THE QUESTION OK PALESTINE 31 the people o f the Middle East were "n atu ral,” and that the “ artificiality” o f which Niebuhr and his friends spoke could more properly be ascribed to the Zionists and the Maronites. (And how unwittingly prescient o f the later troubles in the region, to wit the problems o f Israel and o f civil-war-torn Lebanon.) These “ islands” — had he been less disingenuous, Niebuhr ought to have called them “ colonies” — mitigate the otherwise “ hopeless” picture presented by the Muslim world. Hopeless for whom and for what? Niebuhr doesn't feel it necessary to say what should be evident to any civilized W esterner. Islam is the enem y o f Judaism and Christianity, and therefore “ our” policy ought to be to support Jewish Palestine and Christian Lebanon. That there might be real live people in the region for which Niebuhr speaks so imperiously is an unthought-of possibility. T he ideological screen literally effacing them, permits him to speak as he and his friends do. Zionism is progress and modernity; Islam and the Arabs are the opposite. O nly Niebuhr can speak for all parties; we must not neglect to see a certain condescension even in the partisanship toward Palestinian Jews and Christian Lebanese. A year earlier, Niebuhr had written an article called “ A New V iew o f Palestine” for The Spectator. His inflections here were slightly more conciliatory, seeing as “ advice or criticism from an Am erican on the Palestinian issue will hardly be welcome in Britain at the present tim e,” the time in question being a crisis over the endless problem o f limiting Jewish immigration into Palestine. Even so, Niebuhr feels it incumbent on him to offer if not advice then a new view , or at least a view that will be of help to the British. Unlike the letter in The New York Times. here he speaks directly to an imperial authority, as from one imperial agency to another. There is, I know, not sufficient consideration in America cither of Arab rights or of the embarrassment of Britain in dealing with the Arab world. I find it baffling, on The other hand, that the average person here speaks of Arab ‘‘opinion'’ without suggesting that such opinion is limited to a small circle of feudal overlords, that there is no middle-class in this world