WINSTON CHURCHILL'S VIEWS PALESTINE

WINSTON CHURCHILL'S VIEWS PALESTINE

The Former British Colonial Secretary's Answer

to Pass field.

THERE are four milestones or signposts in

British policy towards Zionism and Palestine,

and the question which has now arisen is whether

they all point the same way . The first of these

signposts was erected when on the second of

November, 1917, the late Lord Balfour addressed

to Lord Rothschild the letter known as "The Balfour

Declaration." "His Majesty's Government,"

wrote the British Foreign Secretary, "views with

favor the establishment in Palestine of a National

Home for Jewish people and will use their best

endeavors to facilitate achievement of this

object."

The year 1917 marked perhaps the most drear

and sombre period of war . It was the time when

many hitherto unswerving, despaired of victory

of the allies . It was the moment when most resolute

elements of the British Government sought

to enlist every influence that could hold allied

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the associated nations to the task . The Zionist

movement throughout the world was actively

pro-Ally, and in a special sense pro-British . Nowhere

was this movement more noticeable than

in the United States and upon the active share of

the United States in the bloody struggle which

was impending rested a large proportion of our

hopes. The able leaders of the Zionist movement

and their wide-spread branches exercised an appreciable

influence upon American opinion and

that influence-like the Jewish influence generally

-was steadily cast in our favor . Throughout the

world of allied nations, Jews (Zionist and non-

Zionist alike) sympathized with the Allies and

worked for the success of Great Britain and the

close co-operation with Great Britain of the

United States.

The Balfour Declaration must, therefore, not

be regarded as a promise given from sentimental

motives ; it was a practical measure taken in the

interests of a common cause at a moment when

that cause could afford to neglect no factor of

material or moral assistance .

The second milestone was the acceptance in

1919 of the Palestinian Mandate by Great Britain

upon certain express terms . ;Article two, the

prime and fundamental article, states "the Mandatory

shall be responsible for placing the coun288

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try under such political administrative and economic

conditions as will secure the establishment

of the Jewish National Home, as laid down in the

preamble, and the development of self-governing

institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil

and religious rights of all inhabitants in Palestine,

irrespective of race or religion ." The dual obligation,

no doubt replete with difficulties, was deliberately

accepted by Great Britain . Upon this

obligation the Permanent Mandates Commission

of the League of Nations, surveying the problem

ten years later, made in 1929 the following pronouncement

: Firstly, "that obligations laid down

in the Mandate in regard to the two sections of

population are of equal weight ." Secondly, "that

the two obligations imposed on the Mandatory

Power are in no sense irreconcilable ." The two

obligations are indeed of equal weight but they

are different in character. The first obligation is

positive and creative, the second obligation is safeguarding

and conciliatory .

Our Mandatory obligation towards the Jews

throughout the world who helped us, and towards

Palestinian Arabs who were the conscript soldiers

of our Turkish enemy are both binding and we are

bound both to persevere in establishment of the

Jewish National Home and in safeguarding the

civil and religious rights of Arabs . Merely to sit

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still and avoid friction with Arabs and safeguard

their civil and religious rights and to abandon the

positive exertion for the establishment of the

Jewish National Home would not be a faithful

interpretation of the Mandate .

Lord Passfield is not stating the case truly when

he writes in the new White Paper, "It is clear

from the wording of this article that the population

of Palestine, and not any sectional interest,

is to be the object of the Government's care."

The essence of the Balfour Declaration in 1917,

and the intention of the Mandate in 1919 was

that "the sectional interest" of the Jews in the

establishment of their National Home was to be

the object of the Government's care and in the

words of the article, the Mandatory Power

assumed responsibility for bringing about the

political, administrative, and economic conditions

which would secure the establishment of

the Jewish National Home.

The third milestone is found in the Colonial

Office dispatches and correspondence published

in June, 1922 . Here we have quitted the region

of mandates and declarations, and the British

Government is face to face with the inherent,

though not inseparable difficulties of the problem .

They have to set limits both of speed and method

to practical year-to-year progress of the Zionist

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scheme. They have to offer to the Arab population

definite and concrete assurances as to the

sphere within which their civil, religious rights

will be safeguarded . Instructions telegraphed on

June 29th, from the Colonial Office to the officer

administrating the Government of Palestine set

this out in a simple summary, "Firstly, the Majesty's

Government reaffirm the Declaration of

November, 1917, which is not susceptible to

change. Secondly, a Jewish National Home will

be founded in Palestine . The Jewish people will

be in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance .

But the Majesty's Government have no such aim

in view as that Palestine should become as Jewish

as England is English . Thirdly, nor do the

Majesty's Government contemplate the disappearance

or subordination of the Arab population,

language or culture. Fourthly, the status of

all citizens of Palestine will be Palestinian, no

section of the population will have any other

status in the eye of the law." (There are other

points in the telegram but they need not be cited

here.)

