During the middle of the last century, before Zionist immigration began, there were not one hundred thousand people all told in the entire country on both sides of the Jordan.

During the middle of the last century, before Zionist immigration began, there were not one hundred thousand people all told in the entire country on both sides of the Jordan. 

There are plenty of official statistics and hundreds of books and consular reports on every detail. The vast majority of Arabs are there-fore newcomers, the same as the Jews. Wherefore are they so land-hungry that they must debouch onto this little territory? The question arises: Are they without adequate territories of their own?

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Here we come to a new application of Aesop's old story of the dog in the manger. We discover that in Asia the Arabs inhabit an area of 2,016,000 square miles, three-quarters the size of the United States. It is so wild and un-populated that

Lowell Thomas was led to exclaim that "we have better maps of the North Pole; in fact, we have better maps of Mars than we have of some parts of the interior of Arabia." 79 The total population roaming this tremendous expanse is less than twelve million, including a healthy proportion of minority peoples. If Syria and Iraq are excluded, this vast domain holds less than six million human beings. In North Africa, which pan-Arab visionaries also dream of incorporating in the Arab Empire of the future, is another territory almost as large and nearly as under-populated.

Here we find the Arabs in possession of what is by all odds the world's last frontier. No colony held by any European Power is as sparsely peopled. No nation on earth can even remotely compare with the Arab in per capita land possession. He has so much of it that he is actually land-poor, its value having fallen to zero, since there are no human beings to work it.

The great territory of Saudi, whose un-surveyed area can only be guessed to be approximately a million square miles, contains not three million human beings, and is undoubtedly the most under-populated space on the globe today. The rich Hejaz has

only eight hundred and fifty thousand people within its 150,000 square miles: yet it was from here that Abdullah and his desert tribesmen came to squat on the Jewish National Home territory in TransJordan. Arabs have also the vast spaces of Oman, Yemen, the Hadramaut and Syria on the Peninsula, as well as Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia and Morocco in Africa. Even Iraq, thickly settled by comparison to the immense empty expanses to the south, has less than three million people in a territory of

143,250 square miles. In ancient times this magically fertile earth, watered by two of the great rivers of Asia, was the granary of civilization. It alone could support the entire Arab nation and still present all the aspects of an under-populated country.

If the matter be considered from the purely Muslim viewpoint, which admits of

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neither racialism nor nationality beyond the community of Mohammed, the axis of possible settlement stretches itself immeasurably. Even Asiatic Turkey is impoverished for want of men. In 1926 Kemal Pasha offered large holdings to Palestine Arabs on the homestead plan if they would immigrate to Turkey. (After a considerable group of families left to take advantage of this attractive tender, the Palestine Government suppressed the whole business, even forbidding any public mention of the Turkish Government's offer.)

Since the emphasis of Arab demands centers on a united Arab Empire, it seems fantastic to believe that they also require for their national development the nine thousand square miles of Western Palestine - Israel. "When the Arab talks of his right of self-determination in Palestine," comments Herbert Sidebotham, "he really means his right to suppress Palestine – Israel and to merge it with some other country. Palestine – Israel as a political unit is a ghost of the Jewish past alone. It has never had a separate existence as a political unit except through the Jeiv nor toill it ever have in the future." Actually, Arab politicians do not recognize Palestine at all. In all their public statements they deliberately refer to it as 'Southern Syria.' They protest continually because Palestine - Israel has been severed from the main body. In their minds it can be no more than a geographical concept. It is only through the introduction of the Jewish factor that it becomes meaningful as a national-territorial organism.

One is forced to concede that wherever two divergent races inhabit the same territory, prejudices, hatreds and envies must arise, if only due to differences of habits and culture and temperament. Despite this, the prosperity brought in by the Jews would be an almost certain guarantee of permanent peace if pernicious propaganda were eliminated. "The Jew would welcome fellowship with the Arab," says Broadhurst. 80 And Colonel Wedgwood states fearlessly that the Arabs would give little or no trouble "were they not encouraged and stimulated to do so by the effendis of the Higher Arab Committee and by a Government which does not like the Jews and lets

401 "A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 

the Arabs know it." 81 Arab papers reflect all the contempt the permanent officials hold for English party politicians. Insolently the Arab press asks: "What is the British Parliament but a Council of Elders of Zion ?" 82 Falastin (usually accounted the semi-official voice of the Government) berates Ormsby-Gore as a stupid heretic who "cannot free himself from the influence of the Bible." "The British Government," it warns, "must forget the Bible" and must order "the Church of England in no uncertain

terms to refrain from interfering in political matters." 83

It must not be doubted that the Arab has some forbidding grievances, real enough to him, no matter how puzzling they may appear to alien minds. One of these is the fear of the emancipation of women. Another is the alarm of the effendis lest the end of the feudal period terminate their privileged position in society. To these Colonel Blimps of the Near East it is useless to argue the benefits which Jewish science, industry and medicine have brought to the people of Palestine. "They will reply," relates the London Times, "that these are luxuries which the people of Palestine can do without." 84 Like all other forms of existence the medieval mind dies hard. This deep-rooted resistance is shown by the petition of professional camel drivers in June 1936, complaining against the competition of such devilish inventions as the automobile and railroad. The camel drivers are hence losing "their independence and dignity,"

and must be protected by turning the clock back. Another reason, which appears too ridiculous on the surface to be credible, though Duff assures us it is so, is that "the Arabs still hate the Jews, and despise them because they hold that Ishmael, and not

Jacob, was the legal son, and that Hagar was the wife of Abraham, and that Sarah was his concubine." 85

The final and clinching argument is that no matter what benefits might come of it, the Arabs do not want Jewish settlement, and that they have a 'right' under the principle of majority rule to forbid Jews from immigrating. Would not the same argument oblige the British to retire from South Africa and other places where they are in the minority? Since the successful issue of a wrong does not make it right, must not

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America then be returned to the Indians; and perhaps England itself to the

Celts?

Certainly of all peoples, the English must know that the history of the world is the history of colonization. Every civilized country is the result of some such process in the past. Today all the major peoples continue to colonize. In Arab Algeria and

Tunisia, for instance, both France and Italy are steadily pouring in European immigrants without anyone in particular objecting. In the case of the Jews there is infinitely more reason to seek mass resettlement. Not poverty or impulse alone drives

them forth, but a grim and terrible battle against extinction. They cannot retreat from Palestine – Israel because there is nowhere else for them to retreat to except their own historical land of Israel..

If the question be one of title and legality, the Jews have in their possession a charter signed by the Nations and counter-signed by Feisal of the House of Hussein for the Arabs with Weizmann in 1919. If a moral right is to be posed, can it be offered by the voracious appetite of a new Arab imperialism, already swollen and choking on vast territories of over 12 million square kilometers, it cannot possibly digest? You may scratch Palestine anywhere and you find Israel. There is not a spot which is not indelibly stamped with the footprint of the Jew — "not a road, spring, mountain or village, which does not awaken the name of some great king or greater prophet. Surely," cries Dr. Holmes, "this is his homeland, if ever again he is to have a home." 86

'SEMITIC BROTHERS'

If British plans ever materialize, Palestine – Israel will eventually come under Arab domination, presumably as part of the great Arab Confederacy. The fate of the Jews in this eventuality becomes an interesting conjecture.

