Chapter 8

Chapter 8 Our Fathers' Children The remarkable Jewish inability or unwillingness to see the reality of innate Arab hostility toward Zionism and a Jewish state is hardly of recent vintage. From the beginning of the twentieth century, as modern nationalism swept from Europe into the Ottoman Empire, there existed Arab nationalist hostility that grew in intensity and hatred with every Jewish stride toward statehood in the Land of Israel. The problem was that the early Zionists simply did not want to understand the basic fact of nationalism: no people is permanently prepared to live as a minority under another people in a land it considers its own. Our fathers would not see; we refuse to see. We are, indeed, their children. From the very beginning of the modern political Zionist movement, the question of the Arab population of Eretz Yisrael was subject to incredible delusion and unimaginable self-delusion. It was Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism, who coined the astonishing slogan: "The land without a people for the people without a land." Perhaps as a journalistic turn of a phrase, it was a bon mot. But in terms of reality, Herzl was very, very wrong. That there existed a people -- the Jews -- without a land was an unmistakable fact. But the land they rightfully called theirs was not empty of people. The year 1880, from which the beginning of modern Jewish restoration dates, saw some 30,000 Jews in the land. They were of the "old yishuy" ("community"), religious Jews living quietly under the Ottoman regime, content to fulfill the mitzvah ("commandment") of dwelling in the Land of Israel and subsisting for the most part on charity. Alongside them dwelt some 80,000 Arabs. These latter may have been poor, ignorant, backward, lacking in political awareness, unconcious of a "Palestinian" nationhood, but they were there. And no one seemed to notice. Leo Pinsker, the most significant of the pre-Herzl political Zionists, made no mention of the Arabs as a significant element to be dealt with by the Zionist believers in his book Auto- Emancipation (1882). The classic Herzlian work, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), is also empty of any reference to the problem of Arabs, and as late as June 4, 1921, the official Zionist magazine in Britain, Palestine, called the country "a deserted, derelict land.”
On the one hand, it was as if Arabs did not exist, or if they did, they really did not matter. On the other hand, there was a naive belief that this backward and primitive people would surely be delighted at the benefits and progress that would be their lot, thanks to the advent of the progressive and talented Jews. As far as an Arab national movement was, concerned, there was near unanimity that such a creature simply did not exist. Professor A. Yahuda, a delegate to the First Zionist Congress (1897), attempted to persuade Herzl that an Arab question did exist, but Herzl was unconvinced. Indeed, the records of the early Zionist Congresses are blissfully empty of any mention of the Arab problem. In the words of the radical socialist Ber Borochov, "if we plant our culture in the Land of Israel, the fellahin ["Arab peasants"] will fully integrate with us. ... the inhabitants of the Land of Israel have no ground to look upon us with hatred; to the contrary, they recognize that legally the land belongs to us." This amazing statement was made in 1905. It was based on a belief held by many that the Arabs would be culturally integrated, absorbed, and assimilated with the Jews. Michael Halperin suggested hastening the process by intermarriage on a massive scale. The nonsense of Arab "disappearance," culturally or nationally, was to be echoed for years by Zionist leaders, even when it was obvious to all that there was a large and growing Arab movement that was the deadly enemy of Zionism. As early as 1891, there was already evidence of anti-Zionism on the part of the Arabs of the Land of Israel. In that year several hundred Arab notables from Jerusalem and Jaffa sent a petition to the court at Constantinople asking that the sultan put an end to both Jewish immigration and land purchase. Neither Herzl nor any of the other political Zionists understood the significance of such a move. The Arab was simply a person whose presence was irrelevant to the future of the country. It was the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish "sick man of Europe," that ruled the land and was the partner with whom Jews had to deal. Either the Turks would agree to a Jewish homeland within the context of their empire, or such a state would come into being as the result of the collapse of the Ottomans and the dismemberment of their territory by the European powers. What would emerge would depend upon how clever the Zionists were in their dealings with the nations. But the term nation most emphatically did not apply to the Arabs of the Land of Israel. One hardly knows what to make of Herzl's naivete. On the one hand he apparently believed that one bought a homeland in much the same manner as one bought a house or a factory. In a letter to Herzl, the sociologist L. von Gumplowicz asked, "You want to found a state without
