The Desert and the Sown

...Political backgrounds, racial diBiculties and economic developments in the near East are stressed...

...Thus, looming big in the situation in this land of broken troth, murder and dissension, religious intolerance and ceaseless strife over modes of worship and ritual, theatre of wild and promiscuous tumult of all the noblest and basest passions, stand the repudiated pledges upon which the Arabs built a new and transcendant hope for an autonomous homeland...

...They harnessed the waters of the Jordan and made the desert bloom...

...But their case is not hopeless...

...They lack everything that would make for more than sporadic risings, and it would seem that the only way left open to them is through winning over public opinion...

...They failed to reckon on the inherent independence of spirit of these peoples and, since x9 I4, on the widespread development of nationab ist thought among them...

...And if more had been needed to make dissentious the situation, this was at hand in Russian Communist activities to further Arab nationalist aspirations...

...They recall that no palliatives since the victorious emergence of the allied Powers from the world war have satisfied the Arabsmprobably because, as Lord Cromer dedared, it is not given to the European to understand the Levantine oriental mind...

...Despite his long political and diplomatic experience, Lord Balfour obviously did not take due account of the Jewish character and what its juxtaposition with a majority group like the Arabs in the mandated territory would mean...

...Comment upon the inferences drawn by Jdam Day is invited...

...No evidence substantiates such charges...

...There were boycotts and other measures which fell just short of resort to arms...

...A thousand Arabs invaded the area, attacking and seriously injuring the beadle in charge of the prayers and destroying sacred objects...

...They held that neither had reached the state of development sufficient to be constituted an independent nation and that, until they had achieved this, they must be governed by trustees of the League...

...In this they are backed by Mohammedan opinion throughout the length and breadth of the worldm and there are 2zo,ooo,ooo followers of Mohammed...

...The King-Crane Commission which President Wilson sent to Syria in z9z 9 reported that, of z,863 petitions received by the commission, more than 60 percent were expressly opposed to a French mandate, and less than 15 percentmmostly from the Lebanonmwere expressly favorable to France...

...and to recognize their individuality...

...This, the Arabs wcrc led to believe, meant a new Arabian state which would include not only the Arabian Peninsula, but Syria and Mesopotamia, both predominantly Arab, and Palestine, in which the Arabs outnumber the Jews about six to one...

...There were riots in z92o, and in those of z92I more than a hundred persons were killed and many wounded...

...Among these was Lord Rothermore, owner of an influential group of newspapers, who characterized the British attempt to establish a "national home" for the Jews as "one of the maddest of all Britain's post-war adventures...

...in the Levant, and in the innumerable political intrigues up the centuries...

...Like the secret treaty of London between the Powers and Italy, the terms of this near-East accord did not become known until the peace conference convened...

...They adopted a position of opposition, founded first on envy of the more fortunate Zionists, and secondly on the most primitive of all fears--that for their life as a people...

...Gertrude Bell died in her beloved Bagdad disillusioned and Colonel Lawrence refused the knighthood...

...The Jews themselves could not get together behind Zionism, so it is not remarkable that Arabs and Christians should unite in opposing the movement, especially since both throughout the near East hold that Zionism is a creation of the Jews of northern and eastern Europe whom it chiefly benefits...

...Sheriff Hussein threw in his lot and that of his people with them, and revolted against the Turks...

...The Hebrew race throughout the world rushed to the aid of its people, and a stream of gold poured in to relieve their distress...

...But it was a foregone conclusion that the immigrant Jews, backed by the tremendous wealth of English and American Jewry, would rise quickly above their lowly feUow-inhabitants of the land...

...The Zionists also are able to recite history, precedent and, too, the official acts of the most powerful nations to justify their demands for adequate protection while they carry forward their program...

...Ever since the final destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the arms of Titus and Hadrian, its rebuilding has been the ruling passion of the children of Israel...

...They declare that permanent peace cannot be established in Palestine under this policy, and demand no less than the complete abrogation of the Balfour Declaration...

...Funds unexampled in philanthropy poured in to enable them to farm and engage in industry--to prosper as few prosper in the near East, where life is hard and cheap...

...France got Syria and the Lebanon...

...It was the premise of the Zionists that a series of formal declarations by the allied Powers, treaties between various nations and the official acts of the League of Nations had given public recognition to the historic right of the Jewish people to do this and had woven it into the fabric of international law...

...When Sir Herbert Samuel, a Jew and the first British High Commissioner, got to Jerusalem, he found the whole country in a state of unrest...

...This was bound to make for trouble...

...It is admittedly, however, not a case either for or against Zionism...

