Jewish leadership fails us again.
[I have significantly added to this recent article.]
By Ted Belman
I just finished the first volume of The Lone Wolf, Shmuel Katz’s biography of Jabotinsky, which ends with Jabotinsky resigning from the Zionist Organization just after the ratification of the Palestine Mandate. I wanted to share with you some remarks that apply today as much as they did then.
Katz writes with respect to the signing of the Mandate, “the enemies of Zionism were in full cry against it” In support, he quotes Weizmann,
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“All the shady characters of the world are at work against us. Rich, servile Jews, dark, fanatic Jewish obscurantists, in combination with the Vatican, with Arab assassins, English imperialist antisemitic reactionaries – in short, all the dogs are howling”.
The same characters are still around and causing the same trouble.
The removal of Palestine east of the Jordan from the Mandate prior to its ratification in Sept 1922 was a huge loss for the Zionists, not only because they lost 78% of the lands promised to them in the Balfour Declaration and confirmed in law in the San Remo Resolution but because, as Weizmann wrote,
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“The climate of Trans-Jordan is invigorating; the soil is rich; irrigation would be easy and the hills are covered with forests. The Jewish settlement could proceed on a large scale without friction with the local population. The economic progress of Cis-Jordania itself is dependent upon the development of these Trans-Jordanian plains, for they form the natural granary of all Palestine, and without them Palestine could never become a self -sustaining economic unit and a real National Home”
Fortunately history and Jewish ingenuity proved him wrong but it was a great loss at the time.
Weizmann and Jabotinsky constantly differed on how to handle the British policies which derogated from the promise and violated the legal rights obtained at San Remo.
Of this difference Jabotinsky wrote,
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“We have to start all over from the beginning. In place of the true Zionism we are being offered a poor substitute. Weizmann wants to follow his system, without a struggle, in an atmosphere of beautiful words and an expressions of love. This means to concede, to give in, to retreat. He would like the English to regard him always with “quiet satisfaction.” But we shall achieve this only if we show firmness in our views, if we don’t stop pressing, if they have to regard us sometimes with “anxious disatisfaction.” [..]
“He thinks that his is the way of the flexible architect of compromise who takes the realities into account while mine is the method of a stubborn utopian. But I feel that his is the road to disavowal, to unwitting apostasy. I admit my ways are difficult and stormy, but they will bring us more speedily to the Jewish State. Of course Weizmann will be successful with solid “respectable” people but, after all, you and I never believed that the Jewish State would be built by solid sedate bourgeois.”
Is this not what Netanyahu keeps doing?
At that time, the Zionists were angry about being betrayed by the British but Weizmann did not want to go public with their complaints. Jabotinsky wanted to shout it from the rooftops. Besides by not going public, the rank and file activists who were collecting money door to door, were losing their enthusiasm for the cause. He wrote;
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“Theirs is a hard and unpleasant task; they can only carry it out with the full weight of their enthusiasm if they know that the ultimate aim is still the same old Zionism – the creation of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine. When they see this ultimate aim officially clouded by such statements as Samuel’s speech of June 3, 1921, or the White Paper of 1922, when they read and hear of the anti-Zionist activities of the Palestine Administration, and when they hear no word of manly protests against all this on the part of the Zionist Executive, but on the contrary see that the executive keeps smiling and bowing as though everything in the government’s behaviour were quite satisfactory; – then the confidence and the energy of the Zionist worker inevitably weakens.
“The most perfect organization of voluntary workers is of no avail where its very basis – the voluntary workers themselves, – have lost faith and see no meaning in their work.”
The same thing is happening today. The Netanyahu government keeps praising Obama and publicly smiling even though Obama keeps sticking the knife in. As a result American Jews maintain their support of Obama. Because Netanyahu doesn’t defend our right to build, they and even Iraeli Jews, lose confidence in our rights. Many become ashamed of the “occupation” because our government gives the impression that criticism of us in this regard is well founded. Under these conditions we cannot win the PR battle.
