Holy Terror in Palestine

Great Britain married herself to a problem in

the Holy Land which there is no divorce

By Linton Wells

Symbolic of British policy in dealing with the Arab-Jew problem in Palestine is the River Jordan. A sluggish, foul, muddy stream, its sacred waters meander across burning deserts and through eroded limestone hills that form a valley "considered to be a great rift in which a large section of the earth's crust has been let down between a series of faults."

England's sidestepping of a world war by selling the Czech's down the river was child's play compared to her finding a solution to this Holy Land crisis. The wrath is upon Mighty Albion, and there is no way of fleeing. There is no safe channel between Scylla and Charybdis. Flames of religious hatred sweep over Palestine with the fury of a forest fire fanned by a tornado, and Britain faces the stark reality of being unable to prevent a Holy War from spreading to all her colonies inhabited by Moslems, unless she betrays the Jews, and that spells trouble, too. Meanwhile a state akin to anarchy reigns along the river Jordan.

The vendetta is racially absurd. Both Arab and Jew are Semitic, each claiming descent from Abraham. yet their differences are religious, and as irreconcilable as truth and falsity. Each claims Palestine as his particular Holy Land. The Jew maintains that since history began the history the history of Palestine. The Arab contends that Palestine has been his home for 1500 years, and that Arabs represent the predominant population--900,000 Arabs against 400,000 Jews.

However, the Palestine that each claims has been conquered and reconquered innumerable times during its 6000 years of history. As long ago as 1700 years before Christ, the Israelites had to flee from Palestine. they have been forced to make many similar migrations since, particularly after the Holy Land was conquered by the Arabs in 633 A.D. But Jewish love of Palestine has never died. Throughout the centuries members of the tribes of Israel have returned time and again to the banks of the Jordan, always to endure persecution at the hands of Arabs, Turks, or whoever was then in possession. 

The present agitation to create a Jewish state in Palestine began late in the nineteenth century; but Turkish and therefore Islamic rule blocked all Jewish efforts. Then came the World War.

In 1915, Great Britain realized that Arab support was vitally necessary. the Arabs were restive under Turkish rule. Turkey was at war against the Allies and imperiling Britain's lifeline to India and the Far East. the British decided to fan the glow of Arab nationalism into an explosive force.

Emissaries were sent to Hussein, the Shereef of Holy Mecca, promising that in return for Arab assistance the greater part of Turkey's Arab provinces would become independent. believing that Palestine was to be included in this sphere of independence, the Arabs cast their lot with the Allies. With Arab aid--inspired and led by Lawrence of Arabia, the Uncrowned King of the Arabs--General Allensby captured Jerusalem in December, 1917, and the Turkish Empire disintegrated.

Leaders of the Zionist Movement had not been inactive during those perilous years, and the age-old question of making Palestine an independent Jewish state was revived. Zionists made it clear that continued Jewish war support depended upon a British policy in favor of such a state. England needed Jewish aid badly, particularly financial aid. So in November, 1917, the late Lord Balfour, then Britain's Foreign Secretary, perpetrated one of history's most monstrous ambiguities. Writing tot he Zionist leader, Lord Rothschild, Balfour made promises which were to cause years of bloody strife in Palestine and lead to present-day chaotic terror. His famous--or infamous, as you please-- Balfour declaration contained these words:

Quite logically, Jews always have read this Balfour declaration in one way. And in the light of British promises to them more than two years before, Arabs always with equal logic have read it the opposite way. Great Britain apparently had promised to restore Palestine to each as independent state.

After the World war nothing happened for a while. Then in 1920 Palestine was placed under a mandate by the league of Nations and England was charged with putting the Balfour Declaration into effect. previously the wily boys in Europe tried to shoulder the United States with the Palestine mandate, but Washington sidestepped it an thus avoided a long and continuous headache.

