Thursday, May 14, 2015

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



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


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
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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

BOOK FOUR
CHAPTER I
THE COLLAPSE OF EMANCIPATION

ENEMIES OF ALL MANKIND'

BOOK FOUR
CHAPTER I
THE COLLAPSE OF EMANCIPATION
ENEMIES OF ALL MANKIND'
There are few passages in the history of modern man which
can equal in wretchedness the shocking situation of the Jewish
people today. Throughout half the known world they are
ostracized from the community of men, shunned, hounded and
reviled as if they were dangerous animals . They are the butt
of the most malign accusations which abuse and hatred can invent
: they crucify and slaughter little children, using their blood
in the preparation of their unleavened bread ; 1 they are deicides ;
they are usurers, pimps, and parasites ; they are responsible for all
the immorality of the times ; they bribe kings, emperors and
cabinet ministers ; they created both Plutocracy and Communism
; through their financial operations they control the world
press . Free Masonry, the Roman Church, and Social Democracy
are their secret tools ; they are bloodthirsty, rapacious, cunning
and crafty . They hate the whole world and are seeking
to destroy it so as to be able to form themselves into a ruling
super-caste . In the wake of every disaster rises the ugly cry
"The Jews are responsible . . . The Jews are the enemies of all
mankind ! Out with the Jews!"
Through all the Liberal period uncontested doctrine had
ruled that anti-Semitism was only the product of a people held
in the densest ignorance ; but now it is among the educated
classes themselves that the poison is being brewed . It is in the
universities, once held to be the strongholds of human progress,
that Jew-hatred is being dragged up out of the gutter, rationalized,
and rounded up into a respectable philosophy of life . The
brutal accusations by which unfortunate millions were butchered,
tortured and torn during the Medieval period, are being exhumed
478
THE COLLAPSE OF EMANCIPATION
479
from the museums and given a new coat of varnish. A monstrous
flood of literature embodying all the old libels, modernized
and embellished, rises like a tidal wave and spreads unchecked
in all directions .
In the cellars and cubicles where they have taken refuge, like
the early Christians in Rome, the Jews tremble . In Germany
half a million cultured people have been outlawed overnight and
exposed to every violence and humiliation . In the schools it is
taught that Jews kill little children on Passover Eve in order that
the rabbis may drink their blood, that they create nothing, that
they are responsible for every evil on this earth, and that no decent
German will have anything to do with them . 2 Anyone
with a single Jewish grandparent is considered to be hopelessly
tainted with the contaminating blood .
A cold pogrom deliberately planned to destroy him is driving
the German Jew to the wall . By single strokes whole groups
are deprived of a livelihood, as when forty thousand traveling
salesmen suddenly had their permits canceled by a single legislative
act.3 They may not work the land, they are forcibly
ejected from the trades and professions . They are boycotted,
harassed, and their enterprises forcibly closed down or confiscated
. Fully one hundred thousand small business men alone
have had to appeal like beggars to outside benevolent associations
for help . The completion of the present four-year economic
plan, the Nazis promise, will see the absolute elimination
of Jews from Germany's economic life .
They are expelled from associations for the blind, may not
enter consumptive sanitoria, and in the Berlin parks must sit on
`ghetto benches .' The Jewish child's first attempts at spelling
out public notices on the billboards will inform him that he is
not a human being, like other children, but a beast whose parents
were not human beings but loathesome animals. The textbooks
used in the schools will teach him that "the non-Nordic man is
a transition stage between Nordic man and the animal kingdom
as represented by the anthropoid apes" and that his characteristics
"are animal ones and at least sub-human ." 4 The torture of
these little victims is artistic and heartrending . They are com48o
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
pelled to sit and pay attention while the teacher explains to the
rest of the class that they are actually a species of vermin and a
menace to the German nation . Outcast, crushed and beaten,
these childish figures are often found following in the footsteps
of their elders in suicide . Dr. Edouard Turner gives the typical
case of a child of twelve who died with a gas tube in her mouth ; 5
and the London Times mentions a little girl of eight who begged
her mother : "Pray God, mamma darling, that he will make me
very ill or let me die . I cannot bear this any longer ."
In a number of towns it is even impossible for Jews to buy
foodstuffs at any cost. In the Province of Pomerania and in
whole districts in Prussia and Hesse, Jews may not purchase
food. In some towns such as Halle, they may buy bread between
noon and 12 :30 P.M. The authorities at Gowowitz in
Upper Silesia not only issued the usual ban forbidding grocers
to sell to Jews, but in addition issued a warning to individuals
against donating food to them. In at least fifty cities, among
them Magdeburg with three hundred thousand inhabitants, it is
forbidden to sell milk to Jewish children .' Everywhere Jews are
evicted from houses, and at such places as Mayence and Wiesbaden
all electric current and gas is cut off from their shops and homes .'
Deprived of the most elementary human rights, Israel in Germany
looks on the future with the glazed eyes of death . Out
of a once proud community of half a million, about one-third
have escaped and wander the globe like gypsies . Deprived of
passports, unwanted anywhere, they move wearily from border
to border ; most of them young people who will never see their
families again.
In 1938 two hundred thousand Austrian Jews and an uncounted
number of Jewish Christians were thrown bodily into
this frightful maelstrom. In one grisly blow this dignified ancient
community was ground to ruins . Jews were ejected from
business and the professions . Their institutions were raided and
closed, shops pillaged and synagogues desecrated . Police refused
them protection as if they were outlaws . The most inhuman,
savage beatings became part of the daily routine . Girls
of fine families were daily dragged into Nazi barracks where
THE COLLAPSE OF EMANCIPATION
481
they were viciously abused . Some of them were later thrown
into the Danube . A large number are now undergoing treatment
for venereal infection in the Jewish Rothschild Hospital
in Vienna . Jewish men and women were picked up on the
streets and forced to scrub pavement and buildings with water
filled with a corrosive acid for the amusement of their jeering
tormentors . From towns in Burgenland they were expelled en
masse on a few hours' notice and all their property confiscated .
On April zo, press dispatches carried a harrowing story of fiftyone
such unfortunates, men, women and children who had been
cast adrift in mid-Danube on a breakwater, without food or
warm clothing . Caught like a toad under a harrow, Austrian
Jewry writhes in mortal agony. In a single week seventeen
hundred are reported to have committed suicide .8
In Poland are another four million Jews who live in even more
appalling misery, if that is possible. Here they are terrorized
and degraded with a ferocity not exceeded by that of wild beasts.
Only Jewish enterprises will employ Jews and these are blocked
in every direction by a vast network of producer and consumer
cooperatives under the control of an intrinsically anti-Semitic
Government. Jews are not permitted to teach in Polish schools,
work as clerks in the banks or even as laborers in the large industries.
There is not a single Jew among the forty thousand
postal employees though Jews are twelve percent of the population
. The last Jewish postman was dismissed on the excuse
that "Jews don't know how to walk ." 9 They are rigidly kept
out of the professions and are restricted to petty trading which,
says Deputy Minzberg, "is crushed ten times more than any
other branch of activity in the midst of this general catastrophe ."
Over one hundred thousand Jewish trading enterprises have
been shut down, and hundreds of thousands of artisan workshops
owned by Jews have had to close. 10 Those that remain
are being mercilessly squeezed by a cruel boycott which grows
in organized efficiency daily .
Without exception, every political party in Poland is anti-
Semitic and aims at the extermination of this hated people . Even
the porters at the railway stations have demanded the dismissal
482
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
of Jewish porters and won their demands ; and in Lodz, Socialist
workers struck against the employment of Jews in the very textile
mills whose proprietors are Jews .
Nowhere is Jewish life safe . Police allow the stabbing and
beating of Jews on the streets. Pogroms, assaults, looting and
burning go on daily . The Authorities regard Jew-baiting as a
game, the excusable indulgence of a pleasure-seeking population.
Children are beaten daily on coming to and leaving school.
Whole cities have been wrecked and evacuated of their Jews
overnight in organized mob attacks . A typical example occurred
at Brzesc, where after sixteen hours of unchecked rioting led by
the police, on May 21, 1937, every Jewish shop and home was
either demolished or wrecked . Twenty-two thousand of the
city's twenty-five thousand Jews were left penniless, without
bread or shelter.
Not even in squalid China is there anything to compare with
the depths of poverty and squalor which are evident in the
ghastly Polish ghettos . Sixty percent of the Jewish workers are
unemployed, receiving neither dole nor insurance . At least one
million men, women and children are totally destitute, dependent
entirely on outside charity. There are hundreds of thousands
of homes where dry bread is a luxury, where children
have never tasted milk. The report of the American Joint Distribution
Committee states that eighty percent of the children in
the elementary schools are hungry all the time . In a single town
the rate of tuberculosis among Jewish children reached the staggering
figure of eighty percent ." In the Warsaw ghetto, Sholem
Asch describes "men going about like ghosts, pale as sheets, living
corpses with mad flaming eyes, continually jabbering to
themselves," and young women of twenty with "dead eyes,
swollen bodies, legs like matchsticks, dragging along in rags,
breathing asthmatic breath ." 12 Jewish peddlers must support
entire families on no more than fifty groschen a day (about 1o¢
in our currency) . Men are glad to stagger under the burden of
draft animals in order to secure a pittance which will allow them
to live, and will work cheaper than a horse .
THE COLLAPSE OF EMANCIPATION
48 3
From all over Poland come the same shocking reports, of a
people sinking daily deeper in the mire of want, but struggling
bravely to save their children. The moral and physical degradation
to which these people have been reduced, defies description.
"Entire families, ten, twelve or fifteen people, live in a single
room. Usually three or four have but one bed." 13 A horrorstruck
observer describes dens where "hundreds were crowded
in, where no human or animal should have lived at all. Men
and women were in incredible rags and dirt, unkempt, starved,
emaciated . . . But above all the stench, the suffering, was the
terrible sense . . . of a group in jail, set apart as leprous, stamped
as unworthy, held down by force to the level of animals." 14
All over Poland these white, thin faces, stunted bodies, hopeless
eyes, tell the terrible story of the Polish Jew. Always the
same frightened look, the hacking cough. George Backer describes
this common scene in the little town of Czestochow,
home of a hundred and fifty Jewish families: "I went to the house
of the rabbi. In an uncomplaining voice he told me the record of
his town. His little synagogue had been bombed. Every single
man, woman and child in that town had been beaten at least
ten times since the first of July. The roads were blocked by
peasants so Jews could neither leave nor have anyone come in
to help them. There was no telephone, no policeman - only
despair." 15
Cut off by hatred from the population in whose midst they
live, the vitality of Polish Jewry nears the breaking point. At
least one and a half million are doomed to death by starvation
and tuberculosis. The rest have only two alternatives: emigration
or suicide.
