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Brandeis and his associates found the draft unsatisfactory in two particulars. They
disliked that part of the draft's second safeguard clause which read, "by such Jew`s who
are fully contented with their existing nationality and citizenship," and substituted "the
rights and civil political status enjoyed by Jews in any country. In addition, Brandeis
apparently proposed the change of "Jewish race" to "Jewish people." [172] Jacob de
Haas, then Executive Secretary of the Provisional Zionist Committee, has written that the
pressure to issue the declaration was coming from the English Zionist leaders: "they
apparently needed it to stabilize their position against local anti-Zionism. If American
Zionists were anxious about it, Washington would act." De Haas continues:
Then one morning Baron Furness, one of England's unostentatious representatives,
brought to 44 East 23rd Street, at that time headquarters of the Zionist Organization, the
final draft ready for issue. The language of the declaration accepted by the English
Zionists based as it was on the theory of discontent was unacceptable to me. I informed
Justice Brandeis of my views, called in Dr. Schmarya Levin and proceeded to change the
text. Then with Dr. Wise, I hurried to Colonel House. By this time he had come to speak of
Zionisn as "our cause." Quietly he perused my proposed change, discussed its wisdom
and promised to call President Wilson on his private wire and urge the change. He cabled
to the British Cabinet. Next day he informed me that the President had approved. I had
business that week-end in Boston and it was over the long distance wire that my secretary
in New York read to me the final form as repeated by cable from London. It was the text as
I had altered it.[173]
"It seems clear," wrote Stein, "that .it was not without some prompting by House that
Wilson eventually authorized a favourable reply to the British enquiry." Sir William
Wiseman, "who was persona grata both with the President and with House, was relied
upon by the Foreign Office for dealing with the declaration at the American end. Sir
William's recollection is that Colonel House was influential in bringing the matter to the
President's attention and persuading him to approve the formula." [174]
On 16 October 1917, after a conference with House, Wiseman telegraphed to Balfour's
private secretary: ''Colonel House put the formula before the President who approves of it
but asks that no mention of his approval shall be made when His Majesty's Government
makes formula public, as he had arranged the American Jews shall then ask him for
approval, which he will publicly give here."[175]
The Balfour Declaration, as stated, was issued on 2 November 1917. Its text, seemingly
so simple, had been prepared by some the craftiest of the craft of legal drafting. Leaflets
containing its message were dropped by air on Germany and Austria and on the Jewish
belt from Poland to the Baltic Sea.
Seven months had passed since America entered the war. It was an epochal triumph for
Zionism, and some believe, for the Jews.
On the other hand, two months before the declaration, Sokolow had written of a marked
falling off in "le philo-sémitisme d'autrefois," ascribed by some to the impression that the
Russian Jews were the mainspring of Bolshevism; and on the day it was issued, The
Jewish Chronicle complained of "the antisemitic campaign which a section of the press in
this country, indifferent to the national interests, is sedulously conducting." [176] There
only remained certain courtesies to be effected. On November 1917, Weizmann wrote a
letter of thanks to Brandeis:
"... I need hardly say how we all rejoice in this great event and how grateful we all feel to
you for the valuable and efficient help which you have lent to the cause in the critical hour
... Once more, dear Mr. Brandeis, I beg to tender to you our heartiest congratulations not
only on my own behalf but also on behalf of our friends here -- and may this
epoch-making be a beginning of great work for our sorely tried people and also of
mankind." [177]
The other principal Allied governments were approached with requests for similar
pronouncements. The French simply supported the British Government in a short
paragraph on 9 February 1918. Italian support was contained in a note dated 9 May 1918
to Mr, Sokolow by their ambassador in London in which he stressed the religious divisions
of communities, grouping "a Jewish national centre" with existing religious communities."
On 31, August 1918, President Wilson wrote to Rabbi Wise "to express the satisfaction I
have felt in the progress of the Zionist movement . . since ... Great Britain s approval of
the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Brandeis joined
in Zionist delight at the President's endorsement and wrote: "Since the President's letter,
anti-Zionism is pretty near disloyalty and non-Zionism is slackening." [178] Non-Zionist
Jews now had a hard time if they wanted to disseminate their views; if they could not
support Zionism they were asked at least to remain silent.
On 30 June 1922, the following resolution was adopted by the United States Congress:
Favouring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people;
Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of
America in Congress assembled. That the United States of America favours the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly
understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights
of Christians and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places
and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected.[J]
All people tend to see the world and its events in terms of their own experience, ideas and
prejudices. This is natural. It is a fact used by master politicians and manipulators of
opinion who form their appeals accordingly. The case of the Balfour Declaration is a
fascinating example of a scheme presenting a multiplicity of images according to the facet
of mind on which it reflected.
There were critics of the Balfour Declaration, although among the cacophony of many
events competing for attention, few but its beneficiaries concentrated on the significance
of what was being offered. One was the Jewish leader and statesman Mr. Edwin Montagu,
who had no desire that Jews should be regarded as a separate race and a distinct
nationality.[181] The other was Lord Curzon, who became Foreign Secretary at the end of
October 1918. He prepared a memorandum dated 26 October 1917, on the penultimate
and final drafts of the Balfour Declaration and related documents, and circulated it in the
Cabinet. It was titled "The Future of Palestine." Here are some extracts:
I am not concerned to discuss the question in dispute between the Zionist and anti-Zionist
jews . I am only concerned in the more immediately practical questions:
(a) What is the meaning of the phrase "a national home for the Jewish race in Palestine,"
and what is the nature of the obligation that we shall assume if we accept this as a
principle of British policy?
(b) If such a policy be pursued what are the chances of its successful realisation?
If I seek guidance from the latest collection of circulated papers (The Zionist Movement,
G.-164) I find a fundamental disagreement among the authorities quoted there as to the
scope and nature of their aim.
A "national home for the Jewish race or people" would seem, if the words are to bear their
ordinary meaning, to imply a place where the Jews can be reassembled as a nation, and
where they will enjoy the privileges of an independent national existence. Such is clearly
the conception of those who, like Sir Alfred Mond, speak of the creation in Palestine of
"an autonomous Jewish State," words which appear to contemplate a State, i.e., a political
entity, composed of Jews, governed by Jews, and administered mainly in the interests of
Jews...
The same conception appears to underlie several other of the phrases employed in these
papers, e.g., when we are told that Palestine is to become "a home for the Jewish nation,"
"a national home for the Jewish race," "a Jewish Palestine," and when we read of "the
resettlement of Palestine as a national centre," and "the restoration of Palestine to the
Jewish people," all these phrases are variants of the same idea, viz., the re-creation of
Palestine as it was before the days of the dispersion.
On the other hand, Lord Rothschild, when he speaks of Palestine as "a home where the
Jews could speak their own language, have their own education, their own civilization, and
religious institutions under the protection of Allied governments," seems to postulate a
much less definite form of political existence, one, indeed, which is quite compatible with
the existence of an alien (so long as it is not Turkish) government...
Now what is the capacity as regards population of Palestine within any reasonable period
of time? Under the Turks there is no such place or country as Palestine, because it is
divided up between the sanjak of Jerusalem and the vilayets of Syria and Beirut. But let
us assume that in speaking of Palestine in the present context we mean the old scriptural
Palestine, extending from Dan to Beersheba, i.e., from Banias to Bir es-Sabi... . an area
of less than 10,000 square miles. What is to become of the people of this country,
assuming the Turk to be expelled, and the inhabitants not to have been exterminated by
the war? There are over a half a million of these, Syrian Arabs -- a mixed community with
Arab, Hebrew, Canaanite, Greek, Egyptian, and possibly Crusaders' blood. They and
their forefathers have occupied the country for the best part of 1,500 years. They own the
soil, which belongs either to individual landowners or to village communities. They profess
the Mohammadan faith. They will not be content either to be expropriated for Jewish
immigrants, or to act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the latter.
A. Born in Rumania in 1856, his imposing presence and scholarship combined with "an
oracular manner suggesting that he had access to mysteries hidden from others, had
made him an important figure at Zionist Congresses and on Zionist platforms in England
and abroad." It was calculated that Sykes would be impressed by his personality and
background.[116]
B. These included the socialist leader, Jules Cuesde, who had joined Viviani's National
Government as Minister of State; Gustave Herve: the publicist and future Minister de
Monzie; and others.
C. Privately, Sokolow resented Malcolm as "a stranger in the center of our work," who was
"endowed with an esprit of a goyish kind. " [130]
D. Of Jewish extraction.[131]
E. The French note represented a defeat for the "Syrian Party" in the government who
believed in French dominion over the entire area. This was not only due to the strong
representations of Sykes on behalf of his Government, but was assisted by those of
Baron Edmond de Rothschild, [132] who prevailed upon the Alliance Israélite to back the
Zionist cause.
The result of the no less successful conversations in Rome and the Vatican were cabled
to the Zionist Organization over British controlled lines.[133]
F. The use of the term "National Home" was a continuation of the euphemism deliberately
adopted since the first Zionist Congress, when the term "Heimstaette" was used instead of
any of the possible German words signifying "state." At that time, its purpose was to avoid
provoking the hostility of non-Zionist Jews.[151]
The author or inventor of the term ''Heimstaette'' was Max Nordau who coined it ''to
deceive by its mildness '' until such time as ''there was no reason to dssimulate our real
aim." [152]
The Arabic translation of ''National Home'' ignores the intended subtlety, and the words
employed: watan, qawm, and sha'b, are much stronger in meaning than an abstract
notion of government.[153]
G. (1879-1924). His father, the first Lord Swaythling, and Herbert Samuel's father were
brothers.
H. Rufus Isaacs, a Jewish lawyer, who had quickly risen to fame in his profession, and
then in politics. This was a period when elevations to the peerage for political and
financial assistance to the party in power were so numerous that the whole system of
British peerage was weakened. In 1916, Isaacs was a viscount; in 1917 an earl.
I. Joined Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in 1921. and was responsible for their liaison with London
banks, and was "in charge of financing several large enterprises." [160]
J. This was introduced by Mr. Hamilton Fish. His interpretation of his action was clarified
thirty-eight years later, when the World Zionists held their 25th Congress in Jerusalem.
