18 Friday, September 1, 1918
THE DETROIT JEWISH HEWS
Stone's 'Other Zionism' Repudiated by History
By VICTOR BIENSTOCK
(Editor's note: Victor
M. Bienstock is former
managing director of the
Jewish Telegraphic
Agency. This article is a
repudiation of the anti-
Zionist views of LF. Stone
which were printed in the
current issue of Harper's
magazine.)
Like so many of us in the
1940s, I.F. (Izzy) Stone, the
brilliant leftwing jour-
nalist, came under the spell
of the magnetic Judah L.
Magnes and those extraor-
dinarily devoted Zionists
with whom he worked to
achieve an Arab-Jewish
rapprochement and the de-
velopment of Palestine as a
bi-national state in which
both races could achieve ful-
fillment.
Stone pays a beautiful
tribute to Magnes,
Kalwariski-Margolis,
Smilanski, Ruppin, Buber
and other greats in the
Zionist pantheon who
sought Arab-Jewish amity,
and to their preceptors,
Ahad Ha'am, the
philosopher of Jewish
nationalism, and J.D. Gor-
don, who preached redemp-
tion through labor on the
land, in an article on the
"Other Zionism" in the cur-
rent (September) issue of
Harper's.
But he uses this memoir
of the manifestation of an
idealistic, warm, but futile
aspect of Zionism to base an
unsparing attack on the
mainstream of Zionism
which he says is exemplified
by the adamant line of the
Begin administration.
The "Other Zionism" of
which Stone speaks so
warmly, as distinguished
from mainstream
Zionism, was the concept
that Palestine was not
only the national home of
the Jewish people, but
the fulfillment of Pales-
tine Arab national ideals
as well. Ahad Ha'am, he
reminds us, stressed that
the historical right of the
Jewish people to a na-
tional home in Palestine
"does not invalidate the
right of the rest of the
land's inhabitants"— the
Arabs.
The Arabs, he declared,
- have "a genuine right to the
land due to generations of
residence and work upon
it." For them too, "this coun-
try is a national home and
they have the right to de-
velop their national poten-
tialities to the uttermost."
Gordon was concerned,
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Stone reminds us, that if the his associates considered
Jews were to re-create their Magnes a traitor, but for a
nation as a just nation, "this man like Magnes, who be-
could not be done on the lieved that for the Jews, one
basis of injustice." The Jews of their greatest duties was
had the right to return to "the attempt to enter the
Palestine and again become Promised Land not by
part of it, "but the Arabs means of conquest as
were part of it too." The Joshua, but through peace-
Arabs had be to "partners ful and cultural means,
with us in the political and through hard work, sac-
social life" of Palestine.
rifice, love, and with a deci-
Ahad Ha'am and J.D. sion not to do anything
Gordon set the moral and which cannot be justified
ethical tone for Arab- before the world con-
Jewish rapprochement. science," there was no other
Magnes, chancellor of the course.
Hebrew University, became
I don't like to take issue
its most celebrated expo- with a man I admire as
nent almost from the time of much as I do Izzy Stone and
his arrival in Palestine
for whose journalistic
until the establishment of achievements I have so
the Jewish state in 1948. much respect and admira-
When the United Nations
tion. But in this case I think
decided on the partition Stone has not played fair
solution, Magnes pressed with mainstream Zionists
for a Middle Eastern con-
and with Israel and 'has
federation of Semitic states joined the pack in pre-
of which the Jewish state judging Menahem Begin for
would be a member.
his refusal, as Stone puts it,
I recall several meet- either to give the Arabs
ings with Magnes in 1943 equality in Israel (a bi-
when I first visited Pales- national state) or let them
tine. No one could fail to have their own state in the
be moved by his sincerity rest of Palestine, without
and the determination awaiting the outcome of
with which he pursued Arab-Israeli negotiations.
his dream. For, by 1943,
dream it was; his unity
movement, Ihud, had
only a handful of Jewish
intellectuals as members;
Arab participation was
almost invisible.
Magnes, more than any-
one I met, had an awareness
of the infinite complexities
of Arab-Jewish relations in
Palestine, of his own diffi-
culties in reaching into both
Jewish and Arab ranks, and
yet he persevered.
Ben-Gurion and many of
HAZEL portfolios ...
basic to every student's
busy school days. In a
wide selection of
materials. Each opens
wide, closes securely,
holds countless papers
and other classroom
necessities.
Peel Commission (the
Royal Palestine Commis-
sion of Inquiry 1937) was
set up to investigate."
But that is not what the
Peel Commission found; to
quote its report: "no other
problem of our time is
rooted so deeply in the
past."
