Israel and the Other PA: Perfidious Albion

bb“There is a possibility that the Germans or their satellites may change over from the policy of extermination to one of extrusion, and aim as they did before the war at embarrassing other countries by flooding them with alien immigrants.” – British Foreign Office memorandum to the U.S. State Department opposing efforts to rescue Europe’s Jews, spring of 1943.

The recent vote in Britain’s Parliament to recognize a Palestinian state (passed by 274 to 12) is, we are told, of no real consequence. Prime Minister Cameron’s government has said it signals no change in British policy.

But the vote was promoted by anti-Israel voices in Parliament that seek to pressure Israel into suicidal concessions; voices that support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, have called for a total European trade embargo against the Jewish state, and have compared Israel to Nazi Germany. It is of a piece with other anti-Israel actions in Britain in recent years.

This summer’s Gaza War was triggered by Hamas – which openly declares its dedication to the murder not only of all Israelis but of all Jews – unleashing an incessant barrage of rockets at Israeli cities and villages. Even the Palestinian Authority’s representative to the United Nations observed of Hamas’s campaign that “each and every missile constitutes a crime against humanity.” But in Britain, beyond Prime Minister Cameron’s assertion of Israel’s right to defend itself, the most visible, most vocal, full-throated and widely echoed contention was that Israel did not have a right to defend itself. Even as Hamas used civilians as human shields, the inevitable civilian deaths were evidence of Israel’s Jews being, in the words of a columnist for The Independent, “a child murdering community.” Such claims became also the message of large public demonstrations, which in turn were accompanied by mob attacks on Israel-associated and Jewish-associated targets and new calls for boycotts and other actions against the Jewish state.

The response to the war, and the parliamentary vote, represent only the latest of anti-Israel convulsions that in recent years have seen British academics, unions, religious bodies, medical and architectural organizations and other groups solemnly advocate boycotts of Israel, members of Parliament call for Israel’s dissolution, and the British public vote Israel the nation representing the greatest threat to world peace. The campaigns against the Jewish state – condemning it with false, kangaroo-court indictments and embracing those who openly advocate and pursue genocidal anti-Israel agendas – inevitably bring to mind Albion’s long history of anti-Jewish perfidy.

No doubt the opening reference to anti-Jewish policies of the British government during World War II, indeed to Britain’s role as abettor of the Nazi genocide, will elicit irate complaints by today’s Israel-baiters. They will insist that this is just another example of the special pleading of Israel’s supporters and that in fact – regurgitating the mindless aspersion that seems to most titillate the anti-Semitic heart – Israel is today’s Nazi state.

But, as will be shown, the British government’s policies toward the Jews during the Holocaust were directly related to a lethal mix of old-fashioned British anti-Semitism and newer vintage anti-Zionism, and that same ugly brew is even more on display in Britain today than it was then.

At the same time, of course, Britain had played godfather to realization of the Zionist project, giving it the nation’s imprimatur with the 1917 Balfour Declaration in which then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour asserted the British government’s favoring the reconstitution of Palestine – then part of the Ottoman Empire – as “the National Home of the Jewish People.”

Certainly, calculations of wartime expediency played a role in the issuing of the Balfour Declaration. But in addition there had been for more than a century in Britain notable individuals sympathetic to the Jews and their historical experience and predicament, and even groups that cultivated what might be characterized as philo-Semitic views. Moreover, such individuals and groups at times offered early support for Zionist aspirations, and people with similar sympathies figured in shaping the pro-Zionist perspectives reflected in the Balfour Declaration. But these attitudes have always been exceptions in Britain, particularly among the nation’s elites.

Lord Byron, in his 1815 Hebrew Melodies, might write: “The wild-dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,/ Mankind their Country – Israel but the grave!” But Byron’s readers hardly included a large following in the poet’s sympathetic views of the Jewish predicament.

George Eliot, whose last novel, published in 1876, was the seminal Zionist work Daniel Deronda, wrote in an 1878 essay, “It would be difficult to find a form of bad reasoning about [the Jews] which has not been heard in conversation or been admitted to the dignity of print.” Eliot, were she alive today, would no doubt find entirely new, if not entirely surprising, contorted reasoning about the Jews in what passes for coherent conversation and writing, perhaps especially journalistic writing, in present-day Britain.

Eliot titled her 1878 piece “The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!” – construing contemporary anti-Jewish animus as the moral equivalent of medieval marauding Crusader gangs that, before departing for the Holy Land, would slaughter local Jewish populations while chanting “Hep! Hep! Hep!,” an acronym for Hierosolyma est perdita, “Jerusalem is lost.” Her title is likewise equally relevant today, as those who demonize Israel in British media, unions, universities, professional organizations, and religious bodies, either explicitly share the objective of, or simply make common cause with, those who would again massacre Jews with the ultimate aim of seizing Jerusalem and emptying the Land of Israel of the People of Israel.

Also resonant with today’s anti-Zionist/anti-Jewish bias is Eliot’s observation that other groups which had sustained a national consciousness and had recently translated that consciousness into a recreated national life – she notes particularly the Greeks and the Italians – were generally regarded positively in Britain for having done so. It was particularly the Jews whose preservation of a national identity, despite millennia-long efforts by those around them to destroy it, was viewed sourly and censoriously by much of British opinion, not least “polite” opinion, and whose aspirations to a resuscitated state enjoyed support in only limited quarters.

Forty years after Eliot’s essay, those leaders in Britain who did support the recreation of the Jewish national home and translated that backing into policy were quickly confronted with the overwhelmingly hostile attitudes and machinations of the nation’s military and its colonial bureaucracy in the Jewish homeland. The Zionist project was, of course, just one of many new or recreated nations that, in the wake of World War I, were carved out of the former German, Austro-Hungarian, Czarist and Ottoman empires. These included, for example, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Mandate Syria and Mandate Iraq. All of these states entailed the granting of sovereignty, or promised sovereignty in the case of the Mandates, to previously largely disenfranchised peoples, and all also encompassed other ethnic groups within their borders that chafed at the new national arrangements. Yet, consistent with George Eliot’s line of observation decades earlier, none stirred anything like the animosity displayed by many in the British government bureaucracy and other British elites at the prospect of a recreated Jewish national life.

The Military Administration set up in the wake of General Allenby’s wresting the territory from Turkish forces quickly exhibited anti-Jewish biases. This reflected not only ingrained anti-Semitism but also patronizing attitudes towards the Arabs and a conviction that the Arabs would be more malleable to British colonial intentions than would the Jews.

Some British officers played the role of agents provocateurs in encouraging Arab assaults on the Jews of the Holy Land, such as the large-scale Arab attacks on Jerusalem’s Jews in April, 1920. (The riots in the city coincided with the meeting of the Allies at San Remo that gave Allied endorsement to the British Mandate for creation of the Jewish National Home.) In addition, British authorities did little to stop the looting and killing, and the Military Administration also sought to use the riots as an excuse for curtailing Jewish immigration and other Zionist activities, arguing that local Arab antagonism would be difficult to control if such curbs were not instituted.

