THE RAPE OF PALESTINE - part 9

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE - part 9

CHAPTER II

JEHOVAH ABDICATES IN FAVOR OF DOWNING STREET

LET NOT THY RIGHT HAND KNOW WHAT THY LEFT HAND

DOETH'

CHAPTER II

JEHOVAH ABDICATES IN FAVOR OF DOWNING

STREET

LET NOT THY RIGHT HAND KNOW WHAT THY LEFT HAND

DOETH'

In 1936 again, uncontrolled violence rolled like a sheet of

seething flame over Palestine . For the sixth time since British

occupation, armed revolt broke out, turning the country into a

roaring furnace. And as before, the lawlessness timed itself to

coincide exactly with events of major importance in Empire

politics .

If circumstances are to be believed at their face value, the

recent revolt in Palestine was a marvel of valor and military

genius. For more than two years a handful of petty ruffians,

sniping from ambush in the hills, have held the greatest empire

in the world at bay . "It may be doubted," states Sidebotham,

"whether there were ever more than one thousand men in the

field against us." 1 What London is asking us to believe at

the moment is that in a country half the size of Ohio, thirtytwo

thousand troops equipped with airplanes, tanks and all the

trappings of war are unable to subdue a small gang of desperadoes

who have succeeded in keeping it in a state of insecurity

and uproar for years. The utter helplessness and awful inefficiency

of the Mandatory in the face of this minor insurrection

is laid on too thick to be credible .

In scarcely more than a century London has managed to seize

for itself over a quarter of the land surface of the globe. Is

not the very existence of this vast Empire a gilt-edged guarantee

that England has never shown herself inept at the business of

handling rebellion ? It is not generally realized that the British

are constantly engaged in putting down insurrection in farseparated

places . In the Hadramaut they have been going

through a merciless mopping-up process . Along India's north-

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JEHOVAH ABDICATES

411

west frontier they are cleaning out the revolting tribesmen of

Waziristan with a ruthless hand . The colonies without exception

are ruled by the axiom, `Spare the rod and spoil the child .'

In Kenya, another mandated territory, when a government

clerk named Thuku founded the "East Africa Native Association"

to protest the peonage system introduced by the Colonials,

he was grabbed on the charge of `sedition' and deported without

trial, after the police had slaughtered a score of his followers

for demonstrating in front of the jail where he was held . In

Iraq an emergency similar to the one in Palestine was handled

by Sir Percy Cox with scant ceremony . All the Arab leaders

concerned were immediately placed in custody, offending newspapers

suppressed and their editors arrested . Sir Percy's comments

were brief and to the point : ". . . the High Commissioner

will not hesitate to take drastic steps against any persons,

tribesmen or townsmen who do not take the present warning,

but continue to emulate the seditious vagaries of those now

placed under restraint ." This was language that Arabs could

understand, and the whole affair died aborning. Subsequent rebellions

were handled in short order by the Iraqi shadow government,

by simply detailing a few British airplanes to bomb

the tribesmen into submission .

In Palestine the close integration of officialdom itself with

the `patriotic' movement is hardly open to doubt . It is sufficient

to cite the Nationalist demonstration of October io, 1 934,

attended by prominent Government functionaries in their official

capacity, where "Arab civilization" was lauded and "the

coming independence and unification of the Arab countries"

(including Palestine) enthusiastically hailed . This hidden complot

reveals itself even more obviously in an incident of twelve

months earlier . An anti-Jewish demonstration had been announced.

The usual preparations had preceded it, the ferocious

bluster and screaming agitation, led by the familiar leaders of the

Arab Executive . Unfortunately for these plans, Nazi violence

in Germany, then unique and shocking, suddenly shook the soul

of civilization like an earthquake . All articulate reaction to

these startling events was overwhelmingly with the stricken

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Jews. Sympathy for human suffering and despair was the prevailing

mood, and it was apparent at that moment that anti-

Jewish riots would be more than embarrassing to the British

Government. In an amazing about-face the scheduled disorders

were converted into a peaceful demonstration against the Government,

in which the word Jew was not even mentioned . A

strike had been called, but it was quietly recalled, without a

word of explanation . Part of the mob which had been so carefully

prepared could not, however, be headed off. Several

thousand hoodlums charged the police in Jaffa after having been

told by their own leaders to disperse . Taking his duties seriously,

Assistant Superintendent of Police Faraday ordered his

men to fire. In the melee he himself was badly wounded ; and

as a result an irate British judge sentenced some of the rioters to

imprisonment. Immediately the District Court quashed the

sentence and released the prisoners on "promise of good behavior

." The bewildered Faraday soon after had his post taken

away from him and was exiled to Beersheba .2

The British are reputed to possess the shrewdest Intelligence

and Secret Service in existence . Concentrated in one small

branch of the War Office, known as M.I.5, this superbly organized

spy and counter-spy system is respected wherever espionage

exists . Yet in strategic Palestine the Authorities never

seemed to know that seditious unrest of the most explosive type

was being openly organized right under their noses . Like the

previous uprisings, the rebellion of 1936 was scarcely a bolt

from the blue. It only became possible after prolonged elaboration

and shaping. Much of it was openly bought and paid for .

"Fifty well-armed, resolute Franks with a large sum o f money,"

observes an official United States Report, "could revolutionize

the whole country ." 3 "It is always easy in Arab countries,"

confirms Ernest Main, "to buy agitators and even murderers

for a pittance. It is easy, too, to work up political demonstrations,

even culminating in riots, if the fee paid is sufficient . All

you have to do is to summon a local labor contractor and tell

him you want a thousand men to demonstrate . His fee will be,

say, C50 or C 7o, and if you hand over this money you will

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

41 3

get a perfectly good demonstration in the streets, perhaps with

a few persons injured and some windows broken . . . It is important,

therefore, to realize that so-called `spontaneous' outbreaks

among the Arabs are less common than those that are

engineered ." 4

Before this kind of backdrop the riots were openly rehearsed

and agitated. For eighteen months the Government allowed

the Arab press to keep up a daily barrage, systematically branding

the Jews as "the human sexual disease," as "a gang of swindlers,"

and "a menace to all mankind ." Arab leaders publicly

threatened violence and bloodshed . Terrorist organizations

paraded themselves without the slightest attempt at secrecy .

Among others, there was the Red Shadow, the Black Hand, and

a formidable murder gang calling itself simply `G,' over whom,

says Farago, "the British made merry," referring to its members

as 'G-Men.' 5 All over Palestine groups of brown-clad storm

troops were marching, shouting 'Heil Hitler .' At Nablus,

boldly operating in the open, was a military training school for

the Arab Scouts, prime leaders in the disturbances .

Late in March a meeting of influential Arabs, practically all

of them Government employees, was held at Safed to plan the

uprising. A delegation consisting of members of the Iraqian

Parliament arrived to attend . It behaved itself in a flagrant

manner which would have led to strong diplomatic representations

in any other country, but here its stay was made pleasant

by every official courtesy. Fifteen days before the lid finally

blew off of this seething caldron, the Revisionist leader Jabotinsky

cabled the High Commissioner warning him that "specific

Arab manifestations on an unprecedented scale are being

exploited to revive the ominous battle cry, `Eddowleh Maana'

[the Government is with us]" and received a contemptuous

reply.

There was hardly one of the Arab ring-leaders who was not

on the Government's payroll . In any other country these men,

self-announced plotters of riot and rebellion, would have immediately

been tried for high treason . On the statute books

was the Seditious Offenses Ordinance, providing severe penalties

414

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

for any act which conspired "to raise discontent or disaffection

amongst the inhabitants of Palestine ; or to promote feelings of

ill-will and hostility between the different sections of the population

of Palestine." Yet on one of those rare occasions when

this ordinance was applied, the dangerous firebrand, Hassan

Sidki Dejani, was let off with the derisive fine of C 25 after he

had been found guilty of inciting Arab officials to revolt . "If

one thing stands out clear from the record of the Mandatory administration,"

concedes the Peel Report, "it is the leniency with

which Arab political agitation, even when carried to the point

of violence and murder, has been treated ."

Responsible Arabs who wanted peace were treated with all

the contumely of renegades who had joined the enemy camp .

In Britain itself, Colonial Office publications were blatantly advising

the Arabs to "unite on a common front ." An Arab delegation

was invited to present its grievances officially in London

- though no Jewish delegation was asked ." The tomtoms beat

in frenzied repetition as Whitehall circles called on the Arabs

not to let this opportunity to smash Zionism go by . The Bureaucracy

was now stalking its game brazenly in the clear .

While Arabs who made no secret of their revolutionary aims

were being pampered on the Government payroll, the steamroller

of official authority was ironing out the Jews. Among

other incidents, every Revisionist leader in Palestine was arrested

on suspicion of being connected with a "secret revolutionary organization,"

and held for considerable periods, without trial .

Even the innocuous little Jewish State Party was refused registration

as a legally existing organization. With withering

mockery the Government announced that unless it "eliminated

from its platform the demand for a Jewish majority . . . the

Jewish State Party could not be registered by the Palestine Administration."

Under this kind of patronage Arab megalomania developed

like a well-watered weed . A droll example is provided by the

indignant protest sent to a Jewish newspaper by a bandit named

Nabulsi during the height of the riots . Complaining that the

paper was not even concerned "with common politeness," he

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

415

says, making his point : "Never have the Official Communiques

designated us as inciters, terrorists and murderers !" 7 Of course

Mr. Nabulsi was quite right -the Official communiques had

never done so .

Unless the British are the victims of the worst accumulation

of circumstantial evidence that ever made white appear to be

black, the current disturbances, as well as the preceding situations

they have been required so busily to police, were created

with adroit cunning by themselves . The hope was plainly to

institute a struggle which would paralyze the Jews, after which

the Administration could come to terms with the Arabs . And

so we see the fantastic picture of a State surreptitiously engaged

in undermining its own authority and ruining its own commerce

and security by an act of civil rebellion to which it has lent its

own tacit permission . The three American Senators, Austin,

Copeland and Hastings, who visited Palestine in 1936, made

no bones about their impressions. Copeland, product of the

unbending morality of an upper-state New York village, bluntly

wrote that "there are really two strikes going on in Palestine .

One is conducted by Arab terrorists, who throw bombs and

snipe at passersby in the streets and highways . The other is

conducted silently by the Mandatory Government of Palestine

against the proper administration of justice . The prolongation

o f the terror in the Holy Land is due . . . to a manifest sympathy

for the vandals and assassins displayed by many officers

who are sworn to uphold the law . . . creating a condition

which could not but shock any American observer ." 8

REVOLT BY PERMISSION

For months, fifteen thousand soldiers had apparently been unable

to render safe a few miles of road between Jerusalem and

Tel Aviv . There had been innumerable hold-ups by armed

gangs, in which Jewish passengers had been hauled out of their

cars and wantonly butchered. Not a soul had been punished

for any of these brutal crimes . With unrestrained arrogance

the intransigeant Arab press hailed these killers as heroes and

416 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

boasted of further horrors to come . The nerves of the Jewish

community were worn to a frazzle. On April 17, 1936 the

funeral of a murdered Jew was made the occasion of a protest

demonstration . In an ugly mood, the police fired into the

crowd, wounding thirty persons . Immediately after, steelhelmeted

officers invaded Tel Aviv, dragging out householders

on suspicion of having been connected with the protest . Bearers

of black-bordered Zionist flags of mourning were beaten into

unconsciousness . Sullen, angry apprehension once more made

the air of the Holy Land a tinder box . It was in the midst of

this charged condition that the explosion was touched off .

The actual lighting of the fuse took place on the nineteenth of

April when a blood-curdling tale was circulated in Jaffa that

four Arab men and women had been beheaded by Jews in Tel

Aviv. Instead of counteracting these wild rumors, the Government

added fuel to the fire by dispatching enlarged police

units to Tel Aviv, obviously to protect Arabs from Jewish attack.

The outbreaks were swiftly and shrewdly plotted . On the

scheduled day not a single Arab was to be seen in Tel Aviv

though they generally offer their vegetables for sale as early as

five in the morning. Jews visiting Jaffa were irritably told by

the Chief Officer there that he "really did not understand why

they had come . . . since everybody had already known yesterday

that anti-Jewish attacks were to take place ." e Not a

finger was lifted by the Authorities . On the entire road from

Tel Aviv to Jerusalem only one policeman was posted though

the roads were almost bursting with armed and threatening men .

Jaffa burst into flames with the familiar cry "the Government is

with us" urging the demented horde on . By midday the streets

were running with Jewish blood . Many were slaughtered and

mutilated past identification, right under the eyes of the police

who made no effort to interfere .

The contagion spread to all parts of the country like wildfire .

Little boys of six carried automatics, shooting them off on the

streets of Jerusalem as if they were toy pistols . Unhindered,

the Arab press beat a loud tattoo for murder and revolt . GramJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

4 1 7

ophone records made their appearance in the shops, calling on

the Arabs to annihilate the Jews . Nazi flags and pictures of

Hitler were prominently displayed in store windows . Booklets

explaining Nazi methods of forcing Jews from the Reich were

distributed freely . Only the Haifa district remained immune,

miraculously free of violence to the end, leading Jabotinsky to

ask coldly if it were true that this was "a revolt by leave" in one

part of Palestine, with no revolt where it was requested by the

Authorities that there should be no revolt .

On May 21, the Arab High Committee called a general strike,

stopping all work. Contrary to its own organic law, the Government

did not declare the strike illegal . Despite the fact that

it was an openly seditious body, the Arab High Committee was

not interfered with. The queer business by no means ended

here. At the end of June a mutinous memorandum was submitted

to the High Commissioner, signed by 137 senior Arab

officials, telling him bluntly to yield to the Arab High Committee.

This singular paper was duly forwarded through proper

channels to the Colonial Office, "who politely acknowledged it

and so far from rebuking the signatories, thanked them for their

loyalty!" 10 It was followed by even more impudent memoranda

from Arab officials in the second division, and the

Government-paid judges of the Moslem Courts .

With the exception of Government employees, virtually the

whole terror was led by Syrians, and Arabs from Mesopotamia

and Egypt. Violent men from all quarters slipped in and out

of the border as if it were non-existent, attracted by the lust

for action. The most important of these was Fawzy Bey el

Kaougji, self-styled commander of the Arab bands . A somewhat

handsome adventurer of neurotic impulses, Fawzy was a

Syrian who had been sentenced to death by the French for his

activities during the Druse revolt . Escaping to the Hejaz, he

had to fly for his life again, this time for being mixed up in a

tribal rebellion .

More lately he had been Commandant of the Military Training

College of Iraq . The Arab outbreak had already lasted three

months when Fawzy made his sensational appearance in a battle

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

in the Nablus area. Soon after, reports came through describing

how he had actually made his way in broad daylight across

the desert from Iraq, accompanied by many motor lorries laden

with full military equipment, and a considerable body of professional

desperadoes said to have come from the Iraqian Army .

To reach the Jordan River he had to pass through a veritable

network of military posts and patrols by which every waterhole

and lane is watched with a hawk's eye. The Jordan crossings

themselves are well known and well guarded . Fawzy

was no ectoplasm which could waft its way across these threedimensional

obstacles like Shaitan's spirit. The passage was that

of a regular expedition replete with weapons and military baggage

; but there he was on the wrong side of Jordan.

