Palestine aka The Land of Israel: The Original Sin
A lot of the problems that we are having to deal with now –
I have to deal with now – are a consequence of our colonial past...the odd
lines for Iraq’s
borders were drawn by Brits. The British involvement in the birth of the
Arab-Israeli dispute was "not entirely an honorable one".
Jack Straw, British
Foreign Secretary, New Statesman, Nov. 2002
I
hope that Hon. Members will believe me when I say that I am not pro-Jew; I am
pro-English. I set a higher value on the reputation of England all over the
world for justice than I do on anything else...but when I see this sort of thing
going on, with the Government unable to put any argument on the other side, it
makes me perhaps bitterer than even a Jew can be against the (British)
Government of Palestine/Israel today.
Colonel Josiah C.
Wedgwood, M.P., to the House of Commons, May 29, 1934
On the wall of my study hangs a
black-and-white photograph – at least 80 years old. To me, however, it is
timeless. The view across green fields of England, framed by trees bare
of leaves, brings back happy memories of my youth in the 1930s. The original
hung on the wall of the estate agent’s office where I worked as an office boy
until I joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve. I dreamed of becoming a pilot, and
was so impatient that after a few weeks, I returned to the recruitment office
to enquire why I hadn’t yet been called.
I recall the idealism, which imbued all of us
in that battle against another “Axis of Evil”, and the conviction that the
shameful years of appeasement were only a blip in the proud record of British
“fair play”.
Today, nothing can erase the bond with my
youth; and when I set down here what I have unearthed about Britain’s handling
of Palestine/Israel since 1917, I have not the heart to excoriate; but merely
to record the facts as they are evidenced in written records of the time –
minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission, speeches in Parliament, books and
papers which have either been out of print for maybe 40 years, or gathering
dust in forgotten corners, and testimony by active participants in a terrible
tale which could have been avoided if Prime Minister Gladstone’s guideline had
been adhered to: “What is morally wrong cannot be politically right.”
I have written much over the years; but
nothing as painful as these words; nevertheless, I do so, not because I love Britain less, but because I love justice more...
There is a fable that at the end of World War
II, after the Allies conquered Berlin, a visitor from outer
space landed there and stood aghast at the destruction, at the rotting bodies
littering the streets, and the sight of survivors begging for bread. He asked a
passerby: “Who did this terrible thing?” The reply was: “The Allied airmen.”
But of course – he didn’t know what happened before...
I recall this story whenever I hear or read of
the plight of the Arab-Palestinians, and the universal condemnation of Israel – by a world that
does not know how it all began.
Those Were the Days
Today, the word Zionism is anathema to the
Muslim Arabs, but it was not always so. Zionism did not begin with Theodore
Herzl in 1897; the whole history of the Jews is a yearning for a reborn and
reestablish the Jewish state on its historical land. Throughout the entire 19th century,
the return of the Jews to the Holy Land was so widely supported in Britain, the
United States and France that such eminent persons as Queen Victoria, King
Edward VII, John Adams, the second President of the United States, General
Smuts of South Africa, President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, British Prime
Ministers Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour, President Woodrow Wilson, Benedetto
Croce, Italian philosopher and historian, Henri Durant, founder of the Red
Cross and author of the Geneva Conventions, Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian
scientist and humanitarian, were among its enthusiastic proponents. The French
government through Minister M. Cambon formally committed itself to “the
renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many
centuries ago". Even in faraway China, Wang, Minister of
Foreign Affairs, declared that “the Nationalist government is in full sympathy
with the Jewish people in their desire to establish a country for themselves.”
In fact, there is a list of over 50 eminent
people from more than 20 countries who appear in the gallery of non-Jewish
Zionists. Representing the political, intellectual elite of many nations, many
of them had traveled widely throughout the Land; but all – even those who had
not – could hardly have been unaware of the written evidence – report after
report – of travelers who testified as to the barren and desolate state of
Palestine/Israel. The most famous was Mark Twain, who recorded after his visit
in 1867: “Stirring scenes occur in the valley (Jezreel) no more. There is not a
solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for thirty miles in either
direction. ...One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings.”
Of the Galilee, he wrote of “...these un-peopled deserts,
these rusty mounds of barrenness...” Nazareth he described as
“forlorn”, Jericho as “a moldering ruin”.
Thirty years later, in 1898, German Kaiser
Wilhelm II also visited Palestine/Israel. He was appalled at the condition of
the country.
The Ottomans had stripped the forests for
lumber and firewood. The Arab Palestinians had let an old Roman aqueduct fall
into ruin. The ultimate ecological curse was the ubiquitous herds of black
goats. For nearly 2,000 years after the dispersion of the Jews, Arabs had
allowed their goats to graze un-fenced across Palestine aka The Land of Israel. They had eaten the
grass down to its roots, and the topsoil had eroded and blown away. The
biblical land of milk and honey had become a dust bowl.
In 1891, Dr. W.E. Blackstone, quoting the
foremost authorities on international law, pointed out that since the Jews
never gave up their title to Palestine/Israel, the general “law of dereliction”
did not apply in their case; “for they never abandoned the land. They made no
treaty; they did not even surrender. They simply succumbed, after the most
desperate conflict, to the overwhelming power of the Romans...” Blackstone
quoted the leading legal authorities of his day, who agreed that the Jewish
claim is legally sound – and this remains so to this day.
Arabs Welcome Jews Home
And what of “Arab nationalism”? At that time,
no one had heard of a “Arab Palestine people”; the term was not invented until
after 1964, entirely for political reasons. The British Peace Handbook No. 60,
published in 1918, declared that “the people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but
only Arab speaking... In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin;
elsewhere they are of the most mixed race...they (the Arabs of Palestine) have
little if any national sentiment...they hide their weapons at the call of
patriotism.” The idea that Palestine should be Arab was
never even contemplated. On the contrary, the attitude of the Arabs to the
Jewish National Movement was one of almost unanimous approval. In 1906, Farid
Kassab, a famous Syrian author, expressed the view uniformly held by the Arabs:
“The Jews of the Orient are at home. This land is their only fatherland. They
don’t know any other.” A year later, Dr. Moses Gaster reported that he had
“held conversations with some of the leading sheiks, and they all expressed
pleasure at the advent of the Jews, for they considered that with them had come
‘barakat’ – blessing, since the rain came in due season.”
