This book ranks as absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in learning what happened during the last years of the British Mandate in Palestine and the widespread fighting that followed the U.N. resolution on partition until the end of the hostilities in early 1949. It effectively wipes out the oceans of ink spilt in convincing much of present world opinion and hypnotizing the present generation of Palestinian Arabs that the nakba (disaster) that befell them was inevitable or the fault of Jewish design, intransigence, or duplicity. The “Betrayal” in the title is self-betrayal by the Palestinian Arab leadership who led the people they claimed as their charge into a dead end. The leadership is condemned by its own archives and eye-witnesses in tens of thousands of documents released by the British Foreign Office that serves as the source material for much of the book.

It was the Palestinian Higher Arab Committee (HAC) which willfully misguided, misinformed, and inflamed a large section of public opinion among the Arab community that there could not be any compromise and all who spoke or acted on its behalf were “traitors.” These traitors who all worked for Jewish-Arab cooperation and understanding include such luminaries as the Arab mayor of Haifa, Hassan Shukri (targeted by assassins numerous times), Labor leader Sami Taha and many lesser Arab officials and politicians as well as village chieftains (all assassinated) who worked closely with the Histadrut and refused to cooperate with the many strikes called by the reactionary and extremist leadership within HAC headed by the notorious Haj-Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Efraim Karsh is a brilliant scholar with the appropriate linguistic tools including fluent Arabic, Hebrew, and English. The evidence marshaled is indeed impressive inasmuch as a good deal of it comes from British Mandatory officials hostile to the Zionist enterprise and the HAC immediately after the “nakba” in the period 1948-1955 before the concerted campaign to rewrite history and turn it upside down.

Karsh’s Palestine Betrayed follows shortly after the magnificent work of Hillel Cohen, whose book Army of Shadows; Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism 1917-1948 surveyed the entire period of the Mandate from 1920 onwards (reviewed in the February 2009 edition of New English Review, “Arab Support for Zionism, 1917-1948“).

Prof. Karsh has uncovered much evidence that many Palestinian Arabs had a sense of betrayal of their cause by their own leadership which he found in the candid admissions made among Palestinian refugees in Gaza. This view is confirmed by Sir John Troutbeck, head of the British Middle East Office of Middle East Affairs in Cairo and a long-time opponent of Zionism who was sent on a fact-finding mission and unequivocally found little or no bitterness toward the Jews, the British, or the Americans and was told, time and again, by refugees that their Arab brothers in HAC persuaded them unnecessarily to abandon their homes. Karsh quotes Troutbeck from his interviews with Arab refugees in Gaza: “I have even heard it said that many of the refugees would give a welcome to the Israelis if they were to come in and take the district over.” (page 2)

Such views regarding the HAC were corroborated early on by the Syrian historian Qustantin Zuraiq and the Palestinian leader and spokesman Musa Alami that it had become clear even after the invasion of the country by the armies of the surrounding Arab states that the masses who had placed trust in their leadership were thoroughly demoralized by its ineffectiveness, disorganization, self-interest, and corruption.

Today, we are told by eminent spokespersons of the Palestinian Arabs cause such as Hanan Ashrawi and the head of the Palestinian Authority, President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), himself a historian—of sorts—whose research has led him to deny the Holocaust, who are listened to keenly by Western journalists, that we should believe their claims. These claims all rely on the standard narrative so easily accepted as gospel by many so-called journalists of Jewish treachery, evil intentions, cunning and the almost unlimited power of Jewish interests abroad funneling resources to the Zionists in America, Britain and Russia (in the spirit of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion).

The Palestinian Arab narrative eagerly swallowed today by so many naïve pundits and instant experts totally ignores the history of the Arabs in Palestine since Ottoman time. It obscures the complete lack of any wider identity than identification with the native tribe, clan, religion, and village that prevailed in Ottoman Palestine among the Arab population. This absence of a wider sense of destiny was more than sufficient for the Ottoman authorities to win the continued loyalty of the Palestinian Muslim population and most Christian Arabs, the so-called Great Arab Revolt notwithstanding. The Lawrence of Arabia myth and Lawrence’s alliance with the acknowledged leader at the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles, the Emir Faisal Ibn Hussein of Mecca, made the Arab revolt a factor in Arab affairs and British interests.

It quickly diminished when Faisal was expelled from Mecca and was compensated by the British with his desert kingdom in Transjordan (in spite of the fact that the land both east and west of the Jordan River were promised as a Jewish National Home) and his clan was given a major role to play in Iraq and in Palestine. No Palestinian Arab spokes-person today is ready to admit that the same first prestigious Arab national leader with a recognized international stature befriended the Zionist movement, welcomed Jewish settlement in Palestine, and insisted that there was no irreconcilable barrier to future friendship and cooperation between the two peoples. Faisal proclaimed:

“We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement…and we regard the Zionist demands as moderate and proper. We will do our best, insofar as we are concerned to help them….we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.”

The enormous gap between such a statement from the most prominent Arab nationalist leader in 1920 to the subsequent extremist leadership of the HAC under the ultra-reactionary Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini is the true narrative of the betrayal of Palestine and the promise of becoming the most developed and prosperous country in the turbulent Middle East. What is novel for the reader today is the revelation that it was largely among traditional, rural, and conservative Muslims and of course, among the Bedouin that the Balfour Declaration and Jewish settlement were initially welcomed. The Arabs took advantage of the new considerable opportunities to sell marginal land to the Jews and take advantage of improvements in trade, transportation, administration, industry, health, education, and welfare.

Karsh documents the expansion of Arab industry and agriculture, especially related to the cultivation of citrus, olives, cereals, and grapes, and traces how the conservative but moderate religious leadership of the effendi class was displaced by the extremist Muslim forces of the Husseinis and the jockeying for power with the growth of Pan-Arab nationalism. An especially revealing and fascinating chapter of the book, “The Most Important Arab Quisling,” traces the role of the Mufti in undercutting the Nashashibi clan. The latter had cooperated with the British Mandatory government and their Jewish neighbors in the 1936-39 “Arab Uprising.” Ironically, the Nashashibi efforts at demonstrating loyalty and moderation were constantly rebuffed by the British, intent on mollifying the most extreme nationalist and Muslim religious voices within the Arab community.

Important information from first-hand sources follows the actual fighting between irregular Arab forces before the U.N. Partition Resolution in November 1947, the proclamation of the State of Israel in May 1948, the invasion of the country by the regular Arab armies immediately afterwards, until the cessation of hostilities in January 1949. The picture that emerges differs completely from the contemporary nakba view that dominates Arab thinking.

Chapters five through nine present a wealth of documented detail of five major facets of the hostilities and diplomatic maneuvering. They are:

1. The unpreparedness of the Jewish underground forces to undertake combat in large formations with heavy weapons against the array of regular Arab armies and the total lack of air cover.

2. The general unwillingness of large segments of Arab society, notably to participate in attacking their Jewish neighbors;

3. The lack of any concerted design to purposely drive out large numbers of Arab civilians from their homes;

4. The wholly opportunistic and venal campaigns launched in the neighboring Arab states to drum up religious Islamist and nationalist passions against the native Jewish populations (as well as the British and even Greek colonies in their midst);

5. The attempts to backslide by the American State Department and abandon the Jews to their fate rather than risk alienating important economic and strategic interests and alliances with the surrounding Arab states.

All of these essential facts are wholly denied or ignored by the current nakba narrative. Striking evidence of point three is provided by three independent sources—one Palestinian Arab, one British, and one American. They are Farid Saad, head of the local Arab “National Committee” in Haifa, the head of the American Consulate in Haifa , Aubrey Lippincot who cabled Washington on April 28, 1948 just a few weeks before Israel’s Declaration of Independence, and Hugh Stockwell, Commander of British forces in the Northern part of the country. All of them witnessed Haganah attempts to persuade the civilian Arab population of Haifa to remain in the city. Karsh presents convincing evidence of the scores of Arab villages that independently of the AHC signed non-aggression agreements with neighboring Jewish settlements, kibbutzim, and towns not to permit their homes to be used as bases for attacks. Many of the Arab villages where the population objected strongly to the presence of foreign Arab military forces who tried to press-gang them into joining in the hostilities ejected them or even provided Jewish settlements with important information.

