THE RAPE OF PALESTINE by WILLIAM B. ZIFF - Draiman

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

by WILLIAM B. ZIFF

Opinions

"Having read `The Rape of Palestine,' I stand amazed at the scholarship,

the courage and the competence of William B . Ziff, its author.

The book is full of political dynamite - in its documented indictment

of the British camarilla which in betraying the Jewish nation is betraying

the British nation as well; in its unsparing exposure of self-deluded

Zionist leadership; in its passionate and convincing demonstration that

anti-Semitism threatens to annihilate not only us Jews but everything

connoted by `Christian civilization.' It is a moving and powerful and

vastly significant book, the kind of book, it seems to me, that makes

history." - Eugene Lyons

"The Palestine problem is not a local issue. It has become one of major

significance to the world at large. Mr. Ziff's great book is a splendid

contribution to the clarification and ultimate solution of that problem.

It is a perfectly amazing historical document. Its clarity and charm of

style, its forthright logic and masterly presentation' of facts make it one

of the outstanding books of this generation."- William Griffin, Editor

and Publisher, New York Enquirer

"At last there has come what has so long been needed, a clear, accurate,

dependable account of the betrayal of the world's hope in Palestine."

-Charles Edward Russell

"This book should be read by all those in responsible position in

American public affairs who are interested in the foreign scene."

- H. Styles Bridges, U. S. Senator, New Hampshire

"Every lover of humanity and everyone who hopes' to preserve our

present civilization against disaster should read these dynamic pages.

This book is an eye-opener." - William Green, President, A. F. of L.

"I heartily recommend Wm. B. Ziff's book. This great book should

be in the hands of all those interested in gaining a proper understanding

of the vexing Palestine problems of today." - Reverend Ralph Sockman,

Former President, Greater New York Federation of Churches

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

`William 13. Ziff

THE RAPE OF  

PALESTINE

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.

NEW YORK • TORONTO  

1938

ZIFF

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

1938

BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO ., INC.

First edition November 1938

Second edition November 1938

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

" . I hope the Hon. Members will believe me when I say that 

I am not pro-Jew; I am pro-English. I set a higher value on the 

reputation of England all over the world for justice than I do on 

anything else . . . but when I see this sort of thing going on, 

with the Government unable to put any argument an the other side, 

it makes me perhaps bitterer than even a Jew can be against the 

Government of Palestine today."- Address by Colonel Josiah C. 

Wedgwood, M.P., to his peers in Commons, May 29, 1934.

PREFACE

The parlous condition of the Jewish people over a large part 

of the known world, and particularly in such countries as Germany, 

Poland and Rumania, has called increasing attention to the 

workings of the Mandate for Palestine now administered by 

Great Britain under the authority of the League of Nations. The 

Mandate, when it was written, as well as the antecedent Balfour 

Declaration, clearly contemplated that the "home" to be established 

in Palestine was intended for the whole Jewish people who

were to be established there by international sanction in the 

future. The intention was to provide a sane and reasonable solution 

to the age-old Jewish problem, and it anticipated those 

circumstances which have rendered so large a portion of the Jewish

race homeless.

If this was indeed the purpose of the Mandate it has proved a 

miserable failure, since it has solved nothing and has only succeeded 

in adding a new and formidable problem to a world already 

sinking under the weight of problems. Many reasons are

adduced for this failure. Much is made of the irreconciliable 

differences between Arabs and Jews, which the mandatory now 

claims render the Mandate unworkable.

The claim that an opposing promise was made to the Arabs will 

be examined in these pages, as will be the circumstances under 

which the Balfour Declaration and Mandate were issued. The

assertion that the Declaration was extorted from an unwilling 

Britain by Jewish financiers during the War, can be obviously 

disposed of as a pure invention of the anti-Semitic mind. Another 

and more reasonable claim made to justify Britain's position 

in this matter is that she was totally ignorant of the real conditions 

in Palestine and the actual problems she was letting herself 

in for when she made her bargain with the Jews. Under 

Vii

vui

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

examination this contention loses much of its plausibility. For a 

hundred years Zionism, as we shall see, had been almost as much 

an English movement as it was a purely Jewish one. As for local 

conditions in Palestine, it is undoubted that British officialdom 

knew more about Arab social and economic problems than the 

Jews aspiring to settle there. From the time the American 

scholar Robinson attempted to explore archaeological remains in 

the Holy Land in 1837, London has, through the Palestine Exploration 

Fund, concentrated on the study of every minute detail

that related to Palestine. "Theirs," state De Haas and Wise, 

"were the surveys, the compilation of flora and fauna, theirs too 

the enumeration and localization of the Bedouin tribes; theirs the 

studies in local conditions, the compilation of customs and excise, 

estimates of population, speculation as to the origins of peoples,

observations on everything that relates to the area between 

the River of Egypt and the cedars of Lebanon." 

1 Reaching far 

back into the 1840's, Lord Palmerston had compiled for his Government 

thorough material on Palestine, considering the possibility 

of exercising a British protectorate over that region in the 

Jewish interests. Since that time the accumulation has been so 

vast that it is only fair to say that the British archives contain a 

better survey of Arab social, economic, agricultural and other 

problems than the Arabs have of themselves.

As for the Declaration itself, it may be assumed that Lord Balfour, 

its author, is an infallible witness to its intended purpose.

He wrote: "The national and international status of the Jews to 

that of other races . . . would be promoted by giving them that 

which all other nations possess: a local habitation and a national 

home . . . [where] they would bear corporate responsibilities

and enjoy corporate duties of a kind which, from the nature of 

the case, they can never possess as citizens of any non-Jewish 

state." 

2 It will be evident from the records that neither the 

Declaration nor the Mandate confers upon non-Jews any rights 

which would allow them to interfere with the growth and operation 

of the National Home. It is obvious that if these documents 

were to be interpreted so as to include National Home rights to 

non-Jews, both the National Home grant to the Jews and the 

rights of non-Jews would be repealed by implication.

PREFACE

ix

The document 

would then repeal itself, which on the face of it would be

a reductio ad absurdum.

As will also be seen from these pages, British trusteeship of the 

Holy Land was the result of Jewish demand itself, Wedgwood 

admitting rather shamefacedly in this respect that the Jews were 

"almost the only non-Anglo-Saxon people who seem to believe 

that on the whole England does try to behave decently towards 

other people." 3 

If the records are to be believed, the Mandatory for Palestine 

has followed a deliberate defaulting policy in respect to its obligations 

there, and has itself largely created the conditions which 

it now so thoroughly decries. 

A large share of its policies have 

been motivated entirely by British power politics in the Mediterranean, 

in which the Mandate was used for the purpose of

surrounding British Imperial strategy in the Middle East with the 

aura of sanctity. A factor of even greater importance, however, 

is the gross anti-Semitism of a handful of civil servants in the 

bureaus of Whitehall and Westminster. It is to the phobia of

these men against Jews that most of the troubles agitating the 

Holy Land can be traced . Its wantonness is not flaunted, it is 

true, like the excesses of the German Nazis or the Polish Endeks.

It lies icily beneath the shining hardness of bureaucratic logic.

It is overlaid with the softness of English colonial skill - but, as 

we shall discover, it is in no sense less intense, and fully as implacable, 

as the open anti-Semitism of the Nazis on the Continent.

This, briefly, will be found to be the underlying condition 

which hides beneath the maze of pretension by which London 

has consistently justified its bad faith to the Jews and to the 

world. It is this factor which has caused the declared policy of 

the Mandate to fail so ignominiously and which has allowed the 

Holy Land in these past years to be given over to hooligans and 

desperadoes who have murdered its citizens, burned its crops and 

houses and demoralized its commerce .

The records are voluminous . This book attempts only the 

barest factual description, as free as such an account may reasonably

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

be from evaluations or interpretations which the facts do 

not bespeak in themselves.

For those who desire fuller information on the various aspects 

of this subject, a selected list of reference works will be found in 

the notes and bibliography. The attention of the reader should 

also be brought to the fact that except where otherwise indicated, 

italics are in every case my own .

W.B.Z

CONTENTS 

BOOK ONE 

CHAPTER 

PAGE

I . THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK . . .

I

The Ancient Land of Israel -Character of the 

Hebrew - Struggles for Independence - Final 

Rebellions - The Dispersion

II. "MAY MY RIGHT ARM WITHER. . ." 21

The Jew Never Gave Up His Claim to Palestine - 

The First Essential to Jewish Title

III . THE WANDERING JEW 2 5

Fifteen Hundred Years of Tragedy - "Liberty !

Fraternity ! Equality !" - `The Lost Ten Tribes' 

- Reawakening Hebrew Consciousness - Herz1

xi

IV.

V.

THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN .

Topography - Jewish Pre-War Settlements

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION . .

45

5

VI.

Palestine and the War - Events Leading to Lord 

Balfour's Commitment - Struggle with the Non-

Zionists - What Did the Declaration Mean ?

BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 64

VII.

Marching Jews - Revolting Tribesmen - The Arab 

View of Zionism - The Military Junta - Handrubbing 

Statesmen - Pogrom and World Horror

THE MANDATE BY THE LEAGUE go 

Weizmann Obliges - The First Partition

xu

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE 

CHAPTER 

PAGE

VIII. A MAN NAMED SAMUEL 100

Under the Colonial Office - A Jewish Ruler After 

Two Thousand Years - The Pogrom of 1921 - 

The Grand Mufti - The Churchill White Paper

- Severance of Transjordan - Samuel is Replaced 

- Field Marshal Lord Plumer

IX. THE WHITE PAPER BARRAGE

The Third High Commissioner - The Pogrom of 

1929 - Who Was Responsible? -Commissions 

and White Papers - The Report of Hope-Simpson

- The Passfield White Paper - The MacDonald 

Letter - The Kid Glove High Commissioner - 

The Report of Mr . French

BOOK TWO

121

I . JEWS HAVE A REPUTATION FOR INTELLIGENCE . . 152

The Zionist Organization - The Palestine Dreyfus

Case - Labor Dictatorship - Reigning Zionist

Personalities

II . "THE DESERT SHALL BLOOM LIKE THE ROSE " . . 176

`Unprecedented Prosperity' -Population and Cities

- Character of the People

III . BUREAUCRACY LOOKS AT JEWS 192

The Holy Land and Whitehall - The Jewish 

Nuisance - `Rule Britannia !' - The Arab

Empire Project- Interpreting the Mandate

IV. WELCOME HOME ! 234

The Jew Tries to Enter Palestine - Tourists - 

Hunting down Illegals - The Arab Comes in Like 

a Gentleman - Britain Puts on the Heat

V. CLOSE SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND .

.

Soil Hunger - A Famine in Land - Double Standard 

of Taxation

2 54

CHAPTER 

VI.

CONTENTS

BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW .

Sabotaging Industry -Banking and Currency - 

Citrus - Economic Insanity -'Heads, I Win

Tails, You Lose' - On Air and Sea - Roads and 

Railroads

VII. DUAL OBLIGATION TO Two PEOPLES

The Tax Moneys - Public Expenditures - Cheating 

Children with Cockles - Health and Sanitation - 

Laws, Benefits and Public Services -'No Jews 

Need Apply' - An Anglo-Saxon System of 

Jurisprudence -The Wolf Named Sheriff to 

X111

PAGE

271

304

Does an Arab Race Exist? -Arab Types and 

Traits - Levantine Worship of God - The Son of 

the Desert Suffers from Jewish Competition - 

Nashishibis and Husseinis - Claims, Objectives 

and Methods -'Semitic Brothers'

II. JEHOVAH ABDICATES IN FAVOR OF DOWNING STREET 4.10

`Let Not Thy Right Hand Know What Thy Left 

Hand Doeth' -Revolt by Permission - Blaming 

Italians and Communists - Another Royal Commission 

- Downing Street Runs the Gauntlet - 

Mr. Weizmann Obliges Again - Saint George 

Spits in the Dragon's Eye

the Lambs - Numerus Clausus and Censorship

VIII. TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN 340

IX. 

Legalities : `Made in England' - Abdullah Puts His 

Hand Out

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY 352

I .

The Legislative Council - "By Their Acts You Shall 

Know Them!" - Some Odious Comparisons

BOOK THREE

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" . 366

Spits in the Dragon's Eye 

the Lambs - Numerus Clausus and Censorship

VIII. TRANSJORDAN THE JUDENREIN 340

IX.

Legalities : `Made in England' - Abdullah Puts His 

Hand Out

WHOOPING IT UP FOR DEMOCRACY 352

I .

The Legislative Council - "By Their Acts You Shall 

Know Them!" - Some Odious Comparisons

BOOK THREE

"A PEOPLE IN DESPAIR" . 366

xiv

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

BOOK FOUR 

CHAPTER 

PAGE

I . THE COLLAPSE OF EMANCIPATION 47 8

`Enemies of All Mankind'- The Refugees

II. SOLVING THE JEWISH QUESTION IN THE HOLY LAND 492

Absorptive Capacity - Landless Arabs and Agricultural 

Possibilities -'No Water' - A Prospect of 

Agricultural Competence - Mineral Resources - 

Other Possibilities - An Overcrowded Country

III . "AM I My BROTHER'S KEEPER?" .

NOTES 527

APPENDIXES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

GLOSSARY 598

Maps appear on end pages, 

inside front and back covers.

5 1 4

57 1

•

5 84

•

6oi

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER I

THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

THE ANCIENT LAND OF ISRAEL

The Zionist fabric is not new. It is of a piece with the whole 

history and tradition of the Hebrew people . It is inextricably a 

part of that dynamic stream of consciousness which has swept the 

Hebrew past a long succession of centuries which, by all logic, 

should have suffocated him . Unconsciously, even the apostate 

Disraeli acknowledged the great compulsion of the Hebrew past 

in the life of the living Jew . Cut to the quick by fellow-members 

in Parliament who taunted him with being a Jew as he made his 

maiden speech, he cried in reply : "That is all very well -but 

when your ancestors were chasing each other around trees with 

stone axes, mine were writing the Talmud."

A short glimpse into the history of this remarkable people will 

shed a clear light on much of the present Jewish situation which 

must otherwise remain confused and inexplicable.

For countless generations the world has been content with the 

paradox which allowed it to affirm with Sir William Jones, that 

the Hebrew Scriptures "contained more sublimity, more exquisite 

beauty, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence than could be 

collected from all other books that were ever composed in any 

age or any idiom" ; and in the same breath to believe that the Hebrews 

who wrote them were a tribe of wild, illiterate shepherds 

on a scale of development comparable to that of the modem 

Bedouin.

Recent archaeological research brings us to the more reasonable 

conclusion that the people who wrote the Bible were a race who 

lived in a high state of civilization, not inferior in many of its 

aspects to that of the present day .

Among the most interesting of these discoveries is the un

doubted proof that Abraham actually lived .

I

2

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

We have the word

of Sir Leonard Woolley and other scholars, that "the fact of 

Abraham's existence was vouched for by written documents almost, 

if not quite, contemporary with him ." 1 And Prof . J. Garrow 

Duncan remarks that in Genesis    i-xi are whole passages which 

"describe actual history dating two thousand years before Abraham, 

and other passages which are translated from ancient cuneiform

records as if the writer had the tablets before him ." He

describes at Ur, the Jewish patriarchs' birthplace, two-story 

houses with plastered rooms, together with sewers, pillars and 

courtyards . "Some of the cuneiform tablets were on the subject 

of mathematics," from plain sums in addition to methods of 

extracting cube roots, a knowledge, he avers, Abraham most certainly

possessed .2

It is now clear that the Jews originated in Mesopotamia, a

colonizing offshoot of that ancient Akkadian-Sumerian culture, 

in which, according to the consensus of modern scholarly opinion, 

civilization itself was cradled.

The Hebrews entered Palestine as an educated people. That 

writing was in common use among them even as early as the time 

of Moses, is shown by the findings at Lachish. Here Sir Charles 

Marston came upon letters written in ink describing contemporary 

history, the earliest known use of alphabetical writing .3

Recent excavations confirm completely descriptions in the texts 

of the Old Testament. At Tell Sbustujeh in Samaria were found 

exquisite decorations, delicately carved inlays, and various articles 

of metal craftsmanship, obviously those referred to in Kings 

22:39, Amos 3 :15 and Psalms 45:8. Here are the palaces of 

Ahab, and houses built with hewn stone, often of two or three

stories, speaking evidence of the rich civilized life which produced 

them. Excavations elsewhere in Palestine tell exactly the 

same story. Apparently even the greatest attention was paid to 

matters of sanitation, and "the great water tunnels at Gezer and 

Jerusalem show that no amount of trouble was considered superfluous 

in order to provide uninterrupted access to water." 4

In the light of these findings, the great prosperity of the Hebrew 

nation cannot be dismissed as so much oriental braggado

cio.

THE 

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK 3

 It must be accepted as a faithful account of historical fact .

The soil had been the basic source of Palestine's wealth and had 

been so during all the ages until the hand of a barbaric and improvident 

race fell heavy upon it and robbed it of its fertility. The 

Song of Solomon describes the luscious beauty of the well-kept 

and thickly populated country in the springtime; and we have today

for reference the remarkable notes of an Egyptian named

Sinuhe (about the twentieth century B.C.) who, compelled to 

reside for a while in the highlands of Palestine, relates tersely 

"There were figs and grapes and more wine than water. Its honey 

was ample and its oil abundant, and all kinds of fruits hung from 

its trees. There were wheat and barley and all kinds of flocks,

without number." 5 About 200 B.C. another articulate traveler, 

one Aristeas, raptly describes the country as an agricultural paradise

." Josephus himself never grew tired of praising the fertility 

of his native land. The Galilee uplands he describes as being so 

closely cultivated as to resemble "a large garden." Tacitus echoes 

much of this unbounded adulation; while Polybius declared that

the district between Beth Shan and the Lake of Galilee alone 

could support an army.

Biblical testimony itself was unstinting in its lush description 

of the region as being a land flowing with milk and honey. Deuteronomy 

describes it as a beautiful country with "brooks of water 

and fountains and lakes that spring out of valleys and hills, a land 

of wheat, barley and vines, and fig trees and pomegranates, a land

of olive oil and honey, a land where one can eat without scarceness, 

where there is no lack of anything . . ."