Throughout Arabia, the chiefs were for
the most part, distinctly pro-Zionist, as were the Palestinian peasantry, who
were delighted at the benefits that Jewish immigration was bringing them. The
Muslim religious leader, the Mufti, was openly friendly, even taking a
prominent part in the ceremony of laying the foundation stone of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The Emir Hussein of
the Hejaz replied “with an expression of goodwill towards a kindred Semitic
race”, when the Balfour Declaration was communicated to him in 1918, a treaty
was signed by King Feisal and Chaim Weitzman on January 3, 1919 in England
officially recognizing Palestine as the Jewish Homeland, and his son Feisal,
acting officially for the Arab movement, wrote on March 3, 1919:
We Arabs look with the deepest sympathy on the
Zionist movement. Our deputation in Paris is fully acquainted with
the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organization to the Peace
Conference and we regard them as moderate and proper. We will do our best,
insofar as we are concerned, to help them through. We will wish the Jews a most
hearty welcome home.
There had indeed been many attacks on Jewish
settlements by Bedouin long before then, reflecting the age-old clash between
agriculturalists and shepherds; and it has been said that not a single
settlement was created without some loss of life. Nevertheless, this was a
feature of the lawless state of the country, in which Jews were not the only
victims.
As late as 1920, three years after the Balfour
Declaration, the British government issued a Peace Handbook No. 162 on
Zionism for the instruction and information of British officials and
representatives throughout the world. It stated unequivocally that Jewish
nationalism has been continuous, and refers to the fact that it is “the oldest
nationalist movement in history”. No more explicit statement of Jewish
aspirations has ever been penned than this official British publication, which
is now buried somewhere in the dusty files of Whitehall.
The Rot Begins
So what happened? How was it possible that in
just three years – from 1917 to 1920, (when the first pogrom occurred) Arab
goodwill was transmuted into hatred and enmity? In March 1921, Winston
Churchill visited Palestine/Israel, and met with a formal body calling itself
the “Executive Committee of the Haifa Congress of Arab Palestinians”. They
presented him with a memorandum protesting Zionist activity in Palestine/Israel,
arguing that Jews were not a nationality but a religion; that they had
destroyed Russia, Germany and Austria, and that they took
but never gave. They wanted Britain to stop the effort for a Jewish National
Home, to stop all Jewish immigration, annul all relevant British laws, and make
Palestine/Israel part of Syria.
It is important to note that this document –
which Churchill rejected – emerged from a population that was mostly given over
to lawlessness and banditry, and of which 85% of the men and 93% of the women
were illiterate, while the remainder were Muslim landlords – a parasitic
upper-class known as effendis. The ideas of democracy and nationalism were
utterly alien to them; from where did they learn of these essentially Western
concepts – as well as the jargon of European anti-Semitism, which they
expressed so succinctly?
War Against the Jews
In December
9, 1917, General Allenby made his historic entry into Jerusalem. Hardly had the Turks
been driven out when it became clear to Jew and Arab alike that the entire
British Military Administration was uncompromisingly opposed both to the letter
and the spirit of the Balfour Declaration. In his solemn proclamation after
taking Jerusalem, Allenby spoke as if
the Declaration had never been issued. In fact, no mention was made of the
Jewish National Home in any official announcement in Palestine/Israel until May 1, 1920.
The generals who succeeded him looked on Britain’s pro-Zionist
commitment as little less than criminal lunacy, and virtually refused to carry
out London’s orders. They considered the Jews to
be dangerous Bolsheviks who were conspiring to upset the Empire. Their aim was
to promote a federation of Arab states, to include the Hejaz, Syria, Iraq and Palestine/Israel,
which was to lie, as Egypt had lain, in the
political and economic sphere of Britain. Their attitude
towards the Jews was contemptuous and hostile. Despite the Jewish majority in Jerusalem, two-thirds of the
Army-appointed Jerusalem Corporation were Arab and only one-third Jewish.
General Money, who succeeded Allenby,
asserted: “I have asked many people in position – in England and elsewhere – why England has capitulated to
the Zionists, but none of them have been able to give me a straight answer.” He
decided that all tax forms and receipts should be printed in English and Arabic
only; and the Military Governor of Jaffa declared that he was
going to address Jewish delegations in Arabic.
Subordinates swiftly responded to the cue
supplied by their superior officers. Horace Samuel, late Judicial Officer in
Palestine/Israel, wrote of a medical officer “who quite frankly and with barely
concealed relish announced that Jew-baiting had been the sport of kings for
centuries and centuries.” “All told”, Samuel concluded, the British officers “regarded
the Balfour Declaration as damn nonsense, the Jews as a damn nuisance, and the
Arabs as damn good fellows.”
In London, a Jewish Commission
had been appointed, ostensibly to take over the business of developing the
country under the protective arm of the Military. Headed by Dr. Weizmann, it
arrived on July 24, 1918, with the authority
of the British Government, to advise the Palestine/Israel Administration on
Jewish affairs. The generals, who had been treating the Jewish population as if
it were non-existent, simply ignored the Commission altogether.
With a pointed demonstration of contempt, when
the Jewish national anthem was played at a concert in a Jewish school, General
Money and his staff deliberately kept their seats. Incident followed upon incident.
Most of the Zionist leaders still carried with them the weakness under attack
that had characterized life in the Russian Pale of Settlement. The only time
they opened their mouths was when the notorious anti-Semite Colonel Scott
(acting head of the Judiciary) publicly insulted the Jews and the Jewish
religion in the corridor of the Law Courts. The howl that went up, led by
Orthodox institutions, compelled him to resign.
In January 1919, the British Civic Adviser in Jerusalem, C.R. Ashbee, wrote
in his diary: “...the Jew is unthinkable without a bargain, he bears the brand
of that mean fellow Jacob on his brow...” On January 1, the Chief of the
Imperial General Staff, Sir Henry Wilson, described Chaim Weizmann as “a clever
rogue but a bad face.” On February 3, a Foreign Office senior official, J.D.
