PALESTINE AND THE ZIONISTS. (To THE EDITOR OF THE "
SPECTATOR.") Sin,—I must needs confine myself to the statements made by Lord Sydenham in his letters and cannot deal here with the unquoted utterances of those whose testimony he invokes in his support. But I may perhaps be allowed to observe that the version given by the editor of the American World's Work of the proceedings at the Cleveland Convention has evoked an emphatic contradition from the general secretary of the Zionist Organization of America; and that the statement made by the secretary of the Palestinian Arab Delegation, that the Sephardic Jews are on the side of the Arabs, has elecited a prompt denial from the Chief Rabbi and the other heads of the Sephardim in Palestine. The immigration of Jews into the country is abso- lutely essential for the fulfilment of the pledge of the British Government, embodied in the Treaty of Sevres, that the Jewish National Home is to be established in Palestine; and it has been conducted in strict accordance with the regulations enacted
by the Palestine Government. If any Bolshevik agitators have contrived to enter, they have done so for the purpose of thwarting the realization of Jewish national aspirations, and the interest of Zionism demands that they should be deported.
I did not mean to suggest that only Jews have been killed in Palestine since the Balfour Declaration, but I maintain that the Arabs who were killed had only themselves to blame, as it was they who started the riots in Jerusalem last year and in Jaffa last May. Firearnh were in the possession of Arabs as well as of Jews in Jerusalem, but the latter needed them solely for self-defence. Bombs were not used by Jews in Jaffa, but they were used by Arabs, as was clearly shown in the evidence given before the Court of Inquiry. The Jaffa outrage was only part of a general plot organized by the Arabs, who also made almost simultaneous attacks in the first week of last May against the Jewish settlements in Petach Tikvah, Rehoboth, Kfar-Saba, and Hedera. At Petach Tikvah there were several thousand Arabs, who abused the white flag by firing on the British troops that arrived to rescue the colony, and those who were captured were found in possession of field-dressing—clear testimony that they were equipped as for war. None of these outrages was provoked by the Jews: they were all organized by the Arabs for the purpose of proving the unwisdom of the British Mandate and compelling the British Government to revoke the Balfour Declaration.
If Palestine " is now seething wills unrest " it is because the
effendis see that their position of power and privilege over the fellaheen must come to an end unless the British withdraw; because Arab nationalist agents from Egypt and Syria are trying to stir up trouble in the interests of Pan-Arab aspira- tions; because the secret agents of a foreign Power, jealous of the British Mandate, are bent upon making mischief; because many of the higher officials, both civilian and military, of the Palestine Administration are either open or ill-concealed opponents of the British policy that they are paid to carry out; and because in England, too, there are politicians and news- papers that are trying to induce the Government to tear up its solemn pledge as though it were a scrap of paper. At present the defence of Palestine does not involve any additional cost to the British taxpayer, as the forces there are regular battalions of the Regular Army, and if they were not stationed in Palestine they would have to be stationed—and paid— elsewhere. But does Lord Sydenham think that if these troops were withdrawn there would be order and security? Are there order and security in Transjordania, where there is no Zionist question? And why his reactionary objection to Jewish officials in Palestine? May Jews hold Government positions in all parts of the British Empire, but not in their own ancestral country, which they helped to free from the Turk, and in which Great Britain is pledged to establish the Jewish National Home?
Lord Sydenham refers approvingly to the brief period between the Young Turkey Revolution and the outbreak of war, during which Palestine was represented by a few deputies in the Constantinople Parliament. But how were these returned and what good did they do? The present Palestine Government has brought about more progressive reforms for the benefit of the Arabs within a year than those Palestinian. deputies could have effected if their Parliament had lived twice as long. Was not Palestine before the war a byword for official corruption, indolence, and incompetence? The political salvation of tho country rests with an Administration that is loyal to the Balfour Declaration; its economic salvation—after centuries of sloth and desolation—rests with Jewish capital, labour, and enterprise. If there are any " grave troubles," as Lord Sydenham foreshadows, they will be due not to the measures taken for the development of the country, but to the treacherous machinations that aim at its frustration.—I am, Sir. &c.,
Zionist Central Office, Isn.ut Cents. Great Russell Street, W.C. 1.
[We cannot continue this correspondence.—Ea. Spectator.]
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