The British, in the post-war years, were attempting to maintain their Middle East territories with very limited forces and were indeed concerned with minimizing local unrest. But, of course, this does not account for Mandate officers working as agents provocateurs and stirring up anti-Jewish violence or for British authorities failing to quell Arab riots when they were fully able to do so. Nor does it explain the Military Administration’s preventing local Jewish units – elements of the Jewish Battalions – from coming to the defense of the Jews of Jerusalem. Vladimir Jabotinsky, who had played a key role in advocating Britain’s establishment of Jewish fighting units within the army, tried to organize defense. He was arrested by the British for his efforts and sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Jabotinsky was soon released but only in the context of an amnesty extended also to the rioters. The British also chose to construe the Jewish units’ attempts to defend the Jews of Jerusalem as an intolerable breach of military discipline and disbanded the units.

Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson was a non-Jewish British officer who had commanded the Zion Mule Corps (a transport unit consisting mainly of Jews who had left Turkish Palestine for Egypt during the war) at Gallipolli. Patterson was subsequently appointed commander of the 38th Jewish Battalion and led the battalion in the Palestine campaign. Patterson wrote extensively of the anti-Jewish depredations to which his troops, and the Jewish population of Palestine, were subjected by the British military’s forces in Palestine under Allenby (the Egyptian Expeditionary Force) and subsequently by the Military Administration. These depredations emanated both from the command structure and, in the wake of evident command tolerance, from the rank and file.

With regard to the April, 1920, Arab attacks on the Jews of Jerusalem, Patterson, referring to the assault as “the Jerusalem pogrom,” noted the Military Administration’s encouragement of the violence, its failure to intervene to stop it, its blocking of intervention by Jewish troops, its attempts to use the Arab assault as an excuse to curb Zionist programs, its scapegoating of Jabotinsky, and all of this being of a piece with general Military Administration hostility to the Jews.

Patterson wrote, for example, “A veritable ‘pogrom,’ such as we have hitherto only associated with Tsarist Russia, took place in the Holy City of Jerusalem in April, 1920, and as this was the climax to the maladministration of the Military Authorities, I consider that the facts of the case should be made public…

“The Balfour Declaration… was never allowed [by the Military Administration] to be officially published within the borders of Palestine; the Hebrew language was proscribed; there was open discrimination against the Jews; the Jewish Regiment was at all times kept in the background and treated as a pariah. This official attitude was interpreted by the hooligan element and interested schemers in the only possible way, viz., that the military authorities in Palestine were against the Jews and Zionism, and the conviction began to grow [within Arab circles] that any act calculated to deal a death blow to Zionist aspirations would not be unwelcome to those in authority…

“Moreover, this malign influence was sometimes strengthened by very plain speaking. The Military Governor of an important town was actually heard to declare… in the presence of British and French Officers and of Arab waiters, that in case of anti-Jewish riots in his city, he would remove the garrison and take up his position at a window, where he could watch, and laugh at, what went on!

“This amazing declaration was reported to the Acting Chief Administrator, and the Acting Chief Political Officer, but no action was taken against the Governor. Only one interpretation can be placed on such leniency.”

Patterson wrote elsewhere of the Arab attacks: “The anti-Jewish outbreak… was carefully fostered… by certain individuals who, for their own ends, hoped to shatter the age-long aspirations of the Jewish people… There can be no doubt that it was assumed in some quarters that when trouble, which had been deliberately encouraged, arose, the Home Government, embarrassed by a thousand difficulties at its doors, would agree with the wire-pullers in Palestine, and say to the Jewish people that the carrying out of the Balfour Declaration, owing to the hostility displayed by the Arabs, was outside the range of practical politics.”

It was an inquiry into Arab attacks in the spring of 1920 and revelation that the military government had encouraged the assaults that led to London’s quickly dissolving the military administration and establishing a civil administration in its place. But the ranks of both the British military contingent in Palestine and the civil service remained the same, continued to harbor the same attitudes and continued to work against compliance with British obligations to the Jews as subsequently formalized in the League of Nations Mandate.

Winston Churchill, colonial secretary at the time, estimated that 90 percent of the British military in Palestine were opposed to Britain fulfilling its Mandate obligations. The civilian bureaucracy was so recalcitrant that Churchill circulated a memorandum to the Cabinet in 1921 suggesting “the removal of all anti-Zionist civil officials, however highly placed.”

Churchill, certainly more sympathetic to the Zionist project than most British officials, nevertheless in 1921 detached more than 75% of Mandate Palestine to create a new Arab nation of Transjordan. Although Transjordan formally remained part of Mandate Palestine until the end of the Mandate in 1947, its territories were closed to Jews. This occurred after endorsement of the Mandate by the Allied Powers at San Remo but before the League of Nations formally granted the Mandate to Britain. In 1923, despite the territory of the Mandate now being defined by the League of Nations, Britain detached the large portion of the Golan Heights that was within the Mandate’s borders and ceded it to the French Mandate in Syria in exchange primarily for French concessions regarding Iraq. This act was in clear violation of Britain’s League of Nations obligations.

So too were many other elements of British administration. The League of Nations Mandate called for Britain to promote “close settlement” of the land by Jewish immigrants; the British administration was determined to do no such thing. On the contrary, it routinely awarded large-scale grants of public lands to the Arabs while withholding public lands from the Jews. Whatever Jewish acquisition occurred did so essentially through private purchase. It also allowed virtually unmonitored migration of Arabs into the Mandate from neighboring states – people drawn by the economic opportunities created by both British and Jewish development – while at the same time repeatedly imposing limits on the admission of Jews.

Arab violence waxed and waned in the Mandate in a noteworthy pattern illustrated by the tenure of Lord Herbert Plumer as High Commissioner. Unlike his predecessor, Plumer generally resisted further backtracking from Mandate obligations to the Jews even in the face of Arab pressures, and his three years in office saw a marked decrease in violence. As has been recognized by a number of historians who have written on the Mandate, appeasement – to say nothing of tacit approval – tended to result in increased Arab violence as violence was perceived as yielding rewards, while a more steadfast course and rejection of concessions in the face of violence typically resulted in more peaceful interludes.

But Plumer’s leadership was exceptional. More typically, the Mandate administration conveyed its sympathies towards the Arabs and its favorable responses to Arab violence. In addition, over time, in the interest of Realpolitik and considerations of empire, the government in London, whether Labor or Tory, became less supportive of Zionist aspirations and more prepared to accommodate the anti-Zionist policies advocated by the Mandate bureaucracy. There emerged a recurrent cynical pattern: An outbreak of anti-Jewish violence; the dispatch from London of a commission of inquiry; determination by the commission that the violence had indeed been initiated by the Arabs; a response by the government in London that Jewish immigration should be further curtailed to placate Arab opinion.

The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission at various times protested Britain’s betrayal of its obligations to the Jews under the Mandate. The Commission had only its moral suasion as backing for its arguments but did on occasion help bring about the British government’s retreat from anti-Jewish measures.

