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BEHIND THE SILKEN CURTAIN: The Story of a Palestine Mission by Bartley C. Crum

BEHIND THE SILKEN CURTAIN: The Story of a Palestine Mission

By

Pub Date: April 8th, 1947
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

A fighting book which should be required for everyone who feels himself competent to discuss the question of a solution in Palestine; a book to inform one's opinions, to help one arrive at a constructive American point of view, a sound foreign policy which alone can end the the Palestinian crisis. It doesn't make for esteem- our own compromise with basic principles has encouraged Britain's determination to maintain the status que -- a position which Bartley Crum feels will lead to economic, strategic and moral loss, and a strengthening of those very forces we fear in the Middle East...Crum, San Francisco lawyer, member of the Anglo-American Joint Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, here tells the grim story of the steps by which the Committee arrived at a unanimous recommendation:- immediate certificates of entry for 100,000 Jewish immigrants; a return to the basis of the mandate principles of government for Palestine as neither an Arab nor a Jewish state, pending trusteeship under the U.N.; revocation of the 1939 White Paper; and ultimately, a standard of equality which would assure peace in Palestine....Before reaching these historic (and subsequently apparently ignored) conclusions, the committee faced disunity, divided opinion, the British definitely pro-Arab, anti-Jew, the Americans in the main veering to the side of the Jew; they were guarded, spied upon, distrusted throughout the mission; they were bombarded from all sides; but they saw for themselves the evidence in the concentration camps of Europe, the almost complete unanimity of the displaced persons- the Jews -- for admission to Palestine; they visited Egypt and Palestine; they heard all sides; they accepted the fact that the Haganah was backed by a whole people, the Jewish Agency was a necessary factor for operations, that Tel Aviv was a demonstration of the principles of democracy operating in the heart of a police state, that only- or mainly- at the top levels of the Arab world is a basis of agreement impossible, and that on lower levels, the masses of Arabs have had their standards raised whenever they came in contact with what the Jews are achieving.....A prejudiced book -- perhaps. But he convinces by incontrovertible evidence. A book that, properly and fairly launched, should do much to clear the mists of misconception and confusion from our eyes.