When Churchill Defied Lord Balfour Over Palestine And Gave Away Judea and Samaria

 Nadene Goldfoot

                                                                        

This is the land known as Israel of ancient days, held by Jews since King Saul's days in about 1030 BCE, King's David and Solomon and on till 70 CE when the Romans, who had occupied it, burned down Jerusalem and the Temple.  Romans had renamed the land "Palestine" out of anger, naming it after the Jews' worst enemy, the Philistines in the year 135 because the Jewish General Bar Kokhba had taken back Jerusalem in 132 and had held it against the Romans for 3 years.  The Jews had beaten the best army in the world for 3 years, pointing out their weaknesses.  That angered them, the beaten people winning?  Never again.

By the year 325 CE the Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great,  held a special meeting, called the Council of Nicea to deal with the change in their religion, and how they perceived Jesus.  Now they were in competition with Jews. The Emperor was accepting Jesus as their G-d.  The Romans were polytheistic, and the Emperor really didn't want nor intended to give up his gods, but his mother, Helena, had done so and expected him to follow suit.  That meant he had to deal with those very same Jews who believed in an invisible god who so many Romans had turned to.  People left and right were joining those confounded Jews and giving up their Roman gods! He found that his mother's religion was now in competition with the very Jews he had come to dislike. 

Justinian, born 482-died November 14, 565 the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565.

 Later, Emperor Justinian wrote 33 laws pertaining to the Jews in his Justinian Code of 529 and 534.  Within these 234 years, anti-Semitism had strongly developed. 

Helena, Constantine's mother,  has been remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 21 May of every year. She was greatly admired in England  She brought back relics from Jesus when she was there, after he had died, of course.  

Lord Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), the head of the British government of which Theodore Hertzl was dealing with in 1902,and was Foreign Secretary in 1917 at the end of World War I, who was especially touched by the help in the war from the Jewish Chaim Weizmann (1874-1932), a chemist who created an additive to their weaponry, causing their bombs to be especially efficient, helping them to win the war.  Weizmann was a Zionist and was the chairman of a London committee, which helped to meet Lord Balfour, who wrote a Letter called the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917. It was one of the most powerful and meaningful letters ever written by a government.  It agreed with Weizmann  that Jews should have their Jewish Homeland and that Britain would help it to be created, just as long as the Arabs were kept happy.   

The Balfour Declaration gave support for the creation of the Jewish Homeland to be created out of Palestine, and land that Britain had been given a 30 year mandate to rule over. This has become a bone of contention ever since, fought over in international law.  

Britain was charged with this responsibility, but then Winston Churchill had turned right around and had given away 79% of this land to a Saudi Prince without a land to rule, Prince Abdullah in 1921 for no other reason other than disliking Jews;  anti-Semitism, and an off-hand promise to Arabs that had NOT gone through the League of Nations nor a special declaration as such. For 4 years, the Jewish leaders were led to believe that  they had secured Palestine as the Jewish Homeland.  

Churchill  wrote his  Churchill White Paper  in June 1922 saying that MacMahon Letters did not refer to Palestine, and not to Jewish domination. It made Jewish immigration there dependent on absorptive  capacity. Because of this paper, Transjordania was excluded from the area of Palestine to which the Balfour Declaration applied.  Was Balfour aware of this at the time?  Certainly not.  1921 comes after 1920.  When Balfour wrote his extremely important letter, it hadn't happened yet, but 4 years later.                                     

MacMahon, born November 28, 1862-died December 29, 1949.  

The MacMahon correspondence was an exchange of letters in 1915 between Sir Henry McMahon, British commissioner in Egypt, and Sherif Hussein and his son Feisal. In 1915, he promised Sharif Hussein bin Ali an independent area under Arab governance that was to include what was then the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem (later Mandatory Palestine), in exchange for Arab support in Britain's conflict against the Ottoman Turks in what came to be known as the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottomans. They contain a promise of British support for Arab independence in return for an Arab revolt against the Turks of the Ottoman Empire.  

