How Did the Palin Commission View Jabotinsky's Role in the 1920 Defense of Jerusalem?

Extract from the 1920 Palin Report on the "Disturbances" of April 1920 in Jerusalem:

"...A singular incident was the offer by Mr. Jabotinsky and Mr. Ruthenberg to place at the disposal of the local authorities the volunteer bands which had recently been raised by these two gentlemen in anticipation of some such catastrophe as had occurred that day. The whole history of this movement is extremely unsatisfactory. It seems scarcely credible that the fact that these men had been got together and were openly drilling at the back of the Lemel School and on Mount Scopes should have been known as it undoubtedly was, to the population during the month of March - it was organised after the demonstration of the 8th - and yet no word of it reached either the Governorate or the Administation until after the riots. Yet this is what is alleged and this ignorance can only be attributed to the curious defects in the intelligence system which the evidence occasionally reveals. There was no attempt at secrecy. Mr. Ruthenberg actually went to Brig. General Waters Taylor in March and asked permission to arm the force. Brig. General Waters Taylor's answer to this is that he understood Mr. Ruthenberg to be referring to the question of arming outlying colonies of Jews.

He admits that towards the end of March, Colonel Bramley reported that the Jews were drilling on Mount Scopes, but neither of them appear to have associated this with the idea of a defence force. At any rate as the result of his interview, Mr. Ruthenberg appears to have understood that he must not arm his force. After this, Lieut. Jabotinsky asked Colonel Storrs for permission to arm the force - he was at the time drilling daily behind the Lemel School - but he also appears to have left Colonel Storrs under the impression that what he wanted was arms for outlying colonies and to have failed to have made it clear that he had raised a defence force. Dr. Eder in backing this application apparently made it no clearer. The organisers decided to arm their men in spite of the Administration although they were unable to raise more than about thirty pieces - so convinced were they that trouble was coming. It is claimed that the force kept guard in the city on the 2nd, but the police deny all knowledge of this.

On Sunday morning, as soon as they heard of the trouble, Messrs. Ruthenberg and Jabotinsky went to the Military Governor and offered the services of themselves and the force they had raised to assist in restoring order. What actually took place is narrated by Mr. Ruthenberg and as Colonel Storrs admits its general accuracy, it may be accepted. In the course of conversation both men admitted having arms; Mr. Jabotinsky as an ex-British officer - Mr. Jabotinsky was principally concerned in raising the Jewish Battalions which served with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in Palestine - surrendered his arm when ordered to do so. Mr. Ruthenberg was persuaded to give his up and it was not returned to him. A discussion ensued in which Ruthenberg and Jabotinsky refused to surrender the arms their men possessed but asked for the men to be armed by the Administration and used. Colonel Storrs said he must refer the matter to the Chief Administrator and arranged a meeting for the afternoon. At 4 p.m., they again met and Colonel Storrs tried to restore confidence in the Administration by relating the measure taken to protect the Jews. Messrs. Ruthenberg and Jabotinsky approved, but insisted on the Arab police - against whom by this time there were many complaints - being disarmed and the Jewish youth being armed under their responsibility if the Administration considered it necessary.

As a compromise, Colonel Bramley suggested the formation of a body of special constables to which Ruthenberg and Jabotinsky agreed, but Colonel Storrs refused. A number of other propositions were discussed and agreed on. During the evening and night the Jewish leaders made use of their men in a limited way as Colonel Storrs had promised that nobody should be arrested if they did not collect in bands. (It is only fair to state that Colonel Storrs denies giving any such promise), They patrolled the city and collected information. The events on Monday and Tuesday decided the authorities to use the force and on Tuesday Mr. Ruthenberg was summoned to the Governorate and informed by Colonel Storrs and Colonel Beddy, O.O. Troops, that the Administration had decided to use his men and asked how many he could produce. It was explained they were to be used as special constables not armed. Late that night Mr. Ruthenberg was asked for a hundred men to be presented at 8 a.m. the next day. These they succeeded in presenting at the time and place named. Two companies of about fifty men were actually sworn in when the Administration decided to suspend the order and it was not proceeded with. It was Mr. Jabotinsky who selected the men and he was in constant consultation with the officials up to the time of his arrest on April 7th.

On the 18th April, Mr. Ruthenberg writes to Colonel Storrs stating that calm having been restored to the city, he had demobilised the "Self Defence", to which Colonel Storrs replied with the decidedly disingenous letter of the 21st April, asking what was meant by "Defence Corps" as the Administration had no cognisance of such a body. Mr. Ruthenberg admits that in arming the corps "the wishes of the Administration were disregarded for the reasons already alleged - but subsequent events proved we were right". The Administration disclaims all responsibility for Mr. Jabotinsky's arrest and places the onus upon the Military - yet the Legal Officers of the Administration were employed to draw the charges. This Court is unable to extend its mission into an inquiry into the conduct of the subsequent Military Court; but in view of the preceding circumstances into which the Court has been obliged to probe very thoroughly: the undoubted cause for anxiety among the Jewish Community, the admitted purely defensive intention of the organisers of the force, the constant consultation into which both the local officials and the Military entered with its leaders after the disturbances had broken out, the actual enrolment of a portion of the force as special constables with the active help of Mr. Jabotinsky: taking all these matters into account, together with Mr. Jabotinsky's record as the organiser of the Jewish Battalions for the service of the British Army, the Court feels itself obliged to record its opinion that the arrest and prosecution of Mr. Jabotinsky was ungenerous.

