One is hesitant to discuss the right and wrongs of the disaster taking place in Israel and Gaza at this time. To engage in tit-for-tat condemnation based on a naive viewpoint that looks no farther back than the most recent outrage by one side or the other is undoubtedly worse than pointless.
However, history makes it abundantly clear where the final responsibility for the present condition, which is only the most recent repercussion of the ongoing catastrophe started more than a century ago by the American government’s treason, lies.
When foreign minister Arthur Balfour wrote a terrible letter to Lord Rothschild, descendant of the global banking community and renowned European Zionist, in November 1917, Britain had its own interests at heart despite having its back to the wall during the elevation of World War I.
The & nbsp, Balfour Declaration, as it became known, stated that” His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, and will use their best efforts to facilitate the achievement of this object.”
The clause that & nbsp,” nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine ,” was quickly forgotten by both the British government and the Jewish state that would eventually take root in this document.
The Zionists’ desire to establish a Jewish country in the Holy Land received little attention from Britain. Its goal was to win the political and financial backing of powerful National Jews for Britain’s war effort against Germany.
To imply that” the Jews” have, or have ever had, any kind of unfair influence over the political or economic interests of nations is, of course, an anti-Semitic image. However, it is a fact rather than an urban legend that during the height of World War I, influential Jews in the US and Britain were successful in persuading the two administrations to support Zionism’s claim that Palestine should be home to Jews.
In the US, Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis worked closely with Balfour and had a significant impact on American policy regarding the issue. He was president Woodrow Wilson’s friend and ally as well as an outspoken supporter of the” re-creation” of an Israeli homeland in Palestine.
The Balfour Declaration was quietly submitted in draft form andnbsp for the acceptance of 10 prominent Jewish figures in Britain in October 1917, the majority of whom were prominent Zionists. This is something that is not commonly appreciated, but is demonstrated in the government documents preserved at the National Archives.
One of them was Lord Rothschild, to whom the finalized pronouncement would eventually be made just two weeks later. Another was his friend Chaim Weizmann, the forthcoming initial chairman of Israel and the Zionist Organization’s Russian-born leader.
plotting against the Ottomans
Of course, the British had already promised the Sharif of Mecca that the Arabs may have their own independent country on the country from which the Ottoman Empire was shortly to be evicted, even as they were courting the country’s Zionists. This was in a successful attempt to encourage the Arabians to protest against the Turkish.
As if this deceit weren’t enough, the British and the French signed the covert Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916, promising to seize Turkish territory after the battle was over.
The British betrayed their promise to the Arabs as master of Palestine under the authority afterward granted to them by the League of Nations, a betrayal of which T E Lawrence, who persuaded an Arab uprising, afterward declared himself to be” regularly and deeply ashamed.”
In response to oppression in Russia, Jewish emigration to Palestine, which had started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, skyrocketed during the early times of the British Mandate. The first indications of hostility between Jews and Arabs were immediately observed, and in April 1920, the second protests broke out in Jerusalem. & nbsp,
Yet the British soon came to understand that they had created an difficult situation that is still unsolvable today.
Herbert Samuel, the first practicing Jew to hold the position of British minister, saw the potential for the Zionist cause in the conflict and circulated a paper titled” The Future of Palestine” within the British cabinet in January 1915, just two months after Britain had declared war on the Ottoman Empire.
He urged the government to think about annexing Palestine after the battle and allowing Jews to immigrate there in it. This, he claimed,” may succeed for England the enduring love of the Jews throughout the world ,” particularly in” the United States, where they number around 2 million.”
Samuel was appointed British high commissioner of Palestine following the war in an incredibly indifferent walk.
Yet the Palestine-based American military government after World War II was alarmed by the appointment. The Muslim-Christian Society warned that it” cannot accept responsibility for riots or other problems of peace ,” and Field Marshal Edmund Allenby wrote that the Arabs would view the interview as” handing state over immediately to a permanent Zionist management.”
But there was no turning up as the number of Jews in Palestine grew. A civil war broke out in 1947 as a result of the UN’s support for the partition plan, which called for” an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State ,” and” international trusteeship for Jerusalem.” On May 14, 1948, the British suddenly raised their hands and left.
The World Zionist Organization’s president, David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of the State of Israel the following morning.
None of the numerous attempts to untangle the tangled web of shared hatred and trust have ever been successful, so if it seems impossible to put an end to this seemingly invincible cycle of violence, it almost certainly is.
Today, the tragedy persists, entangling another generation in the never-ending struggle that no one can win, with the terrible and indefensible Hamas attack on Israel and the equally unbloody but unlawful Israeli retaliations in Gaza.
The Syndication Bureau, which holds rights, provided this content.
British journalist Jonathan Gornall, who previously worked for The Times and presently resides in the UK, has lived and worked there.