Tohuvavohu

The Hebrew phrase which is translated as "without form and void" in Genesis 1:2, is tohnvavohu. It is still highly current. Germans use it a lot these days to mean utter tarfu. In Palestine, too, it means chaos. Last week the situation in Palestine could only be described as tohuvavohu.

"Most Anxious." On Good Friday a small procession wound along the Via Dolorosa. At each station of Christ's journey to Calvary, Archbishop Arthur Hughes, Papal Internuncio at Cairo, genuflected and intoned a prayer; the crowd knelt on the cobbled street and answered. Along the route stood mildly curious Arab Tommy-gunners.

In their synagogues, the Jews celebrated Purim. In the place of honor, beside the reader, sat a uniformed Haganah militiaman.

The Jewish Agency warned that Jerusalem would become a battlefield when the British withdrew. Said a spokesman: ". . . In any battle for Jerusalem we would be most anxious to respect the holy places but, in practice, it will be impossible. . . ."

A Bronx Cheer. Next day in Palestine a dozen engagements between Jews and Arabs were fought. At El Kabri on the north coastal plain 250 Arabs ambushed a Jewish convoy, killed over 40. In another engagement a mile and a half from Bethlehem, 3,000 Arabs attacked another convoy, killed a score of Jews in a 30-hour battle. Both attacks occurred in areas which would have gone to the Arabs under the partition plan. The ambushed Jewish convoys had been carrying badly-needed supplies to isolated Zionist communities.

In the Bethlehem fight, members of Haganah, the Zionist militia, took refuge in a stone house which the Arabs quickly surrounded. During the night Arabs crept close enough to call promises to the Jews that their lives would be spared if they surrendered. The Jews answered with a Bronx cheer.

Next day, with the British army as intermediary, the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem negotiated the surrender with representatives of the Arab Higher Committee. A battalion of the Suffolk Regiment of the British army came up to enforce the surrender terms which had been radioed to the beleaguered Jews. When Arabs attacked, British soldiers crouched in a circle around the house, fired shots over the Arabs' heads. When the Jews surrendered, the British searched them; several of the Zionist militia-women had hidden ammunition in their blouses.

That was Palestine six weeks before the scheduled end of the British mandate. What would it be after Britain dropped all responsibility for keeping the peace between Arabs and Jews?

Americans Are Faster. Neither in Jerusalem, nor London, nor Washington nor Lake Success was there any sign last week of solid planning toward a set-up in Palestine that would prevent all-out war.

The tragedy of Palestine, past and to come, weighed on none more heavily than on old (73) Chaim Weizmann, who more than anyone else had been responsible for Zionism's success--if success it is. Weizmann, a great chemist, had done his once-beloved Britain a memorable service in World War I. He discovered a new method of producing acetone for munitions. Said Lloyd George cynically: "Acetone converted me to Zionism."

Weizmann, who would probably become president if the Zionists proclaim a Jewish state, talked to U.N., to Truman. He got nowhere, commented bitterly: "It took the British 25 years to sell us out; the Americans have done it in 2 1/2 months."

But neither Weizmann nor anyone else had a way to bring order out of tohuvavohu.

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