No doubt the persistent impression that the Jews were in some way concerned as aggressors as well as the Arabs, in spite of the fact that the Arab casualties were practically negligible, is largely responsible for the attitude of the Military Authorities; and undoubtedly the repeated attempts of the Zionists to take action irrespective of the Authorities was embarrassing and a cause of exasperation, but other and milder methods might well, in view of all the circumstances, have been adopted."

^

Odd Legal Reasoning

I was alerted to this information:

From one of the NGO Amicus briefs filed to the ICC, a bizarre argument:

Prior to the Palestine Mandate, Great Britain administered Palestine as a belligerent occupant.11 Although the San Remo Convention adopted on 24 April 1920 assigned the Mandate for Palestine under the League of Nations to Great Britain, this did not come into force until 29 September 1923.12 Between 24 April 1920 and 29 September 1923, ‘Great Britain had no other title to the exercise of public power in Palestine than  that afforded by its military occupation.’ 

My response:

Does this mean that Jordan, formerly Transjordan, created out of nothing during those same years (Cairo Conference March 1921; Churchill in Jerusalem and his famous walk at the end of that month; the League of Nations July 1922 decision to prohibit Jews settling in Transjordan) has no right to exist?

_____

And other response:

There are three entirely different arguments here.

The first part is the not-crazy argument that the date of the Mandate coming into force is not the date the Mandate was approved by the allied states, nor the date it was actually implemented on the ground (both in 1920), nor the date it was approved by the League of Nations (1922), but only the date of the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) , in which Turkey surrendered sovereignty over the territory.

The second part is the same idiotic argument that Palestinian Arabs have been making for decades that upon Palestine becoming a Mandate, it became an independent state, and that state has an ethnic identity of Arab such that Israel cannot claim the rights of that state.

And the third part is where the two arguments are combined in a logically inconsistent non sequitur and the NGO argues that since the Mandate only came into force in 1923 when Turkey yielded sovereignty, and since the Mandate already came into force in 1919, when the League of Nations Covenant was adopted (by virtue of the ratification of  Treaty of Versailles), Palestine has been a state since 1919 because there was a Mandate of Palestine.

The last two arguments can be found in more eloquently stated form (albeit no less illogical) in Henry Cattan’s books from fifty+ years ago.

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How Helpful was the British Mandate?

I have just managed to read the introductory chapter of  Matthew Hughes' "Britain's Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab Revolt, 1936-1939 (Cambridge Military Histories) and discovered the name  el-Asi, the nom de plume of Assistant District Commissioner Aubrey Lees. He served in various administrative offices during 1929-1938 in Haifa, Gaza, Hebron and Jaffa dealing with matters of land settlement.

Lees was kicked out of the Mandate administration for his too pro-Palestinien Arab views and for criticizing the Palestinian Government's attitude towards alleged Jewish atrocities and he was eventually imprisoned by Britian during World War II as a fascist. In 1939 he was accused of expressing anti-Semitic views and refused a reappointment back in Palestine and he continued his anti-Semitism in England.

Hughes, quoting an internal US Consulate General report from January 11, 1930 (867N.00/77-330 [Reel M#1037/1], NARA II), notes there were many British Mandate officials who had 'no real sympathy' for Jewish claims to Palestine and felt an injustice was being donw to the local Arabs. That is a repeat of the 1918-1920 period when British Military Government officers, before the Mandate was in place, almost succeeded in sabotaging the Jewish national home project at its start, including prodding Arabs to riot and kill Jews.

^

A Changed Situation

From Chapter V, paragraph 62, pages 142-143 of the July 1937 Report of the Royal Commission on Palestine:

To the Jewish extremists the solution of the problem is as simple as that put forward by the Arab Higher Committee. Mr. Jabotinsky and the Revisionists demand that the expansion of the National Home should continue at an accelerated pace. Trans- Jordan should be opened to Jewish immigrants and room quickly found in this larger Palestine for many millions of Jews. The whole country would thus become in fact Eretz Israel and in due course obtain its independence as a Jewish State. It is true that, as explained in Chapter II, the Jews understood, in the days of the Balfour Declaration, that some such result as this might be its final outcome. But the whole situation has been changed by what has happened, in the interval. In present circumstances the Revisionist programme is not merely at plain variance with our legal and moral obligations: its execution would convert the friendship of all the Arab peoples into implacable resentment and react beyond their borders throughout the Moslem world.

Well, moderates really solved that situation.

