"A prophecy of tragedy in Palestine"
From the editor, Charles Robideau:
     "The situation. . .is loaded with dynamite," the observer writes of tensions between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.
     "If the generous ideals of a moderate Zionism become dominant, coupling Arab and Jew alike in the plans for a rejuvenated Palestine, then there will be hope. But if a chauvinistic, arrogant, political Zionism obtain control, what started out as a fair dream of a better future for the Jews may easily become one of the greatest Jewish tragedies in history."
    This somber prophecy might have been written by an Arab decrying Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, or a liberal member of Israel’s Knesset, protesting against the policies of Ariel Sharon. Rather, the prophet is a once famous but now little remembered Protestant preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, writing 75 years ago about a tour of the Holy Land.
    In his day Fosdick was the most prominent preacher in the country, with his sermons in churches in New York City broadcast to radio audiences of millions. Fosdick was also a theological progressive, and in 1922 his sermon "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" caused such controversy that he was forced to resign his pulpit at First Presbyterian Church in New York. He then moved to the Riverside Church, newly built by the Rockefellers, where he continued his preaching ministry until 1946.
    In 1926, following his departure from First Presbyterian, Fosdick embarked on a four-month tour of Egypt, Syria and Palestine, which he chronicled in a book, "A Pilgrimage to Palestine," published in 1927. From Mt. Sinai, which he reached by an 11-day camel safari, to Masada, which he scaled by the route laid out by the conquering Romans, Fosdick visited every Biblical site he could find and describes it vividly.
    He also investigated the contemporary situation of Palestine, then administered by the post-World War I British Mandate, with Jewish settlers beginning to implement the Zionist dream of a homeland for Jewish people of the world.
    Fosdick ate Passover supper with a Jewish family in Jerusalem, visited Kibbutzim colonies, dined with Arab families in their homes, and relates these encounters as vividly as he described the scenes of Joshua’s battles or Jesus’ ministry.
    "In the early stages of its development," Fosdick writes, "Zionism was advertised as the movement of a people without a land to a land without a people. Nothing could be more dangerously false than such simplification of the issue. Palestine is not without a people and no one understands the situation who does not see that over half a million Moslem Arabs, who easily constitute seventy-three percent of the population, naturally regard with suspicion, if not with rage, the deliberate endeavor to make a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ in their country."
    Fosdick’s report, long predating the Holocaust, the establishment of Israel and the subsequent conflict, makes clear the roots of current crises. He continues:
    "The Zionists themselves have contributed largely to make this bad matter worse. One of the most prominent Jews in the world, in his exuberance over the new hopes of Zionism, told the Arabs to ‘trek along,’ and the repercussions of that phrase are heard wherever Arabs live today. Zionism to the Jew is an idealistic movement; seen from the Arab side it is predatory, and one who gains entree to the Arabs’ confidence will hear bitter words expressing their desire to convert the Jewish national home into the Jewish national cemetery.
    "One who is neither Jew nor Arab can readily sympathize with both. . . .

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    "I recall two evenings spent with intelligent city Arabs, at dinner, when the talk flowed freely on this question. The first was in a humble, Moslem home. The month-long fast of Ramazan was on, when all Moslems, forbidden to eat or drink between dawn and sunset, make the evening meal a compensatory feast. At this Ramazan dinner in an Arab home, sitting on the floor about the central dish, we entered into the fellowship of a hospitable family and afterward, with a little priming, secured a freely running stream of comment on the Arab feeling about Zionism.
    "Before the war, said our host, Arab nationalism was rising swiftly and the Allies made use of it. With promises of future autonomy they bribed the Arabs of Syria and Palestine to turn against the Turks. In consequence, the war against Turkey was won by Arab aid, and then every Allied promise was thrown to the winds. No autonomy was granted. Syria was parceled out to France, Palestine to Britain, and the so-called mandates were only thin disguises for the designs of autocratic and imperialistic governments, selfish in aim and uncontrolled by the generous professions of the League of Nations.
    "Moreover, said our host, Britain wanted Palestine for selfish reasons. Insecure in Egypt, she wished fom the Palestinian side to control the Suez Canal, an essential artery of her empire’s life. This selfish aim in taking Palestine was carrried further in Zionism. By introducing Jews she divided the country into two mutually suspicious groups and so secured her power by playing off one against the other.
    "As for the Jews themselves, our host hated them. They had no more right in the land, he said, because of previous occupation, than the American Indians had in New York City. There was no possibility of working out a common Palestinian civilization between Arab and Jew. To him the future looked dark and perilous.
    "The second dinner gave opportunity for conversation with aristocratic Arabs of the ruling class. Here was the Grand Mufti of all the Moslems in Palestine and a group of leaders from chief families of the land. They were clean-cut and relentless in their attitude. They foresaw violence and they minced no words in saying so.
    "The triumph of Zionism did not mean in their eyes simply a numerous addition of Jews to the population. It meant the supersession of their Arab culture and civilization by another culture and civilization altogether. They saw clearly that Zionism involved a new economic life built on Western models, a new, progressive type of agriculture with which they could not compete, new applications of scientific method such as would oust from power all who would not adopt them, new Western types of relationship between men and women brought in by Jews and unutterably scandalous to Arabs, and, finally, new aggressiveness on the part of the Jews as their numbers mount until at last wild Zionist dreams, already publicly expressed, of rebuilding Solomon’s temple where the Mosque of Omar stands, might come true.
    "They said frankly that they would fight before they would suffer this supersession of their culture, and that all Islam around them, in Syria, Arabia, Egypt, like a sea around the enisled Zionism of Palestine, would rise in fury.

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    "Meanwhile, no one does justice to the situation who does not fairly estimate the positive achievements already won in the first few, experimental years of this venture. One who knows the apparently exhaustless vitality of the Jewish race would expect its energies, released by the ardent hope of a national home, to flow into Palestine in multiplying streams. That such is the case any one who stays here long enough to see must testify.
    "Wherever the Jews go, education goes, and schools are flourishing in all the Zionist colonies, with higher schools of advanced (learning) standing in Jerusalem already crowned by a university. . . .
    "As they bring with them their passion for education, so they bring their Western ideas of medicine and philanthropy, and one sees in Jerusalem the beginnings of hospital service, public clinics, child welfare work. . . .
    "It is the Zionist colonies themselves, however, that present the ultimate test of the movement. Picture after picture rises in memory as I recall these little settlements newly founded, still struggling, like all pioneers, with the preliminary difficulties of land and water, sometimes fairly hopeful, sometimes obviously in straits. . .

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