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One of the enduring myths of Israel among the Left is that it served as a bridgehead for British imperialism. This myth endured largely thanks to the often otherwise very good Soviet critiques of Zionism which were handicapped by the necessity of couching analyses in Marxist-Leninist jargon, and the breach with Israel, to cultivate links with the Arabs. One of the most prominent examples from the latter-day USSR was Yuri Ivanov’s Caution Zionism.[1] Ivanov alleges:
…Zionist leaders, in pursuance of their own aims, continued to serve the British crown maintaining their alliance with it because of Britain’s leading role in the rapacious world of capitalism.
On receiving the mandate of the League of Nations, in 1922-23 Great Britain established her control over Palestine. Since the Arab population of the country vigorously opposed British colonial oppression, Britain began to depend more than ever on the Zionists in the matter of “fitting up” Palestine with a population prepared to guard British interests, and generally encouraged Zionist colonisation.
After more than twenty years of intense efforts (from 1897 to 1919) British ruling circles and the Zionists managed to increase the Jewish population of Palestine from 5 to 10 per cent of the total.[2]
Such was not the case. Rather, Israel, or at least a large Jewish population in Palestine, was originally viewed as a bridgehead for the USSR and as a center for Communism.
The Balfour Declaration
A member of the War Cabinet, Lord Alfred Milner, who is often viewed as a villain by mainly American “conspiracists,” while involved in drafting the Balfour Declaration twice intervened to make “the declaration more passive as well as focusing on how this would affect the other nations,” according to a Zionist source,[3] even if Balfour had other ideas for a Jewish majority. The Balfour Declaration was a limited statement of support for establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, so long as this did not encroach upon the Palestinians, in return for Jewish support for the British war effort.
The predominant attitude among the British “ruling class” was pro-Arab, based on the personal experiences of many with Arab civility and honor. For example, we can appreciate these sentiments in T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. A Spectatorarticle said of these most Conservative “Arabists,”
These influential chaps, who are often also Tory politicians and clearly entranced by the romance of the desert, have been a decisive influence on British policy in the Middle East for more than a century. They have consistently advocated for the interests of Arab states – no matter how autocratic – and denigrated the only democracy in the region: Israel.[4]
British Palestine Mandate
In 1923, when responding to a question in Parliament by Lord Islington, who had served as Governor of New Zealand, and was a critic of Zionism, Milner defended Britain’s League of Nations Mandate in Palestine, which had been assumed the year previously. Milner saw Palestine as having special status due to its significance for Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Milner believed that this required the Holy Land to be kept under British authority in perpetuity. He stated that he had always been “a strong supporter of the pro-Arab policy which was first advocated in this country in the course of the war. I believe in the independence of the Arab countries, which they owe to us and which they can only maintain with our help. I look forward to an Arab Federation.”[5] He did not believe however that Palestine could belong to an Arab Federation, because of its unique position.
My firm conviction is that you cannot have either an Arab Government in Palestine or a Jewish Government in Palestine, but that you must have in that country some neutral Power which will keep the balance between the different races, and which, without allowing any injury to be inflicted on the Arabs, will allow the Jews also to settle in the vacant spaces of their ancient home as long as they provide, as they are willing to provide, the means of developing those districts, and enabling them to support an adequate new incoming population. You must always have regard for the great Christian interests of Palestine, interests not confined to the Christian population of the country, but which affect the Christianity of the whole world. To hold the balance even between these various interests—to administer fairly what is, in a sense, and must always remain, not an Arab country or a Jewish country, but, if I may use the word, an international country in which all the world has a special interest—I think some Mandatory Power will always be required.
It is a high trust that has been given to this country, and it is a matter of honour, I think, for us to discharge it in such a way as will make the world recognise that that trust has been well placed. I think we have only to go on (steadily disregarding the present agitation) with the policy of establishing not a Jewish Government of Palestine but a Jewish Home there which will receive as many Jews as the country can reasonably support while at the same time taking care, as we have, I believe, taken care, that the interests of the Arab population do not suffer—we have only to go on steadily in the policy which has already been laid down, and I think it will not be many years before Palestine, instead of being, as we are told it is going to be, a great burden to this country, will become a source of strength and credit to us.[6]
Milner died in 1925. He did not live to see the Zionist terrorist war against the British Mandate authorities in Palestine, the vehemence of the Zionists against the British Empire, and the establishment of a wholly Zionist occupation over Palestine, which he would have regarded as an “extreme” Zionist position, thereby shredding his interpretation of the Balfour Declaration.
