THE RAPE OF PALESTINE - part 6

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE - part 6

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

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not apt to 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 Moslem 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 Moslems as shameless infidels .35 They also

could hardly be unaware that the Hindus, far in the majority in

India, are more than a counterweight to any possible Moslem

reaction ; and Hindu leaders have made their cordial sympathy

for Zionism clear .

There is, on the whole, more real difference between the various

Moslem sects than there is between the beliefs of a modern

Englishman and an orthodox Jew from Bessarabia . 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 Paradise containing 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 Moslems

and 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 Musbieks, 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

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of other Moslem sects 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 Moslems"

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 expression

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 asBUREAUCRACY

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sumes an important difference between the civil and criminal

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 Transjordan 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 whole Transjordan 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, "have 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 London concedes to it . The outside

Arabs maintained a prudent silence . Not one Arab paper dared

to write a single article against Turkey . No Arab 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

Britain and the East from headlining an explosive editorial during

the recent riots : "ARABIA AWAKE," asserting that the

Arabs, from Morocco to Persia, 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 agents 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 o f Arabia.42 "They all have to be

satisfied," he comments, "the big chiefs, the little 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' signed October io, 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 Iragian 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 the League 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 Arabia to a depth inland of one hundred kilometres ." 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 from London .

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

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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 Jerusalem

and 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 and Italy, 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 Iraq after 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 from Mecca .

Working against time, British agents like Philby, Cox and

Peake Pasha again criss-crossed the desert handing out money

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and promises right and left . Under 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 Egypt into this bloc was to follow, as was the Arab

Federation into which Palestine was to be absorbed. Such was

the plan. As early as June 11, 1936, Great Britain and the East

blatantly announces that "the Arab Federation is being develveloped

. . . 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 publicists were ballyhooing the right of selfdetermination

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, 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. This is the colony of Aden which dominates

the southern end of the peninsula and looks straight across the

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Red Sea at Mussolini's legions in East Africa . 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 be Britain'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 stop Turkey or Persia walking into Iraq

tomorrow except the presence of Britain ." 46 The Arab liaison

with England is in many ways a more than doubtful value .

Turkey, for instance, obstinately regards the Mosul area of Iraq

as Turkish irredenta territory. Therefore, states Herbert Sidebotham,

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 London is 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

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bones of their intention to blast the English into the sea at the

first opportunity .49

In Palestine itself there can be no doubt of the ferocious extent

of anti-Jewish sentiment, "but it is all but swallowed up in

the sweeping tide of feeling against England." 60 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 Moslem doctrines require much

outside stimulation to foment a frenzied hatred for the Englishman

and all his works. What Moslems really think was plainly

stated by Mohammed Ali, supreme Moslem leader of India, addressing

the Moslem High Council in Palestine on November 23,

1928. "Not the Jews are our enemies," he shouted, "but British

Imperialism which aims to seize all Moslem lands ."

The British were in fact thoroughly cured of "all-Moslem

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

(Moslem 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

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cause with the clique 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 in Palestine."

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 f or land but that

the Government had been prevented from granting them any by

reason o f 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 ."

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 communi ..

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ties but it nowhere mentions their psychological attitude as a

factor 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 Philadelphia lawyers, 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-phobcs, wherever the Nazi racial theory has not supravened.

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 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 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, that Palestine was to be a spiritual center

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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

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the positive significance 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, 1 934) : "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 . 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 "with230

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out distinction of nationality" between the nationals of all States

Members of the League, as in the East Africa Mandate . Suavely,

London replied that "the suggestion appears to His Majesty's

Government to overlook the peculiar conditions existing in Palestine

and especially the great difference in the natures of the

tasks assumed in that country and undertaken by them in South

Africa. . . In order that the policy of establishing in Palestine

a National Home for the Jewish people should be successfully

carried out, it is impracticable to guarantee that equal facilities

for developing the natural resources of the country should be

granted to persons or bodies who may be actuated by other motives

." This in substance was also the reason given to the

French, who were boiling over because their title to the immensely

valuable Dead Sea deposits, carried over as an old Turkish

concession, had been voided by the Palestine authorities .

The Jews were equally useful as an instrument for rejecting

the demands of the Arabs themselves for self-rule, at a time

when Britain felt that it meant their consolidation with Syria

under French influence . With impeccable probity London then

found that "it was impossible to recognize the granting of unqualified

autonomy to the present population of Palestine, since

such an autonomy would imply the right to dispose of the country

by legislative and administrative measures even against the

obligations assumed by the Mandatory," which it asserted are

not to "the present population of Palestine" but to "the much

larger population whose connection with Palestine has been internationally

recognized ."

There was also the fact that in order to get its fingers on

Palestine at all, Britain had acknowledged itself as merely a

temporary agent for the League of Nations . In the earlier days

while the League still had some untested strength, it did not

hesitate to uphold its own authority, and here England was

compelled to use the Jews again as a catspaw . The absolute

control of the Permanent Mandates Commission over mandated

territories was upheld at Geneva on September 27, 1926, after

Sir Austen Chamberlain, British Foreign Secretary, had brought

the matter to issue as to whether the Commission had actual

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jurisdiction or merely the right to criticize and lay down generalities

of policy.

The Mandates Commission did not hesitate at various times to

lock horns with the British Government in no uncertain terms .

Had Zionist leaders themselves played anything but an acquiescent

role, it is quite certain that the League would have supported

them and forced the English into a most difficult position .

