Racism and Apartheid : Zionists in their own words

Since Zionism and its earliest leaders were the products of terror and racism (mostly practiced by anti-Semitic Europe such as Tsarist Russia, France, and Nazi Germany), many Zionist leaders felt it was justified to condone similar practices towards others. 

It should be emphasized that many of the racist & apartheid Zionist quotes below are not confined to the dealings with Muslim and Christian Arabs, but also have spread to the oriental Jews, who are Arabs in culture, language, and descent. What is dangerous about these Zionists is that many of their quotes became institutionalized policies into the structure and society of the “Jewish state”, for example, contemplate Ben-Gurion’s description of the North African Arab Jews:

“Even the immigrant of North Africa, who looks like a savage, who has never read a book in his life, not even a religious one, and doesn’t even know how to say his prayers, either wittingly or unwittingly has behind him a spiritual heritage of thousands of years. . . .” (1949,The First Israelis,p.157)

It is worth pointing out a common pattern among most racist leaders (Zionist and non Zionist alike) that they’re also racist towards their own kind or race. Racism breeds racism, and terror breeds terror. Although we disagree with this fundamental rule of human nature, it is a fact of life which all humans must accept and deplore simultaneously.

In a pamphlet under the heading “Truth from Palestine” published in 1891, Ahad Ha’Am wrote of how Jewish settlers at the time treated the indigenous Palestinians:

“[The Jewish settlers] treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamelessly for no sufficient reason, and even take pride in doing so. The Jews were slaves in the land of their Exile, and suddenly they found themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only exists in a land like Turkey. This sudden change has produced in their hearts an inclination towards repressive tyranny, as always happens when slave rules.”

‘Ahad Ha’Am warned:

“We are used to thinking of the Arabs as primitive men of the desert, as a donkey-like nation that neither sees nor understands what is going around it. But this is a great error. The Arab, like all sons of Sham, has sharp and crafty mind . . . Should time come when life of our people in Palestine imposes to a smaller or greater extent on the natives, they will not easily step aside.” (One Palestine Complete, p.104)

How accurate ‘Ahad Ha’Am’s description was even after more than a 100 plus years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? The conduct of most Israelis, especially in the occupied territories, is very much similar to the way ‘Ahad portrayed it over a century ago.

By the turn of the 20th century, Ben-Gurion advocated exclusively Jewish labor (Avodah Ivrit) in Jewish businesses. He explained why a Jewish laborer should earn a higher salary because:

“[he was] more intelligent and diligent” than the Arab.(Shabtai Teveth, p.12-13)

What if the average Christian American was more “intelligent and diligent” than his Jewish American? Would that justify discrimination in the work force? 

How could the question of whether someone was more “intelligent and diligent” or not be measured in a fair and a balanced way?

The lack of understanding in the boycott of Arab labor proclaimed by Jewish labour Ahad Ha’Am stated:

“Apart from the political danger, I can’t put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to humans of another people, and unwittingly the thought comes to my mind: if it is so now, what will be our relation to the others if in truth we shall achieve at the end of times power in Eretz Yisrael? And if this be the Messiah: I do not wish to see his coming.” (UN: The Origins And Evolution Of Palestine Problem, section II)

From the start, Ben-Gurion wanted to segregate Arab and Jewish societies in all sectors. 

For example, Jews in Palestine had their separate economical, social, health, educational, media, and political sectors that were opened to Jews only. The segregation of Palestine’s society was nurtured by the Zionists to make it easier to partition the country when the “appropriate” time comes. In that regards, he stated in the 1920s:

“The assets of the Jewish National Home must be created exclusively through our own work, for only the product of the Hebrew labor can serve as the national estate.” (Shabtai Teveth, p.66) Similarly, Ben-Gurion stated in the early 1920s: “Without Hebrew labor there is no way to absorb the Jewish masses. Without Hebrew labor, there will be no Jewish economy; without Hebrew labor, there will be no [Jewish] homeland. And anyone who does anything counter to the principle of Hebrew labor harms the most precious asset we have for fulfilling Zionism.” (One Palestine Complete, p.288)

Ben-Gurion had strange ideas to justify why Jews have the right to settle in Palestine. He explained that the right of the Jews to Palestine rested on their capacity for developing its resources. He declared in 1930:

