Robert Weltsch is perhaps the most highly regarded independent journalist in Palestine, and a respected voice of the so-called “moderate” Zionist viewpoint. He has had the courage at many junctures in the course of the Zionist struggle to voice the unpopular view; and his recognized integrity and deep knowledge of the Palestine problem have always won him a hearing, even from those who have disagreed with his views.

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The only possible and sensible object of Jewish policy on Palestine at the present moment must be to avert war. Everything else is of secondary importance. One can no longer go on playing with blueprints and propaganda phrases as if the situation were normal. The very existence of the Yishuv—and possibly more—is in jeopardy. The war now seemingly imminent in Palestine will destroy all those human achievements that have been, justly, the pride of Zionism.

The Jews are confident of winning this war, convinced of their superiority in armaments and of the availability of outside help. But the Arabs feel the same confidence, and for the same reasons. It is said that the Jews in Palestine expect planeloads of arms on “D-day,” May 15. The air is also open to the Arabs, and there should be no illusions about that. It is clear that war will cost both sides a heavy toll of blood, and that for obvious reasons the Jewish side is more vulnerable than the Arab. Even should the war be a victorious one for the Jews, it would be indescribably savage and, all military considerations aside, would leave behind a situation of moral disintegration.

The juncture is too serious to permit us to temporize with the facts. The burning question is whether it will be possible to avert the approaching disaster. It is this question that confronts American Jewry above all, which is now the only strong and independent force left in Jewish life. Many observers believe that American Jewry, with the best intentions in the world but blindfolded by a fundamental misconception and misinterpretation of the whole situation, has contributed much to the present impasse. Victimized for five years by propaganda, American Jews renounced their right and their duty to think independently. The events of the last three or four months may have done something to open their eyes; and now American Jewry must try its best to find a way out.

What I say here is not said in panic, nor should it be misunderstood as a “sign of weakness.” The Jewish community in Palestine—to which I belong—will defend itself. It faces the fight with high spirit and determination. So far the Jews of Palestine have shown great organizational skill and an intense devotion to their cause—which is all the more remarkable when we remember that they have done everything on a voluntary basis. And world Jewry, whose responsibility for the present political situation is great, has a sacred obligation to help it; I do not think world Jewry will fail.

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Some people seem to believe that a war is indispensable to the creation of a nation: that war fuses the different sections of the people into a single national body. We should not forget, however, that we are faced by an enemy in a very similar psychological position. War may transform the Arab mind even more than the Jewish, and intensify immeasurably the growing nationalism of the Arabs. Anything that increases nationalism on either side will only impede a future settlement of differences. For such a settlement can be reached only if a common ideal of cooperation supplants nationalism, and the chief aim of both Jews and Arabs becomes the building of a new great Middle East on modem industrial lines, where different groups will be able to live their national lives in mutual tolerance and without nationalist ambitions.

Now is the hour of reckoning, of the cheshbon ha-nefesh, and we have not the right to go on repeating easy propaganda phrases for our own consumption. We are not yet totalitarian, and a member of the defeated minority at the Basel Conference in 1946 can still express views that differ from the present official party line. And, although we do not necessarily share the political views that have helped bring us to the present situation, we all do share the present military responsibility and the anxiety about the lives of our people.

Our urgent task is to act in terms of political reality. Reality, political or otherwise, cannot be replaced by abstract theory. A sovereign Jewish state as a solution of the Jewish problem may be theoretically unassailable, but this has little to do with the political realities of a world where political relations are all that matter. Without the proper political relations, simply to proclaim a state must prove ineffective. A less perfect solution, provided that it is approved and guaranteed by the great powers, is preferable to a theoretically perfect solution without a sufficient basis in the real world. And always we must keep our mind centrally on this fact: the main requisite for the survival of the Yishuv is security.