...Many important Englishmen are agreed that Great Britain made a political mistake in the Balfour Declaration...

...and it needs to be distinctly understood that, on a subject of this kind, opinions are necessarily tentative.--The Editors...

...On top of this came the Balfour Declaration that His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of that object, it being 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 the Jews in any other country...

...Meanwhile, financed by American and British Jews, there flowed into Palestine a stream of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Poland and all northern and eastern Europe, a few from America, pushing the Arabs further and further away from the cities and the oases...

...October 2, x9a9 THE C O M Even as many of the decisions of the peace conferenee, that of the Big Four regarding Palestine and Syria was a compromise...

...This will be more difficult in Palestine than was the case in the French-mandated territory of Syria, for aligned against them are vast wealth and political considerations which were wholly absent from the former, and they have none of the sympathy which the whole Christian world gave to the Jebel Druse insurrection...

...There was nothing to do but bide their time and hope for more propitious days...

...it was only in Palestine that the Jewish "national home" was to be ]:ounded...

...Rather than religious intolerance, the causes back of the August disturbances arc to bc found in political and economic conditions...

...The disorders spread rapidly throughout Jerusalem and into the country to the utmost confines of British mandated territory...

...the latter out of complaints against the Balfour Declaration of November, 1917 . Back of both is a twofold cause: repudiated promises made to the Arabs when they took up arms against their Turkish overlords, and the age-old European policy of secret treaties...

...It is small wonder that the prosperity of the Palestine home-building immigrants created envy and hatred in the hearts of the illiterate and poor Arab and Druse tribesmenuwild men of the desert and the mountains, whose laws are primitive, like their passions...

...Downing Street's interpretation did not satisfy the Arabs, but they felt themselves impotent, remembering the strong repressive measures employed against them in x9zo z92z...

...They insisted that not only must Britain take every measure for the protection of life and property, but that certain British officials in Palestine were unfitted for their task and must go...

...There followed some of the most colorful episodes of the whole war, and their history is yet to bc written...

...Similar hostility has been exhibited by every people who have seen their lands invaded by a more powerful race...

...This was in the face of a big propaganda by French forces in occupation of the coastal area...

...British warships and troops were hurried to Palestine to reinforce those already there...

...Instead, Arabs and Jews have dwelt side by side in Palestine for many years without grave disturbance marking their relations...

...British troops quelled the disturbances...

...Simultaneously the Zionist organization embracing with its affiliated bodies about two hundred thousand men and women and speaking, its leaders declare, for upward of four million American Jews, attributed the attack to intolerance...

...The situation was not much different in Palestine...

...British opinion was never so averse as now to the idea of an iron rule...

...They blame Zionism directly for the August uprising and assert that a "national home" for the Jews can be accomplished only by putting the Arabs out of their own homes...

...The people of Britain today are opposed to keeping any nation in subjugation and to the heavy armaments which are necessary to dominate a people...

...The Anglo-French understanding and the pledges to the children of the desert were irreconcilable...

...Throughout India, Arabia, Egypt and other Moslem countries, the highest heads in the Moslem world are scheming to free the Peninsula of Arabia from the European Powers and place a caliph over it...

...that this pampered minority had fallen heir to all the joys of living, while they were rich if they had a mangy camel or two, and fortunate if allowed to pitch their black tents in some oasis...

...Meanwhile, large bodies of Arab peasants, armed chiefly with heavy clubs and daggers, flocked into Jerusalem and nearby villages to join in the attack on the Jews...

...to guarantee the holy places of the Mohammedans against all foreign aggression...

...This has taken the form in recent years of an ever-growing interest in reconstructing Palestine for the "disinherited of the Jewish race and to re-create Jewish cub ture and civilization in its native environment...

...Neither knew that there existed, even when these pledges were made, a secret agreement between Great Britain and France, called the Sykes-Picot pact, which created British and French spheres of influence within the territory promlscd to the Arabs...

...Further, a unanimous action by the Senate in Washington on September 2I, I922, had placed the approval of the United States on the purposes of the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine mandate...

...Nor has alliance been infrequent between the disciples of Moses and Mohammed in many of the wars that have been fought the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine in August of this yearmthat they may be regarded as belonging to the single history of European mandates in Asia Minor...

...This was territory that had been promised King MONWEAL Hussein, and the percentage of its Arab population was, more or less, the same as that of Syria...

...It was here that Gertrude Bell and Colonel T. E. Lawrcnce did such yeoman work for Great Britain and her Allies, confident that these Arab people, whom they lived with and loved and who had felt the yoke of Turkish oppression for 400 years, were about to realize their ambition...

...They had now become thoroughly convinced that they had merely changed the old Turk for a new master who understood them even less...

