El Paso Herald · El Paso, Texas · 23 September 1916

CP-1916-005

Church Reports Show Many Thousands Killed By Turks

In Northern Palestine 60,000 Have Been Butchered and Throughout Palestine and Armenia More Than 500,000 Have Been Killed; The Conditions in the Holy Land Are Hopeless and Many Become Insane.

Scan 648 × 1300 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

“THROUGH church channels comes the first authentic information concerning Palestine and Armenia conditions obtainable from these war-ridden states in months. The names of the sources of information cannot be given, owing to war conditions, but the reliability of the news cannot be questioned.

Figures published here within a fortnight, that in northern Palestine 60,000 to 80,000 people have been murdered by the Turks, or starved to death by them, and questioned here, are now known to be accurate…

500,000 Butchered or Starved. Throughout Palestine and Armenia it is now known that 500,000 persons have been butchered, hanged or starved and that in addition to this number of dead fully 1,000,000 have been deported. These deportations have been invariably toward the east, where new homes are impossible.

Deportations now as in times past are equivalent to murder… The Turkish government has prohibited relief of every kind from being given by foreigners. It has even shut off all relief from the Red Cross. Its enmity extends, not to Armenians alone but to those who speak the Arabic tongue.

The 1,500,000 dead and dying are, therefore, Armenians, Moslems of Arabic descent, and Jews. The few Americans have not been molested, and are known to be well at this time… As always happens, a new terror is added to murder and starvation. It is thousands going mad, and not only harming themselves but harming others.

This danger is at the moment appallingly prevalent throughout all Palestine. Locusts are known to have stung the olives and ruined the crop. Scarcely a person has been able to get out of Palestine for months.”

Context added by this archive

One sentence in the middle of this is why it is here. The paper reports that Ottoman enmity extends, not to Armenians alone but to those who speak the Arabic tongue, and then counts the dead and dying as three groups together: Armenians, Moslems of Arabic descent, and Jews.

In 1916, in El Paso, the Arabic-speaking population of Palestine is inside the number, named, and grieved over in the same sentence as everyone else. The column runs beside an advertisement for a cold remedy.

Cite this clipping

More from the 1910s

• Palestine and PatriotismChicago Tribune · 9 January 1916
• The Zionist Movement In PalestineThe Daily Item · 13 March 1916
• $1,000,000 Corporation To Conduct Colony Of Zionists In PalestineEvening Public Ledger · 5 July 1916
• ZIONISTS AID PALESTINE.The New York Times · 6 July 1916
• Zionistic Movement Hopes To Re-establish the Jews As a Nation in PalestineMontgomery Advertiser · 17 December 1916
• Palestine a NationDetroit Free Press · 3 January 1915
• All 77 clippings from the 1910s →

In these collections