I vaguely knew that Winnie was a Zionist, but didn't realize the depth and conviction of his Zionism. (Though always, of course, with a sharp eye for Britain's interests. The fascination of Churchill is the contrast between the literary, imaginative romantic and the cold-eyed, often empirical, statesman. There were two human bings [sic] in there, and they didn't always get along.)Truman's feelings towards Jews and Israel was also not simplistic or black and white.
Along with Churchill's warmth towards Palestinian Jews went a deep dislike and distrust of Palestinian Arabs.Churchill considered Palestinian Jews to be Britain's allies and Palestinian Arabs to be its enemies. He insisted to a skeptical commission member [this is the British govt.'s Peel Commission of 1936-7] that the Palestinian Arabs had sided with the Ottomans in the First World War and 'filled the armies against us and fired their rifles and shot our men.' ... Churchill correctly predicted that the Palestinian Arabs would again side with Britain's enemy in a future war. ... Echoing what he had said as colonial secretary, Churchill relentlessly stressed that the Arabs in Palestine did nothing with the land and thus forfeited any right to control its destiny... (pp.154-155)Churchill's Zionism was too much for the Truman White House:When Churchill dined at the White House at the end of Truman's presidency in January 1953, his aide Jock Colville unsympathetically described the scene in his diary: 'After dinner Truman played the piano. Nobody would listen because they were all busy with post-mortems on a diatribe in favour of Zionism and against Egypt which W. [Winston] at dinner (to the disagreement of practically all the Americans present, though they admitted that the large Jewish vote would prevent them disagreeing in public.)' (p. 255)
Technorati Tag: Israel and John Derbyshire and Winston Churchill and Harry Truman.
Churchill's government, in spite of the war effort against Germany, dedicated a lot of resources to preventing Jews escaping the holocaust in Europe from entering Mandatory Palestine. Not exactly a Zionist!
ReplyDeleteGood point. I found the following at the History News Network. I don't know enough to evaluate his claims; I'm just offering it as a contrary view.
ReplyDeleteWas Churchill a Friend of the Jews and Zionism?
By Daniel Mandel
Dr. Daniel Mandel is a Fellow in History at Melbourne University and author of H.V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist (Routledge, 2004). His blog can be found here.
When I recently published a piece debunking the recent crop of revisionism (including his attitude to Jews) surrounding Winston Churchill in the American Spectator, a number of familiar and important questions came in from readers expressing doubt as to Churchill's partiality for Zionism and Jews. Their objections can be split into three:
1. Since Churchill in 1922 excised Transjordan from Palestine, thus denying to Zionism more than half of the territory earmarked for the Jewish National Home, is Churchill perhaps not overrated as a friend of the Jews?
2. If Churchill was such a good friend to the Jews, why did the restrictive provisions of the 1939 White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration into Palestine to 15,000 annually for the period 1939-1944 after which any further immigration would be dependent on Arab approval, remain in force under his leadership?
3. Since the failure of the RAF to bomb Auschwitz and of the British Army to stop the farhud (pogrom) against the Jews in Baghdad in 1941 have been attributed respectively to the RAF and the British Foreign Office, are we to surmise that Churchill lacked control of his own government and armed forces?
These are my answers:
It's lengthy, so you'll need to go to HNN to read the whole thing.