THE PALESTINE' BLUNDER.
f` Who has blonderedlheee thynges onithio faryon ?"--Palsgrave (circa 1530) [quoted2in Weekley's Etymological' Dictionary of 11140,erntlinglislo].
rrtil ERE used to. be. one very good feature in the way -k in which the. British Empire was. run. There were very few direct blunders: Our policy was slow, cambiums timid; and often without much foresight or insight, but at any sate we did.sot. plunge. We took a long while to decide upon.. anysort of change or. development. This, no doubt, might involve sins of omission, but sins- of commission were very rare indeed. 'We have changed all that. We- now plunge :light-heartedly into all sorts of action- fraught with tremendous consequences and trust to hick to get usout. If we did this only in: one section of the world the evils might be limited ; but; unfortunately, it is- part of our recklessness to gamble in every part of the civilized, . or perhaps. we ought to say uncivilized, world. We 'are blundering in India ; we are blundering in the Far East ; are -blundering in Persia and in Mesopotamia ; we are blusidering in Tenot ; we are blundering in Russia and Turkey, and we are blundering in Palestine. This last is the worst of 'all our blunders; it is so purely unneces- sary, so entirely voluntary, so gratuitously designed to involve us in troubles with our friends without producing the slightest- conciliation among our enemies. Our Palestine policy might, indeed, have been invented by some one who wanted- to produce, the maximum proof of our disinterestedness. There are a dozen ways in which our Palestinian adventure may bring us shame, trouble, and loss—not one which can be useful or satisfactory. We are earning the hatred of the Arabs and the Christians of Palestine, without gaining the gratitude or sympathy of the Jews, either in Palestine or out of it. Instead we are becoming the nation' most hated by the Jows. We are malzingill blood with the -French, and-we are:not' easing, but irritating, the people of Egypt. Lastly, we are incur- ring' an annual.expenditure sense eight or nine millions which we can ill afford—en expression wholly inadequate to represent what this waste means to us at the present -time. Further; we are very likely preparing for ourselves an expenditure not of tens but of hundreds of millions in the near future. Such a bill is quite possible if an outbreak of civil war takes place between the Jews and the Arabs. Possibly, by keeping large numbers of troops' in Palestine -and by increasing our annual expenditure, we may stave ;off, thisdanger, but it can only be at, a great cost, and with reseals • which cannot but' be burdensome, and may be ruinous.
If anyone thinks we are exaggerating when we say we have blundered, let him read between the lines of the speech lately' made by Sir Herbert Samuel. If' ever there were signs- that' we are in most serious'clifficulties in Palestine, perplexed in the extreme, and- unable to 'decide whether it would be better to 'go forward or to To back, they are to befouttd in that speech. Its essential pertains the interpre- tation of the Balfour Declaration. The new -definition negatives almost all the claims not only of the extreme Zionists, but of the Jews who look for the formation of a homogeneous Jewish State in Palestine. A resident in Palestine sends us an accou.nt of ' it with' comments of his own which show how the speech has' been taken on the spot; and further indicate how deep would be the disap- pointment of the Arab and Christian population if the High Commissioner' were to revert °nee More'to active-Zionism ; or' again, how deep must be the disappointment of his co-religionists and co-Zionists if Ire does not retract his retractation. Here is the passage' " Resident's " letter to whiCh'werefer lierbert Samuel's] actual words were : ' The words of therBalfeut Declaration, the real sense of which has perhaps Itbt- been conveyed by the' translation of the English words into- Arabie, mean that the Jews,. a people- who are• scattered 'throughout the world but whose, hearts are always turned to 'Palestine, should be enabled to found' there their home, and that some among them, within the limits that are fixed 'by the number*. and• interests of they present population, shavold come to Palestine in order to help by their resources and efforts to develop the country, to the advantage of all the inhabitants. 'If any measures are needed to convince the Moslem and Christian population that' those piteciplesr will be observed in practice, they will be taken. For the British Government, the Trustee under the Mandate for the happiness of the people of Palestine, would never impose upon them a policy .which the people had reason to think was contrary to their religious, their political, and their economic interests. . . . It must be definitely recognized that the conditions of Palestine are such as not to permit anything in the nature of mass immigration.' If those words had been said three years ago, they would have saved an infinity of heartbnrning and bitterness and that disastrous less of British prestige which is' the most serious handicap in the carrying out of the mandate. And•in -current comment the Arabs, while heartily acclaiming this interpre- tation, lay their finger upon two points as the test questions. What measures are going to be taken. what constitutional safeguards arc ,to be given, to unsure that this interpretation will dominate in practise the administration of the country ? And what praetiaal regulations will .be applied' to immigration —which is in fact entirely Jewish immigration ? "
" Resident " ends his communication with a passage on Jewish emigration which shows that he has no prejudice, but-rather the reverse, against, Sir Herbert Samuel and his administration :- "During. the last 'year or so Jews hate been arriving at the rate of about 1,000 a month. The arrangements made for settling them to work have been chaotic ; the Zionist organiza- tion has completely failedin this. As a result it was necessary to 'start relief works for them, or they have congregated in towns like Jaffa and competed with the Arabs for existing
work. It is now laid down that ' the extent of immigration must bo proportioned to the employment available m the country. It is indeed necessary that it should be strictly so proportioned, and further that the employment should be new work, and work of a permanent character.'
