Being a Jew, Leopold Weiss came in close contact with some of
the Zionist leaders. One of them was Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the undisputed leader
of the Zionist movement.
He met him in the house of one of his Jewish friends and had the
following conversation with him:
He was talking of the financial difficulties which were
besetting the dream of a Jewish National Home, and the insufficient response to
this dream among people abroad;
and I had the disturbing impression that even he, like most of
the other Zionists, was inclined to transfer the moral responsibility for all
that was happening in Palestine to the 'outside world.'
This impelled me to break through the deferential hush with
which all the other people present were listening to him, and to ask:
"What about the Arabs?"
I must have committed a faux pas by thus bringing a jarring note
into the conversation, for Dr. Weizmann turned his face slowly toward me, put
down the cup he had been holding in his hand, and repeated my question:
"What about the Arabs ...?"
"Well – how can you ever hope to make Palestine your
homeland in the face of the vehement opposition of the Arabs who, after all,
are in the majority of the country?"
The Zionist leader shrugged his shoulders and answered drily:
"We expect they won't be in a majority after a few years."
"Perhaps so. You have been dealing with this problem for
years and must know the situation better than I do. But quite apart from the
political difficulties which Arab opposition may or may not put in your way –
does not moral aspect of the question ever bother you?
Don't you think that is wrong on your part to displace the
people who have always lived in this country?"
"But it is our country," replied Dr. Weizmann, raising
his eyebrows.
"We are doing no more than taking back what we have wrongly
been deprived of."
"But you have been away from Palestine for nearly two
thousand years! Before that you had ruled this country, and hardly ever the
whole of it, for less than five hundred years. Don't you think that the Arabs
could, with equal justification, demand Spain for themselves – for,
after all, they held sway in Spain for nearly seven hundred
years and lost it entirely only five hundred years ago?"
Dr. Weizmann had visibly become impatient:
"Nonsense. The Arabs had only conquered Spain; it had never
been their original homeland, and so it was only right that in the end they
were driven out by the Spaniards."
"Forgive me," I retorted, "but it seems to me
that there is some historical oversight here. After all, the Hebrews also came
as conquerors to Palestine.
Long before them were many other Semitic and non-Semitic tribes
settled here – the Amorites, the Edomites, the Philistines, the Moabites, the
Hitties.
Those tribes continued living here even in the days of kingdoms
of Israel and Judah. They continued living here after the Romans drove our
ancestors away.
They are living here today. The Arabs who settled in Syria and
Palestine after their conquest in seventh century were always only a small
minority of the population; the rest of what we describe today as Palestinians
or Syrian "Arabs" are in reality only the Arabianized, original
inhabitants of the country.
Some of them became Muslims in the course of centuries, others
remained Christians; the Muslims naturally inter-married with their co-religionists
from Arabia.
But can you deny that the bulk of those people in Palestine, who
speak Arabic, whether Muslims or Christians, are direct-line descendents of the
original inhabitants; original in the sense of having lived in this country
centuries before the Hebrews came to it?"
Dr. Weizmann smiled politely at my outburst and turned the
conversation to other topics.
