CHAPTER II
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION IN THE
HOLY LAND
ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY
Whether Whitehall wills it or no, the Jews must go to Palestine
since there is no other place for them to go . Europe's
ghettos will either empty or the Jews will perish there, bestially
like moles gassed in their runways . Hence the irresistible force
of sheer necessity, being what it is, must finally compel the British
to give way, no matter what pious fabrication or legality they
may invent to prevent it. Attention must consequently be directed
to a very real problem, lying mysteriously beneath these
cobwebby coverings - the question of the actual absorptive capacity
o f the Holy Land. If that absorptive power does not
exist, then all the argument is for nothing, and any intelligent solution
of the Jewish problem outside of the calamity of world
revolution is hopeless .
It is obvious, to start with, that the capacity of a given area to
support a large population depends on something more than its
own resources and measurements . The quality o f the human
material available, its endurance, intelligence and experience,
must be taken into account . So must the possibilities of capital
investment, and its application to industry . It is evident from
the existence of such densely settled nations as Belgium and Holland,
that an absorptive capacity is far from determined by
area alone . What estimate, for example, would the politicians
of a century ago have placed on the possibilities of such a place
as Lancashire, or Manhattan Island ? "It is a suggestive fact,"
writes Sir Norman Angell, "that some of the most prosperous
States in the world . . . are among the least self-sufficient ; while
those abounding in natural resources, like some of the Central
and South American nations, have an extremely low standard of
living and an unstable civilization ." 1
492
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
493
Actually, states the distinguished British authority, Sir William
Beveridge, "the optimum of density is never the same for two
moments together." The arc of population is not static, but
dynamic. The momentum of growth in itself tends to create
opportunities for still further expansion . Natural adjustments
take place, new appetites and markets emerge . The possibilities
of large-scale production by the use of equipment which a
smaller body of inhabitants would find uneconomic, opens up an
increasing succession of vistas . Specialization is sharply stimulated
. For an outstanding example of this process one need only
look at America, where a long-continued deluge of immigrants
paralleled a general rise in the country's prosperity . It was only
when this stream stopped that the fundamental economic asthenia
which plagues all old countries developed, due as always to the
stabilization (hence constriction) of the nation's internal market .
The circumstances of Jewish life today are providentially perfect
for the successful duplication of just such a colonization
project -provided that no powerful, restraining hand exists to
wreck it from within. A modern colonization attempt which is
faced with the active antagonism of the ruling government must
fail in advance . The concentration of public services in the
hands of central authority, the intricacies of existing taxation
systems, the delicately balanced adjustments which depend for
their smooth operation on the search for markets, places a modem
resettlement operation completely at the mercy of the ruling
power on the spot. If in no other way, it can be effectively
halted by the simple expedient of preventing the would-be colonists
from entering altogether, or by sequestering them in cities
so that their new-born economy develops into a sickly and lopsided
growth .
Granting that a sympathetic regime existed in place of the
present Government of Palestine, no element required for the
triumphant realization of this program is wanting . There is
the man-power, the experience, the energy, the intelligence, the
will, the money, the absolute need . Deeded to Jewry by international
law is a practically empty territory. "Save for a few
bright spots made by the Jews," writes Broadhurst, "[Palestine]
494 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
is a country of desolation and a wilderness in its truest sense ." 2
Surrounding it on all sides are vast undeveloped reaches, the
major part of which are as empty of people as the moon, so that
the country is not even necessarily limited by its own boundaries,
which are more artificial than real . The Bedouins ignore them,
hardly aware that they exist .
For a period of twenty years the Mandatory has justified its defaulting
policy with the oft-repeated claim that this territory had
no resources, was infertile and overcrowded, and presented no
possibilities for either commerce or agriculture. This was the
great stalking-cry of Shaw, of Hope-Simpson, of French and of
Passfield . It was the ritual by which every depredation and vandalism
committed against the returning exiles was sanctified and
made honest. Hidden beneath this conspiracy of distortion lies
another, and quite different, condition. In its general aspects it
is more than hinted at in the following fulsome description contained
in an official paper of 1921
"The prospects of Palestine are not limited, on the economic
side, merely to a return to the standard attained before the war.
It has the possibilities of a far more prosperous future . . . Its geographical
position rendered it in ancient times, and may render it
again, a centre of the large territories that surrounded it . Within
the limits of a province, it offers the varieties of soil and climate of
a continent. It is a country of mountain and plain, of desert and
pleasant valleys, of lake and seaboard, of barren hills, desolate to
the last degree of desolation, and of broad stretches of deep fruitful
soil . . . It is obvious to every passing traveler, and wellknown
to every European resident, that the country was before
the war, and is now, undeveloped and under-populated . . .
There is now in the whole of Palestine . . . a population much
less than that o f the province o f Galilee alone in the time o f
Christ." 3
LANDLESS ARABS AND AGRICULTURAL POSSIBILITIES
Leaving out all questions of trade, manufacture or natural resources,
which may be regarded as a disputable penetration into
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
495
futures, there is still plenty of sound evidence to judge the country's
real ability to sustain a large population . Lord Melchett's
careful analysis shows a capacity of at least nine million people
on both sides of the Jordan, supported largely on an agricultural
base.4 The Near East authority, Henry W . Nevinson, estimates
that Palestine west of the Jordan alone could support at least
four million souls in comfort .5 Professor Elwood Mead, heading
a commission of American experts, estimated that "Western
Palestine alone could absorb between five and six million Jews
without injury to the existent Arab population," 6 a figure concurred
in exactly by Professor Ballod 7 and Major Cecil Quinlan.
3 Lloyd George, whose word may be accepted as authoritative,
declares that the Government's own experts have officially
estimated that the country could easily maintain a population
i 6oo percent greater than that existing there in 1920 ! s
In 1929, just a year before Hope-Simpson was setting up a
whole body of precedent with his `no room' report, Dr . John
Haynes Holmes describes the depression that settled over his
heart on his first morning in Palestine as from the train his eye
encountered nothing but wilderness and desolation . "No villages,"
he exclaims, "no gardens, no people !" 10 Duff specifies
"hundreds of square miles of barren land, excellent soil for the
cultivation of citrus fruits," on the plains of Sharon and Philistia
alone, "left to the wild grasses and the gorgeous flowers of Palestine's
spring," where "another million Jews could be settled"
with benefit to the surrounding Arabs ." The coastal plain
reaching from Gaza to Haifa is described by Dr . Mead as being
"in everything except its development, a counterpart of the
coastal plain of Southern California from San Diego to Santa
Barbara." 12 One can travel, in fact, from Jerusalem to Gaza,
two-thirds of the length of the country, and see only an occasional
wandering shepherd to relieve the deadly monotony of
dreary wilderness and waste . 13
Actually, less than half of the west of Jordan is under cultivation
of any kind . The eastern three-quarters of the Jewish
National Home is so empty as to be terrifying . Jarvis recounts
mournfully that "every mountain is terraced for vine and olives,
4.96
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
and in those days [dim antiquity] it must have resembled southern
Italy or Sicily, but today not a tree exists ." 14
It is in the face of material like this that the Government of
Palestine has fashioned the 'landless Arab' romance ! It is a
strange commentary on this Mandatory that even its own garbled
figures seldom agree ; nor does it hesitate to alter them as it believes
occasion warrants, studiously ignoring anything it might
have committed itself to before . It does not even make the
overall figures for the country's total area add correctly . Lord
Stanhope gives it in the Lords as 22,087,000 dunams.16 The
Chief Secretary of the Palestine Government computes it to be
24,786,000 dunams.'6 Sir John Hope-Simpson estimates z5,900,-
ooo. The Government survey for Imposition of the Rural
Property Tax, 1934, alleges 27,009,000 dunams. 17 But the Administration's
Report to the League for 1935, shrinks it again to
26,r59,000 dunams.
