THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by William B. Ziff pages 1-191 out of 525
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
by William B. Ziff
Opinions
"Having read 'The Rape of Palestine,' I stand amazed at the scholarship, the courage arid the competence of William B. Ziff, its author.
The book is full of political dynamite — in its documented indictment of the British camarilla which in betraying the Jewish nation is betraying the British nation as well; in its unsparing exposure of self-divided Zionist leadership; in its passionate and convincing demonstration that anti-Semitism threatens to annihilate not only us Jews but everything connoted by 'Christian civilization/ It is a moving and powerful and vastly significant book, the kind of book, it seems to me, that makes history." — Eugene Lyons
"The Palestine
It is a perfectly amazing historical document. Its clarity and charm of style, its forthright logic and masterly presentation of facts make it one of the outstanding books of this generation." — William Griffin, Editor and Publisher, New York
"At last there has come what has so long been needed, a clear, accurate, dependable account of the betrayal of the world's hope inPalestine
— Charles Edward Russell
"This book should be read by all those in responsible position in American public affairs who are interested in the foreign scene."
— H. Styles Bridges , U. S. New Hampshire
"Every lover of humanity and everyone who hopes to preserve our present civilization against disaster should read these dynamic pages.
This book is an eye-opener." — William Green, President, A. F. of L.
"I heartily recommend Wm. B. ZifF's book. This great book should be in the hands of all those interested in gaining a proper understanding of the vexing Palestine
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
William B. Zijf
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
ZIFF
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
COPYRIGHT • I938
BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., INC,
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE
RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK, OR
ANY PORTION THEREOF, IN ANY FORM
First edition November 1938
Second edition November 1938
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
. . I hope the Hon. Members will believe me when I say that I am not pro-Jew; I am pro-English. I set a higher value on the reputation ofEngland Palestine May 29, 1934 .
PREFACE
The parlous condition of the Jewish people over a large part of the known world, and particularly in such countries as Germany Poland Rumania Palestine Great Britain League of Nations . The Mandate, when it was written, as well as the antecedent Balfour Declaration, clearly contemplated that the "home" to be established in Palestine
If this was indeed the purpose of the Mandate it has proved a miserable failure, since it has solved nothing and has only succeeded in adding a new and formidable problem to a world already sinking under the weight of problems. Many reasons are adduced for this failure. Much is made of the irreconcilable differences between Arabs and Jews, which the mandatory now claims render the Mandate unworkable.
The claim that an opposing promise was made to the Arabs will be examined in these pages, as will be the circumstances under which the Balfour Declaration and Mandate were issued. The assertion that the Declaration was extorted from an unwilling
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For a hundred years Zionism, as we shall see, had been almost as much an English movement as it was a purely Jewish one. As for local conditions in Palestine Holy Land in 1837, London Palestine Palestine
As for the Declaration itself, it may be assumed that Lord Balfour, its author, is an infallible witness to its intended purpose.
He wrote: "The national and international status of the Jews to that of other races . . . would be promoted by giving them that which all other nations possess: a local habitation and a national home . . . [where] they would bear corporate responsibilities and enjoy corporate duties of a kind which, from the nature of the case, they can never possess as citizens of any non-Jewish state." 2 It will be evident from the records that neither the Declaration nor the Mandate confers upon non-Jews any rights which would allow them to interfere with the growth and operation of the National Home. It is obvious that if these documents were to be interpreted so as to include National Home rights to non-Jews, both the National Home grant to the Jews and the rights of non-Jews would be repealed by implication.
PREFACE
ix
The document would then repeal itself, which on the face of it would be a reduction ad absurdum.
As will also be seen from these pages, British trusteeship of the Holy Land was the result of Jewish demand itself at the request of the British government, Wedgwood admitting rather shamefacedly in this respect that the Jews were "almost the only non-Anglo-Saxon people who seem to believe that on the whole England does try to behave decently towards other people." 3
If the records are to be believed, the Mandatory for Palestine Mediterranean , in which the Mandate was used for the purpose of surrounding British Imperial strategy in the Middle East with the aura of sanctity. A factor of even greater importance, however, is the gross anti-Semitism of a handful of civil servants in the bureaus of Whitehall Westminster Holy Land can be traced. Its wantonness is not flaunted; it is true, like the excesses of the German Nazis or the Polish Endeks.
It lies icily beneath the shining hardness of bureaucratic logic.
It is overlaid with the softness of English colonial skill — but, as we shall discover, it is in no sense less intense, and fully as implacable, as the open anti-Semitism of the Nazis on the Continent.
This, briefly, will be found to be the underlying condition which hides beneath the maze of pretension by which London Holy Land in these past years to be given over to hooligans and desperadoes who have murdered its citizens, burned its crops and houses and demoralized its commerce.
The records are voluminous. This book attempts only the barest factual description, as free as such an account may reasonably be from evaluations or interpretations
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which the facts do not bespeak in themselves.
For those who desire fuller information on the various aspects of this subject, a selected list of reference works will be found in the notes and bibliography. The attention of the reader should also be brought to the fact that except where otherwise indicated, italics are in every case my own.
W.B.Z.
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The People of the Book .1
The Ancient Land Israel Independence
II. "May My Right Arm Wither. . 21
The Jew Never Gave Up His Claim to Palestine
The First Essential to Jewish Title
III. The Wandering Jew 25
Fifteen Hundred Years of Tragedy — "Liberty
Fraternity ! Equality ! " — 'The Lost Ten Tribes'
— Reawakening Hebrew Consciousness — Herzl
IV, The Jewel of the Mediterranean 45
Topography — Jewish Pre- War Settlements
V. The Balfour Declaration 52
VI. Brass Buttons and Stuffed Shirts 64
Marching Jews — Revolting Tribesmen — The Arab View of Zionism — The Military Junta — Hand-rubbing Statesmen — Pogrom and World Horror
VII. The Mandate by the League 90
Weizmann Obliges — The First Partition
xi
xii
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CHAPTER PAGE
VIII. A Man Named Samuel 100
Under the Colonial Office — A Jewish Ruler After
Two Thousand Years — The Pogrom of 1921 —
The Grand Mufti - The Churchill White Paper
— Severance of Trans Jordan — Samuel is Replaced
— Field Marshal Lord Plumer
IX. The White Paper Barrage 121
The Third High Commissioner — The Pogrom of 1929 — Who Was Responsible ? — Commissions and White Papers — The Report of Hope-Simpson
— The Passfield White Paper — The MacDonald Letter — The Kid Glove High Commissioner — The Report of Mr. French
BOOK TWO
I. Jews Have a Reputation for Intelligence . .152
The Zionist Organization — The Palestine
II. "The Desert Shall Bloom Like the Rose" . .176
'Unprecedented Prosperity' — Population and Cities — Character of the People
III. Bureaucracy Looks at Jews 192
The Holy Land and Whitehall
IV. Welcome Home! 234
The Jew Tries to Enter Palestine — Tourists — Hunting down Illegals — The Arab Comes in Like a Gentleman — Britain
V. Close Settlement on the Land 254
Soil Hunger — A Famine in Land — Double Standard of Taxation
CONTENTS
xiii
CHAPTER PAGE
VI. Bricks without Straw 271
Sabotaging Industry — Banking and Currency — Citrus — Economic Insanity — 'Heads, I Win: Tails, You Lose' — On Air and Sea — Roads and Railroads
VII. Dual Obligation to Two Peoples 304
The Tax Moneys — Public Expenditures — Cheating Children with Cockles — Health and Sanitation — Laws, Benefits and Public Services — 'No Jews Need Apply' — An Anglo-Saxon System of Jurisprudence — The Wolf Named Sheriff to the Lambs — Numerous Clauses and Censorship
VIII. Trans Jordan the Judenrein 340
Legalities : 'Made in England
IX. Whooping it up for Democracy 352
The Legislative Council — "By Their Acts You Shall
Know Them ! " — Some Odious Comparisons
BOOK THREE
Does an Arab Race Exist? — Arab Types and Traits — Levantine Worship of God — The Son of the Desert Suffers from Jewish Competition — Nashishibis and Husseinis — Claims, Objectives and Methods — 'Semitic Brothers'
II. Jehovah Abdicates in Favor of Downing Street 410
'Let Not Thy Right Hand Know What Thy Left Hand Doeth' — Revolt by Permission — Blaming Italians and Communists — Another Royal Commission—Downing Street Runs the Gauntlet — Mr. Weizmann Obliges Again — Saint George Spits in the Dragon's Eye
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BOOK FOUR
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Collapse of Emancipation 478
'Enemies of All Mankind' — The Refugees
II. Solving the Jewish Question in the Holy Land 492
Absorptive Capacity — Landless Arabs and Agricultural Possibilities — 'No Water' — A Prospect of Agricultural Competence — Mineral Resources — Other Possibilities — An Overcrowded Country
III. "Am I My Brother's Keeper?" 514
Notes 527
Appendixes 571
Selected Bibliography 584
Glossary 598
Index 601
Maps appear on end pages, inside front and back covers.
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I
1 THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
THE ANCIENT LAND ISRAEL
The Zionist fabric is not new. It is of a piece with the whole history and tradition of the Hebrew people. It is inextricably a part of that dynamic stream of consciousness which has swept the Hebrew past a long succession of centuries which, by all logic, should have suffocated him. Unconsciously, even the apostate Disraeli acknowledged the great compulsion of the Hebrew past in the life of the living Jew. Cut to the quick by fellow-members in Parliament who taunted him with being a Jew as he made his maiden speech, he cried in reply: "That is all very well — but when your ancestors were chasing each other around trees with stone axes, mine were writing the Talmud."
A short glimpse into the history of this remarkable people will shed a clear light on much of the present Jewish situation which must otherwise remain confused and inexplicable.
For countless generations the world has been content with the paradox which allowed it to affirm with Sir William Jones, that the Hebrew Scriptures "contained more sublimity, more exquisite beauty, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence than could be collected from all other books that were ever composed in any age or any idiom"; and in the same breath to believe that the Hebrews who wrote them were a tribe of wild, illiterate shepherds on a scale of development comparable to that of the modern Bedouin.
Recent archaeological research brings us to the more reasonable conclusion that the people who wrote the Bible were a race who lived in a high state of civilization, not inferior in many of its aspects to that of the present day.
Among the most interesting of these discoveries is the undoubted proof that Abraham
2 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
actually lived. We have the word of Sir Leonard Woolley and other scholars that "the fact of Abraham's existence was vouched for by written documents almost, if not quite, contemporary with him." 1 And Prof. J. Garrow Duncan Ur
It is now clear that the Jews originated in Mesopotamia , a colonizing offshoot of that ancient Akkadian-Sumerian culture, in which, according to the consensus of modern scholarly opinion, civilization itself was cradled.
The Hebrews entered Palestine Lachish
Recent excavations confirm completely descriptions in the texts of the Old Testament. At Tell Sbustujeh in Samaria were found exquisite decorations, delicately carved inlays, and various articles of metal craftsmanship, obviously those referred to in Kings 22:39, Amos 3:15 and Psalms 45:8. Here are the palaces of Ahab, and houses built with hewn stone, often of two or three stories, speaking evidence of the rich civilized life which produced them. Excavations elsewhere in Palestine Gezer Jerusalem
In the light of these findings, the great prosperity of the Hebrew nation cannot be dismissed as so much oriental braggadocio. It must be accepted as a faithful
3 THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
account of historical fact.
The soil had been the basic source of Palestine Palestine
"There were figs and grapes and more wine than water. Its honey was ample and its oil abundant and all kinds of fruits hung from its trees. There were wheat and barley and all kinds of flocks, without number." 5 About 200 B.C. another articulate traveler, one Aristeas, raptly describes the country as an agricultural paradise. 0 Josephus himself never grew tired of praising the fertility of his native land. TheGalilee uplands he describes as being so closely cultivated as to resemble "a large garden." Tacitus echoes much of this unbounded adulation; while Polybius declared that the district between Beth Shan and the Lake of Galilee
Biblical testimony itself was unstinting in its lush description of the region as being a land flowing with milk and honey. Deuteronomy describes it as a beautiful country with "brooks of water and fountains and lakes that spring out of valleys and hills, a land of wheat, barley and vines, and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, a land where one can eat without scarceness, where there is no lack of anything. .
The Jew had been a skilled agriculturist. He knew how to prepare the soil, manure it and clear it of stones and debris. He was accustomed to terrace the hills and knew how to practice irrigation by means of cisterns, wells and canals. The ploughshare itself was made out of iron. 7 The ground had to be turned over at least three times, and the plough followed by the harrow. 8 So highly was agriculture esteemed that even Saul, although he was already anointed king, is seen returning from his day at the plough. 9
In the hands of this provident people who loved their soil, this whole territory was an
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Grain crops and vegetables of all kinds grew in profusion both in the valleys and on the hills. The land was so rich in fruits of every kind that they were exported to world markets, where they were famous for their superior quality. All through ancient times the Jordan Valley Judea as famous for dates as Egypt Galilee was known throughout the ancient world for its olive oil. Its importance alone is shown by the amount supplied annually to the King of Tyre by Solomon: i 60,000 gallons of best quality. 11 Across Jordan Bashan were proverbial. AndGilead bore perfume and medicine for the whole Eastern world. Hence the proverb, "Is there no balm in Gilead ?"
Up to the Fifth Century A.D. the bare hills of Moab Bethlehem Sharon Carmel
In this Eden
Dairying was of sufficient importance to make a cheese market necessary in Jerusalem Jordan
They were equally alert and practiced in handicrafts which were considered a family
5 THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
pride and tradition. At the time of Jesus, Jewish literature mentions no less than forty kinds of craftsmen. Hillel was a wood-cutter; R. Yeshoshua ben Hananya a smith; Jesus of Nazareth a carpenter and maker of cattle yokes, and Saul of Tarsus a weaver of tent cloths. An interesting picture of various crafts is given in the Wisdom of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) , a book belonging to about 200 B.C. Here the ploughman, the grazier, the carpenter, the engraver, the smith, the potter and the physician are all spoken of.
Excavations at Tell Beit Mirsim (the Biblical Debir) showed that the industrial life of Israel
At the south end of Lake Tiberius Lebanon land of Moab
In those days the present industrial relations between East and West were reversed. The Orient was then the great industrial center and exchanged its manufactured products against the raw materials of the less developed Western countries.
Solomon was canny enough to exploit the unique geographical position of his country. He was the originator of the policy of customs and levied on both imports and exports to keep his treasury full. 17 The commerce of the Hebrew State China Natal Zululand where
6 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
coins dating from the time of the Maccabee’s have been recently discovered. 18
On the sea, Rawlinson observes that while the friendly dealings of Hiram with David and Solomon are well known, "the continued alliance between the Phoenicians and the Israelites has attracted less attention/'. 19 This continued composition of interests between the two neighboring Semitic nations is mentioned by Herodotus and other ancients and is confirmed by modern authorities. 20 Says Klausner: "Jewish sailors were just as numerous as Jewish donkey-drivers." 21
Fishermen too were numerous and the catch so plentiful that much of it was salted and sold abroad. Trade both by sea and over the camel routes thrived. Aristeas declares fulsomely that "a great mass of spices, precious stones and gold is brought into the district. . . For the country is well adapted for commerce, as well as for cultivation and the city [Jerusalem
This was the country which Jehovah had promised to his peopleIsrael
Population estimates vary, curtained by the dust of antiquity, but in every case they were so considerable as to cause the modern observer to gasp. In an age where opportunities for sustaining concentrated industrial populations were largely non-existent, the land certainly maintained a per capita density incomparably larger than that which allegedly overcrowds it today.
Diodorus, Strabo, Tacitus, and Dio Cassius all agree that "the population to the square
7 THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
mile was larger in Palestine
The book of Exodus 12:37 we are told that there were "about 600,000 on foot that were men, besides women and children" plus "a mixed multitude" that went up from Egypt Jerusalem Galilee alone must have held fully 3,000,000 people, while the whole of Palestine
Certainly if one may judge from Roman accounts of the wars withJudea , where figures running into the millions were given for the slain, and the numbers sold into captivity ran into legions, these figures are not incredible.
CHARACTER OF THE HEBREW
If the Jews are to return to become a collective force in the world of men, they will beyond doubt resuscitate their ancient law. Prof. A. A. Berle points out that "that law, only vaguely understood, and of only very limited application in world history, will have then a full exposition and a thorough working out in terms of modern life/* 26 An increasing army of educators, disgusted with the tyrannical and unpleasant philosophies which are blasting civilization to its foundations, see in the Hebrew laws the elements for a social regeneration of this sick world. "Certainly," says Berle, "many of the laws relating to the ordinary life and relations of mankind, as laid down in ancient Mosaic law, if applied to a modern city block, would regenerate it root and
branch."
Most of what passes for a history of the Hebrew people has been filtered through hostile Greek and Roman sources and through the hardly less hostile bias of
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medieval Christianity. The significance of Hebrew genius in relation to its peculiar understanding of cultural values is hence not generally understood.
Dr. Marion E. Cady says of this situation that "now it is being fearlessly asserted that as in religion, so in education, the Jews have made the greatest contribution of any nation, ancient, medieval or modern." 27 Prof. E. C Baldwin of Illinois University concludes that "modern culture, both artistic and ethical, goes back to Athens and to Jerusalem, but that English culture owes far more to the Hebrew than to the Greeks." 28 And Dr. F. T. Lamb asserts that "if our boys and girls were trained as Jesus was
trained up to twelve years of age, they would be in every desirable respect greatly the superior of the boys and girls trained under the best methods of the present day." 29
The essential core of the Hebrew idea was the superiority of reason. That system of life which is commonly called Judaism was in the most real sense no religion at all. It was never formal, abstract and separated from life, but a throbbing and vital part of it. It was completely unlike pure theological systems such as that evolved by the Greeks — which, attempting to reconcile themselves with the world in its broadest sense, found religious inheritance irreconcilable with rational thinking. It is necessary to understand Judaism in this sense, as a civilization rather than a religion, in order to grasp adequately the dynamics and vitality which have kept Zionism consciously alive over this great lapse of years. Judaism was concerned deliberately with the quality of living on this earth, with the bringing of every phase of existence into relation with eternal truth. "It is worth remarking," comment Graham and May, "that no matter to what heights of social vision and spiritual exaltation the Hebrew seer might climb, he never lost that urge toward physical well-being which had impelled his remote ancestors to venture into the Promised Land.
In the same breath in which he speaks of multitudes streaming toZion
"The drift of all Hebrew thinking," says MacDonald, "as thinking, was to link up morals and intelligence." 31 Judaism significantly regarded stupidity as the source
9 THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
of evil in individual man. A sinner was a blunderer and not a rational person, and the ultimate morality was not to be a fool. Worshiping Reason, the Hebrew could not credit anything which was either irrational or static. To his mind, nothing existed rigid and unalterable in a state of 'being,' but only of 'becoming.'
The great Rabbi Hillel, who preceded Jesus by a generation, typified this remarkable viewpoint. Asked by a heathen who wished to make sport of him, to be taught the whole Torah 32 while standing on one foot, the gentle Hillel replied: "What is hateful to thee do not to others. This is the whole Torah. The rest is merely commentary."
While the Hebrew concept regarded all life forces as constituting one unity not capable of being subdivided on varying moral bases to suit varying emergencies and occasions, it was irrevocably anchored in an implicit belief in the sacredness of the individual personality. At a time when Romans compelled gladiators to slaughter each other for sport in the arenas, when material appetites and gross oppressions were the elements of universal law, this free people was living in accordance with a code which for sheer gallantry of expression has had no equal before — nor perhaps since. A spirit of mercy and humanity pervaded the Hebrew legal system. In Jewish law there was never such a thing as legal justification for inequality. No man could vindicate an act of injustice by an appeal to law. Complete equality before the bar of justice was the right of all from humble herdsman to king. The Deuteronomic Code declares no single witness sufficient to convict a man of wrongdoing. Malicious witnesses were severely dealt with. "A straying animal must be taken up and returned to its owner, and if a beast has fallen under a burden the passerby must aid the owner in raising it to its feet again." 33
This applied also to lost articles and provided that if the owner were unknown the finder must care for them until the owner appears. 34
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"thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the grain." 36 Love of the resident alien is explicitly demanded in Deut. 19:33; Deut. 10: 19 and Exodus 22:21 ; 23:9. The duty of treating strangers, together with orphans and widows, with justice, mercy and generosity is emphasized, decreeing that the gleanings of grain fields, orchards and vineyards must be left free for them to gather and enjoy. 37 The taking of interest on loans to the poor is forbidden. 38 Runaway slaves must be received and treated kindly and are not to be surrendered to their owners or oppressed. 30
More amazing still, in an ancient world of cruelty and ruthlessness, are the injunctions of Deut. 24:16, where the principle of individual responsibility is laid down, so that a relative may not be punished for the misdeeds of a son — in striking contrast with practices in operation even today in such allegedly civilized states as Russia Germany Europe and in parts of America
Un-cleanliness is completely discountenanced. In his splendid book, Medicine in the Bible, Dr. Charles Brim details the amazing medical knowledge and sanitary understanding of the ancient Israelites. Says Dr. Victor Robinson in this regard: "There are passages in the Pentateuch which deserve a place in the Corpus Hippocraticum." 41 And Col. Edgar Erskine Hume avers that every principle of modern military sanitation was known and used by Moses.
Hebrew law also emphasized good breeding, as : "Let another man praise thee and not thine own mouth," 42 or : "When thou sittest among many, reach not thine hand out first of all." 43
Education was widely diffused. The sons of rich families had their tutors, while parents in more modest circumstances taught their own children. Those who could afford it wore handsome clothing of various colors and often the outer garment was embroidered with gold. Everywhere and at all times song and music were to be found. The harp or organ was one of the many instruments known. We hear of pipes,
11 THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
psalteries, cymbals and trumpets, all of which required skill in playing and therefore implied instruction. 44 Music seems to have been the joyous climax of all occasions of public or private life. The international repute which Jewish singers had achieved is indicated from the inscription on an Assyrian monument where the chief item of tribute laid on Hezekiah by an Assyrian ruler was the demand for a company of men and women singers.
Labor was highly esteemed. The Talmud directed every father, regardless of his social position, to teach his son some useful trade. 45 "The tradesman at his work," it declares, "is the equal of the most learned doctor"; and avers that "he who derives his livelihood from the labor of his hands is as great as he who fears God." The most prominent authors of the Talmud were in fact simple workingmen, shoemakers, ironworkers, laborers; proud men who knew no masters and brooked no slaves.
We can also conclude that among the Jews, women enjoyed a free and independent social position. Two of the twenty-four books of the Bible received their titles from the names of women, Ruth and Esther. There were seven prophetesses spoken of in the Talmud. Among them Deborah judged the people and went out with Barak to fight against Sisera. During the reign of Josiah, Huldah was so highly thought of as to be consulted by the chief officers of the kingdom. The king himself bowed down to his mother, as Solomon did to Bathsheba. Wherever in Precepts, Psalms or Proverbs filial devotion is mentioned, father and mother are made equal, as is done in the Fifth Commandment.
Hebrews were never ruled like slaves of an Eastern despot. They were called into council by their kings and contended boldly for their rights. Decrees affecting the whole community were ratified by the general voice of the people, freely assembled.
This free people, for all their gentle philosophy of life, were always animated by the spirit of liberty and inspired by the cry 'To your tents, O Israel V They knew how to resist oppression.
They were not overawed by the cruelties of Antiochus or Herod; nor, alone among the peoples of the earth, cowed by the might of Imperial Rome.
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Specific legislation defined and restricted the powers of the crown, in itself eloquent testimony to the democratic spirit prevailing in Israel
We search antiquity in vain for an example of free government comparable to that provided by Israel 21:23 -24 and23:30 , it had the authority to make and unmake kings and on occasion actually did so. Remarks Sulzberger: "While the modern monotheistic conception of the universe is largely the product of their [the Jewish] genius, so the modern conception of the rational, democratic, representative government owes its origin to the same ancestry." And adds the famed Master of Balliol, Edward Caird: "It is not without significance that the great struggle for political freedom in this country [England
The bulk and mainstay of the nation were middleclass farmers and villagers, each one of whom felt himself equal to Caesar. Tacitus remarks on their health and the fact that they are "capable of enduring great fatigue." Josephus describes them as a war-like people, greatly desired as mercenary soldiers and disliked for their arrogance and pride of race.
The idyll of Jewish speculation was no Valhalla , but a time of grace when swords would be beaten into ploughshares and Spears into pruning hooks. 47 They were the first people in history who regarded their fate not from the standpoint of physical supremacy but from that of moral harmony; yet there were no people in history who possessed the haughty pride in race and the passionate love of country which continually distinguished them. This passion of the Jewish people for Palestine
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Coeval with the Race and is disclosed in every tarn in their history — a sentiment as enduring as the Jew. "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" begins the Psalms. The Hebrews, a poetical people, addressed their country with all the ardor of one referring to a loved one: "Land of beauty!" "The princess among the nations!" "The joy of the whole earth!"
Coexistent with this infatuation for the country was an unbending love of liberty, so reckless and intense as to amount almost to an obsession. The Jewish greeting was Shalom (peace), but all who encountered him were shortly to discover that it did not mean peace at any price.
STRUGGLES FOR INDEPENDENCE
Situated in the very pathway of invading world conquerors we find this brave people again and again refusing to pay tribute or accept oppression. Typical in sheer pathos is the bitter rebellion of the little country, under King Jehoiachim, against the world power of Babylon Jerusalem Jerusalem
Nebuchadnezzar thought he had put a final end to this rebellious and irreconcilable people; but not more than fifty years later he who by his own claim sat at the right hand of God, became with all his works only a memory and the Jews returned to
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Typical again of the magnificent character of this race were their later wars under Judas, son of Mattathias, who was surnamed Maccabeus. A new conqueror had risen in the shape of Antiochus, the Syrian Greek. Now was to begin the first of those world struggles in which the force of idea was advanced as taking precedence over that of inherent personality. This war was fought to stem the sweeping onrush of Hellenism by which the known world seemed about to be engulfed.
With a small group of his determined followers Judas refused to yield. Attacking giant armies again and again with his little band of guerrilla fighters, he won a succession of victories. The Syrian in a towering rage at this Lilliputian effrontery, declared his intention of utterly exterminating every individual of the Jewish people. He invaded with the enormous armies so characteristic of despots of the period.
Able to muster but a handful of ill-equipped men, Judas was counseled to retreat. He replied with characteristic recklessness: "If our time has come to die, let us die; but let it never be said of us that we turned our back on an enemy." With only eight hundred men he attacked the invading legions near Adorsa. Here, fighting grimly to the last, the stern company gave up their lives. But the miracle had happened: the invader, nonplussed by the unexpected nature of this furious resistance, was stopped dead in his tracks. Jonathan, brother of Judas, took up the struggle. The Syrian levies, dismayed and beginning to believe they were fighting devils instead of men, gave the matter over as a bad business and went into retreat. 49 Once more Jews saluted each other with the old greeting of Shalom and began to build where they had left off.
FINAL REBELLIONS
It was inevitable that the lengthening shadow of Rome
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anyone who would hold a firm grip on the rich hinterland of Asia andAfrica . The times were turbulent. The Maccabean princes themselves were in civil war, Hyrcanus warring against his brother, Aristobulus II. Finally the two brothers entreated the assistance of Pompey, then commander-in-chief of the Roman troops in the East, and elected him arbiter of their mutual differences. The consequences of this step were fatal to the Jews. Pompey with true Roman forthrightness, finding the place pleasant, decided to remain. He therefore invested Jerusalem
Under Herod, who was soon to sit on the Jewish throne as a Roman puppet, a conscious policy was adopted aimed at denationalizing this dynamic people. In despair the frantic nation writhed and spat in every direction like a caught wildcat. Continuous sullen insurrection made the air electric. A large number of Jews turned in sheer weariness from what was evidently a hopeless struggle, to a desire for a world religion where peace and justice would reign once more. The new prophet, Joshua of Nazareth whom the Greeks called Jesus, arose to interpret this new direction of Jewish hope. He preached to a rebellious, crushed and unhappy people, his own nation, a class whose stake in the world had been gradually destroyed. Reason had spoken against the futility of attempting to maintain a Culture and State independent of the redemption of unhappy mankind the world over. They turned to this great new prophet, confidently considering the national devotion of the rest of Jewry as so much outworn, reactionary adherence to a social order clearly failing and soon to be outmoded in the coming brotherhood of man.
The Jews of the Dispersion carried the new faith with them and "formed the bridge
16 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
across which Christianity entered the Roman world." 50 It was from the synagogues of the far shores of the Mediterranean that its gospel of world brotherhood was fervently proclaimed, so that for generations there was so little difference between Jew and Christian that both factions attended the same synagogues together. Had anyone told the followers of this new idyllic creed that in its name their brother Jews would one day be flayed alive and boiled in oil, he would have been considered a lunatic.
In Judea itself things went from bad to worse. One Roman governor outdid the other in cruelty and rapacity. The whole Hebraic conception of life crumbled under an onslaught of graft, lust, sabotage and provocation. The old courtly idea of Jewish ethics became a liability; dishonesty and venality were soon recognizable as the only guides to a comfortable existence, and began to corrupt the character of the people themselves. The country was overrun with robbers, and justice was sold to the highest bidder. Great numbers of the wretched Jews, unable to stand this intolerable situation any longer, emigrated.
These were the conditions that preceded the disastrous war which desolated Jewry and dispersed the Jews. Goaded to wild desperation they rose once more in insurrection, a rebellion the most desperate of any recorded in history.
Ironically enough, Agrippa II, descendant of the Maccabean kings, thoroughly Latinized, joined with the Romans. Attempting to show the rebels the folly of opposing the conquerors of the world, he urged them to lay down their arms and submit. The reply was open defiance.
