THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by WILLIAM B. ZIFF - Book 2

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by WILLIAM B. ZIFF - Book 1

THE MACDONALD LETTER

Once again the Bureaucrats were to find to their amazement

that they had fallen into a pit of their own digging . The Labourites,

newer to Imperial sleight-of-hand, had been too incautious

- far too obvious in their tactics .

For a few days it appeared to the Jews that this was the end -

that Zionism had been terminated . Jewish idealists who had

fought all their lives for this cause, walked down the streets of

the principal metropolises of Europe, openly weeping .

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Then a sudden revulsion struck the body of Jewry . A cry of

`shameful betrayal' arose, and rapidly gathered volume . Vitriolically

the late Lord Melchett challenged the White Paper as

"an act of almost unparalleled ingratitude and treachery . . .

towards a credulous and harassed people who believed they had

found a haven under the broad aegis of the British flag and the

guaranteed word of British statesmen ." The venerable Menachem

Ussishkin, stolid and unimaginative but one of the few

men with common sense in the Zionist leadership, was allowed

to speak his mind. "For thirteen years," he declared, "there

had been falsification . Lord Passfield . . . has spoken the truth .

England does not want us to build up Palestine . All other

statements are diplomacy, or simply lies ." Cut to the quick,

the usually moribund Jewish Agency lambasted Passfield's document

as a crude piece of dishonest writing whose purpose was

"to discredit the Jewish Agency, disparage Jewish achievements

in Palestine, and encourage the ill-disposed elements of the Arab

population."

In America, in France and in Germany, leaders of public opinion

were vying with each other in condemning the unprecedented

treachery of the Labour Government . In America, Congressman

Hamilton Fish Jr . threatened a Government inquiry

into occurrences in Palestine, pointing to the treaty which had

made the United States a legal party to the Mandate . From

South Africa, General Smuts thundered that the promise to the

Jews had "become world law" which "cannot now be varied

unilaterally by the British Government ." David Lloyd George

drily challenged the good faith of the Government by declaring

in Commons : "They dare not try to kill Zionism directly, but

they try to put it in a refrigerator ." The Jews themselves were

now aroused everywhere. In Warsaw fifty thousand paraded,

shouting imprecations against Britain . There was fierce talk of

treating the British to the same retaliation they had suffered at the

hands of the Sinn Fein movement . Far and wide the hue and cry

rose from indignant throats.

In England itself the government of the day was a minority

government and definitely unpopular. All the elder statesmen,

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143

says Sidebotham, were on the Jews' side .32 The leaders of the

Conservative and Liberal parties gleefully seized on the affair as

a mighty club to beat the Labourites over the head with . Loudly

they voiced their incensed feelings and clamored for the repeal

of this disgraceful pronouncement . Mr. Baldwin, Sir Austen

Chamberlain, with Mr. . Amery, in a joint letter complained that

the White Paper "would create in America and elsewhere a feeling

of distrust in British good faith." Such world-famous luminaries

as Lord Hailsham and Sir John Simon announced that

the Passfield document was a flagrant breach of International

Conventions, fouling the honest name of England . Gathering

strength from all quarters, the storm on the Passfield White Paper

rose to whirlwind proportions .

At this point a shrewd, courageous Jewish leadership could

have made an expeditious end to Colonial Office plotting . Fate

had laid in their laps another rare gift of chance - a situation

they could not have improved on if they had artificed it themselves,

with the Bureaucrats caught flat-footed in a position they

could neither defend at home nor abroad .

Until this time in their relations with London the Zionists had

been suppliants . They occasionally remonstrated, complained

and criticized, but never demanded. Whatever they asked, it

was always in the tone of the poor relation asking alms of his

rich kinsman. Now for the first time in London's experience

the exasperated Zionists approached the point of open rebellion .

Weitzman himself, always so submissive to blandishment or

threat, was miraculously transmuted from rabbit to lion . In

unmistakable terms he swore that the Jewish people would

never swallow this outrage, that neither he nor his colleagues

would negotiate with the British Government so long as this

infamous document continued to adorn its archives . He demanded

its unconditional removal before the Zionists would

consent to resume any relations whatsoever with the Mandatory

Power. His words were dynamite . They meant a showdown

fight with quarter neither given nor asked . To top it all he resigned

as President of the World Zionist Organization and announced

that he was calling an immediate session of the Zionist

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Congress, which alone could decide what steps were to be taken .

The air fairly crackled when two days later Felix Warburg,

head of the Jewish Agency, also resigned, charging that Passfield

had deliberately tricked him in the behind-the-scenes negotiations,

making him "the innocent vehicle of misstatements to

his colleagues of the Jewish Agency." In a rousing attack in

which the roiled banker stepped completely out of character, he

smote the British hip and thigh, making it plain that no reliance

whatsoever could be placed on the word of Passfield or the

Government he represented, and that further relations with

them were therefore hopeless .

Painfully alive to the situation, the Labour Government saw in

consternation that the affair was assuming the proportions of a

cause celebre ; and that its political opponents were hoping it

would prove the pole to tumble it from power . Prominent

Englishmen, convinced that Britain's good name had been tarnished,

were mercilessly criticizing the reports of the `Commissions'

as only meant to whitewash the criminal culpability of

Palestine officials . Lloyd George, still a powerful figure, had

stentoriously warned his nation : "We shall not reconcile the

Arabs, but we shall alienate an even more powerful race, and,

what is worse, British honour will be sullied ." The influential

London Times asserted flatly that the nation could not afford to

disregard the foul odor this matter had raised in all civilized

quarters, which could end in "a disagreeable political result and

financial consequences that might be even more unpleasant ."

The London Sunday Times, recapitulating in a fiery editorial,

wrote : "First the Jews are massacred in their National Home .

The Inquiry Commission instead of fixing the immediate responsibilities,

strays outside its terms of reference and blames the

Mandate, the Jews and everyone but the murderers . Then the

Government instead of throwing the slovenly and biased report

into the waste paper basket, proceeds to act on two of its recommendations

about immigration and land and finally proceeds to

hang up the Mandate altogether until someone else has reported."

And the Manchester Guardian solemnly declared

"No sooner have we cured the cancer o f Ireland in our internaTHE

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145

tional relations than the indecision o f MacDonald makes a worse

one of Jewry ."

Completely taken aback by the force of the storm that had

gathered, MacDonald offered to do the noble thing. As an

earnest of good intentions he held out the bait of fifteen hundred

immigration certificates .

A circumstance of grave importance now threw its shadow

over the entire proceedings . This was the emergence of the

Socialist labor organizations as a strong factor in Zionist politics.

Although definitely in the minority, they were an important

portion of the support which kept Weitzman in power .

Pressure now began quietly operating on Weitzman from the

Comrades in the Labor groups, who in turn were being highpressured

by the Second Internationale which had finally admitted

them to membership only a few months before . Leon

Blum of France and George Landsbury of England, among

others, members of the Internationale's Pro-Palestine Committee,

appealed to the Comrades in Palestine in the name of the common

solidarity . They asked them to prevent the attempt to

discredit the new Labour Government in Britain, by keeping the

White Paper from coming up for a test vote in Commons . Mac-

Donald promised, if allowed to save his face, that the situation

would be quietly righted. Completely softened up by these assurances,

the Jewish Comrades yielded . Weitzman, relieved of

the torturing conflict with his prior British patriotism, hastily

agreed.33

Friends of Zionism, and bitter opponents of the Labour regime,

waiting eagerly to crush the MacDonald Government by bringing

the affair to a test vote, gulped unbelievingly when they

were informed that Weitzman had given over his golden opportunity

in exchange for a few suave promises and fifteen hundred

immigration certificates. The Zionist Actions Committee

was informed that the scheduled congress, feared by Whitehall

because it was sure to be stormy and wildly anti-British, must be

postponed . Weitzman had reversed himself completely, and

now held out that it was necessary to `negotiate' with the English

Government . His major premise for this recommendation

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was little less than astonishing : Zionist finances were not in

good shape-therefore it were better to eschew `politics' and

concentrate on `practical' matters.

On the Actions Committee sat the Revisionists (right-wing

Zionists) and the Mizrachi (religious Zionists) . The Revisionists

raged ; the Mizrachi resigned in protest ; but the Labourites

and Weizmann's personal followers were in the majority, and

they held fast.

In return MacDonald issued a letter to the Zionists, which

later turned out to be meaningless . Known as the MacDonald

Letter, this communication promised a redefinition of the term

'landless Arabs,' now explained to refer only to such Arabs as

could be shown to have been actually displaced from lands they

formerly occupied ; to investigate what State lands could be

made available for close settlement in accordance with Article

VI of the Mandate ; to reestablish the principle of immigration

"according to economic absorptive capacity" and to allow the

Jewish Agency the right to employ all-Jewish labor on works

or undertakings of its own. It also concedes the White Paper's

error in attempting to substitute the words "Jewish inhabitants

of Palestine" for "the Jewish People" as the beneficiaries of the

Mandate, declaring "that the undertaking of the Mandate is an

undertaking to the Jewish People, and not only to the Jewish

population of Palestine ." "In order to remove certain misconceptions

and misunderstandings" about the Passfield document,

MacDonald agrees that the Mandatory's "obligation to facilitate

Jewish immigration and to encourage close settlement by the

Jews on the land, remains a positive obligation of the Mandate."

On February 13, 1931, the MacDonald Letter, approved by

Weitzman for the Zionists, was laid before Parliament, thus becoming

a State paper . Weitzman greeted this Pyrrhic victory

in the manner of a man who was distributing largesse all around .

He said : ". . . Our work will benefit the whole of Palestine,

including the Arabs, who have suffered from the general economic

crisis, as well as the Palestine Administration which for

the first time in many years now suffers from a serious deficit in

its budget."

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The Government showed its bad faith immediately . The Letter

was released on Saturday, by tradition a hint to newspapers

not to editorialize . MacDonald had ably retreated out of an

ugly situation - and had conceded little. The London politicians

breathed free again . Among others, their old rivals the

French, planning to make capital out of the incident, now had

to drop it.34

But the fire had been fanned so violently that it still smoldered.

At the following sessions of the Permanent Mandates

Commission, the Mandatory was unmercifully cross-examined .

Hastily, Dr. Drummond Shiels, the English representative, replied

that though there had been a great deal of Jewish bad

feeling before, that had all been happily settled, and a love-feast

had subsequently taken place between the Zionists and the British

Government . The now discredited Hope-Simpson Report

would be ignored and a new set of facts and figures, "ascertained

by a development authority on the spot, will be the basis

of the recommendations regarding the C2,500,000 Palestine development

scheme which the British Government is now framing."

35 Eying his interlocutors with a bland smile, Dr . Shiels

asked the Commission whether, in view of the manner in which

the Premier's Letter was received by Weitzman, he (Shiels)

needed to make any further comments on the controversy which

had proceeded.36

The Zionists were not long in finding out that official Britain

had not lost one shade of its determination to crush their movement.

Whitehall had, however, been taught its lesson and had

learned not to be too obviously precipitate . Afterwards, Officialdom

was always outwardly correct in its sympathy for

Jewish aspirations ; but it continued relentless, in a determined

pyramiding of more or less cautious artifice, seeking to break the

back of an enterprise it now cordially detested .

THE KID GLOVE HIGH COMMISSIONER

In July 1931, Lieutenant-General Arthur Grenfell Wauchope

became His Majesty's legate in Palestine, succeeding Chancellor .

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A slight man with a delicately chiseled face, Wauchope had

been the General Officer in command of North Ireland . With

him came the Black and Tans who had wreaked so much havoc

in the Emerald Isle. He was unique in not being a product of

the inflexible system of the Colonial Office .

He proved polite, shrewd, aesthetically inclined, even something

of an artist . He was the first High Commissioner whom

the Jews could even remotely understand . Sir Arthur visited

their colonies - and even expressed some interest in what was

going on. He has been known to give substantial personal gifts

to various Jewish institutions which caught his fancy .

The Jews tended to like him . The regulations passed under

his rule, clearly ear-marked as anti-Semitic measures, were usually

excused by them as proceeding from `Mohammedan pressure,'

or from the sheer inability of a gentile administrator to

get to the bottom of Jewish problems . Even when things grew

inexcusably vexatious, they still refused to credit Wauchope

with a deliberate anti-Jewish policy, and compromised by calling

him vacillating and irresolute . Yet from a practical viewpoint,

Wauchope was hardly an improvement over his predecessors.

During his regime the baleful French Report was

released. Under Sir Arthur the disastrous rebellion of 1936 -38

took place ; followed by the inevitable epilogue, a new investigating

`Commission .' This latest body finally recommended a

plan for further partitioning the country, which if it were placed

into effect, would have produced much of the same result intended

by the abortive White Paper of Lord Passfield .

It is undoubtedly true that Wauchope would infinitely have

preferred not to be a party to this epidemic of Jew-baiting had

circumstances allowed . He is, however, a loyal servant of a

system which has come to regard Zionism as dangerous to the

most precious possession of Englishmen, the Empire .

THE REPORT OF MR. FRENCH

The `expert' Dr . Shiels referred to before the Mandates Commission,

whose findings were to supersede the Hope-Simpson

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149

Report, not only used that report for his precedent, but went it

one better in every acrimonious reference to Jews . A retired

official of the Indian Civil Service, Lewis French had been sent

ostensibly on a great Zionist development scheme, one of the

concessions agreed to by the Labour Government in its private

conversations with Dr. Weitzman .

With the astuteness of long practice, French stalled for time

until the agitation over the Passfield White Paper was well over .

After a year and a half of ostentatious preparation his report was

submitted to the Arab Executive, and to the Zionists, sitting in

camera. The Zionists hit the ceiling - they had been beautifully

jobbed once more .

The report of Mr. . French consisted in the main of a compendium

of generalities against the Jews . He recommended, in

brief, the adoption of a drastic Land Transfer Ordinance completely

prohibiting land purchase by Jews. As if to show French's

comparative reasonableness, his collaborator T . C. Kipching, more

draconian still, appended an auxiliary report asserting that it was

necessary for Jews to give up what land they had already acquired

and migrate from Palestine .

Poor Wauchope, desperately trying to remain something of a

gentleman in this whirlpool of Crown politics, found the crude

dissimulations of this `Report' even more than he could stomach .

He objected . French, fuming at this `traitorous' conduct, threatened

to resign .

In London, the Jewish leaders, realizing how completely they

had been duped, were now hysterically raising the roof . Under

instructions from Downing Street the `expert,' French, grudgingly

agreed to modify his report, and finally resigned, his place

being taken by a subordinate, L . Y. Andrews." Baffling months

of parleying took place in which the worried Zionists were placated

with the usual assurances . These were inevitably passed

on to the rank and file of the movement in Weizmann's conventional

words : "The situation is satisfactory . The Government

desires faithfully to discharge its obligations in the spirit of the

Mandate."

On July 16, 1933 the French Report was finally issued . It

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placed land transfers completely under Government control . It

stated bluntly that the hill Arabs required special protection

against Jews. It elaborated tiresomely on the 'landless Arab'

question. It found the Jews rich and predatory, and piously

referred to the `displaced' Arab as "a son of the soil to be replaced

on the land of his country."

The huge `development scheme' now turned out to be a plan

to purchase citrus land for Arab settlement . Arabs were not

only to be given the land without charge, but the cost of buildings,

livestock, etc., was to be supplied by a paternal Government.

No recognition whatever was made of the fact that

Zionism was and remained a poor and struggling movement,

largely the product of the distress of the Jewish masses, of the

economic pressure forcing their migration and resettlement . At

that very moment there were over seven thousand agricultural

workers in the Holy Land employed on private plantations who

had waited from five to ten years for the chance to get a parcel

of land ; and abroad there were more than forty thousand young

men and women trained on the Zionist agricultural farms who

were waiting anxiously for the chance to locate on a bit of Palestine's

brown earth. Landless Jews, if the Government generously

permitted, would have to buy their acres at prohibitive

prices and depend on Jewish philanthropy for the rest .

Frankly interested in perpetuating the country in its undeveloped

state, French considers as `cultivated land,' areas "on

which a few score of half-starved Bedu families are at present

grazing goats and cutting reed-grass," to use his own description.

The returns of the latter `industry' have been estimated

at three to five pence per dunam per year . In regard to the

marshy Huleh area, a malarial swamp which the Jews were seeking

official permission to drain, French agreed that "settled as

Government tenants, a leavening of Jewish colonists in this tract

would tend to an acceleration of the desired development after

the marshes have been drained ." The brazenness of this observation

is probably unparalleled : the Jews are to buy the swamp,

pay for draining it, and will then be permitted to supply `a leavening'

of Government tenants in its precincts. The Arabs are

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1 5 1

to get the balance without cost. Jewish settlement on the land no

longer appears as one of the primary purposes of the Mandate,

let alone a positive obligation of the Government . It is now

merely to serve as a device, to be applied in small doses only, for

the stimulation and enlightenment of Arab agriculturists .

The French Report proposed legislation of an advanced type

scarcely conceivable outside of Russia . It sought to create a

body of peasants permanently attached to the soil and denied

freedom of movement, a scheme which the indignant Jewish

Agency describes as "an attempt to reestablish the medieval institution

of Glebae Adscriptae." 38 The directness of this subterfuge

is shown in French's recommendation that occupancy

rights be dated as of two years back, "notwithstanding that the

holding may have been since that date let to some other persons,

or may have been left unlet ." The new owner or lessee is left

without remedy or compensation, though he may have incurred

great expense in moving on the land and in improving it . This

provision, granting prescriptive rights to people who may have

left the soil, disregarding the rights of others who may have purchased

or obtained leases meanwhile, is only understandable in

light of the fact that the new holders were invariably Jews .

Another clause of this document practically fixes maximum

rentals in perpetuity, so that more attractive tenant offers to landlords

could not be made . Incensed, the Jewish Agency screwed

up its courage to declare that the purpose "of the proposed clause

is to perpetuate uneconomic use of the land and obstruct development."

In practice, acceptance of this Report would make the establishment

of new Jewish colonies a complete impossibility . The

Jews were to be put in a straight-jacket as they were in the

Russian Pale, forever condemned to be city dwellers and petty

traders.

Thus turned out the great `Palestine Development Scheme'

with which Shiels had cajoled the League's Mandates Commission

almost two years before .

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER I

JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION FOR

INTELLIGENCE

THE ZIONIST ORGANIZATION

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by WILLIAM B. ZIFF - Book 2 of 4

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER I

JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION FOR

INTELLIGENCE

THE ZIONIST ORGANIZATION

An important differentiation must be made between the Jewish

community in Palestine and the World Zionist Group which

officially has the business of repatriation in hand . The community

in Palestine is a nation in embryo, pulsating with new

life. In striking contrast, the Zionist Organization of the World

consists of a loosely knit group of autonomous federations, one

for each country . Any Jew may become a voting member

by the simple procedure of purchasing a shekel (at a cost of

about 50¢), which constitutes his token of membership . The

very circumstances which separate Zionism from the everyday

affairs of life in the various countries of the Diaspora, lend

an air of unreality and philanthropy to the movement . This

nebulousness is amply reflected in the deliberations of its various

branches, and in the vitiated case presented by its spokesmen

in Geneva and London .

Jews have a reputation for expert organizing ability and for

shrewd reasoning, but none of these qualities are evident in the

structure of the Zionist federations . Their business is handled

in the main by magnificent orators whose political conceptions

are limited to the viewpoint of platform lecturers ; and their sessions

are apt to result in mere acrimonious debates between men

who are more scholarly than practical. The fervent support of

many millions of Jews whose only hope lies in Zion has given

this organization infinite possibilities for potency and strength ;

but this latent power has been almost completely wasted by a

group of pedantic spokesmen who obstinately regard all creation

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JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION

153

as if it could be cut to the pattern of a book . The principal concern

of the American Zionist Organization, for example, is to raise

money for the upkeep of its considerable staff of officeholders,

plus the question of whether a Rabbi Goldman is to be president

or a Rabbi Goldstein is to be president . At a four day convention

held in Providence, in July 1936, during the worst crisis

that Jewry has experienced in five hundred years, the sum total

of its labors was the announcement of a campaign to plant 100,000

trees in the Holy Land, and a resolution voicing confidence in

the Zionist President, Weitzman .

The Zionists maintain a London Executive and a Palestine

Executive who mainly specialize in sending learned memoranda

to the British Government and the League of Nations . With

these executive bodies is affiliated still another politically impotent

appendage, the Jewish Agency . Article IV of the Mandate

solemnly provides that the Jewish Agency "shall be recognized

as a public body for the purpose of advising and cooperating

with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social

and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish

National Home." On paper it has all the prerogatives of a

chartered colonizing body, instructed to "take steps in consultation

with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the cooperation

of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment

of the National Home ." The British have, however, reduced its

powers to a collective zero. Caught in the same web of strange

infatuation which has ruled Zionism's dominant leaders, the

Agency, too, relegates politics to the background as unimportant

child's-play . The present Jewish Agency is the result of long

negotiations conducted by Weitzman with certain wealthy non-

Zionists, in the hope of inducting the moneybags of the latter into

an enlarged circuit of operations .' The inclusion of non-Zionists

in this vitally important body was the outcome of the ruinous conception

that economic and cultural interests were the sole levers

capable of raising the Jewish edifice in Palestine . The moneybags,

like moneybags the world over, proved obstinate and hardheaded.

They were willing to offer plenty of sage advice but

kept their checkbooks under lock and key . Outside of their

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accustomed spheres these men proved so inept as to practically

paralyze the Jewish Agency as a political instrument .

From a non-political viewpoint the Jewish Agency has been

extremely successful. It is conscientious, thorough and efficient,

maintains fine statistical and research units, and is usually better

informed regarding economic trends and possibilities than are the

corresponding agencies of the British Administration .

The identical differences of opinion and conflicts of ideology

which are shaking the foundations of society everywhere, are

also evident throughout Zionist ranks . The differences between

Zionist factions are sharp, accentuated by the unhealthy position

the Jew occupies in relation to his environment in Europe . The

same pressures which are creating social conflicts in all countries,

are seen by this doubly harassed people through a magnifying glass .

These irreconcilable groups fall into the usual two camps .

The first, interpreting history in terms of applied Marxian economics,

considers that the course of action lies solely in a Socialist

settlement scheme . What reason, its proponents argue, to

carve out a new unit on the earth's surface if not for the realization

of Socialism . This group, necessarily dualistic, regards all

nationalism with suspicion, and wants a bi-national cooperative

State to include the Arabs . Here are to be found the Zionist

Labor parties, of various degrees of red and pink, known as the

Poale Zion and the Left Poale Zion . They have surrounded

themselves with the same Marxist slogans which proved so hopelessly

inadequate in Germany and Austria . Their literature talks

provocatively of the struggling Palestine industrialists as "an aggressive

capitalist class which strives . . . to create profits out of

the sweat and blood of the `lower classes ."'

They make a considerable effort to instruct their `Arab comrades'

in the mechanics of class-struggle . It is they who have

taught the Arabs the catch-phrases and strike technique which

has been used so successfully against the Jewish National Home ;

and invariably it was these same favored Arabs who led in the

attacks against the Jews themselves .l8 The kind of irresponsible

demagoguery frightened British imperialists were greeted

with can be seen in the deliberations of the First Workers World

JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION

155

Congress. Here the radical leader, Joseph Sprinzak, stated that

participation of Jewish Labor in the Zionist Organization did not

mean a coalition with the bourgeoisie, but "only with the Jewish

workers," a declaration bettered by the Left Poale Zion who asserted

that any cooperation with the Zionist bourgeoisie was

"treason." 2

All the leftist groups possess the traditional Marxist contempt

for religion in any form, and as a result suffer the ineradicable

animosity of the religious elements, who accuse them of trying

to "substitute the religion of Marx" for the fundamental principles

of Judaism .

The opposing camp of Zionist theoreticians suspects what

Herzl also suspected-that if Zionism did not early attain political

control under an assured Jewish majority, all economic

and cultural efforts would finally end in the same ruin which

overwhelmed the Jewish cultural centers in Spain and Lithuania.

They point out that the Laborites tend to be `separatists'

in everything, with their own schools, special theaters,

sports-organizations, and even their own hymn instead of the

Jewish national song, the Hatikvah, thus splitting the weak and

dispersed nation throughout the world as well as its minority in

the Holy Land.

The Nationalists insist on a monist course of action aimed

solely at recreating the Jewish State, emphasizing that in a

modern world the old distinctions between economics and politics

have largely disappeared . They fear that the system of

compromising politics followed by the Labor camp must end

in the doubtful ideal of a Jewish community in an Arab land,

satisfactory to the Marxist mind as long as that ideal is Socialistic.

They assert that during the period of national colonization,

class-struggle is a double misfortune-that it is logically

impossible to call the nation "to unite for the purpose of building

a Fatherland, and simultaneously split and crumble it into

hating and babbling classes. . ." They demand compulsory arbitration

in all labor disputes. In their ranks may be found all

shades of right-wing opinion . Their chief strength lies in

Eastern Europe where they represent the strongest and most

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vital hope among the younger Jews. Giving these stifled

youngsters an outlet to their emotions and creative energies,

Jewish nationalism has unquestionably saved them from the

calamity of Communism .

Consisting mainly of Mr. . Jabotinsky's Revisionists, the rightwingers

demand an emphasis on state diplomacy which recognizes

the extent and pressure of the existing Jewish problem,

"perceiving the aim of Zionism to be a complete and final solution

of the Jewish world-problem in all its aspects ." It demands

an orderly mass migration to relieve the intense pressure

which is crushing the Jewish communities in the Diaspora.

This, it asserts vigorously, is a State function requiring the active

intervention of the State Power, as contrasted to the present

desultory efforts provided by private enterprise and charity .

Revisionism also holds uncompromisingly to a demand for

restoration of the stolen area of Trans-Jordan .

Jabotinsky's external policy is founded on the belief that

Zionism is providential for the solution of British problems in

the East, making the Jewish State London's natural ally . He

points out that all British strongholds from India to the Nile are

inhabited by a solid Mohammedan bloc, intrinsically unstable

and hostile to European penetration. Should Palestine remain

Arab the British must at some future date be thrown bodily

out of the Near East . A Jewish Palestine, on the other hand,

located as an island in this grinding Mohammedan sea, would,

notwithstanding the uncertainties of future politics, be forced

to rely on permanent alliance with Great Britain.

Suffering like the other Zionist leaders from an incurable

Anglophilia, Jabotinsky has offered Jewish Legions from Poland

and elsewhere to police Palestine, or the whole near East if required.

In return the Bureaucrats treat both him and his movement

with surly dislike . Jabotinsky himself is prohibited from

setting foot in Palestine .

The Revisionists, however, do not hesitate at times to damn

British policy with refreshing directness . Whitehall, now knowing

how to evaluate their future strength, unquestionably fears

them.

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157

Also moderately right-wing are the orthodox religious Zionists,

the Mizrachi . Its members may be identified by their long

black coats, curly side-locks, and general inoffensive demeanor.

Mizrachi is capable, when aroused, of common sense and unbending

courage, but it is not aroused often . Among the rightwingers

also is the Jewish State Party, a small group to all

intents and purposes identical with Jabotinsky's group in policy .

In the Center, between all these violently contending factions,

lies the General Zionist group, itself split into factions `A' and

`B,' dependent on whether they lean to the right or the left, respectively.

The General Zionists allege to be Liberals and pure

followers of Herzl . From their ranks are drawn Weitzman,

Wise, Ussishkin, Lipsky and most of the other recognized leaders

of the Zionist world movement . In actual practice they invariably

tend toward simple opportunism, leaning toward the policies

of the party holding the deciding vote at Zionist conventions .

Their political philosophy has been marked by continuous compromise,

retreat and hope .

Tied to the fortunes of these struggling factions in Palestine

are two labor organizations who manage to hate each other with

a bitter detestation not surpassed anywhere .

The required sums for running the somewhat complicated

Zionist machinery are raised by a unique method of self-taxation,

and a system of unctuous levying on the rich, called by the

Jews 'schnorring .' So dependent have the mechanics of Zionist

activity become on these necessary contributions that suspicion

may well be entertained that the major policy of the Zionist

Organization has degenerated into a promotion scheme for the

raising of these vital moneys ; that in short, the tail now wags

the dog . The most important of these organized endowments

are the Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund) and the Keren

Hayesod (Palestine Foundation Fund) . The Revisionists have

their own machinery, the Keren Tel Chai .

This imperative need for money to feed a gradually gathered

army of officeholders appears to dictate much that is otherwise

inexplicable in Zionist policy . The basis of such a precarious

system of revenue is a continuous and increasing tempo of bally158

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

hoo. Booklets must be issued replete with stories of amazing

achievement, leading to the inference that all is going swimmingly

and that these superb successes are only limited by a

regrettable inadequacy of private contributions . The poignant

realization that their revenue is dependent largely on an unceasing

relation of `triumphs' to hard-headed Jews who want

to see value for their money, is the nightmare of Zionist existence,

turning everything they undertake into an operation distinguished

mostly by its ballyhoo. As a net result, the Zionists'

political policy is for all practical purposes bankrupt, since they

may not dare risk puncturing the beautiful bubbles which they

themselves have blown over so many years .

Up to May 1935 the two biggest Zionist funds had collected

a total of jJ 9,400,ooo between them . Despite self-adulatory

publicity, up to that date the land settlement schemes of the two

Kerens had only succeeded in placing a total of 2800 families

on the soil . Effectually prevented by British-fashioned ordinances

from carrying out their ambitious colonization plans, the

Zionist Funds have gone in heavily for such luxuries as grants

to the Hebrew University and the establishment of national libraries.

They have also allowed themselves to be euchred into

subsidizing public health and educational institutions, while the

less obliging Arabs have these identical services paid for out of

the public tax moneys . This whole collapse of healthy function

is strongly intimated in the resignation of Isadore D . Morrison

from the Board of Directors of the Keren Hayesod and The

United Palestine Appeal Board in November 1937 . Charging

"mismanagement, waste, extravagance and misinformation to the

public" in the administration of these funds, he accused the official

Zionist Organizations of having degenerated into mere propaganda

bodies which had long outlived their usefulness .

Not included in the official Zionist bodies is the Agudath

Israel, an ultra-orthodox group who consider women's suffrage

an outrage against God, and Zionism itself a heretical movement.

They believe that when the Almighty is ready he will

send down a messiah who will miraculously lead the way to the

JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION

1 59

Promised Land without political intervention . The unworldly,

wraith-like fanaticism of Agudath Israel has to be seen to be

appreciated . A typical tidbit is the cherem (bull of excommunication)

pronounced on the all-Jewish city of Tel Aviv,

forbidding the Faithful from setting foot there during the gay

merry-making which marks the annual Purim festival . Agudath

Israel is completely persona grata with the Colonial Office, who

see in its zealous messianism the kind of Jew who will give them

no political difficulty.

THE PALESTINE DREYFUS CASE

It was not long before the war between the Zionist factions

degenerated into a wild fracas of words, slander and bricks .

Like the French revolutionist, Carrier, who said "we will make

a graveyard of France rather than fail to regenerate her in our

own way," the leftists were determined to brook no opposition

to their scheme for a cooperative commonwealth. The worst

epithet they could give mouth to was the word `Fascist,' which

they applied to the Hebrew nationalists as if the latter were

predatory wolves . Comically enough, when the `Left' Poale

Zion seceded from the parent body in 1931 it did not hesitate to

denounce its erstwhile Socialist comrades as `Fascist' in turn .

Bad feeling between these rival groups finally ended in wild

physical attacks, in which Revisionist meetings were stormed

with rocks and tear gas bombs . According to Professor Klausner

of Hebrew University, there was not a hospital in the Holy

Land that did not house a Revisionist wounded by leftists .

When thirty Revisionists were injured in Haifa in an assault on

one of their halls, it proved too much even for the Jewish

Agency which on October 23, 1934 declared itself "outraged

by the brutal attacks which were poisoning the atmosphere of

Palestine."

Delighted at this opportunity to smash Jewish nationalism

with the help of Jews, the Government took a hand in the persecutions.

Revisionists, treated as common criminals, were sentenced

to penal servitude, their homes raided and their papers

16o

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

suspended. Its meetings suppressed as dangerous revolutionary

activity, the besmirched and harassed party was for a time practically

driven underground .

In the inner business of Zionist politics the Revisionists had

constituted themselves the opposition to the policy of retreat

initiated by Weitzman and the Zionist Executive . This brought

the Executive down on their heads like a swarm of hornets,

throwing it directly into the laps of the Laborites. A campaign

of slander and repressions followed . Feeling against the Revisionists

rose to a fever pitch, as may be seen from the assertion

by the American Zionist boss, Louis Lipsky, that "a party

which makes disloyalty and violation of discipline a political

principle, which educates its youth to imitation of Hitler organization

methods . . . cannot expect to find place or countenance

within a movement like Zionism ." 3

Here was a unique alliance : the Jewish leftists who hated

the capitalist system and British Imperialism alike ; the Jewish

Agency capitalists who automatically detested leftists and who

could not avoid recognizing British persecution of their cause ;

and the Whitehall bureaucrats who looked on Zionists in general

with distaste and on leftists in the Near East with dread .

All of these regarded as their main enemy in the Palestine sector,

the struggling Revisionist Party .

In this atmosphere of violence and incitement a prominent

left-wing leader, Chaim Arlosoroff, was murdered while walking

with his wife on the beach near Tel Aviv .

Arlosoroff stood for everything the Revisionists were against .

He was an ardent advocate of class war . As a member of the

World Zionist Executive in charge of political affairs, he established

a policy of truckling to British pressure, denied that Palestine

officials were anti-Zionist, and praised Wauchope in unbounded

terms as a genius who really understood the needs of

Palestine. A few weeks before, he had threatened in a letter to

The New Way, Yiddish Zionist organ in Czechoslovakia, that

if the Revisionists ever came into power, Labor Palestine would

carry the fight to the streets and would make a bloody civil war

of it (June io, 1933) .

JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION

161

The murder took place at night in an isolated spot. An appalling

number of European women had suffered rape at Arab

hands, and at first it was assumed that this was a companion

piece to that stream of outrages . Arlosoroff, dying in Hadassah

Hospital, stated that his assailants were unknown to him and

that he was quite certain they were not Jews .

None of this deterred the Labor press from immediately setting

up the charge that here was a political murder . Wildly

they demanded blood revenge . In charge of the investigation

was Captain Harry Rice (Deputy Inspector General of Police),

who got busy at once . He promptly arrested a young Revisionist

named Stavsky .

Stavsky was a stout blond youth of handsome appearance

who had been in the country some three months. His whereabouts

during the time of the murder was amply established by

a score of creditable witnesses, but Mrs . Arlosoroff promptly

identified him as the companion of the man who had fired the

shots. Immediately after, a Revisionist boy named Mintz was

taken into custody, as were two Arabs named Mejid and Lufti.

The state's case was completed with the apprehension of Zvi

Rosenblatt, a young nationalist who was also conveniently

identified by Mrs . Arlosoroff as the man who committed the

actual murder.

Determined to make a clean sweep of the Revisionists, the

Administration ordered a mass arrest of their leaders and held

them without bail, accused of `sedition.' In the formal charges

they were alleged to be part of an organization aiming "to raise

discontent among the inhabitants of Palestine" and "to promote

hostility between different sections of the population ." One

of the supposed "terroristic acts" was the removal of the swastika

flag from the German Consulate Building in Jerusalem by

three of the defendants . Another was an obscure reference in

a confiscated letter to "a certain Jew in Jerusalem whose ideology

rings true and lives within our conscience ." Defense attorney

Cohen protested unavailingly that there was nothing in

this mention of Jesus Christ that could in good sense be construed

as operating against the public peace.

162

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Among those arrested was a prominent editor named Yevin,

and Aba Achimeir, who was accused of being the intellectual

author of the murder . Achimeir, idol of the extreme nationalists,

was of the new type of Hebrew patriot, rigid, incorruptible,

and single-minded to the point of rhapsody . Slim and

courtly, with black ringlets hanging over a high, pale forehead,

he looked like a figure from one of El Greco's canvases .

Palestine was in a turmoil . In an atmosphere inflamed with

libel and violence, the accused were placed on trial for their

lives . As the trial opened, Achimeir was cleared of complicity

in the murder . Collusion between police and Government witnesses

was clearly proven. Evidence was shown to have been

deliberately falsified . Its case against him having collapsed so

hopelessly, the Government ordered Achimeir's release . This

was on May 16, 1934. On May 17, he was promptly rearrested,

charged with leading a "terrorist Revisionist Organization," and

held incommunicado in Acre Prison .

The boy, Yehuda Mintz, who had been identified by Mrs.

Arlosoroff, was also suddenly freed, without explanation, leaving

Rosenblatt and Stavsky in the dock . At the trial, Mrs.

Arlosoroff, caught in a mass of self-contradictions, was accused

by innumerable witnesses of lying . The Government's own

witnesses, insufficiently drilled in their role, made it manifest

that the accused could not have killed Arlosoroff. It was shown

that at the time he was supposed to have committed the murder

Rosenblatt was one of the main speakers at a mass meeting in

another city . More grimly amusing still was the peculiar position

of Captain Rice in refuting the confession of the Arab,

Mejid, who had admitted to the murder with rape as the motive .

In an action unprecedented in modern jurisprudence, Rice took

the stand to swear to Mejid's innocence, and refused pointblank

to call witnesses in regard to the Arab's confession .

On June io, 1934, in one of the most amazing decisions ever

rendered, Stavsky, whom a flood of testimony had placed elsewhere

at the time of the murder, was sentenced to hang . In

the indictment, he had been accused of holding the flashlight

while Rosenblatt did the actual killing . Rosenblatt who had

JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION

163

been addressing a public meeting at the time of the murder, was

acquitted - yet the co-accused Stavsky was convicted . Said the

doomed man on hearing the sentence : "This is a conspiracy by

the Jewish Labor Party and the Palestine Government against

me. I am totally innocent ."

An immediate censorship was put on the Jewish press restraining

it under peril of confiscation from calling attention to

the patent absurdity of the verdict. Three Hebrew newspapers

were stopped and their owners heavily fined for commenting

on the case as a miscarriage of justice.

Vindictively the Poale-Zion-Zeire-Zion (United Jewish Socialist

Workers Party) issued a statement applauding the verdict,

saying that "nothing could serve so well to clear the atmosphere

in our political life." It asserted that "the foundations of British

judicial institutions . . . leave no ground for doubt as to the

impartiality and legal regularity of the trial ." Despite this vote

of confidence, Joseph F . Broadhurst, Assistant Inspector General

of Police, was later to admit that "there was practically no evidence"

against the accused .4

The Laborites were making all the capital they could out of

this tragic situation, the first time a Jew had been on trial for the

murder of a Jew in the modern history of Palestine . In their

publicity they referred to the Revisionists as a party of murderers.

The Eighteenth World Jewish Congress, instead of occupying

itself with problems connected with British perfidy,

ridiculously voted to send a commission to Palestine to investigate

the alleged use of violence and terroristic methods by the

Revisionist group . The Laborites, by an adroit campaign of

slander only comparable to the scheming by which the German

Nazis used the burning of the Reichstag to corral a huge sympathy

vote, controlled the convention with almost forty-five

percent of the ballots .

Weitzman, mild-mannered to Jewish enemies, had a fierce

side when he faced Jews . He refused to return to the leadership

or even to come to the Congress, reputedly because the

Revisionists had not been expelled .

In the meanwhile the pot, which had only been simmering,

164

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

began to boil. Of the four judges who sat on the case, only

one was Jewish, and he alone had voted for acquittal. Now

this Jewish judge, venerable Moshe Valero, braved the wrath of

the gods and issued a strongly couched statement showing the

virtual impossibility of Stavsky's guilt . Chief Rabbi HaCohen

Kook, beloved Palestine leader, wrote a personal appeal to world

Jewry asking for aid in this flagrant miscarriage of justice .

With ferocious ardor the Labor groups leaped to the defense

of their kill . All over Palestine on the walls of houses and

synagogues, slogans were daubed in red paint, reading, "Pity

the nation whose priests protect murderers ." Labor groups

met and condemned in violent language the attempts to clear

Stavsky.

The question agitated the entire Jewish world, which soon

became convinced that an innocent man had been railroaded to

the death cell for the sake of political expediency . In London

the famous Scotland Yard Inspector Charles Leach took the classic

part that Zola had held in the Dreyfus case of a generation past.

His sharp and biting report was a masterpiece of its kind . The

pressure became so great that the British Government could not

ignore it - the trial was reopened .

Shrewd and capable Horace Samuel was now the defense attorney

. He pointed out, among other things, the renewed confession

of the Arab, Mejid, and demanded that the police records

be made public . Again Captain Rice mysteriously refused .

Evidence showing that the leftists had exploited the murder for

political purposes in the 1933 election and that they had, together

with the Jewish Agency, assisted the prosecution in securing

the conviction of Stavsky as a political measure, was excluded

. Even then the proof of collusion was so patent that the

Palestine Court of Appeals had no other recourse than to free

the condemned man . He had been in prison a year and walked

out with his hair snow white .

The Marxists showed their joy over the verdict by stoning

the synagogue in which Stavsky and Rosenblatt were worshiping.

Davar, Laborite mouthpiece, followed up an official leftist

manifesto by declaring that the two men remained murderers.

JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION

165

Things rapidly came to the point where Stavsky and Rosenblatt

were warned by the Tel Aviv police to leave the city as

their lives were in danger and the police could not be responsible

for their safety .

Cheated out of its sacrificial victim, the Government was determined

to have its revenge . It hounded all witnesses for

Stavsky . An example is the almost immediate deportation of

the widow Becherev and her two children, who had aided in establishing

the accused's alibi . Its displeasure against Jewish nationalists

in general showed no signs of diminishing . It found

Achimeir and the other Revisionist leaders guilty of sedition and

sentenced them to twenty-one months at hard labor . On December

30, 1934 this Government which knew how to punish

Jews while Arabs murdered and revolted with impunity, announced

that it had revoked the citizenship of Yevin and Achimier,

making them men without a country. This new formidable

threat in a world where no nation wanted Jews, was held as

a terrible club over the head of all those who believed that the

Palestine Mandate envisioned the formation of a Jewish State .