There is a pleasant fiction, implicitly believed by many Jews, that Israel has been well-treated by the followers of Mohammed; that some sort of modus vivendi was established in the dim days of antiquity, so that the two groups got along famously

403 "A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 

together. This fantasy grew out of the liaison between the Jews of Spain and their racial kinsmen, the invading Berbers, who were largely of direct Jewish and Phoenician descent.* 1 It was the Jewish Berber, General Tarik-es-Ziad, who began the Moorish conquest of Spain. During the Arab invasion of Spain in 711, Jewish troops often as not garrisoned important fortresses. Lloyd George states that "in science and art the superiority of the early Muslim is attributable to the Jews." Lecky tells us that "Jewish learning and Jewish genius contributed very largely to that bright . . . civilization which radiated from Toledo and Cordova." 88 And H. G. Wells declares that it is "difficult to say . . . when the Jew ends and the Arab begins, so important and essential were its Jewish factors." 80

As the invading tribes began to be suffocated by mass conversions and the holding of innumerable concubines, whatever bond of attraction might have existed between the two peoples completely disappeared. Soon thereafter, to continue to this day, Muslim rulers placed a penalty of death on apostasy to Judaism. Jews were forbidden to ride on horses and were marked with special clothes. Politically they were consigned to the same second-rate citizenship which Nazi Germany is now introducing. 90 In this cruel condition they remain, considered in the same light as dogs, creatures the true Believer utterly despises.

The Arabic culture known to history was a modification of the several ancient civilizations absorbed bodily by the barbaric Arab tribes in their swift march of conquest. It never touched the Arabs of Arabia, the peninsular Arab. These, writes Bertram Thomas, "remained inviolate by their poverty, their remoteness, their unwillingness to change. . . An intolerance survives which is almost without parallel in the world today and explains why so few European explorers have penetrated deep

into the peninsula — scarcely twenty throughout the ages." 91

As early as Roman times, when the Hebrews with their backs to the wall were struggling for their very existence, Tacitus informs us that "a considerable body of Arabs . . . took the field as avowed enemies of the Jewish nation." 92 Wherever the

404 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Arab has seized control since, a critical situation has risen for the Jews. A modern instance is the revolt of Palestine Arabs in 1834 against the exactions of the Caliphate. Mobs converged on Jerusalem from all over the country, and for several weeks held the city. Venting their ugly passions on the horror-stricken Jews, they gave themselves over to a mad orgy of rapine, murder and pillage, until the Egyptian general Ibrahim, with equal barbarism and ferocity, annihilated them.

If one may judge from the tone of the Arab press, the lot of the Jew under the coming 'National Government' will be anything but pleasant. El Jctmiya Arabiyah snarls that "the English can stand the pride and impudence of the Jews, but the Arabs know what kind of vermin the Jews are and will know how to silence them." Another ready example is the editorial in Islarma on October 4, 1936, appealing to foreign Arabs not to confine themselves to mere boycott of Jews but to drink their blood. It may be seen again in the inflammatory circulars systematically scattered in Jerusalem, reading: "Kill the Jews until not one of them remains. Gird yourselves and satiate your souls that thirst for blood, souls that cannot be sated but with the blood of the

. . . alien and loathsome Jew."

Farago found that "Arab agitators visit the peasants and promise them that at the end of the struggle the land and wives of the Jews will be distributed amongst them. With this expectation the peasant digs up his money and buys rifles and ammunition from wandering gunrunners." 93 Like many other informed men, Duff gave blunt warning that "as soon as the Palestinian leaders understood that Great Britain had really left them to their own devices ... a general massacre of the Jews and the destruction of their colonies would occur." 94 It need occasion no surprise that the words 'Heil Hitler' proved a magic password during the recent rebellion, protecting Europeans against attack.

In every Muslim country the situation of Israel is tragic and frightful. When the French came into Arab North Africa on a frank war of imperial conquest, the Jews were overjoyed. Their position had been so terrible that the invading French were

405 “A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

looked on as if they had been the troops of Messiah. Even after European intervention, characteristic pogroms have flared up like a windswept flame. The fiendish attack on the Jewish quarter in Constantine, Algiers, in 1934, was a particularly atrocious event. When French troops finally arrived, they found a

bloodcurdling scene of ruin and horror. Over a hundred Jews had been slaughtered. Whole families had been locked in their homes and burned to death. Houses were sacked, women violated and children hacked to pieces. Among the countless injured were young girls with their breasts cut off, creatures mutilated beyond recognition but somehow alive.

In as dire misery are the one hundred and twenty thousand Jews in French Morocco. In Tunis, Tripoli and Spanish Morocco the picture is as wretched. Only the protection of European soldiers saved the North African Jews from an orgy of torture and merciful annihilation; and some day, the Socialists promise, these troops will be withdrawn.

In Iraq the two hundred and ten thousand Jews live under a sanguinary reign of terror, not much different from that taking place in Germany. They are mercilessly boycotted. Savage beatings, murders and robberies are a daily occurrence. Jewish

girls are forcibly seized and dragged into harems. Yusuf Malek assures us that "in Iraq a Muslim finds it more easy to kill a Jew than to kill a chicken." 95

In Syria Jews face famine and gradual extinction. Since they are completely Arabicized, their fate gives an abrupt answer to Arab claims that the tension in Palestine springs solely from a conflict of national aims. The Jewish population of Damascus has collapsed from twenty thousand after the War to less than four thousand in 1935. In the last five years, ten thousand Jews have emigrated from Damascus and Aleppo alone. In every city and village they are systematically terrorized and boycotted. In the streets and mosques they are openly threatened with the same fate as befell the unfortunate Assyrians in Iraq, just as soon as Syria obtains its independence. The French Mandatory Authorities show little concern for Jews and are either vague or frankly indifferent. Nevertheless, the Jew views the day when a

406 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

native government will be installed, with horror. The sudden move of Leon Blum's Socialist ministry to make good on its theories by granting independence to Syria, threw all Syrian Jewry into a panic. To a man, they are trying to leave the country before the French-Syrian Treaty goes into effect.

The only redeeming spot on the Syrian map is the autonomous Christian district of Lebanon. These people are the only friends the Jews have in Western Asia. Centuries of bloody persecution have taught the Syrian Christian a lesson he has not forgotten. The Lebanon is completely and whole-souledly pro-Zionist. It wants the Jews for neighbors by the south, to lessen its isolation in this forever-menacing Muslim sea. When pan-Arab congresses held their anti-Jewish sessions, the Lebanese papers roundly denounced them. 96 The Government of the Lebanon Republic has even proclaimed the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, as an official holiday.

Arabia Felix, that immense curtained mystery, is a graveyard in which lie buried the many strong Jewish tribes who once graced this area with their intelligence and learning. In this vast stronghold of the fanatic Ishmaelites no Jew may enter and live.

