THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by William B. Ziff pages 230-400 out of 525 - Draiman

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by William B. Ziff pages 230-400 out of 525

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by William B. Ziff pages 230-400 out of 525

The Jews were the British excuse for being in Palestine. They were the only protection against the French who were eager to demand an international control if they could not have it for themselves (Although Napoleon in 1799 offered the Jews to reconstitute the Jewish Land of Israel in Palestine). How this worked out is shown in London's rejection in 1921 of a demand by the United States Government that concessions of Palestine's natural resources be granted "with out distinction of

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nationality" between the nationals of all States Members of the League, as in the East Africa Mandate. Suavely, London replied that "the suggestion appears to His Majesty's Government to overlook the peculiar conditions existing in Palestine and especially the great difference in the natures of the tasks assumed in that country and undertaken by them in South Africa. . . In order that the policy of establishing in Palestine a National Home for the Jewish people should be successfully carried out, it is impracticable to guarantee that equal facilities for developing the natural resources of the country should be granted to persons or bodies 'who may be actuated by other motives" This in substance was also the reason given to the French, who were boiling over because their title to the immensely valuable Dead Sea deposits, carried over as an old Turkish concession, had been voided by the Palestine authorities.

The Jews were equally useful as an instrument for rejecting the demands of the Arabs themselves for self-rule, at a time whenBritain felt that it meant their consolidation with Syria under French influence. With impeccable probity London then found that "it was impossible to recognize the granting of unqualified autonomy to the present population of Palestine, since such autonomy would imply the right to dispose of the country by legislative and administrative measures even against the obligations assumed by the Mandatory," which it asserted are not to "the present population of Palestine" but to "the much larger population whose connection with Palestine – The Land of Israel has been internationally recognized."

There was also the fact that in order to get its fingers on Palestine at all, Britain had acknowledged itself as merely a temporary agent for the League of Nations, as a trustee for the Jewish people. In the earlier days while the League still had some untested strength, it did not hesitate to uphold its own authority, and here England was compelled to use the Jews again as a cat’s-paw. The absolute control of the Permanent Mandates Commission over mandated territories was upheld at Geneva on September 27, 1926, after Sir Austen Chamberlain, British Foreign Secretary, had brought the matter to issue as to whether the Commission had actual jurisdiction or

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merely the right to criticize and lay down generalities of policy.

The Mandates Commission did not hesitate at various times to lock horns with the British Government in no uncertain terms. Had Zionist leaders themselves played anything but an acquiescent role, it is quite certain that the League would have supported them and forced the English into a most difficult position. "If the matter were looked at impartially from the point of view of the Mandate as it stood," observed the Commission in 1930, "the Government's method of encouraging immigration had been to limit it . . . [and] that the result would be as negative if an inquiry were made as to the State lands and waste lands on which the settlement of Jews had been encouraged. . . The special situation," it continued dryly, "granted by the Mandate to the Jewish element in Palestine appeared to have escaped the notice of the Administration." In extraordinary session in June of that year the Commission bluntly advised "all the sections of the population [in Palestine] which are rebelling against the Mandate, whether they object to it on principle or wish to retain only those of its provisions which favor their particular cause, that the Mandatory Power must obviously turn a definite and categorical refusal. As long as the leaders of a community persist in repudiating what is at once the fundamental charter of the country, and, as far as the Mandatory Power is concerned, an international obligation, which it is not free to set aside, the negotiations would only unduly enhance their prestige and raise dangerous hopes among their partisans. . ." 53

On the face of it the proposition was a well-nigh impossible one, making it necessary for London to attempt the miracle of standing simultaneously on two sides of the one fence. The Zionists had to be smashed at the same time that Britain was posing as their guide and benefactor. They had, moreover, to be kept placated and quiescent. Experience with the Irish taught England's rulers the folly of an active struggle with a determined, world-scattered people. If the Irish were now to be joined by the Jews in a joint last-ditch fight against the Empire, the Sinn Fein would assume grave proportions. Here was an intricate set of problems, most of which impinged on what

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attitude the Zionist hierarchy itself would take.

Jewish spokesmen, lost in this welter of intrigue, inexperienced, inexpert and totally unable to distinguish between sincerity and clever dissembling, did not prove too troublesome. They appealed to the facts, which they marshaled systematically, to fundamental law and to justice. Their arguments were presented in the circumspect language of a barrister drawing up a brief on some learned obscurity of law and were presented without fanfare. Though the whole fundamental framework of their enterprise was plainly crumbling before their eyes, they continued to issue reassuring statements to their following. They claimed with reverse pugnacity that "the Government wants to be loyal to its duties" ; and were as outraged "over the speculation that the Government is making an effort to encourage the antagonism between Arabs and Jews" as if they were employed in Downing Street. Dr. Weizmann retreated gracefully to keep pace with the wishes of Whitehall in a series of amazing shifts. At one moment he concedes that "everything that is going on inPalestine today is on the pattern of that which is going on in Egypt. . . The same formulae are being applied. In Palestine, I admit we are ... a convenient pretext." 64 At another moment he would warn his fellow-Zionists against submitting sharp memoranda to the Government as "England also has to deal with the Muslim world inIndia and Egypt." 55 In a lecture before the Royal Central Asian Society in May 1936 he discovers that "if the land were properly developed, there is room in Palestine for another hundred thousand Arab families and another sixty thousand Jewish families," a clear proposal for a perpetual Jewish minority status. Soon after he is heard in defense of the dismemberment plan proposed by Lord Peel, inveighing against those Jews who opposed it by calling them "enemies of the Jewish State." The attitude of the Zionists was in fact, the most unexpected windfall the Bureaucrats had experienced in a generation. Only in Palestine itself, where doughty old Mayor Dizengoff of Tel Aviv charged the British with "playing a diabolical game" did the

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Jews make any effort to face political realities.

Until 1936 Whitehall had held tenaciously to the principle of 'absorptive capacity.' It now realized that even this contention, despite every topsy-turvy interpretation of normal economics, would see them the loser in the long run. In a complete about-face from all previously held theses, the Bureaucrats now admitted that "if the matter be reduced to statistical or economic terms . . . the Zionists have the better of the argument, and when the Arabs choose to indulge in figures, they use their weakest argument. . . The Palestineproblem is not one of statistics: something far more fundamental is involved." 56

Just what that 'something more fundamental' might be was soon disclosed officially by Colonial Secretary Ormsby-Gore, addressing Commons on July 2, 1936. Leveling his shafts directly at Jewish nationalists, he acknowledged darkly his awareness of the "character of Zionist propaganda," booming that the British Government accepted the Palestine Mandate 'without subscribing to any declaration that the country belongs to either Jews or Arabs, but that it is a British Mandated territory. The Government, he warned, did not intend countenancing any action "inconsistent with the Mandate" and this interpretation of it.

The British had been nineteen years working up to this denouement, but at last the cat was out of the bag. The Zionism of Herzel and Balfour was now an "action inconsistent with the Mandate" forPalestine. All that was left in the Bureaucratic mind of the Balfour Declaration was now "the Jewish problem in Palestine," and that is the way they expressed it.

CHAPTER IV

WELCOME HOME!

THE JEW TRIES TO ENTER PALESTINE

Article VI of the Mandate makes it obligatory upon the Administration of Palestine to "facilitate Jewish immigration." The British made a convincing start on this by making the Immigration Department a part of the Department of Police and Prisons.

It has been shifted around like an unwelcome cat which refuses to stay lost. Once it was hidden in the Department for Travel. At another time it had been shunted over to the Permit Section of the Secretariat.

The Immigration Department is more of a Secret Service Department than anything else. Its principal function seems to be that of preventing Jews from entering the country in any numbers. The attitude toward the Hebrew migrants was pegged by Duff, who wrote that "we had to be seemingly harsh and unfriendly towards them; it did not pay for one's seniors to think that one had any undue sympathy for the returning Jews... 1 A decade later another Englishman, Josiah Wedgwood, recounted the same story of ugly animus, to Commons. "Why," he asked bitterly, "is this done by Englishmen . . . against all the traditions of our race? If the Jews trying to go to Palestine were English, the situation could not endure for a minute. Conceive the outcry! But they are Jews, not English — they are not in the family; they are not entitled to be treated as though they were Aryans or Christians."

Under the regulations, only capitalists may enter Palestine freely. Originally, a Capitalist* was a man with £500 in cash. After 1930 the required amount was raised to £1000. Skilled artisans possessing £500 or more may also enter, theoretically; but in practice this provision is a dead letter. All others require specially issued immigration certificates, which are doled out with much quibbling in paltry numbers.

234 Pics

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The truth was that while huge sums were being dumped into the Jewish Homeland, Jews were being kept out of it with all the customary rigor of anti-Semitic formula. Some idea of the situation can be gained from Senator Austin's estimate that "measured on a per capita basis, each of the two hundred and fifty thousand Jewish immigrants [man, woman and child] who entered Palestine since the establishment of the Mandate, carried into the country $1800." 2

The distorting political and economic minority life which had stratified the Jews into a class of petty capitalists and traders, found itself dishearteningly duplicated in Palestine. With feverish energy and determination the newcomers applied their money and experience, hoping to create opportunities for their poverty-stricken brothers inEurope to join them in building the new nation. Factories and enterprises of all kinds were started. The result was a critical scarcity of labor in which the entire economy of the country went lunatic. Workers were drained out of the farms to take the more lucrative positions in the cities. In the towns the same process repeated itself in favor of the 'boom trades' which could afford to pay wages far out of line with those of normal occupations. Employer competed desperately with employer for the available labor supply. Industries had to curtail their activities, factories shut down altogether.Palestine skyrocketed along on the most insane economy modern industry has ever seen.

The condition is partially glimpsed in a semi-official report of August 27, 1934, admitting that the entire Palestine export trade was at a standstill due to a shortage of labor. Two-thirds of the workers on Jewish land, says the Report, are now Arabs, "and those Jews remaining will soon be displaced due to labor scarcity." The problem became so acute that populations of whole districts, including school children, had to be mobilized to keep crops from rotting in the fields. While anxious Jews were being turned away at the docks of Jaffaand Haifa, the Nesher Cement Works, engaged in a £150,000 expansion in Haifa, announced November 16, 1933 that it was unable to proceed due to "acute scarcity of labor." In Tel Aviv £1,000,000 worth of building

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had to be held up for the same reason. The story repeated itself everywhere.

At the identical time that it was beguiling world Jewry with the fiction that all was well in the National Home, the Executive of the Jewish Agency, irritated over the small grant of labor certificates, formally accused the Mandatory in a private memorandum of deliberately sabotaging the Home, finding it "impossible to reconcile this restriction of immigration with the declared policy of the Mandatory Power that immigration will be regulated in accordance with the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine."

The British had their authority in London where Sir William Beveridge 3 had found after careful study that the irreducible minimum of unemployment was between six and eight percent. In Palestine the incurable nomadism of the Arab population would further increase this figure. But the Administration, nevertheless, religiously adhered to the almost impossible formula that physical proof had to be given of the permanent employment of every person in the country, plus an established job for the new immigrant, before he could be admitted.

The demand for labor was so urgent as to overpower even this evasion, forcing additional subterfuge on the Authorities. An instance is the demand of the Jewish Agency for 24,000 certificates to cover the period from October to March 1933-34. In their petition they appended the result of a painstaking survey, showing, in detail, jobs awaiting each of the new arrivals. As usual, without explanation, the Government agreed to allow only 5500 certificates, of which 2000 were summarily deducted as having "been used in advance." With other deductions following on one plausible excuse or another, all that was left was the usual face-saving handful. Far from manfully refusing this beggarly schedule, on the date this announcement was made Weizmann was capitalizing on the German excitement to raise funds for the

"Zionist-German relief drive" of which he was head, and issuing a program full of high-sounding generalizations including "cooperation with the Mandatory Power . . . and the establishing of peace and understanding with the Arabs." 4

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As the 'absorptive capacity' of the country increased so tremendously under the stimulus of Jewish investment that any effort to deny it became ludicrous, the Government produced still other cards out of its sleeve. It announced in 1936 that seventy percent of the thirteen hundred immigration certificates available for the following six months were ear-marked for bachelors, ten percent for maidens, and twenty percent for men with families; thus cutting down immigration without appearing to do so. Another able device was the refusal to allow the wives and families of employed residents to enter without the precious labor visas, though in many cases they were an actual charge on these same residents, who sent money abroad to maintain them. 5 Such an obvious attempt was made to restrict the entry of women that the Jewish Agency flatly accused the Government in November 1934 of a mischievous and willful attempt "directed against any considerable development of the immigration of women into Palestine."

Many of the Administration's reasons for refusing entry permits would do credit to Herr Hitler, as witness the refusal to grant a visa to a refugee Russian rabbi on the excuse that "there were enough rabbis already in Palestine." Some of the regulations designed to restrict Jewish immigration are classic. One of these edicts, promulgatedNovember 14, 1933, allowed only 250 immigrants "to enter Palestinefrom any one vessel." Its effectiveness rested on the fact that few of the ships touching Palestine

ports could make a payload out of such a small number of travelers, forcing the cancellation of sailings.

Perhaps the outstanding example of official artifice was the schedule announced for the period between October 1, 1935 and March 31, 1936. 4350 visas were granted, over which the Jewish world press made the usual congratulatory ballyhoo. What was not mentioned were the following deductions made from this schedule in advance: 1000 certificates 'advanced' during the previous six-month period; 250 reserved by the Government (for non-Jews); 1200 taken off to cover 'illegal' immigrants who could not be apprehended; 6 and 1900 for dependents of employed residents (who in any other country would have entered as a matter of course). If these deductions are

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added up they are found to equal exactly the number of certificates granted; so that the Administration was only perpetrating a crude joke on the Zionists and in effect issuing no certificates at all.

In the face of this ruinous procedure the Zionist spokesmen periodically issued reassuring statements to their followers, gloating over the increasing numbers of Jews entering the Homeland. They listed impressive figures to bolster their publicity.

Actually, something like 12,000 certificates was the greatest number ever allowed for workingmen in one year; and from this pitiful number the most unconscionable deductions were made on one excuse or another. An example of how the Zionist publicity bureau treated the matter is given in its handling of the entry figures for 1933, which according to official statements, came to 64,110. Stimulated from this source the world Jewish press headlined: "64,110 Jews Entered Zion during 1933? Giving the impression that there had been that many immigrants. An analysis shows that the balance of recorded arrivals over departures during this period was 38,656 Jews, including 10,236 residents returning to the country after visits abroad and 27,862 actual immigrants. Of these, 'persons living on income,' minors, dependents, etc., totaled 15,653; and working people constituted a mere 2,434 men and 568 women. Juggled around in the official figures somewhere, were 26,002 tourists who came to enjoy the sights, and non-permanents of other kinds. Of the 61,743 Jews who came to remain in the peak year of 1935, only 14,653 belonged to the working class group.

It is perfectly obvious that capitalist immigration will not serve the purposes for which Zionism was originated. It cannot relieve the centers of pressure in the pogrom areas of Europe where Jews are now in a state of starvation and panic. It can only serve to buildPalestine ultimately into an Arab country. What Zionist leaders avoided mentioning, Adolph Hitler sarcastically called attention to, saying, "It is very kind of England to declare that she is ready to receive the Jews with open arms — but why

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should she make the admission of the Jews dependent upon £1,000?" 7 Even neighboring Syria, seeing a fruitful source of capital, announced that it too would welcome capitalist Jews, without the necessity of any Balfour Declaration imprinted

by the Powers. 8

Everything in this business is made subject to cash. Even the boasted Hadassah Aliyah, by which a few hundred Jewish children were brought in from Germany, were made conditional on a substantial money deposit, much as would be charged if the children had entered a boarding school. The Department of Immigration is a paying business, showing in a typical year a net income of £333,200 against an expenditure of £209,100.

Not nearly so docile as the Zionist hierarchy, Palestine Jews have often made their resentment as plain as men living under a knout are able to. Irked to fury, they went out on general strike in May 1930, a matter which the Administration handled expeditiously, as it invariably does when it has only Jews to deal with.

In 1937 the Palestine press reported that an amendment to the immigration laws was in contemplation, jacking up capital requirements of prospective immigrants to £2,000. This would eliminate 56% of those who had previously entered under this category. The time given a capitalist immigrant to liquidate his affairs in the home country had previously been one year. It is planned to reduce this to three months, obviously placing him under such duress as to considerably reduce his enthusiasm for emigrating.

The new stand taken by the Administration was indicated by Immigration Director Eric Mills, who informed the Peel Commission on November 18, 1936 that "immigration into the Holy Land involves political as well as economic issues." Just what these 'political issues' are may be learned from the astonished comments of Farago. Ignoring his statement that he was a Hungarian, port officials had demanded to know whether he was a Mohammedan, Christian or Jew. Long before, Colonel

Wedgwood had also noted that "the first question an immigrant is asked by the

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immigration inspectors in Palestine is, 'Are you a Jew? 9 "This is much as if one were asked anywhere else, "Were you ever convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude?"

TOURISTS

The Holy Land is perhaps the most magnetic spot on earth for sightseers, a circumstance which is probably its greatest single asset. It seems natural to suppose that tourists would be encouraged in every possible fashion and that every inducement would be offered to cause them to remain as long as possible. A large share of the national income of many states depends on just this source; and countries such as France and Italy embark on extensive advertising campaigns in the foreign press to attract this desirable army of visitors.

The tourist is at once bewildered to find that exactly the contrary view is held in Palestine, where every possible obstacle is placed in his path. He is required to make a large cash deposit and it must be certified on his visa that he has purchased in advance a first-class return ticket to his point of embarkation. He is forced to pay $10 for the little consular stamp, as compared with $35 in Egypt and $33 inFrance. Before he is allowed to land he is subjected to a cross-examination almost vicious in its import, and must file his living addresses with the authorities as if he were a paroled convict.

On paper, every tourist visiting Palestine must put up an advance deposit of £60, which is apparently his guarantee that he will not try to outwear his welcome. Actually, these strictures apply only to Jews. A consular officer, who has just refused a visa to John Doe because he took him for a Jew, will grant the same request with profuse apologies as soon as Mr. Doe qualifies as a gentile. This was ineptly admitted by young Malcolm MacDonald, then new Colonial Secretary, under questioning in Commons on July 9, 1935.

Its actual workings are illustrated in the violent protest of Warsaw Jewry on March 20, 1934 because the English Consul issued visas to all Polish Christians bound for

WELCOME HOME! 241

the Holy Land, and at the same time refused permits to Jewish tourists even though the required £60 was deposited. Going beyond its own written measures, the Government often refuses admission to whole parties of tourists, even though their papers are strictly in order and they have made the required deposit. Instances are plentiful. On March 5, 1933, sixty such visitors were refused admission without explanation and were not permitted to leave their steamer. A few days earlier, a group of twenty-three sight-seers fromPoland, all holding proper visas obtained from the British Consulate in Istanbul, were unceremoniously dumped into the Haifa lockup where they were badly treated. The Government had invented a new theory in this particular instance, alleging that they should have obtained their Palestine visas in Warsaw and not in Istanbul. In another case an Egyptian sea captain had his ship impounded and was sentenced together with each member of his crew to five months at hard labor for the crime of carrying a shipload of visitors toPalestine. The Authorities with remarkable clairvoyance insisted that the latter intended to overstay their leave, and unbelievable as it may appear, rested their case entirely on this psychic assertion.

Not altogether satisfied with results, the Administration attempted to put through a prohibitive tax on tourists in 1933, only frustrated by the indignant threat of Palestine Jewry to carry the whole business to the attention of Christian churches in every country. The Government now plans a drastic increase in the required tourist deposit; and has, since the middle of October 1936, enforced a complete ban on the general run of Jewish tourists, making exceptions only for those whose outraged squawk might draw attention to what is going on.

Even visitors of unimpeachable standing are refused permission to overstay their leave. A useful example is provided by the case of Weizmann who, though President of the Jewish Agency was according to reports, picked up in Haifa for this reason in 1936.

The natural result of this determined persecution is that even Egyptian Jews who have

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always, since Turkish times, spent their annual vacations inPalestine, now flock to the Syrian Lebanon instead.

It is worth noting that before the arrival of the British 'liberators,' Turkish law allowed Jews to come as pilgrims without restriction. When in 1887 Turkey, alarmed by the boasts of the Russian Consul that he "had more 'subjects' in Jerusalem than those of all the other consuls combined," attempted to limit the stay of foreign Jews in Palestine to a short period, the British Government led the procession of States whose vigorous denunciation of these regulations caused them to be abrogated in short order.

HUNTING DOWN ILLEGALS

A highly placed official once informed Horace Samuel, with evident relish, that "Jew-baiting was the sport of kings." To more or less degree, this remark is representative of the tone of His Majesty's Service in Palestine. Any hope that the pitiful plight of the fleeing, friendless Jews of Europe would excite compassion in the hearts of these men, evaporated rapidly. To officialdom these unfortunates instead assumed a nuisance value, and the old calloused attitude toward them hardened to icy hate.

It is true that these homeless creatures, hounded from border to border and rigidly kept out of their National Home, did attempt to enter in any way possible. Lacking the £1000 required to buy their way in, they often sneaked their way through without benefit of British sanction. Desperate men attempted to swim ashore from far outlying ships under cover of night. Some came nailed up in boxes of merchandise on the backs of camels, enduring indescribable suffering. Delicately raised girls braved the trip through the desert wastes, placing themselves at the mercy of savage Bedouins in an effort to cross unnoticed at some wild place. They came from everywhere, a horde of stranded, terrified Jews who arrived by steamer, by canoe and on foot. Most of them were young people in their teens or early twenties, desperate, hopeless creatures who were taking their last gamble in life. Many were drowned,

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died of their last gamble in life. Many were drowned, died of starvation, or were murdered on the way by the very Bedouins they hired to transport them.

The most heart-rending events took place daily. One such story is of five hundred Russian Jews who escaped from the Soviets to go toPalestine on foot via Baghdad and Persia. Many were arrested on the various borders. One hundred and fifty died enroute of incalculable hardships. Altogether five finally arrived in Palestine, where they were promptly thrown into jail at Acre. Another typical case held the fate of 318 young German and East European refugees, all under 25, who were marooned on the British steamer Velos in 1934. The Palestine authorities refused to admit them; as did every port at which the vessel touched. Their meager funds exhausted, they were

locked below hatches like so much contraband, which could neither be unloaded nor destroyed. Finally, after ceaseless wandering from port to port, these luckless outcasts were given temporary asylum byPoland.

Just how a Jew under the Mandate could be in Palestine 'illegally' has never been explained. If the beneficiaries of that document are not the entire Jewish people, whose immigration to the Holy Land is to be facilitated by every means possible, then the Mandate has no reason for existence. Ormsby-Gore admitted as much in 1925 when he informed the Permanent Mandates Commission that they "should remember that it is after all the Balfour Declaration which was the reason why the

British Government is now administering Palestine." However, the memory of the King's spokesmen was conveniently suited to what their appetites seemed to demand. So the British gradually developed the peculiar thesis that Jews, under a Mandate directly formulated to facilitate their return to Palestine, could be there illegally.

Coincident with the advent of Hitler the business assumed the proportions of an out and out Jew-hunt. In a nice piece of collusion between the Colonial Secretary, Sir Phillip Cunliffe-Lister, and an M. P. named MacDonald, the Government 'admitted' that 'illegal' Jewish immigration existed but stated in assurance that "practical steps

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would be taken to deal with the matter." The very next day Cunliffe-Lister announced stringent measures to prevent 'illegal' Jewish immigration into Palestine. The system of tourist deposits was instituted. Holders of Nansen passports, that pitiful army of staatenlos men, were not in future to be granted even tourist visas. An air-tight frontier control in collaboration with the agreeable French authorities in Syria was to be put in effect. On the subject of illegal Arab immigration the announcement was expressively silent.

Showing the extent of its pre-organization, the campaign at once assumed the proportions of a large-scale pursuit of Jews over the length and breadth of Palestine. Ironically paid for out of Jewish tax moneys, a dragnet of airplane and motor boat patrols were detailed along the borders ; while British and Arab constables, assisted by organized groups of fellaheen, enjoyed themselves in scouring the coast-wise territory. At Beirut and other Syrian cities British and Arab police questioned motorbus drivers, asking if Jews were among the passengers; carefully examining the passports of all suspected of being Jews, while others were as scrupulously ignored.

The pursuit of 'illegal' Jews was on in earnest, one of the great witch-hunts of modern times. Jews were picked up like dangerous animals everywhere and hauled to police stations. Weeping Jewish women were thrown into cells together with prostitutes, subjected to the obscene taunts of Arab jailers. The situation is made pitifully clear in the case of thirty-two young girls, arrested while out on a hike near Tiberias because an Arab boy denounced them. Thrown into the overcrowded jail at Bethlehem, they were kept on bread and water and refused bail. The Police candidly explained to indignant inquirers that "if they were released on bail, they may marry Palestine citizens and obtain the right to stay." 9 On the same date three other girls were arrested on the streets of Haifa, jailed, and finally deported on an Italian steamer. Italian authorities would not let them land so they were shipped back and forth between Palestine and Italy until finallyJerusalem agreed.

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M5

as an act of international courtesy, to take them off the ship-captain's hands. Says the announcement: "They are now imprisoned in theBethlehem jail."

Jews were expelled for any trivial reason the anti-Semitic mentality could improvise. Men were torn from their jobs and businesses and thrown like common offenders into the prison at Acre, a dank, forbidding structure ranking in terror with the famous French Bastille, where they were regularly beaten by Arab overseers. The attitude is shown in the case of one Isschak Kupetz, a respectable working man who was sentenced to the Central Prison in Jerusalem and escaped. Immediately an intensive police search was begun, and rewards prominently posted for "the escaped convict." Since no nation wanted them, a great number of these tragic sufferers were held long after their sentences had expired; the Government not hesitating to vent its exasperation on their heads.

Hunting 'illegal* Jews became a major game, with thousands of illegal Arab newcomers enlisting gleefully in the chase. Savage Bedouins joined in under promise of a reward for any Jewish man, woman or child they could catch. Palestine was under a virtual reign of terror. Anyone who could not immediately prove his citizenship, or produce his or her certificate of entry, was tracked down, jailed and brutally beaten. The lives of these people became a daily horror. They became gravely endangered by falling ill. They did not dare travel. For years they have had to live without their wives and children and under constant fear of being discovered. The utterly savage attitude toward these people can hardly be grasped by a civilized mind. A characteristic case is that of the family Israel Ezra, tourists who overstayed their three months' leave. Ezra and his wife were sentenced to prison and fine, and in addition it was ordered that their twelve-year-old son be publicly flogged. 10

Bad as existing regulations were, the inhuman meticulousness with which they were interpreted made them infinitely worse. A fair example is the case of a woman and six small children, who had arrived legally with the proper passport and visa, from Turkistan. On the way her husband had been killed at a railway station. The whole

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family was arrested on the ground that the passport provided not for a woman and six children, but for a man, a woman and six children. On this pretext the woman and her children were ordered to prison.

The heat had grown so scorching that it was beginning to drive even the patient Jews mad. Nationalist groups rioted in protest. Serious clashes took place when Arab gangs invaded the Jewish colonies themselves in search of victims. After some of these invaders had been beaten within an inch of their lives, the use of civilian Arab bloodhounds was discontinued.

While all this was going on, the Jewish Agency, which had been to such pains to create a world-wide impression that "new Jewish arrivals were being eagerly welcomed," put out a timid protest. It verbosely pointed out that all this was a clear departure from the MacDonald Letter, which expressly guaranteed that no immigrants "with prospects of employment" would be excluded. The High Commissioner "took the matter under advisement" and immediately buried the 'protest' along with some ash-barrels of others, in theJerusalem files. At almost the identical moment, he announced the appointment of a Commission under Sir William Murison to investigate the police for alleged severity in maintaining order during some Arab riots of a few weeks previous.

THE ARAB COMES IN LIKE A GENTLEMAN

Lured by stark evidence of labor scarcity and big pay, peoples from all surrounding states began to drift into Palestine. Though a huge corps of coast and frontier guards kept vigilant watch to prevent the entry of 'illegal' Jews, Arabs from anywhere entered without even the gesture of passport investigation. The Report of the Peel Commission admits frankly that the inhabitants of Syria andTransjordan "are free to enter the corresponding districts in Palestinewithout special formality." It is, in fact, by disguising themselves as Arabs that most 'illegal* Jewish immigration is accomplished. If they are lucky they will succeed in walking in boldly without challenge. A news item of July 4, 1934 gives the circumstance more lucidly than

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pages of reference. It reads: "Five Jewish women coming overland from Damascus, attired in the traditional costumes of Muslim women, including the black veils, were apprehended at the border when police saw through their disguises. They could not answer questions put to them in Arabic"

Not only is immigration from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen and other surrounding places unrestricted, but Jews from these same countries are as determinedly barred as their brothers from Poland or the Baltic. Casual examples of this condition are the deportation of Jews who fled from the Mosul district of Iraq because of religious persecution; and the demand of the Palestine Government on May 16, 1935 that Syrian Jews be given a special distinguishing passport when proceeding to countries on the Palestine border, a sort of Near Eastern 'yellow ticket,' reminiscent of Czarist Russia.

