representing the power of the British Government, which holds the
mandate over Palestine. The head of the judicial department, who
appoints the judges of Palestine, is a Jew. Christian or Moslem judges
who do not give the Jews a shade the better of the proceedings are
ousted—a condition not unknown in New York. Chaim Weizmann is head of
the department of works—he is a Jew, now traveling in this country and
having the polite lie passed to him occasionally by Judge Julian W.
Mack. In fact, at the heads of all departments are Jews, a former New
York Jew being head of the department of immigration, who has made
splendid rules for the protection of Palestine from an undesirable class
of Jews, rules so well adapted for the purpose that if the Congress of
the United States should adopt them the cry of “persecution” would
girdle the world.
It is to be noted that the Jewish government of Palestine is very much
like that of Russia—mostly foreign. Trotsky came from the East Side of
New York. A gentleman recently released from Bolshevik custody told the
writer that the governor of his prison was an ordinary Jew who formerly
lived on Fourteenth street, Detroit. Practically every big American city
is represented in the Bolshevik government of Russia. There is another
full-fledged government waiting in this country for service wherever
necessary.
The methods being adopted to get the land are such as will fill the
world with indignation once the world fully understands what is being
done. And that it is done with the knowledge and approval of the Zionist
Commissioner is indicated by the fact that he suspended the activities
of the British officer who endeavored to stop the abuse. It was the old
game of lending money at an exorbitant rate of interest to people hard
pressed by war and crop failure, and then seizing their land when they
could not pay. The bank that did this was the Anglo-Palestine Bank, a
Zionist concern. This British officer, to save the people and the land,
made arrangements with a British bank to lend them money at 6½ per cent,
with five years to pay. If payment failed, the land was to go to the
government for redistribution; not to the Zionist bank. This was the
humane plan which the Zionist Commissioner forbade, whereupon the
British officer resigned. Some effort was afterward made to redress the
terrible act, but there it stands as the well-considered action of Jewry
in power.
Then follows what is described by every impartial observer as an
“arrogant” attempt to expropriate everything in sight. In Russia it
could have been done very easily under the plea of “nationalization,”
but there was Great Britain whose laws do not condone theft. The only
schools that have been established in Jerusalem have been built and
manned by the so-called “Gentiles,” although the Jews of Jerusalem have
been the pensioners of world-wide Jewry for centuries. As long ago as
1842 Dr. Murray M’Cheyne noted that the Jerusalem Jews cared noth’ing
for schools because their children were only growing up into pensioners
too. But Christians, with a warm regard for the Holy City, set about to
improve the miserable condition of the Jewish inhabitants, and thus it
came that at the time of the Zionist invasion a considerable number of
Jewish children were in attendance at the schools. The new-come Zionist
leaders demanded that the best of the schools be given up to them. Of
course, this was refused.
“The Council of Jerusalem Jews” then caused it to be published in the
Hebrew daily that parents who did not withdraw their children from the
schools would be punished. And now look at the typical punishments
threatened:
If any parent refused whose name was on the list of the American Relief
Fund, the relief would be withdrawn. An interesting bit of news to
subscribers to that fund.
Doctors would be forbidden to visit the families that had children
attending the enlightened schools.
Their names would be sent to the blacklist at the places where
circumcision was performed, so that new-born descendants of the
recalcitrants might be refused the rite of Moses.
They would be denied all share in Zionist benefits or funds.
If they were in business, they would be boycotted.
If they were workmen, they could get no work.
“Anyone who refused, let him know that it was forbidden for him to be
called by the name of Jew. They will be fought by all lawful means.
Their names will be put upon a monument of shame and their deeds made to
reproach them to the last generation. If they are supported, their
support will cease. If they are rabbis, they will be moved far from
their office. They shall be put under the ban and persecuted, and all
the world will know that in this justice there has been no mercy.”
It is the Jewish Bolshevist spirit all over again, that spirit which so
many people have been vainly endeavoring to reconcile with the Russian
temperament—because it is so un-Russian.
