cineSOURCE Magazine

I’m overjoyed some Californians noticed what’s happening in Ukraine. Indeed, the Academy awarded best documentary to Mstyslav Chernov for “20 Days in Mariupol”, readily available on PBS. It’s a masterful, personal look at Russia’s annihilation of that city.

Hopefully, it will touch American isolationists, on the right and the left. Two days early, Trump told Victor Orban, fellow Putin brownnoser, he would abandon Ukraine. The same day, Vice released “Putin's Russia: A Country at War with Itself” on YouTube, also excellent and by reporters on the ground.

For those thinking it’s NATO’s fault, check out the “1999 Russian apartment bombings” on Wikipedia, in Masha Gessen’s “The Man Without a Face” or elsewhere. Putin’s FSB murdered 307 people and injured 1700 blowing up four apartment blocks around—but not in—Moscow to start his fear machine, which Ukraine is just a bigger version of. Authoritarian conspiracism can not be appeased.

**kfascism

RADICAL MIDDLE EASTERN ART BLOWS MY MIND

On October 12th, 2023, five days after Hamas's deadliest-ever attack on Israel, New York’s Columbia University was rocked by students protesting in support of the Palestinians and a few counter-protesters. With helicopters hovering overhead and police at the ready, it was a tough moment for Minouche Shafik, the university’s Egyptian-English president. She closed the campus to the public, rejected “abhorrent rhetoric” and claimed that she embraced those on both sides “suffering great distress” from the rapidly expanding tragedy.

What Shafik didn’t do, but should have, was recommend the protesters walk a dozen blocks to see the groundbreaking show of modern Arab art at Columbia’s little-known Wallach Art Gallery, in the university’s new Manhattanville campus. Although some of the pieces were a century old, they were powerful enough to inspire the average viewer or challenge the more PC or Islamist. Indeed, a show of such artists in Gaza surely would have been shut down or worse by its theocratic rulers, Hamas.

image“Girl in a Fishnet” was painted by the Egyptian Amy Nimr, as part of her application to the Slade School of Fine Art in London, when she was only 20. That was before she went to Paris and befriended famous Surrealists, and before fishnet stockings became popular, in the mid 1920s and '30s, respectively.Titled “Partisans of the Nude”, amazingly enough, which is what the artists called their movement, the show was curated by Kirsten Scheid, a young but accomplished professor at American University in Beirut, Lebanon, where she did a similar show, and a visiting professor at Columbia and NYU. Well aware of the show’s implications, Scheid mentions some but avoids others in her catalogue and gallery notes, due to their radical nature but also her favoring of identarian and pro-Palestinian perspectives.

In fact, some of the artists' themes and ideas contradict Columbia’s famous arbiter of all things Arab and Palestinian, Professor Edward Said (1935-2003), who was born in Jerusalem and schooled in Egypt before going Ivy League. In fact, Said’s “Orientalism” (1978) largely kicked off the multicultural revolution still roiling Western civilization.

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STAND WITH UKRIANE'S FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY

The Ukrainians are fighting for democracy—both theirs and ours—since a Russian win would greenlight autocrats worldwide as well as wreak cultural and human genocide on Ukraine.

Russia’s “de-N**ifying” claim is absurd. I was just in Ukraine for three months. In Lviv, the supposed center of ultranationalism, I saw no fascist graffiti or thugs, only a beautiful café city straight out of the 60s, full of starry-eyed kids in love with freedom and democracy. Equally insane is Russia’s claim they’re liberating Russian-speaking Ukrainians, since the vast majority of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, from President Zelensky to many soldiers, utterly oppose Russia.

“They are N**is” is “conspiracy mirroring,” given Russia is the new fascist power threatening Europe. Indeed, Putin just told shill Tucker Carlson that Poland started World War Two, another conspiracy theory that bodes ill. “Mirroring” is a standard conspiracy trick, like trying to steal an election by saying the opposition stole it.

Indeed, Putin and Trump are best buds—Trump has long opposed Ukraine, claiming they are corrupt while it was he who tried to extort Zelensky—and they have joined together to scam the world.