Gregory, commenting on anti-Jewish riots in the Ukraine, noted: “The Jews
deserve all they get”; and when Weizmann went again to see Sir Henry Wilson and
protested that the British officers in Palestine/Israel were pro-Arab and
anti-Zionist, Wilson noted in his diary that this was “very likely and quite
right!”
In June 1919, General Louis Bols was appointed
Military Governor of Jerusalem. When Colonel
Patterson, a staunch Zionist friend, heard that Bols had been appointed, he was
shocked, and wrote: “I knew Bols well, having worked with him for two years. I
knew him as an out and out anti-Semite, who would leave no stone unturned to
destroy the Jewish National Home root and branch.” Bols’ Chief of Staff was Colonel
Waters Taylor, whose idea was a military government in perpetuity, and who
later became an anti-Zionist organizer in London.
With conscious design, the Administration
fostered hostility between Arab and Jew. It directly advised the Arabs of
Palestine/Israel and Egypt to abstain from any
concessions to the Jews. It formed the Muslim-Christian Association and used it
against the Zionists on the slightest pretext. It established the Muslim
Supreme Council as a counterpart to the Zionist Executive. It instructed Arab
youths in the technique and tenets of modern nationalism, in order to resist
Jewish “pretenses”. The Arabs were supplied with funds, and their arguments
ghost-written by Englishmen in high places.
From February-June 1919, the Paris Peace
Conference took place, and was concluded with the Treaty of Versailles on June
29. The view taken throughout by the British delegation – which did not include
the Military – was that, if there were to be a Jewish nationality, it could
only be by giving the Jews local habitation, and enabling them to found in
Palestine/Israel a Jewish state. The official recommendation of the United States government was for
the setting up of a Jewish state. A Commission of prominent Americans had been
sent by President Wilson to investigate, and their recommendations, adopted by
the President and other American delegates without dissent, stated bluntly that
“it is right that Palestine/Israel should become a Jewish state.”
In 1920, General Bols issued a proclamation –
it neither is nor clear why – that the British intended to carry out the
provisions of the Mandate. A few weeks later, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen
recorded that Colonel Waters Taylor met with Haj Amin – a violent anti-Jewish
agitator – and told him that “he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the
world that Zionism was unpopular not only with the British Palestine
Administration but in Whitehall; and if disturbances of sufficient violence
occurred at Easter, both General Bols and General Allenby would advocate the
abandonment of the Jewish Home.”
The First British-Inspired Pogrom
Haj Amin took the Colonel’s advice and
instigated a riot. Agitators addressed the Muslim crowds, urging them forward
against the Jews, who had been disarmed on the orders of the Administration.
All Jewish policemen had been relieved from duty in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. The riot
started with cries of “We shall drink the blood of the Jews” – “Don’t be
afraid, the Government is with us!” The mob rushed in, brandishing knives
and clubs. The Government surrounded the Old City with a cordon of
police and troops, preventing outside help. The Jews were given over to
slaughter, rape, torture and looting for three days before the authorities
raised a hand to interfere. Three weeks later, riots in Jaffa and elsewhere left 43
Jews dead.
Because of Haj Amin’s overt role in
instigating the pogrom, the British arrested him. However, he escaped (in
circumstances that are not clear) and was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment
in absentia. However, a year later some British Arabists persuaded Samuel to
pardon him.
After a second pogrom in May 1921 in which looting and murder of Jews
spread throughout the country, the British appointed the Haycraft Commission to
investigate the cause of the violence. Although the panel concluded that the
Arabs had been the aggressors, it rationalized the cause of the attack: “The
fundamental cause of the riots was a feeling among the Arabs of discontent
with, and hostility to, the Jews, due to political and economic causes, and
with their conception of Zionist policy...”
A tremendous wave of protest swept the world
like a typhoon. The British, their hands full with India and Ireland, were in a tight
spot. They removed the top Administrator in Palestine/Israel, together with his
Chief of Staff. The Military Administration, which had worked indefatigably for
three years to foment the Arabs, was disbanded; and its powers transferred to –
of all places – the Colonial Office, a bureau maintained almost entirely for
the control of uncivilized tropical or sub-tropical races, and which, by its
very nature and interests, could not fail to be opposed to the Mandate. And as
Colonel Patterson remarked grimly: “Bols went, but the system he planted
remained. The anti-Semitic officials he brought with him into the country
remained.”
So matters stood, when in April 1920, the
Supreme Council of the principal Allied Powers met at San Remo to go through the
motions of ratifying the Mandate. A few months later, the Treaty of Sevres was
signed between Turkey and the Western
Powers. It reiterated the decisions of the nations, ceding Palestine/Israel
with the proviso that the British “Mandatory will be responsible for putting
into effect the Declaration originally made on November 2, 1917 by the British
Government and adopted by the other Allied Powers in favor of the establishment
in Palestine/Israel of the National Home of the Jewish people.” It is important
to remember that “Palestine region” was not known
as a country but as an administrative district; and that it included
both East and West Banks of the river Jordan, Gaza and the Golan.
The First Partition
In spite of world indignation at the pogrom
that had just taken place, the Jews, led by Chaim Weizmann, still believed
implicitly in British honesty and good faith. They demanded that Britain be confirmed as the
trustee to carry out the Mandate for Palestine/Israel. In July 1922, the League of Nations approved the
appointment of Britain as the Mandatory
Power to help establish the Jewish National Home in all of Palestine aka the historical Land of Israel.
Britain did not, however,
wait for this formality. In the spring of 1920, she began to make territorial
concessions to the French in Syria at the expense of the
Mandated Territory. She transferred
territory in the north, and directly south of Mount Hermon. Also lopped off were
the lands of Naphtali, Dan and Manasseh, east of the Jordan River, in addition to the
Hauran, an ancient granary of Israel, and most of the
fertile, well-watered Galilee. Colonel Josiah
Wedgwood, a prominent Member of Parliament, wrote that this first partition of
the mandated territory had been actuated by a desire to annoy the Jews.