Milner’s advocacy that Britain’s Mandate should be permanent, rather than a transition to independence, was contrary to the intentions of the USA in the conceptions of both Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations mandates, and of Roosevelt’s U.N. trusteeships. In Roosevelt’s view, “the British Empire was the primary obstacle to international trusteeship as a staging post on the road to colonial emancipation.”[7] This was to shape U.S. foreign and financial policies ultimately to the destruction of white colonial rule for the sake of a global plutocracy.
Never Intended as Jewish State
The 1922 British White Paper on Palestine reiterated that it was never the intention of Britain to turn Palestine into a Jewish state, nor to oversee the dispossession of Palestinian Arabs. The 1922 White Paper states regarding the concerns of a Christian Arab delegation that:
Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that Palestine is to become “as Jewish as England is English.” His Majesty’s Government regard any such expectation as impracticable and have no such aim in view. Nor have they at any time contemplated, as appears to be feared by the Arab delegation, the disappearance or the subordination of the Arabic population, language, or culture in Palestine. They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded “in Palestine.”[8]
The Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, referred to the 1921 Zionist Congress at Carlsbad, in which the Zionists are quoted as claiming to want to live with the Arabs “on terms of unity and mutual respect, and together with them to make the common home into a flourishing community.” It was also thought that the Zionist Executive in Palestine would only be concerned with Jewish communal life. While Britain accepted that further Jewish immigration was needed to maintain a viable Jewish community, “It is essential to ensure that the immigrants should not be a burden upon the people of Palestine as a whole…” Further, “It is necessary also to ensure that persons who are politically undesirable be excluded from Palestine, and every precaution has been and will be taken by the Administration to that end.”[9]Presumably, this referred to Bolsheviks and other radical Marxists among the Jews.
Britain intended to establish a system of self-government for Palestine in which Jewish and Arab agencies would play separate roles in looking after the affairs of their own communities. However, the Arabs remained highly suspicious of Zionist ambitions.
The 1930 White Paper on Palestine by Colonial Secretary Lord Passfield reiterated the British mandate obligations to both communities. The Paper urged caution as to the number of Jewish migrants permitted entry. It was noted that the amount of state land available for Jewish settlement was “negligible,” and that Arab occupants should not be dispossessed. Jewish encroachments on Arab land were noted, along with the growing population of landless Arabs. The White Paper notes that the 1921 Carlsbad Zionist Congress statement, quoted in the 1922 White Paper about respecting the Arab communities, had become difficult to believe.[10]
1939 White Paper
The 1939 British White Paper on Palestine, issued when Malcolm Macdonald was colonial secretary, recommended that a unitary state be formed, with a strict limit on Jewish immigration: the admission of 75,000 over five years, after which no further Jewish immigration would be permitted. There would be stringent measures against illegal immigration, including the use of deportation.
The Government again repudiated the forming of a Jewish State: “His Majesty’s Government believe that the framers of the Mandate in which the Balfour Declaration was embodied could not have intended that Palestine should be converted into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population of the country.” The British Government wished to remove any doubts on the intent, stating: “His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State.” The aim remained a self-governing Palestine within ten years for Jews and Arabs.[11]
It was clear that the British Empire was in conflict with the Zionists. A terrorist campaign was initiated against Britain.
Zionist Terrorism & the British Palestine Mandate
Zionists postured as leaders of the “anti-imperialist struggle” on the back of the terrorism undertaken by the Zionist underground against the British Palestine Mandate authorities. This image enabled relations with Communist[12] and Irish republican interests, et al.
The Zionist terrorist apparatus had an “official” army Haganah (“The Defense,” founded in Palestine in 1920) and several particularly vicious terror cells:
Palmach (Strike Companies), the elite forces of Haganah, established in 1941.
