As the Australian Light Horse charged the Turkish trenches guarding Beersheba with the warcry For King Herzl and the Jewish State on their foam-flecked lips...
Just joking!
But if, as the usual suspects would have us believe, those two besties, Australia and Israel, go way back to the Battle of Beersheba in 1917; if that was indeed the start of a long and beautiful friendship, albeit belatedly recognised by the joint issue of commemorative stamps only in 2013, you'd probably expect a Zionist or two living chronologically closer to the event to have noticed, would you not?
He or she, of course, would have to have been not only a true-blue, dinky-di Zionist, but one intimately connected with the earliest stages of the Zionist project in Palestine, right? After all, the current Zionist push to conjure up a link between the ANZACS of 1917 and today's Israel isn't likely to accept the evidence of just any old scholar.
Well, I'd like to nominate Norman Bentwich (1883-1971) as our judge in this matter. How's this for credentials:
"Norman De Mattos Bentwich OBE MC was a British barrister and legal academic. He was the British-appointed attorney-general of Mandatory Palestine and a life-long Zionist." (Wikipedia)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but just how true-blue was this particular true-blue Zionist? Well, a true Zionist is reality averse. Was Bentwich reality averse? Was he what?!
His cheeky colleague, CR Ashbee, once tried to keep it real with Bentwich by quoting James George Frazer at him, as follows:
"It is the opinion of competent judges that the modern fellaheen or Arabic-speaking peasants of Palestine are descendents of the pagan tribes which dwelt there, before the Israelite invasion, and have clung to the soil ever since, being submerged but never destroyed by each successive wave of conquest which has swept over the land." (Folk Lore in the Old Testament, Vol. 1, p 17)
"When I put that statement of Frazer's up to Norman Bentwich one day as we were out riding together," wrote Ashbee, "he met it with a complete unbelief. The fact, if indeed it were a fact, did not touch him, he was dreaming of other things. His smile of childlike confidence in effect said: 'I don't believe it.' Facts have no value in the light of utter faith; they do not exist. Yet that fact is another answer to Zionism, perhaps the strongest of all." (A Palestine Notebook, 1923, p 111)
Indeed!
Now as if that were not enough to qualify Bentwich as judge & jury in the matter here before us, he also, as it happens, wrote a book called simply Palestine - Zionists weren't as squeamish back then as they are these days of that word - the Foreword of which, by British historian H.A.L. Fisher, testifies to the man's eminent suitability for registering purely Zionist vibes:
"Optimism is pardonable in an Anglo-Jewish Professor of the new University of Jerusalem, who sets himself down to write the remarkable story of the first thirteen years of British rule in Palestine and has witnessed the realization of a dream cherished through so many centuries by his ancient race." (1934, p 5)
So, if something deep, meaningful, and worthy of commemoration through the issue of joint Australian-Israeli stamps, was forged on the Beersheba battlefield, Norman Bentwich would surely be the one to know about it, right?
OK, so let's see what he has to say about the matter in his book:
"After months of preparation the English attack on the Turkish front line from Gaza to Beersheba was launched at the end of October [1917]. The Turkish position was broken first at Beersheba and then by the sea; and their army was rolled back in rout over the Plain of Sharon on the one side and the hill country around Hebron on the other. General Allenby pressed the pursuit through the Judean hills, and rapidly occupied in turn Jaffa, Ramleh, Ludd, Hebron, and Bethlehem." (ibid, p 74-75)
Whaaat? You mean, that's it?
No mention of Australians? No mention of adoring Jews chanting, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi! Oi! Oi!?
Can you believe it?
Showing posts with label CR Ashbee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CR Ashbee. Show all posts
Monday, June 24, 2013
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Brain Snap of Brain Snaps
"The secret of [Lord] Balfour's charm was his nonchalance. Staying cool seemed to be his only rule. [Lord] Vansittart thought he viewed events 'with the detachment of a choirboy at a funeral service.' Almost alone among politicians, he was indifferent to what his colleagues, the public or posterity thought of him or his policies. He kept no diary, made no attempt to preserve his papers." (From Adored Gazelle, Ferdinand Mount's review of Balfour: The Last Grandee by R.J.Q. Adams, London Review of Books, 20/3/08)
Don't you just love politicians? Their capacity for stuffing the planet up seems boundless. In fact, one way of accounting for the insanity and misery we see everywhere around us today is to view it as the cumulative result of brain snaps, great and small, experienced by influential politicians of one stripe or another.