This book is meticulously documented with original sources and is a real page-turner that is hard to put down. It is essential to any understanding of what really happened between 1920 and 1948. We learn how divided and at odds with each other different factions were among the Palestinian Arabs, the appeasement of Arab interests by the British, the rivalries among various Arab leaders and their jealousies and reluctance to see King Abdullah of Transjordan profit from any relationship with the Zionists, and even the readiness of the French in Syria and Lebano
n to revel in the difficulties of the British administration in Palestine. What also emerges clearly from Karsh’s research is the desire of the Zionist movement’s leaders from the Labor-Left wing of Weizmann and Ben-Gurion to the so-called “Far Right” of Jabotinsky and the Revisionists to reach some kind of accommodation that did not envision the expulsion or disinheritance of the Palestinian Arabs.

Karsh has been attacked by the so-called Israeli “New Historians,” notably Benny Morris (who, has since recanted many of his initial claims), Avi Shlaim, and Ilan Pappé whose views Karsh interprets as stemming from their desire to find a comfortable academic setting among many European and American historians critical of Israel. He cites numerous contradictions, erroneous citations, and mistranslations in their research that for a period made them well received by those who have made their career based on the nakba narrative.

Karsh’s unassailable conclusion states that….

“Even if the Yishuv (Jewish community) had instigated a plot to expel the Palestinian Arabs, which it most certainly did not, the extensive British military presence in Palestine until the end of the mandate, which severely constrained Jewish military capabilities (from the prohibition of the bearing of arms and the confiscation of weapons and arrest of fighters, to the restriction of movement and repeated military interventions on the Arab side), would have precluded the slightest possibility of systematic “ethnic cleansing.”

And so it was that in the four months of fighting that followed the passing of the partition resolution vast numbers of Palestinian Arabs fled their homes even though the Jews were still on the defensive and in no position to drive them out. (p. 237)

The book is accompanied by 60 pages of notes to direct sources, thirty vivid photos and 5 informative maps that aid in making the events leap out from the page. The book also aids the reader with a list of “Dramatis Personae” and a detailed appendix of the Arab population of each city, town, and village on the eve of hostilities.

Source

It is all the more important to reveal the stark naked truth of the Cuban episode that has for the past fifty years elevated both Fidel Castro and Che Guevara into international icons on the level of pop-stars. The number of teenagers and would-be teenagers wearing Che or Fidel T-shirts probably exceeds those wearing any other emblem with the possible exception of the cross (probably more as a cosmetic adornment rather than a real religious symbol of faith).

Of course, all of this is a matter of simple research available in thousands of documents and first hand sources, but young people all over the world continue to sport their T-shirts in the self-induced hypnosis that opposition to the U.S. by Castro and the support given to him by the USSR and communist block as well as his fifty year long tenure in power and thousands of hours of speeches all vouchsafe that the Cuban regime deserves the support of The LEFT, if for no other reason than Castro opposed U.S. imperialism and overthrew a dictator and therefore, – as in Orwell’s book Animal Farm (Two Legs Bad; Four Legs Good!), i.e., the Communists were/are/always have been on the side of “The People.” 

There were, however, many Cuban refugees in the United States before Castro came to power. They had fled the island to escape the dictatorial and corrupt rule of Fulgencio Batista and they were also fleeing the communist influence in his government and domination of many Cuban labor unions. Let today’s teenagers ask their grandparents! Certainly, all of us who are 65 and older will remember how Desi Arnaz, the star-husband of Lucille Ball of the “I Love Lucy Show,” explained to an American audience that the shocking tabloid newspaper headlines (LUCY BALL IN RED LINK, LUCILLE BALL LISTED AS RED) accusing his wife of communist sympathies were pure libel and a foul trick of yellow-press journalists (no doubt they would be called practitioners of “McCarthyism” today).

Lucy and her brother had registered Communist at the request of their father, a long time labor activist. There was no other “red” connection to Lucy but in addition, Desi revealed in several public appearances how he had fled Cuba and been “kicked out” because of his refusal to tow the line of the Communist dominated unions. He had arrived in the U.S.A. penniless and cleaned canary cages to earn money. As for Lucy’s alleged communist sympathies, Desi put it succintly—-“the only thing red about Lucy is her hair and even that is fake.” 

Populist, anti-American, charismatic figures with strong support among government controlled labor unions

Batista and several puppet presidents under his control had “earned” the support of Cuba’s Communist Party because they appeared as “revolutionary” and “Anti-American.” Other Latin American leaders such as Argentina’s dictator, General Juan Peron and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela today, also appealed to the same bases of support as populist, anti-American, charismatic figures with strong support among government controlled labor unions. The historical obedience to Moscow which characterized most Latin American Communist parties since their creations in the twenties and thirties lay behind the difficult relationship that characterized Fidel Castro’s initial attitude toward Communism and the role played by the old Cuban Communist Party before he gained power in January, 1959.

Although many Afro-Americans were hoodwinked by Castro’s propaganda about the Cuban Revolution bringing “racial equality” to the island’s population for the first time, it was none other than dictator Fulgencio Batista, a “mixed blood,” the descendant of Italian, Spanish, Chinese and African ancestors, who had been the victim of discrimination. He had not been allowed to join the Havana Yacht Club because of his mixed race, a factor he exploited because it focussed attention on the elitist character of the Cuban government and its old colonial heritage of racial prejudices. These prejudices were shared by none other than Fidel Castro‘s father, a wealthy land owner and sugar plantation owner who had supported the Spanish government against Cuban revolutionaries in the 1890s.

THE EARLY PARTY, 1920-1954

Surprisingly, The Cuban Communist Party had deep roots in Cuba going all the way back to the success of the Russian Revolution and Lenin’s ascension to power. The future seeds of distrust between the old Cuban Communists and Fidel Castro were sown many years before Castro became an important figure in Cuban politics. The party was organized in Havana in August, 1920 by a few admirers of the Russian revolution and by the 1930s had become a powerful force in many labor unions, an achievement unmatched elsewhere in Latin America. Its founders were a particularly diverse group of individuals, Julio Antonia Mella, a student activist, Carlos Balino who had been a follower of Cuban nationalist hero Jose Marti and Fabio Grobart, a Jewish immigrant tailor who had been caught up in the Civil War that occurred in Poland and managed to reach Cuba.

Communists played only a very minor role in the 1933 popular revolution that deposed the Cuban dictator Gerardo Machado (1925-1931). It was during this episode that “strong man” Fulgencio Batista with Communist support emerged on the national political scene.  Latin American Communist Party leaders in late 1934 met for a conference in Moscow chaired by Dimitri Manuilsky, for many years head of the Comintern and one of Stalin’s closest friends.

The Cuban Communist party was led at that time by Blas Roca, its Secretary General. Decisions were made with Stalin’s blessing to support insurrection in Brazil, a popular front in Chile, favor an extreme anti-American nationalist program in Mexico and the formation of an eventual alliance with the ruling clique headed by “radical nationalist” leader, Batista in Cuba. This Cuban coalition was named the Unión Revolucionaria.

In September 1934, Batista issued a declaration declaring that “The Communist Party in accordance with its own statutes is a democratic party which pursues its objectives within the margin of the capitalist regime and denounces violence as a means of political action, and a consequence of this, has the right to the same treatment as any other party in Cuba.”

Batista ruled the nation through a puppet president and in 1937, gave his full agreement to the creation of the Union Revolucionaria Party. In 1938, he permitted the publication of the (still illegal) Cuban Communist party’s official newspaper Hoy, edited by Anibal Escalante. Cuban Communist leaders Blas Roca, and Joaquin Ordoquí, met with Colonel Batista and issued the resolutions to be followed that the Party had to adopt a positive attitude towards Colonel Batista “in view that Batista was a defender of democracy.”

By the late 1930s, Batista and the Communists worked hand in glove to allow “free elections” in order to continue their control of the government, form a constituent assembly to produce a new constitution and legitimize the power of a puppet president, Frederico Laredo Bru.

