THE RAPE OF PALESTINE - CHAPTER III BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS pages 191-230 - Draiman

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE 

CHAPTER III

BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS

THE HOLY LAND AND WHITEHALL

The largest and most expertly conducted business in the history of man is the British Empire. The nerve center and business office of that Empire is the section called Whitehall, in London, where sit the all-powerful permanent officials. Theirs is the first, and usually the last, word in directing the line of policy by which every part of that gigantic enterprise is controlled.

Virtually independent of the electorate, these impregnable bureaucracies function magnificently, undisturbed by the hot and cold breath of political change. They are ruled by men who have been trained from boyhood into the tradition of the Empire. To these men the slightest material advantage to Imperial business comes first, irrespective of humanist philosophies and social codes. They are smug, clever and loyal. They avoid the limelight — but their power is immense.

Among the men who really rule England is Sir Robert Vansittart, head of the Foreign Office and perhaps the most powerful personage in the British Empire — a man whose taste for whiskey and intrigue has won him the nickname of "Machiavelli-and-soda." He has under his immediate control the admirable British Secret Service, and dispenses thousands of pounds of the Foreign Office's "secret funds" — money on whose expenditure the law expressly forbids any detailed account to Parliament.

He is also chairman of the 'Coordinating Committee,' the Government's own propaganda bureau, whose function is to influence the news in foreign countries where friendly opinion is important. One of the functions which the 'Coordinating

Committee' has assumed is responsibility for the Arabic broadcasts which go forth regularly from London. 1

Another of these men is Sir Maurice Hankey, an unostentatious functionary who

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combines in his person the post of Secretary to the Cabinet, Secretary to the Privy Council and Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defense. Sir Maurice knows probably more than any other men the closely held secrets of military and political intrigue, the careful long-range planning, by which the future of the Empire is safeguarded. Around these two men are grouped the political agents in direct contact with the omnipotent Intelligence Service, "who are employed to test or to alter public opinion" — a small group which numbers in its ranks some of the best and shrewdest brains in England. 2

Among other powerful figures are Sir Walter Runciman, head of the British Board of Trade, and Sir Warren Fisher, Chief of the Treasury. Behind these Vansittarts and Hankeys are a host of others — shadows behind shadows — men whose direct influence often colors or dictates the actions of their chiefs. More are continually in the course of training, eventually to take over their masters' jobs. The mechanism is self -perpetuating.

The most important of these Bureaus is the Admiralty, recognized as the 'sacred white cow' of British political life. Following closely after the Admiralty in prestige and power are the War and Colonial Offices. A number of lesser Bureaus, immensely powerful in their own right, complete an impregnable web which has rarely failed to enmesh every British Cabinet of modern times.

In the hands of these brilliant functionaries there is no confused muddling of action, but an artfully planned and carefully concealed continuity of objectives. The appearance of clumsy incapacity is part of their technique; but when all the presumed bungling is over, the strategic spots in question are always found to be miraculously occupied by the British, without loss of moral tone. The greatest part of their strategy is dictated by the fact that the Empire has settled down to the point where it exists mostly as a market for English-manufactured goods as well as a source of raw material. Tranquility is the essence of Empire needs under the circumstances — hence these men will make many concessions for it where vital require men will

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make many concessions for it where vital requirements are not at stake. This, plus the private prejudices of the Bureaucrats, is the major basis of British ethics in the business of Empire rule.

Their tactics, developed over centuries of training, are ably devised. They consist in the main of sudden surprise maneuvers covered by a barrage of pious rhetoric. If the resistance is too great and a graceful exit available, they take it. They regard a doughty antagonist with respect. They will treat with him when they discover that more is to be gained in that way. If pushed so far that they cannot return without losing face, their history indicates that they will fight like bulldogs; but if allowed a convenient retreat, as one prominent European states man once said to the writer, "They will give you not only what you want, but fifty percent more."

They have an immense contempt for elected politicians. Parliament they consider a necessary evil. Their method of parrying pointed questions from that body is a marvel in efficiency and insolence.

Among these servants of the Crown there are often decisive and sometimes fundamental differences of opinion. Taken by and large, however, the human content in their computations does not exist. The terms in which they think are well represented in the Chinese opium trade, forced on China by British gunboats. At the Opium Conference held at Geneva in November 1924, these men refused pointblank to yield to the humanitarian demands of the American delegates for termination of this debauching traffic, "on the ground that Britain needed the money," so the Conference came to naught. 3 It was this same cabal and its reactionary allies in 'The City' who were largely responsible for the rise of Adolph Hitler on the Continent, financing him and preparing his way behind the scenes. 4

The vast bulk of these men believe the Balfour Declaration to have been a grave error, and that by it Britain is building a first class Frankenstein in her own backyard. That error they have set out to rectify.

The background for this conviction was erected when English agents returned from

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Russia after Kerensky's fall with the bug of a world Jewish conspiracy chasing itself around in their bonnets. The Chinese Communist Revolution which followed, threatening to eliminate them from their entire privileged position in Asia, almost frightened them out of their skins.

In the path of the Bolshevik eruption came wild reports, and the consuming fear that the established world was about to go up in flames. Riding high on the tide of success, the Communists blatantly announced their plans for ripping the world up by its foundations. Dynamite was in the air throughout Europe and Asia. Radicals had made good their Red promises in Hungary. Italy and Germany were in a nip-and-tuck struggle with disaster. The Far East was infected. Typical of the kind of stuff that was rattling British brains was the Manifesto of the Soviet Congress of Eastern Nations at Baku, September 1920, announcing that "our main blow must be aimed at British Capitalism; though at the same time we want to arouse the working masses of the Near East to hatred. . ."

The English had just finished their sad adventure in Russia where the counter-Revolution was little less than an English war. Some idea of British commitments to the White Russian cause can be gained from Winston Churchill's Memorandum of

September 15, 1919, just before the beginning of Denikin's great retreat; when he observed that up to that date Britain had expended nearly one hundred million pounds. 5 The hatred this contest engendered against Jews carried over into post-war

England as a fixed quotient in all the Government bureaus. The idea soon gained currency that the Russian Revolution was part of the ramifications of a gigantic Jewish plot against the world — and that the Zionists themselves were an important part of this conspiracy. When E. H. Wilcox, a newspaper correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, brought out his book in 191 9, Russia's Ruin, pointing out in a seemingly impartial, reportorial manner the great part played by the Jews in the

Revolution, the identification of Jews with this dangerous movement became complete in the Bureaucratic mind. Over-night the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a crude forgery reputing to be the intimate documentary evidence of the Jewish plot,

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achieved a terrific circulation. 6 Men, otherwise quite sane, believed this fantastic rubbish completely.

A vast literature soon accumulated on the subject. Members of Parliament were flooded with anti-Semitic leaflets and pamphlets daily, in which the term "hidden hand" and other phrases such as "international finance" are developed into an argot used to signify the Jewish conspirators behind the scene. Represented as the modern genius behind this diabolical scheme for world disruption is, remarkably enough, none other than Achad Ha'am; and as Ha'am's "representative," in this strange literature, poor Weizmann is translated into one of the most dangerous men alive.

To suspicious Bureaucrats whose entire training in life lay in quiet conspiracy to gain hidden ends, no part of this sounded like an impossible hypothesis. Antipathy for the Jews assumed such proportions in whole sections of English society and Government as to become pathological. The basis, in fact, of their fanatic support of Hitler was the belief that he was the only man with the genius and courage to fight the vast unseen Jewish octopus which was draining the Empire's life blood and which was credited with instigating every misfortune and misadventure which befell England anywhere.

Some idea of the influence of the Protocols alone can be gained from the critical study made by Benjamin W. Segel, who found that "no recent book of world literature could even in a slight degree compare with the circulation of the Protocols."

The tremendous influence and ready acceptance of this fantasy is hardly understood by Jews. The Zionist leaders, especially, are capable of having this stuff swirling all around their heads without being aware of it. When a few years ago the writer showed it to one of them, he airily dismissed the whole business as sounding "likeAlice in Wonderland."

