Zionists Resent Professor’s Prediction of Israel’s “collapse”

Local Zionist circles took strong exception today to the “prediction” made by Dr. Frederick Watkins, Bronfman Professor of Political Science and chairman of the Department of Social Sciences at McGill University, of the “collapse in the foreseeable future of the new State of Israel.” The professor delivered his speech before a Jewish student body.

In his address before the McGill Intercollegiate Zionist Federation of America, Dr. Watkins said that modern Judaism could have contributed more to world culture if the Jews had continued to play a “cosmopolitan” role instead of setting up a national state of their own.

He said that Palestine had never, since Biblical times, been able to preserve its independence in the face of imperialistic pressures from Asia and Africa. Only during “brief periods of glory,” when no major imperialistic threat existed had the state been really independent. The reigns of David and Solomon formed one of such brief periods and the state of affairs prevailing when the State of Israel was established in 1948 was another, said Dr. Watkins. He added that he did not think the present period would prove more lasting than previous ones.