Jabotinsky believed that by not insisting on our rights, we would lose them. The British Government had a conscious aim, he concluded, “of bringing to naught all the pledges and declarations given to the Jewish people, of abolishing de facto our recognized rights and of destroying the very ground under our feet in our country”.
He proposed to the Actions Committee of the Zionist Organization, a resolution which made three demands
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1) To inform Britain that their present policies threatens “to ruin the Zionist movement and bring our enterprise in Palestine to bankruptcy”,
2) “To declare that the presence of anti-Zionists and anti-semites in the British personnel of the Palestine Administration” is contrary to the Mandate and to instruct the executive to insist on their withdrawal” and
3) “To proclaim that “the [Zionist] movement stands on the basis of its historic aim and that our obligations to the Mandatory Power admit of no other interpretation.”
The resolution was not even put to a vote.
Jabotinsky’s views were so dramatically different from those of the executive, he decided to resign; a decision, not unwelcomed by many.
In his resignation letter, he charged that the executive’s policy “is mainly characterized by the underlying assumption that a party which has no coercive force at its disposal will therefore prove incapable to defend before the British government its constitutional rights.” He utterly rejected this policy and wrote;
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“in the heart of the English people and government, he who stubbornly and systematically fights for a complete fulfillment of his rights will only meet with approval and respect and – even though it be only after a long struggle – justice and satisfaction”.
In a later interview, in response to the thought that his recommendations effectively declared “war” on Britain, he said,
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”There is no reason to depict a civilized government as though it were some highwayman with whom you cannot sit down to table unless you come with a gun”.
He believed that the Jews could achieve their rights without declaring “war”.
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“But for this we need a vigorous and determined campaign, without any wobbling. When you are fighting for your rights – even when faced by a stronger side – you are sometimes forced to make demands which are not convenient and are not pleasant for the other side. Nevertheless they must be presented and sustained however unpleasant they are to the other side; and if they flow from an undoubted right, then in the long run, the British will recognize it.”
I couldn’t help but notice the parallel to today. Our governments for decades have refused to assert our rights, the same rights that Jabotinsky wanted to assert, namely our right to “close settlement of Jews on the land”, all the land.
Furthermore Jabotinsky had confidence in the English people and their government. Similarly today, Yoram Ettinger argues that we should have confidence in the American people and their government. The justice of our cause will win in the end. Right makes might.
When will our leaders learn.
Jabotinsky’s main contribution to the Zionist cause, was to have more respect than the others for the Arab character. He realized that the Arabs would fight tooth and nail, to hang onto their lands. Weissman and others, on the other hand, thought the Arabs would simply politely stand aside while the Jews took over their country. One of Herzl’s greatest contributions was to have a similarly realistic estimation of Jewish character: that they would not be convinced to return to Zion on religious grounds alone; they had to be convinced that it was potentially profitable, and doable.
I don’t know why the whole current generation of Jewish leaders has become so spineless. Maybe they know something I don’t know. In that case, maybe it would be better to be ignorant: I would personally bomb Iran in a trice, if I were the US President or PM of Israel. I think many a victory on the battlefield was won, because the fighters were never convinced that logically, they were supposed to lose.
By the way, I haven’t written off Netanyahu yet; and I hold out the hope of being pleasantly surprized by him. It would be a surprize, though.
So far Netanyahu has been an appeaser, not that much different from his friend Barak and his ilk. But he will be put to the test and his survival and more importantly, Israel’s survival, will depend up his attacking and destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons. If he doesn’t we will witness an apocalypse.
Of the failure of the leadership of Israel, Ezekiel writes,
‘Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, even to the shepherds: Thus saith the Lord GOD: Woe unto the shepherds of Israel that have fed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the sheep? Ye did eat the fat, and ye clothed you with the wool, ye killed the fatlings; but ye fed not the sheep. (Eze 34:2-3).