David Ben Gurion, as Prime Minister of Israel, in his address to the gathering stated:
"every religious Jew has daily violated the precepts of Judaism by remaining in the
diaspora"; and, citing the authority of the Jewish sages, said: "Whoever dwells outside the
land of Israel is considered to have no god." He added: "Judaism is in danger of death by
strangulation. In the free and prosperous countries it faces the kiss of death, a slow and
imperceptible decline into the abyss of assimilation." [179]
Mr. Hamilton Fish replied: "As author of the first Zionist Resolution patterned on the
Balfour Resolution, I denounce and repudiate the Ben Gurion statements as
irreconcilable with my Resolution as adopted by Congress, and if they represent the
Government of Israel and public opinion there, then I shall disavow publicly my support of
my own Resolution, as I do not want to be associated with such un-American
doctrines."[180]
Wilson and the War
If the contract with Jewry was to bring the United States into the Great War in exchange
for the promise of Palestine, did they in fact deliver, through Brandeis or anyone else?
For the German-Jewish princes of the purse in the United States, the evidence points
more to the Russian revolution being the factor of most weight in determining their
attitude.
Was it the resumption of Germany's submarine blockade, the sinking of the Laconia, the
Zimmerman telegram, which really influenced Wilson for war? Was it the Zionist counsel of
Brandeis? In a careful study, Prof. Alex M. Arnett showed in 1937 that Wilson had decided
to put the United States into the war on the side of the Allies many months before the
resumption of U-boat warfare by Germany, which was promoted as a sufficient
reason.[182]
In the propaganda battle for American public opinion between Britain and Germany, the
former had the advantage of language, and the fact that on 5 August 1914 they had cut
the international undersea cables linking Germany and the United States, thus eliminating
quick communication between those two countries and giving British "news" the edge in
forming public opinion.
The success of British propaganda methods were acknowledged by a German soldier of
the time when he dictated his memoirs, Mein Kampf, in 1925: "In England propaganda
was regarded as a weapon of the first order, whereas with us it represented the last hope
of a livelihood for our unemployed politicians and a snug job for shirkers of the modest
heroic type. Taken all in all, its results were negative."
British propaganda portrayed the war as one of just defense against a barbarian
aggressor akin to the hordes of Genghis Khan, who were rapers of nuns, mutilators of
children, led by the Kaiser -- pictured as a beast in human form, a lunatic, deformed
monster, modern Judas, and criminal monarch.
Stories that German soldiers cut off the hands of Belgian children and crucified prisoners
and perpetrated and all sorts of other atrocities said to have been practiced in Belgium,
were circulated as widely as possible. The story about their making glycerine and soap
from corpses did not appear until the end of April 1917, when new stories were created by
American propagandists. One, a book called Christine, by "Alice Cholmondeley," a
collection of letters purporting to have been written by a teenage girl music student to her
mother in Britain until her death in 1914, mingled a damning catalogue of alleged German
character faults with emotional feelings for her fictitious mother and music. Propaganda
experts rated it highly.[183]
The head of the American section of the British propaganda bureau, Sir Gilbert Parker,
was able to report on his Success in the issue of his secret Americon Press Review for 11
October 1916 before the Presidential election: ''This week supplies satisfactory evidence
of the permeation of the American Press by British influence."
Men of British ancestry still dominated the powerful infrastructure of the economy, filled
top Positions in the State Department in the influential Eastern universities, in the
communications and cultural media. Britain and France were more identified with
democracy and freedom, and the Central Powers with imperial militaristic autocracy. From
Oyster Bay, former President Theodore Roosevelt, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize,
performed high-pitched war dances of words in support of belligerency.
But at the Democratic convention, and in the subsequent campaign, it was William
Jennings Bryan and his allied orators who created the theme and slogan: "He kept us out
of war."
Bryan had resigned as Secretary of State in June 1915 because he believed Wilson was
jeopardizing American neutrality and showing partiality towards England. In his last
interview, he told Wilson bitterly, "Colonel House has been Secretary of State, not I, and I
have never had your full confidence."
House, a secretive and subtle flatterer who had performed services relating to the
Federal Reserve Bank and currency legislation for Jacob W. Schiff and Paul Warburg,
was perceived by Wilson as the "friend who so thoroughly understands me," "my second
personality....my independent self, His thoughts and mine are one."
Bryan had wanted to go on a peace mission to Europe at the beginning of 1915, but the
President sent House instead. House had actually sailed on the British ship Lusitania and
as it approached the Irish coast on 5 February, the captain ordered the American flag to
be raised.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House record that on the morning of 7 May 1915, he and
the British Foreign Secretary Grey drove to Kew. "We spoke of the probability of an
ocean liner being sunk," recorded House, "and I told him if this were done, a flame of
indignation would sweep across America, which would in itself probably carry us into the
war." An hour later, House was with King George in Buckingham Palace. "We fell to
talking, strangely enough,'' the Colonel wrote that night, ''of the probability of Germany
sinking a trans-Atlantic liner... " He said, "Suppose they should sink the Lusitania with
American passengers on board... "
That evening House dined at the American Embassy. A dispatch came in, stating that at
two in the afternoon a German submarine had torpedoed and sunk the Lusitania off the
southern coast of Ireland. 1,200 lives were lost, including 128 Americans. It took 60 years
for the truth about its cargo to be confirmed; that it had carried munitions which exploded
when the torpedo hit. But Secretary of State Bryan remarked to his wife, "I wonder if that
ship carried munitions of war... . If she did carry them, it puts a different face on the whole
matter! England has been using our citizens to protect her ammunition."
In a telegram to President Wilson from England on 9 May 1915, House said he believed
an immediate demand should made to Germany for assurance against a similar incident.
I should inform her that our Government expected to take measures ... to ensure the
safety of American citizens.
If war follows, it will not be a new war, but an endeavor to end more speedily an old one.
Our intervention will save, rather than increase loss of life. We can no longer be neutral
spectators .
In another telegram on 25 May, he noted that he had received from Ambassador Gerard
a cable that Germany is in no need of food. "This does away with their contention that the
starving of Germany justified their submarine policy."
The next day, House lunched with Sir Edward Grey and read him all the telegrams that
had passed between the President, Gerard and himself since last they had met. And he
wrote on 30 May 1915, "I have concluded that war with Germany is inevitable, and this
afternoon at six o'clock I decided to go home on the S.S. St. Paul on Saturday. I sent a
cable to the President to this effect." After his arrival in the United States, he wrote to the
President from Rosslyn, Long Island, on 16 June 1915, a long letter which included the
paragraph:
I need not tell you that if the Allies fail to win, it must necessarily mean a reversal of our
entire policy.
I think we shall find ourselves drifting into war with Germany ... Regretable as this would
be, there would be compensations. The war would be more speedily ended, and we would
be in a strong position to aid the other great democracies in turning the world into the
right paths. It is something that we have to face with fortitude, being consoled by the
thought that no matter what sacrifices we make, the end will ustify them. Affectionately
yours, E.M. House.
Are these references related to Zionism or Palestine? I think not. Perhaps the clue is that
immediately after the election of Wilson, House had anonymously publisherl a political
romance entitled Philip Dru: Administrator. Dru leads a revolt and becomes a dictator in
Washington, where he formulates a new American consitution and brings about an
international grouping or league of Powers.
Let us look to the other side of the water again in 1916, a year later.
About a month before Malcolm's meeting with Sir Mark Sykes, Lloyd George gave an
interview to the President of the United Press Association of America, in which he said
"that Britain had only now got into her stride in her war effort, and was justifiably
suspicious of any suggestion that President Wilson should choose this moment to 'butt in'
with a proposal to stop the war before we could achieve victory."
"The whole world ... must know that there can be no outside interference at this stage.
Britain asked no intervention when she was unprepared to fight. She will tolerate none
now that she is prepared, until the Prussian military despotism is broken beyond repair... .
The motto of the Allies was 'Never Again!' " And this made worthwhile the sacrifices so far
as well as those needed to end the war with victory.[184]
Grey wrote to him on the 29th of September that he was apprehensive about the effect
"of the warning to Wilson in your interview... . It has always been my view that until the
Allies were sure of victory the door should be kept open for Wilson's mediation."
But the following month, at one of the formal regular meetings with the Chief of the
Imperial Staff, when Lloyd George received the familiar answers as to the course of the
war -- the German losses were greater than the Allies, that the Germans were gradually
being worn down, and their morale shaken by constant defeat and retreat -- he asked Sir
Wm. Robertson for his views as "to how this sanguinary conflict was to be brought to a
successful end ... He just mumbled something about 'attrition'."
Lloyd George then asked for a formal memorandum on the subject. This was not
encouraging, and said that an end could not be expected "before the summer of 1918.
How long it may go on afterwards I cannot even guess."
The facts were far from rosy, but were the hopes of Great Britain really hanging upon
American entry into the war? There were two other possible courses.
One was suggested by the Marquess of Landsdowne, a member of the Cabinet and a
statesman of considerable standing as the author of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. It was
contained in a Memorandum Respecting a Peace Settlement, circulated to the Cabinet
with the consent of the Prime Minister. Landsdowne suggested doubts as to the possibility
of victory within a reasonable space of time.
What does the prolongation of the war mean? Our own casualties already amount to over
1,100,000. We have had 15,000 officers killed, not including those who are missing.
There is no reason to suppose that, as the force at the front in the different theatres of
war increases, the casualties will increase at a lower rate. We are slowly but surely killing
off the best of the male population of these islands. The figures representing the
casualties of our Allies are not before me. The total must be appalling.[185]
The other members of the Cabinet and the Chief of Staff repudiated peace without victory.
The other course was that adopted: to thrust more men and money into the holocaust
(defined as a wholesale sacrifice or destruction). What would now be called political and
military summit meetings were held in France to plan for it. They commenced on 15
November 1916.
In the political presentations, the only reference to America seems to have been offered
by Lloyd George:
The difficulties we have experienced in making payment for our purchases abroad must
be as present to the minds of French statesmen as to ourselves. Our dependence upon
America is growing for food, raw material and munitions. We are rapidly exhausting the
securities negotiable in America. If victory shone on our banners, our difficulties would
disappear.[Asquith deleted the next sentence, which read] Success means credit:
financiers never hesitate to lend to a prosperous concern: but business which is
lumbering along amidst great difficulties and which is making no headway in spite of
enormous expenditure will find the banks gradually closing their books against it.
