Month: January 2024

#140 – Commissioning Israel – The British Mandate

~ russmac0818 ~ Leave a comment

Zionism, from its beginning, included a battle plan to reconquer Biblical land given to the Israelis according to Genesis 15 and Exodus 23. Menachem Begin called it “the restoration of the whole Land of Israel to its God-covenanted owners.” Chaim Weizmann, the president of the WZO, testified it was the fulfillment of God’s “promise to his people,” and socialist leader Ben-Gurion affirmed that “the Bible is our Mandate.”

There was never any serious thought about what to do with the usurpers living on their land. They were obstacles that needed removal. A partnership between the Zionists and the indigenous Arabs was not possible nor ever considered. The Zionists were on a mission, an exclusive pursuit of a divine right to Palestine.

Politicide

The British Mandate mentions Palestine as a place but does not refer to Palestinians as a people. It describes the triad of players as His Majesty’s Government, the Jewish people, and the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

Politicide is a term coined by Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, describing the process as using omission and commission to destroy a people. To politicide Palestinians was the first step toward their mission. 

The omission in the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine was structured. (1918-1948) Both documents never mention the people, the Palestinians, by name. Rashid Khalidi reflects on the symbolic absence of naming the Palestinians in the Mandate, writing, “As far as Great Britain and the League of Nations are concerned, they were not a people.” 

This blog explores the commissioning aspect of how the British fulfilled the Mandate directive to relegate the Palestinians as subservient to the Zionist reconquest project. (Israel) 

If You Build It, They Will Come

By the end of the 1920s, the Jewish Agency was established and authorized by the British ruling cabinet and had become the veritable government of the Yishuv. (Jewish population in Palestine) The evolution of the agency began in 1908 as the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization, later the Zionist Commission, and then the Palestine Zionist Executive. It was always the operative branch of the World Zionist Organization. (WZO)

The Mandate encouraged cooperation between Zionist and British institutions in Palestine. The British allowed and promoted the Jewish Agency to deal with political affairs, economic affairs, immigration, settlement, and other matters. In return, the agency showed the British exactly how a Jewish state would work. They asserted their political rights over the indigenous, produced detailed maps and irrigation plans, debated the technicalities of government procedure, and exhibited a knowledge of how government functioned.

By contrast, the British denied the Palestinians political rights, making it increasingly difficult for Palestinian leaders to participate, thus negating their political existence. This structural exclusion of the Palestinians meant that the Mandate government and its subcontractor, the Zionist settler-colonial project, rolled on relentlessly without them.

Palestinians built their political structures without the support of the Mandate state. Many of those structures emerged from resistance to the British occupation of Palestine. The Peel Commission testimony would, years later, confirm a structural exclusion of the Palestinians from British decision-making was policy. No amount of paternalistic affection could counterbalance the day-to-day contact between Zionists and British colonial bureaucrats.

Wild In The Streets

Beginning in the 1920s, the Palestinian fellahin, the peasant farmers (over two-thirds of the indigenous Arab population) were being forced off the land in increasingly large numbers into urban environments of unemployment, poverty, and social marginalization. 

Fueled by a dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall, a series of demonstrations and riots in late August 1929 escalated into deadly violence. From August 23 to August 29, there were 133 Jews killed, 339 Jews were injured, 116 Arabs killed, and 232 were wounded. 

The British government commissioned an inquiry to investigate the 1929 rioting. The report, The Passfield White Paper, concluded that the cause of rioting was the result of Arab fears of the continual Jewish immigration and land purchases, particularly resonating from a growing Arab landless class. 

The report concluded that Zionist policy had severely damaged the economic development of the Arab population and also pointed out that the Jewish-only labor policy enhanced unemployment in the Arab sector. The Passfield White Paper proposed to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine and Jewish purchase of Arab land. 

The Paper proved to be feckless. With the World Zionist Organization headquartered in London, adroit lobbying in Parliament by Chaim Weizman, and the Histadrut, Hapoel Hatzair, Ahdut HaAvoda, Poale Zion, and the Jewish Agency firmly embedded in the British Mandate political sphere would only be a matter of time before the Paper was ignored or rescinded.  

