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

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

ABDULLAH PUTS HIS HAND OUT

The Emir of Transjordan owes his success entirely to English

patronage . His one military campaign was staged against

Ibn Saud, when that gentleman with tacit British approval chased

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

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

the desert .

The Emir is an excellent chess player and indifferent poet .

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

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

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

Transjordan, but was overruled by the British . Christian Arab

papers in Palestine have attacked him regularly for his hostility

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

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

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

347

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

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

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

with autocratic powers by the smart British Resident, Colonel

Cox.

His administration proved so erratic and extravagant that the

English finally deprived him of the administration of even his

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

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

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

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

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

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

money and then drive them out again ."

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

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

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

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

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

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

are disgusted with Abdullah and they are still more

disgusted with the British Government which has forced him

upon them."

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

Foreign Minister offering France the annexation of Transjordan

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

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

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

this scheme ." 15

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

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

accompanying the Peel Commission during their 1936 visit, describes

the greater part as inhabited "only by wandering tribes .

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

17

Impelled by their extreme poverty, the Tribes have long gazed

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

348

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

prosperous enough to own many wives and all the good food

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

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

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

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

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

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

They smelled bigger game ; and, mouths watering at this

tempting stream of yellow metal pouring before their eyes across

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

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

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

sections of the Transjordan population .

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

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

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

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

have persistently interfered . In 1926 they forced the dismissal

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

the end of 1932 the Emir himself started negotiations with Jewish

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

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

members of the Jewish Agency, who could not resist premature

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

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

British stepped in and smashed the proceedings .

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

Mithkal Pasha, most powerful sheikh in Transjordan, offered

to lease one hundred thousand dunams. Heads of other tribes

approached the Jewish Agency with similar propositions . On

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

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

carried by the entire Arab press, Abdullah bluntly accused the

Palestine Government of forcing him to rescind his agreement

with the Jewish company.

Events tumbled over themselves in swift succession . On February

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

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

349

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

out the terrible poverty and underpopulation of the country,

they declared that salvation could come only through the Jews .

Under the direction of the Government propaganda officer, the

Palestine Arab press accused Abdullah of having engineered the

petition himself. Undeterred, Abdullah banned offending Arab

papers from his territory . Transjordanian leaders, determined

to have their way, staged impressive demonstrations demanding

land sales . The opening of the Legislative Assembly on February

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

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

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

had already met when the Secretariat announced that it

had been dissolved and that future sessions were indefinitely

postponed . According to the story carried openly by all Arab

papers, both the High Commissioner and the British Commander

of the Transjordan Military had held a hurried conference with

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

no uncertain manner .

Meanwhile the Palestine Government was with meticulous

correctness advising the Jewish press that "this matter is not

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

At almost the identical moment, it informed the

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

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

confounded its masters by running completely amuck.

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

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

unexpectedly beaten by thirteen votes to three . The session

closed in surly mood with no affirmative measure allowed to

come before it.

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

from twenty-three Transjordanian towns waited in a body

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

was apparent that operating deviously with his left hand and

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

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

3 50

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

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

the King of England. Though Abdullah wisely modified his

position, his followers were not nearly so circumspect . Enraged

meetings were held regularly in violent protest . As late

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

in an uproarious session, demanding the cancellation of

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

develop Transjordan is being diverted . . ." With unerring

awareness they ignored the fiction of a Transjordanian Government

and addressed their resolution direct to the British, who disregarded

it.

However, it should not be believed that English solicitude for

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

off picturesquely on their reservations . British officials themselves

have been buying up large tracts of the most fertile acreage

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

are taking over extensive tracts on speculation, considering an

eventual Jewish settlement inevitable .21

There have been other settlement schemes which had British

approval . In the Spring of 1927 the English Government put

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

of Armenians . Sensing no monetary advantage, and disliking

Christians with a keener gusto than they did Jews, Arab

sheikhs submitted a counter-memorandum angrily rejecting the

proposition . It was consequently dropped . Early in 1929 the

English backed another plan to colonize refugees from Tripoli

and Bengasi after those territories had been occupied by the

Italians . Three hundred thousand dunams were to be granted

under the most favorable conditions, but the prospective settlers

proved unorganized and capital was lacking .22 At still another

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

thousand dunams near Amman to a large contingent of exiles

from Morocco. The settlers were guaranteed adequate deeds,

freedom from taxation for three years and military protection

against Bedouin attack.

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

THE JUDENREIN

351

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

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

Tenant Laws, the whole absurd system of blockade and restriction

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

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

Transjordan in prospect, they would become too foolish to retain

even a pretense of plausibility . The Bureaucrats know that

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

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

carefully raised scheme against them must then ultimately fail .

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

official apprehension, crying that "a treaty or some conclusive

guarantee with Transjordan, that the Jews will not be allowed

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

Most Transjordanians seem to believe, however, that their

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

CHAP I ER IX

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

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

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

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

the Bureaucrats thus placed themselves in the vanguard

of progress . Who could challenge the undoubted right

of men to rule themselves through their own elected representatives

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

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

the Legislative Assembly would be a ready-made dummy

congress which could be implemented at any time as a perfect

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

place the Zionists within brackets so that they could not attack

without the risk of losing world sympathy .

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

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

itself there is not and never has been any parliamentary system

whatsoever. Throughout the `free' countries of Arabia democracy

is noteworthy by its absence . Yemen and the immense

territory of Saudi are ruled without even a pretense of constitutional

government . The equally vast Hadramaut, as well as

Aden, cowers under the despotic authority of British guns .

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

shadow Government constituted with the assistance of British

officials. "Notwithstanding the Constitution," says Lieutenant-

Colonel Stafford meaningfully, "British policy in Iraq was directed

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

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

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

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

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

352

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

353

tionalism vanished in 1936 when the Army bombed the capital

and seized control .

Toward the great illiterate bulk of the population the educated

Arab classes are no more democratic in the political sense

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

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

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

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

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

fit into any other system of government except the foreordained

traditional rule of sheikh and religious leaders . . . Conspiracies

and assassinations are the only popular procedure adopted

and practiced by the Arabs when electing representatives and

rulers." 4 Throughout every portion of Arabia slavery flourishes

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

of immemorial respectability, writes Bertram Thomas,

"and any extraneous authority interfering becomes odious in

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

the same breath with this !

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

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

his brother in the desert. The various Commissions of Inquiry

have themselves declaimed that he was incompetent and must be

protected against the superior capacities of European immigrants

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

of his women are illiterate .6

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

would only serve to provide an arena for general intrigue

and agitation against the whole policy and purpose of the

Mandate. The Colonial Office itself informed an Arab Delegation

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

is bound by a pledge which is antecedent to the Covenant

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

position to develop in a country for which they have

accepted responsibility to the principal Allied Powers, which

may make it impracticable to carry into effect a solemn undertaking

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

354 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

preclude the fulfillment of the pledge made by the British Government

to the Jewish People."

The greatest authority in the British Commonwealth on constitutional

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

following principle : "Parliamentary government, as it is understood

in the United Kingdom, works by the interaction of four

essential factors : the principle of majority rule ; the willingness

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

majority ; the existence of great political parties divided by

broad issues of policy rather than by sectional interests ; and

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

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

own instinctive reaction against extravagant movements on one

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

none of these requisite conditions exist. A few families,

the Nashishibis, Husseinis and Khaldis, monopolize all public

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

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

presenting alternative municipal programmes to the electorate,"

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

Still another British authority, the Hilton Young Commission,

lays down the precedent that where a fundamental division

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

civilizations between the various elements o f the population,

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

applied ." How does this fit the Palestine situation ?

In July 1924, Ormsby-Gore informed the Mandates Commission

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

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

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

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

would oppose such measures ." Three months later Herbert

Samuel is droning to the same Commission "that the Arabs

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

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

National Home."

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

355

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

any such parliamentary apparatus was a direct refutation of the

manifest purposes of the Mandate, that it would automatically

crystallize the Jews as a helpless minority in their National

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

procedure. Nevertheless, London is soon after found espousing

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

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

fought the proposition desperately, for once solidly united, the

Bureaucrats pushed it with all the power at their command .

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

accident intervened .

On several occasions, when all else seemed propitious, the

Mandates Commission rejected the proposal as "premature and

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

it in existence . But the Arabs foolishly refused the proffered

bait . Completely misjudging English motives, they believed

that a little additional pressure would bring about the

complete squashing of the Mandate, and the elimination of the

British as well . With consequent bravado they boycotted the

election to the new Parliament, and announced that they would

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

stand on, the Government annulled the election and reinstated

the former Advisory Council, taking the occasion to reduce the

former Jewish proportion .

After the 1929 pogrom the Arabs again renewed their demands

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

have chosen a more awkward moment . A volcanic eruption of

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

Weizmann's Zionists was yet an unprobed factor . Uncertainty

made the Bureaucrats wary . With scrupulous probity Whitehall

proclaimed that "since the effect of meeting the wishes of

the Arab delegation as regards democratic government would

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

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

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

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

6

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

constitutional changes must "be taken in hand without further

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

Legislative Council for Palestine.

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

on December zz, 1935 High Commissioner Wauchope

sounded the tocsin for democracy by once more proclaiming

the establishment of a Legislative Council . The announcement

carefully avoided all reference to the Balfour Declaration and

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

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

as if they did not exist.

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

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

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

to include five Englishmen . The High Commissioner

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

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

deem its measures invalid to rule them out without ceremony .

The Jews anxiously asked themelves : What was back of the

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

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

who could be represented as expressing the country's

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

could plot the death of Zionism ? With dogged resolution they

notified the Government that they would neither participate in

the elections nor recognize the proposed assembly . The reply

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

against them, a Legislative Council would be established in

Palestine."

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

Parliament itself . The Council scheme was debated in the

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

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

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

interrupted, had only two supporters ." 7

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY 357

"BY THEIR ACTS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM! "

After all the moralizing which accompanied the Legislative

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

neglected to put any of these fine precepts into operation during

the entire period of their administration in Palestine . Such

local autonomy as the Jewish settlements retain is almost entirely

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

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

lived in Timbuctoo .

The electoral system the British introduced (no one else

wanted it) is a grotesque travesty on democratic processes .

The country was divided into community rolls based on religion.

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

and a Christian a Christian . Suffrage is based on property

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

become heavily involved . Despite the fact of three

community rolls for nomination purposes, there is only one

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

Mohammedan may vote for anyone he pleases, but Government

decree determines the number of each religion which must be

elected !

An analysis of the polling lists in representative towns shows

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

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

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

officials and the peasantry is the village Mukhtar, a worthy

whom Lord Peel describes as "usually illiterate ."

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

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

The Jews of Jerusalem constitute seventy-two percent of

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

Christians . Despite this numerical preponderance, the

Government has always insisted on the appointment of an Arab

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

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

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

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

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

An incident which occurred in 1930 thrusts this whole

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

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

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

Mayor, armed with a bristling political program aimed directly

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

Municipal Council elections where the Mayor was engaged in

a mortal struggle with his ancient enemies the Husseinis ! The

Jews stormed like madmen. Stentoriously they promised retaliation

by throwing their support to Nashishibi's opponents .

Immediately the Government rose to the occasion with a decree

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

it refused pointblank to allow Chaim Solomon, Jewish

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

instead. Completely disgusted, the Jewish members of the

Municipal Council resigned in a body .

In 1933 the Government introduced an election scheme which

gerrymandered the election districts with such strategic cunning

that the Jewish majority was turned into a minority . Part

of the maneuver which arranged this result lay in the granting

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

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

population only 3900 individuals in Jerusalem were entitled

to appear at the polling places .

In January 1935 the Government appointed Hussein Fakri

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

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

after being inducted into office, Mayor Khaldi refused to countenance

the presence of the Jewish Vice-Mayor and even denied

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

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

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

where relieved of all duties he twiddled his thumbs .

The farcical drama continued to unfold . In 1937, Arab

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

359

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

complicity in the murder of a British official, and exiled

to a small island without benefit of trial . Thus unexpectedly

Vice-Mayor Auster found himself acting-Mayor. Officialdom

was nonplussed . At that very moment London was seeking to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

community is over fifty percent of the population and contributes

around seventy percent of the municipal income, it is

represented by only four out of twelve Councilors on the

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

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

raise taxes for municipal affairs . But only two Jewish towns

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

Arab towns given self-government if they have populations of

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

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

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

until 1 934.

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

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

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

How much `democracy' this entails is demonstrated in

the elections of November 1936, when General Wauchope

calmly invalidated the election of Moshe Chelouche as Mayor

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

Israel Rokeach, Mayor in his stead .

Tel Aviv is the only city in Palestine where women enjoy

the franchise . Here they may even hold important municipal

36o THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

posts. On the extraordinary excuse that this was contrary to

public policy, the Administration suddenly placed this right,

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

regulation issued February 9, 1 933 the High Commissioner was

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

right to active or passive participation in municipal elections, entitling

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

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

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

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

; and the Government at the same time consistently refuses

them permission to make use of outside credit facilities,

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

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

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

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

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

with the Prudential Assurance Company, the Government refused

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

was to be devoted to the construction of schools, built

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

This despotic, minute control extends to trivia undreamed of

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

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

Jewish butchers did not feel safe in Jaffa, the Government

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

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

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

was ultimately built, but the situation continued provocative .

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

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

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

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

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

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

with the result that the price of cattle for slaughter imported

from the identical Balkan countries "is almost three

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

361

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

Authorities decided to take action against further increases in

the cost of meat, the Government withheld its consent for

Municipal regulation of meat prices . Moreover, it refused to

sanction the import of cattle through Tel Aviv Harbor, which

would have cheapened transport and insured independent supplies.

Calling things by their right names, the Jerusalem Palestine

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

District Commissioner, not the "fictitious Council and bogus

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

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

Corporation Ordinance may give the impression that the

Corporations established under that law have wide powers of

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

have practically no authority in connection with

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

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

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

the District Commissioner or the High Commissioner is necessary.

A Council of twelve or fifteen elected representatives

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

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

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

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

Councils into debating clubs ."" These Councils are

not even empowered to regulate building and layout or direct

roads in traffic . Their budgets must receive official ratification

from the District Commissioner, which may not be forthcoming

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

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

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

budgets for 1936-37 were still not approved by January

1937." 12

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

though largely supported from taxes and not subject to

the democratic control of the Arab community, has been al362

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

most completely free of Government supervision, presenting

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

Council, democratically elected and supported entirely by internal

contributions, must submit its budget for Government approval

.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Great Britain under a Mandate from the League of

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

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

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

buy you the modern equivalent to the Queen of Sheba .