Amazingly enough, they’re succeeding with the hard right but also the hard left. Now Putin has convinced much of the global south, even though they depend on Ukraine’s grain and defense of democracy. Meanwhile, Trump has conned Congress, the Trumpers and quite a few conservatives of color, who are condemning us to problems with fascists in the future.

Moderates must periodically fight fascists, simply because absolutely all of us—even the fascists themselves—like to speak our mind, travel and love freely, and enjoy the good life. The greatest number of humans can achieve the good life only through the liberal, rule of law, democratic order, which nurtures more creativity, both cultural and scientific—meaning better weapons—but also more love and tolerance.

Showing support for Ukrainians—some of the most oppressed people in history, given the seven wars and mass murders they endured in the last century—helps oppose Trump and fascism in general.

Please come Saturday, February 24th at 2:00 pm to Harry Bridge Plaza, in front of the San Francisco Ferry Building and 100 feet from the Spanish Civil War Memorial, which honors many Californians who joined Spain’s fight against fascists. For more see:
https://novaukraine.org/event/automaidan-rally-for-ukraines-victory/

Or come to my studio for full moon rise, cocktails and dialogue, Saturday, February 24th at 6:00 pm, 2200 Adeline St, Oakland, 510 220.2126.

DID ARABS AND JEWS LIKE EACH OTHER IN 1946?

While N**i loathing is legion, less well known is that many Germans loved Jews. “Every German stallion needs a Jewish mare,” advised “Iron Chancellor” Bismarck; antisemitism was much higher in France than Germany, where Jews and Germans intermarried at a phenomenal rate; and German Jews won more Nobel prizes than any other group in history, suggesting a little-noted truth: When people come to love the Jews, others feel left out, threatened, compelled to destroy.

Jewish immigration to Palestine was a long litany of colonialism, exploitation and ethnic cleansing, according to some of my pro-Palestine friends and likeminded pundits, but a very compelling and opposing story is told by Bartley Crum in his 1947 book, “Behind the Silken Curtain”. A liberal Republican lawyer from San Francisco, who defended blacklisted Hollywood figures and Paul Robeson among other progressive causes, Crum was on the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, the fact-finding officials dispatched to the Middle East to investigate the “Jewish Question” and take public testimony. Although Crum cites private views throughout, he really gets rolling in Jerusalem, in his twelfth chapter, which is titled “Mr. Effendi, Do Not Believe All You Hear” (effendi: person of high status).

I have edited Crum’s text for flow (indicated by ellipses), added some emphasis (in ALL CAPS) and historical parentheticals, and included twenty pages of text, since it is so worth reading. His chapter 12 starts as follows:

Wherever possible between and after hearings I spoke with the younger Arabs—Palestinian counterparts of my friend Tewfik in Cairo. Educated at the American University in Cairo and in Beirut, and some at Oxford, most were extremely wealthy. Though they stemmed from the effendi stratum of Arab society, it was my feeling that, given a free hand, they would become socially progressive. They made it clear, however, that in Palestine, the political scene was dominated by the M***i [Amin al-Husseini] through Jaamal Husseini.

[Historical Note: The al-Husseini ruling family produced many of Jerusalem’s mayors and muftis. Amin al-Husseini was forced to step down as M***i, meaning head Muslim cleric, because he led the Arab Revolt (1936-39), but he retained the title of M***i.]

The younger Arabs appeared strongly influenced by Mrs. Antonius… [Katy Antonius was the daughter of a Christian Lebanese-Egyptian newspaper magnate, the wife of an esteemed Palestinian intellectual AND the lover of Palestine’s British commander. She was also Jerusalem’s premier salon leader and party host.]

I was perplexed to discover that, despite her antagonism toward the Jews, several of her proteges believed that the key to the Palestine problem was not keeping the Jews out, but urging them to enter and build the old Greater Syria. This, it was explained to me, would utilize Jewish brains and Jewish capital. But there was little they could do about it because the M***i, and the older effendis and cadis [learned men] maintained that the Zionists were in league with the British. They preached that it was impossible to get rid of the British unless they got rid of the Zionists. This they translated into keeping the Jews out.