“We do not recognize any form of absolute ownership over any country. Any group of diligent persons, every industrious people, is entitled to enjoy the fruits of labor, and do with its talents as it pleases. it has no right to prevent others from doing the same, or to close the doors leading to nature’s gifts in the faces of others. The five million inhabitants of Australia have no right to close the gates of their continent–which they alone cannot fully exploit– and so exclude the masses of desperate people seeking a new place to work. This is the principle behind the right of free migration, championed by international socialism.” (Shabtai Teveth, p. 37)

Following the argument present in this article

If this argument is sound for Jews to settle Palestine against the wishes of its indigenous population, why isn’t it a good argument for Germans, Italians, and Palestinian refugees to immigrate and settle Israel? It’s worth noting that over 85% of Israelis live in under 14% of the land and that Israel has the highest ratio of urban dwellers in the world (Check The article above)

In 1936 Ben-Gurion advocated exclusively Jewish labor in Jewish run enterprises, he said:

“If we want Hebrew redemption 100%, then we must have 100% Hebrew settlement, a 100% Hebrew farm, and 100% Hebrew port.” (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p.24)

Regarding anti-semites, Theodor Herzl explained how they could benefit the Zionist enterprise, he wrote in his diary:

“The antisemites will become our most loyal friends, the antisemite nations will become our allies.” (One Palestine Complete, p.47)

According to the British Shaw Commission, which investigated the 1929 Palestinian rebellion against the British Mandate, it went to describe the Charter of the Jewish National Fund (“Keren Kayemet”) as the following:

“The Constitution of the Jewish Agency: Land Holding and Employment Clauses … 

“(d) Land is to be acquired as Jewish property and … the same shall be held as the inalienable property of the Jewish people. 

“(e) The Agency shall promote agricultural colonization based on Jewish labor … it shall be deemed to be a matter of principle that Jewish labor shall be employed …” 

“Keren Kayemet draft lease: Employment of Jewish labor only 

“… The lessee undertakes to execute all works connected with the cultivation of the holding only with Jewish labor. Failure to comply with this duty by the employment of non Jewish labor shall render the lessee liable to the payment of compensation …” 

“The lease also provides that the holding shall never be held by any but a Jew …” 

“Keren ha-Yesod agreements: Employment of labor 

The following provisions are included: 

‘Article 7 – The settler hereby undertakes that … if and whenever he may be obliged to hire help, he will hire Jewish workmen only.’ 

“In the similar agreement for the Emek colonies, there is a provision as follows: 

‘Article 11 – The settler undertakes … not to hire any outside labour except Jewish labourers.'” (UN: The Origins And Evolution Of Palestine Problem, section V) 

It should be emphasized that most of these laws are still in effect in the JNF’s Charter, especially the ones dealing with leasing the “Jewish Land” it controls to non-Jews.

While the peace conference was convening at Versailles in early 1919, a debate erupted on whether to grant the Mandate over Palestine to the Americans or to the British. Zionists opposed the U.S. control of the country on the grounds that American democracy (where majority rule) ran counter to the plan for a “national home” in Palestine. A publication issued by the Zionist Organization in London stated:

“Democracy in American too commonly means majority rule without regard to diversities of types or stages of civilization or differences of quality. Democracy in that sense has been called the melting pot in which that quantitatively lesser is assimilated into quantitatively greater. This doubtless is natural in America, and works on the whole very well. But if American idea were applied as an American administration might apply it to Palestine, what would happen? The numerical majority in Palestine today is [Palestinian] Arab, not Jewish. Qualitatively, it is a simple fact that the Jews are now predominant in Palestine, and given proper conditions they will be predominant quantitatively also in a generation or two. But if the crude arithmetical conception of democracy were to be applied now, or at some early stage in the future to Palestinian conditions, the majority that would rule would be the Arab majority, and the task of establishing and developing a great Jewish Palestine would be infinitely more difficult.” The problem at the heart of the Zionist claim was rarely articulated so clearly: the Zionist dream ran counter to the principle of DEMOCRACY.(One Palestine Complete, p.119)

During the early stages of the First Palestinian Intifada in 1936, Ben-Gurion was not free of ambivalence toward the Palestinian Arabs. He stated:

“I never felt hatred of the Arabs and none of their actions ever awakened vengeful emotions in me.”