bloodshed? Where did you ever see that? Without violence and without guile, simply by selling and buying shares?" Herzl did, indeed, think so, because the Arab question played no part in his grasp of the problem. To him, how could the Arabs, such as they were, conceivably object to a Jewish state in the land they occupied if they became rich through Jewish development? Herzl may sincerely not have meant it, but it was a crude, contemptuous rejection of Arab national pride. Thus, in a letter to the former mayor of Jerusalem, Yusef Ziah AlHaldi, Herzl wrote: "Do you believe that the Arab in the land whose house or land is worth three or four thousand francs will be unhappy if his property rises by five or ten times? And that is what will inevitably happen when the Jews arrive. ...” And in his book Altenuland, Herzl has the Arab Reshid Bey say, concerning the Jewish arrival: "It was a blessing for all of us and first of course for the property owner. ... Is a person who takes nothing from you but only comes to give to you to be considered a thief in your eyes? The Jews made us wealthy; why shall we complain about them?” Not all were blind. The Zionist philosopher Ahad Ha'am visited the land in 1891. He came; he saw; he perceived. And that perception led him to write: "We are wrong to believe that the Arabs are savages of the desert ... who neither observe nor understand what transpires around them. ... The Arabs, especially the town dwellers, see and understand our work and ambitions. But they feign ignorance since at present they do not see in our activities a danger to their future.” Ahad Ha'am realized, too, that this momentary lack of danger coincided with economic benefits for the Arabs which added to the temporary lack of tension. "But," he added, "when the time comes when the life of our people develops to such an extent that it may encroach in however small a measure upon the Arabs, they will not readily give in. ...” But as perceptive as he was, even that one clarion call was not really raised to signal danger. Ishmael, however, was beginning to stir. The winds of nineteenth-century nationalism were late arriving in the Middle East, but the breezes could not forever be blocked. In 1905 a Christian Arab named Neguib Azoury published a book that may well be regarded as the first cogent expression of the Arab nationalism that Jews insisted was nonexistent. From his exile in Paris, Azoury issued an anti-Turkish, anti-Jewish work called Le Reveil de la Nation Arabe. In it he not only called for an Arab state from the Nile to the Euphrates; he also called Zionism a danger to Arab aspirations and
declared that "it was clear" that the two nationalist movements could not exist in the same land. One of the few to be disturbed by rising Arab nationalism and antiZionism (Christian Arabs in Jaffa had organized an anti-Jewish gang under Anton Kassar) was the educator Yitzhak Epstein, who during the Seventh Zionist Congress warned, "Let us not anger a sleeping lion. ... We must solve the question of our relations with the Arabs before a Jewish question arises among them." What did Epstein suggest? Among other things, to raise the Arab standard of living in the fields of education, health, and economy. ... Reaction to the warning was typified by Moshe Smilansky, who, in an article in Ha'Olam, mocked Epstein and wrote that "he takes the shadow of the mountains for mountains." Smilansky flatly stated that the Arabs of the Land of Israel were not a nation but a social organism divided into tribes and classes. This early division of opinion typified the two delusions that almost the entire Zionist movement adhered to. On the one hand were those who refused even to contemplate anything as "ridiculous" as an Arab national movement in the land. On the other were those who recognized an Arab problem but insisted that it could be tamed by giving the Arabs social and economic benefits. The first view eventually died, under the sheer weight of Arab bullets and bombs. The second view is still alive and sick in the minds of Jewish leaders in Israel and the Exile. In 1908 the first organized attack by Arabs against Jews occurred on the night of the Jewish holiday, Purim. The first reaction of fear was put to official rest by the Zionist Establishment, which refused to see any problems. Arthur Ruppin, head of the Palestine office of the World Zionist Movement, in a soothing letter to the president of the movement, David Wolffsohn, wrote: "Instead of being surprised that such incidents occur in Jaffa, we should rather be surprised that relations between Jews and Arabs in the Land of Israel are so calm, despite all the differences.” That year, a revolution deposed the sultan, and a group of "Young Turks" took office, determined to modernize the Turkish Empire. As part of this process they granted the right of political association and expression. To the dismay of the Turks and the astonishment of the Jews, there occurred a veritable explosion of Arab nationalism. An article that appeared in the Hebrew paper Hatzvi declared: "From the time the constitution was given, the Arabs in our land began to arouse themselves