The Jew had been a skilled agriculturist. He knew how to

prepare the soil, manure it and clear it of stones and debris. He 

was accustomed to terrace the hills and knew how to practice irrigation 

by means of cisterns, wells and canals. The ploughshare 

itself was made out of iron.? The ground had to be turned over 

at least three times, and the plough followed by the harrow., So 

highly was agriculture esteemed that even Saul, although he was

already anointed king, is seen returning from his day at the 

plough. 9

In the hands of this provident people who loved their soil, this 

whole territory was an Eden of 

4 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

rich meadows, numberless fruit 

trees, vineyards, palms and closely cultivated farms and gardens.

Grain crops and vegetables of all kinds grew in profusion both in 

the valleys and on the hills. The land was so rich in fruits of 

every kind that they were exported to world markets, where they 

were famous for their superior quality . All through ancient times 

the Jordan Valley was noted for its corn, dates, balsam, flax and 

other products. Here in the last century Tristram came upon 

elaborate ruins of sugar mills still surviving. 10 Pliny called Judea

as famous for dates as Egypt for spices. Galilee was known 

throughout the ancient world for its olive oil. Its importance 

alone is shown by the amount supplied annually to the King of 

Tyre by Solomon : 160,000 gallons of best quality." Across 

Jordan the sleek, fat kine of Bashan were proverbial. And Gilead 

bore perfume and medicine for the whole Eastern world. Hence 

the proverb, "Is there no balm in Gilead?"

Up to the Fifth Century A.D. the bare hills of Moab were covered 

with waving corn and closely settled vineyards. Some remnants 

of the immense forests which once stretched from Kfar 

Saba and east into Bethlehem still existed as late as 1840, when 

they too capitulated to the general war of extermination waged 

by the wandering native population against the woods and soil of 

this favored country. Writers, even down to the Crusades, described 

great woods like those of Sharon. As late as Nehemiah's 

time there was a forester in the Royal Service to control the timber 

supply around Jerusalem, 12 and from the hieroglyphic papyrus 

Golenisheff (about 1150 B.c.) we learn that the Egyptians had 

been importing timber from the Carmel region for generations."

In this Eden of prosperous husbandry it is no surprise to see industry 

and manufacture keeping pace to create a well-rounded 

base for the wealth of this fortunate nation. Allied with the 

farmers were innumerable shepherds, cowherds and cattlemen.

Dairying was of sufficient importance to make a cheese market 

necessary in Jerusalem. On the other side of Jordan the Jews 

dealt in wool, and everywhere raised poultry from the earliest 

times.

They were equally alert and practiced in handicrafts which 

THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK 5

were considered a family pride and tradition. At the time of 

Jesus, Jewish literature mentions no less than forty kinds of craftsmen.

Hillel was a woodcutter; R. Yeshoshua ben Hananya a

smith; Jesus of Nazareth a carpenter and maker of cattle yokes, 

and Saul of Tarsus a weaver of tent cloths. An interesting picture 

of various crafts is given in the Wisdom of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus), 

a book belonging to about 200 B.c. Here the 

ploughman, the grazier, the carpenter, the engraver, the smith, the 

potter and the physician are all spoken of.

Excavations at Tell Beit Mirsim (the Biblical Debir) showed 

that the industrial life of Israel onward to the end of the Exile was 

well developed. "The evidence of weaving and dyeing, of the 

pottery industry, and especially engineering, is now greatly 

strengthened. The evidence of the weaving industry is overwhelming."

14 At Debir, Dr. Albright discovered six dye plants

and remnants "showing that there must have been a loom in nearly 

every house." 15

At the south end of Lake Tiberias was one of the first purely 

manufacturing towns in economic history. Beautiful dyed cloths 

and dyes were exported as well as phosphorus, asphalt, tar, salt, 

glass ornaments and perfumes. Pliny tells us that 'Judean pitch' 

was world famous. Iron mines were found in the Lebanon and

near Jerash. Josephus mentions the `hill of iron' which "extended 

as far as the land of Moab." Dr. Glueck found in 1934 

abandoned workings of rich copper fields in the region north of 

the Gulf of Aqaba and remarks: "When the Biblical historian 

asserts `there was no weighing of the bronze from which he 

[Solomon] made all these vessels, because it was so much,' one 

may believe that he was not exaggerating the facts." 16

In those days the present industrial relations between East and 

West were reversed. The Orient was then the great industrial 

center and exchanged its manufactured products against the raw 

materials of the less developed Western countries.

Solomon was canny enough to exploit the unique geographical 

position of his country. He was the originator of the policy of 

customs and levied on both imports and exports to keep his treasury 

full. 17           The commerce of the Hebrew State extended in all

6

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

directions, as far east as China, and as far west as Natal and Zululand 

where coins dating from the time of the Maccabees have 

been recently discovered."'

On the sea, Rawlinson observes that while the friendly dealings 

of Hiram with David and Solomon are well known, "the continued 

alliance between the Phoenicians and the Israelites has attracted 

less attention." 19 This continued composition of interests 

between the two neighboring Semitic nations is mentioned 

by Herodotus and other ancients and is confirmed by modern

authorities. 20 Says Klausner: "Jewish sailors were just as numerous 

as Jewish donkey-drivers." 21

Fishermen too were numerous and the catch so plentiful that 

much of it was salted and sold abroad. Trade both by sea and 

over the camel routes thrived. Aristeas declares fulsomely that 

"a great mass of spices, precious stones and gold is brought into 

the district . . . For the country is well adapted for commerce 

as well as for cultivation, and the city [Jerusalem] is rich in the 

arts, and lacks none of the merchandise which is brought across 

the sea."

This was the country which Jehovah had promised to his people 

Israel "for an everlasting possession"; a veritable beehive of 

plenty and happiness, tribute to what will happen when a favored 

land and a gifted people meet in conjunction. The Assyrian 

Sennacherib leaves a record of its populousness: "I took forty-six 

of his strong walled cities as well as the small cities in their neighborhood,

which were without number." 22 Josephus remarks 

that "the cities lie here very thick and the very many villages that 

are here, are everywhere so full of people . . . that the very 

least of them contained above fifteen thousand inhabitants." 28

Population estimates vary, curtained by the dust of antiquity, 

but in every case they were so considerable as to cause the modern 

observer to gasp. In an age where opportunities for sustaining 

concentrated industrial populations were largely non-existent, 

the land certainly maintained a per capita density incomparably 

larger than that which allegedly overcrowds it today.

Diodorus, Strabo, Tacitus, and Dio Cassius all agree that "the 

THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK 7

population to the square mile was larger in Palestine than in any 

other portion of the Roman dominion." 24

In Exod. 12:37 we are told that there were "about 600,000 on 

foot that were men, besides women and children" plus "a mixed 

multitude" that went up from Egypt. Chron. 21:5 asserts that 

when David numbered the people, including the soldiery, or 

those who were called into the actual service of the King in due 

course, month by month throughout the year, "all they of Israel

were 1,100,000 that drew sword; and of Judah, 475,000," exclusive 

of Levi and Benjamin. Josephus estimates the number shut 

up in Jerusalem during the siege by Titus at 2,700,000. 25 From 

the figures he gives, Galilee alone must have held fully 3,000,000 

people, while the whole of Palestine could be conservatively estimated 

at at least 12,000,000.

Certainly if one may judge from Roman accounts of the wars 

with Judea, where figures running into the millions were given 

for the slain, and the numbers sold into captivity ran into legions, 

these figures are not incredible .

CHARACTER OF THE HEBREW

If the Jews are to return to become a collective force in the 

world of men, they will beyond doubt resuscitate their ancient 

law. Prof. A. A. Berle points out that "that law, only vaguely 

understood, and of only very limited application in world history, 

will have then a full exposition and a thorough working out in 

terms of modern life." 26 An increasing army of educators, disgusted 

with the tyrannical and unpleasant philosophies which are 

blasting civilization to its foundations, see in the Hebrew laws the 

elements for a social regeneration of this sick world . "Certainly,"

says Berle, "many of the laws relating to the ordinary life and 

relations of mankind, as laid down in ancient Mosaic law, if applied 

to a modern city block, would regenerate it root and 

branch ."

Most of what passes for a history of the Hebrew people has 

been filtered through hostile Greek and Roman sources and

8

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

through the hardly less hostile bias of medieval Christianity. The 

significance of Hebrew genius in relation to its peculiar understanding 

of cultural values is hence not generally understood.

Dr. Marion E . Cady says of this situation that "now it is being 

fearlessly asserted that as in religion, so in education, the Jews 

have made the greatest contribution of any nation, ancient, medieval 

or modern." 27 Prof. E. C. Baldwin of Illinois University 

concludes that "modern culture, both artistic and ethical, goes 

back to Athens and to Jerusalem, but that English culture owes 

far more to the Hebrew than to the Greeks ." 28 And Dr. F. T.

Lamb asserts that "if our boys and girls were trained as Jesus was 

trained up to twelve years of age, they would be in every desirable 

respect greatly the superior of the boys and girls trained under 

the best methods of the present day." 29

The essential core of the Hebrew idea was the superiority of 

reason. That system of life which is commonly called Judaism, 

was in the most real sense no religion at all . It was never formal, 

abstract and separated from life, but a throbbing and vital part of 

it. It was completely unlike pure theological systems such as 

that evolved by the Greeks - which, attempting to reconcile 

themselves with the world in its broadest sense, found religious

inheritance irreconcilable with rational thinking . It is necessary 

to understand Judaism in this sense, as a civilization rather than a 

religion, in order to grasp adequately the dynamics and vitality 

which have kept Zionism consciously alive over this great lapse 

of years . Judaism was concerned deliberately with the quality

of living on this earth, with the bringing of every phase of existence 

into relation with eternal truth. "It is worth remarking," 

comment Graham and May, "that no matter to what heights of social 

vision and spiritual exaltation the Hebrew seer might climb, he 

never lost that urge toward physical well-being which had impelled 

his remote ancestors to venture into the Promised Land .

In the same breath in which he speaks of multitudes streaming to 

Zion to commune with God, he mentions the vine and the fig tree 

which every citizen may call his own." 30

"The drift of all Hebrew thinking," says MacDonald, "as

thinking, was to link up morals and intelligence." 31 Judaism

THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

9

significantly regarded stupidity as the source of evil in individual 

man. A sinner was a blunderer and not a rational person, and the 

ultimate morality was not to be a fool. Worshiping Reason, 

the Hebrew could not credit anything which was either irrational 

or static. To his mind, nothing existed rigid and unalterable in a 

state of `being,' but only of `becoming.'

The great Rabbi Hillel, who preceded Jesus by a generation, 

typified this remarkable viewpoint. Asked by a heathen who 

wished to make sport of him, to be taught the whole Torah 32 

while standing on one foot, the gentle Hillel replied: "What is 

hateful to thee do not to others. This is the whole Torah. The 

rest is merely commentary."

While the Hebrew concept regarded all life forces as constituting 

one unity not capable of being subdivided on varying moral 

bases to suit varying emergencies and occasions, it was irrevocably 

anchored in an implicit belief in the sacredness of the individual 

personality.     At a time when Romans compelled gladiators to

slaughter each other for sport in the arenas, when material appetites 

and gross oppressions were the elements of universal law, 

this free people was living in accordance with a code which for 

sheer gallantry of expression has had no equal before - nor perhaps

since. 

A spirit of mercy and humanity pervaded the Hebrew

legal system. In Jewish law there was never such a thing

as legal justification for inequality. No man could vindicate an 

act of injustice by an appeal to law. Complete equality before 

the bar of justice was the right of all from humble herdsman to 

king. 

The Deuteronomic Code declares no single witness sufficient 

to convict a man of wrongdoing. 

Malicious witnesses 

were severely dealt with. 

"A straying animal must be taken up 

and returned to its owner, and if a beast has fallen under a burden 

the passerby must aid the owner in raising it to its feet again." 33

This applied also to lost articles and provided that if the owner 

were unknown the finder must care for them until the owner 

appears.34

Israel had a real love for animals. The law required a man

to hasten to the aid of any beast, even if it belonged to an enemy, 

that was sinking under its load; 36 a sense of justice that to

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

even extended to the threshing floor where the law provided that 

"thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the grain." 38

Love of the resident alien is explicitly demanded in Dent . 19:33; 

Deut. 10:19 and Exod. 22:21; 23:9. The duty of treating strangers, 

together with orphans and widows, with justice, mercy and 

generosity is emphasized, decreeing that the gleanings of grain 

fields, orchards and vineyards must be left free for them to gather 

and enjoy. 37 The taking of interest on loans to the poor is forbidden.

38 Runaway slaves must be received and treated kindly

and are not to be surrendered to their owners or oppressed. 39

More amazing still, in an ancient world of cruelty and ruthlessness, 

are the injunctions of Dent. 24:16, where the principle of 

individual responsibility is laid down, so that a relative may not be 

punished for the misdeeds of a son - in striking contrast with 

practices in operation even today in such allegedly civilized states 

as Russia and Germany. Reverence for the aged is strictly enjoined,

as is the use of just weights and measures. The animism

still practiced throughout Europe and in parts of America, is declared 

strictly illegal. Prohibited also are practices of magic, 

spiritism, and pagan rites of communion with departed spirits .40

Uncleanliness is completely discountenanced . In his splendid 

book, Medicine in the Bible, Dr. Charles Brim details the amazing 

medical knowledge and sanitary understanding of the ancient Israelites.

Says Dr. Victor Robinson in this regard: "There are

passages in the Pentateuch which deserve a place in the Corpus 

Hippocraticum." 41 And Col. Edgar Erskine Hume avers that 

every principle of modern military sanitation was known and 

used by Moses.

Hebrew law also emphasized good breeding, as: "Let another 

man praise thee and not thine own mouth," 42 or: "When thou 

sittest among many, reach not thine hand out first of all ." 43

Education was widely diffused. The sons of rich families had 

their tutors, while parents in more modest circumstances taught 

their own children. Those who could afford it wore handsome 

clothing of various colors and often the outer garment was embroidered 

with gold. Everywhere and at all times song and music 

were to be found . The harp or organ was one of the many

THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

i z

instruments known. We hear of pipes, psalteries, cymbals and 

trumpets, all of which required skill in playing and therefore implied 

instruction." Music seems to have been the joyous climax 

of all occasions of public or private life. The international repute 

which Jewish singers had achieved is indicated from the inscription 

on an Assyrian monument where the chief item of tribute 

laid on Hezekiah by an Assyrian ruler was the demand for a

company of men and women singers.

Labor was highly esteemed. The Talmud directed every father, 

regardless of his social position, to teach his son some useful 

trade. 45 "The tradesman at his work," it declares, "is the equal 

of the most learned doctor"; and avers that "he who derives his 

livelihood from the labor of his hands is as great as he who fears 

God." The most prominent authors of the Talmud were in fact 

simple workingmen, shoemakers, iron workers, laborers; proud

men who knew no masters and brooked no slaves.

We can also conclude that among the Jews, women enjoyed a 

free and independent social position. Two of the twenty-four 

books of the Bible received their titles from the names of women, 

Ruth and Esther. There were seven prophetesses spoken of in 

the Talmud. Among them Deborah judged the people and went 

out with Barak to fight against Sisera. During the reign of Josiah,

Huldah was so highly thought of as to be consulted by the 

chief officers of the kingdom. The king himself bowed down to 

his mother, as Solomon did to Bathsheba. 

Wherever in Precepts, 

Psalms or Proverbs filial devotion is mentioned, father and mother 

are made equal, as is done in the Fifth Commandment.

Hebrews were never ruled like slaves of an Eastern despot. 

They were called into council by their kings and contended 

boldly for their rights. Decrees affecting the whole community 

were ratified by the general voice of the people, freely assembled.

This free people, for all their gentle philosophy of life, were al

ways animated by the spirit of liberty and inspired by the cry 

`To your tents, 0 Israel!' They knew how to resist oppression.

They were not overawed by the cruelties of Antiochus or Herod; 

nor, alone among the peoples of the earth, cowed by the might 

of Imperial Rome.

12

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Specific legislation defined and restricted the powers of the 

crown, in itself eloquent testimony to the democratic spirit prevailing 

in Israel throughout the whole history of the monarchy .46

We search antiquity in vain for an example of free government 

comparable to that provided by Israel. In all the other States 

of the ancient world, the life, honor and property of the subject 

were at the disposal of the sovereign; but to the Jewish mind, absolute 

power in a ruler was incomprehensible. The power and 

authority of the king were directly circumscribed by law. The

highest executive, political and judicial powers of the State were 

vested in a council of seventy Elders (Zekenim) and a smaller 

chamber composed of twelve Princes (Nesiim), who together 

constituted the Congregation or Parliament of the nation. As we 

learn from Kings 21:23-24 and 23:30, it had the authority to 

make and unmake kings and on occasion actually did so. 

Remarks 

Sulzberger: "While the modern monotheistic conception 

of the universe is largely the product of their [the Jewish] genius, 

so the modern conception of the rational, democratic, representative 

government owes its origin to the same ancestry." And adds 

the famed Master of Balliol, Edward Caird : "It is not without 

significance that the great struggle for political freedom in this

country [England] was led by men who drew much of their inspiration 

from the Old Testament . . ." 461,

The bulk and mainstay of the nation were middle-class farmers 

and villagers, each one of whom felt himself equal to Caesar.

Tacitus remarks on their health and the fact that they are "capable 

of enduring great fatigue." Josephus describes them as a warlike 

people, greatly desired as mercenary soldiers and disliked 

for their arrogance and pride of race. 

The idyll of Jewish speculation was no Valhalla, but a time 

of grace when swords would be beaten into plough-shares and 

spears into pruning hooks .47 They were the first people in history 

who regarded their fate not from the standpoint of physical 

supremacy but from that of moral harmony; yet there was no 

people in history who possessed the haughty pride in race and 

the passionate love of country which continually distinguished

THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

13

them. This passion of the Jewish people for Palestine is coeval 

with the Race and is disclosed in every turn in their history - a 

sentiment as enduring as the Jew. "How shall we sing the Lord's 

song in a strange land?" begins the Psalms. The Hebrews, a 

poetical people, addressed their country with all the ardor of one 

referring to a loved one: "Land of beauty!" "The princess 

among the nations!" "The joy of the whole earth!"