Peering behind this strange curtain further, we find the Government
declaring in its report for the year ending March 31,
1921, that out of a total arable area of some 2,000,000 hectares
only 5oo,ooo hectares were under cultivation ; but this does not
restrain it from reversing itself less than a decade later, to show
in the Hope-Simpson Report that there was no arable land left
at all ! Again, in its report to the Mandates Commission for
1935 it states in one place that the area planted to citrus is 146,-
758 dunams, while in another place (in the same report) the
citrus area is given as z65,ooo dunams. The identical paper totals
the forest area as 698,181 dunams ; whereas the Blue Book of
the Palestine Government, published the year before, fixes this
area at more than double that figure, or 1,400,000 dunams.
Turning back to Hope-Simpson, we find the entire cultivable
area given as 6,540,000 dunams. Just before Hope-Simpson,
the Johnson-Crosbie Report gave the same cultivable' area as
12,233,000 dunams ! Not to be outdone in this hopeless jumble
of mysterious bookkeeping, the Department of Agriculture, appending
a statistical summary to the published results of the last
census, showed an area already under cultivation of 10,000,000
dunams - whereas, still having difficulty in properly juggling its
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
497
figures, the Government report based on valuation for tax purposes,
shows a total existing cultivable area of only 7,780,000
dunams. Accepted official estimates based on survey returns
made for revenue purposes, are always strikingly discrepant to
the Department of Agriculture estimates calculated according to
crop returns . It is amusing to note that the Government's definition
of cultivable land excludes some twenty-five percent of
all acreage now being profitably farmed by Jewish agriculturists.
The Government figures prepared for the Peel Commission, for
example, lists as uncultivable the entire Wadi Hawareth area,
though it had actually been transformed into one of the most
fruitful and promising areas of Jewish farm settlement .
The soil of Palestine is fertile . It has not changed since Flavius
Josephus boasted that "we are seated in a fruitful land which we
make more fruitful by good husbandry." An acre of irrigated
land yields eight crops of clover per year, with a harvest up to
thirty-five tons when properly farmed . In neighboring Egypt,
with its natural irrigation from the Nile, five crops a year with
a total yield of twenty-five tons is considered good . Even the
desolate hills, so much despised in official accounts, are ideal for
the cultivation of fruits and berries in the hands of a progressive
intelligent people . In the early days they were famous for their
olives, figs and grapes. The writer has seen a few acres of this
hill country, in the hands of the German Hospice at Kubeibeh, so
covered with luxuriant growth that it looked like a veritable
Garden of the Lord, a true symbol of what loving human effort
can do with the rest of this gaunt territory .
In most cases the pin-pricking and scratching given this responsive
earth can hardly be dignified as `cultivation .' Sir William
Flinders Petrie relates in exasperation that he has "improved
Arab land fivefold, only to see it left to destruction ." The horrible
gutting of good land that goes on, he exclaims, "is all a
criminal waste . . . increased by the ancestral preference for
the desert, leading to destroying trees by Arabs on Arab land as
well as on anyone else's ." 18 For countless generations they
have been exploiting and abusing the worn earth, never troubling
to manure it or to maintain its fertility, leaching it for
498
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
unending years by their improvident, primitive methods until it
was exhausted . Neither stones nor weeds are ever removed .
Almost no effort is made to combat disease . Trees and other
binding materials are relentlessly clawed from the ground and
never replaced . The stony, treeless valleys offer mute testimony
to this cruel squandering of once-rich resources, as do the
desolate highland regions, which wanton neglect have allowed
to be washed down to bare rock .
It is only where the foot of the Jew treads that the land has
been revived. The ability of this country to sustain a compact
agricultural body is indicated wherever Jews have settled . If
the Jewish district around Jaffa, where intensive tillage is practiced
along European lines, can be taken as an index, Western
Palestine would support a farming population of close to eight
millions. The land on which the colony Benjamina is situated
was once occupied by only twenty families . Now it supports
several thousand persons in comfort . At Petach Tikvah, 35,000
dunams support 15,000 Jews and 2500 Arab workers ; while
20,000 dunams at adjoining Jalil keep 300 persons only . The
Hedera land formerly maintained a few hundred people on an
area of 30,000 dunams. Now it provides a livelihood for 4650,
on a European standard of living . Herzlia, with 7599 dunams,
once kept 162 people in a precarious livelihood . Now 5417 live
there in comfort .
It is, of course, true that if the 122,000 Bedouins are to be provided
with ranging space, privileged to destroy all vegetation
with their herds of goats as they have since the days of the
Pharaohs, then Palestine is already overpopulated . There can
be no doubt that the spread of cultivation results in the gradual
driving back of the nomad races . The principles of roving tenure
over vast areas, and of fixed possession for purposes of intensive
farming, directly conflict. They represent two opposite
conceptions of life, which have struggled with each other for
mastery here for as long as the memory of man . All historians,
from Strabo onward, describe the same pathetic fate of this beautiful
country - a period of brilliant civilization terminated by
invasions of primitive tribes, always flowing in like the wild
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
499
ocean and reducing it again to the cinders of history . Dr.
Smith, greatest of living authorities on this area, characterizes
it as "a land which is blessed more than most with health and fertility
; but its health is paralyzed by its danger, its fertility . . .
checked and blasted by the floods of human barbarism to which
it lies so exposed ." Half a century ago, the noted American
archaeologist, Selah Merrill, named the conditions under which
the Holy Land could be redeemed for civilization . The first of
these, he wrote, "was a power strong and respected, which
should know how to hold the Bedouin at a distance, and to prevent
their access to cultivated regions ." 19
NO WATER'
A favorite claim adopted by the Mandatory, when it found
itself caught in a corner and directly accused of faithlessness and
disloyalty to its trust, was that appearances were deceiving .
The country, it explained sadly, was in large part really a desert
it lacked water, and was therefore completely unsuited for colonization.
One would think under these circumstances that the Government
would show at least some interest in water surveys, in the
mapping of water tables, or in engineering calculations for conserving
the vast rain supply. This would seem all the more
called for since each of these regions for which the claim of
hopeless aridity is made is literally covered with the ruins of
once-prosperous villages, with traces of extensive road and canal
systems and other relics which could only have been left by a
large and thriving population . However, the Mandatory was
far from concerned . It left the problem severely alone . Whatever
efforts were made were by the Zionists themselves . It was
they who hired the engineers, who pored over intricate calculations,
who made the borings, and who even undertook the work
of afforestation so necessary to such a program .
Operations of this sort are obviously far beyond the scope
of private initiative, and normally would be undertaken by any
Government interested in the welfare of its subjects. The enor500
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
mous irrigation works on which Egypt depends for her very
life, the constructions on the Euphrates, the numerous stream
regulation works, dams and other constructions used all over the
world, are built by the State, not by private individuals or institutions.
The little irrigation practiced in the Holy Land today
is dependent on shallow wells and piddling individual methods .
It is far from an effectual solution of a problem which calls for
an extensive system of dams and water channels .
