Churchill, Palestine and Zionism, 1904-1922 - Douglas J. Feith

248 DOUGLAS J. FEITH
Addressing Britain's wartime pledges to Arabs and Jews and its new
mandates, Churchill said that the "paramount object" of the Middle East
department was large-scale reduction of civil and military expenditures.
Notwithstanding the costs, however,
we cannot repudiate light-heartedly these undertakings. We cannot ... leave the
inhabitants, for whose safety and well-being we have made ourselves responsible
in the most public and solemn manner, a prey to anarchy and confusion of the
worst description. We cannot ... leave the Jews in Palestine to be maltreated by
the Arabs who have been inflamed against them.
This would not accord with Britain's "duty," nor would it "be in accordance
with the reputation that our country has frequently made exertions
to deserve and maintain." 107
Two days later, the Times editorialized that, if he had "carried his analysis
of the present difficulties a little further," Churchill
might have discovered that one of the chief obstacles to peace is a fixed scepticism
amongst many of the agents of the Government in Palestine about Zionism and
the Jewish national home; and Sir Herbert Samuel, in prohibiting Jewish immigration
after the Jaffa riots, may have been the unwilling victim of his agents. The
embargo on immigration (now removed) was a profound mistake of policy.loS
Churchill concurred with Samuel that it was undesirable to expound
plainly the goals of the Jewish national home policy. Whereas Meinertzhagen
believed that vagueness on this point encouraged the anti-Zionists,I09
were not Bolsheviks and that their achievements were yielding material benefits to both
themselves and their Arab neighbors. He had declared there: "I defy anybody after
seeing work of this kind, achieved by so much labour, effort and skill, to say that the
British Government, having taken up the position it has, could cast it all aside and leave
it to be rudely and brutally overturned by the incursion of a fanatical attack by the Arab
population from outside" (WSC IV 574).
107 WSC IV 594-8. Though Churchill insisted that Britain must fulfill its obligations in the
Middle East, he would have supported assigning these obligations to the United States
if the latter were willing to accept them. On June 9, 1921, he enthusiastically endorsed
what he thought was a suggestion to this effect from Lloyd George: WSC IV C 1498-
9. The next day, Lloyd George disclaimed and dismissed the idea: WSC IV C 1500.
108 Cohen, Churchill and the Jews, 111 (June 16, 1921, editorial).
109 He wrote in his diary, "Both in Palestine and in the Colonial Office great weakness has
been manifest as a result of the recent anti-Jewish riots in Jaffa. The anti-Zionists have
used the occasion to demonstrate the futility and unfairness of the movement and its
inevitable failure .... Sir Herbert Samuel has been weak. The moment the Jaffa rioting
broke out, he and his staff seem to have been hypnotized by the danger and everything
was done to placate the Arab ... whereas what the Arab wanted was a good sound
punishment for breaking the peace and killing Jews. The Arab is fast learning that he
can intimidate a British Administration. Samuel has not been able to stand up to the
solid block of anti-Zionist feeling among his military advisers and civil subordinates.
"Surely it is time we stood by our policy and told the Arab we shall not be intimidated