ZIONISM: The Wonder Years. posted by Richard Seymour

Roll film.

Int: Day. The office of Zadoc Khan, Chief Rabbi of France. Zadoc sits at his desk, tears open a letter decorated with supremely eloquent handwriting, and begins to read. His muttering to himself is slowly accompanied by a voice-over, to be recognised as the voice of Yusuf Zia al-Khalidi, the author of the letter. A narrator explains the context.

al-Khalidi: (v.o.) In the name of God, leave Palestine in peace!

Narrator: Zadoc Khan, the Chief Rabbi of France and good friend of Theodor Herzl, received a letter from the Mayor of Jerusalem, Yusuf Zia al-Khalidi in 1889. al-Khalidi, a former deputy in the Ottoman parliament, begged the Zionists to reconsider their apparent designs on Palestine. Granting the integrity of the Zionist ideal -

al-Khalidi: God knows, historically it is indeed your own country!

Narrator: - he nevertheless suggested tha it might be problematic because Palestine was already inhabited. The Zionists would encounter an epic uprising if they tried to make their state in Palestine.

Zadoc stands at his desk, takes the letter and places it inside another envelope. Hastily scribbling an explanatory note, he pops it into the envelope and prints in large lettering on the outer "FAO: Theodor Herzl"...


When Theodor Herzl, the grandpappy of political Zionism replied to al-Khalidi, it was with reassurances and soothing unction. The Arabs had "nothing to fear" from Jewish immigration. The Jews would bring their civilisation and raise the quality of life for their Arab brothers. They were not backed by some "belligerent Power", and were not of a "warlike nature". (Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, H111 d 14, 1st March, 1889)

Herzl, however, was aware that an influx of interlopers into Palestine would "end badly...unless based on assured supremacy", which could only come through statehood. (Theodor Herzl, "The Jewish State", page 29). Herzl told his diaries that to this end, the Zionists would have to acquire the land of their choice by force. He himself was indifferent to where that land should be, but the prevalent opinion among Zionists was that Palestine was the homeland to which centripetal forces would drive the Jewish people. (Herzl, "Besammelte, Zionistiche Schriften", Volume I, page 114). To expedite this process, he sought the assistance of the imperial powers of the age. For instance, in 1901 he travelled to Constantinople seeking the establishment of a Jewish-Ottoman Colonisation Association in Palestine. He sought to agree the rudiments of a draft charter, Article Three of which would have granted the Jews the right to deport the native population. Many of the continuing themes of Zionism are evident here, the latter of which is rendered starkly eloquent by the Sharonist plans to "transfer" Palestinians across the Jordanian and Syrian borders under the cover of war on Iraq, while securing as much of the Occupied Territories for Greater Israel as possible. (Adolf Bohm, "Die Zionistiche Bewegung", 1935, page 706).

Dissimulation was a crucial part of this project, as it often is when political projects involve the acquiescence or active involvement of people who are sure to lose out from the fulfillment of the ideal. Maz Nordau, a close associate of Herzl, wrote that it was he who had coined the term "Heimstatte" (Homeland):

"I did my best to persuade the advocates of the Jewish state in Palestine that we might find a circumlocution... I suggested "Heimstatte" as a synonym for 'state'... to us it signified "Judenstaat" (Jewish state) and it signifies the same now..." (Christopher Sykes, "Two Studies in Virtue", 1953).

The Zionist project began in earnest in 1882, with the first 'Aliyah' or wave of immigration. At this time there were already 24,000 Jews in Palestine, mainly elderly indigents seeking expiry in the holy land. The new generation of migrants, while not devotees of the Herzlian grand narrative, were nevertheless "Lovers of Zion", intent on founding agricultural settlements as a refuge from East European and Russian anti-semitism. From 1882 to 1914, the Jewish population in Palestine rose to 85,000 - dropping again to 56,000 as a result of the Great War. The reaction of Palestinians, of whom 75% were land-bound peasants, was one of apprehension: "Is it true that the Jews want to retake this country?" villagers were said to have asked Albert Antebi, an official of the Jewish Colonial Association. (Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest", 1967; L. Oliphant, "Haifa, or Life in Modern Palestine", 1887; Neville Mandel, "Turks, Arabs and Jewish immigration into Palestine, 1882-1914", St Antony's Papers, "Middle Eastern Affairs", 1965).

Peasants were usually not present when their land was being sold off to the settlers, and often their first inkling of a sale was when the estate agents turned up to have a butchers and stake out the land. Consequently, one of the first examples of Palestinian resistance as when some estate agents observing the land recently purchased from the Sursock family of Beirut suddenly had the shit kicked out of them by angry villagers. Settlements and colonies were frequently attacked, harrassed, robbed and viciously made fun of. One notorious example of Zionist arrogance and Palestinian hostility was the Hadera settlement. Moshe Smilansky, a writer from the time, describes the enthusiasm of newly arrived immigrants for this land upon hearing that it had been secured. Why, they wondered, was the land called "Hadera"? One experienced settler suggested it may be related to "the blackwater fever which the Arabs claim prevails in that district". The others were not frightened by "Arab tales". They were not Arabs, and they would "find some way of putting an ened to the Malaria".

