These perceptions continue to affect their attitudes towards each other to the present day.
23 The Arabs believed that the Jews had been implanted in Palestine by Western Imperialism, in order to subjugate the Arab world and control its natural resources. This conviction was supported by the fact that the Zionist movement, from the outset, strove for an alliance with at least one Western power, in order to overcome Arab resistance (Germany in the days of Herzl, Britain from the Uganda plan and the Balfour Declaration until the end of the Mandate, the Soviet Union in 1948, France from the 1950s until the 1967 war, the United States from then on.) This resulted in practical cooperation and a community of interests between the Zionist enterprise and imperialist and colonialist powers, directed against the Arab national movement.
24 The Zionists, on the other hand, were convinced that the Arab resistance to the Zionist enterprise - which was intended to save the Jews from the flames of Europe - was simply the consequence of the murderous nature of the Arabs and of Islam. In their eyes, Arab fighters were "gangs", and the uprisings of the time were "riots ".
25 Actually, the most extreme Zionist leader, Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, was almost alone in having recognized by the I920's that the Arab resistance to the Zionist settlement was an inevitable, natural, and, from its own point of view, just reaction of a "native" people defending their country against foreign invaders. Jabotinsky also recognized that the Arabs in the country were a distinct national entity and derided the attempts to bribe the leaders of other Arab countries in order to put an end to the Palestinian Arab resistance. However, Jabotinsky's solution was to erect an "iron wall" against the Arabs and to crush their resistance by force.
26 These completely contradictory perceptions of the facts permeate every single aspect of the conflict. For example, the Jews interpreted their struggle for "Jewish Labor" as a progressive social effort to transform a people of intellectuals, merchants, middlemen and speculators into one