In May 1939, 937 Jewish refugees on board the German passenger ship St. Louis were denied entry to Cuba due to the revocation of their visas by President Bru. Apparently, the only motivation for this inhuman act was Bru’s desire to obtain an even bigger bribe than he had been promised, a move that also garnered support from many Cubans under the guise of protecting “Cuba’s Workers,” fearful of more Jewish refugees receiving asylum or economic assistance during the Depression. This was the politics of envy so carefully nurtured by the Nazis and the Communists who only a few months later would celebrate their alliance in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of Non-Aggression between the USSR and Germany.

The St. Louis affair was a terrible blot on the conscience of all those who opposed the Nazi threat and anti-Semitic policies. It also sits uncomfortably for the Castro regime who thus required a version of their own “Cuban history”
. Rather then admit that the totally corrupt Cuban government of President Bru (with Batista sitting in the wings) and actually controlling affairs with Communist support was responsible for refusing permission for the Jewish refugees of the St. Louis to seek safety, the version taught in Cuban schools today (and repeated by stooges of the Castro regime writing in to several internet sites about the St. Louis affair), is that the Roosevelt administration ordered the Bru government to reject the right of the passengers to disembark in Havana although they were in possession of Cuban immigration visas and landing permits.

The Cuban Communist Party took no steps to demand acceptance of the refugees. This is all the more reprehensible and disgusting since an earlier generation of Jewish refugees arriving on the island in the early 1920s gave support to the Cuban Communist Party out of all proportion to their miniscule representation in Cuban society. The great majority of Cuban Jews were however not Communists and had formed a committee to consult with President Bru in the hope that the refugees would be accepted elsewhere but appeals to half a dozen Latin American countries and the United States to accept the St. Louis passengers fell on deaf ears and they were ordered to return to Hamburg. At the last moment, Britain, Holland and Belgium agreed to accept the passengers. World War II began only two months later and at least 90% of them were murdered in the Holocaust.

The U.S. has nothing to be proud of in this story since U.S. Coast Guard boats shadowed the St. Louis to make sure that no attempt was made to dock and unload the “illegal immigrants” on American shores but the absurd attempt by the Cuban government to transfer the blame on the U.S. is typical of almost fifty years of Castro’s regime.

Frederico Laredo Bru (a name that will “live in infamy”) was driven by greed and a thorough disregard for any humanitarian concern. Although put in power by Batista, he also wanted to demonstrate that he was not just an insignificant puppet but could demonstrate his own power and pride by defying the Minister of the Interior, appointed by Batista, who had originally granted the visas to the St. Louis passengers. 

In the 1940 election, although the Communists dominated most unions, anti-Batista candidates won 41 of 76 seats, receiving 225,223 votes, while Batista and the Communists won 35 seats and only 97,944 votes. In spite of this rejection of a popular mandate, the Cuban Communist Party urged continued support for Batista who, with their aid, managed to be elected president in spite of his poor parliamentary election results.

Batista resigned his military post as Chief of the Armed Forces and announced his candidacy for the 1940 Presidential elections. It was an honest one in in which he won with full Communist support, promising partial state control of the sugar, tobacco and mining industries as well as land reform. Batista also made anti-American statements to endear him to the Cuban working class which, in spite of U.S. intervention to help win Cuba’s independence from Spain, still regarded the United States with distrust and envy.

Two close associates of Batista were also later to become high ranking Communist members of Fidel Castro‘s government, Juan Marinello (later a member of Castro’s Politburo), who lost his attempt to win the post of mayor of Havana in the 1940 elections and Carlos Rafael Rodriguez (who eventually became Castro’s Vice-President).

Batista’s popularity increased during the war years of his second official presidency, 1940-1944 due to the rise in prosperity caused by the Allies’ demands for sugar, nickel and manganese. As 1944 approached, Batista played a charade by appearing to “step down” as a true democrat. In this way, he would win additional good will support from the United States that was anxious about his ties to the Communists.

As president, Batista was a strong, “democratic leader” but had to suppress an attempted coup by his chief of staff. He extended social welfare measures to workers in the countryside and declared war on the Axis Powers on December 9, 1941 followed by recognition of the Soviet Union in 1943. During the war, Cuba benefited from US aid and the high fixed price of sugar at 2.65¢ a pound. This helped moderate Batista’s anti-American tone.

Once again however, a fairly honest election set back the Batistianos and the Communists. In 1944, Dr. Ramon San Martin Grau was an ex-University professor with substantial student backing and promises of a more honest regime. He won the popular vote in the presidential election and served until 1948. Despite his initial popularity, accusations of corruption tainted his administration’s image, and a sizable number of Cubans began to distrust him.

Batista, who had garnered a fortune of twenty million dollars, the result of his being the real man in charge of Cuba since 1933, appeared to fade away yet communist leaders Carlos Rafael Rodriguez and Blas Roca wrote, in their 1945 book, En Defensa del Pueblo, that “the people’s idol (Batista), the great man of our national politics” was not gone forever. Although the dictator enjoyed Communist Party support for well over twenty years of despotic rule, 99.99% of left-wing college students and many American journalists proudly wearing their Che T-shirts will assure you that “America has always supported corrupt dictators like Batista in Cuba”. During a period of several years, Batista relocated to Florida 1945-48,  and lived in Daytona Beach where there is still a museum of Cuban art with works that he had “borrowed.”

Batista was a masterful politician who enjoyed the confidence and support of the propertied classes while he cultivated the Left, but the wealthy class in Cuba understood that they need not fear him. He had become quite conservative as he became wealthy. Moreover, Cuba on a few additional occasions demonstrated its “popular” anti-American line such as the vote against the partition of Palestine.

Cuba was the only non-Arab and non-Muslim state that voted against the proposal to establish a Jewish state thereby accenting its “independent“ line of foreign policy. Incredibly, several Jewish Cuban communists fully supported the decision simply because it helped cement an image of the Party as “anti-imperialist.” The two Latin American states that had had strong ties to the Axis with strong pro-German leanings at the beginning of the war, Chile and Argentina, abstained. Mexico also followed a “neutral” policy to show its independence of the United States.

Cuba used the Palestine question to try and rally
support among other Latin American states to offer a counterweight to the United States and enlist Arab countries to form a strong block of small nations. The Cuban Communist Party was in an uncomfortable dilemma and out of step on this issue. It could not attack the “popular” anti-American line of the government on the foreign policy issue of Palestine even though the USSR and its East European satellites had all supported the Palestine Partition Plan.

The Latin American headquarters of the Comintern moved from Mexico to Cuba in 1940 and the Communists had a very strong presence in the Cuban Federation of Labor. There were chronic strikes and labor disputes in 1947-48. Student rioters (including Fidel Castro), urban gangsterism, roaming armed bands in the countryside and political assassinations all produced turmoil. The spark for Castro’s political activism was Eduardo Chibas, who, like Castro, came from a well-to-do Galician family from Guantanamo, in Oriente province. Like Castro, he was educated by Jesuits, and was a member of the Cuban elite, deeply religious, but a violent anti-Communist.

In 1948, a stooge of Batista, Carlos Prío Socarrás, was elected as a minority President but the Communists lost three seats in the Senate. Ominously, and forgetting all of his previous anti-American rhetoric, Batista ran his campaign from Florida and was elected as a Senator. Castro, at this time was a prominent figure in Havana politics and a protege of Chibas. In response to these events, the Cuban Communist Party criticized Castro and the other student adventurers for participating in anti-government street fighting during an international conference in Bogota, Colombia.

At the same time and place as the Colombian events, Argentinian Communist Party member, Ernesto Che Guevara, who was present at the Bogota conference, never left his boarding house during the disturbances. Eddy Chibas committed suicide in 1951 during a public address to the nation to call attention to what he believed was a campaign by corrupt politicians to deny him the election, thereby creating a political vacuum in Cuba, leading to the reemergence of Batista in Cuban politics. A few weeks after Chibas’ suicide, Castro met with then Senator Batista and spent several hours in discussions with him at Batista’s ranch. What they discussed is not known but on March 10, 1952, Batista usurped control of the government in a bloodless coup thereby fulfilling Chibas’ worst fear expressed before his death.

The next day, as proclaimed chief of state, Batista moved into the presidential palace. The most radical opposition to Batista’s seizure of power came from the wealthy racist Cuban elite who had detested Batista as a “mixed-blood.” From 1948 to 1952, the Cuban Communist Party had lost control of the unions and the party was divided on whether to support him again. Batista suppressed all opposition newspapers but allowed the Communist daily “Hoy” to remain open, an obvious ploy to win continued communist support.

