Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1899 — THE ZIONISTIC MOVEMENT, [ARTICLE]

THE ZIONISTIC MOVEMENT,

Whereby the Jew Hopes to Regain the Band of Mia Fathers. “The Jews are developing a scheme that has for its object the purchase of Palestine from the Turk and the founding of a Jewish government in the lamd of their fathers,” writes Edward A. Steiner, in the Woman’s Home Compamion. “Already the movement has become a formidable one in some of the European countries. The leader of this movement is Dr. Theodore Herzl, of Vienna, an author of European reputation, who, unwilling to bear longer the taunts of the anti-Semitic mob of his native city, and unable to erase from his face and heart the marks of his race, has planned this exodus with the view of restoring to his people the land once their own, in which, unmolested, they might live and govern themselves. “An able aid to Dr. Herzl is Rabbi Moheleth, of Russia, one of the noblest and most charitable men, revered for his piety and saintliness, of character. At his word of command the Jews would come oat pf Russia like bees out of a hive. Why should they not be glad ,to leave a country where they have experienced only hatred, shame and cruel oppression? In Germany there are scholarly men yearning to lead their people—not from narrow ghettos and squalid homes, but from the broad streets of Berlin' and from the merchant places of Leipsic and a country of their own government, where they will no longer be the despised and persecuted beings they now are. In Rome, in Venice, and in many other, places In Europe, the exodus fever is spreading and burning in the hearts of the doWhtrodden but hopeful people. “Among the French Max Nordau, the well-known author, is the leader. From Paris, from Marseilles, from Boulogne, the Jews expect to go in large numbers, leaving behind them a country where Justice weeps because she is not only blind but fettered? In our own America the movement has not received such a cordial reception, largely because the need for it is not so apparent here. Though, of course, the American Jews who sympathize with this new exodus do not intend to leave the United States, yet they are encouraging it for the sake of their oppressed brethren all over the world.”