Our Daily News Letter

Fifteen years ago a city was founded in the sandy dunes which stretch away to the distant horizon north of the ancient Philstine city of Jaffa.

A handful of Jaffa’s worthy citizens managed at that time to scrape together enough money to purchase the sandy piece of Palestine situated half-way between Jaffa and the Arab cemetery on the sea-shore. 300,000 francs were loaned to these people by the Jewish National Fund, and with this money they built the first modern city of Palestine.

Haff a year ago I wrote in the “Neue Freie Presse”: “Today this city has a population of 13,000 within an area of 400 ##.” Today. speaking to the City Mayor. Mr. Dizengoff, who has an almost uncanny reputation for far-sightedness, and who has stood at the head of the municipality since its foundation. I am told by him that Tel Aviv has already a population of 25,000!

When I ask about the present area of the city I am told that it may have grown while I am asking the question: what, then, is the use of asking? Yesterday, for instance, they bought another couple of hundred duna##s land, and a few more real estate deals are about to be closed by the municipality. What is the use of citing figures if they are already wrong as soon as given?

When the High Commission requested of the Gevernor of Jaffa a plan of Tel Aviv. Major Campbell found none to send him! And this is what the Governor had to say in excuse; “It is impossible to prepare a plan at this time for it will be obsolete before we finish it. We can’t keep pace.”

## buildings completed last month, same 400 order construction, two large factories-including the silk mill of the Vienna banker. Mr. D## built, the corner stone hold for the new City Half (the “old” one has been standing already these ten years almost!) -such is Tel Aviv in October, 1924.

But how did this city become the big place it is today, after starting cut as a mere cottage ##?

Like everything that the Jews in Palestine are doing: from ##. thanks to the enmity of the Arabs.

It was on that ill-starred First of May, 1921, that a pogrom suddenly broke out in the streets of the Old Town of Jaffa. The Arab police had ## the rabble of the port in plundering and ##dering the Jewish inhabitants, while the British garrison stood by idly, without lifting as much as a finger. Some fifty Jews and a little more Arabs were killed, and not a thing was done by the authorities to prevent it.

In less than one hour the Jewish self-defense force had managed to throw a cordon between Tel-Aviv and the Arab sections of Jaffa. No Arab could pass to Tel-Aviv, and no Jew to Jaffa proper. And after one more hour there began this time with the aid of the authorities-a systematic evacuation of the Arab section of the city, which bad for some 80 years past housed peaceably side by side Jews and Moslems. Motor trucks carried the Jews with bag and baggage from their old dwelling places to Tel-Aviv. And on the other hand, in the Nevo Sholem section and other “boundary lists” it was the Arabs who were ejected by the self-defense force from their homes.

Camping at first in tents, the refugees were at ## put to work laying out streets and building roads, to prepare the ground for the new settlement. The slogan was “The Jews Will Not Return to Jaffa.”

And thus, out of the Arab pogrom built by the refugees themselves, arose the city on the “Hill of the Spring” – Tel-Aviv. A city built by Jews, a city of the Jews, a city for the Jews.