Sta,—After reading the article " A Palestine Plan," by G.
R. Driver, in your Paper on October 19th, 1945, may I, as a Palestinian Jewish Serviceman, reply to the author? The first statement that I consider misleading is
that the Jews own the most fertile maritime strip of Palestine, while the Arabs own the poor hill country of Galilee, &c. When the Jews came to Palestine the parts of the country they hold now were swamps and desert. If today our land is more productive than theirs, it is because the Arabs lack our enterprise and determination. Our settlements in Galilee are prospering ; why do the Arabs there still live in poverty? If the Jews were now given the Negeb semi-desert (Southern Palestine, now almost entirely in Arab hands) to develop and if they would succeed there, in twenty years' time the Arabs would want it back again. Another point where I disagree with Mr. Driver is the idea of settling Jews in other countries, such as Eritrea. Forty years ago, when Zionism started, a similar suggestion was brought forward and unanimously rejected by the Jews. Whether that decision was wise is not for me to say, but now, after we built up Palestine, we cannot be expected to start again from the beginning somewhere else. Even if we wanted to, we have not got the resources to concentrate on two countries. If we were to split our forces we would fail everywhere.
Another pOint in Mr. Driver's article, which I consider absolute tommy- rot, is the suggestion that the Jews should reduce their standard of living to Oriental level. Does Mr. Driver know what this Oriental level is? If not, I'll tell him: it means ignorance (according to an Egyptian news- paper in 1942, 90 per cent. of Egypt's population is illiterate and other Arab countries are just as bad) ; it means poverty, hard work on starva- tion wages, disease, an infant mortality of 500-6o0 out of every i,000 born ; it means filth, people living in tents and mud huts together with their goats and fowls. That is the Oriental standard to which the Jews should sink according to Mr. Driver. Any Serviceman who was out in the Middle East will bear my statement out. We Jews coming from Europe want to bring prosperity and progress to the Middle East, and not ourselves sink to the level of ignorant, poverty-stricken, disease-ridden
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