THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
NEW YORK TORONTO
Palestine
Jerusalem Israel 36 a sense of justice that
Cyrene
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Opinions
"Having read `The Rape of Palestine,' I stand amazed at the
scholarship,
The courage and the competence of William B. Ziff, its author.
The book is full of political dynamite -in its documented
indictment of the British camarilla which in betraying the Jewish nation is
betraying the British nation as well; in its unsparing exposure of
self-deluded Zionist leadership; in its passionate and convincing demonstration
that anti-Semitism threatens to annihilate not only us Jews but
everything connoted by `Christian civilization.' It is a moving and powerful
and vastly significant book, the kind of book, it seems to me, that
makes history." - Eugene Lyons "The Palestine
It is a perfectly amazing historical document. Its clarity and
charm of style, its forthright logic and masterly presentation' of facts
make it one of the outstanding books of this generation.”- William Griffin,
Editor and Publisher, New York
"At last there has come what has so long been needed, a clear, accurate, dependable account of the betrayal of the world's hope in Palestine
-Charles Edward Russell
"This book should be read by all those in responsible position
in American public affairs who are interested in the foreign scene.”
- H. Styles Bridges , U. S. New Hampshire
"Every lover of humanity and everyone who hopes' to preserve
our present civilization against disaster should read these dynamic
pages.
This book is an eye-opener." -William Green, President, A. F.
of L.
"I heartily recommend Wm. B. Ziff's book. This great book should be in the hands of all those interested in gaining a proper
understanding of the vexing Palestine New York
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
`William 13. Ziff
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
ZIFF
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
BY LONGMANS,
GREEN AND CO., INC.
First
edition November 1938
Second
edition November 1938
PRINTED IN
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
" . I
hope the Hon. Members will believe me when I say that I am not pro-Jew; I am
pro-English. I set a higher value on the reputation of England Palestine May 29, 1934 .
PREFACE
The parlous condition of the Jewish people over a large part of the
known world, and particularly in such countries as Germany Poland Rumania Palestine Great Britain League of Nations . The Mandate, when it was written, as
well as the antecedent Balfour Declaration, clearly contemplated that the
"home" to be established in Palestine
If this was indeed the purpose of the Mandate it has proved a miserable
failure, since it has solved nothing and has only succeeded in adding a new and
formidable problem to a world already sinking under the weight of problems. Many
reasons are adduced for this failure. Much is made of the irreconcilable differences
between Arabs and Jews, which the mandatory now claims render the Mandate
unworkable.
The claim that an opposing promise was made to the Arabs will be
examined in these pages, as will be the circumstances under which the Balfour
Declaration and Mandate were issued. The assertion that the Declaration was
extorted from an unwilling Britain Britain Palestine
in for when she made her bargain with the Jews. Under examination this contention loses much of its plausibility. For a hundred years
Zionism, as we shall see, had been almost as much an English movement as it was
a purely Jewish one. As for local conditions in Palestine Holy Land in 1837, London Palestine Palestine River of Egypt Palestine
As for the Declaration itself, it may be assumed that Lord Balfour,
its author is an infallible witness to its intended purpose.
He wrote: "The national and international status of the Jews
to that of other races . . . would be promoted by giving them that which all
other nations possess: a local habitation and a national home . . . [where]
they would bear corporate responsibilities and enjoy corporate duties of a kind
which, from the nature of the case, they can never possess as citizens of any
non-Jewish state." 2 It will be evident from the records that neither the Declaration
nor the Mandate confers upon non-Jews any rights which would allow them to
interfere with the growth and operation of the National Home. It is obvious
that if these documents were to be interpreted so as to include National Home
rights to non-Jews, both the National Home grant to the Jews and the rights of non-Jews would be repealed by implication. The document would then repeal itself, which on the face of it would be a reduction
ad absurdum.
As will also be seen from these pages, British trusteeship of the Holy Land was the result of
Jewish demand itself, Wedgwood admitting rather shamefacedly in this respect
that the Jews were "almost the only non-Anglo-Saxon people who seem to
believe that on the whole England
If the records are to be believed, the Mandatory for Palestine Mediterranean , in which the Mandate
was used for the purpose of surrounding British Imperial strategy in the Middle
East with the aura of sanctity. A factor of even greater importance, however, is
the gross anti-Semitism of a handful of civil servants in the bureaus of Whitehall Westminster Holy Land can be traced. Its wantonness is not flaunted;
it is true, like the excesses of the German Nazis or the Polish Endeks.
It lies icily beneath the shining hardness of bureaucratic logic.
It is overlaid with the softness of English colonial skill - but,
as we shall discover, it is in no sense less intense, and fully as implacable, as
the open anti-Semitism of the Nazis on the Continent.
This, briefly, will be found to be the underlying condition which
hides beneath the maze of pretension by which London Holy Land in these past years to
be given over to hooligans and desperadoes who have murdered its citizens,
burned its crops and houses and demoralized its commerce.
The records are voluminous. This book attempts only the barest
factual description, as free as such an account may reasonably be from evaluations or interpretations which the facts do not
bespeak in themselves.
For those who desire fuller information on the various aspects of
this subject, a selected list of reference works will be found in the notes and
bibliography. The attention of the reader should also be brought to the fact
that except where otherwise indicated, italics are in every case my own.
W.B.Z
CONTENTS BOOK ONE CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK . . .
I
The Ancient Land Israel Independence
II. "MAY MY RIGHT ARM WITHER. . ." 21
The Jew Never Gave Up His Claim to Palestine
III. THE WANDERING JEW 2 5
Fifteen Hundred Years of Tragedy - "Liberty
xi
IV.
V.
THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN .
.
.
Topography - Jewish Pre-War Settlements
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION. .
45
5 2
VI.
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 64
VII.
Marching Jews - Revolting Tribesmen - The Arab View of Zionism -
The Military Junta - Hand rubbing Statesmen - Pogrom and World Horror
THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE go Weitzman Obliges - The First Partition
xu
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
VIII. A MAN NAMED SAMUEL 100
Under the Colonial Office - A Jewish Ruler After Two Thousand Years
- The Pogrom of 1921 - The Grand Mufti - The Churchill White Paper - Severance
of Transjordan - Samuel is Replaced - Field Marshal Lord
Plumer
IX. THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
The Third High Commissioner -The Pogrom of 1929-Who Was responsible?
–Commissions and White Papers - The Report of Hope-Simpson - The Passfield White Paper - The MacDonald Letter - The Kid Glove High Commissioner - The Report of Mr. .
French
BOOK TWO 121
I. JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION FOR INTELLIGENCE. . 152
The Zionist Organization - The Palestine
II. "THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE”. . 176
`Unprecedented Prosperity' -Population and Cities - Character of
the People
III. BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS 192
The Holy Land and Whitehall
IV. WELCOME HOME! 234
The Jew Tries to Enter Palestine Britain
V. CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND.
.
Soil Hunger - A Famine in Land - Double Standard of Taxation
2 54
CHAPTER VI. CONTENTS BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW.
Sabotaging Industry -Banking and Currency - Citrus - Economic
Insanity -'Heads, I Win Tails, You Lose' - On Air and Sea - Roads and Railroads
VII. DUAL OBLIGATION TO Two PEOPLES
The Tax Moneys - Public Expenditures – Cheating Children with
Cockles - Health and Sanitation - Laws, Benefits and Public Services -'No Jews Need Apply' - An Anglo-Saxon System of Jurisprudence -The Wolf
Named Sheriff to
X111
PAGE
271
304
Does an Arab Race Exist? -Arab Types and Traits - Levantine Worship
of God - The Son of the Desert Suffers from Jewish Competition - Nashishibis and Husseinis - Claims, Objectives and Methods
-'Semitic Brothers'
II. JEHOVAH ABDICATES IN FAVOR OF DOWNING STREET
`Let Not Thy Right Hand Know What Thy Left Hand Doeth' -Revolt by
Permission – Blaming Italians and Communists - Another Royal Commission - Downing Street Runs the Gauntlet - Mr.
Weitzman Obliges Again - Saint George Spits in the Dragon's Eye the Lambs - Numerous
Clauses and Censorship
VIII. TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN 340
IX.
Legalities: `Made in England
WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY 352
I.
The Legislative Council - "By Their Acts You Shall Know
Them!" - Some Odious Comparisons
BOOK THREE "A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR”. 366
Spits in the Dragon's Eye the Lambs - Numerous Clauses and
Censorship
VIII. TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN 340
IX.
Legalities: `Made in England
WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY 352
I.
The Legislative Council - "By Their Acts You Shall Know
Them!" - Some Odious Comparisons
BOOK THREE "A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR”. 366
xiv
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
PAGE
I. THE COLLAPSE OF EMANCIPATION 47 8
`Enemies of All Mankind'- The Refugees
II. SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION IN THE HOLY LAND
Absorptive Capacity - Landless Arabs and Agricultural Possibilities
-'No Water' - A Prospect of Agricultural Competence - Mineral Resources -
Other Possibilities - An Overcrowded Country
III. "AM I My BROTHER'S KEEPER?”
NOTES 527
APPENDIXES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
GLOSSARY 598
Maps appear on end pages, inside front and back covers.
5 1 4
57 1
•
5 84
•
6oi
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I
THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
THE ANCIENT LAND ISRAEL
The Zionist fabric is not new. It is of a piece with the whole history
and tradition of the Hebrew people. It is inextricably a part of that dynamic
stream of consciousness which has swept the Hebrew past a long succession of
centuries which, by all logic, should have suffocated him. Unconsciously, even
the apostate Disraeli acknowledged the great compulsion of the Hebrew past in
the life of the living Jew. Cut to the quick by fellow-members in Parliament
who taunted him with being a Jew as he made his maiden speech, he cried in reply:
"That is all very well -but
when your ancestors were chasing each other around trees with stone
axes, mine were writing the Talmud."
A short glimpse into the history of this remarkable people will shed
a clear light on much of the present Jewish situation which must otherwise
remain confused and inexplicable.
For countless generations the world has been content with the paradox
which allowed it to affirm with Sir William Jones, that the Hebrew Scriptures
"contained more sublimity, more exquisite beauty, and finer strains of
poetry and eloquence than could be collected from all other books that were
ever composed in any age or any idiom" ; and in the same breath to believe
that the Hebrews who wrote them were a tribe of wild, illiterate shepherds on a
scale of development comparable to that of the modem Bedouin.
Recent archaeological research brings us to the more reasonable conclusion that the people who wrote the Bible were a race who lived
in a high state of civilization, not inferior in many of its aspects to that of
the present day.
Among the most interesting of these discoveries is the undoubted -
I
2
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proof that Abraham actually lived. We have the word of Sir Leonard
Woolley and other scholars, that "the fact of Abraham's existence was
vouched for by written documents almost, if not quite, contemporary with him."
1 And Prof. J. Garrow Duncan remarks that in Genesis i-xi are whole passages
which "describe actual history dating two thousand years before Abraham, and
other passages which are translated from ancient cuneiform records as if the
writer had the tablets before him." He describes at Ur
It is now clear that the Jews originated in Mesopotamia , a colonizing offshoot
of that ancient Akkadian-Sumerian culture, in which, according to the consensus
of modern scholarly opinion, civilization itself was cradled.
The Hebrews entered Palestine Lachish
Recent excavations confirm completely descriptions in the texts of
the Old Testament. At Tell Sbustujeh in Samaria 22 :39 , Amos 3
:15 and Psalms 45 :8. Here are the palaces of Ahab, and houses built
with hewn stone, often of two or three stories, speaking evidence of the rich
civilized life which produced them. Excavations elsewhere in Palestine Gezer
in order to provide uninterrupted access to water." 4
In the light of these findings, the great prosperity of the Hebrew nation
cannot be dismissed as so much oriental braggado
THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
3
3
cio. It must be accepted as a faithful account of historical fact. The
soil had been the basic source of Palestine Palestine Galilee uplands he describes as being so closely
cultivated as to resemble "a large garden." Tacitus echoes much of
this unbounded adulation; while Polybius declared that the district between Beth Shan and the Lake of Galilee
Biblical testimony itself was unstinting in its lush description of
the region as being a land flowing with milk and honey. Deuteronomy describes
it as a beautiful country with "brooks of water and fountains and lakes
that spring out of valleys and hills, a land of wheat, barley and vines, and
fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, a land where one can
eat without scarceness, where there is no lack of anything . . ."
The Jew had been a skilled agriculturist. He knew how to prepare
the soil, manure it and clear it of stones and debris. He was accustomed to
terrace the hills and knew how to practice irrigation by means of cisterns,
wells and canals. The plough-share itself was made out of iron. The ground had
to be turned over at least three times, and the plough followed by the harrow
., So highly was agriculture esteemed that even Saul, although he was already
anointed king, is seen returning from his day at the plough. 9
In the hands of this provident people who loved their soil, this
4
THE RAPE OFPALESTINE
THE RAPE OF
whole territory was an eden
Grain crops and vegetables of all kinds grew in profusion both in the valleys and on the hills. The land was so rich in fruits of every
kind that they were exported to world markets, where they were famous for their
superior quality. All through ancient times the Jordan Valley Judea as famous for dates as
Egypt Galilee was known throughout
the ancient world for its olive oil. Its importance
alone is shown by the amount supplied annually to the King of Tyre 160,000 gallons of best quality."
Across Jordan Bashan were proverbial. And Gilead bore perfume and
medicine for the whole Eastern world. Hence the proverb, "Is there no balm
in Gilead ?”
Up to the Fifth Century A.D. the bare hills of Moab Bethlehem Sharon Jerusalem Carmel
In this eden
Dairying was of sufficient importance to make a cheese market necessary in Jerusalem Jordan
They were equally alert and practiced in handicrafts which
THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
5
5
were considered a family pride and tradition. At the time of Jesus,
Jewish literature mentions no less than forty kinds of craftsmen.
Hillel was a woodcutter; R. Yeshoshua Ben Hananya a smith; Jesus of
Nazareth Tarsus
Here the ploughman, the grazier, the carpenter, the engraver, the
smith, the potter and the physician are all spoken of.
Excavations at Tell Beit Mirsim (the Biblical Debir) showed that
the industrial life of Israel
14 At Debir, Dr. Albright discovered six dye plants and remnants
"showing that there must have been a loom in nearly every house." 15
At the south end of Lake Tiberias was one of the first
purely manufacturing towns in economic history. Beautiful dyed cloths and
dyes were exported as well as phosphorus, asphalt, tar, salt, glass ornaments
and perfumes. Pliny tells us that 'Judean pitch' was world famous. Iron mines
were found in the Lebanon land of Moab Gulf of Aqaba and remarks : "When the Biblical
historian
asserts `there was no weighing of the bronze from which he [Solomon]
made all these vessels, because it was so much,' one may believe that he was
not exaggerating the facts." 16
In those days the present industrial relations between East and West
were reversed. The Orient was then the great industrial center and exchanged
its manufactured products against the raw materials of the less developed
Western countries.
Solomon was canny enough to exploit the unique geographical position
of his country. He was the originator of the policy of customs and levied on
both imports and exports to keep his treasury full.17 The commerce of the Hebrew State
6
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
directions, as far east as China Natal Zululand where coins dating
from the time of the Macabees have been recently discovered."'
On the sea, Rawlinson observes that while the friendly dealings of
Hiram with David and Solomon are well known, "the continued alliance
between the Phoenicians and the Israelites has attracted less attention."
19 This continued composition of interests between the two neighboring Semitic
nations is mentioned by Herodotus and other ancients and is confirmed by modern
authorities.20 Says Kaiser: "Jewish sailors were just as numerous as
Jewish donkey-drivers." 21
Fishermen too were numerous and the catch so plentiful that much of
it was salted and sold abroad. Trade both by sea and over the camel routes thrived.
Aristeas declares fulsomely that "a great mass of spices, precious stones
and gold is brought into the district . . . For the country is well adapted for
commerce as well as for cultivation, and the city [Jerusalem
This was the country which Jehovah had promised to his people Israel
Population estimates vary, curtained by the dust of antiquity, but
in every case they were so considerable as to cause the modern observer to gasp.
In an age where opportunities for sustaining concentrated industrial
populations were largely non-existent, the land certainly maintained a per
capita density incomparably larger than that which allegedly overcrowds it
today.
Diodorus, Strabo, Tacitus, and Dio Cassius all agree that "the
THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
7
7
population to the square mile was larger in Palestine
In Exodus. 12:37 we are told that there
were "about 600,000 on foot that were men, besides women and
children" plus "a mixed multitude" that went up from Egypt Judah Jerusalem Palestine
Certainly if one may judge from Roman accounts of the wars with Judea , where figures running
into the millions were given for the slain, and the numbers sold into captivity
ran into legions, these figures are not incredible.
CHARACTER OF THE HEBREW
If the Jews are to return to become a collective force in the world
of men, they will beyond doubt resuscitate their ancient law. Prof. A. A. Berle
points out that "that law, only vaguely understood, and of only very
limited application in world history, will have then a full exposition and a
thorough working out in terms of modern life." 26 An increasing army of
educators, disgusted with the tyrannical and unpleasant philosophies which are blasting
civilization to its foundations, see in the Hebrew laws the elements for a
social regeneration of this sick world. "Certainly," says Berle,
"many of the laws relating to the ordinary life and relations of mankind,
as laid down in ancient Mosaic law, if applied to a modern city block, would
regenerate it root and branch.”
Most of what passes for a history of the Hebrew people has been
filtered through hostile Greek and Roman sources and
8
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
through the hardly less hostile bias of medieval Christianity. The significance of Hebrew genius in relation to its peculiar
understanding of cultural values is hence not generally understood.
Dr. Marion E. Cady says of this situation that "now it is
being fearlessly asserted that as in religion, so in education, the Jews have
made the greatest contribution of any nation, ancient, medieval or
modern." 27 Prof. E. C. Baldwin of Illinois University Athens Jerusalem
The essential core of the Hebrew idea was the superiority of reason.
That system of life which is commonly called Judaism was in the most real sense
no religion at all. It was never formal, abstract and separated from life, but
a throbbing and vital part of it. It was completely unlike pure theological
systems such as that evolved by the Greeks - which, attempting to reconcile themselves
with the world in its broadest sense, found religious inheritance
irreconcilable with rational thinking. It is necessary to understand Judaism
in this sense, as a civilization rather than a religion, in order to grasp
adequately the dynamics and vitality which have kept Zionism consciously alive
over this great lapse of years. Judaism was concerned deliberately with the
quality of living on this earth, with the bringing of every phase of existence into
relation with eternal truth. "It is worth remarking," comment Graham
and May, "that no matter to what heights of social vision and spiritual
exaltation the Hebrew seer might climb, he never lost that urge toward physical
well-being which had impelled his remote ancestors to venture into the Promised
Land .
In the same breath in which he speaks of multitudes streaming to Zion
"The drift of all Hebrew thinking," says MacDonald,
"as thinking, was to link up morals and intelligence." 31 Judaism
THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK 9
significantly regarded stupidity as the source of evil in
individual man. A sinner was a blunderer and not a rational person, and the ultimate
morality was not to be a fool. Worshiping Reason, the Hebrew could not credit
anything which was either irrational or static. To his mind, nothing existed
rigid and unalterable in a state of `being,' but only of `becoming.’
The great Rabbi Hillel, who preceded Jesus by a generation, typified
this remarkable viewpoint. Asked by a heathen who wished to make sport of him,
to be taught the whole Torah 32 while standing on one foot, the gentle Hillel
replied : "What is hateful to thee do not to others . This is the whole Torah.
The rest is merely commentary."
While the Hebrew concept regarded all life forces as constituting one
unity not capable of being subdivided on varying moral bases to suit varying
emergencies and occasions, it was irrevocably anchored in an implicit belief in
the sacredness of the individual personality. At a time when Romans compelled
gladiators to slaughter each other for sport in the arenas, when material
appetites and gross oppressions were the elements of universal law, this free
people was living in accordance with a code which for sheer gallantry of
expression has had no equal before - nor perhaps since. A spirit of mercy and
humanity pervaded the Hebrew legal system. In Jewish law there was never such a
thing as legal justification for inequality. No man could vindicate an act of
injustice by an appeal to law. Complete equality before the bar of justice was
the right of all from humble herdsman to king. The Deuteronomic Code declares
no single witness sufficient to convict a man of wrongdoing. Malicious
witnesses were severely dealt with. "A straying animal must be taken up and
returned to its owner, and if a beast has fallen under a burden the passerby
must aid the owner in raising it to its feet again." 33
This applied also to lost articles and provided that if the owner were
unknown the finder must care for them until the owner appears.34
10
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even extended to the threshing floor where the law provided that "thou
shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the grain." 38
Love of the resident alien is explicitly demanded in Dent. 19:33 ;
Deut. 10:19 and Exodus. 22:21 ; 23:9. The duty of treating strangers,
together with orphans and widows, with justice, mercy and generosity
is emphasized, decreeing that the gleanings of grain fields, orchards and
vineyards must be left free for them to gather and enjoy .37 The taking of
interest on loans to the poor is forbidden.
38 Runaway slaves must be received and treated kindly and are not
to be surrendered to their owners or oppressed .39
More amazing still, in an ancient world of cruelty and
ruthlessness, are the injunctions of Dent. 24: i6, where the principle of individual
responsibility is laid down, so that a relative may not be punished for the
misdeeds of a son - in striking contrast with practices in operation even today
in such allegedly civilized states as Russia Germany
The animism still practiced throughout Europe and in parts of America
Uncleanliness is completely discountenanced. In his splendid book,
Medicine in the Bible, Dr. Charles Brim details the amazing medical knowledge
and sanitary understanding of the ancient Israelites.
Says Dr. Victor Robinson in this regard: "There are passages
in the Pentateuch which deserve a place in the Corpus Hippocraticum." 41
And Col. Edgar Erskine Hume avers that every principle of modern military
sanitation was known and used by Moses.
Hebrew law also emphasized good breeding, as: "Let another man
praise thee and not thine own mouth," 42 or: "When thou sittest among
many, reach not thine hand out first of all." 43
Education was widely diffused. The sons of rich families had their
tutors, while parents in more modest circumstances taught their own children. Those
who could afford it wore handsome clothing of various colors and often the
outer garment was embroidered with gold. Everywhere and at all times song and
music were to be found. The harp or organ was one of the many
THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
i z
instruments known. We hear of pipes, psalteries, cymbals and trumpets,
all of which required skill in playing and therefore implied instruction."
Music seems to have been the joyous climax of all occasions of public or
private life. The international repute which Jewish singers had achieved is
indicated from the inscription on an Assyrian monument where the chief item of
tribute laid on Hezekiah by an Assyrian ruler was the demand for a company of
men and women singers.
Labor was highly esteemed. The Talmud directed every father, regardless
of his social position, to teach his son some useful trade.45 "The
tradesman at his work," it declares, "is the equal of the most
learned doctor”; and avers that "he who derives his livelihood from the
labor of his hands is as great as he who fears God." The most prominent
authors of the Talmud were in fact simple workingmen, shoemakers, iron workers, laborers;
proud men who knew no masters and brooked no slaves.
We can also conclude that among the Jews, women enjoyed a free and
independent social position. Two of the twenty-four books of the Bible received
their titles from the names of women, Ruth and Esther. There were seven
prophetesses spoken of in the Talmud. Among them Deborah judged the people and
went out with Barak to fight against Sisera. During the reign of Josiah, Huldah
was so highly thought of as to be consulted by the chief officers of the
kingdom. The king himself bowed down to his mother, as Solomon did to Bathsheba.
Wherever in Precepts, Psalms or Proverbs filial devotion is mentioned, father
and mother are made equal, as is done in the Fifth Commandment.
Hebrews were never ruled like slaves of an Eastern despot. They
were called into council by their kings and contended boldly for their rights.
Decrees affecting the whole community were ratified by the general voice of the
people, freely assembled.
This free people, for all their gentle philosophy of life, were always
animated by the spirit of liberty and inspired by the cry `To your tents, 0 Israel
They were not overawed by the cruelties of Antiochus or Herod; nor,
alone among the peoples of the earth, cowed by the might of Imperial Rome
12
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Specific legislation defined and restricted the powers of the crown,
in itself eloquent testimony to the democratic spirit prevailing in Israel
We search antiquity in vain for an example of free government
comparable to that provided by Israel
learn from Kings 21:23-24 and 23:30 , it had the authority
to make and unmake kings and on occasion actually did so. Remarks Sulzberger:
"While the modern monotheistic conception of the universe is largely the
product of their [the Jewish] genius, so the modern conception of the rational,
democratic, representative government owes its origin to the same ancestry."