But the situation grew much worse for the Jews in the 1930′s, after the advent of the Nazi regime in Germany. Berlin quickly embarked on winning allies in the Arab world and stirring up anti-British sentiment. This provided another rationale, if one were needed, for appeasing Arab opinion regarding Mandate Palestine and imposing further hardships on the Jews. Britain did tolerate several years of increased Jewish immigration to the Mandate in the mid-’30′s. But in the wake of the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, Britain, consistent with previous precedent, found in its commission of inquiry that the Arabs had fully instigated the violence and mayhem and had sought to justify the revolt with false accusations against the Jews, but concluded that the appropriate government action should be dramatic new limits on Jewish immigration. In 1939, as war loomed in Europe and Jews were desperate to escape the continent, Britain issued a White Paper restricting admission of Jews to the Mandate to a total of 75,000 over the next five years, after which immigration would end entirely and Palestine would become an Arab state with a Jewish minority.

The Chamberlain White Paper elicited once more opposition from the League of Nations as a violation of Britain’s Mandatory obligations to the Jews. But the League of Nations, having failed to muster a forceful response to fascist aggression in the preceding years, was now a dying organization with little left of its former limited authority.

Britain’s determination, in the absence of a functioning League of Nations, to quash the Zionist enterprise once and for all played a vital role in shaping British Foreign Office, Colonial Office and military hostility to the rescue of Jews from the Nazi killing machine.

In some respects, the murderous animosity that then animated so much of British officialdom was less characteristic of the larger public in Britain than would seem to be the case today. Major elements of British media, clergy and Parliament called openly for government action to rescue Jews, much more so, for example, than did equivalent echelons in the United States. Among those whose efforts were particularly noteworthy was William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, who spoke out forcefully to urge rescue measures and sharply criticized Allied inaction. He was joined in his efforts by Arthur Cardinal Hinsley, leader of Britain’s Catholics.

A Foreign Office note in February, 1943, referred to the “striking difference between the intense propaganda campaign regarding Hitler’s Jewish victims [that is, calls for rescue] carried on here and the apparently negligible publicity in the United States.”

In addition Britain had admitted, among other refugees, over 8,000 unaccompanied Jewish children in the so-called Kindertransport of 1938-1939, with the children being placed in the care of Jewish and non-Jewish families. A parallel attempt to admit 20,000 children to the United States over a two-year period aroused intense opposition and was stymied.

Moreover, one can argue that State Department bureaucrats were as loathe to see Jews rescued and brought to the United States as Foreign Office officials were to see them in England. During the war, the State Department allowed use of only ten percent of the visas that were available for the rescue of Jews and blocked the escape from Europe even of many Jews who had received American visas. It did so by creating additional bureaucratic obstacles to their entry. Many were taken to death camps and murdered even as they possessed visas but were unable to surmount the additional levels of State Department obstructionism.

But where Foreign Office policy differed from that of the State Department, or at least where it set policy which the State Department all too willingly followed, was in its apparent determination to block rescue of Jews no matter where refuge might be offered. And, as Sir Martin Gilbert and others have demonstrated (in, for example, Gilbert’s Auschwitz and the Allies), behind anti-rescue policy in Britain largely lay concerns regarding Palestine. A dominant calculation appears to have been that Jewish survivors, no matter where they found refuge, would be a source of post-war pressure on Britain to fulfill its Palestine Mandate obligations to the Jews, whereas if no European Jews were rescued and none survived the war there would then be no basis for advocacy of a Jewish homeland.

It was in this context that one should understand the 1943 Foreign Office message to the State Department cited at the opening of this article, the concern that: “There is a possibility that the Germans or their satellites may change over from the policy of extermination to one of extrusion, and aim as they did before the war at embarrassing other countries by flooding them with alien immigrants.” There were other memoranda that hammered variations on the same theme, as, for example, one that spoke of “the difficulties of disposing of any considerable number of Jews should they be rescued.”

Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden’s personal secretary wrote of him in 1943: “Unfortunately, A.E. is immovable on the subject of Palestine. He loves Arabs and hates Jews.” (Churchill disagreed with Eden on Palestine policy but did not have the control over Eden that, for example, an American president has over his Cabinet members.) But British government policy toward the Jews obviously reflected a casual indifference to the Nazi genocide that went far beyond simply Eden’s anti-Jewish bigotry. (Churchill during the war cautioned another Foreign Office official “against drifting into the usual anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic channel which it is customary for British officers to follow.”)

(Churchill’s general sympathy for the Jews put off many of those around him. As one friend, Sir Edward Spears, informed Churchill’s official biographer, “Even Winston had a fault. He was too fond of Jews.”)

The lengths to which the Foreign Office went to obstruct rescue at any level and from any quarter is illustrated by the story of Chiune Sugihara, who in 1940 was the Japanese vice consul in Kovno, Lithuania. Sugihara issued several thousand visas to Jews desperate to leave Europe. Among the documents in the Japanese foreign ministry charting Sugihara’s activities have been found complaints from the British Foreign Office protesting Sugihara’s visas and warning that the rescued Jews would become a burden on Japan.

Throughout the war there were many European Jews who could have reached Mandate Palestine, but the British were determined to prevent their doing so. (Given the nature of British policy, it is perhaps not surprising that, after Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, provided the trigger to World War II, apparently the first to fall to British arms were not Nazi soldiers but two Jewish civilians. They were shot dead near Tel Aviv on September 2 when a British patrol vessel opened fire on refugees from Europe trying to slip into Palestine by boat.)

After September, 1940, when the fascist government of Ioan Antonescu seized power in Rumania, several thousand Jews fled the country via Rumania’s Black Sea ports and many died when their delapidated ships – “coffin ships” as they were popularly called – sank either in transit through the Black Sea or in attempts to evade the British blockade of Palestine. One ship sank when, having reached Palestine, it was forced back to sea by the British.

Another particularly notorious episode involved the Struma, likewise an essentially unseaworthy ship that limped into Istanbul harbor in December, 1941, with nearly eight hundred Rumanian Jewish refugees aboard, many among them women and children. The Turkish government offered to let the passengers disembark only if Britain agreed to admit them to Palestine. The British refused and persisted in their stance – even rejecting suggestions that they admit only the children – despite urgent requests for compassion from various quarters. The Turks ultimately had the ship towed out to sea and it quickly sank, killing all but one of the refugees.

By the time of the Struma’s sinking, agents of the Rumanian regime, together with German death squads, had already slaughtered some 200,000 of the 800,000 Jews within Rumania’s borders. But it was widely known that Rumanian strongman Antonescu was not entirely committed to the slaughter and was willing to go on allowing Jews to ransom their way out of the country. But the only possible refuge for them was the League of Nations-mandated Jewish National Home, and Britain continued to make certain that this remained closed to Rumanian and other Jews and that there would be no escape for them. A number of Jews were ultimately admitted to the Mandate in the course of the war, but far fewer than even the 75,000 permitted by the Chamberlain White Paper.

Some Jews obviously did survive the war, and the Nazi slaughter did not end the quest for realization of the promise of the Mandate. Britain still held to its opposition to creation of a Jewish state but failed in its efforts to stop the United Nations’ ratification of partition of Palestine (excluding Transjordan) into separate Jewish and Arab nations.