On the other hand, he felt that Jaffa should be defaced:

“The destruction of Jaffa, the city and the port, will happen and it will be for the best.This city, which grew fat on Jewish immigration and settlement, is asking for destruction when it swings a hatchet over the heads of its builders and benefactors. When Jaffa falls into hell I will not be among the mourners.”(One Palestine Complete, p.383)

A month after the Nazi pogrom against Germany’s Jews, famously known as Kristallnacht, Ben-Gurion provided an interesting mathematical formula for saving German Jewish kids. He stated in December 1938:

“If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz Yisrael, I would choose the later—-because we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People.” (Righteous Victims,p.162)

Ben-Gurion explained how the Palestinian Arab citizens of the Jewish state might be treated:

As Ben-Gurion explained, the advantage of the [Palestinian] Arabs having Arab citizenship was that in the event of hostilities, their legal status would be that of resident aliens, and they therefore “could be expelled” from the Jewish state for potential disloyalty. With Israeli citizenship, on the other hand, “it would only be possible to imprison them, and it would be better to expel them than to imprison them.”(Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p.176)

Ben-Gurion stated that Zionism was largely a movement of Western Jews, specifically from Europe and America. In his opinion, the Jews of Europe were:

“The leading candidates for citizenship in the State of Israel. Hitler, more than he hurt the Jewish people, whom he knew and detested, hurt the Jewish State, whose coming he did not foresee. He destroyed the substance, the main and essential building force of the [Jewish] state. The state arose and did not find the nation which had waited for it.” In the absence of the European Jews, the state of Israel had to bring in Jews from Arab countries. Ben Gurion compared them with the Africans who were brought in as slaves to America.(1949,The First Israelis,p.157)

In one session of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Ben-Gurion referred to the Moroccan Jews as “savages,” but hastily added that they were no different from other Jews as the Polish ones. He said:

“They tell me that there are thieves among them. I am a Polish Jew, and I doubt if there is any Jewish community which has more thieves among them. I am doubtful if there is any Jewish community which has more thieves in it than the Polish ones.”

A few years later Ben Gurion wrote to Justice Moshe Estzioni:

“An Ashkenazi gangster, thief, pimp, or murderer will not gain the sympathy of the Ashkenazi community (if there is such a thing), nor will he expect it. But in such a primitive community as the Moroccans‘—such a thing is possible. . . “(1949,The First Israelis, p.157)

In 1949, Ben-Gurion was not free of ambivalence in his attitude towards the Yemenite Jewish immigrants. In a letter to Yigael Yadin, the first Israeli Chief of Staff, Ben Gurion wrote:

“This tribe is in some ways more easily absorbed, both culturally and economically, than any other. It is hardworking, it is not attracted by city life, it has—or at least, the male part has– a good grounding in Hebrew and the Jewish heritage. Yet in other ways it may be the most problematic of all. It is two thousands years behind us [European cultured Jews], perhaps even more. It lacks the most basic primary concepts of civilization (as distinct from culture). Its attitude toward women and children is primitive. Its physical condition poor. Its bodily strength is depleted and it does not have the minimal notions of hygiene. For thousands of years it lived in one of the most benighted and impoverished lands, under a rule even more backward than an ordinary feudal and theocratic regime.The passage from there to Israel has been profound human revolution, not a superficial, political one. All its human values need to changed from the ground.”(1949,The First Israelis,p.186-187)

It is worth noting how Ben Gurion referred to the Yemenite Jews by “it”.

Soon after the arrival of Chaim Weizmann to Jerusalem in late 1918, he described the ultra orthodox neighborhoods of the city to his wife as the following:

“There’s nothing more humiliating than ‘our’ Jerusalem. Anything that could be done to desecrate ,to defile the sacred has been done. It is impossible to imagine so much falsehood, blasphemy, greed, so many lies. It’s such an accursed city, there’s nothing there, no creature comforts. . . [It] hasn’t a single clean and comfortable apartment.”(One Palestine Complete, p.71)

In June 1938, Moshe Sharett stressed the importance of the period of transition into a Jewish state:

“The critical problem is a parliamentarian in the Jewish state and in the transition period to it …. it is necessary that an institution of government should be set up, and one of its functions will be to prepare the parliamentary regime. In this transition period also we will know who are the [Palestinian] Arabs who would agree to remain as citizens of the Jewish state and their number would certainly be much smaller than we think today. By the reduction of the [Palestinian] Arabs on one hand and Jewish immigration in the transition period on the other, we will ensure an absolute Hebrew majority in a parliamentary regime.” (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p.108-109)