LABOR DICTATORSHIP

Until the time of the Arlosoroff murder, the Revisionists had

been gaining ground so rapidly as to make it appear that their

ultimate control of the Zionist Organization was inevitable.

Under cover of the delirious charges and counter-charges growing

out of the Stavsky affair, the Laborites, possessing by far the

best equipped publicity machine, had succeeded in discrediting

their enemies as a band of ruffians and murderers . By a series of

admirable maneuvers and coalitions, the technique of which they

had learned in the traditional Marxian schools of Europe, they

succeeded, though still a minority in the Convention, in excluding

the Revisionists entirely from participation in Zionist affairs .

Expertly organized, and using the General Zionists as a front so

as to keep the Mizrachi from bolting harness, they took control .

Anchored in the seat of power, with the Organization's established

income at their disposal, they became almost impossible

166

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

to dislodge . Ironically, Laborite activities were now directly

subsidized by donations from the same middle class Zionists all

over the world whom leftist party platforms had sworn to destroy.

The Revisionists found themselves virtually outlawed . Jews

who had always been the persecuted now learned the business of

persecution. For the mere matter of his `ideology,' a youth belonging

to the Jabotinsky faction was to find himself completely

shut off from the possibility of obtaining a visa to Palestine . In

the Diaspora all Zionist activities, except those directly connected

with his party, were closed to him . Hatred grew to

irremediable proportions . The Laborites, nicely in the saddle,

perpetuated the idea, with Zionist funds, that Jabotinsky's men

were a degraded lot of "un-Jewish bastards" who had found

their god in Hitler. The persecuted Revisionists were not backward

in referring to their opponents with heart-felt passion as

`vermin.' Denied participation in Zionist affairs, they went

ahead on their own, issuing their own memoranda to the British

and the League of Nations and collecting their own funds. Infuriated,

the Laborites set up a virtuous wail of `sabotage' and

`secession.' Jews who were letting British bureaucrats tread on

them as if they were worms, now fought Jews with an obduracy

that neither gave quarter nor asked it .

The Zionist rulers set an ironclad dictatorship in operation for

better purposes of the battle. Like the Confessional Churches

in Nazi Germany, the Revisionists found themselves in a box .

Any utterance contrary to the ruling fiction that "unbelievable

progress was being made in Palestine" was treated as rank heresy.

The American, Dr . Stephen S. Wise, resigned from the

Administrative and Executive Committees of the Zionist Organization,

assailing the "absolutist regime in Zionist affairs ."

Shouting all the slogans of democracy, the Zionist leadership

proceeded to place in effect a rigid censorship of all news and

utterances . When the only existing Jewish news service offended

them, they entered the news business with funds of

the Jewish Agency. Leading Yiddish newspapers were handed

simple subsidies with the gentleman's understanding that they

JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION

167

would publish no news unfavorable to their patrons . (The important

Yiddische Tageblatt of Poland accused the Zionist Executive

in June 1936, of trying to "imitate the tone of certain

great powers" in its attempt to censor news on the Palestine disorders.)

In January of 1933 the Revisionists had been formally tried

by a Congress Court for the alleged crime of having discussed

Zionist affairs with the Polish Foreign Minister Beck, with the

result that the entire Revisionist Union was ordered suspended

from membership in the Zionist Organization . On July 26,

1933 the recognized leftist Fuehrer, Ben Gurion, laid down

the dictum that "we shall under no circumstances collaborate

with a party of strike-breakers and anti-labor agitators ." On

March 9, 1 934 the Zionist Executive issued a communique announcing

that the Revisionist Party would henceforth be regarded

as dissolved and non-existent. It declares that no Zionist

group is to be regarded as the Revisionist Sonderverbund, or

to style itself so, and asserts that the World Revisionist Party is

outlawed from the Zionist Organization and has no legal status

within that organization or any of its affiliated bodies . On February

6, 1935, not satisfied by declaring the Revisionists nonexistent,

the Executive placed a cherem (ban) on the Revisionist

Fund, the Keren Tel Chai, ludicrously ordering Jews not

to donate any money to it . In 1935 they also incorporated a

provision in reference to the purchase of the shekel which by its

very nature automatically excluded Revisionists.

In the meanwhile, sensing that all this was beginning to make

a bad impression on Jews all around, the Zionist hierarchy had

made a sudden attempt to compromise the situation . Ben Gurion,

speaking for the Executive, agreed to act with Jabotinsky

to end the inter-party strife . Conventions were arrived at and

signed outlawing all acts of violence, libel or slander . Both

parties undertook to discipline their membership on pain of

permanent expulsion . The Revisionist Union promptly ratified

the act of their leader by a plebiscite . The Laborites, however,

wanted no `peace' with the hated bourgeoisie represented by the

Revisionists. After one of the most vituperative campaigns in

168

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Zionist history, they voted two to one to repudiate Ben Gurion's

signature .

A few months later the provoked Revisionists went through

the motions of resigning from a body which had already all but

thrown them out, and with some other dissident factions formed

the New Zionist Organization . At a great plebiscite which was

to determine the form and content of the new organization, some

750,000 votes were cast - the largest number of ballots ever

voted by Jews on a purely Jewish matter since the days of the

Dispersion . The foundation congress held in Vienna during

the Fall of 1935 was a jubilant and hysterical affair . Jabotinsky's

strategy was to isolate the left-wingers and leave them

hopelessly stranded with their catechisms on the coming Utopia .

But the leftists were no fools : they swiftly compromised with

middle-of-the-road elements who, delighted with the concessions

made to them, decided to remain with the old organization.

Revisionist tactics were also, in part at least, based on the assumption

that Whitehall's known antipathy for Socialists did

not cloak a stronger anti-Semitism underneath . They believed

that the Bureaucrats would welcome their action, as a sensible

piece of Empire strategy . This was from the start a grave misconception

. The Bureaucrats preferred Zionism in the hands

of the most radical Socialists in order to have the better excuse

to lobby against it at home . So the New Zionist Organization,

instead of being welcomed as a happy windfall for the Empire,

was quite competently ignored .

REIGNING ZIONIST PERSONALITIES

No Bill of Rights ever penned can remake overnight the mental

approach of a people whose mind has been ground down by

half a dozen centuries of abject horror . The memory of these

cruel generations left its stamp indelibly on the Jewish spokesmen

who took over the helm of the movement after Herzl's

.death . Invariably they were graduates of the Yeshiva atmosphere

of the Russian Pale .

JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION

169

The circumstances by which they literally fell into leadership

were simple . The great mass of Jewry was busy in the

practical affairs of day-to-day existence . The Socialists, Liberals

and Conservatives kept themselves coolly aloof . The pro-

Zionists, engrossed in their own occupations, were content to

show their sympathy by the donation of funds or by occasional

participation at rallies and meetings . It was a small group of

impassioned scholastics, who had made Zionism a profession all

their lives, who took over the actual machinery of operation.

When the collapse of humanism in post-war Europe endowed

the movement with immediate, critical importance as a political

reality, these men still further intrenched themselves . They

controlled the Zionist income and sources of propaganda . The

great bulk of stunned, ruined Jews were now little more than

fleeing outcasts, trying desperately to extricate their individual

lives from the horrible quagmire in which they found themselves

caught. Artfully the career-Zionists parried their opposition,

contending that any attempt to wash dirty linen publicly during

this precarious period was downright mischievous .

It is only in the light of these circumstances that one can

understand the retention of a group of leaders whose muddled

policies have brought the Zionist movement so close to disaster .

The procedure of these men was from first to last a tragic comedy

of errors . With few exceptions they were brilliant intellectually,

kindly and idealistic. Completely misunderstanding

human motivation, they regarded force of any kind as

barbarian . They were masters of hair-splitting disputation, unmatched

for pure decency of conception, but more useful in

legal briefs than in the serious business of repatriating a nation.

The most influential of them had adopted British nationality,

which under the circumstance of any conflict of interests

brought them up squarely against the question of their prior

patriotism to England .

More fatal still, they lacked the fierce aggressive spirit, the

shrewd realism, which the struggle for national existence demands.

In their minds was ever the idyllic vision of a unique

cultural community, taking precedence over questions of sov170

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

ereign political rule . This completely irrational conception,

springing from the brain of the obstinate scholastic, Achad

Ha'am, served to create an ecstatic polity in which reality could

at no time be dissevered from metaphor and rhetoric . At times

their learned dogmatism lapsed into sheer nonsense, as witness

Rabbi Freehof's declaration that Herzl's Jewish State was not a

State of armies, navies and political schemes, but the embodiment

of "a Jewish civilization in Palestine ." 5 Responsible Zionist

leaders even declared they did not care about politics - their

concern was "with a culture ." Like all intense men, infatuated

with the logic of their own pedantry, they could not understand

in what they were remiss. Co-workers who spoke realistically

were looked down upon as firebrands, radical, uninspired,

or simply reactionary .

Throughout they pursued a course of self-justification in

which their noble theories had an important part . It was they

who first enunciated the conception of duty owed the benighted

local population, later to be transformed into fundamentals of

British policy. With the complication of left wing intrusion

into the movement, shrewd efforts at national self-sufficiency

were left still further behind .

Certainly the Zionist leaders were no match for clever British

bureaucrats, trained in the business of extracting every ounce

of value from every possible situation. Time after time they

missed their chance ; when the Irish were fighting a successful

Sinn Fein, when Mussolini offered his hand in friendship, when

the French turned to them, and when the Arabs themselves

offered peace on an anti-British basis . Far from following a

strategy of resistance, they actually went to the opposite extreme.

Bulwarking their own weaknesses by an intensive propaganda

directed to their fellow Jews, they went to the point of

publicly praising the very British administrators who were conspiring

against them . The influential English Zionists especially,

denounced in grandiloquent sarcasm any attempt to question the

good faith of England, and sabotaged all efforts to bring the

Jewish case to the English public itself.

There were some among the Zionist leaders, such as JabotinJEWS

HAVE A REPUTATION

171

sky, Ussishkin, and Dr. Eder, who fought this policy bitterly in

the inner councils of the movement . Eder for example boldly

told the Court of Inquiry, following the Jaffa disturbances of

1921, that "there can be only one National Home in Palestine,

and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between

Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish preponderance as soon as

the numbers of the race are sufficiently increased ." But these

men were by one artifice or another squeezed out of any position

of real power .

The most influential of all the Zionist personages is the President

of the World Zionist Organization, Dr . Chaim Weitzman .

Weitzman was born in Motele, Russia, in 1874, and was reared

in an atmosphere of poverty, piety and learning . A devoted

follower of Achad Ha'am, he was one of the founders of the

`democratic faction,' a group which stressed the cultural aspects

of Zionism as contrasted to the political demands which were always

paramount with Herzl. During this early period he was

consequently ranged on the side of Herzl's bitterest critics .

Weitzman is bald, but not unhandsome . His bearing is mild

and thoughtful, but intense, brooding eyes lend fire to his personality.

He has made himself into a great chemist by his own

efforts and possesses a warm personal charm together with impeccable

manners .

He is a marvelous money-raiser, capable of button-holing a

prospect and turning on the full stream of his great charm, to

leave the interview with a check in his pocket . He has always

followed the path of least resistance, and early tied up his political

fortunes with those of the Laborites when it appeared that

their star was in the ascendant . He is a master of the technique

of demagoguery, capable of convincingly blotting out his own

failures with such statements as "we will show the world that

Jewish idealism can bring forth a civilization as noble and fructifying

as any which history has known."

Considering the unfettered criticism leveled at him by his

peers for "a leadership that has proven itself a failure and is

bankrupt in all fields of its activity," 6 he has managed to maintain

an almost mesmeric hold over the Zionist Organization .

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Part of this technique of control is the assertion to uneasy Jews

that "England will deal only with Weitzman ."

He is almost pathologically amenable to British importuning .

At a World Congress in 1931, after Dr . Stephen S. Wise had

called attention to London's betrayal of Zionist interests, Weitzman

made this remarkable statement : "I disassociate myself

from and protest against both the form and contents of Wise's

speech . . . but I wish to remind the British reader of Dr .

Wise's speech that Dr . Wise is a champion of the British cause

in America, rendering great service to Great Britain." 7 After

having been rejected at that Congress in favor of a new leadership,

he declared to the Laborites who had followed him staunch

to the end, tears streaming down his beard : "The last hour before

my departure, I wish to spend with those who fought for

the pure and only Zionism, heroically opposing the dark forces

of the Congress [the nationalists] . . . I still believe that the

Balfour Declaration was only a war gain and by its gravity it

was bound to sink . . . I believe that you and I are two creative

forces in Zionism ."

At another Congress he answered Zionists who had charged

Britain with sabotaging their movement, by advising them that

"our task is to cause a minimum of embarrassment to the Mandatory

power. . . It is our delicate task to present the wishes of

the Zionist movement to the Mandatory power, not demanding

but interpreting."

In this almost bizarre description of the head of a political

movement, Weizmann's henchman Louis Lipsky says : "He

staked his leadership upon his faith in Great Britain . Often, he

took upon himself the defense of its policies, with disastrous results

to his influence in the movement . With a certain perversity

derived from his dialectical experience in the Yeshiva, he

would take up the case for Great Britain at a time when it was

entitled to no such advocacy on his part ." 8 In an almost classic

statement coming from a political leader, Weitzman extenuated

British persecution of his own people in the following words

"On the British side it soon became apparent that the very factors

which had brought about the issuance of the Balfour DecJEWS

HAVE A REPUTATION

173

laration, were, in certain circumstances, liable to operate against

the execution of a policy based upon it . The British devotion

to fair play and instinctive support of the weaker side, was responsible

in some quarters for a feeling that the Arabs o f Palestine

needed to be protected against the richer, better organized

Jews. . ." 9

His utterances are unpredictable . On March 28, 1931 he

flatly accused the Jews "of contributing to the Arab's fears"

and of not making the proper concessions . On April 9, 1931,

he stated bluntly that cooperation between Jews and Arabs

would have been possible if England had not prevented it . A

few days later, speaking at Manchester, England, he stated his

unequivocable satisfaction "that the Mandate was in the hands of

England." At still another time he orated : "I have no sympathy

or understanding with the demand for a Jewish majority

in Palestine . . . A majority is not required for the development

of Jewish civilization and culture ." 10 A few years later he is

found trying to sell his fellow-Jews the idea of a greatly restricted

territory because a `Jewish State' is being offered as part

of the bargain .

The policies by which he guided the Zionist movement may

be judged from his continuous flow of statements of a religiosemystic

nature, inviting acceptance of the bi-national state idea.

At the Basle Congress of 1927 he described the Zionist movement

as "spiritual and cultural - not aggressive . . . it is only

the expression of an urge ." Arabs and Jews were somehow to

"come together . . . above politics and above programs." This

was the typical kind of millennium over which Weitzman could

work himself into a religious fervor .

The English bureaucrats think much of him. Gandhi too admires

him greatly . In these two facts many critical observers

think the epitaph of Zionism has been written.

The great opponent of Weitzman is the little ex-soldier,

Vladimir Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky is one of the few Jewish leaders

with any adequate idea of the kind of policies the present

Jewish crisis demands . Among Hebrew nationalists he is idolized .

In the ghettos of Eastern Europe he is already a tradition . He

174

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

is hated without reservation by the Marxists who see him as their

ready-made enemy . Once he answered some leftist attacks by

throwing a handful of pennies contemptuously in their faces,

saying : "Here is your patriotism ."

As a spell-binder Jabotinsky is almost without rival . He can

hold an audience breathless, and often will talk for three or four

hours at a stretch . As an expert conniver in the business of inner

Zionist intrigue he is hopeless . He is handicapped by a

deficient understanding of the structural mechanics of modem

political warfare . Half a dozen times he has had thrown in his

lap the chance to seize control of shattered Zionist affairs, and

half a dozen times he has muffed it . He is impetuous and headstrong,

and a poor judge of men. Despite these inadequacies

he is the only existing leader capable of supplying the flashing

personality and keen insight into events required if anything is

to be salvaged from the impending collapse of the Zionist adventure.

Outside of Dr. Wise, whose influence is scanty, the other personalities

of the movement largely reflect all that Weitzman represents.

A fine example is the head of the all-important Political

Department of the Jewish Agency, in Palestine, Moshe

Shertok. Shertok is a commonplace fellow with wavy hair, a

left-wing product who, called into court as a witness on a case,

declined to take oath on the Torah, declaring that "to do so was

in contradition to his philosophy of life. . ." 11 Some idea of his

caliber is shown in the evidence before the Royal Commission

investigating the 1936 riots, where he announced in the name of

the Socialist Federation of Labor that a thousand of the rioting

Arabs, who had left their jobs at the Jewish settlements in order

to join the rebellion, should have their places kept in reserve for

them in case they wished to return .12

The chief political officer of the Zionist Executive, in London,

is a pudgy professor of mathematics named Selig Brodetsky .

Like most of Weizmann's cabinet, he considers wheedling to be

the measure of political sagacity . On October 24, 1934 he asserted

that "we are fighting discrimination against Jews in the

Jewish National Home." Yet less than four months later he

JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION

175

was heard declaiming in London : "Our partnership with Great

Britain was based on idealism on both sides, infused by the spirit

of the Bible . And if Great Britain saw something in Palestine

which might be useful to herself, we should welcome, not decry

this community of interest . Our watchword is cooperation

with Great Britain . . . The present High Commissioner, Sir Arthur

Wauchope, has shown an understanding of the meaning of

Palestine which is most gratifying ."

Among others whose influence is strong is David Ben Gurion,

a Laborite, now virtually Weizmann's Prime Minister. When

not handicapped by his associations, Ben Gurion is inclined to

show courage and general good sense . After the I929 pogroms

he split no hairs in declaring that "we must take care not to fall

into the trap prepared by hostile British officials who desire to

instigate here a bloody religious war ." Later, to save himself

from the fate which befell Jabotinsky and other irreconcilables,

he switched policy, and can be usually found hand-in-glove with

Weitzman.

Among the other men on the inner Zionist councils with hard

common sense is Menachem Ussishkin, a stolid, bearded engineer

from Odessa . Unlike his associates he is unimaginative and no

intellectual. He never hesitates to speak his mind . He declared

in the squabble over acceptance of the MacDonald Letter

that given a choice between Weitzman and the Jewish people

he had no hesitancy in foregoing Weitzman . His associates

consider him a nuisance and a danger but don't know how to

get rid of him. He was long ago removed from the Executive

and booted upstairs to become President of the Jewish National

Fund. Ussishkin is a stranger to finesse and lacks a cultural

background. In charge of the Commission sent in i 9 i 9 to deal

with the Military in Palestine, he and his colleague Dr . Eder are

said to have served 'Eno's Fruit Salts' to General Storrs at a dinner,

under the impression that it was the English national drink .

Ussishkin's great attribute is a healthy pugnacity, sadly lacking

in Jewish leadership ; and the Zionists might have done

worse than to have had him at the helm in the stormy weather

they have been experiencing during all these years .

CHAPTER II

"THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE"

UNPRECEDENTED PROSPERITY'

If one chooses to ignore the political potentials which make

it a house built on sand, Jewish colonization in Palestine is a

truly astonishing and inspiring spectacle . While most other

countries were suffering in the slough of seemingly endless depression,

little Palestine was growing like a well-watered weed .

At the twenty-seventh Session of the Mandates Commission

1935), it is described as "the most notable colonization undertaking

of modern times ." Major Cecil Quinlan, late Crown official

in the Holy Land, refers to it as an amazing record of

progress, "unparalleled in any part of the world ."

The Jewish community in the Holy Land is a dynamic, vital

organism. One feels the electric quality the Zionists have introduced

in the country almost before he sets foot on its soil .

An air of confidence, eagerness and expectancy suffuses everything.

Everyone seems to be in a rush to go somewhere or do

something. These people are at home - and irrespective of political

actuality, they consider the country theirs . They mean

to build it up at whatever cost, to be handed as a legacy to children

who will never have known ghettos . Their purpose is

passionate and indomitable. If they are balked one way, with

unshakable will they try another . This is the miracle of the

new Jew ; he has seen a vision, and with quiet fortitude he

means to follow it to the death . "Rarely in the history of the

world," says the British M .P. Mr. T. Williams, "have human beings

shown so much faith and devotion or thrown themselves

into a task so wholeheartedly as the Jews in Palestine ."

The Jew has in fact proven himself to be the best colonizing

material on earth . He has built literally out of nothing . Inexperienced,

dealing with a seemingly resourceless area, he has

raised himself practically by his own bootstraps. He has faced

176

"THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE" 177

a hostile soil, a hostile people, and a hostile government . It is in

this light that his small successes assume the proportions of greatness.

Visitors stop, pleasantly surprised in this region of dilapidated

mud huts, to see the modern brick or red-tiled stone houses of

the Jews. The lovely gardens around them are kept neat as a

pin. Shade trees surround the villages . Painstaking irrigation

ditches, lined with young trees, bespeak the unceasing energy of

the colonizers . In the fields hardy pioneers, men and women

alike, work from sunup to sundown . Their voices ring with

the familiar words of peasant song as they labor .

Lloyd George refers to these land settlements as "models of

intensive culture." Herbert Morrison unhesitatingly terms them

"one of the most wonderful moral demonstrations of the human

race in the whole of the civilised world," saying "it is work

typical of the finest of British colonisers in the history of our

Empire." No less explicit, the American Senator Hastings said

after his visit in 1936 that "although Jews own but one-twentieth

of all the land in Palestine, the transformation which they

wrought in its primitive agriculture . . . can be felt and seen

from one end of the country to the other ."

In all branches of farming, Jewish growers have been the

pioneers of advance and progress . The only agricultural literature

published in this entire section of the Near East is issued

under their auspices . They are the first and only ones to bother

about creating markets, advertising, grading and selecting, and

introducing new varieties . A few representative figures bring

the quality of Jewish agriculture into vivid relief . Their average

milk production per cow is 3695 quarts yearly compared

with the Arab average of 89.5 quarts . The production of

Jewish-owned hens is 150 eggs per annum; contrasted with 70 as

the Arab figure . In the most literal sense the settlers have made

two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, experimenting,

testing and adapting, until their areas bloom like one

vast garden .

The figures for Jewish industry are no less impressive. Just as

in 193o Hope-Simpson `proved' that not another rod of land

178

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

was available for new Jewish settlement, so he also declared the

industrial outlook hopeless. His report shows 2274 Jewish factories

and workshops, employing 936z workers, with an invested

capital of £1,635,462, an output of £2,ioo,ooo and a sum total

of wages of £476,452 . He solemnly warned that "it would be

very bad, and might prove a fatal policy, to attract large capital

in order to start doubtful industries in Palestine with the object

of justifying an increase in the number of immigrants ." Notwithstanding

Hope-Simpson's pessimism the figures for 1936,

just six years later, showed that the number of Jewish factories

and shops had increased to 4615, employing 32,830 hands, with

an invested capital of £ 8,654,000, a skyrocketing output of

£9, 10 9,330 and a sum total of wages of £2,925,780 ; all of this

occurring despite the worst set of laws ever devised by Authority

to harass production and trade .

The Holy Land now manufactures goods of the most varied

kind. Among the new firms established in 1935-36 alone, were

bakeries, milling companies, plate glass and paint works ; razor

blade and paraffin paper factories, iron works, kilns for producing

earthenware, pharmaceutical works, foundries and metal

manufactories ; cement works, spinning and weaving mills and

textile, shoe and furniture factories . A census by the Jewish

Agency shows the healthy nature of this industry. Preparation

of foodstuffs, stone and cement accounts for nearly thirtynine

percent of the production value ; metal and wood industries,

twenty-two percent and chemicals, nine percent . The remaining

thirty percent is divided among textiles, printing, paper

and electricity ; all forming a solid base for the country's economy.

In striking contrast to this wide ramification of Jewish

industry, Arab manufactures are few, the most important being

oil-pressing, making of laundry soap, quarrying, baking and various

home handicrafts .

The amount of Jewish capital invested in this tiny land is estimated

to total more than £ 12o,000,ooo . Prior to the recent

riots, Jews were bringing in money at the rate of two to five

million dollars a month . In 1934 alone they are estimated to

have invested approximately £ 1 o,ooo,ooo in Palestine . Today

"THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE" 179

the productive output of the Jewish community is placed at

JJ 20,000,000 annually.' Bank deposits amounted to C 16,ooo,-

ooo and currency in circulation increased in the single year of

1935, from 44,73 8,964 to £6,561,134 .

All of this is reflected throughout the country's economy,

shattering its medieval inertia in every conceivable direction .

Every figure in connection with this mushrooming process is remarkable

. Before the War the tonnage cleared at Haifa was

less than 8oo,ooo ; in 1935, it was close to 5,000,000 . The figures

for electrical consumption climbed from 2,343,764 kilowatt

hours in 1926, to the amazing total of 70,017,998 kilowatt hours

in 1936 . Almost 40,000,000 hours of this huge amount was accounted

for in the Tel Aviv area alone .

In a generation these returning exiles have erected a civilization

which the English writer Ernest Main tells us the Levantine

is not capable of duplicating "in five hundred years ." 2 Behind this

singular development with its wealth of flourishing settlements

and growing range of industries, lie the spiritual drive and moral

tone of the returning Hebrews . Money and skill alone could

not have contrived it .

POPULATION AND CITIES

The Government itself says in relation to its population estimates

that "the precision of these figures is not great ." 3 It is

almost impossible to carry out a reliable census . Looking back

with suspicious memory to the tax-collectors of Turkish times,

the enraged peasants either drive the census-takers out or give

them falsified figures, believing any head count to be an artful

prelude to new levies . The Government computation is 848,-

342 Moslems, 370,483 Jews, and 106,474 Christians . Reliable

Jewish sources, however, place the Jewish figure around 410,-

ooo. Most of these are concentrated around Tel Aviv, which

with its surrounding villages holds over a quarter of a million

people .

Tel Aviv, living symbol of Jewish hope, is like nothing that

anyone ever saw before. It is a mad, poetic crazy-quilt, fash18o

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

ioned out of Jewish determination to recreate life in terms of

Jewish self-sufficiency. The mayor is Jewish, the porters are

Jewish, the street-sweepers are Jewish, the police are Jewish .

Even the thieves are Jewish .

It was founded in 1910 on worthless sand dunes, some miles

out of Jaffa, by a group of queer looking European men with

firm jaws who mystically declared that they were going to erect

here the first great all-Jewish metropolis of modern times . They

gave it the idyllic name of Tel Aviv (Hill of Spring) .

Today a city of 16o,ooo rears its head to justify the extravagant

claims of these visionaries . In America that might be remarkable,

but not astounding . In the Near East, where it vies

with cities established before the memory of man, it is a miracle .

The city looks like a cross between some miniature Paris and

a mushrooming mining town. Everyone is in a hurry. Everyone

is eager. Everyone looks busy . The streets are jammed .

Some are lined with trees, a novelty in the Levant . All of them

are paved .

The architecture is the last word in modernism . To one

used to the orthodox conception of cities, it looks almost freakish.

The stores and amusement places are the most up-to-date

in the world. Along the boardwalk on the sparkling blue sea,

sit throngs of gay people, leisurely relaxing in the warm evening.

Mixed colorfully among the streaming crowds are Arabs,

decked in their finest raiment, who have come from all over the

Levant to gaze on this wonder of wonders . A profound sense

of experiment is everywhere, with a huge shopping district and

cinema palaces giving an impression of a town many times

larger .

Tel Aviv takes thirty-three percent of Palestine's total imports

and uses fifty percent of the electrical power consumed

by Palestine industry. The annual production of its 1512 industrial

plants amounts to around J 3,000,000 which is also the

approximate turnover of the town's 6ooo retail establishments .

Of the i 8,ooo industrial workers in the entire country, 11,000

are employed in the industry of Tel Aviv and its vicinity . Its

"THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE" 181

budget for 1934-35 was £ 275,000 - a staggering sum for this

section of the Orient.

The town places a high value on literacy, and is the center of

the printing industry of Palestine. Of the 500 books published

in the entire country in 1936, 382 were published in Tel Aviv .

Forty-seven of the fifty-seven Jewish newspapers and periodicals

were also printed here . Practically one hundred percent of

the children attend school . Apart from the municipal educational

system, there are 35 kindergartens, 20 private schools, io

secondary schools, 5 trade schools, 5 schools of music ; as well as

art and dancing studios, and evening classes of every description.

The cosmopolitan origin of this remarkable Hebrew community

is mirrored in the school-children . A survey in 1 935

showed 8178 to be Ashkenazic (of East-European derivation) ;

1338 Sephardic (descendants of Spanish exiles, coming mainly

from North Africa, Greece and Bulgaria) ; 1125 Yemenite (native

dark-skinned Jews from the southern end of the Arabian

Peninsula) ; 184 Caucasian, 177 Persian, 92 Bokharian, and 3 of

other communities . The 1616 children of immigrants who settled

in Tel Aviv during 1935 were of 2 2 different nationalities .

A canvass of their parents shows 39% to be ordinary laborers,

14% merchants, 13% artisans, 5 % members of liberal professions,

16% of miscellaneous callings-and the balance housewives

or of no occupation.

The high Western state of culture of this city, as contrasted

with the slough of the surrounding Near East, is not limited to

surface appearances . The per capita rate of water consumption,

always an indication of social and economic conditions, is

230 liters per day. This compares with 52 liters for Vienna,

141 liters for Berlin, and 144 liters for London .

There are over one hundred and sixty synagogues and Talmudical

houses of learning. The names of the shops and commercial

houses are derived from the Bible or the Talmud . At

the sound of the ram's horn on Friday afternoon all traffic

comes to a halt, stores close and commercial activity ceases .

The peace of the Sabbath settles like a soft blanket on the city

182

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

until the following night . But nowhere is the fundamental

Jewish character of this place better shown than on the festival

days. Tel Aviv is a city of holidays . All the ancient Jewish

festivals have been revitalized and made the occasion for public

rejoicing. Succoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, is welcomed not

only by farmers rejoicing in the abundant harvest . In Tel

Aviv, too, thanks is given for the kind bounty of Mother Earth,

with great crowds of citizens dancing the native Hora 4 in the

public squares of the city . During the feast of Chanuka great

fancy-dress balls are held and school-children by the thousands

parade in torchlight procession through the streets, carrying

candles and torches, and singing native songs until the air is

heavy with their shrill voices . There is almost an endless list

of holidays, memorial days and festival occasions, all enthusiastically

observed by this happy people who have found out

how to live. The greatest of these, for which Tel Aviv is famous,

is the Purim celebration, ushered in with street-dancing

and huge parades with gaily decorated floats . During this gay

period which lasts a whole week, the city becomes an enchanted

fairyland of colored lights and music, and masked, laughing figures.

Myriads of people from all over the country jam the

streets ; and annually thousands from neighboring Syria, Egypt

and the Arab villages of Palestine join the merrymakers, for a

moment forgetting their political animus against Jews .

Joseph F. Broadhurst, former Inspector General of Police for

the Palestine Government, remarks that "it is at Tel Aviv that

one realizes the inherent possibilities of the Jews as a nation ."

He found that during his whole term in office there was practically

no important crime despite a polyglot population newly

arrived from all quarters of the globe . "The police force," he

adds, "was entirely Jewish and I never knew a Jewish policeman

to let me down. The men were smart and conscientious and

very anxious to follow the best traditions of the British police ." s

One circumstance in particular labels the citizens of this Jewish

city as unrivaled for pure self-discipline and force of character.

When the 1936 riots were going full blast, for more

than twelve weeks the city of Tel Aviv was unpoliced . Every"

THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE" 183

one was aware that the normal constabulary of two hundred

men had been commandeered to guard its borders against attack

. Yet amongst this population of one hundred and sixty

thousand there was not a single crime, though the town was already

harboring thousands of refugees . During all this troubled

period Tel Aviv was the only place in Palestine where anyone

could walk the streets with absolute security both day and

night . Arabs knew that they could come to Tel Aviv and pass

safely through its thoroughfares, though the life of no Jew was

secure when he crossed the border into Jaffa, one hundred yards

away.

Jerusalem, the capital, is as different from Tel Aviv as day is

from night . It sprawls over seven hills, and its name means

`City of Peace,' derived from the Hebrew Yerushalayim. The

Arabs call it Al Kuds (the holy) . It has had a continuous recorded

habitation for more than six thousand years, and was

probably already old when that record began . Throughout the

ages it has held an almost mesmeric fascination for Jews . Its

population today is estimated at 125,000, of whom 76,000 are

Jews, 26,000 Moslems, and 23,000 Christians. Sure of their

destiny, Jerusalem's Jews are trying to make this famous city

one of the art, medical and cultural centers of the world . Some

of the greatest physicians, scholars and creative artists of Germany

and Russia, exiles from their native lands, are here .

The city is slow and sedate and wears its ancient dignity complacently

on its shoulder. Here is the seat of the British Administration,

and the sites of innumerable convents, monasteries,

and churches of all nationalities . One suddenly comes into the

Holy City out of the desolation of the surrounding granite hills .

From the winding mountain roads at night its lights twinkle like

distant fireflies, a familiar and warming sight to the commuters

taking the hour's drive to Jaffa and Tel Aviv . In the day it sits

like a queen surrounded by the blue haze of the Judean mountains,

flanked in the distance by the rugged, purple wall of the

Moab range.

There are really two Jerusalems . In the center is the older

walled city, as fantastic as a nightmare. Built about four hun184

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

dred years ago, it encloses an area of roughly one square kilometer.

Seven gates open at various points . The eighth, the

Gate of Mercy, facing east, is sealed up, to be opened according

to Jewish legend when Messiah ben David enters through it .

The Old City contains four principal quarters, holding settlements

of Armenians, Greeks and Latins, Moslems, and Jews .

Christian sentiment is centered around the Holy Sepulchre in

the northwest section.

The twisting, narrow streets of the Old City are forever

bathed in kaleidoscopic twilight, some of them mere tunnels,

the bordering structures forming a roof above. These lanes and

alleys, colorfully striped with alternate sunlight and shadow, are

lined with an unbelievable concentration of shops, stalls and

bazaars segregated according to occupation and wares . Above

these shops are a crazy patchwork of dwellings, courtways and

entrances, like a vision from one of the modernist French painters.

Through these coverings the sun passes in striped rays to

touch the gowns of a churning crowd of Arabs, Jews, Armenians

and races from everywhere, men who ply trades which

must have been inseparable from medieval life .

Beyond this strange and picturesque relic lies the modern

Jerusalem, crawling in irregular formation over the surrounding

hills. Its avenues are broad and sunlit, lined with solid-looking

houses of heavy white-chipped stone . Flanking the city are

beautiful garden suburbs, shining clean, where the newer Jewish

immigrants live . On the streets mixing with grimy workmen

from Poland and Greece and learned doctors from Germany,

are turbaned Arabs, Bedouins in flowing gowns, tattooed

women, black-frocked black-skinned Coptic clericals, orthodox

priests with their high, black, stove-pipe hats, dapper British

soldiers, and many others . Automobiles honk at camel and

sheep drivers to move their charges aside - altogether a medley

of singular scenes so indescribable as to seem at times merely the

vision of a sunstricken brain .

At the north of the country is Haifa, destined to become the

aerial as well as rail terminus of the great inter-continental routes

"THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE" 185

of the future . Some day it will undoubtedly be one of the great

cities of the world . Before the Zionists came it was a mere fishing

village. Today it is estimated to hold some 95,000 people,

of whom 65,000 are Jews . Cradled here is a rapidly expanding

industrial area . Railway workshops, electrical power houses,

cement works, factories and mills of all kinds are rising to swell

the growth of this hungry young metropolis .

There is little that may be termed oriental about the place .

Its model landscape seems copied, as it were, from a geography

textbook . Sea, mountains, plains and chalk cliffs meet the eye

all at once, gradually uniting with the Lebanon range in the

distance. High above the city is beautiful . Mount Carmel

where a Jewish suburb with wide streets, smart shops and modern

apartments gazes down on the calm bay and wide, green

plains of Sharon .

In the harbor are always to be seen the gray masses of British

men o' war. On the open beach, housed in an inauspicious

building, is the terminus of the oil line from Iraq . Like two

predatory monsters determined to have no other company in

their berth, they symbolize the British stake in Palestine .

The only other important town is Jaffa . Its name derives

from the Hebrew Japho, the `beautiful .' Pliny declares that even

before the deluge Jaffa was a city . On the porches of Karnak

the name of Ja-pu occurs as having been conquered by Thothmes

III about 16oo B.C. One hundred years ago it had a population

of four thousand. Today it holds seventy thousand, overwhelmingly

Arab, who are largely descendants of the Egyptians

and Ethiopians brought in by the conqueror Ibrahim Pasha .

The few thousand Jews who lived here fled during the 1936

riots, abandoning their shops and property .

Jaffa and Tel Aviv are really one town . Where the one begins

and the other ends is told only by the sudden descent from

the modernity of the Hebrew city into the stuffy squalor, ramshackle

architecture and typical dirt and hoarse cries of an Arab

town. The British were responsible for its artificial dissection

years ago, fearing Jewish domination of the port .

186

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE

There is something awe-inspiring in the simple joy which

shines from the faces of the incoming Hebrews . Many of them

arrive in the ill-ventilated, reeking holds of small cargo steamers

after having survived almost incredible hardships . Some are of

the tradesman and professional type . Most are poor to the point

of desperation . Fellow-travelers are astounded to see these men

and women, grimy workmen and petty bourgeoisie hardly suspected

of sentiment or romanticism, standing silent with tears in

their eyes as the brown Judean hills take form on the distant

horizon. Eighty generations fade from their tired faces, years

of suffering, abasement and homelessness . As they survey these

shores their glance is illumined, speaking without words an almost

fanatic determination that the Land of Israel shall once

more stand glorious among the nations of the earth .

No one who has not seen these faces with his own eyes can

understand what a miracle it is for the Jew, to stand once more

on the soil that Simon Bar Giora trod, where Abraham, Isaac

and David walked, where Bar Kochba led his stem swordsmen.

Nothing can gloat over the sheer majesty of this scene like the

starved Jewish eye, now devouring its outlines with a hunger

sharpened by the nostalgia of two thousand years . As at a beautiful

vision, the newcomer stares at the rosy-cheeked children racing

in happy play . Their fresh, tumbling Hebrew speech gladdens

his ear like beautiful music as he harks back in shuddering

contrast to the sallow emaciation and frightened eyes of the only

Jewish children he has ever known . Thrilled and almost disbelieving,

he gazes at the straight-limbed boys who have left the

puny catechisms of Europe far behind, to work with pick and

shovel under the broiling sun of this new land . Their bronzed

faces are like the stark brown hills around them . Like Ernest in

Hawthorne's story, The Great Stone Face, they have subtly remade

themselves in a mold long forgotten .

It is "a wonderful youth," says M . J. Landa, one of the authorities

on modern Palestine, "brisk of mind, vigorous of sinew,

of athletic physique . . . mentally clean and keenly conscious

"THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE" 187

of its mission and its opportunity to create a new life and

spirit." 6 Nowhere else is sheer idealism so plain in every office

of life . Kindliness and the desire to create a cooperative civilization

worthy of the name of man, everywhere takes precedence

over individual ambition. The same determination for a

socially-intelligent existence which has distinguished post-war

Sweden is evident here . Consumer and industrial cooperatives

have a large hold on life. The number of these organizations

increased from 769 at the end of 1935, to 849 a year later .

These include 166 agricultural cooperatives, 58 irrigation and

water supply societies, and various building groups for the erection

of garden cities . One of the Nazi correspondents commented

that even when a car breaks down on the road, nine out

of ten passing motorists will stop in their journey and volunteer

to assist in mending it .

For the first time in modern Jewish life the distribution of

occupation approaches normality . Agriculture now absorbs

14% ; industry and crafts, 23 .4% ; transportation, 6 .1 % ; building

construction, 12 .7% ; commerce, 20% ;public and civil

service, 2 .4% ; liberal professions, 12 .4% ; persons living on income,

6% ; domestic and hotel employees, 3%.

Something in the way of flowers or greenery grows wherever

a Jew lives . The passion for growing things, for trees and blooms,

is so intense in this psychically starved people as to be insatiable .

They love to loiter in outdoor gardens, sipping their unbelievable

fruit soups or nibbling at sticky fruit compotes .

Hiking is a national pastime . They go in for athletic competition

with feverish zeal . There are innumerable small sports

clubs of every description and three major sports federations,

including the Football and Boxing Federation and the Amateur

Sports Clubs Federation . One of the great bi-annual events is

the Maccabiad (Jewish Olympics), held at the magnificent Tel

Aviv stadium. In the tournament of 1935, twenty-three countries

were represented with over five thousand participants.

Fifty thousand people paid admission as the whole city made a

delirious holiday.

The love for the theater and for music is intense and de188

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

monstrative ; song is often a substitute for supper . An opera

company holds a regular season in Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel

Aviv, translating the classics into Hebrew . In 1936 the Palestine

First Symphony Orchestra, amid scenes of abandon such as

one expects to see only in motion pictures, was led by the great

conductor Toscanini to a triumph of popular support sufficient

to make New York or London blush .' Simple workingmen

fought for the precious tickets at each concert . Outside the

jammed halls thousands waited in the streets to give the loved

musicians a thundering ovation as they left. As in the days of

the Prophets, song and community music are a constant feature

of the new Hebrew life. In the meanest Jewish section of the

cities, in the poorest farmer's hut, when the lights gleam yellow

through the windows at night, there is always heard music and

laughter . The irrepressible Hora is danced tirelessly .

In addition to numerous cinema houses there are a number of

fine theaters . Habimah, the national Hebrew theater, is reputed

to be one of the finest stock companies in the world . Its stage

direction and sets are spoken of with admiration wherever acting

is professionally known . The workers too have their own

theater, said to be professionally superb, called the Ohel ; and

there is a famous children's theater, the Theation Layelodem,

where children are both the actors and audience .

Innumerable art exhibitions are continually showing, a thing

unheard of in the moribund life of the Near East before the

coming of the Zionists . Literature also flourishes . In Tel Aviv

alone are ten publishing houses, some of them prosperous . Palestine

Jewry was responsible for 94% of all the books published

on both sides of the Jordan River in 1935. This is the astounding

country where grimy-handed peasants read Hegel and

Strindberg .

