Cairo Conference

Churchill was probably a Zionist by 1905. Reader Gene Kopelson (Comments, below) notes Michael Makovsky’s evidence of young Winston’s early respect for Jews and many Jewish friends. This didn’t make him a Zionist per se, but he certainly had become one by the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. But I can find no public statement calling for an independent Israel until 1948. Until then he called for a “Jewish National Home.”

“The position of Great Britain in Palestine is one of trust, but it is also one of right. For the discharge of that trust and for the high purposes we have in view, supreme sacrifices were made by all these soldiers of the British Empire, who gave up their lives and their blood. Therefore I beg you to realize that we shall strive to be loyal to the promises we have made both to the Arab and to the Jewish people, and that we shall fail neither in the one nor in the other.” —WSC

Brad Faught has given us an expertly researched and thoughtfully argued examination of one of the seminal diplomatic events of the 20th century. He explains why British officials like Curzon and Allenby opposed a Jewish homeland within the Mandate of Palestine. Allenby, aided by Lawrence, was the general who had conquered the Ottoman provinces in the First World War.

Reguer shows how Churchill created modern Iraq, Jordan and Palestine after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War.

Jordan may have been created with the stroke of a pen, but Churchill didn’t quite say that, and his creation has now survived for 100 years.