I doubt very much whether there has been any more
admirable contribution to the literature of the Palestine controversy than the little booklet Is This The Way ?, by Walter Zander (Gollancz,
No Jew certainly, not even Dr. Weizmann or Dr. Magnes, has been more scrupulously fair and objective in his discussion of a situation in which any Jew is an interested party. Mr. Zander lays stress throughout on the complete failure of Zionism to conciliate, or even attempt to conciliate, the Arabs, and its consistent tendency to throw on Britain blame that it ought to hear itself. For example: "We ourselves have made the position of the moderate Arab untenable and that of the Mufti almost unassailable " ; or again, "It was impossible to pretend indefinitely that our right to enter the country was unlimited ; that it was Britain's duty to enforce the admission of every Jew for whom we could provide a living, until at last we reached the majority in the country." Writing when Partition was the accepted policy Mr. Zander concentrates on urging fair treatment for the considerable Arab minority in what was to have been the independent Jewish State. That project now looks like being superseded. If Jews in Palestine and America were moved by the same spirit which animates the writer of this courageous essay there would be hope for a Palestine containing a Jewish National Home even yet.
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