It is tyranny, and not the tyranny of strength, but of meanness and
darkness. It is now perfectly clear what was meant by Dr. McInnis, who
is Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, when he said: “The emigrants so far
brought in (to Palestine, under the Commission) did not include many
respectable English Jews; but they did include a great number of
Russians, Poles and Rumanians, many of them thoroughly Bolshevik in
their attitude to the government.”
If this spirit obtains at the beginning of a movement which the
Christian world has been taught by propaganda to regard as a profoundly
religious and respectable exodus, it burdens the imagination to forecast
what will be done in a period of full and unquestioned rule.
Observing and weighing the events and tendencies of Jewish rule thus far
in Palestine, it is not difficult to see the purpose in it all. The Jews
still distrust their ability to make a State. They do not distrust the
world’s willingness to let them have a State; indeed, it is amazing how
naturally the Jews place confidence in that portion of the world they
have always affected to despise. But deep-seated in the Jew is a
distrust of himself. He doesn’t know how his people will contrive to
live together. He doesn’t know how they will contrive to drop the
principles and practices which are so destructive of social comity
elsewhere. And he feels that, patient as the mandatory power may be now,
it is doubtful how long that patience will hold out under the blunders
and brutalities that will be inseparable from Zionist rule, if any
deductions can be drawn from the facts at hand. Therefore, feeling that
the time may be short, he is endeavoring by such actions as interference
with the cultural question, with the racial rights of the natives, and
by such schemes as the land-grabbing device described above, to get so
strong a hold on the situation as will seriously complicate it whenever
Great Britain shall feel it to be her duty to the world to step in and
attempt to bring some kind of order out of the chaos.
It begins to be very clear that Jewish nationalism will develop along
the line of enmity to the rest of the world. Already the dangerous
proposal has been made to organize a Jewish army for the protection of
the Suez Canal. Instead of thinking of roads and farmsteads, of
vineyards and oil presses, of schools and sanitary villages, the Jews
are thinking of elevating themselves into the military power that shall
stand between East and West on that most strategic strip of ground in
the world. The whole situation is fraught with danger, and men who wish
well to the Jews are alarmed and saddened by the prospect.
There are three elements of danger in the situation as it exists today:
the overwhelmingly predominant Bolshevik element that is being poured
into Palestine; the intense, egotistic and challenging nationalism that
Zionists exhibit even before they get a potato patch—the taste for world
politics and world power; and the racial confusion which now exists in
Palestine.
These combined are dynamite. The first is more vital than many realize.
Already the Jews who have gone to Palestine at great sacrifice and for
pious reasons are complaining that instead of the Psalms of David the
people are singing songs of the Red Revolution, and instead of meeting
for instruction and prayer there are riotous gatherings extolling
Trotsky as Messiah and the Soviet as the kingdom of heaven. On the third
anniversary of the Jewish Revolution in Russia, the streets of Jerusalem
were placarded with sentiments of blasphemy and treason, and May Day
this year was devoted to the exaltation of anarchy.
This fact will be of interest to students of prophecy. It is as certain
as any human forecast can be that this sort of thing will not be
permitted to go forward in the face of the world. It is unimaginable
that the nations responsible to humanity for the conduct of that
important strip of territory will remain supine while Bolshevism spreads
under the false pretense of a religious movement favored by Christendom.
An attempt will be made to stop it. The Jews of Palestine will turn on
their sponsor nation. The Jews of Russia will come down to help. Great
Britain and perhaps the United States will defend the old pure vision of
a Jerusalem redeemed. Then will come to pass the prophecy of Zachariah:
“_And Judah also shall fight against Jerusalem._”
Judah also! It is a thought to make a Jew bethink himself where the
lawlessness of the East and the materialism of the West will lead him.
Against Jerusalem! What a terrible ending of Judah’s present mad
delusion.