All told there are some three hundred organizations, societies,

and associations of a cultural and social character . In science,

too, the Hebrew genius now shines directly on its own . The

Daniel Sieff Research Institute at Rehovoth is equipped with the

most delicate modern instruments ; its experiments are watched

by chemists all over the world . And of the Hebrew University

"THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE" 189

the Palestine Royal Commission of 1936 says : "It is remarkable

to find on the fringe of Asia a university which maintains the

highest standards of Western scholarship ."

The conventional neuroticism which marks so strongly the

beleaguered Jews of Europe is not seen here . These people

are almost provincial, and certainly without complexes . A comparison

of the incidence of insanity, said to be higher generally

among Jews than in the surrounding populations, is startling .

The average insanity for all the races of the world is 300-400

per hundred thousand ; while among Palestine's Jews it is only

19o per hundred thousand.

The speech of these people is a lyrical Old-Testament Hebrew.

Here in the old land of miracles, the language of the

Lord Jehovah and of the Seminarists, dead and inert so long,

felt the fire of Jewish rebirth breathed into it and is now the

everyday tongue of the people .8 Love for the ancient language

is so fierce that even shopkeepers will pretend ignorance of

other tongues and will allow a customer to walk out rather than

answer him in Yiddish.9 The only exception to this rule in

Palestine is a section of the Marxists, who persist in hanging on

to their Yiddish, regarding Hebrew as an ugly symbol of offensive

nationalism. An amusing sidelight on this issue is given by

the Hebrew writer, Uri Zvi Greenberg, former native of Poland

and noted Yiddish poet . During a return visit to Warsaw,

where he was entertained by the local literary group, he broke

up the reception by thus referring to Yiddish : "In Palestine we

no longer defile our mouths with the filthy Nalewki jargon ."

Going Hebrew is not a fad - it is an irresistible compulsion .

In Palestine when a Jew changes his name, which is frequent, he

selects the most Jewish one he can find . Rose translates, Shoshanna

; and Jacob, Yacob. The Aryan Siegbert becomes

Semitic Shalom ; the Teutonic Siegfried lapses into the Hebrew

Shmuel ; the Persian Mutaza Zamail is remodeled into Mardekjai

Menashi Efrayimi : and the Polish Measze Szmuszkowicz is

henceforward Menashe Benzion .

The Scriptures and Prophets have also inspired the newcomers

to apply a revised and picturesque nomenclature for the

19o

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

places they have occupied . The first of the new garden suburbs

in Jerusalem was named Meah Shearim (the Hundred

Gates), after Genesis 26:12 . Another was called Yegia Kapayim

(the labor of thine hands), after Psalms 128 :2 : "For

thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands - happy shalt thou be,

and it shall be well with thee." Talpioth, southeast of Jerusalem,

was called after the description by Solomon of his beloved

in the Song o f Songs . Rishon-le-Zion, was named after

the 27th verse of Chapter 42 of Isaiah ; and Petach Tikvah (door

of hope), is derived from Hosea, Chapter 2, verse 15, which

reads : "And I will give her vineyards from thence, and the

valley of Achor for a door of hope ."

As in Tel Aviv, Jewish holidays and festivals of Old Testament

times have sprung into life wherever these people live .

In the settlements they are welcomed in a riot of flowers, flags,

ceremony, music and dancing . The dead hand of religious

formalism has departed from them and they have become stirring

national holidays, declaring in sentiment and form, the rewon

self-respect of the Jew.

With every year that passes, admits the 1936 Royal Commission,

"the contrast between this intensely democratic and highly

organized modern community and the old-fashioned Arab world

around it grows sharper," conceding that nowhere in the world

is the spirit of nationalism "more intense than among the Jews

in Palestine." The proud character of this civilization was

noted by the Irish writer St . John Ervine who found, in vivid

contrast to the surrounding Near East, that there were no soreeyed

children among the Jews, nor any young men and women

who were blind because of neglect . "Not once," he notes in

astonishment, "in the course of my brief stay in Palestine did

a Jew solicit alms from me ."

All this lively reborn life is reflected in the growth of the

Hebrew press, truly astonishing for such a small community .

Davar, the largest daily, has a circulation of some twenty-five

thousand ; followed by Haaretz, with some twenty thousand ;

and a number of other dailies, together with many weekly publications,

trade journals, and miscellaneous publications .

"THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE" iqu

Jewish Palestine is organized into one community called Knesseth

Israel . This community elects on an autonomous basis a

body of seventy-one members, the Jewish National Assembly

(Asefath Ha-nichharim), representing the various Jewish parties

. This body in turn selects a permanent committee of

twenty-three (Vaad Leumi), recognized as the authorized

spokesmen of Palestine Jewry in its dealings with the Government.

This body has no actual legislative or executive powers

in the Administration . Actually the Government considers its

existence merely as one of those concessions commonly made to

the amenities, not consequent in practice . Hence the Jewish

National Assembly is restricted in its external dealings to wordy

memoranda of protest over decrees and legislation considered

contrary to Jewish interests . In internal Jewish affairs, however,

it is potent and invaluable . Representing the increasing

solidarity of Palestine's Jewry, it is the nucleus for the Jewish

self-government which is one day certain to come .

Page 207 or 191 per book

CHAPTER III

BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS

THE HOLY LAND AND WHITEHALL

The largest and most expertly conducted business in the history

of man is the British Empire . The nerve center and business

office of that Empire is the section called Whitehall, in

London, where sit the all-powerful permanent officials . Theirs

is the first, and usually the last, word in directing the line of

policy by which every part of that gigantic enterprise is controlled.

Virtually independent of the electorate, these impregnable

bureaucracies function magnificently, undisturbed by the hot

and cold breath of political change . They are ruled by men

who have been trained from boyhood into the tradition of the

Empire. To these men the slightest material advantage to Imperial

business comes first, irrespective of humanist philosophies

and social codes . They are smug, clever and loyal. They

avoid the limelight - but their power is immense .

Among the men who really rule England is Sir Robert Vansittart,

head of the Foreign Office and perhaps the most powerful

personage in the British Empire - a man whose taste for

whiskey and intrigue has won him the nickname of "Machiavelliand-

soda." He has under his immediate control the admirable

British Secret Service, and dispenses thousands of pounds of the

Foreign Office's "secret funds" - money on whose expenditure

the law expressly forbids any detailed account to Parliament .

He is also chairman of the `Co-ordinating Committee,' the

Government's own propaganda bureau, whose function is to influence

the news in foreign countries where friendly opinion is

important. One of the functions which the `Co-ordinating

Committee' has assumed is responsibility for the Arabic broadcasts

which go forth regularly from London .'

Another of these men is Sir Maurice Hankey, an unostenta-

192

BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS

193

tious functionary who combines in his person the post of Secretary

to the Cabinet, Secretary to the Privy Council and Secretary

to the Committee of Imperial Defense . Sir Maurice

knows probably more than any other man the closely held

secrets of military and political intrigue, the careful long-range

planning, by which the future of the Empire is safeguarded .

Around these two men are grouped the political agents in direct

contact with the omnipotent Intelligence Service, "who are employed

to test or to alter public opinion" - a small group which

numbers in its ranks some of the best and shrewdest brains in

England.2

Among other powerful figures are Sir Walter Runciman,

head of the British Board of Trade, and Sir Warren Fisher,

Chief of the Treasury . Behind these Vansittarts and Hankeys

are a host of others - shadows behind shadows - men whose direct

influence often colors or dictates the actions of their chiefs .

More are continually in the course of training, eventually to

take over their masters' jobs . The mechanism is selfperpetuat-

ing-The most important of these Bureaus is the Admiralty, recognized

as the `sacred white cow' of British political life. Following

closely after the Admiralty in prestige and power are the

War and Colonial Offices . A number of lesser Bureaus, immensely

powerful in their own right, complete an impregnable

web which has rarely failed to enmesh every British Cabinet of

modern times .

In the hands of these brilliant functionaries there is no confused

muddling of action, but an artfully planned and carefully

concealed continuity of objectives . The appearance of clumsy

incapacity is part of their technique ; but when all the presumed

bungling is over, the strategic spots in question are always

found to be miraculously occupied by the British, without

loss of moral tone . The greatest part of their strategy is dictated

by the fact that the Empire has settled down to the point

where it exists mostly as a market for English-manufactured

goods as well as a source of raw material . Tranquillity is the

essence of Empire needs under the circumstances - hence these

194 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

men will make many concessions for it where vital requirements

are not at stake . This, plus the private prejudices of the

Bureaucrats, is the major basis of British ethics in the business

of Empire rule .

Their tactics, developed over centuries of training, are ably

devised. They consist in the main of sudden surprise maneuvers

covered by a barrage of pious rhetoric . If the resistance

is too great and a graceful exit available, they take it . They

regard a doughty antagonist with respect . They will treat with

him when they discover that more is to be gained in that way .

If pushed so far that they cannot return without losing face,

their history indicates that they will fight like bulldogs ; but if

allowed a convenient retreat, as one prominent European statesman

once said to the writer, "They will give you not only what

you want, but fifty percent more ."

They have an immense contempt for elected politicians .

Parliament they consider a necessary evil . Their method of

parrying pointed questions from that body is a marvel in efficiency

and insolence .

Among these servants of the Crown there are often decisive

and sometimes fundamental differences of opinion . Taken by

and large, however, the human content in their computations

does not exist. The terms in which they think are well represented

in the Chinese opium trade, forced on China by British

gunboats. At the Opium Conference held at Geneva in November

1924, these men refused pointblank to yield to the humanitarian

demands of the American delegates for termination

of this debauching traffic, "on the ground that Britain needed

the money," so the Conference came to naught .3 It was this

same cabal and its reactionary allies in `The City' who were

largely responsible for the rise of Adolph Hitler on the Continent,

financing him and preparing his way behind the scenes .4

The vast bulk of these men believe the Balfour Declaration

to have been a grave error, and that by it Britain is building a

first class Frankenstein in her own backyard . That error they

have set out to rectify.

The background for this conviction was erected when EngBUREAUCRACY

LOOKS AT JEWS

195

lish agents returned from Russia after Kerensky's fall, with the

bug of a world Jewish conspiracy chasing itself around in their

bonnets. The Chinese Communist Revolution which followed,

threatening to eliminate them from their entire privileged position

in Asia, almost frightened them out of their skins .

In the path of the Bolshevik eruption came wild reports, and

the consuming fear that the established world was about to go

up in flames . Riding high on the tide of success, the Communists

blatantly announced their plans for ripping the world up by

its foundations. Dynamite was in the air throughout Europe

and Asia. Radicals had made good their Red promises in Hungary.

Italy and Germany were in a nip-and-tuck struggle with

disaster. The Far East was infected . Typical of the kind of

stuff that was rattling British brains was the Manifesto of the

Soviet Congress of Eastern Nations at Baku, September 1920,

announcing that "our main blow must be aimed at British Capitalism

; though at the same time we want to arouse the working

masses of the Near East to hatred . . ."

The English had just finished their sad adventure in Russia

where the counter-Revolution was little less than an English

war. Some idea of British commitments to the White Russian

cause can be gained from Winston Churchill's Memorandum of

September 15, 1919, just before the beginning of Denikin's

great retreat, when he observed that up to that date Britain had

expended nearly one hundred million pounds.5 The hatred

this contest engendered against Jews carried over into post-war

England as a fixed quotient in all the Government bureaus .

The idea soon gained currency that the Russian Revolution was

part of the ramifications of a gigantic Jewish plot against the

world - and that the Zionists themselves were an important part

of this conspiracy . When E. H. Wilcox, a newspaper correspondent

for the London Daily Telegraph, brought out his book

in 1 g 19, Russia's Ruin, pointing out in a seemingly impartial,

repertorial manner the great part played by the Jews in the

Revolution, the identification of Jews with this dangerous movement

became complete in the Bureaucratic mind . Over-night

the Protocols o f the Elders o f Zion, a crude forgery reputing

4

196

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

to be the intimate documentary evidence of the Jewish plot,

achieved a terrific circulation." Men, otherwise quite sane, believed

this fantastic rubbish completely .

A vast literature soon accumulated on the subject . Members

of Parliament were flooded with anti-Semitic leaflets and pamphlets

daily, in which the term "hidden hand" and other phrases

such as "international finance" are developed into an argot used

to signify the Jewish conspirators behind the scene. Represented

as the modern genius behind this diabolical scheme for

world disruption is, remarkably enough, none other than Achad

Ha'am ; and as Ha'am's "representative," in this strange literature,

poor Weitzman is translated into one of the most dangerous

men alive.

To suspicious Bureaucrats whose entire training in life lay in

quiet conspiracy to gain hidden ends, no part of this sounded

like an impossible hypothesis . Antipathy for the Jews assumed

such proportions in whole sections of English society and Government

as to become pathological. The basis, in fact, of their

fanatic support of Hitler was the belief that he was the only man

with the genius and courage to fight the vast unseen Jewish

octopus which was draining the Empire's life blood and which

was credited with instigating every misfortune and misadventure

which befell England anywhere .

Some idea of the influence of the Protocols alone, can be

gained from the critical study made by Benjamin W . Segel, who

found that "no recent book of world literature could even in a

slight degree compare with the circulation of the Protocols ."

The tremendous influence and ready acceptance of this fantasy

is hardly understood by Jews . The Zionist leaders, especially,

are capable of having this stuff swirling all around their heads

without being aware of it . When a few years ago the writer

showed it to one of them, he airily dismissed the whole business

as sounding "like Alice in Wonderland ."

Riddling the Bureaucratic mentality also was a strong, though

not properly recognized neo-Pagan movement, borrowed from

their liaison with the Germans . To these groups many of the

important officials of the various Bureaus belong . A particuBUREAUCRACY

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197

larly influential group meets in offices in the Temple off Fleet

Street and is said to be headed by one of the most important

peers and barristers in England. It was this group which Alfred

Rosenberg visited with Count Herbert Bismarck in 1933 on the

all-important Nazi mission which was seeking desperatelyneeded

British support. Its meetings and peculiar occult practices

are semi-secret in view of the station occupied by a great

part of its followers . Loosely organized, it is called "The

Mistery" after the German "Mysterikon" of Lans von Lebenfels.

Part of its philosophy is the theory propagated throughout

official England that the secret meaning of the Book of Job

is that the Jewish race is the result of the mating of a Semitic

tribe and apes.

Official London became a hotbed of anti-Semitism, where the

feeling was no less venomous by reason of being covert . The

`world Jewish plot' remained the implement by which Zionists

were baited in club and salon, those important centers of English

political influence, as well as within the sacred precincts of

`The City' itself. Lord Lloyd, former High Commissioner

of Egypt, expressed the inward fear agitating the English minds

when he stated that Jewish immigration was turning Palestine

into "a springboard of Bolshevism in the Near East ." 7 Innumerable

meetings, semi-official in character, were told of the

extreme danger lying in wait for the Empire and assured that

"Communism was alien to the Arab ."

The embryo of English Arabophilia reached back all the way

to the period of peace negotiations . Englishmen were speaking

for all the varied Arab races to Englishmen in London .

In the agreements for the creation of Arab States, McMahon

had included this sentence throughout : "It is understood

that the Arabs have decided to seek the advice and guidance

of Great Britain only, and that such European advisers and officials

as may be required for the formation of a sound form of

administration will be British ." Englishmen thus found themselves

regimenting their own self-interest as an Imperialist

power, acting for groups of colorful tribesmen who rained all

the blessings of Allah on their heads with unctuous correctness .

198

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

It was a nice feeling and it had its physical rewards in the immense

resources of the Arabian Peninsula, seemingly wide open

to exclusive British exploitation. When the British eventually

came up against another group, the Jews, who had social theories,

spoke English and proposed to represent themselves in negotiations,

they were thoroughly annoyed.

In London, the Palestine Administration, supporting its subversive

efforts with Jewish tax money, lent its entire force to a

campaign making the Arabs out to be an honest, picturesque

folk whose patrimony was being stolen by an invading army of

Bolshevik Jews. Arab `commissions' with the tacit backing and

open advice of Palestine officials, pilgrimaged to London regularly,

walked the streets in their dignified flowing robes and

played their roles as they had been coached .

Judeo-phobes and anti-Bolsheviks began to discover that the

Arab cause was a great and noble one . They formed themselves

into formidable committees in and out of Parliament .

Powerful figures such as Sir Henry Page-Croft, Sir Arnold Wilson,

Lord Sydenham and Lord Lamington associated themselves

actively with the stage management of the Arab campaign for

public sympathy. Other still more powerful figures operated

from the shadows, telling the Arabs what to say, formulating

their demands and maneuvering their case . Lord Eustace Percy

stated the situation in Parliament, July 4, 1922, declaring that

"certain Englishmen - who do not like the Zionist policy . . .

have inspired them [the Arabs] with certain ideas that they

never dreamt of before, and have supplied this Arab delegation

with arguments." Arabs were made to say meaningfully that

"Communism is alien to our religion, our principles and our

conscience ." Early Arab memoranda point out in staged horror

to the Government that "the prevalent conditions of the Jewish

immigrants are a very fertile medium for the propagation of

Communistic principles not only among Jews, but also among

Arabs." s

Certainly, an anti-Zionist campaign of this power and scope

is far beyond the known strength of the Palestine Arabs . Meeting

with little counteraction from the Zionists, it has affected

BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS

199

many divergent sections of opinion . Ironically enough, the Independent

Labour Party announces through its chairman, Archibald

Fenner Brockway, that "the Balfour Declaration was issued

in order to win the support of Jewish Capitalism ; that in itself

is sufficient reason for our opposition to it ." 9 The Communists,

as expected, are categorically opposed to Zionism in any

form or shape. Their only member of Parliament, William

Gallacher, squarely asserted during the 1936 riots that "if ever

a people were justified in making a protest and in making a

demonstration in order to get justice, it is the Arab people in

Palestine. . . I view with growing disgust the hypocrisy of the

position when I hear high moral concern and great regard for

the Jews being expressed in some quarters." 10

The most active opponents of the Zionists are in the Admiralty,

which has its eye on the strategical importance of Palestine to the

Empire. For years it is said to have employed various propagandists

and organizing experts on anti-Zionist work . The Colonial

and Foreign offices also utilize agents for a similar purpose .

According to a detailed statement supplied the writer by an

American whose intimate knowledge of English anti-Semitic activity

is unquestionable, the business of these people is to organize

the known anti-Semites in and out of the Government for a concerted

assault on the Zionist position . Supported by their allies

in the Departments, these people circulate through the drawing

rooms and clubs, cultivate the secretaries of prominent men and

weave their web wherever influence counts .

Through the mediation of these Bureaus, anti-Zionist propaganda

has become an integral part of the efficient publicity

service with which the British Government advances its views

all over the world . The greatest part of this concentration of

effort is in America . Just as English anti-Semitism stems largely

from White Russian sources, so the present propaganda in

America is heavily influenced from London with the hope of

immobilizing the Jewish demand for Palestine . British officialdom

is making a thorough job of presenting the Arab case wherever

public opinion is important . They were even able to secure

an appointment to lecture in Columbia University for the

200 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Mufti's assistant, George Antonious, a venomous Jew-baiter

whose very name sends a shiver down the back of the Palestine

Jews. In adroitly-managed liaison with American anti-Semitic

elements, the anti-Zionist campaign is persistently and expertly

implemented. Its literature, distributed in ton lots in the large

cities, is heavy with neo-Pagan coloring . A sample is its virtuous

announcement that "the Jewish claim to Palestine rests on a

religious-Biblical dogma which is not binding on those who cannot

accept it by reason of a different belief . . . These Jewish

claims have been reinforced by many Christians who have been

influenced by the Bible - a book necessarily favorable to the

Jewish people ."

Actuated by the permanent officials, the full force of the

British Government has been thrown in back of the anti-Zionist

campaign . Its effect is seen in Turkey and even in faraway

Japan, where Zionists are suddenly singled out for persecution

and their movement all but declared illegal . How enormous

and persistent this pressure is on the surrounding countries and

governments of the Near East we shall shortly discover . The

strength of this determined animosity is spot-lighted by London's

insistence that Palestine be excluded from the sphere of

operations of the Refugee Commission presided over by Mac-

Donald in 1936 - certainly as sardonic a commentary on England's

interpretation of her word as could be imagined .

There are of course other and more respectable reasons

which activate London's attitude . One is the repugnance with

which a certain section of British opinion views Palestine's transformation

into a prosperous, modern community. This group

would prefer to keep the Holy Land under a glass case - a

perpetual survivor of the tourist East . But whatever the reason,

the factual result is tersely given by Colonel Meinertzhagen .11

Speaking February 9, 1938, he coldly asserted that "Arab opposition

to Zionism is nursed and encouraged by anti-Zionist views

not only in Palestine, but in Whitehall and Westminster . . .

Anti-Zionist officials in Palestine and London never gave the

Jewish homeland experiment a chance to succeed ."

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201

THE JEWISH NUISANCE

There is no lack of evidence of the dislike held by the Palestine

Administration for Jews. The essentially pro-British

propaganda of the World Zionist Organization is read by the

Yishub with its tongue in its cheek - understood for what it is, a

sagacious part of the Zionist money-raising machinery. The

Vaad Leumi, occasionally provoked enough to forget the conditioning

restraint placed on it by its financial patron, the Jewish

Agency, has sometimes spoken its mind with great clarity as in its

1929 Memorandum to the League charging that the whole continuity

of spoliation, riots and `Commissions,' was "the inevitable

consequence of a policy of opposition to the Jewish National

Home" which the Administration had "been pursuing for

years."

There can be little question that the prevailing sentiment of

the Government of Palestine is a vigorous offshoot of that section

of London City opinion which is pro-Nazi . There is as little

doubt that the controlling factor in this sentiment is a deep-rooted

anti-Semitism.

The monist ferocity of anti-Semites is too well known to require

added description . The structure of the British bureaus

lends itself admirably to maneuvering by a small cabal of determined

political adventurers, and the anti-Semitic group has

not been remiss in utilizing every possible avenue for placing

its own `reliable' creatures in the Holy Land service . They

tried desperately at one time to secure the appointment of General

Michael O'Dwyer as High Commissioner, and came close

enough to it to make the Jews shudder. O'Dwyer, said to believe

religiously in the existence of the great `international Jewish

conspiracy,' is the man reputed to have shot six hundred

Indians in

Indians in cold blood, and made the others at Amritsar crawl

half a mile on their bellies in the dust as a symbol of their submission.

These men want to conduct legally, under the protection of

the British flag in Palestine, a systematic hatred of Jews . They

202

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

are heavily hampered by the existence in Commons of individuals

who are far from agreeable to this point of view. Hence

they wear such a mask of Christian benefaction as they can under

the circumstances, and attempt to justify their acts constantly

by principle . Wedgwood contemptuously refers to this

type of Crown servant as "the ordinary narrow-minded, halfbred

Englishman who feels about Jews just as his counterpart

Herr Hitler does ."

The pagan mentality is also much in evidence in the Holy

Land Service if one may judge from the published remarks of

C. R. Ashbee, Civic Adviser to the City of Jerusalem . In his

volume, A Palestine Notebook, he writes that "the most fanatical

people in the Holy City are the Roman Catholics . . . The Jews

run them a near second . The Moslems being tolerant in religious

matters, are hand in glove with the free-thinking English ."

This official of the New Jerusalem continues : "One still sees the

Christ type in the streets here, and it is usually the Jew who has

it. . . Jesus Christ, if he ever existed at all, was a Syrian and

he's still here in Jerusalem ; he won't enlist, he is perverse, tiresome,

and a thorn in the side of any government . . ."

One of the early reasons contributing to this feeling against

Jews was the unscrupulous propaganda of the German-Turkish

agents, enraged by the deflection of the Zionists . Originally

intended to promote anti-British incitement, these canards found

the sympathetic ear of the English authorities on the spot, who

for quite other reasons were opposed to the Jews .

Among the grudges held against the Jew was the claim that

he was clannish and had behaved with abominable inhospitality

when the British first arrived . The newcomers were lonely and

without their wives, a condition often remedied by Arab

sheikhs who, considering that women do not possess a soul, had

long made it a practice to turn over a female of the household

to a favored overnight guest . War-weary English officers appreciated

the soft inertia, slumberous music and polished deference

shown them by their Arab hosts ; while the inexplicable

Jews had vulgarly continued to toil in their fields and pore over

their interminable blueprints. "Whatever their station in life,"

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203

says Horace Samuel, "and whatever the angle of contact, the

Arabs exhibited invariably far better manners than did the

Jews." 12 They were picturesque and exotic, in striking contrast

to the Zionists whose rolled shirt-sleeves and incessant drive

made the colorful indolence of their neighbors seem almost an

enchanting relief .

On the whole the Jew proved quite the most desperately impossible

human being to govern that ever drove an annoyed

bureaucrat to distraction . He was worse than the Afridis who

took to the mountains and shot off their rusty rifles ; even worse

than that patience-trying creature, the Hindu, who calmly sat

down on his brown haunches and refused to recognize that the

English existed .

The Jews first looked on the all-but-sacred Crown Colony

Code, the provincial's Bible, with disrespect . Feeling that the

country was theirs by solemnly ratified international agreement,

they chafed impatiently at its interminable red tape and officiousness

and often expressed their annoyance in no uncertain terms .

Britishers used to the languor of Timbuctu and Belize, who suddenly

found their snobbish hauteur deflated by even common

Jewish workingmen who did not know the word `native' as applied

to themselves, sat back in their chairs unpleasantly puzzled.

The tempo of activity these Jews set was perpetually

ruffling to officials who wanted to enjoy their jobs in peace .

They did not warm to the determined intellectuals who presented

argumentative petitions when their plans were balked .

They were aghast at the grimy-knuckled men who did not hesitate

to invade the sacred sanctums of officialdom in their shirtsleeves

; men of high energy and courage, whose manners were

often bad and who sometimes developed antagonism by their

very presence . Here was an enigma defying previous experience,

a charade of new values which the Colonial official, recruited

from the aloofness of the British manor or the worse

officiousness of London tenement, could neither understand nor

relish . "They almost forgot the difference between themselves

and their employers," said Sir Ronald Storrs . "My first chauffeur

was a Jew . . . he was an excellent driver, but it never

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

occurred to him to brush me down after I got out of the car .

I stood it for three months and then I engaged an Arab chauff

eur in his stead ."

Even more galling, the Jewish spokesmen, product of an

ethnos incalculably different from anything that makes an English

Colonial, left the impression that they considered themselves

a higher order of humanity . They brought means, culture and

capacity with them, and a typically Jewish point of view that

was apt to forget that an Inspector was not necessarily an ass because

he had not read Turgenieff and had no taste for classical

music.

A certain insight into this matter was given by Mr. . Spicer,

Chief of Palestine Police, in reply to the question, "Why are

you all against the Jews ?" Spicer, decent as Colonial officials

go, but stolid and unimaginative, replied obligingly : "Look 'ere

now, there's many reasons . The bloomin' h'Arabs are h'easier

to 'andle. Now you tyke the h'Arabs when they want something.

A crowd will gather in front of my 'ouse, looking fierce

and shaking their blasted clubs, and maybe bryke a window .

Now w'ot do h'I do ! H'I tykes me military 'at, puts it on me

'ead, and walks outside . I tyke out a cigarette, fix it slowly in

the holder, flick the ashes off with a little finger - so ! And

h'I finally sye in an even voice : `See 'ere you beggars, what's the

damn meaning of all this ! Go 'ome !' And they go 'ome .

"Now w'ot do the Jews do! When they want something,

they call h'up the day before for an appointment. Then three

distinguished lawyers come in on me with their arms full of

lawbooks to prove their bloomin' case . Hell, you know h'I

don't know anything about law ."

Certainly a major factor was the bristling hostility to Communism,

which had been built in the gentile mind into something

closely approximating a Jewish phenomenon. To Officialdom

the new Jews coming to the Holy Land were nothing

but the vanguard of Bolshevism, arch-enemy of everything British.

In Palestine was a labor movement headed by hardworking,

grimy-handed men who had read Karl Marx . These

men were vague pinks, of the kind found in the English Labour

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205

Party, whose Socialism consisted mostly of words . Actually

there were only some five hundred known Communists in the

entire country, most of whom were Arabs, and all of them lockstock-

and-barrel against the Zionist experiment . But these were

fine points past the ken of uniformed officials who, constitutionally

unable to distinguish between the various brands of Marxism,

viewed anything remotely touched by it with dark suspicion

.

What disturbed them principally were a few small farm settlements

called Kvutzoth, organized, like the Christian Hutterites

in the United States, on a communal basis . The Kvutzoth members

pretended to be advanced thinkers, looked on religion as a

remnant of the Dark Ages, fought against religious registration

of marriage, and ploughed on the Sabbath . Beyond this they

were hard-working people who slaved under the hot sun from

daybreak to nightfall. The total number of adults in all these collectives

at no time numbered more than three thousand, but their

activities were looked on with a tolerant eye by the Jewish

Agency, bowing to the thumb pressure of the socialist General

Federation of Labor. Moreover, they were settled on land

owned by the Jewish National Fund, and their buildings financed

from the same source. This was deadly ammunition in

the hands of Zionism's enemies, handing over the Jewish National

Movement for crucifixion on a cross of Marxism. The

Arab High Commission of 1923 does not hesitate to describe the

Kvutzoth as "typical examples of Communistic villages in Red

Russia," adding that "had these conditions been restricted to

Jewish colonies this would have been quite a Jewish affair, but

we find that the infectious bolshevik disease is penetrating day

by day into the Arab peasantry ." This kind of propaganda

had an inestimable affect on the bureaucrats in London . It

made the rounds of British officialdom, even officers friendly to

Zionism surveying it with knitted brows. Up to today it runs

like a binding thread through the entire British attitude .

There can be little question that there has finally grown up

among His Majesty's officials in Palestine an ingrained aversion

to Jews, rendered almost ferocious by the struggle to hold these

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

`unsavory foreigners' in their place . Even as open-minded an

official as Broadhurst refers to "the notorious Balf our Declaration."

13 It would be difficult in fact to find anywhere a group

of men as incapable of assistance or understanding to such a

project as the Jewish National Home as are quartered under the

roof of the Palestine Administration . Without question they

regard themselves as under some sort of queer duty to lead a

stealthy filibuster against the very policy they were commissioned

to carry through. No one even on speaking terms with

the facts can doubt that the British and Jews in Palestine are

lined up, like medieval Norman and Saxon, on two sides of the

political, social and economic fence . "I could not help noticing,"

says Broadhurst pointedly, "that when British officials attend

any Jewish social function they beat a retreat at the first

opportune moment." 14

The American minister, John Haynes Holmes, visiting the

Holy Land in 1929, found an invincible prejudice against Jews

among the Crown officials . These men, he relates, "talked of

the Zionist movement with impatience, frequently with contempt,

and always with the suggestion that they would be ineffably

relieved, if not actually pleased, if the whole thing would

only blow up and disappear." 15 The English writer, Beverley

Nichols, paints an identical picture, saying, "I had not been in

Jerusalem for a week before I realized very clearly in which direction

lay the sympathies of the majority of the English community.

They were pro-Arab. Some from a vague sense of

`justice,' some from very clearly defined views of Imperial policy,

and some because they were frankly anti-Semitic ." 16 This

whole pattern of dislike is aptly shown in trifling provocations,

as the alteration in 1931 when Nathan Straus Street in Jerusalem

was given the hated name of Chancellor . Ashbee epitomizes

much of this feeling. He finds "these Jews of the Holy City

even worse than their brethren of Whitechapel." 17 The policy

of the Balfour Declaration, which he was appointed to implement,

he discovers "is an unjust policy . . . dangerous to civilization."

18

Farago, covering the 1936 riots, describes the wives of highly

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207

placed British officials openly carrying on propaganda for the

Arab cause among the newspaper correspondents . Even the

Chief Secretary of the Government, Hawthorn Hall, an official

ranking next to the High Commissioner, is found advising French

journalists to read the anti-Semitic Arab press if they want to get

at the true facts of the Palestine situation .19 A wave of hatred

as devastating as this has many little eddies, nor have the enlisted

men escaped its clutch . This jingle, popular with the Palestine

army under General Dill, speaks volumes :

"Arab ! Don't shoot me

Shoot the man behind the tree .

He is a treacherous Jew

I am an Englishman true .

Arab ! Don't shoot me

Shoot the man behind the tree ."

A considerable proportion of His Majesty's servants in Palestine,

end up as accomplished anti-Zionist agitators in London .

To understand the ease with which the transition is made, one has

only to read the pages of the Arab propaganda sheet, Palestine

and Transjordan, and then the letters written by Sir John Chancellor

inviting various individuals in the Government to subscribe

money for the upkeep of this "weekly paper in English to express

the British point of view ." 20

There is not the slightest doubt that the Zionists are faced in

Palestine by a cynically hostile Guardian, who in the very nature

of events must sooner or later succeed in grinding their movement

to a pulp . It is in fact hard to conceive how, in a modern

world, any colonization enterprise can be conducted successfully

when it must contend with the active hatred of an overlord

who sets immigration conditions, tariff rates, taxes, and

regulates by fiat every economic and political condition under

which the new settlers must live.

Zionist publicity has proven itself adept at concealing this

ugly situation . Colonel Wedgwood visiting the country in

1927 was utterly astonished to hear at first hand the bitter feeling

of the Jewish settlers . He had been under the impression

that they were enraptured with the English Administration.

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Only old Menachem Ussishkin among the Zionists, has dared to

speak his mind . With blunt candor he declared that "from the

start it was clear that the British officials in Palestine were against

us. The entire Arab opposition to the Jewish National Home

was `made at the Government House .' " 21

Dr. John Haynes Holmes puts the matter in a nutshell when

he says : "It may well be discovered, before the tale is done,

that the English conquest of Palestine, and the English Government

of Palestine under the Mandate, constitute together the

greatest tragedy that ever befell the Zionist movement ." 22

RULE BRITANNIA !'

Weitzman had tartly informed the Twelfth Zionist Congress

: "If you think we made ourselves the agents of English

politics in the Near East, you have the wrong idea . . . If you

were to ask any British Imperialist today whether Palestine is

a necessity for them toward their Imperialistic ends, you will

hear as the answer a flat `no.' "

This, however, was far from the opinion of the gentlemen in

Westminster and Whitehall . They saw with hungry eyes that

this little territory had rapidly become the "key to great oil deposits,

to regions of vital value to Great Britain. Its loss by

the British Empire might be fatal to its interests in India, in

Egypt, and in the Suez Canal Zone ." 23 They saw also that between

Jewish and British interests in Palestine there lay basic,

and from their viewpoint, unbridgeable, contradictions .

With grim realism these men understood what Jewish politicians

were too naive to grasp, that there was no struggle between

Jews and Arabs, but actually an undeclared state of war

between the Zionists and His Britannic Majesty's Government

for possession of this vital area .

It was disconcertingly plain that if the Zionists put up a smart

fight for their patrimony the English would find themselves in

parentheses. Palestine was not a British colony but an area in

the process of becoming an independent state, handed over to

the transient guardianship of a Mandatory by consent of the

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209

Jews. It was in this none too reassuring olio of facts that British

policy in Palestine had its raison d'etre . If need be they could

occupy Palestine on the same principle of 'J' y suis, j' y reste' 24

by which they had held on to Egypt.25 But a Great Britain

faced with a world of enemies, and which was loudly demanding

international sanctions against covenant-breaking nations like

Japan and Italy, had to keep face . It must achieve its ends by a

silently progressive destruction of the legal bases on which the

Zionist framework rested. Understanding this, one understands

the dissembling, the artificially created problems and the

covering cloak of platitudes which mark the British reign in

Palestine. Then, what must be otherwise merely an inexplicably

shabby series of mean-spirited acts against a defenseless people,

begins to make some pattern of sense .

In 1875 Disraeli got the Suez Canal for England with money

advanced by the Rothschilds, literally muscling his nation in

as the major shareholder . The canal made British control of

Egypt inevitable. Since that time, the King's subjects have

been taught that the lifeline of the Empire runs through Suez .

The Admiralty has always held doggedly to the dictum that

this artery must be dominated by Britain at all costs . Suez reverts

to the Egyptian Government when the Canal Company's

concession expires in 1969. Still more disturbing, the Egyptian

Nationalists forced London to sign a new treaty in 1936, under

which Britain troops will have to evacuate Alexandria and Cairo

in eight years.

These changing conditions leave the British Army, quartered

in the Canal Zone, without any hinterland as a base . Palestine

thus becomes an essential bulwark for an otherwise precariously

situated army. Accenting this condition is the presence of the

Italians on the newly acquired Island of Doumeirah in the Red

Sea, their guns mounted menacingly right athwart the Imperial

line of communications. On the land side Italy holds an impregnable

position in Ethiopia. Under her stimulation, Egypt

grows daily more restless . Germany has once more turned her

face toward the East, and is reviving Bismarck's Drang nach

Osten policy . Though at this moment she pays court to Eng210

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

land in the hope of winning its neutrality while Hitler is establishing

his domination in Europe, ultimate German colonial aims

at the expense of the British Empire are unconcealed . The old

objective of the Czars, dreaded by Englishmen for a hundred

years, has been finally gained by the Soviets. At the Montreux

Conference in 1936, despite anything His Majesty's representatives

could do about it, Turkey fortified the Straits and allowed

the Northern Muscovite Bear permission to send her fleets

through to the Mediterranean . Thus the danger of being outflanked

both by land and sea looms up more vividly real with

each passing month . In the Far East, Japan openly challenges

Britain not only for dominance in China but throughout the

East. Under Japanese stimulation the tide against the white

man rises inexorably in Asia . Siam and Persia are visibly anti-

British in sentiment, and the volcano of India smolders with

ominous portent.

Thoroughly alarmed, Great Britain is feverishly rearming .

She is straining every sinew and all her resources to meet the

savage attack which she knows must sooner or later be made on

her.

The chain of great naval bases reaching from Gibraltar to

Singapore and Hongkong bears witness to the sharp attention

paid by British statesmen to control of the trade route to India.

If this were cut, Britain would be dead of starvation within six

weeks.26 Far from being self-supporting, England produces

only about three-fifths of the food she requires and about

twenty percent of the raw materials needed in her manufactures .

Roughly, forty percent of her commerce lies in export trade .

The Mediterranean is the principal trade route to all British

Dominions except Canada, and since her supremacy there has

been challenged it assumes greater significance in British eyes

than ever before. Its importance may be judged from Admiralty

figures, showing an annual value with India of C 8o,ooo,-

ooo; Australia, C 50,ooo,ooo ; and China, C 26,000,000 . The

center of gravity in international affairs, says Sidebotham, is

"no longer Stresa or Danzig, but Haifa ." -"

Haifa harbor has become the most important stronghold in

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211

the Mediterranean. It is incomparably better than that of Alexandria,

which has now become difficult for large water vessels

due to the shifting of the channel . The quarrel with Mussolini

over Ethiopia demonstrated the untenability of the old naval

depot at Malta, which is now to be closed up and transferred to

Haifa, slated to be the permanent station for the Mediterranean

fleet. Haifa has hence become a weighty matter of empire,

comparable only in strategic significance with the new gigantic

Singapore base.

This port is moreover the terminus of the great oil line

through which the enormous stream of Mosul oil is transported

to the sea.28 This factor becomes overwhelmingly important

in light of the fact that less than six percent of all fuel oil and

gasoline consumed in the United Kingdom originates in the Empire.

With the British fleet modernized so that it depends on

fuel oil exclusively, has risen the Admiralty's demand that Zionism

be halted altogether and Palestine fenced off into a wholly

British preserve . The English blueprint envisages a parallel

pipeline to run from Haifa to the Mosul fields ; and another conduit

to carry the Anglo-Iranian oil from the Persian Gulf to

either Haifa or Aqaba.

Palestine today holds the key position for all air routes between

Britain and the East, and in view of the uncertainties in

Egypt, is a dominant factor in the development of air routes to

Africa. It has become a vital link in the whole British chain of

strategy. Desperately, as the open question arises as to the relative

efficiency of dreadnaughts and airships, Britain is seeking

transcontinental sovereignty of the air .

London also plans to supplement the water route to India by

a system of motor roads, of which Haifa will be the western

terminus ; and by a magnificent railway system, connecting all

the important British possessions in the old world like a girdle.

The defeat of Germany and Turkey during the Great War removed

the last physical obstacles to this grandiose scheme . The

railway is to go from Haifa to Baghdad, thence to the Persian

Gulf, connecting with British-controlled Port Fuad and the

India line . At Haifa again, it connects with the Cape to Cairo

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Railway by way of Kantara, making Haifa the apex of a tremendous

triangle whose other extremes are at Capetown and

Calcutta . One arm is to go from Haifa to Damascus via Iraq,

thus maintaining an a priori grip on Syria in case the French are

forced out and the Italians attempt to take their place . Another

branch is to reach from Haifa to Aqaba, providing an alternative

land route between the two great seas .

If Haifa is rapidly becoming the key to the Orient, Aqaba,

on the Red Sea is potentially of like importance . Its sheltered

waters are ideal for a seaplane base, while the high mesa which

overlooks it provides the finest natural aerodrome in the world .

Fifty airplanes could take off simultaneously on this plateau .

Plans are already actively being formulated for the digging of a

new canal to supplement Suez, to stretch from Aqaba to Gaza .

This would relieve Britain of the fear of the water route reverting

to Egypt, and would give her a virtually impregnable

line of communications, making her master of the old world .

Bearing heavily on English attitudes is still another factor of

vast importance - the presence in the Dead Sea of unlimited

amounts of potash and other chemicals, valuable in peace and absolutely

essential in war. Palestine is England's only source of

this material . Until the Dead Sea development materialized, the

Germans held a practical monopoly on potash, placing the Allied

Powers in a serious predicament during the World War .

To the official mind, it became pressingly evident that some

pretext for permanent occupation of this indispensable area had

to be found. One thing was certain : England could never permit

Palestine to come under the rule of any other country.

Even more dubious in the Bureaucratic mind was the possibility

of an independent Jewish State, which, being free to contract

alliances with foreign powers, could conceivably make common

cause with the Empire's foes in the unpredictable future .