This reference to Allied problems in getting more credit from the bankers in the United
States, who were predominantly German-Jewish, elucidates Schiff's agreement to arrange
credit for Britain through the Jewish banker Cassel -- they were not waiting for a Balfour
Declaration, they were waiting for the Russian Revolution!
On the military side, there was general agreement at the summit conference that what
was needed was a ''knock-out blow,'' and it was decided that the 1917 plan of campaign
would be an offensive on all fronts, including Palestine, with the Western Front as the
principal one.
On 7 December the Asquith government fell and Lloyd George, who was pledged to a
more vigorous prosecution of the war, took over the Government. Five days later,
Germany and her allies put forward notes in which they stated their willingness to
consider peace by compromise and negotiations.
The first of the battles opened on 9 April 1917, heralded by a bombardment of 2,700,000
shells. Another attack was launched by the French nine days later, these resulting in
about a million dead and wounded on both sides. The French Army mutinied, and
General Petain was put in charge.
At this time the two events which were to twist the world into a new shape were occurring,
the Russian Revolution and American entry into the war.
French Government wanted to defer all offensive operations until American assistance
became available, but the generals thought otherwise. Maj.-Gen. J.F.C. Fuller, whom I
have met, one of the few bright military-political minds in this century, tells us that Haig
"had set his heart on a decisive battle in Flanders, and so obsessed was he by it that he
believed that he could beat the Germans single-handed, and before the Americans came
in." [186] I do not think that people who did not live in the great days of the British Empire
can have a sense of the hubris of a Haig, unless one gets it from classical literature.
Perhaps today it would be found in the head of the World Bank, from whom we taxpayers,
like the common soldiers of that time, are so far removed! There was actually resentment
in the England of my boyhood about Americans claiming to have played any significant
part in fighting the Great War.
The outcome of the grandiosity of the generals and politicians was the costly Flanders
campaign of the summer and autumn. On 7th June it was opened by the limited and
successful Battle of Messines, which was preceded by a seventeen days' bombardment of
3,500,000 shells, and initiated by the explosion of nineteen mines packed with a million
pounds of high explosives.
On 31st July it was followed by the Third Battle of Ypres, for which the largest force of
artillery ever seen in British history was assembled. In all, the preliminary bombardment
lasted nineteen days, and during it 4,300,000 shells, some 107,000 tons in weight were
hurled onto the prospective low lying battlefield. Its entire surface was upheaved; all
drains, dikes, culverts and roads were destroyed, and an almost uncrossable swamp
created, in which the infantry wallowed for three and a half months. When, on 10th
November, the battle ended, the Germans had been pushed back a maximum depth of
five miles on a frontage of ten miles, at a cost of a little under 200,000 men to themselves,
and, at the lowest estimate, of 300,000 to their enemy.
Thus ended the last of the great artillery battles of attrition on the Western Front, and
when in retrospect they are looked on, it becomes understandable why the politicians
were so eager to escape them.
The Great War was like a greatly magnified version of the mutual destruction of noble
men in the Niebelungenlied. Set against each other by the vanity and lack of vision of
their rulers, the more they fought the more there was to avenge until death delivered
them from their need. "At the going down of the sun and in the morning," we should learn
their lesson.
Britain's Obligation?
In a memorandum marked in his own handwriting "Private & Confidential" to Lord Peel and
other members of the Royal Commission on Palestine in 1936, James Malcolm wrote:
I have always been convinced that until the Jewish question was more or less satisfactorily
settled there could be no real or permanent peace in the world, and that the solution lay
in Palestine. This was one of the two main considerations which impelled me, in the
autumn of 1916, to initiate the negotiations which led eventually to the Balfour Declaration
and the British Mandate for Palestine. The other, of course, was to bring America into the
War.
For generations Jews and Gentiles alike have assumed in error that the cause of
Anti-Semitism was in the main religious. Indeed, the Jews in the hope of obtaining relief
from intolerance, engaged in the intensive and subversive propagation of materialistic
doctrines productive of ''Liberalism,'' Socialism, and Irreligion, resulting in
de-Christianisation. On the other hand, the more materialistic the Gentiles became, the
more aware they were subconsciously made of the cause of Anti-Semitism, which at
bottom was, and remains to this day, primarily an economic one. A French writer --
Vicomte de Poncins -- has remarked that in some respects Anti-Semitism is largely a form
of self-defence against Jewish economic aggression. In my opinion, however. neither the
Jews nor the Gentiles bear the sole responsibility for this.
As I have already said, I had a part in initiating the negotiations in the early autumn of
1916 between the British and French Governments and the Zionist leaders, which led to
the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine.
The first object, of course, was to enlist the very considerable and necessary influence of
the Jews, and especially of the Zionist or Nationalist Jews. to help us bring America into
the War at the most critical period of the hostilities. This was publicly acknowledged by Mr.
Lloyd George during a recent debate in the House of Commons.
Our second object was to enable and induce Jews all the world over to envisage
constructive work as their proper field, and to take their minds off destnictive and
subversive schemes which, owing to their general Sense of insecurity and homelessness.
even in the periods preceding the French Revolution, had provoked so much trouble and
unrest in various countries, until their ever-increasing violence culminated in the Third
International and the Russian Communist Revolution. But to achieve this end it was
necessary to promise them Palestine in consideration of their help, as already explained,
and not as a mere humanitarian experiment or enterprise, as represented in certain
quarters.
It is no wonder that Weizmann did not refer to Malcolm in his autobiography, and Sokolow
privately resented Malcolm "as a stranger in the center of our work," who was "endowed
with an esprit of a goyish kind. " [187]
It is also worth noting that on page seven of his memorandum Malcolm quoted General
Ludendorff, former Quartermaster General of the German Army, and perhaps at least
remembered for heading an unsuccessful coup in Munich in 1923, as saying that the
Balfour Declaration was "the cleverest thing done by the Allies in the way of propaganda
and that he wished Germany had thought of it first."
On the other hand, might it not have provided some cold comfort for Ludendorff to believe
that the Zionist Jews were a major factor in the outcome of the war -- if that is what he is
implying?
Malcolm's belief in the Balfour Declaration as a means of bringing the United States into
the war was confirmed by Samuel Landman, secretary to the Zionist leaders Weizmann
and Sokolow, and later secretary of the World Zionist Organization. As
the only way (which proved so to be) to induce the American President to come into the
war was to secure the cooperation of Zionist Jews by promising them Palestine, and thus
enlist and mobilize the hitherto unsuspectedly powerful forces of Zionist Jews in America
and elsewhere in favour of the Allies on a quid pro quo contract basis. Thus, as will be
seen, the Zionists having carried out their part, and greatly helped to bring America in,
the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was but the public confirmation of the necessarily secret
"gentlemens' " agreement of 1916, made with the previous knowledge, acquiescence, and
or approval of the Arabs, and of the British, and of the French and other Allied
governments, and not merely a voluntary, altruistic and romantic gesture on the part of
Great Britain as certain people either through pardonable ignorance assume or
unpardonable ill-will would represent or rather misrepresent ...[188]
Speaking in the House of Commons on 4 July 1922, Winston Churchill asked rhetorically,
Are we to keep our pledge to the Zionists made in 1917...? Pledges and promises were
made during the war, and they were made, not only on the merits, though I think the
merits are considerable. They were made because it was considered they would be of
value to us in our struggle to win the war. It was considered that the support which the
Jews could give us all over the world, and particularly in the United States, and also in
Russia, would be a definite palpable advantage. I was not responsible at that time for the
giving of those pledges, nor for the conduct of the war of which they were, when given, an
integral part. But like other members I supported the policy of the War Cabinet. Like other
members, I accepted and was proud to accept a share in those great transactions, which
left us with terrible losses, with formidable obligations, but nevertheless with
unchallengable victory.
However, Hansard notes, one member, Mr. Gwynne, plaintively complained that "the
House has not yet had an opportunity of discussing it."
Writing to The Times on 2 November 1949, Malcolm Thomson, the official biographer of
Lloyd George, noted that this was the thirty-second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration
and it seemed a
suitable occasion for stating briefly certain facts about its origin which have recently been
incorrectly recorded.
When writing the official biography of Lloyd George, I was able to study the original
documents bearing on this question. From these it was clear that although certain
members of the Cabinets of 1916 and 1917 sympathized with Zionist aspirations, the
efforts of Zionist leaders to win any promise of support from the British Government had
proved quite ineffectual, and the secret Sykes-Picot agreement with the French for
partition of spheres of interest in the Middle East seemed to doom Zionist aims. A change
of attitude was, however, brought about through the initiative of Mr. James A. Malcolm,
who pressed on Sir Mark Sykes, then Under-Secretary to the War Cabinet, the thesis that
an allied offer to restore Palestine to the Jews would swing over from the German to the
allied side the very powerful influence of American Jews, including Judge Brandeis, the
friend and adviser of President Wilson. Sykes was interested, and at his request Malcolm
introduced him to Dr. Weizmann and the other Zionist leaders, and negotiations were
opened which culminated in the Balfour Declaration.
These facts have at one time or another been mentioned in various books and articles,
and are set out by Dr. Adolf Boehm in his monumental history of Zionism, "Die
Zionistische Bewegung," Vol. 1, p.656. It therefore surprised me to find in Dr. Weizmann's
autobiography, "Trial and Error," that he makes no mention of Mr. Malcolm's crucially
important intervention, and even attributes his own introduction to Sir Mark Sykes to the
late Dr. Caster. As future historians might not unnaturally suppose Dr. Weizmann's
account to be authentic, I have communicated with Mr. Malcolm, who not only confirms the
account I have given, but holds a letter written to him by Dr. Weizmann on March 5, 1941,
saying: "You will be interested to hear that some time ago I had occasion to write to Mr.
Lloyd George about your useful and timely initiative in 1916 to bring about the
negotiations between myself and my Zionist colleagues and Sir Mark Sykes and others
about Palestine and Zionist support of the allied cause in America and elsewhere."
No doubt a complexity of motives lay behind the Balfour Declaration, including strategic
and diplomatic considerations and, on the part of Balfour, Lloyd George, and Smuts, a
genuine sympathy with Zionist aims. But the determining factor was the intervention of Mr
Malcolm with his scheme for engaging by some such concession the support of American
Zionists for the allied cause in the first world war.
