Rediscovering William Ziff’s 1938 Book About Mandatory Palestine, Britain, the Ummah, and the Jews

In 2010 the Mansfield Centre reprinted a book that many, it seems, have forgotten – William Ziff’s The Rape of Palestine, first published in November 1938.

Despite an interest in Israel and its history both ancient and modern I had never heard of Ziff until, visiting the Mid-East Forum website the other day, I encountered Sheree Roth’s article “Were the Arabs Indigenous to Mandatory Palestine?” (Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2016) in which substantial portions of Ziff’s work are cited and his overall argument summarised and discussed.  The article is important and useful; the book – of which a digitised version can be found in its entirety online; just google using “William Ziff  Rape of Palestine” as your search term and you will find it – well worth reading.

Here is Roth’s article. Read it and pass it on; and do the same with Ziff’s book, once you have found it online.

http://www.meforum.org/6275/were-the-arabs-indigenous-to-mandatory-palestine

“Were the Arabs Indigenous to Mandatory Palestine?”

[Review and discussion of] The Rape of Palestine, 1st edition. By William Ziff.  London: Longmans, Green and Col, 1938.  Reprint – Mansfield Centre, Connecticut.  Martino Fine Books, 2010.]

‘The assertion that Palestinian Arabs are the indigenous population is central in their dispute with Israel. The message is that Jews stole and now occupy the land of the indigenous Arab population.

‘Rarely challenged, the claim is widespread, such as this statement from Henry Cattan, a Palestinian (sic: “Palestinian” Arab – CM) Christian jurist and writer born in Jerusalem: “The Palestinians (sic – CM) are the original and continuous inhabitants of Palestine (sic – CM) from time immemorial.”

If Cattan calls himself a Christian he has no excuse for not knowing that the land of Israel, also called land of Canaan in the Bible, but never called “Palestine”, was not renamed “Palestine” until some time after the lifetime of that Jewish preacher and teacher Jesus of Nazareth, and that the name – imposed by the invading and occupying Romans, as a deliberate insult to the Jews – was derived from that of a foreign tribe, the Philistines, the “Sea People”. – CM

‘Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas elaborated this claim in a recent speech: “Our narrative says that we were in this land since before Abraham.  I am not saying it. The Bible says, in these words, that the Palestinians existed before Abraham.  So why don’t you recognise my right?”

The book of Genesis does not speak of “Palestine” nor of “Palestinians”; nor even of “Philistines” because in the time of Abraham the Philistines (Pleshtim) had not yet arrived on the scene.  It speaks of the land of Canaan, and of various tribes living in and around Canaan, none of whom are called “Palestinians”. – CM

‘Saeb Erekat, the PA’s chief negotiator, stated, “I am the son of Jericho… the proud son of the Netufians and the Canaanites.  I’ve been there for 5,500 years before Joshua bin Nun came and burned my hometown Jericho.”

Really? It is far more probable, given the fact of massive Muslim in-migration from all over the lands blighted by Islam – lands not only Arab but non-Arab – that took place not only in the British Mandate period (as massively documented in Ziff’s book) but during the preceding centuries, that Mr Erekat’s ancestral roots lie somewhere else in the Middle East altogether… or perhaps even beyond. – CM

‘To be sure, some Arabs are descendants of the indigenous occupants.

I’ll bet, not many.  – CM

‘But waves of immigration into the Holy Land brought Jews, Arabs and others to the territories, to the point that most of today’s Arabic-speakers (that is: Arabic speakers living in and around Israel – CM) do not trace their roots back for centuries.

‘A number of analyses address the subject of Arab (and, therefore, for the most part, Muslim – CM) immigration to Palestine: Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial, Arieh Aveneri’s The Claim of Dispossession, and Fred M Gottheil’s essay, “The Smoking Gun: Arab immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931”.

‘But William B Ziff’s little-remembered The Rape of Palestine, published in 1938, adds an important first-hand source to these recent studies.

‘None of the modern authors used Ziff as a source, so this is new information to present-day analysts.

‘Ziff (1898-1953) was born in Chicago, and co-founded the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, which specialized in technical magazines in such subject areas as aviation, radio, and photography.

‘Active in Zionist politics, his Rape of Palestine was considered by the (overwhelmingly Arabophile and Islamophile, and infested with antisemites – CM) British Foreign Office as “a violent and offensive book” and for years afterward the British monitored the Zionist writings and speeches of this “unscrupulous gangster”, fearful that his audiences were “lapping this poison up”.