These officials look askance at the presence here of a large, intelligent,

modern population whose reaction in any crisis might

involve an obstinate consideration of its own needs and welfare

; and which might under able leaders extend its hegemony

of interests to cut through the indolent Arabic countries like a

BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS

213

knife through so much cheese, perhaps even challenging British

supremacy over Egypt itself. They believe that Palestine can

be held much more comfortably for Imperial purposes, without

a Jewish Homeland, with a native population completely dependent

on Britain for financial and political support .

The pioneering energy shown by the Zionists has also alarmed

London lest she should be nursing a new Japan in Western Asia,

who, sooner than was pleasant to contemplate, would go into active

competition for the all-important markets of Africa and the

Orient . They dread the possibility that an industrialized Jewish

Palestine would form the spearhead for an economic bloc of

Near Eastern countries, ruining British position completely by

an enlargement of already conflicting interests . They uncomfortably

remember that in 1914 India was importing seventyfive

percent of its cotton textiles from Great Britain. By 1 934

Indian capital had built enough domestic mills to supply seventyfive

percent of the textiles the country needed, Japan gobbling

up more than half of the remaining business . London is determined

to forestall industrialization in Asia wherever it can, and

is much more interested in maintaining the old conditions .29

The British know that the Jew, with his resources and indomitable

energy, if encouraged instead of hampered would

eventually bring the entire Near East into his sphere of influence

; and this possibility is sufficient to keep the gentlemen of

Downing Street from sleeping at night .

A persistent minority of independent British opinion, however,

takes a contrary view . On the matter of trade it points

out that markets depend also on consuming capacity and that it

is to the mother country's advantage to develop the Near East .

It points to the increasingly large English export to Palestine following

hard on the heels of Jewish industrialization . It draws

attention to the compensating trade development following the

industrialization of Canada, Australia and the other Dominions,

and it finally rests on the contention that the hand of progress

cannot be stopped whether England wills or no .

Such leaders as Lords Snell, Lothian, Tweedsmuir and Cecil

hold that the success of Zionism is no less important to Britain

214

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

than to the Jews, and stress the need for developing a loyal

population there whose interests would be tied up with those of

the English. These men view with disquietude the political instability

of the Arab, as well as the growing antagonism to Britain

throughout the Moslem world . They believe that a powerful

Jewish National Home, holding the Judean fastnesses and the

key coastal positions, would be another Gibraltar on the eastern

end of the Mediterranean . The English pro-Zionists contend

that intelligent Imperial planning demands the driving of a stout

Jewish wedge between the Egyptian, Turkish and Arabian Moslems.

Mr. L. S. Amery, former Secretary of State for the

Colonies, in his book The Forward View states that the introduction

of a strong Western force, allied with Britain, into this

part of the world, is an absolute Imperial necessity . The great

British publicist Herbert Sidebotham writes that "so strong

is the argument for Zionism to our own security that if there

had been no Zionism readymade to our hand by thousands of

years of Jewish suffering, we should have had to invent it ." 30

And Lieutenant-Commander Kenworthy asserts that "it is the

duty of every British Imperialist to support the Zionist policy in

Palestine, which is the only insurance policy for the defense of

the Suez Canal ."

Among the plans that have been seriously advocated is the

scheme for making Palestine a Crown Colony as a prelude to recasting

it as a self-governing Dominion . The Seventh Dominion

League was formed under the lead of such men as Colonel

Josiah Wedgwood, Sir Martin Conway and Lord Hartington.

They maintain that it is absolutely essential for the interests of

the British Empire that the Jews realize their ideal of a national

home in Palestine, that the burden of military defense for this

whole sector would then be minimum "because no nation could

attack Palestine without shocking the whole world Jewry ." 31

While the 1936 riots were going on, the Bureaucrats also, with a

wary eye on possibilities in case the original scheme fell through,

conducted some inspiring propaganda among Jews towards

this end. Leading it in Palestine was Hawthorn Hall, Chief

Secretary of the Palestine Government . The Jewish Farmers

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215

Union and certain industrialists agreed eagerly, feeling that this

plan would eliminate the heartbreaking disabilities from which the

country suffers. In sheer weariness, most of the Jewish leaders

would have welcomed this solution if any half decent guarantee

would have been given them in exchange for their voluntary relinquishment

of the Mandate .

However, a Dominion has certain privileges, as London has

found out in its dealings with Canada and South Africa .32

The bureaucrats did not want the Jews as partners in the Empire

if they could avoid it . Expressing this hostility, Joseph F .

Broadhurst, long Assistant Inspector General, C.I.D., to the

Palestine Government, remarks : "I cannot see that a heterogeneous

collection of Jews dumped into a land with no connection

with our own would make the best of compatriots . This

would never do, and few British people would tolerate such a

scheme." 33

While this difference in opinion exists, the vast preponderance

of power lies with the anti-Semitic group, which is irrevocably

opposed to the Jewish National Home. They are painfully

aware that the Mandate was given to fulfill Jewish, not English,

needs and that England has no title in Palestine except such

right as she can make . Hence they have had to base their politics

on Jewish-Arab tension, a policy splendidly successful from

their viewpoint, even when a few of the resulting details were

highly unpleasant for Britain.

One of the great difficulties they encountered was the increasing

pressure of millions of desperate Jews throughout the

world who banged on the doors of the country frantically .

Here the Bureaucrats were at once presented with the need for

much circumspect maneuvering so as to avoid bringing a storm

of condemnation down on their heads . Unwilling to drop its

pose of decent impartiality in view of the effect it might have

on other subject peoples in the Empire, the Government was

forced from one impotent artifice to another .

Officialdom is further faced with the fact that in England itself

an obvious policy of pledge-breaking would not be popular.

British public opinion must be handled with kid gloves . It

z16

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

regards the moral tradition of the nation with reverence, and has

been known to buck like a wild steer when this was outraged .

Both in and out of Parliament there existed an enormous sympathy

for Zionism which could not be dispelled over night . As

late as October 1936 a poll on the Palestine situation taken by

the anti-Zionist Daily Express showed even here a more than

two-to-one majority in favor of the Jews as against the Arabs

Whitehall was espousing . In its own literature the Government

had acknowledged that outside of Jewry "an overwhelming

mass of public opinion would appear to favor Jewish

administration in Palestine ." 34 This "overwhelming mass of

outside opinion" had to be deferred to, and at the same time,

broken down .

These uncertainties are the only reasons why they do not

annex Sinai to Palestine as part of a final settlement with Egypt .

They are playing the safety factor ; not feeling sure that their

strategy in the Holy Land will be successful, and afraid that

they may yet, despite all their desperate juggling, be forced to

deal with the fact of an independent Jewish State .

The sum total of this situation is certainly rather awkward for

the men who sit at the mahogany desks in Whitehall, and calls

for smart operating . But they are capable of smart operating .

And they are determined to make Western Asia into a British

pasturage if they have to turn half of creation upside down in

the process .

THE ARAB EMPIRE PROJECT

Many reasons are advanced by the English to the bewildered

Zionists to explain their conduct . "We are sorry," they say

confidentially. "We would really like to do it, y' know, but

we have to be careful of the ninety million Mohammedans in

our Empire."

Under examination this hackneyed contention seems pretty

thin. The British have only to refer to their own T . E. Lawrence,

who termed Pan-Islamism in politics "a fiction." The

men of Whitehall are, after all, capable administrators who are

BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS

217

not apt to forget recent experience in a hurry . They can still

remember the war with Turkey when the Mohammedans refused

to heed the Ottoman Sultan's call to Holy War against

England, and instead united with the Hindus to aid the Christian

conqueror . They are also aware of the successful French experience

in throwing Feisal, descendant of the Prophet, out of Syria

bodily, with the rifles of imported Moslem levies . They know

that the Agha Khan, head of the Indian Mohammedans, belongs

to the Ishmaelite sect, who are so thoroughly orthodox that they

regard the Palestine Moslems as shameless infidels .35 They also

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

India, are more than a counterweight to any possible Moslem

reaction ; and Hindu leaders have made their cordial sympathy

for Zionism clear .

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

Moslem sects than there is between the beliefs of a modern

Englishman and an orthodox Jew from Bessarabia . Islam itself

is more than a creed . It is a complete social system . Originally

it was a simple and understandable faith, full of the spirit of

generosity and brotherhood . To the essential democracy it

preached it added cannily a list of simple sugary delights, including

a Paradise containing beautiful and agreeable girls whose

virginity miraculously returned to them every morning. Today

knowledge of the Faith is everywhere confused with debased

moral standards, superstitions and bigoted ignorance .

The powerful Ibn Saud preaches the unity of orthodox Moslems

and the exclusion of all other Arabs . His Wahabis adhere

literally to the Koran, do not drink or smoke, and consider

every technical innovation of our time to be a tool of Satan .

They regard all the theological and philosophical speculations

which made Arab civilization famous during the Middle Ages,

as heresies, to be relentlessly purged . They are prepared for no

compromises and consider the North Arabs as Musbieks, unbelievers,

who are to be viewed with more intense dislike than

even Christians or Jews. The Wahabis consider the wearing of

a silk garment or gold ornament to be a sin . They regard the

Prophet Mohammed as just a man and repudiate bitterly the act

z18

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

of other Moslem sects in turning him into a supernatural being .

The Wahabis look on any built place of worship as being

perilously close to idolatry . Only with difficulty were they restrained

from destroying in their zeal the beautiful architectural

shrines in Mecca and Medina when they drove Hussein out of

the Hejaz .

The Wahabis often have threatened an attack on Iraq . Part

of the ever-impending Holy War against "unfaithful Moslems"

in Transjordan, Iraq, Kowiet and Palestine almost eventuated in

March 1928, and was only stopped by a convincing mobilization

of British airplanes and armored cars . In Iraq, against the

fierce opposition of the predominant Shi'a community, Feisal,

who belongs to the Sunna sect, was bombed onto the throne by

the British . There has since been continuous trouble of a sort

only comparable to the religious hatreds which divided France

and Germany after the advent of the Reformation . Numerous

and bloody physical clashes occur. The Shi'as, who outnumber

the Sunni invaders three-to-one, are suppressed with an iron

hand, exiled, imprisoned and their newspapers outlawed . How

venomous the feeling is, is shown in the Shi'a protest to the

League, praying for remedy from the terrorization they are being

subjected to by the "savages brought from the desert" by

England.36

The bogey of a militant Arab racialism is another invention of

the ever-resourceful Bureaucratic mind . Lawrence once told

Liddell Hart that he had "always been a realist and opportunist

in tactics : and Arab unity is a madman's notion ." Sir Ronald

Storrs, too, remarks : "Arabism does not exist ." 37 And another

British authority, Loder, adds : "Arabia is a geographical expression

and corresponds to no political entity ." 38 The very

use of the words 'Mohammedanism' and `nationalism' in the

same breath is a contradiction in terms . Racial pride is unknown

to Islam . Everyone who confesses Allah is accepted as

a brother and equal, whether he be a Negro, Malay or European .

There, moreover, remains a strong identity between sectarianism

and dynastic government . Religion and law are so closely

identified in Islam that the difference between two sects asBUREAUCRACY

LOOKS AT JEWS

219

sumes an important difference between the civil and criminal

sanctions under which they respectively live .39 The only way

nationalism can be effective in the Near East is by the secularization

of religion, from which these people are a long way off .

Arabia is a mass of blood feuds and economic rivalries . There

are long drawn-out boundary disputes between the various countries,

and the traditional jealousies between the ruling houses extends

fan-shape down the line through the whole host of minor

sheikhs, sultans and imams.

Bedouins meeting in strange territory slaughter each other

without mercy . Tribesmen are constantly being killed in frontier

raids from which not even Palestine and Transjordan are

exempt. None of the established Arab governments have been

able to put down these constantly recurring conflicts between

the tribes . Even under the strong hand of the British, raiding

Wahabis slaughtered the whole Transjordan tribe of Atie in

December 1928 ; and a typical pitched battle was fought between

the tribes at Koba near Jerusalem as late as July 1932 .

The Syrian author, Ameen Rihani, gives a graphic picture of the

general state of affairs in one Arab country, Yemen . The ruling

Imam, in order to protect his position, is eternally warring

with rebellious clans and tribes . "The twenty-seven years of

his reign," says Rihani, "have been a continuous Jihad, actual

and political - a chain of wars and truces . Little wonder that

hostages are the foundation of the state ." Here, too, the Italian

observer, Salvatore Aponte, notes that the vast majority of the

population are the unwilling subjects of the ruling Zaidis from

the hills, "whom they look upon as abominable heretics ." 40

In all the Arab countries provincialism is a persistent factor .

Syrians employed in the Iraqi Government service, as an instance,

are the constant object of agitation aimed at ousting

them.

The result of the recent controversy between Turkey and

Syria over the Sanjak of Alexandretta (a part of Syria which

holds a considerable minority Turkish population) is also illuminating.

The Turks declared openly to London, Paris and

Geneva : "We have confidence in France but not in Syria."

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Negotiations between Paris and Ankara, under the auspices of

the League, finally ended in the Spring of 1938 in a settlement

whereby this richest of all Syrian provinces (called by the

Arabs "the pearl of the Arab Empire") is to be detached from

that country and ultimately handed back to Turkey . The result

was hardly what could be expected if pan-Arabism is to be

credited with the vitality London concedes to it . The outside

Arabs maintained a prudent silence . Not one Arab paper dared

to write a single article against Turkey . No Arab State raised

its voice in favor of Damascus, and not a single Arab statesman

protested directly or indirectly . At the very moment, in fact,

when the Syrians were imploring the aid of their Arab brethren,

Baghdad organized a triumphal reception in honor of the Turkish

Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had come to Iraq at the

head of a large official delegation .41

None of this prevents the Colonial Office mouthpiece Great

Britain and the East from headlining an explosive editorial during

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

Arabs, from Morocco to Persia, with a single patriotic voice "are

implacably resolved to look upon Palestine as a part of Arabia ."

The whole plan for a great Federated Arab State reaches back

to the tenacious support England gave the Turks before the

War. By 1915 the idea gradually emerged of elevating the

Arab into the place in English affections that the Turks had so

rudely left vacant . It had been the pet scheme of the military

clique who came in with Allenby . It was then dropped, suddenly

to be revived ten days after General de Bono marched his

Italians into Adowa. Slowly the Federation is taking shape as

British gold pours into the Near East .

The previous tactics were to keep the Arab rulers at each

other's throats . This was handled by a system of agents provocateur,

politely known as political officers, who represented the

Crown and dispensed its largesse in each place and principality .

This method revolves around a system of always having rivals,

or powerful opponents, ready to put forward if the existing

ruler becomes difficult to handle . The big question in every

Arab land is the agreement or treaty with the British, and the

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221

amount of gold that can be secured. The amazing elasticity

and scope of this control system is outlined by Rihani in his

book, Around the Coasts o f Arabia.42 "They all have to be

satisfied," he comments, "the big chiefs, the little chiefs and all

the chiefs between ."

The Arab countries are hardly more than camouflaged English

colonies. Iraq, for example, is theoretically independent.

But the British maintain troops there and have absolute control

over the country's foreign affairs. Under the twenty-year

`treaty' signed October io, 1922, Iraq may appoint no foreign

official or adviser without British approval . It provides for a

separate agreement covering the employment of British officials

in the Iragian Government. Another separate agreement gives

England a measure of control over Iraq's judicial affairs . The

Treaty also stipulates that the British Air Force is to protect

Iraq's frontier, putting England in de facto military control. In

December 1925, Britain maneuvered the League of Nations into

position to hand over the Turkish Vilayet of Mosul to Iraq,

"provided that the British control over that kingdom were extended

for a period of about twenty-five years ." 43 Ibn Saud,

too, gets a large subsidy, granting adequate favors in return .

Among these is a juicy concession to the British-owned Iraq

Petroleum Company "extending over the whole Western littoral

of Saudi Arabia to a depth inland of one hundred kilometres ." 44

Today the official plan involves closing the door to threatened

expansion by Italy, making a more or less closely organized

unit desirable. Mussolini had been making overtures to the

Arabs and was utilizing funds from the Italian Treasury for this

purpose. He had set up a powerful broadcasting station at

Bari, agitating the Arabs in their own language to throw off the

British yoke ; forcing the frightened British to inaugurate competing

Arabic broadcasts from London .

Ibn Saud, in exchange for an increase in his subsidy and wider

autonomy from direct British rule, agreed to enter the system

of pacts, as did Iraq . Then the clique in Whitehall summoned

Abdullah of Transjordan to London and set the background for

the events which ended in the 1936 Palestine riots . King Ghazi

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

of Iraq is looked on as a weakling and thoroughly undependable

; and Abdullah was inserted into the pact system as a check

on the ulterior ambitions of Saud whom London distrusts . Abdullah,

who once expressed strong anti-British sentiment before

he learned what side his bread was buttered on, is now in high

favor with Downing Street as a man of "extraordinary good

sense ." When during the Ethiopian incident the Mufti decided

to balk, it was the ever-pliable Abdullah, rising like an elfin Don

Quixote from his little principality, who issued the call to the

Jihad against Italy in the name of Islam. As ruler of Transjordan

the Emir cuts rather a ludicrous figure, but as King of

a reunited Transjordanian-Palestine he becomes a respectable

monarch and an ideal counter-balance to the Hejaz Kingdom in

the Arabic Federation of the future .

In the formulation of this plan, Abdullah was not to be trusted

altogether with Palestine . Strategical sections, including Jerusalem

and Haifa, were to be handed over to Britain outright, as

was an enclave around Aqaba . The Jews were to be restricted

to a tiny coastal area . If they refused to agree, a cantonization

plan was favored, thus accomplishing the same result without

benefit of international sanction .

The authors of this scheme allowed their imaginations to roam

over the possibility of even disengaging North Africa from

France and Italy, and already have had their puppets speak in

grandiose terms of an allied free Moorish State in North Africa

which will fall within the magnetic influence of the free Arab

Federation.

All this was fraught with considerable difficulty from the

Arab side alone . There had been bad blood between Feisal and

his brother Abdullah . The Emir felt that he should have gotten

the throne of Iraq after Feisal's death instead of the boy King

Ghazi. Iraq was now ambitious to get part of northern Palestine

for an outlet to the sea . The project was also viewed with

ill-concealed suspicion by Ibn Saud who wants no strengthening

of a rival house ejected by him from Mecca .

Working against time, British agents like Philby, Cox and

Peake Pasha again criss-crossed the desert handing out money

BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS

223

and promises right and left . Under pressure, boundary disputes

are being speedily settled as this great effort to de-Balkanize the

Near East goes forward . In complete liaison, British agents

were at work in Teheran and Istanbul to draw these two important

powers within the British orbit by inducing them to

sign a corollary pact . In response to this fast work, Afghanistan,

Iraq, Iran and Turkey came to a treaty of friendship early

in February 1936. One leg of the journey was now over . The

bringing of Egypt into this bloc was to follow, as was the Arab

Federation into which Palestine was to be absorbed. Such was

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

blatantly announces that "the Arab Federation is being develveloped

. . . under British patronage, on sound lines ." At a

crucial Cabinet meeting in September of 1936 the English were

on the point of declaring the Federation in existence ; and were

only deterred at the last moment by pointed protest in the

American Congress calling attention to the international obligations

inherent in the Palestine Mandate and to America's vested

interests there .

It is somewhat sardonic to note that during the same period

that official British publicists were ballyhooing the right of selfdetermination

as applied to Arabs in Palestine, Britain had

grabbed a huge chunk of territory from the Arabs in Southern

Arabia. By an Order in Council which became effective April

1, 1937 the British Government arbitrarily annexed to the Empire

111,025 square miles of territory, including some six hundred

thousand Arabs of different tribes and complexions. This

area is called the Hadramaut, and it was taken by exactly the

same methods Italy used in Ethiopia . Completely soured on the

tactics of his own Government, Philby writes : "The attempt

of Great Britain to curtail the independence of South Arabia

necessitates the employment of terrorism which we deplore

when it is used by others . That aerial bombing is freely used

. . . is not denied by the Government ." 45 The British also

own another slice of Arabia which they annexed shortly after

the World War. This is the colony of Aden which dominates

the southern end of the peninsula and looks straight across the

224

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Red Sea at Mussolini's legions in East Africa . Obviously the

vast areas of the Hadramaut and Aden are not to be included in

the proposed Arab Confederacy .

Part of Whitehall's strategy lies in an attempt to frighten

fellow-Englishmen with the bogey that the Arab was prepared

to be Britain's best friend until the ultimate enormity of Zionism

was thrust upon him. Actually the British seem to have little

to fear here, since the Arabs require the power of English arms

if they are to maintain their independence . "Nothing," writes

Ernest Main, "could stop Turkey or Persia walking into Iraq

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

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

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

as Turkish irredenta territory. Therefore, states Herbert Sidebotham,

English friendship with the Arabs is more than likely to

bring Britain into collision with these countries : "In any case . . .

our friendship should be courted by the Arab kings, rather than

theirs by us." 47

Pro-Arab propagandists additionally ignore the dark hatred

with which the Arab regards all Christians. The Hejaz, country

of King Hussein, number one man in this controversy,

does not allow a single Christian within its sacred borders.

Lieutenant-Colonel Stafford writes that "at an official reception

to the present King of Iraq the usual cheers were followed by

cries of `Down with Britain."' Article II of Lawrence's Confidential

Guide to Newcomers from the British Army states

frankly that "the foreigner and Christian is not a popular person

in Araby. . . Wave a Sherif in front of you like a banner

and hide your own mind and person ." 48

Shrewd English observers, unimpressed by bureaucratic fetish,

are of the absolute opinion that in the event of a general war

the first purpose of the Arabs would be to get rid of Britain, and

that London is strengthening the very forces which will ultimately

be arrayed against her . The English writer Ernest

Main mentions, as an augury for the future, that the Arab press

solidly supported Italy during the Abyssinian War, making no

BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS

225

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

first opportunity .49

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

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

the sweeping tide of feeling against England." 60 Rasps the

Arab newspaper Falastin in its issue of May 19, 1930 : "The

Jews lost an opportunity to arrive at an understanding with the

Arabs owing to the Jews' obstinacy and blind loyalty to Great

Britain." The articles of indictment are numerous : the country

is overridden with English officials who draw high salaries

and live in luxury, etc. Nor do Moslem doctrines require much

outside stimulation to foment a frenzied hatred for the Englishman

and all his works. What Moslems really think was plainly

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

the Moslem High Council in Palestine on November 23,

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

Imperialism which aims to seize all Moslem lands ."

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

Congresses" by occurrences at the Congress of December 1931,

which the Palestine Government had organized as a weapon

against the Zionists . One of the first resolutions it adopted

claimed that the highly strategic Hejaz Railway was Wakf

(Moslem religious) property which had been stolen by the English,

and demanded its return within six months under threat of

an international Mohammedan boycott of British goods .

INTERPRETING THE MANDATE

No matter what opinions British politicians might have once

expressed as private individuals, once in office they invariably

succumb to the demands of the anti-Zionist permanent officials .

When Malcolm MacDonald became Colonial Secretary he

ceased to function as "Weizmann's best friend," just as his

father forgot most of his Socialism and all of his Zionism when

he became Prime Minister . Winston Churchill made beautiful

speeches for the Zionists, but Churchill in office made common

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cause with the clique in the Departments, and issued the crushing

document which bears his name . Thomas as a Labor leader,

protested unreservedly against the theft of Trans-Jordan, but

Thomas as Colonial Secretary lapsed into all the stereotypes of

his predecessors. Ormsby-Gore's deep hearty voice had assured

the Jaffa Jews that the Balfour Declaration meant the

"building up of a Jewish nation in all its various aspects in Palestine."

Becoming Colonial Secretary in turn, he discovered that

the Declaration embodied "a dual obligation toward Arabs and

Jews." What this meant is illuminated in answer to a query

from the Permanent Mandates Commission, asking what was being

done to implement Article VI of the Mandate regarding

close settlement on the land . Ormsby-Gore replied for the

King that immigrants were very anxious f or land but that

the Government had been prevented from granting them any by

reason o f the other duty which it owed to the Arab population .

In reply to another query he declared in extenuation that "the

Arabs objected to the Jews because the latter were much more

efficient ." Thus this responsible officer of the Crown makes it

clear that his Government regards its principal "obligation of

honor" under the Mandate to be the protection of the Arabs

against Jewish encroachment, a finesse which almost approaches

the proportions of genius.

Even the MacDonald Letter, supposedly edited in a tone of

good-will toward Zionism, carries the adroit observation that

"the Mandatory cannot ignore the existence of differing interests

and viewpoints," which it infers will be readily reconciled in

a pending understanding between Arabs and Jews ; but, quite

naturally, "until that is reached, considerations of balance must

inevitably enter into the definition of policy ." Stripped of concealing

verbiage, this simply means that no essential measure in

favor of the Jewish Homeland may be effected unless there is an

`understanding,' i.e., if the Arabs agree. If the Arabs object,

the measure cannot be carried out ."

This theory goes a long way beyond any reservation even

hinted at in the Mandate . The preamble to that document protects

the `civil and religious rights' of the non-Jewish communi ..

BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS

227

ties but it nowhere mentions their psychological attitude as a

factor entitled to annul the purpose for which the Home was

conceived. Article VI of the Mandate reads : "The Administration

of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position

of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate

Jewish immigration . . ." In a process of hair-splitting that

would do credit to fifty Philadelphia lawyers, the British concentrated

on the word `position' with a magnifying glass . When

the Mandate was issued, the `position' of the Arabs was that of

eighty-eight percent of the population. In 1936 it had shrunk

to sixty-six percent, and had therefore been `prejudiced.' The

same logic naturally follows in reference to the professed inability

of the Arab to compete in terms of modern civilization,

an argument not essentially different from that of European

Judeo-phobcs, wherever the Nazi racial theory has not supravened.

It is no new experience for Jews to be barred as immigrants

and be ring-fenced in a percentage norm, but it seems

far-fetched to believe that the sanction of the Peace Conference

was necessary to provide the British Government with the authority

so to act.

This whole sapping operation has been accomplished by a

series of graduated depredations . Entrusted with complete supervision

of the Jewish inheritance, the Bureaucrats were in position

to smash it effectively by degrees and still maintain a surface

attitude of benevolence . Year by year, under one pretext

or another, they managed systematically to curtail Jewish rights

under the Mandate and to give that document various reinterpretations,

most of which rested on a body of precedent established

by themselves. There is scarcely an evasion that was not

tried . With great shrewdness the Palestine Government attempted

to transform the Jews, in its official reports, from a national

entity to a religious body . They questioned the meaning

of the words `Jewish National Home' and pretended a vast ignorance

of the meaning of `Zionist aspirations .' Ormsby-Gore,

then Under-Secretary for the Colonies, was even smart enough to

retreat into the queer conception formulated by the Hebrew

mystic, Achad Ha'am, that Palestine was to be a spiritual center

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

for the Jewish people and that "the quality and not the quantity

of settlers matters." 52

Like a master magician turning up cards that shouldn't be

there, the British went about the business of proving that black

was white. An all-important case revolved around a decision

by the Magistrate of Tulkarm, who had acquitted one Sherif

Shanti of breaking the Fast of Ramadan on the grounds that the

old Turkish law under which the defendant was charged was in

opposition to Article XV of the Mandate . In a judgment rendered

December 16, 1935, the Court of Appeals at Nablus

quashed this decision, laying down inter alia "that the Mandate

. . . has no juridical value in the courts of the country except

so far as its provisions have been expressly incorporated into the

Laws of Palestine ." This ruling laid the way wide open for the

complete destruction of the Mandate itself .

With more than an astute eye to the future, the Jaffa District

Court ruled that "a British subject who voluntarily acquired

Palestinian citizenship does not thereby lose his British nationality"

(June 5, 1934) . Until then Britain had wriggled out of

acknowledging its alien position in the country by refusing to

allow any British Jew to become a citizen of Palestine .

Some of the Mandatory's decisions border on the ludicrous .

One solemnly handed down by the Jaffa District Court on May

25, 1928 reversed an ordinance passed by the City Council of

Tel Aviv declaring Saturday a legal holiday, as being found

contradictory to Article XV of the Mandate "since the Ordinance

establishes a sort of discrimination by prohibiting trading

on the Sabbath to Jews only."

Until recently, the Government has maintained with fine

rectitude that Jewish immigration, keystone to the whole Mandate,

must be based on the `absorptive capacity' of the country,

an argument which can hardly be gainsaid, except for the fact

that the Mandatory made it dependent on an acute shortage of

labor and on a perpetuation of the status quo in industry and

agriculture . In practice, this principle, so nice on paper, put the

Jews almost in a water-tight box .

Throughout the official reports a stubborn silence is kept on

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229

the positive significance of Jewish immigration . Reading them

one would hardly believe that the dynamic and decisive force

in Palestine life emanates from the Jewish element - but rather

that the small minority Jewish community was an unending

source of embarrassment, friction and trouble .

During the entire period of English occupation, not the slightest

step was ever taken to popularize the Mandate among the

general body of Arabs . The High Commissioner was never

known to invite Jews and Arabs to sit at his table at the same

time, a move which might have done much to ameliorate bad

feeling. And in the numerous Government schools Zionism was

treated as an alien and highly unpleasant phenomenon.

Throughout the years the Administration's reply to questions

was "the Government's policy is unchanged ." But it was evident

that when Britain asserted she would stand by the Mandate,

she did not mean Zionism, but rather her right to remain in

Palestine indefinitely .

Stripped of all disguise, the fundamental English attitude toward

the ward entrusted to their care by the Nations was defined

by then Colonial Secretary, Cunliffe-Lister, when he assured

a Quaker Committee (June 28, 1 934) : "I will not permit

Palestine to be filled with Jews ."

In all this skillfully built design of plot and stratagem the

British have had to wind their way through a maze where in one

breath it was imperative to hold that the Jews held legal title to

Palestine, and in the next, to deny it . This made for a most

difficult situation in which anyone less experienced would have

bogged down hard ; but the Bureaucrats managed to detour the

hard places and obviate the rest by simple contrivances which,

while shabby in themselves, are admirable for their sheer artfulness

and long-range insight.

The Jews were the British excuse for being in Palestine. They

were the only protection against the French who were eager to

demand an international control if they could not have it for

themselves . How this worked out is shown in London's rejection

in 1921 of a demand by the United States Government that

concessions of Palestine's natural resources be granted "with230

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

out distinction of nationality" between the nationals of all States

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

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

Government to overlook the peculiar conditions existing in Palestine

and especially the great difference in the natures of the

tasks assumed in that country and undertaken by them in South

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

a National Home for the Jewish people should be successfully

carried out, it is impracticable to guarantee that equal facilities

for developing the natural resources of the country should be

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

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

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

valuable Dead Sea deposits, carried over as an old Turkish

concession, had been voided by the Palestine authorities .

The Jews were equally useful as an instrument for rejecting

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

when Britain felt that it meant their consolidation with Syria

under French influence . With impeccable probity London then

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

autonomy to the present population of Palestine, since

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

by legislative and administrative measures even against the

obligations assumed by the Mandatory," which it asserted are

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

larger population whose connection with Palestine has been internationally

recognized ."

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

Palestine at all, Britain had acknowledged itself as merely a

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

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

hesitate to uphold its own authority, and here England was

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

control of the Permanent Mandates Commission over mandated

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

Sir Austen Chamberlain, British Foreign Secretary, had brought

the matter to issue as to whether the Commission had actual

BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS

231

jurisdiction or merely the right to criticize and lay down generalities

of policy.

The Mandates Commission did not hesitate at various times to

lock horns with the British Government in no uncertain terms .

Had Zionist leaders themselves played anything but an acquiescent

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

them and forced the English into a most difficult position .

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

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

"the Government's method of encouraging immigration had

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

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

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

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

the Jewish element in Palestine appeared to have escaped the

notice of the Administration ." In extraordinary session in June

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

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

whether they object to it on principle or wish to retain

only those of its provisions which favor their particular cause,

that the Mandatory Power must obviously turn a definite and

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

in repudiating what is at once the fundamental charter of the

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

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

would only unduly enhance their prestige and raise

dangerous hopes among their partisans . . ." 53

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

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

standing simultaneously on two sides of the one fence . The

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

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

to be kept placated and quiescent . Experience with the Irish

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

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

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

the Sinn Fein would assume grave proportions . Here was

232 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

attitude the Zionist hierarchy itself would take .

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

inexpert and totally unable to distinguish between sincerity

and clever dissembling, did not prove too troublesome .

They appealed to the facts, which they marshaled systematically,

to fundamental law and to justice. Their arguments were presented

in the circumspect language of a barrister drawing up

a brief on some learned obscurity of law and were presented

without fanfare . Though the whole fundamental framework of

their enterprise was plainly crumbling before their eyes, they

continued to issue reassuring statements to their following . They

claimed with reverse pugnacity that "the Government wants to

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

that the Government is making an effort to encourage the

antagonism between Arabs and Jews" as if they were employed

in Downing Street. Dr. Weitzman retreated gracefully to

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

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

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

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

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

another moment he would warn his fellow-Zionists against submitting

sharp memoranda to the Government as "England also

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

a lecture before the Royal Central Asian Society in May 1936

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

room in Palestine for another hundred thousand Arab families

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

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

defense of the dismemberment plan proposed by Lord Peel, inveighing

against those Jews who opposed it by calling them

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

in fact, the most unexpected windfall the Bureaucrats had experienced

in a generation. Only in Palestine itself, where doughty

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

LOOKS AT JEWS

733

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

realities .

Until 1936 Whitehall had held tenaciously to the principle of

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

despite every topsy-turvy interpretation of normal economics,

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

about-face from all previously held theses, the Bureaucrats

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

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

and when the Arabs choose to indulge in figures, they

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

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

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

disclosed officially by Colonial Secretary Ormsby-Gore, addressing

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

Jewish nationalists, he acknowledged darkly his awareness of the

"character of Zionist propaganda," booming that the British

Government accepted the Palestine Mandate without subscribing

to any declaration that the country belongs to either Jews

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

he warned, did not intend countenancing any action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Page 248 pdf book page 234

CHAPTER IV

WELCOME HOME !

THE JEW TRIES TO ENTER PALESTINE

Article VI of the Mandate makes it obligatory upon the Administration

of Palestine to "facilitate Jewish immigration ." The

British made a convincing start on this by making the Immigration

Department a part of the Department of Police and Prisons.

It has been shifted around like an unwelcome cat which refuses

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

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

of the Secretariat .

The Immigration Department is more of a Secret Service

Department than anything else . Its principal function seems to

be that of preventing Jews from entering the country in any

numbers. The attitude toward the Hebrew migrants was pegged

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

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

think that one had any undue sympathy for the returning

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

recounted the same story of ugly animus, to Commons.

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

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

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

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

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

treated as though they were Aryans or Christians ."

Under the regulations, only capitalists may enter Palestine

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

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

artisans possessing C500 or more may also enter, theoretically ;

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

specially issued immigration certificates, which are doled

out with much quibbling in paltry numbers . The truth was

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WELCOME HOME !

235

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

Jews were being kept out of it with all the customary

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

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

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

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

since the establishment of the Mandate, carried into the

country $ r 800." 2

The distorting political and economic minority life which had

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

found itself dishearteningly duplicated in Palestine . With feverish

energy and determination the newcomers applied their

money and experience, hoping to create opportunities for their

poverty-stricken brothers in Europe to join them in building

the new nation . Factories and enterprises of all kinds were

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

entire economy of the country went lunatic . Workers were

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

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

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

line with those of normal occupations . Employer competed

desperately with employer for the available labor supply . Industries

had to curtail their activities, factories shut down altogether.

Palestine skyrocketed along on the most insane economy

modern industry has ever seen.

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

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

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

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

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

The problem became so acute that populations of whole

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

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

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

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

November 16, 1933 that it was unable to proceed due

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

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

itself everywhere .

At the identical time that it was beguiling world Jewry with

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

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

certificates, formally accused the Mandatory in a private memorandum

of deliberately sabotaging the Home, finding it "impossible

to reconcile this restriction of immigration with the

declared policy of the Mandatory Power that immigration will be

regulated in accordance with the economic absorptive capacity

of Palestine ."

The British had their authority in London where Sir William

Beveridge 3 had found after careful study that the irreducible

minimum of unemployment was between six and eight percent .

In Palestine the incurable nomadism of the Arab population would

further increase this figure. But the Administration, nevertheless,

religiously adhered to the almost impossible formula that physical

proof had to be given of the permanent employment of every

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

before he could be admitted.

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

evasion, forcing additional subterfuge on the Authorities . An

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

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

their petition they appended the result of a painstaking survey,

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

usual, without explanation, the Government agreed to allow only

5500 certificates, of which 2000 were summarily deducted as having

"been used in advance ." With other deductions following

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

face-saving handful . Far from manfully refusing this beggarly

schedule, on the date this announcement was made Weitzman

was capitalizing on the German excitement to raise funds for the

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

a program full of high-sounding generalizations including "cooperation

with the Mandatory Power . . . and the establishing

of peace and understanding with the Arabs." 4

WELCOME HOME ! 237

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

under the stimulus of Jewish investment that any effort

to deny it became ludicrous, the Government produced still

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

percent of the thirteen hundred immigration certificates available

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

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

thus cutting down immigration without appearing to do so . Another

able device was the refusal to allow the wives and families

of employed residents to enter without the precious labor visas,

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

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

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

Jewish Agency flatly accused the Government in November

1934 of a mischievous and willful attempt "directed against any

considerable development of the immigration of women into

Palestine ."

Many of the Administration's reasons for refusing entry permits

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

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

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

designed to restrict Jewish immigration are classic . One of

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

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

rested on the fact that few of the ships touching Palestine

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

forcing the cancellation of sailings .

Perhaps the outstanding example of official artifice was the

schedule announced for the period between October 1, 1935

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

Jewish world press made the usual congratulatory ballyhoo .

What was not mentioned were the following deductions made

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

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

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

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

of employed residents (who in any other country would have

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

up they are found to equal exactly the number of certificates

granted ; so that the Administration was only perpetrating a

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

all.

In the face of this ruinous procedure the Zionist spokesmen

periodically issued reassuring statements to their followers, gloating

over the increasing numbers of Jews entering the Homeland .

They listed impressive figures to bolster their publicity.

Actually, something like 12,000 certificates was the greatest

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

pitiful number the most unconscionable deductions were made

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

bureau treated the matter is given in its handling of the

entry figures for 1933, which according to official statements,

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

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

the impression that there had been that many immigrants.

An analysis shows that the balance of recorded arrivals over departures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

to the working class group.

It is perfectly obvious that capitalist immigration will not

serve the purposes for which Zionism was originated. It cannot

relieve the centers of pressure in the pogrom areas of Europe

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

only serve to build Palestine ultimately into an Arab country .

What Zionist leaders avoided mentioning, Adolph Hitler sarcastically

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

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

WELCOME HOME !

239

but why should she make the admission of the Jews dependent

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

source of capital, announced that it too would welcome capitalist

Jews, without the necessity of any Balfour Declaration imprinted

by the Powers .,'

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

boasted Hadassah aliyahs, by which a few hundred Jewish children

were brought in from Germany, were made conditional on

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

children had entered a boarding school. The Department of

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

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

Not nearly so docile as the Zionist hierarchy, Palestine Jews

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

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

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

as it invariably does when it has only Jews to deal

with.

In 1937 the Palestine press reported that an amendment to the

immigration laws was in contemplation, jacking up capital requirements

of prospective immigrants to C 2000. This would

eliminate 56% of those who had previously entered under this

category. The time given a capitalist immigrant to liquidate

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

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

him under such duress as to considerably reduce his enthusiasm

for emigrating .

The new stand taken by the Administration was indicated by

Immigration Director Eric Mills, who informed the Peel Commission

on November 18, 1936 that "immigration into the Holy

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

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

comments of Farago. Ignoring his statement that he was a

Hungarian, port officials had demanded to know whether he

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

Wedgwood had also noted that "the first question an immigrant

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

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

you ever convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude?"

TOURISTS

The Holy Land is perhaps the most magnetic spot on earth

for sightseers, a circumstance which is probably its greatest

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

encouraged in every possible fashion and that every inducement

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

A large share of the national income of many states depends

on just this source ; and countries such as France and

Italy embark on extensive advertising campaigns in the foreign

press to attract this desirable army of visitors.

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

view is held in Palestine, where every possible obstacle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

authorities as if he were a paroled convict .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Malcolm MacDonald, then new Colonial Secretary, under questioning

in Commons on July 9, 1935.

Its actual workings are illustrated in the violent protest of

Warsaw Jewry on March 20, 1934 because the English Consul

WELCOME HOME !

241

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

and at the same time refused permits to Jewish tourists even

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

own written measures, the Government often refuses admission

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

in order and they have made the required deposit . Instances

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

admission without explanation and were not permitted to

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

sight-seers from Poland, all holding proper visas obtained

from the British Consulate in Istanbul, were unceremoniously

dumped into the Haifa lockup where they were badly treated .

The Government had invented a new theory in this particular

instance, alleging that they should have obtained their Palestine

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

sea captain had his ship impounded and was sentenced together

with each member of his crew to five months at hard

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

The Authorities with remarkable clairvoyance insisted that the

latter intended to overstay their leave, and unbelievable as it

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

Not altogether satisfied with results, the Administration attempted

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

only frustrated by the indignant threat of Palestine Jewry to

carry the whole business to the attention of Christian churches

in every country . The Government now plans a drastic increase

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

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

of Jewish tourists, making exceptions only for those whose outraged

squawk might draw attention to what is going on .

Even visitors of unimpeachable standing are refused permission

to overstay their leave . A useful example is provided by

the case of Weitzman who, though President of the Jewish

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

reason in 1936.

The natural result of this determined persecution is that even

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

annual vacations in Palestine, now flock to the Syrian Lebanon

instead.

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

Turkish law allowed Jews to come as pilgrims without

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

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

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

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

British Government led the procession of States whose vigorous

denunciation of these regulations caused them to be abrogated

in short order.

HUNTING DOWN ILLEGALS

A highly placed official once informed Horace Samuel, with

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

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

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

plight of the fleeing, friendless Jews of Europe would excite

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

officialdom these unfortunates instead assumed a nuisance value,

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

It is true that these homeless creatures, hounded from border

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

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

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

without benefit of British sanction . Desperate men attempted

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

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

camels, enduring indescribable suffering. Delicately raised girls

braved the trip through the desert wastes, placing themselves at

the mercy of savage Bedouins in an effort to cross unnoticed

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

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

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

early twenties, desperate, hopeless creatures who were taking

WELCOME HOME !