His appearance in Palestine was greeted with a well-organized

blast of publicity not less than that given the British expeditionary

force of General Dill." Within a few days his photographs,

describing him grandly as "Commander-in-Chief of the Arab

Armies in Southern Syria," were being sold and displayed in

bookstalls throughout the Holy Land . The entire Arab press

featured them with such provocative statements as "long live

the leader of battles, Fawzy, the messenger from Iraq," and "unsheath

your swords and daggers and press the enemy till he is

strangled." None of this met with the slightest interference

from the all-powerful censorship bureau . Aping the Government

itself, Fawzy even published his own war communiques,

making extravagant claims of `victories .' These were posted

prominently, sometimes on Government buildings themselves,

where they were allowed to remain for Arabs to see and believe .

An apparently frantic search by the combined forces of the

Army and Police found him as elusive as the proverbial greased

pig. While the Authorities were supposedly turning the country

upside down to find him, fifteen thousand Arabs assembled

on the banks of the Jordan to give the `hero' a royal reception .

From the very start, the rebels showed that they possessed an

inexhaustible supply of weapons and ammunition and were being

guided by a skilled military hand . Most of the Arab arms

were "brand new British weapons and ammunition manufacJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

419

tured in the celebrated Woolwich Arsenal ." 12 It is reliably declared

that practically all their bombing operations were conducted

with hand grenades of official army issue . 13 Searches

for arms in Arab towns were preceded by a great stir in advance

so as to apprise the villagers that the raid was imminent, giving

them plenty of time to put their houses in order. In many cases,

groups of rebels used police cars and possessed special police

passes .

With bandits and mutineers swarming over every road, soldiers

were under instruction to fire only in the air. British

Tommies informed Farago : "We are not allowed to use weapons

without the written permission o f the District Commissioner

!" 14 And Duff was told in disgust by a loyal Arab policeman

: "Life is almost impossible for us men of the police

nowadays. We dare not do our duty for fear of being reported

and punished ." 15 "Both men and officers," states the London

Morning Post sharply, "have been quite bewildered by the fact

that operations have frequently been canceled at the moment

when they were on the point of being successful ." 16 A cloak

of bleak mystery shrouded these strange instructions . Where

they came from, no one seemed to know .

The streets of all cities were made the daily stamping grounds

of gangs who threatened Arab shopkeepers and beat up peasants

who came into town with their vegetables . "For an Arab to be

suspected of a lukewarm adherence to the nationalist cause,"

says Lord Peel, "is to invite a visit from a body of gunmen ." 14

Gangs visited villages and threatened to burn them down unless

they supplied quotas of men, firearms and provisions . When

the Mayor of Beisan displayed a foolish unwillingness to swell

the terrorists' funds, his young son's throat was slit in reprisal .

In deadly fear of their own nationals, 1 zoo wealthy Arabs fled

the country.

Shootings, bombings and every conceivable form of violent

outrage now became the daily routine . Bombs were thrown at

homes, railway stations, hospitals and public buildings . Kindergartens

and playgrounds were dynamited, tearing little children

to shreds. Nurses were slain by snipers as they went on duty .

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Trains were fired on and wrecked ; cinema houses blown up ;

crops burned ; trees whose planting represented a lifetime of

heartbreak and industry, maliciously uprooted . Nothing that

would yield to knife or flame was safe from the destructive hand

of the vandal .

The chivalrous stuff these pampered `patriots' were made of is

typified in the case of a gang who invaded the home of a Safed

rabbi at midnight . They found his three little children on the

veranda and butchered them in their sleep. Their mother,

startled by the commotion, ran out and flung herself down to

protect her brood . The Arabs shot her without mercy. Her

husband coming on this terrible scene had barely time to see his

family dying before his eyes when a bomb hurled by the retreating

intruders decapitated him .

The Yishub was caught in a trap, but it knew from what

source its agony came . Courageously the head of the Palestine

Jewish Community, Mr. Ben Zvi, asked : "Who can say that his

hands are clean in these outrages ? Can the High Commissioner

?" In refreshing contrast to the fawning rhetoric of

Zionist `statesmen' in London, forthright old Mayor Dizengoff

of Tel Aviv saddled the High Commissioner with direct responsibility,

bluntly accusing him of having introduced "demoralization,

anarchy and lawlessness into the country ." He declared

that "the Government railways have become the strongholds of

terrorists from which they set fire to Jewish cornfields and bombard

peaceful towns," and that "Palestine is now directed by the

Arab High Committee and hooligans." "You assure us solemnly,"

he exclaimed (addressing himself to the Government),

"that you are fulfilling your obligations to us, but in practice

you have outlawed the Jews and handed them over to a mob of

criminals." 18

As in previous riots, the Jews were rendered impotent by being

forcibly disarmed. Drivers of vehicles compelled to run the

gauntlet of frequent attacks could not carry so much as a club

to protect themselves with. The police regularly searched Jewish

busses and passenger-cars on the roads, while Arab vehicles

derisively passed them, neither examined nor stopped .19 DeJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

421

spite the fact that vandals were systematically uprooting valuable

groves and applying the torch freely, Senator Copeland found

that owners were flatly refused permission to have armed guards

on their properties.20 Jewish watchmen found in possession of

pistols were sentenced to long prison terms, though it was shown

that their posts were dangerous and that other watchmen had

been killed in the very neighborhood. Even colonies which

were subjected to recurrent assaults were religiously ransacked

by police, and colonists found in possession of weapons were

punished by imprisonment. Jews were warned that under no

circumstances might they own a rifle or fire a gun . Colonists

exposed to Arab violence were advised to lode out until troops

came. Even the Jewish Ghaffirs and supernumerary constables

were usually armed with truncheons only, or at best, with decrepit

shotguns that had little military value . Moreover, they

were not permitted to pursue marauders beyond the confines of

their settlements. "Jaffa Jews may be done to death in the very

sight of Tel Aviv's Jewish policemen, but these police may not

go to the rescue !" cries the Palestine Post indignantly.21

In vain the Jews pleaded to be allowed to defend themselves.

Students and veterans of the battalions who had fought under

Allenby begged to be mobilized, urging that they "did not de

sire to see any British blood spilled . We are quite capable of

defending our own homeland ." The Revisionists offered fifty

thousand Jewish soldiers, some of them seasoned World War

veterans, for police duty . The mobilization of five thousand

Jewish youths at any time, would have made short work of the

killers, but the Authorities had other ideas .

Arabs arrested for carrying arms were either freed outright or

fined as ridiculous a sum as three shillings (about 75¢) . Those

convicted of murderous assaults or of arson were indulgently

released "on probation ." For months, though there had been

numerous murders of Jews, the Government did not take the

matter seriously enough to offer any reward at all . It was only

after a British constable named Bird had been assassinated that

they suddenly came out with a substantial reward . Despite the

wholesale murders which took place in 1936, there was not a

422 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

single execution, a more than startling circumstance, since the

normal crime calendar of Palestine accounts for twelve hangings

annually .

Officers who took their duties too seriously were rebuked in

open court or transferred to less desirable posts as a warning to

others . The following cases, selected at random, show the general

tone of the courts . In one case, three Arabs, arrested for

sending an infernal machine in a suitcase to a Jew in Tel Aviv

and found with a whole arsenal of bombs in their possession, were

released on bond of L25. In another, two Arabs positively

identified by seven eye-witnesses as having dynamited a cinema

in Tel Aviv, murdering three people and mangling many others,

were given seven days in jail for carrying guns . The murder

charges were not even brought up. In another, some two hundred

ruffians armed with knives and iron bars, fell on the Jewish

quarter of Tiberias . When the military and police finally arrived

they `escorted' the assailants out of the vicinity . The

journey was made a source of great merriment . Shop windows

were broken and passersby stoned . "The next day the police

returned and arrested fifteen Jews ." 22

When the Administration dealt with outrages it really regarded

as scandalous, it made short work of the miscreants .

Rebels who damaged the Iraq Petroleum Company's pipelines

were not only apprehended, but their houses and those of their

relatives demolished in reprisal . When the military railway

was scathed by unidentified vandals, the nearby city of Lydda

was fined J 5000. An Arab who set a relative's grain field on

fire was sentenced to four years' imprisonment .23 Insurgents

caught firing on British troops were speedily handed the death

penalty, these crimes apparently being classified as `premeditated,'

as opposed to the `unpremeditated,' hence forgivable,

murder and arson committed on the person and property of

Jews.

While Arab papers were allowed to carry on the most unbridled

anti-Jewish incitement, it was a different matter when

El Jamia al Islamia engaged in what was alleged to be pro-Italian

propaganda . Its editor, Khalil Yousuff, was picked up with no

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

423

more ceremony than if he had been a sack of potatoes, and deported.

24 Similarly, when some swashbucklers with little imagination

took their immunity too literally and dropped some bombs

outside the residence of the High Commissioner, "the Palestine

Government ordered the suspension of all Arabic newspapers indefinitely,

beginning at once ." 25

What the attitude was is shown in the order to Jews to bury

their dead at five o'clock in the morning so that there would be

nothing ostentatious about it . At the same time the Arabs were

turning the funeral of an ordinary outlaw into the most spectacular

celebration ever seen around Haifa .

Though in every case Jews were the victims, the Authorities

felt justified in alluding to the marauding operations of the insurgents

as 'Arab-Jewish clashes' requiring the meting out of

equal punishment to both sides `impartially .' To justify this

piece of hypocrisy, Jews suspected of nationalist leanings were

arbitrarily picked up and jailed, without cause or trial . When

an old Arab woman was assassinated by thieves from Arab Tireh,

known as a den of cutthroats since time immemorial, 26 the peaceful

little Jewish hamlet, Achuzat Herbert Samuel, was stigmatized

with the onus of murder by the imposition of a huge collective

fine, without the slightest offer of evidence.

Perhaps the most revolting part of this ugly pantomime was

the treatment accorded the Jewish refugees who had escaped the

storm area with their lives . By June more than twelve thousand

homeless creatures had streamed into Tel Aviv for protection,

their possessions destroyed and occupations ruined . The Government

finally agreed, under pressure, to contribute the sum of

2o mils (1o¢) a day per head to their upkeep . After a few

weeks it abruptly notified the Municipality that it would terminate

even this meager contribution (June 17, 1936) ; and in an

astounding decree taking effect thirteen days later, it denied the

city of Tel Aviv permission to provide for or deal with these

unfortunates. In this amazing order the dictum was laid down

that though the refugees were not to be permitted to return to

their ruined homes, it was up to the voluntary contributions of

Jews abroad to maintain and house them . The Government

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

washed its hands of the proposition and refused to accept, or to

allow the Municipality to accept, the responsibility .

Since it is apparent that this whole mad fury of lawlessness has

been prompted from an outside source, the question naturally

arises -where did all the money come from to keep it alive?

There were men to feed, committees to keep going, agents to

support in foreign countries, and arms and ammunition which

had to be purchased. It is estimated that these activities were

costing in the neighborhood of f 3000 a day.27 This is a large

sum when it is applied to a struggle lasting many months on end .

Those acquainted with the country know that the rich Arab is

not prepared to donate "even a pound of his own free will for

communal purposes." 28 Nor did his nature show any change

in this case . The Arab landlords, effendis and merchants gave

very little support to the strike . Many, in fact, left the country

to protect themselves .

According to the continental press, the Jerusalem Police found

documents proving that the rioters had received C70,000 from

European sources actuated by anti-British as well as anti-Jewish

motives. In addition to this and other sums which came from

Fascist countries, the London Daily Mail reported that a police

raid in Jerusalem discovered receipts and documents indicating

that the Soviet Department for Near East Propaganda had sent

large sums to Palestine to support the insurrection .29 Another

considerable amount was reported to have been remitted to Arab

emissaries at Cairo, Egypt, via the American Express Company .3o

A great part of the revolt funds came from England itself . Allied

anti-Semites in America supplied another portion .31 Some

came directly from the Palestine Government in various disguises,

as the £ 30,000 loan "to needy farmers," actually used

to buy arms and ammunition . 32 The Government-controlled

Moslem Wak f contributed another sizable sum . Mohammedan

.countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq which fall in the British

sphere of influence, made a number of public collections for this

;purpose. The London Daily Mail of July 15, 1936 reports that

£ 11,000 was sent from India, apparently without the slightest

;interference by either the Indian or Palestine Authorities .

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

425

"One of the surest sources of strike funds," states the London

Times, "remains the contributions from Arab officials in the

Government service, most of whom regularly surrender a fraction

o f their salary." 33 For the right to continue working,

Government employees were assessed by gangster methods, up

to twenty percent of their monthly salary . By August 15, 1936,

according to a detailed statement published by an Arab paper,

around £ 5000 was collected in Jerusalem from this source .

According to an incomplete list appearing daily in Ad Difaa,

twice that amount was collected in Jaffa by the same date .

This tax, writes Horace Samuel, fell impartially on every Arab

official from the most junior teacher "to the most senior of Sir

Michael MacDonnell's Arab judges in the Court of Appeal, taking

in, presumably, in its stride, Ishak Effendi El Hashim, the

Arab private secretary of Sir Arthur Wauchope ." 34

By Fall the Levantine began to grow heartily tired of the revolt.

All this turmoil was the incomprehensible business of

Allah and the strange Angliz who for some reason wanted it that

way. The fellah and Bedouin, for their part, had had enough .35

The citrus season was coming on . The fruit hanging on the

tree was like ready money. There were not enough hands to

go around . Tradesmen and merchants found themselves almost

bankrupt and wishing the `patriots' all in hell in consequence.

The British had moreover accomplished all their objectives for

the moment. They had succeeded in concentrating a huge

military force in the delicately balanced Near East without protest

from any source . A Royal Commission was already on its

way to complete the work of demolishing the Mandate . After

dilly-dallying around for months with his huge imported military

machine, General Dill bluntly made it known that the curtain

was about to be rung down on the play .

The Arab ring-leaders were now in an all-but-impossible situation

. With nice consideration Whitehall conceded that their

prestige must be saved at all costs . "The Arab Higher Committee,"

states Great Britain and the East, "cannot of itself say that

the strike shall end without renouncing the whole position it has

426

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

taken up . A 'face-saving' development is however possible." 38

With extravagant mummery, as if they were dealing with a

powerful opponent, the Colonials made the proper motions .

Low-flying airplanes scattered tons of Arabic leaflets promising

that if the strike were dropped, a Royal Commission would immediately

come and "give the Arabs justice ." With ill-concealed

clarity they were told by manifesto and proclamation that all

their demands would be granted .

With brilliant forethought the Bureaucrats cushioned the collapse

for their friends in the Arab High Committee . They invited

the Arab kings into the situation . But here came a snag

the Arab kings smelled a rat and would not budge . Abdullah,

who believed he was to be the Emir of a reunited Palestine and

Transjordan, was mortally afraid of baiting Ibn Saud by a public

declaration, since the latter understood that it was his second

son who was to get the Holy Land throne . Each waited dead

in his tracks, desperately afraid of being double-crossed .37

Finally, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Nuri Pasha Said, was

dragooned to act as mediator . He assured the rebels that "the

Palestine Government would not only announce stoppage of

Jewish entry into Palestine but would also declare an amnesty

for individual Arabs participating in the outbreaks, as quid pro

quo concessions for Arab cessation of the strike ." 38 Almost

immediately afterwards, Nuri Pasha was overthrown in his own

country and chased out to exile in Egypt. The new Government

of Iraq turned its back on the pan-Arab world . Ibn Saud

and Abdullah continued to eye each other suspiciously . Only

after these gentlemen had been stiffly reminded that they owed

their eminence to British bayonets, did they cautiously allow

themselves to be drawn into the 'face-saving' process .

With this theatrical piece of staging the `strike' ended . It was

not a surrender, but in the nature of an honorable armistice.