Unquestionably, definite fear and hatred of the M***i existed among Arab opposition families in Palestine. They expected his return to the Middle East [from house arrest in Paris] but doubted he would come immediately to Palestine because of the blood feuds still raging between many of the leading Arab families and the Husseinis.

I explored this subject with a member of the Nashashibi family [also the source of Jerusalem mayors, including Raghib al-Nashashibi, 1920–‘34, whose wife was Jewish], who called on me at the King David Hotel. Seated in the luxurious lounge of the hotel, listening to the teatime chamber music, he told me his cousin, Fakhri Nashashibi, a second -ranking member of his clan, had been killed in Baghdad in 1941 by the M***i’s men.

“We have never avenged his blood,” he said. “Sooner or later we shall catch up with the M***i.”

I told him of the M***i’s record, as I had come upon it in Nuremberg. I said I was convinced of his guilt as a war criminal. [In fact, Amin al-Husseini was an avid N**i collaborator, who moved to Berlin for the last three years of World War Two, lobbied for the Holocaust, did radio broadcasts to recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Russian front, served as spymaster for the Axis’ Middle East department, and made plans to set up a death camp in Palestine.] I hoped sooner or later to see him tried, I assured him.

“You will wait a long time,” [the Nashashibi] said soberly. “I have lived in Palestine my whole life. My family has been here for generations. We know the ways of the British in such matters. You will see—the M***i will be allowed to escape from Paris and then he will turn up in Saudi Arabia or some near-by Arab state and presently come back to power again.” He gave me the background of the long-standing feud between the two families and explained how strenuously his family had been seeking to rid Palestine of the Huessenis’ deathlike grip.

[The English attempted to prosecute Amin el-Husseini for instigating attacks on Arab liberals and Jews, but both the Brits and the Nashashibis thought that appointing him M***i, after he lobbied for the position in 1922, “might temper Haj Amin’s intransigence.”]

“It was the old story of appeasement,” Nashashibi told me now, “and like all appeasement, it proved a major error. As soon as Haj Amin [haj: honorific for one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca] came to power, he was as intransigent as ever. He purged the Arab leadership of every Arab that threatened his domination, and I do not exaggerate when I say that the M***i’s gangs simply ELIMINATED BY MURDER HUNDREDS of his political opponents.” The M***i, he added, was publicly charged with “direct responsibility” for the murder of 28 men, all distinguished Palestine Arab leaders, in an affidavit entitled “Voice from the Arab Tombs of Palestine,” published in Cairo on January 2, 1939, by Sheik Ali Yassin, who had escaped to Egypt from Palestine. “The M***i is a great problem for us, as you can see,” he added.

As to the question which brought the [Anglo-American] Committee to Palestine—Nashashibi’s solution, which I heard with some surprise, was partition. His reasons were these: the Jews could have an independent democratic state with a Jewish majority; second, the Arabs could have a large Arab state comprising Trans-Jordan and the Arab-populated parts of Palestine, all under King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan; and third, the British would be eliminated, which is what both Jews and Arabs wanted.

“From a dynastic point of view, we Nashashibis would like to see that solution,” he said. “[Jordan’s King] Abdullah has no love for the M***i, and if Abdullah were to reign over greater Trans-Jordan he would put the M***i in his proper place. Our family fortunes would prosper, because we have always enjoyed excellent relations with the Hashimite dynasty to which Abdullah belongs.”

He added: “Of course, these things cannot be said in public. Should you quote me specifically—” He brought the edge of his hand, fingers outstretched, against his neck in a vivid chopping motion. “’Helas!’ I would be finished.”

Later I reported his prediction on the M***i to [Reginald] Maningham-Buller [a Conservative member of the English Parliament also on the Committee]. “I am afraid someone has been pulling your leg, old fellow,” he said good-humoredly. “I don’t think the M***i will ever be allowed back in the Middle East.” [In point of fact, the M***i returned to Cairo a year later, in August 1947, and continued his anti-Zionist and pro-Fascist work until his death in Beirut in 1974.]