Riddling the Bureaucratic mentality also was a strong, though not properly recognized neo-Pagan movement, borrowed from their liaison with the Germans. To these groups many of the important officials of the various Bureaus belong. A

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partiallarly influential group meets in offices in the Temple off Fleet Street and is said to be headed by one of the most important peers and barristers in England. It was this group which Alfred Rosenberg visited with Count Herbert Bismarck in 1933 on the all-important Nazi mission which was seeking desperately needed British support. Its meetings and peculiar occult practices are semi-secret in view of the station occupied by a great part of its followers. Loosely organized, it is called "The Mystery" after the German "Mysterikon" of Lans von Lebenfels. Part of its philosophy is the theory propagated throughout official England that the secret meaning of the Book of Job is that the Jewish race is the result of the mating of a Semitic tribe and apes.

Official London became a hotbed of anti-Semitism, where the feeling was no less venomous by reason of being covert. The 'world Jewish plot* remained the implement by which Zionists were baited in club and salon, those important centers of English political influence, as well as within the sacred precincts of 'The City' itself. Lord Lloyd, former High Commissioner of Egypt, expressed the inward fear agitating the English minds when he stated that Jewish immigration was turning Palestine into "a springboard of Bolshevism in the Near East." 7 Innumerable meetings, semi-official in character, were told of the extreme danger lying in wait for the Empire and assured that "Communism was alien to the Arab."

The embryo of English Arabophilia reached back all the way to the period of peace negotiations. Englishmen were speaking for all the varied Arab races to Englishmen in London. In the agreements for the creation of Arab States, McMahon had included this sentence throughout: "It is understood that the Arabs have decided to seek the advice and guidance of Great Britain only, and that such European advisers and officials as may be required for the formation of a sound form of administration will be British." Englishmen thus found themselves regimenting their own self-interest as an Imperialist power, acting for groups of colorful tribesmen who rained all the blessings of Allah on their heads with unctuous correctness.

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It was a nice feeling and it had its physical rewards in the immense resources of the Arabian Peninsula, seemingly wide open to exclusive British exploitation. When the British eventually came up against another group, the Jews, who had social theories, spoke English and proposed to represent themselves in negotiations, they were thoroughly annoyed.

In London, the Palestine Administration, supporting its subversive efforts with Jewish tax money, lent its entire force to a campaign making the Arabs out to be an honest, picturesque folk whose patrimony was being stolen by an invading army of Bolshevik Jews. Arab 'commissions' with the tacit backing and open advice of Palestine officials, pilgrim aged to London regularly, walked the streets in their dignified flowing robes and played their roles as they had been coached.

Judeo-phobes and anti-Bolsheviks began to discover that the Arab cause was a great and noble one. They formed themselves into formidable committees in and out of Parliament. Powerful figures such as Sir Henry Page-Croft, Sir Arnold Wilson, Lord Sydenham and Lord Lamington associated themselves actively with the stage management of the Arab campaign for public sympathy. Other still more powerful figures operated from the shadows, telling the Arabs what to say, formulating their demands and maneuvering their case. Lord Eustace Percy stated the situation in Parliament, July 4, 1922, declaring that "certain Englishmen — who do not like the Zionist policy . . . have inspired them [the Arabs] with certain ideas that they never dreamt of before, and have supplied this Arab delegation with arguments." Arabs were made to say meaningfully that "Communism is alien to our religion, our principles and our conscience." Early Arab memoranda point out in staged horror

to the Government that "the prevalent conditions of the Jewish immigrants are a very fertile medium for the propagation of Communistic principles not only among Jews, but also among Arabs." 8

Certainly, an anti-Zionist campaign of this power and scope is far beyond the known strength of the Palestine Arabs. Meeting with little counteraction from the Zionists, it has affected many divergent sections of opinion. Ironically enough, the Independent

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Labor Party announces through its chairman, Archibald Fenner Brockway that "the Balfour Declaration was issued in order to win the support of Jewish Capitalism; that in itself is sufficient reason for our opposition to it." 9 The Communists, as expected, are categorically opposed to Zionism in any form or shape. Their only Member of Parliament, William Gallacher, squarely asserted during the 1936 riots that "if ever a people were justified in making a protest and in making a demonstration in order to get justice, it is the Arab people in Palestine. . . I view with growing disgust the hypocrisy of the position when I hear high moral concern and great regard for the Jews being expressed in some quarters." 10

The most active opponents of the Zionists are in the Admiralty, which has its eye on the strategically importance of Palestine to the Empire. For years it is said to have employed various propagandists and organizing experts on anti-Zionist work. The Colonial and Foreign offices also utilize agents for a similar purpose. According to a detailed statement supplied the writer by an American whose intimate knowledge of English anti-Semitic activity is unquestionable, the business of these people is to organize the known anti-Semites in and out of the Government for a concerted assault on the Zionist position. Supported by their allies in the Departments, these people circulate through the drawing rooms and clubs, cultivate the secretaries of prominent men and weave their web wherever influence counts.

Through the mediation of these Bureaus, anti-Zionist propaganda has become an integral part of the efficient publicity service with which the British Government advances its views all over the world. The greatest part of this concentration of effort is in America. Just as English anti-Semitism stems largely from White Russian sources, so the present propaganda in America is heavily influenced fromLondon with the hope of immobilizing the Jewish demand forPalestine. British officialdom is making a thorough job of presenting the Arab case wherever public opinion is important. They were even able to secure an appointment to lecture in Columbia University for the Mufti's assistant, George Antonious, a venomous Jew-baiter whose

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very name sends a shiver down the back of the Palestine Jews. In adroitly-managed liaison with American anti-Semitic elements, the anti-Zionist campaign is persistently and expertly implemented. Its literature, distributed in ton lots in the large cities, is heavy with neo-Pagan coloring. A sample is its virtuous announcement that "the Jewish claim to Palestine rests on a religious-Biblical dogma which is not binding on those who cannot accept it by reason of a different belief. . . These Jewish claims have been reinforced by many Christians who have been influenced by the Bible — a book necessarily favorable to the Jewish people."

Actuated by the permanent officials, the full force of the British Government has been thrown in back of the anti-Zionist campaign. Its effect is seen in Turkey and even in faraway Japan, where Zionists are suddenly singled out for persecution and their movement all but declared illegal. How enormous and persistent this pressure is on the surrounding countries and governments of theNear East we shall shortly discover. The strength of this determined animosity is spot-lighted by London's insistence that Palestine be excluded from the sphere of operations of the Refugee Commission presided over by MacDonald in 1936 — certainly as sardonic a commentary on England's interpretation of her word as could be imagined.

There are of course other and more respectable reasons which activate London's attitude. One is the repugnance with which a certain section of British opinion views Palestine's transformation into a prosperous, modern community. This group would prefer to keep the Holy Land under a glass case — a perpetual survivor of the tourist East. But whatever the reason, the factual result is tersely given by Colonel Meinertzhagen. 11 Speaking February 9, 1938, he coldly asserted that "Arab opposition to Zionism is nursed and encouraged by anti-Zionist views not only in Palestine, but inWhitehall and Westminster. . . Anti-Zionist officials in Palestine andLondon never gave the Jewish homeland experiment a chance to succeed."

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THE JEWISH NUISANCE

There is no lack of evidence of the dislike held by the Palestine Administration for Jews. The essentially pro-British propaganda of the World Zionist Organization is read by the Yishuv with its tongue in its cheek — understood for what it is, a sagacious part of the Zionist money-raising machinery. The Vaad Leumi, occasionally provoked enough to forget the conditioning restraint placed on it by its financial patron, the Jewish Agency, has sometimes spoken its mind with great clarity as in its 1929 Memorandum to the League charging that the whole continuity of spoliation, riots and 'Commissions,' was "the inevitable consequence of a policy of opposition to the Jewish National Home" which the Administration had "been pursuing for years." 

There can be little question that the prevailing sentiment of the Government of Palestine is a vigorous offshoot of that section ofLondon City opinion which is pro-Nazi. There is as little doubt that the controlling factor in this sentiment is a deep-rooted anti-Semitism.

The monist ferocity of anti-Semites is too well known to require added description. The structure of the British bureaus lends itself admirably to maneuvering by a small cabal of determined political adventurers, and the anti-Semitic group has not been remiss in utilizing every possible avenue for placing its own 'reliable' creatures in the Holy Land service. They tried desperately at one time to secure the appointment of General Michael O'Dwyer as High Commissioner, and came close enough to it to make the Jews shudder. O'Dwyer, said to believe religiously in the existence of the great 'international Jewish conspiracy,' is the man reputed to have shot six hundred

Indians in cold blood, and made the others at Amritsar crawl half a mile on their bellies in the dust as a symbol of their submission.