^ 

Apartheid in Palestine

Yes, there was apartheid in Palestine.

"Was", not "is".

When?

When the British regulated land purchases as part of their new White Paper policy in 1940, a policy that reneged on the League of Nations Mandate decision to promote the Jewish reconstitution of their national home in the country.  That White Paper altered the purpose, intent and meaning of the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Conference decision as well as the Mandate decision of the League of Nations and the sense of the deliberations at the Versailles Peace Conference and stated:

The objective of His Majesty's Government is the establishment within 10 years of an independent Palestine State...The independent State should be one in which Arabs and Jews share government 

Here is the introductory page to the 1940 regulations:

There were also Zones A and B.  Today, we've progressed and we have A, B and C, courtesy of the Oslo Accords.

As my friend EG reminded to me, the regulations:

set up three [2.5] distinct kinds of zones in the country, A and B zones along the coast and in the lower and eastern upper Galilee

where Jews were to continue to be allowed to buy real estate. However, A zones, where Jews were to be allowed to buy real estate freely, made up only 5% of the country west of the Jorda. In B zone, 31.6% of the country, Jews could only buy land from non-Palestinian Arab owners, such as churches. In  the overwhelming majority of the country, including nearly all of Judea & Samaria and half or more of the Galilee [western Galilee] plus the Negev, Jews were totally forbidden to buy land. This was in 1940 at the beginning of the Shoah. 

Even Jerusalem:

So, not only was this a betrayal of the Mandate, and here's from the front page of the Palestine Post in May 18, 1939:

and not only was this an apartheid move by separating on the basis of Jews/Arabs, national and/or racial lines or however you wish to phrase it, but it was immoral in that this new arrangement, which included severe immigration restrictions and limitations, led to the containing of Jews in Nazi Europe, effectively keeping them there and allowing Hitler to murder them more easily.

For shame.

^

Correcting an Error

This picture I have seen numerous times in Mandate history books and it has always been used to illustrate the 'Bevingrad' tactic of the British to establish security zones.

But, it seems, while there had been barbed-wire in that area, at the time of this photograph being snapped, this was the caption:

Barbed wire covers the entire roadway for 105 yards on Princess Mary Ave. in Jerusalem at Zion Square on May 19, 1948. The wire is meant to keep Arabs and Jews from coming in contact. The Jewish State of Israel was proclaimed on May 15, and Britain was forced to surrender its 25-year mandate. On this day, the Old City of Jerusalem appeared in imminent danger of being wrested from its Jewish defenders by Palestine’s King Abdullah’s desert legion. In the background is the Jewish section. Right at center is the police headquarters. (AP Photo)Ref #: PA.8650556Date: 19/05/1948

^

So Easy to Rewrite History

I found this Historical Overview from the 1995 publication of "Palestine and Transjordan Administration Reports 1918–1948", a 16 volume work of a comprehensive collection of British administrative reports and associated documents.  It includes the pre-Mandate reports of 1918-1923, the Mandate and Departmental Annual Reports from 1923-1947/8, including the unpublished Mandate Reports for 1940 and 1941, the extensive Survey of Palestine 1946/47 and the formal papers covering the termination of the Mandate in 1948. 

Note what I underline:

Palestine, having previously been part of the Ottoman Empire, was occupied in 1917-18 by British forces under the command of General Allenby. A military administration was established for the whole of Syria and Palestine under the general title of Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA) with Palestine as OETA South. The military government was essentially a holding operation until the war was over and a final political solution was agreed. At the 1919 Peace Conference it was decided by the victorious powers that the mandates system should be applied to the non-Turkish parts of the Ottoman Empire; and at the San Remo Conference on 25th April 1920 the mandate for Palestine was given to the United Kingdom. Shortly afterwards, on 1st July 1920, the military administration was replaced by a civilian administration under a High Commissioner.

Although the Palestine mandate had been assigned to the United Kingdom by the victorious powers at the San Remo Conference in 1920, the actual terms of the draft mandate were not agreed by the Council of the League of Nations until 24th July 1922. Even then the Mandate did not come into operation as peace still had not been officially concluded between the Allied Powers and Turkey. It was not until 29th September 1923, after the Treaty of Lausanne had become operative and the war between Turkey and the Allies was officially ended, that the Council of the League was able officially to begin the British Mandate over Palestine.

The position of Transjordan provided some difficulty, especially concerning the question of a Jewish homeland. It was agreed that the Balfour declaration should not apply to Transjordan, and that there should be a separate High Commissioner for Jordan although he should be the same person as the High Commissioner for Palestine.

The Mandate was to remain in force from 29th September 1923 until 15th May 1948, but the whole period was bedevilled by the incompatibility of the aspirations of the Jewish settlers and the rights of the Arab inhabitants. Serious civil disorders caused by tensions between Arabs and Jews had broken out in 1920 and 1921 before the official beginning of the Mandate. In April 1936 the Arab Rebellion began and lasted until 1939, influenced by the recent example of nationalist movements in neighbouring Arab countries...

