Throughout we have been taking the side of civilisation and of the improvement of the native inhabitants of Palestine. Every time the officials have said that Debate in the House of Commons has been responsible for insurrection and for all the trouble; our refusal to allow the setting up of a representative responsible government under the Mufti has caused the trouble. Everything has been put down to this House trying to check, and check successfully, in spite of the Government on various occasions, the illiberal point of view, in the interests of the population of Palestine, neglecting the interest of the landowners, the capitalists, the exploiters and, above all, that Arab intelligentsia, which sees in this agitation the chance of getting good Government jobs. The hon. Member for Stretford, who spoke for the Arabs, has rightly said that the officials in Palestine are to a man pro-Arab. I am glad to have that from the friend of the Arabs, because it is a statement which I have often made, but perhaps without having the same kind of authority for making it. I am perfectly certain it is true; and not only the officials but, I am afraid, the bulk of the officers in the Army are proArab. I do not think I need argue it. Why are they pro-Arab and anti-Semite? Unless we can realise what is wrong with the administration there, or why they think like the hon. Member for Stretford, we shall not be able to improve matters. I should say that those officials have never liked, and have never been willing, to carry out the Balfour Declaration. They are proArab for reasons which really do appeal to many of us. In the first place the whole official class in this country, and, indeed, throughout the world, has a certain latent sympathy with Nazi Germany. The authoritarian ideal appeals particularly to officials. The totalitarian state also appeals instinctively to officials. Therefore, we have in the Civil Service, in the Army, in the Navy, and in the Air Force, among a good many of the people on top-I am not talking of the rank and file, but of the officers a great deal of sympathy with the authoritarian view which is predominant in Germany and in Italy. We have changed all that here, but we have changed it very recently. It is the experience of the last six months which has changed the sympathy with Nazi Germany which prevailed among the governing class in this country. Of course, changes like that take place more slowly in the outlying parts of the Empire, and one can quite well expect that point of view to drag on in Palestine. It is illustrated in the Palestine administration in various ways. For instance, "Mein Kampf" was allowed to be sold freely in Palestine, whereas a reply to it was not allowed to be published or issued in that country. Representation on the Legislative Council was desired for the German colony in Jerusalem-by nomination. Propaganda which has gone on from Germany, and which is recognised now, has been repeatedly denied from the officials as not existing. In all these ways we have seen the German attitude of mind; and, of course, with that there is the German attitude towards the Jews. Now that this last scheme has been brought forward I hope and believe that we have seen a change. Dr. Weizmann, during the Conference discussions, would never go quite as far as I should have liked. He did say, "We will not accept this solution"; he did say, "We will resist," but he did not say how the Jews were going to resist, and that is the key. If they will resist now-and with their backs to the wall they must resist unless they are to lie down for ever-they will realise that the sympathy and the respect of the entire Anglo-Saxon world goes out to those who stand up for justice, stand up for equal treatment, and who will not continue indefinitely petitioning for justice and whining for mercy. Humanity! What has that got to do with the present world? So to-day we seal the defeat of Parliament, as well as the eclipse of honour, friendship, humanity and common sense. So far as we are concerned this is the end-unless by some miracle some Members on the other side dare to vote against the Whips. But it is not the end so far as the Jewish people are concerned. They can yet secure liberty and gain the respect of all men. I do not think people realise how much of what we enjoy to-day is owing to the self-sacrifice of our forerunners. We are speaking here freely in Parliament because people have broken laws, because men have dared even to go the stake rather than obey the law. Because Prynne's ears were gouged out in Parliament Square, because Hampden died in the field and Sydney on the scaffold, because the seven bishops were thrown into the Tower rather than obey the law, because of the martyrs memorial on Carlton Hill, we have achieved a measure of freedom in this country. Because the American Colonies dared to break with England, dared to fight, America, that great Republic on which we rely so much to-day, came into being. Everything the Ango-Saxon race has achieved has been achieved by breaking laws, laws which have had the sanction of man but against which we have put the sanction of our own conscience. When you place people in the position of having to choose whether to obey man or to obey God, then you will find a determination to obey God first, and man second-and to face prison if need be. That has always been the only thing that has moved us forward in the past. How can we instil that lesson, which no other nation in world has ever learned or known, into the Jews? We know that they have said. they will not go into the new Government in