Racism and Palestine Crisis

By James D. White, Associated Press Foreign Affairs Analyst

Transcribed from the clipping

“Jews and Arabs in Palestine are writing another bloody warning that an old foe of human peace remains unconquered. Around the world, racial hatred burns in the hearts of men who often cannot distinguish among races until they see their fellow creatures eat or worship, or hear them talk.

Racism knows no frontier and travels with ignorance, greed, bigotry and violence everywhere.

The Palestine Illustration Palestine illustrates how racial hatred complicates and confuses an already muddled situation. It is bad enough that Jews and Arabs bear each other the mistrust of long religious, political and economic friction. It is worse that minorities among Jews and Arabs have piled recent excesses on these historic differences.

It is still worse that both communities blame each other collectively for what minorities have done. To tie the knot harder, Palestine is a world crossroads essential for access to Middle Eastern oil. To tie it still harder, the twin giants of world power, Russia and America, are vitally concerned.

Such external interest cannot easily encourage Jews and Arabs to subside, because each could obtain decisive help against the other. Palestine’s explosive potential is partly responsible for the first Russo-American agreement of importance in some time—when the two powers agreed on partition and independence for Palestine.

This confronts the United Nations with the problem, in case Arabs and Jews do not settle their differences peacefully in the meantime, of replacing British authority there next summer. Delicate balances are involved at every step, and are menaced by one more source of trouble as long as Arabs and Jews kill each other simply because they are Jews and Arabs.

President Truman’s Civil Liberties committee recently recommended that federal aid should be withheld from areas where racial discrimination persists. It was answered by a joint Negro-white group in Atlanta which said that regardless of federal action, many southern states will not soon abolish discriminatory laws.

The Atlanta group said the real answer is: ‘To open closed minds—and you can not do it by passing legislation.’ Until the world finds better and faster answers, the double edged sword of racial hatred will be handy for men who learn slowly that it can cut both ways.”

Context added by this archive

A news agency putting racism and Palestine in the same headline in 1947, and then turning, in the same column, to President Truman’s civil liberties committee and a joint Negro-white group in Atlanta. The argument is that the two are the same problem.

It is the earliest clipping in this archive to set the word beside Palestine, and it does it from Connecticut, five months before the state was declared.

Cite this item

"Racism and Palestine Crisis," Bridgeport Telegram, 8 December 1947. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1947-043. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1947-043