The plain inference in this gentleman's arrangement was "that

pending the findings of the Commission, the terrorist organization

is not to be unduly harassed, so that it shall be in a position

to resume hostilities should it not be satisfied with the findings

of the Commission ." 311 With superb courtesy, Fawzy Bey and

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

427

his followers were allowed passage into Transjordan . "Though

the Army had successfully surrounded him and his foreign supporters,"

writes the Jerusalem correspondent of the London

Times, ". . . his capture would have been embarrassing," so he

was "allowed to escape across the Jordan as a more tactful solution,"

enabling him to "conclude his spectacular career here

with honor and without surrender." 40 Why, one wonders, was

it necessary to allow this invading desperado to depart "with

honor" ? By what providential device was he "surrounded"

immediately after the conclusion of the strike, though seemingly

so elusive before ? And why would his capture have been

"embarrassing" to the Government of Palestine ? Returning to

Baghdad with a large party of followers by motor convoy, Fawzy

was given a rousing official reception which included "a message

of welcome from the Prime Minister, who congratulated him on

his safe return." 41 Since Iraq is frankly a British dependency,

must not this circumstance also be included in the puzzle ?

One hundred and seventy-five days had elapsed . During this

time, Palestine had wallowed in a horrible blood bath which had

cost seven hundred lives and thousands of wounded . Trees by

the hundred thousand had been uprooted ; innumerable stock

animals slain ; forty-eight bridges were destroyed ; telephone

and telegraph wires damaged ; trains derailed, buildings burned

and looted. There had been, all told, 1996 attacks on Jewish

settlements and communities, and numerous other forays directed

at busses, police stations and public buildings . Business

was at a standstill . Property loss was estimated at L 3,000,000.

The extra expenditure for military and police ran to another

J.2,200,000

The Holy Land was tense and anxious as still another of the

obliquitous Commissions entrained from London to `investigate :

BLAMING ITALIANS AND COMMUNISTS

While London was thus engaged in victimizing the Jews, official

publicity agencies were losing no opportunity to squeeze

428

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

every ounce of advantage from the situation . A venomous and

apparently incurable quarrel had developed between England

and the ambitious Italian dictator Mussolini . Frankly worried,

London was straining every nerve to quarantine the Italian by

depicting him as an international criminal who must be ostracized

by all decent opinion . The efficient English propaganda

machine was now operating on the old war-time basis . From

London and Jerusalem came a roll of sensational stories fastening

responsibility for the riots on the scowling figure of Mussolini.

Veiled allusions were made to the Pope and to his liaison

with the Italian Dictator . Catholic nuns, nurses and teachers

were accused of carrying on secret propaganda against Zionists

and British alike .42 In beautifully chosen words which inferred

an anti-Jewish as well as anti-English plot the British Foreign

Secretary pinned the whole blame on the Italians .

The entire liberal press rose to the bait so dexterously flicked

upon the water . Like a pack of dogs hot after game, the Marxist

press aggressively took up the cry. The London Daily Herald

asserted that Italy had sent enormous sums to Arab leaders

through secret agents . It even went to the point of claiming

that Mussolini had offered the Bedouins of Transjordan three

dollars a day per man if they would cross over into Palestine and

loot Jewish stores and houses .43 Responsible publications went

so far as to feature as news a weird story, concocted by the press

officer of Palestine, alleging that posters printed in Italian had

been stuck up all over Jerusalem urging Arabs to slit the gullets

of the Jews .44 Even the Zionist spokesmen, anxious now for

some unreal explanation of distasteful reality, seized on this fragile

straw which the Mandatory for Palestine had thoughtfully

provided.

A scant two years later, Italy, under pressure from its Nazi ally,

was to join the anti-Semitic Internationale so sedulously promoted

from Berlin.45 Jews, who had occupied the most illustrious

positions in Italian life, were to find themselves, in a single

merciless stroke, ostracized, vilified and threatened with exile.

In 1936, however, before this chameleon-like development in Italian

policy had taken place, Fascist Italy could truly have been said

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

429

to be freer from anti-Semitic agitation than London itself .46 On

June 20, 1937 the Italian Dictator had told Generoso Pope, New

York publisher : "I authorize you to declare and to make known

immediately upon your return to New York, to the Jews of

America, that their preoccupation for their brothers living in

Italy is nothing but the fruit of evil informers . I authorize you

to specify that the Jews in Italy have received, now receive, and

will continue to receive, the same treatment accorded to every

other Italian citizen and that no form of racial or religious discrimination

is in my thought, which is devoted and faithful to

the policy of equality in law and freedom of worship ." Ten

years previously he had advised the Rumanians : "Anti-Semitism

is a product of barbarism to which our movement is diametrically

opposed. Fascism seeks unity ; anti-Semitism seeks destruction

and separation . If we are to exclude Jews, we will only

strengthen our enemies." 47 In 1935 he had again warned the

pogromists that "if Rumania goes along the road of anti-Semitism

it will have very severe consequences not only inside the country

but in its foreign relations ." 48

Before events forced him into the unhappy position of being

the tail to the German kite, Mussolini had been a persistent advocate

of State Zionism . On February zo, 1934 he urged in

Popolo D'Italia the creation of a "true Jewish State in Palestine,"

pointing out that a "National Home" could logically mean only

this and nothing else . As late as January 18, 1937, he had written

an editorial warmly lauding the Zionist cause, though soon

after he was found attempting to match cards with Britain by

posing as the friend and patron of the Arab .

There can be no doubt that Mussolini, a hard-fisted realist,

would have considered it good business if he could have disengaged

the Jews from the English orbit . A powerful independent

Zion with which he was on a friendly footing would have

suited him perfectly . The Jews themselves eliminated this prospect

by their persistent Anglophilism, and Mussolini has come to

regard Zionism as merely a mask for the creation of another zone

of English political and economic expansion in the Mediterranean.

It hence looms in the Italian mind as an anti-Italian force.

430

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Nevertheless, not a shred of real evidence has ever been offered

to substantiate the charge that Italian intervention was a factor in

the recent Arab revolt in Palestine.

Far more potent than any interference by Italian or Papist has

been the German intervention, which the English studiously

ignore. It has been shown that agitators now active in the Near

East have been trained in a special school in the Brown House

in Munich ; that pamphlets in Arabic are printed in Berlin and

Hamburg for distribution in Palestine 4 9 On October 22, 1 933,

it was announced that Eissael Bendek, member of the Arab Executive's

Administrative Bureau, would direct a propaganda

campaign in the interests of the Nazi Party . On June 8, 1934

the Jerusalem Arab daily, Mukkattar, reported the formation of

an Arab Nazi Youth Organization . The French Weekly, Marianne,

reported in 1937 that a great part of the arms employed in

the rebellion were supplied by the Suhl and Erfurter Gewehrfabrik

of Germany, which sent, in particular, many rifles and

machine-guns. The Arab journals Falastin and Al Dijah published

regularly articles of a racial nature, together with large

portraits of the various leaders of the Third Reich . They did

not even attempt to conceal the fact that they had become tools

of the Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin . The shout of `Heil

Hitler' became a catchword which rang insolently over all Palestine.

Nevertheless, the British Foreign Secretary has persistently

informed Commons that Nazi propaganda in Palestine is not of

such a nature as to require representations to the German Government.

This is a subject which Sir Robert Vansittart's publicity

bureau has also continuously soft-pedaled .

The Mandatory's press releases, however, made much of Communist

agitation in the Holy Land, inferring by unmistakable

innuendo that this was a Jewish introduction and one of the unspoken

horrors against which patriotic Arabs were rebelling .

This was a deft trick which the Soviets returned even more

deftly. Identifying Zionism with British Imperialism, they

placed themselves in the vanguard of the pan-Arab movement .

Communist hatred of Zionism is fundamentally rooted . AcJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

431

cording to Marx, the Jews are not a nation but merely a product

and relic of an outmoded economic system . Hence a Jewish

regeneration based on its own (i.e., capitalist) values is contradictory

to the first and initial postulates of Communist theory .

Despite this ideological overgrowth, however, one may suspect

that this rancorous hostility is actuated by a more realistic reason

: Palestine as a stronghold of British Imperial interests could

by virtue of its strategic position be turned into one of the keystones

in the arch of anti-Soviet attack . The Kremlin, therefore,

not daring to attack England openly, does so by sneaking

through the back door and lambasting the Jews.

As long ago as November 15, 1926, a letter to the Palestine

Arab Executive from the Executive Committee of the Communist

Party of Great Britain offers "the wholehearted help of the

British Communist Party in the great historic mission of establishing

a united workers and peasants republic in the Near East

from Morocco to Syria . . . Great Britain," it asserts, "has

treacherously betrayed the Arabs by establishing Palestine as a

National Home for the Jewish People under an imposed British

Mandate." In Russia the Moscow Pravda roars on August 13,

1935 that "the Communist Party is building a people's front of

the entire Arab Nationalist Movement against Imperialism and

against Zionism." In 1936 the Kremlin decreed "a united front

between the local Communist Party and the Arab nationalists ."

By order of the Comintern the Palestine Communist Party was

completely Arabized.so

Sacrificing outright their social propaganda, which the Arabs

could not be expected to understand, the Palestine section of the

Communist Internationale issued the following manifesto just after

the riots erupted in 1936 : "Arabs, you have seen the open and

clear villainies of the Zionist despoilers . . . Through their despicable

methods they have managed to deprive your tribes of most of

their land and to cut you off absolutely from all means of livelihood.

But they [the Zionists] are not satisfied with establishing

their National Home on the bayonets of British Imperialism . . .

They are bringing in large quantities of arms with but one aim -

to shoot at the hearts of the Arabs, whom they seek to wipe off

432

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

the face of the earth. The Arab people have two ways open to

them. One is the road to annihilation . The other is the road

to life and honor. He who is ready to take the second road

must choose war, just as his fathers and grandfathers spilled their

blood for their fatherland . The present Strike is our opportunity.

The Communist Party joins this Strike, but demands that

it must assume revolutionary proportions, and not by sleeping at

home or sitting around coffee shops . The Strike must not end

until Jewish immigration and the sale of land to Jews will be

stopped, and until the Jews are disarmed and the Arab masses

armed!" 51

As a result of this agitation, organized Jewish labor in Palestine

almost alone in the labor world refuses to admit Communists

to its ranks, stating simply "that such people have cut themselves

off from the Jewish people." The Communist is nicknamed

Mups, a contemptuous label which even the most radical

worker resents. "In my candid opinion," wrote Senator Copeland,

"there is no more solid anti-Communist body in the world

than the four hundred thousand Jewish people in the Holy

Land." 52 Farago, on the other hand, noted that Arabs were being

strongly influenced by Communist propaganda .53 An official

of the Criminal Investigation Department asserted to Duff that

Communism is "becoming a terrible menace now . The Arab

peasants are being inoculated with the poison . . . The fellaheen

believe that a Bolshie revolution in Palestine will mean three

cows for each man, J4 a month in cash, and 2o dunams of land

apiece . On top of that the Communists will expel the Jews and

all the rich colonies will become the property of the Arab peasants."

54

However, these activities were more sinister vocally than important

in reality . The British are not kindly disposed toward

Communists, and only let them on the loose for short periods

when their inflammatory material is required to keep the pot

boiling. When the dangerous woman agitator, Regina Brodskis,

was arrested in September 1935, a storehouse of inflammatory

literature and a counterfeit seal of the High Commissioner

were found in her possession . Despite these damning facts, this

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

433

woman and her gang were released in the Spring of 1936 "for

lack of evidence ." The very unusual nature of this act in itself,

plus its exact timing with the outbreaks, hardly leaves this

trouble-breeding policy open to doubt .

ANOTHER ROYAL COMMISSION

In October 1936, six distinguished British gentlemen, all well

over on the elderly side, packed their duffle to entrain for the

Holy Land. Their names were Peel, Rumbold, Hammond,

Carter, Morris and Coupland . With one possible exception,

they had spent their lives immersed in the intrigues of Imperial

business. Only Lord Peel, their leader, a handsome man with

a thin pleasant smile and soldierly bearing, lent the slightest sense

of reassuring warmth to this new peregrination of elderly

knights.

These were the gentlemen whom officialdom had handpicked

from its own midst for the learned work of passing judgment

on the late lamented remnants of what had once been a

mandate to the Jewish people for the reconstitution of their National

Home in Palestine . What they were up to was amply

demonstrated by Ormsby-Gore's preemptory rejection of a

demand in Commons that a woman member be included, to investigate

the condition of women in Palestine . His reason was

that "such a move would be incompatible with Arab ideals" ;

so that now it could be assumed that the six elderly gentlemen

were to investigate only such matters as were "compatible with

Arab ideals."

Here we have a plot so far-fetched that it would be rejected

by most fiction editors as incredible. In the docket is a mandatory

which, under the most generous construction, must be impeached

as co-defendant with the Arabs in the case . At its

service it possessed an enormous military and espionage machine .

Yet it knew nothing of the impending outbreaks, did nothing to

forestall them, failed to apprehend the principal culprits, and has

since failed to bring the numerous murderers to justice . For

six long months, with this huge military establishment, by which

434

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

a country like Palestine could have been conquered in a week, it

was unable to put down less than two thousand lawless men .

Now we find this custodian, having turned the patrimony of its

ward into bankruptcy, and suspected of scheming to expropriate

the remnants for itself, setting itself up as an impartial court of

inquiry in order to determine who the culprit is .

In order to secure Parliament's consent to the appointment of

this new body, the Colonial Secretary assured Commons on May

z8, 1936 that the Commission would "investigate the causes of

unrest and alleged grievances, either of Arabs or of Jews, without

bringing into question the terms of the Mandate ." Later in

the House of Lords, he repeated this pledge that whatever the

Commission's operations "it will not be open to them to challenge

the Mandate itself ."

At its opening session the new Commission at once began the

usual quibble on words. "We are `to ascertain the underlying

causes of the disturbances which broke out in Palestine in the

middle of April,"' Lord Peel told his associates . "You will note

the words `underlying causes .' It does not appear to be necessary,

therefore, to inquire into the detailed course of events in

the last six or seven months. If there are claims and counterclaims

arising out of these events, they are matters for the courts

or for the Administration, but we have to deal, I believe, with

wider issues." Thus immediately the Commission tore up its

terms of reference and prepared to tear up the Balfour Declaration

and the Mandate .

One has only to read the transcript of evidence to judge this

body's temper, and its badgering and unfriendly attitude towards

Jews. Setting the whole tone of the `investigation,' Sir Horace

Rumbold unburdened himself of the irritable observation that

"the Jews were an alien race in Palestine ." ss When Leonard

Stein, legal adviser to the Jewish Agency, finished a carefully

prepared statement on the legal character of Jewish rights under

the Mandate, Lord Peel remarked sarcastically : "Thank you for

your very able exposition, which now makes the document [the

Mandate] more obscure to me than ever before!" 66 With

magisterial sharpness Peel demanded to know whether the Jews

JEHOVAH ABDICATES 435

were ready to work on the Sabbath as a condition to securing

public works positions - (which was much the same as if one

had asked a professing Catholic to bring a basket of ham sandwiches

to his church on Good Friday) . At another time the

Jewish Agency was given an unmerciful tongue-lashing for not

constituting itself as an unofficial police body to smoke out `illegal'

Jewish immigrants from the corners and crevices where they

lay shivering . But when the Agency brought up the question of

illegal Arab immigration, the Commission changed its attitude

completely. The fact that no measures were being taken against

this illegal procedure, and the moral encouragement given by the

Government, which employed hordes of these Arab illegals on

its own payroll, did not appear to cause them the least concern .57

In all, there were eleven witnesses called by the Commission to

expound the Arab political position . Seven of these were members

or agents of the insurgent Arab High Committee . The

other four, admits the Commission blandly, "appeared with the

full assent of the Arab High Committee" and "supported in toto

the Arab High Committee's case ." It was from this kind of

collusive ballot-box stuffing that the `Arab position' was determined.