243

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

or were murdered on the way by the very Bedouins they

hired to transport them.

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

story is of five hundred Russian Jews who escaped from the

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

were arrested on the various borders . One hundred and fifty

died enroute of incalculable hardships . Altogether five finally

arrived in Palestine, where they were promptly thrown into jail

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

and East European refugees, all under 25, who were

marooned on the British steamer Velos in x934. The Palestine

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

the vessel touched . Their meager funds exhausted, they were

locked below hatches like so much contraband, which could

neither be unloaded nor destroyed . Finally, after ceaseless

wandering from port to port, these luckless outcasts were given

temporary asylum by Poland .

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

has never been explained . If the beneficiaries of that

document are not the entire Jewish people, whose immigration

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

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

admitted as much in 1925 when he informed the Permanent

Mandates Commission that they "should remember that it is

after all the Balfour Declaration which was the reason why the

British Government is now administering Palestine ." However,

the memory of the King's spokesmen was conveniently suited

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

developed the peculiar thesis that Jews, under a Mandate

directly formulated to facilitate their return to Palestine, could

be there illegally .

Coincident with the advent of Hitler the business assumed

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

collusion between the Colonial Secretary, Sir Phillip Cunliffe-

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

that `illegal' Jewish immigration existed but stated in

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

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

measures to prevent `illegal' Jewish immigration into Palestine.

The system of tourist deposits was instituted . Holders

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

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

frontier control in collaboration with the agreeable French authorities

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

illegal Arab immigration the announcement was expressively

silent.

Showing the extent of its preorganization, the campaign at

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

over the length and breadth of Palestine. Ironically paid for

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

patrols were detailed along the borders ; while British and Arab

constables, assisted by organized groups of fellaheen, enjoyed

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

other Syrian cities British and Arab police questioned motorbus

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

the passports of all suspected of being Jews, while others

were as scrupulously ignored .

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

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

dangerous animals everywhere and hauled to police stations .

Weeping Jewish women were thrown into cells together with

prostitutes, subjected to the obscene taunts of Arab jailers .

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

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

an Arab boy denounced them. Thrown into the overcrowded

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

bail . The Police candidly explained to indignant inquirers

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

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

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

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

would not let them land so they were shipped back and

forth between Palestine and Italy until finally Jerusalem agreed.

WELCOME HOME ! 245

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

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

in the Bethlehem jail ."

Jews were expelled for any trivial reason the anti-Semitic

mentality could improvise . Men were torn from their jobs and

businesses and thrown like common offenders into the prison

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

famous French Bastille, where they were regularly beaten by

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

Isschak Kupetz, a respectable working man who was sentenced

to the Central Prison in Jerusalem and escaped . Immediately

an intensive police search was begun, and rewards prominently

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

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

after their sentences had expired ; the Government not hesitating

to vent its exasperation on their heads.

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

Arab newcomers enlisting gleefully in the chase . Savage Bedouins

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

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

reign of terror. Anyone who could not immediately prove his

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

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

people became a daily horror. They became gravely endangered

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

have had to live without their wives and children and under

constant fear of being discovered . The utterly savage attitude

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

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

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

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

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

Bad as existing regulations were, the inhuman meticulousness

with which they were interpreted made them infinitely worse .

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

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

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

way station. The whole family was arrested on the ground

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

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

woman and her children were ordered to prison .

The heat had grown so scorching that it was beginning to

drive even the patient Jews mad . Nationalist groups rioted in

protest. Serious clashes took place when Arab gangs invaded

the Jewish colonies themselves in search of victims . After some

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

the use of civilian Arab bloodhounds was discontinued .

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

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

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

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

from the MacDonald Letter, which expressly guaranteed

that no immigrants "with prospects of employment" would be

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

and immediately buried the `protest' along with some

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

moment, he announced the appointment of a Commission

under Sir William Murison to investigate the police for alleged

severity in maintaining order during some Arab riots of a few

weeks previous.

THE ARAB COMES IN LIKE A GENTLEMAN

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

from all surrounding states began to drift into Palestine .

Though a huge corps of coast and frontier guards kept vigilant

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

entered without even the gesture of passport investigation.

The Report of the Peel Commission admits frankly that

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

corresponding districts in Palestine without special formality ."

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

Jewish immigration is accomplished . If they are lucky they

will succeed in walking in boldly without challenge . A news

WELCOME HOME !

247

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

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

overland from Damascus, attired in the traditional costumes of

Moslem women, including the black veils, were apprehended

at the border when police saw through their disguises . They

could not answer questions put to them in Arabic ."

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

other surrounding places unrestricted, but Jews from these same

countries are as determinedly barred as their brothers from

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

deportation of Jews who fled from the Mosul district of Iraq

because of religious persecution ; and the demand of the Palestine

Government on May 16, 1935 that Syrian Jews be given

a special distinguishing passport when proceeding to countries

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

reminiscent of Czarist Russia.

Though the Government solemnly estimates in 1937 a total

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

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

tribesmen is obvious everywhere . As early as 1926, Colonial

Secretary Amery cautiously conceded that despite the growth of

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

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

Commission in 1937 showed the Arab population to have more

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

a generation must either be attributed to outside immigration or

to the most astonishing philo-progenitiveness in medical history.

Forgotten in its archives, the Government itself acknowledged

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

southern Transjordan into the Beersheba area," a fact which

in itself must make its estimates of Arab immigration farfetched.

13 Other approximate figures are available from scattered

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

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

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

left for Palestine as a consequence of bad crops .14

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Whole villages in the Hauran have been emptied of their

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

French High Commissioner for Syria, asserted in the summer of

1934 that even Arab merchants were moving from Damascus

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

head of the Moslem Youth Association at Beirut, Jamil Bek

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

army of Syrian laborers." 15

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

of this flood of non-Jewish immigration since officially it

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

be pieced together and surmised. Such calculations as are available

show an Arab immigration for the single year 1933 of at

least sixty-four thousand souls . Added to the acknowledged

Hauranese infiltration are some two thousand who arrived from

Damascus alone. Mokattam, leading Cairo daily, announced

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

to Al Jamia Al Islamia, Arab newspaper of Jaffa,

seventeen thousand Egyptians had come from Sinai Peninsula

alone .

To these must be added considerable groups of Numidians

and even Abyssinians, and a vast uncounted army from Transjordan

about whose movement into Palestine not the slightest

pretense of legality is maintained . The figures on this latter

group must be very high, since economic conditions west of

Jordan have been literally frightful, with scanty harvests over

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

of these Transjordanian nomads may be met any place in

Palestine, the Government reports themselves are amusing . In

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

estimates that the total of persons arriving as immigrants

from Transjordan during the entire year was three, of

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

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

openly repatriating thousands of Transjordanians because

the slump which followed after the riots left them without

jobs.

WELCOME HOME ! 249

Farago, puzzled by these contradictions, calls attention to the

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

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

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

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

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

was illicitly converting the Holy Land into an Arab country,

groups of courageous Jewish youths volunteered in 1934 to point

out what apparently the Authorities were unable to see . Fourteen

hundred of these illegals were quickly shown to be working

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

alone. Their probable numbers could be gathered from

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

which showed 273 to be Hauranis illegally in the country.

A check of Arabs employed in Palestine ports on December

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

Palestinians. The remainder included Zoo Egyptians and 500

Hauranis.'S Whole hordes of these people were demonstrated

to be in the employ of the Government itself.

Without deigning to make a reply, the Administration pointedly

told the Jews to mind their own business . When Jews

picketed Jewish employers of this alien labor, the Government

bared its teeth and sentenced the demonstrators to six months

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

a Haifa theater being erected by a contractor named Borovsky

where illegal Hauranis were employed- 19 Immediately the Authorities

arrested fifty-three Jews and sentenced them to prison

terms. That pretty well discouraged any further attempt to

point out illegal Arab immigration .

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

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

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

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

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

for high wages earned, they invariably skip bail.

On one excuse or another every effort has been made to

legalize non-Jewish immigration . The Administration had sent

250

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

was made on December 18, 1934, when unexpectedly they

granted 150 labor immigration certificates to Arabs from Syria

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

`Aryans' who wanted to settle permanently in Palestine in

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

this picture with all the potency of a floodlight was the

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

homesteading rights to distressed Armenians, then in Syria .

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

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

BRITAIN PUTS ON THE HEAT

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

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

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

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

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

accomplishes the same result .

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

in Beirut, refusing Jews proceeding to Oriental countries the

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

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

across the Palestine border at a subsequent date . On this

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

nineteen women tourists were not even permitted to land in

Beirut and were tartly told to disembark at countries not adjacent

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

financial and economic condition, was anxious for an influx

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

frustrated by direct British protest to Paris . Following these

representations Syria obliged by announcing on May 3, 1 934

that Jews might be allowed to buy land anywhere except along

the Palestine border.

Pressure of the British legation at Athens, arguing that illegal

immigrants were being smuggled into the Holy Land by way

WELCOME HOME !

251

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

all foreign Jews henceforth to enter Greece except by special

permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Greek

Consulates were instructed to inquire by cable of the Foreign

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

Foreign Jews passing through Greece, suspected of wishing to

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

except with the stamped permission of the Palestine Government.

The order established a virtual espionage system on Jewish

visitors, affecting Jews of all nations regardless of citizenship.

Iraq, British dependency and protege among the nations, was

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

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

wholesale ban on all Jewish newspapers and books entering the

country was instituted . Following the lead of Palestine officials,

Iraq postal authorities ordered the exclusion of the pamphlet

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

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

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

Afghanistan, under British Foreign Office influence, moved

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

financed and armed by Great Britain to overthrow the former

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

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

Government. One of the first acts of the new Administration

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

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

Jews were expelled from the border towns of Mazar, Ankhoi

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

these persecutions were heightened by regulations compelling

Jews to wear special clothes with red flags across their breasts

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

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

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

1938 Jews were forbidden to engage in any business activities,

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

252

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Persia, too, becoming practically a British protectorate, inexplicably

put its nose into extra-territorial affairs by prohibiting

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

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

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

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

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

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

certainly at least coincidental that when the present ruler, Riza

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

advisers and army officers under English tariff control and

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

rulings.

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

the emigration of Jews to Palestine at a time when London

could have broken its back by withdrawing its financial

support. Jews attempting to leave for Palestine are brought

back and executed . After an economic rapprochement with

Britain, the Turks also made Zionist organizations illegal, in

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

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

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

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

British Embassy. No other publication in Egypt attacks Zionism

with such unrestrained violence . Though the country is completely

dependent upon Britain for both defense and finance, it

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

and during 1938 played host to an international Arabic conference,

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

had these activities been directed against any friendly nation, or

against such British dependencies as Iraq or Transjordan, they

would have been swiftly outlawed .

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

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

the British slapped a blanket censorship on the news, even

withholding cables of news services . Following the disturbances,

the Aden Jews sought to emigrate to Palestine en masse.

WELCOME HOME !

253

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

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

When the fanatical Wahibis swept into Yemen in 1934, Jews

fled to Aden begging permission to be allowed to proceed to

the Jewish Homeland . The Authorities instead issued an order

prohibiting Jews from entering Aden altogether. Even those

lucky Israelites with visas to Palestine, compelled by the only

existing travel routes to pass through the Colony, are refused

transitory entrance and returned to the waiting Jew-baiters at

home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

at the prospect of having someone to whom they could

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

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

demanded in Palestine for similar land . Noting this, enterprising

Cypriots filled the Palestine press with advertisements offering

every kind of attractive acreage for sale cheap . Soon

Jews held almost seven thousand acres in Cyprus, planting it

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

of Jewish immigration began to swell.

Soon after, the Colonial Office sent down General Storrs

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

to rule the Island . Acting expeditiously, Storrs issued an

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

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

the express permission of the Governor himself . It hardly

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

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

end to all such `attempts .'

CHAPTER V

CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

SOIL HUNGER

The early Zionist thinkers instinctively grasped the direct relationship

between a sound peasant class rooted in the soil, and

the project of a national renaissance . The British, too, understood

that a National Home without ownership of the soil was

a misnomer. Their Peace Handbook on Syria and Palestine

reads : "The essence of the Zionist ideal is the desire to found

upon the soil of Palestine a revived Hebrew nation based upon

an agricultural life and the use o f the Hebrew language . . .

There is so much unoccupied land in Palestine that there is plenty

of room for Zionist development without ousting the existing

Moslem population."

The early colonists found the park-like country their ancestors

had left, a treeless desert . Epidemics made even the raising of

cattle impossible. The mountain slopes, once covered with a

never-ending succession of vineyards and orchards, were now

bare rock, washed clean by the torrential rains . The rest of

the country alternated between swamp and desert . Crawling

like dull maggots over these dried bones was a scanty population,

scarcely less haggard, wild and unkempt than the land itself.

Land hunger rode on the shoulders of the returning Jews,

driving them like a man with a lash . They came from the

ghettos of the Russian Pale, men with soft hands, intellectuals,

lawyers, writers, doctors and shopkeepers, inspired by the passionate

dream of turning this pestilential desert into a blossoming

countryside . . They themselves, the dreamers of Zion, would

erect its first peasantry with their own lives and bodies .

Their hardships were almost insupportable . Epidemic pestilences

killed off so many that it became a byword that the

graveyards of these settlements were more populous than the

villages themselves . Undeterred, the new settlers pressed on

254

CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

2S5

doggedly. They were living an epic ; and their eyes danced

with it long after their bodies grew worn from a ceaseless struggle

with a sick earth. This blazing emotion is beautifully described

by the Hebrew poet, Uri Zvi Greenberg

"In a sunburst of love we went up,

Boys and girls to Zion ;

Passionate faith from the roots of our hair

To the tips of the nails of our feet

A boundless love for the mother earth of the Jews

That agonies could not quench,

Nor the teeth of the foxes destroy . . ."

Unlike the advent of European capitalism throughout the

East, the only privilege these colonists asked was to be allowed

to work the soil with their own hands . They consciously understood

that the body of the Jewish nation had been maimed

by a cruel destiny which had driven the Jews from the soil, had

closed manual labor to them, and had crowded them into one

thin stratum of the social pyramid . The renaissance of Jewry

lay in this astonishing attempt to reverse a process consciously

taking place in social adjustment, abjuring personal ambitions,

to erect again by the national will what history had destroyed .

These Jews from the vitiated air of ghettos, men and women

whose psychology and muscles alike were better adjusted to

the counting room and Yeshiva than to heavy labor, made themselves

over by the sheer force of their own idealism into the finest

scientific farmers in the world . Their neat, well-painted

houses went up surrounded by thriving green vineyards, healthy

young orchards, flowers and shadetrees . In the eyes of believing

observers it was a miracle, only to be explained in the light

of Biblical Prophecy .

There has been no braver colonizing group in history, nor

any who operated under more disheartening conditions . With

a song on their lips these determined young people laid the

groundwork for an agricultural prosperity which was to be the

backbone of the coming Jewish nation . Their magnificent accomplishments

were unhesitatingly acknowledged by the English

after the War. "Every traveler in Palestine who visits

256

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

them," relates an official report, "is impressed by the contrast

between these pleasant villages, with the beautiful stretches of

prosperous cultivation about them, and the primitive conditions

of life and work with which they are surrounded ." 1 Beverley

Nichols remarks : "As I walked around, I became more and more

astonished that any race of men, let alone intellectual Jews, could

possibly tackle such an unfriendly soil . . . Yet over this wilderness

the ex-clerks, ex-doctors, ex-shopkeepers swarmed like ants,

staggering under the weight of the stones they were removing,

panting as they wielded their spades ." 2 Father Alfred Sachetti

exclaims in admiration : "What had been up to six years ago a

wild unproductive waste land has been transformed into a fertile

and productive country ." 3 And the Rev. Dr. W. M. Christie

reports : "When you see a green spot in Palestine today you

may be sure it is a Jewish colony." 4

When with premature gratitude the enthusiastic Jews welcomed

the British overlords who were taking the place of the

Turks, they had no reason to suppose that in the near future the

further acquisition of land by them was to be considered in the

nature of a crime against humanity . The British were pledged

to their cause. London had wholeheartedly acknowledged that

"the immigration of Jews and their close settlement on the land,

including State lands and waste lands not required for public

purposes, are integral and indispensable factors in the execution

of the charge laid upon the Mandatory of establishing in Palestine

a National Home for the Jewish People ." s

How far the Jewish position has actually retrogressed since

the English came, may be estimated from the simple fact that the

per capita land possession of Jews in Palestine has shrunk from

approximately 8 dunams in 1921 to only 3 dunams in 1936 . Of

the total land area of 26,319,000 dunams, only 1,300,000 dunams

are in Jewish hands, of which more than half was acquired before

the War . In 1935, the peak year of investment, only

18,250 acres were acquired ; but the price paid was the enormous

sum of J, 1,700,000 . Even at this uneconomic cost, less than

3 % of the huge sums flooding into the country went into the

establishment of new farms .

CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

2S7

These figures mean that Jews numbering 3 3 % of the population

are sequestered on 5% of the land, forcing into existence a

queer economy by which the Jewish farm population must

mathematically decrease with the growth of the Jewish national

structure. Even in the short period between 1931 and 1 935,

we find the proportion of Jewish farmers decreasing from 18%

to 13 .9%, making the Palestine Jews the most highly urbanized

national group on earth.

Here you have the most unhealthy of all possible conditions

a land-hungry people attempting to build a sound national

economy and owning, after decades of struggle, less than three

hundred thousand acres altogether .6 On this fact is shipwrecked

the basic principles on which Zionist planning was constructed.

For all reasonable purposes, it forebodes the creation

not of a free economy but of a new ghetto, this time in an Arab

instead of an Aryan land .

The causative factors behind this condition are not hard to

find. In the early period of Jewish settlement, around 1885,

prices averaged ten francs, or eight shillings, per dunam for good

agricultural land . By 19oo the price had risen to around sixteen

shillings . By 1935 it was anything that anyone cared to

ask. Taking 1932 as an illustration, we find 18,293 land transactions

concluded by Jews ; whereas in 1926, when more than

twice the area of new land had been acquired, there were only

11,821 such transactions? This meant that land-hungry Jews,

caught in a trap, were reduced to buying land from each other,

the price skyrocketing in accordance with the inevitable law

of supply and demand . During the fiscal year 1933-34 when

practically no new land was acquired by Jews, the Palestine

Government received from them close to J 200,000 in registration

fees for land transfers. In many instances a parcel of land

passes through eight or ten hands a year and its price is pyramided

to the most unbelievable heights . "Nowhere in the

world," comments the Royal Commission of 1937, "were such

uneconomic land prices paid as by the Jews in Palestine."

The parent of this distorted condition was none other than

the Government itself . A series of bold expedients flowed from

258

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Jerusalem, directly formulated to prevent Jews from acquiring

the soil of the country. As fast as one artifice proved inadequate,

newer and more offensive ones were invented . The

English set themselves up as the protectors and patrons of the

Arabs, much as though Palestine were an endowed institution

for the improvident and the inept for whose benefit all competitive

factors must be excluded .

The keystone to the British arch was the alleged landless

Arab situation . In his report, French had listed some thirty

seven hundred claimants. The extent of this fabrication was

later conceded when, despite the prodding of the Administration,

only five hundred Arabs could be discovered who even had

a provisional claim. Just how there could be any 'landless'

people in an underpopulated country suffering for years from

an acute labor shortage, the Administration never attempted to

explain. Major Cecil Quinlan answered the best part of the

question with the laconic remark that "the so-called 'landless'

Arab does not exist, except in disordered imaginations ." 8

The Mandate provided that Jews be given State lands for the

purpose of "close settlement." Nowhere in that document is

there anything mentioned about an opposed obligation to Arabs ;

but the Government, making its own interpretation, decided that

this must have been a typographical error . It early handed the

Arabs 140,000 acres of its most fertile holdings . Later to appease

the Jews it gave them a consolation prize of some i 8,ooo acres, of

which only 962 were actually cultivable.

The Administration's Annual Report for 1920-21 gives figures

of 942,000 dunams of State land and two or three million dunams

of waste lands. When the Zionists, grown restive finally, put a

fierce demand on the Government to fulfill its obligations, it was

dismally discovered that the two or three million dunams of waste

land referred to had now vanished in thin air.

The technique under which this piece of legerdemain was accomplished

was not involved. It consisted of simple nostrums

and a characteristic method of dealing off the bottom of the deck .

In reply to a pointed question by the Mandates Commission in

1926, His Majesty's spokesman, Ormsby-Gore, represented that

CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

2 59

"the delay of the grant of Government land to Jews is connected

with the question of survey which has not yet been effected ."'

A Vaad Leumi Memorandum notes in disgust that despite this excuse,

"hundreds of thousands of Government lands . . . have

been distributed among Arab fellaheen, in lots of such size that

they could not work them properly ." All Jewish demands for

land were rejected- "even the claims of the discharged Jewish

soldiers who had participated in the British military conquest of

the country being disregarded ." At the very moment Ormsby-

Gore was offering his explanation to the League, a special Land

Commission was carrying out a liquidation of the Government

estates, "apparently instructed to hand them over to Bedouins ."

Again in 1931, a Vaad Leumi protest to the League notes that

the Government was distributing State lands to Arabs "in parcels

of thousands of dunams per family," while Jewish demands were

studiously ignored .

Pleased with these outright gifts, the Bedu had little intention

of demeaning themselves by manual labor . They at once offered

their new-found acreage to Jews at prices only limited by Bedouin

ability to count . The indignant Administration put an end

to this practice by attaching a string to further gifts, prohibiting

sale of the land for thirty to fifty years . In other cases the Arabs

were beneficiaries of paternal loans, never intended to be repaid,

placing the Jews in the unenviable position of financing activities

aimed directly at themselves . All a Bedouin had to do, to blackmail

this singular Government, was to threaten to sell to Jews and

a subsidy would be forthcoming .

The Administration's sympathy for 'landless' Arabs went an

amazing distance. Four days before the 1936 riots broke out it

gave the Dajani family 10,000 dunams in the rich Jordan Valley .

The 'landless' Dajani family, as it happens, is fabulously wealthy,

owning among other things, the site of `The Last Supper,' for

which they are said to have recently refused C 1,000,000. The

Government even handed out its land to foreigners who made no

pretense of Palestine residence. To mention only a few cases, six

Syrian families located in Damascus and Beirut received over

7000 dunams of the Ashrafiye lands. Of the 3 579 dunams dis260

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

tributed in Tel-Es-Shock, 3469 dunams went to a family group

of four brothers and sisters living in Egypt .1o

Even when Jews bought areas on which the Government felt

it had a lien, it exacted its pound of flesh . A case in point is the

Huleh basin, consisting of 12,000 acres of miasmatic swamp .

This suppurating area had polluted the country, for generations

back, with malaria and dysentery . The job of draining it would

ordinarily be regarded by any other government as a task incumbent

on itself . Instead, the Palestine Administration granted

concession rights for reclamation of the area to two Syrian merchants,

renewing the concession in 1924 and again in 1927, though

the Syrians made no attempt to proceed with the work and were

evidently not in a position to undertake a development project

of this magnitude . It was only after years of procrastination on

the part of the Government that the Jewish Palestine Land Development

Company was able to secure official approval to take

over the concession rights . As the price of its consent the Government

stipulated that when the work was finished, one-third of

the new land would have to be handed over for Bedouin settlement.

It was necessary to pay the original foreign concessionaires

C 200,000, a sum which could only be considered in the

light of a gift . This was in 1935 . In 1935 the Government was

still quibbling over the text of the concession . It also has mysteriously

withheld decision on a number of minor points arising

from an engineering report made several years previously . These

dilatory tactics have effectually prevented any progress being

made in the work of reclamation, which is thus shunted into the

indefinite future .

The huge task of draining this quagmire will take at least a

decade. It will involve an outlay of over £ 1,000,000 . To this

must be added interest on investment, and amortization of principal,

plus such baksheesh as must be paid to petty officials who

would otherwise find a way to throw a sabot into the machinery,

even after the work has been started . When the 16,ooo dunams

which must be given free to the Arabs are deducted, some rough

idea is secured of what this much-touted enterprise will cost the

Jews.11

CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

261

A FAMINE IN LAND

Having devised the 'landless Arab' thesis, it was only a short

step to the principle that the Arab must be protected against

himself and saved from exploitation by the Jew who would take

his land away from him. For this purpose there was introduced

a series of ordinances so plainly meant to prevent Jews from acquiring

land in their National Home that were ten percent of

them introduced into England, and directed at Englishmen, an

armed revolution would follow .

But Zionist spokesmen had been used to the rope's end too long

to be able to react with anything resembling normal indignation.

They recognized helplessly that they were being victimized, but

saw nothing else to it but to smirk ingratiatingly on their tormentors.

Once more it is grizzled old Menachem Ussishkin who

growls like a lone wolf to the British Government : "Since you

have given your consent to the establishment of a Jewish National

Home, you must have realized that it is impossible to build on

anything but on the land . We have paved every field and marsh

with gold, but you, instead of helping us, have piled stones in our

way and have made the country into a hell ." 12

As early as 1920 a Land Transfer Ordinance already read that

"any person wishing to make a disposition of immovable property

must first obtain consent of the Government," a statute which the

Shaw Report frankly admits was introduced to prevent the easy

sale of land. This was followed in 1929 by the Cultivator's Protective

Ordinance, which demanded that buyers make an additional

payment to tenants who might be occupying the land as

well as to the owners . 1931 saw a new edict which provided

that irrespective of any provision in the contract, land could not

be transferred if there were "any tenants" cultivating it . A tenant

was described as anyone who has access to the land by "right

or custom, usage or on sufferance," 13 a person hired for agricultural

work who is paid in kind, squatters of any and all types ;

anyone who cultivated the land by either express or implied permission,

or who had been cultivating the land on the assumption

that he had the right to do so for a period of two years ; or any262

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

one who comes and grazes on the land or cuts reeds for basketmaking,

or one who is a descendant o f a would-be tenant under

the ordinance.

This startling piece of legislation derived its full force from the

primitive nature of Bedouin life . While the Bedouin grazed his

flocks wherever he pitched camp, he always made the same general

circle of travel, returning year after year to the identical

spots . Thus he automatically became a `tenant' under the regulation.

Most of the land purchased by Jews came from the tremendous

estates of absentee landlords, a handful of land-barons

who owned, for example, eighty percent of the soil of Galilee and

at least half of southern Palestine .14 These vacant acres were

trespassed on by all comers, and, by the very nature of things,

were bound to harbor itinerant tenants, squatters and migratory

Bedouins.

The other claw of the pincers lay in the fact that all the

archaic Turkish land and tax laws were still operative .15 This

meant that the verification of title went back to the old Ottoman

religious law . The British had made no attempt to determine

title, and the footnote to every Kuhan (title deed) contained the

phrase : "The title is not deemed to be guaranteed." Under the

new Cultivator's Ordinance all titles were placed in jeopardy as

having been gained illegally, since they were subject to tenant's

rights.

It now transpired that `tenants' could be evicted only by the

High Commissioner himself. This transfer of discretion to a political

appointee, rather than to the courts, prevented any appeal

and gave the frankly anti-Jewish officials of the Administration

arbitrary powers of decision . These powers were further increased

by the Land Disputes Ordinance enacted in March 1932 .

This remarkable edict empowered the District Commissioner,

should he find that a trespasser was forcibly evicted by the rightful

owner, to regard the dispossessed party as the possessor .

Granted magisterial status, no appeals against the findings of this

petty functionary were possible. The enactment additionally

forbade interference with the `rights' of invaders coming to graze,

cut wood or reeds, or for any other purpose (even if the owner's

CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

263

fences had been cut down and his crops destroyed), until in each

case "a competent court ruled on the matter ."

On July 2 5, 1 933 the Administration released the Statutory

Tenant Law, effectually freezing the ownership of large vacant

areas in their present hands . Anyone who occupied or grazed

the land for a year, with or without permission, became a "statutory

tenant ." He could not be evicted without being given a

new piece of land in a nearby area approved by the High Commissioner

.

These restrictions made it next to impossible to purchase lands

on which claim could not be made by `tenants .' The inevitable

result was that Jews buying land had to pay for it twice : one

payment to the owner and the other to his `tenants,' in order to

obtain their voluntary consent to leave the property . In many

cases the sums given the `tenants' were larger than the already inflated

prices paid to the sellers . The whole intent behind this

singular legislation is shown in the law affecting tenants where

the land is not sold . Here the tenant is not protected in any

fashion whatsoever, and may be evicted at the landlord's pleasure .

Even on land long owned by Jews, here is how this `advanced'

legislation operates. `A' owns a piece of land ; `B' squats on that

land, claiming the right to cultivate it . In the ensuing conflict,

B' is not ejected from the parcel and allowed recourse to the

courts, but instead the cultivation o f the land is stayed by both

parties until the determination of the courts . Since land cases

are known to sleep through the judicial chambers for five or six

years, and appeals are seldom, if ever, heard under one year, the

result is apparent. Nor does the final settlement of one trespassing

case protect the owner against new ones. As fast as new

trespassers may appear, new court orders must be obtained against

them through the same lengthy litigation .

Here was an obvious invitation to blackmail which the Arabs

were not slow to take advantage of . False claims were regularly

manufactured against Jewish land with the object of extorting

money from the owners . Arab tribes, often as not under the

fatherly advice of the District Commissioners, turned this situation

into a profitable business . They squat in the Jewish colonies,

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

taking over a piece of land by main force if necessary, claiming

it on the basis of prior possession ; and then compromise on some

compensation from the owner, who usually prefers a limited loss

of money to prolonged litigation. The Bedu then drive their

herds further on, looking for another opportunity to repeat this

agreeable adventure . There are Arab attorneys in Jerusalem

who specialize in causing squatters to do this sort of thing and

who make a very good business out of it . As may be expected,

Jews are the sole sufferers . "In not a single instance," declares

the land expert Ussishkin, "has an Arab owner been pestered in

such a way. Bedouins who would so intrude on an Arab parcel

of land would be ejected by the police without further ado ."

A few actual cases will show how these measures operate in

practical application . A large parcel of land, in Jewish hands

for forty years, was disputed by Arabs on the basis of an alleged

document signed five hundred years ago granting the land to the

Moslem Church . District Commissioner S . H. Perowne immediately

declared the land under dispute and prohibited work

there. Jewish farmers who tried to plough their fields were

arrested.16 At the settlement of Tel Hai in Galilee, Bedouins

brought their cattle to pasture in the colony's fields, destroying

the crops. They claimed to be in possession of a document entitling

them "to pasture anywhere ." A fight ensued, the police

were called, and the usual order issued to both parties to cease

work in the colony "until the title to the land was established ."

At Hedera, where the land had been in Jewish possession for

forty-five years, Bedouins came in, uprooted the crops, injured

workers and killed a watchman. The police ordered all cultivation

to cease "until the Court decides the dispute between the Jews

and the Bedouins ."

A typical case is that of the Wadi Hawareth land . After paying

liberal baksheesh to the tenants and after reams of red tape

had been unwound to secure title, the Jews were unable to take

possession : the land had already been ploughed by Arab squatters

. Similarly, at Haifa Bay, thirty-five hundred dunams legally

bought and paid for by the Jewish National Fund were

given to Arabs, by decision of the District Commissioner, after

CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

265

they had driven off the Jewish watchman and taken the land by

armed force. At Tulkarm, in a regular pestilence of squatter

suits, the courts decided that thirty-six hundred dunams of land

had been "purchased illegally" and directed that they be given,

without compensation, to the squatters. While ignorant Bedouins

were more than willing participants in this hilarious game of plaguing

Jews, what lay behind their actions can be judged from the

Kuskustabun case, where three Jewish farmers were badly injured

by armed Arab invaders . Here it was conclusively proven that

the Arabs "undertook to trespass and plough the land upon the

advice of District Officer Lees." 17

Not satisfied with its previous measures in which Jewish ingenuity

discovered more leaks than the Government considered

supportable, it announced in 1936 a brand new principle in pro-

Arab paternalism, this time swinging back to the Middle Ages for

its inspiration . The present purpose is to anchor the peasant in

the land irrespective of his will to change his status . In future

"no land-owner shall be permitted to sell any of his land unless

he retains a minimum subsistence area . As a safeguard against

collusive sales this minimum area shall be inalienable and shall

revert to the Government if it ceases to be cultivated by the

owner-occupier." 18

Many other, pettier schemes were originated by the Government

of Palestine in its campaign of harassment . The Jews,

urgently needing a source of cheap fertilizer for their groves,

had been buying it from Arabs whose every village was literally

built on an accumulation of century-old dung . Arabs are rarely

known to even remove this filth from the vicinity of their dwellings,

much less use it . In September 1937 the Administration

published a Draft Animal Manure Ordinance vesting the ownership

of manure in the proprietor of the land on which it is

dropped. Any attempt to remove or sell it without official permission

henceforth becomes an offense punishable by fine of f25

or six months' imprisonment, or both.

Another edict stipulates that the amount of damages which

may be demanded from a seller who breaks his contract, cannot

be included in the contract itself, but must be fixed by the court .

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

This `Order in Council' was intended as a staggering blow to

Jewish land purchases, since the only effective way of preventing

Arab owners from changing their minds under pressure was to

include in the contract a provision for damages to be paid together

with the return of the buyer's deposit . Another decree

released early in 1936 was "designed to protect water supplies

from interference by private individuals." Special permission

had now to be obtained from the District Commissioner before a

well could be constructed or enlarged . Jews might own the

land, but the water underneath it belonged to the Administration

in Jerusalem. All water supplies, reads the Ordinance, "river,

spring, or underground," may anywhere be declared public property

at the discretion of the High Commissioner. Beyond serving

to frustrate the irrigation plans of the Jews, this revolutionary

measure has no plausible purpose nor has one ever been offered.

When other artifices proved inadequate, the Government has

followed a system of `loans' to Arab owners, in themselves often

greater than the market value of the land . Sometimes its money

is passed over outright on the score of `relief,' whether owing to

poor crops, damage caused by the elements, or the characteristic

laziness of Arab tillers. It frankly finances and operates Arab

agricultural cooperatives in competition with those of the Jew ;

and it maintains nurseries and other agricultural services of which

Arabs are the sole beneficiaries.

The unremitting campaign of Arab leaders, clearly abetted

from Government House, thundering against the `crime' of selling

property to Jews will be discussed again in Chapter I Book

III. It may be remarked, however, that without the Zionist the

market for Palestine land does not exist . Acreage in this corner

of creation is worth next to nothing. In neighboring Syria it

can hardly be given away. In Transjordan it is worth only a

dollar or two a dunam. Holding a monopoly on the soil, the

Levantines are having a royal holiday. "No one can doubt,"

says Broadhurst, "that the Arabs have exploited the Jews for all

they are worth, fattening their pockets in the process ." 19 Despite

the current campaign against land sales, Arab owners have

been keeping a canny eye fixed on the price barometer . As we

CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

267

shall see, the very leaders of this agitation have proven themselves

as anxious, privately, to circumvent the Government's restrictions

as the Jews. There is ample evidence, also, that Government

officials themselves have not been above surreptitious speculation,

while at the same time being a party to driving the prices up out

of sight by radical legislation .

That official restrictions were designed to force Jews to pay

through the nose for such land as they were able to acquire is

conclusively shown by official figures . Buying in the open market

for the purpose of "resettling landless Arabs," the Government

paid 072,240 for 17,240 dunams, or an average of C4 per

dunam. In the same period the Jews purchased in the same market,

62,114 dunams for which they paid C 1,647,837, an average

of C25 per dunam.

DOUBLE STANDARD OF TAXATION

In vivid contrast to this flood of radical legislation is Palestine's

system of land taxation, beyond question the most reactionary in

existence. Until recently the obsolete Turkish system, based on

the economy of Mohammed's time, was retained intact by the

Government as being perfectly satisfactory in all respects .

There were two basic taxes . One was the Werko, based on

land valuations . The joker lay in the fact that the last appraisement,

by which the tax was set, had been made in the nineties of

the last century. New valuations were only made in cases of

change of ownership . This meant that the old owners were paying

a tax based on pre-War values, while the new owners were assessed

on the basis of crazily inflated post-War prices. Thus the

new proprietor paid twenty to thirty times more for each dunam

in tax than the previous owner used to pay for the same land before

it was sold, and continued to pay for the adjoining acres still remaining

in his possession. "This unjust and abnormal position,"

complains the Jewish Agency, on March 10, 1935, "expressed itself

in the creation of two classes of taxpayers paying different

rates for similar property," of whom "the only sufferers were

Jews." The relative difference in this levy was often literally

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

enormous . An illustration of the whole taxing scheme is provided

by the village of Shattah, which paid less than £4 in tax,

while the neighboring Jewish colony of Kfar Yehezkiel, owning

half the area of land, paid £55 .

The other main grouping was the Osher or tithe, amounting to

1o% on all agricultural income. This was usually canceled in the

case of Arabs, sometimes by personal decision of the High Commissioner

himself, though District Commissioners were also authorized

to grant remission at their discretion. The extent of

this practice can be seen in the announced remission of seventy

percent of the tithe due the Government in 1932, amounting

to £ 173,000. In 1933 the total remission of tithes to Arabs was

,093,500 out of an assessment of £ 1,245,000 ; and in 1 934,

£ 130,000 out of a total tax of £ 245,000. In 1935 the High

Commissioner reported that of a tithe of £ 17 1,021, only £ 19,-

750 had been collected. The fellah's contribution to Government

revenues (tithe, land tax and all other agricultural taxes)

diminished annually, falling from 25% of the total in 1921-22 to

4.8% in 1934-35-

Though after eighteen years of effort the Government was

seemingly unable to complete the survey for land registration

purposes (which would have put an abrupt end to the plague of

squatter suits), it had not the slightest difficulty in finishing the

survey for taxation purposes within a year after deciding that a

remodeled system was in order. The new Rural Property Tax

Ordinance was placed into effect in 1935, substituting a single

basis of levy for the multiple Turkish tithe, house and land taxes .

Says the Royal Commission of 1937, pointedly : "This effected

a large reduction, in some cases up to seventy percent, in the

taxes payable by the [Arab] peasantry ." 20

Though hailed as a simplified system it was, on the face of it,

an intricate maze . It involved some sixteen brackets of taxation,

varying from the highest to the lowest by several thousand percent,

the brackets themselves divided into innumerable blocks in

the various districts . Providentially, the highest tax brackets coincided

exactly with Jewish enterprises and holdings and the

lowest with those of the Arabs . As the lower grades of ground

CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND

269

crop land pay only a nominal tax, or no tax at all, the holdings

of the fellaheen are practically exempted from impost of any

kind. This type of acreage, coinciding with Arab agricultural

undertakings, is divided into eight grades, the highest of which

pays twenty-five mils per dunam, while the sixth grade drops to

eight mils per dunam. The seventh and eighth grades pay no tax.

Irrigated land was divided into nine grades, seemingly in accordance

with the districts where Jews may or may not be

found, and was assessed accordingly. Fallow land, owned entirely

by great Arab landlords, pays no tax whatsoever, putting

an actual premium on land speculation and completely reversing

every known process by which land policy in other nations is

guided. In any other country infant industry is nursed along

and protected . It is the pioneers who are relieved of taxes ; and

in places like Italy and Spain, the Holy Land's chief competitors

in citrus, growers are directly subsidized . Under this latest arrangement

it was the citrus industry, on which the entire export

trade of the country depended, which was placed in the highest

tax division, not even non-bearing groves being excepted . The

tax here vaulted to 825 mils per dunam, the highest rate of taxation

on this type of plantation in the world .21 Excluded specifically

from this category, the all-Arab citrus district of Acre

`pays' 41o mils per dunam .22

Under the same law, taxation on urban property is similarly

gerrymandered . House property, including valuation of the

site, pays a tax of r z V2 % of the net annual value . Premises with

an annual value up to ,f 2o, invariably Arab, are exempted from

levy . In industrial buildings the Ordinance says that "the tax

shall be at such a rate, not exceeding fifteen percent of the net

annual value, as shall be prescribed by the High Commissioner.

The High Commissioner is empowered to apply the Ordinance

by order to specific areas ." One may easily presume that it is

the Jewish sections alone which pay the fifteen percent, a circumstance

glaringly evident in the exemptions granted in a list

of mixed cities, which on examination turn out to affect only

Arab blocks. Not even schools, clinics or village councils are

excepted from these crushing levies .

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

The theory behind this entire performance is made unmistakably

clear in the assessments charged to the German colony of

Sarona, thoroughly Nazi in sentiment since the coming of Hitler .

Almost surrounded by the continuously growing city of Tel

Aviv, the fields of Sarona are now located in one of the most

highly priced urban developments in the world, with individual

holdings worth an average of 4400,000 in cash. Yet the farmers

of this colony continue to pay a tax as negligible as if their

lands were located in the wilderness on the other side of Jordan.

There are still other tax schemes directed without too much

disguise at the Jewish pocketbook, such as the Land Transfer

Tax, Government Inspection Tax, and Animal Tax, all of them

cut from the same cloth as the land taxes and all brilliantly successful

in mulcting this stricken people who by international consent

are returning to their homeland .

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CHAPTER VI

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SABOTAGING INDUSTRY

Practically all countries today take an eager if not anxious interest

in the development of their own prosperity . It is invariably

the government which points the way to methods for developing

business, which seeks to attract capital and enterprise

and to enlarge its commerce in every way possible . As backward

as the Turks were made out to be in matters of government,

they were happy enough to assist new industry in their domains .

Under the Industrial Act of December 1917, newly established

factories in Palestine received five dunams of State land free on

application, were granted exception from import duties until

they were well established, and were relieved of taxation for

fifteen years.

The present mandatory for Palestine, however, appears to do

everything possible to halt the development of business and to

omit doing anything designed to help it . In view of its peculiar

obligations under the Mandate, it would appear that the Administration

should have favored the new settlers in every way,

that it would nurse their industries sympathetically during the

early and critical period, and in general lend its support by the

usual means, favored taxation, protective tariffs, loans and subsidies.