...These causes go back to the Allenby campaign in Palestine and Syria, when the British promised Sheriff Husscin of Mecca to recognize and support the independence of the Arabs in practically all the territory between Turkey proper on one side and the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea...

...They demanded, therefore, the moral support of the Washington government and called on the British government to guarantee the peace in Palestine...

...The former grew out of the inept handling by General Sarrail, French High Commissioner, of complaints of the Jcbel Druse...

...Had similar outrages been committed in connection with Christian holy places, it held, the Arabs would have been disciplined by the British within twenty-four hours...

...At the same time it was recalled that both Christians and Arabs in Palestine were almost unanimous in their objections to the "national home," and that even the leaders of British Jewry warned their people that to accept privileges in Palestine would result in deadly feuds with other nations that would travel throughout the empire...

...This desire for self-government has gone beyond the fanatical tribesmen and peasants and taken strong hold on Moslems of all kinds...

...Plenty grew where a few short years before had been stony soil, destitute of water and treeless and knowing no plow save the hoofs of war horses...

...So closely related are the two incidents-the rising against the French in Damascus in October, 1925, and the clash between W'hat causes underlie the present unrest in Palestine, which has resulted in bloodshed and destructionf The following paper is recommended to our readers as a summary of facts as these are discernible in history and journalistic accounts...

...Then there was much in the press about the efforts of Wilson and Smuts to set it aside...

...Persons who have had long experience in the Moslem world see in Palestine and Syria a situation that contains no augury for permanent peace there...

...The Arabs were alarmed at the Zionist vanguard which was coming, admittedly to take over Palestine under the Balfour Declaration...

...This view is well supported by fact and history...

...Downing Street declared it did not envisage the subordination of the Arab population nor its disappearance...

...This would seem the bright spot on the Arab's horizon, for everyone who knows him knows that only force will maintain peace in the deserts and the nearby cities, and that not even force will make him forget that for which he fought when war shook the world...

...Petersburgmstatesmen have looked across the Mediterranean to the wandering tribes of Arabia, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia and seen in them a backward race, with a tremendous percentage of illiteracy...

...each might go his own way undisturbed, unmolested by the other so long as neither possessed special advantages or wealth...

...554 THE COMMONWEAL October z, I929 i i THE DESERT AND THE SOWN By ADAM DAY IOTING such as Damascus, royal city in every age and oldest inhabited, knew in 1925 has been repeated in Jerusalem proudest monument of Christianity...

...What makes the mistake the more regrettable is that it was of the heart and not of the head...

...From Downing Street and the Quai d'Orsaymand, in the old days, from Berlin, Vienna and St...

...They were turned over to the League of Nations, along with the German colonies...

...Young Jews in America volunteered to form shock battalions to take the war into Arab territory, and some twenty thousand Hebrews marched in slow cadence to one of their songs of mourning down Broadway to protest before the British consulate in Whitehall Street...

...Great Britain got Palestine and Mesopotamia, with its rich oil fields...

...The Moslems are not prepared to wage hostilities against the British empire...

...This showed the thought in the French-mandated area...

...but it was recognized as an armed peace by everyone who knew anything about the Levant, and Sir Herbert appealed to London for an interpretation of the Balfour Declaration...

...There might be peace so long as all were poor...

...Peace with all the world is among the high English aspirations...

...They believed the Allies' declaration that the final liberation of peoples so long oppressed, and the establishment of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and the free choice of the native populations, were the aim of the Powers...

...Every student who has gone to the East has observed the growth of the movement, the strength of its leadership and the fact that it is receiving support where it never found it before...

...The first clash in Jerusalem occurred on Tishah BeAv (August 16) the Jewish fast day commemorative of the destruction of Solomon's temple, when a group of Jews met at their Wailing Wall to lament the lost glories of Israel...

...Protests and petitions flooded the offices of the High Commissioner in Jerusalem and the Colonial Office in London, and in these the Christian population joined, refusing along with the Arabs to co/Sperate with the authorities in carrying out the Balfour Declaration...

...The Arabs hold that, instead of the things promised them when they fought for Great Britain and her Allies, their present government deprives them of all 556 THE COMMONWEAL October z, x929 tl I i political and national rights...

...On March io, I9OO, a congress of z35 notables representative of all cities met at Damascus and proclaimed the independent kingdom of Syria, with the Emir Feisal as king...

...Many American and British Jews were among the dead and wounded...

...They felt that a minority race with alien customs had got a permanent home in their own land at the expense of the majority...

...imposes upon them an autocratic form of government contrary to British tradition and sense of justice ; and makes of their country a British colony...