In Yemen, at the south end of the Peninsula, Jews are locked into ghettos as in the Middle Ages, reduced to conditions of economic desperation even worse, if that be possible, than the Jews of the pogrom areas of Europe. Their women are at the constant mercy of every wandering desperado who takes it into his mind to invade the ghetto. Jews must wear a distinctive dress. They must keep in the shadows. They are prohibited from riding on horseback. Their children, by edict of December 1928, must embrace Muslimism on the death of their parents.

Those who believe the assurances of the English have only to read the gory history of the Christian Assyrians in Iraq, after Britain terminated its Mandate there in 1932, to gain a picture of what is impending in Palestine - Israel. Just as the English made

an arrangement with the Zionists, so they had made a similar one with the Assyrians, inviting them to rise against the Turks and promising them independence and protection if they would do so. Moved by these pledges, the Assyrians were the only

407 "A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" 

people in what is now Iraq who took up the Allied cause and fought loyally for the British Empire. 97 Their territory was later placed under Arab rule because London was anxious to include the Mosul Oil District within Iraqian frontiers.

When the Assyrians expressed alarm over the British proposal to grant statehood to Iraq, the Mandates Commission was solemnly assured that the anxiety of these minorities was due to "mischievous propaganda." Iraq, said the British representative,

was "a country where the Muslim, Christian and Jew have lived happily side by side for centuries. . . His Majesty's Government fully realizes its responsibilities in recommending that Iraq should be admitted to the League. Should Iraq prove unworthy of the confidence which has been reposed in it, the moral responsibility must rest with His Majesty's Government" 98

In vain the Assyrians pleaded. The engineer A. M. Hamilton and other thoughtful Englishmen immediately called the turn without reservation, stating that "the lives of the minorities have been placed in the hands of people without any morals or

conscience." 99

Scarcely a year after Iraq was granted its 'independence/ and despite the readiness of His Majesty's Government to assume "moral responsibility," the Kurdish settlements were bombarded by airplanes. A month later (in August 1933), a holy war was

proclaimed against the Assyrians. The Government offered Arab tribesmen one pound bounty for every Assyrian head brought in, as well as license to plunder any Assyrian property they could find. The Arab press made it known that all acts of violence were lawful and that anyone not participating in this war would be betraying his religion and country. 100 At the head of the Criminal Investigation Department was an Englishman, who watched this terrific barrage of wild propaganda and

incitement without making a move.

Lieutenant-Colonel A. S. Stafford, British Administrative Inspector in Iraq, gives a blood-curdling eye-witness account of what followed. The Assyrians were first systematically disarmed. On August 5, an Army detachment swept through their territory and the Assyrians were hunted down as one stalks rabbits. "No pretence

408 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

was made that these operations had any purely military objective, for the Army Intelligence Officers did not even take the trouble to cross-question the captured Assyrians, who were simply shot as they were rounded up." 101 At Dohuk they were taken from their villages in vans, in batches of eight or ten, and shot down with machine guns. "The heavy armored cars were driven over dead and dying alike." 102

On August 7, the inhabitants of the whole surrounding district were ordered to come down to Simel, the largest Assyrian settlement. After days of sacking, the troops began a cold-blooded and methodical massacre. "Machine gunners set up their guns outside the windows of the houses in which the Assyrians had taken refuge, and having trained them on the terror-stricken wretches in the crowded rooms, fired among them until not a man was left standing in the shambles." 103 Women were ripped open with knives and then made sport of while they were in a state of agony. Little girls of nine were raped and burned alive. After being barbarously tortured, priests were slaughtered, holy books piled over their bodies and burned with them. When there was no one left to kill, the troops took their departure, carrying with them for their amusement a large number of luckless Assyrian girls. The Tribes, who had been interested spectators of these unspeakable events, then came in and completed the looting. "I saw and heard many horrible things in the Great War," related an English eye-witness, "but what  I saw at Simel is beyond human imagination." 104

The troops engaged against the defenseless Assyrians were given a royal reception on their return. In Mosul the Crown Prince, now King of Iraq, decorated their colors with his own hands. The various officers concerned were promoted. Enthusiastic applause greeted their triumphant procession through the capital.

After this cowardly slaughter, occurred other massacres, this time of the Yezidis, "planned by the Central Authorities at Baghdad and conducted by the army with no less barbarity than the previous ones." 105

To the present day Christians are effectively boycotted in the Government service,

409 "A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

debarred from primary schools, and militated against in all ways. Girls are never safe; and "acts of sodomy by force/' states Malek, are committed on boys by education and administrative officials. 106

In these circumstances the Zionists may well read a ghastly projection of the future. In ringing accents the Assyrian leader Prince Gambar told them: "Despite the empty assurances of Great Britain, those who have eyes with which to see, and know what Arabs of the type of the Iraqis can do when let loose, must share your fears as to what is positively to happen to non-Arabs when placed under Arab rule." 107

CHAPTER II

JEHOVAH ABDICATES IN FAVOR OF DOWNING STREET

In Palestine Britain Stabs the Jews in the back

In Palestine Britain Stabs the Jews in the back 

The program of the Nashishibi party now coincides exactly with British aspirations in the Near East. Today they are plumping for a reunited Arab Transjordan and Palestine, under the current British favorite, Abdullah of Transjordan. The Mufti clique rejects Abdullah and hopes for a renaissance of fanatic Mohammedan times in a great loose Muslim Federation, with the Church as the ruling power. In every country where

395 “A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR”

influence counts, these rival groups lobby, not only against the Jews, but with still greater violence, against each other.

The part Whitehall has had in all this can be easily guessed from the constant open advice given by British officials, urging these warring parties to "get together" in their fight against the Jews. Colonial Office organ Great Britain and the East was full of these admonitions; nor could even the High Commissioner refrain in his Annual Report from expressing his "regrets" over this inability of Arabs to create a truly 'united front.' 68

Under the patronage of the Government, Arab leaders representing all the various groups have long been joined in a super-body called the Arab Executive,* most members of which are directly on the Government payroll. A sample of this body's policies is contained in a proclamation issued February 21, 1931, which calls on the entire Muslim world to massacre Jews wherever they may be found.

CLAIMS, OBJECTIVES AND METHODS

The Arab politicians and the anti-Semitic officials of London and Jerusalem who spur them on, always paint the Arab as an under-privileged creature who is unable to get a hearing in Britain because the Jews control the press there and by inference hold the mass of M. P.'s efficiently under their thumbs. This, of course, is nothing but an extension of that lively humbug, the Elders of Zion story. Says Wedgwood, dryly disposing of this contention: "These officials claim that the Arab case is not put

before Parliament. The Arab case cannot be put in a British House simply because their case is anti-British." 69

The pro-Arab case in its entirety is a post-war product. During the War "there were no pro-Arab sympathies [in Palestine - Israel] as [there] were in parts of Arabia . . . and the question of a Palestinian nationality had never entered their heads." 70 The

great Near East negotiator Sir Mark Sykes dismissed them with the deprecatory remark that they had "long had the knack of falling in with the plans of a successful

* The Arab High Committee, has, since 1936, superseded the Arab Executive,

396 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

conqueror." The British Peace Handbook No. 60 observes crisply: "With the Arab movement centered at Damascus, Zionism in Palestine - Israel would be a help rather than a hindrance to it; for that movement would only suffer from the attempt to absorb a district ethnologically and otherwise so different from countries in which the Arab element stands alone or is distinctly predominant''

Despite these facts and the solemn agreements signed by the House of Hussein with the Zionists, the pan-Arabs, backed by their powerful sympathizers, continue to harp on the 'promises' made to Hussein by McMahon.* Time after time, Mc-Mahon himself denied this claim with considerable show of irritation, 71 but it makes no difference. The British-Arab clique held on to this bone with all their teeth. Discredited or not, we find even Lord Peel repeating it as a fact in his official report

in 1937.

