The Controversy of Zion by Douglas Reed

Author:Douglas Reed [Reed, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2014-06-19T03:00:00+00:00

Chapter 35

THE NATIONAL HOME

For ten years after the foisting of “the Mandate” on the British people the pretence was continued that the “Jewish National Home” in Palestine, under their protection, would be simply “a cultural centre” of Judaism, harmless to the Arabs; a Judaist Mecca with university, library and farm-settlements. The Arabs were never beguiled; they saw that they were the objects of an attempt to reinforce, in the 20th Century AD, the Law of violent dispossession set up by the Levites in the 5th Century BC. They responded with riotous protest and warlike uprising which have never since ceased, so that “the war to end war” started warfare without end.

At once it became apparent that Zionism had been inserted like a blasting charge into the life of peoples and that in “a small country the size of Wales or Vermont” (just “liberated” from the Turk) the time-fuse of a future world-conflict had been planted. Nevertheless, a new British Colonial Secretary, Mr. Leopold Amery, went to Palestine in 1925 and (he says) “frankly told the Arabs that there was no possibility of change in the British policy” (Jewish Telegraph Agency).

These words (like Mr. Balfour’s earlier statement that British policy in this question was “definitely set”) contain the central mystery and challenge. In what other issue in history was a reversal of policy ever declared to be impossible? This policy had been proved impossible of fulfilment, and disastrous. What power dictated that it must be pursued in those or any circumstances whatever? No British or American political leader ever explained this secret capitulation to the electorate, to Parliament or to Congress (in the 1950’s statements similar to those of Mr. Balfour and Mr. Amery were often made in America, as will be seen).

During this decade, when the project of the “national home” proved a fiasco, the Western politicians continued to congratulate themselves on what they had done. Mr. Lloyd George told an applauding Zionist audience in London: “I was brought up in a school where I was taught more about the history of the Jews than about the history of my own land.” His day was ending, but candidates for his shoes hastened to declare their allegiance. A coming prime minister, Mr. Ramose Macdonald, though unable to attend this meeting, sent a message declaring support for Zionism; another, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, joined the circle of “friends” (Dr. Weizmann); In South Africa General Smuts saw in his “work for the Jews the justification of his life.”

Lord Balfour considered his Declaration the great achievement of his life and in 1925 first went to see the country he had been privately bartering for twenty years. He was (characteristically) a bad sailor and emerged pale from his cabin at Alexandria. At Tel Aviv he said (with intention to flatter) that the Herzliah High School boys “might have come from Harrow” and the mayor “might easily be the mayor of Liverpool or of Manchester”, and he “opened” the still unbuilt Hebrew University. He toured Palestine under

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