The context seems to indicate that because of this failure -and the words of the enemy from Edom and the nations against the High places- success, even blossoming, on the mountains of Israel is given, despite the shepherds..
Then the nations that are left round about you shall know that I the LORD have builded the ruined places, and planted that which was desolate; I the LORD have spoken it, and I will do it. Thus saith the Lord GOD: I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them; I will increase them with men like a flock. (Eze 36:36-37)
What might be meant by the “nations left round about” might be emerging. The implication is that it is blindingly obvious that it was not mere human will to build the ruined places, so that the people are not dependent on the leaders (in democracy who are the real leaders?). It is not human will to increase the numbers of Jews on the Mountains, yet they will increase. In any battle, PR or otherwise, apparent might is not as useful as it might seem. Gideon won with 300 men. Israel’s PR battle so far has had peculiar effects with a minority that I have observed in the last 5 years. It doesn’t matter what most people think- it matters what the ones who matter think- and no-one can know who is going to matter next. You might not seem to be winning, but there will be effects you might not always know about.
When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee as the sword of a mighty man. (Zec 9:13)
It appears that first the sons of Greece rise up (The White House looks of Greek heritage and its occupant’s thinking likewise)- which rouses the sons of Zion…
Keep up your good work!
@ Jan:
Hi, Jan
It seems the “settlers” have been trying their darndest to build the ruined places, and the High Court has been working against them at every turn. The Israelites themselves seem to be working against Israel in ways that even the Arabs have failed.
@ BlandOatmeal:
The settlers (settle=to sit, dwell)on the mountains of Israel will prevail. The recent Israeli High Court ruling is a momentary event for a witness that despite the will of the nations or even the reluctance of Israel’s elected leaders, and even the Courts the ruined places will be built.
The “sons of Greece”, are sons by cultural inheritance and can be of Jewish descent also. They are raised up, so you may be made to be aware that what is being done is of note and amazing so it makes news everywhere so there is no excuse for missing it.
The building of the ruined places is only part way through (have a look at google satellite). Was not the building of the temple under Ezra and the walls of Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah stopped on occasion by opposition?
There is a petition by Israelis working for Israel – at http://www.yeshuv.org/mission/save-migron
I’m sending it to everyone I know. It is a just cause, and has merit on many levels. But its written that its a miracle that Jews build the waste places of the mountains. You can be part of it by signing and recruiting signatures.
Jabotinsky was not referring to ‘Palestinians’, who did not yet claim to be a people, but to the Arabs living in the Middle East, who later attacked the fledgling state of Israel.
Jabotinsky was wrong about co-existence with the Arabs even with a mythical Iron Wall. I wonder what he would say today?
Jabotinsky accepted Arabs in the Jewish state, presuming they would follow normal individual interests. Since then, Palestinian Arabs have developed a national backbone, and Israel failed to destroy it from village bosses up. Israel lost an ephemeral chance to coexist with individual Arabs, and has to now fight an Arab nation.
having grown up in revisionist family whoe motto was ‘ palestine on both sides of the jordan” i can only sy that
retreat and appeasement by the general zionists and the pinko governments of israel hav lost all semblance of israel legal rights .
isrel itself is quite remarkable in its progress since 1948 but has been hampered by the idiot polticians in all of that time .
they do not know that attack is the best defence and have played the american game for too long .
the israeli population is politically unaware and that is another problem as the best move now is to make leiberman pm .
unfortunately populations vote for monkey with a party label [not only in israel]
we have charlatan buffoons like olmert still giving speeches about how he ould have done it always forgetting his lebanon and gaza fiascos .
despite all the gloom i am still hopeful for amodern miracle !
Before you condemn the early Zionists.
600,000 Jews in 1948 could not have occupied J&S and Transjordan.
And populate it with what?
After WW2,most Jews alive were in the USA, and they were not moving to Israel. Most Euro-Jews wanted to go to the USA or Canada, which is why Tel Belman runs this site. His parents went to Canada.
Had American Jews moved to Israel, the spigot of American Jewish contributions would have dried up fast as they lost American prosperity.
