Palestine (1946)

Heat. [music] [music] Heat. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Amid the fabled hills of Judea in southwest Asia stands Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, sacred to three of the world's great religions. [music] to Mohamadans who ruled Palestine for nearly 13 centuries and still regard it as their own. Jerusalem is almost as sacred as Mecca. [music] To hundreds of millions of Christians, this is the Holy Land. [music] Here Jesus of Nazareth trod the slow agonizing road to Calvary in the cross. [music] Here a great Christian shrine has been erected on the spot believed to be where Jesus began the life he was to sacrifice for all mankind. [music] >> [music] >> One of the oldest traditions in Palestine's history, stretching back beyond recorded time, [music] is that of the Hebrews, symbolized by the Wailing Wall, place of lamentation and prayer since the days of Herod the Great. [music] In no other religion has Palestine a more deep and mystical significance. Throughout all the sorrowful centuries since the Hebrews were scattered over the face of the earth, their religious rituals have kept ever before them the memory of Palestine as the land promised them by Moses. [music] Today, millions of them center their immemorial hopes for fulfillment of this promise on the new Palestine [music] with its shining city of Tel Aviv built by Jews on desert and swampland. Here, [music] [music] world jewelry sees rising at last, a homeland in which the tribes of Israel, wanderers for over 3,000 years, may come together once again as a nation. [music] >> [music] [music] >> After Lord Alan B conquered the Holy Land in 1917, the Jews were promised a national home in Palestine by Britain's Earl of Balffor, a policy endorsed by Woodrow Wilson in the League of Nations, which made Palestine a British mandate. But in 1939, with war in the offing, the oil pipeline from Iraq through Palestine [music] became one of Britain's major strategic worries along with the Suez Canal, the empire's lifeline to the Far East. To ensure an uninterrupted supply of oil for its planes, tanks, and ships, Britain had to maintain peace at all costs with the predominantly Arab population, [music] which had long been resentful of Jewish immigration. To this end, London issued a white paper which strictly limited the number of Jews admitted into Palestine. [music] In the war years that followed, only a few thousands of Europe's millions of unhappy Jews were able to escape the fascist tyranny [music] and seek refuge in Palestine. By the war's end, hundreds of thousands of survivors without homes or possessions faced a future without hope unless some place on earth could be found for them. To Europe's surviving Jews, free access to Palestine, their land of promise, is today more urgently needed than at any time in the long and tragic history of the people of Israel. Convinced that the excuse for keeping Palestine closed had ended with the war, the Jews of America brought strong pressure to bear on Britain. >> [clears throat] >> This conference urges the British government to abregate the policy set out in the white paper of 1939 and to open Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration and resettlement. [music] >> [music] >> Refugee Jews able to get to Palestine find there a community to a large extent self-governing [music] in the Jewish agency representing the Jewish people in the development of their national home are centralized the administrative and executive functions of the community. [music] The Anglo Palestine Bank financed much of Palestine's war created industry and in cooperation with the Jewish Agency has grubstaked thousands of refugees. [music] Palestine's prosperity is reflected in Tel Aviv's own stock exchange where any fluctuations in national stocks and bonds are watched with an eagle eye by the local brokers. Investments in hydroelectric plants alone [music] amount to millions of dollars. The waters of the River Jordan supply the main source of power for scores of Palestine's industrial establishments, which produce millions of dollars worth of goods a year, much of it available for export. [music] Many industries have benefited by the skill of trained craftsmen who escape from Europe. [music] A whole new diamond cutting industry has been built and its future [music] assured by agreement with the British Diamond Trust. [music] >> [music] >> In recent years, a modest start in ship building has been made in the harbor at Tel Aviv. [music] And the facilities which in war were devoted to the construction of mine sweepers are now being used to turn out boats for Palestine's fast growing fishing [music] fleet. [music] [music] On the shores of the Dead Sea, hundreds of feet below sea level, new plants extract thousands of tons of potachsh, broine, and other valuable chemicals each year. [music] [music] To improve industrial processes and develop [music] new products, constant research is carried on by world famous scientists like Dr. Him Weisman and his sister Anna. Ensuring the continuity of Orthodox religion, a Talmud school trains future rabbis who at an early age begin to acquire the knowledge and wisdom for which they will be revered in future years. >> [music] >> Traditionally an intellectual people, the Jews have established Hebrew University, on whose faculty are some of Europe's most famous scholars, and which is today the center of Palestine's cultural renaissance. No less important than education is the physical well-being of Palestine's children. In the last 25 [music] years, the health of the people of Palestine has been immeasurably improved due chiefly to the work of Jewish hospitals and