Jerusalem in Ferment
I
LYING comfortably on my back in the strange, buoyant waters of the Dead Sea, staring at the blue sky overhead, and speculating vaguely about an appetizing smell of fried something or other which floated across from our picnic pitch on the beach — that was the way the first day of the Palestine riots opened for me.
It was a morning of perfect peace, and typified the peaceful spirit in which we had come on an instructional trip to Palestine, forty-two of us, mostly from Wycliffe Hall, Theological Seminary, Oxford.
Two years before, Wycliffe had celebrated its Jubilee Year by undertaking a similar trip. The course at Wycliffe includes four terms of instruction every year, one of which, falling in August, had been ‘kept’ in Jerusalem. At a moment when educated people are everywhere showing indifference toward the Church, the need for bettertrained clergymen is obvious, and it was felt that the students’ training would be immensely improved if they could but see the Holy Land itself and be able to read the Bible with firsthand knowledge of the country it describes. But there was another and deeper reason for such a visit. Would not anyone come to feel a more profound knowledge of our Lord after seeing the places where He lived and in some cases the stones on which He trod?
This first trip had been so successful that it was decided to repeat the experiment, and with these thoughts in mind we, the second group of students, had come on this pilgrimage.
But all was not peaceful in Jerusalem. There had been some mutterings before the storm. A party of young Zionists had made a demonstration; a Jew had been killed by an Arab, and the police had quite rightly, for fear of further trouble, refused to permit his funeral procession to pass through the old city. Unfortunately this refusal was only enforced by a baton charge. And coming back from our Dead Sea picnic we ran into trouble in earnest — a large crowd of angry people with sticks, closely pursued by others with knives. At lunch there was a row outside,and an explosion, and two Moslems hastily took refuge inside the garden gate from a Jewish crowd outside. Walking back to our quarter at St. Georges, I found a large crowd of Jews held in by police; apparently there had been some Jewish bomb throwing and several people killed. I gathered afterward that the Moslems had started the riot by attacking the Jewish quarters round the city.
During the afternoon the commandant of police asked whether Wycliffe Hall would volunteer as special constables. So at tea time our principal gave us a short talk. He said that there were times when the restoration of peace and the protection of life and property were the first duty of every Christian, and in such protection stern measures were justified. In view of the Government’s message, he felt that such a time had arrived and that it was our duty as Christians and as English gentlemen to give what assistance we could; but he was willing to talk with anyone who conscientiously felt otherwise.
After tea we all walked to the Government Headquarters in the Russian Buildings in a careful straggle, for we had been asked only that morning to avoid anything in the nature of a religious procession. Arriving there, we found a hive of warlike activity in the courtyard which before the war had seen so many Russian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Those of us who were familiar with firearms were retained and the rest were sent home.
Half an hour later thirty theological students could have been seen practising rifle drill under their principal, who was somewhat rusty in the words of command, as it was ten years or more since he had been demobilized from the Army. Smartening up, we ‘ formed fours ’ quite efficiently and marched back to St. Georges as a small military squad — ‘The Church Militant.’ After some food, several of us assembled for prayer for the innocent, who so often suffer more than the combatants. It was one of those scenes not easily forgotten — the single lamp, the kneeling figures, and the rifles piled in the background while their users sought the presence of God.
Fifteen minutes later we were back in the Government Headquarters once more. Everywhere there was great activity: men suddenly taken from peaceful occupations now walking about with armlets and rifles as special constables; people and motor cars coming and going; every now and then a shout for Corporal So-and-so, Captain Soand-so, etc., etc. We sat around in the half darkness awaiting orders until at last a dozen of us were packed into a truck with two policemen and sent off into the darkness to patrol the road to Motza. So it came about that the day which for me had opened with a bath in the Dead Sea closed with my sitting on the floor of a truck clutching a rifle, with fifty rounds of ammunition slung round me.
II
We swung out down the road with one of the policemen sitting up in front and the other on the tailboard with his rifle on his knee — ‘like guarding the American mails,’ as he expressed it.