Looked at over a period of years the Arab story strikes an amusingly self -contradictory note. In 1925 it rests its case entirely on the alleged failure of Zionist colonization. The Arab Executive speaks in sepulchral tones of "the economic retrogression" of the country. It groans dolorously that "the figures are growing darker every day" and that "Palestine's general wealth has been reduced by £16,604,594 during the last four years alone." 72 In March 1927, after a year's slump had slowed up Jewish immigration till it was only a dribble, the Arab Executive

asserts triumphantly that "the decrease in Jewish immigration confirms our contention that the Government's policy in Palestine was wrong."

When this line of argument became silly on the face of it, the Arabs suddenly swung over to the discovery that Palestine, virtually ignored in Muslim religious tradition, was "a Holy Land for Muslims also." 73 It was on this concept that the horrible events of 1929 pivoted.

It is at least a curious accident that all these inconsistencies of Arab viewpoint correspond exactly with whatever happens to be agitating Whitehall most at the moment. When the British switched to a policy aiming at the consolidation of

* See Appendix B, p. 580.

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Arabia into a confederacy under their control, the character of Arab demands shifted accommodatingly. At a conference in Jerusalem, the Arab leaders took a pledge under oath "to uphold the integrity of Arabia as a nation and to recognize no divisions

therein." 74 Yet when it became apparent to the British Foreign Office that it would have to go slow on such a program, the Arab agenda shifted obligingly once more. Now the demand was for sectional independence, a concept regarded as nothing less

than traitorous a few months earlier.

Present-day demands are for a complete stoppage of Jewish immigration and a cessation of land sales. The claim is that Palestine is an Arab land and that the Jews, entering on Arab sufferance, can only hope to attain the status of paying guests.

Some leaders go so far as to propose the confiscation of Jewish property; others are satisfied with political domination only. The Mufti's gang would force them all to become Muslims; while the followers of Awny Bey would drive them into the

sea altogether. 

British abuse of power in Palestine

British abuse of power in Palestine

British Central and East Africa may be taken for convenient comparison. The native races here are certainly as intelligent as those of Palestine, and infinitely more tractable. They outnumber the whites four hundred to one. Nevertheless, wherever representative institutions have been granted to English colonies and dependencies in these territories, the native peoples have not been allowed to participate either as voters or as members. The voting power and the right to be elected as members is vested mostly, if not always, in the British European immigrants. 15

Still more significant, there are large colonies of East Indians and Arabs settled in these places. They came long before the British immigrants and they play a vital part

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in the economic life of these communities. Notwithstanding, the constitutional power is invariably placed in the hands of British settlers.

It is worth tearing off the cover of this thing to get a look at some of its detail. We find Tanganyika, also a mandated territory, with a British population of 4000 submerged in some 5,022,000 natives. In addition there are 7,100 Arabs and 23,400

East Indians. Yet under the Constitution of 1926 a Legislative Council is constituted consisting of twenty British Europeans and three British Indians. Neither the native populations nor the 1,000 Arabs, who alone outnumber the British two to one, are represented at all. In Kenya Colony, in which much the same situation obtains, the best part of the agricultural land is sequestered for white settlers only. Into this restricted area neither the large native population nor the considerable proportion of Indians and Arabs may penetrate.

Zanzibar is another fair sample of this weave. In addition to its native population of 186,470, it has 33,400 Arabs, 14,000 British Indians, and only 300 Europeans. Yet of the fourteen members of the Legislative Council, ten are British Europeans.

Arabs apparently do not count here either.

In South Africa, which as a Dominion (not under the direction of the Colonial Office) invites no absolute comparison, Europeans are but 1,890,300 out of a total population of 8,370,000. Yet it is mandatory that members of both the Senate and House of Assembly be British subjects of European descent. Colored people (including Arabs and East Indians) are subjected to discriminology regulations of the most severe type. When the Hindu leader Gandhi visited there several years ago, he was not allowed to enter one of the great public buildings on this account.

A comparison from another angle is offered by British experience in the Island of Cyprus. To spike the Greeks, who hoped for enosis (reunion with Greece) , a Legislative Assembly similar to that proposed for Palestine, was formed. In it the

Turkish minority of twenty percent plus Government officials formed an actual

365 WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY 

voting majority. The result was economic stagnation and political chaos. Greek members refused to cooperate with the Government or the Turk minority. Bills in

the Legislature were jettisoned. National hatreds reached an explosive climax. The gulf of culture, hopes and physical differences between the two races was so fundamental as to contravene ordinary differences of opinion. As a result of this self-

generated combustion, the Island almost blew itself off the map

— and the British were glad enough finally to haul out from under. In November 1931 they withdrew the Constitution as "premature, excessive and unsuitable." From that time forward, Cypriots were not so much as allowed to discuss or hear a political speech. 16 The game had been played out in favor of the baldly stated conviction that if Britain is to stay there, she must rule there.

The British, with this experience immediately behind them, do not need to be told that the differences between Arab and Jew — in ideals, dreams, mentality, culture, and objectives — are far more exaggerated than anything they ever witnessed between Turk and Greek in Cyprus. But Whitehall had not confounded itself by turning evangelist. Its continually publicized efforts to establish a parliament in Palestine had a far more practical purpose. The Zionists had to be pried loose no matter what was forfeit. Towards this end it was desirable to encourage the Arabs to consider themselves the rightful rulers of the country, and to foster the belief that a decisive action on their part would sweep away the last tottering remnants of the Balfour Declaration and the Jewish National Home project.

BOOK THREE

CHAPTER I

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR” 77

DOES AN ARAB RACE EXIST?