Britain then tried to achieve indirectly through military means what it failed to achieve diplomatically. The most effective of the five Arab armies that attacked the nascent Jewish state was Transjordan’s Arab Legion, led by a British officer, John Bagot Glubb (popularly known as Glubb Pasha), and with various other British officers in its senior ranks. The Arab Legion seized control of what later became known as the West Bank as well as eastern Jerusalem, including the Old City, and – in a policy of total ethnic cleansing – the Legion, under its British officers, either killed or expelled every Jew living in the territory that fell within its sway. (One is reminded of Tom Paulin, the Oxford poet renowned for his vicious, mindless rants against Israel, his unoriginal but, for many, ever-thrilling comparison of Israelis to Nazis, his advocacy of the Jewish state’s destruction and, perhaps most notably, his declared desire to kill Jews living on the West Bank. Had he been around in 1948, Paulin could have joined the British officer corps in the Arab Legion and fulfilled his fantasies of murdering West Bank and east Jerusalem Jews.)

As for the Palestinian Arabs dwelling in the West Bank, rather than facilitate their establishing their own state in the territory, consistent with the United Nations’ vision of a partitioned Palestine, Britain supported Transjordan’s annexation of the territory. Indeed, Britain became one of only two countries in the world that recognized the annexation, the other being Pakistan.

As King Hussein himself acknowledged, in the Six Day War of 1967 he ordered his troops to initiate hostilities against Israel at the war’s start and he continued to pursue the attack even as Israel urged him to remain out of the conflict and promised it would refrain from action against him if he did so. In the face of Jordanian bombardments, Israel ultimately went on the offensive in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, capturing both along with the Golan Heights from Syria and the Sinai peninsula and Gaza from Egypt.

Many Israelis believed then that peace with the Arabs was finally at hand; that the Arab states, eager for return of lost territories, would grant Israel peace in exchange. But the Arab nations, meeting in Khartoum in late August, 1967, instead endorsed the “three no’s”: no recognition of Israel, no negotiation, no peace.

Shortly afterwards, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242 regarding steps to be taken towards ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. It called for the return of territory captured by Israel in exchange for peace, but not of “all” the captured territory. Indeed the key drafters of 242 stated that Israel should not be required to retreat to the pre-war armistice lines, that those boundaries were no more than cease-fire lines, were too vulnerable and would only invite additional aggression against Israel. The resolution called rather for the negotiation of “secure and recognized” boundaries.

Resolution 242 was actually introduced in the Security Council by Britain. Lord Caradon, then Britain’s ambassador to the UN and the one who presented the resolution, told an interviewer some years later: “It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial. After all, they were just the places where the soldiers of each side happened to be on the day the fighting stopped in 1948. They were just armistice lines. That’s why we didn’t demand that the Israelis return to them, and I think we were right not to…”

In 1969, the British Foreign Secretary stated in the House of Commons that the framers of the resolution did not envisage Israel withdrawing from “all the territories.” Subsequently, George Brown, who had been Foreign Secretary at the time of the war and passage of the resolution, made the same point in his book, Out of My Way.

The territories, most notably the West Bank, from the perspective of Resolution 242, have the status of disputed lands whose disposition is to be determined in the context of peace negotiations. In fact, a broad consensus among Israelis has supported, virtually since the war, the pursuit of a division of the West Bank that would entail Israel returning to Arab sovereignty most of the area, including the lands that are home to the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs – well in excess of 95% of the population – while retaining for Israel strategically vital and largely unpopulated areas. (With relatively few exceptions, settlement policy, along with the present placement of the settlement population, has followed this agenda and was undertaken to reinforce Israel’s claims to these strategic areas.)

But for British media, much of British officialdom and broad British opinion, particularly elite opinion, institutional memory regarding Resolution 242 has been erased and the resolution has been contorted into a demand that Israel return to its pre-1967 lines. Everything beyond those lines has been transmogrified into “occupied Palestinian territory,” and Israeli presence anywhere in the West Bank and east Jerusalem has been labeled “colonialism,” illegitimate, even “illegal.”

Moreover, popular British demands for Israel’s retreat to its 1967 line ignore the reality that no Palestinian political group with any power or following is offering Israel peace in exchange for withdrawal, however extensive Israel’s retreat. On the contrary, all parties still insist that, beyond the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories, Israel must also acquiesce to the “return” of untold numbers of Palestinian “refugees,” an agenda whose aim, consistent with the stated goals of all Palestinian parties – at least as stated in their declarations in Arabic – is Israel’s destruction.

And if Israelis refuse to participate in their own destruction, they are condemned in British popular opinion as the greatest danger to world peace and are the target of punishment by boycotts. At the same time, those who declare as their goal the annihilation of Israel and its Jewish population and pursue a strategy of mass murder specifically targeting civilians, indeed particularly targeting women and children, are hailed in Britain as poster children for the realization of a more just world.

British criticism of specific aspects of Israeli policy in the territories has likewise been characterized by hypocrisy and perfidy. One sees this not only in depictions of violent clashes between Israel and the Palestinians, which are routinely portrayed in British media, and very often by government officials as well, as unprovoked Israeli brutality or gross Israeli overreaction or collective punishment in response to Palestinian “resistance to occupation” (i.e., wholesale murder of Israeli civilians). The 2002 events virtually universally labeled the “Jenin massacre” in British media – the massacre that wasn’t, that even the United Nations acknowledged did not occur – is but one egregious example of such gross misrepresentations of Israeli-Palestinian violence. But even beyond the context of violence, anti-Israel distortions of realities in the territories are pervasive in Britain.

Consider the following example of Israeli policy and British response concerning Gaza. At the time that Israel gained control of the territories, the worst living conditions among the Palestinians were of those living in the refugee camps. This was particularly so in Gaza, where the camps housed a much larger proportion of the total Palestinian population than in the West Bank and where the Egyptians had allowed no electricity or running water in the camps and forbade residents to work outside the camps.

Under Israeli administration, camp residents, as well as the general population, had virtually universal access to employment. The Israelis also sought to alleviate the squalid living conditions in the camps. This included building new housing units outside the camps for residents and also providing building lots, infrastructure, and subsidies for those who wished to build their own houses, with, in either case, ownership being transferred to the residents. By 1983, over 3,000 Palestinian families had moved into Israeli-built houses and about 3,500 families had moved into houses they had built themselves on lots prepared and provided by Israel.

But the PLO and the Arab states vehemently opposed these housing programs, perceiving the provision of better living conditions to the refugees and their descendants as undercutting both the push for these people’s “return” to Israel and efforts to recruit them into PLO cadres. In addition, various arms of the UN embraced the Arab stance. In 1985, shortly after Israel opened up new housing constructed with support from the Catholic Relief Agency, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning Israel’s relocating refugees to better housing as a violation of the refugees’ “right of return” to their former areas of residence in pre-1967 Israel. Included in the wording of the resolution was the statement that the General Assembly “Reiterates strongly its demand that Israel desist from the removal and resettlement of Palestine refugees in the Gaza Strip…”

Under UN pressure, Israel did end the housing projects. Nevertheless, seemingly to preempt their resumption, the General Assembly, at Arab insistence, passed the same condemnations of Israeli efforts to provide better housing for the refugees in subsequent years as well, with the resolutions including the same wording. Through these years, the British delegation to the UN consistently supported the Arab demand that Israel desist from offering those in the camps new housing. And yet in these and subsequent years British Foreign Office representatives would visit Gaza and use photo opportunities to complain about Israel’s failure to address the atrocious living conditions in the refugee camps! (In January, 1988, for example, about a month after Britain had voted in favor of the 1987 edition of the same resolution, David Mellor, described in the media as “a Foreign Office minister with responsibilities for the Mideast,” appeared before the television cameras in Gaza to denounce Israel for tolerating conditions in the camps that were an “affront to civilization.”)