Retaliating, the Romans massacred almost a hundred thousand Jews. The hills around Jerusalem
The rebels however were made of stuff that was not to be cowed by these punitive measures. They attacked with such indomitable fury that they soon held a large section of the country.
Enraged by this unheard-of insolence, Cestius Gallus invaded fromSyria
17 THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
the inhabitants. Investing Jerusalem
The Emperor Nero, puzzled by this extraordinary occurrence, wisely decided to take no chances. He appointed the great General Vespasian to prosecute the war, who again laid siege to the capital.
Meanwhile the Jews were wasting their strength and resources in internal quarrels. Within the city sanguinary civil wars and sub-civil wars rent to shreds the defenders, who displayed a common front only when the invaders were visible beneath the walls. When the Romans had been driven back, these fratricidal contests were at once resumed.
The attack was now in the hands of Titus, Vespasian's son. Grown weary of this interminable in vesture, he attempted to parley with the insurgents, who contemptuously refused any terms whatsoever save unconditional freedom. Finally, as a result of the continuing internal struggles of the defenders themselves, the city fell. Josephus graphically pictures the indescribable events that followed; "One would have thought that the hill itself on which the Temple Holy City Rome Egypt Cyrene
18 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
as captives, to fight as gladiators in the public theater or to be devoured by wild beasts.
Living symbol of the indomitable Semitic spirit, three fortresses still held out to the end. The last to be taken, Masada , under the command of the lion-hearted Eleazor, maintained itself for long months as an island of resistance after the sea around it had been beaten into submission. Rather than surrender, the defenders slew each other, the last survivor defiantly setting fire to the castle before executing himself. So they fell, writes Tacitus, "with swords in their hands, contending for liberty, and, in the act, preserving it. 53
It had taken Titus more than seven years to subdue a tiny corner of the earth whose inhabitants had not much more to offer in arms and battlements than their simple valor. Returning to Rome
Large numbers of Jews who had escaped the destruction sought asylum in various parts of the world. The dispersion had begun in earnest.
THE DISPERSION
Even these catastrophic losses did not serve to break the Jewish spirit. Scarcely a generation had passed when the same old revolt broke out again, more tempestuous than ever (A.D. 116). This time the dispersed Jews suddenly rose in blazing fury to
aid their brothers who had been struggling in Judea . "Myriads," says Eusebius, "had already been killed in the past seventeen years." There is plenty of evidence that the Jews did equal damage to their enemies.
Simultaneously the scattered men of Israel Egypt Cyprus
19 THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
Whole provinces were devastated in this amazing struggle of one small gallant nation against the mightiest empire of the world. Bar Kochba had succeeded in accomplishing the impossible: he drove out the Roman, holding the entire Empire at bay, and set up a Jewish State. The quality of the man may be judged from the prayer he is said to have addressed to the Lord Jehovah asking that no assistance be given to the enemy. "As for ourselves," he finished piously, "we ask no help — we will take care of ourselves."
The Emperor Hadrian was appalled. In desperation he set aside all other tasks of state, concentrating his energies on the business of wiping out Judea , which had now become a menace to the very life of the Empire. 54
For almost four years the contest continued. When finally resistance ceased, Judea resembled a wilderness. All men capable of bearing arms had fallen, together with their auxiliaries from the Diaspora; and "the unburied bodies of the hundreds of thousands of the dead poisoned the air." At the fall of Betar alone half a million Jews are said to have lost their lives.
Such vast numbers were sold into slavery that in Rome Judea and swept it clear of Jews. He rebuilt Jerusalem Galilee .
It is interesting to note that to the Roman, Christianity was still merely a schismatic Jewish sect. Even at that late date he regardedMount Calvary Temple Golgotha orCalvary ; and in the Grotto at Bethlehem
Even after the ferocious revenge taken by Rome Zion
Utterly ruined and bitterly oppressed, they still had strength enough under the reign of Constantine
20 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
indiscriminate slaughter. The survivors taken captive were sold as slaves. But if the Imperial Government thought it was through with this obstinate race whose will to national existence continued without a State, without territory and almost without human rights anywhere, it soon realized its miscalculation. The fierce determination of the Hebrew to recover what was his by main force remained fiery and undeterred as before. When King Chosroes of Persia Palestine
This was the last straw. Along with the barbarians it had absorbed, Christianity had taken on much of the pagan hatred for Jews. The monks had long been urging the Emperor Heraclius to exterminate this obstinate people. This was their opportunity to drive their argument home. When the country reverted to Byzantium Egypt Palestine
CHAPTER II
"MAY MY RIGHT ARM WITHER. . »
THE JEW NEVER GAVE UP HIS CLAIM TO PALESTINE ISRAEL
The whole history of the Jew, if it has any meaning at all, lies in a demand for political restoration and sovereignty. Despite the spirit in which Jewish history later began to be falsified, one may understand that what these unhappy exiles concentrated all their hopes and yearnings on was the dream of a reborn Jewish Sovereign State. It dominated the writings of the rabbis; it permeated prayer and poetry; it was part and parcel of every expression of existence. "We cannot," they complained in prayer, "serve Thee according to Thy commandment." And mournfully the Talmud proclaims: "He who has not tasted the bread of Palestine Israel
Their oath of fealty is famous wherever men gather who love character and devotion: "May my right arm wither ere I forget thee, O Jerusalem!" For a thousand years their toast and blessing rang in challenge and prayer: "Next year in Jerusalem
Jews were buried with a bag of Palestine Jerusalem Temple
No matter where the Jews lived, culturally and spiritually they moved in a Palestinian milieu. "It did not matter to them that
Palestine - Israel was occupied and in possession of Bedouin or Turk" — three times daily the petition went up that her crops might prosper — exactly as though the Jews still lived there in undisturbed possession.
"After each meal the Jew gave thanks for the Land as though he were still living in it and enjoying its produce." 2 He was certain of again of liberating and occupying it, and always remembered that he was in exile.
The scattered communities of the Jews, until modern enlightenment shattered them beyond recognition, were far more than mere retreats of religious zealotry. They were
21 Pics
22 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
rather an organized attempt to continue their national existence in every possible sphere and to remain as an individual force in history. All through the Dispersion, from the captivity in Babylon
The entire structure of Jewish existence stemmed from the faith that the Temple
One can readily understand the sweet Hebrew poet Halevy, singing a thousand years after the Exodus in identical strain with the troubadours who composed the psalms. All chivalrous hearts must weep for the constancy and the beauty with which he lifts his lyrical voice and cries: "To weep upon thy misery I am like a howling jackal; but when I dream thy return and restoration
I am the harp for thy joyous songs."
So also, in this unbroken continuity of belief and longing, the Modern Hebrew poet Bialik, eye-witness to the pogroms of South Russia , was to pledge his faith in the destiny of his people; singing in deathless words that unending claim which to the Jew is his title in this world:
"Thou wilt not totter, tent of Shem —
I shall rebuild thee.
Thou wilt yet outlive the palaces
As thou didst the days of the destruction
When the towers crumbled."
THE FIRST ESSENTIAL TO JEWISH TITLE
It is on this tenacious, unwavering concentration of hope, sacrifice and prayer that the first part of the Jewish claim to Palestine Israel
23 "MAY MY RIGHT ARM WITHER ..."
is based and not alone, as Judeo-phobes would attempt to make out, on the mere existence of a Jewish State in remote antiquity.
Dr. Wm. E. Blackstone, quoting the foremost authorities on international law, pointed out in 1891 that since the Jews never gave up their title to Palestine - Israel, the general law of dereliction' could not hold in their case: "for they never abandoned the land.
They made no treaty, they did not even surrender. They simply succumbed, after the most desperate conflict, to the overwhelming power of the Romans . . . and were captured or enslaved. . . Since then, having no sovereign nor political head through whom they could speak, they have disputed the possession of the land, by continued protest through their literature and their public and private worship." He showed that the Jews throughout the ages have continually stated in the Passover service: "Next year we hope to celebrate it in the land of Israel Jerusalem
Blackstone quotes the outstanding legal luminaries of his day, who agree that the Jewish claim was legally, at least, sound. He points out that according to the logical precedents established by such authorities as Buswell, Wheaton, Clifford, Phillimore and others, "the forcible manner by which Israel has been kept out of the land, with no means of redress, is equivalent in principle to a continued state of war," and that therefore "limitations should in no event run against them until they have had the opportunity to present their claim at the bar of the only possible earthly court, an International Conference."
The greatest legal authorities have agreed that according to the foundation principles of international law there is no basis for prescription against Israel, either on the ground of dereliction or of undisputed possession — that therefore the Jews have a valid claim on Palestine - Israel as long as there is a single Zionist alive. Certainly no more desperate opposition to despoliation has ever existed in history, nor a sterner demand for restitution.
The British Government in 1920 recognized without reservation the validity of this claim. 4 It points out in clear, ringing words that Jewish nationalism has been continuous, and refers to the fact that it is "the oldest nationalist movement in
24 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
history."
No more thorough, comprehensive or understanding statement of Jewish aims has ever been penned than this official English publication which is now buried somewhere in the dusty files ofWhitehall
CHAPTER III
THE WANDERING JEW
FIFTEEN HUNDRED YEARS OF TRAGEDY
Despite the frightful suffering to which their position in medieval life daily exposed them, the Jews maintained a vigorous, colorful, picturesque existence in which their communal and personal life blossomed out in rich and luxuriant beauty. Scattered from thePersian Gulf to the Irish Sea , the Jewish communities acknowledged equally a system of law that bears comparison with the great systems of the world. With dynamic resilience Jewish life readjusted itself to the new conditions, but carried over with it the old Eastern civilization intact. In the midst of the intellectual decay which overtook mankind during the Dark Ages, it is astonishing to see Levi ben Gershon calmly asserting the existence of primary matter, Hasdai Crescas refuting the narrow concepts of Aristotle, and Rambam dipping his majestic mind into the realms of psychiatry. Academic research and such modern subjects as sex hygiene were part of the regular curriculum of Jewish schooling. Every child was taught the Law; and the sages even implied that the study of the Torah and the observance of its laws were more important than the ceremonies of Worship.
"All the mitzvoth [religious injunctions] are not equal to one word of the Torah," says an authority of the Third Century with sweeping bluntness.
It was in this vibrant atmosphere that Judaism thrived and held staunchly to its belief in the recon quest of the Promised Land, and not in the pallid air of religious zealotry which was later to settle on its spirit like a sickness.
Behind the shroud of silence to which anti-Jewish bias has consigned it, the organized civilization of the Jews during the Dispersion glistens like a diamond. While all else was in the most impenetrable darkness and ignorance, Hebrew writers and scholars not only constructed original works, but studied and elab orated the writings of
25 Pics
26 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
classical antiquity and rendered them accessible to the Christian countries of the Occident. The Arab invasion which followed the rise of Islam was instructed from the same source. Jews wrote the first works on fevers and material medica and translated them into other languages. They founded and supported the famous schools ofSalerno Montpellier
Until the end of the Sixteenth Century medicine was almost a Jewish monopoly. In all of the other arts and sciences, mathematics, astronomy, physics, alchemy, history and geography, Jewish minds excelled. Typical of the stature and enterprise of these lordly exiles was the expedition of Columbus Columbus Columbus New World was the Jewish interpreter Luis de Torres, closely followed by the Jewish surgeon Marco and the Jewish physician Bernal. 2
The Jews left no branch of learning or science untouched. Said Sombart: "Israel passes over Europe like the sun; whenever it appears new life shoots up, but when it is withdrawn all that once flourished withers away." 3 The German scholar, Dr. M. I. Schleiden, declares that during the “Middle Ages” "the Jews were the preservers of agriculture, of all large industries." 4 And Valeriu Marcu assures us that "the most important monarchs seem to have been unable to manage without Jewish educators, advisers and ministers. . ." 5
In commerce as in culture, the part played by this expatriate people was tremendous. "At all points where the formation of cities was going on, where an urban community was developing out of the former castellum of the Romans, the Jews contributed
a decisive element by bringing trade within the walls." 6 This is expressed in a truly
27 THE WANDERING JEW 27
classic manner in the words with which Bishop Rudiger of Speyer village of Speyer Spain
The distinguished character of this Hebrew culture is traceable everywhere, where it is not hidden by slander and omission.
The personal life of the Jew was no less well-ordered. Until later edicts ousted them from that work, agriculture was the most highly esteemed of occupations; and they practically held a monopoly on handicrafts where taste as well as manual skill was required. As a speaking instance, when the edict of expulsion reached Sicily
expelled at once we shall lack craftsmen capable of supplying mechanical utensils, especially those made of iron, as agricultural implements and equipment for ships, galleys. . 7
Labor itself remained dignified in Jewish life, as it was in the old homeland. Bespeaking this attitude, Maimonides laid down the axiom that "a single coin earned by one's manual labor is worth more than the whole revenue of the Prince of the
Captivity, derived as it is from the gifts of others." 8
The sanctity of the Jewish home continued in undiminished tradition. Nothing in modern life can excel the courtly respect and single-hearted devotion which the Talmudic husband displayed towards his spouse. "He loves her as himself," declares the Talmud, "but honors her more than himself."
All through this period the Jews justly prided themselves on their fastidious habits and regard for the amenities. Cleanly habits were in fact codified, and Jewish medieval law contained a systematized scheme of etiquette, of good custom and refined taste. It was not until centuries of ghetto life and cruel degradation had rendered the Jews indifferent to their surroundings that this old characteristic ceased to distinguish them.
It was the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III which in 1215 made the first
28 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
serious encroachments on the freedom and possessions of the Jews, forcing them by decree to wear a distinctive mark on their clothes, the so-called fellow badge.' The decree of the Synod of Breslau in 1267, prohibiting Jews from living together with Christians in the Eastern provinces where "the church was still a tender shoot," finally led to the establishment of the Ghetto in all countries. The Jewish quarter was usually situated in a disreputable, crowded, unhealthful section of the city. It was guarded by night so that no one could enter or leave. Its area was to serve for all time; it was not to be enlarged. Its narrow, crooked streets were always dark. In this foul area where sunlight could not enter, there was no room for trees, grass or flowers. Infant mortality was staggering; the faces of young and old alike were habitually pallid.
Deprived of all legal position and branded as incorrigible Satanists, isolated like lepers from the rest of mankind, these proud Semites found themselves unwittingly the prey of all comers. The attitude of the Church gave pitch to the orchestra of hate and despoliation in which state, city and populace largely participated. Not content with humiliating and caging them like dangerous animals, accusation upon accusation was piled at their door. It was claimed that they made a practice of stealing the consecrated host wafers, mistreating the body of Christ in them until blood flowed forth. At the time of the Black Death they were accused of poisoning the wells; and lending tone to these charges, in many places confessions were extorted from them on the rack.
Jews were compelled like cattle to pay a poll tax, a heavy admission tax, and a whole list of other imposts partly ridiculous and partly humiliating. When they could be mulcted of nothing further, they were expelled over night and their meager possessions confiscated.
Even the written records of Hebrew science, philosophy and learning, so lovingly and painstakingly collected, were prohibited. A typical example is the decree of destruction of the Talmud in France
29 THE WANDERING JEW
In Germany
The entire world had become a horrible dungeon in which this proud and intellectual people suffered the tortures of the damned. They were exterminated in York London Spain Italy Poland Bohemia France Moravia Austria Europe to the other, ripped open with pitchforks and scythes, or beaten to death like dogs. In France Germany Spain Savoy
Century had the Jews unexpectedly driven out to obtain possession of their goods ; and that of Charles VI, who in 1394 again decreed banishment and conversion of their possessions to the state Exchequer.
The onrush of the Crusaders exposed the Jews to a new series of sadistic outrages. Whole communities were wiped out in cold blood, sacked, and forcibly converted. In the Rhineland , and in France Anjou Bordeaux Jerusalem
The list of tortures and outrages suffered by this unhappy people is unending. In 1336 a mob of five thousand peasants led by two nobles, the 'Armleders,' armed with pitchforks and axes, traversed Franconia, Alsace, the Rhineland, Bavaria and Austria, and massacred all the Jews of one hundred and twenty communities in their lust for spoil. In 1298 a nobleman from Roettingen named Rindfleisch, declaring himself appointed by heaven to exterminate the Jews, marched through the country and for
30 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
six months committed the most unheard of outrages against his hapless victims. One hundred and forty-six communities were reduced to bloody shambles.
In Spain Portugal Ukraine
1648, the entire Jewish community, almost eight hundred thousand human creatures, was butchered with revolting tortures so hideous as to defy description. All over Europe the dread "Hep! Hep! Hep!" of the hooligans echoed in the dark streets of the ghettos. In all parts of the Western world Jewish blood flowed down many widely separated rivulets into one mighty stream. In North Africa and the Orient, like a sickening flood, the same indignities, cruelties and disasters overtook their fleeing footsteps.
Each new depth to which this once sturdy people were pushed only served to open up deeper and unsuspected abysses of horror. Forbidden to own land, to engage in handicrafts, deprived of membership in the all-powerful guilds so as to be virtually excluded from trade, harried, slandered and ridiculed, the walls of the Ghetto held them like a prison.
The effects of this system of branding a whole people as a pariah class were as deplorable as they were inevitable. The Jew became the mark for the meanest of insults. He was beaten, reviled, scorned and abused by everyone. This constant humiliation and degradation finally brought him so low that he became the mockery of mankind. He lost the courtly bearing, the refinement of speech and manner which had always distinguished the Hebrew character. Suffering and debasement had also wrought vast changes in the inner consciousness of the race. Where once he had stood on his native Judean hills, the fiercest, most intractable fighting man in all the ancient world, long centuries of persecution had made him submissive like a whipped dog. Meekness and non-resistance became rationalized into a veritable philosophic code. The once lofty Jewish mind hardened and be came grooved in a maze of ritual.
31 THE WANDERING JEW 31
Where once had stood the proud gentility of Hillel, now huddled the wraith-like figure of the pious Israel of Miedzyboz, who preached "humble submission" and a dervish-like rapture of worship which could not but have amazed the stiff-necked old Hebrews in whose name this slave doctrine was enunciated.
The love of inquiry, the intellectual penetration traditional to the Jew, was now transformed into an absurd concentration on dialectical speculations. Deprived of normal outlets to his energies, futile speculations and the splicing of fine theories became his entertainment. The old great Jewish culture disappeared, unnoticed, in a wilderness of stratified formalities, words and ritual.
To complete this sorry picture of deterioration and collapse, the strangled Jewish mind became obsessed by a peculiar indirectness of approach to all problems. The most realistic of all peoples became unreal, pedantic and mystical. All of these changed factors of character and outlook are reflected in the development of the Messianic doctrine.
It must be noted that the earlier seeking after a Messiah rested on quite a different base. It spoke for the sturdy rebellious nature of this people that their thoughts were always on freedom. It reflected a passionate desire for a leader who in strictly mortal fashion would help them redeem what had been raped from them.
The remolded concept rested very subtly on a completely opposite psychology, although the idea appeared to be the same. The impatient rebelliousness, the stiff self-assurance, the commonness of instinct, which had caused the widely separated Jews to rise like one man under Bar Kochba, had vanished. In their stead lived a new zealotry in which dogma and visionary metaphysic vied for mastery. Like a dazzling light, blotting out the sordidness of his surroundings, a deep sense of mission now enveloped the befuddled Jew. With humble piety he conceived of himself as the instrument whereby all the peoples of the earth, including those who had abused and vilified him, would be led into eternal gentleness and bliss. Thus tremulously awaiting the divine deliverer lived the Jews, a great nation who had shriveled to a
32 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
caricature of themselves through the crudest set of circumstances ever to beset the path of man.
They had not long to wait. A whole host of Messiahs appeared in response to this wishful expectation. From Abu Isa of Ispahan in the Seventh Century, Zonarias of Syria in the Tenth, to he shabby Zabettai Zevi, they periodically kept the Jewish world in a fever.
Most notorious of all of these was perhaps Zevi, who announced himself to be the Messiah in Smyrna Amsterdam , Hamburg Venice Holy Land .
Others subjected themselves to penance in order to be rendered worthy of redemption. In the meanwhile the 'Messiah' was hamstrung by the Muslims, who gave him the usual choice, and Zabettai, no martyr, became a Mohammedan.
The colossal collapse of Zevi sent a crushed chill through the Jewries of Europe. They shrank like condemned men into their hovels. Only an ironclad religious particularizes could save the Jew from the deep confusion and widening chaos which was engulfing him everywhere. To this he retreated.
"liberty! fraternity! equality!"
Two events conspired to put an end to the Ghetto. One was the discovery of America
Out of the ashes of this decaying order gradually developed a new force, the power of industrial capital. This new force immediately discovered itself in mortal opposition to the entire system of life the Medieval Era had erected, since it could only maintain itself by free competition and continuing consumer expansion, which meant the opening of new markets. The greater the competition among merchants and those who held the power to grant credit, the better would industry flourish.
33 THE WANDERING JEW
The Ghetto was one of the medieval corporations which had to go in the interest of a speedy evolution of capitalism. Though it continued in some cities into the modern era, its fate was sealed.
It was this young and growing industrial capitalism which was the great lever creating the modern democracies, and with them the emancipation of the Jews.
The new system soon developed a philosophy justifying itself, and fiery expounders of its tenets. "Liberty
The question arose as to whether this queer race of the Jews whose glorious past history was long forgotten, sunk in the torpor of religious formalism, was capable of supporting such enlightened ideas. Learned debates took place as to whether, if they
were enfranchised, they could take their place in an organized secular society ; whether they could become soldiers, manufacturers, artisans, professional men — in short, whether they were capable of competing in the civil society which was to be based on the new order. The atheist and liberator Voltaire considered them dangerous and incurable reactionaries, a source of religious superstition. Others like Tallyrand, Montesquieu and Mirabeau asserted that the Jew must be included in the new dispensation.
Almost coincident with these events the American Revolution exploded in the face of an archaic world and based its fundamental principles on the same Rights of Man. Soon thereafter the victorious young Napoleon was carrying the doctrines of the new belief along with his cannon and gun-powder and putting them into operation by force.
In this onrush of the Liberal spirit the Western Jew miraculously found the walls of the Judengasse 10 torn down. They fell before his eyes like the walls of Jericho
Enthusiastically the Jews put themselves in line with this glorious theme of world brotherhood. For the first time the vernacular took the place of Hebrew in their daily
34 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
life. The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries were the age of Massentaufen (mass baptism). In Berlin
Early an attempt was made to meet this wholesale desertion of Judaism by creating a new and reformed liturgy and a new attitude towards Jewish destiny. Inaugurated in Germany Germany Holland Brunswick
The last step in this denationalization process, in which the Reform Rabbis led the procession, was the transformation into metaphor of the doctrines of Jewish nationalism for which the race had steadfastly held over so long a period. All that now remained of laws meant to control the social and economic interests of the Jews was dead ritual.
For a brief century the ideal of again making themselves an individual force in history sank into comparative insignificance and gave place to a desire to become adapted to environment. Both the spirit and fact of Jewish history became falsified; and Jews endeavoring to win equal rights in every sphere of human activity began to frame both their thought and action with an eye to the opinion and point of view of others. As a living force with legitimate, healthy rights of its own, Judaism was discountenanced by Jews, who had transformed themselves into neo-gentiles. It survived only as an innocuous shadow.
35 THE WANDERING JEW
The inexorable forward movement of 'toleration' hit its peak immediately after the World War. Palestine Germany Weimar Republic
Enthusiastically the Western Liberals and 'Assimilationists' went to the very point of denying the existence of a Jewish nation altogether. Learnedly they 'proved' that a Jewish race could no longer possibly be in existence.
Had anyone told these enraptured Jews that the last strongholds of ignorance, meanness and tyranny would not yield but would instead reacquire vitality and strategy capable of once more putting Liberalism desperately on the defensive, his only reply would have been a smile of pity and commiseration? How could they dream that the Germany of Mendelssohn and Lasker would become the Germany of Hitler and Goering; that throughout the civilized world the old blood libel, the old mass hysterias and slanders, the old inhumaneness and cruelties, would be revived with even increased force and viciousness? All of this was contrary to the rationale of the new order; hence it became schematically impossible.
While all this was happening, the torch of Jewish nationalism distorted and vitiated, but alive, spluttered among the masses still going about their daily tasks in the ghettos of East Europe .
'the lost ten tribes'
In the wake of the irresistible Liberal sweep which was de Judaizing the Jews, occurred a most remarkable phenomenon: the Anglo-Saxon people, rising rapidly to world power, literally pitched themselves headlong at the same time into a Judaizing process.
Aroused by such magnetic personalities as Knox and Tyndale the British peoples retreated to creative Prophecy, to the stern and simple democracy of the Hebrew Bible. The Old Testament in particular was studied with impassioned thoroughness.
36 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
James Truslow Adams remarks that "Christ did indeed occupy a place in their [the Puritan] theology, but in spirit they may be considered Jews and not Christians. Their God was the God of the Old Testament; their laws were the laws of the Old Testament, their guides to conduct were the characters of the Old Testament." 11 "They baptized their children," writes Lord Macaulay, "by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors." 12 Even the Old Saxon names, once household words, were condemned to oblivion. 13 "Cromwell hath beat up his drums clean through the Old Testament," comments Cleveland
Every attitude of the aggressive young imperialism which the Anglo-Saxon was erecting became tinctured with Hebrew philosophy. So completely was it absorbed that a large section of the English people began to look upon themselves as being actually descended from Israelites. A whole body of literature sprang into being claiming that the word British was derived from Brit and Ish of Hebrew, meaning 'circumcised man,' and that the English were descended from the Lost Ten Tribes of
This conviction on the part of a large part of the British public became so great that it resulted in the forming of 'The British-Israel World Federation,' at one time claiming over five million members, and including such eminent personages as Queen Victoria and King Edward VII.
The Hebraizing spirit attended other considerable sections of the Reformation though it was particularly at home with the Anglo-Saxon peoples, whose identification with Hebrew history and philosophy became so complete as to almost appropriate it for themselves. Lecky expressed this debt in the famous remark: "Hebraic mortar cemented the foundation of American Democracy!" In the same vein Ulysses S. Grant advised his countrymen to "hold fast to the Bible. It is the sheet-anchor of your liberties. . ." And Jean Paul bespoke his times when he declared that "the first leaf of
37 THE WANDERING JEW
the Mosaic record has more weight than all the folios of men of science and philosophies."
Protestant theology in particular, rested on the belief that the world of mankind was evolving towards a millennium in which holiness was to be triumphant everywhere, and that a primary prerequisite to this happy eventuality was the return of God's
Chosen People, the Jews, to the Holy Land . 15 Supporting their position with direct quotation from Biblical Prophecy, a large group of earnest men, divines, statesmen and writers, set themelves to be the instruments to speed this desired end. Specialized histories of the Jews gained wide circulation, and it was not long before the political emancipation of Zion
By 1839 popular interest had become so intense that the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, after sending a special commission to the Holy Land to report on conditions there, addressed "A Memorandum to the Protestant Monarchs of Europe on the Subject of the Restoration of the Jewish People to the Land ofPalestine
The Government, taking canny notice of this body of public feeling and being interested in the Near East on its own account, commenced to take a hand. With the entry of the murderous anti-Christian Mehemet Ali into Syria
Interest mounted rapidly in all circles. The statesman Lord Shaftsbury became so absorbed in the project that he learned Hebrew. The colonization expert, Colonel George Gawler, devoted virtually all his time to this cause, firmly convinced that
Jewish repatriation was a political desideratum for England Near East befriended the Jews and took an active interest in their cause. It became a ruling passion with such men as Laurence Oliphant and the archaeologist Conger,
38 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
A mountain of literature and a whirlpool of activity had by now been brought to bear on the matter. All these writers and orators pointed out the desolate, empty, semi-savage condition of the country. Various associations were formed to agitate the cause, and monster mass-meetings were held. English statesmen such as Sir Samuel Montague guaranteed publicly that "not only will the Jews be assisted in colonizing Palestine
While the interest in the fate of the Jews was most spectacular and deep-seated in Britain
In France Holy Land . Here, too, Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross and author of the Geneva Conventions, was an ardent Zionist. Napoleon also is said to have contemplated the restoration of Palestine Egypt Near East .
In America United States Judea , an independent nation. . ." The lively sympathy for Hebrew resettlement is shown also by the petition
to President Benjamin Harrison submitted by Dr. Wm. Blackstone, Chairman of the Conference of Christians and Jews, in 1891. Signed by an imposing list of the greatest names in America, clergymen, corporation presidents and public officials, it offered an elaborate plan for Jewish colonization, declaring that "not for twenty-four centuries since the days of Cyrus, King of Persia, has there been offered to any mortal such a privileged opportunity to further the purposes of God concerning his ancient people."
By 1914 a powerful non- Jewish public opinion, favoring the enterprise as a rational historical development, existed everywhere. In England
39 THE WANDERING JEW
REAWAKENING HEBREW CONSCIOUSNESS
As unaware of all this as if it had taken place on Mars, a wholly independent movement began stirring in the Hebrew ghettos.
As early as 1857 the Hungarian Rabbi Jehouda Alkalai suggested the purchase of Palestine
Others like the writers Hess, Kalisher and Smolenskin began to voice articulate opinions.
In 1882 Leon Pinsker issued his volume Auto-Emancipation in which he demanded that the Jews redeem themselves by their own self-will. Like a lone tragic eagle, Pinsker gazed with tortured sympathy at the misery of his people. Appalled at their apathy and wretchedness he wrote : "Among the living nations of the earth the Jews occupy the position of a nation long since dead. With the loss of their fatherland, the Jewish people lost their independence and fell into a decay which is not compatible with existence as a whole vital organism. The State was crushed before the eyes of the nations, but after the Jewish people had yielded up their existence as an actual State, as a political entity, they could not nevertheless submit to total destruction — they did not cease to exist spiritually as a nation. The world saw in this people the uncanny form of one of the dead walking among the living. The ghostlike apparition of a people without unity or organization, without land or other bond of union, no longer alive, and yet moving about among the living, this eerie form scarcely paralleled in history, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, could not fail to make a strange, peculiar impression upon the imagination of the nations."
