Islam v. Israel

The fighting that began between Jews and Arabs at Jerusalem's Wailing Wall (TIME, Aug. 26) spread last week throughout Palestine, then inflamed fierce tribesmen of the Moslem countries which face the Holy Land (see map).

Sacked and burned by fleet-riding Arabs was the ancient town of Safed, for centuries a seat of mystical Jewish learning. The Moslem version of the affray could not be learned, but Jews told of fleeing headlong through the streets, dodging into houses, making what resistance they could while the Arabs battered down doors, put bullets indiscriminately among the Jews and ended by igniting the town. As at Hebron, where eight U. S. Rabbinical students were killed (TIME, Sept. 2), reports from Safed stressed such accusations as "pillage," "butchery," "rape." Most of the Jews involved were again claimed to have had "no weapons except their household furniture." The Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum plant at Safed was reported burnt out, gutted. Despatches estimated Jewish dead at 22, mentioned no Moslem casualties.

Sporadic clashes continuing at Haifa, Hebron and in Jerusalem itself, rolled up an estimated total of 196 dead for all Palestine. A known total of 305 wounded lay in hospitals. Speeding from England in a battleship the British High Commissioner to Palestine, handsome, brusque Sir John Chancellor, landed at Haifa, hurried to Jerusalem and sought to calm the general alarm by announcing that His Majesty's Government were rushing more troops by sea from Malta and by land from Egypt, would soon control the situation.

Before the week was out 5,000 British troops commanded by Brigadier General William George Shedden Dobbie were in Palestine, mightfully striving to restore order and protect not only the large cities but such strategic towns as El Abadiyeh and Jur-el-Mujami (see map), twin sites of the chief generating stations of the Palestine Power Trust, founded and managed by famed, dynamic Zionist Pincus Rutenberg (TIME, Mar. 4). Neither bristling, florid, militant General Dobbie nor the cold, curt High Commissioner made the smallest vestige of an answer to the week's most vital question: Why were not adequate British forces rushed to Palestine three weeks ago when the Wailing Wall riots unmistakably threatened the nationwide Jew-Arab clashes which inevitably followed?

Tycoons Rush Help. Moslems outnumber Jews 13 to 1. That is, there are more than 209 million Mohammedans on earth and slightly less than 16 million Children of Israel. In Palestine there are 591,000 Moslems and only 150,000 Jews, of whom some 2,000 are from the U. S. Last week Jews all over the world rallied to aid their outnumbered brethren in the Holy Land.

In London potent Baron Melchett (Alfred Moritz Mond), one of the foremost British industrial tycoons, pledged -L-5000 ($25,000) to feed and succor the hundreds of Palestine Jews burnt out of their homes or left orphaned, widowed, destitute. London Bankers James A. de Rothschild quickly followed with a like sum. So did Manhattan's Felix Warburg, who was in London. A fourth $25,000 was pledged by Chicago's Julius Rosenwald, and a fifth by Manhattan's Nathan Straus. Before the week was out, Mr. Straus had doubled his $25,000 pledge and lesser contributions from world Jewry poured in at such a rate that officials of the Palestine Emergency Fund said that they would be able to forward a quarter-million dollars weekly to the Holy Land "as long as the need for immediate relief exists."

Borah on Zion. Most potent of Jewish demonstrations last week was a meeting of 25,000 (including many a Gentile) who jammed Manhattan's Madison Square Garden and roared approval of a tactful telegram read on behalf of President Herbert Hoover (see p. 11). Slouching forward to keynote from the platform came famed Friend-of-Oppressed-Peoples William Edgar Borah, Chairman of the U. S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. Said he:

"This catastrophe was the result of carelessness or stupidity or both. Whose carelessness and whose stupidity time alone will reveal. . . . Knowing the Premier of Great Britain as so many of us do, we know that it would be impossible for him to be indifferent or careless where human life was involved. . . .

"We know now, and with a little reflection we could have known in the beginning that the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine is a task calling not only for the highest of statesmanship, but calling also for eternal vigilance and vast sacrifices.

"The Arabs are a virile people, resourceful in character, indefatigable in purpose and imbued with a national spirit which, at times, partakes of fanaticism. To deal with such a situation, there must be an understanding, there must be some definite arrangement, some definite program."

Without dreaming of saying so, Senator Borah seemed to imply that Zionists may have proceeded too rapidly in colonizing Palestine without first achieving a sufficiently "definite arrangement" with the British for adequate protection. Jewish speakers who followed the Senator of course squarely blamed the whole crisis on the laxity of the British administration in Palestine. Meanwhile in London the World Zionist Organization was actively negotiating with the new British Labor Cabinet. In the London press the issue of whether it is worth while for the Empire to retain Palestine as a mandate was sensationally aired.