There is room for Jews in the Hely Land. Many non-Jews who have been forced into bitter disillusionment by seeing the dominant typo of Zionist have yet much sympathy with, and hope for, genuine Jewish idealism. The hope of the movement is that Jews of the Herbert Samuel type shall prevail among their people, and that the political Zionist, his own people's worst handicap, shall lose credit with the British and American public before he has permanently ruined the movement."
We are glad to see that our contemporary Palestine, the organ of the British Palestine Committee, seems to read Sir Herbert Samuel's speech in a similar spirit, and cherishes hopes that a moderate Arab party may be now formed with which the Jews can co-operate and which will exercise a restraining influence on the policy of the extrem- ists. It adds : " Again, it is to be hoped that Jews will welcome this policy, which means much to them." The general conclusion by Palestine is sound per se and, we do not doubt, sincere :- "Jews, it cannot be too often insisted, ask for no privileged position, except that which their own abilities can secure, their work and their enterprise confirm. The National Home of our dreams never contemplated the setting up of a Jewish oligarchy in the country, and wise Jews will be content to be patient and establish their position on the firm basis of hard work and the enrichment of all Palestine by their political good sense, their money, and their brains."
If words were things and speeches acts, and if, what equally important, the moderate Zionist was the pre- dominant Zionist, we might draw no small hope from these pronouncements. We greatly fear, however, that the moderate Zionist only exists in any strength in this country. The Zionists who have been pouring into Palestine of late at the rate of about a thousand a month, unless we are greatly mistaken, are anything but moderate. They are Semitic crusaders, filled with zeal and with the belief that the Arabs are intruders in Jewry's national home, and ought to be expelled forthwith. Anyone who protests against or prevents that expulsion is the deadly enemy of Zionism. Thousands of Shylocks, though inspired not by Shylock's selfishness, but by a genuine and therefore in itself honourable fanaticism, have been pouring into Palestine demanding their pound of flesh, their whole pound, and nothing but their pound. Up till now, too, the Palestinian Government, in the chief departments, as at the top, has been not merely under Jewish influences, but actually in Jewish hands. It has not had the power, and very likely not the heart, to damp down the zeal of the Lord's House, which is eating up so many thousands of Jews in every part of the world. When we remember that the religious frenzy of the Jews is met and countered by panic joined with pride of race and creed among the Mohammedan Arabs, and by similar feelings among the Syrian and Arabic Christians, can we wonder that Palestine is a pot not only seething, but ready to boil over, and, if it does boil over, likely to produce incalculable evils ?
" But granted Mr. Balfour's Declaration, which seemed when made, to be founded on justice, reason, and to furnish a small instalment of reparation to the Jews for the past, how could the situation just described have been avoided ? It was bound to come, and you are crying over the eggs which had to be broken to make the Judaean omelette." Such a view, though largely held, is in error. Probably the Balfour Declaration was unwise, or at any rate untimely ; but even granted that it was right and timely, there was not the slightest reason why it should have been carried out in the desperately foolish manner in which it has been carried out. One would have imagined that the first thing that statesmen with any foresight would have done would have been to say : " We have entered upon a terrifically difficult job in Palestine, perhaps the most difficult ever taken up by the British Empire. Therefore it behoves us to be.especially careful and especially impartial. Obviously, our chief trouble is going to be with the existing Arabs and Christians. We must begin by inspiring them with absolute confidence in our sense of justice. Therefore we must choose as High Commissioner a Christian, and a man with no axe to grind. We must take care; also, that all the chief posts of the administration are held by Christians and Englishmen, and, further, that the minor posts must be held by the native-born Pales- tinians, whether Arabs, Christians, or Jews." Instead of that, what did we do ? We made a Jew who is a strong Zionist, our new pro-Consul of Judaea, and gave him a sufficient number of British bayonets to make his decrees invincible and his will absolute. Unfortunately, he proceeded not only to draft Jews into his administration, but to inspire it with a Zionist spirit. The result is that instead of the Government being able to gain the support of the Arabs through their confidence in British justice, the Arabs are filled with the idea that we have gone over entirely to the Jewish side, and that their only chance of saving themselves is to organize resistance based on physical force.
