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Thursday, April 15, 2021

Three WHITE PAPERS From England That Almost Ended Our Jewish Homeland

 Nadene Goldfoot                                          

                          End of Ottoman Empire, soldiers leaving Palestine

The Ottoman Empire had been in control over Palestine for the last 400 years, losing it after World War I when Germany and allies, including the Ottoman Empire, lost.  Though the Turks didn't live in Palestine as a country, they did have their patrols there, and people collecting taxes.                                    

First, England's BALFOUR DECLARATION was a  magnificant happening when the British Lord Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930) was head of the government with which Herzl negotiated in 1902-1903.  Later, he was strongly impressed by the personality and Zionist philosophy of Chaim Weizmann.  Lord Balfour was the foreign secretary in 1917 and issued his Balfour Declaration.  From there on he remained outspokenly devoted to the Zionist ideal and even opened the Hebrew University in 1925 in Jerusalem.  

His Balfour Declaration issued on November 2, 1917 declared that the British government favors "the establishment in Palestine for a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.  He stated that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.  He didn't foresee the ensuing fight that the Arabs would put up against the Jews.  The Arab king Feisal, who would be king over Syria and Iraq, was all for the plan and was friend to Chaim Weizmann, at least at the meetings.  His people were being led in the other direction by Husseini who was the Arab sherif of Jerusalem.                                                              

England was given the 30 year mandate for Palestine after WWI on April 24, 1920.  This shows the boundaries of the land in which the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted.                                                  

                             Sir Herbert Samuel and Winston Churchill

The Secretary of State for the Colonies has given renewed consideration to the existing political situation in Palestine, with a very earnest desire to arrive at a settlement of the outstanding questions which have given rise to uncertainty and unrest among certain sections of the population. After consultation with the High Commissioner for Palestine [Sir Herbert Samuel](1870-1963), Jewish, the following statement has been drawn up. It summarizes the essential parts of the correspondence that has already taken place between the Secretary of State and a delegation from the Moslem Christian Society of Palestine, which has been for some time in England, and it states the further conclusions which have since been reached.

Sir Herbert Samuel, member of the British Cabinet in 1914, wrote a memorandum to the Cabinet concerning a British trust for the Jewish Home which influenced the Balfour Declaration.  From 1920 to 1925 he was the 1st HIGH COMMISSIONER for Palestine..

That being established came 3 WHITE PAPERS  that went back on the deal. 

                                                              

Churchill as Secretary of State for the Colonies during his visit to Mandatory Palestine in 1921 in Tel Aviv., 

 The first one was issued by Winston Churchill.  The White Paper is a British state document and this first one was issued in June 1922, 5 years after the Balfour paper.  Churchill was the secretary for the colonies.  It stated that the MACMAHON LETTERS did not refer to Palestine,  that the aim of the  BALFOUR DECLARATION was to establish a Jewish National Home but not Jewish domination.  It stated that the Jews were there by right and not on sufferance.  it also made Jewish immigration into Palestine dependent on absorptive capacity.  As a direct result of the White Paper, Transjordania was excluded from the area to which the Balfour Declaration applied.  It wasn't in 1920 when the plans were drawn up.  England was already changing the wording.    Remember, WW1, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. 

                             


   Sir Henry McMahon                                  

The McMahon Correspondence were exchanges of letters in 1915 between Sir Henry McMahon, British commissioner in Egypt, and Sherif Hussein and his son, Feisal of Arabia.  They contain a promise of British support for Arab independence in return for an Arab revolt against the Turks.  Palestine is not mentioned, as Britain had not yet reached agreement on this subject with France.  The Arabs, however, claimed that Palestine was included in the area for which independence was promised.  Sir Henry McMahon stated explicitly in 1937 that his pledge was meant to exclude the area of Palestine and that this was fully realized at the time by Hussein.                              

The map changed with England giving land to Prince Abdullah, making him king by July 24, 1922.  Here you see the area of Trans-Jordan, in which the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home was to be postponed or withheld.  The territory of Jewish Palestine has been reduced by 77% of the original Mandate.  

                   Carbon print by W. & D. Downey, published in 1893  Sidney James Webb, 1st Baron PassfieldOMPC (13 July 1859 – 13 October 1947) was a British socialist, economist, reformer and a co-founder of the London School of EconomicsHe served as both Secretary of State for the Colonies and Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs in Ramsay MacDonald's second Labour Government in 1929. As Colonial Secretary he issued the Passfield White Paper revising the government's policy in Palestine, previously set by the Churchill White Paper of 1922. In 1930, failing health caused him to step down as Dominions Secretary, but he stayed on as Colonial Secretary till the fall of the Labour government in August 1931.  The Webbs ignored the mounting evidence of atrocities being committed by Joseph Stalin and remained supporters of the Soviet Union until their deaths.