According to the recent Annual Report of the American Colony

Aid Association, among three hundred mothers treated at

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

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

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

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

children who had been sold into slavery . How casually this

brutal trade in human flesh is regarded can be understood from

the following item which appeared in the Palestine press of

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

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

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

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

One of the most persistent complaints of this people whom

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

Zionists have inadvertently chased the price of women out of

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

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

female slaves rose dramatically in accordance with the law of

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

363

supply and demand so that exorbitant prices must now be paid

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

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

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

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

It is a striking commentary on the Mandatory's conception

of government that Jews lucky enough to be nationals of States

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

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

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

trips back to the old countries, registering their children there

so that they might enjoy protection against a Government they

have learned to distrust thoroughly . It is estimated that fully

one hundred and sixty thousand Jews permanently domiciled in

the Holy Land thus keep their old nationality.14

SOME ODIOUS COMPARISONS

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

single area administered by the English Colonial Office where a

constitutional position in favor o f the native population has been

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

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

precisely the area they are under pledge to relinquish ultimately

to the Jews ?

British Central and East Africa may be taken for convenient

comparison . The native races here are certainly as intelligent as

those of Palestine, and infinitely more tractable . They outnumber

the whites four hundred to one . Nevertheless, wherever

representative institutions have been granted to English

colonies and dependencies in these territories, the native peoples

have not been allowed to participate either as voters or as

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

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

immigrants. 15

Still more significant, there are large colonies of East Indians

and Arabs settled in these places . They came long be364

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

economic life of these communities . Notwithstanding, the constitutional

power is invariably placed in the hands of British settlers

.

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

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

with a British population of 4000 submerged in some

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

East Indians . Yet under the Constitution of 1926 a Legislative

Council is constituted consisting of twenty British Europeans

and three British Indians . Neither the native populations nor

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

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

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

sequestered for white settlers only . Into this restricted area

neither the large native population nor the considerable proportion

of Indians and Arabs may penetrate .

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

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

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

members of the Legislative Council, ten are British Europeans.

Arabs apparently do not count here either .

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

of the Colonial Office) invites no absolute comparison, Europeans

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

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

of Assembly be British subjects of European descent. Colored

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

regulations of the most severe type . When the

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

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

A comparison from another angle is offered by British experience

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

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

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

Turkish minority of twenty percent plus Government officials

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY

365

formed an actual voting majority . The result was economic

stagnation and political chaos. Greek members refused to cooperate

with the Government or the Turk minority. Bills in

the Legislature were jettisoned . National hatreds reached an

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

between the two races was so fundamental as to contravene

ordinary differences of opinion . As a result of this selfgenerated

combustion, the Island almost blew itself off the map

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

under. In November 1931 they withdrew the Constitution as

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

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

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

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

must rule there.

The British, with this experience immediately behind them,

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

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

more exaggerated than anything they ever witnessed between

Turk and Greek in Cyprus. But Whitehall had not confounded

itself by turning evangelist . Its continually publicized efforts

to establish a parliament in Palestine had a far more practical

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

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

Arabs to consider themselves the rightful rulers of the country,

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

sweep away the last tottering remnants of the Balfour Declaration

and the Jewish National Home project .

Page 365 Book

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

BOOK THREE

CHAPTER I

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

DOES AN ARAB RACE EXIST ?

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

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by WILLIAM B. ZIFF

BOOK THREE

CHAPTER I

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

DOES AN ARAB RACE EXIST ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

the Administration was still officially claiming that the word

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

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

a fairly homogeneous mixed race. Throughout the Peninsula

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

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

development, who speak the Arabic tongue . Even the courtly

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

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

woman of Turkish blood ..2

The countless cities, tribes and nations incorporated at

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

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

more dreadful revenge was exacted by that cruel institution, the

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

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

tremendous seraglios stocked with women from every conceivable

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

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

blood in the community of Mohammed always gives way to

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

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

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

366

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

367

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

The offspring of these stolen creatures are not slaves but free

Moslems, since the moment a woman conceives she attains the

status of a legal wife .

Pilgrims from such faraway places as Java and Morocco,

streaming like columns of magnetized ants toward the holy

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

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

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

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

Sherifian families - the descendants of the Prophet - and some

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

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

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

describing the population of the Arabian coast, is even

more emphatic .5

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

merely taking control and providing the usual military and

administrative caste . They imposed their religion on the native

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

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

the Latin Kingdom in Jerusalem, Edris comments on the vast

number of captive females required to satisfy the wants of these

amorous gentlemen . He reports slaves brought from all parts

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

demand. The Crusaders found a country peopled by a mixture

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

On the founding of the Kingdom they had to recognize the

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

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

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

were already reported half absorbed in this churning stew

of races.

Of even greater significance than the loose social habits of

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

turned it into a bloody charnel house for unending centuries.

Spoliation, destruction, rapine, extermination, claimed the land

368

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

like an ever-recurring plague. The invasions which regularly

smashed against its stricken borders were countless . It had been

devastated by the Scythians from north of the Caucasus . The

Romans populated it with vast settlements of Greeks and other

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

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

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

Tulum had wrested the country from them in the usual blood

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

alternated in control, periodically baptizing the shuddering

country in a bath of blood .

After the Twelfth Century, Palestine was invaded time and

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

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

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

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

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

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

blood-drenched career. Now for generations Palestine became

an outspread altar on which human sacrifices were offered continually.

In their savage unending struggles for mastery, Mongols,

Mamelukes and the fierce Charismean tribes of Middle

Asia butchered its people indiscriminately. Between 126o and

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

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

and slaughter had left an indelible mark in the character of

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

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

It was always the foreign soldier who was the police power

in Palestine. The Tulunides brought in Turks and Negroes .

The Fatamids introduced Berbers, Slavs, Greeks, Kurds and

mercenaries of all kinds . The Mamelukes imported legions of

Georgians and Circassians . Each monarch for his personal

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

by the Crusaders, received one hundred and fifty thousand

Persians who were given lands in Galilee and the Sidon

district for their services.

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

369

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

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

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

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

slaves and backwash of all corners of creation, was

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

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

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

plagues, more from everywhere were constantly merged into

the common melting pot. In the Fourteenth Century, drought

caused the immigration into Palestine of eighteen thousand `tents'

of Yurate Tartars from the Euphrates. Soon followed twenty

thousand Ashiri under Gaza, and four thousand Mongols under

Moulai, who occupied the Jordan Valley and settled from Jerusalem

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

In 1830 the Albanian conqueror Mehemet Ali colonized Jaffa,

Nablus and Beisan with Egyptian soldiers and their Sudanese

allies. Fourteen years later Lynch estimated the thirteen thousand

inhabitants of Jaffa to be composed of eight thousand

Turco-Egyptians, four thousand Greeks and Armenians, and

one thousand Jews and Maronites . He did not consider that

there were any Arabs at all in that city .®

During the middle of the Nineteenth Century the entire territory

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

computed to have held no more than sixty thousand people all

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

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

growth since that time has been due to large contingents

of new arrivals . The Turks introduced Circassians around Amman.

When North Africa passed under European authority,

the fanatic Moghrabiyeh Moslems moved out and settled in the

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

butchery in 1929, and who supplied the continuous tension at

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

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

a stream of Levantines, mixed desert wanderers and Africans

which continues to the present day.

370

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

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

races. The native Christians of Nazareth come from the Hauran

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

children of immigrants from Hasbeiya who came in the second

half of the last century .

In the Arabic language only the Bedouin is designated by the

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

there is little evidence of common descent. The Ghawarineh

tribe of the Jordan Valley have strongly marked African features,

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

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

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

Several tribes of alleged Jewish stock have even been described

in Transjordan.1o

Until English political maneuvering recast their viewpoint for

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

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

Levantines. Count Sforza designates the inhabitants of this entire

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

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

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

the fine Arab stock which entered the country in the Seventh

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

blood in the peasantry or villages at all . 13

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

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

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

family as unworthy scions of an inferior race . That all

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

autonomous nation may also be doubted for the future.

ARAB TYPES AND TRAITS

From steppe, mountain, jungle and desert, an agglomeration

of primitive, savage man had swarmed in successive waves over

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

371

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

of slaves and a leavening of nobler blood represent the racial

antecedents of the people we call 'Levantine' today.

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

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

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

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

contrast to the direct speech and often uncouth manners of the

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

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

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

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

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

culture, instinct and mind than lies between these people and

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

visions of the Zionist theoreticians run afoul .

English as well as American observers, where they are free

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

estimate of this population . Laconically the American, Commander

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

American Indian" 16 then being held on reservations by the

United States Government . Drawing a sharp difference between

them and his desert tribesmen, Lawrence refers to the

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

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

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

the most striking example of decadent and decayed gentry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

372

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

on which practically nothing will grow is the direct result of

his appalling indolence, combined with his simian trait of destroying

everything he does not understand." 18

Almost a century ago Lieutenant Lynch wrote that "the ruling

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

from the unarmed stranger or filch from an unsuspecting

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

such that he loses all sense of proportion whenever currency is

discussed, whilst if actual coins and notes are displayed before

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

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

sentimentalizing about the noble Arab and remember the

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

feel rage rising within me ." 21

Any attempt to judge these people by European standards is

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

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

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

the slaughter of a sheep and the premeditated killing of a

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

stiletto which he will use with lightning quickness on the slightest

provocation . Brutality is common to Arabs of all classes .

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

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

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

Reverend Mr. . Jannaway.23

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

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

men begin to make complimentary inquiries about their respective

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

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

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

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

Girls are often not even counted in the figures given census

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

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

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

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

373

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

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

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

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

in the petition submitted to the Government in 1935, asking

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

that such entertainment was "contrary to Moslem law" and

"had a demoralizing effect on women ." 26

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

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

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

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

measure .

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

poor physique . The geographer, George Adam Smith, describing

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

race ." Tuberculosis and malaria are rampant . Syphilis

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

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

medical arrangements are elementary . He continues to tend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Arab believes religiously in occult powers, in Shaitan,

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

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

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

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

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

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

worn around the neck, to be a potent charm .

The Arab is stubbornly opposed to modernity of any kind .

He has no conception of civic duty. Broadhurst found that

374 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

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

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

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

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

translation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

also inordinately fond of perfumes and unguents . Men who can

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

of attar of roses .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

not altered since Turkish times when the engineer Pierotti dcscribed

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

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

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

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

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

3 75

face, unpardonable crimes . They used to extort money from

Christian travelers and convents, but this easy source of revenue

has been stopped since British occupation . Their usual method

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

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

politicians who have kept the country in so much turmoil .

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

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

with many wives and concubines, purchased with money

derived from Jewish immigration . "A Moslem family of five

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

rarity ." 29

In the cities is a mongrelized horde of ruffians whose presence

makes it impossible for any European woman to walk alone on

the streets after dark . Their insolent eyes undress every woman

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

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

European opinions of this group are not complimentary . Duff

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

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

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

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

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

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

Belshazzar, Alexander, the Ptolemies, a dozen civilizations

rising and falling, have flitted before his eyes . He

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

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

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

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

Bedouin life has always been one of naked struggle between the

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

The former took possession of the best pastures and wells,

plundering the weaker on whom they imposed tribute . Today,

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

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

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

placable vendetta is a standard part of their existence . The

Bedouin cuts down orchards, burns crops and kills cattle like

any other corsair. The Reverend Henry Field described them in

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

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

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

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

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

virtues ." 33

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

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

herds, paying no attention to international boundaries . He eats

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

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

is precarious since he will eat any he can catch .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

have seen in Arab or Bedouin life." 36

Bedouin women are graceful in youth but begin to walk with

a peculiarly waddling gait after they leave their teens . They

weight themselves down with pounds of barbaric jewelry . Their

faces are disfigured with tattooed patterns of stars, circles and

lines of blue spots. Their knowledge is limited almost entirely

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

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

Almost alone among the peoples of the earth the Bedouin has

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

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

from wherever he camps. His utterly primitive mentality almost

baffles description. In the settled districts he is as likely

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

377

to ride straight through a cornfield as bother about skirting

around it.

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

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

The fellah lacks nearly all the undeniable charm of his

Bedouin countryman . He is incredibly backward and fanatic,

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

dress resembling the old-fashioned nightshirt, which is never

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

sickly.

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

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

dwellings themselves are rude structures made of mud or camel

dung thatched with straw, without windows or ventilation . In

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

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

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

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

dung.

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

impulse to remind the visitor that these people are lifted above

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

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

plentiful supply of homemade rugs . The diners sit at mealtime

in squatting position around a common dish, reaching in with

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

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

the men are through.

Around the houses filth accumulates like guano. Not a tree

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

gnarled olive planted by some generation long forgotten.

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

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

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

The haggard faces and monotonous dark blue rags of the women

make them actually repulsive. They work exactly like animals.

378

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

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

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

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

with long opportunity to observe what the Arab calls `land

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

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

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

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

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

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

of neighboring cities. The fellah's farm implements consist

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

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

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

and chicken diseases are a widespread and permanent feature.

Only a few varieties of vegetables are planted except near the

Jewish villages.

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

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

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

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

The result is that no one attempts to make any

permanent improvements. Not even stones are removed from

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

consigns the future to Allah whose business it is to take

care of it.

LEVANTINE WORSHIP OF GOD

There has seldom existed such a tangle of murderous animosities

as those which divide the many creeds in this motherland

of religions .

The majority of the population is Moslem, divided into two

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

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

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

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 379

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

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

of war-like Druses, who believe in successive reincarnations

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

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

In the north the inhabitants hold the Caliph El Hakem Biamrillah

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

ites place Ali above Mohammed . There are considerable sects

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

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

Different groups recognize various Imams as the deliverer : the

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

They go so far as to acknowledge different religious holidays,

with varying degrees of importance attached to the days mutually

celebrated . Combined with this tangle of dogma is a

confusing medley of fetish and spirit worship dependent on locality.

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

the Palestine Moslem has grooved it into line with his

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

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

word of excuse for mentioning an object indecent to respectable

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

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

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

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

distribute pamphlets and shout bawdy songs of their own composition.

Rising in low frenzied wail from this serpentine line

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

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

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

rigor. On this score Sir Ronald Storrs states

briefly that Moslems are "everywhere more tolerant of Jews

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

is one of the standard Moslem demands .

Christian Arabs are not only of markedly different racial mixture,

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

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

mainly engaged in service occupations . Approximately 12%

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

transport and commerce . Only 1 5 % of the Christians

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

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

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

purposes a Christian ghetto .44

Christians number today in the neighborhood of one hundred

thousand. There are no exact denominational figures available .

