han his colleagues in
Constantinople. In any case he ordered the 'deportation' of all Jews
from Jaffa, Gaza, and other agricultural districts. All Jews were
commanded to leave Jaffa within forty-eight hours, no means of transport
was given them, and they were forbidden to take with them either
provisions or any of their belongings. Eight thousand Jews were evicted
from Jaffa alone, and their houses were pillaged, and they robbed,
maltreated, and many were murdered. Thus, and in no other way had the
massacres of the Armenians begun, and, that there should be no mistake
about it, Jemal threatened them explicitly with the fate of the
Armenians. Next day Ludd was evacuated also; the evacuation of Haifa and
Jerusalem was threatened, and artillery was sent to Jerusalem. There can
be no doubt in fact that Jemal planned and began to carry out a massacre
of all Jews.

At that point the Germans intervened, and for the present (but only for
the present, for so long in fact as Germany has complete control over
all Turkish internal affairs, in which she protested she could not
meddle) the Jewish colonies in Palestine seem to be safe.[1] The German
chief of the General Staff telegraphed to Berlin that the 'military
considerations' on which Jemal based his deportations did not exist, and
Herr Cohn in the Reichstag drew the Imperial Chancellor's attention to
this. How seriously the menace was regarded in Germany, and how far the
deportations had gone may be gathered from his words, 'Is the Imperial
Chancellor prepared to influence the Turkish Government in such a manner
as to prevent with certainty--so far as this is still possible--a
repetition in Palestine of the Armenian atrocities?' This was
sufficient: Germany, who could not dream of interfering in Turkish
internal affairs when only the massacre of hundreds of thousands of
Armenians was concerned, sent her order, and, for the present, Jemal the
Great has been unable to proceed with the solution of the Jewish
question in Turkey, which he had just discovered. We need not yet in
fact give Jemal his Jew. But some sort of explanation to soothe the
exasperation of the Turks in not being allowed to murder when and how
and where they pleased, was thought advisable, and the explanation (an
extraordinarily significant one) was given in an inspired paragraph of
the _Frankfurter Zeitung_ not long after. 'The valuable structure of
Zionist cultural work, in which the German Empire must have wel