Palestine and Britain's Mishandling of Mandate

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                                

        
The Brits, led by General Allenby,  occupied Jerusalem in December 1917 during World War I.

After World War I, the Middle East, an Ottoman Empire possession, went to the winners of the war.  Britain was given the mandate for Palestine which was to last for 30 years.  They were to police the land and help the Jews create their Jewish Homeland, as Palestine was to go to the Jews.  Jews  had lost their land, Judea and Israel to the Romans in 70 CE  and had been homeless for 2,000 years.  They had been suffering from anti-Semitism wherever they went, so this had been legally arranged.

The Brits, in order to carry out this mandate, chose High Commissioners to govern Palestine.  They were Chief executive officials.  The first man to be appointed was a Jew, Sir Herbert Samuel (1870-1963) whose time ran from 1920 to 1925.  This appointment evoked great hopes among the Jews, especially as he was known to be a supporter of Zionism.  Samuels was the first Jew to be a member of a British cabinet and did so by 1909.  He had held office in the Liberal government from 1905 to 1916.  After being a High Commisioner in Palestine, he was in the national government from 1931 to 1932.  His memorandum to the Cabinet in 1914 influenced the Balfour Declaration.  He became the leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons from 1931 to 1935 and in the House of Lords from 1944 to 1955.

His initial task was complicated by the delay in confirming the Mandate and by Arab violence.  He suspended Jewish immigration, the very thing he was to allow and help to happen.  Why?  Arab violence had started in 1921.  Why did they riot?
                                                                           

One of the first things Samuel did, obviously to get in tight with the Arabs who probably scared him, was to appoint Haj Mohammed Amin el-Husseini (1893-1974) as the Grand Mufi of Jerusalem and if that wasn't enough, also the head of the Supreme Moslem Council in 1921.  Husseini therefore had the title of Sherif of Jerusalem and The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.  Samuel showed Husseini much benevolence.  Was it because he came from a long standing Jerusalemite Arab family that had traced their genealogy back to the grandson of Mohammad?    Why did he do this when he knew that in 30 years it was all to become a Jewish state?
                                                                               

Emir Feisal (1883 Mecca, Saudi Arabia-1933 Switzerland)third son of Hussein bin Ali, the Grand Sharif of Mecca, later King of Syria in 1920, then King of Iraq from 1921-1933, member of Hashemite Kingdom like today's King of Jordan, a descendant from Mohammad

Husseini was in direct opposition and competition with Emir Feisal, who was THE spokesman for all the Arabs.  He was for the Jews' return and had high hopes that they would be able to improve his people just by living there and showing them more modern ideas and ways.                                                                                                                                                                        

Chaim Weizmann

Chaim Weizmann, Emir Feisal 

Emir Faisal's delegation at Versailles, during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

Feisal had had meetings with Chaim Weizmann (1874 Belarus-1952 Israel).  Chaim had helped the English to win the war with his invention that made ammunition far better than the enemy had, and so was being rewarded for this by being heard.  It was all agreed upon.  All except the stone in the mix; Husseini,  who didn't want to give up his position as a very important man in Jerusalem and was afraid this would happen once more Jews moved there  and become a Jewish city once again.  He instigated riots in 1921.

This may have brought about the White Paper in June 1922. which followed a statement by Winston Churchill who was the present day secretary for the colonies.  It stated that the aim of the Balfour Declaration was to establish a Jewish National Home, but not Jewish domination.  He said that the Jews were there by right and not on sufferance.  It also made Jewish immigration into Palestine dependent on absorptive  capacity.  As a direct result of the White Paper, Transjordan was affected.   It detached Transjordan from Palestine and came as a large disappointment to the Jews.  The Balfour Declaration had included the area of  Transjordan.

The Balfour Declaration was part of the legal complexities that Jews had been wading through in order to be able to go back to their original land of Israel and Judea legally.  It was an official statement issued on November 2, 1917 at the end of World War I by the British secretary, Arthur James BALFOUR.  It had declared that the British government favored the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and would use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that NOTHING shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country (thinking of the Jews of England who would not like to be rooted up from their homes and shipped off to this home.) such as Samuel.  Actually, this was setting up an unrealistic but idealistic Garden of Eden where Arabs would step aside for returning Jews.

