1946: The Anglo-American Inquiry

The British administration brought a new element to Palestine, the rule of law, or at least attempts to enforce the rule of law. As virtually all Arab-Jewish crime and violence was initiated by the Arabs they saw the British as unfairly supporting the Jews.

The statement folllowing is either knowingly false or ignorance on Hourani's part. Hourani was born in Manchester, England, to Lebanese immigrant parents, who were devout Scottish Presbyterians. He did not go to Lebanon to teach at the American University until he was 21 so he may have really believed this myth of elysian Jewish life under Islam. Jews (and Christians) under Islam were dhimmis - second class citizens - whose treatment under Muslim rulers while generally not persecution could quickly become so.

The Case Against A Jewish State In Palestine: Albert Hourani’s Statement To The Anglo-american Committee Of Enquiry Of 1946

Firstly, the relationship between the Arabs and the Jews. No honest Zionist can deny that the Jews have been well-treated throughout history in the Arab world. It was here that they found refuge when they were turned out of Spain— not a refuge given to strangers. They became part of the Arab universal community, and Arabic became their language. No Arab would wish to destroy the good relations which have always existed between Arabs and Jews if the Jews still care to accept them. If there is tension in various parts of the Arab world, if relations are not so good as they were or as we all should like them to be, that is entirely due to political Zionism.

Mohmsen Mohammed Saleh: 483,000 Jews migrated to Palestine during the British Mandate period and by 1948 they were 646,000 (31.7% of the population) and controlled 6% of the land holding 291 settlements. All the land the Jews purchased was sold by Arabs or Ottomans. Every large landowner knew he was making his tenants, the long-term clients of his family, landless. The fellaheen had already been steadily losing "their" land due to debt, drought and poor farming practices. The patron-tenant relationship was a one-way power relationship.

At the end of the British Mandate period only 25% of the land was registered for private ownership

• 12% of the land was owned by Palestinian Arabs
• 7.5% of the land was owned by Jews

The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, established to examine the situation of European Jewry and the Palestine problem, visited Palestine from March 6, 1946, to March 28, 1946.

Behind the Silken Curtain - Bartley C. Crum. An American from the Midwest, Crum was one of the members of the UNSCOP Commission appointed by President Truman along wth Richard Crossman

Page 165: It was instructive to meet Katie Antonius, widow of George Antonius, author of The Arab Awakening, who had been the outstanding interpreter of Islam to the Western world. I lunched with Mrs. Antonius in the residence of the Mufti, where she was then living - at that time he was still in France - and learned that she had two great obsessions: Communism and Zionism. Germany, she felt,had been wronged. She did not conceal her sympathy with the German cause. It was obvious that she, like so many other intellectuals of the Middle East, had little faith in the democratic processes. Easterners had been brought up to distrust the masses and they had no faith in the common man. The Mufti, she said, was misunderstood and would yet prove himself a great leader. When I met her, she was busy grooming Albert Hourani, a brilliant young Syrian who later testifed before us, to succeed her husband as an Arab spokesman. Hourani had been born in Manchester, England, and educated at Oxford, where, by an interesting coincidence, he had once been a student of Dick Crossman. - Behind the Silken Curtain - Bartley C. Crum

Page 174: Jaamal Husseini appeared first for the Arab case. He had listened carefully to what Dr. Weizmann and Ben Gurion had said, now silent, now whispering to Auni Bey beside him, now smiling, now shaking his head in dis- agreement. Now, as the two Arab leaders appeared before us, the room was more heavily guarded than usual. The press was put through an even more rigid search for bombs and weapons. We knew something of these two men-two of the principal Arab leaders in the Middle East. From in- formation furnished us, we knew that both were repre- sentatives of the self-designated Arab Higher Committee. Neither possessed authority from the masses of the Pales- tine Arabs, and, as it was pointed out later, the young Arab intellectuals I had met at the King David were co1l- spicuously absent. Because of my prior knowledge of the Mufti's activities in Germany, I was, of course, particularly interested in meeting his nephew. Jaamal had been in open rebellion 1against the British authorities during the war. At one time he had a price on his head.

