THE RAPE OF PALESTINE - part 8

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE - part 8

CHAPTER VIII

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

LEGALITIES -MADE IN ENGLAND'

We now return to another of those strange enigmas of British

administration - the territory of the Jewish National Home east

of Jordan. The shrewd manipulation by which it was filched

from the Zionist pocketbook has already been referred to. Just

what its status is today remains a dark mystery . The territory

is called an independent Emirate, yet remains part and parcel of

the Mandate for Palestine . The same High Commissioner rules

both. The Emir Abdullah, its nominal ruler, is granted an ample

personal subsidy straight out of the Palestine treasury . The

deficits of his stagnating State are taken care of from the same

generous source.

When in 1922 London secured the League's consent to set up

a separate Administration east of Jordan, it was granted only

with the stipulation that "the general regime of the Mandate for

Palestine" would be maintained there . To this London agreed,

assuring the League "that no measure inconsistent with the provisions

of the Mandate for Palestine would be passed in that territory."

All of this, in words, was carried out in the `treaty'

with the Emir, and incorporated in the `Constitution' of Transjordan

as well.

In 1924, officialdom still acknowledged that Trans-Jordan was

an integral part of the Jewish National Home . On May z7 of

that year, during a Palestine debate, Lord Arnold, then Under-

Secretary for the Colonies, declared : "During the war we recognized

Arab independence within certain border limits, and supported

it. . . There were discussions as to what territories these

borders should take in. But there was no dispute as to Trans-

Jordan . There is no doubt about the fact that Trans-Jordan is

within the boundaries to which the Declaration [Balfour] during

the War refers . This is the Government's point o f view relative

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TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

341

to the political status o f Trans-Jordan and the character o f our

relations to the land ."

Under the Turks there were no restrictions against the settlement

of Jews in Trans-Jordan . A number of colonization schemes

were attempted . The largest was undertaken by Baron Edmund

de Rothschild in 1894, who bought seventy thousand dunams

in Golan for a large-scale resettlement project . This, however,

was sidetracked in favor of the coastal development where

Zionist effort was then concentrated .

Whitehall early banned Jewish penetration into this territory .

Its expressed reason was a deep solicitation for the returning settlers,

who allegedly would not be safe in this lawless, turbulent

sector. The migratory tribes of Transjordan could enter Western

Palestine freely, however, since the question of their safety

did not arise .

Soon these strictures became iron-clad . The eastern twothirds

of the National Home was not only hermetically sealed to

Jewish settlement but Jews could not possess property there or

practice a profession. Transjordan became the first and remains

the only completely Judenrein area on the earth's surface

. Apparently they are the only immigrants prohibited . Examination

of the official British Report to the League for 1936

shows a large group of foreigners ranging from Syrians and

Egyptians to Germans, Italians and Turks who have taken residence

there . Says the Report succinctly : "The classified and

unclassified officials of the Transjordan Government other than

British, including the officers of the Arab Legion but excluding

other ranks, numbered 683" of whom only 422 are Arabs born

in Transjordan .1

When the Mandates Commission sharply commented on this

condition, London assured it that "there was no legal prohibition

to prevent Jews from entering" Transjordan . In other

words, on paper everything was in order . When the Commission

bluntly demanded that these restrictions be abrogated,

the British spokesman Dr. Drummond Shiels replied with unctuous

regret "that that was impracticable because the existing

Legislative Assembly in Transjordan would frustrate such inten342

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

tions ." 2 Scarcely more than six months later we find the same

Drummond Shiels declaring to an impatient Commons that

"when Transjordan is freed from the irritation of raids and

counter-raids by warring tribesmen, an opportunity will be given

for its settlement and development ." 3 Here we have two diametrically

opposite lines of reasoning. One, that the normal

processes of orderly government forbade an immigration disturbing

to the country's economy . The other, that since no orderly

government existed, it was unthinkable to allow civilized

immigrants to enter .

Faced with a fait accompli, the League in some meretricious

hair-splitting came to a curious decision : Jews who were natives

of Palestine and hence not nationals of a State member of the

League, could not claim the equality stipulated in Article XVIII

of the Mandate . These could be excluded. However, any

Jews in Palestine who were -not Palestinians, must, according to

the terms of the Mandate, be allowed the right of free access to

Transjordan.4

In actual practice the British went whole hog down the line,

barring English Jews as rigidly as their brethren from Poland .

Gentile Englishmen, however, retained indisputable rights of

settlement. Even if one chooses to ignore the maneuvers by

which this section of the National Home was handed outright

to some ambitious nomads from the Hejaz, how may this circumstance

be explained ? It was not so long ago that the world applauded

when the United States broke off its commercial treaty

with Czarist Russia because of a discrimination much the same

as this and less inexcusable . Recounting an identical incident

when Turkey attempted the exclusion of Jews in 1888, official

British Peace Handbook No . 6o thunders that "the Powers refused

to accept discriminatory legislation against their nationals,

Hebrew or others," and the Turks had to drop the offending

statutes like a hot potato.

Dexterous as their performance was, the Bureaucrats ran up

against the hard fact that legerdemain has its absolute limits .

They could swindle the eyes by appearing to separate the body

of the National Home into living fragments, but no amount of

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

343

black magic could endow the operation with reality . Transjordan

was inalienably a part of Palestine, and must immediately

expire, if cut off from it in fact . M. Rappard of the Permanent

Mandates Commission contemptuously called it "a parasite

State" with a budget fed by grants from the Mandatory Government.

Its total income is forty-five percent less than that of

Tel Aviv alone .

Transjordan has practically no industries of any kind, and

only a few of the most primitive homecrafts . According to the

British Report to the League for 1936, the total assessment for

land tax was only r88,ooo of which 1.53,507 had to be subsequently

remitted because the bankrupt villagers could not pay

it.5 The Emir Abdullah's attenuated income includes "Transjordan's

share in the imports duties of Palestine ." 6 Palestine is

also Transjordan's principal market, selling goods there valued

at C208,993 as against 06,o88 which she buys in return .

Examining the High Commissioner's Report for 1935 we discover,

weighted beneath a load of words, that Transjordan's income

was 0276,258, while its expenditure was £369,395 . Its

budget for 1937-38, reduced to skin-and-bones, still showed a

thirty percent deficit . In other words, Transjordan has been

perpetually bankrupt - kept alive only by the munificence of its

rich uncle Israel . If it were divorced from Israel's household it

would simply die of malnutrition . Out of the lush Palestine

treasury, the Emir has had an endless flow of `loans,' subsidies

and outright grants. He has been provided with free Army

and Air Force assistance in quelling the recurrent rebellions of

his own tribesmen and in preserving his boundaries against Wahabi

aggression . As early as 1927 it was pointed out that the

National Home would show a deficit of C 90,000 for the yearly

period "due to the fact that the Palestine Government is covering

the deficits in Transjordan - otherwise the budget would

show a surplus of C 80,000." 7

Transjordan comprises an area of about 35,000 square miles

- more than three times as large as the country west of Jordan .

It is an area of great resources but no effort has been made to

develop them. A census has never been taken, but the popula344

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

tion is reliably estimated to be around 275,000. The majority

are nomad tribesmen to whom even boundaries are incomprehensible.

Some of these, like the Aneezeh and Sherarat, have

their main camping grounds in Arabia proper . The only towns

of any consequence are Amman, the capital, with 38,000 people,

and Es Salt with i 8,ooo .

The limitations of this country lie in the nature of the human

material composing its population . Turbulent, destructive, inefficient,

seemingly incapable of any but the most elementary

creative activities, their stamp is imprinted wherever one turns

in this favored land . Bizarrely enough, one factor that has contributed

to the permanent poverty of the Bedu is the ruthless

suppression of predatory excursions, drying up their chief source

of revenue.

There are only fifteen doctors in all Transjordan . The rate

of infant mortality is the highest on earth. Its poverty is terrible

and crushing . The correspondent of Al Jamia Al Islamia s

describes hordes of people "who snatch hungrily at any refuse

which by a stretch of the imagination may be edible . . . At

night these creatures, men, women and children, with no roof

to shelter them, huddle for warmth and sleep in the streets."

Reliable English sources describe the country, after fifteen years

of Arab rule, as infinitely worse off than it was under the Turks .

Says the Crown Colonist of June 1934 : "The farmers are

plunged in the starkest conditions of poverty, and the nomads

are frequently on the verge of starvation." Cattle die off by thousands,

and epidemics, droughts, grasshopper and mice plagues,

which the fellaheen are incapable of coping with, reduce them

to a state of abject deprivation . The result is seen in the total

lack o f any natural increase in population since the British occupation

; while directly across the Jordan, their brother Arabs

are showing the most remarkable gain of births over deaths on

medical records.

No part of this discourages Whitehall from broadcasting the

usual paean in 1936 to the beauties of existence in this "peaceful

and contented country, blessed with an Arab Emir and Government,

and being without a Jewish problem ." 9 Calmly shiftTRANSJORDAN

THE JUDENREIN

345

ing gears a few short months later, it acknowledges that "the

Emirate of Abdullah is poor, miserably poor, but it does not

want the wealth of the Zionists ." 10 This in itself was flatly

contradicted by the British statesman, Herbert Morrison, who

on returning from a visit to Palestine and Transjordan in 1936,

told the House that Jews were being kept out of Transjordan

"by the wish of the British Government ." 11

The fact is that Transjordan is a colony which Great Britain

got on the excuse that it was to be part of the Jewish Homeland.

The Commander of the Arab Legion is a blue-eyed Englishman

named Peake Pasha . The most prominent agent o f the

all-important British Intelligence Service, Major J. B. Glubb, is

stationed there permanently in charge of the desert patrol which

keeps the turbulent tribesmen under control . Here in itself is

proof of the importance London attaches to ownership of this

area. British officials rule as in any other colony, and the word

of the High Commissioner is final. Says the Encyclopaedia Britannica

: "A considerable increase in the number of British officials

and the transfer of the Palestine gendarmerie en bloc to

Transjordan resulted in fact in the carrying on of the Administration

on Crown Colony lines ; and the local Government existing

as a facade, exercised little or no independent authority ." 12

The `treaty' between Great Britain and Abdullah covers all

of this nicely. "His Highness the Emir agrees to be guided by

the advice of His Britannic Majesty in all matters concerning

the granting of concessions, the exploitation of natural resources,

the construction and operation of railways, and the operation of

loans." The Emir may not "raise or maintain in Transjordan

or allow to be raised or maintained, any military forces without

the consent of His Britannic Majesty." The `independent

Emirate' agrees "to the employment of British officials ." England

may keep a foreign army on its soil, and has its power of

attorney in all matters of international relationship . Laws affecting

the State budget, currency, land grants, succession to the

throne and changes in the `Constitution' are to be referred to the

advice of Great Britain . Signed March 20, 1928, this `treaty'

completed the strategical moves by which Transjordan was to be

346 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

purloined from the Jewish National Home and stuffed in the

pocket of Great Britain. Today the Emir Abdullah is a dummy

who sits on the knee of a ventriloquist known as the British Resident.

It is Abdullah's lips which move, but it is the voice of

Downing Street which comes forth .

Calling a spade a spade, the London Times, in its issue of

March 29, 1928, declares : "Transjordan therefore has the status

equivalent to a protectorate, the only difference being the status

of Great Britain, because whereas a Mandate is provisional, the

present relationship is permanent ."

The latest plan is to separate the Aqaba region from Transjordan

and declare it a separate English colony . This move is

forestalled only by the vigorous claim of Ibn Saud to that port

as part of the legitimate spoils grabbed from old King Hussein.

Saud now demands it as the price of his consent to the Palestine

partition scheme . To settle this annoying question, negotiations

have been going forward for some time . They will undoubtedly

end in the classic manner, with Aqaba created a Crown

Colony, and Ibn Saud handed part of someone else's territory to

compensate him .

ABDULLAH PUTS HIS HAND OUT

The Emir of Transjordan owes his success entirely to English

patronage . His one military campaign was staged against

Ibn Saud, when that gentleman with tacit British approval chased

Abdullah's father, Hussein, off the throne of Hejaz . Abdullah

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

the desert .

The Emir is an excellent chess player and indifferent poet .

He has only one legal wife, but enough concubines of every

color and nationality to suit the most capricious taste . In April

of 1931 he attempted to make the use of automobiles illegal in

Transjordan, but was overruled by the British . Christian Arab

papers in Palestine have attacked him regularly for his hostility

to Christians . His son, Tallal, attempted to assassinate the royal

father in May 1936, and has since been imprisoned in what passes

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

347

for the Palace . The Emir is wise enough to know the limitations

of his power . With the external affairs of his country he

has little to do, even nominally . Its internal affairs are supervised

with autocratic powers by the smart British Resident, Colonel

Cox.

His administration proved so erratic and extravagant that the

English finally deprived him of the administration of even his

own estates and put him on the civil list like a pensioner . The

balance is reserved for the payment of his debts .13 He is known

to privately favor a great Semitic State made up of Jews and

Arabs with himself at the helm . Publicly he is more circumspect.

Once he is said to have declared : "Why should we not

allow the Jews to come into our country ? We shall take their

money and then drive them out again ."

He is a realist of the first water, who would not hesitate at any

time to cut His Britannic Majesty's throat if anything could be

gained by it. Lord Raglan, former British political officer in

Transjordan, informed the Lords on February 21, 1922 that he

himself "had heard Abdullah with his £ 5000 in his pocket 14 hold

up Sinn Fein as an example to the Arabs of Palestine . The inhabitants

are disgusted with Abdullah and they are still more

disgusted with the British Government which has forced him

upon them."

During the Winter of 1935-36 the Emir wrote the French

Foreign Minister offering France the annexation of Transjordan

to Syria on condition that he become king . "If for no other

reason," says Ernest Main, "than that they suspected Abdullah

of being a tool of Britain, the French had nothing to do with

this scheme ." 15

The Emir's country is so pathetically undeveloped that "even

a horse tied to a tree is a wayside event ." 16 Kenneth Williams,

accompanying the Peel Commission during their 1936 visit, describes

the greater part as inhabited "only by wandering tribes .

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

17

Impelled by their extreme poverty, the Tribes have long gazed

with envious eyes at their lucky brethren across the river, now

348

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

prosperous enough to own many wives and all the good food

they could eat . Even Abdullah himself, usually so tractable,

could not restrain his cupidity. He began to regard himself in

the light of a land-owner whose vast stretches could be given a

fabulous market value, though at the time they were not worth

the taxes paid on them . His cronies among the land-owning

effendis also began to grow restless despite hand-outs and patronage.

They smelled bigger game ; and, mouths watering at this

tempting stream of yellow metal pouring before their eyes across

Jordan, they acted at times like a dog teased with a bone that

has a string attached to it . Much to British disgust, the patriotism

ready-made for them by Whitehall began to look phony to all

sections of the Transjordan population .

Back in 1924 Jacob De Haas had already been offered ioo,ooo

dunams at "about a dollar an acre, on condition that the sale was

not disclosed to the British officials in Jerusalem." 18 Then and

since, the Emir has been anxious to sell to Jews, but the British

have persistently interfered . In 1926 they forced the dismissal

of Premier Rikabi Pasha for "favoring Zionist immigration ." By

the end of 1932 the Emir himself started negotiations with Jewish

political circles and arranged a 99-year lease on 70,000 dunams

near the Allenby bridge."' The exultant crowing of some

members of the Jewish Agency, who could not resist premature

publicity over this `stupendous victory,' killed the deal . Becoming

really annoyed at what they considered Arab `rapacity,' the

British stepped in and smashed the proceedings .