Coexistent with this infatuation for the country was an unbending 

love of liberty, so reckless and intense as to amount almost to 

an obsession. The Jewish greeting was Shalom (peace), but all 

who encountered him were shortly to discover that it did not 

mean peace at any price.

STRUGGLES FOR INDEPENDENCE

Situated in the very pathway of invading world conquerors we 

find this brave people again and again refusing to pay tribute or 

accept oppression. Typical in sheer pathos is the bitter rebellion 

of the little country, under King Jehoiachim, against the 

world power of Babylon during the reign of the omnipotent

Nebuchadnezzar; and nine years later, under King Zedekiah, the 

doughty refusal to pay tribute. Enraged at the unaccountable 

nature of this long and obstinate defense against his advancing 

hordes, the lordly Chaldean determined that the city of Jerusalem 

should be no more inhabited. He ordered it leveled to the 

ground. An indiscriminate massacre took place and those who

survived were carried off into captivity. The entire country 

laid in ruins and all that would burn was put to the torch. 

The 

prophet Jeremiah, witness to the destruction, wept: "How doth 

the city sit solitary that was full of people; . . . What thing shall 

I liken to thee, 0 daughter of Jerusalem? . . . Our inheritance 

is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens." 48

Nebuchadnezzar thought he had put a final end to this rebellious 

and irreconcilable people; but not more than fifty years 

later he who by his own claim sat at the right hand of God, became 

with all his works only a memory and the Jews returned

14

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

to Palestine. The mighty one had fallen in 539 B.C. to the Persian 

Cyrus, who was happy to have a nation settled in this seaboard 

province bound to him by the thongs of gratitude.

Typical again of the magnificent character of this race were 

their later wars under Judas, son of Mattathias, who was surnamed 

Maccabeus. A new conqueror had risen in the shape of 

Antiochus, the Syrian Greek. 

Now was to begin the first of 

those world struggles in which the force of idea was advanced as 

taking precedence over that of inherent personality. This war

was fought to stem the sweeping onrush of Hellenism by which 

the known world seemed about to be engulfed.

With a small group of his determined followers Judas refused 

to yield. Attacking giant armies again and again with his little 

band of guerrilla fighters, he won a succession of victories. The 

Syrian in a towering rage at this lilliputian effrontery, declared 

his intention of utterly exterminating every individual of the 

Jewish people. He invaded with the enormous armies so characteristic

of despots of the period.

Able to muster but a handful of ill-equipped men, Judas was 

counseled to retreat. He replied with characteristic recklessness

: "If our time has come to die, let us die; but let it never be 

said of us that we turned our back on an enemy." With only 

eight hundred men he attacked the invading legions near Adorsa.

Here, fighting grimly to the last, the stern company gave up their 

lives. But the miracle had happened: the invader, nonplussed 

by the unexpected nature of this furious resistance, was stopped 

dead in his tracks. Jonathan, brother of Judas, took up the struggle.

The Syrian levies, dismayed and beginning to believe they 

were fighting devils instead of men, gave the matter over as a bad 

business and went into retreat .49 Once more Jews saluted each

other with the old greeting of Shalom and began to build where

they had left off.

FINAL REBELLIONS

It was inevitable that the lengthening shadow of Rome should

fall on this little land which, for all its smallness, was yet the

THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

15

crossroads of the world and necessary for anyone who would hold

a firm grip on the rich hinterland of Asia and Africa . The times

were turbulent . The Maccabean princes themselves were in civil

war, Hyrcanus warring against his brother, Aristobulus II . Finally

the two brothers entreated the assistance of Pompey, then

commander-in-chief of the Roman troops in the East, and elected

him arbiter of their mutual differences . The consequences of

this step were fatal to the Jews . Pompey with true Roman forthrightness,

finding the place pleasant, decided to remain . He

therefore invested Jerusalem on his own account . The Jews,

trapped by their own folly, put up their usual stiff resistance and

the usual slaughter ensued. "The constancy and unshaken firmness"

of the defenders, says an account of the siege, "excited the

astonishment and admiration of the conquerors" who, however,

with fine circumspection, were not so abashed as to omit reducing

the country to the status of a Roman province and exacting

a crushing tribute . This was about 63 B.c., after the Jews had

enjoyed scarcely a hundred years of freedom .

Under Herod, who was soon to sit on the Jewish throne as a

Roman puppet, a conscious policy was adopted aimed at denationalizing

this dynamic people. In despair the frantic nation

writhed and spat in every direction like a caught wildcat . Continuous

sullen insurrection made the air electric . A large number

of Jews turned in sheer weariness from what was evidently a

hopeless struggle, to a desire for a world religion where peace

and justice would reign once more. The new prophet, Joshua

of Nazareth whom the Greeks called Jesus, arose to interpret

this new direction of Jewish hope . He preached to a rebellious,

crushed and unhappy people, his own nation, a class whose stake

in the world had been gradually destroyed . Reason had spoken

against the futility of attempting to maintain a Culture and State

independent of the redemption of unhappy mankind the world

over. They turned to this great new prophet, confidently considering

the national devotion of the rest of Jewry as so much

outworn, reactionary adherence to a social order clearly failing

and soon to be outmoded in the coming brotherhood of man .

The Jews of the Dispersion carried the new faith with them and

16

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

"formed the bridge across which Christianity entered the Roman

world." 50 It was from the synagogues of the far shores of the

Mediterranean that its gospel of world brotherhood was fervently

proclaimed, so that for generations there was so little difference

between Jew and Christian that both factions attended the same

synagogues together. Had anyone told the followers of this new

idyllic creed that in its name their brother Jews would one day

be flayed alive and boiled in oil, he would have been considered

a lunatic .

In Judea itself things went from bad to worse . One Roman

governor outdid the other in cruelty and rapacity . The whole

Hebraic conception of life crumbled under an onslaught of graft,

lust, sabotage and provocation . The old courtly idea of Jewish

ethics became a liability ; dishonesty and venality were soon recognizable

as the only guides to a comfortable existence, and began

to corrupt the character of the people themselves . The

country was overrun with robbers, and justice was sold to the

highest bidder . Great numbers of the wretched Jews, unable

to stand this intolerable situation any longer, emigrated .

These were the conditions that preceded the disastrous war

which desolated Jewry and dispersed the Jews. Goaded to wild

desperation they rose once more in insurrection, a rebellion the

most desperate of any recorded in history .

Ironically enough, Agrippa II, descendant of the Maccabean

kings, thoroughly Latinized, joined with the Romans . Attempting

to show the rebels the folly of opposing the conquerors of the

world, he urged them to lay down their arms and submit. The

reply was open defiance .

Retaliating, the Romans massacred almost a hundred thousand

Jews. The hills around Jerusalem were turned into a forest of

crosses on which despairing patriots paid in last full agony for

their devotion .

The rebels however were made of stuff that was not to be

cowed by these punitive measures . They attacked with such indomitable

fury that they soon held a large section of the country .

Enraged by this unheard-of insolence, Cestius Gallus invaded

from Syria with an immense army, burning all the towns and vilTHE

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

1 7

lages on his way and slaughtering the inhabitants . Investing

Jerusalem, he was to his own astonishment defeated and put to

flight.51

The Emperor Nero, puzzled by this extraordinary occurrence,

wisely decided to take no chances . He appointed the great General

Vespasian to prosecute the war, who again laid siege to the

capital.

Meanwhile the Jews were wasting their strength and resources

in internal quarrels. Within the city sanguinary civil wars

and sub-civil wars rent to shreds the defenders, who displayed

a common front only when the invaders were visible beneath the

walls. When the Romans had been driven back, these fraticidal

contests were at once resumed .

The attack was now in the hands of Titus, Vespasian's son .

Grown weary of this interminable investure, he attempted to

parley with the insurgents, who contemptuously refused any

terms whatsoever save unconditional freedom . Finally, as a result

of the continuing internal struggles of the defenders themselves,

the city fell. Josephus graphically pictures the indescribable

events that followed : "One would have thought that the hill

itself on which the Temple stood was seething hot, full of fire

in every part, yet there was more blood than fire, and those that

were slain were more in number than those who slew them . Nowhere

was the ground visible, so covered was it with the dead

. . . but Simon and John were still living, and a few brave men

were with them, who took up a position in the Upper City, on

the Hill of Zion, and still held out. For the last time Titus . . .

again offered terms to the insurgents ." They declined them, and

eighteen days later the Holy City of the Jews was at last subdued .

Refusing all mercy, the defenders had fought for every house

on every street . It is said that 1,ioo,ooo Jews were slaughtered .

And Josephus assures us that there was no place in the land which

did not suffer the same calamities as the Capital . "The Romans

pursued, took, and slew them everywhere ." 52 They were without

question the most formidable opponents that Rome had ever

encountered, and Roman hatred for these bitter rebels extended

even to foreign parts . Great massacres took place in Egypt and

18

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Cyrene. Tremendous numbers were taken away as captives, to

fight as gladiators in the public theater or to be devoured by wild

beasts .

Living symbol of the indomitable Semitic spirit, three fortresses

still held out to the end. The last to be taken, Masada, under

the command of the lion-hearted Eleazor, maintained itself for

long months as an island of resistance after the sea around it had

been beaten into submission. Rather than surrender, the defenders

slew each other, the last survivor defiantly setting fire to the

castle before executing himself . So they fell, writes Tacitus,

"with swords in their hands, contending for liberty, and, in the

act, preserving it. . ." 63

It had taken Titus more than seven years to subdue a tiny

corner of the earth whose inhabitants had not much more to offer

in arms and battlements than their simple valor . Returning to

Rome, the weary conqueror caused an arch to be erected to commemorate

the event, a recognition only given to honor a victory

over great and formidable enemies .

Large numbers of Jews who had escaped the destruction sought

asylum in various parts of the world . The dispersion had begun

in earnest.

THE DISPERSION

Even these catastrophic losses did not serve to break the Jewish

spirit. Scarcely a generation had passed when the same old revolt

broke out again, more tempestuous than ever (A.D. II6) .

This time the dispersed Jews suddenly rose in blazing fury to

aid their brothers who had been struggling in Judea . "Myriads,"

says Eusebius, "had already been killed in the past seventeen

years." There is plenty of evidence that the Jews did equal damage

to their enemies .

Simultaneously the scattered men of Israel rose in mad rebellion

in the provinces of Egypt, Lybia, and Cyprus, determined

to recover their patrimony . They were led by one of the most

stirring figures in all the records of man, a new Hannibal come to

plague the Roman, named Bar Kochba. Eusebius declares in

righteous indignation that entire districts were terrorized by

THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

iq

their armies ; they "laid waste the land ." Whole provinces were

devastated in this amazing struggle of one small gallant nation

against the mightiest empire of the world . Bar Kochba had succeeded

in accomplishing the impossible : he drove out the Roman,

holding the entire Empire at bay, and set up a Jewish State . The

quality of the man may be judged from the prayer he is said to

have addressed to the Lord Jehovah asking that no assistance be

given to the enemy . "As for ourselves," he finished piously, "we

ask no help - we will take care of ourselves ."

The Emperor Hadrian was appalled . In desperation he set

aside all other tasks of state, concentrating his energies on the

business of wiping out Judea, which had now become a menace

to the very life of the Empire .54

For almost four years the contest continued . When finally

resistance ceased, Judea resembled a wilderness . All men capable

of bearing arms had fallen, together with their auxiliaries from

the Diaspora ; and "the unburied bodies of the hundreds of thousands

of the dead poisoned the air ." At the fall of Bether alone

half a million Jews are said to have lost their lives.

Such vast numbers were sold into slavery that in Rome a Jewish

slave was cheaper than a horse . Determined to put an end to this

refractory race, Hadrian devastated Judea and swept it clear of

Jews. He rebuilt Jerusalem under the name of Aeolia Capitolina

and issued an edict forbidding any Jew .to set foot in it on pain

of death . Such Jews as survived withdrew into Galilee .

It is interesting to note that to the Roman, Christianity was still

merely a schismatic Jewish sect . Even at that late date he regarded

Mount Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre as spots especially

venerated by the Jews . And in his anxiety to stamp out what

he considered to be Jewish rites, Hadrian built a Temple to Venus

on Golgotha or Calvary ; and in the Grotto at Bethlehem where

Jesus was born, the worship of Adonis was established .

Even after the ferocious revenge taken by Rome for their last

uprising, the will of the Jews for a free Zion remained unbroken .

Utterly ruined and bitterly oppressed, they still had strength

enough under the reign of Constantine to erupt again in open

rebellion in the Fourth Century A.D. The Roman Emperor sent

20

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

a powerful army against them, which stamped out the uprising

with indiscriminate slaughter . The survivors taken captive were

sold as slaves. But if the Imperial Government thought it was

through with this obstinate race whose will to national existence

continued without a State, without territory and almost without

human rights anywhere, it soon realized its miscalculation . The

fierce determination of the Hebrew to recover what was his by

main force, remained fiery and undeterred as before . When King

Chosroes of Persia proclaimed war against the Western conquerors,

the Jew, Benjamin of Egypt, created a Hebrew army of

thirty thousand desperate men . Together with the Persians they

conquered the larger part of Palestine and held it under Jewish administration

for fourteen years .

This was the last straw. Along with the barbarians it had absorbed,

Christianity had taken on much of the pagan hatred for

Jews. The monks had long been urging the Emperor Heraclius

to exterminate this obstinate people . This was their opportunity

to drive their argument home . When the country reverted to

Byzantium, the contentions of these men who alleged to speak in

the name of a Jewish Prophet, bore fruit. In one fell swoop

every right the Jews had to human existence were taken from

them and they were hunted down like animals . Those who

escaped fled to the arms of their brethren in Egypt and the Mediterranean

world to hope. anew. Palestine itself was now peopled

almost exclusively by Roman soldiers, Greeks and the inmates

of Christian monasteries . Thus the Jews defended to the last

their right to the land whose every stone they adored, and entered

the long trek of homelessness which was to be their destiny

through the ages. If ever sheer love, devotion, courage and sacrifice

spoke for a human right, it speaks in the wars of the Jews for

the heritage given them by their Father Abraham . In all the

world of fact or fiction there is no record like this . A man must

indeed be pulseless who can survey it without admiration and

awe.

CHAPTER II

"MAY MY RIGHT ARM WITHER. . ."

THE JEW NEVER GAVE UP HIS CLAIM TO PALESTINE

The whole history of the Jew, if it has any meaning at all, lies

in a demand f or political restoration . Despite the spirit in which

Jewish history later began to be falsified, one may understand

that what these unhappy exiles concentrated all their hopes and

yearnings on was the dream of a reborn Jewish State . It dominated

the writings of the rabbis ; it permeated prayer and poetry ;

it was part and parcel of every expression of existence . "We cannot,"

they complained in prayer, "serve Thee according to Thy

commandment." And mournfully the Talmud proclaims : "He

who has not tasted the bread of Palestine does not know how

bread tastes ."

Their oath of fealty is famous wherever men gather who love

character and devotion : "May my right arm wither ere I forget

thee, 0 Jerusalem !" For a thousand years their toast and blessing

rang in challenge : "Next year in Jerusalem!"

Jews were buried with a bag of Palestine soil under their pillows,

that they might poetically have in death what had been so

cruelly riven from them in life . In Jerusalem where some few

stones of Solomon's Temple still survived the ravages of the

vandal, the Jew poured out his sad, passionate heart .'

No matter where the Jews lived, culturally and spiritually they

moved in a Palestinian milieu . "It did not matter to them that

Palestine was in the possession of Bedouin or Turk" - three times

daily the petition went up that her crops might prosper - exactly

as though the Jews still lived there in undisturbed possession .

"After each meal the Jew gave thanks for the Land as though he

were still living in it and enjoying its produce ." 2 He was certain

of again occupying it, and always remembered that he was in

exile .

The scattered communities of the Jews, until modern enlightenment

shattered them beyond recognition, were far more than

2T

22

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

mere retreats of religious zealotry . They were rather an organized

attempt to continue their national existence in every possible

sphere and to remain as an individual force in history . All

through the Dispersion, from the captivity in Babylon, wherever

Jews migrated they sought each other out and formed themselves

into self-governing communities as a matter of collective selfdetermination

. Thus until the Emancipation the Jews were to

all intents a territorial group. The fact that they were distributed

in a number of pales or ghettos did not render a common territory

less of a factor in their lives.

The entire structure of Jewish existence stemmed from the

faith that the Temple would soon be rebuilt and the Jewish State

restored. And they wished to be ready when this happy time arrived

. Thus these pathetic exiles lived, like creatures stepped

from drama, and forgot the dreary present in dreaming of an

idyllic future which they believed near at hand .

One can readily understand the sweet Hebrew poet Halevy,

singing a thousand years after the Exodus in identical strain with

the troubadors who composed the psalms . All chivalrous hearts

must weep for the constancy and the beauty with which he lifts

his lyrical voice and cries : "To weep upon thy misery I am like

a howling jackal ; but when I dream thy return and restoration

I am the harp for thy joyous songs ."

So also, in this unbroken continuity of belief and longing, the

modern Hebrew poet Bialik, eye-witness to the pogroms of South

Russia, was to pledge his faith in the destiny of his people ; singing

in deathless words that unending claim which to the Jew is

his title in this world

"Thou wilt not totter, tent of Shem -

I shall rebuild thee .

Thou wilt yet outlive the palaces

As thou didst the days of the destruction

When the towers crumbled."

THE FIRST ESSENTIAL TO JEWISH TITLE

It is on this tenacious, unwavering concentration of hope, sacrifice

and prayer that the first part of the Jewish claim to Palestine

"MAY MY RIGHT ARM WITHER . . . "

23

is based and not alone, as Judeophobes would attempt to make

out, on the mere existence of a Jewish State in remote antiquity .

Dr. Wm. E. Blackstone, quoting the foremost authorities on

international law, pointed out in 189 i that since the Jews never

gave up their title to Palestine, the general `law of dereliction'

could not hold in their case : "for they never abandoned the land .

They made no treaty, they did not even surrender . They simply

succumbed, after the most desperate conflict, to the overwhelming

power of the Romans . . . and were captured or enslaved . . .

