Introductory Chapter to The Jews (1937) by Hilaire Belloc, part 6 of 6

Pg 51

By the way, it is curious that those people who are always telling us that a Jewish minority is a source of wealth and power, do not apply that dictum to Poland. It is stranger still that those who tell us that justice to Jews is always rewarded at once by Heaven, never emphasize the special care the Poles have taken to give their Jewish subjects privilege.

When the government at Berlin began, in violent, dramatic fashion, its attack on the Jewish people, everyone who differed from the government of Berlin (and that, they will be sorry to hear, covers the vast majority of what they themselves call “Aryans”), became much more inclined than they had been before, to defend the Jewish thesis. “We used to think,” they said, “that the Jews had no great grievance, for, though it is true they have no country of their own, yet they were not badly treated by their hosts, but, if anything, a little too well treated— especially in Germany. But now we see how unjustly Jews are made to suffer.”

For there had come that startling thing — it was a thunderbolt — the moral declaration of war by the triumphant Nazis upon the Jews who had the misfortune to be the subjects of Berlin. After that the old argument broke down. The opponent to Zionism could no longer say, “What do Jews need with a national home?” Every German Jew could answer, and every honest man as well: “We now quite understand the need for some place where Jews may be guaranteed to live at peace without encroaching ‘upon their neighbours.”

Pg 52

But in that last phrase comes the whole crux of the affair: — “without encroaching upon their neighbours.” It is true that the Jewish immigration into Palestine bought at very high prices the land on which it settled ; it is further true that it developed the value of that land immensely, not merely by the pressure of millions of money, but by the exercise of organizing power and of industry. It is true, as the Zionist complains, that he took nothing from Palestine, but hugely added to what he had found there.

Unfortunately the point is not an economical one, but a spiritual one. Islam hates and despises the Jew, and what we were doing in Palestine was to thrust an increasing body of Jews under the protection of British power, into the flesh of Islam. It was a challenge to that feeling which Islam has for the Holy Places. It was a challenge to that feeling within the very territory which was historically the heart of Islam, for though Islam came from the sands to the South, it was first planted in Syria; and Damascus is the heart of its legend, tradition and home.

Now, at that word “ Damascus “ it is well that we should pause. No English journal to my knowledge, and certainly no English politician, has told people what Damascus means. Damascus is Syria and Syria is Damascus. Pompey knew that, and all the successful masters of Antioch even, before him. You cannot rule Syria against the will of Damascus ; you can always rule Syria with the support of Damascus. Had the Crusaders seized Damascus and held it with a sufficient garrison, Europe would have been in the midst of Islam long since, and Islam would have withered. The retirement (the inevitable retirement) of the combined French and German forces from before Damascus in 1148 was the doom of the Crusades and the source of Saladin’s triumph : Islam ousting the West.

Pg 53

Now, England does not hold Damascus, and does not seem likely to hold it. Nor is it to be presumed that the French will be there much longer. Yet unless you hold Damascus how can you permanently support an alien hated and despised Jewish colony in a corner of Syria? Can anything in the near future render the possession of the Palestinian sea-board by the Jews a thing of such value to England that she would be willing to risk all the Orient for that one anomalous position — which is not even a possession?

Attempts have indeed been made to prove in some tortuous fashion that the holding of the coast between Acre and Telaviv was the holding of a “key” to India. It is lamentable nonsense. Palestine has no strategical value to us whatsoever. It has an indefensible land frontier which is geographically and strategically a part of Syria in general. Haifa as a British port has an obvious and very great strategical value, or rather will have such when it has been fortified, but then so will have any other point on the coast where in future a modern harbour may be formed. Tripoli and Beyrouth are obvious examples. Even if Palestine were held, or part of Palestine were held, as a British colony with inhabitants among them from this country, it would be a weakness — a debit, not an asset. Palestine held, not for ourselves but for somebody else who is no strength to us and owes us no allegiance, is not only a debit but a constant peril. To this it will be answered “The thing has been done. It cannot be undone. What then should we advise?”

Pg 54

If we cut our losses by abandoning the Jews to their fate, they will certainly be destroyed by the surrounding power of Islam. Perhaps the only solution for the moment is the present state of things, arranged as best it can be arranged to our future advantage. Perhaps we can carry on for some few years at least, even for many years, gratuitously defending an alien immigrant population against the millions of Mohammedans, though obviously we could never do so on condition of preventing any further extension of Jewish power in those parts.

The compromise suggested by the British government in this summer of 1937, can have no finality about it. But there is a certain precarious equilibrium for the moment in the existing presence of a large protected Jewish minority on Syrian soil. We can count for the moment on the support of the Arab state immediately to the east, across the Jordan, because its ruler hopes that the present arrangement will increase his wealth and power and the number of his subjects. We are for the moment not threatened by any other European power. The French so long as they remain in chaos may be neglected, the Italians are not established within close striking distance. But the thing remains unsettled and a full immediate solution of the problem remains impossible.

Pg 55

The truth is, as everybody knows, that we promised the Arabs their country if they would help us against the Turks. We then broke our promise. As a rule, to break your promise is an advantage in this world; in this case it seems to have turned out the other way, and all we can do is to shoulder the consequences of the error or falsehood or betrayal, whichever you like to call it, and carry on from day to day and from hand to mouth.

Those who made the promise now assure up, a score of years later, that they made a “mental reservation” excluding Palestine, but the interval between the act and its explanation is singularly broad, and “mental reservations” are suspect especially when the other party never heard of them.

* * * * *

Such, as it seems to me, is the standing of the triple problem in its Revolutionary, German and Zionist aspects at the moment of writing.


H. BELLOC.

KING’S LAND,

August, 1937