The land, when the settlers arrived, was awash with swamps, from whence the Malaria originated. The settlers, unperturbed, insisted that they need not take their "cue from barbarians!" They planted a vineyard, sowed wheat, worked the land and proceeded to kick the bucket in droves. Just as the survivors were about to chuck in the towel, however, Baron de Rothschild - the millionaire philanthropist - threw a few wads of cash their way. They hired "hundreds of black labourers from Egypt" to dig ditches for drainage, scores of whom also bit the cracker. As the settlement got on its feet, locals developed a colossal hump. Where the bloody hell were they going to pasture their sheep and graze their cows now that the land was taken? Fortunately for the settlers, the Turkish rulers sent some coppers over to knock the locals about and prevent any further disturbance. ("Hadera", Jewish National Fund Library No 2, Tel Aviv, 1935).

Colonialism, exploitation, brute violence, racism and the buttress of imperial power. Everything Herzl had promised would not be proved the most constant and enduring features of Zionism, crystalised in Hadera, the swampland.

Nevertheless, these early settlers were casual rather than doctrinaire in their racism. They did establish profitable, and sometimes convivial, relations with the Arabs. As each settlement overcame resistance and established itself as a "fact on the ground", Arabs were willing to reconcile themselves to its presence. (Mandel, op cit.) However, the next wave of immigrants were more ideological, armed with Herzl and Hebrew, spurred by antisemitism. The Jewish National Fund, established in 1901, stipulated that all lands bought with its cash were to remain the inalienable property of the Jewish state. According to the migrants, only Jews should own the land and only Jews should work the land. The drive to establish Hebrew-only labour was not always successful. Dr Ruppin, the first head of the Zionist bureau in Palestine, records in his memoirs that he should have liked to build Tel Aviv without Arab involvement, but he soon found their low wages - ahem! - experience invaluable.

The second generation of settlers were also socialists, or at least blended nationalism and socialism at a time when it did not seem such a lethal brew. Agricultural communities were erected in which only Jews were entitled to participate. Histradut, the Hebrew trade union, did not allow non-Jewish members. Indeed, two of their key aims were to protect Jewish labour on the one hand, and Jewish commerce on the other. Arabs were not to be allowed to sell in Jewish areas, or work on Jewish land if avoidable. The reasoning was that Arabs were peasants, only a "potential proletariat" to whom "the international brotherhood of the workers" did not apply. These enlightening sobriquets, combining mutilated Marxism and condescending colonial attitudes, expressed both the noble aspirations and the base goals of the Zionist conquerors. (Ro'i Yaacov, "The Zionist Attitude to the Arabs, 1908-14", Middle Eastern Studies, Vol IV, April 1968). The Arabs, at any rate , would benefit from their presence. So argued these migrants, Herzl before them, and Ben Gurion after.

The genesis of what Uri Avneri calls "gun Zionism" may be the founding of a group called "Hashomer" (The Guardian - a felicitous appellation as it turns out). The aim of this outfit was initially to replace Arab guards with Jewish guards, because after all it was Jewish property, and... In 1909, a secret organisation was founded, among whose luminaries was future President of Israel, Yitzhak Ben Zvi. Ben Gurion was among the first to acknowledge the inevitability of the militarisation of the Zionist presence in Palestine. In this world, he said, only force could win the argument. No argument has determinacy which is between friends. Armed foes settle much more quickly, with the vanquishment or death of one, and victory of the other.

The response of the Palestinians, aside from sporadic attacks on settlements, had been to seek the succour of the imperial master in Turkey, the Sublime Porte in Constantinople. They submitted petitions demanding the end of the Jewish influx and acquisition of their land. However, one thing that made Zionist militarisation inevitable was the growth and increasing success of the Palestinian resistance. The area of land relinquished by small farmers from 1891 to 1900 had represented 42.7% of the total. But that figure fell to a mere 4.3% from 1900 to 1914. The bulk of the land that the Zionists were able to acquire had to come from absentee landlords. The Sursock family, for instance, had purchased huge tracts of land from the Ottomans at knock-down prices, and then sold it to the Jewish settlers at ten times the original cost. Suddenly, the London housing market seems quite rational.

Another way in which Palestinian resistance developed was in the organisation of a Palestinian opposition,. Najib Nassar, a Christian from Haifa, said that the best response to Zionism was to mirror its purpose, skill and organisational zeal. Herzl, he said, had united a scattered people in just fifteen years, with a purpose, a doctrine and some apparently attainable goals. They had bought the best land in Palestine, and opened banks to finance the farmers on it. The Arabs, he said, could only win if they did likewise. From essentially apolitical eruptions of violence, the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist colonisers grew to become the core political issue in the country by 1914. Not just peasants, but small traders and professionals began to organise against the Zionists. The small traders in particular saw the incoming Zionists as potentially devastating commercial competitors.

Najib Nassar published a paper called Carmel, in which he began to document the genesis and goals of the Zionist movement. He was also instrumental in building a vigilante organisation which would attend ports and harbours, ensuring strict enforcement of immigration restrictions. And while some smaller Arab nationalist parties, such as the Decentralisation Party, sought compromise with the Zionists, the prevalent response was that the settlers should be fought with every energy and vigour available. Even if the moderates had represented the majority, the Zionists wanted no part of it. An agreement with the moderates would have involved the Zionists explaining "as far as possible by producing documentary evidence, the aims and methods of Zionism..." The Zionists were not up for that, since they saw little to negotiate over and were unwilling to lay bare the extent of their aims. They procrastinated and in the end were saved by the First World War.

