Israeli Colonialism Signed in
the UK, Sealed in the USA
By Clive Hambidge
“We must do everything to ensure they (the Palestinians)
never do return … The old will die and the young will
forget.” — (Ben Gurion)
Considering the British Mandate of Palestine “carved out of
Ottoman Southern Syria” and its favorable view of a Zionist
drive for the colonization of historical Palestine, is to
seek, somewhere, an honorable historical discourse in a
dishonorable colonialist fulcrum.
The British Mandate was to last from 1920 to 1948. The
ideological democratization of other Middle Eastern states was
to fail then as it does now – fail Palestinians then as it
does today.
British Mandate meant British Occupation. The self-declared
Zionist State of Israel, which learned the lessons of
Colonialism from Britain, was gifted a land for this
pernicious ideology. Colonialism which is “always unlawful”
under international law is yet practiced by Israel’s
machination for a greater Israel:
“A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only a
beginning.” — (Ben Gurion)
Facing persecution and worse in 1880s eastern and central
Europe, revivalist Zionists recognized that the idea of
assimilation was never going to be an option. Instead, they
saw a Zionist colonization of Palestine as the political
solution.
British Colonialism, Zionism and the inherent racism formed an
unholy Troika in the early part of the 20th century. Montagu,
only “the second Jew to serve in a British Cabinet” as
Secretary of State for India 1917-1922, sent a memo suggesting
the British government’s policy was anti-Semitic: “When the
Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every
country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish
citizens … You will find a population in Palestine driving out
its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country.”
Accordingly, those Jews “in whatever country he loves” would
“[remain] as an unwelcome guest in the country (he) thought he
belonged to”. In Montagu’s case, this was Britain.
Not wanted in Britain, Balfour looked to send persecuted Jews
to British East Africa, as debated in 1903, to find a searing
asylum. Kattan’s forensic book ‘From Coexistence to Conquest’
notes: “It was Balfour, who as Prime Minister, steered the
passage of the Aliens Act through Parliament in 1905 that
restricted [the] westward movement of Jewish immigration into
Britain.”
In 1921, the agonized Jewish exodus from Europe was stemmed by
America by the Emergency Quota Act 1921 and the National
Origins Act 1924. An “open door” was closed and immigration
restricted. This led to “fear of immigrants, xenophobia and
racial persecution,” reported the BBC.
Assimilation requires compassionate political will. Neither
Great Britain nor America manifested such virtues.
Dissuasion as applied today is a Conservative Party policy to
discourage Muslim refugees lawfully seeking asylum – this
xenophobic policy encouraging Islamophobia in this case.
Colonialism was seen by a certain British class of the early
20th century as their almost evangelical birth-right, and by
the Zionists as their collective destiny. Zionism is always an
expropriation movement to be a “secularized and nationalized
Judaism, according to Ilan Pappe.
It is no surprise then that the pernicious reality of antiSemitism was used by both groups to further their own ends of
perceived racial superiority, by the Zionists in Palestine and
the British, anywhere and everywhere.
As the long nights and days of World War I began (August 1914)
the Zionists sensed an opportunity. The Ottoman Empire in
decline and retreat, was not the target of Zionist claims for
eventual sovereignty in Historical Palestine, but, the
eloquent and persistent “scientist” Chaim Weizmann was, seeing
Great Britain as embodying a racist exceptionalism. British
racist “disdain” for Arabs was only matched by their racist
suspicion of Jews.
Britain viewed the Middle East through a rheumy-eyed strategic
vision, controlling
the Suez Canal, and exerting colonial
influence in India and dominance in Egypt.
Arab independence could see the light of a Middle Eastern day
by indebting Sharif Hussein ben Ali of the Hashemite family. A
letter from Hussein ben Ali on July 14, 1915 to Henry McMahon,
British High Commissioner in Egypt, stated in part that he:
“prefer[s] the assistance of the Government of Great Britain
in consideration of their geographic position and economic
interests.”
In October 1916, Hussein ben Ali was “King of the Arabs”.
Maybe. But the colonial powers of Great Britain and France
were to be kings of the region.
In February 1916 the duplicitous Sykes-Picot Agreement (Asia
Minor Agreement) was mapping the bloody zones of blue, red and
brown where the Middle East would be “directly controlled” or
“influenced” by the British or French. In Palestine the
Ottoman Sanjak (district) was to be a:
“brown
area
[where]
there
shall
be
established
an
international administration, the form of which is to be
decided upon after consultation with Russia, and subsequently
in consultation with the other Allies, and the
representatives of the Shereef of Mecca.”
The British mandate of 1920 -1948 had begun, as did the
beginning of protracted inhumanity (as described by Edward
Said) inflicted on Palestinians. The 29th November 1947
partition plan hatched together by the hapless United Nations
Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was boycotted by the
Arab Palestinians opening the door for the Zionists. The
Palestinians rightly rejected even the idea of partition.
Indeed, history and hindsight have proven that the lethal
weapon that was/is Zionist Israel never had any intention on
agreeing to an economic union or long-term control by a UN
body of the corpus separatum that was to be and till today
remains Jerusalem.
A letter sent by President Truman on the 27th February 1948 to
Edward Jacobson -an old army buddy and evolving Zionist
amanuensis- expresses then what we know now. It reads in part:
“Sorry that I did not have a chance to see Dr [Chaim] Weizmann
… there was not anything he could say to me that I did not
already know anyway … the situation is not solvable as
presently set up”. Tragically for the Palestinians, it still
is not.
– Clive Hambidge is Human Development Director at Facilitate
Global (www.facilitateglobal.org). He contributed this article
to
PalestineChronicle.com.
Contact
him
at:
[email protected]. (This article was
originally published in Days of Palestine.)