Israel--
a Kingdom Divided
By Leonard J. Schweitzer Can
the newest nation of the world continue to grow and prosper in
spite of
its
segregation and race prejudice? Or will history repeat itself
and
fanaticism
and internal strain cause its ultimate
failure?
How
many Arabs are there in the Middle East? Put that question to Arab
leaders and you'll get a variety of answers ranging from a low of
about thirty-five million to a high of about sixty million. Your
informants may not agree on numbers--a fact that is not too
astonishing if it is remembered that some estimates are based on
language identity and others on various racial
characteristics--but they are unanimous on two points. There are a
lot of Arabs in the Middle East and, right now, none of them like
us.
In a world where our friends can be counted in
the thousands but our enemies in the millions, that is not a
pleasant state of affairs. The Arabs occupy a territory of great
strategic significance. We have gone to considerable pains and
tremendous expense to establish a strong point of Western defense
in Turkey; but the Russians can turn that strong point by
penetrating strife-torn Iran, overrunning the Arab states, and
appearing in our rear. If they do that, we lose much more than the
vital oil of the Middle East; we give the Soviet Communists a land
bridge to India, Southeast Asia, and North Africa. In other worst,
we give them easy access to our own "soft underbelly."
To be on good terms with the Arabs ought to be
a matter of simple precaution. Theoretically nothing should be
easier. Their religion alone makes the Arabs our natural partners
in the defense of the believing world against atheistic Communism.
How, then, have we muffed our opportunity and
converted the friendship of the Arabs into unconcealed hostility?
There is more than one reason, of course, but one is really
outstanding. The Arabs accuse us of giving aid and comfort to the
Zionists in carrying out the act of premeditated aggression which
robbed them of Arab Palestine. And nothing, neither millions in
subsidies, nor more generous oil royalties, nor boatloads of Point
Four technicians, will ever induce the Arabs to believe that we
acted with justice or reason when we encouraged the Zionists to
expel the native population and set up a foreign state in
territory that has been in Arab hands for 1300 years.
Time and again during my trip to the Middle
East, Arabs, Christian as well as Moslem, asked me these
questions: "Why does the United States distinguish between
Nazi and Communist aggression and Zionist aggression? Why did you
fight Hitler but encourage Zionism? Why do you oppose Stalin but
support Israel?
Put in that way--and the Arabs, understandably,
refuse to lessen an American's embarrassment by putting them in
some softer fashion--these questions are unanswerable. I went to
Israel to find out, if I could, whether in place of the Arabs we
had helped to dispossess, we had at least established other
friends ready, willing, and able to support the Western position
in the strategic Middle East. It was possible that the creation of
a strong and viable Palestinian state under Jewish auspices, by
bringing stability and the four freedoms to the Middle East, could
serve as a beacon of progress and enlightenment for the
politically backward Arabs and compensate them in some measure for
the loss of their homes.
Shortly after the Jewish state was born, it was
my good fortune to find relief from the boredom of a long European
railroad trip in the company of an Israeli of Polish extraction.
He held me spellbound with fascinating stories of his prewar work
as an engineer. But the most eloquent portion of his recital was
reserved for an account of the creation of the new country. As my
chance acquaintance reminded me of the outrageous persecution to
which his people had been subjected under Hitler and how the
broken remnant of European Jews had looked toward Palestine as a
land of renewed promise, some of his enthusiasm for Zionism
communicated itself to me.
He spoke in glowing terms of how the Jews, at
last, possessed their own homeland, a country of which they were
as proud as Americans are of their own native land. he described
the tremendous work of construction, the flowering of what had
been desert, the colossal task of transporting his people from
their overseas homes and refugee camps, the slow progress of
building homes and industries, the tremendous financial help
freely given by the American Jewish community. It was impossible
not to be kindled by its enthusiasm and pride.
Before leaving the train, he gave me his
address in Jerusalem and earnestly invited me to come to his
country and see for myself if things were not as he described
them, if his people had not deserved the help they had received
from the United States.
His home was my my first stop in Israel this
past summer. he greeted me with a wry smile amid a disorderly
litter of suitcases, trunks, and cartons.