This was a set-up for Arabia to take over the Ottoman Empire's land that the Turks had lost by siding with Germany in WWI.  They had become part of the Axis side.  England would have their foot in the pot, control over Arabia. 

 After the Sykes-Picot Agreement (secret agreements between  Britain, France and Russia)  was published by the Bolshevik Russian government in November 1917, and McMahon resigned. It was between Sir Arthur Nicolson and later Sir Mark Sykes (for Britain) and Georges Picot (for France) and started March 9, 1916.  

It provided for the complete dismemberment of Palestine with the Upper Galilee under French control, the Hauran a French-protected Arab state, Transjordan and the Negev a British protected Arab State, the Haifa Bay area under British control, and the remainder of central Palestine (from Nazareth to Hebron) an Anglo-French-Russian  condominium which they believed would expose the Jewish population to the dangers of a constant power conflict) and against the radical dismemberment of the country.  This "treaty" was partly responsible for the form of the post-war frontiers of Palestine-keeping Judea and Samaria from Jewish control.   

He also features prominently in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence's account of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

         Feisal and Weizmann, together in Paris at the meeting.  

Actually, Feisal was a likable fellow.  He was not against the Jews having the land in Palestine, and hoped his Arabs would learn from them.  However, when Husseini, the Sherif of Jerusalem, turned against him, he changed his tune and sided with his many Arabs.  It's sad because Feisal was well-educated, so different from Husseini who was murderous.                

                                            
Sidney James Webb, 1st Baron Passfield, OM, PC was a British socialist, economist and reformer, who co-founded the London School of Economics.

Sidney James Webb with Beatrice Webb.  "The Webbs ignored mounting evidence of atrocities being committed by Joseph Stalin and remained supporters of the Soviet Union until their deaths".He was an early member of the Fabian Society in 1884, joining, like George Bernard Shaw, three months after its inception.                                    

British Army in Palestine

1929 was the year not only of the terrible Depression in the USA, but the year of riots and killings of Jews in Palestine.  The English were doing next to nothing to defend the Jews and it was so bad that Jews went against English rule and created groups of defense for themselves.  

My 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, was the Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group (Lohame Herut Israel) , which the English called the Stern Gang.  They were the toughest, even attacking the King David Hotel at one point because of who was residing there.                           

The leader was Avraham Stern, (1907-1942) who left another group-Irgun Tzevai Leumi that he had led because they refused to fight against the British soldiers in Palestine during WWII.  The Stern Group had to go underground and carried out acts of sabotage.  Stern was killed by the British police while being arrested.                                    

Churchill  attacked the Passfield White Paper in October 1930, which was written by Lord Passfield (Sydney Webb).  It was based on the Hope-Simpson report which followed the 1929 Arab riots, and maintained that Jewish land acquisition and settlement created a landless Arab peasantry and wide-spread Arab unemployment. (Think-is this the Democratic way to economics?  Even in Palestine, land was for sale, and Jews had been buying land from Arabs at recession prices, very very over-rated, but the Jews were paying the price asked for.  They would have hired Arabs to work for them, giving them jobs; in fact they had been doing that.  Look at the beginnings of Tel Aviv founded in 1909.  Many Arabs had been hired in the building of it.    This was pure Socialist thinking, not of the Democratic viewpoint.  In fact, it was more communistic or more like Nazi Socialism.   As a result of this White Paper, Transjordania was excluded from the area to which the Balfour Declaration applied according to Churchill.  