Since then, having no sovereign nor political head through whom

they could speak, they have disputed the possession of the land,

by continued protest through their literature and their public and

private worship ." He showed that the Jews throughout the ages

have continually stated in the Passover service : "Next year we

hope to celebrate it in the land of Israel," and that other feasts

and prayers recount the same unbending sentiment, as, "Next

year children of freedom in Jerusalem! " 3

Blackstone quotes the outstanding legal luminaries of his day,

who agree that the Jewish claim was legally, at least, sound . He

points out that according to the logical precedents established by

such authorities as Buswell, Wheaton, Clifford, Phillimore and

others, "the forcible manner by which Israel has been kept out of

the land, with no means of redress, is equivalent in principle to a

continued state of war," and that therefore "limitations should

in no event run against them until they have had the opportunity

to present their claim at the bar of the only possible earthly court,

an International Conference ."

The greatest legal authorities have agreed that according to the

foundation principles of international law there is no basis for

prescription against Israel, either on the ground of dereliction or

of undisputed possession - that therefore the Jews have a valid

claim on Palestine as long as there is a single Zionist alive . Certainly

no more desperate opposition to despoliation has ever existed

in history, nor a sterner demand for restitution .

The British Government in 1920 recognized without reservation

the validity of this claim .4 It points out in clear, ringing

words that Jewish nationalism has been continuous, and refers to

24

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

the fact that it is "the oldest nationalist movement in history ."

No more thorough, comprehensive or understanding statement

of Jewish aims has ever been penned than this official English

publication which is now buried somewhere in the dusty files of

Whitehall.

CHAPTER III

THE WANDERING JEW

FIFTEEN HUNDRED YEARS OF TRAGEDY

Despite the frightful suffering to which their position in medieval

life daily exposed them, the Jews maintained a vigorous,

colorful, picturesque existence in which their communal and personal

life blossomed out in rich and luxuriant beauty. Scattered

from the Persian Gulf to the Irish Sea, the Jewish communities

acknowledged equally a system of law that bears comparison

with the great systems of the world . With dynamic resilience

Jewish life readjusted itself to the new conditions, but carried over

with it the old Eastern civilization intact. In the midst of the

intellectual decay which overtook mankind during the Dark

Ages, it is astonishing to see Levi ben Gershon calmly asserting

the existence of primary matter, Hasdai Crescas refuting the narrow

concepts of Aristotle, and Rambam dipping his majestic mind

into the realms of psychiatry . Academic research and such modern

subjects as sex hygiene were part of the regular curriculum

of Jewish schooling . Every child was taught the Law ; and the

sages even implied that the study of the Torah and the observance

of its laws were more important than the ceremonies of Worship .

"All the mitzvoth [religious injunctions] are not equal to one

word of the Torah," says an authority of the Third Century with

sweeping bluntness .

It was in this vibrant atmosphere that Judaism thrived and held

staunchly to its belief in the reconquest of the Promised Land,

and not in the pallid air of religious zealotry which was later to

settle on its spirit like a sickness .

Behind the shroud of silence to which anti-Jewish bias has

consigned it, the organized civilization of the Jews during the

Dispersion glistens like a diamond . While all else was in the most

impenetrable darkness and ignorance, Hebrew writers and scholars

not only constructed original works, but studied and elab-

25

26

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

orated the writings of classical antiquity and rendered them accessible

to the Christian countries of the Occident . The Arab

invasion which followed the rise of Islam was instructed from the

same source . Jews wrote the first works on fevers and materia

medica and translated them into other languages . They founded

and supported the famous schools of Salerno and Montpellier .

Until the end of the Sixteenth Century medicine was almost a

Jewish monopoly. In all of the other arts and sciences, mathematics,

astronomy, physics, alchemy, history and geography, Jewish

minds excelled. Typical of the stature and enterprise of these

lordly exiles was the expedition of Columbus . The great navigator

himself is said to have been a secret Jew or Morrano . More

to the point, every officer on board the three ships was a Morrano ;

the nautical instruments, charts and tables without which the

voyage would have been impossible, were all invented by Jews .

According to the historian Francis Trevelyan Miller, Columbus'

ships were owned by the Jewish Pinta Brothers, and as for the

myth of Isabella's jewels, Herbert Adams observes that "not

jewels, but Jews were the real financial basis for the first expedition

of Columbus." 1 It is also interesting to note that the first

European to set foot in the New World was the Jewish interpreter

Luis de Torres, closely followed by the Jewish surgeon Marco

and the Jewish physician Bernal .2

The Jews left no branch of learning or science untouched .

Said Sombart : "Israel passes over Europe like the sun ; whenever

it appears new life shoots up, but when it is withdrawn all that

once flourished withers away ." 3 The German scholar, Dr. M. I.

Schleiden, declares that during the Middle Ages "the Jews were

the preservers of agriculture, of all large industries ." 4 And

Valeriu Marcu assures us that "the most important monarchs seem

to have been unable to manage without Jewish educators, advisers

and ministers. . ." s

In commerce as in culture, the part played by this expatriate

people was tremendous . "At all points where the formation of

cities was going on, where an urban community was developing

out of the former castellum of the Romans, the Jews contributed

a decisive element by bringing trade within the walls ." 6 This is

THE WANDERING JEW

27

expressed in a truly classic manner in the words with which Bishop

Rudiger of Speyer opens his charter to the Jews in the year Io84

"Desiring to make a city out of the village of Speyer, I have admitted

the Jews . . ." Summing up their collective relationship

to a single State, Abbott comments on the expulsion edicts of

1492, that "the life of Spain went out with the Jews."

The distinguished character of this Hebrew culture is traceable

everywhere, where it is not hidden by slander and omission .

The personal life of the Jew was no less well-ordered . Until

later edicts ousted them from that work, agriculture was the most

highly esteemed of occupations ; and they practically held a

monopoly on handicrafts where taste as well as manual skill was

required . As a speaking instance, when the edict of expulsion

reached Sicily in the Fifteenth Century, the State Counselors entreated

the King to delay the measure, for they said : "Nearly all

the artisans in the realm are Jews. In case all of them are expelled

at once we shall lack craftsmen capable of supplying mechanical

utensils, especially those made of iron, as agricultural

implements and equipment for ships, galleys . . ." 7

Labor itself remained dignified in Jewish life, as it was in the

old homeland . Bespeaking this attitude, Maimonides laid down

the axiom that "a single coin earned by one's manual labor is

worth more than the whole revenue of the Prince of the Captivity,

derived as it is from the gifts of others ." 8

The sanctity of the Jewish home continued in undiminished

tradition . Nothing in modern life can excel the courtly respect

and single-hearted devotion which the Talmudic husband displayed

towards his spouse. "He loves her as himself," declares

the Talmud, "but honors her more than himself ."

All through this period the Jews justly prided themselves on

their fastidious habits and regard for the amenities . Cleanly habits

were in fact codified, and Jewish medieval law contained a

systematized scheme of etiquette, of good custom and refined

taste . It was not until centuries of ghetto life and cruel degradation

had rendered the Jews indifferent to their surroundings that

this old characteristic ceased to distinguish them .

It was the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III which

28

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

in 1215 made the first serious encroachments on the freedom and

possessions of the Jews, forcing them by decree to wear a distinctive

mark on their clothes, the so-called `yellow badge.' The

decree of the Synod of Breslau in 1267, prohibiting Jews from living

together with Christians in the Eastern provinces where

"the church was still a tender shoot," finally led to the establishment

of the Ghetto in all countries . The Jewish quarter was

usually situated in a disreputable, crowded, unhealthful section

of the city. It was guarded by night so that no one could enter

or leave. Its area was to serve for all time ; it was not to be enlarged

. Its narrow, crooked streets were always dark . In this

foul area where sunlight could not enter, there was no room for

trees, grass or flowers . Infant mortality was staggering ; the

faces of young and old alike were habitually pallid .

Deprived of all legal position and branded as incorrigible Satanists,

isolated like lepers from the rest of mankind, these proud

Semites found themselves unwittingly the prey of all comers .

The attitude of the Church gave pitch to the orchestra of hate

and despoliation in which state, city and populace largely participated

. Not content with humiliating and caging them like

dangerous animals, accusation upon accusation was piled at their

door. It was claimed that they made a practice of stealing the

consecrated host wafers, mistreating the body of Christ in them

until blood flowed forth . At the time of the Black Death they

were accused of poisoning the wells ; and lending tone to these

charges, in many places confessions were extorted from them on

the rack.

Jews were compelled like cattle to pay a poll tax, a heavy admission

tax, and a whole list of other imposts partly ridiculous

and partly humiliating . When they could be mulcted of nothing

further, they were expelled over night and their meager possessions

confiscated.

Even the written records of Hebrew science, philosophy and

learning, so lovingly and painstakingly collected, were prohibited .

A typical example is the decree of destruction of the Talmud in

France, in 1242, followed by the public burning of twenty-four

wagonloads of Jewish books.

THE WANDERING JEW

29

In Germany especially, the massacre of Jews took place before

the Plague gave an added impetus to the pogrom frenzy . Murderers

and incendiaries were allowed free rein and in more than

three hundred and fifty communities the Jews were murdered,

drowned, burned, broken on the wheel, hanged, strangled, buried

alive and tortured to death for the sanctification of the name of

God.9

The entire world had become a horrible dungeon in which

this proud and intellectual people suffered the tortures of the

damned. They were exterminated in York and London ; in

Spain at the instigation of St . Vincent Ferrer ; in Italy where

John of Capistrano preached ; in Poland, Bohemia, France,

Moravia and Austria . They were turned into human torches to

fiendish rites from one end of Europe to the other, ripped open

with pitchforks and scythes, or beaten to death like dogs . In

France alone, during the reign of Charles VI, over a hundred

thousand Jews, totally destitute, were forced to leave their homes

and seek refuge in Germany, Spain and Savoy . Typical of the

period were the actions of Philip the Fair, who in the Fourteenth

Century had the Jews unexpectedly driven out to obtain possession

of their goods ; and that of Charles VI, who in 1394 again

decreed banishment and conversion of their possessions to the

State Exchequer .

The onrush of the Crusaders exposed the Jews to a new series

of sadistic outrages. Whole communities were wiped out in

cold blood, sacked, and forcibly converted . In the Rhineland,

and in France at Anjou, Portou and Bordeaux, thousands were

burned en masse ; and when in 1105 Godfrey de Bouillon took

Jerusalem in the name of Christendom, his first act of piety was to

drive the Jews into the synagogue and burn them alive .

The list of tortures and outrages suffered by this unhappy people

is unending . In 1336 a mob of five thousand peasants led by

two nobles, the `Armleders,' armed with pitchforks and axes,

traversed Franconia, Alsace, the Rhineland, Bavaria and Austria,

and massacred all the Jews of one hundred and twenty communities

in their lust for spoil. In 1298 a nobleman from Roettingen

named Rindfleisch, declaring himself appointed by heaven to ex30

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

terminate the Jews, marched through the country and for six

months committed the most unheard of outrages against his hapless

victims . One hundred and forty-six communities were reduced

to bloody shambles .

In Spain and Portugal during the Fifteenth Century more than

a million and a half horrified beings slipped into the crazy whirlpool

of the Inquisition, the auto-da-fe, torture, violation, banishment,

and death . In faraway Ukraine in the decade following

1648, the entire Jewish community, almost eight hundred thousand

human creatures, was butchered with revolting tortures so

hideous as to defy description . All over Europe the dread "Hep !

Hep ! Hep !" of the hooligans echoed in the dark streets of the

ghettos. In all parts of the Western world Jewish blood flowed

down many widely separated rivulets into one mighty stream . In

North Africa and the Orient, like a sickening flood, the same indignities,

cruelties and disasters overtook their fleeing footsteps .

Each new depth to which this once sturdy people were pushed

only served to open up deeper and unsuspected abysses of horror.

Forbidden to own land, to engage in handicrafts, deprived of

membership in the all-powerful guilds so as to be virtually excluded

from trade, harried, slandered and ridiculed, the walls of

the Ghetto held them like a prison .

The effects of this system of branding a whole people as a

pariah class were as deplorable as they were inevitable . The Jew

became the mark for the meanest of insults . He was beaten,

reviled, scorned and abused by everyone . This constant humiliation

and degradation finally brought him so low that he became

the mockery of mankind . He lost the courtly bearing, the refinement

of speech and manner which had always distinguished the

Hebrew character . Suffering and debasement had also wrought

vast changes in the inner consciousness of the race . Where once

he had stood on his native Judean hills, the fiercest, most intractable

fighting man in all the ancient world, long centuries of persecution

had made him submissive like a whipped dog . Meekness

and non-resistance became rationalized into a veritable philosophic

code. The once lofty Jewish mind hardened and beTHE

WANDERING JEW 3 1

came grooved in a maze of ritual . Where once had stood the

proud gentility of Hillel, now huddled the wraith-like figure of

the pious Israel of Miedzyboz, who preached "humble submission"

and a dervish-like rapture of worship which could not but

have amazed the stiff-necked old Hebrews in whose name this

slave doctrine was enunciated .

The love of inquiry, the intellectual penetration traditional to

the Jew, was now transformed into an absurd concentration on

dialectical speculations. Deprived of normal outlets to his energies,

futile speculations and the splicings of fine theories became

his entertainment . The old great Jewish culture disappeared,

unnoticed, in a wilderness of stratified formalities, words and

ritual .

To complete this sorry picture of deterioration and collapse,

the strangled Jewish mind became obsessed by a peculiar indirectness

of approach to all problems . The most realistic of all peoples

became unreal, pedantic and mystical . All of these changed

factors of character and outlook are reflected in the development

of the Messianic doctrine .

It must be noted that the earlier seeking after a Messiah rested

on quite a different base . It spoke for the sturdy rebellious nature

of this people, that their thoughts were always on freedom .

It reflected a passionate desire for a leader who in strictly mortal

fashion would help them redeem what had been raped from them .

The remolded concept rested very subtly on a completely opposite

psychology, although the idea appeared to be the same .

The impatient rebelliousness, the stiff self-assurance, the commonness

of instinct, which had caused the widely separated Jews

to rise like one man under Bar Kochba, had vanished . In their

stead lived a new zealotry in which dogma and visionary metaphysic

vied for mastery . Like a dazzling light, blotting out the

sordidness of his surroundings, a deep sense of mission now enveloped

the befuddled Jew . With humble piety he conceived of

himself as the instrument whereby all the peoples of the earth, including

those who had abused and vilified him, would be led into

eternal gentleness and bliss. Thus tremulously awaithig the di32

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

vine deliverer lived the Jews, a great nation who had shriveled to

a caricature of themselves through the cruelest set of circumstances

ever to beset the path of man .

They had not long to wait . A whole host of Messiahs appeared

in response to this wishful expectation . From Abu Isa of

Ispahan in the Seventh Century, Zonarias of Syria in the Tenth, to

the shabby Zabettai Zevi, they periodically kept the Jewish world

in a fever.

Most notorious of all of these was perhaps Zevi, who announced

himself to be the Messiah in Smyrna in the year 1640 . Wild

frenzy possessed the Jewish communities . Shrewd business men

in Amsterdam, Hamburg and Venice disposed of their possessions

in order to be prepared for the hasty journey to the Holy Land .

Others subjected themselves to penance in order to be rendered

worthy of redemption . In the meanwhile the `Messiah' was

hamstrung by the Moslems, who gave him the usual choice, and

Zabettai, no martyr, became a Mohammedan .

The colossal collapse of Zevi sent a crushed chill through the

Jewries of Europe . They shrank like condemned men into their

hovels . Only an ironclad religious particularism could save the

Jew from the deep confusion and widening chaos which was engulfing

him everywhere . To this he retreated.

"LIBERTY ! FRATERNITY ! EQUALITY !"

Two events conspired to put an end to the Ghetto . One was

the discovery of America, releasing vast rich areas for settlement

and exploitation . The other was the gradual dry rot which

overtook the feudal era and its master, the totalitarian church .

Out of the ashes of this decaying order gradually developed a

new force, the power of industrial capital . This new force immediately

discovered itself in mortal opposition to the entire system

of life the Medieval Era had erected, since it could only maintain

itself by free competition and continuing consumer expansion,

which meant the opening of new markets . The greater the

competition among merchants and those who held the power to

grant credit, the better would industry flourish .

THE WANDERING JEW

33

The Ghetto was one of the medieval corporations which had

to go in the interest of a speedy evolution of capitalism. Though

it continued in some cities into the modern era, its fate was sealed .

It was this young and growing industrial capitalism which was

the great lever creating the modem democracies, and with them

the emancipation of the Jews .

The new system soon developed a philosophy justifying itself,

and fiery expounders of its tenets. "Liberty ! Fraternity ! Equality!"

became the rallying cry of the day . Leading in the van of

this movement, the French revolted and solemnly declared the

principle of the inalienable Rights of Man .

The question arose as to whether this queer race of the Jews

whose glorious past history was long forgotten, sunk in the torpor

of religious formalism, was capable of supporting such enlightened

ideas. Learned debates took place as to whether, if they

were enfranchised, they could take their place in an organized

secular society ; whether they could become soldiers, manufacturers,

artisans, professional men - in short, whether they were

capable of competing in the civil society which was to be based

on the new order. The atheist and liberator Voltaire considered

them dangerous and incurable reactionaries, a source of religious

superstition. Others like Tallyrand, Montesquieu and Mirabeau

asserted that the Jew must be included in the new dispensation .

Almost coincident with these events the American Revolution

exploded in the face of an archaic world and based its fundamental

principles on the same Rights of Man . Soon thereafter

the victorious young Napoleon was carrying the doctrines of the

new belief along with his cannon and gun-powder and putting

them into operation by force.

In this onrush of the Liberal spirit the Western Jew miraculously

found the walls of the Judengasse 10 torn down. They

fell before his eyes like the walls of Jericho, and he stood blinded

and unaccustomed in the streaming sunlight . The inner glow

which had made his world a place of happiness despite its drab

cruelty, was dimmed by the new glare.

Enthusiastically the Jews put themselves in line with this

glorious theme of world brotherhood . For the first time the

34

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

vernacular took the place of Hebrew in their daily life . The

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries were the age of Massentau

f en (mass baptism) . In Berlin alone it is said that over half the

Jewish community was converted in the course of one year .