Making it clear that he recognized neither the Balfour Declaration nor the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine by which Great Britain became trustee for Palestine, ]aamal declared that we had no right to arbitrate or decide any questions "relating to the Arabs' natural rights in their own country." These rights could not be argued, he said. "Moreover," he went on, "we find ourselves in this inquiry deprived of the presence of our first leader, the Grand Mufti, for whom we can accept no substitute."

I had not quite expected to see the Mufti's name injected so soon. When Hassan el Banna in Cairo publicly supported the Mufti, it was excused on the ground that el Banna was irresponsible. I was rather surprised that Jaamal and the Arab Higher Committee chose to stand publicly in support of one of Hitler's arch-collaborators.

He pictured the Arab world in contrast to bickering, heterogeneous Europe as a mighty expanse extending from the Atlas Mountains to the Nile, from the Nile to the Euphrates and the Tigris and the confines of Persia, and from the borders of Turkey to the Indian Ocean. "One nation, one people, who speak one single language, who have a historic background and who have one future, one aspiration, one aim in the world-such are the Arabs."

The British had made conflicting promises to both Arabs and Jews, he asserted, and the promises to the Arabs of Palestine had not been carried out. He cited four basic demands by the Arabs of Palestine: recognition of the right to complete independence; abandonment of t'he attempt to establish a Jewish National Home; abrogation of the British Mandate for Palestine; immediate ending of all Jewish immigration and of sales of land.

Sir John asked him:

"Is it your wish that the British forces and police should be withdrawn from Palestine forthwith?" Jaamal nodded.

"Have you considered what would happen the day following?" asked Sir John. "Quite clearly, bloodshed." Jaamal demurred. "I don't think so," he said. "If these pampered children, these spoilt children of the British government, the Zionists, know for once that they are no more to be pampered and spoilt, then we will be friends probably."

If, however, the British troops were withdrawn, and there were a war …, pursued Sir John.

"Well, let it be, I say," exclaimed Jaamal. "It has happened all over the world that people have solved their difficulties by their fists."

"So you want us away and you want the British Army and the British police away and to leave you and the Jews together?"

"That is the best policy," said Jaamal. "If they can do it.

"Then you would not allow any more immigration?" asked Sir John.

Jaamal agreed.

"What would you do about those who are in already?" "Well, sir," said Jaamal, "supposing you withdrew just now, I suppose that at least thirty per cent of the Jews who have been brought into Palestine under the impression that they were going to build a Jewish state here will leave of their own free choice."

Page 219: One morning, after a very brief session, we were driven to a well-guarded building some distance from the YMCA. Here we were ushered ceremoniously into a hlgh-ceilinged room, where a slender, very British, very precese military figure waited for us. This was General J. C. D'Arcy, the General Officer Commanding Palestine. I cannot report our conversation verbatim, but the substance of General D'Arcy's evidence to us, without question the most authoritative military information we could obtain follows:

• Speaking purely from the military point of view, he could enforce a pro-Jewish solution without much difficulty.
• In enforcing such a solution, the Haganah could be most helpful.
• In the event of a pro-Arab solution, he would have to contend with a "highly efficient" military organization (the Haganah). He estimated the budget of this organization to reach four million dollars a year. He would require three army divisions and from four to six months to break the back of the opposition. Even then, some measure of underground resistance would persist.
• In enforcing a pro-Arab solution, Arab support, he was afraid, would be of no value.

We discussed with him what would happen if British troops were withdrawn from Palestine. "If you were to withdraw British troops, the Haganah would take over all of Palestine tomorrow," General D'Arcy replied flatly.

"But could the Haganah hold Palestine under such circumstances?" I asked.

"Certainly," he said. "They could hold it against the entire Arab world."

One of my British colleagues asked: ""Are you implying sir, that it is impossible for His Majesty's government to disarm the Haganah?"

General D'Arcy said: "You cannot disarm a whole people. I rather think the world will not stand for another mass murder of Jews."

Sir Frederick turned to me. "Suppose the British left and the Haganah took over. What would the United States do?" he asked rhetorically.

I shouldn't be surprised if the United States would recognize the Jewish provisional government the very next day."

