Every clipping in this archive printed between 1910 and 1919: 51 of them, oldest first, as plain text that can be read, searched and quoted without running any code. Each entry links to its own record, where the scan is.
· The Cincinnati Enquirer · Cincinnati · page 1
Customs as in the Time of Christ
Life and religion of the fellaheen — or peasants — of Palestine who represent the aboriginal inhabitants of the Holy Land
Evangeline Ben-Oliel
On land: “All the land around the village is one of two kinds—the freehold or the communal land.” “The communal land is apportioned to the villagers annually. Each year they receive a different allotment.” On government: “The fellaheen of a village are divided into clans and are governed by a Sheik. The Sheik is the Governor and the father of the community, a man revered and feared by all the inhabitants of the village.” On hospitality: “There is one building in every village set apart for visitors—the guest house, or ‘medafe’.” Fellah’s Primitive Life. “The various clans have a common language and a common religion, and their customs are the same, but there is no such thing as unity among them all. Patriotism and national pride are unknown words to the fellaheen. Their love is entirely limited to their own clan and their own village, and their affection for their own hut, or mud house, is very great indeed. The Sheik is a law unto himself. Each clan wages war with the other clans, and lives only for its own clan and family.”… “The fellah lives the most primitive life imaginable in his rude stone house, or mud hut, on the rocky slopes of the hill.”… How Land Is Held. “The freehold consists of gardens and vineyards. They are divided into little plots of 12 feet square, with trenches of earth around them, with openings for irrigation, there being no rainfall for six months of the year.”… “The ‘Sok,’ or market place, is the meeting place for rich and poor, active and idle… It is the center for gossip, there being no newspapers, and the people being illiterate.” Center of Village Life. “To the market place the women bring their baskets of produce. Here sits the Scribe, who will read or write their letters for them for payment.”… “Every village has a Khatheeb—priest, teacher, lawyer and scribe, all in one.”… “The fellaheen are all of the Mohammedan faith, but only in name, for they know little regarding their religious beliefs.”… “A bride is bought by her husband and is paid for either in money or cattle, or in exchange for some other fair relative.”
Going to Market · Sheiks of Villages · A Maiden of Bethlehem · The Road to Hebron · A Turkish Minaret—From Here the Muezzin Calls to the Followers of Mohammed Five Times a Day That It Is the Hour of Prayer
A full illustrated Sunday page, thirty-eight years before 1948, describing Palestinian villagers as the people of the place: their land tenure, their courts, their schools, their hospitality to strangers. The subheading calls them “the aboriginal inhabitants of the Holy Land.” The same page calls them primitive and illiterate, and says their faith is a name only.
“Zammarin, Mount Carmel, Palestine. I give you to-day some bits of Palestine out of doors. Within the past few weeks I have kept away from the cities and towns, and have watched the shepherds and farmers. I have seen the real Palestine, with the same sky, the same rocks and hills and the same carpet of wild flowers that were here in the days of our Lord. I have talked with the farmers in the fields, have ridden side by side with the modern Balaam as he climbed the hills on his ass, and have even put my hand to the plows, such as were used in the times of the Scriptures, and with a goad have pricked on the bullocks and donkeys as they turned up the sod. The Land of the Farmer. The Palestine of the Bible was a land of the farmer. The children of Israel and their leaders were reared or worked on the farm…”
The same Frank Carpenter column as the Richmond Times-Dispatch printed that Sunday (CP-1911-002), and the whole difference is the room it was given. Richmond ran it across a page under a headline naming stock, grain, shepherds and sheepfolds, with four photographs of the people doing the work. Birmingham ran it in one narrow column headed The Farms Of Palestine, between an advertisement for a drunkenness cure and one for Curo Grains of Life. The copy underneath is the same.