And adds the famed Master of Balliol, Edward Caird: "It is not without significance
that the great struggle for political freedom in this country [England
The bulk and mainstay of the nation were middle-class farmers and
villagers, each one of whom felt himself equal to Caesar.
Tacitus remarks on their health and the fact that they are
"capable of enduring great fatigue." Josephus describes them as a
warlike people greatly desired as mercenary soldiers and disliked for their
arrogance and pride of race.
The idyll of Jewish speculation was no Valhalla , but a time of grace
when swords would be beaten into plough-shares and spears into pruning hooks .47
They were the first people in history who regarded their fate not from the
standpoint of physical supremacy but from that of moral harmony; yet there was
no people in history who possessed the haughty pride in race and the passionate
love of country which continually distinguished
THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
13
them. This passion of the Jewish people for Palestine
Coexistent with this infatuation for the country was an unbending love
of liberty, so reckless and intense as to amount almost to an obsession. The
Jewish greeting was Shalom (peace), but all who encountered him were shortly to
discover that it did not mean peace at any price.
STRUGGLES FOR INDEPENDENCE
Situated in the very pathway of invading world conquerors we find
this brave people again and again refusing to pay tribute or accept oppression.
Typical in sheer pathos is the bitter rebellion of the little country, under
King Jehoiachim, against the world power of Babylon Jerusalem Jerusalem
Nebuchadnezzar thought he had put a final end to this rebellious and
irreconcilable people; but not more than fifty years later he who by his own
claim sat at the right hand of God, became with all his works only a memory and
the Jews returned
14
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to Palestine
Typical again of the magnificent character of this race were their
later wars under Judas, son of Mattathias, who was surnamed Maccabeus. A new
conqueror had risen in the shape of Antiochus, the Syrian Greek. Now was to
begin the first of those world struggles in which the force of idea was
advanced as taking precedence over that of inherent personality.
This war was fought to stem the sweeping onrush of Hellenism by
which
the known world seemed about to be engulfed.
With a small group of his determined followers Judas refused to
yield. Attacking giant armies again and again with his little band of guerrilla
fighters, he won a succession of victories. The Syrian in a towering rage at
this lilliputian effrontery, declared his intention of utterly exterminating
every individual of the Jewish people. He invaded with the enormous armies so
characteristic of despots of the period.
Able to muster but a handful of ill-equipped men, Judas was counseled
to retreat. He replied with characteristic recklessness: "If our time has
come to die, let us die; but let it never be said of us that we turned our back
on an enemy." With only eight hundred men he attacked the invading legions
near Adorsa.
Here, fighting grimly to the last, the stern company gave up their lives.
But the miracle had happened: the invader, nonplussed by the unexpected nature
of this furious resistance, was stopped dead in his tracks. Jonathan, brother
of Judas, took up the struggle.
The Syrian levies, dismayed and beginning to believe they were
fighting devils instead of men, gave the matter over as a bad business and went
into retreat .49 Once more Jews saluted each other with the old greeting of
Shalom and began to build where they had left off.
FINAL REBELLIONS
It was inevitable that the lengthening shadow of Rome
THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
15
crossroads of the world and necessary for anyone who would hold a
firm grip on the rich hinterland of Asia and Africa . The times were turbulent.
The Maccabean princes themselves were in civil war, Hyrcanus warring against
his brother, Aristobulus II. Finally the two brothers entreated the assistance
of Pompey, then commander-in-chief of the Roman troops in the East, and elected
him arbiter of their mutual differences. The consequences of this step were
fatal to the Jews. Pompey with true Roman forthrightness, finding the place
pleasant, decided to remain. He therefore invested Jerusalem
Under Herod, who was soon to sit on the Jewish throne as a Roman puppet,
a conscious policy was adopted aimed at denationalizing this dynamic people. In
despair the frantic nation writhed and spat in every direction like a caught wildcat.
Continuous sullen insurrection made the air electric. A large number of Jews
turned in sheer weariness from what was evidently a hopeless struggle, to a
desire for a world religion where peace and justice would reign once more. The
new prophet, Joshua of Nazareth
The Jews of the Dispersion carried the new faith with them and
16
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
"formed the bridge across which Christianity entered the Roman
world." 50 It was from the synagogues of the far shores of the Mediterranean that its gospel of
world brotherhood was fervently proclaimed, so that for generations there was
so little difference between Jew and Christian that both factions attended the
same synagogues together. Had anyone told the followers of this new idyllic
creed that in its name their brother Jews would one day be flayed alive and
boiled in oil, he would have been considered a lunatic?
In Judea itself things went from
bad to worse. One Roman governor outdid the other in cruelty and rapacity. The
whole Hebraic conception of life crumbled under an onslaught of graft, lust,
sabotage and provocation. The old courtly idea of Jewish ethics became a liability;
dishonesty and venality were soon recognizable as the only guides to a
comfortable existence, and began to corrupt the character of the people themselves.
The country was overrun with robbers, and justice was sold to the highest bidder.
Great numbers of the wretched Jews, unable to stand this intolerable situation
any longer, emigrated.
These were the conditions that preceded the disastrous war which
desolated Jewry and dispersed the Jews. Goaded to wild desperation they rose
once more in insurrection, a rebellion the most desperate of any recorded in history.
Ironically enough, Agrippa II, descendant of the Maccabean kings,
thoroughly Latinized, joined with the Romans. Attempting to show the rebels the
folly of opposing the conquerors of the world, he urged them to lay down their
arms and submit. The reply was open defiance.
Retaliating, the Romans massacred almost a hundred thousand Jews.
The hills around Jerusalem
The rebels however were made of stuff that was not to be cowed by
these punitive measures. They attacked with such indomitable fury that they
soon held a large section of the country.
Enraged by this unheard-of insolence, Cestius Gallus invaded from Syria
THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
17
on his way and slaughtering the inhabitants. Investing Jerusalem
The Emperor Nero, puzzled by this extraordinary occurrence, wisely
decided to take no chances. He appointed the great General Vespasian to
prosecute the war, who again laid siege to the capital.
Meanwhile the Jews were wasting their strength and resources in
internal quarrels. Within the city sanguinary civil wars and sub-civil wars
rent to shreds the defenders, who displayed a common front only when the
invaders were visible beneath the walls. When the Romans had been driven back,
these fratricidal contests were at once resumed.
The attack was now in the hands of Titus, Vespasian's son.
Grown weary of this interminable investure, he attempted to parley
with the insurgents, who contemptuously refused any terms whatsoever save
unconditional freedom. Finally, as a result of the continuing internal struggles
of the defenders themselves, the city fell. Josephus graphically pictures the
indescribable events that followed: "One would have thought that the hill itself
on which the Temple Upper City Holy City
Refusing all mercy, the defenders had fought for every house on
every street. It is said that 1,100,000 Jews were slaughtered.
And Josephus assures us that there was no place in the land which did
not suffer the same calamities as the Capital. "The Romans pursued, took,
and slew them everywhere." 52 They were without question the most
formidable opponents that Rome Egypt
18
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Living symbol of the indomitable Semitic spirit, three fortresses still
held out to the end. The last to be taken, Masada , under the command of
the lion-hearted Eleazor, maintained itself for long months as an island of
resistance after the sea around it had been beaten into submission. Rather than
surrender, the defenders slew each other, the last survivor defiantly setting
fire to the castle before executing himself. So they fell, writes Tacitus, "with
swords in their hands, contending for liberty, and, in the act, preserving it.
. ." 63
It had taken Titus more than seven years to subdue a tiny corner of
the earth whose inhabitants had not much more to offer in arms and battlements
than their simple valor. Returning to Rome
Large numbers of Jews who had escaped the destruction sought asylum
in various parts of the world. The dispersion had begun in earnest.
THE DISPERSION
Even these catastrophic losses did not serve to break the Jewish spirit.
Scarcely a generation had passed when the same old revolt broke out again, more
tempestuous than ever (A.D. II6).
This time the dispersed Jews suddenly rose in blazing fury to aid
their brothers who had been struggling in Judea . "Myriads," says
Eusebius, "had already been killed in the past seventeen years."
There is plenty of evidence that the Jews did equal damage to their enemies.
Simultaneously the scattered men of Israel Egypt Cyprus
THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
19
their armies; they "laid waste the land." Whole provinces
were devastated in this amazing struggle of one small gallant nation against
the mightiest empire of the world. Bar Kochba had succeeded in accomplishing
the impossible: he drove out the Roman, holding the entire Empire at bay, and
set up a Jewish State. The quality of the man may be judged from the prayer he
is said to have addressed to the Lord Jehovah asking that no assistance be given
to the enemy. "As for ourselves," he finished piously, "we ask
no help - we will take care of ourselves.”
The Emperor Hadrian was appalled. In desperation he set aside all
other tasks of state, concentrating his energies on the business of wiping out Judea , which had now become
a menace to the very life of the Empire .54
For almost four years the contest continued. When finally resistance
ceased, Judea resembled a wilderness. All men capable
of bearing arms had fallen, together with their auxiliaries from the Diaspora;
and "the un-buried bodies of the hundreds of thousands of the dead poisoned
the air." At the fall of Bether alone half a million Jews are said to have
lost their lives.
Such vast numbers were sold into slavery that in Rome Judea and swept it clear of Jews. He rebuilt Jerusalem Aeolia Capitolina and issued
an edict forbidding any Jew .to set foot in it on pain of death. Such Jews as
survived withdrew into Galilee .
It is interesting to note that to the Roman, Christianity was still
merely a schismatic Jewish sect. Even at that late date he regarded Mount Calvary Temple Golgotha or Calvary ; and in the Grotto at Bethlehem
Even after the ferocious revenge taken by Rome Zion
Utterly ruined and bitterly oppressed, they still had strength enough
under the reign of Constantine
20
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
a powerful army against them, which stamped out the uprising with
indiscriminate slaughter. The survivors taken captive were sold as slaves. But
if the Imperial Government thought it was through with this obstinate race
whose will to national existence?
continued without a State, without territory and almost without human
rights anywhere, it soon realized its miscalculation. The fierce determination
of the Hebrew to recover what was his by main force remained fiery and
undeterred as before. When King Chosroes of Persia Egypt Palestine
This was the last straw. Along with the barbarians it had absorbed, Christianity had taken on much of the pagan hatred for Jews. The
monks had long been urging the Emperor Heraclius to exterminate this obstinate people.
This was their opportunity to drive their argument home. When the country
reverted to Byzantium Egypt Palestine
CHAPTER II
"MAY MY RIGHT ARM WITHER. . ."
THE JEW NEVER GAVE UP HIS CLAIM TO PALESTINE
The whole history of the Jew, if it has any meaning at all, lies in
a demand f or political restoration. Despite the spirit in which Jewish history
later began to be falsified, one may understand that what these unhappy exiles
concentrated all their hopes and yearnings on was the dream of a reborn Jewish State.
It dominated the writings of the rabbis; it permeated prayer and poetry; it was
part and parcel of every expression of existence. "We cannot," they
complained in prayer, "serve Thee according to Thy commandment." And mournfully the Talmud proclaims: "He who
has not tasted the bread of Palestine
Their oath of fealty is famous wherever men gather who love character
and devotion: "May my right arm wither ere I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem Jerusalem
Jews were buried with a bag of Palestine soil under their pillows, that
they might poetically have in death what had been so cruelly driven from them
in life. In Jerusalem Temple
No matter where the Jews lived, culturally and spiritually they moved
in a Palestinian milieu. "It did not matter to them that Palestine
"After each meal the Jew gave thanks for the Land as though he
were still living in it and enjoying its produce." 2 He was certain of
again occupying it, and always remembered that he was in exile.
The scattered communities of the Jews, until modern enlightenment
shattered them beyond recognition, were far more than
21
22
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
mere retreats of religious zealotry. They were rather an organized attempt
to continue their national existence in every possible sphere and to remain as
an individual force in history. All through the Dispersion, from the captivity
in Babylon
The entire structure of Jewish existence stemmed from the faith
that the Temple
Thus these pathetic exiles lived, like creatures stepped from
drama, and forgot the dreary present in dreaming of an idyllic future which they
believed near at hand.
One can readily understand the sweet Hebrew poet Halevy, singing a
thousand years after the Exodus in identical strain with the troubadors who
composed the psalms. All chivalrous hearts must weep for the constancy and the
beauty with which he lifts his lyrical voice and cries: "To weep upon thy
misery I am like a howling jackal; but when I dream thy return and restoration I
am the harp for thy joyous songs.”
So also, in this unbroken continuity of belief and longing, the modern
Hebrew poet Bialik, eye-witness to the pogroms of South Russia , was to pledge his
faith in the destiny of his people; singing in deathless words that unending
claim which to the Jew is his title in this world
"Thou wilt not totter, tent of Shem - I shall rebuild thee.
Thou wilt yet outlive the palaces
As thou didst the days of the destruction
When the towers crumbled."
THE FIRST ESSENTIAL TO JEWISH TITLE
It is on this tenacious, unwavering concentration of hope,
sacrifice and prayer that the first part of the Jewish claim to Palestine
"MAY MY RIGHT ARM WITHER . . . "
23
is based and not alone, as Judeophobes would attempt to make out,
on the mere existence of a Jewish State in remote antiquity.
Dr. Wm. E. Blackstone, quoting the foremost authorities on international
law, pointed out in 189 i that since the Jews never gave up their title to Palestine
They made no treaty, they did not even surrender. They simply succumbed,
after the most desperate conflict, to the overwhelming power of the Romans . . . and were captured or
enslaved . . .
Since then, having no sovereign nor political head through whom they
could speak; they have disputed the possession of the land, by continued
protest through their literature and their public and private worship." He
showed that the Jews throughout the ages have continually stated in the
Passover service: "Next year we hope to celebrate it in the land of Israel Jerusalem
Blackstone quotes the outstanding legal luminaries of his day, who
agree that the Jewish claim was legally, at least, sound? He points out that
according to the logical precedents established by such authorities as Buswell,
Wheaton Israel
The greatest legal authorities have agreed that according to the foundation
principles of international law there is no basis for prescription against Israel Palestine
The British Government in 1920 recognized without reservation the
validity of this claim .4 It points out in clear, ringing words that Jewish
nationalism has been continuous, and refers to
24
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
the fact that it is "the oldest nationalist movement in history.”
No more thorough, comprehensive or understanding statement of
Jewish aims has ever been penned than this official English publication which
is now buried somewhere in the dusty files of Whitehall
CHAPTER III
THE WANDERING JEW
FIFTEEN HUNDRED YEARS OF TRAGEDY
Despite the frightful suffering to which their position in medieval life daily exposed them; the Jews maintained a vigorous, colorful,
picturesque existence in which their communal and personal life blossomed out
in rich and luxuriant beauty. Scattered from the Persian Gulf to the Irish Sea , the Jewish
communities acknowledged equally a system of law that bears comparison with the
great systems of the world. With dynamic resilience Jewish life readjusted
itself to the new conditions, but carried over with it the old Eastern
civilization intact. In the midst of the intellectual decay which overtook
mankind during the Dark Ages, it is astonishing to see Levi Ben Gershon calmly
asserting the existence of primary matter, Hasdai Crescas refuting the narrow concepts of Aristotle, and Rambam dipping his majestic mind into
the realms of psychiatry. Academic research and such modern subjects as sex
hygiene were part of the regular curriculum of Jewish schooling. Every child was taught the Law; and the
sages even implied that the study of the Torah and the observance of its laws
were more important than the ceremonies of Worship.
"All the mitzvoth [religious injunctions] are not equal to one
word of the Torah," says an authority of the Third Century with sweeping bluntness.
It was in this vibrant atmosphere that Judaism thrived and held staunchly
to its belief in the recon quest of the Promised Land, and not in the pallid
air of religious zealotry which was later to settle on its spirit like a sickness.
Behind the shroud of silence to which anti-Jewish bias has consigned
it, the organized civilization of the Jews during the Dispersion glistens like
a diamond. While all else was in the most impenetrable darkness and ignorance,
Hebrew writers and scholars not only constructed original works, but studied
and elaborated
25
25
26
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
the writings of classical antiquity and rendered them accessible to
the Christian countries of the Occident. The Arab invasion which followed the
rise of Islam was instructed from the same source. Jews wrote the first works
on fevers and material medical and translated them into other languages. They
founded and supported the famous schools of Salerno Montpellier
Until the end of the Sixteenth Century medicine was almost a Jewish
monopoly. In all of the other arts and sciences, mathematics, astronomy,
physics, alchemy, history and geography, Jewish minds excelled. Typical of the
stature and enterprise of these lordly exiles was the expedition of Columbus
According to the historian Francis Trevelyan Miller, Columbus Columbus New World was the Jewish
interpreter Luis de Torres, closely followed by the Jewish surgeon Marco and
the Jewish physician Bernal .2
The Jews left no branch of learning or science untouched.
Said Sombart: "Israel Europe like the sun; whenever
it appears new life shoots up, but when it is withdrawn all that once
flourished withers away." 3 The German scholar, Dr. M. I. Schleiden,
declares that during the Middle Ages "the Jews were the preservers of
agriculture, of all large industries." 4 And Valeriu Marcu assures us that
"the most important monarchs seem to have been unable to manage without
Jewish educators, advisers and ministers. . ." s
In commerce as in culture, the part played by this expatriate people
was tremendous. "At all points where the formation of cities was going on,
where an urban community was developing out of the former castellum of the
Romans, the Jews contributed a decisive element by bringing trade within the walls."
6 This is
THE WANDERING JEW
27
expressed in a truly classic manner in the words with which Bishop Rudiger of Speyer village of Speyer Spain
The distinguished character of this Hebrew culture is traceable everywhere,
where it is not hidden by slander and omission.
The personal life of the Jew was no less well-ordered. Until later
edicts ousted them from that work, agriculture was the most highly esteemed of occupations;
and they practically held a monopoly on handicrafts where taste as well as
manual skill was required. As a speaking instance, when the edict of expulsion reached
Sicily
utensils, especially those made of iron, as agricultural implements
and equipment for ships, galleys . . ." 7
Labor itself remained dignified in Jewish life, as it was in the old
homeland. Bespeaking this attitude, Maimonides laid down the axiom that "a
single coin earned by one's manual labor is worth more than the whole revenue
of the Prince of the Captivity, derived as it is from the gifts of others."
8
The sanctity of the Jewish home continued in undiminished tradition.
Nothing in modern life can excel the courtly respect and single-hearted
devotion which the Talmudic husband displayed towards his spouse. "He
loves her as himself," declares the Talmud, "but honors her more than
himself.”
All through this period the Jews justly prided themselves on their
fastidious habits and regard for the amenities. Cleanly habits were in fact
codified, and Jewish medieval law contained a systematized scheme of etiquette,
of good custom and refined taste. It was not until centuries of ghetto life and
cruel degradation had rendered the Jews indifferent to their surroundings that this
old characteristic ceased to distinguish them.
It was the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III which
28
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
in 1215 made the first serious encroachments on the freedom and possessions of the Jews, forcing them by decree to wear a
distinctive mark on their clothes, the so-called `yellow badge.' The decree of
the Synod of Breslau in 1267, prohibiting Jews from living together
with Christians in the Eastern provinces where "the church was still a
tender shoot," finally led to the establishment of the Ghetto in all countries.
The Jewish quarter was usually situated in a disreputable, crowded, unhealthful
section of the city. It was guarded by night so that no one could enter or
leave. Its area was to serve for all time; it was not to be enlarged.
Its narrow, crooked streets were always dark. In this foul area
where sunlight could not enter, there was no room for trees grass or flowers. Infant
mortality was staggering; the faces of young and old alike were habitually pallid.
Deprived of all legal position and branded as incorrigible
Satanists,
isolated like lepers from the rest of mankind, these proud Semites
found themselves unwittingly the prey of all comers.
The attitude of the Church gave pitch to the orchestra of hate and
despoliation in which state, city and populace largely participated.
Not content with humiliating and caging them like dangerous
animals, accusation upon accusation was piled at their door. It was claimed
that they made a practice of stealing the consecrated host wafers, mistreating
the body of Christ in them until blood flowed forth. At the time of the Black
Death they were accused of poisoning the wells; and lending tone to these charges,
in many places confessions were extorted from them on the rack.
Jews were compelled like cattle to pay a poll tax, a heavy
admission tax and a whole list of other imposts partly ridiculous and partly humiliating.
When they could be mulcted of nothing further, they were expelled over night
and their meager possessions confiscated.
Even the written records of Hebrew science, philosophy and learning,
so lovingly and painstakingly collected, were prohibited.
A typical example is the decree of destruction of the Talmud in France
THE WANDERING JEW
29
In Germany
The entire world had become a horrible dungeon in which this proud
and intellectual people suffered the tortures of the damned. They were
exterminated in York London Spain Italy Poland Bohemia France Moravia Austria Europe to the other, ripped
open with pitchforks and scythes, or beaten to death like dogs. In France Germany Spain Savoy
The onrush of the Crusaders exposed the Jews to a new series of
sadistic outrages. Whole communities were wiped out in cold blood, sacked, and
forcibly converted. In the Rhineland , and in France Anjou Bordeaux Jerusalem
The list of tortures and outrages suffered by this unhappy people is
unending. In 1336 a mob of five thousand
peasants led by two nobles, the `Armleders,' armed with pitchforks and axes, traversed
Franconia , Alsace Rhineland , Bavaria Austria 1298 a nobleman from Roettingen named
Rindfleisch, declaring himself appointed by heaven to exterminate
30
30
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
the Jews marched through the country and for six months committed
the most unheard of outrages against his hapless victims. One hundred and
forty-six communities were reduced to bloody shambles.
In Spain Portugal Ukraine Europe the dread "Hep! Hep! Hep!" of
the hooligans echoed in the dark streets of the ghettos. In all parts of the
Western world Jewish blood flowed down many widely separated rivulets into one
mighty stream. In North Africa and the Orient, like a sickening flood, the same
indignities, cruelties and disasters overtook their fleeing footsteps.
Each new depth to which this once sturdy people were pushed only
served to open up deeper and unsuspected abysses of horror.
Forbidden to own land, to engage in handicrafts, deprived of membership
in the all-powerful guilds so as to be virtually excluded from trade, harried,
slandered and ridiculed, the walls of the Ghetto held them like a prison.
The effects of this system of branding a whole people as a pariah
class were as deplorable as they were inevitable. The Jew became the mark for
the meanest of insults. He was beaten, reviled, scorned and abused by everyone.
This constant humiliation and degradation finally brought him so low that he
became the mockery of mankind. He lost the courtly bearing, the refinement of
speech and manner which had always distinguished the Hebrew character. Suffering
and debasement had also wrought vast changes in the inner consciousness of the race.
Where once he had stood on his native Judean hills, the fiercest, most
intractable
fighting man in the entire ancient world, long centuries of
persecution had made him submissive like a whipped dog. Meekness and
non-resistance became rationalized into a veritable philosophic code. The once
lofty Jewish mind hardened and be
THE WANDERING JEW
31
came grooved in a maze of ritual. Where once had stood the proud
gentility of Hillel, now huddled the wraith-like figure of the pious Israel
The love of inquiry, the intellectual penetration traditional to the
Jew, was now transformed into an absurd concentration on dialectical
speculations. Deprived of normal outlets to his energies, futile speculations
and the splicings of fine theories became his entertainment. The old great
Jewish culture disappeared, unnoticed, in a wilderness of stratified
formalities, words and ritual.
To complete this sorry picture of deterioration and collapse, the
strangled Jewish mind became obsessed by a peculiar indirectness of approach to
all problems. The most realistic of all peoples became unreal, pedantic and mystical.
All of these changed factors of character and outlook are reflected in the
development of the Messianic doctrine.
It must be noted that the earlier seeking after a Messiah rested on
quite a different base. It spoke for the sturdy rebellious nature of this
people, that their thoughts were always on freedom.
It reflected a passionate desire for a leader who in strictly
mortal fashion would help them redeem what had been raped from them.
The remolded concept rested very subtly on a completely opposite psychology, although the idea appeared to be the same.
The impatient rebelliousness, the stiff self-assurance, the
commonness of instinct, which had caused the widely separated Jews to rise
like one man under Bar Kochba, had vanished. In their stead lived a new
zealotry in which dogma and visionary metaphysic vied for mastery. Like a dazzling
light, blotting out the sordidness of his surroundings, a deep sense of mission
now enveloped the befuddled Jew. With humble piety he conceived of himself as
the instrument whereby all the peoples of the earth, including those who had
abused and vilified him, would be led into
eternal gentleness and bliss. Thus tremulously awaiting the divine
32
32
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
deliverer lived the Jews, a great nation who had shriveled to a
caricature of themselves through the cruelest set of circumstances ever to
beset the path of man.
