Jews Demand Less Than Justice from Mandatory Power in Palestine, Says Lewisohn

“What we ask today of the Mandatory Power and of the enlightened opinion of the world is little and is less than justice, but it will suffice: the active recognition that we are in Palestine, as the nations have solemnly admitted and declared, as ‘of right’; that we have done everything in the world of both moral and economic values to confirm, to sustain, to re-win that right; that, so long as we treat the Arabs, as we have done and shall go on doing, with justice and with generosity, we be recognized as the bearers of peace and true civilization, of the values in human society that must and do prevail. We want it recognized, in brief, that our self-redemption is an essential part of that larger movement by which, from age to age, all mankind seeks to redeem itself.”

This is how Ludwig Lewisohn, noted American-Jewish novelist concludes his article entitled “The Jewish World Crisis” in the November issue of Harper’s Magazine. Discussing the land question in Palestine today, Mr. Lewisohn says:

20% UNDER CULTIVATION

“Only 20% of the total area of Palestine is under cultivation. By a generous etsimate the present population could cultivate an additional 15%. That leaves, when all deductions for irreclaimable waste and desert have been made, a total of 6½ millions of dunam of cultivable land which will lie idle as it has for centuries unless the Zionists acquire it. For ‘cultivable’ in Palestine is a term with a special meaning. It means malarial swamps that can be drained, sand dunes that can be made to yield, wastes that can be reforested, and naked rock to which the soil can be coaxed back. By

whom? The Arab effendis? They have let more and more land lapse back into the waste through the centuries. Only by the self-sacrifice of our pioneers, who are willing to die, and have often died in the effort to reclaim this stubborn and bitter soil because it is their own.

“Now how has the Zionist Organization acquired its land? By paying exorbitant prices for it in the open market. Thus a number of effendis have grown richer than ever by taking our money and others have sat back and watched the value of their lands go up in equity. The cry recently raised of Arabs evicted by Jews is of an indescribable absurdity. Anyone who knows Palestine is aware of the fact that the effendi’s attitude to the peasant is about that of a seventeenth-century Russian noble to serfs on an estate he had never seen. The Zionists however took their precautions. On all the lands acquired by them in the course of the years only 750 Arab tenants have been displaced. These have all been re-established by us on better lands and given a compensation additional to their new land of $250 each. The annual budget of these fellaheen before displacement was $150. Thus have the Zionists acquired the lands they have bought.”

OPPOSITION OF ARABS

With regard to the opposition of Arabs and others to a Jewish homeland, Mr. Lewisohn has this to say:

“Doubtless the Palestinian Arabs would have preferred to remain in the land alone; doubtless they are disturbed by the jolt of contact with western civilization. Side by side on the Mediterranean shore lie the Arab city of Jaffa and the Jewish city of Tel Aviv. Jaffa is filthy with the inconceivable filth of the East and rotten with poverty and disease and picturesque and ancient and holy. Tel Aviv is one of the most modern communities in the world-socialminded, hygienically impeccable, remarkably well governed, without any rich men, with very few poor, without a jail; Tel Aviv is not very beautiful nor very religious. It has a well-equipped book shop for every two thousand inhabitants. Jaffa sees Tel Aviv and is not psychically happy. But is not the whole march of the world, the inevitable march, precisely the march from Jaffa to Tel Aviv? Will it harm Britain or mankind if, with all possible care and respect for the bread and peace fo our Arab neighbors, we help that march to be accomplished in Palestine?”