THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by WILLIAM B. ZIFF - Part 8

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by WILLIAM B. ZIFF - Part 8

NASHISHIBIS AND HUSSEINIS

Little in the way of political reasoning can be expected from

the inert Levantine mass which has been elected to rake Whitehall's

chestnuts from the fire . These people have never been

able to reason along other than religious and economic lines .

Colonel Wedgwood tells us that they think more "of the next

meal than of greater Arabia ." Duff found that they had not the

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 391

slightest conception of sacrifice for the common good. They

invariably bow with respect to the authority of the powerful

and rich. They are forever intriguing against each other . "The

Arab who has a Government position," writes Senator Austin,

"is always exposed to the attempts of other Arabs to put him

out and get his place ." 66

Combined with these traits is an inordinate love for the excitement

of feudal contention . Given an opportunity for guntoting,

almost any banner would suit the average tribesman .

Their whole economy centers around the patronage, power

and influence of half a dozen wealthy families . These invariably

lay claim to hereditary rights of overlordship based on aristocratic

lineage. There are, in the main, two great camps . One is

headed by the Husseinis, who allege themselves to be sprung from

Mohammed himself. The other is led by their traditional enemies,

the Nashishibis, whose boasts of noble descent are no less

lofty . Beyond a natural quest for power, no one actually knows

on what tangible grounds this rancorous rivalry is based, least

of all, probably, the Husseinis and Nashishibis themselves .

Of the six Arab parties in Palestine, five are family or patronage

organizations. Only one, Istakial, could be considered a

political party in the European sense . Istaklal is a minor but

loud-voiced group which represents the young-bloods of the

country. It is the party of the pan-Arabs and dopes itself on

dreams of a revived Arabic empire stretching over all of North

Africa as well as the Arabian Peninsula . It regards the Jew as

an hereditary enemy who is to be rigorously annihilated . The

violent tone of this group, and its fantastic utterances, conforms

to the best traditions of Nazism, overlayed with a thick buttering

of oriental mysticism . Its members no longer wear the

Tarbush, sacred to Mohammedans, but a smart brown military

hat. Istaklal believes in direct action and is known for its thugs

and assassins . Other Arab leaders are so desperately afraid of

this organization that they rarely oppose it publicly for fear of

death.

The British have tolerated Istaklal as a hedge against futures ;

but its usefulness to them now seems about at an end . It is

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headed by an ambitious radical named Awny Bey Abdul Hadi,

a man with broken teeth, a cynical laugh and, strange in Levantines,

a sense of humor . He comes from a large and quarrelsome

family who are always in litigation with each other which

sometimes ends in murder . One member of the family is a

judge of the Supreme Court. Another graces the Secretariat.

The titular head of the Husseini clan is Haj Amin, whom Samuel

had appointed Mufti . For years he was the `fair-haired boy'

of the Administration . He was a frequent and favored visitor

at the High Commissioner's table. He had his own brand of

shock troops, openly tolerated by the Government . Apparently

his position was impregnable .

If the Mufti had been created by some fiction writer instead

of having been authored by the Mandatory for Palestine, he

would have been considered too exaggerated a character to be

included in a serious work . He occupied the unique and unparalleled

position of being at war with the same government

which was subsidizing him . In every one of the riots which

shook Palestine the Mufti was an acknowledged leader . He

openly directed the rebellion of 1936 and at the same time continued

to act as a high official of the Government . He is violently

and incurably anti-Jewish . He has a fixed delusion that

the Jews are conspiring to tear down the Mosque of Omar and

build a Jewish Temple on its site . In June 1936 he sent a cablegram

to the Syrians in Brazil beginning with the theatrical words

"Jews and Arabs at war !"

It cannot be emphasized too clearly that the Mohammedan

Church in Palestine is not a private organization as are churches

elsewhere, but an official body with prescribed secular functions.

As its head the black-robed Mufti was a Government

employee . Under his control was the rich Moslem Wak f, which

possesses an income of some C 1 oo,ooo a year, and literally untold

wealth in ancient treasure . The Wakf is the largest landowner

in the country, holding over a million dunams, including

office buildings, apartment houses, shops, factories and warehouses.

It is paid by the Government a fixed sum in lieu of

tithe, and thus receives seventy percent of the total Government

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

393

revenue from rural property in Palestine . The Mufti in addition

had autocratic authority over the Moslem Courts, also

Government-subsidized, and could appoint or dismiss judges

and employees at will .

Haj Amin was thoroughly resented by his fellow-Moslems

who accused him of every crime on the calendar . He never

kept accounts and the disposal of all funds was his personal secret.

His power came completely from Government patronage.

An insight into this relationship of Mufti to Government was

provided by the Tiberias Arab leader, Mohammed Tawil, who

declared from exile in 1930 that "the Palestine Government is

protecting the Grand Mufti, supporting his anti-Jewish policy

and going so far as to suppress those who favor peace ." He asserted

that those opposed to this agitation lived under a veritable

reign of terror and were afraid to open their mouths .67

The crowning insult in the Government's favoritism to the

Husseinis was reached in 1934 when Ragheb Bey Nashishibi,

Mayor of Jerusalem for 14 years, was ousted and Dr . Husseini

Khaldi appointed in his stead . The Nashishibis, cut to the quick,

went wild. They even urged that a Jew be appointed mayor .

It looked like their star had set, when the Mufti made the

crowning mistake of his career : he refused to denounce Mussolini

during the Ethiopian invasion, making it plain that he took

British utterances seriously and considered himself no puppet .

The British believed, and with reason, that Haj Amin was convinced

that ultimate victory in the Near East would be with the

Italians, and that he had quietly switched allegiance . It was

evident that he considered himself so powerful a figure that the

Government would not dare remove him . From that day onward,

Jerusalem maneuvered to create a situation which would

bring about the Mufti's fall .

Now began a game of high politics and involved intrigue

almost impossible to describe . The Administration had planned

Haj Amin's ruin by the Legislative Council project with Ragheb

Bey slated as its president. Thoroughly alarmed, the Mufti

fought this proposal tooth and nail, joined enthusiastically by the

Jews. This land makes strange bedfellows . The Nashishibis,

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taking their cue, began to send spellbinders to the villages who

soon had the countryside in an uproar. The strategy was to

undermine the Mufti by depicting him as an enemy of Arab national

aspirations. This seemed easy since the secular form of

state was anathema to Haj Amin, who was dreaming of a new

edition of the old Moslem Caliphate with himself as the boss .

The agitation became more and more violent . Government

House watched it with circumspect eye. Here was a chance to

kill two birds with one stone : to unload the Mufti, now grown

dangerous, and to smash the unwanted Jewish National Home

once and for all.

But Haj Amin was no fool . A Husseini suddenly bobbed up

as one of the most violent of the extremists . He declared for

his party in a press interview that "between the Arabs and Jews

a life-and-death struggle is raging, which will not cease before

one of the parties has been completely crushed ." Against his

will the Mufti found himself forced, temporarily at least, into

the nationalist camp .

Quite different from the squat, ape-like figure of his archopponent,

Ragheb Bey Nashishibi is a tall personable Arab with

white hair and almost fair skin. His manner is smooth and he

has a certain easy Levantine charm . Though he now heads an

Arab independence party which bases its demands on alleged

promises made by Britain for Arab help during the War, Nashishibi

himself had fought on the opposite side as an officer in the

Turkish Army. He is said to have three legal wives, one Moslem,

one Jewish and one Christian, choosing them deliberately

from each faith so as to enhance his chances to get into Heaven

when he dies, by whichever gate is open . He plays the game

of practical politics in much the same pragmatic manner and

can shift his ground on any issue with the most bewildering ease.

The program of the Nashishibi party now coincides exactly

with British aspirations in the Near East . Today they are plumping

for a reunited Arab Transjordan and Palestine, under the

current British favorite, Abdullah of Transjordan . The Mufti

clique rejects Abdullah and hopes for a renaissance of fanatic

Mohammedan times in a great loose Moslem Federation, with

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

395

the Church as the ruling power . In every country where influence

counts, these rival groups lobby, not only against the

Jews, but with still greater violence, against each other .

The part Whitehall has had in all this can be easily guessed from

the constant open advice given by British officials, urging these

warring parties to "get together" in their fight against the Jews.

Colonial Office organ Great Britain and the East was full of these

admonitions ; nor could even the High Commissioner refrain in

his Annual Report from expressing his "regrets" over this inability

of Arabs to create a truly `united front .' 08

Under the patronage of the Government, Arab leaders representing

all the various groups have long been joined in a superbody

called the Arab Executive,* most members of which are

directly on the Government payroll . A sample of this body's

policies is contained in a proclamation issued February 21, 1 93 1,

which calls on the entire Moslem world to massacre Jews wherever

they may be found .

CLAIMS, OBJECTIVES AND METHODS

The Arab politicians and the anti-Semitic officials of London

and Jerusalem who spur them on, always paint the Arab as an

under-privileged creature who is unable to get a hearing in Britain

because the Jews control the press there and by inference

hold the mass of M . P.'s efficiently under their thumbs. This,

of course, is nothing but an extension of that lively humbug, the

Elders of Zion story . Says Wedgwood, drily disposing of this

contention : "These officials claim that the Arab case is not put

before Parliament . The Arab case cannot be put in a British

House simply because their case is anti-British ." 69

The pro-Arab case in its entirety is a post-war product . During

the War "there were no pro-Arab sympathies [in Palestine]

as [there] were in parts of Arabia . . . and the question of a

Palestinian nationality had never entered their heads ." 70 The

great Near East negotiator Sir Mark Sykes dismissed them with

the deprecatory remark that they had "long had the knack of

0 The Arab High Committee, has, since 1936, superseded the Arab Executive.

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falling in with the plans of a successful conqueror ." The British

Peace Handbook No. 6o observes crisply : "With the Arab

movement centered at Damascus, Zionism in Palestine would be a

help rather than a hindrance to it ; for that movement would

only suffer from the attempt to absorb a district ethnologically

and otherwise so different from countries in which the Arab element

stands alone or is distinctly predominant ."