Yours, & c.,
MALCOLM THOMSON
According to Lloyd George's Memoirs of the Peace Conference, where, as planned many
years before, the Zionists were strongly represented,
There is no better proof of the value of the Balfour Declaration as a military move than
the fact that Germany entered into negotiations with Turkey in an endeavor to provide an
alternative scheme which would appeal to Zionists. A German-Jewish Society, the
V.J.O.D., [A] was formed, and in January 1918, Talaat, the Turkish Grand Vizier, at the
instigation of the Germans, gave vague promises of legislation by means of which "all
justifiable wishes of the Jews in Palestine would be able to meet their fulfilment."
Another most cogent reason for the adoption by the Allies of the policy of the Declaration
lay in the state of Russia herself. Russian Jews had been secretly active on behalf of the
Central Powers from the first; they had become the chief agents of German pacifist
propaganda in Russia; by 1917 they had done much in preparing for that general
disintegration of Russian society, later recognised as the Revolution. It was believed that
if Great Britain declared for the fufillment of Zionist aspirations in Palestine under her own
pledge, one effect would be to bring Russian Jewry to the cause of the Entente.
It was believed, also, that such a declaration would have a potent influence upon world
Jewry outside Russia, and secure for the Entente the aid of Jewish financial interests. In
America, their aid in this respect would have a special value when the Allies had almost
exhausted the gold and marketable securities available for American purchases. Such
were the chief considerations which, in 1917, impelled the British Government towards
making a contract with Jewry.[189]
As for getting the support of Russian Jewry, Trotsky's aims were to overthrow the
Provisional Government and turn the imperialist war into a war of international revolution.
In November 1917 the first aim was accomplished. Military factors primarily influenced
Lenin to sign the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918.
The Zionist sympathizers Churchill and George seemed never to lose an opportunity to
tell the British people that they had an obligation to support the Zionists.
But what had the Zionists done for Britain?
Where was the documentation?
"Measured by British interests alone," wrote the Oxford historian Elizabeth Monroe in
1963, the Balfour Declaration "was one of the greatest mistakes in our imperial history!"
The Zionists had the Herzlian tradition -- shall we call it -- of Promises, "promises."
Considerable credit for the diplomacy which brought into existence the Jewish national
home must go to Weizmann. A British official who came into contact with him summarized
his diplomatic method in the following words:
When (the First World War) began, his cause was hardly known to the principal
statesman of the victors. It had many enemies, and some of the most formidable were
amongst the most highly placed of his own people ... He once told me that 2,000
interviews had gone into the making of the Balfour Declaration. With unerring skill he
adapted his arguments to the special circumstances of each statesman. To the British
and Americans he could use biblical language and awake a deep emotional undertone; to
other nationalities he more often talked in terms of interest. Mr. Lloyd George was told
that Palestine was a little mountainous country not unlike Wales; with Lord Balfour the
philosophical background of Zionism could be surveyed; for Lord Cecil the problem was
placed in the setting of a new world organization; while to Lord Milner the extension of
imperial power could be vividly portrayed. To me, who dealt with these matters as a junior
officer of the General Staff, he brought from many sources all the evidences that could be
obtained of the importance of a Jewish national home to the strategical position of the
British Empire, but he always indicated by a hundred shades and inflections of the voice
that he believed that I could also appreciate better than my superiors other more subtle
and recondite arguments.[190]
A) Vereinigung Jüdischer Organisation in Deutschland zur Wahrung der Rechte des
Osten. (Alliance of the Jewish Organizations of Germany for the Safeguarding of the
Rights of the East.)
Triumph and Tragedy
Herzl correctly predicted a great war between the Great Powers. His followers organized
to be ready for that time to further their ambitions through exploiting the rivalry of the
Great Powers. They had a vested interest in promoting that war and in its continuance
until Palestine was wrested from Turkey by British soldiers.
They prepared for the Peace Conference at Versailles although they had no belligerent
standing, but they had the weight of the Rothschilds, Bernard Baruch, Felix Frankfurter,
and others, which made room for them.
In the Introduction to The Palestine Diary I wrote,
The establishment in 1948 of a "Jewish state" in Palestine was a phenomenal
achievement. In fifty years from the Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897 --
attended by a small number of Jews who represented little more than themselves -- the
Zionist idea had captivated the vast majority of world Jewry, and enlisted in particular
Britain, America and the United Nations to intervene in Palestine in its support.
In 1983, seventy-five years after the Balfour Declaration and nearly ninety years after the
first Zionist Congress in Switzerland a meeting was held there of the International
Conference on the Question of Palestine -- but the conferees were not Jews -- they were
Palestinians -- two million are in exile -- displaced by Jews!
Where is the meaning for us?
On a day-to-day level, we can look in our newspapers for Zionist tactics of influence and
leverage which we can document they have used successfully in the past.
Then there is a long-term strategy, From the mass of material in a century of history and
in our complex society of today I see the underlying effect of two themes, They influence
the lives of every one of us, and will continue to do so unless a change is made.
We can see them clearly in their early formulation, before they had been fed as valid data
into the information processing and software systems of our society, with the result that
most of the answers we get are wrong!
They are found in the conversation of Herzl and Meyer-Cohn in 1895. The sets of ideas
are those associated with Jewish nationalism and racism on the Right [191] -- racism
being defined by Sir Andrew Huxley P.R.S. as the belief in the subjugation of one race by
another, and on the other hand the concept of "universalism."
Acceptance of this input from the Right into our computations has resulted in the transfer
of some $50 billion from our pockets into theirs.[192] In 1983, budgeted American tax
money, labeled "aid," alone amounts to $625 for every man, woman and child in
Israel.[193] It results in our acceptance of concentration camps for Palestinians containing
thousands of people without a squeak from the so-called "international community" in
acceptance of their assassination, torture, deportation, closing of their schools and
colleges, even of their massacre.[194] The lives of American troops -- men and women,
are committed to supporting these crimes.[195] Criticism is called "antisemitism," a word
which computes as "unemployable social outcast."
Jewish nationalism and Israeli policy planned the present destabilization of Lebanon in
1955.[196] This is part of larger schemes to fragment and enfeeble possible challenges
to their supremacy in the Middle East.[197]
On the other hand we have "universalism." This, I believe was the factor motivating
Woodrow Wilson through House in his telegram of 30 May 1916 and letter of 16 June
1915 to the President, to which I have referred. "The League of Nations," the United
Nations Organization, are its printouts. Just as House was a coefficient of the international
bankers, so the United Nations and the international bankers have been part of the
coefficient whereby over $400 billion of the earnings of workers in countries where
universalism is a significant force, has been transferred to the peoples of Asia, Africa,
South America and Communist countries; money needed for our capital investment.
People should ask: How is it that, with such multiplication of industrial power and
resources, our peoples' standard of living and possibilities to have and support children
have not multiplied accordingly? Why do so many of our women have to work? Why does
no public figure -- politician, labor leader -- dare to ask -- and raise the roof?
Universalism and Marxism compete superficially for first place as finalists in western
culture distortion. Both promote its ethnic dilution, but deny us the reality of racial
differences. Against our individuality and our nationalism, they and the global capitalists
and their corporations unite as transnationals to reduce all but themselves to a common
consumer market of blurred boundaries and one color. They would like one law -- which
they would make; one armed force -- which they would control. Universalism would impose
-- not a global peace, but a global tyranny!
Universalism has come up with "interdependence," an expression used as a cover for the
expropriation of our earnings as foreign aid in various forms; it has anesthetized the
sense of self-defense of our countries so that those who have tried to stop their
colonization by people from exploding populations of Africa, Asia and Latin America have
been made to feel that they were depriving others of their "human rights."
In countries where they live other than Israel, Zionists are in the forefront of opposition to
restrictions on immigration. Note that even in 1903 a leader of the fight against the Alien's
Bill and against tightening up naturalization regulations in Britain was the pro-Zionist
Winston S. Churchill, and the super-Zionist Herzl appeared before the Royal Commission
on Alien Immigration to oppose any restriction.
And yet, my Arab friends born in Jerusalem are cast out and cannot return.
"If," said Herzl, "we wanted to bring about the unity of mankind independent of national
boundaries, we would have to combat the ideal of patriotism. The latter, however, will
prove stronger than we for innumerable years to come.
In a hundred years they have almost won that struggle.
In a conversation with Joseph Chamberlain in 1903, Theodore Herzl was asked how the
Jewish colony would survive in the distant future. Herzl said, "We shall play the role of a
small buffer state. We shall attain this not through the goodwill but from the jealousy of
the Powers."
This is the game that Israel plays today, obtaining its military supplies, its high technology,
and its billions of dollars from the pay packets of American workers, using the rivalry of
the USSR and the U.S.A.
We should not allow ourselves to be made pawns in the games of others.
Appendix
SECRET
Political Intelligence Department,
Foreign Office.
Special 3.
Memorandum on British Commitments to King Husein
(Page 9) With regard to Palestine, His Majesty's Government are committed by Sir H.
McMahon's letter to the Sherif on the 24th October, 1915, to its inclusion in the
boundaries of Arab independence. But they have stated their policy regarding the
Palestinian Holy Places and Zionist colonisation in their message to him of the 4th
January, 1918:
"That so far as Palestine is concerned, we are determined that no people shall be
subjected to another, but that in view of the fact:
"(a.) That there are in Palestine shrines, Wakfs, and Holy Places, sacred in some cases
to Moslems alone, to Jews alone, to Christians alone, and in others to two or all three, and
inasmuch as these places are of interest to vast masses of people outside Palestine and
Arabia, there must be a special regime to deal with these places approved of by the world.
"(b.) That as regards the Mosque of Omar, it shall be considered as a Moslem concern
alone, and shall not be subjected directly or indirectly to any non-Moslem authority.
"That since the Jewish opinion of the world is in favour of a return of Jews to Palestine,
and inasmuch as this opinion must remain a constant factor, and further, as His Majesty's
Government view with favour the realisation of this aspiration. His Majesty's Government
are determined that in so far as is compatible with the freedom of the existing population,
both economic and political, no obstacle should be put in the way of the realisation of this
ideal."
This message was delivered personally to King Husein by Commander Hogarth, and the
lattcr reported on his reception of it as follows:
"The King would not accept an independent Jewish State in Palestine, nor was I instructed
to warn him that such a State was contemplated by Great Britain. He probably knows
nothing of the actual or possible economy of Palestine, and his ready assent to Jewish
settlement there is not worth very much. But I think he appreciates the financial
advantage of Arab co-operation with the Jews."
