Did Britain create Israel?
[The Balfour] Declaration was made (a) by a European power, (b) about a non-European territory, (c) in a flat disregard of both the presence and the wishes of the native majority resident in that territory, and (d) it took the form of a promise about this same territory to another foreign group so that this foreign group might quite literally make this territory a national home for the Jewish people. . . . Balfour’s statements in the declaration take for granted the higher right of a colonial power to dispose of a territory as it saw fit.
– Edward Said
[The Balfour] Declaration was made
Overview of the truth
In 1917 the British government issued a letter to Baron Walter Rothschild instructing him to inform the Zionist Federation that the British Government “view[ed] with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. At that time the number of Jews living in the area that would become Israel was between 90,000 and 95,000 and they already had a de facto Jewish National Home.
The Jews in Palestine, some of whom had lived in the land for centuries, had established this homeland on the ground without the assistance of any colonial or imperialist powers. They had relied on their own hard work in building an infrastructure and cultivating land they’d legally purchased.
This letter did not establish a sovereign Jewish state, it was an endorsement of protectorate. Up until the day Israel declared independence the British government worked relentlessly against Jewish sovereignty in the region.
A timeline of British opposition to a Jewish state
- 1903 – Britain proposes the Jews establish a British protectorate in Kenya, instead of a region in modern day Egypt that was once part of King David’s Israel (Herzl had proposed a settlement in the Sinai Peninsula which was turned down by Lord Cromer).
- 1917 – In the Balfour Declaration Britain proposes a “Jewish National Home” in Palestine. The language inferred a British protectorate, rather than a Jewish State. They would only support a state when there was a Jewish majority in the land. Something they consistently tried to prevent.
- 1920 – After defeating the Ottomans the victors agreed that the Mandate of Palestine be awarded to the British on the condition they honor the promise in the Balfour Declaration (of a “Jewish National Home”).
- 1920– Col. Waters-Taylor, British Field-marshal Allenby’s Chief of Staff, met with Haj Amin, the Palestinian leader, a few days before Easter, and told him “he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world…that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine Administration but in Whitehall and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols [Chief Administrator in Palestine, 1919-20] and General Allenby [Commander of Egyptian Force, 1917-19, then High Commissioner of Egypt] would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.”
- 1921 – Britain gives Abdullah Hussein three quarters of Mandatory Palestine. Which became the Arab emirate of Transjordan.
- 1921 – Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, former head of British military intelligence in Cairo, and later Chief Political Officer for Palestine and Syria, wrote in his diary that British officials “incline towards the exclusion of Zionism in Palestine.”
- 1922 – Britain is granted Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations, until such time as the inhabitants of the land are able to stand alone. The “Jewish National Home” is not created, instead some Jews are granted permission to apply for citizenship of Mandatory Palestine.
- 1937 – The British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden ferociously campaigns to block Jewish sovereignty, on 26 November 1937 he told the British Ambassador in Washington he was looking for a solution “which would not give Jews any territory exclusively for their use”
- 1938 – The British government declares its Peel and Woodhead Commission proposals to divide Mandatory Palestine into two states as untenable.
- 1939 – While unfettered Arab immigration swells, made possible by Britain’s unrestricted immigration policy for Arabs to Mandatory Palestine. Britain issued the White Paper, a policy paper which severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, during a time when Jews were being persecuted in Europe (Britain kept these quotas in place when millions of Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust).
- 1946 – Britain creates internment camps in Cyprus to imprison Jews attempting enter Mandatory Palestine. Over 53,000 Jews are held captive and 400 die, many of these having just escaped the Nazis.
- 1946 – Britain puts the entire city of Tel Aviv, 250,000 Jewish residents, under house arrest.
- 1946 – British anti-Semitism is rife. The then British Palestine Commander, Lt. General Evelyn Barker issued an order banning British troops from socializing with Jews, going on to say, “[We] will be punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them”. 1 In a letter to a lover he wrote “Yes I loathe the lot – whether they be Zionists or not. Why should we be afraid of saying we hate them. Its time this damned race knew what we think of them – loathsome people” 2
- 1947 – The British government requests France and Italy prevent Jews from embarking for Palestine. The British Secret Service blows-up Holocaust refugee ships bound for Palestine-Israel under "Operation Embarrass".
- 1947 – The British ask the American government to ban fundraising for Israel, the Truman administration complies.