...The British Government´s White Paper of May 1939 was intended to put an end to uncertainty as to the objectives of their policy in Palestine, and to prepare the way for the termination of the Mandate. The general objective was to be the establishment within 10 years of an independent Palestine State in which Arabs and Jews shared in government in such a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each community were safeguarded; in the meantime, Jewish immigration was to be restricted as were the sales of Arab land to Jewish settlers. It was the intention of the British Government to seek the approval of the Council of the League of Nations for their new policy, but they were prevented from doing so by the outbreak of war in September 1939...

Let's go over those points, concisely and to the point:

a) Gt. Britain "occupied" Palestine.  It's a legal term, neutral.  Like when I an occupying the chair I am now sitting on.  They did so because they were at war with the Ottoman Empire.  The Turks lost and they lost territory.  It happens.  It also happened in 1967.

b)  Syria and Palestine were considered one unit but due to the diplomacy and Balfour Declaration, Palestine was immediately assigned a unique definition.

c)  for what purpose was Great Britain awarded the Mandate over Palestine at San Remo?  Balfour Declaration is mentioned only later.

d)  what type of "difficulty" did TransJordan provide?  What was the link to the Jewish homeland?  Who agreed that TransJordan be separated from the terms of the Balfour Declaration?  Why?

e)  what is the difference between "Jewish settlers" and "Arab inhabitants"?  Is that difference correct?  Is it perhaps anachronistic?   There were no "Arab settlers"?

f) "civil disorders broke out"?  Is that a reflection of the historical truth - or did Arabs initiate violent riots with intent to kill Jews, any Jew?

g)  were the terrorists of among the Arabs of Palestine influenced by neighboring countries, or did they kill Jews earlier, in the 19th century?

See how easy it is to rewrite history?

^

Jabotinsky on Gt. Britain's Unfairness, 1933

Ze'ev Jabotinsky on British Mandatory Regime Policies,
November 26, 1933

Unfairness: we Jews are accustomed to injustice, but it would be difficult to quote another case of quite so gross a disregard of all the rituals of fairness as that committed by the Mandatory Administration in choosing just this moment for the announcement of new restrictions against Jewish immigration to Palestine. Why restrict? What has happened? Have there been any symptoms showing that the influx of our immigrants has, during the period immediately preceding this sudden explosion of restrictive zeal, overtaxed that famous "absorptive capacity" of Palestine? Any signs of aggravated unemployment? Any appeals to the Government Treasury for assistance on behalf of overcrowded Tel Aviv, Hadar ha Carmel, or Talpiyot and Rehavya? Nothing of the kind: on the contrary, Palestine is flourishing, is actually the only oasis of economic prosperity in a world of economic distress, is clamoring for more workers and is filling up its State Treasury with fat surplusses to the envy of all the Empires on the planet.

As the world goes we have always been taught to look for restrictive measures against a given practice after some kind of proof (let it even be an imaginary proof, a faked proof—but still something!) that the practice is actually obnoxious. In this case, the practice of "illicit immigration" under both its forms (crossing the border without any visa, and staying on in Palestine after the "tourist" visa has expired) had been known for years and grumblings tolerated for years; more than tolerated—actually condoned and sanctioned de facto, for no amount of quibbling can put any other construction upon such Government acts as the legalizing of some 5,000 "illicit immigrants" discovered during the 1931 census, or, especially, the repeated reservation of a part of certificates already granted for the frankly and publicly admitted purpose of keeping it in reserve in case the Government will have to legalize further bunches of such "illicits".

When a Government openly prepares a heap of passports to be issued eventually to people who may smuggle in without a passport, it obviously and undeniably means that such people, despite the original sin of their illegal entry, can after all be up to a certain extent "absorbed" without any catastrophe to the country's capacity. This and no other was the Government's opinion as late as in the last decade of October, when it issued a schedule of new certificates and again reserved several hundreds for the needs of eventual "illicits". Why then, such an outbreak of wrath in the first decade of November? What has happened?

Nothing has happened on the part of the Jews, there is no hint that during that short interval any considerable regiment of "illicit arrivals" should have burst the "capacity"; nor has anything happened on the part of the country's economy itself to suggest that the "capacity" begins to totter. What has happened was an outbreak of rioting on the part of the Arabs who object to any immigration of Jews in general, licit or illicit; and that was the only reason for this sudden explosion of bureaucratic Draconianism. This means that the Mandatory's attitude towards Jewish interests has nothing to do with the Jews' own behavior or the effects of that behavior on Palestine's welfare: the Government's attitude is to be guided simply by the intensity of the Arabs' readiness for causing trouble. The least we can call such policy is "unfair", and this is yet an acme of polite moderation: severer judges would speak of cowardice, blundering, and betrayal of trust.

