Arabs Fear Zionists Menace in Palestine

Grand Mufti Explains Foreigners “Too Progressive” for Backward Natives. · Says Would Have Same Distrust of Americans or Englishmen.

By Marion Weinstein

Arabs Fear Zionists Menace in Palestine — Omaha World-Herald, 17 March 1919 — Omaha World-Herald · Omaha, Nebraska · 17 March 1919

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“Jerusalem, Feb. 10.—Up the rocky path that skirts the foot of Mount Olivet I climbed to the home of the Grand Mufti, the head of the Moslems of all Palestine. I wanted to learn from their spiritual leader how the 500,000 Arabs here view the future of the Holy land.

The Grand Mufti, I was told by representatice men of all three faiths in Jerusalem, could speak for his people. For ten years he had been their patriarch, as his father was for forty-five years and his grandfather and great-grandfather before him.

Though a heavily branched family tree, they said, he traced his descent straight from Mohammed… We passed into the dim parlor of the Grand Mufti. A slight figure rose in the lamplight, turbaned, a dark silk jubbeh falling to his feet. Above a thin, short round beard his eyes shone with kindliness.

Makes Visitors Welcome. ‘Make yourself welcome higher up,’ my companion interpreted the Grand Mufti’s soft Arabic accents. (Moslem hospitality dictates, he further explained, that a guest occupy the ‘head’ of his host’s ‘tent.’) ‘And how do you like El Khuds?

If you have drunk of its waters, you will never forget it.’ It was my first direct evidence of the Moslem’s love for his ‘El-Khuds,’ Jerusalem, next to Mecca his Holy City… ‘We Arabs here see uneasy days now,’ he began in answer to my questions. ‘We are anxious.

We are afraid the Jews will soon be our masters and we their servants. ‘Praised be Allah, in Palestine Jews and Moslems have lived for centuries as brothers. While in Christian countries there were pogroms, we dwelt in peace.

It is not that we look askance at Jews now, but we fear we shall slowly be forced out, bought out perhaps, but still forced out, from a land where the earth is the dust of our dead bones. ‘I have been asked if the Hedjas kingdom will satisfy our national aspirations. Not at all. That is for the Bedouins across the Jordan. We are different peoples.

Our native country is Palestine,’ the Mufti continued, his spare brown hands nervously fingering his black beads. ‘But there is this likeness: we both love our home lands.’

Nomads Love Country. The Bedouin never tarries in the same spot a month. But read his love songs to his fair maiden. Always the thought of his home land is uppermost, the land where he pitches his tent. How much more should we who are not Nomads love our mother country!

‘Palestinian Arabs have gone away to Egypt and America and found fortune, but they have always come back, content to live in wretched little huts in the villages like Bethlehem, like Ramleh. We are orientals and can never adopt a foster country. Besides, would we be satisfied to leave this fertile field for the desert wastes of Arabia?

‘We stand not only against a Jewish home land here now or in the days to come, but even against Jewish immigration. What is more, we want no immigration, no foreigners of any kind to enter here. As pilgrims we shall welcome all who come, Chirstian and Jew. Love of the guest is in the nature of the east.

But we are helpless after years under the Turkish heel, and foreign colonists with plenty of gold and modern ways would engulf us. Especially the Jews, who are ready to fling money away here—not to grow profit, but for a religious dream.

We feel the people in the country should have the fruits of the new freedom and not have to give up the lion’s share to strangers. ‘This land is not like America—that can embrace thousands of foreigners. When we have become half of what America is in enlightment, in riches, in power, we shall not only welcome but invite aliens.

But not now, when we are prostrate. We would even welcome the Zionists in such a day.

No Match for Zionists. ‘We consider Zionism a menace to us because we are no match for the Zionists. It is well known to all that they are the most civilized people, first in enlightenment; energy and enterprise. On the other hand, the natives here are just the reverse—ignorant, backward. It is not that we look upon Zionists as wolves.

We would have the same fear of Americans or Englishmen. We want time to turn our own deserts ourselves into oases. ‘This great war was fought out with the professed idea to lift every oppressed nation to its feet. No nation has been more oppressed than the Arabs under the Turks. They were taxed many fold.

If a man ploughed with forty yoke of oxen he was so ground down with tithes that his sons would plough with twenty and his grandsons with ten. Now is it the consensus of intention to give us bread or to eat off the little flesh now left to our bones? ‘We have put our protest against the Balfour declaration on record.