I was just thinking how peaceful everything looked under the moon when my thoughts were interrupted by the sudden stopping of the truck. Excited female voices came out of the darkness: ‘It is not safe.’ ‘Can you not leave an armed man behind?’ ‘The Arabs might attack us.’ Apparently these were a few Jewish families living together, and they were in desperate fear of attack. The policeman did his best to reassure them by telling them that there would be an armed patrol down the road every hour. Most reluctantly they let us go, and we rumbled off across the valley to Motza. Everything seemed quiet, so we stayed a moment and then returned to Jerusalem, stopping again to reassure the Jewish families on the way back.
We had barely reached Jerusalem when shots broke out behind us; we listened carefully, but all was quiet. Turning around, we ran through to Motza again, hearing nothing, and finally we returned to the Government Headquarters in Jerusalem to find the rest of our party still sitting where we had left them. ‘How did you get on?’ ‘What happened?’ They pelted us with questions, which soon died away as they were summoned to go off in the same truck to Ramemah, where they supported the regular police in raiding a house for arms. Meantime we found a canteen in the basement of the Government Headquarters and polished off some ham and bread, washed down with beer or soda water.
After food, sleep — on some army stretchers with a couple of blankets. We were awakened at dawn, and climbed sleepily into a truck to set off down the same patrol to Motza. Everything was quiet, and the country looked lovely in the early morning light, with Ain Karim, John the Baptist’s birthplace, sleeping peacefully across the valley.
But on the way back my thoughts of the beauty of the country were rudely interrupted by a few shots whistling overhead. We dismounted immediately — a truck is too good a target — and took cover with rifles ready. Another shot sang harmlessly overhead. The enemy seemed to be concealed among some houses gleaming white on the hill above Lifta.
The range was too long and their cover too effective to do anything from where we were. ‘Let’s go and turn ’em out,’ our commander said suddenly. So two by two, in small rushes, we tumbled into the truck and set off at full speed up the road. Dismounting behind a house, we proceeded up the street by the undignified method of crawling along the side of the road, taking cover behind piles of stones. But life is worth more than dignity! At last the enemy was discovered behind a wall, and the front of our party opened fire round the corner of a house.
After many swallowings, and saying ‘One, two, three!’ to myself, I made a run across the open and landed next to one of our policemen behind the house. Together we proceeded up a byroad to outflank the enemy, running across the open and taking cover behind walls and houses. Eventually we arrived at the end house and caught the enemy nicely as he retreated before the main body. But meanwhile a sniper had found us in turn and we retired hastily to the garden of the house, being careful not to tread on the flowers — such is one’s nursery training!
From the garden we spotted a large pit out in the open. ‘I’m going across there,’ the policeman said to me. ‘ When I get there, you follow — see ?’ And before I could reply he was off. As soon as he landed safely, I set out. It seemed a terribly long way with that sniper so close at hand, but I accomplished the journey in record time, my progress being greatly accelerated by a bullet which sang behind me. ‘That nearly got you,’ said the policeman when I reached him.
In the pit I found another ‘special,’large and fat, with the sweat pouring off him, blazing away for all he was worth, tremendously proud of a bullet hole in his hat and obviously enjoying himself enormously. I lay down beside him and endeavored to make sure that none of the enemy reached cover. It seemed queer training for a parson and I said as much to the policeman. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s in a righteous cause.’
By this time the enemy, including our friend the sniper, had retreated to a hill a long way off, where it was obviously impossible for us to pursue. As we withdrew, the front doors of shuttered houses cautiously opened and the inhabitants began to appear. It seemed strange to stand safely in the garden which had recently been a death trap and enjoy a much-needed drink supplied by the grateful householder.
Returning to the main road, we sat about on piles of stones and had a very welcome breakfast of food which the neighboring families gladly brought us. Our only casualty was one man with a badly grazed knee, which he proceeded to treat with iodine.
III
After breakfast we set off to attend to some more firing from the other side of the main road. A run over a perfectly vile byroad brought us to a suburb where the sound of firing was plainly audible. We dismounted and advanced in open formation. Hearing more firing to our right, I went off to investigate and found a Palestinian Police Post very excited and firing away across the valley at some Arabs behind a wall. In view of the many statements in the press as to the partiality of the native police force during the troubles, it is well to state here quite definitely that these were Arab policemen firing as policemen on an Arab enemy.