That the Palestine Government is well able to understand

this matter of elementary economy is shown plainly enough in

the concessions granted to the Iraq Petroleum Company in an

agreement signed January 14, 193 1, to run for a period of seventy

years. This convention between a private corporation and the

Government of Palestine is one of the most remarkable ever

penned, and is worth quoting in extenso. It provides that neither

Palestine nor Transjordan shall derive any revenue from the pipeline

passing through their territory . The Government agrees

271

272 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

that "no import tax, transit tax, export tax, or other tax or fiscal

charge of any sort shall be levied on petroleum, naphtha, ozokerite

or natural gases, whether in crude state or any form or derivatives

thereof, whether intended for consignment in transit or

utilized for the industrial operations of the undertaking ." The

Company is given the far-reaching right to bring in, free of duty,

all stores, equipment, materials, etc., required for its undertakings,

"including all equipment for offices, houses or other buildings,"

directly or indirectly required for the development of its

business in Palestine .

Article VII of this compact gives the concessionaire the privilege

of constructing one or more private ports in the region and

of levying port, harbor or other taxes, as well as authority to determine

who shall have the right to entry at such a port ; and the

Palestine railroads are placed at the Company's disposal at a special

schedule of rates . Article XVII entitles the Company to

lease State lands at a nominal rental. Lands privately owned are

to be expropriated by the High Commissioner for this purpose

if the Company cannot come to agreement with the owners .

The Company may bring in cheap labor at its own discretion to

compete with the higher-priced local labor. Finally, this document

frees the Company from any kind of land tax, income tax,

or any other toll or liability . Thus this foreign corporation is

presented with all the benefits of a tax-supported community, and

is at the same time released from any possible levy or demand, in

what is altogether the most amazing concession ever granted by a

modern State . On February", 1933 the Palestine Government

handed this concessionaire, free of charge, 2250 dunams of valuable

land in the industrial Haifa Bay area to build a terminus for

its oil line.

In return for all this, the Company did not even allow casual

favors to the local market, so that a four-gallon tin of gasoline,

which might sell for 4o¢ in Iraq, retails for $1 .9o in Palestine.

Neither does Palestinian trade derive any benefit from the large

oil tankers which sail from Haifa. Everything connected with

the petroleum trade, from the time of its boring, through its transBRICKS

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portation down to the tanker and retail marketing, is in the hands

of foreign trusts .2

When it comes to the Jews, for whose benefit the Mandate

was supposed to have been framed, another view is taken entirely

. Their industries, instead of being welcomed, are discouraged.

Practically nothing is done to assist them . The Government's

attitude can hardly be described as being other than

antagonistic. Tariffs and duties are levied in topsy-turvy fashion,

as they would be in a lunatic asylum ; and whatever caters

to the needs of industry, such as mail service, telegraphic system,

railways, ports and roads, is maneuvered so as to place it at a

disadvantage.

The Government has a tariff on old shoes imported into the

country ; but bases its customs policy on the theory that tariffs

lead to a high cost of living . It considers it immoral to deprive

its citizens of the benefits of low-cost merchandise dumped in

from everywhere by subsidized foreign trusts ; yet it does not

hesitate to levy prohibitive import duties on all raw materials required

by its own industry.

The only authority the Administration regards as competent

to dictate the needs of business is the Customs Department,

headed by a pompous official who starts with the idea that the local

manufacturer must prove that he is producing a superior article

at a lower price than those dumped in the Palestine market

by outside competitors, before he can be regarded as anything

but a public enemy. Such foreign trade statistics as exist are not

only badly jumbled but published long after they can do anyone

any good . Drily, the President of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Chamber

of Commerce advised the Administration that "the movement of

trade is a matter of some importance to those who are responsible

for the conduct of the country's economic affairs, and it should

not be treated as a departmental secret reluctantly disclosed to

the public." 3

By what is at least the strangest of coincidences, whenever a

Palestine factory competes with English goods, even for the home

market, it is sure to find all protective tariffs taken away from

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

it and impossibly high duties leveled against the bulk materials

and machinery necessary to turn its finished products out . These

cramping tactics may even go the lengths of a carte blanche refusal

to allow the contemplated enterprise to operate on any

terms.

An example of this condition is contained in the several attempts

to establish brewery enterprises in the Holy Land . The

first project was started by a man named Delfiner, who intended

to produce, besides beer, certain chemical products out of the

waste materials of alcohol production . A capital investment of

,L8o,ooo was made, a location bought near Mikweh Israel, and

machinery ordered. Innocently, the founder of the factory applied

for exemption from duty on the ferments and malt required

in beer-making until these materials could be produced

locally. The Government did not even bother about a response ;

and after eight months of patient waiting, Mr. . Delfiner, beginning

to see the light, gave up his project and took his loss .

In the meanwhile a group of French capitalists, headed by a

Mr. Dreyfuss, leased a portion of the wine cellars in Rishon

L'Zion and started reconstruction for brewery purposes . Turned

wise by Delfiner's experience, before going into production they

applied to the Government, asking that the existing excise tax on

spirits of five mils per liter and the customs duty of twenty mils

per liter be not changed after the setting up of their business .

On receipt of this request the Administration immediately did

the opposite . It decided to raise the excise tax on spirits (which

had not yet been begun to be manufactured) to fifteen mils per

liter and committed itself to an arrangement admitting Syrian

beer, on which not even an excise tax was levied, free of duty .

Reconstruction work was stopped and negotiations entered into

with the Government, which stated off the record that it considered

this enterprise an unwarranted attempt to compete with

the import of English beer. So in March 1934 the Dreyfuss

group, having had an object lesson in Near Eastern politics, gave

up the ghost.4

In every branch of trade the same tactics are to be seen . A

fair illustration of what takes place is given in the iron wire in

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dustry, a business calling for a great outlay of capital . Here a

heavy tariff is slapped on raw material, which Palestine does not

produce, and no duty whatsoever placed on the finished article .

Another example is that of the aluminum industry. Imported

raw aluminum was taxed at the rate of three cents per pound ;

while the levy on finished aluminum goods was six cents . When

a factory was set up in Haifa, it was quickly discovered that the

tariff was insufficient to allow for competition even in the home

market. The owner asked for an increase to ten cents per pound .

The Government took this request under the usual advisement

and promptly reduced the duty on finished aluminum ware to

three cents a pound .

An even more graphic illustration is provided in the tax on

automobiles. A newly industrialized land is bound to develop

a voracious appetite for cars and trucks of all kinds . But the

Jews made the mistake of showing a preference for American

cars, which they considered more suitable to the terrain than the

lighter English makes .5 The Government then placed a per

pound tax on incoming motor vehicles of forty mils per kilogram.

6 This enormous impost would add to the normal cost of

a small American car the fantastic sum of $2700 for duty alone,

with the same toll on old cars as on new. In a desperate effort

to circumvent this assessment, the Jews opened up a car-assembling

plant in Tel Aviv . Jerusalem at once retaliated by placing

a duty on bodies and parts, twenty-five to fifty percent higher

than that on complete vehicles.

The attitude of the official Zionists to all this is incredible . It

is reflected in Weizmann's declaration that "one hears complaints

of alleged injustices with regard to protective tariffs . People do

not want to realize that if a Jew from Schnepeshok [a touch of

humor] comes to Palestine and manufactures inferior buttons,

the British Government is not obliged to secure this button by

a protective tariff." 7 The manufacturers of Palestine, caught in

a very real web of economic peonage, were far from impressed

with the philosophical ruminations of the Zionist orators in Europe.

There were not wanting individuals who declared themselves

boldly. One of them was the silk manufacturer, Sachs,

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

who found himself paying a prohibitive duty on raw silk, with

no protection whatever against the dumping of Japan and other

countries .$ Shortly before he was compelled to shut down his

factory, Weitzman and the High Commissioner Wauchope

strolled through.

"How do you like it here ?" asked Sir Arthur politely .

Sachs : "Very much indeed - but I would like it better if we

had a decent Government ."

Weitzman, hurriedly : "Excuse him, Excellency -Mr. . Sachs

cannot ably express himself in English ."

"Pardon me," replied Sachs, looking straight at Weitzman,

"but I speak English very well!"

Part of the situation this manufacturer referred to showed glaringly

on the cost sheets . A meter of Japanese cloth sells for 12 %2

mils, while the labor alone costs 15 mils in Palestine and the raw

material 2o-z5 mils. The factory production cost of a simple

article like cotton sports shirts came to a total of 150 mils in

Palestine, while the corresponding Japanese article was laid down

in Haifa for 8o mils. In 1936 it cost a Palestine manufacturer

43o mils to make a pullover, while the identical article brought

in from Germany or Austria retailed for 320-350 mils.

Agricultural products found their competition fully as severe .

Syrian shipments are able to consistently undersell locally grown

vegetables in all Palestine cities. Practically the whole of Syria's

exports in this line are concentrated on the Holy Land . Syrian

eggs retail in the Palestine market for eighteen cents a dozen,

while Palestine eggs cannot be sold profitably for less than thirtysix

cents a dozen. In 1935 the local production of table fowl was

1,860,000. Imports for the same year came to 2,000,000, all free

of duty. A heavy impost, levied on practically all feed, made it

a physical impossibility to produce commercial poultry as cheaply

as it could be shipped in from abroad .

Adding to the miseries of business, the Government's immigration

policy caused all industrial plans to become a matter of

hazard due to labor uncertainty . In all Jerusalem there are only

a handful of qualified electricians and carpenters. One has to

wait interminable periods for even the simplest installations - yet

BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW

271

the Authorities refuse to grant visas to skilled workmen now

refugees from Germany or starving in Rumania and Poland .

The transplanting of a higher standard of life into the medieval

setting of the Near East has invited still other troubles. In

Egypt, woman and child labor is obtainable in large quantities at

two or three piasters a day, and in the Syrian factories children

are employed at almost no pay at all. It is obvious that either of

two simple factors can cut the heart out of an unprotected Palestine

industry in a realistic world : the mass production of States

with strong industries and vast local markets, and the extremely

low wage scales in the surrounding agricultural countries of the

Near East.

In such a thoroughly destructive situation, industry can only

hope to secure and hold isolated and unique markets, and even

these, as we shall see, are not safe from attack . Though Palestine's

industry has shown a striking development resulting from

the headlong rush of Jewish investment and enterprise, it has

been able to penetrate only a fraction of its home market and is

in extreme jeopardy everywhere else . What this condition adds

up to in figures is seen in the problem of Japanese dumping . In

1929 the Holy Land imported 67000 of Japanese goods . By

1935 this figure had skyrocketed to £646,ooo, while during this

same period Japanese purchases from Palestine held at the ludicrous

amount of £ S .

Certain favored groups are saved from a portion of this disabling

condition by Governmental exception . All of the various

missionary institutions and enterprises are exempted from tax or

toll of any kind . Under this immunity the churchmen run hotels,

farms, manufacture wine on which no excise duty is levied, and

engage in other flourishing businesses under favorable conditions .

Also relieved of tax and imposts are "all members of His Majesty's

forces" and all officers of the Palestine Government. So

is the great Iragian-owned trans-desert transport service between

the Holy Land and Iraq, which thus escapes the exorbitant levies

placed on motor vehicles, tires and gasoline .9

Specific Arab industries are also shown generous consideration .

An eloquent token is the exemption of the Arab soap industry of

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Nablus from the high tax on olive oil for industrial purposes ; and

the grotesquely contrasting customs protection given olives themselves

. Study of the agricultural products protected by Government

impost discloses them to be almost exclusively Arab .

Such fellaheen crops as wheat, barley and seminola are safeguarded

by high duties and a rigid regulation of imports under a

system of licenses.

On scattered occasions Jewish industry participates unavoidably

in these advantages . One such instance concerns the shoe industry.

After dumping practices almost succeeded in wiping

this business out of existence, the Arabs made such a howl that

the Government was moved to remedy the situation in 1932 by

protective duty . The net result shows in sharp relief the viciousness

of the open door system : there was an immediate decrease

in imports, dropping in two years from £ 8o,ooo to £40,000,

and an equalizing increase in the sale of local manufactures .

The Jews have also been the beneficiaries of other favors not

meant for them . The result of glutting the Palestine market

with foreign goods inadvertently gave Japan and Germany a toehold

from which they were invading the entire Near and Middle

East, ousting Britain from her favored position . In printed cotton

goods, one of Britain's pet specialties, Japan took first place as

leading exporter to Palestine, more than doubling English sales

in the same market. In 1936 London was shocked to discover

that Germany had jumped to first place as seller to the Palestine

market, with English goods losing position steadily .'°

This dangerous piece of backfire shocked the Bureaucrats into

action. As a result, quickly imposed tariffs have bettered the

situation considerably and a number of closed Jewish factories

have been able to reopen.

It is an error, however, to assume that Whitehall has suddenly

suffered from an attack of conscience . This was poignantly

demonstrated during the recent Tozareth Haaretz (favoring

home products) campaign. In this `Buy Palestine' movement,

the Jews literally put on a volunteer tariff of their own, deliberately

buying home-manufactured goods though they had to

pay a large premium for the privilege . This enthusiastically supBRICKS

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ported crusade was a considerable factor in enabling Jewish industry

to survive, and bespeaks the almost unique patriotism of

Palestine Jewry. Its effectiveness was evidenced during the

three months' campaign early in 1937, when Jewish leaders estimated

it was worth C4,000,000 in increased sales of local products.

Out of this campaign grew a typical frenzy of official

harassment . Jewish stores advertising the sale of `Palestine Goods

Only' were visited by Government agents seeking an excuse to

make arrests. At the same time, street peddlers selling `Only

Palestine Products' were hustled off to police stations to explain

why they preferred to limit their wares to those made in their

own land .

BANKING AND CURRENCY

Due to all the disabling uncertainties, the credit situation in

Palestine is a severe one . It is further complicated by an archaic

credit system which the Authorities refuse to alter . So the financing

of industry lapses into an impossible stalemate ; with the

banks on one side, so full of money that they are loath to take on

new accounts, and on the other, an aggregation of puzzled industrialists

who are wondering from day to day what the Government

is going to do next. Finance in Palestine has consequently

developed into something like a roulette game, with all bets called

when the wheel stops.

Apart from trivial quotas, the banks grant no real long-term

credits. No security market is in existence, a particular blow to

moderate-sized new undertakings. These are, in general, precariously

financed, the limited capital of the owner being eaten

up early by bloated land prices and building costs . The Near

Eastern expert, Dr . Alfred Michaelis, states that consequently

"numerous moderate and small-sized factories are in danger of

closing down for financial reasons ." 11

The legal interest rate is 9%, but this is vastly exceeded in practice

; while the banks pay I %2 % interest on deposits . Despite

the favorable circumstances provided in Palestine's swift growth,

the hostile attitude of the Government makes industrial and agri2.80

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

cultural mortgages most difficult to obtain, even at the gouging

interest rates prevailing . The establishment of adequate mortgage

banks is hampered by the Administration's land legislation

and attitude generally, frightening off interested financial institutions

in London and New York . The Arabs fare a little better.

Looking out for its self-selected wards, the Administration

has established an agricultural bank out of the public funds with

a capital of (400,000. It grants Arab farmers long-term credits

at nominal interest rates . The Jews, however, must contend

with the existing credit situation as best they can .

The Palestine pound is based on the British pound sterling . The

setting of its money values at this artificially high level automatically

exposes Palestine to the paralyzing competition of surrounding

nations whose devaluated and blocked currencies give

them an immeasurable advantage in all markets .

Due again to the Administration's own strictures, the banks of

Palestine are mainly branches of foreign institutions, with no particular

interest in the welfare of the country . Barclay's Bank,

an offshoot of the institution in London, has offices in Jerusalem

and six other towns and is banker to the Palestine Government .

The Ottoman Bank (Anglo-French) has five branches, and the

Italian Banco di Roma, four . In Tel Aviv is found the Polska

Kasa Oszczednosci (Polish) . There are a few local Jewish institutions

but, with little exception, they are of trivial importance.

This circumstance is all the more remarkable since the great bulk

of the money on deposit everywhere belongs to Jews . The savings

of the Arab fellaheen are usually kept in jars and similar hiding

places .

It is apparent here, too, that the British are determined to hang

a millstone around the neck of Palestine industry, and that if

equivocation and quibbling will not accomplish this purpose

they are prepared to strike directly at the heart of the country's

financial structure . This is conveyed in the draft ordinance of

April 1936, deleting from the law the provision requiring banks

to publish annual balance sheets . Thus not only was industry

deprived of any adequate insight into the country's financial situation,

but it was placed hopelessly at the mercy of foreign wireBRICKS

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pulling. This was made uncomfortably clear during the unsettled

condition which followed after Italy's invasion of Ethiopia,

when apprehensive withdrawals threatened the collapse of Palestine's

whole economic structure .

In February 1936 the Government published notice of impending

legislation which speaks volumes. This regulation proposes

that "no company or cooperative society shall carry on a

banking business without obtaining from the High Commissioner

a license to do so, and the High Commissioner may grant, refuse,

or revoke such license without explanation."

CITRUS

Pride of the Yishub is the Jaffa orange, reputedly the finest in

the world . An incident occurring in Paris a few years ago spoke

more for the quality of this fruit than a mountain of figures . A

fruit vendor had made a charge of two francs for a single orange,

which the writer considered outrageous . After having been so

informed, the vendor shrugged his shoulders and said testily

"Mais, M'sieu - c'est un Ja f a !"

Before the advent of the Zionists, oranges were scarcely a factor

in the Palestine economy and grapefruit were unknown . By

1931 the Holy Land was producing five percent of the oranges

for sale on world markets, jumping in 1938 to the unbelievable

proportion of eighteen percent. Nowhere else in the world is

scientific farming brought to such a high point in perfection . In

some of the larger groves complete filing systems are used in

which the case history of every tree is charted with all the thoroughness

of a medical clinic .

Citrus is the heart of Jewish agricultural enterprise and the

keystone to the National Home's prosperity. In 1934 it represented

eighty-three percent of all Palestinian exports . Unlike

competitor countries, where a healthy home consumption provides

a secure back-log for this industry, Palestine with its small

population has only a negligible internal market. A falling off

in foreign sales would necessarily place its citrus growers in the

most precarious of situations, serious enough to snap the back282

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

bone of the country's commerce . Here is an imperative which

would automatically dictate the commercial policy of any other

government . But in Palestine, declares S . Tolkowsky, General

Manager of the Jaffa Citrus Exchange, this key industry "remains

like a fatherless child, whom everybody is free to kick and exploit

and whom nobody will protect ." 12

In the Old World, oranges come within the luxury category .

The arc of production is, moreover, rapidly climbing everywhere,

making competition for existing markets very difficult . The

acuteness of this phase is amply demonstrated in Palestine production

alone. In 1936 it was some eight million cases, whereas

in 1940, when the young groves- come into full bearing, it is estimated

that total shipments will reach twenty-two million cases .

What this situation will result in can be discovered from the overwhelming

hardships already crucifying the industry . Impassable

trade restrictions are robbing it of existing foreign markets .

Exorbitant taxes make the planters' lives a nightmare . In general,

the obstructive tactics of the Mandatory are shooting them

head-first into catastrophe .

At Jaffa, where the industry is situated, there is neither a port

nor sufficient storage space . At Haifa, the transit sheds, under

the control of the Government, are pathetically inadequate and

become more congested each season as the new orchards begin to

bear. The single railroad between the orange section and Haifa

is a Government monopoly. It is short of cars and locomotives,

and during the turbulent rains which fall at the height of the picking

season it often does not run at all . Following nerve-wracking

delays, shippers are compelled to load their fruit in open

wagons ordinarily used for the transport of manure . Since the

orange is highly perishable, many thousands of boxes are lost annually

at the railway stations . Fruit is inspected outside rather

than within the dock warehouses, adding to the spoilage, in a

scene of indescribable congestion and confusion . Galling delays

frustrate every step in the attempt to export . The net result

is that full shiploads often reach their markets with as much as

fifty percent of waste fruit .

The alternative possibility of truck hauling did not exist until

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recently . Over the sixty miles of sand dune between Haifa and

Tel Aviv-Jaffa, the most important commercial centers in the

country, the Administration had obstinately refused to construct

a road. It was only when the present war-beclouded horizon

made the building of this artery an inevitable military necessity,

that it was undertaken.

In practically all European countries, quotas, currency restrictions,

or prohibitive duties make the situation more precarious

with every passing year . The principal competitor nations,

Spain and Italy, overcome this hazard by favorable commercial

treaties and clearing agreements negotiated with the countries in

which they market their fruit. Such intercession as the Palestine

Government attempts is almost inevitably in the nature of cavalier

interference . One single rule costing the growers over a million

boxes of fruit was the order excluding oranges from export which

count more than one hundred to the box . The Administration

refuses to introduce any uniform inspection system and calmly

ignores the demands of distracted Jewish growers for compulsory

spraying and smoking of disease-ridden groves - practically all

of them Arab . The desperate Jewish growers have had to establish

their own inspection service on roads leading to the Colonies

to keep their trees from being ravaged by the black scale and

other destructive pests .

Over the objection of the Arabs, also, Jews are making a strenuous

effort to create a voluntary, all-inclusive citrus exchange for

the maintenance of high standards of sizing, packing and shipping.

They hope to win the better prices fetched by wellselected,

well-advertised and well-marketed fruit. The Government,

however, seems to regard this effort as an extravagant

irritation of Arabs who wish to keep to their old ways .

In the matter of trade agreements the Administration lays exaggerated

stress on formal difficulties, which it pretends cannot be

overcome . Yet Great Britain itself levies so heavily on Palestine

citrus that the tariff represents as much as half of the actual cost

of production. The only value this high duty could have is to

protect a British island in the West Indies, whose sole export

amounts to twenty thousand cases . The desperate Palestine grow284

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

ers offered to buy this whole crop at attractive prices in exchange

for relief - but their offer met with no response .

A reasonable reading of this mystery is offered in the deliberate

British effort to develop Cyprus, where Jews are now practically

excluded, into a direct competitor to Palestine . The Jaffa orange

has made such a great European reputation that the market it has

established becomes a most desirable plum for anyone who can

steal it. The bureaucrats have set themselves to take over this

lucrative industry if they can. Cyprus oranges have been exempted

from customs duty in the Empire. Land is cheap, labor

is cheap, and the Palestine competitor is being frozen in his tracks

by tariff walls . The Island is now being systematically advanced

as "a place of settlement for retired Colonial officials of all ranks"

and other Britons looking for a good thing . In the official British

press it is provocatively described as "practically undeveloped ." 13

That the tragic troubles besetting the citrus growers cannot

be credited to merely lackadaisical administration is shown by a

host of other circumstances . An illuminating example concerns

the boxes in which the fruit is packed, which the growers had

been buying in Poland and Rumania. When these countries

placed severe import tolls on Palestine fruit, to favor Italian and

Spanish oranges, the Palestinian growers retaliated by setting up

machinery to make their own boxes . This was the signal for the

Government of Palestine to act . It promptly plastered a high

tariff on box-wood, so that they could not be produced locally

except at prohibitive cost.

The result of this official persecution is not slow in showing itself.

Jewish groves, established at extravagant prices, bearing

the entire cost of advertising and marketing Palestine fruit, and

harassed from every source, are losing their hard-won position,

even in Palestine . Isaac Rokeach, President of the Jaffa Citrus

Exchange, estimates that at least one-third of the Jewish citrus

growers have been unable to meet the interest on their debts for

the last two years .l4

In his 1935 Report, the High Commissioner candidly calls attention

to this end result of his policies, saying : "A decrease of

investment in citrus plantations was also observed owing to deBRICKS

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cline in profits and fear of over-production. Arab farmers, however,

with little or nothing to pay for their land and their larger

margin between receipts and costs, have placed large additional

areas under citrus." 15 The simple figures tell the rest . Citrus,

once a Jewish monopoly in Palestine, is gradually passing into

Arab hands. The Arab area increased during 1935 by 20,000

dunams - the Jewish area, by Io,ooo.

ECONOMIC INSANITY

Practically all countries today maintain a strict control over

their exchange transactions, and also supervise the search for new

markets. Their rulers are prepared to bargain for each minute

advantage at the drop of a hat . This is accomplished by a direct

manipulation of currency, noteworthy in the case of Germany,

and special agreements of various kinds, most common of which

is the `favored nation' type . Under this arrangement a mutual

exchange of purchase value is arrived at, cemented by tariff discriminations

in favor of the preferred party .

Without exception, industrial nations follow the rule of buying

only where they can sell, and view with serious misgivings even

the slightest upset of their trade balance . The United States,

after studying the bewildering list of marks introduced by Dr.

Schacht, each with a different value and all manipulated to Germany's

trade advantage, came to the conclusion in July of 1936

that they constituted discriminatory trade practice and promptly

placed a retaliatory duty on German goods .

On June 10, 1937, Commons listened to Lieutenant-Colonel

Amery, former First Lord of the Admiralty, threaten a sharp increase

in duty against American products . "It is impossible," he

said, "to get back to the gold standard as long as that great

creditor nation still is forcing us to take an excess of imports ."

Echoed by the whole British Cabinet, Foreign Minister Eden

stated that an agreement with the United States "for the reduction

of customs duties on a most-favored-nation basis," was one of the

main objects of His Majesty's Government.16 The Colonial Office,

too, is not oblivious to these rudiments of economic good

286

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

sense . In a recent report it expresses glowing gratification because

Cyprus was able to show a small favorable balance for the

three months ending June 30, 1936, with imports of £305,o87

against exports of 4305 ,35 1 -

Alone in the world, Palestine's trade policy is characterized by

an entirely negative attitude . There the Government considers

that the Mandate rules out the possibility of trade agreements,

quotas and compensations, though these are regarded by other

countries as the sole means of establishing satisfactory trade relations

. Though it seems to levy tariffs and imposts as it pleases

under the less imposing name of `taxes,' the Government officially

takes refuge in the position that its "obligations under the Mandate"

prevent it from `discriminating' against countries belonging

to the League, from whom the Administration of Palestine theoretically

derives its authority.

It is obvious that Germany and Japan, two of the worst offenders

in the dumping process, are hardly entitled, even under this interpretation,

to continued privileges . Officially they have retired

from the League and all its obligations . In Syria, under similar

mandate, the French slapped a prompt surtax on German goods,

and forced both Germany and Japan to conclude favorable trade

agreements which included adequate guarantees of payment in

Syrian currency .

Palestine is one of the few countries restrained from taking

counter measures when a foreign government leaves the gold

standard and spills its depreciated wares on the market, or even

directly subsidizes some of its exports . Latvian butter shippers,

for example, receive such generous grants-in-aid from their Government

that they are able to sell their product cheaper in Jaffa

than it can be produced on neighboring farms . The Holy Land

is literally flooded with goods from a large number of countries,

sold at a price with which no industry depending entirely on its

own resources can hope to compete . Much of this dumping is

accomplished through organized cartels which are able to maintain

their home prices at such a high level that they can accept

payments on export goods barely sufficient to cover the cost of

materials and transport . Recent years have witnessed a vast inBRICKS

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crease in the dumping of goods by highly organized countries,

effected through export premiums, subsidies to industry, etc ., by

which the State endeavors to balance its payments without reference

to the home cost. In the case of Egyptian sugar, prices in

Cairo and Alexandria are exactly double those prevailing in Palestine

where competition has to be met from Czechoslovakia and

other beet-sugar producers.

All nations, without exception, enjoy preferential treatment in

regard to Palestine, turning it out, a little ewe lamb, to pasture

among the wolves.17 The Holy Land has consequently fallen

heir to a dangerous condition where it buys infinitely more abroad

than it sells . The result of this policy showed in 1935 when Palestine

had the staggering trade deficit of JJ 13,800,000, representing

the difference between imports of C r 8,ooo,ooo and exports of

only £4,200,000, a fatal disproportion which has risen yearly .

In 1936 the situation became still more serious. Imports for the

first quarter show a reduction of 14.2 % over the corresponding

period for 1935, while exports for the same period declined by

18.5%. Not only is the present deficit the largest in the world,

reckoned per head of population, but it was created at the very

time when every country was making the most strenuous efforts

to balance up its trade accounts either by diminishing imports or

increasing exports.

Under some circumstances these huge arrears might not be

cause for overwhelming anxiety. It could be argued that in the

development of a young and progressive country the import

of large quantities of production equipment is a vital necessity,

which must be considered as a capital investment rather than an

expenditure. It is undoubtedly significant that the largest single

import in 1935 was industrial machinery, valued at £992,ooo as

compared with 0967,000 in 1934 and 0467,000 in 1933 . Other

items of producers' materials showed similar pleasant increases .

Despite this optimistic circumstance, the facts as we have seen

them are not conducive to so liberal an interpretation . State

policies which allow for a constriction of foreign markets, and

make possible a condition where a locally manufactured blouse

costing 270 mils to make, has to compete with an identical blouse

288

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

imported from Austria which retails for 250 mils, hardly make

an assumption of this sort acceptable .

A picture of what is occurring can be gained from the increase

in egg imports from i 1,ooo,ooo eggs in 1929, to 76,000,000 eggs

in 1935, a frightening clue into real condition, when it is considered

that Palestine is still in the main an agricultural country.

The import value of food, drink and tobacco alone in 1935 was

43,646,877, while manufactured articles were 00,789,934.

These are certainly forbidding enough figures, fully justifying

Jabotinsky's dour warning that "the Jews are not settlers in Palestine-

they are just tourists!"

Certainly nothing but ruin can come to the infant industry of

this small land by turning it into a stronghold of free trade while

all the countries, including Great Britain itself, operate on the

principle of commercial treaties, mutual preferences and protective

tariffs . It seems obvious that the boasted `prosperity' of the

National Home is a delusion, since it depends upon the continued

import of funds, and not on the sound mechanics which trial and

error have proven to be the only operative media anywhere . To

become economically independent, the National Home must find

a way to produce within its borders, goods and services with

which to pay for the supplies it is compelled to buy from the outside

world. Otherwise the difference between imports and exports

must be charged off out of capital ; which meant that the

country had to pay out more than twice as much in 1935 alone

than was brought in by all the immigrants of 1936 put together.

The actual fact is that the four hundred thousand Jews in Palestine

find themselves in a grim economic battle with the world,

unprotected and prevented from protecting themselves . Since

the Zionist enterprise in Palestine represents a plunging investment

on the part of scattered Israel, desperately attempting to

salvage its remaining resources, Zionist Jewry, despite mutual

self-delusions, must be living largely on its dwindling capital.

Such, indeed, must inevitably prove to be the case . If no other

factor than the customs system operated, Jewish industrial position

would still remain dangerous and unhealthy, its catastrophic

ferments sure to expose themselves the instant the river of money

BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW

289

pouring into this tiny area abated. That Jewish ingenuity has

succeeded in partly circumventing these determined disabilities is

of little real importance, as it can be assumed that new restrictions

will constantly be invented to take the place of those which have

proven ineffective .

In the matter of currency alone, imports from such countries

as Germany, Rumania and Poland have to be paid for in full,

whereas when these States purchase from Palestine, the sums

owing are placed in blocked accounts, or goods which have to

be taken in lieu of money ; and it is a long time, if ever, before

the exporter collects on his debt . Such a condition would be

laughable in any other country, which would insist at once on

being paid in local currency under pain of excluding the off ending

States from its markets .

All these signs of economic insanity are the more remarkable

since the mere existence of a great excess of imports over exports

should place the National Home in an ideal bargaining position .

The very weakness of her trade position would provide a club

with which to secure important concessions from foreign nations

the instant a quota system was set up. Under an interested Government,

Palestine's trade would become a fat prize for which all

commercial nations would angle . It is almost four times that

of Egypt, six times that of Syria and five and a half times that of

Iraq.

Turkey, one of the prime offenders, sold Palestine in 1935 a

total of £ 3 38,807 and bought in return, £ 6646. Governed under

a system of strict State control over foreign trade, the Turks

put a virtual embargo on Palestine products. They ended by

banning all Palestine citrus in 1936. 111

Rumania, another typical illustration, sold Palestine £ 1,208,-

204 in 1935 and bought from her during that time a total of

£ 30,000. Despite this enormous advantage, Bucharest insisted

that sixty percent of the oranges it buys from the Holy Land had

to be shipped in Rumanian boats . To obtain the present import

licenses for two hundred thousand cases of fruit, Palestine

exporters had to purchase from Rumania fifteen orange cases for

every box of fruit sold . The same method of box-wood against

290 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

citrus fruit was forced on Palestine by Russia, whose balance of

trade with the Jewish National Home is twenty-three to one in

Russia's favor. In this policy these countries aped a similar one

announced in Poland. Taking full advantage of the defenseless

position of Palestine, Warsaw uses it as a dumping grounds for

cheap Polish goods, selling the Holy Land £400,000 annually,

and buying £ 40,000 in return.

Another of this unending list of examples is Hungary which

sells the Holy Land in the neighborhood of £ 120,000 every year,

and buys about £ i o0o worth of its goods in return . Like many

of her neighbors, Hungary has a complete embargo on Palestinian

fruit, out of deference to trade agreements with other orangegrowing

nations. Even in such countries as France and Belgium,

the sale of Palestine fruit is dropping consistently due to the presence

of new trade agreements by these countries with other

orange producers . Palestine is mulcted from every direction.

In order to sell Germany, last season, 216,ooo cases of fruit worth

less than £ ioo,ooo, she had to buy German goods of specified

classes to an equal value, notwithstanding an adverse trade balance

of £ 2,000,000.

Whatever specious legality the Administration might take

refuge in to justify its present course, Article XVIII of the Mandate

specifically empowers it to conclude special agreements

"with any State the territory of which in 1914 was wholly included

in Asiatic Turkey or Arabia." One of these States is

Iraq, which in 1935 exported to Palestine £237,000, and managed

by discriminatory duties to hold imports from that country

to £ 10,000 . The ratio of Iraq's sales to, and purchases from, Palestine

is now about thirty-one to one . Another is Syria whose

cheap labor and abundant irrigation facilities offers a destructive

competition to the fruit and vegetable growers of the Holy

Land. Syria sold Palestine during 1 935, £ 1,310,363 and bought

only £ 302,988 in exchange . The exports of Palestine to all the

countries of the Near East amount to only seventeen percent of

its imports from these same States, showing a deficit of £ 2,29o,-

00o in 1935 . This may be compared with the Iraqian balance

BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW 291

of trade for the same Near Eastern countries including Palestine,

coming to 890,000 dinars in imports against exports of 1,113,000

dinars. In the identical sphere of Near Eastern trade, Syria

shows imports of 5,763,493 Syrian pounds against exports of

7,121,693 Syrian pounds .

Under the stimulus of an interested Government, Syria has

started an impressive industrial development of her own . Industrial

exports, which a few years ago were far smaller than

those of Palestine, now exceed Palestine's by sixty percent . Even

more astounding is the fact that most of these are being concentrated

on the Holy Land . Syrian industrial export to Palestine

for 1935 added to £520,000, as against an industrial export by

Palestine to Syria of £ 110,000. In the trade relations between

Egypt and Syria we find a wholly different condition . After a

brief tariff war in 1934, a mutual trade agreement was reached

between the two countries leveling off the disproportion under

which Syria had suffered, to the point where Syrian and Egyptian

exports practically balanced each other .

As if playing a practical joke, the sole trade arrangement approved

by the Administration was made with Germany in 1933

during the world Jewish boycott of that country . Here Palestine

agreed to take double the amount of German goods for the

value of all oranges shipped to the Reich . Zionist politicians with

their hands out, had set the example in August 1933, by an arrangement

for the transfer of German-Jewish capital in the form

of German merchandise, thus flooding the whole Near East with

German goods . This scheme, which seemingly had the full blessing

of the Palestine authorities, resulted in a tremendous fillip to

German trade. German exports leaped from £780,000 in 1932

to £2,035,000 in 1936. How the trade wind blew as a result of

this policy is illustrated in the drop of Palestine's sales to Germany

from £6oo,669 in 1934 to £ 131,000 in 1936.

The whole sum and substance of the Government's attitude can

be seen in its failure to provide for a Palestine trade secretary in

any of the British Consulate-General's offices - even those in

neighboring countries. Such arrangements as are made in the

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

name of Palestine are literally fantastic . One is the treaty granting

free zones to Iraq and Iran in Haifa port . Iraq, despite its

anti-Jewish attitude, is given complete facilities for landing, warehousing

and transshipment of goods and the Zone is placed under

the absolute control of Iraq customs officials . Under this curious

`commercial agreement' Iraq also receives concessions "in respect

of local taxation," and is allowed duty reductions in favor

of her produce averaging from fifty percent to eighty percent .

In return for all this, Palestine receives privileges which add up to

a collective zero .19 The result of this `agreement' has merely

been to aggravate Haifa's already serious problem of congestion .

The effect of this stultifying process was recently described by

Dr. F. Rottenstreich, Palestine member of the Zionist Executive .20

In 1937, he disclosed, Jewish workers in Palestine industry had

decreased by twenty-eight percent from the previous year .

He flatly accused the Government of boycotting Palestinian

products, asserting that it even went abroad for goods not manufactured

in Great Britain rather than patronize local manufacture.

Something of the same condition was described by the Palestine

Arab Congress back in 1925, which sarcastically mentions a

special Stores Department existing only to buy from Europe such

articles as "a thermometer, for instance, at PTio, when similar

thermometers of the same sort, manufacture and patent, are sold

in Jerusalem pharmacies at PT3 ." 21

While everything connected with Jewish interests is being

booted around like a football, the usual solicitousness for Arabs

continues. This is shown handsomely in the case of the Arab

specialty of wheat growing . When a high tariff proved ineffectual,

the flour trade was placed under a system of rigid licenses,

with Jews allowed an annual import of only ten thousand tons

though the Tel Aviv demand alone was estimated at seventeen

thousand tons . Finally the High Commissioner stopped the imports

of wheat altogether during May, June and July of 1935.

This policy was continued to the actual point of an acute flour

shortage, notwithstanding the fact that it represented a `discrimination'

against members of the League of Nations anxious to

dump their excess produce into the Holy Land .22

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HEADS, I WIN -TAILS, YOU LOSE'

Though Palestine is under the direct control of the British

Colonial Office, London takes the stand that to grant it Imperial

preference would be in some obscure fashion immoral . Palestinian

exports to Britain are hence taxed for all the tariff will bear .

It is significant that Imperial preference has been accorded all

other mandated territories assigned to Great Britain, without too

much fuss being made about it . In the cases of Togo, Cameroon

and Tanganyika, it was decreed by Order in Council, October

13, 1928, that these areas should be considered part of the British

Empire for tariff purposes under Article VIII of the Finance

Act of I9I9. International precedent is also offered in the preferential

tariff granted by France to the protectorate of Tunis .

The United States did the same for the benefit of Hawaii before

its annexation ; and in 1903 allowed Cuba a customs reduction of

twenty percent on the basis of "moral obligations existing ."

All authorities on international law agree that the Covenant

and the Mandate were devised for the protection of the mandated

areas, and not for the benefit of foreign powers . Even the open

door, in principle, is primarily intended to prevent the exploitation

of these territories . That economic isolation was certainly

not meant by the Powers is proven in the Mandates Commission's

demand that Mandatory rulers and all other States "which have

concluded special treaties or conventions with the Mandatory

Powers . . . extend the benefits of such treaties or conventions

to the Mandated territories ." 23

Britain does just the reverse . In no case where she has commercial

treaties embodying the most-favored-nation clause has

she bothered to arrange that the benefits be extended to Palestine .

At the same time, the National Home is bound by all the obligations

of existing trade agreements between England and other

countries. When a speaker in Commons demanded that duties

be imposed on German and Japanese imports into Palestine, the

Colonial Secretary replied that "this was impossible as long as

Palestine remained a party to the Empire commercial treaties with

Germany and Japan ." 24 Despite this contention, the British Gov294

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

ernment has not applied the Anglo-German payments agreement,

in which Palestine is legally included, to the balance of payments

between Germany and Palestine .

The shrewd hypocrisy of London's position is emphasized by

the voluntary action of Stockholm, which removed all import

duties on Holy Land grapefruit to "promote trade relations between

Palestine and Sweden." 26 In the same friendly gesture,

the Dominion of Canada allows free entry to Palestine citrus during

the principal season of export from December to May of each

year. Yet Britain itself doggedly maintains prohibitive tolls on

everything that comes from the Holy Land .

At the same time London insists on being credited with the

amount of Palestine imports in its trade deals with the various

countries, as in the Commercial Agreement signed with Poland

on February 27, 1930. In the Anglo-Lithuanian Treaty, signed

to maintain a balance of trade between the two countries, the

same business was repeated. Here, too, the British claimed credit

for all Lithuanian goods sold in the Holy Land.26

ON AIR AND SEA

The irresistible force which drew the city-bound Jew to the

hard, challenging soil, also beckons him to the sea . Zionist thinkers

saw in advance what the Asiatic hinterland is rapidly discovering

- that the sea borders of Palestine form the gateway to international

traffic . Strategically located at the sea cross-roads of

three continents, the land of Israel must inevitably become a prosperous

maritime country .

The Nationalist leader Jabotinsky was among the first to grasp

the full significance of this situation . There has long been a

Revisionist marine school at Civitavecchia, Italy, where shipbuilding,

fishery and navigation are taught to eager students from

the recesses of European ghettos . The Palestine Histadruth has

its own society called Nachshon, Ltd ., and in Haifa there is a

non-partisan group, the rapidly developing Zebulun Society,27

where enthusiastic youths acquire nautical training and a love for

the sea.

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In 1934, goods to the value of C 17,000,000 were transported

to and from Palestine by water, and nearly three hundred thousand

travelers came or left. Jews alone spend for shipping an

estimated C 3,500,000 each year. Yet for all the revenue Palestine

derives from its own fishing and shipping industries, it might

just as well be tucked away in the middle of Africa .

Several Jewish companies have made determined efforts to

capture a part of this sea traffic for the Jewish people. When the

first Hebrew steamer, the Atid, made its maiden voyage in 193 3,

manned by a Hebrew-speaking crew, observers commented wonderingly

that "there was an air of unreality about this venture ."

Today there are three Jewish shipping corporations in Palestine,

with half a score of vessels plying between the ports of the Mediterranean.

For the most part these craft are of low tonnage but

the new Jew looks at them with pride.

