When Israel Comes Home

(M. Pierre Goemaere, the author of this remarkable series of articles on Palestine and the German Jewish refugees, is one of the leading Catholic writers in Belgium and the editor of the important magazine “La Revue Belge.” Mr. Goemaere was considered an anti-Semite before his recent visit to Palestine. He was so deeply impressed with the Jewish achievements he witnessed in Palestine that his views about the Jews have undergone a complete change. These articles will be published in the “Soir”, of Brussels, and “Intransigeant”, of Paris. The Jewish Daily Bulletin has obtained the exclusive American rights to this series. The first of these articles appeared here three days ago. More will appear at #dates.)

Slowly, like a huge elephant, the boat swerved to press her black side against the dock at Haifa.

Port of the Levant ! There is a grinding of chains, amidst the yelling of the Arab stevedores, supple and muscled like deer. Inside, camels, customs officials, policemen, merchants, veiled women, children, all glued together like flies. And, above everything else, a smell of pickle, of tar, of rotten fruit.

To protect myself from the sunlight which is beating down upon my neck in spite of my helmet, I hoist myself, with David, onto the cushions of a truck which bears, painted on its sides, holy biblical names-Nazareth, Cana, Jerusalem….

“Tell me, David, those fine cars over there… For the Jews who are going to get off here?”

I point to a sparkling line of automobiles, ranged along the length of the piers. Each carries, attached to the windshield, a number, 1, 2, 3, 4… up to number 42.

David smiles.

“No, those are for the tourists, for those who are getting off…. Look, see them on the ladder. Those are the Germans, brought here by an agency for a Palestinian tour. You understand, the Palestine where those dogs of Jews find refuge-what an attraction for the aryans of Hitler; The German touch, you see…”

“But where are the Jews? I thought the boat…”

“You thought Mr. Hitler chartered the boat so that he could very kindly send home the Jews ! No, be patient. When our friends, the tourists, will have all gotten off, they’ll allow off the exiles whom they have deigned to accept as passengers. For them, there will be those cars that you see over there, near the buildings of the Jewish Agency. They’ll be made to sit down on benches with all the rubbish, and then there will be a lot of noise and mix-ups… This, you see, is the glorious return of Israel to the Promised Land.”

It is a full hour before the caravan of Hitlerian tourists has departed. At the bow of the ship, the Jews still do not make an appearance. To calm my impatience, David explains to me that the formalities of admission are particularly severe. There is the vaccination. There are the papers to be inspected through a magnifying glass. The English, holding the mandate over Palestine, “count each drop” of immigration, as David says.

“But I thought the English favored immigration. Doesn’t the Balfour Declaration make it clear?”

“The Balfour Declaration makes everything as clear as you want it to be. In everything, you know, there is the letter and there is the spirit. As for the spirit-when Palestine was under the power of the Turks, England took over the mandate because it was understood, once and for all, that there was a lack of ‘political education.’ Later, when the Palestinian baby could walk without its nurses, it would be let alone. While waiting, England would arrange everything in the provisional house. And in the first place, there is that Arab majority, of whose sympathy she isn’t too sure, and which could well throw a troublesome glance at the tooclose, Suez Canal.

“How then counterbalance the Arab power in Palestine? Ah, simple ! Through the Jews ! The Jews are putting up a hue and cry to be permitted to reinstall themselves on the soil of their ancestors. Let us create the Jewish Homeland in Palestine, let the Jews come home.

“Come, come, friends, you can enter. I, the Englishman, I am the friend of the Jews. Come in, come in, you are at home !

“Hey, there, not so fast, please ! A little discretion, please ! Look here, if we left you alone, tomorrow you would be more numberous than the Arabs. Then what happens to my old policy of equilibrium? Remember- I spoke of a Jewish Homeland, never of a Jewish State. A Jewish State ! All my colleagues of the Entente would protest: you have no political education. And besides, these Arabs are not content. You don’t want to excite them, do you? Those nice little Arabs ! Don’t forget that I warned you; didn’t I write in my Declaration ( I thought of everything because I have a political education) didn’t I write: ‘It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.” Now, it is certain that in continuing to invade Palestine as you do, you will provoke an economic unrest in which these poor dear Arabs would suffer very unjustly.

“We shall therefore put the brakes on this unprecedented immigration. The number of immigrants will be limited. Thus we will avoid for you any Arab reaction that might cause trouble.

“You see how we put your interests above everything else. We have a great liking for the Jewish people. And we bring you, for your protection, all the experience of our political education.”

Thus the irony of David.

I was going to ask him what would happen if the English, these troublesome protectors, disinterested themselves in Palestine and left the Jewish immigrants alone to face the enormous Arab population which was only awaiting the occasion to throw them into the sea. But David, in spite of his sixty summers, was hopping like a goat to the ground and running to the boat, shouting:

“There they are !”

They were there.

Slowly, with careful steps, they were coming down the ship’s ladder.

Somber flock, black flock… Why do the Jews always have this taste – unexpected among orientals-for dark clothing?

“Not always,” the Talmudist might tell me, “but only since the destruction of the Temple.”

Men of all ages, but mostly young men, very young men.

The old wear felt hats, delapidated-looking and greened with age. The young wear caps.

Most of the women wear very modest hats, like black bells, of oilcloth, hiding the hair, and accentuating the hardness of these Semitic faces which hardship and worry had softened.

All, men and women alike, are dressed in heavy coats with fur collars. Yet it is as hot as Hades here. But they had to take them along, didn’t they? And how put them in the overcrowded trunks, in the alreadystuffed valises?

These trunks, these valises, they carry them as they can, on their shoulders, on their backs, on their heads. For a long time now the Arab porters have been gone, spitting behind them. Help the Jews to land? Rather drown them first !

There are packs of linen-or I know not what-and matresses, and buckets, and little iron beds (for the tiny children who are here too, dressed in mourning like their parents). There are sacks, overflowing like stuffed sausages, and pieces of furniture, carefully tied so that they should not lose what they contain, and bicycles, and clocks…. There is even a cage with a canary in it.

On the quai, I mix with the crowd, There are almost three hundred of them. I have a great choice if I want to question them.

I don’t dare yet. I have seen too many handkerchiefs held to the eyes. I satisfy myself with approaching discreetly.

And I remain stupefied.

Stupefied, before the intense joy that glistens in their eyes, before the sheer #ha ness that has caused their tears.

Eretz-Israel !From generation to generation-for the past fifty generations !- these uprooted people upon whom weighs the curse of wandering, these most unfortunate of all humanity, have known that somewhere they, too, have a home, a fatherland, a country that belongs to them, the country of their ancestors, of their prophets, of their mystery; the country in which their race bloomed in the days of the patriarchs, under the great sun of Jehovah; the land of happiness, the Eden where, according to the Promise, they could one day return-the day the they have been awaiting for two thousand years!- to rediscover their greatness, their prosperity.

They knew that yesterday. They awaited this flour without realizing it. They awaited it, for every Jew, no matter how much he has estranged himself from the synagogue, keeps, in a fold of his heart, his faith in the messianic era. And suddenly comes this, a stroke of destiny, a gesture of the German “Fuhrer” who knows that popularity that the crowed gives ot one who delivers the feeble to the holocaust. And the messianic era is pushed forward for them.

Yes, their goods have been confiscated, their professions have been taken away from them, they have been struck, thrown out, there is left for them only their clothing, their mattresses, their canary in its cage… But they have come back to the land of Abraham, of Moses, of David.

Eretz-Israel ! On the pier at Haifa I saw the misery of Israel sob for joy !