Palestine. Officially they are going to boycott it. Officially they are going, apparently, to refuse to pay taxes. Unofficially I hear all sorts of excellent ideas about blowing up the pipe-line, blowing up bridges, bombing, and doing all that the I. R. A. are doing. But that is not good enough. Your self-sacrifice must be for something that you believe in more than that, and there are three things which the right hon. Gentleman will have to realise. In the first place, the Jew has a human right of access to his home. Whatever the law may be about keeping out immigrants, every Jew will feel justified in doing everything he can to break that law. And, of course, it is easy to break. As long as there is unity nothing can withstand them. An immigrant ship can land immigrants at Tel Aviv as long as there are 150,000 Jews in Tel Aviv who want it. We must realise that laws made to prevent people from doing something which they have a God-given right to do, to live somewhere, particularly in their home, cannot be insisted upon. The law which has been passed is not only to punish people who land illegally but to punish those who harbour them. An exactly similar law was proposed in the French Convention in 1790. It was a law to make it a capital crime to emigrate and punishing all those who harboured the emigrants. Mirabeau, then nearly at the end of his life, rose in the Convention and said, "You may pass this law, but I swear that I will never obey it." And the French Convention, being a very emotional assembly-quite unlike this House were so moved by Mirabeau's speech that they rejected the law. Now here, in the twentieth century, we are inflicting precisely the same penalties upon people who have nowhere else to go, who have had the promise of Palestine not as their home but as "a" home, and we are asking 450,000 intelligent liberal minded Jews to co-operate with Government in enforcing that unjust law. The Government will never get it; I hope they will not get it. I shall certainly do my best to prevent it, and I hope everybody else here will do so." * * * * * The second law which to my mind is contrary to the law of nature and humanity and to the law of God is that you say that the Jews who go to Palestine shall not be allowed to use land whereon to live. All production and all life begin with access to land. If you make a law to say that Arabs may have land but that the Jews may not have land, that is the most invidious form of discrimination that can possibly be drawn. If the Jews of Palestine say, as I hope they will, that the law is inhuman and that they consider it their duty to break the law, I hope they will all unite to do so. The other day they started a colony somewhere out north of Huleh and Dr. Weizmann wrote to the Commander-in-Chief saying that they intended to plant their colonies on that land. If there was any opposition to it Dr. Weizmann intended to lead the march himself. Of course there was no opposition and they did start their colony there. They planted something else, because as a matter of fact one of the features of the plantation of this Jewish colony was that the Arabs of the neighbouring villages entertained them when they go there, so fictitious is the agitation. In future, when they buy land and the transfer is not authorised by the State, I hope the Jews will do exactly as they have done in respect of this colony. I would point out a third unjust law. The Government of Jerusalem is manifestly unjust at the present time because there is a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and the Government insists upon the mayoralty and administration being in the hands of the Arabs. That is something which nobody can justify. There, too, the Jews will have the right and the duty to break down that form of Government. They have already refused to take any part in it. Much the best way to smash that local administration is to refuse taxes and to see that taxes are not paid. In that way you can break down any Government. Let us realise too that in this House we are yielding to force, and so compelling resistance; that the only way which the Jews in Palestine and in the world have of securing justice is by using those forces which we have blamed in other people although we have always exercised them ourselves. We are now saying "good-bye" to control by this House and to constitutional methods. We are saying good-bye also to our dreams of seeing Palestine a happy colony within the Biritish Empire. It is now joining Iraq. The intelligent civilised and educated people of that country must look after themselves. The constitution is at an end. I inform the right hon. Gentleman that in spite of his policy, men are preparing to sacrifice their lives as our ancestors did, and in the long run to win that same freedom that we ourselves achieved. RT. HON. LEOPOLD STENNETT AMERY * My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, began with an account of the origins of our policy in Palestine. I confess that that account did not tally altogether with my own recollections. I had the privilege of being, as a Secretary to the War Cabinet very closely associated with the discussions, the long discussions, which preceded the Balfour Declaration. My right hon. Friend referred to that policy as having been born in the tumult of war, and he suggested that there was some lack of full consideration about it. He hinted to-day, indeed he told us more definitely last November, that the authors of the Balfour Declaration were not aware of the existence of a population of 600,000 Arabs in Palestine. Believe me, that is entirely remote