News and Record · 20 December 1925

CP-1925-010

Back To Palestine

60,000 Jewish Immigrants of 47 Countries Back To Soil

Send this clipping to somebody

Transcribed from the clipping

“New York, Dec. 19.—The Ghetto Jew of eastern Europe—outcast, exile, homeless wanderer—is going back to the soil, back to his own soil in Palestine.

The Holy Land, sacred to Jews, Christians and Mohammedans, a desert waste for the past 1,800 years since the Emperor Titus ravaged the country, destroyed Jerusalem and led the once mighty Jewish nation captive and broken back to Rome, is once more beginning to bloom and flourish as it did in Biblical days.

Through the guarantees of the league of nations, Great Britain’s mandate and the organized efforts of the Jewish people throughout the world, a new Jewish homeland is arising in Palestine.

Through modern agricultural and building methods, typical of American pioneering in the west, the land seared by centuries of Turkish misrule is beginning to be dotted with flourishing farm colonies and up-to-date cities, where the spirit of American enterprise and Jewish idealism have combined to produce one of the great miracles of the twentieth century—the return of the Jew to his own soil.

Goes Back 50 Years. Although the practical beginning of the modern development of Palestine dates from the official recognition of the Jewish homeland by the principal world powers through the league of nations and the issuance of the Palestine mandate to Great Britain, the first colonization activities in the country were undertaken almost 50 years before the close of the world war through the wide-seeing beneficence of Baron Edmond de Rothchild, greatest of all Jewish philanthropists, who established the first Jewish colony in the Holy Land a half a century ago.

The growth of Jewish colonization was slow and precarious until the Versailles treaty gave official recognition to the historic claims of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland in Palestine.

A mass movement of Jews from eastern Europe started at once and was only held back by the lack of resources to transport these immigrants to the country and Palestine’s inability to absorb large numbers because of its primitive economic conditions.

But within the last two years, due largely to the generosity of American Jewry which has, through various Zion funds, established an efficient colonization program which has brought prosperity to the country, immigration has increased steadily, hand-in-hand with the general economic development of the country, until today Palestine is absorbing into its growing life more than 4,000 immigrants monthly with every indication that the present year will see a total of 60,000 new immigrants settled in the country.

Sixty thousand immigrants for this year, considered a conservative estimate by Zionist colonization experts, is practically double the record-breaking number of new settlers during the past year, which in turn was almost double the immigration figure of two years ago.

Doors Open to Wanderer. As Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist organization, and Dr. Stephen R.

Wise and other noted leaders of the Jewish homeland movement have pointed out, Palestine stands today as the only country in the world whose doors are open to the Jewish refugee from Eastern Europe; the only country which guarantees freedom, security and the opportunity to rebuild his life to the Jewish wanderer.

In order to meet the present need and to take advantage of the present opportunity to place additional thousands of immigrants in productive occupations throughout the land, and particularly to bring them back-to-the-soil, the American Palestine colonization funds have combined this year, under the leadership of Dr.

Wise, to raise $5,000,000 for the extension of Jewish colonization in Palestine. This marks the greatest sum American Jewry have ever been called upon to raise in a single year for the restoration of the Jewish homeland.

The funds, combined as the United Palestine Appeal, include the Palestine Foundation Fund, chief colonization agency of the homeland movement, which in the four years of its existence has expended almost $5,000,000 in colonization activities in Palestine; the Jewish National Fund, chief land purchasing agency, which has bought over 60,000 acres of land for colonization purposes; Hadassah, the American Women’s Zionist organization, which maintains a series of modern hospitals in Palestine and carries on an extensive health, child health and sanitation program, and the Hebrew University Fund, which helps support and extend the activities of the university dedicated last spring as the head of the Hebrew educational system of Palestine.

Agricultural colonization is the basis of the upbuilding work in Palestine. At present the number of Jews on the soil is 21 per cent of the entire Jewish population, a proportion which has mounted steadily every year. There now are almost 100 farm colonies in Palestine, 43 of which have been built by the Palestine Foundation Fund on land purchased by the Jewish National Fund.