At this point a message arrived from the commander telling me to take two men and outflank the Arabs he was engaging. An attempt to do this was immediately stopped by fire from across the valley, and I went back to report the existence of this section of the enemy hidden from the commander by the shoulder of the hill.
I found the rest of the party extended across the field, firing from the cover of convenient rocks. The commander was lying with another man farther up the field. He seemed a long way off, but a run from rock to rock soon brought me to him. The enemy, dislodged from his original position, was now concealed among the rocks on a neighboring hill. Like most of Palestine, the country is ideal for snipers, and concealment is possible everywhere. This fact accounts for the many successful raids in Biblical history.
As it seemed impossible to dislodge the enemy further, the commander ordered a retreat. His companion left first and ran back to cover, and I followed. Some Arab sniper must have had that path covered nicely, for before I got back there was a whiz, and a red-hot poker seemed to go through my shoulder. One of the specials instantly rushed up, and before I could tell him to seek cover he was badly wounded.
For some reason the firing seemed to die away after that, and I felt utterly alone with a dying man and a painful shoulder. It was then that, grasping his hand, I turned to prayer, and seldom has the presence of God seemed more real. All the tenseness left my mind and a great sense of calm filled it. With this absolute spiritual strength I began the painful undertaking of dragging him back to cover. In safety at last, almost helpless, I could feel the blood soaking my back. It seemed an age but actually was not long before the principal of our college, who had run a dangerous course across the open, rushed up and knelt down by my companion. It was a scene I shall never forget — the sun beating down fiercely overhead, the sound of renewed firing, while beside me the principal prayed for him who had died, a gallant English gentleman.
Leaning on the principal’s arm, I made my way to a neighboring house filled with frightened people. An old woman wringing her hands in horror, several young men with sticks, an old gentleman with a beard — they all seemed to me like actors on some remote stage as I lay on the bed and longed to be left in peace.
But the ambulance, a commandeered bus, had now arrived, and I was led half-running across the open space toward it.
To my dismay, it was filled with Palestinian people all talking at once. For hours, it seemed, I lay on the seat and longed for the bus to start. At last another wounded man, an elderly Jew, lying on a piece of corrugated iron, was thrust in, and off we went back down that vile byroad.
The heat was almost unbearable, the flies were worse, and as we crashed and jolted along the babble of tongues increased, while a Palestinian policeman on the seat opposite fired airily out of the window over my left ear! It was a journey I should not care to repeat.
We arrived at last at the Hadassah Jewish Hospital, where another equally talkative crowd rushed to help me. At last I reached the operating room, and thence to bed. Thus ended my personal part in the outbreak.
But reenforcements had arrived at the scene of our late action, and the Arabs were at last driven off with heavy losses, chiefly by machine-gun fire.
Meanwhile Arab attacks were developing all over the country, the force of British police being too small numerically to cope with all of them. At Tal Pioth attacks began on Friday night; there were several casualties on both sides, and Professor Klausner’s library was severely damaged. On Saturday some of our party were sent out there, and had a very hot time until relieved by an armored car which drove the Arabs off. Other places underwent similar attacks, but were not so successfully defended. This was particularly the case at Hebron, where grave massacres of Jews occurred. These would have been much worse if it had not been for the brave action of Mr. Cafferata, the local British police officer, who, almost single-handed, defended Hebron. For this he has not received a word of thanks or acknowledgment in the Jewish press.
There is no doubt that crimes have been committed on both sides, but there is also no doubt that the Moslems have been the worst offenders. Cases of mutilation and atrocious acts are alleged and are now being investigated, though these are not so numerous as some sections of the press would have us believe. The frequency and simultaneous nature of the attacks in different places give the appearance of a preorganized effort, but, taking into account how quickly news travels in the East and the smallness of the country, it is just possible that the initial flare-up in Jerusalem set fire to the country quite naturally.