"If the matter were looked at impartially from the point of view

of the Mandate as it stood," observed the Commission in 1930,

"the Government's method of encouraging immigration had

been to limit it . . . [and] that the result would be as negative

if an inquiry were made as to the State lands and waste lands on

which the settlement of Jews had been encouraged . . . The

special situation," it continued drily, "granted by the Mandate to

the Jewish element in Palestine appeared to have escaped the

notice of the Administration ." In extraordinary session in June

of that year the Commission bluntly advised "all the sections of

the population [in Palestine] which are rebelling against the Mandate,

whether they object to it on principle or wish to retain

only those of its provisions which favor their particular cause,

that the Mandatory Power must obviously turn a definite and

categorical refusal. As long as the leaders of a community persist

in repudiating what is at once the fundamental charter of the

country, and, as far as the Mandatory Power is concerned, an international

obligation, which it is not free to set aside, the negotiations

would only unduly enhance their prestige and raise

dangerous hopes among their partisans . . ." 53

On the face of it the proposition was a well-nigh impossible

one, making it necessary for London to attempt the miracle of

standing simultaneously on two sides of the one fence . The

Zionists had to be smashed at the same time that Britain was

posing as their guide and benefactor . They had, moreover,

to be kept placated and quiescent . Experience with the Irish

taught England's rulers the folly of an active struggle with a

determined, world-scattered people . If the Irish were now to

be joined by the Jews in a joint last-ditch fight against the Empire,

the Sinn Fein would assume grave proportions . Here was

232 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

an intricate set of problems, most of which impinged on what

attitude the Zionist hierarchy itself would take .

Jewish spokesmen, lost in this welter of intrigue, inexperienced,

inexpert and totally unable to distinguish between sincerity

and clever dissembling, did not prove too troublesome .

They appealed to the facts, which they marshaled systematically,

to fundamental law and to justice. Their arguments were presented

in the circumspect language of a barrister drawing up

a brief on some learned obscurity of law and were presented

without fanfare . Though the whole fundamental framework of

their enterprise was plainly crumbling before their eyes, they

continued to issue reassuring statements to their following . They

claimed with reverse pugnacity that "the Government wants to

be loyal to its duties" ; and were as outraged "over the speculation

that the Government is making an effort to encourage the

antagonism between Arabs and Jews" as if they were employed

in Downing Street. Dr. Weitzman retreated gracefully to

keep pace with the wishes of Whitehall in a series of amazing

shifts . At one moment he concedes that "everything that is

going on in Palestine today is on the pattern of that which is

going on in Egypt. . . The same formulae are being applied .

In Palestine, I admit we are . . . a convenient pretext." b' At

another moment he would warn his fellow-Zionists against submitting

sharp memoranda to the Government as "England also

has to deal with the Moslem world in India and Egypt." ss In

a lecture before the Royal Central Asian Society in May 1936

he discovers that "if the land were properly developed, there is

room in Palestine for another hundred thousand Arab families

and another sixty thousand Jewish families," a clear proposal for

a perpetual Jewish minority status . Soon after he is heard in

defense of the dismemberment plan proposed by Lord Peel, inveighing

against those Jews who opposed it by calling them

"enemies of the Jewish State ." The attitude of the Zionists was

in fact, the most unexpected windfall the Bureaucrats had experienced

in a generation. Only in Palestine itself, where doughty

old Mayor Dizengoff of Tel Aviv charged the British with "playBUREAUCRACY

LOOKS AT JEWS

733

ing a diabolical game" did the Jews make any effort to face political

realities .

Until 1936 Whitehall had held tenaciously to the principle of

`absorptive capacity.' It now realized that even this contention,

despite every topsy-turvy interpretation of normal economics,

would see them the loser in the long run . In a complete

about-face from all previously held theses, the Bureaucrats

now admitted that "if the matter be reduced to statistical or

economic terms . . . the Zionists have the better of the argument,

and when the Arabs choose to indulge in figures, they

use their weakest argument . . . The Palestine problem is not

one of statistics : something far more fundamental is involved ." 56

Just what that `something more fundamental' might be was soon

disclosed officially by Colonial Secretary Ormsby-Gore, addressing

Commons on July 7, 1936 . Leveling his shafts directly at

Jewish nationalists, he acknowledged darkly his awareness of the

"character of Zionist propaganda," booming that the British

Government accepted the Palestine Mandate without subscribing

to any declaration that the country belongs to either Jews

or Arabs, but that it is a British Mandated territory . The Government,

he warned, did not intend countenancing any action

"inconsistent with the Mandate" and this interpretation of it .

The British had been nineteen years working up to this denouement,

but at last the cat was out of the bag . The Zionism

of Herzl and Balfour was now an "action inconsistent with the

Mandate" for Palestine. All that was left in the Bureaucratic

mind of the Balf our Declaration was now "the Jewish problem

in Palestine," and that is the way they expressed it.

Page 248 pdf book page 234

CHAPTER IV

WELCOME HOME !

THE JEW TRIES TO ENTER PALESTINE

Article VI of the Mandate makes it obligatory upon the Administration

of Palestine to "facilitate Jewish immigration ." The

British made a convincing start on this by making the Immigration

Department a part of the Department of Police and Prisons.

It has been shifted around like an unwelcome cat which refuses

to stay lost . Once it was hidden in the Department for Travel .

At another time it had been shunted over to the Permit Section

of the Secretariat .

The Immigration Department is more of a Secret Service

Department than anything else . Its principal function seems to

be that of preventing Jews from entering the country in any

numbers. The attitude toward the Hebrew migrants was pegged

by Duff, who wrote that "we had to be seemingly harsh and

unfriendly towards them ; it did not pay for one's seniors to

think that one had any undue sympathy for the returning

Jews. . ." 1 A decade later another Englishman, Josiah Wedgwood,

recounted the same story of ugly animus, to Commons.

"Why," he asked bitterly, "is this done by Englishmen . . .

against all the traditions of our race ? If the Jews trying to go

to Palestine were English, the situation could not endure for a

minute . Conceive the outcry ! But they are Jews, not English

- they are not in the family ; they are not entitled to be

treated as though they were Aryans or Christians ."

Under the regulations, only capitalists may enter Palestine

freely. Originally, a `capitalist' was a man with C 5oo in cash.