When after long delays the much heralded `Report' finally

made its appearance in July 1937, it was apparent that whatever

else this Commission had `investigated,' responsibility for the

riots (the only matter which came within its terms of reference)

was not among them . The `Report' consisted of a monumental

4.04-page compendium of closely packed, sanctimonious verbiage.

It breathed brotherly love in every phrase . As a compendium

of plausible nostrums it was nothing less than a literary

masterpiece ; but cleansed of all concealing rhetoric it boiled

down to several quite sordid propositions . One was an adroit

effort to absolve the Mandatory from any inference of misconduct

or dereliction in its stewardship of the Jewish National

Home. The other was an attempt to justify by principle a

planned embezzlement of its Jewish ward's inheritance .

For this purpose the Report boldly reverses every contention

by which the British Government had justified its strictures

436

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

against Zionists in the past. Directly confounding the findings

of previous `Commissions,' it acknowledges that Arabs are much

better off than they were in 1920, and that this increased prosperity

has been due to the influx of Jewish capital and the other

factors connected with the growth of the National Home .

It tenaciously remembers, however, that "the Government's

first duty was what Sir Herbert Samuel rightly called `the invidious

task' of preventing this tide [of Jewish immigration] from

swamping Palestine." It discovers that "the establishment of

the National Home involved at the outset a blank negation of

the rights implied in the principles of national self-government,"

and that "as the Home has grown, the fear has grown with it

that, if and when self-government is conceded, it may not be

national in the Arab sense, but government by a Jewish majority .

That is why it is difficult to be an Arab patriot and not to hate

the Jews. . . In their eyes," continues the Report, "the Jewish

National Home is already too big . Four hundred thousand is a

formidable fraction in a total population of i,3oo,000 ." Thus

the whole attempt to oust the Jews from Palestine is switched

from the basis of alleged economic injury to the Arabs, to that

of conflicting national loyalties .

With absurd disregard for all known facts, the document discloses

that "there was little or no friction . . . between Arab

and Jew in the rest of the Arab world until the strife in Palestine

engendered it ." By every implication, it attempts to give

the false impression that the young intelligentsia of Syria and

Palestine joined in the revolt of Hussein against the Turks, and

hence had an earned right to `their' country . Not a single mention

is made of the part played by the Jewish Legion .

Despite its admission that the Arab has benefited greatly from

Jewish immigration, it returns to the old thesis that the native

cannot possibly compete with the Jew. It finds that the Arab

has to be protected against his own cupidity ; and to bolster its

contention that the land must be allowed to stay undeveloped,

offers the ludicrous argument that any effort at intensive farming

would entail "a complete change in the [Arab] cultivator's habits,

chief among which stands the fact that he would have to

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

437

work all the year around ." It asks particularly for stringent

legislation barring the Jews from settlement "in certain areas,"

and that the Mandatory "reserve certain areas for Jewish settle .

ment." In less circumspect words, what it proposes is the establishment

of a new ghetto . For its authority it refers to the completely

discredited Hope-Simpson Report which it describes as

"an excellent and comprehensive appreciation of the agrarian

position" and "a thorough investigation of the land problem in

Palestine."

The Report counts it "highly undesirable" that there should

be a harbor in Tel Aviv since this would compete with Arab

Jaffa . In a transparent effort to organize the entire Arab world

against the Zionists, it suggests that an Arab Agency be formed

in London and Palestine, "including in addition to the Arabs of

Palestine, representatives of Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia,

Syria and perhaps Egypt ."

The Commission completely disposes of the principle that

`economic absorptive capacity' shall be the yardstick by which

Jewish immigration is to be figured. It discovers that "political,

social and psychological factors should be taken into account ."

So it now asks His Majesty's Government to "lay down a political

high level of Jewish immigration ." On no account, it

states, must more than twelve thousand Jews be admitted to

Palestine annually, and that even this maximum shall be subject

to the discretion of the High Commissioner, who may admit

none at all if he feels so disposed . Following this bombshell, the

Commission arrives at the bizarre conclusion that "insofar as

immigration has been the major factor in bringing the Jewish

National Home to its present stage of development, the Mandatory

has fully implemented his obligation to facilitate the establishment

of a National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine" !

With queer reverse logic, it condemns the Jewish National

Home as having "grown into something like a state within a

state ." "It would be difficult to find in history," it remarks, "a

precedent for the establishment of so distinct an imperium in

imperio." With similar waggish complaint it concludes that

"the social conscience of the National Home tends to concen438

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

trate on Jewish needs and to leave the Arabs to the care of the

Government." It asserts that the Jew is no patriot even of his

own homeland, saying that "allegiance to Palestine and its Government

are minor considerations to many of them," and goes

out of its way to call into question the loyalty of the Jewish police.

By analogy one gains the idea from its pages that the Jews

actually plan to demolish all the Christian churches and the

Moslem mosques, and re-erect the temple of Solomon. It makes

sly reference to the findings of the Haycraft Commission, which

found the `Bolshevik' Jews guilty of arousing patriotic Arabs by

their May Day celebrations after the pogrom of 1920. It disposes

of the charge that Jews receive virtually no share of the

tax moneys, with the observation that "it should be a matter of

pride to the Jews that their Home is one of their own building

and we believe it to be in accordance with the intention of the

Mandate that it should be so ." The claim that Jews should at

least receive their proportionate share of educational grants is invalidated

in the single remark that the Arab is not as well educated

as the Jew, and that hence "it is unjustifiable to increase the

grants to the latter ." (The Jew is apparently to be brought

forcibly down to the Arab's level .)

Though the Arab insurrectionists are obviously recognized as

`patriots,' the Jewish nationalists are referred to as "a determined

and troublesome group," who one gathers, are basically responsible

for all the trouble . The Commission does not hesitate to

saddle the murder of Dr. Arlosoroff on the Revisionists as "an

act of political terrorism," though time has proven conclusively

that this was a trumped-up charge in which the Government itself

was not guiltless . Jews, who were formerly militated against

by all administrations as being advance agents for Communism,

are now lambasted hip and thigh for being such thoroughgoing

nationalists . "So far, in fact, from facilitating a better understanding

between the races," laments the Report, "the Jewish educational

system is making it more and more difficult as, year by

year, its production of eager Jewish nationalists mounts up ."

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

439

Then comes a filibuster patently aimed at disengaging those

Christian Zionists who have given their sympathy and strength

to the Jewish cause . Says the Report piously : "The religious

stake of the Christians in the Holy Places is just as great as that

of the Jews or Moslems . . . The 500,000,000 Christians in the

world cannot be indifferent to the position and well-being of

their co-religionists in the Holy Land ." The Commission refers

sententiously to the "very strict observance of the Jewish

Sabbath and the fact that the Jewish Government official does

not work on Saturday" ; with the result that "the Christian official

has to work on Sunday," a state of affairs which the Commission

believes "impairs the spiritual influence of the Christian

Church."

All this is followed by even more brilliant grotesqueries.

Their recommendation, the Commission regretfully announces,

is only "a palliative ." It would not remove the "grievance" of

the Arabs in the matter or prevent its recurrence . We gather

that the whole Mandate and Balfour Declaration can only be

considered a practical and moral mistake, made by a humanitarian-

minded Empire, which through this act of sheer benevolence

has placed itself in an ethical if not physical dilemma .

Finally we come to the point all this literary effort was leading

up to. It seems, quotes the Commission, that all the previous

Governments' Commissions had been dead wrong. The Mandate

does not involve an obligation to two peoples who are to

live side by side with each other, nor does it preclude the establishment

of a Jewish State. That, God bless you, could have

been its only purpose, since anything else save a homogeneous,

self-governing territory is unreasonable. But again, God bless

you, "under stress of the World War the British Government

made promises to Arabs and Jews in order to obtain their support"

which seem to cancel each other out . (Not a particle of

evidence exists to show that any promises were ever made to

Arabs in regard to Palestine, except in the imagination of the

Commission. Sir Henry McMahon, acknowledged by all comers

to have been the only negotiator privy to these conversations,

4.40

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

has denied time and again that any such promises existed . The

denial is also implicit in the Conventions signed by Feisal with

the Zionists.)

In the interest of common decency, it now turns out that

something must be done to clear this imbroglio permanently and

justly. Skillfully presented in the role of a fatigued mediator

with a headstrong quarrel on its hands, the Mandatory has attempted

to conciliate both parties, but without success . Here

comes the master touch . It pleads with both Jews and Arabs

to accept a disinterested proposal for a settlement of these irreconcilable

differences through a division of territory. In suave

words it pleads its friendship for both parties and offers to cut

the Gordian knot in one heroic stroke . The Jews are startled

to find that they have been offered a Jewish State as their share

of the bargain . A Jewish `State' after two thousand years of

tragedy and homelessness ! Messiah's kingdom at last !

We put the proposed Jewish `State' under a spy glass and discover

that it is an area approximately seven times the size of New

York City, running along the coastal plain ; that though Haifa

and the towns of Galilee are ostensibly included, the British plan

to hold them `temporarily' under their own administration ; 58

that it consists of the only densely populated portion of Palestine,

holding 140 people to the square mile, a density twice as

great as that of France ; that it will contain 225,ooo Arabs (approximately

equal to the number of Jews) ; that its fiscal services

will be under British control ; that as an independent economic

unit it is undone from the beginning ; and that it undoubtedly

will be administered by the British under a new and separate

Mandate of the same character, temper and quality as the existing

one.59

The British retain for themselves, under `permanent Mandate,'

the city of Jerusalem and an area around it taking in Bethlehem

and a corridor to the port of Jaffa. In the Report the Negeb,

the vast underpopulated portion of Palestine south of Jaffa, is

described by allusion as desert . It fronts on the road to Aqaba,

and is the area through which the new canal which is to parallel

Suez is to be constructed . It seems to have no claimant . ApJEHOVAH

ABDICATES 441

parently it is not to be divided or partitioned, but it is to be

left as a residue which the Mandatory Government will in due

time take possession of, just as it has the Hadramaut . The remainder

of what had been Palestine is to be given to the Arabs,

to be rejoined with Transjordan under the Emir Abdullah, and

to become Judenrein, an area from which Jews are to be permanently

barred. Thus in this third partition, the Jewish National

Home, originally a territory of some 45,000 or 50,000 square

miles, is shrunk to less than 2000 square miles .

Since "the Jews contribute more per capita to the revenue of

Palestine than the Arabs, and the Government has thereby been

enabled to maintain public services of the Arabs at a higher level

than would otherwise have been possible," continues the Report,

"partition would mean . . . that the Arab area would no

longer profit from the taxable capacity of the Jewish area ."

This unfortunate complication presents a self-evident problem,

but the Commission has a solution ! The Jewish State should

pay a permanent subvention to the Arab State out of its own

tax moneys ! 80 To justify this denouement, the Commission

establishes the fact that the Arabs are inept and incapable of supplying

sufficient revenue from their own resources to run their

State . Transjordan, it cites, has never been able to meet even

the costs of its skeleton administration . Since the Jews had

always met the deficit before, runs the reasoning, why should

they not continue to do so indefinitely ! 81 The Jewish `State' is

further to "provide for the free transit of goods in bond between

the Arab State and Haifa ." The Central Government, i .e., the

British, would control railways, roads and post office . The collection

of customs at all ports would also be taken over by the

British, including Haifa, Jaffa, Tel Aviv and such other ports

as may be found necessary .

The existing public debt of Palestine amounting to about

£4,500,000, is to be divided between the Arab and Jewish States

by a Financial Commission to be appointed later . Is it a mere

slip of the pen which causes the Report to omit any reference in

this connection to the permanently mandated British area ? Is

this area to be exempt from taking over any share of the debt ?

442

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Nothing is said in the Report as to the apportionment of the

Government's surplus . Who, one wonders, is to take over that ?

The Report makes it clear that the permanently mandated territory

will be administered on a footing to which the Balfour

Declaration will not apply. There will be no recognition of

any official languages - except that of the Mandatory Administration,

i.e., English. It is clear that the public schools of Jerusalem,

for instance, will be managed on such lines as would be

prescribed by British Authorities. Within the Jewish area the

British would hold Haifa, Tiberias, Acre and Safed . Will not

the same condition also be true there ? If Arab and Jewish

nationalists are really as fanatic and refractory as the Mandatory

claims, is it not setting itself up for a new and more terrible

vendetta ? If this inflexible, blazing national feeling exists, how

could it become reconciled to the theft of its principal cities and

the subordination of its culture there ?

Further analysis reveals that the British would have a stranglehold

on the major portion of foreign trade and resulting customs

revenue. Customs duties and various types of urban taxation

constitute eighty percent of the total income of the Palestine

Government from taxation . For the year 1935-36 the Government's

income from these sources was £4,097,126 out of a

total revenue of C5,770,475 . The lion's share of tax revenue

would therefore be controlled, if not wholly appropriated, by

the British, leaving the proposed Jewish and Arab States without

resources at the outset . The Mandatory would also gain

practically all of the tourist business, by virtue of its ownership

of the Holy Places . Controlling the larger urban centers which

constitute the major markets of the rural areas, it would have

the power of life and death over the Jewish and Arab States .

The British would be entitled to, and doubtless would, impose

burdensome restrictions on the movement of men and goods

to these areas. They would be able to determine the utilization

of the Jordan waters through control of the Sea of Galilee, thus

putting them in a further coercive position in relation to the

two `States.'

In its proposed boundaries the Jewish `State' would be cut off

JEHOVAH ABDICATES 443

not only from its traditional Capital, but also from its sources of

hydro-electric power on the Jordan, its main mineral asset of the

Dead Sea, and from prospective mineral resources such as petroleum,

phosphates and copper, in the south . Since it would have

no access to the great desolate regions surrounding it, it will have

no outlet for future growth.

Moreover, there will be almost as many Arabs in the Jewish

`State' as Jews . Hence it is likely that the division will not solve

the problem of Arab-Jewish rancor, but intensify it, encouraging

two mutually clashing irredentas within a small territory . The

Government clearly encourages the proposed Arab State to join

a future Arab Federation, so that this little Naboth's vineyard is

to be surrounded by a more or less united mass of covetous appetites

about ten million strong. In what respect will the position

be better than it is now ? Would it not simply provide

pan-Arabic ambition with a definite objective ? Whereas formerly

the Jews in the country were, at any rate, bringing new

wealth to the Arabs, would not the new contrast between Jewish

progress and Arab poverty "invite attack by tempting

greed" ? 112

Strategically the Jewish `State' cannot be protected . It consists

of lowlands surrounded by Arab hills. At one point it is

seven and a half to nine miles wide . What would the life of

anyone on this plain be worth if the hills bordering it were fortified

by the Arabs ? A country like that could be overrun

within a few hours, whatever the valor of its defenders . Of

this the Royal Commission itself gives unintentional warning,

saying, "the Jews must realize that another world war is unhappily

not impossible [and] that in the changes and chances of

war it is easy to imagine circumstances under which the Jews

might have to rely mainly on their own resources for the defense

of the National Home." How could such a wealthy, crowded

and progressive State on the plains and coast, surrounded by hills

and uplands, protect itself from the hungry, warlike inhabitants

of these adjacent areas ?

