Anti-Zionist Myth Debunked

 
by Michael Goldblatt 

        Critics of Zionism have long accused Zionist leaders of having
deliberately ignored the Palestinian Arab issue during the early 1900s.  An
important new book shatters this anti-Zionist myth.  Zionism and the Arabs:
An American Jewish Dilemma, 1898-1948, by Dr. Rafael Medoff, documents how
American Zionist leaders recognized, debated, and grappled with the Palestinian Arab
question from the earliest years of the Zionist movement until the
establishment of the State of Israel half a century later.

        Zionism and the Arabs is available from Praeger Books (203-226-3571),
which is to be commended for its informative and prestigious "With Eyes
Toward Zion" series of books on America-Holy Land relations.  Among the many
fascinating topics in the area of America-Holy Land relations, perhaps none
is more intriguing than the one which is explored in Dr. Medoff's study.

        The "American Jewish dilemma" which this book addresses was real.
Zionist efforts to build a Jewish state during the 1920s and 1930s were being
handicapped  by British restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine.
 That gave the Palestinian Arabs a temporary majority--and opponents of Zionism promptly
demanded "democracy for Palestine," knowing the Arabs could outvote the Jews.
American Zionists found themselves in the unenviable position of appearing to
be more interested in Jewish statehood than democracy.  But Jews in America have
always known how to strike a balance among their multiple interests and
loyalties; that is the essence of ethnic-group acculturation.

        Utilizing a broad array of early Zionist literature, documents, and
private correspondence, Medoff sets the issue within the context of the
American Jewish immigrant experience.  Newcomers to these shores often found that
traditional Jewish ways conflicted with aspects of American culture or
economics.  They quickly found that Sabbath observance clashed with the 6-day
work week.  They realized that Yiddish preserved Jewish ethnicity but impeded
Americanization.  And they came to realize that support for Zionism might not
always mesh easily with the idea of immediate, unrestricted democracy.

        An editorial in one  U.S. Zionist journal in 1928 warned that by
"concentrating on a plea against 'taxation without representation'," the
Arabs had picked a slogan "which is bound to ring sincere in the ears of
fair-minded men."  But American Zionists answered back, firmly and effectively, in the
press, in public debates, and in the halls of power in Washington.  They
pointed out that the Arab world had not yet sincerely embraced the concept of
democracy; experimental democratic elections in Arab countries had been marred by
corruption and ballot fraud ("even the dead were permitted to vote").  They
also stressed that Jews had a historical, legal, and religious right to immigrate
to their ancient homeland prior to any elections that would decide the country's
status.

        Most of all, American Zionists emphasized that the Palestinian Arab
electorate would be unfairly swelled by the large number of illegal Arab
immigrants in the country.  Several hundred thousand of the Arabs living in
pre-World War II Palestine were either immigrants, or the children of
immigrants, who had slipped across the border from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria
or Lebanon, in response to Jewish development that created new economic
opportunities.  In one particularly fascinating episode, Dr. Medoff reveals
that in the late 1930s, the American Zionist leader and Supreme Court Justice,
Louis Brandeis, persuaded President Franklin Roosevelt that several hundred
thousand Arabs had illegally entered Palestine.  FDR, intrigued at the realization
that the Palestinian Arabs had been given an unfair demographic advantage,
demanded clarification from the British Embassy in Washington. The flurry of heated
diplomatic exchanges might eventually have led to some change in the
Palestine situation had World War II not intervened.

        Partisans at both ends of the spectrum will be surprised by what
Zionism and the Arabs reveals.  Those who suspect all Jewish leaders of a readiness
to compromise Zionist principles will discover that most mainstream U.S. Zionist
leaders, when faced with conflicts between Zionism and democracy, did not
abandon their Zionism.  On the other hand, those who rush to blame the
Zionist leadership for supposedly not giving the Arab question its due will find that
American Zionist leaders did indeed come up with a variety of creative ways
to resolve Palestine's demographic quandary, often defying party labels and
narrow political categories in their search for a peaceful solution.

        At a time when politically-motivated "revisionist" historians seek to
blame Israel and Zionism for Middle East tensions, Medoff's new book sheds
important light on a controversial subject.  Zionism and the Arabs: An
American Jewish Dilemma is must reading.

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