Finally fired by the atrocious pogroms that were taking place in South Russia a group of intellectuals formed the Chovevi Zion Society 16 which soon attempted practical work in the direction of a resettlement in the Old Land
Jewry which had been gazing on all these vague groping’s with tolerant amusement, living like a drugged man on promises of a new world order where men would live like gods, was jolted from this fantasy by two startling events. The first of these had
40 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
been the arrest, torture and conviction of the leading Jewish notables in the city of Damascus Syria
murder charge was historically proven.
In France
the whole case was a deliberate frame-up that the ensuing hubbub forced the authorities to retry the Jewish officer some four years later, when, under farcical circumstances, he was once more sentenced to Devil's Island .
The doughty novelist, Zola, risked his career by issuing the famous J y Accuse, exposing the outrageous nature of this affair. Arrested, he fled to England
After an agitation which convulsed the entire civilized world, Dreyfus, who had been kept in an iron cage on the Island , was pardoned, still un-vindicated.
The anti-Semitic movement now grew with marvelous rapidity, confounding every theory of the educators, who had held such a result impossible. Jewry once more began to seek communion with its own organic forces. The desire for a specifically Hebrew cultural scheme in which they could live their lives out, began to arise in the minds of the unhappy creatures groping their way around tortured ghetto paths.
Vienna Europe , apparently so firmly established in the prosperity of those days, were not to last. They would fall and would be replaced by tyrants, either royal or popular, who would be worse than
Jerusalem Edom valley of Esdraelon Asia and Africa , splits
Sterling
PALESTINE
Britain Asia . She already held fabulously rich India China Germany Britain
HERZEL
Sitting quietly in the press galleries during the second Dreyfus trial was a young Viennese journalist named Theodore Herzel. 17
41 THE WANDERING JEW
A thoroughly Westernized Jew who accepted the Enlightenment as a matter of course, he suddenly saw the Jewish problem outlined stark naked. Returning to Vienna
Friends, de-Judaized like himself, to whom he enunciated these 'revolutionary ideas,' counseled that he had been working too hard and urged him to see the great brain specialist Max Nordau, which nothing daunted, Herzel did.
One of the journalist's friends inquired anxiously of Nordau after the visit: "What do you make of him?"
"Well," said Nordau thoughtfully, "it is of course quite possible that he is crazy — but if he is, so am I, because I agree with him."
Tall, majestic, handsome, looking like an Assyrian god who had stepped down from an old frieze, the magnetic personality of this figure suddenly galvanized the incoherent movement into action. Until then Zionism had been resting upon a vague
Cultural-settlement base, with no definite scheme of control.
The great difference between Herzel's viewpoint and that of his immediate predecessors was his pointblank insistence on political guarantees before a single other step was taken. Claimed this new master: ". . . the solution of the Jewish difficulty is the recognition of the Jews as a People, and the finding by them of a legally recognized home to which Jews in those parts of the world in which they are oppressed would naturally migrate, for they would arrive there as citizens just because they were Jews, and not as aliens" With prophetic insight Herzel insisted on complete political guarantees. He wrote: "An infiltration is bound to end in disaster. It continues until the inevitable moment when the native population feels itself crushed, and forces the Government to stop the further influx of Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless based on an assured supremacy"
His a priori demand was for "sovereignty over a tract of the earth's surface that is adequate for our rightful needs as a nation."
There was something almost omniscient in the man's ability to peer into the curtained future. In a letter to the Rothschild’s at
42 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
the aristocracies whom the parliamentary governments had dis-placed. 19 It took less than forty years for this prophecy to come true.
At the first Zionist Congress he predicted that the Jewish prob-lem would inevitably be turned into the problem of Zion
On all sides the storm of opposition mounted like a rising hurri-cane. Assimilationist rabbis thundered against him in their pul-pits. The Jews of Germany, where he proposed to hold his first Congress, gazed on the man as a dangerous lunatic, so the his-toric Congress was held in Basle instead. But he had gotten the ear of the crushed Jewish masses and had touched their imagina-tions as no figure had since the ill-fated messiah Zevi.
Abused and ridiculed as few men have been in history, Herzl continued with his plan to attempt the purchase of Palestine
who placed an itching palm on the table. The Zionist leader went out to find ways of covering it.
Jewish millionaires might have easily provided the £i 0,000,-000 demanded by Abdul Hamid for a concession in Palestine
The great man listened benevolently and finally said: "Herr Herzel, I observe that you are an intelligent man — but you have such fantastic ideas."
In vain Herzel cajoled and pleaded: he could not raise the money; and in the meanwhile the 'Young Turks' made an end to Abdul Hamid and the Palestine
On the pulse of these events the British kept practiced and in-terested fingers. When Herzel came to London
43 THE WANDERING JEW
whose interests were coincidental to this scheme of development, had created ready-made for him a galaxy of famous and influ-ential supporters. Powerful organs such as the Daily Chronicle and Pall Mall Gazette were demanding the fulfillment of the
Zionist program and calling for a conference of the Powers to consider it.
Herzel had already appeared at the sittings of the Royal Com-mission on Alien Immigration. Given the honor of being the first witness on the problem of Jewish homelessness and immigra-tion, he had been questioned closely by the Commission for an exact definition of what was meant by Zionism. He replied with his usual straightforwardness that it meant the establishment of a Jewish State under absolute guarantees of political control, and nothing else.
The British now took a direct hand and offered the territory of Uganda in West Africa on a full autonomous basis under chartered rights, "a recognition," states the official British Peace Handbook No. 162^ "that Herzel and his following were regarded seriously in serious quarters." Supporting the Government in this well-intentioned offer was a young M.P. named Arthur James Balfour.
But the Russian Zionists rebelled; and at the next Congress the whole Uganda Palestine
Within the Zionist movement itself various schisms began to develop. The widest of these was that of the so-called Practical Zionists who derived from the old Chovevi Zion Society. They were bitterly opposed to Herzel's policy, were uninterested in
political guarantees, and stressed 'cultural' and 'practical' work.
One of their rising stars was the young chemist Chaim Weiz-mann. Their leader was Achad Ha'am, a little pinch-faced man with a goatee and the eye of an ascetic.
Achad Ha'am represented all that his arch-enemy Herzel would never understand in his lifetime. He was born in a little village in the Pale and was brought up in an ultra-orthodox home where secular knowledge was tabu. He literally concentrated on the
Talmud, and his knowledge of that book became so great that local rabbis would
44 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
local rabbis would come to consult him when he was still in his early teens. He was a typical hair-splitter in words, the per-sonified ideal of the spirit of philosophic dialecticism in the flesh. He considered all 'political' Zionists to be barbarians. "What
we lack," he wrote, "is a fixed spot to serve as a national spiritual center, a safe retreat, not for Jews, but for Judaism. . . The foundation of a single great school," he insisted, "of learning or art inPalestine
the highest import and would do more to bring us near to our goal than a hundred agricultural colonies."
Fanatically understood by the queer type of scholastic whose soul he interpreted, Achad Ha'am, if influence counts, was the most potent of all the modern Zionist forces. Belittling Herzel as a wild dreamer, his influence began to be apparent after the lat-ter's death, and finally triumphed. He was an extremist who could care much for idea and little for men, a product and con-sequence of that tragic pariah world into which the gentiles had sequestered Jehovah's people.
Herzel saw what Achad Ha'am did not — what, indeed, he was incapable of seeing — that a free and living culture is not the source but the outcome of an organized and stable life, and that this contemptuous attitude towards political control could only
end in one more ghetto — this time in Palestine
It is the Hebrew tragedy that the manly Herzel should have died young and the visionary Ha'am should have lived to a ripe old age. On July 3, 1904 , harassed and worn, the incomparable leader suddenly sickened and died. He was then only forty-
four years old.
The Zionist movement had already begun to be encumbered with ideological contentions, and factions of various descrip-tions. Its leadership fell in the hands of minor worthies, follow-ers for the most part of Achad Ha'am, who talked in learned
circumlocutory motions and all but smothered in the mantle they had inherited. Even so, carried along by its own irresistible momentum, Zionism continued to grow rapidly.
CHAPTER IV
THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
TOPOGRAPHY
The name 'Palestine Land of Wanderers Philistia . At first applied to a small section of the coast it later spread to encompass the entire country. Until the
resurgent Zionist movement brought this area into the sphere of world politics its identity was largely interchangeable with that ofSyria Asia Minor but later contracted to cover the confines of Palestine
With proprietary determination the Jew has always referred to his homeland as Eretz Israel
By and large, this territory must be accounted one of the most stirringly beautiful and, certainly, one of the most remarkable countries on the face of Mother Earth. It is not to be wondered by those who have seen it that "some of the finest visions of the true age of reason have been penned within its borders." 2
Here in matchless beauty can be found every climate from tropical to sub-alpine, and a bewildering variety of flora and fauna to match — all in a half hour's ride. It is possible to pass through four different zones, from the scotch fir in the hill country down to the date palm growing in its native soil on the plains of Jordan
The valley of the Dead Sea , sultry and depressing, lies thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean . From this strange salt lake, almost visible to the naked eye is Jerusalem
night air one feels as if he could reach up and touch the cold white stars. In the north the country rises precipitously to a height of nine thousand feet above the ocean
45 Pics
46 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
calmly sunning itself below, and becomes alpine. On the central range, snow has been known to reach a depth of nearly two feet. This explains the feat of Benaiah who went down and slew a lion in the midst of a cistern in the day of the snow. The beast had strayed up the Judean hills from Jordan
A fertile plain fronts the Mediterranean for the entire length of the country except where rugged Carmel
the mountain range which spreads across Palestine Haifa Jordan
In an area but little larger than Vermont
heat; nor a roll of iridescent desert like that which falls from the multi-colored rocks of Judea to the opal shores of the Dead Sea . Yet in these neighboring hills the climate is so temperate that first rate apples may be grown ; and on the hottest days the nights are cool enough to sleep under blankets.
The climate is divided roughly into a rainy and dry season, with a short period of scorching desert winds called the Humseen. The rain falling in the three winter months becomes a deluge. Wild flowers follow each other in stunning confusion. Glittering like precious gems, anemone, crocus, poppy, wild mignonette, oleander and narcissus, sparkle in the sun just as they must have once delighted the Hebrew women in the old days.
Overhead, birds of all kinds make the air gay with their limpid notes. Whole hosts of harmless lizards of every color dart like small genii across the banks of hedge and sward. In the wilder-ness are tiny gazelles who look as if they had been painted on the landscape. It is claimed that there are still wolves, hyenas and jackals in the hills.
47 THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
Tristram speaks of foxes near Nablus
Beyond this eloquent native beauty, which the hand of barbarian man is not powerful enough to destroy, the country has been stripped and starved. In parts it is a veritable carcass of a land.
Travelers gazing on Palestine Land of Promise
The great oak forests of Gilead , Bashan and Lebanon Jordan Valley
their tops with cornfields and vineyards, are dead. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that while for miles and miles there is no appearance of life or habitation in the hills of Judea except an occasional goatherd, there is hardly a hilltop of the many within
sight which is not covered by the vestiges of some fortress or city of former ages. Where now only forbidding rocks greet the eye, the soil on their steep sides was once held securely in place by ingeniously devised terraces.
The indescribably wild state of the country, before the Zionists came, is pictured graphically in the chronicles of the last century. Some of the descriptions given are almost unbelievable. Churton refers to the plain between Jerusalem Jordan Walpole
Prophecy, the Rev. A. G. H. Hollingsworth, wept that "here is one of the most remarkable and best situated countries in the world, without a population, without resources, without commerce." 7
West of the Jordan
48 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
hillsides, remain to remind the traveler that once this country was populated by a civilized people. Standing on the Moab Moab Gilead and Bashan . That this vast region was
then one of the most fertile and populous on the globe is amply proven by the multitude of ruins which dot its surface at the present day. From a single outlook Merrill counted as many as forty ruined cities and towns. 8 Buckingham described "ruined towns in every direction, both before, behind, and on every side of us. . . There was not a tree in sight as far as the eye could reach. ,, 9
Even in early Christian centuries Trans-Jordan * was so thickly settled as to be honored with the seat of a bishopric. Many Greeks drifted in and settled among the Syrian and Roman elements. After the Fourth Century, the Bedouin Arab inundated
the country and left it a wilderness again, as it remains today.
The tumbling remains of fine marble baths, great columns, evidences of a cultivated life now hushed in death, are looked upon by the Arab with uncomprehending eye. Merrill, with the hurt conscience of a great archaeologist, complained bitterly that these aboriginals were wantonly smashing the famous ruins.
At Jerash alone are remains unexcelled by the best antiquities of northern Damascus Jordan
Today the very names of these places are forgotten. The Bedu 10 hejd their sheep in these deserted courts and make their rude beds of grass among their stones. They extract the same blackmail, and if it is withheld, sweep off the harvests in the same
time-sanctified retaliation. Their frail houses of hair had been * Trans-Jordan, the territory of the Jewish National Home lying east of the River Jordan (so designated to distinguish it from Cis-Jordan, the area lying west of the River Jordan) was later detached by the British as a separate administrative area under the name of 'Trans Jordan.'
49 THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
The Jews were there four thousand years before, and are there again today unchanged.
The whole of Eastern Palestine is incomparably more fertile and better watered than the western third of the country. Draining it is a number of large rivers, fed by innumerable springs, filled with fishes and other aquatic life.
Travelers glowingly describe its rich soil and natural beauty. Irby and Mangles mention "the vast variety of natural flora; and downs with verdure so thick as to appear almost turf." 11 Lord Lindsay declares that "the whole of the country ... on the
east of the Jordan Gilead "turning furrows which were nearly a mile in length, and as straight as one could draw a line."
This whole area across Jordan
JEWISH PRE-WAR SETTLEMENTS
Historians agree that there has been no period since the time of Joshua when there have not been Jews in Palestine
The oldest identifiable communities whose continuing record can be established are the Jews of Pekiin, a village in the hills of upperGalilee near Safed, a group which has not moved in two thousand years. This settlement is referred to in the Talmud under the name of Tekoa, and then reappears more than a thousand years later in the narrative of an early Sixteenth Century traveler. At Bukeia in the mountains is another ancient community of Jews who claim to be descended from Israelites living there before the Dispersion; and the Samaritans at Sechem are known to have been
there since the days of Nehemiah.
All through the Dispersion, Jews sought to return to their homeland. They trickled in
50 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
from all directions after each catastrophe in the Diaspora. Most of them succumbed to massacre, forced conversion and disease. The rest were turned into broken-spirited men whose cowed eyes became hypnotized by mere liturgical devotions.
The first practical steps for modern colonization were taken in Russia University of Odessa
and to devote their lives working at common labor for the reconstruction of the Land of Israel
Students with soft white hands and determined wills began to arrive in small groups. The great-hearted Englishman, Oliphant, his head full of idyllic schemes for buying the country from the Sultan, found a number of them stranded in Galilee . He helped
them found what is now the prosperous colony of Zichron Jacob, near Haifa
Soon at Petach Tikvah a thriving agricultural colony was established. Jewish resettlement had begun in dead earnest. By 1883, three thousand of these hardy dreamers had landed in Jaffa
Progress continued quietly and steadily. Arabs attracted by the magnetizing vitality of the returning Jew began to drift in from impoverished Syria Egypt Palestine
British consular report recognized that "there can be no doubt that the establishment of the Jewish colonies in Palestine Palestine
Exports from the port of Jaffa Palestine
• The Palestine Pound is worth approximately the same as the English Pound
51 THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
By 1914 the Jews had increased to over 100,000. There were now fifty-four agricultural colonies, with a total area of 110,000 acres. New land was being rapidly purchased, garden suburbs laid out. The all-Jewish city of Tel Aviv
The official British Peace Handbook on Zionism thus describes the settlements: "The Jewish agricultural colonies, which have grown up during the past 25 years, show a level of agricultural and scientific development far ahead of anything else in Palestine
So stood the Jewish effort at reclaiming their homeland, at the beginning of the World War, when they wholeheartedly threw their destiny into the balance with that of the Allies. They had already achieved a solid foundation for a sound national economy. Soon they were to have the solemn promise of the nations for a charter which would finally end the tragedy of Jewish homelessness.
CHAPTER V
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
Indirectly, the World War was fought for possession of the Near East . The natural route for expansion of the mushrooming industrial growths of Europe lay in the direction of the great sluggish masses of Asia where vast consumer needs and untapped natural riches excited the cupidity of Europe 's imperialists.
All great conquerors whose interest was divided between East and West have considered the possession of the land bridge between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates essential to their security.Assyria and Egypt Rome
maneuvering that led to the Balkan and Crimean Wars.
Here Great Britain Russia Germany France
be vulnerable. The whole course of German policy centered around the Drang nach Osten (Drive to the East), whose undeclared objective was to cut the lifelines of British communications with India Berlin
52 Pics
53 THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
53 THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
clear pathway through the Balkans. The dying Turkish Empire was flooded with German generals, engineers, diplomats and agents. "The Baghdad Railway was pushing rapidly down towardsMesopotamia . When it got to the Tigris and Euphrates ,
it would proceed to Basra Karachi Calcutta Delhi Whitehall
Here was the most potent threat the British Empire had faced in generations. If the German plans were allowed to come to a head, the Reich would be in an infinitely better position to deal commercially in the East than Britain
political position. It would mean whopping big orders for German goods of all kinds, from steel down to knickknacks. It would present the threat of a half million Teuton warriors who could be transported within a matter of days by train from Berlin India
It was imperative to British strategy that the German drive to the East be halted at the gateway of the Asiatic continent. It was apparent that Great Britain Near East if her Empire was to survive. Like two great patient cats England Germany
awaiting der Tag, when the fight was unexpectedly precipitated by the explosion at Sarajevo
Though the primary struggle was between the rival economic ambitions of the English and Germans, the French too had their eye on this strategic sector. In March 191 5, Paris Syria Palestine Syria France
democracy' in advance. Under this agreement Palestine Haifa Acre , which were to go to England
54 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
The entire Mediterranean littoral was to go to France
be paramount in Damascus Aleppo Mosul
From 1788 till 1914, Great Britain India Germany France
EVENTS LEADING TO LORD BALFOUR'S COMMITMENT
By the autumn of 1917, after a startling attack by the Turks on theSuez Canal , a wholly new idea had taken possession of the minds of politicians and strategists. It was obvious that a protective bastion had to be created to buttress the artery of communications withIndia Britain Palestine
Jews all over the world to the Allied cause could be gained. And still a third factor, not to be overlooked, was the poverty of Judea and the surrounding desert. If the Jews would undertake to form a country here and would invest the necessary money, Britain
All this sounded too good to be true, and the Government began putting out feelers to see if it could be finagled through. So potent, in fact, did this new policy appear that
55 THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
London
Lawrence
already on November 22, 1915 a leading article in the Manchester Guardian stated
that Palestine Egypt British Empire as a sea empire."
From a purely military viewpoint, the friends of this idea in Britain Palestine Mediterranean a new dominion associated with Britain England
Still other factors of pressing importance were at work. Lloyd George, wartime Prime Minister, was anxious to bring over theUnited States Germany Palestine Palestine Turkey
reached the British Foreign Office that Baron Rosen, German Ambassador to the Hague
Aside from specifically British questions of policy, the hard pressed Allied spokesmen were poignantly aware of the instability of their allyRussia
for them and their families. The Allies were aware that the propaganda bureau of the Central Powers was exploiting this fact for all it was worth. Daily, proclamations were scattered over the Eastern battlefront informing Jews that German victory
56 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
meant liberty for them; 5 and in all neutral countries adroit advantage was being taken of the propaganda story which set the Kaiser's legions up as crusaders in a war of liberation.
Thus in a large sense the alliance of the Western Powers withRussia
British Foreign Office at the time: "The persecuting Governments became our friends, and Palestine
Among the details is a significant aide-memoire by the British Embassy in Petrograd to Sazanov, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, on March 13, 1916 , reading:
. . Although as is known, many Jews are indifferent to the idea of Zionism, yet a numerous, and the most influential, part of Jewry in all the countries would very much appreciate an offer of agreement concerning Palestine
"If the above view is correct, then it is clear that by utilizing the Zionist idea important political results can be achieved. Among them will be the conversion, in favor of the Allies, of Jewish elements in the Orient, in the United States
". . . The only purpose of H. M. Government is to find some arrangement, sufficiently attractive to the majority of the Jews, which might facilitate the conclusion of an agreement ensuring the Jewish support."
The rumors that Germany Turkey London
When the inevitable happened and the great Russian bear began to collapse, the question of an alliance with Jewry took on even greater importance. Jewish influence in Russia
57 THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
revolution — but they were greatly divided. "Some were for peace at any price, some for the maintenance of the alliance with the Western Powers; many were utterly uninterested in Zionism and had found a messiah in Karl Marx. . ." 7 But the great bulk of the Russian Jews were known to be Zionists; and with calculating eye the British computed that the alliance with Jewry might have permanent value. Zionism became an important political issue.
Negotiations were instituted with the Jewish leaders to sound them out on this pressing subject and to determine their demands. By February 1917 the way had been prepared for a formal meeting with Sir Mark Sykes of the British Foreign Office. Soon after, Mr. Nahum Sokolow, representative of the Zionist Organization, opened discussion with the French and Italian Governments. In July the Zionists submitted a memorandum to the British Cabinet suggesting the formula to be used in an official pronouncement of sympathy for their cause.
STRUGGLE WITH THE NON-ZIONISTS
If the purposes and aims of the Zionist movement needed clarification in anyone's mind, a circumstance at once occurred supplying that deficiency. The intentions of the Government were no sooner manifest than a loud and violent protest was set
up by certain classes of Jews in England France America Zion
The Conjoint Committee, the most influential of all Jewish bodies inEngland
58 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Jews were only a religious community and not a nation. "The granting of a charter for Palestine
"Under the pressure of Allied needs," says the official British historian at the subsequent Peace Conference, "the objections of the anti-Zionists were either overruled or the causes of objection removed. . ." 9 At that time the Zionists could have practically written their own ticket, since there was no subject on which
everyone but the Jews themselves were so unanimously agreed as the matter of a pro Zionist declaration. The only powerful opponent of this course in the Government was the India Office, ultra-Islamic under a Jewish Secretary of State.
Although the members of the Conjoint Committee had been hopelessly buried under an avalanche of public ridicule, certain changes were made in the wording of the Declaration to placate them.
As early as October 191 6, the Zionist leaders in Britain Palestine
On February 7, 1917 , Sir Mark Sykes communicated with Weizmann and Sokolow, together with M. Georges Picot, representing the French Government. 10 This was the first of a series of round-table conferences. Its full minutes, as well as those of
subsequent sessions, were transmitted to the American Zionist Organization by officials of the British War Office.
Throughout the negotiations President Wilson who, as early as 1911 had made known his profound interest in the Zionist idea, was intimately consulted; and all drafts of the proposed Declaration were submitted to the White House for approval.
The formula accepted in July 1917 by the British Cabinet read : "H. M. Government, after considering the aims of the Zionist Organization, accepts the principle of
59 THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
recognizing Palestine
the Jewish people to build up its national life in Palestine
"H. M. Government regards as essential for the realization of this principle, the grant of internal autonomy to Palestine
"The conditions and forms of the internal autonomy and a charter for the Jewish National Colonizing Corporation should, in the view of H. M. Government, be elaborated in detail and determined with the representatives of the Zionist Organization." 11
One of the changes introduced to mollify the anti-Zionist Jews was the substitution of the phrase "the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine Palestine
By November 2, 1917, after its wording had been sufficiently emasculated to suit the 'ideals' of Jews all around, Lord Balfour placed it in the form of a letter to the pro-Zionist, Lord Rothschild, reading as follows:
"I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty's Government the following declaration of sympathy with the Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment inPalestine
which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine
"I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation."
Ironically enough, the second part of the Declaration, which was since construed by Britain
60 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Zionists themselves, partly to meet the objections of Sir Philip Magnus, Mr. Claude
Montefiore and other powerful non-Zionist Jews; and partly as a symbol of that "nobility of social vision" with which the strangled ghetto mind was obscured. 13
Written by Achad Ha'am, this proviso was not in any remote sense considered as a modification of the Declaration but rather as a polite sop to quiet the fears of the non-Zionist Jews, and an equally considerate makeweight assurance to the various religious communities scattered over the Holy Land .
All of these alterations and changes in the British Government's commitment, says Herbert Sidebotham, then secretary to Premier Lloyd George, "were inserted in deference to the opinion of a minority, in the hope of securing complete unanimity
among Jews. . . It was certainly no British interest, either at this stage or later, that weakened the scope of the promise and infected it with ambiguity." 14
The Zionist negotiators, naive and inexperienced, felt that the introduction of these nice, virtuous phrases in their magna chart a was a fitting and seemly gesture with which to begin their great adventure. Herzel, who had the gift of seeing beyond his nose, would have known better.
WHAT DID THE DECLARATION MEAN?
In view of the cool disclaimers which were to come later, it is interesting to note what interpretation was placed on the British Government's Declaration to the Jews at the time. Whatever bearing it might have had on the commendable questions of humaneness and justice, it could hardly be regarded as a wholly benevolent gesture. Balfour himself, handsome, clever and icy, was no mere romantic. He who had pacified Ireland
The benefits immediately accruing to the Allied cause need hardly be argued. Certainly the tremendous number of Jewish soldiers fighting in the Armies of the
61 THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
Western Powers were fired by this warm earnest of good faith. Nor can one estimate the weight of Jewish influence in neutral countries, which dropped heavily on the Allied side of the scales. Nor the enthusiastic aid given to the Allenby invasion of Palestine Israel
it gave the Allied claims when Palestine
Not only was the effect of this superb piece of propaganda felt in all neutral countries but it was immediate in its reaction on the morale of the Central Empires, with their stew of subject races, accelerating the cleavage then taking place between the subject
nationalities and their overlords. Worthy of note, too, is the boldness with which the German Zionist Conference in Berlin
declaration the right of the Jewish people to a national existence inPalestine
chartered company with a form of self-government and the right of free immigration into Palestine
Wholeheartedly the great and important body of fundamentalist Christian opinion, hating war for any proclaimed purpose, rose to the bait. Jann away expresses this profound conviction in his book,Palestine
"Indeed," says a semi-official British publication, "support of the Zionist ambitions promised much for the Allies. . . That it is in purpose a direct contract with Jewry is beyond question." 16 This was acknowledged plainly by General Smuts, member of
the War Cabinet, who speaking retrospectively some years later, asserted that "the Declaration was intended to rally the powerful Jewish influence for the Allied cause
62 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Jewish influence for the Allied cause at the darkest hour of the War"; a statement which David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and others, emphatically reiterated.
The Declaration was unreservedly endorsed by the other Powers. On June 4, 191 7 the French Government, through its Minister, M. Cambon, formally committed itself to "the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel China
In America Palestine November 2, 191 7, its desire that Great Britain League of Nations , as may be formed, to assure the development of Palestine Holy Land ." The minutes of its sessions show that this under-
standing had not altered by an iota five years later, when the American Congress was induced to put its seal of approval, by resolution, on the selection of Great Britain Palestine
The utterances of the Cabinet ministers who framed the Declaration were no less emphatic. General Smuts asserted that "in generations to come you will see a great Jewish State rising there once more." Declared Lloyd George grandly: ". . . Great Britain Armenia Judea for the Jews." And 011 another occasion he lumped the whole
63 THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
matter in a nutshell, telling the excited Zionists: "We have given you national existence. In your hands lies your national future." Lord Balfour was no less
clear. "The destruction of Judea 1900 years ago," he asserted, "was one of the greatest historical crimes, which the Allies now endeavor to remedy."
British newspapers were as one in their mighty paean of approval. Without exception they spoke of "the new Jewish State which is to be formed under the suzerainty of a Christian Power." Across the water, the American newspapers echoed these remarks
in the same expansive detail. A representative editorial of the time explains: "The Zionists are that group of Jews who wish to found a Jewish Republic in Palestine Jerusalem
64 CHAPTER VI
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
MARCHING JEWS
Anti-Zionists invariably stress the part played by the Arabs during the War, inferring that the sons of Ishmael earned their patrimony, and that the Jews, who had done nothing, insolently demanded a chunk of the Arab pie when the spoils were being
divided.
Actually the Jewish share in the victory was significant, well justifying in value received the solemn bargain made with world Jewry to reconstitute the Land of Israel
In the neutral countries the Allied cause, associated everywhere in the Jewish mind with justice and equity, was given invaluable support. Jews fought in the armies of all the Western Powers. Over a hundred thousand Jewish soldiers were killed in action. In the British Empire itself, out of a total community of 425,000 Jews, 50,000 were in uniform. In true Maccabean spirit they earned more than their share of honors and decorations on the battlefield. One of them was the heroic Sir John Monash, leader of the Australians.
Behind the lines, the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann was the genius directing the Admiralty Chemical Laboratories. According to Lloyd George, he "absolutely saved the British army at a critical moment" by devising a substitute for exhausted English
supplies of acetone, used in making the basic material in gunpowder. Among others, Sir Alfred Stern invented the tank, which saved the Western Powers from annihilation during the latter part of the fighting. Solomon J. Solomon created the idea of camouflage, allowing harassed Allied shipping to run the U-boat blockade. Everywhere Jewish brains, money, valor and enthusiasm were placed wholeheartedly at the service of the Allies.
65 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
In Palestine
In 1915 Palestinian refugees in Egypt
In the meanwhile a brilliant young Russian writer, Vladimir Jabotinsky, had been scurrying around in an attempt to organize a legion of Jewish volunteers from the Diaspora countries to fight directly under the Jewish flag. With rare insight he pointed out that words and promises were soon forgotten and that the most enduring Jewish title to the Holy Land would come from a direct investment of Jewish blood under a Jewish flag.