The official figures for 1920 named thirty-five thousand Greek

Orthodox communicants, twenty-five thousand Catholics (split

into two distinct groups centering around the Italian and French

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

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

as well as varieties of Uniate Churches and a sprinkling of

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

hate each other with an explosive bigotry hardly understandable

to anyone who has not breathed this morbid atmosphere .

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

Annunciation. At Nazareth the Catholics have a chapel to mark

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

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

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

foot of the Holy Places . The contest between the Franciscans

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

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

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

again cleaned, both the District Commissioner and the Police

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

of military guards is always required on high holidays to keep

the Armenians, Latins and Orthodox priests from bashing in

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

the priests of the different sects have been known to brain

each other with the brass candlesticks at Christmas.

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

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

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

381

verts. Their statements are always bald and uncompromising .

An example is the accusation hurled by the Latin Patriarch in

Jerusalem against the Protestants, claiming that they had "despoiled

many important Catholic sites in Jerusalem ." 46

The classic quarrel is between the Greek and Roman Catholics,

with the British invariably taking a covert stand in favor

of the Greeks. An outstanding instance occurred during 1921

when the collapse of Russia left the Greek Patriarchate practically

bankrupt. This was the hour the Latin Church had

waited centuries for. Promptly it entered into an agreement to

purchase the rights and properties of its Orthodox rival, including

the envied Church of the Sepulchre . The Authorities, getting

wind of what was occurring, stepped into the breach and

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

Church to gain the paramount importance which possession of

these sites would give . The collapsing Orthodox clericals were

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

puppet, His Beatitude the Greek Patriarch Damianos, was installed

on the bankrupt patriarchal throne over the violent opposition

of the majority of his own synod .47

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

continuous state of war with the Authorities since the Administration

began. The English suspect that the Vatican is working

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

turn is aroused because the Holy Places Commission has not yet

been constituted, though the League had instructed Britain to

do so from the beginning.

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

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

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

English propaganda center to boot, and has threatened with excommunication

every Catholic who dares enter its portals .48

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

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

been converted to Protestantism.

No matter how virulently these factions may detest each

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

382

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

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

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

to regard with surreptitious enjoyment . A speaking instance

occurred in March 1921, when the Greek Orthodox daily Falastin

headlined an atrocious story accusing the Jews of kidnaping

Arab children in order to drink their blood during the Passover

rites. Jewish agencies angrily remonstrated to the Government .

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

named Mark Young ordering the Jaffa authorities "to investigate

the report immediately to ascertain what truth there is

in it."

With the cooperation of Government House, native Christians

have placed themselves in the forefront of Arab nationalist agitation.

49 The intellectual activity and propaganda work is almost

exclusively in their hands . It flatters their vanity, says

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

Moslem gentlemen of Jerusalem and Jaffa to whom through all

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

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

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

Crescent in Palestine is a chimera . Christians have undergone

an oppression here not one whit less horrible than that meted

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

massacres have occurred consistently since the time when the

Moslem Chief, Ashraf Khalil, celebrated his conquest of Acre

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

.

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

reminded by blackmail, bloody repression, rape and murder

that they were inferior sons of dogs whom the Prophet for

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

Jews and Christians to every barbarity a distorted imagination

could invent, the notorious el Djezzar actually issued orders

in I8oI to massacre every Christian in Palestine . Only the

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

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

383

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

from extermination. Living men still remember the terrible

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

of the riots of 1936, sixteen thousand Christians were slaughtered

and countless others left destitute . Throughout Palestine

and southern Syria whole villages embraced Islam as the only

alternative to certain death . Again only the hurried intervention

of the Great Powers prevented a general massacre .

In each of the pogroms which have occurred under British

Administration the old enmities have come to the surface . Soon

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

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

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

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

knew it meant them and no one else . Christians were

freely attacked, and kept to their houses for safety .

The publicity officer of the Palestine Administration has

always been at eternal pains to broadcast the slightest squabbles

between Arab and Jew "apparently to indicate the terrific difficulties

in judicial handling the Mandatory labors under ." 51 But

news of the constant brawls and killings between followers of

Cross and Crescent is always carefully suppressed . Actually the

hatred which separates Moslem and Christian is far more fundamental

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

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

Despite rigid censorship, news events break through, such as

the mob attack on the Protestant Missionary Council Conference

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

rioters and police . Moslem attacks flared up viciously in September

1930 . Christian notables were assassinated. In mixed

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

The paper El Yarmonk, bespeaking the general feeling, advised

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

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

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

Arab disturbances, the Government swiftly intervened . Troops

384

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

slightest disturbance . Special regulations were issued and rigidly

enforced against assemblies of any kind .

During the recent rebellion, too, Arab bravos swollen with

their own truculence could but with difficulty be restrained

from including their ancient enemies, the Christians, in one

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

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

worded ukase was issued forbidding `loyal Arabs' from even

using busses run by Christians. The Christian chairman of the

Arab Labor Association was butchered in cold blood . Followers

of the Cross and Crescent fought it out in bloody scrimmage

on the streets. Once more the Administration stamped its foot

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

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

taken place was deleted from news dispatches sent abroad .

THE SON OF THE DESERT SUFFERS FROM JEWISH

COMPETITION

Hope-Simpson's thesis that Zionist development has impoverished

the Arab, remains the text from which the ruling coterie

of Whitehall continues to draw its inspiration . Utter despondency,

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

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

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

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

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

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

their security and livelihood are threatened ." 53

Has the Arab really been reduced to penury by Zionist immigration

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

Colonials so zealously insist ? The best answer to these interesting

questions lay in the English records themselves .

The returning Zionists found a country sunk in the most

wretched poverty. Malaria, trachoma, dysentery and tuberculosis

stalked everywhere like great shadowy werewolves . Trans"

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

385

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

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

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

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

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

In 1881, states another official American report, there

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

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

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

The population lived in a state of squalid degradation not surpassed

by the most miserable savages in creation . There was

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

and small industries that existed. The demoralized inhabitants

would not even trouble to cut wood for fuel "but

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

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

living from land which he leased from gouging landlords .

Other human vultures burned his fields and robbed him of even

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

employed in the few orange groves belonging to the

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

to sundown under supervisors armed with whips .

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

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

had no other feeling for this pauperized, disease-ridden

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

proceeded steadily. Immigration was virtually non-existent .

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

begin to augment itself . The introduction of European

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

East. Abruptly Palestine became an Arab center of attraction.

By 1922, after a quarter century of Jewish colonization,

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

a million .

If the English contention were accurate, we should expect to

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

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

386

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

precisely in the vicinity of these Jewish villages that Arab development

is most marked . Arab Haifa, profiting by the Zionist

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

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

district increased by over 135%. The all-Arab city of Nablus,

which held 33,000 before the War, has fallen to less than 12,000.

Safed which had zo,ooo, dropped to less than 9000.

In the vicinity of Jewish villages Arab workers earn twice the

wage paid in other parts of Palestine . Unskilled labor receives

three to five shillings a day, and skilled workers eight to twelve

shillings . In neighboring Egypt, Iraq and Syria a worker considers

himself well off if he gets one shilling a day .

Palestine is the only country in the entire Middle and Near

Eastern section where there has been any substantial increase

either in nominal or real wages since the War . The official

index of wages shows a rise from zoo in 1913, to 390 in 1932 .

No Government figures have been published since that date, but

the report of the Department of Overseas Trade in 1935 states

that wages have progressively increased since 1933. The simultaneous

fall in the official index number of retail prices, from loo

in 1922, to 55.1 in 1934, indicates the enormous increase in real

wages in post-war Palestine.

According to the Royal Commission's Report of 1937, forty

percent of all labor employed on Jewish-owned plantations is

Arab. Against this, Arab establishments employ practically no

Jews whatever .

Jews spend annually about £ 1,500,000 for agricultural produce

of the Arab fellaheen, and about £750,000 on the products

of Arab quarries and industries ." It is estimated that they pay

Arabs in direct wages, £ 86o,ooo ; in rentals, £ 5oo,ooo, and in

trade and transport, £200,000 . 61 Payments for land are about

£ 1,650,000 . To these annual figures must be added the tax

moneys derived from Jews and expended for Arab benefit (computed

at (1,250,000) . Balanced against these sums, the Arab

payments to Jews for all causes during a single year, come to

around 10,200,000 . It does not require expert bookkeeping to

determine who is getting the better of this bargain.

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 387

Modernization, copied directly from the Jew, has benefited the

Arab greatly. Machine production is being introduced into the

manufacture of oils and soaps, silk and cotton textiles, and tobacco

working. In 1928 the industrial census registered ten

thousand persons employed in Arab industries and handicrafts,

representing an investment of £ 1,100,000 . Four years later the

census showed twenty thousand persons engaged in the same

industries, with capital expanding to C2,500,000.

In the short period from 1931 to 1935 Arab land under vegetables

rose from 20,000 dunams to 65,000 and Arab citrus groves

increased from zo,ooo dunams to 135,000. In a span of hardly

eight years, Arab orchards devoted to bananas, figs, apricots,

olives and grapes rocketed from 18o,o6o dunams to 1,651,466

dunams.

In 1927 Arab urban building represented an average annual

investment of £2oo,ooo. By 1935 it had inflated itself to

£ 1,500,000 ; and Arab bank deposits had grown from £ 1,ooo ;

000 to £4,000,000 .

Once the poorest, sorriest population in this whole section of

poverty-stricken masses, the Arabs of Palestine are now on their

way to be the richest per capita of their race . As an index to

their prosperity, they import £4.5s . per head, as compared with

£3 .7s . for wealthy Egypt and £3 .5s- for oil-rich Iraq . Motor

cars, unknown here before the War, now number one to every

352 inhabitants, as compared with one to every 730 in Iraq.62

The network of Jewish medical centers, hospitals and dispensaries

has served the Arab equally with the Jew . It is these

Jewish services alone which carry on the bitter fight against trachoma,

malaria and other devastating diseases . These benefits

are amply reflected in the great natural increase in a population

disease had once brought to a standstill . "One of the most important

consequences of the rise of the cultural and economic

level of the country due to Jewish immigration," a British representative

told the Mandates Commission, "is the high increase

in the Arab birth rate ." 63 The death rate at the same time goes

down steadily year by year.

Some mention must also be made of the assertion that Jews

388

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

are dispossessing Arabs from the land. As far as one is able to

make out, the area of the entire mandated territory is 26,ooo,ooo

dunams west of Jordan, and something over ioo,ooo,ooo east

of Jordan. Of this total, Jews own 1,300,000 dunams - a grand

over-all acquisition of approximately one percent of their National

Home - by which, according to the tenaciously held British

thesis, they have managed to frighten and abuse the natives,

and present the Mandatory with a major crisis in the shape of a

landless Arab problem.

Fully seventy-five percent of the area in Jewish hands, moreover,

had not known the plough for centuries . The northern

colonies in Galilee were built on land rendered impossible for

life since Roman times because of marsh and endemic disease.

Tel Aviv was erected on sand dunes which were considered to

be without monetary value . That great granary, the Valley of

Jezreel, now nestling so trim and green in the shining Palestine

sun, was so deserted and pestilential when Jews bought it that it

was said that any bird attempting to cross it would fall dead in

its flight . That adjacent scene of Jewish colonization, the Plain

of Esdraelon, was in i 9 i 9 desolate and abandoned except for a

few sickly villages built on camel dung .

In the case of those peasants who sold to Jews, with the exception

of a bare five percent who bettered themselves in urban pursuits,

all remained on the land . Most of them sold only a part

of their acres and with the money obtained got out o f debt for

the first time in their lives. Within the past six years the indebtedness

of the Arab cultivator has been reduced by sixty percent,

and the tax burden by as much as seventy percent, while

at the same time his income has sharply increased. The years

have proven the landless Arab hypothesis to be nothing more

than simple humbug . The most solicitous prodding by the

Government over a period of the last ten years has not been able

to bring forth more than 664 Arab families who could come even

vaguely under the definition of displaced cultivators . Of these,

317 families refused the Government's offers, presumably because

they had more satisfactory employment elsewhere .

A very real and harsh condition, which the British carefully

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

389

slur over, is the fact that a handful of large land-owners hold

as much acreage as all the Arab peasantry put together . The

Husseini family holds fifty thousand dunams ; the Abdul Hadi

family, sixty thousand ; the Tajji family, fifty thousand, etc .

The bulk of this ground lies permanently fallow, happily untaxed.

The rest is rented out to tenants under conditions which

would make the lot of the average American sharecropper look

heavenly. The Hope-Simpson Report estimates a year's income

of a tenant farmer at only eighteen dollars - this for an

entire family !

The prevailing system is one of actual peonage . The fellah

is continually in debt to the effendi-usurer . According to the

Johnson-Crosbie Report "a rate of thirty percent per annum is

perhaps the commonest, but fifty percent for three months is not

unusual." Arab improvidence and extortionate interest charges

have had their result in the taking over of many small tracts for

debt. The French Report states that as a consequence, in one

Sub-District in the hills "no less than thirty percent of the land

has passed from Arab peasants to Arab capitalists" in a single

decade . This is the type of creature existence to which British

policy would freeze the Arab forever !

Though British `investigators' have proven `conclusively' that

Zionism is an unrelieved menace to the `helpless' natives, it appears

that surrounding countries would like very much to be

exposed to a similar risk . In his book, Europe and Europeans,

Count Carlo Sforza states that Syrians of all classes, who have

been watching Palestine's development with envious eyes, are

anxious to have something of the same phenomena duplicated in

their country. This desire is written in the clamorous petition

sent the French in 1935 by the inhabitants of Lebanon, begging

them to encourage Jewish immigration as that would bring prosperity.

Said the important Damascus paper Lissan Alakhar in

a fiery editorial on this subject : "We ought to demand Jewish

immigration, for through it our situation will be saved ." 64

In Palestine itself, if official encouragement to hoodlums and

agitators were removed, the whole condition would alter overnight.

The Levantine mind is sensible enough to know which

390

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

side its bread is buttered on, and to pay that side a proper regard.

In 1926 Major E. W. Poison stated unequivocably that

despite mischievous propaganda, "if the Jews were to leave Palestine

tomorrow, the Arabs would be the first to cry out ." 85

"We are led by a group of men who bargain us away, buying

and selling us like cattle," asserts the newspaper Al Igdam in

May 1930. "The Arab people have not yet said their last word

on the Arab-Jewish question . When this word has been said,

it will not be one of hatred and war, but one of peace and

brotherhood, as is suitable for two people who live in one country."