After 1930 the required amount was raised to C Iooo. Skilled

artisans possessing C500 or more may also enter, theoretically ;

but in practice this provision is a dead letter . All others require

specially issued immigration certificates, which are doled

out with much quibbling in paltry numbers . The truth was

234

WELCOME HOME !

235

that while huge sums were being dumped into the Jewish Homeland,

Jews were being kept out of it with all the customary

rigor of anti-Semitic formula . Some idea of the situation can

be gained from Senator Austin's estimate that "measured on a

per capita basis, each of the two hundred and fifty thousand

Jewish immigrants [man, woman and child] who entered Palestine

since the establishment of the Mandate, carried into the

country $ r 800." 2

The distorting political and economic minority life which had

stratified the Jews into a class of petty capitalists and traders,

found itself dishearteningly duplicated in Palestine . With feverish

energy and determination the newcomers applied their

money and experience, hoping to create opportunities for their

poverty-stricken brothers in Europe to join them in building

the new nation . Factories and enterprises of all kinds were

started. The result was a critical scarcity of labor in which the

entire economy of the country went lunatic . Workers were

drained out of the farms to take the more lucrative positions in

the cities . In the towns the same process repeated itself in favor

of the `boom trades' which could afford to pay wages far out of

line with those of normal occupations . Employer competed

desperately with employer for the available labor supply . Industries

had to curtail their activities, factories shut down altogether.

Palestine skyrocketed along on the most insane economy

modern industry has ever seen.

The condition is partially glimpsed in a semi-official report of

August 27, 1934, admitting that the entire Palestine export trade

was at a standstill due to a shortage of labor. Two-thirds of the

workers on Jewish land, says the Report, are now Arabs, "and

those Jews remaining will soon be displaced due to labor scarcity."

The problem became so acute that populations of whole

districts, including school children, had to be mobilized to keep

crops from rotting in the fields . While anxious Jews were being

turned away at the docks of Jaffa and Haifa, the Nesher Cement

Works, engaged in a £ 150,000 expansion in Haifa, announced

November 16, 1933 that it was unable to proceed due

to "acute scarcity of labor ." In Tel Aviv £ 1,000,000 worth of

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

itself everywhere .

At the identical time that it was beguiling world Jewry with

the fiction that all was well in the National Home, the Executive

of the Jewish Agency, irritated over the small grant of labor

certificates, formally accused the Mandatory in a private memorandum

of deliberately sabotaging the Home, finding it "impossible

to reconcile this restriction of immigration with the

declared policy of the Mandatory Power that immigration will be

regulated in accordance with the economic absorptive capacity

of Palestine ."

The British had their authority in London where Sir William

Beveridge 3 had found after careful study that the irreducible

minimum of unemployment was between six and eight percent .

In Palestine the incurable nomadism of the Arab population would

further increase this figure. But the Administration, nevertheless,

religiously adhered to the almost impossible formula that physical

proof had to be given of the permanent employment of every

person in the country, plus an established job for the new immigrant,

before he could be admitted.

The demand for labor was so urgent as to overpower even this

evasion, forcing additional subterfuge on the Authorities . An

instance is the demand of the Jewish Agency for 24,000 certificates

to cover the period from October to March 1933-34. In

their petition they appended the result of a painstaking survey,

showing, in detail, jobs awaiting each of the new arrivals . As

usual, without explanation, the Government agreed to allow only

5500 certificates, of which 2000 were summarily deducted as having

"been used in advance ." With other deductions following

on one plausible excuse or another, all that was left was the usual

face-saving handful . Far from manfully refusing this beggarly

schedule, on the date this announcement was made Weitzman

was capitalizing on the German excitement to raise funds for the

"Zionist-German relief drive" of which he was head, and issuing

a program full of high-sounding generalizations including "cooperation

with the Mandatory Power . . . and the establishing

of peace and understanding with the Arabs." 4

WELCOME HOME ! 237

As the `absorptive capacity' of the country increased so tremendously

under the stimulus of Jewish investment that any effort

to deny it became ludicrous, the Government produced still

other cards out of its sleeve . It announced in 1936 that seventy

percent of the thirteen hundred immigration certificates available

for the following six months were ear-marked for bachelors, ten

percent for maidens, and twenty percent for men with families ;

thus cutting down immigration without appearing to do so . Another

able device was the refusal to allow the wives and families

of employed residents to enter without the precious labor visas,

though in many cases they were an actual charge on these same

residents, who sent money abroad to maintain them .5 Such an

obvious attempt was made to restrict the entry of women that the

Jewish Agency flatly accused the Government in November

1934 of a mischievous and willful attempt "directed against any

considerable development of the immigration of women into

Palestine ."

Many of the Administration's reasons for refusing entry permits

would do credit to Herr Hitler, as witness the refusal to

grant a visa to a refugee Russian rabbi on the excuse that "there

were enough rabbis already in Palestine." Some of the regulations

designed to restrict Jewish immigration are classic . One of

these edicts, promulgated November 14, 1933, allowed only 250

immigrants "to enter Palestine from any one vessel ." Its effectiveness

rested on the fact that few of the ships touching Palestine

ports could make a payload out of such a small number of travelers,

forcing the cancellation of sailings .

Perhaps the outstanding example of official artifice was the

schedule announced for the period between October 1, 1935

and March 31, 193 6 - 435 0 visas were granted, over which the

Jewish world press made the usual congratulatory ballyhoo .

What was not mentioned were the following deductions made

from this schedule in advance : loon certificates `advanced' during

the previous six-month period ; 250 reserved by the Government

(for non-Jews) ; 1200 taken off to cover `illegal' immigrants

who could not be apprehended ; s and 19oo for dependents

of employed residents (who in any other country would have

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

entered as a matter of course) . If these deductions are added

up they are found to equal exactly the number of certificates

granted ; so that the Administration was only perpetrating a

crude joke on the Zionists and in effect issuing no certificates at

all.