But the Arabs were not to be put off . On January 17, 1 933,

Mithkal Pasha, most powerful sheikh in Transjordan, offered

to lease one hundred thousand dunams. Heads of other tribes

approached the Jewish Agency with similar propositions . On

January 2o a great meeting of sheikhs at Amman resolved to support

Abdullah up to the hilt . Three days later, in an interview

carried by the entire Arab press, Abdullah bluntly accused the

Palestine Government of forcing him to rescind his agreement

with the Jewish company.

Events tumbled over themselves in swift succession . On February

6, a group of the most influential tribal leaders drew up a

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

349

petition demanding the right to lease or sell their land . Pointing

out the terrible poverty and underpopulation of the country,

they declared that salvation could come only through the Jews .

Under the direction of the Government propaganda officer, the

Palestine Arab press accused Abdullah of having engineered the

petition himself. Undeterred, Abdullah banned offending Arab

papers from his territory . Transjordanian leaders, determined

to have their way, staged impressive demonstrations demanding

land sales . The opening of the Legislative Assembly on February

9, was all set for fireworks . The group in favor of legalizing

land sales to Jews, having a clear majority, had taken the

bit in their teeth and meant to be stopped by no one . The Assembly

had already met when the Secretariat announced that it

had been dissolved and that future sessions were indefinitely

postponed . According to the story carried openly by all Arab

papers, both the High Commissioner and the British Commander

of the Transjordan Military had held a hurried conference with

the Emir, laying down the law to that refractory gentleman in

no uncertain manner .

Meanwhile the Palestine Government was with meticulous

correctness advising the Jewish press that "this matter is not

within our jurisdiction as Transjordan is under a different government."

At almost the identical moment, it informed the

Emir that his subsidy would be reduced by twenty-five percent

during the coming year . But for once the rubber-stamp Legislature

confounded its masters by running completely amuck.

On April r, at its next session, the High Commissioner's bill prohibiting

sale or lease of land to non-Transjordanians (Jews) was

unexpectedly beaten by thirteen votes to three . The session

closed in surly mood with no affirmative measure allowed to

come before it.

Still trying to force the issue, on May 25, representatives delegated

from twenty-three Transjordanian towns waited in a body

on the Jewish Agency urging them not to give up the fight . It

was apparent that operating deviously with his left hand and

hungrier than ever, Abdullah was sitting tight . That forced the

British to lay aside their switch in favor of the cudgel. They

3 50

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

reminded the Emir of what had happened to his illustrious father,

King Hussein, when he thought he was a bigger man than

the King of England. Though Abdullah wisely modified his

position, his followers were not nearly so circumspect . Enraged

meetings were held regularly in violent protest . As late

as March 27, 1935 the heads of the most important tribes convened

in an uproarious session, demanding the cancellation of

anti-Jewish laws "because Jewish money which is destined to

develop Transjordan is being diverted . . ." With unerring

awareness they ignored the fiction of a Transjordanian Government

and addressed their resolution direct to the British, who disregarded

it.

However, it should not be believed that English solicitude for

their tribal wards is limited to some skittish desire to fence them

off picturesquely on their reservations . British officials themselves

have been buying up large tracts of the most fertile acreage

and placing them under cultivation.20 Palestine Arabs, too,

are taking over extensive tracts on speculation, considering an

eventual Jewish settlement inevitable .21

There have been other settlement schemes which had British

approval . In the Spring of 1927 the English Government put

up a demand that land be made available for the immediate settlement

of Armenians . Sensing no monetary advantage, and disliking

Christians with a keener gusto than they did Jews, Arab

sheikhs submitted a counter-memorandum angrily rejecting the

proposition . It was consequently dropped . Early in 1929 the

English backed another plan to colonize refugees from Tripoli

and Bengasi after those territories had been occupied by the

Italians . Three hundred thousand dunams were to be granted

under the most favorable conditions, but the prospective settlers

proved unorganized and capital was lacking .22 At still another

time, under London's request, Abdullah presented one hundred

thousand dunams near Amman to a large contingent of exiles

from Morocco. The settlers were guaranteed adequate deeds,

freedom from taxation for three years and military protection

against Bedouin attack.

Whitehall is still fearful that the Jews will find a way someTRANSJORDAN

THE JUDENREIN

351

how to break through the wall which holds them west of Jordan.

When they do, the 'landless Arab' bogey, the Statutory

Tenant Laws, the whole absurd system of blockade and restriction

in which the land-hungry Jew is caught, must fall apart

of its own inert weight. With the vast unpopulated reaches of

Transjordan in prospect, they would become too foolish to retain

even a pretense of plausibility . The Bureaucrats know that

if they succeed in securing themselves on the soil the Jews will

never be driven out o f the Holy Land, and that the whole

carefully raised scheme against them must then ultimately fail .

In its issue of February 4, 1937, Great Britain and the East echoes

official apprehension, crying that "a treaty or some conclusive

guarantee with Transjordan, that the Jews will not be allowed

to take land there, would greatly pacify the country ."

Most Transjordanians seem to believe, however, that their

country would be better `pacified' by the removal of the British.

CHAP I ER IX

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

The final stroke, which was to deal the death blow to Zionist

hopes, was simply conceived . It rested on the establishment of

that great democratic institution, a parliament, in Palestine . Superficially

the Bureaucrats thus placed themselves in the vanguard

of progress . Who could challenge the undoubted right

of men to rule themselves through their own elected representatives

! By intent, however, the scheme was a long step forward

toward the liquidation of the Mandate . As envisaged by Whitehall,

the Legislative Assembly would be a ready-made dummy

congress which could be implemented at any time as a perfect

sounding board for British policies . At the same time it would

place the Zionists within brackets so that they could not attack

without the risk of losing world sympathy .

All of this was urged in the name of the `sacred promises'

made to Hussein of the Hejaz, despite the fact that in the Hejaz

itself there is not and never has been any parliamentary system

whatsoever. Throughout the `free' countries of Arabia democracy

is noteworthy by its absence . Yemen and the immense

territory of Saudi are ruled without even a pretense of constitutional

government . The equally vast Hadramaut, as well as

Aden, cowers under the despotic authority of British guns .

Iraq, most developed of all these Arab countries, is ruled by a

shadow Government constituted with the assistance of British

officials. "Notwithstanding the Constitution," says Lieutenant-

Colonel Stafford meaningfully, "British policy in Iraq was directed

. . . towards making Feisal a real King in the Eastern

sense ." 1 "The country's Parliamentary system," he tells us, "is

a farce." The Government is cordially hated by the majority of

the population . Armed revolt is always in the air and is kept

down with an iron hand.2 Even the barest pretext to constitu-

352

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

353

tionalism vanished in 1936 when the Army bombed the capital

and seized control .

Toward the great illiterate bulk of the population the educated

Arab classes are no more democratic in the political sense

than the Athenians were to their slaves . "Even within their

own circle," remarks Ernest Main, "they have little sense of

what real democracy means." 3 The orbit of politics in `free

Arabia' revolves around the sheikhs, emirs, imams and their supporters.

"The Arab masses," says Professor Scherger, "do not

fit into any other system of government except the foreordained

traditional rule of sheikh and religious leaders . . . Conspiracies

and assassinations are the only popular procedure adopted

and practiced by the Arabs when electing representatives and

rulers." 4 Throughout every portion of Arabia slavery flourishes

with the full support of public opinion . It is a vested interest

of immemorial respectability, writes Bertram Thomas,

"and any extraneous authority interfering becomes odious in

the eyes of the people ." 5 How can one talk of democracy in

the same breath with this !

The readiness of the Palestinian Arab for self-rule is not less

unpromising. He is just as backward, excitable and fanatic as

his brother in the desert. The various Commissions of Inquiry

have themselves declaimed that he was incompetent and must be

protected against the superior capacities of European immigrants

. Eighty-five percent of his men and ninety-three percent

of his women are illiterate .6

The setting up of a parliamentary body, under the circumstances,

would only serve to provide an arena for general intrigue

and agitation against the whole policy and purpose of the

Mandate. The Colonial Office itself informed an Arab Delegation

in March 1922 : "The position is that His Majesty's Government

is bound by a pledge which is antecedent to the Covenant

of the League of Nations, and they cannot allow a constitutional

position to develop in a country for which they have

accepted responsibility to the principal Allied Powers, which

may make it impracticable to carry into effect a solemn undertaking

given by themselves and their allies . . . It is quite clear

354 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

that the creation at this stage o f a National Government would

preclude the fulfillment of the pledge made by the British Government

to the Jewish People."

The greatest authority in the British Commonwealth on constitutional

reform is the India Report of 1934. It lays down the

following principle : "Parliamentary government, as it is understood

in the United Kingdom, works by the interaction of four

essential factors : the principle of majority rule ; the willingness

o f the minority for the time being to accept the decisions o f the

majority ; the existence of great political parties divided by

broad issues of policy rather than by sectional interests ; and

finally, the existence of a mobile body of public opinion, owing

no permanent allegiance to any party and therefore able, by its

own instinctive reaction against extravagant movements on one

side or the other, to keep the vessel on an even keel ." In Palestine

none of these requisite conditions exist. A few families,

the Nashishibis, Husseinis and Khaldis, monopolize all public

power, and would soon rend all public life to shreds in their

mutual struggles . "Of a genuine rivalry of political parties,

presenting alternative municipal programmes to the electorate,"

says the Peel Commission, "there is no trace ."

Still another British authority, the Hilton Young Commission,

lays down the precedent that where a fundamental division

exists of race or religious hatreds, or a difference in level o f

civilizations between the various elements o f the population,

"the abstract principle o f `majority rule' cannot be dogmatically

applied ." How does this fit the Palestine situation ?

In July 1924, Ormsby-Gore informed the Mandates Commission

that "if in this [legislative] council there should be brought

forth an anti-Zionist majority, the Government will come into

an impasse, since it must execute certain provisions of the Mandate,

on the one hand, while, on the other hand, a hostile majority

would oppose such measures ." Three months later Herbert

Samuel is droning to the same Commission "that the Arabs

have declared they would, if they had the majority [in the proposed

Parliament], use it to prevent the creation of the Jewish

National Home."

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

355

Everyone, including the British, agreed that the setting up of

any such parliamentary apparatus was a direct refutation of the

manifest purposes of the Mandate, that it would automatically

crystallize the Jews as a helpless minority in their National

Home, and that no right thinking man could countenance such a

procedure. Nevertheless, London is soon after found espousing

this very scheme as one of its fundamentals of policy. Every

High Commissioner had to make it his own . Though the Jews

fought the proposition desperately, for once solidly united, the

Bureaucrats pushed it with all the power at their command .

Time after time when it appeared on the verge of adoption, unlucky

accident intervened .

On several occasions, when all else seemed propitious, the

Mandates Commission rejected the proposal as "premature and

ill-advised ." Notwithstanding, in 1923 London officially declared

it in existence . But the Arabs foolishly refused the proffered

bait . Completely misjudging English motives, they believed

that a little additional pressure would bring about the

complete squashing of the Mandate, and the elimination of the

British as well . With consequent bravado they boycotted the

election to the new Parliament, and announced that they would

sabotage all laws accepted by that body. Left without a leg to

stand on, the Government annulled the election and reinstated

the former Advisory Council, taking the occasion to reduce the

former Jewish proportion .

After the 1929 pogrom the Arabs again renewed their demands

for the `true processes of democracy.' They could not

have chosen a more awkward moment . A volcanic eruption of

horror still convulsed world opinion . The temper of Mr. .

Weizmann's Zionists was yet an unprobed factor . Uncertainty

made the Bureaucrats wary . With scrupulous probity Whitehall

proclaimed that "since the effect of meeting the wishes of

the Arab delegation as regards democratic government would

have been to render it impossible for His Majesty's Government

to continue as Mandatory for Palestine . . . it became evident

that this matter could not usefully be pursued further." This

was in May 1930. In October we are told by the same Gov35

6

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

ernment "that the time has now come" when the question of

constitutional changes must "be taken in hand without further

delay," and that "the time has arrived" for the setting up of a

Legislative Council for Palestine.

For five more years the matter seesawed back and forth. Finally,

on December zz, 1935 High Commissioner Wauchope

sounded the tocsin for democracy by once more proclaiming

the establishment of a Legislative Council . The announcement

carefully avoided all reference to the Balfour Declaration and

the Jewish National Home . It was made on Saturday, the Jewish

Sabbath, and was addressed to the Arabs, ignoring the Jews

as if they did not exist.

The `Council' was a precious piece of humbug . Out of

twenty-eight members, four Jews and eleven Arabs were to be

elected. The balance were to be appointed by the High Commissioner,

to include five Englishmen . The High Commissioner

retained wide veto powers. If a miracle happened and his handpicked

`legislative body' bucked the traces, he merely had to

deem its measures invalid to rule them out without ceremony .

The Jews anxiously asked themelves : What was back of the

British mind ? What purpose could there be to all this artful

simulation ? Was it to provide a rostrum for anti-Zionist agitators

who could be represented as expressing the country's

will? Was it a smokescreen behind which anti-Jewish officials

could plot the death of Zionism ? With dogged resolution they

notified the Government that they would neither participate in

the elections nor recognize the proposed assembly . The reply

was the icy ultimatum that "with them, without them or

against them, a Legislative Council would be established in

Palestine."

This was all very well, but it did not take into account the British

Parliament itself . The Council scheme was debated in the

Lords on February z6,1936, and on March 24 in Commons, where

it was disastrously routed . In the latter body, recites Lord Peel

dolefully, "the Secretary of State, whose speech was constantly

interrupted, had only two supporters ." 7

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY 357

"BY THEIR ACTS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM! "

After all the moralizing which accompanied the Legislative

Council plan, one is astonished to discover that the British have

neglected to put any of these fine precepts into operation during

the entire period of their administration in Palestine . Such

local autonomy as the Jewish settlements retain is almost entirely

a carry-over from the Turkish regime. The Arab masses have

no more voice in even their local community affairs than if they

lived in Timbuctoo .

The electoral system the British introduced (no one else

wanted it) is a grotesque travesty on democratic processes .

The country was divided into community rolls based on religion.

A Jew could nominate only a Jew, a Moslem a Moslem

and a Christian a Christian . Suffrage is based on property

rights, and there is no educational test . From here on, the proceedings

become heavily involved . Despite the fact of three

community rolls for nomination purposes, there is only one

common roll for election purposes. Now a Christian, Jew or

Mohammedan may vote for anyone he pleases, but Government

decree determines the number of each religion which must be

elected !

An analysis of the polling lists in representative towns shows

Nablus to have less than goo voters, out of a population of

20,000. Gaza, a city of 19,000, boasts 500 voters. Ramleh,

with 12,000, has 300 voters. The link between Government

officials and the peasantry is the village Mukhtar, a worthy

whom Lord Peel describes as "usually illiterate ."

The Capital City itself is a perfect example of what the British

mean when they talk about `democracy' and `self-determination.'

The Jews of Jerusalem constitute seventy-two percent of

its 110,000 souls . Moslems are twenty percent, with the balance

Christians . Despite this numerical preponderance, the

Government has always insisted on the appointment of an Arab

Mayor, who runs the city with a high hand ." Jews, who pay

practically all the taxes, are allowed the barest minimum of pub358

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

lic benefits. Some of the older Jewish quarters such as Nahlat

Zion, which have been paying taxes since the British occupation,

have yet to be provided with a single yard of road .

An incident which occurred in 1930 thrusts this whole

strange situation close to the realm of fantasy . We see the

Mayor of Jerusalem, Ragheb Bey Nashishibi, at the head o f an

anti-Jewish delegation, proceeding to London in his capacity of

Mayor, armed with a bristling political program aimed directly

against his own constituents ! And this on the very eve of

Municipal Council elections where the Mayor was engaged in

a mortal struggle with his ancient enemies the Husseinis ! The

Jews stormed like madmen. Stentoriously they promised retaliation

by throwing their support to Nashishibi's opponents .

