In the late 1930s, the Jewish community in Palestine did not have the leverage to initiate a transfer of the Arab population. But the new idea spoke volumes about the new state of mind of the Zionist leadership. All that had been suppressed and denied since Herbert Bentwich disembarked in the port of Jaffa in 1897 now surfaced. The shocking insight of Israel Zangwill was now a part of conventional thinking. Within a year, a merciless perception of reality took root: us or them, life or death.
