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What were Churchill’s actual views on the Jews?In 1982 I published Churchill’s written instructionsto Marshall Diston on what the articleshould cover. Churchill wrote: “Obviouslythere are four things. The first is to be a goodcitizen of the country to which he belongs. The second isto avoid too exclusive an association in ordinary mattersof business and daily life, and to mingle as much as possiblewith non-Jews everywhere, apart from race and religion.The third is to keep the Jewish movement free fromCommunism. The fourth is a perfectly legitimate use bythe Jews of their influence throughout the world to bringpressure, economic and financial, to bear upon theGovernments which persecute them.”*Churchill had always urged the Jews to be good citizens,while retaining their faith and culture. His advice tohis Manchester Jewish constituents in 1907 was: “Be goodJews.” He explained that he did not believe a Jew could be“a good Englishmen unless he is a good Jew.”A year later, at the first public meeting he attendedwith his wife Clementine, a few weeks after their marriage,he told those gathered to open a new wing of theManchester Jewish Hospital that he was “very glad to havethe experience of watching the life and work of the Jewishcommunity in England; there was a high sense of the corporateresponsibility in the community; there was a greatsense of duty that was fostered on every possible occasionby their leaders.”Avoiding “too exclusive” an all-Jewish associationwas another consistent theme. Churchill welcomed Jewsas part of the wider British community, and was impressedby how many accepted that challenge. His friendRufus Isaacs became (as Lord Reading) both Viceroy ofIndia and Foreign Secretary. But he was worried whenLloyd George wanted to include three Jewish CabinetMinisters among the seven Liberals in his 1918 administration,writing to the Prime Minister: “There is a pointabout Jews which occurs to me—you must not have toomany of them. Three Jews among only seven LiberalCabinet Ministers might I fear give rise to comment.”Keeping “the Jewish movement” free ofCommunism was another consistent theme. The prominenceof individual Jews in senior positions in theCommunist revolutions in Russia, Bavaria and Hungaryhad alarmed Churchill since the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.Writing about this in 1920 he urged the Jews toabandon Communism, and either enter into the nationallife of their own countries, as in Britain—“while adheringfaithfully to their own religion”—or opt for Zionism.* Martin Gilbert, ed., Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume V, Part3, The Coming of War: Documents 1936-1939, London: Heinemann,1982; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983, 654. See also Gilbert’s noteson the Diston draft of “King George VI,” page 519.Churchill regarded Zionism as “a very great ideal,”writing in 1920: “If as may well happen, there should becreated in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan aJewish State under the protection of the British Crown,which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, anevent would have occurred in the history of the worldwhich would, from every point of view, be beneficial.”Churchill’s 1922 White Paper established that theJews were in Palestine “of right, and not on sufferance.”During the Second World War he suggested appointingthe Zionist leader, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, as British HighCommissioner for Palestine (in 1910, as Home Secretary,Churchill had signed Weizmann’s naturalization papers).Fighting persecution was also Churchill’s consistentadvice to the Jews, at a time when he himself was beingabused by Nazi newspapers in Germany for his outspokencriticism of Nazi racial policy. Some of his most powerfulwords in the House of Commons after Hitler came topower were denunciations of the cruelty of Nazi anti-Semitic policies.Anti-Semitism was anathema to Churchill. In aletter to his mother he described the French anti-Semiticcampaign against Dreyfus as “a monstrous conspiracy.”His main criticism of the Conservative Government’sAliens Bill in 1904 was that the proposed immigrationcontrols could be abused by an “anti-Semitic HomeSecretary.”When, in the House of Commons in 1921,Churchill spoke in favour of Jewish land purchase inPalestine, a fellow Member of Parliament warned himthat, as a result of his advocacy, he would find himself up“against the hereditary antipathy which exists all over theworld to the Jewish race.” This was indeed so: in 1940 asenior Conservative gave as one reason for Churchill’sunsuitability to be Prime Minister his “pro-Zionist”stance in Cabinet, protesting against the Chamberlaingovernment’s restrictions on Jewish land purchase.During the Second World War, Churchill suggestedthe removal of “anti-Semitic officers” from high positionsin the Middle East. This led one of those officers, hisfriend General Sir Edward Spears, a Liberal MP, to warnthis writer that “Churchill was too fond of Jews.”Following the King David Hotel Jewish terroristbombing in 1946, at a time of strong anti-Jewish feelingin Britain, Churchill told the House of Commons: “I amagainst preventing Jews from doing anything which otherpeople are allowed to do. I am against that, and I have thestrongest abhorrence of the idea of anti-Semitic lines ofprejudice.”These were Churchill’s consistent, and persistentbeliefs. As he remarked when his criticisms of Jewishterrorism in Palestine were being discussed: “The Jewishpeople know well enough that I am their friend.”This was indeed so. ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 41