Despite these facts and the solemn agreements signed by the

House of Hussein with the Zionists, the pan-Arabs, backed by

their powerful sympathizers, continue to harp on the `promises'

made to Hussein by McMahon .* Time after time, Mc-

Mahon himself denied this claim with considerable show of irritation,

71 but it makes no difference. The British-Arab clique

held on to this bone with all their teeth . Discredited or not, we

find even Lord Peel repeating it as a fact in his official report

in 1 937 .

Looked at over a period of years the Arab story strikes an

amusingly self-contradictory note . In 1925 it rests its case entirely

on the alleged failure of Zionist colonization. The Arab

Executive speaks in sepulchral tones of "the economic retrogression"

of the country . It groans dolorously that "the figures are

growing darker every day" and that "Palestine's general wealth

has been reduced by 4 16,604,594 during the last four years

alone ." 72 In March 1927, after a year's slump had slowed up

Jewish immigration till it was only a dribble, the Arab Executive

asserts triumphantly that "the decrease in Jewish immigration confirms

our contention that the Government's policy in Palestine

was wrong."

When this line of argument became silly on the face of it, the

Arabs suddenly swung over to the discovery that Palestine, virtually

ignored in Moslem religious tradition, was "a Holy Land

for Moslems also ." 73 It was on this concept that the horrible

events of 1929 pivoted .

It is at least a curious accident that all these inconsistencies of

Arab viewpoint correspond exactly with whatever happens to

be agitating Whitehall most at the moment. When the British

* See Appendix B, p. 580.

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 397

switched to a policy aiming at the consolidation of Arabia into

a confederacy under their control, the character of Arab demands

shifted accommodatingly . At a conference in Jerusalem,

the Arab leaders took a pledge under oath "to uphold the

integrity of Arabia as a nation and to recognize no divisions

therein." 74 Yet when it became apparent to the British Foreign

Office that it would have to go slow on such a program, the Arab

agenda shifted obligingly once more . Now the demand was

for sectional independence, a concept regarded as nothing less

than traitorous a few months earlier .

Present-day demands are for a complete stoppage of Jewish

immigration and a cessation of land sales . The claim is that

Palestine is an Arab land and that the Jews, entering on Arab

sufferance, can only hope to attain the status of paying guests .

Some leaders go so far as to propose the confiscation of Jewish

property ; others are satisfied with political domination only.

The Mufti's gang would force them all to become Moslems ;

while the followers of Awny Bey would drive them into the

sea altogether.

Much of this, of course, is the sheerest political hokum, since

very few Levantines have ever been known to lose an opportunity

to make money. Duff writes that "nearly every man of

Nazareth had land ready to sell to the Jews, despite the fact that

they were continually signing high-sounding declarations about

never surrendering one inch of the `Fatherland' to the detested

intruders." 75 At the very peak of the 1936 revolt the three

visiting United States Senators found that "while the Arab High

Committee in charge of the Strike is officially demanding prohibition

of, the sale of land to Jews, some of the prominent Arab

leaders active in that Committee are quietly trying to sell land

to Jewish buyers ." 76

If this proposed tabu were placed into effect a number of

knotty problems would at once arise which none of the Arab-

English solons have yet attempted to answer. Could Arab land,

for instance, be sold to a Jew who has become a convert to Mohammedanism

? May the Druses, who are not Arabs but Persians,

and heretical Moslems to boot, own land? A large part of

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

the Afghan population calls itself B'nai Yisroel77 and claims

Jewish descent though they are fanatic Moslems . If they

came to Palestine could they own land ? Half a century ago a

great number of Samaritans accepted Moslemism for the practical

advantages involved . May these people buy land ? Finally,

what is the attitude toward Arabs who are converted to

Judaism ?

It is also claimed that the Nations, in authorizing the establishment

of a Jewish National Home, disposed of a country

which did not belong to them but to the Arab people . But

here again they appear to be flying in the face of facts . Mr.

Van Rees of the Permanent Mandates Commission remarks that

it is "enough to point out that Palestine had belonged before the

War to the Ottoman Empire . That country had been conquered

not by Arabs of Palestine, but by the Allies, and had

finally been ceded to the Allies and not to the Arabs ." 78 If the

League's right to act on behalf of the Jews is contested, it would

be equally valid to challenge the status of every other area disposed

of through the Mandatory system. Turkey then would

have an a priori case for the return of all her lost territory in

Arabia. Certainly if this business of self-determination is to be

carried through honestly, the rich oil area of Mosul must be

taken from Iraq and given back to the Turks . Of the 342,000

people who inhabit the Mosul Vilayet, only 6o,ooo are Arabs,

and these are newcomers living in the town of Mosul itself . Yet,

since Mosul oil is one of the major reasons for British presence

in the Near East, would they dream of urging its return to Turkey

under the same rules they are attempting to apply in Palestine

?

During the middle of the last century, before Zionist immigration

began, there were not one hundred thousand people all told

in the entire country on both sides of the Jordan . There are

plenty of official statistics and hundreds of books and consular

reports on every detail . The vast majority of Arabs are therefore

newcomers, the same as the Jews . Wherefore are they so

land-hungry that they must debouch onto this little territory ?

The question arises : Are they without adequate territories of

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 399

their own ? Here we come to a new application of Aesop's old

story of the dog in the manger. We discover that in Asia the

Arabs inhabit an area of 2,o i 6,000 square miles, three-quarters

the size of the United States . It is so wild and unpopulated that

Lowell Thomas was led to exclaim that "we have better maps

of the North Pole ; in fact, we have better maps of Mars than we

have of some parts of the interior of Arabia ." 79 The total population

roaming this tremendous expanse is less than twelve million,

including a healthy proportion of minority peoples . If

Syria and Iraq are excluded, this vast domain holds less than six

million human beings . In North Africa, which pan-Arab visionaries

also dream of incorporating in the Arab Empire of the future,

is another territory almost as large and nearly as underpopulated

.

Here we find the Arabs in possession of what is by all odds

the world's last frontier. No colony held by any European

Power is as sparsely peopled . No nation on earth can even remotely

compare with the Arab in per capita land possession .

He has so much of it that he is actually land-poor, its value having

fallen to zero, since there are no human beings to work it .

The great territory of Saudi, whose unsurveyed area can only

be guessed to be approximately a million square miles, contains

not three million human beings, and is undoubtedly the most

underpopulated space on the globe today . The rich Hejaz has

only eight hundred and fifty thousand people within its 150,000

square miles : yet it was from here that Abdullah and his desert

tribesmen came to squat on the Jewish National Home territory

in Transjordan. Arabs have also the vast spaces of Oman, Yemen,

the Hadramaut and Syria on the Peninsula, as well as

Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia and Morocco in Africa. Even Iraq,

thickly settled by comparison to the immense empty expanses

to the south, has less than three million people in a territory of

143,250 square miles. In ancient times this magically fertile

earth, watered by two of the great rivers of Asia, was the granary

of civilization . It alone could support the entire Arab nation

and still present all the aspects of an underpopulated country .

If the matter be considered from the purely Moslem view400

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

point, which admits of neither racialism nor nationality beyond

the community of Mohammed, the axis of possible settlement

stretches itself immeasurably . Even Asiatic Turkey is impoverished

for want of men . In 1926 Kemal Pasha offered large

holdings to Palestine Arabs on the homestead plan if they would

immigrate to Turkey. (After a considerable group of families

left to take advantage of this attractive tender, the Palestine Government

suppressed the whole business, even forbidding any public

mention of the Turkish Government's offer .)

Since the emphasis of Arab demands centers on a united Arab

Empire, it seems fantastic to believe that they also require for

their national development the nine thousand square miles of

Western Palestine. "When the Arab talks of his right of selfdetermination

in Palestine," comments Herbert Sidebotham, "he

really means his right to suppress Palestine and to merge it with

some other country. Palestine as a political unit is a ghost of

the Jewish past alone . It has never had a separate existence as

a political unit except through the Jew nor will it ever have in

the future." Actually, Arab politicians do not recognize Palestine

at all. In all their public statements they deliberately refer

to it as `Southern Syria .' They protest continually because

Palestine has been severed from the main body . In their minds

it can be no more than a geographical concept . It is only

through the introduction of the Jewish factor that it becomes

meaningful as a national-territorial organism .

One is forced to concede that wherever two divergent races

inhabit the same territory, prejudices, hatreds and envies must

arise, if only due to differences of habits and culture and temperament.

Despite this, the prosperity brought in by the Jews

would be an almost certain guarantee of permanent peace if

pernicious propaganda were eliminated. "The Jew would welcome

fellowship with the Arab," says Broadhurst . 80 And Colonel

Wedgwood states fearlessly that the Arabs would give little

or no trouble "were they not encouraged and stimulated to do

so by the effendis of the Higher Arab Committee and by a Government

which does not like the Jews and lets the Arabs know

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 401

it." 81 Arab papers reflect all the contempt the permanent officials

hold for English party politicians . Insolently the Arab

press asks : "What is the British Parliament but a Council of

Elders of Zion ?" 82 Falastin (usually accounted the semi-official

voice of the Government) berates Ormsby-Gore as a stupid

heretic who "cannot free himself from the influence of the Bible."