The influential capitalist Jews were aghast. They put pressure on the British War Office to stop this little impassioned Zionist with the under-slung jaw who they believed was jeopardizing their position in the gentile world with his lunatic nonsense. But the British needed this Jewish regiment for publicity purposes: they had made themselves the champion of the oldest betrayed nationality in existence, impressive to the Poles, Czechs, Armenians, etc., who had been listening to the noble assurances of the Western Powers with their tongues in their cheeks. The War Office consequently overrode the objections of the anti-Zionists and allowed Jabotinsky to form The Jewish Regiment. As the protest of the scared English Jews became louder, the regiment's name was changed to The Judea? is, official sub-title for the 38th Royal Fusiliers. Following hard on its heels came another Jewish battalion, the 39th Fusiliers.
66 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
At a giant mass meeting seeing the Jewish warriors off, the Hon. G. N. Barnes, M.P.,
spoke fulsomely in the name of His Majesty the King. He eulogized the Jewish soldiers as "fellow fighters for freedom," and assured his listeners that "the British Government proclaimed its policy of Zionism because it believes that Zionism is identified with the policy and aims for which good men and women are struggling everywhere."
In Palestine The Judeans were joined by Colonel Patterson's seasoned campaigners, the Zion Mule Corps. The Jewish national anthem rang in their ears as they marched, and over their heads waved the Jewish flag.
Wildly enthusiastic, the able-bodied Jews in the conquered territory enlisted. With an appreciation almost reverential the British Peace Handbook No. 60 announced that "the most important event which has taken place . . . since our occupation, has been the recruiting of the Palestine Jews, whatever their national States, into the British Army. . . Practically the whole available Jewish youth of the Colonies . . . came forward for voluntary enlistment in the Jewish Battalions."
The distinguished service rendered by these Jewish regiments is indelibly written in the records. Said General Bartholomew "For the Turks the end of the War was dependent upon maintenance of theJordan
sector of the front not the Arab Army fought, but the Jewish Legion." 1 It was the Jews who took the fords of the Jordan Damascus
Of fully as great importance was the voluntary intelligence service rendered by the celebrated Nili Society all over the Holy Land . Organized by the scientist
67 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
Alexander Aronson, 3 its daring exploits were largely instrumental in the success of Allenby's campaign. Far from giving the invaders any help, the Palestine Arabs were, as we shall see, either apathetic or directly hostile.
Spiritedly the Palestinian volunteers addressed themselves to Colonel Patterson when he landed with his Jewish boys: "We are convinced that Britain Britain England
blood." 4
They had every reason to feel Convinced.' In April 1917 the British War Department had issued a statement on War Aims in the Near East in which it was proclaimed that "Palestine Palestine Palestine Palestine
Addressing the first Conference of Jews in the liberated area, Major W. Ormsby-Gore, later as Colonial Secretary to suffer a serious case of amnesia, orated for His Majesty's Government as follows:
"Mr. Balfour has made a historic declaration with regard to the Zionists : that he wishes to see created and built up in Palestine
68 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
People. What do we understand by this ? We mean that those Jews who voluntarily
come to live in Palestine Palestine Palestine
The marching Jews listened. The great dream which had inspired the Jewish mind for so many long centuries, seemed about to be realized. They believed Britain
REVOLTING TRIBESMEN
Part of Lloyd George's technique during the War was connected with the old art of inciting dissatisfaction within the enemy camp. This practice had proven especially effective with the moribund Austro-Hungarian Empire, and several capable agents, including the famous Lawrence Arabia to foment an insurrection there if possible.
The English started with little in their favor. To speak of Turkish oppression of the Arab was actually an absurdity, unless one referred to the Levantine Christian on the coast. The constitution of the Ottoman Empire was the Arab's Koran from which the Turk derived his law, religion and culture. Even the Turkish language became half Arabic; and it was only with the later revolution under Kemal Pasha that the decadent Arab cultural pattern which ruled the life of the Ottoman nation was eliminated.
Under Turkish suzerainty the Arab areas were virtually independent, ruled by local chiefs whose authority was recognized by the Sultan. Arabs held high position all over the Empire. The Sultan's Guards were almost completely Arab. The schools and army were dominated by them. Even the Prime Minister, Mahmoud Chawkat Pasha, was an Arab. The whole system of Muslimism itself practically precluded
any idea of national sentiment, until it began to arise under the stimulus of British agitators. In Baghdad
69 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
anynationalist feeling. Regional sectarianism was everywhere the rule. The Shiah’s did not desire a Sunni government; nor would the Sunnis tolerate a Shiah rule, while the mass of tribesmen did not desire any government at all.
As matters rested, the British were compelled to create a completely synthetic situation if they were to have the great Arab revolt come off. They decided to rely on private rivalries and ambitions; and here they made a shrewd guess: the desert was
a hotbed of rapacity, hatreds and feuds.
Sitting immobile in the Hejaz was the Sherif Hussein, descendant of the Prophet and unbending hater of Christians and all their works. Almost alone among the Arabian princes he was the nominee of the Turks. His measure may be gained from the fact that he even prohibited talking-machines in his kingdom, believing them to be the invention of the devil.
On the other side of Hussein was his mortal enemy, the gigantic Ibn Saud of Nejd . Saud, a good hater who believed in the old Mohammedan tenets of conversion by disemboweling, was also in conflict with the powerful Emir of Hail, who was being supported by the Turks.
The British wanted Hussein for the moral effect they presumed his name would have on the Faithful, and made overtures to him early. Part of these 'negotiations' lay in the bland threat to feed him outright to the ferocious Saud, to whom they were handing a subsidy of £5,000 a month to insure his neutrality. To make the argument more pointed, Britain Egypt Mecca Medina Hejaz with bankruptcy, since this pilgrimage provided the barren land with its chief source of revenue. The Sherif had still other and more urgent considerations to hasten his decision. One of these was the British naval blockade of the Arabian coast, "inevitably aggravating the internal distress caused by the lack of pilgrims." 6
That Hussein's over-lordship of the Holy Places would make him an acceptable leader to all the Arabs of the Peninsula turned out to be an error. Even at that time, his mortal enemy, Saud, was the principal power in South Central Arabia as was another
70 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
mutual opponent, Ibn Rashid of Hayil, in the North Central part. Nor would the great sheikhs, such as those of the Huwallah, the Shammar, or the Mutair accept Hussein's over-lordship, or even permit him to speak for them. 7
The whole business degenerated into a confused medley of intrigue, directed by a multitude of British agencies acting under conflicting instructions and authority; the powerful India Office, for example, bucked the traces completely and gave encouragement to Ibn Saud as the logical leader of the rebellion. 8
Just what kind of 'Arab patriot' Hussein was, may be learned from the fact that he allowed a contingent of volunteers to be recruited in his territory for the abortive Turkish expedition to the Suez Canal in February 19 15, and used his influence to assist the crew of the German cruiser Emden which had been harassing British communications off the Red Sea Coast. 9 Thus he negotiated with Turks and British alike until he could make sure he was backing the right horse. Actually all he wanted
or hoped to secure was complete independence in his own corner of southwestern Arabia , military support against his rival, Ibn Saud, and unfettered control of the lucrative pilgrim revenue.
Finally, the British High Commissioner in Egypt
to as fine a mulcting as they have ever experienced. The Agreement entered into early in 191 6, reads that "The Government of Great Britain agrees to furnish this Arab Government with all its needs of arms and ammunition and money during the War." What this transaction was like is more than explained in the wireless received by McMahon's confidential assistant, Sir Ronald Storrs, just before the 'rebellion' broke out. It read : "Foreign Office has approved payment of £107,000 to Abdullah and £10,000 to Sherif of Mecca. But this latter payment only in return for definite action and if a reliable rising takes place" 10 All told, the English handed over to the Sherif
71 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
a cool ,£11,000,000 in materials and money, and stimulated his patriotism with grandiose promises of personal power. 11 Nothing else than this flood of gold, writes Lawrence
the field for five months on end." And C. S. Jarvis, English Governor of Sinai Peninsula , comments that Arab actions from start to finish "proved that they were only interested in the revolution for three objects in the following order of importance — gold, loot, and the satisfactory clearing up of their own daraks or areas." 12 Indeed, the only time a full muster of the 'patriots' could be counted on was payday.
The whole 'campaign of the desert' was a strangely inept piece of business, vastly enlarged on by British publicists for outside consumption. A good account of it is given by the French General, Edouard Bremond, in his book Le Hedjaz dans la
Guerre Mondtale. Hussein himself is described as "an obstinate, narrow-minded, suspicious character," so insanely jealous of his son Feisal that he was forever issuing from his throne in Mecca
Observers, neutral and friendly, have described the character of these purchased levies. They were not, by our standards, good soldiers. Bloodless victories were the kind that they appreciated, andLawrence Lawrence Lawrence
air." 15
men were blood enemies of thirty tribes, and only for my hand
72 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
over them would have murdered in the ranks every day. Their feuds prevented them combining against me ; while their unlikeness gave me sponsors and spies wherever I went or sent. . 17
Often the Arabs refused to fight at all because they were not satisfied with the amount of loot they were receiving. Lawrence himself was once abandoned with two companions in the middle of an engagement, his Arab allies having gone raving
mad with the lust of plunder. In their frenzy they fought among themselves, and soon were all 'missing,' "having dispersed with their spoil." Even in victory they did not hesitate to leave their own wounded lying helpless on the ground while they looted. Under these circumstances, says Lawrence
The British, in fact, had their hands full with their wild allies. Aviators had to fly at a considerable height to avoid being shot at by the Bedouins, who had "an irresistible desire to shoot anything that was moving fast." 19 They found the Arab chiefs volcanic and suspicious and ever ready to resent the presence of infidels. "Many of them," writes Captain Hart, ""behaved as if the British officers were their servants, and set an example of rudeness that was imitated by their followers, as well as by their slaves." Lawrence
allies, the Bedouins." 20 Nor would he instruct his tribesmen in the handling of the high explosives used to cripple the Turkish transportation system, afraid that they "would keep on playfully blowing up trains even after the termination of the war." 21
The whole Lawrence Arabia at all,
73 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
and merely went down the western coastal fringe from Mecca
along the Pilgrim railway. 22 Most of the inhabitants of Arabia could hardly have known of his existence, "while the suggestion implied of Arabian unification under a foreigner and a non-Muslim is, of course, a myth." 23
His entire 'army' of purchased irregulars did not amount to a row of peanuts when compared with the Arabs fighting on the Turkish side against the detested infidel. Simultaneous with the Sherif's commitment to the Allies, his powerful neighbor
Hussein Mabeirig, chief of the Rabegh Harb, joined the Turks; and facing the invaders was at least one entire Ottoman division made up entirely of Arab men and officers.
The number who participated in the 'revolt' were an uncertain and fluctuating quantity, "simply gathering," says Bertram Thomas, "for some particular expedition in numbers that some- times reached a few thousand, but were more often only a few
hundred." Lloyd George estimated their total number to aggregate "but a few thousand horsemen," remarking that "the vast majority of their race in the Great War were fighting for their Turkish conquerors." 24
There have been few peoples in history who have gotten so much for giving so little. In Iraq
was their principal object. Blood-curdling eyewitness accounts tell how Turks and Englishmen alike were murdered for their small possessions. Unfortunate prisoners had their bellies ripped open in search of the gold liras which the Arabs thought
the soldiers had swallowed. Graves containing Turkish and English dead were despoiled for any articles which might have been buried with them. Throughout the Turkish Empire the phrase Khayin Arab (treacherous Arab) became an ugly
proverb. 25
As shown by the records, as far as Palestine
74 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Trans-Jordan it was the Jewish Legions who, having assisted the English to take the passages of the Jordan River , marched on to capture Es Salt, then considered its principal town. Lawrence
At this time the dazzling fiction of a Palestinian Arab struggle against the Turks had not yet been invented. The British themselves, roiled by the disinclination of Palestine Arabs to assist in any way, described them as "sunk in almost animal brutishness, moved by no spirit of personal liberty or freedom for their native land." A study ofLawrence Lawrence Palestine Palestine Burton
Despite the ado subsequently made over the vaunted promises to Hussein, all the evidence indicates that until British policy shifted after the War, the idea that Palestine Lawrence Syria Palestine
75 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
given to Hussein which could be construed to mean that Palestine July 11, 1922 , Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, declared: "No pledges were made to the Arab Palestinian Arabs in 1915. So far as I am aware, the first suggestion that Palestine Hejaz to anything.
When Hussein finally proclaimed himself Commander of the Faithful, it proved a fatal step, hardening against him the Wahabis and other fanatic Muslim groups in whose eyes the Sherif was an infidel backslider. London Hejaz refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles and wriggled out of joining theLeague of Nations under British tutelage. Quietly they withdrew their support from the recalcitrant Hussein and let it be known that he was now on his own. 27 Saud, who had been waiting for this moment, needed no further invitation. He promptly occupied Mecca Cyprus
himself King of the Hejaz and Sultan of Nejd.
While the Sherif was engaged in this death struggle with his ancient enemy, Britain Red Sea port of Aqaba May 27, 1925 , the British Government regretfully informed
the Commander of the Faithful that if he would not accede to this demand, it "would have to take Aqaba and Maan by force." On June 18, both towns became part of Transjordan . Here was created the need for a fresh departure in British Arabic policy since their new protégé, Saud, would not accept the fact of British possession gracefully; he continued to roar with aggrieved self-righteousness that he had been robbed. This friction, which persists until today, resulted in still another of
Whitehall
76 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
THE ARAB VIEW OF ZIONISM
During all the period that the Zionists had been without benefit of Balfour Declaration or Mandatory 'assistance the attitude of the Arabs toward the Jewish National Movement had been one of almost unanimous approval. In 1906, Farid Kassab, famous Syrian author, had expressed the view uniformly held by Arabs: "The Jews of the Orient are at home. This land is their only fatherland. They don't know any other." 28 A year later Dr. Gaster reported that he had "held conversations with some of the leading sheikhs, and they all expressed themselves as very pleased with the advent of the Jews, for they considered that with them had come barakat, i.e., blessing, since the rain came in due season." 29
The Muslim religious leader, the Mufti, was openly friendly, even taking a prominent part in the ceremony of laying the foundation stone for the Hebrew University Mt. Scopus Arabia the chiefs were for the most part distinctly pro-Zionist; and inPalestine
The Arab National Movement itself, puny, inexperienced, and hated by the huge Levantine population who continued to regard themselves simply as Ottoman subjects, looked to the
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 77
strong, influential Zionist Organization for sympathy and assistance.
Hussein of the Hejaz who had been booted upstairs by the British into a position of recognized authority in the Arab Nationalist Movement after the War, distrusted European nations and their statesmen to the very marrow of his bones. He looked
to the Zionists, as a kindred folk, for the financial and scientific experience of which the projected Arab state would stand badly in need. When the Balfour Declaration was communicated to him in January 1918, he had replied "with an expression of good will towards a kindred Semitic race." 31
In May of the same year, at Aqaba where he held court and made camp, Hussein was visited by Dr. Weizmann, head of the Zionist Commission. At this desert conference the British Government and the Arab Bureau in Cairo
Feisal, dark, majestic son of the Sherif, spoke as the Arab representative. Intimate mutual cooperation between the two Movements was pledged. The Zionists were to provide political, technical and financial advisers to the Arabs; and it was agreed
that Palestine
Basic hostility to all Christian powers characterized father and son, who felt that the Jews were the indispensable allies, and indeed the instruments, of a new Arab renaissance. They regarded a dominantly Jewish Palestine Arabia ; and were anxious for a rapid development of thePeninsula if it were to become capable of resisting the attacks which their weakness must sooner or later invite.
When Feisal came to Europe in 1919 representing the Arab cause, the Zionists submitted their plans to him. Both Feisal and Lawrence approved of them, and early in 1919 these conversations culminated in a Treaty of Friendship. Solemnly signed, this convention provided for the "closest possible collaboration" in the development of theArab State
78 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Mohammedan control; the Zionist Organization undertook to provide economic experts to the new Arab State; and the Arabs agreed to facilitate the carrying into effect of the Balfour Declaration and to "encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine January 3rd, 1919 a formal Agreement was signed by Faisal representing the Arabs and Weizmann representing the Jews. This Agreement confirmed the understanding by King Faisal and the Arabs that Palestine
On March 3, 1919 , Feisal acting officially for the Arab movement wrote: "We Arabs look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation in Paris
most hearty welcome home."
The Arab leaders placed themselves on record everywhere in an obvious effort to attain Zionist support for their own aspirations, then under the cloud of European Imperialist ambitions. A representative example is Feisal's public communication to
Sir Herbert Samuel, pleading the need to "maintain between us that harmony so necessary for the success of our common cause."
On meticulous English records, carefully buried in the Government vaults, the entire story is written in comprehensive detail. At all discussions British representatives were present. Lawrence Whitehall
THE BRITISH MILITARY JUNTA
Whatever the mighty deeds and feats of derring-do by English arms elsewhere in the Great War, it is not a fact that they alone conqueredPalestine
79 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
When with pennants flying, Sir Edmund Allenby made his historic entry into Jerusalem December 9, 1917 , the Hebrew battalions were also there. Sir John Monash's Australians were the bulk of his effectives. Under his command, among others, was a contingent of French Colonials and a force of Italian Bersaglieri from Lybia. As he victoriously entered, Allenby was flanked on one side by M. Francis Georges-Picot and on the other by Major d'Augustino, the French and Italian representatives respectively.
It was understood all around that the expressed Jewish wish was to have the British in control during the early period when the foundations of the Jewish National Home were to be laid. The Zionists were at the time much afraid of the practical results which might follow from the International control favored by the French and Italians; and they looked on the English as their friends and sponsors. Under this Jewish insistence the Latins generously allowed their interests to lapse, and the English military was left in complete authority.
The surrender of Jerusalem Temple
said on entering: "We have come not as conquerors but as deliverers."
But hardly had the Turks been driven out when it became apparent to Jew and Arab alike that the entire Administration was uncompromisingly opposed both to the letter and the spirit of the Balfour Declaration. In his solemn proclamation after taking the Capital, Allenby spoke as if the Balfour Declaration had never been issued. In fact no mention was made of the Jewish National Home in any official announcement in Palestine May 1, 1920 . Even all references to the Jewish Legion, unstintingly praised in the military dispatches for its gallantry in action, were suppressed by G.H.Q. from the dispatches as published in the Palestine
80 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Weizmann and his cohorts had been used to dealing with suave statesmen whose assurances were still ringing in their ears. Balfour had just reiterated that "no one is now opposed to Zionism. The success of Zionism is secure." 35 Ormsby-Gores
had even gone so far as to urge the immediate creation of a Jewish passport. In Jerusalem Palestine British Empire ; but its administration should be largely entrusted to Jews of the Colonist type. . . Zionists of this way of thinking believe that, under such conditions, the Jewish population would rapidly increase until the Jew became the predominant partner of the combination."
The Zionists were under the impression that they had "gained the adhesion of the Powers to practically the exact terminology of theBasle program adopted in 1897" under the direction of Herzel. 36 They were totally unprepared for the unexpected attitude of the Military, and stood around rubbing their hands in consternation.
The Generals, looking on the pro-Zionist commitment of the Foreign Office as little less than criminal lunacy, virtually refused to carry outLondon Cairo Syria
in high elation reported that he had interviewed a number of 'Syrians' and that "their idea of Government for Palestine Palestine
81 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
from which Jews were to be excluded.
The Zionists were put in their place with a bang. Despite the Jewish majority in Jerusalem
receipts should be printed in English and Arabic only; and the Military Governor of Jaffa
The attitude of the Generals toward the Jews was contemptuous and hostile; and subordinates were swiftly responsive to the cue supplied by their superior officers. General Money asserted with cool complacency: "I have asked many people in
position — in England England Holy Land had been handed over to Weizmann who had
demanded it as his pound of flesh for having invented "in the nick of time . . . some ultra-Teutonic deadliness of gas and bombs." 38
Not un-instructive of the whole tone of this administration is the case given by Horace Samuel, late Judicial Officer in Palestine
damn good fellows." *°
HANDRUBBING STATESMEN
It was tragic for the hopes of Zion
82 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
dreaming and weakness under attack which had characterized life in the Russian Pale. Wise politicians would have known that the Balfour Declaration was only the beginning of their troubles; that from this time onward, the Jewish estate would
have to be protected by every artifice that stubborn determination and vigilance could invent. But the inexperienced Zionists considered their provisional charter to be the solution to all problems. Learnedly they mapped and blueprinted the perfect society which was gradually to unfold its petals like a lovely orchid in the new Land of Israel
Shocked by these pedantic vagaries, the shrewd Nordau urged that a half million Jews be thrown into Palestine Israel Holy Land under any conditions. The practical difficulties to such a project were by no means insuperable, and, fully as important, Arab resistance to the policy of the Jewish National Home was at this time scarcely visible. Arab landowners, holders of great vacant stretches, were under the impression that radical land legislation was impending and were anxious to sell at any price. It was a golden opportunity, never to come again.
But Zionist spokesmen at that time were opposed to what they considered 'premature' immigration, and wanted to build on 'sound 5 lines. With cautious logic they demanded to know: "How will these people live? We have no houses for them —
they will starve !" 41
"Let them live in tents — let them starve!" replied Nordau. "But you had better bring them in at once while the opportunity lasts. Gentlemen, you have the Balfour Declaration: but you don’t knowEngland
The Hierarchy, condemning Nordau and his followers as 'impractical, un-idealistic and headstrong,' was content to wait. Its initiative had been immobilized by the collapse of Russia
coming into power, had outlawed the movement on the grounds that it was a tool of the Imperialists and a betrayal of the Jewish masses. Quoting the master, Marx, to show that Jews were only a social class and not a nation, they declared Jewish
83 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
nationalism a counter-revolutionary activity.
Completely upset by this volcanic withdrawal of their principal source of support, the bewildered Zionists did nothing. Their complete reliance on the good faith of British assurances caused them to neglect the most logical and prudent step, that of consolidating their position quickly, before opposition forces had had time to collect themselves.
The British could hardly believe their eyes when the Jewish leaders, obsessed with vague schemes for national ownership of the land, actually welcomed the drastic legislation ordered by Allenby prohibiting land sales as well as immigration. They
did not even protest when the Jewish Legion was cavalierly disbanded and told to leave the Holy Land for their points of origin, though the balance of Allenby's force remained under arms.
In London July 24, 1918 , equipped, with the authority of the British Government, to advise the Palestine Administration on Jewish affairs. As head of this essentially political body, Weizmann's first act was to warn his hearers to beware of treacherous insinuations that Zionists were seeking political power. 42
The Generals, who had been treating the Jewish population as if it were non-existent, did not even bother with blandishments ; they simply ignored the Commission altogether. Not even a pretense of friendship with the Government could be maintained.
With a pointed demonstration of contempt, when the Jewish National Anthem was played at a concert in a Jewish school, General Money and his staff deliberately kept their seats. Putty soled Zionist leaders, who might have used the incident for a complete show-down fight in a world where the advantage of sympathy and legality was all theirs, remembered the knout of the Czars, sweated and kept silent.
84 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Incident multiplied itself on incident, and for twenty months the status quo of the country remained unchanged. The onlytime the Zionist leaders opened their mouths was when "the notorious anti-Semite Colonel Scott (acting head of the Judiciary) publicly insulted the Jews and the Jewish religion in the corridor of the Law Courts." 43 The howl that went up, forced by Orthodox institutions, compelled him to resign.
The Zionists were badly rattled. Wanting the hardihood necessary to handle this admittedly difficult situation, they could only sit helplessly by, hoping for the best. They watched apathetically while a civil agent of the Government, an apostate
Jew named Gabriel, busied himself in promoting British commercial interests while the Jews, treated as social, commercial and political outcasts, were kept at a distance. With equal meekness they stood by while the Government sabotaged Jewish efforts to come to an understanding with the Arabs.
With conscious design the Administration fostered hostility between Arab and Jew. It directly advised the amazed Arabs of Palestine andEgypt
as a weapon against the Zionists on the slightest pretext. It instructed astonished Arab young-bloods in the technique and tenets of modern nationalism, in order to resist Jewish pretenses.' And inLondon
The Arabs were not only instigated and advised, but supplied with funds, and their arguments ghost-written by Englishmen in high places. They proved a tolerably good investment. Their ready compliance may be seen in the very convenient demands put forward in the Third Arab Palestine Congress (timed to coincide with the British plot to force the French out of the Near East altogether) that the Holy Land be not separated from Syria. During all this time the Military had been playing a high game
of politics on its own, maneuvering carefully to present the forthcoming Peace Conference with a fait accompli which would set the lily-livered civilian officials in London
85 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
to who should control the Eastern Mediterranean . The French, traditional protectors of Syria Sidon Jerusalem
The Generals aimed at one big Arab state or federation of states, to include the Hejaz , Iraq Syria Palestine Egypt Britain Palestine Syria Levant or a Zionist policy
in Palestine
Now began a technique of instigation and incitement from which the Anglo-Saxon rulers of the Holy Land have never varied wherever they had a point to be gained. Tension between France England London Palestine
Matters came to a head in 1920 when Feisal staged a revolt against the French in Damascus Palestine
part of Syria Jerusalem
mean the end of Zionism, that the League of Nations , which had not yet officially named a mandatory, would be forced to 'recognize the rights' of the native population and cancel out the Zionist adventure.
86 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
POGROM AND WORLD HORROR
The Governor of Jerusalem was General Louis Bols. Chief of Staff to Bols was Colonel Waters Taylor, whose ideal polity was a military government in perpetuity, and who later became an anti-Zionist organizer in London
When Colonel Patterson, staunch Zionist friend, heard that Bols had been appointed, he was shocked. He writes: "I knew Bols well, having worked with him for two years. I knew him as an out and out anti-Semite, who would leave no stone unturned to destroy the Jewish National Home root and branch." So moved was this honest English soldier that he boarded a train for Cairo that very day in order to warn Weizmann of the danger, urging him to oppose Bols' appointment with might and
main. In reply Weizmann informed Patterson that his fears "were really exaggerated, as he had just had a two-hour conversation with Bols and had found him a very nice man." Despite Weizmann's optimistic appraisal, the result of Bols' appointment
was soon to be written in Jewish blood.
Ominous incidents crowding fast on the heels of the intensive propaganda which followed the crowning of Feisal in Syria
The riots of April 1920 broke on the heads of the astonished Jews like a clap of thunder. Misled by the naiveté of their responsible leaders, they awoke from their dreams of a Jewish Commonwealth to scenes no different than those from which
they had fled in Russia
The action was perfectly timed. Moslem crowds had gathered for the Nebt Monssa festival in Jerusalem
Now agitators were addressing this churning mass, urging them forward against the
87 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
Jerusalem
Poland Germany Ukraine Palestine Lebanon Valley Israel Europe or perish. The Arabs, undeterred by the restraining 'principles' of the Zionists, had demanded, and received, more than they had ever envisioned in their wildest dreams. At a moment when public opinion would have completely approved of the Zionists taking immediate possession, they demurred on 'democratic' and 'social' grounds.
Palestine
Palestine
London
Jews. Hesitant for a moment, the reassuring cry arose: "The Government is with us !"
The stage had been ably set. All Jewish policemen had been relieved from duty in the 'Old City Jerusalem
Shrieking madness covered the Old City
to rape.
Shivering with the emotion of an unhappy, betrayed man, Weizmann, supreme Jewish leader, wept bitterly. In another part of the city, Jabotinsky, the little Russian writer with the prognathous jaw, was raging. Cursing the wordy timidity of his Zionist confreres he swiftly gathered together a group of ex-Legionnaires. Heartened, other young Jews joined the "Self-Defense." Where they appeared the rioters ran for their lives.
Meanwhile the Government surrounded the Old City
raised a hand to interfere. 45
Jabotinsky and his Legionnaires were arrested as fast as they could be apprehended. It was symptomatic of the general tone of the Administration that Howes, the Commandant of Police, caused Jabotinsky to be held in the common lockup, while Arab agitators who had also been arrested were accommodated in a pleasant room in the Governate itself. Zionist stock slumped still lower when Jewish notables were refused an audience, while motor cars were placed at the disposal of Arab leaders for
the purpose of granting them an interview with the Chief Administrator. 46
With ghoulish thoroughness the Government both during and after the riots searched
88 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
the Jews for arms, deliberately rendering them defenseless, and causing numerous arrests of those guilty of protecting their homes and loved ones. Cynically Sir Louis Bols complained in a dispatch toCairo
So devilishly inhuman a course would hardly seem credible if it were not supported by the word of many witnesses, some of them distinguished Englishmen, revolted by this sickening parade of events. The tone of the Administration was so hostile that a celebrated American archaeologist, a non-Jew, told Horace Samuel "quite specifically" that because of his sympathy for the riot victims "he found himself deliberately cold-shouldered by the British officials." 47 A thoroughly upset British lady felt compelled to write that "for the first time yesterday I felt ashamed of being born an Englishwoman." 48
never to fade. Far away in the little Galilee village of Tel Hai
In a vermin-infested jail, awaiting trial, was Jabotinsky — Jewish patriot and ex-officer of His Majesty's Army — now stripped of his honors and treated like a dangerous felon. With scant ceremony he was tried, and with his Legionnaires sentenced to fifteen years at hard labor.
Shocked by this savage order, the Jews shut their shops in protest. The Government replied with a ukase ordering the shops reopened under penalty of a fine of £50; an action more than interesting in view of the way subsequent Arab strikes were handled.