The British, who were later to talk imposingly of 'Arab nationalism in Palestine,' were of a quite different view in 1918. British Peace Handbook No. 60 declares briskly that "the people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arab speaking. ... In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most mixed race." As late as 1921 the Administration was still officially claiming that the word

'Arab' as applied to Palestinians was a misnomer. 1

Actually there are no 'Arabs' anywhere. There is not even a fairly homogeneous mixed race. Throughout the Peninsula the Arab has ceased to exist. Those who have taken his place are a motley assortment of peoples, low in the scale of human

development, who speak the Arabic tongue. Even the courtly Saladin was no Arab, but a Kurd. Hussein of the Hejaz, himself, was mothered by a Circassian and had his official heirs by a woman of Turkish blood. 2

The countless cities, tribes and nations incorporated at sword's point into the swollen host of Allah, soon drowned the Arab out by the very suffocation of their numbers. An even more dreadful revenge was exacted by that cruel institution, the Harem. How enormous this practice was can be seen in Sykes' description of the empire of fabled Haroun-al-Raschid, with its tremendous seraglios stocked with women from every conceivable corner of the globe. 3 He marvels at the unending supply of female slaves, of every color and kind. Since purity of blood in the community of Mohammed always gives way to purity of line, where are the descendants of Qoraish 3a now ? Even in the very core of desert Arabia, the race has been steadily

adulterated by an incoming flow of slave girls, most of them, in recent centuries,

366 Pics

367 ”A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR"

from the Sudan and other places in Africa. The offspring of these stolen creatures are not slaves but free Muslims, since the moment a woman conceives she attains the

status of a legal wife.

Pilgrims from such faraway places as Java and Morocco, streaming like columns of magnetized ants toward the holy cities of the Hejaz, contributed liberally to this mélange. The Muslim habit of giving a slave girl to an overnight guest for his comfort, the frequent looting of visiting caravans of the devout, all sweetened the mixture. "If we make exception of the Sherifian families — the descendants of the Prophet — and some very few other people of undoubted Arab origin," writes the

great Turkish scholar, Dr. Riza-Tewfik, "all the population of Mecca is alien to the Semitic race." 4 The Syrian author, Rihani, describing the population of the Arabian coast, is even more emphatic. 5

History gives it as a fact that the Arabs never settled Palestine, merely taking control and providing the usual military and administrative caste. They imposed their religion on the native peoples but failed to exterminate them. Here, too, gradual racial suicide was the price of uncontrolled lust. As far back as the Latin Kingdom in Jerusalem, Edris comments on the vast number of captive females required to satisfy the wants of these amorous gentlemen. He reports slaves brought from all parts of Africa and the East, with good-looking Nubian girls most in demand. The Crusaders found a country peopled by a mixture of all the races of the Orient, intermarried with Greeks.

On the founding of the Kingdom they had to recognize the existence of five types of Muslims (each of different racial antecedents), as well as Jews, Druses, Samaritans, and others. 6 By 1120, when the Council of Nablus was held, the Latins themselves were already reported half absorbed in this churning stew of races.

Of even greater significance than the loose social habits of the Muslims was the physical position of this little land, which turned it into a bloody charnel house for unending centuries. Spoliation, destruction, rapine, extermination, claimed the land

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like an ever-recurring plague. The invasions which regularly smashed against its stricken borders were countless. It had been devastated by the Scythians from north of the Caucasus. The Romans populated it with vast settlements of Greeks and other

races from everywhere. It was scoured soon after by the wars of the Seleucids and Ptolemies. In 634 A.D. occurred the Arab conquest. By 868 A.D. an Egyptian invader named Mehmet Tulum had wrested the country from them in the usual blood

bath. Now for a period of centuries Turks, Egyptians, Crusaders, alternated in control, periodically baptizing the shuddering country in a bath of blood.

After the Twelfth Century, Palestine – Israel was invaded time and again by wild hordes from Asia who plundered, slew and violated without halt. In 1256 the Mongol, Hulagu Khan, sacked the stricken area and put the entire population to the sword. A

scarce hundred years later, Timur the Lame, a sanguinary destroyer who called himself 'The Wrath of God’ made this whole sector the scene of one of the crudest massacres of his blood-drenched career. Now for generations Palestine became an outspread altar on which human sacrifices were offered continually. In their savage unending struggles for mastery, Mongols, Mamelukes and the fierce Charismean tribes of Middle Asia butchered its people indiscriminately. Between 1260 and 1400 A.D. not a single city, town or village remained intact. When the next conquerors, the Ottoman Turks, came in, raping and slaughter had left an indelible mark in the character of the survivors. "In few parts of the world," says Lieutenant- olonel Stafford, "were there more different types." 7

It was always the foreign soldier who was the police power in Palestine. The Tulunides brought in Turks and Negroes. The Fatamids introduced Berbers, Slavs, Greeks, Kurds and mercenaries of all kinds. The Mamelukes imported legions of

Georgians and Circassians. Each monarch for his personal safety relied on great levies of slave warriors. Saladin, hard-pressed by the Crusaders, received one hundred and fifty thousand Persians who were given lands in Galilee and the Sidon

district for their services.

369 ”A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR”

Out of this human patch-work of Jews, Arabs, Armenians, Kalmucks, Persians, Crusaders, Tartars, Indians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Sudanese, Turks, Mongols, Romans, Kharmazians, Greeks, pilgrims, wanderers, ne'er-do-wells and adventurers, invaders, slaves and backwash of all corners of creation, was formed that hodge-podge of blood and mentality we call today 'Levantine’ As this wild medley of ungovernable, lawless men were killed off from time to time by incessant wars, raids and plagues, more from everywhere were constantly merged into the common melting pot. In the Fourteenth Century, drought caused the immigration into Palestine of eighteen thousand 'tents' of Yurate Tartars from the Euphrates. Soon followed twenty- thousand Ashiri under Gaza, and four thousand Mongols under Moulai, who occupied the Jordan Valley and settled from Jerusalem south. Kaisaite and Yemenite tribes followed in their trail. 8 In 1830 the Albanian conqueror Mehemet Ali colonized Jaffa, Nablus and Beisan with Egyptian soldiers and their Sudanese allies. Fourteen years later Lynch estimated the thirteen thousand inhabitants of Jaffa to be composed of eight thousand Turco-Egyptians, four thousand Greeks and Armenians, and one thousand Jews and Maronites. He did not consider that there were any Arabs at all in that city. Q

During the middle of the Nineteenth Century the entire territory of the National Home, east and west of the Jordan, is computed to have held no more than sixty thousand people all told. Of this number, non-Muslims, living under the bitterest

persecution, were still heavily in the majority. The huge population growth since that time has been due to large contingents of new arrivals. The Turks introduced Circassians around Amman. When North Africa passed under European authority,

the fanatic Moghrabiyeh Muslims moved out and settled in the Holy Land. (It was they who were responsible for the Safed butchery in 1929, and who supplied the continuous tension at the Wailing Wall.) So too, were introduced into the permanent

population of this little land, Bosnians, Turkoman nomads, and a stream of Levantines, mixed desert wanderers and Africans which continues to the present day.

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As for the Christian population, we are told by the learned Dr. Christie that it is made up of fragments of all the Levant races. The native Christians of Nazareth come from the Hauran and from Merj-Ayun; while the Christians of Safed are the children of immigrants from Hasbeiya who came in the second half of the last century.