Immediately the Government rose to the occasion with a decree

postponing the elections for three years . In the Mayor's absence,

it refused pointblank to allow Chaim Solomon, Jewish

Vice-Mayor, to sit as acting-executive, and appointed an Arab

instead. Completely disgusted, the Jewish members of the

Municipal Council resigned in a body .

In 1933 the Government introduced an election scheme which

gerrymandered the election districts with such strategic cunning

that the Jewish majority was turned into a minority . Part

of the maneuver which arranged this result lay in the granting

of special rights to owners of property in the Old City . These

regulations so curtailed the right of suffrage that out of its entire

population only 3900 individuals in Jerusalem were entitled

to appear at the polling places .

In January 1935 the Government appointed Hussein Fakri

El Khaldi mayor for five years, to take Nashishibi's place. A

Jew, Daniel Auster, was given the title of Vice-Mayor . Right

after being inducted into office, Mayor Khaldi refused to countenance

the presence of the Jewish Vice-Mayor and even denied

him an office in the Municipal Building . A new roar of

indignation arose from the Jews . As a result, permission was

now given the Vice-Mayor to sit in the Municipal Building,

where relieved of all duties he twiddled his thumbs .

The farcical drama continued to unfold . In 1937, Arab

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

359

Khaldi himself was picked up by a squad of soldiers for alleged

complicity in the murder of a British official, and exiled

to a small island without benefit of trial . Thus unexpectedly

Vice-Mayor Auster found himself acting-Mayor. Officialdom

was nonplussed . At that very moment London was seeking to

put over its great coup, the Partition Plan . For the sake of

world opinion the Jew must be allowed to remain . But what

to do about the Mayor's salary, which totals C 144.6 a year !

To give it to Mr. Auster would be to recognize his position .

Naturally, Arab Khaldi, in exile in the Seychelles Islands, could

not receive it. From that point on the problem is solved by

being studiously ignored. So Mr. Auster, who is Mayor and

yet not Mayor, continues to perform the mayoral duties gratis .

Just what his status is, no one, least of all himself, can say .

In Haifa the situation is much the same . Though the Jewish

community is over fifty percent of the population and contributes

around seventy percent of the municipal income, it is

represented by only four out of twelve Councilors on the

Municipal Board . A number of other towns have, on paper at

least, some rights of self-government, with power principally to

raise taxes for municipal affairs . But only two Jewish towns

come within this category. "Why," asks Wedgwood, "are

Arab towns given self-government if they have populations of

2500 or more, while Jewish towns like Petach Tikvah, with a

population of 25,000 or 30,000, do not get self-government?"'

Even Tel Aviv did not attain the status of a municipal corporation

until 1 934.

Tel Aviv's self-rule is not worth too much . A Council is:

elected, which selects a Mayor and Vice-Mayor from among its

own members, subject to the approval of the High Commissioner.

How much `democracy' this entails is demonstrated in

the elections of November 1936, when General Wauchope

calmly invalidated the election of Moshe Chelouche as Mayor

without offering any reason for his action, and appointed Dr.

Israel Rokeach, Mayor in his stead .

Tel Aviv is the only city in Palestine where women enjoy

the franchise . Here they may even hold important municipal

36o THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

posts. On the extraordinary excuse that this was contrary to

public policy, the Administration suddenly placed this right,

which Jewish women have had for a decade, into question . By

regulation issued February 9, 1 933 the High Commissioner was

granted the power to decide whether or not a woman has the

right to active or passive participation in municipal elections, entitling

him at will to throw out of office such women as might

have been duly elected, as well as to deny them suffrage .

Though they are taxed to the hilt, Jewish colonies fail to receive

the grants-in-aid allowed to Arab towns for public services

; and the Government at the same time consistently refuses

them permission to make use of outside credit facilities,

even for self-paying projects. Thus the Council of Rehovoth

tried vainly for three years to get permission to raise a loan for

building a market. In the end Rehovoth built its market without

the loan by straining its resources to the bursting point . When

in 1933 the Tel Aviv Municipality negotiated a loan of C350,000

with the Prudential Assurance Company, the Government refused

permission for any sum over J 6o,ooo. (This loan, incidentally,

was to be devoted to the construction of schools, built

in other cities by the Government at its own cost.)

This despotic, minute control extends to trivia undreamed of

in any other State but Soviet Russia. When, after the outbreaks

of 1929, Tel Aviv sought to set up its own slaughter house because

Jewish butchers did not feel safe in Jaffa, the Government

not only ignored the petition but would not even allow the city

to "meet the requirements by supplies of meat from elsewhere ."

It was either Jaffa or no meat .9 Years later a slaughter house

was ultimately built, but the situation continued provocative .

In 1938 Tel Aviv was faced with an enormous increase in meat

prices, "owing," says Palestine and Middle East Economic

Magazine, "to the domination of the market by a group of cattle

importers who now run what is virtually a meat racket on a

large scale." 10 By manipulating supply and transport at both

ends, these importers had succeeded in wiping out all competition,

with the result that the price of cattle for slaughter imported

from the identical Balkan countries "is almost three

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

361

times higher in Tel Aviv than in Egypt." When the Tel Aviv

Authorities decided to take action against further increases in

the cost of meat, the Government withheld its consent for

Municipal regulation of meat prices . Moreover, it refused to

sanction the import of cattle through Tel Aviv Harbor, which

would have cheapened transport and insured independent supplies.

Calling things by their right names, the Jerusalem Palestine

Review states the fact that the real ruler of the city is the

District Commissioner, not the "fictitious Council and bogus

Mayor." Fully as courageous, the Jewish Vice-Mayor (now

Mayor ?) writes that "although a cursory reading of the Palestine

Corporation Ordinance may give the impression that the

Corporations established under that law have wide powers of

civic administration, such an impression is erroneous . . . Municipalities

have practically no authority in connection with

the welfare of their citizens . . . Authority of the Municipal

Councils is so limited that even if it is decided to appoint a

minor clerk at a salary of 436 per annum . . . the approval of

the District Commissioner or the High Commissioner is necessary.

A Council of twelve or fifteen elected representatives

may spend hours and days arriving at a decision which, when

submitted to the Commissioner, is responded to by a curt note

canceling it. Against that rejection no action can be taken .

. . . The Palestine Government has, in effect, turned our Municipal

Councils into debating clubs ."" These Councils are

not even empowered to regulate building and layout or direct

roads in traffic . Their budgets must receive official ratification

from the District Commissioner, which may not be forthcoming

for a year or more . "For example," writes Lord Peel, "the budget

of Jerusalem for the financial year 1935-36 was not approved

until August 1935 ; and . . . the majority of the municipal

budgets for 1936-37 were still not approved by January

1937." 12

It is interesting to discover that the Moslem Wak f Administration,

though largely supported from taxes and not subject to

the democratic control of the Arab community, has been al362

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

most completely free of Government supervision, presenting

its budget only for `information' ; while the Jewish National

Council, democratically elected and supported entirely by internal

contributions, must submit its budget for Government approval

.

It is shocking to learn that Palestine is one of the few places

in the world where the slave traffic is carried on openly . "We

talk about slavery in Abyssinia," states a sickened English writer,

"but how many people know, for example, that [in Palestine]

you can buy the most beautiful girl . . . for a couple of hundred

pounds . You can buy her when she is twelve years old,

and you can take her home, there and then, to live with your

other . . . wives . . . and all of this in 1936, in a land administered

by Great Britain under a Mandate from the League of

Nations !" 13 He gives the current price of women as £5 for an

`old' woman of twenty or a girl of fifteen who is non-virgin.

,00 to C50 gets you a first class concubine, while f200 Will

buy you the modern equivalent to the Queen of Sheba .

According to the recent Annual Report of the American Colony

Aid Association, among three hundred mothers treated at

the Infant Welfare Center, one was thus purchased for the purpose

of sexual abuse at the age of seven, one at eight, 7 at nine

years, i i at ten, 2 2 at eleven, 41 at twelve, 51 at thirteen, and

54 at fourteen . Of the mothers treated, 62 .5% were defenseless

children who had been sold into slavery . How casually this

brutal trade in human flesh is regarded can be understood from

the following item which appeared in the Palestine press of

December 27, 1930 : "Three fellaheen of a Gaza tribe, now

residing in the Beisan district, have sold their daughters at a

good price, and already handed them over to masters in Tulkarm,

Nablus and Haifa, according to a letter to El Carmel."

One of the most persistent complaints of this people whom

British propaganda regards as long-suffering patriots, is that the

Zionists have inadvertently chased the price of women out of

sight. Arabs who sold land to Jews had enough money to buy

six, seven - sometimes a dozen or more women . The price of

female slaves rose dramatically in accordance with the law of

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

363

supply and demand so that exorbitant prices must now be paid

for women, who are dragooned from even far-away Ethiopia . "I

assure you," a highly placed Arab told Farago, "even such episodes

add to the general hatred of Jews, and one must not judge the

Arabs too harshly if they take to arms in desperation ."

It is a striking commentary on the Mandatory's conception

of government that Jews lucky enough to be nationals of States

tolerably free of Jew-baiting will not risk Palestinian citizenship,

even though they have come to the National Home to stay .

As in the worst days of the old barbaric Turks, they take special

trips back to the old countries, registering their children there

so that they might enjoy protection against a Government they

have learned to distrust thoroughly . It is estimated that fully

one hundred and sixty thousand Jews permanently domiciled in

the Holy Land thus keep their old nationality.14

SOME ODIOUS COMPARISONS

You may search the map through and you will not find a

single area administered by the English Colonial Office where a

constitutional position in favor o f the native population has been

allowed to develop. Is it not astonishing, then, that they should

exhibit such a compelling sentiment for the `rights' of natives in

precisely the area they are under pledge to relinquish ultimately

to the Jews ?

British Central and East Africa may be taken for convenient

comparison . The native races here are certainly as intelligent as

those of Palestine, and infinitely more tractable . They outnumber

the whites four hundred to one . Nevertheless, wherever

representative institutions have been granted to English

colonies and dependencies in these territories, the native peoples

have not been allowed to participate either as voters or as

members. The voting power and the right to be elected as

members is vested mostly, if not always, in the British European

immigrants. 15

Still more significant, there are large colonies of East Indians

and Arabs settled in these places . They came long be364

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

fore the British immigrants and they play a vital part in the

economic life of these communities . Notwithstanding, the constitutional

power is invariably placed in the hands of British settlers

.

It is worth tearing off the cover of this thing to get a look

at some of its detail . We find Tanganyika, also a mandated territory,

with a British population of 4000 submerged in some

5,02 2,000 natives. In addition there are 71 oo Arabs and 2 3,400

East Indians . Yet under the Constitution of 1926 a Legislative

Council is constituted consisting of twenty British Europeans

and three British Indians . Neither the native populations nor

the 7000 Arabs, who alone outnumber the British two to one,

are represented at all . In Kenya Colony, in which much the

same situation obtains, the best part of the agricultural land is

sequestered for white settlers only . Into this restricted area

neither the large native population nor the considerable proportion

of Indians and Arabs may penetrate .

Zanzibar is another fair sample of this weave . In addition to

its native population of 186,470, it has 33,400 Arabs, 14,0o0

British Indians, and only 300 Europeans. Yet of the fourteen

members of the Legislative Council, ten are British Europeans.

Arabs apparently do not count here either .

In South Africa, which as a Dominion (not under the direction

of the Colonial Office) invites no absolute comparison, Europeans

are but 1,890,300 out of a total population of 8,370,000.

Yet it is mandatory that members of both the Senate and House

of Assembly be British subjects of European descent. Colored

people (including Arabs and East Indians) are subjected to discriminatory

regulations of the most severe type . When the

Hindu leader Gandhi visited there several years ago, he was not

allowed to enter one of the great public buildings on this account.

A comparison from another angle is offered by British experience

in the Island of Cyprus . To spike the Greeks, who

hoped for enosis (reunion with Greece), a Legislative Assembly

similar to that proposed for Palestine, was formed . In it the

Turkish minority of twenty percent plus Government officials

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

365

formed an actual voting majority . The result was economic

stagnation and political chaos. Greek members refused to cooperate

with the Government or the Turk minority. Bills in

the Legislature were jettisoned . National hatreds reached an

explosive climax. The gulf of culture, hopes and physical differences

between the two races was so fundamental as to contravene

ordinary differences of opinion . As a result of this selfgenerated

combustion, the Island almost blew itself off the map

-and the British were glad enough finally to haul out from

under. In November 1931 they withdrew the Constitution as

"premature, excessive and unsuitable ." From that time forward,

Cypriots were not so much as allowed to discuss or hear a

political speech . 16 The game had been played out in favor of

the baldly stated conviction that if Britain is to stay there, she

must rule there.

The British, with this experience immediately behind them,

do not need to be told that the differences between Arab and Jew

- in ideals, dreams, mentality, culture, and objectives - are far

more exaggerated than anything they ever witnessed between

Turk and Greek in Cyprus. But Whitehall had not confounded

itself by turning evangelist . Its continually publicized efforts

to establish a parliament in Palestine had a far more practical

purpose. The Zionists had to be pried loose no matter what

was forfeit . Towards this end it was desirable to encourage the

Arabs to consider themselves the rightful rulers of the country,

and to foster the belief that a decisive action on their part would

sweep away the last tottering remnants of the Balfour Declaration

and the Jewish National Home project .

Page 365 Book

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by WILLIAM B. ZIFF - Book 3 of 4

BOOK THREE

CHAPTER I

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

DOES AN ARAB RACE EXIST ?

Book 3 of 4  BOOK THREE CHAPTER I "A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" DOES AN ARAB RACE EXIST ?

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by WILLIAM B. ZIFF

BOOK THREE

CHAPTER I

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

DOES AN ARAB RACE EXIST ?

The British, who were later to talk imposingly of `Arab nationalism

in Palestine,' were of a quite different view in 1918 .

British Peace Handbook No. 6o declares briskly that "the people

west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arab speaking .

. . . In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin ;

elsewhere they are of the most mixed race ." As late as 1921

the Administration was still officially claiming that the word

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

Actually there are no `Arabs' anywhere . There is not even

a fairly homogeneous mixed race. Throughout the Peninsula

the Arab has ceased to exist . Those who have taken his place

are a motley assortment of peoples, low in the scale of human

development, who speak the Arabic tongue . Even the courtly

Saladin was no Arab, but a Kurd . Hussein of the Hejaz, himself,

was mothered by a Circassian and had his official heirs by a

woman of Turkish blood ..2

The countless cities, tribes and nations incorporated at

sword's point into the swollen host of Allah, soon drowned the

Arab out by the very suffocation of their numbers . An even

more dreadful revenge was exacted by that cruel institution, the

Harem. How enormous this practice was can be seen in Sykes'

description of the empire of fabled Haroun-al-Raschid, with its

tremendous seraglios stocked with women from every conceivable

corner of the globe .3 He marvels at the unending supply

of female slaves, of every color and kind . Since purity of

blood in the community of Mohammed always gives way to

purity of line, where are the descendants of Qoraish 3a now ?

Even in the very core of desert Arabia, the race has been steadily

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

366

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

367

recent centuries, from the Sudan and other places in Africa .

The offspring of these stolen creatures are not slaves but free

Moslems, since the moment a woman conceives she attains the

status of a legal wife .

