THE y l ESTION OK PALESTINE exclude African blacks and Latin American Indians from the right to resist white colonialists, who were people). !i will not in fact produce that result because the fellah is at least four centuries behind the times, and the effendi (who, by the way, is the real gainer from the present system) is dishonest, uneducated, greedy, and as unpatriotic as he is inefficient.15 W eizm ann’s candor is instructive. His principal rhetorical device is to identify himself with Balfour as a European who knows the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental mind. From this distinction all sorts o f conclusions follow, Arabs are O riental, therefore less human and valuable than Europeans and Zionists; they are treacherous, unregcncrate, etc. Most of all, they do not deserve to own a country, even if their numerical advantage seems otherwise to entitle them to it. Weizmann essentially recapitulates John Stuart Mill's arguments on representative governm ent, by which the Indians were denied the right to rule themselves because they were centuries “ behind” the English.“ Thus the total identification o f Zionism with the most reprehensible aspects o f European white cultural and racial hegem ony is easily made by W eiz­ mann, as is the more useful identification o f himself with the expert knowledge o f the Orient usually reserved for O riental­ ists, Eastern experts. A rab Bureau “ hands,” and the like. The Zionist fuses with the White European against the colored O riental, whose principal political claim seems only to be quantitative (his brute numbers) and otherwise lacking in quality: and the Zionist also— because he “ understands the Eastern mind from w ithin"— represents the A ra b , speaks for him, explains him to the European. Both Zionist and E urope­ an share in common the ideals o f fair play, civilization, and progress, none o f which the Oriental could understand. As Weizmann explains it, the conflict in Palestine is a struggle to wrest control o f land from natives; but it is a struggle dignified by an idea, and the idea was everything. Secondly, Zionism 's conflict with the Arabs in Palestine and elsewhere in the region was seen as extending, perpetuating, even enhancing (to the advantage of the W est) the age-old