Jabotinsky calls it a `frozen stampede.' Like caught animals
they cannot move. No nation wants them. With the eagerness
of eternal hope they besiege the Zionist offices, seeking the
coveted visas; trembling mothers, weeping fathers, who would
thankfully sacrifice their own lives if only their little children
could escape this hell.
Like men in a dream they read the letters received from
484
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
friends in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. They con the Zionist
propaganda: the pictures of smiling happy children, of suntanned
muscular workers. Caressingly they scan each printed
countenance until its posed assurance and quiet happiness is
photographed on their souls. Frenzied by this promise of paradise
where Jews, too, may live as beings with human rights, they
chase after the automobiles in which ride well-fed visiting Zionists
or smug, annoyed British officials; offering to sell their lives,
their bodies, anything, for a precious visa. Many cut their
throats or drown themselves.
Neighboring Rumania with another million Jews, is a boiling
inferno in which the Polish picture is reproduced all over again,
and if anything, in ghastlier pigments. At the business of exploiting
the sufferings of this unhappy people, Rumania never
grows tired. The neighboring Baltic countries with other hundreds
of thousands of Jews, follow an almost identical performance.
In Hungary and the States of Central Europe, they are
being slowly starved to death. In this devouring quicksand they
quietly sink. There is no beating of drums to herald their doom,
such as focused attention on the fate of German Jewry. In
Greece, Turkey and Spain crisis after crisis develops, with the
Jews continually hounded in a swirl of anti-Semitic parties and
envenomed propaganda. In Moslem Africa and Asia, they live
under a continued barrage of looting, murder, rape, beatings and
enforced conversions. From Soviet Russia, also, come muffled
reports of a growing tide of anti-Jewish hatred. Violent pogroms
were said to have taken place in the Ukraine and White
Russia, led by members of Komsomol (Communist Youth Organization)
.15a In Kiev anti-Jewish riots were reported which
had to be suppressed by Red Army troops.l5b That left wing
doctrine in itself is not impervious to the anti-Semitic disease is
clearly shown in Mexico, where Jews are continually threatened
with exile in a campaign of harassment led directly by the
radical Socialist elements. In a caustic editorial on August 23,
1938, El Popular, organ of the powerful Confederation of Mexican
Labor, lays the onus of anti-Mexican agitation in the United
States at the door of the Jews, who it alleges are the authors of
THE COLLAPSE OF EMANCIPATION
485
the "Semitic pseudo-democratic capitalism of the United States"
and hence responsible for "the anti-radical propaganda" carried
on there.'-5c
The Western countries, too, are riddled with this spreading
anti-Semitic virus. Daily this incurable condition grows worse.


THE REFUGEES
This pitiful case history is a typical example of the fate of
Jews, wandering the earth as refugees .
Johanna and Julia are two sisters . Their father had been a
well-to-do business man in Mannheim, Germany, when Hitler
came to power. Unable to stand conditions any longer, in October
1933 they bade a tearful farewell to their parents and fled
to Switzerland . Harassed by the police they tried Belgium,
then France . Prohibited by the laws of these countries from
finding work, and shipped from border to border like cattle,
they finally went to Turkey where they found employment in
Istanbul. After a time they were expelled from that city, put
on a steamer, deported to Greece and then to Brindisi where
they were refused permission to land . Since no country would
accept them they were sent back to Istanbul, arrested and put
in prison. Released, they were shipped to Adrianople, and having
no passports, transported back to Turkey . After strenuous
efforts on the part of Jewish agencies, the Turkish Government
finally agreed to give them passports on condition that they left
the country. They then went to Belgrade in Yugoslavia. From
there they were sent to Budapest, Hungary. Thrown out once
more as undesirable aliens, the intercession of the Jewish community
in Belgrade got them temporary sanctuary in Bratislava
. Finally they arrived in Vienna, where relief organizations
took up their case once more . When last heard of, broken
in body and spirit, they had been shipped to Prague .'°
These unfortunates had been lovely and cultured Jewish girls,
whose only previous knowledge of life had been the tender affection
of adoring parents and the protecting shelter of a fine Jewish
home . They are a symbol of many thousands of other
486
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
ruined creatures who, bewildered and broken, skulk like plaguecarrying
rodents all over Europe and Asia . Brother is torn
from brother, son from mother, sister from sister . Wherever
by hook or crook one can find temporary shelter, he grabs it
with the desperation of a drowning man reaching for a life preserver.
A single refugee family may in consequence be scattered
over the length and breadth of two continents .
No country wants them . A fair example is Belgium, certainly
not less liberal than the rest . In 1934 this country placed
a high tax on foreigners with, significantly, a yellow identification
card . The refugees were put under rigid police supervision
. A whole series of petty harassments were enacted to
dog their footsteps. Both entry into the country and naturalization
suddenly became very difficult . The States where liberals
made the loudest outcry against Nazi persecutions were far
too realistic to extend this fine sympathy to actual practice .
England will not even let a refugee land on her island unless he
can prove that he is not taking a job away from an Englishman .
France, going England one better, will not grant the exile a labor
permit at all . This means that the hapless refugee must live entirely
on his own resources, a practical impossibility in the case
of Germans and Austrians, who are not permitted to take with
them more than ten marks (approximately $4 .00) .
Everywhere, as a result, is a trail of fine, honest Jewish girls
who have been forced to turn to prostitution, a growing list of
misanthropes ready for any mischief, a skyrocketing suicide toll .
In addition to those wanderers who possess passports, there
are many hundred thousands who are actually `stateless .' Thirty
thousand of these are in the Reich alone . A large proportion of
these luckless exiles consist of the all-but-forgotten men who fled
Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution . Others had
their citizenship revoked by fiat of the State in the shuffling of
territory in eastern and central Europe after the War . The
usual procedure is to notify the stateless Jew that his residential
permit has expired and that he must leave the country within
fourteen days . As no European country will admit such persons,
the stateless Jew has only two alternatives - the concentraTHE
COLLAPSE `OF EMANCIPATION
487
tion camp for failure to obey the deportation order, or jail in
a neighboring country for entering it illegally .17
Meanwhile new rivulets threaten to swell the already engorged
river of refugees to devastating proportions . Hungary makes
ready to declare thirty-five thousand of her Jews men without
a country. Rumania suddenly brands as aliens another three
hundred thousand whom it asserts secured their citizenship illegally.
In Italy a decree of expulsion is issued against the twenty
thousand Jews who acquired citizenship there after i 9 i 9, ordering
them to leave within six months . Bulgaria and Turkey cancel
the naturalization rights of still others and throw them to the
wolves of Europe . This epidemic of cruelty and heartlessness
seems only to be beginning, with even such countries as Costa
Rica and Ecuador threatening expulsion. What is to be done
with these people, and with the millions more who are clawing
like frantic beasts at the dark walls of the suffocating chambers
where they are imprisoned ?
The Christian world has practically abandoned them, and sits
by with hardly an observable twinge of conscience in the midst
of this terrible catastrophe . The Western Jews, still potent and
powerful, rotate in their smug self-satisfied orbits and confine
themselves to genteel charity. Their attitude is, on the whole,
that of a fat rich gentleman towards his poor relations . They
are totally unable to visualize the general extent of this disaster .
They are obscured by beautiful dreams of humaneness and
twentieth-century liberalism, which have degenerated into selfdelusions.
Instead of making a manly effort to resolve this problem
finally and for all time, they settle back into the old palliatives
. They seek new nooks and crannies for the fleeing victims
of oppression to hide themselves in, new islands of human
tolerance and kindness, such as the old America, Australia and
Argentine which once welcomed their fathers with open arms .
Tried, discredited, but always bouncing up again with irrepressible
vitality, a brilliant spotlight plays on these illusory
schemes, shunting realistic possibilities into the shadows. Every
impalpable notion is explored and presented with all the dignity
of a permanent solution. An American Congressman secures
488 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
some well-earned publicity by an investigation of Cuba as a place
for settlement. The Negro republic of Santo Domingo suddenly
springs up as the land of promise . Romantic Jewish leaders
enter into long negotiations with Ecuador. French and English
leaders suggest the Belgian Congo. Muddled Jewish philanthropists
even went so far as to take over the anti-Semite scheme
for exiling the Jews to Madagascar. The invariable fate of these
hopelessly futile efforts is shown in the collapse of these latter
negotiations, which ended with a statement by the French authorities
that "if Jews overran the Island they would be deported,
because France did not wish to create a `Jewish problem'
on the Island." 18
Another of these tinseled propositions is the Soviet scheme for
a Biro-Bidjan Republic . Highly publicized with all the arts of
Socialist fanfare, it occupies the public mind as a providential
alternative to Palestine as a land for Jewish settlement. British
bureaucracy looks on this scheme with real favor. A Foreign
Office man protested to a Zionist leader recently: "Why don't
you Jews go to Biro-Bidjan ? It's really a much nicer and safer
place."
It may as well be realized that this territory is not being considered
as a homeland for the dispossessed Jews of the world.
The Soviets are not at all interested in developing a cultural Jewish
center in Russia. Hebraic culture and Zionism, the two
most driving forces in Jewish life, remain outlawed as counterrevolutionary
forces. Thousands of Zionists still rot in Soviet
jails. Biro-Bidjan is actually to be only a new bulwark against
Japanese aggression, with Yiddish to be allowable as the language
of instruction, whether spoken by Jews or non-Jews. No inclination
is discernible to open up this colony to the Jews of
Germany or Austria. According to Dr. Rosen of the Joint Distribution
Committee, not a single Jewish family from Poland has
been allowed to settle there .19


Despite the publicity which accompanies this project, there
were only fifteen thousand Jews in Biro-Bidjan in 1936, out of
a total population of fifty thousand. The term `autonomous
Jewish Republic' is more than misleading . One need only refer
THE COLLAPSE OF EMANCIPATION
489
to the rabid attack of Geserd (the official Communist Colonization
Agency for this territory) on the Zionists, in October 1936,
charging them with "killing innocent Arab women and children"
and alleging them to be "responsible for the terrible bloodshed
in Palestine ." 20 How could such a statement possibly be issued
if this were a Jewish country in fact ? Even more pointed was
the arrest of all Jewish Communist Party chiefs in the `Jewish
autonomous region' during February 1937 (including Katell,
President of the region's Executive, and Professor Liberberg
former President), drolly charged with "fomenting Jewish nationalism."