Pilgrims from such faraway places as Java and Morocco,

streaming like columns of magnetized ants toward the holy

cities of the Hejaz, contributed liberally to this melange . The

Moslem habit of giving a slave girl to an overnight guest for

his comfort, the frequent looting of visiting caravans of the devout,

all sweetened the mixture . "If we make exception of the

Sherifian families - the descendants of the Prophet - and some

very few other people of undoubted Arab origin," writes the

great Turkish scholar, Dr. Riza-Tewfik, "all the population of

Mecca is alien to the Semitic race ." 4 The Syrian author, Rihani,

describing the population of the Arabian coast, is even

more emphatic .5

History gives it as a fact that the Arabs never settled Palestine,

merely taking control and providing the usual military and

administrative caste . They imposed their religion on the native

peoples but failed to exterminate them. Here, too, gradual racial

suicide was the price of uncontrolled lust . As far back as

the Latin Kingdom in Jerusalem, Edris comments on the vast

number of captive females required to satisfy the wants of these

amorous gentlemen . He reports slaves brought from all parts

of Africa and the East, with good-looking Nubian girls most in

demand. The Crusaders found a country peopled by a mixture

of all the races of the Orient, intermarried with Greeks .

On the founding of the Kingdom they had to recognize the

existence of five types of Moslems (each of different racial antecedents),

as well as Jews, Druses, Samaritans, and others.°

By i 120, when the Council of Nablus was held, the Latins themselves

were already reported half absorbed in this churning stew

of races.

Of even greater significance than the loose social habits of

the Moslems was the physical position of this little land, which

turned it into a bloody charnel house for unending centuries.

Spoliation, destruction, rapine, extermination, claimed the land

368

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

like an ever-recurring plague. The invasions which regularly

smashed against its stricken borders were countless . It had been

devastated by the Scythians from north of the Caucasus . The

Romans populated it with vast settlements of Greeks and other

races from everywhere . It was scoured soon after by the wars

of the Seleucids and Ptolemies . In 634 A.D . occurred the Arab

conquest. By 868 A.D . an Egyptian invader named Mehmet

Tulum had wrested the country from them in the usual blood

bath. Now for a period of centuries Turks, Egyptians, Crusaders,

alternated in control, periodically baptizing the shuddering

country in a bath of blood .

After the Twelfth Century, Palestine was invaded time and

again by wild hordes from Asia who plundered, slew and violated

without halt . In 1256 the Mongol, Hulagu Khan, sacked

the stricken area and put the entire population to the sword . A

scarce hundred years later, Timur the Lame, a sanguinary destroyer

who called himself `The Wrath of God,' made this

whole sector the scene of one of the cruelest massacres of his

blood-drenched career. Now for generations Palestine became

an outspread altar on which human sacrifices were offered continually.

In their savage unending struggles for mastery, Mongols,

Mamelukes and the fierce Charismean tribes of Middle

Asia butchered its people indiscriminately. Between 126o and

1400 A.D . not a single city, town or village remained intact .

When the next conquerors, the Ottoman Turks, came in, rapine

and slaughter had left an indelible mark in the character of

the survivors. "In few parts of the world," says Lieutenant-

Colonel Stafford, "were there more different types ." 7

It was always the foreign soldier who was the police power

in Palestine. The Tulunides brought in Turks and Negroes .

The Fatamids introduced Berbers, Slavs, Greeks, Kurds and

mercenaries of all kinds . The Mamelukes imported legions of

Georgians and Circassians . Each monarch for his personal

safety relied on great levies of slave warriors . Saladin, hardpressed

by the Crusaders, received one hundred and fifty thousand

Persians who were given lands in Galilee and the Sidon

district for their services.

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

369

Out of this human patch-work of Jews, Arabs, Armenians,

Kalmucks, Persians, Crusaders, Tartars, Indians, Ethiopians,

Egyptians, Sudanese, Turks, Mongols, Romans, Kharmazians,

Greeks, pilgrims, wanderers, ne'er-do-wells and adventurers, invaders,

slaves and backwash of all corners of creation, was

formed that hodge-podge of blood and mentality we call today

'Levantine .' As this wild medley of ungovernable, lawless men

were killed off from time to time by incessant wars, raids and

plagues, more from everywhere were constantly merged into

the common melting pot. In the Fourteenth Century, drought

caused the immigration into Palestine of eighteen thousand `tents'

of Yurate Tartars from the Euphrates. Soon followed twenty

thousand Ashiri under Gaza, and four thousand Mongols under

Moulai, who occupied the Jordan Valley and settled from Jerusalem

south . Kaisaite and Yemenite tribes followed in their trail .8

In 1830 the Albanian conqueror Mehemet Ali colonized Jaffa,

Nablus and Beisan with Egyptian soldiers and their Sudanese

allies. Fourteen years later Lynch estimated the thirteen thousand

inhabitants of Jaffa to be composed of eight thousand

Turco-Egyptians, four thousand Greeks and Armenians, and

one thousand Jews and Maronites . He did not consider that

there were any Arabs at all in that city .®

During the middle of the Nineteenth Century the entire territory

of the National Home, east and west of the Jordan, is

computed to have held no more than sixty thousand people all

told. Of this number, non-Moslems, living under the bitterest

persecution, were still heavily in the majority . The huge population

growth since that time has been due to large contingents

of new arrivals . The Turks introduced Circassians around Amman.

When North Africa passed under European authority,

the fanatic Moghrabiyeh Moslems moved out and settled in the

Holy Land . (It was they who were responsible for the Safed

butchery in 1929, and who supplied the continuous tension at

the Wailing Wall .) So too, were introduced into the permanent

population of this little land, Bosnians, Turkoman nomads, and

a stream of Levantines, mixed desert wanderers and Africans

which continues to the present day.

370

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

As for the Christian population, we are told by the learned

Dr. Christie that it is made up of fragments of all the Levant

races. The native Christians of Nazareth come from the Hauran

and from Merj-Ayun ; while the Christians of Safed are the

children of immigrants from Hasbeiya who came in the second

half of the last century .

In the Arabic language only the Bedouin is designated by the

word `Arab.' But here, too, unless the eyes cannot be trusted,

there is little evidence of common descent. The Ghawarineh

tribe of the Jordan Valley have strongly marked African features,

fuzzy hair, black skin and guttural voices . A short distance

away is the tribe of Ghazawiyeh, shrill-voiced, gaunt and

large-featured. Nearby are the blue-eyed blondes of Bethlehem.

Several tribes of alleged Jewish stock have even been described

in Transjordan.1o

Until English political maneuvering recast their viewpoint for

them, the townspeople were insulted if they were referred to as

Arabs. They wanted to be known for what they were, Syrian

Levantines. Count Sforza designates the inhabitants of this entire

region as a medley of peoples "with not the slightest bond

between them." 11 Mrs. Andrews remarks drily that "in Jerusalem

today there are two or three families that claim to be of

the fine Arab stock which entered the country in the Seventh

Century." 12 Dr. Christie doubts whether there is any Arab

blood in the peasantry or villages at all . 13

As long as these masses have lived side by side, they have been

at each other's throats. Tribe hated tribe, city man hated fellah,

the Bedouin despised both, sect cursed sect, and even family disdained

family as unworthy scions of an inferior race . That all

this ill-assorted, explosive mixture can be organized into one

autonomous nation may also be doubted for the future.

ARAB TYPES AND TRAITS

From steppe, mountain, jungle and desert, an agglomeration

of primitive, savage man had swarmed in successive waves over

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

371

Palestine, and left their seed there . These with a vast admixture

of slaves and a leavening of nobler blood represent the racial

antecedents of the people we call 'Levantine' today.

Many of these people are shrewd, clever and even charming .

The studied gentility of the upper-bracket Arab leaves little to

be desired . Dressed in his Abaye 14 and red tarbush 15 he is a

colorful figure . His bearing is languorous and courtly, in vivid

contrast to the direct speech and often uncouth manners of the

immigrant Jew. Beneath this thin stratum, the balance of the

Arab population is primitive in the extreme. For the most part

it can hardly be said that they have risen above the stage of barbarism.

They are, on the whole, of poor physical type and of

low mentality . It would be hard to pose a wider disparity of

culture, instinct and mind than lies between these people and

the returning Hebrew. It is on this cold reality that all the finespun

visions of the Zionist theoreticians run afoul .

English as well as American observers, where they are free

from the corrosion of Empire politics, give a none-too-flattering

estimate of this population . Laconically the American, Commander

Lynch, reported that they were "far inferior to the North

American Indian" 16 then being held on reservations by the

United States Government . Drawing a sharp difference between

them and his desert tribesmen, Lawrence refers to the

Palestinians as "an ape-like people, having much of the Japanese

quickness, but shallow." 17 The late Governor of Sinai Peninsula,

C. S. Jarvis, sweepingly disposes of the Arab as "undoubtedly

the most striking example of decadent and decayed gentry

in the world ." He finds that "the Arab works about i o days

out of the 365," and that "all forms of manual labor are abhorrent

to him ." Like Petrie and other English observers, Jarvis

calls the tribesman a bane to the country he inhabits, asserting

that this once prosperous area "will remain wilderness as long as

he encumbers the land." While "the Arab is sometimes called

the Son of the Desert," he continues, quoting from Palmer, "this

is a misnomer as in most cases he is the Father o f the Desert, having

created it himself, and the arid waste in which he lives and

372

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

on which practically nothing will grow is the direct result of

his appalling indolence, combined with his simian trait of destroying

everything he does not understand." 18

Almost a century ago Lieutenant Lynch wrote that "the ruling

passion of an Arab is greediness of gold, which he will clutch

from the unarmed stranger or filch from an unsuspecting

friend ." 19 In 1935 Jarvis remarks that "his love of money is

such that he loses all sense of proportion whenever currency is

discussed, whilst if actual coins and notes are displayed before

him he not only loses his sense of proportion but his self-control

as well." 20 St. John Ervine adds that "when I hear an Englishman

sentimentalizing about the noble Arab and remember the

dirty and greedy baksheesh hunters I saw wherever I went, I

feel rage rising within me ." 21

Any attempt to judge these people by European standards is

anomalous in itself . Their language, for example, contains loo

words for camel and 99 for woman, but none for murder. There

is not a single Arabic word by which one can distinguish between

the slaughter of a sheep and the premeditated killing of a

man. Under his Abaye the Arab wears a long, wicked-looking

stiletto which he will use with lightning quickness on the slightest

provocation . Brutality is common to Arabs of all classes .

Their "utter callousness . . . for the suffering of animals," comments

Reverend H . V. Morton, "is a terrible thing ." 22 "All

their horses, in the tourist season, have bleeding knees," adds the

Reverend Mr. . Jannaway.23

Among all strata of Arabs woman is regarded as a mere animal .

The Moslem does not believe that a woman has a soul . If two

men begin to make complimentary inquiries about their respective

families, the wives are mentioned last, the boys and cattle

being named before them . "A father who has several daughters,"

writes Pierotti, "regards them just as he would sheep or

cows, and sells them in the same way ." 24

Girls are often not even counted in the figures given census

takers . A woman who bears a female child may be beaten and

reviled as if it were her fault . If she bears a large number of

daughters, she is despised . Merrill mentions a typical unfortu"

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

373

nate, thus described by sympathetic neighbors : "Poor thing,

poor thing ! She's got no children-only girls ." A barren

woman is promptly divorced, and her life made a constant series

of humiliations . An amusing side-light on this attitude is contained

in the petition submitted to the Government in 1935, asking

a ban on the showing of motion pictures to women ; asserting

that such entertainment was "contrary to Moslem law" and

"had a demoralizing effect on women ." 26

The Arab's sanitary arrangements do not bear mention . They

are long past the stage where they could be described as vulgar

or offensive. He has an incurable habit of using the middle of

a busy street for a latrine, shocking visiting European ladies beyond

measure .

Contrary to what might be expected, the Arab is of generally

poor physique . The geographer, George Adam Smith, describing

a locality, speaks of the inhabitants as "a sickly and degenerate

race ." Tuberculosis and malaria are rampant . Syphilis

is a chronic affliction which few escape.26 The dread amoebic

dysentery, meningitis and cholera are common . The Arab's

medical arrangements are elementary . He continues to tend

wounds by the application of fresh cow dung ; and in the case

of eye disease, applies bandages soaked in camel's urine . An

Arab will come to a fountain and wash his hair, ears, face, mouth

and feet in it, before drinking . He is much amused over the

European's ideas of hygiene . St. John Ervine speaks the mind

of most visitors when he remarks that "the man who can cure

the Arab of his filthy habits will be his benefactor ." 27

The Arab believes religiously in occult powers, in Shaitan,

the evil one ; in afrits, malicious little devils ; in Djinnieh, wicked

female spirits who suck the life from men's bodies. They cure

illness by prayer at a sacred tree or shrine . Slips of paper with

verses of the Koran on them are soaked in water and the drink

is given to patients ; or they use the froth from the mouth of a

mania dervish who has fallen in a fit . They believe a wolf's jawbone,

worn around the neck, to be a potent charm .

The Arab is stubbornly opposed to modernity of any kind .

He has no conception of civic duty. Broadhurst found that

374 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

he could not even organize a voluntary fire brigade in Jaffa, and

that the city had to be served by the Jewish group in Tel Aviv .

There is no intellectual life . The only Arab writer of any consequence

is Aref-al-Arif, whose book on Bedouin life could not

even find an Arabic publisher and had to appear first in Hebrew

translation.

There is no denying the fact that the Arab is on the whole

likable - as are all primitives . When not aroused by cupidity

or anger, he can be openhanded to a fault . His very ineptness

is engaging. Even his knavery is tolerable and amusing . In a

typical instance given by Meltzer, an elderly woman in a law

court, obviously not less than sixty, claimed to be twenty-seven.

"But your son says he is twenty-three years old, so how can you

be only twenty-seven ?" asks the red-faced English judge, on the

verge of apoplexy. "My Lord," answers the hag, "upon my head

be it if I am lying . That is how it is. Everything is in the hands

of Allah. He alone knows the ages of women ."

Like the heroes of old, Arabs think it a stain on their reputations

if they do not gorge . To say how much a man can eat or

drink is their way of expressing how strong he is . They are

also inordinately fond of perfumes and unguents . Men who can

afford it will walk around smelling as if they had fallen in a vat

of attar of roses .

Few of them have family names . They are simply called after

the tribe to which the family belongs . There is no set style. A

child may be called by name, followed by his father's name, as

`Yakub Ibrahim' ; or the father might be called `Abu Yakub'

(father of Yakub), and the mother, 'Umm Yakub' (mother of

Yakub) . Sometimes they are merely known by the trades they

ply, as Hadad (blacksmith), Hajjar (stoneworker), etc.

Perched atop of the social scale is the Effendieh class, characterized

by Duff as "those masters of low intrigue ." They have

not altered since Turkish times when the engineer Pierotti dcscribed

them in an ironic simile as "a curse to the country - a

greater evil to Palestine than the plagues were to Egypt, because

those were temporary and these are permanent ." 28 They consider

work of any kind to be degrading ; poverty and loss of

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

3 75

face, unpardonable crimes . They used to extort money from

Christian travelers and convents, but this easy source of revenue

has been stopped since British occupation . Their usual method

of living is by usury . Blackmail is another accepted feature of

their system of existence . It is this class which provides the

politicians who have kept the country in so much turmoil .

The sex habits of this gentry are notorious . Their word is

valueless, even under oath. Most of them have immense families,

with many wives and concubines, purchased with money

derived from Jewish immigration . "A Moslem family of five

wives and thirty or forty children," says Mrs . Erskine, "is no

rarity ." 29

In the cities is a mongrelized horde of ruffians whose presence

makes it impossible for any European woman to walk alone on

the streets after dark . Their insolent eyes undress every woman

they see, with lingering deliberation . The `middle class,' as in

all undeveloped peoples, is neither numerous nor well-defined .

