Summary
Leader of the Zionist movement in Kanafani’s account, who on the eve of the April 1936 outbreak placed the Zionist forces as the instrument of colonialism, and whose statement of the complete similarity of Zionist and British interests Kanafani takes as the law governing Zionist policy throughout the revolt.
Details
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On 23 April 1936, two days before the Arab Higher Committee was formed, Weizmann, leader of the Zionist movement, made a speech in Tel-Aviv describing the Arab-Zionist struggle, which was beginning to break out, as a struggle between destructive and constructive elements, thereby putting the Zionist forces in their place as the instrument of colonialism on the eve of the armed clash (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.22 / printed p.42-43).
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Kanafani says the law that led the policies of the Zionists during that period was the one summarised by Weizmann: there is a complete similarity of interests between the Zionists and the British in Palestine; that statement is quoted on the source page (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.29 / printed p.56-57).
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Sayegh lists Weizmann, with Herzl, Ben Gurion and Goldmann, among the Zionist leaders from first to last who believed and preached that the chief enemy of Zionism is not Gentile anti-Semitism but Jewish assimilation (Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, PDF p.9 / printed p.214).
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In Said: Weizmann was soon to speak of the fact that the British understood how the Jews alone were capable of rebuilding Palestine and of giving it a place in the modern family of nations (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.34 / printed p.13).
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Weizmann’s letter to Balfour of May 30, 1918, quoted at length by Said, presents the Arabs as superficially clever and quick witted, worshipping power and success alone, treacherous, screaming and blackmailing, their officials corrupt and inefficient, and concludes that no Arab Palestine will result because the fellah is at least four centuries behind the times and the effendi dishonest, uneducated, greedy and unpatriotic (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.47-49 / printed p.26-28).
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Said reports Weizmann’s later remark on 1948 as a miraculous cleaning of the land, the miraculous simplification of Israel’s task, and his embarrassment at Sylvain Lévi’s testimony because the world would judge the Jewish state by what it shall do with the Arabs (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.41, p.43 / printed p.20, p.22).
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In Said, Chapter Two II: Weizmann is the leader who translated the Zionist design into action. Said quotes his description of Palestine’s soil covered with rocks, marshes and sand awaiting those who love it, his 1907 visit account (written 1941) of a dolorous, neglected country of something above six hundred thousand, about eighty thousand Jews, his call for new blood and enterprise, his shift of the National Home from establishment to reestablishment, his praise of Samuel Pevsner beside Palestine as a social wilderness, his account of the Arab as a subtle debater whose talent is never plainly agreeing, and his Ruppin walk north of Jaffa that became the vision of Tel Aviv (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.105-107, p.112-114 / printed p.84-86, p.91-93).
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Said sets Weizmann beside C. L. Temple of Nigeria: for both, natives of a stationary culture had to be prodded, perhaps dislocated, by an advanced European culture (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.115 / printed p.94).
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In Said, Chapter Two II close and Chapter Three II: between Weizmann and Israel Koenig there intervenes several decades; what was visionary projection for Weizmann became for Koenig a context of actual law (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.132 / printed p.111).
Related pages
The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Zionism, David Ben-Gurion, 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine