Posted on 08/02/2010 11:44:11 PM PDT by propertius
I’m glad Shimon Peres has retracted his claim that the British Establishment is motivated by anti-Semitism. It was a silly and unpresidential thing to say and, more to the point, it was inaccurate. No doubt it can be frustrating to deal with FCO mandarins; but, wrong as our officials are about most things, they are rarely anti-Semitic. It’s true that our diplomats tend to emphasise Britain’s relations with its former Arab protectorates, notably Jordan and the Gulf monarchies. Nothing wrong with that, of course, though you can see why it makes some Israelis uneasy. It’s true, too, that many FCO officials are Euro-federalists. Committed as they are to supra-nationalism, they subliminally resent the country which represents the world’s greatest vindication of the national principle. For 2000 years, Jews were stateless and scattered, but they never abandoned their dream of a homeland: “Next year in Jerusalem!” Then, against all the odds – providentially, we might almost say – they fulfilled it, thereby refuting the EU’s ruling doctrine, namely that the nation-state has no special legitimacy. So, are British civil servants unsupportive of Israel? Yes, sometimes. But the idea that anti-Semitism is unusually prevalent in Britain is wretchedly ahistorical. I suggest President Peres reads Paul Johnson’s History of the Jews. Johnson argues convincingly that, prior to the opening up of North America, England was the securest and freest place to live if you were Jewish.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
British behavior can also be proved by how they treated one of their own if he supported the Jews.
It may surprise you to know, if you don’t, that a British Christian military officer can be considered the “father of the IDF”
Orde Wingate was a British Christian Zionist who trained the Haganah and the Palmach, the fighting forces of the Jewish Agency, in how to fight Arab attacks.
Those he trained became the first officer corp of the IDF.
For doing this, the British punished him by transferring him away and prohibiting him from ever again entering Palestine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orde_Wingate
"it’s simply inane for Americans to cluck their tongues and point fingers at European history before the 1800s. BECAUSE IT’S YOUR HISTORY TOO, NUMBNUTS."
Your view of the world is London-centered and typically colonialist. It is very shallow to say that history of Britain is also history of colonial India, Kenya or America. Yes, various directives promulgated from London, but there is also cultural and social history. And only a victim of a modern secondary school would suggest that social history of the English Isles is the social history of India and America.
For Jews at the time it was not so much as the laws but the treatment by neighbors that mattered more. And, most certainly, it was different in London and the Massachusetts colony.
So your elitist catching of the poster on "forgetting" that our histories intertwined is as shallow as your name-calling unbecoming.
The British say they never received a warning. It’s quite possible. Did the Irgun really expect that in half an hour a message relayed second hand through the Palestine Post and the French consulate (that is, assuming the Irgun were telling the truth, and I know I would rather trust the British), that would have been enough time to evacuate the building?
Yes, and the Balfour Declaration says a Jewish homeland IN Palestine. That does not mean all Palestine, by any means. Lloyd George wanted Dan Beersheba, others suggested a much smaller homeland.
I don’t trust the British. For good cause.
You leave out that THREE calls were made. One to the British. I believe the fact that even you acknowledge that even outside actors, including the French, received the warning is proof that a warning was issued.
Begin knew that also Jews would die if the building was not evacuated. If you knew anything at all, anything, about Begin, you would know that he would have not have done this if he believed one Jew would be harmed.
He believed the British would heed the warning, but the British contempt for the Jews, and the British hubris that those lowly Jews wouldn’t dare bomb British HQ, resulted in their ignoring the warnings.
See: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/King_David.html
The King David Hotel was the site of the British military command and the British Criminal Investigation Division. The Irgun chose it as a target after British troops invaded the Jewish Agency June 29, 1946, and confiscated large quantities of documents. At about the same time, more than 2,500 Jews from all over Palestine were placed under arrest. The information about Jewish Agency operations, including intelligence activities in Arab countries, was taken to the King David Hotel.
A week later, news of a massacre of 40 Jews in a pogrom in Poland reminded the Jews of Palestine how Britain’s restrictive immigration policy had condemned thousands to death.
