I have written this book with the hope that it will bring both Arabs and Jews into truer focus for the reader; that it will help reveal what they are and what they are not, what may be expected of them and what is impossible. I pray that these ancient Semitic peoples will reconcile their differences, that Palestine refugees who, in the main, left their homes because Arab leaders urged them to do so--expecting a short war and a quick victory--will be resettled. The only alternative to peace is disaster for Arab, Jew, and Christian, for none may hope to prosper alone. Together they may ultimately build a prosperous and democratic Middle East. To remain apart, at dagger's point, means only that Communism and anarchy can be the ultimate victors.

I was delighted. I hurried to the address Canning [a British fascist] gave me. It was a small, quiet apartment house of dark brownstone at 76 Eaton Square, in the exclusive West End section of London. I found myself in a dark, narrow hallway...

...I was ushered into a semidarkened room. Swarthy young Arabs prowled about, escorting athletic young Englishmen into side rooms in an atmosphere of almost melodramatic conspiracy. Suddenly a door opened and an intense man in his thirties, with piercing black eyes and short black mustache, stepped out -- instinctively I knew it must be Shawa Bey -- accompanied by a tall, blond Englishman. The two shook hands briskly and the Englishman left. Shawa Bey turned to me.

"Come with me," he said curtly. I followed him into an office and he closed the door carefully after me...

...I looked at Shawa Bey. How many British mercenaries was he hiring? And on what conditions? When were they to enter Palestine? By what route? It was too risky to ask...

...Shawa Bey began to talk more freely. "The Jews think America is going to help them in Palestine but she won't because there's too much feeling against the Jews in the States. The Arabs are well armed and well equipped. Many have been infiltrating into Jewish territory. We are confident of winning."

"I plan to go to Palestine myself," I said. "I want to be there for the Arab victory."

"I wouldn't go now," Shawa Bey remarked. "I'd go a little later. Once the war starts, it won't take us long." We discussed some of the persons I'd met so far. "I've known Captain Canning for a long time," he said. "He has helped the Arab cause. Another good friend of the Arabs is Miss Frances Newton. She has been of great assistance."

I asked about the Mufti.

"He's in good health. He's in Cairo now. He goes back and forth between Cairo and Damascus. He has headquarter everywhere in the Middle East." Shawa Bey paused." These next months are very important. The Jews will learn that quickly."

I rose to go. In the outer room, young British veterans of World War II in civilian dress were waiting to be interviewed. Within a few months I was to see them fighting and dying for the Arab cause under Arab names. I was to see them buried in unknown graves, in Moslem cemeteries, unhonored and unsung. I was to see them as prisoners of war in Israel. Izzed-een Shawa Bey rose to his feet.

"Good-bye," he said." We might meet again in Egypt or Palestine."

If we did, I hoped he wouldn't recognize me!

Half of my day in Cairo was spent keeping out of jail. I began the morning determined to photograph a near-by mosque, magnificent with its slender stately minaret silhouetted against a breathtakingly blue sky.

I focused my camera but hadn't even pressed the shutter when I became aware that someone was watching me. A short distance away stood a policeman, dressed in a shapeless black wool uniform and the ever present red fez. I closed my camera and nonchalantly moved on. Glancing in a showcase, I saw him nearing me. A moment later a heavy hand plummeted down on my shoulder, and another grabbed my camera, nearly ripping the shoulder strap. He pulled me over to a traffic officer and the two jabbered excitedly. A surly crowd gathered. It was decided that my fate should be sealed in the Karakol Abdin Kism -- the Abdin District Police Station.

Flanked by the two policemen, and followed by a crowd yelling "Yahoodi" -- Jew -- we walked on. Once I turned around, and beating my breast like and outraged patriot, I shouted: "I am an American!"

"Then you are worse than a Jew!" someone yelled in perfect English.

Those in front rushed up, tried to jab me with their sticks, and threatened me with the whips. Most Egyptians apparently carried one or the other, handy for warding off flies, urchins, or would-be thugs. Had not the police flailed back savagely, I might easily have been mauled. A few months later an American, Stephen A. Haas of Philadelphia, sight-seeing with his wife and an Arab guide, was fatally beaten while police looked the other way.