"You've timed it with only a few days to
spare," he told me. "We're leaving for Australia next
week. there's a new start waiting for us there."
I expressed my amazement but thought it would
hardly be polite to remind him of what he had once told me, that
come what might he, like the rest of his people, felt he was home
at last and would live and die in Israel.
"I know what you're thinking," he
said, "but our conversation took place a long time ago and
conditions have changed since then." he smiled apologetically
and added, "Either that, or else I let my enthusiasm run away
with me."
Then he began to speak passionately, like a man
with a burden on his mind. "The trouble here," he said,
"is that we really have no basis for a nation. In the
beginning we were united by our remembrance of the past and by the
hostility of the Arabs, But that doesn't seem to be enough to make
a nation out of people who speak sixty-four different languages
and come from every possible cultural and educational level. maybe
if we had time, if we had centuries, but even then I'm not sure.
"Look here!" He drew me to a window
and pointed to the crowded street. Some of the pedestrians looked
like Europeans, the kind of people you see in Paris or Vienna or
Zurich. Others resembled the Asiatic and African types so commonly
seen in the Middle Eastern bazaars.
My friend singled out an athletic looking Negro
dressed in Arab style and trailed by three Negro women and half a
dozen children. he was a Yemenite Jew and his harem.
"I assure you," the Israeli engineer
said earnestly, "that I'm as free from racial prejudices as
the next man, but it's madness to believe that my wife and
children and I can co-operate harmoniously with people like that
in the creation of a new nation."
He went on bitterly, "The only thing we
have in common is our religion, and even there the difference
between the Yemenite Jew and myself is greater than the difference
between me and the average European Protestant."
"Do you know," he asked, "that
some of the Yemenite immigrants have actually had to be forcibly
restrained from sacrificing live animals in their religious rites?
No, my friend, I was wrong; it was a dream. if only it were
possible to win these people away from their primitive habits, but
it can't be done. they have a dozen children to our one. Three
generations from now we'll all be Yemenites."
My friend's bitter words laid bare the roots of
an unanticipated problem. Zionism was originally a movement of
European and American Jewish origin. Its purpose was to find a
safe haven for the persecuted Jews of Europe, and it was for that
worthy aim that American Jews gave so generously of their
fortunes. When Zionism reached its goal, the gates of the new
country were flung open to Jews from all over the world.
From the beginning, there had been trouble in
Palestine between European Jewish immigrants and the few thousand
native Palestinian Jews whose way of life and culture made them
feel more at home with their Arab neighbors than with the
newcomers. Kipling's "East is East and West is West, and
never the twain shall meet," is nowhere better exemplified
than in this ancient corner of the Middle East. Europeans and
Orientals can and should respect each other's habits and customs
but usually find it disastrous to form a mixed community.
As Oriental Jews began to exercise their right
to come to the new country and poured in by the hundreds of
thousands, their European co-religionists were seized with panic.
Forgotten was their own recent past, when they were the victims of
fraudulent race and blood theories, and in their fear of being
submerged by a strange and alien tide, they resurrected the
questionable doctrines for which the Nazis once earned the scorn
of the world. They soon made their feelings of superiority
apparent to the oriental Jews who, in turn, are filled with
religious anger. A great chasm splits Israel today.
It would be difficult to build a country out of
such disparate elements under the best of conditions, and economic
conditions in Israel have been bad from the very start. It is a
tiny and impoverished land. The European immigrants are not
farmers for the most part. the Yemenites resent being turned into
a class of agricultural laborers. Israel has few natural resources
to support industrial enterprises are in operation, but they are
principally artificial growths on sentimental, not economic,
roots.
Surrounded by a sea of self-created enemies and
burdened by the influx of a population which has not yet had time
to put down roots and fend for itself, Israel today is living on
American charity. that was admitted by every responsible Israeli
to whom I spoke. Government officials, businessmen, farmers, and
journalists all agreed that the only way Israel can endure is for
the United States to transmit sufficient capital--and that means
billions on an even bigger scale than anything we have done for
Europe--to establish a host of new industries and agricultural
enterprises. Even then, they acknowledge, proportionately heavy
annual subsidies will still be necessary until far into the
indefinite future in order to pay for raw materials from
abroad, make up for the food deficit, and pay for resettlement of
the heavy flow of immigrants.
It is true that one Israeli faction, the
leftwing Mapam Socialist and the Communists, believe, or pretend
to believe, that some of the necessary help will come from Soviet
Russia. The Israeli Government's official policy is to accept help
from wherever it comes. It recently offered concessions to the
Soviet Union in exchange for Red experts and technical equipment.
But most Israeli realists understand that Moscow neither will nor
nor can assist them, and that the United States will continue to
be their only source of help.
Although the Israelis lean heavily on their
American co-religionists and the United States Government, I found
the atmosphere heavily laden with anti-Americanism. The usual
clichés can be heard in abundance: we are materialists; ours is a
coca Cola civilization; the United States is anxious for war; the
Vatican and the American Government are conspiring together
against peace; we are trying to avoid a truce in Korea.
This distaste for Americans and America
policies follows one channel, however, which is peculiar to
Israel. Instead of praise for the American Jews for their
magnificent help, I heard constant criticism of them for their
wealth and for their reluctance to pack up their property and move
bag and baggage to Israel. Instead of praise for the American Jews
for their magnificent help, I heard constant criticism of them for
their wealth and for their reluctance to pack up their property
and move bag and baggage to Israel. The basis for this
anti-Americanism seems to be the extreme left-wing orientation of
the more articulate leaders in Israel, many of whom, like premier
David Ben-Gurion, were members of the Socialist and other radical
parties of Eastern Europe before the emigrated.
These are two great handicaps obstructing a
viable economy, even if the additional American assistance bow
being requested is granted. many of the European immigrants are
elderly people who can make no great contribution tot he country's
industrial and agricultural prosperity, while others, notably the
Oriental Jews, simply lack the skills to make an advantageous
contribution. Usually this latter handicap as the pretext, the
European Jews who control the country have lately adopted a policy
of selective immigration, in the hope of keeping out the unskilled
and the unfit and attracting newcomers with both skills and
capital. Opponents of the new policy denounce it as a panic
measure, inspired by the European fear of an Oriental influx.
In any case, the policy is floundering because
American Jews evince no enthusiasm for leaving the United States
and resettling in Israel. European Jews, right after the war, were
willing to go to Israel only when no other place of refuge was
open to them. many who are still in the European refugee camps,
under the influence of complaining letters from friends and
relatives already in Israel, are declining to move to that
country. as for the French, British, and Belgian Jews, like the
Americans they want to stay home.
But the very fact that the Israeli Government
has advanced these proposals for selective immigration has
antagonized the oriental Jews, who already form about half the
population. they bitterly complain that European Jews are trying
to perpetuate their control and establish themselves as a master
race. government officials denied these accusations, but a number
of Oriental Jews, interviewed in a reception center, alleged that
the conditions under which they were housed and few were far
inferior to those enjoyed by newcomers from the West. They also
said their children received far fewer educational facilities, and
that they themselves were rarely offered anything better than
menial jobs.
Most oriental Jews are banned from returning to
the lands of their origin by Arab restrictions, but nevertheless a
number of them told me that they would gladly return to Iraq and
Yemen if arrangements could be made and if arrangements could be
made and of they had the money for their return passages. indeed,
a number of Indian and Ethiopian Jews, not subject to these
restrictions, recently returned to their homelands after
protesting that they were subjected to humiliation in Israel
because of their color. Nor is this immigration-in-reverse
confined to the oriental Jews. Numerous Western Jews, like my
engineer friend, are leaving the country as fast as other
possibilities open for them.
Businessmen also have their complaints. They
are worried by the increased pace of the march toward Socialism.
The largest political party, premier Ben-Gurion's Mapai, is wholly
Socialist. Mapai, plus Mapam, the left-wing Socialist group, and
the Communists and other splinter parties of the left, command the
votes of more than half the electorate. a small-scale furniture
manufacturer in Tel-Aviv said that Mapai, which has been treading
carefully until now in order not to frighten away American
capital, is now reverting to Socialist type.