                                    The White Paper, Passfield of 1930: 

This was a British political document issued in October 1930 by the colonial secretary, Lord Passfield (Sydney Webb).  It was based on the HOPE-SIMPSON Report which followed the 1929 Arab riots.  It maintained that Jewish land acquisition and settlement were creating a landless Arab peasantry and widespread Arab unemployment.  The paper concluded that Jewish immigration and land-purchase must be severely restricted.  Weizmann thereupon resigned from the presidency of the World Zionist Organization (1931), thus eliciting a letter form the British premier, Ramsay MacDonald, which in fact canceled the anti-Zionist recommendation of the White Paper.   

                                                                    

                                       Husseini with Hitler, talking about the Jews

Haj Amin al-Husseini, Sherif of Jerusalem and also called the Grand Mufti, was busy attacking Jews.  He was afraid of losing his position.  He was in cahoots with Hitler from the beginning.  

List of killings and massacres committed in Mandate Palestine including the 1929 riots.  

NameDateResponsible partyFatalitiesnotes
Battle of Tel HaiMarch 1, 1920Arabs13Jews,[1] 5 Arabs killed[2]
Nebi Musa riotsApril 4–7, 1920Arabs95 Jews, 4 Arabs killed; 216 Jews, 18 Arabs, 7 Britons wounded[1][3][4]
Jaffa riotsMay 1–7, 1921Arabs9548 Arabs, 47 Jews killed; 140 Jews, 73 Arabs wounded.[5]
NANovember 2, 1921Arabs55 Jews killed in Jerusalem in stabbing attack. Multiple wounded, including women and children.[6]
Palestine RiotsAugust 23–29, 1929Arabs249133 Jews, 116 Arabs killed; 339 Jews, 232 Arabs wounded;[1][3][7][8][9] includes the Hebron massacre (67 Jews killed; 58 Jews wounded (included in "Palestine riots" above) and the Safed massacre (18–20 Jews killed; 80 Jews wounded (included in "Palestine riots" above)[9])
1933 Palestine riotsOctober 28, 1933British forces20
1936 Anabta shootingApril 15, 1936Arabs22 Jews killed, 1 shot but survived in road block with Jewish drivers selected out and shot [10][11][12]
The Bloody Day in Jaffa (Hebrew: יום הדמים ביפו)April 19–20, 1936Arabs219 Jews killed, 40 Jews wounded (11 critically) in Arab attack in Jaffa. Police killed two attackers. Further 7 Jews and 3 Arabs killed the next day[13][14][15]

                          "The 1929 Arab riots in Palestine, or the Buraq Uprising (Arabic: ثورة البراق‎, Thawrat al-Buraq), also known as the 1929 Massacres, (Hebrew: מאורעות תרפ"ט‎, Meora'ot Tarpat, lit. Events of 5689 Anno Mundi) refers to a series of demonstrations and riots in late August 1929 when a long-running dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem escalated into violence.                                                             

   Riots against Jews in August 1929 causing them to flee the city of Jerusalem

The riots took the form, for the most part, of attacks by Arabs on Jews accompanied by destruction of Jewish property. During the week of riots from 23 to 29 August 133 Jews were killed by Arabs. 339 Jews were injured, a vast majority of whom were unarmed. 116 Arabs were killed, and at least 232 wounded, mostly by the Mandate police suppressing the riots. Around 20 Arabs were killed by Jewish attackers and indiscriminate British gunfire. During the riots, 17 Jewish communities were evacuated.

The British-appointed Shaw Commission found that the fundamental cause of the violence "without which in our opinion disturbances either would not have occurred or would not have been little more than a local riot, is the Arab feeling of animosity and hostility towards the Jews consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future," as well as Arab fears of Jewish immigrants "not only as a menace to their livelihood but as a possible overlord of the future." With respect to the triggering of the riots, the Commission found that the incident which "contributed most to the outbreak was the Jewish demonstration at the Wailing Wall on 15 August 1929".

Avraham Sela described the riots as "unprecedented in the history of the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine, in duration, geographical scope and direct damage to life and property.                                                                 

Neville Chamberlain was the British prime minister as Great Britain entered World War II. He is known for his policy of "appeasement" toward Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.  He died on November 9, 1940.  

                                            The White Paper of 1939:  

The White Paper of 1939  (May 23, 1939) was a policy paper issued by the British government, led by Neville Chamberlain, in response to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. This was issued when Germany  was known to be attacking Jews in their own country.  