This Declaration came about after LONG negotiations initiated by Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow and others shortly after the outbreak of World War I, with the support of Herbert Samuel, Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz, the Haham Moses Gaster, and others.  There was much discussion on the formula of the Declaration and its timing.  Balfour visited the USA in Spring of 1917 and met with President Wilson who supported the efforts of the American Zionists who were headed by Louis Brandeis which expedited the final decision of the British government.

We had Jews at that time who were afraid of it happening and were against the idea.  They were the presidents of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and of the Anglo-Jewish Association.  DL Alexander and CG Montefiore issued a statement that the Zionist aspirations were calculated to endanger the Jewish position in all countries.  All countries meant the Western of USA and England, evidently, for pogroms and anti-Semitism were going great in France and Russia.  All this rebuttal made Britain even more cautious, so they didn't accept the wording from the Zionists that said:
1. To recognize Palestine as "the national home of the Jewish people"
2. For providing a "Jewish National Colonizing Corporation" for the resettlement and economic development of the country.

The Declaration, after having finally been approved by the British cabinet, was sent to Lord Walter Rothchild who was asked to convey it to the Zionist Federation.  It was approved by other Allied governments and incorporated in the Mandate in 1922.

Samuel did a few helpful things such as erecting the structure of the new Palestine, creating a solid governmental machinery and turning a chaotic country into an organized state, good for England but not for the future of the Jews.  The foundations of the Jewish National Home were  firmly laid down during his term of office.

Lord Plumer was the 2nd High Commissioner from 1925 to 1928.  He, on the other hand, refused to restrict Jewish immigration and displayed much administrative energy.  Under his rule, Palestine citizenship provisos were laid down.  A water supply for Jerusalem was installed.  Public works schemes were inaugurated to meet the threat of unemployment.

Sir John Chancellor was the 3rd High Commissioner from 1928 to 1931.  1929 was a year of much rioting and deaths of Jews, instigated again by the Grand Mufti.  Chancellor condemned the 1929 Arab massacres in outspoken terms.  They had happened when he was away on leave, but later was inclined to temporize.

Sir Arthur Wauchope was the 4th High Commissioner from 1931 to 1937.  He was sympathetic to Jewish aspirations while being scrupulously fair to the Arabs.   I note that Nazis were gaining power in Germany at this time, and by 1937, things were terrible for Jews living there.  They were trying to emigrate from Germany and many wanted to come to Palestine and found it difficult to get in there or to the USA.  During Wauchope's period of office, the stream of immigrants rapidly increased, naturally.

This led to Arab restiveness which he tried to pacify by promising a Legislative Council.  He failed to quell the Arab revolt of 1936, again led by the Grand Mufti and this led to the end of his position.  In 1936, Husseini was chairman of the Arab Supreme Council so  had organized the Palestine disturbances for which he was sentenced to exile in 1937.  He fled to Lebanon.
                                                                             

Grand Mufti meeting with Hitler in Germany-November 1941

Sir Harold MacMichael (1882-1969)  was the 5th High Commissioner from 1938 to 1944. He was 56 when he took the post.  These were the war years.  He was the man in office during the war who refused to admit Jewish refugees from Europe.  This made him very unpopular with the Jewish population.  He was blamed for sending at least 768 Jewish refugees aboard MV Struma to their deaths. It was an "illegal" immigrant ship which left Romania in 1941 for Palestine and reached Istanbul, Turkey but were turned back.  It was MacMichael who had refused them entry into Palestine. The boat floundered in the Black Sea with the loss of all on board.  Seven unsuccessful attempts, mainly by Lehi (Stern Gang/Stern Group) , were undertaken to assassinate him during his sojourn in Palestine. In the last, both he and his wife narrowly escaped death in an ambush Lehi mounted on 8 August 1944 on the eve of his replacement as High Commissioner.

Viscount Gort was the 6th High Commissioner from 1944 to 1945.  He was sympathetic for the Jews, but was unable to make a fundamental change in the British government's policy.