In the face of this ruinous procedure the Zionist spokesmen

periodically issued reassuring statements to their followers, gloating

over the increasing numbers of Jews entering the Homeland .

They listed impressive figures to bolster their publicity.

Actually, something like 12,000 certificates was the greatest

number ever allowed for workingmen in one year ; and from this

pitiful number the most unconscionable deductions were made

on one excuse or another. An example of how the Zionist publicity

bureau treated the matter is given in its handling of the

entry figures for 1933, which according to official statements,

came to 64,110. Stimulated from this source the world Jewish

press headlined : "64,11 o Jews Entered Zion During 1933," giving

the impression that there had been that many immigrants.

An analysis shows that the balance of recorded arrivals over departures

during this period was 38,656 Jews, including 10,236

residents returning to the country after visits abroad and 27,862

actual immigrants . Of these, `persons living on income,' minors,

dependents, etc ., totaled 15,653 ; and working people constituted

a mere 2434 men and 568 women. Juggled around in the official

figures somewhere, were 26,002 tourists who came to enjoy the

sights, and non-permanents of other kinds. Of the 61,743 Jews

who came to remain in the peak year of 1935, only 14,653 belonged

to the working class group.

It is perfectly obvious that capitalist immigration will not

serve the purposes for which Zionism was originated. It cannot

relieve the centers of pressure in the pogrom areas of Europe

where Jews are now in a state of starvation and panic . It can

only serve to build Palestine ultimately into an Arab country .

What Zionist leaders avoided mentioning, Adolph Hitler sarcastically

called attention to, saying, "It is very kind of England

to declare that she is ready to receive the Jews with open arms -

WELCOME HOME !

239

but why should she make the admission of the Jews dependent

upon C iooo?" 7 Even neighboring Syria, seeing a fruitful

source of capital, announced that it too would welcome capitalist

Jews, without the necessity of any Balfour Declaration imprinted

by the Powers .,'

Everything in this business is made subject to cash . Even the

boasted Hadassah aliyahs, by which a few hundred Jewish children

were brought in from Germany, were made conditional on

a substantial money deposit, much as would be charged if the

children had entered a boarding school. The Department of

Immigration is a paying business, showing in a typical year a net

income of 1 3 3 3,200 against an expenditure of _f 209,100 .

Not nearly so docile as the Zionist hierarchy, Palestine Jews

have often made their resentment as plain as men living under a

knout are able to . Irked to fury, they went out on general strike

in May 1930, a matter which the Administration handled expeditiously,

as it invariably does when it has only Jews to deal

with.

In 1937 the Palestine press reported that an amendment to the

immigration laws was in contemplation, jacking up capital requirements

of prospective immigrants to C 2000. This would

eliminate 56% of those who had previously entered under this

category. The time given a capitalist immigrant to liquidate

his affairs in the home country had previously been one year .

It is planned to reduce this to three months, obviously placing

him under such duress as to considerably reduce his enthusiasm

for emigrating .

The new stand taken by the Administration was indicated by

Immigration Director Eric Mills, who informed the Peel Commission

on November 18, 1936 that "immigration into the Holy

Land involves political as well as economic issues ." Just what

these `political issues' are may be learned from the astonished

comments of Farago. Ignoring his statement that he was a

Hungarian, port officials had demanded to know whether he

was a Mohammedan, Christian or Jew. Long before, Colonel

Wedgwood had also noted that "the first question an immigrant

240

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

is asked by the immigration inspectors in Palestine is, `Are you a

Jew ?' " This is much as if one were asked anywhere else, "Were

you ever convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude?"

TOURISTS

The Holy Land is perhaps the most magnetic spot on earth

for sightseers, a circumstance which is probably its greatest

single asset . It seems natural to suppose that tourists would be

encouraged in every possible fashion and that every inducement

would be offered to cause them to remain as long as possible.

A large share of the national income of many states depends

on just this source ; and countries such as France and

Italy embark on extensive advertising campaigns in the foreign

press to attract this desirable army of visitors.

The tourist is at once bewildered to find that exactly the contrary

view is held in Palestine, where every possible obstacle

is placed in his path. He is required to make a large cash deposit

and it must be certified on his visa that he has purchased

in advance a first-class return ticket to his point of embarkation.

He is forced to pay $Io for the little consular stamp, as

compared with 350 in Egypt and 330 in France . Before he is

allowed to land he is subjected to a cross-examination almost

vicious in its import, and must file his living addresses with the

authorities as if he were a paroled convict .

On paper, every tourist visiting Palestine must put up an advance

deposit of C 6o, which is apparently his guarantee that

he will not try to outwear his welcome . Actually, these strictures

apply only to Jews . A consular officer who has just refused

a visa to John Doe because he took him for a Jew, will

grant the same request with profuse apologies as soon as Mr. .

Doe qualifies as a gentile . This was ineptly admitted by young

Malcolm MacDonald, then new Colonial Secretary, under questioning

in Commons on July 9, 1935.

Its actual workings are illustrated in the violent protest of

Warsaw Jewry on March 20, 1934 because the English Consul

WELCOME HOME !

241

issued visas to all Polish Christians bound for the Holy Land,

and at the same time refused permits to Jewish tourists even

though the required C 6o was deposited. Going beyond its

own written measures, the Government often refuses admission

to whole parties of tourists, even though their papers are strictly

in order and they have made the required deposit . Instances

are plentiful . On March 5, 1933, sixty such visitors were refused

admission without explanation and were not permitted to

leave their steamer . A few days earlier, a group of twentythree

sight-seers from Poland, all holding proper visas obtained

from the British Consulate in Istanbul, were unceremoniously

dumped into the Haifa lockup where they were badly treated .