Says a round robin issued during March 1934 by the

leading Moslems and Christians of Nazareth : "On behalf of the

majority of the property-owners and consumers, we declare that

we would welcome Jewish immigration and trust that the enlightened

Jews with their financial and commercial associations

will hasten, to respond to our appeal . We have had enough of

losses ; we want a system of reciprocity and understanding.

We are tired of the obstinacy of the money-lenders and shopkeepers

who pursue a policy of boycott and preach hatred ." In

the very hotbed of unrest, on May 2.1, 1936, the merchants and

shopkeepers issued a manifesto urging fellow-Arabs to repudiate

the self-seeking agitators who were leading the `Arab cause' -

a courageous enough act, since some of the signers were soon

after murdered .

The claim that Jewish colonization has ruined the Arab and

driven him to the desperate acts of despair, is obviously a fabrication.

Hidden beneath this pretext lie the deeper issues of

classic anti-Semitism, British self-interest and Arab family feud .

NASHISHIBIS AND HUSSEINIS

Little in the way of political reasoning can be expected from

the inert Levantine mass which has been elected to rake Whitehall's

chestnuts from the fire . These people have never been

able to reason along other than religious and economic lines .

Colonel Wedgwood tells us that they think more "of the next

meal than of greater Arabia ." Duff found that they had not the

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 391

slightest conception of sacrifice for the common good. They

invariably bow with respect to the authority of the powerful

and rich. They are forever intriguing against each other . "The

Arab who has a Government position," writes Senator Austin,

"is always exposed to the attempts of other Arabs to put him

out and get his place ." 66

Combined with these traits is an inordinate love for the excitement

of feudal contention . Given an opportunity for guntoting,

almost any banner would suit the average tribesman .

Their whole economy centers around the patronage, power

and influence of half a dozen wealthy families . These invariably

lay claim to hereditary rights of overlordship based on aristocratic

lineage. There are, in the main, two great camps . One is

headed by the Husseinis, who allege themselves to be sprung from

Mohammed himself. The other is led by their traditional enemies,

the Nashishibis, whose boasts of noble descent are no less

lofty . Beyond a natural quest for power, no one actually knows

on what tangible grounds this rancorous rivalry is based, least

of all, probably, the Husseinis and Nashishibis themselves .

Of the six Arab parties in Palestine, five are family or patronage

organizations. Only one, Istakial, could be considered a

political party in the European sense . Istaklal is a minor but

loud-voiced group which represents the young-bloods of the

country. It is the party of the pan-Arabs and dopes itself on

dreams of a revived Arabic empire stretching over all of North

Africa as well as the Arabian Peninsula . It regards the Jew as

an hereditary enemy who is to be rigorously annihilated . The

violent tone of this group, and its fantastic utterances, conforms

to the best traditions of Nazism, overlayed with a thick buttering

of oriental mysticism . Its members no longer wear the

Tarbush, sacred to Mohammedans, but a smart brown military

hat. Istaklal believes in direct action and is known for its thugs

and assassins . Other Arab leaders are so desperately afraid of

this organization that they rarely oppose it publicly for fear of

death.

The British have tolerated Istaklal as a hedge against futures ;

but its usefulness to them now seems about at an end . It is

392

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

headed by an ambitious radical named Awny Bey Abdul Hadi,

a man with broken teeth, a cynical laugh and, strange in Levantines,

a sense of humor . He comes from a large and quarrelsome

family who are always in litigation with each other which

sometimes ends in murder . One member of the family is a

judge of the Supreme Court. Another graces the Secretariat.

The titular head of the Husseini clan is Haj Amin, whom Samuel

had appointed Mufti . For years he was the `fair-haired boy'

of the Administration . He was a frequent and favored visitor

at the High Commissioner's table. He had his own brand of

shock troops, openly tolerated by the Government . Apparently

his position was impregnable .

If the Mufti had been created by some fiction writer instead

of having been authored by the Mandatory for Palestine, he

would have been considered too exaggerated a character to be

included in a serious work . He occupied the unique and unparalleled

position of being at war with the same government

which was subsidizing him . In every one of the riots which

shook Palestine the Mufti was an acknowledged leader . He

openly directed the rebellion of 1936 and at the same time continued

to act as a high official of the Government . He is violently

and incurably anti-Jewish . He has a fixed delusion that

the Jews are conspiring to tear down the Mosque of Omar and

build a Jewish Temple on its site . In June 1936 he sent a cablegram

to the Syrians in Brazil beginning with the theatrical words

"Jews and Arabs at war !"

It cannot be emphasized too clearly that the Mohammedan

Church in Palestine is not a private organization as are churches

elsewhere, but an official body with prescribed secular functions.

As its head the black-robed Mufti was a Government

employee . Under his control was the rich Moslem Wak f, which

possesses an income of some C 1 oo,ooo a year, and literally untold

wealth in ancient treasure . The Wakf is the largest landowner

in the country, holding over a million dunams, including

office buildings, apartment houses, shops, factories and warehouses.

It is paid by the Government a fixed sum in lieu of

tithe, and thus receives seventy percent of the total Government

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

393

revenue from rural property in Palestine . The Mufti in addition

had autocratic authority over the Moslem Courts, also

Government-subsidized, and could appoint or dismiss judges

and employees at will .

Haj Amin was thoroughly resented by his fellow-Moslems

who accused him of every crime on the calendar . He never

kept accounts and the disposal of all funds was his personal secret.

His power came completely from Government patronage.

An insight into this relationship of Mufti to Government was

provided by the Tiberias Arab leader, Mohammed Tawil, who

declared from exile in 1930 that "the Palestine Government is

protecting the Grand Mufti, supporting his anti-Jewish policy

and going so far as to suppress those who favor peace ." He asserted

that those opposed to this agitation lived under a veritable

reign of terror and were afraid to open their mouths .67

The crowning insult in the Government's favoritism to the

Husseinis was reached in 1934 when Ragheb Bey Nashishibi,

Mayor of Jerusalem for 14 years, was ousted and Dr . Husseini

Khaldi appointed in his stead . The Nashishibis, cut to the quick,

went wild. They even urged that a Jew be appointed mayor .

It looked like their star had set, when the Mufti made the

crowning mistake of his career : he refused to denounce Mussolini

during the Ethiopian invasion, making it plain that he took

British utterances seriously and considered himself no puppet .

The British believed, and with reason, that Haj Amin was convinced

that ultimate victory in the Near East would be with the

Italians, and that he had quietly switched allegiance . It was

evident that he considered himself so powerful a figure that the

Government would not dare remove him . From that day onward,

Jerusalem maneuvered to create a situation which would

bring about the Mufti's fall .

Now began a game of high politics and involved intrigue

almost impossible to describe . The Administration had planned

Haj Amin's ruin by the Legislative Council project with Ragheb

Bey slated as its president. Thoroughly alarmed, the Mufti

fought this proposal tooth and nail, joined enthusiastically by the

Jews. This land makes strange bedfellows . The Nashishibis,

394

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

taking their cue, began to send spellbinders to the villages who

soon had the countryside in an uproar. The strategy was to

undermine the Mufti by depicting him as an enemy of Arab national

aspirations. This seemed easy since the secular form of

state was anathema to Haj Amin, who was dreaming of a new

edition of the old Moslem Caliphate with himself as the boss .

The agitation became more and more violent . Government

House watched it with circumspect eye. Here was a chance to

kill two birds with one stone : to unload the Mufti, now grown

dangerous, and to smash the unwanted Jewish National Home

once and for all.

But Haj Amin was no fool . A Husseini suddenly bobbed up

as one of the most violent of the extremists . He declared for

his party in a press interview that "between the Arabs and Jews

a life-and-death struggle is raging, which will not cease before

one of the parties has been completely crushed ." Against his

will the Mufti found himself forced, temporarily at least, into

the nationalist camp .

Quite different from the squat, ape-like figure of his archopponent,

Ragheb Bey Nashishibi is a tall personable Arab with

white hair and almost fair skin. His manner is smooth and he

has a certain easy Levantine charm . Though he now heads an

Arab independence party which bases its demands on alleged

promises made by Britain for Arab help during the War, Nashishibi

himself had fought on the opposite side as an officer in the

Turkish Army. He is said to have three legal wives, one Moslem,

one Jewish and one Christian, choosing them deliberately

from each faith so as to enhance his chances to get into Heaven

when he dies, by whichever gate is open. He plays the game

of practical politics in much the same pragmatic manner and

can shift his ground on any issue with the most bewildering ease.

The program of the Nashishibi party now coincides exactly

with British aspirations in the Near East. Today they are plumping

for a reunited Arab Transjordan and Palestine, under the

current British favorite, Abdullah of Transjordan. The Mufti

clique rejects Abdullah and hopes for a renaissance of fanatic

Mohammedan times in a great loose Moslem Federation, with

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

395

the Church as the ruling power. In every country where influence

counts, these rival groups lobby, not only against the

Jews, but with still greater violence, against each other.

The part Whitehall has had in all this can be easily guessed from

the constant open advice given by British officials, urging these

warring parties to "get together" in their fight against the Jews.

Colonial Office organ Great Britain and the East was full of these

admonitions; nor could even the High Commissioner refrain in

his Annual Report from expressing his "regrets" over this inability

of Arabs to create a truly `united front.' 08

Under the patronage of the Government, Arab leaders representing

all the various groups have long been joined in a superbody

called the Arab Executive,* most members of which are

directly on the Government payroll. A sample of this body's

policies is contained in a proclamation issued February 21, 1931,

which calls on the entire Moslem world to massacre Jews wherever

they may be found.

CLAIMS, OBJECTIVES AND METHODS

The Arab politicians and the anti-Semitic officials of London

and Jerusalem who spur them on, always paint the Arab as an

under-privileged creature who is unable to get a hearing in Britain

because the Jews control the press there and by inference

hold the mass of M . P.'s efficiently under their thumbs. This,

of course, is nothing but an extension of that lively humbug, the

Elders of Zion story . Says Wedgwood, drily disposing of this

contention : "These officials claim that the Arab case is not put

before Parliament . The Arab case cannot be put in a British

House simply because their case is anti-British ." 69

The pro-Arab case in its entirety is a post-war product . During

the War "there were no pro-Arab sympathies [in Palestine]

as [there] were in parts of Arabia . . . and the question of a

Palestinian nationality had never entered their heads ." 70 The

great Near East negotiator Sir Mark Sykes dismissed them with

the deprecatory remark that they had "long had the knack of

0 The Arab High Committee, has, since 1936, superseded the Arab Executive.

396

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

falling in with the plans of a successful conqueror ." The British

Peace Handbook No. 6o observes crisply : "With the Arab

movement centered at Damascus, Zionism in Palestine would be a

help rather than a hindrance to it ; for that movement would

only suffer from the attempt to absorb a district ethnologically

and otherwise so different from countries in which the Arab element

stands alone or is distinctly predominant ."

Despite these facts and the solemn agreements signed by the

House of Hussein with the Zionists, the pan-Arabs, backed by

their powerful sympathizers, continue to harp on the `promises'

made to Hussein by McMahon .* Time after time, Mc-

Mahon himself denied this claim with considerable show of irritation,

71 but it makes no difference. The British-Arab clique

held on to this bone with all their teeth . Discredited or not, we

find even Lord Peel repeating it as a fact in his official report

in 1 937 .

Looked at over a period of years the Arab story strikes an

amusingly self-contradictory note . In 1925 it rests its case entirely

on the alleged failure of Zionist colonization. The Arab

Executive speaks in sepulchral tones of "the economic retrogression"

of the country . It groans dolorously that "the figures are

growing darker every day" and that "Palestine's general wealth

has been reduced by 4 16,604,594 during the last four years

alone ." 72 In March 1927, after a year's slump had slowed up

Jewish immigration till it was only a dribble, the Arab Executive

asserts triumphantly that "the decrease in Jewish immigration confirms

our contention that the Government's policy in Palestine

was wrong."

When this line of argument became silly on the face of it, the

Arabs suddenly swung over to the discovery that Palestine, virtually

ignored in Moslem religious tradition, was "a Holy Land

for Moslems also ." 73 It was on this concept that the horrible

events of 1929 pivoted .

It is at least a curious accident that all these inconsistencies of

Arab viewpoint correspond exactly with whatever happens to

be agitating Whitehall most at the moment. When the British

* See Appendix B, p. 580.

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 397

switched to a policy aiming at the consolidation of Arabia into

a confederacy under their control, the character of Arab demands

shifted accommodatingly . At a conference in Jerusalem,

the Arab leaders took a pledge under oath "to uphold the

integrity of Arabia as a nation and to recognize no divisions

therein." 74 Yet when it became apparent to the British Foreign

Office that it would have to go slow on such a program, the Arab

agenda shifted obligingly once more . Now the demand was

for sectional independence, a concept regarded as nothing less

than traitorous a few months earlier .

Present-day demands are for a complete stoppage of Jewish

immigration and a cessation of land sales . The claim is that

Palestine is an Arab land and that the Jews, entering on Arab

sufferance, can only hope to attain the status of paying guests .

Some leaders go so far as to propose the confiscation of Jewish

property ; others are satisfied with political domination only.

The Mufti's gang would force them all to become Moslems ;

while the followers of Awny Bey would drive them into the

sea altogether.

Much of this, of course, is the sheerest political hokum, since

very few Levantines have ever been known to lose an opportunity

to make money. Duff writes that "nearly every man of

Nazareth had land ready to sell to the Jews, despite the fact that

they were continually signing high-sounding declarations about

never surrendering one inch of the `Fatherland' to the detested

intruders." 75 At the very peak of the 1936 revolt the three

visiting United States Senators found that "while the Arab High

Committee in charge of the Strike is officially demanding prohibition

of, the sale of land to Jews, some of the prominent Arab

leaders active in that Committee are quietly trying to sell land

to Jewish buyers ." 76

If this proposed tabu were placed into effect a number of

knotty problems would at once arise which none of the Arab-

English solons have yet attempted to answer. Could Arab land,

for instance, be sold to a Jew who has become a convert to Mohammedanism

? May the Druses, who are not Arabs but Persians,

and heretical Moslems to boot, own land? A large part of

398

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

the Afghan population calls itself B'nai Yisroel77 and claims

Jewish descent though they are fanatic Moslems . If they

came to Palestine could they own land ? Half a century ago a

great number of Samaritans accepted Moslemism for the practical

advantages involved . May these people buy land ? Finally,

what is the attitude toward Arabs who are converted to

Judaism ?

