Trudy Gold
Britain and Palestine in 1945
Trudy Gold | Britain and Palestine in 1945 | 06.24.21
- Good morning.
Good morning. Good morning to you. Good evening. I couldn’t get on.
You okay? Everything fine?
Yes, my son-in-law’s going to be a coach at Wimbledon. He’s going to coach one of the athletes, so-
Fantastic!
Yeah, it’s exciting. Fabulous for him.
[Trudy] Well, that’s very, very exciting.
Yeah, so, you know, he used to play, yeah, he used to be a professional player and-
Oh? What, Theo?
No, no, Brandon Shanefast.
Oh, how fantastic. Tell me.
I mean, no, he didn’t play the circuit. He was a very good tennis player. Are we live?
Yes, we’re live, and you can chit chat. We absolutely-
Oh, I’m so sorry. Oh, I’m so sorry. All right, so-
Actually, Wendy,
Okay, so.
[Judi] Wendy, yesterday, I didn’t listen last night, but I had such wonderful feedback, and everyone goes, “Please, please, Wendy, continue with the chit chat. We absolutely love it.” So there are those few people who don’t like it, but 99% of them absolutely
Wendy,
adore the chit chat.
it seems they like it. Okay.
So keep it up.
Anyway, tell me when you want me to start, will you?
I definitely will, but for those South Africans who are on, Lloyd Harris is going to be playing for South Africa, and there’s an Israeli by the name of Yoni Erlich, and so Brandon’s going to be coaching him. For those who are interested in tennis, it’s going to be exciting for all of us. So okay. Let’s talk about Britain and Palestine in 1945. Good morning. Good evening. It’s lovely to be with everybody, and I’m now going to hand over to you. Thank you.
Thanks, Wendy.
Thank you.
I’m sorry. Sorry for the chit-
No, they love it.
Oh, you don’t anyway.
No, no, no. It’s human and we need it. We’re living in a mad world, and we’re dealing with tough subjects. It’s human.
Well, it’s lovely to be connected as a community. That’s the thing, and it’s lovely to root for each other and, you know-
It is a community. It really is.
Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.
- All right. As my father would’ve said, . Anyway, good evening everyone from Cornwall, and tonight, the subject is Britain and Palestine in 1945. And it’s important to remember the kind of emotion that Jews would’ve felt at V-Day, because on one level, the war was over, but the horror was revealed, what on earth could be the solution for the Jewish people?
And as I explained to you already, and I know most of you know this from your reading, even if Zionism been a minority movement right up until the 30s, sometime in the war and certainly in 1945 in the DP camps because, of course, last time we were looking at what happened to the displaced persons who tried to go home and how so many of them met such appalling hostility, and, of course, it culminated in Kielce in Southern Poland in 1946 when over 82 people were either murdered or terribly wounded, and, in all, over 500 Polish Jews were murdered when they tried to go home. And I think what really sticks in my craw, including the chap who had led the Sobibor uprising. So that was the situation.
But before we can get onto Britain and Palestine in 1945, because I’ve had so many questions about the Middle East and maps, with your indulgence, and some of you will know this very well, I’m going to use Martin Gilbert’s maps to actually look at the geography of Palestine, and I want to take you back briefly to the First World War. So Judi, could we see the first map please? Okay, you see, these are from Martin Gilbert’s history atlas, and you will notice, and you can may increase it on your screen by just putting your hands on it, you will notice the vilayet of Damascus, the vilayet of Aleppo.
Basically take all the borders out of your minds because in the First World War, these were all districts of the Turkish Empire. Yes, they were very important cities like Damascus, Jerusalem, Beirut, et cetera, but they’re all part of the Turkish empire, and we’ve done this in a lot of details. So I’m just going to give you a heads up on the geography of it all. In order to win the First World War, obviously you send an army in, but if you can persuade the indigenous population to rise up, that works, too. So what the British did was, and remember, the British already had interests in the Middle East, and it’s important to remember what British aims really were in the Middle East. This is the days of empire.