Irgun Tsva’i-Leumi (National Military Organization), formed in 1931 by elements who objected to the “moderation” of the Haganah;
Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), commonly referred to as the Stern Gang, founded in 1940 as a breakaway from Irgun.
During 1945-46 these organizations combined into the Tnu’at HaMeri Ha’Ivri (Hebrew Rebellion Movement), to fight the British, at the instigation of the Jewish Agency, the de facto self-appointed “government” of the Jews in Palestine.
It was during this time that the King David Hotel, serving as the headquarters of the British Palestine authorities, was bombed, killing 91 people: 28 British citizens, 41 Palestinian Arabs, 17 Palestinian Jews, two Armenians, a Russian, an Egyptian, and a Greek.
Among other terrorist actions were the killing of colonial secretary Lord Moyne by Sternists, in Cairo, 1944. Moyne’s driver was killed heroically trying to defend him. The Stern gunmen were executed by the British in Egypt. Their remains were returned to Israel in 1975 to a hero’s welcome. In 1983 two stamps were issued by Israel in their honor.
In October 1946 the Irgun bombed the British embassy in Rome, killing two Italian passersby. The same year the Sacher Hotel in Vienna, serving as British regional H.Q., was bombed. In December four soldiers and a major in the 6th Airborne Division were flogged.
On July 12, 1947, one of the most appalling atrocities against the British was undertaken by Irgun: two British field security NCOs, Sergeant Clifford Martin and Mervin Paice were kidnapped, strung from trees, and slowly strangled with piano wire. The area around their bodies was mined, and their bodies booby-trapped. A British officer was severely injured when cutting down the bodies. According to Irgun posters they had been lynched for “anti-Hebrew activities” as part of the “criminal British-Nazi army of occupation.”
In 1946 colonial secretary Ernest Bevin formulated a plan to temporarily halt Jewish immigration and establish independent Jewish and Arab states in Palestine. Although the British were due to withdraw in 1948, the Bevin plan escalated Zionist terrorism. That year 49 British soldiers and 28 British policemen were killed in Palestine.
In 1948 Lehi mailed letter-bombs to the British High Commissioner for Palestine, and to the governors of Cyprus and Trinidad, although these failed to explode. A parcel bomb addressed to Major Roy Farran, who had served in Palestine, was opened by his brother Rex, who was killed.
In September U.N. envoy Count Bernadotte, a popular Swedish humanitarian who had saved many Jews from internment during the World War, was shot by four Lehibecause his partition plan was not welcome. A bomb was planted under the seat of Ernest Bevin in the House of Parliament, but the timing device failed.[13]
In the aftermath of World War II, the primary concern of Britain’s security agency MI5, was not Cold War Soviet espionage, but Zionist terrorism, particularly Irgun and Lehi, according to declassified intelligence records. Calder Walton, a specialist in intelligence and national security at Harvard Kennedy School, writes that at the close of the war MI5 received intelligence reports warning that Irgun and Stern were planning a terrorist campaign inside Britain. During the spring and summer of 1946, coinciding with the escalation of terrorism in Palestine, SIME (Security Intelligence Middle East) reported that Irgun and Lehi were planning to send five terrorist “cells” to London, “to work on IRA lines.”[14]
In addition to the terrorist campaign in Palestine and at British diplomatic and military posts in Europe, in June 1947 Lehi launched a letter-bomb campaign in Britain, consisting of 21 bombs, targeting prominent British cabinet members. Two waves of bombs were posted from Italy. “Some of those in the first wave reached their targets, but they did not result in any casualties.” “The deputy leader of the Conservative Party, Sir Anthony Eden, carried a letter bomb around with him for a whole day in his briefcase, thinking it was a Whitehall circular that could wait till the evening to be read, and only realized what it was when he was warned by the police of the planned attack, on information provided by MI5.”[15]
Allied with IRA
Zionism broadened its clash against the British Empire. At a time when Britain and her Empire were fighting the Axis, Avraham Stern considered how he might send a detachment to India to help in a guerrilla war against the Raj.[16] However, Indian nationalists were not enthusiasts for the Zionist cause.