Sir Alan Cunningham was the 7th and last High Commissioner from 1945 to 1948.  On May 14, he and his soldiers left.  He governed the country throughout the eventful happenings which culminated in the British withdrawal from Palestine.  By 1946, the population of Jerusalem reached 165,000 of whom 100,000 were Jews.  The city expanded and the Hebrew University was erected on Mt. Scopus.  This was a period of Jewish resistance to the  British Mandatory government.  The UN partition resolution of November 29, 1947 provided for the creation of an independent area of Jerusalem under the UN administration.  Arab outbreaks which were exactly like warfare were between the Haganah and the Arabs who had developed into the Arab Legion of Transjordan  seemed to put an end to this international scheme.  During that time, the Jewish quarter in the Old City had to be evacuated and was destroyed.  The rest of Jerusalem fell into Jewish hands.  The Arab Legion was shelling and starving the Jews in trying to get them  to surrender, but that was foiled by the fortitude of the Jews and by the opening of the Burma Road which restored the connection between Jewish Jerusalem and the coast.

Husseini, the Grand Mufti,  participated in Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup in Iraq during World War II before he went to Europe, where he assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in the Moslem areas of Bosnia.  In 1946 he escaped to Egypt.  Now we see Gaza was also affected by him.  After 1948, he set up a Palestine Government in Gaza, but it was short-lived.  Later, he set one up in Cairo, Egypt.  All this power was given to him by Samuel.  Evidently Samuel didn't vet him.

Ressource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/muftihit.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_MacMichael

Jews Cheated Out of Land to be Jewish Homeland: Facts of History of Palestine and Israel

                                                                                                                                                                                   
Nadene Goldfoot
All of Palestine was designated as a "Jewish National Home."  This was done legally through international law at the end of WWI in the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917.  What happened and how come the Jews wound up with only 20% of land to be theirs once again?  The Jews even had the agreement of King Feisal, king of Iraq and Syria  that it would work out for the Jews to return to their land.  He was one of the leaders who fought against the Ottomans.

"Understanding that Jews and Arabs would have to live together in the Land of Israel, Weizmann strove to create peaceful coexistence between the two peoples. Thus he met in Aqaba with Emir Faisal, leader of the Arab national movement. Faisal expressed sympathy for the Zionist cause, which he felt was similar to the Arabs’ national aspirations."  Weizmann was influenced by Theodore Hertzl, a secular Jewish Austrian reporter  who envisioned a Utopia for Jews.  Hertzl had written "Der Judenstaat" (The State of the Jews) outlining his ideas.

The British held the mandate and were trusted to follow out the rules.  Instead, they gave state domain lands, allocated for the "Jewish National Home,"  to those Arabs who were landless.  They did not own any land, but they claimed they were being "displaced by Jews" in Western Palestine.  The outcome was that land outside the limited Jewish-settled area of Western Palestine was then treated as "Arab" land which was more than 80% of the promised to the Jews' land.

These same Arabs did not think of themselves or even call themselves "Palestinians."  The bulk of all the Arab peasantry in the area came from East Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian and other neighboring states and had been landless due to the feudal-like societal structures of their own native-born people.  That, along with natural disasters, heavy taxation and corrupt loan sharks kept them poor.  It was not the Jews who were native to the land or the Jews who arrived in the 1880's that who made the Arabs landless.

The traditional land of Palestine included land both east and west of the Jordan River.  The few Arabs that lived there thought of themselves as Ottomans or Turks, as the land had been held by the Ottomans for the past 400 years.  Some also thought of themselves as southern Syrians or as Arab people..  None said they were Palestinians.

They were imbued with religious prejudice, and erupted into anti-Jewish violence often whenever their Muslim leaders would incite them.  This happened way before Israel was created in 1948.   After 1917 with the British in the area, they were referred to by the British as being "Nationalistic"-which was in truth subterfuge  to be  anti-Semitic.  The effendis and the Mufti tried to also incite this "nationalism" which meant attacks on Jewish civilians.  T.E. Lawrence did his part also in creating nationalistic feelings among the Muslims, a leftover from inspiring them to fight with him.

The charges from Palestinian leaders of today that the Palestinian people have had an identity with the land that goes back thousands of years is false.  A few nomadic people lived in the land in the 1860's (note Mark Twain's book "The Innocents Abroad".)  It was he and his friends who were the innocents, wanting to visit Palestine who answered the flier saying to join the excursion to the Holy Land and Egypt, the Crimea, Greece, and intermediate points of interest starting in Brooklyn, February 1, 1867.  They took a first-class steamer that would hold 150 passengers.  He gave an excellent description of what he saw.