They had not long to wait. A whole host of Messiahs appeared in
response to this wishful expectation. From Abu Isa of Ispahan in the Seventh
Century, Zonarias of Syria
Most notorious of all of these was perhaps Zevi, who announced himself to be the Messiah in Smyrna Amsterdam , Hamburg Venice Holy Land .
Others subjected themselves to penance in order to be rendered worthy
of redemption. In the meanwhile the `Messiah' was hamstrung by the Moslems, who
gave him the usual choice, and Zabettai, no martyr, became a Mohammedan.
The colossal collapse of Zevi sent a crushed chill through the Jewries
of Europe . They shrank like condemned men into their hovels.
Only an ironclad religious particularism could save the Jew from the deep
confusion and widening chaos which was engulfing him everywhere. To this he
retreated.
"LIBERTY
Two events conspired to put an end to the Ghetto. One was the
discovery of America
Out of the ashes of this decaying order gradually developed a new
force, the power of industrial capital. This new force immediately discovered
itself in mortal opposition to the entire system of life the Medieval Era had
erected, since it could only maintain itself by free competition and continuing
consumer expansion, which meant the opening of new markets. The greater the competition
among merchants and those who held the power to grant credit, the better would
industry flourish.
THE WANDERING JEW
33
The Ghetto was one of the medieval corporations which had to go in
the interest of a speedy evolution of capitalism. Though it continued in some
cities into the modern era, its fate was sealed.
It was this young and growing industrial capitalism which was the
great lever creating the modem democracies, and with them the emancipation of
the Jews.
The new system soon developed a philosophy justifying itself, and
fiery expounders of its tenets. "Liberty Man.
The question arose as to whether this queer race of the Jews whose
glorious past history was long forgotten, sunk in the torpor of religious
formalism, was capable of supporting such enlightened ideas. Learned debates
took place as to whether, if they were enfranchised, they could take their
place in an organized secular society; whether they could become soldiers,
manufacturers, artisans, professional men - in short, whether they were capable
of competing in the civil society which was to be based on the new order. The
atheist and liberator Voltaire considered them dangerous and incurable reactionaries, a source of religious superstition. Others like Tallyrand, Montesquieu and Mirabeau asserted
that the Jew must be included in the new dispensation.
Almost coincident with these events the American Revolution exploded
in the face of an archaic world and based its fundamental principles on the
same Rights of Man.
In this onrush of the Liberal spirit the Western Jew miraculously found the walls of the Judengasse 10 torn down. They fell before
his eyes like the walls of Jericho
Enthusiastically the Jews put themselves in line with this glorious
theme of world brotherhood. For the first time the
34
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
vernacular took the place of Hebrew in their daily life. The Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Centuries were the age of Massentau f en (mass baptism). In Berlin
Early an attempt was made to meet this wholesale desertion of Judaism
by creating a new and reformed liturgy and a new attitude towards Jewish destiny.
Inaugurated in Germany Germany Holland Brunswick
The last step in this denationalization process, in which the Reform
Rabbis led the procession, was the transformation into metaphor of the
doctrines of Jewish nationalism for which the race had steadfastly held over so
long a period. All that now remained of laws meant to control the social and
economic interests of the Jews was dead ritual.
For a brief century the ideal of again making themselves an individual
force in history sank into comparative insignificance and gave place to a
desire to become adapted to environment.
Both the spirit and fact of Jewish history became falsified; and Jews
endeavoring to win equal rights in every sphere of human activity began to
frame both their thought and action with an eye to the opinion and point of
view of others. As a living force with legitimate, healthy rights of its own,
Judaism was discountenanced by Jews, who had transformed themselves into neo-gentiles?.
It survived only as an innocuous shadow.
THE WANDERING JEW
35
The inexorable forward movement of `toleration' hit its peak immediately
after the World War. Palestine Germany Weimar Republic
Enthusiastically the Western Liberals and 'Assimilationists' went
to the very point of denying the existence of a Jewish nation altogether. Learnedly
they `proved' that a Jewish race could no longer possibly be in existence.
Had anyone told these enraptured Jews that the last strongholds of
ignorance, meanness and tyranny would not yield but would instead reacquire a
vitality and strategy capable of once more putting Liberalism desperately on
the defensive, his only reply would have been a smile of pity and commiseration.
How could they dream that the Germany Germany
be revived with even increased force and viciousness. All of this
was contrary to the rationale of the new order; hence it became schematically
impossible.
While all this was happening, the torch of Jewish nationalism distorted
and vitiated, but alive, spluttered among the masses still going about their
daily tasks in the ghettos of East Europe .
'THE LOST TEN TRIBES'
In the wake of the irresistible Liberal sweep which was
de-Judaizing the Jews, occurred a most remarkable phenomenon the Anglo-Saxon
people, rising rapidly to world power, literally pitched themselves headlong at
the same time into a Judaizing process.
Aroused by such magnetic personalities as Knox and Tyndale the
British peoples retreated to creative Prophecy, to the stern and simple
democracy of the Hebrew Bible. The Old Testament
36
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
in particular was studied with impassioned thoroughness.
James Truslow Adams remarks that "Christ did indeed occupy a place
in their [the Puritan] theology, but in spirit they may be considered Jews and
not Christians. Their God was the God of the Old Testament, their laws were the
laws of the Old Testament, their guides to conduct were the characters of the
Old Testament."" "They baptized their children," writes
Lord Macaulay, "by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew
patriarchs and warriors." 12 Even the old Saxon names, once household
words, were condemned to oblivion .13 "Cromwell hath beat up his drums
clean through the Old Testament," comments Cleveland
Every attitude of the aggressive young imperialism which the Anglo-Saxon
was erecting became tinctured with Hebrew philosophy.
So completely was it absorbed that a large section of the English
people began to look upon themselves as being actually descended from Israelites.
A whole body of literature sprang into being claiming that the word British was
derived from Brith and Ish of Hebrew, meaning `circumcised man,' and that the
English were descended from the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel
This conviction on the part of a large part of the British public
became so great that it resulted in the forming of `The British-Israel World
Federation,' at one time claiming over five million members and including such
eminent personages as Queen Victoria and King Edward VII.
The Hebraizing spirit attended other considerable sections of the
Reformation though it was particularly at home with the Anglo-Saxon peoples,
whose identification with Hebrew history and philosophy became so complete as
to almost appropriate it for themselves. Lecky expressed this debt in the
famous remark: "Hebraic mortar cemented the foundation of American Democracy!"
In the same vein Ulysses S. Grant advised his countrymen to "hold fast to
the Bible. It is the sheet-anchor of your liberties. . ." And Jean Paul bespoke his times when he
THE WANDERING JEW
37
declared that "the first leaf of the Mosaic record has more
weight than all the folios of men of science and philosophies."
Protestant theology in particular, rested on the belief that the world
of mankind was evolving towards a millennium in which holiness was to be triumphant
everywhere, and that a primary prerequisite to this happy eventuality was the
return of God's Chosen People, the Jews, to the Holy Land .15 Supporting their position
with direct quotation from Biblical Prophecy, a large group of earnest men,
divines, statesmen and writers, set themselves to be the instruments to speed
this desired end. Specialized histories of the Jews gained wide circulation,
and it was not long before the political emancipation of Zion
By 1839 popular interest had become so intense that the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, after sending a special commission
to the Holy Land to report on conditions there, addressed "A
Memorandum to the Protestant Monarchs of Europe on the Subject of the
Restoration of the Jewish People to the Land of Palestine." From this date
onwards a pro-Jewish Palestinian discussion ran parallel in the London
The Government, taking canny notice of this body of public feeling
and being interested in the Near East on its own account, commenced
to take a hand. With the entry of the murderous anti-Christian Mehemet Ali into
Syria
Interest mounted rapidly in all circles. The statesman Lord Shaftsbury
became so absorbed in the project that he learned Hebrew. The colonization
expert, Colonel George Gawler, devoted virtually all his time to this cause,
firmly convinced that Jewish repatriation was a political desideratum for England Near East befriended the Jews and took an active interest in their cause. It became a ruling passion
with such men as Laurence Oliphant and the archaeologist Conger.
38
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
A mountain of literature and a whirlpool of activity had by now
been brought to bear on the matter. All these writers and orators pointed out
the desolate, empty, semi-savage condition of the country. Various associations
were formed to agitate the cause and monster mass-meetings were held. English
statesmen such as Sir Samuel Montague guaranteed publicly that "not only will
the Jews be assisted in colonizing Palestine
While the interest in the fate of the Jews was most spectacular and
deep-seated in Britain
In France
Congress to restore the Holy Land . Here, too, Henri Dun
ant, founder of the Red Cross and author of the Geneva Palestine Egypt Near East .
In America United States Judea , an independent nation
. . ." The lively sympathy for Hebrew resettlement is shown also by the
petition to President Benjamin Harrison submitted by Dr. Wm. Blackstone, Chairman
of the Conference of Christians and Jews, in 1891. Signed by an imposing list
of the greatest names in America
"not for twenty-four centuries since the days of Cyrus, King
of Persia
By 1914 a powerful non-Jewish
public opinion, favoring the enterprise as a rational historical development
existed everywhere.
In England
THE WANDERING JEW
REAWAKENING HEBREW CONSCIOUSNESS
As unaware of all this as if it had taken place on Mars, a wholly independent
movement began stirring in the Hebrew ghettos.
As early as 1857 the Hungarian Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai suggested the
purchase of Palestine
Others like the writers Hess, Kalisher and Smolenskin began to voice articulate opinions.
In 1882 Leon Pinsker issued his volume Auto-Emancipation in which
he demanded that the Jews redeem themselves by their own self-will. Like a lone
tragic eagle, Pinsker gazed with tortured sympathy at the misery of his people.
Appalled at their apathy and wretchedness he wrote: "Among the living
nations of the earth the Jews occupy the position of a nation long since dead.
With the loss of their fatherland, the Jewish people lost their independence and fell into a decay which is not compatible with
existence as a whole vital organism. The State was crushed before the eyes of
the nations, but after the Jewish people had yielded up their existence as an
actual State, as a political entity, they could not nevertheless submit to
total destruction – they did not cease to exist spiritually as a nation. The
world saw in this people the uncanny form of one of the dead walking among the
living. The ghostlike apparition of a people without unity or organization,
without land or other bond of union, no longer alive, and yet moving about
among the living, this eerie form scarcely paralleled in history, unlike
anything that preceded or
followed it, could not fail to make a strange, peculiar impression upon
the imagination of the nations."
Finally fired by the atrocious pogroms that were taking place in South Russia a group of
intellectuals formed the Chovevi Zion Society 16 which soon attempted practical
work in the direction of a resettlement in the Old Land
Jewry which had been gazing on all these vague gropings with tolerant
amusement, living like a drugged man on promises of a new world order where men
would live like gods, was jolted from
39
40
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
this fantasy by two startling events. The first of these had been the
arrest, torture and conviction of the leading Jewish notables in the city of Damascus Syria
In France Devil's Island .
The doughty novelist, Zola, risked his career by issuing the famous
J'Accuse, exposing the outrageous nature of this affair.
Arrested, he fled to England
After an agitation which convulsed the entire civilized world, Dreyfus,
who had been kept in an iron cage on the Island , was pardoned, still
un-vindicated.
The anti-Semitic movement now grew with marvelous rapidity, confounding every theory of the educators, who had held such? a
result impossible. Jewry once more began to seek communion with its own organic
forces. The desire for a specifically Hebrew cultural scheme in which they
could live their lives out, began to arise in the minds of the unhappy
creatures groping their way around tortured ghetto paths.
HERZL - Sitting quietly in the press galleries during the second Dreyfus trial
was a young Viennese journalist named Theodore Herzl .17
THE WANDERING JEW
41
A thoroughly Westernized Jew who accepted the Enlightenment as a
matter of course, he suddenly saw the Jewish problem outlined stark naked.
Returning to Vienna
Friends, de-Judaized like himself, to whom he enunciated these `revolutionary
ideas,' counseled that he had been working too hard and urged him to see the
great brain specialist Max Nordau, which nothing daunted, Herzl did.
One of the journalist's friends inquired anxiously of Nordau after
the visit: "What do you make of him?"
"Well," said Nordau thoughtfully, "it is of course
quite possible that he is crazy - but if he is, so am I, because I agree with him.)l
Tall, majestic, handsome, looking like an Assyrian god who had
stepped down from an old frieze, the magnetic personality of this figure
suddenly galvanized the incoherent movement into action. Until then Zionism had
been resting upon a vague cultural-settlement base, with no definite scheme of control.
The great difference between Herzl's viewpoint and that of his immediate
predecessors was his pointblank insistence on political guarantees before a
single other step was taken. Claimed this new master: ". . . the solution
of the Jewish difficulty is the recognition of the Jews as a People, and the
finding by them of a legally recognized home to which Jews in those parts of
the world in which they are oppressed would naturally migrate, for they would arrive there as citizens just because they were Jews, and
not as aliens." With prophetic insight Herzl insisted on complete
political guarantees. He wrote: "An infiltration is bound to end in disaster.
It continues until the inevitable moment when the native population feels
itself crushed, and forces the Government to stop the further influx of Jews. Immigration
is consequently futile unless based on an assured supremacy.”
His a priori demand was for "sovereignty over a tract of the earth's
surface that is adequate for our rightful needs as a nation.”
There was something almost omniscient in the man's ability to peer
into the curtained future. In a letter to the Rothschild's at
42
THE RAPE OFPALESTINE
THE RAPE OF
Vienna he pointed out that the Liberal governments of Europe, apparently
so firmly established in the prosperity of those days, were not to last. They
would fall and would be replaced by tyrants, either royal or popular, who would
be worse than the aristocracies whom the parliamentary governments had
displaced .19 It took less than forty years for this prophecy to come true.
At the first Zionist Congress he predicted that the Jewish problem would
inevitably be turned into the problem of Zion
On all sides the storm of opposition mounted like a rising
hurricane.
Assimilationist rabbis thundered against him in their pulpits.
The Jews of Germany Basle instead. But he had
gotten the ear of the crushed Jewish masses and had touched their imaginations as
no figure had since the ill-fated messiah Zevi.
Abused and ridiculed as few men have been in history, Herzl continued
with his plan to attempt the purchase of Palestine
Jewish millionaires might have easily provided the 410,000,000 demanded by Abdul Hamid for a concession in Palestine
The great man listened benevolently and finally said: "Herr Herzl,
I observe that you are an intelligent man - but you have such fantastic ideas.”
In vain Herzl cajoled and pleaded: he could not rise the money; and
in the meanwhile the `Young Turks' made an end to Abdul Hamid and the Palestine
On the pulse of these events the British kept practiced and
interested fingers. When Herzl came to London
THE WANDERING JEW
43
whose interests were coincidental to this scheme of development?
had created ready-made for him a galaxy of famous and influential supporters. Powerful organs such as the Daily Chronicle and Pall Mall Gazette were demanding
the fulfillment of the Zionist program and calling for a conference of the
Powers to consider it.
Herzl had already appeared at the sittings of the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration. Given the honor of being the first witness on
the problem of Jewish homelessness and immigration, he had been questioned
closely by the Commission for an exact definition of what was meant by Zionism.
He replied with his usual straightforwardness that it meant the establishment of
a Jewish State under absolute guarantees of political control, and nothing
else.
The British now took a direct hand and offered the territory of Uganda West Africa on a full autonomous
basis under chartered rights, "a recognition," states the official
British Peace Handbook No. 162, "that Herzl and his following were
regarded seriously in serious quarters." Supporting the Government in this
well-intentioned offer was a young M.
P. named Arthur James Balfour.
But the Russian Zionists rebelled; and at the next Congress the whole
Uganda Palestine
Within the Zionist movement itself various schisms began to develop.
The widest of these, was that of the so-called Practical Zionists who derived
from the old Chovevi Zion Society. They were bitterly opposed to Herzl's
policy, were uninterested in political guarantees, and stressed `cultural' and
`practical' work.
One of their rising stars was the young chemist Chaim Weitzman.
Their leader was Achad Ha'am, a little pinch-faced man with a goatee
and the eye of an ascetic.
Achad Ha'am represented all that his arch-enemy Herzl would never
understand in his lifetime. He was born in a little village in the Pale and was
brought up in an ultra-orthodox home where secular knowledge was tabu. He literally
concentrated on the Talmud, and his knowledge of that book became so great that
44
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
local rabbis would come to consult him when he was still in his early
teens. He was a typical hair-splitter in words, the personified ideal of the
spirit of philosophic dialecticism in the flesh.
He considered all `political' Zionists to be barbarians. "What
we lack," he wrote, "is a fixed spot to serve as a national spiritual
center, a safe retreat, not for Jews, but for Judaism . . . The foundation of a
single great school," he insisted, "of learning or art in Palestine
Fanatically understood by the queer type of scholastic whose soul
he interpreted, Achad Ha'am, if influence counts, was the most potent of all
the modern Zionist forces. Belittling Herzl as a wild dreamer, his influence
began to be apparent after the Tatter's death, and finally triumphed. He was an
extremist who could care much for idea and little for men, a product and
consequence of that tragic pariah world into which the gentiles had sequestered
Jehovah's people.
Herzl saw what Achad Ha'am did not - what, indeed, he was incapable
of seeing -that a free and living culture is not the source but the outcome of
an organized and stable life, and that this contemptuous attitude towards
political control could only end in one more ghettos - this time in Palestine
It is the Hebrew tragedy that the manly Herzl should have died
young and the visionary Ha'am should have lived to a ripe old age. On July 3, 1904 , harassed and worn,
the incomparable leader suddenly sickened and died. He was then only forty-four
years old.
The Zionist movement had already begun to be encumbered with
ideological contentions, and factions of various descriptions. Its leadership
fell in the hands of minor worthies, followers for the most part of Achad
Ha'am, who talked in learned? circumlocutory motions and all but smothered in
the mantle they had inherited. Even so, carried along by its own irresistible momentum,
Zionism continued to grow rapidly.
CHAPTER IV
THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
TOPOGRAPHY
Palestine Palestine Palestine
Britain Asia . She already held
fabulously rich India China
London
Palestine Palestine Palestine Palestine
Arabia to foment an insurrection there if possible.
Lawrence
Lawrence
London
Palestine Jordan Carolina Israel Downing Street had demanded
Trans-Jordan in the name of "the forthcoming Zionist Government," 36
and the French finally conceded the issue. Under the Leygues-Harding Agreement,
signed December 23, 1920 , in Paris Palestine Britain Iraq
Great Britain Palestine Hejaz was a clear violation of both the
spirit and letter of this provision.
The name `Palestine
Like its Hebrew equivalent, Pelesheth (Land of Wanderers Philistia . At first applied to a
small section of the coast it later spread to encompass the entire country. Until
the resurgent Zionist movement brought this area into the sphere of world
politics its identity was largely interchangeable with that of Syria Asia Minor but later
contracted to cover the confines of Palestine
With proprietary determination the Jew has always referred to his
homeland as Eretz Israel Land of Israel
By and large, this territory must be accounted one of the most stirringly
beautiful and, certainly, one of the most remarkable countries on the face of
Mother Earth. It is not to be wondered by those who have seen it that
"some of the finest visions of the true age of reason has been penned
within its borders." 2
Here in matchless beauty can be found every climate from tropical
to sub-alpine, and a bewildering variety of flora and fauna to match - all in a
half hour's ride. It is possible to pass through four different zones, from the
scotch fir in the hill country down to the date palm growing in its native soil
on the plains of Jordan
The valley of the Dead Sea , sultry and
depressing, lays thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean . From this strange
salt lake, almost visible to the naked eye is Jerusalem
45
46 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
nine thousand feet above the ocean calmly sunning itself below, and
becomes alpine. On the central range, snow has been known to reach a depth of
nearly two feet. This explains the feat of Benaiah who went down and slew a
lion in the midst of a cistern in the day o f the snow. The beast had strayed
up the Judean hills from Jordan
A fertile plain fronts the Mediterranean for the entire length of
the country except where rugged Carmel Judea , lie rolling foothills
studded with rich valleys. South of Jerusalem Edom valley of Esdraelon Asia and Africa , splits
the mountain range which spreads across Palestine Haifa Jordan
In an area but little larger than Vermont Judea to the opal shores of
the Dead Sea .
Yet in these neighboring hills the climate is so temperate that
first rate apples may be grown; and on the hottest days the nights are cool
enough to sleep under blankets.
The climate is divided roughly into a rainy and dry season, with a
short period of scorching desert winds called the Humseen.
The rain falling in the three winter months becomes a deluge.
Wild flowers follow each other in stunning confusion. Glittering like
precious gems, anemone, crocus, poppy, wild mignonette, oleander and narcissus
sparkle in the sun just as they must have once delighted the Hebrew women in
the old days.
Overhead, birds of all kinds make the air gay with their limpid notes.
Whole hosts of harmless lizards of every color dart like small genii across the
banks of hedge and sward. In the wilderness are tiny gazelles who look as if
they had been painted on the landscape. It is claimed that there are still
wolves, hyenas and
THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
47
jackals in the hills. Tristram speaks of foxes near Nablus
Beyond this eloquent native beauty, which the hand of barbarian man
is not powerful enough to destroy, the country has been stripped and starved. In
parts it is a veritable carcass of a land.
Travelers gazing on Palestine Land of Promise
The great oak forests of Gilead , Bashan and Lebanon Jordan Valley Judea except an
occasional goatherd, there is hardly a hilltop of the many within sight
which is not covered by the vestiges of some fortress or city of former ages. Where
now only forbidding rocks greet the eye, the soil on their steep sides was once
held securely in place by ingeniously devised terraces.
The indescribably wild state of the country, before the Zionists came,
is pictured graphically in the chronicles of the last century.
Some of the descriptions given are almost unbelievable. Churton
refers to the plain between Jerusalem Jordan Walpole
one of the most remarkable and best situated countries in the world,
without a population, without resources, without commerce." 7
West of the Jordan
48
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
brew irrigation works crumbling on the hillsides; remain to remind the
traveler that once this country was populated by a civilized people. Standing
on the Moab Moab Gilead and Bashan . That this vast region
was then one of the most fertile and populous on the globe is amply proven by
the multitude of ruins which dot its surface at the present day. From a single
outlook Merrill counted as many as forty ruined cities and towns.8 Buckingham
described "ruined
towns in every direction, both before, behind, and on every side of
us. . . There was not a tree in sight as far as the eye could reach." 9
Even in early Christian centuries Trans-Jordan * was so thickly settled
as to be honored with the seat of a bishopric. Many Greeks drifted in and
settled among the Syrian and Roman elements.
After the Fourth Century, the Bedouin Arab inundated the country
and left it a wilderness again, as it remains today.
The tumbling remains of fine marble baths, great columns, and
evidences
of a cultivated life now hushed in death, are looked upon by the
Arab with uncomprehending eye. Merrill, with the hurt conscience of a great
archaeologist, complained bitterly that these aboriginals were wantonly
smashing the famous ruins.
At Jerash alone are remains unexcelled by the best antiquities of
northern Damascus
Today the very names of these places are forgotten. The Bedu 10
herd their sheep in these deserted courts and make their rude beds of grass
among their stones. They extract the same blackmail, and if it is withheld,
sweep off the harvests in the same time-sanctified retaliation. Their frail houses
of hair had been * Trans-Jordan, the territory of the Jewish National Home
lying east of the River Jordan Jordan Transjordan :
THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
49
there four thousand years before, and are there again today
unchanged.
The whole of Eastern Palestine is incomparably more
fertile and better watered than the western third of the country. Draining it is
a number of large rivers, fed by innumerable springs, filled with fishes and
other aquatic life.
Travelers glowingly describe its rich soil and natural beauty.
Irby and Mangles mention "the vast variety of natural flora;
and downs with verdure so thick as to appear almost turf." 11 Lord Lindsay
declares that "the whole of the country . . . on the east of the Jordan Gilead "turning furrows which were nearly a mile
in length, and as straight as one could draw a line.”
This whole area across Jordan
JEWISH PRE-WAR SETTLEMENTS
Historians agree that there has been no period since the time of Joshua
when there has not been Jews in Palestine
The oldest identifiable community whose continuing record can be
established are the Jews of Pekiin, a village in the hills of upper Galilee near Safed, a group
which has not moved in two thousand years. This settlement is referred to in
the Talmud under the name of Tekoa, and then reappears more than a thousand years
later in the narrative of an early Sixteenth Century traveler.