The attacks started on Friday night; by Saturday afternoon the first troops arrived by air, and they have been pouring into the country ever since. Order was restored almost within two days, with the exception of spasmodic outbreaks, one of which, at Safed, proved serious. Indeed, so quiet was the country that some of the special constables were demobilized. Our party was dismissed on Saturday, having served for eight days, and was addressed by Sir John Chancellor, the High Commissioner, in the following words: —
Captain Graham Brown and members of Wycliffe Hall
I am very pleased and honored to have an opportunity of seeing you and saying a few words to you of gratitude and appreciation for the services you have rendered to Palestine, and indeed to England, during the last fortnight.
You will, I am sure, understand that it is not out of lack of consideration for you that I have not had time to prepare a formal speech. In the present circumstances I have to do the thing that first comes to hand. But I could not let you leave Palestine without telling you how deeply grateful I am for the immeasurable services that you have rendered to Palestine in the appalling crisis that confronted her. You came here with a very different object from that of fighting. You are going to become clergymen of the Church of England, and you came to the Holy Land expecting to find a place of peace where you could study your religion and learn about the holy places. You find yourselves in the middle of a state of violence and savagery the like of which I have not read of for a hundred years. It is quite alien to your career to take up arms, but there are moments in this world when your duty is to save life.
You are not a large body, and your support to our native police was far beyond your numbers, and of the greatest value in giving them confidence. You have had an experience — a horrible one — which you will never forget. It will teach you things about human beings that you would never otherwise have learned. I want to say good-bye to you and to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your services.
I should like to add that you may be proud of the police uniforms you are wearing. The general conduct of the police force, and the many cases of individual heroism, will, I am sure, make you proud to have been associated with them, and to wear at any rate part of their uniform.
I wish you all success in the careers in front of you. May they be rich lives, full of service to Christ and to humanity.
IV
It is difficult to trace the causes of the outbreak, but a week in Cairo before coming to Jerusalem certainly enabled us to understand something of the Moslem outlook which contributed to the trouble. One gathered that Mohammedanism is a strange blend of Judaism, superstition, and mysticism. It is not to be wondered at that the educated effendi class are becoming indifferent to it, and this opinion was confirmed by a visit to the El Azhar Mosque, the oldest and probably the largest university in the world. As it was vacation time, there were few pupils, but a number of classes were in session, sitting in circles around their sheik teachers. One class was sitting around a decrepit blackboard learning to multiply one number by another. Hardly, one feels, a university subject, but it is the start of an effort to teach scientific subjects. If even in their central university Moslems are so backward, is it to be wondered at that tribes of Moslem Arabs, in small country villages, can be preyed on and hoodwinked into rising for almost any cause?
In addition to this visit in Cairo, two other visits helped us to understand how the trouble arose — one to the Temple Area and the other to the Jewish colonies.
The Temple Area is an enormous plateau on the southeast corner of the city and is one of the best authenticated of the holy sites. In the middle is the Dome of the Rock, sometimes erroneously called the Mosque of Omar. Actually it is not a mosque, but a Moslem shrine, and consists of a dome built over the naked rock, which is undoubtedly the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. It was here that the Altar of Burnt Sacrifice stood in Solomon’s Temple, and there is a large hole leading to a cave underneath to drain off the blood. Here also the Crusaders used the present seventhcentury Moslem building as a church; part of the rock was flattened to form the base of their High Altar, and they built the Temple Church in London on the same pattern. But here also Mahomet hid in the cave beneath, so that the spot actually typifies the religious problem of Palestine — the problem of one sacred site claimed by three religions.
Coming across the court, once more in the open, we looked down from a window in the mosque on to the famous Wailing Wall of the Jews. A narrow alleyway, leading to a few houses at the other end and flanked on one side by the identical stones of the Temple of Solomon — this is the place where the pious Jews of every age have come to weep for their departed glories. Sometimes they have been allowed there only once a year, and even then only through bribes, ‘having to buy even their tears,’ as one of their poets has expressed it. No one can look on such a sight unmoved. Empires have come and gone, Greek, Roman, Persian, Ottoman, and yet there is still the Jew. In spite of hardships and incredible suffering,— often, to our shame, inflicted by Christian people, — the Jew still lives.
