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

Palestine and Zionism, 1904-1922 257
violated Britain's wartime pledges to Sherif Hussein and contradicted the
"wishes of the great majority of the people of Palestine."132
Balfour, newly created earl, rose to oppose the motion. In this, his
maiden speech in the House of Lords, he explained that the ground that
"chiefly moves me" to support Zionism is not "materialistic" but rather
a desire to help solve "the great and abiding Jewish problem.,,133 As for
the purported injustice to the Arabs of Palestine, he stated: "Of all the
charges made against this country ... the charge that we have been unjust
to the Arab race seems to me the strangest." He noted that it was British
troops, British generals, and British blood that freed the Arab people
from Turkish rule, and it was Britain that established Arab kings in
Mesopotamia and the Hejaz:
And that we ... who have ... done more than has been done for centuries past
to put the Arab race in the position to which they have attained ... should be
charged with ... having taken a mean advantage of the course of international
negotiations, seems to me not only most unjust to the policy of this country, but
almost fantastic in its extravagance. 134
Balfour's heated eloquence notwithstanding, however, the Lords voted
overwhelmingly-sixty to twenty-nine-that Britain should reject the
mandate.
The issue of British responsibility for Palestine came to a head in the
House of Commons on 4 July. As in the Lords, the anti-Zionists attacked
Zionism in principle and the Rutenberg hydroelectric power concession
in particular. (Churchill had approved the concession the previous September.)
They protested that the Palestine administration was dominated
by Jews who had "Zionised" the country. 135
132 Christopher Sykes, Cross Roads to Israel (London: Collins, 1965), 90.
133 Cohen, Speeches by Balfour, 59, 64-5: "Surely, it is in order that we may send a message
to every land where the Jewish race has been scattered ... that Christendom is not
oblivious of their faith, is not unmindful of the service they have rendered to the great
religions of the world, and, most of all, to the religion that the majority of your Lordships'
House profess, and that we desire ... to give them that opportunity of developing,
in peace and quietness under British rule, those great gifts which hitherto they have been
compelled ... only to bring to fruition in countries which know not their language and
belong not to their race."
134 Ibid., 57-8. In his memoirs, Lloyd George made essentially the same point: "No race has
done better out of the fidelity with which the Allies redeemed their promises to the
oppressed races than the Arabs. Owing to the tremendous sacrifices of the Allied Nations
... the Arabs have already won independence in Iraq, Arabia, Syria, and Transjordania,
although most of the Arab races fought [for Turkey] .... The Palestinian Arabs fought
for Turkish rule." David Lloyd George, Memoirs of the Peace Conference, 2 vols. (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1939), vol. 2, 723-4.
135 WSC IV 651.