Arab Refugees—A Jewish Problem

William Zukerman

Transcribed from the clipping

“The Arabs have lost, by the emergence of the state of Israel, their homes, fields and country which, as history has shown, can be regained. But the Jews are in mortal danger of losing their souls and status as a people of justice and mercy which was their most precious possession for centuries… The Jews themselves… refused in 1906 to accept a generous offer by the British government to settle them in Uganda… Why should they expect that the Arab refugees, who had lived in Palestine all their lives… will give up their claims to their homes…? … Is all this not too great a price to pay for a state?”

Context added by this archive

The pivot of the Jewish-dissent thread in this collection. The earlier nodes — 1898, 1907, 1919, 1922, 1947 — argue about loyalty and how Zionism makes American Jews appear. Zukerman argues about consequence, in a general-audience American newspaper, eleven years after the state, and names four Jewish figures who had said it before him: Rabbi R. Benjamin, Moshe Smilansky, I. Nachman Steinberg and Judah L. Magnes.

Cite this item

"Arab Refugees—A Jewish Problem," The Daily Report, 3 December 1959. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1959-005. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1959-005