Destination 1922: A Return to Claims of the Arabs in Palestine

Bernard M. Smith’s recent article, Israel Is Not Our Ally, presents a concise and cogent overview of the current American predicament — that of having an obsequious relationship with Israel and how our interests and worldwide opinion are realistically affected by it. While the American public is generally awash in one-sided propaganda backing the Jewish State, few get an education on the subject of Zionism, let alone opposing viewpoints unless they were readers of Alison Weir’s If Americans Knew website or her book Against Our Better Judgement: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel. But as we are now a little over a century since the British helped secure the embryonic home of the Jews with the 1917 Balfour Declaration, would it not be prudent to revisit the British Palestine Mandate through the words of its native Palestinian leaders from that early 1922 inception? Thanks to the wonders of Newspapers.com, we can act on our imperative to revisit the roots of the Palestinian-Jewish conflict. Prepare to enter our time capsule. The course is set for Canada, May 6, 1922, and The Edmonton Journal for a counter-narrative not known to many of that time, save buyers of the Ford Model-T automobile!

Here we find a full-page article titled Claims of the Arabs in Palestine, by York Guille (reporting from Jerusalem) of the McClure Newspaper Syndicate. This piece is presented in its entirety, with key points and arguments of the text italicized by me in bold for quick perusal if you wish. Here’s the article with my emphasis throughout:

Jews Smuggling German Revolvers Into the Holy Land is One Charge Made — Firearms as Agricultural Machinery — Situation In Palestine, Says Arif Pasha, Nationalist Leader, Rapidly Getting Worse — “Syria Will Soon Be Ablaze”

“The situation is rapidly going from bad to worse. Unless the plan to make Palestine the national home of the Jews is abandoned, Syria will soon be ablaze and the gravest international consequences may follow. Both the Christian and Moslem worlds are concerned. The Arabs will never consent to the Zionist program. Zionism, instead of settling Jewish problems, already threatens a world-wide revival of the anti-Semitic movement.”

This is the considered view of Arif Pasha el-Dazzinn, president of the executive committee of the Congress of the Moslem- Christian Leagues of Palestine, which represents 93 per cent of the entire population and all of the Arabs. He described to me, in a special interview, the Arab point of view and stated it with marked moderation through his secretary, who speaks English fluently. This alert, highly educated representative of one of the most picturesque races of the East, a race which kept learning alive in the Dark Ages and has left Spain a rich heritage of art and culture, upset all of one’s pre-conceived ideas of the Arab. Instead of burnous and turban, he wore a finely tailored grey lounge suit. He belongs to the ruling class and is fully acquainted with Western knowledge and international politics.

Do suits matter? Yes, you say, if wishing to exercise diplomacy? In America today, a hundred of the most perceptive, articulate and scholarly gentlemen dressed in finely tailored grey suits can gather for a peaceful meeting of the minds and cordial presentations at the finest Italian restaurant in the Washington D.C. area, only to be violently attacked by a mob of rabid Antifa immune from prosecution while dressed like the zombies from the movie Night of the Living Dead. It appears that thugs have more power than some of our best suits, because suits who haven’t learned everything they know from television, TikTok, or liberal-approved textbooks cannot even gather at a hotel unharmed. Who is it that plays a predominant role in financing and leading these anarchists to denying American freedom of assembly and freedom of speech? I don’t think it’s the Arabs. But getting back to the article, do many Americans realize that 93 percent of the Palestinian population of 1922 were represented by both Moslems and Christians, all of whom were Arabs? What is that percentage today?