Suddenly, like a typhoon which had gathered from nowhere, a tremendous wave of protest swept the world. England Ireland India
89 BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
The Generals' plan had become a boomerang. The League had not yet granted an official mandate; and the French, irritated to the boiling point, took action to throw
King Feisal; out of Syria Palestine
The English were in a tight spot. They stood morally condemned before the world. The precious life line to India
Here was another shining opportunity laid right in the Zionists' laps. The functionaries in Whitehall Palestine Israel
CHAPTER VII
THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
WEIZMANN OBLIGES
At the Peace Conference, held at Versailles Europe .
An example of their attitude is contained in the assertion by Sir Herbert Samuel that "the immediate establishment of a complete and purely Jewish State in Palestine
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91 THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
91 THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
Both at Versailles Palestine England
Throughout the Versailles Conference the view taken by the British delegation, and supported by the Plenipotentiaries, "was that if there was to be a Jewish nationality, it could only be by giving the Jews a local habitation and enabling them to found in
Powerful America Europe in her pocket, was heart and soul for a Zionist solution. The official American recommendation at the Peace Conference was for the establishment of a Jewish State. A commission of prominent Americans had been sent by President Wilson to investigate, and their recommendations, adopted by the President and other American delegates without dissent were direct and forthright, stating bluntly that "it is right that Palestine
The frank of America Holy Land were protected, opposition virtually did not exist. The Arabs themselves were more than friendly and in fact were looking to the obviously influential Zionists for support of their own program.
Again, as in the case of the Balfour Declaration, the only oppositionists were Jews — capitalists or Marxists — who considered Zionism a move of gravely dangerous import. In England America
92 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
effect "against the program of political Zionism." But the only effect of these hysterical renunciations was to cause the Plenipotentiaries to scratch their heads in wonder and dismiss the authors as a bunch of well-meaning crackpots.
Heavily in the Zionists' favor was the biting rivalry between the British and French, each determined to shut the other out of the Near East if it could. Sticking in the craw of the British was the Sykes-Picot Treaty, which all but handed the Levant over to France India
Able tacticians, they pointed out that the Balfour Declaration, to which Paris
The French, secure in the largest military establishment on earth, already almost at war with England Palestine Syria
Though the Kaiser was chopping wood somewhere in Holland Palestine
The French stood pat. They wanted Palestine
As it became evident that the Zionists held the decision in their hands they were courted by both sides. Sir Mark Sykes and M. Georges-Picot, authors of the earlier agreement, both declared themselves as favoring the Zionist solution.
What the French had not figured on was the almost pathological pro-Anglicism of the Jews, enduring product of an earlier generation of English friendship. It must be rioted that
93 THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
there was nothing either in the Balfour promises or in the negotiations at Versailles Great Britain
The Zionists, prompted by London Great Britain
the return of the Jews to Zion Poland Great Britain League of Nations . This request was made in an elaborate statement on the future of Palestine France
Condensing a volume of duplicity and ingratitude in a few words, De Haas remarks that "the British at once commenced a process of whittling the phraseology before the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference." 4
So matters stood when in April of 1920 the League Council met atSan Remo Palestine
94 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
that England
The reaction of the Arabs to the San Remo Iraq
A few months later the matter was clinched for England Turkey
Secure in the knowledge that the over-lordship of this coveted territory was now theirs, London
producing it in its final form.
The Zionists made plea after plea, realizing that they had put their feet in quicksand. They appealed to the League as if the procrastination lay there. On February 27, 1922 , representatives of the Zionist Organization went through the play-acting
of informing the League Council in Paris that the Jews of Palestine, at a conference in Jaffa, appealed to the Allied and Associated Powers "to nominate Great Britain as their trustee, and to confer on her the government of Palestine
95 THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
the Jewish People in building up their Commonwealth." 5 A confirmed Zionist, President Harding made his interest known unofficially; and in April of 1922 the United States Congress stated by resolution its profound satisfaction that "owing to the outcome of the World War and their part therein, the Jewish people, under definite and adequate international guarantee, are to be enabled ... to recreate and reorganize a National Home in the land of their fathers," commending "this act of historic justice about to be consummated" as "an undertaking which will do honor to Christendom."
Still the British continued to hem and haw, utilizing every trifling technicality to spar for time. It was not until the revised convention with Turkey
powers limited by language ambiguous enough to be interpreted in any direction the ruling power of Palestine
It provided that in the territory east of Jordan
In view of later English contentions that under the Mandate they were forced to consult the Arabs in implementing their actions, it is interesting to note that the Arabs were not approached when that responsibility was handed to Britain
were consulted. It is also remarkable that the word 'Arab' never once occurs in the whole document as apart from the recognition of Arabic as one of the official languages of the country. A most casual reading makes it plain that the League had
* See Appendix 'A,' p. 571.
96 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
engaged itself to a definite and positive policy of Jewish development, not only permitted, but fostered and subsidized by the Government of Palestine Palestine
as a whole who are the beneficiaries. The Mandate is clearly for an absent people who are not yet there on the ground, with the existing populations secondarily guaranteed full liberty and civil rights. 6 This alteration of basic law came under discussion at the twelfth meeting of the Twentieth Session of the Mandates Commission (June 1931) in connection with a British observation to the effect that "in international law there was no such thing as a Jew from the standpoint of nationality." To this the Vice-Chairman of the Commission replied that the remark would be correct except for the existence of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, which had introduced a new element into this law in favor of the Jewish People.
Included in the Preamble was the Balfour Declaration and its ratification by the Powers at San Remo Palestine Palestine Palestine
Of the direct commitments the most important was Article II which stated that "the Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish
National Home as laid down in the Preamble. . While Article VI ordered the Mandatory to "facilitate Jewish immigration" and to "encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency . . . the close settlement of Jews on the land including State lands and wastelands not required for public purposes."
On December 3, 1924 , the United States
97 THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
the contracting parties to this international arrangement. This treaty, known as the American-British Mandate Convention on Palestine League of Nations . In the correspondence relating to the several draft treaties submitted, it is plainly evident that the American Government considered England only as the temporary custodian for what was soon to be a Jewish State and, for this reason only, allowed herself to relinquish the special capitulation rights she had enjoyed under the old Turkish regime. The final draft of this agreement guarantees that "the United States
of the League of Nations and their nationals, notwithstanding the fact that the United States League of Nations ."
The determination of America United States
For once the Nations were attempting to solve their problems in a consciously intelligent manner. They had tackled the question of Jewish homelessness vigorously, and rested from their labors sincerely believing that they had rid the world of one of
its oldest problems.
THE FIRST PARTITION
At the time of the Peace Conference there was no haggling over the size of the Jewish territory. The American Commission took it for granted that "the new State would control its own source of water power and irrigation, from Mount Hermon in the east to the Jordan Palestine Syria Egypt Iraq
98 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
by Egypt Iraq Hejaz . The English viewpoint, embodied in British Peace Handbook No. 60 on Syria and Palestine, even contended that Damascus itself could very well be included, asserting that the whole "portion of the center of Syria that lies to the east of Jebel esh-Sharki may easily be separated from northern Syria Palestine River ofEgypt
With the San Remo Downing Street , suddenly showing a neighborly spirit, began to make territorial concessions to the French at the expense of the Jewish National Home. Satisfied with those elements relating purely to the safety of their Empire, English negotiators were completely indifferent to proper Palestinian boundaries from any other point of view. The Zionists were in consternation when London
Since the coming Hebrew Commonwealth Mount Hermon . This strategic sector, as well as the lands of Naphthali, Dan and Manasseh, was lopped off and uselessly handed to Syria Israel Galilee whence came the chief Zealots and patriots of the Roman wars.
Mincing no words, Colonel Wedgwood wrote that this first jettison of the patrimony of Israel
Outraged by what he also considered an act of unpardonable vandalism, President Wilson rose from his sick bed and cabled the following protest to the British Cabinet: "The Zionist cause depends upon rational northern and eastern boundaries for a
99 THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
self-sustaining, economic development of the country. This means on the north, Palestine Litany River
a mutilation. . . I need not remind you that neither in this country nor in Paris
This was in the Spring of 1920. Procrastinating, sugaring the Zionists with promises, London Jordan Jordan
The logic of this inexplicable indifference to British interests became clear later when the Zionists began to get a glimpse of what was in the back of the bureaucratic mind. Even at the sacrifice of desired territory, they wanted to make certain that Zionism could not succeed. A Zionist Palestine they regarded as a new Ireland in embryo, a development even more fraught with trouble for the Empire.
They proceeded cautiously. Time was in their favor.
Bols and the Generals had been dumped overboard. To show good faith a hand-picked Jew, Sir Herbert Samuel, had been appointed first High Commissioner under the coming Civil Administration. Of this change, Colonel Patterson commented grimly: "Bols went, but the system he implanted remained. The anti-Semitic officials that he brought with him into the country remained. . ." 11
CHAPTER VIII
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
UNDER THE COLONIAL OFFICE
The Military Administration was over. Anxious, but still un-protesting, the Zionists discovered that the Palestine
The country was now being directly governed by the Crown Colony Code and by a bureau which by the very nature of its experiences and interests could not fail to be opposed to the Mandate. This type of administration is maintained almost solely for the control of uncivilized tropical or sub-tropical races. The English themselves were later to admit that it "is not a suitable form of government for a numerous, self-reliant, progressive people, European for the most part in outlook and equipment, if not in race." 1 The evolution of self-rule even in backward India
The worst of its features is the unwritten law of the Colonial that the Colony exists chiefly to supply cheap raw material to, and to buy manufactured goods from, the mother country. It is his business to discourage industrial development, which might eventually offer substantial competition to the factories at Glasgow Lancashire . The perfect example of desirable condition was that offered by Indian and Egyptian cotton, which after being hauled over half the globe to England Egypt India
The Colonial Office, caring nothing about developing a body of officials acquainted with the needs of the country, actually does the reverse. It wants no functionaries even remotely identified with the territory they rule ; hence it rotates these officials
100 Pics
101 A MAN NAMED SAMUEL 101
from one colony to the other. Typical of the men who were to interpret the needs of Zionism were Police Chief R. B. G. Spicer, late Police Chief in Kenya Colony ; Chief Secretary Mark Aitchison Young, previously Colonial Secretary for Sierra Leone ; Michael Francis Joseph McDonnell, Chief Justice of the Palestine Supreme Court, formerly Assistant District Commissioner of the Gold Coast ; and Sir John Chancellor, High Commissioner of unlamented memory, who came from Southern Rhodesia where he had kept the peace with rifles.
These were all career men, suffering invariably from an ingrown sense of superiority; some of them educated and clever, others recruited from the backwash of the English slums. They were taught an attitude of cold reserve, a system of playing native factions off expertly against each other, a technique of incitement, and a calloused disregard for everything not connected with the spirit of the Crown Colony Code.
Under this set of regulations, created to serve settlements of Englishmen marooned among easily subdued or barbarian natives, the Zionists found that even the slightest trivialities had to be referred to some bureaucrat in London Jerusalem London Palestine
in what was hoped to be an important financial institution for issuing mortgages and bonds on Jewish property. The reason given was the Crown Colony Code. Another official was refused permission to aid in the development of so unprofitable a venture as the Hebrew Opera Company. The reason? The Crown Colony Code. 2 Even though there is only a scant handful of English school-children in the area, under the Code, Palestine
Just what rights the Crown Agents had in a mandated area was never made clear.
102 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
But the Zionists were not to be bothered by formalities. They had a colossal disrespect for politics. They declared that what they wanted was to 'build up the country' and let politics take care of itself.
A JEWISH RULER AFTER TWO THOUSAND YEARS
Sir Herbert Samuel arrived in due course, dressed for the occasion in gold braid and a resplendent white uniform. Throughout the Jewish world he had been trumpeted as the new Moses, the man of destiny. When he at last arrived in Jerusalem
Samuel was an impressive man, handsome and soldierly looking as he clicked his heels before the welcoming cameras; though closer inspection was not so reassuring, revealing a moody face whose whole expression was searching and suspicious. He had been Home Secretary in the British Government during the War and a had a reputation for treating Jews in a way that would not redound to the credit of a liberal gentile administrator." 3 The famous 'Tay Pay' O'Connor had briefly described him as having an "utter disregard for all the occupations and prizes of life except those to be found in politics. ,, 4 His inability to understand even the most obvious conditions under which the masses of Jewry lived is shown by an incident occurring in the Fall of 191 9 when Samuel was functioning as leader of a British Committee of Investigation in Poland
The heavens were almost covered with omens in reference to the mettle of Mr.
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
Samuel; but nevertheless the Zionists allowed themselves to be hoaxed into accepting him. Acting on a polite hint from high British quarters, they actually sponsored him; and officially his appointment was the result of their direct demand. Ruefully, Weizmann was later to admit : "Perhaps 1 am responsible for this chapter 'Samuel.' " 6
History will undoubtedly look on the man Samuel with wonder, as a striking commentary on his times. His first official act was to throw the brave Jews, jailed for their part in the self-defense during the riots, into the same class with Arab rapists by magnanimously pardoning both, all in the same breath and the same document. 7
Shortly after his arrival he held a reception for the members of his staff. The reaction, blurted out of the mouth of one of them was: "And there I was at Government House, and there was the Union Jack flying as large as life, and a bloody Jew sitting under it." 8
Sir Herbert was surrounded from the first by anti-Zionist subordinates, whom he was afraid to offend by appearing to favor the Jews. Horace Samuel declares that throughout his whole tenure of office Sir Herbert suffered acutely from the consciousness of being a Jew, causing him to pivot right around to an actual pro-Arab attitude.
The important Political Department of the Secretariat was assigned to an officer who labored under an intensive and fanatical hostility to the declared policy of His Majesty's Government in Palestine Richmond Palestine
103 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
whose influence was reduced to little. In the subordinate jobs, particularly on the Police Force and Intelligence Department, nearly all the key non-British positions were filled by Arabs, who were quick to respond to the cue given them by their superiors. The situation became so obvious that a number of Jewish officers of the Administration threw up their jobs "with the statement that they were doing so because there did not seem to be room for Jewish officials in the National Home." 11
It is no exaggeration to say that every subterfuge used to obstruct Zionist advance in future years, originated with Samuel. Characteristic of the man was this statement attributed to him: "If the Jews really want Palestine
it is worth." At the Fifth Session of the Permanent Mandates Commission he stated that it was "the fundamental intention of the Government" to deal with the Arabs "as if there had never been a Balfour Declaration." 12 Samuel's interference almost
lost the important Dead Sea concession for the Jews. He had deliberately held it up, not considering it seemly that Jews should get such a valuable concession. 13
Incongruously enough, Sir Herbert was so religious that he believed it a sin for Jews and non-Jews to intermarry. He deliberately snubbed a senior Christian official who had married a Jewish girl, remaining stiffly rude to both man and wife, even on those occasions when the duties of His Majesty's service made it impossible to avoid him.
THE POGROM OF 1921
The result of Samuel's policies was a pogrom. Only a scant year had passed since the previous massacre of Jews in Jerusalem
It was the end of April. The Moslems were celebrating their annual festival of the Prophet Moses. This fiesta at which howling creatures with quivering eyes and distorted features worked themselves into a lather, had been the starting point for
104 A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
trouble the year before. Each year, as the Moslems carried on their wild dances in the streets, anxiety spoke from the faces of the Jews until the Nebi Moussa festival was over. Notwithstanding this, the British Commandant of Police was conveniently away. The few Jews on the police force had been mysteriously taken off duty for the day.
"Bolsheviki! Bolsheviki! The Zionists are flooding the country with Bolsheviki!" This ugly cry had reverberated from many throats, Christian and Moslem alike, for a long period of months. With tacit consent the Authorities had given
sullen approval to the accusation that "every Jew is a Bolshevik." This malignant propaganda had been carried on openly under the eye of the Administration until the saturated minds of every section of Palestine
Suddenly during the Festival the mad shout arose that "the Mosques were being attacked by the Bolsheviks" (Jews). At Jaffa Jaffa
A howling horde led by uniformed policemen armed with rifles, bombs and ammunition stormed the Zionist Immigration Depot. Thirteen newly arrived immigrants were butchered amid horrible scenes of rape and looting. The water-front workmen, huge ruffians armed with long boat-hooks, ran through the streets impaling Jews on their weapons. Respectable looking Arabs with well-ironed fezzes, polished shoes, well-creased pants and starched collars, rushed into stores and helped themselves to all kinds of merchandise. 16
The conflagration immediately spread beyond the Jaffa
106 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
delivered in military formation, "directed by a gentleman with binoculars." 17 Hopelessly outnumbered the colonists fought with desperate courage for their lives. The colony Kfar Saba was destroyed and Rehovoth and Hadera badly damaged. Everywhere Arabs ruined beautiful fruit orchards, the work of a lifetime, burned homes and carried off movable property and cattle. Only the circumstance that almost all Jewish workers were former soldiers prevented the Jewish National Home from being consumed in one grand conflagration. 18
The most revolting spectacles had taken place. Defenseless old people and little children alike had been cut to ribbons and mutilated beyond recognition. Women were dragged out into the open street and outraged before being murdered. Bedlam shrieked all over theland of Moses
All Palestine England Holy Land , the wife of the Labor leader Philip Snowden fixed the responsibility on "the activity of certain
British subjects in Palestine England
infested area, asked him what his orders were and received the reply: "I must not shoot." 22 The policy of the police can be judged from the case of Shakeer Ali Kishek, one of the Bedouin chieftains who had led the attack on Petach Tikvah. Subsequently arrested, he "was immediately released on bail as a graceful gesture;
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL 107
while . . . the chief notable of the colony, one of the most respected Jewish colonists in the whole of Palestine Jerusalem
As a token of its displeasure the Government plastered a punitive fine on the villages that had attacked Hadera, which the Arabs never bothered about paying. Warrants were issued against some individuals living in the notorious Tulkarm district who were identified as having been involved in the murderous assaults, but "no efforts were made to execute the warrants." 24
The Authorities refused pointblank to make any investigation, so the Zionist Commission together with Judge Horace Samuel and Mr. Sacher engaged the services of a British enquiry agent, "who, immediately after he had gotten on the track, was promptly ordered by the military authorities to leave the Jaffa
district." 25
According to the principal Medical Officer the total number of casualties in the pogrom were 95 killed and 290 wounded. 26 Lending a ghoulish touch to the after-performance, while the Jews were bowed in mourning for their dead, General Storrs,
Governor of Jerusalem
The insurrection of 1921 marked a variation of Administration technique. It constituted a precedent for the principle — observed by all ensuing Administrations with almost religious scrupulousness — that every outbreak of armed Arab violence was ipso facto to be rewarded with political concessions and to be followed by a Commission of Inquiry whose importance was to be in proportion to the scale of the revolt.
The Haycraft Commission was appointed to investigate and fix responsibility for the terrible events which had just passed. One of its three members was Harry Luke, the man whom Palestine Jewry was to hold responsible for the terrible excesses of 1929, when Jewish Palestine almost went up in smoke. This
108 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
body finally ended by finding guilty the 'Bolshevik' Jews who had been coming into the country and who had aroused the patriotic Arabs by their May Day demonstrations.
Within forty-eight hours of the Jaffa
Samuel went so far as to offer the Arabs complete control over immigration, a tender they foolhardily refused. Reduced to simple terms, what they demanded was the enforced return of the Jews to their pre-war status as a tolerated minority without political rights.
This was the same Samuel who had asserted in 191 7 that Jewish immigration must be regulated by the responsible Jewish body inPalestine Palestine
London
Palestine Jordan Carolina Israel
Downing Street had demanded Trans-Jordan in the name of "the forthcoming Zionist Government," 36 and the French finally conceded the issue. Under the Leygues-Harding Agreement, signedDecember 23, 1920 , in Paris Britain Iraq
Great Britain Palestine Hejaz was a clear violation of both the spirit and letter of this provision. Right after the Zionists, cringing under Churchill's empty-threat, ratified the White Paper, Abdullah and his invaders were installed as masters of Eastern Palestine . In July the terms of the Mandate for Palestine League of Nations , and in the same month Abdullah was formally instated as Emir of Transjordan. Adding insult to injury, the Palestine
THE GRAND MUFTI
Implicated in the disturbances of 1920 was a political adventurer named Haj Amin al Husseini. 31 Haj Amin, a leering ruffian with misshapen ears and close-cropped scanty beard, was descended from an Egyptian family known for its turbulence and penchant for intrigue. In a general housecleaning under taken to appease the Jews at
109 A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
the San Remo Conference, he had been sentenced by a British court to fifteen years at hard labor, as a dangerous gang leader and agitator. Conveniently allowed to escape by the police, Haj Amin was hiding out in neighboring Syria London
Caliphate, in Jerusalem
Haj Amin was not in the literal sense an Arab patriot. He considered Western Nationalism a work of the devil. His ideal was the old Moslem particularism functioning in an area without boundaries, where none but the Faithful would be allowed to remain with bowels. Beyond that, he was somewhat stupid, honest in his way, ambitious, and a fanatical hater of Jews. During the war he had been an officer in the Turkish Army.
With a pardon from Sir Herbert tucked up his flowing black sleeve, this man who had fled Palestine
This was only the beginning. Samuel was determined to go whole hog in anchoring this son of the Husseini in the seat of power. He created the 'Supreme Moslem Council which was presumably authorized to elect its own leadership by democratic vote. In the balloting the Government candidate, Haj Amin al Husseini, polled only nine electoral votes against nineteen eighteen and twelve for his three rivals. This fact, however, weighed little with the High Commissioner, who forced the chosen
110 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
candidate, Sheikh Hussam ed Din Effendi Jarallah, to step aside, and made Haj Amin President. Soon after, the Mufti was created Reis al Ulema, president of the religious (Sharia) courts, thus concentrating in his hands the highest posts of distinction and powerPalestine
Few men have had such benefactors as Haj Amin discovered in Sir Herbert Samuel. In his person he now combined the headship of the Church and the Law, so closely connected in the Islamic religion. Under the Turks the Wakf, or religious bequests, were under rigid State supervision from Istanbul
or other charitable endowments, as well as the Mohammedan courts and educational institutions, including even the Industrial School Jerusalem
and fifty paid assistants was allowed the Supreme Moslem Council to superintend the six hundred men employed in the various Wakf departments.
As if to make the anti-Jewish lineup airtight, Sir Herbert took the pet scheme of the Generals, the Moslem-Christian Union, under his wing. Although a large number of Arabs objected, he gave it semi-official standing. Under his generous patronage it soon developed strong roots.
THE CHURCHILL WHITE PAPER
In June 1922, Samuel drew up a long document, deadly in its import to the Jews, which when signed by Winston Churchill became known as the Churchill White Paper. The Papal Secretary, Cardinal Gaspari, annoyed by the procrastination in formulating Article XIV of the Mandate, regulating the Holy Places, had put up an outright demand that this Article be clarified and acted upon. Whitehall Palestine
111 A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
purpose constituted a bold reinterpretation of the Balfour Declaration. With carefully chosen words it smashes at the legal base for Zionist repatriation, arriving at the remarkable conclusion that the terms of Balfour's Declaration "do not contemplate thatPalestine Palestine
In phrases unctuous with sophistry the White Paper attempts to explain away Britain Palestine Palestine
be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection."
Thus in two short years Samuel had changed from an impassioned advocate of the reestablished Jewish State, to a pleader for "a national Jewish home in Palestine Palestine
112 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
bringing in a leavening of able, enterprising Jews.
Buried in the Churchill-Samuel White Paper was a neat little paragraph holding that while Jews had every right to return to their homeland freely, this immigration must not be so great in volume "as to exceed whatever may be the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals." This sounded very nice and sensible; but it was to prove the formula which future anti-Semitic administrations utilized to justify their depredations by principle.
Included also was a scheme for an elective Legislative Assembly to be composed of a trinity of Arabs, Jews and British officials, who would presumably spend their time in the subtleties of reciprocal intrigue. Samuel had originated this as bait for the Arabs, who were mortifying His Excellency by referring to the Administration as 'that Jewish Government.'
Ably the White Paper juggled words, hemmed and hawed, to make it clear that Palestine
The Zionists were in an uproar. The White Paper had been sprung on them out of the clear sky, a few days before the terms of the Mandate were to be published in their final form. Fuming with indignation, the Zionist Executive balked. At this, Churchill called in the ever reliable Weizmann and pointed out to him that the tenor of the Memorandum was a reflection of British needs in the Near East .Britain Egypt India Great Britain Britain
113 A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
Executive did not agree in twenty-four hours. 33
Weizmann hurriedly called a meeting of his colleagues, most of whom wanted desperately to call Churchill's bluff. The fact was that the only method by which the projected revision of Jewish status inPalestine Israel
There can be no doubt that the largest share of the Zionist acquiescence to this move rested on an exaggerated loyalty to the interests of their friend and patron, Britain Levant . Had they stood their ground, any coercive tactics used against them would have reacted infallibly against the schemers in London Jerusalem Palestine Britain
Acceptance of the White Paper at the same time placed the Zionist stamp of approval on another outrage even more deadly to their hopes.
SEVERANCE OF TRANSJORDAN
On the second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Samuel had quite rationally declaimed that "you cannot have numbers without area and territory. Every expert knows that for a prosperousPalestine Jordan
114 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
indelibly over every part of its hills and plains. It was the permanent home of two of the Twelve Tribes, as well as the half tribe of Manasseh. The five cities of the plain were Trans-Jordanic. Two of them, Nebo and Pisgah, are like household words.
Between 1918 and 1921, when the creation of a Jewish National Home was being negotiated with the Zionists by the British Government, there was no question of a Palestine West of theJordan River or East of the Jordan River . The Balfour
Declaration embraced both sides of the Jordan Palestine Palestine
This whole area was embraced in the British Mandate largely because of London Palestine Syria Palestine Palestine Palestine Manchester
Guardian alleged that both from a historical and economic viewpoint Trans-Jordan was an organic part of the Holy Land .
115 A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
Feisal, puppet of the British generals, had just been driven out ofSyria
Abdullah, gathering an army of his wild nomads, marched out of theHejaz and headed north for Syria Amman
Samuel again grew jittery. He had to curb the Military or face the possibility of the French attacking Abdullah in TransJordan and remaining there. But Abdullah refused to budge. It seemed necessary to placate him in some fashion — and Sir Herbert had a brilliant idea: he invited the little Arab to a conference to 'talk things over,' and suggested that he park a while in the territory of the Jewish National Home. Abdullah, gaping at this unexpected chance for power, thought that this would be very nice. He took over the administration of Eastern Palestine "for a period of six months," ostensibly to restore order 38 — a rather comic provision since the only disorder in the territory was that created by Abdullah and his Sherifian Army itself.
Stroking his chin quizzically at Samuel's droll move, Churchill waited for the Zionists to blow the roof off. For once Winston Churchill, master of bluff and stratagem, was nonplussed. The Zionists had been gagged by Samuel's threat of still further restrictions, and their silence was token of acquiescence.
Secure in the knowledge that Jewish spokesmen would not prove troublesome, London Eastern Palestine from the rest of the country.
116 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
The earlier drafts of the Mandate all contained twenty-seven paragraphs, none of which mentioned a separate Transjordan . The final text, sprung with the quickness of legerdemain, consisted of twenty-eight paragraphs. The new one, number twenty-five, empowered the Mandatory with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations (which had no such power), "to withhold or set aside, in the territories between the Jordan River and the eastern boundaries of Palestine, the employment of such mandate agreements which are found to be inapplicable because of local conditions," certainly an innocent enough appearing proviso. It was explained on the basis of Britain
117 A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
"in the name of the British Government . . . that Great Britain
The second brutal rape of the territory of the Jewish National Home was now all but accomplished. Transjordan henceforward became the only territory in the 'world to all intents and purposes Judenrein (free of Jews). It was the first country to prohibit Jews from even practicing a profession or owning land. Its ban on them was complete.
Beyond whimpering a little, the Zionist Executive kept its peace, and actually covered up this gigantic theft of the Jewish patrimony by a new festival campaign "for the Jewish National Fund." As late as October 1934, Dr. Weizmann was with gentle self-abnegation declaring that "we do not wish to change the status of Trans-Jordan by applying the Balfour Declaration there... 40
SAMUEL IS REPLACED
Probably no man was so cordially detested by his own people as this latter-day Herod called Herbert Samuel. In any other community this deep-seated resentment would have flared up in periodic attempts at violence. Jews, who have an instinctive abhorrence of lawlessness as a method of settling their problems, kept their peace but hardly hated him the less.
Among his public acts was the matter of the allotment of the Crown lands, which under the Mandate were to have been placed at the disposal of the Zionists. The story of their distribution is amazing.
The cream of these Government lands were in the Beisan area, in the fertile region known as the Ghor Valley
118 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
any suggestions for improvement of their housing, water supply or education. . . There were no trees, no vegetables. The fellaheen, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals. . . The Bedu, wild and lawless by nature, were constantly at feud with their neighbors on both sides of the Jordan Transjordan tribe of nomads who had pitched camp there for the winter.
Nettled, Samuel returned to his earlier technique of placating the tribesmen with gifts. He immediately announced that he was giving the Beisan lands to the same truculent nomads who had insulted him. All told, the Government gave these Arabs almost four hundred thousand dunams (a dunam is about a quarter of an acre) 41 of the best land in Palestine Israel
Immediately these lands became the subject of the most cynical speculation. Tribesmen were not interested in the hard work cultivation requires and most of them were given far more acreage than they could handle by themselves. The net result was that the major part of the soil was immediately offered to the Zionists at fancy prices. Even more sardonic, much of the land given to these Bedouins was resold later to the Government at a profit of some 500 percent, to be used for the resettlement of so-called displaced Arabs. 43 Everywhere Arab speculators entered, scenting a middleman's profit. Many of the tribesmen sold at inflated prices and disappeared into Trans-Jordan and Iraq
The Government was now in fact compelled to tackle a new problem: that of preventing the Beisan lands from subsequently falling into the hands of land-hungry Jews, who were willing to offer almost any price.