The principal agricultural colonization work is now centered in the historic Valley of the Jezreel, locale of the Battle of Armageddon, where on former swamp land considered uninhabitable because of the malaria-bearing mosquito, 12 flourishing colonies, the first of a chain of settlements, have been built.

From Forty-Seven Countries. From 47 countries Jewish immigrants have come to Palestine during the past few years.

Immigration centers are maintained in Warsaw, Lemberg, Berlin, Vienna, Constantinople, Trieste, Riga and other cities, to facilitate their departure, while receiving stations are established at Jaffa and Haifa, the ports of Palestine, where the immigrants are prepared to settle in the country and, if necessary, given small loans to help establish themselves in productive work.

Practical farmers and other American visitors to Palestine have been amazed at the results accomplished in the Jewish colonies, which in most cases have been established on land barren, swampy, rocky and malaria-ridden.

The burning idealism and self-sacrificing spirit of these thousands of Jewish pioneers, who have forsaken university training to engage in the most menial labor to build up their homeland, have achieved results which would stump the most successful scientific farmer. But the idealism has been tempered with a systematic and scientific agricultural program.

Farming experts have supervised the colonization. Most noted of these experts is Dr. Elwood Mead, at present commissioner of reclamation of the United States department of the interior, ranked as the world’s foremost colonization expert, who was commissioned by the World Zionist organization to survey the colonization work in the county.

During the past two years, the high point in Jewish colonization, 17 new colonies have been established by the Palestine foundation fund, the farm settlers have increased 125 per cent and cultivated land has increased 150 per cent. The production of the Jewish farmers on the Palestine foundation colonies alone is estimated at over one million dollars for this year.

Trained In Farming. Practical training in agriculture, modeled after American methods, is given to thousands of young intellectual men and women, who have left behind professions in Europe, to become farmers on their own soil in Palestine.

This training is carried on in the colonies and in agricultural schools and by the agricultural extension system, which has been so successful in America in bringing the latest farming methods to farmers.

The agricultural experiment station maintained by the fund has succeeded in introducing many new crops into Palestine, particularly tobacco, first planted three years ago and now its most successful farming product.

That, in spite of the unprecedented immigration to Palestine during the past year there has been practically no unemployment, is due to the various activities of the Palestine foundation fund for the promotion of labor and the loans it has extended for building and industrial activities.

These loans to workers’ banks and co-operative labor organizations have not only solved the unemployment problems but they have also helped establish sick benefit associations, schools and social welfare agencies for the workmen.

Other activities of the Palestine foundation fund, the principal organization engaged in the united $5,000,000 Palestine appeal, are the establishment of a general mortgage bank, which has financed the construction of hundreds of houses in towns and colonies, and investments in the Rutenberg concession, the great hydro-electric plan for the electrification of the Holy Land by harnessing the Jordan river.

The plan is already in operation, powerhouses in Tel-Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa and Tiberias providing electric current for these cities.

Hebrew Is Spoken. The revival of Hebrew as a modern tongue and the everyday language of Palestine is due largely to the complete system of 112 Hebrew schools maintained by the Palestine foundation fund. The schools range from kindergartens to the Hebrew university.

Hebrew is the language of instruction in them all, and their aim is to give their students a thorough education, combined with a practical training, which will enable them to jump into the work of upbuilding the country equipped with a special trade which will contribute to the general progress of the homeland.

The Jewish national fund is the oldest of all Zionist activities in Palestine. It was founded 25 years ago to purchase land for colonization activities. Its funds come from Jews throughout the world, principally from the pennies of the poor, who keep Jewish national fund boxes in their homes and drop their mites into them whenever they can sacrifice a little for the homeland.

The land of the Jewish national fund is held forever in the name of the Jewish people, and at present totals more than 60,000 acres. The total possessions of the fund, including land and improvements are valued at more than $5,000,000. After purchasing the land, the Jewish national fund, through irrigation, afforestation and sanitation, makes it available for colonization.