The Government had invented a new theory in this particular

instance, alleging that they should have obtained their Palestine

visas in Warsaw and not in Istanbul . In another case an Egyptian

sea captain had his ship impounded and was sentenced together

with each member of his crew to five months at hard

labor for the crime of carrying a shipload of visitors to Palestine.

The Authorities with remarkable clairvoyance insisted that the

latter intended to overstay their leave, and unbelievable as it

may appear, rested their case entirely on this psychic assertion.

Not altogether satisfied with results, the Administration attempted

to put through a prohibitive tax on tourists in 1 933,

only frustrated by the indignant threat of Palestine Jewry to

carry the whole business to the attention of Christian churches

in every country . The Government now plans a drastic increase

in the required tourist deposit ; and has, since the middle

of October 1936, enforced a complete ban on the general run

of Jewish tourists, making exceptions only for those whose outraged

squawk might draw attention to what is going on .

Even visitors of unimpeachable standing are refused permission

to overstay their leave . A useful example is provided by

the case of Weitzman who, though President of the Jewish

Agency, was according to reports, picked up in Haifa for this

reason in 1936.

The natural result of this determined persecution is that even

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Egyptian Jews who have always, since Turkish times, spent their

annual vacations in Palestine, now flock to the Syrian Lebanon

instead.

It is worth noting that before the arrival of the British `liberators,'

Turkish law allowed Jews to come as pilgrims without

restriction . When in 1887 Turkey, alarmed by the boasts of

the Russian Consul that he "had more `subjects' in Jerusalem

than those of all the other consuls combined," attempted to

limit the stay of foreign Jews in Palestine to a short period, the

British Government led the procession of States whose vigorous

denunciation of these regulations caused them to be abrogated

in short order.

HUNTING DOWN ILLEGALS

A highly placed official once informed Horace Samuel, with

evident relish, that "Jew-baiting was the sport of kings ." To

more or less degree, this remark is representative of the tone of

His Majesty's Service in Palestine . Any hope that the pitiful

plight of the fleeing, friendless Jews of Europe would excite

compassion in the hearts of these men, evaporated rapidly . To

officialdom these unfortunates instead assumed a nuisance value,

and the old calloused attitude toward them hardened to icy hate .

It is true that these homeless creatures, hounded from border

to border and rigidly kept out of their National Home, did

attempt to enter in any way possible. Lacking the £ I ooo required

to buy their way in, they often sneaked their way through

without benefit of British sanction . Desperate men attempted

to swim ashore from far outlying ships under cover of night .

Some came nailed up in boxes of merchandise on the backs of

camels, enduring indescribable suffering. Delicately raised girls

braved the trip through the desert wastes, placing themselves at

the mercy of savage Bedouins in an effort to cross unnoticed

at some wild place . They came from everywhere, a horde of

stranded, terrified Jews who arrived by steamer, by canoe and

on foot. Most of them were young people in their teens or

early twenties, desperate, hopeless creatures who were taking

WELCOME HOME !

243

their last gamble in life . Many were drowned, died of starvation,

or were murdered on the way by the very Bedouins they

hired to transport them.

The most heart-rending events took place daily . One such

story is of five hundred Russian Jews who escaped from the

Soviets to go to Palestine on foot via Baghdad and Persia . Many

were arrested on the various borders . One hundred and fifty

died enroute of incalculable hardships . Altogether five finally

arrived in Palestine, where they were promptly thrown into jail

at Acre. Another typical case held the fate of 318 young German

and East European refugees, all under 25, who were

marooned on the British steamer Velos in x934. The Palestine

authorities refused to admit them ; as did every port at which

the vessel touched . Their meager funds exhausted, they were

locked below hatches like so much contraband, which could

neither be unloaded nor destroyed . Finally, after ceaseless

wandering from port to port, these luckless outcasts were given

temporary asylum by Poland .

Just how a Jew under the Mandate could be in Palestine `illegally'

has never been explained . If the beneficiaries of that

document are not the entire Jewish people, whose immigration

to the Holy Land is to be facilitated by every means possible,

then the Mandate has no reason for existence . Ormsby-Gore

admitted as much in 1925 when he informed the Permanent

Mandates Commission that they "should remember that it is

after all the Balfour Declaration which was the reason why the

British Government is now administering Palestine ." However,

the memory of the King's spokesmen was conveniently suited

to what their appetites seemed to demand . So the British gradually

developed the peculiar thesis that Jews, under a Mandate

directly formulated to facilitate their return to Palestine, could

be there illegally .

Coincident with the advent of Hitler the business assumed

the proportions of an out and out Jew-hunt. In a nice piece of

collusion between the Colonial Secretary, Sir Phillip Cunliffe-

Lister, and an M . P. named MacDonald, the Government `admitted'

that `illegal' Jewish immigration existed but stated in

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assurance that "practical steps would be taken to deal with the

matter." The very next day Cunliffe-Lister announced stringent

measures to prevent `illegal' Jewish immigration into Palestine.

The system of tourist deposits was instituted . Holders

of Nansen passports, that pitiful army of staatenlos men, were

not in future to be granted even tourist visas . An air-tight

frontier control in collaboration with the agreeable French authorities

in Syria was to be put in effect. On the subject of

illegal Arab immigration the announcement was expressively

silent.

Showing the extent of its preorganization, the campaign at

once assumed the proportions of a large-scale pursuit of Jews

over the length and breadth of Palestine. Ironically paid for

out of Jewish tax moneys, a dragnet of airplane and motor boat

patrols were detailed along the borders ; while British and Arab

constables, assisted by organized groups of fellaheen, enjoyed

themselves in scouring the coast-wise territory . At Beirut and

other Syrian cities British and Arab police questioned motorbus

drivers, asking if Jews were among the passengers ; carefully examining

the passports of all suspected of being Jews, while others

were as scrupulously ignored .

