by Henry Ford

(Reprinted from the 28 may 1921 Issue of the house journal of the Ford Motor Co., the Dearborn Independent and slightly edited by Raymond Bray to eliminate the numerous uses of "which" for "that" in the original.)

When the British Army passed into Jerusalem in the memorable capture of the city in 1917, the Protocols went in with it. A symbolic circle was thus closed, though not in the way the Protocolists had hoped. The man who carried the Protocols knew what they signified, and they were carried not in triumph, but as the plans for the enemies of world liberty.

Zionism is the best advertised of all present Jewish activities and has exerted a greater influence upon world events than the average man realizes. In its more romantic aspects it makes an appeal to Christian as well as to Jew, because there are certain prophecies that are held to concern the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. When this return takes place, certain great events are scheduled to ensue.

Because of this admixture of the religious sentiment, it will be rather difficult for a certain class of people to scrutinize modern Political Zionism; they have been too well propagandized into believing that political Zionism and the "return" promised by the prophets are the same thing. Having succumbed to the initial confusion of mistaking Judah for Israel they have entirely mistaken the ancient writings that relate to these two and have made the single tribe of Judah (whence comes the name Jew) the hub around which all history and humanity swing. Judah was the tribe with which Israel could not live in peace over two thousand years ago, and that has the fateful gift of stirring up the same kind of dissension today. And yet no one ever thought of charging the Ten Tribes of Israel with "anti-Semitism."

Zionism is challenging the attention of the world today because it is creating a situation out of which many believe the next war will come. To adopt a phraseology familiar to students of prophecy, it is believed by many students of world affairs that Armageddon will be the direct result of what is now beginning to be manifested in Palestine.

For these, if for no other reasons, the subject becomes important.

With Zionism as a dream of pious Jews, this article has nothing to do. With Zionism as a political fact, every first class government is now compelled to have something to do. It is a bigger question than the German indemnities or American immigration, because it lies back of both, and is rapidly proceeding under cover of both.

It is worthy of note, if only in passing, that Zionism in the active modern political sense took its rise racially and geographically where Bolshevism arose, namely in Russia, and that its center, the seat of its Inner Actions Committee, was at Berlin. There was always a close relationship between the Zionists of Russia and the New York Kehillah, as is evidenced by public utterances made in Russia after the Revolution in which the Kehillah is extolled.

At the time the war was declared in 1914, the Inner Actions Committee was spread about in various countries. For example: Dr. Schmarya Levin of Berlin, was in the United States and remained here. He was Russian rabbi, German scholar, and cosmopolitan. Although his headquarters were Berlin, he remained in the United States and became recognized as the leader of the leaders of Zionism, until the great Jewish shift to Versailles. Another member of the Inner Actions Committee was one Jacobson, who was in Constantinople. "When he saw that Constantinople could no longer be the center of Zionist politics, he left and went to Copenhagan, Denmark, where in a neutral country he could be of practical usefulness to the Zionists by transmitting information and funds." (Guide to Zionism, page 80.) In fact, the entire Inner Actions Committee, with headquarters at Berlin, moved freely through a war-locked world, the only exceptions being Warburg and Hantke - and there was no need for the Berlin Warburg to move about, for there were others who represented him.

Dr. Levin gave his sanction for the shifting of the center of Jewish gravity from Berlin to America, and "as early as August 30, 1914, a month after the outbreak of war, an extraordinary conference of American Zionists was called in New York."

What this change of seat meant, has formed the substance of much discussion. In 1914 the Jews apparently knew more about the probable duration of the war than did the principals. It was not to be a mere excursion through Belgium, as some fancied. There was time to dicker, to show the value of certain Jewish support to the governments. Germany gladly pledged the land of Palestine to the Jews, but the Jews had already seen what Wilhelm had done in that ancient state when he enthroned himself on the Mount of Olives. Evidently, the Allies won the contest of making promises, for on November 2, 1917, when General Allenby was pushing up through Palestine with his British Army, Arthur James Balfour, the British secretary of state for foreign affairs, issued the famous declaration approving Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people.

"The wording of it came from the British foreign office, but the text had been revised in the Zionist offices in America as well as in England. The British declaration was made in the form in which the Zionists desired it, and the last clauses were added in order to appease a certain section of timid anti-Zionist opinion." (Guide to Zionism, pages 85-86.)