21
Recognizing the seriousness and extent of the refugee problem,
the Evian Conference was called in July 1938 . The intention
of the thirty-two participating nations was to seek, by international
agreement, avenues for an orderly resettlement of
refugees from Germany and Austria . The meeting took place at
the French watering place of Evian-Les-Bains, but as laudworthy
as the purposes of this assembly were, its results were wholly disappointing.
The British Government itself, commented the
Yorkshire Observer, 22 only "grudgingly acquiesced" to President
Roosevelt's proposal . To Evian it sent the Earl of Winterton
to whom the New York Herald-Tribune refers as "the anti-
Semitic leader of the British delegation ." 23 "The appointment
of Winterton cannot fail to arouse serious misgivings," adds the
London Jewish Chronicle, labeling him as a pro-Arab who was
"out of sympathy with the Jews in general ." 24 The result was
what could be expected, with Winterton standing firmly on the
ground that Palestine could not be taken into consideration as a
center for refugees . Britain, he asserted, considered as "wholly
untenable" the idea that the Jewish problem could be solved if
"the gates of Palestine were thrown open ." 25
The final upshot all around was not encouraging, though a
permanent Intergovernmental Committee, comprising the representatives
of the thirty-two participating governments, was
finally set up.26 The London Spectator comments that "if the
Conference has not been a complete failure, it has achieved little
to boast about, all the States sympathizing and none desiring to
490 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
admit refugees . Even the United States, as prime mover, offers
no more than the quota." 27 Some, like Brazil and Canada, were
polite but non-committal . Others, as Belgium, Argentina and
the Netherlands, stated that they could admit practically no
more refugees . Australia was blunt, its delegate stating that his
country "does not have a racial problem and does not wish to import
one."
It is obvious that this effort to redistribute these homeless and
outcast people is ,doomed to failure in advance . At best it can
only serve as a palliative, since no one wants them in large numbers.
This already chronic problem must therefore become
more desperate with each passing month.
The masses of European Jewry have instinctively rejected
these projected solutions as worthless makeshifts . They realize
that every place they attempt to seek a haven they are aliens
and refugees. Only in the Holy Land can they enter as citizens.
With the eyes of little children they have turned back
to the demand of the Prophet Isaiah : "Look unto the rock
whence ye were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye
were digged ; look unto Abraham, your father." They have
become Jewish nationalists with every fiber of their being .
With all the frenzy of desperate longing they look toward Palestine,
the Land of the Jews. Its name sobs in the wake of every
disillusionment . It is echoed in every indignity, in each heartrending
sorrow . Their eyes like those of beaten dogs, spell it
out endlessly .
Here is a phenomenon almost unique in the world of man ;
the development of an intense nationalism on the part of a people
scattered everywhere, separated by every conceivable barrier
of education, language and economic interest . They are
in a wild stampede from every condition they now face, a group
of millions of human beings who have courageously set out to
remake themselves, body, mind and soul . This is the miracle of
the new Jew, that something larger than his five individual senses
has gripped his being . He longs now for a community of men
forever his, from which no historic disaster can ever exclude him,
because he exists through it and it through him . These people
THE COLLAPSE OF EMANCIPATION
491
throng the Zionist offices, lawyers willing to work as stevedores,
cultured girls ready to be housemaids or farm-workers . But
they cannot escape like the Pilgrims and Quakers from England
or the Huguenots from France . They are hermetically sealed
in, condemned to live in a world that is neither in the past nor in
the future, a grotesque world of clutching shadows and leering
unreality, in which they glide like men in an evil dream .
In the hovels of Poland where miserable, emaciated creatures
sit with dumb longing in their eyes, in the flats of Berlin where
shivering children nurse their maimed spirits in silence, in the
menacing streets of Algiers where the proud gaze of the Sephardic
Jew stares sadly toward the East, in stricken Yemen, in
savage Rumania, from widely separated ghettos where Jews lie
tormented and imprisoned, a single brooding question repeats
itself interminably in agonized eyes and numbed brains : why
is the door of Palestine closed to its children in this, their most
desperate hour of need ? Why are they compelled to skulk like
wretched animals outside the barred door of their own house ?
For whom does the sweet warm light stream through its windows,
if not for them ? For whom are its fires lit, and for
whom its steaming table set? Why are they thus condemned
to perish in the night ?
Patiently they wait for an answer to this terrible question .
CHAPTER II
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION IN THE
HOLY LAND
ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY
Whether Whitehall wills it or no, the Jews must go to Palestine
since there is no other place for them to go . Europe's
ghettos will either empty or the Jews will perish there, bestially
like moles gassed in their runways . Hence the irresistible force
of sheer necessity, being what it is, must finally compel the British
to give way, no matter what pious fabrication or legality they
may invent to prevent it. Attention must consequently be directed
to a very real problem, lying mysteriously beneath these
cobwebby coverings - the question of the actual absorptive capacity
o f the Holy Land. If that absorptive power does not
exist, then all the argument is for nothing, and any intelligent solution
of the Jewish problem outside of the calamity of world
revolution is hopeless .
It is obvious, to start with, that the capacity of a given area to
support a large population depends on something more than its
own resources and measurements . The quality o f the human
material available, its endurance, intelligence and experience,
must be taken into account . So must the possibilities of capital
investment, and its application to industry . It is evident from
the existence of such densely settled nations as Belgium and Holland,
that an absorptive capacity is far from determined by
area alone . What estimate, for example, would the politicians
of a century ago have placed on the possibilities of such a place
as Lancashire, or Manhattan Island ? "It is a suggestive fact,"
writes Sir Norman Angell, "that some of the most prosperous
States in the world . . . are among the least self-sufficient ; while
those abounding in natural resources, like some of the Central
and South American nations, have an extremely low standard of
living and an unstable civilization ." 1
492
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
493
Actually, states the distinguished British authority, Sir William
Beveridge, "the optimum of density is never the same for two
moments together." The arc of population is not static, but
dynamic. The momentum of growth in itself tends to create
opportunities for still further expansion . Natural adjustments
take place, new appetites and markets emerge . The possibilities
of large-scale production by the use of equipment which a
smaller body of inhabitants would find uneconomic, opens up an
increasing succession of vistas . Specialization is sharply stimulated
. For an outstanding example of this process one need only
look at America, where a long-continued deluge of immigrants
paralleled a general rise in the country's prosperity . It was only
when this stream stopped that the fundamental economic asthenia
which plagues all old countries developed, due as always to the
stabilization (hence constriction) of the nation's internal market .
The circumstances of Jewish life today are providentially perfect
for the successful duplication of just such a colonization
project -provided that no powerful, restraining hand exists to
wreck it from within. A modern colonization attempt which is
faced with the active antagonism of the ruling government must
fail in advance . The concentration of public services in the
hands of central authority, the intricacies of existing taxation
systems, the delicately balanced adjustments which depend for
their smooth operation on the search for markets, places a modem
resettlement operation completely at the mercy of the ruling
power on the spot. If in no other way, it can be effectively
halted by the simple expedient of preventing the would-be colonists
from entering altogether, or by sequestering them in cities
so that their new-born economy develops into a sickly and lopsided
growth .
Granting that a sympathetic regime existed in place of the
present Government of Palestine, no element required for the
triumphant realization of this program is wanting . There is
the man-power, the experience, the energy, the intelligence, the
will, the money, the absolute need . Deeded to Jewry by international
law is a practically empty territory. "Save for a few
bright spots made by the Jews," writes Broadhurst, "[Palestine]
494 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
is a country of desolation and a wilderness in its truest sense ." 2
Surrounding it on all sides are vast undeveloped reaches, the
major part of which are as empty of people as the moon, so that
the country is not even necessarily limited by its own boundaries,
which are more artificial than real. The Bedouins ignore them,
hardly aware that they exist .
For a period of twenty years the Mandatory has justified its defaulting
policy with the oft-repeated claim that this territory had
no resources, was infertile and overcrowded, and presented no
possibilities for either commerce or agriculture. This was the
great stalking-cry of Shaw, of Hope-Simpson, of French and of
Passfield. It was the ritual by which every depredation and vandalism
committed against the returning exiles was sanctified and
made honest. Hidden beneath this conspiracy of distortion lies
another, and quite different, condition. In its general aspects it
is more than hinted at in the following fulsome description contained
in an official paper of 1921
"The prospects of Palestine are not limited, on the economic
side, merely to a return to the standard attained before the war.
It has the possibilities of a far more prosperous future . . . Its geographical
position rendered it in ancient times, and may render it
again, a centre of the large territories that surrounded it. Within
the limits of a province, it offers the varieties of soil and climate of
a continent. It is a country of mountain and plain, of desert and
pleasant valleys, of lake and seaboard, of barren hills, desolate to
the last degree of desolation, and of broad stretches of deep fruitful
soil . . . It is obvious to every passing traveler, and wellknown
to every European resident, that the country was before
the war, and is now, undeveloped and under-populated . . .
There is now in the whole of Palestine . . . a population much
less than that o f the province o f Galilee alone in the time of
Christ." 3


LANDLESS ARABS AND AGRICULTURAL POSSIBILITIES
Leaving out all questions of trade, manufacture or natural resources,
which may be regarded as a disputable penetration into
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
495
futures, there is still plenty of sound evidence to judge the country's
real ability to sustain a large population . Lord Melchett's
careful analysis shows a capacity of at least nine million people
on both sides of the Jordan, supported largely on an agricultural
base.4 The Near East authority, Henry W . Nevinson, estimates
that Palestine west of the Jordan alone could support at least
four million souls in comfort .5 Professor Elwood Mead, heading
a commission of American experts, estimated that "Western
Palestine alone could absorb between five and six million Jews
without injury to the existent Arab population," 6 a figure concurred
in exactly by Professor Ballod 7 and Major Cecil Quinlan.