The pursuit of `illegal' Jews was on in earnest, one of the

great witch-hunts of modern times. Jews were picked up like

dangerous animals everywhere and hauled to police stations .

Weeping Jewish women were thrown into cells together with

prostitutes, subjected to the obscene taunts of Arab jailers .

The situation is made pitifully clear in the case of thirty-two

young girls, arrested while out on a hike near Tiberias because

an Arab boy denounced them. Thrown into the overcrowded

jail at Bethlehem, they were kept on bread and water and refused

bail . The Police candidly explained to indignant inquirers

that "if they were released on bail, they may marry Palestine

citizens and obtain the right to stay ." 9 On the same

date three other girls were arrested on the streets of Haifa,

jailed, and finally deported on an Italian steamer . Italian authorities

would not let them land so they were shipped back and

forth between Palestine and Italy until finally Jerusalem agreed.

WELCOME HOME ! 245

as an act of international courtesy, to take them off the ship .

captain's hands . Says the announcement : "They are now imprisoned

in the Bethlehem jail ."

Jews were expelled for any trivial reason the anti-Semitic

mentality could improvise . Men were torn from their jobs and

businesses and thrown like common offenders into the prison

at Acre, a dank, forbidding structure ranking in terror with the

famous French Bastille, where they were regularly beaten by

Arab overseers . The attitude is shown in the case of one

Isschak Kupetz, a respectable working man who was sentenced

to the Central Prison in Jerusalem and escaped . Immediately

an intensive police search was begun, and rewards prominently

posted for "the escaped convict ." Since no nation wanted

them, a great number of these tragic sufferers were held long

after their sentences had expired ; the Government not hesitating

to vent its exasperation on their heads.

Hunting `illegal' Jews became a major game, with illegal

Arab newcomers enlisting gleefully in the chase . Savage Bedouins

joined in under promise of a reward for any Jewish man,

woman or child they could catch. Palestine was under a virtual

reign of terror. Anyone who could not immediately prove his

citizenship, or produce his or her certificate of entry, was

tracked down, jailed and brutally beaten . The lives of these

people became a daily horror. They became gravely endangered

by falling ill . They did not dare travel. For years they

have had to live without their wives and children and under

constant fear of being discovered . The utterly savage attitude

toward these people can hardly be grasped by a civilized mind.

A characteristic case is that of the family Israel Ezra, tourists

who overstayed their three months' leave. Ezra and his wife

were sentenced to prison and fine, and in addition it was ordered

that their twelve-year-old son be publicly flogged .10

Bad as existing regulations were, the inhuman meticulousness

with which they were interpreted made them infinitely worse .

A fair example is the case of a woman and six small children,

who had arrived legally with the proper passport and visa, from

Turkestan . On the way her husband had been killed at a rail246

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

way station. The whole family was arrested on the ground

that the passport provided not for a woman and six children,

but for a man, a woman and six children . On this pretext the

woman and her children were ordered to prison .

The heat had grown so scorching that it was beginning to

drive even the patient Jews mad . Nationalist groups rioted in

protest. Serious clashes took place when Arab gangs invaded

the Jewish colonies themselves in search of victims . After some

of these invaders had been beaten within an inch of their lives,

the use of civilian Arab bloodhounds was discontinued .

While all this was going on, the Jewish Agency, which had

been to such pains to create a world-wide impression that "new

Jewish arrivals were being eagerly welcomed," put out a timid

protest. It verbosely pointed out that all this was a clear departure

from the MacDonald Letter, which expressly guaranteed

that no immigrants "with prospects of employment" would be

excluded. The High Commissioner "took the matter under advisement"

and immediately buried the `protest' along with some

ash-barrels of others, in the Jerusalem files . At almost the identical

moment, he announced the appointment of a Commission

under Sir William Murison to investigate the police for alleged

severity in maintaining order during some Arab riots of a few

weeks previous .

THE ARAB COMES IN LIKE A GENTLEMAN

Lured by stark evidence of labor scarcity and big pay, peoples

from all surrounding states began to drift into Palestine .

Though a huge corps of coast and frontier guards kept vigilant

watch to prevent the entry of `illegal' Jews, Arabs from anywhere

entered without even the gesture of passport investigation.

The Report of the Peel Commission admits frankly that

the inhabitants of Syria and Transjordan "are free to enter the

corresponding districts in Palestine without special formality ."

It is, in fact, by disguising themselves as Arabs that most `illegal'

Jewish immigration is accomplished . If they are lucky they

will succeed in walking in boldly without challenge . A news

WELCOME HOME !

247

item of July 4, 1934 gives the circumstance more lucidly than

pages of reference . It reads : "Five Jewish women coming

overland from Damascus, attired in the traditional costumes of

Moslem women, including the black veils, were apprehended

at the border when police saw through their disguises . They

could not answer questions put to them in Arabic ."

Not only is immigration from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen and

other surrounding places unrestricted, but Jews from these same

countries are as determinedly barred as their brothers from

Poland or the Baltic. Casual examples of this condition are the

deportation of Jews who fled from the Mosul district of Iraq

because of religious persecution ; and the demand of the Palestine

Government on May 16, 1935 that Syrian Jews be given

a special distinguishing passport when proceeding to countries

on the Palestine border, a sort of Near Eastern `yellow ticket,'

reminiscent of Czarist Russia.

Though the Government solemnly estimates in 1937 a total

Moslem increase by immigration of only 22,535 since the time

of the British occupation, 11 evidence of a vast influx of desert

tribesmen is obvious everywhere . As early as 1926, Colonial

Secretary Amery cautiously conceded that despite the growth of

the Jewish element "the increase of the Arabs is actually greater

than that of the Jews." 12 Figures presented before the Peel

Commission in 1937 showed the Arab population to have more

than doubled itself in fourteen years . This admitted gain in half

a generation must either be attributed to outside immigration or

to the most astonishing philo-progenitiveness in medical history.

