Celebrating the denial of ethnic cleansing
When, with the the help of the Arabs it was intending to betray, Britain defeated Turkey and occupied Palestine, it was in a position to give substance to the Balfour Declaration. But what substance? Balfour spelled it out in a memorandum he prepared on 11 August 1919 for the Paris Peace Conference. It said:
“In Palestine we do not propose even togo through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country…. The four great powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes,of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”(Emphasis added).
Twenty years later, and shortly after the British occupation forces had put down a full-scale Arab rebellion and destroyed the Palestinian leadership, Balfour’s policy was repudiatedby a committee whose members included the Lord Chancellor, Vincent Caldecot.The committee investigated Britain’s promises to the Arabs, and the Lord Chancellor was privately appalled by the British duplicity the committee uncovered. Its unanimous report was issued on 11 March 1939. It said:
“His Majesty’s Government wasnot free to dispose of Palestine without regard for the wishes and interests of the inhabitants of Palestine.” (Emphasis added).
Six weeks later, in the countdown to World War II, and terrified by the prospect of the Arabs throwing in their lot with Nazi Germany on the basis that the enemy of their enemy was their friend, the British government unveiled a White Paper setting out its new policyfor Palestine. It said:
“His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it isnot part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish state.”(Emphasis added)
In a most explicit way that left no scope for misunderstanding by anybody, and no opportunity for misrepresentation by Zionism, the White Paper spelled out what Britain’s Palestine policy was to be from here on.
The objective was “an independent Palestinian state within 10 years,”in which “Arabs and Jews could share in such a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each are safeguarded.”
As a concession to the Zionists, the White Paper also stated that Britain would permit a total of 75,000more Jews to enter Palestine over the next five years, which would take the Jewish population of Palestine to approximately one-third. But after five years Britain was not intending to allow any more Jews to enter Palestine without the consent of the Arabs.Since it was predictable that the Arabs would not agree to further Jewish immigration, the 1939 White Paper was effectively announcing the end of it after five years.
In addition the White Paper pledged that Britain would check the ever-increasing illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine; and that the British High Commissioner would be given powers to regulate the sale and transfer of land.
Zionism rejected the White Paper and accused Britain of betraying the Jews. Ben-Gurion himself declared:
“We will fight with the British against Hitler as if there was no White Paper; and fight the White Paper as if there were no war.
What was about to happen in Palestine, and much of what is still happening today, was determined more than anything else by what happened in Europe – the slaughter of six million Jews.
Prior to the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, Zionism’s prospects for creating a state for Jews in Palestine were not good. They were even poor. And that was due in large part to the fact that very many Jews of the world, particularly the most informed and thoughtful of them, were opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise. They believed it to be morally wrong. They believed it would lead to unending conflict. And they feared that if Zionism had its way, it would one day provoke anti-Semitismwhich could threaten the well-being and perhaps even the survival of Jews everywhere.
Also documented is the fact that very many of the Jews who were displaced and uprooted in Nazi occupied Europe and needed refuge elsewhere did not want to go to Palestine.Their preference was America.
- President Roosevelt did, in fact, seek to organise a rescue plan which he hoped would allow up to half a million European refugees, Jews and others, into America, Britain and elsewhere. But this initiative was killed by the Zionist lobby, a victory that was due in large part to the fact that many of America’s settled Jews, like their English counterparts in an earlier time, did not want the arrival of too many more Jewish immigrants.
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