“The worst phase of the situation today is the smuggling of firearms by Jews,” he explained. “The latest incident is the discovery of 96 cases of revolvers and ammunition as they were being landed at Haifa. These cases were labelled ‘agricultural implements.’ They were German revolvers and had been shipped from Trieste. They were assigned to Mr. Rosenberg, the president of the Jewish labor party at Haifa. He is, by the way, also a member of the Haifa city corporation, Rosenberg was arrested and his house searched.  Correspondence was seized and papers found disclosed the fact that this was the second consignment. The first had been successfully smuggled in and a second was on the way. Three other Jews who lived in a village outside the town were implicated. The chief of police hurried off to arrest them, but arrived to find they had fled. A Jewish telegraphist at the Haifa telegraph office – a government servant – had warned them by wire to clear out. Rosenberg was released on bail of 12,500 dollars. He has just been acquitted. This, of course, has called out volumes of protest from all over the country.

Does this Mr. Rosenberg of Haifa have any familial relationship to atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg or BLM fundraising director and convicted American terrorist Susan Rosenberg? Don’t even go there, or you’ll be charged with blatant anti-Semitism! These are all just unrelated individuals of specific identity facing their own objective and selfish reality, Ayn Rand style (Ayn being born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum).

“Jews are smuggling in firearms incessantly. Only last week there were six cases and six Jews arrested. Public opinion is greatly perturbed and the peace is menaced unless the Jewish immigration is stopped. Already over 25,000, mostly from Poland, Germany, Russia and Central Europe, have come in. They are all young men and women, most of them penniless and many infected with Bolshevism. Firearms have actually been distributed by the government among the Jewish colonists and the people of Palestine are now asking that they should be collected again. Over 900 rifles have been given to these colonists. The Jews complained that they were defenseless and in danger of attack, so the government gave them these rifles to enable them to defend themselves until troops could reach them in sufficient numbers to protect them. At the same time, and this is the worst feature of the position, all the natives have been disarmed.

While controlling the rights to firearm possession seems to have been a key factor in aiding the creation of the Jewish state, it is odd then that Jewish billionaire Mike Bloomberg (who believes in a “secure and stable Jewish democracy”) finds himself in the targets of the NRA for misleading voters in His Anti-Gun Apparatus! Is Mike trying to disarm today’s Americans like the Palestinians were disarmed in 1922? Does Mike believe in a secure and stable American democracy? And was Jewish smuggling of guns, rifles and ammunition only the prelude to smuggling in stolen nuclear weapons material against American and Middle East interests?

Reds Foment Riots

“One of the gravest dangers of this Jewish immigration lies In the type of immigrant. As I have said, many of them are Bolshevistic. Now the Arabs are not, and they will not tolerate the methods or the system of Lenin and Trotsky in Palestine. The night before the Jaffa riots the police seized proclamations printed In Hebrew, Yiddish and Arabic. They were signed by the executive committee of the Palestine Communist Party and called upon the people to fight for the Social Revolution. They appealed to Jewish and Arab laborers to join in an effort to throw off their oppressors and ‘in beating down your torturers and the tyrants among you.’ The Hebrew and Yiddish appeal ended:

Long live the First of May.
Down with the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoise.
Down with the Palestine Rule of Force.
Long live the International Solidarity of the Jewish and Arab Proletariat.
Long live the Civil War.
Long live Soviet Russia.
Long live the Third Communistic International.
Long live the Palestine Communistic Party.’

The Arabic version ended:

‘Down with British and French bayonets.
Down with the Arab and foreign Capitalists.
Long live Soviet Palestine.’

Before reading this Canadian article, I never realized that the predominant type of Jewish immigrant to Palestine in those days was the radical Bolshevik type. Would American Christians today find it surprising that the Israeli state was originally founded by Commie atheists? Having read Stalin’s War by prize-winning historian Sean McMeekin, and considering the influx of immigration to America before the 1924 National Origin’s Act (when Jewish radical-left politics was heavily on the public mind), I should now seriously entertain the possibility that both the USA and Israel are actually dyed in the wool “Red” nations. Why else would the slur “Commie” be unheard of in our media and forbidden in academic writing while Antifa hordes burn our modern cities?

