On young people today being concerned about Palestinians - that too is really odd, historically.

100 years ago it was unlikely that the average 20 year old American gave a second thought about the affairs overseas, unless they had an urge to travel or join the Navy.

So I looked up “Palestine” in newspapers of 1924 to see how much news that region garnered. Now I’m skipping the Jewish newspapers (which had much news about Palestine), and with the British Mandate also in the news that came up on occasion.

But oddly enough, the first paper I found was The Daily Worker (of Chicago), an obviously pro-labor and socialist outlet. They had an article in the June 9th, 1924 edition: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

The right hand column is a discussion of…. oil. And concessions on oil the US is getting, in which is mentioned Palestine.

It is not odd that the US government was working on behalf of American companies to get oil concessions.

And this of course gets to the point: the reason the US was interested in that part of the world was oil.

Even back then.

And the youth of 1924 probably didn’t give a second thought to it.