An Honorable American Witness - Edwin Wright on "Eretz Israel"

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An Honorable American Witness - Edwin Wright

Edwin Wright was born in Iran of missionary parents and knew the area well.  He also studied Hebrew, and when assigned to the Near East issues  at the U.S. State Department during the Truman years,  he went to Palestine to find out for himself what was really going on. Here are some of his findings as given in his "Oral History" interview for the Truman Library.


This period is very important for what I have to say about serving under President Truman, because while I was there I realized that there was going to be a war between Jews and Arabs; that was just certain. This was because of the concepts of the two societies. One has to get into the attitude of mind and the philosophy of these two societies to understand this problem.

I made a special study of Zionism, and I talked with as many people as I could find who were the leaders of the Zionist community. I interviewed Golda Meir at that time; she was then labor secretary. I had conversations with Reuven Zaslani, who later was called Shiloah (all these people changed their names later on); Dov Joseph, who became the mayor of Jerusalem during the war; and Teddy Kolleck. I made a special effort to meet them, talk with them, and find out what Zionism is; what it stands for. I also found that there was a school in Tel Aviv, known as the Gymnasia Herzliya. It was the training school in which most of the modern leaders of Israel had gone; Moshe Dyan and others. I talked with a number of the teachers and professors there. I felt that this was a school dedicated to inculcating and indoctrinating [Theodor] Herzl's ideas into the minds of the young Jews in Palestine. [See: Moshe Menuhin, The Decadence of Judaism in our Times, Exposition Banner Book, 1965. He was a graduate of this school.]

At that time many of Herzl's writings were not yet translated into English. In fact, they were not translated until 1952, so no one had really any easy access to this material unless he knew German or Hebrew. I don't know either one of these very well. I studied some German and some Hebrew, but I talked with the people who were the professors there and also got to know Edwin Samuel, the son of Lord Samuel who was the first High Commissioner of Palestine.

With Edwin Samuel, I made trips all through the kubbutzim. We spent several days at Ein Geb, Mishmar Ha-Emek, and at various other of the kubbutzim. During this period I became convinced that Americans didn't know what Zionism was at all.

The material was not in English. There was very little of it known to America, and I came to the conclusion that it was a very dangerous type of philosophy of living.

What I found out was that Herzl had taught that all the Jews of the world should go to Israel. This was the idea that dominated the Yishuv (the Yishuv means the Jewish community of Palestine) and even Ben Gurion, who was at that time Secretary of the Jewish Agency.

The Jewish Agency was a shadow government. It already was a government of Israel; simply waiting for the veil to be pulled and it would emerge. It had all the functions of government. I found their ideas were that all Jews should leave the Gentile world. This is in Herzl: "Gentiles hate Jews, they are going to destroy the Jewish world." It's a paranoic view of things. The only way Judaism can be saved is for the Jews to leave the Gentile world completely; to go to a Jewish state, as Herzl put it in his book. There they would rule themselves and be able to get away from the hatred of the Gentile world. The Gentiles are out to destroy Judaism. [See: Theodore Herzl, The Jewish State, N.Y., 1943. Diaries in II Volumes]

I did not believe this. I think it's a false concept of society, and especially false of American society. Nevertheless, this is the foundation of Zionist thinking.

The second step was that this Jewish state must be in Palestine. This is the sacred home of the people; its literature was developed there, and their attitude was that Judaism cannot survive in any other place except Palestine itself. That's where it grew and germinated, and it's got to get back there in order to save itself. Otherwise, Jews are going to assimilate in other countries. Herzl himself made the statement that, when the Jewish state is set up, if a Jew does not go to live in it he is anti-Semitic because he chooses to live with Gentiles rather than live with Jews which are his real community.

I got all these ideas through talking with people who were Zionists. The third step in Zionism was that they must have large enough a state in order to keep the whole Jewish population there. At that time there were about fourteen million Jews, and now that meant owning a very large territory. It is not brought out in Zionist propaganda in America, but what they claim is all the territory from the Suez Canal clear north to the mountains of Cappadocia, in southern Turkey. [Statement by Herzl. Also see Numbers 34; Genesis 15:18, Joshua 13, II Samuel 8:5-6.} It includes all of Lebanon, much of Syria, Jordan, and Sinai. This is the territory they call "Eretz Israel," the land of Israel, which is mentioned in the Bible.

Furthermore, in the Bible you will find the boundaries of "Eretz Israel" as given by God. There are several places these are found, Numbers, the 34th Chapter and so forth.

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/isra ... rael.shtml
One of the men whom I discussed this with was Rabbi Meyer Berlin, the Chief Rabbi in the Mizrachi group. These are the ultra-orthodox group, who accept the Old Testament literally. Everything that it says is exactly just as it's described.

This means from the Nile to the Euphrates --
 just as King Saud warned in 1954.