The difficulties faced by Jewish shipping are far greater than

those usually connected with an attempt to establish a new merchant

marine . It must compete unaided against the subsidized

shipping industries of other nations . More, it suffers from the

actual animus of its own home government . It does not even

get preference in port clearance and wharf facilities . It is handicapped

by its inability to get itself included in the pacts between

shipping companies, so that a balanced payload of merchandise

could be arranged for its vessels between their various ports of

call . Since the amount of shipping originating in Palestine is

considerable, a simple expression of interest by the Palestine Government

to foreign lines which touch at its ports would easily

bring about this desirable result . Far from betraying such an

interest in the country's merchant marine, the Authorities actually

prompted Egypt to forbid entry into her waters of Palestine

steam vessels (specified so as not to interfere with Arab

sailing skiffs) of less than one thousand tons . This, of course, hit

the Jews alone. Similar difficulties were encountered in Britishowned

Cyprus ; and Syria, too, was prevailed on to take discriminatory

action against the struggling Hebrew companies.

The Administration has declared Sundays and Christian holidays

the only days of rest in Palestine ports . On those days cus296

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

toms is closed and the work carried on at port extremely limited .

Employees engaged in it must be paid `overtime .' The Jewish

Sabbath and holidays are not recognized . This obviously places

Jewish shipping under costly duress, causing it to lose patronage

and cargoes.

In 1936 the largest of the Jewish steamers, the S .S. Tel Aviv,

finally had to throw up the sponge due to State-subsidized competition

of foreign companies, and the ship was sold to a corporation

in Japan.

A growing number of Jewish vessels are engaged in deep-sea

fishing, though local fisheries are discouraged by special legislation

prohibiting trawling, and by the granting of "exclusive licenses

to fish." The High Commissioner dictates the industry

personally, with powers to issue licenses as he sees fit . It is noteworthy

that foreign fishermen are subject to none of these disabilities

when operating in Palestine waters .

No appropriation exists for the fisheries service, even though

Palestine imports a great amount of seafood every year . Iraq

finds it profitable to transport large quantities of fish all the way

across the scorching desert route . This export of fish from the

Tigris to the markets of Palestine's coastal towns is as ironical as

bringing the proverbial coal to Newcastle . Practically the only

experimentation has been that done by private Jewish enterprise .

Dr. Sklover, former official in the Fisheries Department of the

German Government has proven, for instance, that the yearly

cycle of sardines takes them all the way from South Palestine to

the Syrian coast. Were the Government's attitude not a factor,

a great export of sardines, packed in native olive oil, could easily

materialize .

This uncompromising indifference to the fate of its entire

maritime industry on the part of a Government, is, to say the

least, unique . Not even in the section of the coast around Jaffa

Harbor is there an official sea-chart . Apathy extends in every

possible direction . The ports themselves are pathetically inadequate

to care for the enormous growth of shipping. Facilities

are so badly jammed that shippers who can possibly avoid Palestine,

do so. For years the Jaffa customs area has been so badly

BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW

297

overcrowded that arriving steamers often have to stand by for

a week or more before they can unload . Sometimes in the height

of the orange season the situation becomes so impossible that the

whole import and tourist traffic has to be rerouted through Haifa .

Storage facilities are so poor that port authorities have had repeatedly

to proclaim a respite week, during which no merchandise

is accepted from incoming ships and no products loaded on

outgoing steamers . What all this jockeying means to anxious

growers whose perishable product is decaying in the sheds and

rail-terminals need hardly be explained .

Haifa Harbor has been modernized to make it suitable as a

military-naval base . From time to time it is substantially rumored

that all civil shipping is to be discontinued, and beautiful

Haifa Bay turned into a purely military preserve. Here oil,

which pays no taxes, is the fair-haired boy of the Administration,

and its transportation takes precedence over all else except the

cardinal business of His Britannic Majesty's great gray sea dogs.

With superb unconcern, the Authorities watch everything connected

with private shipping pile into a hopeless jumble at these

two ports, a mess which grows crazier with each passing year .

The ideal spot for a harbor which would relieve this congestion

is Jaffa-Tel Aviv, with a combined population of well over

two hundred thousand and the great bulk of Palestine's citrus

groves within easy reach. For twenty years the irritated Jews

have remonstrated with the Administration over the neglect of

Jaffa Harbor. Not even a breakwater exists. Jagged rocks line

the shore, making it necessary for ships to load and unload from

lighters manned by ruffian Arab crews whose mood is always unpredictable.

Steamers must anchor at least a mile out, and in

bad weather have to stand by and pray for calm .

Unable to enlist Government support, the city of Tel Aviv had

a brilliant idea : it would build a harbor itself, at its own expense.

The juncture of the River Yarkon and the sea lent itself admirably

to such an enterprise .28 Its success seemed guaranteed by

its location at the very nerve center of the country's commerce.

The Government's answer was a flat `no.' It is doubtful whether

in the history of responsible government, the right of a city

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

situated on the seashore to build its own harbor at its own expense

has ever been contested ; but Palestine officialdom was willing to

set this amazing precedent . Its views were that such an improvement

on the coast of the all-Jewish city would constitute an encroachment

on the vested rights o f Ja ffa Arabs.

For years the Jews tried to secure at least unloading rights, and

for years their petitions were ignored . In 1936, after four weeks

of violence and isolation had sealed up Jaffa Port, the Authorities

finally granted the city of Tel Aviv a limited right to unload.

What the Government agreed to, in view of the emergency,

was that the Jews be allowed to build a temporary jetty

one hundred yards long with money raised by private subscription.

29 It not only refused to participate in the financing of

the `port' but also expressly forbade the Municipality of Tel

Aviv to do so . With fine meticulousness it limited the cargo

which could be discharged to eleven categories of merchandise .

Vessels with anything else to unload, be it only as big as a dime,

had to steam up the coast to Haifa or to one of the Syrian ports .

With usual exuberance, the Zionist press over the world hailed

the moment as historic and the `port' as a great concession .

However, what exists at the present day is a board pier with a

couple of wooden shacks serving as customs houses, and a big

sign, "No Admittance to Port Area ." 30 Certainly present omens

are at least dubious. One appeared on the jubilant `Sea Day'

which Tel Aviv arranged to celebrate the triumphant opening

of its `port' in June of 1936 . The great event of the day centered

on three Jewish steamers which were to sail proudly into

harbor as living evidence of Jewish might on the sea . Jerusalem,

however, ordered these vessels out of the vicinity, announcing

that anchoring in Tel Aviv waters was "permitted only to ships

unloading cargoes, not for display purposes ."

Actually there is no deep-water harbor in Tel Aviv, nor has

the Government granted any permission to construct one . The

`port' has none of the rights which are granted even such minor

places as Acre and Gaza .31 Officially it has no independent existence.

Ships calling at Tel Aviv must receive their quarantine

certificate from Jaffa . More ironic still, though the Jews of

BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW 299

Tel Aviv put up all the money to construct its wharves and

quays, the Government takes all the income from wharfage and

storage fees in addition to the revenue derived from customs

duties . The Mandatory's attitude is well covered in the Report

of the Royal Commission of /937 . It comments in regard to

the projected harbor that "this would undoubtedly be disastrous

to the prosperity of Jaffa, and, in justice to the Arabs, the Administration

has been unable to consent to such a proposal ." 32

In that more modern type of navigation, over the air lanes, the

story is much the same . Private flying is practically forbidden .

When a young Jewish aviator who had been a former executive

in the Fokker Airplane Works attempted to lay out a field he

was all but ordered out of the country.

There are three important air bases, at Haifa, Gaza and Lydda .

The Sea of Galilee is also being used as a permanent landing base

for Imperial Airways flying to and from India and Australia .

Palestine is on the schedule of the Royal Dutch Airlines' East

and West service as well as the Italian Ala Littoria and the Polish

`Lot,' connecting it up with the most important airports of

Europe, Asia and Africa .

A number of years ago, Tel Aviv with usual enterprise suggested

that a piece of ground could be acquired at the northern

end of the city for a commercial airport. It brought forward

the fact that the existing civil airport, located at the extreme

southern tip of the country in the Arab town of Gaza, was far

from all business centers and thoroughly unsuited to serve commercial

interests. Leading officers of the Royal Air Force were

induced to survey the site and they agreed that it was the best

in the country for the purpose. As expected, the Government

made no response . Tel Aviv then made another proposition,

offering to share the expense of purchasing and maintaining the

port. The Government now replied immediately with an icy

refusal, stating categorically that it would neither participate in

the construction of this air field nor allow the City of Tel Aviv

to build it at its own expense .

It must be noted, however, that recently a company in which

Jewish as well as prominent English figures are interested has

300

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

been allowed to use the airport at Lydda for civil aviation purposes.

33

ROADS AND RAILROADS

The question of roads, touched on briefly before, is well

worth additional examination .

The major part of Jewish investment is made in the coastal

plain and in the valleys around Haifa and Tel Aviv . Scores of

Jewish settlements are located here . This district is the backbone

of Hebrew colonization.

Despite the frequent pleading, practically no roadways have

been built to relieve these colonies of their isolation . Colonel

Wedgwood called the turn in Commons . Replying to his

"honourable friend Mr. . Isaac Foot" who thought "the roads were

beautiful," he observed that "if he goes there and looks again

he will see that the roads which he mentions are all roads leading

to Arab villages and that it is very difficult to get to the Jewish

villages." In January 1930, S . Ettingen, lecturer on road and

railway engineering at Jewish Technical College in Haifa, directly

accused Jerusalem of mapping the roads deliberately so

that they would not pass through Jewish settlements. This

charge is substantiated in the single experience of the colony of

Hedera, largest and wealthiest in the country and center of the

orange-growing section . Not only did the Administration refuse

to construct a road but the colonists themselves were denied

permission to build one at their own expense . Only after interminable,

heart-breaking delays, and determined pressure from

the Jewish Agency in London, was this permission reluctantly

granted. Considering even this miserable concession a great

stroke of luck, the sturdy men and women of the settlement

turned out under the broiling sun to do the road construction

themselves, stopping all other work .

In striking contrast are the beautiful highways existing in all

parts of Palestine, leading to obscure Arab villages or isolated

military stations . An example of official competence, which

speaks for itself, is the beautiful automobile highway built in

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301

1936 at breakneck speed from Gaza to the Red Sea over a

sparsely settled region where any kind of wheeled vehicle is a

rarity . Another is the really brilliant engineering feat involved

in the great broad artery constructed in 1937 to serve British

military needs along the thinly settled northern border .

At the same time that Jewish towns were wallowing in surrounding

mud, Imperial self-benefaction announces that two

main roads are to be extended from Palestine through Transjordan

and on to Baghdad, at an estimated cost to the Palestine

tax-payers of r3,000,000 . The principal function of these

highways is political, guaranteeing the communications of England

with her Indian Empire and protecting that all-but-sacred

instrument, the pipe line to the oil fields of Mosul. Their sole

commercial value will be to give Iraq a convenient artery for the

export and import of its merchandise through Haifa.

Military necessities have also given the Jews a left-handed

benefit, through the construction during 1937-38 of the coastal

road between Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Haifa . For two decades

Jewish colonists pleaded to deaf ears, issuing volumes of protest

memoranda that would fill a library. In 1936 Mussolini inadvertently

became the Jew's good angel . The Government realized

that the need for facilitating speedy movement of troops

was more pressing than its strictures against Jews . Without

further ado, the highway was completed with such dispatch as

to come under the head of an engineering miracle . Jewish

growers will now be able to transport their fruit and vegetables

overnight to Haifa port. They will be relieved of making their

meandering way in heavy mud to the railroad which hauls their

produce by a circuitous route to the docks . Hardly less important,

since it passes mostly through Jewish territory, the new

road will be safe for travelers.

The Palestine railways are reminiscent of nothing so much

as Fontaine Fox's old comic, the Toonerville Trolley . Today

they remain in almost the same disreputable condition as they

were when Palestine was nothing but a decrepit Turkish province.

The main line is largely a war-time product, and exhibits all

302

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

the short-comings of its improvised military origin . Instead of

continuing on a straight course down the coast, the line loops

suddenly inland at the very point where the barren stretches of

the south give way to the economically important citrus belt

with its great urban centers of Tel Aviv and Jaffa .84 Just how

many miles of line the Palestine Government operates is an open

question . The Royal Commission of 1937 estimates a little over

iooo kilometers, of which 203 kilometers are in Sinai Peninsula,

323 kilometers in Transjordan, and 477 kilometers in Palestine

itself. A part of this system is the Hejaz Railway, a Moslem

religious property used largely to transport pilgrims to the

desert shrines. Most of it lies outside of Palestine territory, and

the only section which pays for itself is that which serves the

Jewish colonies of the Emek . Its annual deficit comes to about

,C45,000, which Palestine shoulders as one of the shackles hung

around its neck by the Administration . The Young Turks of

Kemal Pasha would have sold it as scrap iron long ago .

One of the characteristics of these railways is their varying

gauges, requiring a multiplicity of reloading operations to reach

different parts of the same lilliputian country . The personnel

consists of inept political appointees of the Government, who

treat this business with all the sporadic glee that a spoiled child

does a mechanical toy. The management does not bother to

coordinate and adapt its services, so that shipment by rail is

liable at any point to turn into a comedy of errors .

An analysis of revenue demonstrates that Jewish freight and

passengers supply at least two-thirds of the income of these

roads.

Since these lines were constructed they have always been in

bad shape . The Mandatory's 1920 report to the League of Nations

describes them as "entirely unballasted, scantily bridged,

needing repairs to earthworks, drains, fences and ditches . . .

and liable to be closed to traffic by washouts." For their length

the Palestine Railways are the most expensive in the world .

From year to year the losses of these hungry white elephants increase,

aggravated by the growing preference for highway transportation

where Jews are relieved of Governmental incomBRICKS

WITHOUT STRAW

303

petence and obstructiveness . The railway deficit charged to,

Government expenditure in the fiscal year 1935-36 was £ 124,-

159, as compared with £33,805 in 1934-35.

When the roads were taken over, more than £500,000 was

paid to the Jerusalem-Jaffa Line concessionaires alone. The

Palestine tax-payer was asked to refund an additional £ z,ooo,-

ooo to the British Treasury for railway expenditures of the

Military Administration . This makes the initial cost £ 2,500,-

ooo, apart from subsequent capital expenditure of C785,000

and an increasing list of deficits . The charge on the Palestine

tax-payer per kilometer of line is conservatively estimated at

£ 10,000 .35 The cost of constructing a modern railway system

with full equipment, in other countries with similar traffic, does

not average over £4500-

To reduce effective competition, the Government puts every

possible obstacle in the way of motor traffic . Some of these

have already been mentioned. Others are a drastic restriction

on driving licenses, and such curious devices as an ordinance

which allows only one person to ride in the front seat of a touring

car.

To cap the strange state of affairs, Tel Aviv, the most important

metropolis in the country, does not have a railway

terminal . It has only a little way-station, a small, ramshackle

wooden shack suited to some obscure Arab village . To catch

a train its people must go by motor to the little Arab town of

Ludd. Nowhere in the whole British Empire is there a town

half of Tel Aviv's size which has to contend with such a condition.

And nowhere in known creation is there another public

utility which could deliberately avoid the chief commercial city

of the country without having its management made the subject

of a lunacy commission .

CHAPTER VII

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES

THE TAX MONEYS

Before the Zionists threw themselves into the picture, Palestine

was a millstone around the neck of every nation that governed

it. It was always in the red, produced nothing of any

value, and was considered an all-around liability . On a cost

accounting basis the new British acquisition seemed a pretty dismal

proposition . A great economic collapse had settled like a

bleak fog over exhausted Europe . The British Exchequer itself

was being bled white by incessant demands from every

possible quarter.

Soon Jewish money began to gravitate toward the National

Home. This was one part of the Zionist adventure the London

politicians could approve wholeheartedly . The prospect of having

someone to tax in Palestine was a pleasing one . We find

Colonial Secretary Amery begging the Zionists, in January 1928,

not to withdraw their financial support since "it would be very

unfortunate if that support were not forthcoming just because

there is a temporary depression ." Great Britain and the East

speaks of the Zionist Organization as a "hen that lays golden

eggs." It was evident that in the Mandate for Palestine the

British had fallen into one of the best paying businesses they had

ever encountered .

Despite generous squandering, the public moneys flowed in

like a golden river . Nothing like it has ever been seen in the

modern world. A deficit of £41,000 in 1931, converted itself

into a surplus of £6,267,81o in 1935 . By the beginning of 1936

this accumulated hoard was already equal to more than two years'

normal expenditure and was piling up rapidly .

This was far and away the most respectable surplus that any

Government in existence could show ; but nothing daunted, the

Palestine Administration went about the business of both expend-

Page 304 Book

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 305

iture and taxation as if it were skating on the thin ice of bankruptcy.

In 1934, though the Treasury was already groaning

under the weight of a huge accumulated reserve, with income

gaining over expenditures with every passing month, the Administration

attempted to put through an income tax, and was only deterred

from this measure when it was discovered that the Arabs

refused to keep books . ,

Now began a performance which Lord Strabolgi sarcastically

described as "the policy and economics of bedlam ." The Palestine

Government, its pockets already bursting with unused

money, commenced to borrow huge sums in London at high

interest rates, using its own money surplus as security for the

loans ! Completely rounding out this strange condition, the

Administration placed all but £ 10,000 of its surplus into lowinterest

English stocks and bonds, for funding British Colonial

development in such places as Ceylon, Natal, Uganda and

Guiana, an investment whose collectibility is more than doubtful,

if only in view of the defaulted amounts Great Britain owes the

United States .

It is interesting to examine one of these loans to discover just

what purposes the Palestine Administration had in mind . A

typical borrowing was made in 1934 for £ 2,000,000. Included

among its items were £ 133,000 for Arab schools (no provision

at all for Jewish schools), £ 250,000 for the resettlement of `displaced'

Arabs ; and £200,000 for agricultural credits (Arab) .

£210,000 is asked for a berth and reclamation scheme at Haifa

(for the benefit of the Iraq Petroleum Company) . £933,000 is

sequestered for water and drainage development schemes. Of

this amount, the provision made for Water Resources Survey (a

life and death matter in view of the claim that Jewish immigration

must be restricted for lack of water) was only £6o,ooo . (Two

years later only £7ooo had been used, wasted in bureaucratic

functions, the balance spent almost entirely for Arab villages and

British administrative necessities .) The only benefit the Jews

received from the entire water and drainage project came inadvertently

from improvements made in the mixed towns of

Jerusalem and Haifa .

306 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

The final item in this loan was 0407,000 for public buildings

and post offices. In the application of this provision the Jews

were again ignored . Tel Aviv, bearing by far the heaviest part

of the country's tax burden, was not given a farthing out of the

total loan and went along as best it could with its antiquated telephone,

postal, sewage and drainage facilities.

Analysis of the Government's expenditures for any period

shows a good deal of marauding in the interests of the Mandatory

itself. The League's Council had ruled that "while a mandated

territory may be expected to pay its own way, it may not be

burdened with obligations not directly connected with its own

administration ." We have already seen surreptitious violations

of this principle in the amazing deals made with Iraq and the

British petroleum companies. But the English were prepared to

go much further : they dipped their fingers directly into the till

without bothering too much about ceremony . They compelled

Palestine to pay over to the British treasury JJ 1,ooo,ooo as a refund

for a military railroad built during the War through Sinai

Peninsula . At a time when London itself defaulted on war debts,

it collected in full from Palestine, treating it as conquered Turkish

territory. In addition to these reparations paid direct to the

British treasury, the share of the old Ottoman public debt fastened

on Palestine by the Treaty of Lausanne is regularly paid, though

all other countries affected by this provision ignore it, regarding it

as a dead letter .2

The great bulk of all expenditures made by the Palestine Government

are conditioned directly on the military needs of the

Empire. Says Broadhurst without mincing words, "Troops

have to be kept somewhere, and although it costs more to keep

them in Palestine than in Egypt, India, or other British possessions,

the Palestine Government pays the extra money, and the expense

does not fall on the British taxpayer ." 3 According to the Shaw

Report thirty percent of all public expenditures were made on

the military and armed forces of Great Britain .

In addition to sums handed directly to London, are other expenditures,

designed for the same purpose but buried in the jumbled

double-ledger bookkeeping followed by the Administration.

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 307

One has only to compare the disproportionate figure of 042,-

487 for military and police during 1935, with £313,597 allowed

the combined Departments of Health and Agriculture, the latter

amount itself hiding such expenditures as those for military roads .

Just as Jewish money was used to build the best military harbor

in the Mediterranean at Haifa to protect Britain's way to India,

under the pretext of `riots' Jews are now expected to pay Britain's

huge military costs in safeguarding that same highway from the

menace of the Italians . It was decided by the Palestine Government

in July 1936 that "in principle" it shall be liable for the

whole cost of army troops stationed in Palestine, plus the capital

cost of works services there .3a According to a statement published

in March 1936 in the official Palestine Gazette, the expenditures

on the military garrison alone during the year came to

10,333,000 .

An inkling of where this sweet flood of golden rain comes from

was given by the Colonial Secretary in Commons on March 24,

1936. The fat Palestine surplus, he acknowledged, "in itself is

a magnificent tribute to Jewish enterprise - in the main it is

Jewish money." Official figures of the Palestine Administration

show the Jewish share in Government revenue to exceed seventy

percent of all collections of direct and indirect taxes . On the

basis of these estimates the per capita burden of taxation amounts

to about £ 13 a year for Jews, and £ 2 a year for non-Jews. As

far back as 1930, the economist, Hoofien, proved by careful

computation that Jews contributed per head directly to the Government,

£q per annum, against a revenue from non-Jews of

£ 1 .75 per annum .

The figures from Jerusalem give a fair comparative index into

the situation throughout the country . In 1936 the municipality

had a budget of £ 1 oo,ooo. Of this, £ 8o,ooo was received in

rates and fees, of which £70,000 came from Jews . A great

share of the balance arose from the wealthy Greek and Armenian

Patriarchates, and such foreign-owned enterprises as the giant

King David Hotel .

308

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

PUBLIC EXPENDITURES

"I think," said Colonel Wedgwood, his stern blue eyes snapping,

"the feeling is that the Jews ought to look after the Jews

and the Government ought to look after the Arabs . . . Under

this bill we are providing for a post office in Jerusalem . We have

already put up with national money, not municipal money, a

magnificent post office in Jaffa . . . We were told the other day

that if the people of Tel Aviv wished they could raise a loan and

build a post office . Of course they could, but it is not just that

the Government should provide post offices for Arab towns and

leave the Jews to provide the public buildings in their own

towns."

In thus referring to the postal situation as a symbolic example,

Wedgwood did not overstate the case . Jews contribute seventyfour

percent of all postal revenues, most of it from Tel Aviv .

When the palatial new post office was erected in Jaffa, Tel Aviv

was already posting eight letters to Jaffa's one . With this disproportion

vastly enlarged in recent years, the Tel Aviv Post

Office is still housed in a rented, ramshackle building, staffed with

only two officials compared to Jaffa's ten . Broadhurst informs

us that "a visit to the post office at Tel Aviv will show a queue as

long as that at a Labor Exchange, waiting for stamps ." 4

It takes three days for a letter to travel the thirty-five miles

from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv . Parcels are not delivered at all but

must be called for . In the villages this applies even to letters .

And should a business man attempt to be smart and send his letter

by bus-driver, a warrant is promptly issued for his arrest for

contravening the Postal Regulations .

All public services can be measured by the same yardstick.

The work of drainage and reforestation, so vital to the needs of

an enlightened European community, has been dumped into the

lap of the Jews themselves . Expenditures on health, education

and agriculture are limited mainly to administration costs with the

exception of small subsidies to the Arabs to keep them quiet . If

the Jews themselves had not drained the malarial swamps, the

land would still be subject to pestilence and disease. One of the

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 309

learned reproaches of the Jewish Agency informs the Government

that "in most countries the protection of public health, the

promotion of education, the construction of highways and drainage

of large areas, are regarded as governmental functions." s

Considering the fact that in Palestine the Jews had to undertake

all these functions on their own, with funds begged from scattered

Israel the world over, this quaint remonstrance is no less

bizarre than the circumstances which gave rise to it.

There is little in Palestine, as we shall discover, which is not

controlled by the Authorities with an iron hand. They have

their fingers in many of the country's most important business activities

and have taken over even such minor functions as are

generally conceded to the Municipalities by the most highly socialized

States. Despite this, they maintain no offices in the chief

commercial city of the country. Citizens of Tel Aviv in need

of Government services are compelled to go to Jaffa. During

the riots, when it meant death for any Jew to venture into the

Arab town, the Government opened up a few temporary services

in Tel Aviv; but transactions not involving a contribution to the

Exchequer had still to be carried out in Jaffa! Fretful at being

compelled to go to Tel Aviv to collect its taxes, the Administration

plastered an increased assessment on the Jews for this `convenience.' 
In the temporary Customs Clearing Office, for example,

an additional sur-charge of two hundred and fifty mils was

levied, apparently, as one observer remarked, "for the privilege of

not having to penetrate into the closed port area of Jaffa at the

cost of a broken head."

CHEATING CHILDREN WITH COCKLES 6

Since the educational system is generally considered to be the

foundation of the State, it is important to see just how this public

institution operates in Palestine .

Official reports for 1935 show the number of Jewish school pupils

as 52,030 ; Moslem, 45,894 ; and Christian, 18,175 . This unexpected

proportion is due to the peculiar age brackets of the

Jewish immigration, as well as the aversion of Moslems to educa310

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

tion, which they consider destructive to the true faith . If it were

left up to the British alone, the Jewish National Home would be

the most illiterate spot on the globe . Only 6.2 % of the Government's

budget goes into education, and of this small sum, the

great bulk is deflected into Arab channels . The attitude toward

Jewish schooling is something like that found in some of our

Southern States toward Negroes . Roughly, the State allots

$5 .45 for the education of every Jewish child, and $26.68 for

every non-Jewish child .? Of the £9oo,ooo spent from 1921 to

1929, less than £ 6o,ooo went to the Jewish school system . For

the school year 1935-36 the expenditures of the DepaiUiient of

Education ran to f237,000, of which £ 37,916 was allocated

to Jewish schools . These comparative figures are even more

striking than they appear, since they do not contain other amounts

which must be credited to the Arab side such as expenditures of

the Public Works Department in building of schools, and general

administrative overhead .

With no exception, the Government School System is purely

Arab in character. The language of instruction is Arabic . Hebrew

is not even taught as a foreign tongue . When in 1937 a

rumor circulated that the study of Hebrew was to be introduced,

it only evoked incredulity and rendered the Government's hasty

denial superfluous. "Apart from scientific subjects," the Peel

Commission acknowledges, "the curriculum is almost wholly devoted

to the literature, history and tradition of the Arabs ; and

all the school masters from the humblest village teacher to the

head of the Government Arab college, are Arabs ." e Arab

school masters in Palestine appear to have been recruited from

the ranks of the most exaggerated pan-Arab agitators. The result,

as Lord Peel candidly admits, is to turn the children out as

violent "Arab patriots ." "The schools," he tells us, "have become

seminaries of Arab nationalism ." s

During the whole period of British occupation there has never

been a single Jewish school built in Palestine out o f the public

funds. The only consideration shown Jewish children is in the

form of the usual face-saving maintenance grants . As early as

1926 the Vaad Leumi was complaining that though Jews pay

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 3 11

taxes for the maintenance of national institutions, "the entire

burden of the education of the Jewish children is laid on the

shoulders of the Jews themselves ." 10 In the year 1933, which

may be taken as an example, the Jewish educational budget was

£250,000 . The Government's grant was the ludicrous sum of

£23,626. The balance of the money had to be provided by

opulent Americans, and by the many poor European Jews who

were cajoled into donating their meager possessions to the various

Zionist funds. The Administration nevertheless does not

hesitate to impose its will on the Jewish-supported system even

in small matters . An instance, more than amusing under the

circumstances, occurred in February 1933, when it informed the

Vaad Leumi that it considered the salaries paid to Jewish teachers

excessive and demanded an immediate reduction .

These marauding operations show even more cruelly in the

handling of the Kadoorie legacy . Kadoorie was a Baghdad Jew

who died in China, leaving a million dollars to the Government

of Palestine for the establishment of an agricultural school . He

died in the serene belief that a Jewish State was in the process of

erection. Says Wedgwood, describing what ensued : "The bequest

was, of course, made for Jewish education ; but it was divided,

and half was spent on building an Arab school and the

other half has not yet been spent at all . And when the Arab

school was opened they avoided even mentioning the Baghdadi

Jew's bequest." The Jewish school was built some years later,

after the Government had been prompted into action by the

glare of publicity this remarkable arrangement elicited . In accommodation

and size it was, as may be imagined, vastly inferior

to the Arab institution .

HEALTH AND SANITATION

The attitude toward public health is substantially that man

must not presume to interfere with the inscrutable will of Allah .

Only inadequate attention has been given to the needs of the

Arabs, and none at all to those of the Jews . Determined to build

their land so that civilized human beings could live in it, the

312

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Zionists have diverted tremendous sums, desperately needed for

other purposes, to sanitation work, meeting as they went along

not the gratitude of officialdom but its undisguised resentment .

Though it bars the municipal corporations from acting on their

own, the Government has not made the slightest effort to develop

adequate sewage systems in the cities . There is no serious

milk and dairy inspection ; and nothing but the sketchiest

provisions for controlling epidemics or isolating contagious disease.

No provision is made for tubercular patients and little

more for the insane. The single small Government hospital for

mental diseases is reserved for Arabs . Broadhurst mentions that

lunatics "wandered loose about the streets, ignored by the passers-

by . If they frightened people, or attacked them, the nearest

policeman was called" 11 and the lunatic was jailed in great cells

containing thirty or more, together with illegal immigrants, and

criminals of all descriptions . Even lepers are not segregated .

Says Duff, "I can show you a half dozen any day in the Suq"

(the general market place) .12

We find the Jewish Agency remonstrating with the Government

in 193o because it was "steadily reducing its expenditures

for health" despite the great growth in population and revenue.

13 Again, in 1936 the Hadassah Report bitterly informed

the Peel Commission that appropriations for public health,

meager as they were, had declined materially since 1922.

Taking the initiative, the Jews have done a magnificent job .

"Next to the great sanitation work carried out in Panama by

American genius," wrote Senator Copeland, "there has been no

greater achievement in the field of public health anywhere in

the world than the sanitation program put into effect in Palestine

by American Jews ." 14 In 1927 the Zionist medical budget

was already double that of the Government for the entire country.

For years expenditures of the Hadassah institutions alone

exceeded those of the Health Department . 15 Hadassah keeps a

whole system of hospitals, clinics and infant-welfare stations,

open to Arabs as well as Jews. Unpublicized, still other voluntary

bodies play a brave part in this terrible struggle to redeem

the National Home from the morbid infirmities of the Near East .

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 313

As a result of their effort, infant mortality in Tel Aviv fell to

74.75 per thousand, compared with 209 per thousand in neighboring

Jaffa and 242 per thousand in Gaza. For all this, officialdom

has artfully usurped credit, though in his 1935 report the

High Commissioner is not ashamed to list the munificent sum of

£ 1038 as the Government's grant for infant welfare work .

Out of the anemic amounts which constitute the country's

health budget, a scarce ten percent has been spent on Jews .

The Government's preventive medical services are carried on

exclusively for Arabs . All hospitals it has built or supports are

in Arab centers. In Jerusalem itself, where Arabs are far in the

minority, less than five percent of the in-patients treated in Central

Government Hospital were Jews . These are generally refused

admittance and told to go to the Jewish hospitals . The

grimmest efforts of the Vaad Leumi finally succeeded during

1935-36 in securing grants for Jewish medical services totaling

the ridiculous sum of C 17,703 . At the same time the Government

contributes lavishly to hospitalization in Transjordan, as in

February 1938 when it announced a gift of C56,ooo to the projected

hospital at Amman.

The matter of national health is one of the innumerable crises

with which the Yishub is faced. Despite the great achievements

of voluntary health work, unsettling world conditions have diminished

the funds once so willingly donated by Diaspora Jewry.

As these shrink, the old perils revive in proportion . Such enterprises

as the draining of Esdraelon's great swamps rid Palestine

of the major part of its dysentery and malaria ; but similar work

cannot be continued for want of money . Malaria has consequently

assumed epidemic proportions in parts of the country,

and dysentery is considered such an acute danger that housewives

use permanganate of potash on all uncooked fruits and

vegetables as a precaution .

Even in sickness and death the malice of officialdom pursues

the belabored Jews . Jerusalem Hadassah Hospital, largest health

institution in the city, is charged for water at the same exorbitant

rate as if it were an ordinary industrial undertaking, the Administration

admittedly taking a hundred percent profit ; while Arab

314

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

hospitals, built and subsidized by the Government itself, do not

pay for water at all . A sorrier state of affairs was recited in

Commons on July 11, 1935 by Captain Strickland, referring to

the condition of Municipal Hospital in Tel Aviv. The only institution

serving the two hundred and fifty thousand Jewish inhabitants

of this district, it had barely one-fifth of the accommodations

normally demanded in civilized communities . With

a long list of patients on the waiting list, it was so overcrowded

that beds had to be put in the corridors . Facing the Colonial

Secretary, Captain Strickland asked the astonishing question,

"Has the Government yet decided to allow the Municipal Authorities

o f Tel Aviv to provide necessary additional hospital accommodations?"

The reply of the King's Officer was the usual skillful evasion -

"It would be very unwise for me to forward ex parte statements

to the High Commissioner, who as the House knows, gives most

careful consideration to these matters ." Here we have something

approaching the ultimate in human enormity : though the

Government's Department of Health contributed almost nothing

to the support of Jewish hospitals, the Municipality of Tel Aviv

is forbidden to provide improved hospitalization even at its own

expense.

In matters of health, too, the British relentlessly squeeze this

little country for profits. When the Municipality of Haifa

came to an arrangement to buy its sewage pipes from a reliable

Tel Aviv factory in July 1931, the Government stepped in and

squashed the agreement, demanding that it purchase them in

England instead . As a result of this kind of exploitation it was

shown in 1935 that over seventy percent of the pipes in Jerusalem's

newly laid water system were so defective that they all

had to be torn up again. After a decade of mysterious engineering,

Jerusalem is still so strictly rationed on water that a bath is a

rare luxury and its people are often reduced to cleaning their

teeth with soda water.'° It has been reliably estimated that the

entire reserve supply would not last three weeks in emergency

and that most of it is totally unfit for drinking purposes .17

A perverse pleasure seems to be taken in keeping all abominaDUAL

OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 315

tions intact. One of these is an open sewer which runs from

North Jerusalem down the whole valley, poisoning the air with

a nauseating stink . This plague-spot has been in existence for

at least fourteen years . Despite protests, not the faintest attempt

has ever been made to cover it. However, on occasion the Administration

can take an aggressive interest in `sanitary' measures .

One of these, announced in July 1930, was a drainage project for

Jerusalem - unaccountably routed so that it cut directly through

the Sephardic cemetery, crossing the last resting place of Shimon

Ha'Zadid, whom orthodox Jews regard as a saint .18

LAWS, BENEFITS AND PUBLIC SERVICES

There are more useless officials quartered on the back of this

unfortunate country than can be found in any other administrated

area on earth . Officials crawl over the land like flies.

In 1925, when they were not nearly so numerous, an Arab Congress

did not hesitate to declare that "the Turkish regime administered

Palestine with no more than one-eighth of the present

Administration and, from several points, more effectively

and satisfactorily ." 19 Some of these men are capable and efficient

. Most are thoroughly unfitted by both experience and

psychology for their posts. With few exceptions all of them

avoid work as much as is decently possible .20 In their train is

an assisting horde of native politicos who need no introduction

to the somnambulant venality of the East .

It is a normal experience to go to one of the Government

offices day after day seeking some small service, such as having

the water turned on in a newly leased apartment, only to be told

that the only person who can attend to your matter, is `out .'

To get anything done at all, it is the common practice to hand

one of the native politicos an inducing sum on the side, which

invariably helps. Duff's admirable book Galilee Galloper, barred

in Palestine, gives a relentless description of the greed and corruption

of these men . Their hand is everlastingly out, and

nothing can be moved without the passing of a proper bribe .

Despite its hostility to Marxism, the Government of Palestine

316

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

has put into effect a practical socialism of its own . It owns railroads,

telephones and other public utilities, and keeps a close

control over every kind of major enterprise . The attitude was

explained in a sentence by Mr. Johnson, the Palestine Treasurer,

when he was asked directly why it was so difficult for Jews to

obtain any concessions . Johnson replied tersely : "What do

you s'pose we're 'ere for !" Meaning that if any of the proposed

concessions were any good, `they' would operate them for

themselves with the public moneys, creating more jobs for

worthy Englishmen out of work . This procedure is, however,

held in check by lack of experience and the enervating climate .

Ordinarily things touched by officialdom wither - or proceed

at a snail's pace .

Very little that is lucrative escapes their attention . Jewish

firms rendering a public service sooner or later find Englishmen

in control of their businesses ; or their charters are canceled outright.

The Jewish Hasolel Company, first to generate electricity

in Jerusalem, may be given as a case in point . Its rights

to operate were challenged and the concession was finally taken

away from this firm by a simple maneuver. An obscure Greek

named Mavromatis with an ancient `charter' from the Sultan,

was dug up and his claims were shrewdly advanced at the Hague

Tribunal. Mavromatis, whose support hinged on an undercover

agreement to sell to British interests, got the concession ;

and in September 1928 the powerful London Power Security

Company 21 owned the business so bravely started by the little

Hasolel Corporation . Scarcely half a year later, a boycott was

being threatened against the new owner for its policy in refusing

to employ Jews .

All public utilities seem to operate on the theory that in one

way or another life must be made miserable for the Jews . The

phone service is a case in point . Jews are the great majority of

all subscribers . According to Hoofien's estimate, they are more

than seventy percent of the subscribers even in Arab Jaffa . In

a rapidly industrializing country, telephone communications are

an urgent necessity . Nevertheless, applicants for new phones

were informed that these could not be installed under three

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 317

years' notice . The expressed reason for this delay was that the

Government did not like the existing telephone building and,

apparently, had been spending all these years trying to decide

on an acceptable location for a new one . The ownership of a

phone in Palestine is now worth a substantial sum of money,

often changing hands like a seat on the stock exchange .

Though Tel Aviv is the commercial center of the country,

trunk calls to and from that city have to pass through the Jaffa

Exchange. If a subscriber wants to put in a call during business

hours from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem or Haifa, it will take him

from two to three hours to get through .22 Even this is sometimes

an improvement over the local service . Jerusalem's main

post office has two call-boxes, one for local and one for trunk

purposes . "If the local box is occupied," says an English political

writer, "the wise man calls a friend in Haifa, delivers a

message, which he asks to be put through to the required number

in Jerusalem, and steps out of the trunk-box elated over the

comparative perfection of the long distance service, while his

neighbor in the local box is still trying to extricate himself from

wrong numbers." 23

All communications of any kind are in the hands of the Government.

Wires must be brought to the Central Post Office in

person and must be called for in the same way . The Government

fixes the charge, no matter which cable or wireless company

is to handle the message . The press rate for sending a

cable from Jerusalem to London is 21 mils a word, and it takes

an average of two hours in transit . From Cairo, Egypt, where

the distance to London is almost the same, the rate is i x mils

per word, and the time in transit is a half-hour .

All but a negligible proportion of telegrams are forwarded by

Jews. The revenue of this Department in an ordinary year

amounts to around C 300,000, against an average expenditure of

£ 198,000 .

Until very recently, messages were accepted only in English

and Arabic . A stream of violent protests from Jewish telegraph

users bombarded Geneva in protest . Replying to the League's

question the Government asserted that its lawyers had made a

318

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

careful search of the Mandate and were unable to find any specific

provision for the sending o f telegraphic messages in Hebrew.

24 After a protracted struggle, this farce was ended when

the Permanent Mandates Commission ordered that the discrimination

cease . The Government then installed Hebrew telegraphy

in only a few cities, so that its use became, in effect, impossible.

The Mandate for Palestine guarantees the rights of the Hebrew

language, though these are constantly infringed in State

institutions and in public life . Throughout the Government

Service an accurate knowledge of Arabic is demanded, but no

understanding of Hebrew is expected from either Arab or Englishman.

Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson brought out on

December 3, 1937 that only two percent of the Senior Officers

in Palestine had even a passing knowledge of Hebrew . Even

in Jerusalem itself, regulations were issued by the Commandant

of Police requiring a working knowledge of English and Arabic

of all officers and constables in order to be eligible for promotion.

No mention of Hebrew was made at all . This discrimination

against Jews in a Jewish city received such worldwide

publicity that a knowledge of Hebrew was hastily included

; but in practice the original force and purpose of the

regulation remained intact.

Identical strictures operate against the showing of the Jewish

flag . Its public use is treated as a virtual encroachment on public

morals. This was demonstrated convincingly during the

celebration of the Maimonides Octocentenary in April 1935.25

Spain, the great philosopher's birthplace, declared the occasion

a public holiday . Other powers, including the Vatican, joined

in honoring his memory. In Palestine the thousands of Jewish

pilgrims to his tomb were greeted by police with batons, who

busied themselves, among other activities, in tearing down all

Jewish flags they could find .

The present flag of the National Home is the Union Jack

with the word `Palestine' inscribed in a small circle in the lower

right hand corner. Its adoption was precipitated late in 1 934,

when a Japanese sea captain gave the Zionists their cue (which

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 319

with customary ineptness they ignored) by refusing to fly British

colors when in Palestine port, maintaining that the National

Home was an independent country under League Mandate .

Quite in keeping is the Government Broadcasting Service,

launched with much fanfare at the beginning of 1936. After

operating but a few days, officials forced the Hebrew speakers

to eliminate the name 5K-w4 Y-18 (Eretz Yisroel) when referring

to Palestine, and to substitute the phrase's initials, ,-t; (Aleph

Yud), a childish piece of malice which is even carried over to the

country's postage stamps .