Another Arab of influence with whom I discussed Middle East politics was Yussef D… Mr D. greeted me in French rather than in the Middle Eastern fashion and began our discussion by saying that he thought of Wendall Willkie [the 1940 Republican presidential candidate who toured the Middle East in 1944 and was a friend of Crum] as his ‘grand ami’—a man who really understood that all men were brothers.

He told me that the Arab world, even at the top, was far from unwilling to co-operate with the Jews. The entire Middle East needed the intelligence, ingenuity, and productive capacity they represented. Coming from an Arab dignitary this rather startled me, although I knew from conversations with [Chaim] Weizmann [the Russian biochemist who became Israel’s first president] and other Jewish leaders, and from my own examination here, that the relationship between the Arabs and the Jews—save when someone else was looking—was good.

Mr D. cited the vast unsettled and undeveloped areas in the Arab world. “You must not forget that the Middle East was the cradle of civilization and in Roman times the granary of the world. It once held millions of people and boasted great civilizations.” I asked him what he thought the needs were. First, he said, was education. For centuries, the Arab people had no opportunity for education. He took me to the window of his suite and pointed to the distant hills which were being reforested by Jewish settlers.

“Whether the present Arab leadership likes it or not,” he said, “we must realize that what the Jews are doing in Palestine must be done for the whole Middle East, if we are to take our rightful place in the community of nations.” Again I expressed some surprise at these conciliatory words, but he remarked, “You should not think what I say strange. I was a friend of Wendell Willkie.” He drew a wallet from his pocket and showed me snapshots taken of him and Wendell together. “I believe in peace with our neighbors. When I look at the Middle East, I think of it as a great customs union, a great trading area. Therein lies our hope...”

Our conversation veered to democracy. “Our people are unfortunately not ready for democracy as you know it,” he said. “We have a parliament, but no real freedom. We have the forms of democracy but not the substance. Take, for example, Lebanon. It is a republic. It has a parliament. But out of the 55 members of that parliament, not one represents the farmers, the artisans, or the workers. They are all wealthy landowners, lawyers or merchants. That is why we can have the forms of democracy but not its substance. We can get the substance of democracy only by raising the living standard of all of our people, by education and by developing the land. That is why I believe in irrigation and electric-power projects in this area…”

He lit a cigarette and thought somberly for a moment. “I say to you honestly, Mr. Crum, I am sick at heart. I have seen my own people telling your committee lies. You must not believe what they say to you in public—they say what they feel they must say for public consumption, but I assure you many of them are neither as recalcitrant or as belligerent [toward the Jews] as they appear!”

“If they were sure that Britain and America wished the Jews and Arabs to get together, we would. But they are not convinced, these Arab leaders: they wish to maintain their position of power, and they know that depends on keeping to the [British] Colonial Office line.”

I interrupted, “You mean the witnesses who appeared before us?” He said, “Yes, you must not believe what most of them say to you in public.”

Topside Arab leadership, he said, was extremely cynical about Western civilization. They used democratic catch phrases because they thought it pleased the Western world. In his opinion real democracy could come to the Middle East only though economic development of the whole area in co-operation with the Jewish community of Palestine. Medical needs were all important, he added. Disease was appalling among his people. “They desperately need education so they will better understand that the modern world offers them a better life…”

He concluded by emphasizing that the fundamental Arab error was in not sitting down with the Jews. Unfortunately, he said, the Jews, too, were guilty of this error and sometimes fell into the trap of thinking of the Arabs as their enemies.

There is no question that this man heads a school of thought in some Arab countries which has not been able to speak out. At this date I still do not feel free to reveal his name.

I tried to see as much of Palestine as I could, and the necessary facilities were given to me. One afternoon I came into the King David lobby to find a tall, dark Arab youth of about 24 waiting for me. “Mr. Crum?” he asked, and put out his hand. “I am Michael. I am to be your chauffer. I am a Christian, sir. I am named after a saint. I have a wife and a coming baby. I live in Bethlehem, and I have a hard time to make a living…”

“Michael, I want to know what the common man thinks,” I said…

Michael said apologetically that he did not want to be involved in such matters, but that some of the Arab Christians—perhaps one in five Palestinian Arabs were Christian—felt the presence of the Jews in Palestine helped safeguard them. The Christians had been persecuted by the Muslims long before the Jews, he said.