President Wilson rose from his sick bed and cabled the following protest to the
British Cabinet:
The Zionist cause depends on rational northern
and eastern boundaries for a self-maintaining, economic development of the
country. This means, on the north, Palestine/Israel must include the Litany River and the watersheds of
the Hermon, and on the east it must include the plains of the Jaulon and the
Hauran. Narrower than this is a mutilation...I need not remind you that neither
in this country nor in Paris has there been any
opposition to the Zionist program, and to its realization the boundaries I have
named are indispensable.
The protests moved the British to recover a
few square miles, and to ignore further protests.
The Second Partition
In the following year, 1921, when Britain was
still the occupying power in Palestine/Israel, and before she had even been
granted the Mandate to establish the Jewish National Home in all of
Palestine/Israel, she lopped off Trans-Jordan – three-quarters of the mandated
territory – and handed it over to the Emir Abdullah of the Hejaz who had
marched up with 1,200 nomads and squatted there. So was created the Emirate of
Trans-Jordan – later the Kingdom of Jordan – the first area on
the earth’s surface hermetically sealed to Jews. What now remained out of the
original 60,000 square miles of mandated Palestine was about 11,000
square miles. The Mandates Commission was sharply critical, but like the League of Nations itself, it had no
teeth. It was not until the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in 1923 that the
Mandate was finally placed in British hands. Meanwhile, in Palestine, the British had
appointed a Civil Administration to replace the Military Government; local
responsibility was vested in a civilian High Commissioner. The first was Sir
Herbert Samuel; shortly after his arrival, he held a reception for the members
of his staff. The reaction, blurted out of the mouth of one of them was: “And
there I was at Government House, and there was the Union Jack flying as large
as life, and a bloody Jew sitting under it.”
The Court Jew
Throughout his whole tenure of office, Samuel
suffered acutely from his consciousness of being a Jew, causing him to pivot
right round to an actual pro-Arab attitude. At the Fifth Session of the
Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, Samuel declared that
it was “the fundamental intention of the Government” to deal
with the Arabs “as if there had never been a Balfour Declaration.” He
even recalled and appointed Haj Amin to the powerful position of Mufti of
Jerusalem, in the belief that giving him more responsibility would encourage
him to moderate his anti-Jewish incitement. It didn’t. Husseini guided and
stirred up the Arabs for almost 30 years, and spent his last years in Berlin during World War II
advising Hitler on his plans to “eliminate the Jewish problem”. His baneful
influence lasted until his dying day.
In 1925, Field-Marshal Lord Plumer, under
whose rule the old policies remained unchanged, replaced Samuel. Typical of his
rule was the loan of 20,000 pounds to the Sheba Bedouin in 1928 to quiet their
grumbling against the indirect Government refusal to allow land sales to Jews.
The Second British-Inspired Pogrom
Lord Plumer was relieved in 1928, and was
succeeded by Sir John Chancellor, who retired after three years and became an
anti-Zionist spokesman in London. It was during his
term of office that the second bloody massacre of Jews by the Arabs took place,
in 1929. The story put about that the Jews planned to tear down the Mosque of
Omar, and to rebuild the Temple on the site – a
tactic that has been used to arouse the Arabs to this day. In the Arab press an
anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish campaign was going full blast; the Russian
forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was widely
circulated – as it is also until today. The High Commissioner was absent from
his post for the first time, on a visit to London. The acting High
Commissioner was Harry Luke, known to be unfriendly to the Jews. Arab agitators
toured the country, bringing word from the Mufti to await orders the following
Friday.
In this threatening atmosphere, the Government
disarmed the Jewish villagers, leaving them defenseless. Once again, the cry
went up: “The Government is with us!” The police watched as hundreds of
screaming fellaheen and Bedouin armed with clubs, knives and guns swarmed through
Jerusalem. Whole families were slaughtered,
while the police and British officials, standing on the balcony of Government
House, heard the screaming and the shots – and did nothing. For eight days the
country was given over to an orgy of slaughter, rape, castration and
unspeakable mutilation. The worst barbarisms took place at Hebron, Safed, Jaffa and Motza. The
victims – men, women and children – were beaten, stabbed, their limbs
amputated, stomachs were ripped open, and women were raped. I have met survivors,
who – if they can bring themselves to speak of what happened – remember
recognizing among their assailants Arab “friends” who had been regular guests
in their homes. I have an album of horrifying photographs taken in hospital
after the pogrom; they show the hacked bodies of the survivors, and amputated
hands and fingers laid out on tables.
Voices of Decency
Since the days of the Crusaders, no such
massacre of Jews had occurred in Palestine/Israel. There were worldwide
protests; Lawrence of Arabia, supposed to know the Arabs better than any living
Englishman, declared: “If you had 400 decent British policemen in Palestine/Israel,
there would have been no trouble for the Jews there.” The Frankfurter
Zeitung accused London of trying to “prove
through recurrent struggles between Jews and Arabs that England must stay forever in Palestine.” The venerable Hindu
poet, Rabindranath Tagore, charged Britain with “seeking to
perpetuate a state of war between the Arabs and the Jews”. Adding its voice to
the uproar, the Permanent Mandates Commission, which since 1924 had not spared
criticism of Britain’s handling of the
Mandate, lashed out at the British Government, virtually accusing it of
sabotaging the Jewish National Home.
“Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue”
The Government reacted by appointing more
Commissions. Incredibly, after long delays, they produced pro-Arab reports.
Practically everyone accused of having a hand in the riots was promoted. The
highest term of imprisonment imposed for any of the Hebron murders was 18
months. Typical was the case of a peasant who had killed the two young sons of
a woman named Fruma Charkel by smashing their brains out. He had known the
family for years, and had only laughed at the mother’s plea for mercy while the
little boys were being battered to death. With her surviving son she appeared
against him, as did the invalid father and other eyewitnesses to the attack.
The court freed the Arab, finding “insufficient evidence”.
In 1930, a Labor Government was in power. The
Prime Minister was J. Ramsey MacDonald, who had asserted after a visit to the Middle East in 1922: “The
Arab population do not or cannot use or develop the resources of Palestine...the country is
undeveloped and under populated.” Arthur Henderson, the Foreign Secretary,
was the man who had drawn up a resolution in 1917 approving the Zionists’
right “to form a Free State under International
Agreement, where the Jewish people may return and work out their own salvation
without interference by those of alien faith and religion.”
“Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness”
However, if it is true that power corrupts,
the first casualties of that process seem to be truth and principle. In Spring
1930, the Shaw Commission was the first to report on the 1929 violence. It
concluded that, among the immediate causes of the disturbances was the
“enlargement of the Jewish Agency”. In fact, it is doubtful if any of the
murderers had ever heard of the Jewish Agency or its enlargement. It held the
primary cause to be in essence the crafty way in which the Zionists had taken
advantage of the innocent Arabs, who were being deprived of soil and substance.
Thus was created the “landless Arab” fiction which was to serve the Government
of Palestine as a convenient symbol for many years. It found that Palestine was overcrowded, and
there was not enough land to go round. (This was two short years after the
Government of Palestine had published the fact that “the country
suffers from a lack of population – it is under-cultivated and needs capital.”) It
recommended the curtailment of Jewish immigration and land
purchase, and a Government subsidy to buy up vacant land which was to be handed
over free to the “landless Arabs” – wherever they might be found.
Lord Snell, a member of the Commission, turned
in a minority report. He accused the Administration of encouraging the
Arabs “to believe that they have suffered a great wrong and that the
immigrant Jew constitutes a permanent menace to their livelihood and future,” despite
the fact that “Jewish activities have increased the prosperity
of Palestine/Israel and raised the standard of life of the Arab worker.” Far
from finding the country overcrowded, he noted that “large tracts are
lying waste that should be made available to the Jews.”
Lloyd George condemned the Commissioners’
Report as “mischievous nonsense”. He declared:
The report made for the British Government of
which I was the head in 1919, by competent and experienced engineers, stated
that by well-planned schemes of irrigation one million acres could be added to
the cultivable area of Palestine, and that by this plan, sixteen persons could
be maintained for every one there now.
However, Whitehall had another rabbit to
pull out of the hat, in the form of yet another Commission. The
Hope-Simpson Report was published in November 1930 – simultaneously
with a Cabinet decision to act on it. It consisted of a symposium of oblique
attacks against the Jews and included all the anti-Semitic conceptions of its
day, including the inability of native races to compete with superior Jewish
cunning and ability, and the omnivorous greed of the “rich” Jew for further
gain. It suggested that the Jews be prohibited by law from buying more land. It
charged that the Jews were introducing Bolshevism into the land, and it demanded
that irrigation work of any kind be virtually prohibited. Thus Hope-Simpson,
who had been sent to Palestine under instructions to
investigate the slaughter, looting and raping perpetrated on the Jews, left his
terms of reference – like his predecessors and successors – far behind and
nowhere to be seen.
Evaporation of the Jewish National Home
In October 1930, Lord Passfield, the Colonial
Secretary, issued a White Paper based on the findings of the two Commissions.
It was decidedly pro-Arab and anti-Zionist. It repeated the claim that there
was not enough land for newcomers, and recommended limiting Jewish immigration
and Jewish ownership of land. This resulted in wide protests from leaders of
public opinion in France, Germany and America, while in the House
of Commons, David Lloyd George observed: “They dare not try to kill Zionism
directly, but they try to put it in a refrigerator.” Such prominent
elder statesmen as Lord Hailsham, Mr. Baldwin, Sir John Simon, Sir Austen
Chamberlain and Leo Amery complained that the White Paper would create a
feeling of distrust in British good faith; the major Press added their intense
criticism to the storm. As a result, MacDonald produced a letter modifying
somewhat the offending provisions; but it later turned out to be meaningless.
At the subsequent sessions of the Permanent
Mandate, the Mandatory Power was unmercifully cross-examined. The British
representative suavely asked in reply whether, in view of the fact that Dr.
Weizmann had approved the letter, he needed to make any further comments on the
controversy.
In July 1931, Lieutenant-General Arthur
Wauchope was appointed High Commissioner. He was hardly an improvement on his
predecessors. During his term of office the baleful French Report was issued,
and the disastrous Arab rebellion of 1936-38 took place. Mr. French recommended
completely prohibiting land purchase by Jews, and his collaborator, T.C.
Kipching, appended an auxiliary report asserting that it was necessary for the
Jews to give up what land they already possessed and migrate from Palestine/Israel.
The Jewish leaders were fuming; months of parleying took place, and an amended
French Report was published in July 1933. It placed land transfers completely
under Government control; it stated that the hill Arabs required special
protection against Jews, elaborated on the “landless Arab” problem, and piously
referred to the “displaced” Arab as “a son of the soil to be replaced on the
land of his country”.
Hitlerism in Palestine/Israel
There is little question that by this time the
British officials in Palestine regarded themselves as under some kind of duty
to sabotage the very policy they were appointed to carry out. The American
minister, John Haines Holmes, visiting Palestine/Israel in 1929, related that
the Crown officials he met “talked of the Zionist movement with
impatience, frequently with contempt, and always with the suggestion that they
would be ineffably relieved, if not actually pleased, if the whole thing would
only blow up and disappear.” The English writer Beverley Nichols,
said: “I had not been in Jerusalem for a week before I
realized very clearly in which direction lay the sympathies of the English
community. They were pro-Arab.” Dr. Holmes summed up the matter when he
wrote: “It may well be discovered, before the tale is done, that the English
conquest of Palestine, and the English
Government of Palestine under the Mandate, constitute together the greatest
tragedy that ever befell the Zionist movement.”
On October
10, 1934, a nationalist demonstration was attended by prominent
Government functionaries in their official capacity, where “Arab civilization”
was praised, and their “coming independence and unification of the Arab
countries” (including Palestine/Israel) was enthusiastically hailed. Riots were
openly rehearsed, and the Government allowed the Arab press to keep up a daily
barrage, systematically branding the Jews as “the human sexual disease”, “a
gang of swindlers” and “a menace to all mankind”. Terrorist organizations
paraded, without the slightest attempt at secrecy. All over Palestine groups of brown-clad
storm troops were marching, shouting “Heil Hitler”.
