UNITED NATIONS: Overstatement

According to a legend told by Syria’s Faris el Khoury, an Arab counts only happy days in reckoning his age. On that basis, Arabs did not grow much older in the 18-day General Assembly session.

The non-Arab world had tended to look upon the Palestine problem as a quarrel between Britain and the Zionists, as if Arabs did not also live there.* At U.N., the Arabs had their big chance to present their case, overstated it, and in the end lost some of the sympathy they had won.

Arabs staked everything on independence for Palestine right now, while Arabs still outnumber Jews there, 1,000,000 to 600,000. Jews would then become a permanent minority, living on sufferance. The Zionists, to counter this strategy, had to bring into the open a fact long hidden by their anti-British propaganda. They do not want the immediate independence of Palestine. Instead, they want increased Jewish immigration into Palestine, under foreign protection against the Arab majority; after they have attained a majority, they will want independence.

Fighting Invited? When the Arabs saw themselves losing the debate, they lost their tempers. Cried Iraq’s Fadhil Jamali: “Supporting the aspirations of the Jews [in Palestine] means very clearly a declaration of war. . . . This is an invitation to fighting.” Even Arabs saw they had gone too far when Emil Ghory, a Christian Arab on the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, defended his pro-Nazi boss, the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, with an un-Christian outburst: “The Jews are questioning the record of an Arab spiritual leader. Does that come properly from the mouth of a people who have crucified the Founder of Christianity?”

Arabs insist on ignoring the cry from European refugee Jews for admission to the Holy Land. Faris el Khoury brought in some dubious history to deny their connection with Palestine. “Who are the Jews of eastern Europe?” he asked. “They are Mongols who were near the Aral Lake, north of the Caspian Sea. . . . They were pagans at first, but their Prince, in the 7th or 8th Century, said: ‘It is shameful for us to be pagans.’ ” The Prince, according to El Khoury, found that Christians and Moslems would be willing to accept Judaism as a second choice, that the Jews would kill themselves rather than give up their faith. So he set up Judaism as the religion of the Khazar Dynasty in southern Russia.*

Flirtation Abandoned? Russia abandoned (for the time being) her flirtation with the Arab states, smothered the last Arab hope for an immediate victory. “It would be unjust,” said Andrei Gromyko, “not to take [Zionist aspirations] into account.” Then he proposed partition of Palestine (which Arabs have unanimously opposed) as one possible solution of the Palestine problem. Russia, in effect, jumped up on the fence with Britain and the U.S. On Palestine, where big-power rivalry (always in the background) had not yet been clearly defined, the U.N. at last was able to take almost unanimous action. The General Assembly voted, 46 to 7, for the plan backed by the U.S.: a special commission of eleven small “neutral” states* with the “widest powers” to investigate every phase of the Palestine problem.

In his closing speech Brazil’s scholarly Dr. Oswaldo Aranha, who had presided over the Assembly with dignity and tact, reminded angry Arabs that no final decision had been taken on their case.

Defiance Organized? As the delegates of 55 nations scattered from Flushing Meadow, Arabs growled threats of boycotting the commission’s work and decision. From Cairo the ex-Mufti roared: “We don’t count on international organizations to recover our rights. It’s up to the Arabs alone to resolve the Palestine question.” But even if the Arabs take the unlikely course of defying the U.N., they are ill-equipped to fight a sustained battle against either the well-organized Jews or the British. Their two Palestinian paramilitary organizations, Nejada and Futuwa, are still divided by rivalries. Cabled TIME’S Cairo Bureau last week: “Together—if they ever got together—they would muster maybe 10,000 men, but in arms and ammunition and supplies they would be unprepared. Some say that given two more years, they would be ready to be a serious threat both to the British and the Jews, but not now.”

Many Westerners still have that blind spot. Last week the U.S. weekly, the Nation, issued a supp’ement brilliantly summarizing the Zionist case on Palestine, not once suggesting that the Arabs have any cause to feel outraged at becoming a minority in their own land.

The Khazars, who adopted Judaism in the 8th Century from Crimean and Transcaucasian Jews, seldom penetrated beyond the Volga. Most Jews of eastern Europe are descendants of those who migrated there from the west during the Middle Ages.

Australia and Canada (from the British Commonwealth), Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia (from the Slav bloc), India and Persia (pro-Arab), Guatemala, The Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, and Uruguay.