"I sometimes wonder," he said,
"if all this money would have been sent to Israel if the
donors realized they were financing another Socialist
experiment."
In the opinion of many, Mapai aims to create a
Socialist economy even further to the left than the recent British
try. Most of my informants thought that Mapai, under the pressure
of their extremist Mapam rivals, would be forced to travel
"as far to the left as you can go without calling it
Communism."
"I'm about ready to quit," one
businessman told me. "My brother in the United States is
doing his best to get a visa for us. I see expropriation of all
private property in another five years."
A third source of discontent is the enormous
burden of military service and military expenditures shouldered by
the tiny country. Israel looks like an armed camp. Soldiers of
both sexes and armed to the teeth are seen everywhere, accompanied
by efficient-looking tanks and other lethal equipment. The regular
budget includes a sizable item for military expenditures but, in
addition, there is a huge secret fund for the same purpose. This
so-called Special defense Budget is financed via the printing
press and treasury notes, and thus has a terrific inflationary
effect on the economy. But the inflationary effect is not the
chief reason for the distaste of those who regret the enormous
military expenditures and the maintenance of an oversize army.
"I know that in these times we need an
army, even a big one," a rabbi told me, "but I'm afraid
that the establishment we have now is much too large. certainly
it's bigger than than we need to defend our borders. The only
reason I can see for maintaining an army of the present size is
because some of our jingoists are looking forward to a foreign
'adventure'."
He was reluctant to amplify his remarks. But
from other, bolder sources I learned that a number of Israeli
leaders, among them Menachem Begin, the terrorist leader, have
been quietly but ardently pressing the Israeli claim for
additional Lebensraum in the surrounding Arab territories.
Among these rather anachronistic Jewish
advocates of a former Nazi tenet are spokesmen for part of the
Orthodox sector of the population. It is their thesis that Israel
must expand until its borders encompass all territory occupied by
the Jewish state during its Biblical heyday. That takes in an
amazing amount of territory, because at various times Biblical
Judea and Israel conquered and controlled all of what is now the
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and even portions of
Iraq and Egypt. the danger of renewed Israeli aggression against
the Arabs is a serious one.
The impression I gathered from conversations
with government officials and private citizens alike is that under
no circumstances will the present Israeli government carry out its
obligation to withdraw from Jerusalem and permit the
internationalization of that Holy City which contains so many
religious monuments sacred to Christians and Moslems as well as
Jews. on the contrary, their attitude is hardening against other
religions. A Franciscan father told me that the Israeli Government
was making it increasingly difficult to maintain the Catholic
shrines by denying building permits and materials needed for their
repair in many instances, and in others by granting the permits
but obstructing the recruitment of a labor force. The father was
of the opinion that many government officials have swallowed too
much of the heady doctrine of Jewish racial and religious
superiority.
One of my experiences bears this out. After I
reached Israel I learned that the Government's published policy is
to grant entry permits to priests and religious of all
nationalities. yet Israeli consulates abroad frequently deny these
entry permits to priests of German and Austrian nationality. in
the face of such fanaticism, and in the light of the internal
strains and stresses which have already caused such enormous
cracks in the Israeli state, the Zionist experiment hardly seems a
stabilizing force for domestic and international peace in the
Middle East. Their past sufferings have earned the Jews of Israel
the sympathy of most Americans. one can only hope that their
current policies, which most Americans would regard as serious
errors, do not bring them a self-created repetition of tragedy.
Nothing can wipe out or even atone for the act
of aggression committed by the Zionists against the Arab world or
for the sufferings of the almost one million Arab refugees who are
today homeless and without hope. however, it would have been good
to be able to report that despite the bedrock of injustice and
persecutions underlying the foundation of Israel, American aid was
well deserved and that the new state was solid, strong, and
thriving. That it is not so is a major tragedy of the times and a
poor reward for that alienation of the Arab world which our
alienation of the Arab which our pro-Zionist stand has earned for
us. Source: The Sign (January 1953) * * *
* *
updated 11 June 2008 |
