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

86 ZIONISM AND PALESTINE
by the thoroughness with which the caricature of the
British officer had been disseminated. Several American
Jews expressed surprise that I was "not the same"
as they had read in their newspapers. In 1934 a Jewish
wheat magnate of Chicago told me that he had been
to his amazement and disgust sharply rebuked by a
travelling Zionist leader for attributing a measure of
Palestinian progress to the British Administration.
More recently I learnt that a Jewish lady who had left
a British Dominion to settle in Tel Aviv was horrified
by the stream of abuse poured there upon everything
British. Such manifestations are what is called in
Arabic Kufr al-naamah—"Denial of the Blessing",
and certain it is that no blessing can attend them.
Whatever our defects, I have yet to hear that the most
virulent of these critics is able to suggest an acceptable
alternative Mandatory. Still, these attacks had their
uses. They taught one to keep one's temper. I find my
only comment home on the general atmosphere was:
"I do not want to end my career as a Ritual Sacrifice."
They also drew British officers closer together. At the
Armistice "Reunion Dinner" in 1921, when the speeches
were over: "To my surprise I heard my name shouted
aloud ; and then a clapping, stamping and roaring which
continued for two or three minutes. I recognized that
this din was a definitely organized ovation of sympathy
and protest against the attacks to which I have been
subjected by the Jewish Press; and was so affected
thereby that I could hardly reply." I believe my colleague
Harry Luke was greeted with an even more
significant demonstration at the St. Andrew's Dinner
in 1929. Yet we both had plenty of British critics.
What made some of us think that we might not be
not see that someone is standing by and offering him a crown".
Palestine, vol. XI, no. 10, p. 2.
The respective rôles of Briton and Zionist are no less tactfully
than appetizingly contrasted.