Actually the Wailing Place is wakf property — that is, a Moslem charitable trust. It thus belongs to the Moslems, and recently they constructed staircases through the far end, so that the Wailing Wall, instead of leading only to some houses, now leads, via these steps and a passageway, to one of the entrances to the Haramesh-Sherif (Temple Area). The Government sought the advice of the highest law officer in England before granting permission for this alteration, but was unable to prevent the Moslems from doing what they would with their own property. The Jews complain, with reason, that the steps have not been necessary up to date and were only constructed to increase the volume of Moslem traffic through the Wailing Place and thus disturb the Jews at their devotions.
Under the Turk, the Jews in Palestine were numerically few and politically unimportant. Most of them were supported by contributions from abroad and existed to say their prayers and to weep for their relatives, who could not come to pray in person. Moreover, those were the good old days of baksheesh, and a coin into the hand of the Turkish policeman ensured peace. Few Moslems went to the Wailing Place, and for years services were held there undisturbed. But now all is changed. With the new Zionist policy, Jewish immigration is proceeding on a huge scale and the Jewish population of the country is mounting rapidly. Not unnaturally the Arab, in spite of the great benefits the Jewish settlers have brought him, views this phenomenon with suspicion. The Wailing Place, the point where the western wall of the Haramesh-Sherif touches the sacred spot of Judaism, is the obvious place where this racial tension is felt.
Since the Wailing Wall is Moslem property and, incidentally, a right of way, the Jew is not permitted to put up fixtures. This he has sometimes been inclined to do — benches for the old to sit upon, tables for prayer books, and the like. Under the Turkish rule, a few piastres soon squared up any trouble of that sort, but now, with the Moslem jealousy aroused, any suspicion of a fixture is reported at once to a long-suffering British Government as an infringement of Moslem rights.
It was such a fixture which caused the trouble at the Wall a year ago and pointed the way to the present outbreak. Some of the pious Jews erected a partition at the Wall, of lath and canvas, to separate the women from the men, holding that the presence of women distracts the men from pure devotion. This was at once reported to the Government by the ever-watchful Moslem, and, since it was technically an infringement, the Jews were ordered to remove the partition. Unfortunately they left it there until the next day, the Day of Atonement, when no work could possibly be done by any Orthodox Jew, and the police had to take it away. Through ignorance of the Jewish ritual, they arrived to do this at the most sacred part of the service. Thus the famous Wailing Wall is at present the tinder box, where at any moment a spark may be struck between Jew and Moslem. It should be added that the situation is not made any easier by the occasional arrival of Young Zionists who are not inspired by religious motives, but who merely wish to make a demonstration.
V
The other expedition which threw a flood of light upon the trouble was our tour of some of the Jewish colonies the day before the rioting began. We set off in three buses, under officials of the Zionist organization. We went out along the Motza road, past a large orphanage and a beautiful sanatorium, surrounded by lovely grounds, all put up by Jewish enterprise.
Our first real glimpse of the difficulties of colonization was at Kiryath Anavim (Village of Grapes). Here, in a barren wady, without even water, a small community of thirty Jews are making the desert blossom. They have terraced the hillside and planted trees, having even to bring earth for the terraces. The water problem they have solved by constructing an enormous reservoir of concrete which collects during the rainy season enough water to last through the summer. The colony is run on communal lines; the individuals have no money and their wants are met by communal purchase. We gathered that public opinion is sufficiently strong to force the slacker to depart. They all live in standardpattern houses, one of which is used for a kindergarten school. Like all Zionists, they are very keen on education. Drawn by the great ideal of Jewish Nationalism, they came from many parts of Europe to this barren spot, financed by those who stay to make money in Babylon. We understood that they were typical of many colonies up and down the country.
It was interesting to compare this with Rishon-le-Zion, one of the oldest colonies. Its chief products are wine and fruit, and it looked remarkably attractive. But perhaps the most interesting was Tel-Aviv, whose growth has been phenomenal. We were told it exceeded any mushroom city in America. On what were once sand dunes, north of Jaffa, the Jew has built a new town, — houses, roads, shops, villas, — all erected within the last few years. It is the only town in the world which is entirely Jewish from top to bottom — municipal government, residents, police, crossing sweepers, and so forth. Here, for the first time in generations, the Jew can hold up his head, a free man in a free Jewish town.