Though the Government solemnly estimates in 1937 a total Muslim increase by immigration of only 22,535 since the time of the British occupation, 11 evidence of a vast influx of desert tribesmen is obvious everywhere. As early as 1926, Colonial

Secretary Amery cautiously conceded that despite the growth of the Jewish element "the increase of the Arabs is actually greater than that of the Jews." 12 Figures presented before the Peel Commission in 1937 showed the Arab population to have more than doubled itself in fourteen years. This admitted gain in half a generation must either be attributed to outside immigration or to the most astonishing philo-progenitiveness in medical history.

Forgotten in its archives, the Government itself acknowledged in 1922 the immigration of whole tribes "from the Hejaz and southernTransjordan into the Beersheba area," a fact which in itself must make its estimates of Arab immigration far-fetched. 13 Other approximate figures are available from scattered but credible sources. One of these is the statement of the French Governor of the Hauran in Syria, that from his district alone, in the summer of 1933, thirty-five thousand people had left for Palestine as a consequence of bad crops. 14

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Whole villages in the Hauran have been emptied of their people, who are drifting into Palestine. Count De Martel, French High Commissioner for Syria, asserted in the summer of 1934 that even Arab merchants were moving from Damascus to Palestine because of the prosperity there; and in 1936 the head of the Muslim Youth Association at Beirut, Jamil Bek Basham, wrote that "there is a penetration into Palestine of an army of Syrian laborers." 15

It is of course difficult to attain any adequate idea of the extent of this flood of non-Jewish immigration since officially it does not exist. In the absence of accurate canvass its size must be pieced together and surmised. Such calculations as are available show an Arab immigration for the single year 1933 of at least sixty-four thousand souls. Added to the acknowledged Hauranese infiltration are some two thousand who arrived from Damascus alone. Mokattam, leading Cairo daily, announced that ten thousand Druses had gone to the Holy Land; and according to Al Jamia Al Isla?ma y Arab newspaper of Jaffa, seventeen thousand Egyptians had come from Sinai Peninsula alone.

To these must be added considerable groups of Numidians and even Abyssinians, and a vast uncounted army from Trans-Jordan about whose movement into Palestine not the slightest pretense of legality is maintained. The figures on this latter group must be very high, since economic conditions west of Jordan have been literally frightful, with scanty harvests over several successive years. In view of the fact that many thousands of these Trans-Jordanian nomads may be met any place in Palestine, the Government reports themselves are amusing. In his statement to the League of Nations for 1936 the High Commissioner estimates that the total of persons arriving as immigrants from Trans-Jordan during the entire year was three, of whom only one was an Arab (the two others presumably being Englishmen). 16 Not eight months later we find the same Government openly repatriating thousands of Trans-Jordanians because the slump which followed after the riots left them without jobs.

249 WELCOME HOME! 

Farago, puzzled by these contradictions, calls attention to the fact that "one always finds in Palestine, Arabs who have been in the country only a few years or a few months. . . Since they are themselves strangers in a strange land, they are the loudest

in the cry: 'Out with the Jews.' " 17

Exasperated by the Government's lack of good faith, which was illicitly converting the Holy Land into an Arab country, groups of courageous Jewish youths volunteered in 1934 to point out what apparently the Authorities were unable to see. Fourteen hundred of these Illegals were quickly shown to be working at Petach Tikvah; and 1 200 in Haifa on road and house construction alone. Their probable numbers could be gathered from a test count of 357 Arab laborers in the buildings material industry, which showed 273 to be Hauranis illegally in the country. A check of Arabs employed inPalestine ports on December 23, 1936 showed that only 50 of the 750 workers were Palestinians. The remainder included 200 Egyptians and 500 Hauranis. 18 Whole hordes of these people were demonstrated to be in the employ of the Government itself.

Without deigning to make a reply, the Administration pointedly told the Jews to mind their own business. When Jews picketed Jewish employers of this alien labor, the Government bared its teeth and sentenced the demonstrators to six months at hard labor for their pains. Undeterred, Jews again picketed a Haifa theater being erected by a contractor named Borovsky where illegal Hauranis were employed. 19 Immediately the Authorities arrested fifty-three Jews and sentenced them to prison terms. That pretty well discouraged any further attempt to point out illegal Arab immigration.

Once in a while, for purposes of the High Commissioner's report to the League, a few Arabs are apprehended for being in the country without permission. Though bail, even in large amounts, is refused Jews held for the identical offense, Arabs are let go for £10. Considering this trifling sum a sort of premium for high wages earned, they invariably skip bail.

On one excuse or another every effort has been made to legalize non-Jewish immigration. The Administration had sent up a number of trial balloons in this

250 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

direction. Their first feeler was made on December 18, 1934, when unexpectedly they granted 150 labor immigration certificates to Arabs from Syria and Egypt. Another was the admission in 1936 of 214 German 'Aryans' who wanted to settle permanently in Palestinein order to "take advantage of the boom in that country." Highlighting this picture with all the potency of a floodlight was the Administration's attempt to grant a huge tract of land under homesteading rights to distressed Armenians, then in Syria. This was at the same time that Hope-Simpson was showing 'conclusively' that Palestine was suffering from 'overcrowding.'

BRITAIN PUTS ON THE HEAT

London's animosity for Jews can be discerned in every part of theNear East. Wherever Britain is influential she has drawn a fibrous cordon of anti-Zionist arrangements, edicts and influences. Where power lies in English hands the operation is direct, as in Cyprus. Elsewhere, a discreet hint to friendly States accomplishes the same result.

In Syria, one has only to gaze at the startling regulation issued inBeirut, refusing Jews preceding to Oriental countries the right to make a stopover, a concession to the English allegation that many tourists stopped over in Syria with a view to slipping across thePalestine border at a subsequent date. On this ground, in the first week of February 1933, fifty-one men and nineteen women tourists were not even permitted to land in Beirut and were tartly told to disembark at countries not adjacent to Palestine. In the spring of 1934, Syria, then in a desperate financial and economic condition, was anxious for an influx of Jews. This plan, backed by the Syrians themselves, was frustrated by direct British protest to Paris. Following these representations Syria obliged by announcing on May 3, 1934 that Jews might be allowed to buy land anywhere except along the Palestine border.

Pressure of the British legation at Athens, arguing that illegal immigrants were being smuggled into the Holy Land by way ofGreece, produced the edict of November 30,

  

251 WELCOME HOME!

1934, forbidding all foreign Jews henceforth to enter Greece except by special permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Greek Consulates were instructed to inquire by cable of the Foreign Office in Athens whenever a Jew applied for a Greek visa. Foreign Jews passing through Greece, suspected of wishing to visit Palestine, would not be permitted to pass the Greek frontier except with the stamped permission of the Palestine Government. The order established a virtual espionage system on Jewish visitors, affecting Jews of all nations regardless of citizenship.

Iraq, British dependency and protégé among the nations, was also quick to respond. Zionist activity of any kind was made a crime punishable by imprisonment, as in Soviet Russia. A wholesale ban on all Jewish newspapers and books entering the country was instituted. Following the lead of Palestine officials, Iraq postal authorities ordered the exclusion of the pamphlet Hitler Terror issued by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, as well as other anti-Nazi material; while such 'literature' as

Hitler's Mein Kampf was allowed a free sale.

Afghanistan, under British Foreign Office influence, moved against the Jews viciously. The present ruler, Nadir Khan, was financed and armed by Great Britain to overthrow the former pro-Russian king. Like Egypt and Iraq, the country is now ruled by British 'advisers,' as a practical appendage to the Indian Government. One of the first acts of the new Administration was to move against the Jews, who had all passports withdrawn. On a few moments' notice, in January of 1934, two thousand

Jews were expelled from the border towns of Mazar, Ankhoi and Maimane, and thrown homeless in the desert. In May 1935 these persecutions were heightened by regulations compelling Jews to wear special clothes with red flags across their breasts and a rope around their hips. They were forbidden to shave or to ride in the streets. Jewish women must not appear in public markets and, like common harlots, must not wear stockings. In 1938 Jews were forbidden to engage in any business activities, the only occupation left open to them being that of bootblacks.

252 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE 

Persia, too, becoming practically a British protectorate, inexplicably put its nose into extra-territorial affairs by prohibiting the emigration of Jews to Palestine. 20 Jews were forced to wear a distinguishing badge. No Jew was allowed to walk in the open street in front of a Muslim, or to talk aloud to him, build a fine house or whitewash its rooms. He could not leave town, grow a beard or ride on horseback. The law stipulated that "Jews shall not be permitted to consume good fruit." It is certainly at least coincidental that when the present ruler, Riza Khan, denounced the treaty under which Persia was run by British advisers and army officers under English tariff control and financing, he abolished most of the more ridiculous anti-Semitic rulings.

Yemen, too, at the south end of the Arabian Peninsula, prohibited the emigration of Jews to Palestine at a time when London could have broken its back by withdrawing its financial support. Jews attempting to leave for Palestine are brought back and executed. After an economic rapprochement with Britain, the Turks also made Zionist organizations illegal, in October 1934, going to the point of raiding Jewish homes all over the country in their efforts to stamp the movement out.

The attitude may again be seen in Egypt where an Arab daily paper appears called the Mokattam, known as the voice of the British Embassy. No other publication in Egypt attacks Zionism with such unrestrained violence. Though the country is completely dependent upon Britain for both defense and finance, it has lately become a center of anti-Zionist conspiracy and agitation, and during 1938 played host to an international Arabic conference, convened atCairo, to fight Zionism. No one doubts that had these activities been directed against any friendly nation, or against such British dependencies as Iraq or Trans-Jordan, they would have been swiftly outlawed.

A confirming view is given in Aden, owned by England outright, without bother of pretense. In June 1932, after mob attacks, the British slapped a blanket censorship on the news, even withholding cables of news services. Following the disturbances, the Aden Jews sought to emigrate to Palestine en masse.

253 WELCOME HOME!

Many were arrested, and many more deported to Hodeida, an Arab pogrom center then raging in a bath of Jewish blood. When the fanatical Wahabis swept into Yemen in 1934, Jews fled to Adenbegging permission to be allowed to proceed to the Jewish Homeland. The Authorities instead issued an order prohibiting Jews from entering Aden altogether. Even those lucky Israelites with visas to Palestine, compelled by the only existing travel routes to pass through the Colony, are refused transitory entrance and returned to the waiting Jew-baiters at home.

Lying off the coast of Palestine, so that its outline is faintly visible on a clear day, is another English piece of property, the Island ofCyprus. Cyprus had been taken by Disraeli for the Empire because of its "propinquity to Palestine," a rare evidence of the great statesman's sentimentality. A number of Jews that were unable to get into Palestine, settled here. The natives were delighted at the prospect of having someone to whom they could sell their almost valueless land at a good price. The average amount paid was £8 per acre — about a thirtieth of the price demanded in Palestine for similar land. Noting this, enterprising Cypriots filled the Palestinepress with advertisements offering every kind of attractive acreage for sale cheap. Soon Jews held almost seven thousand acres inCyprus, planting it mostly in citrus. The Island started to boom, and the stream of Jewish immigration began to swell.

Soon after, the Colonial Office sent down General Storrs (who had had some experience with similar problems in Palestine) to rule theIsland. Acting expeditiously, Storrs issued an edict on December 13, 1934 announcing that in future no more foreigners could buy land inCyprus; nor could they enter without the express permission of the Governor himself. It hardly needs mention that the only 'foreigners' attempting to come in or buy land were Jews, and that this ordinance put a summary end to all such 'attempts.'

CHAPTER V

CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

SOIL HUNGER

The early Zionist thinkers instinctively grasped the direct relationship between a sound peasant class rooted in the soil, and the project of a national renaissance. The British, too, understood that a National Home without ownership of the soil was

a misnomer. Their Peace Handbook on Syria and Palestine reads: "The essence of the Zionist ideal is the desire to found upon the soil of Palestine a revived Hebrew nation based upon an agricultural life and the use of the Hebrew language. . . There is so much unoccupied land in Palestine that there is plenty of room for Zionist development without ousting the existing Muslim population."

The early colonists found the park-like country their ancestors had left, a treeless desert. Epidemics made even the raising of cattle impossible. The mountain slopes, once covered with a never-ending succession of vineyards and orchards, were now bare rock, washed clean by the torrential rains. The rest of the country alternated between swamp and desert. Crawling like dull maggots over these dried bones was a scanty population, scarcely less haggard, wild and unkempt than the land itself.

Land hunger rode on the shoulders of the returning Jews, driving them like a man with a lash. They came from the ghettos of the Russian Pale, men with soft hands, intellectuals, lawyers, writers, doctors and shopkeepers, inspired by the passionate dream of turning this pestilential desert into a blossoming countryside. They themselves, the dreamers of Zion, would erect its first peasantry with their own lives and bodies.

Their hardships were almost insupportable. Epidemic pestilences killed off so many that it became a byword that the graveyards of these settlements were more populous than the villages themselves. Undeterred, the new settlers pressed on doggedly.

254 Pics

255 CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND 

They were living an epic; and their eyes danced with it long after their bodies grew worn from a ceaseless struggle with a sick earth. This blazing emotion is beautifully described by the Hebrew poet, Uri Zvi Greenberg:

"In a sunburst of love we went up,

Boys and girls to Zion;

Passionate faith from the roots of our hair

To the tips of the nails of our feet:

A boundless love for the mother earth of the Jews

That agonies could not quench,

Nor the teeth of the foxes destroy. . .

Unlike the advent of European capitalism throughout the East, the only privilege these colonists asked was to be allowed to work the soil with their own hands. They consciously understood that the body of the Jewish nation had been maimed by a cruel destiny which had driven the Jews from the soil, had closed manual labor to them, and had crowded them into one thin stratum of the social pyramid. The renaissance of Jewry lay in this astonishing attempt to reverse a process consciously taking place in social adjustment, abjuring personal ambitions, to erect again by the national will what history had destroyed.

These Jews from the vitiated air of ghettos, men and women whose psychology and muscles alike were better adjusted to the counting room and Yeshiva than to heavy labor, made themselves over by the sheer force of their own idealism into the finest scientific farmers in the world. Their neat, well-painted houses went up surrounded by thriving green vineyards, healthy young orchards, flowers and shade-trees. In the eyes of believing observers it was a miracle, only to be explained in the light of Biblical Prophecy.

There has been no braver colonizing group in history, nor any who operated under more disheartening conditions. With a song on their lips these determined young people laid the groundwork for an agricultural prosperity which was to be the backbone of the coming Jewish nation. Their magnificent accomplishments were unhesitatingly acknowledged by the English after the War. "Every traveler in Palestine who visits them," relates an official report, "is impressed by the contrast

256 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

between these pleasant villages, with the beautiful stretches of prosperous cultivation about them, and the primitive conditions of life and work with which they are surrounded." 1 Beverley Nichols remarks: "As I walked around, I became more and more astonished that any race of men, let alone intellectual Jews, could possibly tackle such an unfriendly soil. . . Yet over this wilderness the ex-clerks, ex-doctors, ex-shopkeepers swarmed like ants, staggering under the weight of the stones they were removing, panting as they wielded their spades." 2 Father Alfred Sachetti exclaims in admiration: "What had been up to six years ago a wild unproductive waste land has been transformed into a fertile and productive country?" 3 And the Rev. Dr. W. M. Christie reports: "When you see a green spot in Palestine today you may be sure it is a Jewish colony," 4

When with premature gratitude the enthusiastic Jews welcomed the British overlords who were taking the place of the Turks, they had no reason to suppose that in the near future the further acquisition of land by them was to be considered in the nature of a crime against humanity. The British were pledged to their cause. London had wholeheartedly acknowledged that "the immigration of Jews and their close settlement on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes, are integral and indispensable factors in the execution of the charge laid upon the Mandatory of establishing in Palestine a National Home for the Jewish People." 5

How far the Jewish position has actually retrogressed since the English came, may be estimated from the simple fact that the per capita land possession of Jews in Palestine has shrunk from approximately 8 dunams in 192 1 to only 3 dunams in 1936. Of the total land area of 26,319,000 dunams, only 1,300,600 dunams are in Jewish hands, of which more than half was acquired before the War. In 1935, the peak year of investment, only 18,250 acres were acquired; but the price paid was the enormous sum of £1,700,000. Even at this uneconomic cost, less than 3% of the huge sums flooding into the country went into the establishment of new farms.

257 CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

These figures mean that Jews numbering 33% of the population are sequestered on 5% of the land, forcing into existence a queer economy by which the Jewish farm population must mathematically decrease with the growth of the Jewish national structure. Even in the short period between 193 1 and 1935, we find the proportion of Jewish farmers decreasing from 18% to 13.9%, making the Palestine Jews the most highly urbanized national group on earth.

Here you have the unhealthiest of all possible conditions: a land-hungry people attempting to build a sound national economy and owning, after decades of struggle, less than three hundred thousand acres altogether. 6 On this fact is shipwrecked the basic principles on which Zionist planning was constructed. For all reasonable purposes, it forebodes the creation not of a free economy but of a new ghetto, this time in an Arab instead of an Aryan land.

The causative factors behind this condition are not hard to find. In the early period of Jewish settlement, around 1885, prices averaged ten francs, or eight shillings, per dunam for good agricultural land. By 1900 the price had risen to around six-teen shillings. By 1935 it was anything that anyone cared to ask. Taking 1932 as an illustration, we find 18,293 £ an (£ transactions concluded by Jews; whereas in 1926, when more than twice the area of new land had been acquired, there were only 11,821 such transactions. 7 This meant that land-hungry Jews, caught in a trap, were reduced to buying land from each other, the price skyrocketing in accordance with the inevitable law of supply and demand. During the fiscal year 1933-1934, when practically no new land was acquired by Jews, the Palestine Government received from them close to £200,000 in registration fees for land transfers. In many instances a parcel of land passes through eight or ten hands a year and its price is pyramided to the most unbelievable heights. "Nowhere in the world," comments the Royal Commission of 1937, "were such uneconomic land prices paid as by the Jews in Palestine."

The parent of this distorted condition was none other than the Government itself. A series of bold expedients flowed fromJerusalem, directly formulated to prevent Jews

258 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

from buying land. Jerusalem British Authorities directly formulated to prevent Jews from acquiring the soil of the country. As fast as one artifice proved inadequate, newer and more offensive ones were invented. The English set themselves up as the protectors and patrons of the Arabs, much as though Palestine were an endowed institution for the improvident and the inept for whose benefit all competitive factors must be excluded.

The keystone to the British arch was the alleged landless Arab situation. In his report, French had listed some thirty-seven hundred claimants. The extent of this fabrication was later conceded when, despite the prodding of the Administration, only five hundred Arabs could be discovered who even had a provisional claim. Just how there could be any landless' people in an under populated country suffering for years from an acute labor shortage, the Administration never attempted to explain. Major Cecil Quinlan answered the best part of the question with the laconic remark that "the so-called 'landless' Arab does not exist, except in disordered imaginations." 8

The Mandate provided that Jews be given State lands for the purpose of "close settlement." Nowhere in that document is there anything mentioned about an opposed obligation to Arabs; but the Government, making its own interpretation, decided that this must have been a typographical error. It early handed the Arabs 1 40,000 acres of its most fertile holdings. Later to appease the Jews it gave them a consolation prize of some 18,000 acres, of which only 962 were actually cultivable.

The Administration's Annual Report for 1920-21 gives figures of 942,000 dunams of State land and two or three million dunams of waste lands. When the Zionists, grown restive finally, put a fierce demand on the Government to fulfill its obligations, it was dismally discovered that the two or three million dunams of waste land referred to had now vanished in thin air.

The technique under which this piece of legerdemain was accomplished was not involved. It consisted of simple nostrums and a characteristic method of dealing off the bottom of the deck. In reply to a pointed question by the Mandates Commission in

1926, His Majesty's spokesman, Ormsby-Gore, represented that "the delay of the

259 CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

grant of Government land to Jews is connected with the question of survey which has not yet been effected." 9 A Vaad Leumi Memorandum notes in disgust that despite this excuse, "hundreds of thousands of Government lands . . . have been distributed among Arab fellaheen, in lots of such size that they could not work them properly." All Jewish demands for land were rejected — "even the claims of the discharged Jewish soldiers who had participated in the British military conquest of the country being disregarded." At the very moment Ormsby-Gore was offering his explanation to the League, a special Land Commission was carrying out a liquidation of the Government estates, "apparently instructed to hand them over to Bedouins."

Again in 1931, a Vaad Leumi protest to the League notes that the Government was distributing State lands to Arabs "in parcels of thousands of dunams per family/' while Jewish demands were studiously ignored.

Pleased with these outright gifts, the Bedu had little intention of demeaning themselves by manual labor. They at once offered their new-found acreage to Jews at prices only limited by Bedouin ability to count. The indignant Administration put an end to this practice by attaching a string to further gifts, prohibiting sale of the land for thirty to fifty years. In other cases the Arabs were beneficiaries of paternal loans, never intended to be repaid, placing the Jews in the unenviable position of financing activities aimed directly at themselves. All a Bedouin had to do, to blackmail this singular Government, was to threaten to sell to Jews and a subsidy would be forthcoming.

The Administration's sympathy for 'landless' Arabs went an amazing distance. Four days before the 1936 riots broke out it gave the Dajani family 10,000 dunams in the rich Jordan Valley. The 'landless' Dajani family, as it happens, is fabulously wealthy, owning among other things, the site of 'The Last Supper,' for which they are said to have recently refused £1,000,000. The Government even handed out its land to foreigners who made no pretense of Palestineresidence. To mention only a few cases, six Syrian families located in Damascus and Beirut received over 7000 dunams of the Ashrafiye lands. Of the 3579 dunams distributed in Tel-Es-Shock, 3469

160 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

dunams went to a family group of four brothers and sisters living inEgypt. 10

Even when Jews bought areas on which the Government felt it had a lien, it exacted its pound of flesh. A case in point is the Huleh basin, consisting of 12,000 acres of miasmatic swamp.

This suppurating area had polluted the country, for generations back, with malaria and dysentery. The job of draining it would ordinarily be regarded by any other government as a task incumbent on itself. Instead, the Palestine Administration granted concession rights for reclamation of the area to two Syrian merchants, renewing the concession in 1924 and again in 1927, though the Syrians made no attempt to proceed with the work and were evidently not in a position to undertake a development project of this magnitude. It was only after years of procrastination on the part of the Government that the Jewish Palestine Land Development Company was able to secure official approval to take over the concession rights. As the price of its consent the Government stipulated that when the work was finished, one-third of the new land would have to be handed over for Bedouin settlement. It was necessary to pay the original foreign concessionaires £200,000, a sum which could only be considered in the light of a gift. This was in 1935. In 1938 the Government was still quibbling over the text of the concession. It also has mysteriously withheld decision on a number of minor points arising from an engineering report made several years previously. These dilatory tactics have effectually prevented any progress being made in the work of reclamation, which is thus shunted into the indefinite future.

The huge task of draining this quagmire will take at least a decade. It will involve an outlay of over £1,000,000. To this must be added interest on investment, and amortization of principal, plus such baksheesh as must be paid to petty officials who would otherwise find a way to throw a sabot into the machinery, even after the work has been started. When the 16,000 dunams which must be given free to the Arabs are deducted, some rough idea is secured of what this much-touted enterprise will cost the Jews. 11

261 CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

A FAMINE IN LAND

Having devised the 'landless Arab' thesis, it was only a short step to the principle that the Arab must be protected against himself and saved from exploitation by the Jew who would take his land away from him. For this purpose there was introduced a series of ordinances so plainly meant to prevent Jews from acquiring land in their National Home that were ten percent of them introduced intoEngland, and directed at Englishmen, an armed revolution would follow.

But Zionist spokesmen had been used to the rope's end too long to be able to react with anything resembling normal indignation. They recognized helplessly that they were being victimized, but saw nothing else to it but to smirk ingratiatingly on their tormentors. Once more it is grizzled old Menachem Ussishkin who growls like a lone wolf to the British Government: "Since you have given your consent to the establishment of a Jewish National Home, you must have realized that it is impossible to build on anything but on the land. We have paved every field and marsh with gold, but you, instead of helping us, have piled stones in our way and have made the country into a hell." 12

As early as 1920 a Land Transfer Ordinance already read that "any person wishing to make a disposition of immovable property must first obtain consent of the Government," a statute which the Shaw Report frankly admits was introduced to prevent the easy sale of land. This was followed in 1929 by the Cultivator's Protective Ordinance, which demanded that buyers make an additional payment to tenants who might be occupying the land as well as to the owners. 1931 saw a new edict which provided that irrespective of any provision in the contract, land could not be transferred if there were "any tenants" cultivating it. A tenant was described as anyone who has access to the land by "right or custom, usage or on sufferance" 13 a person hired for agricultural work who is paid in kind, squatters of any and all types; anyone who cultivated the land by either express or implied permission, or who had been cultivating the land on the assumption that he had the right to do so for a period of two years; or any one who comes and grazes on the land or cuts reeds for

262 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

basket-making, or one who is a descendant of a would-be tenant under the ordinance.

This startling piece of legislation derived its full force from the primitive nature of Bedouin life. While the Bedouin grazed his flocks wherever he pitched camp, he always made the same general circle of travel, returning year after year to the identical spots. Thus he automatically became a 'tenant' under the regulation. Most of the land purchased by Jews came from the tremendous estates of absentee landlords, a handful of land-barons who owned, for example, eighty percent of the soil of Galilee and at least half of southern Palestine. 14 These vacant acres were trespassed on by all comers, and, by the very nature of things, were bound to harbor itinerant tenants, squatters and migratory Bedouins.

The other claw of the pincers lay in the fact that all the archaic Turkish land and tax laws were still operative. 15 This meant that the verification of title went back to the old Ottoman religious law. The British had made no attempt to determine title, and the footnote to every Kuban (title deed) contained the phrase: "The title is not deemed to be guaranteed." Under the new Cultivator's Ordinance all titles were placed in jeopardy as having been gained illegally, since they were subject to tenant's rights.

It now transpired that tenants' could be evicted only by the High Commissioner himself. This transfer of discretion to a political appointee, rather than to the courts, prevented any appeal and gave the frankly anti-Jewish officials of the Administration arbitrary powers of decision. These powers were further increased by the Land Disputes Ordinance enacted in March 1932. This remarkable edict empowered the District Commissioner, should he find that a trespasser was forcibly evicted by the rightful owner, to regard the dispossessed party as the possessor. Granted magisterial status, no appeals against the findings of this petty functionary were possible. The enactment additionally forbade interference with the 'rights' of invaders coming to graze, cut wood or reeds, or for any other purpose (even if the owner's fences had

263 CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND  

been cut down and his crops destroyed), until in each case "a competent court ruled on the matter."

On July 25, 1933 the Administration released the Statutory Tenant Law, effectually freezing the ownership of large vacant areas in their present hands. Anyone who occupied or grazed the land for a year, with or without permission, became a "statutory tenant/' He could not be evicted without being given a new piece of land in a nearby area approved by the High Commissioner.

These restrictions made it next to impossible to purchase lands on which claim could not be made by tenants.' The inevitable result was that Jews buying land had to pay for it twice: one payment to the owner and the other to his 'tenants/ in order to obtain their voluntary consent to leave the property. In many cases the sums given the tenants' were larger than the already inflated prices paid to the sellers. The whole intent behind this singular legislation is shown in the law affecting tenants where the land is not sold. Here the tenant is not protected in any fashion whatsoever, and may be evicted at the landlord's pleasure.

Even on land long owned by Jews, here is how this 'advanced' legislation operates. 'A' owns a piece of land; 'B' squats on that land, claiming the right to cultivate it. In the ensuing conflict, 'B' is not ejected from the parcel and allowed recourse to the courts, but instead the cultivation of the land is stayed by both parties until the determination of the courts. Since land cases are known to sleep through the judicial chambers for five or six years, and appeals are seldom, if ever, heard less than one year, the result is apparent. Nor does the final settlement of one trespassing case protect the owner against new ones. As fast as new trespassers may appear, new court orders must be obtained against them through the same lengthy litigation.

Here was an obvious invitation to blackmail which the Arabs were not slow to take advantage of. False claims were regularly manufactured against Jewish land with the object of extorting money from the owners. Arab tribes, often as not under the fatherly advice of the District Commissioners, turned this situation into a profitable business. They squat in the Jewish colonies, taking over a piece of land by main force

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if necessary, claiming it on the basis of prior possession ; and then compromise on some compensation from the owner, who usually prefers a limited loss of money to prolonged litigation. The Bedu then drive their herds further on, looking for another opportunity to repeat this agreeable adventure. There are Arab attorneys in Jerusalemwho specializes in causing squatters to do this sort of thing and who make a very good business out of it. As may be expected, Jews are the sole sufferers. "In not a single instance," declares the land expert Ussishkin, "has an Arab owner been pestered in such a way. Bedouins who would so intrude on an Arab parcel of land would be ejected by the police without further ado."

A few actual cases will show how these measures operate in practical application. A large parcel of land, in Jewish hands for forty years, was disputed by Arabs on the basis of an alleged document signed five hundred years ago granting the land to the MuslimChurch. District Commissioner S. H. Perowne immediately declared the land under dispute and prohibited work there. Jewish farmers who tried to plough their fields were arrested. 16 At the settlement of Tel Hai in Galilee, Bedouins brought their cattle to pasture in the colony's fields, destroying the crops. They claimed to be in possession of a document entitling them "to pasture anywhere." A fight ensued, the police were called, and the usual order issued to both parties to cease work in the colony "until the title to the land was established." At Hedera, where the land had been in Jewish possession for forty-five years, Bedouins came in, uprooted the crops, injured workers and killed a watchman. The police ordered all cultivation to cease "until the Court decides the dispute between the Jews and the Bedouins."

