When Israel Comes Home

(M. Pierre Goemaere, the author of this remarkable series of articles on Palestine and the German Jewish refugees, is one of the leading Catholic writers in Belgium and the editor of the important magazine “La Revue Belge.” Mr. Goemaere was considered an anti-Semite before his recent visit to Palestine. He was so deeply impressed with the Jewish achievements he witnessed in Palestine that his views about the Jews have undergone a complete change. These articles will be published in the “Soir”, of Brussels, and “Intransigeant”, of Paris. The Jewish Daily Bulletin has obtained the exclusive American tights to this series.)

VI. ARABS AND JEWS IN THE HOLY CITY

To leave Jerusalem is easy.

To return has been a much more complicated affair since Sir Arthur Wauchope, the British High Commissioner, proclained martial law there. One had to show a clean record, for since the recent uneasiness, the government feared that the turlent Arab elements would invade the capital to attack the Jews. Was it not something of that sort which was the signal for the massacres of 1929?

Right now, no doubt, the anger of the Arabs seems to have died down a little. But perhaps the fire is dormant beneath the cinders. If the British vigilance relaxed, we would be present at the unchaining of uncontrolled passions. In a few hours, Palestine would become the scene of a new pogrom which might be, this time, horrible and blody.

It is became the cause is still here. The cause is the constant wave of Zionist immigration, in the boats that, in spite of the obstacles imposed by the English mandatory power, never cease pouring out into the colonies of Palestine more and more exiles, whose number, increases that of the Jewish residents.

If this flood is not dammed, think the Arabs, Israel will become, my master.

Do people know that in the past ten years, more than a hundred thousand Jews have come to live in Palestine? Of course, their number is still much less than that of the older occupants of the country, since right now there are 600,000 Arabs as against 200,000 Jews; but if the influx continues in the accelerated cadence that it has recently assumed (since the Hitler persecutions, six thousand German Jews have taken refuge here) one can alrady foresee the day when Israel-whose prolific qualities, as everyone knows, are infinitely more brilliant than those of the Arabs-will leave the British High Commissioner in the anteroom and will speak to the Arab thus:

“And now, old man, I beg you in the name of Abraham (who was our common father, as you know) to listen to this little story. It goes back as far as the flood, but it is clear and brief.

“I was established in this country long before you. One day a man named Titus came from Rome, and, after having destroyed my Temple for his pleasure, sent us out to take the air elsewhere.

“Then you came along and entered my house (which, I may add, you kept up very poorly during my absence) and you continue to be comfortable here.

“But today I have returned to my house. You heard me: I don’t say your house, or even our house: I said my house. Perhaps you have forgotten this nuance during the seventeen centuries that you have been sleeping in my bed, but still I am right.

“Besides, I haven’t only histortical rights to my house. I have legal rights also. You know well that I haven’t returned fraudulently, but at England’s invitation, which with the consent of all the powers, authorized me to come home after the war.

“Right now, I am as strong as you in my new-found home. I could throw you out of the window, without much ado. But I am willing that you should remain here with me, if you listen and submit to this reasoning:

“In every well-organized house, there must be a master. Which of us two will be master? I! I, first because this is my home, and second because-let me say it without your getting insulted-I am much more intellingent than you. You know well that my sons, whom the Titus I spoke of just now had made great travelers, have shone because of their genius in every country they have visited. To the philosophy and sciences of this Occident that dazzles you, they have given the three greatest names of our time: Bergson, Freud, Einstein. My race has, therefore, proved itself while you contented yourself to suck on your narghaila, between your buffalo and your camel.

“Therefore-and this is my conclusion-I am willing to let you stay here. The two of us will be very strong in this house, where you will be the arm, and I the head.

“And now, let us start work together. The Englishman, I believe, is still waiting for us in the ante-room. Really, I wonder what he’s still doing here! Come with me, dear brother: we’ll throw the Englishman out of the window!”

Thus, before the “Jaffa Gate,” where an important military barrier had stopped my car, from which I had to alight with my companions, David and Joseph, we proved our records to be clean-or rather, we showed our pockets to be free from all weapons.

The police lieutenant wanted to know what we had come to do in Jerusalem.