Imperial Reaction. "Let Us Get Out of Palestine!" blared last week the potent London news organs of Baron Beaverbrook, famed "Hearst of England." Above his own signature the blatant Baron declared:

"The money that Chancellor of the Exchequer Snowden has just gained at The Hague after weeks of anxious toil (see p. 25) has been thrown away in a few days on the sands of Palestine, from which we shall never receive a penny in return either in cash, trade, prestige or political advantage. . . . Let us get out now!"

Small though the likelihood is that such a short-sighted view should ever be forced upon British statesmen-who know the strategic value of the land of Palestine quite apart from that of the people-the issue of whether a great deal more money should be spent at once to protect Palestine Jews was sharply raised in London by-hard-featured, scrubby-bearded Dr. Chaim Weizmann, shrewd president of the World Zionist Organization. After an interview with Minister of Colonies and Mandates Baron Passfield (famed in his former style as Economist Sidney Webb), Dr. Weizmann gave correspondents to understand that the Cabinet would continue sternest measures to restore peace in Palestine, and might even dismiss Acting High Commissioner Harry Charles Luke, whom Zionists regard as chiefly responsible for allowing the situation to get out of hand. Subsequent intimations by Lord Passfield that Mr. Luke would not be dismissed did not alter the fact that the Acting High Commissioner had been superseded in authority by the return to Jerusalem last week of High Commissioner Sir John Chancellor. That Sir John presently received instructions to take an unmistakably pro-Jewish line was strongly suggested by the tone of his next proclamation at Jerusalem: "I have learned with horror of atrocious acts committed by bodies of ruthless and blood-thirsty evildoers, of savage murders perpetrated upon the defenseless members of the Jewish population regardless of age and sex, accompanied, as at Hebron, by acts of unspeakable savagery. . . . My first duties are to restore order in the country and inflict stern punishment upon those found guilty of the acts of violence. I charge all inhabitants of Palestine to assist me."

Holy War? Moslems mass-met and demonstrated violently against Jews last week in Syria, Transjordania, Irak and Arabia (see map). They shouted "Palestine for the Arabs!," jabbered of Holy War and of the booty to be got by plundering expeditions into Palestine. Syria is a protectorate of France but her civilized soldiers have never been able to quell the wild, rebellious Sultan El Atrash who lives in a mud palace high in the remote mountains and sallies forth on sporadic raids at the head of his hard-riding, fanatical Druse tribesmen. Last week the dread Atrash was reputed to be rampaging toward Palestine with 800 of his own horsemen and 2,000 Bedouins who recently joined his plundering banner.

Utterly different from bold Sultan El Atrash is the mild spoken little Amir Abdullah of Transjordania, a contented British puppet whose chief delight is in breeding priceless Arab steeds. Last week the Amir dutifully hastened across the River Jordan by means of Allenby Bridge, successfully dissuaded some 300 of his subjects who had set out minded to wage plunder in Palestine.

Another British puppet, paradoxically more potent than his elder brother Amir Abdullah, is King Feisul of Irak, inventor of a special headdress named after him. Of all the Arab lands in the Near East, melancholy King Feisul's seemed the least perturbed about Jews, though one band of Iraki tribesmen were said to be making their way secretly to Palestine.

London editors thought last week that Arabia was the only really likely kindling place for a Holy War. There tall, sagacious, tortoise-spectacled Ibn Saud is Sultan, and King of the Hejaz to boot. He alone has sufficient prestige to galvanize and weld Moslem tribesmen of the Near East into mass enthusiasm for an Islamic pogrom. Last week despatches from Damascus (French Syria) told that 20,000 Arabs had paraded through the bazars shouting: "Long live the unity of Arab peoples under the Sultanship of Ibn Saud!"

"To ignore these signs," wrote the editor of London's Daily News, "would be to blind ourselves to the existence of combustible elements in the Arab nature, and to the possibility that a senseless and bloody 'Holy War' may emerge from the racial conflict in Palestine."

Egypt. Every afternoon last week fat King Fuad of Egypt took his usual garden ride on one or the other of his two favorite mules. Unperturbed, His Majesty read that Jews in Cairo had set upon and beaten an Arab "nearly to death"--the only racial disturbance reported in his realm.

Solomon's Temple. Many a commentator on the Jew-Arab crisis of last week loosely assumed that the "Wailing Wall," where all the trouble started, is part of the famed Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, built by the Louis XIV of Jewry circa 1000 B.C. and today utterly in ruins though the outlines of the Temple remain. Actually Jews wail for the lost glories of their race at a superimposed and much later wall built by detested King Herod. The lower courses of masonry alone are supposed to contain stones originally part of the Temple.