Now please read the declaration and note the italicized clauses just referred to:

"His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it is clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

Zionism is of particular interest, not merely because of the quarrels that have arisen among the leaders over money - it is the war of "interest" against "capital" - but also because of the light it throws on the two great armies of Jews in the world, the way in which they use their power where they can, and the trouble that always embroils the nations that become Jewish tools.

People sometimes ask why Jewry, which is capitalistic, should favor Bolshevism, which is the announced enemy of capital. It is an interesting question. Why should a New York Jewish financier, an officer of the government of the United States, help finance a "Red" publication that even our tolerant government cannot stomach? In addition to the fact that it is only "Gentile capital" that is attacked, the answer is that the Jew who has fallen for the worship of the Golden Calf is anxious to keep in the good graces of the Jew of the East - the Mongolian Jews - who are rampaging against orderly systems of society. It is quite useful when there is a revolution in Paris to have the 600 houses that you may own spared by the incendiary mobs - as were Rothschild's houses. Zionism has been one of the subjects upon which Western and Eastern Jew can unite. Indeed, it was the Eastern Jew that compelled the Western Jew to take a favorable stand on this matter. The Jewish gentlemen who are receiving the freedom of our cities today in their various aspects as "German" and "British" scientists are Eastern Jews. They have come to a contest with the Jews of America on the question of Money. The Jews of America have smothered some very ugly charges. The Jews of the East, more recently of Germany or England, are not likely to be browbeaten by the moneybags of Jewish New York, for the Eastern type of Jew knows of a situation in which money is the most useless thing in the world - and that is why he is feared and favored by Western Jewry of the Golden Calf.

The Jewish defenders are just now capitalizing the "split" in Jewry. The real split will come when Jews of wisdom begin to support the attempts that have been made to liberate the Jews from their leaders. This internal squabble means nothing but a squabble of leaders; but when the Jews themselves divide, one side for the twentieth century light and the destruction of the class power of selfish leaders, then may we look up hopefully. When the Jew recognizes the honesty of his critics and the righteousness of what they charge, then will there be a "split," but not before. The division in Jewry as evidenced by the contempt of the revolutionary party for the financial party, and as even more strongly evidenced by the fear of the revolutionary party by the financial party, is being brought about by the incincerity of the Western Jew's Zionism. The Western Jew says that the United States is the Promised Land, profits and interest are the "milk and honey" and New York is Jerusalem; the Jew of Russia has another view. A knowledge of Political Zionism is worth while also as an authoritative illustration of what the Jew does when he is in power. Heretofore there has been Russia to illustrate this, but now there is Palestine. With every fact against them, with every traveler and observer giving them the lie direct, there are still Jewish spokesmen and poor befuddled "Gentile fronts" who insist that Bolshevism is not Jewish and that Russia is not now governed by Jews. It is just this constant denial of facts, this failure to use their opportunity to be honest, that is going to be the judgement of Jewish leaders. Bolshevism all over the world, not in Russia only, but in New York, in Chicago, in New Orleans, in San Francisco, is Jewish.

However, there is no need further to insist upon that, except occasionally to ad confirmatory illustrations of it. More to the present point is Palestine. It will be very difficult for the most irresponsible Jewish spokesman to deny that Palestine is Jewish. The government is Jewish, the plan of procedure is Jewish, the methods used are Jewish. Does anyone rise to deny that? Scarcely.

Very well, Palestine will do to illustrate the genius of the Jew when he comes to power.

Professor Albert T. Clay, in the Atlantic Monthly (will anyone declare that this long-established and thoroughly respectable Boston publication is "anti-Semitic"?) warns us that the information about Palestine that we receive in America comes to us through the Jewish Telegraph Service (which is the Associated Press of world-wide Jewry) and the Zionist propaganda. "The latter," he says, "with its harrowing stories of pogroms in Europe, and its misrepresentations of the situation in the Near East, has been able to awaken not a little sympathy for the Zionist propaganda."

This propaganda of pogroms - "thousands upon thousands of Jews killed" - amounts to nothing except as it illustrates the gullibility of the press. No one believes this propaganda, and governments regularly disprove it. But the fact that it continues indicates that something besides facts is necessary to keep the scheme going.