Several typical incidents will show the uses this public service

is being put to . During the last week of September 1936, a

famous Arabic legend was being retold . The story revolves

around the classic loyalty of the Jewish poet-hero, Ishmuel (Samuel)

Adaya HaCohen, who had protected a valuable shield entrusted

to him by the Arab hero Alkis, even when his little son

was being tortured to death to force him to yield . To this day

HaCohen remains so traditional a symbol of absolute honesty that

an Arab when speaking of outstanding loyalty and trust will

say, "faithful as Ishmuel." As told over the Government broadcasting

station by the announcer, a public official, the explanation

was added that "Samuel behaved as he did from love of wealth,

as the shield that Alkis had left was a pledge for money Samuel

had loaned him." Thus the speaker demonstrated that so great

is the avarice of the crafty Jew that he would even sacrifice his own

child to it . On another occasion, in February 1937, a visiting

English M .P. named McGovern had his scheduled talk over the

Palestine Broadcasting Service cavalierly canceled at the last moment.

The acknowledged reason was that McGovern had made

the mistake of lauding Jewish accomplishments in a newspaper

interview the day before .

Radios practically come within the contraband class . The

tourist is astounded to discover that he must make a special journey

to Jerusalem and cut his way through a swathing of red

tape to get his radio out of quarantine, where it is impounded on

sight. Though Jews require a special permit even to possess one,

hundreds of sets have been supplied without cost by the Gov320

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

ernment to Arab villages so that they might listen to the propaganda

sent out from London and Jerusalem . (The English have

been lately horrified to find that the Arabs have been tuning in

instead on the anti-English incitement broadcast from Italian

Bari.)

Even the priceless antiquities of the Holy Land are not sacred

to the ruling caste and may be exported unhindered ; though

such `backward' nations as Honduras prohibit similar ravishment

as an offense against the nation . Much connivance goes on to

enrich individual pocketbooks . In one representative instance,

certain of these priceless objects were disposed of to a `speculator'

for £Soo, who promptly `resold' them to a Chicago museum

for C2ooo, a price in itself far below their real value .26

In other respects the regulation of life is minute and drastic .

The most revolutionary enactments decorate the statute books,

often promulgated without notice or publicity . One of these

empowers a police officer to stop a touring car and order the

driver to do such a thing as transport a live cow to the municipal

slaughter house .27 Another entitles the Authorities to shut off

the water supply at any Jerusalem address where a resident has

contravened any municipal law . Still another of these edicts

empowers the Government to revoke the citizenship of anyone

whose utterances might be displeasing to it, without explanation

and without recourse. Here one is reminded of the story of

the Berlin Jew, Horowitz, who wrote to a friend in America

saying that everything was fine with him under the Hitler Government,

putting at the end of his letter the following P.S. :

"Abe Cohen, who complained in a letter to his brother that

things were not so well here, was shot yesterday ." No one

needs to explain to the Government of Palestine what it means

for a Jew to be without a country and without a passport in the

present world .

'NO JEWS NEED APPLY'

Had the Government seriously wished to pursue the policy

of the Mandate, it would have engaged itself in training Jews

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 321

for its administrative and executive departments against the day

when the manifest purposes of that document had been fulfilled .

Simple logic would have recommended the appointment to high

position of only those Arabs who could be relied on to carry

out the policy to which the Mandatory was pledged . But the

official cabal had quite other ideas . Hence we discover, among

the other `benefits' conferred on Jews in Palestine, their derogation

to a sub-human species who at all costs must be kept out of

the Government itself.

As in Nazi Germany, virtually the only Jews who can get

Government positions are the old soldiers - and their lives are

made so miserable that they prefer anything else if they can get

it. Though European Zionists proclaimed their happy relationship

with Britain, local Jewry suffered from no such illusion .

The Vaad Leuini Memorandum to the League of June 15, 1931,

referring to the exclusion of Jewish workers on all governmental

projects, declared pointblank that "this exclusion, which is in

effect a boycott, provides additional evidence of a Government

policy calculated to ignore the interests of the Jewish community

in all its needs . . ."

When Samuel came after the 1920 pogrom which almost lost

the Mandate for England, a number of high-ranking Jewish officials

had been appointed with him as evidence of London's good

faith . The most important of these was Norman Bentwich, the

Attorney-General. As was true of Samuel, Bentwich leaned

over backward so far that he favored the Arabs like the other

officials . But this did not save him and he was retired by `comrade'

Passfield because he was a Jew, eight years before his

pensionable age.28

The resignation in 1932 of A. M. Hyamson, Director of the

Department of Immigration, eliminated the last Jew who served

as a department head in Palestine. Hyamson had managed

to hold on to his job by outdoing even the English in severity

to Jews. This did not save him either. The Administration

simply did not want anyone remotely suspected of being a Jew

in a position of authority . The Jews, who had come to detest

this man, were also glad to see him leave . Said the Hebrew press

322

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

politely at the time : "Mr. Hyamson's departure from Palestine

will not be viewed with regret ." 29

British policy has turned Palestine into a paradise for petty

Arab officials, who have been encouraged into bold disloyalty to

the very Mandate which feeds them . To understand all the

implications contained in this shoddy situation, the character and

training of the average Arab must be borne in mind . Like the

Igorrote of Luzon, he is still in the tribal stage of development .

He still lives in the atmosphere of the Ghazzu, the night raid .

Lawrence, and everyone else who has had any experience with

him, was quick to grasp his hopeless inadequacy for any kind of

modern organization. In all of Palestine but 73,000 Moslems

are able to read and write . To these may be added 43,000

Christians, making z i 6,ooo non-Jews who can sign their own

names.

Against this miserable showing, almost one hundred percent

of the Jews in Palestine are literate . They not only possess a

heavy majority of the trained and educated population but have

in their midst some of the greatest minds in the world . Included

in their ranks is a vast amount of ability that has fled from

oppression, a concentration of so many scholars, engineers, economists,

thinkers and distinguished figures generally, that they

probably represent the highest group level of culture and ability

in existence. Here was apparently the perfect source to draw

on, in this land inexperienced in self-rule, for the purposes of

efficient government .

Actually, we find bias against these people so great that they

are allowed to serve only where their appointment could hardly

be prevented - as in the case of translators, or in the municipal

Jewish institutions . The Government's Works and Plans Department

provides an excellent illustration . Some of the ablest

engineers in the world now live permanently in Palestine but are

studiously ignored. Whenever competent engineers or architects

are needed, advertisements for the purpose are inserted

solely in the London papers . That `Aryans only' need apply,

goes without saying .

In the whole Government service, Jews, who constitute one

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 323

third of the population and contribute the bulk of the State's

revenues, hold less than 5% of the public jobs. Even this fraction

is in the nature of a sop, thrown irritably to keep them

quiet as one does a bone to a yelping dog . A bird's-eye view of

these complaints tells a vivid story . A wild cry from the Jewish

Agency reveals that the percentage of Jewish labor employed

on public enterprises was i %2 % in 1925, as compared with 6%

in 1922 .30 In the five-year period ending March 31, 1927, the

average was less than 3% . The Agency avers that in Haifa

where Jews were half the population, and at Jaffa where their

numbers were considerable, extensive public works programs

were undertaken without employing a single Jewish workman

or clerk . It declares that less than q.% of those employed on

public works in Jerusalem are Jews.

As early as 1926, various departments of the Government had

already been made Judenrein (free of Jews) . A list of official appointments

published October 11 of that year, shows the railroads,

post office and police departments to be practically without

Jews, though a few were appointed in ensuing years to keep

a decent face . No Jews at all were named to the strategic Land

Courts or to the Frontier Force . In 1930 a Customs Department

investigation disclosed that in the head Government office,

of thirty-five officials, one was Jewish . In the Haifa office, of

thirty-two officials, there were two Jews . Since these offices

were all in strong Jewish areas, it does not require saying that

in the Arab sectors there were no Jews at all .

By 1935 the condition was hardly improved . In April of

that year the Hebrew press was complaining that Jewish officials

in Government offices averaged less than one-half of one percent.

Not a single Jew was employed in the vast Haifa Harbor

extension and improvement works . There were only ten

in the Government works in Jerusalem, including the Printing

Press, Post Office and Police School, and only five on Jerusalem

municipality enterprises. Thousands of illegal Arab newcomers

were being used on these projects, but no Jews were wanted .

Evidence presented to the Peel Commission in 1937, proved

that though they contribute directly sixty-five percent of the

324

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

railway revenue, out of the 4300 employees in the Government

railway system only 365 were Jews. The annual budget of

£ 130,000 for road maintenance and public works was spent almost

in its entirety with Arabs .

Though Jews are responsible for seventy percent of customs

receipts, they are virtually excluded from labor in the ports . At

Jaffa the porters are all in direct Government employ . Lighter

men and stevedores must be licensed by the Authorities, who

flatly refused to issue licenses to Jews. At Haifa a considerable

proportion of the porters work for private firms, which hire Jews .

Of the three thousand laborers regularly working in the two

ports, at the beginning of 1936 only three hundred were Jews,

all of whom were in the employ of Jewish importers .31

Where a proportion of Jews is used the difference in treatment

is impressive. Even the Peel Commission was compelled

to remark that Jewish scavengers in Jerusalem were not supplied

with winter clothes as Arab scavengers had been .32

Partisanship of the most indefensible kind is always in evidence.

Tel Aviv, with one hundred and fifty thousand people,

is allowed only twenty-six postmen, who work twelve hours a

day for £5 a month . Side by side with these Jewish mailcarriers

are imported Englishmen who are paid four or five times

this amount. The Executive Committee of the Palestine Arab

Congress comments that "salaries of Government servants are a

matter of wonder and ridicule . . . A customs cashier in Jerusalem

station, for instance, gets £E25 per mensem.33 He is

transferred and his successor is given only £E1 z, though he is

held equally responsible . A clerk in a department gets more

sometimes than his chief who is even responsible for his own

work; as for example is the case in the Werko Department of

Jerusalem where the director of that section gets £E16 and one

of his clerks gets £E22, though the former is his senior in age

and service, and though other clerks who carry on the same

work get between £ E 1 o and 15." 34

Sometimes official bias goes to such lengths that it backs up

against itself. An amusing instance concerned a contract for a

£6o,ooo British military camp near the Jewish settlement of

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 325

Nathania, assigned to a firm in Egypt. Unable to handle it, they

promptly sublet the job at a profit to Jewish contractors in

Palestine.

Still others took their cue from the Government and refused

to employ Jews. One of them was the already mentioned Jerusalem

Electric Company. Another was the important Shell Oil

group, beneficiary of the tax-free Iraq Oil Company agreement.

A particularly flagrant case concerned the famous King David

Hotel, one of the largest enterprises in the country and a favorite

rendezvous of Government officials. On September 23,

1934 it became entirely Judenrein, the last remnant of a oncelarge

Jewish staff having been dismissed to be replaced by imported

foreign labor. Bellowed the manager: "We want no

Jews in this hotel. We shall keep it clean." 35

AN ANGLO-SAXON SYSTEM OF JURISPRUDENCE

The average Englishman believes religiously in the incorruptible

quality of "British Justice." He will tell you that the Englishman

takes his whole system of equity with him wherever he

goes, and that it is a great, moral, cleansing influence in the lives

of the backward peoples who inhabit the far reaches of the Empire.

But whatever it may be elsewhere, the British system of

jurisprudence in the Holy Land has little to recommend it .

The men sent down from London to rule this martyred country

proceeded at once to put into effect a number of kinds of

justice for a number of kinds of people . Lowest in the categories

of caste by which equity was meted out were the Jews .

The Arabs followed, a few notches ahead in favoritism . Perched

on top of the heap were the English, who were practically a law

unto themselves .

Widespread corruption degrades every department of the

Judiciary . Graft, baksheesh and rake-off are constantly in the

background as in the worst days of the Roman yoke . Everything

connected with either the police or the courts is for sale .

Even the black-list of persons to be kept under particular police

surveillance at the time of the 1929 outbreak (a document so

326

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

confidential that it was even kept secret from the Parliamentary

Commissions sent down later to investigate), appeared in Photostat,

with admitted accuracy, in the columns of the New York

Vorwdrts and in other papers throughout the world . Thoroughly

disgusted, Detective Chief Broadhurst came to the conclusion

"that to put anything on paper at all was simply `to blow

the whole gaff .' 11 36 He candidly concedes that it would be

impossible to operate a jury system in Palestine . Bribery and

corruption infest all processes of law to such a degree that to introduce

it would mean a complete end to even the bare pretense

of legal justice .37

The great bulk of appointments to the Magistracy has been

drawn from clerks and interpreters, some of them semi-literates .

The Government benevolently allows these incompetents ten

years to pass an examination, meanwhile authorizing them to

serve in a judicial capacity . "There was only one man on the

High Court Bench who had any real conception of criminal

law," states Broadhurst laconically, "and he was in a district

where his knowledge was only of use locally ." 38

To the outsider it is incredible that Tel Aviv has no Court .

All matters involving more than J 15o have to be heard in Jaffa .

A court sits in such Arab villages as Jenin, Tulkarm and Acre,

but the largest city in the country has no court . And if you

speak anything but Arabic to the notary of clerks in the Jaffa

District Court, you will be stared at as if you were some strange

animal . The record of proceedings in almost all courts is kept

in Arabic. Basic law is still the old reactionary Ottoman code,

long ago discarded as obsolete in Turkey itself .

The prosecution of crime is almost wholly in Arab hands .

The Government Advocate is an Arab . His assistant at headquarters

is an Arab . With the exception of one Jew, who does

only office work, all the junior Government Advocates are

Arabs.39

The Criminal Investigation Department is so desultory in its

service that it can hardly be said to exist in practice. Here, too,

official perjury is an expected occurrence and influence and

baksheesh are part of the formula of justice. It is notorious

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 327

that the police `investigators' who compose the original `report'

before cases come to the examining magistrate, will prepare these

documents in any way that is wanted if a proper payment is

made. As for the courts, "it was possible," says Broadhurst, "to

obtain a habeas corpus for a few piastres in order to shortcircuit

proceedings ." 40 The style of British officialdom itself

can be convincingly grasped in the trial of a Georgian Jew

named Turshoili, for arson, in November 1932 . Declared States

Attorney Elliot for the Government, before the highest tribunal

in Palestine : "Jews are necessarily arsonists ."

The police are merciless to prisoners who meet their displeasure.

Their tone may be judged from the reappointment to high

position in the Police Force of Kheir El Din Effendi Besesso after

he had been found guilty by the High Court, on August 9, 1928,

of kidnaping a witness for the defense on the eve of a criminal

trial. Says Duff who should know : "Torquemada, or the Court

of Star Chamber can have had little fresh to impart to your

Palestine policeman determined to extract a confession ." The

arrest of two Jewish children, Simon Mizrachi, aged 9, and

Haham Jacob, aged 10, on March 7, 1931, provides a ghastly example.

Without their parents having been informed of the

offense, the `criminals,' charged with throwing stones at an

Arab's house, were flogged so unmercifully that one was reported

near death .41 The brutal medieval custom of whipping

is actively followed in the jails, a matter which received some

airing in Commons in June 1928, where the Colonial Secretary

learnedly backed this cruel usage with the opinion that "flogging

was a proper punishment ."

Not even the concentration camps of Germany can surpass

in pure horror prison life in Palestine . The jail at Acre is a

good example. It is the principal prison of Palestine, a massive,

forbidding structure inherited from the Turks . Its foul dungeons,

in which light and air rarely enter, are a relic of ages past .

The prison food is supplied by a concessionaire, the lowest

bidder receiving the concession . It is of the poorest kind and

consists of a small amount of rice, rough bread and a handful of

green olives . A great many of the prisoners are growing boys

328

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

in their teens (especially those held as illegal immigrants), and

very often remain crippled for life after a year or two of this

diet. "General weakness, stoppage of growth, ulcerated stomach,

anemia and chronic dysentery are prevalent among the

younger Acre prisoners," writes Malkah Raymist .42 There is

no distinction made between petty offenders, illegal immigrants,

tourists who overstay their leave, murderers, prostitutes or the

insane ; all of whom are crowded into the same filthy cells, where

at times it is almost impossible to breathe . The prisoners have

no beds and must sleep directly on the earth floor . Until early

in 1938 they were not even entitled to blankets .

There is no adequate medical service and no dental service at

all. All of the prisoners (including those awaiting trial) are put

on hard labor and regularly kicked and beaten if they are unable

to do the heavy work demanded of them . At the slightest

sign of disobedience they are severely thrashed or thrown into

a tiny windowless cell called the 'sensane,' a foul cubicle where

a man can neither lie nor stand, but only crouch . Sanitary

conditions are nil and the stench is described as unimaginable.

Clothes are seldom issued and often prisoners have to go about

in rags. Cigarettes are not allowed . Inmates may write or receive

letters only once a month, so that they are virtually cut off

from the world .

Under these terrible conditions unfortunates of all kinds may

be kept for years awaiting trial, and must then serve their sentences

in addition.

Suicide and attempted suicide are a common occurrence, particularly

among the illegal immigrants held here . Often the

prisoners collapse in fainting spells or develop fits of wild hysteria,

screaming, tearing their hair and knocking their heads

against the stone walls. Those who have been kept here for

any considerable period invariably emerge physical wrecks.

Palestine is the only country where the old law of imprisonment

for debt still holds . Another novelty of Palestine court

procedure permits witnesses to give testimony behind a screen

so that the accused cannot see them .43 An even more startling

introduction is contained in the Laws of Evidence (AmendDUAL

OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 329

ments) Ordinance, introduced in 1936, which "abolishes the

necessity for corroboration in criminal cases generally." 44

Fully as abhorrent to any civilized mind is the practice of

levying collective fines on whole villages for the misdeeds of

a single culprit ; or still more horrible, of blowing up entire

blocks of houses with dynamite on suspicion that a yet-untried

law-breaker made his home in one o f them .

What was taking place under good British Government may

be aptly judged from the fact that in an ordinary year there

were three hundred and sixty reported murders in Palestine, with

only eight offenders hanged . Hundreds of additional homicides

were not reported at all, "while highway robberies and cattle

thefts were higher even than they had been in the laxest years

of the Ottoman regime." 45

Duff gives a graphic account of the officially condoned reign

of terror against the Jews in the sector where he was ruling

police officer. "It was a most trying situation for me," he writes .

"I dare not do much against the Arabs, even though I knew they

were guilty, as Jerusalem frowned on anything that would annoy

the `Nationalists,' as these self-seeking, cynical effendis

called themselves ." In his district a hurricane of outrages battered

the Jewish settlers, ranging from wanton destruction of

trees and animals, to murder and assault - yet, he writes, "in no

single instance was I able, through the restrictions placed upon

me, to bring the offenders to trial, though I knew who the guilty

persons were, and they knew I did ." 46 It was a contemplation

of this sort of thing which caused Wedgwood to cry out in

Commons that "the Government at the present time is and-

Semitic and is a disgrace to England ."

It appears to be a principle of common equity here that thieves

and vandals may not be injured when they are caught redhanded

at their work. Hundreds of Jewish watchmen have

been imprisoned for doing bodily harm to Arabs who came to

steal or commit other depredations . A simple example is the

case of an 18-year-old watchman named Solomon Jacobson who

was badly injured during a raid by a gang of Arab thugs organized

for purposes of theft . In an effort to discharge his duty

330

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

and defend his life he mortally wounded one of the invaders .

For this `crime' he was sentenced on May 2, 1935 to seven and

one half years at hard labor . Another typical case occurred February

24, 1 933, when a group of thirty Bedouins attacked a

small Jewish colony, killing an ex-Legionnaire and wounding

several others . Police who stood watching a short distance

away did not attempt to interfere ; but four of the raiders were

captured by members of the colony. At the Nablus Court, a

few months later, the Bedouins were acquitted for `lack of evidence,'

an item which appears with tiresome repetition on Palestine

court records .

The amazing legal principle making these decisions possible

is indicated in the case of Naftali Rubenstein, a watchman of the

Bath Galim settlement, who was sentenced to prison at Haifa

for "attempted murder" (the wounding of an Arab) . The judge,

in pronouncing his verdict, stated that it was intentionally light

because "there were extenuating circumstances" in that the Jews

of Bath Galim were being assaulted by Arabs at the time ! 47

An even more revolutionary precedent is written in the case

of Achmed Said, an Arab burglar who had killed a watchman

of the Jewish colony at Petach Tikvah . The Jerusalem Court

sentenced the man to six months, justifying this nominal punishment

on the score that "the crime had been unpremeditated," in

that the thief had killed the watchman only to escape being

caught .4S However, when an Englishman is killed, also "without

premeditation," the death penalty is unhesitatingly invoked .

This double application of the law is nowhere better shown than

in the trial of one Sadik Altamini, indicted for inciting a Hebron

crowd with the cry : "Kill Police Inspector Cafferatta and the

Jews !" For inciting to kill Cafferatta, the man was sentenced

to four years at hard labor . At the same time, the second charge,

that of inciting to kill Jews, was dropped "for lack of evidence

!" 4s

Offenses against womanhood are regarded almost casually .

"Young girls no longer may venture forth safely alone on the

streets," writes the correspondent for the National Catholic WelDUAL

OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 33 1

fare Council.80 The Government's attitude speaks for itself in

the dismissal of a Jewish sub-inspector of police named Ben-

Yehuda for "communicating to the press and some friends"

the fact that an American girl had been violated on the streets

of Jerusalem.51 Cases of unpunished criminal assault reached

such proportions that the American Consul General in Jerusalem

was forced to make strong representations on behalf of the

United States Government.52 As if by magic, three assailants

of an American girl were promptly apprehended and sentenced

to fifteen years at hard labor - the heaviest and practically the

only punishment imposed for such crimes up to that time .

In addition to the deluge of rape cases against women were

many degenerate attacks on boys and men . The Palestine penal

law does not prohibit homosexuality and its practice involves

little social stigma among Moslems.

The official attitude is brought home in revolting detail in the

case of a Jewish boy and girl named Stahl and Zohar who disappeared

in the Winter of 1931 while out for a stroll . A series

of earlier outrages had excited the Jewish community to a fever

pitch of feeling ; and since the Authorities would do nothing,

private investigators were hired and a big reward posted. This

initiative brought accusing witnesses from Bedouin villages near

Herzlia, who led investigators to a shallow grave where the

bodies of the unlucky youngsters were found . The boy had

been stabbed to death defending his companion . The girl, according

to witnesses, had been violated by five Bedouins .

Though the culprits were thus openly named, the police made

no effort to arrest them . Here a new factor entered. The

murdered pair were nationals of Germany and Poland and their

consulates insisted on at least a show of justice . Under these

representations, the Government took the five accused into custody,

where three were promptly discharged and the other two

held on the familiar charge of "unpremeditated murder" - the

fact that the killing had been incidental to an attempt at rape

apparently being considered a mitigating circumstance. To

make the police less eager for private rewards in future, an officer

337

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

named Kabra was given three years for having lodged "false

information" against the Arabs who had been released, though

they had been identified by a score of people of their own tribe .

Now followed galling, interminable delay . Finally, after

angry representations from the Polish and German Consuls, the

Bedouins were committed to trial . Though the case against each

of them was identical, only one was found guilty and he was

sentenced to fifteen years. The same Court which made this

decision sentenced an Arab named Mustafa Jeebawi to death for

the murder of Mrs . Thomas Miller, wife of an English engineer,

while bent on rape .53 Apparently 'unpremeditation' did not apply

when it came down to typical Arab crimes against the families

of British officials.

It has been shown time and again that culprits arrested for

physical attacks on Jews were rescued by the public prosecutors

themselves. Apparently this corrosion reaches into the highest

places, as was clearly demonstrated in the case of an Arab (a suspected

murderer) caught in flagrante delicto with four rifles and

some bombs, early in 1937 . The prosecuting attorney immediately

asked that the case be thrown out of court . Guilelessly,

the presiding magistrate asked why it should not at least be

pressed according to normal regulations on illegal possession of

arms. "I am acting on instructions," snapped back the Government

attorney.54

In addition to the civil and criminal courts are an unending

multiplicity of ecclesiastical tribunals whose jurisdiction is legally

recognized . These perform civil functions ordinarily considered

to be the prerogative of the State alone . The judges who

sit in the Moslem Shavia Courts are considered servants of the

Administration, which pays their salaries - yet the courts themselves

are completely removed from any supervision by the Government's

Legal Department . In the usual contrast, Jewish

courts must pay all their own expenses by a voluntary tax on the

Jewish community. The privileges of the various non-British

Christian communities are intermediate between those of Jews

and Moslems. However, Christians are allowed certain unique,

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 333

overall privileges in compensation . One is the right of monks,

European or native, to serve sentences of imprisonment in the

spiritual seclusion of their own monasteries instead of in the

squalid promiscuity of a Palestine lockup .55

THE WOLF NAMED SHERIFF TO THE LAMBS

One may well pity a people who are placed at the mercy of

an alien police . The Irish, with centuries of wretchedness behind

them, could tell you something about that . Jews who remember

the Kishineff massacres in Russia, when uniformed gendarmes

led the howling hooligans over the barricades, could tell

you more. From their experience in Palestine they could add

terrible pages to that record.

Shocked by the course events have taken in the National

Home, Colonel Patterson grimly referred to it as a "National

Death Trap ." Echoing the same disgust and revulsion, former

Colonial Secretary Amery sarcastically informed his Government

that the Home could not be regarded as a Home "unless

those living there were allowed to play a part in its defense ." 56

Since the disbanding of the Jewish Legion it has been known

that Jews were not wanted in the Palestine military or police

force. Part of the strategy in this high game of dissimulation

was to make it impossible for the Jews to protect themselves, and

then, by encouraging attacks upon them, pose as the faithful,

disquieted custodian who was being badgered from all corners

for his good offices . Thus the Jew is placed in the traditional

role of a craven interloper foisted on an innocent people, who

too cowardly to defend himself, calls on the harassed Briton to

do this for him while he slinks out of harm's way. It is this

interpretation that London has so painstakingly palmed off on

puzzled world opinion.

The modern Jew has proven himself to be a good soldier . In

the World War he won his full share of citations in all countries .

The present French Foreign Legion, so famous for its exploits

in North Africa, has so many Jews in its ranks that whole sec334

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

tions of it can almost be designated as a Hebrew force. The

same is true of the plucky International Brigade of Spain which

held up Franco's advance for so long .

In Palestine the Jews were at all times prepared to defend

themselves and were perfectly capable of doing so, had they

not been rendered impotent by the Government . The Hebrew

in his National Home is far from a milksop . The military of

Palestine would be literally swamped with Jewish recruits, were

they accepted . Before the British came, the Jewish colonies

were considered the safest places in the Near East. Their gendarmerie,

a force of hard-riding, reckless horsemen known as the

Shomrim, had long since won a reputation for everything that

was fearless and gallant . The Turks freely acknowledged it to

be the most skilled police force in the Near East. In those days

Arabs did not attack Jewish colonies, preferring to pay their nightriding

respects to other Arab tribes and villages where they would

get off with a whole skin.

One of the first British acts was to quietly disband this efficient

constabulary, and to organize one of their own from which Jews

were excluded . They were disarmed as if they had been a conquered

enemy, and were not even allowed to possess the small

arms and dirks habitually carried by all Bedouins . A lurid light

is thrown on this circumstance in an anecdote concerning an irreproachable

physician who had been attacked by an Arab assassin.

When the police called to inquire, the doctor informed

them in a sad voice : "I was afraid you had come to arrest me ."

"Arrest you ?" said the officer . "Why ?"

"Well, because it is known that I carry a weapon ."

"A weapon? Where do you have it?"

"Here," answered the doctor, turning around, "it is a knife,

stuck in my back ." 57

The expenditure for military and police in the Holy Land

amounts to more than a third of the total revenues. The immense

constabulary this infers is hardly required for the policing

of Jews, who foot its bills . The trial of Jews for crimes of

violence is practically unknown . Even on such minor charges

as drunkenness, only 52 Jews were among the 724 convicted

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 335

during 1 935 ; and out of 415 sentenced in 1936 for the same

offense, 27 were Jews. Commenting in Commons, Wedgwood

cried : "You say that the money spent on the police force is

spent to protect the Jews . . . If you go to any police station,

you will find that the crimes of violence, and the crimes against

which the police are provided . . . are committed by Arabs and

not by Jews . . . So far as the police and the defense of Palestine

are concerned, if you gave the Jews arms and allowed them

to defend themselves, it would not need so much defense, even

from the excellent British police ." 68

The present percentage of Jews on the police force is just

large enough to be reasonably circumspect . One is surprised to

discover that Tel Aviv itself has few Jewish policemen . The

surface excuse is that Jews do not care for this type of work .

The hidden stratagem which makes this condition possible lies

in the amazing scale of salaries . There are few Jewish men who

are able to live on the £ 7 a month the Administration is willing

to pay a Jewish policeman . At the same time, imported Englishmen

are given £3S a month for precisely the same police

work. Even common labor averages £ 24 a month .

The Frontier Force is no better . When it was formed in

1926 the Authorities decided to exclude Jews from it on principle,

as well as from the Border Patrol Force . All sections of

Palestine Jewry rose in furious protest . The Zionist Executive

itself was passive, Weitzman going so far as to declare that

"from the political standpoint it is unimportant whether in Palestine

a bigger or smaller number of Jewish gendarmes would

be employed ." This pedantic outlook did not deter local Jewish

opinion, which finally forced the Colonial Office to voice the

empty assurance that "Jews would not be excluded by principle."

69 In 1930 the Jewish Agency was again remonstrating

that the Frontier Force "was to all intents and purposes an Arab

Force." 80 In 1937, out of a total of 1039 men there were only

35 Jews.

While Jews were thus practically forbidden to join this national

legion which their tax money keeps, Arabs, who are both

poor and unwilling soldiers, have not responded in sufficient

336

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

numbers. The Arab likes fighting but he detests drilling and

routine. So it became necessary to draw on outlanders from

everywhere. The London Daily Telegraph describes the result,

calling the Force "a veritable Foreign Legion of the Near

East," containing among others, Britons, Austrians, Germans, .

Armenians, Circassians, Chechans, Druses, Hejazis, Kurds, Russians,

Serbians, Sudanese and Syrians.81 According to the Peel

Commission's Report in 1937, the Force contained more Sudanese

than Jews and almost six times as many Circassians alone .

It is thus apparent that almost anyone is welcome in this defense

force except the Jews whose National Home it ostensibly exists.

to protect.

It must be perfectly plain that this hot-blooded gendarmerie

is a poor guarantee of security . The police themselves are described

by Broadhurst as a queer, unruly lot . "Annual meetings

of officers," he writes, "generally resolved themselves into

discussions on the best methods of entering police horses for the

local races . . ." 82

In each of the previous pogroms it was the police themselves

who were found to be the leaders of the mob . What may be

expected of them in the future can easily be guessed from a few

passing incidents. One was the storm raised in Parliament in

June 1934 over the report that police detailed to cover the

Levant Fair in Tel Aviv wore swastikas on their arms . It is no

secret that the recent rebellion itself was started with arms and

ammunition stolen by the Palestine gendarmerie from the Central

Government Arsenal in Jerusalem. Whatever clarity the

position lacked was provided in June 1936, when the police

stood in ceremonial silence, on public parade, in honor of the

desperadoes whose rifles had touched off the revolt .63

NUMERUS CLAUSUS AND CENSORSHIP

In Jerusalem where there are not more than one thousand Germans,

there is an avowedly Nazi daily newspaper. It seems

fair to ask under whose auspices this pogrom-inciting literature

is published . And how can it be issued in a Jewish city, and in

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 337

a country ruled by an all-powerful autocrat with complete powers

of censorship which he does not hesitate to use whenever it

pleases him ?

In Jerusalem also, Nazi handbills of the most scurrilous type

are openly distributed without interference by the police .114

How can this be done in the capital city of the Jewish National

Home ? At a moment when England itself is expressing violent

indignation over Nazi excesses, a Jewish youth is arrested and

sentenced to the degradation o f a public whipping for picketing

a Jewish shop which was selling German goods. Why

should this be a commendable expression of spirit in England,

but a crime in the National Home?

The Jerusalem Y.M.C.A. is a favorite retreat of the High

Commissioner himself and its Board is certainly dominated by

Government officials. Yet its General Secretary, an American

named Waldo Heinrichs, was summarily discharged when he

attempted to exclude Hitler's Jew-baiting Voelkischer Beobachter

from the general reading room . Why is this so ?

There is a book published in England called The Brown Book

o f the Hitler Terror. It is a factual history of the first months

of the Nazi inquisition in Germany . No one has ever challenged

its accuracy . Yet when it comes to Palestine it is banned,

together with other anti-Hitler literature . But Hitler's Mein

Kampf, a venomous collection of canards against the Jew, is not

banned.65

Everyone who has ever been in the Near East knows what British

censorship in Palestine is . Newspapers may be forbidden to

mention the very name of a notorious murderer on trial for his

life. The control is so strict that a story which doesn't sit well

with the Administration, just isn't cabled . Nor is the reporter

informed about it. His first hint that anything is wrong is generally

in the form of a communication from his home office, inquiring

into his silence. When the Government wants to clamp

down, relates a foreign correspondent, "it just shuts off telephone,

telegraph and cable service completely ." B 6

Sometimes foreign Jewish newspapers are proscribed, as they

are in Germany and Iraq . In 1934,, for example, the Moment

338

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

of Kaunas, Lithuania, was barred for a year and Unzerzeit of

Kishineff (now part of Rumania) was outlawed permanently .

Even such publications as the New York Times are occasionally

confiscated when they contain articles favorable to the Jews .

Local Hebrew papers are consistently harassed and closed,

though they exercise admirable restraint, foment no civil war

and circulate no inflammatory manifestoes urging civil disobedience.

Where they are not ordered stopped entirely, they often

go to press with huge white spaces in their columns, representing

material ordered deleted by the Government censor . Perfectly

representative of the Government's style is the suspension of the

Hebrew papers Doar Hayom and Haboker in July 1936 for the

remarkable reason that they urged the Authorities to put a halt

to the rioting and murder . Yet at the same time the censors

permitted the radical Arab Journal A-Di ff a to publish a poem by

Ali Mansour which read : "We Arabs are all Abu Jildas [a notorious

cutthroat and terrorist] ; we shall drive Cohen [a name

for the Jew, Mansour acquired from the Nazis] out of the country."

Confident of its immunity, the Arab press kept the sledges

of hate pounding in a clamor of extravagant invective only limited

by the imaginations of its authors . In few other countries,

concedes the Peel Report, would such a campaign of vilification

and incitement have been tolerated for a moment .

It is no exaggeration to state that everything pro-Jewish is

either directly forbidden or discreetly frowned upon . Duff's

books debunking the Arab terrorists are permanently banned

in the Palestine he loved and served so long . Even Colonel Patterson,

commander of the very legions which conquered this

area, is made to suffer for his pro-Zionist views . During a visit

in 1937 .he was filmed in Tel Aviv inspecting some Jewish institutions

. This bit of news-film, titled Colonel Patterson in

Palestine, was banned by the Film Censorship Board on the

single score that the film could not be shown with that title !

This singular custodian of Jewish aspirations, the Palestine

Government, has introduced still other innovations, modeled

after the notorious European numerus clausus . Feeling his way

in December 1933, Government Officer Harkness announced

DUAL OBLIGATION TO TWO PEOPLES 339

that the Administration was viewing with concern the preponderance

of Jews, especially in the medical and dental callings ;

and that it was considering the introduction of numerus clausus

in the professions . This was followed by the Medical Practitioners

Ordinance. Thinly disguising its anti-Jewish bias, it

placed a severe limit on the number of physicians who could be

licensed in future. 67 Thus is laid the groundwork for a whole

new plague of repressions against the Jews returning to their

Home.

Page 340 Book

CHAPTER VIII

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

LEGALITIES -MADE IN ENGLAND'

We now return to another of those strange enigmas of British

administration - the territory of the Jewish National Home east

of Jordan. The shrewd manipulation by which it was filched

from the Zionist pocketbook has already been referred to. Just

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

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

the Mandate for Palestine . The same High Commissioner rules

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

personal subsidy straight out of the Palestine treasury . The

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

generous source.

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

a separate Administration east of Jordan, it was granted only

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

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

assuring the League "that no measure inconsistent with the provisions

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

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

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

as well.

In 1924, officialdom still acknowledged that Trans-Jordan was

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

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

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

Arab independence within certain border limits, and supported

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

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

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

within the boundaries to which the Declaration [Balfour] during

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

340

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

341

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

relations to the land ."

Under the Turks there were no restrictions against the settlement

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

were attempted . The largest was undertaken by Baron Edmund

de Rothschild in 1894, who bought seventy thousand dunams

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

was sidetracked in favor of the coastal development where

Zionist effort was then concentrated .

Whitehall early banned Jewish penetration into this territory .

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

who allegedly would not be safe in this lawless, turbulent

sector. The migratory tribes of Transjordan could enter Western

Palestine freely, however, since the question of their safety

did not arise .

Soon these strictures became iron-clad . The eastern twothirds

of the National Home was not only hermetically sealed to

Jewish settlement but Jews could not possess property there or

practice a profession. Transjordan became the first and remains

the only completely Judenrein area on the earth's surface

. Apparently they are the only immigrants prohibited . Examination

of the official British Report to the League for 1936

shows a large group of foreigners ranging from Syrians and

Egyptians to Germans, Italians and Turks who have taken residence

there . Says the Report succinctly : "The classified and

unclassified officials of the Transjordan Government other than

British, including the officers of the Arab Legion but excluding

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

in Transjordan .1

When the Mandates Commission sharply commented on this

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

to prevent Jews from entering" Transjordan . In other

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

bluntly demanded that these restrictions be abrogated,

the British spokesman Dr. Drummond Shiels replied with unctuous

regret "that that was impracticable because the existing

Legislative Assembly in Transjordan would frustrate such inten342

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

Drummond Shiels declaring to an impatient Commons that

"when Transjordan is freed from the irritation of raids and

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

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

opposite lines of reasoning. One, that the normal

processes of orderly government forbade an immigration disturbing

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

government existed, it was unthinkable to allow civilized

immigrants to enter .

Faced with a fait accompli, the League in some meretricious

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

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

League, could not claim the equality stipulated in Article XVIII

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

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

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

Transjordan.4

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

barring English Jews as rigidly as their brethren from Poland .

Gentile Englishmen, however, retained indisputable rights of

settlement. Even if one chooses to ignore the maneuvers by

which this section of the National Home was handed outright

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

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

when the United States broke off its commercial treaty

with Czarist Russia because of a discrimination much the same

as this and less inexcusable . Recounting an identical incident

when Turkey attempted the exclusion of Jews in 1888, official

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

to accept discriminatory legislation against their nationals,

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

statutes like a hot potato.

Dexterous as their performance was, the Bureaucrats ran up

against the hard fact that legerdemain has its absolute limits .

They could swindle the eyes by appearing to separate the body

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

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

343

black magic could endow the operation with reality . Transjordan

was inalienably a part of Palestine, and must immediately

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

Mandates Commission contemptuously called it "a parasite

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

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

Tel Aviv alone .

Transjordan has practically no industries of any kind, and

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

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

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

remitted because the bankrupt villagers could not pay

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

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

also Transjordan's principal market, selling goods there valued

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

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

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

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

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

thirty percent deficit . In other words, Transjordan has been

perpetually bankrupt - kept alive only by the munificence of its

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

would simply die of malnutrition . Out of the lush Palestine

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

and outright grants. He has been provided with free Army

and Air Force assistance in quelling the recurrent rebellions of

his own tribesmen and in preserving his boundaries against Wahabi

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

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

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

the deficits in Transjordan - otherwise the budget would

show a surplus of C 80,000." 7

Transjordan comprises an area of about 35,000 square miles

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

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

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

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

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

are nomad tribesmen to whom even boundaries are incomprehensible.

Some of these, like the Aneezeh and Sherarat, have

their main camping grounds in Arabia proper . The only towns

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

and Es Salt with i 8,ooo .

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

material composing its population . Turbulent, destructive, inefficient,

seemingly incapable of any but the most elementary

creative activities, their stamp is imprinted wherever one turns

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

to the permanent poverty of the Bedu is the ruthless

suppression of predatory excursions, drying up their chief source

of revenue.

There are only fifteen doctors in all Transjordan . The rate

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

and crushing . The correspondent of Al Jamia Al Islamia s

describes hordes of people "who snatch hungrily at any refuse

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

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

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

Reliable English sources describe the country, after fifteen years

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

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

plunged in the starkest conditions of poverty, and the nomads

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

and epidemics, droughts, grasshopper and mice plagues,

which the fellaheen are incapable of coping with, reduce them

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

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

; while directly across the Jordan, their brother Arabs

are showing the most remarkable gain of births over deaths on

medical records.

No part of this discourages Whitehall from broadcasting the

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

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

and being without a Jewish problem ." 9 Calmly shiftTRANSJORDAN

THE JUDENREIN

345

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

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

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

contradicted by the British statesman, Herbert Morrison, who

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

told the House that Jews were being kept out of Transjordan

"by the wish of the British Government ." 11

The fact is that Transjordan is a colony which Great Britain

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

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

named Peake Pasha . The most prominent agent o f the

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

stationed there permanently in charge of the desert patrol which

keeps the turbulent tribesmen under control . Here in itself is

proof of the importance London attaches to ownership of this

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

of the High Commissioner is final. Says the Encyclopaedia Britannica

: "A considerable increase in the number of British officials

and the transfer of the Palestine gendarmerie en bloc to

Transjordan resulted in fact in the carrying on of the Administration

on Crown Colony lines ; and the local Government existing

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

The `treaty' between Great Britain and Abdullah covers all

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

the advice of His Britannic Majesty in all matters concerning

the granting of concessions, the exploitation of natural resources,

the construction and operation of railways, and the operation of

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

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

the consent of His Britannic Majesty." The `independent

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

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

attorney in all matters of international relationship . Laws affecting

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

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

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

completed the strategical moves by which Transjordan was to be

346 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

purloined from the Jewish National Home and stuffed in the

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

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

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

Downing Street which comes forth.

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

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

equivalent to a protectorate, the only difference being the status

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

present relationship is permanent."

The latest plan is to separate the Aqaba region from Transjordan

and declare it a separate English colony. This move is

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

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

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

partition scheme. To settle this annoying question, negotiations

have been going forward for some time. They will undoubtedly

end in the classic manner, with Aqaba created a Crown

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

compensate him.