Andrew Markowitz

“Let me at this juncture deal also with the ridiculous accusation that I have heard for so many years to the effect that we ignored the Arabs of Palestine and set about developing the country as though it had no Arab population at all. When the instigators of the Arab disturbances of the late 1930s claimed, as they did, that the Arabs were attacking us because they had been ‘dispossessed’, I did not have to look up British census figures to know that the Arab population of Palestine had doubled since the start of the Jewish settlement there. I had seen for myself the rate of growth of the Arab population ever since I had first come to Palestine. Not only did the living standard of the Arabs of Palestine far exceed that of Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East, but, attracted by the new opportunities, hordes of Arabs were immigrating to Palestine from Syria and other neighboring countries all through those years. Whenever some kindly representative of the British government sought to shut off Jewish immigration by declaring that there was not enough room in Palestine, I remember making speeches about Palestine’s larger absorptive capacity, complete with statistical references which I dutifully took from British sources, but which were based on what I had actually witnessed with my own eyes.
And let me add, there was no time during the thirties that I did not hope that eventually the Arabs of Palestine would live with us in peace and equally as citizens of a Jewish homeland – just as I kept on hoping that Jews who live in Arab countries would be allowed to live there in peace and equality.”
― Golda Meir, My Life