...One peddler who came to my table was particularly insistent, although I repeatedly waved him away. He was a keen-faced young man.

"You will maybe like this!" the Arab demonstrated. What seemed to be an ordinary whip suddenly became a vicious, four-sided, ten-inch dagger tapering to a fine point. "This knife for Yahood. But maybe you Amerikans like Yahood, yes?"

I took no chances. "No, I hate Jews. Allah's curse on them."

"Ah," he grinned triumphantly. "Then you buy knife to kill Yahood?"

"No. I have one bigger, a Turkish knife. I kill Armenians and Jews with it."

A dust cloud became visible in the distance. A welcoming shout went up. It turned out to be a column of soldiers, marching with their banners in the wind -- a contingent of about two hundred volunteers bound for Palestine under Misr el Fattat auspices. They were dressed in war-surplus khaki and the Arab headpiece...Their faces were bronzed by the Nile sun, their hands bony from toil. They were fellaheen -- those lowest in the social scale, usually tenant-slave farmers or unskilled workers. They joined the Green Shirt columns, and together marched past a guard of honor of Green Shirt officials. I began to photograph the scene with one policeman behind me, the other at my side. Suddenly, as the massed banners and flags passed by, a dozen Green Shirt arms shot out in the old-fashioned Fascist salute. To snap or not to snap! What would the police say? Nervously, I took two photographs of the saluting soldiers. Nothing happened...

..."Take a picture of my daughters," Hussein said. "I have named them Faith and Liberty." Hussein's wife was nowhere in evidence, faithful to the Moslem tradition that no decent woman ever shows her face to strangers. In his military dress and cap, hands on hips, jaw stuck out, Hussein on the balcony of his home imitated Il Duce. Hussein had neither the girth, the stature, the jaw, nor the snarl of the Italian Fascist whom he admired and tried to emulate...

...As we watched from the balcony, the Followers of Truth marched across the bridge in long thin columns, their khaffiyas flowing in the wind, their banners proclaiming in huge Arabic letter: GO AND FIGHT THE JEWS...THE ARMY OF ALLAH GOING TO FREE PALESTINE...I WANT TO COME WITH YOU. While the two feuhrers stood side by side with me, waving from the balcony, the columns marched to Misr el Fattat headquarters.

That St. Patrick's night, I witnessed the weirdest briefing session any American could hope to see. Green Shirts and Followers of Truth filled the courtyard, so that not even a crow could find a resting-place. On the iron fence was a banner, reading: THE ARMY OF MOHAMMEDAN GOD. FOR THE LIBERATION OF PALESTINE...

...From eight o'clock on,. for two hours, speaker after speaker mesmerized them with the most extraordinary supercharged emotional oratory I have heard in ten years of hearing the best among our worst Americans...It seemed to me the words were like savage thrusts into the night. They were like flying stilettos jabbing at my senses. I understood on ly a few words -- Allah, Yahood, Falastine (Palestine) attl, attl (kill, kill), Mujahed (Holy Warrior), Jehad (Holy War) -- but I felt the impact of every word, and the crackling thunder of every sentence as it ripped and lashed out into the night.

One speaker was a true firebrand. He was a thin wisp of a man, with a small, thin, pointed beard. His long deep-copper-colored face glowed with religious frenzy...He mixed pure fire with his words, and as he spoke he swayed slightly with the fluid rhythm of his words, as a cobra sways, at times speaking in a kind of hypnotic singsong -- half prayer, half chant -- then suddenly, his voice as brutal as a mailed fist, he exhorted, demanded, beat with the hammer of his eloquence on the ears of his men to fight for Allah and His Prophet. His words were like the thunder of a savage symphony, piercing the listeners and the darkness beyond...

As he finished, the bowels of the earth seemed to explode. The roar that came from the frenzied listeners is utterly undescribable to American ears. The least I can say is that it was like the snarling of volcanic monsters, bloodcurdling, awesome. The white-turbaned faces, roasted under the Nile sun, burned with the zealous fire of Islam; wherever I looked men stood screaming, shouting, eyes bloodshot, ready at the moment to tear the hearts of their foe with bare hands in the name of Allah and the Holy War...

...Hussein was an intense speaker. With powerful gestures and deep emotion he reinflamed the religious frenzy of his listeners.

