T. R. Feiwel

Are the Jews aware of this hostile world surrounding them on every side? They are aware, and yet not aware, both a t the same time: a contradictory psychological state and deliberate ability not to see, very possible under the influence of the exalted Zionist state of mind.

A t the 1936 Levant Fair in Tel Aviv one Zionist pavilion contained a huge photograph showing a group of young Jews and Jewesses in workers' clothes striding in unbroken line towards the observer, conveying, as intended, an impression of irresistible penetration - the new army of Jewish conquest.

A distinguished English visitor, a pro-Zionist but startled by this picture, commented about it: “And then they wonder why the Arab reaches for his rifle!”

No Arab saw the picture, because no Arab visited the 1956 Levant Fair. In the Zionist Press this boycott was taken as another sign of Arab extremism, racial chauvinism, and lack of joint effort for the common good of Palestine.

The curious point is that such views are held by men who in all other respects are intelligent, educated and broad-minded, whose minds are not closed at all. One might therefore assume that they are simply not aware of the Arab issue and of Arab dangers.

Objectively this might be questioned because the feverish Zionist drive for a majority in Palestine proves their awareness of the danger. But subjectively the Zionist assumption that such a Zionist majority could be obtained without major resistance by the Arabs, implies that the Palestine Arabs do not exist, at least not as a separate nation with its own aims for national survival which would have to be reckoned with.

The history of Zionist policy towards the Arabs is that of this illusion, but an illusion fanatically upheld! The illusion started, of course, with the birth of the Zionist movement itself. To the early Zionists, who only knew Palestine as a Turkish province without special mention in geography books, the presence of a small Arab population meant nothing.

Nordau's phrase [*] “Das Land ohne Volk dem Volk ohne Land” [The land without a people to a people without a land] exactly sums up the early Zionist claim. Nor was this ignorance surprising. The early pre-War Zionists, typical Central European intellectuals, were anything but Orientalists. Under the Turks Palestine looked an empty country, poor and desolate. The small Levantine merchant communities and the few hundred thousand poor fellaheen seemed little more than a temporary squatter population. If Palestine were built up as a Jewish country, surely these fellaheen must also profit from its new prosperity; they would either become absorbed in the new state, or else transferred.

Compared to the growing problem of millions of Jews in Europe, compared with the forces Zionism aimed to arouse, the problem of transferring an Oriental population – something the Turks had frequently done – seemed of a very minor order.

As we have said, that the early Zionists dreaming in Cracow and Basle and Chicago should think this is not surprising. But that this messianic belief in Palestine as a purely Jewish country, so vital to Zionism, should be able to survive shock after shock of reality and endure even to the present day, after the Arabs have made their presence so clearly and unmistakably felt – that is remarkable proof of the Jewish urge for clinging fanatically to any hope promising even a partial way out from the Jewish problem.

[…]

Examining the Jewish altitude to the Arabs during the years 1933-6, it would be difficult to find it other than a frantic belief that the Arab did not exist. Already the official Zionist name for Palestine – Eretz Israel, Land of Israel – emphasized this attitude. True, this was the ancient Biblical name of the country. Bul its modern revival signified the political demand of Zionism, and it did so in Arab eyes. The education of Jewish children in Palestine was nationalist, in a strangely calm and matter-of-fact way. Aggressiveness was not preached, only peaceful penetration. The Jewish children were simply taught that the plight of the Jews was intolerable and that Palestine was, by historic right and international recognition, theirs to colonize.

Colonization should even extend beyond the borders of the country. Arab opposition could not exist; if it did, it was due to obscurantism or wickedness. That the inevitable answer to this calm assumption was similar Arab education towards Arab national rights and conquest by force, was disregarded.

In fact, nothing was done to placate Arab suspicions, and almost nothing omitted which could rouse them. No contact was established with even a single Arab group. To the Arabs Zionism could not but appear uncanny and peculiarly malevolent. Individual Jews they encountered were often friendly and kindly and extraordinarily helpful. But, as a whole, Zionism excluded them like an intangible wall.

Statistics showing Jewish growth and progress were continually held before their eyes. The terminology of Zionism was militant. Expansion of colonization was described as the conquest of new areas – the conquest of Galilee, the conquest of the ports, the conquest of the hill country. When Jewish labourers were substituted for Arabs in some branch of work, this was called the conquest of such work. To buy a new Jewish product, previously supplied only by Arabs, was openly proclaimed as an advance.

Incessant flag-waving and the most extravagant Zionist patriotic programmes were carried on as though the Arab had no susceptibilities, and as though the Zionists tried to make the Arabs believe that these programmes could really be carried out. In the crowded streets and cafés of Tel Aviv, particularly isolated from the rest of Palestine during the hectic years 1934-6, no doubts were permitted that the Zionist programme was feasible, because the need of solving the Jewish problem was so great that it had to be feasible.

Even when it was seen that a more and more closely knit national movement was arising out of the million Arabs in Palestine, that even so primitive and disunited a people could be stirred to common action, this was disregarded. Or else the class issue was dragged in. Young socialist Jews, even though Zionism had done nothing to benefit the Arab peasantry directly, said with perfect conviction that if they were Arab peasants they would, for the sake of indirect benefits, be ardent Zionists.

To the last this spirit of blindness was maintained, so that when the crash came and the Arabs rose in 1936 the Jewish reaction was the hysterical one of a psychologically unprepared people. True, the Jews defended themselves with rare courage and discipline, but, faced with Arab violence, instead of asking themselves in what way they could have aroused such widespread burning hatred among a primitive people, they proclaimed to the world that there Arabs were not only primitive savages, but branded by their own acts as without moral sense, an evil force with which one could not bargain.

Or alternatively, the Arabs were an innocent people ready to love the Jews who were showering such benefits upon them, had they not been misled by unscrupulous leaders.

But, in any case, the Arab attack was aimed at historical Jewish rights – the right to colonize freely in all Palestine, a right arising out of the catastrophic Jewish situation, and one internationally acknowledged. So how could the Arab attack be anything but wickedness, and how could Jewish resistance not be uncompromising? In their inability to see the Arab point of view, in their frantic belief that surely public opinion must recognize the justice of the Jewish cause, that surely the British must realize that British and Zionist interests went together, the Jews were politically paralysed.

Their own self-deception prevented them from recognizing the million Arabs of Palestine as a political factor, with whom accommodation must be sought. Ard so beyond tenacious self-defence, the Jews had no policy whatsoever in Palestine, least of all towards moderate Arabs, and in these bitter years of struggle without compromise the prosperity of Palestine, the impetus of Zionism, all were lost. The Jews had relatively tremendous power in Palestine, but it was hardly used.

And even in 1938, when the Partition Plan seemed to save something from the wreckage of Zionist hopes, it was only a minority of the Zionists who could break through the hysterical make-belief, and realize that Palestine was a mixed country, that even any Jewish state must inevitably be mixed Jewish and Arab, and that the difficulties of establishing tolerable Jewish and Arab relations, vital to any continuance of Zionism, were only just beginning.

Note

[*] The phrase attributed here to Max Nordau had already been pronounced by many other people, amongst them Israel Zangwill. As for Max Nordau, it seems that when he heard for the first time that there were Arabs inhabiting Palestine, he rushed excitedly to Herzl proclaiming: “I did not know that! If that is the case, then we are perpetrating an injustice.”
Even Israel Zangwill changed his mind when he realised his mistake of believing that Palestine was an uninhabited land.