“Then Michael, what is the truth about trouble between the Arabs and Jews?”

Michael spread his hands. “Sir, I am interested in making enough money for my wife and my baby that is coming… I know I am an attractive man but where am I to go? I am limited. My father, my grandfather, his father, and his grandfather before him all lived in Bethlehem. I must live there, too. That is not right. A man should be able to move. I speak English, Arabic, Hebrew—but what good does it do me?” He explained that as an Arab Christian, he was viewed with suspicion by Muslim Arab officials, and said that he could not get visas to foreign countries such as the United States or West Africa [where the Lebanese mercantile class was well-established]… He could go to another Arab country, if he wished, but I am afraid my life would be even more difficult to make…”

“Do your friends read about politics?” I asked. “Do they know what is happening? Are they interested?”

“It is not easy to say, sir, that they are interested. We sit in the coffeehouse and we hear what the radio tells us, and we talk about what is taking place, but we have no power, my friends and I. The common man here is not important. He does not vote, no one asks him anything. A wise man does not become deeply caught in matters in which he can do nothing.”

Michael possessed a natural dignity of his own. He enjoyed himself where and how he could. He was not above becoming pleasantly intoxicated on Palestinian brandy, which he obtained in Richon-le-Zion, a Jewish village…

I found it interesting to discuss morals with him. In this he was as fatalistic as in other things. “You know, Jerusalem is a pure city, sir,” he told me. “We do not permit any houses of women within the boundaries of the city… here they are on the outskirts.”

As we drove through the country… I attempted to see Jewish and Arab life both in the whole and in detail; upon its average economic level and among its poor and its rich. I visited many Arab villages with Michael as my translator.

On one trip [fellow Committee members] Crick, Sir Frederick, and I entered the town of Beisan… [A]pparently the Arab Higher Committee had been there before us, for [there were] placards in English, reading “Bring the M***i Back” and “Support the White Paper” [the 1939 English edict which prohibited almost all Jewish immigration and contributed to the Holocaust]…

Numerous sheiks welcomed us in their colorful robes, and there was much gracious and ceremonious bowing. We found these village Arab leaders extremely nationalistic. An Arab Roman Catholic priest was also present, and he expressed in the strongest terms his opposition to the Jews. I told him that I, too, was Roman Catholic, and recalled to him the clear stand of our Church on antisemitism…

[Crum’s extensive travels brought him from Nazareth, Jericho and Haifa to orange groves and shipbuilding shops as well as monasteries, mosques and Biblical sites.] I visited Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus [in Jerusalem], not far from the Hebrew University, and was impressed by this medical institution, whose medical staff and nursing corps are unquestionably among the finest in the world. Later at the hospital’s outpatient clinic in the heart of modern Jerusalem, I saw Arab mothers bringing their children for treatment.

[I visited Tel Aviv,] “a thriving city of 200,000… with tree-shaded boulevards, opera and theater, with playgrounds and modern schools, with buses and apartment houses. [My tour guide] told us how the city’s character had changed from that of a residential suburb [of the old city of Jaffa], in which trade was barred, to that of Palestine’s commercial center, following the 1921 Arab riots, when Jews were compelled to move their shops out of Jaffa. In 1936, an Arab general strike [led by Amin al-Husseini] which paralyzed port activities in Jaffa, led the Jews to develop a port of their own.

[Crum attended a play and visited construction sites and a Jewish family living in what “might have been an apartment in San Francisco,” except for] a small nephew recently rescued from the concentration camps… and his arm, just above the wrist showed the same purple band [of tattooed numbers] I had become so familiar with in Germany and Austria.

[He visited a kibbutz,] “where perhaps 350 men, women and children lived… This agricultural settlement seemed to present an excellent example of how smoothly Palestine Jewry fits into life in Palestine. Nearby was a monastery, and not far was an Arab village. The secretary of the kibbutz was about 30, wearing khaki trousers and a shirt open at the neck, and spoke English with an accent.

