On the Record

Sonorous tones familiar to Cleveland's temple last week filled the committee room at Lake Success: "In these tragic years, when the whole household of Israel became one great hostelry of pain, we could not have builded what we did build had we not preserved our unshakable trust in the victory of truth." Grey-maned Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, speaking for the Jewish Agency for Palestine, was telling the 55 U.N. delegations what the Zionists regard as truth's victory: unlimited immigration of refugee Jews into Palestine, creation of a Zionist state when Jews outnumber the Arabs.

Next day a clipped English voice that has persuasively argued in many Jerusalem courtrooms replied: "With the future of our children in doubt, with our national patrimony in danger, we [Palestinian Arabs] come to you ... in the full assurance that your conscience will support us." Dark, dapper Henri Cattan, speaking for the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine, was telling U.N. what the Arabs expect of them: immediate stopping of all Jewish immigration into Palestine, setting up of an independent state in which Arabs would have a majority.

Alumni Club. The delegates of the five Arab states in U.N. gathered round to congratulate London-educated Lawyer Cattan. They formed a group of westernized Arabs, divided by many rivalries, but united by a common hatred of Zionism. Big, hawknosed Charles Malik, the rangy giant of Lebanon, once taught philosophy at Harvard. His part-Christian, part-Moslem state favors Arab independence but fears a pan-Islamic movement which might engulf the Christians of Lebanon. Little, white-thatched Paris el Khoury of Syria has spent a lifetime in politics opposing the Turks, the French, and now the Zionists. He likes a sedentary life, moves at the speed of a slow-motion film. Asked last week if he thought the Assembly was dragging, El Khoury, with great deliberation, said: "No, I do not consider that things are moving slowly."

Iraq's excitable, blustering Fadhil Jamali likes to scold Americans about Zionism: "The trouble with you Americans is that you think it is a case of a people without a homeland moving into a land without a people." Saudi Arabia's cool, ceremonious Prince Feisal al Saud is the only Arab head delegate who wears flowing native abaya and qutra. His Egyptian colleague, suave, man-of-the-world Mahmoud Hassan Pasha (whose country contests with Lebanon the intellectual leadership of the Arab world), often wears sports clothes to U.N. sessions. The head delegates and their staffs are not only a well-organized team (coached by a lank Egyptian, Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League), but a sort of alumni club: most of the Arabs at U.N. were educated at the American University of Beirut.

Far away from Lake Success, another Arab nodded approvingly at Cattan's performance. From his beflowered villa in Cairo's Qubba Gardens (guarded inside by Palestinian gunmen, outside by Egyptian troops), Haj Amin el Husseini, onetime Mufti of Jerusalem and Nazi collaborator, directed the work of the Arab Higher Committee. Said he: "We go to New York, but we are under no obligations to accept any solution unless it is favorable. If unfavorable, we will fight."

Witness & Jury. The U.S. had disappointed both Zionists and Arabs by refusing to show what sort of solution it favored. Instead, the U.S. stuck consistently to its position that there was no point in discussing Palestine until a neutral U.N. inquiry commission had studied the problem and made its recommendations. Neither Britain nor the U.S. wanted to serve on such a commission. Both wanted it made up of a small group of small, disinterested states. Said Britain's Sir Alexander Cadogan: Britain cannot properly be "at times in the witness stand, and then . . . with the jury." Retorted Yugoslavia's Sava Kosanovic: "Dante puts neutral opinions in the Inferno."*

As the Assembly session went into its third week, U.N. had not yet decided who should serve on the commission. But it had turned down a Russian demand that the investigators plan an immediate cancellation of the British mandate.

India's loquacious, figure-fumbling Asaf Ali had the greatest number of questions to ask Zionist and Arab spokesmen. He turned to Henri Cattan, and asked (as if he knew): "Do you realize that in the Dead Sea there are $3,000,000,000,000 worth of minerals?" Cracked the committee chairman, Canada's witty, brisk Lester Pearson: "Gentlemen, I think our work is over. . . . We have found [indicating Asaf Ali] our special committee of inquiry."

* Dante condemns the lukewarm, those "miserable souls . . . whom infamy and honor both forgot," to wander in a no man's land beyond the outer circle of hell.

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