Brooklyn Eagle · Brooklyn, New York · 18 January 1931

CP-1931-002

Money Printed in 3 Languages

In Palestine and, contrary to general belief, Jews and Arabs are friends, says Brooklyn man

Eleanore Levenson

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Transcribed from the clipping

“Palestine is still a strange and picturesque land. A land of startling contrasts where nomadic tribes live in the most primitive fashion side by side with communities and cities that boast theaters, universities, libraries and all the most gracious gifts of civilization.”… “Abraham I.

Shiplacoff has just returned from a three months trip to Palestine as head of a delegation from the National Labor Committee for the Organized Workers of Palestine. He told me during our interview that when he first came to the Palestine frontier and started the trip across the desert he saw miles and miles of arid, unbeautiful land.

There were only stone and rocks, goats running loose, nothing green, nothing growing. He asked, ‘Is this Palestine?’ A Frenchman sitting in the same compartment said, ‘Wait until you get to the Jewish farms. There you will see a new world, a green world.

It is the medieval and the modern side by side.’” “Not only do the Arabs still live as they did in Biblical ages but there are a hundred and fifty thousand Bedouins who wander from place to place. Mr. Shiplacoff said: ‘They live by grazing and on whatever they can lay hands on while prowling at night through Arabian and Jewish villages.

This also is considered a trade, an accepted way of earning a livelihood.’ When a Bedouin child reaches school age, about eight or nine, his education is begun by his mother, who starves him for a few days and, driven by hunger, he goes out and learns to steal. If he is a nimble thief he will soon be on his own.

Horses, sheep, food, anything unwatched is fair game for the Bedouins.”

“To this arid land, inhabited by the most primitive people, the Jews have come, bringing their longing for a national homeland, their social idealism and more tangibly the implements of modern science and invention, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into reclaiming Palestine.”… “Every coin and banknote, every street sign and official paper is printed in three languages—English, Arabic and Hebrew.”… “The Arabs served the Jewish boys with coffee and spoke to them in a friendly fashion, but they couldn’t help asking, ‘Aren’t you afraid to come here?’

Another Arab standing by said, ‘Why should they be afraid? There are no Englishmen around.’”

Context added by this archive

Abraham I. Shiplacoff, home from three months in Palestine as head of a delegation from the National Labor Committee for the Organized Workers of Palestine, called “the Jewish Debs” by the paper. The headline says Jews and Arabs are friends.

The article that follows it describes Bedouin children taught to steal by starvation and a land “inhabited by the most primitive people.” He blames “the effendis, the Arabian feudal lords who exploit the fellaheens.”

Cite this clipping

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• THROUGH PALESTINE.Brooklyn Eagle · 21 February 1890
• From Zionist sources we learn that the Jaffa riots were directly traceable to hatred of the British mandateBrooklyn Eagle · 6 May 1921
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