Early an attempt was made to meet this wholesale desertion of

Judaism by creating a new and reformed liturgy and a new

attitude towards Jewish destiny . Inaugurated in Germany, `Reform

Judaism' quickly took shape as a creed . Jews who had

formerly considered themselves expatriate Palestinians who

would in the fullness of time be returned to their own country,

began to refer to themselves in Germany as `Germans of Mosaic

persuasion.' The question arose as in the emancipation in Holland,

whether Jews were a nation or a religious cult . This was

straddled at the Reform Conference at Brunswick in 1844 by

Ludwig Philippson who declared : "Every nation has its historical

mission, and the Jews have theirs . They are a nation

dedicated to religion ." This new attitude soon spread among

the Jews like a devouring flame . The fine old Jewish civilization

had finally become a religious cult, separate from secular

life, with an ordained pastorate and all the paraphernalia of that

office .

The last step in this denationalization process, in which the

Reform Rabbis led the procession, was the transformation into

metaphor of the doctrines of Jewish nationalism for which the

race had steadfastly held over so long a period . All that now

remained of laws meant to control the social and economic interests

of the Jews was dead ritual .

For a brief century the ideal of again making themselves an

individual force in history sank into comparative insignificance

and gave place to a desire to become adapted to environment .

Both the spirit and fact of Jewish history became falsified ; and

Jews endeavoring to win equal rights in every sphere of human

activity began to frame both their thought and action with an

eye to the opinion and point of view of others . As a living force

with legitimate, healthy rights of its own, Judaism was discountenanced

by Jews, who had transformed themselves into neogentiles

. It survived only as an innocuous shadow.

THE WANDERING JEW

35

The inexorable forward movement of `toleration' hit its peak

immediately after the World War . Palestine was seemingly returned

to Jews who wished to go there . In the last strongholds

of anti-Jewish reaction, minority clauses guaranteed by the nations

of the world were put into operation . In Germany a Jew,

Dr. Hugo Preuss, framed the Constitution of the Weimar Republic,

hailed as the last word in justice and democracy .

Enthusiastically the Western Liberals and 'Assimilationists'

went to the very point of denying the existence of a Jewish nation

altogether . Learnedly they `proved' that a Jewish race

could no longer possibly be in existence .

Had anyone told these enraptured Jews that the last strongholds

of ignorance, meanness and tyranny would not yield but

would instead reacquire a vitality and strategy capable of once

more putting Liberalism desperately on the defensive, his only

reply would have been a smile of pity and commiseration . How

could they dream that the Germany of Mendelssohn and Lasker

would become the Germany of Hitler and Goering ; that

throughout the civilized world the old blood libel, the old mass

hysterias and slanders, the old inhumaneness and cruelties, would

be revived with even increased force and viciousness. All of

this was contrary to the rationale of the new order ; hence it became

schematically impossible.

While all this was happening, the torch of Jewish nationalism

distorted and vitiated, but alive, spluttered among the masses still

going about their daily tasks in the ghettos of East Europe .

'THE LOST TEN TRIBES'

In the wake of the irresistible Liberal sweep which was de-

Judaizing the Jews, occurred a most remarkable phenomenon

the Anglo-Saxon people, rising rapidly to world power, literally

pitched themselves headlong at the same time into a Judaizing

process.

Aroused by such magnetic personalities as Knox and Tyndale

the British peoples retreated to creative Prophecy, to the stern

and simple democracy of the Hebrew Bible . The Old Testa36

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

ment in particular was studied with impassioned thoroughness .

James Truslow Adams remarks that "Christ did indeed occupy a

place in their [the Puritan] theology, but in spirit they may be

considered Jews and not Christians. Their God was the God of

the Old Testament, their laws were the laws of the Old Testament,

their guides to conduct were the characters of the Old

Testament."" "They baptized their children," writes Lord

Macaulay, "by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew

patriarchs and warriors ." 12 Even the old Saxon names, once

household words, were condemned to oblivion .13 "Cromwell

hath beat up his drums clean through the Old Testament," comments

Cleveland. "You may know the genealogy of our Saviour

by the names of his regiment ."

Every attitude of the aggressive young imperialism which the

Anglo-Saxon was erecting became tinctured with Hebrew philosophy.

So completely was it absorbed that a large section of

the English people began to look upon themselves as being actually

descended from Israelites . A whole body of literature

sprang into being claiming that the word British was derived

from Brith and Ish of Hebrew, meaning `circumcised man,' and

that the English were descended from the Lost Ten Tribes of

Israel .14

This conviction on the part of a large part of the British

public became so great that it resulted in the forming of `The

British-Israel World Federation,' at one time claiming over five

million members, and including such eminent personages as

Queen Victoria and King Edward VII.

The Hebraizing spirit attended other considerable sections of

the Reformation though it was particularly at home with the

Anglo-Saxon peoples, whose identification with Hebrew history

and philosophy became so complete as to almost appropriate it

for themselves . Lecky expressed this debt in the famous remark

: "Hebraic mortar cemented the foundation of American

Democracy!" In the same vein Ulysses S . Grant advised his

countrymen to "hold fast to the Bible . It is the sheet-anchor of

your liberties. . ." And Jean Paul bespoke his times when he

THE WANDERING JEW

37

declared that "the first leaf of the Mosaic record has more weight

than all the folios of men of science and philosophies."

Protestant theology in particular, rested on the belief that the

world of mankind was evolving towards a millennium in which

holiness was to be triumphant everywhere, and that a primary

prerequisite to this happy eventuality was the return of God's

Chosen People, the Jews, to the Holy Land .15 Supporting their

position with direct quotation from Biblical Prophecy, a large

group of earnest men, divines, statesmen and writers, set themselves

to be the instruments to speed this desired end . Specialized

histories of the Jews gained wide circulation, and it was not long

before the political emancipation of Zion became a lively topic

in English politics .

By 1839 popular interest had become so intense that the General

Assembly of the Church of Scotland, after sending a special

commission to the Holy Land to report on conditions there, addressed

"A Memorandum to the Protestant Monarchs of Europe

on the Subject of the Restoration of the Jewish People to the

Land of Palestine ." From this date onwards a pro-Jewish Palestinian

discussion ran parallel in the London Times with the agitation

over the Eastern question .

The Government, taking canny notice of this body of public

feeling and being interested in the Near East on its own account,

commenced to take a hand. With the entry of the murderous

anti-Christian Mehemet Ali into Syria, the advocacy of Zionism

became quietly identified with English foreign policy .

Interest mounted rapidly in all circles . The statesman Lord

Shaftsbury became so absorbed in the project that he learned

Hebrew. The colonization expert, Colonel George Gawler, devoted

virtually all his time to this cause, firmly convinced that

Jewish repatriation was a political desideratum for England, conveniently

sanctioned by Holy Writ . A whole succession of

English representatives in the Near East befriended the Jews

and took an active interest in their cause . It became a ruling

passion with such men as Laurence Oliphant and the archaeologist

Conger .

38

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

A mountain of literature and a whirlpool of activity had by

now been brought to bear on the matter . All these writers and

orators pointed out the desolate, empty, semi-savage condition of

the country . Various associations were formed to agitate the

cause, and monster mass-meetings were held. English statesmen

such as Sir Samuel Montague guaranteed publicly that "not only

will the Jews be assisted in colonizing Palestine, but practical

shape will be given to their aspiration for the restoration of the

Jewish Kingdom ."

While the interest in the fate of the Jews was most spectacular

and deep-seated in Britain, manifestations of it were evident

everywhere .

In France, Joseph Salvador called for the assembling of a European

Congress to restore the Holy Land . Here, too, Henri

Dunant, founder of the Red Cross and author of the Geneva Conventions,

was an ardent Zionist . Napoleon also is said to have

contemplated the restoration of Palestine to the Jews. This is

reported to have been one of the objects of his ill-fated adventure

in Egypt and the Near East.

In America the second president of the United States, John

Adams, announced himself an ardent Zionist who "really wished

the Jews again in Judea, an independent nation . . ." The lively

sympathy for Hebrew resettlement is shown also by the petition

to President Benjamin Harrison submitted by Dr. Wm. Blackstone,

Chairman of the Conference of Christians and Jews, in

1891 . Signed by an imposing list of the greatest names in America,

clergymen, corporation presidents and public officials, it offered

an elaborate plan for Jewish colonization, declaring that

"not for twenty-four centuries since the days of Cyrus, King of

Persia, has there been offered to any mortal such a privileged opportunity

to further the purposes of God concerning his ancient

people."

By 1914 a powerful non-Jewish public opinion, favoring the

enterprise as a rational historical development, existed everywhere.

In England itself, long habituation to this program as

well as what appeared to be obvious self-interest had committed

British policy to it.

THE WANDERING JEW

REAWAKENING HEBREW CONSCIOUSNESS

As unaware of all this as if it had taken place on Mars, a wholly

independent movement began stirring in the Hebrew ghettos .

As early as 1857 the Hungarian Rabbi Jehouda Alkalai suggested

the purchase of Palestine by a company to be formed for

that purpose, and in 1864 Professor Heinrich Graetz demanded a

Zionist solution for the problems confronting the Jewish race .

Others like the writers Hess, Kalisher and Smolenskin began to

voice articulate opinions .

In 1882 Leon Pinsker issued his volume Auto-Emancipation in

which he demanded that the Jews redeem themselves by their

own self-will . Like a lone tragic eagle, Pinsker gazed with tortured

sympathy at the misery of his people . Appalled at their

apathy and wretchedness he wrote : "Among the living nations

of the earth the Jews occupy the position of a nation long since

dead. With the loss of their fatherland, the Jewish people lost

their independence and fell into a decay which is not compatible

with existence as a whole vital organism . The State was crushed

before the eyes of the nations, but after the Jewish people had

yielded up their existence as an actual State, as a political entity,

they could not nevertheless submit to total destruction - they

did not cease to exist spiritually as a nation . The world saw in

this people the uncanny form of one of the dead walking among

the living. The ghostlike apparition of a people without unity

or organization, without land or other bond of union, no longer

alive, and yet moving about among the living, this eerie form

scarcely paralleled in history, unlike anything that preceded or

followed it, could not fail to make a strange, peculiar impression

upon the imagination of the nations."

Finally fired by the atrocious pogroms that were taking place

in South Russia a group of intellectuals formed the Chovevi Zion

Society 16 which soon attempted practical work in the direction

of a resettlement in the Old Land .

Jewry which had been gazing on all these vague gropings with

tolerant amusement, living like a drugged man on promises of a

new world order where men would live like gods, was jolted from

39

40

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

this fantasy by two startling events . The first of these had been

the arrest, torture and conviction of the leading Jewish notables

in the city of Damascus, Syria, on a charge of having murdered a

local friar for blood ritual purposes . The whole Jewish community

was terrorized, with the agreement and connivance of the

English and French consuls, who stated their belief that the ritual

murder charge was historically proven .

In France, the very center of enlightenment, after a long barrage

of anti-Semitic incitement, the Jewish officer Dreyfus was

railroaded by a secret military tribunal in 1894, degraded and

condemned to penal servitude for life for alleged treason . Everywhere

press and populace placed the stigma on the entire

Jewish community, with the weight of the Government thrown

behind a deliberate persecution of those attempting to prove the

unfortunate man's innocence . It soon became so apparent that

the whole case was a deliberate frame-up that the ensuing hubbub

forced the authorities to retry the Jewish officer some four years

later, when, under farcical circumstances, he was once more sentenced

to Devil's Island .

The doughty novelist, Zola, risked his career by issuing the

famous J'Accuse, exposing the outrageous nature of this affair .

Arrested, he fled to England where he went into hiding .

After an agitation which convulsed the entire civilized world,

Dreyfus, who had been kept in an iron cage on the Island, was

pardoned, still unvindicated .

The anti-Semitic movement now grew with marvelous rapidity,

confounding every theory of the educators, who had held such

a result impossible. Jewry once more began to seek communion

with its own organic forces . The desire for a specifically Hebrew

cultural scheme in which they could live their lives out, began

to arise in the minds of the unhappy creatures groping their

way around tortured ghetto paths .

HERZL

Sitting quietly in the press galleries during the second Dreyfus

trial was a young Viennese journalist named Theodor Herzl .17

THE WANDERING JEW

41

A thoroughly Westernized Jew who accepted the Enlightenment

as a matter of course, he suddenly saw the Jewish problem

outlined stark naked. Returning to Vienna, his head full of the

question, all unaware that anyone had ever written on this subject

before, he penned his pamphlet The Jewish State."'

Friends, de-Judaized like himself, to whom he enunciated these

`revolutionary ideas,' counseled that he had been working too

hard and urged him to see the great brain specialist Max Nordau,

which nothing daunted, Herzl did.

One of the journalist's friends inquired anxiously of Nordau

after the visit : "What do you make of him?"

"Well," said Nordau thoughtfully, "it is of course quite possible

that he is crazy - but if he is, so am I, because I agree with

him.)l

Tall, majestic, handsome, looking like an Assyrian god who

had stepped down from an old frieze, the magnetic personality

of this figure suddenly galvanized the incoherent movement into

action . Until then Zionism had been resting upon a vague

cultural-settlement base, with no definite scheme of control .

The great difference between Herzl's viewpoint and that of his

immediate predecessors was his pointblank insistence on political

guarantees before a single other step was taken . Claimed this

new master : ". . . the solution of the Jewish difficulty is the

recognition of the Jews as a People, and the finding by them of

a legally recognized home to which Jews in those parts of the

world in which they are oppressed would naturally migrate, for

they would arrive there as citizens just because they were Jews,

and not as aliens." With prophetic insight Herzl insisted on

complete political guarantees . He wrote : "An infiltration is

bound to end in disaster . It continues until the inevitable moment

when the native population feels itself crushed, and forces

the Government to stop the further influx of Jews . Immigration

is consequently futile unless based on an assured supremacy ."

His a priori demand was for "sovereignty over a tract of the

earth's surface that is adequate for our rightful needs as a nation ."

There was something almost omniscient in the man's ability to

peer into the curtained future . In a letter to the Rothschilds at

42 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Vienna he pointed out that the Liberal governments of Europe,

apparently so firmly established in the prosperity of those days,

were not to last . They would fall and would be replaced by

tyrants, either royal or popular, who would be worse than

the aristocracies whom the parliamentary governments had displaced

.19 It took less than forty years for this prophecy to come

true.

At the first Zionist Congress he predicted that the Jewish problem

would inevitably be turned into the problem of Zion. "We

are laying the cornerstone," he declared, "for an edifice that will

house the entire Jewish nation ."

On all sides the storm of opposition mounted like a rising hurricane.

Assimilationist rabbis thundered against him in their pulpits.

The Jews of Germany, where he proposed to hold his first

Congress, gazed on the man as a dangerous lunatic, so the historic

Congress was held in Basle instead . But he had gotten the

ear of the crushed Jewish masses and had touched their imaginations

as no figure had since the ill-fated messiah Zevi .

Abused and ridiculed as few men have been in history, Herzl

continued with his plan to attempt the purchase of Palestine, and

to form a chartered company which was to control and direct the

resettlement . He finally received an audience with the Sultan,

who placed an itching palm on the table . The Zionist leader

went out to find ways of covering it.

Jewish millionaires might have easily provided the 41 o,ooo,-

ooo demanded by Abdul Hamid for a concession in Palestine, but

they shied away from the idea . Herzl, hat in hand like a petitioner,

presented his plan to the philanthropist Baron de Hirsch .

The great man listened benevolently and finally said : "Herr

Herzl, I observe that you are an intelligent man - but you have

such fantastic ideas ."

In vain Herzl cajoled and pleaded : he could not raise the

money ; and in the meanwhile the `Young Turks' made an end

to Abdul Hamid and the Palestine negotiations together .

On the pulse of these events the British kept practiced and interested

fingers . When Herzl came to London he found to his

amazement that English public opinion, joined by a government

THE WANDERING JEW 43

whose interests were coincidental to this scheme of development,

had created ready-made for him a galaxy of famous and influential

supporters . Powerful organs such as the Daily Chronicle

and Pall Mall Gazette were demanding the fulfillment of the

Zionist program and calling for a conference of the Powers to

consider it .

Herzl had already appeared at the sittings of the Royal Commission

on Alien Immigration . Given the honor of being the

first witness on the problem of Jewish homelessness and immigration,

he had been questioned closely by the Commission for an

exact definition of what was meant by Zionism . He replied

with his usual straightforwardness that it meant the establishment

of a Jewish State under absolute guarantees of political control,

and nothing else.

The British now took a direct hand and offered the territory

of Uganda in West Africa on a full autonomous basis under

chartered rights, "a recognition," states the official British Peace

Handbook No. 162, "that Herzl and his following were regarded

seriously in serious quarters ." Supporting the Government in

this well-intentioned offer was a young M .P. named Arthur

James Balfour.

But the Russian Zionists rebelled ; and at the next Congress the

whole Uganda scheme was thrown out. It was Palestine or

nothing . 20

Within the Zionist movement itself various schisms began to

develop . The widest of these, was that of the so-called Practical

Zionists who derived from the old Chovevi Zion Society . They

were bitterly opposed to Herzl's policy, were uninterested in

political guarantees, and stressed `cultural' and `practical' work .

One of their rising stars was the young chemist Chaim Weizmann.

Their leader was Achad Ha'am, a little pinch-faced man

with a goatee and the eye of an ascetic.

Achad Ha'am represented all that his arch-enemy Herzl would

never understand in his lifetime. He was born in a little village

in the Pale and was brought up in an ultra-orthodox home where

secular knowledge was tabu . He literally concentrated on the

Talmud, and his knowledge of that book became so great that

44 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

local rabbis would come to consult him when he was still in his

early teens . He was a typical hair-splitter in words, the personified

ideal of the spirit of philosophic dialecticism in the flesh .

He considered all `political' Zionists to be barbarians . "What

we lack," he wrote, "is a fixed spot to serve as a national spiritual

center, a safe retreat, not for Jews, but for Judaism . . . The

foundation of a single great school," he insisted, "of learning or

art in Palestine . . . would be, to my mind, a national work of

the highest import and would do more to bring us near to our

goal than a hundred agricultural colonies ."

