by Hal Lindsey
In the next chapter, however, we will see how those good motives were hijacked on the way to Jerusalem.
[ THIRTEEN ]
BRITAIN’S BETRAYAL:
THE SELLOUT OF THE JEWS
“This land is capable of supporting a large population if irrigated and cultivated scientifically. . . . The Zionists have as much right to this no-man’s land as the Arabs, or more.
—ARNOLD TOYNBEE215
“If we must have preferences, let me murmur in your ear that I prefer Arabs to Jews.”
—ANTHONY EDEN, British secretary of foreign affairs216
ELEMENTS OF BETRAYAL
Of all the injustices perpetrated against the Jewish people in the Holy Land, the worst is the way their land has been continually reduced from its original mandated seize. As we have seen, historical evidence shows that during the four centuries under Ottoman control, the Holy Land reached its ultimate state of desolation.
During that period, the absentee landlord effendis practiced such calloused usury and taxation on the poor Arab’s who attempted to farm the land that they all were eventually overwhelmed with debt and fled the land. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, every report from officials and visitors described a land virtually absent of any settled people. Remarks such as these call attention to the terrible condition of the land, and speak of hardly any living souls inhabiting the vast desolation that lay between the few villages and towns.
True history also reveals there has continually been a sizable Jewish remnant living in the Holy Land despite the Roman destruction of Israel in A.D. 70 and the final crushing of Jewish rebellions in the second century A.D. Amazingly, as we jump forward to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the number of Jews living in Jerusalem actually exceeded the number of Muslims.
Another very important factor we saw in previous chapters is that the Arab-Muslim world of the nineteenth-century Middle East was totally wiped clean of national entities. All semblances of independent states and nationalism were crushed during the centuries of harsh Ottoman occupation of the Arabs. All that was left were tribal sheikdoms that warred with each other constantly, and the small Arab Hashemite Kingdom of the Hedjaz region that controlled Mecca and Medina.
Whence Cometh the Palestinians?
There never was any such thing as a Palestinian state—much less a people known as “Palestinians.” The few Arabic-speaking people that lived there thought of themselves as “Ottomans,” “Turks,” “Southern Syrians,” or simply as “Arab people,” but never as “Palestinians.” The migratory Bedouins who seasonally moved through the area never had any claim to the land.
The Jews who began to come to the Holy Land in earnest during the mid-nineteenth century bought land from the all-too-willing-to-sell Ottoman effendis and the few local owners, who also were delighted to sell the desolated lands for enormously inflated prices.
Jews Become “Victims” of Their Success
At the price of Herculean labor and the loss of many lives to malaria, the Jews began to reclaim the land and make it flourish. This is when a significant number of poor Arab-Muslim people flocked to the land the Jews had settled, to find work and a better standard of living. Becoming victims of their own success, little did these Jews realize that these migrant Arabs they were helping would later claim that the Jews had “stolen their land that had belonged to their families from time immemorial.” Most of these so-called Palestinian refugees couldn’t even establish to the UN officials sent to help them that they had lived in Palestine more than two years before fleeing in 1948 to allow the Arab armies to annihilate the new state of Israel.
The Balfour Declaration
This was the condition of the Middle East the British Parliament knew. It was because of full knowledge of all these conditions that Lord Balfour and other members of the British Parliament thought it not an invasion of Arab-Muslim land to set forth the propositions contained in the Balfour Declaration. The motto of the British forming committee was, “A people for a land, for a land without a people.” Furthermore, the League of Nations concurred with the declaration for all the same reasons. As we have noted in this and in previous chapters, apart from a few villages and towns, the land was an utter desolation devoid of people. No one could live in it until the returning Jews almost miraculously restored it.
It was because of the above facts that the actual Balfour Declaration of 1917 was a rather simple statement. A simple statement was thought all that was necessary. It committed Britain to work toward the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the vast wasteland of the area designated as the Palestinian territory. It reads:
His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
With its passage in the Parliament, Lord Balfour expressed the Parliament’s general feelings, saying, “We hope that the ‘small notch’ of Palestine being given the Jews would not be ‘grudged’ by the Arab leaders.”
Now look at the map (No. 1) on page 184, and see what Lord Balfour referred to as “a small notch” of Palestine. This map shows the borders specifically designated for a Jewish National Homeland by the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
On January 4, 1919, a formal agreement on this mandated Jewish homeland illustrated by map No. 1 was signed in London. The signatories were: His Royal Highness the Emir Feisal ibn-Hussein, representing and acting on behalf of the Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz, and Chaim Weitzmann, representing and acting on behalf of the Zionist Organization.217
The Balfour Declaration was the end product of a great many debates and compromises within the British government but, without question, reflects the unequivocal goal at the time. Later, all kinds of ridiculous interpretations were placed on the declaration, but representatives of all sides clearly and unambiguously understood at the time: A Jewish state was to be established as soon as Jewish immigration and development was sufficient in the barren wilderness of Palestine.