The war proved a massive opportunity for the Zionists. The Ottoman empire was collapsing, and lands taken from them would be divided up among the victorious powers. Joseph Trumpeldor and Vladimir Jabotinsky created the Zion Mule Corps, a Jewish fighting unit which served with the British at Galipoli. Toward the end of the war, Jabotinsky also formed "The Jewish Legion", four battalions of Royal Fuseliers, 5,000-strong, fighting under the Union Jack. In developing the military strength and dexterity of the Zionist footsoldiers, both Jabotinsky and Aaron Aaronsohn hoped to created a military force capable of crushing the Palestinians, while at the same time breaking the sterile Gentile myth about the passive Jew. Jews, they wanted to prove, could be strongmen too. Jabotinsky, one of the most famous 'revisionist' Zionists of the time, was an unabashed reactionary, admirer of Mussolini and anti-Arab racist. He formulated the "Iron Wall" doctrine, in which he recognised that the Palestinians would never accede to the Jewish state unless they were FORCED to. Therefore, the Jews should build a vast, military 'iron wall' that would crush the Palestinian resistance until they HAD to negotiate. (Avi Shlaim, "The Iron Wall", 2001). Alexander Aaronsohn remarked that "[t]he Arab is a cunning fellow whose only respect is for brute force. He exercises it himself for every possible victim and expects the same treatment from his superiors." (Alex Aaronsohn, "With the Turks in Palestine", 1917). These 'revisionist' Zionists were more doctrinaire in their contempt for the Arab population, and also more willing to accept the human cost that would come with their project to sieze Palestine.

Official Zionism, exemplified by the skilled diplomat Chaim Weizmann, was contemptuous of the revisionists. For, while Jabotinsky et al prepared for conflict, Weizmann negotiated painstakingly with the imperial powers to achieve what Herzl had been unable to: an international power agreeing the framework for a Jewish state in Palestine.

Two documents emerged in the war years, one in 1916 the other in 1917. The first was the Sykes-Picot agreement, in which Russia, Britain and France agreed to divvy up the Middle East between them. This document was made public by the Bolshevik hell-raisers, causing enormous embarrassment for the British who had made promises to "recognise and support" the independence of the Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula, Palestine, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq. The second document, somewhat of an extension of the first but much more significant, was the Balfour Declaration. 117 words long, the letter composed by Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild stands as the most significant piece of literature written on the subject of Palestine before the inception of Israel. It expresses the British government's sympathy with the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish homeland, provided "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the extisting non-Jewish communities in Palestine".

Balfour had been Prime Minister at a time when Jewish immigraton was restricted by the Aliens Act (not a theatrical production). Jewish refugees had been the apparent target of riots and protest in London. The Declaration was therefore a fruit of both the meticulous diplomacy of the Zionists, who deserve credit for the framing and wording of the document, and also the British desire to get Jews to migrate to Jaffa rather than London. Weizmann was careful to avoid letting this document be interpreted in public as the basis of a Jewish state. Homeland, certainly, but not statehood. And he warned the revisionists that they should not violate "the legitemate rights of Arabs" while assuring the Palestinians that the Zionists had no intention of attempting to wrest control of "the higher policy of the province of Palestine". Nor was it their objective to "turn anyone out of his property". (Speech to 14th Zionist Congress, 1925; Khalidi, op cit).

At the same time, Weizmann told Balfour that "[t]he Arabs... worship one thing, and only thing only - power and success... He screams as often as he can and blackmails as much as he can...". (Does anyone else think its at this point that the Zionists started to sound like Bond villains?) The British authorities knew "the treacherous nature of the Arab" and would understand it if they tried to place "misinterpretations and misconceptions" on Balfour's Declaration. In public, Weizmann occasionally let the staat out of the bag. At one speech, he trusted to God that a Jewish state would emerge, and insisted that the Balfour Declaration was "the golden key which unlocks the doors of Palestine" so that such conditions "politicial, economic and administrative" may be created to enable the influx of "a considerable number of immigrants, and finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English and America is American..." (Doreen Ingrams, "Palestine Papers 1917-1922", 1972; "Chaim Weizmann; excerpts from his Historic Statements, Writings and Addresses", The Jewish Agency for Palestine, 1952).

Balfour was sympathetic:

"[I]n Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder importance than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land..." (Ingrams, op cit).

On May 1st, 1921, mass riots and violence erupted across Palestine. Concentrated especially in areas where Jewish immigration was greatest, the trouble appeared initially to emerge from an inter-Jewish clash. The Socialist Revolutionary Party (known as the Mopsi) was a tiny tributary of the Second International, and it had taken to the streets to celebrate May Day in defiance of an official ban. They urged Jews and Arabs to unite and bring down the oppressors from England. As they proceeded, they encountered an officially sanctioned demonstration by Ahdot ha Avodah, a social democratic party, and a fight broke out. Punches were thrown, kicks were lobbed, names were called.

Arabs, normally bemused and put off by shows of Jewish labour disturbance, and certainly too respectful of authority to join in, this time went on a rampage. It seems that a crowd of them had gathered around the quarreling demonstrators, while the British cops attempted to keep the two sides apart. Sadly, the British police officer had not at that time any lengthy experience dealing with the British football hooligan, so their performance was tragically exiguous. Someone in a neighbouring district began to smash up Jewish shop windows. Apparently stirred to unspeakable rage, the Arabs deserted the street, took up sticks, knives and weapons and began a general hunt against the Jews. Jewish markets were looted, Jews attacked and killed. The civil police were able only to quell the uproar in their immediate proximity, which only reared up again when they departed. Jews, naturally, fought back with equal savagery, and the net result was 200 Jewish casualties and 120 Arab casualties (here meaning deaths and injuries). Arabs had mobbed the Zionist immigration hostel, led in fact by Arab constables, and attacked newly arrived refugees. The following day, armed gangs of Jews sought vengeance. One man was shot dead in his house, while his daughter copped an axe in her head for her troubles. Most of the worst atrocities on both sides were premeditated.