A typical case is that of the Wadi Hawareth land. After paying liberal baksheesh to the tenants and after reams of red tape had been unwound to secure title, the Jews were unable to take possession: the land had already been ploughed by Arab squatters. Similarly, atHaifa Bay, thirty-five hundred dunams legally bought and paid for by the Jewish National Fund were given to Arabs, by decision of the District Commissioner, after they had driven off the Jewish watchman and taken the land by

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armed force. At Tulkarm, in a regular pestilence of squatter suits, the courts decided that thirty-six hundred dunams of land had been "purchased illegally" and directed that they be given, without compensation, to the squatters. While ignorant Bedouins

were more than willing participants in this hilarious game of plaguing Jews, what lay behind their actions can be judged from the Kuskustabun case, where three Jewish farmers were badly injured by armed Arab invaders. Here it was conclusively proven that the Arabs "undertook to trespass and plough the land upon the advice of District Officer Lees." 17

Not satisfied with its previous measures in which Jewish ingenuity discovered more leaks than the Government considered supportable, it announced in 1936 a brand new principle in pro-Arab paternalism, this time swinging back to the Middle Ages for its inspiration. The present purpose is to anchor the peasant in the land irrespective of his will to change his status. In future "no land-owner shall be permitted to sell any of his land unless he retains a minimum subsistence area. As a safeguard against collusive sales this minimum area shall be inalienable and shall revert to the Government if it ceases to be cultivated by the owner-occupier" 18

Many other, pettier schemes were originated by the British Government of Palestine in its campaign of harassment. The Jews, urgently needing a source of cheap fertilizer for their groves, had been buying it from Arabs whose every village was literally built on an accumulation of century-old dung. Arabs are rarely known to even remove this filth from the vicinity of their dwellings, much less use it. In September 1937 the Administration published a Draft Animal Manure Ordinance vesting the ownership of manure in the proprietor of the land on which it is dropped. Any attempt to remove or sell it without official permission henceforth becomes an offense punishable by fine of £2$ or six months' imprisonment, or both.

Another edict stipulates that the amount of damages which may be demanded from a seller who breaks his contract, cannot be included in the contract itself, but must be fixed by the court.

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This 'Order in Council' was intended as a staggering blow to Jewish land purchases, since the only effective way of preventing Arab owners from changing their minds under pressure was to include in the contract a provision for damages to be paid  together with the return of the buyer's deposit. Another decree released early in 1936 was "designed to protect water supplies from interference by private individuals." Special permission had now to be obtained from the District Commissioner before a well could be constructed or enlarged. Jews might own the land, but the water underneath it belonged to the Administration in Jerusalem. All water supplies, reads the Ordinance, "river, spring, or underground," may anywhere be declared public property at the discretion of the High Commissioner. Beyond serving to frustrate the irrigation plans of the Jews, this revolutionary measure has no plausible purpose nor has one ever been offered.

When other artifices proved inadequate, the Government has followed a system of loans' to Arab owners, in themselves often greater than the market value of the land. Sometimes its money is passed over outright on the score of 'relief,' whether owing to poor crops, damage caused by the elements, or the characteristic laziness of Arab tillers. It frankly finances and operates Arab agricultural cooperatives in competition with those of the Jew; and it maintains nurseries and other agricultural services of which Arabs are the sole beneficiaries.

The unremitting campaign of Arab leaders, clearly abetted from Government House, thundering against the 'crime' of selling property to Jews will be discussed again in Chapter I Book III. It may be remarked, however, that without the Zionist the market for Palestineland does not exist. Acreage in this corner of creation is worth next to nothing. In neighboring Syria it can hardly be given away. InTransjordan it is worth only a dollar or two a dunam. Holding a monopoly on the soil, the Levantines are having a royal holiday. "No one can doubt," says Broadhurst, "that the Arabs have exploited the Jews for all they are worth, fattening their pockets in the process." 19 Despite the current campaign against land sales, Arab owners have been keeping a canny eye fixed on the price barometer. As we shall see, the very leaders of this

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agitation have proven themselves as anxious, privately, to circumvent the Government's restrictions as the Jews. There is ample evidence, also, that Government officials themselves have not been above surreptitious speculation, while at the same time being a party to driving the prices up out of sight by radical legislation.

That official restrictions were designed to force Jews to pay through the nose for such land as they were able to acquire is conclusively shown by official figures. Buying in the open market for the purpose of "resettling landless Arabs," the Government paid £72,240 for 17,240 dunams, or an average of £4 per dunam. In the same period the Jews purchased in the same market, 62,114 dunams for which they paid £1,647,837, an average of £25 per dunam.

DOUBLE STANDARD OF TAXATION

In vivid contrast to this flood of radical legislation is Palestine's system of land taxation, beyond question the most reactionary in existence. Until recently the obsolete Turkish system, based on the economy of Mohammed's time, was retained intact by the Government as being perfectly satisfactory in all respects.

There were two basic taxes. One was the Werko, based on land valuations. The joker lay in the fact that the last appraisement, by which the tax was set, had been made in the nineties of the last century. New valuations were only made in cases of change of ownership. This meant that the old owners were paying a tax based on pre-War values, while the new owners were assessed on the basis of crazily inflated post- War prices. Thus the new proprietor paid twenty to thirty times more for each dunam in tax than the previous owner used to pay for the same land before it was sold, and continued to pay for the adjoining acres still remaining in his possession. "This unjust and abnormal position," complains the Jewish Agency, on March 10, 1935, "expressed itself in the creation of two classes of taxpayers paying different rates for similar property," of which "the only sufferers were Jews." The relative difference in this levy was often literally enormous. An illustration of the whole taxing scheme is

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provided by the village of Shattah, which paid less than £4 in tax, while the neighboring Jewish colony of Kfar Yehezkiel, owning half the area of land, paid £55.

The other main grouping was the Osher or tithe, amounting to 10% on all agricultural income. This was usually canceled in the case of Arabs, sometimes by personal decision of the High Commissioner himself, though District Commissioners were also authorized to grant remission at their discretion. The extent of this practice can be seen in the announced remission of seventy percent of the tithe due the Government in 1932, amounting to £173,000. In 1933 the total remission of tithes to Arabs was £193,500 out of an assessment of £1,245,000; and in 1934, £130,000 out of a total tax of £245,000. In 1935 the High Commissioner reported that of a tithe of £171,021, only £19,750 had been collected. The fellah's contribution to Government revenues (tithe, land tax and all other agricultural taxes) diminished annually, falling from 25% of the total in 1921-22 to 4.8% in 1934-35.

Though after eighteen years of effort the Government was seemingly unable to complete the survey for land registration purposes (which would have put an abrupt end to the plague of squatter suits), it had not the slightest difficulty in finishing the survey for taxation purposes within a year after deciding that a remodeled system was in order. The new Rural Property Tax Ordinance was placed into effect in 1935, substituting a single basis of levy for the multiple Turkish tithe, house and land taxes.

Says the Royal Commission of 1937, pointedly: "This effected 1 a large reduction, in some cases up to seventy percent, in the taxes payable by the [Arab] peasantry." 20

Though hailed as a simplified system it was, on the face of it, an intricate maze. It involved some sixteen brackets of taxation, varying from the highest to the lowest by several thousand percent, the brackets themselves divided into innumerable blocks in the various districts. Providentially, the highest tax brackets coincided exactly with Jewish enterprises and holdings and the lowest with those of the Arabs. As the lower grades of ground crop land pay only a nominal tax or no tax at all, the holdings

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of the fellaheen are practically exempted from impost of any kind. This type of acreage, coinciding with Arab agricultural undertakings, is divided into eight grades, the highest of which pays twenty-five mils per dunam, while the sixth grade drops to eight mils per dunam. The seventh and eighth grades pay no tax.

Irrigated land was divided into nine grades, seemingly in accordance with the districts where Jews may or may not be found, and was assessed accordingly. Fallow land, owned entirely by great Arab landlords, pays no tax whatsoever, putting an actual premium on land speculation and completely reversing every known process by which land policy in other nations is guided. In any other country infant industry is nursed along and protected. It is the pioneers who are relieved of taxes; and in places like Italy and Spain, the Holy Land's chief competitors in citrus, growers are directly subsidized. Under this latest arrangement it was the citrus industry, on which the entire export trade of the country depended, which was placed in the highest tax division, not even non-bearing groves being excepted. The tax here vaulted to 825 mils per dunam, the highest rate of taxation on this type of plantation in the world. 21 excluded specifically from this category, the all-Arab citrus district of Acre 'pays' 410 mils per dunam. 22

Under the same law, taxation on urban property is similarly gerrymandered. House property, including valuation of the site, pays a tax of 12-1/2% of the net annual value. Premises with an annual value up to 20, invariably Arab, are exempted from levy. In industrial buildings the Ordinance says that "the tax shall be at such a rate, not exceeding fifteen percent of the net annual value, as shall be prescribed by the High Commissioner. The High Commissioner is empowered to apply the Ordinance by order to specific areas" One may easily presume that it is the Jewish sections alone which pay the fifteen percent, a circumstance glaringly evident in the exemptions granted in a list of mixed cities, which on examination turn out to affect only Arab blocks. Not even schools, clinics or village councils are exempted from these crushing levies.

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The theory behind this entire performance is made unmistakably clear in the assessments charged to the German colony of Sarona, thoroughly Nazi in sentiment since the coming of Hitler. Almost surrounded by the continuously growing city of Tel Aviv, the fields of Sarona are now located in one of the most highly priced urban developments in the world, with individual holdings worth an average of £400,000 in cash. Yet the farmers of this colony continue to pay a tax as negligible as if their lands were located in the wilderness on the other side of Jordan.

There are still other tax schemes directed without too much disguise at the Jewish pocketbook, such as the Land Transfer Tax, Government Inspection Tax, and Animal Tax, all of them cut from the same cloth as the land taxes and all brilliantly successful in mulcting this stricken people who by international consent are returning to their homeland.

CHAPTER VI

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SABOTAGING INDUSTRY

Practically all countries today take an eager if not anxious interest in the development of their own prosperity. It is invariably the government which points the way to methods for developing business, which seeks to attract capital and enterprise and to enlarge its commerce in every way possible. As backward as the Turks were made out to be in matters of government, they were happy enough to assist new industry in their domains. Under the Industrial Act of December 1912, newly established factories inPalestine received five dunams of State land free on application, were granted exception from import duties until they were well established, and were relieved of taxation for fifteen years.

The present mandatory for Palestine, however, appears to do everything possible to halt the development of business and to omit doing anything designed to help it. In view of its peculiar obligations under the Mandate, it would appear that the Administration should have favored the new settlers in every way, that it would nurse their industries sympathetically during the early and critical period, and in general lend its support by the usual means, favored taxation, protective tariffs, loans and subsidies.

That the Palestine Government is well able to understand this matter of elementary economy is shown plainly enough in the concessions granted to the Iraq Petroleum Company in an agreement signedJanuary 14, 1931, to run for a period of seventy

years. This convention between a private corporation and the Government of Palestine is one of the most remarkable ever penned, and is worth quoting in extensor. It provides that neitherPalestine nor Transjordan shall derive any revenue from the pipeline passing through their territory. The Government agrees that

271 Pics

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"no import tax, transit tax, export tax, or other tax or fiscal charge of any sort shall be levied on petroleum, naphtha, ozokerite or natural gases, whether in crude state or any form or derivatives thereof, whether intended for consignment in transit or utilized for the industrial operations of the undertaking." The Company is given the far-reaching right to bring in, free of duty, all stores, equipment, materials, etc., required for its undertakings, "including all equipment for offices, houses or other buildings," directly or indirectly required for the development of its business in Palestine.

Article VII of this compact gives the concessionaire the privilege of constructing one or more private ports in the region and of levying port, harbor or other taxes, as well as authority to determine who shall have the right to entry at such a port ; and the

Palestine railroads are placed at the Company's disposal at a special schedule of rates. Article XVII entitles the Company to lease State lands at a nominal rental. Lands privately owned are to be expropriated by the High Commissioner for this purpose

if the Company cannot come to agreement with the owners. The Company may bring in cheap labor at its own discretion to compete with the higher-priced local labor. Finally, this document frees the Company from any kind of land tax, income tax,

or any other toll or liability. Thus this foreign corporation is presented with all the benefits of a tax-supported community, and is at the same time released from any possible levy or demand, in what is altogether the most amazing concession ever granted by a modern State. On February 11, 1933 the Palestine Government handed this concessionaire, free of charge, 2250 dunams of valuable land in the industrial Haifa Bay area to build a terminus for its oil line.

In return for all this, the Company did not even allow casual favors to the local market, so that a four-gallon tin of gasoline, which might sell for .40£ in Iraq, retails for £1.90 in Palestine. Neither does Palestinian trade derive any benefit from the large

oil tankers which sail from Haifa. Everything connected with the petroleum trade, from the time of its boring, through its transportation down to the tanker and retail

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marketing, is in the hands of foreign trusts. 2

When it comes to the Jews, for whose benefit the Mandate was supposed to have been framed, another view is taken entirely. Their industries, instead of being welcomed, are discouraged. Practically nothing is done to assist them. The Government's attitude can hardly be described as being other than antagonistic. Tariffs and duties are levied in topsy-turvy fashion, as they would be in a lunatic asylum ; and whatever caters to the needs of industry, such as mail service, telegraphic system, railways, ports and roads, is maneuvered so as to place it at a

disadvantage.

The Government has a tariff on old shoes imported into the country ; but bases its customs policy on the theory that tariffs lead to a high cost of living. It considers it immoral to deprive its citizens of the benefits of low-cost merchandise dumped in

from everywhere by subsidized foreign trusts ; yet it does not hesitate to levy prohibitive import duties on all raw materials required by its own industry.

The only authority the Administration regards as competent to dictate the needs of business is the Customs Department, headed by a pompous official who starts with the idea that the local manufacturer must prove that he is producing a superior article at a lower price than those dumped in the Palestine market by outside competitors, before he can be regarded as anything but a public enemy. Such foreign trade statistics as exist are not only badly jumbled but published long after they can do anyone any good. Dryly, the President of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Chamber of Commerce advised the Administration that "the movement of trade is a matter of some importance to those who are responsible for the conduct of the country's economic affairs, and it should not be treated as a departmental secret reluctantly disclosed to

the public." 3

By what is at least the strangest of coincidences, whenever aPalestine factory competes with English goods, even for the home market, it is sure to find all protective tariffs taken away from it and impossibly high duties leveled against the

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bulk materials and machinery necessary to turn its finished products out. These

cramping tactics may even go the lengths of a carte blanche refusal to allow the contemplated enterprise to operate on any terms.

An example of this condition is contained in the several attempts to establish brewery enterprises in the Holy Land. The first project was started by a man named Delfiner, who intended to produce, besides beer, certain chemical products out of the waste materials of alcohol production. A capital investment of £80,000 was made, a location bought near Mikveh Israel, and machinery ordered. Innocently, the founder of the factory applied for exemption from duty on the ferments and malt required in beer-making until these materials could be produced locally. The Government did not even bother about a response; and after eight months of patient waiting, Mr. Delfiner, beginning to see the light, gave up his project and took his loss.

In the meanwhile a group of French capitalists, headed by a Mr. Dreyfuss, leased a portion of the wine cellars in Rishon LeZion and started reconstruction for brewery purposes. Turned wise by Delfiner's experience, before going into production they

applied to the Government, asking that the existing excise tax on spirits of five mils per liter and the customs duty of twenty mils per liter be not changed after the setting up of their business. On receipt of this request the Administration immediately did

the opposite. It decided to raise the excise tax on spirits (which had not yet been begun to be manufactured) to fifteen mils per liter and committed itself to an arrangement admitting Syrian beer, on which not even an excise tax was levied, free of duty. Reconstruction work was stopped and negotiations entered into with the Government, which stated off the record that it considered this enterprise an unwarranted attempt to compete with the import of English beer. So in March 1934 the Dreyfuss group, having had an object lesson in Near Eastern politics, gave

up the ghost. 4

In every branch of trade the same tactics are to be seen. A fair illustration of what takes place is given in the iron wire in dustry, a business calling for a great outlay

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of capital. Here a heavy tariff is slapped on raw material, whichPalestine does not

produce, and no duty whatsoever placed on the finished article.

Another example is that of the aluminum industry. Imported raw aluminum was taxed at the rate of three cents per pound; while the levy on finished aluminum goods was six cents. When a factory was set up in Haifa, it was quickly discovered that the tariff was insufficient to allow for competition even in the home market. The owner asked for an increase to ten cents per pound. The Government took this request under the usual advisement and promptly reduced the duty on finished aluminum ware to

three cents a pound.

An even more graphic illustration is provided in the tax on automobiles. A newly industrialized land is bound to develop a voracious appetite for cars and trucks of all kinds. But the Jews made the mistake of showing a preference for American cars, which they considered more suitable to the terrain than the lighter English makes. 5 The Government then placed a per pound tax on incoming motor vehicles of forty mils per kilogram. 6 This enormous impost would add to the normal cost of

a small American car the fantastic sum of $2700 for duty alone, with the same toll on old cars as on new. In a desperate effort to circumvent this assessment, the Jews opened up a car-assembling plant in Tel Aviv. Jerusalem at once retaliated by placing

a duty on bodies and parts, twenty-five to fifty percent higher than that on complete vehicles.

The attitude of the official Zionists to all this is incredible. It is reflected in Weizmann's declaration that "one hears complaints of alleged injustices with regard to protective tariffs. People do not want to realize that if a Jew from Schnepeshok [a touch of humor] comes to Palestine and manufactures inferior buttons, the British Government is not obliged to secure this button by a protective tariff." 7 The manufacturers of Palestine, caught in a very real web of economic peonage, were far from impressed with the philosophical ruminations of the Zionist orators in Europe. There were not wanting individuals who declared themselves boldly. One of them was the silk manufacturer, Sachs, who found himself paying a prohibitive duty on ra

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raw silk, with no protection whatever against the dumping of Japanand other

countries. 8 Shortly before he was compelled to shut down his factory, Weizmann and the High Commissioner Wauchope strolled through.

"How do you like it here ? Masked Sir Arthur politely.

Sachs: "Very much indeed — but I would like it better if we had a decent Government/'

Weizmann, hurriedly: "Excuse him, Excellency — Mr. Sachs cannot ably express himself in English."

"Pardon me," replied Sachs, looking straight at Weizmann, "but I speak English very well ! "

Part of the situation this manufacturer referred to showed glaringly on the cost sheets. A meter of Japanese cloth sells for 12-1/2 mils, while the labor alone costs 15 mils in Palestine and the raw material 20-25 mils. The factory production cost of a simple

article like cotton sports shirts came to a total of 150 mils inPalestine, while the corresponding Japanese article was laid down inHaifa for 80 mils. In 1936 it cost a Palestine manufacturer 430 mils to make a pullover, while the identical article brought in from Germanyor Austria retailed for 320-350 mils.

Agricultural products found their competition fully as severe. Syrian shipments are able to consistently undersell locally grown vegetables in all Palestine cities. Practically the whole of Syria's exports in this line are concentrated on the Holy Land. Syrian eggs retail in the Palestine market for eighteen cents a dozen, whilePalestine eggs cannot be sold profitably for less than thirty-six cents a dozen. In 1935 the local production of table fowl was 1,860,000. Imports for the same year came to 2,000,000, all free of duty. A heavy impost, levied on practically all feed, made it a physical impossibility to produce commercial poultry as cheaply as it could be shipped in from abroad.

Adding to the miseries of business, the Government's immigration policy caused all industrial plans to become a matter of hazard due to labor uncertainty. In all Jerusalem there are only a handful of qualified electricians and carpenters. One has to

wait interminable periods for even the simplest installations — yet

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the Authorities refuse to grant visas to skilled workmen now refugees from Germany or starving in Rumania and Poland.

The transplanting of a higher standard of life into the medieval setting of the Near East has invited still other troubles. In Egypt, woman and child labor is obtainable in large quantities at two or three piasters a day, and in the Syrian factories children are employed at almost no pay at all. It is obvious that either of two simple factors can cut the heart out of an unprotected Palestineindustry in a realistic world : the mass production of States with strong industries and vast local markets, and the extremely

low wage scales in the surrounding agricultural countries of the Near East.

In such a thoroughly destructive situation, industry can only hope to secure and hold isolated and unique markets, and even these, as we shall see, are not safe from attack. Though Palestine's industry has shown a striking development resulting from the headlong rush of Jewish investment and enterprise, it has been able to penetrate only a fraction of its home market and is in extreme jeopardy everywhere else. What this condition adds up to in figures is seen in the problem of Japanese dumping. In 1929 the Holy Land imported £7000 of Japanese goods. By 1935 this figure had skyrocketed to £646,000, while during this same period Japanese purchases from Palestineheld at the ludicrous amount of £5.

Certain favored groups are saved from a portion of this disabling condition by Governmental exception. All of the various missionary institutions and enterprises are exempted from tax or toll of any kind. Under this immunity the churchmen run hotels, farms, manufacture wine on which no excise duty is levied, and engage in other flourishing businesses under favorable conditions. Also relieved of tax and imposts are "all members of His Majesty's forces" and all officers of the Palestine Government. So is the great Iraqian-owned trans-desert transport service between

the Holy Land and Iraq, which thus escapes the exorbitant levies placed on motor vehicles, tires and gasoline. 0

Specific Arab industries are also shown generous consideration. An eloquent token is the exemption of the Arab soap industry of Nablusfrom the high tax on olive oil for

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industrial purposes; and the grotesquely contrasting customs protection given olives themselves. Study of the agricultural products protected by Government impost discloses them to be almost exclusively Arab. Such fellaheen crops as wheat, barley and seminola are safe-guarded by high duties and a rigid regulation of imports under a system of licenses.

On scattered occasions Jewish industry participates unavoidably in these advantages. One such instance concerns the shoe industry. After dumping practices almost succeeded in wiping this business out of existence, the Arabs made such a howl that

the Government was moved to remedy the situation in 1932 by protective duty. The net result shows in sharp relief the viciousness of the open door system: there was an immediate decrease in imports, dropping in two years from £80,000 to £40,000,

and an equalizing increase in the sale of local manufactures.

The Jews have also been the beneficiaries of other favors not meant for them. The result of glutting the Palestine market with foreign goods inadvertently gave Japan and Germany a toe-hold from which they were invading the entire Near and Middle

East, ousting Britain from her favored position. In printed cotton goods, one of Britain's pet specialties, Japan took first place as leading exporter to Palestine, more than doubling English sales in the same market. In 1936 London was shocked to discover thatGermany had jumped to first place as seller to the Palestine market, with English goods losing position steadily. 10

This dangerous piece of backfire shocked the Bureaucrats into action. As a result, quickly imposed tariffs have bettered the situation considerably and a number of closed Jewish factories have been able to reopen.

It is an error, however, to assume that Whitehall has suddenly suffered from an attack of conscience. This was poignantly demonstrated during the recent Tozareth Haaretz (favoring home products) campaign. In this 'Buy Palestine' movement, the Jews literally put on a volunteer tariff of their own, deliberately buying home-manufactured goods though they had to pay a large premium for the privilege. This

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enthusiastically supported crusade was a considerable factor in enabling Jewish industry to survive, and bespeaks the almost unique patriotism of Palestine Jewry. Its effectiveness was evidenced during the three months' campaign early in 1937, when Jewish leaders estimated it was worth £4,000,000 in increased sales of local products. Out of this campaign grew a typical frenzy of official harassment. Jewish stores advertising the sale of 'Palestine Goods Only' were visited by Government agents seeking an excuse to make arrests. At the same time, street peddlers selling 'Only

Palestine Products' were hustled off to police stations to explain why they preferred to limit their wares to those made in their own land.

BANKING AND CURRENCY

Due to all the disabling uncertainties, the credit situation in Palestineis a severe one. It is further complicated by an archaic credit system which the Authorities refuse to alter. So the financing of industry lapses into an impossible stalemate; with the banks on one side, so full of money that they are loath to take on new accounts, and on the other, an aggregation of puzzled industrialists who are wondering from day to day what the Government is going to do next. Finance inPalestine has consequently

developed into something like a roulette game, with all bets called when the wheel stops.

Apart from trivial quotas, the banks grant no real long-term credits. No security market is in existence, a particular blow to moderate-sized new undertakings. These are, in general, precariously financed, the limited capital of the owner being eaten

up early by bloated land prices and building costs. The Near Eastern expert, Dr. Alfred Michaelis, states that consequently "numerous moderate and small-sized factories are in danger of closing down for financial reasons." 11

The legal interest rate is 9%, but this is vastly exceeded in practice; while the banks pay 1-1/2% interest on deposits. Despite the favorable circumstances provided in Palestine's swift growth, the hostile attitude of the Government makes industrial and

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agricultural mortgages most difficult to obtain, even at the gouging interest rates prevailing. The establishment of adequate mortgage banks is hampered by the Administration's land legislation and attitude generally, frightening off interested financial institutions inLondon and New York. The Arabs fare a little better. Looking out for its self -selected wards, the Administration has established an agricultural bank out of the public funds with a capital of X 400,000. It grants Arab farmers long-term credits at nominal interest rates. The Jews, however, must contend with the existing credit situation as best they can.

The Palestine pound is based on the British pound sterling. The setting of its money values at this artificially high level automatically exposes Palestine to the paralyzing competition of surrounding nations whose devaluated and blocked currencies give

them an immeasurable advantage in all markets.

Due again to the Administration's own strictures, the banks ofPalestine are mainly branches of foreign institutions, with no particular interest in the welfare of the country. Barclay's Bank, an offshoot of the institution in London, has offices in Jerusalem and six other towns and is banker to the Palestine Government.

The Ottoman Bank (Anglo-French) has five branches, and the Italian Banco di Roma, four. In Tel Aviv is found the Polska Kasa Oszczednosci (Polish). There are a few local Jewish institutions but, with little exception, they are of trivial importance.

This circumstance is all the more remarkable since the great bulk of the money on deposit everywhere belongs to Jews. The savings of the Arab fellaheen are usually kept in jars and similar hiding places.

It is apparent here, too, that the British are determined to hang a millstone around the neck of Palestine industry, and that if equivocation and quibbling will not accomplish this purpose they are prepared to strike directly at the heart of the country's financial structure. This is conveyed in the draft ordinance of April 1936, deleting from the law the provision requiring banks to publish annual balance sheets. Thus not only was industry deprived of any adequate insight into the country's financial situation, but it was placed hopelessly at the mercy of foreign wire pulling. This was made

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uncomfortably clear during the unsettled condition which followed after Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, when apprehensive withdrawals threatened the collapse of Palestine's whole economic structure.

In February 1936 the Government published notice of impending legislation which speaks volumes. This regulation proposes that "no company or cooperative society shall carry on a banking business without obtaining from the High Commissioner

a license to do so, and the High Commissioner may grant, refuse, or revoke such license without explanation."

CITRUS

Pride of the Yishuv is the Jaffa orange, reputedly the finest in the world. An incident occurring in Paris a few years ago spoke more for the quality of this fruit than a mountain of figures. A fruit vendor had made a charge of two francs for a single orange, which the writer considered outrageous. After having been so informed, the vendor shrugged his shoulders and said testily: "Mais, ATsieu — c'est unJaffa /"

Before the advent of the Zionists, oranges were scarcely a factor in the Palestine economy and grapefruit were unknown. By 193 1 theHoly Land was producing five percent of the oranges for sale on world markets, jumping in 1938 to the unbelievable

proportion of eighteen percent. Nowhere else in the world is scientific farming brought to such a high point in perfection. In some of the larger groves complete filing systems are used in which the case history of every tree is charted with all the thoroughness of a medical clinic.

Citrus is the heart of Jewish agricultural enterprise and the keystone to the National Home's prosperity. In 1934 it represented eighty-three percent of all Palestinian exports. Unlike competitor countries, where a healthy home consumption provides a secure back-log for this industry, Palestine with its small population has only a negligible internal market. A falling off in foreign sales would necessarily place its citrus growers in the most precarious of situations, serious enough to snap the back-

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bone of the country's commerce. Here is an imperative which would automatically dictate the commercial policy of any other government. But in Palestine, declares S. Tolkowsky, General Manager of the Jaffa Citrus Exchange, this key industry remains

like a fatherless child, whom everybody is free to kick and exploit and whom nobody will protect." 12

In the Old World, oranges come within the luxury category. The arc of production is, moreover, rapidly climbing everywhere, making competition for existing markets very difficult. The acuteness of this phase is amply demonstrated in Palestine production alone. In 1936 it was some eight million cases, whereas in 1940, when the young groves-come into full bearing, it is estimated that total shipments will reach twenty-two million cases. What this situation will result in can be discovered from the overwhelming hardships already crucifying the industry. Impassable trade restrictions are robbing it of existing foreign markets. Exorbitant taxes make the planters' lives a nightmare. In general, the obstructive tactics of the Mandatory are shooting them head-first into catastrophe.

At Jaffa, where the industry is situated, there is neither a port nor sufficient storage space. At Haifa, the transit sheds, under the control of the Government, are pathetically inadequate and become more congested each season as the new orchards begin to bear. The single railroad between the orange section and Haifa is a Government monopoly. It is short of cars and locomotives, and during the turbulent rains which fall at the height of the picking season it often does not run at all. Following nerve-wracking delays, shippers are compelled to load their fruit in open

wagons ordinarily used for the transport of manure. Since the orange is highly perishable, many thousands of boxes are lost annually at the railway stations. Fruit is inspected outside rather than within the dock warehouses, adding to the spoilage, in a

scene of indescribable congestion and confusion. Galling delays frustrate every step in the attempt to export. The net result is that full shiploads often reach their markets with as much as fifty percent of waste fruit.