Map 1
1917 The Jewish National Homeland The Balfour Declaration
The League of Nations Mandate
The boundaries of this new nation were codified and approved unanimously by the League of Nations five years later (1924) with Britain being given authority over the entire Middle East, from the Mediterranean to the borders of India. The territory that would become the state of Israel—then variously referred to as “Palestine,” “Western Palestine,” “South Syria,” or even as part of Turkey—extended east and west of the Jordan River from the Mediterranean to Arabia and Iraq, and north and south from Egypt to Lebanon and Syria. On today’s map, that would include most of the Arab nations of Jordan, southern Lebanon, and the Sinai. (See map No. 2 on page 186)
At the same time, independent Arab statehood was being granted to Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. With this giant landmass being turned over to Arab control, Lord Balfour hoped that the “small notch” of Palestine being given to the Jews would not be “grudged” by Arab leaders. The land originally given here was considerably bigger than today’s Jewish state, even if you include the territories Israel captured in June 1967. There is some evidence to show that Arab leaders were initially satisfied with their acquisition and unquestioning as far as the status of Jewish Palestine.
In a letter to then-Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill from Col. T. E. Lawrence in January 1921, Lawrence it stated that Emir Feisal, the man who had led the Arab revolt, had “agreed to abandon all claim of his father to [Western] Palestine,” if Feisal got Iraq and Eastern Palestine as Arab territories. (See copy of letter in Appendix A) In fact, Emir Feisal had written in his own hand a letter agreeing to exactly this in a 1919 meeting with Zionist representative Chaim Weizmann. (See Appendix B)
Furthermore, in an agreement worked out between Chaim Weizmann, leader of the British Zionist movement, and Feisal, both sides pledged the “closest possible collaboration” and “most cordial goodwill” in working out the details of the creation of the modern Arab states and Israel.218 (See complete copy of Agreement in Appendix C).
Map 2
The Arabs probably felt magnanimous at the time because they had just come out of having nothing of their own during the many centuries of the Ottoman occupation. Then suddenly Britain hands them an enormous gift of land and sovereign states for doing virtually nothing to earn it. This is why Lord Balfour could not imagine that they would “begrudge the small notch of land” the Jews were being given.
Britain Gives Away 75 Percent of the Jew’s Mandated Land
It wasn’t long, however, before Abdullah, brother of Feisal ibn-Hussein, decided he should have Transjordan as his kingdom. He protested to the British, who unilaterally decided to carve out of the Jewish Palestine mandate 75 percent of its territory, the area then known as Transjordan, and hand it over to Abdullah.219
The main reason Abdullah, who was a Hashemite, was in Transjordan was because the tribe of Ibn Saud and his fanatical sect of Wahabi Muslims had just driven the Hashemite tribe out of Mecca and Medina. The Hashemites had been custodians of those holy sites for centuries, but now the Wahabis were in charge of Mecca and Medina and all of Arabia.
Feisal, the ruler of the Hashemites, was the one with whom the British Foreign Office made promises for fighting against the Turks. Abdullah argued that the British gave his brother Feisal Ibn-Hussein both Syria and Iraq, but had given him nothing. So the British Foreign Office scrambled to give Abdullah the major part of the land they were bound by League of Nation mandate to give to Israel. Now recall, this was all done on the basis of the T. E. Lawrence myth that said they had significantly helped Britain defeat the Ottoman Turks in the Middle East.
The League of Nations mandate for Palestine remained unchanged even though Britain had unilaterally altered its map and its purpose,” explains Joan Peters. “The Mandate included Transjordan until 1946, when that land was declared an independent state. Transjordan had finally become the de jure Arab state in Palestine just two years before Israel gained its Jewish statehood in the remaining one-quarter of Palestine; Transjordan comprised nearly 38,000 square miles; Israel, less than 8,000 square miles.”220 (See map No. 3 on page 189)
How Britain Violated Its Mandate
When Britain gave Transjordan to Abdullah, it specifically violated Article 5 of the mandate given by the unanimous approval of the League of Nations at the San Remo Conference July 24, 1922. (See complete document in Appendix C)
Article 5 stated, “The Mandatory [Britain] shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, the Government of any foreign Power.” Abdullah was a foreign power and certainly not part of the Zionist organization to whom Transjordan had been given.
The local British officials of the Foreign Office grossly violated the main reason for Britain being given the mandate by the League of Nations. They were specifically charged only with facilitating the immigration of Jews to Palestine to populate and settle the land that had been granted as a Jewish homeland. Britain had express instructions not to allow or facilitate more immigration of Arabs into the land mandated for the Jewish homeland.
As the following details will show, the British did exactly the opposite of what they were mandated to do. They increasingly restricted Jewish immigration while opening the floodgates to Arab immigration.
Map 3
1921 35,000 square miles of the Jewish National Homeland were given to Arabs (80% of their promised land was lost).
The Real Palestinian State
This historical footnote to the Arab-Israeli conflict should shatter another Muslim myth. The modern-day state known as the Royal Kingdom of Jordan was and is clearly and literally an independent Palestinian-Arab state located geographically on most of the land once called Palestine. Its population is mostly made up of the former migrant Arab farmers who began to call themselves “Palestinians.” Abdullah and other Arab leaders admitted as much just prior to launching their war of aggression against the new state of Israel in 1948.
