Lawrence of Arabia, Zionism and Palestine - The World War I ...

ZIONISM AND PALESTINE 85
I did not emerge from it an anti-Semite for life. The
clamour indeed subsided so soon as it was clear that
the British Government had no intention of yielding
to it, and I think Jewry has since drawn its own conclusions
from the succeeding five years of undisturbed peace
in Jerusalem. After the Jaffa riots of May 1921, and
most of all after the outbreak in 1929, the abuse of
executive officers became proportionately louder and
fiercer, 1 sparing only the thrice-blessed technician—
the geologist, the bacteriologist and the veterinary
surgeon. The British officer responsible for the Wailing
Wall in 1928 received 400 abusive letters, from Jews all
over the world. In agonies such as those who would
not sympathise, who would expect a philosophic calm?
Yet when I revisited Palestine in 1931, and found the
British Administration fully convinced that in any
future crisis, while the Arabs might be their enemies, the
Jews certainly would be, I could not help asking myself
how far these wild, derisive indignations could be said to
have furthered the cause of Zion. However this may be
(for my book is not written to criticize but to record—
sometimes to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves),
the Jews still detest, while the Arabs regret, though
they often abused, the Military Administration. 2
Visiting America a year or two later, I was struck
1 "The Jews once more had a feeling that it was inconceivable
this could have taken place against the wishes of the British
officials." Thy Neighbour, p. 176.
Even this remarkable statement is as milk-and-water to the
heroic denunciations of the time. Yet all these, and later troubles
had been foreseen during the War by Talaat Pasha, himself a
Donmé, or crypto-Jew, who stated, in the interview with Count
Bernstorf (quoted in his Memoirs) : " I will gladly establish a National
Home for the Jews, to please you, but, mark my words, the Arabs
will destroy the Jews."
2 Even in April 1936 the Palestine Officer of the Civil Government
had the pleasure of reading that "The British Government
in Palestine has great virtues, but sometimes one thinks of its
unimaginative officialdom in terms of Bunyan's parable of the
man who works, eyes cast down, with the muck-rake, and does