At Bukeia in the mountains is another ancient community of Jews who
claim to be descended from Israelites living there before the Dispersion; and
the Samaritans at Sechem are known to have been there since the days of Nehemiah.
All through the Dispersion, Jews sought to return to their
50
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
homeland. They trickled in from all directions after each
catastrophe in the Diaspora. Most of them succumbed to massacre, forced
conversion and disease. The rest were turned into broken spirited men whose
cowed eyes became hypnotized by mere liturgical devotions.
The first practical steps for modern colonization were taken in Russia 1880, a group of students,
mostly from the University of Odessa Land of Israel
Students with soft white hands and determined wills, began to arrive
in small groups. The great-hearted Englishman, Oliphant, his head full of
idyllic schemes for buying the country from the Sultan, found a number of them
stranded in Galilee . He helped they found what is now the prosperous
colony of Zichron Jacob, near Haifa
Soon at Petach Tikvah a thriving agricultural colony was
established.
Jewish resettlement had begun in dead earnest.
By 1883, three thousand of these hardy dreamers had landed in Jaffa
Progress continued quietly and steadily. Arabs attracted by the
magnetizing vitality of the returning Jew began to drift in from impoverished Syria Egypt
Exports from the port of Jaffa 682,000 in 1911, from C 264,000 in 1900.* A Blue Book
issued by the British Board of Trade in 1911 acknowledges that "the chief
feature * The Palestine Sterling
THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
51
of the economic development of Palestine
By 1914 the Jews had increased to over 100,000. There were now
fifty-four agricultural colonies, with a total area of 110,000 acres . New land was being
rapidly purchased, garden suburbs laid out. The all-Jewish city of Tel Aviv
investment of blood, courage, lives and money.
The official British Peace Handbook on Zionism thus describes the
settlements: "The Jewish agricultural colonies, which have grown up during
the past 25 years, show a level of agricultural and scientific development far
ahead of anything else in Palestine
So stood the Jewish effort at reclaiming their homeland, at the beginning
of the World War, when they wholeheartedly threw their destiny into the balance
with that of the Allies. They had already achieved a solid foundation for a
sound national economy.
Soon they were to have the solemn promise of the nations for a charter
which would finally end the tragedy of Jewish homelessness.
CHAPTER
CHAPTER V
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION - PALESTINE
Indirectly, the World War was fought for possession of the Near East . The natural route for
expansion of the mushrooming industrial growths of Europe lay in the direction
of the great sluggish masses of Asia where vast consumer
needs and untapped natural riches excited the cupidity of Europe 's imperialists.
All great conquerors whose interest was divided between East and
West have considered the possession of the land bridge between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates essential to their security.
Assyria and Egypt
It was pivotal to the empires of Macedon and Rome
Here Great Britain Russia Germany France
The only formidable competitor who developed during this period was
Germany
The Kaiser and his entourage realized that here was the path to power.
Moreover, it was here that they considered Britain India Berlin
52
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
53
clear pathway through the Balkans. The dying Turkish Empire was flooded with
German generals, engineers, diplomats and agents. "The Baghdad Mesopotamia . When it got to the Tigris and Euphrates , it would proceed to Basra Karachi Calcutta Delhi Whitehall
Here was the most potent threat the British Empire had faced in
generations. If the German plans were allowed to come to a head, the Reich
would be in an infinitely better position to deal commercially in the East than
Britain Berlin India
It was imperative to British strategy that the German drive to the
East be halted at the gateway of the Asiatic continent. It was apparent that Great Britain Near East if her Empire was to survive.
Like two great patient cats England Germany
two feline antagonists had stalked each other for a decade, tensely
awaiting der Tag, when the fight was unexpectedly precipitated by
the explosion at Sarajevo
Though the primary struggle was between the rival economic ambitions
of the English and Germans, the French too had their eye on this strategic sector.
In March 1915, Paris Syria Palestine 1915, M . Picot again insisted that the whole of
Syria France 1916, a secret agreement was concluded known as
the Sykes-Picot Agreement, dividing up the spoils of the `war for
democracy' in advance. Under this agreement Palestine Haifa Acre ,
54
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
which were to go to England France Damascus Aleppo Mosul
From 1788 till 1914, Great Britain India Germany France
EVENTS LEADING TO LORD BALFOUR'S COMMITMENT
By the autumn of 1917, after a startling attack by the Turks on the
Suez Canal , a wholly new idea had taken possession of the
minds of politicians and strategists. It was obvious that a protective bastion
had to be created to buttress the artery of communications with India Britain Palestine
of the proverbial two birds who were killed with one stone, a miracle
could be maneuvered to make it three. First, an end would be put to French
pretensions to control over this vital area. Scarcely less important, the
enthusiastic support of the Jews all over the world to the Allied cause could
be gained. And still a third factor, not to be overlooked, was the poverty of Judea and the surrounding desert.
If the Jews would undertake to form a country here and would invest the
necessary money, Britain
All this sounded too good to be true, and the Government began putting
out feelers to see if it could be finagled through. So
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
55
potent, in fact, did this new policy appear that already on November 22, 1915 a leading article in
the Manchester Palestine Egypt
From a purely military viewpoint, the friends of this idea in Britain Palestine Mediterranean a new dominion
associated with Britain England
Still other factors of pressing importance were at work. Lloyd George,
wartime Prime Minister, was anxious to bring over the United States Germany
ruler had once declared to Herzl, when the two met in Palestine Palestine Turkey the Hague
Aside from specifically British questions of policy, the hard-pressed
Allied spokesmen were poignantly aware of the instability of their ally Russia
the Eastern battlefront informing Jews that German victory
56
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
meant liberty for them; s and in all neutral countries adroit
advantage was being taken of the propaganda story which set the Kaiser's
legions up as crusaders in a war of liberation.
Thus in a large sense the alliance of the Western Powers with Russia Palestine
Among the details is a significant aide-memoirs by the British Embassy
in Petrograd to Sazanov, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs,
on March 13, 1916 , reading ". . .
Although as is known, many Jews are indifferent to the
idea of Zionism, yet a numerous, and the most influential, part of Jewry
in all the countries would very much appreciate an offer of agreement
concerning Palestine
"If the above view is correct, then it is clear that by
utilizing the Zionist idea important political results can be achieved.
Among them will be the conversion, in favor of the Allies, of Jewish
elements in the Orient, in the United States
". . . The only purpose of H. M. Government is to find some arrangement,
sufficiently attractive to the majority of the Jews, which might facilitate the
conclusion of an agreement ensuring the Jewish support."
The rumors that Germany Turkey London
When the inevitable happened and the great Russian bear began to
collapse, the question of an alliance with Jewry took on even greater importance.
Jewish influence in Russia
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
57
in the revolution - but they were greatly divided. "Some were for
peace at any price, some for the maintenance of the alliance with the Western Powers;
many were utterly uninterested in Zionism and had found a messiah in Karl Marx
. . ." 7 But the great bulk of the Russian Jews were known to be Zionists;
and with calculating eye the British computed that the alliance with Jewry
might have permanent value. Zionism became an important political issue.
Negotiations were instituted with the Jewish leaders to sound them
out on this pressing subject and to determine their demands.
By February 1917 the way had been prepared for a formal meeting
with Sir Mark Sykes of the British Foreign Office. Soon after, Mr.
. Nahum Sokolov, representative of the Zionist Organization, opened discussion
with the French and Italian Governments.
In July the Zionists submitted a memorandum to the British Cabinet
suggesting the formula to be used in an official pronouncement of sympathy for
their cause.
STRUGGLE WITH THE NON-ZIONISTS
If the purposes and aims of the Zionist movement needed clarification
in anyone's mind, a circumstance at once occurred supplying that deficiency. The
intentions of the Government were no sooner manifest than a loud and violent
protest was set up by certain classes of Jews in England France America
Among them were the `new thinkers' who, enveloped in a cloud of
Marxist pharisaism, saw the projected return to Zion
movement which violated their `deep Socialist convictions.'
Others were the great capitalists, who were afraid that any
declaration in favor of a Jewish State might place their hard-won social
position in jeopardy. Included in this strange gathering of the clans were the
ultra orthodox fanatics who were awaiting the divine Messiah; and the Reform
Rabbis whose tissue-paper houses this new movement seemed destined to destroy.
The Conjoint Committee, the most influential of all Jewish bodies
in England
58
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
of the Zionist demands, asserting that the Jews were only a
religious community and not a nation. "The granting of a charter for Palestine
Immediately the Zionists replied with vigor. The press of the day
was full of the argument, with' the Government and the entire gentile world
solidly on the pro-Zionist side .8
"Under the pressure of Allied needs," says the official
British historian at the subsequent Peace Conference, "the objections of the
anti-Zionists were either overruled or the causes of objections removed. .
." s At that time the Zionists could have practically written their own
ticket, since there was no subject on which everyone but the Jews themselves
were so unanimously agreed as the matter of a pro-Zionist declaration. The only
powerful opponent of this course in the Government was the India
ultra-Islamic under a Jewish Secretary of State.
Although the members of the Conjoint Committee had been hopelessly
buried under an avalanche of public ridicule, certain changes were made in the
wording of the Declaration to placate them.
As early as October 19 16, the Zionist leaders in Britain Palestine
with the aspirations of the Zionist movement.”
On February 7, 1917 , Sir Mark Sykes
communicated with Weitzman and Sokolov, together with M. Georges Picot,
representing the French Government." This was the first of a series of
round-table conferences. Its full minutes, as well as those of subsequent
sessions, were transmitted to the American Zionist Organization by officials of
the British War Office.
Throughout the negotiations President Wilson who, as early as 1911
had made known his profound interest in the Zionist idea, was intimately consulted;
and all drafts of the proposed Declaration were submitted to the White House
for approval.
The formula accepted in July 1917 by the British Cabinet read:
"H. M. Government, after considering the aims of the
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
59
Zionist Organization, accepts the principle of recognizing
Palestine as the National Home of the Jewish people, and the right of the
Jewish people to build up its national life in Palestine
"H. M. Government regards as essential for the realization of this
principle, the grant of internal autonomy to Palestine
"The conditions and forms of the internal autonomy and a charter
for the Jewish National Colonizing Corporation should, in the view of H. M.
Government, be elaborated in detail and determined with the representatives of
the Zionist Organization." 11
One of the changes introduced to mollify the anti-Zionist Jews was
the substitution of the phrase "the establishment of a Jewish National
Home in Palestine Palestine
By November 2, 1917 , after its wording had
been sufficiently
emasculated to suit the `ideals' of Jews all around, Lord Balfour placed
it in the form of a letter to the pro-Zionist, Lord Rothschild, reading as
follows:
"I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty's
Government the following declaration of sympathy with the Jewish Zionist
aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in
Palestine Palestine
"I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the
knowledge of the Zionist Federation.”
Ironically enough, the second part of the Declaration, which was
since construed by Britain
60
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
was inserted on the insistence of the Zionists themselves, partly
to meet the objections of Sir Philip Magnus, Mr. . Claude Montefiore and other
powerful non-Zionist Jews; and partly as a symbol of that "nobility of
social vision" with which the strangled ghetto mind was obscured. 13
Written by Achad Ha'am, this proviso was not in any remote sense
considered as a modification of the Declaration but rather as a polite sop to
quiet the fears of the non-Zionist Jews, and an equally considerate makeweight
assurance to the various religious communities scattered over the Holy Land .
All of these alterations and changes in the British Government's
commitment, says Herbert Sidebotham, then secretary to Premier
Lloyd George, "were inserted in deference to the opinion of a minority, in
the hope of securing complete unanimity among Jews . . . It was certainly no
British interest, either at this stage or later, that weakened the scope of the
promise and infected it with ambiguity." 14
The Zionist negotiators, naive and inexperienced, felt that the introduction
of these nice, virtuous phrases in their magna carat was a fitting and seemly
gesture with which to begin their great adventure. Herzl, who had the gift of
seeing beyond his nose, would have known better.
WHAT DID THE DECLARATION MEAN?
In view of the cool disclaimers which were to come later, it is interesting
to note what interpretation was placed on the British Government's Declaration
to the Jews at the time. Whatever bearing it might have had on the commendable
questions of humaneness and justice, it could hardly be regarded as a wholly benevolent
gesture. Balfour himself, handsome, clever and icy, was no mere romantic. He
who had pacified Ireland
The benefits immediately accruing to the Allied cause need hardly
be argued. Certainly the tremendous number of Jewish
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
61
soldiers fighting in the Armies of the Western Powers were fired by
this warm earnest of good faith. Nor can one estimate the weight of Jewish
influence in neutral countries, which dropped heavily on the Allied side of the
scales. Nor the enthusiastic aid given to the Allenby invasion of Palestine Palestine
Not only was the effect of this superb piece of propaganda felt in
all neutral countries but it was immediate in its reaction on the morale of the
Central Empires, with their stew of subject races, accelerating the cleavage
then taking place between the subject nationalities and their overlords. Worthy
of note, too, is the boldness with which the German Zionist Conference in Berlin Palestine Palestine
Wholeheartedly the great and important body of fundamentalist Christian
opinion, hating war for any proclaimed purpose, rose to the bait. Jannaway
expresses this profound conviction in his book, Palestine and the World,
asserting that Biblical Prophecy was being fulfilled exactly as predicted, thus
placing Jehovah squarely on the side of the Western Powers.
"Indeed," says a semi-official British publication,
"support of the Zionist ambitions promised much for the Allies . . . That
it is in purpose a direct contract with Jewry is beyond question." 18
This was acknowledged plainly by General Smuts, member of the War
Cabinet, who speaking retrospectively some years later, asserted that "the
Declaration was intended to rally the powerful
62
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Jewish influence for the Allied cause at the darkest hour of the War”;
a statement which David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and others,
emphatically reiterated.
The Declaration was unreservedly endorsed by the other Powers.
On June 4, 1917 the French Government,
through its Minister, M. Cambon, formally committed itself to "the
renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel China
themselves." 17
In America
President Wilson wrote that "the Allied nations, with the
fullest concurrence of our own Government and people, are agreed that in all of
Palestine
In gratitude the American Jewish Congress cabled H. M.
Government, on November 2, 1917 , its desire that Great Britain League of Nations , as may be formed,
to assure the development of Palestine
In the United States Holy Land ." The minutes
of its sessions show that this understanding had not altered by an iota five
years later, when the American Congress was induced to put its seal of
approval, by resolution, on the selection of Great Britain Palestine
The utterances of the Cabinet ministers who framed the Declaration
were no less emphatic. General Smuts asserted that "in generations to come
you will see a great Jewish State rising there once more." Declared Lloyd
George grandly ". . . Great Britain Armenia Judea for the Jews."
And on another
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
63
occasion he lumped the whole matter in a nutshell, telling the excited
Zionists: "We have given you national existence. In your hands lies your
national future." Lord Balfour was no less clear. "The destruction of
Judea 1900 years ago," he asserted, "was
one of the greatest historical crimes, which the Allies now endeavor to
remedy."
British newspapers were as one in their mighty paean of approval.
Without exception they spoke of "the new Jewish State which is
to be formed under the suzerainty of a Christian Power.”
Across the water, the American newspapers echoed these remarks in
the same expansive detail. A representative editorial of the time explains:
"The Zionists are that group of Jews who wish to found a Jewish Republic
in Palestine Jerusalem
. . The British cabinet has pronounced in favor of Zionism."18
CHAPTER VI
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS - MARCHING JEWS
Anti-Zionists invariably stress the part played by the Arabs during
the War, inferring that the sons of Ishmael earned their patrimony, and that
the Jews, who had done nothing, insolently demanded a chunk of the Arab pie
when the spoils were being divided.
Actually the Jewish share in the victory was significant, well justifying
in value received the solemn bargain made with world Jewry to reconstitute the Land of Israel
In the neutral countries the Allied cause, associated everywhere in
the Jewish mind with justice and equity, was given invaluable support. Jews
fought in the armies of the entire Western Powers. Over a hundred thousand
Jewish soldiers were killed in action. In the British Empire itself, out of a total
community of 425,000 Jews, 50,000 were in uniform. In true Maccabean spirit
they earned more than their share of honors and decorations on the battlefield.
One of them was the heroic Sir John Monash, leader of the Australians.
Behind the lines, the Zionist leader Chaim Weitzman was the genius
directing the Admiralty Chemical Laboratories. According to Lloyd George, he
"absolutely saved the British army at a critical moment" by devising
a substitute for exhausted English supplies of acetone, used in making the
basic material in gunpowder.
Among others, Sir Alfred Stern invented the tank, which saved the
Western Powers from annihilation during the latter part of the fighting. Solomon
J. Solomon created the idea of camouflage, allowing harassed Allied shipping to
run the U-boat blockade. Everywhere Jewish brains, money, valor and enthusiasm
were placed wholeheartedly at the service of the Allies.
64
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 65
In Palestine
In 1915 Palestinian refugees in Egypt Zion Zion
In the meanwhile a brilliant young Russian writer, Vladimir Jabotinsky,
had been scurrying around in an attempt to organize a legion of Jewish
volunteers from the Diaspora countries to fight directly under the Jewish flag.
With rare insight he pointed out that words and promises were soon forgotten
and that the most enduring Jewish title to the Holy Land would come from a
direct investment of Jewish blood under a Jewish flag.
The influential capitalist Jews were aghast. They put pressure on
the British War Office to stop this little impassioned Zionist with the under
slung jaw who they believed was jeopardizing their position in the gentile
world with his lunatic nonsense.
But the British needed this Jewish regiment for publicity purposes:
they had made themselves the champion of the oldest betrayed nationality in
existence, impressive to the Poles, Czechs, Armenians, etc., who had been
listening to the noble assurances of the Western Powers with their tongues in
their cheeks. The War Office consequently overrode the objections of the
anti-Zionists and allowed Jabotinsky to form The Jewish Regiment.
As the protest of the scared English Jews became louder, the regiment's
name was changed to The Judeans, official sub-title for the 38th Royal
Fusiliers. Following hard on its heels came another Jewish battalion, the 39th Fusiliers.
66
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
sheer romance of the historic occasion. At a giant mass meeting seeing
the Jewish warriors off, the Hon. G. N. Barnes, M.P., spoke fulsomely in the
name of His Majesty the King. He eulogized the Jewish soldiers as "fellow
fighters for freedom," and assured his listeners that "the British
Government proclaimed its policy of Zionism because it believes that Zionism is
identified with the policy and aims for which good men and women are struggling
everywhere.”
In Palestine Zion
Wildly enthusiastic, the able-bodied Jews in the conquered
territory
enlisted. With an appreciation almost reverential the British Peace
Handbook No. 6o announced that "the most important event which has taken
place . . . since our occupation, has been the recruiting of the Palestine
The distinguished service rendered by these Jewish regiments is
indelibly written in the records. Said General Bartholomew "For the Turks
the end of the War was dependent upon maintenance of the Jordan Jordan
contributing in great measure to the brilliant victory at Damascus
This was amply confirmed by General Chaytor, leader of the
Australian and New Zealand Jordan Valley
Of fully as great importance was the voluntary intelligence service
rendered by the celebrated Nili Society all over the Holy
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 67
Land. Organized by the scientist Alexander Aronson, 3 its daring exploits
were largely instrumental in the success of Allenby's campaign. Far from giving
the invaders any help, the Palestine
Spiritedly the Palestinian volunteers addressed themselves to Colonel
Patterson when he landed with his Jewish boys: "We are convinced that Britain Britain England
They had every reason to feel `convinced.' In April 1917 the
British War Department had issued a statement on War Aims in the Near East in which it was
proclaimed that "Palestine Palestine
The Suzerain Government shall grant full and free rights of immigration
into Palestine Palestine
Charters or statutes of similar colonizing bodies." These
statements were simultaneously reduced by the Allied war propagandists to brief
slogans and exploited to the fullest advantage everywhere.
Addressing the first Conference of Jews in the liberated area, Major
W. Ormsby-Gore, later as Colonial Secretary to suffer a serious case of
amnesia, orated for His Majesty's Government as follows
"Mr. Balfour has made a historic declaration with regard to the
Zionists: that he wishes to see created and built up in
68
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
The marching Jews listened. The great dream which had inspired the
Jewish mind for so many long centuries, seemed about to be realized. They believed
Britain
REVOLTING TRIBESMEN
Part of Lloyd George's technique during the War was connected with
the old art of inciting dissatisfaction within the enemy camp. This practice
had proven especially effective with the moribund Austro-Hungarian Empire, and
several capable agents, including the famous Lawrence
The English started with little in their favor. To speak of Turkish
oppression of the Arab was actually an absurdity, unless one referred to the
Levantine Christian on the coast. The constitution of the Ottoman Empire was the Arab's Koran
from which the Turk derived his law, religion and culture. Even the Turkish
language became half Arabic; and it was only with the later revolution under
Kemal Pasha that the decadent Arab
cultural pattern which ruled the life of the Ottoman nation was eliminated.
Under Turkish suzerainty the Arab areas were virtually independent,
razed by local chiefs whose authority was recognized? by the Sultan. Arabs held
high position all over the Empire. The Sultan's Guards were almost completely Arab.
The schools and army were dominated by them. Even the Prime
Minister, Mahmoud Chawkat Pasha, was an Arab.
The whole system of Muslimism itself practically precluded any idea
of national sentiment, until it began to arise under the stimulus of British agitators.
In Baghdad
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 69
mass of townsmen and fellaheen were utterly apathetic to any nationalist
feeling. Regional sectarianism was everywhere the rule. The Shiahs did not
desire a Sunni government; nor would the Sunnis tolerate a Shiah rule, while
the mass of tribesmen did not desire any government at all.
As matters rested, the British were compelled to create a
completely
synthetic situation if they were to have the great Arab revolt come
off. They decided to rely on private rivalries and ambitions; and here they
made a shrewd guess: the desert was a hotbed of rapacity, hatreds and feuds.
Sitting immobile in the Hejaz was the Sherif
Hussein, descendant of the Prophet and unbending hater of Christians and all
their works. Almost alone among the Arabian princes he was the nominee of the
Turks. His measure may be gained from the fact that he even prohibited
talking-machines in his kingdom, believing them to be the invention of the devil.
On the other side of Hussein was his mortal enemy, the gigantic Ibn
Saud of Nejd . Saud, a good hater who believed in the old
Mohammedan tenets of conversion by disemboweling, was also in conflict with the
powerful Emir of Hail, who was being supported by the Turks.
The British wanted Hussein for the moral effect they presumed his
name would have on the Faithful, and made overtures to him early. Part of these
`negotiations' lay in the bland threat to feed him outright to the ferocious
Saud, to whom they were handing a subsidy of 45,000; a month to insure his neutrality.
To make the argument more pointed, Britain Egypt Mecca Medina Hejaz with bankruptcy, since
this pilgrimage provided the barren land with its chief source of revenue.
The Sherif had still other and more urgent considerations to hasten
his decision. One of these was the British naval blockade of the Arabian coast,
"inevitably aggravating the internal distress caused by the lack of pilgrims."
8
That Hussein's over-lordship of the Holy Places would make him an
acceptable leader to all the Arabs of the Peninsula turned out to be an
error. Even at that time, his mortal enemy, Saud,
70
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
was the principal power in South Central Arabia as was another mutual
opponent, Ibn Rashid of Hayil, in the North Central part.
Nor would the great sheikhs, such as those of the Huwallah, the
Shammar, or the Mutair accept Hussein's over lordship, or even permit him to
speak for them. 7
The whole business degenerated into a confused medley of intrigue,
directed by a multitude of British agencies acting under conflicting
instructions and authority; the powerful India
Just what kind of `Arab patriot' Hussein was, may be learned from
the fact that he allowed a contingent of volunteers to be recruited in his
territory for the abortive Turkish expedition to the Suez Canal in February 1915, and
used his influence to assist the crew of the German cruiser Emden Red Sea Coast.9 Thus he negotiated
with Turks and British alike until he could make sure he was backing the right
horse. Actually all he wanted or hoped to secure was complete independence in
his own corner of southwestern Arabia , military support
against his rival, Ibn Saud and unfettered control of the lucrative pilgrim
revenue.
Finally, the British High Commissioner in Egypt
In order to force the `Arab patriot' to move, the British had to
submit to as fine a mulcting as they have ever experienced.
The Agreement entered into early in 1916, reads that "The Government
of Great Britain
It read: "Foreign Office has approved payment of £ 10,000 to Abdullah
and £ 50,000 to Sherif of Mecca
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 71
a cool £ 1,000,000 in materials and money,
and stimulated his patriotism with grandiose promises of personal power."
