Translated from the Italian of the article in ‘Vogliamo’, November 1929, Biasca-Annemasse-Lugano, Italy
Let’s leave alone the “wailing wall”. It’s only the background of the picture. Symbolically it can be considered the center of the tragedy, historically it is not. To the wall of Solomon, which legally belongs to the Arabs, every Friday for ten years went the Jews freely to mourn the despair and misfortunes of their race. Against the orthodox Jewish element, Arab fury has never been enraged. The Arabs are tolerant, in religion they are good Mohammedans. Their “fanaticism” is explained with demographic data more than with historical reminiscence and psychological amateurism. The Arab revolt was contingently anti-Jewish; by nature, simply xenophobic.
I have two interviews in front of me: one by Doctor Weizmann, president of the universal Zionist organization, and another by Amein Hussein, religious leader of the Arabs of Palestine. The first declares as necessary: that the Arabs understand that England does not want to change its own policy of protection for Zionism; that for them it is necessary to facilitate Jewish immigration with the greatest possible measures. The second reconfirms that the present government of Palestine is contrary, in its constitution and policy, to the Arabs; calls for the adoption of a democratic form of government, in which all the inhabitants of Palestine are represented, proportionally, and for the abandonment of the English policy in favour of the development of a “Jewish national centre”, especially with regard to immigration.
Two clearly opposed positions. A contrast that is difficult to resolve. Which side is right? The Arabs’ side. Sentimentality is out of place. The world’s press may have recorded the Jewish victims and depicted the horrendous scenes of the massacre of unarmed Zionist settlers; there may be a just tradition of pity towards the Jewish victims of absurd and unjust laws, and of pogrom massacres; the efforts of the Zionists may be admirable, but all this is counterbalanced by the weight of the Arab victims, by the fact that Zionism serves as a cover for English imperialist policy, by the regime of inequality dominant in Palestine.
The Jews have declared themselves certain that in the future they will be hegemonic in Palestine. The Arabs have seen hundreds of Jews disembark from each steamship in Jaffa and Haifa, they have seen their most favourable lands occupied by the Jews, they have seen lands which had been made fertile by the labour of Arab farmers taken possession of by the Jews, they have seen the major part of public spending going to the benefit of the Zionist community, they have witnessed the big business of reselling land bought for little cash, have been denied the convening of the Palestinian parliament.
Before the European war, the Zionist agricultural colonies had grown in number to 43, with about 13,000 individuals. With the British occupation of Palestine (December 1917) Lord Balfour became protector of Zionism. Such protection led to large-scale Jewish immigration. In 1919, the Jews in Palestine numbered 57,000; from that year to 1927 they increased by 90,200 individuals. The immigrants from 1922 to 1927 were in total 77,792. The peak of immigration was in 1925 with 35,801 individuals. After 1925, immigration dropped rapidly, so that in 1927 the quota was 2,788 individuals.
At the same time there was an exodus which after 1925 reached more than 7,000 or 5,000 individuals. What do these figures mean? They mean this: after the initial momentum toward the promised land comes the crisis, due to the lack of capacity of the area to absorb immigration. If we take into account the prevailing nature of the soil and the population density (38 inhabitants per km), the ratio of the Arab population (80%) compared to the Jewish (19%), the aforementioned economic contrast is very evident.
But the demographic factor is not central. What worries those in the area is the nature of Jewish immigration, economically selected and technically endowed with capital. The Immigration Ordinance of 1925 prescribes that a Jewish immigrant must have an annual income of at least 60 pounds sterling or a minimum of 250 pounds sterling in capital. Jewish immigration therefore almost entirely consists of wealthy people. It should be added that many of the Jewish settlers are endowed with technical culture (engineers, agricultural experts, professors of sciences, etc.). The Arabs cannot therefore sustain competition: because of the administrative inequality in favour of the Jews, because of the Jewish grabbing of the best land, because of the union of capital and technical ability that characterizes Zionist colonization.
The solution cannot be the one advocated by the head of Zionism, but the one advocated by the head of the Muslims of Palestine. Yet, England has in Palestine a base for expansion into Asia Minor and will not give up its policy of protection for Zionism. On the other hand, millions of Muslims are in territories under English rule in Asia and Africa, and this must be taken into account soon; in Iraq, in Transjordan, and in Syria, Muslim discontent is far from being placated.