You had poor Euro-Jews surviving on American funds.
These survivors were not enough to take everything West of the Jordan and hold it. They could not even take and hold Latrun.
After 1967, Ben Gurion suggested returning most of J&S for demographic reasons.
They did what they could, when they could.
Take it easy, yamit. Not everyone is a Kahanist like you.
@ yamit82:
Not too sure about that.
“Where’s my wall?”
Too many Diaspora Jews enjoy the Westernized dhimmi status, see no need to affirm themselves and accept repeat slaps in the face.
The West typical behavior can be witnessed every day when we see Allah in action in the South of Sudan where Muslims are exterminating masses of black Sudanese forcing them to runaway to South Sudan. Somali, another example! Where Islamists spread the deserts spread. Pakistan and Afghanistan same story. Pr. Obama flying secretly to Afghanistan cause the death of more Afghans. He could have signed the documents in ways that would not have triggered the well known barbaric reaction of the Talibans. The Talibans are a significant reflection of what Islam is about. The West DESPERATELY refuses to call it the way it is. Man made disaster!!!!!!!!! said the Obama administration (full of JEWS).
@ CuriousAmerican:
I agree, we didn’t have the numbers in 48 and in 67.
YES THE ENGLISH RENEG ON THIER PROMISE THEY TOOK 78%OF THE LAND OF ISRAEL AND THOSE LEFTIST IN ISRAEL WANT TO GIVE THE ARABS 50% WHATS LEFT SOME THING IS WRONG IN THE PICTURE THOSE WHO ARE EAGER TO GIVE LAND TO THE TERRORIST ARABS SHOULD MOVE OUT OF ISRAEL AND GO LIVE IN THE ARAB COUNTRYES AND STAY THERE
You didn’t have the numbers in 1948. But you had 2.2 million Jews in June 1967, and scores of thousands of panicked Arabs were streaming eastward over the broken Jordan River bridges into Trans-Jordan. Eshkol, Dayan and the rest of the Labor Party leadership could have expelled most of the rest of them across the river, or transported them in locked Egged buses with armed guards right to Suez Canal, taking on holding a bridgehead on the other side long enough to expel hundreds of thousands of them onto the African side.
There are lots of things you can do while you have the power and are sensible enough to use it. All it takes is ruthlessness. Which Jewish leaderships unfortunately always have lacked, despite the claims of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” gang.
Now you have 6 million Jews in Israel, along with the toughest and best professional army and air force in the Middle East, and according to all the estimates I have seen, at least a couple of hundred nuclear weapons. You could, as a matter of fact, not only destroy the Middle East oil supply but also render the Middle East uninhabitable, possibly for scores of thousands of years. So what in hell are you waiting for? Somebody else to climb down from a mountain with an engraved stone tablet in hand?
The time is long overdue for you to learn, that if you don’t scoop up those Arabs and expel them from the land, they will scoop you up and expel you from the land. Real life in the clash of civilizations is not a polite chess game or a case to be argued in a court of law. It’s as nasty and faustian as you can possibly envision. Kill or be killed. Expel or be expelled.
And if not all that, then for what other serious purpose do you really imagine ha-Shem made you a nation? And don’t feed me any crap about being a light onto the nations, or tikun ha-olam. I’ve been hearing that from liberal Jews for a lifetime.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
@ CuriousAmerican: And some of us are Kahanists, pal: No Choice but Transfer
Kahane war Right
From my imperfect memory I seem to recall that it was Herzl who said that the Torah is Zionism and that before returning back to the land of Israel means first returning to Judaism. Every problem that we have today was anticipated long ago with the Torah and our prophets.
Just as today we had corrupt Jewish leaders back then who even wanted to get rid of Moses. Every time we had a chance to leap forward we were sold out by our own secular, timid, egotistical ‘leaders’.
This article and the comments that follow point to the debate that the Jewish People urgently need to conduct.
@ Underzog:
Please count me too.