This statement of practical policy required to

fulfill the obligations of the Mandate and of the

Balfour Declaration was inconsistently rejected

by the Arabs and accepted only with extreme

disappointment by the Zionists . Nevertheless, the

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Executive of the Zionist Organization passed a

resolution assuring His Majesty's Government

that the activity of the Organization would conform

to the policy therein set forth and in letter

conveying the text of this resolution . Dr. Chaim

Weizmann wrote, "The Zionist Organization has

at all times been sincerely desirous of proceeding

in harmonious co-operation with all sections of

the people of Palestine . It has repeatedly made it

clear both in word and deed that nothing is further

from its purpose than prejudice in the smallest

degree of civil or religious rights or material

interests of the non-Jewish population ."

On this basis, therefore, the Government of

Palestine has been conducted for the intervening

eight years.

We now come to the fourth milestone, namely

the White Paper issued from the Colonial Office

by Lord Passfield in the past month . The question

which has to be judged is whether the new

Declaration of the Socialist Government departs

from the position established in 1922, which

position was, however reluctantly, accepted by

Zionists as in interpretation of the Balfour letter

and of the Mandate. Here it should be said that

the difference is largely one of emphasis . Lord

Passfield is an aged minister worn with a lifetime

of literary and sociological labors who has, as is

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well known, long been anxious to seek repose. It

may well be that he has not given that intense

personal attention and original effort to this

White Paper that controversial delicacy and importance

of subject required . No one, according

to the Premier, was more surprised than the Colonial

Office at the interpretation placed upon

their document . The alteration of the emphasis

of a few passages and phrases might easily have

brought the balance of the statement into harmony

with the balance achieved in 1922. This,

we hope, may yet be done .

There are, however, at least two deviations of

principle which must be remarked . The first has

already been mentioned. Lord Passfield in basing

himself upon the report of the Permanent Mandates

Commission of the League of Nations that

the obligations laid down by the Mandate in regard

to the two sections of population are of

equal weight, has overlooked or ignored the fact

that obligations are totally different in character .

Secondly, frequent use in Lord Passfield's paper

of Mandatory obligations "to inhabitants of

Palestine, both Arabs and Jews," diverges fundamentally

from the 1922 White Paper which, following

upon the Balfour Declaration and the

Mandate, recognized in obligation not only to

the inhabitants of Palestine-Arab or Jew-but

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to the Zionist movement all over the world to

whom the original promise was made.

"When it is asked," says the White Paper of

11922, "what is meant by the development of the

Jewish National Home in Palestine it may be

answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish

Nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a

whole, but the further development of the existing

Jewish community, with the assistance of

Jews in other parts of the world in order that it

may become a centre in which Jewish people as

a whole may take, on grounds of religion and

race, an interest and pride . But in order that this

community should have the best prospect of free

development and provide full opportunity for

the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is

essential that it should know that it is in Palestine

as of right and not on sufferance. That is the

reason why it is necessary that the existence of

the Jewish National Home in Palestine should be

internationally guaranteed and that it should be

formally recognized to rest upon the ancient historic

connection."

Discrepancy in fact and in spirit is obvious .

British obligation is not limited to the inhabitants

of Palestine . It must also comprise further external

obligation. The duty of the British Govern294

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ment cannot be discharged merely by a convenient

administrative treatment of a local situation .

There is no use at this stage in examining

whether the obligations which Great Britain has

contracted by the Balfour letter and the Palestine

Mandate were wise or unwise . The sole

question is whether they are being fulfilled, or

that they are incapable of fulfilment, or that our

latest Government has neither the will nor the

means to persevere in their fulfilment, there is

one relief and one relief only which can be

sought. No one could claim that the British nation

is bound for all time, irrespective of events

or of their own physical and moral strength to

pursue the policy of establishment of the Jewish

National Home . But from the moment that we

recognize and proclaim that we have departed

from these undertakings and are regarding the

Zionist cause as a mere inconvenient incident in

the Colonial Office administration of Palestine,

we are bound to return our Mandate to the

League of Nations and forego the strategic moral

and material advantages arising from the British

control of, and association with the Holy Land .

THE GREAT BETRAYAL is much more than a protest against

the recently issued White Paper of Lord Passfield . It is a precise

and moderate statement of British-Zionist relations by two

men who were trusted collaborators of Herzl and Nordau and

who have been outstanding factors in the direction of the

Herzlian movement since its founding in 1897. Here they

answer the questions asked in and out of Jewry by those who

wish to know the truth as to the charges of betrayal hurled at

the British Labor Government by Jews in all lands and even by

some of England's leading statesmen . Their collaboration has

resulted in a trenchant revelatory book, another J'ACCUSE,

directed as was Zola's against a clique committed to the sacrifice

of obligations of honor toward the Jewish people.