Oh, dear.  Having found the book online, and begun to read it, I find these screeching accusations against it to be so off the mark as to be farcical. – CM

‘The thrust of Ziff’s book is on British policy in Palestine during the Mandate period, but what is especially interesting today are his comments on the migration of Arabs (that is: of mostly-Muslim Arabs – CM) and the squelching of Jewish immigration by the British.

I am reminded eerily of what is happening today, as many Western nations freely admit hordes of Muslims – mostly males of military age – who claim to be “refugees and asylum seekers”, whilst somehow managing to make entry into the West extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for non-Muslims – threatened-with-genocide Christians, and members of other dreadfully-persecuted and imperilled minorities – who are trying to escape from Muslim lands.  The US and the UK have admitted “refugees” from Syria; but the proportion of Muslims to Christians, within that intake, doees not reflect the relative percentages of Muslim and Christian that obtained in Syria before the Sunni-Shiite-Alawite civil war broke out; if it did, then ten percent of the admitted Syrian refugees would be Christians, but  that is not the case, the percentage is far less. – CM

‘The following extensive quotes show the value of his work.

“Indigenous” Pre-20th Century Foreigners.

‘Ziff notes that foreigners already peopled the land:

“It was always the foreign soldier who was the police power in Palestine.

“The Tulunides brought in Turks and Negroes.  The Fatimids introduced Berbers, Slavs, Greeks, Kurds, and mercenaries of all kinds (and these would have been, overwhelmingly, Muslims – CM).  The Mamelukes imported legions of Georgians and Circassians.  Each monarch for his own personal safety relied on great levies of slave warriors.  Saladin, hard-pressed by the Crusaders, received 150,000 Persians who were given lands in Galilee and the Sidon district for their services.

“Out of this human patchwork of Jews, Arabs, Armenians, Kalmucks, Persians, Crusaders, Tartars, Indians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Sudanese, Turks, Mongols, Romans, Kharmazians, Greeks, pilgrims, wanderers, ne’er-do-wells and adventurers, invaders, slaves… was formed that hodge-podge of blood and mentality we call today “Levantine”.

…

“In the fourteenth century, drought caused the immigration into Palestine of 18,000 “tents” of Yurate Tartars from the Euphrates.  Soon followed 20,000 Ashiri under Gaza, and four thousand Mongols under Moulai, who occupied the Jordan Valley and settled from Jerusalem south.  Kaisaite and Yemenite tribes followed in their trail….

“In 1830 the Albanian conqueror Mehemet [Muhammad] Ali colonised Jaffa, Nablus and Beisan with Egyptian soldiers and their Sudanese allies.  Fourteen years later (i.e. in 1844 – CM), Lynch estimated the thirteen thousand inhabitants of Jaffa to be composed of eighteen thousand Turco-Egyptians, four thousand Greeks and Armenians, and one thousand Jews and Maronites.  He did not consider that there were any Arabs at all in that city...”.

‘Ziff continues: 

“One hundred years ago (i.e. in 1838 – CM), [Jaffa?] had a population of four thousand.

So presumably it went from four to thirteen in the course of six years – 1838-1844. – CM

“Today (i.e. circa 1938 – CM) it holds seventy thousand, overwhelmingly Arab, who are largely descendants of the Eygptians and Ethiopians brought in by the conqueror Ibrahim Pasha [Muhammad Ali’s son].  The few thousand Jews who lived here fled during the 1936 riots (riots perpetrated by Arabic-speaking Muslims – CM), abandoning their shops and property.

‘Arabs Attracted to Jewish-Settled Areas.

‘Ziff reports that Jews invested large amounts of money to “facilitate” Jewish immigration and encourage Jewish settlement in Palestine….

‘All the authors mentioned above refer to the Arabs as being attracted by Jewish economic activity to their settled areas.  Ziff describes this pattern:

“Not until the Zionists had arrived in numbers did the Arab population begin to augment itself.  The introduction of European standards of wage and life acted like a magnet on the entire Near East.  Abruptly, Palestine became an Arab centre of attraction.  By 1922, after a quarter century of Jewish colonization, their (the mainly-Muslim Arabs’ – CM) numbers mushroomed to 488,000.  Today they are over a million.