to a new life. In all the important towns there have been established chapters of the national Arab association, 'Arab Brotherhood.'“ An Arab paper, Al Atzmai, appeared in Jaffa, and immediately began vicious attacks on Jews. Other Arab papers followed suit. One Arab cartoon in 1911 depicts Joshua Hankin, an early Zionist pioneer, trying to buy land from an Arab and being stabbed by Saladin. The leading antiZionist journal was the Haifa newspaper Al-Karmel, edited by Najib Natzer, which not only attacked Jewish immigration and land sales but directed its major shafts against the very idea of a Jewish state. The rise of bitter anti-Zionist Arab journalism led a young Jew named David BenGurion to complain, in 1910: "On the one hand they spread libel and false charges against the Hebrew settlement in the Land of Israel in governmental circles. On the other, they sow hatred toward Jews among all the levels of the Arab people.” In January 1911 the Jaffa newspaper Falistin warned against the danger of "Zionist imperialism." And when the Arabs succeeded in electing some sixty-five representatives to the new Turkish Parliament -- about one-quarter of all the delegates - the Zionists suddenly realized their power. They watched in dismay as the three Arab representatives from Jerusalem, who had been wooed assiduously, joined all the rest in strong anti-Zionist stands. S. D. Levontin, head of the Anglo-Palestine Company office in Jaffa, wrote to Wolffsohn: "We have realized for the first time that the Arab population is not so primitive and that they have cultural powers that should not be denigrated. ... They have people who understand what freedom means and ... new political forces are emerging that we must contend with.” The vast majority of Zionist leaders were not impressed. The fact that the Arabs might look upon the land as their land was simply too implausible. Three points were constantly raised and reemphasized: 1. The Land of Israel was a barren land, large enough for all the Jews who would come to build their state, as well as the Arab peasants. 2. Arab attacks on Zionism and Jewish settlement were a product of the wealthy landlords' (effendis) fear of losing their power. 3. The Arab masses would eagerly welcome the Jews, who would raise their living standards and free them from feudalism. Almost all Zionists believed this nonsense for years. It does not behoove us to scorn them, however, since nonsense not too dissimilar was spouted even by Begin and other leaders of the Irgun underground, who
told the UN commission investigating conditions in Palestine in 1947: "There is no such phenomenon as independent Arab opposition, and all Arab opposition was instigated by the British themselves.” Arab nationalist anti-Zionism began to bear "fruit." In 1909 physical attacks in Jewish settlements in the Galilee led to the formation of Jewish self-defense groups (Bar Giora, Hashomer). Jews were killed by Arab marauders in Yavneel, Beit Gan, and Sajra. Despite the fact that the naive Jews had paid good money for land, the Arabs now discovered the concept of the "dispossessed." Thus, the Jewish settlers of Dm Juni or Deganyawere accused of dispossessing the Arabs, though they pathetically waved their legal "deed." Arab hatred was now so palpable that in November 1910 even Ruppin suggested building a separate Jewish community in Haifa, "since it is unpleasant for Jews to live together with Arabs, especially in view of the attacks by the anti-Jewish paper AlKarmel” The Arab nationalists concentrated on halting Jewish immigration and land purchase. They understood, quite correctly, that the Zionists' eventual aim was a Jewish state and a Jewish majority, and these they swore to fight to the death. In 1911 some 150 Arab notables sent a telegram to the Parliament in Constantinople, demanding an end to Jewish immigration and land purchase. Natzer founded a group in Haifa for the purpose of boycotting the Jews. "We shall not sell to them, buy from them, or rent them houses," he declared. A similar group called the Ottoman Patriotic Party was founded in Jaffa. The crisis escalated as hundreds of Arabs attacked the Jewish settlement of Merchavya, pillaging and looting food, clothing, and wheat in the fields. The Zionist leadership now prepared to meet in the Tenth Zionist Congress. Ruppin pleaded that the speakers beware of inflaming the Arabs, "that each speaker weigh every word, and that it would be best if questions concerning the Land of Israel not be discussed at all, except in committees.” Nevertheless, the Tenth Zionist Congress was the first that dealt with the Arab question. Shiomo Kaplansky, the delegate of Poale Zion, the Laborites, expressed his confidence that despite everything, understanding could yet be reached with the "Arab democracy [sic]" Yitzhak Ben Zvi, in later years to become Israel's second president, elaborated on the difference between the Arab Christian intellectuals and property owners (who were hostile) and the general Muslim population