Descent into Chaos
In 1936 armed revolt broke out again all over
Palestine/Israel – for the sixth time since British occupation as trustee for
the Jewish people. There was hardly one of the Arab ringleaders who was not on
the Government payroll. “If one thing stands out from the record of the
British Mandatory administration,” conceded the Peel Report, “it
is the leniency with which Arab political agitation, even when carried out to
the point of violence and murder, has been treated.” An Arab
delegation was invited to London to present its
grievances officially in London – but no Jewish
delegation was asked. Three American Senators – Austin, Copeland and Hastings –
who visited the country, wrote that
there are really two strikes going on in
Palestine/Israel. One is conducted by Arab terrorists, who throw bombs and
snipe at passers-by in the streets and highways. The other is conducted
silently by the British Mandatory Government of Palestine/Israel against the
proper administration of justice. The prolongation of the terror in the Holy Land is due...to a manifest
sympathy for the vandals and assassins displayed by many officers who are sworn
to uphold the law...creating a condition which could not but shock any American
observer.
“Thou Shalt Not Murder”
For months, 15,000 soldiers had apparently
been unable to make safe a few miles of road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. There had been
innumerable hold-ups by armed gangs, in which Jewish passengers had been hauled
out of cars and butchered by the Arabs. The Arab press hailed these killers and
boasted of further horrors to come. On April
16, 1936, the funeral of a murdered Jew was made the occasion of a
protest demonstration. The police fired into the crowd, wounding 30.
Immediately afterwards, steel-helmeted British officers entered Tel Aviv,
dragging out householders on suspicion of being connected with the protest.
Bearers of black-bordered flags were beaten into unconsciousness. The air was
charged with tension, and three days later, the fuse was lit.
A story was circulated in Jaffa that four Arab men
and women had been beheaded by Jews in Tel Aviv. Jaffa resounded with the
familiar cry “The British Mandatory Government is with us!”
By midday the streets were
running with Jewish blood; many were slaughtered and mutilated beyond
recognition, right under the eyes of the British police, who made no effort to
interfere. The contagion spread to other parts of the country. The Arab press
called for murder and revolt. Nazi flags and pictures of Hitler were
prominently displayed in shop windows, and on May 21, the Arab Higher Committee
called a general strike. Violent men from Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia slipped over the
border as if it did not exist. The most important was Fawzy Bey el Kaougji, a
Syrian adventurer who had been sentenced to death by the French. He was greeted
as a hero, hailed as “Commander-in-Chief of the Arab Armies in Southern Syria” (which was the Arab
name for Palestine/Israel); his photographs were displayed and sold in
bookstalls all over the country.
The rioters appeared to possess an
inexhaustible supply of weapons and ammunition – most of them brand-new,
manufactured in Britain. Gangs threatened
Arab shopkeepers and beat up Arab peasants who came into town with their
vegetables. “For an Arab to be suspected of a lukewarm adherence to the
nationalist cause,” said Lord Peel, “is to invite a
visit from a body of gunmen.” When the mayor of Beisan displayed
unwillingness to swell the terrorists’ funds, his young son’s throat was slit
in reprisal; hundreds of wealthy Arabs fled the country in fear.
The Arabs were; Shootings, bombings, and every
conceivable form of violent outrage were daily routine. Bombs were thrown at
homes, railway stations and public buildings. Kindergartens and playgrounds
were dynamited, tearing little children to pieces. Nurses were slain by snipers
as they went on duty. Trains were fired on and wrecked, cinemas blown up, crops
burned, trees whose planting represented a lifetime’s work were uprooted.
One midnight, a gang invaded the
home of a Safed rabbi. They found his three young children on the veranda and
butchered them in their sleep. Their mother, startled by the commotion, ran out
and flung herself on her brood; the Arabs shot her without mercy. Her husband,
coming on the terrible scene, had barely time to see his family dying before
his eyes before a bomb hurled by the retreating intruders decapitated him.
Self-Defense Denied
As in previous riots, the Jews were rendered
impotent by being forcibly disarmed by the British. Drivers of vehicles could
not even carry a club to defend themselves. The British police regularly
searched Jewish buses and cars, while Arab vehicles passed them, neither
examined nor even stopped. Despite the fact that vandals were systematically
uprooting groves and torching them, Senator Copeland found that owners were
flatly refused permission to have armed guards on their properties. Possession
of weapons by Jews was punished by imprisonment. Fifty thousand Jews, some of
them World War I veterans, were ready to undertake police duty; the offer was
refused. Despite wholesale murders through 1936, the British Government did not
take the matter seriously enough to offer a reward. Although in every case the
Jews were the victims, the authorities invariably referred to “Arab-Jewish
clashes”.
The general tone of the courts can be attested
by many. Two examples here must suffice. Two Arabs positively identified by
seven eyewitnesses as having dynamited a cinema in Tel Aviv, murdering three
and mangling many others, were given seven days’ jail; the murder charges were
not even brought up. In another case, some 200 Arabs armed with knives and iron
bars fell on the Jewish quarter of Tiberias. When the British military and
police eventually arrived, they “escorted” the assailants out of the vicinity.
On the way, the latter broke shop windows and stoned passersby. The next day
the British police returned and arrested 15 Jews.
After the bloodbath had continued for 175 days
the Government decided that enough was enough. They promised that if the strike
were halted, a Royal Commission would immediately come and “give the Arabs
justice”. The strike ended, and Fawzy Bey and his followers were allowed
passage into Trans-Jordan “with honor” – according to the London Times.
The Third Partition?
In October 1936, yet another British
Commission arrived this time under the leadership of Lord Robert Peel. It held
66 meetings and issued its Report in July 1937, recommending partition of
Palestine/Israel into an Arab and a Jewish state. The British Government
expressed general agreement with these findings, but in practice it faced three
options: to enforce a second partition, to pull out and leave the Jews and
Arabs to fight it out, or to stay and improvise. In the face of strong
opposition from all the Arab Palestinians to the whole idea of partition, the British
Government decided to stay and improvise. The improvisation took the form of
crushing the Arab rebellion, combined with promising them an independent state
in the future.