When Fidel Castro founded his “Revolutionary” Movement, Communists were automatically excluded from joining it and the Party denounced Castro‘s attack on the Moncada Barracks of July 26, 1953, in Santiago de Cuba. The American Communist daily newspaper “The Daily Worker”, described the Castro led attack as “a putschist method peculiar to all bourgeois political factions.”

When Castro ultimately succeeded, he and the Communists knew they were meant for each other regardless of the past. For Fidel, it was the discipline and support of an international force directed against “American imperialism” and capable of providing massive economic, diplomatic and military support. For the Communists, it was a simple shift to another “people’s idol.” Find the official website in Spanish of the Cuban Communist Party, and read the section marked “History”. It contains not a word about the Party from its founding until January 1, 1959. This is how internal contradictions are typically resolved by totalitarian regimes.

Much water has passed under the bridge since then. Part of the self-delusions of those who identify themselves as “progressives,” or many liberals today is their immediate and most often mistaken gut reaction that the “masses” must be right when they emotionally respond to anti-Western and especially anti-American (and even more irrationally, anti-Israel, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish) rhetoric and jargon.

For the Marxist LEFT and many of those who call themselves “Liberals” today, there is no better litmus test for political correctness than the envy of the poor and downtrodden, a powerful forced that can be manipulated. No matter how fanatical, corrupt, degenerate and blind to any humanitarian consideration of such despicable characters as Batista and Bru, or Peron, and later Castro, Nasser, Arafat, Ahmadinejad, Mao Tse Tung, the Ayatollah Khomeini or Saddam Hussein were, they are thought to speak for “The People,” the “Nation,” the “workers,” the “dispossessed,” the “poor,” the “homeless,” refugees etc. The failure to see in such leaders both a symptom and a basic cause of their nations’ problems is the continued malaise of much of the political LEFT.

(A book review of Nazis in Newark by Warren Grover, 
Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J., 2003; 
ISBN 978-0-7658-0516-4)

The crisis we face today that has resulted in an ever more aggressive and truculent, militant Islam threatening the foundations of Western civilization from without and within, bears an uncanny parallel, almost a parallel universe, with the dreadful anxiety-filled 1930s, when a virulent Nazism intimidated and cowed much of public opinionthroughout the United States.

The recent incident at Ft. Hood, in which an American born Muslim carrying out the tenets of Jihad resulting in numerous deaths that has “dumbfounded” the Pentagon, puts into the sharpest relief the blindness of our highest authorities, both civilian and military, and their total ignorance of Islam and its many followers who are committed to jihad yet thrive and scheme while protected by our laws. Dozens of “isolated incidents” involving Muslims committing heinous acts of murder and honor killings have been swept under the carpet by our government and mass media treating the guilty as “lone individuals” suffering from “derangement” or “personal crises” while ignoring the ideology that lies at the bottom of their mental instability.

This is all the more reason to read “Nazis in Newark,” a book that reveals a parallel history two generations ago with the apathy to danger in our midst today. Under the impact of a world depression, a large majority of isolationist public opinion in the United States, including many self styled Liberals, sought to adopt a default policy of America first, excusing anti-Semitism, making amends for saddling Germany with war guilt and avoiding any rearmament. Their first object of assigning blame was then, like today, to avoid placing it on the Germans, or the Muslims and their allegiance to Nazi and Jihadist doctrines, but instead on those “war-mongers” who “inflamed emotions” by a “reckless foreign policy,” one that dared to confront the evil ambitions or ruthless dictators and fanatics who had constructed a scenario blaming the Jews for all the world’s ills.

This book is an accurate and insightful account of the struggles of decent Americans who sought to call public attention to the growing menace of Nazism within the United States and the confrontations on the streets of Newark, New Jersey which witnessed the most direct physical battle of the era between Nazi sympathizers and American Jews. It recalls a parallel universe to today’s battles with one notable exception, the absence then of much of the current insane political correctness and “multiculturalism” that excuses Islamist crimes and designs to wreck the foundations of American democracy and self-defense.

Glover’s book casts a sharp clinical light from the standpoint of history on the sanctimonious attitude of Jewish Obama supporters who have created the ultra-Liberal “J-Street” refusing to acknowledge the open anti-Semitic stance or radical Far Left character of many of the President’s most influential supporters, associates and appointees who demean and defame Israel and Zionism.

For them, any sign of Jewish pride must be demeaned in order to secure theircertificate of “kashrut” as loyal Democrats for whom all other ethnic, racial or religious groups must be encouraged to seek special favor from the government and be recognized as an important and proud element of a rainbow coalition.

In a strange irony, many of these ultra-Liberal, ultra-Reform Jews apparently act from much the same motivation and rationale as ultra-Orthodox Jews, convinced that they are setting an example for all the Gentiles as a priestly caste bringing “Light unto the nations,” thereby fulfilling God’s commandments. Like t
heir Orthodox grandparents, they feel obliged to seek forgiveness for their sins but instead of once a year on Yom Kippur and turning to God, they seek to assure their Liberal cohorts, “world opinion”, the U.N.,political correctness,and now President Obama that they are good Jews who are sufficiently self-critical.

While their parents and grandparents rejoiced at the rebirth of Israel in 1948 and regarded it mystically as partial compensation for the Holocaust, they have been psychologically intimidated by the constant anti-Israel line of the media and of the torrent of bloody confrontations picturing enraged Muslim mobs ready for constant mayhem to avenge what they regard as the worst injustice in human history (i.e. the creation of the Jewish State rather than the failure to establish an Arab Palestinian state).

In the 1930s, there were many Jews who at first timidly hoped for the Nazis to eventually change their tune and agreed to support a behind the scenes approach in order to avoid a confrontation that might embarrass a Democratic administration afraid of being labeled as interventionist in foreign policy yet, by 1939, the overwhelming majority of Jews and a growing majority of Gentiles realized that there could be no new “world order” as promulgated by the Nazis that would not be hostile to American interests and ultimate survival. The same realization of the Jihadist vision of a new world order today fails to mobilize the same call to arms.

When Jews actually organized successful real resistance in DEEDS and not just WORDS on a major scale (something unheard of today in the United States) in the Newark riots against the pro-Nazi organizations “Friends of the New Germany” and the “German-American Bund,” the initiative was largely on the part of conservative leaning Jewish war veterans with battle experience, professional and amateur boxers, gangsters, machinists, plumbers, glaziers, athletes, butchers and upholsterers with muscle power rather than the pious statements of “activists” on the Left and liberal leaning “progressive rabbis.”

The same was true in Britain after World War II when the “1943 Group” of Jewish war veterans took to the streets of London to forcefully evict the remnants of Moseley’s British Union of Fascists in defiance of the requests of the establishment British Board of Deputies who pleaded for British Jews not to act as vigilantes and leave their protection to the police (see The 1943 Group by Morris Beckman, A Centerprise Publication, London. 1992.)

The long dormant and docile majority among many Jews still suffering from a time warp in which FDR was regarded as a savior is wholly ignorant of the perfidious roles played by the New York Times and the BBC in their decades’ long campaign to slander and malign “The Jewish State” (the very term offends their international and cosmopolitan sensibilities).

The Jewish worship for learning continues to venerate what so many Liberals regard as “our finest academic Ivy League Institutions” such as Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Vassar and Barnard, aware that these names conjure up the picture of perfect liberal respectability with complete ignorance that precisely these universities were among the most anti-Semitic in their enrollment restrictions against Jewish students in the interwar years and that some of their most prominent faculty members including presidents and deans defended warmer foreign relations with Nazi Germany and opposed any anti-German economic boycott (see Rebecca Bynum’s excellent book review “Fashionable Fascism” in the November, 2009 on line issue of New English Review “The Third Reich and the Ivory Tower; Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses; by Stephen H. Norwood. Cambridge University Press,2009).

Many among today’s Jewish Liberals have convinced themselves that the Religious Right in Israel is their principal enemy and that to win credibility as progressives they must support a position that calls on Israel to make unlimited concessions no matter what the consequences. They follow the classic definition of insanity—“repeating the same course of failed action and still believing that the outcome will be different.” In the meantime, since the “Oslo Accords,” most Israelis have been cured of that form of insanity and realize the futility of continuing to act as if the Palestinian side with Iranian encouragement intends to abide by any of the promises made.

