PALESTINE AND THE ZIONISTS.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,-It would require a volume, or at least a substantial pamphlet, to reply to the letter of Mr. Israel Cohen. I can only say that the statements I have made in the House of Lords could not be contradicted by the Government. You, Sir, are doubtless aware of the published utterances of the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, and the Moslem-Christian deputation now in London can give you further information of the proceedings of the Zionists. A little country, where the Jews lived in harmony with the rest of the Palestinians and where the Turks maintained order with one battalion, is now seeth- ing with unrest, and is to cost the British taxpayer two and a-half millions next year, according to the sanguine estimate of Mr. Churchill. Clearly there must be some explanation of this change. Before the British occupation the Jews numbered less than one-tenth of the population. Many thousands—I have not been able to get exact figures—have since been rushed into the country by the Zionist organization, and the rightful owners of the soil are helpless to check the flow, or even to discriminate against undesirables. The natural result has been the introduction of Bolshevism and of anti-British elements.
Mr. Cohen says that I omitted to point out that Jewish lives were among those lost owing to the Balfour declaration. I thought that this was obvious; but he now suggests that the fatal casualties were all Jewish. As the Government has refused to publish the official report upon the riots in Jerusalem last year, when the Jews alone used firearms, as at Jaffa they resorted to bombs, we are denied facts which would throw light on the situation. As the Palestinians before our conquest had representative institutions of a simple character and returned members to the parliament at Constantinople, the setting up of our autocracy, in which the most important posts —high commissioners and Ministers of law and commerce— are held by Jews, must naturally appear to involve a loss of freedom.
I am sorry if I misrepresented the extraordinary proceedings at the Convention at Cleveland as a "split" in the American Zionist party. What happened is explained by the editor of the World's Work, who, after stating that " the most distin- guished leaders of the American Zionists," including the President and Judge Brandeis, had resigned, goes on to add that " this breach in American Jewry has thrown the whole policy of Zionism into controversy."
Mr. Cohen must settle his differences with Mr. Morgenthau, whose article will appeal to most Gentiles as a well-reasoned exposition of the best interests of the Jews. I am, of course, well aware of the potentiality of some parts of Palestine; but the whole question is one of economics. Given adequate capital it would be possible to plant a colony in the Sahara, but it would never pay its way, and a close examination of the accounts of some of the Jewish colonies founded under Turkish rule would be of more value than the surmises of Mr. Cohen.
My only object has been to plead for justice to the Palestinians, whose claims to their own country should be held as sacred as the ambitions of foreign Zionists. If the economic future of Palestine is to be dominated, as the draft mandate appears to Propose, by an alien body directed from London, New York, Berlin, or Frankfort, or all or any of these places, then there will be grave troubles for which we shall be responsible.—I
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