Correction: {'note': 'The presentation captions this scan as the Birmingham Post-Herald. The masthead reads THE AGE-HERALD, which is the Birmingham paper that existed in 1911; the Post-Herald was formed later. Filed under the name on the page.'}
Farms of Palestine—How They Raise Stock and Grain in Land of Milk and Honey—Among Shepherds and Sheepfolds
By Frank G. Carpenter
“Zammarin, Mount Carmel, Palestine. I give you to-day some bits of Palestine out of doors. Within the past few weeks I have kept away from the cities and towns, and have watched the shepherds and farmers. I have seen the real Palestine, with the same sky, the same rocks and hills and the same carpet of wild flowers that were here in the days of our Lord. I have talked with the farmers in the fields, have ridden side by side with the modern Balaam as he climbed the hills on his ass, and have even put my hand to the plows, such as were used in the times of the Scriptures, and with a goad have pricked on the bullocks and donkeys as they turned up the sod. The Land of the Farmer. The Palestine of the Bible was a land of the farmer. The children of Israel and their leaders were reared or worked on the farm…”
“SHEPHERD WITH ONE OF HIS LAMBS.” · “SHEARING A CAMEL. A COMMON SIGHT IN PALESTINE.” · “GATHERING TARES FROM THE WHEAT.” · “HOW THEY PLOW IN PALESTINE.”
A syndicated American correspondent spends a few weeks away from the cities and writes down what the people of Palestine do for a living: plowing, threshing, shearing, keeping sheep in folds, gathering tares out of the wheat. Four photographs run with it here. The subheads across the page are The Land of the Farmer, The Sheep of the Holy Land, Among the Shepherds, In the Sheepfolds, Camels and Donkeys, A Land of Milk and Honey, How They Plow, On the Farms, Taxed by the Mohammedans, In a Jewish Colony and A Furnace Town in the Holy Land — so the piece distinguishes the population that was farming the country from the colonies being planted in it, and gives most of its space to the first. The same column ran in Birmingham the same morning as a single narrow column with no pictures (CP-1911-001).
Correction: {'note': 'The presentation captions this scan as the Lincoln Journal Star. The masthead reads SUNDAY STATE JOURNAL, the Sunday edition of the Nebraska State Journal, which the Journal Star descends from. Filed under the established name so it does not become a second paper.'}
Plan of American Society Is to Buy 100,000 Acres in Palestine Annually — To Establish Colonies of Jews in Holy Land — 14th Annual Convention Held in Peoria
“To buy 100,000 acres of land annually in Palestine in order to establish colonies of Jews was the principal proposition of a practical nature placed before the fourteenth annual convention of the Federation of American Zionists at its session in Peoria Saturday. This proposition was made by the National Fund Commission, which is the active agency of the Zionist movement for the purpose of regaining the Holy Land for the Jewish people. The National Fund Commission reported through Dr. M. Bodenheimer, of Cologne, Germany, that in addition to the thirty-eight agricultural colonies established in Palestine through the efforts of Zionists, a residential suburb for artisans had been established close to the port of Jaffa.”
Colonies in the subheading, and a purchase target in acres per year, decided at a convention in Illinois.
Correction: {'note': 'Slide 9 of the presentation captions this scan as the Buffalo Jewish Review, 19 July 1929. It reports the fourteenth annual convention of the Federation of American Zionists, held in Peoria in 1911, and discusses the Young Turk party in the Ottoman Empire. Filed to the caption on the other scan on that slide.'}
Over 100,000 of Them Now There, and They Are Transforming the Country. PEOPLE BECOMING WEALTHY. Foreign Jews Furnishing Capital and Executive Ability to Make the Natives Self-Supporting.
'Colonists', 'redeem', 'natives' - all in NYT headline voice, 1912
CHRISTIANS MOWED DOWN BY MOSLEMS AT JAFFA, PALESTINE
Athens, Greece, Nov. 20
“Reports of massacres of Christians in Jaffa, Palestine, caused the commander of the Russian cruiser Oleg to weigh anchor and depart hurriedly for that district today… There are supposed to be about 10,000 Christians among the inhabitants, the total of whom is estimated at about 40,000.”