I first became aware per-
sonally of the Palestine
question in 1929 when my
assignment on a New York
daily was to help process the
flood of cables from Pales-
tine describing the Arab
anti-Jewish rioting which
cost hundreds of Jewish
lives. Those riots, like those
in 1922 and the series of
anti-Jewish attacks even
preceding the Balfour Dec-
laration, and the anti-
Jewish propaganda and
libels distributed by Arab
sources, came long before
the Arabs had to fear that
they were going to have to
pay the price for Hitler.
It is ironic that Hayim
Kalwariski-Margolis, who
spent more than a half-
century in a constant effort
to promote Arab-Jewish
understanding, was the
man who found it necessary
Arab opposition to to establish Hashomer, the
Zionism did not begin corps of armed watchmen
with the flight of the Jews who guarded the isolated
from Nazi Germany, as Jewish settlements from
Stone's article suggests, Arab marauders — their
and the Arab complaint neighboring fellaheen as
that they were being well as wandering Bedouin.
made to pay the penalty
It was Kalwariski's
of loss of their land as the Shomrim, as Stone notes,
price for the persecution who later became the basis
of the Jews in Germany of the Hagana, the Jewish
and Eastern Europe. underground defense army.
This, Stone says, "is what And Hagana, as we all
the Arabs feared and this know, evolved into the Is-
was the root cause of the rael Defense Forces.
Arab uprising that the
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I don't believe Stone
has been entirely fair to
the mainstream Zionists
by giving the impression
that only the "Other
Zionists" actively sought
understanding with the
Arabs.
From Chaim Weizmann's
meeting with the Emir Fai-
sal before the Paris peace
conference that ended
World War Ito Golda Meir's
secret metting with King
Abdullah in Jericho in 1948
in an attempt to avert the
imminent war, Zionist his-
tory is marked by numerous
attempts to reach agree-
ment with the Arabs. The
efforts of people like Eliahu
Sassoon, who was a Syrian
nationalist before he be-
came a Zionist; of Eliahu
Epstein (Elath) who spent
so many years working
among Arabs before he be-
came ambassador to the
United States and president
of the Hebrew University,
cannot be dismissed.
They tried and they
failed, not because of a
stiff-necked Zionist position
(although by 1943, the
Sabra was demonstrating a
siege mentality as regards
the Arabs) but because no
Arab dared to get involved
in negotiations with the
Jews or take what other
Arabs might regard as a
pro-Jewish attitude.
Stone tells of the assassi-
nation of a cousin of the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
because he endorsed the
Ihud position. But prev-
iously, Fakri el-Nashashibi,
nephew of the Mayor of
Jewusalem, and leader of
the anti-Mufti faction
among the Arabs, was gun-
ned down because he let it
be known he was prepared
to talk with the Jewish
Agency.
The Arabs were so av-
erse to any negotiation
with the Jews that when
Arabs and Jews were
summoned to London to
participate in the St.
James' Palace "round-
table" conference with
the British in 1939, the
Arabs refused to meet
with the Jews and the
British were forced to
conduct separate, paral-
lel meetings with both
groups.
Dr. Nahum Goldmann,
whose contribution to the
establishment of the Jewish
state and to its survival dur-
ing its first crucial years has
never been given proper
recognition, talks of the
Weizmann-Feisal meeting
and notes in his autobiog-
raphy that "official Zionist
spokesmen like David
Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett
and I myself during my
years in Geneva sub-
sequently tried more than
once to reach agreement
with the Arabs." But, as he
notes, it was the "fantastic
Jewish historical memory"
in conflict with the ten-
dency of the Arabs to be
"slow to forget and forgive"
that made understanding
almost impossible.
"If the Arabs were
Englishmen," Goldmann
remarks, "peace could have
been concluded between
them and Israel long ago."
The official Zionist posi-
tion, Goldmann recalls, as
expressed also by Ben-
Gurion before the United
Nations Palestine Commis-
sion was a Jewish state in
part of Palestine and an al-
liance with the Arabs.
Separate states, an
Arab-Jewish confedera-
tion — those were and
remain possible but it
must be evident to every
serious student of the
Palestine question from
1943 on — and possibly
for many years before
that — that there was no
possibility of creating a
bi-national state. There
were two irreconciliable
cultures and they could
not adjust to each other
at close quarters. Jewish
mores shocked the or-
thodox Moslems as many
Arab customs were re-
pugnant to Jews.
Stone cannot be faulted
when he insists that the Is-
raelis must find some way to
live in harmony with the
millions of Arabs who Sur-
round them and who will,
otherwise, ultimately
engulf them. I doubt that an
answer as simple as agree-
ment to establish an Arab
state in the occupied areas
of Jerusalem is what Stone
calls the path to eventual
reconciliation.