“If the English contention were accurate, we should expect to find an exodus of Arabs from areas where Jews are settled.  But exactly the opposite is true: it is precisely in the vicinity of these Jewish villages that Arab development is most marked.  Arab Haifa, profiting by the Zionist boom, grew from 1922 to 1936 by 130 percent, Jaffa by 80 percent, and Jerusalem by 55 percent.  The Arab rural settlement in the Tel Aviv district increased by over 135 percent.  The all-Arab city of Nablus (whose name, by the way, is an Arabisation of a Greek name – Nea Polis, the new city – CM) which held 33,000 before the war (that is, before WWI – CM), has fallen to less than 12,000.  Safed, which had 20,000, dropped to less than 9,000.”

‘Lack of Jobs for Jews.

‘Ziff elaborates on Jewish efforts, both from within and from abroad, to create more jobs for those Jews emigrating to Palestine, as well as those already living there.  These efforts spurred significant economic growth and consequently accomplished the goal of providing employment.

‘However, British policy resulted in a stream into Palestine of illegal Arab (and, therefore, overwhelmingly Muslim – CM) immigrants, who filled these jobs in lieu of the barred Jews...

‘…The Zionists have been mercilessly jobbed. They choked and spluttered in amazed exasperation. The incredible posing of “landless Arabs” in a country suffering from a drastic shortage of workers was past understanding. So, too, was the Commission’s demand that Jewish capitalists be forced to put all Arab unemployed to work before (my emphasis – CM) another Jew could come in, which meant literally the employment of all the natives of Northeast Africa and Arabia (since these outsiders were already flowing into the country in a steady stream…

“Whole villages in the Hauran have been emptied of their people, who are drifting into Palestine. Count de Martel, French high commissioner for Syria, asserted in the summer of 1934 that even Arab merchants were moving from Damascus to Palestine because of the prosperity there; and in 1936, the head of the Moslem Youth Association in Beirut, Jamil Bek Basham, wrote that “there is a penetration into Palestine of an army of Syrian labourers..”.

It is, of course, possible that there was more to this than just people “moving to where the work was”.  Hijra, immigration-invasion, is an ancient tactic of Islam.  Just how “unconscious” was this mass movement of Muslims that, perceiving a local resurgence in Jewish numbers and, therefore, Jewish political power, on historically-Jewish land, instantly poured in – quite probably encouraged and enabled by British Islamophiles and Arabophiles – to demographically swamp it? – CM

‘British Obstruction of Jewish, Not Arab, Immigration.

‘Peters and Avneri describe how the British obstructed Jewish immigration, while facilitating or ignoring Arab (and therefore, Muslim – CM) immigration.

Not one of Britain’s proudest achievements, to say the least. – CM

‘Ziff adds details about immigration certificates, labor visas, taxation, and Hadassah aliyahs:

“As the “absorptive capacity” of the country increased so tremendously under the stimulus of Jewish investment, that any effort to deny it became ludicrous, the government produced still other cards out of its sleeve.  It announced, in 1936 (note the year – 1936; remember what was happening in Germany at that time – CM) that 70 percent of the thirteen hundred immigration certificates available for the following six months were ear-marked for bachelors, ten percent for maidens, and 20 percent for men with families, thus cutting down immigration without appearing to do so.

And this at a time when the most prudent and far-seeing of the Jews of Germany and of other parts of continental Europe in general were getting the wind up and trying to flee, with their families.  The British – cravenly pandering to the Ummah or Mohammedan Mob – slammed shut the gates of Mandatory Palestine against the very people who should naturally have been offered refuge there, it being their ancestral homeland.  The antisemitic bureaucrats of perfidious Albion who, by every imaginable underhanded means prevented European Jewish families – note the refusal to accept women, girls, families –  from fleeing to Mandatory Palestine during the mid-late 1930s, and therefore trapped most of them in Europe where they perished in Nazi death camps, have the blood of those innocents on their hands, right up to the elbows. – CM

“Another able device was the refusal to allow the wives and families of employed residents to enter without the precious labour visas, though in many cases they were an actual charge on these same residents, who sent money abroad to maintain them.

“Such an obvious attempt was made to restrict the entry of women that the Jewish Agency flatly accused the government in November 1934 of a mischievous and wilful attempt “directed against any considerable development of the immigration of [Jewish] women into Palestine.”