The headline states an atrocity as fact. Underneath it: an Athens dateline, a rumour whose only evidence is that a warship sailed, no casualty counted, no witness quoted — and then three-quarters of the item is an inventory of missionary staff. This is held as a control. The machinery is identical to what produces the other kind of error, and here it runs the other way.
Dr. Paul Nathan of Berlin Asserts Jewish Cause Is Imperilled.
Four years before Balfour. The verb in the headline is disturb and the thing disturbed is Palestine — a country with a settled enough life to be disturbed. The objection in the line beneath is made on Jewish grounds by a Jewish figure in Berlin, which is how the New York Times could print the headline flat.
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.
“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.”
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.
Achooza Corporation Lays Land System Before Zionists. SPECULATION IS PROHIBITED. Jewish Congress To Be Asked To Give $5,000,000 To Aid In Colonization Scheme.
“PLANS IDEAL PALESTINE. Achooza Corporation Lays Land System Before Zionists. SPECULATION IS PROHIBITED. Jewish Congress To Be Asked To Give $5,000,000 To Aid In Colonization Scheme.” “The Achooza, the Palestine Company organized under the laws of New York, yesterday morning laid its plans for the realization of Zionists' ideals upon the table at the Academy of Music.” Mrs. Joseph Fels of New York “spoke on the advisability of a single tax for the colonies of Palestine.” “Purchasers of land certificates who settle in the colonies must use the land for agricultural purposes.” “Jewish soldiers, who at the close of the war will have no homes to return to, will be granted the privilege of settling upon the lands of Palestine. These soldiers, according to present plans, will comprise an agricultural army.”
Colonization in the subheading, colonies in the body, in the Baltimore Sun in 1917.
Correction: {'pub': 'The Baltimore Sun', 'date': '1917-06-27', 'note': 'two captions arrived swapped; the content is from the First World War (Jewish soldiers “who at the close of the war will have no homes to return to”, American Jewish Congress)'}
“The Chief Rabbi of Turkey sent an open letter to the government in which he disavows any relationship of the Jews of Turkey with the plans for a Jewish state in Palestine which is advocated by Jews of Russia and of America.”
Eight weeks before the Balfour Declaration. Not American or European Jews weighing assimilation, but the Jews already living under the sovereignty the plan proposed to break up — and their Chief Rabbi, in an open letter to his own government.
“Palestine has always been renowned for its vines and grapes, the climate, soils and other conditions being much the same as ours. Numbers xiii, 23, refers to bunches of grapes which required two men to carry them, and in Psalm 80 David speaks of a vine figuratively that covered the hill and had boughs like the goodly cedars.”
Sixty-four words, three weeks after the Balfour Declaration. No people, no politics, no mention that the country had just been promised to somebody. The climate is compared to Idaho’s. A country turned into a growing region and a Bible reference, in the month its future was being decided, for readers who grew fruit.
The Views of Those Who Are Opposed to Zionism Expressed by a Leading American Rabbi.
Three weeks after the Balfour Declaration, in the New York Times, as a plain statement across two lines. The line beneath makes clear whose views they are and that a leading American rabbi is expressing them. This is the earliest of the Jewish anti-Zionist headlines in this archive from after the declaration, and it ran as news rather than as controversy.
“London, Dec. 7—General Allenby reports that he has occupied the town of Hebron, in Palestine, the British war office announces tonight. Ancient Hebron, is situated about twenty miles southwest of Jerusalem with approximately 15,000 inhabitants. Tradition identifies it as the site of the tombs of Abraham and other patriarchs. King David resided there the first seven years of his reign.”
The place name is set in the headline, in capitals, as an ordinary geographic fact. The same London dispatch ran in the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester on the same day under a different headline, Allenby Occupies Hebron, Palestine. Neither paper was making a point about the name. It was what the town was called.
“LONDON, Feb. 15. — The British forces in Palestine yesterday made an advance of two miles on a front of six miles northeast of Jerusalem, the war office announces.”