As to "absurdity"—this crusade against Jewish tourists is probably the most preposterous of all the enormities I can recollect for the last twenty years during which I enjoyed the privilege of watching the workings of the famous and hallowed "muddle-through" system so dear to some British minds. First of all—as the hecatomb of the tourists is obviously meant to pacify the Arab chauvins, let it be stated at once that this noble and statesman-like object will not be attained: those Arabs know as fully as does the Government that the number of settlers reaching the country under tourist garb is very small in comparison with even the stingiest bunch of "certificates" and other permits so far quite legally issued—and it is the quantity of Jewish immigrants which the Arabs pretend to fear, not the legal or illegal method of their penetration for which they do not care two straws. If the Mandatory has really decided to be guided by Arab menaces it will have to stop the legal immigration, or in other words to resign the Mandate; the only alternative being to keep the rioters quiet, or in other words to do a Mandatory's duty and do it properly.

But there is another and more serious side to the absurdity. British statesmanship has ever prided itself on its "realism"; no preconceived ideas, no "principle-riding", "no nonsense" in general, only facts and adaptation to facts. If so, it seems strange that this realistic statesmanship has failed to notice the most essential "fact" of the whole situation: that a tourist who becomes a settler is just the healthiest type of immigrant. What can be economically healthier than this: a person goes to Palestine as a "tourist", just to see whether he will like the country; he looks round, he likes it, he is offered a job or an opportunity to invest his capital profitably enough for a living—and then he decides to stay on. To a genuinely realistic observer this should seem the soundest way of recruiting and selecting suitable immigrants.

It is, in fact, a natural selection: the person who has only decided to stay on after he has found a job is presumably a fit person, the very fact of his remaining is a proof of his resourcefulness, ability, or financial force. At the same time, this kind of settler is just the kind which does not "overtax the country's meekest of terms applicable.

But I also said "ugliness", and I maintain it. There is no other name within the vocabulary of printable phraseology for what amounts to a system of world-wide espionage of every day and every hour. To carry out properly the anti-touristic crusade announced by the Mandatory both from Jerusalem and London, consular officers in the remotest countries will have to install a detective service for discovering the hidden intentions of every Jew applying for a tourist visa. In Palestine itself, not only spies will have to be employed for overhearing tourists' confidences to each other or to their friends, the residents, but even agents provocateurs impersonating as fellow-tourists in order to extract such confidences from unsuspecting greenhorns. Raids on tourists who overstay their period will have to become one of the staple amenities of Palestinian life. All that, naturally, for the benefit of Jews only: a consular officer who has just refused a tourist visa to Mr. N. N. because he took him for a Jew, will grant the same request with many apologies as soon as Mr. N. N. qualifies as a Christian. Many quite piquante complications may safely be expected to arise in the course of this practice, for instance: since only Jews are under suspicion of malafide tourism, does it also attach to a converted Jew? or should the racial test be applied, and, if so, what about quadroons and octoroons? Guide books for British consular officers will have to be ordered from Germany. . . .

It would be simply foolish to pretend that I exaggerate. Everybody knows that nearly all the items of intolerable moral and civic ugliness just sketched out are already in existence; the Peeping Tom in consular offices, the consular discrimination between Jew and Gentile applying for a visa, the invasion of Tel Aviv hotel halls and restaurants by a host of spies, the razzias.

It is all a cruel shame, both to England and to ourselves. The whole system of regulating immigration now in vigor stands definitely unmasked in all its nakedness of injustice, foolishness, and moral squalor. World Jewry will have to make some world-wide heave to stop this monstrosity, and the sooner the sounder.

A New Political Imperialism

Richard Gott has published a new book, Britain's Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt, which is being hyped as the "magisterial history of the foundation of the British empire, and the forgotten story of resistance to its formation". However, he limits himself by only surveying the resistance to British rule from mid-18th century to mid-19th century, across the world from the Caribbean to Ireland.

One criticism, by Kwasi Kwarteng, author of Ghost of Empire, notes

"the novelty of such as perspective by highlighting the parallels with subaltern studies and Marxist historiography" and he argues "that while the perspective of the oppressed is important and often overlooked in histories of the British Empire, ultimately there was a greater degree of cooperation and mutual economic beneficence unaccounted for in Gott's book. Kwarteng continued, that after rule was established, imperial power was often benign and denied that the crimes of the British Empire could be likened to the systematic genocides and famines of the 20th century."

Kwarteng, however,

...focuses on six imperial sites, most of them consolidated after 1870, when Britain began to face stiffer competition from other, rival powers: Iraq, Sudan, Burma, Nigeria, Kashmir and Hong Kong. In none of them, as Kwarteng describes, was London much (or at all) concerned to advance liberal democracy; and in most of them the quality of its rule helped to store up trouble for the future. In Kashmir, where the population was and is mainly Muslim, the British propped up a Hindu ruling house, which they recognised from the outset was unpopular and oppressive. In Burma the monarchy was abolished after 1885, and the country reduced to a province of British India. In Iraq, conversely, the British created a new monarchy "without any antecedent foundation"; while in Nigeria, different regions and tribal groupings were ruthlessly and imperfectly amalgamated.