who would supposedly be friendly, thanks to Jewish progress and benefits. This was the Zionist conventional wisdom of the time. Ruppin and Levontin on February 16, 1911, sent the following memorandum to the Zionist Organization's central office in Cologne: "The only source of hatred of Jews ... is the Christian Establishment, the wealthy Christians and those educated in Jesuit schools. ...” For a look at what the "moderate" Muslims thought about Zionism, it is interesting to note the statements made by two Jerusalem rivals for election to the Turkish Parliament. The Nashashibi and Al-Husseini Jerusalem clans were longtime Muslim rivals for power in Jerusalem. Each put up a candidate for Parliament in 1914. Said Rajib Nashashibi: "If elected I will dedicate my efforts, night and day, to eliminate the damage and danger of the Zionists and Zionism." Said his rival, Sa'ad AlHusseini: "We must, especially, support the fellah ["peasant"] ... to make sure that the Zionist hand does not acquire even one inch of their land.” So much for "moderate Muslims.” This ludicrous attempt to paint the Muslim Arabs as potential allies of Zionism would offer us some minor historical comfort if we at least learned from its delusion. Instead, today, we have reached the absurdity at the opposite end of the pole. We now maintain that it is the Muslims who are the source of anti-Zionist evil, whereas the Christians have now become the source of moderation and coexistence. Just as early Zionism's delusion was punctured early - the worst inciters against Zionism in the Turkish Parliament were the Muslims - so do today's expert "Arabists" scratch their heads over the "puzzle" of the largest Christian town in Israel, Nazareth, which is the center of PLO agitation under its anti-Zionist Communist mayor, Tewfik Zayad, or George Habash, the extremist (sic) in the PLO, who is a Christian. Ruppin, Levontin, Ben Zvi, and all the rest could build their world of pleasant illusions. Truth suffers fools for a while and then rudely returns them to reality. In the words of Mordechai Eliav, an expert on early Jewish settlements which were then in Palestine: "There is no doubt that Ruppin was convinced that in the days to come the Arabs would be grateful for the economic benefits that the Jewish community had brought them through its dynamic development. But this premise was totally erroneous. ... No amount of explanation about the growth of benefits could convince them, for the dispute was political from the outset as the immovable clash between two national movements [italics added]."
("First Clashes with the Arab National Question," Bar Han University Journan977, p. 297). Writing in 1913, German Zionist Richard Lichtheim stated: "The Arabs are and will always remain our natural opponents. They do not care a straw for 'the Joint Semitic Spirit.' ... The Jew for them is a competitor who threatens their predominance in Palestine. ...” The nearly two decades that followed were years of bloody violence that included the riots of 1920, 1921, and 1929. During all those years the general Zionist view remained optimistically, wishfully the same: There was no real clash between Jewish and Arab interests. There was room in the country for both people (in a Jewish state, of course), and all that was required was "understanding" and "goodwill." For years nothing could shake this delusion, for the bitter reality was better put out of sight and mind. Thus, Ben-Gurion, in a 1915 article titled "Facing the Living," wrote: "The Land of Israel is now a half-desolate and ruined country - and the Arab minority [sic!] element is not capable of resurrecting the land. ... we are building and reviving the land and this is the moral humane basis of our desire and work in the Land of Israel." What Ben-Gurion either could not or would not understand was that the Arab believed that the land was his half-desolate or totally so, and that the ability to rebuild it did not, in the Arab's eyes, carry with it any "moral humane right" whatsoever to take it from him. Again and again the early Zionists attempted to delude themselves with the thought that they were really benefiting the Arab, who would sell his political birthright for a mess of socio-economic pottage. Thus, Achdut Avoda, largest and most influential of the labor groups in the early years (from it eventually came two presidents and three prime ministers), after years of serious Arab rioting, could resolve at its Seventh Convention (1924) that, on the one hand, the convention "sees as an unbreakable foundation ... the right of the Hebrew people to create a national home in Eretz Yisrael ["the Land of Israel"]." And without blinking an eyelid, the same program could blithely declare its intentions to "create conditions to raise and improve the situation of the working masses, Jewish and Arab. ... The economic development of the land that will come about with the growth of Jewish immigration and settlement and the faithful influence and help of the Jewish worker's movement will raise the Arab worker from his low state and will prepare him to fill his political and social role. ...”
