Britain Charged with Facilitating Presence of Arab Delegations at San Francisco

The charge that the British Government, appeasing the Arabs, facilitated the presence of Arab delegations at San Francisco, but excluded Jewish representation there, is made today by Harold Laski, noted economist and a leader of the British Labor Party, in an article cabled to the Overseas News Agency in New York. Mr. Laski also predicts that the present British policy may lead to “a transfer of the scene of Jewish massacre from Central Europe to the Middle East.”

“No one can say that the Arab states, at least Iraq and Syria, were helpful to Britain in the war,” Laski writes. “It is common knowledge that a large influential party in Egypt was pro-Axis in sympathy until the Germans and Italians were defeated in Africa. The necessity for military action in Iraq and Syria by Britain to defend its lines of communication from the attack which must have been envisaged and was instanded to aid the Axis powers, who had bribed Arab leaders in both countries, is still in our memories. Nor must we forget the large-scale, half-hidden Axis propaganda in Palestine, of which the Mufti was the chief agent and to which the main British reply seems to be maintenance of the infamous MacDonald White Paper of 1939 and refusal to withdraw it even after the need to appease the Arabs on strategic grounds has largely passed away.

“No one knows better than Churchill and Eden that almost all the help, both in men and materials, they received from Palestine during the European war was the outcome of Jewish effort. Yet it is hard not to interpret British policy, at this time, toward the Jews, despite all the fine rhetoric by Churchill about the White Paper when it was published, except upon the assumption that the Jews are once more to be sacrificed and offered upon the altar by buying the goodwill of the Arab peoples despite all solemn pledges.

“It is the British Government which facilitate the presence of the Arab states, including Arab Palestine, which is not a state, but excluded Jewish representation at San Francisco. It is the British Government which agreed to discuss the colonies there, with all the repercussion this involves regarding the position of Palestine, despite the pledge to the unrepresented Jews that this would not affect their hopes built on the Balfour Declaration. Britain must be aware that behind a fesade of parliementarianism in its pathetically crude form each Arab state today is an oligarchy of exploitation of the many fellaheen by the few effendi and often ebsentee landlords.

“It is intelligible that Churchill should be unwilling, in his famous phrase, ‘to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.’ It looks as though he is not equally unwilling to assist in liquidation of French interests in the Middle East and a little later to see a transfer of the scene of Jewish massacre from Central Europe to the Middle East, Why Syria and Iraq should be regarded as fit for the freedom and ealf-government which Churchill continues to deny to India, I do not know. I can only say that the price he and his colleagues ceem willing to pay for Arab good-will regarding oil and lines of communication is too high. For that good-will is not substantial today and will not continue longer than Ibn Saud and his allies see no alternative.

“As they bought appeasement during the war, so are they buying appeasement after it. The cost is likely to be paid immediately by the Jews. But in the long ran it will be paid by the poverty-stricken peasants in the Middle East who will be denied the chance of that increasing standard of civilization which is so long overdue.”