In Jerusalem, as this is being written, martial law is proclaimed. There has been a struggle between the native inhabitants, whom the Balfour declaration sought to protect, and the new-come Jews. As in the famous Easter disorders of the last year, the wounded in the hospitals show that the Jews were armed and the natives fought with whatever weapons they could find on the spot; the conclusion of all impartial observers under the circumstances being that the Jews prepared for and sought the fight with unprepared natives.

The mark of disorder perpetrated by the Jews is all over the place, the "persecuted" turned persecutor, and lest this should be charged to the general wildness of the people in Palestine let it be said that the rioters were only expressing in deeds what the cultivated American and English Jews have expressed in words - namely, that the lawful inhabitants of the land ought to be driven out, in spite of governmental promises to the contrary. One of the first Easter rioters, Jabotinsky, whom the British authorities sentenced to 15 years in prison, was released immediately upon the arrival of Sir Herbert Samuel and is now traveling in state and is talked of as a possible successor to Sir Herbert, although he is originally one of the Russian Bolsheviki come down to practice the gentle arts of that tribe in Palestine.

The government is Jewish. Sir Herbert Samuel is High Commissioner, representing the power of the British Government, which holds the mandate over Palestine. The head of the judicial department, who appoints the judges of Palestine, is a Jew. Christian or Moslem judges who do not give the Jews a shade the better of the proceedings are ousted - a condition not unknown in New York. Chaim Weizman is head of the department of works - he is a Jew, now traveling in this country and having the polite lie passed to him occasionally by Judge Julian W. Mack. In fact, at the heads of all departments are Jews, a former New York Jew being head of the department of immigration who has made splendid rules for the protection of Palestine from an undesirable class of Jews, rules so well adapted for the purpose that if the Congress of the United States should adopt them the cry of "persecution" would girdle the world.

It is to be noted that the Jewish government of Palestine is very much like that of Russia - mostly foreign. Trotsky came from the East Side of New York. A gentleman recently released from Bolshevik custody told the writer that the governor of his prison was an ordinary Jew who formerly lived on Fourteenth street, Detroit. Practically every big American city is represented in the Bolshevik government of Russia. There is another full-fledged government waiting in this country for service wherever necessary.

The methods being adopted to get the land are such as will fill the world with indignation once the world fully understands what is being done. And that it is done with the knowledge and approval of the Zionist is indicated by the fact that he suspended the activities of the British officer who endeavored to stop the abuse. It was the old game of lending money at an exorbitant rate of interest to people hard pressed by war and crop failure, and then seizing their land when they could not pay. The bank that did this was the Anglo-Palestine Bank, a Zionist concern. This British officer, to save the people and the land, made arrangements with a British bank to lend them money at 6-1/2 percent, with five years to pay. If payment failed, the land was to go to the government for redistribution, not to the Zionist bank. This was the humane plan that the Zionist Commissioner forbade, whereupon the British officer resigned. Some effort was afterward made to redress the terrible act, but there it stands as the well-considered action of Jewry in power.

Then follows what is described by every impartial observer as an "arrogant" attempt to expropriate everything in sight. In Russia it could have been done very easily under the plea of "nationalization," but there was Great Britain whose laws do not condone theft. The only schools that have been established in Jerusalem have been built and manned by the so-called "Gentiles," although the Jews of Jerusalem have been the pensioners of world-wide Jewry for centuries. As long ago as 1842 Dr. Murray M'Cheyne noted that the Jerusalem Jews cared nothing for schools because their children were only growing up into pensioners too. But Christians, with a warm regard for the Holy City, set about to improve the miserable condition of the Jewish inhabitants, and thus it came that at the time of the Zionist invasion a considerable number of Jewish children were in attendance at the schools. The new-come Zionist leaders demanded that the best of the schools be given up to them. Of course, this was refused.

"The Council of Jerusalem Jews" then caused it to be published in the Hebrew daily that parents who did not withdraw their children from the schools would be punished. And now look at the typical punishments threatened:

If any parent refused whose name was on the list of the American Relief Fund, the relief would be withdrawn. An interesting bit of news to subscribers to that fund.

