Jew and English in Palestine: Major Ormsby-gore on Need of Understanding Each Other: Just As My Job

I have always had, ever since I came in contact with Palestinian matters and the Jewish National movement, a peculiar sympathy with that movement and I made it my task to do what I could to learn something about Jewish life and ideals and to understand it, because it is only by understanding it that you can possibly interpret it to others, Major Ormsby-Gore, former Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies and now First Commissioner of Works in the National Cabinet, said when he spoke this evening to the Palestine Students’ Association.

I am of the opinion that just as my job in Palestine fourteen years ago was to act as the go-between of the Zionist Commission and the Military organisation in Palestine, Mr. Ormsby-Gore went on, so ever since one of the problems of Palestine has been the adequate interpretation of the Jews to the English and the English to the Jews.

ONE OF THE TROUBLES IN PALESTINE IN LAST FEW YEARS UNDOUBTEDLY BEEN THAT JEWS AND ENGLISH IN PALESTINE HAVE NOT UNDERSTOOD EACH OTHER ADEQUATELY: ENGLISH OFTEN FAIL TO UNDERSTAND WHAT JEW IS AFTER: ENGLAND HAS EVER BEEN DRIVEN TO COMPROMISES

One of the troubles in Palestine in the last few years has undoubtedly been the fact, Mr. Ormsby-Gore continued, that the Jews and the English in Palestine have not understood each other adequately and my attempt to-night is to give you some idea of the English, so that when you get back to Palestine you will then be more able to understand the English than otherwise. Equally, on your part, if you understand what is typically English, it will, I believe, be more easy to get the Jewish point understood by the English.

We are very different. The Jew has an amazingly greater dialectical skill than the English and a great power of concentration on an object he has in view. The English have not got that in the same degree and therefore the English often fail to understand what the Jew is after.

The Englishman is quite obviously more governed by traditional habits and impulses than by reason or logic. To survive as a national entity England by her varied traditions and immense diversity of race and physical environment has ever through the ages been driven to compromises. The value of any new movement or new idea in the Englishman’s view is determined by whether it can be grafted on to some existing root-stock and made contributory to national growth. His realism is direct and is the product of his special environment. When he gets transplanted out of his environment to other lands he has two ideas-one to maintain for himself something of the environment of his own home, and the other to let other people work out their own development in their own environment in their own way. Consequently, he becomes disliked for a certain separation or exclusiveness. Probably what he understands best in other nationalities is that element which is rooted in a soil which is the resultant of a traditional adaptation to a particular environment. He is intensely proud and fond of his own country and its past. He likes other people to feel the same about theirs. His real difficulty and perhaps his chief shortcoming is that he is so local and concrete in his outlook. He mistrusts general ideas, doctrine, conscious purpose or sudden change.

BEEN TOO MUCH POLITICAL CONTACT AT TOP IN LONDON AND NOT ENOUGH PERSONAL DIRECT UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL ENGLISHMAN AND INDIVIDUAL JEW IN PALESTINE

One of the troubles of Palestine, Mr. Orsmby-Gore said in reply to a question, is the instinctive feeling of so many Englishmen for the people who have long been in any place. Because of his love for that which is rooted in the soil, newcomers to the country are sometimes regarded as an intrusive force.

There has been too much political contact at the top in London, and not enough personal direct understanding between the individual Englishman and the individual Jew in Palestine, he said.

When something goes wrong in Palestine and some Englishman does something you don’t understand or like, he added, the Jew is apt to imagine that it is due to policy directed from the top; some Machiavellian change of policy from the Colonial Office or the Cabinet. I must disillusion you on that. You may find a series of actions interpreted as contradictory policies. This is due usually to the perpetual love the individual Englishman has of adaptation to circumstances. You must allow in your dealings for the individual.