The alternative possibility of truck hauling did not exist until recently. Over the sixty

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miles of sand dune between Haifa and Tel Aviv-Jaffa, the most important commercial centers in the country, the Administration had obstinately refused to construct a road. It was only when the present war-beclouded horizon made the building of this artery an inevitable military necessity, that it was undertaken.

In practically all European countries, quotas, currency restrictions, or prohibitive duties make the situation more precarious with every passing year. The principal competitor nations, Spain and Italy, overcome this hazard by favorable commercial

treaties and clearing agreements negotiated with the countries in which they market their fruit. Such intercession as the PalestineGovernment attempts is almost inevitably in the nature of cavalier interference. One single rule costing the growers over a million boxes of fruit was the order excluding oranges from export which

count more than one hundred to the box. The Administration refuses to introduce any uniform inspection system and calmly ignores the demands of distracted Jewish growers for compulsory spraying and smoking of disease-ridden groves — practically all of them Arab. The desperate Jewish growers have had to establish their own inspection service on roads leading to the Colonies to keep their trees from being ravaged by the black scale and other destructive pests.

Over the objection of the Arabs, also, Jews are making a strenuous effort to create a voluntary, all-inclusive citrus exchange for the maintenance of high standards of sizing, packing and shipping. They hope to win the better prices fetched by well-

selected, well-advertised and well-marketed fruit. The Government, however, seems to regard this effort as an extravagant irritation of Arabs who wish to keep to their old ways.

In the matter of trade agreements the Administration lays exaggerated stress on formal difficulties, which it pretends cannot be overcome. Yet Great Britain itself levies so heavily on Palestinecitrus that the tariff represents as much as half of the actual cost of production. The only value this high duty could have is to protect a British island in the West Indies, whose sole export amounts to twenty thousand cases. The desperate Palestine growers offered to buy this whole crop at

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attractive prices in exchange for relief — but their offer met with no response.

A reasonable reading of this mystery is offered in the deliberate British effort to develop Cyprus, where Jews are now practically excluded, into a direct competitor to Palestine. The Jaffa orange has made such a great European reputation that the market it has established becomes a most desirable plum for anyone who can steal it. The bureaucrats have set themselves to take over this lucrative industry if they can. Cyprus oranges have been exempted from customs duty in the Empire. Land is cheap, labor is cheap, and the Palestine competitor is being frozen in his tracks by tariff walls. The Island is now being systematically advanced as "a place of settlement for retired Colonial officials of all ranks" and other Britons looking for a good thing. In the official British press it is provocatively described as "practically undeveloped." 13

That the tragic troubles besetting the citrus growers cannot be credited to merely lackadaisical administration is shown by a host of other circumstances. An illuminating example concerns the boxes in which the fruit is packed, which the growers had been buying inPoland and Rumania. When these countries placed severe import tolls on Palestine fruit, to favor Italian and Spanish oranges, the Palestinian growers retaliated by setting up machinery to make their own boxes. This was the signal for the Government of Palestine to act. It promptly plastered a high

tariff on box-wood, so that they could not be produced locally except at prohibitive cost.

The result of this official persecution is not slow in showing itself. Jewish groves, established at extravagant prices, bearing the entire cost of advertising and marketing Palestine fruit, and harassed from every source, are losing their hard-won position,

even in Palestine. Isaac Rokeach, President of the Jaffa Citrus Exchange, estimates that at least one-third of the Jewish citrus growers have been unable to meet the interest on their debts for the last two years. 14

In his 1935 Report, the High Commissioner candidly calls attention to this end result of his policies, saying; "A decrease of investment in citrus plantations was also

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observed owing to decline in profits and fear of over-production. Arab farmers, how-

ever, with little or nothing to pay for their land and their larger margin between receipts and costs, have placed large additional areas under citrus" 15 The simple figures tell the rest. Citrus, once a Jewish monopoly in Palestine, is gradually passing into Arab hands. The Arab area increased during 1935 by 20,000 dunams — the Jewish area, by 10,000.

ECONOMIC INSANITY

Practically all countries today maintain a strict control over their exchange transactions, and also supervise the search for new markets. Their rulers are prepared to bargain for each minute advantage at the drop of a hat. This is accomplished by a direct manipulation of currency, noteworthy in the case of Germany, and special agreements of various kinds, most common of which is the 'favored nation' type. Under this arrangement a mutual exchange of purchase value is arrived at, cemented by tariff discriminations in favor of the preferred party.

Without exception, industrial nations follow the rule of buying only where they can sell, and view with serious misgivings even the slightest upset of their trade balance. The United States, after studying the bewildering list of marks introduced by Dr.

Schacht, each with a different value and all manipulated toGermany's trade advantage, came to the conclusion in July of 1936 that they constituted discriminatory trade practice and promptly placed a retaliatory duty on German goods.

On June 10, 1937, Commons listened to Lieutenant-Colonel Amery, former First Lord of the Admiralty, threaten a sharp increase in duty against American products. "It is impossible," he said, "to get back to the gold standard as long as that great

creditor nation still is forcing us to take an excess of imports." Echoed by the whole British Cabinet, Foreign Minister Eden stated that an agreement with the United States "for the reduction of customs duties on a most-favored-nation basis," was one of the main objects of His Majesty's Government. 16 The Colonial Office, too, is not oblivious to these rudiments of economic good sense. In a recent report it expresses

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glowing gratification because Cyprus was able to show a small favorable balance for the three months ending June 30, 1936, with imports of £305,087 against exports of £305,351.

Alone in the world, Palestine's trade policy is characterized by an entirely negative attitude. There the Government considers that the Mandate rules out the possibility of trade agreements, quotas and compensations, though these are regarded by other

countries as the sole means of establishing satisfactory trade relations. Though it seems to levy tariffs and imposts as it pleases under the less imposing name of 'taxes,' the Government officially takes refuge in the position that its "obligations under the Mandate" prevent it from 'discriminating' against countries belonging to the League, from whom the Administration of Palestine theoretically derives its authority.

It is obvious that Germany and Japan, two of the worst offenders in the dumping process, are hardly entitled, even under this interpretation, to continued privileges. Officially they have retired from the League and all its obligations. In Syria, under similar mandate, the French slapped a prompt surtax on German goods, and forced both Germany and Japan to conclude favorable trade agreements which included adequate guarantees of payment in Syrian currency.

Palestine is one of the few countries restrained from taking counter measures when a foreign government leaves the gold standard and spills its depreciated wares on the market, or even directly subsidizes some of its exports. Latvian butter shippers, for example, receive such generous grants-in-aid from their Government that they are able to sell their product cheaper in Jaffa than it can be produced on neighboring farms. The Holy Land is literally flooded with goods from a large number of countries, sold at a price with which no industry depending entirely on its own resources can hope to compete. Much of this dumping is accomplished through organized cartels which are able to maintain their home prices at such a high level that they can accept payments on export goods barely sufficient to cover the cost of

materials and transport. Recent years have witnessed a vast in crease in the dumping

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of goods by highly organized countries, effected through export premiums, subsidies to industry, etc., by which the State endeavors to balance its payments without reference to the home cost. In the case of Egyptian sugar, prices in Cairo and Alexandria are exactly double those prevailing in Palestine where competition has to be met from Czechoslovakia and other beet-sugar producers.

All nations, without exception, enjoy preferential treatment in regard to Palestine, turning it out, a little ewe lamb, to pasture among the wolves. 17 The Holy Land has consequently fallen heir to a dangerous condition where it buys infinitely more abroad than it sells. The result of this policy showed in 1935 when Palestine had the staggering trade deficit of £13,800,000, representing the difference between imports of £18,000,000 and exports of only £4,200,000, a fatal disproportion which has risen yearly. In 1936 the situation became still more serious. Imports for the first quarter show a reduction of 14.2% over the corresponding period for 1935, while exports for the same period declined by 18.5%. Not only is the present deficit the largest in the world, reckoned per head of population, but it was created at the very time when every country was making the most strenuous efforts to balance up its trade accounts either by diminishing imports or increasing exports.

Under some circumstances these huge arrears might not be cause for overwhelming anxiety. It could be argued that in the development of a young and progressive country the import of large quantities of production equipment is a vital necessity,

which must be considered as a capital investment rather than an expenditure. It is undoubtedly significant that the largest single import in 1935 was industrial machinery, valued at £992,000 as compared with £967,000 in 1934 and £467,000 in 1933. Other items of producers' materials showed similar pleasant increases. Despite this optimistic circumstance, the facts as we have seen them are not conducive to so liberal an interpretation. State policies which allow for a constriction of foreign markets, and make possible a condition where a locally manufactured blouse costing 270 mils to make, has to compete with an identical blouse imported from Austria which retails for 250 mils, hardly make an assumption of this sort acceptable.

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A picture of what is occurring can be gained from the increase in egg imports from 11,000,000 eggs in 1929, to 76,000,000 eggs in 1935, a frightening clue into real condition, when it is considered that Palestine is still in the main an agricultural country. The import value of food, drink and tobacco alone in 1935 was £3,646,877, while manufactured articles were £10,789,934. These are certainly forbidding enough figures, fully justifying Jabotinsky's dour warning that "the Jews are not settlers in Palestine—they are just tourists!"

Certainly nothing but ruin can come to the infant industry of this small land by turning it into a stronghold of free trade while all the countries, including Great Britain itself, operate on the principle of commercial treaties, mutual preferences and protective tariffs. It seems obvious that the boasted 'prosperity' of the National Home is a delusion, since it depends upon the continued import of funds, and not on the sound mechanics which trial and error have proven to be the only operative media anywhere. To become economically independent, the National Home must find a way to produce within its borders, goods and services with which to pay for the supplies it is compelled to buy from the outside world. Otherwise the difference between imports and exports must be charged off out of capital; which meant that the country had to pay out more than twice as much in 1935 alone than was brought in by all the immigrants of 1936 put together.

The actual fact is that the four hundred thousand Jews in Palestinefind themselves in a grim economic battle with the world, unprotected and prevented from protecting themselves. Since the Zionist enterprise in Palestine represents a plunging investment on the part of scattered Israel, desperately attempting to salvage its remaining resources, Zionist Jewry, despite mutual self-delusions, must be living largely on its dwindling capital. Such, indeed, must inevitably prove to be the case. If no other factor than the customs system operated, Jewish industrial position would still remain dangerous and unhealthy, its catastrophic ferments sure to expose themselves the instant the river of money

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pouring into this tiny area abated. That Jewish ingenuity has succeeded in partly circumventing these determined disabilities is of little real importance, as it can be assumed that new restrictions will constantly be invented to take the place of those which have proven ineffective.

In the matter of currency alone, imports from such countries asGermany, Rumania and Poland have to be paid for in full, whereas when these States purchase from Palestine, the sums owing are placed in blocked accounts, or goods which have to

be taken in lieu of money; and it is a long time, if ever, before the exporter collects on his debt. Such a condition would be laughable in any other country, which would insist at once on being paid in local currency under pain of excluding the offending States from its markets.

All these signs of economic insanity are the more remarkable since the mere existence of a great excess of imports over exports should place the National Home in an ideal bargaining position. The very weakness of her trade position would provide a club with which to secure important concessions from foreign nations the instant a quota system was set up. Under an interested Government,Palestine's trade would become a fat prize for which all commercial nations would angle. It is almost four times that of Egypt, six times that of Syria and five and a half times that of Iraq.

Turkey, one of the prime offenders, sold Palestine in 1935 a total of £338,807 and bought in return, £6646. Governed under a system of strict State control over foreign trade, the Turks put a virtual embargo on Palestine products. They ended by banning all Palestine citrus in 1936. 18

Rumania, another typical illustration, sold Palestine X x ' 208,204 in 1935 and bought from her during that time a total of £30,000. Despite this enormous advantage, Bucharest insisted that sixty percent of the oranges it buys from the Holy Land had to be shipped in Rumanian boats. To obtain the present import licenses for two hundred thousand cases of fruit, Palestine exporters had to purchase from Rumania fifteen orange cases for every box of fruit sold. The same method of box-wood against citrus

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fruit was forced on Palestine by Russia, whose balance of trade with the Jewish National Home is twenty-three to one in Russia's favor. In this policy these countries aped a similar one announced in Poland. Taking full advantage of the defenseless position of Palestine,Warsaw uses it as dumping grounds for cheap Polish goods, selling the Holy Land £400,000 annually, and buying £40,000 in return.

Another of this unending list of examples is Hungary which sells theHoly Land in the neighborhood of £ 1 20,000 every year, and buys about £ 1000 worth of its goods in return. Like many of her neighbors, Hungary has a complete embargo on Palestinian fruit, out of deference to trade agreements with other orange-growing nations. Even in such countries as France and Belgium, the sale of Palestinefruit is dropping consistently due to the presence of new trade agreements by these countries with other orange producers.Palestine is mulcted from every direction. In order to sell Germany, last season, 216,000 cases of fruit worth less than £100,000, she had to buy German goods of specified classes to an equal value, notwithstanding an adverse trade balance of £2,000,000.

Whatever specious legality the Administration might take refuge in to justify its present course, Article XVIII of the Mandate specifically empowers it to conclude special agreements "with any State the territory of which in 1914 was wholly included in Asiatic Turkey orArabia." One of these States is Iraq, which in 1935 exported toPalestine £237,000, and managed by discriminatory duties to hold imports from that country to £10,000. The ratio of Iraq's sales to, and purchases from, Palestine is now about thirty-one to one. Another isSyria whose cheap labor and abundant irrigation facilities offers a destructive competition to the fruit and vegetable growers of the Holy Land. Syria sold Palestine during 1935, £1,310,363 and bought only £302,988 in exchange. The exports of Palestine to all the countries of the Near East amount to only seventeen percent of its imports from these same States, showing a deficit of £2,290,000 in 1935. This may be compared with the

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Iraqian balance of trade for the same Near Eastern countries including Palestine,

coming to 890,000 dinars in imports against exports of 1,113,000 dinars. In the identical sphere of Near Eastern trade, Syria shows imports of 5,763,493 Syrian pounds against exports of 7,121,693 Syrian pounds.

Under the stimulus of an interested Government, Syria has started an impressive industrial development of her own. Industrial exports, which a few years ago were far smaller than those of Palestine, now exceed Palestine's by sixty percent. Even more astounding is the fact that most of these are being concentrated on the Holy Land. Syrian industrial export to Palestine for 1935 added to ,£520,000, as against an industrial export by Palestine to Syria of £ 1 10,000. In the trade relations between

Egypt and Syria we find a wholly different condition. After a brief tariff war in 1934, a mutual trade agreement was reached between the two countries leveling off the disproportion under which Syria had suffered, to the point where Syrian and Egyptian

exports practically balanced each other.

As if playing a practical joke, the sole trade arrangement approved by the Administration was made with Germany in 1933 during the world Jewish boycott of that country. Here Palestine agreed to take double the amount of German goods for the value of all oranges shipped to the Reich. Zionist politicians with their hands out, had set the example in August 1933, by an arrangement for the transfer of German-Jewish capital in the form of German merchandise, thus flooding the whole Near East with German goods. This scheme, which seemingly had the full blessing of the Palestine authorities, resulted in a tremendous fillip to German trade. German exports leaped from £780,000 in 1932 to £2,035,000 in 1936. How the trade wind blew as a result of this policy is illustrated in the drop ofPalestine's sales to Germany from ,£600,669 in 1934 to ,£131,000 in 1936.

The whole sum and substance of the Government's attitude can be seen in its failure to provide for a Palestine trade secretary in any of the British Consulate-General's offices — even those in neighboring countries. Such arrangements as are made in the

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name of Palestine are literally fantastic. One is the treaty granting free zones to Iraq and Iran in Haifa port. Iraq, despite its anti-Jewish attitude, is given complete facilities for landing, ware-housing and transshipment of goods and the Zone is placed under the absolute control of Iraq customs officials. Under this curious 'commercial agreement' Iraq also receives concessions "in respect of local taxation," and is allowed duty reductions in favor of her produce averaging from fifty percent to eighty percent. In return for all this,Palestine receives privileges which add up to

a collective zero. 19 The result of this 'agreement' has merely been to aggravate Haifa's already serious problem of congestion.

The effect of this stultifying process was recently described by Dr. F. Rottenstreich, Palestine member of the Zionist Executive. 20 In 1937, he disclosed, Jewish workers in Palestine industry had decreased by twenty-eight percent from the previous year.

He flatly accused the Government of boycotting Palestinian products, asserting that it even went abroad for goods not manufactured in Great Britain rather than patronize local manufacture. Something of the same condition was described by the Palestine Arab Congress back in 1925, which sarcastically mentions a special Stores Department existing only to buy from Europe such articles as "a thermometer, for instance, at PT10, when similar thermometers of the same sort, manufacture and patent, are sold inJerusalem pharmacies at PT3." 21

While everything connected with Jewish interests is being booted around like a football, the usual solicitousness for Arabs continues. This is shown handsomely in the case of the Arab specialty of wheat growing. When a high tariff proved ineffectual, the flour trade was placed under a system of rigid licenses, with Jews allowed an annual import of only ten thousand tons though the Tel Aviv demand alone was estimated at seventeen thousand tons. Finally the High Commissioner stopped the imports of wheat altogether during May, June and July of 1935.

This policy was continued to the actual point of an acute flour shortage, notwithstanding the fact that it represented a 'discrimination* against members of the League of Nations anxious to dump their excess produce into the Holy Land. 22

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'HEADS, I WIN — TAILS, YOU LOSE'

Though Palestine is under the direct control of the British Colonial Office, London takes the stand that to grant it Imperial preference would be in some obscure fashion immoral. Palestinian exports toBritain are hence taxed for all the tariff will bear.

It is significant that Imperial preference has been accorded all other mandated territories assigned to Great Britain, without too much fuss being made about it. In the cases of Togo, Cameroon andTanganyika, it was decreed by Order in Council, October 13, 1928, that these areas should be considered part of the British Empire for tariff purposes under Article VIII of the Finance Act of 1 91 9. International precedent is also offered in the preferential tariff granted by France to the protectorate of Tunis. The United States did the same for the benefit of Hawaii before its annexation; and in 1903 allowed Cuba a customs reduction of twenty percent on the basis of "moral obligations existing."

All authorities on international law agree that the Covenant and the Mandate were devised for the protection of the mandated areas, and not for the benefit of foreign powers. Even the open door, in principle, is primarily intended to prevent the exploitation of these territories. That economic isolation was certainly not meant by the Powers is proven in the Mandates Commission's demand that Mandatory rulers and all other States "which have concluded special treaties or conventions with the Mandatory Powers . . . extend the benefits of such treaties or conventions to the Mandated territories." 23

Britain does just the reverse. In no case where she has commercial treaties embodying the most-favored-nation clause has she bothered to arrange that the benefits be extended to Palestine. At the same time, the National Home is bound by all the obligations of existing trade agreements between England and other countries. When a speaker in Commons demanded that duties be imposed on German and Japanese imports into Palestine, the Colonial Secretary replied that "this was impossible as long as Palestine remained a party to the Empire commercial treaties with Germany and Japan." 24 Despite this contention, the British Government has not applied the

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Anglo-German payments agreement, in which Palestine is legally included, to the balance of payments between Germany andPalestine.

The shrewd hypocrisy of London's position is emphasized by the voluntary action of Stockholm, which removed all import duties onHoly Land grapefruit to "promote trade relations between Palestineand Sweden." 25 In the same friendly gesture, the Dominion of Canada allows free entry to Palestine citrus during the principal season of export from December to May of each year. Yet Britainitself doggedly maintains prohibitive tolls on everything that comes from the Holy Land.

At the same time London insists on being credited with the amount of Palestine imports in its trade deals with the various countries, as in the Commercial Agreement signed with Poland on February 27, 1930. In the Anglo-Lithuanian Treaty, signed

to maintain a balance of trade between the two countries, the same business was repeated. Here, too, the British claimed credit for all Lithuanian goods sold in the Holy Land. 26

ON AIR AND SEA

The irresistible force which drew the city-bound Jew to the hard, challenging soil, also beckons him to the sea. Zionist thinkers saw in advance what the Asiatic hinterland is rapidly discovering — that the sea borders of Palestine form the gateway to international traffic. Strategically located at the sea cross-roads of three continents, theland of Israel must inevitably become a prosperous maritime country.

The Nationalist leader Jabotinsky was among the first to grasp the full significance of this situation. There has long been a Revisionist marine school at Civitavecchia, Italy, where ship-building, fishery and navigation are taught to eager students from the recesses of European ghettos. The Palestine Histadruth has its own society called Nachshon, Ltd., and in Haifa there is a non-partisan group, the rapidly developing Zevulun Society, 27 where enthusiastic youths acquire nautical training and a love for

the sea.

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In 1934, goods to the value of £17,000,000 were transported to and from Palestine by water, and nearly three hundred thousand travelers came or left. Jews alone spend for shipping an estimated £3,500,000 each year. Yet for all the revenue Palestine derives from its own fishing and shipping industries, it might just as well be tucked away in the middle of Africa.

Several Jewish companies have made determined efforts to capture a part of this sea traffic for the Jewish people. When the first Hebrew steamer, the Atid, made its maiden voyage in 1933, manned by a Hebrew-speaking crew, observers commented wonderingly that "there was an air of unreality about this venture." Today there are three Jewish shipping corporations in Palestine, with half a score of vessels plying between the ports of the Mediterranean. For the most part these craft are of low tonnage but the new Jew looks at them with pride.

The difficulties faced by Jewish shipping are far greater than those usually connected with an attempt to establish a new merchant marine. It must compete unaided against the subsidized shipping industries of other nations. More, it suffers from the actual animus of its own home government. It does not even get preference in port clearance and wharf facilities. It is handicapped by its inability to get itself included in the pacts between shipping companies, so that a balanced payload of merchandise could be arranged for its vessels between their various ports of call. Since the amount of shipping originating in Palestine is considerable, a simple expression of interest by the Palestine Government to foreign lines which touch at its ports would easily bring about this desirable result. Far from betraying such an interest in the country's merchant marine, the Authorities actually prompted Egypt to forbid entry into her waters ofPalestine steam vessels (specified so as not to interfere with Arab sailing skiffs) of less than one thousand tons. This, of course, hit the Jews alone. Similar difficulties were encountered in British-ownedCyprus ; and Syria, too, was prevailed on to take discriminatory action against the struggling Hebrew companies.

The Administration has declared Sundays and Christian holidays the only days of rest in Palestine ports. On those days customs is closed and the work carried on at port

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extremely limited. Employees engaged in it must be paid 'overtime.' The Jewish

Sabbath and holidays are not recognized. This obviously places Jewish shipping under costly duress, causing it to lose patronage and cargoes.

In 1936 the largest of the Jewish steamers, the S.S. Tel Aviv, finally had to throw up the sponge due to State-subsidized competition of foreign companies, and the ship was sold to a corporation in Japan.

A growing number of Jewish vessels are engaged in deep-sea fishing, though local fisheries are discouraged by special legislation prohibiting trawling, and by the granting of "exclusive licenses to fish." The High Commissioner dictates the industry

personally, with powers to issue licenses as he sees fit. It is note-worthy that foreign fishermen are subject to none of these disabilities when operating in Palestine waters.

No appropriation exists for the fisheries service, even thoughPalestine imports a great amount of seafood every year. Iraq finds it profitable to transport large quantities of fish all the way across the scorching desert route. This export of fish from the Tigris to the markets of Palestine's coastal towns is as ironical as bringing the proverbial coal to Newcastle. Practically the only experimentation has been that done by private Jewish enterprise. Dr. Sklover, former official in the Fisheries Department of the German Government has proven, for instance, that the yearly

cycle of sardines takes them all the way from South Palestine to the Syrian coast. Were the Government's attitude not a factor, a great export of sardines, packed in native olive oil, could easily materialize.

This uncompromising indifference to the fate of its entire maritime industry on the part of a Government, is, to say the least, unique. Not even in the section of the coast around Jaffa Harbor is there an official sea-chart. Apathy extends in every possible direction. The ports themselves are pathetically inadequate to care for the enormous growth of shipping. Facilities are so badly jammed that shippers who can possibly avoid Palestine, do so. For years theJaffa customs area has been so badly

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overcrowded that arriving steamers often have to stand by for a week or more before they can unload. Sometimes in the height of the orange season the situation becomes so impossible that the whole import and tourist traffic has to be rerouted through Haifa. Storage facilities are so poor that port authorities have had repeatedly to proclaim a respite week, during which no merchandise is accepted from incoming ships and no products loaded on outgoing steamers. What all this jockeying means to anxious growers whose perishable product is decaying in the sheds and rail-terminals need hardly be explained.

Haifa Harbor has been modernized to make it suitable as a military-naval base. From time to time it is substantially rumored that all civil shipping is to be discontinued, and beautiful Haifa Bay turned into a purely military preserve. Here oil, which pays no taxes, is the fair-haired boy of the Administration, and its transportation takes precedence over all else except the cardinal business of His Britannic Majesty's great gray sea dogs. With superb unconcern, the Authorities watch everything connected with private shipping pile into a hopeless jumble at these two ports, a mess which grows crazier with each passing year.

The ideal spot for a harbor which would relieve this congestion is Jaffa-Tel Aviv, with a combined population of well over two hundred thousand and the great bulk of Palestine's citrus groves within easy reach. For twenty years the irritated Jews have remonstrated with the Administration over the neglect of Jaffa Harbor. Not even a breakwater exists. Jagged rocks line the shore, making it necessary for ships to load and unload from lighters manned by ruffian Arab crews whose mood is always un-

predictable. Steamers must anchor at least a mile out, and in bad weather have to stand by and pray for calm.

Unable to enlist Government support, the city of Tel Aviv had a brilliant idea : it would build a harbor itself, at its own expense. The juncture of the River Yarkon and the sea lent itself admirably to such an enterprise. 28 Its success seemed guaranteed by its location at the very nerve center of the country's commerce. The Government's answer was a flat 'no.' It is doubtful whether in the history of responsible government,

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the right of a city situated on the seashore to build its own harbor at its own expense

has ever been contested ; but Palestine officialdom was willing to set this amazing precedent. Its views were that such an improvement on the coast of the all-Jewish city 'would constitute an encroachment on the vested rights of Jaffa Arabs.

For years the Jews tried to secure at least unloading rights, and for years their petitions were ignored. In 1936, after four weeks of violence and isolation had sealed up Jaffa Port, the Authorities finally granted the city of Tel Aviv a limited right to un-

load. What the Government agreed to, in view of the emergency, was that the Jews be allowed to build a temporary jetty one hundred yards long with money raised by private subscription. 29 It not only refused to participate in the financing of the 'port' but also expressly forbade the Municipality of Tel Aviv to do so. With fine meticulousness it limited the cargo which could be discharged to eleven categories of merchandise. Vessels with anything else to unload, be it only as big as a dime, had to steam up the coast toHaifa or to one of the Syrian ports.

With usual exuberance, the Zionist press over the world hailed the moment as historic and the 'port' as a great concession. However, what exists at the present day is a board pier with a couple of wooden shacks serving as customs houses, and a big sign, "No Admittance to Port Area." 30 Certainly present omens are at least dubious. One appeared on the jubilant 'Sea Day' which Tel Aviv arranged to celebrate the triumphant opening of its 'port' in June of 1936. The great event of the day centered on three Jewish steamers which were to sail proudly into harbor as living evidence of Jewish might on the sea. Jerusalem, however, ordered these vessels out of the vicinity, announcing that anchoring in Tel Aviv waters was "permitted only to ships

unloading cargoes, not for display purposes."

Actually there is no deep-water harbor in Tel Aviv, nor has the Government granted any permission to construct one. The 'port' has none of the rights which are granted even such minor places as Acreand Gaza. 31 Officially it has no independent existence. Ships calling at Tel Aviv must receive their quarantine certificate from Jaffa. More ironic still, though the Jews of Tel Aviv put up all the money to construct

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its wharves and quays, the Government takes all the income from wharf age and

storage fees in addition to the revenue derived from customs duties. The Mandatory's attitude is well covered in the Report of the Royal Commission of 1937. It comments in regard to the projected harbor that "this would undoubtedly be disastrous to the prosperity of Jaffa, and, in justice to the Arabs, the Administration has been unable to consent to such a proposal." 32

In that more modern type of navigation, over the air lanes, the story is much the same. Private flying is practically forbidden. When a young Jewish aviator who had been a former executive in the Fokker Airplane Works attempted to lay out a field he

was all but ordered out of the country.

There are three important air bases, at Haifa, Gaza and Lydda. TheSea of Galilee is also being used as a permanent landing base for Imperial Airways flying to and from India and Australia. Palestine is on the schedule of the Royal Dutch Airlines' East

and West service as well as the Italian Ala Littoria and the Polish 'Lot,' connecting it up with the most important airports of Europe,Asia and Africa.

A number of years ago, Tel Aviv with usual enterprise suggested that a piece of ground could be acquired at the northern end of the city for a commercial airport. It brought forward the fact that the existing civil airport, located at the extreme southern tip of the country in the Arab town of Gaza, was far from all business centers and thoroughly unsuited to serve commercial interests. Leading officers of the Royal Air Force were induced to survey the site and they agreed that it was the best in the country for the purpose. As expected, the Government made no response. Tel Aviv then made another proposition, offering to share the expense of purchasing and maintaining the port. The Government now replied immediately with an icy refusal, stating categorically that it would neither participate in the construction of this air field nor allow the City of Tel Aviv to build it at its own expense.