In the Arabic language only the Bedouin is designated by the word 'Arab.' But here, too, unless the eyes cannot be trusted, there is little evidence of common descent. The Ghawarineh tribe of the Jordan Valley have strongly marked African features, fuzzy hair, black skin and guttural voices. A short distance away is the tribe of Ghazawiyeh, shrill-voiced, gaunt and large-featured. Nearby are the blue-eyed blondes of Bethlehem. Several tribes of alleged Jewish stock have even been described in Transjordan. 10

Until English political maneuvering recast their viewpoint for them, the townspeople were insulted if they were referred to as Arabs. They wanted to be known for what they were, Syrian Levantines. Count Sforza designates the inhabitants of this entire region as a medley of peoples "with not the slightest bond between them." 11 Mrs. Andrews remarks dryly that "in Jerusalem today there are two or three families that claim to be of the fine Arab stock which entered the country in the Seventh Century." 12 Dr. Christie doubts whether there is any Arab blood in the peasantry or villages at all. 13

As long as these masses have lived side by side, they have been at each other's throats. Tribe hated tribe, city man hated fellah, the Bedouin despised both, sect cursed sect, and even family disdained family as unworthy scions of an inferior race. That all this ill-assorted, explosive mixture can be organized into one autonomous nation may also be doubted for the future.

ARAB TYPES AND TRAITS 

TRANS-JORDAN THE JUDEN-REIN LEGALITIES — 'MADE IN ENGLAND' - "Jordan is Palestine"

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

LEGALITIES — 'MADE IN ENGLAND'

We now return to another of those strange enigmas of British administration — the territory of the Jewish National Home east of Jordan. The shrewd manipulation by which it was filched from the Zionist pocketbook has already been referred to. Just

what its status is today (1938) remains a dark mystery. The territory is called an independent Emirate, yet remains part and parcel of the Mandate for Palestine. The same High Commissioner rules both. The Emir Abdullah, its nominal ruler, is granted an ample personal subsidy straight out of the Palestine treasury. The deficits of his stagnating State are taken care of from the same generous source.

When in 1922 London secured the League's consent to set up a separate Administration east of Jordan, it was granted only with the stipulation that "the general regime of the Mandate for Palestine" would be maintained there. To this London agreed, assuring the League "that no measure inconsistent with the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine would be passed in that territory." All of this, in words, was carried out in the 'treaty' with the Emir, and incorporated in the 'Constitution' of Trans-Jordan as well.

In 1924, officialdom still acknowledged that Trans-Jordan was an integral part of the Jewish National Home. On May 27 of that year, during a Palestine debate, Lord Arnold, then Under-Secretary for the Colonies, declared: "During the war we recognized Arab independence within certain border limits, and supported it. . . There were discussions as to what territories these borders should take in. But there was no dispute as to Trans-Jordan. There is no doubt about the fact that Trans-Jordan is within the boundaries to which the Declaration [Balfour] during the War refers. This is the Government's point of view relative to the political status of Trans-Jordan and

340 TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN

the character of our relations to the land"

Under the Turks there were no restrictions against the settlement of Jews in Trans-Jordan. A number of colonization schemes were attempted. The largest was undertaken by Baron Edmund de Rothschild in 1894, who bought seventy thousand dunams in Golan for a large-scale resettlement project. This, however, was sidetracked in favor of the coastal development where Zionist effort was then concentrated.

Whitehall early banned Jewish penetration into this territory. Its expressed reason was a deep solicitation for the returning settlers, who allegedly would not be safe in this lawless, turbulent sector. The migratory tribes of Trans-Jordan could enter Western Palestine freely, however, since the question of their safety did not arise.

Soon these strictures became iron-clad. The eastern two-thirds of the National Home was not only hermetically sealed to Jewish settlement but Jews could not possess property there or practice a profession. Transjordan became the first and remains the only completely Judenrein area on the earth's surface. Apparently they are the only immigrants prohibited. Examination of the official British Report to the League for 1936 shows a large group of foreigners ranging from Syrians and Egyptians to Germans, Italians and Turks who have taken residence there. Says the Report succinctly: "The classified and unclassified officials of the Transjordan Government other than British, including the officers of the Arab Legion but excluding other ranks, numbered 683" of whom only 422 are Arabs born in Transjordan. 1

When the Mandates Commission sharply commented on this condition, London assured it that "there was no legal prohibition to prevent Jews from entering" Transjordan. In other words, on paper everything was in order. When the Commission bluntly demanded that these restrictions be abrogated, the British spokesman Dr. Drummond Shiels replied with unctuous regret "that that was impracticable because the existing Legislative Assembly in Trans-Jordan would frustrate such intentions." 2 Scarcely more than six months later we find the same

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Drummond Shiels declaring to an impatient Commons that "when Transjordan is freed from the irritation of raids and counter-raids by warring tribesmen, an opportunity will be given for its settlement and development." 3 Here we have two diametrically opposite lines of reasoning. One, that the normal processes of orderly government forbade an immigration disturbing to the country's economy. The other, that since no orderly government existed, it was unthinkable to allow civilized

immigrants to enter.

Faced with a fait accompli, the League in some meretricious hair-splitting came to a curious decision: Jews who were natives of Palestine and hence not nationals of a State member of the League, could not claim the equality stipulated in Article XVIII

of the Mandate. These could be excluded. However, any Jews in Palestine who were not Palestinians, must, according to the terms of the Mandate, be allowed the right of free access to Transjordan. 4

In actual practice the British went whole hog down the line, barring English Jews as rigidly as their brethren from Poland. Gentile Englishmen, however, retained indisputable rights of settlement. Even if one chooses to ignore the maneuvers by

which this section of the National Home was handed outright to some ambitious nomads from the Hejaz, how may this circumstance be explained? It was not so long ago that the world applauded when the United States broke off its commercial treaty

with Czarist Russia because of a discrimination much the same as this and less inexcusable. Recounting an identical incident when Turkey attempted the exclusion of Jews in 1888, official British Peace Handbook No. 6o thunders that "the Powers refused to accept discriminatory legislation against their nationals, Hebrew or others," and the Turks had to drop the offending statutes like a hot potato.

Dexterous as their performance was, the Bureaucrats ran up against the hard fact that legerdemain has its absolute limits. They could swindle the eyes by appearing to separate the body of the National Home into living fragments, but no amount of

343 TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN 

black magic could endow the operation with reality. Trans-Jordan was inalienably a part of Palestine, and must immediately expire, if cut off from it in fact. M. Rappard of the Permanent Mandates Commission contemptuously called it "a parasite State" with a budget fed by grants from the Mandatory Government. Its total income is forty-five percent less than that of Tel Aviv alone.

Transjordan has practically no industries of any kind, and only a few of the most primitive home-crafts. According to the British Report to the League for 1936, the total assessment for land tax was only £88,000 of which £53,507 had to be subsequently remitted because the bankrupt villagers could not pay it. 5 The Emir Abdullah's attenuated income includes "Trans-Jordan's share in the imports duties of Palestine." 6 Palestine is also Tran-Jordan’s principal market, selling goods there valued at £208,993 as against £36,088 which she buys in return.

