San Antonio Express News · San Antonio, Texas · 22 July 1917
CP-1917-010
WAR TANKS WHERE SAMSON LIFTED GATES OF GAZA
Modern War on Spot Where Samson, the Strongest Man, Did Stunts When World Was Young. Big Shells on Hagar’s Well and Blowing Up the Beer-Sheba Railroad—Scenes of Old Bible Story Where Abraham Received the Three Angels, Solomon Met the Queen of Sheba and Philip Met the Eunuch.
STERLING HEILIG
Transcribed from the clipping
MARSEILLES, July 8.—I have information from a party who knows Gaza.
At last hearing the British, in a raid of Camel Corps, mounted troops, desert column and field engineers, blew up the railroad to Beer-Sheba—“not a length of rail remained whole, not a railroad tie intact, and not a bolt without its head knocked off”—so that the Turks, who had great need of railroad material and were hastily tearing up the road to build a new line back of Gaza, “could not find a sound rail or sleeper!”
He is a Frenchman, learned in the languages, who rendered service to the English and knows everything about the wonderful old Bible land here. Also, there is a woman. I can name her without mentioning her work, for she is a great friend of mine—the celebrated Myriam Harry, who was brought up in Jerusalem and the Sinnai Peninsula.
Do not these names bring things home to your childhood?
Think, there is not a bald-headed American business man today but who pored over (as a little boy, of Sunday afternoons) the steel engraved plates of the family Bible—pictures of Hagar and her child in the wilderness, of Abraham receiving the three angels, and of Samson, the strongest man, carrying off the gates of Gaza on his back!
How this transcription was made
Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person.
Context added by this archive
Date check: the masthead reads SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS: SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 22, 1917., with the page number 28 at the left. This matches `pub` and the slide date of 1917-07-22, and July 22, 1917 was a Sunday.
Cite this clipping
"WAR TANKS WHERE SAMSON LIFTED GATES OF GAZA," San Antonio Express News, 22 July 1917, p. 28. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1917-010. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1917-010
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More from the 1910s
- Palestine Not a Solution of Jewish ProblemThe New York Times · 10 June 1917
- PLANS IDEAL PALESTINEThe Baltimore Sun · 27 June 1917
- JEWISH SOCIALISTS FOR FREE PALESTINEThe New York Times · 23 July 1917
- Turkish Jews Opposed to Zionism.The American Jewish World · 7 September 1917
- Gaza and Beersheba, Ancient Places, Taken By Modern New ArmiesPittsburgh Post-Gazette · 18 November 1917
- IN PALESTINE.Evening Capital News · 23 November 1917
- All 77 clippings from the 1910s →
Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1917-010.
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