"The British Government," it warns, "must forget the

Bible" and must order "the Church of England in no uncertain

terms to refrain from interfering in political matters ." 83

It must not be doubted that the Arab has some forbidding

grievances, real enough to him, no matter how puzzling they

may appear to alien minds . One of these is the fear of the

emancipation of women . Another is the alarm of the effendis

lest the end of the feudal period terminate their privileged position

in society. To these Colonel Blimps of the Near East it

is useless to argue the benefits which Jewish science, industry

and medicine have brought to the people of Palestine . "They

will reply," relates the London Times, "that these are luxuries

which the people of Palestine can do without." 84 Like all

other forms of existence the medieval mind dies hard . This

deep-rooted resistance is shown by the petition of professional

camel drivers in June 1936, complaining against the competition

of such devilish inventions as the automobile and railroad . The

camel drivers are hence losing "their independence and dignity,"

and must be protected by turning the clock back. Another reason,

which appears too ridiculous on the surface to be credible,

though Duff assures us it is so, is that "the Arabs still hate the

Jews, and despise them because they hold that Ishmael, and not

Jacob, was the legal son, and that Hagar was the wife of Abraham,

and that Sarah was his concubine ." 85

The final and clinching argument is that no matter what benefits

might come of it, the Arabs do not want Jewish settlement,

and that they have a `right' under the principle of majority rule

to forbid Jews from immigrating . Would not the same argument

oblige the British to retire from South Africa and other

places where they are in the minority ? Since the successful

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

issue of a wrong does not make it right, must not America then

be returned to the Indians ; and perhaps England itself to the

Celts ?

Certainly of all peoples, the English must know that the history

of the world is the history of colonization . Every civilized

country is the result of some such process in the past . Today

all the major peoples continue to colonize . In Arab Algeria and

Tunisia, for instance, both France and Italy are steadily pouring

in European immigrants without anyone in particular objecting.

In the case of the Jews there is infinitely more reason to

seek mass resettlement. Not poverty or impulse alone drives

them forth, but a grim and terrible battle against extinction .

They cannot retreat from Palestine because there is nowhere else

for them to retreat to .

If the question be one of title and legality, the Jews have in

their possession a charter signed by the Nations and countersigned

by Feisal of the House of Hussein for the Arabs . If a

moral right is to be posed, can it be offered by the voracious appetite

of a new Arab imperialism, already swollen and choking

on vast territories it cannot possibly digest ? You may scratch

Palestine anywhere and you find Israel. There is not a spot

which is not indelibly stamped with the footprint of the Jew -

"not a road, spring, mountain or village, which does not awaken

the name of some great king or greater prophet . Surely," cries

Dr. Holmes, "this is his homeland, if ever again he is to have

a home." 86

`SEMITIC BROTHERS'

If British plans ever materialize, Palestine will eventually come

under Arab domination, presumably as part of the great Arab

Confederacy . The fate of the Jews in this eventuality becomes

an interesting conjecture.

There is a pleasant fiction, implicitly believed by many Jews,

that Israel has been well-treated by the followers of Mohammed

; that some sort of modus vivendi was established in the dim

days of antiquity, so that the two groups got along famously to"

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 403

gether. This fantasy grew out of the liaison between the Jews

of Spain and their racial kinsmen, the invading Berbers, zvho were

largely of direct Jewish and Phoenician descent .87 It was the

Jewish Berber, General Tarik-es-Ziad, who began the Moorish

conquest of Spain . During the Arab invasion of Spain in 71 z,

Jewish troops often as not garrisoned important fortresses .

Lloyd George states that "in science and art the superiority of

the early Moslem is attributable to the Jews." Lecky tells us

that "Jewish learning and Jewish genius contributed very largely

to that bright . . . civilization which radiated from Toledo and

Cordova." 88 And H. G. Wells declares that it is "difficult to

say . . . when the Jew ends and the Arab begins, so important

and essential were its Jewish factors." 89

As the invading tribes began to be suffocated by mass conversions

and the holding of innumerable concubines, whatever

bond of attraction might have existed between the two peoples

completely disappeared . Soon thereafter, to continue to this

day, Moslem rulers placed a penalty of death on apostasy to

Judaism. Jews were forbidden to ride on horses and were

marked with special clothes . Politically they were consigned

to the same second-rate citizenship which Nazi Germany is now

introducing ." In this cruel condition they remain, considered

in the same light as dogs, creatures the true Believer utterly despises.

The Arabic culture known to history was a modification of

the several ancient civilizations absorbed bodily by the barbaric

Arab tribes in their swift march of conquest . It never touched

the Arabs of Arabia, the peninsular Arab . These, writes Bertram

Thomas, "remained inviolate by their poverty, their remoteness,

their unwillingness to change. . . An intolerance survives

which is almost without parallel in the world today and

explains why so few European explorers have penetrated deep

into the peninsula - scarcely twenty throughout the ages ." 91

As early as Roman times, when the Hebrews with their backs

to the wall were struggling for their very existence, Tacitus informs

us that "a considerable body of Arabs . . . took the field

as avowed enemies of the Jewish nation ." 92 Wherever the

404 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Arab has seized control since, a critical situation has risen for

the Jews . A modern instance is the revolt of Palestine Arabs

in 1834 against the exactions of the Caliphate . Mobs converged

on Jerusalem from all over the country, and for several weeks

held the city. Venting their ugly passions on the horror-stricken

Jews, they gave themselves over to a mad orgy of rapine, murder

and pillage, until the Egyptian general Ibrahim, with equal

barbarism and ferocity, annihilated them .

If one may judge from the tone of the Arab press, the lot of

the Jew under the coming `National Government' will be anything

but pleasant. El Jamiya Arabiyah snarls that "the English

can stand the pride and impudence of the Jews, but the Arabs

know what kind of vermin the Jews are and will know how to

silence them ." Another ready example is the editorial in Islamia

on October 4, 1936, appealing to foreign Arabs not to confine

themselves to mere boycott of Jews but to drink their blood .

It may be seen again in the inflammatory circulars systematically

scattered in Jerusalem, reading : "Kill the Jews until not one of

them remains. Gird yourselves and satiate your souls that thirst

for blood, souls that cannot be sated but with the blood of the

. . . alien and loathsome Jew ."

Farago found that "Arab agitators visit the peasants and promise

them that at the end of the struggle the land and wives of the

Jews will be distributed amongst them . With this expectation

the peasant digs up his money and buys rifles and ammunition

from wandering gunrunners ." 93 Like many other informed

men, Duff gave blunt warning that "as soon as the Palestinian

leaders understood that Great Britain had really left them to their

own devices . . . a general massacre of the Jews and the destruction

of their colonies would occur ." 94 It need occasion

no surprise that the words 'Heil Hitler' proved a magic password

during the recent rebellion, protecting Europeans against

attack.

In every Moslem country the situation of Israel is tragic and

frightful. When the French came into Arab North Africa on

a frank war of imperial conquest, the Jews were overjoyed .

Their position had been so terrible that the invading French

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

405

were looked on as if they had been the troops of Messiah . Even

after European intervention, characteristic pogroms have flared

up like a windswept flame . The fiendish attack on the Jewish

quarter in Constantine, Algiers, in 1934, was a particularly atrocious

event. When French troops finally arrived, they found a

bloodcurdling scene of ruin and horror . Over a hundred Jews

had been slaughtered . Whole families had been locked in their

homes and burned to death . Houses were sacked, women violated

and children hacked to pieces . Among the countless injured

were young girls with their breasts cut off, creatures mutilated

beyond recognition but somehow alive .

In as dire misery are the one hundred and twenty thousand

Jews in French Morocco . In Tunis, Tripoli and Spanish Morocco

the picture is as wretched. Only the protection of European

soldiers saved the North African Jews from an orgy of

torture and merciful annihilation ; and some day, the Socialists

promise, these troops will be withdrawn .

In Iraq the one hundred and ten thousand Jews live under a

sanguinary reign of terror, not much different from that taking

place in Germany . They are mercilessly boycotted . Savage

beatings, murders and robberies are a daily occurrence . Jewish

girls are forcibly seized and dragged into harems . Yusuf Malek

assures us that "in Iraq a Moslem finds it more easy to kill a Jew

than to kill a chicken ." 95

In Syria Jews face famine and gradual extinction . Since they

are completely Arabicized, their fate gives an abrupt answer to

Arab claims that the tension in Palestine springs solely from a

conflict of national aims . The Jewish population of Damascus

has collapsed from twenty thousand after the War to less than

four thousand in 1935. In the last five years, ten thousand Jews

have emigrated from Damascus and Aleppo alone . In every

city and village they are systematically terrorized and boycotted .

In the streets and mosques they are openly threatened with the

same fate as befell the unfortunate Assyrians in Iraq, just as soon

as Syria obtains its independence . The French Mandatory Authorities

show little concern for Jews and are either vague or

frankly indifferent . Nevertheless, the Jew views the day when

4o6

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

a native government will be installed, with horror . The sudden

move of Leon Blum's Socialist ministry to make good on its

theories by granting independence to Syria, threw all Syrian

Jewry into a panic. To a man, they are trying to leave the

country before the French-Syrian Treaty goes into effect .

The only redeeming spot on the Syrian map is the autonomous

Christian district of Lebanon . These people are the only friends

the Jews have in Western Asia . Centuries of bloody persecution

have taught the Syrian Christian a lesson he has not forgotten.

The Lebanon is completely and whole-souledly pro-

Zionist. It wants the Jews for neighbors by the south, to lessen

its isolation in this forever-menacing Moslem sea. When pan-

Arab congresses held their anti-Jewish sessions, the Lebanese

papers roundly denounced them .116 The Government of the

Lebanon Republic has even proclaimed the Jewish Day of

Atonement, Yom Kippur, as an official holiday .