The decision of the United Nations Assembly to partition Palestine was hailed as the birth of the Jewish state and the dawn of redemption. A messianic mood filled the air; the final realization of Jewish dreams seemed to have arrived. Why has this mood been so quickly dissipated, why has it been so quickly replaced by fear for the very existence of the Yishuv?

The answer is not difficult. It was forgotten during Zionism’s political struggles of the past five years—and to a large extent of the thirty years before—that political relations are more decisive than abstract political principles, solemn resolutions, and treaties.

In our contemporary world, divided as it is between two or three great powers, stability depends upon cooperation with at least one of them. One is not entirely free to choose here. Geographical proximity, as in the case of Czechoslovakia and Finland, may decide, or the relative military might of the great powers. This is a grim fact to admit, but it is the way the world has been left by the immense material and moral devastation of the war.

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For all these reasons there was—and perhaps still is—only one political problem of paramount importance to Zionism: that is, its relations with Great Britain. However distasteful this is for us, Zionism cannot choose to align itself with any great power other than Great Britain, for neither the United States nor the Soviet Union is on the scene in Palestine. Great Britain was, and for the moment still is; whatever the future may bring, no other great power has yet appeared in Palestine.

Relations with the Arab world create the second great problem—a problem that will be of still greater importance ultimately. But this problem has been neglected and its existence even denied by Zionists, and for this neglect and denial we have paid by the loss of irreplaceable time. For, after all, the Jewish-Arab conflict is the root of the present crisis, and its settlement is indeed the primary object of all our political and military strivings. Zionism demanded a political reshaping of Palestine to which the Arabs did not consent, and to which they could not be brought to consent willingly in this epoch of exaggerated nationalism. This fact has been ignored in the United States in an astonishing way.

If we accept the thesis that any nation, however small, has the right to lead an isolated existence of its own without having to be concerned with other people’s needs, then the Arab position would be unassailable. But this view is impermissible, most of all to Zionists. But it also follows that Zionists, too, have to acknowledge the intricacies of rights and ways of life, and cannot assume that they alone may decree what can or shall be done in a region where different interests collide. The ideal aim of Zionist policy is a harmony of interests between the Jews and the other peoples in the region of which Palestine is a part. Naturally, this harmony cannot be easily achieved. But, even if we leave the Arabs aside for the moment, the political advantage of a coordination of interests with the decisive power on the spot—Britain—cannot be replaced, by anything else, not even by resolutions adopted by the most imposing international body, when that body consists in large part of members who are entirely powerless as far as the subject under discussion is concerned. (I do not mean, of course, to deny the fundamental value of international agreements; but all of us by now understand that their value lies in the will and the power to enforce them.)

The real danger of the present situation is not the unsatisfactory wording of the resolution by the United Nations Assembly or Security Council, but the bitter reality of the outspoken hostility between Great Britain and Zionism, between—it has to be said—Great Britain and the Jews in general. This is a new development that has changed political alignments fundamentally. It is overlooked because too many people have estimated the situation only in terms of political controversy and verbal charges, utterly failing to anticipate that unceasing and accelerating hostility would lead to a situation of more or less open warfare. As long as British power maintained public security in Palestine, it did not occur to many Jews that their unrestrained attacks upon the British might one day have unpleasant, perhaps fatal, consequences for then and the Jewish cause.

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The Jews are hardly to be blamed for feeling deeply outraged and indignant at British policy during the past three years. The viciousness of this policy becomes only too apparent when we compare the irresponsible thoughtlessness of the Labor party’s resolution on Zionism in 1944, promising unlimited immigration and a Jewish state, with events following that party’s rise to power. Not even a humanitarian gesture was made toward the Jews after the close of the war, when all the horrors of Hitler’s wholesale-extermination policy had been fully exposed.

But the question before the Jews was not whether they did or did not acquiesce in British policy. Of course, they did not. The question was how to act in view of the world situation and the alignment of political forces, keeping always in mind the means at the disposal of the Jews. The test of statesmanship for a nation arises when, confronted with a hostile policy on the part of another nation, it has to decide how to combat it and within what limits to keep its struggle. Before making its choice it must consider all the alternatives. What choice did the Jews have? This alone was the crucial point. It remains the crucial point. Nothing should be allowed to obscure it.

