B"H

Authentic historical insight to Zionism

The Reunion in Palestine and the position of those who remain behind

Zionists are firmly convinced that the anxiety of the assimilated Jews is without foundation. The reunion of the Jewish people in Palestine will not have the consequence the latter fear. Once there is a Jewish country, the Jews will have the choice of emigrating thither or of remaining in their present home. Many will doubtless remain and those who do remain will have shown by their choice that they prefer their native land to their race and the national country. It is possible that even then the anti-Semites will still hurl into their teeth the contemptuous and perfidious reproach: "Foreigners!" But those who are real Christians among the fellow-citizens, those who think and feel in accordance with the teachings and examples of the Gospel, will be convinced that these Jews do not regard themselves as strangers in their native country, and the latter will be able properly to show their voluntary renunciation of the return to their own Jewish country and their faithful loyalty to their home and their Christian neighbors.

Overcoming Difficulties.

Zionists know that they have under­taken a work of unexampled difficulty. The attempt has never been made of transplanting several million people in a short time from different countries to another territory by peaceful means; the attempt has never been made to convert millions of proletarians, without a tirade and sadly reduced in physical respects, into agriculturists and cattle-breeders, to make the shopkeepers and dealers of tile city, tile agents and domestic servants, all divorced from nature, once more familiar with the plough and with nourishing Mother Earth. It will be necessary to accustom the Jews of different origin to one another, to train them practically to national uniformity, and thereby to conquer tile almost superhuman difficulties arising out of differences of language, dissimilar culture, and the modes of thought, prejudices, inclinations, and aversions of foreign nationalities, which they will bring with them from the land of their birth.

Our confidence.

But Zionists are encouraged to begin this labor of Hercules by the conviction that they are doing a necessary and useful work, a work of love and of civilization, a work of justice and of wisdom. They want to save from eight to ten million of their brethren from intolerable misery. They want to deliver the nations, amid which they are now vegetating, from the presence of Jews who, they tell us, are a burden to them and whose residence amongst them is obviously disagreeable to them. They want to remove its victims from anti-Semitism, which everywhere degrades public morals and magnifies tile worst instincts. They want to make the Jews, who are reproached at present with being parasites, into valuable producers. They want to water with their sweat a land which is to-day a desert, and to cultivate it with their hands until it becomes a luxuriant garden as of yore. Thus will Zionism be of equal service to the unfortunate Jews and to the Christian nations, to civilization and to international economy, and the services which it can render and will render, are great enough to justify the hope that the Christian world will also hold them in honor and support the movement with its active sympathy.

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