Arabia Felix, that immense curtained mystery, is a graveyard

in which lie buried the many strong Jewish tribes who once

graced this area with their intelligence and learning . In this vast

stronghold of the fanatic Ishmaelites no Jew may enter and live .

In Yemen, at the south end of the Peninsula, Jews are locked

into ghettos as in the Middle Ages, reduced to conditions of economic

desperation even worse, if that be possible, than the Jews

of the pogrom areas of Europe . Their women are at the constant

mercy of every wandering desperado who takes it into his

mind to invade the ghetto. Jews must wear a distinctive dress .

They must keep in the shadows . They are prohibited from

riding on horseback . Their children, by edict of December

1928, must embrace Moslemism on the death of their parents .

Those who believe the assurances of the English have only to

read the gory history of the Christian Assyrians in Iraq, after

Britain terminated its Mandate there in 1932, to gain a picture

of what is impending in Palestine . Just as the English made

an arrangement with the Zionists, so they had made a similar one

with the Assyrians, inviting them to rise against the Turks and

promising them independence and protection if they would do

so. Moved by these pledges, the Assyrians were the only peo"

A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

407

ple in what is now Iraq who took up the Allied cause and fought

loyally for the British Empire .97 Their territory was later placed

under Arab rule because London was anxious to include the

Mosul Oil District within Iraqian frontiers .

When the Assyrians expressed alarm over the British proposal

to grant statehood to Iraq, the Mandates Commission was solemnly

assured that the anxiety of these minorities was due to

"mischievous propaganda." Iraq, said the British representative,

was "a country where the Moslem, Christian and Jew have

lived happily side by side for centuries . . . His Majesty's Government

fully realizes its responsibilities in recommending that

Iraq should be admitted to the League . Should Iraq prove unworthy

o f the confidence which has been reposed in it, the moral

responsibility must rest with His Majesty's Government ." 98

In vain the Assyrians pleaded . The engineer A . M. Hamilton

and other thoughtful Englishmen immediately called the

turn without reservation, stating that "the lives of the minorities

have been placed in the hands of people without any morals or

conscience." e°

Scarcely a year after Iraq was granted its `independence,' and

despite the readiness of His Majesty's Government to assume

"moral responsibility," the Kurdish settlements were bombarded

by airplanes. A month later (in August 1933), a holy war was

proclaimed against the Assyrians . The Government offered

Arab tribesmen one pound bounty for every Assyrian head

brought in, as well as license to plunder any Assyrian property

they could find . The Arab press made it known that all acts

of violence were lawful and that anyone not participating in

this war would be betraying his religion and country.'°° At the

head of the Criminal Investigation Department was an Englishman,

who watched this terrific barrage of wild propaganda and

incitement without making a move .

Lieutenant-Colonel A. S. Stafford, British Administrative Inspector

in Iraq, gives a blood-curdling eye-witness account of

what followed. The Assyrians were first systematically disarmed.

On August 5, an Army detachment swept through

their territory and the Assyrians were hunted down as one stalks

408

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

rabbits. "No pretence was made that these operations had any

purely military objective, for the Army Intelligence Officers

did not even take the trouble to cross-question the captured Assyrians,

who were simply shot as they were rounded up ." 101

At Dohuk they were taken from their villages in vans, in batches

of eight or ten, and shot down with machine guns . "The heavy

armoured cars were driven over dead and dying alike ." 102

On August 7, the inhabitants of the whole surrounding district

were ordered to come down to Simel, the largest Assyrian

settlement. After days of sacking, the troops began a coldblooded

and methodical massacre . "Machine gunners set up

their guns outside the windows of the houses in which the Assyrians

had taken refuge, and having trained them on the terrorstricken

wretches in the crowded rooms, fired among them until

not a man was left standing in the shambles ." 103 Women

were ripped open with knives and then made sport of while they

were in a state of agony . Little girls of nine were raped and

burned alive. After being barbarously tortured, priests were

slaughtered, holy books piled over their bodies and burned with

them. When there was no one left to kill, the troops took their

departure, carrying with them for their amusement a large number

of luckless Assyrian girls . The Tribes, who had been interested

spectators of these unspeakable events, then came in and

completed the looting. "I saw and heard many horrible things

in the Great War," related an English eye-witness, "but what

I saw at Simel is beyond human imagination." 104

The troops engaged against the defenseless Assyrians were

given a royal reception on their return . In Mosul the Crown

Prince, now King of Iraq, decorated their colors with his own

hands. The various officers concerned were promoted . Enthusiastic

applause greeted their triumphant procession through

the capital.

After this cowardly slaughter, occurred other massacres, this

time of the Yezidis, "planned by the Central Authorities at Baghdad

and conducted by the army with no less barbarity than the

previous ones." 105

To the present day Christians are effectively boycotted in the

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

409

Government service, debarred from primary schools, and militated

against in all ways . Girls are never safe ; and "acts of

sodomy by force," states Malek, are committed on boys by education

and administrative officials .100

In these circumstances the Zionists may well read a ghastly

projection of the future. In ringing accents the Assyrian

leader Prince Gambar told them : "Despite the empty assurances

of Great Britain, those who have eyes with which to see,

and know what Arabs of the type of the Iraqis can do when

let loose, must share your fears as to what is positively to happen

to non-Arabs when placed under Arab rule ." 107

CHAPTER II

JEHOVAH ABDICATES IN FAVOR OF DOWNING STREET

LET NOT THY RIGHT HAND KNOW WHAT THY LEFT HAND

DOETH'

CHAPTER II

JEHOVAH ABDICATES IN FAVOR OF DOWNING

STREET

LET NOT THY RIGHT HAND KNOW WHAT THY LEFT HAND

DOETH'

In 1936 again, uncontrolled violence rolled like a sheet of

seething flame over Palestine . For the sixth time since British

occupation, armed revolt broke out, turning the country into a

roaring furnace. And as before, the lawlessness timed itself to

coincide exactly with events of major importance in Empire

politics .

If circumstances are to be believed at their face value, the

recent revolt in Palestine was a marvel of valor and military

genius. For more than two years a handful of petty ruffians,

sniping from ambush in the hills, have held the greatest empire

in the world at bay . "It may be doubted," states Sidebotham,

"whether there were ever more than one thousand men in the

field against us." 1 What London is asking us to believe at

the moment is that in a country half the size of Ohio, thirtytwo

thousand troops equipped with airplanes, tanks and all the

trappings of war are unable to subdue a small gang of desperadoes

who have succeeded in keeping it in a state of insecurity

and uproar for years. The utter helplessness and awful inefficiency

of the Mandatory in the face of this minor insurrection

is laid on too thick to be credible .

In scarcely more than a century London has managed to seize

for itself over a quarter of the land surface of the globe. Is

not the very existence of this vast Empire a gilt-edged guarantee

that England has never shown herself inept at the business of

handling rebellion ? It is not generally realized that the British

are constantly engaged in putting down insurrection in farseparated

places . In the Hadramaut they have been going

through a merciless mopping-up process . Along India's north-

410

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

411

west frontier they are cleaning out the revolting tribesmen of

Waziristan with a ruthless hand . The colonies without exception

are ruled by the axiom, `Spare the rod and spoil the child .'

In Kenya, another mandated territory, when a government

clerk named Thuku founded the "East Africa Native Association"

to protest the peonage system introduced by the Colonials,

he was grabbed on the charge of `sedition' and deported without

trial, after the police had slaughtered a score of his followers

for demonstrating in front of the jail where he was held . In

Iraq an emergency similar to the one in Palestine was handled

by Sir Percy Cox with scant ceremony . All the Arab leaders

concerned were immediately placed in custody, offending newspapers

suppressed and their editors arrested . Sir Percy's comments

were brief and to the point : ". . . the High Commissioner

will not hesitate to take drastic steps against any persons,

tribesmen or townsmen who do not take the present warning,

but continue to emulate the seditious vagaries of those now

placed under restraint ." This was language that Arabs could

understand, and the whole affair died aborning. Subsequent rebellions

were handled in short order by the Iraqi shadow government,

by simply detailing a few British airplanes to bomb

the tribesmen into submission .

In Palestine the close integration of officialdom itself with

the `patriotic' movement is hardly open to doubt . It is sufficient

to cite the Nationalist demonstration of October io, 1 934,

attended by prominent Government functionaries in their official

capacity, where "Arab civilization" was lauded and "the

coming independence and unification of the Arab countries"

(including Palestine) enthusiastically hailed . This hidden complot

reveals itself even more obviously in an incident of twelve

months earlier . An anti-Jewish demonstration had been announced.

The usual preparations had preceded it, the ferocious

bluster and screaming agitation, led by the familiar leaders of the

Arab Executive . Unfortunately for these plans, Nazi violence

in Germany, then unique and shocking, suddenly shook the soul

of civilization like an earthquake . All articulate reaction to

these startling events was overwhelmingly with the stricken

412

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Jews. Sympathy for human suffering and despair was the prevailing

mood, and it was apparent at that moment that anti-

Jewish riots would be more than embarrassing to the British

Government. In an amazing about-face the scheduled disorders

were converted into a peaceful demonstration against the Government,

in which the word Jew was not even mentioned . A

strike had been called, but it was quietly recalled, without a

word of explanation . Part of the mob which had been so carefully

prepared could not, however, be headed off. Several

thousand hoodlums charged the police in Jaffa after having been

told by their own leaders to disperse . Taking his duties seriously,

Assistant Superintendent of Police Faraday ordered his

men to fire. In the melee he himself was badly wounded ; and

as a result an irate British judge sentenced some of the rioters to

imprisonment. Immediately the District Court quashed the

sentence and released the prisoners on "promise of good behavior

." The bewildered Faraday soon after had his post taken

away from him and was exiled to Beersheba .2

The British are reputed to possess the shrewdest Intelligence

and Secret Service in existence . Concentrated in one small

branch of the War Office, known as M.I.5, this superbly organized

spy and counter-spy system is respected wherever espionage

exists . Yet in strategic Palestine the Authorities never

seemed to know that seditious unrest of the most explosive type

was being openly organized right under their noses . Like the

previous uprisings, the rebellion of 1936 was scarcely a bolt

from the blue. It only became possible after prolonged elaboration

and shaping. Much of it was openly bought and paid for .