While the curious american applied the term ‘kahanist’ as a derogatory term when he replied to yamit, you and I and many others, hold this as a badge of honor.
Arnold Harris put it very plainly, as this IS a clash of civilizations and as THE GREAT rabbi kahane said “they must go!”
Kahane and Jabotinsky had the luxury of dying before having their theories tested in shoe leather. It’s for the rest of us to do that. The British shuffled, Jabotinsky cut, and the Arabs dealt the hand. I’m praying for Netanyahu to make the right decisions; because he’s likely to be the leader of Israel for some time.
@ david frankel:
What the English did was different than merely “reneg on a promise”. They violated their express fiduciary obligations as a trustee and guardian where the beneficiary and ward was World Jewry.
@ david frankel:
What Wallace is saying, David, is that the Brits broke the law.
As long as their promise had been confined to the pledge contained in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, it had no legally binding force.
It merely expressed the UK’s postwar intentions at a time when the GreatWar was still raging, and Palestine was still a Turkish possession.
However, when the victorious Allied Powers awarded Britain the Mandate for Palestine (based on the promise previously made in the Balfour Declaration)
— and Britain ACCEPTED that Mandate: with all the spelled-out fiduciary & international legal obligations to the Jewish People that Wallace refers to,
and when the League of Nations ratified that Mandate award & acceptance
— at that point, Britain became legally bound to Balfour’s Promise.
So when Britain broke her word to the Jews
— she ALSO broke the Law.
Jabo’s views didn’t take into account that the British, the Vatican, the 3rd Reich, and the US State Department would all invent a mythology-based ‘Arab nationalism’ and use it to wage war by proxy against the Jews.
I’m of firm belief that left to their own devices, Jabotinsky would have been entirely correct: Arabs interested in improving their own lives would have gotten along fine with the Jews then, just as they do now. Written accounts from the 1940s document the Vatican’s efforts to stoke this ‘Arab nationalism’/Jewhatred in the region.
My parents just went to Israel and took some little side trip to Jordan. How to explain that some of their guides were Arabs?
I don’t buy the line that *all* Arabs want the Jews dead any more than I buy the line that *all* domestic blacks hate the Jews. US media and the US government DO love these types of Arabs/blacks, which tends to make it harder to observe things objectively.
Perhaps Jabo underestimated the sick degree of Jewhatred in the geopolitical powers of the time.
I will agree that in 1948 and, perhaps in 1967, there were not enough Jews of military age to fight, conquer and hold Judea and Samaria; however, today, there are almost 8 million Jews with more coming in all the time. Where are they suppose to live if the terriories are not opened for them? In 20 years there will be about 14 million living in a cramped area the size of New Jersey. Once the population is stifled, progress will grind to a halt and Israel becomes another Euro state. That must not happen. We must not allow Obama to force that upon Israel. It is far past time that the Arabs on the west side if the Jordan be expelled and, if it means war, we are up to it. While all of the Arab nations are killing each other, when is there a better time than now?
This is nothing new–Jewish leadership has been a failure for thousands of years–and it will continue to be a failure!
I do not get this statement. If they removed Transjordan – PRIOR TO ITS RATIFICATION IN SEPT 1922 – how was it confirmed in law? I am not saying the British were right or wrong. I am wondering how it can be against the law before the law is even ratified.
Note: I am not defending the British who were treacherous to the Jews.
But that paragraph seems to be illogical and poorly constructed; as if the writer wanted to make a point he could not defend clearly, and so he wrapped his argument in ambiguity.
If San Remo needed ratification, then it was not the law, and they were not breaking the law.
If it was the law, then San Remo did not need ratification.
This is a legal question.
@ Ed Katz:
Ed, you’re the cheeriest guy here! The rest of the comments here, including my own, leave me in a state of depression.
When will the expulsions begin? Can goiim come and watch? Will Israel use the same troops that it used to expel the Jews from Gaza? That would be poetic justice. I’m all for it! Get a date set, and I’ll try to buy an airline ticket to Israel, just to share the happening.