These men want to conduct legally, under the protection of the British flag in Palestine, a systematic hatred of Jews. They are heavily hampered by the existence in

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Commons of individuals who are far from agreeable to this point of view; Hence they wear such a mask of Christian benefaction as they can under the circumstances, and attempt to justify their acts constantly by principle. Wedgwood contemptuously refers to this type of Crown servant as "the ordinary narrow-minded, half-bred Englishman who feels about Jews just as his counterpart Herr Hitler does."

The pagan mentality is also much in evidence in the Holy Land Service if one may judge from the published remarks of C. R. Ashbee, Civic Adviser to the City of Jerusalem. In his volume, A Palestine Notebook, he writes that "the most fanatical people in theHoly City are the Roman Catholics. . . The Jews run them a near second. The Muslims being tolerant in religious matters are hand in glove with the free-thinking English."

This official of the New Jerusalem continues: "One still sees the Christ type in the streets here, and it is usually the Jew who has it. . . Jesus Christ, if he ever existed at all, was a Syrian and he's still here in Jerusalem; he won't enlist, he is perverse, tiresome, and a thorn in the side of any government. . ."

One of the early reasons contributing to this feeling against Jews was the unscrupulous propaganda of the German-Turkish agents, enraged by the deflection of the Zionists. Originally intended to promote anti-British incitement, these canards found the sympathetic ear of the English authorities on the spot, who for quite other reasons were opposed to the Jews.

Among the grudges held against the Jew was the claim that he was clannish and had behaved with abominable inhospitality when the British first arrived. The newcomers were lonely and without their wives, a condition often remedied by Arab sheikhs who, considering that women do not possess a soul, had long made it a practice to turn over a female of the household to a favored overnight guest. War-weary English officers appreciated the soft inertia, slumberous music and polished deference shown them by their Arab hosts ; while the inexplicable Jews had vulgarly continued to toil in their fields and pore over their interminable blueprints. "Whatever their station in

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life,” says Horace Samuel, "and whatever the angle of contact, the Arabs exhibited invariably far better manners than did the Jews." 12 They were picturesque and exotic, in striking contrast to the Zionists whose rolled shirt-sleeves and incessant drive made the colorful indolence of their neighbors seem almost an enchanting relief.

On the whole the Jew proved quite the most desperately impossible human being to govern that ever drove an annoyed bureaucrat to distraction. He was worse than the Afridis who took to the mountains and shot off their rusty rifles; even worse than that patience-trying creature, the Hindu, who calmly sat down on his brown haunches and refused to recognize that the English existed.

The Jews first looked on the all-but-sacred Crown Colony Code, the provincial's Bible, with disrespect. Feeling that the country was theirs by solemnly ratified international agreement, they chafed impatiently at its interminable red tape and officiousness and often expressed their annoyance in no uncertain terms. Britishers used to the languor of Timbuctu and Belize, who suddenly found their snobbish hauteur deflated by even common Jewish workingmen who did not know the word 'native' as applied to themselves, sat back in their chairs unpleasantly puzzled. The tempo of activity these Jews set was perpetually ruffling to officials who wanted to enjoy their jobs in peace. They did not warm to the determined intellectuals who presented argumentative petitions when their plans were balked. They were aghast at the grimy-knuckled men who did not hesitate to invade the sacred sanctums of officialdom in their shirtsleeves; men of high energy and courage, whose manners were often bad and who sometimes developed antagonism by their very presence. Here was an enigma defying previous experience, a charade of new values which the Colonial official, recruited from the aloofness of the British manor or the worse officiousness of London tenement, could neither understand nor relish. "They almost forgot the difference between themselves and their employers," said Sir Ronald Storrs. "My first chauffeur was a Jew ... he was an excellent driver, but it never

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occurred to him to brush me down after I got out of the car. I stood it for three months and then I engaged an Arab chauffeur in his stead."

Even more galling, the Jewish spokesmen, product of an ethnos incalculably different from anything that makes an English Colonial, left the impression that they considered themselves a higher order of humanity. They brought means, culture and capacity with them, and a typically Jewish point of view that was apt to forget that an Inspector was not necessarily an ass because he had not read Turgenieff and had no taste for classical music.

A certain insight into this matter was given by Mr. Spicer, Chief of Palestine Police, in reply to the question, "Why are you all against the Jews?" Spicer, decent as Colonial officials go, but stolid and unimaginative, replied obligingly: "Look 'ere now, there's many reasons. The bloomin' h'Arabs are h'easier to 'andle. Now you take the h'Arabs when they want something. A crowd will gather in front of my 'ouse, looking fierce and shaking their blasted clubs, and maybe bryke a window.

Now w'ot do h'l do ! H'l tykes me military 'at, puts it on me 'ead, and walks outside. I tyke out a cigarette, fix it slowly in the holder, flick the ashes off with a little finger — so ! And h'l finally sye in an even voice : 'See 'ere you beggars, what's the

damn meaning of all this ! Go 'ome ! ' And they go 'ome.

"Now w'ot do the Jews do! When they want something, they call h'up the day before for an appointment. Then three distinguished lawyers come in on me with their arms full of lawbooks to prove their bloomin' case. Hell, you know h'l don't know anything about law."

Certainly a major factor was the bristling hostility to Communism, which had been built in the gentile mind into something closely approximating a Jewish phenomenon. To Officialdom the new Jews coming to the Holy Land were nothing but the vanguard of Bolshevism, arch-enemy of everything British. In Palestine was a labor movement headed by hard-working, grimy-handed men who had read Karl Marx. These men were vague pinks, of the kind found in the English Labor Party, whose

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Socialism consisted mostly of words. Actually there were only some five hundred known Communists in the entire country, most of whom were Arabs, and all of them lock-stock-and-barrel against the Zionist experiment. But these were fine points past the ken of uniformed officials who, constitutionally unable to distinguish between the various brands of Marxism, viewed anything remotely touched by it with dark suspicion.

What disturbed them principally were a few small farm settlements called Kvutzoth, organized, like the Christian Hutterites in the United States, on a communal basis. The Kvutzoth members pretended to be advanced thinkers, looked on religion as a remnant of the Dark Ages, and fought against religious registration of marriage, and ploughed on the Sabbath. Beyond this they were hard-working people who slaved under the hot sun from daybreak to nightfall. The total number of adults in all these collectives at no time numbered more than three thousand, but their activities were looked on with a tolerant eye by the Jewish Agency, bowing to the thumb pressure of the socialist General Federation of Labor. Moreover, they were settled on land owned by the Jewish National Fund, and their buildings financed from the same source. This was deadly ammunition in the hands of Zionism's enemies, handing over the Jewish National Movement for crucifixion on a cross of Marxism. The Arab High Commission of 1923 does not hesitate to describe the Kvutzoth as "typical examples of Communistic villages in Red Russia," adding that "had these conditions been restricted to Jewish colonies this would have been quite a Jewish affair, but we find that the infectious Bolshevik disease is penetrating day by day into the Arab peasantry." This kind of propaganda had an inestimable affect on the bureaucrats in London. It made the rounds of British officialdom, even officers friendly to Zionism surveying it with knitted brows. Up to today it runs like a binding thread through the entire British attitude.