To give the proposition some aspect of reason, the Commission

suggests a mass exchange of population between the two

444 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

`States,' citing in defense of this idea the Graeco-Turkish exchanges

of population in 1922 .63 The transfer of Arabs in Galilee

is to be voluntary, but the transfer of those from the Sharon

is to be compulsory. A Transfer Commission is to be set up

under British control with headquarters at Jerusalem . Is not

all this contrary to the whole argument raised against the Jewish

National Home in the first place ? What in the name of common

sense is the moral difference between transferring 300,000

Arabs and, say, 900,000 Arabs, the total of those now in Palestine

? If it was moral when the League undertook the repatriation

of Turks and Greeks, and if it is moral in order to justify a

British plan of partition, why is it not moral in the name of those

8,ooo,ooo Jews who are being slowly done to death in Poland,

Rumania and Germany? There are at least 100,000 Jews in

the Arab peninsula who could be exchanged for Moslems . Two

hundred and fifty thousand more live in Arab North Africa. All

told, in Arabic speaking countries, there are at least 700,000 . Iraq,

among others, has stated her willingness to take all the Arab immigrants

she can get and to offer them every possible attraction,

including free land .64 Would not this solution be not only humane

but an act of the highest statesmanship, far superior to the

dog-in-the-manger tactics at present adopted ?

Much to the amazement of the Mandates Commission, which

had more than a little difficulty swallowing this explanation,

Ormsby-Gore stated that this whole scheme of partition was an

afterthought which occurred to the Commission after its return

from Palestine.65 He hastened to report that it was all a happy

accident and that the British Government had had absolutely

nothing to do with suggesting it . Yet Britain's Colonial Secretary

must know that no part of this is new in British Colonial

policy. It is identical with the system of `native reserve' followed

in many parts of Africa . Was the appointment of Sir

Morris Carter to the Commission a mere coincidence ? Sir Morris

is an expert on just this kind of work . Not long ago he

served as chairman of a commission in Kenya which fixed the

boundaries of a native reserve from which European colonists

are barred. This same partition scheme, in fact, was published

JEHOVAH ABDICATES 445

in almost exact outline more than eighteen months before, by

Mrs. Steuart Erskine, speaking the mind of the London anti-

Zionist cabal .6°

The partition scheme parallels exactly British strategic requirements,

allowing Mount Carmel and Haifa to be converted into

an eastern Gibraltar, and developing the corridor between Jaffa

and Jerusalem into a strong military and air base under permanent

British control, unhampered by promises, covenants and

trusteeships . Is this also coincidence ? The Commission recommended

in the interests of the Jewish and Arab `States' that they

sign treaties "of military cooperation" with England "dealing

with the maintenance of naval, military and air forces, the upkeep

of ports, roads and railways," for British military purposes.

The Jews, in other words, would foot the bill for a permanent

British garrison in their own territory . Are we asked to believe

that this, too, came as a touching and unexpected surprise to Britain's

military and naval advisers ?

At least it can occasion no surprise to find the British Cabinet

tripping over its own feet to accept "the unanimous Report of

the Royal Commission on Palestine" on the day it was published,

before there was any opportunity for examination or discussion.

But even here they were careful not to bind themselves

too closely, so as to leave the way open for still a further

foray against the distracted and retreating Zionists. In the exact

language used, the gentlemen of the Cabinet found that they

were "in general agreement with the arguments and conclusions

of the Commission," thus committing themselves to exactly

nothing, while at the same time appearing to have taken a stand.67

DOWNING STREET RUNS THE GAUNTLET

There were still formidable obstacles to be overcome, whether

by guile or force, before this carefully laid intrigue could be

consummated. One was certainly the conscience of Britishers

outside the official cabal . Another was the League of Nations,

for whom Britain was acting as temporary trustee . Since the

mere fact of railing against the Mandate did not alter its exist

446

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

ence, the third was obviously the Zionists themselves, who alone

could turn the trick without unpleasant repercussions if they

could be cajoled or frightened into voluntarily relinquishing

their rights in favor of the new British promises .

In England itself matters did not go too well . The country

was still a democracy, and for all the bureaucratic contempt for

elected politicians, five hundred cabals of vested officialdom

could not bring this plot off without the consent of Commons .

And Commons was grimly asking questions .

The moment Earl Peel's report was published, Englishmen,

boring through its polished phrases to the deceptions which lay

below, began to make themselves heard. Lloyd George, whose

government had issued the original Declaration, blasted it as a

"crazy scheme" which would brand Britain as faithless in the

eyes of honest men .68 Winston Churchill denounced it and the

men who issued it, stating that the Balfour Declaration could not

be brushed aside "as though they were under no obligations ."

Lord Strabolgi bluntly placed the entire blame for Palestine

troubles squarely on the shoulders of British officials, and accused

the Royal Commission of neglecting Imperial interests .

"The British scheme," he asserted, "was playing straight into the

hands of Premier Benito Mussolini of Italy, who . . . had been

in touch with the representatives of the Zionist Organization

. . . promising them all sorts of things ." 89 Expressing the generally

voiced opposition, the London Morning Post commented

sarcastically : "They have put a Saar, a Polish Corridor and half

a dozen Danzigs and Memels into a country the size of Wales ." 70

Opposition leaders once more scented an opportunity to tumble

the Government from power .

In foreign countries it appeared that the official clique had

overestimated the extent and force of anti-Semitic influence .

Ominous rumblings began to boil to the surface like little bubbles,

presaging a more vigorous convulsion gathering underneath.

Christian leaders, Fundamentalists who took their Bible

Prophecy literally, gazed askance. Bishop Alma White advised

the British nation that "the world will not know peace

until a Jewish Zion is established ." 71 "If the Jews do not preJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

447

sent united opposition," asserted the Reverend John Haynes

Holmes, "then the Christians must take up the fight . For the

partition of Palestine is as gross an outrage upon Christian tradition

as upon Jewish hope." 72 The Irish, who saw a situation

developing analogous to their own, came out in their newspapers

with such headlines as "Palestine Riots Due to British Guile ." 73

The Hindu leader, Basanta Koomar Roy, termed the whole affair

a characteristic piece of British diplomatic treachery, declaring

that "the British conspiracy is to exterminate the Jews and to

paralyze the Arabs in Palestine through a bitterly fought and

mechanically prolonged civil war ." 74 Irredentist groups of all

kinds, in chains to Britain the world over, were looking on now

with keen interest to see what the Jews were going to do about it .

The cabal was playing with fire . Hitler and Mussolini were

on the move, and an alarmed Britain saw herself as the ultimate

target for their fast-developing ambitions . With pecksniffian

horror she was declaiming on the subject of treaty breaking and

violation of sacred international covenants. Righteous indignation

was her stock in trade . "With all her customary secret

diplomacy," writes Wythe Williams, she was preparing "the

greatest campaign in history to insure the aid of the United

States in the conflict she now fears is inevitable ." 75 The belief

on the Continent that in case of war Britain could count on

American support, and at the least would have access to huge

American supplies of raw materials, was an important asset which

London did not dare forego . The ablest British diplomats were

detailed to Washington, where they concentrated all their wiles .

Downing Street grew increasingly nervous as the reports from

America became more and more disconcerting . Though officially

inspired news agencies were pounding out ecstatic descriptions

of the proposed new Jewish `State,' the reaction was

impressively antagonistic . The Jews themselves were quiet, under

the strictures of the ever-reliable Weitzman and his collaborators

; but there were signs that this too might only be the proverbial

lull before the storm . Consternation ruled Whitehall

when the American Christian Conference sent a cable to Geneva

signed by the most prominent and influential names in American

448

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

public life, calling attention to the "persecution of Jews that

now disgraces and degrades Germany, Poland and Rumania,"

and making the British Government a party to this villainy by

calling on it to "fulfill its covenanted pledges to the Jewish people

and to the world . . . and to cease obstructing Jewish settlement."

78 The Pro-Palestine Committee, headed by Senator

William H . King, issued a vigorous statement denouncing the

proposed plan as "a cruel act of persecution and a grave infringement

of international law ." Said the influential Hamilton Fish

"It is an amazing suggestion and a deliberate breach of trust ." 77

From the American Congress, forty-one members petitioned

Secretary of State Hull to advise London that partition was "totally

opposed to the spirit and acceptance of the Mandate by the

British Government ."

In the Senate the question of the treaties under which America

held rights in Palestine co-equal to those of Britain and other

League members, popped up as big as day. Senator Royal S .

Copeland, standing on the American-British Mandate Convention

on Palestine signed in 1924, drew attention to the fact that

under this treaty no modification can be made in the terms o f

the Mandate without the prior consent o f the United States .

Despite this Agreement, he pointed out, the United States had

not been consulted. Speaking in turn, Senator Warren R.

Austin, an eye-witness to the outrageous events which had taken

place in the Holy Land, solemnly urged that "under this treaty,

Americans are clearly entitled if not obligated to investigate the

lawlessness . . . and criminal conduct prevalent in Palestine ."

From Berlin, Adolph Hitler contemptuously dismissed the

whole plan as "English bluff ." Mexico announced that it would

oppose it in Geneva. The French, still wryly remembering the

intrigue which had handed Feisal to them in Syria, let it be

known with some heat that "no final decision could be taken

without their consent ." 78 In an impressive memorandum the

liberal groups of France and Belgium presented a major report

whose general premise was that far from being interested in the

establishment of a Jewish commonwealth, Britain would infinitely

prefer to see the work of construction collapse in order to have

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

449

a free hand to play the political game in the East. Accusing

London of direct complicity in the riots, the report proposed an

international committee to investigate .79

From yet another quarter came Poland, which as a powerful

buffer state between Germany and Russia, each a potential English

enemy, was being desperately wooed by Downing Street .

Poland wanted the largest Jewish State possible, in order to provide

a competent outlet for her unwanted Jews . Surveying the

British plan coldly, Poland announced herself solidly opposed . In

this tart disagreement she was joined by Rumania, and for much

the same reason.

It was apparent that all of this was just the beginning ; and

that if the Zionists started raising a commotion, the first nation

to have a serious tiff with Britain would make the Jewish quarrel

their own, with the legal advantage all on their side . None of

these things argued well for the Government's case when Parliament,

filled with grim and suspicious men, met late in July to

consider the measure .

Leading the Government's fight in person was the Colonial

Secretary, William George Arthur Ormsby-Gore . He was the

same Ormsby-Gore who had told a Zionist gathering in London

"I belong to the Anglican Church, and I see God's finger in the

return of the Jews to Palestine ." 80 He was the same man who

had thundered in 1921 : "Never in the history of the world has

a great empire taken up obligations of this kind and gone back

on them without being doomed. . . The little Englanders and

the narrow-minded politicians . . . what do they care about

Jerusalem or the British Empire ? They only care about . . .

getting an anti-Semitic cry."

It was he who had again told Commons in 1922 that the campaign

waged against a Jewish Palestine was the product of anti-

Semitic conspiracy ; that it was anti-British as well ; that it was

"only likely to result in the replacement of Britain in Palestine

by some other power" ; and that England "ought to pause before

it allows such a policy to be effected by its own nationals ." 81

Yet now we find this same gentleman hand-in-glove with the

cabal he had denounced, doing his best to convince Parliament

450

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

that the undertaking to which his nation was solemnly pledged

"involved an irreconcilable conflict between the aspirations of

Arabs and Jews" and therefore must be abandoned . To show

what kind of company he was keeping, one merely needs to

mention that in the House of Lords the Government's case was

being summed up by Lord Winterton, the identical worthy who

had once shouted down an unlucky Jewish M . P. from Whitechapel

with the words : "Silence in the ghetto!" 82 Now Winterton

was orating with crocodile tears in his eyes about the

miseries of Jews in this world, and stating his conviction that the

official clique were offering them "a fair deal" for the first time in

two thousand years .

In Commons it was apparent at once that none of this pharisaical

nonsense was going to be worth its salt . Despite the Government's

plea that the matter was so imperative that it had to

be adopted at once, Parliament was in no mood to accept this

proposition blindfolded . It was plain that while the Government

might win on the straight question of a vote of confidence,

it was a risky business, with a considerable section of its own

Party ready to vote with the opposition . Rather than chance

it, the official clique hastily backtracked, and introduced a resolution

referring the whole matter to the League, giving Commons

a chance to mull over it in its own good time . The result was

that Ormsby-Gore had to take his proposals before the Mandates

Commission without authority to say that Parliament approved

the scheme in principle or in detail . Here again the

British Colonial Secretary found himself with his hands full .

The Mandates Commission, considerably bucked up by international

reaction and Parliament's refusal to immediately approve,

was not impressed. It expressed astonishment that the

Mandatory had been unable to control the Arabs, and in effect

held the Commission's learned labors to be so much vague rubbish.

83

It was plain all around that for all its careful build-up the plan

wasn't worth the powder to blow it to hell with, unless the Jews

agreed. Once more Whitehall, with a cat-like smile, turned to

Weitzman.

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

MR. WEIZMANN OBLIGES AGAIN

To discourage any attempts at bold action which might have

been latent in the Zionists' minds, London promptly arranged

to have its creature, the Arab High Committee, reject the proposed

partition scheme . In a statement breathing fire and brimstone,

this body, composed for the most part of senior officials

of the Palestine Government, vociferated that Palestine "did

not belong to the Palestine Arabs alone, but to the whole Moslem

world ." Therefore it was turning to the Arab kings for

advice. Producing their optical illusions in swift sequence, the

magicians in Downing Street straightway trotted out these desert

potentates, who obligingly played their roles . Ibn Saud's

son was made to roar like a lion that "Palestine is Arabian and

must remain so!" Seyvid Hikmat Suleiman, Prime Minister of

Iraq, issued a spate of violent pronouncements damning partition

as an outrage against Arabs ; and Abdullah of Transjordan,

heir presumptive to a good part of the swag, added a comical

note by stentoriously threatening Great Britain with the consequences.

Thus the Zionists were to be kept properly scared and made

to understand that crumbs were better than no loaf at all . This

was inadvertently shown when Yemen's rapprochement with

Mussolini caused the permanent officials to believe that they had

carried this game of make-believe too far, putting ideas into the

heads of Arab princes that shouldn't be there . A few weeks

later the Colonial Secretary is found assuring an anxious Commons

that far from getting out of hand, "the Governments of

Transjordan and Iraq are now backing Great Britain in its decision

to tri-partition Palestine ." 84 In Palestine, itself, violent

protest demonstrations continued to be held, led by the most

virulent of the Arab extremists and protected by the police. But

the outside Arabs, including Saud and even the Government of

Egypt, suddenly seeing the light, had changed their tune. They

saw now with proper benevolence that the fact of a Jewish State

was only right and proper.

While all this was developing, the Zionists were preparing to

45 1

452 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

hold a congress to consider the situation, the most ominous they

had faced since their movement began . Only a few months before,

the Zionist Executive had voted not to cooperate with the

Royal Commission since that Commission, a political body, constituted

in itself "a distinctly anti-Zionist action" ; and also not

to convey this fact to the public "for obvious reasons ." S 5

Now, suddenly, the Zionist press gushes that "the great dream

of hundreds of generations of Jews throughout the two thousand

years of our history soon will materialize ." 86 Screeching headlines

announced : "England gives the Jews a Jewish Kingdom!"

In fulsome editorials, which under the circumstances can only be

described as crack-brained, the general theme runs throughout

"God bless England - England our friend - England our benefactor

- England our saviour !"