Notes
disliked that part of the draft's second safeguard clause which read, "by such Jew`s who
are fully contented with their existing nationality and citizenship," and substituted "the
rights and civil political status enjoyed by Jews in any country. In addition, Brandeis
apparently proposed the change of "Jewish race" to "Jewish people." [172] Jacob de
Haas, then Executive Secretary of the Provisional Zionist Committee, has written that the
pressure to issue the declaration was coming from the English Zionist leaders: "they
apparently needed it to stabilize their position against local anti-Zionism. If American
Zionists were anxious about it, Washington would act." De Haas continues:
Then one morning Baron Furness, one of England's unostentatious representatives,
brought to 44 East 23rd Street, at that time headquarters of the Zionist Organization, the
final draft ready for issue. The language of the declaration accepted by the English
Zionists based as it was on the theory of discontent was unacceptable to me. I informed
Justice Brandeis of my views, called in Dr. Schmarya Levin and proceeded to change the
text. Then with Dr. Wise, I hurried to Colonel House. By this time he had come to speak of
Zionisn as "our cause." Quietly he perused my proposed change, discussed its wisdom
and promised to call President Wilson on his private wire and urge the change. He cabled
to the British Cabinet. Next day he informed me that the President had approved. I had
business that week-end in Boston and it was over the long distance wire that my secretary
in New York read to me the final form as repeated by cable from London. It was the text as
I had altered it.[173]
"It seems clear," wrote Stein, "that .it was not without some prompting by House that
Wilson eventually authorized a favourable reply to the British enquiry." Sir William
Wiseman, "who was persona grata both with the President and with House, was relied
upon by the Foreign Office for dealing with the declaration at the American end. Sir
William's recollection is that Colonel House was influential in bringing the matter to the
President's attention and persuading him to approve the formula." [174]
On 16 October 1917, after a conference with House, Wiseman telegraphed to Balfour's
private secretary: ''Colonel House put the formula before the President who approves of it
but asks that no mention of his approval shall be made when His Majesty's Government
makes formula public, as he had arranged the American Jews shall then ask him for
approval, which he will publicly give here."[175]
The Balfour Declaration, as stated, was issued on 2 November 1917. Its text, seemingly
so simple, had been prepared by some the craftiest of the craft of legal drafting. Leaflets
containing its message were dropped by air on Germany and Austria and on the Jewish
belt from Poland to the Baltic Sea.
Seven months had passed since America entered the war. It was an epochal triumph for
Zionism, and some believe, for the Jews.
On the other hand, two months before the declaration, Sokolow had written of a marked
falling off in "le philo-sémitisme d'autrefois," ascribed by some to the impression that the
Russian Jews were the mainspring of Bolshevism; and on the day it was issued, The
Jewish Chronicle complained of "the antisemitic campaign which a section of the press in
this country, indifferent to the national interests, is sedulously conducting." [176] There
only remained certain courtesies to be effected. On November 1917, Weizmann wrote a
letter of thanks to Brandeis:
"... I need hardly say how we all rejoice in this great event and how grateful we all feel to
you for the valuable and efficient help which you have lent to the cause in the critical hour
... Once more, dear Mr. Brandeis, I beg to tender to you our heartiest congratulations not
only on my own behalf but also on behalf of our friends here -- and may this
epoch-making be a beginning of great work for our sorely tried people and also of
mankind." [177]
The other principal Allied governments were approached with requests for similar
pronouncements. The French simply supported the British Government in a short
paragraph on 9 February 1918. Italian support was contained in a note dated 9 May 1918
to Mr, Sokolow by their ambassador in London in which he stressed the religious divisions
of communities, grouping "a Jewish national centre" with existing religious communities."
On 31, August 1918, President Wilson wrote to Rabbi Wise "to express the satisfaction I
have felt in the progress of the Zionist movement . . since ... Great Britain s approval of
the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Brandeis joined
in Zionist delight at the President's endorsement and wrote: "Since the President's letter,
anti-Zionism is pretty near disloyalty and non-Zionism is slackening." [178] Non-Zionist
Jews now had a hard time if they wanted to disseminate their views; if they could not
support Zionism they were asked at least to remain silent.
On 30 June 1922, the following resolution was adopted by the United States Congress:
Favouring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people;
Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of
America in Congress assembled. That the United States of America favours the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly
understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights
of Christians and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places
and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected.[J]
All people tend to see the world and its events in terms of their own experience, ideas and
prejudices. This is natural. It is a fact used by master politicians and manipulators of
opinion who form their appeals accordingly. The case of the Balfour Declaration is a
fascinating example of a scheme presenting a multiplicity of images according to the facet
of mind on which it reflected.
There were critics of the Balfour Declaration, although among the cacophony of many
events competing for attention, few but its beneficiaries concentrated on the significance
of what was being offered. One was the Jewish leader and statesman Mr. Edwin Montagu,
who had no desire that Jews should be regarded as a separate race and a distinct
nationality.[181] The other was Lord Curzon, who became Foreign Secretary at the end of
October 1918. He prepared a memorandum dated 26 October 1917, on the penultimate
and final drafts of the Balfour Declaration and related documents, and circulated it in the
Cabinet. It was titled "The Future of Palestine." Here are some extracts:
I am not concerned to discuss the question in dispute between the Zionist and anti-Zionist
jews . I am only concerned in the more immediately practical questions:
(a) What is the meaning of the phrase "a national home for the Jewish race in Palestine,"
and what is the nature of the obligation that we shall assume if we accept this as a
principle of British policy?
(b) If such a policy be pursued what are the chances of its successful realisation?
If I seek guidance from the latest collection of circulated papers (The Zionist Movement,
G.-164) I find a fundamental disagreement among the authorities quoted there as to the
scope and nature of their aim.
A "national home for the Jewish race or people" would seem, if the words are to bear their
ordinary meaning, to imply a place where the Jews can be reassembled as a nation, and
where they will enjoy the privileges of an independent national existence. Such is clearly
the conception of those who, like Sir Alfred Mond, speak of the creation in Palestine of
"an autonomous Jewish State," words which appear to contemplate a State, i.e., a political
entity, composed of Jews, governed by Jews, and administered mainly in the interests of
Jews...
The same conception appears to underlie several other of the phrases employed in these
papers, e.g., when we are told that Palestine is to become "a home for the Jewish nation,"
"a national home for the Jewish race," "a Jewish Palestine," and when we read of "the
resettlement of Palestine as a national centre," and "the restoration of Palestine to the
Jewish people," all these phrases are variants of the same idea, viz., the re-creation of
Palestine as it was before the days of the dispersion.
On the other hand, Lord Rothschild, when he speaks of Palestine as "a home where the
Jews could speak their own language, have their own education, their own civilization, and
religious institutions under the protection of Allied governments," seems to postulate a
much less definite form of political existence, one, indeed, which is quite compatible with
the existence of an alien (so long as it is not Turkish) government...
Now what is the capacity as regards population of Palestine within any reasonable period
of time? Under the Turks there is no such place or country as Palestine, because it is
divided up between the sanjak of Jerusalem and the vilayets of Syria and Beirut. But let
us assume that in speaking of Palestine in the present context we mean the old scriptural
Palestine, extending from Dan to Beersheba, i.e., from Banias to Bir es-Sabi... . an area
of less than 10,000 square miles. What is to become of the people of this country,
assuming the Turk to be expelled, and the inhabitants not to have been exterminated by
the war? There are over a half a million of these, Syrian Arabs -- a mixed community with
Arab, Hebrew, Canaanite, Greek, Egyptian, and possibly Crusaders' blood. They and
their forefathers have occupied the country for the best part of 1,500 years. They own the
soil, which belongs either to individual landowners or to village communities. They profess
the Mohammadan faith. They will not be content either to be expropriated for Jewish
immigrants, or to act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the latter.
A. Born in Rumania in 1856, his imposing presence and scholarship combined with "an
oracular manner suggesting that he had access to mysteries hidden from others, had
made him an important figure at Zionist Congresses and on Zionist platforms in England
and abroad." It was calculated that Sykes would be impressed by his personality and
background.[116]
B. These included the socialist leader, Jules Cuesde, who had joined Viviani's National
Government as Minister of State; Gustave Herve: the publicist and future Minister de
Monzie; and others.
C. Privately, Sokolow resented Malcolm as "a stranger in the center of our work," who was
"endowed with an esprit of a goyish kind. " [130]
D. Of Jewish extraction.[131]
E. The French note represented a defeat for the "Syrian Party" in the government who
believed in French dominion over the entire area. This was not only due to the strong
representations of Sykes on behalf of his Government, but was assisted by those of
Baron Edmond de Rothschild, [132] who prevailed upon the Alliance Israélite to back the
Zionist cause.
The result of the no less successful conversations in Rome and the Vatican were cabled
to the Zionist Organization over British controlled lines.[133]
F. The use of the term "National Home" was a continuation of the euphemism deliberately
adopted since the first Zionist Congress, when the term "Heimstaette" was used instead of
any of the possible German words signifying "state." At that time, its purpose was to avoid
provoking the hostility of non-Zionist Jews.[151]
The author or inventor of the term ''Heimstaette'' was Max Nordau who coined it ''to
deceive by its mildness '' until such time as ''there was no reason to dssimulate our real
aim." [152]
The Arabic translation of ''National Home'' ignores the intended subtlety, and the words
employed: watan, qawm, and sha'b, are much stronger in meaning than an abstract
notion of government.[153]
G. (1879-1924). His father, the first Lord Swaythling, and Herbert Samuel's father were
brothers.
H. Rufus Isaacs, a Jewish lawyer, who had quickly risen to fame in his profession, and
then in politics. This was a period when elevations to the peerage for political and
financial assistance to the party in power were so numerous that the whole system of
British peerage was weakened. In 1916, Isaacs was a viscount; in 1917 an earl.
I. Joined Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in 1921. and was responsible for their liaison with London
banks, and was "in charge of financing several large enterprises." [160]
J. This was introduced by Mr. Hamilton Fish. His interpretation of his action was clarified
thirty-eight years later, when the World Zionists held their 25th Congress in Jerusalem.