Now if you had to cite just one of these buggers for a really quality brain snap - of the sort which is still giving us hell today - who might it be?
My choice, naturally, would have to be Britain's Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), known principally for that brain snap of brain snaps, the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
Evaluations of the bastard and his mother-of-all brain snaps don't come much better than the following, from a conversation between CR Ashbee and his friend 'Mercutio', in Jerusalem, December 1919:
"Mercutio quoted the other day a cynicism, purporting to be Arthur Balfour's when the policy of the British Government in regard to the Jewish National home was under criticism. 'Well, even if it fails, it will have been a profoundly interesting experiment!'* Then he added with asperity: 'As if the idealism of thousands and the fate of the Middle East could be gambled for a political chance! They say that when he goes to Heaven he will explain himself and his 'Declaration' in a different manner to each person of the Trinity.'" (A Palestine Notebook 1918-1923, CR Ashbee, p 106)
(*This was a theme of Balfour's. See my 29/1/12 post Lord Gingrich.)
Don't you just love politicians? Their capacity for stuffing the planet up seems boundless. In fact, one way of accounting for the insanity and misery we see everywhere around us today is to view it as the cumulative result of brain snaps, great and small, experienced by influential politicians of one stripe or another.
Now if you had to cite just one of these buggers for a really quality brain snap - of the sort which is still giving us hell today - who might it be?
My choice, naturally, would have to be Britain's Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), known principally for that brain snap of brain snaps, the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
Evaluations of the bastard and his mother-of-all brain snaps don't come much better than the following, from a conversation between CR Ashbee and his friend 'Mercutio', in Jerusalem, December 1919:
"Mercutio quoted the other day a cynicism, purporting to be Arthur Balfour's when the policy of the British Government in regard to the Jewish National home was under criticism. 'Well, even if it fails, it will have been a profoundly interesting experiment!'* Then he added with asperity: 'As if the idealism of thousands and the fate of the Middle East could be gambled for a political chance! They say that when he goes to Heaven he will explain himself and his 'Declaration' in a different manner to each person of the Trinity.'" (A Palestine Notebook 1918-1923, CR Ashbee, p 106)
(*This was a theme of Balfour's. See my 29/1/12 post Lord Gingrich.)
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Beware the Zionist Jabberwock
Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
The Zionist Jabberwocks of the Robber State started small:
"Another day a request came for a building permit. I refused it as premature. It was followed by a petition couched in persuasive terms but intimating that the Administration was holding up legitimate building enterprise. I went a second time to the site and found that the petitioner, a long, hungry-looking Germanized Jew with wild furtive eyes had been stealing his neighbours' boundary stones. The neighbours, all Moslem, were sitting round, some 6 of them in the garden. In the usual Moslem way they had started to build without counting the cost, and then left their great stones lying around for Heaven and the British Administration to care for. So this religious Jew (he used to move about the streets reciting texts) had conceived the idea not only of adding a wing to his house but also a foot or two to his land. The Moslem neighbours entered an injunction, but they were very kindly folk, and when I came into the garden tapped their foreheads significantly and said 'Majnun' - 'quite mad!' 'Etfaddal!' - 'Pray be seated.' There was a great Kalam, when the Jew who had it in his mind that his was a prescriptive religious right sprang up at me like the Jabberwocky and spread his great and very dirty paws, all the ten fingers extended, over my face. I whipped out my little cane and rapped him soundly upon the knuckles. The Moslem claque on the wall shouted with fun at the play, but a fortnight later came another long petition, this time addressed to the Chief Administrator, couched in the language of the Book of Psalms, and passed on through the Governor asking for an investigation as to the reason why a British official had maltreated an unfortunate Jew, and 'stricken him bloody' over the backs of his hands. There is a file on the subject." (A Palestine Notebook 1918-1923, CR Ashbee, 1923, pp 142-143)
But here it is, almost a century later, and these loathsome creatures have reached plague proportions in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, such that no non-Jabberwock is safe from their their biting jaws and catching claws:
"On December 31, as Americans celebrate New Year's Eve and Israelis lift a glass to 'Sylvester', a Palestinian family will be evicted from their East Jerusalem home to make way for Jewish settlers. The Jerusalem District Court has ruled that the Shamasneh family must leave the house they have been living in since 1964 - 3 years before Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem began - by 2:00 PM on Monday afternoon. Ten people currently live in the home, including six children.