European opinions of this group are not complimentary . Duff

terms them "absolutely incapable of loyalty . . . If money or advantage

is to be gained by betraying partners, there are very few

of them that will not snatch at the opportunity ." 30

At the bottom of the social scale is the Bedouin, whose black

hair tents can be seen today exactly as in the time of the first

Pharaoh.3' He has seen Abraham and Solomon pass . Nebuchadnezzar,

Belshazzar, Alexander, the Ptolemies, a dozen civilizations

rising and falling, have flitted before his eyes . He

remains the same. If his horizon was altered at any point, it speedily

shifted back again as soon as the disturbing element was removed.

The Bedouin is the traditional enemy of the villagers who, not

without justice, regard him as an incorrigible robber and thief .

Bedouin life has always been one of naked struggle between the

stronger and the weaker, the dominant and the subservient tribes.

The former took possession of the best pastures and wells,

plundering the weaker on whom they imposed tribute . Today,

as in the past, the youth of the tribe is nurtured on war songs and

tribal epics of valiant deeds and victories . The principle of im376

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

placable vendetta is a standard part of their existence . The

Bedouin cuts down orchards, burns crops and kills cattle like

any other corsair. The Reverend Henry Field described them in

1884 as "a horrible set of cutthroats, useless in war, as they

were subject to no discipline, and only intent on pillage ." 32 In

our own time, Lowell Thomas reiterates that "the desire to loot

is an all-consuming passion with the Bedouins and is not considered

a form of stealing with them, but is listed among the cardinal

virtues ." 33

The Bedouin has no conception of the word `home' analogous

to ours. He roams a certain well-defined territory with his

herds, paying no attention to international boundaries . He eats

anything : boiled grasshoppers, roast rats, lizards, cats, or any

kind of bird he can snare.34 The life of songbirds in his vicinity

is precarious since he will eat any he can catch .

No fuss is made over the dead . When the body is done with

life, it is simply laid out of sight and promptly forgotten . "The

living do not lay to heart the death of friends ." 35

There is no sentimentality wasted on women, who do all the

slave's work around camp. The Bedouin has a belief in regard

to a certain aromatic shrub that if a man can tie a bow in a twig

with one hand, he will marry two wives . "This superstition,"

says Merrill, "comes the nearest to romance of anything that I

have seen in Arab or Bedouin life." 36

Bedouin women are graceful in youth but begin to walk with

a peculiarly waddling gait after they leave their teens . They

weight themselves down with pounds of barbaric jewelry . Their

faces are disfigured with tattooed patterns of stars, circles and

lines of blue spots. Their knowledge is limited almost entirely

to the trivial tasks of camp life . "They do not know what year

it is," writes Madeleine Miller, "what month, what hour ." 37

Almost alone among the peoples of the earth the Bedouin has

virtually no creative gifts . He destroys and never builds . His

browsing herds of sheep and goats gut the last blade of green

from wherever he camps. His utterly primitive mentality almost

baffles description. In the settled districts he is as likely

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

377

to ride straight through a cornfield as bother about skirting

around it.

The settled Arabs, known as the fellaheen, are considered by

the Bedouin to be of different (and inferior) race from himself.

The fellah lacks nearly all the undeniable charm of his

Bedouin countryman . He is incredibly backward and fanatic,

and usually of low intelligence . He wears a long plain cotton

dress resembling the old-fashioned nightshirt, which is never

washed and lasts him for years . He is generally undersized and

sickly.

The villages of gray mud huts invariably nestle on the side of

a hill, with an evident eye to safety from surprise attack . The

dwellings themselves are rude structures made of mud or camel

dung thatched with straw, without windows or ventilation . In

one part of the shack lives the owner and his family, sleeping together

on straw mats. In the other part is housed the cattle,

together with the hired hand, if one is employed . The place

is heated by a rough oven which burns the usual fuel, dried cattle

dung.

In the house is not the slightest evidence of artistic or creative

impulse to remind the visitor that these people are lifted above

the stage of simple animal appetite . There are neither beds,

tables, chairs nor candlesticks . On the clay floor are usually a

plentiful supply of homemade rugs . The diners sit at mealtime

in squatting position around a common dish, reaching in with

unwashed fingers for the food . Women may not sit at this

rude table, but get the remains, together with the dogs, when

the men are through .

Around the houses filth accumulates like guano . Not a tree

is to be seen in the whole village, with the exception of an occasional

gnarled olive planted by some generation long forgotten .

The only vegetation is a clump of cactus here and there . The

children run around half naked. Before the Jews came, most

of them suffered from horrible eye disease : many were blind.

The haggard faces and monotonous dark blue rags of the women

make them actually repulsive . They work exactly like animals .

378

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

To this day they give birth to their children in the middle of the

road, returning to their village not only with the new-born child

on their back, but with other heavy loads besides .38

The male peasant himself is no lover of hard work . Dr. Morton,

with long opportunity to observe what the Arab calls `land

cultivation,' comments : "For the most part, the Arab watchword

is `do as little as you can, and let what must be done be

done by your wife !' " 39 And Jarvis remarks sarcastically that

if the poorly sowed crop is a failure, "the Arab is on the whole

pleased, as the awful necessity of garnering the corn is thereby

obviated ." 40 He is invariably in debt to the effendi loan sharks

of neighboring cities . The fellah's farm implements consist

solely of a wooden plough of the most elementary design . He

may own an emaciated donkey or camel . If he has a cow, it

is as lean as the proverbial creature of Pharaoh's dream . Cattle

and chicken diseases are a widespread and permanent feature .

Only a few varieties of vegetables are planted except near the

Jewish villages .

Much of the land is held under the antiquated rusha'a system .

The village lands are owned by the community in common, but

cultivated individually . Every two years or so, each tiller moves

on to a fresh holding . Thus this curious rotation goes on indefinitely.

The result is that no one attempts to make any

permanent improvements . Not even stones are removed from

the fields. The fellah, like his Bedouin brother, quite respectfully

consigns the future to Allah whose business it is to take

care of it .

LEVANTINE WORSHIP OF GOD

There has seldom existed such a tangle of murderous animosities

as those which divide the many creeds in this motherland

of religions .

The majority of the population is Moslem, divided into two

great camps, the Sunnites and Shi'ites . The Sunnites, most numerous,

are in turn split up into four principal sects, all of them

fanatics who hate each other hardly less than they do the de"

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 379

spised infidel.41 Around Acre is a large group of Bahaists, an

heretical offshoot of Shi'a. In Galilee are a considerable number

of war-like Druses, who believe in successive reincarnations

of the one God, including Jesus but not Mohammed .42

Islam in Palestine is a magnificent jungle of faiths and dogma .

In the north the inhabitants hold the Caliph El Hakem Biamrillah

as the Messiah and the incarnation of Ali . The numerous Shi'-

ites place Ali above Mohammed . There are considerable sects

which believe in the twelve Imams, one of whom is destined to

return, like Jesus, to relieve mankind of trouble and unbelief .

Different groups recognize various Imams as the deliverer : the

Caliph All, Mohammed al Bakr, Zeidi, Ismail and Suleiman .

They go so far as to acknowledge different religious holidays,

with varying degrees of importance attached to the days mutually

celebrated . Combined with this tangle of dogma is a

confusing medley of fetish and spirit worship dependent on locality.

Whatever Islam might have been in the past or might be elsewhere,

the Palestine Moslem has grooved it into line with his

own peculiar racial mentality . He considers the word `Jew'

obscene and generally uses it as `Al Yahud, Tikram' -using a

word of excuse for mentioning an object indecent to respectable

Moslems. At the Nebi Moussa festival each year, an hysterical

mob of true believers goes through the streets in procession, in a

delirium of wild, whirling dances, waving huge knives and clubs .

They are led by young townsmen of the low-effendi type who

distribute pamphlets and shout bawdy songs of their own composition.

Rising in low frenzied wail from this serpentine line

as it swings along is the continuous guttural chant : "El Billad

billadna, Wa el Yahud Kellabna" (This is our land and the Jews

are our dogs) . The Christian is despised with even more uncompromising

rigor. On this score Sir Ronald Storrs states

briefly that Moslems are "everywhere more tolerant of Jews

. . . than of Christians ." 48 The expulsion of all Christian missionaries

is one of the standard Moslem demands .

Christian Arabs are not only of markedly different racial mixture,

but their whole role in the country's social-economic struc38o

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

tore is strikingly like that of the Jews in the Diaspora . They are

mainly engaged in service occupations . Approximately 12%

of the population, they are 37.7% of those engaged in manufacturing,

transport and commerce . Only 1 5 % of the Christians

of working age are in agriculture as compared to the Moslems'

66%. And like the Diaspora Jews they are huddled together

in certain towns and villages, forming what is f or all practical

purposes a Christian ghetto .44

Christians number today in the neighborhood of one hundred

thousand. There are no exact denominational figures available .

The official figures for 1920 named thirty-five thousand Greek

Orthodox communicants, twenty-five thousand Catholics (split

into two distinct groups centering around the Italian and French

clerics respectively) and an assortment of others, including Maronite,

Coptic, Anglican, Armenian, Gregorian, Jacobite, Abyssinian,

as well as varieties of Uniate Churches and a sprinkling of

Protestants . All of these share in the principal shrines . All

hate each other with an explosive bigotry hardly understandable

to anyone who has not breathed this morbid atmosphere .

Among their squabbles is the question of the actual site of the

Annunciation. At Nazareth the Catholics have a chapel to mark

their claim, the Greeks another, the Rumanians a third . "For

all one knows," remarks Beverley Nichols, "there may be a

dozen similar chapels." 45 Vicious struggles go on for every

foot of the Holy Places . The contest between the Franciscans

and the Orthodox priests as to who is to be permitted to clean

the north window of the Basilica in Bethlehem, usually ends in

an open row. When on December z8, 1936 the Basilica was

again cleaned, both the District Commissioner and the Police

Chief had to be present . In the Holy Sepulchre, the presence

of military guards is always required on high holidays to keep

the Armenians, Latins and Orthodox priests from bashing in

each other's heads . In the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem,

the priests of the different sects have been known to brain

each other with the brass candlesticks at Christmas.

Their brawls never cease . If not over `Holy Places' and

liturgical rights, they are accused of stealing each other's con"

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

381

verts. Their statements are always bald and uncompromising .

An example is the accusation hurled by the Latin Patriarch in

Jerusalem against the Protestants, claiming that they had "despoiled

many important Catholic sites in Jerusalem ." 46

The classic quarrel is between the Greek and Roman Catholics,

with the British invariably taking a covert stand in favor

of the Greeks. An outstanding instance occurred during 1921

when the collapse of Russia left the Greek Patriarchate practically

bankrupt. This was the hour the Latin Church had

waited centuries for. Promptly it entered into an agreement to

purchase the rights and properties of its Orthodox rival, including

the envied Church of the Sepulchre . The Authorities, getting

wind of what was occurring, stepped into the breach and

forbade the sale . They did not care to allow the Catholic

Church to gain the paramount importance which possession of

these sites would give . The collapsing Orthodox clericals were

bolstered up by a subvention from the public funds and a British

puppet, His Beatitude the Greek Patriarch Damianos, was installed

on the bankrupt patriarchal throne over the violent opposition

of the majority of his own synod .47

Beneath the surface, the Latin Church has been in almost a

continuous state of war with the Authorities since the Administration

began. The English suspect that the Vatican is working

hand-in-glove with the Italian Foreign Office . The Vatican in

turn is aroused because the Holy Places Commission has not yet

been constituted, though the League had instructed Britain to

do so from the beginning.

There is not the slightest concord in the religious life of this

land. The Latin Patriarch, for example, considers the local

Y.M.C.A. not only a Protestant missionary institution but an

English propaganda center to boot, and has threatened with excommunication

every Catholic who dares enter its portals .48

On the other side of the fence is the symbolic case of a Moslem

sentenced to one month in jail (on June 23, 1931) for having

been converted to Protestantism.

No matter how virulently these factions may detest each

other, they all join in the opinion that to injure a Jew is a work

382

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

well pleasing in the sight of God . The Greeks, particularly, are

fond of raising the old blood-libel charge, exactly as they used

to in Russia . This type of Jew-baiting the Administration seems

to regard with surreptitious enjoyment . A speaking instance

occurred in March 1921, when the Greek Orthodox daily Falastin

headlined an atrocious story accusing the Jews of kidnaping

Arab children in order to drink their blood during the Passover

rites. Jewish agencies angrily remonstrated to the Government .

The result was a typical piece of horseplay, with an official

named Mark Young ordering the Jaffa authorities "to investigate

the report immediately to ascertain what truth there is

in it."

With the cooperation of Government House, native Christians

have placed themselves in the forefront of Arab nationalist agitation.

49 The intellectual activity and propaganda work is almost

exclusively in their hands . It flatters their vanity, says

Duff, "to believe that they are on equal terms with the young

Moslem gentlemen of Jerusalem and Jaffa to whom through all

the centuries, their people have had to look up with awe and respect."

50 There is no doubt in the minds of unbiased observers,

however, that any idea of a lasting alliance between Cross and

Crescent in Palestine is a chimera . Christians have undergone

an oppression here not one whit less horrible than that meted

out by their co-religionists to the Jews in Europe . Periodic

massacres have occurred consistently since the time when the

Moslem Chief, Ashraf Khalil, celebrated his conquest of Acre

with a great display of Christian skulls on the spears of his bodyguards

.

As long as the Crescent ruled, the Christians were to be pointedly

reminded by blackmail, bloody repression, rape and murder

that they were inferior sons of dogs whom the Prophet for

some reason of dark mercy allowed to carry on . After subjecting

Jews and Christians to every barbarity a distorted imagination

could invent, the notorious el Djezzar actually issued orders

in I8oI to massacre every Christian in Palestine . Only the

threat of the great British Admiral, Sir Sidney Smith, to blow

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

383

Acre out of the ocean if a single Christian head fell, saved them

from extermination. Living men still remember the terrible

events of i 86o when in a widespread murderous attack reminiscent

of the riots of 1936, sixteen thousand Christians were slaughtered

and countless others left destitute . Throughout Palestine

and southern Syria whole villages embraced Islam as the only

alternative to certain death . Again only the hurried intervention

of the Great Powers prevented a general massacre .

In each of the pogroms which have occurred under British

Administration the old enmities have come to the surface . Soon

Christians, too, heard an angry familiar scream which made them

shiver in their skins . They and their forefathers knew its meaning.

It was the call to war against the detested infidel, the old

battle-cry of Islam : "Mohammed and his sword!" The Christians

knew it meant them and no one else . Christians were

freely attacked, and kept to their houses for safety .

The publicity officer of the Palestine Administration has

always been at eternal pains to broadcast the slightest squabbles

between Arab and Jew "apparently to indicate the terrific difficulties

in judicial handling the Mandatory labors under ." 51 But

news of the constant brawls and killings between followers of

Cross and Crescent is always carefully suppressed . Actually the

hatred which separates Moslem and Christian is far more fundamental

than that held by either party for the Jew . This enmity

does not need to be fostered, since it is traditional .

Despite rigid censorship, news events break through, such as

the mob attack on the Protestant Missionary Council Conference

held in April 1928, when a pitched battle was fought between

rioters and police . Moslem attacks flared up viciously in September

1930 . Christian notables were assassinated. In mixed

quarters, Moslem well-owners refused to sell water to Christians.