David Ben Gurion, as Prime Minister of Israel, in his address to the gathering stated:
"every religious Jew has daily violated the precepts of Judaism by remaining in the
diaspora"; and, citing the authority of the Jewish sages, said: "Whoever dwells outside the
land of Israel is considered to have no god." He added: "Judaism is in danger of death by
strangulation. In the free and prosperous countries it faces the kiss of death, a slow and
imperceptible decline into the abyss of assimilation." [179]
Mr. Hamilton Fish replied: "As author of the first Zionist Resolution patterned on the
Balfour Resolution, I denounce and repudiate the Ben Gurion statements as
irreconcilable with my Resolution as adopted by Congress, and if they represent the
Government of Israel and public opinion there, then I shall disavow publicly my support of
my own Resolution, as I do not want to be associated with such un-American
doctrines."[180]
Wilson and the War
If the contract with Jewry was to bring the United States into the Great War in exchange
for the promise of Palestine, did they in fact deliver, through Brandeis or anyone else?
For the German-Jewish princes of the purse in the United States, the evidence points
more to the Russian revolution being the factor of most weight in determining their
attitude.
Was it the resumption of Germany's submarine blockade, the sinking of the Laconia, the
Zimmerman telegram, which really influenced Wilson for war? Was it the Zionist counsel of
Brandeis? In a careful study, Prof. Alex M. Arnett showed in 1937 that Wilson had decided
to put the United States into the war on the side of the Allies many months before the
resumption of U-boat warfare by Germany, which was promoted as a sufficient
reason.[182]
In the propaganda battle for American public opinion between Britain and Germany, the
former had the advantage of language, and the fact that on 5 August 1914 they had cut
the international undersea cables linking Germany and the United States, thus eliminating
quick communication between those two countries and giving British "news" the edge in
forming public opinion.
The success of British propaganda methods were acknowledged by a German soldier of
the time when he dictated his memoirs, Mein Kampf, in 1925: "In England propaganda
was regarded as a weapon of the first order, whereas with us it represented the last hope
of a livelihood for our unemployed politicians and a snug job for shirkers of the modest
heroic type. Taken all in all, its results were negative."
British propaganda portrayed the war as one of just defense against a barbarian
aggressor akin to the hordes of Genghis Khan, who were rapers of nuns, mutilators of
children, led by the Kaiser -- pictured as a beast in human form, a lunatic, deformed
monster, modern Judas, and criminal monarch.
Stories that German soldiers cut off the hands of Belgian children and crucified prisoners
and perpetrated and all sorts of other atrocities said to have been practiced in Belgium,
were circulated as widely as possible. The story about their making glycerine and soap
from corpses did not appear until the end of April 1917, when new stories were created by
American propagandists. One, a book called Christine, by "Alice Cholmondeley," a
collection of letters purporting to have been written by a teenage girl music student to her
mother in Britain until her death in 1914, mingled a damning catalogue of alleged German
character faults with emotional feelings for her fictitious mother and music. Propaganda
experts rated it highly.[183]
The head of the American section of the British propaganda bureau, Sir Gilbert Parker,
was able to report on his Success in the issue of his secret Americon Press Review for 11
October 1916 before the Presidential election: ''This week supplies satisfactory evidence
of the permeation of the American Press by British influence."
Men of British ancestry still dominated the powerful infrastructure of the economy, filled
top Positions in the State Department in the influential Eastern universities, in the
communications and cultural media. Britain and France were more identified with
democracy and freedom, and the Central Powers with imperial militaristic autocracy. From
Oyster Bay, former President Theodore Roosevelt, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize,
performed high-pitched war dances of words in support of belligerency.
But at the Democratic convention, and in the subsequent campaign, it was William
Jennings Bryan and his allied orators who created the theme and slogan: "He kept us out
of war."
Bryan had resigned as Secretary of State in June 1915 because he believed Wilson was
jeopardizing American neutrality and showing partiality towards England. In his last
interview, he told Wilson bitterly, "Colonel House has been Secretary of State, not I, and I
have never had your full confidence."
House, a secretive and subtle flatterer who had performed services relating to the
Federal Reserve Bank and currency legislation for Jacob W. Schiff and Paul Warburg,
was perceived by Wilson as the "friend who so thoroughly understands me," "my second
personality....my independent self, His thoughts and mine are one."
Bryan had wanted to go on a peace mission to Europe at the beginning of 1915, but the
President sent House instead. House had actually sailed on the British ship Lusitania and
as it approached the Irish coast on 5 February, the captain ordered the American flag to
be raised.
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House record that on the morning of 7 May 1915, he and
the British Foreign Secretary Grey drove to Kew. "We spoke of the probability of an
ocean liner being sunk," recorded House, "and I told him if this were done, a flame of
indignation would sweep across America, which would in itself probably carry us into the
war." An hour later, House was with King George in Buckingham Palace. "We fell to
talking, strangely enough,'' the Colonel wrote that night, ''of the probability of Germany
sinking a trans-Atlantic liner... " He said, "Suppose they should sink the Lusitania with
American passengers on board... "
That evening House dined at the American Embassy. A dispatch came in, stating that at
two in the afternoon a German submarine had torpedoed and sunk the Lusitania off the
southern coast of Ireland. 1,200 lives were lost, including 128 Americans. It took 60 years
for the truth about its cargo to be confirmed; that it had carried munitions which exploded
when the torpedo hit. But Secretary of State Bryan remarked to his wife, "I wonder if that
ship carried munitions of war... . If she did carry them, it puts a different face on the whole
matter! England has been using our citizens to protect her ammunition."
In a telegram to President Wilson from England on 9 May 1915, House said he believed
an immediate demand should made to Germany for assurance against a similar incident.
I should inform her that our Government expected to take measures ... to ensure the
safety of American citizens.
If war follows, it will not be a new war, but an endeavor to end more speedily an old one.
Our intervention will save, rather than increase loss of life. We can no longer be neutral
spectators .
In another telegram on 25 May, he noted that he had received from Ambassador Gerard
a cable that Germany is in no need of food. "This does away with their contention that the
starving of Germany justified their submarine policy."
The next day, House lunched with Sir Edward Grey and read him all the telegrams that
had passed between the President, Gerard and himself since last they had met. And he
wrote on 30 May 1915, "I have concluded that war with Germany is inevitable, and this
afternoon at six o'clock I decided to go home on the S.S. St. Paul on Saturday. I sent a
cable to the President to this effect." After his arrival in the United States, he wrote to the
President from Rosslyn, Long Island, on 16 June 1915, a long letter which included the
paragraph:
I need not tell you that if the Allies fail to win, it must necessarily mean a reversal of our
entire policy.
I think we shall find ourselves drifting into war with Germany ... Regretable as this would
be, there would be compensations. The war would be more speedily ended, and we would
be in a strong position to aid the other great democracies in turning the world into the
right paths. It is something that we have to face with fortitude, being consoled by the
thought that no matter what sacrifices we make, the end will ustify them. Affectionately
yours, E.M. House.
Are these references related to Zionism or Palestine? I think not. Perhaps the clue is that
immediately after the election of Wilson, House had anonymously publisherl a political
romance entitled Philip Dru: Administrator. Dru leads a revolt and becomes a dictator in
Washington, where he formulates a new American consitution and brings about an
international grouping or league of Powers.
Let us look to the other side of the water again in 1916, a year later.
About a month before Malcolm's meeting with Sir Mark Sykes, Lloyd George gave an
interview to the President of the United Press Association of America, in which he said
"that Britain had only now got into her stride in her war effort, and was justifiably
suspicious of any suggestion that President Wilson should choose this moment to 'butt in'
with a proposal to stop the war before we could achieve victory."
"The whole world ... must know that there can be no outside interference at this stage.
Britain asked no intervention when she was unprepared to fight. She will tolerate none
now that she is prepared, until the Prussian military despotism is broken beyond repair... .
The motto of the Allies was 'Never Again!' " And this made worthwhile the sacrifices so far
as well as those needed to end the war with victory.[184]
Grey wrote to him on the 29th of September that he was apprehensive about the effect
"of the warning to Wilson in your interview... . It has always been my view that until the
Allies were sure of victory the door should be kept open for Wilson's mediation."
But the following month, at one of the formal regular meetings with the Chief of the
Imperial Staff, when Lloyd George received the familiar answers as to the course of the
war -- the German losses were greater than the Allies, that the Germans were gradually
being worn down, and their morale shaken by constant defeat and retreat -- he asked Sir
Wm. Robertson for his views as "to how this sanguinary conflict was to be brought to a
successful end ... He just mumbled something about 'attrition'."
Lloyd George then asked for a formal memorandum on the subject. This was not
encouraging, and said that an end could not be expected "before the summer of 1918.
How long it may go on afterwards I cannot even guess."
The facts were far from rosy, but were the hopes of Great Britain really hanging upon
American entry into the war? There were two other possible courses.
One was suggested by the Marquess of Landsdowne, a member of the Cabinet and a
statesman of considerable standing as the author of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. It was
contained in a Memorandum Respecting a Peace Settlement, circulated to the Cabinet
with the consent of the Prime Minister. Landsdowne suggested doubts as to the possibility
of victory within a reasonable space of time.
What does the prolongation of the war mean? Our own casualties already amount to over
1,100,000. We have had 15,000 officers killed, not including those who are missing.
There is no reason to suppose that, as the force at the front in the different theatres of
war increases, the casualties will increase at a lower rate. We are slowly but surely killing
off the best of the male population of these islands. The figures representing the
casualties of our Allies are not before me. The total must be appalling.[185]
The other members of the Cabinet and the Chief of Staff repudiated peace without victory.
The other course was that adopted: to thrust more men and money into the holocaust
(defined as a wholesale sacrifice or destruction). What would now be called political and
military summit meetings were held in France to plan for it. They commenced on 15
November 1916.
In the political presentations, the only reference to America seems to have been offered
by Lloyd George:
The difficulties we have experienced in making payment for our purchases abroad must
be as present to the minds of French statesmen as to ourselves. Our dependence upon
America is growing for food, raw material and munitions. We are rapidly exhausting the
securities negotiable in America. If victory shone on our banners, our difficulties would
disappear.[Asquith deleted the next sentence, which read] Success means credit:
financiers never hesitate to lend to a prosperous concern: but business which is
lumbering along amidst great difficulties and which is making no headway in spite of
enormous expenditure will find the banks gradually closing their books against it.
This reference to Allied problems in getting more credit from the bankers in the United
States, who were predominantly German-Jewish, elucidates Schiff's agreement to arrange
credit for Britain through the Jewish banker Cassel -- they were not waiting for a Balfour
Declaration, they were waiting for the Russian Revolution!