Nothing else than this flood of gold, writes Lawrence Sinai Peninsula , comments that Arab
actions from
start to finish "proved that they were only interested in the revolution
for three objects in the following order of importance - gold, loot, and the
satisfactory clearing up of their own daraks or areas." 12 Indeed, the
only time a full muster of the `patriots' could be counted on was payday.
The whole `campaign of the desert' was a strangely inept piece of
business, vastly enlarged on by British publicists for outside consumption. A
good account of it is given by the French General, Edouard Bremond; in his book
Le Hedjaz dans la Guerre Mondiale. Hussein himself is described as "an obstinate,
narrow-minded, suspicious character," so insanely jealous of his son
Feisal that he was forever issuing from his throne in Mecca
Observers, neutral and friendly, have described the character of
these purchased levies. They were not, by our standards, good soldiers.
Bloodless victories were the kind that they appreciated, and Lawrence
and Lawrence Lawrence
Likewise, we could not use the men of one tribe in the territory of
another." 16 With sardonic resignation he observes: "My men were
blood enemies of thirty tribes and only for my hand
72
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
over them would have murdered in the ranks every day. Their feuds
prevented them combining against me; while their unlikeness gave me sponsors
and spies wherever I went or sent. . ." 17
Often the Arabs refused to fight at all because they were not satisfied
with the amount of loot they were receiving. Lawrence himself was once
abandoned with two companions in the middle of an engagement, his Arab allies
having gone raving mad with the lust of plunder. In their frenzy they fought among
themselves, and soon were all `missing,' "having dispersed with their spoil."
Even in victory they did not hesitate to leave
their own wounded lying helpless on the ground while they looted.
Under these circumstances, says Lawrence
of a spectacular battle or the capture of a large town with its garrison.
The British, in fact, had their hands full with their wild allies.
Aviators had to fly at a considerable height to avoid being shot at
by the Bedouins, who had "an irresistible desire to shoot anything that
was moving fast." 19 They found the Arab chiefs volcanic and suspicious
and ever ready to resent the presence of infidels. "Many of them,"
writes Captain Hart, "behaved as if the British officers were their
servants, and set an example of rudeness that was imitated by their followers,
as
well as by their slaves." Lawrence
The whole Lawrence
He was a brave and clever man, but the truth of the
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 73
matter is that he never penetrated into Arabia at all, and merely went
down the western coastal fringe from Mecca Arabia could hardly have
known of his existence, "while the suggestion implied of Arabian
unification under a foreigner and a non-Moslem is, of course, a myth." 23
His entire `army' of purchased irregulars did not amount to a row
of peanuts when compared with the Arabs fighting on the Turkish side against
the detested infidel. Simultaneous with the Sherif's commitment to the Allies,
his powerful neighbor Hussein Mabeirig, chief of the Rabegh Harb, joined the Turks;
and facing the invaders was at least one entire Ottoman division made up
entirely of Arab men and officers.
The number who participated in the `revolt' were an uncertain and
fluctuating quantity, "simply gathering," says Bertram Thomas,
"for some particular expedition in numbers that sometimes reached a few
thousand, but were more often only a few hundred." Lloyd George estimated
their total number to aggregate "but a few thousand horsemen,"
remarking that "the vast majority of their race in the Great War were
fighting for
their Turkish conquerors." 24
There have been few peoples in history who have gotten so much for
giving so little. In Iraq
ripped open in search of the gold liras which the Arabs thought the
soldiers had swallowed. Graves containing Turkish and
English dead were despoiled for any articles which might have been buried with them.
Throughout the Turkish Empire the phrase Khayin Arab
(treacherous Arab) became an ugly proverb.25
As shown by the records, as far as Palestine
74 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Trans-Jordan it was the Jewish Legions who, having assisted the English
to take the passages of the Jordan River, marched on to capture Es Salt, then
considered its principal town. Lawrence
At this time the dazzling fiction of a Palestinian Arab struggle against
the Turks had not yet been invented. The British themselves, roiled by the
disinclination of Palestine Lawrence
Syrians, of whom six `ratted' and four deserted. No Palestinian Arab
is mentioned by Lawrence
to speak pompously of Arab nationalism in Palestine
This class, while regretting the opportunities for illegitimate gain
offered by Turkish rule, has no real political cohesion, and, above all, no
power of organization." There was in fact not a single Arab personality in
Palestine Burton
Despite the ado subsequently made over the vaunted promises to
Hussein, all the evidence indicates that until British policy shifted after the
War, the idea that Palestine Lawrence Syria Palestine
McMahon himself vigorously denied that any pledge had been
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 75
given to Hussein which could be construed to mean that Palestine July
11, 1922 , Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for the
Colonies, declared: "No pledges were made to the Palestine Palestine Hejaz to anything.
When Hussein finally proclaimed himself Commander of the Faithful,
it proved a fatal step, hardening against him the Wahabis and other fanatic
Moslem groups in whose eyes the Sherif was an infidel backslider. London, too,
was tiring of his incessant demands and arrogance; and burned with rage when the
new King of the Hejaz refused to sign the
Treaty of Versailles League of Nations under British
tutelage. Quietly they withdrew their support from the recalcitrant Hussein and
let it be known that he was now on his own.27 Saud, who had been waiting for
this moment, needed no further invitation. He promptly occupied Mecca Cyprus Hejaz and Sultan of Nejd .
While the Sherif was engaged in this death struggle with his ancient
enemy, Britain Red Sea port of Aqaba
On May 27, 1925 , the British
Government regretfully informed the Commander of the Faithful that if he would
not accede to this demand, it "would have to take Aqaba and Maan by force."
On June 18, both towns became part of Transjordan .
Here was created the need for a fresh departure in British Arabic policy
since their new protege, Saud, would not accept the fact of British possession gracefully;
he continued to roar with aggrieved self-righteousness that he had been robbed.
This friction, which persists until today, resulted in still another of
76
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Whitehall's famous zigzags, this time back in the direction of Abdullah
of the House of Hussein.
THE ARAB VIEW OF ZIONISM
During all the period that the Zionists had been without benefit of
Balfour Declaration or Mandatory `assistance,' the attitude of the Arabs toward
the Jewish National Movement had been one of almost unanimous approval. In 1906,
Farid Kassab, famous Syrian author, had expressed the view uniformly held by Arabs:
"The Jews of the Orient are at home. This land is their only fatherland. They
don't know any other." 28 A year later
Dr. Gaster reported that he had "held conversations with some of
the leading sheikhs, and they all expressed themselves as very pleased with the
advent of the Jews, for they considered that with them had come Barakat, i.e.,
blessing, since the rain came in due season." 29
The Moslem religious leader, the Mufti, was openly friendly, even
taking a prominent part in the ceremony of laying the foundation stone for the Hebrew University Mt. Scopus
Throughout Arabia the chiefs were for
the most part distinctly pro-Zionist; and in Palestine
Land acquisition was easy. Commercial intercourse between Arab and
Jew was constant and steady. In the face of the practical regard with which the
impoverished natives viewed these queer Moskubs 30 who brought with them manna
from heaven, the anti-Zionist elements, if they existed, kept silent. Remarkably
enough, the incoming Zionists, vigorous, modern, and capable, were treated with
high respect, while the native Jew still remained despised.
The Arab National Movement itself, puny, inexperienced, and hated
by the huge Levantine population who continued to regard themselves simply as
Ottoman subjects, looked to the
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS? 7
strong, influential Zionist Organization for sympathy and
assistance.
Hussein of the Hejaz who had been booted
upstairs by the British into a position of recognized authority in the Arab Nationalist
Movement after the War, distrusted European nations and their statesmen to the
very marrow of his bones. He looked to the Zionists, as a kindred folk, for the
financial and scientific experience of which the projected Arab state would
stand badly in need. When the Balfour Declaration was communicated to him in
January 1918, he had replied "with an expression of good will towards a
kindred Semitic race." 31
In May of the same year, at Aqaba where he held court and made
camp, Hussein was visited by Dr. Weitzman, head of the Zionist Commission. At
this desert conference the British Government and the Arab Bureau in Cairo
Feisal, dark, majestic son of the Sherif, spoke as the Arab
representative.
Intimate mutual cooperation between the two Movements was pledged. The
Zionists were to provide political, technical and financial advisers to the Arabs;
and it was agreed that Palestine
This alliance fitted perfectly with Hussein's ideas.
Basic hostility to all Christian powers characterized father and son,
who felt that the Jews were the indispensable allies, and indeed the
instruments, of a new Arab renaissance. They regarded a dominantly Jewish Palestine Arabia ; and were anxious for
a rapid development of the Peninsula if it were to become
capable of resisting the attacks which their weakness must sooner or later invite.
When Feisal came to Europe in 1919 representing
the Arab cause, the Zionists submitted their plans to him. Both Feisal and
Lawrence approved of them, and early in 1919 these conversations culminated in
a Treaty of Friendship. Solemnly signed, this convention provided for the
"closest possible collaboration"
in the development of the Arab State Commonwealth of Palestine
78
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
considered; 32 Mohammedan Holy Places were to be under Mohammedan control;
the Zionist Organization undertook to provide
economic experts to the new Arab State Palestine
On March 3, I9I9, Feisal acting officially for the Arab movement, wrote:
"We Arabs look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our
deputation in Paris
The Arab leaders placed themselves on record everywhere in an
obvious effort to attain Zionist support for their own aspirations, then under
the cloud of European Imperialist ambitions.
A representative example is Feisal's public communication to Sir
Herbert Samuel, pleading the need to "maintain between us that harmony so
necessary for the success of our common cause."
On meticulous English records, carefully buried in the Government vaults,
the entire story is written in comprehensive detail.
At all discussions British representatives were present.
Major Ormsby-Gore was liaison officer on the ground.
It was he who pulled the strings between Arab and Jew, at a time
when Zionism was still persona grata to the gentlemen who rule Whitehall
THE MILITARY JUNTA
Whatever the mighty deeds and feats of derring-do by English arms
elsewhere in the Great War, it is not a fact that they alone conquered Palestine
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 79
When with pennants flying, Sir Edmund Allenby made his historic
entry into Jerusalem December 9, 1917 , the Hebrew battalions
were also there. Sir John Monash's Australians were the bulk of his effectives.
Under his command, among others, was a contingent of French Colonials and a
force of Italian Bersaglieri from Libya
the other by Major d'Augustino, the French and Italian
representatives
respectively.
It was understood all around that the expressed Jewish wish was to
have the British in control during the early period when the foundations of the
Jewish National Home were to be laid.
The Zionists were at the time much afraid of the practical results which
might follow from the International control favored by the French and Italians;
and they looked on the English as their friends and sponsors. Under this Jewish
insistence the Latins generously allowed their interests to lapse and the
English military was left in complete authority.
The surrender of Jerusalem Temple
But hardly had the Turks been driven out when it became apparent to
Jew and Arab alike that the entire Administration was uncompromisingly opposed
both to the letter and the spirit of the Declaration. In his solemn
proclamation after taking the Capital, Allenby spoke as if the Declaration had
never been issued.
In fact no mention was made of the Jewish National Home in any
official announcement in Palestine May 1, 1920 .
Even all references to the Jewish Legion, unstintingly praised in the
military dispatches f or its gallantry in action, were suppressed by G.H.Q.
from the dispatches as published in the Palestine
80
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Weitzman and his cohorts had been used to dealing with suave
statesmen whose assurances were still ringing in their ears.
Balfour had just reiterated that "no one is now opposed to Zionism.
The success of Zionism is secure." 35 Ormsby-Gore had even gone so far as
to urge the immediate creation of a Jewish passport. In Jerusalem
agreed to, read: "Jewish opinion would prefer Palestine British Empire ; but its
administration should be largely entrusted to Jews of the Colonist type. . .
Zionists of this way of thinking believe that, under such conditions, the
Jewish population would rapidly increase until the Jew became the predominant partner
of the combination.”
The Zionists were under the impression that they had "gained the
adhesion of the Powers to practically the exact terminology of the Basle program adopted in
1897" under the direction of Herzl. 3B They were totally unprepared for
the unexpected attitude of the Military, and stood around rubbing their hands
in consternation.
The Generals, looking on the pro-Zionist commitment of the Foreign
Office as little less than criminal lunacy, virtually refused to carry out London Cairo Syria Palestine
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
81
In his mind's eye he already considered Palestine
The Zionists were put in their place with a bang. Despite the
Jewish majority in Jerusalem Jaffa
The attitude of the Generals toward the Jews was contemptuous and hostile;
and subordinates were swiftly responsive to the cue supplied by their superior officers.
General Money asserted with cool complacency: "I have asked many people in
position - in England England
the Holy Land had been handed over
to Weitzman who had demanded it as his pound of flesh for having invented
"in the nick of time . . . some ultra-Teutonic deadliness of gas and bombs."
38
Not un-instructive of the whole tone of this administration is the
case given by Horace Samuel, late Judicial Officer in Palestine
HANDRUBBING STATESMEN
It was tragic for the hopes of Zion
8
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
dreaming and weakness under attack which had characterized life in
the Russian Pale. Wise politicians would have known that the Balfour
Declaration was only the beginning of their troubles; that from this time
onward, the Jewish estate would have to be protected by every artifice that
stubborn determination and vigilance could invent. But the inexperienced
Zionists considered their provisional charter to be the solution to all problems.
Learnedly they mapped and blueprinted the perfect society which was gradually
to unfold its petals like a lovely
orchid in the new Land of Israel
Shocked by these pedantic vagaries, the shrewd Nordau urged that a
half million Jews be thrown into Palestine Holy Land under any conditions. The
practical difficulties to such a project were by no means insuperable, and,
fully as important, Arab resistance to the policy of the Jewish National
Home was at this time scarcely visible. Arab landowners, holders of
great vacant stretches, were under the impression that radical land legislation
was impending and were anxious to sell at any price. It was a golden
opportunity, never to come again.
But Zionist spokesmen at that time were opposed to what they
considered `premature' immigration, and wanted to build on `sound' lines. With
cautious logic they demanded to know "How will these people live? We have
no houses for them - they will starve! “41
"Let them live in tents - let them starve!" replied
Nordau.
"But you had better bring them in at once while the
opportunity lasts. Gentlemen, you have the Balfour Declaration: but you don't
know England
The Hierarchy, condemning Nordau and his followers as `impractical,
un-idealistic and headstrong,' was content to wait.
Its initiative had been immobilized by the collapse of Russia
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 83
only a social class and not a nation, they declared Jewish
nationalism
a counter-revolutionary activity.
Completely upset by this volcanic withdrawal of their principal source
of support, the bewildered Zionists did nothing.
Their complete reliance on the good faith of British assurances caused
them to neglect the most logical and prudent step, that of consolidating their
position quickly, before opposition forces had had time to collect themselves.
The British could hardly believe their eyes when the Jewish leaders,
obsessed with vague schemes for national ownership of the land, actually
welcomed the drastic legislation ordered by Allenby prohibiting land sales as
well as immigration. They did not even protest when the Jewish Legion was
ca'Talierly disbanded and told to leave the Holy Land for their points of origin,
though the balance of Allenby's force remained under arms.
In London July 24, 1918 , equipped, with the
authority of the British Government, to advise the Palestine
The Generals, who had been treating the Jewish population as if it
were non-existent, did not even bother with blandishments; they simply ignored
the Commission altogether. Not even a pretense of friendship with the
Government could be maintained.
With a pointed demonstration of contempt, when the Jewish National
Anthem was played at a concert in a Jewish school, General Money and his staff
deliberately kept their seats. Putty-souled Zionist leaders, who might have
used the incident for a complete show-down fight in a world where the advantage
of sympathy and legality was all theirs, remembered the knout of the Czars
sweated and kept silent.
84
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Incident multiplied itself on incident, and for twenty months the
status quo of the country remained unchanged. The only time the Zionist leaders
opened their mouths was when "the notorious anti-Semite Colonel Scott (acting
head of the judiciary) publicly insulted the Jews and the Jewish religion in
the corridor of the Law Courts."" The howl that went up,
forced by Orthodox institutions, compelled him to resign.
The Zionists were badly rattled. Wanting the hardihood necessary to
handle this admittedly difficult situation, they could only sit helplessly by,
hoping for the best. They watched apathetically while a civil agent of the
Government, an apostate Jew named Gabriel, busied himself in promoting British
commercial interests while the Jews, treated as social, commercial and
political outcasts were kept at a distance. With equal
meekness they stood by while the Government sabotaged Jewish efforts
to come to an understanding with the Arabs.
With conscious design the Administration fostered hostility between
Arab and Jew. It directly advised the amazed Arabs of Palestine Egypt
tenets of modern nationalism, in order to resist Jewish
`pretenses.'
And in London
The Arabs were not only instigated and advised, but supplied with
funds, and their arguments ghost-written by Englishmen in high places. They
proved a tolerably good investment.
Their ready compliance may be seen in the very convenient demands put
forward in the Third Arab Palestine Holy Land be not separated from Syria
During all this time the Military had been playing a high game of
politics on its own, maneuvering carefully to present the forthcoming Peace
Conference with a fait accompli which would set the lily-livered civilian
officials in London
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 85
their heels. Tension was strong between British and French as to
who should control the Eastern Mediterranean . The French, traditional
protectors of Syria Sidon Jerusalem
The Generals aimed at one big Arab state or federation of states,
to include the Hejaz , Iraq Syria Palestine Egypt Britain Palestine Syria Levant or a Zionist policy in
Palestine
Now began a technique of instigation and incitement from which the
Anglo-Saxon rulers of the Holy Land have never varied
wherever they had a point to be gained. Tension between France England London
forwarded the protest to Palestine
themselves.
Matters came to a head in 1920 when Feisal staged a revolt against
the French in Damascus Palestine Syria
the Balfour Declaration in the face of native hostility, the
Generals
arranged a pogrom in Jerusalem League of Nations , which had not yet
officially named a mandatory, would be forced to `recognize the rights' of the
native population and cancel out the Zionist adventure.
86
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
POGROM AND WORLD HORROR
Poland Germany Ukraine Palestine Lebanon Valley
London Turkey
The Governor of Jerusalem London
When Colonel Patterson, staunch Zionist friend, heard that Bols had
been appointed, he was shocked. He writes: "I knew Bols well, having
worked with him for two years. I knew him as an out and out anti-Semite, who
would leave no stone unturned to destroy the Jewish National Home root and
branch."
So moved was this honest English soldier that he boarded a train for
Cairo
Ominous incidents crowding fast on the heels of the intensive propaganda
which followed the crowning of Feisal in Syria
The riots of April 1920 broke on the heads of the astonished Jews
like a clap of thunder. Misled by the naiveté of their responsible leaders,
they awoke from their dreams of a Jewish Commonwealth to scenes no different
than those from which they had fled in Russia
The action was perfectly timed. Moslem crowds had gathered for the
Nebi Moussa festival in Jerusalem
Now agitators were addressing this churning mass, urging
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS
87
them forward against the Jews. Hesitant for a moment, the
reassuring
cry arose: "The Government is with us!"
The stage had been ably set. All Jewish policemen had been relieved
from duty in the `Old City Jerusalem
Shrieking madness covered the Old City
Shivering with the emotion of an unhappy, betrayed man, Weitzman,
supreme Jewish leader, wept bitterly. In another part of the city, Jabotinsky,
the little Russian writer with the prognathous jaw was raging. Cursing the
wordy timidity of his Zionist confreres he swiftly gathered together a group of
ex-Legionnaires. Heartened, other young Jews joined the
"Self-Defense." Where they appeared the rioters ran for their lives.
Meanwhile the Government surrounded the Old City
Jabotinsky and his Legionnaires were arrested as fast as they could
be apprehended. It was symptomatic of the general tone of the Administration
that Howes, the Commandant of Police, caused Jabotinsky to be held in the
common lockup, while Arab agitators who had also been arrested were
accommodated in a pleasant room in the Governate itself. Zionist stock slumped still
lower when Jewish notables were refused an audience, while motor cars were
placed at the disposal of Arab leaders for
the purpose of granting them an interview with the Chief
Administrator.
46
With ghoulish thoroughness the Government both during and
88
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
after the riots searched the Jews for arms, deliberately rendering them
defenseless, and causing numerous arrests of those guilty of protecting their
homes and loved ones. Cynically Sir Louis Bols complained in a dispatch to Cairo
So devilishly inhuman a course would hardly seem credible if it
were not supported by the word of many witnesses, some of them distinguished
Englishmen, revolted by this sickening parade of events. The tone of the
Administration was so hostile that a celebrated American archaeologist, a
non-Jew, told Horace Samuel "quite specifically" that because of his
sympathy for the riot victims "he found himself deliberately
cold-shouldered by the British officials." 47 A thoroughly upset British lady felt
compelled to write that "for the first time yesterday I felt ashamed
of being born an Englishwoman." 48
Jerusalem had undergone an orgy of slaughter, rape, torture and sack.
Everywhere homes and stores were wrecked. Sixty innocents lay dead, and
innumerable victims were injured, the memory of unspeakable horror engraved on
their consciousness, never to fade. Far away in the little Galilee village of Tel Hai
In a vermin-infested jail, awaiting trial, was Jabotinsky – Jewish patriot
and ex-officer of His Majesty's Army- now stripped of his honors and treated
like a dangerous felon. With scant ceremony he was tried, and with his
Legionnaires sentenced to ifteen years at hard labor.
Shocked by this savage order, the Jews shut their shops in protest.
The Government replied with a ukase ordering the shops reopened under penalty
of a fine of £ 50; an action more than interesting in view of the way
subsequent Arab strikes were handled.
Suddenly, like a typhoon which had gathered from nowhere, a
tremendous wave of protest swept the world. England with her hands full in
Ireland and India, smarting under the condemnation
BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 89
she was receiving in all civilized quarters was aghast.
The Generals' plan had become a boomerang.
The League had not yet granted an official mandate; and the French,
irritated to the boiling point, took action to throw Feisal out. Angling for
Jewish support, they let it be known that they would not refuse if the mandate
for Palestine
The English were in a tight spot. They stood morally condemned before
the world. The precious life line to India
Here was another shining opportunity laid right in the Zionists' laps.
The functionaries in Whitehall
To show their good faith they severed the heads of the top
administrator
of Palestine
Page104
CHAPTER VII
THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
WEIZMANN OBLIGES
At the Peace Conference, held at Versailles
following.
At this psychological moment, had Zionist leaders possessed the
political shrewdness which induced the other nations to scramble eagerly for
the biggest hunk of spoil they could get, the Jewish problem would have found
its solution, and would not today be a plague spot in the life of Europe .
vacant; and the signs were already written on the heavens that Israel Europe or perish. The Arabs,
undeterred by the restraining `principles' of the Zionists, had demanded, and
received, more than they had ever envisioned in their wildest dreams, they
received over five million square miles of territory.
At a moment when public opinion would have completely approved of the Zionists taking immediate possession, they
demurred on `democratic' and `social' grounds.
An example of their attitude is contained in the assertion by Sir Herbert
Samuel that "the immediate establishment of a complete and purely Jewish
State in Palestine
90
THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
91
Both at Versailles Palestine England
a bitterly questionable compliment to the oppressed Jews who survey
it in retrospect.
Throughout the Versailles Conference the view taken by the British
delegation, and supported by the Plenipotentiaries, "was that if there was
to be a Jewish nationality, it could only be by giving the Jews a local
habitation and enabling them to found in Palestine a Jewish State." 2
Powerful America Europe in her pocket was heart and soul for a
Zionist solution. The official American recommendation at the Peace Conference
was for the establishment of a Jewish State. A commission of prominent Americans
had been sent by President Wilson to investigate, and their recommendations,
adopted by the President and other American delegates without dissent, were
direct and forthright, stating bluntly that "it is right that Palestine
The frank of America Holy Land were protected, opposition
virtually did not exist. The Arabs themselves were more than friendly and in
fact were looking to the obviously influential Zionists for support of their
own program.
Again, as in the case of the Balfour Declaration, the only
oppositionists
were Jews - capitalists or Marxists - who considered Zionism a move
of gravely dangerous import. In England America
92
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
"Against the program of political Zionism." But the only
effect of these hysterical renunciations was to cause the Plenipotentiaries to
scratch their heads in wonder and dismiss the authors as a bunch of
well-meaning crackpots.
Heavily in the Zionists' favor was the biting rivalry between the
British and French, each determined to shut the other out of the Near East if it could. Sticking
in the craw of the British was the Sykes-Picot Treaty, which all but handed the
Levant over to France
facto control of the route to India, to slip through their fingers.
