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The U.S. Navy Saved the Jews of the Holy Land 110 Years Ago

(Substack) Lenny Ben-David - During World War I, the Jews of Palestine suffered from hunger, disease, and oppression. The territory was ruled with an iron fist by the Ottoman (Turkish) army. In 1914, Turkey abolished agreements with European powers which granted them elements of sovereignty over their subjects in the Ottoman Empire. The financial assistance the Jews received from their European Jewish brethren evaporated. Many Jews of the Holy Land were seen as citizens of the enemy - France, Britain and Russia. The Turkish authorities ordered their immediate expulsion. In 1915, a plague of locusts of Biblical proportions ravaged the land for six months. The U.S. retained its neutrality in the war until 1917. The Americans were the only ones left to help the Jews of Palestine. On October 6, 1914, the U.S. Navy's USS North Carolina landed in Jaffa harbor and delivered $50,000 to the U.S. consul general for distribution to the Jewish community. The USS North Carolina, Vulcan, Des Moines, and Tennessee made 13 port visits, delivering aid to the Jews of Palestine until the U.S. entered the war. The U.S. ships also departed the Holy Land with Jews who were expelled or had to flee the Turks because of their Russian origins, Zionist activity, or draft dodging. Some 6,000 Jews of Palestine were evacuated by U.S. Navy ships in 1914 and 1915. The Jews of the Holy Land "would have succumbed had not financial help arrived from America," according to a Zionist Organization of London report. "America was at that time the one country which through its political and financial position was able to save [Jewish] Palestine permanently from going under." The writer, a Research and Diplomacy Fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, is the author of American Interests in the Holy Land Revealed in Early Photographs: 1840-1940.
2025-08-07 00:00:00
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