It is also claimed that the Nations, in authorizing the establishment

of a Jewish National Home, disposed of a country

which did not belong to them but to the Arab people . But

here again they appear to be flying in the face of facts . Mr.

Van Rees of the Permanent Mandates Commission remarks that

it is "enough to point out that Palestine had belonged before the

War to the Ottoman Empire . That country had been conquered

not by Arabs of Palestine, but by the Allies, and had

finally been ceded to the Allies and not to the Arabs ." 78 If the

League's right to act on behalf of the Jews is contested, it would

be equally valid to challenge the status of every other area disposed

of through the Mandatory system. Turkey then would

have an a priori case for the return of all her lost territory in

Arabia. Certainly if this business of self-determination is to be

carried through honestly, the rich oil area of Mosul must be

taken from Iraq and given back to the Turks . Of the 342,000

people who inhabit the Mosul Vilayet, only 6o,ooo are Arabs,

and these are newcomers living in the town of Mosul itself . Yet,

since Mosul oil is one of the major reasons for British presence

in the Near East, would they dream of urging its return to Turkey

under the same rules they are attempting to apply in Palestine

?

During the middle of the last century, before Zionist immigration

began, there were not one hundred thousand people all told

in the entire country on both sides of the Jordan . There are

plenty of official statistics and hundreds of books and consular

reports on every detail . The vast majority of Arabs are therefore

newcomers, the same as the Jews . Wherefore are they so

land-hungry that they must debouch onto this little territory ?

The question arises : Are they without adequate territories of

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 399

their own ? Here we come to a new application of Aesop's old

story of the dog in the manger. We discover that in Asia the

Arabs inhabit an area of 2,o i 6,000 square miles, three-quarters

the size of the United States . It is so wild and unpopulated that

Lowell Thomas was led to exclaim that "we have better maps

of the North Pole ; in fact, we have better maps of Mars than we

have of some parts of the interior of Arabia ." 79 The total population

roaming this tremendous expanse is less than twelve million,

including a healthy proportion of minority peoples . If

Syria and Iraq are excluded, this vast domain holds less than six

million human beings . In North Africa, which pan-Arab visionaries

also dream of incorporating in the Arab Empire of the future,

is another territory almost as large and nearly as underpopulated

.

Here we find the Arabs in possession of what is by all odds

the world's last frontier. No colony held by any European

Power is as sparsely peopled . No nation on earth can even remotely

compare with the Arab in per capita land possession .

He has so much of it that he is actually land-poor, its value having

fallen to zero, since there are no human beings to work it .

The great territory of Saudi, whose unsurveyed area can only

be guessed to be approximately a million square miles, contains

not three million human beings, and is undoubtedly the most

underpopulated space on the globe today . The rich Hejaz has

only eight hundred and fifty thousand people within its 150,000

square miles : yet it was from here that Abdullah and his desert

tribesmen came to squat on the Jewish National Home territory

in Transjordan. Arabs have also the vast spaces of Oman, Yemen,

the Hadramaut and Syria on the Peninsula, as well as

Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia and Morocco in Africa. Even Iraq,

thickly settled by comparison to the immense empty expanses

to the south, has less than three million people in a territory of

143,250 square miles. In ancient times this magically fertile

earth, watered by two of the great rivers of Asia, was the granary

of civilization . It alone could support the entire Arab nation

and still present all the aspects of an underpopulated country .

If the matter be considered from the purely Moslem view400

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

point, which admits of neither racialism nor nationality beyond

the community of Mohammed, the axis of possible settlement

stretches itself immeasurably . Even Asiatic Turkey is impoverished

for want of men . In 1926 Kemal Pasha offered large

holdings to Palestine Arabs on the homestead plan if they would

immigrate to Turkey. (After a considerable group of families

left to take advantage of this attractive tender, the Palestine Government

suppressed the whole business, even forbidding any public

mention of the Turkish Government's offer .)

Since the emphasis of Arab demands centers on a united Arab

Empire, it seems fantastic to believe that they also require for

their national development the nine thousand square miles of

Western Palestine. "When the Arab talks of his right of selfdetermination

in Palestine," comments Herbert Sidebotham, "he

really means his right to suppress Palestine and to merge it with

some other country. Palestine as a political unit is a ghost of

the Jewish past alone . It has never had a separate existence as

a political unit except through the Jew nor will it ever have in

the future." Actually, Arab politicians do not recognize Palestine

at all. In all their public statements they deliberately refer

to it as `Southern Syria .' They protest continually because

Palestine has been severed from the main body . In their minds

it can be no more than a geographical concept . It is only

through the introduction of the Jewish factor that it becomes

meaningful as a national-territorial organism .

One is forced to concede that wherever two divergent races

inhabit the same territory, prejudices, hatreds and envies must

arise, if only due to differences of habits and culture and temperament.

Despite this, the prosperity brought in by the Jews

would be an almost certain guarantee of permanent peace if

pernicious propaganda were eliminated. "The Jew would welcome

fellowship with the Arab," says Broadhurst . 80 And Colonel

Wedgwood states fearlessly that the Arabs would give little

or no trouble "were they not encouraged and stimulated to do

so by the effendis of the Higher Arab Committee and by a Government

which does not like the Jews and lets the Arabs know

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 401

it." 81 Arab papers reflect all the contempt the permanent officials

hold for English party politicians . Insolently the Arab

press asks : "What is the British Parliament but a Council of

Elders of Zion ?" 82 Falastin (usually accounted the semi-official

voice of the Government) berates Ormsby-Gore as a stupid

heretic who "cannot free himself from the influence of the Bible."

"The British Government," it warns, "must forget the

Bible" and must order "the Church of England in no uncertain

terms to refrain from interfering in political matters ." 83

It must not be doubted that the Arab has some forbidding

grievances, real enough to him, no matter how puzzling they

may appear to alien minds . One of these is the fear of the

emancipation of women . Another is the alarm of the effendis

lest the end of the feudal period terminate their privileged position

in society. To these Colonel Blimps of the Near East it

is useless to argue the benefits which Jewish science, industry

and medicine have brought to the people of Palestine . "They

will reply," relates the London Times, "that these are luxuries

which the people of Palestine can do without." 84 Like all

other forms of existence the medieval mind dies hard . This

deep-rooted resistance is shown by the petition of professional

camel drivers in June 1936, complaining against the competition

of such devilish inventions as the automobile and railroad . The

camel drivers are hence losing "their independence and dignity,"

and must be protected by turning the clock back. Another reason,

which appears too ridiculous on the surface to be credible,

though Duff assures us it is so, is that "the Arabs still hate the

Jews, and despise them because they hold that Ishmael, and not

Jacob, was the legal son, and that Hagar was the wife of Abraham,

and that Sarah was his concubine ." 85

The final and clinching argument is that no matter what benefits

might come of it, the Arabs do not want Jewish settlement,

and that they have a `right' under the principle of majority rule

to forbid Jews from immigrating . Would not the same argument

oblige the British to retire from South Africa and other

places where they are in the minority ? Since the successful

402

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

issue of a wrong does not make it right, must not America then

be returned to the Indians ; and perhaps England itself to the

Celts ?

Certainly of all peoples, the English must know that the history

of the world is the history of colonization . Every civilized

country is the result of some such process in the past . Today

all the major peoples continue to colonize . In Arab Algeria and

Tunisia, for instance, both France and Italy are steadily pouring

in European immigrants without anyone in particular objecting.

In the case of the Jews there is infinitely more reason to

seek mass resettlement. Not poverty or impulse alone drives

them forth, but a grim and terrible battle against extinction .

They cannot retreat from Palestine because there is nowhere else

for them to retreat to .

If the question be one of title and legality, the Jews have in

their possession a charter signed by the Nations and countersigned

by Feisal of the House of Hussein for the Arabs . If a

moral right is to be posed, can it be offered by the voracious appetite

of a new Arab imperialism, already swollen and choking

on vast territories it cannot possibly digest ? You may scratch

Palestine anywhere and you find Israel. There is not a spot

which is not indelibly stamped with the footprint of the Jew -

"not a road, spring, mountain or village, which does not awaken

the name of some great king or greater prophet . Surely," cries

Dr. Holmes, "this is his homeland, if ever again he is to have

a home." 86

`SEMITIC BROTHERS'

If British plans ever materialize, Palestine will eventually come

under Arab domination, presumably as part of the great Arab

Confederacy . The fate of the Jews in this eventuality becomes

an interesting conjecture.

There is a pleasant fiction, implicitly believed by many Jews,

that Israel has been well-treated by the followers of Mohammed

; that some sort of modus vivendi was established in the dim

days of antiquity, so that the two groups got along famously to"

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 403

gether. This fantasy grew out of the liaison between the Jews

of Spain and their racial kinsmen, the invading Berbers, zvho were

largely of direct Jewish and Phoenician descent .87 It was the

Jewish Berber, General Tarik-es-Ziad, who began the Moorish

conquest of Spain . During the Arab invasion of Spain in 71 z,

Jewish troops often as not garrisoned important fortresses .

Lloyd George states that "in science and art the superiority of

the early Moslem is attributable to the Jews." Lecky tells us

that "Jewish learning and Jewish genius contributed very largely

to that bright . . . civilization which radiated from Toledo and

Cordova." 88 And H. G. Wells declares that it is "difficult to

say . . . when the Jew ends and the Arab begins, so important

and essential were its Jewish factors." 89

As the invading tribes began to be suffocated by mass conversions

and the holding of innumerable concubines, whatever

bond of attraction might have existed between the two peoples

completely disappeared . Soon thereafter, to continue to this

day, Moslem rulers placed a penalty of death on apostasy to

Judaism. Jews were forbidden to ride on horses and were

marked with special clothes . Politically they were consigned

to the same second-rate citizenship which Nazi Germany is now

introducing ." In this cruel condition they remain, considered

in the same light as dogs, creatures the true Believer utterly despises.

The Arabic culture known to history was a modification of

the several ancient civilizations absorbed bodily by the barbaric

Arab tribes in their swift march of conquest . It never touched

the Arabs of Arabia, the peninsular Arab . These, writes Bertram

Thomas, "remained inviolate by their poverty, their remoteness,

their unwillingness to change. . . An intolerance survives

which is almost without parallel in the world today and

explains why so few European explorers have penetrated deep

into the peninsula - scarcely twenty throughout the ages ." 91

As early as Roman times, when the Hebrews with their backs

to the wall were struggling for their very existence, Tacitus informs

us that "a considerable body of Arabs . . . took the field

as avowed enemies of the Jewish nation ." 92 Wherever the

404 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Arab has seized control since, a critical situation has risen for

the Jews . A modern instance is the revolt of Palestine Arabs

in 1834 against the exactions of the Caliphate . Mobs converged

on Jerusalem from all over the country, and for several weeks

held the city. Venting their ugly passions on the horror-stricken

Jews, they gave themselves over to a mad orgy of rapine, murder

and pillage, until the Egyptian general Ibrahim, with equal

barbarism and ferocity, annihilated them .

If one may judge from the tone of the Arab press, the lot of

the Jew under the coming `National Government' will be anything

but pleasant. El Jamiya Arabiyah snarls that "the English

can stand the pride and impudence of the Jews, but the Arabs

know what kind of vermin the Jews are and will know how to

silence them ." Another ready example is the editorial in Islamia

on October 4, 1936, appealing to foreign Arabs not to confine

themselves to mere boycott of Jews but to drink their blood .

It may be seen again in the inflammatory circulars systematically

scattered in Jerusalem, reading : "Kill the Jews until not one of

them remains. Gird yourselves and satiate your souls that thirst

for blood, souls that cannot be sated but with the blood of the

. . . alien and loathsome Jew ."

Farago found that "Arab agitators visit the peasants and promise

them that at the end of the struggle the land and wives of the

Jews will be distributed amongst them . With this expectation

the peasant digs up his money and buys rifles and ammunition

from wandering gunrunners ." 93 Like many other informed

men, Duff gave blunt warning that "as soon as the Palestinian

leaders understood that Great Britain had really left them to their

own devices . . . a general massacre of the Jews and the destruction

of their colonies would occur ." 94 It need occasion

no surprise that the words 'Heil Hitler' proved a magic password

during the recent rebellion, protecting Europeans against

attack.

In every Moslem country the situation of Israel is tragic and

frightful. When the French came into Arab North Africa on

a frank war of imperial conquest, the Jews were overjoyed .

Their position had been so terrible that the invading French

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

405

were looked on as if they had been the troops of Messiah . Even

after European intervention, characteristic pogroms have flared

up like a windswept flame . The fiendish attack on the Jewish

quarter in Constantine, Algiers, in 1934, was a particularly atrocious

event. When French troops finally arrived, they found a

bloodcurdling scene of ruin and horror . Over a hundred Jews

had been slaughtered . Whole families had been locked in their

homes and burned to death . Houses were sacked, women violated

and children hacked to pieces . Among the countless injured

were young girls with their breasts cut off, creatures mutilated

beyond recognition but somehow alive .

In as dire misery are the one hundred and twenty thousand

Jews in French Morocco . In Tunis, Tripoli and Spanish Morocco

the picture is as wretched. Only the protection of European

soldiers saved the North African Jews from an orgy of

torture and merciful annihilation ; and some day, the Socialists

promise, these troops will be withdrawn .

In Iraq the one hundred and ten thousand Jews live under a

sanguinary reign of terror, not much different from that taking

place in Germany . They are mercilessly boycotted . Savage

beatings, murders and robberies are a daily occurrence . Jewish

girls are forcibly seized and dragged into harems . Yusuf Malek

assures us that "in Iraq a Moslem finds it more easy to kill a Jew

than to kill a chicken ." 95

In Syria Jews face famine and gradual extinction . Since they

are completely Arabicized, their fate gives an abrupt answer to

Arab claims that the tension in Palestine springs solely from a

conflict of national aims . The Jewish population of Damascus

has collapsed from twenty thousand after the War to less than

four thousand in 1935. In the last five years, ten thousand Jews

have emigrated from Damascus and Aleppo alone . In every

city and village they are systematically terrorized and boycotted .

In the streets and mosques they are openly threatened with the

same fate as befell the unfortunate Assyrians in Iraq, just as soon

as Syria obtains its independence . The French Mandatory Authorities

show little concern for Jews and are either vague or

frankly indifferent . Nevertheless, the Jew views the day when

4o6

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

a native government will be installed, with horror . The sudden

move of Leon Blum's Socialist ministry to make good on its

theories by granting independence to Syria, threw all Syrian

Jewry into a panic. To a man, they are trying to leave the

country before the French-Syrian Treaty goes into effect .