The attitude of the Administration can hardly be described as
anything but hostile . Operating with its usual contrary logic,
it has gone to the point of declaring that while a man may own
the land, he does not have title to the water under it. Under the
Safeguarding of Public Water Supplies Ordinance, any area may
be declared a "public water area," without explanation or legal
recourse . Once this declaration has been made, no one may
sink any new wells within the area or alter any existing well
without special permission from the High Commissioner . Anyone
who does so makes himself liable to a prison sentence .
Despite propaganda to the contrary, Palestine is not a land
poor in water . The visible surface supply from its springs and
rivers alone amounts to z %z to 3 milliard cubic meters per year .
This volume, were it fully used, would irrigate ten times the
area which is irrigated at present .20 These gaunt, parched regions,
reported the explorer Tristram in 1865, "had once been
fertile by the irrigation of the plenteous streams above . Nothing
but neglect has reduced the well-watered plains to such desolation
. We could detect the traces of the old water courses for
irrigation ." 21 "It is one of the anomalies," wrote G . S. Blake,
the Government's own geological adviser, in an official report,
"that in such a droughty land as Palestine practically all the
large springs run to waste." Yet the Government obstinately
forbids the use of river water for irrigation purposes !
It was shown by the Palestine engineer Hausdorf that the
deviation of the Jordan, where it emerges from Huleh through
Galilee to the Valley of Jezreel, could be utilized to form an
artificial lake ; one channel to run through the Kishon Valley to
the Mediterranean ; the other to stretch into the Jordan Valley
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
501
towards the Dead Sea, where a waterfall would be formed 400
meters in height . The power generated here alone could irrigate
fully one million dunams of southern Palestine .22 The
Jugoslavian water expert Dr. Werber calculated that five hundred
thousand people could earn a livelihood from the soil in the
deserted Negeb alone if water were brought down from the
hills.23
In 1926 the French engineer M . Imbeaux published a plan to
bring water from the Mediterranean to the Jordan Valley by
utilizing the difference in levels . Had it been put into effect,
this project would have dramatically altered the agricultural situation
of both Palestine and Transjordan, making these regions
as lushly fertile as any in the old world . But it was ignored.
The Government itself admitted in 1921 that "the water
problem, over most of the country, is not a question of quantity,
but o f storage, of pumping and distribution ." 24 Even the average
rainfall of Palestine is a factor of no mean importance. It
runs from 22 to 29 inches a year, almost double that of California.
It is estimated that reservoirs could collect and store during
a year 191,000,000 cubic meters of this precipitation, an item
which in itself would make the country over from top to bottom .
If all this were ignored, deep borings would still provide ample
water for every possible purpose . At the identical time that the
Government was most vociferous in its contention that there
was no water in this part of the world, the builders of the Iraq
Pipeline demonstrated the presence of a huge water table below
the entire surface of the desert . Along the complete length of
this line, borings produced abundant water at an average depth
o f 6oo feet. American engineers sent later by the Palestine
Economic Corporation demonstrated that artesian wells sunk
according to modern methods struck the life-giving fluid even
in the apparently hopeless hill area . In the supposedly dry
Negeb, exploratory borings at Asir (near Beersheba) produced
a 4o-foot geyser when the drill reached a depth of 130 feet.
The report of the American water expert Julius Fohs has
proven conclusively that by the sinking of deep wells no part
o f Palestine can be said to be without water.
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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Though few actual data exist in reference to the territory
east of Jordan, travelers have been fulsome in their descriptions
of its fragrant pastures, rich valleys and well-watered moors and
uplands. From Jerusalem, the blue range of Moab, shimmering
in the hot sun, appears barren and forbidding . Beyond this
fringe of hills the scenery of Trans-Jordan bears evidence of
ample natural irrigation . Four large rivers, the Yarmuk, `Arab,
Jabbok and Arnon drain the entire country . The Yarmuk, with
its picturesque falls, is as large as Jordan . These streams are fed
by numerous springs and tributaries, causing the geographer
George Adam Smith to remark that next to its cool, bracing air
Trans-Jordan's "waters are its most charming feature . . . Luxuriant
vegetation," he states, "is therefore, almost universal
[there] . . ." 25 Trans-Jordan, it must be remarked, however,
does suffer in some years from severe drought, which would necessitate
artificial irrigation .
A PROSPECT OF AGRICULTURAL COMPETENCE
All kinds of gloomy conjectures could be brought forward
as an argument against such a far-reaching scheme of landdevelopment
. It could be contended with sober logic : you
complain now that markets are seriously constricting - who
then is going to buy this vastly increased production ? Will
the country not be glutted with a mountainous surplus of undisposable
produce and fall rapidly into bankruptcy ? In some
States such a cautious position might be more than reasonable .
But as it happens, ignoring the export market (which plays an
important part in the calculations of such agricultural countries
as Syria), the Palestine of today cannot begin to care for its own
consumption needs. In 1936 it imported nearly 2000 tons of
dairy products, 80,ooo,ooo eggs, more than 20,000 tons of vegetables
and over f 200,000 worth of sugar, in addition to meats,
poultry and other foodstuffs .
A comprehensive investigation by Dr . Ludwig Samuel of the
Jewish Agricultural Experimental Station in Rehovoth, showed
the value of agricultural produce consumed by Jews during
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
503
1 935 to be 44,739,000 . Of this amount Jewish farmers supplied
twenty-one percent, Arabs supplied twenty percent and
imports accounted for the rest . These representative figures
speak depressingly enough for the economy of a country still
mainly in the agricultural stage of its development . Actually,
the total of Palestine's requirements in agricultural, fish and forest
products is supplied half locally and half by imports . Since
most of the domestic contribution is consumed by the agricultural
population itself and does not come on the market, by far
the larger part of the market requirements (probably seventyfive
percent of it) is supplied by imported produce .26 Such a
mad situation would have made the development of its agricultural
economy a ruling imperative to any other government but
that of Palestine.
There is no vegetable or fruit imported in any quantity which
cannot be successfully grown in the Holy Land . Even in the
field of dairy farming, the Jews have proven that whole settlements
devoted to this type of enterprise can be made selfsustaining
and prosperous . Such crops as potatoes, not believed
adaptable to Near East conditions, have been experimented with
and new varieties developed . As a result the country's production
rose in five years from 821 tons to an expected 6ooo tons
in 1936. Experimentation goes on in an effort to acclimatize
other fruits, such as the papaya, mango, sugar-apple, guava,
avocado and persimmon.
The extent to which Palestine agriculture could be expanded
all along the line is indicated in the increased production figures
wherever Arabs have profited by neighboring Jewish example.
Despite Hope-Simpson's lugubrious predictions, between 1932
and 1935 wheat production jumped from 51,000 tons to 103,000
tons ; barley, from 47,750 tons to 68,030 tons ; lentils, from 161o
tons to 2660 tons. The total of winter crops rose from 81,240
tons to 183,950 tons. During the same three years an even
greater relative increase was shown by the summer harvests.
In a single year, grapes gained by 71 .2% . Tomatoes, almost an
unknown crop in Palestine before, stepped up to 19,000 tons in
1936 and found, in addition, a lucrative export market .
504
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
The consumption of sugar, which reached twenty thousand
tons in 1935, would easily make a sugar factory profitable, and
the raw material could be produced in neighboring fields . The
adjoining countries of Egypt, Turkey and Iran have done very
well with this staple in the past few years . Egypt's young industry
already supplies the larger part of the local demand of
more than one hundred thousand tons a year . By 1934 Turkey
managed to provide the whole of its requirements from home
production, and now has four sugar factories producing seventy
thousand tons annually.