That came with the issuing of a letter from British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to Chaim Weizmann (President – Zionist World Organization) reaffirmed British support for the continuation of Jewish immigration and land purchase in Palestine. This submission letter, prompted by claims of anti-Semitism by the Zionists, was dubbed the Black Letter by the Palestinians. It was an unofficial (official) withdrawal of the Passfield White Paper. 

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

In the crowded shanty towns in Jaffa and Haifa, the young Palestinians found encouragement in the teachings of the charismatic preacher Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. His following came from the landless ex-tenant farmers drifting into Haifa from Upper Galilee. These areas were most affected by purchases of agricultural land by the Jewish National Fund and the Hebrew labor policy. These policies had dispossessed the Arabs of land and many of their traditional livelihoods. 

In April 1936, growing unrest among the Arab community of Palestine led to the outbreak of a revolt initially as an urban-led campaign of civil disobedience directed against the Zionist presence in Palestine. The British instituted financial penalties, curfews, and house demolitions upon the Palestinians. They soon followed up by militarization, as they turned schools into barracks and injected violence into everyday spaces. State violence as a retaliation tool and mass punishment ran rampant. 

To further the pain of the Palestinian quest to maintain their country, the British released The Peel Commission (1936–37) report. It was the first British commission of inquiry to recommend the partition of Palestine into two states. The division of British-occupied Palestine into physically segregated Arab and Jewish territories was a foreshadowing of the removal and relocation of Palestinians from their homes to designated Palestinian land.

This revelation thus began the second phase of the Arab rebellion. The rebellion proved more violent, and the peasant-led resistance movement increasingly targeted British forces. The colonial state responded with more interventions in Arab daily life. The Mandate security forces hoped that the increased force, the infliction of more economic losses, and the damage to Palestinian property would break the rebel movement. 

The British targeted the Palestinians, routines of work, school, worship, and travel. They intensified curfews, instituted mass incarceration and forced labor, and the revocation of free movement. The military took their campaign of collective punishments ever further, constricting and diminishing the life of the colonized and ruthlessly exploiting the damage they did to the substance and fabric of Palestinian lives. 

The retooled British counterinsurgency brought economic instability and physical insecurity. Socioeconomic foundations of society and cracking the institutional bases of the revolutionary movement. The onslaught of collective punishments destroyed the daily life of Arab Palestinians, forcing sacrifice and suffering onto households far and wide and making the quest for freedom and self-determination ever more costly and untenable. 

The Israelis learned well from their British mentors. It remains in Israel today, in the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza and The West Bank. The Arab Revolt was a forecast for Palestinian viability to develop and maintain a resilient popular movement. Without any support, the Great Revolt was soon in tatters.

The Palestine Rebellion of 1936–39 was the most defiant of British imperial authority in the first half of the twentieth century. It had a price. The brutal crushing of the rebellion by the British army, the killing and hanging and collective punishment, the dismantling of Palestinian political organizations, the arrest and exile of Palestinian leaders, and the systematic disarmament of the Palestinian population shifted the balance of power in favor of the Zionists. 

The Palestinian national movement came to a tragic end. The brutal crushing of the rebellion by the British army, the killing, hanging, collective punishment, the dismantling of Palestinian political organizations, the arrest and exile of Palestinian leaders, and the systematic disarmament of the Palestinian population massively and irreversibly shifted the balance of power in favor of the Yishuv. 

Palestinians were demoralized and disorganized. “Palestinians began a disorienting period of transition during which they lost control over their fate.” An independent Palestinian government was not palatable to regional Arab nations and had strong opposition from those with power, including the British, Transjordan, and the Zionists.

Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste

As early as 1920, Ben-Gurion and his Labor colleagues had decided on the need for a secret underground army, the Haganah, on the realistic assumption that to convert a country whose vast majority was Arab into a Jewish national home required direct military force that the British government might not always be willing to provide. The word Haganah in Hebrew characteristically means self-defense.

At war’s end, Britain had created a Jewish auxiliary colonial army twenty thousand strong, which it armed, trained, and officered. This military force became the official Jewish army, the Jewish Settlement Police. (JSP) Once the Haganah army of thirty thousand men merged into the JSP, with a population of less than a half million, it became one of the most militarized communities in the world. 

