Head & Rear

Nobody knows better than Britain's new Colonial Secretary William George Arthur Ormsby-Gore the history behind the terror that Arabs were last week waging against Jews in Palestine. During the War he was not only an intelligence officer with the Arab Bureau in the Near East, but assistant political officer in Palestine. In a statement on the Palestine terror in the House of Commons last fortnight he confined himself to droning out the bloody score: some 40 Arabs, half a dozen British soldiers, some 30 Jews killed. "The daily average of attacks by firearms in Palestine," continued the Colonial Secretary, "runs from ten to 15. Attacks on roads and railways have averaged eight daily. There have been from five to ten bombings daily and an equal number of attacks on telephones and telegraph installations. The British Government has not been and will not be moved by intimidation and outrage."

Nearly hidden beneath last week's shootings was the deeper issue of an Arab family feud. Between the great Arab families, the Husseini and Nashashibi, bitter rivals for leadership in Palestine, the last insult fell last year when a Hussein beat out Ragheb Bey Nashashibi for the mayoralty of Jerusalem which he had held for 14 years. The Hussein had had the votes of Jerusalem Jews. The enraged Nashashibi plotted a great Arab revolt against Jewish immigration to win Arab leadership from the head of Husseini, Haj Amin el Husseini, president of the Moslem Supreme Council and, as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, spiritual leader of Palestine Moslems. The point was that the Grand Mufti, in the event of an Arab revolt, must either give up his Arab following or lose the high office he holds with British support. Last week this Nashashibi strategy seemed to be working to perfection. The Grand Mufti had been obliged to promise the British that the Moslem Supreme Council would support no violence or strike. Protested the inspired young Arabs of Nablus: "Your religious position requires you to march at the head of the people, never at the rear."

Such impudent talk from youngsters to the Grand Mufti revealed a still deeper cause of last week's revolt: the crackup of the Arab social hierarchy in Palestine. Jewish development of Palestine has weakened the downtrodden Arab farm workers to the feudal tyranny of their Arab masters, has raised wage and living standards in Palestine, introduced the eight-hour day, encouraged Arab trade-unions. Result: economic liberation of Arab farmers. At bottom the anti-Jewish rage of the Arab landowners, backed by their Bedouin cavalry hordes, was caused by this unexpected social upheaval. But the leaders are willing to compromise. Not so the sincere fanatic desert Arabs who follow them and are always ready for a new holy war.

These savage herders and fighters last week roused their sheiks in British-mandated Transjordania to urge a single wild cavalry sweep into Palestine to massacre Jews and Britons. Mild Emir Abdullah Ibn Hussein, who holds his throne by the favor of Britain, tried to soothe his sheiks while the Emir's son, Crown Prince Talal, whipped them up to a fighting frenzy.

In Palestine the Husseini family, last week, bobbed up with a Hussein among the extremists. Interviewed by the New York Times he said: "Between Arabs and Jews a life-&-death struggle is raging, which will not cease before one of the parties has been completely crushed. . . . There is no 'antiSemitism' in Palestine. We ourselves belong to the Semitic race. We turn against the Jews not because they are Jews but because they threaten our existence. Our resistance would be just as strong if the invaders were French, German or Scandinavian. . . .

"A London Times correspondent has said that the Arabians will meet the same fate as the Indians in North America. We feel sorry for the Jews in Europe but we can't see why we should be the victims of their colonial expansion. . . . Italian propaganda in Palestine probably exists to some extent but I see no reason why we should exchange British rule for Italian. On the contrary, the Italian occupation of Ethiopia is a threat against the two independent states on the Arabian peninsula: Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Mussolini has no chance of gaining followers among the Arabians; he has instead contributed to the speedy growth of the Pan-Arab movement."

Last fortnight another of the promises sprayed about by British diplomats in 1917 came home to roost when Britain's Wartime Minister David Lloyd George reminded the House of Commons: "The Balfour Declaration [for a British-backed Jewish homeland in Palestine] was made at one of the darkest times in the War. The French army had mutinied, the Italian army was on the eve of collapse, America had hardly started to come in. There was nothing left but for Great Britain to confront the most powerful military combination the world has ever seen. We came to the conclusion that it was most vital we should have the sympathy and cooperation of that most remarkable community: the Jews throughout the world. I bear testimony to the fact that Jews responded to the appeal which was made."

Forced to consider the possibility of another War and another "darkest time," Britain was last week inclined to take no chance of alienating that same "most remarkable community," even at the risk of antagonizing Britain's vast Moslem populations. In prospect for Palestine was one of those muddling-through, negotiating, chieftain-bribing, bloody campaigns of counterterrorism familiar in the history of British genius for government.

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