The fact is that there was no power but Great Britain with whom the Jews could have cooperated in Palestine or whose protection they could have sought. All we could do was try to extract as much help as possible from that power and find out how far it was prepared to meet our wishes. Inevitably, there would be heartbreaking disappointments, but one can always hope that political conditions will change, and sometimes there is no course left but to press one’s case and wait for a favorable turn. The Jews could undertake a political crusade and use all the influence at their disposal, including that of world Jewry and of Zionist sympathizers all over the world; they could apply the weight of their moral claim, which was a prima facie case of martyrdom, and of their phenomenal constructive achievements in Palestine. Whatever the necessities of carrying on an intense struggle for Zionist aims, the most important consideration of all was to do nothing that would harm the Zionist cause in the eyes of the world. And it was perfectly clear that at some stage the necessity of cooperation with the British would again arise.

The only conceivable alternative policy for the Jewish Agency would have been to establish a reliable and effective connection with some other great power that would have been willing, for the sake of Zionism, to shoulder the necessary responsibilities in Palestine and in the Middle East. Many Jews were convinced that the Jewish Agency, especially its American branch, had grounds for complete confidence that the United States was prepared to play this role. Otherwise the policy that has led to the alienation of Britain would be inexplicable. But it should have been clear to any careful student of politics that the United States never seriously contemplated taking over the task of protecting Zionism in Palestine. Such being the situation, the vehement incitement to hostility toward the British among Jews appears a political folly with few precedents in history.

This is where the terror comes into the picture. Terror is not just “one” feature of Jewish life and Zionist policy among others. It is the overriding fact that has sealed the destiny of Jewish Palestine. Terror, and not Zionist conferences and congresses with all their inconclusive talk, has shaped Zionist policy. Terror has been the outstanding Jewish activity of late, hailed as heroism by too many Jews in the United States and elsewhere. Nothing else has influenced the Jewish attitude in Palestine to an equal degree. To be sure, the majority of the community condemned the state of affairs brought about by the terrorists, but later—seeing that the British did not strike back—became indifferent and finally condoned it, accepting it as necessary, as “the only language the British understood.”

It is very difficult to absolve the Jewish community and its leadership of its share of responsibility for the anarchy that has been created in Palestine. Most people, including Jewish leaders, found all sorts of excuses for the terrorists, even though they would condemn some particular act. The usual way of expressing “condemnation” was to couple it with the explanation that the actual source of terrorism was British policy and that terrorism would disappear if that policy were changed. But objectively, this amounted to nothing less than approval of terrorism and encouragement of its use as a political weapon.

We must also realize that to some extent terrorism is a direct offspring of the official Zionist doctrine of the last six years. The Biltmore Program, with its demand for the immediate establishment of a Jewish state in the whole of Palestine, was generally interpreted as the proclamation of a struggle for independence analogous to the independence movements in India, Ireland, and elsewhere in the British Empire. The British were regarded as the invader who was to be expelled from the country. American Jews compared the situation to 1776, and the obvious implication was that the British should be driven out of Palestine. Palestinian Jewry and its youth were taught that this aim could be achieved by “activism” (ma-avak). Activism means in effect the use of political methods that do not incorporate the ways of democracy but instead adopt violence as a legitimate means.

And now months of murder, bombing, ambushing, sniping, bank robberies, blackmail, extortion, intimidation, and other outrages have created a state of chaos. Gradually, the Jews of Palestine lost their sense of proportion in respect to what was going on. Practically everybody found himself at the mercy of a secret Maffia, which had established an arbitrary rule over the community. The terrorists seized the key to the destiny of the community because everyone became involved in the consequences of their crimes. And once the whole community became involved, the British administration could not root out the terrorists without destroying the community. This fact should never be lost sight of.