We can assure our readers that we are not speaking as advocates or from prejudice. We note, indeed, with great interest that a Jewish writer, Mr. Joseph Finn, writing in the Jewish Chronicle of June 10th, puts this point of view even more strongly than we do. Here is the essential part of his letter. It may well stand as a postscript to our lament over our blunder of blunders :— " Friend and foe alike of the Zionist Movement should be grate- ful to you [the Jewish Chronicle] for the publication of tho Arab Memorial to the Colonial Secretary. Would to goodness such an eye-opener had been given to us ten years ago It might have saved tens of thousands of Jeviish lives and millions worth of Jewish property. It would have taught the Zionists a lesson, that Palestine was not the land without a people waiting for the people without a land to come and reclaim it. The artificially created National Movement and political Zionism would have died a quiet natural death. Jews in every country would have exerted all their strength to secure full political and civil rights and liberties in their respective countries. The anti-Semites would have been deprived of their poisonous weapon of propa- ganda—viz., that Jews are a nation within a nation. During the upheaval caused by the world war all the Jewish influence would have been exerted to protect the lives, the properties, and citizen rights of the Jews in the affected countries, had the energies of the Weizmanns, Sokolows, Ussishkins, and others been directed to the above objects instead of a chimera like a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine. The Mohammedan world would not have been turned from a friend into a deadly
enemy as a result of the artificially created Zionist movement. England would have conquered Palestine without Mr. Jabotinsky's aid. Having conquered it, Palestine would have become a British Colony or Protectorate, under whose rule all people residing there would have enjoyed equal rights. If the economic conditions of the country had become favourable for immigrants, Jews would have settled there of their own accord, as they did in other free countries, without the aid
of movements,' congresses, funds, &c. Nothing would have prevented them from populating the country, from speaking Hebrew or Yiddish, from building. a Jewish university—not even from building a inptri nu.
In your editorial on the Memorandum' you say : But the practical question that arises from a perusal of the statement : How can it be expected that a Jewish National Home is to be established in Palestine—whatever within reason that Home may mean—if those who are responsible for the anti- Jewish sentiments of this statement are to be either in a pre- dominant political position, or in one of political equi-ponderanco with the Jewish people ? ' Out of your question arises another. Since the Arabs must and will be in one o' the two positions, is Palestine a fit place even as a Convales.mut Home for the sick Jew ? During the last twenty years, I have more than once pointed out in the Jewish Chronicle why Palestine is not a suitable place for a Jewish Commonwealth. My last letter on the subject you were good enough to publish about the time of the Armistice. In it I warned our rime, tt,./72 not to throw away the substance for the shadow. Not to ask for Palestine, but to demand only citizen rights for Jews wherever they do not enjoy them. Had a united Jewish voice demanded only that, the tragedies in Poland, Ukrainia, Hungary, and elsewhere might have been averted. Truly, we paid dearly for that ill-conceived propaganda of Jewish Nationalism.' Nationalism in nations is like selfishness in individuals. It is not a sentiment to be proud of. Humanity and culture try to wean the individual from selfishness, and implant in him altruism. The progress of nations must therefore also be, from collective selfishness—Nationalism—to collective altruism —Internationalism. Every move towards that goal moans Progress, away from it is Retrogression. It was always my pride that we Jews are less addicted to the cravings for that poisonous stimulant—Nationalism—than other nations. Instead of preaching to our neighbours to partake less of that alcohol, our ' Ached Ha'ams, Sokolows, and other philosophers held out the bottle to the temperate Jew, shouting, drink ! drink Some drank because it became the fashion among the nations. Others hoped that the Nationalistic intoxication would lead to religious revivalism, but none foresaw the bodily mutilations of which the Jewish Nationalist propaganda was the cause."
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