The Jewish State in Palestine

The Jewish State in Palestine By H. C. Singer DESPITE the crushing defeat the Jews suffered at the hands of the Romans under Titus in the year A. D. 70, the hope of a restoration to an independent state did not die. For about two generations after the destruction of the temple, rebellion broke out among the Jews in the eastern dominions under Roman rule. Finally, under Bar-cochba in 133 A. D., one more concerted effort was made to establish Jewish independence, which culminated in the crushing defeat two years later, in the month of Ab, at the siege of Bither, in Palestine; Bar-cochba was slain and over half a million followers lost their lives in the revolt that did not die out until all had fallen. The hope of restoration did not die for generations, but the impossibility of reconquest became manifest as the years went on, and the Jewish people consoled themselves, over the loss of the national independence, by faith in their ultimate redemption through special divine intercession. Being, as they believed, the recipients of divine favor through having been chosen as a medium of revelation to the world, the return to Palestine and the setting up of a national independence seemed to them a prerequisite. As time passed and the Roman went, their lot became harder under the Persian, and later under the Arabs who had been raiding from the desert. Finally the Byzantine army, which at this time, 640 A. D., had assumed control over Palestine, was destroyed by the Arabs and the country over run by the hordes under the Caliph Omar. Later the heel of the Egyptian trampled over the roads made sacred by the pilgrimages of the faithful, and despite the attempts made by the Byzantine emperors again to repossess the land, it re- mained under the Egyptian masters until disputed by the Turkish adventurers who filtered in from the north and east. The profanation of the sacred places of Palestine and the closing of the roads to the pilgrims set Christendom aflame and contributed to the launching of the Crusades. Because of the success of the early Crusades and the organization of Palestine into Latin states the country flourished as it had not done for many generations. By 1 189 A. D., however, the last of the Latin states had succumbed to the invasions of their Moslem neighbors and a strong foothold in Palestine was not again established by the Christian kingdoms till many centuries had passed. Under treaty, however, in 1229, Jerusalem and several neighboring cities were restored to Christian

THE JEWISH STATE IN PALESTINE 203 keeping, but less than twenty years later the Tartar hordes sacked and invaded Jerusalem, and Acre in 1291, the last stronghold of the Crusaders, was captured by the Egyptians, who had overcome the Mongols on the Plain of Esdraelon fifteen years previously, and the Latins vanished from the scene. After about a hundred years of comparative tranquility the Tartar menace reappeared in the person of Tamerlane, who with- drew, however, after contenting himself with fighting on the borders of Palestine but not invading it. The year 1516, brought other taskmasters, the Ottoman Turks, who were destined to remain mas- ters till the days of restoration of Palestine should have begun. They made no attempt at colonizing or administering the land, and the history of Palestine for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries resolved itself into perpetual warfare between local chieftains. The abortive campaign of Napoleon in 1799 had the effect of compelling the Turks to reassert themselves in the administration of Palestine, but rebellion gave the Egyptians the opportunity they had been seeking, and they became masters of the land for a decade. Harsh and stern as was the Egyptian rule, it gave Palestine some semblance of order, and when the Turks again returned to Palestine in 1840, under the support of European powers, the country had left the Middle Ages behind forever. Still Palestine had no political history save that afforded by the rivalries of the Greek and Latin churches, which were among the im- mediate causes of the Crimean war and furnished a basis for inter- national politics with the Levant for years to come. Under the Young Turks' regime the reforms promised in Palestine were little more than a dead letter, although in the closing years of the Turkish rule there were signs of economic progress through the growth of the ports of Jaffa and Haifa, the building of roads and railways and the influx of Jewish and European settlers prior to the Great War. Out from a new land, from among a strange and peculiar peo- ple, a people harrassed and persecuted as the Jews of the world, went a prophet of the Lord carrying into the land of a despised people a promise and a blessing. The seeds of adversity bring forth flowers of humility and the fruit thereof is love. From despised Israel in America, known as the Latter-day Saints, or "Mormons," went the message of love, and hope, and prayers for the Jews scattered abroad awaiting the gathering that was to come in the due time of the Lord. Set apart at general conference in Nauvoo. on April 6, 1840, Orson Hyde was appointed to take a mission to Palestine to dedicate the land for the return of the Jews. On April 15, Elder Hyde left Nauvoo and journeyed to New York where he spent some time among the Jews of that city. After many trials and difficulties, Elder