The charge that alien Jews returned after 2000 years in 1948 to "displace" the Arabs in the new Jewish state is not true.  First of all, Jews hadn't all left in 70 CE.  There were a remnant who remained and were there to greet newcomers who returned throughout the 2,000 years.  Secondly, the plans Chaim Weizmann drew up for Israel included Arabs who were on the land at the time.  It was to be a state second to none as a Utopia. Instead, they were consistently greeted with gunfire.

Palestinians charge that there was no place for them in 1948.  The land to which Arab refugees moved in 1948 included lands that many Arab refugees had only recently left in order to gain the economic  advantages of the small Jewish region within Palestine.  These homelands where they originated included Jordan.  Those who deprived these Arab refugees of homes were the Arab-Muslim leaders.  Neighboring Arab states refused to grant citizenship to those they called their Arab brothers, so they wound up in camps where they reside today.  .  Arab who did not leave when their leaders told them to became citizens of Israel.

Unfortunately, the British treated the land designated to be the Jewish National Home as Arab Land.  The Jews who tried to immigrate during WWII before and after were brutally restricted while the Brits allowed illegal Arab immigration to enter.  Therefore the Brits violated the International League of Nations Mandate by facilitating Arab settlement onto Jewish-settled land and treating the Jews terribly.  (Read "Exodus" by Leon Uris).  They helped to build up the Arab population this way.
                                                           Weizmann and King Feisal

Perhaps King Feisal was not alone in his ability to see that Jews re-entering and developing their homeland would be good for Arabs as well, but these good people have been overcome by religious zealots who have pieced out the anti-Semitic clauses in the Koran and uphold them more than even the Arab countries that hosted Jews for the past 2,000 years as Dhminnis.  All good intentions of Weizmann and other Zionists of his day have been attacked by hatred from the Arab people, except that we see 1.4 million Arabs living as citizens in Israel today and living far better than their neighbors.    Weizmann and Feisal's dreams are working.

Resource: book:  From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters page 392-393.
The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~samuel/feisal1.html  about King Feisal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
http://www.mygen.com/users/ufo/Israel_gets_the_Bomb.html
http://suite101.com/article/theodor-herzl-the-dreyfus-affair-and-modern-zionism-a407378

Bergen-Belsen Survivors Sing Hatikva:

                           Hatikva means "HOPE". 
Nadene Goldfoot
"As long as the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the heart,
With eyes turned toward the East, looking toward Zion,
Then our hope - the two-thousand-year-old hope - will not be lost:
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem."

This song was written by Naphtali Herz Imber in 1886, a poet from Bohemia living in England at the time.  It is now Israel's National Anthem. 

Below is the song sung by survivors just liberated from the German concentration camp, Bergen Belsen on April 20, 1945.  It was a recording just recovered by the Smithsonian Center for American Folklife.  It was sung at their first Sabbath service while around them lie corpses on the ground as living people were lying down and dying.  While trying to sing they were sobbing. 

Twenty-four days and 3 years later, Israel was re-born on May 14, 1948.  The process to become a state started much earlier, like with Chaim Weizmann and his knowledge of chemistry which helped to win the WWI.    The pogroms in Russia caused leadership to arise and look for a place to hang their hat and call home once again,  but it took much time to evolve. They quickly learned that the only home that would do was our original one that we were led to by G-d, that land now lying in what was being called Palestine, and it just happened to be lying fallow and up for grabs.   

The trial of Dryfus was another catalyst in France.  A good soldier was tried and found guilty just because he was Jewish and  a useful scapegoat.  These were some major events that happened since 70AD when Jews were forced to wander all over the earth settling in one place only to be forced out, which even happened in England. 

 Little did they realize that Nazis would try to exterminate a whole people.  The state of Israel was not to become a reality until after the 2nd war.  Jews went from being relocated and held in one section of Russia called the "Pale of Settlement", not allowed out without special passes,  to being in the Warsaw Ghetto of Poland and slaughtered in mass and all the gas chambers in concentration camps.

 We have gone to being granted the Jewish National Home in Palestine by WWI's British mandated legalists to find we must settle for a  tiny section of that land only to be attacked  while it was announced and in coming years in many wars from all sides. 

We have gone through a massive war in 1967 attacked by all the neighboring states and won, not only from the attack but gained back Gaza and parts of ancient Israel of Judea and Samaria as well as the eastern part of Jerusalem all held illegally by Jordan.  We have seen the nations deplore our right to this land even though we left Gaza completely for the sake of making peace which didn't happen.  Instead it's a handy place to kill us from. 
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We are seeing certain Christian groups turn against us in a fight without bullets but are trying to harm us just as much.  Anti-semitism has reared its ugly head to join the masses. 