The paper El Yarmonk, bespeaking the general feeling, advised

Arab Catholics coldly : "Christians are not entitled to speak for

the Arab nation ." 52 Feeling was at a dangerous tension . With

an iron hand, in significant contrast to its handling of Jewish-

Arab disturbances, the Government swiftly intervened . Troops

384

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

patrolled the danger zones, prepared to make short work of the

slightest disturbance . Special regulations were issued and rigidly

enforced against assemblies of any kind .

During the recent rebellion, too, Arab bravos swollen with

their own truculence could but with difficulty be restrained

from including their ancient enemies, the Christians, in one

grand all-embracing terror. Pious Moslems, with an eye for

business, called for a boycott of Christian shops . A violently

worded ukase was issued forbidding `loyal Arabs' from even

using busses run by Christians. The Christian chairman of the

Arab Labor Association was butchered in cold blood . Followers

of the Cross and Crescent fought it out in bloody scrimmage

on the streets. Once more the Administration stamped its foot

down with surgical efficiency, and put a summary end to this

phase of the disorders. Even the slightest hint of what had

taken place was deleted from news dispatches sent abroad .

THE SON OF THE DESERT SUFFERS FROM JEWISH

COMPETITION

Hope-Simpson's thesis that Zionist development has impoverished

the Arab, remains the text from which the ruling coterie

of Whitehall continues to draw its inspiration . Utter despondency,

we are told, has made the Arabs desperate . The semiofficial

British press characterizes them as "a people in despair ."

The root of all the troubles, past and present, Great Britain and

the East assures us solemnly, "is inherent in the Mandatory policy

of making Palestine a National Home for the Jews, with the inevitable

consequence o f reprisals on the part o f the Arabs when

their security and livelihood are threatened ." 53

Has the Arab really been reduced to penury by Zionist immigration

? Has he been actually driven to "despair," as the

Colonials so zealously insist ? The best answer to these interesting

questions lay in the English records themselves .

The returning Zionists found a country sunk in the most

wretched poverty. Malaria, trachoma, dysentery and tuberculosis

stalked everywhere like great shadowy werewolves . Trans"

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

385

Jordan was almost deserted by human life . "In Western Palestine,"

writes De Haas, quoting from a U . S. consular report,

"they [the Bedouins] had driven the population to the hills and

its plains were wholly neglected ." 54 The majority of Jerusalem's

nineteen thousand inhabitants were "mendicants and beggars.'"-'

In 1881, states another official American report, there

was "not even a good wagon road" in the entire country .56

Some years earlier Churton had written : "In the whole of Palestine

there is not a single cart or vehicle on wheels ." 67

The population lived in a state of squalid degradation not surpassed

by the most miserable savages in creation . There was

no professional class . Only 1 % % lived from the rude handicrafts

and small industries that existed. The demoralized inhabitants

would not even trouble to cut wood for fuel "but

found it easier to set fire to the trees on a mountainside to obtain

the charcoal they needed ." S8 The peasant scratched a miserable

living from land which he leased from gouging landlords .

Other human vultures burned his fields and robbed him of even

the pittance he managed to eke from the unfriendly soil . Laborers

employed in the few orange groves belonging to the

effendis received one bishlik (5¢) per day, working from sunup

to sundown under supervisors armed with whips .

At the turn of the century there were 40,000 Jews in Palestine

and about 140,000 others of all complexions ." The inhabitants

had no other feeling for this pauperized, disease-ridden

country than a fervent desire to get away from it . Emigration

proceeded steadily. Immigration was virtually non-existent .

Not until the Zionists had arrived in numbers did the Arab population

begin to augment itself . The introduction of European

standards of wage and life acted like a magnet on the entire Near

East. Abruptly Palestine became an Arab center of attraction.

By 1922, after a quarter century of Jewish colonization,

their numbers mushroomed to 488,000. Today they are over

a million .

If the English contention were accurate, we should expect to

find an exodus of Arabs from areas where Jews are settled, into

purely Arab regions . But exactly the opposite is true : it is

386

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

precisely in the vicinity of these Jewish villages that Arab development

is most marked . Arab Haifa, profiting by the Zionist

boom, grew from 1922 to 1936 by 130%, Jaffa by 8o% and

Jerusalem by 55% . The Arab rural settlement in the Tel Aviv

district increased by over 135%. The all-Arab city of Nablus,

which held 33,000 before the War, has fallen to less than 12,000.

Safed which had zo,ooo, dropped to less than 9000.

In the vicinity of Jewish villages Arab workers earn twice the

wage paid in other parts of Palestine . Unskilled labor receives

three to five shillings a day, and skilled workers eight to twelve

shillings . In neighboring Egypt, Iraq and Syria a worker considers

himself well off if he gets one shilling a day .

Palestine is the only country in the entire Middle and Near

Eastern section where there has been any substantial increase

either in nominal or real wages since the War . The official

index of wages shows a rise from zoo in 1913, to 390 in 1932 .

No Government figures have been published since that date, but

the report of the Department of Overseas Trade in 1935 states

that wages have progressively increased since 1933. The simultaneous

fall in the official index number of retail prices, from loo

in 1922, to 55.1 in 1934, indicates the enormous increase in real

wages in post-war Palestine.

According to the Royal Commission's Report of 1937, forty

percent of all labor employed on Jewish-owned plantations is

Arab. Against this, Arab establishments employ practically no

Jews whatever .

Jews spend annually about £ 1,500,000 for agricultural produce

of the Arab fellaheen, and about £750,000 on the products

of Arab quarries and industries ." It is estimated that they pay

Arabs in direct wages, £ 86o,ooo ; in rentals, £ 5oo,ooo, and in

trade and transport, £200,000 . 61 Payments for land are about

£ 1,650,000 . To these annual figures must be added the tax

moneys derived from Jews and expended for Arab benefit (computed

at (1,250,000) . Balanced against these sums, the Arab

payments to Jews for all causes during a single year, come to

around 10,200,000 . It does not require expert bookkeeping to

determine who is getting the better of this bargain.

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 387

Modernization, copied directly from the Jew, has benefited the

Arab greatly. Machine production is being introduced into the

manufacture of oils and soaps, silk and cotton textiles, and tobacco

working. In 1928 the industrial census registered ten

thousand persons employed in Arab industries and handicrafts,

representing an investment of £ 1,100,000 . Four years later the

census showed twenty thousand persons engaged in the same

industries, with capital expanding to C2,500,000.

In the short period from 1931 to 1935 Arab land under vegetables

rose from 20,000 dunams to 65,000 and Arab citrus groves

increased from zo,ooo dunams to 135,000. In a span of hardly

eight years, Arab orchards devoted to bananas, figs, apricots,

olives and grapes rocketed from 18o,o6o dunams to 1,651,466

dunams.

In 1927 Arab urban building represented an average annual

investment of £2oo,ooo. By 1935 it had inflated itself to

£ 1,500,000 ; and Arab bank deposits had grown from £ 1,ooo ;

000 to £4,000,000 .

Once the poorest, sorriest population in this whole section of

poverty-stricken masses, the Arabs of Palestine are now on their

way to be the richest per capita of their race . As an index to

their prosperity, they import £4.5s . per head, as compared with

£3 .7s . for wealthy Egypt and £3 .5s- for oil-rich Iraq . Motor

cars, unknown here before the War, now number one to every

352 inhabitants, as compared with one to every 730 in Iraq.62

The network of Jewish medical centers, hospitals and dispensaries

has served the Arab equally with the Jew . It is these

Jewish services alone which carry on the bitter fight against trachoma,

malaria and other devastating diseases . These benefits

are amply reflected in the great natural increase in a population

disease had once brought to a standstill . "One of the most important

consequences of the rise of the cultural and economic

level of the country due to Jewish immigration," a British representative

told the Mandates Commission, "is the high increase

in the Arab birth rate ." 63 The death rate at the same time goes

down steadily year by year.

Some mention must also be made of the assertion that Jews

388

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

are dispossessing Arabs from the land. As far as one is able to

make out, the area of the entire mandated territory is 26,ooo,ooo

dunams west of Jordan, and something over ioo,ooo,ooo east

of Jordan. Of this total, Jews own 1,300,000 dunams - a grand

over-all acquisition of approximately one percent of their National

Home - by which, according to the tenaciously held British

thesis, they have managed to frighten and abuse the natives,

and present the Mandatory with a major crisis in the shape of a

landless Arab problem.

Fully seventy-five percent of the area in Jewish hands, moreover,

had not known the plough for centuries . The northern

colonies in Galilee were built on land rendered impossible for

life since Roman times because of marsh and endemic disease.

Tel Aviv was erected on sand dunes which were considered to

be without monetary value . That great granary, the Valley of

Jezreel, now nestling so trim and green in the shining Palestine

sun, was so deserted and pestilential when Jews bought it that it

was said that any bird attempting to cross it would fall dead in

its flight . That adjacent scene of Jewish colonization, the Plain

of Esdraelon, was in i 9 i 9 desolate and abandoned except for a

few sickly villages built on camel dung .

In the case of those peasants who sold to Jews, with the exception

of a bare five percent who bettered themselves in urban pursuits,

all remained on the land . Most of them sold only a part

of their acres and with the money obtained got out o f debt for

the first time in their lives. Within the past six years the indebtedness

of the Arab cultivator has been reduced by sixty percent,

and the tax burden by as much as seventy percent, while

at the same time his income has sharply increased. The years

have proven the landless Arab hypothesis to be nothing more

than simple humbug . The most solicitous prodding by the

Government over a period of the last ten years has not been able

to bring forth more than 664 Arab families who could come even

vaguely under the definition of displaced cultivators . Of these,

317 families refused the Government's offers, presumably because

they had more satisfactory employment elsewhere .

A very real and harsh condition, which the British carefully

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

389

slur over, is the fact that a handful of large land-owners hold

as much acreage as all the Arab peasantry put together . The

Husseini family holds fifty thousand dunams ; the Abdul Hadi

family, sixty thousand ; the Tajji family, fifty thousand, etc .

The bulk of this ground lies permanently fallow, happily untaxed.

The rest is rented out to tenants under conditions which

would make the lot of the average American sharecropper look

heavenly. The Hope-Simpson Report estimates a year's income

of a tenant farmer at only eighteen dollars - this for an

entire family !

The prevailing system is one of actual peonage . The fellah

is continually in debt to the effendi-usurer . According to the

Johnson-Crosbie Report "a rate of thirty percent per annum is

perhaps the commonest, but fifty percent for three months is not

unusual." Arab improvidence and extortionate interest charges

have had their result in the taking over of many small tracts for

debt. The French Report states that as a consequence, in one

Sub-District in the hills "no less than thirty percent of the land

has passed from Arab peasants to Arab capitalists" in a single

decade . This is the type of creature existence to which British

policy would freeze the Arab forever !

Though British `investigators' have proven `conclusively' that

Zionism is an unrelieved menace to the `helpless' natives, it appears

that surrounding countries would like very much to be

exposed to a similar risk . In his book, Europe and Europeans,

Count Carlo Sforza states that Syrians of all classes, who have

been watching Palestine's development with envious eyes, are

anxious to have something of the same phenomena duplicated in

their country. This desire is written in the clamorous petition

sent the French in 1935 by the inhabitants of Lebanon, begging

them to encourage Jewish immigration as that would bring prosperity.

Said the important Damascus paper Lissan Alakhar in

a fiery editorial on this subject : "We ought to demand Jewish

immigration, for through it our situation will be saved ." 64

In Palestine itself, if official encouragement to hoodlums and

agitators were removed, the whole condition would alter overnight.

The Levantine mind is sensible enough to know which

390

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

side its bread is buttered on, and to pay that side a proper regard.

In 1926 Major E. W. Poison stated unequivocably that

despite mischievous propaganda, "if the Jews were to leave Palestine

tomorrow, the Arabs would be the first to cry out ." 85

"We are led by a group of men who bargain us away, buying

and selling us like cattle," asserts the newspaper Al Igdam in

May 1930. "The Arab people have not yet said their last word

on the Arab-Jewish question . When this word has been said,

it will not be one of hatred and war, but one of peace and

brotherhood, as is suitable for two people who live in one country."

Says a round robin issued during March 1934 by the

leading Moslems and Christians of Nazareth : "On behalf of the

majority of the property-owners and consumers, we declare that

we would welcome Jewish immigration and trust that the enlightened

Jews with their financial and commercial associations

will hasten, to respond to our appeal . We have had enough of

losses ; we want a system of reciprocity and understanding.

We are tired of the obstinacy of the money-lenders and shopkeepers

who pursue a policy of boycott and preach hatred ." In

the very hotbed of unrest, on May 2.1, 1936, the merchants and

shopkeepers issued a manifesto urging fellow-Arabs to repudiate

the self-seeking agitators who were leading the `Arab cause' -

a courageous enough act, since some of the signers were soon

after murdered .

The claim that Jewish colonization has ruined the Arab and

driven him to the desperate acts of despair, is obviously a fabrication.

Hidden beneath this pretext lie the deeper issues of

classic anti-Semitism, British self-interest and Arab family feud .

NASHISHIBIS AND HUSSEINIS

Little in the way of political reasoning can be expected from

the inert Levantine mass which has been elected to rake Whitehall's

chestnuts from the fire . These people have never been

able to reason along other than religious and economic lines .

Colonel Wedgwood tells us that they think more "of the next

meal than of greater Arabia ." Duff found that they had not the

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 391

slightest conception of sacrifice for the common good. They

invariably bow with respect to the authority of the powerful

and rich. They are forever intriguing against each other . "The

Arab who has a Government position," writes Senator Austin,

"is always exposed to the attempts of other Arabs to put him

out and get his place ." 66

Combined with these traits is an inordinate love for the excitement

of feudal contention . Given an opportunity for guntoting,

almost any banner would suit the average tribesman .

Their whole economy centers around the patronage, power

and influence of half a dozen wealthy families . These invariably

lay claim to hereditary rights of overlordship based on aristocratic

lineage. There are, in the main, two great camps . One is

headed by the Husseinis, who allege themselves to be sprung from

Mohammed himself. The other is led by their traditional enemies,

the Nashishibis, whose boasts of noble descent are no less

lofty . Beyond a natural quest for power, no one actually knows

on what tangible grounds this rancorous rivalry is based, least

of all, probably, the Husseinis and Nashishibis themselves .

Of the six Arab parties in Palestine, five are family or patronage

organizations. Only one, Istakial, could be considered a

political party in the European sense . Istaklal is a minor but

loud-voiced group which represents the young-bloods of the

country. It is the party of the pan-Arabs and dopes itself on

dreams of a revived Arabic empire stretching over all of North

Africa as well as the Arabian Peninsula . It regards the Jew as

an hereditary enemy who is to be rigorously annihilated . The

violent tone of this group, and its fantastic utterances, conforms

to the best traditions of Nazism, overlayed with a thick buttering

of oriental mysticism . Its members no longer wear the

Tarbush, sacred to Mohammedans, but a smart brown military

hat. Istaklal believes in direct action and is known for its thugs

and assassins . Other Arab leaders are so desperately afraid of

this organization that they rarely oppose it publicly for fear of

death.

The British have tolerated Istaklal as a hedge against futures ;

but its usefulness to them now seems about at an end . It is

392

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

headed by an ambitious radical named Awny Bey Abdul Hadi,

a man with broken teeth, a cynical laugh and, strange in Levantines,

a sense of humor . He comes from a large and quarrelsome

family who are always in litigation with each other which

sometimes ends in murder . One member of the family is a

judge of the Supreme Court. Another graces the Secretariat.

