THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by William B. Zijf - pages 191-235 - Draiman

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by William B. Zijf - Pages 191-235

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 `Coordinating 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 `Coordinating

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-

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 self-perpetuating -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

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 English 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 reputing4 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 particularly 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

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

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 ."

BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS

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

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," 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 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 chauffeur 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

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

`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

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.

208

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

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 England 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

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

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

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 seventy five percent of its cotton textiles from Great Britain. By 1 934 Indian capital had built enough domestic mills to supply seventy five 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

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 Muslim 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 Muslims.

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 ready made 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

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

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

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 Muslim 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 Muslims 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 Muslim reaction ; and Hindu leaders have made their cordial sympathy for Zionism clear .

There is, on the whole, more real difference between the various

Muslim 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 Muslims

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 of other Muslim 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 Muslims"

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 as

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."

220

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

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

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

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 developed . . . 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 self-determination 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

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 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 Muslims really think was plainly stated by Mohammed Ali, supreme Muslim leader of India, addressing the Muslim High Council in Palestine on November 23, 1928. "Not the Jews are our enemies," he shouted, "but British Imperialism which aims to seize all Muslim 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

(Muslim 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

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 for land but that

the Government had been prevented from granting them any by

reason of 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 communities 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

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

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 "with

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

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

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 "playing 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.

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