Forgotten in its archives, the Government itself acknowledged

in 1922 the immigration of whole tribes "from the Hejaz and

southern Transjordan into the Beersheba area," a fact which

in itself must make its estimates of Arab immigration farfetched.

13 Other approximate figures are available from scattered

but credible sources. One of these is the statement of the

French Governor of the Hauran in Syria, that from his district

alone, in the summer of 1933, thirty-five thousand people had

left for Palestine as a consequence of bad crops .14

248

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Whole villages in the Hauran have been emptied of their

people, who are drifting into Palestine . Count De Martel,

French High Commissioner for Syria, asserted in the summer of

1934 that even Arab merchants were moving from Damascus

to Palestine because of the prosperity there ; and in 1936 the

head of the Moslem Youth Association at Beirut, Jamil Bek

Basham, wrote that "there is a penetration into Palestine of an

army of Syrian laborers." 15

It is of course difficult to attain any adequate idea of the extent

of this flood of non-Jewish immigration since officially it

does not exist. In the absence of accurate canvass its size must

be pieced together and surmised. Such calculations as are available

show an Arab immigration for the single year 1933 of at

least sixty-four thousand souls . Added to the acknowledged

Hauranese infiltration are some two thousand who arrived from

Damascus alone. Mokattam, leading Cairo daily, announced

that ten thousand Druses had gone to the Holy Land ; and according

to Al Jamia Al Islamia, Arab newspaper of Jaffa,

seventeen thousand Egyptians had come from Sinai Peninsula

alone .

To these must be added considerable groups of Numidians

and even Abyssinians, and a vast uncounted army from Transjordan

about whose movement into Palestine not the slightest

pretense of legality is maintained . The figures on this latter

group must be very high, since economic conditions west of

Jordan have been literally frightful, with scanty harvests over

several successive years . In view of the fact that many thousands

of these Transjordanian nomads may be met any place in

Palestine, the Government reports themselves are amusing . In

his statement to the League of Nations for 1936 the High Commissioner

estimates that the total of persons arriving as immigrants

from Transjordan during the entire year was three, of

whom only one was an Arab (the two others presumably being

Englishmen) . 16 Not eight months later we find the same Government

openly repatriating thousands of Transjordanians because

the slump which followed after the riots left them without

jobs.

WELCOME HOME ! 249

Farago, puzzled by these contradictions, calls attention to the

fact that "one always finds in Palestine, Arabs who have been in

the country only a few years or a few months . . . Since they

are themselves strangers in a strange land, they are the loudest

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

Exasperated by the Government's lack of good faith, which

was illicitly converting the Holy Land into an Arab country,

groups of courageous Jewish youths volunteered in 1934 to point

out what apparently the Authorities were unable to see . Fourteen

hundred of these illegals were quickly shown to be working

at Petach Tikvah ; and 1 zoo in Haifa on road and house construction

alone. Their probable numbers could be gathered from

a test count of 357 Arab laborers in the buildings material industry,

which showed 273 to be Hauranis illegally in the country.

A check of Arabs employed in Palestine ports on December

23, 1936 showed that only 50 of the 750 workers were

Palestinians. The remainder included Zoo Egyptians and 500

Hauranis.'S Whole hordes of these people were demonstrated

to be in the employ of the Government itself.

Without deigning to make a reply, the Administration pointedly

told the Jews to mind their own business . When Jews

picketed Jewish employers of this alien labor, the Government

bared its teeth and sentenced the demonstrators to six months

at hard labor for their pains . Undeterred, Jews again picketed

a Haifa theater being erected by a contractor named Borovsky

where illegal Hauranis were employed- 19 Immediately the Authorities

arrested fifty-three Jews and sentenced them to prison

terms. That pretty well discouraged any further attempt to

point out illegal Arab immigration .

Once in a while, for purposes of the High Commissioner's

report to the League, a few Arabs are apprehended for being

in the country without permission. Though bail, even in large

amounts, is refused Jews held for the identical offense, Arabs

are let go for C 1o. Considering this trifling sum a sort of premium

for high wages earned, they invariably skip bail.

On one excuse or another every effort has been made to

legalize non-Jewish immigration . The Administration had sent

250

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

up a number of trial balloons in this direction. Their first feeler

was made on December 18, 1934, when unexpectedly they

granted 150 labor immigration certificates to Arabs from Syria

and Egypt . Another was the admission in 1936 of 214 German

`Aryans' who wanted to settle permanently in Palestine in

order to "take advantage of the boom in that country ." Highlighting

this picture with all the potency of a floodlight was the

Administration's attempt to grant a huge tract of land under

homesteading rights to distressed Armenians, then in Syria .

This was at the same time that Hope-Simpson was showing

`conclusively' that Palestine was suffering from `overcrowding .'

BRITAIN PUTS ON THE HEAT

London's animosity for Jews can be discerned in every part

of the Near East . Wherever Britain is influential she has drawn

a fibrous cordon of anti-Zionist arrangements, edicts and influences

. Where power lies in English hands the operation is direct,

as in Cyprus. Elsewhere, a discreet hint to friendly States

accomplishes the same result .

In Syria, one has only to gaze at the startling regulation issued

in Beirut, refusing Jews proceeding to Oriental countries the

right to make a stopover, a concession to the English allegation

that many tourists stopped over in Syria with a view to slipping

across the Palestine border at a subsequent date . On this

ground, in the first week of February 1933, fifty-one men and

nineteen women tourists were not even permitted to land in

Beirut and were tartly told to disembark at countries not adjacent

to Palestine . In the Spring of 1934, Syria, then in a desperate

financial and economic condition, was anxious for an influx

of Jews . This plan, backed by the Syrians themselves, was

frustrated by direct British protest to Paris . Following these

representations Syria obliged by announcing on May 3, 1 934

that Jews might be allowed to buy land anywhere except along

the Palestine border.