Examining the High Commissioner's Report for 1935 we discover, weighted beneath a load of words, that Trans-Jordan's income was £276,258, while its expenditure was £369,395. Its budget for 1937-38, reduced to skin-and-bones, still showed a thirty percent deficit. In other words, Transjordan has been perpetually bankrupt — kept alive only by the munificence of its rich uncle Israel. If it were divorced from Israel's household it would simply die of malnutrition. Out of the lush Palestine treasury, the Emir has had an endless flow of 'loans,' subsidies and outright grants. He has been provided with free Army and Air Force assistance in quelling the recurrent rebellions of his own tribesmen and in preserving his boundaries against Wahabis aggression. As early as 1927 it was pointed out that the National Home would show a deficit of £90,000 for the yearly period "due to the fact that the Palestine Government is covering the deficits in Transjordan — otherwise the budget would show a surplus of £80,000." 7

Transjordan comprises an area of about 35,000 square miles — more than three times as large as the country west of Jordan. It is an area of great resources but no effort has been made to develop them. A census has never been taken, but the population is

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reliably estimated to be around 275,000. The majority are nomad tribesmen to whom even boundaries are incomprehensible. Some of these, like the Aneezeh and Sherarat, have their main camping grounds in Arabia proper. The only towns of any consequence are Amman, the capital, with 38,000 people, and Es Salt with 18,000.

The limitations of this country lie in the nature of the human material composing its population. Turbulent, destructive, inefficient, seemingly incapable of any but the most elementary creative activities, their stamp is imprinted wherever one turns

in this favored land. Bizarrely enough, one factor that has contributed to the permanent poverty of the Bedu is the ruthless suppression of predatory excursions, drying up their chief source of revenue.

There are only fifteen doctors in all Trans-Jordan. The rate of infant mortality is the highest on earth. Its poverty is terrible and crushing. The correspondent of Al Jamia Al Islamia 8 describes hordes of people "who snatch hungrily at any refuse which by a stretch of the imagination may be edible. . . At night these creatures, men, women and children, with no roof to shelter them, huddle for warmth and sleep in the streets." Reliable English sources describe the country, after fifteen years of Arab rule, as infinitely worse off than it was under the Turks. Says the Crown Colonist of June 1934: "The farmers are plunged in the starkest conditions of poverty, and the nomads are frequently on the verge of starvation." Cattle die off by thousands, and epidemics, droughts, grasshopper and mice plagues, which the fellaheen are incapable of coping with, reduce them to a state of abject deprivation. The result is seen in the total lack of any natural increase in population since the British occupation; while directly across the Jordan, their brother Arabs are showing the most remarkable gain of births over deaths on medical records.

No part of this discourages Whitehall from broadcasting the usual paean in 1936 to the beauties of existence in this "peaceful and contented country, blessed with an Arab Emir and Government, and being without a Jewish problem" 9 Calmly

345 TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN 

shifting gears a few short months later, it acknowledges that "the Emirate of Abdullah is poor, miserably poor, but it does not want the wealth of the Zionists." 10 This in itself was flatly-contradicted by the British statesman, Herbert Morrison, who on returning from a visit to Palestine and Trans-Jordan in 1936, told the House that Jews were being kept out of Transjordan "by the wish of the British Government. ,, 11

The fact is that Trans-Jordan is a colony which Great Britain got on the excuse that it was to be part of the Jewish Homeland. The Commander of the Arab Legion is a blue-eyed Englishman named Peake Pasha. The most prominent agent of the

all-important British Intelligence Service, Major J. B. Glubb, is stationed there permanently in charge of the desert patrol which keeps the turbulent tribesmen under control. Here in itself is proof of the importance London attaches to ownership of this

area. British officials rule as in any other colony, and the word of the British High Commissioner is final. Says the Encyclopedia Britannica: "A considerable increase in the number of British officials and the transfer of the Palestine gendarmerie en bloc to

Trans-Jordan resulted in fact in the carrying on of the Administration on Crown Colony lines; and the local Government existing as a façade, exercised little or no independent authority." 12

The 'treaty' between Great Britain and Abdullah covers all of this nicely. "His Highness the Emir agrees to be guided by the advice of His Britannic Majesty in all matters concerning the granting of concessions, the exploitation of natural resources,

the construction and operation of railways, and the operation of loans." The Emir may not "raise or maintain in Trans-Jordan or allow to be raised or maintained, any military forces without the consent of His Britannic Majesty." The 'independent

Emirate' agrees "to the employment of British officials." England may keep a foreign army on its soil, and has its power of attorney in all matters of international relationship. Laws affecting the State budget, currency, land grants, succession to the

throne and changes in the 'Constitution' are to be referred to the advice of Great Britain. Signed March 20, 1928, this 'treaty* completed the Strategical moves by which Transjordan was to be purloined from the Jewish National Home and stuffed

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in the pocket of Great Britain. Today the Emir Abdullah is a dummy who sits on the knee of a ventriloquist known as the British Resident. It is Abdullah's lips which move, but it is the voice of Downing Street which comes forth.

Calling a spade a spade, the London Times, in its issue of March 29, 1928, declares: "Transjordan therefore has the status equivalent to a protectorate, the only difference being the status of Great Britain, because whereas a Mandate is provisional, the

present relationship is permanent"

The latest plan is to separate the Aqaba region from Trans-Jordan and declare it a separate English colony. This move is forestalled only by the vigorous claim of Ibn Saud to that port as part of the legitimate spoils grabbed from old King Hussein.

Saud now demands it as the price of his consent to the Palestine partition scheme. To settle this annoying question, negotiations have been going forward for some time. They will undoubtedly end in the classic manner, with Aqaba created a Crown Colony, and Ibn Saud handed part of someone else's territory to compensate him.

ABDULLAH PUTS HIS HAND OUT

The Emir of Transjordan owes his success entirely to English patronage. His one military campaign was staged against Ibn Saud, when that gentleman with tacit British approval chased Abdullah's father, Hussein, off the throne of Hejaz. Abdullah

himself was disastrously routed and had to flee for his life into the desert.

The Emir is an excellent chess player and indifferent poet. He has only one legal wife, but enough concubines of every color and nationality to suit the most capricious taste. In April of 1931 he attempted to make the use of automobiles illegal in

Transjordan, but was overruled by the British. Christian Arab papers in Palestine have attacked him regularly for his hostility to Christians. His son, Tallal, attempted to assassinate the royal father in May 1936, and has since been imprisoned in what passes for the Palace. The Emir is wise enough to know the limitations of his power.

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With the external affairs of his country he has little to do, even nominally. Its internal affairs are supervised with autocratic powers by the smart British Resident, Colonel Cox.

His administration proved so erratic and extravagant that the English finally deprived him of the administration of even his own estates and put him on the civil list like a pensioner. The balance is reserved for the payment of his debts. 13 He is known to privately favor a great Semitic State made up of Jews and Arabs with himself at the helm. Publicly he is more circumspect. Once he is said to have declared : "Why should we not allow the Jews to come into our country ? We shall take their money and then drive them out again."

He is a realist of the first water, who would not hesitate at any time to cut His Britannic Majesty's throat if anything could be gained by it. Lord Raglan, former British political officer in Transjordan, informed the Lords on February 21, 1922 that he himself "had heard Abdullah with his £ 5000 in his pocket 14 hold up Sinn Fein as an example to the Arabs of Palestine. The inhabitants are disgusted with Abdullah and they are still more disgusted with the British Government which has forced him

upon them."