If many Jews now accuse the British of not sufficiently protecting the Jews—which is true enough—we should not forget, on the other hand, that the British were unable, for their part, to protect their own subjects from the attacks of Jewish terrorists.

February and March of 1948 showed, unhappily, that violence was no monopoly of Jewish terrorists, and that it could be easily turned against Jews in Palestine.

The Jewish community of Palestine was too vulnerable not to have a deep interest—for the sternly practical reason of survival, if not for moral reasons also—in upholding what Aldous Huxley has called the “social convention of ordinary decency.”

The only way to deal with acts of political terrorism is by collective punishment of the community in whose name the terrorists pretend to act, and which seems, or is forced, to protect and hide them. During the Arab uprising of 1936-39 the Jews of Palestine did not hesitate to urge the British administration to employ collective punishment and reprisals against the Arab community. The British civil and military authorities were very reluctant to do this—as the British have always been—but in the last year of the revolt they were finally forced to adopt this policy and did succeed in stamping out the revolt. Ten years later, confronted with Jewish terrorism, the British again hesitated. They went to the extent of making themselves almost ridiculous, at least in Jerusalem, by withdrawing into a few so-called “security zones,” Which were in reality British fortresses fenced in by barbed wire and nicknamed “Bevingrads.”

Naturally, under such conditions, normal psychological relations between government and governed were hard to maintain. An almost unbridgeable gulf was created between the administration and the population. For many months the choice before the administration was either to take severe measures against the whole Jewish community and force it to repudiate terrorism, or to abdicate entirely and abandon the country to its fate. Sometimes the British seemed ready to take the former course; they used strong language and arrested people, but after a short time everything was undone and the situation was allowed to continue as before. The public drew the conclusion that the terrorists were free to do whatever they wished, and it came to seem almost an established habit for the authorities, who hardly ever caught anybody anyhow, not to interfere more than symbolically.

Since the British, under the circumstance, could not or did not desire to reestablish their authority over the Yishuv with all firmness, their only alternative was to abandon the situation altogether. When two British sergeants were kidnapped in August, 1947, the British administration warned the Jewish community to prevent the murder of these so-called hostages, saying bluntly that the consequences would be incalculable. The day after the bodies of the two victims were discovered it was decided in the British cabinet to get out of Palestine. Public opinion in England would no longer tolerate a continuation of the Mandate, and never were the British people as united as they were on this matter.

Without the terror, it might have been possible to regain public sympathy in Britain for the Jews—who, after all, had been treated very badly. But Jewish terrorism evoked indiscriminate abhorrence in all British hearts. To acknowledge defeat and abandon the situation is, of course, peculiar behavior on the part of an “imperialist” government, and there is no doubt that other governments would have reacted differently. But this is not the end of the story.

Many Jews forgot all too quickly the terrorist acts that had provoked the security and retaliatory measures of the British administration. It is undeniable that these measures, as well as some retaliatory acts by individual members of the British Army and police, intensified anti-British feeling in the Jewish community, and the terrorist slogan, “The British are our enemy,” fell upon all too fertile ground. Psychologically, the victory of the terrorists was complete; they had brought the entire community into the same camp with themselves.

The British decision to evacuate Palestine was certainly not an easy one, and it is impossible to assume that the British are not bitter about it. Consciously or unconsciously, the British have finally come to the conclusion that they are what Jewish propaganda claims them to be—“the enemy.” Their policy of “neutrality,” in a country where law and order have been largely destroyed and in a situation for which they are still formally responsible, is untenable. But, however justified such criticism may be, it would be futile to criticize the British for not accepting their responsibility, as a member of the United Nations Assembly, to enforce its decisions under present conditions. Such criticisms will bring us no nearer to a solution of the Palestine problem as long as we do not understand and admit that the present state of war with the Arabs and of quasi-war with the British is in large part the result of Jewish policy during the last three years.