Irgun leader Menachem Begin stressed his desire to avoid civilian casualties and said three telephone calls were placed, one to the hotel, another to the French Consulate, and a third to the Palestine Post, warning that explosives in the King David Hotel would soon be detonated.
On July 22, 1946, the calls were made. The call into the hotel was apparently received and ignored. Begin quotes one British official who supposedly refused to evacuate the building, saying: “We don’t take orders from the Jews.”1 As a result, when the bombs exploded, the casualty toll was high: a total of 91 killed and 45 injured. Among the casualties were 15 Jews. Few people in the hotel proper were injured by the blast.2
For decades the British denied they had been warned. In 1979, however, a member of the British Parliament introduced evidence that the Irgun had indeed issued the warning. He offered the testimony of a British officer who heard other officers in the King David Hotel bar joking about a Zionist threat to the headquarters. The officer who overheard the conversation immediately left the hotel and survived.4
Sounds like Britain has won WW I singlehandedly. Do I sense a touch of complex of superiority in you, my friend?
And, of all people, it is you who hectors on history?
"and freeing Jerusalem from the Muslims, it set aside certain captured lands (all present-day Israel and Jordan) to be a Jewish homeland. This great gift was later attenuated "
A gift? This is more that elitist. Have you gifted Afghanistan to the Afghans when you left? Or Iraq to the "Iraqis," which never existed before. Look at the maps of your country from 1945 and 2000: have you "gifted" one quarter of the Earth's surface to the respective inhabitants, or did you run home with tail between your legs because your Empire has crumbled. Its people no longer identified with colonial enterprise, and became only slightly less socialist than the Soviets. Why do you single out Palestine as a "gift?" A bit patronizing, isn't it?
It is a pleasure to see a Brit who is proud of his heritage. British colonialism, in particular, has indeed civilized much of the world (compare, for instance, Barbados and Haiti). But your knowledge and view of the Britain's proud history may benefit from further study and analysis, respectively.
The Stern Gang did not try to collaborate with Hitler. They tried to come to an agreement to save Jews in exchange for aid fighting the British.
When Britain issued the Balfour Declaration it was a major indisputable World power. It was an Empire.
The betrayal of the Jews coincided with the beginning of the decline of the British Empire to the common status it has today. And with its Islamic overrun it will get worse.
One would think British hubris would have declined with their fortunes. I guess not. Give it time.
Britain ended Jewish migration in steps after 1929, while encouraging Arab migration. In 1947, they disarmed JEws and armed Arabs. Try again.
We don't know that, do we? You are arguing against something hypothetical. At so many turning points of Jewish history it looked like Jews themselves, and not just a dream, would have died. There are no reasons to believe that this particular dream would've died as well.
Palestine was not a colony. It was administered by Britain as part of a UN mandate.Please forgive me. I should have written, "administered like a colony," by the same Foreign Office, or have you yet to read Hannah Arendt's On Totalitarianism trilogy, where she describes the link between colonial-imperial policy and the evolution of European notions of race, developments the British participated in.
propertius wrote: “if it hadn’t been for the Balfour Declaration, the whole dream would have died.”
And if not for the Munich Pact Hitler might have been contained and there would not have been a Holocaust.
Haiti was a French colony (that explains a lot).
One would think French hubris would have declined with their fortunes. I guess not. Give it time.
One would think Arab hubris would have declined with their fortunes. I guess not. Give it time.
How much time do we need?
Those would be illegal refugees wouldn’t they?That would depend on your point of view. To the Jews who escaped the slaughter-house on the European peninsula, or to the many Jews who migrated peacefully to Ottoman Palestine for 50 years before the Shoa to plant vinyards, orchards, and groves of fruit trees in the desolate wastes that the Arabs had long ago abandoned, there were higher laws at stake.
Britain’s saving grace vis a vis the Jews was Churchill, and it was a further tragedy that he was kicked out right after the war.So, who let the Jews out?
True, but not for long. The French appear not to have left there any of their own institutions either.
That's a great analogy, HM.
True — Judeophobic is more accurate. But it’s false that there’s a philo-Semitic tradition — the British have merely been sniffing the asses of Moslems wherever they encountered them during the Sun-never-sets period.
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