Our Palestine Problems

reason in a situation where Jews create possibilities of immigration into Palestine, and these are utilized by Arabs from outside Palestine. As for the Arabs inside Palestine, let it be said once for all that we Jews have never preached and never shall preach any policy of boycott of Arab labor. We have suffered boycotts; we know that national and racial enmity represent the gravest cause of world misery, misery which we ourselves have experienced in our bodies and in our souls. We do not wish to practice, and we never shall practice, against others what many peoples have practiced, and still practice, against us.

DENIES ARAB BOYCOTT

When we speak of the principle of Jewish labor in Palestine, we do not mean a policy of exclusion of Arab labor from Jewish enterprises. It is, indeed, a peculiarly ironical position, that we are accused of boycotting Arab labor at a time when Arab labor is actually displacing Jewish labor by the thousand, and just in the most fundamental and pivotal of our economic factors, namely, the agriculture in the Sharon. The Arab press which is continually fighting against Jewish enterprise in Palestine is now talking about defending the rights of the Arabs to work in Jewish enterprises.

We understand what this means. We are always welcome when we work for the benefit of others. In lands near Palestine, the desire has been expressed to have Jewish capital invested, with, in some cases, the significant proviso that it is Jewish capital that is wanted, not Jewish workers.

NOT HOME OF CAPITAL

The Jewish National Home is not a home of capital. It is a home of Jewish bodies and souls working to redeem a people from slavery. We rejoice when we benefit others, and with that long Jewish memory for benefits conferred, we rejoice doubly when we bring benefit to our cousins, the Arabs, the descendants of those, who, with our cooperation, made the great civilizations of Northern Africa and Western Asia.

But we desire to see in Palestine Jewish people reaping the benefits of our work. This is what we mean by the principle of Jewish labor. When Arab labor is used with the effect of keeping out Jewish labor, of reducing our immigration, of emptying of Jews in such an important region of our agriculture as the Sharon, then all Zionists, all Jews, must unite to fight this danger.

FIGHT DISCRIMINATION

It is not discrimination against Arabs that we want. We are fighting discrimination against Jews in the Jewish National Home. We are fighting against that exploitation of cheap native labor which has been the curse of colonial enterprise.

At the Mandates Commission, recently, a question was asked whether there was not some danger of a situation arising in the future in which the Jews in Palestine would be the trading and professional classes and the Arabs merely the laborers, and would not such a situation increase the opposition between Jews and Arabs. The answer of the Government representative amounted to the statement that the policy of Jewish labor for Jewish enterprises was the effective means of preventing such a situation.

This is exactly what we want when we assert the principle of Jewish labor.

Stories are circulated about the dangerous consequences of this principle. We are told that oranges rotted on the trees in Jewish groves because Arabs were not employed. Government investigation has proved that this is untrue. We are told that between 2,000 and 3,000 Jewish children enter the labor market of Palestine each year, and twice as many Arab children. Yet the fact is that these children have entered the labor market and, nevertheless, the accumulated labor shortage has reached dangerous proportions.

It is said that there is not adequate accommodation for the immigration we desire. This is an argument in a circle, for it is the shortage of labor that produces the shortage of accommodation. As a distinguished economist pointed out to me some months back, when a country enjoys a certain rate of progress, this rate must be assured in all branches of development, or an unhealthy and dangerous situation must arise.

TENTS PROVE FEASIBLE

In any case, temporary accommodation under canvas and in barracks has always been found possible and satisfactory. We are told that seasonal work is used by the Jewish Agency in calculating its schedule. I am afraid I cannot agree with this statement, for seasonal work refers mainly to agricultural work, and, in agricultural work, experience of many years has shown that so many dunams correspond to so many workers: this is the basis upon which we calculate.

The damaging accusation is made that the Executive of the Jewish Agency has frequently nominated under the labor schedule professional men and non-manual immigrants instead of working men, and the editor of Near East and India goes so far as to say that “no satisfactory understanding can be based on sharp practice” and so much as accuses the Jewish Agency of bad faith.

ACCUSATIONS BASELESS

It is a pity that such accusations are made without due investigation. The immigration regulations of Palestine as used in fact till quite recently seemed to be based upon the conception of immigration of capitalists possessing £1,000, and of labor immigrants possessing nothing, the former supplying the employment for the latter.

But no nation consists of two such marked off categories, least of all the Jewish people from the lands whence Jewish immigration comes. For years the government made the sub-categories of professional men with £500 and of skilled artisans with £250 almost dead letters. The pressure upon the Jewish Agency Executive is such as no body of men directly the affairs of a nation has ever experienced. We would appeal to the government not only to continue and develop the practice of being more liberal with £500 and £250 permits, but to re-examine the whole situation, in order that Jewish immigration into Palestine shall be made to fit in with both the needs of Palestine and the needs of the Jewish people.

BOOM ERA IN PALESTINE?

Is Palestine going through a period of economic boom? Attention should be drawn to the fact that, whereas a few years ago the government spoke of the “economic absorptive capacity of the country,” we are now faced with a new formula, namely, “the true economic absorptive capacity of the country on the long view.”

As the government representative at Geneva said: “The High Commissioner who was responsible for the present and future welfare of the country as a whole was bound to take a longer and more cautious view than the Jewish Agency.”

Economic problems are difficult to discuss on general lines, in vague terms, but one is entitled to suggest that economic absorptive capacity on the long view would be understandable if it meant an equalization of immigration, as between good times, and bad times. When in October, 1931, 350 certificates were granted for the half year schedule, the contention of the Jewish Agency that the long view justified and indeed necessitated a larger immigration was ignored, although the event very soon showed how right this contention was.

A number of distinguished and impartial observers, who have looked at Palestine, not for the purpose of encouraging Jewish immigration, but as an economic proposition, have reported that, on the long view, the best policy is that of the largest possible immigration at the time when the country is developing so favorably.

CAN JEWS EVER PLEASE?

Political motives have been adduced against Jewish immigration. The suggestion in a recent article in The Times that Jewish progress must keep pace with Arab progress, is a doctrine which nobody would enunciate on economic grounds.

The complaint in another article in the same newspaper, that Jewish work in Palestine has only benefitted the Arabs in the plains, and not the Arabs in the hills, is a peculiar complaint to associate with the policy of restricting Jewish development. The logical consequence of such a complaint is surely that Jews should also be allowed to do their beneficent work in the hills. And when the same article suggests that the Arabs in the plains have benefitted so much, and yet they feel “like rabbits before a boa constrictor,” then one can only hold up one’s hands in despair, and ask whether anything that Jews do can ever get the approval of certain people.

ASKS TRUE COOPERATION

We therefore welcome the assurance of the government that it will not be deterred from its avowed policy by any pressure or political considerations. We base ourselves entirely on the economic consideration to which our attention was directed by the government in 1922 and again in 1930. It is on the basis of these economic considerations that this conference should express its deep appreciation of the great if insufficient immigration that has been allowed by the government; of the new administrative measures and acts of understanding that have allowed some expansion of immigration in the last few months; and request the government to make Jewish immigration really equal to what Palestine can absorb.

The future of Palestine will largely depend upon cooperation and understanding between the three factors which make up the country, the Mandatory Power, the Arabs, and the Jews. This cooperation and understanding cannot be based upon any artificial or political limitation of Jewish immigration. The conference should request of the government such a policy as will mean true cooperation between the government and ourselves in regard to immigration, and, will lead to a future cooperation between the government, the Arabs and ourselves, on the basis of the undoubted rights of both Jews and Arabs in Palestine.