During the Winter of 1935-36 the Emir wrote the French Foreign Minister offering France the annexation of Transjordan to Syria on condition that he become king. "If for no other reason," says Ernest Main, "than that they suspected Abdullah of being a tool of Britain, the French had nothing to do with this scheme." 15

The Emir's country is so pathetically undeveloped that "even a horse tied to a tree is a wayside event." 16 Kenneth Williams, accompanying the Peel Commission during their 1936 visit, describes the greater part as inhabited "only by wandering tribes.

Only one-fifth of the total area of the Emirate, in fact, is cultivated." 17

Impelled by their extreme poverty, the Tribes have long gazed with envious eyes at their lucky brethren across the river, now prosperous enough to own many wives and

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all the good food they could eat. Even Abdullah himself, usually so tractable, could not restrain his cupidity. He began to regard himself in the light of a land-owner whose vast stretches could be given a fabulous market value, though at the time they were not worth the taxes paid on them. His cronies among the land-owning effendis also began to grow restless despite hand-outs and patronage. They smelled bigger game ; and, mouths watering at this tempting stream of yellow metal pouring before their eyes across Jordan, they acted at times like a dog teased with a bone that has a string attached to it. Much to British disgust, the patriotism ready-made for them by Whitehall began to look phony to all sections of the Trans-Jordan population.

Back in 1924 Jacob De Haas had already been offered 100,000 dunams at "about a dollar an acre, on condition that the sale was not disclosed to the British officials in Jerusalem." 18 Then and since, the Emir has been anxious to sell to Jews, but the British have persistently interfered. In 1926 they forced the dismissal of Premier Rikabi Pasha for "favoring Zionist immigration." By the end of 1932 the Emir himself started negotiations with Jewish political circles and arranged a 99-year lease on 70,000 dunams near the Allenby bridge. 19 The exultant crowing of some members of the Jewish Agency, who could not resist premature publicity over this 'stupendous victory,' killed the deal. Becoming really annoyed at what they considered Arab 'rapacity,' the British stepped in and smashed the proceedings.

But the Arabs were not to be put off. On January 17, 1933, Mithkal Pasha, most powerful Sheikh in Trans-Jordan, offered to lease one hundred thousand dunams. Heads of other tribes approached the Jewish Agency with similar propositions. On

January 20 a great meeting of Sheikhs at Amman resolved to support Abdullah up to the hilt. Three days later, in an interview carried by the entire Arab press, Abdullah bluntly accused the British Palestine Government of forcing him to rescind his agreement with the Jewish company.

Events tumbled over themselves in swift succession. On February 6, a group of the most influential tribal leaders drew up a petition demanding the right to lease or sell

TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN 349

their land. Pointing out the terrible poverty and under population of the country, they declared that salvation could come only through the Jews. Under the direction of the British Government propaganda officer, the Palestine Arab press accused Abdullah of having engineered the petition himself. Undeterred, Abdullah banned offending Arab papers from his territory. Trans-Jordanian leaders, determined to have their way, staged impressive demonstrations demanding land sales. The opening of the Legislative Assembly on February 9, was all set for fireworks. The group in favor of legalizing land sales to Jews, having a clear majority, had taken the bit in their teeth and meant to be stopped by no one. The Assembly had already met when the Secretariat announced that it had been dissolved and that future sessions were indefinitely postponed. According to the story carried openly by all Arab papers, both the British High Commissioner and the British Commander of the Transjordan Military had held a hurried conference with the Emir, laying down the law to that refractory gentleman in no uncertain manner.

Meanwhile the British Palestine Government was with meticulous correctness advising the Jewish press that "this matter is not within our jurisdiction as Trans-Jordan is under a different government." At almost the identical moment, it informed the Emir that his subsidy would be reduced by twenty-five percent during the coming year. But for once the rubber-stamp Legislature confounded its masters by running completely amuck.

On April 1, at its next session, the British High Commissioner's bill prohibiting sale or lease of land to non-Trans-Jordanians (Jews) was unexpectedly beaten by thirteen votes to three. The session closed in surly mood with no affirmative measure allowed to come before it.

Still trying to force the issue, on May 25, representatives delegated from twenty-three Trans-Jordanian towns waited in a body on the Jewish Agency urging them not to give up the fight. It was apparent that operating deviously with his left hand and hungrier than ever, Abdullah was sitting tight. That forced the British to lay aside their switch in favor of the cudgel. They reminded the Emir of what had happened to

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his illustrious father, King Hussein, when he thought he was a bigger man than

the King of England. Though Abdullah wisely modified his position, his followers were not nearly so circumspect. Enraged meetings were held regularly in violent protest. As late as March 27, 1935 the heads of the most important tribes convened in an uproarious session, demanding the cancellation of anti-Jewish laws "because Jewish money which is destined to develop Transjordan is being diverted. . " With unerring awareness they ignored the fiction of a Trans-Jordanian Government and addressed their resolution direct to the British, who disregarded it.

However, it should not be believed that English solicitude for their tribal wards is limited to some skittish desire to fence them off picturesquely on their reservations. British officials themselves have been buying up large tracts of the most fertile acreage and placing them under cultivation. 20 Palestine Arabs, too, are taking over extensive tracts on speculation, considering an eventual Jewish settlement inevitable. 21

There have been other settlement schemes which had British approval. In the Spring of 1927 the English Government put up a demand that land be made available for the immediate settlement of Armenians. Sensing no monetary advantage, and disliking Christians with a keener gusto than they did Jews, Arab Sheikhs submitted a counter-memorandum angrily rejecting the proposition. It was consequently dropped. Early in 1929 the English backed another plan to colonize refugees from Tripoli and Benghazi after those territories had been occupied by the Italians. Three hundred thousand dunams were to be granted under the most favorable conditions, but the prospective settlers proved unorganized and capital was lacking. 22 At still another time, under London's request, Abdullah presented one hundred thousand dunams near Amman to a large contingent of exiles from Morocco. The settlers were guaranteed adequate deeds, freedom from taxation for three years and military protection against Bedouin attack.

Whitehall is still fearful that the Jews will find a way some how to break through the

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wall which holds them west of Jordan. When they do, the 'landless Arab' bogey, the Statutory Tenant Laws, the whole absurd system of blockade and restriction in which the land-hungry Jew is caught, must fall apart of its own inert weight. With the vast un-populated reaches of Trans-Jordan in prospect, they would become too foolish to retain even a pretense of plausibility. The Bureaucrats know that if they succeed in securing themselves on the soil the Jews will never be driven out of the Holy Land, and that the whole carefully raised scheme against them must then ultimately fail.

In its issue of February 4, 1937, Great Britain and the East echoes official apprehension, crying that "a treaty or some conclusive guarantee with Trans-Jordan, that the Jews will not be allowed to take land there, would greatly pacify the country."

Most Trans-Jordanians seem to believe, however, that their country would be better 'pacified' by the removal of the British.