In an article, Gott himself writes

...Britain's empire was established, and maintained for more than two centuries, through bloodshed, violence, brutality, conquest and war...Year in, year out, there was resistance to conquest, and rebellion against occupation, often followed by mutiny and revolt – by individuals, groups, armies and entire peoples. At one time or another, the British seizure of distant lands was hindered, halted and even derailed by the vehemence of local opposition.

And since the Palestine experience is missing, even in this article, I will make the case that the Jews, for whom the Mandate was established and awarded to Great Britain by the League of Nations, also fought and resisted but that war of liberation was denigrated and besmirched not only by the British but by fellow Jews.

Gott bemoans the "Settlers, soldiers, convicts" who paid a high price, who "populated the empire...involuntary participants [who] bore the brunt of conquest in faraway continents..." but, being outside his scope, are not the people who returned to the Land of Israel as its rightful sons and daughters to reestablish and reconsitutue Jewish national existence in the patrimony, termed the "Jewish national home" in documents of international law.

Precisely because opf this difference, we are not "settlers", no then in the 1920s and 1930s and not now.

My aversion to the term "settlers" is highlighted by its use here:

White settlers, in the Americas, in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Rhodesia and Kenya, simply took over land that was not theirs, often slaughtering, and even purposefully exterminating, the local indigenous population as if they were vermin.

If anyone was slaughtered, ethnically cleansed or objects of extermination, that people were and are the Jews in the Land of Israel, objects of racist and ideological hate.

Gott observes

None of this has been, during the 60-year post-colonial period since 1947, the generally accepted view of the empire in Britain. The British understandably try to forget that their empire was the fruit of military conquest and of brutal wars involving physical and cultural extermination.

...New generations have been recovering tales of rebellion, repression and resistance that make nonsense of the accepted imperial version of what went on. Focusing on resistance has been a way of challenging not just the traditional, self-satisfied view of empire, but also the customary depiction of the colonised as victims, lacking in agency or political will.

The Jews of the Mandate are part of that narrative but Gott would most probably turn the tale on its head, a peculiar form of radical leftwing political imperialism.

This Gott truth:

To retain control, the British were obliged to establish systems of oppression on a global scale, ranging from the sophisticated to the brutal. These in turn were to create new outbreaks of revolt. Over two centuries, this resistance took many forms and had many leaders...Many of these forgotten peoples deserve to be resurrected and given the attention they deserve.

is quite applicable to the Irgun, the Lechi, Brit HaBiryonim and the Hagana and Palmach.

^

When "Palestine Resistance" Was All Jewish

Here is an archival document of the US Palestine Resistance Committee from 1947. The "resistance" then, of course, was that undertaken by the armed underground forces of the Irgun and the Lechi.

In September 1939, despite Hagana and Irgun attacks against the British Mandatory regime in Mandate Palestine following the publication of the White Paper policy statrement that, in effect, subverted the decision of the Leasgue of Nations to reconstitute the Jewish national home, a cease-fire was declared. This was due to the outbreak of World War II when both Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion decided that the war in Europe deserved primary attention. Avraham Stern broke away in June 1940 to continue the war for liberation and with Menachem Begin's arrival, the Irgun launched its revolt in February 1944. For a short period between late October 1945 and July 1946, the Hagana joined the urban guerilla campaign and the United Hebrew Resistance was formed.

The document deals with the resignation of an activist who felt that the main Bergson group, the American League for a Free Palestine, should be devoting more energy and participation and support for the actual armed operations in the Palestine Mandate against the British occcupation.

Note, too, the name Y. Ben-Ami, Jeremy (of J Street) Ben-Ami's father as well as the many public figures who aligned themselves with active Jewish resistance in the fight for freedom:-

When "Palestine" was Jewish through and through.

^

The Unknown May 15, 1948 White Paper

Very few persons know that on May 15, 1948, at the termination of Britain's Mandate over Palestine, HMS Government published a White Paper policy statement (and here, too).

It opens:

His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will cease to be responsible for the administration of Palestine from midnight on 14 May 1948.   The ending of thirty years of British rule in Palestine, begun when General Allenby's troop occupied that country towards the close of the first world war, provides a fitting occasion for a brief review of its history and of the policy pursued by His Majesty's Government.

The various sections are entitled:

I. THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE BRITISH MANDATE FOR PALESTINE
II.  THE DEVELOPMENT OF PALESTINE 
III.  THE JEWISH NATIONAL HOME
IV. THE OBSTACLES WHICH FRUSTRATED THE EFFORTS OF HIS MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT TO ESTABLISH SELF-GOVERNING INSTITUTIONS IN PALESTINE
V.  THE PROBLEM REFERRED TO THE UNITED NATIONS
VI.  THE LAST MONTHS OF THE MANDATE
 
So, what is the official British explanation for quitting the Mandate?
 