@ CuriousAmerican:
“If they removed Transjordan – PRIOR TO ITS RATIFICATION IN SEPT 1922 – how was it confirmed in law?… If San Remo needed ratification, then it was not the law, and they were not breaking the law.”
San Remo did not need ratification.
It was in the nature of an international treaty, created by the victorious Principal Allied Powers acting in concert — as MANDATOR — and with the full plenipotentiary authority of their respective govts to do so.
Its function was to authorize the creation of the Mandate, and the awarding of it to a MANDATORY (the UK)
— which creation & award (and acceptance by the selected Mandatory) DID require ratification — by the Council of the League of Nations, which body was, in turn, organized by those same (above) Principal Allied Powers to develop & supervise all the Mandates.
The delay and skullduggery that went into the Mandate Charter’s drafting — more specifically its re-drafting (by the new FM, Lord Curzon), and the arm-twisting of the Zionists (by Colonial Secty Churchill)
— amounted to a violation of San Remo.
Yes, even before the Mandate Charter was ratified.
I’m sure that Grief explains this far better than I could (Howard Grief, former member of the Canadian bar, now a citizen of Israel, practicing law in Jerusalem).
You must lay hands on his book, Curious: The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel Under International Law (Jerusalem, 2008) — a major undertaking, 25 years in preparation, possibly destined to become the present era’s definitive work on the jurisprudential basis for the Jewish State — and which explores the matter exhaustively, with clarity, precision & courtesy for lay apprehensibility. [Available from Mazo Publishers, Jerusalem: 054-7294-565 / USA: 1-815-301-3559.] http://www.mazopublishers.com
(Shameless plug.)
@ CuriousAmerican: You raise a very good question. Here is the answer. The major parties agreed on the 1920 document. It was intended to be a trust agreement and a guardianship. See Article 22 of the League Covenant. The beneficiary was World Jewry.
England volunteered to be trustee. Both England and the US were under consideration for trustee. This was not yet an agreement of all the members of the League of Nations, but it was an agreement of the principal Allies. As trustee, England undertook a fiduciary obligation to the beneficiary of the trust and the ward of the guardianship — World Jewry. But it gave away TransJordan to solve its own political problems caused by its agreement on the one hand in the secret Sykes-Picot agreement to Syria being in the French sphere of influence, and having to solve the problem of what to do when France deposed Feisal who England had put on the throne of Syria at the end of the war when it had control. Churchill also had to solve the problem of Abdullah, Feisal’s brother, who had marched his army to Eastern Palestine to make war on the French in Damascus in revenge for the Battle of Maysalun after which the French deposed his brother. Winston Churchill thought he was being clever and put Feisal, as a consolation prize, on the throne of Iraq. He prevented Abdullah from making war on the French by giving him a temporary right to Transjordan. It was Col Richard Meinertzhagen that persuaded Churchill to give him only a temporary right. But England changed it to a permanent right in 1928.
That transfer to Abdullah was a gross violation of England’s fiduciary responsibility. None of its trust was to be ceded to a foreign power. That was expressly prohibited in the trust agreement. It was an even more extreme violation for England to block the immigration of Jews into Palestine in its 1939 White Paper when the trust agreement expressly required the mandatory power to facilitate the immigration of Jews into Palestine. By blocking immigration the trustee would be frustrating the purpose of the trust. That was to give the Jews sovereignty over Palestine, but not until they had attained a population majority.
I read Article 22 (here), but I do not see a reference to Palestine.)
I do not see the word Jew or Jewish in the League of Nations covenant, nor the boundaries of Palestine delcared; so that argument strikes me as a stretch.
What I see is that San Remo is the first document approximating a legal obligation to the Jewish people. If the British made a change before San Remo, I do not see it as illegal, but rather as pre-legal.
Now, you might have a case, but not in the League of Nations document. The mistake of the Jewish people was trusting the matter to the British.