 The Partition Scheme in 1937 was advanced by the Peel Commission and was first accepted by the British Government and evoked deep differences of opinion inside the Zionist movement.  The British proposal was received coldly by the League of Nation.  In November 1937 the Brits got the Woodhead Commission to come up with practical proposals, obviating the population transfers envisaged by the Peel Commission. (The Peel Commission, formally known as the Palestine Royal Commission, was a British Royal Commission of Inquiry, headed by Lord Peel, appointed in 1936 to investigate the causes of unrest in Mandatory Palestine, which was administered by Great Britain, following a six-month-long Arab general strike. Wikipedia) The outcome after much haggling was that a proposed Arab state never came into fruition because the Arab states of Jordan and Egypt took the land, and the recommended economic union was not implemented.  The changes were incorporated in the Rhodes Agreements.  

         During this period of the 1930s, the Germans were treating Jews as untouchables, and had more and more rules against them.  From 1939 to 1941, Jews imprisoned and slaughtered began to look like this as they were starved.  England was allowing Arabs into Palestine while they kept Jews out, which meant that most were fated to fall into the hands of the Nazis. Ships loaded with Jews from Germany escaping were turned away from Palestine-their go- to- hope of saving their lives as being a Jewish Homeland.                           

English Prime Minister Malcom MacDonald, b:1866-d:1937) 

The White Paper of 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland and started WWII, was submitted by Malcom MacDonald after the failure of talks led by the British with the Jewish and Arab delegations.  It stated the British intention of setting up a Palestine in 10 years where equal amounts of Arabs and Jews would be members.  75,000 Jews could enter over 5 years to 1944 which then would allow Arabs could decide on Jews' entrance.   Jews could not buy land in the majority of Palestine.  Zionists were appalled and against this paper, but it continued to guide British Policy in coming years.                                         

 England had been a country who had kept Jews out of it for 365 years from 1290 of the Dark Ages to 1655 of the more enlightened period,  Any Jews who had already moved to England were expulsed in 1290 and they were to be never received back, but times did change, but barely.  Churchill was not showing any respect at all to Lord Balfour's intentions with his Balfour Doctrine.  

Sir Winston Churchill was a man with an on and off attitude towards Jews. A law in place until the 1850s stated that no member of the Jewish religion could be elected to Parliament. Some Christian denominations were similarly prohibited. If elected, a member would be excluded if he refused to swear an oath of abjuration with a strong Christian wording. Churchill had to show some understanding since Jews were now accepted into the British parliament.  There had been Benjamin Disraeli (1837–1876) [1] Archived 2019-02-09 at the Wayback Machine, Conservative MP and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Born Jewish but baptised at an early age. Lionel de Rothschild (1847–1868 & 1869–1874) [2], Liberal MP. David Salomons (1851–1852 & 1859–1873) Liberal MP.

Having given away the most important part of Palestine, the very homeland of Jews that was Judea and Samaria which became Transjordan to Abdullah, he decided to be the good guy and supported those Jews in England.  We are to imagine some great need, greater than the Jews to have given away the Jewish land they had been praying for 3 times a day since 70 CE, a people homeless for 1,850 years !                   

Weizmann resigning from Zionist Organization in 1931

It had been Churchill who was responsible for the damning Passfield White Paper of 1930 . This is when Weizmann resigned from the presidency of the World Zionist Organization in 1931, thus causing a letter from the British premier, Ramsay MacDonald, which in fact canceled the anti-Zionist recommendations of the white paper with the terrible MacDonald White Paper of 1939..  James Ramsay MacDonald FRS was the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who belonged to the Labour Party, leading minority Labour governments for nine months in 1924 and again between 1929 and 1931.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/when-churchill-severed-transjordan-from-palestine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_Jewish_politicians#:~:text=Benjamin%20Disraeli%20(1837%E2%80%931876),baptised%20at%20an%20early%20age.&text=Lionel%20de%20Rothschild%20(1847%E2%80%931868,1859%E2%80%931873)%20Liberal%20MP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena,_mother_of_Constantine_I#:~:text=Helena%2C%20Helena%20Augusta%2C%20or%20Saint,Roman%20emperor%20Constantine%20the%20Great.

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

https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Council_of_Nicea_(325_A.D.)

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