Spiritual Semetism

The following text is an extract from the Memoirs of Gaston Zananiri OP, of which copies of the complete text have been deposited in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and the Dominican Historical Centre, Oxford. This extract allows us to relive the Jewish-Arab problem as it existed in the 1930s. Palestine was still under the British mandate, but its inhabitants were waiting for independence. This was the time when Pius XI declared, 'Spiritually we are all Semites.' Since then the Near East has witnessed political, nationalist and religious movements which have entirely changed the situation. We think it useful, in the present climate of renewed hopes and tensions, to publish this testimony from someone who was personally involved in this earlier period. The author, a Dominican priest in France since 1956, is an Alexandrian Melkite on his father's side, and a Jew on his mother's side.