3 Lloyd George, whose word may be accepted as authoritative,
declares that the Government's own experts have officially
estimated that the country could easily maintain a population
i 6oo percent greater than that existing there in 1920 ! s
In 1929, just a year before Hope-Simpson was setting up a
whole body of precedent with his `no room' report, Dr . John
Haynes Holmes describes the depression that settled over his
heart on his first morning in Palestine as from the train his eye
encountered nothing but wilderness and desolation . "No villages,"
he exclaims, "no gardens, no people !" 10 Duff specifies
"hundreds of square miles of barren land, excellent soil for the
cultivation of citrus fruits," on the plains of Sharon and Philistia
alone, "left to the wild grasses and the gorgeous flowers of Palestine's
spring," where "another million Jews could be settled"
with benefit to the surrounding Arabs ." The coastal plain
reaching from Gaza to Haifa is described by Dr . Mead as being
"in everything except its development, a counterpart of the
coastal plain of Southern California from San Diego to Santa
Barbara." 12 One can travel, in fact, from Jerusalem to Gaza,
two-thirds of the length of the country, and see only an occasional
wandering shepherd to relieve the deadly monotony of
dreary wilderness and waste . 13
Actually, less than half of the west of Jordan is under cultivation
of any kind . The eastern three-quarters of the Jewish
National Home is so empty as to be terrifying . Jarvis recounts
mournfully that "every mountain is terraced for vine and olives,
4.96
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
and in those days [dim antiquity] it must have resembled southern
Italy or Sicily, but today not a tree exists ." 14
It is in the face of material like this that the Government of
Palestine has fashioned the 'landless Arab' romance ! It is a
strange commentary on this Mandatory that even its own garbled
figures seldom agree ; nor does it hesitate to alter them as it believes
occasion warrants, studiously ignoring anything it might
have committed itself to before . It does not even make the
overall figures for the country's total area add correctly . Lord
Stanhope gives it in the Lords as 22,087,000 dunams.16 The
Chief Secretary of the Palestine Government computes it to be
24,786,000 dunams.'6 Sir John Hope-Simpson estimates z5,900,-
ooo. The Government survey for Imposition of the Rural
Property Tax, 1934, alleges 27,009,000 dunams. 17 But the Administration's
Report to the League for 1935, shrinks it again to
26,r59,000 dunams.
Peering behind this strange curtain further, we find the Government
declaring in its report for the year ending March 31,
1921, that out of a total arable area of some 2,000,000 hectares
only 5oo,ooo hectares were under cultivation ; but this does not
restrain it from reversing itself less than a decade later, to show
in the Hope-Simpson Report that there was no arable land left
at all ! Again, in its report to the Mandates Commission for
1935 it states in one place that the area planted to citrus is 146,-
758 dunams, while in another place (in the same report) the
citrus area is given as z65,ooo dunams. The identical paper totals
the forest area as 698,181 dunams ; whereas the Blue Book of
the Palestine Government, published the year before, fixes this
area at more than double that figure, or 1,400,000 dunams.
Turning back to Hope-Simpson, we find the entire cultivable
area given as 6,540,000 dunams. Just before Hope-Simpson,
the Johnson-Crosbie Report gave the same cultivable' area as
12,233,000 dunams ! Not to be outdone in this hopeless jumble
of mysterious bookkeeping, the Department of Agriculture, appending
a statistical summary to the published results of the last
census, showed an area already under cultivation of 10,000,000
dunams - whereas, still having difficulty in properly juggling its
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
497
figures, the Government report based on valuation for tax purposes,
shows a total existing cultivable area of only 7,780,000
dunams. Accepted official estimates based on survey returns
made for revenue purposes, are always strikingly discrepant to
the Department of Agriculture estimates calculated according to
crop returns . It is amusing to note that the Government's definition
of cultivable land excludes some twenty-five percent of
all acreage now being profitably farmed by Jewish agriculturists.
The Government figures prepared for the Peel Commission, for
example, lists as uncultivable the entire Wadi Hawareth area,
though it had actually been transformed into one of the most
fruitful and promising areas of Jewish farm settlement .
The soil of Palestine is fertile . It has not changed since Flavius
Josephus boasted that "we are seated in a fruitful land which we
make more fruitful by good husbandry." An acre of irrigated
land yields eight crops of clover per year, with a harvest up to
thirty-five tons when properly farmed . In neighboring Egypt,
with its natural irrigation from the Nile, five crops a year with
a total yield of twenty-five tons is considered good . Even the
desolate hills, so much despised in official accounts, are ideal for
the cultivation of fruits and berries in the hands of a progressive
intelligent people . In the early days they were famous for their
olives, figs and grapes. The writer has seen a few acres of this
hill country, in the hands of the German Hospice at Kubeibeh, so
covered with luxuriant growth that it looked like a veritable
Garden of the Lord, a true symbol of what loving human effort
can do with the rest of this gaunt territory .
In most cases the pin-pricking and scratching given this responsive
earth can hardly be dignified as `cultivation .' Sir William
Flinders Petrie relates in exasperation that he has "improved
Arab land fivefold, only to see it left to destruction ." The horrible
gutting of good land that goes on, he exclaims, "is all a
criminal waste . . . increased by the ancestral preference for
the desert, leading to destroying trees by Arabs on Arab land as
well as on anyone else's ." 18 For countless generations they
have been exploiting and abusing the worn earth, never troubling
to manure it or to maintain its fertility, leaching it for
498
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
unending years by their improvident, primitive methods until it
was exhausted . Neither stones nor weeds are ever removed .
Almost no effort is made to combat disease . Trees and other
binding materials are relentlessly clawed from the ground and
never replaced . The stony, treeless valleys offer mute testimony
to this cruel squandering of once-rich resources, as do the
desolate highland regions, which wanton neglect have allowed
to be washed down to bare rock .
It is only where the foot of the Jew treads that the land has
been revived. The ability of this country to sustain a compact
agricultural body is indicated wherever Jews have settled . If
the Jewish district around Jaffa, where intensive tillage is practiced
along European lines, can be taken as an index, Western
Palestine would support a farming population of close to eight
millions. The land on which the colony Benjamina is situated
was once occupied by only twenty families . Now it supports
several thousand persons in comfort . At Petach Tikvah, 35,000
dunams support 15,000 Jews and 2500 Arab workers ; while
20,000 dunams at adjoining Jalil keep 300 persons only . The
Hedera land formerly maintained a few hundred people on an
area of 30,000 dunams. Now it provides a livelihood for 4650,
on a European standard of living . Herzlia, with 7599 dunams,
once kept 162 people in a precarious livelihood . Now 5417 live
there in comfort .
It is, of course, true that if the 122,000 Bedouins are to be provided
with ranging space, privileged to destroy all vegetation
with their herds of goats as they have since the days of the
Pharaohs, then Palestine is already overpopulated . There can
be no doubt that the spread of cultivation results in the gradual
driving back of the nomad races . The principles of roving tenure
over vast areas, and of fixed possession for purposes of intensive
farming, directly conflict. They represent two opposite
conceptions of life, which have struggled with each other for
mastery here for as long as the memory of man . All historians,
from Strabo onward, describe the same pathetic fate of this beautiful
country - a period of brilliant civilization terminated by
invasions of primitive tribes, always flowing in like the wild
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
499
ocean and reducing it again to the cinders of history . Dr.
Smith, greatest of living authorities on this area, characterizes
it as "a land which is blessed more than most with health and fertility
; but its health is paralyzed by its danger, its fertility . . .
checked and blasted by the floods of human barbarism to which
it lies so exposed ." Half a century ago, the noted American
archaeologist, Selah Merrill, named the conditions under which
the Holy Land could be redeemed for civilization . The first of
these, he wrote, "was a power strong and respected, which
should know how to hold the Bedouin at a distance, and to prevent
their access to cultivated regions ." 19
NO WATER'
A favorite claim adopted by the Mandatory, when it found
itself caught in a corner and directly accused of faithlessness and
disloyalty to its trust, was that appearances were deceiving .
The country, it explained sadly, was in large part really a desert
it lacked water, and was therefore completely unsuited for colonization.
One would think under these circumstances that the Government
would show at least some interest in water surveys, in the
mapping of water tables, or in engineering calculations for conserving
the vast rain supply. This would seem all the more
called for since each of these regions for which the claim of
hopeless aridity is made is literally covered with the ruins of
once-prosperous villages, with traces of extensive road and canal
systems and other relics which could only have been left by a
large and thriving population . However, the Mandatory was
far from concerned . It left the problem severely alone . Whatever
efforts were made were by the Zionists themselves . It was
they who hired the engineers, who pored over intricate calculations,
who made the borings, and who even undertook the work
of afforestation so necessary to such a program .
Operations of this sort are obviously far beyond the scope
of private initiative, and normally would be undertaken by any
Government interested in the welfare of its subjects. The enor500
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
mous irrigation works on which Egypt depends for her very
life, the constructions on the Euphrates, the numerous stream
regulation works, dams and other constructions used all over the
world, are built by the State, not by private individuals or institutions.
The little irrigation practiced in the Holy Land today
is dependent on shallow wells and piddling individual methods .
It is far from an effectual solution of a problem which calls for
an extensive system of dams and water channels .
The attitude of the Administration can hardly be described as
anything but hostile . Operating with its usual contrary logic,
it has gone to the point of declaring that while a man may own
the land, he does not have title to the water under it. Under the
Safeguarding of Public Water Supplies Ordinance, any area may
be declared a "public water area," without explanation or legal
recourse . Once this declaration has been made, no one may
sink any new wells within the area or alter any existing well
without special permission from the High Commissioner . Anyone
who does so makes himself liable to a prison sentence .
Despite propaganda to the contrary, Palestine is not a land
poor in water . The visible surface supply from its springs and
rivers alone amounts to z %z to 3 milliard cubic meters per year .
This volume, were it fully used, would irrigate ten times the
area which is irrigated at present .20 These gaunt, parched regions,
reported the explorer Tristram in 1865, "had once been
fertile by the irrigation of the plenteous streams above . Nothing
but neglect has reduced the well-watered plains to such desolation
. We could detect the traces of the old water courses for
irrigation ." 21 "It is one of the anomalies," wrote G . S. Blake,
the Government's own geological adviser, in an official report,
"that in such a droughty land as Palestine practically all the
large springs run to waste." Yet the Government obstinately
forbids the use of river water for irrigation purposes !
It was shown by the Palestine engineer Hausdorf that the
deviation of the Jordan, where it emerges from Huleh through
Galilee to the Valley of Jezreel, could be utilized to form an
artificial lake ; one channel to run through the Kishon Valley to
the Mediterranean ; the other to stretch into the Jordan Valley
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
501
towards the Dead Sea, where a waterfall would be formed 400
meters in height . The power generated here alone could irrigate
fully one million dunams of southern Palestine .22 The
Jugoslavian water expert Dr. Werber calculated that five hundred
thousand people could earn a livelihood from the soil in the
deserted Negeb alone if water were brought down from the
hills.23
In 1926 the French engineer M . Imbeaux published a plan to
bring water from the Mediterranean to the Jordan Valley by
utilizing the difference in levels . Had it been put into effect,
this project would have dramatically altered the agricultural situation
of both Palestine and Transjordan, making these regions
as lushly fertile as any in the old world . But it was ignored.
The Government itself admitted in 1921 that "the water
problem, over most of the country, is not a question of quantity,
but o f storage, of pumping and distribution ." 24 Even the average
rainfall of Palestine is a factor of no mean importance. It
runs from 22 to 29 inches a year, almost double that of California.
