The position of Zionism, with the crisis in Jewish life and the internal economic Armaggedon in the background, is discussed in a statement issued by Nahum Sokolow, President of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization. Urging Jews to join the Zionist Organization, Mr. Sokolow declares in the course of his statement:
Zionism signifies salvation for tens of thousands today, as it will for hundreds of thousands in time to come. It signifies the economic and moral redemption of Israel. It is the only dignified answer to persecution without and disintegration within. A policy of despair or of impatience cannot be countenanced. Strength lies in hard work; real heroism lies in material sacrifice. There is no reason for despair. To refuse to work for the realization of a Jewish Palestine because we can only get it in instalments is a very cheap excuse for indolence. Compared with the thousands of years of sustained hope and martyr-like endurance, a decade or two longer is of no consequence. The future belongs to those who will wait and work—the future is ours. If in proportion to the great expectations we have to some extent fallen short in our endeavors, it is not of much significance. We, are sure to succeed; history points in that direction. Divine promise points that way. In Zionism alone all Israel are brethren. We are on the road to Zion, and must be helped and shall be helped on that road by Great Britain. Great Britain can be impressed only empirically through our systematic work, our tenacity and devotion. All other methods of argumentation are doomed to failure. Sooner or later, Great Britain will accept our entire Zionist policy. But before that issue is raised, the problem to be solved is the acceptance of the Zionist policy by the whole of Jewry.
Dealing with the situation of Jews in the Diaspora, Mr. Sokolow notes that in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe our middle class has been reduced to beggary. Jewish laborers who lived from hand-to-mouth in ordinary times are now, during the industrial crisis, literally suffering direst want. Jewish benevolence, hardly surpassed amongst other nations, is unable, under present conditions, to cope with the increasing poverty. In addition, the new outbreak of persecutions has to be taken into account. Jews are not everywhere subjected to massacre; in many places they would prefer speedy brutal death to the slow extinction from destitution and starvation to which hypocritical anti-Semitism condemns them through economic measures.
After describing the progress achieved in the development of Palestine, revealing a cardinal antithesis between the Diaspora and Palestine, Mr. Sokolow says that it would be false modesty not to note the success of the Jewish National Home even in its present imperfect stage. We are distressed, he says, that tens of thousands of young and able pioneers are suffering, morally and materially, waiting in suspense for their turn to be admitted to the only place of refuge for them, the sole haven of their hopes. The sight of middle-class Jews in some countries doomed to extinction at a time when they would be useful to the development of the Jewish National Home, thus lessening the terrible congestion as well as becoming in Palestine a productive and creative industrial factor, weighs gravely with us Along with the “Aliyah” of the pioneers, that of the middle classes deserves close attention. The two are inseparable. We need much larger tracts of land ; the land at our dis-
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.