Able tacticians, they pointed out that the Balfour Declaration to which
Paris
The French, secure in the largest military establishment on earth,
already almost at war with England Turkey Palestine Syria
Though the Kaiser was chopping wood somewhere in Holland Palestine
The French stood pat. They wanted Palestine
They relied on the Jews and on President Wilson to provide the
necessary brake to French ambitions.
As it became evident that the Zionists held the decision in their
hands they were courted by both sides. Sir Mark Sykes and M. Georges-Picot,
authors of the earlier agreement, both declared themselves as favoring the
Zionist solution.
What the French had not figured on was the almost pathological pro-Anglicism
of the Jews, enduring product of an earlier generation of English friendship. It
must be noted that
THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
93
there was nothing either in the Balfour promise or in the
negotiations at Versailles Great Britain
It was still very much open to the Powers to appoint anyone they pleased.
The only positive commitment was that Palestine
The Zionists, prompted by London
In the name of the Jewish people the American Jewish Congress solemnly
pleaded with the Powers for the appointment of Great Britain Zion Poland Versailles
should be entrusted to Great Britain League of Nations . This request was made in an elaborate statement
on the future of Palestine France
Condensing a volume of duplicity and ingratitude in a few words, De
Haas remarks that "the British at once commenced a process of whittling
the phraseology before the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference." 4
So matters stood when in April of 1920 the League Council met at San Remo
The French, smiling delightedly, were confident that the Zionists
had had enough of English patronage. Despite the recommendations of the Peace
Conference, technically the Sykes-Picot Agreement was the document
which governed the future status of Palestine
94
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
He again reiterated the demand that England
for the Jewish estate.
The reaction of the Arabs to the San Remo
King Feisal of Iraq
A few months later the matter was clinched for England
The Treaty of Sevres was signed between Turkey
Secure in the knowledge that the overlordship of this coveted territory
was now theirs; London
The Zionists made plea after plea, realizing that they had put their
feet in quicksand. They appealed to the League as if the procrastination lay there.
On February 27, 1922 , representatives of
the Zionist Organization went through the play-acting of informing the League
Council in Paris Palestine Jaffa Great Britain
confer on her the government of Palestine
THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
95
the Jewish People in building up their Commonwealth." s
A confirmed Zionist, President Harding made his interest known
unofficially; and in April of 1922 the United States Congress stated
by resolution its profound satisfaction that "owing to the outcome of the
World War and their part therein, the Jewish people, under definite and
adequate international guarantee, are to be enabled . . . to recreate and
reorganize a National Home in the land of their fathers," commending
"this act of historic justice about to be consummated" as "an
undertaking which will do honor to Christendom."
Still the British continued to hem and haw, utilizing every trifling
technicality to spar for time. It was not until the revised convention with Turkey Lausanne Hudson Bay
Company, was given the right to act in an advisory capacity, its powers
limited by language ambiguous enough to be interpreted in any direction the
ruling power of Palestine
It provided that in the territory east of Jordan
to local conditions. It was understood that this related only to
the unsettled condition of this area and the possibilities of policing it properly.
What this innocent appearing clause meant in far-sighted English minds the Jews
were presently to discover.
In view of later English contentions that under the Mandate they
were forced to consult the Arabs in implementing their actions, it is
interesting to note that the Arabs were not approached when that responsibility
was handed to Britain
A most casual reading makes it plain that the League had
* See Appendix `A,' p. 571.
96
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
engaged itself to a definite and positive policy of Jewish development,
not only permitted, but fostered and subsidized by the Government
of Palestine Palestine Palestine
as a whole who are the beneficiaries. The Mandate is clearly for an
absent people who are not yet there on the ground, with the existing
populations secondarily guaranteed full liberty and civil rights.' This
alteration of basic law came under discussion at the twelfth meeting of the
Twentieth Session of the Mandates Commission (June 1931) in connection with a
British observation to the effect that "in international law there was no such
thing as a Jew from the standpoint of nationality." To this the
Vice-Chairman of the Commission replied that the remark
would be correct except for the existence of the Balfour Declaration
and the Mandate, which had introduced a new element into this law in favor of
the Jewish People.
Included in the Preamble was the Balfour Declaration and its ratification
by the Powers at San Remo Palestine Palestine
Jewish as the Palestine
Of the direct commitments the most important was Article II which
stated that "the Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country
under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the
establishment of the Jewish National Home as laid down in the Preamble . .
." While Article VI ordered the Mandatory to "facilitate Jewish
immigration" and to "encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency
. . . the close settlement of Jews on the land including State lands
and wastelands not required for public purposes.”
On December 3, 1924 , the United States
THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
97
the contracting parties to this international arrangement. This treaty,
known as the American-British Mandate Convention on Palestine League of Nations . In the correspondence
relating to the several draft treaties submitted, it is plainly evident that
the American Government considered England
The final draft of this agreement guarantees that "the United States League of Nations and their nationals,
notwithstanding the fact that the United States League of Nations ."
The determination of America United States
For once the Nations were attempting to solve their problems in a
consciously intelligent manner. They had tackled the question of Jewish
homelessness vigorously, and rested from their labors sincerely believing that
they had rid the world of one of its oldest problems.
THE FIRST PARTITION
At the time of the Peace Conference there was no haggling over the
size of the Jewish territory. The American Commission took it for granted that
"the new State would control its own source of water power and irrigation,
from Mount Hermon in the east to the Jordan Palestine Syria
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
the southwest by Egypt Iraq Hejaz . The English
viewpoint, embodied in British Peace Handbook No. 6o on Syria Palestine Damascus Syria Palestine
east it was understood that the Zionists could have any part of the
great desert they wanted; and that the southern boundary was to be established
at the historic line, the "River of Egypt.
With the San Remo Downing Street , suddenly showing a
neighborly spirit, began to make territorial concessions to the French at the expense
of the Jewish National Home. Satisfied with those elements relating purely to
the safety of their Empire, English negotiators were completely indifferent to
proper Palestinian boundaries from any other point of view. The Zionists were in
consternation when London
Since the coming Hebrew Commonwealth Mount Hermon . This strategic
sector, as well as the lands of Naphthali, Dan and Manasseh was lopped off and
uselessly handed to Syria Israel
most of fertile, well-watered Galilee whence came the
chief Zealots and patriots of the Roman wars.
Mincing no words, Colonel Wedgwood wrote that this first jettison
of the patrimony of Israel
Outraged by what he also considered an act of unpardonable vandalism,
President Wilson rose from his sick bed and cabled the following protest to the
British Cabinet: "The Zionist cause depends upon rational northern and
eastern boundaries for a
THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE
99
self-sustaining, economic development of the country. This means on
the north, Palestine Litany River Paris
indispensable."
This was in the Spring of 1920. Procrastinating, sugaring the Zionists
with promises, London Jordan
The logic of this inexplicable indifference to British interests became
clear later when the Zionists began to get a glimpse of what was in the back of
the bureaucratic mind. Even at the sacrifice of desired territory, they wanted
to make certain that Zionism could not succeed. A Zionist Palestine
They proceeded cautiously. Time was in their favor.
Bols and the Generals had been dumped overboard. To show good faith
a hand-picked Jew, Sir Herbert Samuel, had been appointed first High
Commissioner under the coming Civil Administration . Of this change, Colonel
Patterson commented grimly: "Bols went, but the system he implanted remained.
The anti-Semitic officials that he brought with him into the country
remained . . ." it
CHAPTER VIII
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL UNDER THE
CHAPTER VIII
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL UNDER THE COLONIAL OFFICE
The Military Administration was over. Anxious, but still unresisting,
the Zionists discovered that the Palestine
The country was now being directly governed by the Crown Colony
Code and by a bureau which by the very nature of its experiences and interests
could not fail to be opposed to the Mandate. This type of administration is
maintained almost solely for the control of uncivilized tropical or
sub-tropical races. The English themselves were later to admit that it "is
not
a suitable form of government for a numerous, self-reliant,
progressive
people, European for the most part in outlook and equipment, if not
in race." 1 The evolution of self-rule even in backward India
The worst of its features is the unwritten law of the Colonial that
the Colony exists chiefly to supply cheap raw material to, and to buy
manufactured goods from, the mother country. It is his business to discourage
industrial development, which might eventually offer substantial competition to
the factories at Glasgow Lancashire . The perfect example
of desirable condition was that offered by Indian and Egyptian cotton, which
after being hauled over half the globe to England Egypt India
The Colonial Office, caring nothing about developing a body of
officials acquainted with the needs of the country, actually does the reverse.
It wants no functionaries even remotely identified with the territory they rule;
hence it rotates these officials from one colony to the other.
100
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
101
Typical of the men who were to interpret the needs of Zionism were
Police Chief R. B. G. Spicer, late Police Chief in Kenya Sierra Leone Palestine
Supreme Court, formerly Assistant District Commissioner of the Gold
Coast; and Sir John Chancellor, High Commissioner of unlamented memory, who
came from Southern Rhodesia where he had kept the
peace with rifles.
These were all career men, suffering invariably from an ingrown sense
of superiority; some of them educated and clever, others recruited from the
backwash of the English slums. They were taught an attitude of cold reserve, a
system of playing native factions off expertly against each other, a technique
of incitement, and a calloused disregard for everything not connected with the
spirit of the Crown Colony Code.
Under this set of regulations, created to serve settlements of Englishmen
marooned among easily subdued or barbarian natives, the Zionists found that
even the slightest trivialities had to be referred to some bureaucrat in London Jerusalem London
give some details on the bizarre workings of this Code in Palestine
Native-born Jews and immigrants holding public office could not
cooperate financially or as a matter of formal association in the development
of the country. The Crown Colony Code forbade it. A judge was denied the right
to participate in what was hoped to be an important financial institution for issuing
mortgages and bonds on Jewish property. The reason given was the Crown Colony Code.
Another official was refused permission to aid in the development of so
unprofitable a
venture as the Hebrew Opera Company. The reason? The Crown Colony
Code .2 Even though there is only a scant handful of English school-children in
the area, under the Code, Palestine British School
Just what rights the Crown Agents had in a mandated area
102 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
was never made clear. But the Zionists were not to be bothered by formalities.
They had a colossal disrespect for politics.
They declared that what they wanted was to `build up the country' and
let politics take care of itself.
A JEWISH RULER AFTER TWO THOUSAND YEARS
Sir Herbert Samuel arrived in due course, dressed for the occasion in
gold braid and a resplendent white uniform. Throughout the Jewish world he had
been trumpeted as the new Moses, the man of destiny. When he at last arrived in
Jerusalem
Samuel was an impressive man, handsome and soldierly looking as he
clicked his heels before the welcoming cameras; though closer inspection was
not so reassuring, revealing a moody face whose whole expression was searching
and suspicious.
He had been Home Secretary in the British Government during the War
and "had a reputation for treating Jews in a way that would not redound to
the credit of a liberal gentile administrator." 3 The famous `Tay Pay' O'Connor had
briefly described him as having an "utter disregard for all the
occupations and prizes of life except those to be found in politics." 4
His inability to understand even the most obvious conditions under
which the masses of Jewry lived is shown by an incident occurring in the Fall
of 1919 when Samuel was functioning as leader of a British Committee of
Investigation in Poland Warsaw
the protection of minorities?" When this had been affirmed he
inquired conclusively: "So you consequently do not want to be a
nationality but a religious group?" Whereupon the Zionists broke up the
negotiations as hopeless and stalked out of the room. 5
The heavens were almost covered with omens in reference to
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
103
the mettle of Mr. . Samuel; but nevertheless the Zionists allowed
themselves to be hoaxed into accepting him. Acting on a polite hint
from high British quarters, they actually sponsored him; and officially his
appointment was the result of their direct demand.
Ruefully, Weitzman was later to admit: "Perhaps 1 am
responsible for this chapter `Samuel.'" our - History will undoubtedly
look on the man Samuel with wonder, as a striking commentary on his times. His
first official act was to throw the brave Jews, jailed for their part in the self-defense
during the riots, into the same class with Arab rapists by magnanimously
pardoning both, all in the same breath and the same document?
Shortly after his arrival he held a reception for the members of
his staff. The reaction, blurted out of the mouth of one of them was: "And
there I was at Government House, and there was the Union Jack flying as large
as life, and a bloody Jew sitting under it." 8
Sir Herbert was surrounded from the first by anti-Zionist subordinates,
whom he was afraid to offend by appearing to favor the Jews. Horace Samuel
declares that throughout his whole tenure of office Sir Herbert suffered
acutely from the consciousness of being a Jew, causing him to pivot right
around to an actual pro-Arab attitude.
The important Political Department of the Secretariat was assigned to
an officer who labored under an intensive and fanatical hostility to the
declared policy of His Majesty's Government in Palestine Richmond Palestine
the most violent anti-Jewish articles to such journals as the Edinburgh
104
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
whose influence was reduced to little. In the subordinate jobs, particularly
on the Police Force and Intelligence Department, nearly all the key non-British
positions were filled by Arabs, who were quick to respond to the cue given them
by their superiors.
The situation became so obvious that a number of Jewish officers of
the Administration threw up their jobs "with the statement that they were
doing so because there did not seem to be room for Jewish officials in the
National Home.""
It is no exaggeration to say that every subterfuge used to obstruct
Zionist advance in future years, originated with Samuel.
Characteristic of the man was this statement attributed to him "If
the Jews really want Palestine Dead Sea concession for the
Jews. He had deliberately held it up, not considering it seemly that Jews should
get such a valuable concession .13
Incongruously enough, Sir Herbert was so religious that he believed
it a sin for Jews and non-Jews to intermarry. He deliberately snubbed a senior
Christian official who had married a Jewish girl, remaining stiffly rude to
both man and wife, even on those occasions when the duties of His Majesty's
service made it impossible to avoid him.
THE POGROM OF 1921
The result of Samuel's policies was a pogrom. Only a scant year had
passed since the previous massacre of Jews in Jerusalem
Once again the lust for blood asserted itself in the narrow streets.
As usual, the riots were timed with a major change in British policy, soon
after to be announced.
It was the end of April. The Moslems were celebrating their annual festival
of the Prophet Moses . This fiesta at which howling creatures with quivering eyes and distorted features worked
themselves into a lather, had been the starting point for
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
105
trouble the year before . Each year, as the Moslems carried on their
wild dances in the streets, anxiety spoke from the faces of the Jews until the
Nebi Moussa festival was over . Notwithstanding this, the British Commandant of
Police was conveniently away. The few Jews on the police force had been
mysteriously taken off duty for the day.
"Bolsheviki ! Bolsheviki! The Zionists are flooding the country
with Bolsheviki!" This ugly cry had reverberated from many throats,
Christian and Moslem alike, for a long period of months. With tacit consent the
Authorities had given sullen approval to the accusation that "every Jew is
a Bolshevik."
This malignant propaganda had been carried on openly under the eye
of the Administration until the saturated minds of every section of Palestine
Suddenly during the Festival the mad shout arose that "the Mosques
were being attacked by the Bolsheviks" (Jews).
At Jaffa Jaffa 15 In many cases the observance of a
benevolent neutrality was insufficient, and the police gave full vent to their patriotism
by shooting at Jews, directing the mob and plundering Jewish shops.
A howling horde led by uniformed policemen armed with rifles, bombs
and ammunition stormed the Zionist Immigration Depot. Thirteen newly arrived
immigrants were butchered amid horrible scenes of rape and looting. The
water-front workmen, huge ruffians armed with long boat-hooks, ran through the
streets impaling Jews on their weapons. Respectable looking Arabs with
well-ironed fezzes, polished shoes, wellcreased pants and starched collars,
rushed into stores and helped
themselves to all kinds of merchandise. 16
The conflagration immediately spread beyond the Jaffa
In Tel Aviv the disarmed Jews courageously formed a self-defense,
holding the `patriots' at bay with hastily mustered sticks and stones. On May
5, the settlement of Petach Tikvah was attacked by thousands of armed fellaheen
from nearby villages. 6
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
The assault was delivered in military formation, "directed by
a gentleman with binoculars." 17 Hopelessly outnumbered the colonists
fought with desperate courage for their lives. The colony Kfar Saba was
destroyed and Rehovoth and Hedera badly damaged. Everywhere Arabs ruined
beautiful
fruit orchards, the work of a lifetime, burned homes and carried off
movable property and cattle. Only the circumstance that almost all Jewish
workers were former soldiers prevented the Jewish National Home from being
consumed in one grand conflagration."'
The most revolting spectacles had taken place. Defenseless old
people and little children alike had been cut to ribbons and mutilated beyond
recognition. Women were dragged out into the open street and outraged before
being murdered. Bedlam shrieked all over the land of Moses
observes bitterly that the Government "refrained from
publishing the number of the Arabs who had been killed in the attack on Petach
Tikvah, for fear presumably of unduly depressing and discouraging Arab
susceptibilities." 19 The property damage was incalculable.
All Palestine England Holy Land , the wife of the Labor leader Philip Snowden
fixed the responsibility on "the activity of certain British subjects in Palestine England
with the British `Black Hundreds.' The visiting American clergyman,
Dr. Dushaw, speaking to an English soldier in the infested area, asked him what
his orders were and received the reply: "I must not shoot." 22 The
policy of the police can be judged from the case of Shakeer Ali Kishek, one of
the Bedouin chieftains who had led the attack on Petach Tikvah. Subsequently arrested,
he "was immediately released on bail as a
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
107
graceful gesture; while . . . the chief notable of the colony, one
of the most respected Jewish colonists in the whole of Palestine Jerusalem
As a token of its displeasure the Government plastered a punitive fine
on the villages that had attacked Hedera, which the Arabs never bothered about
paying. Warrants were issued against some individuals living in the notorious
Tulkarm district who were identified as having been involved in the murderous assaults,
but "no efforts were made to execute the warrants." 24
The Authorities refused pointblank to make any investigation, so
the Zionist Commission together with Judge Horace Samuel and Mr. . Sacher
engaged the services of a British enquiry agent, "who, immediately after
he had gotten on the track, was promptly ordered by the military authorities to
leave the Jaffa
According to the principal Medical Officer the total number of
casualties in the pogrom were 95 killed and 290 wounded. 26
Lending a ghoulish touch to the after-performance, while the Jews
were bowed in mourning for their dead, General Storrs, Governor of Jerusalem
The insurrection of 1921 marked a variation of Administration technique.
It constituted a precedent for the principle - observed by all ensuing
Administrations with almost religious scrupulousness - that every outbreak of
armed Arab violence was ipso facto to be rewarded with political concessions
and to be followed by a Commission of Inquiry whose importance was to be in
proportion to the scale of the revolt.
The Haycraft Commission was appointed to investigate and fix
responsibility for the terrible events which had just passed.
One of its three members was Harry Luke, the man whom Palestine Palestine
108
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
body finally ended by finding guilty the `Bolshevik' Jews who had
been coming into the country and who had aroused the patriotic Arabs by their May
Day demonstrations.
Within forty-eight hours of the Jaffa Jaffa
Samuel went so far as to offer the Arabs complete control over
immigration, a tender they foolhardily refused. Reduced to simple
terms, what they demanded was the enforced return of the Jews to their pre-war
status as a tolerated minority without political rights.
This was the same Samuel who had asserted in 1917 that Jewish
immigration must be regulated by the responsible Jewish body in Palestine Palestine
Samuel retreated backward as far as he could go.
THE GRAND MUFTI
Implicated in the disturbances of 1920 was a political adventurer named
Haj Amin al Husseini .31 Haj Amin, a leering ruffian with misshapen ears and
close-cropped scanty beard, was descended from an Egyptian family known for its
turbulence and penchant for intrigue . In a general housecleaning under
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
Log taken to appease the Jews at the San Remo Syria
as London Jerusalem
Haj Amin was not in the literal sense an Arab patriot. He considered
Western Nationalism a work of the devil. His ideal was the old Muslim
particularism functioning in an area without boundaries, where none but the
Faithful would be allowed to remain with bowels. Beyond that, he was somewhat
stupid,
honest in his way, ambitious, and a fanatical hater of Jews.
During the war he had been an officer in the Turkish Army.
With a pardon from Sir Herbert tucked up his flowing black sleeve,
this man who had fled Palestine
Despite the opposition of the then Moslem High Council, which
regarded him as a parvenu hoodlum of the most unsavory stripe, Haj Amin was
appointed by the High Commissioner as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
Moslem notables with his displeasure and ordered them to accept the
reprieved convict as their religious leader.
This was only the beginning. Samuel was determined to go whole hog
in anchoring this son of the Husseini in the seat of power. He created the
`Supreme Moslem Council,' which was presumably authorized to elect its own
leadership by democratic vote. In the balloting the Government candidate, Haj
Amin al Husseini, polled only nine electoral votes against nineteen, eighteen
and twelve for his three rivals . This fact, however,
weighed little with the High Commissioner, who forced the
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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
chosen candidate, Sheikh Hussam ed Din Effendi Jarallah, to step
aside, and made Haj Amin President. Soon after, the Mufti was created Reis al
Ulema, president of the religious (Sharia) courts, thus concentrating in his
hands the highest posts of distinction and power Palestine
Few men have had such benefactors as Haj Amin discovered in Sir
Herbert Samuel. In his person he now combined the headship of the Church and
the Law, so closely connected in the Islamic religion. Under the Turks the Wakf,
or religious bequests, were under rigid State supervision from Istanbul
These were now handed over to the Mufti free of all control by the
State. He was given complete authority over all Wakf or other charitable
endowments, as well as the Mohammedan courts and educational institutions,
including even the Industrial School Jerusalem
As if to make the anti-Jewish lineup airtight, Sir Herbert took the
pet scheme of the Generals, the Moslem-Christian Union, under his wing.
Although a large number of Arabs objected, he gave it semi-official standing.
Under his generous patronage it soon developed strong roots.
THE CHURCHILL WHITE PAPER
In June 1922, Samuel drew up a long document, deadly in its import
to the Jews, which when signed by Winston Churchill became known as the
Churchill White Paper. The Papal Secretary, Cardinal Gaspari, annoyed by the
procrastination in formulating Article XIV of the Mandate, regulating the Holy Places,
had put up an outright demand that this Article be clarified and acted upon. Whitehall Palestine
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL III
document it issued to accomplish this purpose constituted a bold
reinterpretation of the Balfour Declaration . With carefully chosen
words it smashes at the legal base for Zionist repatriation, arriving at the
remarkable conclusion that the terms of Balfour's Declaration "do not
contemplate that Palestine Palestine
In phrases unctuous with sophistry the White Paper attempts to
explain away Britain Palestine Palestine
Thus in two short years Samuel had changed from an impassioned
advocate of the reborn Jewish State, to a pleader for "a national
Jewish home in Palestine
country to the advantage of all its inhabitants." Thus, in a sentence,
the 2ooo-year old Jewish dream, the unbroken hope for which countless
generations of martyrs fought and prayed, is reduced to a philanthropic scheme
for improving the economic
112
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
nomic position of the Palestine
of able, enterprising Jews.
Buried in the Churchill-Samuel White Paper was a neat little paragraph
holding that while Jews had every right to return to their homeland freely,
this immigration must not be so great in volume "as to exceed whatever may
be the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals."
This sounded very nice and sensible; but it was to prove the formula which
future anti-Semitic administrations utilized to justify their depredations by
principle.
Included also was a scheme for an elective Legislative Assembly to
be composed of a trinity of Arabs, Jews and British officials, who would
presumably spend their time in the subtleties of reciprocal intrigue. Samuel
had originated this as bait for the Arabs, who were mortifying His Excellency
by referring to the Administration as `that Jewish Government. . .'
Ably the White Paper juggled words, hemmed and hawed, to make it
clear that Palestine
The Zionists were in an uproar. The White Paper had been sprung on
them out of the clear sky, a few days before the terms of the Mandate were to be
published in their final form.
Fuming with indignation, the Zionist Executive balked. At this,
Churchill called in the ever reliable Weitzman and pointed out to him that the
tenor of the Memorandum was a reflection of British needs in the Near East . Britain Egypt India
Churchill, the friend of Zionism, pleaded with Weitzman and his
colleagues, the friends of Great Britain, to accept the Memorandum and to trust
that Britain, realizing why they had accepted it, would make ample amends at
some future date .32
Having reminded Weitzman of the obligations of British patriots, the
clever English statesman drove his arguments home by
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
113
threatening to cancel the entire Mandate if the Executive did not
agree in twenty-four hours. 33
Weitzman hurriedly called a meeting of his colleagues, most of whom
wanted desperately to call Churchill's bluff. The fact was that the only method
by which the projected revision of Jewish status in Palestine
There can be no doubt that the largest share of the Zionist acquiescence
to this move rested on an exaggerated loyalty to the interests of their friend
and patron, Britain Levant . Had they stood their
ground, any coercive tactics used against them would have reacted infallibly
against the schemers in London Jerusalem
The French still wanted Palestine Britain
Acceptance of the White Paper at the same time placed the Zionist
stamp of approval on another outrage even more deadly to their hopes.