There can be little question that there has finally grown up among His Majesty's officials in Palestine an ingrained aversion to Jews, rendered almost ferocious by the struggle to hold these 'unsavory foreigners' in their place. Even as open-minded an

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official as Broadhurst refers to "the notorious Balfour Declaration." 13 It would be difficult in fact to find anywhere a group of men as incapable of assistance or understanding to such a project as the Jewish National Home as are quartered under the roof of the Palestine Administration. Without question they regard themselves as under some sort of queer duty to lead a stealthy filibuster against the very policy they were commissioned to carry through. No one even on speaking terms with the facts can doubt that the British and Jews in Palestine are lined up, like medieval Norman and Saxon, on two sides of the political, social and economic fence. "I could not help noticing," says Broadhurst pointedly, "that when British officials attend any Jewish social function they beat a retreat at the first opportune moment." 14

The American minister, John Haynes Holmes, visiting the Holy Landin 1929, found an invincible prejudice against Jews among the Crown officials. These men, he relates, "talked of the Zionist movement with impatience, frequently with contempt, and always with the suggestion that they would be ineffably relieved, if not actually pleased, if the whole thing would only blow up and disappear." 15 The English writer, Beverley Nichols, paints an identical picture, saying, "I had not been in Jerusalem for a week before I realized very clearly in which direction lay the sympathies of the majority of the English community. They were pro-Arab. Some from a vague sense of 'justice/ some from very clearly defined views of Imperial policy, and some because they were frankly anti-Semitic." 16 This whole pattern of dislike is aptly shown in trifling provocations, as the alteration in 1931 when Nathan Straus Street in Jerusalemwas given the hated name of Chancellor. Ashbee epitomizes much of this feeling. He finds "these Jews of the Holy City even worse than their brethren of White chapel." 17 The policy of the Balfour Declaration, which he was appointed to implement, he discovers "is an unjust policy . . . dangerous to civilization." 18

Farrago, covering the 1936 riots, describes the wives of highly placed British officials

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openly carrying on propaganda for the Arab cause among the newspaper correspondents. Even the Chief Secretary of the Government, Hawthorn Hall, an official ranking next to the High Commissioner, is found advising French Journalists to read the anti-Semitic Arab press if they want to get at the true facts of thePalestine situation. 19 A wave of hatred as devastating as this has many little eddies; nor have the enlisted men escaped its clutch. This jingle, popular with the Palestine army under General Dill, speaks volumes:

"Arab! Don't shoot me

Shoot the man behind the tree.

He is a treacherous Jew

I am an Englishman true.

Arab! Don't shoot me

Shoot the man behind the tree."

A considerable proportion of His Majesty's servants in Palestine, end up as accomplished anti-Zionist agitators in London. To understand the ease with which the transition is made, one has only to read the pages of the Arab propaganda sheet, Palestine and Transjordan, and then the letters written by Sir John Chancellor inviting various individuals in the Government to subscribe money for the upkeep of this "weekly paper in English to express the British point of view." 20

There is not the slightest doubt that the Zionists are faced in Palestine by a cynically hostile Guardian, who in the very nature of events must sooner or later succeed in grinding their movement to a pulp. It is in fact hard to conceive how, in a modern world, any colonization enterprise can be conducted successfully when it must contend with the active hatred of an overlord who sets immigration conditions, tariff rates, taxes, and regulates by fiat every economic and political condition under which the new settlers must live.

Zionist publicity has proven itself adept at concealing this ugly situation. Colonel Wedgwood visiting the country in 1927 was utterly astonished to hear at first hand the bitter feeling of the Jewish settlers. He had been under the impression that they were enraptured with the English Administration.

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Only old Menachem Ussishkin among the Zionists has dared to speak his mind. With blunt candor he declared that "from the start it was clear that the British officials in Palestine were against us. The entire Arab opposition to the Jewish National Home was 'made at the Government House.' "21

Dr. John Haynes Holmes puts the matter in a nutshell when he says : "It may well be discovered, before the tale is done, that the English conquest of Palestine, and the English Government of Palestine under the Mandate, constitute together the greatest tragedy that ever befell the Zionist movement." 22

'RULE BRITANNIA!'

Weizmann had tartly informed the Twelfth Zionist Congress: "If you think we made ourselves the agents of English politics in the Near East, you have the wrong idea. . . If you were to ask any British Imperialist today whether Palestine is a necessity for them toward their Imperialistic ends, you will hear as the answer a flat 'no.' "

This, however, was far from the opinion of the gentlemen inWestminster and Whitehall. They saw with hungry eyes that this little territory had rapidly become the "key to great oil deposits, to regions of vital value to Great Britain. Its loss by the British Empire might be fatal to its interests in India, in Egypt, and in the Suez Canal Zone." 23 They saw also that between Jewish and British interests inPalestine there lay basic, and from their viewpoint, unbridgeable, contradictions.

With grim realism these men understood what Jewish politicians were too naive to grasp, that there was no struggle between Jews and Arabs, but actually an undeclared state of war between the Zionists and His Britannic Majesty's Government for possession of this vital area.

It was disconcertingly plain that if the Zionists put up a smart fight for their patrimony the English would find themselves in parentheses.Palestine was not a British colony but an area in the process of becoming an independent state, handed over to the transient guardianship of a Mandatory by consent of the Jews. It was in

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this none too reassuring olio of facts that British policy in Palestinehad its raison d'etre. If need be they could occupy Palestine on the same principle of c J f y suis, fy reste* 24 by which they had held on to Egypt. 25 But a Great Britain faced with a world of enemies, and which was loudly demanding international sanctions against covenant-breaking nations like Japan and Italy, had to keep face. It must achieve its ends by a silently progressive destruction of the legal bases on which the Zionist framework rested. Understanding this, one understands the dissembling, the artificially created problems and the covering cloak of platitudes which mark the British reign in Palestine. Then, what must be otherwise merely an inexplicably shabby series of mean-spirited acts against a defenseless people begins to make some pattern of sense.

In 1875 Disraeli got the Suez Canal for England with money advanced by the Rothschild’s, literally muscling his nation in as the major shareholder. The canal made British control of Egyptinevitable. Since that time, the King's subjects have been taught that the lifeline of the Empire runs through Suez. The Admiralty has always held doggedly to the dictum that this artery must be dominated by Britain at all costs. Suez reverts to the Egyptian Government when the Canal Company's concession expires in 1969. Still more disturbing, the Egyptian Nationalists forced Londonto sign a new treaty in 1936, under which Britain troops will have to evacuate Alexandria and Cairo in eight years.

These changing conditions leave the British Army, quartered in theCanal Zone, without any hinterland as a base. Palestine thus becomes an essential bulwark for an otherwise precariously situated army. Accenting this condition is the presence of the

Italians on the newly acquired Island of Doumeirah in the Red Sea, their guns mounted menacingly right athwart the Imperial line of communications. On the land side Italy holds an impregnable position in Ethiopia. Under her stimulation, Egypt grows daily more restless. Germany has once more turned her face toward the East, and is reviving Bismarck's Drang nach Osten policy. Though at this moment she pays court to England in the hope of winning its neutrality while Hitler is establishing his

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domination in Europe, ultimate German colonial aims at the expense of the British Empire are unconcealed. The old objective of the Czars, dreaded by Englishmen for a hundred years, has been finally gained by the Soviets. At the Montreux Conference in 1936, despite anything His Majesty's representatives could do about it, Turkeyfortified the Straits and allowed the Northern Muscovite Bear permission to send her fleets through to the Mediterranean. Thus the danger of being outflanked both by land and sea looms up more vividly real with each passing month. In the Far East, Japan openly challenges Britain not only for dominance in China but throughout the East. Under Japanese stimulation the tide against the white man rises inexorably in Asia. Siam and Persia are visibly anti-British in sentiment, and the volcano of India smolders with ominous portent.

Thoroughly alarmed, Great Britain is feverishly rearming. She is straining every sinew and all her resources to meet the savage attack which she knows must sooner or later be made on her.

The chain of great naval bases reaching from Gibraltar to Singaporeand Hong-Kong bears witness to the sharp attention paid by British statesmen to control of the trade route to India. If this were cut,Britain would be dead of starvation within six weeks. 26 Far from being self-supporting, England produces only about three-fifths of the food she requires and about twenty percent of the raw materials needed in her manufactures. Roughly, forty percent of her commerce lies in export trade.

The Mediterranean is the principal trade route to all British Dominions except Canada, and since her supremacy there has been challenged it assumes greater significance in British eyes than ever before. Its importance may be judged from Admiralty figures, showing an annual value with India of £80,000,000; Australia, £50,000,000; and China, £26,000,000. The center of gravity in international affairs, says Sidebotham, is "no longer Stresa orDanzig, but Haifa." 27

Haifa harbor has become the most important stronghold in theMediterranean. It is

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incomparably better than that of Alexandria, which has now become difficult for large water vessels due to the shifting of the channel. The quarrel with Mussolini over Ethiopia demonstrated the untenability of the old naval depot at Malta, which is now to be closed up and transferred to Haifa, slated to be the permanent station for the Mediterranean fleet. Haifa has hence become a weighty matter of empire, comparable only in strategic significance with the new gigantic Singapore base.

