News Brief

That Arab malcontents, desirous of getting rid of the Mandate, but not daring to attack the British, kill the Jews, was charged at today’s session of the Inquiry Commission hearing by Abraham Shapiro, a prominent Jewish colonist at Petach Tikvah, one of the oldest Jewish colonies in Palestine, where he settled fifty years ago.

Shapiro, who if he were clothed in Arab attire, could easily pass for a Bedouin chief, lovingly described his pioneer settlement as the “mother of the colonies.” His evidence confirmed the well-known fact that several days before August 23, some 600 Arab laborers had left the orange groves where they were working, when rumors reached them that all Arabs had been called to Jerusalem to protect the Holy Place threatened by the Jews. The same thing happened on the eve of the 1921 riots, declared Shapiro, who said when he heard of the rumor, he headed a delegation on August 25 to the friendly Arab villages with whom Petach Tikvah signed a peace pact in 1922.

During the parleys, he said, petty Arab officials arrived from other villages with the message that the streets of Jaffa were running with Mostem blood, and the people of Yahudiah must come and defend the Moslems. The villagers. remembering the friendliness of the Jews and the collective punishments they had to pay in 1921. disregarded the message, declared Shapiro. With Viscount Erleigh’s assist-

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ance, Shapiro elaborated on the 1922 peace covenant with the Arab villages.

Speaking of the covenant he said “we have had perfect peace since, and I hope that no man will ever be able to disturb it.” Criminal offenders must be punished, insisted Shapiro, in replying to a question from Silley, Arab counsel, whether he recommends colective punishments as the best way of keeping peace. Shapiro, like Smilansky yesterday, contested the conclusion of the 1921 Haycraft commission, which declared that the hostility of the Arabs to the Jews was due to political and economic reasons and on account of Jewish immigration.

Silley railed in his attempt to make Shapiro admit that the Jewish farmers favored Jewish labor exclusively. It is true. said the witness, that the Jews are being increasingly employed, but they receive only a shilling more than the Arab laborers. whose wages have more than doubled since the WarGovernment counsel Preedy tried to get an admission from Shapiro that there had been disputes between the lewish and Arab laborers at Petach Tikvah, and he also suggested that a number of Arab laborers had left the colony because they feared the Jews would attack them. In this connection Precdy recalled that the Haycraft Commission had reported that a rumor to the effect that the Jews intended to attack the Arab villages had been circulated in 1921.

It never happened that the Jews attacked anyone.” declared Shapiro Replying to a question by Commissioner Hopkins, he said that the Arabs were mistaking the purport of the Balfour Declartion, which gives the Jews the right to settle in Palestine and to acquire land legally if the owners wish to sell.