Britain's mandate came into operation in 1923. Whitehall meanwhile had reached the conclusion that an independent Jewish state in the Holy Land was an utter impossibility--at least pending the arrival of the millennium. At first the trusting victorious Arabs had not been indisposed to welcome their "Semitic brothers" back to Palestine. Then they began to realize that England had no intention of fulfilling promises to turn Palestine over to them as an independent Arab state. So in 1920 and again in 1921 serious disorders broke out in the Holy Land. The British quelled them.

As Jewish immigration increased increased, as Jewish leaders proclaimed their plans to rule Palestine, the resentful Arabs launched a campaign of terrorism. British troops put down a rebellion in 1924, and again in 1933 and 1936. Arab losses were considerable and Arab antagonism toward the Jew and toward British raj also, grew immeasurably.

British officialdom hoped that in the course of time Arabs and Jews would sink their differences in a common Palestinian citizenship, especially if pressure were brought to bear. But in 1936, after fifteen years of bloody strife, another commission--the sixth--was appointed to investigate this vexatious problem and recommend a solution. lord Robert peel and his Royal Commissioners studied the situation for months and on July 7, 1937, issued their report and recommendations.

After confessing to having broken unfulfillable promises to both Arabs and Jews--that Britain had sold the same pup twice--the Royal Commission recommended that Palestine be divided into three parts--a Jewish state, a British mandate over the Holy Places, and an Arab state. The Jewish state would contain nearly all the best and most fruitful land in Palestine--chiefly land which the Jews have made productive--together with the country's only deep-sea harbor, at Haifa. The Arab state would include the greater portion of Palestine, largely unproductive desert and mountains. 

The British Mandated Territory would lie between as a heavily armed, strategically placed umpire, yet be common ground to both Jew and Arab.

This judgment of Solomon was violently damned by the Arabs and Jews alike. The British cannot partition Palestine without the consent of the permanent Mandate Commission at Geneva--and also over the United States' protests, incidentally. So it was laid before the Commission at Geneva where it received a far from cordial reception. Washington didn't like it either.

Until the partition idea was revealed, the Arab terrorist campaign had been directed chiefly against Jews chosen at random; it was well planned and organized, but spasmodically rather than continuous. naturally the Jews retaliated; but the toll in Arabs killed was low. After the peel Report in 1937, rioting in Palestine grew in violence, Arab attention now being directed toward His Majesty's armed forces and representatives. British officials and soldiers were murdered ruthlessly, together with Jews, as guerilla bands of Arabs harassed the country.

British warships were rushed to Haifa and Jaffa. Additional British troops were landed in the Holy land until today more than 20,000 Tommies are supporting the large and well-organized Palestine police force. Martial law was declared in some sections, then extended to cover the entire country. Rewards totalling tens of thousands of pounds were offered for the arrests of Arab assassins.

Simultaneously the British began a relentless campaign to crush Arab terrorism. Arab leaders were arrested and held for deportation, Arabs were killed for resisting. British punitive expeditions scoured the countryside, skirmishing sporadically with Arab tribesmen. Royal Air Force planes bombed Arab villages, machine-gunned guerilla bands, reconnoitred for foot soldiers.

But the hardy, fearless, well-armed Arabs continued to challenge British authority with such success that today that authority faces destruction. Nowhere under the Union Jack--not even in the turbulent Northeast Province of India--are such scenes of disorder being witnessed as those in Palestine. And the reasonable fear is that soon they will find repetition in other parts of the empire as the Islamic world takes up the sword.

As rule-of-the-gun intensified in Palestine, the Peel partition plan faded into another (the Woodhead) commission to consider its application. This merely increased the anger of the Arabs. Last August, Moslem leaders in neighboring Iraq, which recently slipped out from under a British mandate, met and jolted the entire empire with a resolution in favor of a jihad or Holy War against Jews in Palestine and Britons everywhere. Their decree left those acquainted with the world of Islam with few illusions and considerable fears:

To a True believer nothing more is needed to urge him on to warfare against all infidels. the Moslems are noted for their homogeneity and single-track minds. There are more than two hundred million of them on earth, all automatically obedient to the orders of their holy leaders. Start them on the warpath and their fanatical religious enthusiasm will create havoc throughout the world.