It might be added that Tel-Aviv is excessively ugly, but that is a fault common to all mushroom towns, and will, no doubt, be remedied in time. Actually the country cannot naturally support such a large town, and it is largely composed of residents who derive their income from abroad and live here for patriotic reasons.
Everywhere the Jews are buying up the land. One Arab village after another wakes up to the fact that the best land is gone forever and that it has been left to scratch a living off some barren hilltop. It is true that the Arabs need not sell, and that the Jews, by reason of greater wealth and driving force, are developing the country to the larger benefit of everyone; but still the Arabs are aggrieved, and their fear and suspicion of the Jews, coupled with unwise exaggeration on the part of the Zionist leaders, are at the base of the present trouble, far more than any religious motive.
VI
It would be improper at this time, before the finding of the Commission of Inquiry, now on its way from England, to express any opinion as to the conduct of the British Administration in Palestine. The ‘Balfour Declaration ’ states that ‘ His Majesty’s Government views with favor the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, without prejudice to the rights of existing communities.’ But whether it is possible for a third party, C, to assist in establishing B in A’s country without prejudice to A is a question. It may be said that Palestine morally belongs to the Jew, but that can hardly be the view of the Arab who has established the right of user and who naturally looks upon the country as his, tending to regard the Jew as an invader. But the Arab has many countries, whereas the Jew has only one.
In nearly every other case of invasion, force has been either used or implied, but here is an attempt of one nation to invade the country of another by legitimate purchase, backed, if need be, by the force of a third parly. Some will say that purchase of land is not quite the same thing as invasion, but purchase on the scale adopted by the Jews very nearly amounts to invasion— an invasion with weapons of gold.
That all this is morally right is the view of the Western World, supported by — it would be unfair to say inspired by — the world-wide Jewish organization and its access to the press. Let there be an ‘incident’ in Palestine involving Jewish rights, real or alleged, and immediately there is a mass meeting in Chicago, a deputation waits upon the Prime Minister in London, and a letter is written to the Melbourne Times. Thus the Jewish point of view is continuously presented to the world, whereas that of the Arab is confined to a few newspapers of limited circulation, written in Arabic.
Living here in a Jewish hospital, I tend to see the 100 per cent Jewish point of view. The Jews say that they, as a civilized race, are merely colonizing and developing the land of a backward, savage race. For this there are many precedents, and clearly their method of conquest by legitimate purchase is a far more moral way of opening up a country than the methods other nations have often adopted to add to their dominions. But the driving force seems to be a narrow nationalism, almost devoid of religion, which one fears will only increase the intolerance of which the Jew is so often accused.
The Jews have certainly suffered much in these outbreaks, both in life and in property. When I first came to this hospital, new cases were being brought in hourly, with ghastly knife wounds, and there were many deaths. This must have been typical of Jewish hospitals all over Palestine during the first Friday and Saturday. It will be very hard to start again without feelings of bitterness and hatred, but if peace is to be lasting the Jew will have to give the Arab a lead in spiritual matters as he now does in material ones.
The difficult command to love one’s enemies, no part of the Zionist or the Moslem creed, is especially hard when your enemy has murdered some close relative. But the responsibility of the Jew lies just here. Can he rise to the spiritual vision of Deutero-Isaiah, or will he keep to the nationalism of Haggai? Can he build up the character of the Arab by example, as he is building up his material well-being by energy and industry? If not, one feels that the next generation of Jews, brought up in the atmosphere of Jewish nationalism and in fear or suspicion of the Arab, will make the problem of peace in Palestine ten times harder.
Such are some of the thoughts induced by the recent events in Palestine. We, from Wycliffe, came on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We little thought, as the train pulled out of Victoria Station in London, that we should see fighting over the hill country of Judea before our return. Setting out with thoughts of Biblical scenes, we have been forced to think of the problems of the Administration. The case is like that of a Moslem with two wives, each watching the other jealously to see that there is no extra favor or concession. The problem is further complicated by the fact that one of the wives has an influential father-in-law in the shape of the Jewish press organization and the other a crafty one with a knife.
Whatever else one thinks, reflection on the matter has probably given all of us a great sympathy for Pontius Pilate. Perhaps, after all, the Abyssinian Church is right to make him a saint! For he judged and found no fault.