The only redeeming spot on the Syrian map is the autonomous

Christian district of Lebanon . These people are the only friends

the Jews have in Western Asia . Centuries of bloody persecution

have taught the Syrian Christian a lesson he has not forgotten.

The Lebanon is completely and whole-souledly pro-

Zionist. It wants the Jews for neighbors by the south, to lessen

its isolation in this forever-menacing Moslem sea. When pan-

Arab congresses held their anti-Jewish sessions, the Lebanese

papers roundly denounced them .116 The Government of the

Lebanon Republic has even proclaimed the Jewish Day of

Atonement, Yom Kippur, as an official holiday .

Arabia Felix, that immense curtained mystery, is a graveyard

in which lie buried the many strong Jewish tribes who once

graced this area with their intelligence and learning . In this vast

stronghold of the fanatic Ishmaelites no Jew may enter and live .

In Yemen, at the south end of the Peninsula, Jews are locked

into ghettos as in the Middle Ages, reduced to conditions of economic

desperation even worse, if that be possible, than the Jews

of the pogrom areas of Europe . Their women are at the constant

mercy of every wandering desperado who takes it into his

mind to invade the ghetto. Jews must wear a distinctive dress .

They must keep in the shadows . They are prohibited from

riding on horseback . Their children, by edict of December

1928, must embrace Moslemism on the death of their parents .

Those who believe the assurances of the English have only to

read the gory history of the Christian Assyrians in Iraq, after

Britain terminated its Mandate there in 1932, to gain a picture

of what is impending in Palestine . Just as the English made

an arrangement with the Zionists, so they had made a similar one

with the Assyrians, inviting them to rise against the Turks and

promising them independence and protection if they would do

so. Moved by these pledges, the Assyrians were the only peo"

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

407

ple in what is now Iraq who took up the Allied cause and fought

loyally for the British Empire .97 Their territory was later placed

under Arab rule because London was anxious to include the

Mosul Oil District within Iraqian frontiers .

When the Assyrians expressed alarm over the British proposal

to grant statehood to Iraq, the Mandates Commission was solemnly

assured that the anxiety of these minorities was due to

"mischievous propaganda." Iraq, said the British representative,

was "a country where the Moslem, Christian and Jew have

lived happily side by side for centuries . . . His Majesty's Government

fully realizes its responsibilities in recommending that

Iraq should be admitted to the League . Should Iraq prove unworthy

o f the confidence which has been reposed in it, the moral

responsibility must rest with His Majesty's Government ." 98

In vain the Assyrians pleaded . The engineer A . M. Hamilton

and other thoughtful Englishmen immediately called the

turn without reservation, stating that "the lives of the minorities

have been placed in the hands of people without any morals or

conscience." e°

Scarcely a year after Iraq was granted its `independence,' and

despite the readiness of His Majesty's Government to assume

"moral responsibility," the Kurdish settlements were bombarded

by airplanes. A month later (in August 1933), a holy war was

proclaimed against the Assyrians . The Government offered

Arab tribesmen one pound bounty for every Assyrian head

brought in, as well as license to plunder any Assyrian property

they could find . The Arab press made it known that all acts

of violence were lawful and that anyone not participating in

this war would be betraying his religion and country.'°° At the

head of the Criminal Investigation Department was an Englishman,

who watched this terrific barrage of wild propaganda and

incitement without making a move .

Lieutenant-Colonel A. S. Stafford, British Administrative Inspector

in Iraq, gives a blood-curdling eye-witness account of

what followed. The Assyrians were first systematically disarmed.

On August 5, an Army detachment swept through

their territory and the Assyrians were hunted down as one stalks

408

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

rabbits. "No pretence was made that these operations had any

purely military objective, for the Army Intelligence Officers

did not even take the trouble to cross-question the captured Assyrians,

who were simply shot as they were rounded up ." 101

At Dohuk they were taken from their villages in vans, in batches

of eight or ten, and shot down with machine guns . "The heavy

armoured cars were driven over dead and dying alike ." 102

On August 7, the inhabitants of the whole surrounding district

were ordered to come down to Simel, the largest Assyrian

settlement. After days of sacking, the troops began a coldblooded

and methodical massacre . "Machine gunners set up

their guns outside the windows of the houses in which the Assyrians

had taken refuge, and having trained them on the terrorstricken

wretches in the crowded rooms, fired among them until

not a man was left standing in the shambles ." 103 Women

were ripped open with knives and then made sport of while they

were in a state of agony . Little girls of nine were raped and

burned alive. After being barbarously tortured, priests were

slaughtered, holy books piled over their bodies and burned with

them. When there was no one left to kill, the troops took their

departure, carrying with them for their amusement a large number

of luckless Assyrian girls. The Tribes, who had been interested

spectators of these unspeakable events, then came in and

completed the looting. "I saw and heard many horrible things

in the Great War," related an English eye-witness, "but what

I saw at Simel is beyond human imagination." 104

The troops engaged against the defenseless Assyrians were

given a royal reception on their return. In Mosul the Crown

Prince, now King of Iraq, decorated their colors with his own

hands. The various officers concerned were promoted . Enthusiastic

applause greeted their triumphant procession through

the capital.

After this cowardly slaughter, occurred other massacres, this

time of the Yezidis, "planned by the Central Authorities at Baghdad

and conducted by the army with no less barbarity than the

previous ones." 105

To the present day Christians are effectively boycotted in the

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

409

Government service, debarred from primary schools, and militated

against in all ways . Girls are never safe; and "acts of

sodomy by force," states Malek, are committed on boys by education

and administrative officials.100

In these circumstances the Zionists may well read a ghastly

projection of the future. In ringing accents the Assyrian

leader Prince Gambar told them: "Despite the empty assurances

of Great Britain, those who have eyes with which to see,

and know what Arabs of the type of the Iraqis can do when

let loose, must share your fears as to what is positively to happen

to non-Arabs when placed under Arab rule." 107

CHAPTER II

JEHOVAH ABDICATES IN FAVOR OF DOWNING STREET

LET NOT THY RIGHT HAND KNOW WHAT THY LEFT HAND

DOETH'

CHAPTER II

JEHOVAH ABDICATES IN FAVOR OF DOWNING

STREET

LET NOT THY RIGHT HAND KNOW WHAT THY LEFT HAND

DOETH'

In 1936 again, uncontrolled violence rolled like a sheet of

seething flame over Palestine . For the sixth time since British

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

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

coincide exactly with events of major importance in Empire

politics .

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

recent revolt in Palestine was a marvel of valor and military

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

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

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

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

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

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

thousand troops equipped with airplanes, tanks and all the

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

who have succeeded in keeping it in a state of insecurity

and uproar for years. The utter helplessness and awful inefficiency

of the Mandatory in the face of this minor insurrection

is laid on too thick to be credible .

In scarcely more than a century London has managed to seize

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

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

that England has never shown herself inept at the business of

handling rebellion ? It is not generally realized that the British

are constantly engaged in putting down insurrection in farseparated

places . In the Hadramaut they have been going

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

410

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

411

west frontier they are cleaning out the revolting tribesmen of

Waziristan with a ruthless hand . The colonies without exception

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

In Kenya, another mandated territory, when a government

clerk named Thuku founded the "East Africa Native Association"

to protest the peonage system introduced by the Colonials,

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

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

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

Iraq an emergency similar to the one in Palestine was handled

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

concerned were immediately placed in custody, offending newspapers

suppressed and their editors arrested . Sir Percy's comments

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

will not hesitate to take drastic steps against any persons,

tribesmen or townsmen who do not take the present warning,

but continue to emulate the seditious vagaries of those now

placed under restraint ." This was language that Arabs could

understand, and the whole affair died aborning. Subsequent rebellions

were handled in short order by the Iraqi shadow government,

by simply detailing a few British airplanes to bomb

the tribesmen into submission .

In Palestine the close integration of officialdom itself with

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

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

attended by prominent Government functionaries in their official

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

coming independence and unification of the Arab countries"

(including Palestine) enthusiastically hailed . This hidden complot

reveals itself even more obviously in an incident of twelve

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

The usual preparations had preceded it, the ferocious

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

Arab Executive . Unfortunately for these plans, Nazi violence

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

of civilization like an earthquake . All articulate reaction to

these startling events was overwhelmingly with the stricken

412

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Jews. Sympathy for human suffering and despair was the prevailing

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

Jewish riots would be more than embarrassing to the British

Government. In an amazing about-face the scheduled disorders

were converted into a peaceful demonstration against the Government,

in which the word Jew was not even mentioned . A

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

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

prepared could not, however, be headed off. Several

thousand hoodlums charged the police in Jaffa after having been

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

Assistant Superintendent of Police Faraday ordered his

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

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

imprisonment. Immediately the District Court quashed the

sentence and released the prisoners on "promise of good behavior

." The bewildered Faraday soon after had his post taken

away from him and was exiled to Beersheba .2

The British are reputed to possess the shrewdest Intelligence

and Secret Service in existence . Concentrated in one small

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

spy and counter-spy system is respected wherever espionage

exists . Yet in strategic Palestine the Authorities never

seemed to know that seditious unrest of the most explosive type

was being openly organized right under their noses . Like the

previous uprisings, the rebellion of 1936 was scarcely a bolt

from the blue. It only became possible after prolonged elaboration

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

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

observes an official United States Report, "could revolutionize

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

confirms Ernest Main, "to buy agitators and even murderers

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

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

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

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

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

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

41 3

get a perfectly good demonstration in the streets, perhaps with

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

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

among the Arabs are less common than those that are

engineered ." 4

Before this kind of backdrop the riots were openly rehearsed

and agitated. For eighteen months the Government allowed

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

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

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

threatened violence and bloodshed . Terrorist organizations

paraded themselves without the slightest attempt at secrecy .

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

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

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

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

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

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

the Arab Scouts, prime leaders in the disturbances .

Late in March a meeting of influential Arabs, practically all

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

uprising. A delegation consisting of members of the Iraqian

Parliament arrived to attend . It behaved itself in a flagrant

manner which would have led to strong diplomatic representations

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

by every official courtesy. Fifteen days before the lid finally

blew off of this seething caldron, the Revisionist leader Jabotinsky

cabled the High Commissioner warning him that "specific

Arab manifestations on an unprecedented scale are being

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

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

reply.

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

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

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

been tried for high treason . On the statute books

was the Seditious Offenses Ordinance, providing severe penalties

414

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

for any act which conspired "to raise discontent or disaffection

amongst the inhabitants of Palestine ; or to promote feelings of

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

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

this ordinance was applied, the dangerous firebrand, Hassan

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

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

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

concedes the Peel Report, "it is the leniency with

which Arab political agitation, even when carried to the point

of violence and murder, has been treated ."

Responsible Arabs who wanted peace were treated with all

the contumely of renegades who had joined the enemy camp .

In Britain itself, Colonial Office publications were blatantly advising

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

was invited to present its grievances officially in London

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

in frenzied repetition as Whitehall circles called on the Arabs

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

was now stalking its game brazenly in the clear .

While Arabs who made no secret of their revolutionary aims

were being pampered on the Government payroll, the steamroller

of official authority was ironing out the Jews. Among

other incidents, every Revisionist leader in Palestine was arrested

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

and held for considerable periods, without trial .

Even the innocuous little Jewish State Party was refused registration

as a legally existing organization. With withering

mockery the Government announced that unless it "eliminated

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

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

Under this kind of patronage Arab megalomania developed

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

indignant protest sent to a Jewish newspaper by a bandit named

Nabulsi during the height of the riots. Complaining that the

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

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

415

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

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

Mr. Nabulsi was quite right -the Official communiques had

never done so.

Unless the British are the victims of the worst accumulation

of circumstantial evidence that ever made white appear to be

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

they have been required so busily to police, were created

with adroit cunning by themselves. The hope was plainly to

institute a struggle which would paralyze the Jews, after which

the Administration could come to terms with the Arabs. And

so we see the fantastic picture of a State surreptitiously engaged

in undermining its own authority and ruining its own commerce

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

own tacit permission. The three American Senators, Austin,

Copeland and Hastings, who visited Palestine in 1936, made

no bones about their impressions. Copeland, product of the

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

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

One is conducted by Arab terrorists, who throw bombs and

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

conducted silently by the Mandatory Government of Palestine

against the proper administration of justice. The prolongation

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

for the vandals and assassins displayed by many officers

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

which could not but shock any American observer." 8

REVOLT BY PERMISSION

For months, fifteen thousand soldiers had apparently been unable

to render safe a few miles of road between Jerusalem and

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

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

cars and wantonly butchered. Not a soul had been punished

for any of these brutal crimes . With unrestrained arrogance

the intransigeant Arab press hailed these killers as heroes and

416 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

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

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

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

crowd, wounding thirty persons . Immediately after, steelhelmeted

officers invaded Tel Aviv, dragging out householders

on suspicion of having been connected with the protest . Bearers

of black-bordered Zionist flags of mourning were beaten into

unconsciousness . Sullen, angry apprehension once more made

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

this charged condition that the explosion was touched off .

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

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

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

Aviv. Instead of counteracting these wild rumors, the Government

added fuel to the fire by dispatching enlarged police

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

The outbreaks were swiftly and shrewdly plotted . On the

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

though they generally offer their vegetables for sale as early as

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

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

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

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

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

Tel Aviv to Jerusalem only one policeman was posted though

the roads were almost bursting with armed and threatening men .

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

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

were running with Jewish blood . Many were slaughtered and

mutilated past identification, right under the eyes of the police

who made no effort to interfere .

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

Little boys of six carried automatics, shooting them off on the

streets of Jerusalem as if they were toy pistols . Unhindered,

the Arab press beat a loud tattoo for murder and revolt . GramJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

4 1 7

ophone records made their appearance in the shops, calling on

the Arabs to annihilate the Jews . Nazi flags and pictures of

Hitler were prominently displayed in store windows . Booklets

explaining Nazi methods of forcing Jews from the Reich were

distributed freely . Only the Haifa district remained immune,

miraculously free of violence to the end, leading Jabotinsky to

ask coldly if it were true that this was "a revolt by leave" in one

part of Palestine, with no revolt where it was requested by the

Authorities that there should be no revolt .

On May 21, the Arab High Committee called a general strike,

stopping all work. Contrary to its own organic law, the Government

did not declare the strike illegal . Despite the fact that

it was an openly seditious body, the Arab High Committee was

not interfered with. The queer business by no means ended

here. At the end of June a mutinous memorandum was submitted

to the High Commissioner, signed by 137 senior Arab

officials, telling him bluntly to yield to the Arab High Committee.