On the military side, there was general agreement at the summit conference that what
was needed was a ''knock-out blow,'' and it was decided that the 1917 plan of campaign
would be an offensive on all fronts, including Palestine, with the Western Front as the
principal one.
On 7 December the Asquith government fell and Lloyd George, who was pledged to a
more vigorous prosecution of the war, took over the Government. Five days later,
Germany and her allies put forward notes in which they stated their willingness to
consider peace by compromise and negotiations.
The first of the battles opened on 9 April 1917, heralded by a bombardment of 2,700,000
shells. Another attack was launched by the French nine days later, these resulting in
about a million dead and wounded on both sides. The French Army mutinied, and
General Petain was put in charge.
At this time the two events which were to twist the world into a new shape were occurring,
the Russian Revolution and American entry into the war.
French Government wanted to defer all offensive operations until American assistance
became available, but the generals thought otherwise. Maj.-Gen. J.F.C. Fuller, whom I
have met, one of the few bright military-political minds in this century, tells us that Haig
"had set his heart on a decisive battle in Flanders, and so obsessed was he by it that he
believed that he could beat the Germans single-handed, and before the Americans came
in." [186] I do not think that people who did not live in the great days of the British Empire
can have a sense of the hubris of a Haig, unless one gets it from classical literature.
Perhaps today it would be found in the head of the World Bank, from whom we taxpayers,
like the common soldiers of that time, are so far removed! There was actually resentment
in the England of my boyhood about Americans claiming to have played any significant
part in fighting the Great War.
The outcome of the grandiosity of the generals and politicians was the costly Flanders
campaign of the summer and autumn. On 7th June it was opened by the limited and
successful Battle of Messines, which was preceded by a seventeen days' bombardment of
3,500,000 shells, and initiated by the explosion of nineteen mines packed with a million
pounds of high explosives.
On 31st July it was followed by the Third Battle of Ypres, for which the largest force of
artillery ever seen in British history was assembled. In all, the preliminary bombardment
lasted nineteen days, and during it 4,300,000 shells, some 107,000 tons in weight were
hurled onto the prospective low lying battlefield. Its entire surface was upheaved; all
drains, dikes, culverts and roads were destroyed, and an almost uncrossable swamp
created, in which the infantry wallowed for three and a half months. When, on 10th
November, the battle ended, the Germans had been pushed back a maximum depth of
five miles on a frontage of ten miles, at a cost of a little under 200,000 men to themselves,
and, at the lowest estimate, of 300,000 to their enemy.
Thus ended the last of the great artillery battles of attrition on the Western Front, and
when in retrospect they are looked on, it becomes understandable why the politicians
were so eager to escape them.
The Great War was like a greatly magnified version of the mutual destruction of noble
men in the Niebelungenlied. Set against each other by the vanity and lack of vision of
their rulers, the more they fought the more there was to avenge until death delivered
them from their need. "At the going down of the sun and in the morning," we should learn
their lesson.
Britain's Obligation?
In a memorandum marked in his own handwriting "Private & Confidential" to Lord Peel and
other members of the Royal Commission on Palestine in 1936, James Malcolm wrote:
I have always been convinced that until the Jewish question was more or less satisfactorily
settled there could be no real or permanent peace in the world, and that the solution lay
in Palestine. This was one of the two main considerations which impelled me, in the
autumn of 1916, to initiate the negotiations which led eventually to the Balfour Declaration
and the British Mandate for Palestine. The other, of course, was to bring America into the
War.
For generations Jews and Gentiles alike have assumed in error that the cause of
Anti-Semitism was in the main religious. Indeed, the Jews in the hope of obtaining relief
from intolerance, engaged in the intensive and subversive propagation of materialistic
doctrines productive of ''Liberalism,'' Socialism, and Irreligion, resulting in
de-Christianisation. On the other hand, the more materialistic the Gentiles became, the
more aware they were subconsciously made of the cause of Anti-Semitism, which at
bottom was, and remains to this day, primarily an economic one. A French writer --
Vicomte de Poncins -- has remarked that in some respects Anti-Semitism is largely a form
of self-defence against Jewish economic aggression. In my opinion, however. neither the
Jews nor the Gentiles bear the sole responsibility for this.
As I have already said, I had a part in initiating the negotiations in the early autumn of
1916 between the British and French Governments and the Zionist leaders, which led to
the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine.
The first object, of course, was to enlist the very considerable and necessary influence of
the Jews, and especially of the Zionist or Nationalist Jews. to help us bring America into
the War at the most critical period of the hostilities. This was publicly acknowledged by Mr.
Lloyd George during a recent debate in the House of Commons.
Our second object was to enable and induce Jews all the world over to envisage
constructive work as their proper field, and to take their minds off destnictive and
subversive schemes which, owing to their general Sense of insecurity and homelessness.
even in the periods preceding the French Revolution, had provoked so much trouble and
unrest in various countries, until their ever-increasing violence culminated in the Third
International and the Russian Communist Revolution. But to achieve this end it was
necessary to promise them Palestine in consideration of their help, as already explained,
and not as a mere humanitarian experiment or enterprise, as represented in certain
quarters.
It is no wonder that Weizmann did not refer to Malcolm in his autobiography, and Sokolow
privately resented Malcolm "as a stranger in the center of our work," who was "endowed
with an esprit of a goyish kind. " [187]
It is also worth noting that on page seven of his memorandum Malcolm quoted General
Ludendorff, former Quartermaster General of the German Army, and perhaps at least
remembered for heading an unsuccessful coup in Munich in 1923, as saying that the
Balfour Declaration was "the cleverest thing done by the Allies in the way of propaganda
and that he wished Germany had thought of it first."
On the other hand, might it not have provided some cold comfort for Ludendorff to believe
that the Zionist Jews were a major factor in the outcome of the war -- if that is what he is
implying?
Malcolm's belief in the Balfour Declaration as a means of bringing the United States into
the war was confirmed by Samuel Landman, secretary to the Zionist leaders Weizmann
and Sokolow, and later secretary of the World Zionist Organization. As
the only way (which proved so to be) to induce the American President to come into the
war was to secure the cooperation of Zionist Jews by promising them Palestine, and thus
enlist and mobilize the hitherto unsuspectedly powerful forces of Zionist Jews in America
and elsewhere in favour of the Allies on a quid pro quo contract basis. Thus, as will be
seen, the Zionists having carried out their part, and greatly helped to bring America in,
the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was but the public confirmation of the necessarily secret
"gentlemens' " agreement of 1916, made with the previous knowledge, acquiescence, and
or approval of the Arabs, and of the British, and of the French and other Allied
governments, and not merely a voluntary, altruistic and romantic gesture on the part of
Great Britain as certain people either through pardonable ignorance assume or
unpardonable ill-will would represent or rather misrepresent ...[188]
Speaking in the House of Commons on 4 July 1922, Winston Churchill asked rhetorically,
Are we to keep our pledge to the Zionists made in 1917...? Pledges and promises were
made during the war, and they were made, not only on the merits, though I think the
merits are considerable. They were made because it was considered they would be of
value to us in our struggle to win the war. It was considered that the support which the
Jews could give us all over the world, and particularly in the United States, and also in
Russia, would be a definite palpable advantage. I was not responsible at that time for the
giving of those pledges, nor for the conduct of the war of which they were, when given, an
integral part. But like other members I supported the policy of the War Cabinet. Like other
members, I accepted and was proud to accept a share in those great transactions, which
left us with terrible losses, with formidable obligations, but nevertheless with
unchallengable victory.
However, Hansard notes, one member, Mr. Gwynne, plaintively complained that "the
House has not yet had an opportunity of discussing it."
Writing to The Times on 2 November 1949, Malcolm Thomson, the official biographer of
Lloyd George, noted that this was the thirty-second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration
and it seemed a
suitable occasion for stating briefly certain facts about its origin which have recently been
incorrectly recorded.
When writing the official biography of Lloyd George, I was able to study the original
documents bearing on this question. From these it was clear that although certain
members of the Cabinets of 1916 and 1917 sympathized with Zionist aspirations, the
efforts of Zionist leaders to win any promise of support from the British Government had
proved quite ineffectual, and the secret Sykes-Picot agreement with the French for
partition of spheres of interest in the Middle East seemed to doom Zionist aims. A change
of attitude was, however, brought about through the initiative of Mr. James A. Malcolm,
who pressed on Sir Mark Sykes, then Under-Secretary to the War Cabinet, the thesis that
an allied offer to restore Palestine to the Jews would swing over from the German to the
allied side the very powerful influence of American Jews, including Judge Brandeis, the
friend and adviser of President Wilson. Sykes was interested, and at his request Malcolm
introduced him to Dr. Weizmann and the other Zionist leaders, and negotiations were
opened which culminated in the Balfour Declaration.
These facts have at one time or another been mentioned in various books and articles,
and are set out by Dr. Adolf Boehm in his monumental history of Zionism, "Die
Zionistische Bewegung," Vol. 1, p.656. It therefore surprised me to find in Dr. Weizmann's
autobiography, "Trial and Error," that he makes no mention of Mr. Malcolm's crucially
important intervention, and even attributes his own introduction to Sir Mark Sykes to the
late Dr. Caster. As future historians might not unnaturally suppose Dr. Weizmann's
account to be authentic, I have communicated with Mr. Malcolm, who not only confirms the
account I have given, but holds a letter written to him by Dr. Weizmann on March 5, 1941,
saying: "You will be interested to hear that some time ago I had occasion to write to Mr.
Lloyd George about your useful and timely initiative in 1916 to bring about the
negotiations between myself and my Zionist colleagues and Sir Mark Sykes and others
about Palestine and Zionist support of the allied cause in America and elsewhere."
No doubt a complexity of motives lay behind the Balfour Declaration, including strategic
and diplomatic considerations and, on the part of Balfour, Lloyd George, and Smuts, a
genuine sympathy with Zionist aims. But the determining factor was the intervention of Mr
Malcolm with his scheme for engaging by some such concession the support of American
Zionists for the allied cause in the first world war.