119 A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
It was during Sir Herbert's regime that Arab opposition to the Jews took definite form and grooved itself. The entire Administration was honey-combed with anti-Semitic officials who made the Executive Offices a nest of pro-Arab activity. Samuel, masking himself behind a screen of 'liberalism,' made not the slightest move to interfere.
When in 1925 Sir Herbert was relieved by Lord Plumer, Jewish Palestine woke as from a nightmare and breathed free again. He had done about as much damage as it was possible for one man to do to the Jewish cause; but the Zionist Organization thought it politic to go through the mummery of giving him a testimonial banquet. 44
FIELD MARSHAL LORD PLUMER
When the hated Samuel finally packed his duffle and left forEngland England
Compared to Samuel, Plumer was a vision of fair delight. By any other reasonable criterion he was a total loss. The Field Marshal was a hard man, iron-willed, who ruled with a clenched fist. He was the only High Commissioner who held his Jew-baiting subordinates within reasonable check. The best that can be said for him is that under his rule there were no pogroms. When the Arabs, persisting naively in the same tactics which were so successful under Samuel, approached him in delegation, warning that if a planned procession of Jewish war veterans were held, they "would not be responsible for the peace of Jerusalem
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responsible." The Arabs never tried that trick again as long as the Field Marshal remained in Palestine
However, the old policies continued unchanged. Typical of his regime is the loan of £20,000 to the Beersheba Bedouins in 1928 to quiet their grumbling against the indirect Governmental refusal to allow land sales to Jews. 45 It was also under Plumer that Jews were practically banned from participation in the defense forces of the country. A whole succession of carefully developed ordinances directed against Zionist penetration marked his regime. Despite this, the Zionists, with good reason fearful of his unknown successor, were sorry to see him go.
When he resigned, a sudden outburst of Jewish energy brought General Smuts, Zionist friend and incorruptible executive, under consideration for the post. Smuts declined, obviously not caring to accept the burden of reconciling his conscience with the policies of the Colonial Office.
Storrs Storrs
necessary to know that Cafferata was an intimate of the Princess Kerachi, one of the
Hebron
Whitehall
England
CHAPTER IX
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
THE THIRD HIGH COMMISSIONER
The soldier Plumer was succeeded in 1928 by Sir John Chancellor. Chancellor was an unfortunate choice for the Jews. He had the general appearance of the Shakespearean actor who, with a certain forgivable pompousness, loves to play the great man. His graying hair and regular features were imposing; but his countenance was too complacent and unwrinkled for a man his age, giving an impression of appalling smugness. His contempt for Jews was so deliberate as to appear ostentatious.
It was under this man that the bloody outbreak of 1929 took place. When these excesses brought on an unlooked-for wave of world indignation that threatened to swamp his regime, he issued an hysterical statement condemning the Arabs in terms of unbridled virulence. When he saw the Zionists disinclined to press their advantage and yielding to British blandishments, he maneuvered the placing of political responsibility onto Jewish shoulders.
Chancellor was hardly equal to the standards of shrewd manipulation set by the Colonial Office. When he retired in July 1931, he became an anti-Zionist spokesman in London
Lieutenant-General Arthur Grenfell Wauchope.
THE POGROM OF 1929
There are few chapters in civilized history that can match for sheer inhumanity and outrage the record of the British Government inPalestine Israel
With characteristic blind-optimism the Zionist leaders were running around like fussy ants, unconscious that a heavy heel was about to crush down on their hill. With fine disregard for actual conditions, they were making ready to repair to Europe for a
121 Pics
122 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Congress which was announced as "a turning point in the history of Zionism — the close of an illustrious epoch and the beginning of a new and still greater period." Ignored were the desperate appeals of Palestine Jewry, who knew better how to
evaluate the signs and portents written on sky and fencepost than the mighty orators who held the fort in Europe .
For a period of six years the Zionist Executive had been negotiating with powerful Jewish bodies with a view to forming a vastly enlarged Jewish Agency. Such financial giants as Felix Warburg of New York
Alarmed, the Palestine Administration watched developments like a cat at a rat-hole. Article IV of the Mandate, long ignored, gave the Jewish Agency considerable power. The Bureaucrats in Jerusalem
Carefully the story was built and circulated that the Jews planned to tear down the Mosque of Omar, which Moslems believe marks the exact center of the earth, and to rebuild the Temple
Immediately adjoining the Mosque is located the most sacred of all Jewish devotional objects, the Wailing Wall, last remnant of Solomon's Temple
123 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
rights of all Jewry. Four centuries of Turkish rule had protected Jewish title to this holy place without disturbance. Neither the Wall itself nor the immediate patch of Temple Jerusalem
The Wall had been a cul de sac, and when the Government allowed, or instigated, the Moslems to erect a mosque on the right side of it, and to break through the Wall proper to open a new avenue to the Mosque of Omar, all Jewish Palestine rose in indignant protest. Donkeys and their Moslem masters now passed in droves through the sacred precincts which had been undisturbed for centuries except for the soft prayers of the worshipers.
On the Day of Atonement, holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Keith-Roach, Governor of Jerusalem, learned that the worshipers had placed a portable screen at the Wall to protect themselves from Arab abuse. The Neilah, or closing services, were being recited when an English officer, under the Governor's instruction, violently broke into the midst of the worship, with no more regard than if he were invading a den of thieves, and removed the screen.
I24 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Incident now followed incident, with the Arabs growing daily-more pugnacious and the Administration openly abetting them. Matters had been allowed to develop to such a point of high tension that it seemed as if taut nerves must burst if even a firecracker popped. In the Arab press an intensive anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish campaign was going full blast. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were being widely circulated. The Communists, too, like great carrion birds sensing disaster from afar, had joined in the campaign of incitement, urging "an Arab fight to the finish against Zionism." 1 Just before the actual bloodshed started, they took advantage of the growing excitement to issue a manifesto urging a general strike against the policy of the Jewish National Home.
The Zionist hierarchy had treated this pernicious propaganda with aloof disdain as small-time matters of a passing character, and airily dismissed as 'alarmists' those friends who warned them that blue fury was about to blaze in the Land of Israel
happy children they went traipsing off to their Congress inSwitzerland Palestine
High Commissioner had arranged to be absent from his post for the first time, and was on visit to London Jerusalem
On August 1 6 a fanatical Moslem demonstration was held inJerusalem
125 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE 125
the Mufti that Friday the twenty-third was to be der Tag, instructing the villagers to await orders on that day.
In this atmosphere of threat and uncertainty the Government once more deliberately disarmed the Jews, leaving the colonies defenseless. 5
The riots were precipitated by the police themselves, who with extraordinary savagery attacked a procession of mourners who were carrying the casket of a seventeen-year-old Sephardic 6 boy who had been stabbed to death by Arabs. Old men, women and children were beaten up indiscriminately. 7 The city was swarming with fellaheen and Bedouins armed with clubs, knives and guns and they needed no further invitation. Like a flood of death they broke loose over the city with the old cry: "Al daula Maana /" (The Government is with us.)
In Jerusalem
For eight days the country was given over to an orgy of violence. Far from declaring martial law the moment these outbreaks occurred, no attempt was made to disarm the invaders. Even after the massacres began the police did not use their firearms, under "orders from headquarters." 8 The Acting High Commissioner, Luke, cynically informed an anxious Jewish delegation begging for help, that he had "given orders not to shoot."
Jewish youths responded with hidden arms and clubs in the desperate work of self-defense. A group of visiting Oxford England
126 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
with chivalric courage. On August 24, Luke decided to disarm all Jewish special constables in response to a request of the Mufti. 9 The possession of arms by the Jews was everywhere and at all times illegal. Jews were sentenced to long prison terms for even owning a dagger, standard Bedouin equipment. Those defending themselves were arrested and charged with murder.
A typical incident took place in the village of Jabniel
Horrible days of nightmare followed for the Jewish colonies, who found themselves beleaguered by veritable armies of screaming savages. The colony at Ekron sent a delegation to the British officer stationed at Naaneh. He received them brutally and refused to offer any advice as to how the Jews were to defend their lives and property. Asked what was to be done with the cattle, he said, "put them in the synagogue." And when the Jewish physician of Ekron pressed him for a sensible answer, he boxed his ears. Shaken by this ruffian attitude the colonists decided to evacuate their homes, and went down to the railroad station. At four in the afternoon, the same officer appeared with a guard and demanded all the weapons in the place. 10
It was at Hebron
127 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
moving spirits in the anti-Semitic International then taking form inEurope . Openly warned, the Jews at Hebron Hebron
The police, says an eye-witness, then "shot into the air, and at once the street was empty." 11
Refugees from Hebron Hebron Hebron
Whatever interpretation one might place on the role of the Government in this crazy mélange of revenge, its actions following the riots can hardly be described as anything less than contemptible. Its press releases set a new high in official
128 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
mendacity and ill-concealed dislike for the stricken victims themselves. In its reports the attacker is classed with the attacked, the criminal with the innocent, even though not a single case existed of Jewish assault on an Arab quarter or of Jewish looting.
Following its usual technique, all Jewish newspapers were suppressed; while Arab publications with open brazenness proclaimed Arab guilt and aggression, as if victors in some medieval holy war. Some picture of the utter depths this bias reached can be gained from the notice issued by the Administration that it "deprecated any mention of the Arabs having mutilated their victims." To this Duff exclaims: "They had not mutilated them — they had merely hacked them to pieces." 15
Since the days of the Crusaders no such massacre of Jews inPalestine
of innocent creatures who had come, eager-eyed, to this country to build a new life for themselves. The wounded and maimed were everywhere. Were it not for the miracle that the Arabs attacked in broad daylight instead of night, giving the Jewish self-defense an opportunity to organize, the Jewish Yishuv * would have been wiped off the map of the Near East .
WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE?
All witnesses agree that the uprising was neither spontaneous nor unforeseen. As in the previous pogroms, evidence of careful preparation was plainly written. Setting the general tone of comment, the correspondent for Alif Beh, great Arab newspaper of Damascus Lawrence Palestine
* Hebrew name for the Jewish Community.
129 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
have been no trouble for the Jews there." 16 The venerable Hindu poet, Rabindranath Tagore, urging a united fight on England London England Palestine
Everywhere it was admitted that the mob, justified or not, had acquired the belief that the Administration was on their side. Among other incidents, when some Arabs were placed in custody for their part in the Hebron
In a paroxysm of revulsion Palestine Jewry spit out the gag that had smothered its voice and directly fastened responsibility on the Administration for the riots. In a grim Protest Memorandum to the High Commissioner signed by the whole Jewish community, no words were minced in calling blunt attention to "officers of the Government whose responsibility for these events is beyond doubt... 21 The Memorial of the Jews of Hebron submitted to the High Commissioner "in the name of sixty-five slaughtered, eighty-five wounded, and many orphans and widows, and in the name of the remnants of the plundered and the tortured," pathetically "accuses the Government, which did not fulfill its duty ... the Commander Cafferata, who deprived us of the means of appealing for help and defense, betrayed us with empty promises, and gave the murderers and robbers their opportunity; the Police, which . . . behaved with contemptible baseness; and the Emissaries of the Mufti and the Muslim Council . . . who proclaimed the massacre."
The drums of horrified protest now rolled with increasing tempo all over the world. The Administration had overplayed its hand again. Realizing its error it was doing its best to cover up, and once again the Zionists were presented with a brilliant
130 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
opportunity for reversing the tables.
Chancellor himself, noting which way the wind blew, repudiated the entire affair in these blasting words: "I have just learned with horror of the atrocious acts committed by bodies of ruthless and bloodthirsty evil-doers, savage murders perpetrated on defenseless members of the Jewish population regardless of sex, accompanied ... by acts of unspeakable savagery, of the burning of farms and houses in town and country and of the looting and destruction of property. These crimes have brought upon their authors the execration of all civilized people throughout the world." The Government was in full retreat all along the line, casting anxious glances at the effect on America Egypt Ireland India
The Zionists, however, were hardly political-minded enough to understand their opportunity. They considered that the Jews had no strength and that their strategy must continue to be one of wheedling for slight gains. Catching its breath, the Government placated them with soft words, condemned its minions in Palestine London
Having held the business-end of a live wire so long the Zionists should have been prepared for shocks. But when the 'Commissions' after long delays brought in pro-Arab reports, they stared in bewildered amazement. They looked on still more unbelievingly when practically everyone accused of having a hand in the riots was promoted. Cafferata, the evil genius of Hebron
Chancellor's "bloodthirsty evil-doers" all got off with nominal sentences. The highest term any of the Hebron
131 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
which this business was handled was the case of a fellah who had killed the two young sons of a woman named Fruma Charkel by dashing their brains out. He had known the family for years, and had only laughed at the mother's plea for mercy while the little boys were being battered to death. With her surviving son she appeared against him, as did the invalid father and several other eye-witnesses to the attack, including the revered Rabbi Epstein. Despite this weight of testimony the court finally freed the Arab, finding "insufficient evidence." 22
Even more ribald were the 'awards and amends' which the Government had contritely promised the riot victims, and which were finally doled out after an interminable wait. Here are some of the 'compensation awards,' selected at random: Rabbi Hassoun, whose house at Hebron
The Jewish Community of Hebron, with a loss of £2000 including the destruction of its synagogue, asylum and other communal institutions, was paid £54. Asher Karlinsky, whose house at Hebron Hebron Jerusalem
Beyond muttering at length on "the shameful attitude of the Government," the Jews took it like a dose of castor oil, which having once been poured down their throats, admitted of no further argument. But a still more fantastic occurrence, which even this patient people could not stomach, arose when the Arabs at Hebron
Jewish creditors, asserting them to be non-existent under thePalestine
132 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
the money. The lenders had, however, all been massacred by the borrowers. There
seemed to be nothing in the law which provided for such a situation, leading the newspaper Door Hayom to ask in outraged fury whether it was the policy of the Government "to have the Hebron
However, like all abominations, these things began to lose their edge as time went on and were soon half-buried in the past. In many of the villages eternal peace was declared between Arab and Jew, to the accompaniment of colorful oriental festivities and the usual slaughter of a sheep to wipe out the blood feud.
But it was only a matter of a few months before the British-Muslim combination was up to its old tricks of provocation. A fair illustration is the case of technical school student Zilbaski, who was arrested in April 1930 for chasing Arab hoodlums who had been stoning worshipers at the Wailing Wall. Fined seven shillings he was warned, in essence, not to interfere with the pleasures of Arabs.
COMMISSIONS AND WHITE PAPERS
Headed by men whose 'broad Socialist principles' had more than once declared themselves flatly in favor of the Jewish Homeland, the Labor Party sat firmly entrenched in power in England. Lord Passfield, and Sidney Webb, Marxist radical, was Colonial Secretary. Arthur Henderson, who had drawn up a handsome resolution in 1917 approving the Zionists' right "to form a Free State under International Agreement, where the Jewish people may return and work out their own salvation without interference by those of alien race or religion," was the power behind the throne. Perched directly in the saddle was J. Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister and a self-announced Zionist who had asserted after visiting the Near East in 1922:
"The Arab population does not and cannot use or develop the resources of Palestine
133 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
During pre-war days the Socialist International had been openly hostile to Zionism of any brand, recognizing in fine that a Zionist proletariat was a contradiction in terms, a force devoted incongruously both to separatist and merging principles. Shifting its position after the War, Labor Zionism was adopted as part of the international politics of the Socialist world. A Socialist Pro-Palestine Committee was created to place the mighty strength of the movement behind Zionism. Among the most wordy in their enthusiasm for this fabulous commission were the English members, MacDonald, Landsbury, and others, who" were later to disembowel their little Jewish brother with their left hand while they embraced him with their right. 24
These were the men, self-announced exponents of the coming brotherhood, who held the destinies of the Jewish experiment in their fingers. Confident of the outcome the Zionists settled back complacently to await the result of London Downing Street had let them down pretty sadly. The Shaw report was outspokenly anti-Jewish. Charged only with investigating responsibility for the riots, it had gone far a field conducting a probe altogether outside its sphere of reference; creating a most clever confusion of issues, and engagingly shunting off the main purpose of the investigation to the background.
It included among the immediate causes of the outbreak, the enlargement of the Jewish Agency, though it is doubtful whether any of the murderers at Hebron
Agency or its enlargement. It touched deftly on the cupidity of the Jews, and blamed the Zionists for bringing in too many potential Bolsheviks into the country. It held the primary cause of the riots to be, in essence, the crafty way in which the Zionists had taken advantage of the innocent Arabs, who were being deprived of soil and sustenance. Thus was created the 'landless Arab' fiction which was to serve the Government of Palestine as a convenient symbol for many years. In a statement, bizarre even in this land of extravaganza, it found an extenuating circumstance for
134 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
the outbreak in that it was "not premeditated." The Grand Mufti, a self-convicted perjurer whose guiltlessness was best proven when he referred the Commission to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion* was given an adept whitewashing. The Commission made no mention of the source or prevalence of arms in Palestine
It endorsed Luke's action in disarming the Jews and refusing to fire on the mobs. It omitted to report that all the special Jewish constables had been publicly paraded and disarmed at the demand of the Arabs. While stating that all the special constables were of British nationality, it is nowhere mentioned that a large proportion of those disarmed because they were Jews were ex-servicemen of the British Army, many of <whom had held the King's Commission.
Only two short years before, the Government of Palestine had published the fact that "the country suffers from a lack of population — it is under-cultivated and needs capital." 25 But the Commission now found that Palestine
Recommended in solution was the curtailment of Jewish immigration and land purchase, and a Government subsidy to buy up acreage which was to be handed scot-free to the 'landless Arabs' wherever these worthies could be found. Completely challenging Jewish position in Palestine Palestine
17, 1930.)
Another member of the Commission, Lord Snell, turned in a minority report fairly
• See note 6, page 542.
135 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
bristling with contempt for the findings of his colleagues. He accuses the Administration of encouraging the Arabs "to believe that they have suffered a great wrong and that the immigrant Jew constitutes a permanent menace to their livelihood and future," despite the plain fact that "Jewish activities have increased the prosperity of Palestine Israel
Time has shown conclusively that the findings of the Shaw Commission, as well as those of the bodies which followed in its train, were so wrong as to seem willfully ridiculous. Each one of these Commissions proved itself more hostile than its predecessor, making recommendations so opposed to the self-evident facts as to lead one to believe that the substance of their findings must have been dictated in advance. This presumption is at least indicated, since each of these bodies appeared to operate on a preconceived plan aimed at erecting a structure of precedent which was to serve as authority for future commissions, thus creating a new body of apparent facts to substitute for the actual facts.
The Zionists had been mercilessly jobbed. They choked and spluttered in amazed exasperation. The incredible posing of landless Arabs' in a country suffering from a drastic shortage of workers was past understanding. So, too, was the Commission's demand that Jewish capitalists be forced to put all Arab unemployed to work before another Jew could come in, which meant literally the employment of all the natives of Northeast Africa and Arabia (since these outsiders were already flowing into the country in a steady stream).
Lloyd George, coming to the point where the Shaw Report declared that there was "no more room" in Palestine Britain Palestine
136 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
there now.' 26
THE REPORT OF HOPE-SIMPSON
The trick was something like that of the catch-penny auctioneer, who glibly makes good to his spluttering victim by selling him another object more worthless than the first, accepting the parcel complained of in part payment. This is the kind of business that experienced British dealers in international legerdemain were now practicing on the naive, frightened Zionists.
The new Commission, headed by Sir John Hope-Simpson, 27 was replete with a staff of 'experts.' Sir John had had a good deal of experience in the mass movement of émigré populations. He had gained his knowledge of the refugee problem as Vice- president of the Refugee Settlements Commission (which had conducted the mass transplantation of 1,300,000 Asiatic Greeks) in Athens
job.
On November 20, 1930 , Hope-Simpson's report was published by the Government simultaneously with Cabinet decision acting upon it. 28 With the lightning stroke of an expert matador the Zionist development in Palestine
In releasing both the Cabinet's White Paper and Hope-Simpson's report so precipitously, both precedent and practice were coolly ignored. Under time-sanctioned Colonial usage, the Zionists would normally, as party to the matter, have been allowed to study the Report and make the usual observations and criticisms before it was actually put into effect.
Hope-Simpson's Report consisted of a symposium of oblique attacks against the
137 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
Jews. It embodied all the anti-Semitic conceptions of its day: the professed inability of native races to compete with superior Jewish ability and cunning, the omnivorous greed of the 'rich' Jew for further gain. It carried a de facto recommendation for numerous clauses in all directions, as the only method of keeping this objectionable Jewish attributes within reasonable bounds. As Sir John puts it, "it is the Government's duty under the Mandate to see to it that the Arab position is not prejudiced by Jewish immigration." The Commissioner decries the purchase of land by Jews and suggests that they be prohibited by law from buying more. The unfortunate Arab had to be protected against the Hebrew who was crawling over his land like a plague. This, clothed in the niceties of diplomatic language, was the substance of Hope-Simpson's findings. To support them he brought up an array of figures and facts, which had they been accurate, would have been imposing.
Hope-Simpson went so far as to compute (with a figure inferring mathematical precision) that 29.4% of the Arab rural population was landless, leaving in the reader's mind a vague impression that it was owing to Jewish settlement activities that landlessness had reached such alarming proportions. With nice precision, leading to the patent inference that it is the result of an exact survey, he gives the area of cultivable land as 6,544,000 sq. Dunams. He makes no effort to explain the astounding difference between this estimate and the figure of 11,000,000 dunams supplied by the Director of Lands of the Palestine Government to the Shaw Commission; or the figure of 12,233,000 dunams given by the Johnson-Crosbie Report on the position of agriculturists in Palestine
Government figures, accepted as correct for years, were 100% off.
Operating on figures which events were also to show unsup ported by factual
138 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
evidence, Hope-Simpson discovered that a fellah family needs 130 dunams of land, 28 whereas the 61,408 fellah families actually had only 90 dunams per family; leading ipso facto to the only possible conclusion, that the land was already overcrowded and immediately faced with a pressing problem of Arab landlessness. 29 Everywhere he uses the words landless' and 'tenant' indiscriminately and interchangeably, leading one to wonder whether the great tenant-farmer class of
Bespeaking the common distaste and distrust for Jews. Hope-Simpson states with ominous reserve: "The Federation of Jewish Labor continues to carry out, at the expense of World Jewry, a social and economic experiment of great interest but of questionable value. The Jewish Agency either approves of this experiment or is impotent to suppress it." (Even more explicit in its left-handed charge that the Jews were introducing Bolshevism into Palestine
Simpson's Report, issued at the same time.) With a queer, new-found type of ethics, Sir John proclaims in regard to the settlements which were being subsidized by the Jewish National Fund, that "it is undesirable from the point of view of ordinary morality that colonists should be allowed to benefit by the large expenditure which has been made for their settlement, and yet to escape payment of the amount spent upon them.
In addition to these generalities, several practical measures are included in the Hope-Simpson Report. One was the demand that irrigation work of any kind be virtually prohibited 30 (which would put an absolute stop to Jewish irrigation development); and another that the Government buy land out of the public funds, i.e., with Jewish money, to hand over to all Arabs who could prove they were landless. Jews were to be virtually restricted to the cities. Not even in Czarist Russia had anyone ever suggested a scheme as cruel and unfair as this.
Hope-Simpson, who had been sent to the Holy Land under instructions to investigate the slaughter, looting and rapine perpetrated on Jewish colonists, like his predecessors and successors, had left his field of reference far behind and nowhere
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now to be seen. In the meanwhile, to leave a convenient retreat in case anything went wrong, still another 'Commission,' headed by Lewis French, retired officer of the Indian Service, was puttering away in Jerusalem
THE PASSFIELD WHITE PAPER
Lord Passfield, smug dean of English social reform theoreticians, was not long in assimilating the technique of the Colonial Office when he took over the portfolio of Colonial Minister in the Labor Cabinet. A radical whose expressed admiration of
Soviet method and theory remained constant; he also observed the Bolshevik inconsistency toward the Jew: he did not concede that they had the right to be Zionists. He frankly admitted that he was opposed to the Histadruth (The Jewish
Federation of Labor). He did not approve of the type the Histadruth was bringing into the country, stating openly that he preferred the old type of Palestinian immigrant of before the War, the 'pious' Jew who went there to die. He emphasized that since he was a Socialist, he was not opposed to the new immigrants because they were Socialists and trade unionists, "but because they were Zionists." 31
He was nasty to Jews wherever a convenient opportunity arose, and pursued the Zionists with all the hatred a zealot holds for infidels. Asked in 1930 by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency for a New Year's message to Jewry, he curtly refused. Before he took the bull by the horns to issue his 'White Paper,' he had attempted to push through an ordinance ghettoizing Palestine Jewry in the cities, frustrated only by an energetic fight on the part of the Jewish Agency.
Despite all this, the Jewish Socialists continued to vocalize their undying 'solidarity' with Comrade Webb, the fellow- Marxist. Commenting on a perfectly venal statement Passfield had just issued, the influential Socialist New York Jewish For-
ward stated editorially on July 9, 1930 that "the whole document breathes a warm desire to convince the Jewish world of the full friendship toward Jews and toward
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the Jewish work in Palestine
20, 1930, Officialdom deemed that the sapping operation had been completed. Comrade Webb himself, with pious words of explanation, touched off the fuse.
The Zionists abruptly awoke to the realization that they had built on sand ; that it was the end of them and their dreams of salvation, their fund collecting, their stereotyped statement that "our relations with the Mandatory are satisfactory."
England Palestine Palestine
Eder ; who fought this policy bitterly in the inner councils of the movement. Eder for example boldly told the Court of Inquiry, following the Jaffa disturbances of 1921, that "there can be only one National Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish preponderance as soon as the numbers of the race are sufficiently increased." But these men were by one artifice or another squeezed out of any position of real power.
England Palestine
All the distortions, the veiled anti-Jewish hostility of the Hope-Simpson Report, were in the White Paper. Benignly it asserts that since there are only 6,500,000 dunams available, there is not enough for the Arabs, who require 8,000,000; therefore land purchases in future would be permitted "only if they do not interfere with the Government's plans for development," an artful method of saying that Jews could no longer settle on the soil. To make the matter air-tight it sets up the principle that land with tenants on it cannot in future be sold — in effect freezing the vast stretches held by great Levantine landlords, mostly émigrés living with their retinues in Cairo Paris
The outcome of this reasoning was the recommendation for complete stoppage of immigration "in view of the responsibility under the Mandate" and of the "close relationship of immigration and the land development policy." In keeping with the
same argument it holds that the older type of Jewish immigration benefited the Arabs, whereas "The Zionists' contentions regarding the benefits which their colonization work has bestowed upon the Arabs has been proven . . . fallacious."
Massing a frontal attack on the stupefied Jewish Agency, Socialist Passfield cries that a "modus vivendi" must "be established between the Government and the Jewish
141 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
Agency regarding their respective functions, and full account must be taken of the influence in policy exerted by the General Federation of Jewish Labor over the Jewish Agency. . . It is necessary to take into account the part played by the General Federation of Jewish Labor . . . [which has] adopted a policy implying the introduction of a new social order" Here we have an astonishing though not unusual spectacle : the pot calls the kettle black; the British Labor Party, speaking as the Government of Great Britain, sanctimoniously expresses dissatisfaction with its Jewish comrades for following a line of policy in Palestine identical to that which the Labor Party itself is committed to in England.
Loading its guns for bear, the Government released at the same time a statement of policy announcing the realization of Samuel's pet scheme, the Legislative Council. This maneuver, which would have handed the country over irrevocably to Arab politicos, was issued with the remarkable explanation that it "should be of special benefit to the Arab section of the population."
As a sop to the Jews the White Paper included the usual verbiage in reference to the Government's good intentions, and the droll "hope that the White Paper will restore the confidence of the Jews in the British Government." This gratuitous bit of buffoonery was too much for even the compliant Zionist leadership. With cries of stung anguish it bolted the traces and started to run amuck.
THE MACDONALD LETTER
Once again the Bureaucrats were to find to their amazement that they had fallen into a pit of their own digging. The Laborites, newer to Imperial sleight-of-hand, had been too incautious — far too obvious in their tactics.
For a few days it appeared to the Jews that this was the end — that Zionism had been terminated. Jewish idealists who had fought all their lives for this cause, walked down the streets of the principal metropolises of Europe , openly weeping.
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Then a sudden revulsion struck the body of Jewry. A cry of 'shameful betrayal* arose, and rapidly gathered volume. Vitriolic ally the late Lord Melchett challenged the White Paper as "an act of almost unparalleled ingratitude and treachery . . . towards a credulous and harassed people who believed they had found a haven under the broad aegis of the British flag and the guaranteed word of British statesmen." The venerable Menachem Ussishkin, stolid and unimaginative but one of the few men with common sense in the Zionist leadership, was allowed to speak his mind. "For thirteen years," he declared, "there had been falsification. Lord Passfield . . . has spoken the truth.
In America France Germany America Palestine United States South Africa Warsaw Britain
In England
143 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
The leaders of the Conservative and Liberal parties gleefully seized on the affair as
a mighty club to beat the Laborites over the head with. Loudly they voiced their incensed feelings and clamored for the repeal of this disgraceful pronouncement. Mr. Baldwin, Sir Austen Chamberlain, with Mr. Amery, in a joint letter complained that the White Paper "would create in America
Conventions; fouling the honest name of England
At this point a shrewd, courageous Jewish leadership could have made an expeditious end to Colonial Office plotting. Fate had laid in their laps another rare gift of chance — a situation they could not have improved on if they had artifice it them selves, with the Bureaucrats caught flat-footed in a position they could neither defend at home nor abroad.
Until this time in their relations with London London
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steps were to be taken.