Jews were apparently shocked that a pogrom, so common in East Europe and Russia, could happen in Palestine. The feasibility of the Zionist state was rendered problematic. The poetry of the future was starkly contrasted with what Merleau-Ponty called the "prose of the world". Utopia was beginning to resemble the European dystopia. Other observers had no difficulty in locating both the proximal cause and the general contextual reasons for the riots. In the first place, the Mopsi demonstration; in the second, fear of Jewish immigration and what it represented.

The Mopsi were feared and loathed by conservative Arabs because they imported a European doctrine of revolution and workers power, heralding a future of heretofore unknown industrial strife. Another thing that could be imported from Europe, of course, was antisemitism. For many Arabs, insurrection and anarchy were genetically inscribed into the Jew. These "vagabonds and outcasts" came with an alien culture and a tendency to upheaval. Their presence on the streets aggravated the sensibilities of many Arabs, not just those of a conservative disposition.

However, this fact alone was insufficient to explain the riots. The Arabs, it seemed, would have absorbed this 'alien culture' had it not been the aim of the Zionists to make it the only culture. Thomas Haycraft's Commission, set up to investigate the 1921 violence, recognised this fear:

"It is important that it should be realised that what is written on the subject of Zionism by Zionists and their sympathisers is read and discussed by Palestinian Arabs..." The Commission cited many Zionist works and newspapers calling for Palestine to be made "'as Jewish as England is English, or as Canada is Canadian'", the only "feasible meaning of a Jewish National Home". Haycraft et al also cited "Palestine", the official organ of the British Palestine Committee which described "Palestine as a 'deserted, derelict land'. This description hardly tallies with the fact that the density of the present population of Palestine, according to Zionist figures, is something like 75 to the square mile".

Respectable Zionists such as Dr Eder, the Chairman of the Zionist Commission, openly and unapologetically expressed the view that there could "only be one National Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish predominance as soon as the numbers of that race are sufficiently increased ... Jews should, and the Arabs should not, have the right to bear arms."

Arabs were further persuaded that the Palestine government was under Zionist influence, that the majority was discriminated against, and that they were therefore under considerable national threat. Immigration was "the tangible, visible evidence of Zionism. It is a measure which they can judge by", according to the Chief Secretary of Palestine. (Ingrams, op cit; Sir Thomas Haycraft, "Commission of Inquiry into the Palestine Disturbances of May 1921", Cmd 1540).

Zionist writers had blamed the Arab politicians for stirring up discontent, while Winston Churchill was sure the Arabs benefitted from the Jewish presence - peace, they all said, could only come when there was Jewish majority rule, so that the Arabs could enjoy the fruits and higher wages of Westernised civilisation and the pesky Arab politicians could be dispatched to the dustbin of history. But if anything it was the Arab politicians who were most inclined toward peace. Musa Kazim al-Husseini, President of the Arab Executive which represented the Palestine community in their dealings with the British, appealed to his compatriots to place their faith "in the government of Great Britain, which is famous for its justice, its concern for the well-being of the inhabitants, its safeguarding of their rights, and consent to their lawful demands". He really laid the shit on like peanut butter, this guy.

Outlining two broad approaches, al-Husseini indicated that the Palestinians could either take their case directly to the British authorities and work diplomatically for a formal renunciation of Balfour. Failing that, they could work for a representative government in Palestine so that the majority could put a stop to the plans of the Zionist majority. They would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for those meddling Brits. Their logic was that Britain had committed itself under the terms of the Mandate to developing self-governing institutions in the areas where it ruled. The more backward areas like Saudi Arabia had already been granted independence - why not Palestine? Churchill, as Colonial Secretary, stubbed both options out with his fat cigar when he paid a visit to the Middle East in 1921 and foreclosed on any notion either of representative of government or revoking the British government's support for Zionism. It was neither in his power nor his wish, he told them, to rescind Balfour and cease Jewish immigration. Although there was to emerge, by degree, a Palestinian parliament, it would come ever so slowly so that "our children's children will have passed away before that is accomplished". (JMN Jeffreys, "Palestine: The Reality", 1939).

Churchill's arrogant and strident refusal to consider the Arab view did give way to a few nugatory concessions. In 1922, he proposed a "legislative council" for Palestine. In a White Paper, whose contents he placed before the consideration of both Arab and Zionist representatives, his government affirmed Balfour, dismissed Arab doubts as based on "exaggerated interpretations" of the Declaration, but insisted that there would be no Jewish State. Chaim Weizmann told Churchill, and was backed by Lloyd George and Lord Balfour, that if these proposals intended equal representation for Arabs and Jews, they would spell an end ot any Jewish Homeland in Palestine. So, the proposals intimated that alongside twelve elected members (8 Muslims, 2 Christians and 2 Jews), the council would include eleven appointees.