SEVERANCE OF TRANSJORDAN
On the second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Samuel had
quite rationally declaimed that "you cannot have numbers without area and
territory. Every expert knows that for a prosperous Palestine Jordan
114
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
indelibly over every part of its hills and plains. It was the permanent
home of two of the Twelve Tribes, as well as the half tribe of Manasseh. The
five cities of the plain were Trans-Jordanic . Two of them, Nebo and Pisgah,
are like household words.
Between 1918 and 1921, when the creation of a Jewish National Home
was being negotiated with the Zionists by the British Government, there was no
question of a Palestine Jordan River or East of the Jordan River .
The Balfour Declaration embraced both sides of the Jordan
the Zionist spokesmen mentioned the eastern boundary of Palestine Palestine Palestine
This whole area was embraced in the British Mandate largely because
of London Palestine Syria Palestine Palestine London Palestine Manchester
viewpoint Trans-Jordan was an organic part of the Holy Land .
the East, but the military clique was not satisfied as long as
there
was a Gallic foot on that part of the globe.
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
115
Feisal, puppet of the British generals, had just been driven out of
Syria
In March of 1921 the so-called Churchill Conference took place in Cairo Iraq Iraq
Abdullah, gathering an army of his wild nomads, marched out of the Hejaz and headed north for Syria Amman
Samuel again grew jittery. He had to curb the Military or face the
possibility of the French attacking Abdullah in Trans-Jordan
It seemed necessary to placate him in some fashion-and Sir Herbert
had a brilliant idea : he invited the little Arab to a conference to `talk
things over,' and suggested that he park a while in the territory of the Jewish
National Home. Abdullah, gaping at this unexpected chance for power, thought
that this would be very nice. He took over the administration of Eastern Palestine "for a period of
six months," ostensibly to restore order 38 - a rather comic provision
since the only disorder in the territory was that created by Abdullah and his
Sherifian Army itself.
Stroking his chin quizzically at Samuel's droll move, Churchill waited
for the Zionists to blow the roof off. For once Winston Churchill, master of
bluff and stratagem, was nonplussed. The Zionists had been gagged by Samuel's
threat of still further restrictions, and their silence was token of
acquiescence.
Secure in the knowledge that Jewish spokesmen would not prove
troublesome, London Eastern Palestine from the rest of the
country.
116
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
The earlier drafts of the Mandate all contained twenty-seven paragraphs,
none of which mentioned a separate Transjordan .
The final text, sprung with the quickness of legerdemain, consisted
of twenty-eight paragraphs. The new one, number twentyfive, empowered
the Mandatory with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations , "to withhold or
set aside, in the territories between the Jordan River and the eastern
boundaries of Palestine Britain
pacified and made suitable for European settlement. It must be pointed
out that this article, though it stipulates for the first time a difference
between East and West Palestine , nevertheless considers
the former an integral part of the Jewish National Home and in no sense even
infers its right to separation; its carefully chosen words merely `entitling'
the Mandatory to meet temporary emergency conditions, as they might arise, in a
special manner - that is by "postponing and withholding" the
application of the Mandatory provisions for the Jewish National
Home. 39
Right after the Zionists, cringing under Churchill's empty threat,
ratified the White Paper, Abdullah and his invaders were installed as masters
of Eastern Palestine . In July the terms of the Mandate for Palestine League of Nations , and in the same month
Abdullah was formally instated as Emir of Transjordan . Adding insult to
injury, the Palestine
the beginning of a long list of generous subsidies paid out of the
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL
11 7
treasury of the Jewish National Home. Sonorously Sir Herbert declared
"in the name of the British Government . . . that Great Britain Transjordan under Emir
Abdullah." This was a polite euphemism since Transjordan was ruled directly
through a British Resident acting on behalf of the High Commissioner.
The second brutal rape of the territory of the Jewish National Home
was now all but accomplished. Transjordan henceforward became
the only territory in the world to all intents and purposes JUDENREIN (free of
Jews). It was the first country to prohibit
Jews from even practicing a profession or owning land.
Its ban on them was complete.
Beyond whimpering a little, the Zionist Executive kept its peace,
and actually covered up this gigantic theft of the Jewish patrimony by a new
festival campaign "for the Jewish National Fund." As late as October
1934, Dr. Weitzman was with gentle self-abnegation declaring that "we do
not wish to change the status of Trans-Jordan by applying the Balfour
Declaration there. . ." 40
Jerusalem
Hebron
SAMUEL IS REPLACED
Probably no man was so cordially detested by his own people as this
latter-day Herod called Herbert Samuel. In any other community this deep-seated
resentment would have flared up in periodic attempts at violence. Jews, who
have an instinctive abhorrence of lawlessness as a method of settling their
problems, kept their peace but hardly hated him the less.
Among his public acts was the matter of the allotment of the Crown
lands, which under the Mandate were to have been placed at the disposal of the
Zionists. The story of their distribution is amazing.
The cream of these Government lands were in the Beisan area, in the
fertile region known as the Ghor Valley
118
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
low intelligence to be receptive to any suggestions for improvement
of their housing, water supply or education . . . There were no trees, no
vegetables. The fellaheen, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready
to harbour these and other criminals. . . The Bedu, wild and lawless by nature,
were constantly at feud with their neighbors on both sides of the Jordan
His Excellency had visited Beisan, chief marketing town of this section,
and had been "received with hostility and contumely" by the ruffian
population, a Transjordan tribe of nomads who had
pitched camp there for the winter.
Nettled, Samuel returned to his earlier technique of placating the
tribesmen with gifts. He immediately announced that he was giving the Beisan
lands to the same truculent nomads who had insulted him. All told, the
Government gave these Arabs almost four hundred thousand dunams (a dunam is
about a quarter of an acre) 41 of the best land in Palestine
Immediately these lands became the subject of the most cynical
speculation. Tribesmen were not interested in the hard work
cultivation requires and most of them were given far more acreage than they
could handle by themselves. The net result was that the major part of the soil
was immediately offered to the Zionists at fancy prices . Even more sardonic,
much of the land given to these Bedouins was resold later to the Government at
a profit of some 500 percent, to be used for the resettlement of so-called
displaced Arabs .43 Everywhere Arab speculators entered, scenting a middleman's
profit. Many of the
tribesmen sold at inflated prices and disappeared into Transjordan and Iraq
The Government was now in fact compelled to tackle a new problem:
that of preventing the Beisan lands from subsequently falling into the hands of
land-hungry Jews, who were willing to offer almost any price.
A MAN NAMED SAMUEL 119
It was during Sir Herbert's regime that Arab opposition to the Jews
took definite form and grooved itself. The entire Administration was
honey-combed with anti-Semitic officials who made the Executive Offices a nest
of pro-Arab activity.
Samuel, masking himself behind a screen of `liberalism,' made not the
slightest move to interfere.
When in 1925 Sir Herbert Samuel was relieved by Lord Plumer, Jewish
Palestine
FIELD MARSHAL LORD PLUMER
When the hated Samuel finally packed his duffle and left for England
Article IV of the Mandate makes it clear that the Jewish Agency has
certain powers, that it should be consulted concerning the appointment of any
High Commissioner. The Bureaucrats destroyed the vestigial remnant of this
section of England
Compared to Samuel, Plumer was a vision of fair delight.
By any other reasonable criterion he was a total loss. The Field
Marshal was a hard man, iron-willed, who ruled with a clenched fist. He was the
only High Commissioner who held his Jew-baiting subordinates within reasonable
check. The best that can be said for him is that under his rule there were no
pogroms.
When the Arabs, persisting naively in the same tactics which were
so successful under Samuel, approached him in delegation, warning that if a
planned procession of Jewish war veterans were held, they "would not be
responsible for the peace of Jerusalem
120
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
you to be responsible .. I am the High Commissioner and I will be
responsible." The Arabs never tried that trick again as long as the Field
Marshal remained in Palestine
However, the old policies continued unchanged. Typical of his
regime is the loan of f 20,000 to the Beersheba
A whole succession of carefully developed ordinances directed
against Zionist penetration marked his regime. Despite this, the Zionists, with
good reason fearful of his unknown successor, were sorry to see him go.
When he resigned, a sudden outburst of Jewish energy brought
General Smuts, Zionist friend and incorruptible executive, under consideration
for the post. Smuts declined, obviously not caring to accept the burden of
reconciling his conscience with the policies of the Colonial Office.
Page 135
CHAPTER IX
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
THE THIRD HIGH COMMISSIONER
The soldier Plumer was succeeded in 1928 by Sir John Chancellor.
Chancellor was an unfortunate choice for the Jews.
He had the general appearance of the Shakespearean actor who, with
a certain forgivable pompousness, loves to play the great man. His graying hair
and regular features were imposing; but his countenance was too complacent and
unwrinkled for a man his age, giving an impression of appalling smugness. His
contempt for Jews was so deliberate as to appear ostentatious.
It was under this man that the bloody outbreak of 1929 took place.
When these excesses brought on an unlooked-for wave of world indignation that
threatened to swamp his regime, he issued an hysterical statement condemning
the Arabs in terms of unbridled virulence. When he saw the Zionists disinclined
to press their advantage and yielding to British blandishments, he maneuvered
the placing of political responsibility onto Jewish shoulders.
Chancellor was hardly equal to the standards of shrewd manipulation
set by the Colonial Office . When he retired in July 1931, he became an
anti-Zionist spokesman in London
THE POGROM OF 1929
There are few chapters in civilized history that can match for sheer
inhumanity and outrage the record of the British Government in Palestine
With characteristic blind-optimism the Zionist leaders were running
around like fussy ants, unconscious that a heavy heel was about to crush down
on their hill. With fine disregard for acteal
121
122
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
conditions, they were making ready to repair to Europe for a Congress which
was announced as "a turning point in the history of Zionism - the close of
an illustrious epoch and the beginning of a new and still greater period."
Ignored were the desperate appeals of Palestine Europe .
For a period of six years the Zionist Executive had been
negotiating
with powerful Jewish bodies with a view to forming a vastly
enlarged Jewish Agency. Such financial giants as Felix Warburg of New York
Alarmed, the Palestine Jerusalem
Carefully the story was built and circulated that the Jews planned
to tear down the Mosque of Omar, which Muslims believe marks the exact center
of the earth, and to rebuild the Temple on its site.
Immediately adjoining the Mosque is located the most sacred of all
Jewish devotional objects, the Wailing Wall, last remnant of Solomon's Temple
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
123
attack on it became identified with an attack on the rights of all Jewry.
Four centuries of Turkish rule had protected Jewish title to this holy place
without disturbance. Neither the Wall itself nor the immediate patch of Temple
Now suddenly they discovered a deep interest in the vicinity of the
Wall and ended by claiming ownership for themselves.
A whole series of petty persecutions, abetted by the authorities in
The Wall had been a cul de sac, and when the Government allowed, or
instigated, the Muslims to erect a mosque on the right side of it, and to break
through the Wall proper to open a new avenue to the Mosque of Omar, all Jewish
Palestine rose in indignant protest. Donkeys and their Muslim masters now passed
in droves through the sacred precincts which had been undisturbed for centuries
except for the soft prayers of the
worshipers.
On the Day of Atonement, holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Keith-Roach,
Governor of Jerusalem
124
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Incident now followed incident, with the Arabs growing daily more
pugnacious and the Administration openly abetting them.
Matters had been allowed to develop to such a point of high tension
that it seemed as if taut nerves must burst if even a firecracker popped. In
the Arab press an intensive anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish campaign was going
full blast. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
had joined in the campaign of incitement, urging "an Arab
fight to the finish against Zionism."' Just before the actual bloodshed started,
they took advantage of the growing excitement to issue a manifesto urging a
general strike against the policy of the Jewish National Home.
The Zionist hierarchy had treated this pernicious propaganda with
aloof disdain as small-time matters of a passing character, and airily
dismissed as `alarmists' those friends who warned them that blue fury was about
to blaze in the Land of Israel Switzerland Palestine
"merely shrugged his shoulders indifferently." 2
The High Commissioner had arranged to be absent from his post for
the first time, and was on visit to London Jerusalem Storrs Storrs
On August 16 a fanatical Muslim
demonstration was held in Jerusalem
Arab agitators began touring the country, bringing word from
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
125
the Mufti that Friday the twenty-third was to be der Tag,
instructing the villagers to await orders on that day.
In this atmosphere of threat and uncertainty the Government once
more deliberately disarmed the Jews, leaving the colonies defenseless. 5
The riots were precipitated by the police themselves, who with
extraordinary savagery attacked a procession of mourners who were carrying the
casket of a seventeen-year-old Sephardic 6 boy who had been stabbed to death by
Arabs. Old men, women and children were beaten up indiscriminately.? The city
was swarming with fellaheen and Bedouins armed with clubs, knives and guns and
they needed no further invitation. Like a flood of death they broke loose over
the city with the old cry: "Al daula Maana!" (The Government is with
us.)
In Jerusalem Nablus
Six mounted policemen went with them, watching the proceedings
with interest. In the Georgian Quarter of Jerusalem
For eight days the country was given over to an orgy of violence.
Far from declaring martial law the moment these outbreaks occurred,
no attempt was made to disarm the invaders.
Even after the massacres began the police did not use their
firearms,
under "orders from headquarters." 8 The Acting High Commissioner,
Luke, cynically informed an anxious Jewish delegation begging for help, that he
had "given orders not to shoot."
Jewish youths responded with hidden arms and clubs in the desperate
work of self-defense. A group of visiting Oxford England
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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
fighting with chivalric courage. On August 24, Luke decided to
disarm all Jewish special constables in response to a request of the
Mufti." The possession of arms by the Jews was everywhere and at all times
illegal. Jews were sentenced to long prison terms for even owning a dagger,
standard Bedouin equipment.
Those defending themselves were arrested and charged with murder.
A typical incident took place in the village of Jabniel
attacking hoodlums. No wonder the Hebrew newspaper Davar asked in
despair: "Is there a law which compels our men to deliver their lives and
the lives of their children to massacre, their daughters to rape, their
property to plunder? What theory and what kind of regime is it that demands
such things from men?"
Horrible days of nightmare followed for the Jewish colonies, who
found themselves beleaguered by veritable armies of screaming savages. The
colony at Ekron sent a delegation to the British officer stationed at Naaneh.
He received them brutally and refused to offer any advice as to how the Jews
were to defend their lives and property. Asked what was to be done with the
cattle, he said, "put them in the synagogue." And when the Jewish
physician of Ekron pressed him for a sensible answer, he boxed his ears. Shaken
by this ruffian attitude the colonists decided to evacuate their homes, and
went down to the railroad station. At four in the afternoon, the same officer
appeared with a guard and demanded all the weapons in the place. 1 "
It was at Hebron
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
127
merely necessary to know that Cafferata was an intimate of the Princess
Kerachi, one of the moving spirits in the anti-Semitic Internationale then
taking form in Europe . Openly warned, the
Jews at Hebron
tableau. Witnesses were unanimous in reporting that even a warning,
or a few shots in the air, would have dispersed the mob.
The attackers stormed the houses, and sliced their occupants to ribbons.
Everything worth stealing was carried off. The rest was soaked in stolen
gasoline and set on fire. If it had not been for some friendly Arab families,
not a single Jewish soul in Hebron
The police, says an eye-witness, then "shot into the air, and
at once the street was empty." 11
finally gave orders to his men to shoot with blank cartridges.
This "stopped the massacre immediately, but not the pillage."
13
Refugees from Hebron Hebron
'Hebron
Whatever interpretation one might place on the role of the Government
in this crazy melange of revenge, its actions following the riots can hardly be
described as anything less than contemptible. Its press releases set a new high
in official mendacity 128
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
and ill-concealed dislike for the stricken victims themselves.
In its reports the attacker is classed with the attacked, the
criminal with the innocent, even though not a single case existed of Jewish
assault on an Arab quarter or of Jewish looting.
Following its usual technique, all Jewish newspapers were
suppressed;
while Arab publications with open brazenness proclaimed Arab guilt
and aggression, as if victors in some medieval holy war. Some picture of the
utter depths this bias reached can be gained from the notice issued by the
Administration that it "deprecated any mention of the Arabs having
mutilated their victims." To this Duff exclaims: "They had not
mutilated
them - they had merely hacked them to pieces." 15
Since the days of the Crusaders no such massacre of Jews in Palestine
The property loss was incalculable. In the blackened rooms of what
were once their homes lay the mangled bodies of hundreds of innocent creatures
who had come, eager-eyed, to this country to build a new life for themselves.
The wounded and maimed were everywhere. Were it not for the miracle that the
Arabs attacked in broad daylight instead of night, giving the Jewish
selfdefense an opportunity to organize, the Jewish Yishub * would have been
wiped off the map of the Near East .
WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE?
All witnesses agree that the uprising was neither spontaneous nor
unforeseen. As in the previous pogroms, evidence of careful preparation was
plainly written. Setting the general tone of comment, the correspondent for
Alif Beh, great Arab newspaper of Damascus Lawrence
Arab better than any living Englishman, stated that "if you
had four hundred decent British policemen in Palestine
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
129
have been no trouble for the Jews there." 16 The venerable Hindu
poet, Rabindranath Tagore, urging a united fight on England
The Frankfurter Zeitung accused London England Palestine
Everywhere it was admitted that the mob, justified or not, had
acquired the belief that the Administration was on their side. Among other incidents,
when some Arabs were placed in custody for their part in the Hebron
In a paroxysm of revulsion Palestine Hebron
sixty-five slaughtered, eighty-five wounded, and many orphans and
widows, and in the name of the remnants of the plundered and the
tortured," pathetically "accuses the Government, which did not
fulfill its duty . . . the Commander Cafferata, who deprived us of the means of
appealing for help and defense, betrayed us with empty promises, and gave the
murderers and robbers their opportunity; the Police, which . . . behaved with contemptible
baseness; and the Emissaries of the Mufti and the Muslim Council . . . who
proclaimed the massacre."
The drums of horrified protest now rolled with increasing tempo all
over the world. The Administration had overplayed its hand again. Realizing its
error it was doing its best to cover up,
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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
and once again the Zionists were presented with a brilliant opportunity
for reversing the tables.
Chancellor himself, noting which way the wind blew, repudiated the
entire affair in these blasting words: "I have just learned with horror of
the atrocious acts committed by bodies of ruthless and bloodthirsty evil-doers,
savage murders perpetrated on defenseless members of the Jewish population
regardless of sex, accompanied . . . by acts of unspeakable savagery, of the
burning of farms and houses in town and country and of the looting and
destruction of property . These crimes have brought upon
their authors the execration of all civilized people throughout the
world." The Government was in full retreat all along the line, casting
anxious glances at the effect on America Egypt Ireland India
The Zionists, however, were hardly political-minded enough to
understand their opportunity. They considered that the Jews had no strength and
that their strategy must continue to be one of wheedling for slight gains.
Catching its breath, the Government placated them with soft words, condemned
its minions in Palestine London
Having held the business-end of a live wire so long the Zionists should
have been prepared for shocks. But when the `Commissions' after long delays
brought in pro-Arab reports, they stared in bewildered amazement. They looked
on still more unbelievingly when practically everyone accused of having a hand in
the riots was promoted. Cafferata, the evil genius of Hebron, was decorated for
`heroism.' Luke was rewarded for his efforts by being made Governor of Malta
Chancellor's "bloodthirsty evil-doers" all got off with
nominal sentences. The highest term any of the Hebron
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
1 3 1
most farcical efforts made at conviction. Characteristic of the style
in which this business was handled was the case of a fellah who had killed the
two young sons of a woman named Fruma Charkel by dashing their brains out. He
had known the family for years, and had only laughed at the mother's plea for
mercy while the little boys were being battered to death. With her surviving
son she appeared against him, as did the invalid father and several other eye-witnesses
to the attack, including the revered Rabbi Epstein. Despite this weight of
testimony the court finally freed the Arab, finding "insufficient evidence."
22
Even more ribald were the `awards and amends' which the Government
had contritely promised the riot victims, and which were finally doled out
after an interminable wait. Here are some of the `compensation awards,'
selected at random Rabbi Hassoun, whose house at Hebron
The Jewish Community of Hebron Hebron 14. M . Klenger of Safed,
with a loss estimated at £ 11,000,
came off somewhat better with an award of £ 11,040; while a sister of Rabbi
Dvoretz of Hebron
home reduced to a shambles, was given the sum of £ 2,100. In nice contrast, Hassan
Albudeiri, an Arab lawyer of Jerusalem
Beyond muttering at length on "the shameful attitude of the Government,"
the Jews took it like a dose of castor oil, which having once been poured down their
throats, admitted of no further argument. But a still more fantastic
occurrence, which even this patient people could not stomach, arose when the Arabs
at Hebron Palestine
132
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
to swear that the borrower received the money. The lenders had,
however, all been massacred by the borrowers. There seemed to be nothing in the
law which provided for such a situation, leading the newspaper Doar Hayom to
ask in outraged fury whether it was the policy of the Government "to have
the Hebron
However, like all abominations, these things began to lose their
edge as time went on and were soon half-buried in the past. In many of the
villages eternal peace was declared between Arab and Jew, to the accompaniment
of colorful oriental festivities and the usual slaughter of a sheep to wipe out
the blood feud.
But it was only a matter of a few months before the British-Muslim
combination was up to its old tricks of provocation.
A fair illustration is the case of technical school student
Zilbaski, who was arrested in April 1930 for chasing Arab hoodlums who had been
stoning worshipers at the Wailing Wall. Fined seven shillings he was warned, in
essence, not to interfere with the pleasures of Arabs.
COMMISSIONS AND WHITE PAPERS
Headed by men whose `broad Socialist principles' had more than once
declared themselves flatly in favor of the Jewish Homeland, the Labor Party sat
firmly entrenched in power in England Free State Near East in 1922 "The Arab
population do not and cannot use or develop the resources of Palestine
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
133
During pre-war days the Socialist Internationale had been openly
hostile to Zionism of any brand, recognizing in fine that a Zionist proletariat
was a contradiction in terms, a force devoted incongruously both to separatist
and merging principles.
Shifting its position after the War, Labor Zionism was adopted as
part of the international politics of the Socialist world. A Socialist Pro-Palestine
Committee was created to place the mighty strength of the movement behind
Zionism. Among the most wordy in their enthusiasm for this fabulous commission
were the English members, MacDonald, Landsbury, and others, who were later to
disembowel their little Jewish brother with their left hand while they embraced
him with their right. 24
These were the men, self-announced exponents of the coming brotherhood,
who held the destinies of the Jewish experiment in their fingers. Confident of
the outcome the Zionists settled back complacently to await the result of London
First to report was the Shaw Commission, releasing its findings in
the Spring of 1930. The Zionists were stunned. It was evident that the
`Comrades' in Downing Street had let them down
pretty sadly. The Shaw report was outspokenly anti-Jewish. Charged only with
investigating responsibility for the riots, it had gone far afield, conducting
a probe altogether outside its sphere of reference; creating a most clever
confusion of issues, and engagingly shunting off the main purpose of the
investigation to the background.
It included among the immediate causes of the outbreak, the
enlargement of the Jewish Agency, though it is doubtful whether any of the
murderers at Hebron
of the riots to be, in essence, the crafty way in which the
Zionists had taken advantage of the innocent Arabs, who were being deprived of
soil and sustenance. Thus was created the 'landless Arab' fiction which was to
serve the Government of Palestine
134
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
even in this land of extravaganza, it found an extenuating
circumstance
for the outbreak in that it was "not premeditated."
The Grand Mufti, a self-convicted perjurer whose guiltlessness was
best proven when he referred the Commission to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Commission made no mention of the source or prevalence of arms
in Palestine
It endorsed Luke's action in disarming the Jews and refusing to fire
on the mobs. It omitted to report that all the special Jewish constables had
been publicly paraded and disarmed at the demand of the Arabs. While stating
that all the special constables were of British nationality, it is nowhere
mentioned that a large proportion of those disarmed because they were Jews were
exservicemen of the British Army, many of whom had held the
King's Commission.