Syria, Turkey and Iraq have also successfully introduced the
cultivation of cotton . In two years the area under this commodity
in Syria shot from 8o,ooo to 270,000 dunams. In Turkey
the cultivation of another staple, rice, has increased tremendously
in recent years. Conditions for these crops are even
more suitable in Palestine, where they are completely neglected .
In all of the countries mentioned, the government takes an
active hand in promoting these developments, by means of loans,
helpful information and large-scale irrigation works . Cultivation
of such products, which presupposes governmental interest,
opens up still other prospects for industrial expansion which
would absorb countless droves of new settlers in addition to
those sustained directly on the land . Milling, canning of vegetables,
tanning, cotton spinning and weaving are only a few of
the related industrial possibilities which Jewish enterprise might
take on and develop .
Judging from present day timber imports of £ i,ooo,ooo annually,
even industries connected with the finishing of wood
could conceivably amount to a large figure if a comprehensive
plan of afforestation were attempted, particularly in the empty
stretches of Trans-Jordan.
MINERAL RESOURCES
During the entire period of its administration, the Mandatory
has treated the question of Palestine's mineral wealth as if it were
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
505
one of the secrets of the War Department . Prospecting is practically
prohibited . An owner may not even explore his own
land without official permission .27 Information on this important
subject is consequently vague and inadequate, and must be
pieced together from data gathered here and there . But beneath
the mass of camouflage which seeks to prove that this is a
poor, resourceless land, gleams tangible evidence that these resources
are hardly negligible.
During the Biblical period, iron mines were described in the
north of Edom, near the town of Pinon . Josephus mentions the
"hill of iron" which "extended as far as the land of Moab ."
There were certainly many such mines in Trans-Jordan . Merrill
specifies a deposit of ore in Tel Ekweder to the south of
Aj'lun, which was worked at the time of the Crusaders ; 28 and
Ibrahim Pasha used to quarry iron near Jebel Ma'rad during the
last century .
Recent findings have disclosed the existence of a rich field of
copper in the Arabah, south of the Dead Sea . 29 Solomon is
known to have possessed extensive copper mines in the south of
the country . In 1938 the American School of Oriental Research
(in Jerusalem) announced the discovery of the great Hebrew
king's seaport on the shore of the Red Sea (the Ezion-
Geber of the Bible) ; unearthing on this site the most complete
copper smelting and refining plant so far found in the entire
Near East. It was, incidentally, this very territory which Deuteronomy
viii, 9, described as "a land whose stones are iron, and
out of whose hills you can dig copper ."
Transjordan, hermetically sealed off from the rest of creation,
is known to contain vast mineral deposits, in addition to rock
phosphates and bituminous limestone . In the Aqaba region
are unplumbed deposits of copper and manganese . The latter
mineral occurs at the base of the Nubian sandstone in this district,
and known deposits are now estimated to be about five
hundred tons .
The High Commissioner's Report for 1935 mentions the presence
of baryta, cuprite, malachite and galena . Gypsum also
506
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
occurs abundantly. Near the Jewish settlement of Melhamie
large deposits have been worked for years . The possibilities of
this native substance are great . It is useful for making plaster
of Paris and is an important medium for the blending of colors,
as well as a source, of sulphuric acid .
Palestine has immense quantities of cement-producing material,
large amounts of basalt, and a lavish choice of marbles of
various tints . There are large amounts of pumice rubble of a
kind marketed under various trade names as a household cleanser ;
and an inexhaustible supply of the so-called zif-zi f, a sand rich
in salicylic acid and pieces of broken shell, widely used as a constituent
of concrete .
The asphalt of the Dead Sea was so famous in Roman times
that this material became universally known as 'Judean pitch .'
It is of such high quality that it can be used in the manufacture
of varnishes and dyes, yet the cost of obtaining it is so low that
it could easily be made available for road-making .
Rock salt found in large amounts could, with sulphur and
phosphate-producing substances, lay the basis for a series of key
chemical industries . The Salt Mountain of Jebel Udsdum contains
unlimited quantities of pure salt . 30 Tremendous deposits
of phosphate exist all over the Holy Land,31 and the beds of sulphur
are literally inexhaustible . At Gaza alone, the Government
geologist estimated a deposit of several million tons .
Materials for the manufacture of glass, and ochre and other
raw substances for the production of dry colors, exist in abundance.
Chalk, which is heavily imported, is to be found in many
parts of the country . Bituminous limestone is likewise plentiful,
though no use is made of it. The total reserve of this substance
is estimated to amount to at least 200,000,000 tons, with
an oil content of five to twenty-five percent . It is mainly located
in the neighborhood of Nabi Musa and in the vicinity of
Safed and Tarshiha in Galilee. These deposits are sufficient to
satisfy the internal oil demand of Palestine for another century.
During the World War the bituminous beds in the Yarmuk Valley
were utilized by German engineers, who erected a plant to
distill petroleum there . The British are reliably reported to be
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
507
counting on the use of these deposits as a wartime emergency in
the event of damage to the pipeline leading from Iraq to the
Mediterranean .
There is also every evidence that Palestine is fabulously rich
in natural oil. D. P. Brown, oil geologist for the Oil Trust Ltd .,
after exploration in 1911 and 1912, stated that "there is every
indication of petroleum existing in depth . Taken from east to
west this oil belt can be clearly seen for nearly thirty miles ;
from north to south the oil field, so far as we know, reaches to a
distance of about 9o miles."
Professor Day of Beirut and the German expert Blankenhorn
arrived at much the same conclusion ; and in 1913 Dr.
Arthur Wade reported that "there is good evidence that liquid
petroleum occurs in quantity in the beds let down by the great
system of fracture which forms the trough of the Dead Sea ."
In 1926 the presence of visible oil was recorded in the report of
an expedition to southern Palestine by Hebrew University .32
The same year, petroleum was discovered in the village of Sakia
near Jaffa. The report of experts on the scene averred that the
whole district from Beersheba to Jaffa contains "a wealth of oil ."
On April 5, 1927, states General R . B. D. Blakeney, the Colonial
Office admitted in an official letter that great quantities of oil
existed in the Dead Sea area, but "discouraged further exploration."
The latest official summary of Palestine's mineral position,
quoted in the 1935 Blue Book, indicates that a large petroleum
structure has been located in the neighborhood of Gaza, and that
it is also likely that oil would be found near Jebel Udsdum in
the Ghor ; and in 1937 the Imperial Institute's survey of the
mineral resources of the British Empire refers to oil seepages noticed
in various localities in Palestine, notably at Masada .
Meanwhile colonists at Beer-Tuvia, digging for water, struck
oil. "Had they dug another twenty meters," says Pierre van
Paassen, "the whole colony would have been washed away" in
a bath of petroleum . The next morning the High Commissioner
and a retinue of Government experts appeared on the
scene to investigate . The astonishing outcome of this official
508
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
survey was an order that the well be filled up again without delay.
Inspectors remained on the spot until the last shovelful of
earth had been dumped back into the hole.33
The Government flatly refuses to allow any further investigation
of this fabulous source of national wealth . All title to
bore for oil, irrespective of ground ownership, has been vested
in large British concerns who utterly forbid drilling for fear it
will affect their investments in Iraq and Persia by depressing the
market price . The concept which rules this situation is indicated
by the Iraq Petroleum Company's offer to pay the Syrian
Government a compensation of £ 2,000,000 if it would agree to
postpone any actual working of the new Djezireh oil fields until
1945, after which the Iraq Petroleum Company would undertake
their gradual development .34
Despite this body of facts, we find the Colonial Secretary informing
Commons (in reply to a question on oil concessions),
on March 13, 1938, that "we have no reason to believe there is
oil in Palestine ."