"Fifty well-armed, resolute Franks with a large sum o f money,"

observes an official United States Report, "could revolutionize

the whole country ." 3 "It is always easy in Arab countries,"

confirms Ernest Main, "to buy agitators and even murderers

for a pittance. It is easy, too, to work up political demonstrations,

even culminating in riots, if the fee paid is sufficient . All

you have to do is to summon a local labor contractor and tell

him you want a thousand men to demonstrate . His fee will be,

say, C50 or C 7o, and if you hand over this money you will

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

41 3

get a perfectly good demonstration in the streets, perhaps with

a few persons injured and some windows broken . . . It is important,

therefore, to realize that so-called `spontaneous' outbreaks

among the Arabs are less common than those that are

engineered ." 4

Before this kind of backdrop the riots were openly rehearsed

and agitated. For eighteen months the Government allowed

the Arab press to keep up a daily barrage, systematically branding

the Jews as "the human sexual disease," as "a gang of swindlers,"

and "a menace to all mankind ." Arab leaders publicly

threatened violence and bloodshed . Terrorist organizations

paraded themselves without the slightest attempt at secrecy .

Among others, there was the Red Shadow, the Black Hand, and

a formidable murder gang calling itself simply `G,' over whom,

says Farago, "the British made merry," referring to its members

as 'G-Men.' 5 All over Palestine groups of brown-clad storm

troops were marching, shouting 'Heil Hitler .' At Nablus,

boldly operating in the open, was a military training school for

the Arab Scouts, prime leaders in the disturbances .

Late in March a meeting of influential Arabs, practically all

of them Government employees, was held at Safed to plan the

uprising. A delegation consisting of members of the Iraqian

Parliament arrived to attend . It behaved itself in a flagrant

manner which would have led to strong diplomatic representations

in any other country, but here its stay was made pleasant

by every official courtesy. Fifteen days before the lid finally

blew off of this seething caldron, the Revisionist leader Jabotinsky

cabled the High Commissioner warning him that "specific

Arab manifestations on an unprecedented scale are being

exploited to revive the ominous battle cry, `Eddowleh Maana'

[the Government is with us]" and received a contemptuous

reply.

There was hardly one of the Arab ring-leaders who was not

on the Government's payroll . In any other country these men,

self-announced plotters of riot and rebellion, would have immediately

been tried for high treason . On the statute books

was the Seditious Offenses Ordinance, providing severe penalties

414

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

for any act which conspired "to raise discontent or disaffection

amongst the inhabitants of Palestine ; or to promote feelings of

ill-will and hostility between the different sections of the population

of Palestine." Yet on one of those rare occasions when

this ordinance was applied, the dangerous firebrand, Hassan

Sidki Dejani, was let off with the derisive fine of C 25 after he

had been found guilty of inciting Arab officials to revolt . "If

one thing stands out clear from the record of the Mandatory administration,"

concedes the Peel Report, "it is the leniency with

which Arab political agitation, even when carried to the point

of violence and murder, has been treated ."

Responsible Arabs who wanted peace were treated with all

the contumely of renegades who had joined the enemy camp .

In Britain itself, Colonial Office publications were blatantly advising

the Arabs to "unite on a common front ." An Arab delegation

was invited to present its grievances officially in London

- though no Jewish delegation was asked ." The tomtoms beat

in frenzied repetition as Whitehall circles called on the Arabs

not to let this opportunity to smash Zionism go by . The Bureaucracy

was now stalking its game brazenly in the clear .

While Arabs who made no secret of their revolutionary aims

were being pampered on the Government payroll, the steamroller

of official authority was ironing out the Jews. Among

other incidents, every Revisionist leader in Palestine was arrested

on suspicion of being connected with a "secret revolutionary organization,"

and held for considerable periods, without trial .

Even the innocuous little Jewish State Party was refused registration

as a legally existing organization. With withering

mockery the Government announced that unless it "eliminated

from its platform the demand for a Jewish majority . . . the

Jewish State Party could not be registered by the Palestine Administration."

Under this kind of patronage Arab megalomania developed

like a well-watered weed . A droll example is provided by the

indignant protest sent to a Jewish newspaper by a bandit named

Nabulsi during the height of the riots . Complaining that the

paper was not even concerned "with common politeness," he

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

415

says, making his point : "Never have the Official Communiques

designated us as inciters, terrorists and murderers !" 7 Of course

Mr. Nabulsi was quite right -the Official communiques had

never done so .

Unless the British are the victims of the worst accumulation

of circumstantial evidence that ever made white appear to be

black, the current disturbances, as well as the preceding situations

they have been required so busily to police, were created

with adroit cunning by themselves . The hope was plainly to

institute a struggle which would paralyze the Jews, after which

the Administration could come to terms with the Arabs . And

so we see the fantastic picture of a State surreptitiously engaged

in undermining its own authority and ruining its own commerce

and security by an act of civil rebellion to which it has lent its

own tacit permission . The three American Senators, Austin,

Copeland and Hastings, who visited Palestine in 1936, made

no bones about their impressions. Copeland, product of the

unbending morality of an upper-state New York village, bluntly

wrote that "there are really two strikes going on in Palestine .

One is conducted by Arab terrorists, who throw bombs and

snipe at passersby in the streets and highways . The other is

conducted silently by the Mandatory Government of Palestine

against the proper administration of justice . The prolongation

o f the terror in the Holy Land is due . . . to a manifest sympathy

for the vandals and assassins displayed by many officers

who are sworn to uphold the law . . . creating a condition

which could not but shock any American observer ." 8

REVOLT BY PERMISSION

For months, fifteen thousand soldiers had apparently been unable

to render safe a few miles of road between Jerusalem and

Tel Aviv . There had been innumerable hold-ups by armed

gangs, in which Jewish passengers had been hauled out of their

cars and wantonly butchered. Not a soul had been punished

for any of these brutal crimes . With unrestrained arrogance

the intransigeant Arab press hailed these killers as heroes and

416 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

boasted of further horrors to come . The nerves of the Jewish

community were worn to a frazzle. On April 17, 1936 the

funeral of a murdered Jew was made the occasion of a protest

demonstration . In an ugly mood, the police fired into the

crowd, wounding thirty persons . Immediately after, steelhelmeted

officers invaded Tel Aviv, dragging out householders

on suspicion of having been connected with the protest . Bearers

of black-bordered Zionist flags of mourning were beaten into

unconsciousness . Sullen, angry apprehension once more made

the air of the Holy Land a tinder box . It was in the midst of

this charged condition that the explosion was touched off .

The actual lighting of the fuse took place on the nineteenth of

April when a blood-curdling tale was circulated in Jaffa that

four Arab men and women had been beheaded by Jews in Tel

Aviv. Instead of counteracting these wild rumors, the Government

added fuel to the fire by dispatching enlarged police

units to Tel Aviv, obviously to protect Arabs from Jewish attack.

The outbreaks were swiftly and shrewdly plotted . On the

scheduled day not a single Arab was to be seen in Tel Aviv

though they generally offer their vegetables for sale as early as

five in the morning. Jews visiting Jaffa were irritably told by

the Chief Officer there that he "really did not understand why

they had come . . . since everybody had already known yesterday

that anti-Jewish attacks were to take place ." e Not a

finger was lifted by the Authorities . On the entire road from

Tel Aviv to Jerusalem only one policeman was posted though

the roads were almost bursting with armed and threatening men .

Jaffa burst into flames with the familiar cry "the Government is

with us" urging the demented horde on . By midday the streets

were running with Jewish blood . Many were slaughtered and

mutilated past identification, right under the eyes of the police

who made no effort to interfere .

The contagion spread to all parts of the country like wildfire .

Little boys of six carried automatics, shooting them off on the

streets of Jerusalem as if they were toy pistols . Unhindered,

the Arab press beat a loud tattoo for murder and revolt . GramJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

4 1 7

ophone records made their appearance in the shops, calling on

the Arabs to annihilate the Jews . Nazi flags and pictures of

Hitler were prominently displayed in store windows . Booklets

explaining Nazi methods of forcing Jews from the Reich were

distributed freely . Only the Haifa district remained immune,

miraculously free of violence to the end, leading Jabotinsky to

ask coldly if it were true that this was "a revolt by leave" in one

part of Palestine, with no revolt where it was requested by the

Authorities that there should be no revolt .

On May 21, the Arab High Committee called a general strike,

stopping all work. Contrary to its own organic law, the Government

did not declare the strike illegal . Despite the fact that

it was an openly seditious body, the Arab High Committee was

not interfered with. The queer business by no means ended

here. At the end of June a mutinous memorandum was submitted

to the High Commissioner, signed by 137 senior Arab

officials, telling him bluntly to yield to the Arab High Committee.

This singular paper was duly forwarded through proper

channels to the Colonial Office, "who politely acknowledged it

and so far from rebuking the signatories, thanked them for their

loyalty!" 10 It was followed by even more impudent memoranda

from Arab officials in the second division, and the

Government-paid judges of the Moslem Courts .

