Port at Jaffa Will Be Enlarged; £115,000 Assigned

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

Palestine will have the facilities of two ports, that of Haifa and Jaffa, according to a decision of the Palestine Government.

It was learned here that in addition to the construction of the port of Haifa the Government has assigned the amount of £115,000 for the purpose of enlarging and improving the Jaffa port.

The work at Jaffa will start shortly, it was stated. Turkey is a Republic the Jews do not need more than civil rights, has no sense. The Turkish Republic cannot be compared to America, or to France or England. In these countries the Jewish children attend the general schools, but in Turkey they cannot do so. There the Jews must have their own schools. If minority rights are applicable it is to such countries as Turkey. And where as the Jews of Poland, which is certainly more civilized than Turkey, and the Jews of Lithuania and Roumania are fighting for the rights which protect the Jewish nationality and religion, the act of the Turkish Jews is similar to that of the first Jewish assimilationists in France who declared, at the end of the eighteenth century, that they renounced Jerusalem because France is their Jerusalem. The Turkish Jews have always been national. But the new Turkish chauvinism has converted them into spiritual slaves.”

A different view of the subject is taken by Jacob Fishman, in the “Jewish Morning Journal.” Though not approving of the action of the Turkish Jews, Mr. Fishman finds extenuating factors. “If we should face the truth,” he writes “we should find that the so-called remedy of ‘minority rights’ is usually a tortured escape from a complicated situation. In the best cases those who have been granted minority rights are through this very fact stamped as citizens who are not equal to all the others. It is much better, of course, when a country can rise to the level of America where equal rights for everybody, regardless of religion or origin prevail.”

Referring to the complicated conditions in Eastern Europe where minority rights for Jews have remained merely ‘scraps of paper,’ the writer concludes: “The Jewish situation in Mustapha Kemal’s new Turkey is not sufficiently clear for a correct appraisal of the significance of the present step on the part of the Turkish Jews. It is not precluded that its decision was inspired by the government and that there is another element that cannot make itself heard distinctly.”

ZANGWILL’S INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION

Zangwill’s influence on American public opinion is discussed editorially by the Buffalo “Times.”

“Zangwill,” the paper writes, “was personally so widely known in this country, his plays were acted here so frequently and his writings so extensively read, that in the retrospect consequent upon his death, the feeling here is as though he had lived on this side of the Atlantic. He was a powerful and signally wholesome influence in creation and guidance of American public opinion. This had eminent illustration in regard to what for years was a great American issue, which was ultimately settled, and settled right. That was the issue of woman’s suffrage, and of woman’s suffrage, Israel Zangwill was one of the early and most illustrious pioneers.”

Zangwill’s refusal to change his style, asserts the “Nation” of Aug. 11, was the reason for his failure to become the acknowledged leader in Jewry.

“His custom of wrapping the pearl of wisdom in the tinfoil of epigram,” we read, “antagonized this literal-minded people (the Jews). They suspected the sincerity of one who could joke about matters of great seriousness and import, and they failed to see the justice of his comments for the jest.

“Zangwill was fully aware of the extent to which his manner injured the substance of his appeals to reason, but he would not change his style. It was a sacrifice he was not prepared to make for any ideal. Without doubt it was this trivial weakness that deprived him of the acknowledged leadership in Jewry and–far greater loss–deprived the Jewish people of his leadership. Thus did the writer injure the man, men as the man had injured the author.”

That Zangwill’s fame will rest most securely on his championship of Zionism and other causes rather than on his contribution to literature, is the belief of the Buffalo “Courier-Express,” which observes in part:

“Even if Zangwill had never written The Children of the Ghetto’ or his plays, including Merely Mary Ann, his journalistic work for betterment of his race would have made his name widely known. To his incessant labor in keeping before the public the intolerable conditions under which Jews lived in many parts of Europe, the present development in Palestine may be said, in large measure at least, to owe its ###.”Ashtoreth, whose monument was discovered in the building. Until lately it was thought that under the time of Rameses III of the Egyptian Dynasty the latter temple was in disuse, but the new details show that such was not the case. As a matter of fact, from the time of the erection of the buildings up to the time when King David drove out the Philistines, worship was carried on in both temples, first of all by the Egyptians and their mercenaries, and, latterly; by the Philistines. These peoples seem to have taken possession of Beth-shan at the death of Rameses III in 1167 B.C. But already before their time, as the evidence indicates, there were Egyptian mercenary troops at Beth-shan, who, like the Philistines, came from the Aegean-Anatolian regions. On the death of the king these troops probably took possession of the place for themselves and amalgamated with the incoming Philistines, whom the Egyptians knew as the Pulesti. The newcomers are never themselves described as mercenaries of Egypt but always as enemies. Burials of Egyptian mercenaries were discovered at Beth-shan in 1922; they comprised peculiar anthropoid pottery sarcophagi of the same date (11th Dynasty) and type as the foreign-looking pottery sarcophagi found in Egypt at el-Yahuaiyoh and Tell Nebesheh. A spearhead found with a sarcophagus at the latter place is identical with that found in one of the parallel burials at Beth-shan.It is evident that at the death of Saul in 1020 B.C. the Philistines were in actual possession of the fort: and they were worshipping in the two temples erected by Rameses II, the adoration of their Baal whom they called Dagon and their Baalath Ashtoreth, doubtless being carried out in the respective temples in which the Baal and Baalath of the Egyptians were revered. The biblical references are given in I Chronicles, X, 10 and I Samuel, XXI, 10. The former passage relates that when Saul died the Philistines “put his armour in the house of their gods, and fastened his head in the temple of Dagon,” and the parallel passage in Samuel informs us that “they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan.” The combined facts, both literary and archaeological, show that, in the Old Testament, the building called “temple of Dagon” was the southern temple of Rameses II; and that the building called “house of Ashtaroth” in the one place and “house of their gods” in the other was the old northern temple of the king. In the latter connection there is no inconsistency in the fact that the same temple is termed “house of Ashtaroth (in Revised Version, ‘house of the Ashtaroth’)” and “house of their gods,” for it must be remembered that Ashtaroth is merely the plural form of Ashtoreth. In any case the passage in Chronicles shows that there were two temple at Beth-shan during the Philistine regime. The excavations have certainly proved that there were.

Somewhere about 1000 B.C. King David-seems to have driven out the Philistines. He was probably also responsible for the partial demolition of the “house of Ashtaroth” and the “temple of Dagon.” A new floor which the excavators found laid in the former building over the debris of destruction, and at such a height as to cover the stone bases of the four columns which they once supported, was perhaps his work. David must have established a sanctuary or a tabernacle to the God of Israel at Beth-shan. If there was such a sanctuary, the only place large enough for it was either in the ruins of the Dagon temple or in the reconstructed Ashtoreth temple, the report states.