One can, of course, imagine the touching impact this blend of socialist noblesse oblige and white-man's-burden mentality had on Ishmael. What is more pertinent, however, is the incredible blindness of the early Zionists who had not the slightest understanding that their efforts on behalf of the Arab would indeed prepare him for his "political and social role," but that role would be very different from the one that the Jewish socialist Kiplings had mapped out for him. What Jewish progress and development would create was a Frankenstein monster, an educated and radical Arab generation that would vow to drive the Jews out of Eretz Yisrael. Blindness. How else can we explain the 1925 article in Davar, the Histadrut Labor Federation's official organ? Written by Moshe Beilinson, one of the editors of the paper, it lavishly praised the Jaffa workers council for a successful strike of Arab factory workers. Beilinson wrote: "We know that the Arab people who are still disunited can and probably will tomorrow be strong and united." The joy that one was presumably supposed to feel over this development was apparent only to those who refused to see that it was precisely Jewish education and organization that would develop an Arab people, strong and united in its determination to wipe out Zionism. Blindness, yes. But it is apparently a hereditary disease, this political glaucoma, for the children and grandchildren, the present-day generation of Zionists, suffer from the very same case of vision failure. They, too, educate, develop, "raise up" the Arab. They, today, create the PLO leader and follower prepared "to fill his political and social role. ...” In 1930, after twenty years of bloody Arab rioting, Ben-Gurion could still meet with his inner circle (4 Cheshvan 5680 [1929]) and emerge with a statement that paid lip service to an Arab national movement and add: "We must explain to him [the Arab] that Zionism does not come to attack the rights of the inhabitants but, quite the opposite, comes to bring its blessing. This explanation can come about only through cooperation in the field of economics and health so that the Arab will feel its results in a practical way.” One of the early proponents of working with the Arabs was a quixotic chap named H. M. Kalvarisky. He considered himself to be both an "expert" on Arabs and an Arabophile. As with most of those who claim, for no logical reason, to have a special liking for a particular people, Kalvarisky really had a snobbish contempt for the Arabs. Thus, he told the Zionist Executive Political Department in 1923 that the Arab was "by nature a materialistic and should he realize that no advantage will accrue
to him by siding with us, he will naturally turn away from us." There is not the slightest doubt that this contempt lay at the bottom of the majority Zionist view that one could buy the Arab's political soul with economic benefits. It is similarly true that, today, all those who reject the removal of Arabs from the Land of Israel and claim that economic and social "integration" will make them loyal to the Zionist state are just as contemptuous of the Arab. Every so often a Zionist leader would pronounce a thought of clarity and truth, only to shrink from its implications. Thus, Ben-Gurion, a political chameleon whose changes in thinking revealed not pragmatism as much as confusion and opportunism, called in 1921 for "friendly relations between Jewish workers and the Arab working masses" and suggested a long list of benefits. The Ben-Gurion proposal was based on the old and tried thesis of bad Arab effendis and good Arab fellahin. Fellow socialist Moshe Shertok (Sharett) differed with the view and wrote to him in September 1921, saying: "Who is more likely to find a response? We, the hated foreigners, or the muchtar ["headman"] and the sheikh who dwell in the midst of their people and play on such effective instruments as racist and nationalist instincts, language, hallowed tradition, and the force of inertia. ... For the sake of self-delusion we have made it all sound easy and simple -- a handful of effendis against the masses of workers [italics added].” Nothing could change the minds of those determined not to change. Ben Zvi insisted that the Arabs of Eretz Yisrael could not even be part of the Arab general national movement, let alone a "Palestinian" one, since he had reached the scholarly conclusion that they were really descendants of the Jews who had remained in the land after the Roman conquest and who had later embraced Islam. Clearly, "ex-Jews" would not challenge the right of Jews to the land, reasoned Ben Zvi. It was his opinion that they were not a nation but rather eleven "communities-peoples" and numerous smaller sects. Unfortunately, intellectual dialectics had little impact on the inhabitants of the land, who ungratefully persisted, despite Ben Zvi's research, in regarding themselves as Arabs and "Palestinians.” The socialists continued to cleave, with a religious fervor that would have made the Hasidim of the Mea Sh'arim district envious, to the catechism that social and economic benefits would make the Arab "our friend." In itself that should have been perceived as a ludicrous concept, but the Zionist laborers added yet another astonishing