It is estimated that reservoirs could collect and store during
a year 191,000,000 cubic meters of this precipitation, an item
which in itself would make the country over from top to bottom .
If all this were ignored, deep borings would still provide ample
water for every possible purpose . At the identical time that the
Government was most vociferous in its contention that there
was no water in this part of the world, the builders of the Iraq
Pipeline demonstrated the presence of a huge water table below
the entire surface of the desert . Along the complete length of
this line, borings produced abundant water at an average depth
o f 6oo feet. American engineers sent later by the Palestine
Economic Corporation demonstrated that artesian wells sunk
according to modern methods struck the life-giving fluid even
in the apparently hopeless hill area . In the supposedly dry
Negeb, exploratory borings at Asir (near Beersheba) produced
a 4o-foot geyser when the drill reached a depth of 130 feet.
The report of the American water expert Julius Fohs has
proven conclusively that by the sinking of deep wells no part
o f Palestine can be said to be without water.
502
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Though few actual data exist in reference to the territory
east of Jordan, travelers have been fulsome in their descriptions
of its fragrant pastures, rich valleys and well-watered moors and
uplands. From Jerusalem, the blue range of Moab, shimmering
in the hot sun, appears barren and forbidding . Beyond this
fringe of hills the scenery of Trans-Jordan bears evidence of
ample natural irrigation . Four large rivers, the Yarmuk, `Arab,
Jabbok and Arnon drain the entire country . The Yarmuk, with
its picturesque falls, is as large as Jordan . These streams are fed
by numerous springs and tributaries, causing the geographer
George Adam Smith to remark that next to its cool, bracing air
Trans-Jordan's "waters are its most charming feature . . . Luxuriant
vegetation," he states, "is therefore, almost universal
[there] . . ." 25 Trans-Jordan, it must be remarked, however,
does suffer in some years from severe drought, which would necessitate
artificial irrigation .
A PROSPECT OF AGRICULTURAL COMPETENCE
All kinds of gloomy conjectures could be brought forward
as an argument against such a far-reaching scheme of landdevelopment
. It could be contended with sober logic : you
complain now that markets are seriously constricting - who
then is going to buy this vastly increased production ? Will
the country not be glutted with a mountainous surplus of undisposable
produce and fall rapidly into bankruptcy ? In some
States such a cautious position might be more than reasonable .
But as it happens, ignoring the export market (which plays an
important part in the calculations of such agricultural countries
as Syria), the Palestine of today cannot begin to care for its own
consumption needs. In 1936 it imported nearly 2000 tons of
dairy products, 80,ooo,ooo eggs, more than 20,000 tons of vegetables
and over f 200,000 worth of sugar, in addition to meats,
poultry and other foodstuffs .
A comprehensive investigation by Dr . Ludwig Samuel of the
Jewish Agricultural Experimental Station in Rehovoth, showed
the value of agricultural produce consumed by Jews during
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
503
1 935 to be 44,739,000 . Of this amount Jewish farmers supplied
twenty-one percent, Arabs supplied twenty percent and
imports accounted for the rest . These representative figures
speak depressingly enough for the economy of a country still
mainly in the agricultural stage of its development . Actually,
the total of Palestine's requirements in agricultural, fish and forest
products is supplied half locally and half by imports . Since
most of the domestic contribution is consumed by the agricultural
population itself and does not come on the market, by far
the larger part of the market requirements (probably seventyfive
percent of it) is supplied by imported produce .26 Such a
mad situation would have made the development of its agricultural
economy a ruling imperative to any other government but
that of Palestine.
There is no vegetable or fruit imported in any quantity which
cannot be successfully grown in the Holy Land . Even in the
field of dairy farming, the Jews have proven that whole settlements
devoted to this type of enterprise can be made selfsustaining
and prosperous . Such crops as potatoes, not believed
adaptable to Near East conditions, have been experimented with
and new varieties developed . As a result the country's production
rose in five years from 821 tons to an expected 6ooo tons
in 1936. Experimentation goes on in an effort to acclimatize
other fruits, such as the papaya, mango, sugar-apple, guava,
avocado and persimmon.
The extent to which Palestine agriculture could be expanded
all along the line is indicated in the increased production figures
wherever Arabs have profited by neighboring Jewish example.
Despite Hope-Simpson's lugubrious predictions, between 1932
and 1935 wheat production jumped from 51,000 tons to 103,000
tons ; barley, from 47,750 tons to 68,030 tons ; lentils, from 161o
tons to 2660 tons. The total of winter crops rose from 81,240
tons to 183,950 tons. During the same three years an even
greater relative increase was shown by the summer harvests.
In a single year, grapes gained by 71 .2% . Tomatoes, almost an
unknown crop in Palestine before, stepped up to 19,000 tons in
1936 and found, in addition, a lucrative export market .
504
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
The consumption of sugar, which reached twenty thousand
tons in 1935, would easily make a sugar factory profitable, and
the raw material could be produced in neighboring fields . The
adjoining countries of Egypt, Turkey and Iran have done very
well with this staple in the past few years . Egypt's young industry
already supplies the larger part of the local demand of
more than one hundred thousand tons a year . By 1934 Turkey
managed to provide the whole of its requirements from home
production, and now has four sugar factories producing seventy
thousand tons annually.
Syria, Turkey and Iraq have also successfully introduced the
cultivation of cotton . In two years the area under this commodity
in Syria shot from 8o,ooo to 270,000 dunams. In Turkey
the cultivation of another staple, rice, has increased tremendously
in recent years. Conditions for these crops are even
more suitable in Palestine, where they are completely neglected .
In all of the countries mentioned, the government takes an
active hand in promoting these developments, by means of loans,
helpful information and large-scale irrigation works . Cultivation
of such products, which presupposes governmental interest,
opens up still other prospects for industrial expansion which
would absorb countless droves of new settlers in addition to
those sustained directly on the land . Milling, canning of vegetables,
tanning, cotton spinning and weaving are only a few of
the related industrial possibilities which Jewish enterprise might
take on and develop .
Judging from present day timber imports of £ i,ooo,ooo annually,
even industries connected with the finishing of wood
could conceivably amount to a large figure if a comprehensive
plan of afforestation were attempted, particularly in the empty
stretches of Trans-Jordan.
MINERAL RESOURCES
During the entire period of its administration, the Mandatory
has treated the question of Palestine's mineral wealth as if it were
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
505
one of the secrets of the War Department . Prospecting is practically
prohibited . An owner may not even explore his own
land without official permission .27 Information on this important
subject is consequently vague and inadequate, and must be
pieced together from data gathered here and there . But beneath
the mass of camouflage which seeks to prove that this is a
poor, resourceless land, gleams tangible evidence that these resources
are hardly negligible.
During the Biblical period, iron mines were described in the
north of Edom, near the town of Pinon . Josephus mentions the
"hill of iron" which "extended as far as the land of Moab ."
There were certainly many such mines in Trans-Jordan . Merrill
specifies a deposit of ore in Tel Ekweder to the south of
Aj'lun, which was worked at the time of the Crusaders ; 28 and
Ibrahim Pasha used to quarry iron near Jebel Ma'rad during the
last century .
Recent findings have disclosed the existence of a rich field of
copper in the Arabah, south of the Dead Sea . 29 Solomon is
known to have possessed extensive copper mines in the south of
the country . In 1938 the American School of Oriental Research
(in Jerusalem) announced the discovery of the great Hebrew
king's seaport on the shore of the Red Sea (the Ezion-
Geber of the Bible) ; unearthing on this site the most complete
copper smelting and refining plant so far found in the entire
Near East. It was, incidentally, this very territory which Deuteronomy
viii, 9, described as "a land whose stones are iron, and
out of whose hills you can dig copper ."
Transjordan, hermetically sealed off from the rest of creation,
is known to contain vast mineral deposits, in addition to rock
phosphates and bituminous limestone . In the Aqaba region
are unplumbed deposits of copper and manganese . The latter
mineral occurs at the base of the Nubian sandstone in this district,
and known deposits are now estimated to be about five
hundred tons .
The High Commissioner's Report for 1935 mentions the presence
of baryta, cuprite, malachite and galena . Gypsum also
506
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
occurs abundantly. Near the Jewish settlement of Melhamie
large deposits have been worked for years . The possibilities of
this native substance are great . It is useful for making plaster
of Paris and is an important medium for the blending of colors,
as well as a source, of sulphuric acid .
Palestine has immense quantities of cement-producing material,
large amounts of basalt, and a lavish choice of marbles of
various tints . There are large amounts of pumice rubble of a
kind marketed under various trade names as a household cleanser ;
and an inexhaustible supply of the so-called zif-zi f, a sand rich
in salicylic acid and pieces of broken shell, widely used as a constituent
of concrete .
The asphalt of the Dead Sea was so famous in Roman times
that this material became universally known as 'Judean pitch .'
It is of such high quality that it can be used in the manufacture
of varnishes and dyes, yet the cost of obtaining it is so low that
it could easily be made available for road-making .
Rock salt found in large amounts could, with sulphur and
phosphate-producing substances, lay the basis for a series of key
chemical industries. The Salt Mountain of Jebel Udsdum contains
unlimited quantities of pure salt . 30 Tremendous deposits
of phosphate exist all over the Holy Land,31 and the beds of sulphur
are literally inexhaustible. At Gaza alone, the Government
geologist estimated a deposit of several million tons.
Materials for the manufacture of glass, and ochre and other
raw substances for the production of dry colors, exist in abundance.
Chalk, which is heavily imported, is to be found in many
parts of the country. Bituminous limestone is likewise plentiful,
though no use is made of it. The total reserve of this substance
is estimated to amount to at least 200,000,000 tons, with
an oil content of five to twenty-five percent. It is mainly located
in the neighborhood of Nabi Musa and in the vicinity of
Safed and Tarshiha in Galilee. These deposits are sufficient to
satisfy the internal oil demand of Palestine for another century.
During the World War the bituminous beds in the Yarmuk Valley
were utilized by German engineers, who erected a plant to
distill petroleum there. The British are reliably reported to be
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
507
counting on the use of these deposits as a wartime emergency in
the event of damage to the pipeline leading from Iraq to the
Mediterranean.
There is also every evidence that Palestine is fabulously rich
in natural oil. D. P. Brown, oil geologist for the Oil Trust Ltd.,
after exploration in 1911 and 1912, stated that "there is every
indication of petroleum existing in depth. Taken from east to
west this oil belt can be clearly seen for nearly thirty miles;
from north to south the oil field, so far as we know, reaches to a
distance of about 9o miles."


