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Arabs Get Aid of Tribesmen in War on Jews

August 12, 1934
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Even Beduin tribesmen, known for their ruthless ferocity and lawlessness, are being mobilized by the Arab Youth Federation, latest and most implacable factor in the fight against Zionism, to watch the frontiers in order to prevent Jewish immigrants crossing without visas.

Beduins in the Tiberias and Beisan areas are being promised rewards for every Jewish man or woman whom they catch.

The traffic in smuggled immigrants is becoming as brisk and as bold as of Chinese across the Mexican border, it is stated, and not all of these travellers by the underground route are Jews. It is only the Jews who are betrayed by their so-called guides, Arabs who get a reward from the police, and who are arrested.

Baroness Orczy’s description of some of the ruses that Sir Percy Blakeney employed to get French aristocrats out of the clutches of the French revolutionists in 1792 are tame compared to the ways in which Jews and others are brought across land or sea frontiers into Palestine. One group of Jewish women came disguised as Moslem wives, with black veils and clothing; others come in as Beduin tribesmen or women; or hidden in cars with market produce.

It is estimated that for every Jew caught trying to enter unauthorizedly, at least five get in unmolested.

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