The titular head of the Husseini clan is Haj Amin, whom Samuel

had appointed Mufti . For years he was the `fair-haired boy'

of the Administration . He was a frequent and favored visitor

at the High Commissioner's table. He had his own brand of

shock troops, openly tolerated by the Government . Apparently

his position was impregnable .

If the Mufti had been created by some fiction writer instead

of having been authored by the Mandatory for Palestine, he

would have been considered too exaggerated a character to be

included in a serious work . He occupied the unique and unparalleled

position of being at war with the same government

which was subsidizing him . In every one of the riots which

shook Palestine the Mufti was an acknowledged leader . He

openly directed the rebellion of 1936 and at the same time continued

to act as a high official of the Government . He is violently

and incurably anti-Jewish . He has a fixed delusion that

the Jews are conspiring to tear down the Mosque of Omar and

build a Jewish Temple on its site . In June 1936 he sent a cablegram

to the Syrians in Brazil beginning with the theatrical words

"Jews and Arabs at war !"

It cannot be emphasized too clearly that the Mohammedan

Church in Palestine is not a private organization as are churches

elsewhere, but an official body with prescribed secular functions.

As its head the black-robed Mufti was a Government

employee . Under his control was the rich Moslem Wak f, which

possesses an income of some C 1 oo,ooo a year, and literally untold

wealth in ancient treasure . The Wakf is the largest landowner

in the country, holding over a million dunams, including

office buildings, apartment houses, shops, factories and warehouses.

It is paid by the Government a fixed sum in lieu of

tithe, and thus receives seventy percent of the total Government

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

393

revenue from rural property in Palestine . The Mufti in addition

had autocratic authority over the Moslem Courts, also

Government-subsidized, and could appoint or dismiss judges

and employees at will .

Haj Amin was thoroughly resented by his fellow-Moslems

who accused him of every crime on the calendar . He never

kept accounts and the disposal of all funds was his personal secret.

His power came completely from Government patronage.

An insight into this relationship of Mufti to Government was

provided by the Tiberias Arab leader, Mohammed Tawil, who

declared from exile in 1930 that "the Palestine Government is

protecting the Grand Mufti, supporting his anti-Jewish policy

and going so far as to suppress those who favor peace ." He asserted

that those opposed to this agitation lived under a veritable

reign of terror and were afraid to open their mouths .67

The crowning insult in the Government's favoritism to the

Husseinis was reached in 1934 when Ragheb Bey Nashishibi,

Mayor of Jerusalem for 14 years, was ousted and Dr . Husseini

Khaldi appointed in his stead . The Nashishibis, cut to the quick,

went wild. They even urged that a Jew be appointed mayor .

It looked like their star had set, when the Mufti made the

crowning mistake of his career : he refused to denounce Mussolini

during the Ethiopian invasion, making it plain that he took

British utterances seriously and considered himself no puppet .

The British believed, and with reason, that Haj Amin was convinced

that ultimate victory in the Near East would be with the

Italians, and that he had quietly switched allegiance . It was

evident that he considered himself so powerful a figure that the

Government would not dare remove him . From that day onward,

Jerusalem maneuvered to create a situation which would

bring about the Mufti's fall .

Now began a game of high politics and involved intrigue

almost impossible to describe . The Administration had planned

Haj Amin's ruin by the Legislative Council project with Ragheb

Bey slated as its president. Thoroughly alarmed, the Mufti

fought this proposal tooth and nail, joined enthusiastically by the

Jews. This land makes strange bedfellows . The Nashishibis,

394

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

taking their cue, began to send spellbinders to the villages who

soon had the countryside in an uproar. The strategy was to

undermine the Mufti by depicting him as an enemy of Arab national

aspirations. This seemed easy since the secular form of

state was anathema to Haj Amin, who was dreaming of a new

edition of the old Moslem Caliphate with himself as the boss .

The agitation became more and more violent . Government

House watched it with circumspect eye. Here was a chance to

kill two birds with one stone : to unload the Mufti, now grown

dangerous, and to smash the unwanted Jewish National Home

once and for all.

But Haj Amin was no fool . A Husseini suddenly bobbed up

as one of the most violent of the extremists . He declared for

his party in a press interview that "between the Arabs and Jews

a life-and-death struggle is raging, which will not cease before

one of the parties has been completely crushed ." Against his

will the Mufti found himself forced, temporarily at least, into

the nationalist camp .

Quite different from the squat, ape-like figure of his archopponent,

Ragheb Bey Nashishibi is a tall personable Arab with

white hair and almost fair skin. His manner is smooth and he

has a certain easy Levantine charm . Though he now heads an

Arab independence party which bases its demands on alleged

promises made by Britain for Arab help during the War, Nashishibi

himself had fought on the opposite side as an officer in the

Turkish Army. He is said to have three legal wives, one Moslem,

one Jewish and one Christian, choosing them deliberately

from each faith so as to enhance his chances to get into Heaven

when he dies, by whichever gate is open . He plays the game

of practical politics in much the same pragmatic manner and

can shift his ground on any issue with the most bewildering ease.

The program of the Nashishibi party now coincides exactly

with British aspirations in the Near East . Today they are plumping

for a reunited Arab Transjordan and Palestine, under the

current British favorite, Abdullah of Transjordan . The Mufti

clique rejects Abdullah and hopes for a renaissance of fanatic

Mohammedan times in a great loose Moslem Federation, with

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

395

the Church as the ruling power . In every country where influence

counts, these rival groups lobby, not only against the

Jews, but with still greater violence, against each other .

The part Whitehall has had in all this can be easily guessed from

the constant open advice given by British officials, urging these

warring parties to "get together" in their fight against the Jews.

Colonial Office organ Great Britain and the East was full of these

admonitions ; nor could even the High Commissioner refrain in

his Annual Report from expressing his "regrets" over this inability

of Arabs to create a truly `united front .' 08

Under the patronage of the Government, Arab leaders representing

all the various groups have long been joined in a superbody

called the Arab Executive,* most members of which are

directly on the Government payroll . A sample of this body's

policies is contained in a proclamation issued February 21, 1 93 1,

which calls on the entire Moslem world to massacre Jews wherever

they may be found .

CLAIMS, OBJECTIVES AND METHODS

The Arab politicians and the anti-Semitic officials of London

and Jerusalem who spur them on, always paint the Arab as an

under-privileged creature who is unable to get a hearing in Britain

because the Jews control the press there and by inference

hold the mass of M . P.'s efficiently under their thumbs. This,

of course, is nothing but an extension of that lively humbug, the

Elders of Zion story . Says Wedgwood, drily disposing of this

contention : "These officials claim that the Arab case is not put

before Parliament . The Arab case cannot be put in a British

House simply because their case is anti-British ." 69

The pro-Arab case in its entirety is a post-war product . During

the War "there were no pro-Arab sympathies [in Palestine]

as [there] were in parts of Arabia . . . and the question of a

Palestinian nationality had never entered their heads ." 70 The

great Near East negotiator Sir Mark Sykes dismissed them with

the deprecatory remark that they had "long had the knack of

0 The Arab High Committee, has, since 1936, superseded the Arab Executive.

396

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

falling in with the plans of a successful conqueror ." The British

Peace Handbook No. 6o observes crisply : "With the Arab

movement centered at Damascus, Zionism in Palestine would be a

help rather than a hindrance to it ; for that movement would

only suffer from the attempt to absorb a district ethnologically

and otherwise so different from countries in which the Arab element

stands alone or is distinctly predominant ."

Despite these facts and the solemn agreements signed by the

House of Hussein with the Zionists, the pan-Arabs, backed by

their powerful sympathizers, continue to harp on the `promises'

made to Hussein by McMahon .* Time after time, Mc-

Mahon himself denied this claim with considerable show of irritation,

71 but it makes no difference. The British-Arab clique

held on to this bone with all their teeth . Discredited or not, we

find even Lord Peel repeating it as a fact in his official report

in 1 937 .

Looked at over a period of years the Arab story strikes an

amusingly self-contradictory note . In 1925 it rests its case entirely

on the alleged failure of Zionist colonization. The Arab

Executive speaks in sepulchral tones of "the economic retrogression"

of the country . It groans dolorously that "the figures are

growing darker every day" and that "Palestine's general wealth

has been reduced by 4 16,604,594 during the last four years

alone ." 72 In March 1927, after a year's slump had slowed up

Jewish immigration till it was only a dribble, the Arab Executive

asserts triumphantly that "the decrease in Jewish immigration confirms

our contention that the Government's policy in Palestine

was wrong."

When this line of argument became silly on the face of it, the

Arabs suddenly swung over to the discovery that Palestine, virtually

ignored in Moslem religious tradition, was "a Holy Land

for Moslems also ." 73 It was on this concept that the horrible

events of 1929 pivoted .

It is at least a curious accident that all these inconsistencies of

Arab viewpoint correspond exactly with whatever happens to

be agitating Whitehall most at the moment. When the British

* See Appendix B, p. 580.

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 397

switched to a policy aiming at the consolidation of Arabia into

a confederacy under their control, the character of Arab demands

shifted accommodatingly . At a conference in Jerusalem,

the Arab leaders took a pledge under oath "to uphold the

integrity of Arabia as a nation and to recognize no divisions

therein." 74 Yet when it became apparent to the British Foreign

Office that it would have to go slow on such a program, the Arab

agenda shifted obligingly once more . Now the demand was

for sectional independence, a concept regarded as nothing less

than traitorous a few months earlier .

Present-day demands are for a complete stoppage of Jewish

immigration and a cessation of land sales . The claim is that

Palestine is an Arab land and that the Jews, entering on Arab

sufferance, can only hope to attain the status of paying guests .

Some leaders go so far as to propose the confiscation of Jewish

property ; others are satisfied with political domination only.

The Mufti's gang would force them all to become Moslems ;

while the followers of Awny Bey would drive them into the

sea altogether.

Much of this, of course, is the sheerest political hokum, since

very few Levantines have ever been known to lose an opportunity

to make money. Duff writes that "nearly every man of

Nazareth had land ready to sell to the Jews, despite the fact that

they were continually signing high-sounding declarations about

never surrendering one inch of the `Fatherland' to the detested

intruders." 75 At the very peak of the 1936 revolt the three

visiting United States Senators found that "while the Arab High

Committee in charge of the Strike is officially demanding prohibition

of, the sale of land to Jews, some of the prominent Arab

leaders active in that Committee are quietly trying to sell land

to Jewish buyers ." 76

If this proposed tabu were placed into effect a number of

knotty problems would at once arise which none of the Arab-

English solons have yet attempted to answer. Could Arab land,

for instance, be sold to a Jew who has become a convert to Mohammedanism

? May the Druses, who are not Arabs but Persians,

and heretical Moslems to boot, own land? A large part of

398

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

the Afghan population calls itself B'nai Yisroel77 and claims

Jewish descent though they are fanatic Moslems . If they

came to Palestine could they own land ? Half a century ago a

great number of Samaritans accepted Moslemism for the practical

advantages involved . May these people buy land ? Finally,

what is the attitude toward Arabs who are converted to

Judaism ?

It is also claimed that the Nations, in authorizing the establishment

of a Jewish National Home, disposed of a country

which did not belong to them but to the Arab people . But

here again they appear to be flying in the face of facts . Mr.

Van Rees of the Permanent Mandates Commission remarks that

it is "enough to point out that Palestine had belonged before the

War to the Ottoman Empire . That country had been conquered

not by Arabs of Palestine, but by the Allies, and had

finally been ceded to the Allies and not to the Arabs ." 78 If the

League's right to act on behalf of the Jews is contested, it would

be equally valid to challenge the status of every other area disposed

of through the Mandatory system. Turkey then would

have an a priori case for the return of all her lost territory in

Arabia. Certainly if this business of self-determination is to be

carried through honestly, the rich oil area of Mosul must be

taken from Iraq and given back to the Turks . Of the 342,000

people who inhabit the Mosul Vilayet, only 6o,ooo are Arabs,

and these are newcomers living in the town of Mosul itself . Yet,

since Mosul oil is one of the major reasons for British presence

in the Near East, would they dream of urging its return to Turkey

under the same rules they are attempting to apply in Palestine

?

During the middle of the last century, before Zionist immigration

began, there were not one hundred thousand people all told

in the entire country on both sides of the Jordan . There are

plenty of official statistics and hundreds of books and consular

reports on every detail . The vast majority of Arabs are therefore

newcomers, the same as the Jews . Wherefore are they so

land-hungry that they must debouch onto this little territory ?

The question arises : Are they without adequate territories of

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 399

their own ? Here we come to a new application of Aesop's old

story of the dog in the manger. We discover that in Asia the

Arabs inhabit an area of 2,o i 6,000 square miles, three-quarters

the size of the United States . It is so wild and unpopulated that

Lowell Thomas was led to exclaim that "we have better maps

of the North Pole ; in fact, we have better maps of Mars than we

have of some parts of the interior of Arabia ." 79 The total population

roaming this tremendous expanse is less than twelve million,

including a healthy proportion of minority peoples . If

Syria and Iraq are excluded, this vast domain holds less than six

million human beings . In North Africa, which pan-Arab visionaries

also dream of incorporating in the Arab Empire of the future,

is another territory almost as large and nearly as underpopulated

.

Here we find the Arabs in possession of what is by all odds

the world's last frontier. No colony held by any European

Power is as sparsely peopled . No nation on earth can even remotely

compare with the Arab in per capita land possession .

He has so much of it that he is actually land-poor, its value having

fallen to zero, since there are no human beings to work it .

The great territory of Saudi, whose unsurveyed area can only

be guessed to be approximately a million square miles, contains

not three million human beings, and is undoubtedly the most

underpopulated space on the globe today . The rich Hejaz has

only eight hundred and fifty thousand people within its 150,000

square miles : yet it was from here that Abdullah and his desert

tribesmen came to squat on the Jewish National Home territory

in Transjordan. Arabs have also the vast spaces of Oman, Yemen,

the Hadramaut and Syria on the Peninsula, as well as

Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia and Morocco in Africa. Even Iraq,

thickly settled by comparison to the immense empty expanses

to the south, has less than three million people in a territory of

143,250 square miles. In ancient times this magically fertile

earth, watered by two of the great rivers of Asia, was the granary

of civilization . It alone could support the entire Arab nation

and still present all the aspects of an underpopulated country .

If the matter be considered from the purely Moslem view400

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

point, which admits of neither racialism nor nationality beyond

the community of Mohammed, the axis of possible settlement

stretches itself immeasurably . Even Asiatic Turkey is impoverished

for want of men . In 1926 Kemal Pasha offered large

holdings to Palestine Arabs on the homestead plan if they would

immigrate to Turkey. (After a considerable group of families

left to take advantage of this attractive tender, the Palestine Government

suppressed the whole business, even forbidding any public

mention of the Turkish Government's offer .)

Since the emphasis of Arab demands centers on a united Arab

Empire, it seems fantastic to believe that they also require for

their national development the nine thousand square miles of

Western Palestine. "When the Arab talks of his right of selfdetermination

in Palestine," comments Herbert Sidebotham, "he

really means his right to suppress Palestine and to merge it with

some other country. Palestine as a political unit is a ghost of

the Jewish past alone . It has never had a separate existence as

a political unit except through the Jew nor will it ever have in

the future." Actually, Arab politicians do not recognize Palestine

at all. In all their public statements they deliberately refer

to it as `Southern Syria .' They protest continually because

Palestine has been severed from the main body . In their minds

it can be no more than a geographical concept . It is only

through the introduction of the Jewish factor that it becomes

meaningful as a national-territorial organism .

One is forced to concede that wherever two divergent races

inhabit the same territory, prejudices, hatreds and envies must

arise, if only due to differences of habits and culture and temperament.

