The reader will recall that in the years preceding the Second War Zionism was in collapse in Palestine; and that the British Parliament in 1939, having been forced by twenty years of experience to realize that the "Jewish National Home" was impossible to realize, had decided to abandon the unworkable "Mandate" and to withdraw after ensuring the parliamentary representation of all parties in the land, Arab, Jews and others. The reader then beheld the change which came about when Mr. Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940 and privately informed Dr. Weizmann (according to Dr. Weizmann's account, which has not been challenged) that he "quite agreed" with the Zionist ambition "after the war . . . to build up a state of three or four million Jews in Palestine".
Mr. Churchill always expressed great respect for parliamentary government but in this case, as a wartime potentate, he privily and arbitrarily overrode a policy approved, after full debate, by the House of Commons. After that, the reader followed Dr. Weizmann in his journeys to America and saw how Mr. Churchill's efforts "to arm the Jews" (in which he was opposed by the responsible administrators on the spot) received support from there under the "pressure" of Dr. Weizmann and his associates.
That was the point at which the reader last saw the Zionist state in gestation. Throughout 1944, as Mr. Churchill records in his war memoirs, he continued to press the Zionist ambition. "It is well known I am determined not to break the pledges of the British Government to the Zionists expressed in the Balfour Dec1aration, as modified by my subsequent statement at the Colonial Office in 1921. No change can be made in policy without full discussion in Cabinet" (June 29, 1944). The policy had been changed after full discussion in Cabinet and
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Parliament, in 1939. Here Mr. Churchill simply ignored that major decision on policy and reverted to the earlier one, echoing the strange words of another Colonial Secretary (Mr. Leopold Amery, earlier quoted) that this policy could not change.
Again, "There is no doubt that this" (the treatment of Jews in Hungary) "is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world . . . all concerned in this crime who may fall into our hands, including the people who only obeyed orders by carrying out the butcheries, should be put to death after their association with the murders has been proved . . . Declarations should be made in public, so that everyone connected with it will be hunted down and put to death" (July 11, 1944). Here Mr. Churchill, like President Roosevelt and Mr. Eden, implicitly links the execution of captives solely with their crimes against Jews, thus relegating all other sufferers to the oblivion in to which, in fact, they fell. Incidentally, the reader saw in the last chapter that Jews were among the tormentors, as well as among the victims.
To continue: "I am anxious to reply promptly to Dr. Weizmann's request for the formation of a Jewish fighting force put forward in his letter of July 4" (July 12, 1944). "I like the idea of the Jews trying to get at the murderers of their fellow-countrymen in Central Europe and I think it would give a great deal of satisfaction in the United States. I believe it is the wish of the Jews them selves to fight the Germans everywhere. It is with the Germans they have their quarrel" (July 26,1944). If Mr. Churchill, as stated by Dr. Weizmann, had agreed to the building up "of a state of three or four million Jews in Palestine", he must have known that the Zionists had a much larger quarrel with the population of Arabia, and that any "Jewish fighting force" would be more likely to fall on these innocent third parties than on the Germans.
Mr. Churchill's last recorded allusion (as wartime prime minister) came after the fighting in Europe ended: "The whole question of Palestine must be settled at the peace table. . . I do not think we should take the responsibility upon ourselves of managing this very difficult place while the Americans sit back and criticise. Have you ever addressed yourselves to the idea that we should ask them to take it over? . . . I am not aware of the slightest advantage which has ever accrued to Great Britain from this painful and thankless task. Somebody else should have their turn now" (July 6, 1945). (?!?!?!)
This passage (considered together with President Roosevelt's jocular remark to Stalin, that the only concession he might offer King Ibn Saoud would be "to give him the six million Jews in the United States") reveal the private thoughts of these premier-dictators who so docilely did the bidding of Zion. Mr. Churchill wished he could shift the insoluble problem to the American back; Mr. Roosevelt would gladly have shifted it on to some other back. In this matter the great men, as an unwary remark in each case shows, behaved like the comedian who cannot by any exertion divest himself of the gluey flypaper. Mr. Churchill, in this inter-
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office memorandum, ws not aware "of the slightest advantage that has ever accrued to Great Britain from this painful and thankless task". But in public, when Zion was listening, he continued (and to the moment of writing this book continues) to applaud the Zionist adventure in a boundless manner which aroused the curiosity even of Jewish critics (as will be seen).