A two-sentence war-office bulletin. Nobody who lives in Palestine appears in it.
“London, March 4.—Astride of the westward road leading from Jerusalem to Nablus, Gen Allenby’s forces advanced a maximum depth northward of three thousand yards on a 12 mile front Saturday and Sunday, it was officially announced today. The enemy offered little opposition. Nablus, 33 miles north of Jerusalem is a city of about 25,000 population. It is the ancient center of the Samaritans and in biblical times was called Shechem. Jacob’s well was located nearby.”
The headline says the city was captured. The story says the line moved three thousand yards toward a city thirty-three miles away, and the paragraph under it gives Nablus a population of twenty-five thousand.
Viscount Bryce Finds Country Able to Support Not More Than 300,000 Additional Souls. · MIGHT GAIN BY IRRIGATION · With Large Capital Expenditure Water Could Be Had to Make Land Serve 600,000.
A British statesman putting a ceiling on it in 1918: room for 300,000 more, or 600,000 with a great deal of money spent on water. Twenty-three years later a Buffalo paper printed the legal adviser of the Jewish Agency saying the country could take three million (CP-1941-001), and quoting an unnamed British official’s earlier estimate only to laugh at it. This is the kind of estimate he meant. Neither headline mentions the people already living there; the word in this one is colony.
“The Dispatch sent by Rabbi Ephraim Frisch of the New Synagogue, this city, to President Wilson, protesting against his endorsement of Zionism, is similar to the protest of the rabbis twenty-two years ago, when Herzl called together the first Zionist Congress. The few reform rabbis who have gained their knowledge of Judaism from German-Jewish reformers, or better said, assimilators, are very ill advised when they—as Rabbi Frisch, their spokesman, did—assailed the loyalty of American Zionists… With the exception of one or two, the others are blatant ignoramuses; and, which is worse, they absolutely decline to learn. They are theorists, and like all theorists, refuse to face facts squarely and honestly. We grant them the right to their opinion, but when they tell the President that the loyalty of Zionists is to be questioned, then they stand before the world branded as miserable slanderers… President Wilson does not need to be told who is loyal. He knows Louis D. Brandeis; he knows Julian W. Mack; he knows Stephen S. Wise; he knows Felix Frankfurter… No one will doubt the Americanism and loyalty of Theodore Roosevelt. He, too, has endorsed a Jewish State in Palestine. What unutterable impertinence on the part of these rabbis! Chutzpah is their long suit, their stock and trade. Representing a dying minority, they want to make the world believe that their voice is the voice of American Israel. They are fooling no one but themselves. There will be a Jewish State in Palestine, protest rabbis or no protest rabbis… For twenty-five years and more the Zionist Movement has gone on, growing from strength to strength. Where are the protest-rabbis of those days? Where the modern protest-rabbis will be. They are forgotten; they were execrated. History repeats itself.”
1918, in a New York Yiddish daily with English pages: the Zionist answer to the rabbis who wrote to Wilson against Zionism, printed as a front-page editorial. The archive carries the anti-Zionist letters; this is what was said back, in the same decade, at the same volume.
Correspondence: David Philipson, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Jacob De Haas
David Philipson, of Cincinnati: “I fear the separatist nationalistic movement among Jews known as Zionism has led you to this conclusion. But let me remind you that there are any number of Jews in the United States who have no conscious separatist solidarity other than a religious solidarity and a solidarity of sympathy with their suffering co-religionists abroad… This is our homeland.” Under the heading “Zionism and Palestinian Natives,” Jacob De Haas answers, quoting the British declaration of November 2, 1917: “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,” and the Zionists of America in convention at Pittsburgh, June 25, 1918: “First: We declare for political and civil equality irrespective of race, sex or faith, of all the inhabitants of the Land.”
An argument between Jewish Americans about Zionism, printed as correspondence three weeks after the Armistice. The first letter runs on from the previous page and carries no heading of its own; the heading recorded here is the one over the reply.
