DR. HERTZ, the chief Rabbi of the British Empire, is naturally an enthusiastic Zionist. He says that a thousand Jews are now landing in Palestine every week, and that next year it is hoped that the number will be increased to seventy-five thousand. This is hardly a matter for congratulation. It may be that the worst of the troubles in Syria are over, and that, now General Sarrail is safely back in Paris, wiser and more understanding administrators will deal with grievances and secure internal peace. They will not, however, succeed in destroying the growing nationalism which the Palestinian shares with his Syrian neighbour. This nationalism is aggravated in Palestine by the constant arrival of ship-loads of truculent emigrants who regard a country with which they are entirely unfamiliar as theirs by right, and the people who have lived in it for two thousand years as mere interlopers. For good or ill Great Britain is pledged to what we regard as the fatal policy of Zionism. The Zionist leaders, we are told, warmly approve of Lord Plumer, but there will certainly be serious trouble in Palestine if immigration is allowed to become too rapid, and if the rights of the native population, both Moslem and Christian, are not scrupulously regarded. Dr. Hertz, by the way, in pleading for the national home in Palestine, declared that “in Russia Jew and Judaism are on the point of total and absolute destruction.” . . . A proportion of the Jews who are settling in Palestine are themselves confessed Bolshevists.
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