“Many of the administration’s reasons for refusing entry permits would do credit to Herr Hitler (one must at all times bear grimly in mind that Ziff’s book appeared in print in November 1938 – CM) as witness the refusal to grant a visa to a refugee Russian rabbi on the excuse that “there were enough rabbis already in Palestine”.

“Some of the regulations designed to restrict Jewish immigration are classic.  One of these edicts, promulgated November 14, 1933, allowed only 250 immigrants “to enter Palestine from any one vessel”. Its effectiveness rested on the fact that few of the ships touching Palestine ports could make a payload out of such a small number of travellers, forcing the cancellation of sailings.

“Perhaps the outstanding example of official artifice was the schedule announced for the period between October 1st 1935 and March 31st 1936.  Four thousand, three hundred and fifty visas were granted..  What was not mentioned were the following deductions made from this schedule in advance: 1,000 certificates “advanced” during the previous six-month period; 250 reserved by the government (for non-Jews); 1,200 taken off to cover “illegal” immigrants who could not be apprehended; and 1,900 for dependents of employed residents (who in any other country would have entered as a matter of course).  If these deductions are added up they are found to equal exactly the number of certificates granted; so that the administration was only perpetrating a crude joke on the Zionists and, in effect, issuing no certificates at all...” (emphasis in original; and again, bear in mind, this was 1935-1936, and the shadow of Herr Hitler was growing ever darker and longer across Germany and all Europe, and all sensible Jews were beginning to be seriously frightened, and were looking to leave if they could – CM).

“Everything in this business is made subject to cash.  Even the boasted Hadassah aliyahs, by which a few hundred Jewish children were brought in from Germany (a few hundred! – the blood of the children who would otherwise have come, but were actively prevented from so doing by the various schemes of the Mandate bureaucrats doing the bidding of the Ummah and, as a result, finished up in the ovens, or in the execution pits, is on the hands of the blandly-antisemitic British bureaucrats who appear to have spent a great deal of time and effort concocting clever ways to prevent all but the smallest possible number of Jews from reaching Mandatory Palestine – the ancient Land of Israel – even if, as a result, those Jews – men women and children – would meet an ever more certain and hideous death. – CM) were made conditional on a substantial money deposit, much as would be charged if the children had entered a boarding school. The Department of Immigration is a paying business, showing in a typical year a net income of 333,200 pounds against an expenditure of 209,100 pounds…”.

Squeezing the Jews, just as medieval kings of England – and elsewhere – had been wont to do.  Given the circumstances, and Hitler’s already-savage persecution of Jews in Germany, the British Mandate administrators’ demanding payment of vast sums before they would take a Jewish child from Germany, amounts to extortion and holding-to-ransom. – CM

“Lured by stark evidence of labour scarcity and big pay, peoples from all surrounding states began to drift into Palestine.

“Though a huge corps coast and frontier guards kept vigilant watch to prevent the entry of “illegal” Jews, Arabs from anywhere (and that means, primarily, Muslim Arabs – CM) entered without even the gesture of passport investigation.

An iniquitous double standard.. and a gross violation of the original terms of the Mandate, whereby the British were supposed to facilitate Jewish settlement in the land of Israel. – CM

“The report of the Peel Commission admits frankly that the inhabitants of Syria and Transjordan “are free to enter the corresponding districts in Palestine without special formality”.  It is, in fact, by disguising themselves as Arabs that most “Illegal” Jewish immigration is accomplished.  (Bolding and italics mine – CM).

“A news item of July 4 1934 gives the circumstance more lucidly than pages of reference.  It reads, “Five Jewish women coming overland from Damascus, attired in the traditional costumes of Muslim women, including the black veils, were apprehended at the border when police saw through their disguises. They could not answer questions put to them in Arabic.”

They must have been non-Arabic-speaking Jews from the Diaspora in “Christian” lands, rather than Jews from within the Arabic-speaking regions of the dar al Islam. – CM

‘Hunting Down Jews.

‘Only Ziff mentions the British practice of hunting down “illegal” Jews.

In which they enlisted and made use of the services of Jew-hating Muslim Arabs. – CM

“Coincident with the advent of Hitler, the business assumed the proportions of an out-and-out Jew-hunt.  In a nice piece of collusion between the colonial secretary, Sir Phillip Cunliffe-Lister, and an M.P. named MacDonald, the Government “admitted” that “illegal” Jewish immigration existed, but stated in assurance that “practical steps would be taken to deal with the matter”.