Palestine has been called the center of the earth. It is. The power that
controls Palestine controls the world. Although exercising no
sovereignty over the land itself, Great Britain’s control of adjacent
waters and of Egypt and Persia and India, forms the key of her power.
The white race has thus far been the Chosen People to whom the dominion
of the earth has been given. Palestine is the key to world military
strategy and trade. In question 12 of the Questions and Answers
published by the department of education, Zionist Organization of
America, this occurs:
12. What are the commercial possibilities of Palestine?
The location of Palestine _between the three continents_ favors
foreign trade.
All this lends itself to dreams of future glory, and many Christian
friends of the Jew have pleased themselves by conceiving an universal
Hague at Jerusalem and a new social order going out to bless the nations
from Zion. It is the idea conveyed by men like A. A. Berle in books like
“The World Significance of a Jewish State.” All this might be expected
if the Jews of today were Old Testament people, anxious to re-establish
the social laws of Moses, which are conceded to be the best safeguards
ever devised against pauperism on the one hand and plutocracy on the
other. But Palestine has not fallen into the hands of that sort of Jews.
Before the dream can be fulfilled Judah must come to himself, as he has
not yet, for from of old the Word is—
“And Judah also shall fight against Jerusalem.”
The racial situation in Palestine just now is very delicate. Americans
do not understand it. The Zionist propaganda has always been accepted on
the assumption that Palestine is the Jews’ land and that they only need
help to go back. It is an historical and political fact that Palestine
has not been the Jews’ land for more than 2,000 years. There are in
Palestine 500,000 Moslems, 105,000 Christians and 65,000 Jews. The
industry of the land is agriculture. Engaged in this are 69 per cent of
the Moslems, 46 per cent of the Christians and 19 per cent of the Jews.
Neither numerically nor industrially have they held the land. Yet, as
the result of a war bargain, it is handed over to them as regardless of
the native inhabitants as if Belgium had been handed over to Mexico.
Many of the natives are Semites, like the Jews, but they do not want the
Jews among them.
That is a strange fact for those who use the term “anti-Semitism”; why
do real Semites also dislike the Jews? Surely Semites are not victims of
“anti-Semitism.”
The Balfour Declaration, as well as the terms of the Mandate adopted at
San Remo, recognized the rights of the native races. Indeed, everyone
who knows about the people who have been native to Palestine for 2,000
years recognizes their rights, everybody except the Jews. Bethlehem was
a Christian town, as befits the birthplace of Christ. Yet the Jews have
contrived that 2,000 Bethlehemites leave Palestine rather than submit to
what they see coming. The other races are not so placid about it, hence
the trouble. It is now that the last clauses, added as the Zionist
historian declares, “in order to appease a certain section of
anti-Zionist opinion,” begin to get a meaning for the reader. “Was the
purpose only to quiet disturbing questions until all the arrangements
were made? Evidently. It was then a dishonest appeasement! Such may have
been the Zionists’ intention, but no one need expect perjury on the part
of the responsible nations. The end of the matter will see those last
clauses redeemed by honest application of their terms to the people
involved.
General Allenby promised those native races of Palestine that their
rights would be respected. So did the Balfour Declaration. So did the
San Remo Conference. So also did President Wilson in the twelfth of his
Fourteen Points.
But Judah says, “Let them get out!” “The last clauses were added in
order to appease a certain section of timid anti-Zionist opinion.”
“Let them get out!” says Israel Zangwill. “We must gently persuade them
to ‘trek.’ After all, they have all Arabia with its million square
miles, and Israel has not a square inch. There is no particular reason
for the Arabs to cling to those few kilometers. To fold their tents and
silently to steal away is their proverbial habit; let them exemplify it
now.” Aside from the falsity of using the term “Arab,” there is the
delightful Jewishness of it—let them give it up to us, we want it!
Americans have been in their land less than 150 years as a nation, and
there is China and Arabia or Siberia for us to go to if we should want
to, but we prefer our own country, and so do the native races of
Palestine, who have dwelt there for 2,000 years.
