This Is Not the Time to Preach Racism With Palestine Problem

Heffernan says

Joseph Heffernan

This Is Not the Time to Preach Racism With Palestine Problem — Brooklyn Eagle, 12 May 1940 — Brooklyn Eagle · Brooklyn, New York · 12 May 1940

Transcribed from the clipping

“HEFFERNAN says

This Is Not the Time to Preach Racism With Palestine Problem One cannot read Selden’s digest of ‘The Rape of Palestine’ without feeling the tremendous impact of the author’s argument. There is something of the German super-efficiency in his method.

He marshals his documented facts like shock troops and backs the formidable vanguard with all the zeal and passion of his race. And yet if one lays this challenging volume alongside history, one finds in its fundamental philosophy the faults of the foes Mr. Ziff assails.

Its Strength and Weakness The merit of the book, which has the high praise of such non-Hebrew critics as the Jewish periodical America; H. L. Mencken, Prof. Francis V. Brown, the Rev. Joseph H.

Moody of Cathedral College and others, is that it makes the treatment of the Jew the breach in the wall of modern civilization through which pour into the citadel the barbaric hordes of anti-Christ.

The weakness is that it strikes a blow from the rear in a most unhappy hour at the nations which, whatever their faults—and they are many—are engaged now in a desperate struggle with the arch-foe of Jewry. I have tried to check Mr. Ziff’s book with ‘The Puzzle of Palestine,’ issued by the Foreign Policy Association.

Substantially they agree as to those secret treaties and objectives of the Allies in the World War. There are revelations in both books which should fortify American determination to remain out of the present conflict—and they agree also as to the progress made by the Jewish colonists in Palestine.

But the Foreign Policy Association deals far more gently with Britain and points out her difficulty in dealing with the Arab and Christian elements of the population, and at the same time carrying out the purpose of the Balfour Declaration. There is disagreement also as to the population bearing possibilities of Palestine; Mr.

Ziff seeing unlimited wealth of natural resources for all the Jews who might find a refuge in the ancient homeland of Israel; the Foreign Policy Association stressing the exhaustion of its resources.

The main difficulty, which lies outside the category of difficulties created by unpatriotic interest and diplomatic chicanery, is indicated by a diagram in the Foreign Policy brochure, showing that in 1937 the Jewish element constituted only 30 percent of the population of Palestine.

To carry out the Balfour agreement, therefor, it would seem necessary to exile 70 percent of the native population, alienating Arab forces whose friendship is of primary importance to Great Britain now, or establish a minority caste government. How does Mr. Ziff meet the difficulty? On the theory of every conqueror—that the others are an inferior race.

Read Macaulay to learn how the land-hungry British regarded the Irish whom they dispossessed. How soon the peace-loving Boers became an inferior race when diamond mines were discovered at Kimberly! Many years ago I met old General Cronje and the chivalrous young Boer cavalry chief, Gen. Louis DeWet.

Had Britain their like in Norway today the communiques might be telling a different tale. What has been Hitler’s pretext for his persecution of Jews, Lutherans, Catholics, for his Austrian, Czech and Polish conquests?

It does not seem to me that Americans of Jewish stock can approve the preaching of racism in Palestine in an hour when racism is deluging the Old World in a blood bath.

Zionism has its place and circumstances have made a refuge for the dispossessed a necessity, but the solution of the problem, if it is to be solved in the interest of those most intimately concerned, must be deferred until the statesmen of Europe can think without the crash of falling bombs and the thunder of artillery muddling their minds.

Meanwhile, I’d suggest to Americans of the seed of Shem, as well as the seed of Japhets, a careful reading of both these books.”

Context added by this archive

The word racism in a Palestine headline in 1940, seven years earlier than anything else in this archive and twenty-eight years before the argument reached the United Nations.

The columnist is reviewing two books at once, and he reaches the count by way of a diagram: the Jewish population of Palestine was 30 percent in 1937, so carrying out Balfour means either exiling 70 percent of the native population or establishing a minority caste government — a formulation eight years before the state and a decade before the word apartheid entered English from anywhere else.

His comparisons are the Irish whom the British dispossessed and the Boers who became an inferior race when diamonds were found at Kimberley. The column is set beside the Sunday and Monday radio listings.

Cite this item

"This Is Not the Time to Preach Racism With Palestine Problem," Brooklyn Eagle, 12 May 1940. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1940-002. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1940-002