Be this as it may, it is certainly no exaggeration to say that
Palestine, if it possessed nothing else, is wealthy beyond the
dreams of avarice through a natural phenomenon which makes
it the greatest chemical crucible on earth . From the waters of
the Dead Sea alone, the amount of potash, so essential to agriculture
and to war, would supply the world with one million tons
a year for two thousand years . The Dead Sea holds 2000 million
tons of potassium chloride ; i 2,900 million tons of sodium
chloride ; 22,000 million tons of magnesium chloride ; 6ooo million
tons of calcium chloride ; and 980 million tons of magnesium
bromine.35
These figures are staggering in themselves ; but there are still
others which sound almost fantastic . The French scientist
Georges Claude asserted that a fabulous amount of gold also lay
in the recesses of this queer salt lake, the concentration being
forty times that of sea water, "making its extraction highly profitable
." He estimates the actual gold content at ten milliard
pounds.36 That this is not altogether crazy is shown by the
estimates of British chemists who compute the gold at half this
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
509
figure, or J 5,000,000,000 . 37 The British ban any attempt at
further speculation by limiting operations at the Dead Sea to the
extraction of salts only.
The coming to life of this strangest of all waters is certainly
not the least of the latter day miracles taking place in the Holy
Land. Today in that eerie, depressed spot where Sodom and
Gomorrah were reputed to have stood, where David sought
sanctuary, where Herod and Marianne fled from the pursuing
Parthians, the shores ring with the sound of hammers . The
winding highway which carries you from Jerusalem to this isolated
industrial center is never forgotten . The arid wastes of
unbelievable kaleidoscopic color, the sinking feeling of suffocation
as the serpentine road dips slowly below sea level, the
glittering indigo waters of the Dead Sea itself and the colorful
bustling activity around it, are sights like those out of a child's
fairyland.
The Dead Sea concession was obtained originally by a Jewish
company through the far-sighted vision of the Zionist engineer
Novomeysky. It is one of the few franchises of any kind allowed
to Jews . At the time this concession was granted it was
looked upon as a visionary project. The overwhelming preponderance
of opinion throughout the scientific world was that
Novomeysky's plan could never be put into practical operation .
Final approval was only obtained after much wrangling. When
it appeared that Novomeysky's faith would ultimately be justified,
the French claimed prior title under the old Ottoman Act.
To forestall this claim, London backed the Zionist company solidly.
(As it was, the French vigorously protested, threatening to
take the matter before the International Tribunal at the Hague.)
The British drove a tight bargain . The concession does not
extend to "gold, silver, precious stones, mineral oils or antiquities
that may be contained on or beneath the shores of the Dead Sea
or in or under the waters ." The Palestine Government receives
royalties of five percent of the bulk value and, in addition, up
to forty percent of the net profits . The concession runs for
seventy-five years, but the Authorities hold the whip hand and
can terminate it on one month's notice, for causes which may
510
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
for all practical purposes be said to lie directly within their own
discretion. Though apparently a Zionist company, the concessionaire
is now largely dominated by the English themselves.
Its headquarters is in London, and such figures as the Earl of
Lytton (its Chairman) and Lord Glenconner (an ardent pro-
Nazi) sit on its board .38
It may be suspected also that, in view of its great importance
to the Empire, London intends to quietly remove the Zionist
finger from this pie altogether . This was believed to be one of
the actuating reasons operating behind the scenes during the
riots. Such a construction is certainly reflected in the subsequent
sophistries of the Peel Report, recommending the detachment
of the Dead Sea area from the zone of Jewish influence
and settlement .38
OTHER POSSIBILITIES
There are many other unplumbed resources which an enterprising
population could make use of. One is obviously the
fishing industry. The Holy Land catches only thirty-three percent
of the fish it uses, though its waters teem with aquatic life .
Foreign vessels fish regularly off the Palestine coast, but as we
have seen, the Administration has efficiently discouraged any
local development by various destructive regulations .
Another fine potential lies in the growth of seaweed which is
plentiful in the whole surrounding water belt .40 There has recently
been a revival of interest in this industry, especially because
of the increasing importance of algin and its salts, used
as a colloidal substance with a wide range of adaptations in
modern chemistry. In France alone, the value of seaweed harvests
is estimated at around thirty million francs . The growing
interest in this commodity is illustrated in the recent paper read
by the Norwegian chemist, Dr . G. Lunde, in which he reported
that the specific colloidal properties of alginic acid and its salts
were opening an expanding field for new products and applications
in modern technique.41
Not the least of the country's resources lies in its compelling
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
511
beauty, and the profound majesty in which Jewish history has
clothed it. If a reasonable Government existed which tried to
attract visitors instead of discouraging them, the Holy Land
could easily become one of the great tourist attractions of the
world. This tourist influx, in wide-awake States takes on the
proportions of an industry, not only enhancing the name of the
country and indirectly assisting even its exports, but capable in
itself of supporting an army of people . Even under present conditions,
more than one hundred thousand tourists visited Palestine
in 1935, bringing in with them over r i,ooo,ooo . If Palestine
deliberately catered to sightseers, and advertised for them,
as do France, Italy and other tourist nations, these figures would
radically enlarge themselves .
Again, if instead of putting up numerus clausus to keep out
the famous Jewish physicians of Germany and Austria, they had
been welcomed with a brass band, the disastrous advent of Hitler
might have sent the famous specialists of these nations to the
Jewish Homeland and made Palestine, in one coup, the medical
center of the world . The many thousands who would come
here for medical treatment and advice would have provided another
fruitful source of employment for all sections of the country's
inhabitants.
Health specialists agree that Palestine is potentially one of the
great health centers of modern times. A string of resorts could
be built all along the blue Mediterranean . Wonder spots could
be erected here that would rival Cannes and Nice . "Sooner or
later," says Dr . Elwood Mead, "the homes and gardens around
the Bay of Haifa will be one of the show places of the world."
There are spas here second to none . In Roman times the
baths at Tiberias, Gaderah and Kalirroe were internationally
known. The mineral waters at Tiberias today, as well as those
at Kalirroe and El Hamah, compare with any in Germany or
France . The water of the Dead Sea, too, is reputed to have
great curative qualities . With a climate much like that of the
famous Egyptian resorts, only a sympathetic regime is required
to develop this area into an international attraction .
The country's greatest single asset is probably its geographical
512 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
position. Strategically situated between great producing and
consuming populations on three continents, it is located at the
crossroads of the three main arteries of the Old World . The
road from the Cape to Cairo, passing through Suez and thence
north to Europe and Asia, will certainly in the days to come
be the great highway by land. The sea route from Liverpool
to the Far East is the principal water artery . Following these
routes almost exactly are the great air lanes . Palestine's coastal
corridor also has great tactical value and is destined to become
one of the great international traffic centers of the future .
There is not the slightest doubt that with the development of
Asia and Africa in the next generation, "this corner of the earth
will certainly be populated to a great density," if only by reason
of its location.42
As an outlet for the oil fields, and key to both land and air
routes to south and east, the absorptive possibilities of this conventionally
despised country leap enormously in power . Even
today, comments U. S. Senator Austin, "its ports are performing
functions hitherto fulfilled by the Egyptian ports on the
harbor" to the whole vast dark hinterland which lies at
its back .43 An identical function would be performed by Aqaba
on the Red Sea , enabling it to become the nerve center f or transit
shipments to and from the Orient, though at present there is
not even a road to this important port .