The British Empire was actually at its height in 1926. They already had Suez, they had the whole of Egypt, and they dreamt of an empire that would stretch all the way to India. Now, who were their allies? The French and the Russians at this stage. And it’s interesting because, at the end of 1914, a memo comes out of the foreign office, not shredded, saying, “British interests are best served by stopping French and Russian empire building.” So anyway, the British high commissioner in Egypt sends a letter to one of the most powerful men in the Arab world, a man called the Emir Hussein Sharif of Mecca. Mecca and Medina are the two great sites. They’re in what’s known as the Hejaz, now known as Saudi Arabia.
These are the great sites of Islam, and he promises them land in the Middle East centred on Damascus because that was once the greatest Arab dynasty. Don’t forget, the Arabs had a great and glorious history. If you go back to the 8th, 9th centuries, go back to the 10th century, take the year 1000, in the year 1000, Europe was so pygmy compared to the culture of Islam and to the culture of the Arab world, and this is what the British are doing. They’re stirring up memory. Look, the 19th century is the century of nationalism. Zionism had been born in the 19th century, but this is the stirrings of Arab nationalism. And in return for this promise, the Emir Hussein promised to revolt against the Turks, and it was his son Faisal, who, with Lawrence of Arabia, led the famous revolt in the desert.
So a promise was made. Can we go on please, Judi? But the war’s not going too well for the British, and the French are their allies. So basically, they do a secret deal with the allies, with the French; it’s called the Sykes-Picot Agreement. And if you take a line north of Acre, stretch the map with your finger, you will see that that line north of Acre, everything from that line upwards and outwards is to be French. Everything below the line is to be British. Now the white area, you see the white area, which, of course, encompasses much of what is now Israel, that was to be international. But the British reserved themselves the port of Haifa and Acre, so that was the plan then. And please don’t forget that, 15 months later, the British issued the Balfour Declaration, when they promised the Jews a homeland in Palestine, in Palestine.
His Majesty’s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, care to be taken that nothing shall be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing community or the rights and privileges of Jews living outside. So basically, promises are made and promises, are they going to be kept? Can we see the next map please? And this is terribly, terribly important. I know, as I said before, a lot of you will know this very well.
Can I please recommend to you Martin Gilbert’s history atlas or Martin Gilbert’s atlas book on the Arab-Israeli conflict? Particularly if you’ve got children and grandchildren, you need these books in your home. Now at the end of the First World War, this is where you’re going to have to think very, very clearly, those of you who’ve never studied this before. The end of the First World War, look, the British didn’t really want the French anywhere in the Middle East, and it was a British army under a General Allenby that actually invaded the Turkish area, which we now call Palestine. And on the word Palestine, this is very important, the Arabs referred to much of this area as Greater Syria.
Palestine comes from Palestrina. When the Romans destroyed Judea, as the final insult, they called it Palestrina for the Philistines, a real slap in the face for the Jews whose kingdom they had destroyed. So it comes into use in Renaissance times again, and it begins to be used by some Christian Arabs, particularly those studying in Paris, but the majority of Arabs at this time would’ve referred to it as Greater Syria. Now remember the British conquer on the ground, and they take Beersheba, they take Jerusalem, and then they march on to Damascus. On the outskirts of Damascus, the British Army pulls back and allows the Emir Faisal, the son of the Emir Hussein, to enter Damascus at the head of a victorious Arab army.
What that meant was they’re creating facts. The British do not want the French in the Middle East. They hope that this will hold. However, once the war is over, the Versailles Treaty and all the other conferences that clean up the various areas, ‘cause remember, it’s not just the Turkish empire that’s dismembered, so the Russian Empire, the Hapsburg Empire, the German Empire. It’s absolutely extraordinary when you think back to the issues of 100 years ago because it’s 100 years ago now, and we are still living, in many ways, with the issues that were created then. So the French insists that the promise is kept. So the British, under the terms of the treaties, the British are awarded mandates on Palestine and on Iraq.
