastoral people,” continued Mr.
Zangwill, “and we could make Palestine again a land of milk and honey. We
should like to have the country as a Jewish colony, made up of our own
people, where we could govern ourselves in our own way. We should not
object to being colonially dependent upon some great power, but we want
home rule and a national home of our own.”
There are really three kinds of Zionists, and the Jews themselves are
divided. Some would be satisfied to make Jerusalem merely the centre of
their religion and of Hebrew culture. A larger number want Palestine to
be a place of refuge, where Jews from all over the world may live in
freedom from political, religious, or economic oppression. But a still
larger number will not be satisfied until there is set up in Palestine
a Jewish state, with Jews in control of the land, the government, and
the holy places. These Jews say they wish to do full justice to the
other natives of Palestine, with whom they believe they can live in
peace, and expect the British to retain control until the Jews form a
majority of the population. To put through this programme powerful Jewish
organizations have set out to raise a fund of one hundred and twenty-five
million dollars in five years.
The non-Jewish people of Palestine have objected to the Zionist scheme,
and demanded of the British that all Jewish immigration be stopped for
ten years. Christians and Moslems in Palestine have wasted no love on
one another, but the prospect of a great wave of Jewish settlers united
them to the extent that a Moslem-Christian league was formed, whose
members agreed to sell no land to Jews. Nevertheless, the Jews have
continued to increase their land holdings, but the British have limited
the number of Jewish immigrants who can come into Palestine. At times the
feeling between Jew and non-Jew has been so acute as to result in riots
in which many people were killed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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