Fanatically understood by the queer type of scholastic whose

soul he interpreted, Achad Ha'am, if influence counts, was the

most potent of all the modern Zionist forces . Belittling Herzl as

a wild dreamer, his influence began to be apparent after the Tatter's

death, and finally triumphed . He was an extremist who

could care much for idea and little for men, a product and consequence

of that tragic pariah world into which the gentiles had

sequestered Jehovah's people .

Herzl saw what Achad Ha'am did not - what, indeed, he was

incapable of seeing -that a free and living culture is not the

source but the outcome of an organized and stable life, and that

this contemptuous attitude towards political control could only

end in one more ghetto - this time in Palestine.

It is the Hebrew tragedy that the manly Herzl should have

died young and the visionary Ha'am should have lived to a ripe

old age. On July 3, 1904, harassed and worn, the incomparable

leader suddenly sickened and died. He was then only fortyfour

years old .

The Zionist movement had already begun to be encumbered

with ideological contentions, and factions of various descriptions

. Its leadership fell in the hands of minor worthies, followers

for the most part of Achad Ha'am, who talked in learned

circumlocutory motions and all but smothered in the mantle

they had inherited . Even so, carried along by its own irresistible

momentum, Zionism continued to grow rapidly.

CHAPTER IV

THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

TOPOGRAPHY

The name `Palestine' occurs for the first time in Herodotus.

Like its Hebrew equivalent, Pelesheth (Land of Wanderers), it

meant only Philistia . At first applied to a small section of the

coast it later spread to encompass the entire country . Until the

resurgent Zionist movement brought this area into the sphere of

world politics its identity was largely interchangeable with that

of Syria,' a generic term used to describe the entire region of Asia

Minor but later contracted to cover the confines of Palestine and

the block of territory immediately to the north of it .

With proprietary determination the Jew has always referred

to his homeland as Eretz Israel, The Land of Israel .' The Arabs

call it Esh-Sher (the Land to the Left) since it represented the

northernmost limit of their natural range .

By and large, this territory must be accounted one of the most

stirringly beautiful and, certainly, one of the most remarkable

countries on the face of Mother Earth . It is not to be wondered

by those who have seen it that "some of the finest visions of the

true age of reason have been penned within its borders ." 2

Here in matchless beauty can be found every climate from

tropical to sub-alpine, and a bewildering variety of flora and

fauna to match - all in a half hour's ride . It is possible to pass

through four different zones, from the scotch fir in the hill country

down to the date palm growing in its native soil on the plains

of Jordan.

The valley of the Dead Sea, sultry and depressing, lies thirteen

hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean . From this

strange salt lake, almost visible to the naked eye is Jerusalem,

twenty-six hundred feet above sea level, where in the sparkling

night air one feels as if he could reach up and touch the cold white

stars . In the north the country rises precipitously to a height of

45

46 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

nine thousand feet above the ocean calmly sunning itself below,

and becomes alpine . On the central range, snow has been known

to reach a depth of nearly two feet . This explains the feat of

Benaiah who went down and slew a lion in the midst o f a cistern

in the day o f the snow . The beast had strayed up the Judean

hills from Jordan and had been caught in a sudden storm .

A fertile plain fronts the Mediterranean for the entire length

of the country except where rugged Carmel reaches down to the

shore . East of this plain, finally giving way to the mountains of

Judea, lie rolling foothills studded with rich valleys . South of

Jerusalem this range gradually fades into a forbidding sandy

waste of desert, what is left of ancient Edom, glowering in the

hot sun . In the north, the historic valley of Esdraelon, ancient

highway between the great land masses of Asia and Africa, splits

the mountain range which spreads across Palestine from Haifa to

Jordan.

Jordan.

In an area but little larger than Vermont this endless variety of

view seems almost theatrical . No other country can begin to

match it. None has a valley like that deep gash called the Ghor,

where bananas droop like lolling odalesques in the shimmering

heat ; nor a roll of iridescent desert like that which falls from the

multi-colored rocks of Judea to the opal shores of the Dead Sea.

Yet in these neighboring hills the climate is so temperate that first

rate apples may be grown ; and on the hottest days the nights are

cool enough to sleep under blankets.

The climate is divided roughly into a rainy and dry season, with

a short period of scorching desert winds called the Humseen.

The rain falling in the three winter months becomes a deluge .

Wild flowers follow each other in stunning confusion . Glittering

like precious gems, anemone, crocus, poppy, wild mignonette,

oleander and narcissus, sparkle in the sun just as they

must have once delighted the Hebrew women in the old days .

Overhead, birds of all kinds make the air gay with their limpid

notes . Whole hosts of harmless lizards of every color dart like

small genii across the banks of hedge and sward . In the wilderness

are tiny gazelles who look as if they had been painted on the

landscape. It is claimed that there are still wolves, hyenas and

THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

47

jackals in the hills. Tristram speaks of foxes near Nablus ; 3 and a

crocodile is said to have been caught in the River Zerka as late as

the year 1902.

Beyond this eloquent native beauty, which the hand of barbarian

man is not powerful enough to destroy, the country has

been stripped and starved . In parts it is a veritable carcass of a

land.

Travelers gazing on Palestine for the first time, aghast at its

stony hills and deserted valleys, invariably exclaim : "Can this unfavored

country be indeed the Land of Promise, the land flowing

with milk and honey ? "

The great oak forests of Gilead, Bashan and Lebanon are gone,

as are the groves of the Jordan Valley and the date palms of the

maritime plain. The Hebrew laughter which once came down

from the hills lives only in echo . These hills, once covered to

their tops with cornfields and vineyards, are dead . It is hardly

an exaggeration to say that while for miles and miles there is no

appearance of life or habitation in the hills of Judea except an

occasional goatherd, there is hardly a hilltop of the many within

sight which is not covered by the vestiges of some fortress or city

of former ages . Where now only forbidding rocks greet the

eye, the soil on their steep sides was once held securely in place

by ingeniously devised terraces .

The indescribably wild state of the country, before the Zionists

came, is pictured graphically in the chronicles of the last century.

Some of the descriptions given are almost unbelievable . Churton

refers to the plain between Jerusalem and Jordan as "bare as a

desert." 4 Walpole exclaims : "On my road I saw six ruined

towns and only six living persons ." s Mark Twain called it "a

hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land . . . inherited only by birds

of prey and skulking foxes ." 6 And that staunch believer in

Prophecy, the Rev. A. G. H. Hollingsworth, wept that "here is

one of the most remarkable and best situated countries in the

world, without a population, without resources, without commerce."

7

West of the Jordan even the surface ruins of cities have been

obliterated. Only the bare remnants of the once extensive He48

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

brew irrigation works crumbling on the hillsides, remain to remind

the traveler that once this country was populated by a civilized

people. Standing on the Moab hills and looking east, one

can see nothing but a tired, worn country, as naked of signs of

life as mid-ocean . In Old Testament times it included the fruitful

lands of Moab, Gilead and Bashan . That this vast region was

then one of the most fertile and populous on the globe is amply

proven by the multitude of ruins which dot its surface at the

present day. From a single outlook Merrill counted as many as

forty ruined cities and towns.8 Buckingham described "ruined

towns in every direction, both before, behind, and on every side

of us. . . There was not a tree in sight as far as the eye could

reach." 9

Even in early Christian centuries Trans-Jordan * was so thickly

settled as to be honored with the seat of a bishopric . Many

Greeks drifted in and settled among the Syrian and Roman elements.

After the Fourth Century, the Bedouin Arab inundated

the country and left it a wilderness again, as it remains today .

The tumbling remains of fine marble baths, great columns, evidences

of a cultivated life now hushed in death, are looked upon

by the Arab with uncomprehending eye . Merrill, with the hurt

conscience of a great archaeologist, complained bitterly that these

aboriginals were wantonly smashing the famous ruins.

At Jerash alone are remains unexcelled by the best antiquities

of northern Damascus. Throughout the length and breadth of

the land these relics may be seen, the names of many of them

forgotten. Polla, overlooking the Jordan, once a great city with

castle, colonnades and mausoleums, is now distinguished by only

a few pillars.

Today the very names of these places are forgotten . The

Bedu 10 herd their sheep in these deserted courts and make their

rude beds of grass among their stones . They extract the same

blackmail, and if it is withheld, sweep off the harvests in the same

time-sanctified retaliation . Their frail houses of hair had been

* Trans-Jordan, the territory of the Jewish National Home lying east of the

River Jordan (so designated to distinguish it from Cis-Jordan, the area lying

west of the River Jordan) was later detached by the British as a separate administrative

area under the name of `Transjordan :

THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN 49

there four thousand years before, and are there again today unchanged.

The whole of Eastern Palestine is incomparably more fertile

and better watered than the western third of the country . Draining

it are a number of large rivers, fed by innumerable springs,

filled with fishes and other aquatic life .

Travelers glowingly describe its rich soil and natural beauty .

Irby and Mangles mention "the vast variety of natural flora ; and

downs with verdure so thick as to appear almost turf ." 11 Lord

Lindsay declares that "the whole of the country . . . on the

east of the Jordan . . . is fertile in the extreme ." 12 And Merrill

comments that he has seen men on the plains of Gilead "turning

furrows which were nearly a mile in length, and as straight as

one could draw a line ."

This whole area across Jordan is one of the most favored territories

on the earth. It only awaits the coming of an energetic

and intelligent race to become again everything that it was in the

past.

JEWISH PRE-WAR SETTLEMENTS

Historians agree that there has been no period since the time of

Joshua when there have not been Jews in Palestine . If length of

continuous settlement makes the case, Jewish residence of some

44oo years vastly overshadows any rival claim which can be offered.

The oldest identifiable community whose continuing record

can be established are the Jews of Pekiin, a village in the hills of

upper Galilee near Safed, a group which has not moved in two

thousand years. This settlement is referred to in the Talmud under

the name of Tekoa, and then reappears more than a thousand

years later in the narrative of an early Sixteenth Century traveler .

At Bukeia in the mountains is another ancient community of Jews

who claim to be descended from Israelites living there before the

Dispersion ; and the Samaritans at Sechem are known to have been

there since the days of Nehemiah .

All through the Dispersion, Jews sought to return to their

50

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

homeland . They trickled in from all directions after each catastrophe

in the Diaspora. Most of them succumbed to massacre,

forced conversion and disease . The rest were turned into brokenspirited

men whose cowed eyes became hypnotized by mere liturgical

devotions.

The first practical steps for modern colonization were taken

in Russia where Zionism was growing rapidly . About i88o, a

group of students, mostly from the University of Odessa, formed

a group called `Bilu .' 13 They took oath to renounce their studies

and to devote their lives working at common labor for the reconstruction

of the Land of Israel .

Students with soft white hands and determined wills, began to

arrive in small groups . The great-hearted Englishman, Oliphant,

his head full of idyllic schemes for buying the country from the

Sultan, found a number of them stranded in Galilee . He helped

them found what is now the prosperous colony of Zichron Jacob,

near Haifa . Through him, also, the aid of the philanthropist

Baron Edmund de Rothschild was enlisted for the struggling

cause.

Soon at Petach Tikvah a thriving agricultural colony was established.

Jewish resettlement had begun in dead earnest . By

1883, three thousand of these hardy dreamers had landed in Jaffa .

Progress continued quietly and steadily . Arabs attracted by

the magnetizing vitality of the returning Jew began to drift in

from impoverished Syria, from Egypt, and from the desert wastes.

Palestine was making enormous strides . As far back as 19oo, a

British consular report recognized that "there can be no doubt

that the establishment of the Jewish colonies in Palestine has

brought about a great change in the aspect of that country" ; and

in 1904 another consular report reiterates that "the Jewish element

is spreading all over Palestine and represents today the most

enterprising part of the population."

Exports from the port of Jaffa had jumped to 0682,000 in

191 I, from C264,000 in i goo .* A Blue Book issued by the British

Board of Trade in 1911 acknowledges that "the chief feature

* The Palestine Pound is worth approximately the same as the English Pound

Sterling -or about $5 .00 in American money.

THE JEWEL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

51

of the economic development of Palestine in the past year was

the Jewish immigration."

By 1914 the Jews had increased to over ioo,ooo . There were

now fifty-four agricultural colonies, with a total area of i i o,ooo

acres . New land was being rapidly purchased, garden suburbs

laid out. The all-Jewish city of Tel Aviv was growing out of

its swaddling clothes. The pace of building was feverish . A

great new wave of immigration was gaining momentum . Zionism

had seemingly won its battle and was about to cash in on its

investment of blood, courage, lives and money .

The official British Peace Handbook on Zionism thus describes

the settlements : "The Jewish agricultural colonies, which have

grown up during the past 25 years, show a level of agricultural

and scientific development far ahead of anything else in Palestine

. . . The colonies are inhabited by strong and healthy agriculturists

living in clean, well-built houses and possessing a high

degree of commercial and political organization as well as a distinctive

social life. . . The children think and talk in Hebrew,

and all the colonists possess the newly acquired national consciousness.

. . "

So stood the Jewish effort at reclaiming their homeland, at the

beginning of the World War, when they wholeheartedly threw

their destiny into the balance with that of the Allies . They had

already achieved a solid foundation for a sound national economy.

Soon they were to have the solemn promise of the nations for a

charter which would finally end the tragedy of Jewish homelessness.

CHAPTER

CHAPTER V

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

PALESTINE AND THE WAR

Indirectly, the World War was fought for possession of the

Near East . The natural route for expansion of the mushrooming

industrial growths of Europe lay in the direction of the great

sluggish masses of Asia where vast consumer needs and untapped

natural riches excited the cupidity of Europe's imperialists .

All great conquerors whose interest was divided between East

and West have considered the possession of the land bridge between

the Mediterranean and the Euphrates essential to their

security. Assyria and Egypt spilled out their life blood for it.

It was pivotal to the empires of Macedon and Rome . Napoleon

made a desperate bid for it when his ambitious eyes stretched

longingly toward the rich mysterious East . It was the `Near

East Question' which lay at the bottom of the plotting and

maneuvering that led to the Balkan and Crimean Wars .

Here Great Britain, Russia, Germany and France engaged in

a sometimes open, sometimes hidden, struggle for the most important

intercontinental routes of this planet, and with them,

world power and influence.

Britain was aiming at complete domination of Asia . She already

held fabulously rich India by the throat . Her interests in

China, and in lesser countries, had grown to gigantic proportions .

The only formidable competitor who developed during this period

was Germany whose great commercial barons were now

looking at the wealthy East with scarcely concealed appetite .

The Kaiser and his entourage realized that here was the path to

power. Moreover, it was here that they considered Britain to

be vulnerable. The whole course of German policy centered

around the Drang nach Osten (Drive to the East), whose undeclared

objective was to cut the lifelines of British communications

with India and the East. Berlin had already established a

52

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

53

clear pathway through the Balkans . The dying Turkish Empire

was flooded with German generals, engineers, diplomats and

agents. "The Baghdad Railway was pushing rapidly down towards

Mesopotamia . When it got to the Tigris and Euphrates,

it would proceed to Basra, and thence, somehow, to Karachi and

Calcutta and Delhi . Everyone in Whitehall and in The City

knew that, and knew what it would mean ." 1

Here was the most potent threat the British Empire had faced

in generations. If the German plans were allowed to come to a

head, the Reich would be in an infinitely better position to deal

commercially in the East than Britain who held the paramount

political position. It would mean whopping big orders for German

goods of all kinds, from steel down to knickknacks . It

would present the threat of a half million Teuton warriors who

could be transported within a matter of days by train from Berlin

to the very gates of India .

It was imperative to British strategy that the German drive to

the East be halted at the gateway of the Asiatic continent . It

was apparent that Great Britain must control the Near East if

her Empire was to survive . Like two great patient cats England

and Germany watched each other, unspoken challenge, suspicion

and hate staring from their eyes . Another predatory creature,

the Russian bear, as well as minor scavengers, stood by . The

two feline antagonists had stalked each other for a decade, tensely

awaiting der Tag, when the fight was unexpectedly precipitated

by the explosion at Sarajevo which signaled the outbreak of the

World War.

Though the primary struggle was between the rival economic

ambitions of the English and Germans, the French too had their

eye on this strategic sector . In March 1915, Paris made a claim

for the ultimate control of all Syria including Palestine . In November

19 1 5, M. Picot again insisted that the whole of Syria down

to the Egyptian frontier must be assigned to France . Finally in

May of 1916, a secret agreement was concluded known as the

Sykes-Picot Agreement, dividing up the spoils of the `war for

democracy' in advance. Under this agreement Palestine was to

be made International, with the exception of Haifa and neighbor54

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

ing Acre, which were to go to England . The entire Mediterranean

littoral was to go to France, whose influence was also to

be paramount in Damascus, Aleppo and Mosul .

From 1788 till 1914, Great Britain had fought some twenty

wars to keep the route to India open . Now for this identical

reason, to put a complete end to the German Drang nach Osten,

she was fighting the Great War with Germany . With farsighted

suspicion she saw the friend of today as the enemy of tomorrow,

and looked askance at France and the French demands .

Anxiously the British Foreign Office began casting its eyes around

for some plausible method to forestall the ambition of its powerful

ally .

EVENTS LEADING TO LORD BALFOUR'S COMMITMENT

By the autumn of 19 17, after a startling attack by the Turks on

the Suez Canal, a wholly new idea had taken possession of the

minds of politicians and strategists . It was obvious that a protective

bastion had to be created to buttress the artery of communications

with India . Such a plan made necessary absolute

possession of the Palestinian coast as well as the Judean hills that

command it. Now, reasoned Britain's strategists, would be an

auspicious time to revive the old Palestine. In this way, instead

of the proverbial two birds who were killed with one stone, a

miracle could be maneuvered to make it three . First, an end

would be put to French pretensions to control over this vital

area. Scarcely less important, the enthusiastic support of the

Jews all over the world to the Allied cause could be gained . And

still a third factor, not to be overlooked, was the poverty of Judea

and the surrounding desert . If the Jews would undertake to

form a country here and would invest the necessary money, Britain

would achieve every result it hoped for ; and this ideal fortress

for the imperial lifeline, being self-supporting, would not cost the

Royal Exchequer a penny.