The watchmen on the towers of the world are alarmed at what seems
brewing in Judah’s geographical caldron.
——
Issue of May 28, 1921.
LII.
How the Jews Use Power—By an Eyewitness
The Jewish Question continues to mount the scale of public attention,
attracting ever a higher type of mind to the discussion of its
significance. When THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT first began to print some of
the results of its research into the Question, the initial response was
largely from those who disliked the Jew because he was a Jew. This class
expected to find in THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT a spokesman for all their
coarse humor and abuse.
The method that was followed by this paper, however, was not abusive
enough, nor bitter enough to satisfy Jew-baiters and Jew-haters, and
gradually a new response from another class began to be heard, which by
this time has attained massive proportions. The better class of people,
seeing that racial and religious prejudice had no part in the work,
began to consider the Question with relation to our American life and
the future of this nation as a Christian people.
Upon this ascent of the discussion to its proper plane, the better
periodicals began to give thoughtful attention to the matter. These
publications have been referred to in previous articles. There is to be
added to the list the _Century Magazine_ for September, which contains
an article by Herbert Adams Gibbons which clearly intends to be fair and
is certainly able, in spite of a difference of opinion that might exist
with regard to some of the author’s conclusions. Mr. Gibbons states some
matters more plainly than they have been stated outside the pages of THE
DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, and some matters he states just as plainly; and he
will be justified by the unprejudiced reader.
One of the most notable studies of the Jewish Question has come out of
the University of the South, at Sewanee, Tennessee. It is entitled
“Zionism and the Jewish Problem,” the author being the Rev. Dr. John P.
Peters, formerly canon residentiary of the Cathedral of St. John the
Divine, Morningside Heights, New York, also rector emeritus of St.
Michael’s Church, New York, and professor of New Testament Languages and
Literature in the University of the South. The article has been
reprinted from the Sewanee _Review_ and makes a brochure of 29 pages.
Dr. Peters begins with an historical sketch of the development of the
two lines of thought among the Jews, the nationalistic which made for
exclusiveness, and the religions which made for inclusiveness, and he
describes the domination of the latter by the former with the coming of
modern Zionism which he finds to be racial and not religious. He says
“the dominant control of the Zionist party is at present in the hands of
those who are not religious but merely racial Jews.” He believes that
the development of race consciousness along these lines “must be
inevitably in the end to make the Jews bad citizens of the United States
or of any other country and to keep alive and increase the hostility to
the Jews....”
This monograph by Dr. Peters will repay study. By permission, THE
DEARBORN INDEPENDENT reprints the article from page 20 to the end, this
portion being selected because it deals with Dr. Peters’ testimony as an
eyewitness of certain conditions in Palestine: (The italics are ours,
there being none in the university reprint.)
“The experiment of the Zionist homeland is now being tried. It is too
early to determine fully how it will work, but it is at least of
interest to consider its manifestations so far. My earliest contact with
Zionism and Zionistic influences in Palestine dates from 1902. When I
first visited Palestine, in 1890, the Jews in Jerusalem were almost
exclusively of old oriental Sephardic families. Jerusalem was then still
the old Jerusalem within the walls. There were no houses without. Jewish
colonization, economic and philanthropic in character, had just then
begun on the Sharon plain, but what little there was in the way of
colonization was a feeble, unsuccessful exotic—an attempt to replace the
persecuted Jews of Russia on the land, where, however, the Jew, unused
to manual and especially farm labor, sat under an umbrella to protect
himself from the sun and engaged native Syrians to do the work.
“On my next visit, in 1902, more colonies had been planted, and a
serious effort was being made to turn the Jewish colonists into farmers.