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Year by year the Zionist organization allowed its relations with Britain to deteriorate irreparably. Although Zionist opposition to British policy and the British interpretation of the Balfour Declaration has been strong since the very beginning of the British administration in Palestine in 1918, it seemed self-evident, at least at that time, that Zionism could be realized only to the extent provided by the British framework. The Arabs never recognized the mandate and hated British rule as imperialism and oppression. The Jews on the other hand knew that it was this British rule that made possible, not only the work of colonization and economic expansion, but also the very existence of the Yishuv.

I do not wish to go into the question of whether or not British rule in Palestine can be described as imperialism. I am not opposed to imperialism under all circumstances; I think that under certain conditions it is preferable to chaos, and may at certain stages even benefit the subject population even though they be unaware of it. But the word “imperialism” is in very bad odor in America, and since the very beginning of the socialist movement it has been a commonplace of abuse—a commonplace now being put to good use by Communist propaganda.

But whatever we think of imperialism, once we accept it in connection with Palestine, it is clear that Zionism is its legitimate child. Without British mastery of the Middle East, Zionism could never have established itself in Palestine. The change from Turkish to British authority in Palestine offered the Jews a unique historical chance that enabled them to establish themselves under a Pax Britannica. Admittedly, dependence on alien rule also involves great disadvantages; your autonomy is not unlimited and you cannot do everything you might want to—but neither can you do so if you happen to be a small sovereign state of limited power. True, the Zionist community in Palestine had no direct access to international bodies, but on the other hand it had the valuable advantage of not having to concern itself with the defense of a country that, being a British dependency, no one would dare to attack The mandatory administration was by no means an ideal state of affairs, but then we never do have ideal solutions in political life, and have always to choose lesser evils. To do otherwise is to surrender to wishful thinking. Jews today, however, have almost forgotten what extraordinary and unprecedented historical acts the Balfour Declaration and the mandate were.

The abominable White Paper of 1939 carries no small amount of the blame for this forgetfulness. Like all Zionists, I have never held any other view than that the rescinding of this document was the necessary and irrevocable aim of Zionism. Yet that aim could not be achieved simply by war against Britain or by the expulsion of the British. Nor was it necessary or inevitable that our struggle against the White Paper should have resulted in the state of affairs we now behold. If it did so, we share that responsibility because we embarked on an unsound political course—unsound because, in terms of our immediate needs, it did not place first things first. At a time when immigration for the DP’s and the survival of the Yishuv were the necessities of the situation, we made the core of our struggle the fetish of absolute sovereignty.

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From the very beginning of the Zionist movement many Jews believed that the Jewish state in Palestine required absolute sovereignty. It was one of the nationalist dogmas inherited from the 19th century that only a state could provide freedom and security, and that a people living within a greater political union—and therefore not fully “sovereign”—was exposed to permanent danger. I remember Vladimir Jabotinsky touring Europe in the 20’s and preaching that only a Jewish state based on Jewish military might could assure a “free” and safe national life to the Jewish people. Some of us challenged his views, arguing that a national home as an autonomous part of a greater and mightier political and economic unity based on cooperation with the native population of Palestine and in close relations with her neighbors would be preferable to a miniature state and offer even greater security and freedom. But Jabotinsky refuted us by quoting the examples of such new independent states as Latvia and Esthonia. Thundering his faith in guns from the lecturer’s platform, Jabotinsky seemed to give no thought to the possibility that if guns decided national existence, somebody else might have more and bigger guns, and that therefore a small sovereign state might be much more easily overrun than an empire. In any case, why sovereignty should be considered so great a protection in a world ruled by the law of the power jungle seems an enigma. Sometimes sovereignty, far from being a protection, is only a pretext for disturbing the peace.