204 IMPROVEMENT ERA Hyde, a modern apostle of the Lord, arrived in Palestine, and early on Sunday morning, October 24, 1841, ascended the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem and dedicated the land of Palestine for the gathering of the Jews. As was the custom in the days of old, to erect a pile of stone as a witness, so did Elder Orson Hyde on the Mount of Olives and again on Mount Moriah where the glorious temple of old had stood. He prayed that scattered Judah might again be assembled, for the building of Jerusalem so long trodden down by the Gentiles and the erecting once again of a temple to the Lord. He prayed that the curse of barrenness and sterility might be removed from the land; that springs of living water might break forth to water its thirsty soil; that the vine and olive and fig tree might again bloom and flourish; that the clouds might distil virtue and richness, and the fields smile with plenty. "And let thy great kindness con- quer and subdue the unbelief of thy people," he prayed. "Do thou take from them their stony heart, and give them a heart of flesh; and may the sun of thy favor dispel the cold mists of darkness that have so long beclouded their atmosphere. Incline them to gather in upon this land according to thy word. Let them come like clouds and like doves to their windows. Let the ships of the nations bring them from the distant isles; and let kings become their nursing fa- thers, and queens with motherly fondness wipe the tear of sorrow from their eye." All Europe was stirred in 1895, with the trial of Captain Dreyfus, a French army officer, on charge of espionage in the French army. To Paris was sent a young Jewish reporter from Austria, by the name of Theodor Herzl. He was a doctor of laws, a clever journalist, and a successful playwright, already launched on a bril- liant literary career. He saw in Captain Dreyfus, the defendant in that trial, a symbol of the Jewish people who had been the victims of political and religious persecution, of social injustice and outrage throughout all the Christian centuries. In Theodor Herzl's mind was formed an idea born of a re- action against Jewish hatred and persecution, more particularly against that form of it which has come to be known as anti-Semitism. In a Paris hotel during those days of the trial he wrote a pamphlet, wherein he offered what he thought to be a solution to the Jewish problem, and called his pamphlet "The Jewish State," and based his call to the Jews of the world on the premise, "We are a people, — one people." Being a man of unusuallv fine sensibilities and intel- lectual courage he thought the problem out to its inevitable con- clusion; a Jewish state for the Jewish people. Such was the modern starting point of the Zionist Movement. Herzl was by no means the first to conceive a plan for the re-

THE JEWISH STATE IN PALESTINE 205 establishing of a Jewish state. Napoleon had conceived it as part of his great political scheme to control the Mediterranean Basin, and had his plan been attended with success, a Jewish state would have arisen in the east under the protection of the French flag. This solution to the problem at once suggests a great danger. The life of a Jewish state established by one great power would depend upon the. ability of the creator to protect it. Instead of the realization of their hopes, through long centuries, of an independent national state, it might prove nothing more than a pitiable incident in the drama of Israel in exile. Napoleon was not the only theorist to dream of a national Jewish state, although he undoubtedly was animated by more than altruistic impulse. Warden Cresson of Philadelphia planned on paper a reconstructed state and later, in 1844. went to Jerusalem to act as United States Consul there, where he became a convert to Judaism and wrote considerable on the Jewish problem. Both Jew and Gentile alike called upon the Jews to restore their national life, and upon the rest of the world to aid them; Joseph Salvador, a French Jew, early in the nineteenth century; Hollings- worth, an Englishman, in 1852; Moses Hess, a German socialist and philosopher, in 1862; and George Elliot in her great novel, Daniel Deronda, in 1876. But from the ranks of Judaism was heard the great clarion note in 1860. when Hirsch Kalisher, an Orthodox Rabbi, wrote advocating the colonization of Palestine, and declaring that the Messianic ideal is not incompatible with hu- man labor and sacrifice. The movement to colonize Palestine took root. The first modern settlement was established in 1876, by the International As- sociation of the Alliance Israelite, which founded an agricultural school, known as Mikweh Israel (the gathering of Israel) a few miles out of Jaffa. Two years later pioneers from Russia started a colony in the plain north of Jaffa, and named it the "Gate of Hope." It was, indeed, to be rather the gate of death to some of the pioneers; Baron Edmond de Rothschild became interested in them and sent assistance and also rendered financial aid to all the Jewish settlements springing up in the country. There were not, according to available statistics, more than three thousand Jews in Palestine at the com- mencement of the nineteenth century, and practically all of them were living in the four so-called holy cities. Jerusalem. Hebron. Tiberias and Safed. These were descendants of Jews who had been exiled from Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth century and were joined by pious mystics of Poland and Russia. Settling in the cities and living on the charitable gifts of their brethren scattered throughout the world, they cannot be said to have had much influence on the problem of resettlement. By the late eighties of the nineteenth century, how-

