HOLY LAND CALAMITY

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 241, 10 September 1929, Page 7

HOLY LAND CALAMITY

VICTIMS OF MASSACRES. MEMORIAL SERVICE IN LONDON CHIEF RABBI’S STATEMENT. (United Press Association.—By Electric . Telegraph.—Copyright.) (United Service.) Received September 10, 8.45 a.m. LONDON, Sept. 9. “Some tragedies are too deep for tears, and some calamities are too vast for lamentation,” stated the Chief ltabbi, Rev. Joseph Herman Liertz, when conducting a memorial service for the victims of tlie massacres in the Holy Land. Rev. Hertz stated that the so-called age-long feud between the Jew and Arab was an absolute invention. There was an age-long friendship between the two races until 1912. It was a striking thing that nearly all the ecclesiastics in England were dumb concerning a calamity that had stirred the world. The safety of Israel and the honour of Britain depended upon the Commission of Inquiry. APPORTIONINgTtHE BLAME. ARAB ALLEGATIONS. jewishTieply. (Australian Press Association —United Servioe.) LONDON, Sept. 9. The Jewish National Council at Jerusalem, has replied to the Arab Executive’s rejoinder to the High Commissioner’s proclamation of September 3. The reply is an answer to the allegation that the Government armed the Jews: “If the Jews at Hebron and Safed had been armed they would not have been slaughtered like sheep without firing a shot. The truth is that on August 23 thousands of Arabs came allegedly to pray, but were armed with knives that had been publicly distributed through tho streets.of Jerusalem. ’ The Jews in certain parts of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa used the first arms within their reach, but only for self-defence, thereby saving those in other places from destruction. “It is impossible to point to one Jewish attack on an Arab village or settlement, the violation of Arab women, or Jewish arson, loot or robbery, whereas the Arabs perpetrated these offences wholesale, and numerous Arabs were captured or killed while engaged therein. There was even a case of Arabs killing each other when quarrelling over the division of booty.” SITUATION QUIET. REPORTS FROM PALESTINE. (British Official Wireless.) Received September 10, 10 a.m. RUGBY, Sept. 9. , The Colonial Office states that reports received from Palestine this morning are to tire effect that the situation is quiet.

The Palestine Arab Executive in a manifesto declared that most of the Jews were self-armed and that Government armed others. They denied that any Jews were mutilated, but asserted that Jews mutilated certain Arabs, that Jewish mobs killed isolated Arab women and children, that Jews committed tho first murders on women and children, and that' disciplined British troops shot Arab women ‘ and children in their homes and in their beds.