NO DOUBTS FOR MRS. SILVERMAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 279, 27 October 1944, Page 14

NO DOUBTS FOR MRS. SILVERMAN

Interview With A Zionist

By a

Staff Reporter

OU may or may not surrender -to Mrs. Silverman, Zionist delegate now in New Zealand, but you will certainly sit up and take notice of her. It is doubtful if she is 60 inches high, and in addition she is 61 years old, she says-though she looks 10 years younger -and a grandmother; but let a doubt creep into a question about Palestine and you will yourself be asked so many questions in the next three minutes that you will hesitate before you speak again. She is dramatic, eloquent, sarcastic, fiery, one after the other and all together, and just when you have thought out an answer to a rhetorical flood she drops her hands and her eyes and her voice and you have the choice between brutality and silence. It was the Mufti a moment ago; Ibn Saud, or the scoundrel Nahas Pasha. But suddenly it is her people, Hitler’s victims in Europe, Britain’s vacillations and delays in Palestine, and there is blood where she is

looking on the floor-blood and tearsand your questions die on your lips. Where We Began I was certainly unfortunate in my day. The papers the night before had reported a statement by the Colonial Secreta that Jewish terrorists were interfering with the war effort, and this report had been repeated in the morning papers and amplified by an appeal from the Officer Commanding our troops in the Middle East. Conversation began there. Had I seen that report-that bundle of lies and malice written to injure her people? "T saw a statement by Mr. Stanley." "Mr, Stanley did not write it. It came from that scoyndrel Nahas Pashanow, thank God, driven out of office. I deplore the acts of irresponsible Jews, but tell me this, sir! Why should the Jews be holier than everyone else? If we are a nation we are entitled to so many gangsters, so many thieves, so many prostitutes, so many murderers. Why should the Jews only be saints?"

It did not seem reasonable, and I said so, but I spoke too soon. "They were not Jewish terrorists, anyhow. Jews do not murder or rob anyone. Those outrages were caused by hired assassins-Arab gangsters brought in from ‘Trans-Jordania, Iraq and Syria." Arabs and Jews It was necessary to be more careful. So I asked if the Arabs and Jews already in Palestine-not the politicians but the ordinary people of both nations -were living harmoniously. Did friendships exist between them, and was there free coming and going in their homes and businesses? "That question answers itself, sir. Listen. When I first went to Palestine 95 per cent of the new-born Arab babies had trachom — an eye-infection that when neglected leads to blindness; It was heart-breaking to see flies clinging in masses to their lids and the childdren too listless to brush them away. (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) To-day that disease has disappeared. Jewish science has driven it out. Shouldn’t the Arabs be grateful?" "They should be." "They should be, and they are, sir. They had malaria, too, don’t forget, and typhus and dysentery, and other loathsome diseases. Now they have doctors and nurses and hospitals and schools, and you tell me that they are not grateful." "I told you that they are grateful, or should be." "And don’t forget either, sir, that we have raised their standard of living from about. 644d a day in your money to five or six times as much. And you Say that they don’t want us there!" "No, Mrs. Silverman, I asked you to tell me how they feel about you." "How. would you feel about anyone who saved the lives and sight of your children, banished disease from your home and put clothes on your back instead of rags?" "Grateful, I hope." "Yet you dare to tell me, sir, that the Arabs are not grateful!" "Mrs. Silverman, I have told you nothing. I am asking you questions." Questions for the Questioner "Well, let me ask you some questions. Why all this solicitude for the Arabs? Arabs, Arabs, why always the Arabs? How solicitous were you for the Maoris when you took their country? You killed them off." "We did kill a lot of them, and they killed a lot of us. But that was in a smash-and-grab period of world history. Do I understand you to be saying that the Jews are now doing in Palestine what all nations did once?" "What do you ‘mean?" "Smashing into Palestine." "Before God, sir, you amaze me. You either don’t listen to me or you don’t want to hear me. Palestine is ours! God gave it to us-and no power on earth will take it away from us a second time. But we are not smashing our way in. We are buying our way — and before God aren’t we paying! The Arabs are bleeding, us. white. Fifty pounds an acre for-rocks and sand and swamp! And — in the meantime my people are dispersed and dying: No country wants them; and — I say ‘Let us go back home then; to our own place; to Zion."

She drooped suddenly and was silent. I was embarrassed and ashamed. Then she said very quietly: "Why did you come to see me, sir?" "To get information." "No, sir! Not to get information. When I speak to you there is a wall of suspicion or doubt or indifference between us,'and my words bounce back again." "But you treat me as a_ hostile witness." "Don’t say that. Don’t go away and say that you met with hostility. I am not hostile. I welcome your questions, but when I answer them you ask them again. I can’t understand you." "Then I had better go. I am sorry that we can’t speak plainly, but apparently we can’t." "All So Simple" "Sit down, sir-please. We must not part in misunderstanding. I am prepared to answer any question, but what more do you still require to know? What more does anyone require to know? It is all so simple: A Land; a promise; a claim maintained for 2000 years; an acknowledgment by Mr. Balfour and a contract by 52 nations. And now ourselves at the gate saying, ‘Fulfil the promise of God and man and let us in.’ That is all, sir. There are no questions. God gave us His holy word, and the powers of Hell will not prevail against us." * * * RITTEN down it now seems tame and flat. Apart from anything else not a tenth of what was said has been recorded, and to make up that tenth I have selected only the politically safe and diplomatically permissible things. It is nowhere a verbatim report of either questions or answers. But it is faithful as far as it goes, and if I have: not retained the atmosphere that is because scorn, passion, vehemence and whitehot faith are difficult to imprison in a reporter’s note-book. eee