from the situation as I remember it. That memorable document was not issued in haste or lightheartedly. It was not a sudden happy thought, a piece of war propaganda, meant to win the support of the American or Russian Jewry; still less was it issued in ignorance of the facts of the case. On the contrary, all the relevant facts, all the difficulties that might arise, and were indeed bound to arise, from the natural reaction of a primitive population in contract with a new element, separated from it even more by centuries of development than by race and religionall those aspects were canvassed for many months and were fully understood. But the statesmen of that day viewed their problems from a wider perspective. They saw in the approaching dissolution of the Ottoman Empire a unique opportunity, which could never recur, for contributing to the solution of that baffling and tragic problem, the fate of a people which is yet not a people, which is a minority everywhere, with no home to call its own, whether as actual refuge from oppression or merely as a focus for their pride and affection. They knew that that problem might become acute again at any moment, though they never dreamed of the insane orgy of persecution, of extirpation, which has since swept over Europe. In that respect, at any rate, they builded better than they knew. If foresight is the measure of statesmanship, then surely, we should be proud to-day that it was British statesmanship which, by bold, constructive prevision, planned the framework of a Home, a City of Refuge, which might, if it were allowed, be at this moment affording immeasurable relief, spiritual as well as material to the agony of the Jews. I should have thought that we might have been heartened and encouraged to-day to carry on a policy, so far-seeingly initiated and already so fruitfully advanced, with fresh confidence and with a keener determination to overcome all obstacles. Instead, we have this White Paper, which, from beginning to end, is a confession of failure, a direct negation of the principles on which our administration in Palestine has been based, and, in my view at any rate, a repudiation of the pledges on the strength of which the government of Palestine was entrusted to our hands. There was another aspect of the question which appealed more particularly to some of the younger men like myself and the late Sir Mark Sykes-too soon lost to this House-who travelled in the Near East and who had taken a keen and sympathetic interest in the affairs of the Moslem world long before either of us had ever come in contact with Zionism. We believed that it was Britain's mission to restore prosperity and civilisation to those ancient lands that had once been the very centre of the civilised and prosperous life of the world and of its creative thought. We knew that, while we might give the indispensable frame-work from some more intimate and directly quickening influence. It seemed to us that the Jews alone could bring Western civilisation to the East with an instinctive understanding of its outlook. Above all, they would come, not as transient administrators, not even as colonists looking back to a motherland elsewhere, but as a people coming back to their own homeland, prepared unreservedly and wholeheartedly to identify themselves with its fortunes. That was a view which appealed, not only to the Zionist leaders, but to the best among the Arab leaders at that time. Some day, I dare say, it may appeal to them again, but that will require a very different approach, a very different attitude on our part from that revealed in the White Paper. There was, lastly, a more narrowly British view-and I, at any rate, have never been ashamed of regarding these issues primarily from the point of view of their effect on British interests. It was based on the fact that Palestine occupies a position of unique strategical importance, in relation both to the Suez Canal and to the junction of the air routes between the three Continents of the Old World. In our view it was a vital British interest that Palestine should be a prosperous, progressive State, bound to us by ties of good will and gratitude, able in the hour of need to furnish resources both of personnel and of material which only a densely populated, developed modern community could furnish. Had we known of the dangers which face us to-day, how much more eagerly should we have pushed on the policy in which we then believed! Now, with the terrible dangers which confront us, it is tragic to think of the use we might be making to-day of the manpower, the ability, the enterprise, the loyalty and trust-for till now the loyalty and trust were still there of the Jews in Palestine. Those were the reasons which justified the policy of the Balfour Declaration, and for those reasons the statesmen of that day had no hesitation in demanding of the Arabs, whom they were liberating over the whole of the vast Arab world, that to this one small corner of it, containing at that moment perhaps one-fifteenth of its population, the Jews should be admitted on the basis of equal rights of citizenship with the older population. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Crossley) objected. He took the view that the population of any given area, whatever its size or character, is entitled entirely to dispose of its own destiny, regardless of all circumstances, domestic or international. I would ask him, if he were here, whether the view he has taken about the indefeasible and unlimited right of the 600,000 Arabs of Palestine to control their destiny would apply equally to the |