There was collaboration between Zionists and elements of the Irish Republican Army. Zionist terrorists such as Avraham Stern saw parallels between their fight against the British and that of the IRA during World War I. Stern translated P. S. O’Hegarty’s The Victory of Sinn Féin into Hebrew. Yitzhak Shamir, a Lehi and future Israeli prime minister, adopted the nom de guerre “Michael,” in honor of IRA commander Michael Collins. Dr. Colin Shindler comments that declassified MI5 documents show the Zionist underground regarded itself as “the Zionist Sinn Fein.”[17] (Palmach, a crack force of 6000 “ideological fanatics” “identified with the Red Army”).[18]
Lehi and Irgun were recipients of “technical support” from the IRA. Robert Briscoe, an IRA leader, member of the Irish parliament, an adherent of “Revisionist Zionism,” and a future mayor of Dublin, was known by MI5 as an Irgun supporter. In his memoirs Briscoe recalled that he assisted Irgun “in every way he could.” He wrote in his memoirs of helping Irgun to organize on “IRA lines.” The former chief rabbi of Ireland, Isaac Herzog, was also “an open supporter” of both IRA and Zionist terrorism. After migrating to Palestine in 1936, he became the chief rabbi of Palestine. MI5 and the British Palestine police kept him under close surveillance.[19]
In 1938 Ze’ev Jabotinsky, leader of “Revisionist Zionism,” travelled to Eire to gain diplomatic support. He was introduced to President Eamon de Valera by Briscoe.[20]Briscoe advised Jabotinsky on “how best to fight the British in Palestine.”[21]
When Palestine was partitioned in 1948 Eire’s Government welcomed the creation of Israel. Minister for External Affairs, Sean McBride, declared to the Dáil: “Our common suffering from persecution and certain similarities in the histories of the two races create a special bond of sympathy and understanding between the Irish and Jewish peoples.”[22]
Like the estrangement of Israel from its former African proteges, later the IRA and Sinn Fein sought to distance themselves from Israel, to claim solidarity with the Palestinians.
Britain Distrusted USA
The relationship between the USA and its ostensible Cold War “ally” Britain was often strained at best, as the USA aimed to supplant the European empires, behind the façade of decolonialization, in accordance with Roosevelt’s Atlantic Charter. This situation extended to Britain’s responsibilities in Palestine. Walton writes:
The stance taken by the U.S. government over Palestine, and in particular the position of Jewish-Americans, sometimes made it difficult for MI5 to obtain cooperation from U.S. authorities on issues of Zionist terrorism. The unambiguous support shown by the U.S. administration toward Zionist aspirations was one of the main factors which led in February 1947 to the British government’s decision to hand the entire matter of Palestine over to the United Nations… MI5 established a useful working relationship with American military (G-2) intelligence in occupied zones of Europe over clandestine Jewish migration to Palestine and Zionist terrorism, but in general the relationship between British and U.S. intelligence over Zionism was difficult.[23]
As with the U.S. duplicity against its wartime allies the Netherlands and France regarding their colonial responsibilities, the USA acted with treachery against Britain in the face of Zionist terrorism: “… Operation Gold, run by U.S. Navy intelligence, was intercepting cable traffic with Jewish gun-runners, but this was not shared with Britain, nor was it acted upon by Washington.”[24]
While Israel now presents itself as the only reliable ally of the “West” in the Middle East, and the sole representative of “democratic values,” prior to and during Israel’s establishment, and regardless of the support received from the USA, Israel played its own duplicitous game of alliance with Communism and the Soviet bloc.[25]
One of the few ways in which MI5 was able to receive cooperation from the FBI on Zionism was by exposing the “many prominent Zionists’ connections with communism and the Soviet Union.” For example, MI5 correctly believed that members of Irgunand Lehi arrived in Palestine with the aid of Soviet intelligence. These included future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, and Nathan Friedman-Yellin, who plotted the murder of Lord Moyne. Both arrived from Poland during the war with the aid of Soviet intelligence. Friedman-Yellin and other Zionist leaders advocated an alliance with the Soviet Union. The pro-Soviet faction included Moshe Sneh, head of security for the Jewish Agency in Palestine, “who was aware of, if not actively involved, with planning the King David Hotel bombing.” “MI5’s suspicions have been confirmed by subsequent research, which shows that on several occasions the Stern Gang appealed to Moscow for aid.”[26]
The USA, USSR, and Israel all postured on the world stage as mentors of a world anti-imperialist struggle. Israel’s intentions were as expansive and subversive as the two super-powers. None boded well for the predicament of whites across the world.
