They have won one of our greatest victories in Palestine. Hebrew came to us not as a miracle, but by the incessant labor of the Hebrew teachers and writers in Palestine. And when I left Palestine I promised them that I would not keep silent on this subject.”
Talking of his recent visit to Palestine, Dr. Sokolow told of his dramatic meeting in the Emek with a colony of Jews, most of whom hailed from the Whitechapel district. “My present visit to Palestine was after a period of many years,” Dr. Sokolow went on, “and progress was visible everywhere throughout the country. One of the miracles was the miracle of finding water in Palestine. I visited for myself Kerkur, a colony of English Jews, and I found them celebrating a festival, because they had found water. Most of these Jews I had known in Whitechapel, and they took me to see the miracle of water. In place of a wilderness everything was verdant and flourishing. The finding of water has transformed the entire land.
“Our hope that Palestine will be a land flowing with milk and honey will soon be realized,” Dr. Sokolow said. “For years, we had to get our milk from Australia and our honey from Syria. Now we have our own milk and our own honey.
“If you wish to confer any honor upon me, maintain the ‘Haolom’ which I founded,” Mr. Sokolow concluded. “I should consider it a national calamity if the small flame of the ‘Haolom’ should be extinguished.”
Among other speakers were Dr. S. Brodetsky, head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency in London; M. Klein man, acting editor of the ‘Haolom’, and Major H. A. Proctor. Major Proctor, who is a non-Jew and a member of Parliament, surprised the gathering by interspersing his speech with quotations in faultless Hebrew.
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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.