There was a still more recent argument for Jewish “sovereignty” in Palestine. After Hitler’s extermination of European Jewry it was generally claimed in Palestine that the Yishuv was saved from such a fate because it was the Jewish homeland where Jews felt free; and this, it was said, proved that the Galut was doomed. This is strange logic. The Yishuv was not saved because it was Eretz Israel but because it was geographically remote from the field of Hitler’s operations—the same advantage that saved American, South African, British, and a great part of Soviet Jewry. If Rommel had broken through at El Alamein in July, 1942, nothing would have saved the Yishuv.

Nor would it have made any difference—perhaps it might even have worsened the situation—had Palestine been an isolated sovereign Jewish state at that time. What rescued Palestinian Jewry was not our semi-sovereign nationhood, but Montgomery’s British Army.

This is no argument against the desirability of the Jewish state as an ultimate goal. It merely underlines the main thesis of this article: namely, that political relations are more important than the legal form of the Jewish homeland. Sovereignty without favorable political relations is less of a solution than favorable political relations without sovereignty. A Jewish state at war with the Arabs and with the British, and without any strong and reliable ally, hardly seems to offer a true realization of Zionist hopes.

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The British withdrawal from Palestine, Together with their sabotage of action by the United Nations, has created a political vacuum which, in the absence of international authority, amounts to a worldwide scandal. This vacuum can easily become the scene of a ghastly tragedy, and British behavior would then be properly stigmatized as one of the most terrible examples of inhumanity in history. But the British can always point out that in their withdrawal from Palestine they only complied with frequently expressed Jewish demands. The Biltmore Program in 1942 told the British to go. The terrorist posters said so, too. The UNSCOP and the United Nations Assembly were unanimous on this point. And in the end the actions of Jewish terrorists, carried on with the encouragement of American Jewry, forced the British out of Palestine.

The world can blame the British for going, but how can the Zionists? True, what they had in mind was an orderly withdrawal and a transfer of authority to the Jews, but this was never anything but a naive expectation. The Jews did not realize that they could hardly decide for the British in just what way they would get out of Palestine. They forgot that hostility is a two-edged weapon. And, alas, to complain of injustice, however justified the complaint, does not help very much if there is no effective tribunal to whom you can apply. In the world of political reality one does better to take into account the facts as they are.

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Therefore, I must humbly reiterate, political relations are more important than drawing up protests. The Jews need allies, and, at the very least, they need benevolent neutrality. Every measure must be taken, and quickly, for the effective defense of the Yishuv, but at the same time the political framework of Zionism needs to be reconsidered thoroughly.

Can American Jewry be of help in regaining some of the lost diplomatic ground? American Jews now carry the main burden of Palestine, which is utterly dependent on their financial and moral support. The destiny of the Jewish homeland is literally in their hands. We all know the tremendous contribution American Jews have made to Jewish Palestine. But something more is demanded now. American Jews to a large extent share responsibility for the present political isolation of the Jews in Palestine. Large sections of Jewish opinion in the United States encourage and support the terrorists, and sometimes engage in hysterical anti-British propaganda that reaches even into fields of no concern to Jews as Jews—thus there was Jewish agitation against the American loan to Britain. This seems to me a grave blunder, and one that may in the long run hurt American Jewry itself.

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It is possible that the disillusionment of recent months will arouse us to sober second thoughts. What will happen to the Jewish political state without political backing? Under present circumstances, it appears most unrealistic to expect an isolated Jewish state of, say, two million inhabitants, with an Arab minority of about forty per cent, to survive for any considerable length of time. The Jewish state can only survive as a link in the chain of some greater political system. The United Nations decision of November, 1947, envisaged an “economic union” of the Jewish and Arab states that were to be carved out of Palestine. This would be a first step; but in a period of political instability it is difficult to see how even a united or federated Palestine could retain its unrestricted sovereign independence. What useful purpose would be served by establishing on paper a small state that would become the prey of a conqueror at the first juncture? Such a state could only exist by grace of the rivalry of the greater powers.