laboratories. [music] Hadasa Hospital, supported by contributions from the United States, trains scores of nurses who will go out to the pioneer settlements to aid in the development of their country. [music] >> [music] [music] >> But of first importance to the national welfare is the production of food. And in agricultural schools, Jews have acquired skills which have enabled them to refute the widely held belief that they do not [music] make good farmers. Now over 30% of them make their living from the soil [music] which they have reclaimed from the swamp and desert. Most of Palestine's agricultural workers live in the cooperative settlements which have been developed in their ancestral homeland during the past 20 years. [music] In these settlements where work begins before sunrise, every detail of daily life is based on the principle of cooperation. [music] All work in these communities is divided and assigned by an elected committee whose members must take into account the age and strength of the colonists before assigning them their daily chores. [music] [music] As a result of this program of training, careful planning and hard work, production of food by Jews in Palestine has almost doubled in recent years. [music] >> [music] >> But there are also settlements wherein those who prefer to farm their own land, some 22% of the agricultural population can live and flourish. Following the same cardinal rule of self-help which applies on the co-ops, the individual farmer must work his tract of land to the best of his ability, for he is expected to make the interest payments on his long-term loan at regular intervals. [music] Constantly the immigrants carry on their fight to increase the yield of the land. [music] Always the first and most pressing need has been water, which must be damned up during the rainy season for use in irrigating farmland during the long months of drought. Through a complex irrigation system built at a cost of many millions of dollars, water flows throughout 100,000 acres of once [music] arid land. [music] >> [music] >> But though a good beginning has been made in the areas occupied by the Jews, they believe that nearly all of Palestine's 6 million acres could [music] be made to bear crops. [music] The search for water goes on in isolated desert camps. On land abused and eroded for centuries, teams of experts sink test wells, [music] and on their findings will depend the future of that land. Whether it is to remain a desert waste, or whether given water, it will be the site of another new and flourishing community brought to life by thousands of settlers. Many a barren field has been cleared in Palestine to make way for vineyards and farms and villages. >> [music] >> Many plans have been carried out to enlarge the reclaimed land areas so that they can support thousands of new settlers [music] [music] to maintain in these areas Palestine's high standard of health. Research stations have been established in an effort to stamp out the disease which for so many years has sapped the vitality and taken the lives of the natives. [music] Here the discoveries of modern medical science are made available to Jew and Arab alike. [music] >> [music] >> Though Palestine is still predominantly Arab, the Jewish population increased greatly from the early 20s until 1940. Since that time, as a result of British immigration restrictions, the Jewish increase has scarcely kept pace with that of the Arabs. [music] Side by side with the Jewish population, the Arabs, outnumbering them 2 to1, live in their immemorial manner. [music] Though noted for their independence and readiness to fight, [music] the Arabs have in recent years been coming into Palestine in increasing numbers as workers. For the high wages they earn on the Jewish owned farms and plantations bring them a new and welcome prosperity. [music] And not only has the workingclass Arab profited by the presence of the Jews in Palestine, but to many an Arab property owner, wealth and pleasant living have come from the sale of his land to the [music] immigrants. [music] Nevertheless, the Arabs are determined to keep Palestine an Arab country and to resist every move by Britain to admit more refugees. And their [music] threats are backed up by the League of Arab States and by armed and trained men ready to shatter the peace of the Near East by a religious war. [music] [music] Repeatedly the London spokesman for the Arab states has warned Britain's government that its policy is not acceptable to the Arabs. Every Jew that arrives in Palestine is one more brick in the structure of the proposed Zionist state, one more unit towards Zionist majority against the Arabs. So that it is impossible for the Arabs to regard the matter only in its humanitarian aspect. The political question was finally settled by the white paper and any attempt to force more refugees on Palestine now on whatever grounds it is ostensibly made would be a breach of their settlement. But the Jews, whose arguments for a free Palestine before the war were strong, are sure that they now have an irresistible case. For not only have millions of men and women of Jewish faith been tortured and murdered in Europe, but 30,000 who formed the Jewish brigade fought in the desert campaign and in Italy to free the world of fascism. [music] >> [music] >> Today, the quot under which refugees from Europe can enter Palestine is the concern of Jews the world over. [music] And they fervently hope that in the future, all Jews who wish to will be permitted to enter Palestine [music] far from the scenes of their torture and degradation to pursue happiness in their ancient homeland as free men and women. [music] Heat [music] up here. >> [music]