With the exception of Government employees, virtually the

whole terror was led by Syrians, and Arabs from Mesopotamia

and Egypt. Violent men from all quarters slipped in and out

of the border as if it were non-existent, attracted by the lust

for action. The most important of these was Fawzy Bey el

Kaougji, self-styled commander of the Arab bands . A somewhat

handsome adventurer of neurotic impulses, Fawzy was a

Syrian who had been sentenced to death by the French for his

activities during the Druse revolt . Escaping to the Hejaz, he

had to fly for his life again, this time for being mixed up in a

tribal rebellion .

More lately he had been Commandant of the Military Training

College of Iraq . The Arab outbreak had already lasted three

months when Fawzy made his sensational appearance in a battle

418

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

in the Nablus area. Soon after, reports came through describing

how he had actually made his way in broad daylight across

the desert from Iraq, accompanied by many motor lorries laden

with full military equipment, and a considerable body of professional

desperadoes said to have come from the Iraqian Army .

To reach the Jordan River he had to pass through a veritable

network of military posts and patrols by which every waterhole

and lane is watched with a hawk's eye. The Jordan crossings

themselves are well known and well guarded . Fawzy

was no ectoplasm which could waft its way across these threedimensional

obstacles like Shaitan's spirit. The passage was that

of a regular expedition replete with weapons and military baggage

; but there he was on the wrong side of Jordan.

His appearance in Palestine was greeted with a well-organized

blast of publicity not less than that given the British expeditionary

force of General Dill." Within a few days his photographs,

describing him grandly as "Commander-in-Chief of the Arab

Armies in Southern Syria," were being sold and displayed in

bookstalls throughout the Holy Land . The entire Arab press

featured them with such provocative statements as "long live

the leader of battles, Fawzy, the messenger from Iraq," and "unsheath

your swords and daggers and press the enemy till he is

strangled." None of this met with the slightest interference

from the all-powerful censorship bureau . Aping the Government

itself, Fawzy even published his own war communiques,

making extravagant claims of `victories .' These were posted

prominently, sometimes on Government buildings themselves,

where they were allowed to remain for Arabs to see and believe .

An apparently frantic search by the combined forces of the

Army and Police found him as elusive as the proverbial greased

pig. While the Authorities were supposedly turning the country

upside down to find him, fifteen thousand Arabs assembled

on the banks of the Jordan to give the `hero' a royal reception .

From the very start, the rebels showed that they possessed an

inexhaustible supply of weapons and ammunition and were being

guided by a skilled military hand . Most of the Arab arms

were "brand new British weapons and ammunition manufacJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

419

tured in the celebrated Woolwich Arsenal ." 12 It is reliably declared

that practically all their bombing operations were conducted

with hand grenades of official army issue . 13 Searches

for arms in Arab towns were preceded by a great stir in advance

so as to apprise the villagers that the raid was imminent, giving

them plenty of time to put their houses in order. In many cases,

groups of rebels used police cars and possessed special police

passes .

With bandits and mutineers swarming over every road, soldiers

were under instruction to fire only in the air. British

Tommies informed Farago : "We are not allowed to use weapons

without the written permission o f the District Commissioner

!" 14 And Duff was told in disgust by a loyal Arab policeman

: "Life is almost impossible for us men of the police

nowadays. We dare not do our duty for fear of being reported

and punished ." 15 "Both men and officers," states the London

Morning Post sharply, "have been quite bewildered by the fact

that operations have frequently been canceled at the moment

when they were on the point of being successful ." 16 A cloak

of bleak mystery shrouded these strange instructions . Where

they came from, no one seemed to know .

The streets of all cities were made the daily stamping grounds

of gangs who threatened Arab shopkeepers and beat up peasants

who came into town with their vegetables . "For an Arab to be

suspected of a lukewarm adherence to the nationalist cause,"

says Lord Peel, "is to invite a visit from a body of gunmen ." 14

Gangs visited villages and threatened to burn them down unless

they supplied quotas of men, firearms and provisions . When

the Mayor of Beisan displayed a foolish unwillingness to swell

the terrorists' funds, his young son's throat was slit in reprisal .

In deadly fear of their own nationals, 1 zoo wealthy Arabs fled

the country.

Shootings, bombings and every conceivable form of violent

outrage now became the daily routine . Bombs were thrown at

homes, railway stations, hospitals and public buildings . Kindergartens

and playgrounds were dynamited, tearing little children

to shreds. Nurses were slain by snipers as they went on duty .

420

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Trains were fired on and wrecked ; cinema houses blown up ;

crops burned ; trees whose planting represented a lifetime of

heartbreak and industry, maliciously uprooted . Nothing that

would yield to knife or flame was safe from the destructive hand

of the vandal .

The chivalrous stuff these pampered `patriots' were made of is

typified in the case of a gang who invaded the home of a Safed

rabbi at midnight . They found his three little children on the

veranda and butchered them in their sleep. Their mother,

startled by the commotion, ran out and flung herself down to

protect her brood . The Arabs shot her without mercy. Her

husband coming on this terrible scene had barely time to see his

family dying before his eyes when a bomb hurled by the retreating

intruders decapitated him .

The Yishub was caught in a trap, but it knew from what

source its agony came . Courageously the head of the Palestine

Jewish Community, Mr. Ben Zvi, asked : "Who can say that his

hands are clean in these outrages ? Can the High Commissioner

?" In refreshing contrast to the fawning rhetoric of

Zionist `statesmen' in London, forthright old Mayor Dizengoff

of Tel Aviv saddled the High Commissioner with direct responsibility,

bluntly accusing him of having introduced "demoralization,

anarchy and lawlessness into the country ." He declared

that "the Government railways have become the strongholds of

terrorists from which they set fire to Jewish cornfields and bombard

peaceful towns," and that "Palestine is now directed by the

Arab High Committee and hooligans." "You assure us solemnly,"

he exclaimed (addressing himself to the Government),

"that you are fulfilling your obligations to us, but in practice

you have outlawed the Jews and handed them over to a mob of

criminals." 18

As in previous riots, the Jews were rendered impotent by being

forcibly disarmed. Drivers of vehicles compelled to run the

gauntlet of frequent attacks could not carry so much as a club

to protect themselves with. The police regularly searched Jewish

busses and passenger-cars on the roads, while Arab vehicles

derisively passed them, neither examined nor stopped .19 DeJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

421

spite the fact that vandals were systematically uprooting valuable

groves and applying the torch freely, Senator Copeland found

that owners were flatly refused permission to have armed guards

on their properties.20 Jewish watchmen found in possession of

pistols were sentenced to long prison terms, though it was shown

that their posts were dangerous and that other watchmen had

been killed in the very neighborhood. Even colonies which

were subjected to recurrent assaults were religiously ransacked

by police, and colonists found in possession of weapons were

punished by imprisonment. Jews were warned that under no

circumstances might they own a rifle or fire a gun . Colonists

exposed to Arab violence were advised to lode out until troops

came. Even the Jewish Ghaffirs and supernumerary constables

were usually armed with truncheons only, or at best, with decrepit

shotguns that had little military value . Moreover, they

were not permitted to pursue marauders beyond the confines of

their settlements. "Jaffa Jews may be done to death in the very

sight of Tel Aviv's Jewish policemen, but these police may not

go to the rescue !" cries the Palestine Post indignantly.21

In vain the Jews pleaded to be allowed to defend themselves.

Students and veterans of the battalions who had fought under

Allenby begged to be mobilized, urging that they "did not de

sire to see any British blood spilled . We are quite capable of

defending our own homeland ." The Revisionists offered fifty

thousand Jewish soldiers, some of them seasoned World War

veterans, for police duty . The mobilization of five thousand

Jewish youths at any time, would have made short work of the

killers, but the Authorities had other ideas .

Arabs arrested for carrying arms were either freed outright or

fined as ridiculous a sum as three shillings (about 75¢) . Those

convicted of murderous assaults or of arson were indulgently

released "on probation ." For months, though there had been

numerous murders of Jews, the Government did not take the

matter seriously enough to offer any reward at all . It was only

after a British constable named Bird had been assassinated that

they suddenly came out with a substantial reward . Despite the

wholesale murders which took place in 1936, there was not a

422 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

single execution, a more than startling circumstance, since the

normal crime calendar of Palestine accounts for twelve hangings

annually .

Officers who took their duties too seriously were rebuked in

open court or transferred to less desirable posts as a warning to

others . The following cases, selected at random, show the general

tone of the courts . In one case, three Arabs, arrested for

sending an infernal machine in a suitcase to a Jew in Tel Aviv

and found with a whole arsenal of bombs in their possession, were

released on bond of L25. In another, two Arabs positively

identified by seven eye-witnesses as having dynamited a cinema

in Tel Aviv, murdering three people and mangling many others,

were given seven days in jail for carrying guns . The murder

charges were not even brought up. In another, some two hundred

ruffians armed with knives and iron bars, fell on the Jewish

quarter of Tiberias . When the military and police finally arrived

they `escorted' the assailants out of the vicinity . The

journey was made a source of great merriment . Shop windows

were broken and passersby stoned . "The next day the police

returned and arrested fifteen Jews ." 22

When the Administration dealt with outrages it really regarded

as scandalous, it made short work of the miscreants .

Rebels who damaged the Iraq Petroleum Company's pipelines

were not only apprehended, but their houses and those of their

relatives demolished in reprisal . When the military railway

was scathed by unidentified vandals, the nearby city of Lydda

was fined J 5000. An Arab who set a relative's grain field on

fire was sentenced to four years' imprisonment .23 Insurgents

caught firing on British troops were speedily handed the death

penalty, these crimes apparently being classified as `premeditated,'

as opposed to the `unpremeditated,' hence forgivable,

murder and arson committed on the person and property of

Jews.