"The court has granted ownership to the Israeli Custodian for Absentee Property, which was represented by lawyers who also represent settlers' organizations, including the Israel Land Fund. According to the ILF's website, the organization's goals include 'acquiring the land of Israel for the Jewish people.' The ILF 'strives to ensure that Jewish land is... reclaimed and in Jewish hands' rather than 'hostile, non-Jewish, and enemy sources.' The ILF has been behind a number of different settlement projects in East Jerusalem. Activists believe that the Shamasnehs' home will be handed over to Jewish settlers after the family is evicted. The Jerusalem District Court's decision breaks a 3-year lull in such evictions in Sheikh Jarrah. The al-Kurd family was evicted from their house in Sheikh Jarrah in 2008 and were left homeless; two more families were dispossessed in 2009. Jewish settlers now occupy all the houses...
"In the letter below, Ayoub Shamasneh asks the international community to help him and his family. He also points out that Jews the world over can claim properties in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories based on previous ownership - however tenuous those claims - while Palestinians are not allowed to reclaim the properties they were forced to leave during the 1947-1948 conflict.
To whom it may concern,
"My name is Ayoub Shamasneh and I live in Um Haroun, Sheikh Jarrah. My wife and I are living here with our son, Mohammed, his wife Amaal, and their 6 children ranging in age from 11 to 22 years old. We have lived in this house since 1964. It is where we raised our children. In 2009, decades later, the Israeli General Custodian's Office informed us that our rental agreement would not be renewed. They have now sued us in order to take ownership of the property via individuals whom they claim are the descendents of the original pre-1948 Jewish owners. Our case has been reviewed by an Israeli court in two separate hearings but the judges have refused to accept evidence we have submitted to show proof of our residence in our home since 1964. Therefore, they are claiming that we are not eligible for protected tenant status. Consequently, we have been ordered to vacate the property by 2 pm on December 31 2012. As far as we know it will be handed over to a right-wing settler organization that has previously taken over other properties in the neighbourhood.
"Now more than ever we are aware of the double standard of the Israeli law that does not allow Palestinian refugees or their children to reclaim property they owned before 1948, yet allows children of Jewish Israelis to sue and evict Palestinian families from homes they have lived in for decades. As a result of this discriminatory double standard in Israeli law we are about to lose our home and be thrown onto the street.
"Forced eviction from our home will not only be a human tragedy but also a political manoeuvre which aims to strengthen and expedite the settlement project in Sheikh Jarrah. Israeli Jewish settler takeovers in Sheikh Jarrah serve to disrupt the presence of a continuous and connected Palestinian community in East Jerusalem. Numerous families have already lost their homes and 30 more are living day-to-day under the imminent threat of eviction. Our case will set yet another precedent that will play directly into the hands of the settlement project and will be another nail in the coffin of a viable East Jerusalem.
"We turn to you, as writers, activists, public figures, artists and concerned citizens of the world, to do all that you can to call on the Israeli government to instruct the General Custodian not to evict our family from our home and thereby facilitate the agenda of the extremist settlers who are destroying all chances for a peaceful and just future in Jerusalem."