Yours, & c.,
MALCOLM THOMSON
According to Lloyd George's Memoirs of the Peace Conference, where, as planned many
years before, the Zionists were strongly represented,
There is no better proof of the value of the Balfour Declaration as a military move than
the fact that Germany entered into negotiations with Turkey in an endeavor to provide an
alternative scheme which would appeal to Zionists. A German-Jewish Society, the
V.J.O.D., [A] was formed, and in January 1918, Talaat, the Turkish Grand Vizier, at the
instigation of the Germans, gave vague promises of legislation by means of which "all
justifiable wishes of the Jews in Palestine would be able to meet their fulfilment."
Another most cogent reason for the adoption by the Allies of the policy of the Declaration
lay in the state of Russia herself. Russian Jews had been secretly active on behalf of the
Central Powers from the first; they had become the chief agents of German pacifist
propaganda in Russia; by 1917 they had done much in preparing for that general
disintegration of Russian society, later recognised as the Revolution. It was believed that
if Great Britain declared for the fufillment of Zionist aspirations in Palestine under her own
pledge, one effect would be to bring Russian Jewry to the cause of the Entente.
It was believed, also, that such a declaration would have a potent influence upon world
Jewry outside Russia, and secure for the Entente the aid of Jewish financial interests. In
America, their aid in this respect would have a special value when the Allies had almost
exhausted the gold and marketable securities available for American purchases. Such
were the chief considerations which, in 1917, impelled the British Government towards
making a contract with Jewry.[189]
As for getting the support of Russian Jewry, Trotsky's aims were to overthrow the
Provisional Government and turn the imperialist war into a war of international revolution.
In November 1917 the first aim was accomplished. Military factors primarily influenced
Lenin to sign the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918.
The Zionist sympathizers Churchill and George seemed never to lose an opportunity to
tell the British people that they had an obligation to support the Zionists.
But what had the Zionists done for Britain?
Where was the documentation?
"Measured by British interests alone," wrote the Oxford historian Elizabeth Monroe in
1963, the Balfour Declaration "was one of the greatest mistakes in our imperial history!"
The Zionists had the Herzlian tradition -- shall we call it -- of Promises, "promises."
Considerable credit for the diplomacy which brought into existence the Jewish national
home must go to Weizmann. A British official who came into contact with him summarized
his diplomatic method in the following words:
When (the First World War) began, his cause was hardly known to the principal
statesman of the victors. It had many enemies, and some of the most formidable were
amongst the most highly placed of his own people ... He once told me that 2,000
interviews had gone into the making of the Balfour Declaration. With unerring skill he
adapted his arguments to the special circumstances of each statesman. To the British
and Americans he could use biblical language and awake a deep emotional undertone; to
other nationalities he more often talked in terms of interest. Mr. Lloyd George was told
that Palestine was a little mountainous country not unlike Wales; with Lord Balfour the
philosophical background of Zionism could be surveyed; for Lord Cecil the problem was
placed in the setting of a new world organization; while to Lord Milner the extension of
imperial power could be vividly portrayed. To me, who dealt with these matters as a junior
officer of the General Staff, he brought from many sources all the evidences that could be
obtained of the importance of a Jewish national home to the strategical position of the
British Empire, but he always indicated by a hundred shades and inflections of the voice
that he believed that I could also appreciate better than my superiors other more subtle
and recondite arguments.[190]
A) Vereinigung Jüdischer Organisation in Deutschland zur Wahrung der Rechte des
Osten. (Alliance of the Jewish Organizations of Germany for the Safeguarding of the
Rights of the East.)
Triumph and Tragedy
Herzl correctly predicted a great war between the Great Powers. His followers organized
to be ready for that time to further their ambitions through exploiting the rivalry of the
Great Powers. They had a vested interest in promoting that war and in its continuance
until Palestine was wrested from Turkey by British soldiers.
They prepared for the Peace Conference at Versailles although they had no belligerent
standing, but they had the weight of the Rothschilds, Bernard Baruch, Felix Frankfurter,
and others, which made room for them.
In the Introduction to The Palestine Diary I wrote,
The establishment in 1948 of a "Jewish state" in Palestine was a phenomenal
achievement. In fifty years from the Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897 --
attended by a small number of Jews who represented little more than themselves -- the
Zionist idea had captivated the vast majority of world Jewry, and enlisted in particular
Britain, America and the United Nations to intervene in Palestine in its support.
In 1983, seventy-five years after the Balfour Declaration and nearly ninety years after the
first Zionist Congress in Switzerland a meeting was held there of the International
Conference on the Question of Palestine -- but the conferees were not Jews -- they were
Palestinians -- two million are in exile -- displaced by Jews!
Where is the meaning for us?
On a day-to-day level, we can look in our newspapers for Zionist tactics of influence and
leverage which we can document they have used successfully in the past.
Then there is a long-term strategy, From the mass of material in a century of history and
in our complex society of today I see the underlying effect of two themes, They influence
the lives of every one of us, and will continue to do so unless a change is made.
We can see them clearly in their early formulation, before they had been fed as valid data
into the information processing and software systems of our society, with the result that
most of the answers we get are wrong!
They are found in the conversation of Herzl and Meyer-Cohn in 1895. The sets of ideas
are those associated with Jewish nationalism and racism on the Right [191] -- racism
being defined by Sir Andrew Huxley P.R.S. as the belief in the subjugation of one race by
another, and on the other hand the concept of "universalism."
Acceptance of this input from the Right into our computations has resulted in the transfer
of some $50 billion from our pockets into theirs.[192] In 1983, budgeted American tax
money, labeled "aid," alone amounts to $625 for every man, woman and child in
Israel.[193] It results in our acceptance of concentration camps for Palestinians containing
thousands of people without a squeak from the so-called "international community" in
acceptance of their assassination, torture, deportation, closing of their schools and
colleges, even of their massacre.[194] The lives of American troops -- men and women,
are committed to supporting these crimes.[195] Criticism is called "antisemitism," a word
which computes as "unemployable social outcast."
Jewish nationalism and Israeli policy planned the present destabilization of Lebanon in
1955.[196] This is part of larger schemes to fragment and enfeeble possible challenges
to their supremacy in the Middle East.[197]
On the other hand we have "universalism." This, I believe was the factor motivating
Woodrow Wilson through House in his telegram of 30 May 1916 and letter of 16 June
1915 to the President, to which I have referred. "The League of Nations," the United
Nations Organization, are its printouts. Just as House was a coefficient of the international
bankers, so the United Nations and the international bankers have been part of the
coefficient whereby over $400 billion of the earnings of workers in countries where
universalism is a significant force, has been transferred to the peoples of Asia, Africa,
South America and Communist countries; money needed for our capital investment.
People should ask: How is it that, with such multiplication of industrial power and
resources, our peoples' standard of living and possibilities to have and support children
have not multiplied accordingly? Why do so many of our women have to work? Why does
no public figure -- politician, labor leader -- dare to ask -- and raise the roof?
Universalism and Marxism compete superficially for first place as finalists in western
culture distortion. Both promote its ethnic dilution, but deny us the reality of racial
differences. Against our individuality and our nationalism, they and the global capitalists
and their corporations unite as transnationals to reduce all but themselves to a common
consumer market of blurred boundaries and one color. They would like one law -- which
they would make; one armed force -- which they would control. Universalism would impose
-- not a global peace, but a global tyranny!
Universalism has come up with "interdependence," an expression used as a cover for the
expropriation of our earnings as foreign aid in various forms; it has anesthetized the
sense of self-defense of our countries so that those who have tried to stop their
colonization by people from exploding populations of Africa, Asia and Latin America have
been made to feel that they were depriving others of their "human rights."
In countries where they live other than Israel, Zionists are in the forefront of opposition to
restrictions on immigration. Note that even in 1903 a leader of the fight against the Alien's
Bill and against tightening up naturalization regulations in Britain was the pro-Zionist
Winston S. Churchill, and the super-Zionist Herzl appeared before the Royal Commission
on Alien Immigration to oppose any restriction.
And yet, my Arab friends born in Jerusalem are cast out and cannot return.
"If," said Herzl, "we wanted to bring about the unity of mankind independent of national
boundaries, we would have to combat the ideal of patriotism. The latter, however, will
prove stronger than we for innumerable years to come.
In a hundred years they have almost won that struggle.
In a conversation with Joseph Chamberlain in 1903, Theodore Herzl was asked how the
Jewish colony would survive in the distant future. Herzl said, "We shall play the role of a
small buffer state. We shall attain this not through the goodwill but from the jealousy of
the Powers."
This is the game that Israel plays today, obtaining its military supplies, its high technology,
and its billions of dollars from the pay packets of American workers, using the rivalry of
the USSR and the U.S.A.
We should not allow ourselves to be made pawns in the games of others.
Appendix
SECRET
Political Intelligence Department,
Foreign Office.
Special 3.
Memorandum on British Commitments to King Husein
(Page 9) With regard to Palestine, His Majesty's Government are committed by Sir H.
McMahon's letter to the Sherif on the 24th October, 1915, to its inclusion in the
boundaries of Arab independence. But they have stated their policy regarding the
Palestinian Holy Places and Zionist colonisation in their message to him of the 4th
January, 1918:
"That so far as Palestine is concerned, we are determined that no people shall be
subjected to another, but that in view of the fact:
"(a.) That there are in Palestine shrines, Wakfs, and Holy Places, sacred in some cases
to Moslems alone, to Jews alone, to Christians alone, and in others to two or all three, and
inasmuch as these places are of interest to vast masses of people outside Palestine and
Arabia, there must be a special regime to deal with these places approved of by the world.
"(b.) That as regards the Mosque of Omar, it shall be considered as a Moslem concern
alone, and shall not be subjected directly or indirectly to any non-Moslem authority.
"That since the Jewish opinion of the world is in favour of a return of Jews to Palestine,
and inasmuch as this opinion must remain a constant factor, and further, as His Majesty's
Government view with favour the realisation of this aspiration. His Majesty's Government
are determined that in so far as is compatible with the freedom of the existing population,
both economic and political, no obstacle should be put in the way of the realisation of this
ideal."
This message was delivered personally to King Husein by Commander Hogarth, and the
lattcr reported on his reception of it as follows:
"The King would not accept an independent Jewish State in Palestine, nor was I instructed
to warn him that such a State was contemplated by Great Britain. He probably knows
nothing of the actual or possible economy of Palestine, and his ready assent to Jewish
settlement there is not worth very much. But I think he appreciates the financial
advantage of Arab co-operation with the Jews."
Notes