This port is moreover the terminus of the great oil line through which the enormous stream of Mosul oil is transported to the sea. 28 This factor becomes overwhelmingly important in light of the fact that less than six percent of all fuel oil and gasoline consumed in the United Kingdom originates in the Empire. With the British fleet modernized so that it depends on fuel oil exclusively, has risen the Admiralty's demand that Zionism be halted altogether and Palestine fenced off into a wholly British preserve. The English blueprint envisages a parallel pipeline to run from Haifa to the Mosul fields; and another conduit to carry the Anglo-Iranian oil from the Persian Gulf to eitherHaifa or Aqaba.

Palestine today holds the key position for all air routes betweenBritain and the East, and in view of the uncertainties in Egypt, is a dominant factor in the development of air routes to Africa. It has become a vital link in the whole British chain of strategy. Desperately, as the open question arises as to the relative efficiency of dreadnaughts and airships, Britain is seeking transcontinental sovereignty of the air.

London also plans to supplement the water route to India by a system of motor roads, of which Haifa will be the western terminus; and by a magnificent railway system, connecting all the important British possessions in the old world like a girdle.

The defeat of Germany and Turkey during the Great War removed the last physical obstacles to this grandiose scheme. The railway is to go from Haifa to Baghdad, thence to the Persian Gulf, connecting with British-controlled Port Fuad and the India line. At Haifa again, it connects with the Cape to Cairo Railway by way of Kantara,

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making Haifa the apex of a tremendous triangle whose other extremes are at Cape- town and Calcutta. One arm is to go fromHaifa to Damascus via Iraq, thus maintaining an a priori grip on Syriain case the French are forced out and the Italians attempt to take their place. Another branch is to reach from Haifa to Aqaba, providing an alternative land route between the two great seas.

If Haifa is rapidly becoming the key to the Orient, Aqaba, on the Red Sea is potentially of like importance. Its sheltered waters are ideal for a seaplane base, while the high mesa which overlooks it provides the finest natural aerodrome in the world.

Fifty airplanes could take off simultaneously on this plateau. Plans are already actively being formulated for the digging of a new canal to supplement Suez, to stretch from Aqaba to Gaza,* This would relieve Britain of the fear of the water route reverting to Egypt, and would give her a virtually impregnable line of communications, making her master of the old world.

Bearing heavily on English attitudes is still another factor of vast importance — the presence in the Dead Sea of unlimited amounts of potash and other chemicals, valuable in peace and absolutely essential in war. Palestine is England's only source of this material. Until the Dead Sea development materialized, the Germans held a practical monopoly on potash, placing the Allied Powers in a serious predicament during the World War.

To the official mind, it became pressingly evident that some pretext for permanent occupation of this indispensable area had to be found. One thing was certain: England could never permit Palestine to come under the rule of any other country. Even more dubious in the Bureaucratic mind was the possibility of an independent Jewish State, which, being free to contract alliances with foreign powers, could conceivably make common cause with the Empire's foes in the unpredictable future.

These officials look askance at the presence here of a large, intelligent, modern population whose reaction in any crisis might involve an obstinate consideration of its own needs and welfare; and which might under able leaders extend its hegemony

of interests to cut through the indolent Arabic countries like a knife through so much

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cheese, perhaps even challenging British supremacy over Egyptitself. They believe that Palestine can be held much more comfortably for Imperial purposes, without a Jewish Homeland, with a native population completely dependent on Britain for financial and political support.

The pioneering energy shown by the Zionists has also alarmedLondon lest she should be nursing a new Japan in Western Asia, who, sooner than was pleasant to contemplate, would go into active competition for the all-important markets of Africa and the Orient. They dread the possibility that an industrialized Jewish Palestine would form the spearhead for an economic bloc of Near Eastern countries, ruining British position completely by an enlargement of already conflicting interests. They uncomfortably remember that in 19 14 India was importing seventy-five percent of its cotton textiles from Great Britain. By 1934 Indian capital had built enough domestic mills to supply seventy-five percent of the textiles the country needed, Japan gobbling up more than half of the remaining business. London is determined to forestall industrialization in Asiawherever it can, and is much more interested in maintaining the old conditions. 29

The British know that the Jew, with his resources and indomitable energy, if encouraged instead of hampered would eventually bring the entire Near East into his sphere of influence; and this possibility is sufficient to keep the gentlemen of

Downing Street from sleeping at night.

A persistent minority of independent British opinion, however, takes a contrary view. On the matter of trade it points out that markets depend also on consuming capacity and that it is to the mother country's advantage to develop the Near East. It points to the increasingly large English export to Palestine following hard on the heels of Jewish industrialization. It draws attention to the compensating trade development following the industrialization ofCanada, Australia and the other Dominions, and it finally rests on the contention that the hand of progress cannot be stopped whetherEngland wills or no.

Such leaders as Lords Snell, Lothian, Tweedsmuir and Cecil hold that the success of Zionism is no less important to Britain than to the Jews, and stress the need for

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developing a loyal population there whose interests would be tied up with those of the English. These men view with disquietude the political instability of the Arab, as well as the growing antagonism toBritain throughout the Muslim world. They believe that a powerful Jewish National Home, holding the Judean fastnesses and the key coastal positions, would be another Gibraltar on the eastern end of the Mediterranean. The English pro-Zionists contend that intelligent Imperial planning demands the driving of a stout Jewish wedge between the Egyptian, Turkish and Arabian Muslims. Mr. L. S. Amery, former Secretary of State for the Colonies, in his book The Forward View states that the introduction of a strong Western force, allied with Britain, into this part of the world, is an absolute Imperial necessity. The great British publicist Herbert Sidebotham writes that "so strong is the argument for Zionism to our own security that if there had been no Zionism readymade to our hand by thousands of years of Jewish suffering, we should have had to invent it." 30 And Lieutenant-Commander Ken worthy asserts that "it is the duty of every British Imperialist to support the Zionist policy in Palestine, which is the only insurance policy for the defense of the Suez Canal."

Among the plans that have been seriously advocated is the scheme for making Palestine a Crown Colony as a prelude to recasting it as a self-governing Dominion. The Seventh Dominion League was formed under the lead of such men as Colonel

Josiah Wedgwood, Sir Martin Conway and Lord Harrington. They maintain that it is absolutely essential for the interests of the British Empire that the Jews realize their ideal of a national home inPalestine, that the burden of military defense for this whole sector would then be minimum "because no nation could attack Palestinewithout shocking the whole world Jewry." 31 While the 1936 riots were going on, the Bureaucrats also, with a wary eye on possibilities in case the original scheme fell through, conducted some inspiring propaganda among Jews towards this end. Leading it in Palestinewas Hawthorn Hall, Chief Secretary of the Palestine Government. The Jewish Farmers Union and certain industrialists agreed eagerly,

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feeling that this plan would eliminate the heartbreaking disabilities from which the country suffers. In sheer weariness, most of the Jewish leaders would have welcomed this solution if any half decent guarantee would have been given them in exchange for their voluntary relinquishment of the Mandate. 

However, a Dominion has certain privileges, as London has found out in its dealings with Canada and South Africa. 32

The bureaucrats did not want the Jews as partners in the Empire if they could avoid it. Expressing this hostility, Joseph F. Broadhurst, long Assistant Inspector General, C.I.D., to the Palestine Government, remarks: "I cannot see that a hetero-generous collection of Jews dumped into a land with no connection with our own would make the best of compatriots. This would never do, and few British people would tolerate such a scheme." 33

While this difference in opinion exists, the vast preponderance of power lies with the anti-Semitic group, which is irrevocably opposed to the Jewish National Home. They are painfully aware that the Mandate was given to fulfill Jewish, not English, needs and thatEngland has no title in Palestine except such right as she can make. Hence they have had to base their politics on Jewish-Arab tension, a policy splendidly successful from their viewpoint, even when a few of the resulting details were highly unpleasant for Britain.

One of the great difficulties they encountered was the increasing pressure of millions of desperate Jews throughout the world who banged on the doors of the country frantically. Here the Bureaucrats were at once presented with the need for much circumspect maneuvering so as to avoid bringing a storm of condemnation down on their heads. Unwilling to drop its pose of decent impartiality in view of the effect it might have on other subject peoples in the Empire, the Government was forced from one impotent artifice to another.

