Toward a Middle East Community of Nations

By Ernest Morgan

The shock of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination calls forth dismay and, at the same time, demands reflection in which there may be a source of hope. The nations of the Middle East are now called upon to replace an adversarial mode with one of cooperation and mutual support—in other words, to give history a new turn.

Actually, the roots of the conflict which has racked the Middle East for the past 50 years are to be found in European imperialism and Christian intolerance. To understand the problems of the Middle East and to solve them we need to understand their historic roots.

Now in my 91st year, I have witnessed the flow of modern history not only for many years, but from an unusual vantage point. During World War I, my father, Arthur E. Morgan, was a charter member and first secretary of the League to Enforce Peace, which developed the idea of a League of Nations and sold the idea to Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson's Vision

Wilson had a vision of giving history a new turn. He characterized World War I as "a war to end wars and make the world safe for democracy." His famous "Fourteen Points" for peace were clearly aimed in this direction.

But Wilson's plans for a creative peace with "the self-determination of peoples" and other progressive features were brushed aside at Versailles. The British and French politicians ganged up on him. They brushed aside his "idealistic notions" and went ahead with the harsh politics of imperialism. The defeated nations were abused and humiliated. The League of Nations was adopted as a sop to Wilson but was helpless in the face of the brutal injustice of the Versailles Treaty.

That treaty paved the way for the rise of Hitler and made World War II inevitable, with vast destruction of property and 45 million people killed. Seven million of those people were Jews deliberately murdered by the Nazis.

The Holocaust was not the first expression of Christian intolerance. Muslims and Jews had long been victims of this intolerance. In fact, it was the pogroms against the Jews in Russia that first gave rise to Zionism, when Theodor Herzl, an Austrian Jewish journalist, proclaimed that there should be "a national home for the Jews" where they could take refuge from persecution.

The Holocaust gave the Zionist movement an enormous boost, launching a mass movement of Jews into the Middle East. The partition plan, put forward by the U.S. under Jewish influence, would not have gained U.N. endorsement had not the Soviet bloc thrown its seven votes in support. Their aim was clear—to push the Arab nations closer to the Soviet orbit in the Cold War.

When fighting broke out, as was to be expected, the Jews lacked arms, so the Soviets rushed to their aid with arms from Czechoslovakia. Then, when the Jews prevailed and Israel was there to stay, the Soviets promptly switched sides and became pro-Arab.

I myself served as a member of the team of volunteers who administered relief for the 200,000 Arab refugees on the Gaza Strip. Years before I had been active in assisting Jewish refugees. Now my heart went out to the Arab refugees as well.

After what they had suffered in so-called Christian countries, the Jews would have been more than human had they not developed a terrorist element of their own. I was traveling with a group of Israeli veterans when one of them said to me, "We had to drive out the Arabs like you drove out the Indians." He seemed to feel that I would understand—which, alas, I did.

Referring to the massacre of the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin by Jewish terrorists, one of my Israeli companions remarked: "Deir Yassin was a tragedy, but it was necessary. The Arab farmers didn't want to fight and they didn't want to run, so we had to do something to get them started because we needed their land." That massacre was a major factor in the flight of 900,000 Palestinians from their homes.

The Arabs, too, would have been more than human if they also had not developed a terrorist element. And so it goes—the seemingly endless tragic history in which the actors seem to perform like helpless puppets.

But it doesn't have to be that way. After World War II, the worst war in history, the former enemies in Europe came together to form the European Community, in which hostility was replaced by active cooperation and mutual assistance. This was one of the greatest events in all human history. With determined effort it can be repeated today in the Middle East. Failing in that, the future there is dubious at best.

Ernest Morgan was a member of a Quaker United Nations team administering Palestinian relief in 1949-50.