Sincerely,
Ayoub Shamasneh
(Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah days away from eviction, Mya Guarinieri, 972mag.com, 27/12/12)
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
The Zionist Jabberwocks of the Robber State started small:
"Another day a request came for a building permit. I refused it as premature. It was followed by a petition couched in persuasive terms but intimating that the Administration was holding up legitimate building enterprise. I went a second time to the site and found that the petitioner, a long, hungry-looking Germanized Jew with wild furtive eyes had been stealing his neighbours' boundary stones. The neighbours, all Moslem, were sitting round, some 6 of them in the garden. In the usual Moslem way they had started to build without counting the cost, and then left their great stones lying around for Heaven and the British Administration to care for. So this religious Jew (he used to move about the streets reciting texts) had conceived the idea not only of adding a wing to his house but also a foot or two to his land. The Moslem neighbours entered an injunction, but they were very kindly folk, and when I came into the garden tapped their foreheads significantly and said 'Majnun' - 'quite mad!' 'Etfaddal!' - 'Pray be seated.' There was a great Kalam, when the Jew who had it in his mind that his was a prescriptive religious right sprang up at me like the Jabberwocky and spread his great and very dirty paws, all the ten fingers extended, over my face. I whipped out my little cane and rapped him soundly upon the knuckles. The Moslem claque on the wall shouted with fun at the play, but a fortnight later came another long petition, this time addressed to the Chief Administrator, couched in the language of the Book of Psalms, and passed on through the Governor asking for an investigation as to the reason why a British official had maltreated an unfortunate Jew, and 'stricken him bloody' over the backs of his hands. There is a file on the subject." (A Palestine Notebook 1918-1923, CR Ashbee, 1923, pp 142-143)
But here it is, almost a century later, and these loathsome creatures have reached plague proportions in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, such that no non-Jabberwock is safe from their their biting jaws and catching claws:
"On December 31, as Americans celebrate New Year's Eve and Israelis lift a glass to 'Sylvester', a Palestinian family will be evicted from their East Jerusalem home to make way for Jewish settlers. The Jerusalem District Court has ruled that the Shamasneh family must leave the house they have been living in since 1964 - 3 years before Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem began - by 2:00 PM on Monday afternoon. Ten people currently live in the home, including six children.
"The court has granted ownership to the Israeli Custodian for Absentee Property, which was represented by lawyers who also represent settlers' organizations, including the Israel Land Fund. According to the ILF's website, the organization's goals include 'acquiring the land of Israel for the Jewish people.' The ILF 'strives to ensure that Jewish land is... reclaimed and in Jewish hands' rather than 'hostile, non-Jewish, and enemy sources.' The ILF has been behind a number of different settlement projects in East Jerusalem. Activists believe that the Shamasnehs' home will be handed over to Jewish settlers after the family is evicted. The Jerusalem District Court's decision breaks a 3-year lull in such evictions in Sheikh Jarrah. The al-Kurd family was evicted from their house in Sheikh Jarrah in 2008 and were left homeless; two more families were dispossessed in 2009. Jewish settlers now occupy all the houses...
"In the letter below, Ayoub Shamasneh asks the international community to help him and his family. He also points out that Jews the world over can claim properties in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories based on previous ownership - however tenuous those claims - while Palestinians are not allowed to reclaim the properties they were forced to leave during the 1947-1948 conflict.
To whom it may concern,
"My name is Ayoub Shamasneh and I live in Um Haroun, Sheikh Jarrah. My wife and I are living here with our son, Mohammed, his wife Amaal, and their 6 children ranging in age from 11 to 22 years old. We have lived in this house since 1964. It is where we raised our children. In 2009, decades later, the Israeli General Custodian's Office informed us that our rental agreement would not be renewed. They have now sued us in order to take ownership of the property via individuals whom they claim are the descendents of the original pre-1948 Jewish owners. Our case has been reviewed by an Israeli court in two separate hearings but the judges have refused to accept evidence we have submitted to show proof of our residence in our home since 1964. Therefore, they are claiming that we are not eligible for protected tenant status. Consequently, we have been ordered to vacate the property by 2 pm on December 31 2012. As far as we know it will be handed over to a right-wing settler organization that has previously taken over other properties in the neighbourhood.
"Now more than ever we are aware of the double standard of the Israeli law that does not allow Palestinian refugees or their children to reclaim property they owned before 1948, yet allows children of Jewish Israelis to sue and evict Palestinian families from homes they have lived in for decades. As a result of this discriminatory double standard in Israeli law we are about to lose our home and be thrown onto the street.