Officialdom is further faced with the fact that in England itself an obvious policy of pledge-breaking would not be popular. British public opinion must be handled with kid gloves. It regards the moral tradition of the nation with reverence, and has been

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known to buck like a wild steer when this was outraged. Both in and out of Parliament there existed, an enormous sympathy for Zionism which could not be dispelled over night. As late as October 1936 a poll on the Palestine situation taken by the anti-Zionist Daily Express showed even here a more than two-to-one majority in favor of the Jews as against the Arabs Whitehall was espousing. In its own literature the Government had acknowledged that outside of Jewry "an overwhelming mass of public opinion would appear to favor Jewish administration in Palestine." 34 This "overwhelming mass of outside opinion" had to be deferred to, and at the same time, broken down.

These uncertainties are the only reasons why they do not annex Sinai to Palestine as part of a final settlement with Egypt. They are playing the safety factor; not feeling sure that their strategy in theHoly Land will be successful and afraid that they may yet, despite all their desperate juggling, be forced to deal with the fact of an independent Jewish State.

The sum total of this situation is certainly rather awkward for the men who sit at the mahogany desks in Whitehall, and calls for smart operating. But they are capable of smart operating. And they are determined to make Western Asia into a British pasturage if they have to turn half of creation upside down in the process.

THE ARAB EMPIRE PROJECT

Many reasons are advanced by the English to the bewildered Zionists to explain their conduct. "We are sorry," they say confidentially. "We would really like to do it, y' know, but we have to be careful of the ninety million Mohammedans in our Empire."

Under examination this hackneyed contention seems pretty thin. The British have only to refer to their own T. E. Lawrence, who termed Pan-Islamism in politics "a fiction." The men of Whitehall are, after all, capable administrators who are not apt to

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forget recent experience in a hurry. They can still remember the war with Turkey when the Mohammedans refused to heed the Ottoman Sultan's call to Holy War against England, and instead united with the Hindus to aid the Christian conqueror. They are also aware of the successful French experience in throwing Feisal, descendant of the Prophet, out of Syria bodily, with the rifles of imported Muslim levies. They know that the Agha Khan, head of the Indian Mohammedans, belongs to the Ishmaelite sect; who are so thoroughly orthodox that they regard the Palestine Muslims as shameless infidels. 35 They also could hardly be unaware that the Hindus, far in the majority inIndia, are more than a counterweight to any possible Muslim reaction; and Hindu leaders have made their cordial sympathy for Zionism clear.

There is, on the whole, more real difference between the various Muslim sects than there is between the beliefs of a modern Englishman and an orthodox Jew from Bess Arabia. Islam itself is more than a creed. It is a complete social system. Originally

it was a simple and understandable faith, full of the spirit of generosity and brotherhood. To the essential democracy it preached it added cannily a list of simple sugary delights, including a Paradisecontaining beautiful and agreeable girls whose virginity miraculously returned to them every morning. Today knowledge of the Faith is everywhere confused with debased moral standards, superstitions and bigoted ignorance.

The powerful Ibn Saud preaches the unity of orthodox Muslims land the exclusion of all other Arabs. His Wahabis adhere literally to the Koran, do not drink or smoke, and consider every technical innovation of our time to be a tool of Satan. They regard all the theological and philosophical speculations which made Arab civilization famous during the Middle Ages, as heresies, to be relentlessly purged. They are prepared for no compromises and consider the North Arabs as Musbreks, unbelievers, who are to be viewed with more intense dislike than even Christians or Jews. The Wahabis consider the wearing of a silk garment or gold ornament to be a sin. They regard the

Prophet Mohammed as just a man and repudiate bitterly the act of other Muslim sects

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in turning him into a supernatural being. The Wahabis look on any built place of worship as being perilously close to idolatry. Only with difficulty were they restrained from destroying in their zeal the beautiful architectural shrines in Mecca and Medina when they drove Hussein out of the Hejaz.

The Wahabis often have threatened an attack on Iraq. Part of the ever-impending Holy War against "unfaithful Muslims" in Transjordan, Iraq, Kowiet and Palestine almost eventuated in March 1928, and was only stopped by a convincing mobilization of British airplanes and armored cars. In Iraq, against the fierce opposition of the predominant Shi' a community, Feisal, who belongs to the Sunna sect, was bombed onto the throne by the British. There has since been continuous trouble of a sort only comparable to the religious hatreds which divided France and Germany after the advent of the Reformation. Numerous and bloody physical clashes occur. The Shi'as, who outnumber the Sunni invaders three-to-one, are suppressed with an iron hand, exiled, imprisoned and their newspapers outlawed. How venomous the feeling is, is shown in the Shi'a protest to the League, praying for remedy from the terrorization they are being subjected to by the "savages brought from the desert" by England. 36

The bogey of a militant Arab racialism is another invention of the ever-resourceful Bureaucratic mind. Lawrence once told Liddell Hart that he had "always been a realist and opportunist in tactics: and Arab unity is a madman's notion." Sir Ronald

Storrs, too, remarks: "Arabism does not exist." 37 And another British authority, Loder, adds: "Arabia is a geographical ex of other Muslim sects press ion and corresponds to no political entity." 38 The very use of the words 'Mohammedanism' and 'nationalism' in the same breath is a contradiction in terms. Racial pride is unknown to Islam. Everyone who confesses Allah is accepted as a brother and equal, whether he be a Negro, Malay or European.

There, moreover, remains a strong identity between sectarianism and dynastic government. Religion and law are so closely identified in Islam that the difference between two sects assumes an important difference between the civil and criminal

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sanctions under which they respectively live. 39 The only way nationalism can be effective in the Near East is by the secularization of religion, from which these people are a long way off.

Arabia is a mass of blood feuds and economic rivalries. There are long drawn-out boundary disputes between the various countries, and the traditional jealousies between the ruling houses, extends fan-shape down the line through the whole host of minor sheikhs, sultans and imams.

Bedouins meeting in strange territory slaughter each other without mercy. Tribesmen are constantly being killed in frontier raids from which not even Palestine and Trans- Jordan are exempt. None of the established Arab governments have been able to put down these constantly recurring conflicts between the tribes. Even under the strong hand of the British, raiding Wahabis slaughtered the wholeTransjordan tribe of Atie in December 1928; and a typical pitched battle was fought between the tribes at Koba near Jerusalem as late as July 1932.

The Syrian author, Ameen Rihani, gives a graphic picture of the general state of affairs in one Arab country, Yemen. The ruling Imam, in order to protect his position, is eternally warring with rebellious clans and tribes. "The twenty-seven years of his reign," says Rihani, "has been a continuous Jihad, actual and political — a chain of wars and truces. Little wonder that hostages are the foundation of the state." Here, too, the Italian observer, Salvatore Aponte, notes that the vast majority of the population are the unwilling subjects of the ruling Zaidis from the hills, "whom they look upon as abominable heretics." 40

In all the Arab countries provincialism is a persistent factor. Syrians employed in the Iraqi Government service, as an instance, are the constant object of agitation aimed at ousting them.

The result of the recent controversy between Turkey and Syria over the Sanjak of Alexandretta (a part of Syria which holds a considerable minority Turkish population) is also illuminating. The Turks declared openly to London, Paris and

Geneva: "We have confidence in France but not in Syria."

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Negotiations between Paris and Ankara, under the auspices of the League, finally ended in the spring of 1938 in a settlement whereby this richest of all Syrian provinces (called by the Arabs "the pearl of the Arab Empire") is to be detached from that country and ultimately handed back to Turkey. The result was hardly what could be expected if pan-Arabism is to be credited with the vitality Londonconcedes to it. The outside Arabs maintained a prudent silence. Not one Arab paper dared to write a single article against Turkey. NoArab State raised its voice in favor of Damascus, and not a single Arab statesman protested directly or indirectly. At the very moment, in fact, when the Syrians were imploring the aid of their Arab brethren, Baghdad organized a triumphal reception in honor of the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had come to Iraq at the head of a large official delegation. 41

None of this prevents the Colonial Office mouthpiece Great Britainand the East from headlining an explosive editorial during the recent riots: "ARABIA AWAKE," asserting that the Arabs, from Morocco toPersia, with a single patriotic voice "are

Implacably resolved to look upon Palestine as a part of Arabia."