“The Arabs have been charged with responsibility for these riots and those here at Jerusalem in 1920. But what are the facts? A government inquiry was held into the circumstance of the Easter disturbances here when there was serious loss of life, but their report has never been published because the high commissioner (Sir Herbert Samuel), a staunch Zionist, did not wish it. The fact is that its publication would injure the Zionist case. The riot was started by a Jew who threw a stone at the sacred flag of the Hebron Mosque when it was being carried in procession through the streets by a large crowd of Arabs on their way to the Harames-Sherif for the animal national festival of Nebi Mousa. But the report on the Jaffa riot of last year has been published and this shows they were due to a quarrel between Jewish Bolsheviks and the Jewish Labor party. A large quantity of explosives was found by a British army officer in a Jewish house. The official inquiry report states: “We are convinced that the charge constantly brought by Jews against the Arabs that this outbreak had been planned by them, or by their leaders, and was pre-arranged for the first of May is unfounded…the (Arab) notable on both sides, whatever their feelings may have been, were always ready to help the authorities in the restoration of order and we think that without their assistance the outbreak would have resulted in even worse excesses.”

The Zionist High Commissioner denied publication of a report on rioting so as to protect Jewish Bolsheviks, much like the Heaphy Report on the 2017 Charlottesville rioting is generally suppressed from our public knowledge and public opinion today, suggesting facts that differ from mainstream propaganda.

“The Arab objects to the Hebrew language, which is spoken by barely one percent of the population, being recognized as an official language. He objects to the tide of Jewish immigration which is bringing into his country mass of undesirable aliens who are not even self-supporting. This foreign laborer deprives the Arab of his daily bread and gets a higher rate of wages for half the amount of work the Arab could do in the same time. Contracts for public works in the majority of cases go to Jews, though their tenders are usually higher than those sent in by Arabs. Road-building has been started to give employment to these Jewish immigrants, who would otherwise be stranded. This work is paid for out of the taxes, paid for mostly by non-Jews. Under normal circumstances this work would have gone to Arab workmen.

A contract for the generation of electricity from the water power of the Auja River, north of Jaffa, has been granted to a Russian Jew named Ruttenberg, who has now come here to carry out his contract. This contract was given to this man without being put to public tender. The administration has no right to give concessions to foreigners before the final status of Palestine has been determined.

This really begs one to look at the true possessors of meaningful privilege in the world today. Here in 1922 we find the native Palestinian population discriminated against for valuable employment opportunities, but paid for by taxes on non-Jews. If there’s a modicum of truth to these statements in the article, then there must be a reassessment as to who the “victims” were in 1922 Palestine. And isn’t it uncanny how similar support is being played out for minority migrants and open borders in America today. Who is driving this? It might be the multi-religious efforts following the Jewish creed, “Welcome the Stranger, Protect the Refugee,” as heard from the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society.

Half Goods Imported German

Another matter which we do not like, as we fought with the Allies during the war, is the fact that the last customs statistics show that over fifty per cent of the goods that came into Palestine in the last six months came from Germany through Hamburg and Trieste. And you can walk along the streets here and hear nothing but Yiddish.

The laws and regulations now in force check our liberty and prevent our expansion. Patriotic Arabs are arrested and imprisoned or deported on the pretext that they are dangerous to the State. And the press is muzzled. There is strict censorship. We are not allowed to say what we think nor to disagree with Zionism. Anyone who did so would be deported. Not only can the High Commissioner deport whom he likes but a new law gives power to the governors of districts to recommend anyone they think dangerous to the state for deportation. And they can call on that person to deposit money as a bond to keep the peace. Several prominent Arabs have already been bound over under this regulation. Some of them have had to deposit as much as 5,000 dollars, and where they could not find the money the title deeds of their lands and buildings were taken. Only the other day an ex-Procurator-General was deported. This Is Costaki Saba, who eighteen months ago resigned his post, worth 420 dollars a month, because he could not agree with his chief, the legal secretary, Norman Bentwich, a Jew and a Zionist. Then he started journalism and he has been told to leave the country. When he asked for the reason in writing, it was refused. Mr. Wadie Bustani, a former government official at Haifa, was told the other day that if he took any farther part in politics he would be deported.