- 1947 – In a United Nations vote on the partition of Mandatory Palestine, 72% voted for the creation of Jewish and Arab states. Britain was the only Western nation that refused to vote.
- 1948/9 – Britain abstained from voting to admit Israel to the United Nations on both occasions Israel sought admission.
It should be noted that not all Britons were against the Zionist ideal, individuals like Winston Churchill, Lord Balfour and Herbert Samuel thought favorably of Jewish sovereignty in Israel. However, Britain’s allegiance had begun to shift in the early 1920’s as oil was discovered in Britain’s Mandate for Iraq and other Arab nations they were allies with.
Jewish protectorate in Kenya – the Uganda Plan
In October 1902 British Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, met with the founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl to discuss the idea a Jewish homeland. At the time Israel was under Ottoman rule, but its neighbor Egypt was a protectorate of Britain. Herzl proposed the idea of a settlement in the Egypt’s Sinai peninsula – near the borders of Israel. Though Chamberlain entertained the idea, the British government later rejected it.
A year later, following a brutal massacre of Jews in Kishinev, Chamberlain offered Herzl a British protectorate consisting of 5,000 square miles in an isolated area of Kenya. This became known as the Uganda Plan. Desperate to create a refuge for Jews fleeing anti-semitism the Zionist Congress sent a delegation to Kenya to review its suitability as an interim solution, until the re-establishment of Israel had been achieved. The delegation returned with a negative report and the proposal was rejected. This sequence of events was the first time Britain prevented a Jewish State in the Middle East.
The Balfour Declaration 1917
A few years later in 1906, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann met with Lord Arthur Balfour who’d been the British Prime Minister that authorized the Uganda Plan. Balfour asked why Weizmann had turned down a Jewish homeland in Kenya in favor of Palestine. Weizmann explained that there was always a Jewish communities in Palestine for thousands of years and that the Jews in the Diaspora yearned to return to their historical ancestral land and escape thousands of years of persecution in the Diaspora. These words stuck with Balfour and the two struck up a close relationship.3
As Europe was plunged into the horrors of World War I, the question of a Jewish homeland arose again. Two month’s after Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire, British politician and secular Jew, Herbert Samuel suggested in a governmental memorandum that if Palestine were conquered Britain should establish a home for the Jewish people under British Rule.4
In May 1916 the governments of the United Kingdom, France and Russia signed the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which defined how Western Asia should be divided if the Ottoman Empire were defeated. As Samuel had proposed the agreement placed Palestine under British rule.
The following year, influenced by Herbert Samuel’s memorandum and his own encounters with Chaim Weizmann, Balfour wrote a letter to the Zionist Federation (via Baron Rothschild) stating that Britain viewed favorably a “Jewish National Home” in Palestine. This letter became known as the Balfour declaration.
However, the declaration describe a Jewish state which is “a national home for the Jewish people” – the wording was specific for Jewish sovereignty. While many within the British Cabinet supported the Zionist program (Chamberlain, Samuel, et al), there were others who were strongly opposed to it and to this faction the idea of Britain renouncing sovereignty over Palestine and recreating a Jewish state was intolerable.
Leopold Amery, one of the Secretaries to the British War Cabinet of 1917–18 later testified under oath that from his personal knowledge “The phrase ‘the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people’ was intended and understood by all concerned to mean at the time of the Balfour Declaration that Palestine would ultimately become a ‘Jewish Commonwealth’ or a ‘Jewish State’, if only Jews came and settled there in sufficient numbers.“. 5
This distinction was to shape future immigration policy as Britain did many things that prevented a Jewish majority from forming.
Mandatory Palestine
A de facto Jewish homeland already existed in parts of Palestine, and its recognition by the Balfour Declaration became a matter of binding international law when Britain was granted Mandate of Palestine on 24 July 1922 by the fifty one member states of the League of Nations.
In the lead up to the Mandate being awarded, President Woodrow Wilson famously declared that the principle of self-determination should govern any postwar reorganization of territories that were formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Against this ideal Britain was granted the Mandate on the condition they re-establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
… Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour Declaration] and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might 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; andWhereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;…Article 7: The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.***
The Mandate stopped short of granting Jews sovereignty over the land, though it was understood that sovereignty would be granted if the Jews reached majority. 5 The only chance Britain had of denying sovereignty would be if they prevented the Jews from reaching a majority. For this reason, while many civil functions were placed under the autonomy of the Jews; immigration policy was not and Article 7 of the Mandate placed it firmly in the hands of the British.