Had the Jews entrusted the Mandate to the United States, and given the US’ racism at that time, the Arabs would have been treated like the Apache.
@ CuriousAmerican:The first two paragraphs of Article 22 show that the mandate was meant to be built on the well established British legal concepts of the trust and the guardianship.
The language of the mandate is not explicit. But the legislative intent can be used to clarify meaning at least in the US, Canada and the UK.
To see the proof of purpose you will have to read the two part op ed I wrote for Arustz Sheva. You can find it on the interent at: Part 1: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11408
Part 2: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11412
Someone had made a short video of the same subject illustrating it except for their failure to discuss the sovereignty of the Jews was to be held in abeyance until they had a majority of population.
It is undisputed that England volunteered to be trustee on April 25, 1920 and was accepted by the other principals. For proof of purpose, read particularly the memo of Arnold Toynebee and Lewis Namier of the British Foreign Office dated September 19, 1917, two months before the Balfour Declaration was published, the statement of David Lloyd-George at the Paris Peace conference stating what Toynebee and Namier had predicted had actually happend, and the argument of the Arabs at the UNSCOP hearing on Partition in 1948 in which the Arabs said that Winston Churchill, after WWI had told an Arab delegation visiting London that the people of Palestine would not be permitted self determination until there was a Jewish Population majority. Also read the terms of the mandate as it existed in 1920, Article 2, the article requiring the Mandatory personnel to be advised by the Zionist Organization, and the part requiring the Mandatory to facilitate the immigration of Jews and their close settlement on the land.
Col Richard Meinertzagen’s Middle East Diary is helpful too. He prophesied that the language was so vague, it would be easy for anti-semites and anti-Zionists to frustrate the attainment of its goal. But it turned out to be so vague that the Israelis two generations later didn’t understand it in June, 1967.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Yes.
The change was made AFTER San Remo [24/25 Apr 1920]
— and BEFORE Mandate Ratification [24 July 1922].
A charming, but fanciful proposition. . . .
The Jews were in no position to be ‘entrusting’ anything to anybody.
The Allies were in possession of the former Turkish parcels, and they were calling the shots.
The Jews had gotten a seat at Versailles, because of their contribution to the Allied war effort.
Weizmann had recognized, early-on, that “only the guns would be given a voice.”
(And better to be at the table — than on the menu.)
But it was the major Powers themselves that were dividing up the spoils.
As I recall, Balfour had (at one point or another) actually favored an American Mandate over Palestine.
Lloyd-George & Clemenceau, however — each of whose geopolitical stake in the M-E was enormously greater than that of Wilson — had no intention of putting matters Middle Eastern into the President’s meddlesome hands.
While Wilson had been in many ways the animating spirit behind creation of the Mandate system, “Lloyd George in particular was contemptuous of Wilson and his attempt to determine the future of the Middle East without having sent a single soldier to fight there, indeed without even having declared war on the Ottoman Empire.” [Ephraim Karsh & Inari Karsh, Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 (Harvard U. Press, Cambridge, 1999), p.270]
Britain alone had committed 1.4 million troops to the Middle East theatre in the conflict, and had spent some £ 750 million on it.
In his own way, L-G had a point.
Ted, how can you allow two calls for the assasination of the Prime Minister of the state of Israel to stay here?
Bland, I do not dwell on negativity. If I determine that something is not right, I either correct it or move on to more important things to do. The things that are happening in Israel are not right and the situation needs correcting, I’m not blaming Bibi for problems that are occuring there, but he needs to step up to the plate and do the right things to correct them, otherewise, let someone else step in who can.
The solution as I see it is to break some Arab heads often enough for them to understand that Jews will no longer put up with their bull shit.
I put a block on Sally before. Now I will remove her post.
@ Wallace Brand:Curious American: Article 22 of the League Of Nations Covenant described all mandates, not just the Mandate for Palestine for which England volunteered to be trustee. There were many of them. England was mandatory power or trustee and guardian in only two or three of them.