Sheiks & Strikes

In Jerusalem last week the British Crown tried to prosecute an Arab, potent Sheik Taleb Maraka, for instigating the "Hebron Massacre" of Jews (TIME, Sept. 9) August upon the Bench in beehive wigs and flowing gowns sat Mr. Justice Corrie and Mr. Justice Defreitas. This was going to be an exemplary trial. The Arab prisoner would be grilled by an Arab prosecutor. There were plenty of prosecution witnesses, already lamenting and smiting their breasts in the corridor. With an easy sauntering stride and a smile of contempt for the witnesses Prisoner Sheik Taleb Maraka entered, was escorted to the dock by an armed policeman.

Sixty-six Jews were butchered at Hebron. The Arab prosecutor did not seem to want to probe into that. To simple peasant witnesses he addressed questions remarkably prolix and abstruse, double questions, contradictory questions. Even so the witnesses managed to testify that they had seen Sheik Taleb Maraka publicly inciting Arabs to massacre, shouting that the faithful could settle any debts they might owe to Jews by slaughtering their creditors. One witness who thus testified was Superintendent Cafferata of the local British Police. When the Arab prosecutor sought to question Mr. Cafferata only on irrelevant topics, Mr. Justices Corrie and Defreitas became incensed, ordered another Arab to prosecute for the Crown on the morrow.

"Tell me, Sheik Taleb Maraka." began the second Arab prosecutor, "are you an enemy of the Jews?"

"As a matter of fact," smiled the prisoner blandly, "I am their friend."

"Did you incite the massacre of any Jews?"

"Never!" shouted the Sheik, smacking his fist on the dock. "Never in all my life have I led or addressed a crowd. ... I did not even learn of what happened until I read the police reports."

Exploded Mr. Justice Defreitas: "I refuse to believe that you, as a member of

the Arab Executive Committee, did not know what was going on!" "I refuse to believe," coolly observed Sheik Taleb Maraka soon afterward, "that the respectable Moslems of Hebron are capable of committing atrocities." Since the Crown seemed unable to get an Arab to prosecute and dared not incense Moslems by calling in a Jew, the trial dragged on in farcical doldrums. Meanwhile the most potent Moslem in Palestine, the young and vigorous Grand Mufti Haj Amin El-Husseini, President of the Supreme Moslem Council, ordered a general strike of Arabs, in protest against the British Government's determination to bring to justice suspected authors of the Palestine Massacres (TIME, Sept. 16). Strikers Spanked. Among the first and most enthusiastic strikers were Arab schoolboys at Nablus, 30 miles north of Jerusalem. Several were nabbed by Assistant Director of Education Parrel and soundly spanked. Screaming they rushed home to their parents. Within an hour the "General Strike," previously ineffective in Nablus, halted every Arab activity. Strikers militating in numerous Palestine towns and cities provoked demonstrations which British troops were able to keep under control last week, but an ugly situation loomed. Einstein v. Mufti. As Jews in foreign lands grew anxious, fearing afresh for their Palestine brethren, the Grand Mufti was attacked from far away Berlin by Israel's aloof delver into relativity riddles, Albert Einstein. Wrote he for the Man chester Guardian, in an effort to arouse Englishmen: "Does public opinion in Great Britain realize that the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem, who is the center of all the trouble and speaks so loudly in the name of all the Moslems, is a young political adventurer not much more, I understand, than 30 years old, who, in 1920, was sentenced to several years' imprisonment for his complicity in the riots then, but was pardoned under the terms of amnesty? The mentality of this man may be gauged from a recent statement he gave to an interviewer, accusing me, of all men, of having demanded the rebuilding of the [Jewish] Temple [of Solomon] on the site of the [Moslem] Mosque of Omar."

Mufti's Demands. In frequent statements to Jews and others the Grand Mufti has declared that Palestine can only have peace when ruled by a Government responsible to a local Palestine Parliament in which Jews and Arabs would be proportionately represented. This demand could be met by making Palestine a dominion like Canada. But since Palestine Arabs outnumber Palestine Jews five to one, the British Government fears to make an experiment in democracy which would give Palestine a Parliament almost totally Arabian.