Like a fierce old wolf driven to bay, the veteran Ussishkin

growled : "It is necessary to indict England openly. The outbreaks

would not have occurred if the English Administration

had not wanted them to happen ." But the clear-sighted old

man was hushed up by timid confreres who were more afraid

to let go of the lion's tail than they were to hold on . Lord Peel's

threat to introduce a "political high level of immigration" and to

further restrict Jews on the land, had frightened them almost

out of their wits. If Jews did not accept the partition proposal,

warned Dr. Bernard Joseph, legal adviser of the Jewish

Agency, there was danger of a "much worse alternative." 87

Impending at last was a dramatic end to the inflated ballyhoo,

the stories of "unbelievable progress," the carefully nurtured

fiction of English friendship, the fund-raising prospectuses, the

long retreat into solacing unreality, by which the Zionist politicians

had sustained themselves . To Jews throughout the

world, totally unprepared for this collapse of their last hope, it

would come as a stunning blow . Could their confidence in the

Zionist hierarchy survive this final crushing disappointment ?

Would not Jewry, enraged and disillusioned, withdraw its support

? This fear, says Dr. Maurice Karpf, American member

of the Jewish Agency, entered heavily into the calculations of

the Executive.$$

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

453

At this very moment, a half dozen good, solid protest meetings

in the liberal countries and the threat of a determined Sinn Fein

might have moved the English. The Zionists might have concentrated

on the determined demand that the actual disturbances

themselves be investigated, that the action of the Royal Commission,

as well as the conduct of the members of the Palestine Administration,

be subject to an international court of inquiry . But

timidity ruled . Christian friends of the movement looked on

aghast, completely taken aback by the want of reaction on the

part of the official Jewish body . That great gentile pro-Zionist,

Charles Edward Russell, wrote to a friend : "I may say to you

quite frankly that if the Jews submit tamely to this colossal

affront and deep injury, I am out of the game . It will be of no

use to try to do anything for a people resolutely in love with

kicks in the face ."

Early in August the Congress met in Zurich, Switzerland .

Leading the struggle against acceptance of the partition principle

was Menachem Mendel Ussishkin . Solemnly turning to

Weitzman, he charged that for the past twenty years that gentleman

and his colleagues "had suppressed criticism of the British

Government and had concealed its unbending animosity to

the Jewish work in Palestine ." Acceptance of the British proposal,

he warned, would be only the beginning "of a new disaster."

Heading the American section was Dr . Stephen S . Wise

of New York, who was moving heaven and earth to make his

unqualified opposition clear . Even the non-Zionist, Felix Warburg,

pleaded : "I beg you, do not let down your ideals for something

that only seems like a State ." Violent language, hardbitten

accusations, split the air of the meeting-hall into a shower

of fragments from day to day . In a barrage of charges, Weitzman

himself was stigmatized as a traitor who had committed

himself to the partition principle in advance of the session's deliberations

.$» It was obvious that the temper of the Congress

454

was unalterably opposed to the British plan, even many of the

Laborites displaying a willingness to vote with the opposition .

Leading the fight for his program, Weitzman addressed the

delegates again and again, turning on all his old mesmeric charm,

454

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

with the officeholders holding up the van . Reversing himself

completely once more, he spoke in the typical language he had

always denounced as Fascist and jingo . Now he was violently

attacking those Jews who disagreed with what he called "the nationalist

Zionist ideal ." "The Arabs refuse to share Palestine with

anyone," he orated with nice casuistry . "If the Americans also

share the Arab viewpoint, our roads must part." "The Jews must

not forget," he continued, "that England is the only country

trying to solve the Jewish question ."

Weitzman was followed by Mr. David Ben-Gurion, regarded

as the second most influential person in the Zionist high command.

Mr. Ben-Gurion had changed considerably since that

day scarcely three months back when he had valiantly blazed

"We declare to the representatives of the English people that we

shall take no part in any experiment with the object of reexamining

that which has been decided by the nations of the

world and that which has been entrusted to England to carry

out." 90 Now he, too, was for partition .

It was useless to argue with such men, or to remind them that

`he who is cheated twice by the same man becomes an accomplice

with the cheater .' England had struck her blow just before

the era of stabilization had set in, and just in time to prevent

a Jewish majority in the Holy Land . The Jewish people

were writhing in the coils of the bitterest persecution they have

endured since the Dark Ages . Was not this the time of all

tunes for a final showdown ? If omens spoke correctly, a frank

revelation of this whole situation to the English electorate itself,

might have given them justice . If the facts had courageously

been made known, the nations of the world would certainly

have looked unsympathetically at this sordid attempt at

pirating the last resource of a defenseless people . Whitehall and

Downing Street, always sensitive to outside opinion, could hardly

have ignored this prospect .

It seems reasonable that the Zionists could have stood safely

on several counts : that Palestine was mandated and not British

territory ; that Jews have a right to an impartial investigation of

any squandering of their resources by a malfeasant mandatory ;

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

455

that neither a Colonial Office nor a Royal Commission of any

kind has any authority in Palestine ; and that Jews have the

same right to human happiness and existence as any other people .

Since the Mandate was not created to serve the interests of English

Imperialism, but to solve the Jewish problem, it could hardly

have been claimed that the whittling down of the Jewish National

Home to a few hundred square miles under questionable

`self-rule,' was a just and reasonable interpretation of Great Britain's

obligations .

But warning and counsel were useless . A large group of stalwarts

fought to the end against anything but a flat rejection of

this proposition, which they regarded as infamous . The Congress

as a whole could be regarded as implacably set against

Weizmann's proposals . But it consisted for the most part of inexperienced,

unworldly men who often acted for all the world

as if they had stared at the moon too long . They were caught

in the spell of glamorous orators who urged them in the name of

`reason' not to slam the door tight, who prodded their fancies

into the belief that this was only the opening bid - that since

Britain was thinking in terms of `a Jewish State,' it was indecent

not to investigate at least and discuss .

Finally they were brought to the point of agreeing to authorize

negotiations with Great Britain to ascertain "the precise purpose

of the Government in the proposed establishment of the

Jewish State ." That seemed perfectly safe, since at the same

time the Congress hedged this permission by instructing the

Executive not to commit either itself or the Zionist Organization,

but to bring a definite scheme for creation of the State, if

such a scheme emerged from the negotiations, before a newly

elected congress for "consideration and decision ." To make

clear that this act in no sense altered their opposition to the existing

proposals, the same resolution declared the partition scheme

unacceptable, protested all restrictions placed on Jewish development,

rejected the contention that the Mandate was unworkable,

and emphasized that the Homeland was understood at the time

of the Balfour Declaration to be "the whole of historic Palestine,

including Trans-Jordan ." As a parting shot, it directed the

456

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Executive to "resist any infringement of Jewish rights as guaranteed

by either Balfour Declaration or Mandate ."

Events immediately proved the irreconcilables right . The

Zionists thought they had committed themselves to nothing ; but,

though they did not realize it, they had crossed the Rubicon .

They had not rejected the proposition absolutely and unconditionally

as had Jabotinsky's right-wingers, or even Agudath Israel

in convention at Marienbad, Czechoslovakia. Moreover,

they had re-elected Mr. . Weitzman as president, and with him

all the old gang and all the old policies . The world press at once

flashed the story in their columns : "Zionists Accept Partition ."

The functionaries in the Bureaus, too, understood it that way,

Great Britain and the East commenting smugly that "the Zionists

at Zurich have made the best of what they regard as a

thoroughly bad position." 91 Lending force and color to this interpretation,

Weitzman appeared at Geneva . Dining with Professor

William Rappard, Vice-Chairman of the Mandates Commission,

he "was understood" to be pressing for acceptance by

that body of the Royal Commission's proposal .92

Serenely now, with the appraising smirk of one who knows

that the die is cast in his favor, the British waited on Geneva.

With no other recourse, in view of the apparent circumstances,

the Mandates Commission committed itself to approval of the

Palestine partition scheme "in principle," going no farther than

they conceived their wards, the Zionists, had gone . "The word

'scathing,"' reports the New York Evening Journal, "can properly

be used to describe the Commission's biting criticism of British

action in Palestine" accompanying this approval . It charged

London with responsibility for the extent and duration of the

riots, and declared that "the present Mandate, which Britain now

says is unworkable, did not become unworkable until Britain

said it was ." 93

The next move was now up to Commons, where the friends

of the Jews looked on in some mystification at what appeared to

be a voluntary relinquishment of the Jewish franchise without a

fight of any kind . Weitzman had succeeded in taking the wind

completely out of the sails of those staunch spirits who had been

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

457

ready to crusade for justice to the Jew in Palestine . One prominent

American who had been most vigorous in denouncing this

attempted larceny of Jewish rights, remarked to the writer after

reading the newspaper reports on the Zurich deliberations : "I

feel like a fool."

Whether they liked it or not, the Zionists had put their head

in the lion's mouth . The question that remained was - will the

beast bite? The Government answered provisionally by putting

into effect at once all the stringent "Partition-Interim"

recommendations of the Commission, though the Report had not

yet been approved, and before any discussion of its policy in

Parliament.

SAINT GEORGE SPITS IN THE DRAGON'S EYE

With the dexterity of long practice the cabal once more made

effective use of the Arab kings. Egypt, which a scarce two

months previously had declared a complete `hands off' policy in

regard to the Palestine troubles, 94 mysteriously awoke to its

obligations to Arabs in the Holy Land . She was joined the next

day by Iraq which after leaping nimbly on and off this hot plate,

decided that the Arabs could not possibly permit "the cancer of

Zionism" to ruin the body of the Arab world 9 5 Moslem India,

too, was hauled into the play when Sir Zafrullah Khan, a minion

closely connected with Whitehall, was made to solemnly warn

Great Britain that unless she solved the Palestine problem to

Moslem satisfaction she would be "setting up a sore which will

never heal ." 96 The trump card played for the benefit of jittery

Parliamentarians came with the insolent declaration by an Iraqian

statesman that Arabs "will look elsewhere" if Britain takes the

wrong turn at the crossroads between pro-Zionism and a profitable

amity with the Arab world .97 These were ferocious warnings,

but it is notable that without exception they came from territories

held under British control . No word was heard from

the great body of Arabs in North Africa living under French,

Spanish and Italian rule, who went about their business completely

indifferent to events in the Holy Land . Equally as

458 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

apathetic were the non-Arab Moslem territories whose orbits rotated

outside of British spheres of influence.

Despite these imposing demonstrations, it was inevitable that

when the British moved to consolidate their new position the

Arab High Committee would have to go. It had been an effective

instrument, but it was composed of insubordinate, refractory

men who had long taken literally the tradition of power and invulnerability

British policy had woven around them . The Mufti,

in particular, was regarded as too dangerous now to be useful .

He had made the fatal mistake of defying his masters at a critical

moment when they had asked him to issue a call to Holy War

against the Italians. Like a cat sitting immobile at a rat hole,

the British had waited patiently for a propitious moment to destroy

him . Had Haj Amin been wise, he could have read the

premonitory menace in the Peel Commission's statement, cautiously

taxing him with "his due share of responsibility" for the

riots, and ominously referring to him "as the head of yet a third

parallel Government ."

As it came about, der Tag was Sunday, September 27, 1 937,

when for the first time a high-ranking British official was assassinated.

His name was Lewis Yelland Andrews and he had been

District Commissioner for Galilee. The murder had been committed

by unidentified thugs who, as usual, made a quick disappearance

.

Until this time it was alleged by officialdom that no matter

how truculent they became, the Mufti and Arab High Committee

had to be handled with kid gloves. "Britain," they asserted,

"had to think of the Moslems in India, her delicate relationships

with the Arab world, etc ." Now giving the game

dead away, the Arab High Committee, always so bold and brassy

before, precipitously swung over, becoming apologetic and cringing.

It immediately met in urgent session and issued a frightened

manifesto "condemning the assassins and expressing condolences

for the victims' families ." Its bravado had disappeared as

completely as if it had yielded to black magic .

Ignoring these protestations, Jerusalem acted swiftly and ruthlessly

. A reward of 41 o,ooo, unprecedented in the history of

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

459

Palestine, was posted for the murderers, dead or alive . Within

twenty-four hours Haj Amin had been deposed from his Government-

paid position as president of the Supreme Moslem Council

; and two hundred previously immune gentlemen, in or around

the Arab High Committee, were rounded up . They included,

among others, the Mayor of Jerusalem and the forbidding personality

whom everyone was allegedly afraid to touch, the pan-

Arab firebrand Awny Bey Abdul Hadi. Now it appeared that

the Government had forgotten about the susceptibilities "of the

Moslems in India" and the delicate feelings of "our friends the

Arabs outside of Palestine," for it outlawed the Arab High Committee

in toto, explaining this action, as if it had just awakened to

the fact, by the existence of an organized terrorist and assassination

campaign, directed by the arrested gentlemen .

It was soon apparent that careful preparations had long been

made in advance by the Government for this coup . All police

and military leaves had been canceled and the order given to

stand by. Friday morning, at dawn, the homes of the Arab

High Committee members were surrounded . Telephone service

throughout the country was completely suspended . Lulled

to a sense of false security by past experience with English rule,

the Arab leadership was taken completely by surprise . Without

formality of trial, the erstwhile `patriots' now found themselves

roped like so many sheep on the British cruiser Sussex, and

headed for permanent exile on a barren island in the Indian

Ocean.98 Moving with the speed of lightning, this Government,

which had been so unbelievably supine before, went to

ferocious extremes. In a relentless purge, strikingly reminiscent

of what was taking place in Germany and Russia, suspected

persons were punished and their houses blown up with dynamite

without the slightest pretense at judicial inquiry.99

Despite twenty years of dire prophecy, the sensitive Moslems

of India and the fire-eating politicians of the Arab world remained

as docile as lambs . For weeks, until the cabal in Whitehall

thought to bestir itself again, Palestine, too, was as quiet as

a churchyard . In vain the Mufti sent out his official bulls demanding

intervention by the Arab kings . Not an Arab prince46o

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

ling let out a peep - not even when the Palestine Official Gazette

announced that henceforth the Moslem religious funds were going

to be administered by a triumvirate consisting of two Christian

officials and one Mohammedan sheikh for makeweight .

It was evident that Whitehall did not contemplate sharing Palestine

with anyone and that consequently the Jews were next on

the agenda for official attention. The cabal was playing its cards

with the shrewd, practiced hand of a gamester who knows how

every card is marked. Their moves came in rapid-fire order .

Within a week it was known that Jerusalem was starting preparations

for the establishment of an Arab Agency to offset the

Jewish body, an overt move which would in itself shatter every

obligation of the Mandate to bits.

Into operation were placed all the `palliatives' proposed by the

Peel Commission, as if they had already received the approval of

Parliament. On October 21 an ordinance was promulgated empowering

the High Commissioner to set political limits on immigration,

which in no case was to exceed one thousand a month

irrespective of absorptive capacity, -and to establish a Jewish proportion

o f this maximum. "In cases where a dispute arises," the

Government Director of Immigration was to decide whether or

not a person was a Jew . The new schedule announced several

weeks later to cover the ensuing eight-month period, consisted

of 9600 certificates . Of these, i 6oo were reserved for non-Jews,

thereby setting up a principle which could be extended in any

direction at officialdom's whim . For the first time capitalists

were lumped with all other immigrants, and a limit placed on

their entry within this same number of certificates .* It was also

announced that another ordinance was being drawn up which

would rigidly restrict Jews on the land in accordance with the

Royal Commission's recommendation .