Grand Mufti Explains Foreigners “Too Progressive” for Backward Natives. · Says Would Have Same Distrust of Americans or Englishmen.
By Marion Weinstein
Two American papers carried Marion Weinstein’s interview with the Grand Mufti that week. Look at what this one does in its second line. Too Progressive is inside quotation marks, so it is presented as his phrase. Backward Natives is not, so it is the paper’s. The sentence that results has the Mufti explaining that his own people are too backward for the newcomers — which makes the objection a confession. The Buffalo News two days later printed what he asserted: that Moslems are afraid they will be slowly forced out of Palestine (CP-1919-002). Same interview, and one paper has him describing his people’s inadequacy while the other has him describing their expulsion, twenty-nine years before it happened.
Grand Mufti Asserts Moslems Are Afraid They Will Be Slowly Forced Out of Palestine.
Marion Weinstein
The same interview the Omaha World-Herald ran two days earlier (CP-1919-001), and the line under the headline is the one that matters: slowly forced out of Palestine, stated as what the Grand Mufti asserts, in an American paper in March 1919. Omaha had used the space to say instead that the foreigners were too progressive for backward natives. The main headline here also swaps the noun: Omaha’s Arabs fear Zionists; Buffalo’s fear Jews, with Zionism held back for the second clause.
“He has no authority to appear for us before the Peace Conference on that question… Should anyone attempt to speak on behalf of the Order for or against that question I will denounce him.”
Adolph Kraus of B’nai B’rith disowning Congressman Julius Kahn of California after Kahn presented an anti-Zionist petition to President Wilson. Eighty-five years later the Chicago Tribune would cite that petition — 299 rabbis and laypeople, opposing a Jewish state because displacing Palestinians would be “contrary to the principles of democracy” — as a road not taken.
Despite Statements of Emir Feisul, Head of Hedjaz Delegation to Peace Conference, Relations With Jews in Palestine Strained to Breaking Point—British, Ever Watchful, Take Precautions to Prevent Bloodshed
Marion Weinstein
“during my three months’ travels in Palestine, fellaheen and effendis, peasants and landowners. I have had long conversations with members of the leading families, with educated Arabs, not only in Palestine, but in Damascus and in Beirut. I have spent much time here in Cairo with a member of Emir Feisul’s own staff and with one of the officers in his army, both educated, both coolheaded.” And, under the subhead “Wild Rumors in Palestine”: “I have never found a single Arab, Moslem or Christian, who looks with the deepest sympathy upon the Zionist movement.”
Three months of reporting, and the correspondent lists the society she moved through: peasants, landowners, leading families, educated Arabs, Muslim and Christian. The unanimity is the finding. So is the fact that somebody went and asked.
The greatest peril to the peace of Palestine is Zionism
Clair Price
It will see another war unless Zionism is arrested. Given peaceful development under British direction, it will develop into the peak of the British empire... But given the continued menace of Jewish immigration, its population will break out into an anti-Zionist war which quite conceivably may bring down Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Afghanistan and India and involve the world in a new chaos.
Deseret News Foreign Correspondent Describes Bitter Resentment of Jewish Colonization by Natives Whose Demand Is, “Palestine For Palestinians”—Moslems and Christians For Once United, Say They Will Fight to the Death Rather Than Give Up Their Country to the Jews—“Zionist” Methods Resented, Especially Lavish Use of Money, by Which Agents Buy Best Land at High Prices—Strained Feeling Among Arabs and Other Natives Who Declare They Are Being Sold Out by Allies Without Their Consent—Demand For American or British Protectorate.
Clair Price
The masthead reads: “DESERET EVENING NEWS. FOREIGN NEWS, SOCIETY NEWS. MUSIC, THE DRAMA, AND LITERATURE. SECTION THREE. SATURDAY JULY 12 1919 SALT LAKE CITY UTAH.” The banner: “Is ‘Zionism’ A Menace to World Peace?”