Can you flip to the next map for just a short minute, Judi, and then back to this one? No, it’s one in between. Go back. Sorry, Jude. No, go back. I’ve obviously omitted a map. Go back. Okay, start again. Sorry, go back to the map. Sorry Judi. Go on to the next one. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. The next one. Okay, I thought I’d added another one.
What I want you to do is to look at the black line, the black line that incorporates what is today, Israel, the West Bank and Transjordan. That black line is the British mandate on Palestine. It’s important, this. This is all Palestine. So let me just give you one or two other heads ups on this because it’s very important. The French are determined that they should have Syria. Awarded by the League of Nations, France is going to have Syria, and out of Syria, they carve Lebanon, Lebanon because of various religious and tribal issues, and they divide Syria up into various districts.
Another time, another place, but the point is Faisal is evicted from Syria. There’s a battle, the French conquer, so the British offer Faisal a consolation prize. They give him Iraq. He has a younger brother on the borders of what you see as Saudi Arabia but was known as the Hejaz. That brother was Abdullah. Winston Churchill, who I’m going to be talking about next week, Winston Churchill, who was the colonial secretary at the time, he comes to Palestine. He wants to make the Balfour Declaration work for the Jews, and there’s no Jewish settlement east of the Jordan, so he cuts off 2/3 of Palestine and creates Transjordan, which he gives to Abdullah. So you have the two brothers, one Faisal in Iraq and Abdullah in Jordan. And can we go on to the next map?
As I’m sure you all know, because we’ve covered it and I’m sure you’ve done a lot of reading on it, was the conflict always irreconcilable? That’s something we’ll come back to time and time again. The point is there are various Arab riots, and, in 1936, there’s terrible riots and a strike, and the British come to Palestine, the Peel Commission, to try and solve the problem. Remember, this is July 1937, and the Peel Commission, having looked at the issue of the Jews and the Arabs, bearing in mind what is going on in Nazi Germany, what is going on for Jewish communities all over Europe, they decide that what is equitable is to give the Jews that dark area, and the rest will become an Arab state, an Arab state.
So there’s a state already in Transjordan, so what they do is that is basically the Peel Commission plan map. Now both Jabotinsky and Weizmann give heartbreaking evidence. They don’t want an area that small. It’s about half the size of Cornwall, those of you who know England. It’s about half the size of Cornwall, but what choice do they have at this stage? However, even though the Peel Commission recommended, and you have these heartbreaking comments from Weizmann who says, “There are six million Jews at risk, at least save the two million young,” Jabotinsky puts the number at four million under threat in the East.
So basically, because it’s not just Nazi Germany. It’s astro-fascism. It’s what’s going on in Spain. It’s Mussolini in Italy. It’s terrible antisemitism all over Eastern Europe. So consequently, the Peel Commission plan, but it’s rejected back home in England, why? Because in any future war, the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, the mufti of Jerusalem, he says, “In any future war, we are going to back the Nazis unless you stop allowing Jews into Palestine.” So consequently, you have this very cynical memo that comes out of the foreign office. In any future war, the Jews will have no cause but to side with us.
Therefore, it’s in our interests to back the Arabs, and basically, the Peel Commission plan comes to nothing, and, as you all know, in May 1939, the British more or less close the doors of Palestine for pragmatic reasons. They do it because they realise a war is brewing, and if they don’t do it, can they actually trust the Arabs? Now what is absolutely fascinating, of course, is that the Arabs do not support them. As Rommel gets deeper and deeper into Egypt, pro-Axis sentiment really develops in the Middle East. I mean, Lyn Julius talked about Iraq a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, in Iraq stirred up by the mufti, there was a pro-Axis revolt, and there was a terrible pogrom as a response to that. In 1941, the Egyptian Ministry of Defence handed over Egypt’s defence plans to the Italian military intelligence. The grand mufti Hajj Amin, as I said, he was very much implicated in the pro-Axis revolt. Then he flees to Berlin. Beirut, under Vichy, became a centre for Nazi entry. However, throughout the whole of the war, the British did not alter the White Paper. Ships were turned back, and, as you know, many Jews died trying to run the gauntlet to Palestine, and this is really one of the most contentious issues. If the gates of Palestine had been opened, how many people could have been saved?