What chance has an Arab when the high commissioner is a Jew and a Zionist, and the legal secretary, the controller of stores, the director of commerce and industries and the chief of immigration  are all Jews? Every department of the government has been swamped by Jews, the majority of whom are new and have no previous experience. According to the official statistics one fifth of the senior service are Jews, though Jews represent only seven per cent of the population. In the junior service one third of the staff are Jews who hold the chief places.

Aaaah, where to begin! First, there seems to even be a “Germany story” before WWII and Hitler that benefited organized Jewry and Zionism instead of victimizing them, one most people of today are completely unaware. Next, I’d like to point out that there might be a similarity between harmless Palestinian patriots of 1922 and the diehard MAGA patriots of January 6, 2021. What ties these innocent victims together? And isn’t it prescient that the Palestinian quoted here described leadership in “every department of the government” with a word that would help President Trump coin the term, “The Swamp?” Maybe Trump reads old newspapers too.

That we are not alone in our objection to the Jewish immigration is proved by the fact that there is here a large section of Jews who are hostile to the Zionist movement. When Lord Northcliffe was here recently a deputation of these Jews appeared before him and complained of Zionist religious and political aspirations. There are some 35,000 Palestinian Jews with whom we live and lived before the war in perfect harmony. They object, as much as we do, to Zionism. Indeed, only a day or two ago, Zionists attacked these Ashkenazim rabbis in the synagogues and the police had to be called in to protect them. Ten Zionists were arrested.  Lord Northcliffe, after hearing all sides of the case here on the spot, took a very grave view of the position and has returned to England to wage a campaign in our favor. There are prominent Jews, both in England and America, who support the fight against Zionism. Among them are Mr. Monteflore, who has just resigned the presidency of the British Jewish Colonization Association, and Mr. Morgenthau, the former United States ambassador to Turkey.

Just a thought: was Morgenthau placed in Ottoman Turkey to help Jewish interests in the case that the Germans won WWI, a strategy of having resources on both sides of politics or both sides of the war? I’m not a historian and not as familiar with Henry Morgenthau, Sr., as with Morgenthau, Jr. – a prominent Treasury Secretary highlighted in McMeekin’s book, Stalin’s War. It is, nevertheless, intriguing how this father and son would have the power to shape America and the World.

So strong is the feeling of Palestinians, both Christian and Moslem, that we have combined to send a delegation to Europe and America. The president is His Excellency Musk Kazim Pasha el-Husseini, who belongs to one of the oldest families in Islam, which can trace its descent right back to the prophet.

Under the Turks he filled several important governorships and under the British was mayor of this city. He resigned because he would not allow Hebrew to be used as an official language and would not subscribe to the Jewish policy of government. The vice-president of the Hai Tewik Hammad, who was a member of parliament for Nabious at the Imperial Parliament at Constantinople. The secretary, Shibly Effendi Jamal, is a B.A. of Beyrout University and has been occupied with education for many years and is also a prominent journalist. The other two members are graduates of the college for officials at Constantinople and the sixth member is a prominent merchant. Four are Moslems and the other two Christians. They were elected at the fourth congress which met in this city of Jerusalem last June. The delegates to the congress, numbering 96, were elected by popular vote by the Moslem-Christian leagues. The late pope received the delegation and talked with them for over an hour. He expressed great sympathy with our aims and promised active cooperation. He told them he would write to all the Catholic powers asking them to support us actively in the League of Nations.

Three members of the delegation then went to Geneva for the last assembly of the League of Nations last September and there interviewed the representatives of all the powers with the important result that the ratification of the mandate for Palestine has been postponed pending a more thorough examination of the situation. In England, I hear, the delegation has already succeeded in gaining the sympathy of many members of parliament who have arranged meetings for them in the house of common and they are to lay our case before the foreign affairs committee. The delegation has not yet finished its work in England, but when it has it will go to the United States, where It believes it will find valuable support among the Jews. It must be made clear that we have no hatred of the race. On the contrary, we have lived with them for a long period and get on well with them. But we hate the Zionist movement which aims to make our land a Jewish state.