The Palestinians, sniffing a rather poorly concealed rat, rejected the proposals. Since Zionist policy was presently carried out illegally and against the manifest wishes of the people of Palestine, why should they assent to a consitutional form which would allow the Zionist programme to continue under the guise of legality and consent? (Neville Barbour, "Nisi Dominus", 1946). This is often taken to be a classic example of "Arab rejectionism", which cost more than it was worth. However, when the British government did propose limited self-government in 1935, which was still weighted toward the Zionists, though not quite so much, it was the Zionists and not the Arabs who pushed the 'Reject' button. ("Report on the Conditions in Palestine, 1935", HMSO, 1935).

Although the 1922 White Paper proposals were rejected by the Arab representatives, they did not see resistance as a serious option. And while the people of Palestine continued to erupt in regular violent protests, the Fourth Arab Congress insisted that the Palestine question be settled through exclusively peaceful means. Their conservative disposition to law and order inclined them to rebuke the militant youths who wanted to resist with street violence and civil disobedience. They intervened to restrain violence where it occurred, and even such passive resistance as strikes, the boycott of Jewish goods, non-payment of taxes and so on, were frowned upon by the Arab politicians while the majority of the population continued to favour these measures. (Naji Allush, "Arab Resistance in Palestine", 1969).

At the same time as the Zionists had the ear of the British, newly formed Zionist militias were flourishing. One was the Haganah, Jabotinsky's monster, which was later to form the basis of the Israeli Defense Force. The Zionists were militarising and diplomatising with exceptional skill, while the tension on the streets continued to rise and Arabs continued to resist the colonial project. By 1929, the tension between Arabs and Zionists was reaching boiling point. There were regular attacks and counter-attacks. (Vincent Sheehan, a journalist of the time, records his impressions of this bloody period in "Personal History", 1935). The violence crescendoed in several spectacular massacres taking many Jewish and Arab victims.

Two distinguished British emissaries were sent to investigate the growing tide of violence and concluded, in seperate reports, that a) "The Jewish demonstration on the Wailing Wall [which aside from its relation to Judaism, is also a site of immense religious significance for Muslims] was the principal cause of the violence and b) the violence which did result from it would never have occurred if not for the economic and political grievances suffered by the Arabs. Further, immigration and land settlement should be drastically curtailed in recognition of these two salient facts, and a legislative council be set ip to represent all the people of Palestine. However, with the Zionists in uproar, the British government acceded to pressure and rejected utterly the conclusions and findings of their two emissaries. (Sir Walter Shaw, "Commission on the Palestine Disturbances of August 1929", Cmd 3530; Sir John Hope-Simpson, "Report to the British Government", 20th October, 1930, Cmd 3686).

Prime Minister Ramsay McDonald wrote a letter to Chaim Weizmann assuring him that Jewish immigration and settlements would continue unabated. Arab violence had been unable to match the diplomatic efficacy of the Zionists. Yehoshua Porath, the Israeli historian, maintains that Arab violence would certainly have yielded more and swifter concessions had they applied violence more systematically and over more prolonged periods. (Yehoshua Porath, "The Emergence of the Palestine-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929", 1974). He might have had in mind, when writing this, the Arab revolt of 1935-1939.


Everything was deteriorating as far as the conspirators were concerned. Jewish immigration was reaching record levels, land sales were increasing, more and more peasants were being turfed off their land. The British had been in Palestine for eighteen years and their rule was becoming intolerable. No further delay was possible. It was time to get medieval on the interlopers.


November 12th, 1935, a group of followers of the Muslim cleric Shaikh Izzedin Qassam gathered secretly in Haifa to plan operations. Within a week, they would be dead or captured, and yet their rebellion proved far more significant than some might have thought it had any right to be. Qassam preached nothing less than dedicated self-sacrafice in the service of ridding one's country of foreign occupiers. His followers, at their peak, must have totalled around 800, with 200 of those trained for military service. At night they trained in stealth, using guns and other weaponry bought by selling prized personal possessions. The plan was to spend the daytime living in caves up on the hills, praying and reading from the Koran. At night, they would mount attacks on the Jews and the British. The Mandate authorities, however, had been informed and swooped in with a force of British and Arab soldiers backed by reconnaissance planes. Qassam urged his followers to "die as martyrs", never to surrender for this was "a jihad for God and country". A few of his companions did knock off early, while the rest were catpured. This was the M.O. of the fedayi, "one who sacrafices himself". While the authorities were bemused by this apparently insensible revolt, the Palestinian Arabs lost no time in recognising the significance of the uprising. Huge crowds gathered at Qassam's funeral to mourn and protest against British rule and the Jewish National Homeland. The police were stoned in a brutally hilarious manner. The Cairo-based newspaper al-Ahram said: "Dear friend and martyr, I heard you preaching from pulpits, calling us to arms, but today, preaching from the Bosom of God, you were more eloquent in death than in life." Which is pretty rotten luck. Eloquence does you no good when you're dead.

The Arab leaders, that bloc of vacillating chair-moisteners, raised barely a whisper. They, after all, were often the most criminally complicit with the Zionist takeover. In public, they denounced sales of land to the settlers. Yet, in private, they were the absentee and resident landlords who sold off their dunums for juicy profits. Whereas a dunum of land might previously have yielded little more than eight shillings, by the mid-1930s they were raking in anything between ten and twenty-five quid. Sterling. (Nathan Weinstock, "Le Zionisme contre Israel", 1969). When the British attempted a fact-finding mission into these transactions, they met resistance from Arab leaders as well as Jewish leaders. There was another reason why the Arab leaders were less than moved by Qassam's death. They saw in his uncompromising stance, his call to collective violence and his purist faith a rebuke to them. They were conservative, wary of allowing the huddled masses to get too wound up lest the giant boot aimed at stamping out the Zionist dream might thereafter be planted in their own corpulent backsides.

