ZIONISM t ROM THE STANDPOINT OK ITS VICTIMS
9.1
sufficient. The Jews of Jaffa would move into the new, modern
city, and the Jewish colonies of the neighborhood would have
a concentrated market for their products. The Gymnasium
would stand at the center, and would attract a great many
students from other parts of Palestine and from Jews abroad,
who would want their children to be educated in a Jewish high
school in a Jewish city.
Thus it was Ruppin who had the first vision of Tel Aviv,
which was destined to outstrip, in size and in economic
importance, the ancient town of Jaffa, and lo become one of
the metropolitan ccntersof the eastern Mediterranean.
In time, o f course, the preeminence of Tel A viv was to be
buttressed by the military capture o f Jaffa. The visionary
project later turned into the first step o f a military conquest,
the idea o f a colony being later fleshed out in the actual
appearance o f a colony, o f colonizers, and o f the colonized.
Weizmann and Ruppin, it is true, spoke and acted with the
passionate idealism o f pioneers; they also were speaking and
acting with the authority o f Westerners surveying fundam en
tally retarded non-Western territory and natives, planning the
future for them. Weizmann himself did not just think that as a
European he was better equipped to decide for the natives
what their best interests were (e .g ., that Jaffa ought to be
outstripped by a modern Jewish city), he also believed he
“ understood” the A rab as he really mw. In saying that the
A rab 's “ immense talent" was “ in fact" for never telling the
truth, he said what other Europeans had observed about
non-European natives elsewhere, for whom, like the Zionists,
the problem was controlling a large native majority with a
comparative handful o f intrepid pioneers:
It may well be asked how it is that we are able to control, with
absurdly inadequate forces, races so virile and capable, with
such mental and physical endowments. The reply is, 1 think,
that there are two flaws to be found: — the mental and moral
equipment of the average African. . . . 1 say that inherent
lack of honesty is the first great flaw. . . , Comparatively
rarely can one African depend upon another keeping his
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