Only two short years before, the Government of Palestine Palestine
Recommended in solution was the curtailment of Jewish immigration and
land purchase, and a Government subsidy to buy up acreage which was to be
handed scot-free to the 'landless Arabs' wherever these worthies could be found.
Completely challenging Jewish position in Palestine
one of the Commissioners, defined to mean that "not another Jewish
immigrant can be admitted to Palestine
Another member of the Commission, Lord Snell, turned in a
* See note 6, page 542.
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
135
minority report fairly bristling with contempt for the findings of
his colleagues. He accuses the Administration of encouraging the Arabs "to
believe that they have suffered a great wrong and that the immigrant Jew
constitutes a permanent menace to their livelihood and future," despite
the plain fact that "Jewish activities have increased the prosperity of Palestine
waste" which should be made available to the Jews.
Time has shown conclusively that the findings of the Shaw Commission,
as well as those of the bodies which followed in its train, were so wrong as to
seem wilfully ridiculous. Each one of these Commissions proved itself more
hostile than its predecessor, making recommendations so opposed to the
selfevident facts as to lead one to believe that the substance of their findings
must have been dictated in advance. This presumption is at least indicated,
since each of these bodies appeared to
operate on a preconceived plan aimed at erecting a structure of
precedent which was to serve as authority for future commissions,
thus creating a new body of apparent facts to substitute for the
actual facts.
The Zionists had been mercilessly jobbed. They choked and spluttered
in amazed exasperation. The incredible posing of 'landless Arabs' in a country
suffering from a drastic shortage of workers, was past understanding. So, too,
was the Commission's demand that Jewish capitalists be forced to put all Arab
unemployed to work before another Jew could come in, which meant literally the
employment of all the natives of Northeast Africa and Arabia (since these
outsiders were already flowing into the country in a steady stream).
Lloyd George, coming to the point where the Shaw Report declared
that there was "no more room" in Palestine Britain
He roared: "The report made for the Government, of which I was
the head in 1919, by competent and experienced engineers, stated that by
well-planned schemes of irrigation one million acres could be added to the
cultivable area of Palestine
136
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
and that by this plan sixteen persons could be maintained for every
one there now." 26
THE REPORT OF HOPE-SIMPSON
Whitehall
The trick was something like that of the catch-penny auctioneer, who
glibly makes good to his spluttering victim by selling him another object more
worthless than the first, accepting the parcel complained of in part payment.
This is the kind of business that experienced British dealers in international
legerdemain were now practicing on the naive, frightened Zionists.
The new Commission, headed by Sir John Hope-Simpson '27 was replete
with a staff of `experts.' Sir John had had a good deal of experience in the
mass movement of emigre populations.
He had gained his knowledge of the refugee problem as Vice-president
of the Refugee Settlements Commission (which had conducted the mass
transplantation of 1,300,000 Asiatic Greeks) in Athens
On November zo, 1930, Hope-Simpson's report was published by the
Government simultaneously with a Cabinet decision acting upon it. 28 With the
lightning stroke of an expert matador the Zionist development in Palestine
In releasing both the Cabinet's White Paper and Hope-Simpson's
report so precipitously, both precedent and practice were coolly ignored. Under
time-sanctioned Colonial usage, the Zionists would normally, as party to the
matter, have been allowed to study the Report and make the usual observations and
criticisms before it was actually put into effect.
Hope-Simpson's Report consisted of a symposium of oblique
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
137
attacks against the Jews. It embodied all the anti-Semitic
conceptions
of its day: the professed inability of native races to compete with
superior Jewish ability and cunning, the omnivorous greed of the `rich' Jew for
further gain. It carried a de facto recommendation for numerus clausus in all
directions, as the only method of keeping these objectionable Jewish attributes
within reasonable bounds. As Sir John puts it, "it is the
Government's duty under the Mandate to see to it that the Arab position
is not prejudiced by Jewish immigration." The Commissioner decries the
purchase of land by Jews and suggests that they be prohibited by law from buying
more. The unfortunate Arab had to be protected against the Hebrew who was
crawling over his land like a plague. This, clothed in the niceties of
diplomatic language, was the substance of Hope-Simpson's findings.
To support them he brought up an array of figures and facts, which
had they been accurate, would have been imposing.
Hope-Simpson went so far as to compute (with a figure inferring mathematical
precision) that 29.4% of the Arab rural population was landless, leaving in the
reader's mind a vague impression that it was owing to Jewish settlement
activities that landlessness had reached such alarming proportions. With nice precision,
leading to the patent inference that it is the result of an exact survey, he
gives the area of cultivable land as 6,544,00c? dunams. He makes no effort to
explain the astounding difference between this estimate and the figure of 11,000,000
dunams
supplied by the Director of Lands of the Palestine Palestine
This original system, wholly unique in the history of agronomy, was
able to establish in a few weeks that the official Government figures, accepted
as correct for years, were ioo% off.
Operating on figures which events were also to show unsuported
138
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
by factual evidence, Hope-Simpson discovered that a fellah family
needs 130 dunams of land, 28a whereas the 61,408 fellah families actually had
only go dunams per family; leading ipso facto to the only possible conclusion,
that the land was already overcrowded and immediately faced with a pressing
problem of Arab landlessness. 29 Everywhere he uses the words 'landless' and
`tenant' indiscriminately and interchangeably, leading one to wonder whether
the great tenant-farmer class of England itself should not, on the same score,
also be considered
'landless.'
Bespeaking the common distaste and distrust for Jews, Hope-Simpson
states with ominous reserve: "The Federation of Jewish Labor continues to
carry out, at the expense of World Jewry, a social and economic experiment of
great interest but of questionable value. The Jewish Agency either approves of this
experiment or is impotent to suppress it." (Even more explicit in its
left-handed charge that the Jews were introducing
Bolshevism into Palestine, was the White Paper based on
Hope-Simpson's Report, issued at the same time.) With a queer, newfound type of
ethics, Sir John proclaims in regard to the settlements which were being
subsidized by the Jewish National Fund, that "it is undesirable from the
point of view of ordinary morality that colonists should be allowed to benefit
by the large expenditure which has been made for their settlement, and yet to escape
payment of the amount spent upon them . . ."
In addition to these generalities, several practical measures are
included in the Hope-Simpson Report. One was the demand that irrigation work of
any kind be virtually prohibited 30 (which would put an absolute stop to Jewish
irrigation development); and another that the Government buy land out of the public
funds, i.e., with Jewish money, to hand over to all Arabs who could prove they
were landless. Jews were to be virtually
restricted to the cities. Not even in Czarist Russia
Hope-Simpson, who had been sent to the Holy Land under instructions to
investigate the slaughter, looting and rapine perpetrated on Jewish colonists,
like his predecessors and successors,
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
139
had left his field of reference far behind and nowhere now to be seen.
In the meanwhile, to leave a convenient retreat in case anything went wrong,
still another `Commission,' headed by Lewis French, retired officer of the
Indian Service, was puttering away in Jerusalem
THE PASSFIELD WHITE PAPER
England Palestine Palestine
Whitehall
Lord Passfield, smug dean of English social reform theoreticians, was
not long in assimilating the technique of the Colonial Office when he took over
the portfolio of Colonial Minister in the Labour Cabinet. A radical whose
expressed admiration of Soviet method and theory remained constant, he also
observed the Bolshevik inconsistency toward the Jew : he did not concede that
they had the right to be Zionists. He frankly admitted that he was opposed to
the Histadruth (The Jewish Federation of Labor). He did not approve of the type
the Histadruth was bringing into the country, stating openly that he preferred
the old type of Palestinian immigrant of before the War, the `pious' Jew who
went there to die. He emphasized that since he was a Socialist, he was not
opposed to the new immigrants because they were Socialists and trade unionists,
"but because they were Zionists." 31
He was nasty to Jews wherever a convenient opportunity arose, and
pursued the Zionists with all the hatred a zealot holds for infidels. Asked in
I930 by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency for a New Year's message to Jewry, he
curtly refused. Before he took the bull by the horns to issue his `White
Paper,' he had attempted to push through an ordinance ghettoizing Palestine
Despite all this, the Jewish Socialists continued to vocalize their
undying `solidarity' with Comrade Webb, the fellow-Marxist. Commenting on a
perfectly venal statement Passfield had just issued, the influential Socialist New York
140
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
the full friendship toward Jews and toward the Jewish work in Palestine England
which Ha'aretz alludes had been in preparation so long that nothing
short of a miracle could head it off . On November 20, 1930 , Officialdom deemed that the sapping
operation had been completed. Comrade Webb himself, with pious words of explanation,_
touched off the fuse.
The Zionists abruptly awoke to the realization that they had built
on sand; that it was the end of them and their dreams of salvation, their fund
collecting, their stereotyped statement that "our relations with the
Mandatory are satisfactory."
All the distortions, the veiled anti-Jewish hostility of the Hope-Simpson
Report, were in the White Paper. Benignly it asserts that since there are only
6,500,000 dunams available, there is not enough for the Arabs, who require
8,000,000; therefore land purchases in future would be permitted "only if
they do not interfere with the Government's plans for development," an artful
method of saying that Jews could no longer settle on the soil. To make the
matter air-tight it sets up the principle that land with tenants on it cannot
in future be sold - in effect freezing the vast stretches held by great
Levantine landlords, mostly emigres living with their retinues in Cairo Paris
The, outcome of this reasoning was the recommendation for complete
stoppage of immigration "in view of the responsibility under the Mandate"
and of the "close relationship of immigration and the land development
policy." In keeping with the same argument it holds that the older type of
Jewish immigration benefited the Arabs, whereas "The Zionists' contentions
regarding the benefits which their colonization work has bestowed upon the
Arabs has been proven . . . fallacious."
Massing a frontal attack on the stupefied Jewish Agency, Socialist
Passfield cries that a "modus vivendi" must "be
established
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
141
between the Government and the Jewish Agency regarding their respective
functions, and full account must be taken of the influence in policy exerted by
the General Federation of Jewish Labor over the Jewish Agency. . . It is
necessary to take into account the part played by the General Federation of Jewish
Labor . . . [which has] adopted a policy implying the introduction of a new
social order." Here we have an astonishing though not unusual spectacle:
the pot calls the kettle black; the British Labour Party, speaking as the
Government of Great Britain Palestine England
Loading its guns for bear, the Government released at the same time
a statement of policy announcing the realization of Samuel's pet scheme, the
Legislative Council. This maneuver, which would have handed the country over
irrevocably to Arab politicos, was issued with the remarkable explanation that
it "should be of special benefit to the Arab section of the
population."
As a sop to the Jews the White Paper included the usual verbiage in
reference to the Government's good intentions, and the droll "hope that
the White Paper will restore the confidence of the Jews in the British
Government." This gratuitous bit of buffoonery was too much for even the
compliant Zionist leadership.
With cries of stung anguish it bolted the traces and started to run
amuck.
THE MACDONALD LETTER
Once again the Bureaucrats were to find to their amazement that
they had fallen into a pit of their own digging. The Labourites, newer to
Imperial sleight-of-hand, had been too incautious - far too obvious in their
tactics.
For a few days it appeared to the Jews that this was the end - that
Zionism had been terminated. Jewish idealists who had fought all their lives
for this cause, walked down the streets of the principal metropolises of Europe , openly weeping.
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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Then a sudden revulsion struck the body of Jewry. A cry of `shameful
betrayal' arose, and rapidly gathered volume. Vitriolically the late Lord
Melchett challenged the White Paper as "an act of almost unparalleled
ingratitude and treachery . . . towards a credulous and harassed people who
believed they had found a haven under the broad aegis of the British flag and
the guaranteed word of British statesmen." The venerable Menachem Ussishkin,
stolid and unimaginative but one of the few men with common sense in the
Zionist leadership, was allowed to speak his mind. "For thirteen
years," he declared, "there had been falsification. Lord Passfield .
. . has spoken the truth.
In America France Germany America Palestine United States South Africa Warsaw Britain
In England
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
143
says Sidebotham, were on the Jews' side. 32 The leaders of the
Conservative and Liberal parties gleefully seized on the affair as a
mighty club to beat the Labourites over the head with. Loudly they voiced their
incensed feelings and clamored for the repeal of this disgraceful pronouncement.
Mr. Baldwin, Sir Austen Chamberlain, with Mr. . Amery, in a joint letter
complained that the White Paper "would create in America
Conventions, fouling the honest name of England
At this point a shrewd, courageous Jewish leadership could have
made an expeditious end to Colonial Office plotting. Fate had laid in their
laps another rare gift of chance - a situation they could not have improved on
if they had artificed it themselves, with the Bureaucrats caught flat-footed in
a position they could neither defend at home nor abroad.
Until this time in their relations with London London
Weitzman himself, always so submissive to blandishment or threat,
was miraculously transmuted from rabbit to lion. In unmistakable terms he swore
that the Jewish people would never swallow this outrage, that neither he nor
his colleagues would negotiate with the British Government so long as this infamous
document continued to adorn its archives. He demanded its unconditional removal
before the Zionists would consent to resume any relations whatsoever with the
Mandatory
Power. His words were dynamite. They meant a showdown fight with quarter
neither given nor asked. To top it all he resigned as President of the World
Zionist Organization and announced that he was calling an immediate session of
the Zionist
14
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Congress, which alone could decide what steps were to be taken.
The air fairly crackled when two days later Felix Warburg, head of
the Jewish Agency, also resigned, charging that Passfield had deliberately
tricked him in the behind-the-scenes negotiations, making him "the
innocent vehicle of misstatements to his colleagues of the Jewish Agency."
In a rousing attack in which the roiled banker stepped completely out of
character, he smote the British hip and thigh, making it plain that no reliance
whatsoever could be placed on the word of Passfield or the Government he
represented, and that further relations with them were therefore hopeless.
Painfully alive to the situation, the Labour Government saw in consternation
that the affair was assuming the proportions of a cause celebre; and that its
political opponents were hoping it would prove the pole to tumble it from
power. Prominent Englishmen, convinced that Britain Palestine
stentoriously warned his nation: "We shall not reconcile the Arabs,
but we shall alienate an even more powerful race, and, what is worse, British
honour will be sullied."
The influential London
quarters, which could end in "a disagreeable political result
and financial consequences that might be even more unpleasant."
The London
The Inquiry Commission instead of fixing the immediate
responsibilities,
strays outside its terms of reference and blames the Mandate, the
Jews and everyone but the murderers. Then the Government instead of throwing
the slovenly and biased report into the waste paper basket, proceeds to act on two
of its recommendations about immigration and land and finally proceeds to hang
up the Mandate altogether until someone else has reported."
And the Manchester Ireland
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
145
relations than the indecision of MacDonald makes a worse one of
Jewry."
Completely taken aback by the force of the storm that had gathered,
MacDonald offered to do the noble thing. As an earnest of good intentions he
held out the bait of fifteen hundred immigration certificates.
A circumstance of grave importance now threw its shadow over the
entire proceedings. This was the emergence of the Socialist labor organizations
as a strong factor in Zionist politics.
Although definitely in the minority, they were an important portion
of the support which kept Weitzman in power.
Pressure now began quietly operating on Weitzman from the Comrades
in the Labor groups, who in turn were being highpressured by the Second
Internationale which had finally admitted them to membership only a few months
before. Leon Blum of France England
appealed to the Comrades in Palestine
solidarity. They asked them to prevent the attempt to discredit the
new Labour Government in Britain
Friends of Zionism, and bitter opponents of the Labour regime, waiting
eagerly to crush the MacDonald Government by bringing the affair to a test
vote, gulped unbelievingly when they were informed that Weitzman had given over
his golden opportunity in exchange for a few suave promises and fifteen hundred
immigration certificates. The Zionist Actions Committee was informed that the
scheduled congress, feared by Whitehall
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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
was little less than astonishing: Zionist finances were not in good
shape-therefore it were better to eschew `politics' and concentrate on `practical'
matters.
On the Actions Committee sat the Revisionists (right-wing Zionists)
and the Mizrachi (religious Zionists). The Revisionists raged; the Mizrachi
resigned in protest; but the Labourites and Weizmann's personal followers were
in the majority, and they held fast.
In return MacDonald issued a letter to the Zionists, which later
turned out to be meaningless. Known as the MacDonald Letter, this communication
promised a redefinition of the term 'landless Arabs,' now explained to refer
only to such Arabs as could be shown to have been actually displaced from lands
they formerly occupied; to investigate what State lands could be made available
for close settlement in accordance with Article VI of the Mandate; to
reestablish the principle of immigration "according to economic absorptive
capacity" and to allow the Jewish Agency the right to employ all-Jewish
labor on works or undertakings of its own. It also concedes the White Paper's error
in attempting to substitute the words "Jewish inhabitants of Palestine
Jews on the land, remains a positive obligation of the
Mandate."
On February 13, 1931 , the MacDonald Letter,
approved by Weitzman for the Zionists, was laid before Parliament, thus
becoming a State paper. Weitzman greeted this Pyrrhic victory in the manner of
a man who was distributing largesse all around.
He said: ". . . Our work will benefit the whole of Palestine Palestine
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
147
The Government showed its bad faith immediately. The Letter was
released on Saturday, by tradition a hint to newspapers not to editorialize .
MacDonald had ably retreated out of an ugly situation - and had conceded
little. The London
But the fire had been fanned so violently that it still smoldered.
At the following sessions of the Permanent Mandates Commission, the
Mandatory was unmercifully cross-examined.
Hastily, Dr. Drummond Shiels, the English representative, replied that
though there had been a great deal of Jewish bad feeling before, that had all
been happily settled, and a love-feast had subsequently taken place between the
Zionists and the British Government. The now discredited Hope-Simpson Report would
be ignored and a new set of facts and figures, "ascertained by a
development authority on the spot, will be the basis of the recommendations
regarding the C2,500,000 Palestine
35 Eying his interlocutors with a bland smile, Dr. Shiels asked the
Commission whether, in view of the manner in which the Premier's Letter was
received by Weitzman, he (Shiels) needed to make any further comments on the
controversy which had proceeded. 36
The Zionists were not long in finding out that official Britain
THE KID GLOVE HIGH COMMISSIONER
In July 1931, Lieutenant-General Arthur Grenfell Wauchope became
His Majesty's legate in Palestine
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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
A slight man with a delicately chiseled face, Wauchope had been the
General Officer in command of North Ireland . With him came the
Black and Tans who had wreaked so much havoc in the Emerald Isle. He was unique
in not being a product of the inflexible system of the Colonial Office.
He proved polite, shrewd, aesthetically inclined, even something of
an artist. He was the first High Commissioner whom the Jews could even remotely
understand. Sir Arthur visited their colonies - and even expressed some
interest in what was going on. He has been known to give substantial personal
gifts to various Jewish institutions which caught his fancy.
The Jews tended to like him. The regulations passed under his rule,
clearly ear-marked as anti-Semitic measures, were usually excused by them as
proceeding from `Mohammedan pressure,' or from the sheer inability of a gentile
administrator to get to the bottom of Jewish problems. Even when things grew inexcusably
vexatious, they still refused to credit Wauchope
with a deliberate anti-Jewish policy, and compromised by calling him
vacillating and irresolute . Yet from a practical viewpoint, Wauchope was
hardly an improvement over his predecessors.
During his regime the baleful French Report was released. Under Sir
Arthur the disastrous rebellion of 1936-38 took place; followed by the
inevitable epilogue, a new investigating `Commission.' This latest body finally
recommended a plan for further partitioning the country, which if it were
placed into effect, would have produced much of the same result intended by the
abortive White Paper of Lord Passfield.
It is undoubtedly true that Wauchope would infinitely have preferred
not to be a party to this epidemic of Jew-baiting had circumstances allowed. He
is, however, a loyal servant of a system which has come to regard Zionism as
dangerous to the most precious possession of Englishmen, the Empire.
THE REPORT OF MR. FRENCH
The `expert' Dr . Shiels referred to before the Mandates
Commission,
whose findings were to supersede the Hope-Simpson
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
149
Report, not only used that report for his precedent, but went it one
better in every acrimonious reference to Jews. A retired official of the Indian
Civil Service, Lewis French had been sent ostensibly on a great Zionist development
scheme, one of the concessions agreed to by the Labour Government in its
private conversations with Dr. Weitzman.
With the astuteness of long practice, French stalled for time until
the agitation over the Passfield White Paper was well over.
After a year and a half of ostentatious preparation his report was
submitted to the Arab Executive, and to the Zionists, sitting in camera.
The Zionists hit the ceiling - they had been beautifully jobbed once more.
The report of Mr. . French consisted in the main of a compendium of
generalities against the Jews. He recommended, in brief, the adoption of a
drastic Land Transfer Ordinance completely prohibiting land purchase by Jews.
As if to show French's comparative reasonableness, his collaborator T . C. Kipching,
more draconian still, appended an auxiliary report asserting that it was necessary
for Jews to give up what land they had already acquired and migrate from Palestine
Poor Wauchope, desperately trying to remain something of a gentleman
in this whirlpool of Crown politics, found the crude dissimulations of this
`Report' even more than he could stomach.
He objected. French, fuming at this `traitorous' conduct,
threatened to resign.
In London Downing Street the `expert,' French,
grudgingly agreed to modify his report, and finally resigned, his place being
taken by a subordinate, L . Y. Andrews." Baffling months of parleying took
place in which the worried Zionists were placated with the usual assurances.
These were inevitably passed on to the rank and file of the movement in
Weizmann's conventional words: "The situation is satisfactory. The
Government
desires faithfully to discharge its obligations in the spirit of
the Mandate."
On July 16, 1933 the French Report was
finally issued.
150
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
It placed land transfers completely under Government control. It stated
bluntly that the hill Arabs required special protection against Jews. It
elaborated tiresomely on the 'landless Arab' question. It found the Jews rich
and predatory, and piously referred to the `displaced' Arab as "a son of
the soil to be replaced on the land of his country."
The huge `development scheme' now turned out to be a plan to
purchase citrus land for Arab settlement. Arabs were not only to be given the
land without charge, but the cost of buildings, livestock, etc., was to be
supplied by a paternal Government.
No recognition whatever was made of the fact that Zionism was and
remained a poor and struggling movement, largely the product of the distress of
the Jewish masses, of the economic pressure forcing their migration and
resettlement. At that very moment there were over seven thousand agricultural workers
in the Holy Land employed on private plantations who had waited
from five to ten years for the chance to get a parcel of land; and abroad there
were more than forty thousand young
men and women trained on the Zionist agricultural farms who were
waiting anxiously for the chance to locate on a bit of Palestine
Frankly interested in perpetuating the country in its undeveloped
state, French considers as `cultivated land,' areas "on which
a few score of half-starved Bedu families are at present grazing goats and
cutting reed-grass," to use his own description.
The returns of the latter `industry' have been estimated at three to
five pence per dunam per year. In regard to the marshy Huleh area, a malarial
swamp which the Jews were seeking official permission to drain, French agreed
that "settled as Government tenants, a leavening of Jewish colonists in
this tract would tend to an acceleration of the desired development after the
marshes have been drained." The brazenness of this observation is probably
unparalleled: the Jews are to buy the swamp,
pay for draining it, and will then be permitted to supply `a
leavening' of Government tenants in its precincts. The Arabs are
THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE
151
to get the balance without cost. Jewish settlement on the land no longer
appears as one of the primary purposes of the Mandate, let alone a positive
obligation of the Government. It is now merely to serve as a device, to be
applied in small doses only, for the stimulation and enlightenment of Arab
agriculturists.
The French Report proposed legislation of an advanced type scarcely
conceivable outside of Russia
or may have been left unlet." The new owner or lessee is left without
remedy or compensation, though he may have incurred great expense in moving on
the land and in improving it. This provision, granting prescriptive rights to
people who may have left the soil, disregarding the rights of others who may
have purchased or obtained leases meanwhile, is only understandable in light of
the fact that the new holders were invariably Jews.
Another clause of this document practically fixes maximum rentals
in perpetuity, so that more attractive tenant offers to landlords could not be
made. Incensed, the Jewish Agency screwed up its courage to declare that the
purpose "of the proposed clause is to perpetuate uneconomic use of the
land and obstruct development."
In practice, acceptance of this Report would make the establishment
of new Jewish colonies a complete impossibility. The Jews were to be put in a
straight-jacket as they were in the Russian Pale, forever condemned to be city
dwellers and petty traders.
Thus turned out the great `Palestine
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER I
JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION FOR INTELLIGENCE
THE ZIONIST ORGANIZATION
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER I
JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION FOR INTELLIGENCE
THE ZIONIST ORGANIZATION
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