"Death to Palestine's Jews!" he bellowed.

"Death to Palestine's Jews!" the mob roared back.

He exhorted them against British occupation of the Suez and the Sudan. The mob thundered its approval. As Hussein ended with the familiar words, Jehad, attl! attl! the same vibrant voice in the rear called out in Arabic:

"Hussein, our leader; Hussein, our savior; Hussein, protector of Egypt!"

Once again the monsters thundered into the night, the echoes reverberating from Cairo's moon-bathed rooftops.

The briefing was over. The Holy War was launched. The emotional crescendo on which this rally had ended found everyone perspiring, ecstatic, savage, ready to dismember any Jew, or burn his home. I could understand now how it was possible, after such meetings, for inflamed mobs to pour into Cairo's Jewish quarter, and smash and destroy Jewish shops. Hussein himself had incited a number of such riots on Friday, the Moslem Sunday, after his prayers. Cairo police with black shields and long black whips stopped such riotings -- after the "patriotic" fury had spent itself.

I liked this big shaggy soldier the minute I saw him. Though his hand played tricks, it was never with my possessions. Basically his character was honest and simple, uncorrupted by the greed and venality about him. Moustafa never professed to be religious: I never saw him kneel in prayer. A one-time captain in the Egyptian army, he had been born into a farming family of small landowners. They had given him a good elementary-school education, and in addition he could read and write English -- rare among Egyptians. But he was a natural-born fighter and detested farm work. When I met him he had just returned from an expedition: his next assignment -- due to come within a few weeks -- was to lead the Green Shirt contingents and Followers of Truth into Palestine and make guerrilla attacks on Jewish outposts.

I had planned to go later to Palestine by myself; but when I heard this news, I made a quick decision. How much better to go with Moustafa and his men! How much better to be an intimate part of the Arab guerrilla movement, than to go as the typical reporter, always the outsider and stranger. I broached the subject to Moustafa. "I will come along as your photographer," I suggested. A few days later, after we found we hit it off well together, he agreed. When he and his men would leave for Palestine, I would go with them.

"I will arrange it with Ahmed Hussein," Moustafa said.

I quizzed him on his views on Zionism.

"We are fighting because Palestine is our land and we want to die there. Even if all the world helps the Jews we know we will win because our God is the strongest. We are not afraid to die. The Jews are cowards because they want to live. The Arab would rather lose ten men than one gun. The Jews are the opposite. They want to save their lives and lose their guns. That is one difference between us. Besides, we have plenty of money," Moustafa went on. "Plenty of ammunition. Plenty of men, We even have a Tiger tank we stole from the British."

"How did you manage that?"

"We paid £500 to English soldiers who were riding in the tank. They stopped and went into the bushes where we paid them money. When they came out the tank was gone. Don't think we are without friends," Moustafa continued. "We have English deserters and Germans fighting with us. They make some of our bombs. We also have Czechs and Yugoslavs spying for us. They go right into Tel Aviv and tell us how things are. They are fine spies."

At Green Shirt headquarters, Moustafa introduced me to a fiery Egyptian who was training the volunteers. His name was Izzed-een Abdul Kader...Moustafa said dolefully, while Izzed-een watched me with his little, suspicious, red-rimmed eyes. "He is willing to kill anybody who is an enemy of Misr el Fattat. He is a very strong patriot."

"Will he kill me if he thinks I'm your enemy?" I asked curiously.

Moustafa spoke to him, then turned to me and translated his reply with a smile: "If he knows you to be a Jew or a spy, he will not only kill you, but he will drink your blood."

With this comforting thought I left Misr el Fattat headquarters for a long night of note-making...There were thousands of these volunteers and adventurers from all the Arab countries, armed and financed by pashas, sheiks, or the Arab League, trained on Egyptian army grounds by regular army officers on leave. Their role was to harass the Jew, cut off his communications, isolate settlements, strip and weaken him for the moment, now only a few weeks off, when the British would leave Palestine and the entire Arab world would declare a bloody, open season on the Jew. Then the regular Arab armies would invade Palestine and settle once and for all the impudent and fantastic Zionist dream of a Jewish state on Arab soil.