Even Arab blood libels against Israel and “the Jews” are given a pass by British media or blamed on Israel. A cynic might attribute this at least in part to pride of invention, as the medieval blood libel, the claim that Jews kill Christians, particularly children, to use the blood of Christian innocents for Jewish rituals, was first introduced in England. The earliest recorded such claim involved the death of one William of Norwich in 1144.

The blood libel was exported from England to the continent, where over eight centuries it provided a rationale for the murder of thousands of Jews. The Nazis invoked it extensively, but since the end of World War II it has enjoyed its greatest popularity in the Arab world. There it has been the subject of a book attesting to its veracity by former Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas and has found similar sympathetic treatment in myriad Arab texts, television shows, and movies. It is also a popular theme of Arab clerics and political figures.

British media have not given much coverage to, or found fault with, this current popularity of the blood libel in the Arab world. On the contrary, they have tended to be apologists for manifestations of Arab anti-Semitism, however crude and vile. For example, a BBC program on anti-Semitism in Egyptian media concluded that it merely reflected support for the predicament of the Palestinians and not “hatred of Jews as a race.” It was hardly surprising then when Britain’s Political Cartoon Society gave first prize in its “Cartoon of the Year” competition for 2003 to The Independent’s Dave Brown for his drawing of a naked Ariel Sharon devouring a Palestinian child.

One can certainly argue that the Jews and the Jewish state are not the only targets of bigotry in British popular opinion and in the attitudes of British elites and British officialdom. But with regard to Israel and the Jews, today’s smug and casual hatred, with its transparently ludicrous veneer of moral superiority, has a long, dark history that renders it different from other, quotidian biases; renders it rather one more chapter in a long record of anti-Jewish perfidy.

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  • frances951

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    • UCSPanther

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      • Joe The Gentile

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  • Larry Larkin

    It would have been very, very interesting if the British had sent the highest ranking ever Jewish officer in the British Army, LtGen Sir John Monash, to Palestine as either Military or Civilian Governor.
    But there was enough of a fight getting him his rank as LtGen despite him being one of the, if not the, outstanding Generals of the Great War. Him being an Australian wouldn’t have been a problem, as during WWII the Special Minister of State for Egypt was also an Australian, and former Australian Cabinet Member.

  • http://JudeoChristianAmerica.org Alexander Gofen

    Perfidious and base Albion! Quite a comprehensive assay, demonstrating once more that…

    1) Britain de-facto had prepared the ground for the Holocaust and actively collaborated with Nazis for its implementation. Britain’s share of the guilt for the Holocaust is second after the Nazis.

    2) Contemporary British establishment and a majority of the population are not even embarrassed to regurgitate every item of the KGB propaganda on Israel! Britons are not embarrassed to become a mouthpiece of KGB while enjoying the best freedom in the world: What a baseness!..

    3) What a baseness – and what a dhimmitude! What a betrayal of their own national identity by letting in and placating to uncounted islamic piranhas! Barely islam got in, the nation voluntarily lay down spreading the legs and thinking about what?..

    4) There is an infamous and shameless statement of British baseness, attributed to Lord Palmerston: We have no permanent allies, we have no permanent enemies, we only have permanent interests… Which are now what: To invite more moslem invaders into own Christendom under the motto “The Defender of Christian Faith”? To provide more “white meet” (teenaged girls) for moslem raping?

    • John Pallyswine

      Brilliant essay. Front page mag is light years and head and shoulders beyond any other website.

      Perfidious Albion indeed. This miserable island of Anglo Saxons made it their mission to control as much of the planet as possible, since the 15th century. They did and all we can do is list and detail the crimes of this miserable island of lies, falsehoods, distortions, twists and evil evil deeds.

      Nothing good has come from this wretched piece of land since the Beatles and perhaps Brian Jones and Monty Python ( Mr Bean is funny too).

      Ernest Bevin, Jeffrey Amherst, Vice Admiral Vernon, and the list goes on of quasi genocidal freaks who have attempted to destroy any and all non European peoples including the Jews who were 2x sent into exile from this miserable grey wretched place.

      The Jews were forced to leave 300 years before Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice and we can connect the Versailles Treaty to the Holocaust.

      Ernest Bevin, an ugly bulldog banned the Jews from entering “palestine” in 1936 and yet again in 1946, 6,000,000 dead Jews later!.

      When I post that it is karma that Albion is undergoing colonization, I am not amused because perhaps the biggest enemy the West faces in our colonization by Islam is the Anglo Saxon WASP and their control over so much of the political and media establishments in the West.

      Best to install and electric version of Hadrian’s Wall and not allow anything nor anyone in or out.

      For the better of us all.

      Thank You Front Page Mag.

      • http://JudeoChristianAmerica.org Alexander Gofen

        Well, it was not all so straightly negative as you presented it. The British Empire was rather a mixed bag of goods… The Anglophone part of the world is still the best (whichever that means). Yet this is a legacy of the old time…

        • John Pallyswine

          It is the best old horse in the glue factory. But it is the best. It is with mixed emotions I post these things but the Britain, the UK, England or whatever these freaks call themselves, must be spotlighted for their treachery here, there and everywhere.

        • John Pallyswine

          I look at that island as the source of misery for so many non Anglo Saxon non Europeans. They introduce genocide and diseases and displacement.

          There may have been some good later on with the introduction of medicines and inventions BUT one cannot deny the perniciousness of Albion from attempted genocide to fiat printing gone amock.

          I delight in the horrific UK debt/GDP ratio but another a part of me senses that they lose their grip on the World they will lose it mentally and they will erupt in wanton violence against anybody. The Eastern peoples understand what I post. I talk about with them often

          • Joe The Gentile

            More hateful anti-British ranting.

      • Joe The Gentile

        I disagree. Your post is an anti-British rant.

        • John Pallyswine

          MY post is based on facts. England has invaded 22 countries to steal their resources, reserves of gold and silver and language.

          It is the heart of fiat paper printing, the British treasury is bankrupt re: Brown’s Bottom. It is the heart of the Holocaust. The Holocaust would never happen nor the division of the Arab Muslim world nor their assistance by the British to attack Israel following their departure. But the war on the Jews was assisted by German ( and Austrian?) soldiers after WW2.

          We can discuss the far and dirty reaches of this wretched island in any part of the world. At the moment, Britain is the cause of so much poverty in the world via their suppression of metals. I do not possess the sagacity of Prof. Jeffrey Sachs but I cannot think of anything better to erase poverty from much of the “third world” save Japan, than by the liberation of the precious and rare metals markets.

          • MrVeryAngry

            Er, no. A rant. Not a comment. Probably a troll.