Flashback to the 1930s: Newark, New Jersey became the prime stage of confrontation due to its ethnic make-up and proximity to both New York and Washington, D.C. From 1933 until Pearl Harbor, it was the most prominent American city where the struggle against Nazi sympathizers took on the dimensions of pitched street battles. It is worthwhile recalling how the political battle for “hearts and minds” of Americans was fought and how the anti-Nazi struggle successfully engaged both Jews and Gentiles including German-Americans.

This is particularly important in the light of today’s squeamishness among the “politically correct” Left wing of the Democratic Party to demand that Muslim-Americans express their condemnation of Jihadist activity around the globe and the sympathy, aid and comfort rendered to those fighting our troops and murdering civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and on a dozen other fronts.

The American Jewish boycott against the Nazi regime was initiated on March 19, 1933 by the national Jewish War Veterans at its annual convention in Atlantic City. Nowhere else in America was the call to battle so enthusiastically answered as in the Third Ward of Newark. The response came as a direct reaction to the parades and activities of the Friends of the New Germany, a Nazi front and propaganda organization.

The wealthier more integrated veteran Jewish community leaders of German origin were cautious at first and reluctant to utilize any measures beyond those of trust in the government and police as a strategy to oppose anti-Semitism. The established German-American community in Newark and elsewhere also initially viewed the Nazi government with suspicion and disfavor and hoped for an avoidance of any tensions with their Jewish
neighbors but with each political victory engineered by Hitler over the re-militarization of the Rhineland and Saar, the absorption of Austria and the Sudentenland, the take-over of Memel and demands on Poland to return the “Corridor” and Danzig, more and more German-Americans (although still a small minority) expressed support and pride in the new regime. In doing so, they accepted without reservation the accompanying racist anti-Semitic doctrines of the Nazis.

A growing number of the Liberal Christian clergy following the example of Pastor Reinhold Niebhur, although anxious to avoid any extra-legal measures, gravitated more and more to support of Jewish rights while many in the ultra conservative Catholic clergy, the African-American community and certainly among many hard core isolationists and “country-club” bluebloods among the WASP majority in America felt that this was a foreign matter of little concern to them.

Many even viewed anti-Semitism with “schadenfreude” regarding the Jews as radicals in Europe, staunch left-wing supporters of the new Roosevelt administration or a class of shopkeepers and landlords that had been given a deserved slap in the face.

The central figure in the Jewish resistance movement that arose in Newark was Abner “Longy” Zwillman, a notorious gangster and his henchman, ex-prizefighter, Nat Arno. Their gang was the leading criminal organization involved in bootlegging, racketeering, gambling, protection and labor union extortion all along the Northeast Coast. Zwillman’s financial and tactical support of the Jewish militant activists named “The Minutemen,” dedicated to disrupting Nazi meetings, had nothing to do with his criminal activities. He acted as a proud Jew, profoundly sympathetic to his friends and neighbors, many of them first generation immigrant Americans in Newark’s inner city Third Ward. He and Arno had used their fists and wits to combat anti-Semitism like many of his generation. From the 1920s to 1950s, and sporadically thereafter, American, British, Russian, Argentine, Hungarian and French Jews held many national and world champion boxing titles. Many of them wore the Star of David on their trunks, and were elected to the Boxing hall of Fame (for full list see List of Jews in sports – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)…

…including such greats as U.S. world champion middleweight boxer Benny Leonard (Benjamin Leiner; “The Ghetto Wizard”) who often fought and trained in Newark, Abe Attell (“The Little Hebrew”), U.S. world champion featherweightboxer, Monte Attell, U.S. world champion bantamweight boxer, Louis Kaplan(“Kid Kaplan”),^[world champion featherweight boxer, Jaime Averboch, Argentine world champion welterweight boxer, Max Baer (“Madcap Maxie”), U.S. world champion heavyweightboxer, Al Bummy Davis (Abraham Davidoff), U.S. welterweight & lightweight boxer, Solly Krieger (“Danny Auerbach”), U.S. world champion middleweight boxer, Jackie Fields (Jacob Finkelstein), U.S. world champion welterweight & Olympic champion featherweight boxer, U.S. world champion bantamweight boxer, Ruby Goldstein (“Ruby the Jewel of the Ghetto”), U.S. welterweight boxer, U.S. world champion bantamweight boxer, Ben Jeby(Morris Jebaltowsky), U.S. world champion lightweight boxer, Battling Levinsky(Barney Lebrowitz), U.S. world champion light heavyweight boxer, Maxie Rosenbloom(“Slapsie”), U.S. world champion light heavyweight boxer, Barney Ross (Dov-Ber Rasofsky), U.S. world champion lightweight & junior welterweight boxer, Isadore “Corporal Izzy” Schwartz (“The Ghetto Midget”), U.S. world champion flyweight boxer and Al Singer (“The Bronx Beauty”), U.S. world champion lightweight boxer.

Between the two world wars, Jews held twenty-six world boxing titles. Where are they now? Nowhere in our parallel universe of today! The American Jewish scene with its rise in social and economic standing and its aspirations in the business, professional and academic worlds have made these former sports heroes and the spirit of a fighting Jewish community as remote as the days of the Biblical prophets.

It is this image of proud fighting Jews, today almost unilaterally associated with the Israelis, that makes Obama’s Jewish upper and upper middle class sanctimonious Jewish supporters nervous—the Israelis will not abide by the Marquis of Queensbury Rules when fighting savages yet their record exceeds that of any of the Allied and Western armies in protecting civilians during combat (see remarks to the U.N. by Colonel Richard Kemp who commanded British troops in Afghanistan in 2003 Richard Kemp – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia BBC: Former British Army Colonel Richard Kemp Discusses IDF Gaza …).

Flashback again to Newark. Grover’s most damning indictment in the book is Chapter Five that bears the title “The Failure of Liberalism.” It chronicles the initial rejection by the Newark liberal, academic and clerical establishment of the two pastors Frank Kingdon (Methodist preacher, born in London and educated in Boston) a
nd Lucius Hamilton Garner (born in Alabama), both ruggedly handsome and dedicated to fighting for social justice, ending racial discrimination and combating anti-Semitism. Their only important local ally was a wealthy socialite, Amelia Moorfield, an early voice on behalf of pacifism, and feminism. It took a long and painful campaign of education to win over Labor union leaders and a reluctant clergy and academia in Newark to stand up and openly oppose the growing menace of the pro-Nazi “Friends” and later, the The German-American Bund.

Attempts by anti-Nazi organizations and mainstream Jewish groups to organize a boycott of German goods is the subject of a poignant chapter that reveals the unwillingness of any assistance by the government. This was a factor that limited what otherwise would have been a severe blow against the Nazi regime. President Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, during the entire period of 1933 to 1941 was convinced that anti-Semitism in Germany was not an American problem and that a boycott would worsen political and economic relations with Germany the maintenance of which remained an important goal of U.S. foreign policy.

The most prominent spokesman for the boycott was S. William Kalb, organizer of Newark Post 34 of the Jewish War Veterans. A man of great organizational ability, good public speaking skills, a physician and Marine combat veteran of World War I, he was frustrated by the lack of support demonstrated by the Jewish owners of Bambergers and Macy’s department stores, both contributors to Jewish philanthropic causes yet fearful of upsetting the lucrative business handling German export goods.

Liberalism was popular, especially among “white ethnics” in as much as it promised relief from the economic misery of the Depression but unable to bridge the gap in winning real progress to end racial discrimination against Blacks and counteract anti-Semitism. The ACLU, then as now, spoke out on behalf of what it considered its most important plank—the right of free speech protection for Nazis or Racists (however much their lawyers would contend that they opposed and abhorred racism and Nazism). Sound familiar?

