Zionism

An Authoritative Exposition of the Movement.

Reviewing ZIONISM. By Richard J. H. Gottheil, Professor of Semitic Languages in Columbia University; Sometime President of the Federation of American Zionists. The Jewish Publication Society of America.

Zionism — New York Tribune, 20 June 1914 — New York Tribune · New York, New York · 20 June 1914

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Transcribed from the clipping

“There is certainly something attractive and inspiring in the proposal to give the land without a people to the people without a land. In any case, almost, it would seem logical and practical.

But it far transcends those qualities when the land and the people in question belong to each other by virtue of a possession among the most ancient in the world, and of circumstances making the strongest of appeals to equity and to sentiment. There are various other peoples who plead for or demand a fuller control of their own land.

But the Jewish people stand alone in asking that their land be restored to them after their enforced exile from it for eighteen hundred years. Professor Gottheil is, of course, a Zionist, and he writes the history of the Zionist movement from the point of view not merely of a sympathizer but of an earnest propagandist.

Yet we cannot accuse him of partiality, at least to the extent of doing any injustice to those who differ from his views… With his vindication of the patriotism of Zionists in the lands in which they now happen to be sojourners there will be hearty agreement on the part of thoughtful men.

The loyal Americanism of Jews has been too often proved to be doubted now because they advocate the restoration of their ancient home to their scattered race… we may in default of fuller demonstration assume that if Zion were restored large numbers of perfectly loyal Jews would remain in America and elsewhere, while there would also be a large number who would hasten to Palestine; enough, we imagine, to populate that country well, and to effect a redevelopment of its resources.”

Context added by this archive

The phrase, in an American newspaper, in its own voice, in 1914 — and then the same sentence continues into its opposite: the land and the people in question belong to each other. This is the clipping the slogan claim rests on, and it is rarer than the claim implies. It runs beside a review of a book about industrial efficiency called The Job, the Man, the Boss.

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"Zionism," New York Tribune, 20 June 1914, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1914-002. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1914-002