AN OVERCROWDED COUNTRY
It seems evident that if the Mandatory did not deliberately
contrive to limit the absorptive capacity of the country, Palestine
with all its natural advantages, plus the levers of Jewish need
and enterprise, could have absorbed sufficient immigrants to have
made the Jewish problem virtually non-existent . A brief foray
into the realm of comparative statistics brings these potentials
into closeup view. If it equaled Massachusetts in density, Western
If it held the same population per square mile as England itself, the
SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION
513
Jewish National Home as it was originally mandated (East and
West of the Jordan ), could maintain 3 2 ,933,000.
The Netherlands , almost without natural resources beyond the
native intelligence of its inhabitants, has another 8,500,000 domiciled
within 13,200 square miles. Sicily , which is slightly smaller
than Western Palestine , and a purely agricultural land to boot,
holds a population of 4,426,000 . Why then, could not at least
a similar number exist here ?
To speak of Palestine at the present time as being overpopulated,
or even in terms of a limited absorptive capacity, is
to talk rubbish . Even in ancient times, before the magic of
modern industrialism created opportunity for great concentrations
of population, this favored land harbored its millions. As
Josephus has indicated, fully twelve million people lived and
prospered here at the time of the Roman wars . With all its
natural advantages, some day it must again become a country of
teeming cities and pleasant green countrysides, its long sickness
and prostration merely a dark chapter in history.
For further comparative statistics see Appendix C, p. 581 .
CHAPTER III
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER P"1
The horrible fate of the Jewish people today can no longer
be ignored if Western civilization itself is to survive . Even if
the world of Western humanity is so lost to common decency
that it can calmly watch this terrible procession of suffering and
degradation without a twinge of conscience, it cannot escape
the general disaster of which these savage persecutions are a
forewarning. "The time has come," the American delegate,
Myron C. Taylor, told the Evian Congress, "when governments
are recognizing that the disorderly movements of peoples in
great numbers makes for general unrest" and that an orderly
directed migration is essential to world peace . The war of extermination
against the Jews, declares Senator Wagner grimly,
has been "rationalized into a crusade against the liberal and democratic
ideals which are an integral part of the Jewish outlook on
life. . . If Palestine fails, democracy is endangered . It is an
essential responsibility of the great democratic nations to assure
the preservation and success of the Jewish homeland ." 2 Returning
from Germany in January 1938, Ambassador Dodd
solemnly warned his hearers that "mankind is in grave danger"
and facing a murderous onslaught implacably bent on destroying
all personal, religious and economic freedom .
It is now widely recognized that Hitler means to go down in
history not in the character of a German political hero, which
the forgetfulness of a few centuries will obscure, but in the
tradition of Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed . The Christian and
Jewish mentality are both the mortal enemy of this phase, to
which he is willy-nilly being swept by the fanatic emotion of
his force-crazed followers . This rapidly emerging religion (for
it is no less than that) now refers to Christianity as "the Asiatic-
Semitic world priesthood ." Its aggressive campaign is only
modified in the various countries to suit local conditions . "Je-
5 , 4
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?" 5 1 5
hovah whom the Jews worship," asserts Der Stuermer, leading
Nazi weekly, is "the greatest of all criminals ." 3 "Instead of
thanking God for their daily bread, German children are taught
to thank Hitler," states Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, general secretary
of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ.4 And
thunders the Nazi apostle, Dr. Engelke : "God has manifested
Himself not in Jesus Christ but in Adolf Hitler ."
Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, number one Nazi ideologist, whose
book, The Myth o f the Twentieth Century, is compulsory reading
in all German schools, is the most fanatic anti-Christian alive .
Christianity, he claims "is the unsuccessful attempt during the
last millennium and a half to make us mentally Jews ." "No
one," announces Rosenberg decisively, "has the right to find fault
with those of our people who have found their Son of God [Hitler]
and have thus regained their Eternal Father ." s In the same
vein General Ludendorff writes : "Christianity originates in the
Jewish spirit and must be crushed if the German people are to be
saved." s And the powerful German Action, official organ of
one of Nazidom's most sacred institutions, declares : "Christianity
is part of the Jew's diabolical plot against the world . It
is therefore a trail blazer for Bolshevism. Bolshevism is the
fruit of the Jew's Bible." 7
The ethical scruples, the regard for the individual, the principles
of justice taught by the Judeo-Christian creed, are contemptuously
rejected by the new anti-Semitic dogma as a poisonous
system of slave morality, cunningly palmed off on the noble
Aryan peoples by the Jews, in order to destroy their hardihood
and further the Jewish plot against the world . According to
literature distributed in ton-lots all over Europe, Masonry is a
particularly vicious Jewish prop, and "the entire Jesuit order, responsible
for so much Catholic mischief throughout the world,
was founded by a Jew, Ignatius Loyola . . . [and is] based upon
an introvert form of the Jewish Cahilla ." The Jews, asserts this
new scholarship, are far from the `Chosen People' but a group
of debauched culture-Bedouins who plagiarized the Scriptures
themselves from earlier originals .
This may again be seen in Italy's new alignment with Nazi
516
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
racial principles . Fiercely, Mussolini refers in the Foreign Ministry
organ Informazione Diplomatica to a conspiracy "proved
during the past twenty years in the life of Europe, between
Judaism, Bolshevism and Free Masonry ." 8 These attacks on
Jews and Free Masons were coincident with a tirade against the
Catholic Church led by the identical section of the Fascist press
which was conducting the campaign against the Jews. Membership
in the Catholic Action "is incompatible with membership in
the Fascist Party," thunders the anti-Semitic leader Robert Farinacci
in the authoritative Regime Fascista .9 To receive their
instruction in these theories from their source, four hundred
Italian Blackshirts left for Vienna in August 1938, reports the
London Daily Telegraph, for special courses of teaching in the
new pagan curriculum . 10
The extent and danger of this program is well recognized by
the German Church. In a defiant letter read from Church pulpits
on August 28, 1938, Germany's Roman Catholic hierarchy
asserted the existence of a large scale persecution designed "to
eradicate Christianity in Germany" and supplant it with a new
pagan doctrine . "The fate of the catacombs is meant for us,"
it warned bluntly, "by moves intended to mark the beginning of
the end." It can hardly be doubted that modern anti-Semitic
doctrine is no less rabidly anti-Christian than it is anti-Jewish .
"Anti-Semitism of the present era," declares Osservatore Romano,
official organ of the Vatican, on December 2 7, 1 937 "is
not only a fight against the national aspirations of the Jewish
people, but is also an aspect of the struggle provoked by the new
paganism in large sections of international political life ." "Spiritually,"
pronounced Pope Pius XI, meeting the challenge of Nazi
doctrine squarely, "we are Semites ." 11 From other Christian
sources comes an identical estimate . Averred the Greek Catholic
Bishop of Lemberg, Dr . Jan Butchko : "The fight against
anti-Semitism is a fight for the defense of Christianity ." 12 'And
warns Dr. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury : "The outrages
and attacks on Jews are only a preliminary to an attack on
Christian civilization ." 13
Wherever Nazi philosophy has gained control so that it can
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?"