“I came from Yugoslavia ten years ago,” he told me. “My wife came with me. Our family believed that the Jews had no future in Europe: that we must return to the soil, that we must make a nation or be lost…”

I asked him if they had experienced any trouble with the Arabs.

“Our problem here is clear,” he said. “We must get along with our Arab neighbors. We do get along with them. They get along with us. When we drilled our well, the first to take water from us was the Arabs who lived nearby. Let’s go there for a moment,” he said…

As we passed a large lumber shed, I peered in. Two boys about sixteen were working with an electric buzz saw. They were making wooden marionettes in preparation for a children’s show they were to give in a few days.

“Are you surprised?” my companion asked, smiling.

I said I was. Somehow the thought of a marionette show in the middle of this “troubled” country seemed bizarre…

Once in the Arab village, we came upon a kibbutz member adjudicating a dispute between two Arabs, and I was gratified to learn he had been a lawyer in Berlin.
During the Arab disturbances of 1936-’39, the secretary told me, many Arab villagers warned their Jewish neighbors of attacks. More Arabs were killed by Arab raiders, principally because the Arab villagers refused to give up men, donkeys, and food requisitioned by the Arab mercenaries [recruited by the Husseinis, often from Syria and Egypt]…

[Crum details vibrant kibbutz life but also asks if they received any child survivors of the Holocaust. Since they had, he learns how they were slowly introduced to the new way of life. He especially enjoyed the kibbutz’s Children’s House, where children lived apart from their parents under the care of young women, noting “one of my pleasantest half-hours was spent in this child’s world in the middle of Palestine.”]

“As for money, it has no value here with the collective,” [the kibbutz secretary said.] “We have food, we have lodging, we have clothes… We each receive items such as toothpaste, soap and razors. We are all mature here. We do not ask for more than we need. We do not take advantage of each other.”

“But what about your young women? Do they wear identical dresses?” I asked. “The girls wouldn’t stand for it back home.”

He laughed.

“Yes, we recognize that, and so we have a few different styles of dress. The women choose what they like and, of course, they can sew or decorate it according to their wishes…”

[Crum concludes in his kibbutz chapter with, “It is always difficult to draw conclusions on the basis of brief study, but the kibbutz movement seemed to me a striking contribution to modern life.” His next chapter concerns the Israeli freedom fighters, the Hagenah, the spies trailing him and the disagreements between the Committee’s English and American members, all of which I omit because it doesn’t illuminate Arab-Jewish relations. He jumps back into that topic in Chapter 16: “Arab vs. Jew: ‘On the Top Level’”.]

[Crum starts by introducing Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham, His Majesty’s chief executive in Palestine and his problems, but also Cunningham’s predecessor:] “Field Marshal Viscount Gort, who had resigned his position in Jerusalem in 1945, shortly before his death. Gort had given his illness as the reason for his resignation, but there were many in Palestine who said that Gort had been unwise enough to let his heart rule him: he had become pro-Jewish [while most English authorities were pro-Arab, some did favor the Jews], and he simply could not carry out policies, particularly after the war ended and thousands of Jewish refugees pleaded to enter Palestine, which he knew would add to the bitterness and the anguish of Palestinian Jewry. Whatever the cause, there was no doubt that Gort was one of the most popular High Commissioners Palestine had ever had…

Sir Alan [Cunningham] struck me as a worthy successor to Lord Gort. Possessing an air of great gentleness and kindliness, he was not at all military in manner. If he had a free hand, I am convinced the Arab-Jewish problems in Palestine would be enormously simplified. He was one of the few British officials I met in whom I found a sympathetic understanding of both Arab and Jewish positions.

“I have tried hard to get both Arab and Jewish leaders together,” he said. “I have attempted it at government receptions, which you might say are really command performances. But”—he smiled wryly—“within a short time you’d discover the Arab and Jewish leaders on opposite sides of the room, afraid to speak to each other in public, especially in front of British officials.”