In contrast to the disgraceful failure of much of the Liberal establishment and ACLU, the German-American League for Culture, founded in 1935 to combat Nazism and foster German culture, proved a staunch ally. The League fully supported German-American participation in World War II. As an American of German descent, journalist Dorothy Thompson felt it incumbent upon her to organize other German-Americans with the support of the League to speak out against Nazism, and counter the publicity given the pro-Nazi German-American Bund. In the fall of 1942, she approached the World Jewish Congress, which agreed to pay for such a statement, and in the last week of December, 1942, the “Christmas Declaration by men and women of German ancestry” was printed appearing in the New York Times and nine other major American daily newspapers, signed by fifty prominent German-Americans, the most famous beingBabe Ruth. Fast forward to today’s parallel universe.

Where is there a shred of similar action among Muslims who are American citizens? Where are their loud protests against the misuse of Islam and the affront to their pride as loyal and patriotic American citizens??? Where are the recognized and distinguished American imams calling for a March on Washington to proclaim their disassociation and rejection of terror? Nowhere! Only…deafening silence.

What little efforts have been made, mostly by those who have left Islam and by a few courageous individuals who refuse to follow CAIR, the largest so called “civil rights movement to protect Muslims” (an exact counterpart today of the Bund and Friends of the New Germany),have been refused coverage of their events by the mass media and by NPR (beneficiary of your tax dollars) as “too controversial”.

The wretched opportunism of the American Communist Party was revealed in the attempts to wrest control of the German-American League for Culture and use it as a front organization as they had similarly done with many Jewish and anti-Nazi organizations. As soon as the proclamation of the infamous, Ribbentrop-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact of August, 1939, the Communist front groups ceased their cooperation with the Minutemen and Jewish opposition to Nazi activities in the U.S., making them an object of derision among Jews everywhere.

The infamous alliance between Hitler and Stalin did more to mobilize general American support among Gentiles against anti-Semitism than any other factor. It had become abundantly clear that in spite of a noisy and all too visible Jewish presence in the American Communist party, it represented only a tiny fraction of the community. The communists’ patient and persistent efforts to penetrate anti-Fascist organizations, as well as their activities on behalf of the Spanish Republic, in favor of boycotting German goods and protests against Nazi anti-Semitism had all been tactical maneuvers.

The publicity provoked by the resistance of the Newark Minutemen to the pro-Nazi organizations helped focus Congressional investigations spearheaded by New York Congressman Samuel Dickstein (Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee known as HUAC) who relentlessly pursued leads that uncovered the financial assistance provided by the Nazi German government to both the Friends of the New Germany and its more powerful successor organization, The German-American Bund.

Fast forward to today—Why has our government remained silent on Saudi support and financing for Jihadi inspired Sunni terrorists throughout the world? In what must be one of history’s great ironies, the ACLU and the Nazis attacked Dickstein for his “witch-hunting,” exactly the same charge that many “Liberals” and Left wing dupes of the American Communist Party raised against HUAC a generation later (when it investigated Communist subversion and links to Moscow of many so called “Progressives” in Hollywood).

Warren Grover’s book is meticulously footnoted to original sources but is not a boring academic treatise. It is the fast paced exciting story of how a courageous minority of Americans, Jews and Gentiles, realized the evil on their doorstep and refusing to be cowed by it, sought to alert others to the imminent danger. If only today’s reality were the same!

It should have been a simple matter for President Carter to declare his concerns when he was President rather than waiting more than twenty years to bring us his program for peace. Moreover, the book deals primarily with the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the territories on the West Bank under Israeli control. Its treatment of the plight (both real and imagined) of the Israeli Arab minority covers two pages in the book (p. 68 and 168) is shallow and gives the reader little information about what to expect in the territories.

Do Israeli Arabs live under Apartheid conditions? A simple answer must be a categorical NO. Individuals among Israel’s non-Jewish population of Arabs (both Christian and Muslims, Bedouin tribesmen), the Druze, Circassians have held and continue to hold significant positions in the Israeli parliament (Knesset), the police, the army, the diplomatic corps, the arts, literature, cinema, sports, entertainment, the universities, business, medicine and science.

Serious problems and discrimination do exist especially in the areas of career choices, and jobs, as well as a pattern of segregation in residence and elementary educationthat goes far back to conditions prevailing in Palestine under the British and Turkish administrations. Like charges of discrimination practically everywhere else, historical reasons cannot be ignored and must be put into perspective before any judgments can be made.

Much of Israel’s Jewish population settled on private land purchased by the Jewish National Fund, a branch of the Zionist movement with the expressed purposed of providing for Jewish settlement. The great majority of Arabs living in Palestine lived in their own villages or in the “mixed cities” of Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, Lydda, and Ramla. Nazareth and Acre have separate Arab and Jewish residential quarters. After 1948, practically no Israeli Arab had the desire to relocate and live anywhere but in a dense Arab environment. All Arab (and Jewish) community leaders have opposed an integrated school system of elementary education. In addition to these natural historic factors, there have been security concerns adding to the pattern of residential segregation.

The Arab Minority

The Arab minority in Israel, numbering more than a million souls is guaranteed full cultural expression of its identity whereas practically no more than a handful of a few thousand Jews remain in the Arab states (primarily in Morocco) as if they were exotic plants on display in a hothouse when in 1948 they numbered more than 800,000 throughout the Arab World and Iran and included large sections of major cities such as Baghdad and Cairo. Their fate, expulsion, forced exile and loss of property rate not a single mention in Carter‘s book – his sole humanitarian concern is for the Palestinian Arabs who were first forcibly put under Jordanian and Egyptian occupation without their consent and then became the pawns of all those in the Arab world intent on launching a new crusade to destroy the Jewish state.

Israel’s population today is just over 6.5 million of which non-Jews constitute something like 18%. This does not take into account the former Jordanian occupied areas of East Jerusalem. Of the one million plus Israeli citizens who are lumped together as “Arabs”, there are significant differences among three communities including those such as the Druze, Circassians and Bedouin tribesmen who voluntarily serve in the Israel Defense Forces.

The Arab minority in Israel has lived for almost sixty years in a state of “suspended animation”. They are citizens and are entitled to the same rights and obligations according to Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Israel’s Arabs have, however, always looked at only one side of the equation, demanding equal rights without equal obligations. Equal does not necessarily mean identical. Military service may be replaced by some civilian duty, but to continue wobbling the issue or sitting on the fence has only led to growing disaffection and tensions. In 1948 a few optimistic voices expressed the naïve view that they or the Jews in the Arab countries might serve as a “Bridge to Peace”.

The settled Moslem and Christian Arab Population:

The bulk of the Arab population comprises 950,000 Israeli Muslim citizens and another 145,000 Christians living in villages and towns. In theory, every Arab child must go to school in Israel for at least 8 years and Hebrew is taught from the third grade. Hostility towards Israel has always been primarily due to the experience of being reduced from a majority, both ethnically and religiously, to the status of a minority. The previous confidence of being a Christian or a Moslem and therefore part of a prestigious worldwide religious community was dealt a severe blow by Israel’s independence andmilitary victories. The same attitude of a “lost prestige” prevails among the Arab population in the territories to an even greater degree yet President Carter makes no allowances for this and how they can ever be pacified with less than a return to majority status within one state. He cannot see the contradiction and irony in his use of the term Apartheid.

For both Carter and Obama, Israel is to make every concession regarding full and equal rights and acceptance of a large number of refugees who would thus comprise a huge minority destined to become a majority by the differential birth rate alone while the Arab Palestinian state to be formed by the Palestinian Authority in the west Bank and Gaza would be “Judenrein”. i.e. without any Jewish population whatsoever similar to the reality in much of the Arab states today.

Israeli Arab Cultural Creativity in Arabic and Hebrew

The lack of an appropriate framework and symbols by which the Christian and Moslem population can identify with the state rather than a specific grievance based on prejudice is the problem which Israeli statesmen, educators, philosophers and politicians have not sufficiently addressed. High school graduates are fluent in Hebrew after 3-5 hours a week instruction for ten years. Knowledge of Hebrew is much greater among men and especially those who work in the Jewish sector of the economy outside of the village. Hebrew is needed for higher education as there is no university in Israel especially for Arabs. The shortage of appropriate skilled jobs for Israeli Arab university graduates has always been a primary factor in antagonisms and resentment towards the state. Several Israeli Arabs have distinguished themselves in the theater and aswriters, winning Israel’s highest honors in these professions.