Doctors would be forbidden to visit the families that had children attending the enlightened schools

Their names would be sent to the blacklist at the places where circumcision was performed, so that new-born descendants of the recalcitrants might be refused the rite of Moses.

They would be denied all share in Zionist benefits or funds.

If they were in business, they would be boycotted.

If there were workmen, they could get no work.

"Anyone who refused, let him know that it was forbidden for him to be called by the name of Jew. They will be fought by all lawful means. Their names will be put upon a monument of shame and their deeds made to reproach them to the last generation. If they are supported, their support will cease. If they are rabbis, they will be moved far from their office. They shall be put under the ban and persecuted, and all the world will know that in this justice there has been no mercy."

It is the Jewish Bolshevist spirit all over again, that spirit that so many people have been vainly endeavoring to reconcile with the Russian temperament - because it is so un-Russian.

It is tyranny, and not the tyranny of strength, but of meanness and darkness. It is now perfectly clear what was meant by Dr. McInnis, who is Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, when he said: "The emigrants so far brought in (to Palestine, under the Commission) did not include many respectable English Jews; but they did include a great number of Russians, Poles and Rumanians. many of them thoroughly Bolshevik in their attitude to the government."

If this spirit obtains at the beginning of a movement that the Christian world has been taught by propaganda to regard as a profoundly religious and respectable exodus, it burdens the imagination to forecast what will be done in a period of fall and unquestioned rule.

Observing and weighing the events and tendencies of Jewish rule thus far in Palestine, it is not difficult to see the purpose in it all. The Jews still distrust their ability to make a State. They do not distrust the world's willingness to let them have a State; indeed, it is amazing how naturally the Jews place confidence in that portion of the world they have always affected to despise. But deep-seated in the Jew is a distrust of himself. He doesn't know how his people will contrive to live together, He doesn't know how they will contrive to drop the principles and practices that are so destructive of social comity elsewhere. And he feels that, patient as the mandatory power may be now, it is doubtful how long that patience will hold out under the blunders and brutalities that will be inseparable from Zionist rule,, if any deductions can be drawn from the facts at hand. Therefore, feeling that the time may be short, he is endeavoring by such actions as interference with the cultural question, with the racial rights if the natives, and by such schemes as the land-grabbing device described above, to get so strong a hold on the situation as will seriously complicate it whenever Great Britain shall feel it to be her duty to the world to step in and attempt to bring some kind of order out of the chaos.

It begins to be very clear that Jewish nationalism will develop along the line of enmity to the rest of the world. Already the dangerous proposal has been made to organize a Jewish army for the protection of the Suez Canal. Instead of thinking of roads and farmsteads, of vineyards and oil presses, of schools and sanitary villages, the Jews are thinking of elevating themselves into the military power that shall stand between East and West on that most strategic strip of ground in the world. The whole situation is fraught with danger, and men who wish well to the Jews are alarmed and saddened by the prospect.

There are three elements of danger in the situation as it exists today: the overwhelmingly predominant Bolshevik element that is being poured into Palestine; the intense egotistic and challenging nationalism that Zionists exhibit even before they get a potato patch - the test for world politics and world power; and the racial confusion that now exists in Palestine.

These combined are dynamite. The first is more vital than many realize. Already the Jews who have gone to Palestine at great sacrifice and for pious reasons are complaining that instead of the Psalms of David the people are singing songs of the Red Revolution, and instead of meeting for instruction and prayer there are riotous gatherings extolling Trotsky as Messiah and the Soviet as the kingdom of heaven. On the third anniversary of the Jewish Revolution in Russia, the streets of Jerusalem were placarded with sentiments of blasphemy and treason, and May Day this year was devoted to the exaltation of anarchy.

This fact will be of interest to students of prophecy. It is as certain as any human forecast can be that this sort of thing will not be permitted to go forward in the face of the world. It is unimaginable that the nations responsible to humanity for the conduct of that important strip of territory will remain supine while Bolshevism spreads under the false pretense of a religious movement favored by Christendom. An attempt will be made to stop it. The Jews of Palestine will turn on their sponsor nation. The Jews of Russia will come down to help. Great Britain and perhaps the United States will defend the old pure vision of a Jerusalem redeemed. Then will come to pass the prophecy of Zechariah:

"And Judah also shall fight against Jerusalem,"

Judah also! It is a thought to make a Jew bethink himself where the lawlessness of the East and the materialism of the West will lead him. What a terrible ending of Judah's present mad delusion.