        • John Pallyswine

          However, I would be avoiding the 800 pound gorilla in the room if I did not say that the Germans used their free will to burn every untermensch Jew or Gypsy they could find.

          • Joe The Gentile

            I genuinely wonder whether John Pallyswine is just an angry commentator, or is in fact a *sophisticated* Jihadi troll. Because he is de facto working for the enemy, by sowing division between Jews/Israelis and Europeans/Gentiles. The very writer of the article in question is making some of the same mistake. Pallyswine is just more overt.

            To the extent that British and European people perceive commentators like John Pallyswine as ‘Zionist’ or ‘Jewish’ or ‘Israeli’ (which may or may not be strictly correct perception), but to the extent that they do, antisemitism is stirred among them. Pallyswine is treating the Europeans, and the British in particular, as an enemy. This produces a response. Pallyswine in his behavior is not a friend of the US, Israel, Western Civilization or the counterjihad, because he is addicted to the gratification of anger and puts this above forging the necessary allegiances to defeat the Jihad. It is geopolitically immature behavior, and is in favor of his real enemies. Pallyswine is behaving exactly like a *sophisticated* Jihadi troll might behave.

            If current Muslim birthrates continue, the UK is about 1.5 to 2.5 generations away from having a Muslim voting majority, which can overnight elect an Islamist government and then Israel and the US face a thermonuclearly-armed government with sophisticated nuclear delivery systems including nuclear submarines–let’s say 10-30 times the threat of a nuclear Iran. The US and Israel want this like they want … well, thermonuclear Jihad.

            Division and hatred between Jews and Gentiles, between Israel and Europe serves the Jihad.

            Do I understand this anger of Jews towards the rising antisemitism in Europe? I do. But manage your anger in a smart way that helps the future of your people, not in a way that helps your enemies. Be smart and geopolitically mature in your response, or help your enemies. It’s that simple.

            I’m not going to get into interminable arguments about this because if you post too much in a short period, disqus puts you under moderation for some time. So this is the last I will say on this thread. John, you get the last word.

          • John Pallyswine

            1) Britain and Europe are on the side of the enemy. At least their commercial and government leaders are.

            2) I am a friend to the US common man and woman but their government is a criminal organ. Even most Americans see that.

            3) British Jew hate is alive with or without me. The Jew will always be blamed. Go read the millions of comments on RT and Youtube

            Let us get real. I am not a Jihadi troll. I am saying that it is shameful that Israel be so close to the Anglo Saxon race that is behind so much of the problems the West faces: debt, demographics, never ceasing war, arming ISIS directly or indirectly.

            The Anglo Empires are slowly going way of the dodo; on like support due to the Federal Reserve System and genuine companies such as Apple and BP, Shell, Mobil. etc.

            Israel is .0002% of the Middle East. Islam is evil but the Anglo Saxon is behind it directly or indirectly with members of the other European groups (especially twisted and evil Eastern Europeans) applauding.

            Go read the comments on RT.com

            Best if Israel drop the Anglo world like an old stinky shoe. It cannot do much worse with the Russians and Chinese

        • John Pallyswine

          A well deserve anti British rant. Even the word Britain was stolen. Is their no end to your thievery?

    • aspacia

      Sources?

  • Joe The Gentile

    The UK elites are judging Israel before they have walked a mile in Israel’s shoes. The punishment the UK will receive is that it will have to walk miles, many miles, in shoes just like those of Israel, shoes it cannot take off. Welcome to the Third Jihad, ladies and gentleman, where we ALL live on a promised land which Islam has decided belongs to Islam.

    • MrVeryAngry

      It’s the ‘elites’ bit that should be noted. The British people are not their ‘elites’. Cameron, Clegg, Milliband are all not of ‘the people’. But you are correct in one thing, the English ruling class has a reputation for anti-semitism.

  • wildjew

    Mr. Levin, you wrote: “Churchill disagreed with Eden on Palestine policy but did not have the control over Eden that, for example, an American president has over his Cabinet members. But British government policy toward the Jews obviously reflected a casual indifference to the genocide that went far beyond simply Eden’s anti-Jewish bigotry. Churchill during the war cautioned another Foreign Office official “against drifting into the usual anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic channel which it is customary for British officers to follow.”

    Prime Minister Churchill, if anything had a voice and a strong one at that, which fell silent on the Jews during those terrible years.

    “In a broadcast ten months before the Lidice massacre, Churchill proclaimed that “scores of thousands— literally scores of thousands” of Russians had been executed by the Germans. He couched his words in terms of reports from visiting British generals, but his real source was impeccable. German commanders, with their penchant for precise bookkeeping, radioed the death tallies directly to Berlin, and therefore to Bletchley. Thousands of victims were described as “Jewish plunderers” and “Jewish bolshevists.” This Churchill chose not to share with the public….”

    The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965 by William Manchester and Paul Reid

    To his discredit, Churchill was also in some way complicit in the mass-genocide, along with the rest of his government. He was in some way complicit in the Britain’s betrayal of her Mandate obligations. Yet Churchill pretended outrage when Jews (Menachem Begin and others) in ‘Palestine’ fought back. These heroes the British and their apologists called “terrorists.”

  • kiwi41

    In 1940 Goebbels described the English in a speech as a ” race of sub humans who need to be exterminated. ”

    Judging by past and present actions of Britains ruling elite over the last century or so, he was not wrong. Their duplicity and hypocrisy is in the Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot league, never better demonstrated by todays anti-semitic PCMC vermin who are carrying out systematic ethnic replacement and genocide against its
    indigenous white citizens with the ultimate aim of an Islamic state.

    • John Pallyswine

      I hope that when the Muslims are successful in taking control of Western Europe, the leaders of America are able to annihilate Western Europe and their financiers before the Muslims take control of the Western Europe nuclear arsenal. Fitting end to the misery and horror that part of the world has delivered.

      • MrVeryAngry

        You are bonkers.

  • RAM500

    How was it that the brave Churchill as PM didn’t manage to curb the anti-semites in his government, at least enough to allow Jews an escape route from the Germans? If he could buck Hitler, why couldn’t he buck Eden and the rest?

  • Vinegar Hill

    There are several points which I do not agree with which are outlined in this article. One of these issues is the false interpretation of the reading of UN Res. 242. It clearly states that Israel should withdraw from territory occupied in the recent conflict.
    It can only be interpreted as a sign of desperation when the author vainly attempts to claim that it does not signify “all” territories. Why include “all” when the original sentence in the resoultion is as clear as mountain dew!

    • John Pallyswine

      How dare the Anglos demand that Israel retreat while the Anglo powers and others ILLEGALLY OCCUPY so much of the world, judging those “inwanderings” by illegal invasion as defined under international law????

      • John Pallyswine

        Although not explicit, when I post about the Anglos, I include the financially corrupt American Anglo fund manager who has made millions or even billions on the sweat of the rest of us

      • Vinegar Hill

        Why do you criticise the “Anglos” for 242? It was a UN S C Resolution!
        Are the people living in Gibraltar and the Falklands being brutalised like the Palestinians are by the IDF in the West Bank? I think you may be a bit muddled in what you have written.

