Vatican is Attempting to Turn Palestine into Part of Papal State Says English Minister Resident in H

Propaganda which aimed to make Palestine an appendage of the Papal State and which was fostered by a combination of Moslems and Catholics who publicly proclaimed themselves as being against the Jews and Protestants, was the real reason behind the riots of last August. This was the statement made recently by the Rev. Dr. W. M. Christie of the Mount Carmel Bible School, Haifa, in a paper read at the Victoria Institute, London, according to a letter from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service.

The Balfour Declaration, wrote Dr. Christie, has been much discussed and much condemned, but this was because it has been misunderstood and misrepresented. It gave the Jew not a single right or privilege that men of every other nationality had not all along possessed. It abolished the regulation made only against the Jew, which prevented his entering the land and acquiring property, but that law had already become obsolete by means of backsheesh which passed into Arab and Turkish pockets.

“What of the National Home that has been so much denounced?” asked Dr. Christie. “That, too, gave the Jew nothing he did not possess before—the opportunity of acquiring the nationality of the country of his residence, i.e., he might give up his old nationality and become a Palestinian. He had found security in the past in not being Turkish, now he might, under British Mandate, be better as a Palestinian than anything else. And in not a single point has there been an infringement of the terms as I have explained them. Immigration has been carefully controlled and limited, with a view to absorption. The unsuitable have been eliminated by the Zionists, and those who have come in have done so in the spirit of goodwill. Every yard of land acquired has been purchased, very often at high prices, the intermediaries being generally the Effendi class who bought at low rates from the peasantry and resold to the Jews at enormous profits. But the land once got, the Jew has tried to make the most of it. When you see a green spot in Palestine today you may be sure it is a Jewish colony. We knew the Plains of Esdraelon and Gennesaret when they were covered with thorns and thistles, but now the former is covered with sheaves of golden grain, and the latter is fast becoming what Josephus called it—’the ambition of nature.

“Whence then,” proceeded Dr. Christie, “the hostility that led to the disastrous outbreak in August? And what part does the Wailing Wall play in it? I begin with the latter question, and the answer is that the incidents connected with the Wailing Wall are merely created as an excuse and ground of offence. After the Fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Jews began to weep and pray over the ruins, and gradually the western wall became the center for this worship. There was no question of Jewish right in Turkish days. From the time of the introduction of printing, prayer-books were provided with the prayers for this shrine. In 1894 and on later occasions, benches, chairs an carpets have been seen on the pavement at the Waiing Place, for the convenience especially of older worshippers.

“The hostility has a different cause and comes from a different source,” declared Dr. Christie. “It has something to do with international jealousy and more to do with ecclesiastical intrigue. From the close of the War it has been taught in Syria that the cutting away of Palestine from the north is a wrong, and that both ought to be under one mandate, and that in the hands of France. The treatment Lord Balfour received in Damascus was a demonstration allowed, if not engineered, in favor of the same idea. Beginning at the close of the War, too, there was a propaganda begun in Palestine and mainly by pupils trained in the schools of a sect having great influence in Syria. The Jews were first approached and informed that if they would throw Palestine into the hands of France, they could secure even better terms than the Balfour Declaration gave them. They rejected this, and then the Arabs were informed that they were to be displaced and the land given to the Jews. This created feeling and led to the incidents of 1921.

“When the Crown Prince of Italy visited Palestine eighteen months ago the propaganda began anew, but with this difference: it was proposed that Italy should get the Mandate. The whole movement means that neither Italy nor France should have the Mandate, but that Palestine should become an appendage of the Papal State. If confirmation of this were wanted it is to be found in the assertions openly made, ‘There will be peace in another month, for the Pope will be the man in authority,’ and further by the fact that there is a combination of Moslems and Latins, publicly proclaimed as being against the Jews and protestants and having as a badge the Latin Cross inserted in the Moslem Crescent, and worn as an ornament, generally as a scarf-pin.,

“If this was the powder, the spark was formed within the Holy Land. The Effendis had made money at the expense of the peasantry, who now saw what the land could produce, and what they had lost, and it was in the interest of the Effendis to turn attention away from themselves to the Jew. False statements were made to incite the peasantry. These formed the spark and thence the conflagration. The Effendis themselves are intensely fanatical and they found an equally fanatical tool in the Moghrabiyeh Arabs, who did all the evil work in Safed, and who were the nearest aggressors at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

“What should now be done? Without hesitation I say ‘maintain the mandate.’ Explain it, if necessary, but make no modifications or concessions. Let the Arab know that the Jew has got nothing more than he himself may have in any country in the world—the right to settle, to acquire property, and to become a citizen. Britain must retain the mandate. No other country can deal even-handed justice to all races and creeds. There is no room for fanaticism in what is the Holy Land of all, and under the influence of the Papal State, there would be no toleration and little liberty. And in dealing with all, there must be the firm hand. It must be felt and seen. The Indian Moslem bogey must have no place. Islam is as much divided as the Christian world, and, with the family of Osman gone, it has no political head. Firmly administered law and evenhanded justice will prove the secret of British success.”