It must be noted, however, that recently a company in which Jewish as well as prominent English figures are interested has been allowed to use the airport at

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Lydda for civil aviation purposes. 33

ROADS AND RAILROADS

The question of roads, touched on briefly before, is well worth additional examination.

The major part of Jewish investment is made in the coastal plain and in the valleys around Haifa and Tel Aviv. Scores of Jewish settlements are located here. This district is the backbone of Hebrew colonization.

Despite the frequent pleading, practically no roadways have been built to relieve these colonies of their isolation. Colonel Wedgwood called the turn in Commons. Replying to his "honorable friend Mr. Isaac Foot" who thought "the roads were

beautiful," he observed that "if he goes there and looks again he will see that the roads which he mentions are all roads leading to Arab villages and that it is very difficult to get to the Jewish villages." In January 1930, S. Ettingen, lecturer on road and railway engineering at Jewish Technical College in Haifa, directly accused Jerusalem of mapping the roads deliberately so that they would not pass through Jewish settlements. This charge is substantiated in the single experience of the colony of Hedera, largest and wealthiest in the country and center of the orange-growing section. Not only did the Administration refuse to construct a road but the colonists themselves were denied permission to build one at their own expense. Only after interminable, heart-breaking delays, and determined pressure from the Jewish Agency in London, was this permission reluctantly granted. Considering even this miserable concession a great stroke of luck, the sturdy men and women of the settlement turned out under the broiling sun to do the road construction themselves, stopping all other work.

In striking contrast are the beautiful highways existing in all parts ofPalestine, leading to obscure Arab villages or isolated military stations. An example of official competence, which speaks for itself, is the beautiful automobile highway built in

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1936 at breakneck speed from Gaza to the Red Sea over a sparsely settled region where any kind of wheeled vehicle is a rarity. Another is the really brilliant engineering feat involved in the great broad artery constructed in 1937 to serve British military needs along the thinly settled northern border.

At the same time that Jewish towns were wallowing in surrounding mud, Imperial self-benefaction announces that two main roads are to be extended from Palestine through Trans-Jordan and on toBaghdad, at an estimated cost to the Palestine tax-payers of £3,000,000. The principal function of these highways is political, guaranteeing the communications of England with her Indian Empire and protecting that all-but-sacred instrument, the pipe line to the oil fields of Mosul. Their sole

commercial value will be to give Iraq a convenient artery for the export and import of its merchandise through Haifa.

Military necessities have also given the Jews a left-handed benefit, through the construction during 1937-38 of the coastal road betweenTel Aviv-Jaffa and Haifa. For two decades Jewish colonists pleaded to deaf ears, issuing volumes of protest

memoranda that would fill a library. In 1936 Mussolini inadvertently became the Jew's good angel. The Government realized that the need for facilitating speedy movement of troops was more pressing than its strictures against Jews. Without

further ado, the highway was completed with such dispatch as to come under the head of an engineering miracle. Jewish growers will now be able to transport their fruit and vegetables overnight to Haifaport. They will be relieved of making their meandering way in heavy mud to the railroad which hauls their produce by a circuitous route to the docks. Hardly less important, since it passes mostly through Jewish territory, the new road will be safe for travelers.

The Palestine railways are reminiscent of nothing so much as Fontaine Fox's old comic, the Toonerville Trolley. Today they remain in almost the same disreputable condition as they were whenPalestine was nothing but a decrepit Turkish province.

The main line is largely a war-time product, and exhibits all the short-comings

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of its improvised military origin. Instead of continuing on a straight course down the coast, the line loops suddenly inland at the very point where the barren stretches of

the south give way to the economically important citrus belt with its great urban centers of Tel Aviv and Jaffa. 84 Just how many miles of line the Palestine Government operates is an open question. The Royal Commission of 1937 estimates a little over 1000 kilometers, of which 203 kilometers are in Sinai Peninsula, 323 kilometers in Trans-Jordan, and 477 kilometers in Palestine itself. A part of this system is the Hejaz Railway, a Muslim religious property used largely to transport pilgrims to the desert shrines. Most of it lies outside ofPalestine territory, and the only section which pays for itself is that which serves the Jewish colonies of the Emek. Its annual deficit comes to about ,£45,000, which Palestine shoulders as one of the shackles hung around its neck by the Administration. The Young Turks of Kemal Pasha would have sold it as scrap iron long ago.

One of the characteristics of these railways is their varying gauges, requiring a multiplicity of reloading operations to reach different parts of the same Lilliputian country. The personnel consists of inept political appointees of the Government, who

treat this business with all the sporadic glee that a spoiled child does a mechanical toy. The management does not bother to coordinate and adapt its services, so that shipment by rail is liable at any point to turn into a comedy of errors.

An analysis of revenue demonstrates that Jewish freight and passengers supply at least two-thirds of the income of these roads.

Since these lines were constructed they have always been in bad shape. The Mandatory's 1920 report to the League of Nationsdescribes them as "entirely un-ballasted, scantily bridged, needing repairs to earthworks, drains, fences and ditches . . . and liable to be closed to traffic by washouts." For their length the Palestine Railways are the most expensive in the world. From year to year the losses of these hungry white elephants increase, aggravated by the growing preference for highway transportation where Jews are relieved of Governmental incompetence and

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obstructive ness. The railway deficit charged to Government expenditure in the fiscal year 1935-36 was £124,159, as compared with £33,805 in 1934-35.

When the roads were taken over, more than £500,000 was paid to the Jerusalem-Jaffa Line concessionaires alone. The Palestine tax-payer was asked to refund an additional £2,000,000 to the British Treasury for railway expenditures of the Military Administration. This makes the initial cost £2,500,000, apart from subsequent capital expenditure of £785,000 and an increasing list of deficits. The charge on the Palestine

tax-payer per kilometer of line is conservatively estimated at £ 10,000. 35 The cost of constructing a modern railway system with full equipment, in other countries with similar traffic, does not average over £4500.

To reduce effective competition, the Government puts every possible obstacle in the way of motor traffic. Some of these have already been mentioned. Others are a drastic restriction on driving licenses, and such curious devices as an ordinance which allows only one person to ride in the front seat of a touring car.

To cap the strange state of affairs, Tel Aviv, the most important metropolis in the country, does not have a railway terminal. It has only a little way-station, a small, ramshackle wooden shack suited to some obscure Arab village. To catch a train its people must go by motor to the little Arab town of Ludd. Nowhere in the whole British Empire is there a town half of Tel Aviv's size which has to contend with such a condition. And nowhere in known creation is there another public utility which could deliberately avoid the chief commercial city of the country without having its management made the subject of a lunacy commission.

CHAPTER

VII

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES

THE TAX MONEYS

Before the Zionists threw themselves into the picture, Palestine was a millstone around the neck of every nation that governed it. It was always in the red, produced nothing of any value, and was considered an all-around liability. On a cost accounting basis the new British acquisition seemed a pretty dismal proposition. A great economic collapse had settled like a bleak fog over exhaustedEurope. The British Exchequer itself was being bled white by incessant demands from every possible quarter.

Soon Jewish money began to gravitate toward the National Home. This was one part of the Zionist adventure the London politicians could approve wholeheartedly. The prospect of having someone to tax in Palestine was a pleasing one. We find Colonial Secretary Amery begging the Zionists, in January 1928, not to withdraw their financial support since "it would be very unfortunate if that support were not forthcoming just because there is a temporary depression."Great Britain and the East

speaks of the Zionist Organization as a "hen that lays golden eggs." It was evident that in the Mandate for Palestine the British had fallen into one of the best paying businesses they had ever encountered.

Despite generous squandering, the public moneys flowed in like a golden river. Nothing like it has ever been seen in the modern world. A deficit of ,£41,000 in 193 1, converted itself into a surplus of ,£6,267,810 in 1935. By the beginning of 1936

this accumulated hoard was already equal to more than two years' normal expenditure and was piling up rapidly.

This was far and away the most respectable surplus that any Government in existence could show ; but nothing daunted, the Palestine Administration went about the

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business of both expenditure and taxation as if it were skating on the thin ice of bankruptcy. In 1934, though the Treasury was already groaning under the weight of a huge accumulated reserve, with income gaining over expenditures with every passing month, the Administration attempted to put through an income tax, and was only deterred from this measure when it was discovered that the Arabs refused to keep books. 1

Now began a performance which Lord Strabolgi sarcastically described as "the policy and economics of bedlam." The Palestine Government, its pockets already bursting with unused money, commenced to borrow huge sums in London at high interest rates, using its own money surplus as security for the loans/ Completely rounding out this strange condition, the Administration placed all but ,£10,000 of its surplus into low-interest English stocks and bonds, for funding British Colonial development in such places as Ceylon,Natal, Uganda and Guiana, an investment whose collectibility is more than doubtful, if only in view of the defaulted amounts Great Britain owes the

United States.

It is interesting to examine one of these loans to discover just what purposes the Palestine Administration had in mind. A typical borrowing was made in 1934 for £2,000,000. Included among its items were £133,000 for Arab schools (no provision at all for Jewish schools), £250,000 for the resettlement of 'displaced' Arabs; and       £200,000 for agricultural credits (Arab). £210,000 is asked for a berth and reclamation scheme at Haifa (for the benefit of the Iraq Petroleum Company). £933,000 is sequestered for water and drainage development schemes. Of this amount, the provision made for Water Resources Survey (a life and death matter in view of the claim that Jewish immigration must be restricted for lack of water) was only £60,000. (Two years later only £7000 had been used, wasted in bureaucratic functions, the balance spent almost entirely for Arab villages and British administrative necessities.) The only benefit the Jews received from the entire water and drainage project came inadvertently from improvements made in the mixed towns ofJerusalem and Haifa.

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The final item in this loan was £407,000 for public buildings and post offices. In the application of this provision the Jews were again ignored. Tel Aviv, bearing by far the heaviest part of the country's tax burden, was not given a farthing out of the total loan and went along as best it could with its antiquated telephone, postal, sewage and drainage facilities.

Analysis of the Government's expenditures for any period shows a good deal of marauding in the interests of the Mandatory itself. The League's Council had ruled that "while a mandated territory may be expected to pay its own way, it may not be burdened with obligations not directly connected with its own administration." We have already seen surreptitious violations of this principle in the amazing deals made with Iraq and the British petroleum companies. But the English were prepared to go much further: they dipped their fingers directly into the till without bothering too much about ceremony. They compelled Palestine to pay over to the British treasury   £1,000,000 as a refund for a military railroad built during the War through Sinai Peninsula. At a time when London itself defaulted on war debts, it collected in full from Palestine, treating it as conquered Turkish territory. In addition to these reparations paid direct to the British treasury, the share of the old Ottoman public debt fastened onPalestine by the Treaty of Lausanne is regularly paid, though all other countries affected by this provision ignore it, regarding it as a dead letter. 2

The great bulk of all expenditures made by the Palestine Government are conditioned directly on the military needs of the Empire. Says Broadhurst without mincing words, "Troops have to be kept somewhere, and although it costs more to keep them inPalestine than in Egypt, India, or other British possessions, the Palestine Government pays the extra money, and the expense does not fall on the British taxpayer." 3 According to the Shaw Report thirty percent of all public expenditures were made on

the military and armed forces of Great Britain.

In addition to sums handed directly to London, are other expenditures, designed for the same purpose but buried in the jumbled double-ledger bookkeeping followed by the Administration.

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One has only to compare the disproportionate figure of £842,487 for military and police during 1935, with £313,597 allowed the combined Departments of Health and Agriculture, the latter amount itself hiding such expenditures as those for military roads. Just as Jewish money was used to build the best military harbor in the Mediterranean atHaifa to protect Britain's way to India, under the pretext of 'riots' Jews are now expected to pay Britain's huge military costs in safeguarding that same highway from the menace of the Italians. It was decided by the Palestine Government in July 1936 that "in principle" it shall be liable for the whole cost of army troops stationed in Palestine, plus the capital cost of works services there. 3 * According to a statement published in March 1936 in the official Palestine Gazette, the expenditures on the military garrison alone during the year came to £1,333,000.

An inkling of where this sweet flood of golden rain comes from was given by the Colonial Secretary in Commons on March 24, 1936. The fat Palestine surplus, he acknowledged, "in itself is a magnificent tribute to Jewish enterprise — in the main it is Jewish money." Official figures of the Palestine Administration show the Jewish share in Government revenue to exceed seventy percent of all collections of direct and indirect taxes. On the basis of these estimates the per capita burden of taxation amounts to about £13 a year for Jews, and £2 a year for non-Jews. As far back as 1930, the economist, Hoofien, proved by careful computation that Jews contributed per head directly to the Government, £8.2 per annum, against a revenue from non-Jews of £1.7 S Per annum.

The figures from Jerusalem give a fair comparative index into the situation throughout the country. In 1936 the municipality had a budget of £100,000. Of this, £80,000 was received in rates and fees, of which £70,000 came from Jews. A great share of the balance arose from the wealthy Greek and Armenian Patriarchates, and such foreign-owned enterprises as the giant King David Hotel.

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PUBLIC EXPENDITURES

"I think," said Colonel Wedgwood, his stern blue eyes snapping, "the feeling is that the Jews ought to look after the Jews and the Government ought to look after the Arabs. . . Under this bill we are providing for a post office in Jerusalem. We have

already put up with national money, not municipal money, a magnificent post office in Jaffa. . . We were told the other day that if the people of Tel Aviv wished they could raise a loan and build a post office. Of course they could, but it is not just that

the Government should provide post offices for Arab towns and leave the Jews to provide the public buildings in their own towns."

In thus referring to the postal situation as a symbolic example, Wedgwood did not overstate the case. Jews contribute seventy-four percent of all postal revenues, most of it from Tel Aviv. When the palatial new post office was erected in Jaffa, Tel Aviv

was already posting eight letters to Jaffa's one. With this disproportion vastly enlarged in recent years, the Tel Aviv Post Office is still housed in a rented, ramshackle building, staffed with only two officials compared to Jaffa's ten. Broadhurst informs us that "a visit to the post office at Tel Aviv will show a queue as

long as that at a Labor Exchange, waiting for stamps." 4

It takes three days for a letter to travel the thirty-five miles fromJerusalem to Tel Aviv. Parcels are not delivered at all but must be called for. In the villages this applies even to letters. And should a business man attempt to be smart and send his letter by bus-driver, a warrant is promptly issued for his arrest for contravening the Postal Regulations.

All public services can be measured by the same yardstick. The work of drainage and reforestation, so vital to the needs of an enlightened European community, has been dumped into the lap of the Jews themselves. Expenditures on health, education and agriculture are limited mainly to administration costs with the exception of small subsidies to the Arabs to keep them quiet. If the Jews themselves had not drained the malarial swamps, the land would still be subject to pestilence and disease. One of the

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learned reproaches of the Jewish Agency informs the Government that "in most countries the protection of public health, the promotion of education, the construction of highways and drainage of large areas, are regarded as governmental functions." 5

Considering the fact that in Palestine the Jews had to undertake all these functions on their own, with funds begged from scattered Israelthe world over, this quaint remonstrance is no less bizarre than the circumstances which gave rise to it.

There is little in Palestine, as we shall discover, which is not controlled by the Authorities with an iron hand. They have their fingers in many of the country's most important business activities and have taken over even such minor functions as are

generally conceded to the Municipalities by the most highly socialized States. Despite this, they maintain no offices in the chief commercial city of the country. Citizens of Tel Aviv in need of Government services are compelled to go to Jaffa. During the riots, when it meant death for any Jew to venture into the Arab town, the Government opened up a few temporary services in Tel Aviv ; but transactions not involving a contribution to the Exchequer had still to be carried out in Jaffa ! Fretful at being

compelled to go to Tel Aviv to collect its taxes, the Administration plastered an increased assessment on the Jews for this 'convenience.' In the temporary Customs Clearing Office, for example, an additional surcharge of two hundred and fifty mils was levied, apparently, as one observer remarked, "for the privilege of not having to penetrate into the closed port area of Jaffa at the cost of a broken head."

CHEATING CHILDREN WITH COCKLES 6

Since the educational system is generally considered to be the foundation of the State, it is important to see just how this public institution operates in Palestine.

Official reports for 1935 show the number of Jewish school pupils as 52,030; Muslim, 45,894; and Christian, 18,175. This unexpected proportion is due to the peculiar age brackets of the Jewish immigration, as well as the aversion of Muslims

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to education, which they consider destructive to the true faith. If it were left up to the British alone, the Jewish National Home would be the most illiterate spot on the globe. Only 6.2 % of the Government's budget goes into education, and of this small sum, the great bulk is deflected into Arab channels. The attitude toward Jewish schooling is something like that found in some of our Southern States toward Negroes. Roughly, the State allots $5.45 for the education of every Jewish child, and $26.68 for every non-Jewish child. 7 Of the ,£900,000 spent from 1921 to 1929, less than £60,000 went to the Jewish school system. For the school year 1935-36 the expenditures of the Department of Education ran to £237,000, of which £37,916 was allocated to Jewish schools. These comparative figures are even more striking than they appear, since they do not contain other amounts which must be credited to the Arab side such as expenditures of the Public Works Department in building of schools, and general administrative overhead.

With no exception, the Government School System is purely Arab in character. The language of instruction is Arabic. Hebrew is not even taught as a foreign tongue. When in 1937 a rumor circulated that the study of Hebrew was to be introduced,

it only evoked incredulity and rendered the Government's hasty denial superfluous. "Apart from scientific subjects," the Peel Commission acknowledges, "the curriculum is almost wholly devoted to the literature, history and tradition of the Arabs; and

all the school masters from the humblest village teacher to the head of the Government Arab college, are Arabs." 8 Arab school masters in Palestine appear to have been recruited from the ranks of the most exaggerated pan-Arab agitators. The result, as Lord Peel candidly admits, is to turn the children out as violent "Arab patriots." "The schools," he tells us, "have become seminaries of Arab nationalism." 9

During the whole period of British occupation there has never been a single Jewish school built in Palestine out of the public funds. The only consideration shown Jewish children is in the form of the usual face-saving maintenance grants. As early as 1926 the Vaad Leumi was complaining that though Jews pay taxes for the maintenance of

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national institutions, "the entire burden of the education of the Jewish children is laid on the shoulders of the Jews themselves." 10 In the year 1933, which may be taken as an example, the Jewish educational budget was £250,000. The Governments grant was the ludicrous sum of £23,626. The balance of the money had to be provided by opulent Americans, and by the many poor European Jews who were cajoled into donating their meager possessions to the various Zionist funds. The Administration nevertheless does not hesitate to impose its will on the Jewish-supported system even in small matters. An instance, more than amusing under the circumstances, occurred in February 1933, when it informed the Vaad Leumi that it considered the salaries paid to Jewish teachers excessive and demanded an immediate reduction.

These marauding operations show even more cruelly in the handling of the Kadoorie legacy. Kadoorie was a Baghdad Jew who died inChina, leaving a million dollars to the Government of Palestine for the establishment of an agricultural school. He died in the serene belief that a Jewish State was in the process of erection. Says Wedgwood, describing what ensued: "The bequest was, of course, made for Jewish education; but it was divided, and half was spent on building an Arab school and the other half has not yet been spent at all. And when the Arab school was opened they avoided even mentioning the Baghdadi Jew's bequest." The Jewish school was built some years later, after the Government had been prompted into action by the glare of publicity this remarkable arrangement elicited. In accommodation and size it was, as may be imagined, vastly inferior to the Arab institution.

HEALTH AND SANITATION

The attitude toward public health is substantially that man must not presume to interfere with the inscrutable will of Allah. Only inadequate attention has been given to the needs of the Arabs, and none at all to those of the Jews. Determined to build their land so that civilized human beings could live in it, the Zionists have diverted

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tremendous sums, desperately needed for other purposes, to sanitation work, meeting as they went along not the gratitude of officialdom but its undisguised resentment.

Though it bars the municipal corporations from acting on their own, the Government has not made the slightest effort to develop adequate sewage systems in the cities. There is no serious milk and dairy inspection ; and nothing but the sketchiest

provisions for controlling epidemics or isolating contagious disease. No provision is made for tubercular patients and little more for the insane. The single small Government hospital for mental diseases is reserved for Arabs. Broadhurst mentions that lunatics "wandered loose about the streets, ignored by the passers-by. If they frightened people, or attacked them, the nearest policeman was called" 11 and the lunatic was jailed in great cells containing thirty or more, together with illegal immigrants, and criminals of all descriptions. Even lepers are not segregated.

Says Duff, "I can show you a half dozen any day in the Suq" (the general market place). 12

We find the Jewish Agency remonstrating with the Government in 1930 because it was "steadily reducing its expenditures for health" despite the great growth in population and revenue. 13 Again, in 1936 the Hadassah Report bitterly informed the Peel Commission that appropriations for public health, meager as they were, had declined materially since 1922.

Taking the initiative, the Jews have done a magnificent job. "Next to the great sanitation work carried out in Panama by American genius," wrote Senator Copeland, "there has been no greater achievement in the field of public health anywhere in the world than the sanitation program put into effect in Palestine by American Jews." 14 In 1927 the Zionist medical budget was already double that of the Government for the entire country. For years expenditures of the Hadassah institutions alone exceeded those of the Health Department. 15 Hadassah keeps a whole system of hospitals, clinics and infant-welfare stations open to Arabs as well as Jews. Unpublicized, still other voluntary bodies play a brave part in this terrible struggle to redeem the National Home from the morbid infirmities of the Near East.

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As a result of their effort, infant mortality in Tel Aviv fell to £74.75 per thousand, compared with £209 per thousand in neighboring Jaffaand £242 per thousand in Gaza. For all this, officialdom has artfully usurped credit, though in his 1935 report the High Commissioner is not ashamed to list the munificent sum of £1038 as the Government's grant for infant welfare work.

Out of the anemic amounts which constitute the country's health budget, a scarce ten percent has been spent on Jews. The Government's preventive medical services are carried on exclusively for Arabs. All hospitals it has built or supports are in Arab centers. InJerusalem itself, where Arabs are far in the minority, less than five percent of the in-patients treated in Central Government Hospitalwere Jews. These are generally refused admittance and told to go to the Jewish hospitals. The grimmest efforts of the Vaad Leumi finally succeeded during 1935-36 in securing grants for Jewish medical services totaling the ridiculous sum of £17,703. At the same time the Government contributes lavishly to hospitalization in Trans-Jordan, as in February 1938 when it announced a gift of £56,000 to the projected hospital at Amman.

The matter of national health is one of the innumerable crises with which the Yishuv is faced. Despite the great achievements of voluntary health work, unsettling world conditions have diminished the funds once so willingly donated by Diaspora Jewry.

As these shrink, the old perils revive in proportion. Such enterprises as the draining of Esdraelon's great swamps rid Palestine of the major part of its dysentery and malaria ; but similar work cannot be continued for want of money. Malaria has consequently assumed epidemic proportions in parts of the country, and dysentery is considered such an acute danger that housewives use permanganate of potash on all uncooked fruits and vegetables as a precaution.

Even in sickness and death the malice of officialdom pursues the belabored Jews. Jerusalem Hadassah Hospital, largest health institution in the city, is charged for water at the same exorbitant rate as if it were an ordinary industrial undertaking, the Administration admittedly taking a hundred percent profit ; while Arab hospitals,

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built and subsidized by the Government itself, do not pay for water at all. A sorrier state of affairs was recited in Commons on July u, 1935 by Captain Strickland, referring to the condition of Municipal Hospitalin Tel Aviv. The only institution serving the two hundred and fifty thousand Jewish inhabitants of this district, it had barely one-fifth of the accommodations normally demanded in civilized communities. With a long list of patients on the waiting list, it was so overcrowded that beds had to be put in the corridors. Facing the Colonial Secretary, Captain Strickland asked the astonishing question, "Has the Government yet decided to allow the Municipal Authorities of Tel Aviv to provide necessary additional hospital accommodations?"

The reply of the King's Officer was the usual skillful evasion — "It would be very unwise for me to forward ex parte statements to the High Commissioner, who as the House knows, gives most careful consideration to these matters." Here we have something approaching the ultimate in human enormity: though the Government's Department of Health contributed almost nothing to the support of Jewish hospitals, the Municipality of Tel Aviv is forbidden to provide improved hospitalization even at its given expense.

In matters of health, too, the British relentlessly squeeze this little country for profits. When the Municipality of Haifa came to an arrangement to buy its sewage pipes from a reliable Tel Aviv factory in July 1931, the Government stepped in and squashed the agreement, demanding that it purchase them in England instead. As a result of this kind of exploitation it was shown in 1935 that over seventy percent of the pipes in Jerusalem's newly laid water system were so defective that they all had to be torn up again. After a decade of mysterious engineering, Jerusalem is still so strictly rationed on water that a bath is a rare luxury and its people are often reduced to cleaning their

teeth with soda water. 16 It has been reliably estimated that the entire reserve supply would not last three weeks in emergency and that most of it is totally unfit for drinking purposes. 17

A perverse pleasure seems to be taken in keeping all abominations intact. One of

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these is an open sewer which runs from North Jerusalem down the whole valley, poisoning the air with a nauseating stink. This plague-spot has been in existence for

at least fourteen years. Despite protests, not the faintest attempt has ever been made to cover it. However, on occasion the Administration can take an aggressive interest in 'sanitary' measures. One of these, announced in July 1930, was a drainage project for Jerusalem — unaccountably routed so that it cut directly through the Sephardic cemetery, crossing the last resting place of Shimon Ha'tzadik, whom orthodox Jews regard as a saint. 18

LAWS, BENEFITS AND PUBLIC SERVICES

There are more useless officials quartered on the back of this unfortunate country than can be found in any other administrated area on earth. Officials crawl over the land like flies. In 1925, when they were not nearly so numerous, an Arab Congress did not hesitate to declare that "the Turkish regime administered Palestinewith no more than one-eighth of the present Administration and, from several points, more effectively and satisfactorily." 19 Some of these men are capable and efficient. Most are thoroughly unfitted by both experience and psychology for their posts. With few exceptions all of them avoid work as much as is decently possible. 20 In their train is

an assisting horde of native politicos who need no introduction to the somnambulant venality of the East.

It is a normal experience to go to one of the Government offices day after day seeking some small service, such as having the water turned on in a newly leased apartment, only to be told that the only person who can attend to your matter, is 'out.' To get anything done at all, it is the common practice to hand one of the native politicos an inducing sum on the side, which invariably helps. Duff's admirable book Galilee Galloper, barred in Palestine, gives a relentless description of the greed and corruption of these men. Their hand is everlastingly out, and nothing can be moved without the passing of a proper bribe.

Despite its hostility to Marxism, the Government of Palestine has put into effect

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a practical socialism of its own. It owns railroads, telephones and other public utilities, and keeps a close control over every kind of major enterprise. The attitude was explained in a sentence by Mr. Johnson, the Palestine Treasurer, when he was asked directly why it was so difficult for Jews to obtain any concessions. Johnson replied tersely: "What do you s'pose uoe're 'ere for ! " Meaning that if any of the pro-

posed concessions were any good, 'they' would operate them for themselves with the public moneys, creating more jobs for worthy Englishmen out of work. This procedure is, however, held in check by lack of experience and the enervating climate. Ordinarily things touched by officialdom wither — or proceed at a snail's pace.

Very little that is lucrative escapes their attention. Jewish firms rendering a public service sooner or later find Englishmen in control of their businesses; or their charters are canceled outright. The Jewish Hasolel Company, first to generate electricity in Jerusalem, may be given as a case in point. Its rights to operate were challenged and the concession was finally taken away from this firm by a simple maneuver. An obscure Greek named Mavromattes with an ancient 'charter' from the Sultan, was dug up and his claims were shrewdly advanced at the Hague Tribunal. Mavromattes, whose support hinged on an under-cover agreement to sell to British interests, got the concession; and in September 1928 the powerful London Power Security Company 21 owned the business so bravely started by the little Hasolel Corporation. Scarcely half a year later, a boycott was being threatened against the new owner for its policy in refusing to employ Jews.

All public utilities seem to operate on the theory that in one way or another life must be made miserable for the Jews. The phone service is a case in point. Jews are the great majority of all subscribers. According to Hoofien's estimate, they are more than seventy percent of the subscribers even in Arab Jaffa. In a rapidly industrializing country, telephone communications are an urgent necessity. Nevertheless, applicants for new phones were informed that these could not be installed under three years’

317 DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 317

notice. The expressed reason for this delay was that the Government did not like the existing telephone building and, apparently, had been spending all these years trying to decide on an acceptable location for a new one. The ownership of a phone inPalestine is now worth a substantial sum of money, often changing hands like a seat on the stock exchange.

Though Tel Aviv is the commercial center of the country, trunk calls to and from that city have to pass through the Jaffa Exchange. If a subscriber wants to put in a call during business hours from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem or Haifa, it will take him from two to three hours to get through. 22 Even this is sometimes an improvement over the local service. Jerusalem's main post office has two call-boxes, one for local and one for trunk purposes. "If the local box is occupied," says an English political writer, "the wise man calls a friend in Haifa, delivers a message, which he asks to be put through to the required number in Jerusalem, and steps out of the trunk-box elated over the comparative perfection of the long distance service, while his neighbor in the local box is still trying to extricate himself from wrong numbers." 23

All communications of any kind are in the hands of the Government. Wires must be brought to the Central Post Office in person and must be called for in the same way. The Government fixes the charge, no matter which cable or wireless company is to handle the message. The press rate for sending a cable from Jerusalem to London is 2 1 mils a word, and it takes an average of two hours in transit. FromCairo, Egypt, where the distance to London is almost the same, the rate is n mils per word, and the time in transit is a half-hour.