“JAFFA—The Leading Zionist Center in Palestine.” “JERUSALEM—Headquarters of the Zionist Commission in Palestine.” “HAIFA—Landing Place of the Famous Zionist Party.”
The whole argument is in the standfirst, in 1919, including the demand as the correspondent heard it: Palestine for Palestinians. The masthead prints the date.
Unless Zionism is checked at once, it will succeed in the next few years in buying up all the good land in Palestine and in peopling it with Jewish colonies, leaving the 750,000 present inhabitants of Palestine as hirelings and strangers in their own homeland. None knows this better than the Palestinians themselves.
The colonies would be welcomed were they not forerunners of a planned wave
Clair Price
Palestinians explain the fair amount of success which has been gained by the Jewish colonies by the unlimited resources which Zionism has placed at their command... The colonies would be welcomed in Palestine were they not forerunners in a planned wave of Jews intended to buy the country away from its people.
Interview with leaders of the Mohammedan-Christian society
Clair Price
'If the Jews have a right to Palestine,' they told me, 'we Arabs have a right to Spain and the Indians have a right to New York.' 'We Arabs have been here for 5,000 years... Today they constitute only 12.5 percent of our population... Haven't we Moslems respected the Christians' holy places? Haven't we permitted Jewish pilgrims to flow into and out of the country with perfect freedom? Is it grateful of them to return our favors by demanding that we give up our country to them? Where will we go?'
ZIONISM IS DANGER TO WORLD PEACE SAYS CLAIR PRICE’S JERUSALEM LETTER
Natives Bitterly Resent Jewish Colonization, Whose Great Wealth Makes It Irresistible Force
Clair Price, Jerusalem, June 30 (Edward Marshall Syndicate)
“Before the menace of Zionism, Moslems and Christians alike are united. Never before have these two religions sunk their differences as they have sunk them before the common peril of Jewish colonization. They are no longer enemies. They are Palestinians. … The fact is that Palestine’s population now, as before the war, consists of 600,000 Arabs, all of whom are Moslems; 75,000 Christians, a large proportion of whom are natives; and 75,000 Jews…”
A fourth city for the Clair Price dispatch the archive already holds from Salt Lake City, Buffalo and San Antonio — the earliest of the four datelines, and the only Southern one. The Mohammedan-Christian Society interview in the same column is CP-1919-008. The assertion that Palestinian national identity was manufactured later has to contend with this sentence, set in ordinary body type in Alabama in July 1919.
ZIONISM MAY BRING MORE WORLD WAR, SAYS CLAIR PRICE
Correspondent finds Palestinians very bitter on the point of Jewish colonization. DON'T CONCEDE RIGHT - Say Hebrews have same claim on land as Indians have to New York or Arabs to Spain. BRITISH COME IN FOR ABUSE - Natives wondering if they are to be displaced again, now that the Turk has been driven out.
Correspondent Finds Remarkable Union Between Christians and Mohammedans Opposing Settlement of "Their Country" by Jews
Clair Price
“JERUSALEM, June 30.—The greatest peril to the peace of Palestine is Zionism. The little link between the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa which is Palestine, has seen more fighting than any other land in the world during its 5,000 years of history. It will see another war unless Zionism is arrested. Given peaceful development under British direction, it will develop into the peak of the British Empire… Before the ‘menace’ of Zionism, Moslems and Christians alike are united. Never before have these two religions sunk their differences as they have sunk them before the common peril of Jewish colonization. They are no longer enemies. They are Palestinians. It is Zionist money that they fear. Turkish tax collectors have left Palestine a poverty-stricken country. The ‘osher’ has left its mark everywhere in the arrested development of Palestine. For years, the ‘osher,’ the principal tax in the Ottoman Empire, was sold by public tender in Palestine and was collected by its purchaser or tax farmer, whose primary interest was collecting many times the amount he paid for it. The only limit to the amount he could collect was the necessity of avoiding a complaint to the Porte. Provided the tax farmer did not provoke a revolt, he could rob right and left. The result is that today the number of Moslems in Palestine whose personal fortunes exceed [figure illegible] could be named on the fingers of one hand. The vast majority of Palestinians live from day to day. Zionism, however, commands unlimited wealth… Unless Zionism is checked at once, it will succeed in the next few years in buying up all the good land in Palestine and in peopling it with Jewish colonies, leaving the 780,000 present inhabitants of Palestine as hirelings and strangers in their own homeland. None knows this better than the Palestinians themselves. Their answer to it is the Mohammedan-Christian Society, an organization whose headquarters is in Jerusalem and whose branch offices now cover Palestine like a blanket. Its governing board consists of thirty Moslems and ten Christians.”
