VIEWPOINT
Semites of Palestine, unite
GEORGE GALE
`His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitaie the ac1rieve►Went of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious -rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country? Final text of the so-called Balfour Declara- tion. 31 October, 1917.
At the time British troops were already in Palestine, part of Allenby's campaigns which were to complete the destruction of the Ottoman Empire. Britain's allies approved of the Balfour Declaration. The Middle Eastern empire of the Ottomans was falling apart, being made up into new pieces. There was no one in particular around to speak up for the indigenous and largely Arab inhabitants of Palestine, whose interests were presumed to be covered by the caveat in the Declaration 'it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may pre- judice the civil and religious rights of exist- ing non-Jewish communities in Palestine'. More serious objections to the Balfour Declaration came from leading Jewish English families, who opposed Zionism, who feared lest the effect of a 'national home' might be to make exiles of Jewish Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians or Americans. Such was the view,of the only Jew in the British Cabinet, Edwin Montagu, Secretary for India; but despite the energy with which he put his case. Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, was happy to let Bal- four make his Declaration.
In one of the papers he laid before the Cabinet Montagu quoted. favourably, the opinion of the previous Chief Rabbi: 'When we dwelt on the Holy Land', the late Chief Rabbi had said, 'we had a political organi- sation of our own; we had judges and kings to rule over us. But ever since the conquest of Palestine by the Romans. we have ceased to be a body politic; we are citizens of the country in which we dwell . . . The great bond which unites Israel is not one of race, but the bond of a common religion'. To this anti-racist view, Montagu then opposed the words of Mr Norman Bentwich who, asked in 1909 whether the Zionist students here felt that they could completely identify themselves with the English nation, replied `They feel that as Jews this is not possible. They cannot be as entirely English in thought as the man who is born of English parents and descended from ancestors who have mingled their blood with other Englishmen for generatiOns . .. There is no use disguis- ing this fact. To me it seems impossible to separate religion from nationality in Judaism.'
Although Edwin Montagu and the Chief Rabbi he quoted were doubtless on the side of the angels, far the more prophetic were to be the words of Bentwich. Among the early proponents of Zionism, in the nine- teenth century, were those indeed who feared that Jewish separateness or identity could not long survive tolerance and mixed mar- riages, and that, therefore, the only way to preserve Israel was to preserve it in a ter- ritorial nation-state. Sentiments on a par with those of Bentwich are now put out by Mr Enoch Powell on behalf of the English as opposed to the black; and, which is much more to the point, were expressed and trans- formed into the most appalling policies of persecution, expulsion and finally extermina- tion by Hitler's Germany in order to keep its mythological ancestral blood unmixed with a purported semitic strain.
The German persecutions as Germany conquered Europe spread as a contagious disease encountering distressingly little resistance throughout the continent; and aroused, during the war, remarkably little outrage among the allied warlords. But after the war, when the death camps were opened up, the dreadful and almost unimaginable dimension of the persecution, and of the collusion of so many millions in that perse- cution, became in part realised. All the western nations in differing degrees became imbued with a sense of collective guilt. The Jews themselves, almost every one of whom felt that he had belonged to a race and professed a religion which had almost been exterminated, turned with greater unity than before to the cause of Zionism. The creation of a state of Israel, in Palestine, open to Jews from and of all nations, was their only secure hope of maintaining their distinct and corporate existence. By and large, the poor and the idealistic emigrated to the Promised Land. The rich and the ordinary gave cash and political support. When Britain ended the Mandate, having failed to secure agreement between Palestinian Arabs and the immigrant Jews, those Jews proclaimed the state of Israel.
That Israeli state was created, and is maintained, by force of arms: and in an environment which, naturally, was and is most hostile. For whatever rights the Hebrews may have had in the lands of Israel and Judah before they were almost entirely cleared out of the area about nineteen hundred years ago, they, or rather their presumed successors through the best part of forty generations, have had none, save by force of colonisation and conquest, since. In particular, Arthur Balfour in his Declara- tion had no right, although thanks to Allen- by's compaigns he possessed some of the might, to iterate a policy which was to lead to the dispossession of the lands and pros- pects of political self-determination of the indigenous population of Palestinian Arabs.
Israel in the last twenty-odd years has proved itself to be a tough state. It has seen what it has taken to be its principal enemies —the adjacent Arab countries of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and their Arab allies—to be, thus far, of scant military consequence. It has humiliated and con- tinues to humiliate Egypt in particular; while Jordan and Syria have lost valuable and strategic territory. And until recently the general idea in the world at large has been that Israel, this tiny people surrounded by a hundred million hostile Arabs. deserved sympathy on this ground as well as on the ground of the Jewish historical experience of persecution.
There is, however, nowadays. thanks largely to Israeli actions, a new underdog, which is beginning to yelp because it does not like being kicked around. I refer, of course, to the Palestinian Arabs and their various guerrilla movements about which Laurence Martin wrote in these pages last week. At the beginning of the year I spent a few days in Cairo. being there when Yasser Arafat passed through and when, also, the
news broke about the Israeli theft of Egypt's Russian radar installation. I came to the conclusion that the effective, the militant, leadership of the campaign against the present Israeli state (which is not the same as any campaign against the presence of Jews in Palestine) would increasingly come from guerrilla chiefs like Arafat. who com- mands increasing money and esteem in the Arab world. It is one thing for Israel to thump the Egyptians or the Syrians every now and then; but another thing entirely to deal with the Palestinian Arabs whom the state of Israel has territorially and politi- cally dispossessed.
Peace is going to be a long and bloody time coming; and in that time I increasingly suspect it will only come when the Israelis become Palestinians first and Jews second; and the indigenous Arabs do likewise. If the Jews are a race (and I doubt it) they are of the same semitic race as the Arabs. What separates them is their religion, and their consciousness of race. Both will weaken their hold as Israel becomes more and more Middle Eastern. Arafat is the kind of man that men like Dayan will, later rather than sooner, assuredly find themselves talking with. Semites of Palestine, unite! You have nothing to lose but your state religion and your refugee camps.
Previous page