All but a negligible proportion of telegrams are forwarded by Jews. The revenue of this Department in an ordinary year amounts to around £300,000, against an average expenditure of £198,000.

Until very recently, messages were accepted only in English and Arabic. A stream of violent protests from Jewish telegraph users bombarded Geneva in protest. Replying to the League's question the Government asserted that its lawyers had made a careful

318 Pics

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search of the Mandate and were unable to find any specific provision for the sending of telegraphic messages in Hebrew. 2 * After a protracted struggle, this farce was ended when the Permanent Mandates Commission ordered that the discrimination cease. The Government then installed Hebrew telegraphy in only a few cities, so that its use became, in effect, impossible.

The Mandate for Palestine guarantees the rights of the Hebrew language, though these are constantly infringed in State institutions and in public life. Throughout the Government Service an accurate knowledge of Arabic is demanded, but no understanding of Hebrew is expected from either Arab or Englishman. Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson brought out on December 3, 1937 that only two percent of the Senior Officers in Palestine had even a passing knowledge of Hebrew. Even in Jerusalem itself, regulations were issued by the Commandant of Police requiring a working knowledge of English and Arabic of all officers and constables in order to be eligible for promotion. No mention of Hebrew was made at all. This discrimination against Jews in a Jewish city received such worldwide publicity that knowledge of Hebrew was hastily included; but in practice the original force and purpose of the regulation remained intact.

Identical strictures operate against the showing of the Jewish flag. Its public use is treated as a virtual encroachment on public morals. This was demonstrated convincingly during the celebration of the Maimonides Octo-centenary in April 1935. 25 Spain, the great philosopher's birthplace, declared the occasion a public holiday. Other powers, including the Vatican, joined in honoring his memory. In Palestine the thousands of Jewish pilgrims to his tomb were greeted by police with batons, who busied themselves, among other activities, in tearing down all Jewish flags they could find.

The present flag of the National Home is the Union Jack with the word 'Palestine' inscribed in a small circle in the lower right hand corner. Its adoption was precipitated late in 1934, when a Japanese sea captain gave the Zionists their cue

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(which with customary ineptness they ignored) by refusing to fly British colors when in Palestine port, maintaining that the National Home was an independent country under League Mandate.

Quite in keeping is the Government Broadcasting Service, launched with much fanfare at the beginning of 1936. After operating but a few days, officials forced the Hebrew speakers to eliminate the namePalestine with (Eretz Yisroel) when referring

to Palestine, and to substitute the phrase's initials, (Aleph Yud), a childish piece of malice which is even carried over to the country's postage stamps.

Several typical incidents will show the uses this public service is being put to. During the last week of September 1936, a famous Arabic legend was being retold. The story revolves around the classic loyalty of the Jewish poet-hero, Ishmuel (Samuel) Adaya HaCohen, who had protected a valuable shield entrusted to him by the Arab hero Alkis, even when his little son was being tortured to death to force him to yield. To this day HaCohen remains so traditional a symbol of absolute honesty that an Arab when speaking of outstanding loyalty and trust will say, "faithful as Ishmuel." As told over the Government broadcasting station by the announcer, a public official, the explanation was added that "Samuel behaved as he did from love of wealth, as the shield that Alkis had left was a pledge for money Samuel had loaned him." Thus the speaker demonstrated that so great is the avarice of the crafty Jew that he would even sacrifice his own child to it. On another occasion, in February 1937, a visiting English M.P. named McGovern had his scheduled talk over the Palestine Broadcasting Service cavalierly canceled at the last moment. The acknowledged reason was that McGovern had made the mistake of lauding Jewish accomplishments in a newspaper interview the day before.

Radios practically come within the contraband class. The tourist is astounded to discover that he must make a special journey toJerusalem and cut his way through a swathing of red tape to get his radio out of quarantine, where it is impounded on sight. Though Jews require a special permit even to possess one, hundreds of sets have been supplied without cost by the Government to Arab villages so that they

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might listen to the propaganda sent out from London and Jerusalem. (The English have been lately horrified to find that the Arabs have been tuning in instead on the anti-English incitement broadcast from Italian Bari.)

Even the priceless antiquities of the Holy Land are not sacred to the ruling caste and may be exported unhindered; though such 'backward' nations as Honduras prohibit similar ravishment as an offense against the nation. Much connivance goes on to enrich individual pocketbooks. In one representative instance, certain of these priceless objects were disposed of to a 'speculator' for £500, who promptly 'resold' them to a Chicago museum for £2000, a price in itself far below their real value. 26

In other respects the regulation of life is minute and drastic. The most revolutionary enactments decorate the statute books, often promulgated without notice or publicity. One of these empowers a police officer to stop a touring car and order the driver to do such a thing as transport a live cow to the municipal slaughter house. 27 Another entitles the Authorities to shut off the water supply at anyJerusalem address where a resident has contravened any municipal law. Still another of these edicts empowers the Government to revoke the citizenship of anyone whose utterances might be displeasing to it, without explanation and without recourse. Here one is reminded of the story of the Berlin Jew, Horowitz, who wrote to a friend in America saying that everything was fine with him under the Hitler Government, putting at the end of his letter the following P.S.: "Abe Cohen, who complained in a letter to his brother that things were not so well here, was shot yesterday." No one needs to explain to the Government of Palestine what it means for a Jew to be without a country and without a passport in the present world.

*NO JEWS NEED APPLY'

Had the Government seriously wished to pursue the policy of the Mandate, it would have engaged itself in training Jews for its administrative and executive departments

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against the day when the manifest purposes of that document had been fulfilled.

Simple logic would have recommended the appointment to high position of only those Arabs who could be relied on to carry out the policy to which the Mandatory was pledged. But the official cabal had quite other ideas. Hence we discover, among

the other 'benefits' conferred on Jews in Palestine, their derogation to a sub-human species who at all costs must be kept out of the Government itself.

As in Nazi Germany, virtually the only Jews who can get Government positions are the old soldiers — and their lives are made so miserable that they prefer anything else if they can get it. Though European Zionists proclaimed their happy relationship withBritain, local Jewry suffered from no such illusion. The Vaad Leumi Memorandum to the League of June 15, 1931, referring to the exclusion of Jewish workers on all governmental projects, declared pointblank that "this exclusion, which is in effect a boycott, provides additional evidence of a Government policy calculated to ignore the interests of the Jewish community in all its needs. . ."

When Samuel came after the 1920 pogrom which almost lost the Mandate for England, a number of high-ranking Jewish officials had been appointed with him as evidence of London's good faith. The most important of these was Norman Bentwich, the Attorney-General. As was true of Samuel, Bentwich leaned over backward so far that he favored the Arabs like the other officials. But this did not save him and he was retired by 'comrade' Passfield because he was a Jew, eight years before his pension able age. 28

The resignation in 1932 of A. M. Hyamson, Director of the Department of immigration, eliminated the last Jew who served as a department head in Palestine. Hyamson had managed to hold on to his job by outdoing even the English in severity to Jews. This did not save him either. The Administration simply did not want anyone remotely suspected of being a Jew in a position of authority. The Jews, who had come to detest this man, were also glad to see him leave. Said the Hebrew press

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politely at the time : "Mr. Hyamson's departure from Palestine will not be viewed with regret." 29

British policy has turned Palestine into a paradise for petty Arab officials, who have been encouraged into bold disloyalty to the very Mandate which feeds them. To understand all the implications contained in this shoddy situation, the character and

training of the average Arab must be borne in mind. Like the Garrote of Luzon, he is still in the tribal stage of development.

He still lives in the atmosphere of the Ghazzu, the night raid. Lawrence, and everyone else who has had any experience with him, was quick to grasp his hopeless inadequacy for any kind of modern organization. In all of Palestine but 73,000 Muslims are able to read and write. To these may be added 43,000 Christians, making 116,000 non-Jews who can sign their own names.

Against this miserable showing, almost one hundred percent of the Jews in Palestine are literate. They not only possess a heavy majority of the trained and educated population but have in their midst some of the greatest minds in the world. Included in their ranks is a vast amount of ability that has fled from oppression, a concentration of so many scholars, engineers, economists, thinkers and distinguished figures generally, that they probably represent the highest group level of culture and ability

in existence. Here was apparently the perfect source to draw on, in this land inexperienced in self-rule, for the purposes of efficient government.

Actually, we find bias against these people so great that they are allowed to serve only where their appointment could hardly be prevented — as in the case of translators, or in the municipal Jewish institutions. The Government's Works and Plans Department provides an excellent illustration. Some of the ablest engineers in the world now live permanently in Palestine but are studiously ignored. Whenever competent engineers or architects are needed, advertisements for the purpose are inserted solely in the Londonpapers. That 'Aryans only' need apply, goes without saying.

In the whole Government service, Jews, who constitute one third of the population

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and contribute the bulk of the State's revenues, hold less than 5% of the public jobs. Even this fraction is in the nature of a sop, thrown irritably to keep them quiet as one does a bone to a yelping dog. A bird's-eye view of these complaints tells a vivid story. A wild cry from the Jewish Agency reveals that the percentage of Jewish labor employed on public enterprises was 1%% in 1925, as compared with 6% in 1922. 30 In the five-year period ending March 31, 1927, the average was less than 3%. The Agency avers that in Haifa where Jews were half the population, and at Jaffa where their numbers were considerable, extensive public works programs were undertaken without employing a single Jewish workman or clerk. It declares that less than 4% of those employed on public works inJerusalem are Jews.

As early as 1926, various departments of the Government had already been made Judenrein (free of Jews) . A list of official appointments published October 11 of that year, shows the railroads, post office and police departments to be practically without Jews, though a few were appointed in ensuing years to keep a decent face. No Jews at all were named to the strategic Land Courts or to the Frontier Force. In 1930 a Customs Department investigation disclosed that in the head Government office,

of thirty-five officials, one was Jewish. In the Haifa office, of thirty-two officials, there were two Jews. Since these offices were all in strong Jewish areas, it does not require saying that in the Arab sectors there were no Jews at all.

By 1935 the condition was hardly improved. In April of that year the Hebrew press was complaining that Jewish officials in Government offices averaged less than one-half of one percent. Not a single Jew was employed in the vast Haifa Harbor extension and improvement works. There were only ten in the Government works in Jerusalem, including the Printing Press, Post Office and Police School, and only five on Jerusalem municipality enterprises. Thousands of illegal Arab newcomers were being used on these projects, but no Jews were wanted.

Evidence presented to the Peel Commission in 1937, proved that though they contribute directly sixty-five percent of the railway revenue, out of the 4300

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employees in the Government railway system only 365 were Jews. The annual budget of £130,000 for road maintenance and public works was spent almost in its entirety with Arabs.

Though Jews are responsible for seventy percent of customs receipts, they are virtually excluded from labor in the ports. At Jaffathe porters are all in direct Government employ. Lighter men and stevedores must be licensed by the Authorities, who flatly refused to issue licenses to Jews. At Haifa a considerable proportion of the porters work for private firms, which hire Jews? Of the three thousand laborers regularly working in the two ports, at the beginning of 1936 only three hundred were Jews, all of whom were in the employ of Jewish importers. 31

Where a proportion of Jews is used the difference in treatment is impressive. Even the Peel Commission was compelled to remark that Jewish scavengers in Jerusalem were not supplied with winter clothes as Arab scavengers had been. 32

Partisanship of the most indefensible kind is always in evidence. Tel Aviv, with one hundred and fifty thousand people, is allowed only twenty-six postmen, who work twelve hours a day for a month. Side by side with these Jewish mail-carriers are imported Englishmen who are paid four or five times this amount. The Executive Committee of the Palestine Arab Congress comments that "salaries of Government servants are a matter of wonder and ridicule. . . A customs cashier in Jerusalem station, for instance, gets £26 per men?* He is transferred and his successor is given only £12, though he is held equally responsible. A clerk in a department gets more

sometimes than his chief who is even responsible for his own work; as for example is the case in the Werko Department of Jerusalem where the director of that section gets £16 and one of his clerks gets £22, though the former is his senior in age and service, and though other clerks who carry on the same work get between £10 and £15." 34

Sometimes official bias goes to such lengths that it backs up against itself. An amusing instance concerned a contract for a £60,000 British military camp near the Jewish settlement of

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Netania, assigned to a firm in Egypt. Unable to handle it, they promptly sublet the job at a profit to Jewish contractors in Palestine.

Still others took their cue from the Government and refused to employ Jews. One of them was the already mentioned Jerusalem Electric Company. Another was the important Shell Oil group, beneficiary of the tax-free Iraq Oil Company agreement.

A particularly flagrant case concerned the famous King David Hotel, one of the largest enterprises in the country and a favorite rendezvous of Government officials. On September 23, 1934 it became entirely Judenrein, the last remnant of a once-large Jewish staff having been dismissed to be replaced by imported foreign labor. Bellowed the manager: "We want no Jews in this hotel. We shall keep it clean." 35

AN ANGLO-SAXON SYSTEM OF JURISPRUDENCE

The average Englishman believes religiously in the incorruptible quality of "British justice." He will tell you that the Englishman takes his whole system of equity with him wherever he goes, and that it is a great, moral, cleansing influence in the lives of the backward peoples who inhabit the far reaches of the Empire. But whatever it may be elsewhere, the British system of jurisprudence in the Holy Land has little to recommend it.

The men sent down from London to rule this martyred country proceeded at once to put into effect a number of kinds of justice for a number of kinds of people. Lowest in the categories of caste by which equity was meted out were the Jews.

The Arabs followed a few notches ahead in favoritism. Perched on top of the heap were the English, who were practically a law unto themselves.

Widespread corruption degrades every department of the Judiciary. Graft, baksheesh and rake-off are constantly in the background as in the worst days of the Roman yoke. Every-thing connected with either the police or the courts is for sale.

Even the black-list of persons to be kept under particular police surveillance at the time of the 1929 outbreak (a document so

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confidential that it was even kept secret from the Parliamentary Commissions sent down later to investigate), appeared in Photostat, with admitted accuracy, in the columns of the New York Forwards and in other papers throughout the world. Thoroughly disgusted, Detective Chief Broadhurst came to the conclusion "that to put anything on paper at all was simply 'to blow the whole gaff.' "36 He candidly concedes that it would be impossible to operate a jury system in Palestine. Bribery and corruption infest all processes of law to such a degree that to introduce it would mean a complete end to even the bare pretense of legal justice. 37

The great bulk of appointments to the Magistracy have been drawn from clerks and interpreters, some of them semi-literates. The Government benevolently allows these incompetents ten years to pass an examination, meanwhile authorizing them to serve in a judicial capacity. "There was only one man on the High Court Bench who had any real conception of criminal law," states Broadhurst laconically, "and he was in a district where his knowledge was only of use locally." 38

To the outsider it is incredible that Tel Aviv has no Court. All matters involving more than £150 have to be heard in Jaffa. A court sits in such Arab villages as Jenin, Tulkarm and Acre, but the largest city in the country has no court. And if you speak anything but Arabic to the notary of clerks in the Jaffa District Court, you will be stared at as if you were some strange animal. The record of proceedings in almost all courts is kept in Arabic. Basic law is still the old reactionary Ottoman code, long ago discarded as obsolete in Turkey itself.

The prosecution of crime is almost wholly in Arab hands. The Government Advocate is an Arab. His assistant at head- quarters is an Arab. With the exception of one Jew, who does only office work, all the Junior Government Advocates are Arabs. 39

The Criminal Investigation Department is so desultory in its service that it can hardly be said to exist in practice. Here, too, official perjury is an expected occurrence and influence and baksheesh are part of the formula of justice. It is notorious that the

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police 'investigators' who compose the original 'report' before cases come to the examining magistrate, will prepare these documents in any way that is wanted if a proper payment is made. As for the courts, "it was possible," says Broadhurst, "to obtain a habeas corpus for a few piastres in order to short-circuit proceedings." 40 The style of British officialdom itself can be convincingly grasped in the trial of a Georgian Jew named Turshoili, for arson, in November 1932. Declared States Attorney; Elliot for the Government, before the highest tribunal in Palestine: "Jews are necessarily arsonists."

The police are merciless to prisoners who meet their displeasure. Their tone may be judged from the reappointment to high position in the Police Force of Kheir El Din Effendi Besesso after he had been found guilty by the High Court, on August 9, 1928,

of kidnapping a witness for the defense on the eve of a criminal trial. Says Duff who should know: "Torquemada, or the Court of Star Chamber can have had little fresh to impart to your Palestinepoliceman determined to extract a confession." The arrest of two Jewish children, Simon Mizrachi, aged 9, and Haham Jacob, aged 10, on March 7, 1931, provides a ghastly example. Without their parents having been informed of the offense, the 'criminals,' charged with throwing stones at an Arab's house, were flogged so unmercifully that one was reported near death. 41 The brutal medieval custom of whipping is actively followed in the jails, a matter which received some

airing in Commons in June 1928, where the Colonial Secretary learnedly backed this cruel usage with the opinion that "flogging was a proper punishment."

Not even the concentration camps of Germany can surpass in pure horror prison life in Palestine. The jail at Acre is a good example. It is the principal prison of Palestine, a massive, forbidding structure inherited from the Turks. Its foul dungeons, in which light and air rarely enter, are a relic of ages past.

The prison food is supplied by a concessionaire, the lowest bidder receiving the concession. It is of the poorest kind and consists of a small amount of rice, rough bread and a handful of green olives. A great many of the prisoners are growing boys

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in their teens (especially those held as illegal immigrants), and very often remain crippled for life after a year or two of this diet. "General weakness, stoppage of growth, ulcerated stomach, anemia and chronic dysentery are prevalent among the

younger Acre prisoners," writes Malkah Ray mist. 42 There is no distinction made between petty offenders, illegal immigrants, tourists who overstay their leave, murderers, prostitutes or the insane; all of whom are crowded into the same filthy cells, where at times it is almost impossible to breathe. The prisoners have no beds and must sleep directly on the earth floor. Until early in 1938 they were not even entitled to blankets.

There is no adequate medical service and no dental service at all. All of the prisoners (including those awaiting trial) are put on hard labor and regularly kicked and beaten if they are unable to do the heavy work demanded of them. At the slightest sign of disobedience they are severely thrashed or thrown into a tiny windowless cell called the 'sensane,' a foul cubicle where a man can neither lie nor stand, but only crouch. Sanitary conditions are nil and the stench is described as unimaginable. Clothes are seldom issued and often prisoners have to go about in rags. Cigarettes are not allowed. Inmates may write or receive letters only once a month, so that they are virtually cut off from the world.

Under these terrible conditions unfortunates of all kinds may be kept for years awaiting trial, and must then serve their sentences in addition.

Suicide and attempted suicide are a common occurrence, particularly among the illegal immigrants held here. Often the prisoners collapse in fainting spells or develop fits of wild hysteria, screaming, tearing their hair and knocking their heads against the stone walls. Those who have been kept here for any considerable period invariably emerge physical wrecks.

Palestine is the only country where the old law of imprisonment for debt still holds. Another novelty of Palestine court procedure permits witnesses to give testimony behind a screen so that the accused cannot see them. 43 An even more startling

introduction is contained in the Laws of Evidence (Amendments) Ordinance,

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introduced in 1936, which "abolishes the necessity for corroboration in criminal cases generally." 44

Fully as abhorrent to any civilized mind is the practice of levying collective fines on whole villages for the misdeeds of a single culprit; or still more horrible, of blowing up entire blocks of houses with dynamite on suspicion that a yet-untried law-breaker made his home in one of them.

What was taking place under good British Government may be aptly judged from the fact that in an ordinary year there were three hundred and sixty reported murders in Palestine, with only eight offenders hanged. Hundreds of additional homicides were not reported at all, "while highway robberies and cattle thefts were higher even than they had been in the laxest years of the Ottoman regime." 45

Duff gives a graphic account of the officially condoned reign of terror against the Jews in the sector where he was ruling police officer. "It was a most trying situation for me," he writes. "I dare not do much against the Arabs, even though I knew they

were guilty, as Jerusalem frowned on anything that would annoy the 'Nationalists,' as these self-seeking, cynical effendis called themselves." In his district a hurricane of outrages battered the Jewish settlers, ranging from wanton destruction of trees and animals, to murder and assault yet, he writes, "in no single instance was I able, through the restrictions placed upon me, to bring the offenders to trial, though I knew who the guilty persons were, and they knew I did." 46 It was a contemplation of this sort of thing which caused Wedgwood to cry out in Commons that "the Government at the present time is antiSemitic and is a disgrace to England."

It appears to be a principle of common equity here that thieves and vandals may not be injured when they are caught red-handed at their work. Hundreds of Jewish watchmen have been imprisoned for doing bodily harm to Arabs who came to steal or commit other depredations. A simple example is the case of an 18-year-old watchman named Solomon Jacobson who was badly injured during a raid by a gang of Arab thugs organized for purposes of theft. In an effort to discharge his duty and defend

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his life he mortally wounded one of the invaders. For this 'crime' he was sentenced on May 2, 1935 to seven and one half years at hard labor. Another typical case occurred February 24, 1933, when a group of thirty Bedouins attacked a small Jewish colony, killing an ex-Legionnaire and wounding several others. Police who stood watching a short distance away did not attempt to interfere; but four of the raiders were captured by members of the colony. At theNablus Court, a few months later, the Bedouins were acquitted for lack of evidence,' an item which appears with tiresome repetition onPalestine court records.

The amazing legal principle making these decisions possible is indicated in the case of Naftali Rubenstein, a watchman of the Bath Galim settlement, who was sentenced to prison at Haifa for "attempted murder" (the wounding of an Arab). The judge, in pronouncing his verdict, stated that it was intentionally light because "there 'were extenuating circumstances" in that the Jews of Bath Galim were being assaulted by Arabs at the time! 47

An even more revolutionary precedent is written in the case of Achmed Said, an Arab burglar who had killed a watchman of the Jewish colony at Petach Tikvah. The Jerusalem Court sentenced the man to six months, justifying this nominal punishment on the score that "the crime had been unpremeditated" in that the thief had killed the watchman only to escape being caught. 48 However, when an Englishman is killed, also "without premeditation," the death penalty is unhesitatingly invoked. This double application of the law is nowhere better shown than in the trial of one Sadik Altamini, indicted for inciting a Hebron crowd with the cry: "Kill Police Inspector Cafferatta and the Jews!" For inciting to kill Cafferatta, the man was sentenced to four years at hard labor. At the same time, the second charge, that of inciting to kill Jews, was dropped "for lack of evidence r 49

Offenses against womanhood are regarded almost casually. "Young girls no longer may venture forth safely alone on the streets," writes the correspondent for the

331 DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 

National Catholic Welfare Council. 60 The Government's attitude speaks for itself in

the dismissal of a Jewish sub-inspector of police named Ben-Yehuda for communicating to the press and some friends" the fact that an American girl had been violated on the streets of Jerusalem. 51 Cases of unpunished criminal assault reached

such proportions that the American Consul General in Jerusalemwas forced to make strong representations on behalf of the United States Government. 52 As if by magic, three assailants of an American girl were promptly apprehended and sentenced to fifteen years at hard labor — the heaviest and practically the only punishment imposed for such crimes up to that time.

In addition to the deluge of rape cases against women were many degenerate attacks on boys and men. The Palestine penal law does not prohibit homosexuality and its practice involves little social stigma among Muslims.

The official attitude is brought home in revolting detail in the case of a Jewish boy and girl named Stahl and Zohar who disappeared in the Winter of 1931 while out for a stroll. A series of earlier outrages had excited the Jewish community to a fever pitch of feeling; and since the Authorities would do nothing, private investigators were hired and a big reward posted. This initiative brought accusing witnesses from Bedouin villages near Herzelia, who led investigators to a shallow grave where the

bodies of the unlucky youngsters were found. The boy had been stabbed to death defending his companion. The girl, according to witnesses, had been violated by five Bedouins.

Though the culprits were thus openly named, the police made no effort to arrest them. Here a new factor entered. The murdered pair were nationals of Germany and Poland and their consulates insisted on at least a show of justice. Under these representations, the Government took the five accused into custody, where three were promptly discharged and the other two held on the familiar charge of "unpremeditated murder" — the fact that the killing had been incidental to an attempt at rape apparently being considered a mitigating circumstance. To make the police less eager for private rewards in future, an officer named Kabra was given three years for having lodged

332 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

“false information" against the Arabs who had been released, though they had been identified by a score of people of their own tribe.

Now followed galling, interminable delay. Finally, after angry representations from the Polish and German Consuls, the Bedouins were committed to trial. Though the case against each of them was identical, only one was found guilty and he was

sentenced to fifteen years. The same Court which made this decision sentenced an Arab named Mustafa Jeebawi to death for the murder of Mrs. Thomas Miller, wife of an English engineer, while bent on rape. 53 Apparently 'un-premeditation' did not apply when it came down to typical Arab crimes against the families of British officials.

It has been shown time and again that culprits arrested for physical attacks on Jews were rescued by the public prosecutors themselves. Apparently this corrosion reaches into the highest places, as was clearly demonstrated in the case of an Arab (a suspected murderer) caught in flagrant delicto with four rifles and some bombs, early in 1937. The prosecuting attorney immediately asked that the case be thrown out of court. Guilelessly, the presiding magistrate asked why it should not at least be pressed according to normal regulations on illegal possession of arms. "I am acting on instructions," snapped back the Government attorney. 54

In addition to the civil and criminal courts are an unending multiplicity of ecclesiastical tribunals whose jurisdiction is legally recognized. These perform civil functions ordinarily considered to be the prerogative of the State alone. The judges who sit in the Muslim Sharia Courts are considered servants of the Administration, which pays their salaries — yet the courts themselves are completely removed from any supervision by the Government's Legal Department. In the usual contrast, Jewish

courts must pay all their own expenses by a voluntary tax on the Jewish community. The privileges of the various non-British Christian communities are intermediate between those of Jews and Muslims. However, Christians are allowed certain unique,

333 DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES  

overall privileges in compensation. One is the right of monks, European or native, to serve sentences of imprisonment in the spiritual seclusion of their own monasteries instead of in the squalid promiscuity of a Palestine lockup. 55

THE WOLF NAMED SHERIFF TO THE LAMBS

One may well pity a people who are placed at the mercy of an alien police. The Irish, with centuries of wretchedness behind them, could tell you something about that. Jews who remember the Kishineff massacres in Russia, when uniformed gendarmes led the howling hooligans over the barricades, could tell you more. From their experience in Palestine they could add terrible pages to that record.

Shocked by the course events have taken in the National Home, Colonel Patterson grimly referred to it as a "National Death Trap." Echoing the same disgust and revulsion, former Colonial Secretary Amery sarcastically informed his Government that the Home could not be regarded as a Home "unless those living there were allowed to play a part in its defense." 56

Since the disbanding of the Jewish Legion it has been known that Jews were not wanted in the Palestine military or police force. Part of the strategy in this high game of dissimulation was to make it impossible for the Jews to protect themselves, and

then, by encouraging attacks upon them, pose as the faithful, disquieted custodian who was being badgered from all corners for his good offices. Thus the Jew is placed in the traditional role of a craven interloper foisted on an innocent people, who too cowardly to defend himself, calls on the harassed Briton to do this for him while he slinks out of harm's way. It is this interpretation that London has so painstakingly palmed off on puzzled world opinion.

The modern Jew has proven himself to be a good soldier. In the World War he won his full share of citations in all countries. The present French Foreign Legion, so famous for its exploits in North Africa, has so many Jews in its ranks that whole

334 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

sections of it can almost be designated as a Hebrew force. The same is true of the plucky International Brigade of Spain which held up Franco's advance for so long.

In Palestine the Jews were at all times prepared to defend themselves and were perfectly capable of doing so, had they not been rendered impotent by the Government. The Hebrew in his National Home is far from a milksop. The military of Palestine would be literally swamped with Jewish recruits, were they accepted. Before the British came, the Jewish colonies were considered the safest places in the Near East. Their gendarmerie, a force of hard-riding, reckless horsemen known as the

Shomrim, had long since won a reputation for everything that was fearless and gallant. The Turks freely acknowledged it to be the most skilled police force in the Near East. In those days Arabs did not attack Jewish colonies, preferring to pay their night-riding respects to other Arab tribes and villages where they would get off with a whole skin.

One of the first British acts was to quietly disband this efficient constabulary, and to organize one of their own from which Jews were excluded. They were disarmed as if they had been a conquered enemy, and were not even allowed to possess the small arms and dirks habitually carried by all Bedouins. A lurid light is thrown on this circumstance in an anecdote concerning an irreproachable physician who had been attacked by an Arab assassin. When the police called to inquire, the doctor informed them in a sad voice: "I was afraid you had come to arrest me."

"Arrest you?" said the officer. "Why?"

"Well, because it is known that I carry a weapon."

"A weapon? Where do you have it?"