All this sounded too good to be true, and the Government began

putting out feelers to see if it could be finagled through . So

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

55

potent, in fact, did this new policy appear that already on November

22, 1915 a leading article in the Manchester Guardian stated

that Palestine must be created as a Jewish Nation to act as a buffer

state for Egypt, and concluded quite seriously that "on the realization

of that condition depends the whole future of the British

Empire as a sea empire ."

From a purely military viewpoint, the friends of this idea in

Britain urged that "the only possible colonists of Palestine were

the Jews." Only they could build up in the Mediterranean a

new dominion associated with Britain from the outset in Imperial

work, at once a protection against the alien East and a

mediator between it and England .3

Still other factors of pressing importance were at work . Lloyd

George, wartime Prime Minister, was anxious to bring over the

United States to the Allied side and was attempting to make good

on the propaganda that the War was fought for democracy and

for the righting of old wrongs . There was also the fear that Germany

itself would declare for Zionism . The German Government

was fully alive to the importance of rallying Jewish opinion

to her side . It was suspected that the Kaiser was thinking of following

Napoleon's example in his Eastern campaign . The German

ruler had once declared to Herzl, when the two met in

Palestine, that he was willing to undertake the `mandate' for the

Zionist settlement in Palestine if Turkey would agree .4 News

reached the British Foreign Office that Baron Rosen, German

Ambassador to the Hague, had been in conference with leading

Dutch Jews.

Aside from specifically British questions of policy, the hardpressed

Allied spokesmen were poignantly aware of the instability

of their ally Russia, in whose army six hundred thousand

Jews were serving, men who were fighting for a government they

hated, and whose success could mean nothing but degradation

for them and their families. The Allies were aware that the

propaganda bureau of the Central Powers was exploiting this fact

for all it was worth . Daily, proclamations were scattered over

the Eastern battlefront informing Jews that German victory

56

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

meant liberty for them ; s and in all neutral countries adroit advantage

was being taken of the propaganda story which set the

Kaiser's legions up as crusaders in a war of liberation .

Thus in a large sense the alliance of the Western Powers with

Russia was a direct liability, souring any sympathy either Jews or

Liberals might have had for their cause. This the declaration

for a Jewish commonwealth was designed to correct. Said the

British Foreign Office at the time : "The persecuting Governments

became our friends, and Palestine was a most important

factor in the war policy of the Allies ." 6

Among the details is a significant aide-memoire by the British

Embassy in Petrograd to Sazanov, Russian Minister of Foreign

Affairs, on March 13, 1916, reading

". . . Although as is known, many Jews are indifferent to the

idea of Zionism, yet a numerous, and the most influential, part of

Jewry in all the countries would very much appreciate an offer of

agreement concerning Palestine which would completely satisfy

the aspiration o f the Jews .

"If the above view is correct, then it is clear that by utilizing

the Zionist idea important political results can be achieved .

Among them will be the conversion, in favour of the Allies, of

Jewish elements in the Orient, in the United States, and in other

places, elements whose attitude at the present time is to a considerable

extent opposed to the Allies' cause.

". . . The only purpose of H. M. Government is to find some

arrangement, sufficiently attractive to the majority of the Jews,

which might facilitate the conclusion of an agreement ensuring

the Jewish support."

The rumors that Germany was attempting to get Turkey's

consent to some sort of pro-Zionist declaration crackled along

the grapevine route . President Wilson, raised on Bible Prophecy,

allowed it to be known in London that he would welcome

a British pronouncement in favor of the Zionists .

When the inevitable happened and the great Russian bear began

to collapse, the question of an alliance with Jewry took on

even greater importance . Jewish influence in Russia was supposed

to be considerable . Jews were playing a prominent part

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

57

in the revolution - but they were greatly divided . "Some were

for peace at any price, some for the maintenance of the alliance

with the Western Powers ; many were utterly uninterested in

Zionism and had found a messiah in Karl Marx . . ." 7 But the

great bulk of the Russian Jews were known to be Zionists ; and

with calculating eye the British computed that the alliance with

Jewry might have permanent value . Zionism became an important

political issue.

Negotiations were instituted with the Jewish leaders to sound

them out on this pressing subject and to determine their demands.

By February 1917 the way had been prepared for a formal meeting

with Sir Mark Sykes of the British Foreign Office . Soon

after, Mr . Nahum Sokolow, representative of the Zionist Organization,

opened discussion with the French and Italian Governments.

In July the Zionists submitted a memorandum to the

British Cabinet suggesting the formula to be used in an official

pronouncement of sympathy for their cause .

STRUGGLE WITH THE NON-ZIONISTS

If the purposes and aims of the Zionist movement needed

clarification in anyone's mind, a circumstance at once occurred

supplying that deficiency . The intentions of the Government

were no sooner manifest than a loud and violent protest was set

up by certain classes of Jews in England, France and America .

Among them were the `new thinkers' who, enveloped in a cloud

of Marxist pharisaism, saw the projected return to Zion as a reactionary

movement which violated their `deep Socialist convictions.'

Others were the great capitalists, who were afraid that

any declaration in favor of a Jewish State might place their hardwon

social position in jeopardy . Included in this strange gathering

of the clans were the ultra orthodox fanatics who were

awaiting the divine Messiah ; and the Reform Rabbis whose

tissue-paper houses this new movement seemed destined to destroy.

The Conjoint Committee, the most influential of all Jewish

bodies in England, issued a public attack on the `political char58

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

acter' of the Zionist demands, asserting that the Jews were only

a religious community and not a nation . "The granting of a

charter for Palestine to the Jews," it declared heatedly, "would

be a disaster for all Jewry, since the equal status of the Jews with

the other citizens of different States would thereby be risked ."

Immediately the Zionists replied with vigor . The press of the

day was full of the argument, with'the Government and the entire

gentile world solidly on the pro-Zionist side .8

"Under the pressure of Allied needs," says the official British

historian at the subsequent Peace Conference, "the objections of

the anti-Zionists were either overruled or the causes of objection

removed. . ." s At that time the Zionists could have practically

written their own ticket, since there was no subject on which

everyone but the Jews themselves were so unanimously agreed

as the matter of a pro-Zionist declaration . The only powerful opponent

of this course in the Government was the India Office,

ultra-Islamic under a Jewish Secretary of State .

Although the members of the Conjoint Committee had been

hopelessly buried under an avalanche of public ridicule, certain

changes were made in the wording of the Declaration to placate

them.

As early as October 19 16, the Zionist leaders in Britain had already

submitted to the Government a formal "program for a new

administration of Palestine and fo, a Jewish resettlement in accordance

with the aspirations of the Zionist movement ."

On February 7, 1917, Sir Mark Sykes communicated with

Weizmann and Sokolow, together with M. Georges Picot, representing

the French Government ." This was the first of a series

of round-table conferences . Its full minutes, as well as those of

subsequent sessions, were transmitted to the American Zionist

Organization by officials of the British War Office .

Throughout the negotiations President Wilson who, as early

as 1911 had made known his profound interest in the Zionist idea,

was intimately consulted ; and all drafts of the proposed Declaration

were submitted to the White House for approval .

The formula accepted in July 1917 by the British Cabinet

read : "H. M. Government, after considering the aims of the

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

59

Zionist Organization, accepts the principle of recognizing Palestine

as the National Home of the Jewish people, and the right of

the Jewish people to build up its national life in Palestine under a

protection to be established at the conclusion of peace, following

upon the successful issue of the War .

"H. M. Government regards as essential for the realization of

this principle, the grant of internal autonomy to Palestine, freedom

of immigration for Jews, and the establishment of a Jewish

National Colonizing Corporation for the resettlement and economic

development of the country.

"The conditions and forms of the internal autonomy and a

charter for the Jewish National Colonizing Corporation should,

in the view of H. M. Government, be elaborated in detail and determined

with the representatives of the Zionist Organization ." 11

One of the changes introduced to mollify the anti-Zionist Jews

was the substitution of the phrase "the establishment of a Jewish

National Home in Palestine" for the previous wording, "the

establishment of the Jewish National Home in Palestine." 12

By November 2, 1917, after its wording had been sufficiently

emasculated to suit the `ideals' of Jews all around, Lord Balfour

placed it in the form of a letter to the pro-Zionist, Lord Rothschild,

reading as follows

"I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His

Majesty's Government the following declaration of sympathy

with the Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to

and approved by the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment

in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and

will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this

object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done

which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-

Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status

enjoyed by Jews in any other country .

"I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to

the knowledge of the Zionist Federation ."

Ironically enough, the second part of the Declaration, which

was since construed by Britain to make it a self-annulling docu6o

THE RAPE OF . PALESTINE

ment, was inserted on the insistence of the Zionists themselves,

partly to meet the objections of Sir Philip Magnus, Mr . Claude

Montefiore and other powerful non-Zionist Jews ; and partly as

a symbol of that "nobility of social vision" with which the strangled

ghetto mind was obscured . 13

Written by Achad Ha'am, this proviso was not in any remote

sense considered as a modification of the Declaration but rather

as a polite sop to quiet the fears of the non-Zionist Jews, and an

equally considerate makeweight assurance to the various religious

communities scattered over the Holy Land .

All of these alterations and changes in the British Government's

commitment, says Herbert Sidebotham, then secretary to

Premier Lloyd George, "were inserted in deference to the opinion

of a minority, in the hope of securing complete unanimity

among Jews . . . It was certainly no British interest, either at this

stage or later, that weakened the scope of the promise and infected

it with ambiguity ." 14

The Zionist negotiators, naive and inexperienced, felt that the

introduction of these nice, virtuous phrases in their magna charta

was a fitting and seemly gesture with which to begin their great

adventure . Herzl, who had the gift of seeing beyond his nose,

would have known better .

WHAT DID THE DECLARATION MEAN?

In view of the cool disclaimers which were to come later, it is

interesting to note what interpretation was placed on the British

Government's Declaration to the Jews at the time . Whatever

bearing it might have had on the commendable questions of humaneness

and justice, it could hardly be regarded as a wholly

benevolent gesture. Balfour himself, handsome, clever and icy,

was no mere romantic. He who had pacified Ireland with guns

and was known as `Bloody Balfour' in consequence, could hardly

be accused of suddenly developing a philanthropic complex in

favor of Jews.

The benefits immediately accruing to the Allied cause need

hardly be argued . Certainly the tremendous number of Jewish

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

61

soldiers fighting in the Armies of the Western Powers were fired

by this warm earnest of good faith . Nor can one estimate the

weight of Jewish influence in neutral countries, which dropped

heavily on the Allied side of the scales. Nor the enthusiastic aid

given to the Allenby invasion of Palestine . Nor the stirring effect

of the Jewish Legion, fighting to right the oldest wrong in history,

on the imaginations of Jewry and the world . Nor the fillip

it gave the Allied claims when Palestine, the first conquered territory,

was trumpeted to all humanity as newly liberated .

Not only was the effect of this superb piece of propaganda felt

in all neutral countries but it was immediate in its reaction on the

morale of the Central Empires, with their stew of subject races,

accelerating the cleavage then taking place between the subject

nationalities and their overlords . Worthy of note, too, is the

boldness with which the German Zionist Conference in Berlin

adopted and cabled a Resolution "greeting with satisfaction the

fact that the British Government has recognized in an official

declaration the right of the Jewish people to a national existence

in Palestine." In fact, after the British announcement, the Central

Powers did all they could to win the Zionist movement over

to their side. They formulated a rival proposition, involving a

chartered company with a form of self-government and the right

of free immigration into Palestine ; and "by the end of 1917 it was

known that the Turks were willing to accept a scheme on those

lines ." 15

Wholeheartedly the great and important body of fundamentalist

Christian opinion, hating war for any proclaimed purpose, rose

to the bait. Jannaway expresses this profound conviction in his

book, Palestine and the World, asserting that Biblical Prophecy

was being fulfilled exactly as predicted, thus placing Jehovah

squarely on the side of the Western Powers.

"Indeed," says a semi-official British publication, "support of

the Zionist ambitions promised much for the Allies . . . That it

is in purpose a direct contract with Jewry is beyond question ." 18

This was acknowledged plainly by General Smuts, member of

the War Cabinet, who speaking retrospectively some years later,

asserted that "the Declaration was intended to rally the powerful

62

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Jewish influence for the Allied cause at the darkest hour of the

War" ; a statement which David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill

and others, emphatically reiterated .

The Declaration was unreservedly endorsed by the other Powers.

On June 4, 1917 the French Government, through its

Minister, M . Cambon, formally committed itself to "the renaissance

of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the

people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago ." Even in

faraway China, Wang, Minister of Foreign Affairs, assured the

Zionists that "the Nationalist Government is in full sympathy

with the Jewish people in their desire to establish a country for

themselves." 17

In America, echoed by practically every official of public importance,

President Wilson wrote that "the Allied nations, with

the fullest concurrence of our own Government and people, are

agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish

Commonwealth." In gratitude the American Jewish Congress

cabled H. M. Government, on November 2, 1917, its desire that

Great Britain should be given the trusteeship, "acting on behalf

of such League of Nations, as may be formed, to assure the development

of Palestine into a Jewish Commonwealth . . ." In

the United States Congress, members expressed general accord

with "the British Declaration in favor of a Jewish State in the

Holy Land." The minutes of its sessions show that this understanding

had not altered by an iota five years later, when the

American Congress was induced to put its seal of approval, by

resolution, on the selection of Great Britain as the Mandatory

for Palestine .

The utterances of the Cabinet ministers who framed the

Declaration were no less emphatic . General Smuts asserted

that "in generations to come you will see a great Jewish State

rising there once more ." Declared Lloyd George grandly

". . . Great Britain extended its mighty hand in friendship to

the Jewish people to help it to regain its ancient national home

and to realize its age-long aspirations ." Said Lord Robert Cecil

"Our wish is that Arabian countries shall be for Arabs, Armenia

for the Armenians and Judea for the Jews ." And on another

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

63

occasion he lumped the whole matter in a nutshell, telling the

excited Zionists : "We have given you national existence . In

your hands lies your national future ." Lord Balfour was no less

clear . "The destruction of Judea i goo years ago," he asserted,

"was one of the greatest historical crimes, which the Allies now

endeavor to remedy."

British newspapers were as one in their mighty paean of approval.

Without exception they spoke of "the new Jewish State

which is to be formed under the suzerainty of a Christian Power ."

Across the water, the American newspapers echoed these remarks

in the same expansive detail. A representative editorial of the

time explains : "The Zionists are that group of Jews who wish to

found a Jewish Republic in Palestine with Jerusalem as the capital.

. . The British cabinet has pronounced in favor of Zionism."

18

CHAPTER VI

BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS

MARCHING JEWS

Anti-Zionists invariably stress the part played by the Arabs

during the War, inferring that the sons of Ishmael earned their

patrimony, and that the Jews, who had done nothing, insolently

demanded a chunk of the Arab pie when the spoils were being

divided .

Actually the Jewish share in the victory was significant, well

justifying in value received the solemn bargain made with world

Jewry to reconstitute the Land of Israel as a living factor among

the nations .

In the neutral countries the Allied cause, associated everywhere

in the Jewish mind with justice and equity, was given invaluable

support. Jews fought in the armies of all the Western

Powers. Over a hundred thousand Jewish soldiers were killed

in action . In the British Empire itself, out of a total community

of 425,000 Jews, 50,000 were in uniform . In true Maccabean

spirit they earned more than their share of honors and decorations

on the battlefield. One of them was the heroic Sir John Monash,

leader of the Australians .

Behind the lines, the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann was the

genius directing the Admiralty Chemical Laboratories . According

to Lloyd George, he "absolutely saved the British army at

a critical moment" by devising a substitute for exhausted English

supplies of acetone, used in making the basic material in gunpowder.

Among others, Sir Alfred Stern invented the tank,

which saved the Western Powers from annihilation during the

latter part of the fighting . Solomon J. Solomon created the idea

of camouflage, allowing harassed Allied shipping to run the Uboat

blockade . Everywhere Jewish brains, money, valor and

enthusiasm were placed wholeheartedly at the service of the

Allies .

64

BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 65

In Palestine itself, as a result of their commitment to the Western

Powers, Jews were tortured, executed and deported. When

the final truce came, fully half of them were dead or had fled

abroad.

In 1915 Palestinian refugees in Egypt had organized the Zion

Mule Corps under the leadership of dashing Captain Trumpledor,

a one-armed veteran of the Russo-Japanese War . Colonel Patterson,

the British officer who led these men in the ill-fated Gallipoli

campaign, declared : "I have been in the army a long time,

but I never saw anything like the way those Zionists picked up

the art of soldiery ." For the first time since Roman days, the

Zion Mule Corps fought under the proudly floating Jewish ensign,

the blue and white Mogen Dovid (Shield of David) .

In the meanwhile a brilliant young Russian writer, Vladimir

Jabotinsky, had been scurrying around in an attempt to organize

a legion of Jewish volunteers from the Diaspora countries to fight

directly under the Jewish flag. With rare insight he pointed

out that words and promises were soon forgotten and that the

most enduring Jewish title to the Holy Land would come from

a direct investment of Jewish blood under a Jewish flag .

The influential capitalist Jews were aghast . They put pressure

on the British War Office to stop this little impassioned Zionist

with the underslung jaw who they believed was jeopardizing

their position in the gentile world with his lunatic nonsense .

But the British needed this Jewish regiment for publicity purposes

: they had made themselves the champion of the oldest betrayed

nationality in existence, impressive to the Poles, Czechs,

Armenians, etc ., who had been listening to the noble assurances

of the Western Powers with their tongues in their cheeks . The

War Office consequently overrode the objections of the anti-

Zionists and allowed Jabotinsky to form The Jewish Regiment.

As the protest of the scared English Jews became louder, the

regiment's name was changed to The Judeans, official sub-title for

the 38th Royal Fusiliers. Following hard on its heels came another

Jewish battalion, the 39th Fusiliers .

London was groggy with excitement . The official propagandists

did not miss this glamorous opportunity to exploit the

66

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

sheer romance of the historic occasion . At a giant mass meeting

seeing the Jewish warriors off, the Hon . G. N. Barnes, M.P.,

spoke fulsomely in the name of His Majesty the King . He eulogized

the Jewish soldiers as "fellow fighters for freedom," and

assured his listeners that "the British Government proclaimed its

policy of Zionism because it believes that Zionism is identified

with the policy and aims for which good men and women are

struggling everywhere ."