“The very next day Cunliffe-Lister announced stringent measures to prevent “illegal” Jewish immigration into Palestine.

Having made legal immigration well-nigh impossible. – CM

“The system of tourist deposits was instituted.  Holders of Nansen (League of Nations) passports, that pitiful army of staatenlos [stateless] men were not in future to be granted even tourist visas.  An air-tight frontier control in collaboration with the agreeable French authorities in Syria was to be put in effect.

“On the subject of illegal Arab (that is: Arab and overwhelmingly-Muslim – CM) immigration, the announcement was expressively silent.

“Showing the extent of its pre-organisation, the campaign at once assumed the proportions of a large-scale pursuit of Jews over the length and breadth of Palestine.  Ironically paid for out of Jewish tax moneys, a dragnet of aeroplane and motor-boat patrols were detailed along the borders, while British and Arab constables, assisted by organised groups of fellaheen, enjoyed themselves in scouring the coast-wise territory.

Those fellaheen would mostly have been Muslims. – CM

“At Beirut and other Syrian cities, British and Arab police questioned motorbus drivers, asking if Jews were among the passengers, carefully examining the passports of all suspected of being Jews, while others were as scrupulously ignored…”.

‘According to Ziff:

“Hunting “illegal” Jews became a major game, with illegal Arab (and most likely, Muslim – CM) newcomers enlisting gleefully in the chase.

I’ll bet the Muslims enjoyed this. –  CM

“Savage Bedouins (Muslim to a man – CM) joined in under promise of a reward for any Jewish man, woman or child they could catch.  Palestine was under a virtual reign of terror. Anyone who could not immediately prove his citizenship, or produce his or her certificate of entry, was tracked down, jailed, and brutally beaten..

“A fair example is the case of a woman and six small children who had arrived legally and with the proper passport and visa from Turkestan.  On the way, her husband had been killed at a railway station.  The whole family was arrested on the grounds that the passport provided not for a woman and six children, but for a man, a woman, and six children.  On this pretext the woman and her children were ordered to prison.”

‘Illegal Arab Immigration’.

‘Ziff also writes about futile attempts by Jews to bring the problem of illegal Arab immigrants to the attention of British authorities.

Who it seems were quite content to allow hordes of Muslims to flood Mandatory Palestine, whilst expending a great deal of time and energy to prevent Jews at all costs from entering. – CM

“It is, of course, difficult to attain any adequate idea of the extent of this flood of non-Jewish immigrants, since officially it does not exist.  In the absence of accurate canvass, its size must be pieced together and surmised.  Such calculations as are available show an Arab immigration fro the single year 1933 of at least 64,000 souls.  Added to the acknowledged Hauranese infiltration are some 2000 who arrived from Damascus alone.  Mokattan, the leading Cairo daily, announced that ten thousand Druses had gone to the Holy Land, and according to Al-Jamia al-Islamia, an Arab newspaper of Jaffa, seventeen thousand Egyptians had come from the Sinai peninsula alone.

The majority of these people had shown no interest whatever in the land of Israel until after the Jews showed signs of gaining a stronger presence there. – CM

“To these must be added considerable groups of Numidians and even Abyssinians, and a vast uncounted army from Transjordan about whose movement into Palestine not the slightest pretence of legality is maintained.”

‘Ziff adds:

“Exasperated by the government’s lack of good faith, which was illicitly converting the Holy Land (that is: the ancestral homeland of the House of Israel, of the Jews – CM) into an Arab country (and, therefore, de facto, into a Muslim country – CM) groups of courageous Jewish youths volunteered in 1934 to point out what apparently the authorities were unable to see.

“Fourteen hundred of these illegals were quickly shown to be working at Petach Tikvah, and 1,200 in Haifa on road and house constructions alone. Their probable numbers could be gathered from a test count of 357 Arab labourers in the building materials industry, which showed 273 to be Hauranis illegally in the country. A check of Arabs employed in Palestine ports on December 23 1936 showed that only 50 of the 750 workers were Palestinians.  The remainder included 200 Egyptians and 500 Hauranis. Whole hordes of these people were demonstrated to be in the employ of the government itself.

