Palestine

Eleven years ago Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid Sir Winston Churchill a compliment and this writer a minor one, in his thanks for a gift of my book, Churchill by Himself.

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 worst thing Churchill said about indigenous peoples is often singled out to prove his racism. It is very misleading to base one’s beliefs on a single statement during a contentious discussion in 1937. It is at variance with many examples of Churchill’s concern for human rights, which caused some contemporaries to look consider him a dangerous radical. Honest history demands we weigh every aspect of the man. Does the evidence add up to blatant racism?

“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

“We are told that there are a handful of terrorists on one side and 100,000 British troops on the other. How much longer are they to stay there? And stay for what? In order that on a threat to kill hostages we show ourselves unable to execute a sentence duly pronounced by a competent tribunal. It is not good enough. I never saw anything less recompensive for the efforts now employed than what is going on in Palestine.” —WSC, 31 January 1947

“[I]t is impossible to avoid expressing deep regret at the many changes of tactics and method, at the needless disappointment created throughout world Jewry by the failure to fulfill the hopes which the party opposite excited by their promises and convictions at the General Election, and above all, at the lack of any policy worthy of the name. This absence of any policy or decision on these matters, which have become more complicated as they proceed, has allowed havoc and hatred to flare and run rife throughout Palestine for more than a year and no one knows where we are today.” —WSC, 12 November 1946

The Middle East was ruled by the Ottoman Empire for almost 500 years, but by 1918 it was occupied by a British army of one million. No other major military force was on scene. British plans were in shambles: subversive foreign plots were suspected. At this truly horrendous moment, Lloyd George in effect turned to Churchill and said, in effect: You deal with it. Britain would often do that when all else had failed and other policies had proven not to work.

Churchillians in Portland, Oregon have Sir Winston on their minds; their questions are pertinent to our understanding of him, and ourselves.

Wingate “lives on in the long-range penetration groups, and all these intricate and daring air and military operations.” —WSC

Stafford’s description of this critical year is masterful. In 1921 the former “bold, bad man” of British national life rose above his reputation as a war-mongering opportunist. The picture is of a reflective and vulnerable man of character, strengthened by every reverse—a man of vision and, to a few observers, “a prime minister in the making.” Really good books about Churchill are scarce these days, and deserve full appreciation. This one belongs on any list of the top twenty specialized studies.

Cohen dismisses Churchill’s reaction to the news of the Auschwitz killings (“probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world”) as a mere retreading of something Churchill said of the Turkish massacres of Armenians during the First World War–but this is not to be found in his writings, speeches or private papers. This mistake and these omissions do not affect Cohen’s judgment on the question of bombing, but do demonstrate that Churchill had not dropped the issue, let alone from indifference.

A fresh look at Churchill and Jewry, from an address by Ronald Cohen to Ambassador and Mrs. Barak and the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa at Kinneret, residence of the Ambassador, 16 June 2016.