Fortunately for the welfare of the Christian world, the inviolable command to start a general Holy War has not yet been issued from Mecca, although that day is approaching rapidly if signs mean anything. In October, delegates from eight Moslem countries met in Cairo and defiantly voted a demand that Britain not only repudiate the Balfour Declaration but also stop all Jewish immigration and leave the 400,00 Jews now in Palestine to the tender mercy of 900,000 Arabs. They made it clear that the alternative was "or else."

Then on October 18 came an ultimatum from Haj Amin Effendi el Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem--the brains of the Palestine revolt. from his exile home in Syria, whither he fled a year ago, came these demands from the spiritual head of the Palestine Arabs, president of the Moslem Supreme Council and Arab High Command:

At this writing, the British answer has been to intensify efforts to stamp out Arab secret societies and destroy guerilla bands. British civil administration has been taken over by the military, and punitive expeditions are relentlessly scouring all sections of the country. When the Arab insurgents intrenched themselves in their sacred Old City of Jerusalem and launched a terroristic campaign of sniping and bombing. British troops drove them out and occupied the city, making approximately its twenty-eighth capture since King David's historic exploit.

England has seemed stubbornly resolved to put down the Arab holy revolt in Palestine and damn the consequences of a general Moslem uprising. However, it is rumored in London that the partition plan will be abandoned in the hope of restoring peace, so that an opportunity can be provided for trying out a new plan which contemplates "strengthening and expanding the British administration of Palestine and enlisting the active cooperation of both Arabs and Jews on the promise that eventually a unified 'independent' state will be set up under British supervision and with full protection for the rights of the Arab majority and the Jewish and Christian minorities."

It is freely predicted that this will solve nothing. in the first place, it will not grant either Arabs or Jews the independence each demands; secondly, the Arabs will be satisfied with nothing short of complete cessation of Jewish immigration, which of course the Jews refuse to countenance.

World Jewry is profoundly dissatisfied with the manner in which Britain has dealt with the Palestinian situation. Ignoring the probable dangerous consequences inherent in a pan-Arab uprising, the Zionists insist that the British fulfill their promise to restore Palestine to the Jews and maintain it as their national home without any hampering immigration restrictions.

They argue that with Jewish persecution in totalitarian and other dictator states, Palestine must be preserved for the Jews at all costs. They say that since compromise with the Arabs has failed, the hour for clear-cut decisions in favor of the Jews is at hand. They point out that any other course means humiliating surrender to force. These are debatable points, because  the Jews have refused to compromise and capitulation to their demands would mean British surrender to their moral force.

No nation is more interested in the Palestine situation than the United States. American Jews have some $200,000,000 invested there; 9000-odd American Jews have settled there; and the United States, under a convention signed with Great Britain in 1924, has the right to object to any change in Britain's mandate over the Holy Land.

Secretary of State Hull has promised to consult with Great Britain. And on October 22, President Roosevelt let it be known that he and the government at Washington are "for the maintenance of Palestine as Jewish national home without limitation." Moreover, ignoring the prospect of world-wide pan-Arab revolt, it was indicated that "everything within the power of the United States government would be done to prevent the curtailment of Jewish immigration into Palestine."

Although Washington is unable to prevent modifications in the British mandate and can only "decline to accept as applicable to American interests any modification affecting such interests, unless we have given our assent to them," it is considered that this government is so situated that any protest it might make would be effective.

So the British Lion finds himself between the devil and the deep blue sea. Moreover, in his a paw is a thorn which has caused a wound to fester until gangrene is on the point of setting in, and the patient's condition is rather critical. Doctor-statesmen search frantically for an antidote, unfortunately no nearer to success than were other Palestinian rulers during centuries of bloody history.

Source: Current History, December 1938

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updated 11 June 2008