Professor Day of Beirut and the German expert Blankenhorn
arrived at much the same conclusion ; and in 1913 Dr.
Arthur Wade reported that "there is good evidence that liquid
petroleum occurs in quantity in the beds let down by the great
system of fracture which forms the trough of the Dead Sea ."
In 1926 the presence of visible oil was recorded in the report of
an expedition to southern Palestine by Hebrew University .32
The same year, petroleum was discovered in the village of Sakia
near Jaffa. The report of experts on the scene averred that the
whole district from Beersheba to Jaffa contains "a wealth of oil ."
On April 5, 1927, states General R . B. D. Blakeney, the Colonial
Office admitted in an official letter that great quantities of oil
existed in the Dead Sea area, but "discouraged further exploration."
The latest official summary of Palestine's mineral position,
quoted in the 1935 Blue Book, indicates that a large petroleum
structure has been located in the neighborhood of Gaza, and that
it is also likely that oil would be found near Jebel Udsdum in
the Ghor ; and in 1937 the Imperial Institute's survey of the
mineral resources of the British Empire refers to oil seepages noticed
in various localities in Palestine, notably at Masada .
Meanwhile colonists at Beer-Tuvia, digging for water, struck
oil. "Had they dug another twenty meters," says Pierre van
Paassen, "the whole colony would have been washed away" in
a bath of petroleum . The next morning the High Commissioner
and a retinue of Government experts appeared on the
scene to investigate . The astonishing outcome of this official
508
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
survey was an order that the well be filled up again without delay.
Inspectors remained on the spot until the last shovelful of
earth had been dumped back into the hole.33
The Government flatly refuses to allow any further investigation
of this fabulous source of national wealth . All title to
bore for oil, irrespective of ground ownership, has been vested
in large British concerns who utterly forbid drilling for fear it
will affect their investments in Iraq and Persia by depressing the
market price . The concept which rules this situation is indicated
by the Iraq Petroleum Company's offer to pay the Syrian
Government a compensation of £ 2,000,000 if it would agree to
postpone any actual working of the new Djezireh oil fields until
1945, after which the Iraq Petroleum Company would undertake
their gradual development .34
Despite this body of facts, we find the Colonial Secretary informing
Commons (in reply to a question on oil concessions),
on March 13, 1938, that "we have no reason to believe there is
oil in Palestine ."
Be this as it may, it is certainly no exaggeration to say that
Palestine, if it possessed nothing else, is wealthy beyond the
dreams of avarice through a natural phenomenon which makes
it the greatest chemical crucible on earth . From the waters of
the Dead Sea alone, the amount of potash, so essential to agriculture
and to war, would supply the world with one million tons
a year for two thousand years . The Dead Sea holds 2000 million
tons of potassium chloride ; i 2,900 million tons of sodium
chloride ; 22,000 million tons of magnesium chloride ; 6ooo million
tons of calcium chloride ; and 980 million tons of magnesium
bromine.35
These figures are staggering in themselves ; but there are still
others which sound almost fantastic . The French scientist
Georges Claude asserted that a fabulous amount of gold also lay
in the recesses of this queer salt lake, the concentration being
forty times that of sea water, "making its extraction highly profitable
." He estimates the actual gold content at ten milliard
pounds.36 That this is not altogether crazy is shown by the
estimates of British chemists who compute the gold at half this
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
509
figure, or J 5,000,000,000 . 37 The British ban any attempt at
further speculation by limiting operations at the Dead Sea to the
extraction of salts only.
The coming to life of this strangest of all waters is certainly
not the least of the latter day miracles taking place in the Holy
Land. Today in that eerie, depressed spot where Sodom and
Gomorrah were reputed to have stood, where David sought
sanctuary, where Herod and Marianne fled from the pursuing
Parthians, the shores ring with the sound of hammers . The
winding highway which carries you from Jerusalem to this isolated
industrial center is never forgotten . The arid wastes of
unbelievable kaleidoscopic color, the sinking feeling of suffocation
as the serpentine road dips slowly below sea level, the
glittering indigo waters of the Dead Sea itself and the colorful
bustling activity around it, are sights like those out of a child's
fairyland.
The Dead Sea concession was obtained originally by a Jewish
company through the far-sighted vision of the Zionist engineer
Novomeysky. It is one of the few franchises of any kind allowed
to Jews . At the time this concession was granted it was
looked upon as a visionary project. The overwhelming preponderance
of opinion throughout the scientific world was that
Novomeysky's plan could never be put into practical operation .
Final approval was only obtained after much wrangling. When
it appeared that Novomeysky's faith would ultimately be justified,
the French claimed prior title under the old Ottoman Act.
To forestall this claim, London backed the Zionist company solidly.
(As it was, the French vigorously protested, threatening to
take the matter before the International Tribunal at the Hague.)
The British drove a tight bargain . The concession does not
extend to "gold, silver, precious stones, mineral oils or antiquities
that may be contained on or beneath the shores of the Dead Sea
or in or under the waters ." The Palestine Government receives
royalties of five percent of the bulk value and, in addition, up
to forty percent of the net profits . The concession runs for
seventy-five years, but the Authorities hold the whip hand and
can terminate it on one month's notice, for causes which may
510
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
for all practical purposes be said to lie directly within their own
discretion. Though apparently a Zionist company, the concessionaire
is now largely dominated by the English themselves.
Its headquarters is in London, and such figures as the Earl of
Lytton (its Chairman) and Lord Glenconner (an ardent pro-
Nazi) sit on its board .38
It may be suspected also that, in view of its great importance
to the Empire, London intends to quietly remove the Zionist
finger from this pie altogether . This was believed to be one of
the actuating reasons operating behind the scenes during the
riots. Such a construction is certainly reflected in the subsequent
sophistries of the Peel Report, recommending the detachment
of the Dead Sea area from the zone of Jewish influence
and settlement .38
OTHER POSSIBILITIES
There are many other unplumbed resources which an enterprising
population could make use of. One is obviously the
fishing industry. The Holy Land catches only thirty-three percent
of the fish it uses, though its waters teem with aquatic life .
Foreign vessels fish regularly off the Palestine coast, but as we
have seen, the Administration has efficiently discouraged any
local development by various destructive regulations .
Another fine potential lies in the growth of seaweed which is
plentiful in the whole surrounding water belt .40 There has recently
been a revival of interest in this industry, especially because
of the increasing importance of algin and its salts, used
as a colloidal substance with a wide range of adaptations in
modern chemistry. In France alone, the value of seaweed harvests
is estimated at around thirty million francs . The growing
interest in this commodity is illustrated in the recent paper read
by the Norwegian chemist, Dr . G. Lunde, in which he reported
that the specific colloidal properties of alginic acid and its salts
were opening an expanding field for new products and applications
in modern technique.41
Not the least of the country's resources lies in its compelling
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
511
beauty, and the profound majesty in which Jewish history has
clothed it. If a reasonable Government existed which tried to
attract visitors instead of discouraging them, the Holy Land
could easily become one of the great tourist attractions of the
world. This tourist influx, in wide-awake States takes on the
proportions of an industry, not only enhancing the name of the
country and indirectly assisting even its exports, but capable in
itself of supporting an army of people . Even under present conditions,
more than one hundred thousand tourists visited Palestine
in 1935, bringing in with them over r i,ooo,ooo . If Palestine
deliberately catered to sightseers, and advertised for them,
as do France, Italy and other tourist nations, these figures would
radically enlarge themselves .
Again, if instead of putting up numerus clausus to keep out
the famous Jewish physicians of Germany and Austria, they had
been welcomed with a brass band, the disastrous advent of Hitler
might have sent the famous specialists of these nations to the
Jewish Homeland and made Palestine, in one coup, the medical
center of the world . The many thousands who would come
here for medical treatment and advice would have provided another
fruitful source of employment for all sections of the country's
inhabitants.
Health specialists agree that Palestine is potentially one of the
great health centers of modern times. A string of resorts could
be built all along the blue Mediterranean . Wonder spots could
be erected here that would rival Cannes and Nice . "Sooner or
later," says Dr . Elwood Mead, "the homes and gardens around
the Bay of Haifa will be one of the show places of the world."
There are spas here second to none . In Roman times the
baths at Tiberias, Gaderah and Kalirroe were internationally
known. The mineral waters at Tiberias today, as well as those
at Kalirroe and El Hamah, compare with any in Germany or
France. The water of the Dead Sea, too, is reputed to have
great curative qualities. With a climate much like that of the
famous Egyptian resorts, only a sympathetic regime is required
to develop this area into an international attraction.
The country's greatest single asset is probably its geographical
512 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
position. Strategically situated between great producing and
consuming populations on three continents, it is located at the
crossroads of the three main arteries of the Old World. The
road from the Cape to Cairo, passing through Suez and thence
north to Europe and Asia, will certainly in the days to come
be the great highway by land. The sea route from Liverpool
to the Far East is the principal water artery. Following these
routes almost exactly are the great air lanes. Palestine's coastal
corridor also has great tactical value and is destined to become
one of the great international traffic centers of the future.
There is not the slightest doubt that with the development of
Asia and Africa in the next generation, "this corner of the earth
will certainly be populated to a great density," if only by reason
of its location.42
As an outlet for the oil fields, and key to both land and air
routes to south and east, the absorptive possibilities of this conventionally
despised country leap enormously in power. Even
today, comments U. S. Senator Austin, "its ports are performing
functions hitherto fulfilled by the Egyptian ports on the
Suez Canal . Haifa is on the way to become the key Mediterranean
harbor" to the whole vast dark hinterland which lies at
its back .43 An identical function would be performed by Aqaba
on the Red Sea, enabling it to become the nerve center for transit
shipments to and from the Orient, though at present there is
not even a road to this important port.

AN OVERCROWDED COUNTRY
It seems evident that if the Mandatory did not deliberately
contrive to limit the absorptive capacity of the country, Palestine
with all its natural advantages, plus the levers of Jewish need
and enterprise, could have absorbed sufficient immigrants to have
made the Jewish problem virtually non-existent . A brief foray
into the realm of comparative statistics brings these potentials
into closeup view. If it equaled Massachusetts in density, Western
Palestine alone would keep a population of over 5,270,000 .
If it held the same population per square mile as England itself, the
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
513
Jewish National Home as it was originally mandated (East and
West of the Jordan), could maintain 3 2 ,933,000.
Belgium with 11,780 square miles, sustains 8,159,000 people.
The Netherlands, almost without natural resources beyond the
native intelligence of its inhabitants, has another 8,500,000 domiciled
within 13,200 square miles. Sicily, which is slightly smaller
than Western Palestine, and a purely agricultural land to boot,
holds a population of 4,426,000 . Why then, could not at least
a similar number exist here ?