In 1938 Berl Katzneslon, the influential Mapai leader, stated his opinion of the demographic make up of the Jewish state upon the implementation of the partition proposed by the Peel Commission:

“There is the question of how the army, the police, and the civil service will function and how a state can be run if part of its population is disloyal …..[and the Palestinian Arabs will get equal rights as Jews] … only a small minority of [the Palestinian] Arabs will remain in the country.”(Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p.115)

Soon after the so called war ended in 1949, the Israeli-Palestinian Arabs were systematically discriminated against, and for the most part were under direct military rule until 1966. Palestinian Arabs were confined to certain parts of the country, and they were also prevented from direct contact with civil and administrative officials, which eventually led to a segregated society (one Arab and the other Jewish) in Israel up to the present day. 

In February 1950, Moshe Sharett warned his fellow ministers:

“The is a growing number of cases of [Palestinian] Arab citizens of Israel applying to members of the government and to central offices not via the authorized officials, i.e. the military governor or the local officers in charge of [Palestinian] Arab affairs. . . . All these applications share the desire to circumvent the local government and wish to avoid having to deal with it in the particular case, because that authority [military governor] is seen as unamenable to them. . . . . . . . When there is a direct application by {Palestinian] Arabs who are residents of Israel, your offices should first verify the details of the cases in question with the appropriate local military authorities and not respond to the applicants until the matter has been clarified, and then do it in full cooperation with the authorized local government. Also, it would be preferable if the answer would not be given to the applicants directly, but that the final decision should be transmitted via local governor or the regional officer of [Palestinian] Arab affairs.” (1949,The First Israelis, p.65)

While speaking to the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vishinsky in the early 1950s, Moshe Sharett expressed interest in receiving Eastern European Jewish immigrants rather than Moroccan Arab Jews. In his opinion “the Jews of Eastern Europe are the salt of the earth” who should take precedence over other Jews in immigrating to the “Jewish state”, he said:

“There are countries—and I was referring to North Africa–from which not all Jews need to emigrate. It is not so much of quantity as of quality. Our role in Israel is a pioneering one, and we need people with certain strength of fiber.We are very anxious to bring the Jews of Morocco over and we are doing all we can to achieve this. But we cannot count on the Jews of Morocco alone to build the country, because they have not been educated for this. We don’t know what may yet happen to us, what military and political defeats we may yet have to face. So we need people who will remain steadfast in any hardship and who have a high degree of resistance. For the purpose of building up our country, I would say that the Jews of Eastern Europe are the salt of the earth. . . . ” (1949,The First Israelis,p.173)

This shows that specific Zionist Jews who share the values of Zionism as its racist colonial pioneers were the subject of interest, Zionism didn’t care about saving the Jewish people, It cared about establishing a Jewish state and used specific Jews to achieve that purpose.

According to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, European Jews have little in common with the “Orient”:

“We Jews have nothing in common with what is called the ‘Orient,’thank God. To the extent that our uneducated masses have ancient spiritual traditions and laws that call the Orient, they must be weaned away from them, and this is in fact what we are doing in every decent school, what life itself is doing with great success. We are going in Palestine, first for our national convenience,[second] to sweep out thoroughly all traces of the ‘Oriental soul.’ As for the [Palestinians] Arabs in Palestine, what they do is their business; but if we can do them a favor, it is to help them liberate themselves from the Orient.'” (One Palestine Complete, p.151)

It should be noted that the renaissance of Judaism was among the Muslim Arabs in Andalusia in southern Spain.

Under Zionism, Jews from Mena went through a complete process of de-arabization, and the whole racist ideology wanted to remove the Palestinian Arabic identity , and still trying to until this day. Ze’ev Jabotinsky stated in a letter to one of his Revisionist colleagues in the United States dated November 1939:

“We Jews, thank God, have nothing to do with the East. . . . The Islamic soul must be broomed out of Eretz-Yisrael. . . [Muslims are] yelling rabble dressed up in gaudy, savage rags.”(Expulsion Of The Palestinians,p.29)

In the early 1920s, there were talks of Palestine being part of a large Arab federation, but even Ahad Ha’Am said he would not remain in Palestine if that were to happen:

“Better to die in the exile than to die here and be buried in the land of fathers, if that land is considered the ‘homeland’ of the [Palestinian] Arabs and we are strangers in it.” (One Palestine Complete, p.285)