David lives here? Papers?. . . All right.

And Joseph? Authotized immigrant? papers?. . . All right.

And I? Belgian journalist? Papers?. . . All right.

“Shalom!” said David to the lieutenant, while our car passed the Jaffa Gate before a double row of sentinels.

“I’ll accompany you there,” I said to David.

Where else could David take his grand-nephew, in Jerusalem for the first time in his life, if not to the Wall?

We had left the car in order to enter the sordid network of streetlets in the lower city.

They went up steeply, and they went down. They became entangled in mud-puddles, and mats, set up on sticks to make a kind of roof, kept out all light. Then ran against obscure cubby-holes where turbaued men sat smoking, squatted on rugs which they invited us to look at more closely. They curved and turned, and they straightened out. They swarmed with turbans, burnooses, veils to hide eyes, monastic capes, Greek caps, and Russian, and Armenian, and Abyssinian. You could hear Arab, English, Hebrew. It was sharp underfoot, and slippery. There was art odor of cinnamon, of olives, of camel-dung.

And everywhere, in every corner-and God knows there are many corners!-there were policemen in khaki, standing at attention, rigid as gingerbread soldiers.

The fact is that those underworld districts, which, at the foot of the Mosque of Omar – sacred to the Arabs-encircles the Wailing Wall-sacred to the Jews-are the nerve-centers of the permanent quarrel.

The irony of fate had willed that at the very heart of the Arab quarters, the Jews should attach themselves passionately to their Wailing Wall , all that is left of the Temple of Solomon, so close to which Islam built one of her proudest mosques.

Thus the Wall of the Jews is at the same time part of the structure that supports the Mosque of the Arabs!

To whom does the Wall belong? To the Arabs, because it is part of the Mosque. To the Arabs, too, because-as if more complications were necessary!-it is a sacred place for them too: was it not at this wall that the angel Gabriel caught the winged horse which was to take Mohamet to the clouds? And is not the Wall called, by them, Bourak, after that horse?

Yes, but the Jews have an incontestable moral right over the Wall, too, since it is the last vestige of their destroyed temple.

So, how can they come to an understanding?

I doubt whether the ancient owner of the temple, wise Solomon himself, could today make a decision that would be acceptable to both sides!

“Let’s hurry up,” said David, “We must return before evening. The English have announced that after nightfall they will be responsible for nothing in this trap. They even take away their own troops. . . .”

From the doorways of the shops, hostile eyes followed us. Yet neither David nor Joseph was wearing the Chassidic hat which made the Catholic clergy in Jerusalem adopt a cap in order that they might not be confused with the Jews.

But the Arabs pretend that they can scent a Jew:

“The smell of Israel,” they say.

Another corner. The Wall. . .

It is very high, made up of huge blocks placed one upon another. A wide passage, where the weepers are, runs along the base of the Wall and ends in a cul-de-sac. . . . What a place for throat-cutting!

I stopped, while David and Joseph went on, mingling with the suppliants: women dressed in black, bearded old men, sun-burned young men.They quivered continuously, as if in a sort of dance of distress. Some caressed the stone lovingly with their hand, others hit at it violently in an outburst of despair.

Through a chink in the Wall, I saw David take out a piece of paper and hold it up to the heaven. No doubt the “prayer paper” to which he had confided his wishes for the return of Joseph.

Joseph himself was in a state of beatitude. His face was beaming. He was not praying; his lips were motionless (a neophyte, he did not yet know the Words) but with all his soul he was communing, he was associating himself with the prayer of his brethren:

“We sit here in solitude , and we weep for the Temple that was destroyed, for the walls that were ruined.

“We beseech Thee, O Lord, have pity on Zion, reunite the scattered children of Israel; let the walls of Zion be rebuilt, let peace and prosperity reign anew in the Holy City!”

Turnig to leave, I ran into two men whom I had not noticed behind me, and who, like myself, had been staring at the worshippers. Even i# they had not worn the turban, their knitted brows, their red skin would easily give away their nationality.

They were quiet, but on their thi# lips there quivered a smile of hat cruel, cutting. . . .

Cutting like the sword of Island.