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Ida Nasatir book review

Palestine: Problem and Promise by Robert R. Nathan, Oscar Gass and Daniel Creamer

July 3, 1947—Book review—Palestine: Problem and Promise by Robert R. Nathan, Oscar Gass and Daniel Creamer—Southwestern Jewish Press, page 6: This is one of the most logical books on Palestine which has yet appeared. One of the three authors, Robert R. Nathan, recently spoke here in San Diego. The three authors are trained economists first and idealists second. They present the case for Jewish Palestine with the perfection of a syllogism with every premise neatly, carefully arranged, and therefore, utterly irrefutable. Palestine is in the Middle East, around which area a host of grevious misconceptions have been deliberately created and spread. Both the major and minor ones are analysed at great length and neatly disposed of, leaving no doubt as to their basic fallacy or falsehood. The supreme problem of the Middle East, yet the one which is energetically suppressed, is poverty of man and soil. Unless this is remedied, there is little hope for this, potentially one of the richest portions of the earth. Despite popular belief, the Middle East is definitely not entirely Arabic in character, either in language or in nationality. The three largest and leading states, Turkey, Egypt and Iran are none of them racially or culturally Arabic. This much heralded rising Arab nationalism, a bogey sedulously spread and cultivated is branded a pure myth. The masses in Egypt, as throughout the entire Middle East, are profoundly indifferent to nationalism, democracy, and to anything else for the crucial reason that 80 percent of them "live under conditions of slow starvation" and endure "a life little removed from walking death." Those who have, like the authors of this book, visited Syria or Egypt or Turkey will appreciate the truth of this assertion and its appalling implications. After a brief and illuminating resume of Turkish rule over Palestine, the incredibly tragic story of Palestine under the British is told by these three authors. Evidence upon evidence is piled up, of British treachery, sabotage and deceit, until the record becomes conclusive, and overwhelming and a condemnation which no amount of diplomatic double-talk or evasion can erase or soften. The fair-minded person can have no doubts concerning the true intentions of the British in Palestine from the day of the issuance of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate. For an authoritative interpretation of these documents, the authors take us to Lloyd George, to Arthur J. Balfour, and to Winston Churchill—Prime Minister, author of the Balfour Declaration, and Secretary of War, respectively when the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate were issued. These three men, more than any other single group, were instrumental in bringing Palestine under British control. What they have to say concerning British intent, purpose and aim (and they are quoted at length) leaves no doubt whatever that the British in 1917 promised to establish a Jewish state. This book is a truly encyclopedic volume. It is unusual in character; it answers every possible question and issue, and it does so with documentation, with facts and figures, and with statistical data of an unimpeachable nature.