        • John Pallyswine

          The Palestinkiand being brutalised often deserve it.I am not saying all deserve it but most do.

          And of the 200,000 Arabs slaughtered in Syria. No tears for them?? No Jews there. No Jews no news.

          GIBRALTAR is ILLEGALLY OCCUPIED TERRITORY based on International Law. TheBritsh left know it but being the cowards they are they ignore it. White men do no rong unless they are Republican or Conservative.

          Spain nor its Army nor Navy never posed any serious risk of invasion to Britain.WHY invade that miserable place????? No gold, no silver and oil was not yet an international issue. ILLEGAL is ILLEGAL.

    • imtirtzu

      Actually, when the resolution was being drafted, there was a discussion and proposal to include the word “all”.

      The proposal was rejected precisely because the resolution was never intended to mean “all” of the territory, as stated by Lord Caradon himself.

      • Vinegar Hill

        I don’t know where you got that Idea from but from what I have read in an interview related to this Caradon clearly stated: “I defend the resolution as it stands.
        What it states, as you know, is first the general principle of inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war. That means that you can’t justify holding onto territory merely because you conquered it.
        I would add to that: a text stands or falls on the basis of its own wording, and it is only when its meaning is still unclear that further interpretation is necessary.

        • imtirtzu

          If you were to have reproduced the continuation of the quote you would have shown that Caradon said,

          “I defend the resolution as it stands. What it states, as you know, is first the general principle of inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war. That means that you can’t justify holding onto territory merely because you conquered it. We could have said: well, you go back to the 1967 line. But I know the 1967 line, and it’s a rotten line. You couldn’t have a worse line for a permanent international boundary. It’s where the troops happened to be on a certain night in 1948. It’s got no relation to the needs of the situation.

          Had we said that you must go back to the 1967 line, which would have resulted if we had specified a retreat from all the occupied territories, we would have been wrong.”

          The preamble of the resolution which includes the statement referring to the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” as with the preamble of any resolution, refers to the reason the resolution was called for. The operative portion of the resolution are in the following paragraphs.

          Under Article 51 of the UN Charter it is permissible to acquire territory in self defence. The territories were brought under Israeli control in 1967 in defensive battle.

          • Vinegar Hill

            In the first place, the wording of the Withdrawal Phrase refers to a category of territories, namely those territories ‘occupied in the recent conflict’. It treats
            these territories as a unity. If a withdrawal takes place from some, but not all, of these territories, can it be said that the principle contained in the Withdrawal Phrase has been complied with in full? A partial withdrawal would surely only be partial compliance with the principle. The absence of the word ‘all’ does not imply that ‘some’ was intended
            Why did you choose what Caradon? Ten of the fifteen voting members made a point of stating on the record that they considered that the Resolution provided that Israel had no right to acquire any of the territories
            occupied in the Six Days War, and that it followed from this that the requirement to withdraw extended to all these territories.
            Several countries expressly stated that the Withdrawal Phrase was clear in requiring a total withdrawal: India, Mali, Nigeria, Bulgaria, the USSR, and France, and
            those who implied it was clear in the context of the Resolution as a whole: Britain, Ethiopia, Argentina, and Brazil.
            Britain seems to straddle the two categories because Caradon stated that the Withdrawal Phrase was clear and implied that it meant a total withdrawal. None of the representatives of the five remaining members made a statement on the meaning of the Withdrawal Phrase.

          • imtirtzu

            Lord Caradon was the chief drafter of the resolution however several other representatives involved in helping to draft the resolution are on record clearly stating that the the word “all” was intentionally omitted since the resolution did not mean withdrawal from all the territories. They include Eugene Rostow, Arthur Goldberg, Baron George-Brown and others.

            The UNSC spent five and a half months discussing the wording of the resolution and after the the drafts submitted by India, Mali and Nigeria, the U.S. and the USSR were withdrawn, all parties accepted the UK draft without the inclusion of the word “all”.

            The final text represents the view of the Security Council as a body.

            There was absolutely no “requirement” for Israel to withdraw since the resolution was non-binding.

            The framework of the resolution was a list of principles subject to negotiation between the sides.

            Ultimately, peace agreements were negotiated and signed between Egypt and Israel and Jordan and Israel and borders were agreed.
            Neither Egypt nor Jordan have further claim to the territories.

          • Vinegar Hill

            It is absurd to try and argue that “all” was not assumed because then the orther points covered in 242 make no sense.
            Added to this it appears that Eban may have succeeded in securing the absence of ‘all’ or ‘the’ before territories. However, there is more to it which demonstrates it did indeed included all territories in the recent conflict.
            Caradon knew the Arab states were concerned that if he were to follow the original bland American text it would not require a full Israeli withdrawal. So in order to reassure them he added two things.
            First, were the words ‘in the recent conflict’ after the reference to occupied territories. It now became clear that a specific category of territories was meant. The wording of the Withdrawal Phrase implies that these territories are to be treated as a unity, and a partial
            withdrawal would only be a partial compliance with the principle. Eban knew this and was upset. He stated:
            The words ‘in the recent conflict’ convert the principle of eliminating occupation into a mathematically precise formula for restoring the June 4 Map.”
            The other insertion was the preambular ‘Emphasising the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’. Eban fought hard to persuade Caradon to delete this phrase as well. He enlisted the Americans, Canadians and the Danish to see Caradon together. They were unsuccessful.
            Eban’s failures shows that he appreciated the significance of the wording, and how it would make the Israeli interpretation untenable (the one that you are trying to argue).
            The points I have made regarding the “preparatory works” prove the point I made originally and Aban was well aware of this too.

          • imtirtzu

            The drafters make it absolutely clear why “all” and “the” were not included in the final, accepted draft and were never intended to be included in the draft.

            The resolution did not recommend that Israel withdraw from “all the” territories.
            Any withdrawal to secure boundaries would be achieved through negotiation.

            Negotiations were eventually held between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan and boundaries/borders agreed to.

            Eban did not represent a member of the Council and consequently was not involved in drafting the resolution nor in voting to accept it.

          • Vinegar Hill

            You have completely ignored the points I have made.
            First, a resolution is taken for what it states. Israel was the country that did not do this. It is very clear that what they argue does not make sense.

            You then go on about the drafting of the document. I exposed th flaws in what you wrote. You ignore this and refuse to explain why my points were invalid according to your line of thought.
            You then refer to negotiations between Jordan etc…..why, I don’t know!
            You then fully demonstrate you total lack of knowledge over thee role of the Israeli Eban
            The only conclusion that I can reach is that you are stuck and don’t want to admit that what I argued was correct.
            imtirtzu….RIP

          • imtirtzu

            Israel has taken the resolution for what it states and the interpretation is that of the drafters.

            It was the Arab states that rejected the resolution and declared their three “No’s” in Khartoum.

            Not only have I rebutted your claimed flaws, so have those who drafted the resolution.

            The resolution recommended peaceful settlement which was realized in negotiations.

            Whatever role Eban may have played in representing Israel as her Foreign Minister, it was little different from any role played by the foreign ministers of any other country who was not a member of the Security Council.

            It is clear who is stuck and projecting their disposition on the other …. and it isn’t me.