“Yet I know from my own confidential reports that in day-to-day activities, the Jews and Arabs of course see each other and get along well.” [Crum broached delicate topics like the British arrest of many Jews and Arabs, the need for American troops or the ability to absorb 100,000 Jewish immigrants, which Cunningham largely sidestepped. Crum] left Government House with the feeling that Sir Alan himself favored partition as a solution but with a far more generous territorial allowance to the new state of Judea [i.e. Israel—evidently, Crum was unaware of the new state’s intended name].

[At the Government House meeting with Cunningham, Crum encountered Anthony, a Franciscan monk from Vermont, who invited him to cocktails at his monastery. There, another monk told Crum how the Arab and Jewish children were friends at the Franciscan school.]

“Would you say the struggle between Arabs and Jews is at the top level only?” I asked.

He nodded. “On the top level,” he said, “there is no question of it.”

Into my mind flashed the words of Viscount Samuel, the first High Commissioner of Palestine, as he sat before us in London, quiet, informed, his hands folded on the small table before him, and summed up the problem.

“I think if you could get a political settlement at the top, things would shape up very differently at the bottom. I do not think the bottom people wish to quarrel; at the top they rather like it.”

In London, critics of the Jews in Palestine had charged that the Arabs were paid far less than the Jews and this caused difficulties among the two peoples. [At Committee hearings] I had heard the testimony of Mrs. Goldie Meyerson, spokeswoman for the Histadruth, the General Federation of Jewish Labor, who told us, from the first day of Jewish work in Palestine, the Histadruth had never ceased to work for mutual aid and co-operation with Arab workers.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Meyerson, who had grown up in Milwaukee [also the childhood home of Golda Meir, Israel’s fourth prime minister, 1969-74] and become the first woman leader in the Palestine labor movement, “we recognize two different standards of wage levels in Palestine. It is not a happy situation and the record will show that we have worked constantly to raise the Arab level to the Jewish, or we face the possibility of bringing the Jewish down to the Arab. We don’t want this. We are building a country, a civilization, a way of life, and we don’t want a master race, with a people of much lower standard of living among us. We want our young people to grow up in an environment of high cultural standards, not only within the Jewish communal settlements, but in the neighboring Arab villages, in the streets of Jerusalem, in the streets of Haifa—everywhere.”

In the ‘20s, the Jewish employers and workers urged the Mandatory [Mandatory Palestine, established by the League of Nations and lasting 1920-’48] to establish minimum wage legislation for all workers, Arab and Jewish, in Palestine, she testified. This was not granted. The Jewish Agency repeatedly requested blanket wage increases to Jewish and Arab policemen and Jewish and Arab civil servants. This was refused.

I myself learned that much of the difficulty of raising the Arab standard of living lies in the OPPOSITION OF THE ARAB EFFENDI to having Arab workers reach the same wage levels as the Jewish workers. This policy has been recognized by the Mandatory itself; even in government work a wage differential is maintained by the Mandatory between Arab and Jewish workers.

I build up my conclusions slowly. Walking through the streets of Jerusalem, I would come upon an Arab having an English letter read to him by a small Jewish school child. I found that Arabic was taught in all the Jewish secondary schools and even some of the elementary ones, while every agricultural settlement had at least one Arabic teacher. Down at the Dead Sea, Arabs and Jews worked in harmony. [Despite the wage differential,] the Arabs received almost double the wages paid Arabs in Egypt performing comparable work. In Haifa, Jews and Arabs are together members of the town council and the mayor is Jewish: both Jews and Arabs collaborate on numerous government boards, committees, and trade and commerce organizations. In the citrus industry, one of Palestine’s great industries, Jewish and Arab orange growers cooperate.

I discovered that basically their common success depended on their common efforts. In Jerusalem, for example, if Jews were to patronize only Jewish shops, and Arabs on Arab shops, both would suffer.

Arab governments invite Hebrew University professors to formulate schemes of improvement, and officials and students from neighboring Arab countries work in Jewish research institutions and laboratories. I thought it paradoxical to learn that the very Arab leaders who attack the Jews send their wives and families to Hadassah Hospital, an institution made possible only by the Zionist endeavor.

