Labor Daily “davar,” and “palestine Daily Bulletin” Fined for Contempt of Court in First Case of Kin

The Hebrew labor daily, “Davar,” and the “Palestine Daily Bulletin,” the only English daily in the country, have been fined $400 and $50 respectively for contempt of court in a judgment that permits no appeal. This first contempt of court case in Palestine arose from an editorial in the “Davar” suggesting that “some hidden influence against the Jews is working through the judiciary.” The editorial was reprinted in the “Palestine Daily Bulletin” with the title “Injustice to the Jews.”

The “Davar’s” editorial was the result of the acquittal of the 12 Arabs charged with the murder of the Macleff family and the death sentence of the Jewish police constable Hinkis. The High Court composed of Judges MacDonnell and Baker rejected the plea of counsel for the “Davar” that the editorial had not suggested that the courts had departed from right but merely questioned the conduct of the legal and not the judicial investigation.

The Court concluded that the editorial contained contempt and the innuendo that justice was not dealt out alike to Jew and Arab and that such innuendo, everywhere grave, was especially grave in Palestine now. The plea that the editorial did not reflect on the honor of the courts was alse turned down.

Judge MacDonnell in handing down the decision said that it was “not to salve the wounded honor of judges but to uphold the integrity of the courts and judges. To charge a judge with injustice is more serious than charging him with corruption.” The “Daily Bulletin’s” translation of the “Davar” editorial was termed “very fair” and in accepting the apologies of Sh. Schwartz on behalf of the “Bulletin,” Judge MacDonnell reproached the English daily for giving further circulation to a scandalizing article.

The full text of the editorial in the “Davar” that was the basis of the contempt charges follows: Entitled “No Confidence,” it said, “during the riots crimes were committed for which there can be no atonement or pardon. Among the hundreds of cases where the blood of Jews was shed by Arabs, where the property of Jews was looted and destroyed, there were also isolated cases where Arabs were killed without the excuse of actual defence. These isolated instances must cause infinite pain, even if one cannot treat them in the same way as attacks on Jews.

“Yet no verdict in any court can blind us to the fact that these occurences took place after the destruction in Jerusalem, Hebron, Jaffa, Haifa and Hulda and Safed. Nevertheless, in spite of the bitterness that was aroused at a time when it seemed as if the government allowed anyone freely to shed Jewish blood when there was no one on whom to rely it still seems that the courts must deal with these isolated cases. We want justice. We do not want acquittal just because the defendant is a Jew.

“Though this be so how can we explain the feeling of horror which gripped the whole Jewry of Palestine when it heard that Hinkis had been condemned to death, although the decision is not final, there being an appeal to Jerusalem and the possibility of an appeal to London. Isn’t it possible that there might be some error in a case which may make it possible not to condemn a man to death? It is, because we feel that the news was received not only with sorrow but with anger. Before the Hinkis case and before the Macleff case and both before and since there have been other curious cases, all of them tending in the same way—injustice towards the Jews.

“The police, the central government, and particularly the attorney general and the examining magistrates, all share the same responsibility of the government if they are unable to discover the murderers of the Macleff family while at the same time and on the very same day those trying to murder the British official Athlit were apprehended. The attorney-general withdraws his charges owing to a lack of evidence in a number of cases against Arabs charged with committing crimes against Jews during the riots, but collects every kind of evidence and uses all the government offices and even goes abroad to collect expert evidence in order to prove a case against a Jew.

“It would almost seem as if some hidden influence against the Jews is working through the judiciary, and it is because of this that we no longer feel complete confidence in the verdicts which are given in the courts of law. We can never be sure that the guilty will not go free while the innocent will be condemned. Can we be quite certain in the Hinkis case, with all the evidence that was brought against him, that this secret influence to which we have referred has not been responsible for producing just this evidence? Can we be certain that Hinkis did indeed commit the ghastly crime for which the court condemned him?

“If we are unable to discover the murderers of the Macleffs, we cannot be sure that the murderers of Sheik Abdel Aoun have been discovered. This feeling of dissatisfaction which has gripped the whole of Palestine Jewry, does not, Heaven forbid, mean that the Jews wish to make any apology for the acts of reprisal. It is but an expression of the complete collapse of Jewish faith in judicial proceedings in Palestine.”