“The Wailing Place” of the Jews · Jerusalem, Headquarters of the Zionist [movement] · Jaffa, the Leading Zionist Centre in Palestine · A View of Haifa
A correspondent writing from Jerusalem in 1919 uses “Palestinians” as a national noun and defines it on the page: Moslems and Christians who stopped being enemies. He names their organization, the Mohammedan-Christian Society, and counts its board. He also gives the population of Palestine as 780,000 and says what he expects will happen to them. Forty-five years before the PLO was founded.
“Our inimical friends, the anti-Zionists, striving to strengthen their opposition to Zionism, besides accusing the Zionists of treachery to the countries of which they are citizens—a most vicious falsehood—they quote some Gentile writers who happen to sound anti-Zionistic sentiment. One of these self-appointed keepers of Israel in his weekly or weekly, after re-stating his anti-Zionistic position and assuring his readers that Zionism has lost out because of its misinterpretation of the Balfour Declaration, quotes Dr. William T. Ellis, special correspondent of the New York Herald in Damascus, who, among other things, said, also: ‘It is simply impossible to turn Palestine over to the Jews without precipitating a great massacre,’ and that the natives object to an English mandate in Palestine… To them every anti-Semite becomes a renowned authority, so long as he promotes anti-Zionism.”
A warning printed in 1919 and quoted in order to dismiss it. The argument that opposing Zionism amounts to antisemitism is already fully formed here, twenty-five years before the Baltimore Sun reported it from a convention platform.
PEACE CONFERENCE COMMISSION TO HOLD INVESTIGATION.
from the Jerusalem correspondent of the Jewish Morning Journal
“The very first question that was put to the spokesmen of Palestine Jewry was ‘What would be the attitude of the Jews toward the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine?’ … The Commission wanted to know how large a Jewish population in the opinion of the delegation could be absorbed in Palestine. The reply was four million… it was evident from the questions put by the Commission that the Palestine it had in mind was not limited to the territory west of the Jordan.”
The King–Crane Commission beginning work in Jaffa on 10 June 1919. Its opening question names roughly nine-tenths of the country’s population by what they are not — the Balfour Declaration’s own construction, reprinted in an American paper. One line of type in the third column is set upside down; the inversion is the paper’s. “accomodate” is the paper’s spelling.
“The medal of the Order of the British Empire has been presented to two Palestinian Jews who performed deeds of exceptional heroism in the campaign against the Turks. The presentation was made by Major General Hodgson in front of the Military Governorate, and was witnessed by a very large gathering, including the staff of the Military Administration, representatives of the Zionist Commission and of the American Zionist Medical Unit, as well as members of the various Jewish communities in the country. The recipients of the medals were Mr. Lova Schnerson and Mr. Yussef Davidesco, both of whom were employed in the Intelligence Department of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Mr. Schnerson crossed the enemy lines twice in disguise, at great peril to his life, and obtained very important information. Mr. Davidesco also crossed the Turkish lines, and—”
Palestinian Jews, meaning Jewish residents of Palestine, in 1919. The clipping is cut off mid-sentence.
Part of Covering Palestine, an archive of 1262 newspaper clippings about Palestinians printed in 512 papers between 1799 and 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles. Nothing here was printed after 6 October 2023.