It drains swamps, clears away stones and installs water supply and irrigation systems. Its drainage work has largely eliminated the dreaded scourge of malaria from the lands under its control. The Turks, not realizing the value of trees to the country, ruthlessly destroyed thousands of them, denuding the country.

Within the past few years alone the Jewish national fund has planted more than 300,000 trees in an effort to undo the harm wrought by the Turks.

American Women Aid. The Jewish women of America through the Hadassah organization are responsible for one of the greatest pieces of constructive work in Palestine warring on disease by introducing and maintaining modern systems of public and private health service in the Holy Land.

That disease, which has ravaged the country for centuries, is largely conquered and under control, is due largely to the efforts of Hadassah and its small army of devoted doctors and nurses, many of them from America.

Hadassah has established four hospitals in Palestine, medical clinics, dispensaries and laboratories, all fitted with modern equipment and manned by doctors and nurses trained according to the highest medical standards. A nurses’ training school is attached to the Jerusalem hospital and has thus far graduated 52 nurses.

Supplementing the hospitals and clinics, Hadassah carries on medical school inspection, a rural medical and nursing service which brings its health-dealing activities to the farthest settlements throughout the country, infant welfare work and a variety of activities which have greatly improved the health standards of the country and taught the people how to care for themselves.

To fight trachoma, one of the dread diseases of Palestine, which is rampant among the Arabs, an ophthalmologist travels from one rural settlement to the other, teaching the general population the care of the eyes in order to reduce the large percentage of blindness due to trachoma.

The fourth fund united in the present $5,000,000 effort is the Hebrew university fund, organized to aid in the development and extension of the university, dedicated with impressive ceremonies on Mount Scopus, overlooking Jerusalem, last spring by Lord Balfour.

The immediate aim of the university is in research work in those sciences which are connected with the reconstruction of Palestine. Two scientific research institutes are already at work—the Institute of Microbiology and Tropical Medicine, as part of the Medical college, and the Chemical Institute.

On the side of the humanities, the Institute of Jewish Studies was recently opened for advance research work in Jewish literature, religion, history, law philosophy, etc.

The Balfour-Einstein Institute of Mathematics and Physics and the School of Oriental Studies are shortly to be opened as the latest additions to the university, which is expected to attract the finest Jewish minds in the academic world, and which when completed will stand as the connecting link between the scholarship of the east and the west.

While eminent scientists and teachers are already working in the university, many outstanding scholars are planning to join its faculty shortly. Foremost of these is Dr. Albert Einstein, promulgator of the theory of relativity, and the world’s greatest physicist. Dr.

Weizmann, a world famous chemist, also plans joining the faculty of the university when the present lead of his leadership of the Zionist movement is no longer required.

The $5,000,000 required this year for Palestine is considered the minimum amount necessary to extend the activities of the various organizations united in the present campaign, so that they can meet the problem of increased immigration and prepare the land to settle the additional thousands of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, who can be permitted to enter the country only when the land is made ready to absorb them in self-supporting work.”

How this transcription was made

Transcribed in full from the scan, read column by column at nine times magnification. The figure in “a desert waste for the past 1,800 years” was illegible at the resolution used for the first pass and is now read; it was not guessed. Spellings are the paper’s own, including Rothchild and “the colonization work in the county.”

Context added by this archive

The empty-land argument with a start date attached: the country has been a desert waste since a Roman emperor, and it is once more beginning to bloom. The sentence concedes in passing that the place is sacred to Mohammedans, and then describes it as waste anyway.

The section heads are Goes Back 50 Years, Doors Open to Wanderer, From Forty-Seven Countries, Trained in Farming, Hebrew Is Spoken and American Women Aid. Below it on the page, a full-column advertisement offers a year’s newspaper subscription as a Christmas gift.

Cite this clipping

"Back To Palestine," News and Record, 20 December 1925, p. 12A. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1925-010. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1925-010