Palestine has been called the center of the earth. It is. The power that controls Palestine controls the world. Although exercising no sovereignty over the land itself, Great Britain's control of adjacent waters and of Egypt and Persia and India forms the key of her power. The white race has thus far been the Chosen People to whom the dominion of the earth has been given. Palestine is the key to world military strategy and trade. In question 12 of the Questions and Answers published by the department of education, Zionist Organization of America, this occurs:

12. What are the commercial possibilities of Palestine?

The location of Palestine between the three continents favors foreign trade.

All this lends itself to dreams of future glory, and many Christian friends of the Jew have pleased themselves by conceiving an universal Hague at Jerusalem and a new social order going out to bless the nations from Zion. It is the idea conveyed by men like A. A. Berle in books like "The World Significance of a Jewish State." All this might be expected if the Jews of today were Old Testament people, anxious to re-establish the social laws of Moses, which are conceded to be the best safeguards ever devised against pauperism on the one hand and plutocracy on the other. But Palestine has not fallen into the hands of that sort of Jews. Before the dream can be fulfilled Judah must come to himself, as he has not yet, for from of old the Word is -

"And Judah also shall fight against Jerusalem."

The racial situation in Palestine just now is very delicate. Americans do not understand it. The Zionist propaganda has always been accepted on the assumption that Palestine is the Jews' land and that they only need help to go back. It is an historical and political fact that Palestine has not been the Jews' land for more than 2,000 years. There are in Palestine 500,000 Moslems, 105,000 Christians and 65,000 Jews. The industry of the land is agriculture. Engaged in this are 69 percent of the Moslems, 46 percent of the Christians and 19 percent of the Jews. Neither numerically nor industrially have they held the land. Yet, as the result of a war bargain, it is handed over to them as regardless of the native inhabitants as if Belguim had been handed over to Mexico. Many of the natives are Semites, like the Jews, but they do not want the Jews among them.

That is a strange fact for those who use the term anti-Semitism"; why do real Semites also dislike the Jews? Surely Semites are not victims of "anti-Semitism."

The Balfour Declaration, as well as the terms of the Mandate adopted as San Remo, recognized the rights of the native races. Indeed, everyone who knows about the people who have been native to Palestine for 2,000 years recognizes their rights, everybody except the Jews. Bethlehem was a Christian town, as befits the birthplace of Christ. Yet the Jews have contrived that 2,000 Bethlehemites leave Palestine rather than submit to what they see coming. The other races are not so placid about it, hence the trouble. It is now that the last clauses, added as the Zionist historian declares, "in order to appease a certain section of anti-Zionist opinion," begin to get a meaning for the reader. Was the purpose only to quiet disturbing questions until all the arrangements were made? Evidently. It was then a dishonest appeasement! Such may have been the Zionists' intention, but no one need expecte perjury on the part of the responsible nations. The end of the matter will see those last clauses redeemed by honest application of their terms to the people involved.

General Allenby promised those native races of Palestine that their rights would be respected. So did the Balfour Declaration. So did the San Remo Conference. So also did President Wilson in the twelfth of his Fourteen Points.

But Judah says, "Let them get out!" "The last clauses were added in order to appease a certain section of timid anti-Zionist opinion."

"Let them get out!" says Israel Zangwill. "We must gently persuade them to 'trek.' After all, they have all Arabia with its million square miles, and Israel has not a square inch. There is no particular reason for the Arabs to cling to those few kilometers. To fold their tents and silently to steal away is their proverbial habit; let them exemplify it now." Aside from the falsity of using the term "Arab," there is the delightful Jewishness of it - let them give it up to us, we want it! Americans have been in their land less than 150 years as and there is China and Arabia or Siberia for us to go to if we should want to, but we prefer our own country, and so do the native races of Palestine, who have dwelt there for 2,000 years.

The watchmen on the towers of the world are alarmed at what seems brewing in Judah's geographical caldron.