24 THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE Jews, Palestine had the further advantage o f being a backward province in an even more backward em pire. T herefo re, the effort o f all Zionist apologetics from the beginning was to lay claim to Palestine both as a backward, largely uninhabited territory and as a place where the Jews, enjoying a unique historical privilege could reconstitute the land into a Jewish homeland. Thus to oppose such an idea in the W est was immediately to align oneself with anti-Semitism. T o support it, on the other hand, was to do a number o f far more interesting and acceptable things than m erely displace or ignore a basically uninteresting bunch o f resident natives. It was once again to solve a specific problem with a specific solution, a prospect— as we shall see— that bore within it not only the ideology o f a constructive colonial adventure, but also the scientific, disci­ plined attitude o f a positive social solution to a positive social and intellectual issue. M oreover, the idea o f a Jewish state in (or a Jewish m ovem ent for) Palestine acquired a remarkable aura o f moral prestige, the more so since the advent o f fascism in Europe. H ere was a people identified since ancient times with the land o f Israel, identified also with a prodigious history o f suffering, m oral and intellectual grandeur, and, above all, with dispersion. Palestine was the specific and, it seem ed, most liberal o f all the answers to their needs. T o oppose this plan, as 1 said above, was to find oneself with nowhere in the W est to stand. This is still more or less true today. Zionism has always sought specific answers: immigra­ tion, hospitals, and, later, arms for its defense, m oney. These answers attract support, since their negation seems principally to be only a negation, and an abstract and general one to boot. Even G eorge A m on ius’ great book made its argument the Arab awakening (not the Palestinian presence), which was to be understood, he said, in terms o f the A rabization and the Islamization o f the whole N ear O r ie n t." A n yon e feeling doubts now and then about Zionist conquests in Palestine would inevitably have to face up to the "fa ct” that what he supported as a result was a general A rab and Islamic bloc. And this bloc, both in its amorphousness and dark abstraction,