Notes
[1] Yuri Ivanov, Caution Zionism: Essays on the Ideology, Organisation and Practice of Zionism (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970). Online: https://archive.org/details/yuri-ivanov-caution-zionism-progress-1970/page/n3/mode/2up
[2] Yuri Ivanov, p. 75.
[3] Elana Yael Heideman, “The Power of Words: Balfour & the First Draft,” The Israel Forever Foundation, https://israelforever.org/interact/blog/the_power_of_words_balfour_and_the_first_draft/
[4] “David Cameron and the long history of the posh Arabist,” The Spectator, February 17, 2024, https://spectator.com/article/david-cameron-and-the-long-history-of-the-posh-arabist/
[5] A. Milner, “Palestine,” Hansard, HL Deb June 27 1923, Vol. 54 cc654-82, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1923/jun/27/palestine
[6] Milner, ibid.
[7] Kenneth J. Cosgrove, “The American Anti-Colonial Tradition and International Accountability for Dependent Peoples: A Study of the American Role in the Establishment of the League of Nations Mandates System and the United Nations Trusteeship System” (Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 1990), p. 50.
[8] Winston Churchill, “Palestine: Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organisation” (British White Paper on Palestine, June 1922).
[9] Winston Churchill, “Palestine: Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organisation” (British White Paper on Palestine, June 1922), https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1922.asp
[10] Passfield, Palestine: Statement of Policy by his Majesty’s Government (London, 1930).
[11] Malcolm Macdonald, White Paper on Palestine (1939), (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/british-white-paper-of-19391939
[12] K R Bolton, Zionism, Islam and the West (London: Black House Publishing, 2014), “The Red Face of Israel,” pp. 103-120. (The book was promptly banned from Amazon).
[13] “Zionist Operations Against the British Mandate Authorities,” Interactive Encyclopedia on the Palestinian Question; https://www.palquest.org/en/overallchronology?nid=139&chronos=139
[14] C. Walton, “How Zionist Extremism Became British Spies’ Biggest Enemy,” Foreign Policy, January 1, 2014, https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/01/how-zionist-extremism-became-british-spies-biggest-enemy/
[15] Ibid.
[16] L. Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, (Westport, Conn.: Lawrenc Hill, 1983), p. 266.
[17] Colin Shindler, “Sinn Fein [sic] and the Zionists, Letter,” The Guardian, May 23, 2003, https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2003/may/23/guardianletters
[18] Bolton, Zionism…, p. 108, citing Israeli author Tom Segev, One Palestine (London, Abacus, 2000), p. 452.
[19] C. Walton, ‘How Zionist Extremism Became British Spies’ Biggest Enemy.”
[20] Aiden Beatty, “Zionists Looked to Irish History,” The Irish Echo, July 12, 2016; https://www.irishecho.com/2016/7/zionists-looked-to-irish-history
[21] Rebecca Heilweil, “‘Only in America,’ The Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin Robert Briscoe in the U.S. 1956-1958,” p. 12, https://repository.upenn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/de92f6e8-666c-4bb4-b0d7-cff2771000b9/content
[22] Shulamit Eliash, The Harp and the Shield of David: Ireland, Zionism, and the State of Israel (London: Routledge, 2007), p.102.
[23] C. Walton, op. cit.
[24] Ibid.
[25] For the extent of Communist and pro-Soviet sentiments in the Zionist underground see: Bolton, Zionism, Israel, & The West, pp. 103-120.
[26] C. Walton, op. cit.
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