The majority of the Jews who had come to Palestine, however, were
settled about Jerusalem, and the new Jerusalem without the walls was
larger, in space at least, than the old Jerusalem within. The Alliance
Israelite had developed there splendid schools to teach agriculture, and
manual and industrial arts. I was urgently solicited by the management
to visit and inspect these schools. Here I found Jew, Moslem and
Christian working side by side without prejudice. This was, in my
judgment, the best work of any sort being done in Palestine, for two
reasons: first, these schools were teaching the dignity and the worth of
manual labor, which the oriental of all sorts had theretofore despised,
regarding it as unworthy of any man of intelligence or capacity;
secondly, because they brought Moslem, Christian and Jew together on a
plane of common work and common worth, the most valuable agent for the
breaking down of those ancient prejudices, religious, racial and social,
which have been the curse and bane of the land.
“I was asked to put this down in writing because, I was told, _great
pressure was being exerted—I regret to say, especially from America—to
prevent the management from continuing this particular work_ of teaching
Jew, Christian and Moslem on the same plane, the demand being that the
Jew should not be brought into such contact with the Moslem and the
Christian, and that he alone should be trained, that he might not be
infected, as it were, by the others, _and that they might not be
prepared to compete with him for possession of the land. This spirit I
met in a more thoroughly organized and offensive form on my latest visit
in 1919 and 1920_.
“I found immense progress in the development of agricultural colonies.
There was still difficulty in persuading the Jew, except only the
African or Arabian Jew, to do the actual work of the colony, but
colonies were prospering, and fruit-culture, vine-culture and especially
the manufacture of wine and liquors on a grand and most scientific
scale, had progressed wonderfully. In general, the land occupied by
those colonies was not in a proper sense ancient Jewish land. They were
on the Sharon and Esdraelon plains and in the extreme upper end of the
Jordan Valley; but those regions were being enriched, and the country at
large benefited by the colonists. The great bulk of the Jews were still
gathered in Jerusalem as heretofore, and there were on one hand the
intellectuals and on the other the parasitic or pauperized Jew, what
would ordinarily be regarded as the very best and the very worst. Life
in the colonies was often very sweet and very lovely, a wholesome,
normal family life, and an exhibition in peace and prosperity of what
religious Judaism at its best may be.
“In Jerusalem one found the extremes of intensely narrow and bitter
orthodoxy, and unbelief with extreme Bolshevik radicalism. Here, too,
aggressive Zionism manifested itself in an attitude of bumptiousness and
aggressiveness. The country was for the Jew. It belonged to him and he
would shortly take possession. One was made to feel that one’s presence
in the land was objected to. The Hebrew press contained angry diatribes
against the existence of Christian schools and missions. The attitude
taken by these Zionists at first alarmed, then aroused and irritated
enormously, the native population, both Christian and Moslem, making the
Jew an object of dread and hatred as he had never been before. I had
opportunities to talk on intimate and friendly terms with leaders in all
camps, albeit I was unable, through language difficulties, to
communicate with the rank and file as freely as I should like to have
done. I myself felt the annoyance and in some places the danger of the
animosity aroused. Under government order I was not permitted to visit
certain sections of the country on account of the raids or uprisings of
the Arabs, partly due to animosity roused by their apprehension of the
Jewish invasion, and partly due to banditry, which took advantage of
that as an occasion. In other parts it was difficult to travel, because
any stranger, unless he could prove the contrary, was suspected of being
an agent of the Zionists, spying out the land for possession by the
Jews. It was difficult to obtain lodgings or food, and there were
sometimes unpleasantly hostile demonstrations on account of these
suspicions. Everywhere it was believed that the Jew by unfair means was
seeking to oust the true owners and to take possession of their land.
“In Jerusalem it was asserted that the Zionist funds, or the Jewish
funds which the Zionists could influence or control, were used to
subsidize Jewish artisans or merchants to underbid Christians and
Moslems and thus oust them by unfair competition, and that similar means
were being used to acquire lands or titles to lands. It was even
believed by many that the English authorities were unduly favoring and
helping the Jews in these endeavors, as is shown by a letter from a
Christian in Jaffa published in the _Atlantic Monthly_:—
“‘We are already feeling that we have a government within a
government. British officers cannot stand on the right side because
they are afraid of being removed from their posts or ticked off.’