Pressure of the British legation at Athens, arguing that illegal

immigrants were being smuggled into the Holy Land by way

WELCOME HOME !

251

of Greece, produced the edict of November 30, 1934, forbidding

all foreign Jews henceforth to enter Greece except by special

permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Greek

Consulates were instructed to inquire by cable of the Foreign

Office in Athens Whenever a Jew applied for a Greek visa .

Foreign Jews passing through Greece, suspected of wishing to

visit Palestine, would not be permitted to pass the Greek frontier

except with the stamped permission of the Palestine Government.

The order established a virtual espionage system on Jewish

visitors, affecting Jews of all nations regardless of citizenship.

Iraq, British dependency and protege among the nations, was

also quick to respond . Zionist activity of any kind was made

a crime punishable by imprisonment, as in Soviet Russia . A

wholesale ban on all Jewish newspapers and books entering the

country was instituted . Following the lead of Palestine officials,

Iraq postal authorities ordered the exclusion of the pamphlet

Hitler Terror issued by the Board of Deputies of British Jews,

as well as other anti-Nazi material ; while such `literature' as

Hitler's Mein Kamp f was allowed a free sale.

Afghanistan, under British Foreign Office influence, moved

against the Jews viciously . The present ruler, Nadir Khan, was

financed and armed by Great Britain to overthrow the former

pro-Russian king. Like Egypt and Iraq, the country is now

ruled by British `advisers,' as a practical appendage to the Indian

Government. One of the first acts of the new Administration

was to move against the Jews, who had all passports withdrawn .

On a few moments' notice, in January of 1934, two thousand

Jews were expelled from the border towns of Mazar, Ankhoi

and Maimane, and thrown homeless in the desert . In May 1 935

these persecutions were heightened by regulations compelling

Jews to wear special clothes with red flags across their breasts

and a rope around their hips . They were forbidden to shave or

to ride in the streets . Jewish women must not appear in public

markets and, like common harlots, must not wear stockings . In

1938 Jews were forbidden to engage in any business activities,

the only occupation left open to them being that of bootblacks .

252

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Persia, too, becoming practically a British protectorate, inexplicably

put its nose into extra-territorial affairs by prohibiting

the emigration of Jews to Palestine .20 Jews were forced to

wear a distinguishing badge . No Jew was allowed to walk in

the open street in front of a Moslem, or to talk aloud to him,

build a fine house or whitewash its rooms . He could not leave

town, grow a beard or ride on horseback. The law stipulated

that "Jews shall not be permitted to consume good fruit." It is

certainly at least coincidental that when the present ruler, Riza

Khan, denounced the treaty under which Persia was run by British

advisers and army officers under English tariff control and

financing, he abolished most of the more ridiculous anti-Semitic

rulings.

Yemen, too, at the south end of the Arabian peninsula, prohibited

the emigration of Jews to Palestine at a time when London

could have broken its back by withdrawing its financial

support. Jews attempting to leave for Palestine are brought

back and executed . After an economic rapprochement with

Britain, the Turks also made Zionist organizations illegal, in

October 1934, going to the point of raiding Jewish homes all

over the country in their efforts to stamp the movement out .

The attitude may again be seen in Egypt where an Arab daily

paper appears called the Mokattam, known as the voice of the

British Embassy. No other publication in Egypt attacks Zionism

with such unrestrained violence . Though the country is completely

dependent upon Britain for both defense and finance, it

has lately become a center of anti-Zionist conspiracy and agitation,

and during 1938 played host to an international Arabic conference,

convened at Cairo, to fight Zionism . No one doubts that

had these activities been directed against any friendly nation, or

against such British dependencies as Iraq or Transjordan, they

would have been swiftly outlawed .

A confirming view is given in Aden, owned by England outright,

without bother of pretense. In June 1932, after mob attacks,

the British slapped a blanket censorship on the news, even

withholding cables of news services . Following the disturbances,

the Aden Jews sought to emigrate to Palestine en masse.

WELCOME HOME !

253

Many were arrested, and many more deported to Hodeida, an

Arab pogrom center then raging in a bath of Jewish blood.

When the fanatical Wahibis swept into Yemen in 1934, Jews

fled to Aden begging permission to be allowed to proceed to

the Jewish Homeland . The Authorities instead issued an order

prohibiting Jews from entering Aden altogether. Even those

lucky Israelites with visas to Palestine, compelled by the only

existing travel routes to pass through the Colony, are refused

transitory entrance and returned to the waiting Jew-baiters at

home.

Lying off the coast of Palestine, so that its outline is faintly

visible on a clear day, is another English piece of property, the

Island of Cyprus . Cyprus had been taken by Disraeli for the

Empire because of its "propinquity to Palestine," a rare evidence

of the great statesman's sentimentality . A number of Jews,

unable to get into Palestine, settled here . The natives were delighted

at the prospect of having someone to whom they could

sell their almost valueless land at a good price. The average

amount paid was £ 8 per acre -about a thirtieth of the price

demanded in Palestine for similar land . Noting this, enterprising

Cypriots filled the Palestine press with advertisements offering

every kind of attractive acreage for sale cheap . Soon

Jews held almost seven thousand acres in Cyprus, planting it

mostly in citrus. The Island started to boom, and the stream

of Jewish immigration began to swell.

Soon after, the Colonial Office sent down General Storrs

(who had had some experience with similar problems in Palestine)

to rule the Island . Acting expeditiously, Storrs issued an

edict on December 13, 1934 announcing that in future no more

foreigners could buy land in Cyprus ; nor could they enter without

the express permission of the Governor himself . It hardly

needs mention that the only `foreigners' attempting to come in

or buy land were Jews, and that this ordinance put a summary

end to all such `attempts .'