The air fairly crackled when two days later Felix Warburg, head of the Jewish Agency, also resigned, charging that Passfield had deliberately tricked him in the behind-the-scenes negotiations, making him "the innocent vehicle of misstatements to his colleagues of the Jewish Agency." In a rousing attack in which the roiled banker stepped completely out of character, he smote the British hip and thigh, making it plain that no reliance whatsoever could be placed on the word of Passfield or the
Government he represented, and that further relations with them were therefore hopeless.
Painfully alive to the situation, the Labor Government saw in consternation that the affair was assuming the proportions of a cause celebre; and that its political opponents were hoping it would prove the pole to tumble it from power. Prominent
Englishmen, convinced that Britain Palestine Ireland
145 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
MacDonald makes a worse one of Jewry"
Completely taken aback by the force of the storm that had gathered, MacDonald offered to do the noble thing. As an earnest of good intentions he held out the bait of fifteen hundred immigration certificates.
A circumstance of grave importance now threw its shadow over the entire proceedings. This was the emergence of the Socialist labor organizations as a strong factor in Zionist politics. Although definitely in the minority, they were an important portion of the support which kept Weizmann in power. Pressure now began quietly operating on Weizmann from the Comrades in the Labor groups, who in turn were being high pressured by the Second International which had finally admitted them to membership only a few months before. Leon Blum of France England Palestine Britain
agreed. 33
Friends of Zionism, and bitter opponents of the Labor regime, waiting eagerly to crush the MacDonald Government by bringing the affair to a test vote, gulped unbelievingly when they were informed that Weizmann had given over his golden opportunity in exchange for a few suave promises and fifteen hundred immigration certificates. The Zionist Actions Committee was informed that the scheduled congress, feared by Whitehall
now held out that it was necessary to 'negotiate' with the English Government. His major premise for this recommendation was little less than astonishing:
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Zionist finances were not in good shape — therefore it were better to eschew 'politics' and concentrate on 'practical' matters.
On the Actions Committee sat the Revisionists (right-wing Zionists) and the Mizrachi (religious Zionists). The Revisionists raged; the Mizrachi resigned in protest ; but the Laborites and Weizmann's personal followers were in the majority, and they held fast.
In return MacDonald issued a letter to the Zionists, which later turned out to be meaningless. Known as the MacDonald Letter, this communication promised a redefinition of the term 'landless Arabs,' now explained to refer only to such Arabs as
could be shown to have been actually displaced from lands they formerly occupied ; to investigate what State lands could be made available for close settlement in accordance with Article VI of the Mandate; to reestablish the principle of immigration "according to economic absorptive capacity" and to allow the Jewish Agency the right to employ all-Jewish labor on works or undertakings of its own. It also concedes the White Paper's error in attempting to substitute the words "Jewish inhabitants of Palestine" for "the Jewish People" as the beneficiaries of the Mandate, declaring "that the undertaking of the Mandate is an undertaking to the Jewish People, and not only to the Jewish population of Palestine." "In order to remove certain misconceptions and misunderstandings" about the Passfield document, MacDonald agrees that the Mandatory's "obligation to facilitate Jewish immigration and to encourage close settlement by the Jews on the land, remains a positive obligation of the Mandate."
On February 13, 1931 , the MacDonald Letter, approved by Weizmann for the Zionists, was laid before Parliament, thus becoming a State paper. Weizmann greeted this Pyrrhic victory in the manner of a man who was distributing largesse all around.
He said : ". . . Our work will benefit the whole of Palestine
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The Government showed its bad faith immediately. The Letter was released on Saturday, by tradition a hint to newspapers not to editorialize. MacDonald had ably retreated out of an ugly situation — and had conceded little. The London
But the fire had been fanned so violently that it still smoldered. At the following sessions of the Permanent Mandates Commission, the Mandatory was unmercifully cross-examined. Hastily, Dr. Drummond Shiels, the English representative, replied that though there had been a great deal of Jewish bad feeling before, that had all been happily settled, and a love-feast had subsequently taken place between the Zionists and the British Government. The now discredited Hope-Simpson Report
would be ignored and a new set of facts and figures, "ascertained by a development authority on the spot, will be the basis of the recommendations regarding the £2,500,000 Palestine development scheme which the British Government is now framing." 35 Eying his interlocutors with a bland smile, Dr. Shiels asked the Commission whether, in view of the manner in which the Premier's Letter was received by Weizmann, he (Shiels) needed to make any further comments on the controversy which had proceeded. 36
The Zionists were not long in finding out that official Britain Whitehall
THE KID GLOVE HIGH COMMISSIONER
In July 193 1, Lieutenant-General Arthur Grenfell Wauchope became His Majesty's legate in Palestine
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A slight man with a delicately chiseled face, Wauchope had been the General Officer in command of North Ireland . With him came the Black and Tans who had wreaked so much havoc in the Emerald Isle. He was unique in not being a product of the inflexible system of the Colonial Office.
He proved polite, shrewd, aesthetically inclined, even something of an artist. He was the first High Commissioner whom the Jews could even remotely understand. Sir Arthur visited their colonies — and even expressed some interest in what was going on. He has been known to give substantial personal gifts to various Jewish institutions which caught his fancy.
The Jews tended to like him. The regulations passed under his rule, clearly ear-marked as anti-Semitic measures, were usually excused by them as proceeding from 'Mohammedan pressure,' or from the sheer inability of a gentile administrator to get to the bottom of Jewish problems. Even when things grew inexcusably vexatious, they still refused to credit Wauchope with a deliberate anti-Jewish policy, and compromised by calling him vacillating and irresolute. Yet from a practical viewpoint, Wauchope was hardly an improvement over his predecessors. During his regime the baleful French Report was released. Under Sir Arthur the disastrous rebellion of 1936-38 took place; followed by the inevitable epilogue, a new investigating 'Commission.' This latest body finally recommended a plan for further partitioning the country, which if it were placed into effect, would have produced much of the same result intended by the abortive White Paper of Lord Passfield.
It is undoubtedly true that Wauchope would infinitely have preferred not to be a party to this epidemic of Jew-baiting had circumstances allowed. He is, however, a loyal servant of a system which has come to regard Zionism as dangerous to the most precious possession of Englishmen, the Empire.
THE REPORT OF MR. FRENCH
The 'expert' Dr. Shiels referred to before the Mandates Commission, whose findings were to supersede the Hope-Simpson Report, not only used that report for his
149 THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
precedent, but went it one better in every acrimonious reference to Jews. A retired official of the Indian Civil Service, Lewis French had been sent ostensibly on a great Zionist development scheme, one of the concessions agreed to by the Labor Government in its private conversations with Dr. Weizmann.
With the astuteness of long practice, French stalled for time until the agitation over the Passfield White Paper was well over. After a year and a half of ostentatious preparation his report was submitted to the Arab Executive, and to the Zionists, sitting in camera. The Zionists hit the ceiling — they had been beautifully jobbed once more.
The report of Mr. French consisted in the main of a compendium of generalities against the Jews. He recommended, in brief, the adoption of a drastic Land Transfer Ordinance completely prohibiting land purchase by Jews. As if to show French's comparative reasonableness, his collaborator T. C. Kipching, more draconian still, appended an auxiliary report asserting that it was necessary for Jews to give up what land they had already acquired and migrate from Palestine
Poor Wauchope, desperately trying to remain something of a gentleman in this whirlpool of Crown politics, found the crude dissimulations of this 'Report' even more than he could stomach. He objected. French, fuming at this 'traitorous' conduct, threatened to resign.
In London Downing Street the 'expert,' French, grudgingly agreed to modify his report, and finally resigned, his place being taken by a subordinate, L. Y. Andrews. 37 Baffling months of parleying took place in which the worried Zionists were placated with the usual assurances. These were inevitably passed on to the rank and file of the movement in Weizmann's conventional words: "The situation is satisfactory. The Government desires faithfully to discharge its obligations in the spirit of the Mandate."
On July 16, 1933 the French Report was finally issued. It placed land transfers
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completely under Government control. It stated bluntly that the hill Arabs required special protection against Jews. It elaborated tiresomely on the landless Arab' question. It found the Jews rich and predatory, and piously referred to the 'displaced' Arab as "a son of the soil to be replaced on the land of his country."
Palestine
The huge 'development scheme' now turned out to be a plan to purchase citrus land for Arab settlement. Arabs were not only to be given the land without charge, but the cost of buildings, livestock, etc., was to be supplied by a paternal Government. No recognition whatever was made of the fact that Zionism was and remained a poor and struggling movement, largely the product of the distress of the Jewish masses, of the economic pressure forcing their migration and resettlement. At that very moment there were over seven thousand agricultural workers in the Holy Land employed on private plantations who had waited from five to ten years for the chance to get a parcel of land; and abroad there were more than forty thousand young men and women trained on the Zionist agricultural farms who were waiting anxiously for the chance to locate on a bit of Palestine's brown earth. Landless Jews, if the Government generously permitted, would have to buy their acres at prohibitive prices and depend on Jewish philanthropy for the rest.
Frankly interested in perpetuating the country in its undeveloped state, French considers as 'cultivated land,' areas "on which a few score of half -starved Bedu families are at present grazing goats and cutting reed-grass," to use his own description. The returns of the latter 'industry' have been estimated at three to five pence per dunam per year. In regard to the marshy Huleh area, a malarial swamp which the Jews were seeking official permission to drain, French agreed that "settled as Government tenants, a leavening of Jewish colonists in this tract would tend to an acceleration of the desired development after the marshes have been drained." The brazenness of this observation is probably unparalleled: the Jews are to buy the swamp or pay for draining it, and will then be permitted to supply 'a leavening' of Government tenants in its precincts. The Arabs are to get the balance without cost.
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Jewish settlement on the land no longer appears as one of the primary purposes of the Mandate, let alone a positive obligation of the Government. It is now merely to serve as a device, to be applied in small doses only, for the stimulation and enlightenment of Arab agriculturists.
The French Report proposed legislation of an advanced type scarcely conceivable outside of Russia
Another clause of this document practically fixes maximum rentals in perpetuity, so that more attractive tenant offers to landlords could not be made. Incensed, the Jewish Agency screwed up its courage to declare that the purpose "of the proposed clause
is to perpetuate uneconomic use of the land and obstruct development."
In practice, acceptance of this Report would make the establishment of new Jewish colonies a complete impossibility. The Jews were to be put in a straight-jacket as they were in the Russian Pale, forever condemned to be city dwellers and petty traders.
Thus turned out the great 'Palestine Development Scheme' with which Shiels had cajoled the League's Mandates Commission almost two years before.
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER I
JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION FOR INTELLIGENCE
THE ZIONIST ORGANIZATION
An important differentiation must be made between the Jewish community in Palestine Palestine Geneva London
Jews have a reputation for expert organizing ability and for shrewd reasoning, but none of these qualities are evident in the structure of the Zionist federations. Their business is handled in the main by magnificent orators whose political conceptions
are limited to the viewpoint of platform lecturers; and their sessions are apt to result in mere acrimonious debates between men who are more scholarly than practical. The fervent support of many millions of Jews whose only hope lies in Zion
this organization infinite possibilities for potency and strength; but this latent power has been almost completely wasted by a group of pedantic spokesmen who obstinately regard all creation as if it could be cut to the pattern of a book.
152 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION 153
The principal concern of the American Zionist Organization, for example, is to raise money for the upkeep of its considerable staff of officeholders, plus the question of whether a Rabbi Goldman is to be president or a Rabbi Goldstein is to be president. At a four day convention held in Providence Holy Land , and a resolution voicing confidence in the Zionist President, Weizmann.
The Zionists maintain a London Executive and a Palestine Executive who mainly specialize in sending learned memoranda to the British Government and the League of Nations . With these executive bodies is affiliated still another politically impotent appendage, the Jewish Agency. Article IV of the Mandate solemnly provides that the Jewish Agency "shall be recognized as a public body for the purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish National Home." On paper it has all the prerogatives of a chartered colonizing body, instructed to "take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the cooperation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the National Home." The British have, however, reduced its powers to a collective zero. Caught in the same web of strange infatuation which has ruled Zionism's dominant leaders, the Agency, too, relegates politics to the background as unimportant child's-play. The present Jewish Agency is the result of long negotiations conducted by Weizmann with certain wealthy non-Zionists, in the hope of inducting the moneybags of the latter into an enlarged circuit of operations. 1 The inclusion of non-Zionists in this vitally important body was the outcome of the ruinous conception that economic and cultural interests were the sole levers capable of raising the Jewish edifice in Palestine
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paralyze the Jewish Agency as a political instrument.
From a non-political viewpoint the Jewish Agency has been extremely successful. It is conscientious, thorough and efficient, maintains fine statistical and research units, and is usually better informed regarding economic trends and possibilities than are the corresponding agencies of the British Administration.
The identical differences of opinion and conflicts of ideology which are shaking the foundations of society everywhere are also evident throughout Zionist ranks. The differences between Zionist factions are sharp, accentuated by the unhealthy position the Jew occupies in relation to his environment in Europe . The same pressures which are creating social conflicts in all countries are seen by this doubly harassed people through a magnifying glass.
These irreconcilable groups fall into the usual two camps. The first, interpreting history in terms of applied Marxian economics, considers that the course of action lies solely in a Socialist settlement scheme. What reason, its proponents argue, to carve out a new unit on the earth's surface if not for the realization of Socialism. This group, necessarily dualistic, regards all nationalism with suspicion, and wants a bi-national cooperative State to include the Arabs. Here are to be found the Zionist
Labor parties of various degrees; of red and pink known as the Poale Zion and the Left Poale Zion. They have surrounded themselves with the same Marxist slogans which proved so hopelessly inadequate inGermany Austria Palestine
They make a considerable effort to instruct their 'Arab comrades' in the mechanics of class-struggle. It is they who have taught the Arabs the catch-phrases and strike technique which has been used so successfully against the Jewish National Home; and invariably it was these same favored Arabs who led in the attacks against the Jews themselves. 111 The kind of irresponsible demagoguery frightened British imperialists were greeted with can be seen in the deliberations of the First Workers World Congress. Here the radical leader, Joseph Sprinzak, stated that participation
155 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION
of Jewish Labor in the Zionist Organization did not mean a coalition with the bourgeoisie, but "only with the Jewish workers," a declaration bettered by the Left Poale Zion who asserted that any cooperation with the Zionist bourgeoisie was "treason." 2
All the leftist groups possess the traditional Marxist contempt for religion in any form, and as a result suffer the ineradicable animosity of the religious elements, who accuse them of trying to "substitute the religion of Marx" for the fundamental principles of Judaism.
The opposing camp of Zionist theoreticians suspects what Herzel also suspected— that if Zionism did not early attain political control under an assured Jewish majority, all economic and cultural efforts would finally end in the same ruin which overwhelmed the Jewish cultural centers in Spain Lithuania Holy Land .
The Nationalists insist on a monist course of action aimed solely at recreating the Jewish State, emphasizing that in a modern world the old distinctions between economics and politics have largely disappeared. They fear that the system of compromising politics followed by the Labor camp must end in the doubtful ideal of a Jewish community in an Arab land, satisfactory to the Marxist mind as long as that ideal is Socialistic. They assert that during the period of national colonization, class-struggle is a double misfortune— that it is logically impossible to call the nation "to unite for the purpose of building a Fatherland, and simultaneously split and crumble it into hating and babbling classes. They demand compulsory arbitration in all labor disputes. In their ranks may be found all shades of right-wing opinion. Their chief strength lies in Eastern Europe where they represent the strongest and most vital hope
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among the younger Jews. Giving these stifled youngsters an outlet to their emotions and creative energies, Jewish nationalism has unquestionably saved them from the calamity of Communism. Consisting mainly of Mr. Jabotinsky's Revisionists, the right-wingers demand an emphasis on state diplomacy which recognizes the extent and pressure of the existing Jewish problem, "perceiving the aim of Zionism to be a complete and final solution of the Jewish world-problem in all its aspects." It demands an orderly mass migration to relieve the intense pressure which is crushing the Jewish communities in the Diaspora. This, it asserts vigorously, is a State function requiring the active intervention of the State Power, as contrasted to the present desultory efforts provided by private enterprise and charity. Revisionism also holds uncompromisingly to a demand for restoration of the stolen area of Trans-Jordan.
Jabotinsky's external policy is founded on the belief that Zionism is providential for the solution of British problems in the East, making the Jewish State London's natural ally. He points out that all British strongholds from India Nile are inhabited by a solid Mohammedan bloc, intrinsically unstable and hostile to European penetration. Should Palestine Near East . A Jewish Palestine, on the other hand, located as an island in his grinding Mohammedan sea, would, notwithstanding the uncertainties of future politics, be forced to rely on permanent alliance with Great Britain
Suffering like the other Zionist leaders from an incurable Anglophilia, Jabotinsky has offered Jewish Legions from Poland and elsewhere to police Palestine, or the whole near East if required. In return the Bureaucrats treat both him and his movement with surly dislike. Jabotinsky himself is prohibited from setting foot in Palestine
The Revisionists, however, do not hesitate at times to damn British policy with refreshing directness. Whitehall
157 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION
Also moderately right-wing are the orthodox religious Zionists, the Mizrachi. Its members may be identified by their long black coats, curly side-locks, and general inoffensive demeanor. Mizrachi is capable, when aroused, of common sense and unbending courage, but it is not aroused often. Among the right-wingers also is the Jewish State Party, a small group to all intents and purposes identical with Jabotinsky's group in policy.
In the Center, between all these violently contending factions, lies the General Zionist group, itself split into factions 'A' and 'B/ dependent on whether they lean to the right or the left, respectively. The General Zionists allege to be Liberals and pure followers of Herzel. From their ranks are drawn Weizmann, Wise, Ussishkin, Lipsky and most of the other recognized leaders of the Zionist world movement. In actual practice they invariably tend toward simple opportunism, leaning toward the policies of the party holding the deciding vote at Zionist conventions. Their political philosophy has been marked by continuous compromise, retreat and hope.
Tied to the fortunes of these struggling factions in Palestine
The required sums for running the somewhat complicated Zionist machinery are raised by a unique method of self -taxation, and a system of unctuous levying on the rich, called by the Jews 'schnorring' So dependent have the mechanics of Zionist activity become on these necessary contributions that suspicion may well be entertained that the major policy of the Zionist Organization has degenerated into a promotion scheme for the raising of these vital moneys; that in short, the tail now wags the dog. The most important of these organized endowments are the Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund) and the Keren Hayesod (Palestine Foundation Fund). The Revisionists have their own machinery, the Keren Tel Chai.
This imperative need for money to feed a gradually gathered army of officeholders appears to dictate much that is otherwise inexplicable in Zionist policy. The basis of such a precarious system of revenue is a continuous and increasing tempo of ballyhoo
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Booklets must be issued replete with stories of amazing achievement, leading to the inference that all is going swimmingly and that these superb successes are only limited by a regrettable inadequacy of private contributions. The poignant realization that their revenue is dependent largely on an unceasing relation of 'triumphs' to hard-headed Jews who want to see value for their money, is the nightmare of Zionist existence, turning everything they undertake into an operation distinguished mostly by its ballyhoo. As a net result, the Zionists' political policy is for all practical purposes bankrupt, since they may not dare risk puncturing the beautiful bubbles which they themselves have blown over so many years.
Up to May 1935 the two biggest Zionist funds had collected a total of ^9,400,000 between them. Despite self-adulatory publicity, up to that date the land settlement schemes of the two Kerens had only succeeded in placing a total of 2800 families on the soil. Effectually prevented by British-fashioned ordinances from carrying out their ambitious colonization plans, the Zionist Funds have gone in heavily for such luxuries as grants to the Hebrew University
Not included in the official Zionist bodies is the Agudath Israel, an ultra-orthodox group who consider women's suffrage an outrage against God, and Zionism itself a heretical movement. They believe that when the Almighty is ready he will send down a messiah who will miraculously lead the way to the Promised Land without political
159 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION
intervention. The unworldly, wraith-like fanaticism of Agudath Israel Tel Aviv Israel
THE PALESTINE
It was not long before the war between the Zionist factions degenerated into a wild fracas of words, slander and bricks. Like the French revolutionist, Carrier, who said "we will make a graveyard ofFrance
Bad feeling between these rival groups finally ended in wild physical attacks, in which Revisionist meetings were stormed with rocks and tear gas bombs. According to Professor Klausner of Hebrew University
Land; that did not house a Revisionist wounded by leftists.
When thirty Revisionists were injured in Haifa October 23, 1934 declared itself "outraged by the brutal attacks which were poisoning the atmosphere of
Delighted at this opportunity to smash Jewish nationalism with the help of Jews, the Government took a hand in the persecutions. Revisionists, treated as common criminals, were sentenced to penal servitude, their homes raided and their papers
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suspended. Its meetings suppressed as dangerous revolutionary activity, the besmirched and harassed party was for a time practically driven underground.
Palestine May 16, 1934 . On May 17, he was promptly rearrested, charged with leading a "terrorist Revisionist Organization," and held incommunicado in Acre Prison.
In the inner business of Zionist politics the Revisionists had constituted themselves the opposition to the policy of retreat initiated by Weizmann and the Zionist Executive. This brought the Executive down on their heads like a swarm of hornets, throwing it directly into the laps of the Laborites. A campaign of slander and repressions followed. Feeling against the Revisionists rose to a fever pitch, as may be seen from the assertion by the American Zionist boss, Louis Lipsky, that "a party which makes disloyalty and violation of discipline a political principle, which educates its youth to imitation of Hitler organization methods . . . cannot expect to find place or countenance within a movement like Zionism." 3
Here was a unique alliance: the Jewish leftists who hated the capitalist system and British Imperialism alike; the Jewish Agency capitalists who automatically detested leftists and who could not avoid recognizing British persecution of their cause; and theWhitehall Near East with dread. All of these regarded as their main enemy in the Palestine
In this atmosphere of violence and incitement a prominent left-wing leader, Chaim Arlosoroff, was murdered while walking with his wife on the beach near Tel Aviv.
Arlosoroff stood for everything the Revisionists were against. He was an ardent advocate of class war. As a member of the World Zionist Executive in charge of political affairs, he established a policy of truckling to British pressure, denied that Palestine Palestine Czechoslovakia
161 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION
The murder took place at night in an isolated spot. An appalling number of European women had suffered rape at Arab hands, and at first it was assumed that this was a companion piece to that stream of outrages. Arlosoroff, dying in Hadassah Hospital
None of this deterred the Labor press from immediately setting up the charge that here was a political murder. Wildly they demanded blood revenge. In charge of the investigation was Captain Harry Rice (Deputy Inspector General of Police), who got busy at once. He promptly arrested a young Revisionist named Stavsky.
Stavsky was a stout blond youth of handsome appearance who had been in the country some three months. His whereabouts during the time of the murder was amply established by a score of creditable witnesses, but Mrs. Arlosoroff promptly identified him as the companion of the man who had fired the shots. Immediately after, a Revisionist boy named Mintz was taken into custody, as were two Arabs named Mejid and Lufti. The state's case was completed with the apprehension of Zvi
Rosenblatt a young nationalist, who was also conveniently, identified by Mrs. Arlosoroff; as the man who committed the actual murder.
Determined to make a clean sweep of the Revisionists, the Administration ordered a mass arrest of their leaders and held them without bail, accused of 'sedition.' In the formal charges they were alleged to be part of an organization aiming "to raise discontent among the inhabitants of Palestine German Consulate Building Jerusalem Jerusalem
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Among those arrested was a prominent editor named Yevin, and Aba Achimeir, who was accused of being the intellectual author of the murder. Achimeir, idol of the extreme nationalists, was of the new type of Hebrew patriot, rigid, incorruptible, and single-minded to the point of rhapsody. Slim and courtly, with black ringlets hanging over a high, pale forehead, he looked like a figure from one of El Greco's canvases.
The boy, Yehuda Mintz, who had been identified by Mrs. Arlosoroff, was also suddenly freed, without explanation, leaving Rosenblatt and Stavsky in the dock. At the trial, Mrs. Arlosoroff, caught in a mass of self-contradictions, was accused by innumerable witnesses of lying. The Government's own witnesses, insufficiently drilled in their role, made it manifest that the accused could not have killed Arlosoroff. It was shown that at the time he was supposed to have committed the murder Rosenblatt was one of the main speakers at a mass meeting in another city. More grimly amusing still was the peculiar position of Captain Rice in refuting the confession of the Arab, Mejid, who had admitted to the murder with rape as the motive. In an action unprecedented in modern jurisprudence, Rice took the stand to swear to Mejid's innocence, and refused pointblank to call witnesses in regard to the Arab's confession.
On June 10, 1934 , in one of the most amazing decisions ever rendered, Stavsky, whom a flood of testimony had placed, else- where at the time of the murder, was sentenced to hang. In the indictment, he had been accused of holding the flashlight while Rosenblatt did the actual killing. Rosenblatt who had been addressing a public meeting at the time of the murder, was acquitted — yet the co-accused Stavsky was
163 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION
convicted. Said the doomed man on hearing the sentence: "This is a conspiracy by the Jewish Labor Party, and the Palestine Government against me. I am totally innocent."
An immediate censorship was put on the Jewish press restraining it under peril of confiscation from calling attention to the patent absurdity of the verdict. Three Hebrew newspapers were stopped and their owners heavily fined for commenting on the case as a miscarriage of justice.
Vindictively the Poale-Zion-Zeire-Zion (United Jewish Socialist Workers Party) issued a statement applauding the verdict, saying that "nothing could serve so well to clear the atmosphere in our political life." It asserted that "the foundations of British
Judicial institutions . . . leave no ground for doubt as to the impartiality and legal regularity of the trial." Despite this vote of confidence, Joseph F. Broadhurst, Assistant Inspector General of Police, was later to admit that "there was practically no evidence" against the accused. 4
The Laborites were making all the capital they could out of this tragic situation, the first time a Jew had been on trial for the murder of a Jew in the modern history of Palestine Palestine
Weizmann, mild-mannered to Jewish enemies, had a fierce side when he faced Jews. He refused to return to the leadership or even to come to the Congress, reputedly because the Revisionists had not been expelled.
In the meanwhile the pot, which had only been simmering, began to boil. Of the four
164 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
judges who sat on the case, only one was Jewish, and he alone had voted for acquittal. Now this Jewish judge, venerable Moshe Valero, braved the wrath of
the gods and issued a strongly couched statement showing the virtual impossibility of Stavsky's guilt. Chief Rabbi HaCohen Kook, beloved Palestine
With ferocious ardor the Labor groups leaped to the defense of their kill. All over Palestine
The question agitated the entire Jewish world, which soon became convinced that an innocent man had been railroaded to the death cell for the sake of political expediency. In London
Shrewd and capable Horace Samuel was now the defense attorney. He pointed out, among other things, the renewed confession of the Arab, Mejid, and demanded that the police records be made public. Again Captain Rice mysteriously refused.
Evidence showing that the leftists had exploited the murder for political purposes in the 1933 election and that they had, together with the Jewish Agency, assisted the prosecution in securing the conviction of Stavsky as a political measure, was excluded. Even then the proof of collusion was so patent that the Palestine Court of Appeals had no other recourse than to free the condemned man. He had been in prison a year and walked out with his hair snow white.
The Marxists showed their joy over the verdict by stoning the synagogue in which Stavsky and Rosenblatt were worshiping. Davar, Laborite mouthpiece, followed up an official leftist manifesto by declaring that the two men remained murderers.
165 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION
Things rapidly came to the point where Stavsky and Rosenblatt were warned by the Tel Aviv police to leave the city as their lives were in danger and the police could not be responsible for their safety.
Cheated out of its sacrificial victim, the Government was determined to have its revenge. It hounded all witnesses for Stavsky. An example is the almost immediate deportation of the widow Becherev and her two children, who had aided in establishing the accused's alibi. Its displeasure against Jewish nationalists in general showed no signs of diminishing. It found Achimeir and the other Revisionist leaders guilty of sedition and sentenced them to twenty-one months at hard labor. On December 30, 1934 this Government which knew how to punish Jews while Arabs murdered and revolted with impunity, announced that it had revoked the citizenship of Yevin and Achimeir, making them men without a country. This new formidable threat in a world where no nation wanted Jews, was held as a terrible club over the head of all those who believed that the Palestine Mandate envisioned the formation of a Jewish State.
LABOR DICTATORSHIP
Until the time of the Arlosoroff murder, the Revisionists had been gaining ground so rapidly as to make it appear that their ultimate control of the Zionist Organization was inevitable. Under cover of the delirious charges and counter-charges growing out of the Stavsky affair, the Laborites, possessing by far the best equipped publicity machine, had succeeded in discrediting their enemies as a band of ruffians and murderers. By a series of admirable maneuvers and coalitions, the technique of which they had learned in the traditional Marxian schools of Europe , they succeeded, though still a minority in the Convention, in excluding the Revisionists entirely from participation in Zionist affairs. Expertly organized, and using the General Zionists as a front so as to keep the Mizrachi from bolting harness, they took control. Anchored in the seat of power, with the Organization's established income at their disposal, they became almost impossible
166 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
to dislodge. Ironically, Laborite activities were now directly subsidized by donations from the same middle class Zionists all over the world whom leftist party platforms had sworn to destroy.
The Revisionists found themselves virtually outlawed. Jews who had always been the persecuted now learned the business of persecution. For the mere matter of his 'ideology,' a youth belonging to the Jabotinsky faction was to find himself completely shut off from the possibility of obtaining a visa to Palestine League of Nations and collecting their own funds. Infuriated, the Laborites set up a virtuous wail of 'sabotage' and 'secession.' Jews who were letting British bureaucrats tread on them as if they were worms, now fought Jews with an obduracy that neither gave quarter nor asked it.
