Israel: An Anti-Colonial Triumph

Spiked ^ | 3/30/25 | James Heartfield

[EnderWiggin1970]

The history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine has become a contest of one-sided interpretations and outright myths. For Israelis, Palestine was never a country. For Palestinians and their supporters in the West, Israel is an illegitimate settler-colonial state.

There is perhaps no historical moment that has been more distorted by such mythmaking than 1948, the year the British colonial ‘mandate’ ended and the modern state of Israel was founded. It was a moment of celebration for the Zionist movement, which had finally realised its dream of a Jewish homeland. But it was a moment of misery for Arabs. Indeed, it is remembered as a ‘catastrophe’ or ‘disaster’ – the Nakba. In their telling, it was the moment when hundreds of thousands were exiled to refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank and in Lebanon and Syria.

To Arabs, Britain has often been portrayed as the midwife to the Israeli victory. ‘The British and the Jews defeated us’, said one prominent refugee at the time. The Brits gave ‘their weapons to the Jews’, said another. According to Palestinian artist Ismail Shammout, British support for Zionism was a conspiracy (1). The Arabs of Palestine were certainly right to conclude that history had defeated them. But the nature of that defeat has long been mischaracterised as a British-Jewish collaboration, when nothing could be further from the truth.

[EnderWiggin1970]

While there were Zionist British officers such as Orde Wingate in the 1930's, this article highlights the role of the British in arming and leading (with embedded officers) the Arab army that fought to destroy Israel at its founding.

[Sam Gamgee]

Yes, total pikers the British. They left arms for the Palestinians as you said, some wanted Jewish blood so they enlisted with the Jordanians and killed Jews. I don’t know if it was Jew hate or more Arab love that motivated them.

[Reily]

The British tried to keep both sides happy. Something akin to a square circle.

[x]

The story he tells doesn’t justify the message he wants to draw from it. Britain recognized that it wasn’t going to hold on to Palestine and opposed those who were the greatest threat to the peace. Arabs in the 30s, Zionists in the 40s. “Anti-imperialism” is no guarantee that one’s policies are correct.

[Uncle Miltie]

Settler colonialist arab muslims should go back to Arabia from which they launched their genocidal wars of conquest against the Levant’s native Christians and Jews.

[Rummyfan]

The thing is … there was always a Jewish presence in ‘Palestine’ which whatever that is didn’t really exist prior to 1948.

Secondly, when the Zionist movement became serious in the late 1800s early 1900s, the Arab PTB mostly sold the land to Jews coming in. But these moderate Arabs were murdered by the extremists.

Thirdly, even after the 1948 partition, the Arabs could have stayed. But they were promised by the hardliners in Jordan / Syria / Egypt they could come back after the Jews were eliminated and reclaim their lands. Hows that worked out?!

[Rummyfan]

The Brits were really of two minds about Palestine / Israel / the Jews…. OTOH, without the Balfour Declaration and officers like Wingate and others - not just sympathizers to the Zionist cause on a personal level but believing it to be almost a Biblical prophesy come to life - there were many old-fashioned anti-Semites.

[MacNaughton]

Settler colonialist arab muslims should go back to Arabia from which they launched their genocidal wars of conquest against the Levant’s native Christians and Jews.

KIS,S!