In rural areas of Palestine I found the Arabs looking upon the Jews with great respect. Farmers themselves, they regarded with approval these people who worked the land so earnestly, who were ready to stay up all night with a sick lamb, and whose of values toward the simple things of earth—planting, harvesting, irrigating—were like their own. These Arabs might be told time and again by political leaders that the Jews were a foreign people, alien to Palestine and its ageless way of life: but they saw the evidence of their own eyes that these men and women were ready to endure great hardship, live in malarial country, fight nature with all their energy—and they understood this.

THE BASIC TRUTH OF ARAB-JEWISH LIFE IN PALESTINE IS THAT POLITICAL CONFLICT ON HIGH LEVELS DOES NOT AFFECT THE RELATIONS AMONG MEN ON THE STREET [Crum’s emphasis].

I could find no conflict of interest. The nearer an Arab village was to a Jewish colony, the better its economic, social and health conditions. There is no question that the Arabs of Palestine are better off than those of any other Arab country. The birth rate of the Palestine Arabs is higher, the death rate lower: an Arab laborer in Palestine is paid higher wages and lives a better life than his opposite number in Egypt or in Iraq, although they have no problem there of Jewish immigration or “Zionist invasion.” It is precisely because of this better life in Palestine that tens of thousands of Arabs from neighboring Arab countries have been attracted to Palestine, crossing the border from Syria, Trans-Jordan, and Egypt—and they are still coming.

Yet despite this lack of conflict of interests, despite this lack of hatred and animosity in everyday life, in spite of the signs of neighborly friendship I had seen myself, apparently a feud exists on the higher levels.

I became almost obsessed with this question of Arab-Jewish relations. Left alone, I was told by both peoples, they would get along. And slowly this same conviction grew in me, and slowly it became definite truth to me that at every turn, whether covertly or overtly, whether by design or through ignorance, pressures were at work on both peoples to keep them if possible at each other’s throats.

It is obvious that there were two vested interests militating against a Jewish-Arab understanding. Two distinct groups, for reasons of its own, are opposed to a Jewish Palestine. The Arab kings and the effendis form the first group. British imperialism represents the second—and both, in that “passive alliance” cited by Dr. Einstein [earlier in the book], were now acting as one against a common enemy.

Pan-Arabism as a solid united force of the Arab world was more myth than truth. [As it happened, the United Arab Republic included Egypt, the Gaza Strip and Syria from 1958 until 1961.] The community of interests of the kings, sheiks, and effendis in the various Arab lands is unquestionably the MAIN FORCE of the Arab states in their fight against Zionism. And in this united front, the Arab masses are unprotected. What we have here is a class interest of state rulers, landowners and officialdom. To them, as distinct from the multitudes of the Arab peoples, Zionism’s social and technological innovations are a threat because they mean lifting the masses from their ignorance and serfdom...

[Crum’s remaining 70 pages covers why the Brits are so determined to keep the Arab establishment on their side—to help preserve their empire—public works that could help the Middle East and a chapter entitled “Arab Adventure”, about when Committee members flew to Syria and Iraq, where the authorities’ attempts to impress them with scenes of “happy Jews” backfired.]

If, in centuries past, the Arabs had been hospitable to the Jews, this was now the 20th century, and we were in an era of growing nationalism and xenophobia in which the Jew, the perennial stranger, was the first and most helpless victim. The result of Arab nationalism today was to denationalize the Jews and break any connection they had with Jews elsewhere—particularly in Palestine. At the same time, Arabs nationalism did not permit the Jew to become assimilated in the Arab states, so that he was, as it were, GROUND BETWEEN TWO STONES. In Iraq for example, Zionism was high treason. Every Iraqi Jew’s passport was stamped “Not Valid for Palestine…”

[Fifty-seven pages later, the Crum’s ultimate paragraph concludes:] We cannot have peace, I am convinced, with a Middle East divided, half Fascist, half democratic. Palestine symbolizes the crossroads, not only for our foreign policy but the world. Which way will we choose?