In 1949 Yosef Weitz described his dismay of the increasing number of the Oriental Jews, he stated:

“You know that we do not have a common language with them. Our culture level is not theirs. Their way of life is medieval. . . . While I was talking to Yosef Shprintsak, he expressed anxiety about preserving our cultural standards given the massive immigration from the Orient. There are indeed grounds for anxiety, but what’s the use? Can we stop it?” Yaakov Zrubavel, head of the Middle East Department of the Jewish Agency, concurred. “Perhaps these are not the Jews we would like to see coming here [Jewish state], but we can hardly tell them not to come. . . .” (1949,The First Israelis, p.156)

When the first Israeli Knesset convened in 1949, two elected Palestinian Arab-Israelis to the Knesset were present wearing their tradition headdress, Yosef Weitz wrote in his diary:

“It chilled the heart and angered the soul,” then he asked himself how these Palestinian Arab-Israelis MKs felt when they swore allegiance to the “Jewish state.” He noted in his diary, “Isn’t filled with lies and deceit? No. Nevertheless, I do not want there to be many of them. Perhaps they will integrate into society. But it will take several generations before they become loyal to the [Jewish] state.” (1949,The First Israelis, p.43)

Israel Zangwill wrote in an article published in “Voice Of Jerusalem” in 1920,that Palestinians’ cultural “backwardness” was a justification for the removal of the population or “transfer”. He stated: “

We cannot allow the Arabs to block so valuable a piece of historic reconstruction….. And therefore we must generally persuade them to ‘trek.’ After all, they have all Arabia with its million square miles …. There is no particular reason for the Arabs to cling to these few kilometers. ‘To fold their tents and silently steal away’ is their proverbial habit: let them exemplify it now.” (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 14, and Righteous Victims,p.140

Zionist leader Moshe Smilansky said in 1914:

“We must not forget that we are dealing here with a semi-savage people, which has extremely primitive concepts. And this is his nature: If he senses in you power- he will submit and will hide his hatred for you. And if he senses weakness- he will dominate you …. Moreover … owing to the many tourists and urban Christians, there developed among the Arabs base values which are not common to other primitive people … to lie, to cheat, to harbor grave [unfounded] suspicions and to tell tales…. and a hidden hatred for the Jews. These Semites– they are anti Semites.”(Righteous Victims,p.43)

In 1914 Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (Israel’s second president) advocated the employment of exclusively Jewish Labor in Jewish run business, he wrote:

“It should have been the case that the Jewish bourgeoisie would be chauvinistic and would demand only Jewish labor.We, the socialists, tending toward internationalism, should have demanded that workers be employed without regard to national and religious differences. In reality, we see exactly the opposite.”(Righteous Victims,p.51)

In 1909 Meir Disengoff, who become Tel-Aviv’s first mayor, asked:

“How can Jews, who demand emancipation in Russia, rob the rights of, and act selfishly toward, other workers upon coming to Eretz Yisrael.”(Righteous Victims,p.51)

Arthur Ruppin wrote to his friend on December 3rd 1931:

“At most, the [Palestinian] Arabs would agree to grant national rights to the Jews in an Arab state, on the pattern of the national rights in Eastern Europe. But we know only too well from conditions in Eastern Europe how little a majority with executive power can be moved to grant real and complete national equality to a minority. The fate of the Jewish minority in Palestine would always be dependent upon the goodwill of the [Palestinian] Arab majority, which would steer the state. To the Jews of Eastern Europe, who form the over whelming majority of all the Zionists, such a settlement would be completely unsatisfactory, and it would kill their enthusiasm for the Zionist cause and for Palestine. A movement which would agree to such a compromise with the [Palestinian] Arabs would not be supported by the East European Jews and would very soon become a Zionism without Zionists.“(Israel:A History, p.66)

In 1936 the Mapai leader David Hacohen explained how Zionist socialism should be for Jews not Arabs, he said:

“I remember being one of the first of our comrades [of the Ahdut Ha’avodah] to got to London after the first World War. … There I became a socialist. … [In Palestine] I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism, to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to the housewives that they not buy at [Palestinian] Arab stores, to prevent [Palestinian] Arab workers from getting jobs there.…. To pour kerosene on the [Palestinian] Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash the Arab eggs they had bought; to praise to the skies the Keneen Kayemet [Jewish National Fund] that sent Hankin to Beirut to buy land from absentee effendi [landlords] and to throw the fellahin [peasants] off the land— to buy dozens of dunums– from an Arab is permitted, but to sell, God forbid, one Jewish dunam to an Arab is prohibited.” (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p.25)

Such racist sentiment was the norm among the early Zionist leaders, similar statements were also repeated by Ben Gurion and Jabotinsky.