Though all this went off with little or no trouble, Whitehall's

plan was still highly vulnerable . Neither Parliament nor the

League had yet agreed to it . The Zionists could conceivably

* On March 15, 1938, when the schedule for the ensuing six months came up,

the British Government announced a further reduction, limiting the Jewish

immigration quota to one thousand labor certificates and two thousand certificates

for capitalists for the six months beginning April 1 .

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

461

about-face, overturn Weitzman, and unhorse the whole program.

There were signs that such a contingency was by no

means remote.10° Already harried by these problems, officialdom

now found another, equally serious, obtruding on its view

the Arabs themselves had begun a definite movement for rapprochement

with the Jews. To London's consternation it

gained ground with surprising momentum . "For the first time

in the twenty years since the Balfour Declaration," writes the

New York Times' correspondent on August 5, 1937, "the Arabs

openly censure the Palestine Government for never having attempted

to bring the two peoples together ." Falastin, once the

pet of the Administration, commented caustically a day later

that despite British allegations of an unbreachable enmity between

Jews and Arabs, "we cannot recall a single instance since

the British occupation here when they have made the slightest

effort to bring the Arabs and Jews together . Pre-war Jewish

residents lived here peacefully with Arabs for hundreds of years.

To this day these Jews, in addition to the Arabs, maintain that

if it were not for British policy of divide and rule, the Arabs and

Jews would again live in Palestine in peace and harmony ."

On November 15, 1937 the Arab daily Ad-Difaa asserted

that the British Government had categorically rejected all proposals

for a round-table discussion between Jews, Arabs and

British, though the Jews and Arabs alike were anxious for such

a meeting. After talking to all sections of the Arab population,

the Near East Correspondent for the New York Times again

reported on November z 1, that their unanimous cry was "we've

suffered enough and we don't wish to have any more trouble .

May Allah curse them and cut off the lives of these intruders

from the outside who are disturbing our existence ." Pamphlets

were distributed in Arab villages, violently attacking Great Britain

as being the cause of their ruin . Publications which for years

had heralded the most extreme Arab nationalism, published conspicuously

on their front pages manifestoes of Arab and Jewish

leaders appealing to the public for peace . A similar appeal was

issued by the councilors of the Jerusalem Municipality, Jews and

Arabs, in the form of a joint resolution, followed by another

462

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

from a conference of Jewish and Arab merchants . Even the

extremist Jaffa daily Al Jamia Al Islamia gnashed its teeth,

threatening terrorists "with the wrath of judgment day and the

anger of posterity, for fanning the embers of hatred and animosity."

101 The planned Arab Congress which was to have aroused

world-wide sympathy for the nationalist cause, proved a fizzle,

with responsible Arabs both in and out of Palestine refusing to

have anything to do with it .

There was good reason for this change of face. The plot

had overreached itself so far that everyone faced bankruptcy .

Preceding events had "gradually but effectively ruined Arab

merchants and tradesmen ." 102 A financial crisis was rapidly

developing . As cash was withdrawn in increasingly heavier

amounts, the banks shut down on credits . Real estate values

tobogganed downward. In Tel Aviv alone, the Property Owners

Protective Association registered five thousand owners who

were faced with foreclosure due to inability to meet mortgage

interest . Arab towns, such as Jaffa, Acre, Tulkarm and Ramleh,

were gripped with a virtual paralysis ; their business centers practically

deserted . `To Let' signs hung over thousands of stores

and apartments . In the villages "tens of thousands of fellaheen

began to experience starvation . . . In very many cases the disturbances

ruined fellaheen for life, and perhaps their families

after them ." 102a The debts of the Arab peasantry had "at least

trebled." 102b An economic collapse threatened the entire country.

Budgets of all concerns, large and small, were cut to the

bone, with the inevitable result that unemployment was rampant.

Wages fell . Jewish enterprises which had always employed

Arabs set themselves resolutely against the practice . During

1936, Jewish investments had dropped by more than half

from the previous period. In 1937, reversing the accustomed

process, foreign capital was liquidating its investments and fleeing

from the country .

For the first time in years the Government announced a

deficit, £25,000 for the sixth-month period ending October 1,

1936. The High Commissioner warned that there would have

to be a drastic increase in the land tax, to cover . Arabs, who

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

463

suddenly remembered that they owned 97% of all the land, were

in a panic . Even Transjordan, feeling the repercussions, was

having serious trouble, bordering on open revolt. Awakening

as from a bad dream, responsible Arab opinion shied away from

the Royal Commission's solution, considering it a measure which

would only add further to their already crushing miseries . What

they wanted was a return to the golden age of prosperity which

had come in with the Jews .

Once more officialdom started pulling the strings necessary to

make its puppets move . Bloody insurrection broke out over the

Holy Land with renewed savagery . Arab notables who indicated

that they wanted amity were shot down or intimidated.

103 Moderates among the Arab Government employees

received warnings to resign or be killed . When the Mukhtar

of Siris, a town near Jenin, notified the District Commissioner

that he was resigning following receipt of such a threat, he was

arrested and sent to the Acre Concentration Camp . 104 Terror

settled over this stricken land as hand-picked Arab hoodlums

went on record with torches and bullets to the effect that the

Mandate must be abolished, to be superseded by a treaty between

Arab Palestine and England "along the lines of the Anglo-Iraq

Treaty." Their attitude was now, "We yield nothing ."

This time the insurgents consisted almost altogether of some fifteen

hundred ruffians imported from Syria and other nearby countries.

The disgusted villagers not only gave them no help, but in

many cases actually drove them out of their vicinity .105 George

Meyer, Cairo correspondent for the influential Paris daily Le

Temps, states that the leaders of the new disturbances are the identical

Syrian Arabs and Kurds who had participated in the Druse

uprising in 1925 against French rule in Syria . There are twenty

of them who "constitute an executive and contact committee,"

writes Meyer tersely. "These twenty usually meet in Damascus

in a house located in the Salhiye quarter, and from this headquarters

they control the terrorist bands in Palestine, organize

the recruiting and the transport of reenforcements, as well as of

arms and funds ." Most of the recruits he specifies to be villagers

from the Syrian Hauran, attracted by the opportunity for ad464

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

venture and loot. In addition there is a considerable group of

Moroccans and some Druses, Circassians and Armenians . "Crossing

the frontier," continues Meyer, "is a very easy matter for

the terrorists. . . Daily they enter and leave the country without

hindrance. So far [July 1938] there is no instance on record

of terrorists being arrested at the boundary ." * 106

The insurgents operated with bold effrontery, levying on villages

for both funds and supplies . In several cases mentioned

by the Palestine Review where bandits raided Arab villages whose

residents were suffering from temporary financial embarrassment,

they agreed to accept promissory notes from their victims

on condition that they bore the signatures, as guarantors,

of two of the leading men of the village. It may be presumed

that they proceeded to discount these bills in the usual way .107

The new outbreak shook the country with unmitigated savagery.

Daily, orchards and homes were wrecked, railroads bombed,

men, women and children assassinated and pitched battles fought .

Christians, too, were made the object of violence . Many were

slain, including the Reverend Pietro Rossini, an Italian principal

of a mission school near Jaffa . He was beaten almost to a pulp,

his school looted and practically demolished .

Perfectly timed for its publicity value, a great engagement

took place between Government forces and Arabs in Galilee

on Christmas Eve, in which fifty men were killed . It was the

bloodiest battle the Holy Land had witnessed since the World

War. The farcical maneuvers of the previous years were now

reenacted all over again . Prominent Arab residents `suspected'

of having a hand in the disorders had to remain helpless "while

their homes and goods were blown to smithereens" by charges

of dynamite set by British troops.108 When the airport at Lydda

was damaged, a succession of Moslem houses were officially

dynamited in reprisal . Collective fines running into huge amounts

were levied on entire villages without the slightest judicial inquiry

or proof of guilt .

With engaging hypocrisy, the British went about the business

* This is the same border which Jewish illegals find it almost impossible to

cross due to drastic supervision .

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

465

of changing generals as if they were facing a major crisis . Major-

General Archibald P . Wavell iosa who had replaced General Dill,

was in turn replaced by Major-General Robert H . Haining,

much as players are substituted in sporting contests. As if reluctantly

put into operation by liberal humanitarians who had

been pushed as far as they could go and who now meant to end

the terrorism at any cost, courts martial were decided on and

loudly announced on November 1 7, 1937. To advise the General

Staff on the correct points of law before such courts, it was

advertised that "the noted British jurist," Major William Henry

Stoker, had been appointed Deputy Judge Advocate General .

Stoker, as it happens, had been in Palestine news before as the

chief counsel for the Arab Executive when it appeared before

the "Commission of Inquiry" after the 1929 upheaval .

Determined to make this whole procedure look like the end

result of a serious imbroglio between warring Arabs and Jews,

the Administration seized a number of Jews and threw them into

concentration camps . Jewish leaders, in particular Jabotinsky's

Revisionists, were picked up en masse under `preventive arrest'

and sentenced to long terms, or simply thrown into concentration

camps without trial or charge . Jewish passersby were

seized indiscriminately in the streets and laborers in the colonies

were grabbed and sentenced without even being questioned .

For the first time in the history of the National Home, the Authorities

established punitive police posts in Jewish quarters .

With mock solemnity, Arab busses passing through Jewish areas

(where Arabs had lived in peace even during the worst of the

riots) carried elaborate police protection .

The brunt of the disorders as well as this farcical arrest of

Jews, came just before the League of Nations Council meeting

in Geneva, where the partition proposals were to be considered .

It is at least noteworthy, too, that during that week the Authorities

allowed posters to be put up in the Jerusalem mosques signed

by Fawzy Bey el Kaougji, the old public enemy number one of

the previous year, appealing for a renewal of terrorism .

This synthetic state of affairs had been impressively staged but

there were men high in the councils of Europe to whom similar

466

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

phenomena were not new . The Report of the Mandates Commission

to the League Council unexpectedly threw the lie in the

face of British reports by absolving the Jews completely from

any responsibility for the 1936 disorders. It viewed London's

explanations with unconcealed disbelief, and held the newest

restrictions on Jewish immigration to be a flagrant violation of

the Mandate. "It was inconceivable," said Commissioner M .

Orts, "that during the transition period between the present

regime and the institution of a new regime, Palestine should be

administered entirely at the pleasure of the former Mandatory."

109

At the League of Nations Assembly held a few weeks later,

the British plan was unmercifully criticized . In a searing analysis,

President De Valera of Ireland declared that "partition is

not the solution - it is the cruelest wrong that could be done any

people." 110 Dr. Christian Lange, the beloved and influential

delegate from Norway, demanded the inclusion in the Jewish

State of the strategic areas which Britain had reserved for itself .

Poland's delegate, Mr. . Komarnicki, made it plain that his Government

would agree only if the proposed Jewish State were to

get an area large enough to make it economically sound, and

capable of absorbing a compact Jewish immigration . On this

position he was solidly backed up by the representatives of the

Little Entente . Uruguay, Lithuania, Latvia and even Haiti

joined in demanding that if the Jews were to be given a State, it

should be a State in fact, and not the spurious makeshift proposed

by Great Britain . Guided by what seemed to be the abdication

of Weizmann's official Zionists, the League finally authorized

Britain to "study" a solution of the Palestine problem on partition

lines, but emphasized that it was in "the meantime entirely

reserving its opinion and decision ." 111 This meant that the

Mandate continued to remain in full force as heretofore .

For the time being at least, Whitehall's play had fallen far

short. This result was more than disappointing. The permanent

officials had counted on bringing their program to a quick

head, after which it could rest as a fait accompli. In this lengthening

interim it became a dangerous plaything . Had these men

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

467

been dealing with anyone but inexperienced Jewish theorists, the

results might have been extremely unhappy . In Britain's current

situation, the label of "perfidious Albion" reburnished and

flung in her face would have effected a disastrous loss of moral

position ; and there were Parliamentary leaders who suspected

that Whitehall was exposing the nation to this hazard .

During an angry debate on supplementary estimates for Palestine

defense, David Lloyd George asserted that the continued

disturbances in the Holy Land were "entirely due to matters of

policy." 112 Winston Churchill warned that partition "will not

lead away from violence but into its very heart ." 113 On the

floor of the House, Colonel Wedgwood charged the Government

with failing to give the military in Palestine authority or

power to pacify the country, impeaching it scornfully for not

using the forty thousand Jews capable of bearing arms . Sarcastically

he pointed out in a letter to the London Times (July

21, 1938) : "For two years murder and destruction of Jewish

property have gone unpunished under British rule. The Administration

continues to be strictly impartial between the murderers

and the murdered . I have not known of such a black

page of incompetence and hypocrisy in British history."

Even more disconcerting was a bill introduced without warning

by Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson for the purpose of

"giving the potentially persecuted Jew in Europe the chance, if

he wishes, of becoming a Palestine subject." 114 The measure

contemplated extending to all Jews who required it, an extraterritorial

Palestine nationality, placing them automatically under

the protection of Palestine law . The bill unexpectedly passed

Commons by a vote of 145 to 144. This was a matter the

startled Bureaucrats would sabotage effectively before it came

to the Lords ; but it offered proof positive that beneath the comparatively

smooth surface there were hidden snags, well capable

of capsizing the craft when the matter again arose for final disposition.

The news from America was still more disquieting . The influential

Foreign Policy Association dubbed the British plan "a

political absurdity . . . fraught with the greatest danger." 115

468

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Such eminent statesmen as President Roosevelt and Secretary of

the Interior, Harold Ickes, expressed "their deep and continuing

sympathy for Jewish efforts to build a National Home ." "With

cruel pressures against Jews in Europe unrelaxed and access to

Palestine no easier," Secretary Ickes told a Zionist gathering robustly,

"the need for a viable Jewish homeland in Palestine is

greater than ever. . . The enemies against whom you are forced

to contend are not so much your enemies as the enemies of all

human progress . . . As the darkening shadows lift from a

troubled world, the sun will also rise over Palestine, and law shall

again go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem."

116 In the American Congress, Representative Hamilton

Fish introduced a concurrent resolution demanding that

Great Britain lift its unjust and inhumane restrictions on Jewish

immigration into Palestine . 117

It was evident enough that this whole ferment of intrigue was

teetering on the verge of self-defeat, and that nobody but Whitehall

was assuming even vaguely that this was a matter exclusively

for Britain to deal with. It was clear that Palestine was not yet

British property and was still playing its independent part in international

politics . Moreover, the Powers needed little encouragement

to resist any encroachment on their special position

in the Near East. London was profoundly shocked when it

was reported late in October 1937 that Germany had suggested

to Italy that a four-power commission, to include Britain, France,

Germany and Italy, be sought to rule Palestine in place of the

present Mandatory Government . Modeled along the lines of

the Saar Commission, it would be empowered to send an international

militia to Palestine to preserve order ."" Another piece

of annoying news reported that Ibn Saud, bitterly resentful of

this attempt to strengthen the hated house of Hussein, had mobilized

his horsemen on the Transjordanian border under orders

to be ready for action if Abdullah were given Palestine.119

The situation focused itself logically on the Jews themselves .

Would they accept partition? Was Weizmann's mesmeric influence

still strong enough to hold, with nerve-cracking tension

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

469

turning Israel over half the world, bitter and dangerously restive

? What to do ! Should the Jews be frightened further into

submissiveness by continued riots ? Should the pill be sugarcoated

with a heavy dose of the old promises ? Would the

leopard change its spots or would the Zionists take their licking

like decent fellows ? These were the questions running through

the mind of the London cabal .