To speak of Palestine at the present time as being overpopulated,
or even in terms of a limited absorptive capacity, is
to talk rubbish . Even in ancient times, before the magic of
modern industrialism created opportunity for great concentrations
of population, this favored land harbored its millions. As
Josephus has indicated, fully twelve million people lived and
prospered here at the time of the Roman wars . With all its
natural advantages, some day it must again become a country of
teeming cities and pleasant green countrysides, its long sickness
and prostration merely a dark chapter in history.
For further comparative statistics see Appendix C, p. 581 .

CHAPTER III
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER P"1
The horrible fate of the Jewish people today can no longer
be ignored if Western civilization itself is to survive . Even if
the world of Western humanity is so lost to common decency
that it can calmly watch this terrible procession of suffering and
degradation without a twinge of conscience, it cannot escape
the general disaster of which these savage persecutions are a
forewarning. "The time has come," the American delegate,
Myron C. Taylor, told the Evian Congress, "when governments
are recognizing that the disorderly movements of peoples in
great numbers makes for general unrest" and that an orderly
directed migration is essential to world peace . The war of extermination
against the Jews, declares Senator Wagner grimly,
has been "rationalized into a crusade against the liberal and democratic
ideals which are an integral part of the Jewish outlook on
life. . . If Palestine fails, democracy is endangered . It is an
essential responsibility of the great democratic nations to assure
the preservation and success of the Jewish homeland ." 2 Returning
from Germany in January 1938, Ambassador Dodd
solemnly warned his hearers that "mankind is in grave danger"
and facing a murderous onslaught implacably bent on destroying
all personal, religious and economic freedom .
It is now widely recognized that Hitler means to go down in
history not in the character of a German political hero, which
the forgetfulness of a few centuries will obscure, but in the
tradition of Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed . The Christian and
Jewish mentality are both the mortal enemy of this phase, to
which he is willy-nilly being swept by the fanatic emotion of
his force-crazed followers . This rapidly emerging religion (for
it is no less than that) now refers to Christianity as "the Asiatic-
Semitic world priesthood ." Its aggressive campaign is only
modified in the various countries to suit local conditions . "Je-
5 , 4
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?" 5 1 5
hovah whom the Jews worship," asserts Der Stuermer, leading
Nazi weekly, is "the greatest of all criminals ." 3 "Instead of
thanking God for their daily bread, German children are taught
to thank Hitler," states Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, general secretary
of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ.4 And
thunders the Nazi apostle, Dr. Engelke : "God has manifested
Himself not in Jesus Christ but in Adolf Hitler ."
Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, number one Nazi ideologist, whose
book, The Myth o f the Twentieth Century, is compulsory reading
in all German schools, is the most fanatic anti-Christian alive .
Christianity, he claims "is the unsuccessful attempt during the
last millennium and a half to make us mentally Jews ." "No
one," announces Rosenberg decisively, "has the right to find fault
with those of our people who have found their Son of God [Hitler]
and have thus regained their Eternal Father ." s In the same
vein General Ludendorff writes : "Christianity originates in the
Jewish spirit and must be crushed if the German people are to be
saved." s And the powerful German Action, official organ of
one of Nazidom's most sacred institutions, declares : "Christianity
is part of the Jew's diabolical plot against the world . It
is therefore a trail blazer for Bolshevism. Bolshevism is the
fruit of the Jew's Bible." 7
The ethical scruples, the regard for the individual, the principles
of justice taught by the Judeo-Christian creed, are contemptuously
rejected by the new anti-Semitic dogma as a poisonous
system of slave morality, cunningly palmed off on the noble
Aryan peoples by the Jews, in order to destroy their hardihood
and further the Jewish plot against the world . According to
literature distributed in ton-lots all over Europe, Masonry is a
particularly vicious Jewish prop, and "the entire Jesuit order, responsible
for so much Catholic mischief throughout the world,
was founded by a Jew, Ignatius Loyola . . . [and is] based upon
an introvert form of the Jewish Cahilla ." The Jews, asserts this
new scholarship, are far from the `Chosen People' but a group
of debauched culture-Bedouins who plagiarized the Scriptures
themselves from earlier originals .
This may again be seen in Italy's new alignment with Nazi
516
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
racial principles . Fiercely, Mussolini refers in the Foreign Ministry
organ Informazione Diplomatica to a conspiracy "proved
during the past twenty years in the life of Europe, between
Judaism, Bolshevism and Free Masonry ." 8 These attacks on
Jews and Free Masons were coincident with a tirade against the
Catholic Church led by the identical section of the Fascist press
which was conducting the campaign against the Jews. Membership
in the Catholic Action "is incompatible with membership in
the Fascist Party," thunders the anti-Semitic leader Robert Farinacci
in the authoritative Regime Fascista .9 To receive their
instruction in these theories from their source, four hundred
Italian Blackshirts left for Vienna in August 1938, reports the
London Daily Telegraph, for special courses of teaching in the
new pagan curriculum . 10
The extent and danger of this program is well recognized by
the German Church. In a defiant letter read from Church pulpits
on August 28, 1938, Germany's Roman Catholic hierarchy
asserted the existence of a large scale persecution designed "to
eradicate Christianity in Germany" and supplant it with a new
pagan doctrine . "The fate of the catacombs is meant for us,"
it warned bluntly, "by moves intended to mark the beginning of
the end." It can hardly be doubted that modern anti-Semitic
doctrine is no less rabidly anti-Christian than it is anti-Jewish .
"Anti-Semitism of the present era," declares Osservatore Romano,
official organ of the Vatican, on December 2 7, 1 937 "is
not only a fight against the national aspirations of the Jewish
people, but is also an aspect of the struggle provoked by the new
paganism in large sections of international political life ." "Spiritually,"
pronounced Pope Pius XI, meeting the challenge of Nazi
doctrine squarely, "we are Semites ." 11 From other Christian
sources comes an identical estimate . Averred the Greek Catholic
Bishop of Lemberg, Dr . Jan Butchko : "The fight against
anti-Semitism is a fight for the defense of Christianity ." 12 'And
warns Dr. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury : "The outrages
and attacks on Jews are only a preliminary to an attack on
Christian civilization ." 13
Wherever Nazi philosophy has gained control so that it can
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?"
5 1 7
come boldly out into the open with its aims, repressions of Christians
as well as Jews, have followed . When the need for placating
outside Christian opinion vanishes, Christianity in Germany
will be crushed like an eggshell . "No Jew will be alive [there]
twenty-five years from now," says Dr . John Haynes Holmes,
"and if the Christian Church survives at all it will be an underground
movement as it was in the days of its beginning in
Rome." 14
Not since the time Mohammed's frenzied legions surged over
three continents has the world been presented with as formidable
a body of doctrine as this . Its followers are hardly even
nominal patriots of the countries of their residence . Like that
other group of renegades which takes its orders from Moscow,
they no longer know loyalty to nation or State, but only to idea .
The religion of blood and race has become a fixed obsession,
blotting out every normal consideration. Can it be doubted that
this hypnotic cult which bred traitors and renegades in Austria,
which has its inspired converts throughout Europe, seeks ultimately
to embrace England and America within its fold? 15 It
was not for nothing that General Goering bellowed to the
rubber-stamp Reichstag : "We welcome England to the Germanic
community of nations!"
Can it be believed that the fanatic followers of Hitler who
occupy high places in British official life are any less traitors
than the Nazi renegades of Austria or those troublesome groups
who seek to undermine the Netherlands, Brazil, Switzerland and
other States on which the covetous Nazi eye rests ? Are they
not ruled by the same fixed hatreds, the identical delusions ?
And have they not already betrayed the vital interests of their
country on the Continent, as well as in the Holy Land, in the
name of the greater Aryan destiny? Who can doubt that
the final object of attack is to be the Anglo-Saxon peoples and the
free philosophy of life which distinguishes them. Leading the
paean of hatred against the Jews, the prominent Fascist journalist
Giovanni Ansaldo roars in the Gazetta del Popolo (August
14, 1938) that countries unwilling to succumb to the Anglo-
Saxon world system of which "Jews are the agents," must or518
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
ganize a rigorous counter-offensive. By every innuendo, German
leaders have been fully as explicit. Certainly sober British
thinkers such as F . A. Voigt, brilliant Foreign Affairs Editor of
the Manchester Guardian, have little doubt in their minds as to
the extent and direction of the storm which is gathering. 16
The great weapon by which the Liberal world is to be beaten
to its knees is anti-Semitism; and always bearing the brunt of
this attack are the Zionists, "the shock troops of the world
Jewish conspiracy," sub-human, cunning-creatures who skulk
from the shadows as the prime movers in every catastrophe,
from whose contaminating touch even the savage Bedouin must
be saved lest he be defiled and outraged! 17 In this mortar
Western culture is being pounded. The old love for truth and
justice, the sturdy character which once armored it, have all
but worn away. Its once proud soul has been corrupted by
gross materialism. It is full of corroding fears, but cannot act
to defend itself.
What a dreadful prospect humankind faces unless it can force
itself to act now with purpose and resolution! Not the Jews
alone, but Christianity and all its cherished institutions, must be
ground to bits between the crushing millstones of Marx and
Hitler's paganism. These themselves must fight another bloody
conflict for mastery, since they are antithetic to each other;
after which the racial philosophy must devolve into a series of
devastating conflicts of mutual extermination between the various
white races, and finally one last great bloody holocaust, that
final struggle for supremacy between the white and colored
peoples, so frankly predicted by the philosophies of Nazism from
Houston Stewart Chamberlain down to Rosenberg. Within the
conquering nations themselves, the tolerant, the generous and the
manly will be ruthlessly extirpated, and the cowardly and mercenary
will usurp their place. Does any sane person think that
civilization or man himself can survive such a hideous program?
If the Nazi threat should turn out to be an overrated phenomenon,
what then? Communism? Chaos? What of the
Jews of East Europe, whom sheer despair is slowly driving to
madness! When the flood of Communism rolls like a great tide
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?" 519
over the fall of the House of Hitler, will they resist it -or
welcome it as a deliverer? That is a question whose importance
to the world at large can hardly be overemphasized.
The soul of this people is now on a rack of hatred more
powerful and shattering than any they have faced in their history.
George Backer, Vice-Chairman of the Joint Distribution
Committee, returned from Poland commenting that the Jews,
"exhausted, assailed on every side, have begun to lose their faith
in the power of the Word." For the first time in a thousand
years of Jewish residence in Poland, we are witnessing the complete
breakdown of Jewish culture.
