Journal Association of Jewish Refugees
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VOLUME 7 NO. 12 DECEMBER 2007 journal Association of Jewish Refugees The British and the Mandate inety years ago this month, in worse) by the Arab majority once the latter eyes, as disadvantaging their cause - as December 1917, British forces took felt threatened by Jewish immigration. indeed it did, for their interests and those of Ncontrol of Palestine from the The first High Commissioner, heading the the Arabs were fundamentally and Ottoman Turks. So began the period of the British administration in Palestine, was irreconcilably opposed. British Mandate, which ended with the War Herbert Samuel, a leading British politician, The Zionist goal - that of building a of Independence and the foundation of the a Jew and a convinced Zionist. The second Jewish community numerous, cohesive and State of Israel in 1948. Some Jewish most important figure in the administration, powerful enough economically, politically commentators portray the years of the the Chief Secretary, was Wyndham Deedes, and militarily to live in security ~ could be Mandate as a heroic era of struggle achieved only at the expense of the against the British, out of which the Arabs, as the latter saw it. The Jewish state was bom. But was it error underlying British policy in quite like that? Did the Yishuv, the Palestine was the refusal to Jewish community in Palestine, acknowledge that by permitting throw off the yoke of British the establishment of the Jewish colonialism as, say, the American national home, they were setting colonists did in the late eighteenth Jews and Arabs on a collision century? course that made war virtually The British were hardly in inevitable. No commissions of volved in the war of 1948: they inquiry, no white papers, not even simply concentrated on extricating the mailed fist of military power could remove this primary cause of themselves from the mess they had High Commissioner John Chancellor, 1928 (Central Zionist Archive) created in Palestine. Indeed, the conflict: mass Jewish immigration British had formally abandoned authority a devout Christian who believed profoundly into Palestine galvanised the Arabs into over Palestine some months previously, in the retum of the Jews to the Holy Land. rejecting Jewish settlement, for all the when they handed their Mandate to the When he died in 1956, AfR Information called technological and economic benefits that it United Nations. Once they had given up India him 'a true, dedicated friend' of the Jewish promised to bring them. in 1947, they had no strategic reason for stay people: 'He was one of the famous company During the period of the Mandate, the ing in Palestine, no need to safeguard the of Englishmen who were inspired by the Yishuv undeniably flourished. The Jewish route to the sub-continent. In 1948 the Jews visions of the Bible. He staunchly believed population of Palestine increased by more were not fighting for independence against that it was the privilege of England to help than tenfold during those years, the Jewish an occupying or colonial power; they fought the Jewish people to a new dispensation.' economy was dynamic and progressive, and the Arabs, who had also been under British Attorney General Norman Bentwich was the Jewish educational system provided a rule. For these reasons, it is more accurate to another British Jew and Zionist at the apex literate, highly skilled workforce for a rapidly refer to the war of 1948 as the Arab-Israeli of the administration. modernising society. The Israeli historian War, though less stirring in tone. Evidently, though, British policy was not Tom Segev has listed the advances made Nor had the British Mandate begun in a identical with Zionist interests. The Balfour under British mle in his book One Palestine, spirit of conflict between Jewish interests and Declaration itself stated that the Jewish Complete: fews and Arabs Under the British British rule. On the contrary, it was Britain national home was to be established without Mandate (London: Abacus, 2001): 'The Jews that proclaimed the establishment of the prejudice to the civil and religious rights of were permitted to purchase land, develop 'Jewish national home' in Palestine in the the existing Arab population. In accordance agriculture, and establish industries and Balfour Declaration of November 1917. with this, the British strove to balance the banks. The British allowed them to set up Without the protection of a major power, Jews rights and interests of the two communities hundreds of new settlements, including could never have settled in substantial in a reasonably fair and even-handed manner. several towns. They created a school system numbers in Palestine; at the time of the Neither community saw it like that, of course: and an army; they had a political leadership Balfour Declaration, they formed about a both were convinced that Britain favoured and elected institutions; and with the help of tenth of the territory's popularion and would the other. Zionists saw any concession to all these they in the end