AFRICA: Commercial Travelers

At one time, Africa—instead of what is now Israel—might have become the homeland of the Jews. When Czarist pogroms drove hundreds of thousands of Jews out of Russia before World War I, Britain's Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain drew up a grant of 5,000 sq. mi., in what is now Kenya's white highlands, to serve as a Zionist refuge until the Holy Land should be opened to them. But a Zionist commission inspecting this temporary Promised Land took fright after being nearly crushed by stampeding elephants, surrounded by Masai warriors, and rendered sleepless by roaring lions. Shuddering "No, thanks," the commissioners...

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