So far the inroads of Marxism among the Jewish masses, despite
anti-Semitic assertions, have not been spectacular. At the
Jewish community elections in Warsaw in 1936, the labor bloc,
which presented a united front and was supported by the Communists,
succeeded in securing only fourteen out of forty-nine
seats all told. But Jewish deputies in the Polish Sejm have
warned their government that unless this vicious war of extermination
against the Jew is halted, he will turn towards anything
that holds out a promise of rescue from this mortal horror.
A human being is not inert like a picture in a book, which
may be maltreated with impunity until it is finally cast into the
garbage heap. When underprivilege has reached a certain stage
in misery, it constitutes in itself a stark demand on humanity
which cannot be safely ignored. Often whole civilizations, as
well as States, have discovered this to their amazement - and cost.
The Romans found it out in the Sparticide rebellion. The
French nobles could give you details from their graves on how
desperate even despised serfs may become - a story which the
Russian Romanoffs could punctuate in gory particulars . The
English, too, discovered it in their dealings with the American
colonists, and recently in their experience with the German
people, who rendered desperate by exactions and tribute developed
a Hitler, who now threatens to tear down the roof of
the world.
In any system of social ethics worthy of the name, the pressure
of absolute need takes precedence over all other claims,
520
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
even if this were the only title to consideration that could be
presented. Otherwise need, inspired by desperation, will inevitably
attempt to force its own rights, without caring whether
the world of mankind goes up in smoke as a consequence.
It seems almost impossible to believe that the Powers have
learned no lesson from the situation they forced on Germany.
The chancellories of Europe can hardly afford to ignore the
deadly explosion which is brewing in these pest-ridden areas,
merely to satisfy the cold rapacity of a few Nazi-British officials.
The bastions of European civilization are not so solid that still another
of its props can be callously kicked out from under without
hurt. "Economic unrest in Poland," reported Alexander
Kahn of the Joint Distribution Committee, "coupled with the
persecution of the three million Jews still living there, may soon
set off a civil war that will involve all Europe."
Who would be the first and main sufferer in the event of
such a calamity if not the vulnerable British Empire ? Can this
great Empire remain unaffected during any period of general
unrest ? If new forces appear in the world, do they not flourish
at Britain's expense? The German, Russian and Chinese revolutions
have already immeasurably weakened her position . Will
it stand another and further assault ?
Even if the Jews are to be murdered in a body, so as to do
away with them and their problem together, it could only be
done at the sacrifice of all existing liberty and culture . The
eddies of such a monstrous proposition would not be lost until
they had reduced Europe to a shambles. A population infected
with such ideas is not likely to stop in its search for victims
after the Jews have been butchered.
If there remains the slightest sanity or conscience in this distraught
world, it must be realized that this whole affair is lifted
far above the realms to which a handful of British political adventurers
wish to consign it. It must be understood that it is
a practical impossibility to ostracize and ruin ten million intelligent
human beings (perhaps many millions more, if the Hebrew
Christians are also to be included) without the most violent
type of eventual repercussions on the entire world estate.
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?"
521
Do the English expect that the descendants of the Maccabeans
will stand by in apathy while hatred and threat converge on
their children from every side? That is too much to ask of
flesh .
Here, too, plenty of historical warning is written. Count
Coudenhove-Kalergi wrote bluntly that "should the aims of
Zionism not be realized, cruel catastrophes are imminent, dangers
of which no man can tell whether they will be limited to Jews
alone." 18 The Norwegian member of the League of Nations
Assembly declared in 1931 that "Palestine is the center of Jewish
hopes," warning that any attempt to rob this dynamic race of
its ancient homeland is to complicate the social uneasiness which
characterizes the present epoch. Nearer home, Lord Robert
Cecil, a member of the very cabinet which issued the Balfour
Declaration, asserted: "The Zionist policy seems to me of vital
importance to the world. A nation without a country of its
own is an anomaly, and anomalies breed trouble . . . therefore
I am a convinced Zionist." 19
Christian theology also has a very definite stake in Zionism .
Christianity cannot be separated from Jewish Prophecy, which
is an integral part of Scriptures. These Prophecies rest altogether
on the promised restoration of the Jewish nation to their
own land. "This," says the noted Christian historian, Mayers,
"appears to be the uniform language, the grand object, the final
result of the entire series of Prophecy, from the beginning of
the inspired volume to the end." 20 It is echoed from Isaiah
and Ezekiel to Jesus. The Apostle James repeats it in the words
of Amos: "And I will bring again the captivity of my people,
Israel, to an end, and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit
them, and I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no
more be pulled out of their land which I have given them, said
the Lord thy God ."
No matter how cruelly they use the Jews, by what sophistry
can the Church justify the abandonment of the millions of
Hebrew Christians? The campaign of annihilation against the
Jews does not except their blood brothers in the Christian faith.
In Austria alone, where there are only two hundred thousand
522
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Jews, Knickerbocker estimated that eight hundred thousand non-
Aryan men, women and children are hiding or fleeing from the
fury of Hitler's anti-Semitic Storm Troops. If the Nuremberg
laws are one day to be applied all over the earth, they may affect
as many as forty or fifty million people if the condition in Austria
is a fair criterion. What is to become of these Hebrew Christians
? Shall not the doors of Palestine be open to them as to their
brother Jews ? They, too, must evacuate Europe or perish .
The Jewish National Movement is not a religious activity, but a
question of National Restoration. In the days of Jesus, Hebrew
Christians worshiped by the thousands in the Temple, but
were none the less Jews.
Ignoring all related questions of morality and decency, it is
not to the interests of mankind generally that these people be
allowed to perish. Throughout Europe, in all branches of human
endeavor, this ostracized race has made in the past and continues
to make even under present disheartening conditions, the
most brilliant contributions to human thought.21 These same
unwanted Jews have already demonstrated in Palestine that they
are well capable of extending Western Civilization into Asia,
where a prosperous, proud Jewish State might well become one
of the outposts of Europe in a permanently unstable and dangerous
part of the world. It appears quite plain that if these barren
stretches can be colonized by the Jews, at once ridding Europe
of a serious problem and adding to the wealth and stability of
the world, not only Israel, but all mankind will be the gainer
by it. It is equally evident that if the purpose of Zionism is to
solve the Jewish problem, the proposed British solution is doing
the very opposite by adding still another area on which it can
press. The only possibility for a sane solution lies in the creation
of a Jewish State within boundaries allowing for its survival
as an economic unit. Any definition less than that is like digging
post holes for the purpose of filling them up again. At the
very least, the Jewish Nation would require Western Palestine
and Trans-Jordan. In addition it should have Sinai Peninsula,
rectification of its northern borders, and a large portion of the
bleak desert to the east .
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?"
523
The fact must be made clear that England has no vested interest
in Palestine which entitles her to steal it from a people
who need it to sustain their very life. The Arabs must be told,
too, that this effort to expropriate, for their already bloated empire,
a tiny province on the coast, will prove a futile and misguided
dream. The vast international significance of the Holy Land demands
that it be a separate State. And only through the Jews
can this ever be possible.
The Jews in their present situation are not free agents and
can concede nothing. Certainly the stark sequence of events
must compel them to shake their present, hopelessly inadequate
leadership. Fawning and international quixotism will gain them
nothing. If their objective is to be achieved, they must be ready
for whatever sacrifice is necessary and must approach Whitehall
`knife in hand.' In this bitter struggle for life, they have no
choice but ruthlessly to eradicate their inner enemies, the pacifists,
weaklings and advocates of class struggle, who do nothing
but weaken them at a time when their utmost strength is required.
Urging that this has become an emergency matter which will
not wait on debates, Jewry should seek a mass repatriation of at
least five million people from the ghettos of Europe, under the
supervision of the Great Powers and along the lines on which
the League handled the repatriation of the Asiatic Greeks .* Such
a proposition is essentially practicable, and may be carried out
on an orderly, business-like basis if no insuperable obstacles are
thrown in its path by the civil servants of His Britannic Majesty's
Government, the present Mandatory.
The fight in that case should be carried to the Nations, and
in England, to the British people themselves . The latter could
profitably be told that if the coterie of Whitehall politicians
speaks in their name, they have done them a great disservice ;
for the record these men have left says that this is an England
whose word is worthless, who cannot be trusted, who robs the
weak and fawns on the strong, and who has lost its soul.
The ideal situation for a Jewish Palestine would undoubtedly
See Appendix D, p . 582 .
524
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
be a permanent alliance with the English people ; but certainly
if the politicians in Whitehall speak the true spirit of Britain,
the Jews have no other recourse than to look elsewhere for allies .
And they may then believe with confidence that their hopes
based on the fall of the British Empire will not be long in fulfillment.
For when the policy of a nation no longer depends on
the broad outlines of creative action and degenerates into a mere
olio of petty treachery and scheming, that nation has passed its
heyday - it is decadent, and on the verge of a collapse which
will be as swift as it is unexpected .
Then if the Jews are smart, they will turn to anyone who has
a quarrel with England, and take their chances on the result .
And they will say in effect to the Powers: "No, gentlemen,
unless you wish the foul dreams of the anti-Semites to come true,
and the soul of torn Israel turn in despair to that destroying
agency it has so far manfully resisted (Communism), you had
better curb this destroying British camarilla. They and their
philosophy of intrigue and hate must yield; for if the people
of Jehovah are to be thus driven to national suicide because flesh
and spirit can suffer no more, let the world take warning that
one of its props of sanity is collapsing. It cannot gloat over
the miseries of this determined, intelligent race, or be indifferent
to its fate. The future of man is indivisible from morality,
decency, fairness and honor. If these virtues in their broad
outline no longer exist, and if the people of the Bible are to be
wantonly wiped out in this Twentieth Century with no more
mercy than if they were rats in a trap, then this civilization must
fall. It is then proven hard and worthless, and the virtues you
pose for it do not exist. By the very nature of things, men
everywhere will instinctively seek a better morality, even if that
attempt ends in death. Gentlemen of the Great Powers, this
is not a Jewish problem alone. It is your problem too!"
Despite the drab cruelty which obscures it today, it may be
deemed certain that the world conscience still exists. If the
Jews take the lead with stern and unbending courage, yielding
nothing that brave despair can hold, that conscience may be
relied on to reassert itself. They have at least no other choice,
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?"
525
unless they are to go down in some general catastrophe which
may well signal the end of civilized man on this planet . Meanwhile
they can only fight on, sustained by that undimmed faith
which valiant men have never questioned over the ages. It rings
imperishably in the sad, beautiful words of Bialik
"Around the last dead slave, maybe tonight
The desert wind and desert beast shall fight . . .
Beyond the howling desert with its sand

There waits beneath the stars the Promised Land ."



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