touch to their pilpulism. Not only were they planning to make the land a Jewish homeland, but they also embarked on a desperate struggle to get Jewish 153 employers to hire only Jewish laborers. Clearly, the need to create a solid, employed Jewish working class was vital to creating the infrastructure of a normal Jewish homeland, but just as clearly, it did little to make the Arab worker and peasant love the Zionists. What was really at work was a process of dual delusion. The Arab would be told that, somehow, Jewish laborers, Jewish immigration, Jewish land purchase, and the ultimate Jewish homeland would not really rob him of any rights. And the Jew, repeating this to himself enough times, would persuade himself that it was true. Thus, the first postwar Zionist Congress (1921) adopted a resolution of "friendship" toward the Arabs, stressing that Eretz Yisrael was the common homeland of two peoples. It never explained how the Balfour promise of a Jewish homeland really meant a "common" homeland for Jews and Arabs. In describing the muddled views of Achdut Avoda in the period between the two world wars, one writer said: "It recognized the existence of an Arab people in Israel but demanded of it that it renounce its rights. It proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to Palestine but recognized the need for coexistence between Jews and Arabs" (Yosef Gorni, "Zionist Socialism and the Arab Question," Middle Eastern Studies, 1978). What to make of this nonsense? Gorni writes: "The key to their subjective approach was the belief that objective necessity would sooner or later create a Jewish majority in Palestine which would solve all the political, ethical and socialist aspects of the problem." Translated into simple, if cynical terms, the policy was: While we are a minority in the land, let us pay lip service to a "common homeland" and "mutual benefits," all the while working to become a majority so that the embarrassing political and ethical question of Arab majority rights will fade away. Either the Zionist leaders were fools or, more probably, believed the Arabs were. Ben Zvi could tell the Vaad Leumi (Jewish representative committee) in 1922: "Some rights are not dependent on the approval of others. We will employ all possible means of entering the country and since this is historically inevitable the Arabs must understand us. And only when they understand can we arrive at reconciliation with our neighbors." And then the Poale Zion in 1920 could declare that "the interests of the fellahin and the masses of Arab workers will not be affected by the Jewish influx. For we wish to build this country not only for ourselves but for all its inhabitants." And finally, a leader of the World Zionist Movement, Nahum Sokolow, could tell the Arabs that the only problem was that of "misunderstanding." The Arabs would have had to 154 be cretins not to give the reply of Arab writer Issat Darwazeh in AlKarmel (1921): "They [the Zionists] keep dinning into our ears the word 'misunderstanding.' Are they trying to tell us that flooding the country with an overwhelming Jewish majority is nothing to frighten the Arab nation in Palestine? ... Won't Mr. Sokolow tell us which rights the Arabs will not be deprived of by Zionist political fulfillment? Let the leaders of the Zionist movement ... find for their nation some uninhabited country.” Poale Zion spokesman Yosef Aharonovitz, in a 1921 article called "L'Atzmeynu," could somehow write: "The Arab masses, as all uncultured masses, are caught in a net of intrigue ... by those who spread and arouse among them a passion for vengeance and also by the natural passion in their hearts to plunder and loot. Anyone who tends to see in these intrigues signs of a national or political movement errs and desecrates, by his error, the concept of an ideological movement of any kind. ... One can speak of all kinds of trends and turnings from various directions but not about an Arab national movement.” Alas, the poor Arab lad insisted that he existed. After the bloody 1921 riots by the "invisible" Arab national movement, the British colonialist government appointed the Haycraft Commission to look into the causes of the Arab riots that took the lives of forty-three Jews. They were hardly an unbiased party, but the fact remains that the anti-Zionist British did not have to fabricate the essential cause of the riots. It was, unfortunately, quite true that the Arab's "main objection to immigration has, however, been political and this obsession, although originating with the more educated Arabs, has filtered through the khans and coffee shops into the streets and villages. It can be summed up in the fear that through extreme Jewish immigration Palestine will become a Jewish dominion.” As the Arab national dybbuk refused to be exorcised, the Zionist movement resorted to all kinds of blandishments and devices to "win over" the Arabs. All were based on the time-dishonored Middle Eastern appetite for baksheesh - bribes, money. Thus, men like Yosef Nahmani became skilled in lavishing entertainment and gifts on local Bedouin sheikhs. Another frequent initiative was to gather Arab signatures on mazbatas ("petitions") in support of Zionism. These were obtained for small sums from village heads and were then proudly displayed as external propaganda to show that the Arab population was not unanimously opposed to Zionism. (After the State of Israel came into being and for the first two decades or so, a more sophisticated but essentially similar game was played with the cooperation of the heads of the hamullas. That, today, is gone with the shifting sands of time. Thanks