For once, the British action against violence
was resolute. Stung by the Peel Commission’s severe criticism of its leniency with
Arab political agitation, the British Government gave the Military the
necessary political backing to repress the revolt. When in September 1937, the British
District Commissioner of Galilee was assassinated, all the members of the
Higher Arab Committee were arrested, and Haj Amin was removed from his post as
head of the Supreme Muslim Council. He escaped, dressed as a Bedouin, and made
his way to Lebanon, where the French
gave him asylum.
The next month, widespread rioting broke out
again all over the country, and it developed into a full-scale Arab revolt,
which lasted until the end of 1938. Against it the British Government applied
severe military repression. The High Commissioner himself was retired, and his
place was taken by Sir Harold MacMichael who arrived on March 3, 1938. One of his first acts was to return control
of the city government of Jerusalem to the Arabs,
dismissing the acting Jewish mayor, Daniel Auster, and appointing an Arab
majority in the Municipal Council. In the official announcement it was made
perfectly clear that if Auster had been a Muslim, he could have continued as
mayor.
The First Hanging
In April, yet another British Commission set
out for Palestine/Israel. As it arrived, Arab terrorism again stalked the
country, with the British police and military seemingly powerless to stop it.
Peaceful Arabs as well as Jews were slaughtered daily, Jewish villages
attacked, and houses, schools and other buildings blown to bits. Arson, stoning
and sniping became part of the regular routine of the Arabs. Determined to
characterize these events as “Arab-Jewish clashes”, the British Government
ordered mass arrests of Jewish workmen and students. Among them was a young boy
named Shlomo Ben-Yosef who was sentenced to hang for allegedly possessing arms.
The British Government did not assert that he had killed or injured anyone.
A general strike shut all Jewish shops in Jerusalem, while over the
entire country, widespread demonstrations took place. They were ignored, and
Ben-Yosef was put to death – on a Jewish holiday. In the British Parliament,
John McGovern, MP referred to the execution as “perfectly outrageous”.
Meanwhile, terror expanded to unprecedented proportions; and in this turbulent
setting, the British Commission completed its labors. Their plan was to reduce
the Jewish area to a token “home” of some 400 square miles in the Sharon Valley. Galilee, Acre and Haifa were to be added to
the permanently mandated British area. The British would also take over
southern Palestine/Israel to protect the Suez Canal and the remainder of
the country was to be added to Trans-Jordan as an Arab state under Abdullah.
Encouraged by the British Commission’s
recommendations, the British Government toyed with the idea of even abrogating
the Jewish “token home”, altogether repudiating the Balfour Declaration, and
setting up an Arab government permanently allied to Great Britain. Tewfik es-Suwaidi,
Foreign Minister of Iraq, was invited to London for this purpose,
under the sponsorship of the Foreign Office, and he demanded this solution in
the name of an "aroused Arab world". Simultaneously, an imposing Arab
Congress gathered in Cairo and threatened Britain with the eternal
enmity of all Arabia unless their minimum demands were met.
Likewise simultaneously, the Arab rebels in Palestine/Israel announced the
formation of a “provisional Arab government” to take over the responsibility
for “law and order, life and limb” in the whole of Palestine/Israel. They set
up their own courts, issued laws and decrees, and collected taxes. The British
looked on passively, while shocking acts of violence were committed, as when 21
Jews were butchered in cold blood on October 22 in Tiberias, including ten
little children who were roasted alive.
League of Nations – A Dying Protest
As it became apparent that Britain was about to
repudiate its obligations under the Mandate for Palestine/Israel, indignation
and anger were voiced, particularly in the United States. In its dying
moments, the League of Nations accused Britain of a flagrant violations
and breach of its Mandate, calling attention to her “virtual suspension” of
Jewish immigration. In the face of these reactions, and at a time of an
international crisis in Europe, the British cabinet
met on October 19 and announced that no drastic action would be taken against
the Jews. The plans for a reorganized Arab Palestine/Israel were shelved, and
it was announced that military action would be taken at once to put down the
Arab rebels.
In November 1938, the British Government
convened the London Conference on the future of Palestine/Israel. It was
attended by the representatives of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen and Trans-Jordan – as
well as a Arab Palestinian Arab (which was split between followers of the Mufti
and people who were frightened of him), the Zionist Executive, and the British
hosts. The Conference broke up in deadlock on March 17, 1939, two days after Hitler’s occupation of Prague. It paved the way for
a unilateral statement from the British Government, which would be much more
favorable to the Arabs than any official statement since the beginning of the
Mandate. This was the famous White Paper of May 1939, of which the main
provisions were: no partition; no Jewish state; an independent Arab state
within 10 years; Jewish immigration, after five years, would not be allowed
“unless the Arabs of Palestine/Israel were prepared to acquiesce in it”.
The legality of the White Paper, in terms of
the Mandate, for Palestine/Israel was not only contested by the Jews. The
Permanent Mandates Commission, reporting to the Council of the League, found
unanimously “that the policy set out in the White Paper was not in
accordance with the interpretation which, in agreement with the Mandatory Power
and the Council, the Commission had placed upon the Palestine Mandate.”
However, the outbreak of war put an end to the
League’s life, and the Council never met to consider the matter.
In spite of everything, almost the entire
Jewish population – known as the Yishuv (from the root “to
return”) - was wholeheartedly in support of the British. However, restrictions
on immigration were maintained, and as the war went on, and the horrifying
details of Hitler’s Final Solution of the Jewish Problem became known, the
inhumanity of barring the gates of Palestine/Israel to those pitiful remnants
trying to escape the Holocaust tore at the hearts of the Yishuv –
especially the youth. The British went as far as sending intelligence agents to
blow up Jewish refugee ships bound for Palestine/Israel – under “Operation Embarrass”.
The resulting clash between them and Britain in the immediate post-war years,
resulting in Britain, at last, abandoning their responsibility and relinquishing
the Mandate for Palestine/Israel, is too well recorded – and indeed too painful
– to recall here.
