Palestine Government is Pro-arab, Conclusion of Rev. John Haynes Holmes

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That the English government in Palestine is pro-Arab and not pro-Jewish is the conclusion reached by the Rev. John Haynes Holmes, pastor of the New York Community Church, on the basis of his observations in the country.

In the first of a series of three lectures given at the Community Church, Rev. Holmes laid particular emphasis on the attitude of the government. The second lecture of the series was held last night.

The “Jewish Daily Bulletin” is now in a position to publish the stenographic report of that part of Dr. Holmes’ first lecture wherein he presented the government’s attitude. He stated:

“But there is something else to be said, more than I dare say to you, more than I think I have any right to say to a public audience in view of the relations which I enjoyed with the English officials of that country. When you are extended every courtesy, when you are received not only in public offices but in private houses, when you are guest at the table of the High Commissioner and Deputy Commissioners, when you are granted information in relation to perfect confidence, you find that, with the best will in the world, you can’t say all that you would like to say, at least in extemporaneous, hurried public speech such as I am giving to you tonight. So I can’t say all that I want to say-although I hope that, under proper conditions, with full consideration for the most careful, accurate statement of my convictions, I can state what I want to say about the English Government in Palestine. Here I simply kind of sum up with certain observations that I want to throw out to you for your own thought upon the basis of your own information.

“First, I am convinced that the English Government is pro-Arab and not pro-Jew. That was denied every time I put the question straight and direct. It was denied, I believe, honestly and sincerely. The Englishmen are good sportsmen. The Englishmen wants to be fair, without prejudice to himself, of course-the Englishman wants to be fair. I believe, in Palestine, that he is trying to play fair but interprets the game of fairness inevitably in favor of the Arab. He regards the Arabs as the native population. He believes that the Arab is the man who is actually living on the land. He believes, therefore, that the Arab must be saved from exploitation by the Jew. Therefore, however fine and sure and sincere his motives, he is standing there, I am convinced, today with a sheltering hand around the population which he regards as helpless as that population faces the invasion of the highly-trained westernized Jews coming in there to take over the land and establish their own country.

“Secondly, I am convinced that England in Palestine doesn’t like the Jew and doesn’t know how to deal with

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him. The Englishman in Palestine is an imperialist, trained in imperial administration with the far-flung colonies of the world. He is used to dealing with the members of a native population. But he doesn’t know what on earth to do with a man living in a colony who enters his office and looks him straight in the eye and, instead of asking him a favor, tells him what he has got to do.

“That is what the Jews are persisting in doing in Palestine. Week after week they send their committees to the office of the High Commissioner. They enter that office as men who walk straight and tall, without any favors to ask and without any favors to grant, speaking in the name of justice; and they present careful reports, many of which I read, specifying with the utmost particularity that the English Government has got to do that and that and it has got to do the other.

“The English Government, imperially speaking, won’t stand for that sort of thin. So the English Government doesn’t know how to handle the Jew, doesn’t understand the Jew and, God knows, he doesn’t like him. So you find a Government pro-Arab on the one side and with a certain degree of prejudice springing from misunderstanding, confusion and bewilderment against the Jew on the other.

“In the third place (and how I hate to say it, but I believe I have the testimony and evidence which I wish I could give to you), I am profoundly convinced that the Englishman has no confidence in the success of Zionism. His attitude (let me put it as frankly as I can) is the attitude of “the man from Missouri.” He has got to be shown. And up to the present moment he isn’t being shown, or at least he won’t tell you that he sees anything that convinces him of the thing that you really believe in your own heart is so true and so sure-skepticism, skepticism, skepticism on the question of nearly all the enthusiasms which I myself brought to certain Englishmen from the standpoint of the things that I had seen and which had thrilled me to the very core.

“And, lastly, I am convinced that the Englishman’s prime motive in Palestine is the motive of the Empire. He is not over-interested in the Arab, not over-interested in the Jew; he is tremendously interested in the Empire, and he recognizes the supreme imperial importance of Palestine lying half-way between England on the one hand and India upon the other. And, don’t fool yourselves, now that England is in Palestine, she is never going to get out as long as the English Empire endures. The problem of Zionism, I am convinced, has got to be worked out in terms of the permanent imperial sovereignty in that country.”

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