"Forced eviction from our home will not only be a human tragedy but also a political manoeuvre which aims to strengthen and expedite the settlement project in Sheikh Jarrah. Israeli Jewish settler takeovers in Sheikh Jarrah serve to disrupt the presence of a continuous and connected Palestinian community in East Jerusalem. Numerous families have already lost their homes and 30 more are living day-to-day under the imminent threat of eviction. Our case will set yet another precedent that will play directly into the hands of the settlement project and will be another nail in the coffin of a viable East Jerusalem.
"We turn to you, as writers, activists, public figures, artists and concerned citizens of the world, to do all that you can to call on the Israeli government to instruct the General Custodian not to evict our family from our home and thereby facilitate the agenda of the extremist settlers who are destroying all chances for a peaceful and just future in Jerusalem."
Sincerely,
Ayoub Shamasneh
(Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah days away from eviction, Mya Guarinieri, 972mag.com, 27/12/12)
Monday, December 24, 2012
Jerusalem Syndrome
OK, it's Christmas Eve. Time to lighten up a bit. Here's one for all you wonderful Christian Zionists out there:
Jerusalem, 1920-21.
Amongst my strangest experiences in this fantastic city has been watching its varieties of religious mania. The Lord drives these people with the afflatus to his Holy Hill. The question is how they ought to be dealt with on arrival.
One morning an American turned up to see the Civic Adviser. His gambits were so good that I was completely taken in.
'I've had a great deal of experience in town-planning,' he said, 'and I assure you you are going the wrong way to work.'
That seemed reasonable.
'What you say is probably true,' said I, 'but we have to work along the line of least resistance, and must make or improve our alignments as and when people need them. Meantime, the general plan and survey of the city are in progress.'
I pointed to some charts and drawings on the walls.
'That's just what I'm complaining of, and where I've been sent to guide you. You're going the wrong way to work.'
'Well,' said I rather testily, 'if there's any particular section of the city you think should be differently handled, I'll give it consideration.' And I handed him pencil and paper.
'The fact is, you've got to begin with cubits.'
'With what?'
'With cubits. Here,' he said, making a black spot, 'is Solomon's Temple.'
Whenever we get to Solomon's Temple (what a charlatan Solomon was, the Moslem tradition that he was the great conjurer is surely sound!) - whenever we get to Solomon's Temple it's all over.
'I'm sorry,' said I, 'I have no time for... '
'You have no time for God's way... You... and what's to become of me? I've got to live. Your Administration is here to provide for people like me.'
And that was true, too, under the 'Wa'd Balfour.'*
There was an embarrassing pause. He gathered up his 'cubits' with an awful solemnity.
'I shall go and see Sir Herbert Samuel in person.'
I shrugged my shoulders and he left. Two hours later I had an agitated call on the telephone from the A.D.C. on Mount Scopus.
'A Mr ___ is here; says you have told him to see H.E. - seems rather odd in the head!'
Weeks after I saw him tramping he streets, frayed, hollow-cheeked, and half starved.
(A Palestine Notebook 1918-1923, CR Ashbee, 1923, pp 140-142)
[* Balfour Declaration]
Jerusalem, 1920-21.
Amongst my strangest experiences in this fantastic city has been watching its varieties of religious mania. The Lord drives these people with the afflatus to his Holy Hill. The question is how they ought to be dealt with on arrival.
One morning an American turned up to see the Civic Adviser. His gambits were so good that I was completely taken in.
'I've had a great deal of experience in town-planning,' he said, 'and I assure you you are going the wrong way to work.'
That seemed reasonable.
'What you say is probably true,' said I, 'but we have to work along the line of least resistance, and must make or improve our alignments as and when people need them. Meantime, the general plan and survey of the city are in progress.'
I pointed to some charts and drawings on the walls.
'That's just what I'm complaining of, and where I've been sent to guide you. You're going the wrong way to work.'
'Well,' said I rather testily, 'if there's any particular section of the city you think should be differently handled, I'll give it consideration.' And I handed him pencil and paper.
'The fact is, you've got to begin with cubits.'