I have another photograph hanging on the wall
of my study. It, too, is well known. In the foreground stands a scared Jewish
boy, about 12 years old, wearing a cap, and holding his hands above his head in
surrender. To his left are a few women and children, who have just emerged from
the sewers of the Warsaw ghetto under the
watchful eyes of Nazi soldiers, standing around with guns.
To me, this photo speaks volumes. I wonder how
many of the six million Jews who were horribly done to death in Nazi
concentration camps would have found a haven in the Jewish National Home,
probably millions. I wonder what the Middle East would be like today
if Britain had faithfully and
resolutely carried out the Mandate for Palestine/Israel entrusted her by the League of Nations to implement some of
the terms of the 1920 San Remo Treaty.
The late British General Wavell of World War
II fame wrote of “...1919-1939, years that are better forgotten in the history
of our people, when the spirit grew tired and disillusioned, and the
body slack and soft.” It was not only the body and the spirit that drooped,
but the values, the decency, and the British reputation for fair play which –
had they been upheld in those years – might have avoided not only the tragedy
of Palestine/Israel and the Jews, but World War II itself.
Today, many of the old pretexts for Britain’s dereliction of duty
have been demolished: “the absorptive capacity of Palestine/Israel”, “the
landless Arab”, “the twice-promised Land”. But there is one which not only
remains to this day, but has grown into a reincarnation of the monstrous demon
which stalked the world in the Middle Ages: anti-Semitism. And –
painful though it may be to admit – the fact is that the seed was sown by the
British in Palestine/Israel under the Mandate for Palestine, with a resolution
which, had it been more honest and constructive in attitude, would have avoided
over 80 years of bloodshed and pain.
In fairness to the British, it must be pointed
out that the dissension they sowed did not fall on barren soil. There were
attacks on Jewish settlements by Bedouin for 40 years before the British came;
but as I have already pointed out, these reflected the age-old quarrel between
the agriculturalist and the nomad, the homesteader and the shepherd. But more
important was the history of traditional Muslim-Arab hostility and violence
towards Jews as “dhimmis” – viz., Jews and Christians living under
Muslim rule and subject to discriminatory restrictions. The British, however,
added a political dimension to this age-old religious prejudice, and the two
together, fertilized with European anti-Semitism, became the poisonous weed
that has strangled the Middle East ever since.
If an individual were to behave in a manner
dictated by racial prejudice, by the desire to maintain or extend his influence
– to lie, malign, deceive, distort, manipulate, incite and conspire, in such a
manner as to inspire hatred, murder and mayhem – there are few who would defend
him. One of the main reasons why the world is tortured is because states can
and do behave in this manner; and neither they nor anyone else considers it
deplorable.
But I am not talking about “states” in
general; I am talking about the land of my birth, which I once admired, and
which I volunteered to help defend against evil. I am repeating what a large
number of decent, honorable Englishmen said and wrote during those terrible
inter-war years, of whom I have quoted here only a few. Their memoirs, their
speeches, their protests, their denunciations, all breathed the spirit of fair
play that was once regarded as synonymous with the word “British”. Nothing they
said, wrote or did had any effect on those who committed the most terrible
perfidy in world history.
I still live in the hope that Britain will return to her
true self. The signs today are gloomy; we hear the old mantra of “the cycle of
violence” in the Middle East, echoing the words, “Arab-Jewish
clashes” used to express moral equivalence between perpetrators and victims.
When attention is drawn – and rightly so – to the appalling suffering of the Arab
Palestinian, the present British Government never alludes to the overwhelming
evidence – mostly from Arab leaders – that Arab leaders themselves were
entirely responsible for the origin and continuation of their people’s
suffering, and should be held responsible to this day. We hear from the Arabs
the daily litany of lies so palpable, so obvious, and at times so ridiculous;
and we marvel that no one in Britain stands up and
declares – “Stop! Enough! If you want our help, change your mindset!” Assad of
Syria, now the strongest supporter of terrorist organizations in the Middle East and a fanatical
anti-Semite – is given a royal welcome in London. We witness the eager
sponsorship by Britain of a third partition of Palestine/Israel by carving out
a second “Arab Palestinian” state, occupied by a people, invented –on their
own admission – some 40 years ago, and who never cease to proclaim
that their aim is still to destroy Israel. We recall that a large proportion of
these Arabs who deny the right of Jews to return to their homeland immigrated
to enjoy a better economic life after the Jews had revitalized the land and
turned it into green pastures. We are told that the Arabs must be assured of
“even-handedness” – something which the Jews have lacked at Britain’s hands
ever since 1917; and this from the British country which created the
Arab-Jewish conflict, and which therefore might be expected to display less
presumption and more humility. However, as the prophet Zephaniah wrote: “The
unjust knows no shame.”
The story is told that when British Field
Marshal Lord Plumer was High Commissioner of Palestine/Israel, the Arabs,
persisting naively in the same tactics which were so successful under his
predecessor, Lord Samuel, approached him in delegation, warning that if a
planned procession of Jewish war veterans were held, they “would not be
responsible for the peace of Jerusalem” Plumer withered them with the reply:
“No one asked you to be responsible. I am the High Commissioner, and I will be
responsible.” The Arabs never tried that trick again as long as the Field
Marshal remained in Palestine/Israel; nor were there any pogroms under his
rule.
This is a lesson for today.
Select Bibliography
Bard, Mitchell G.: Myths and Facts – A
Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2001).
Bennett, Ramon: Philistine (1995).
Dawood, N.J.: The Koran (translation)
(1999).
Denton, Clifford: Islam
and Israel (No. 9 in the
series The Challenge of Islam) (1989).
Duff, Douglas V.: Galilee Galloper (1939).
Gilbert, Martin: Exile and Return,
(1978).
Hamady, Sania: Temperament and
Character of the Arabs(1960).
Laffin, John: The Arab Mind (1987).
Loftus, John and Mark Aarons: The
Secret War Against the Jews(1994).
Peters, Joan: From Time Immemorial (1948).
Samuel, Horace B.: Unholy Memories of
the Holy Land (1936).
Trifkovic, Serge: The Sword of the
Prophet: Islam History, Theology, Impact on the World (2002).
Van Paassen, Pierre: Forgotten
Ally (1943).
Ye’or, Bat: The Dhimmi (1985).
