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No. 11. Vienna, 15 March 1901. Fifth Year

Aid for the Jewish Colonies in Palestine.

Had anyone told them that — those glowing patriots, the Jewish men who went out to Palestine twenty years ago to win back the soil of the homeland for their people — that it would be Jews who should drive them from the clod won with unspeakable toil! They, whose love for their people was greater and hotter than can be told, so great that no obstacle, no danger, nothing human could dismay them, would have called him a fool, or the most shameful defiler of the Jewish name, who had dared to foretell: "Your holy Jewish work shall be destroyed, and it will be Jews who destroy it..."

And now it has come true: the calamity has broken in, a calamity that is far more painful still because it is full of bitter, bloody irony. And before the eyes of the whole Jewish people an idea of freedom, full of strength and beauty, which set the best Jewish hearts aflame, is shamed to death by Jews. The heroes of Jewish labour, of Jewish diligence, of Jewish fidelity to the people are abandoned to want by a Jewish money-power that holds their fate in its hands, and are set before the choice of starving in the homeland or — with the price of a journey in their pocket — of going forth into foreign parts.

Neither want nor death ever made the Palestinian colonists waver; the dear soil had become to them the dearer, the more it was moistened with the blood and tears of worthy brethren. But that it was Jews themselves who denied them help, who with a cool farewell sent them into foreign parts, who laughed at the patriotic enthusiasts — that has made weak many of the unbending, of those strong in wind and weather, of those who went joyfully to death. It was not the worst among them who in these latest times have gone to America. They despaired of the success of their work. What, then, had been the secret of the strength of those colonists who for twenty years had tilled Palestine under the burning sun? Love of this land, and love of the people for whom they were bringing it under cultivation; trust in the fidelity of their fellow-countrymen. When they came to know the Ica, they learned how it stood with the fidelity of their fellow-countrymen. And that one great, painful disappointment broke their courage, of which one might have believed that it was not to be broken. They grew weak, as the giant grew weak when the hair was shorn from his head...

*

But by far the greater part of the colonists have thus far withstood the weight of the disappointment and the enticements of naked Mammon. They defend themselves at any price against forsaking the vineyards they have built up, against destroying the fields they have made fruitful. And withal their distress has risen to the utmost. Hundreds of labourers are without work and without bread, the colonists themselves in a desperate economic situation. And now they demand of the two-hundred-million company Ica, the heiress of Baron von Rothschild, which is the directress of the colonies and bears the responsibility for the fate of the colonists and labourers, speedy and thorough help. The colonists demand independence in the production and the sale of their products; the labourers demand work, demand that they be made husbandmen. Demand! They have not even demanded — although they would have a right to require — they have sent deputies to Paris who wished to beg. The deputation was not even received. Instead of improvements there came in Palestine severer measures and worse conditions; only he who would go across the sea still found a hearing with the Ica...

*

For months past the Zionists, and in particular the Russian "Chowewe Zion," have been occupied with the fate of the Palestinians. Intervention was made with the Ica — made in vain — and independent relief funds were founded. But the situation has meanwhile become too critical for men to content themselves any longer with small actions. The Odessa Committee has therefore called together an assembly of all the Russian Zionists, in which some two thousand persons took part, among them the most eminent personalities. And after long and much deliberation they came to the chief resolution that a