We haven't been granted much peace, even by the bombastic UN who has done little for this fledgling country, but we haven't given up hope!  Am Israel Chai!  The people of Israel live. 

Resource: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=syUSmEbGLs4
http://stateofisrael.com/anthem/
Victor Sharpe-sending me the website

How Jews Got Balfour's Help

Nadene Goldfoot

After the Ottoman Empire fell in WWI, the whole empire was divided up between the French and the English. The English won because a Jewish man, Chaim Weimann invented artificial acetone, which was the chief ingredient in cordite-a smokeless gun powder. This enabled the British to mass produce gunpowder for the war and to win against Germany. The Ottoman Empire had sided with Germany, and the axis lost everything.

The promise was that Israel would be created where it had originally been. At this time there were about 85,000 to 100,000 Jews living in Palestine where the land of Israel had been. Most of the Arabs living there had migrated in the past 30 years because they were attracted by jobs offered by Jews who were building and farming. Jews had immigrated in large numbers in 1882 when only 250,000 Arabs were living there. Arabs mostly were a migratory people.

In 1917 Earl Arthur Balfour, foreign secretary, promised British support with the Balfour Doctrine. Previously in 1906, they had a conversation about an offer he had made in 1903 to take Uganda instead of Israel, even though at that time the Ottomans still controlled the Middle East.

Weizmann asked Balfour, "Would you take Paris over London?
Balfour replied, "But we already have London". He meant that Jews should take whatever they could get, and that beggers couldn't be choosers.
Weizmann retorted back, "Mr. Balfour, the Jews had Jerusalem when London was a marsh."

What Balfour didn't know was that we all had made a promise ever since the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD by the Roman attack was that we would not forget it, lest we would lose our right hand. Being of this generation, I haven't forgotten and neither have my peers. Uganda? Not a chance. If Americans suddenly lost the USA, I wonder how long future generations would remember and crave Washington DC?

Balfour's promise was watered down so badly that one can hardly recognize it. We did not receive the parcel of land promised, but just a piece of the pie. Other Arab rulers were able to feather their nests around 1932 and get nations like Iraq and Saudi Arabia. We had to wait until May 1948, and even at that had to fight the minute we announced our statehood to keep it. So much for broken promises.

History of Palestine

Nadene Goldfoot

There has never been a country of Palestine. There was a territory called Palestine. When the Romans conquered Jerusalem in 70AD, they renamed the whole area "Palestine" to shatter the real names of Israel and Judea.

The area remained a wasteland. Nobody lived there. It was finally to become a part of the Ottoman Empire, which the Turks controlled. In the WWI, the Turks, who had sided with Germany, lost their empire to the allies. It went under the control of Britain.

To win the war, a Jew helped Britain by developing a dynamite by the name of Chaim Weizmann. The Balfour Declaration, written by Britain, declared the whole area of "Palestine" to become the new Jewish state, in honor of Weizmann's help. However, certain Arabs complained, scaring Britain, so the end result was that the area was chopped in pieces and the future Israel got a very small piece. We said we'd take it. Something was better than nothing. The rest of the area was offered to complaining Arabs who the British were placating. They did not want it and refused the land offer.

Before 1948, Jews were leaving Europe and the Holocaust and trying to get into "Palestine", and the British decided to stop their entering. But, on May 14, 1948, the United Nations made Israel a state, and immediately, 7 Arab countries attacked Israel.

After one of the attacks, the Arabs were told by their leaders to leave and let the Arab armies do their thing. As soon as they won the war, the Arab population could come back. Instead, the Jews won the war. The Arab leaders kept the Arab population out of Israel and in camps. Even the other Arab countries that surround Israel would not let them into their country. It was like a chess game. They served the leaders' purpose better by being in camps, fed by the UN and gaining support from the world. Israel had asked them (somehow, through bull horns, etc, not to leave. ) Those that did not leave are citizens of Israel, and are even in politics in the knesset. These people have served as propaganda for the Arabs.

This year, we are celebrating Israel's 60th birthday. We've been constantly attack by Arab countries, and yet we exist. More than half of the Arab population living in Israel prefer to be in Israel rather than a future Palestine. They have more freedom in Israel.