206 IMPROVEMENT ERA ever, some half a dozen colonies had been centered around Jaffa, and another group in the northern part of the Plain of Sharon and on the lower spurs of the ridge of Carmel and another in the valleys and highlands of Galilee. By the outbreak of the war there were forty-six Jewish agricultural colonies established in Palestine throughout Judea, Samaria, Galilee and even on the eastern side of the Jordan, largely assisted by Baron Rothschild and the Jewish Colonization Association. Throughout the years that had followed Theodor Herzl's first article on the Jewish state question, there had come to be a vast in- terest in the re-establishment of the Jewish colony. Following swiftly on the issue of his phamphlet in 1895, he appeared at Basel, in Switzerland, in the August of 1897, at a Congress of Jews and under his presidency, and, for the first time, laid before the world a public petition of rights for which was asked international sanction. The great basic declaration of this Congress was that the object of Zion- ism is the creation for the Jewish people of a home in Palestine secured by public international law, and from this declaration Zion- ism has never swerved. Expressions of good will were at once shown by many of the leading writers and diplomats of the world; foremost among them, Herzl received offers from the British government. Expressions of good feeling were given by the Sultan Abdul Hamid, the King of Italy, the Pope, and William II of Germany and from Von Plehve the Czar's minister. From the British government, however, came two distinct offers of land; one in October in 1902, of a section in the Sinai Peninsula, bordering on Palestine; the other in 1903, of a large tract in East Africa with guarantees of local autonomy. The first offer was found impracticable owing to the dearth of water in the territory in question. The second, however, created a crisis in the history of Zionism. It brought to grips those who held that Palestine alone was the Zionist objective and those who were willing to establish a national home in any part of the world. Despite the unfavorable report of the commission who investigated the land in East Africa, those who held to the latter view seceded from the Zionist movement under Israel Zangwill and did not again join forces until the days of the re-establishment of Palestine had begun. Theodor Herzl, the great leader, died in 1904, having first organized the Zionist movement in every quarter of the globe even to clubs in Rhodesia and Manchuria. He was a man of imposing personality and those associated with him say he had no reason to ask for either obedience and leadership, the people knew it was his and gave it to him. In Jerusalem, after seeing the German Emperor, he stood on the tower of David, and looked toward the south and

THE JEWISH STATE IN PALESTINE 207 west toward Egypt, where the British held their protectorate, and he is said to have uttered: "From that direction, and only from that direction, in the end, will come the redemption of Israel." Though he died, Zionism was not lacking in leaders and when the time was ripe they moved with a sagacity that could only have had its inspiration from a divine source. The late Sultan Abdul Hamid was not unfavorable to the plan proposed to him by Dr. Theodor Herzl, and he granted a charter to the Jews of Palestine, giving them local self-government upon their paying a certain sum in cash into the Turkish treasury and a definite annual tribute thereafter. The Zionists could not raise the money and the plan fell through. The attitude of Turkey had been a vacillating one, torn by the desires of Germany towards the Jews on the one side, and Austria on the other; both nations had conflict- ing views on many points touching the Jews in Palestine and Turkey, and their own particular interests. It has been said that Herzl was the Moses of Zionism, and Chaim Weizman the Joshua of the new return. The latter is a British subject, but was born in Russia, and has studied in Vienna. He went to England and taught chemistry at the University of Man- chester, advocating the principles of Zionism at every opportunity. Meeting Mr. Arthur Balfour he talked to him of Zionism and the former, liking him, introduced him to men of power and place. Then came the Great War. Chaim Weizman was a great scientist. The British needed a certain chemical for their munitions, and Weizman supplied it; so successful was he that the British Admiralty called him to London to work in their chemical laboratories. To the head of the Ad- miralty came Mr. Arthur Balfour. So pleased were the British authorities with his efforts that they granted him a special fund of money to make him financially independent. All the while Chaim Weizman continued to talk Zionism to new people with power and at the same time with added prestige to himself. In the year 1916, there was a new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the British Government, and the new secretary was Mr. Arthur James Balfour. The entry of Turkey into the Great War led to the invasion of Palestine by the British forces. Attacking Gaza in March, of 1917, Sir Archibald Murray, commander of the British forces, said: "What should we do with Palestine liberated from the Turkish grip? There can be no doubt that we should revive the Jewish Palestine of old." Such was the first great Zionist declaration of 1917. But it could not bind the British Government. By the summer of 1917.