The whole plan for a great Federated Arab State reaches back to the tenacious support England gave the Turks before the War. By 1915 the idea gradually emerged of elevating the Arab into the place in English affections that the Turks had so rudely left vacant. It had been the pet scheme of the military clique who came in with Allenby. It was then dropped, suddenly to be revived ten days after General de Bono marched his Italians into Adowa. Slowly the Federation is taking shape as British gold pours into the Near East.

The previous tactics were to keep the Arab rulers at each other's throats. This was handled by a system of agent’s provocateur, politely known as political officers, who represented the Crown and dispensed its largesse in each place and principality.

This method revolves around a system of always having rivals, or powerful opponents, ready to put forward if the existing ruler becomes difficult to handle. The big question in every Arab land is the agreement or treaty with the British, and the

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amount of gold that can be secured. The amazing elasticity and scope of this control system is outlined by Rihani in his book, Around the Coasts of Arabia* 2 "They all have to be satisfied," he comments, "the big chiefs, the litde chiefs and all the chiefs between."

The Arab countries are hardly more than camouflaged English colonies. Iraq, for example, is theoretically independent. But the British maintain troops there and have absolute control over the country's foreign affairs. Under the twenty-year 'treaty' signedOctober 10, 1922, Iraq may appoint no foreign official or adviser without British approval. It provides for a separate agreement covering the employment of British officials in the Iraqi an Government. Another separate agreement gives England a measure of control over Iraq's judicial affairs. The Treaty also stipulates that the British Air Force is to protect Iraq's frontier, putting England in de facto military control. In December 1925, Britain maneuvered theLeague of Nations into position to hand over the Turkish Vilayet of Mosul to Iraq, "provided that the British control over that kingdom were extended for a period of about twenty-five years." 43 Ibn Saud, too, gets a large subsidy, granting adequate favors in return. Among these is a juicy concession to the British-owned Iraq Petroleum Company "extending over the whole Western littoral of Saudi Arabiato a depth inland of one hundred kilometers." 44

Today the official plan involves closing the door to threatened expansion by Italy, making a more or less closely organized unit desirable. Mussolini had been making overtures to the Arabs and was utilizing funds from the Italian Treasury for this purpose. He had set up a powerful broadcasting station at Bari, agitating the Arabs in their own language to throw off the British yoke ; forcing the frightened British to inaugurate competing Arabic broadcasts fromLondon.

Ibn Saud, in exchange for an increase in his subsidy and wider autonomy from direct British rule, agreed to enter the system of pacts, as did Iraq. Then the clique in Whitehall summoned Abdullah of Transjordan to London and set the background for the events which ended in the 1936 Palestine riots. King Ghazi of Iraq is looked on as

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of Iraq is looked on as a weakling and thoroughly undependable; and Abdullah was inserted into the pact system as a check on the ulterior ambitions of Saud whom London distrusts. Abdullah, who once expressed strong anti-British sentiment before

he learned what side his bread was buttered on, is now in high favor with Downing Street as a man of "extraordinary good sense." When during the Ethiopian incident the Mufti decided to balk, it was the ever-pliable Abdullah, rising like an elfin Don

Quixote from his little principality who issued the call to the Jihad against Italy in the name of Islam. As ruler of Transjordan the Emir cuts rather a ludicrous figure, but as King of a reunited TransJordanian-Palestine he becomes a respectable monarch and an ideal counter-balance to the Hejaz Kingdom in the Arabic Federation of the future.

In the formulation of this plan, Abdullah was not to be trusted altogether with Palestine. Strategical sections, including Jerusalemand Haifa, were to be handed over to Britain outright, as was an enclave around Aqaba. The Jews were to be restricted to a tiny coastal area. If they refused to agree, a cantonization plan was favored, thus accomplishing the same result without benefit of international sanction.

The authors of this scheme allowed their imaginations to roam over the possibility of even disengaging North Africa from France andItaly, and already have had their puppets speak in grandiose terms of an allied free Moorish State in North Africa which will fall within the magnetic influence of the free Arab Federation.

All this was fraught with considerable difficulty from the Arab side alone. There had been bad blood between Feisal and his brother Abdullah. The Emir felt that he should have gotten the throne of Iraqafter Feisal's death instead of the boy King Ghazi. Iraq was now ambitious to get part of northern Palestine for an outlet to the sea. The project was also viewed with ill-concealed suspicion by Ibn Saud who wants no strengthening of a rival house ejected by him fromMecca.

Working against time, British agents like Philby, Cox and Peake, Pasha again criss-crossed the desert handing out money and promises right and left. Under pressure,

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pressure, boundary disputes are being speedily settled as this great effort to de-Balkanize the Near East goes forward. In complete liaison, British agents were at work in Teheran and Istanbul to draw these two important powers within the British orbit by inducing them to sign a corollary pact. In response to this fast work, Afghanistan,Iraq, Iran and Turkey came to a treaty of friendship early in February 1936. One leg of the journey was now over. The bringing of Egyptinto this bloc was to follow, as was the Arab Federation into whichPalestine was to be absorbed. Such was the plan. As early as June 11, 1936, Great Britain and the East blatantly announce that "the Arab Federation is being developed . . . under British patronage, on sound lines." At a crucial Cabinet meeting in September of 1936 the English were on the point of declaring the Federation in existence; and were only deterred at the last moment by pointed protest in the American Congress calling attention to the international obligations inherent in the Palestine Mandate and to America's vested interests there.

It is somewhat sardonic to note that during the same period that official British publicist were ballyhooing the right of self-determination as applied to Arabs in Palestine, Britain had grabbed a huge chunk of territory from the Arabs in Southern Arabia. By an Order in Council which became effective April 1, 1937 the British Government arbitrarily annexed to the Empire 111,025 square miles of territory, including some six hundred thousand Arabs of different tribes and complexions. This

area is called the Hadramaut (Yemen), and it was taken by exactly the same methods Italy used in Ethiopia. Completely soured on the tactics of his own Government, Philby writes: "The attempt of Great Britain to curtail the independence of South Arabia necessitates the employment of terrorism which we deplore when it is used by others. That aerial bombing is freely used ... is not denied by the Government." 45 The British also own another slice of Arabia which they annexed shortly after the World War I. This is the colony ofAden which dominates the southern end of the peninsula and looks straight across the Red Sea at Mussolini's legions in East Africa.

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Obviously the vast areas of the Hadramaut and Aden are not to be included in the proposed Arab Confederacy.

Part of Whitehall's strategy lies in an attempt to frighten fellow-Englishmen with the bogey that the Arab was prepared to beBritain's best friend until the ultimate enormity of Zionism was thrust upon him. Actually the British seem to have little to fear here, since the Arabs require the power of English arms if they are to maintain their independence. "Nothing," writes Ernest Main, "could stopTurkey or Persia walking into Iraq tomorrow except the presence ofBritain." 46 The Arab liaison with England is in many ways a more than doubtful value. Turkey, for instance, obstinately regards theMosul area of Iraq as Turkish irredenta territory. Therefore, states Herbert Side-botham, English friendship with the Arabs is more than likely to bring Britain into collision with these countries: "In any case . . . our friendship should be courted by the Arab kings, rather than theirs by us." 47

Pro-Arab propagandists additionally ignore the dark hatred with which the Arab regards all Christians. The Hejaz, country of King Hussein, number one man in this controversy, does not allow a single Christian within its sacred borders.

Lieutenant-Colonel Stafford writes that "at an official reception to the present King of Iraq the usual cheers were followed by cries of 'Down with Britain.' "Article II of Lawrence's Confidential Guide to Newcomers from the British Army states frankly that "the foreigner and Christian is not a popular person in Araby. . . Wave a Sherif in front of you like a banner and hide your own mind and person." 48

Shrewd English observers, unimpressed by bureaucratic fetish, are of the absolute opinion that in the event of a general war the first purpose of the Arabs would be to get rid of Britain, and that Londonis strengthening the very forces which will ultimately be arrayed against her. The English writer Ernest Main mentions, as an augury for the future, that the Arab press solidly supported Italy during the Abyssinian War, making no bones of their intention to blast the English into the sea

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at the first opportunity. 49

In Palestine itself there can be no doubt of the ferocious extent of anti-Jewish sentiment, u but it is all but swallowed up in the sweeping tide of feeling against England." 50 Rasps the Arab newspaper Falastin in its issue of May 19, 1930: "The

Jews lost an opportunity to arrive at an understanding with the Arabs owing to the Jews' obstinacy and blind loyalty to Great Britain." The articles of indictment are numerous: the country is overridden with English officials who draw high salaries and live in luxury, etc. Nor do Muslim doctrines require much outside stimulation to foment a frenzied hatred for the Englishman and all his works. What Muslims really think was plainly stated by Mohammed Ali, supreme Muslim leader of India, addressing the Muslim High Council in Palestine onNovember 23, 1928. "Not the Jews are our enemies," he shouted, "but British Imperialism which aims to seize all Muslim lands."