Benny Morris in 1948 wrote:

The Palestinians' "Arab Office," headed by Musa al Alami, cautioned the AAC against regarding "Jewish colonization in Palestine and Arab resistance to it in terms of white colonization of America and Australia and the resistance of the Red Indians and Aborigines." Nor would Zionist-engendered prosperity persuade the Arabs to shelve their opposition to a movement that was bent on their dispossession. 71 The Jewish Agency presented a report that emphasized Arab (and specifically Palestinian Arab) backwardness and Zionism's role as a bearer of enlightenment and progress. The agency offered reams of statistics and graphs to demonstrate Zionist beneficence. Of particular effect was the month the committee members spent touring DP camps, especially in Poland. Jewish Agency agents, working behind the scenes, made sure that the committee met and heard only Jews propounding the Zionist solution. The committee found that the displaced Jews in Poland lived in an "atmosphere of terror," with "pogroms … an everyday occurrence." (Indeed, some fifteen hundred Jews were slaughtered by antiSemitic Poles in the year following the end of World War II.) The committee members were persuaded of the need for wholesale immigration of the DPs to Palestine.

Before reaching Palestine, the members visited Arab capitals. At Riyadh, King Ibn Saud told them: "The Jews are our enemies everywhere. Wherever they are found, they intrigue and work against us. … We drove the Romans [Byzantines] out of Palestine. … How, after all this sacrifice, would a merchant [that is, Jew] come and take Palestine out of our hands for money?" Ibn Saud then presented each member with a golden dagger and an Arabian robe and headdress and showed off his harem. He offered to find Judge Singleton a spouse.72

In the hearings in Palestine, the Jewish leaders again offered statistics and graphs and argued that the Arabs already had a number of states; the Palestinian Arabs did not need a separate state of their own. Ben-Gurion banned all but mainstream Zionist spokesmen from appearing before the AAC (though, defying the leadership, Hebrew University president Yehuda Leib Magnes also testified, advocating a binational solution). The Arabs preferred to impress the AAC with "a sumptuous luncheon at Katy Antonius's or a ceremonial visit to a large estate rather than any systematic marshalling of facts and figures to make a convincing presentation."73

But perhaps more important than the formal testimony were the committee's tours around the country. The contrary realities of Zionist and Arab existence left an abiding impression. After visiting Kibbutz Mishmar Ha'emek, at the western edge of the Jezreel Valley, Crossman wrote: "I've never met a nicer community anywhere." By contrast, two hundred yards down the road, he later reported, was "the stenchiest Arab village I have ever seen," where Crossman was treated to tea "on the [earthen] floor of a filthy hovel."74

And Aydelotte later wrote: "I left Washington pretty strongly anti-Zionist. … But when you see at first hand what these Jews have done in Palestine … the greatest creative effort in the modern world. The Arabs are not equal to anything like it and would destroy all that the Jews have done. … This we must not let them do."75 Buxton was later to compare the Haganah to the American revolutionary army, "a rabble in arms in the fine sense."76

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One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate - Tom Segev

One morning, sometime after General Sir Evelyn Barker had arrived in Palestine to suppress the Jewish terrorist organizations, he heard Irving Berlin's "Dancing Cheek to Cheek" on the radio program Musical Clock. That was in the summer or autumn of 1946, at 7:15 in the morning. The general immediately sat down to write to Katy Antonius: "You are the first woman I've ever done it with," he wrote, referring apparently to dancing cheek to cheek. "I enjoyed every moment and wished it could have gone on." She had told him that he had, perhaps, fallen in love with her. Barker appreciated her comment more than anything, he wrote, because in fact he had been in love with her for months.1

Their love story is revealed in close to one hundred letters that the general wrote on official army stationary and sent by special messenger, his driver, to his beloved's house in east Jerusalem, a few blocks from his own home on the city's west side. The letters tell a story of ecstasy and tragedy, pathos, mystery, and deception, danger, hope, and disappointment, romance, tears, and kisses - all against the background of nationalist terror, the crumbling of an empire, the birth of one nation and the devastation of another.