Even as it employed Muslim Arabs to hunt down every last one of the few “illegal” Jewish immigrants who had somehow managed to get into the country against all the odds. – CM

“Without deigning to make a reply, the administration pointedly told the Jews to mind their own business.  When Jews picketed Jewish employers of this alien labour, the government bared its teeth, and sentenced the demonstrators to six months at hard labour for their pains.  Jews again picketed a Haifa theatre being erected by a contractor named Borovsky, where illegal Hauranis were employed.  Immediately the authorities arrested fifty-three Jews and sentenced them to prison terms.”

‘Modern authors agree with Ziff that the huge increase in Arab population numbers cannot be accounted for by natural growth. 

‘Ziff does the math.

“Though the government solemnly estimates in 1937 a total Moslem increase by immigration of only 22,535 since the time of the British occupation (i.e. from 1917 onwards – CM), evidence of a vast influx of desert tribesmen is obvious everywhere.

“As early as 1926, Colonial Secretary Amery cautiously conceded that despite the growth of the Jewish element (in the face of all the deliberate obstructions placed in the way of Jewish immigration by the British authorities, which obstructions grew ever more obvious and ever more severe through the 1930s – CM), “the increase of the Arabs is actually greater than the Jews”.  Figures presented before the Peel Commission in 1937 showed the Arab population to have more than doubled in fourteen years.  This admitted gain in half a generation must either be attributed to outside immigration, or to the most astonishing philoprogenitiveness in medical history…

“The government itself acknowledged in 1922 the immigration of whole tribes “from the Hejaz and southern Transjordan into the Beersheba area”, a fact which itself must make its estimates of Arab immigration far-fetched.

“Other approximate figures are available from scattered but credible sources.  One of these is the statement of the French governor of the Hauran in Syria, that from his district alone, in the summer of 1933, thirty-five thousand people had left for Palestine as a consequence of bad crops…”. “

‘The increasei n Arab population due to immigration was no secret.

‘Another important testimony came from Robert Kennedy, the future U.S. attorney-general, who travelled at age 22 in 1948 to Palestine, and reported from there for the Boston Post.

‘He also noted the influx of Arab immigration into Palestine:

“The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs in the 12 years between 1932 and 1944 came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state.  This is the only country in the Near and Middle East where an Arab middle class is in existence.”

‘Fred Gottheil summarizes why finding the truth on this topic is important:

“For Arab Palestinians (that is: for Arabic-speakers, mostly Muslim, living in and around Israel – CM), the character of their demography is at the heart of their claim to territorial inheritance and national sovereignty. Their contention, seen by them as being beyond dispute, is that Arab Palestinians (sic: “Palestinians” – CM) have deep and timeless roots in that geography.  To challenge that contention, then, is to challenge their self-selected criterion for sovereignty”.

 ‘While Ziff’s book has lain dormant, his insights regarding the waves of Arab immigration into Palestine substantiates the assertions of later scholars.

‘During the mandate period, Arabs (who were, overwhelmingly, Muslims – CM) from many lands flowed freely into Palestine, while Jewish immigration was severely (and actively – CM) limited.  

‘The truth remains that the native Arab population in Palestine was relatively small before the first Jewish settlers made it an attractive and prosperous place.’

 

From a preliminary page-through of some of the digitised online version of Ziff’s book, I shall conclude my comments by quoting a little more. First, Ziff himself, from the closing chapters of his book: “The fact must be made clear, that England has no vested interest in Palestine which entitles her to steal it from a people who need it to sustain their very life. (Remember, always remember, that Ziff wrote these words in 1937-38 – CM).  The Arabs (that is: the Muslim Arabs – CM) must be told, too, that this effort to expropriate, for their already bloated empire, a tiny province on the coast, will prove a futile and misguided dream...”.

And then there is this, by a reviewer named Eugene Lyons, which was printed in the introductory pages of the volume on its first appearance, under the caption, “Opinions”:

“Having read “The Rape of Palestine”, I stand amazed at the scholarship, the courage, and the competence of William Ziff, its author.

“The book is full of political dynamite – in its documented indictment of the British camarilla which in betraying the Jewish nation is betraying the British nation as well; in its unsparing exposure of self-divided Zionist leadership; in its passionate and convincing demonstration that anti-Semitism threatens to annihilate not only us Jews, but everything connoted by ‘Christian civilisation’.  It is a moving and powerful and vastly significant book the kind of book, it seems to me, that makes history”.

Perhaps not back then, in 1938. Indeed, it seems to have been pretty successfully buried, for more than seventy years. But perhaps, having been lately rediscovered and reprinted, and placed out there in cyberspace as well, its time is now, when its v