With the United Nations Resolution 181 (Partitioning of Palestine) and the Israeli independence proclamation on the horizon, the challenges for the Zionists were twofold. 1) How to get rid of the British, now that they served their purpose, and 2) How to market “The Nakba”, the catastrophe. 

#139 – Balfour, The Camel, and Zionism

~ russmac0818 ~ Leave a comment

“There is a British proverb about the camel and the tent, At first the camel sticks one leg in the tent, and eventually it slips into it. This must be our policy.” Chaim Weizmann

The Tent

Sometime between the Old Testament and the latest ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, Israel came into existence. The 1947 United Nations Resolution 181, the Partition Plan of Palestine, was the culmination of an international Zionist political campaign officially launched after the publication of the Theodore Hurzl 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State ). Herzl offered Zionism as the “final solution of the Jewish question.”

The First World Zionist Organization meeting held in Basel, Switzerland (August 1897) adopted the Basel Program. It implemented Zionist goals for establishing a home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Included in the manifesto were two tenants that would have a lasting impact on Palestine, its people, and the Middle East.  

The first of those tenets was the promotion of Jewish settlements in Palestine, accomplished by purchasing land for “Jewish Only” settlers. Aided by the catastrophic Ottoman Land Code of 1858, creating an absentee landlord system of Palestinian peasant-farmer land, and the financial backing of agencies like the Jewish Colonization Association (1891) and the Jewish National Fund (1901) to acquire land in Palestine for “any Jews upon any term” forcibly dispossessed unsuspecting Palestinian peasant farmers of the land. 

The second part of the scheme was obtaining governmental approval to achieve the Zionist purpose. This legitimacy would come to fruition twenty years later when the British hegemonic empire issued the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The British Government announced its support for the establishment of “a National Home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

Balfour – One Leg

It appears ironic that Prime Minister Arthur Balfour sponsored the anti-semitic Aliens Act of 1905 to prevent East European Jews fleeing pogroms from immigrating to England. Then, a dozen years later, as United Kingdom Foreign Secretary, issued the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Irony has been absorbed into many political decisions throughout history. 

Balfour wrote privately about his decision, ”Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far more profound import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”

When exploring those profound age-long traditions, present needs, and future hopes, it becomes clear that the Balfour verbiage is “Political language designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ” (George Orwell)

The reality for the Balfour Declaration on Palestine: 

  1. it was strategically important to keep Egypt and the Suez Canal in its sphere of influence (passage to India, British Navy access, transporting of merchant goods)
  2. to rally support among Jews in the United States and Russia; 
  3. to satisfy the British Zionist Lobbyist community;
  4. sympathy towards Jews persecuted in Europe;
  5. to keep the Allied governments in the World War.

Despite appearing as a bold declaration by Great Britain in favor of Zionism, it served as a strategic tool to support the Allied war effort. Married to a fear that Germany might preempt the Allies by issuing its own pro-Zionist statement, the Balfour Declaration stole any pro-Zionist move Germany could make.

No one doubted that the Allied Countries stood beside Britain when Balfour issued it. The Jewish Chronicle of London affirmed that the British government had acted “in accord—it is without doubt to be assumed—with the rest of the Allies.” At a Zionist conference in May 1917, Chaim Weizmann (1st President of Israel) announced, “The support of the British government, when given, will be in conjunction and agreement with the Allied powers.”

The French, the Americans, and the Italians were pliable passengers aboard the Zionist train conducted by a coalition of Nahum Sokolow, Chaim Weizmann, and Louis Brandeis. During the spring of 1917, Nahum Sokolow secured the support of France, (Cambon letter) Italy, and even the Catholic pope. Weizmann and Brandeis adroitly secured Great Britain’s and the United States’ support. A Jewish “national home” under British auspices had gained international credit.

A decree was issued by the most powerful country of that age, the empire that conquered Palestine. (World War l) announced to the world that they supported the creation of a Jewish state was iconic. The British knew that Palestine was then an overwhelmingly Arab country, populated by 722,143 inhabitants with only 38,754 Jewish. ( 5.3 percent) It did not matter what the inhabitants wanted because the political expedience was of more benefit. Inevitably, the Balfour decision, until this day, has rendered a conflict-riven land.