While Arab papers were allowed to carry on the most unbridled

anti-Jewish incitement, it was a different matter when

El Jamia al Islamia engaged in what was alleged to be pro-Italian

propaganda . Its editor, Khalil Yousuff, was picked up with no

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

423

more ceremony than if he had been a sack of potatoes, and deported.

24 Similarly, when some swashbucklers with little imagination

took their immunity too literally and dropped some bombs

outside the residence of the High Commissioner, "the Palestine

Government ordered the suspension of all Arabic newspapers indefinitely,

beginning at once ." 25

What the attitude was is shown in the order to Jews to bury

their dead at five o'clock in the morning so that there would be

nothing ostentatious about it . At the same time the Arabs were

turning the funeral of an ordinary outlaw into the most spectacular

celebration ever seen around Haifa .

Though in every case Jews were the victims, the Authorities

felt justified in alluding to the marauding operations of the insurgents

as 'Arab-Jewish clashes' requiring the meting out of

equal punishment to both sides `impartially .' To justify this

piece of hypocrisy, Jews suspected of nationalist leanings were

arbitrarily picked up and jailed, without cause or trial . When

an old Arab woman was assassinated by thieves from Arab Tireh,

known as a den of cutthroats since time immemorial, 26 the peaceful

little Jewish hamlet, Achuzat Herbert Samuel, was stigmatized

with the onus of murder by the imposition of a huge collective

fine, without the slightest offer of evidence.

Perhaps the most revolting part of this ugly pantomime was

the treatment accorded the Jewish refugees who had escaped the

storm area with their lives . By June more than twelve thousand

homeless creatures had streamed into Tel Aviv for protection,

their possessions destroyed and occupations ruined . The Government

finally agreed, under pressure, to contribute the sum of

2o mils (1o¢) a day per head to their upkeep . After a few

weeks it abruptly notified the Municipality that it would terminate

even this meager contribution (June 17, 1936) ; and in an

astounding decree taking effect thirteen days later, it denied the

city of Tel Aviv permission to provide for or deal with these

unfortunates. In this amazing order the dictum was laid down

that though the refugees were not to be permitted to return to

their ruined homes, it was up to the voluntary contributions of

Jews abroad to maintain and house them . The Government

424

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

washed its hands of the proposition and refused to accept, or to

allow the Municipality to accept, the responsibility .

Since it is apparent that this whole mad fury of lawlessness has

been prompted from an outside source, the question naturally

arises -where did all the money come from to keep it alive?

There were men to feed, committees to keep going, agents to

support in foreign countries, and arms and ammunition which

had to be purchased. It is estimated that these activities were

costing in the neighborhood of f 3000 a day.27 This is a large

sum when it is applied to a struggle lasting many months on end .

Those acquainted with the country know that the rich Arab is

not prepared to donate "even a pound of his own free will for

communal purposes." 28 Nor did his nature show any change

in this case . The Arab landlords, effendis and merchants gave

very little support to the strike . Many, in fact, left the country

to protect themselves .

According to the continental press, the Jerusalem Police found

documents proving that the rioters had received C70,000 from

European sources actuated by anti-British as well as anti-Jewish

motives. In addition to this and other sums which came from

Fascist countries, the London Daily Mail reported that a police

raid in Jerusalem discovered receipts and documents indicating

that the Soviet Department for Near East Propaganda had sent

large sums to Palestine to support the insurrection .29 Another

considerable amount was reported to have been remitted to Arab

emissaries at Cairo, Egypt, via the American Express Company .3o

A great part of the revolt funds came from England itself . Allied

anti-Semites in America supplied another portion .31 Some

came directly from the Palestine Government in various disguises,

as the £ 30,000 loan "to needy farmers," actually used

to buy arms and ammunition . 32 The Government-controlled

Moslem Wak f contributed another sizable sum . Mohammedan

.countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq which fall in the British

sphere of influence, made a number of public collections for this

;purpose. The London Daily Mail of July 15, 1936 reports that

£ 11,000 was sent from India, apparently without the slightest

;interference by either the Indian or Palestine Authorities .

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

425

"One of the surest sources of strike funds," states the London

Times, "remains the contributions from Arab officials in the

Government service, most of whom regularly surrender a fraction

o f their salary." 33 For the right to continue working,

Government employees were assessed by gangster methods, up

to twenty percent of their monthly salary . By August 15, 1936,

according to a detailed statement published by an Arab paper,

around £ 5000 was collected in Jerusalem from this source .

According to an incomplete list appearing daily in Ad Difaa,

twice that amount was collected in Jaffa by the same date .

This tax, writes Horace Samuel, fell impartially on every Arab

official from the most junior teacher "to the most senior of Sir

Michael MacDonnell's Arab judges in the Court of Appeal, taking

in, presumably, in its stride, Ishak Effendi El Hashim, the

Arab private secretary of Sir Arthur Wauchope ." 34

By Fall the Levantine began to grow heartily tired of the revolt.

All this turmoil was the incomprehensible business of

Allah and the strange Angliz who for some reason wanted it that

way. The fellah and Bedouin, for their part, had had enough .35

The citrus season was coming on . The fruit hanging on the

tree was like ready money. There were not enough hands to

go around . Tradesmen and merchants found themselves almost

bankrupt and wishing the `patriots' all in hell in consequence.

The British had moreover accomplished all their objectives for

the moment. They had succeeded in concentrating a huge

military force in the delicately balanced Near East without protest

from any source . A Royal Commission was already on its

way to complete the work of demolishing the Mandate . After

dilly-dallying around for months with his huge imported military

machine, General Dill bluntly made it known that the curtain

was about to be rung down on the play .

The Arab ring-leaders were now in an all-but-impossible situation

. With nice consideration Whitehall conceded that their

prestige must be saved at all costs . "The Arab Higher Committee,"

states Great Britain and the East, "cannot of itself say that

the strike shall end without renouncing the whole position it has

426

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

taken up . A 'face-saving' development is however possible." 38

With extravagant mummery, as if they were dealing with a

powerful opponent, the Colonials made the proper motions .

Low-flying airplanes scattered tons of Arabic leaflets promising

that if the strike were dropped, a Royal Commission would immediately

come and "give the Arabs justice ." With ill-concealed

clarity they were told by manifesto and proclamation that all

their demands would be granted .

With brilliant forethought the Bureaucrats cushioned the collapse

for their friends in the Arab High Committee . They invited

the Arab kings into the situation . But here came a snag

the Arab kings smelled a rat and would not budge . Abdullah,

who believed he was to be the Emir of a reunited Palestine and

Transjordan, was mortally afraid of baiting Ibn Saud by a public

declaration, since the latter understood that it was his second

son who was to get the Holy Land throne . Each waited dead

in his tracks, desperately afraid of being double-crossed .37

Finally, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Nuri Pasha Said, was

dragooned to act as mediator . He assured the rebels that "the

Palestine Government would not only announce stoppage of

Jewish entry into Palestine but would also declare an amnesty

for individual Arabs participating in the outbreaks, as quid pro

quo concessions for Arab cessation of the strike ." 38 Almost

immediately afterwards, Nuri Pasha was overthrown in his own

country and chased out to exile in Egypt. The new Government

of Iraq turned its back on the pan-Arab world . Ibn Saud

and Abdullah continued to eye each other suspiciously . Only

after these gentlemen had been stiffly reminded that they owed

their eminence to British bayonets, did they cautiously allow

themselves to be drawn into the 'face-saving' process .

With this theatrical piece of staging the `strike' ended . It was

not a surrender, but in the nature of an honorable armistice.

The plain inference in this gentleman's arrangement was "that

pending the findings of the Commission, the terrorist organization

is not to be unduly harassed, so that it shall be in a position

to resume hostilities should it not be satisfied with the findings

of the Commission ." 311 With superb courtesy, Fawzy Bey and

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

427

his followers were allowed passage into Transjordan . "Though

the Army had successfully surrounded him and his foreign supporters,"

writes the Jerusalem correspondent of the London

Times, ". . . his capture would have been embarrassing," so he

was "allowed to escape across the Jordan as a more tactful solution,"

enabling him to "conclude his spectacular career here

with honor and without surrender." 40 Why, one wonders, was

it necessary to allow this invading desperado to depart "with

honor" ? By what providential device was he "surrounded"

immediately after the conclusion of the strike, though seemingly

so elusive before ? And why would his capture have been

"embarrassing" to the Government of Palestine ? Returning to

Baghdad with a large party of followers by motor convoy, Fawzy

was given a rousing official reception which included "a message

of welcome from the Prime Minister, who congratulated him on

his safe return." 41 Since Iraq is frankly a British dependency,

must not this circumstance also be included in the puzzle ?

One hundred and seventy-five days had elapsed . During this

time, Palestine had wallowed in a horrible blood bath which had

cost seven hundred lives and thousands of wounded . Trees by

the hundred thousand had been uprooted ; innumerable stock

animals slain ; forty-eight bridges were destroyed ; telephone

and telegraph wires damaged ; trains derailed, buildings burned

and looted. There had been, all told, 1996 attacks on Jewish

settlements and communities, and numerous other forays directed

at busses, police stations and public buildings . Business

was at a standstill . Property loss was estimated at L 3,000,000.

The extra expenditure for military and police ran to another

J.2,200,000

The Holy Land was tense and anxious as still another of the

obliquitous Commissions entrained from London to `investigate :

BLAMING ITALIANS AND COMMUNISTS

While London was thus engaged in victimizing the Jews, official

publicity agencies were losing no opportunity to squeeze

428

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

every ounce of advantage from the situation . A venomous and

apparently incurable quarrel had developed between England

and the ambitious Italian dictator Mussolini . Frankly worried,

London was straining every nerve to quarantine the Italian by

depicting him as an international criminal who must be ostracized

by all decent opinion . The efficient English propaganda

machine was now operating on the old war-time basis . From

London and Jerusalem came a roll of sensational stories fastening

responsibility for the riots on the scowling figure of Mussolini.