The rebellion, when it began, was regarded with some contempt and bemusement by the Zionists. Weizmann saw in it the "barbarism of the desert", nothing more than a fusion of primitive stupidity, clerical fanatcism, and international Fascism. They assumed that the Arab leaders, some of whom praised Hitler's rise in Germany, were leading the masses awry. But, as the British historian John Marlowe points out, "the Arab rebellion was in fact a peasant revolt". He quotes GM Trevelyan: "'[T]he readiness of the rural population to turn out and die for their faith was a new thing... The record of this brief campaign is as the lifting of the curtain; behind it we can see for a moment into the peasant life. In that one glance, we see not rustic torpor, but faith, idealism, vigour, love of liberty, and scorn of death." As Orwell almost said, it would almost be worth being wiped out to have something like that written about you.

The Arab revolt can be broadly seperated into two phases. The first was kicked off with a series of accidents spiralling into incidents, as is often the case. Montesquieu points out that if an Empire falls because of an accident, we should not focus on the accident itself but ask why it only required an accident for the Empire to fall. We should employ a similar logic here. On April 15th, 1936, Arabs were holding up and robbing cars on the Tulkaram-Nablus road. In the course of these robbings, two Jewish travellers were shot. The following night, two Arabs living in a hut near a Jewish settlement copped a couple of bullets. One of the dying men identified the attackers as Jewish, and it was assumed that it was a revenge attack for the previous day's killings. The funeral for the Jewish dead, held the next day, attracted a large crowd of mourners who stoned the police, and demanded "a Jewish army". Arabs were also stoned and beaten. On April 19th, rumours were heard in Jaffa that a couple of Arabs had been murdered in Tel Aviv. Arab mobs formed, toured the local neighbourhoods and killed several Jews. There followed three days of rioting which claimed the lives of sixteen Jews and five Arabs, the latter of whom were all done in by the old bill.

On April 20th, a National Committee was formed in Nablus, and similar bodies spread across Palestine by the end of the month. They demanded militant action, including a general strike. This time, the Arab leadership joined in the calls for national strike activity. In a hammering irony, the people who had feared the importing of industrial unrest from Europe now had need of that tool in fighting the interlopers. As my Dad used to say about the Romans being kicked out of Britain: "We learned all their little tricks, then knocked their fucking pans in." An Arab Higher Committee was formed under the Mufti, whose purpose was to unite the entire non-Jewish population with a singular political purpose and will. They demanded that the British end Jewish immigration. Shortly after, the committees decreed a nation-wide non-payment of taxes campaign; bus, lorry and taxi drivers took their caper off the road; import and export routes, as well as national arteries, were blocked. Senior civil servants and members of the judiciary submitted a memo to the British High Commissioner which insisted that the problems would never go away until their causes were addressed. Countless inquiries had been held into Arab grievances and no change had resulted. "The Arabs have been driven into a state verging on despair; and the present unrest is no more than an expression of that despair".

Far from stopping, or at least curtailing immigration, the British government increased by ten per cent the allowed "economic absorptive capacity" for Jewish immigration. They did, however, promise another inquiry which failed to impress the natives. Arabs, presumably feeling that another investigation into the patently obvious was a perfect way of doing absolutely nothing about it, repeated that their strike would go on until Jewish immigration had been suspended. The British announced the construction of an all-Jewish port at Tel Aviv, which had little economic justification in light of the port which was perfectly functional just two miles down the road in Jaffa. They also blew up about 237 houses in down-town Jaffa, ostensibly aimed at "beautification" (now you know what Prince Charles would do with your council flat if given the chance) but in reality it was an extremely harsh security measure. 6,000 ex-residents rolled out into the shanty towns with their possessions and developed an almight chip on their shoulders.

Although the National Committees were dedicated to passive and peaceful resistance on the Ghandi model, violence did occur. The High Commissioner had been able to report to the Colonial secretary the "remarkable fact" that no cry for Jihad had been "raised during the last six weeks", something for which "the Mufti is mainly responsible". But grassroots peasant activists burned crops, mined and barricaded roads, derailed trains, set fire to buildings, beat up strikebreakers and punctured the tyres of blackleg drivers. Armed bands roamed the hilly regions of the country, and were joined by volunteers from across the Arab world. One suck volunteer was Fawzi Kawekji, who perceived the rise of Hitler as a positive development in the Arab struggle against the Zionists and the British government. If he had heard Adolf Hitler's admiring statements about the British empire, or read the simpering letter sent by the Zionist Federation of Germany to Hitler in which they assured him that they shared his aims of national and racial purity, had no desire to hang around when they weren't wanted and urged him to assist in the erection of a Jewish state, Kawekji might then have realised how impossibly wrong he was.

Nevertheless, the Arab revolt was centred on the Arab peasantry - neither in its dynamics nor its aims was it an arm of international Fascism as Zionist writers from the time insisted. It was the Arab peasants to whom the British addressed leaflets begging them to give up violence and trust the Royal Commission. These peasant organisations numbered about 5,000 initially, and were often inspired by the example of Shaikh Qassam. They used primitive weaponry, were poorly trained and organised - yet, their commitment was astounding. One British observer describes how soldiers would witness their comrades chopped to the ground in their droves by British gun fire, and yet would return within two days to fight again. (Neville Barbour, op cit).