'With what?'
'With cubits. Here,' he said, making a black spot, 'is Solomon's Temple.'
Whenever we get to Solomon's Temple (what a charlatan Solomon was, the Moslem tradition that he was the great conjurer is surely sound!) - whenever we get to Solomon's Temple it's all over.
'I'm sorry,' said I, 'I have no time for... '
'You have no time for God's way... You... and what's to become of me? I've got to live. Your Administration is here to provide for people like me.'
And that was true, too, under the 'Wa'd Balfour.'*
There was an embarrassing pause. He gathered up his 'cubits' with an awful solemnity.
'I shall go and see Sir Herbert Samuel in person.'
I shrugged my shoulders and he left. Two hours later I had an agitated call on the telephone from the A.D.C. on Mount Scopus.
'A Mr ___ is here; says you have told him to see H.E. - seems rather odd in the head!'
Weeks after I saw him tramping he streets, frayed, hollow-cheeked, and half starved.
(A Palestine Notebook 1918-1923, CR Ashbee, 1923, pp 140-142)
[* Balfour Declaration]
Thursday, December 20, 2012
100 Years of Zionist Shit
To date the Palestinians have had to put up with almost 100 years of Zionist shit - literally:
2012: "Waste water from an Israeli settlement has flowed into agricultural lands in a Palestinian village in the northern West Bank, a local official said Tuesday. Deir Istiya village mayor Nathmi Salman said waste pipes from Yaqir settlement are faulty and have flooded the village's land, causing the formation of waste water pools. The sewage is nearing the main water spring of the Qana Valley by Salfit, he said, noting that livestock drink from natural springs in the area. Salman said it was not the first time the village was contaminated by settlement waste, and charged Israeli authorities with procrastinating over fixing the sewage system. This environmental damage is ongoing, while Israel claims the land is considered a nature reserve, he added." (Mayor: Salfit village flooded by settlement sewage, maannews.net, 18/7/12)
1922: "The drainage debacle in the Wadi'l-Joz is for us, and many others, very serious. The Administration is, of course, responsible. It accepted the money from the Zionist Commission and failed to carry the work through effectively. Like all work done for purposes of politics and propaganda, rather than for its own sake - work that is not strictly honest - it has been 'found out.' The best Moslem residential area in the city has now been flooded with the drainage of Meoscheorim, and a pool of liquid sewage lies, at the moment of writing, in the lovely valley between the Grand Mufti's house and ours. For us it will mean that we shall probably not be able to return to our house. The property owners, all Moslem, are very angry. They have sent in petition after petition and all have been ignored. But they will probably not have enough cohesion to bring the necessary pressure to bear upon the Administration. Had the situation been reversed and the drains of a Moslem slum voided into the best Jewish quarter there would have been such an outcry in Israel as would have moved Wall Street and Park Lane:
Benjamin, and Levy, Cohen, and Sassoon
Lewis, Mond, and Meinertzhagen moaning all in tune,
Franklin, Montefiore, and Harrari in between,
Isaacs, Fels, and Israeli baying at the moon,
Ladenburg, and Schlezinger, and Trier, and Duveen,
All the tribes in harmony from counter, pale, and dune -
Was such a sorrow ever known, or such a scandal seen!