Creation of Jordan
Shortly after the mandate, in September 1922, the League of Nations (which has no such authority) and Great Britain in violation of international law and treaties decided that the provisions for setting up a Jewish National Home in all of Palestine would not apply to the area east of the Jordan River (which constituted three quarters of the territory included in the Mandate). This region would be awarded to the Arabs and later become Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The original Mandate made no mention of an Arab National Home, but 70% of the population of Mandatory Palestine (Israel, Jordan and the disputed territories) was Arab Muslims and Christians 6, so it came as surprise that the Arabs were awarded 75% of the land, because it violated international law and treaties.
For the next 15 years Arab hostility to a Jewish National Home increased and hundreds of Jews and Britons were murdered by Arab Nationalists. Faced with mounting violence, the British commissioned two inquiries (Peel and Woodhead) both of which suggested land partitions. The Jews were willingly to negotiate the borders of both proposals, but the Arabs rejected them outright. Refusing accept even the tiniest of Jewish states in the region.
The British in-turn declared that none of the partition plans were tenable.
Jewish immigration restrictions to Palestine and British hostility to Zionism
Having given away illegally most of the Jewish land to the Arabs and unwilling to establish a Jewish National Home. The British entered a period of extreme hostility towards Zionism.
In 1939, a year after rejecting the commission’s partition plans, Britain introduced one of its most brutal policies. During this period Jews across Europe were being murdered and interned in ghettos by the Nazis. Against this backdrop Britain released a White Paper limiting Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine. 7 This policy which was in violation of international law and the terms of the Mandate for Palestine; which caused the death of millions of Jews trying to escape Nazi extermination camps.
In 1942 British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden famously confirmed in Parliament that the Nazis were exterminating Europe’s Jews, adding that Britain could do nothing to thwart the genocide other than winning the war. The very next year Eden personally blocked a request from the Bulgarian authorities to aid with deporting part of the Jewish population from newly acquired Bulgarian territories to British controlled Palestine. After his refusal, those Jews were transported to Poland for extermination by the Nazis.
While Arab migration swelled by the hundreds of thousands, attracted by the economic opportunities Zionism created. Jews seeking refuge from the Nazi horrors were illegally refused entry and locked in detention centers. This provoked a strong reaction and Zionist paramilitary groups began using force to change immigration policy to save their Jewish brethren from the holocaust.
In one infamous attack the Irgun bombed the British military headquarters which was stationed in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel. Several warning calls were placed – but ignored by the British. When the bomb exploded 91 people lost their lives (including 41 Arabs, 28 Britons and 17 Jews).8
As more Jews attempted to migrate to Mandatory Palestine British Government interned more and more of them in camps in Cyprus. The majority of these refugees were weak and disheveled having just escaped the Nazi death camps of Europe. In a cruel twist of fate, they now found themselves imprisoned behind the wire fences of another European superpower. Hundreds died and 73,000 refugees were held captive. 9
In another instance three Jews smuggling arms into Israel (for defense against Arab attacks) were sentenced to death by the British. The Irgun kidnapped two British sergeants in retaliation and warned if the Jews were executed the British soldiers would meet the same fate. The three Jews were executed on 29 July, and two days later the bodies of the soldiers were discovered hanged – their bodies booby-trapped. This caused a wave of anti-Jewish rioting throughout Britain and one London synagogue was burned to the ground.
Realizing and abandoning its obligation, the British obligation establishing sovereignty for the Jewish people in Palestine had been deserted. The British handed the problem over to the United Nations, relinquishing its control and responsibility over the region.
Britain refusing to vote for the sovereignty of Israel
If there was one moment in history that definitively captured Britain’s position on Jewish sovereignty, it was the 1947 United Nations partition vote. 72% of the nations taking part in the partition vote, voted for the sovereignty of Jewish and Arab states. Greece and Britain were only Western nations that did not vote in favor of creating Israel.
The charge that Britain created Israel was utterly refuted in this moment. From the beginning of the 20th century Britain favored a Jewish nation that was sovereign. But the idea of a Jewish sovereign state was as unpalatable in 1917 due to lack of Jewish majority, but 30 years later when the Jews became a majority; Britain refused to vote for a Jewish state. Britain wanted control of the oil in the Arab states.