to Israeli education, the Arabs today would stone any official who attempted such a crude approach.) In any event, these "spontaneous" Arab ads and petitions on behalf of Zionism proved to be a tidy little source of income for the Uncle Ahmeds of their time, but their effectiveness was surely nonexistent. Every Arab knew why another Arab suddenly became "pro-Zionist." The petitions became things of ridicule, and, worse, when a decision was made to end a long-term subsidy, the "pro-Zionist" would turn around and embarrass his Jewish friends by "repenting" and signing an anti-Zionist petition. An even more expensive delusion was the decision to take hard-earned Jewish money and attempt to soothe "the Arab beast" by grassrooot benefits. It is estimated that between 1918 and 1921 some £ 3,000 went for this, and we know that in 1923 Colonel Kisch, head of the Political Department of the Palestine Zionist Executive (PZE), requested £ 8,500 for such activities. To angry (and sober) Zionists who bitterly protested the spending of such large sums (at the time) of money that had originally been raised for colonization. Dr. Chaim Weizmann pathetically replied (June 8, 1920): "It may show little return, but if it only brings a temporary relief to the situation, that is all one wants." Such is the politics of confusion. The most ambitious delusion was the attempt to create an Arab political movement that, in the words of Kalvarisky, would be a "large Muslim-Arab party favorable to our aspirations." The rankest amateur political realist could have predicted the failure of such an Uncle Ahmed party. What self-respecting Arab would support a political group conceived by Zionists, come into the world with Zionist midwives, and whose entire basis lay in its success in paying out baksheesh? Thousands upon thousands of pounds went into Arab pockets, and Dr. Eder of the PZE, commenting on Kalvarisky's "generosity," observed: "He gives out money very readily to people who may be taking the money and laughing at us.” The Zionists went through two Arab political movements, the Muslim National Association and the Palestine Arab National Party, before giving up. In the words of Tel Aviv Mayor Meir Dizengoff in 1923: "The moderates ... are the baksheesh takers who will oppose us if we don't pay them." Samuel Tolkowsky, an Israeli expert on Arabs, gave vent to his "Zionism" by adamantly supporting bribery, because "we must prove to the Arabs that our coming into the country will really be to their advantage and ... the big majority of the Palestinian Arabs understand by 'advantage,' only material advantage." And Aaron Aharonson: "So far as 156 we know the Arabs, the man among them who will withstand a bribe is still to be born.” What a policy of coexistence! What a way to guarantee Zionism's peaceful progress! A policy based on mutual contempt of the briber and bribee. ... Neither was it successful. Among the most extreme of the Zionist haters was Musa Kazim Al Hussini, president of the Arab Executive. The impossible Kalvarisky met him in 1922 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and at least hinted at the possibility of financial reward if he would moderate his views. According to Kalvarisky, Musa Kazim replied that "his attitude toward us is in our hands." A generous sum of money passed, but within a few months Musa Kazim's behavior reverted to its extreme anti-Zionism. Confronted, he proudly replied: "I am still a patriot and did not sell myself or my people to the Zionists." So much for the lack of hostility of Uncle Ahmed. Confusion, contradiction, and mass delusion were the characteristics of official Zionist policy vis-a-vis the Arabs from the beginning. Moshe Beilinson gave voice to the prevalent theory within the Achdut Avoda movement in a 1925 article, "On the Controversy Regarding Arab-Jewish Relations." The gist of the theory was that "Palestine" was not generally "of importance" to the Arabs since they had had many other national centers and lands. The Jews, however, had only one land, and it was vital for their physical and spiritual survival. Since the Zionists would thus be taking only a small part of the huge Arab territory, and also guaranteeing a better life for the Arabs in Eretz Yisrael, including equal rights, surely the Arabs would eventually realize that Zionism did not really conflict with Arab nationalism. It was that kind of thinking that could lead Laborite Yosef Sprinzak in 1919 to declare himself "one of the admirers of a Jewish-Arab alliance" and then to insist that "we must receive Palestine without limitation or reservation. ... There is room for half a million Arabs in a greater Jewish Palestine, but there is not room here for an Arab kingdom." Obviously, the Zionists totally misread the Arab mind. The Arabs were not interested in a large amount of the land. They wanted all of it, because they believed that it was theirs. Most unreasonable, true. Eminently selfish, beyond a doubt. But a fact. And a fact to this day, only more so. Whatever the feeling of the "Palestinian" about the greater "Arab nation" and "homeland," he is first a "Palestinian," and he wants "his" land - all of it. The "Palestinians," whether they were a national movement or people in 1880 or 1900 or 1930, certainly believe they are that today. Our refusal