Samuel, Schiff, and Rothschild twined in richer chords,
Mourning all together in a cry that is the Lord's
(A Palestine Notebook 1918-1923, CR Ashbee, 1923, pp 205-206)
2012: "Waste water from an Israeli settlement has flowed into agricultural lands in a Palestinian village in the northern West Bank, a local official said Tuesday. Deir Istiya village mayor Nathmi Salman said waste pipes from Yaqir settlement are faulty and have flooded the village's land, causing the formation of waste water pools. The sewage is nearing the main water spring of the Qana Valley by Salfit, he said, noting that livestock drink from natural springs in the area. Salman said it was not the first time the village was contaminated by settlement waste, and charged Israeli authorities with procrastinating over fixing the sewage system. This environmental damage is ongoing, while Israel claims the land is considered a nature reserve, he added." (Mayor: Salfit village flooded by settlement sewage, maannews.net, 18/7/12)
1922: "The drainage debacle in the Wadi'l-Joz is for us, and many others, very serious. The Administration is, of course, responsible. It accepted the money from the Zionist Commission and failed to carry the work through effectively. Like all work done for purposes of politics and propaganda, rather than for its own sake - work that is not strictly honest - it has been 'found out.' The best Moslem residential area in the city has now been flooded with the drainage of Meoscheorim, and a pool of liquid sewage lies, at the moment of writing, in the lovely valley between the Grand Mufti's house and ours. For us it will mean that we shall probably not be able to return to our house. The property owners, all Moslem, are very angry. They have sent in petition after petition and all have been ignored. But they will probably not have enough cohesion to bring the necessary pressure to bear upon the Administration. Had the situation been reversed and the drains of a Moslem slum voided into the best Jewish quarter there would have been such an outcry in Israel as would have moved Wall Street and Park Lane:
Benjamin, and Levy, Cohen, and Sassoon
Lewis, Mond, and Meinertzhagen moaning all in tune,
Franklin, Montefiore, and Harrari in between,
Isaacs, Fels, and Israeli baying at the moon,
Ladenburg, and Schlezinger, and Trier, and Duveen,
All the tribes in harmony from counter, pale, and dune -
Was such a sorrow ever known, or such a scandal seen!
Samuel, Schiff, and Rothschild twined in richer chords,
Mourning all together in a cry that is the Lord's
(A Palestine Notebook 1918-1923, CR Ashbee, 1923, pp 205-206)
Monday, December 10, 2012
Zionism in a Nutshell
Jerusalem, April, 1921.
Little Mrs ___ (let us call her Rockenheimer) has turned up from the USA. She is bitten with Zionism. Dreamy, electric, and with that Semitic hardness which blinds while it sharpens, she is about to give a large sum of money to land experiments in Palestine: or, as she puts it, to 'demonstrate the truth of single tax.' Single tax is the bee in her bonnet, as it was in that of her magnetic millionaire husband...
Little Mrs Rockenheimer lunched with us and was, in acute American, charmingly naive and outspoken in her ideas. It is this sort of outspokenness in and out of season that so frightens the Moslem. And who would not be frightened? It makes even an English Gallio's flesh creep.
"It will come," she said prophetically, "I feel it in my bones that it will come!"
It is when a Jew feels things in his bones that the Moslem feels for his knife.
"What will come, Mrs Rockenheimer?"
"I feel it in my bones that this land - ALL of it - is going to belong to us."
Mark the simplicity of the feeling.
"But what are you going to do with the inhabitants, the 80% of the population who are not Jews?"
"What the Ay-rabs? They have Ay-raybia. Let them go there!"
How shall we deal with such reasoning?
Go home and read Josephus.
A Palestine Notebook 1918-1923, C.R. Ashbee, 1923, pp 176-177
Little Mrs ___ (let us call her Rockenheimer) has turned up from the USA. She is bitten with Zionism. Dreamy, electric, and with that Semitic hardness which blinds while it sharpens, she is about to give a large sum of money to land experiments in Palestine: or, as she puts it, to 'demonstrate the truth of single tax.' Single tax is the bee in her bonnet, as it was in that of her magnetic millionaire husband...
Little Mrs Rockenheimer lunched with us and was, in acute American, charmingly naive and outspoken in her ideas. It is this sort of outspokenness in and out of season that so frightens the Moslem. And who would not be frightened? It makes even an English Gallio's flesh creep.
"It will come," she said prophetically, "I feel it in my bones that it will come!"
It is when a Jew feels things in his bones that the Moslem feels for his knife.
"What will come, Mrs Rockenheimer?"
"I feel it in my bones that this land - ALL of it - is going to belong to us."
Mark the simplicity of the feeling.
"But what are you going to do with the inhabitants, the 80% of the population who are not Jews?"
"What the Ay-rabs? They have Ay-raybia. Let them go there!"
How shall we deal with such reasoning?
Go home and read Josephus.
A Palestine Notebook 1918-1923, C.R. Ashbee, 1923, pp 176-177
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