They are Anton Shammas, author of the critically acclaimed novel Arabesques, Makram Khouri, a popular actor on the stage, screen and television and the late playwright, politician and Communist member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), Emile Habibi; all prominent on the Israeli cultural scene and who have
demonstrated equal talent in Hebrew along with their native Arabic but their work and names are totally unknown among Jewish communities abroad. Within Israel, they have been regarded by some from both communities with suspicion.

What is crucial however is that Israel is the scene of a real, if flawed, coexistence while the Arab World and the Palestinian Authority continue to envision a macabre world of an eventual confrontation in which the Arabs will regain their “rights” aided by Iran as a result of a major Israeli catastrophe. The recent award winning Israeli film The Syrian Bride is a gallant effort by Israeli actors and producers – both Arabs and Jews for a future without the threat of war and the promise of potential benefits stemming from co-existence and mutual respect. Carter has not a word of praise for these joint efforts within Israel at coexistence and no word of criticism for the Palestinian Authority’s openly anti-Jewish textbooks with open incitement to hatred in elementary schools. 

One of Israel’s top football club won the Israel Cup and participated in the 2004 UEFA Tournament. The team, Bnei Sachnin (a small Arab village in Galilee), is made up largely of Israeli Arabs but also includes a number of Africans “on loan” and a manager and several key players who are Jews. No other country has a national team in which Whites, Blacks, Jews, Arabs, Christians and Muslims are represented. If another country had such a team, it would be the subject of endless praise by the international media.

The Druze and Circassians

Hebrew has been fervently embraced by the Druze in Israel, a community of 100,000 Arabic speakers who are considered a “heretical” or “deviant” Moslem sect (an offshoot of Shi’a Islam). The Druze sided with the Jews in the War for Independence in 1948-49 and have since voluntarily accepted the obligations of military service in the Israeli Defense Forces and the Border Police. They have in the past voted heavily for the Zionist parties and admired “strong” Israeli leaders, particularly General Moshe Dayan and Menahem Begin. The same has been largely true among Israel’s 200,000 Bedouin minority, largely concentrated in the Negev, nominally Moslem but and traditionally hostile to the urban-dwelling nationalistic and more religious Moslem population.

Among the Druze, the greater degree of social integration with the Jewish majority is also leading to greater use of, and fluency in, Hebrew, so much so that many observers report spontaneous Hebrew conversations between men and among youngsters at play or while watching football games without any Jews present. Obviously their shared loyalty, sense of common citizenship and language has also led to greater demands for real equality in every walk of life. Yet, the Druze have their own flags (one version used by Druze soldiers in the IDF contains the Star of David and is flown only in their own villages alongside the Israeli flag), and their religious particularity remains unchanged.

They are a “minority within a minority” and their relationship with other Arabic speaking Druze living in Arab states hostile to Israel is a cause of concern and suspicion among both Israelis and Arabs. There is a large Druze minority in Syria, a state that has been particularly hostile to Israel. Many of the Druze residents on the Golan Heights under Israeli administration have close relatives living on the Syrian side, a reality that is portrayed in the Israeli film, “The Syrian Bride.“

The 3,500 Circassians in Israel are non-Arab Moslems who settled in the Galilee region of Palestine at the end of the 19thCentury after fleeing from their homeland in the Russian occupied Caucasus region to Turkey and Turkish controlled areas in the Middle East. They were loyal subjects of the Ottoman Turkish regime and like the Druze, have been on good terms with the Jews and loyally serve in the Israeli armed forces. All the men are fluent in Hebrew and scores of Circassians have moved from their Galilean villages and settled in Israeli cities from Eilat to Haifa. They speak their Circassian language at home but due to their physical isolation from other Circassian settlements in Jordan and Syria, they have readily given up Arabic and adopted Hebrew instead as the most practical means of common discourse.

The Bedouin

A third group of Israel’s “Arab population” are the Bedouins (almost entirely Muslim and mostly located in the Negev), a still distinct group who have traditionally been hostile to the settled population and government authorities throughout the region. The problems of providing health, education and welfare services to the Bedouins and integrating them into the national society with its laws and demands upon all citizens has evoked the same opposition in Arab countries as it has in Israel. Traditionally, the Bedouin have been less susceptible to the claims of modern nationalism and Islam. Many tribesmen traditionally felt no “divided loyalty” in serving as trackers and scouts for Israel’s army and security forces, yet times have changed and Israel now faces the possible additional threat of Bedouin hostility.

The biggest issue for the Bedouin has always been “land use” and grazing rights rather than formal legal “ownership” of land. Traditionally, no attention was paid to the formal ownership of land when Bedouin tribesmen built temporary structures or grazed their herds of sheep and goats. For this reason, all Israeli Bedouin abandon their nomadic life and settle in towns. Israel’s security needs in the Negev, especially the use of land as training ground for the army and for airports, have often posed conflicts with the areas grazed by the Bedouin. Many Arab governments share the same concerns about their Bedouin populations and are suspicious of their loyalty.

The first Israeli Bedouin town, Tel Sheva, was founded in 1967. Another six towns have been established since then and the residents of these towns now account for more than one-third of the Bedouin population. Much resentment among the Bedouins has been caused by the urban framework of these towns that are felt to be too restrictive of their mobility. The problem remains, however, that the best way to provide necessary services is to a sedentary population. The extremely wide gap between Bedouin living standards and that of the settled Jewish population has produced new tensions. Children who formerly took an active part in herding activities are now idle or forced to attend schools. Part of the adaptation to an urban lifestyle has led to more interest in religion and the establishment of a fixed mosque for the Bedouin population in the regional capital of
Beer Sheva.

The Dilemma of the Israeli Arabs

Israel will lose nothing if it accepts the principle of equal rights and equal responsibilities for individuals rather than for communities. However, this does not mean compromising the “national identity” of the state with its Jewish character and symbols. Undoubtedly there were and are many more educated Arab, Druze and Circassians who could have been appointed to the post of Israeli representative at the UN or European Union than the party hacks who are often selected as part of the coalition politics stemming from Israel’s proportional representation system. Even among states whose religious or national-linguistic identity is represented by a dominant group such as Hindus in India, the President is a Moslem and until recently in Iraq, the Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz was a Christian.

After 50 years of procrastination, there has been one Israeli Arab appointed to the level of ambassador (to Finland) and one Druze, Walid Mansour (to Vietnam and Peru). The Arab is Adib Hassan Yihye, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University and the National Defense College, a resident of Kfar Kara who was awarded an Israel Price in 1986 for his work in education. He also teaches Arabic and Hebrew at Ulpan Akiva, a residential language school in Netanya that has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for its work in fostering Jewish-Arab relations.

President Carter’s Concern for the Palestinian Arabs in the Territories

President Carter’s portrait on the left hand side of the jacket cover of his book shows a thoughtful man with his hands clasped under his chin in a staged portrayal of dignity, piety, humility, and deep prayerful contemplation. One is immediately reminded in the starkest and most ironic terms of his predecessor in the highest office of our land who acted without the Carterite halo of sainthood although raised in the same Baptist traditions – Harry S. Truman. “Give them Hell Harry” was the slogan that propelled him to victory in 1948 following the crucial decision to recognize the State of Israel as an act of historic justice, a decision that Jimmy Carter apparently believes he must compensate for by his new found passion for the situation of the Palestinian Arabs.

The right hand side of the jacket cover shows a picture of the foreboding security wall that looms over the people scurrying at its base; an obvious allusion to “Apartheid” and the discomfort and problems that have befallen the civilian Arab population in the region as a result of Israel’s successful effort to drastically reduce infiltration by suicide bombers. The efforts of the jacket cover designers is decidedly to portray a truth but certainly not the WHOLE truth.

A careful reading of the book uncovers a multiplicity of omissions and one-sided coverage although it may well be that the President is convinced that he is an honest broker on a mission from God and a true friend to both sides. There are indeed many expressions of Carter’s “good will to all men” but the picture he paints is a two-dimensional one like the paces of a thoroughbred horse with blinders on, oblivious to the jockeys on either side about to pull past him.