Today in America, any criticism of the state of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism, regardless of whether you are in love with the Jewish race or enjoy their friendship as individuals. The recent donor response to Ivy League student protests demonstrates how a young college student’s professional future can be destroyed by blacklisting for merely exercising free speech on campus. Note: in the Fox News report linked above, they show a large banner demanding “NO DIALOGUE WITH WHITE SUPREMACY.” Is it not long overdue for Americans to have a conversation on who retains real supremacist power and influence today? And do they simply appear White to everyone, giving European descendants a bad rap?

The British government has now published a resume of the constitution for Palestine. The executive is all in the hands of the high commissioner and his advisers. He has the power to deport any person whom he thinks dangerous to the state without trial and without appeal. There is to be a legislative council of 25 members in addition to the high commissioner who has the casting vote. He nominates ten of the members from the officers of the government and two others as well. The chambers of commerce nominate one and the rest are elected. Thus the high commissioner will have fourteen votes at his command, the votes of the twelve nominated by him and the two votes be had as head of the council. The Jews will, according to numerical strength, have the right to elect one or two. That leaves the Arabs with only ten or eleven members at most. This means they will never have any power because they will always be in the minority of the council although in an overwhelming majority on the basis of population. Moreover, if any measure is passed by the council the high commissioner has the power to veto it. The fact that he is Zionist is not likely to help matters.

As European-Americans are quickly becoming a minority in the country they founded and have had their political leaders sell them out for more than the last one hundred years, can we see White Americans becoming the future Palestinians, held up in Balkanized open concentration camps for future Gaza-styled tyranny? There’s never been a better time for uncensored, unfettered free speech like that which was permitted in the Edmonton Journal of Canada, 1922. But as Elon Musk has discovered, we must first overcome the hate-filled NGOs controlling “what speech has reach.”

Pledges to Arabs Broken

The case for the Palestinians is a strong one. The Arabs are the original inhabitants of the land, whereas the Jews only occupied Palestine as a whole for 520 years and that was many centuries ago. Their proper home is Ur of the Chaldees, which is some-where near the Euphrates. When King Hussein in 1915 took up arms for the allies the British government assured him that the independence of the Arab countries would be acknowledged. Mr. Balfour’s pledge to the Zionists in 1917 seemed a direct contradiction to this. But again in 1918 Lord Allenby promised that nothing would be decided about the future of our land without first consulting its people. In 1919 Mr. Lloyd George stated that the pledge given to King Hussein would be redeemed. But when a Jew and a Zionist was made high commissioner, when Zionists openly boasted that they drew up Mr. Balfour’s declaration and secured the appointment of Sir Herbert Samuel, and above all when they asserted that they did not only mean to make Palestine a home for the Jews, but a Jewish state, ‘as Jewish as England is English or the United States is American,’ we felt it was time for us to protest.

“…as England is English or the United States is American!” What a dream that would be! Today, there seems to be no Western nation that will long reman as an ethnic/cultural homeland. They are all under attack, as professed by the Jewish Barbara Lerner Spectre, who opposes the existence of monolithic or even culturally-tight European societies. Could someone like Barbara explain when Israel “will learn how to be multi-cultural,” as France and Germany and especially Sweden are learning today?

That is why the delegation has been financed for an appeal to the civilized nations and why both Moslem and Christians have joined hands to fight for the self-determination. Mr. Winston Churchill has admitted in the British parliament ‘that the only cause of unrest in Palestine arises from the Zionist movement’ and this has cost the British people for military garrisons fifteen million dollars this year, 22,500,000 dollars last year and 22,500,000 dollars the year before.

The Arab population is composed of merchants, tradesmen, men in the professions, about forty per cent, and landowners and peasants. We have been described as wild, lawless, brutal, ignorant and savage.