Soon after the 1948 war, the “Jewish state” imposed a martial law against the remaining Palestinian citizens of the state. The political aim of the martial law was summed up in the following top secret memorandum:”

The government’s policy . . . has sought to divide the [Palestinian] Arab population status of the [Palestinian] Arab villages, and competitive spirit of local elections, deepened the divisions inside the villages themselves. The communal policy and the clan divisions in the villages prevented [Palestinian] Arab unity. . . . Martial law has ruled all this time with complete and total authority.”(1949,The First Israelis, p.65)

In an interview with Yehoshua Palmon (who was a Jewish Agency Arabist and later became PM’s advisor on Arab Affairs) conducted in 1983, Palmon clearly stated the “Jewish state’s” policies towards its Palestinian Arab citizens soon after the 1948 war:

“The 1929 anti-Jewish riots in Palestine taught me that we had only two alternatives before us: surrender or the sword. I chose the sword. I was not surprised that the [Palestinian] Arabs fled [during the 1948 war]. It was natural reaction. It was the best of them who fled—the leaders, the intelligentsia, the economic elite. Only the small fly remained. I behaved toward them as a wolf in sheep’s clothing—harsh, but outwardly decent. I opposed the integration of [Palestinian] Arabs into Israeli society. I preferred separate development. True, this prevented the [Palestinian] Arabs from integrating into the Israeli democracy. Yet they had never had democracy before. Since they never had it, they never missed it. The separation made it possible to maintain a democratic regime within the Jewish population alone. I was not a member of the MAPAI [which later evolved into the Labor Party], but I thought that if Ben-Gurion did not remain in power it would be a catastrophe for the state. My policy . . . was not designed to provide votes for the MAPAI, but instead for Ben-Gurion’s rule. At least, that was how I saw it at the time. . . The main problem was that of the infiltration [in the early 1950s]. We expelled a few thousand, but we failed to expel tens of thousands. In that sense we failed—the number of [Palestinian] Arabs in the country continued to rise steadily.”(1949,The First Israelis, p.67)

Many Zionists talk about Thawret alburaq/1929 Palestinian Arab revolt, and try to ignore its prelude, just like when they talk about modern-day legitimate armed resistance against the occupation,and they don’t ask themselves: Why Palestinians are resisting? Why do they hate us? 

A simple look at the history of Zionism , what all Zionist leaders and founders called for , and its actions since its inception explains why. 

In the wake of World War I, Palestinians began to organize politically in opposition both to British rule, and to the imposition of the Zionist movement as a privileged interlocutor of the British. Palestinians efforts included petitions to the British, to the Paris Peace Conference, and to the newly formed League of Nations. Their most notable effort was a series of seven Palestine Arab congresses planned by a country-wide network of Muslim-Christian societies and held from 1919 until 1928. These congresses put forward a consistent series of demands focused on independence for Arab Palestine, rejection of the Balfour Declaration, support for majority rule, and ending unlimited Jewish immigration and land purchases. The congresses established an Arab executive that met repeatedly with British officials in Jerusalem and in London, albeit to little avail.It was a dialogue of the deaf. The British refused to recognize the representative authority of the congresses or its leaders, and insisted on Arab acceptance of the Balfour Declaration and the terms of the Mandate that had succeeded it—the antithesis of every substantive Arab demand—as a precondition for discussion. The Palestinian leadership pursued this fruitless legalistic approach for over a decade and a half.

In contrast to these elite-led initiatives, popular dissatisfaction with British support for Zionist aspirations exploded into demonstrations, strikes, and riots, with violence flaring notably in 1920, 1921, and 1929, each episode more intense than the previous one. In every case, these were spontaneous eruptions, often provoked by Zionist groups flexing their muscle ,just like what happened in the prelude of 1929. The British repressed peaceful protests and outbreaks of violence with equally harsh severity, but Arab popular discontent continued. By the early 1930s, younger, educated lower-middle- and middle-class elements, impatient with the conciliatory approach of the elite, began to launch more radical initiatives and organize more militant groups. These included an activist network set up throughout the northern parts of the country by a Haifa based itinerant preacher of Syrian origin named Shaykh ‘Iz al-Din al-Qassam, which was clandestinely preparing for an armed uprising, as well as the Istiqlal. Istiqlal (“independence”) Party, whose name summarized its aims. 