208 IMPROVEMENT ERA General Edmund Allenby had assumed command of the Palestinian Expeditionary Force and was thrusting northward from Gaza, menacing Jerusalem and striving to cut the Turkish line of com- munication. His successes had been brilliant and on November 2, 1917, the British Foreign Office through Arthur James Balfour wrote a letter to Lord James Rothschild, vice president of the English Zionist Federation. That letter will go down as the greatest docu- ment in Jewish political life since the year of 70 A. D. Great Britain, with all her mighty energies strained in a life and death struggle with a colossal military machine, spoke to scattered Israel in words of comfort, hope and in fulfillment of prophecy, as follows: "His Majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in Pal- estine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best en- deavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." One month later, in December, 1917, Allenby had entered Jeru- salem and the Turkish armies were in retreat. There are few passages in history that surpass the story of Allenby's brilliant surprise attack on the Turkish positions in the Plain of Sharon, near the old battlefields of Thothmes and the Hittites. The story of the British Horsemen charging into Nazareth in the grey dawn and later galloping with drawn swords through the streets of Damascus pursuing the fleeing Turk, and hearing the cries of Arab and Jew, both sons of Abraham, of deliverance and praise to Jehovah, will furnish stories that shepherds guarding their flocks at night will tell oft and again. No sooner had the British ensured the safety and order of Jerusalem than the Zionist executives began to link the interests of their organization in Palestine with those scattered throughout the world and work out the program that had existed in theory dur- ing the years of waiting. "When the Lord turned again the captiv- ity of Zion, we were like them that dream." Following closely on the declaration made by the British gov- ernment, came those of France. Italy, Serbia and Greece, and later an expression of sympathy from Pope Benedict 16. Due, however, to the circumstance that the United States and Turkey, not being formally at war, the United States could not express itself in an official endorsement. But in August, 1918. President Wilson wrote Dr. Stephen S. Wise in Palestine expressing the sympathy of the American people and their satisfaction and interest in the laying of the foundation of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The consummation of the political recognition desired by the

THE JEWISH STATE IN PALESTINE 209 Zionists came on July 24, 1922, at London, when the League ol Nations confirmed the Mandate for Palestine and made Great Britain their Mandatory for the Administration of Palestine. So, in part, has the aim and dream of the modern leaders of Jewish Israel been fulfilled, who sought to establish her among the nations; and the prayer of Orson Hyde, uttered in October of 1841, received answer: "Let them come like clouds and like doves to their windows. Let the large ships of the nations bring them from the distant isles; and let kings become their nursing fathers, and queens with motherly fondness wipe the tear of sorrow from their eye." Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada Soul Moonbeams Have you ever sat a-thinking On the lone and languid prairie? Have you ever slept beneath the hazy sky? With the chinook sternly sweeping Its hot waves across the grasses, Though the modest moon still beaming. And the northern lights still gleaming, Have you ever wondered why? Have you ever felt the smallness Of yourself beneath such shadows? Have you ever grasped the triteness of the world? Have you gazed up into heaven, As its wide and wondrous bigness Seized and stilled your groping fingers. While your heart and thought still lingers On the universe unfurled? If you've not, you've missed a blessing; You have lost a heavenly dower; For 'tis then you learn to understand your soul; Knowing then your own creation, Understand love's law of giving, Feel the bounteous joy of living, And the good which gods extol. Flashes often in the night-time. When your heart is gray and grieving, Lights illusive from the cold and cutting north, But the ray that keeps on shining On your dark and wind-swept prairie, Through the night-time of your sorrow, Till the morn of life's tomorrow, Are soul moon-beams of your worth. Lyman, Wyoming LLOYD O. IVIE