Our Fathers’ Children

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bArab national movement and add: “We must explain to him b[the Arab] that Zionism does not come to attack the rights of the binhabitants but, quite the opposite, comes to bring its blessing. bThis explanation can come about only through cooperation in bthe field of economics and health so that the Arab will feel its bresults in a practical way.”

bOne of the early proponents of working with the Arabs was ba quixotic chap named H.M. Kalvarisky. He considered himself bto be both an “expert” on Arabs and an Arabophile. As with bmost of those who claim, for no logical reason, to have a special bliking for a particular people, Kalvarisky really had a snobbish bcontempt for the Arabs. Thus, he told the Zionist Executive Po- blitical Department in 1923 that the Arab was “by nature a mate- brialist and should he realize that no advantage will accrue to him bby siding with us, he will naturally turn away from us.” There bis not the slightest doubt that this contempt lay at the bottom of bthe majority Zionist view that one could buy the Arab’s political bsoul with economic benefits. It is similarly true that, today, all bthose who reject the removal of Arabs from the Land of Israel band claim that economic and social “integration” will make bthem loyal to the Zionist state are just as contemptuous of the bArab.

bEvery so often a Zionist leader would pronounce a thought bof clarity and truth, only to shrink from its implications. Thus, bBen-Gurion, a political chameleon whose changes in thinking brevealed not pragmatism as much as confusion and op- bportunism, called in 1921 for “friendly relations between Jewish bworkers and the Arab working masses” and suggested a long list bof benefits. The Ben-Gurion proposal was based on the old and btired thesis of bad Arab effendis and good Arab fellahin.

bFellow socialist Moshe Shertok (Sharett) differed with the bview and wrote to him in September 1921, saying: “Who is more blikely to find a response? We, the hated foreigners, or the muchtar b[“headman”] and the sheikh who dwell in the midst of their bpeople and play on such effective instruments as racist and na- btionalist instincts, language, hallowed tradition, and the force of binertia. . . . For the sake of self delusion we have made it all sound easy band simple—a handful of effendis against the masses of workers [italics badded].”

bNothing changed the minds of those determined not to b