Barker was forty-two, married, and the father of a son. Before arriving in Palestine in May 1946 he had enjoyed a celebrated military career that began when he decided in his youth, a short time before World War I, to enlist in the army and become a professional soldier like his father. In the 1930s, Barker was sent to Palestine for the first time to help the army suppress the Arab rebellion. In World War II, he participated in the invasion of Normandy. He distinguished himself in the battle to liberate Le Havre, as a result of which the king granted him a knighthood. Afterward he joined the VIII Corps, which crossed the Rhine under General Montgomery and advanced through northern Germany. On April 15, 1945, his men liberated the Bergen-Belsen death camp. An officer of the old school, he exuded colonial arrogance - tall, thin, slightly bent, with a steely, penetrating gaze devoid of emotion. Yet in his letters to Katy Antonius he sounds like a schoolboy in love.*

The widow of George Antonius, Katy was the daughter of Dr. Faris Nimr Pasha of Alexandria, senator, expert on the Arab language, and owner of the prestigious newspaper Al-Muqadam. From a young age she had been taught that her culture was European. She kept company with Western diplomats and spoke a number of their languages as if they were her own. Her sister married Sir Walter Alexander Smart, a high official in the British embassy in Cairo. "Katy Antonius was an intelligent, bright, and witty woman, full of humor and charm," Anwar Nusseibeh said of her, "always up-to-date on the intricacies of political events, pretty, good-hearted, and generous." She lived in a house that was owned by the mufti and was a high-society hostess; her guests included everyone who was anyone in the British administration - Western politicians, journalists, artists, notables from around the world, as well as many leaders from the Arab countries.5

One of her guests, British journalist and politician Richard Crossman, described her house as a political salon in the French style. He wrote of one magnificent party: "Evening dress, Syrian food and drink, and dancing on the marble floor." As far as he could make out, the guests were a mix of Arabs and Britishers. "It is easy to see why the British prefer the Arab upper class to the Jews," Crossman went on. "This Arab intelligentsia has a French culture, amusing, civilized, tragic and gay. Compared with them the Jews seem tense, bourgeois, central European." In the car that took Crossman back to the King David Hotel, a British official explained that there were two societies in Jerusalem, not three - one Anglo-Arab, the other Jewish, and the two could not mix.6

Barker seems to have fallen in love with Katy Antonius at one of those parties. When they saw each other at social events they would keep a discreet distance; the following day he would write how hard he had found being in her company without touching her. He frequently visited her home in the evenings, and the next morning would write to her how much he enjoyed her company, how important she was to him, how much he loved her. "I am not sentimental," he wrote once during a flight home, "but am sensitive to love and kindness. I could not keep the tears away from my eyes as I drove off this morning - stupid as you may think me."7 By the time Barker's plane had landed he had written Katy another letter.8 He promised over and over again that he was on the Arab side and made her party to several military secrets, including some dealing with the fight against Jewish terrorism.

In the wake of the King David bombing, Barker translated these instructions into an order declaring all Jewish establishments, including restaurants and places of entertainment, off-limits to British soldiers. He knew this would be difficult, Barker wrote to his men, but the Jews had to learn just how much the British despised them, and the best way to punish them was by striking at their pockets, which the race particularly disliked. His choice of words was unfortunate. They were interpreted as antisemitic and caused an uproar. Katy Antonius preserved among her papers a caricature that appeared in England showing Barker brandishing his statement while standing on a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf. Barker was soon returned to England. Many years later he claimed, in a conversation with Lord Nicholas Bethell, that it had been "a rotten letter written on the spur of the moment."43

But Barker's disclaimer was false. Sometime after returning to England, he wrote to Kate Antonius. "They do hate having their pockets touched, as I said in my letter," he noted, adding, "I hope the Arabs will no longer think we are afraid to hang Jews." Two terrorists had committed suicide in prison before being executed, and Barker commented, "So that's two more less." His hostility to the Jews was clearly an inseparable part of his love for his Katy, and that love was part of his hostility. He would gaze at her picture, his eyes growing damp: "Katy, I love you so much, Katy," he wrote her. "Just think of all this life and money being wasted for these b - y Jews. Yes I loathe the lot - whether they be Zionists or not. Why should we be afraid of saying we hate them - it's time this damned race knew what we think of them - loathsome people."44

For a Critical Opinion

• Humanitarianism Over Justice