What did former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett just call the Palestinians while exploding on Sky News?

Look at this photograph of an Arab peasant woman. She is wearing a gown of which any woman may be proud. It was embroidered by herself and it is worth at least a hundred dollars. Modern methods of agriculture are now being used and up-to-date machinery was introduced before the war. The Turkish government, anxious to encourage modern methods, released agricultural machinery from custom dues and also supplied machinery on the installment plan.

The Jaffa orange industry is in the hands of Arabs and their products are famous the world over. They have brought it to a highly efficient state. During the war owing to the lack of petroleum and machinery most of the gardens dried up and withered but during the last three years everything has been revived and the orange growing is today as good as ever it was. Millions of dollars are invested in it. Soap is another important industry. Palestinian soap is exported in large quantities to India, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Syria, Mesopotamia and Turkey proper. Cloth is made at Medjel, Ghaza, Nablous and other towns. The mother-of-pearl work at Bethlehem is sent all over the world and a lot goes to America. The olivewood work of Jerusalem and the needle work are both exported in large quantities and are known everywhere. The natives are not asleep. And they certainly do not need Zionism to wake them up.”

Zionism cost Winston Churchill’s Britain the 2023 equivalent of billions of dollars then, and tens of billions of dollars for America today. Isn’t it ironic that as our post-WWII society progresses more to the left every year, we can’t even shelter our increasing homeless population? Why is that? And who has ever read every word of the congressional budget that has stiffed us to the tune of a $33 trillion in debt? I sense that a common playbook of shenanigans is leading America to the abyss.

Abbreviated captions of photos shown in this article:

“Here is a typical Palestine peasant woman of Arab blood. The native dress she is wearing is embroidered by hand and is quite valuable. This is the photograph to which Arif Pasha refers in the special interview he gave to our correspondent.”

And…

“A photograph of the Arab delegation from Palestine, now in England to place their case against Zionism before the British government.”

End of Article, But Please Read on to My Second Destination…

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Destination 1920

Let’s conclude our time capsule journey by going back two more years, to a Jewish newspaper from Cincinnati, Ohio. There we find embedded a quote from Sir Herbert Samuel (High Commissioner of Palestine):

Herbert Samuel, former British Cabinet Minister and Special Commissioner to Belgium, in passing through Cairo from Jerusalem on his way home, issued a statement to the press, both native and British, in which he declared that the riots In Jerusalem had been due to a misconception of Zionism on the part of the non-Jewish population. He wrote:

They have assumed that Mohammedans and Christians will be placed under the government of a Jewish minority, that the present possessors and cultivators of the soil will be dispossessed of their property, that the ownership of Mohammedan and Christian holy places will be affected, and that the Jews will fill the administrative offices to the prejudice of others. All these assumptions are untrue, but, even if the Zionist organizations entertained such ideas, Great Britain would not permit their adoption.” — The American Israelite, July 1, 1920

He obviously underestimated the tactics of Irgun terrorist leader Menachem Begin (i.e., future Prime Minister of Israel Begin) who ordered the bombing of the British Headquarters at the King David Hotel! But what of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty and the 34 deaths and 174 wounded Navy servicemen? Why did an American carrier group get ordered to turn away from the defense of the Liberty and our American sailors in 1967, while today in 2023 two carrier groups are sent in to aid Israel? The fact is that the average American citizen knows virtually nothing about the details of terrorism that have swept over Palestine lands from 1922 through today except for what our mainstream media has repetitively pounded into our heads. I’ll end my point with a quick one question test: 1. Who was Count Folke Bernadotte?

The time capsule has returned to our present day, 2023, as Israel’s IDF prepares for a ground assault into congested Gaza. I trust that our journey gives you a better understanding of the situation at hand, one that complements the work of Bernard M. Smith, noted in my introduction. I wrote this for the memory of the innocent victims of the last century, the innocent victims of the future, and in the hopes that the American people can find their roots, before it’s too late.