Despite this, the prosperity brought in by the Jews

would be an almost certain guarantee of permanent peace if

pernicious propaganda were eliminated. "The Jew would welcome

fellowship with the Arab," says Broadhurst . 80 And Colonel

Wedgwood states fearlessly that the Arabs would give little

or no trouble "were they not encouraged and stimulated to do

so by the effendis of the Higher Arab Committee and by a Government

which does not like the Jews and lets the Arabs know

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 401

it." 81 Arab papers reflect all the contempt the permanent officials

hold for English party politicians . Insolently the Arab

press asks : "What is the British Parliament but a Council of

Elders of Zion ?" 82 Falastin (usually accounted the semi-official

voice of the Government) berates Ormsby-Gore as a stupid

heretic who "cannot free himself from the influence of the Bible."

"The British Government," it warns, "must forget the

Bible" and must order "the Church of England in no uncertain

terms to refrain from interfering in political matters ." 83

It must not be doubted that the Arab has some forbidding

grievances, real enough to him, no matter how puzzling they

may appear to alien minds . One of these is the fear of the

emancipation of women . Another is the alarm of the effendis

lest the end of the feudal period terminate their privileged position

in society. To these Colonel Blimps of the Near East it

is useless to argue the benefits which Jewish science, industry

and medicine have brought to the people of Palestine . "They

will reply," relates the London Times, "that these are luxuries

which the people of Palestine can do without." 84 Like all

other forms of existence the medieval mind dies hard . This

deep-rooted resistance is shown by the petition of professional

camel drivers in June 1936, complaining against the competition

of such devilish inventions as the automobile and railroad . The

camel drivers are hence losing "their independence and dignity,"

and must be protected by turning the clock back. Another reason,

which appears too ridiculous on the surface to be credible,

though Duff assures us it is so, is that "the Arabs still hate the

Jews, and despise them because they hold that Ishmael, and not

Jacob, was the legal son, and that Hagar was the wife of Abraham,

and that Sarah was his concubine ." 85

The final and clinching argument is that no matter what benefits

might come of it, the Arabs do not want Jewish settlement,

and that they have a `right' under the principle of majority rule

to forbid Jews from immigrating . Would not the same argument

oblige the British to retire from South Africa and other

places where they are in the minority ? Since the successful

402

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

issue of a wrong does not make it right, must not America then

be returned to the Indians ; and perhaps England itself to the

Celts ?

Certainly of all peoples, the English must know that the history

of the world is the history of colonization . Every civilized

country is the result of some such process in the past . Today

all the major peoples continue to colonize . In Arab Algeria and

Tunisia, for instance, both France and Italy are steadily pouring

in European immigrants without anyone in particular objecting.

In the case of the Jews there is infinitely more reason to

seek mass resettlement. Not poverty or impulse alone drives

them forth, but a grim and terrible battle against extinction .

They cannot retreat from Palestine because there is nowhere else

for them to retreat to .

If the question be one of title and legality, the Jews have in

their possession a charter signed by the Nations and countersigned

by Feisal of the House of Hussein for the Arabs . If a

moral right is to be posed, can it be offered by the voracious appetite

of a new Arab imperialism, already swollen and choking

on vast territories it cannot possibly digest ? You may scratch

Palestine anywhere and you find Israel. There is not a spot

which is not indelibly stamped with the footprint of the Jew -

"not a road, spring, mountain or village, which does not awaken

the name of some great king or greater prophet . Surely," cries

Dr. Holmes, "this is his homeland, if ever again he is to have

a home." 86

`SEMITIC BROTHERS'

If British plans ever materialize, Palestine will eventually come

under Arab domination, presumably as part of the great Arab

Confederacy . The fate of the Jews in this eventuality becomes

an interesting conjecture.

There is a pleasant fiction, implicitly believed by many Jews,

that Israel has been well-treated by the followers of Mohammed

; that some sort of modus vivendi was established in the dim

days of antiquity, so that the two groups got along famously to"

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 403

gether. This fantasy grew out of the liaison between the Jews

of Spain and their racial kinsmen, the invading Berbers, zvho were

largely of direct Jewish and Phoenician descent .87 It was the

Jewish Berber, General Tarik-es-Ziad, who began the Moorish

conquest of Spain . During the Arab invasion of Spain in 71 z,

Jewish troops often as not garrisoned important fortresses .

Lloyd George states that "in science and art the superiority of

the early Moslem is attributable to the Jews." Lecky tells us

that "Jewish learning and Jewish genius contributed very largely

to that bright . . . civilization which radiated from Toledo and

Cordova." 88 And H. G. Wells declares that it is "difficult to

say . . . when the Jew ends and the Arab begins, so important

and essential were its Jewish factors." 89

As the invading tribes began to be suffocated by mass conversions

and the holding of innumerable concubines, whatever

bond of attraction might have existed between the two peoples

completely disappeared . Soon thereafter, to continue to this

day, Moslem rulers placed a penalty of death on apostasy to

Judaism. Jews were forbidden to ride on horses and were

marked with special clothes . Politically they were consigned

to the same second-rate citizenship which Nazi Germany is now

introducing ." In this cruel condition they remain, considered

in the same light as dogs, creatures the true Believer utterly despises.

The Arabic culture known to history was a modification of

the several ancient civilizations absorbed bodily by the barbaric

Arab tribes in their swift march of conquest . It never touched

the Arabs of Arabia, the peninsular Arab . These, writes Bertram

Thomas, "remained inviolate by their poverty, their remoteness,

their unwillingness to change. . . An intolerance survives

which is almost without parallel in the world today and

explains why so few European explorers have penetrated deep

into the peninsula - scarcely twenty throughout the ages ." 91

As early as Roman times, when the Hebrews with their backs

to the wall were struggling for their very existence, Tacitus informs

us that "a considerable body of Arabs . . . took the field

as avowed enemies of the Jewish nation ." 92 Wherever the

404 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Arab has seized control since, a critical situation has risen for

the Jews . A modern instance is the revolt of Palestine Arabs

in 1834 against the exactions of the Caliphate . Mobs converged

on Jerusalem from all over the country, and for several weeks

held the city. Venting their ugly passions on the horror-stricken

Jews, they gave themselves over to a mad orgy of rapine, murder

and pillage, until the Egyptian general Ibrahim, with equal

barbarism and ferocity, annihilated them .

If one may judge from the tone of the Arab press, the lot of

the Jew under the coming `National Government' will be anything

but pleasant. El Jamiya Arabiyah snarls that "the English

can stand the pride and impudence of the Jews, but the Arabs

know what kind of vermin the Jews are and will know how to

silence them ." Another ready example is the editorial in Islamia

on October 4, 1936, appealing to foreign Arabs not to confine

themselves to mere boycott of Jews but to drink their blood .

It may be seen again in the inflammatory circulars systematically

scattered in Jerusalem, reading : "Kill the Jews until not one of

them remains. Gird yourselves and satiate your souls that thirst

for blood, souls that cannot be sated but with the blood of the

. . . alien and loathsome Jew ."

Farago found that "Arab agitators visit the peasants and promise

them that at the end of the struggle the land and wives of the

Jews will be distributed amongst them . With this expectation

the peasant digs up his money and buys rifles and ammunition

from wandering gunrunners ." 93 Like many other informed

men, Duff gave blunt warning that "as soon as the Palestinian

leaders understood that Great Britain had really left them to their

own devices . . . a general massacre of the Jews and the destruction

of their colonies would occur ." 94 It need occasion

no surprise that the words 'Heil Hitler' proved a magic password

during the recent rebellion, protecting Europeans against

attack.

In every Moslem country the situation of Israel is tragic and

frightful. When the French came into Arab North Africa on

a frank war of imperial conquest, the Jews were overjoyed .

Their position had been so terrible that the invading French

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

405

were looked on as if they had been the troops of Messiah . Even

after European intervention, characteristic pogroms have flared

up like a windswept flame . The fiendish attack on the Jewish

quarter in Constantine, Algiers, in 1934, was a particularly atrocious

event. When French troops finally arrived, they found a

bloodcurdling scene of ruin and horror . Over a hundred Jews

had been slaughtered . Whole families had been locked in their

homes and burned to death . Houses were sacked, women violated

and children hacked to pieces . Among the countless injured

were young girls with their breasts cut off, creatures mutilated

beyond recognition but somehow alive .

In as dire misery are the one hundred and twenty thousand

Jews in French Morocco . In Tunis, Tripoli and Spanish Morocco

the picture is as wretched. Only the protection of European

soldiers saved the North African Jews from an orgy of

torture and merciful annihilation ; and some day, the Socialists

promise, these troops will be withdrawn .

In Iraq the one hundred and ten thousand Jews live under a

sanguinary reign of terror, not much different from that taking

place in Germany . They are mercilessly boycotted . Savage

beatings, murders and robberies are a daily occurrence . Jewish

girls are forcibly seized and dragged into harems . Yusuf Malek

assures us that "in Iraq a Moslem finds it more easy to kill a Jew

than to kill a chicken ." 95

In Syria Jews face famine and gradual extinction . Since they

are completely Arabicized, their fate gives an abrupt answer to

Arab claims that the tension in Palestine springs solely from a

conflict of national aims . The Jewish population of Damascus

has collapsed from twenty thousand after the War to less than

four thousand in 1935. In the last five years, ten thousand Jews

have emigrated from Damascus and Aleppo alone . In every

city and village they are systematically terrorized and boycotted .

In the streets and mosques they are openly threatened with the

same fate as befell the unfortunate Assyrians in Iraq, just as soon

as Syria obtains its independence . The French Mandatory Authorities

show little concern for Jews and are either vague or

frankly indifferent . Nevertheless, the Jew views the day when

4o6

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

a native government will be installed, with horror . The sudden

move of Leon Blum's Socialist ministry to make good on its

theories by granting independence to Syria, threw all Syrian

Jewry into a panic. To a man, they are trying to leave the

country before the French-Syrian Treaty goes into effect .

The only redeeming spot on the Syrian map is the autonomous

Christian district of Lebanon . These people are the only friends

the Jews have in Western Asia . Centuries of bloody persecution

have taught the Syrian Christian a lesson he has not forgotten.

The Lebanon is completely and whole-souledly pro-

Zionist. It wants the Jews for neighbors by the south, to lessen

its isolation in this forever-menacing Moslem sea. When pan-

Arab congresses held their anti-Jewish sessions, the Lebanese

papers roundly denounced them .116 The Government of the

Lebanon Republic has even proclaimed the Jewish Day of

Atonement, Yom Kippur, as an official holiday .

Arabia Felix, that immense curtained mystery, is a graveyard

in which lie buried the many strong Jewish tribes who once

graced this area with their intelligence and learning . In this vast

stronghold of the fanatic Ishmaelites no Jew may enter and live .

In Yemen, at the south end of the Peninsula, Jews are locked

into ghettos as in the Middle Ages, reduced to conditions of economic

desperation even worse, if that be possible, than the Jews

of the pogrom areas of Europe . Their women are at the constant

mercy of every wandering desperado who takes it into his

mind to invade the ghetto. Jews must wear a distinctive dress .

They must keep in the shadows . They are prohibited from

riding on horseback . Their children, by edict of December

1928, must embrace Moslemism on the death of their parents .

Those who believe the assurances of the English have only to

read the gory history of the Christian Assyrians in Iraq, after

Britain terminated its Mandate there in 1932, to gain a picture

of what is impending in Palestine . Just as the English made

an arrangement with the Zionists, so they had made a similar one

with the Assyrians, inviting them to rise against the Turks and

promising them independence and protection if they would do

so. Moved by these pledges, the Assyrians were the only peo"

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

407

ple in what is now Iraq who took up the Allied cause and fought

loyally for the British Empire .97 Their territory was later placed

under Arab rule because London was anxious to include the

Mosul Oil District within Iraqian frontiers .

When the Assyrians expressed alarm over the British proposal

to grant statehood to Iraq, the Mandates Commission was solemnly

assured that the anxiety of these minorities was due to

"mischievous propaganda." Iraq, said the British representative,

was "a country where the Moslem, Christian and Jew have

lived happily side by side for centuries . . . His Majesty's Government

fully realizes its responsibilities in recommending that

Iraq should be admitted to the League . Should Iraq prove unworthy

o f the confidence which has been reposed in it, the moral

responsibility must rest with His Majesty's Government ." 98

In vain the Assyrians pleaded . The engineer A . M. Hamilton

and other thoughtful Englishmen immediately called the

turn without reservation, stating that "the lives of the minorities

have been placed in the hands of people without any morals or

conscience." e°

Scarcely a year after Iraq was granted its `independence,' and

despite the readiness of His Majesty's Government to assume

"moral responsibility," the Kurdish settlements were bombarded

by airplanes. A month later (in August 1933), a holy war was

proclaimed against the Assyrians . The Government offered

Arab tribesmen one pound bounty for every Assyrian head

brought in, as well as license to plunder any Assyrian property

they could find . The Arab press made it known that all acts

of violence were lawful and that anyone not participating in

this war would be betraying his religion and country.'°° At the

head of the Criminal Investigation Department was an Englishman,

who watched this terrific barrage of wild propaganda and

incitement without making a move .

Lieutenant-Colonel A. S. Stafford, British Administrative Inspector

in Iraq, gives a blood-curdling eye-witness account of

what followed. The Assyrians were first systematically disarmed.

On August 5, an Army detachment swept through

their territory and the Assyrians were hunted down as one stalks

408

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

rabbits. "No pretence was made that these operations had any

purely military objective, for the Army Intelligence Officers

did not even take the trouble to cross-question the captured Assyrians,

who were simply shot as they were rounded up ." 101

At Dohuk they were taken from their villages in vans, in batches

of eight or ten, and shot down with machine guns . "The heavy

armoured cars were driven over dead and dying alike ." 102

On August 7, the inhabitants of the whole surrounding district

were ordered to come down to Simel, the largest Assyrian

settlement. After days of sacking, the troops began a coldblooded

and methodical massacre . "Machine gunners set up

their guns outside the windows of the houses in which the Assyrians

had taken refuge, and having trained them on the terrorstricken

wretches in the crowded rooms, fired among them until

not a man was left standing in the shambles ." 103 Women

were ripped open with knives and then made sport of while they

were in a state of agony . Little girls of nine were raped and

burned alive. After being barbarously tortured, priests were

slaughtered, holy books piled over their bodies and burned with

them. When there was no one left to kill, the troops took their

departure, carrying with them for their amusement a large number

of luckless Assyrian girls . The Tribes, who had been interested

spectators of these unspeakable events, then came in and

completed the looting. "I saw and heard many horrible things

in the Great War," related an English eye-witness, "but what

I saw at Simel is beyond human imagination." 104

The troops engaged against the defenseless Assyrians were

given a royal reception on their return . In Mosul the Crown

Prince, now King of Iraq, decorated their colors with his own

hands. The various officers concerned were promoted . Enthusiastic

applause greeted their triumphant procession through

the capital.

After this cowardly slaughter, occurred other massacres, this

time of the Yezidis, "planned by the Central Authorities at Baghdad

and conducted by the army with no less barbarity than the

previous ones." 105

To the present day Christians are effectively boycotted in the

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

409

Government service, debarred from primary schools, and militated

against in all ways . Girls are never safe ; and "acts of

sodomy by force," states Malek, are committed on boys by education

and administrative officials .100

In these circumstances the Zionists may well read a ghastly

projection of the future. In ringing accents the Assyrian

leader Prince Gambar told them : "Despite the empty assurances

of Great Britain, those who have eyes with which to see,

and know what Arabs of the type of the Iraqis can do when

let loose, must share your fears as to what is positively to happen

to non-Arabs when placed under Arab rule ." 107