5 1 7
come boldly out into the open with its aims, repressions of Christians
as well as Jews, have followed . When the need for placating
outside Christian opinion vanishes, Christianity in Germany
will be crushed like an eggshell . "No Jew will be alive [there]
twenty-five years from now," says Dr . John Haynes Holmes,
"and if the Christian Church survives at all it will be an underground
movement as it was in the days of its beginning in
Rome." 14
Not since the time Mohammed's frenzied legions surged over
three continents has the world been presented with as formidable
a body of doctrine as this . Its followers are hardly even
nominal patriots of the countries of their residence . Like that
other group of renegades which takes its orders from Moscow,
they no longer know loyalty to nation or State, but only to idea .
The religion of blood and race has become a fixed obsession,
blotting out every normal consideration. Can it be doubted that
this hypnotic cult which bred traitors and renegades in Austria,
which has its inspired converts throughout Europe, seeks ultimately
to embrace England and America within its fold? 15 It
was not for nothing that General Goering bellowed to the
rubber-stamp Reichstag : "We welcome England to the Germanic
community of nations!"
Can it be believed that the fanatic followers of Hitler who
occupy high places in British official life are any less traitors
than the Nazi renegades of Austria or those troublesome groups
who seek to undermine the Netherlands, Brazil, Switzerland and
other States on which the covetous Nazi eye rests ? Are they
not ruled by the same fixed hatreds, the identical delusions ?
And have they not already betrayed the vital interests of their
country on the Continent, as well as in the Holy Land, in the
name of the greater Aryan destiny? Who can doubt that
the final object of attack is to be the Anglo-Saxon peoples and the
free philosophy of life which distinguishes them. Leading the
paean of hatred against the Jews, the prominent Fascist journalist
Giovanni Ansaldo roars in the Gazetta del Popolo (August
14, 1938) that countries unwilling to succumb to the Anglo-
Saxon world system of which "Jews are the agents," must or518
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
ganize a rigorous counter-offensive . By every innuendo, German
leaders have been fully as explicit . Certainly sober British
thinkers such as F . A. Voigt, brilliant Foreign Affairs Editor of
the Manchester Guardian, have little doubt in their minds as to
the extent and direction of the storm which is gathering . 16
The great weapon by which the Liberal world is to be beaten
to its knees is anti-Semitism ; and always bearing the brunt of
this attack are the Zionists, "the shock troops of the world
Jewish conspiracy," sub-human, cunning-creatures who skulk
from the shadows as the prime movers in every catastrophe,
from whose contaminating touch even the savage Bedouin must
be saved lest he be defiled and outraged ! 17 In this mortar
Western culture is being pounded. The old love for truth and
justice, the sturdy character which once armored it, have all
but worn away. Its once proud soul has been corrupted by
gross materialism . It is full of corroding fears, but cannot act
to defend itself .
What a dreadful prospect humankind faces unless it can force
itself to act now with purpose and resolution ! Not the Jews
alone, but Christianity and all its cherished institutions, must be
ground to bits between the crushing millstones of Marx and
Hitler's paganism. These themselves must fight another bloody
conflict for mastery, since they are antithetic to each other ;
after which the racial philosophy must devolve into a series of
devastating conflicts of mutual extermination between the various
white races, and finally one last great bloody holocaust, that
final struggle for supremacy between the white and colored
peoples, so frankly predicted by the philosophies of Nazism from
Houston Stewart Chamberlain down to Rosenberg. Within the
conquering nations themselves, the tolerant, the generous and the
manly will be ruthlessly extirpated, and the cowardly and mercenary
will usurp their place . Does any sane person think that
civilization or man himself can survive such a hideous program ?
If the Nazi threat should turn out to be an overrated phenomenon,
what then? Communism? Chaos? What of the
Jews of East Europe, whom sheer despair is slowly driving to
madness ! When the flood of Communism rolls like a great tide
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?" 519
over the fall of the House of Hitler, will they resist it -or
welcome it as a deliverer ? That is a question whose importance
to the world at large can hardly be overemphasized .
The soul of this people is now on a rack of hatred more
powerful and shattering than any they have faced in their history.
George Backer, Vice-Chairman of the Joint Distribution
Committee, returned from Poland commenting that the Jews,
"exhausted, assailed on every side, have begun to lose their faith
in the power of the Word ." For the first time in a thousand
years of Jewish residence in Poland, we are witnessing the complete
breakdown of Jewish culture .
So far the inroads of Marxism among the Jewish masses, despite
anti-Semitic assertions, have not been spectacular . At the
Jewish community elections in Warsaw in 1936, the labor bloc,
which presented a united front and was supported by the Communists,
succeeded in securing only fourteen out of forty-nine
seats all told. But Jewish deputies in the Polish Sejm have
warned their government that unless this vicious war of extermination
against the Jew is halted, he will turn towards anything
that holds out a promise of rescue from this mortal horror.
A human being is not inert like a picture in a book, which
may be maltreated with impunity until it is finally cast into the
garbage heap. When underprivilege has reached a certain stage
in misery, it constitutes in itself a stark demand on humanity
which cannot be safely ignored . Often whole civilizations, as
well as States, have discovered this to their amazement - and cost .
The Romans found it out in the Sparticide rebellion . The
French nobles could give you details from their graves on how
desperate even despised serfs may become - a story which the
Russian Romanoffs could punctuate in gory particulars . The
English, too, discovered it in their dealings with the American
colonists, and recently in their experience with the German
people, who rendered desperate by exactions and tribute developed
a Hitler, who now threatens to tear down the roof of
the world.
In any system of social ethics worthy of the name, the pressure
of absolute need takes precedence over all other claims,
520
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
even if this were the only title to consideration that could be
presented . Otherwise need, inspired by desperation, will inevitably
attempt to force its own rights, without caring whether
the world of mankind goes up in smoke as a consequence .
It seems almost impossible to believe that the Powers have
learned no lesson from the situation they forced on Germany .
The chancellories of Europe can hardly afford to ignore the
deadly explosion which is brewing in these pest-ridden areas,
merely to satisfy the cold rapacity of a few Nazi-British officials .
The bastions of European civilization are not so solid that still another
of its props can be callously kicked out from under without
hurt. "Economic unrest in Poland," reported Alexander
Kahn of the Joint Distribution Committee, "coupled with the
persecution of the three million Jews still living there, may soon
set off a civil war that will involve all Europe ."
Who would be the first and main sufferer in the event of
such a calamity if not the vulnerable British Empire ? Can this
great Empire remain unaffected during any period of general
unrest ? If new forces appear in the world, do they not flourish
at Britain's expense ? The German, Russian and Chinese revolutions
have already immeasurably weakened her position . Will
it stand another and further assault ?
Even if the Jews are to be murdered in a body, so as to do
away with them and their problem together, it could only be
done at the sacrifice of all existing liberty and culture . The
eddies of such a monstrous proposition would not be lost until
they had reduced Europe to a shambles . A population infected
with such ideas is not likely to stop in its search for victims
after the Jews have been butchered .
If there remains the slightest sanity or conscience in this distraught
world, it must be realized that this whole affair is lifted
far above the realms to which a handful of British political adventurers
wish to consign it. It must be understood that it is
a practical impossibility to ostracize and ruin ten million intelligent
human beings (perhaps many millions more, if the Hebrew
Christians are also to be included) without the most violent
type of eventual repercussions on the entire world estate .
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?"
521
Do the English expect that the descendants of the Maccabeans
will stand by in apathy while hatred and threat converge on
their children from every side ? That is too much to ask of
flesh .