The British were in fact thoroughly cured of "all-Muslim Congresses" by occurrences at the Congress of December 1931, which the Palestine Government had organized as a weapon against the Zionists. One of the first resolutions it adopted claimed that the highly strategic Hejaz Railway was Wakf (Muslim religious) property which had been stolen by the English, and demanded its return within six months under threat of

an international Mohammedan boycott of British goods.

INTERPRETING THE MANDATE

No matter what opinions British politicians might have once expressed as private individuals, once in office they invariably succumb to the demands of the anti-Zionist permanent officials.

When Malcolm MacDonald became Colonial Secretary he ceased to function as "Weizmann's best friend," just as his father forgot most of his Socialism and all of his Zionism when he became Prime Minister. Winston Churchill made beautiful speeches for the Zionists, but Churchill in office made common cause with the clique

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in the Departments, and issued the crushing document which bears his name. Thomas as a Labor leader, protested unreservedly against the theft of Trans-Jordan, but Thomas as Colonial Secretary lapsed into all the stereotypes of his predecessors. Ormsby-Gore's deep hearty voice had assured the Jaffa Jews that the Balfour Declaration meant the "building up of a Jewish nation in all its various aspects inPalestine." Becoming Colonial Secretary in turn, he discovered that the Declaration embodied "a dual obligation toward Arabs and Jews." What this meant is illuminated in answer to a query from the Permanent Mandates Commission, asking what was being done to implement Article VI of the Mandate regarding close settlement on the land. Ormsby-Gore replied for the King that immigrants were very anxious for land but that the Government had been prevented from granting them any by reason of the other duty "which it owed to the Arab population. In reply to another query he declared in extenuation that "the Arabs objected to the Jews because the latter were much more efficient." Thus this responsible officer of the Crown makes it clear that his Government regards its principal "obligation of honor" under the Mandate to be the protection of the Arabs against Jewish encroachment, a finesse which almost approaches the proportions of genius.

Even the MacDonald Letter, supposedly edited in a tone of good-will toward Zionism, carries the adroit observation that "the Mandatory cannot ignore the existence of differing interests and viewpoints," which it infers will be readily reconciled in a pending understanding between Arabs and Jews; but, quite naturally, "until that is reached, considerations of balance must inevitably enter into the definition of policy." Stripped of concealing verbiage, this simply means that no essential measure in favor of the Jewish Homeland may be effected unless there is an 'understanding,' i.e., if the Arabs agree. If the Arabs object, the measure cannot be carried out. 51

This theory goes a long way beyond any reservation even hinted at in the Mandate. The preamble to that document protects the 'civil and religious rights' of the non-Jewish communities but it nowhere mentions their psychological attitude as a factor

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entitled to annul the purpose for which the Home was conceived. Article VI of the Mandate reads: 'The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration. . ." In a process of hair-splitting that would do credit to fifty Philadelphialawyers, the British concentrated on the word 'position' with a magnifying glass. When the Mandate was issued, the 'position' of the Arabs was that of eighty-eight percent of the population. In 1936 it had shrunk to sixty-six percent, and had therefore been 'prejudiced.' The same logic naturally follows in reference to the professed inability of the Arab to compete in terms of modern civilization, an argument not essentially different from that of European Judeo-phobes, wherever the Nazi racial theory has not sup ravened. It is no new experience for Jews to be barred as immigrants and be ring-fenced in a percentage norm, but it seems far-fetched to believe that the sanction of the Peace Conference was necessary to provide the British Government with the authority so to act.

This whole sapping operation has been accomplished by a series of graduated depredations. Entrusted with complete supervision of the Jewish inheritance, the Bureaucrats were in position to smash it effectively by degrees and still maintain a surface attitude of benevolence. Year by year, under one pretext or another, they managed systematically to illegally curtail Jewish rights under the Mandate and to give that document various reinterpretations, most of which rested on a body of precedent established by themselves. There is scarcely an evasion that was not tried. With great shrewdness the British Palestine Government attempted to transform the Jews, in its official reports, from a national entity to a religious body. They questioned the meaning of the words 'Jewish National Home' and pretended a vast ignorance of the meaning of 'Zionist aspirations.' Ormsby-Gore, then Under-Secretary for the Colonies, was even smart enough to retreat into the queer conception formulated by the Hebrew mystic, Achad Ha'am, thatPalestine was to be a spiritual

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Center for the Jewish people and that "the quality and not the quantity of settlers matters." 52

Like a master magician turning up cards that shouldn't be there, the British went about the business of proving that black was white. An all-important case revolved around a decision by the Magistrate of Tulkarm, who had acquitted one Sherif Shanti of breaking the Fast of Ramadan on the grounds that the old Turkish law under which the defendant was charged was in opposition to Article XV of the Mandate. In a judgment rendered December 16, 1935, the Court of Appeals at Nablus quashed this decision, laying down inter alia "that the Mandate . . . has no juridical value in the courts of the country except so far as its provisions have been expressly incorporated into the Laws of Palestine." This ruling laid the way wide open for the complete destruction of the Mandate itself.

With more than an astute eye to the future, the Jaffa District Court ruled that "a British subject who voluntarily acquired Palestinian citizenship does not thereby lose his British nationality" (June 5, 1934). Until then Britain had wriggled out of acknowledging its alien position in the country by refusing to allow any British Jew to become a citizen of Palestine.

Some of the Mandatory's decisions border on the ludicrous. One solemnly handed down by the Jaffa District Court on May 25, 1928 reversed an ordinance passed by the City Council of Tel Aviv declaring Saturday a legal holiday, as being found contradictory to Article XV of the Mandate "since the Ordinance establishes a sort of discrimination by prohibiting trading on the Sabbath to Jews only."

Until recently, the Government has maintained with fine rectitude that Jewish immigration, keystone to the whole Mandate, must be based on the 'absorptive capacity' of the country, an argument which can hardly be gainsaid, except for the fact that the Mandatory made it dependent on an acute shortage of labor and on a perpetuation of the status quo in industry and agriculture. In practice, this principle, so nice on paper, put the Jews almost in a water-tight box.

Throughout the official reports a stubborn silence is kept on the positive significance

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of Jewish immigration. Reading them one would hardly believe that the dynamic and decisive force in Palestine life emanates from the Jewish element — but rather that the small minority Jewish community was an unending source of embarrassment, friction and trouble.

During the entire period of English occupation, not the slightest step was ever taken to popularize the Mandate among the general body of Arabs. The High Commissioner was never known to invite Jews and Arabs to sit at his table at the same time, a move which might have done much to ameliorate bad feeling. And in the numerous Government schools Zionism was treated as an alien and highly unpleasant phenomenon.

Throughout the years the Administration's reply to questions was "the Government's policy is unchanged." But it was evident that when Britain asserted she would stand by the Mandate, she did not mean Zionism, but rather her right to remain in Palestine indefinitely.

Stripped of all disguise, the fundamental English attitude toward the ward entrusted to their care by the Nations was defined by then Colonial Secretary, Cunliffe-Lister, when he assured a Quaker Committee (June 28, 1934): "I will not permit Palestine to be filled with Jews."

In all this skillfully built design of plot and stratagem the British have had to wind their way through a maze where in one breath it was imperative to hold that the Jews held legal title to Palestine, and in the next, to deny it. This made for a most difficult situation in which anyone less experienced would have bogged down hard; but the Bureaucrats managed to detour the hard places and obviate the rest by simple contrivances which, while shabby in themselves, are admirable for their sheer artfulness and long-range insight.

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

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