Colors of Jewish Battalion to Be Removed from Jerusalem Synagogue, on Demand of Ultraorthodox

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

The colors of the Jewish Legion, which were recently deposited in the Main Synagogue in Jerusalem, will be removed from the synagogue and placed in a hotel, according to a report from Jerusalem to the news agency of the National Catholic Welfare Conference here. The correspondent of the Catholic News Agency sees in the proposed removal a sign of “the violent anti-Christian feeling of some of the Palestine Jews.”

Commenting on the echoes in Jerusalem of the Wise incident, the correspondent states that the “assurance of a national existence given to the Jews in Palestine by the Balfour Declaration and subsequent actions of the Great Powers has not served to lessen the antipathy with which the Zionists regard Christianity here.”

The correspondent then relates: “The colors of the Jewish Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, brought from London, were deposited with great ceremony in the Great Synagogue here. Immediately a violent protest arose from the Orthodox Jews who assert that the presence of the flag in the Synagogue is contrary to the dictates of the Jewish faith because there is a Christian cross on the flag. It is reported that the Battalion’s colors are to be removed from the Synagogue and placed in a hotel.”

The “Falastin.” the anti-Zionist Arab paper in Palestine, states that “a few days after the ceremony of depositing the flag in the Synagogue, several Jews demanded the removal of the colors from the Temple, because it bears a cross on it. Mr. Amdursky being the Warden of that Synagogue, they proposed that it should be removed to his hotel, but we think it a dishonour for the flag to be kept in such a place. Thus the British flag is insulted by the Jews.” the paper says.