THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE 19 of men, races, and civilizations, an inequality allowing the most extrem e forms o f self-aggrandizing projections, and the most extrem e forms o f punitive discipline toward the unfortu­ nate natives whose existence, paradoxically, was denied. I shall have something to say about Zionist projections and discipline as they bore on the Palestinian natives later in the book. Now I want principally to remark that for much o f its modern history, Palestine and its native people have been subject to denials o f a very rigorous sort. For in order to mitigate the presence o f large numbers o f natives on a desired land, the Zionists convinced them selves that these natives did not exist, then made it possible for them to exist only in the most rarefied forms. First denial, then blocking, shrinking, silencing, hemming in. This is an enorm ously com plex policy, for it includes not only the policy o f the Zionists toward the native A rabs, but also the policy o f Israel toward its A rab colonies, and the character o f the Israeli occupying forces on the West B ank and G aza after 1967. These too are matters that will occupy me later in this book. H ow ever, it would seem more interesting to inquire here why these aspects o f the Palestinian experience are so little known and discussed in the West. Here we find ourselves confronting some special attrib­ utes o f the Zionist/Palestinian interaction. If, as I have been saying, Palestine was the site o f a contest between a native presence and an incoming, basically Europe­ an/Western form o f advanced culture, then it has followed that a considerable part o f the contest was conducted outside Palestine itself. Before 1918, Palestine was a province within the Ottom an Empire. A fter 1918, it officially entered Britain's sphere o f influence. A s far as the Jewish minority in Palestine was concerned, Zionism had very little to do with them. Despite the worldwide interest am ong Jews in the Balfour D eclaration, no publicity was undertaken for it in Palestine, in the Jewish community th ere.17 This fact was in keeping with the spirit, if not the letter, o f Balfour's view that "th e present inhabitants” need not be consulted— even though these pre­ sent inhabitants happened also to include some Jews. Later, during testim ony given to the Supreme W ar Council preparing