All that I had learned about Hassan el Banna and the unquestioned loyalty he inspired in his cutthroats only whetted my desire to meet him. It proved more difficult than I expected, because of his deep hatred of "Europeans." Finally one day, accompanied by my friend Gamal, I walked into Ikhwan headquarters for my audience with the Supreme Guide.

He approached us -- a short, squat ratty-faced man with puffed cheeks and fleshy nose. He was dressed in European clothes -- a black pinpoint double-breasted suit -- and wore an extra tall tarboosh, which gave him the illusion of added height. His thin beard, running from ear to ear, crawled up, then down his upper lip like an ugly black hirsute vine. His manner was mousy and furtive. His eyes, beadlike and deepset, were like two dark slits across his face. We sat in the shade under the shield showing the Koran above a pair of crossed swords.

The Moorshid spoke with a pious look on his face, his head bent slightly to the right, hands folded meekly in his lap. I disliked him instantly and thoroughly. He was the most loathsome man I had yet met in Cairo. Gamal sat next to us and faithfully interpreted.

"The Koran should be Egypt's constitution, for there is no law higher than Koranic law," the Moorshid began. "We seek to fulfill the lofty, human message of Islam which has brought happiness and fulfillment to mankind in centuries past., Ours is the highest ideal, the holiest cause and the purest way. Those who criticize us have fed from the tables of Europe. They want to live as Europe has taught them -- to dance, to drink, to revel, to mix the sexes openly and ion public."

I asked his views on establishing the Caliphate, the complete merger of Church and State -- the Moslem equivalent of religious totalitarianism, as in Spain.

"We want an Arabian United States with a Caliphate at its head and every Arab state subscribing wholeheartedly to the laws of the Koran. We must return to the Koran, which preaches the good life, which forbids us to take bribes, to cheat, to kill one's brother. The laws of the Koran are suitable for all men at all times to the end of the world. This is the day and this is the time when the world needs Islam most."

I could not help making a mental note that the word "Christian" has been similarly used and with similar fanaticism among Western exponents of authoritarianism.

"We are not eager to have a parliament of the representatives of the people," the Supreme Guide continued, "or a cabinet of ministers, unless such representatives and ministers are Koranic Moslems. If we do not find them, then we must ourselves serve as the parliament. Allah and the religious councils will limit our authority so that no one has to hear dictatorship. We aim to smash modernism in government and society. In Palestine our first duty as Moslems is to crush Zionism, which is Jewish modernism. It is our patriotic duty. The Koran commands it."

He was silent, and then nodded, to indicate the interview was over. And with this Gamal and I took leave of Ikhwan's Moorshid and Egypt's Rasputin.

"What do you think of our Moorshid?" Gamal asked.

"He is a holy man," I said.

It was about this time that I found plastered on the walls of Cairo buildings huge, luridly colored posters, violently anti-Jewish. One of them, showing a bloodstained dagger with the Star of David on its handle, and blood dripping from it, exhorted: "Arm Arabism!" Other posters read: "Don't talk to the Jews...Don't do business with them...Kill their business and they die...Consider them as our deepest enemies."

A large colored placard, printed in English. Arabic, Spanish, French and Italian, showed a sketch that purported to be the desecration of a holy relic in Jerusalem by the Jews, and read:

ZIONISTS' NEW YEAR PRESENT TO CHRISTENDOM

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in a recent letter to the Times, said he would not entrust the Holy Land to the Zionists because he was sure they would lose no time in desecrating every relic of the Christ or the Prophet Muhammad to be found in the Holy Places.

The photo of the statue of the Virgin Mary in Ratisbonne Church, Jerusalem, battered beyond recognition and thrown on the floor of the church, shows that the Archbishop's apprehensions were well-founded. His prophecy has come true.

I was told that this poster was put up by the Arab League.

Certain committees, posing as "patriotic," either mortgaged or bought land from Palestinian Arabs, ostensibly to keep it from Jewish settlers. Arabs who refused to sell at low prices were branded tools of the Jews, and often murdered. Actually, the purpose of these committees was to extend the feudal powers of the landowner. I was told: "The Arab who sold his land to the Jews against our advice was killed at once. Anyone could kill him. No one would know who. The Arab's family and the families of other Arabs would know why he had been killed."

