Stuartbirdan2
Diamond Member
- Sep 6, 2020
- 1,220
- 9,187
In less than ten years three serious attacks have been made by Arabs on Jews. For eighty years before the first of these attacks there is no recorded instance of any similar incidents. It is obvious then that the relations between the two races during the past decade must have differed in some material respect from those which previously obtained. Of this we found ample evidence. The reports of the Military Court and of the local Commission which, in 1920 and in 1921 respectively, enquired into the disturbances of those years, drew attention to the change in the attitude of the Arab population towards the Jews in Palestine. This was borne out by the evidence tendered during our enquiry when representatives of all parties told us that before the War the Jews and Arabs lived side by side if not in amity, at least with tolerance, a quality which to-day is almost unknown in Palestine.[28]
Morris likewise notes in 1948 that the attacks were chiefly motivated by “the fear and antagonism toward the Zionist enterprise”: “The bouts of violence of 1920, 1921, and 1929 were a prelude to the far wider, protracted eruption of 1936–1939, the (Palestine) Arab Revolt. Again, Zionist immigration and settlement—and the prospect of the Judaization of the country and possibly genuine fears of ultimate displacement—underlay the outbreak.”[29]
As Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion wrote to the director of the agency’s Political Department, Moshe Shertok, in 1937, “What Arab cannot do his math and understand that immigration at the rate of 60,000 a year means a Jewish state in all of Palestine?”[30]
As Morris also documents, Ben-Gurion understood the Arab perspective perfectly well. With respect to the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt, Ben-Gurion told his colleagues, “We must see the situation for what it is. On the security front, we are those attacked and who are on the defensive. But in the political field we are the attackers and the Arabs are those defending themselves. They are living in the country and own the land, the village. We live in the Diaspora and want only to immigrate [to Palestine] and gain possession of [lirkosh] the land from them.”[31]
Ben-Gurion told Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann years later, after the establishment of Israel, “Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”[32]
Morris likewise notes in 1948 that the attacks were chiefly motivated by “the fear and antagonism toward the Zionist enterprise”: “The bouts of violence of 1920, 1921, and 1929 were a prelude to the far wider, protracted eruption of 1936–1939, the (Palestine) Arab Revolt. Again, Zionist immigration and settlement—and the prospect of the Judaization of the country and possibly genuine fears of ultimate displacement—underlay the outbreak.”[29]
As Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion wrote to the director of the agency’s Political Department, Moshe Shertok, in 1937, “What Arab cannot do his math and understand that immigration at the rate of 60,000 a year means a Jewish state in all of Palestine?”[30]
As Morris also documents, Ben-Gurion understood the Arab perspective perfectly well. With respect to the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt, Ben-Gurion told his colleagues, “We must see the situation for what it is. On the security front, we are those attacked and who are on the defensive. But in the political field we are the attackers and the Arabs are those defending themselves. They are living in the country and own the land, the village. We live in the Diaspora and want only to immigrate [to Palestine] and gain possession of [lirkosh] the land from them.”[31]
Ben-Gurion told Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann years later, after the establishment of Israel, “Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”[32]