When we learned of it, a delegation of natives headed by the mayor of El Khuds went to the military governor with a petition that set forth our rights. Still we realize that the declaration is elastic. Many interpretations can be put upon it. So far I have heard nothing definite from any official source. Each man is reading it in the light of his own hopes.

Only Allah knows what will be the fate of Palestine and he has shown no inclination to reveal it.’

Ignorant of Advantages. ‘Did Dr. Weizmann explain to you,’ I asked of the Mufti, ‘that your people will profit when the Zionists come here and rebuild the land.’ ‘No,’ the moslem head replied. ‘Dr. Weizmann visited me at my home many times and we had long talks. But we only exchanged expressions of good will.

We never had a practical discussion. The war was still on. The Turks were entrenched in Palestine. The land was dark as night. Nobody could tell what the future would bring. I knew what Dr. Weizmann’s desires were for the Holy Land, but just how far they had gone toward their goal I did not know. We only spoke as host and guest.

‘No other Zionists have discussed Palestine’s future with me. Not half a per cent of the Arabs here are reconciled to their plans. I know they speak of their benefiting one another. But that has not been our experience in the past. The Jews always remain in their own quarters and do business with themselves.’

‘Moses is your prophet, too,’ I said to the mufti. ‘Don’t you believe Palestine is the promised land of the Jews?’ The Grand Mufti smiled broadly. ‘Politics does not enter the field of religion,’ he answered. ‘And even if it did the land promised the Jews lies far below the present surface.

A new civilization has covered it, stone on stone. Besides, after the bible came the Koran, that says Allah gives the land as a heritage to the ‘salihen,’ the just, to him who tends it. We have cultivated it for centuries.’

Majority Share Opinion. ‘We are told that only the offendis, the landowners, are opposed to Zionism, because they are afraid they will no longer be able to exploit the peasants, the fellaheen,’ I remarked. ‘That is not so,’ the mufti corrected. ‘These views I express are the opinion of the majority of the Arabs here.

Our real offendis are our aristocracy. They never exploited the fellaheen. The small portion of their countrymen that did live off them were the government employes. But that was the fault of the Turkish system. An agent received no more than 100 piastres ($15) a month, not enough to pay for his cigarets and coffee. ‘Now things have changed.

No one oppresses the fellaheen. They are joining with the offendis to keep the land in the hands of the Arabs. Under the Turk every man was glad to be rid of his farm, for it brought him only tax burdens. You would often come upon a fellah cutting down a beautiful olive tree to evade the tithe. But today we are under a just rule. Nobody overtaxes our land.

No one commandeers our camel, our donkey, our ox. We are not afraid to own our belongings.’ ‘Then Jews who plan to come here may expect to find an unfriendly Moslem?’ I asked the grand mufti. ‘If they come to stay,’ was his smiling answer. The grand mufti rose with us as we prepared to leave. His own son had served us tea to honor us, his guests.

His own hands now lighted our path back to the city of David. His ‘sallam’ was the last word we hear—‘Peace’—so like the Hebrew ‘sholom’—the greeting of his fellow semite that the mufti does not want to hear in the promised land.”

How this transcription was made

Transcribed in full from the paper’s own page. The clipping in this archive is the headline block only; the column was read from the Evening World-Herald of 17 March 1919, page 12. The paper’s own spellings are kept, including representatice, Chirstian, enlightment, employes, cigarets and Hedjas. The masthead reads EVENING WORLD-HERALD; the paper is filed here under the name it carries now.

Context added by this archive

The earliest sustained Palestinian political argument in this archive, printed in Nebraska in March 1919. A named American correspondent, Marion Weinstein, climbs the path past Mount Olivet to ask the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem how the 500,000 Arabs here see the future, and prints his answer at the length of a column and a half.

He fears being bought out perhaps, but still forced out, from a land where the earth is the dust of our dead bones. He rejects the Hedjaz as a substitute — our native country is Palestine. He says a delegation headed by the mayor of Jerusalem had already taken a petition against the Balfour declaration to the military governor.

He says Weizmann visited him many times and they never once had a practical discussion. And asked whether only landlords object, he corrects the reporter: these views I express are the opinion of the majority of the Arabs here. The paper’s own subheading over the central passage is No Match for Zionists.

Cite this clipping

"Arabs Fear Zionists Menace in Palestine," Omaha World-Herald, 17 March 1919, p. 12. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1919-001. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1919-001