Palestinian terrorism is condemned as “suicidal” for ….“the Palestinian cause” rather than the real victims of these acts of homicide that result in the death and disfiguration of innocent civilians. Israeli steps designed to halt the infiltration of terrorists that interfere with civilian life are referred to as “regrettable”. The immense achievements in living standards that were the result of improved security and general prosperity until the outbreak of the intifada are wholly missing from the book that places the chief responsibility for the current dreadful living standards and lack of security on the Israelis. In numerous citations of “fact”, Carter omits vital information. His description of Jordan’s loss of the West Bank as a result of the Six Day War in June 1967 makes no mention of how Jordan became a belligerent and entered the war and launched hostilities after numerous warnings from Israel not to open a new front.

His fascination with The Fourth Geneva Convention that forbids an occupying power from transferring any parts of its civilian population into “territories seized by military force” does not distinguish how Jordanian policies and population transfers in parts of the West Bank were themselves a result of seizure by Jordanian occupation forces. The same rule apparently never interfered with U.S. and Soviet policy following the Yalta Conference and the seizure of massive parts of what had been Germany and then seized and occupied by Soviet, Polish, Czech and Lithuanian armed forces who annexed the same territories.

References to such events as the Syrian inspired assassination of President Rafiq Harriri of Lebanon are stated simply as “facts” as well as the automatic Syrian denial of any responsibility. President Carter prefers not to express any opinion on the matter (p.99). Israeli and Jewish readers may find it surprising that Carter speaks so highly of the Israeli leaders he has called “right-wing” and “hawks” such as Menahem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ezer Weizman but the intention is crystal clear in his remarks that these leaders had “seen the light“ or were about to and would “inevitably have“ continued “ their conciliatory policy of compromises had they lived (Carter sees beyond the grave).

What is outright repugnant is his analysis of the elections to the Palestinian authority that he so highly praises, describing the victory of Yassir Arafat as “an overwhelming mandate”. This is his view of an election in conditions without freedom of the press, an independent judiciary, widespread intimidation and the absence of a realistic opposition candidate (Arafat’s opponent was a woman for whom the great majority of Palestinian men in the territories would have most likely boycotted if she had run unopposed). Carter’s reluctance to do more than “chastise” (how like a Biblical prophet!) Arafat, a man with so much blood on his hands and the individual most responsible for the use of terrorism as a political weapon in our times for…..”not encouraging more democracy in the Palestinian Authority” and “arresting Palestinians of the news media and human rights activists” (p.193) is a scene out of the theater of the absurd. The term “extremely militant” is only used regarding the 450 Jewish settlers in Hebron (many of them descendants of those Jews who survived a massacre by local Arabs there in 1929) “driving out” 150,000 Arabs.

Carter, like so many other “Johnny-come-latelies” to the Middle East views events through the prism of his background. What else can explain the weird reference to illegal Arab migration into the Palestinian Mandate Territory from 1920 to 1947 as the entry of “Gentiles” (p.66), a frame of reference that is simply out of place. The back of the jacket cover is just as off-base in calling the book a plea for “a lasting peace agreement with justice, compatible with international law” and …“conforms to agreements previously consummated”; a ridiculous description of the present Hamas-led government that has renounced all such agreements.

Every so often, an apparent slip of the pen or Carter’s repressed subconscious emerges to proclaim real and undeniable crucial aspects of the Middle East conflict such as on page 68.…“Only among Israelis in a democracy with almost unrestricted freedom of speech can one hear a wide range of opinion concerning the dispute among themselves with Palestinians and other Arabs.” How then does one reach a meaningful agreement when the other side does not permit a real debate on the issues? Carter has no answer.

Caught in the middle – Between a rock and a hard place

Although Israeli Arab expressions of disloyalty during the Intifada dismayed many Jews in Israel, signs of loyalty and even heroism are often ignored. One case that made headlines in September 2002 was that of 17-year old Rami Mahamid who informed police of a suicide bomber by cell phone just in time to prevent many fatalities at the bus stop in the Israeli Arab village of Umm-el-Fahm. One policeman was killed and Rami seriously injured by fragments of the explosion. Rami was given a police citation by Brigadier General Dov Lutzky, “for saving life with great courage and initiative” and celebrated his “good citizenship”. He was originally shackled to his hospital bed until his story was checked out due to fear that he might have been an accomplice.

Rami described himself as Israeli, not Palestinian, but he spoke with some bitterness about the reality of the Arab minority in Israel. “I feel always under suspicion” he said. “You don’t feel free in your own country.” This is the great dilemma of Israel’s Arab minority. They are under constant suspicion as disloyal. The way forward is to recognize and reward those who are loyal and make them feel that Israel is their state too and to punish severely all (Jew or Arab) who betray their obligations as citizens.

Anyone who doubts this is unaware of how Jews and Arabs in Israeli football clubs, restaurants, garages and the entertainment world have performed harmoniously together during almost sixty years of coexistence. The Arabs of Israel do face a dilemma. They must be aided by a much greater willingness on the part of their Jewish fellow citizens to foster their integration. Those who elect to stay in Israel must be loyal citizens or else they will have no future. They must, however, be given more encouragement and a new and more embracing framework to emphasize that their status is not an ambivalent one. Most of all, recognition of loyalty should be rewarded and common citizenship stressed.

The Future and What Can Be Done

A much more clear-cut critical American position on the Palestinian Authority, and the eventual realization that Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas & Company have led their brothers and cousins on both sides of the Green Line down a dead-end path, will ultimately create a change in attitudes.

The Arabs of Israel have some legitimate grievances. It behooves Israel not to put symbolic obstacles in the path of those Arab citizens who do not identify with the enemy. This should require some attempt at finding the kind of minor compromises that foster identification with the state and lower barriers to full participation in Israeli society but without insisting on acceptance of Jewish identity.

Sponsoring a competition for Arabic words to a common anthem and replacing Hatikva (or permitting an alternative anthem) that sings of love for a common homeland would offend no one except the obtuse and obdurate. A model for this exists in Finland where Swedish speaking citizens in the Aaland islands sing the Finnish national anthem in their own language and serve in special Swedish speaking units in the armed forces yet no would hurl the label of apartheid at Finland. Israel must, of course, also strive to eliminate some of the major disparities in employment opportunities and municipal services to Arab towns and villages.

Many observers who are aware of the unrelenting hostility of Arab Knesset members and many prominent figures in public life among the Israeli Arabs do not give sufficient recognition to the unabashed opportunism that characterizes the political culture prevalent in the region. This means there are no real political parties, no free press or independent judiciary – hence the expression “The Arab Street”. Questions and issues of policy are never really debated. They are manifested in street demonstrations, almost always orchestrated. In stable states with strong governments, the “people” support the government. In weak states, or in the case of Israel, extremist religious and political groups capable of using force, coercion and the threat of violence hold sway because they promise greater pain and punishment than the rewards offered by the government.

This should have been obvious during the “Iraqi Freedom” campaign. Many critics of the Bush administration bemoaned the “apparent lack” of support for American troops until it was clear from Baghdad that the regime symbolized by Saddam Hussein’s statue was gone forever. There is a residue of Arab opinion in Israel that is afraid to speak out in any public forum against extremists who preach secession and civil disobedience. Many Israelis who are suspicious and pessimistic of ever reaching any accommodation with the Arab minority in the country see only emigration as a “final solution”.

This is short-sighted and self-defeating. It also plays into the hands of extremists. Even if many Israeli Arabs are opportunistic and blow with every change in wind, it would be a smart policy to offer a framework based on the “carrot and stick” approach. In so doing, Israel would be spared the accusation that it is an “Apartheid state” and give some hint to the population in the West Bank and Gaza that a real peace agreement would bring enormous benefits to all. Carter’s repeated accusations against Israel only encou
rage the hard-liners to continue their campaign of no meaningful compromise.

The ex-President’s use of the nickname “Jimmy” was always calculated to sound more folksy. He undoubtedly believes that he has a special mission to bring “peace” to the Middle East and that a renewed effort on his part may restore the luster and prestige to his achievement of bringing Sadat and Begin together. Sadat’s fate and the cold nature of the Egyptian regime toward Israel (and the United States) have not given him or President Obama cause to reconsider. They both believe their initiatives will somehow contribute to a new step forward but there is a hollow and pathetic ring to it. If the term “apartheid” has any meaning at all in the context of today’s realities, it is the self-imposed apartheid of Muslim communities refusing any meaningful step towards integration within Western democratic societies.