defeated the Arabs.' almost certainly have been expelled (or Arab claims, however justified in British continued overleaf AJRJOURNAL DECEMBER 2007 THE BRITISH AND THE MANDATE con tinned from page 1 Plainly, the primary credit for these the British to the free-roaming desert civilians in Amritsar in 1919, or with the achievements must go to the Jews themselves. Bedouin. But the British administration in wholesale bmtality employed in the suppres But the British for the most part did nothing Palestine was bound to follow govemment sion of the Mau Mau in Kenya in the 1950s. to stop them. By contrast, the British allowed policy - and that remained the establishment The issue that arouses the strongest Arab society to remain backward and primi of thejewish national home, which favoured emotions - the British refusal to admit into tive, with a high rate of illiteracy, slow to the Jews, not the Arabs. The harsh suppres Palestine Jews fleeing the Holocaust - modernise and to develop an educated politi sion of the Arab rebellion of 1936-39, an demonstrated heartlessness rather than cal class and an effective political leadership. episode often overlooked, showed to what active brutality; Britain was not the original Even in the highly contentious area of lengths the British would go; 25,000 men perpetrator of the evil, though its reaction immigration, British and Zionists co-operated were sent to Palestine, a very substantial was one of callous disregard for the victims. to some extent, at least until the mid-1930s. force by interwar standards, and in 1938 The spectacle of Jews fleeing the Nazis from Initially, the Jewish Agency, the Jewish General Bernard Montgomery, no less, Black Sea ports, risking their lives on government-in-waiting, wanted free arrived to command them. The draconian ramshackle ships, only to be stopped from immigration into Palestine. But Herbert measures adopted against Arab terrorism entering Palestine by the Royal Navy, has Samuel pointed out that this would also mean effectively broke the back of the Arab fight not lost its power over the years. The case of free immigration for Arabs; far better, he ing capacity, thus unintentionally boosting the Struma, which sank in the Black Sea with argued, for the British to agree an annual the chances of a Jewish victory a decade later. the loss of over 700 Jewish lives, was the quota with thejewish Agency on a bilateral In the conflict between the British and the worst. Of those who arrived in Palestine on basis, shutting the Arabs out. Though these Jews that came to a head after 1945, both board the Patria, some 300 lost their lives in annual negotiations were often very heated, sides behaved with a measure of restraint; a botched Haganah bombing; the British saw the quota nevertheless brought one priceless incidents like the bombing of the King David fit to intem the survivors in Mauritius. advantage to the Jewish Agency: it could Hotel in Jemsalem in 1946 were the excep The hostility of the British towards the control the process of immigration. Jews who tion. The British took the usual measures, Jews increased as they came to see Jewish wished to leave their native lands to go to imprisoning, interrogating and sometimes immigration into Palestine as the destabi Palestine never went to the nearest British executing those convicted of terrorist lising element in a situation where, with war consulate; they went to the local offices of offences, while also resorting to illegal means approaching, they urgently needed stability. the Jewish Agency, which selected those to like torture, and imposing curfews and forci From about 1944, Jewish attacks on British be given immigration permits. ble searches on the Jewish population, like soldiers and officials not surprisingly caused the notorious 'Black Sabbath' arrests of June That antisemitic attitudes were common British attitudes to harden further. Ultimately, 1946. But Jews, however scorned, were among the British in Palestine is beyond the British were forced to acknowledge that Europeans and their lives were not as ex doubt. They were part of the casual racism their Mandate had ended in ignominious fail pendable as those of 'natives'. Nothing the of the day, part of the British sense of supe ure. It was the cmcible in which the war of British did in Palestine compares with the riority over colonial peoples - which included 1948 and what followed was forged. massacre of hundreds of peaceful Indian Arabs, despite the romantic attachment of Anthony Grenville umtoit'-i^--'. !*•.... aiJJiMA.,., it.*i--' -ym^samssmm^ Letter to the Stars: Young Austrians visit survivors bwards the end of the war, the over 20 young Austrians came to grandparents' generation had done. In Allies designated Austria as the London primarily to visit individual May next year, on the 70th anniversary Tfirst of Hitler's victims, rather than Shoah survivors and to hear their stories of the liberation of Mauthausen, there as a perpetrator at least equally so that they could tell their schools about will be a major rally in the Heldenplatz responsible for the crimes committed them.