Here, too, plenty of historical warning is written. Count
Coudenhove-Kalergi wrote bluntly that "should the aims of
Zionism not be realized, cruel catastrophes are imminent, dangers
of which no man can tell whether they will be limited to Jews
alone." 18 The Norwegian member of the League of Nations
Assembly declared in 1931 that "Palestine is the center of Jewish
hopes," warning that any attempt to rob this dynamic race of
its ancient homeland is to complicate the social uneasiness which
characterizes the present epoch . Nearer home, Lord Robert
Cecil, a member of the very cabinet which issued the Balfour
Declaration, asserted : "The Zionist policy seems to me of vital
importance to the world . A nation without a country of its
own is an anomaly, and anomalies breed trouble . . . therefore
I am a convinced Zionist ." 19
Christian theology also has a very definite stake in Zionism .
Christianity cannot be separated from Jewish Prophecy, which
is an integral part of Scriptures . These Prophecies rest altogether
on the promised restoration of the Jewish nation to their
own land . "This," says the noted Christian historian, Mayers,
"appears to be the uniform language, the grand object, the final
result of the entire series of Prophecy, from the beginning of
the inspired volume to the end ." 20 It is echoed from Isaiah
and Ezekiel to Jesus . The Apostle James repeats it in the words
of Amos : "And I will bring again the captivity of my people,
Israel, to an end, and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit
them, and I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no
more be pulled out of their land which I have given them, said
the Lord thy God ."
No matter how cruelly they use the Jews, by what sophistry
can the Church justify the abandonment of the millions of
Hebrew Christians ? The campaign of annihilation against the
Jews does not except their blood brothers in the Christian faith.
In Austria alone, where there are only two hundred thousand
522
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
Jews, Knickerbocker estimated that eight hundred thousand non-
Aryan men, women and children are hiding or fleeing from the
fury of Hitler's anti-Semitic Storm Troops . If the Nuremberg
laws are one day to be applied all over the earth, they may affect
as many as forty or fifty million people if the condition in Austria
is a fair criterion . What is to become of these Hebrew Christians
? Shall not the doors of Palestine be open to them as to their
brother Jews ? They, too, must evacuate Europe or perish .
The Jewish National Movement is not a religious activity, but a
question of National Restoration . In the days of Jesus, Hebrew
Christians worshiped by the thousands in the Temple, but
were none the less Jews .
Ignoring all related questions of morality and decency, it is
not to the interests of mankind generally that these people be
allowed to perish. Throughout Europe, in all branches of human
endeavor, this ostracized race has made in the past and continues
to make even under present disheartening conditions, the
most brilliant contributions to human thought .21 These same
unwanted Jews have already demonstrated in Palestine that they
are well capable of extending Western Civilization into Asia,
where a prosperous, proud Jewish State might well become one
of the outposts of Europe in a permanently unstable and dangerous
part of the world. It appears quite plain that if these barren
stretches can be colonized by the Jews, at once ridding Europe
of a serious problem and adding to the wealth and stability of
the world, not only Israel , but all mankind will be the gainer
by it. It is equally evident that if the purpose of Zionism is to
solve the Jewish problem, the proposed British solution is doing
the very opposite by adding still another area on which it can
press . The only possibility for a sane solution lies in the creation
of a Jewish State within boundaries allowing for its survival
as an economic unit . Any definition less than that is like digging
post holes for the purpose of filling them up again . At the
very least, the Jewish Nation would require Western Palestine
and Trans-Jordan. In addition it should have Sinai Peninsula ,
rectification of its northern borders, and a large portion of the
bleak desert to the east .
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?"
523
The fact must be made clear that England has no vested interest
in Palestine which entitles her to steal it from a people
who need it to sustain their very life . The Arabs must be told,
too, that this effort to expropriate, for their already bloated empire,
a tiny province on the coast, will prove a futile and misguided
dream. The vast international significance of the Holy Land demands
that it be a separate State. And only through the Jews
can this ever be possible .
The Jews in their present situation are not free agents and
can concede nothing . Certainly the stark sequence of events
must compel them to shake their present, hopelessly inadequate
leadership. Fawning and international quixotism will gain them
nothing. If their objective is to be achieved, they must be ready
for whatever sacrifice is necessary and must approach Whitehall
`knife in hand.' In this bitter struggle for life, they have no
choice but ruthlessly to eradicate their inner enemies, the pacifists,
weaklings and advocates of class struggle, who do nothing
but weaken them at a time when their utmost strength is required.
Urging that this has become an emergency matter which will
not wait on debates, Jewry should seek a mass repatriation of at
least five million people from the ghettos of Europe , under the
supervision of the Great Powers and along the lines on which
the League handled the repatriation of the Asiatic Greeks .* Such
a proposition is essentially practicable, and may be carried out
on an orderly, business-like basis if no insuperable obstacles are
thrown in its path by the civil servants of His Britannic Majesty's
Government, the present Mandatory .
The fight in that case should be carried to the Nations, and
in England , to the British people themselves . The latter could
profitably be told that if the coterie of Whitehall politicians
speaks in their name, they have done them a great disservice ;
for the record these men have left says that this is an England
whose word is worthless, who cannot be trusted, who robs the
weak and fawns on the strong, and who has lost its soul .
The ideal situation for a Jewish Palestine would undoubtedly
•
See Appendix D, p . 582 .
524
THE RAPE OF PALESTINE
be a permanent alliance with the English people ; but certainly
if the politicians in Whitehall speak the true spirit of Britain ,
the Jews have no other recourse than to look elsewhere for allies .
And they may then believe with confidence that their hopes
based on the fall of the British Empire will not be long in fulfillment.
For when the policy of a nation no longer depends on
the broad outlines of creative action and degenerates into a mere
olio of petty treachery and scheming, that nation has passed its
heyday - it is decadent, and on the verge of a collapse which
will be as swift as it is unexpected .
Then if the Jews are smart, they will turn to anyone who has
a quarrel with England , and take their chances on the result .
And they will say in effect to the Powers : "No, gentlemen,
unless you wish the foul dreams of the anti-Semites to come true,
and the soul of torn Israel turn in despair to that destroying
agency it has so far manfully resisted (Communism), you had
better curb this destroying British camarilla . They and their
philosophy of intrigue and hate must yield ; for if the people
of Jehovah are to be thus driven to national suicide because flesh
and spirit can suffer no more, let the world take warning that
one of its props of sanity is collapsing . It cannot gloat over
the miseries of this determined, intelligent race, or be indifferent
to its fate . The future of man is indivisible from morality,
decency, fairness and honor. If these virtues in their broad
outline no longer exist, and if the people of the Bible are to be
wantonly wiped out in this Twentieth Century with no more
mercy than if they were rats in a trap, then this civilization must
fall. It is then proven hard and worthless, and the virtues you
pose for it do not exist . By the very nature of things, men
everywhere will instinctively seek a better morality, even if that
attempt ends in death . Gentlemen of the Great Powers, this
is not a Jewish problem alone . It is your problem too !"
Despite the drab cruelty which obscures it today, it may be
deemed certain that the world conscience still exists. If the
Jews take the lead with stern and unbending courage, yielding
nothing that brave despair can hold, that conscience may be
relied on to reassert itself. They have at least no other choice,
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?"
525
unless they are to go down in some general catastrophe which
may well signal the end of civilized man on this planet . Meanwhile
they can only fight on, sustained by that undimmed faith
which valiant men have never questioned over the ages . It rings
imperishably in the sad, beautiful words of Bialik
"Around the last dead slave, maybe tonight
The desert wind and desert beast shall fight . . .
Beyond the howling desert with its sand
There waits beneath the stars the Promised Land ."
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