“Me? I’m wailing!”
“What are you wailing for? Aren’t there plenty of Jews in Jerusalem? And haven’t you got a Jew for a governor?”
“Yes, I know, but I want the Mosque of Omar.”
There are also Jews who favour a more moderate Zionism, and fear that setting up a Jewish state will make trouble both in Palestine and in the countries where Jews are now citizens with a part in business and public affairs.
CHAPTER XXV
THE WORLD’S OLDEST CITY
Stand with me on the slope of the Lebanon Mountains and take a look over Damascus. We have climbed the road cut out for Kaiser Wilhelm, the Emperor of Germany, when he visited this region, and are now on a bare lofty hill which the Mohammedans consider one of the holy spots of the world. It is where the prophet Mohammed stood and gazed at that magnificent town, the Damascus of his day. After staying here for hours, he turned away with a sigh, saying:
“I dare not go in. Man can enter paradise but once, and if I go into Damascus, this paradise on earth, I shall not be able to enter the paradise of the hereafter.”
According to the Mohammedans, Abraham first received the divine revelation of the unity of God in Damascus; and Josephus says that the town was founded by Uz, the great-grandson of Noah. The Bible tells us that Abraham had a steward who came from Damascus, and we know that King David besieged and conquered the place. There is no doubt that it is one of the oldest towns, if not the very oldest, upon earth. It was in existence before the days of Rameses and Thebes, before Alexandria sprang into greatness on the Mediterranean shores, and while Nebuchadnezzar was chewing grass in the gardens of Babylon. It was old long before Athens had begun to be, was already gray-haired when Rome was a baby, and antedates any of the cities of the present. It is now one of the most thriving centres of the Mohammedan world.