ARAB AND JEW
siR,—In his reply to Brigadier Longrigg's letter, your correspondent, Mr. Israel Cohen, objects to the description of the Zionists in Palestine as an " invading community " on the grounds that the Jews have a historic connection with Palestine of 3,000 years, and had the only independent State that ever existed in that country. The complete answer to the Zionist claim to Palestine on the grounds of this historic connection is to be found in an article by Professor W. T. Stace (Pro- fessor of Philosophy in Princeton University) recently published in the Atlantic Monthly, and since the entire Zionist case rests ultimately on the argument that this historical connection gives them a right to Palestine, it may be of interest to your readers to quote Professor Stace's views on the reasonableness or moral force of this claim. This is what he says: " What force, if any, is there in this contention? The question can only be answered after we have first decided what are the grounds of right by which any nation can claim the country which it occupies. The answer is clear. No nation has i-my right to the land it occupies except long possession. What right have Americans to live in, occupy, and control the United States) No right whatsoever except the fact that they have actually lived here for two or three hundred years. The same is true of every other people in the world. The British, the French, the Germans, the Japanese, the Zulus have no claim to the countries in which they live except long possessjon.
' Judged by this principle, which is the only possible principle to apply, the Arabs have a far better claim to Palestine than the Americans have to America. For they have effectively occupied the country for nearly two thousand years. There may have been always a small Jewish minority in Palestine, just as there has been in America a small Indian minority from the time of its white occupation until now. This would give the Jews in Palestine a right to vote and to proper treatment, just as it gives the same rights to Indians in America. But that is all.
" These consideratioug'make it clear that the fact that Palestine was a Jewish land in ancient times cannot possibly give Jews a right of mass entry there now. No matter how a people came originally into possession of a country, whether by aggression, war, or in any other way, we have in the end—that is to say, after a sufficiently long period—to admit their exclusive right to it, which means, of course, that all prior claims are extinguished. For that'is the only basis on which any people can ever claim the country which it inhabits. What is a sufficiently long period? Certainly two thousand years is. Thus this Zionist argument is entirely
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