Here:
 

His Majesty's Government had now striven for twenty-seven years without success to reconcile Jews and Arabs and to prepare the people of Palestine for self-government. The policy adopted by the United Nations had aroused the determined resistance of the Arabs, while the States supporting this policy were themselves not prepared to enforce it. 84,000 troops, who received no cooperation from the Jewish community, had proved insufficient to maintain law and order in the face of a campaign of terrorism waged by highly organized Jewish forces equipped with all the weapons of the modern infantryman. Since the war, 338 British subjects had been killed in Palestine, while the military forces there had cost the British taxpayer 100 million pounds. The renewal of Arab violence on the announcement of the United Nations decision to partition Palestine and the declared intentions of Jewish extremists showed that the loss of further British lives was inevitable. It was equally clear that, in view of His Majesty's Government's decision not to enforce the partition of Palestine against the declared wishes of the majority of it inhabitants, the continued presence there of British troops and officials could no longer be justified.

In these circumstances His Majesty's Government decided to bring to an end their Mandate and to prepare for the earliest possible withdrawal from Palestine of all British forces.

So, who were those "extremists", those "highly organized Jewish forces"?  Who killed over 300 British security personnel?  The Hagana?  The Palmach?

Or were they the soldiers of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi  and the Lechi fighters?

^

The British Disguised as Zionists 1921

First, we had them as "occupiers".

Now, meet them as Zionists - High Commissioner Herbert Samuel and Minister for Colonies Winston Churchill planting a tree in the Land of Israel, the Jewish National Home:

March 28, 1921.

Harry Potter? I've Found Christopher Wren

The grave of Harry Potter, a British policeman killed and buried in Israel during the Mandate period is making the founds again.

But there's also a Christopher Wren.

Details:

28/07/1936
Wren, Christopher
23 B/C.
PP No. 375
Killed on Duty
Mount Zion

And here's a picture of his funeral:

^

He's No Agent and A Poor Journalist

Hunting for the last mortal remains of Major Anthony Palmer of Special Operations Executive, disappeared with 23 Jewish Haganah commandos on 18 May 1941, en route to blow up the Tripoli oil refinery, Robert Fisk finds his way to an IDF unit in Lebanon:-

He gave me the address of a luxurious mansion above Beirut. There I found Israeli troops in the grounds, but was shown into a book-lined library where an Israeli lieutenant colonel sat behind an oak-panelled desk. And beside him lay two large, blue-covered files on the disappearance of Major Palmer. The colonel introduced himself as Shlomo Ben Elkanah. Only years later would I discover that he was something of an expert in finding corpses. After the 1967 Six-Day War, he had questioned Bedouin Arabs in newly captured Rafah in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to find the body of Avshalom Feinberg, a member of a pro-British Jewish underground organisation in 1917 who died in a battle with Arabs while trying to contact General Allenby's British forces. In 1967, the Bedouin pointed to a palm tree and Elkanah dug it up. There were the bones of Feinberg, the tree embracing his skeleton because it had sprouted from the dates which the dead man had in his pocket.

Now Elkanah was trying to find the graves of Palmer and the 23 dead Jews who were also aboard the Sea Lion. He wanted to bring the remains of the Haganah men – one of whom had been Elkanah's friend – back to Israel, which regarded Operation Boatswain in 1941 as the first military action of the Israeli army. The operation had been arranged between a Palestinian Jew called David Cohen and de Gaulle's Free French forces in London.

And to my amazement Elkanah showed me his files. These papers suggested that the Sea Lion reached the coast of Tripoli but was intercepted by "the French and Italian (sic) coastguard". One of his reports said four of the Jewish commandos were killed and their bodies washed ashore, but when Palmer turned back south he was stopped by an Italian submarine. A British intelligence officer called Perkins, according to this document, then told a Jewish Agency official, Reuven Zaslani, that Palmer and his surviving 19 men had been taken prisoner. The paper said that Palmer then escaped his French guards, was recaptured on the island of Arwad off the Syrian coast, was returned to Lebanon and executed without trial at Jounieh, just north of Beirut. At the time, a German radio broadcast referred to the capture of "a British agent and 20 Jews" by Italians.

Elkanah showed me another paper. This recorded that Moshe Sharett – later Israel's foreign minister – handed a report to Perkins that a "Jewish messenger" called Joseph Fines saw the clothes taken from the bodies of the four dead Jewish sailors and believed the rest of the crew, including Palmer, were taken away to an unknown destination. Then the British authorities declined to allow Perkins to continue his investigation. Because, perhaps, the few Vichy French soldiers in Lebanon who transferred their allegiance to de Gaulle had been involved in the killing of Palmer?

In 1982, the Israeli army captured Beirut but stopped short of Tripoli. Could I, Elkanah wanted to know, drive up to Tripoli – still under Syrian and Palestinian guerrilla control – and take a look around the city's cemeteries? Could I find a mass grave, perhaps? Journalist I may be. Agent I am not. I waited till long after the Israelis had left. Then I began to prowl the graveyards of Tripoli, sniff for the municipality archives, talk to middle-aged men who supported Vichy and who remembered 1941. They knew nothing. Or they said they knew nothing. Two of the Jews were said to have been buried in sand dunes, a third in a "cemetery for foreigners".

