The Jerusalem News was the first English-language newspaper in Jerusalem, existing for around six months during the British Mandate for Palestine. The paper was established in 1919 by Elizabeth Lippincott McQueen and edited by William D. McCrackan, with contributors such as John Huston Finley and Talbot Mundy.
History Following the conquest of Palestine by the British Army in 1917, which marked the first time the holy land had been under Christian rule since the crusades, many Christians interested themselves in the affairs of Palestine. One of them was William D. McCrackan, who came there with his wife in September 1919 as part of an independent party of relief workers, although he called the main impulse for traveling to the country a spiritual one. McCrackan had previously worked for The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Europe to assist in relief work during World War I, and helped form relief organizations and distribute funds in England, Germany, France, and Switzerland. He had also served as associate editor of The Christian Science Journal, Christian Science Sentinel, and The Herald of Christian Science from 1916 to 1919, but opted not to continue at the end of his term in May of that year.
The Jerusalem News was established in 1919 by Elizabeth Lippincott McQueen, a British-American woman who would later become a women's aeronautics pioneer, and who had in the aftermath of World War I served in war relief work in Palestine under Field Marshal Edmund Allenby. McQueen asked McCrackan to be the paper's editor. McCrackan wrote that there was an "urgent need for a newspaper which could maintain a policy of impartiality" in the city, and printed Abraham Lincoln's "With charity to all, malice toward none" as the paper's motto in every issue. The first issue appeared on Dec. 9, 1919, the anniversary of the taking of Jerusalem by British forces, and it bore a congratulatory message from Allenby, then High Commissioner of Egypt.
Red Cross Commissioner John Huston Finley was a reader and frequent contributor to the paper. In February 1920, the British-American writer and journalist Talbot Mundy, McCrackan's co-worker and personal friend, arrived in Jerusalem. There he became the Jerusalem News''' editorial assistant, being involved in writing articles, reporting on current events, proof reading, and editing. McQueen, McCrackan, Mundy, and the others involved with the paper witnessed and reported on the increasing conflict between Arab and Jewish populations within the city, including the 1920 Nebi Musa riots. At one point during the build up to the riots, McQueen addressed a group of would-be rioters and was successful in pacifying them, partially as a result of the novelty of a woman addressing a group of men. Afterwards the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Kamil al-Husayni sent McQueen a letter thanking her.
The Jerusalem News'' ceased publication on June 8, 1920. The end of the paper's publication was explained by its having been "a wartime publication" and that the start of a British civil administration necessitated a different kind of paper. According to McCrackan, the paper "established the fact that a daily newspaper in the English language could be brought out in Jerusalem". He saw the paper as strictly connected to the war relief effort, and left Palestine in July 1920 after the British civil administration assumed control of the city.
McCrackan was critical of the Zionist slogan "a land without a people for a people without a land". He later said of it, "We used to read in our papers the slogan of Zionism, 'to give back a people to a Land without a People,' while the truth was that Palestine was already well-peopled with a population which was rapidly increasing from natural causes."
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External links All 151 issues of the Jerusalem News at the Library of Congress