Page:The Truth about Palestine.djvu/13

 the Delegation's case, and illustrate the need for caution in accepting at their face value any of its statements of fact.

The remaining complaints are equally misleading.

The Hebrew tongue is the common medium of expression among the Jews of Palestine, and the language of instruction in almost the whole of the Jewish schools. It is only one of the three official languages, the others being English and Arabic, and its recognition as such cannot inflict the smallest injury on the Arabs or impose on them the least obligation to make use of it.

The Delegation refers to the "tide of immigration which pours into Palestine, bringing in a mass of undesirable aliens." The actual number of Jewish immigrants from the British occupation up to June, 1921, was 15,079. A further 4,938 immigrants (of whom most, though not all, were Jews) entered Palestine up to the end of December, 1921. The "tide" which is "pouring in" thus amounts to a total, from first to last, of about 20,000 persons, of whom an appreciable proportion were refugees returning to their homes. For reasons best known to itself, the Delegation has chosen to ignore the authentic statistics published in the Official Interim Report, which puts the total population at "hardly 700,000," and the Jews at 76,000. The British Committee of the Palestine Arab Delegation itself only puts the Arab population at 665,000. The Delegation prefers to invent the statement that "the inhabitants of Palestine number about 800,000, of whom 60,000 are Jews." According to the official statistics published in