Finally, come September, the British were sick and tired of having their asses kicked, and announced that they were sending in a division of new troops to quell the mutiny. The citrus season was coming. A continued strike, already showing signs of strain, would deprive Palestine of an enormous source of export profit. The Arab states sent three Magi to tell the Palestinians to cut it out, and finally the Arab Higher Committee asked the people to "put an end to the strike and disorders". This they duly did, and the tally stood at 37 British dead, 69 Jews dead and anything up to a 1000 Arabs in "the Bosom of God". As the promised Royal Commission left for Palestine, the British government decided to announce an unusually generous work schedule for immigrant Jews. The Arabs, in turn, boycotted the commission until its final week in the country. (Hirst, op cit).

The Commission's findings were a negation of everything that had been promised to the Arabs from Balfour onwards. The 'safeguards' which had been highlighted in the Balfour Declaration were valueless, because it was now decided that the best thing for Palestine would be partition, the effective road to a Jewish State. (The Peel Commission, 1936). It did, however, concede much of the arguments that Arabs had been making - namely that the attainment of Zionist ambitions was inherently prejudicial to the rights of Arabs, that the existing order was untenable and only capable of preservation through "the dark path of repression". The partition was not implemented, but all the factors which had caused the initial uprising continued unabated. Jewish immigration, land sales and favouritism toward settlers. In addition, the staunchly pro-Arab residents of Galilee were astounded to learn that if such a partition were to be implemented, they would be in the zone of the Jewish State.

A Mr L.Y. Andrews was made the District Commissoner for Galilee and, by the end of September, 1937, had been shot dead.

The second phase of the rebellion, having thus began, impelled Arab leaders to abandon whatever vestiges of moderation they had maintained. If moderate politics were impossible before, they were now comical. Those who did espouse moderation and pacifism were likely to find themselves on the wrong end of some extremist's gun. The British aggravated the uprising with some outrageous provocation, including the dissolution of the Arab Higher Committee, and the deportation of its members to the Seychelles (the British are forever sending their most hated enemies to lagoons of paradise, like Australia or some Pacific Island).

On October 14th, 1937, disorder erupted across Palestine. The rebellion had acquired greater coordination. Lessons had been learned from the previous uprising, among which was the idea that its best if more people die on the other side. The rebels, at their height numbering 15,000 men, were able to take most of the central mountain area, from Galilee to Hebron, Beersheba to Gaza. They set up their own courts and collected their own taxes. They were able to destroy a thousand acres of orange trees belonging to a settlement in a single night. By controlling the countryside, they conquered the towns. They created a hegemony that encircled several major cities. Hundreds of troops descended on Bethlehem, disarmed the local cops and then swanned off singing patriotic songs. In Nablus, they emptied out the contents of Barclays Bank twice, right under the noses of the British. In Beersheba, they knocked off seventy-five rifles and ten thousand rounds of ammo. Even as far as the coastal town of Jaffa, the Mandate Authority was mainly fictitious. Its 3,000 Jewish citizens were forced to evacuate, as well as Arabs who did not cooperate with the mutiny. Police stations were raided, stores were looted, many hilarious photographs were taken.

Bombs planted in various public places slaughtered many Arabs. Since it was presumed the culprits were Jewish, the rebels descended from Tiberias to kill as many Jews as possible. One October evening, a crowd of rebels attacked the Arab and British police barracks, while others set fire to Jewish houses and synagogues in a quite deliberate massacre which took the lives of nineteen Jews, some of whom were babies. (The Times, October 4th, 1938).

Had the British extricated themselves at this point, it is fairly safe to say that Israel would not exist today. The main guarantor and facilitator of the Zionist project was British rule. But the British were in no mood to take any shit from the backward residents of a "derlict, deserted land". By the autumn of 1938, they had over 20,000 troops in Palestine. They banned the use or public possession of firearms. Military commanders were placed in charge of several districts, while civil authorities acted as advisers. With modern technology including armoured cars and airplanes pitted against muskets, the British began to score hit after palpable hit. One Times article reported that two British soldiers had been killed and, by the way, between 40 and 60 Arabs also died. (The Times, 3rd October, 1938). Military courts enforced emergency regulations. The death penalty was meted out to 112 Arabs and one Jew. Sir Alec Kirkbride, who witnessed the hangings, felt "guilty and mean". (Sir Alec Kirkbride, "A Crackle of Thorns", 1956). Collective fines and demolitions were imposed.

In March 1939, the British murdered the rebellion's commander, Abdul Rahim al-Haj Muhammed. Other commanders began to flee the country. The uprising was effectively over, the Palestinians crushed. The score this time was approximately 5,000 Arabs, 101 British, and 463 Jews dead.

All, however, was not in vain. The British were put off their lunches by having had to pursue a policy that was so harsh and costly. Malcolm McDonald, then Colonial Secretary in the coalition government, reported to the Commons that the Arab resistance was actuated by a militant patriotism, adding that if he were an Arab he would feel the same. And while the Peel Commission had recommended partition, another inquiry headed by Sir John Woodward concluded that partition was as unworkable as the Mandate. After deadlocked meetings involving Zionist leaders and Arab leaders, the British produced their new policy. The McDonald White Paper of 1939 announced that it was no longer government policy that "Palestine should become a Jewish state". 75,000 Jews would be admitted over the next five years, but no more without the approval of Arabs. Land sales would be regulated, and self-governing institutions formed. Palestinians, although put off by some of the provisions, were impressed by the British recognition of their concerns.