"Here," answered the doctor, turning around, "it is a knife, stuck in my back." 57

The expenditure for military and police in the Holy Land amounts to more than a third of the total revenues. The immense constabulary this infers is hardly required for the policing of Jews, who foot its bills. The trial of Jews for crimes of violence is practically unknown. Even on such minor charges as drunkenness, only 52 Jews were among the 724 convicted

335 DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 

during 1935; and out of 415 sentenced in 1936 for the same offense, 27 were Jews. Commenting in Commons, Wedgwood cried: "You say that the money spent on the police force is spent to protect the Jews. . . If you go to any police station, you will find that the crimes of violence and the crimes against which the police are provided ... are committed by Arabs and not by Jews. . . So far as the police and the defense of Palestine are concerned, if you gave the Jews arms and allowed them to defend themselves, it would not need so many defenses, even from the excellent British police." 58

The present percentage of Jews on the police force is just large enough to be reasonably circumspect. One is surprised to discover that Tel Aviv itself has few Jewish policemen. The surface excuse is that Jews do not care for this type of work.

The hidden stratagem, which makes this condition possible; lies in the amazing scale of salaries. There are few Jewish men who are able to live on the £15 a month the Administration is willing to pay a Jewish policeman. At the same time, imported Englishmen are given £35 a month for precisely the same police work. Even common labor averages £24 a month.

The Frontier Force is no better. When it was formed in 1926 the Authorities decided to exclude Jews from it on principle, as well as from the Border Patrol Force. All sections of Palestine Jewry rose in furious protest. The Zionist Executive itself was passive, Weizmann going so far as to declare that "from the political standpoint it is unimportant whether in Palestine a bigger or smaller number of Jewish gendarmes would be employed." This pedantic outlook did not deter local Jewish opinion, which finally forced the Colonial Office to voice the empty assurance that "Jews would not be excluded by principle." 59 In 1930 the Jewish Agency was again remonstrating that the Frontier Force "was to all intents and purposes an Arab Force." 60 In 1937, out of a total of 1039 men there were only 35 Jews.

While Jews were thus practically forbidden to join this national legion which their tax money keeps, Arabs, who are both poor and unwilling soldiers, have not responded in

336 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

sufficient numbers. The Arab likes fighting but he detests drilling and routine. So it became necessary to draw on outlanders from everywhere. The London Daily Telegraph describes the result, calling the Force "a veritable Foreign Legion of the Near East," containing among others, Britons, Austrians, Germans, Armenians, Circassians, Chechans, Druses, Hejazis, Kurds, Russians, Serbians, Sudanese and Syrians. 61 According to the Peel Commission's Report in 1937, the Force contained more Sudanese than Jews and almost six times as many Circassians alone. It is thus apparent that almost anyone is welcome in this defense force except the Jews whose National Home it ostensibly exists to protect.

It must be perfectly plain that this hot-blooded gendarmerie is a poor guarantee of security. The police themselves are described by Broadhurst as a queer, unruly lot. "Annual meetings of officers," he writes, "generally resolved themselves into

discussions on the best methods of entering police horses for the local races. . " 62

In each of the previous pogroms it was the police themselves who were found to be the leaders of the mob. What may be expected of them in the future can easily be guessed from a few passing incidents. One was the storm raised in Parliament in

June 1934 over the report that police detailed to cover the Levant Fair in Tel Aviv wore swastikas on their arms. It is no secret that the recent rebellion itself was started with arms and ammunition stolen by the Palestine gendarmerie from the Central Government Arsenal in Jerusalem. Whatever clarity the position lacked was provided in June 1936, when the police stood in ceremonial silence, on public parade, in honor of the desperadoes whose rifles had touched off the revolt. 63

NUMEROUS CLAUSUES AND CENSORSHIP

In Jerusalem where there are not more than one thousand Germans, there is an avowedly Nazi daily newspaper. It seems fair to ask under whose auspices this pogrom-inciting literature is published. And how can it be issued in a Jewish city, and

337 DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES

in a country ruled by an all-powerful autocrat with complete powers of censorship which he does not hesitate to use whenever it pleases him?

In Jerusalem also, Nazi handbills of the most scurrilous type are openly distributed without interference by the police. 64 How can this be done in the capital city of the Jewish National Home ? At a moment when England itself is expressing violent

indignation over Nazi excesses, a Jewish youth is arrested and sentenced to the degradation of a public whipping for picketing a Jewish shop which was selling German goods. Why should this be a commendable expression of spirit in England,

but a crime in the National Home?

The Jerusalem Y.M.C.A. is a favorite retreat of the High Commissioner himself and its Board is certainly dominated by Government officials. Yet its General Secretary, an American named Waldo Heinrichs, was summarily discharged when he attempted to exclude Hitler's Jew-baiting Voelkischer Beobachter from the general reading room. Why is this so?

There is a book published in England called The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror. It is a factual history of the first months of the Nazi inquisition in Germany. No one has ever challenged its accuracy. Yet when it comes to Palestine it is banned, together with other anti-Hitler literature. But Hitler's Mein Kampf, a venomous collection of canards against the Jew, is not banned. 65

Everyone who has ever been in the Near East knows what British censorship in Palestine is Newspapers may be forbidden to mention the very name of a notorious murderer on trial for his life. The control is so strict that a story which doesn't sit well

with the Administration, just isn't cabled. Nor is the reporter informed about it. His first hint that anything is wrong is generally in the form of a communication from his home office, inquiring into his silence. When the Government wants to clamp down, relates a foreign correspondent, "it just shuts off telephone, telegraph and cable service completely." 66

Sometimes foreign Jewish newspapers are proscribed, as they are in Germany and Iraq. In 1934, for example, the Moment of Kaunas, Lithuania, was barred for a year

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and Unzerzeit of Kishineff (now part of Rumania) was outlawed permanently. Even such publications as the New York Times are occasionally confiscated when they contain articles favorable to the Jews.

Local Hebrew papers are consistently harassed and closed, though they exercise admirable restraint, foment no civil war and circulate no inflammatory manifestoes urging civil disobedience. Where they are not ordered stopped entirely, they often

go to press with huge white spaces in their columns, representing material ordered deleted by the Government censor. Perfectly representative of the Government's style is the suspension of the Hebrew papers Door Hayom and Haboker in July 1936 for the remarkable reason that they urged the Authorities to put a halt to the rioting and murder. Yet at the same time the censors permitted the radical Arab Journal A-Diffa to publish a poem by Ali Mansour which read: "We Arabs are all Abu Jildas [a notorious cutthroat and terrorist]; we shall drive Cohen [a name for the Jew, Mansour acquired from the Nazis] out of the country." Confident of its immunity, the Arab Press kept the sledges of hate pounding in a clamor of extravagant invective only limited by the imaginations of its authors. In few other countries, concedes the Peel Report, would such a campaign of vilification and incitement have been tolerated for a moment.

It is no exaggeration to state that everything pro-Jewish is either directly forbidden or discreetly frowned upon. Duff's books debunking the Arab terrorists are permanently banned in the Palestine he loved and served so long. Even Colonel Patterson, commander of the very legions which conquered this area, is made to suffer for his pro-Zionist views. During a visit in 1937 he was filmed in Tel Aviv inspecting some Jewish institutions. This bit of news-film, titled Colonel Patterson in Palestine, was banned by the Film Censorship Board on the single score that the film could not be shown with that title!

This singular custodian of Jewish aspirations, the Palestine Government, has introduced still other innovations, modeled after the notorious European numerous clauses. Feeling his way in December 1933, Government Officer Harkness

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 339

announced that the Administration was viewing with concern the preponderance of Jews, especially in the medical and dental callings; and that it was considering the introduction of numerous clauses in the professions. This was followed by the Medical Practitioners Ordinance. Thinly disguising its anti-Jewish bias, it placed a severe limit on the number of physicians who could be licensed in future. 67 Thus is laid the groundwork for a whole new plague of repressions against the Jews returning to their Home.

CHAPTER VIII

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

LEGALITIES — 'MADE IN ENGLAND'

We now return to another of those strange enigmas of British administration — the territory of the Jewish National Home east of Jordan. The shrewd manipulation by which it was filched from the Zionist pocketbook has already been referred to. Just

what its status is today (1938) remains a dark mystery. The territory is called an independent Emirate, yet remains part and parcel of the Mandate for Palestine. The same High Commissioner rules both. The Emir Abdullah, its nominal ruler, is granted an ample personal subsidy straight out of the Palestine treasury. The deficits of his stagnating State are taken care of from the same generous source.

When in 1922 London secured the League's consent to set up a separate Administration east of Jordan, it was granted only with the stipulation that "the general regime of the Mandate for Palestine" would be maintained there. To this London agreed, assuring the League "that no measure inconsistent with the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine would be passed in that territory." All of this, in words, was carried out in the 'treaty' with the Emir, and incorporated in the 'Constitution' of Trans-Jordan as well.

In 1924, officialdom still acknowledged that Trans-Jordan was an integral part of the Jewish National Home. On May 27 of that year, during a Palestine debate, Lord Arnold, then Under-Secretary for the Colonies, declared: "During the war we recognized Arab independence within certain border limits, and supported it. . . There were discussions as to what territories these borders should take in. But there was no dispute as to Trans-Jordan. There is no doubt about the fact that Trans-Jordan is within the boundaries to which the Declaration [Balfour] during the War refers. This is the Government's point of view relative to the political status of Trans-Jordan and

340 TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

the character of our relations to the land"

Under the Turks there were no restrictions against the settlement of Jews in Trans-Jordan. A number of colonization schemes were attempted. The largest was undertaken by Baron Edmund de Rothschild in 1894, who bought seventy thousand dunams in Golan for a large-scale resettlement project. This, however, was sidetracked in favor of the coastal development where Zionist effort was then concentrated.

Whitehall early banned Jewish penetration into this territory. Its expressed reason was a deep solicitation for the returning settlers, who allegedly would not be safe in this lawless, turbulent sector. The migratory tribes of Trans-Jordan could enter Western Palestine freely, however, since the question of their safety did not arise.

Soon these strictures became iron-clad. The eastern two-thirds of the National Home was not only hermetically sealed to Jewish settlement but Jews could not possess property there or practice a profession. Transjordan became the first and remains the only completely Judenrein area on the earth's surface. Apparently they are the only immigrants prohibited. Examination of the official British Report to the League for 1936 shows a large group of foreigners ranging from Syrians and Egyptians to Germans, Italians and Turks who have taken residence there. Says the Report succinctly: "The classified and unclassified officials of the Transjordan Government other than British, including the officers of the Arab Legion but excluding other ranks, numbered 683" of whom only 422 are Arabs born in Transjordan. 1

When the Mandates Commission sharply commented on this condition, London assured it that "there was no legal prohibition to prevent Jews from entering" Transjordan. In other words, on paper everything was in order. When the Commission bluntly demanded that these restrictions be abrogated, the British spokesman Dr. Drummond Shiels replied with unctuous regret "that that was impracticable because the existing Legislative Assembly in Trans-Jordan would frustrate such intentions." 2 Scarcely more than six months later we find the same

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Drummond Shiels declaring to an impatient Commons that "when Transjordan is freed from the irritation of raids and counter-raids by warring tribesmen, an opportunity will be given for its settlement and development." 3 Here we have two diametrically opposite lines of reasoning. One, that the normal processes of orderly government forbade an immigration disturbing to the country's economy. The other, that since no orderly government existed, it was unthinkable to allow civilized

immigrants to enter.

Faced with a fait accompli, the League in some meretricious hair-splitting came to a curious decision: Jews who were natives of Palestine and hence not nationals of a State member of the League, could not claim the equality stipulated in Article XVIII

of the Mandate. These could be excluded. However, any Jews in Palestine who were not Palestinians, must, according to the terms of the Mandate, be allowed the right of free access to Transjordan. 4

In actual practice the British went whole hog down the line, barring English Jews as rigidly as their brethren from Poland. Gentile Englishmen, however, retained indisputable rights of settlement. Even if one chooses to ignore the maneuvers by

which this section of the National Home was handed outright to some ambitious nomads from the Hejaz, how may this circumstance be explained? It was not so long ago that the world applauded when the United States broke off its commercial treaty

with Czarist Russia because of a discrimination much the same as this and less inexcusable. Recounting an identical incident when Turkey attempted the exclusion of Jews in 1888, official British Peace Handbook No. 6o thunders that "the Powers refused to accept discriminatory legislation against their nationals, Hebrew or others," and the Turks had to drop the offending statutes like a hot potato.

Dexterous as their performance was, the Bureaucrats ran up against the hard fact that legerdemain has its absolute limits. They could swindle the eyes by appearing to separate the body of the National Home into living fragments, but no amount of

343 TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN 

black magic could endow the operation with reality. Trans-Jordan was inalienably a part of Palestine, and must immediately expire, if cut off from it in fact. M. Rappard of the Permanent Mandates Commission contemptuously called it "a parasite State" with a budget fed by grants from the Mandatory Government. Its total income is forty-five percent less than that of Tel Aviv alone.

Transjordan has practically no industries of any kind, and only a few of the most primitive home-crafts. According to the British Report to the League for 1936, the total assessment for land tax was only £88,000 of which £53,507 had to be subsequently remitted because the bankrupt villagers could not pay it. 5 The Emir Abdullah's attenuated income includes "Trans-Jordan's share in the imports duties of Palestine." 6 Palestine is also Tran-Jordan’s principal market, selling goods there valued at £208,993 as against £36,088 which she buys in return.

Examining the High Commissioner's Report for 1935 we discover, weighted beneath a load of words, that Trans-Jordan's income was £276,258, while its expenditure was £369,395. Its budget for 1937-38, reduced to skin-and-bones, still showed a thirty percent deficit. In other words, Transjordan has been perpetually bankrupt — kept alive only by the munificence of its rich uncle Israel. If it were divorced from Israel's household it would simply die of malnutrition. Out of the lush Palestine treasury, the Emir has had an endless flow of 'loans,' subsidies and outright grants. He has been provided with free Army and Air Force assistance in quelling the recurrent rebellions of his own tribesmen and in preserving his boundaries against Wahabis aggression. As early as 1927 it was pointed out that the National Home would show a deficit of £90,000 for the yearly period "due to the fact that the Palestine Government is covering the deficits in Transjordan — otherwise the budget would show a surplus of £80,000." 7

Transjordan comprises an area of about 35,000 square miles — more than three times as large as the country west of Jordan. It is an area of great resources but no effort has been made to develop them. A census has never been taken, but the population is

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reliably estimated to be around 275,000. The majority are nomad tribesmen to whom even boundaries are incomprehensible. Some of these, like the Aneezeh and Sherarat, have their main camping grounds in Arabia proper. The only towns of any consequence are Amman, the capital, with 38,000 people, and Es Salt with 18,000.

The limitations of this country lie in the nature of the human material composing its population. Turbulent, destructive, inefficient, seemingly incapable of any but the most elementary creative activities, their stamp is imprinted wherever one turns

in this favored land. Bizarrely enough, one factor that has contributed to the permanent poverty of the Bedu is the ruthless suppression of predatory excursions, drying up their chief source of revenue.

There are only fifteen doctors in all Trans-Jordan. The rate of infant mortality is the highest on earth. Its poverty is terrible and crushing. The correspondent of Al Jamia Al Islamia 8 describes hordes of people "who snatch hungrily at any refuse which by a stretch of the imagination may be edible. . . At night these creatures, men, women and children, with no roof to shelter them, huddle for warmth and sleep in the streets." Reliable English sources describe the country, after fifteen years of Arab rule, as infinitely worse off than it was under the Turks. Says the Crown Colonist of June 1934: "The farmers are plunged in the starkest conditions of poverty, and the nomads are frequently on the verge of starvation." Cattle die off by thousands, and epidemics, droughts, grasshopper and mice plagues, which the fellaheen are incapable of coping with, reduce them to a state of abject deprivation. The result is seen in the total lack of any natural increase in population since the British occupation; while directly across the Jordan, their brother Arabs are showing the most remarkable gain of births over deaths on medical records.

No part of this discourages Whitehall from broadcasting the usual paean in 1936 to the beauties of existence in this "peaceful and contented country, blessed with an Arab Emir and Government, and being without a Jewish problem" 9 Calmly

345 TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN 

shifting gears a few short months later, it acknowledges that "the Emirate of Abdullah is poor, miserably poor, but it does not want the wealth of the Zionists." 10 This in itself was flatly-contradicted by the British statesman, Herbert Morrison, who on returning from a visit to Palestine and Trans-Jordan in 1936, told the House that Jews were being kept out of Transjordan "by the wish of the British Government. ,, 11

The fact is that Trans-Jordan is a colony which Great Britain got on the excuse that it was to be part of the Jewish Homeland. The Commander of the Arab Legion is a blue-eyed Englishman named Peake Pasha. The most prominent agent of the

all-important British Intelligence Service, Major J. B. Glubb, is stationed there permanently in charge of the desert patrol which keeps the turbulent tribesmen under control. Here in itself is proof of the importance London attaches to ownership of this

area. British officials rule as in any other colony, and the word of the British High Commissioner is final. Says the Encyclopedia Britannica: "A considerable increase in the number of British officials and the transfer of the Palestine gendarmerie en bloc to

Trans-Jordan resulted in fact in the carrying on of the Administration on Crown Colony lines; and the local Government existing as a façade, exercised little or no independent authority." 12

The 'treaty' between Great Britain and Abdullah covers all of this nicely. "His Highness the Emir agrees to be guided by the advice of His Britannic Majesty in all matters concerning the granting of concessions, the exploitation of natural resources,

the construction and operation of railways, and the operation of loans." The Emir may not "raise or maintain in Trans-Jordan or allow to be raised or maintained, any military forces without the consent of His Britannic Majesty." The 'independent

Emirate' agrees "to the employment of British officials." England may keep a foreign army on its soil, and has its power of attorney in all matters of international relationship. Laws affecting the State budget, currency, land grants, succession to the

throne and changes in the 'Constitution' are to be referred to the advice of Great Britain. Signed March 20, 1928, this 'treaty* completed the Strategical moves by which Transjordan was to be purloined from the Jewish National Home and stuffed

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in the pocket of Great Britain. Today the Emir Abdullah is a dummy who sits on the knee of a ventriloquist known as the British Resident. It is Abdullah's lips which move, but it is the voice of Downing Streetwhich comes forth.

Calling a spade a spade, the London Times, in its issue of March 29, 1928, declares: "Transjordan therefore has the status equivalent to a protectorate, the only difference being the status of Great Britain, because whereas a Mandate is provisional, the

present relationship is permanent"

The latest plan is to separate the Aqaba region from Trans-Jordan and declare it a separate English colony. This move is forestalled only by the vigorous claim of Ibn Saud to that port as part of the legitimate spoils grabbed from old King Hussein.

Saud now demands it as the price of his consent to the Palestinepartition scheme. To settle this annoying question, negotiations have been going forward for some time. They will undoubtedly end in the classic manner, with Aqaba created a Crown Colony, and Ibn Saud handed part of someone else's territory to compensate him.

ABDULLAH PUTS HIS HAND OUT

The Emir of Transjordan owes his success entirely to English patronage. His one military campaign was staged against Ibn Saud, when that gentleman with tacit British approval chased Abdullah's father, Hussein, off the throne of Hejaz. Abdullah

himself was disastrously routed and had to flee for his life into the desert.

The Emir is an excellent chess player and indifferent poet. He has only one legal wife, but enough concubines of every color and nationality to suit the most capricious taste. In April of 1931 he attempted to make the use of automobiles illegal in

Transjordan, but was overruled by the British. Christian Arab papers in Palestine have attacked him regularly for his hostility to Christians. His son, Tallal, attempted to assassinate the royal father in May 1936, and has since been imprisoned in what passes for the Palace. The Emir is wise enough to know the limitations of his power.

347 TRANS-JORDAN THE JUDENREIN 

With the external affairs of his country he has little to do, even nominally. Its internal affairs are supervised with autocratic powers by the smart British Resident, Colonel Cox.

His administration proved so erratic and extravagant that the English finally deprived him of the administration of even his own estates and put him on the civil list like a pensioner. The balance is reserved for the payment of his debts. 13 He is known to privately favor a greatSemitic State made up of Jews and Arabs with himself at the helm. Publicly he is more circumspect. Once he is said to have declared : "Why should we not allow the Jews to come into our country ? We shall take their money and then drive them out again."

He is a realist of the first water, who would not hesitate at any time to cut His Britannic Majesty's throat if anything could be gained by it. Lord Raglan, former British political officer in Transjordan, informed the Lords on February 21, 1922 that he himself "had heard Abdullah with his £ 5000 in his pocket 14 hold up Sinn Fein as an example to the Arabs of Palestine. The inhabitants are disgusted with Abdullah and they are still more disgusted with the British Government which has forced him

upon them."

During the Winter of 1935-36 the Emir wrote the French Foreign Minister offering France the annexation of Transjordan to Syria on condition that he become king. "If for no other reason," says Ernest Main, "than that they suspected Abdullah of being a tool of Britain, the French had nothing to do with this scheme." 15

The Emir's country is so pathetically undeveloped that "even a horse tied to a tree is a wayside event." 16 Kenneth Williams, accompanying the Peel Commission during their 1936 visit, describes the greater part as inhabited "only by wandering tribes.

Only one-fifth of the total area of the Emirate, in fact, is cultivated." 17

Impelled by their extreme poverty, the Tribes have long gazed with envious eyes at their lucky brethren across the river, now prosperous enough to own many wives and

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all the good food they could eat. Even Abdullah himself, usually so tractable, could not restrain his cupidity. He began to regard himself in the light of a land-owner whose vast stretches could be given a fabulous market value, though at the time they were not worth the taxes paid on them. His cronies among the land-owning effendis also began to grow restless despite hand-outs and patronage. They smelled bigger game ; and, mouths watering at this tempting stream of yellow metal pouring before their eyes across Jordan, they acted at times like a dog teased with a bone that has a string attached to it. Much to British disgust, the patriotism ready-made for them byWhitehall began to look phony to all sections of the Trans-Jordan population.

Back in 1924 Jacob De Haas had already been offered 100,000 dunams at "about a dollar an acre, on condition that the sale was not disclosed to the British officials in Jerusalem." 18 Then and since, the Emir has been anxious to sell to Jews, but the British have persistently interfered. In 1926 they forced the dismissal of Premier Rikabi Pasha for "favoring Zionist immigration." By the end of 1932 the Emir himself started negotiations with Jewish political circles and arranged a 99-year lease on 70,000 dunams near the Allenby bridge. 19 The exultant crowing of some members of the Jewish Agency, who could not resist premature publicity over this 'stupendous victory,' killed the deal. Becoming really annoyed at what they considered Arab 'rapacity,' the British stepped in and smashed the proceedings.

But the Arabs were not to be put off. On January 17, 1933, Mithkal Pasha, most powerful Sheikh in Trans-Jordan, offered to lease one hundred thousand dunams. Heads of other tribes approached the Jewish Agency with similar propositions. On

January 20 a great meeting of Sheikhs at Amman resolved to support Abdullah up to the hilt. Three days later, in an interview carried by the entire Arab press, Abdullah bluntly accused the British Palestine Government of forcing him to rescind his agreement with the Jewish company.

Events tumbled over themselves in swift succession. On February 6, a group of the most influential tribal leaders drew up a petition demanding the right to lease or sell

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN 349

their land. Pointing out the terrible poverty and under population of the country, they declared that salvation could come only through the Jews. Under the direction of the British Government propaganda officer, the Palestine Arab press accused Abdullah of having engineered the petition himself. Undeterred, Abdullah banned offending Arab papers from his territory. Trans-Jordanian leaders, determined to have their way, staged impressive demonstrations demanding land sales. The opening of the Legislative Assembly on February 9, was all set for fireworks. The group in favor of legalizing land sales to Jews, having a clear majority, had taken the bit in their teeth and meant to be stopped by no one. The Assembly had already met when the Secretariat announced that it had been dissolved and that future sessions were indefinitely postponed. According to the story carried openly by all Arab papers, both the British High Commissioner and the British Commander of the Transjordan Military had held a hurried conference with the Emir, laying down the law to that refractory gentleman in no uncertain manner.

Meanwhile the British Palestine Government was with meticulous correctness advising the Jewish press that "this matter is not within our jurisdiction as Trans-Jordan is under a different government." At almost the identical moment, it informed the Emir that his subsidy would be reduced by twenty-five percent during the coming year. But for once the rubber-stamp Legislature confounded its masters by running completely amuck.

On April 1, at its next session, the British High Commissioner's bill prohibiting sale or lease of land to non-Trans-Jordanians (Jews) was unexpectedly beaten by thirteen votes to three. The session closed in surly mood with no affirmative measure allowed to come before it.

Still trying to force the issue, on May 25, representatives delegated from twenty-three Trans-Jordanian towns waited in a body on the Jewish Agency urging them not to give up the fight. It was apparent that operating deviously with his left hand and hungrier than ever, Abdullah was sitting tight. That forced the British to lay aside their switch in favor of the cudgel. They reminded the Emir of what had happened to

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his illustrious father, King Hussein, when he thought he was a bigger man than

the King of England. Though Abdullah wisely modified his position, his followers were not nearly so circumspect. Enraged meetings were held regularly in violent protest. As late as March 27, 1935 the heads of the most important tribes convened in an uproarious session, demanding the cancellation of anti-Jewish laws "because Jewish money which is destined to develop Transjordan is being diverted. . " With unerring awareness they ignored the fiction of a Trans-Jordanian Government and addressed their resolution direct to the British, who disregarded it.

However, it should not be believed that English solicitude for their tribal wards is limited to some skittish desire to fence them off picturesquely on their reservations. British officials themselves have been buying up large tracts of the most fertile acreage and placing them under cultivation. 20 Palestine Arabs, too, are taking over extensive tracts on speculation, considering an eventual Jewish settlement inevitable. 21

There have been other settlement schemes which had British approval. In the Spring of 1927 the English Government put up a demand that land be made available for the immediate settlement of Armenians. Sensing no monetary advantage, and disliking Christians with a keener gusto than they did Jews, Arab Sheikhs submitted a counter-memorandum angrily rejecting the proposition. It was consequently dropped. Early in 1929 the English backed another plan to colonize refugees from Tripoli and Benghazi after those territories had been occupied by the Italians. Three hundred thousand dunams were to be granted under the most favorable conditions, but the prospective settlers proved unorganized and capital was lacking. 22 At still another time, under London's request, Abdullah presented one hundred thousand dunams near Amman to a large contingent of exiles from Morocco. The settlers were guaranteed adequate deeds, freedom from taxation for three years and military protection against Bedouin attack.

Whitehall is still fearful that the Jews will find a way some how to break through the

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wall which holds them west of Jordan. When they do, the 'landless Arab' bogey, the Statutory Tenant Laws, the whole absurd system of blockade and restriction in which the land-hungry Jew is caught, must fall apart of its own inert weight. With the vast unpopulated reaches of Trans-Jordan in prospect, they would become too foolish to retain even a pretense of plausibility. The Bureaucrats know that if they succeed in securing themselves on the soil the Jews will never be driven out of the Holy Land, and that the whole carefully raised scheme against them must then ultimately fail.

In its issue of February 4, 1937, Great Britain and the East echoes official apprehension, crying that "a treaty or some conclusive guarantee with Trans-Jordan, that the Jews will not be allowed to take land there, would greatly pacify the country."

Most Trans-Jordanians seem to believe, however, that their country would be better 'pacified' by the removal of the British.

CHAPTER IX

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

The final stroke, which was to deal the death blow to Zionist hopes, was simply conceived. It rested on the establishment of that great democratic institution, a parliament, in Palestine. Superficially the Bureaucrats thus placed themselves in the vanguard of progress. Who could challenge the undoubted right of men to rule themselves through their own elected representatives! By intent, however, the scheme was a long step forward toward the liquidation of the Mandate. As envisaged by Whitehall, the Legislative Assembly would be a ready-made dummy congress which could be implemented at any time as a perfect sounding board for British policies. At the same time it would place the Zionists within brackets so that they could not attack

without the risk of losing world sympathy.

All of this was urged in the name of the 'sacred promises' made to Hussein of the Hejaz, despite the fact that in the Hejaz itself there is not and never has been any parliamentary system whatsoever. Throughout the 'free' countries of Arabia democracy is noteworthy by its absence. Yemen and the immense territory of Saudi are ruled without even a pretense of constitutional government. The equally vast Hadramaut, as well as Aden, cowers under the despotic authority of British guns.

Iraq, most developed of all these Arab countries, is ruled by a shadow Government constituted with the assistance of British officials. "Notwithstanding the Constitution," says Lieutenant-Colonel Stafford meaningfully, "British policy in Iraq was directed . . . towards making Feisal a real King in the Eastern sense." 1 "The country's Parliamentary system," he tells us, "is a farce." The Government is cordially hated by the majority of the population. Armed revolt is always in the air and is kept

down with an iron hand. 2 Even the barest pretext to constitutionalism vanished in

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1936 when the Army bombed the capital and seized control.

Toward the great illiterate bulk of the population the educated Arab classes are no more democratic in the political sense than the Athenians were to their slaves. "Even within their own circle," remarks Ernest Main, "they have little sense of what real democracy means." 3 The orbit of politics in 'free Arabia' revolves around the Sheikhs, Emirs, Imams and their supporters. "The Arab masses," says Professor Scherger, "do not fit into any other system of government except the foreordained

traditional rule of sheikh and religious leaders. . . Conspiracies and assassinations are the only popular procedure adopted and practiced by the Arabs when electing representatives and rulers." 4 Throughout every portion of Arabia slavery flourishes with the full support of public opinion. It is a vested interest of immemorial respectability, writes Bertram Thomas, "and any extraneous authority interfering becomes odious in the eyes of the people." 5 How can one talk of democracy in

the same breath with this !