The withdrawal of Britain from Palestine, with the subsequent creation there of a political vacuum, will be a revolutionary event of the first magnitude. Before the British came there had been no political entity called Palestine, and their departure cancels the development of thirty years. People in Britain regard this admission of failure after so many years of constructive effort on their part as a severe blow to their national pride, and they seem determined to avenge it. Although it may seem entirely frivolous and provocative to speak of an Anglo-Jewish war, as the Palestinian terrorists and others have done constantly during the last three years, this fantastic slogan is now within the realm of reality—certainly that is already the case on the level of emotion.

The Yishuv cannot wage war against both the Arabs and the British. If Britain, the only great power on the spot, really joins the camp of our open enemies, the prospect will be very dark for us.

American Jews must give full support to the Yishuv in its present struggle, since it cannot hold out without American aid, and besides they have the responsibility of making good the guarantees involved in their support and leadership of the course of Zionist policy in the last five years. This may even—and I think it should—involve bending their efforts to try to reestablish normal relations with Britain. This is also imperative in view of the general world situation.

It is not humiliating to acknowledge mistakes, especially since the mistakes we have made were based in part on a belief in the efficacy of the United Nations and in a stable postwar world. An error of judgment and a miscalculation of political forces have been made. More experienced people have made similar mistakes. It is much worse to persist in a mistake.

It lies with American Jewry to avert an Anglo-Jewish war under any guise. American Jewry alone can help bring Palestine back to the tradition of civilized conduct, which is the indispensable condition for Jewish existence and work. If war is not averted, we may as well stop all idyllic talk about making the desert bloom. The soil of Palestine will be drenched with blood, Jewish blood and Arab blood, and possibly the blood of others as well. The best generation of youth that the Jewish people have ever produced may have to be sacrificed. Before making final decisions, let us keep clearly in mind what is at stake.

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The action of the United States, in completely reversing its stand on partition [which took place after this article to this point was in type], only underlines the folly of the Zionists in relying on America against Britain. Warren R. Austin, the American delegate to the UN, has appealed for the immediate termination of bloodshed, but does not say how to achieve it without military measures. And the only troops available are still the British—and Britain declares she will withdraw them according to previous plan.

The United States government now finds itself in a position similar to that of the British Labor party: namely, of having promised more than it is willing to fulfill when confronted with reality. Possibly Gromyko will soon assume the role of opposition against Truman which Truman assumed against Attlee a year ago.

The new development only underscores the main thesis I have emphasized: that realistic political relations are a more weighty consideration than expressions of moral support. The Jews are rightly indignant at the behavior of the great powers, but indignation is not politics.

Again, I must reiterate, Jewish policy must be guided by knowledge of the realities which must sooner or later prevail.

The attempt to establish a de facto Jewish state after British withdrawal may be a necessary measure to avoid absolute chaos, but clearly it offers no final solution. For this attempt, too, depends on actual power, and the absence of power may mean the doom of Jewish outposts, including Jerusalem. Anyhow, it is an irrational move without ultimate recognition, which depends principally on America and Britain. Therefore, the vicious circle remains: final solution requires agreement from at least these two great powers, who—tormented by bad conscience after the “betrayal”—may be moved to find a peaceful settlement, permitting substantial immigration and establishing a political framework within which an autonomous or semi-autonomous Jewish community could exist.

In the present confused situation, it is clearly impossible to make long-range proposals; everything will depend upon negotiation after the restoration of peace and confidence. In the short view, however, it is urgently necessary to prevent further bloodshed, not by a declaration, but by strong and immediate military intervention, especially in Jerusalem, where it may soon be too late. The new American proposals, unless implemented, represent only a new escapism.

It is the duty of Jewish leadership to warn the great powers of their responsibility to avert catastrophe. But this involves openly exposing the full dangers and their participation in efforts to extinguish the flames. This, in turn, requires a rapprochement with the great powers—and thus brings us back to the basic thesis I have tried to present throughout this article.

The question of terrorism is unchanged: from the first, terrorism has meant disaster, and it means disaster today. The main need at this moment is to put an end to hostilities.

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