Woman Who Fears Nothing

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 369, 25 February 1937, Page 8

Woman Who Fears Nothing

LEADER OF ARABS Prison walls have no terror for Mrs Mateel E. Mogannnam, olive-skinned Arab wife of a Jerusalem Arab lawyer, who has decided that the women of Palestine must support the Grand Mufti’s ban on the Royal Commission. Sitting in her Oriental home in Jerusalem, she told a newspaper correspondent a sensational story ot the Arab plans for the future of Palestine. “Across the desert, between the Jordan and the Tigris, the Arabs are massing,” she said. 4/ Fauzy Kawikzy, the Great One:— you call our Scarlet Pimpernel—is training this Arab army. Recruits are coming from ■'syria, Transjordan, Arabia and Irak. “They will not fight while the comiwision stays in Palestine. But after the Commission has returned home this army will march across the desert, through the almost impassable lava country —one section through Amman across the Jordan valley to Jerusalem, the other in the north through the plain of Jezreel.

“They will slaughter the Jews, and because the British will protect the Jews, they will be forced to kill them too.

“I am ready to gfc to prison at any moment in support, of the ban,” Mrs Mogannam said as she sipped sweet Turkish coffee. ‘T shall keep my mouth shut. Nothing will make me give in. When the police come I will go with them.

4 4 The Royal Commission may have power to command me to appear before them, but they cannot open my mouth —they can only send me to prison.” Mrs Mogannam v represents the Arab women’s committee, the power behind the Arab men’s higher committee. Smiling wistfully, she explained: ‘‘You see, I think maybe the Arab committee has been a little hasty in deciding to boycott, but the decision has ben made, and,” her dark eyes glowed with excitement, 44 we women will stand by it.”