Cairo's mood, the hour before our departure, was one of excitement or terror -- depending on your religion. Jews were imprisoned because they were Zionists, and beaten on streets because they were Jews. They huddled in their homes, afraid to leave, afraid to worship on the Sabbath because the Ikhwan had spread rumors that synagogues were used for "plotting." Newspapers daily whipped up new excitement with news from Palestine: FIERCE BATTLE IN HOLY CITY'S NO-MAN'S LAND...HAIFA EXPRESS BLOWN UP AGAIN...MARTIAL LAW PROCLAIMED...There were celebrations as news of the dynamiting of the Jewish Agency building in Jerusalem, by a car carrying TNT and "flying an American flag," was announced, and later when Arabs ambushed a large convoy near Bethlehem, seized scores of vehicles, and killed many Jews. Under Arab League sponsorship, Fawzy Bey el Kawoukjy (who had spent the war years in Germany, marrying there) had begun to attack with his Yarmuk Army of Liberation.

Arabs everywhere were confident of victory. They gloated over their arms, their money, their numbers. "If we Moslems choose to spit on the Jews we could drown them," one said contemptuously. From another: "We are like a ball of snow. We have just begun to roll. We will crush the microbe of Zionism forever."

The Arab Goliath of eight States and forty-five million people would win over a tiny, sausage-shaped, "militarily indefensible" area, encircled by Arabs, and containing 650,000 poorly armed Jews and a fifth column of at least as many Arabs. There was no doubt that the Arabs would win easily. They said so.

We headed toward a shanty town on the outskirts of Rafa, headquarters at the gates of the Negev, the great southern desert of Palestine, Rafa itself had boomed in the last few months, and served as an outpost for volunteer fighters, gun-runners, and Arab refugees already fleeing from Palestine. As early as the end of March 1948, Cairo was crowded with wealthy Palestinian refugees, both Moslem and Christian, who had left their homes voluntarily, even though widespread fighting had not yet broken out. By ten o'clock Moustafa and Zaki had located a gun-running truck leaving for Beersheba.

Yallah! We climbed into the truck and rode until we reached the Palestine border. There we were halted by British soldiers. Two tanks stood near by. Beyond was a large British camp. The Green Shirts had now hidden their own guns and insignia, and posed as native Palestinians. The English went through the formality of asking: "Any guns on the truck?" We said: "No," laughing. The soldiers smiled back, took down our license number and, lifting the wooden barrier, let us through. We were in Palestine!

Not far from Beersheba I saw my first Jewish communal settlement, Kibbutz Beit Eshel. With its well-tended orchards and green trees, Beit Eshel rose like an oasis from the bleak, dust-packed Negev desert around it. A kibbutz was always conspicuous by its water tower, silo and modern farm buildings, and contrasted sharply with the squalor of Arab villages.

Moustafa pointed at Beit Eshel with awe. "We have attacked it, but the Jews are well armed. They have built a Maginot Line around their place and fight you from under the ground. They are cowards." Later, I was to see astonishing examples of Jewish ingenuity -- and understand exactly what Moustafa meant. "After May 15 Beit Eshel will be ours. The Egyptian army will make it one with the desert."

"Insh'alla! Insh'alla! With God's help," I said.

Surrounded by Arabs and desert, a lone sentry in the wilderness, I could not imagine how Beit Eshel could ever hold out against massed troops and heavy artillery¹ (¹ But it did. On one occasion the settlement's armory consisted of twelve rifles and two machine-guns. The Egyptian army attacked in battalion strength with heavy artillery, and was repeatedly beaten back.) Inquiring discreetly, I learned that the kibbutz had already taken a toll of attacking Arabs. It was supplied by a daring airlift and sometimes by food and ammunition convoys that boldly ran the gauntlet of Arab soldiers all the way from coastal Tel Aviv, seventy miles across the desert.

...we waited for Sheik Salaam, a Bedouin tribal chief. He was a short, wizened man with a face the color of burnt copper. He had tiny, cunning eyes and a tight and narrow mouth from which the words came sparingly. He was draped in a flowing black burnous, gold-braided at the neck. Around his waist was a cartridge belt, revolver, and a curved dagger, standard Bedouin equipment. He took Moustafa inside with him.