All of these efforts took place initially in the shadow of a strict British military regime that lasted until 1920 (one of the congresses was held in Damascus because the British had banned Palestinian political activity), and thereafter under a series of British Mandatory high commissioners. The first of them was Sir Herbert Samuel, a committed Zionist and former cabinet minister who laid the governmental foundations for much of what followed, and who ably advanced Zionist aims while foiling those of the Palestinians.

Well-informed Palestinians were aware of what the Zionists were preaching both abroad and in Hebrew in Palestine to their followers—that unlimited immigration would produce a Jewish majority that would permit a takeover of the country. They had been following the doings and sayings of Zionist leaders via the extensive reportage on the subject in the Arabic press since well before the war. (Palestinian Identity ,ch.6,119-44)

While Chaim Weizmann had, for example, told several prominent Arabs at a dinner party in Jerusalem in March 1918 “To beware treacherous insinuations that Zionists were seeking political power,(Storrs,Orientations,341) Most knew that such assertions were strategic and meant to cloak the Zionists’ real objectives. Indeed, the Zionist movement’s leaders understood that “under no circumstances should they talk as though the Zionist program required the expulsion of the Arabs, because that would cause the Jews to lose the world’s sympathy,” but knowledgeable Palestinians were not deceived. (Tom segev,one Palestine ,complete,p.404)

While readers of the press, members of the elite, and villagers and city-dwellers who were in direct contact with the Jewish settlers were conscious of the threat, such awareness was far from universal. Similarly, the evolution of the Palestinians’ sense of self was uneven. While most people desired Palestinian independence, some entertained the hope that such independence could be secured as part of a larger Arab state. A newspaper briefly published in Jerusalem in 1919 by ‘Arif al-‘Arif and another political figure, Muhammad Hasan al-Budayri, proclaimed this aspiration in its name: Suriyya al-Janubiyya, or Southern Syria. (The publication was quickly suppressed by the British.) A government under Amir Faysal, son of Sharif Husayn, had been established in Damascus in 1918, and many Palestinians hoped their country would become the southern part of this nascent state.

However France claimed Syria for itself on the basis of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and in July 1920, French troops occupied the country, eliminating the newborn Arab state. As Arab countries under mandates or other forms of direct or indirect European control became preoccupied with their own narrow problems, more and more Palestinians realized that they would have to depend on themselves. Arabism and a sense of belonging to the larger Arab world always remained strong, but Palestinian identity was constantly reinforced by Britain’s bias in favor of the burgeoning Zionist project.

Supported by the British authorities ,a separate Jewish-controlled sector of the economy was created through the exclusion of Arab labor from Jewish-owned firms under the slogan of “Avoda ivrit,” Hebrew labor, and the injection of truly massive amounts of capital from abroad. By the middle of the 1930s, although Jews were still a minority of the population, this largely autonomous sector was bigger than the Arab owned part of the economy.

In spite of the extraordinary capacity of the Zionist movement to mobilize and invest capital in Palestine (financial inflows to an increasingly self-segregated Jewish economy during the 1920s were 41.5 percent larger than its net domestic product, an astonishing level. (Zeev Sternhell, The Founding myths of Israel, p.2217))

In 1935 alone, more than sixty thousand Jewish immigrants came to Palestine, a number greater than the entire Jewish population of the country in 1917. Most of these refugees, mainly from Germany but also from neighboring countries where anti-Semitic persecution was intensifying, were skilled and educated. German Jews were allowed to bring assets worth a total of $100 million, thanks to the Transfer Agreement reached between the Nazi government and the Zionist movement, concluded in exchange for lifting a Jewish boycott of Germany.(Edwin Black, The Transfer agreement: The untold story of the secret agreement between the the third Reich and Jewish Palestine)

During the 1930s the Jewish economy in Palestine overtook the Arab sector for the first time, and the Jewish population grew to more than 30 percent of the total by 1939. In light of fast economic growth and this rapid population shift over only seven years, combined with considerable expansion of the Zionist movement’s military capacities, it became clear to its leaders that the demographic, economic, territorial, and military nucleus necessary for achieving domination over the entire country, or most of it, would soon be in place. As Ben-Gurion put it at the time, 

“immigration at the rate of 60,000 a year means a Jewish state in all Palestine.”(Shabai Teveth,Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs:From peace to war,p.166-168)

Many Palestinians came to similar conclusions. Palestinians now saw themselves inexorably turning into strangers in their own land, as ‘Isa al-‘Isa had warned in dire tones in 1929. Over the first twenty years of British occupation, the Palestinians increasing resistance to the Zionist movement’s growing dominance had found expression in periodic outbreaks of violence, which occurred in spite of commitments by the Palestinian leadership to the British to keep their followers in line. In the countryside, sporadic attacks, often described by the British and the Zionists as “banditry, bespoke the popular anger at Zionist land purchases, which often resulted in the expulsion of peasants from lands they considered to be theirs that were their source of livelihood. In the cities, demonstrations against British rule and the expansion of the Zionist para state grew larger and more militant in the early 1930s. The British policies meant to divide the Palestinians (Rashid Khalidi,The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine)

Dr. Y. Meir (who was the General Director of the Ministry of Health in 1949) was “horrified” to learn that the “black Jews” (Falashas of Ethiopia) could immigrate to the “Jewish state,” he said:

“I hope that this report is unfounded.”

Eighteen months later the Jewish Agency’s representative in Aden, Shlomo Schmidt reported:

“My investigation shows that the problem of the Falashas is not at all simple, because these people’s ways are not much different from those of the Abyssinians, and that intermarriage is natural among them. There is also among them a large number of people with venereal diseases. . . ” (1949,The First Israelis, p.144-145)

It is worth noting that these “BLACK JEWS” could not immigrate to the “Jewish state” despite their hardship in their country, until the Likud came to power in the late 1970s, which was done mostly for political reasons since“oriental Jews” historically voted with the Likud. Prior to the arrival of the Arab North African Jews to the “Jewish state,” Ha’aretz newspaper published the following report:

“. . . . this is a race unlike any we have seen before. They say there are differences between people of the Tripoltania, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, but I can’t say I have learned what those differences are, if they do, in fact, exist. The say, for example, that the Tripolitanians and Tunisians are better than the Moroccans, and Algerians, but it’s the same problem with them all (Incidentally, none of these immigrants will admit that he is (North) African – Je suis francais!—They are all Frenchmen from Paris and almost all were captains in the Maquis.)”(1949,The First Israelis, p.159-160)

During a political consultation with Ben-Gurion in 1949, David Horowitz (then General Director of the Ministry of Finance and subsequently the President of the Bank of Israel) expressed his opinion of the North African Jews status in the “Jewish state,” he stated:

“The [North African Jewish] population in [transit] camps is becoming a sort of a second nation, a rebellions nation which views us as plutocrats. This is incendiary material, eminently useful to Herut [later evolved into Likud] and the Communists. It’s dynamite. . . . The immigrants are in some ways taking the place of the [Palestinian] Arabs. There is also special attitude emerging on our part toward them, we are beginning to harbor an attitude of superiority.”(1949,The First Israelis, p.161)

A report sent by a Jewish Agency emissary, H. Tzvilie, in Libya described the Jews he met there as if he were trading horses, he wrote:

“They are handsome as far as their physique and outward appearance are concerned, but I found it very difficult to tell them from the good Arab type.”(1949,The First Israelis, p.170)

Often the Arab Jews were looked at for cheap labor “human material” in the “Jewish state,” who would eventually replace the Palestinian workers who were ethnically cleansed.In a secret record,Berl Locker (Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive) wrote the American Jewish politician, Henry Morgenthau, in October 1948:

“In our opinion the Sephradi and Yemenite Jews will play a considerable part in the building of the country. We have to bring them over in order to save them, but also to obtain the human material needed for building the country.”(1949,The First Israelis, p.172)

In July 1949, the Israeli Knesset was debating whether to bring the Yemenite Arab Jews or not, and in that regards MK Itzhak Greenbaum asked:

“Why do we have to put an end to the Yemen Diaspora and bring over people who are more harm than use? By bringing Yemenites, 70% of whom are sick, we are doing no good to anybody. We are harming them by bringing them into an alien environment where they will degenerate. Can we withstand an immigration of which 70% are sick?” (1949,The First Israelis, p.185)

As long as the Zionist ideology persists, there will never be peace in the Middle East.

As always,

from Palestine with Love

-OverDose