The response of the Zionists was to go absolutely bonkers. The broadcasting station from which the new policy was to be announced was bombed, the transmission lines cut. The headquarters of the Department of Migration were set on fire. Government offices in Haifa and Tel Aviv were ransacked by crowd intent on destroying all files relating to immigration. Arab shops were looted. One British constable was shot dead. A general Jewish strike was declared, and meetings across Palestine promised that this "new and treacherous" policy would be defeated. A campaign of terror and sabotage was initiated. The Rex Cinema in Jerusalem was blown up, killing five Arabs. Five more were murdered in an attack on Adas. David Ben Gurion, the leader of Yishuv, described the violence as "the beginning of Jewish resistance" to the British betrayal. Gun Zionism had come into its own.

The influence of Jabotinsky had been growing in the armed wing of Zionism for some years. Even as mainstream Zionists pretended that Jabotinsky and the revisionists were "the lunatic fringe", their methods were the ones which eventually prevailed. One example of this tendency was the position of Chaim Arlosoroff, the Director of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency who, as early as 1932, had written to Weizmann suggesting that the evolutionary path to a Jewish state was no longer possible. "Under present circumstance Zionism cannot be realised without a transition period during which the Jewish minority would exercise organised revolutionary rule," he wrote. ("Jewish Frontier", October 1948).

Gun Zionism was the tendency and direction of Zionist policy for some time. Even during the Arab uprising, when Yishuv was officially committed to Havlaga, meaning "self restraint, the tendency was for Zionists to react against this. Havlaga was a Jewish tradition based on Jewish ethics. In many ways, Zionism was a reaction against the Jewish tradition. In the Spring of 1938, three young Revisionists fired at an Arab bus on the Acre-Safad highway. The men were caught, and the ringleader, a young Polish Jew named Shlomo ben Yussif, was the first and only Jew to be hung by the British. Jabotinsky ranked Yussif among "the heroes of Israel" and abandoned Havlaga. (Joseph Shechtman, "Fighter and Prophet, the Jabotinsky Story", 1961). In July, 1938, six seperate incidents resulted in the deaths of 100 Arabs. The last of this series of atrocities was a bomb planted in the Arab Melon Market in Haifa at 7am on July 26th, no more than three weeks after a similar bomb had gone off not far away. Fifty three Arabs were killed and one Jew.

Jewish newspapers, such as Davar and Ha'aretz, condemned these actions without equivocation. On the other hand, the condemnation was general, and if a finger of blame was pointed it was liable to be pointed at the Arabs. The Palestine Post could not believe that there would be "a Jew so insane" as to throw a bomb outside a Mosque in a crowded place, thus "spreading the seed of inter-racial war". (Palestine Post, 17th July, 1938) The author of this article rather seems to have missed the point about Zionism. Jabotinsky's biographer points out the "inestimable political and educational value" of these acts. They "taught the Arab terrorist bands a healthy lesson" while generating "a new spirit of militancy and self-sacrafice in the Jewish youth". (Schechtman, op cit).

For some, Haglava had been a means of winning the support of the British for a Jewish militia, and in 1936 it succeeded. The British authorised the formation of a Jewish supernumerary police, 1,240-strong. The British informed the Zionist leadership later that year that an armed special force of Jewish constables could continue to exist provided Haganah disarm. But, as Arab violence raged on, they tacitly dropped this condition. The force was expanded over the next two years so that by 1939, it numbered 14,500 men. The training, increasingly sophisticated, was passed on to thousands of others who were not included in the force. In the Special Night Squads, the Zionists benefitted enormously from collaboration with the British. In particular one British captain named Orde Wingate, who had become a dedicated Zionist, taught them the principles of surprise, offensive daring, deep penetration and high mobility which are the hallmarks of the present Israeli army. Moshe Dayan was among the many talented Israeli officers who had first done battle with the Arabs under Wingate. A British journalist named Leonard Mosley described the brutal methods of Wingate and his men:

"He went up to the four Arabic prisoners. He said in Arabic: 'You have arms in this village. Where have you hidden them?' The Arabs shook their heads and protested innocence. Wingate reached down and took sand and grit from the ground; he thrust it into the mouth of the first Arab and pushed it down his throat until he choked and puked.
"'Now,' he said 'where have you hidden the arms?'
"Still they shook their heads.
"Wingate turned ro one of the Jews and, pointing to the coughing and spluttering Arab, said 'Shoot this man'.
"The Jew lookes at him questioningly and hesitated.
"Wingate said, in a tense voice, 'Did you hear? Shoot him.'
"The Jew shot the Arab. The others stared for a moment, in stupefaction, at the dead body at their feet. The boys from Hanita were watching in silence.
"'Now speak', said Wingate. They spoke." (Leonard Mosley, "Gideon Goes to War", 1951).


Well, the Zionists grew up. They learned to attempt deals with Hitler, shoot the Arabs and make a religious state on someone else's turf. But that's how painful it is growing up. And, y'know? Wendy never went near me again.

Titles, soundtrack of bleary old man singing about singing out of tune.