In Palestine The Judeans were joined by Colonel Patterson's

seasoned campaigners, the Zion Mule Corps . The Jewish national

anthem rang in their ears as they marched, and over their

heads waved the Jewish flag .

Wildly enthusiastic, the able-bodied Jews in the conquered territory

enlisted . With an appreciation almost reverential the

British Peace Handbook No . 6o announced that "the most important

event which has taken place . . . since our occupation,

has been the recruiting of the Palestine Jews, whatever their national

States, into the British Army . . . Practically the whole

available Jewish youth of the Colonies . . . came forward for

voluntary enlistment in the Jewish Battalions ."

The distinguished service rendered by these Jewish regiments

is indelibly written in the records . Said General Bartholomew

"For the Turks the end of the War was dependent upon maintenance

of the Jordan front against Allenby, and on this decisive

sector of the front not the Arab Army fought, but the Jewish

Legion ." 1 It was the Jews who took the fords of the Jordan,

thus opening the way for the passage of the British Army and

contributing in great measure to the brilliant victory at Damascus.

This was amply confirmed by General Chaytor, leader

of the Australian and New Zealand cavalry and Commanderin-

Chief of all troops in the Jordan Valley, who emphasized

publicly "the facts of the heroic struggle made by the 38th and

39th Fusilier Battalions," who had marched on to conquer Transjordan

and had thus contributed heavily to the victory over the

Fourth Turkish Army.2

Of fully as great importance was the voluntary intelligence

service rendered by the celebrated Nili Society all over the Holy

BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 67

Land. Organized by the scientist Alexander Aronson, 3 its daring

exploits were largely instrumental in the success of Allenby's

campaign . Far from giving the invaders any help, the

Palestine Arabs were, as we shall see, either apathetic or directly

hostile.

Spiritedly the Palestinian volunteers addressed themselves to

Colonel Patterson when he landed with his Jewish boys : "We

are convinced that Britain's victory is ours and our victory

Britain's. This war and Balfour's declaration have made us a

sister nation of England. We hope to convince by our fighting

that the soul of the Maccabees has not dried up and that we

know how to countersign Balfour's declaration with our own

blood." 4

They had every reason to feel `convinced .' In April 1917

the British War Department had issued a statement on War

Aims in the Near East in which it was proclaimed that "Palestine

was to be recognized as the Jewish National Home . . . The

Jewish population present and future throughout Palestine is to

possess and enjoy full national, political and civic rights. . .

The Suzerain Government shall grant full and free rights of

immigration into Palestine to Jews of all countries . . . The

Suzerain Government shall grant a charter to a Jewish Company

for the colonization and development of Palestine, the Company

to have the power to acquire and take over any concessions for

works of a public character . . . and the rights of preemption

of Crown lands or other lands not held in private or religious

ownership, and such other powers and privileges as are usual in

charters or statutes of similar colonizing bodies ." These statements

were simultaneously reduced by the Allied war propagandists

to brief slogans and exploited to the fullest advantage

everywhere.

Addressing the first Conference of Jews in the liberated area,

Major W. Ormsby-Gore, later as Colonial Secretary to suffer

a serious case of amnesia, orated for His Majesty's Government

as follows

"Mr. Balfour has made a historic declaration with regard to

the Zionists : that he wishes to see created and built up in

68

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Palestine a National Home for the Jewish People . What do we

understand by this ? We mean that those Jews who voluntarily

come to live in Palestine, should live in Palestine as Jewish nationalists

. . . You are bound together in Palestine by the need

of building up a Jewish nation in all its various aspects, a national

center for Jewry all over the world to look at ." a

The marching Jews listened . The great dream which had

inspired the Jewish mind for so many long centuries, seemed

about to be realized. They believed Britain's word implicitly .

REVOLTING TRIBESMEN

Part of Lloyd George's technique during the War was connected

with the old art of inciting dissatisfaction within the

enemy camp. This practice had proven especially effective

with the moribund Austro-Hungarian Empire, and several capable

agents, including the famous Lawrence, were sent to

Arabia to foment an insurrection there if possible .

The English started with little in their favor . To speak of

Turkish oppression of the Arab was actually an absurdity, unless

one referred to the Levantine Christian on the coast . The

constitution of the Ottoman Empire was the Arab's Koran from

which the Turk derived his law, religion and culture . Even the

Turkish language became half Arabic ; and it was only with

the later revolution under Kemal Pasha that the decadent Arab

cultural pattern which ruled the life of the Ottoman nation

was eliminated .

Under Turkish suzerainty the Arab areas were virtually independent,

ru:zd by local chiefs whose authority was recognized

by the Sultan . Arabs held high position all over the

Empire. The Sultan's Guards were almost completely Arab .

The schools and army were dominated by them . Even the

Prime Minister, Mahmoud Chawkat Pasha, was an Arab .

The whole system of Moslemism itself practically precluded

any idea of national sentiment, until it began to arise under

the stimulus of British agitators . In Baghdad some Arabs of

vaulting ambition had formed Nationalist Committees, but the

BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 69

mass of townsmen and fellaheen were utterly apathetic to any

nationalist feeling. Regional sectarianism was everywhere the

rule. The Shiahs did not desire a Sunni government ; nor

would the Sunnis tolerate a Shiah rule, while the mass of tribesmen

did not desire any government at all.

As matters rested, the British were compelled to create a completely

synthetic situation if they were to have the great Arab

revolt come off. They decided to rely on private rivalries and

ambitions ; and here they made a shrewd guess : the desert was

a hotbed of rapacity, hatreds and feuds .

Sitting immobile in the Hejaz was the Sherif Hussein, descendant

of the Prophet and unbending hater of Christians and

all their works . Almost alone among the Arabian princes he

was the nominee of the Turks. His measure may be gained

from the fact that he even prohibited talking-machines in his

kingdom, believing them to be the invention of the devil .

On the other side of Hussein was his mortal enemy, the gigantic

Ibn Saud of Nejd. Saud, a good hater who believed in

the old Mohammedan tenets of conversion by disemboweling,

was also in conflict with the powerful Emir of Hail, who was

being supported by the Turks .

The British wanted Hussein for the moral effect they presumed

his name would have on the Faithful, and made overtures

to him early. Part of these `negotiations' lay in the bland threat

to feed him outright to the ferocious Saud, to whom they were

handing a subsidy of 4 5ooo a month to insure his neutrality .

To make the argument more pointed, Britain politely withheld

the annual donation from Egypt to the holy cities of Mecca and

Medina, threatening the Hejaz with bankruptcy, since this pilgrimage

provided the barren land with its chief source of revenue.

The Sherif had still other and more urgent considerations

to hasten his decision . One of these was the British naval

blockade of the Arabian coast, "inevitably aggravating the internal

distress caused by the lack of pilgrims ." 8

That Hussein's overlordship of the Holy Places would make

him an acceptable leader to all the Arabs of the Peninsula turned

out to be an error. Even at that time, his mortal enemy, Saud,

70

THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

was the principal power in South Central Arabia as was another

mutual opponent, Ibn Rashid of Hayil, in the North Central part .

Nor would the great sheikhs, such as those of the Huwallah,

the Shammar, or the Mutair accept Hussein's overlordship, or

even permit him to speak for them 7

The whole business degenerated into a confused medley of

intrigue, directed by a multitude of British agencies acting under

conflicting instructions and authority ; the powerful India Office,

for example, bucked the traces completely and gave encouragement

to Ibn Saud as the logical leader of the rebellion .,,

Just what kind of `Arab patriot' Hussein was, may be learned

from the fact that he allowed a contingent of volunteers to be

recruited in his territory for the abortive Turkish expedition to

the Suez Canal in February 1915, and used his influence to assist

the crew of the German cruiser Emden which had been harassing

British communications off the Red Sea Coast.9 Thus he

negotiated with Turks and British alike until he could make

sure he was backing the right horse. Actually all he wanted

or hoped to secure was complete independence in his own

corner of southwestern Arabia, military support against his rival,

Ibn Saud, and unfettered control of the lucrative pilgrim revenue.

Finally, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry

McMahon, tried his hand . He found Hussein a good horsetrader,

non-committal and holding out for the highest bidder .

In order to force the `Arab patriot' to move, the British had

to submit to as fine a mulcting as they have ever experienced .

The Agreement entered into early in i q i 6, reads that "The

Government of Great Britain agrees to furnish this Arab Government

with all its needs of arms and ammunition and money

during the War ." What this transaction was like is more than

explained in the wireless received by McMahon's confidential

assistant, Sir Ronald Storrs, just before the `rebellion' broke out.

It read : "Foreign Office has approved payment of £ io,ooo to

Abdullah and C So,ooo to Sherif o f Mecca. But this latter payment

only in return for definite action and i f a reliable rising

takes place." 10 All told, the English handed over to the Sherif

BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 71

a cool J i 1,ooo,ooo in materials and money, and stimulated his

patriotism with grandiose promises of personal power ." Nothing

else than this flood of gold, writes Lawrence cynically,

"would have performed the miracle of keeping a tribal army in

the field for five months on end ." And C. S. Jarvis, English

Governor of Sinai Peninsula, comments that Arab actions from

start to finish "proved that they were only interested in the

revolution for three objects in the following order of importance

- gold, loot, and the satisfactory clearing up of their own

daraks or areas." 12 Indeed, the only time a full muster of the

`patriots' could be counted on was payday.

The whole `campaign of the desert' was a strangely inept piece

of business, vastly enlarged on by British publicists for outside

consumption . A good account of it is given by the French

General, Edouard Bremond, in his book Le Hedjaz dans la

Guerre Mondiale . Hussein himself is described as "an obstinate,

narrow-minded, suspicious character," so insanely jealous

of his son Feisal that he was forever issuing from his throne

in Mecca, out of sheer pique, "orders that from time to time

jeopardized the cause ." 13

Observers, neutral and friendly, have described the character

of these purchased levies. They were not, by our standards,

good soldiers. Bloodless victories were the kind that they appreciated,

and Lawrence's understanding of this preference

dictated his whole strategy of irregular warfare . Colonel Wilson,

the English representative at Hussein's court, contemptuously

refers to them as "a cowardly and undisciplined rabble" ;

and Lawrence makes no bones about their cowardice under

Turkish fire . 14 "Lawrence knew," says Jarvis, "that if his

Arabs suffered heavy casualties in a direct attack they would

never recover from the effect and would disseminate into thin

air." 15

Lawrence states, moreover, that "it was impossible to mix or

combine tribes, since they disliked or distrusted one another .

Likewise, we could not use the men of one tribe in the territory

of another." 16 With sardonic resignation he observes : "My

men were blood enemies of thirty tribes, and only for my hand

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THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

over them would have murdered in the ranks every day . Their

feuds prevented them combining against me ; while their unlikeness

gave me sponsors and spies wherever I went or

sent. . ." 17

Often the Arabs refused to fight at all because they were not

satisfied with the amount of loot they were receiving . Lawrence

himself was once abandoned with two companions in the

middle of an engagement, his Arab allies having gone raving

mad with the lust of plunder. In their frenzy they fought

among themselves, and soon were all `missing,' "having dispersed

with their spoil ." Even in victory they did not hesitate to leave

their own wounded lying helpless on the ground while they

looted. Under these circumstances, says Lawrence, they lost

their wits completely and "were as ready to assault friend as

foe." 18 Without exception, every observer comments that they

invariably broke off in the middle of an engagement to disappear

into the desert with their captured gains . There is actually

no recorded instance of an Arab accomplishment in the way

of a spectacular battle or the capture of a large town with its

garrison.

The British, in fact, had their hands full with their wild allies.

Aviators had to fly at a considerable height to avoid being

shot at by the Bedouins, who had "an irresistible desire to

shoot anything that was moving fast ." 19 They found the Arab

chiefs volcanic and suspicious and ever ready to resent the

presence of infidels. "Many of them," writes Captain Hart,

"behaved as if the British officers were their servants, and set

an example of rudeness that was imitated by their followers, as

well as by their slaves." Lawrence cautioned his men frankly

before an excursion into the desert "that there was no need to

worry about the Turks, but every need to worry about our

allies, the Bedouins ." 20 Nor would he instruct his tribesmen

in the handling of the high explosives used to cripple the Turkish

transportation system, afraid that they "would keep on playfully

blowing up trains even after the termination of the war ." 21

The whole Lawrence legend in itself has been sadly exaggerated.

He was a brave and clever man, but the truth of the

BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 73

matter is that he never penetrated into Arabia at all, and merely

went down the western coastal fringe from Mecca northward

along the Pilgrim railway .22 Most of the inhabitants of Arabia

could hardly have known of his existence, "while the suggestion

implied of Arabian unification under a foreigner and a non-

Moslem is, of course, a myth ." 23

His entire `army' of purchased irregulars did not amount to

a row of peanuts when compared with the Arabs fighting on

the Turkish side against the detested infidel . Simultaneous with

the Sherif's commitment to the Allies, his powerful neighbor

Hussein Mabeirig, chief of the Rabegh Harb, joined the Turks ;

and facing the invaders was at least one entire Ottoman division

made up entirely of Arab men and officers .

The number who participated in the `revolt' were an uncertain

and fluctuating quantity, "simply gathering," says Bertram

Thomas, "for some particular expedition in numbers that sometimes

reached a few thousand, but were more often only a few

hundred." Lloyd George estimated their total number to aggregate

"but a few thousand horsemen," remarking that "the

vast majority of their race in the Great War were fighting for

their Turkish conquerors." 24

There have been few peoples in history who have gotten so

much for giving so little . In Iraq the Arabs took almost no part

whatsoever in the fighting, and always were to be found on the

winning side. Now with the Turks, now with the British, loot

was their principal object . Blood-curdling eyewitness accounts

tell how Turks and Englishmen alike were murdered for their

small possessions . Unfortunate prisoners had their bellies

ripped open in search of the gold liras which the Arabs thought

the soldiers had swallowed. Graves containing Turkish and

English dead were despoiled for any articles which might have

been buried with them . Throughout the Turkish Empire the

phrase Khayin Arab (treacherous Arab) became an ugly

proverb.25

As shown by the records, as far as Palestine is concerned, the

Arab contribution to its conquest was indirect and trifling . Not

a single Arab was employed in the conquest of Cis-Jordan . In

74 THE RAPE OF PALESTINE

Trans-Jordan it was the Jewish Legions who, having assisted the

English to take the passages of the Jordan River, marched on to

capture Es Salt, then considered its principal town. Lawrence's

Arabs were far away in the desert engaged in butchering and

looting fleeing men, fellow-Arabs of the Turkish army, who had

been routed by British guns and airplanes . The soldier, Duff,

his blood turned cold by these activities, describes their "strange,

twisted mentality. . ." 26

At this time the dazzling fiction of a Palestinian Arab struggle

against the Turks had not yet been invented . The British themselves,

roiled by the disinclination of Palestine Arabs to assist

in any way, described them as "sunk in almost animal brutishness,

moved by no spirit of personal liberty or freedom for their

native land ." A study of Lawrence's Seven Pillars o f Wisdom

reveals that his levies were all desert tribesmen except for ten

Syrians, of whom six `ratted' and four deserted . No Palestinian

Arab is mentioned by Lawrence . The British, who were later

to speak pompously of Arab nationalism in Palestine, were of

quite a different sentiment in 1918 . British Peace Handbook

No. 6o declares briskly that "they have little if any national

sentiment . . . The Moslem Effendi class . . . evince a feeling

somewhat akin to hostility towards the Arab movement . . .

This class, while regretting the opportunities for illegitimate

gain offered by Turkish rule, has no real political cohesion, and,

above all, no power of organization ." There was in fact not a

single Arab personality in Palestine with whom the British could

negotiate . With their experiences still fresh in English minds,

the Peace Handbook repeats Burton's jibe that these Levantines

"hide their weapons at the call of patriotism ."

Despite the ado subsequently made over the vaunted promises

to Hussein, all the evidence indicates that until British policy

shifted after the War, the idea that Palestine should become

Arabic had not even been contemplated . It is certain that during

Lawrence's campaign Feisal and his principal henchmen had

their eye upon Syria, not upon Palestine, and that the rank

and file were interested in money and loot and nothing else .

McMahon himself vigorously denied that any pledge had been

BRASS BUTTONS AND STUFFED SHIRTS 75

given to Hussein which could be construed to mean that Palestine

was to be included in the Arab area ; and in Commons on

July 11, 1922, Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for

the Colonies, declared : "No pledges were made to the Palestine

Arabs in 1915 . So far as I am aware, the first suggestion that

Palestine was included in the area within which His Majesty's

Government promised to recognize and support the independence

of the Arabs, was made . . . more than five years after

the conclusion of the correspondence on which the claim was

based." The promise to Hussein was in any case crazy ; for, as

Sidebotham points out, he was not in a position to pledge the

Arabs outside the Hejaz to anything.

When Hussein finally proclaimed himself Commander of the

Faithful, it proved a fatal step, hardening against him the Wahabis

and other fanatic Moslem groups in whose eyes the Sherif

was an infidel backslider . London, too, was tiring of his incessant

demands and arrogance ; and burned with rage when

the new King of the Hejaz refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles

and wriggled out of joining the League of Nations under

British tutelage. Quietly they withdrew their support from

the recalcitrant Hussein and let it be known that he was now on

his own.27 Saud, who had been waiting for this moment,

needed no further invitation . He promptly occupied Mecca,

chased Hussein off to exile in Cyprus, and henceforth styled

himself King of the Hejaz and Sultan of Nejd .

While the Sherif was engaged in this death struggle with his

ancient enemy, Britain stepped in and demanded that he place

Maan and the Red Sea port of Aqaba under British Mandate .

On May 27, 1925, the British Government regretfully informed

the Commander of the Faithful that if he would not accede

to this demand, it "would have to take Aqaba and Maan by

force." On June 18, both towns became part of Transjordan .

Here was created the need for a fresh departure in British Arabic

policy since their new protege, Saud, would not accept the fact

of British possession gracefully ; he continued to roar with aggrieved

self-righteousness that he had been robbed . This friction,

which persists until today, resulted in still another of

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Whitehall's famous zigzags, this time back in the direction of

Abdullah of the House of Hussein .