[The purpose of the Digest is informative: Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does not indicate approval,-Editor.]
The report of Dr. Henry Pritchett of the Carnegie Endowment giving an unfavorable estimate of the Jewish reconstruction work in Palestine and the possibilities of the Jewish National Home, is criticized in the New York press of yesterday. Dr. Pritchett’s report is regarded as biased and exaggerated in its analysis of the Palestine situation.
“We have read the report very carefully and have concluded that whatever else may be said one thing is certain, that the writer is not impartial,” observes the “Forward,” Socialist paper of New York, which writes further:
“Dr. Pritchett thinks that the Jews have no right to have their own land, because they are worse than other people. The Jews, he says, are too nationalistic, a people that is too egotistic, and if they were to have their own land the other people would find them unbearable. This is a libel against the Jews, a libel which has been broadcast by the anti-Semites during the recent years of patriotic insanity.”
As regards Dr. Pritchett’s allegation that the Jews are too “acquisitive,” the paper terms it “another anti-Semitic insult” and adds: “It is positively scandalous how the author of the report applies the ‘Jewish characteristic’ to the Jewish relations with the Arabs in Palestine. If the Jews can be accused anywhere by the anti-Semites as ‘acquisitive’ there certainly is not a trace of this characteristic in Palestine. Whatever possessions the Jews have there they have paid for dearly, very dearly. The Arabs themselves will admit this.”
The charge that Dr. Pritchett’s report was deliberately inspired because of his connections with the Near East Relief, an organization close to the anti-Zionist Christian Arabs, is made by the “Day,” which writes: “Every Mohammedan Arab will recognize and admit that it is not science that speaks through Dr. Pritchett but the political trickstry of the Christian Arabs, a group of Politicians who are concerned more with church-politics than with the welfare of the country. And every American who is familiar with the social connections in this country knows Dr. Pritchett’s relation to the well known missionary society: Near-East Relief, which is concerned with souls for the future world rather than with the living interests of the people in this world.”
The most glaring injustice of Dr. Pritchett’s report, in the opinion of Jacob Fishman (“Jewish Morning Journal”) is his assertion that the Jews through their colonization work drove the Arabs from the Emek Jezreel. “This is a downright falsehood,” declares Mr. Fishman. “When the Chalutzim undertook to colonize the Emek the Arabs predicted that the Jewish settlers would die out like flies Without the Chalutzim the Emek would unto this day have remained abandoned and swampy… Wherever Jews purchase land on which Arabs live the Arabs are given other land to settle on.”
The New York “Times” finds that” when Dr. Pritchett passes from concrete data to purpose and motives he enters on the debatable ground of sentiment.”
As regards his opinion that Zionism is an instance of the superheated nationalism engendered by the World War, the “Times” remarks: “There will be those to suggest that if the old Jewish State had weaknesses, it also had virtues, and that in giving to the Western world its two chief religions it did reveal a capacity for cooperation with the rest of mankind. There are Zionists who maintain that their scheme, far from emphasizing the character of the Jews as a chosen people among the nations, abdicates that role by striving to create a Jewsh State on the model of existing States everywhere.
“For the moment, however,” the paper avers, “these imponderables are of less consequence than the concrete problems which Dr. Pritchett raises. Are there in Palestine the possibilities of a sound economic foundation for large-scale Jewish agricultural colonies have been kept alive by artificial stimulation? Even if the economic foundations are there, can a large Jewish population be developed without displacing the native Arabs? Dr. Pritchett asserts that the Arabs must be evicted if a million Jewish colonists are to enter the country Around such questions should centre the debate which Dr. Pritchett’s report is certain to provoke.”
The New York “World” is impressed with Dr. Pritchett’s views. Listing his arguments against Zionism, the paper concludes thus:
“These are formidable facts. And however high the hopes and fine the spirit of the Jewish immigrant returning to a distant home they are facts which no amount of hopefulness can brush aside.”
The “Baltimore Sun,” on the other hand, expresses the conviction that Dr. Pritchett’s arguments constitute “weak logic.” In an editorial under this caption the paper makes especial reference to his assertion regarding the ill effects of the “segregation of national groups” as an argument against the Jewish national Home.
“Two criticisms of this comment come immediately to mind. The first, that if it is true, the mingling of Jews and Arabs in Palestine is to be desired rather than condemned. The second that Americans, who are about as far from being a segregated national group as can be imagined, are not infrequently accused of possessing these unlovely characteristics in spite of cosmopolitan lineage.
“Zionism has many opponents whose views command respect. But most of them are more successful with the logic than Dr. Pritchett in this instance.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
