THE TRUTH ABOUT PALESTINE.
the Estimates of the Occupied Enemy Territories Administration for 1919-1920, the population on March 31st, 1919, numbered 647,850, of whom 65,300 were Jews. It thus appears that if the Delegation is to be believed, the "tide of immigration" has actually increased the numbers of the Arabs and reduced those of the Jews.
HOW THE IMMIGRANTS ARE EMPLOYED.
Leaving aside these picturesque fictions, it remains the fact that Jewish immigration has been not only moderate in volume, but, on the whole, unexceptionable in quality. The Jewish immigrants who are courteously described as "undesirable aliens" are for the most part sturdy young pioneers who have added appreciably to the common stock of physical and moral energy. The statement that they are a "burden on the community" is wholly fictitious. The immigrants, if temporarily unemployed, are provided for exclusively from Jewish funds, and have not cost the country a piastre. It is equally untrue that they "deprive the Arab of his daily bread," that the "contracts for public works are in the majority of cases given to Jews, whose quotations are usually higher than those of Arabs," and that the "Jewish labourer is paid at a higher rate for half the amount of work which the Arab can accomplish." Of some 20,000 Jewish immigrants, only about 3,000 have been employed on public works at all, and the only labour they have displaced is that of the imported Egyptian gangs which formerly served the Army, and whose gradual replacement by Jews and others settled in the country is, by common consent, to the advantage of all parties concerned. The remainder—the vast majority—of the Jewish immigrants have found employment in a variety of Jewish enterprises, brought into existence by Jewish capital, and contributing substantially to the quickening of economic life in the country as a whole. There can here be no question of any displacement of Arab labour.
10
