Against those who now accuse Jewish Palestine of being nothing but a haven for the get-rich-quick, and as such deserving of no special consideration in its efforts to raise its economic level above that of the Arab fellaheen, Lord Melchett, in the Daily Herald of August 31, reaffirms the intellectual character of the Jewish immigration and its cultural significance.
"There is a tendency," Lord Melchett believes, "to turn round and say that the colonization of Palestine has become nothing more than an economic racket.
"It was only to be expected that, as the result of Jewish efforts, territory in Palestine would become more valuable . . . and that the efficiency of the Jews would be to their own economic advantage.
A NEW CULTURE
"What, however, the whole world seems to fail to realize at the moment is that the Jewish colonization of Palestine has given rise to a great new working class culture, produced by those whose talents were being stamped out and stifled in the ghettos of Europe and whose abilities were openly reviled in so-called civilized countries. . . ."
Economic success, Lord Melchett insists, is merely the basis for a widespread, deeply pervasive working-class culture, of which the Ohel Players, recently performing in London, were ### enormously impressive token.
"To have witnessed the card-playing scene in Maxim Gorki’s play, ‘The Lower Depths,’ was to have realized that the new development in Palestine represents the outcropping, after centuries of suppression, of an artistic ability and power of fundamentally greater value than anything which has taken place in Palestine since the Dispersion," he says.
ATTACKS BEING MADE
But there are groups, even among liberals, "trying to whittle down the sense of obligation to the Jew"; and these attack the working class, augmented by many returning to it of their own will, as providing an undesirable type of immigrant. This class, in Lord Melchett’s opinion, is "imbued with ideals that can be paralleled by no other working class in the world."
"And it would be a tragedy," Lord Melchett concludes, "if, at this stage, the prejudices of those who fail to realize our high spiritual purpose are allowed in any way to check what we are doing in our homeland."
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.