Across the Pond – The Second Leg

The American mind romanticized the Bible stories and crusader adventure. For the majority of Western Christians and Jews, Zionists or anti-Zionists, newspaper reporters, missionaries, government officials, the United States president, and ordinary American citizens, the history and culture of the Arab Muslims of Palestine were irrelevant. Colonialist and religious ideology combined to triumph over history.

Zionism had also taken hold in the press. In December 1917, a pro-Jewish nation op-ed appeared in the New York Times. It encouraged the U.S. government “to recognize the Jewish nation as one of those oppressed smaller nationalities which must have an opportunity to assert themselves after the war.” Later in that month wrote, “thousands of New York Zionists packed Carnegie Hall” to celebrate ”the British promise to restore Jerusalem and the Holy Land to the Jewish people.”

President Woodrow Wilson had recently reached international stardom. In his January 8, 1918, address to Congress, President Woodrow Wilson proposed a 14-point program for world peace. It would later be a reference at the Paris Peace talks and a precursor to his Noble Peace Prize and the formation of the League of Nations. 

The Fifth point of the 14-Point Plan was “A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty, the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.”

The Wilson administration, Secretary of State Robert Lansing, his staff, and Colonel House, his personal adviser, were better informed about the demographic realities of Palestine. Both men expressed misgivings about Zionism. By the time of the Paris Peace Conference, both argued against it because “a Jewish homeland implied the rejection of Wilsonian self-determination concerning Arabs.”

One would conclude that Wilson would oppose a colonial settler project in Palestine. However, Wilson was indebted to a cabal of Jewish Zionists that helped him get elected. The prestigious list included financier Jacob H. Schiff, philanthropist Nathan Straus, Bernard Baruch, Samuel Untermeyer, Rabbi Stephen Wise, and Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, a former U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. (1913-1916) 

Woodrow Wilson – It’s Slipping In

Wilson frequently consulted with attorney and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. In a letter to Wilson, Brandeis urged expanding boundaries for a new state of Israel. Brandeis persuaded, “Less than this would produce mutilation of the promised homeland. Neither in this country nor in Paris has there been any opposition to the Zionist program? The Balfour Declaration, which you made possible, was a public promise. I venture to suggest that it may be given to you, at this time, to move the statesman of Christian nations to keep this solemn promise to Israel. Your word to Millerand (France) and Lloyd George (Great Britain) at this hour may be decisive.”

Irony again confronts the reality of politics. Wilson bypassed Lansing and the State Department when it came to a decision on the Balfour Declaration, and the president ignored the cautionary advice of Colonel House. The contradiction between Zionist goals and the Wilson rule of self-determination was ignored. Wilson would turn to religious idealism to justify granting the Zionists an exemption from the rule. Wilson saw a European-born movement claiming validity from Old Testament history as a higher priority than twelve centuries of Arab culture and history.

Henry Morgenthau summed up the prevailing attitude in America, “Christians everywhere will rejoice that the Holy Land, so well-known to them through both the Old and New Testaments, has been restored to the civilized world.”

The Camel Is In The Tent

The seduction of Woodrow Wilson was the final conquest needed by the Zionists. Thus, the borders of Israel became a reality. The politicizing and empowering of a statement in an official British Government letter in support of “a National Home for the Jewish people” to the creation of the State of Israel was quite a jump. How the truth becomes mutated is essential to understanding the power that the Zionist Camel holds.

This Zionist Camel formula has proven successful over the years. It is a blend of half-truths mixed with claims of anti-semitism (actual or created) garnished of lobbying, bullying, and financial rewards. Then victimhood is sprinkled over this formula to enable the chosen State of Israel to be levitated to a height above the law. 

Balfour was a victim of the Zionist Camel, followed by Wilson and US citizens. At the 1919 Paris Peace talks, Zionism was a powerful force that established a stranglehold on world history. What followed was a series of tragic setbacks to Palestinian sovereignty. Including the formation of the League of Nations, the British Mandate of Palestine, the United Nations Resolution 181, the 1967 Six-Day War, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the 2023 Genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Will it end?

The Camel is well entrenched in the Washington big top. Are there any camel herders capable of removing it? I fear not!