The readiness of the Arab Palestinian for self-rule is not less unpromising. He is just as backward, excitable and fanatic as his brother in the desert. The various Commissions of Inquiry have themselves declaimed that he was incompetent and must be protected against the superior capacities of European immigrants. Eighty-five percent of his men and ninety-three percent of his women are illiterate. 6

The setting up of a parliamentary body, under the circumstances, would only serve to provide an arena for general intrigue and agitation against the whole policy and purpose of the Mandate. The Colonial Office itself informed an Arab Delegation in March 1922 : "The position is that His Majesty's Government is bound by a pledge which is antecedent to the Covenant of the League of Nations, and they cannot allow a constitutional position to develop in a country for which they have accepted responsibility to the principal Allied Powers, which may make it impracticable to carry into effect a solemn undertaking given by themselves and their allies. . . It is quite clear that the creation at this stage of a National Government would preclude

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the fulfillment of the pledge ?made by the British Government to the Jewish People"

The greatest authority in the British Commonwealth on constitutional reform is the India Report of 1934. It lays down the following principle : "Parliamentary government, as it is understood in the United Kingdom, works by the interaction of four essential factors : the principle of majority rule; the willingness of the minority for the time being to accept the decisions of the majority; the existence of great political parties divided by broad issues of policy rather than by sectional interests ; and finally, the existence of a mobile body of public opinion, owing no permanent allegiance to any party and therefore able, by its own instinctive reaction against extravagant movements on one side or the other, to keep the vessel on an even keel." In Palestine none of these requisite conditions exist. A few families, the Nashishibis, Husseinis and Khaldis, monopolize all public power, and would soon rend all public life to shreds in their mutual struggles. "Of a genuine rivalry of political parties,

presenting alternative municipal programs to the electorate," says the Peel Commission, "there is no trace."

Still another British authority, the Hilton Young Commission, lays down the precedent that where a fundamental division exists of race or religious hatreds, or a difference in level of civilizations between the various elements of the population,

u the abstract principle of 'majority rule 7 cannot be dogmatically applied" How does this fit the Palestine situation ?

In July 1924, Ormsby-Gore informed the Mandates Commission that "if in this [legislative] council there should be brought forth an anti-Zionist majority, the Government will come into an impasse, since it must execute certain provisions of the Mandate, on the one hand, while, on the other hand, a hostile majority would oppose such measures." Three months later Herbert Samuel is droning to the same Commission "that the Arabs have declared they would, if they had the majority [in the proposed Parliament], use it to prevent the creation of the Jewish National Home."

355 WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY  

Everyone, including the British, agreed that the setting up of any such parliamentary apparatus was a direct refutation of the manifest purposes of the Mandate, that it would automatically crystallize the Jews as a helpless minority in their National

Home, and that no right thinking man could countenance such a procedure. Nevertheless, London is soon after found espousing this very scheme as one of its fundamentals of policy. Every High Commissioner had to make it his own. Though the Jews fought the proposition desperately, for once solidly united, the Bureaucrats pushed it with all the power at their command. Time after time when it appeared on the verge of adoption, unlucky accident intervened.

On several occasions, when all else seemed propitious, the Mandates Commission rejected the proposal as "premature and ill-advised." Notwithstanding, in 1923 London officially declared it in existence. But the Arabs foolishly refused the proffered bait. Completely misjudging English motives, they believed that a little additional pressure would bring about the complete squashing of the Mandate, and the elimination of the British as well. With consequent bravado they boycotted the

election to the new Parliament, and announced that they would sabotage all laws accepted by that body. Left without a leg to stand on, the Government annulled the election and reinstated the former Advisory Council, taking the occasion to reduce the former Jewish proportion.

After the 1929 pogrom the Arabs again renewed their demands for the 'true processes of democracy.' They could not have chosen a more awkward moment. A volcanic eruption of horror still convulsed world opinion. The temper of Mr. Weizmann's Zionists was yet an un-probed factor. Uncertainty made the Bureaucrats wary. With scrupulous probity Whitehall proclaimed that "since the effect of meeting the wishes of the Arab delegation as regards democratic government would have been to render it impossible for His Majesty's Government to continue as Mandatory for Palestine ... it became evident that this matter could not usefully be pursued further." This was in May 1930. In October we are told by the same Gov eminent "that the time has now

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come" when the question of constitutional changes must "be taken in hand without further delay," and that "the time has arrived" for the setting up of a Legislative Council for Palestine.

For five more years the matter seesawed back and forth. Finally, onDecember 22, 1935 High Commissioner Wauchope sounded the tocsin for democracy by once more proclaiming the establishment of a Legislative Council. The announcement carefully avoided all reference to the Balfour Declaration and the Jewish National Home. It was made on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and was addressed to the Arabs, ignoring the Jews as if they did not exist.

The 'Council' was a precious piece of humbug. Out of twenty-eight members, four Jews and eleven Arabs were to be elected. The balance were to be appointed by the High Com- missioner, to include five Englishmen. The High Commissioner retained wide veto powers. If a miracle happened and his handpicked legislative body' bucked the traces, he merely had to deem its measures invalid to rule them out without ceremony.

The Jews anxiously asked themselves: What was back of the British mind ? What purpose could there be to all this artful simulation ? Was it to provide a rostrum for anti-Zionist agitators who could be represented as expressing the country's will ? Was it a smokescreen behind which anti-Jewish officials could plot the death of Zionism ? With dogged resolution they notified the Government that they would neither participate in the elections nor recognize the proposed assembly. The reply was the icy ultimatum that "with them, without them or against them, a Legislative Council would be established inPalestine."

This was all very well, but it did not take into account the British Parliament itself. The Council scheme was debated in the Lords onFebruary 26, 1936, and on March 24 in Commons, where it was disastrously routed. In the latter body, recites Lord Peel

dolefully, "the Secretary of State, whose speech was constantly interrupted, had only two supporters." 7

357 WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY 

"by their acts you shall know them!"

After all the moralizing which accompanied the Legislative Council plan, one is astonished to discover that the British have neglected to put any of these fine precepts into operation during the entire period of their administration in Palestine. Such local autonomy as the Jewish settlements retain is almost entirely a carry-over from the Turkish regime. The Arab masses have no more voice in even their local community affairs than if they lived in Timbuktu.

The electoral system the British introduced (no one else wanted it) is a grotesque travesty on democratic processes. The country was divided into community rolls based on religion. A Jew could nominate only a Jew, a Muslim a Muslim and a Christian a Christian. Suffrage is based on property rights, and there is no educational test. From here on, the proceedings become heavily involved. Despite the fact of three community rolls for nomination purposes, there is only one common roll for election purposes. Now a Christian, Jew or Mohammedan may vote for anyone he pleases, but Government decree determines the number of each religion which must be elected!

An analysis of the polling lists in representative towns shows Nablusto have less than 900 voters, out of a population of 20,000. Gaza, a city of 19,000, boasts 500 voters. Ramle, with 12,000, has 300 voters. The link between Government officials and the peasantry is the village Mukhtar, a worthy whom Lord Peel describes as "usually illiterate."

The Capital City itself is a perfect example of what the British mean when they talk about 'democracy' and 'self-determination.' The Jews of Jerusalem constitute seventy-two percent of its 110,000 souls. Muslims are twenty percent, with the balance Christians. Despite this numerical preponderance, the Government has always insisted on the appointment of an Arab Mayor, who runs the city with a high hand. 8 Jews, who pay practically all the taxes, are allowed the barest minimum of public

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benefits. Some of the older Jewish quarters such as Nahlat Zion, which have been paying taxes since the British occupation, have yet to be provided with a single yard of road.

An incident which occurred in 1930 thrusts this whole strange situation close to the realm of fantasy. We see the Mayor of Jerusalem, Ragheb Bey Nashishibi, at the head of an anti-Jewish delegation, proceeding to London in his capacity of Mayor, armed with a bristling political program aimed directly against his own constituents! And this on the very eve of Municipal Council elections where the Mayor was engaged in

a mortal struggle with his ancient enemies the Husseinis! The Jews stormed like madmen. Stentoriously they promised retaliation by throwing their support to Nashishibis opponents. Immediately the Government rose to the occasion with a decree postponing the elections for three years. In the Mayor's absence, it refused pointblank to allow Chaim Solomon, Jewish Vice-Mayor, to sit as acting-executive, and appointed an Arab instead. Completely disgusted, the Jewish members of the

Municipal Council resigned in a body.

In 1933 the Government introduced an election scheme which gerrymandered the election districts with such strategic cunning that the Jewish majority was turned into a minority. Part of the maneuver which arranged this result lay in the granting of special rights to owners of property in the Old City of Jerusalem. These regulations so curtailed the right of suffrage that out of its entire population only 3900 individuals in Jerusalem were entitled to appear at the polling places.

In January 1935 the Government appointed Hussein Fakri El Khaldi mayor for five years, to take Nashishibis place. A Jew, Daniel Auster, was given the title of Vice-Mayor. Right after being inducted into office, Mayor Khaldi refused to countenance the presence of the Jewish Vice-Mayor and even denied him an office in the MunicipalBuilding. A new roar of indignation arose from the Jews. As a result, permission was now given the Vice-Mayor to sit in the MunicipalBuilding, where relieved of all duties he twiddled his thumbs.

The farcical drama continued to unfold. In 1937, Arab Khaldi himself was picked

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up by a squad of soldiers for alleged complicity in the murder of a British official, and exiled to a small island without benefit of trial. Thus unexpectedly Vice-Mayor Auster found himself acting-Mayor. Officialdom was nonplussed. At that very moment London was seeking to put over its great coup, the Partition Plan. For the sake of world opinion the Jew must be allowed to remain. But what to do about the Mayor's salary, which totals £1,446 a year! To give it to Mr. Auster would be to recognize his position. Naturally, Arab Khaldi, in exile in the Seychelles Islands, could not receive it. From that point on the problem is solved by being studiously ignored. So Mr. Auster, who is Mayor and yet not Mayor, continues to perform the mayoral duties gratis. Just what his status is, no one, least of all himself, can say.

In Haifa the situation is much the same. Though the Jewish community is over fifty percent of the population and contributes around seventy percent of the municipal income, it is represented by only four out of twelve Councilors on the Municipal Board. A number of other towns have, on paper at least, some rights of self-government, with power principally to raise taxes for municipal affairs. But only two Jewish towns come within this category. "Why," asks Wedgwood, "are Arab towns given self-government if they have populations of 2,500 or more, while Jewish towns like Petach Tikvah, with a population of 25,000 or 30,000, do not get self-government?" Even Tel Aviv did not attain the status of a municipal corporation until 1934.

Tel Aviv's self-rule is not worth too much. A Council is elected, which selects a Mayor and Vice-Mayor from among its own members, subject to the approval of the High Commissioner. How much 'democracy' this entails is demonstrated in the elections of November 1936, when General Wauchope calmly invalidated the election of Moshe Chelouche as Mayor without offering any reason for his action, and appointed Dr. Israel Rokeach, Mayor in his stead.

Tel Aviv is the only city in Palestine - Israel where women enjoy the franchise. Here they may even hold important municipal posts. On the extraordinary excuse that this

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was contrary to public policy, the Administration suddenly placed this right,

which Jewish women have had for a decade, into question. By regulation issued February 9, 1933 the High Commissioner was granted the power to decide whether or not a woman has the right to active or passive participation in municipal elections, entitling him at will to throw out of office such women as might have been duly elected, as well as to deny them suffrage.

Though they are taxed to the hilt, Jewish colonies fail to receive the grants-in-aid allowed to Arab towns for public services; and the Government at the same time consistently refuses them permission to make use of outside credit facilities,

even for self-paying projects. Thus the Council of Rehovoth tried vainly for three years to get permission to raise a loan for building a market. In the end Rehovoth built its market without the loan by straining its resources to the bursting point. When

in 1933 the Tel Aviv Municipality negotiated a loan of £350,000 with the Prudential Assurance Company, the Government refused permission for any sum over £60,000. (This loan, incidentally, was to be devoted to the construction of schools, built in other cities by the Government at its own cost.)

This despotic, minute control extends to trivia undreamed of in any other State but Soviet Russia. When, after the outbreaks of 1929, Tel Aviv sought to set up its own slaughter house because Jewish butchers did not feel safe in Jaffa, the Government

not only ignored the petition but would not even allow the city to "meet the requirements by supplies of meat from elsewhere." It was either Jaffa or no meat. 9 Years later a slaughter house was ultimately built, but the situation continued provocative. In 1938 Tel Aviv was faced with an enormous increase in meat prices, "owing," says Palestine and Middle East Economic Magazine, "to the domination of the market by a group of cattle importers who now run what is virtually a meat racket on a large scale." 10 By manipulating supply and transport at both ends, these importers had succeeded in wiping out all competition, with the result that the price of cattle for slaughter imported from the identical Balkan countries "is almost three

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times higher in Tel Aviv than in Egypt." When the Tel Aviv Authorities decided to take action against further increases in the cost of meat, the Government withheld its consent for Municipal regulation of meat prices. Moreover, it refused to sanction the import of cattle throughTel Aviv Harbor, which would have cheapened transport and insured independent supplies.

Calling things by their right names, the Jerusalem Palestine Review states the fact that the real ruler of the city is the District Commissioner, not the "fictitious Council and bogus Mayor” Fully as courageous, the Jewish Vice-Mayor (now Mayor ?) writes that "although a cursory reading of the Palestine Corporation Ordinance may give the impression that the Corporations established under that law have wide powers of civic administration, such an impression is erroneous. . . Municipalities have practically no authority in connection with the welfare of their citizens. . . Authority of the Municipal Councils is so limited that even if it is decided to appoint a minor clerk at a salary of £36 per annum . . . the approval of the District Commissioner or the High Commissioner is necessary. A Council of twelve or fifteen elected representatives may spend hours and days arriving at a decision which, when

submitted to the Commissioner, is responded to by a curt note canceling it. Against that rejection no action can be taken. . . . The Palestine Government has, in effect, turned our Municipal Councils into debating clubs." 11 These Councils are not even empowered to regulate building and layout or direct roads in traffic. Their budgets must receive official ratification from the District Commissioner, which may not be forthcoming for a year or more. "For example," writes Lord Peel, "the budget of Jerusalem for the financial year 1935-36 was not approved until August 1935 ; and ... the majority of the municipal budgets for 1936-37 were still not approved by January

1937." 12

It is interesting to discover that the Muslim Wakf Administration, though largely supported from taxes and not subject to the democratic control of the Arab community, has been al most completely free of Government supervision, presenting

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its budget only for 'information'; while the Jewish National Council, democratically elected and supported entirely by internal contributions, must submit its budget for Government approval.

It is shocking to learn that Palestine is one of the few places in the world where the slave traffic is carried on openly. "We talk about slavery in Abyssinia," states a sickened English writer, "but how many people know, for example, that [in Palestine]

you can buy the most beautiful girl . . . for a couple of hundred pounds. You can buy her when she is twelve years old, and you can take her home, there and then, to live with your other . . . wives . . . and all of this in 1936, in a land administered by Great Britain under a Mandate from the League of Nations! " 13 He gives the current price of women as £5 for an 'old' woman of twenty or a girl of fifteen who is non-virgin.

£l° to £5° gets you a first class concubine, while £200 will buy you the modern equivalent to the Queen of Sheba.

According to the recent Annual Report of the American Colony Aid Association, among three hundred mothers treated at the InfantWelfare Center, one was thus purchased for the purpose of sexual abuse at the age of seven, one at eight, 7 at nine

years, nine at ten, 22 at eleven, 41 at twelve, 51 at thirteen, and 54 at fourteen. Of the mothers treated, 62.5% were defenseless children who had been sold into slavery. How casually this brutal trade in human flesh is regarded can be understood from

the following item which appeared in the Palestine press ofDecember 27, 1930: "Three fellaheen of a Gaza tribe, now residing in the Beisan district, have sold their daughters at a good price, and already handed them over to masters in Tulkarm, Nablus and Haifa, according to a letter to El Carmeie

One of the most persistent complaints of this people whom British propaganda regards as long-suffering patriots, is that the Zionists have inadvertently chased the price of women out of sight. Arabs who sold land to Jews had enough money to buy

six, seven — sometimes a dozen or more women. The price of female slaves rose dramatically in accordance with the law of supply and demand so that exorbitant

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prices must now be paid for women, who are dragooned from even far-away Ethiopia. "I assure you," a highly placed Arab told Farago, "even such episodes

add to the general hatred of Jews, and one must not judge the Arabs too harshly if they take to arms in desperation."

It is a striking commentary on the Mandatory's conception of government that Jews lucky enough to be nationals of States tolerably free of Jew-baiting will not risk Palestinian citizenship, even though they have come to the National Home to stay.

As in the worst days of the old barbaric Turks, they take special trips back to the old countries, registering their children there so that they might enjoy protection against a Government they have learned to distrust thoroughly. It is estimated that fully one hundred and sixty thousand Jews permanently domiciled in the Holy Land thus keep their old nationality. 14

SOME ODIOUS COMPARISONS

You may search the map through and you will not find a single area administered by the English Colonial Office 'where a constitutional position in favor of the native population has been allowed to develop. Is it not astonishing, then, that they should

exhibit such a compelling sentiment for the 'rights' of natives in precisely the area they are under pledge to relinquish ultimately to the Jews?

British Central and East Africa may be taken for convenient comparison. The native races here are certainly as intelligent as those of Palestine, and infinitely more tractable. They outnumber the whites four hundred to one. Nevertheless, wherever representative institutions have been granted to English colonies and dependencies in these territories, the native peoples have not been allowed to participate either as voters or as members. The voting power and the right to be elected as members is vested mostly, if not always, in the British European immigrants. 15

Still more significant, there are large colonies of East Indians and Arabs settled in these places. They came long before the British immigrants and they play a vital part

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in the economic life of these communities. Notwithstanding, the constitutional power is invariably placed in the hands of British settlers.

It is worth tearing off the cover of this thing to get a look at some of its detail. We find Tanganyika, also a mandated territory, with a British population of 4000 submerged in some 5,022,000 natives. In addition there are 7,100 Arabs and 23,400

East Indians. Yet under the Constitution of 1926 a Legislative Council is constituted consisting of twenty British Europeans and three British Indians. Neither the native populations nor the 1,000 Arabs, who alone outnumber the British two to one, are represented at all. In Kenya Colony, in which much the same situation obtains, the best part of the agricultural land is sequestered for white settlers only. Into this restricted area neither the large native population nor the considerable proportion of Indians and Arabs may penetrate.

Zanzibar is another fair sample of this weave. In addition to its native population of 186,470, it has 33,400 Arabs, 14,000 British Indians, and only 300 Europeans. Yet of the fourteen members of the Legislative Council, ten are British Europeans.

Arabs apparently do not count here either.

In South Africa, which as a Dominion (not under the direction of the Colonial Office) invites no absolute comparison, Europeans are but 1,890,300 out of a total population of 8,370,000. Yet it is mandatory that members of both the Senate and House of Assembly be British subjects of European descent. Colored people (including Arabs and East Indians) are subjected to discriminology regulations of the most severe type. When the Hindu leader Gandhi visited there several years ago, he was not allowed to enter one of the great public buildings on this account.

A comparison from another angle is offered by British experience in the Island of Cyprus. To spike the Greeks, who hoped for enosis (reunion with Greece) , a Legislative Assembly similar to that proposed for Palestine, was formed. In it the

Turkish minority of twenty percent plus Government officials formed an actual

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voting majority. The result was economic stagnation and political chaos. Greek members refused to cooperate with the Government or the Turk minority. Bills in

the Legislature were jettisoned. National hatreds reached an explosive climax. The gulf of culture, hopes and physical differences between the two races was so fundamental as to contravene ordinary differences of opinion. As a result of this self-

generated combustion, the Island almost blew itself off the map

— and the British were glad enough finally to haul out from under. In November 1931 they withdrew the Constitution as "premature, excessive and unsuitable." From that time forward, Cypriots were not so much as allowed to discuss or hear a political speech. 16 The game had been played out in favor of the baldly stated conviction that if Britain is to stay there, she must rule there.

The British, with this experience immediately behind them, do not need to be told that the differences between Arab and Jew — in ideals, dreams, mentality, culture, and objectives — are far more exaggerated than anything they ever witnessed between Turk and Greek in Cyprus. But Whitehall had not confounded itself by turning evangelist. Its continually publicized efforts to establish a parliament in Palestine had a far more practical purpose. The Zionists had to be pried loose no matter what was forfeit. Towards this end it was desirable to encourage the Arabs to consider themselves the rightful rulers of the country, and to foster the belief that a decisive action on their part would sweep away the last tottering remnants of the Balfour Declaration and the Jewish National Home project.

BOOK THREE

CHAPTER I

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR 77

DOES AN ARAB RACE EXIST?

The British, who were later to talk imposingly of 'Arab nationalism inPalestine,' were of a quite different view in 1918. British Peace Handbook No. 60 declares briskly that "the people west of theJordan are not Arabs, but only Arab speaking. ... In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most mixed race." As late as 1921 the Administration was still officially claiming that the word

'Arab' as applied to Palestinians was a misnomer. 1

Actually there are no 'Arabs' anywhere. There is not even a fairly homogeneous mixed race. Throughout the Peninsula the Arab has ceased to exist. Those who have taken his place are a motley assortment of peoples, low in the scale of human

development, who speak the Arabic tongue. Even the courtly Saladin was no Arab, but a Kurd. Hussein of the Hejaz, himself, was mothered by a Circassian and had his official heirs by a woman of Turkish blood. 2

The countless cities, tribes and nations incorporated at sword's point into the swollen host of Allah, soon drowned the Arab out by the very suffocation of their numbers. An even more dreadful revenge was exacted by that cruel institution, the Harem. How enormous this practice was can be seen in Sykes' description of the empire of fabled Haroun-al-Raschid, with its tremendous seraglios stocked with women from every conceivable corner of the globe. 3 He marvels at the unending supply of female slaves, of every color and kind. Since purity of blood in the community of Mohammed always gives way to purity of line, where are the descendants of Qoraish 3a now ? Even in the very core of desert Arabia, the race has been steadily

adulterated by an incoming flow of slave girls, most of them, in recent centuries,

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367 ”A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

from the Sudan and other places in Africa. The offspring of these stolen creatures are not slaves but free Muslims, since the moment a woman conceives she attains the

status of a legal wife.

Pilgrims from such faraway places as Java and Morocco, streaming like columns of magnetized ants toward the holy cities of the Hejaz, contributed liberally to this mélange. The Muslim habit of giving a slave girl to an overnight guest for his comfort, the frequent looting of visiting caravans of the devout, all sweetened the mixture. "If we make exception of the Sherifian families — the descendants of the Prophet — and some very few other people of undoubted Arab origin," writes the

great Turkish scholar, Dr. Riza-Tewfik, "all the population of Mecca is alien to the Semitic race." 4 The Syrian author, Rihani, describing the population of the Arabian coast, is even more emphatic. 5

History gives it as a fact that the Arabs never settled Palestine, merely taking control and providing the usual military and administrative caste. They imposed their religion on the native peoples but failed to exterminate them. Here, too, gradual racial suicide was the price of uncontrolled lust. As far back as the LatinKingdom in Jerusalem, Edris comments on the vast number of captive females required to satisfy the wants of these amorous gentlemen. He reports slaves brought from all parts of Africa and the East, with good-looking Nubian girls most in demand. The Crusaders found a country peopled by a mixture of all the races of the Orient, intermarried with Greeks.

On the founding of the Kingdom they had to recognize the existence of five types of Muslims (each of different racial antecedents), as well as Jews, Druses, Samaritans, and others. 6 By 1120, when the Council of Nablus was held, the Latins themselves were already reported half absorbed in this churning stew of races.

Of even greater significance than the loose social habits of the Muslims was the physical position of this little land, which turned it into a bloody charnel house for unending centuries. Spoliation, destruction, rapine, extermination, claimed the land

368 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

like an ever-recurring plague. The invasions which regularly smashed against its stricken borders were countless. It had been devastated by the Scythians from north of the Caucasus. The Romans populated it with vast settlements of Greeks and other

races from everywhere. It was scoured soon after by the wars of the Seleucids and Ptolemies. In 634 A.D. occurred the Arab conquest. By 868 A.D. an Egyptian invader named Mehmet Tulum had wrested the country from them in the usual blood

bath. Now for a period of centuries Turks, Egyptians, Crusaders, alternated in control, periodically baptizing the shuddering country in a bath of blood.

After the Twelfth Century, Palestine – Israel was invaded time and again by wild hordes from Asia who plundered, slew and violated without halt. In 1256 the Mongol, Hulagu Khan, sacked the stricken area and put the entire population to the sword. A

scarce hundred years later, Timur the Lame, a sanguinary destroyer who called himself 'The Wrath of God’ made this whole sector the scene of one of the crudest massacres of his blood-drenched career. Now for generations Palestine became an outspread altar on which human sacrifices were offered continually. In their savage unending struggles for mastery, Mongols, Mamelukes and the fierce Charismean tribes of Middle Asia butchered its people indiscriminately. Between 1260 and 1400 A.D. not a single city, town or village remained intact. When the next conquerors, the Ottoman Turks, came in, raping and slaughter had left an indelible mark in the character of the survivors. "In few parts of the world," says Lieutenant- olonel Stafford, "were there more different types." 7

It was always the foreign soldier who was the police power inPalestine. The Tulunides brought in Turks and Negroes. The Fatamids introduced Berbers, Slavs, Greeks, Kurds and mercenaries of all kinds. The Mamelukes imported legions of

Georgians and Circassians. Each monarch for his personal safety relied on great levies of slave warriors. Saladin, hard-pressed by the Crusaders, received one hundred and fifty thousand Persians who were given lands in Galilee and the Sidon

district for their services.

369 ”A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR”

Out of this human patch-work of Jews, Arabs, Armenians, Kalmucks, Persians, Crusaders, Tartars, Indians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Sudanese, Turks, Mongols, Romans, Kharmazians, Greeks, pilgrims, wanderers, ne'er-do-wells and adventurers, invaders, slaves and backwash of all corners of creation, was formed that hodge-podge of blood and mentality we call today 'Levantine’ As this wild medley of ungovernable, lawless men were killed off from time to time by incessant wars, raids and plagues, more from everywhere were constantly merged into the common melting pot. In the Fourteenth Century, drought caused the immigration into Palestine of eighteen thousand 'tents' of Yurate Tartars from the Euphrates. Soon followed twenty- thousand Ashiri under Gaza, and four thousand Mongols under Moulai, who occupied the Jordan Valley and settled from Jerusalem south. Kaisaite and Yemenite tribes followed in their trail. 8 In 1830 the Albanian conqueror Mehemet Ali colonized Jaffa,Nablus and Beisan with Egyptian soldiers and their Sudanese allies. Fourteen years later Lynch estimated the thirteen thousand inhabitants of Jaffa to be composed of eight thousand Turco-Egyptians, four thousand Greeks and Armenians, and one thousand Jews and Maronites. He did not consider that there were any Arabs at all in that city. Q

During the middle of the Nineteenth Century the entire territory of the National Home, east and west of the Jordan, is computed to have held no more than sixty thousand people all told. Of this number, non-Muslims, living under the bitterest

persecution, were still heavily in the majority. The huge population growth since that time has been due to large contingents of new arrivals. The Turks introduced Circassians around Amman. WhenNorth Africa passed under European authority,

the fanatic Moghrabiyeh Muslims moved out and settled in the Holy Land. (It was they who were responsible for the Safed butchery in 1929, and who supplied the continuous tension at the Wailing Wall.) So too, were introduced into the permanent

population of this little land, Bosnians, Turkoman nomads, and a stream of Levantines, mixed desert wanderers and Africans which continues to the present day.

370 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

As for the Christian population, we are told by the learned Dr. Christie that it is made up of fragments of all the Levant races. The native Christians of Nazareth come from the Hauran and from Merj-Ayun ; while the Christians of Safed are the children of immigrants from Hasbeiya who came in the second half of the last century.

In the Arabic language only the Bedouin is designated by the word 'Arab.' But here, too, unless the eyes cannot be trusted, there is little evidence of common descent. The Ghawarineh tribe of the JordanValley have strongly marked African features, fuzzy hair, black skin and guttural voices. A short distance away is the tribe of Ghazawiyeh, shrill-voiced, gaunt and large-featured. Nearby are the blue-eyed blondes of Bethlehem. Several tribes of alleged Jewish stock have even been described in Transjordan. 10

Until English political maneuvering recast their viewpoint for them, the townspeople were insulted if they were referred to as Arabs. They wanted to be known for what they were, Syrian Levantines. Count Sforza designates the inhabitants of this entire region as a medley of peoples "with not the slightest bond between them." 11 Mrs. Andrews remarks dryly that "in Jerusalem today there are two or three families that claim to be of the fine Arab stock which entered the country in the Seventh Century." 12 Dr. Christie doubts whether there is any Arab blood in the peasantry or villages at all. 13

As long as these masses have lived side by side, they have been at each other's throats. Tribe hated tribe, city man hated fellah, the Bedouin despised both, sect cursed sect, and even family disdained family as unworthy scions of an inferior race. That all this ill-assorted, explosive mixture can be organized into one autonomous nation may also be doubted for the future.

ARAB TYPES AND TRAITS

From steppe, mountain, jungle and desert, an agglomeration of primitive, savage man had swarmed in successive waves overPalestine, arid left their seed there.

371 "A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"