Neville didn't get it right for the Jews of Palestine nor right about Hitler.  He signed the Munich Agreement in 1938, relinquishing a region of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. In 1939, Britain declared war on Germany. Chamberlain, who had lost political support, resigned in 1940 and died a few months later.  While he saw Britain through the early days of the war, Chamberlain found himself on the political decline. He resigned on May 10, 1940, and was succeeded by Winston Churchill as prime minister. Still, Chamberlain remained a member of Churchill's cabinet. By that October, however, he was too ill with cancer to continue his work. Chamberlain died on November 9, 1940, in Heckfield (near Reading), Hampshire, England.        

My uncle, Werner Oster (born in 1916) , of Westerburg, Hildesheim, Niedersachsen, Germany, was picked up right after Kristallnacht (night of broken glass9–10 November 1938. and placed in the Auschwitz concentration camp on a maniacal charge, who then with the help of his family and all their finances, got him out on  a ship, the SS Washington,  to the USA in May 1939Of 15 November 1938 to 8 February 1939 he sat as an "action prisoner" in the Dachau concentration camp. During that time he was tortured.    He may have been one of the last 19 Jews to get out of Germany before they closed the doors as there were 18 others on the ship with him.   

Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, and Britain and France's declaration of war on Germany two days later marks the beginning of World War II.

After its formal approval in the House of Commons on 23 May 1939, it acted as the governing policy for Mandatory Palestine from 1939 to the 1948 British departure. After the war, the Mandate was referred to the United Nations.

The British government statement of Palestine policy was again altering its wording.  They knew what was going on in Germany to the Jews and yet issued this paper.  I charge them with intended malice towards the Jewish people.  They were even aware of the fact that Chaim Weizmann, chemist, had created something that would help them win the coming war by improving their ammunition greatly.  Arabs helped them to win the war, but so did Jews who also fought from Palestine in the war.  Jews were fighting from other countries as well in the war against Germany.                   

       Malcolm MacDonald 1931 joined his father to break with the party and join the National          Government and was consequently expelled from the Labour Party.

 This paper was submitted by the British colonial secretary, Malcolm MacDonald after the failure of conversations conducted by the British with the Arab and Jewish delegations.  This White Paper declared the BRITISH intention of setting up after 10 years an independent Palestinian state in which Jews and Arabs would participate in the government  proportionately to their numbers.  75,000 Jews would be allowed to enter over 5 years to 1944 after which Jewish immigration would be dependent on Arab agreement.  land sales to Jews would be restricted or forbidden in the majority of the country.  The document aroused the fierce opposition of the Zionist movement but guided British policy in ensuing years. 

In 1939, MacDonald oversaw and introduced the so-called MacDonald White Paper which aimed at the creation of a unified state in Palestine, with controls on Jewish immigration. The White Paper argued that since over 450,000 Jews had been settled in the mandate, the terms of the Balfour Declaration had now been met and that an independent Jewish state should not be established. When the White Paper was debated in Parliament on 22–23 May 1939, many politicians objected to its central recommendations.                                                       

                   Winston Churchill in 1939  Out of office during the 1930s, Churchill took the lead in calling for British rearmament to counter the growing threat of militarism in Nazi Germany. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In May 1940, he became Prime Minister, replacing Neville Chamberlain.

Winston Churchill noted, '"After the period of five years no further Jewish immigration will be permitted unless the Arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce in it". 

Now, there is the breach; there is the violation of the pledge; there is the abandonment of the Balfour Declaration; there is the end of the vision, of the hope, of the dream.' 

The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission held that the White Paper was in conflict with the terms of the Mandate that had been put forth.

That's right.  England was going against the contract of the mandate they had

 accepted to carry out.                                

                                                          Husseini with Nazi friends 

Historians differ in assessing the role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini in the riots. Some sources claim al-Husseini actually incited the riots, some claim al-Husseini took advantage of the crisis for the advancement of his own goals, and some claim al-Husseini called for restraint.  Those were anti-Semitic historians, for anyone in cahoots with Hitler would not restrain the killing Jews.  

Resource:

https://world-media-watch.org/2013/03/10/65-jahre-moderner-staat-israel-oder-die-volkerrechtlich-verbindliche-errichtung-einer-nationalen-heimstatte-fur-die-juden-vor-91-jahren/sir-herbert-samuel-sir-winston-churchill/

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.biography.com/political-figure/neville-chamberlain#:~:text=Neville%20Chamberlain%20was%20the%20British,toward%20Adolf%20Hitler's%20Nazi%20Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_and_massacres_in_Mandatory_Palestine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_MacDonald

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMahon%E2%80%93Hussein_Correspondence




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