The Promised Land Fulfills
its Promise

By Sea and by Air Thousands of the
Children of Israel Come Home

By OBSERVER

Tel Aviv (By Mail)

When, during the last war, President Roosevelt ordered that we admit some refugee into the United States, a shipload of uprooted persons of all faiths, not quite a thousand, was brought to this country and for security reasons was lodged in a camp near Oswego, N.Y. Since the United States has more than 140,000,000 persons and Jewish Palestine only 700,000, one thousand refugees for the United States are proportionately equal to five refugees for Jewish Palestine.

At present 15,000 refugees reach Israel each month, and the land absorbs them. This rate of immigration would bring 35 million newcomers to the United States in one year, or 10 million to the British Isles.

The land is small, and years of misery and years of compulsory idleness are sometimes the only baggage of these homeless ones; the country is at war and all available material reserves must be devoted to the struggle for survival. And still the refugees come, by sea and by air.

Never have vessels of the sea and planes of the air carried such a multitude of the destitute and home-seeking; planes and ships move in an unbroken line toward the East. No land is willing to receive these homeless ones save the Promised Land: the old, the young, the sick, the mother and the expectant mother—the land welcomes and absorbs them all.

* * *

The prophet Jeremiah had a vision (31:8ff.)

Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the uttermost parts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and her that travaileth with child together: a great company shall return thither. They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them. I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel.

The words of the prophet have become life. With weeping the children of Israel return to their country, and the gates of the land are opened wide before them, and the land takes them in and mothers them.

* * *

Economists will vainly seek the solution to this problem: How can so small a country, with all its resources devoted to its defense, take in all this multitude from the camps of the displaced?

The answer is not written in books. It is written in the hearts of people. No country in the world could do this. The Promised Land can and does.

It says: Come to me all you who are tired, all you who are persecuted; enter my gates; be my children; till my soil; and stretch your hand to those who come after you and bring them in, too.