The problem of Zionism must also be solved in Europe as a problem of tolerance toward Jews. The fact that in 1925 50.5% of the Jewish immigrants in Palestine came from Poland is enough to show that the idea of reconstituting the Jewish nation grew and developed on the terrain of suffering, of fears, of inferiority in which the Jews have been made and are still made a outcast race in some countries.
The wall of Solomon was the altar of a dispersed and oppressed people. The Zionists want to make a throne out of it. But above that tattered wall stands the mosque of Amar in its beautiful grandeur. Behind Rome, destructive and persecuting, has advanced the Arab Muslim.
Have the Jews found in England an ally that will be able to disperse the people of Muhammad? The problem of Palestine is this: Arabs or Jews. The land is too cramped to be inhabited by both, in peaceful and free coexistence. The Zionists who demand the opening up of Palestine to an unlimited current of Jewish emigrants can only want the Arab diaspora. But the people of Judah were a complex of tribes of believers. It was religion that constituted the nation. The Arab people of Palestine are a fraction of the Islamic world. And Islam does not disperse, because it has many vital centers and a sphere of life that embraces a large part of the world.
If the Zionists do not come to see the problem with clear eyes, they will be driven out of Palestine. The exodus of settlers from the bloodied Jewish oasis should be a warning. Unfortunately, exemplary lessons are being demanded in London; and new blood will bathe the sod and sands of Palestine. With this sowing of hatred, the fruits of Zionist colonization can only be bitter.
Also
Some Early Anarchists on Zionism: From Bernard Lazare to Emma Goldman (1899-1939)
National Atavism, from Mother Earth (1906)
La Palestina insanguinata, per Camillo Berneri (1929)
Against the Racist Delirium, by Camillo Berneri (1934)
Mussolini: The Great Actor, by Camillo Berneri (1934)
What Can We Do?, by Camillo Berneri (1936)
Blood in Palestine, by Solidaridad Obrera (1936)
The Right of Peoples to Determine Themselves, by Solidaridad Obrera (1936)
Terrorism In Palestine: “Democracy” at Work, by Vernon Richards (1937)
Palestine and Socialist Policy, by Reginald Reynolds (1938)
Reg. Reynolds Answers Emma Goldman on Palestine (1938)
Palestine: Idealists and Capitalists, by Vernon Richards (1938)
Anarchist Tactic for Palestine, by Albert Meltzer (1939)
The “Advantages” of British Imperialism, by Reginald Reynolds (1939)
Conspiracy on Palestine, by Reginald Reynolds (1941)
Palestine and the Jews, by Albert Meltzer (1942)
Palestine, by Albert Meltzer (1948)
Middle East Notes: Civil War, from Freedom (1948)
Chaim Weizmann and Israel, by Albert Meltzer (1952)
A US Victory in the Middle East?, by Anne-Marie Fearon (1967)
The Class Nature of Israeli Society, by Haim Hanegbi, Moshé Machover and Akiva Orr (1971)
Camillo Berneri, by Frank Mintz (1978)
Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom, by Fredy Perlman (1983)
Luigi Camillo Berneri, by Toni (1998)
Palestine, platitudes and silence, by Tommy Lawson (2023)
A Textbook Case of Genocide, by Raz Segal (2023)
On Mourning and Statehood: A Response to Joshua Leifer, by Gabriel Winant (2023)
Three Genocides, by Eyal Weizman (2024)
Clarity Contra Complicity, by K. C. Sinclair (2025)
Anarchists & Fellow Travellers on Palestine
Camillo Berneri texts at the Anarchist Library
Excerpt from Nino Napolitano’s ‘La Rivolta Degli Arabi’ (1929)
“To us, the fate of the Arabs persecuted by the infamous usurper calls us to protest, equal to that which we were called against the imperial Little Father for the pogroms against the Jews. Certainly, indeed surely, behind the Arab people who pay the price for their irreducible idea of autonomy, there will be those who caress a wish for domination; but as people we feel the need to protest against the infamous [British] Empire that persecutes and starves them.”
Nino Napolitano, La Rivolta Degli Arabi, L’Adunata dei Refrattari, Oct.5, 1929, Newark, USA