J.T.A. Staff Correspondent
Berlin.
Special agreements for commerce between Palestine and Germany are good business and are valuable for both parties to the deal, declares Freiherr von Rheinbaben, former State Secretary and aide to Chancellor Streseman, in an article in the Berliner Boersenzeitung from Palestine.
Pointing out that Germany is acting out of “real considerations” in facilitating exports to Palestine, he declares that “if, on the other hand, the Jewish leaders of the Jewish settlement organizations systematically bring in German immigrants, if they have deliberately themselves broken the international Jewish boycott against the New Germany, especially in Palestine, this is due equally not to sentiments and slogans but to sober interests. We perceive in the problems of present-day Palestine not only a highly interesting experiment, but we realize a good, practical and useful policy if we continue along this road of an exchange of goods and expand it.”
ANALYZES POPULATION
He writes:
“Palestine is only a third of the size of Bavaria and has no more than 1,200,000 inhabitants, the Jews numbering at most only 350,000 with more than 800,000 Arabs and only a few thousand Christians. The Jewish immigration comes into the country about half legally and about half illegally. The legal immigration during the last few years has been on an average of about 40,000, and in 1934 it went as high as 45,000.
“In the last two years 18,000 Jews came legally into Palestine from Germany. The majority of the Jewish immigrants are poor. Only twelve to thirteen percent bring with them the sum of £1,000 which entitles them to admission under the capitalist category. Nevertheless, during the last three years, the very considerable sum of thirty to thirty-five million pounds has in this way been brought into Palestine mainly through Zionist Jews all over the world. Germany’s industrial export to Palestine in 1934 was valued at about twenty-five million marks, and Germany, with twenty-two per cent of the total imports of Palestine, took second place after Great Britain.”
SEES FOUNDATION FIRM
Freiherr von Reinbaben asks in the article whether the present economic prosperity in Palestine is genuine. There are many people, he says, who ask themselves whether this favorable development is not too rapid and therefore unsound. It is impossible under present conditions in the world to prophesy any economic matters, he says. But even a decline of the prosperity in Palestine, or a real crisis could not again destroy certain foundations and real factors that have been created.
“The Near East after the Great War is a new economic territory that has been opened up that is not without its own raw material, and is inhabited by a large well-governed population that is growing accustomed to modern methods and needs,” he points out. This makes continued progress appear certain.
THE ARAB-JEWISH PROBLEM
With regard to the differences between Arabs and Jews, he believes that there is a real political problem there. “Many thousands of poor Arabs naturally view with astonishment and with enmity that which is being created by the immigrant Jews in front of their eyes. But it is a long way from nursing such feelings to the possibility of again expelling this section of the Jewish population or otherwise destroying them. Large sections of the Arab population are profiting by the general progress of the country. In addition, the systematic direction of Jewish immigration to Palestine does not pursue the aim of converting Palestine into a Jewish State, but only according to the Balfour Declaration, assuring the Jews a National Home in Palestine. Even if there are efforts made on the Jewish side to create a total Jewish State, as there are on the other hand also adherents of a pan-Arab confederation including Palestine, the fact is that the land is in the firm grip of the British Empire. So far as any human being can be sure of anything, Palestine will become neither the one nor the other.”
The writer pays tribute to the far-seeing British art of government. “Higher than the humanitarian aim of the Jewish homeland, there is the security and expansion of the British Empire,” he declares.
“If we in Germany,” he concludes, “promote Jewish emigration to Palestine by means of a special agreement, if we import Jaffa oranges and export to an increasing extent industrial articles to Palestine, if we ourselves contribute by providing machinery to create a native industry in Palestine which can cater to the needs of the population of the Near East, we are doing this out of very real considerations.
“If, on the other hand, the Jewish leaders of the Jewish settlement organizations systematically bring in German immigrants, if they have deliberately themselves broken the international Jewish boycott against the New Germany, especially in Palestine, this is due equally not to sentiments and slogans, but to sober interests. We perceive in the problems of present-day Palestine not only a highly interesting experiment, but we realize a good, practical and useful policy if we continue along this road of an exchange of goods and expand it.”
CENTRAL COUNCIL CREATED
A Central Council for unifying public opinion and forming cooperative plans has been established in the Bensonhurst and Mapleton districts of Brooklyn, with headquarters at the Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, Bay Parkway and 78th Street.
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.