Not quite knowing their proper course, they attempted to

make things look right by a violent shake-up of the gendarmerie

in Palestine in which the resignation of virtually every police

head was found acceptable . Included in this collection of scalps

was that of the High Commissioner himself . It was 1920 all

over again.

The new High Commissioner was a man with a high-domed

head and a shrewd face creased with tired lines, named Sir Harold

MacMichael . MacMichael had been former Governor of

Tanganyika Territory, and later a high official in the Sudan Government.

He was reputed to be a renowned Arabic scholar.

"If anything could reassure the Arab world particularly, and the

Islamic world in general," says Great Britain and the East succinctly,

"that the problems of Palestine will be handled sympathetically,

they need but refer to the Bedouin and the fellaheen

of the Sudan for their opinion of Sir Harold MacMichael."

Before leaving for Palestine, MacMichael pledged himself in

a leonine oration to eradicate the terror, root and branch . His

arrival on March 3, 1938 was marked by violent samples of the,

very lawlessness he had promised to eliminate . One of his first

acts was arbitrarily to return control of the city government of

Jerusalem to the Arabs, giving the acting-Mayor, Mr. Auster,

his walking papers and appointing an Arab majority in the Municipal

Council . In the official announcement it was made perfectly

clear that had Mr. . Auster been a Moslem he could have

continued as Mayor . 120 Along the full length of the northern

frontier, allegedly to keep out terrorists, was built an elaborate

barbed-wire entanglement of the most substantial and

permanent wartime type, six feet high and six feet deep, strung

470

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

on stakes set in concrete .121 Despite this `precaution,' terrorists

seemed to have little difficulty in continuing to go and come as

they pleased .

Meanwhile tension was considerably eased by the new accord

signed with Italy, in which Mussolini agreed not to oppose British

policy in Palestine. Long grueling months of riot and uncertainty

had all but destroyed Palestine's economic life. With

their principal enemy out of the way for the moment, the Bureaucrats

decided that now was the time to strike in a decisive

effort to force a conclusion . A new partition Commission was

announced. Swiftly organized, it sailed from London on April

21, 1938 to begin its task. Coincident with its arrival, terrorism

of the most frightful kind again stalked the country, with the

police and military seeemingly powerless to halt it . Peaceful

Arabs as well as Jews were slaughtered daily, colonies attacked,

and houses, schools and other buildings blown to bits . Arson,

stoning and sniping became part of the regular routine .

In a determined attempt to justify its interpretation of these

events as "Arab-Jewish clashes," the Administration concentrated

its efforts on the unfortunate Revisionists . Once more

there were mass arrests of Jewish workmen and students, who

were promptly referred to in dispatches sent abroad in the same

terms as were the Arab desperadoes . Among them was a young

boy named Shlomo Ben Josef who was sentenced to hang for

being allegedly in possession of arms.122 The Government did

not assert that he had killed or injured anyone .

A general strike shut all Jewish shops in Jerusalem as the case

became a cause celebre for all Jewish Palestine . Over the entire

country widespread demonstrations took place and a spontaneous

walkout emptied all schools in Tel Aviv . Sickened and outraged,

the struggling Yishub endeavored desperately to make itself

heard .

These manifestations were contemptuously ignored, and Ben

Josef was officially put to death, the first Jew to be hanged in the

history of modern Palestine . The Jewish Yishub, to a man, considered

him an innocent victim of the Government's determination

to prove that Jews, too, were terrorists . In the British ParliaJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

47 1

ment itself, John McGovern M. P. did not hesitate to refer to the

execution of this boy as "perfectly outrageous ." 123 Making the

event as offensive as possible, the day selected for the hanging

was a Jewish holiday so that no rabbi could be present to administer

last rites . An appeal by Chief Rabbi Herzog to postpone

the execution till the next day was refused, as had been

the unanimous demand of Palestine Jewry for a retrial .

For once the Jews sunk their ideological differences . Defiantly

the Jewish Council and the Chief Rabbinate issued a

manifesto saying : "The entire Yishub mourns the loss of a son

of Israel. Let us bear the pain quietly and with restraint suitable

to the dignity of a people struggling for life ." Jewish Palestine

seethed with dangerous tension. General strikes were called in

the principal cities. Jews carrying black flags of mourning were

beaten down by the police in the Jerusalem streets . But Jewish

leaders, who had been urging self-restraint in the face of all provocations,

managed to make their influence felt again.123a The

Yishub settled back to its old dogged policy of patient waiting .

Haifa, which had been so miraculously free of disturbance

during the earlier period of the revolt, now became the very

center of terrorist activity . By the usual coincidence, this synchronized

itself exactly with Whitehall's latest agitation to detach

Haifa from the Jewish State, and to include it in the Arab

area. It is also worthy of remark that the worst outrages took

place at the very time President Roosevelt was calling his Evian

Conference to arrange for an orderly resettlement of Jewish

refugees from Germany and Austria . The deadliest bomb explosion

in Palestine's current history shattered the crowded Haifa

market place, killing thirty-five Arabs, including women and

children, and touching off a day of terror which left forty-five

dead and seventy-five wounded. Aghast at this atrocity (which

was promptly attributed to them) the Jews made no bones of

the fact that they considered the explosion to be the work of

agents provocateur, 1231 and that its purpose was to impress upon

the Evian Congress the supposed perils of settling large numbers

of Jews in the Holy Land .124

These provocations had their effect. Deep unreasoning hatred

472

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

paralyzed the Holy Land. It was the Arab turn now to be outraged.

The terror expanded into unprecedented proportions,

with stricken Haifa the chief battleground. A whole series of

disastrous bomb explosions followed, blowing Arabs and Jews

to pieces indiscriminately . The list of dead mounted into the

hundreds. Property of untold value was destroyed . The normal

economic life of the country continued to deteriorate rapidly.

Despite the presence of innumerable British soldiers, Haifa,

particularly, became a death trap for the Jews, who could not

go to work or return home without running the risk of ambuscade.

"One entire section of the city," writes Roman Slobodin,

correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, "is overrun

by the Shabab - the organized Arab mob - whose leaders boast

that they rule supreme in the Arab quarters, and who, by this

correspondent's personal observation, make good that boast ." 125

Four large bands operated apparently with impunity in the

vicinity of this great seaport city . One consisted of two hundred

Palestine Arabs headed by Yussef Abu Dura ; another of

a hundred and twenty Palestine Arabs led by a relative of the

exiled Awny Bey, one Fakhri Abdul Hadi ; a third group comprised

four hundred Syrian Arabs and was led by Abdullah el

Asmat of Damascus ; and a fourth band consisted of several hundred

Iraqians headed by a lieutenant of Fawzy Bey, Sheikh

Salach Issa Laoh .

Meanwhile the country was rife with reports that these and

other bands were not only controlling entire sectors without interference,

but were imposing collective fines and preparing

mobilization lists . From Beirut came reliable information that

a general uprising was in preparation, to be coincident with the

presentation of the Commission's plan to Parliament . Armed men

were reported pouring unchecked across all Palestine frontiers .

Agents were said to be openly recruiting villagers throughout

Palestine, fixing an orderly levy of men and cash in proportion

to village populations .126 In Iraq and the desert, the old reliable

threat of a jihad in the name of all Islam, suddenly became a

threatened reality. The fanatical Shi'as (who had been petiJEHOVAH

ABDICATES 473

tioning the League, voicing passionate indignation at the outrages

committed against them by the hated Sunnis) now incomprehensibly

issued a solemn fatwa demanding that Iraqis engage

in a holy war to aid their Arab (Sunni) brothers in Palestine .127

In this turbulent setting the latest `Commission' sent down from

London to `investigate,' completed its labors . What it had in

mind was more than hinted at by the columns of Great Britain

and the East, which referred to the "false premise which caused

the Commission [Peel body] to propose including Arab Galilee

in the suggested State ." The Zionists were thus put on warning

that the tiny area suggested by Lord Peel was itself about to be

drastically slashed . The Jews, in short, were to be pushed out

of Palestine by being compressed into an uneconomic mud-hole

on the coast, which could not possibly continue its existence as

an independent unit. Great Britain and the East did not mince

the matter. It `predicted' that the Arab State would, eventually,

either join an Arab Federation or become part of that larger entity

provided by Transjordan and Palestine. The future of the Jewish

`State' it found no difficulty in forecasting, remarking : "It

may find a way of accommodation, and even help to fructify those

States [Arab] . It may ultimately end as a dream." 128

The plan was thus to reduce the Jewish `State' to a mere "token

home," and to confine it to some 40o square miles in the Sharon

Valley. Galilee, Acre and Haifa were to be added to the permanently

mandated British area . Under this scheme the British

would also take over southern Palestine to protect Suez .129 The

remainder of the country was to be united with Transjordan as

an Arab `State' under Abdullah.130

Convinced that the Jewish stag had finally been run to earth,

the exultant Bureaucrats now dallied with the idea of abrogating

even the Jewish "token home," repudiating the Balfour Declaration

and setting up an Arab government "permanently allied with

Great Britain." For this purpose, under the sponsorship of the

British Foreign Office, Tewfik es-Suwaidi, foreign minister of

Iraq, was introduced to official London ; and it was he who went

through the motions of demanding this solution in the name of an

aroused Arab world . At this psychological moment an imposing

474

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Arab Congress, consisting of delegates from various countries of

the Peninsula, had been gathered in Cairo, where, under the approving

eye of both Egyptian and British authorities it stentoriously

threatened the British nation with the eternal enmity of all

Arabia unless these minimum demands were promptly met .

Timed to absolute precision the revolt in the Holy Land, itself,

assumed major proportions . Calling themselves the "provisional

Arab Government" the rebels announced that they had taken

over responsibility for "law and order, life and limb" in their

territory .

With unparalleled audacity they swiftly assumed authority

over practically the whole of Palestine with the exception of a

few isolated military outposts held by the British . Persons in

the vicinity of Jerusalem's American colony stated that they were

halted in broad daylight on the charge of violating this `provisional

Arab Government's' laws, and taken into custody by the insurgents

after being marched right past the Mandatory's policemen

who looked on passively. The insurgents not only set up

their own courts but issued laws and decrees like a bona fide

government and began to collect taxes. According to the Chicago

Daily News of October i9, 1938, an old Englishwoman,

resident of Jericho for forty years, was given twenty-four hours'

notice by the `Provisional Government' to pay taxes on her orange

grove. When she repaired to Jerusalem for advice she was

told by British officials there "to pay and look pleasant ." Returning

to Jericho, she not only paid the tax but was "fined additionally

for not paying on time ."

Over the whole length and breadth of the Holy Land sanguinary

violence flared wickedly . The most shocking acts were

committed, as when twenty-one Jews were butchered in cold

blood on October z 2 in Tiberias, including ten little children who

were roasted alive.

For all its perfect timing, it now became apparent that the

Bureaucrats had once more over-reached themselves . News from

Europe of a new succession of barbarities against the Jews was

profoundly stirring international Christian opinion . As a result

of the Munich settlement, 30,000 Siideten Jews suddenly found

JEHOVAH ABDICATES 475

themselves penniless refugees, fleeing in mortal terror from the

invading Nazi legions . Czechoslovakia, which the Munich pact

had reduced to complete vassalage, now, under Nazi pressure,

turned to anti-Semitism, threatening its 340,000 Jews with expulsion

or pauperization . The news from Poland and other European

countries grew worse daily .

As it became apparent that London was about to repudiate its

obligations under the Balfour Declaration, voices of protest, of

indignation and anger began to make themselves heard, particularly

in the United States . American Jewry, too, aroused itself

from its apathy and became articulate . Hundreds of mass meetings

were planned to denounce this final outrage . This swelling

tide of opinion quickly enlisted the sympathetic support of noted

political leaders, of organized labor, church dignitaries, and the

majority of influential newspapers . The National Council of

Catholic Men appealed to President Roosevelt to take immediate

action in regard to Palestine "to the end that misfortune and

misery be not further heaped upon the afflicted peoples of the

world." More than one hundred thousand telegrams and memorial

resolutions poured in from all sources, urging the American

Government to intercede . It was once more pointed out that the

American-British Mandate Convention on Palestine prohibited

any change in the Mandate without the prior consent of the

United States Government . Both the Senate and House of the

Pennsylvania legislature adopted a unanimous resolution asking

President Roosevelt to inform London "that this country looks

to Great Britain to adhere to her commitments and to hold fast

to the terms of the Palestine Mandate and to the spirit of the Balfour

Declaration ." Another petition signed by 5i Senators, 31

Governors of States, and 194 members of the Lower House,

voiced an almost identical sentiment . Additional protests emanated

from still other legislative bodies as well as religious and

social groups throughout the nation .

In view of the dangerous situation both in the Far East and on

the Continent, London had been feverishly courting American

public opinion . If America refused cooperation in the event of

a new world war, the great vulnerable British Empire was sure

476

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

to find itself in a desperate position . The very thought of such

a possibility was sufficient to throw Whitehall's masters into a

panic.

In England itself there were signs that the Munich pact was not

popular and that a growing section of British opinion viewed it

as a direct betrayal of Britain's future . The Government's own

party was split wide open with dissension . Opposition leaders

were searching frantically for some issue which would throw the

hated Tories out of power.

In its very dying moments the League, speaking for the nations

which still believed in the fundamental principles of international

law, taxed Great Britain with a flagrant breach of the

Mandate, calling attention to her "virtual suspension" of Jewish

immigration .

To the Bureaucrats the situation had, unexpectedly, again

become tense and fraught with ominous possibilities . It was apparent

that the attempt to wreck the Jewish Homeland now,

might bring on a reaction of enormously unpleasant proportions .

This was the situation when the British Cabinet hurriedly met

on October ig and announced that no drastic action was about

to be taken against the Jews . All the carefully built plans for a

reorganized Arab Palestine were immediately shunted out of

sight ; and it was authoritatively stated that military action would

be taken at once to put down the few thousand Arab `rebels' who

had so unaccountably checkmated a major British army in Palestine.

The Woodhead Commission's report, which was to have

been issued late in October, was with-held apparently to undergo

a drastic revision .

The Bureaucrats themselves are now eager to allay the grave

suspicions visibly growing in the world conscience . The much

heralded partition plan has, from all appearances, been quietly

jettisoned . Judging from the inspired propaganda arising from

London sources, the latest strategy is to perform the operation by

degrees. It seems fairly certain that the Jews are to be placated

for the time being by a gift of several thousand additional immigration

visas. At the same time a cantonization scheme is to be

presented, to be elaborated in a round-table conference at which

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

477

will be seated hand-picked Arabs and Jews . Coincident with

this maneuver a great campaign to the Christian world is to be

pressed, placing the Mandatory in the role of a champion of

Christianity. The Jews and Arabs, both, will be reminded forcibly

that Palestine is not of interest to them alone, but that there

is also a third party - the Christian churches. Under this pretext,

Haifa and the whole of Galilee is to be taken over by Britain

under permanent Mandatory rule, and closed to Jewish settlement.

The new cantonized Palestine would thus consist of a

large permanently mandated area which would include all the

Holy Places as well as the strategic points ; a small and circumscribed

Jewish sector (where Jews would be given certain illusory

rights) ; and a remaining Arab section, to be set up under

some other form of British control .

When all of this has been settled, the Arabs can be expected to

mysteriously quiet down like decent fellows, and the rebellion

in Palestine will suddenly evaporate into thin air . The intransigeant

politicians of the rest of the Arab world, too, will undoubtedly

then find their attention distracted elsewhere .

Thus, with the exception of a few hundred square miles of virtual

ghetto on the maritime plain, Western Palestine eventually

would become, like Transjordan, Judenrein .

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