Veiled allusions were made to the Pope and to his liaison

with the Italian Dictator . Catholic nuns, nurses and teachers

were accused of carrying on secret propaganda against Zionists

and British alike .42 In beautifully chosen words which inferred

an anti-Jewish as well as anti-English plot the British Foreign

Secretary pinned the whole blame on the Italians .

The entire liberal press rose to the bait so dexterously flicked

upon the water . Like a pack of dogs hot after game, the Marxist

press aggressively took up the cry. The London Daily Herald

asserted that Italy had sent enormous sums to Arab leaders

through secret agents . It even went to the point of claiming

that Mussolini had offered the Bedouins of Transjordan three

dollars a day per man if they would cross over into Palestine and

loot Jewish stores and houses .43 Responsible publications went

so far as to feature as news a weird story, concocted by the press

officer of Palestine, alleging that posters printed in Italian had

been stuck up all over Jerusalem urging Arabs to slit the gullets

of the Jews .44 Even the Zionist spokesmen, anxious now for

some unreal explanation of distasteful reality, seized on this fragile

straw which the Mandatory for Palestine had thoughtfully

provided.

A scant two years later, Italy, under pressure from its Nazi ally,

was to join the anti-Semitic Internationale so sedulously promoted

from Berlin.45 Jews, who had occupied the most illustrious

positions in Italian life, were to find themselves, in a single

merciless stroke, ostracized, vilified and threatened with exile.

In 1936, however, before this chameleon-like development in Italian

policy had taken place, Fascist Italy could truly have been said

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

429

to be freer from anti-Semitic agitation than London itself .46 On

June 20, 1937 the Italian Dictator had told Generoso Pope, New

York publisher : "I authorize you to declare and to make known

immediately upon your return to New York, to the Jews of

America, that their preoccupation for their brothers living in

Italy is nothing but the fruit of evil informers . I authorize you

to specify that the Jews in Italy have received, now receive, and

will continue to receive, the same treatment accorded to every

other Italian citizen and that no form of racial or religious discrimination

is in my thought, which is devoted and faithful to

the policy of equality in law and freedom of worship ." Ten

years previously he had advised the Rumanians : "Anti-Semitism

is a product of barbarism to which our movement is diametrically

opposed. Fascism seeks unity ; anti-Semitism seeks destruction

and separation . If we are to exclude Jews, we will only

strengthen our enemies." 47 In 1935 he had again warned the

pogromists that "if Rumania goes along the road of anti-Semitism

it will have very severe consequences not only inside the country

but in its foreign relations ." 48

Before events forced him into the unhappy position of being

the tail to the German kite, Mussolini had been a persistent advocate

of State Zionism . On February zo, 1934 he urged in

Popolo D'Italia the creation of a "true Jewish State in Palestine,"

pointing out that a "National Home" could logically mean only

this and nothing else . As late as January 18, 1937, he had written

an editorial warmly lauding the Zionist cause, though soon

after he was found attempting to match cards with Britain by

posing as the friend and patron of the Arab .

There can be no doubt that Mussolini, a hard-fisted realist,

would have considered it good business if he could have disengaged

the Jews from the English orbit . A powerful independent

Zion with which he was on a friendly footing would have

suited him perfectly . The Jews themselves eliminated this prospect

by their persistent Anglophilism, and Mussolini has come to

regard Zionism as merely a mask for the creation of another zone

of English political and economic expansion in the Mediterranean.

It hence looms in the Italian mind as an anti-Italian force.

430

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Nevertheless, not a shred of real evidence has ever been offered

to substantiate the charge that Italian intervention was a factor in

the recent Arab revolt in Palestine.

Far more potent than any interference by Italian or Papist has

been the German intervention, which the English studiously

ignore. It has been shown that agitators now active in the Near

East have been trained in a special school in the Brown House

in Munich ; that pamphlets in Arabic are printed in Berlin and

Hamburg for distribution in Palestine 4 9 On October 22, 1 933,

it was announced that Eissael Bendek, member of the Arab Executive's

Administrative Bureau, would direct a propaganda

campaign in the interests of the Nazi Party . On June 8, 1934

the Jerusalem Arab daily, Mukkattar, reported the formation of

an Arab Nazi Youth Organization . The French Weekly, Marianne,

reported in 1937 that a great part of the arms employed in

the rebellion were supplied by the Suhl and Erfurter Gewehrfabrik

of Germany, which sent, in particular, many rifles and

machine-guns. The Arab journals Falastin and Al Dijah published

regularly articles of a racial nature, together with large

portraits of the various leaders of the Third Reich . They did

not even attempt to conceal the fact that they had become tools

of the Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin . The shout of `Heil

Hitler' became a catchword which rang insolently over all Palestine.

Nevertheless, the British Foreign Secretary has persistently

informed Commons that Nazi propaganda in Palestine is not of

such a nature as to require representations to the German Government.

This is a subject which Sir Robert Vansittart's publicity

bureau has also continuously soft-pedaled .

The Mandatory's press releases, however, made much of Communist

agitation in the Holy Land, inferring by unmistakable

innuendo that this was a Jewish introduction and one of the unspoken

horrors against which patriotic Arabs were rebelling .

This was a deft trick which the Soviets returned even more

deftly. Identifying Zionism with British Imperialism, they

placed themselves in the vanguard of the pan-Arab movement .

Communist hatred of Zionism is fundamentally rooted . AcJEHOVAH

ABDICATES

431

cording to Marx, the Jews are not a nation but merely a product

and relic of an outmoded economic system . Hence a Jewish

regeneration based on its own (i.e., capitalist) values is contradictory

to the first and initial postulates of Communist theory .

Despite this ideological overgrowth, however, one may suspect

that this rancorous hostility is actuated by a more realistic reason

: Palestine as a stronghold of British Imperial interests could

by virtue of its strategic position be turned into one of the keystones

in the arch of anti-Soviet attack . The Kremlin, therefore,

not daring to attack England openly, does so by sneaking

through the back door and lambasting the Jews.

As long ago as November 15, 1926, a letter to the Palestine

Arab Executive from the Executive Committee of the Communist

Party of Great Britain offers "the wholehearted help of the

British Communist Party in the great historic mission of establishing

a united workers and peasants republic in the Near East

from Morocco to Syria . . . Great Britain," it asserts, "has

treacherously betrayed the Arabs by establishing Palestine as a

National Home for the Jewish People under an imposed British

Mandate." In Russia the Moscow Pravda roars on August 13,

1935 that "the Communist Party is building a people's front of

the entire Arab Nationalist Movement against Imperialism and

against Zionism." In 1936 the Kremlin decreed "a united front

between the local Communist Party and the Arab nationalists ."

By order of the Comintern the Palestine Communist Party was

completely Arabized.so

Sacrificing outright their social propaganda, which the Arabs

could not be expected to understand, the Palestine section of the

Communist Internationale issued the following manifesto just after

the riots erupted in 1936 : "Arabs, you have seen the open and

clear villainies of the Zionist despoilers . . . Through their despicable

methods they have managed to deprive your tribes of most of

their land and to cut you off absolutely from all means of livelihood.

But they [the Zionists] are not satisfied with establishing

their National Home on the bayonets of British Imperialism . . .

They are bringing in large quantities of arms with but one aim -

to shoot at the hearts of the Arabs, whom they seek to wipe off

432

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

the face of the earth. The Arab people have two ways open to

them. One is the road to annihilation . The other is the road

to life and honor. He who is ready to take the second road

must choose war, just as his fathers and grandfathers spilled their

blood for their fatherland . The present Strike is our opportunity.

The Communist Party joins this Strike, but demands that

it must assume revolutionary proportions, and not by sleeping at

home or sitting around coffee shops . The Strike must not end

until Jewish immigration and the sale of land to Jews will be

stopped, and until the Jews are disarmed and the Arab masses

armed!" 51

As a result of this agitation, organized Jewish labor in Palestine

almost alone in the labor world refuses to admit Communists

to its ranks, stating simply "that such people have cut themselves

off from the Jewish people." The Communist is nicknamed

Mups, a contemptuous label which even the most radical

worker resents. "In my candid opinion," wrote Senator Copeland,

"there is no more solid anti-Communist body in the world

than the four hundred thousand Jewish people in the Holy

Land." 52 Farago, on the other hand, noted that Arabs were being

strongly influenced by Communist propaganda .53 An official

of the Criminal Investigation Department asserted to Duff that

Communism is "becoming a terrible menace now . The Arab

peasants are being inoculated with the poison . . . The fellaheen

believe that a Bolshie revolution in Palestine will mean three

cows for each man, J4 a month in cash, and 2o dunams of land

apiece . On top of that the Communists will expel the Jews and

all the rich colonies will become the property of the Arab peasants."

54

However, these activities were more sinister vocally than important

in reality . The British are not kindly disposed toward

Communists, and only let them on the loose for short periods

when their inflammatory material is required to keep the pot

boiling. When the dangerous woman agitator, Regina Brodskis,

was arrested in September 1935, a storehouse of inflammatory

literature and a counterfeit seal of the High Commissioner

were found in her possession . Despite these damning facts, this

JEHOVAH ABDICATES

433

woman and her gang were released in the Spring of 1936 "for

lack of evidence ." The very unusual nature of this act in itself,

plus its exact timing with the outbreaks, hardly leaves this

trouble-breeding policy open to doubt .