31 THE Ql'ESTION OF PAI.KSTINE and that the miserable masses are in such abject poverty that an opinion is an impossible luxury for them. One difficulty with the Arab problem is that the technical anti dynamic civilization which the Jews might have helped to introduce and which should have the support of American capital, and which would include river-development, soil-conscrvaiion and use of native power, would not be acceptable to the Arab chieftains though beneficial to the Arab masses. It would have therefore to be imposed provisionally, but would have a chance of ultimate acccptance by the masses. \The Spectator, August 6. [946, p. [62] W hether before this piece was written or after it, Niebuhr could not have been found guilty o f discussing, much less supporting, “ A rab rights." He simply never did. His opening sentence, therefore, is little more than a rhetorical ploy for making his main point, that A rab opinion doesn't count (for the bogus sociological reasons he gives, as if masses didn’ t also need some piecc o f land on which to conduct their ignorance, backwardness, and decadence). Even that is not his real intention, which is nothing more than saying that whether they have an opinion or not, A rabs ought not to be allowed to obstruct the “ technical and dynamic civilization” being brought into Palestine by the European Jews. It might have been easier to make such a point if, for exam ple, he could directly assert (a) that Arabs are sui generis inferior and (b) that they were simply the creatures, without will or opinion, of a hopelessly decadent, sm all, feudal class o f “ overlords” who manipulated the “ masses” as so many puppets. Instead, Niebuhr chooses the more culturally valid form o f statement, and says that his argument in reality is being made not merely on behalf o f the “ technical and dynamic civilization" brought in by Zionism , but that it has the A rab masses in mind. Let us leave aside the fact that Niebuhr could have found many instances in recent A rab Palestinian history o f purely spontaneous mass uprising against Zionism , or that he could have found cases of A rab peasants turning in vain to the Zionist settlers for help against A rab absentee landlords. What he does not see— as M arx did not see a hundred years earlier