The Zionist rulers set an ironclad dictatorship in operation for better purposes of the battle. Like the Confessional Churches in Nazi Germany, the Revisionists found themselves in a box. Any utterance contrary to the ruling fiction that "unbelievable progress was being made in Palestine
Shouting all the slogans of democracy, the Zionist leadership preceded to place in effect a rigid censorship of all news and utterances. When the only existing Jewish news service offended them, they entered the news business with funds of the Jewish Agency. Leading Yiddish newspapers were handed simple subsidies with the gentleman's understanding that they would publish no news unfavorable to their
167 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION
patrons. (The important Yiddische Tageblatt of Poland accused the Zionist Executive in June 1936, of trying to "imitate the tone of certain great powers" in its attempt to censor news on the Palestine disorders.)
In January of 1933 the Revisionists had been formally tried by aCongress Court July 26, 1933 the recognized leftist Fuehrer, Ben Gurion, laid down the dictum that "we shall under no circumstances collaborate with a party of strike-breakers and anti-labor agitators." On March 9, 1934 the Zionist Executive issued a communiqué announcing that the Revisionist Party would henceforth be regarded as dissolved and non-existent. It declares that no Zionist group is to be regarded as the Revisionist Sonderverbund, or to style itself so, and asserts that the World Revisionist Party is outlawed from the Zionist Organization and has no legal status within that organization or any of its affiliated bodies. On February 6, 1935 , not satisfied by declaring the Revisionists nonexistent, the Executive placed a cherem (ban) on the Revisionist Fund, the Keren Tel Chai, ludicrously ordering Jews not to donate any money to it. In 1935 Diey also incorporated a provision in reference to the purchase of the shekel which by its very nature automatically excluded Revisionists.
In the meanwhile, sensing that all this was beginning to make a bad impression on Jews all around, the Zionist hierarchy had made a sudden attempt to compromise the situation. Ben Gurion, speaking for the Executive, agreed to act with Jabotinsky to end the inter-party strife. Conventions were arrived at and signed outlawing all acts of violence, libel or slander. Both parties undertook to discipline their membership on pain of permanent expulsion. The Revisionist Union promptly ratified the act of their leader by a plebiscite. The Laborites, however, wanted no 'peace' with the hated bourgeoisie represented by the Revisionists. After one of the most vituperative campaigns in Zionist history, they voted two to one to repudiate Ben Gurion's
168 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
signature.
A few months later the provoked Revisionists went through the motions of resigning from a body which had already all but thrown them out, and with some other dissident factions formed the New Zionist Organization. At a great plebiscite which was to determine the form and content of the new organization, some 750,000 votes were cast — the largest number of ballots ever voted by Jews on a purely Jewish matter since the days of the Dispersion. The foundation congress held in Vienna
middle-of-the-road elements who, delighted with the concessions made to them, decided to remain with the old organization.
Revisionist tactics were also, in part at least; based on the assumption that Whitehall
REIGNING ZIONIST PERSONALITIES
No Bill of Rights ever penned can remake overnight the mental approach of a people whose mind has been ground down by half a dozen centuries of abject horror. The memory of these cruel generations left its stamp indelibly on the Jewish spokesmen who took over the helm of the movement after Herzel’s death. Invariably they were graduates of the Yeshiva atmosphere of the Russian Pale.
169 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION
The circumstances by which they literally fell into leadership were simple. The great mass of Jewry was busy in the practical affairs of day-to-day existence. The Socialists, Liberals and Conservatives kept themselves coolly aloof. The pro-Zionists, engrossed in their own occupations, were content to show their sympathy by the donation of funds or by occasional participation at rallies and meetings. It was a small group of impassioned scholastics, which had made Zionism a profession all their lives, who took over the actual machinery of operation.
When the collapse of humanism in post-war Europe endowed the movement with immediate, critical importance as a political reality, these men still further entrenched themselves. They controlled the Zionist income and sources of propaganda. The great bulk of stunned, ruined Jews were now listed more than fleeing outcasts, trying desperately to extricate their individual lives from the horrible quagmire in which they found themselves caught. Artfully the career-Zionists parried their opposition, contending that any attempt to wash dirty linen publicly during this precarious period was downright mischievous.
It is only in the light of these circumstances that one can understand the retention of a group of leaders whose muddled policies have brought the Zionist movement so close to disaster. The procedure of these men was from first to last a tragic comedy of errors. With few exceptions they were brilliant intellectually, kindly and idealistic. Completely misunderstanding human motivation, they regarded force of any kind as barbarian. They were masters of hair-splitting disputation, unmatched for pure decency of conception, but more useful in legal briefs than in the serious business of repatriating a nation. The most influential of them had adopted British nationality, which under the circumstance of any conflict of interests brought them up squarely against the question of their prior patriotism toEngland
More fatal still, they lacked the fierce aggressive spirit, the shrewd realism, which the struggle for national existence demands. In their minds was ever the idyllic vision of a unique cultural community, taking precedence over questions of sovereign political
170 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
rule. This completely irrational conception, springing from the brain of the obstinate scholastic, Achad Ha' am, served to create an ecstatic polity in which reality could at no time be dissevered from metaphor and rhetoric. At times their learned dogmatism lapsed into sheer nonsense, as witness Rabbi Freehof’s declaration that Herzel's Jewish State was not a State of armies, navies and political schemes, but the embodiment of "a Jewish civilization in Palestine
Throughout they pursued a course of self-justification in which their noble theories had an important part. It was they who first enunciated the conception of duty owed the benighted local population, later to be transformed into fundamentals of British policy. With the complication of left wing intrusion into the movement, shrewd efforts at national self-sufficiency were left still further behind.
Certainly the Zionist leaders were no match for clever British bureaucrats, trained in the business of extracting every ounce of value from every possible situation. Time after time they missed their chance; when the Irish were fighting a successful Sinn Fein, when Mussolini offered his hand in friendship, when the French turned to them, and when the Arabs themselves offered peace on an anti-British basis. Far from following a strategy of resistance, they actually went to the opposite extreme. Bulwarking their own weaknesses by an intensive propaganda directed to their fellow Jews, they went to the point of publicly praising the very British administrators who were conspiring against them. The influential English Zionists especially, denounced in grandiloquent sarcasm any attempt to question the good faith of England
There were some among the Zionist leaders, such as Jabotinsky, Ussishkin, and Dr.
171 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION
The most influential of all the Zionist personages is the President of the World Zionist Organization, Dr. Chaim Weizmann.
Weizmann was born in Motele , Russia
Weizmann is bald, but not unhandsome. His bearing is mild and thoughtful, but intense, brooding eyes lend fire to his personality. He has made himself into a great chemist by his own efforts and possesses a warm personal charm together with impeccable manners.
He is a marvelous money-raiser, capable of button-holing a prospect and turning on the full stream of his great charm, to leave the interview with a check in his pocket. He has always followed the path of least resistance, and early tied up his political fortunes with those of the Laborites when it appeared that their star was in the ascendant. He is a master of the technique of demagoguery, capable of convincingly blotting out his own failures with such statements as "we will show the world that
Jewish idealism can bring forth a civilization as noble and fructifying as any which history has known."
Considering the unfettered criticism leveled at him by his peers for "a leadership that has proven itself a failure and is bankrupt in all fields of its activity," 6 he has managed to maintain an almost mesmeric hold over the Zionist Organization.
172 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Part of this technique of control is the assertion to uneasy Jews that "England
He is almost pathologically amenable to British importuning. At a World Congress in 193 1, after Dr. Stephen S. Wise had called attention to London America Great Britain
At another Congress he answered Zionists who had charged Britain
In this almost bizarre description of the head of a political movement, Weizmann's henchman Louis Lipsky says: "He staked his leadership upon his faith in Great Britain Great Britain
173 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION
Declaration, were, in certain circumstances, liable to operate against the execution of a policy based upon it. The British devotion to fair play and instinctive support of the weaker side, so as responsible in some quarters for a feeling that the Arabs of Pales-
tine needed to be protected against the richer, better organized Jews. . r 9
His utterances are unpredictable. On March 28, 1931 he flatly accused the Jews "of contributing to the Arab's fears" and of not making the proper concessions. On April 9, 1931 , he stated bluntly that cooperation between Jews and Arabs would have been possible if England Manchester , England
The policies by which he guided the Zionist movement may be judged from his continuous flow of statements of a religiosemystic nature, inviting acceptance of the bi-national state idea. At the Basle Congress of 1927 he described the Zionist movement as "spiritual and cultural — not aggressive ... it is only the expression of an urge." Arabs and Jews were somehow to "come together . . . above politics and above programs." This was the typical kind of millennium over which Weizmann could work himself into a religious fervor.
The English bureaucrats think much of him. Gandhi too admires him greatly. In these two facts many critical observers think the epitaph of Zionism has been written.
The great opponent of Weizmann is the little ex-soldier, Vladimir Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky is one of the few Jewish leaders with any adequate idea of the kind of policies the present Jewish crisis demands. Among Hebrew nationalists he is idolized.
In the ghettos of Eastern Europe he is already a tradition. He is hated without
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reservation by the Marxists who see him as their ready-made enemy. Once he answered some leftist attacks by throwing a handful of pennies contemptuously in their faces, saying: "Here is your patriotism."
As a spell-binder Jabotinsky is almost without rival. He can hold an audience breathless, and often will talk for three or four hours at a stretch. As an expert conniver in the business of inner Zionist intrigue he is hopeless. He is handicapped by a deficient understanding of the structural mechanics of modern political warfare. Half a dozen times he has had thrown in his lap the chance to seize control of shattered Zionist affairs, and half a dozen times he has muffed it. He is impetuous and head- strong, and a poor judge of men. Despite these inadequacies
he is the only existing leader capable of supplying the flashing personality and keen insight into events required if anything is to be salvaged from the impending collapse of the Zionist adventure.
Outside of Dr. Wise, whose influence is scanty, the other personalities of the movement largely reflect all that Weizmann rep- resents. A fine example is the head of the all-important Political Department of the Jewish Agency, in Palestine
Shertok, Shertok is a commonplace fellow with wavy hair, a left-wing product who, called into court as a witness on a case, declined to take oath on the Torah, declaring that "to do so was in contradiction to his philosophy of life... 11 Some idea of his
caliber is shown in the evidence before the Royal Commission investigating the 1936 riots, where he announced in the name of the Socialist Federation of Labor that a thousand of the rioting Arabs, who had left their jobs at the Jewish settlements in order to join the rebellion, should have their places kept in reserve for them in case they wished to return. 12
The chief political officer of the Zionist Executive, in London October 24, 1934 he asserted that "we are fighting discrimination against Jews in the Jewish National Home." Yet less than four months later he
175 JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION
was heard declaiming in London Great Britain Great Britain Palestine Great Britain Palestine
Among others whose influence is strong is David Ben Gurion, a Laborite, now virtually Weizmann's Prime Minister. When not handicapped by his associations, Ben Gurion is inclined to show courage and general good sense. After the 1929 pogroms
he split no hairs in declaring that "we must take care not to fall into the trap prepared by hostile British officials who desire to instigate here a bloody religious war." Later, to save himself from the fate which befell Jabotinsky and other irreconcilables, he switched policy, and can be usually found hand-in-glove with Weizmann.
Among the other men on the inner Zionist councils with hard common sense is Menachem Ussishkin, a stolid, bearded engineer from Odessa Palestine
Ussishkin's great attribute is a healthy pugnacity, sadly lacking in Jewish leadership ; and the Zionists might have done worse than to have had him at the helm in the stormy weather they have been experiencing during all these years.
CHAPTER II
"THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE"
'unprecedented prosperity'
If one chooses to ignore the political potentials which make it a house built on sand, Jewish colonization in Palestine Palestine Holy Land , refers to it as an amazing record of progress, "unparalleled in any part of the world."
The Jewish community in the Holy Land is a dynamic, vital organism. One feels the electric quality the Zionists have introduced in the country almost before he sets foot on its soil. An air of confidence, eagerness and expectancy suffuses everything. Everyone seems to be in a rush to go somewhere or do something. These people are at home — and irrespective of political actuality, they consider the country theirs. They mean to build it up at whatever cost, to be handed as a legacy to children who will never have known ghettos. Their purpose is passionate and indomitable. If they are balked one way, with unshakable will they try another? This is the miracle of the new Jew; he has seen a vision, and with quiet fortitude he means to follow it to the death. "Rarely in the history of the world," says the British M.P. Mr. T. Williams, "have human beings shown so much faith and devotion or thrown themselves
into a task so wholeheartedly as the Jews in Palestine
The Jew has in fact proven himself to be the best colonizing material on earth. He has built literally out of nothing. Inexperienced, dealing with a seemingly resource less area, he has raised himself practically by his own bootstraps. He has faced a hostile
176 Pics
177 "THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE"
soil, a hostile people, and a hostile government. It is in his light that his small successes assume the proportions of greatness.
Visitors stop, pleasantly surprised in this region of dilapidated mud huts, to see the modern brick or red-tiled stone houses of the Jews. The lovely gardens around them are kept neat as a pin. Shade trees surround the villages. Painstaking irrigation ditches, lined with young trees, bespeak the unceasing energy of the colonizers. In the field’s hardy pioneers, men and women alike, work from sunup to sundown. Their voices ring with the familiar words of peasant song as they labor.
Lloyd George refers to these land settlements as "models of intensive culture." Herbert Morrison unhesitatingly terms them "one of the most wonderful moral demonstrations of the human race in the whole of the civilized world," saying "it is work typical of the finest of British colonizers in the history of our Empire." No less explicit, the American Senator Hastings said after his visit in 1936 that "although Jews own but one-twentieth of all the land in Palestine
In all branches of farming, Jewish growers have been the pioneers of advance and progress. The only agricultural literature published in this entire section of the Near East is issued under their auspices. They are the first and only ones to bother about creating markets, advertising, grading and selecting, and introducing new varieties. A few representative figures bring the quality of Jewish agriculture into vivid relief. Their average milk production per cow is 3695 quarts yearly compared with the Arab average of 845 quarts. The production of Jewish-owned hens is 150 eggs per annum; contrasted with 70 as the Arab figure. In the most literal sense the settlers have made
two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, experimenting, testing and adapting, until their areas bloom like one vast garden.
The figures for Jewish industry are no less impressive. Just as in 1930 Hope-Simpson 'proved' that not another rod of land was available for new Jewish settlement, so he
178 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
also declared the industrial outlook hopeless. His report shows 2274 Jewish factories and workshops, employing 9362 workers, with an invested capital of ,£1,635,462, an output of ,£2,100,000 and a sum total of wages of ,£476,452. He solemnly warned that "it would be very bad, and might prove a fatal policy, to attract large capital in order to start doubtful industries in Palestine
The Holy Land now manufactures goods of the most varied kind. Among the new firms established in 1935-36 alone, were bakeries, milling companies, plate glass and paint works; razor blade and paraffin paper factories, iron works, kilns for producing earthenware, pharmaceutical works, foundries and metal manufactories ; cement works, spinning and weaving mills and textile, shoe and furniture factories. A census by the Jewish Agency shows the healthy nature of this industry. Preparation of foodstuffs, stone and cement accounts for nearly thirty-nine percent of the production value; metal and wood industries, twenty-two percent and chemicals, nine percent. The remaining thirty percent is divided among textiles, printing, paper and electricity; all forming a solid base for the country's economy. In striking contrast to this wide ramification of Jewish industry, Arab manufactures are few, the most important being oil-pressing, making of laundry soap, quarrying, baking and various home handicrafts.
The amount of Jewish capital invested in this tiny land is estimated to total more than £120,000,000. Prior to the recent riots, Jews were bringing in money at the rate of two to five million dollars a month. In 1934 alone they are estimated to have invested approximately 10,000,000 in Palestine
179 "THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE" 179
community is placed at £20,000,000 annually. 1 Bank deposits amounted to £16,000,000 and currency in circulation increased in the single year of 1935, from £4,738,964 to £6,561,134.
All of this is reflected throughout the country's economy, shattering its medieval inertia in every conceivable direction. Every figure in connection with this mushrooming process is remarkable. Before the War the tonnage cleared at Haifa
In a generation these returning exiles have erected a civilization which the English writer Ernest Main tells us the Levantine is not capable of duplicating "in five hundred years." 2 Behind this singular development with its wealth of flourishing settlements and growing range of industries, lie the spiritual drive and moral tone of the returning Hebrews. Money and skill alone could not have contrived it.
POPULATION AND CITIES
The Government itself says in relation to its population estimates that "the precision of these figures is not great." 3 It is almost impossible to carry out a reliable census. Looking back with suspicious memory to the tax-collectors of Turkish times, the enraged peasants either drive the census-takers out or give them falsified figures, believing any head count to be an artful prelude to new levies. The Government computation is 848,- 342 Muslims, 370,483 Jews, and 106,474 Christians. Reliable
Jewish sources, however, place the Jewish figure around 410,000. Most of these are concentrated around Tel Aviv, which with its surrounding villages holds over a quarter of a million people.
Tel Aviv, living symbol of Jewish hope, is like nothing that anyone ever saw before. It is a mad, poetic crazy-quilt, fashioned out of Jewish determination to recreate
180 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
life in terms of Jewish self-sufficiency. The mayor is Jewish, the porters are Jewish, the street-sweepers are Jewish, the police are Jewish. Even the thieves are Jewish.
Jerusalem Peace Jerusalem
Holy City Jaffa Judean Mountains Moab
Hawthorne
It was founded in 1910 on worthless sand dunes, some miles out ofJaffa
Today a city of 160,000 rears its head to justify the extravagant claims of these visionaries. In America Near East , where it vies with cities established before the memory of man, it is a miracle.
The city looks like a cross between some miniature Paris Levant . All of them are paved.
The architecture is the last word in modernism. To one used to the orthodox conception of cities, it looks almost freakish. The stores and amusement places are the most up-to-date in the world. Along the boardwalk on the sparkling blue sea,
sit throngs of gay people, leisurely relaxing in the warm evening. Mixed colorfully among the streaming crowds are Arabs, decked in their finest raiment, who have come from all over the Levant to gaze on this wonder of wonders. A profound sense
of experiment is everywhere, with a huge shopping district and cinema palaces giving an impression of a town many times larger.
Tel Aviv takes thirty-three percent of Palestine Palestine
181 THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE"
Its budget for 1934-35 was 275,000 — a staggering sum for this section of the Orient.
The town places a high value on literacy, and is the center of the printing industry of Palestine
The cosmopolitan origin of this remarkable Hebrew community is mirrored in the school-children. A survey in 1935 showed 8178 to be Ashkenazic (of East-European derivation); 1338 Sephardic (descendants of Spanish exiles, coming mainly from North Africa, Greece and Bulgaria) ; n 25 Yemenite (native dark-skinned Jews from the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula) ; 184 Caucasian, 177 Persian, 92 Bokharian, and 3 of other communities. The 161 6 children of immigrants who settled in Tel Aviv during 1935 were of 22 different nationalities.
A canvass of their parents shows 39% to be ordinary laborers, 14% merchants, 13% artisans, 5% members of liberal professions, 16% of miscellaneous callings — and the balance housewives or of no occupation.
The high Western state of culture of this city, as contrasted with the slough of the surrounding Near East, is not limited to surface appearances. The per capita rate of water consumption, always an indication of social and economic conditions, is 230 liters per day. This compares with 52 liters for Vienna Berlin London
There are over one hundred and sixty synagogues and Talmudical houses of learning. The names of the shops and commercial houses are derived from the Bible or the Talmud. At the sound of the ram's horn on Friday afternoon all traffic comes to a halt, stores close and commercial activity ceases. The peace of the Sabbath settles like a soft blanket on the city until the following night. But nowhere is the fundamental
182 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Jewish character of this place; better shown than on the festival days. Tel Aviv is a city of holidays. All the ancient Jewish festivals have been revitalized and made the occasion for public rejoicing. Succoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, is welcomed not only by farmers rejoicing in the abundant harvest. In Tel Aviv, too; thanks is given for the kind bounty of Mother Earth, with great crowds of citizens dancing the native Hora 4 in the public squares of the city. During the feast of Chanuka great fancy-dress balls are held and school-children by the thousands parade in torchlight procession through the streets, carrying candles and torches, and singing native songs until the air is heavy with their shrill voices. There is almost an endless list of holidays, memorial days and festival occasions, all enthusiastically observed by this happy people who have found out how to live. The greatest of these, for which Tel Aviv is famous, is the Purim celebration, ushered in with street-dancing and huge parades with gaily decorated floats. During this gay period which lasts a whole week, the city becomes an enchanted fairyland of colored lights and music, and masked, laughing figures. Myriads of people from all over the country jam the streets; and annually thousands from neighboring Syria Egypt Palestine
Joseph F. Broadhurst, former Inspector General of Police for the Palestine Government, remarks that "it is at Tel Aviv that one realizes the inherent possibilities of the Jews as a nation." He found that during his whole term in office there was practically no important crime despite a polyglot population newly arrived from all quarters of the globe. "The police force," he adds, "was entirely Jewish and I never knew a Jewish policeman to let me down. The men were smart and conscientious and
very anxious to follow the best traditions of the British police." 5
One circumstance in particular labels the citizens of this Jewish city as unrivaled for pure self -discipline and force of character. When the 1936 riots were going full blast, for more than twelve weeks the city of Tel Aviv
183 THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE" 183
aware that the normal constabulary of two hundred men had been commandeered to guard its borders against attack. Yet amongst this population of one hundred and sixty-thousand there was not a single crime, though the town was already harboring thousands of refugees. During all this troubled period Tel Aviv was the only place in Palestine Jaffa
of the greatest physicians, scholars and creative artists of Germany Russia
The city is slow and sedate and wears its ancient dignity complacently on its shoulder. Here is the seat of the British Administration, and the sites of innumerable convents, monasteries, and churches of all nationalities. One suddenly comes into the
There are really two Jerusalem
184 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
square kilometer. Seven gates open at various points. The eighth, the Gate of Mercy, facing east, is sealed up, to be opened according to Jewish legend when Messiah ben David enters through it. The Old City
Christian sentiment is centered around the Holy Sepulchre in the northwest section.
The twisting, narrow streets of the Old City
Beyond this strange and picturesque relic lies the modernJerusalem Poland Greece Germany
At the north of the country is Haifa
"THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE" 185
undoubtedly be one of the great cities of the world. Before the Zionists came it was a mere fishing village. Today it is estimated to hold some 95,000 people, of whom 65,000 are Jews. Cradled here is a rapidly expanding industrial area. Railway workshops, electrical power houses, cement works, factories and mills of all kinds are rising to swell the growth of this hungry young metropolis.
There is little that may be termed oriental about the place. Its model landscape seems copied, as it were, from geography textbook. Sea, mountains, plains and chalk cliffs meet the eye all at once, gradually uniting with the Lebanon
In the harbor are always to be seen the gray masses of British men o' war. On the open beach, housed in an inauspicious building, is the terminus of the oil line from Iraq Palestine
The only other important town is Jaffa. Its name derives from the Hebrew Japho, the 'beautiful.' Pliny declares that even before the deluge Jaffa Karnak the name of Japu occurs as having been conquered by Thothmes III about 1600 B.C. One hundred years ago it had a population of four thousand. Today it holds seventy thousand, overwhelmingly Arab, who are largely descendants of the Egyptians and Ethiopians brought in by the conqueror Ibrahim Pasha. The few thousand Jews who lived here fled during the 1936 riots, abandoning their shops and property.
Jaffa and Tel Aviv are really one town. Where the one begins and the other ends is told only by the sudden descent from the modernity of the Hebrew city into the stuffy squalor, ramshackle architecture and typical dirt and hoarse cries of an Arab town. The British were responsible for its artificial dissection years ago, fearing Jewish domination of the port.
186 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE
There is something awe-inspiring in the simple joy which shines from the faces of the incoming Hebrews. Many of them arrive in the ill-ventilated, reeking holds of small cargo steamers after having survived almost incredible hardships. Some are of
the tradesman and professional type. Most are poor to the point of desperation. Fellow-travelers are astounded to see these men and women, grimy workmen and petty bourgeoisie hardly sus- pected of sentiment or romanticism, standing silent with tears in their eyes as the brown Judean hills take form on the distant horizon. Eighty generations fade from their tired faces, years of suffering, abasement and homelessness. As they survey these shores their glance is illumined, speaking without words an al- most fanatic determination that the Land of Israel
No one who has not seen these faces with his own eyes can understand what a miracle it is for the Jew, to stand once more on the soil that Simon Bar Giora trod, where Abraham, Isaac and David walked, where Bar Kochba led his stern swordsmen.
Nothing can gloat over the sheer majesty of this scene like the starved Jewish eye, now devouring its outlines with a hunger sharpened by the nostalgia of two thousand years. As at a beautiful vision, the newcomer stares at the rosy-cheeked children racing in happy play. Their fresh, tumbling Hebrew speech gladdens his ear like beautiful music as he harks back in shuddering contrast to the sallow emaciation and frightened eyes of the only Jewish children he has ever known. Thrilled and almost disbelieving, he gazes at the straight-limbed boys who have left the puny catechisms of Europe far behind, to work with pick and shovel under the broiling sun of this new land. Their bronzed faces are like the stark brown hills around them. Like Ernest in
It is "a wonderful youth," says M. J. Landa, one of the authorities on modern Palestine
187 "THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE"
spirit." 6 Nowhere else is sheer idealism so plain in every office of life. Kindliness and the desire to create a cooperative civilization worthy of the name of man, everywhere takes precedence over individual ambition. The same determination for a
socially-intelligent existence which has distinguished post-warSweden
of ten passing motorists will stop in their journey and volunteer to assist in mending it.
For the first time in modern Jewish life the distribution of occupation approaches normality. Agriculture now absorbs 14% ; industry and crafts, 23.4% ; transportation, 6.1% ; building construction, 12.7% ; commerce, 20% ; public and civil service, 2.4% ; liberal professions, 12.4% ; persons living on income, 6% ; domestic and hotel employees, 3%. Something in the way of flowers or greenery grows wherever a Jew lives. The passion for growing things, for trees and blooms, is so intense in this psychically starved people as to be insatiable. They love to loiter in outdoor gardens, sipping their unbelievable fruit soups or nibbling at sticky fruit compotes.
Hiking is a national pastime. They go in for athletic competition with feverish zeal. There are innumerable small sports clubs of every description and three major sports federations, including the Football and Boxing Federation and the Amateur Sports Clubs Federation. One of the great bi-annual events is the Maccabiad (Jewish Olympics), held at the magnificent Tel Aviv stadium. In the tournament of 1935, twenty-three countries were represented with over five thousand participants. Fifty thousand people paid admission as the whole city made a delirious holiday.
The love for the theater and for music is intense and demonstrative; song is often a
188 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
substitute for supper. An opera company holds a regular season inJerusalem Haifa New York London
In addition to numerous cinema houses there are a number of fine theaters. Habimah, the national Hebrew theater, is reputed to be one of the finest stock companies in the world. Its stage direction and sets are spoken of with admiration wherever acting is professionally known. The workers too have their own theater, said to be professionally superb, called the Ohel; and there is a famous children's theater, the Theation Layelodem, where children are both the actors and audience.
Innumerable art exhibitions are continually showing, a thing unheard of in the moribund life of the Near East before the coming of the Zionists. Literature also flourishes. In Tel Aviv alone are ten publishing houses, some of them prosperous. Palestine Jewry was responsible for 94% of all the books published on both sides of theJordan River in 1935. This is the astounding country where grimy-handed peasants read Hegel and Strindberg.
All told there are some three hundred organizations, societies, and associations of a cultural and social character. In science, too, the Hebrew genius now shines directly on its own. The Daniel Sieff Research Institute at Rehovoth is equipped with the most delicate modern instruments; its experiments are watched by chemists all over the world. And of the Hebrew University
189 "THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE"
"It is remarkable to find on the fringe of Asia a university which maintains the highest standards of Western scholarship."
The conventional neuroticism which marks so strongly the beleaguered Jews of Europe is not seen here. These people are almost provincial, and certainly without complexes. A comparison of the incidence of insanity, said to be higher generally among Jews than in the surrounding populations, is startling. The average insanity for all the races of the world is 300-400 per hundred thousand; while among Palestine
The speech of these people is a lyrical Old-Testament Hebrew. Here in the old land of miracles, the language of the Lord Jehovah and of the Seminarists, dead and inert so long, felt the fire of Jewish rebirth breathed into it and is now the everyday tongue of the people. 8 Love for the ancient language is so fierce that even shopkeepers will pretend ignorance of other tongues and will allow a customer to walk out rather than answer him in Yiddish. 9 The only exception to this rule in Palestine Poland Warsaw Palestine
Going Hebrew is not a fad — it is an irresistible compulsion. InPalestine
The Scriptures and Prophets have also inspired the new-come nomenclature for the
190 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
places they have occupied. The first of the new garden suburbs inJerusalem Jerusalem
As in Tel Aviv, Jewish holidays and festivals of Old Testament times have sprung into life wherever these people live. In the settlements they are welcomed in a riot of flowers, flags, ceremony, and music and dancing. The dead hand of religious formalism has departed from them and they have become stirring national holidays, declaring in sentiment and form, the re-won self-respect of the Jew.
With every year that passes, admits the 1936 Royal Commission, "the contrast between this intensely democratic and highly organized modern community and the old-fashioned Arab world around it grows sharper," conceding that nowhere in the world is the spirit of nationalism "more intense than among the Jews in Palestine Palestine
All this lively reborn life is reflected in the growth of the Hebrew press, truly astonishing for such a small community. Davar, the largest daily, has a circulation of some twenty-five thousand; followed by Ha’aretz y with some twenty thousand; and a number of other dailies, together with many weekly publications, trade journals, and miscellaneous publications.
191 "THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE"
Jewish Palestine Israel
in the Administration. Actually the Government considers its existence merely as one of those concessions commonly made to the amenities, not consequent in practice. Hence the Jewish National Assembly is restricted in its external dealings to wordy
memoranda of protest over decrees and legislation considered contrary to Jewish interests. In internal Jewish affairs, however, it is potent and invaluable. Representing the increasing solidarity ofPalestine
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