Summary
Britain did not create Israel, it was created by Zionists that purchased and settled land and when the Supreme Allied Powers in 1920 executed a treaty that granted the reconstitution of the Jewish people its ancestral land of Palestine; and later recognized by the international community after declaring its sovereignty in 1948. The international community recognized the Jews struggle for self-determination and put in place a number of measures to help them realize this.
On the contrary, Britain went to great lengths to prevent a sovereign Jewish state in their ancestral homeland:
- Britain only ever supported a Jewish protectorate
- Britain gave away the vast majority of Palestine to the Arabs with the creation of Jordan
- Britain went to huge lengths to prevent Jews from settling in their ancestral homeland, while it opened the gates for Arab migrants
- Britain refused to vote for a sovereign Jewish state
- However, it should be noted that there were also British governments and politicians that were favorable to Zionism (such as those involved in the Balfour declaration). The purpose of this article is to document the efforts Britain made to block the Jewish state, which primarily evolved in the late 30's and 40's.
Israel’s juridical birth certificate is the pre-Holocaust San Remo Resolution and its incorporation of the 1917 Balfour Declaration having the force of international law and its execution by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine of 1922 (provisionally operative from 1920 international law and treaties) -- not the post-Holocaust United Nations Palestine Partition Plan of 1947. Moreover, the Mandate was itself explicitly based upon the preexisting “historical connection of the Jewish people with the land of Palestine Palestine
The Mandate forPalestine
The Mandate for
MANDATE FOR
The Council of the
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917 (the Balfour Declaration), by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might 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; and
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have selected His Britannic Majesty as the Mandatory for
Whereas the mandate in respect of
Whereas His Britannic Majesty has accepted the mandate in respect of Palestine and undertaken to exercise it on behalf of the League of Nations in conformity with the following provisions; and
Whereas by the aforementioned Article 22 (paragraph 8), it is provided that the degree of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the Mandatory, not having been previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, shall be explicitly defined by the Council of the League Of Nations;
Confirming the said Mandate, defines its terms as follows:
ARTICLE 1 The Mandatory shall have full powers of legislation and of administration, save as they may be limited by the terms of this Mandate.
ARTICLE 2 The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the Preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
ARTICLE 3 The Mandatory shall, so far as circumstances permit, encourage local autonomy.
ARTICLE 4 An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognized as a public body for the purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the control of the Administration, to assist and take part in the development of the country.
The Zionist Organization, so long as its organization and constitution are, in the opinion of the Mandatory, appropriate, shall be recognized as such agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the cooperation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.
ARTICLE 5 The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no
ARTICLE 6 The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the Land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.
ARTICLE 7 The Administration of
. . .
Since the Jewish people’s right to reestablish their nation-state in the biblical Land of Israel became a pillar of international law decades before the advent of the Holocaust, and since this aspect of international law was merely a formal acknowledgment of the 4,000 year old aboriginal Jewish right to the Land, it is a gross misrepresentation of History to claim that the State of Israel instead emerged from the womb of the United Nations, impregnated by alleged European remorse over the Holocaust.
Moreover, while the Holocaust did not create the State of Israel Israel
Learn more about how Israel as created:
- Did Israel get all of the good land?
- Did America create Israel?
- Was Israel carved out of stolen land?
- Was there ever a Palestinian people?
- Was there ever a country called Palestine?
- Was the Zionist movement a plot to colonise the Middle East?
- Were the Jews unwilling to share Palestine?
- Was the UN Partition Plan unfair to the Palestinian majority?
- Are Israel’s borders expanding?
- Did Britain create Israel?
- Why should the Palestinians pay for Europe's wrongs during the Holocaust?
Sources
1. “Conservative Party attitudes to Jews, 1900-1950”, Harry Defries p194
2. Israel State Archive, Section 123, P 867/2. 27 April 1947
3. Trial and Error, Chaim Weizmann, p111
4. The Future of Palestine, Herbert Samuel, 1915
5. The Palestine Yearbook of International Law 1984, Martinus Nijhoff
2. Israel State Archive, Section 123, P 867/2. 27 April 1947
3. Trial and Error, Chaim Weizmann, p111
4. The Future of Palestine, Herbert Samuel, 1915
5. The Palestine Yearbook of International Law 1984, Martinus Nijhoff
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