This singular paper was duly forwarded through proper

channels to the Colonial Office, "who politely acknowledged it

and so far from rebuking the signatories, thanked them for their

loyalty!" 10 It was followed by even more impudent memoranda

from Arab officials in the second division, and the

Government-paid judges of the Moslem Courts .

With the exception of Government employees, virtually the

whole terror was led by Syrians, and Arabs from Mesopotamia

and Egypt. Violent men from all quarters slipped in and out

of the border as if it were non-existent, attracted by the lust

for action. The most important of these was Fawzy Bey el

Kaougji, self-styled commander of the Arab bands . A somewhat

handsome adventurer of neurotic impulses, Fawzy was a

Syrian who had been sentenced to death by the French for his

activities during the Druse revolt . Escaping to the Hejaz, he

had to fly for his life again, this time for being mixed up in a

tribal rebellion .

More lately he had been Commandant of the Military Training

College of Iraq . The Arab outbreak had already lasted three

months when Fawzy made his sensational appearance in a battle

418

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

in the Nablus area. Soon after, reports came through describing

how he had actually made his way in broad daylight across

the desert from Iraq, accompanied by many motor lorries laden

with full military equipment, and a considerable body of professional

desperadoes said to have come from the Iraqian Army .

To reach the Jordan River he had to pass through a veritable

network of military posts and patrols by which every waterhole

and lane is watched with a hawk's eye. The Jordan crossings

themselves are well known and well guarded . Fawzy

was no ectoplasm which could waft its way across these threedimensional

obstacles like Shaitan's spirit. The passage was that

of a regular expedition replete with weapons and military baggage

; but there he was on the wrong side of Jordan.

His appearance in Palestine was greeted with a well-organized

blast of publicity not less than that given the British expeditionary

force of General Dill." Within a few days his photographs,

describing him grandly as "Commander-in-Chief of the Arab

Armies in Southern Syria," were being sold and displayed in

bookstalls throughout the Holy Land . The entire Arab press

featured them with such provocative statements as "long live

the leader of battles, Fawzy, the messenger from Iraq," and "unsheath

your swords and daggers and press the enemy till he is

strangled." None of this met with the slightest interference

from the all-powerful censorship bureau . Aping the Government

itself, Fawzy even published his own war communiques,

making extravagant claims of `victories .' These were posted

prominently, sometimes on Government buildings themselves,

where they were allowed to remain for Arabs to see and believe .

An apparently frantic search by the combined forces of the

Army and Police found him as elusive as the proverbial greased

pig. While the Authorities were supposedly turning the country

upside down to find him, fifteen thousand Arabs assembled

on the banks of the Jordan to give the `hero' a royal reception .

From the very start, the rebels showed that they possessed an

inexhaustible supply of weapons and ammunition and were being

guided by a skilled military hand . Most of the Arab arms

were "brand new British weapons and ammunition manufacJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

419

tured in the celebrated Woolwich Arsenal ." 12 It is reliably declared

that practically all their bombing operations were conducted

with hand grenades of official army issue . 13 Searches

for arms in Arab towns were preceded by a great stir in advance

so as to apprise the villagers that the raid was imminent, giving

them plenty of time to put their houses in order. In many cases,

groups of rebels used police cars and possessed special police

passes .

With bandits and mutineers swarming over every road, soldiers

were under instruction to fire only in the air. British

Tommies informed Farago : "We are not allowed to use weapons

without the written permission o f the District Commissioner

!" 14 And Duff was told in disgust by a loyal Arab policeman

: "Life is almost impossible for us men of the police

nowadays. We dare not do our duty for fear of being reported

and punished ." 15 "Both men and officers," states the London

Morning Post sharply, "have been quite bewildered by the fact

that operations have frequently been canceled at the moment

when they were on the point of being successful ." 16 A cloak

of bleak mystery shrouded these strange instructions . Where

they came from, no one seemed to know .

The streets of all cities were made the daily stamping grounds

of gangs who threatened Arab shopkeepers and beat up peasants

who came into town with their vegetables . "For an Arab to be

suspected of a lukewarm adherence to the nationalist cause,"

says Lord Peel, "is to invite a visit from a body of gunmen ." 14

Gangs visited villages and threatened to burn them down unless

they supplied quotas of men, firearms and provisions . When

the Mayor of Beisan displayed a foolish unwillingness to swell

the terrorists' funds, his young son's throat was slit in reprisal .

In deadly fear of their own nationals, 1 zoo wealthy Arabs fled

the country.

Shootings, bombings and every conceivable form of violent

outrage now became the daily routine . Bombs were thrown at

homes, railway stations, hospitals and public buildings . Kindergartens

and playgrounds were dynamited, tearing little children

to shreds. Nurses were slain by snipers as they went on duty .

420

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Trains were fired on and wrecked ; cinema houses blown up ;

crops burned ; trees whose planting represented a lifetime of

heartbreak and industry, maliciously uprooted . Nothing that

would yield to knife or flame was safe from the destructive hand

of the vandal .

The chivalrous stuff these pampered `patriots' were made of is

typified in the case of a gang who invaded the home of a Safed

rabbi at midnight . They found his three little children on the

veranda and butchered them in their sleep. Their mother,

startled by the commotion, ran out and flung herself down to

protect her brood . The Arabs shot her without mercy. Her

husband coming on this terrible scene had barely time to see his

family dying before his eyes when a bomb hurled by the retreating

intruders decapitated him .

The Yishub was caught in a trap, but it knew from what

source its agony came . Courageously the head of the Palestine

Jewish Community, Mr. Ben Zvi, asked : "Who can say that his

hands are clean in these outrages ? Can the High Commissioner

?" In refreshing contrast to the fawning rhetoric of

Zionist `statesmen' in London, forthright old Mayor Dizengoff

of Tel Aviv saddled the High Commissioner with direct responsibility,

bluntly accusing him of having introduced "demoralization,

anarchy and lawlessness into the country ." He declared

that "the Government railways have become the strongholds of

terrorists from which they set fire to Jewish cornfields and bombard

peaceful towns," and that "Palestine is now directed by the

Arab High Committee and hooligans." "You assure us solemnly,"

he exclaimed (addressing himself to the Government),

"that you are fulfilling your obligations to us, but in practice

you have outlawed the Jews and handed them over to a mob of

criminals." 18

As in previous riots, the Jews were rendered impotent by being

forcibly disarmed. Drivers of vehicles compelled to run the

gauntlet of frequent attacks could not carry so much as a club

to protect themselves with. The police regularly searched Jewish

busses and passenger-cars on the roads, while Arab vehicles

derisively passed them, neither examined nor stopped .19 DeJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

421

spite the fact that vandals were systematically uprooting valuable

groves and applying the torch freely, Senator Copeland found

that owners were flatly refused permission to have armed guards

on their properties.20 Jewish watchmen found in possession of

pistols were sentenced to long prison terms, though it was shown

that their posts were dangerous and that other watchmen had

been killed in the very neighborhood. Even colonies which

were subjected to recurrent assaults were religiously ransacked

by police, and colonists found in possession of weapons were

punished by imprisonment. Jews were warned that under no

circumstances might they own a rifle or fire a gun . Colonists

exposed to Arab violence were advised to lode out until troops

came. Even the Jewish Ghaffirs and supernumerary constables

were usually armed with truncheons only, or at best, with decrepit

shotguns that had little military value . Moreover, they

were not permitted to pursue marauders beyond the confines of

their settlements. "Jaffa Jews may be done to death in the very

sight of Tel Aviv's Jewish policemen, but these police may not

go to the rescue !" cries the Palestine Post indignantly.21

In vain the Jews pleaded to be allowed to defend themselves.

Students and veterans of the battalions who had fought under

Allenby begged to be mobilized, urging that they "did not de

sire to see any British blood spilled . We are quite capable of

defending our own homeland ." The Revisionists offered fifty

thousand Jewish soldiers, some of them seasoned World War

veterans, for police duty . The mobilization of five thousand

Jewish youths at any time, would have made short work of the

killers, but the Authorities had other ideas .

Arabs arrested for carrying arms were either freed outright or

fined as ridiculous a sum as three shillings (about 75¢) . Those

convicted of murderous assaults or of arson were indulgently

released "on probation ." For months, though there had been

numerous murders of Jews, the Government did not take the

matter seriously enough to offer any reward at all . It was only

after a British constable named Bird had been assassinated that

they suddenly came out with a substantial reward . Despite the

wholesale murders which took place in 1936, there was not a

422 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

single execution, a more than startling circumstance, since the

normal crime calendar of Palestine accounts for twelve hangings

annually .

Officers who took their duties too seriously were rebuked in

open court or transferred to less desirable posts as a warning to

others . The following cases, selected at random, show the general

tone of the courts . In one case, three Arabs, arrested for

sending an infernal machine in a suitcase to a Jew in Tel Aviv

and found with a whole arsenal of bombs in their possession, were

released on bond of L25. In another, two Arabs positively

identified by seven eye-witnesses as having dynamited a cinema

in Tel Aviv, murdering three people and mangling many others,

were given seven days in jail for carrying guns . The murder

charges were not even brought up. In another, some two hundred

ruffians armed with knives and iron bars, fell on the Jewish

quarter of Tiberias . When the military and police finally arrived

they `escorted' the assailants out of the vicinity . The

journey was made a source of great merriment . Shop windows

were broken and passersby stoned . "The next day the police

returned and arrested fifteen Jews ." 22

When the Administration dealt with outrages it really regarded

as scandalous, it made short work of the miscreants .

Rebels who damaged the Iraq Petroleum Company's pipelines

were not only apprehended, but their houses and those of their

relatives demolished in reprisal . When the military railway

was scathed by unidentified vandals, the nearby city of Lydda

was fined J 5000. An Arab who set a relative's grain field on

fire was sentenced to four years' imprisonment .23 Insurgents

caught firing on British troops were speedily handed the death

penalty, these crimes apparently being classified as `premeditated,'

as opposed to the `unpremeditated,' hence forgivable,

murder and arson committed on the person and property of

Jews.

While Arab papers were allowed to carry on the most unbridled

anti-Jewish incitement, it was a different matter when

El Jamia al Islamia engaged in what was alleged to be pro-Italian

propaganda . Its editor, Khalil Yousuff, was picked up with no

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

423

more ceremony than if he had been a sack of potatoes, and deported.

24 Similarly, when some swashbucklers with little imagination

took their immunity too literally and dropped some bombs

outside the residence of the High Commissioner, "the Palestine

Government ordered the suspension of all Arabic newspapers indefinitely,

beginning at once ." 25

What the attitude was is shown in the order to Jews to bury

their dead at five o'clock in the morning so that there would be

nothing ostentatious about it . At the same time the Arabs were

turning the funeral of an ordinary outlaw into the most spectacular

celebration ever seen around Haifa .

Though in every case Jews were the victims, the Authorities

felt justified in alluding to the marauding operations of the insurgents

as 'Arab-Jewish clashes' requiring the meting out of

equal punishment to both sides `impartially .' To justify this

piece of hypocrisy, Jews suspected of nationalist leanings were

arbitrarily picked up and jailed, without cause or trial . When

an old Arab woman was assassinated by thieves from Arab Tireh,

known as a den of cutthroats since time immemorial, 26 the peaceful

little Jewish hamlet, Achuzat Herbert Samuel, was stigmatized

with the onus of murder by the imposition of a huge collective

fine, without the slightest offer of evidence.

Perhaps the most revolting part of this ugly pantomime was

the treatment accorded the Jewish refugees who had escaped the

storm area with their lives . By June more than twelve thousand

homeless creatures had streamed into Tel Aviv for protection,

their possessions destroyed and occupations ruined . The Government

finally agreed, under pressure, to contribute the sum of

2o mils (1o¢) a day per head to their upkeep . After a few

weeks it abruptly notified the Municipality that it would terminate

even this meager contribution (June 17, 1936) ; and in an

astounding decree taking effect thirteen days later, it denied the

city of Tel Aviv permission to provide for or deal with these

unfortunates. In this amazing order the dictum was laid down

that though the refugees were not to be permitted to return to

their ruined homes, it was up to the voluntary contributions of

Jews abroad to maintain and house them . The Government

424

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

washed its hands of the proposition and refused to accept, or to

allow the Municipality to accept, the responsibility .

Since it is apparent that this whole mad fury of lawlessness has

been prompted from an outside source, the question naturally

arises -where did all the money come from to keep it alive?

There were men to feed, committees to keep going, agents to

support in foreign countries, and arms and ammunition which

had to be purchased. It is estimated that these activities were

costing in the neighborhood of f 3000 a day.27 This is a large

sum when it is applied to a struggle lasting many months on end .

Those acquainted with the country know that the rich Arab is

not prepared to donate "even a pound of his own free will for

communal purposes." 28 Nor did his nature show any change

in this case . The Arab landlords, effendis and merchants gave

very little support to the strike . Many, in fact, left the country

to protect themselves .

According to the continental press, the Jerusalem Police found

documents proving that the rioters had received C70,000 from

European sources actuated by anti-British as well as anti-Jewish

motives. In addition to this and other sums which came from

Fascist countries, the London Daily Mail reported that a police

raid in Jerusalem discovered receipts and documents indicating

that the Soviet Department for Near East Propaganda had sent

large sums to Palestine to support the insurrection .29 Another

considerable amount was reported to have been remitted to Arab

emissaries at Cairo, Egypt, via the American Express Company .3o

A great part of the revolt funds came from England itself . Allied

anti-Semites in America supplied another portion .31 Some

came directly from the Palestine Government in various disguises,

as the £ 30,000 loan "to needy farmers," actually used

to buy arms and ammunition . 32 The Government-controlled

Moslem Wak f contributed another sizable sum . Mohammedan

.countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq which fall in the British

sphere of influence, made a number of public collections for this

;purpose. The London Daily Mail of July 15, 1936 reports that

£ 11,000 was sent from India, apparently without the slightest

;interference by either the Indian or Palestine Authorities .

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

425

"One of the surest sources of strike funds," states the London

Times, "remains the contributions from Arab officials in the

Government service, most of whom regularly surrender a fraction

o f their salary." 33 For the right to continue working,

Government employees were assessed by gangster methods, up

to twenty percent of their monthly salary . By August 15, 1936,

according to a detailed statement published by an Arab paper,

around £ 5000 was collected in Jerusalem from this source .

According to an incomplete list appearing daily in Ad Difaa,

twice that amount was collected in Jaffa by the same date .