to recognize them as such is valid and justified. But that refusal must be accompanied by the realization of the implications. To deny "Palestinian" rights to all or any part of Eretz Yisrael, one must cease deluding himself that somehow and sometime they will accept that. They never will. No national group can ever or will ever reconcile itself to the loss of a major part of its land to another people, especially when the latter appears to be weak, isolated, confused, and unsure of its own rights. Let the Jews know that there is no "Palestine" or "Palestinians," but let them not expect the Arabs to accept that. Ben-Gurion presented his delusion, of Zionism and the Arab national movement not being in conflict because the Arabs had so much land and the poor Jews had only one country, in 1936 to George Antonius. Antonius, a Christian Palestine leader, met with Ben-Gurion three times and in his description of their discussion, the future Israeli prime minister painted a rosy picture in which he sought to portray only a narrow gulf separating himself and Antonius. Just a cursory look at Antonius's replies reveals how shocking was the Zionist leadership's desire to deceive itself. Antonius saw the very idea of a Jewish state as dangerous to Arab aspirations. Ben-Gurion heard nothing. He did not want to. We suffer from deafness of the political ear to this day. There was one small section of the Zionist movement that realized that the Arabs would never accept a Jewish state and that war would be a permanent threat to it. They were not deluded. Instead, they proposed to give up the idea of a Jewish state. This pitiful alternative to Zionist delusions was mainly the Brit Shalom ("Alliance of Peace") group, founded in 1925 by intellectuals of mainly German origin. They included philosopher Martin Buber, Hebrew University President Judah Magnes, Dr. Hugo Bergmann, and others. These people, sensing the essential flaws in the official Zionist argument, called for a binational state, with both Arabs and Jews enjoying absolute equality and parity, regardless of numbers. Bergmann, rising to metaphysics, discovered that by "divine grace," no less, the land was intended for both peoples. Others, more political, avowed that the noble Jewish gesture of giving up its right to an exclusive homeland in the Land of Israel would move the Arabs to do the same. Eventually the Brit Shalom intellectuals joined in a group called Ihud and worked with the Marxist Hashomer Hatzair movement in a common League for Jewish-Arab Cooperation and Rapprochement whose goal was a binational state.
Essentially, the difference between the binationalists and the official Zionists was over delusions. Each had its own, and the ultimate common denominator that all refused to see -- that all did not wish to see — was that the Arabs believed that the land was theirs -- all of it -- that as the majority they had the right to it and saw no reason to give up one inch of land or one centimeter of rights. Many blind Zionists; see how they ran! Faced with the unmistakable fact of the existence of the Arab who was a majority in the land, they groped in various directions, saying: 1. The Arab as a distinct entity does not really exist and will ultimately be absorbed by the Jews -- so there is no problem. 2. The Arabs do exist and will remain, but they are only a collection of tribes and classes and not a national people -- so there is no problem. 3. The Arabs are a national people, but if we show them goodwill, learn Arabic, mix with them, and give them economic and social benefits, they will agree to Jewish control of the country -- so there is no problem. 4. The Arabs are a national people who will never agree to a Jewish state but will accept a binational state in which both Jews and Arabs will have exactly the same powers and rights, even if the Arabs are a majority - - so there is no problem. 5. The Arabs will never accept anything less than their own sovereign state, so partition of that country into separate Arab and Jewish states will give them what they want; they will accept the plan, and all the "Palestinians" who wish to will live within its boundaries and any who choose to remain in the Jewish state will live with the Jews in brotherhood and equality -- so there is no problem. But there is a problem. It is a problem of sons who learned nothing from the errors of their fathers. After one hundred years of Jewish pioneering return; after eighty years of political Zionism; after scores of riots; after four major wars and more than thirty years of a Jewish state, the sons of the fathers, the Jews of Israel, still believe that they can live in peace with the Arabs in a land the Arabs believe is theirs. Time runs out, and we had best, quickly, listen to the Arab voices and believe what they say they plan for us.