Denouncing the policy of “appeasing the wrong people,” the weekly New Statesman and Nation asserted today that except for the Greeks, the Jews in Palestine were the only trustworthy friends of Britain in the Near East.
“We now have in this part of the world only two trustworthy friends–the Greeks in Crete and Cyprus and the Jews in Palestine,” an editorial declared. “These latter we have persistently cold-shouldered and neglected and they now face the possibility of a tragedy.
“The Foreign Office has preferred to conciliate only the reactionaries–the fifth column among the Arab magnates of Palestine and Iraq, our enemies in Vichy and our open foes in Spain.
“Even today, with the Germans speeding towards Baghdad, the puppet of the Axis, Rashid Said, is still head of the government of Iraq and that arch-conspirator, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, is still at large. This policy of appeasing the wrong people has complicated our military task and made the problem of the defense of Suez more difficult than it need have been.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