This tax, writes Horace Samuel, fell impartially on every Arab

official from the most junior teacher "to the most senior of Sir

Michael MacDonnell's Arab judges in the Court of Appeal, taking

in, presumably, in its stride, Ishak Effendi El Hashim, the

Arab private secretary of Sir Arthur Wauchope ." 34

By Fall the Levantine began to grow heartily tired of the revolt.

All this turmoil was the incomprehensible business of

Allah and the strange Angliz who for some reason wanted it that

way. The fellah and Bedouin, for their part, had had enough .35

The citrus season was coming on . The fruit hanging on the

tree was like ready money. There were not enough hands to

go around . Tradesmen and merchants found themselves almost

bankrupt and wishing the `patriots' all in hell in consequence.

The British had moreover accomplished all their objectives for

the moment. They had succeeded in concentrating a huge

military force in the delicately balanced Near East without protest

from any source . A Royal Commission was already on its

way to complete the work of demolishing the Mandate . After

dilly-dallying around for months with his huge imported military

machine, General Dill bluntly made it known that the curtain

was about to be rung down on the play .

The Arab ring-leaders were now in an all-but-impossible situation

. With nice consideration Whitehall conceded that their

prestige must be saved at all costs . "The Arab Higher Committee,"

states Great Britain and the East, "cannot of itself say that

the strike shall end without renouncing the whole position it has

426

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

taken up . A 'face-saving' development is however possible." 38

With extravagant mummery, as if they were dealing with a

powerful opponent, the Colonials made the proper motions .

Low-flying airplanes scattered tons of Arabic leaflets promising

that if the strike were dropped, a Royal Commission would immediately

come and "give the Arabs justice ." With ill-concealed

clarity they were told by manifesto and proclamation that all

their demands would be granted .

With brilliant forethought the Bureaucrats cushioned the collapse

for their friends in the Arab High Committee . They invited

the Arab kings into the situation . But here came a snag

the Arab kings smelled a rat and would not budge . Abdullah,

who believed he was to be the Emir of a reunited Palestine and

Transjordan, was mortally afraid of baiting Ibn Saud by a public

declaration, since the latter understood that it was his second

son who was to get the Holy Land throne . Each waited dead

in his tracks, desperately afraid of being double-crossed .37

Finally, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Nuri Pasha Said, was

dragooned to act as mediator . He assured the rebels that "the

Palestine Government would not only announce stoppage of

Jewish entry into Palestine but would also declare an amnesty

for individual Arabs participating in the outbreaks, as quid pro

quo concessions for Arab cessation of the strike ." 38 Almost

immediately afterwards, Nuri Pasha was overthrown in his own

country and chased out to exile in Egypt. The new Government

of Iraq turned its back on the pan-Arab world . Ibn Saud

and Abdullah continued to eye each other suspiciously . Only

after these gentlemen had been stiffly reminded that they owed

their eminence to British bayonets, did they cautiously allow

themselves to be drawn into the 'face-saving' process .

With this theatrical piece of staging the `strike' ended . It was

not a surrender, but in the nature of an honorable armistice.

The plain inference in this gentleman's arrangement was "that

pending the findings of the Commission, the terrorist organization

is not to be unduly harassed, so that it shall be in a position

to resume hostilities should it not be satisfied with the findings

of the Commission ." 311 With superb courtesy, Fawzy Bey and

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

427

his followers were allowed passage into Transjordan . "Though

the Army had successfully surrounded him and his foreign supporters,"

writes the Jerusalem correspondent of the London

Times, ". . . his capture would have been embarrassing," so he

was "allowed to escape across the Jordan as a more tactful solution,"

enabling him to "conclude his spectacular career here

with honor and without surrender." 40 Why, one wonders, was

it necessary to allow this invading desperado to depart "with

honor" ? By what providential device was he "surrounded"

immediately after the conclusion of the strike, though seemingly

so elusive before ? And why would his capture have been

"embarrassing" to the Government of Palestine ? Returning to

Baghdad with a large party of followers by motor convoy, Fawzy

was given a rousing official reception which included "a message

of welcome from the Prime Minister, who congratulated him on

his safe return." 41 Since Iraq is frankly a British dependency,

must not this circumstance also be included in the puzzle ?

One hundred and seventy-five days had elapsed . During this

time, Palestine had wallowed in a horrible blood bath which had

cost seven hundred lives and thousands of wounded . Trees by

the hundred thousand had been uprooted ; innumerable stock

animals slain ; forty-eight bridges were destroyed ; telephone

and telegraph wires damaged ; trains derailed, buildings burned

and looted. There had been, all told, 1996 attacks on Jewish

settlements and communities, and numerous other forays directed

at busses, police stations and public buildings . Business

was at a standstill . Property loss was estimated at L 3,000,000.

The extra expenditure for military and police ran to another

J.2,200,000

The Holy Land was tense and anxious as still another of the

obliquitous Commissions entrained from London to `investigate :

BLAMING ITALIANS AND COMMUNISTS

While London was thus engaged in victimizing the Jews, official

publicity agencies were losing no opportunity to squeeze

428

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

every ounce of advantage from the situation . A venomous and

apparently incurable quarrel had developed between England

and the ambitious Italian dictator Mussolini . Frankly worried,

London was straining every nerve to quarantine the Italian by

depicting him as an international criminal who must be ostracized

by all decent opinion . The efficient English propaganda

machine was now operating on the old war-time basis . From

London and Jerusalem came a roll of sensational stories fastening

responsibility for the riots on the scowling figure of Mussolini.

Veiled allusions were made to the Pope and to his liaison

with the Italian Dictator . Catholic nuns, nurses and teachers

were accused of carrying on secret propaganda against Zionists

and British alike .42 In beautifully chosen words which inferred

an anti-Jewish as well as anti-English plot the British Foreign

Secretary pinned the whole blame on the Italians .

The entire liberal press rose to the bait so dexterously flicked

upon the water . Like a pack of dogs hot after game, the Marxist

press aggressively took up the cry. The London Daily Herald

asserted that Italy had sent enormous sums to Arab leaders

through secret agents . It even went to the point of claiming

that Mussolini had offered the Bedouins of Transjordan three

dollars a day per man if they would cross over into Palestine and

loot Jewish stores and houses .43 Responsible publications went

so far as to feature as news a weird story, concocted by the press

officer of Palestine, alleging that posters printed in Italian had

been stuck up all over Jerusalem urging Arabs to slit the gullets

of the Jews .44 Even the Zionist spokesmen, anxious now for

some unreal explanation of distasteful reality, seized on this fragile

straw which the Mandatory for Palestine had thoughtfully

provided.

A scant two years later, Italy, under pressure from its Nazi ally,

was to join the anti-Semitic Internationale so sedulously promoted

from Berlin.45 Jews, who had occupied the most illustrious

positions in Italian life, were to find themselves, in a single

merciless stroke, ostracized, vilified and threatened with exile.

In 1936, however, before this chameleon-like development in Italian

policy had taken place, Fascist Italy could truly have been said

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

429

to be freer from anti-Semitic agitation than London itself .46 On

June 20, 1937 the Italian Dictator had told Generoso Pope, New

York publisher : "I authorize you to declare and to make known

immediately upon your return to New York, to the Jews of

America, that their preoccupation for their brothers living in

Italy is nothing but the fruit of evil informers . I authorize you

to specify that the Jews in Italy have received, now receive, and

will continue to receive, the same treatment accorded to every

other Italian citizen and that no form of racial or religious discrimination

is in my thought, which is devoted and faithful to

the policy of equality in law and freedom of worship ." Ten

years previously he had advised the Rumanians : "Anti-Semitism

is a product of barbarism to which our movement is diametrically

opposed. Fascism seeks unity ; anti-Semitism seeks destruction

and separation . If we are to exclude Jews, we will only

strengthen our enemies." 47 In 1935 he had again warned the

pogromists that "if Rumania goes along the road of anti-Semitism

it will have very severe consequences not only inside the country

but in its foreign relations ." 48

Before events forced him into the unhappy position of being

the tail to the German kite, Mussolini had been a persistent advocate

of State Zionism . On February zo, 1934 he urged in

Popolo D'Italia the creation of a "true Jewish State in Palestine,"

pointing out that a "National Home" could logically mean only

this and nothing else . As late as January 18, 1937, he had written

an editorial warmly lauding the Zionist cause, though soon

after he was found attempting to match cards with Britain by

posing as the friend and patron of the Arab .

There can be no doubt that Mussolini, a hard-fisted realist,

would have considered it good business if he could have disengaged

the Jews from the English orbit . A powerful independent

Zion with which he was on a friendly footing would have

suited him perfectly . The Jews themselves eliminated this prospect

by their persistent Anglophilism, and Mussolini has come to

regard Zionism as merely a mask for the creation of another zone

of English political and economic expansion in the Mediterranean.

It hence looms in the Italian mind as an anti-Italian force.

430

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Nevertheless, not a shred of real evidence has ever been offered

to substantiate the charge that Italian intervention was a factor in

the recent Arab revolt in Palestine.

Far more potent than any interference by Italian or Papist has

been the German intervention, which the English studiously

ignore. It has been shown that agitators now active in the Near

East have been trained in a special school in the Brown House

in Munich ; that pamphlets in Arabic are printed in Berlin and

Hamburg for distribution in Palestine 4 9 On October 22, 1 933,

it was announced that Eissael Bendek, member of the Arab Executive's

Administrative Bureau, would direct a propaganda

campaign in the interests of the Nazi Party . On June 8, 1934

the Jerusalem Arab daily, Mukkattar, reported the formation of

an Arab Nazi Youth Organization . The French Weekly, Marianne,

reported in 1937 that a great part of the arms employed in

the rebellion were supplied by the Suhl and Erfurter Gewehrfabrik

of Germany, which sent, in particular, many rifles and

machine-guns. The Arab journals Falastin and Al Dijah published

regularly articles of a racial nature, together with large

portraits of the various leaders of the Third Reich . They did

not even attempt to conceal the fact that they had become tools

of the Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin . The shout of `Heil

Hitler' became a catchword which rang insolently over all Palestine.

Nevertheless, the British Foreign Secretary has persistently

informed Commons that Nazi propaganda in Palestine is not of

such a nature as to require representations to the German Government.

This is a subject which Sir Robert Vansittart's publicity

bureau has also continuously soft-pedaled .

The Mandatory's press releases, however, made much of Communist

agitation in the Holy Land, inferring by unmistakable

innuendo that this was a Jewish introduction and one of the unspoken

horrors against which patriotic Arabs were rebelling .

This was a deft trick which the Soviets returned even more

deftly. Identifying Zionism with British Imperialism, they

placed themselves in the vanguard of the pan-Arab movement .

Communist hatred of Zionism is fundamentally rooted . AcJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

431

cording to Marx, the Jews are not a nation but merely a product

and relic of an outmoded economic system . Hence a Jewish

regeneration based on its own (i.e., capitalist) values is contradictory

to the first and initial postulates of Communist theory .

Despite this ideological overgrowth, however, one may suspect

that this rancorous hostility is actuated by a more realistic reason

: Palestine as a stronghold of British Imperial interests could

by virtue of its strategic position be turned into one of the keystones

in the arch of anti-Soviet attack . The Kremlin, therefore,

not daring to attack England openly, does so by sneaking

through the back door and lambasting the Jews.

As long ago as November 15, 1926, a letter to the Palestine

Arab Executive from the Executive Committee of the Communist

Party of Great Britain offers "the wholehearted help of the

British Communist Party in the great historic mission of establishing

a united workers and peasants republic in the Near East

from Morocco to Syria . . . Great Britain," it asserts, "has

treacherously betrayed the Arabs by establishing Palestine as a

National Home for the Jewish People under an imposed British

Mandate." In Russia the Moscow Pravda roars on August 13,

1935 that "the Communist Party is building a people's front of

the entire Arab Nationalist Movement against Imperialism and

against Zionism." In 1936 the Kremlin decreed "a united front

between the local Communist Party and the Arab nationalists ."

By order of the Comintern the Palestine Communist Party was

completely Arabized.so

Sacrificing outright their social propaganda, which the Arabs

could not be expected to understand, the Palestine section of the

Communist Internationale issued the following manifesto just after

the riots erupted in 1936 : "Arabs, you have seen the open and

clear villainies of the Zionist despoilers . . . Through their despicable

methods they have managed to deprive your tribes of most of

their land and to cut you off absolutely from all means of livelihood.

But they [the Zionists] are not satisfied with establishing

their National Home on the bayonets of British Imperialism . . .

They are bringing in large quantities of arms with but one aim -

to shoot at the hearts of the Arabs, whom they seek to wipe off

432

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

the face of the earth. The Arab people have two ways open to

them. One is the road to annihilation . The other is the road

to life and honor. He who is ready to take the second road

must choose war, just as his fathers and grandfathers spilled their

blood for their fatherland . The present Strike is our opportunity.

The Communist Party joins this Strike, but demands that

it must assume revolutionary proportions, and not by sleeping at

home or sitting around coffee shops . The Strike must not end

until Jewish immigration and the sale of land to Jews will be

stopped, and until the Jews are disarmed and the Arab masses

armed!" 51

As a result of this agitation, organized Jewish labor in Palestine

almost alone in the labor world refuses to admit Communists

to its ranks, stating simply "that such people have cut themselves

off from the Jewish people." The Communist is nicknamed

Mups, a contemptuous label which even the most radical

worker resents. "In my candid opinion," wrote Senator Copeland,

"there is no more solid anti-Communist body in the world

than the four hundred thousand Jewish people in the Holy

Land." 52 Farago, on the other hand, noted that Arabs were being

strongly influenced by Communist propaganda.53 An official

of the Criminal Investigation Department asserted to Duff that

Communism is "becoming a terrible menace now. The Arab

peasants are being inoculated with the poison . . . The fellaheen

believe that a Bolshie revolution in Palestine will mean three

cows for each man, J4 a month in cash, and 2o dunams of land

apiece. On top of that the Communists will expel the Jews and

all the rich colonies will become the property of the Arab peasants."

54

However, these activities were more sinister vocally than important

in reality. The British are not kindly disposed toward

Communists, and only let them on the loose for short periods

when their inflammatory material is required to keep the pot

boiling. When the dangerous woman agitator, Regina Brodskis,

was arrested in September 1935, a storehouse of inflammatory

literature and a counterfeit seal of the High Commissioner

were found in her possession. Despite these damning facts, this

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

433

woman and her gang were released in the Spring of 1936 "for

lack of evidence." The very unusual nature of this act in itself,

plus its exact timing with the outbreaks, hardly leaves this

trouble-breeding policy open to doubt.