The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-03-31
PALESTINE NOT
 VERY FAVORABLE TOWARD zI0NISM

Edward Bliss Reed in the April Yale. Review)
 Since Palestine is an Arab country in which the Jews are outnumbered eight to one, naturally the question to be asked first of all is what the Palestinians desire. To the American mind, the founding of a. Jewish com m onwealth in Palestine in compara- ble to opening up Indian lands and establishing the State of Oklahoma, but no such parallel can be drawn. Apart from the small proportion of Bedouins, the Arabs of Palestine are divided into two classes. The fella- heen, the village or farming classes, are ignorant, absolutely illliterate, and show all too plainly rae result of four centuries of Turkish oppres- sion, yet these very Arabs can make good agricu1turists and to the num- Der of five thousand have largely fur nished the labor in the Jewish 'tcol- onies.' Indeed, it may be said that without them, the success of these Jewish communities would have been | extremely probIematicaI- The second class of Palestinians, the business men, the employers of labor, con;- | tains many well-e6Bucated Arabs, both i Mos1em and Christian. It is no long l journey to Beirut with it's American 1 college where Christians and Moham- l medans receive a training equal to 1 that given by our best universities. l Both classes have lived under the i tyranny of the Turk, who discouraged l education, forbade progress of any
 kind, and deliberately retarded the 1 development of the country. Now | that his yoke has been removed for ever and for the first time Pales- 1 tinians may look forward to living | and working under a. just govern ment, the chief question to be asked 1 is how they feel towards this new 1 commonwealth of non-Palestinians l to be forced upon them by Euro peans and Americans. Surely if the l principle of self-determination means anything, it implies that the inhab-
 itants of a country shall have some voice in the government and develop ment of their own land.
 Unfortunately, no voice from Pal l estine ever reaches our shores; in
 stead we hear 'Incessant and exten sive Zionist propaganda An incl dent will show the actual situation In March, 1919, a group of Zionis | migrants landed at Joppa- Rumo. placed their number anywhere iron two hundred to two thousand; ther, 1 were perhaps some five hundred il i the party, yet this mere handful
 com pared to the coming of hundred
 of thousands, was enough to crystal
 ize in Jerusalem the determined hos
 tility to Zionism that exists there 1 MosleIns and Christians, not al
 ways united, planned together an an
 ti-Zionist demonstration to take tn
 form of a procession through tn
 city. It was hoped that this woul
 show the outside world what Pales
 tine thought of the proposed common . wealth Anticipating serious trouble
 the British authorities brought bat
 tahons of Indian troops to Jerusaler and demanded guarantees that n disorder should result from this put
 lie protest against Zfonism. Certai 4 Headers were told that they must as sume responsibility that no out , breaks would occur, and as they wer unwilling to do this, the whole affai , was suppressed No demonstratio was held, but at least the non-JeN
 ish citizens of the capital of PaIestir