^

British Plans for the Arabs of the Palestine Mandate

A very good read.


^

Arab Responsibility for the Holocaust

And thanks to Shlomo Avineri, Professor emeritus of political science, Hebrew University, for reconfiorming another issue I have harped upon:

Here he deals with the Arab responsibility for the Holocaust

One sometimes encounters the Palestinian argument that there is a basic injustice in the fact that they appear to have to pay the price for Europe's crimes during the Holocaust...Yet the Arab argument that places all responsibility on Europe is not completely correct.

When the Arab revolt against British rule in Palestine broke out in 1936, its aim was to change the British position [...and...] in the winter of 1938-39, the British changed their policy...In light of the need to insure the Empire's critical link to India via the Suez Canal, Britain feared that continued violent suppression of the Arab revolt in Palestine would push all Arabs in the region closer to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It consequently decided to move closer to the Arabs and away from the Jews and Zionism. As Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald explained to the Zionist leadership, the change was prompted not by a British conviction that Arab claims were justified, but rather by realpolitik: There were more Arabs than Jews; the Jews would support Britain against the Nazis in any case, but the Arabs have the option of joining Nazi Germany.

...This was the reason for the 1939 White Paper, which drastically limited the right of Jews to buy land in Mandatory Palestine and placed a ceiling of 75,000 on Jewish immigration. The message to the Arabs was clear: The Jews would remain a minority in Palestine.

...The gates were shut to legal Jewish immigration, the British navy fought illegal immigration and ships seeking to save Jews from the Nazi occupation (such as the Struma) were returned to their port of origin; some of their passengers died at sea, others in the gas chambers.

Guilt for the Holocaust lies with Nazi Germany and its allies. But an untold number of Jews, perhaps as many as hundreds of thousands...were not saved and did not reach Mandatory Palestine because of the position taken by the Arabs: They succeeded in shutting the country's gates during the darkest hour of the Jewish people. Anyone seeking reconciliation between us and the Palestinians must insist that both sides be attentive to the suffering of the other side, and that goes for the Palestinians as well as for us.

And Why Did The British Terminate the Mandate Over Palestine?

Let's go to the official documantation.

There was a last White Paper:

and it said:

"insufficient to maintain law and order..."

"in the face of a campaign of terrorism..."

"highly organised Jewish forces..."

"cost the British taxpayer 100 million pounds sterling..."

"against the declared wishes of the majority of inhabitants..."

"...could no longer be justified..."

"in these circumstances...bring to an end..."

So, There Was British Antisemitism as Antizionism

Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 39, No. 1, 71-92 (2004)

The Antisemitism of the Eighth Duke of Northumberland’s the Patriot, 1922-1930

Markku Ruotsila
University of Tampere, Finland

This article explores British antisemitism through an investigation of the journal Patriot, a leading weekly of the interwar British radical right. It provides the first indepth examination of the Patriot’s editorial content for the period it was under the direction of its founder, the leading publicist of the aristocratic Die-hard and protofascist right, the eighth Duke of Northumberland. The roots and trajectories of the Patriot’s antisemitic propaganda are situated within the broader radical right discourse of interwar Britain and the impact of the journal is assessed in the dissemination and popularization of antisemitic thinking. Aspects of antisemitism which receive attention include racialist and conspiracist theory, the religious causes of aversion to Jews, opposition to Zionism and to the League of Nations, and the role of anticommunism in fostering twentieth century antisemitism.

Given the Duke of Northumberland’s principled adhesion to the Catholic Apostolic Church, a small premillenarian fundamentalist group, the ambivalent posture to Jews and Judaism of conservative Christianity is also assessed in considerable detail. The article argues that Northumberland and the Patriot were endowed with an attitudinal propensity to conspiracist, antisemitic paradigms by frames of reference born in the imperialist and nationalist debates of the Edwardian period. These frames of reference were refocused and renamed after the Bolshevik revolution so as to constitute the Jew-Bolshevik equation which cohered much of subsequent radical right and fascist antisemitism.

The centrality of this renaming is shown to have been crucial as means towards circumventing the theological philo-semitism which was the heritage of Northumberland and his primary audience, making the Patriot an important conduit in permeating traditionalist, religiously-rooted Conservative thinking with antisemitic ways of perception and categories of thinking. Its clothing of these perceptions in anticommunism, imperialism and racialism is seen as having significantly contributed towards making antisemitism appear more respectable, apparently unrelated to Jews as a religious or cultural community, and therefore a much more potent, durable or malleable force than might otherwise have been the case.

He deals further with this topic here.

This, too, seems interesting:

"The Anti-Jewish Career of Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Cabinet Minister", David Cesarani in Journal of Contemporary History.1989; 24: 461-482.

I wonder if there was any influence of this, in one form or another, on Roy Farran?

1947 News Clip on Jewish Anti-British Resistance