          • mikey248

            Vinegar, your disingenuousness reaches new levels.

            The US ambassador to the UN at that time explicitly stated that the he insisted upon the removal of the word “the” in order so that the language would not refer to all of the territories.

            As the US has and had veto power over the resolution, only one Security Counsel member expressing this opinion at that time is required in order for the resolution to be limited accordingly.

          • Vinegar Hill

            See my reply to “imtirtzu” as you seem to be muddled regarding the matter.

          • Vinegar Hill

            There are two other points to be made. The International Court of Justice has held that the modification of a text as a draft evolves does not necessarily imply a change in meaning.
            Secondly, it used to be permissible for a state to acquire sovereignty over territory by right of conquest on the termination of a state of war. This right was abolished
            when the League of Nations was established in the aftermath of the First World War. The abolition of conquest extends to a prohibition of the acquisition of any territory by a state in actions of self-defence.
            In summary, Israel has to witdraw from the West Bank according to 242.

          • imtirtzu

            Article 51 of the UN Charter states:

            “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

            The 1970 UNGA “Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States” and the 1974 “Definition of Aggression” resolution upheld the legality of military occupation provided the force used didn’t contravene the UN Charter.

            These facts all disprove your claim and together with the fact that UNSC Res 242 is non-binding and therefore not a “requirement” but a framework for negotiation ( already negotiated with Jordan who has no further claim) as well as the fact that Israel has never declared sovereignty over the territories, Israel does not “have to withdraw” from the West Bank.

  • Joe The Gentile

    I like the article’s information, but I don’t like it’s overall obsessively anti-British tenor and I question whether it is constructive in this place and time. As an Irishman, I can indulge in a litany of any number of crimes Britain has committed against Ireland, or I can, as I have, decided to know about them but not dedicate my life to slandering the current UK on the basis of its past crimes. Fostering old wounds is not as useful to a country as forging valuable allegiances. Forgive, do not forget.

    Essentially accusing Britain as being a historical and current hotbed of anti-semites may gratify anger, but unless that accusation is properly qualified and carefully stated, with due respect to those who do not fit the accusation, and with due respect for the capacity of Britons to move beyond it, the accusation backfires profoundly on Jews and Israel. There are many Israel-sympathetic Britons and others on the fence, and you can lose sympathy among the Israel-sympathetic and knock those on the fence onto the wrong side.

    • John Pallyswine

      To be honest, Joe is correct re “Israel sympathetic Britons”. I have met some in my life. But they are the exceptions.

      Great British men such as Douglas Murray and Colonel Richard Kemp are very rare. These two men should be given honorary citizenship of Israel. They are very special.

      But the British, like all Europeans, have openly made their cost benefit decision. Sweden is perhaps the biggest supporter of a Palestinian country.

      It is time, Sir, that Britain act like the great men they claim themselves to be and speak about not just the Anglo history of the spread of debt and death, then resumed by the Americans, but also its current financial crimes and occupations of far away lands (used as tax havens), including GIBRALTAR and the FALKLANDS et al.

    • Joe The Gentile

      Further, with articles like this, Frontpagemag is undermining itself and the counterhihad.

      Frontpagemag was happy to interview Geert Wilders recently and its readers were glad to see it.

      If a leader like Geert Wilders arises in the UK, and such a leader may well, I would think Frontpagemag would like to interview him or her. However, Frontpagemag is undermining its ability to do so. Indeed if Frontpagemag had an article that was as anti-Dutch as this one is anti-British, Wilders might not have been willing or able to take the interview.

      Because a leader of the Netherlands or the UK would not be in a good position domestically to be interviewed by a magazine that is perceived as anti-Dutch or anti-British.

      It serves the Jihad for Jew and Gentile, for Israel and Europeans, for Americans and Europeans, to be divided. If I were an UNsophisticated Jihadi troll at Frontpagemag, I would come in with a Muslim user ID and a Muslim symbol, and start yelling abuse at everything infidel. I would be no more than an annoyance. If I were a sophisticated Jihadi troll on the other hand, I would do much more damage by appearing with a Star of David symbol, a Hebrew user ID, and consistently praising Israel while undermining Israeli-European relations and coming across as a ‘hateful Jew’, even delighting in the destruction of Europe under Islamization, as some users here do at times. For these reasons, the amateurs sometimes inevitably effectively work for the other side. They have an excuse — they are amateurs. The professionals do not have this excuse. And the damage the professionals do when they make these mistakes is also much greater than that of the amateurs, because the amateurs tend to be regarded so much less and what they say has much less power, good or bad.

      The editors and writers of Frontpagemag are expected to be professionals for their causes, and must be called up when they fail to be so.

  • Joe The Gentile

    “Churchill disagreed with Eden on Palestine policy but did not have the control over Eden that, for example, an American president has over his Cabinet members.)”

    I don’t think this is at all correct. An American cabinet member reports to the President and a British cabinet member reports to the cabinet, but the distinction is more technical than real. The fact that he British Prime Minister

  • Nabukuduriuzhur

    We are repeating the same mistakes.

    This morning I compiled a list comparing characteristics of National Socialists, Axis, and Democrats:

    http://www.holodiscustechnical.com/documents/side_by_side_comparison_of_democrat_nazi_and_min.html

  • herb benty

    God loves the Jews and Israel. The godless British elites, with their love of the occult, hatred for Christianity(Richard Dawkins) have now followed the path of other once great nations.

  • stevejfgb

    The full UK government memorandum can be seen at http://images.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/EFacs/1943v01/reference/frus.frus1943v01.i0010.pdf.

    The following passage regarding Jewish immigration to Palestine in 1943 is most telling:

    “… the authorities are not prepared, except possibly in individual cases, to accept male adults from enemy or enemy-occupied countries.”

    The document did express a willingness to accept children “within the limits imposed by the 1939 White Paper” but said nothing either way (that I noticed) about accepting women.

    The Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations unanimously said in June 1939 of the May 1939 White Paper

    “the policy set out in the White Paper was not in accordance with the interpretation which, in agreement with the Mandatory Power and the Council, the Commission had always placed upon the Palestine Mandate”

    and

    Four of the seven members “did not feel able to state that the policy of the White Paper was in conformity with the Mandate, any contrary conclusion appearing to them to be ruled out by the very terms of the Mandate and by the fundamental intentions of its authors.”

    See para 110 of the UK letter to UNSCOP on 2nd October 1947

    http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/16B8C7CC809B7E5B8525694B0071F3BD

  • MrVeryAngry

    There is not one State in the world that has not sinned against minorities. For example:-

    When the 1890 McKinley Act eliminated the tariff on sugar, it effectively destroyed the reciprocity advantage Hawaii had over other tropical regions and the islands’ economy collapsed. In the ensuing economic crisis, the American planters on the islands overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy, set up a Hawaiian Republic, and sought annexation by the United States.

  • Vinegar Hill

    You are entitled to your opinion but the fact is that Israel should withdraw from all territory occupied in the Six Day War. If you like, it can also be demonstrated that Israel has very dubious claims to any territory taken in 1948 as well!

    • imtirtzu

      Israel has the clearest and most legal claim over the territory pre and post 1967.

  • lumiss

    Excellent.