I learned the sheikh's record. Already wealthy through border traffic, he had bought land cheaply from Bedouins, and later sold it at extravagant prices to Jews, amassing even greater wealth. The vengeful Bedouins demanded an accounting. The sheikh promptly turned against the Jews, and emerged a top Arab patriot.

Moustafa came away empty-handed from the sheikh. "He is rich but he does not give baksheesh. He is not patriotic," Moustafa complained bitterly. "His enemies will kill him very soon."

...Moustafa and I were ushered into the presence of Captain Fadhil Rashid Bey, Arab military commander of Jerusalem. He was soft-spoken in contrast to the braggarts I had met so far. An Iraqi, he had been trained by Germans and, as he told me, had participated in the pro-Nazi revolt of 1941 in Iraq, which for two desperate months threatened to turn the entire Middle East into a Nazi camp. Moustafa gave me a flattering introduction as a correspondent and a German sympathizer, so that Rashid Bey and I got along famously from the outset. I took his photograph and he was pleased. I asked him deferentially how well he knew the Mufti.

"I am commander of Jerusalem because of the Mufti. I knew him in Iraq."

RUFFIANS ALL

Rashid Bey's job was not enviable. He had no regular army, but a vast rabble of largely unemployed, impoverished, loot-hungry Arab hooligans, whom even the respectable Moslems feared and avoided. There was no dearth of experienced fighters. Many were veterans of the Mufti's 1929 and 1936-9 revolts. Some had spent the war years in Germany, had been thoroughly indoctrinated, and were now excellent propagandists. Others had served in the Axis-sponsored Moslem Legions organized under the Mufti's guidance. There was also the Mufti's Youth Corps -- Futuwas -- reorganized by Jamal Bey el Husseini, the Mufti's cousin and chairman of the Arab Higher Committee. There were, too, a strong representation of Ikhwan el Muslimin thugs, select ruffians from Hebron, and thousands of other shiftless semiliterate marauders. They were undisciplined and outlaw fighters all, inept at teamwork, but dangerous when fighting individually or in small bands as guerrillas, with loot -- in any form -- as the primary objective.

These were the Arab gangs that, with the aid of technically skilled deserters from the British army, in recent months had blown up the Palestine Post and the Jewish Agency Building, bombed Ben Yehuda street, the principal Jewish business thoroughfare, and laid mines. As I strolled about I could see that they were in an extremely cocky and festive mood. They had made this last week in March a black week for the Jews. With foolhardy courage, the Haganah had sent a large convoy to supply Kfar Etzion -- a chain of four kibbutzim -- perched on a strategic hilltop commanding the road to Jerusalem from the South. The convoy had successfully charged through a fifteen mile gauntlet of Arab villages and numerous roadblocks, mines, and snipers' posts.

On its way back, however, the story was different. The Jews met Arabs under Abdul Kader el Husseini, a relative of the Mufti, who had served him the Iraq-Nazi revolt and was now commander of Arab forces in the Jerusalem area. At Nebi Daniel (site of a small Arab village named for the prophet Daniel) huge roadblocks halted the returning convoy. A fierce battle began. Cornered, the Haganah commander regrouped his vehicles on three sides of a square, with a ruined wall forming the fourth side. The battle raged for thirty-six hours between some two hundred Jews and more than three thousand Arabs who had surrounded them and cut them off from all help.

British forces were still responsible for "law and order." They were in Palestine to prevent precisely such battles as this. But when the British finally intervened, it was to strike a bargain with the Arabs. In return for the safety of the surviving Jews, the Arabs were to take all the Haganah arms and equipment. To prolong a hopeless struggle against odds of fifteen to one would have meant the eventual destruction of the Jewish fighting force as well as the loss of vehicles. The Haganah commander capitulated. The English escorted his men to Jerusalem. To the Jews it meant the loss of almost their entire fleet of armored trucks in Jerusalem. They also lost twelve men. The Arab toll in this "Battle of the Roads" was 135 dead.

The next day on sale everywhere in the Holy City were gruesome photographs of the battle: the burnt and mutilated bodies of Haganah men, which for some perverse Arab reason, had been stripped of clothing and photographed in the nude. These naked shots hit "Holy" City markets afresh after every battle, and sold rapidly. Arabs carried them in their wallets and displayed them frequently, getting the same weird, abnormal "kick" that our perverts derive from nude photographs of women.