Western Media thought that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was just being sarcastic and evasive when a newsman asked him, “If he would give the Palestinians a state.” He answered, “There already is a state of Palestine—it’s called Jordan.” That sounded preposterous to the reporters, because most of them have no knowledge of that area’s history. But Sharon not only knew that history well, he is a living eyewitness to the reasons Chaim Weizmann was willing to forfeit 75 percent of Israel’s mandated territory. It was because Feisal Ibn-Hussein, acting on behalf of the Arab people, signed an agreement that this would be used as the homeland of any migrant Arabs, also known as “Palestinians,” that might be displaced by the mandated Jewish homeland.
“Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country,” said Abdullah. His prime minister, Hazza al-Majali, went even further: “We are the army of Palestine . . . the overwhelming majority of the Palestine Arabs are living in Jordan.”221 This confirms that the Arabs recognized Jordan as a homeland of the so-called Palestinians.
East and West Palestine
It is the forgotten concept of “Eastern” and “Western” Palestine that is at the root of another Arab myth. Because as we have seen already, most of the Palestinian population was “excluded from the new state of Israel not by force but by where borders were drawn on the map by the British, false assumptions have been perpetuated on the world. This is at the root of why people generally accept the idea that Jews forced Palestinians out of their homeland. As we have seen in earlier chapters, the settled Muslim population in what became the Jewish state only began growing after the time Jewish emigration began in the 1880s through 1948. The evidence repeatedly shows that the migrant Arab workers came to Palestine seeking jobs after the Jews began to reclaim the land.
As Peters, who conducted a first-hand population study in the region, puts it: “The ‘unprecedented’ sudden ‘natural’ increase among Arabs of Western Palestine after centuries of static population figures was intriguing. That extraordinary increase was represented as a countrywide ‘phenomenon.’”222
The purpose of Peters’ original study was “to determine whether in fact there was a large-scale displacement of Arab natives by Jews in Western Palestine before and at the time of the November 1947-1948 war of Arabs against Jewish independence.” Peters admits that when she began the investigation her sympathies were with the “Palestinian refugees.” She expected to find evidence of Israeli aggression against helpless Palestinians and of Jewish occupation of Palestinian family lands.
Peters was astonished at the evidence she found. She writes, “What the calculations indicate is that, rather than a situation in which a teeming Arab people, present ‘from time immemorial,’ was forced off or excluded from its land, the situation is almost the exact opposite . . . the Jews, whose presence attracted Arab migrants, and the Jews’ land, earmarked as their Home, was usurped by the arrival of these Arab in-migrants from outside Jewish-settled areas.”223
More Falsehoods Discovered
Peters also found in her original population investigation:
Even the earlier conservative estimates of Muslim population in the Jewish-settled areas of Palestine had been grossly exaggerated.224
Arabs indeed migrated from the depressed areas of the region to those places where they could gain greater economic advantage in the Jewish-settled areas.225
Overlooking the Obvious
So, why was this factor of “explosive Arab population growth” not investigated or at least considered before? It was simply because the British never attempted to count Arab in-migration or illegal Arab immigration. They on
ly quantified Jewish immigration into the Holy Land, and they did this with scrupulous zeal for details. Furthermore, Peters found, the population was never accurately identified by location or analyzed according to Jewish and non-Jewish areas.
Amazingly, the false assumptions in subsequent generations have been that “all Palestine was Jewish-settled” and “Jewish-settled Palestine was all Arab Palestine.” Most of the British Foreign Service could never get it through their heads that the Jews came to a land that was an utter desolation and almost entirely barren of settled people of any kind. But some influential British Foreign Service officers did not care what the facts were. They just didn’t like Jews.
So what made the British turn a blind eye toward this kind of one-sided population movement? Clearly, within the British Foreign Service there were men who wanted to see the idea of a Jewish state fail. For the sake of their own imperial ambitions in the Middle East, they preferred working with the Arabs rather than with the more troublesome, independently minded Jews.
Underlings Secretly Reverse Foreign Policy
When British Gen. Edmund Allenby walked reverently into Jerusalem, leading his army of liberation on December 9, 1917, he was set to institute a military government. Unfortunately, virtually the entire staff of Ronald Storrs, the governor of Jerusalem, was riddled with army officers who did not believe in the principles of the Balfour Declaration. Without authorization, they reversed on the field the official policy of their government and sabotaged the mandate given their country by the League of Nations. Had this been discovered and investigated at the time, it would have been considered a crime at best and treason at worst. These men betrayed the official policy of their government.
One example of this group’s illegal action was when Gov. Storrs decided to placate the spiritual leader of the Muslims of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem. You will recall from earlier in the book that al-Husseini stayed for a couple of years in Nazi Germany as the special guest of Adolf Hitler, learning how to deal with “the Jewish Problem.” The Grand Mufti Husseini, to whom Yasser Arafat was related, used a subtle blend of religious rhetoric, threats, terror, and very real physical violence to get his way. And, as much as he used the British, those pro-Arab Foreign Service officers also tried to use him.