However, we do have to be careful here because the Nazis did it. It’s the Nazis with all their helpers, but the point is, for pragmatic reasons, the British closed the gates to Palestine, and what is going on in Palestine? Look, when the White Paper was issued, as we’ve discussed, the Irgun decide, the Irgun decide that the British are destroying any hope of Jewish rescue, and they begin a war against the British. When war breaks out, the Hagenah decide to join the British army. Most of the Irgun do, too. They’re much smaller group than the Hagenah. However, a small group, the Stern, continue the war against the British until their leader, Avraham Stern, is killed in police custody, but nevertheless, they still continue attacking British soldiers and targets.
The first Irgun person was actually killed, was actually hanged by the British in 1938. So basically, it’s ratcheting up, and as the war develops, and as I explained a couple of weeks ago and again last night, the efforts of the Hagenah, first, the British wouldn’t allow the Hagenah into the army, apart from German speakers who could be incredibly useful, but gradually, they did, and by 1944, there was a large Jewish regiment fighting mainly in Italy. But as more and more evidence comes through of the horrors of Europe and the fact that nobody’s doing anything, the Irgun under Begin in February 1944, and I’ll be spending quite a long time talking about Begin later on, Begin had been in Anders’ Army.
He’s written extraordinary autobiography of his period. He’d been born in Brest-Litovsk. A lawyer from a very early age, a follower of Jabotinsky, he was imprisoned by the Soviets. Beg your pardon. Yes, by the Soviets. He managed to escape. He joined Colonel Anders’ army in Palestine, was demobbed, and took over the Irgun, and in February ‘44, the Irgun rejoin the fight against the British, and this is what he has to say.
“We are in the last stage of the war. Every nation is now conducting its national reckoning. What are its triumphs and what were its losses? What road must it take in order to achieve its goal and fulfil its mission? Who are its friends and who its enemies? Who is the true ally and who the traitor, and who is proceeding towards a decided battle? Sons of Israel, we stand at the final stage of the war. We face a historic decision. The truths proclaimed where war break out has been violated by the British authorities. The rulers of the country have taken into account by the loyalty nor concession nor sacrifice. They have continued to implement their aim, the liquidation of sovereign Zionism. We must draw the necessary conclusions without wavering. There can no longer be a truce between us.
Our nation will fight this regime to the end. Rule over the land of Israel must immediately be handed over to a provisional Hebrew government. The Hebrew government must be the sole legal representative of the Jewish people must immediately, after its establishment, begin the implementation of the following principles: the establishment of a national Hebrew army; conduct negotiation with all authorised bodies. Jews, the establishment of Hebrew government, and the implementation of its plan, this is the sole way of rescuing our people, salvaging our existence and our honour. We will follow this path. Our fighting youth will not be deterred by victims, blood, and suffering. May the God of Israel be with us and aid us.”
So that’s in February 1944. So the Irgun, along with the Stern, their smaller group, they rejoined the fight against the British. Now at the end of the war, knowing that the Arabs in the main have gone over to the Axis, the British, they’d hoped for parity. One of the reasons they didn’t allow Jews into the army in 1939, Jews in Palestine, was because they thought we had to have a parity system, but the Arabs didn’t join. At the end of the war, in a way, they felt that the case rested. After all, isn’t it time now? Won’t the British see that we have been loyal? So also, what was happening in Europe with the DP camps? What on earth is going to be the destiny of the Jewish people?
Ben-Gurion was in London on VE Day, and he said, “You know, I can see what’s going on, the great triumph of people, but what is going to happen to my people? How on earth can we survive all of this?” So this is the situation. Can we go on please, Judi? Now this is a map that I’m going to put before you, but we come back to it many times. This is the actual United Nations partition plan of 1947. Because there’s so much misunderstanding at the moment, I think it’s important, and I’m sure most of you know this, that when Israel was established, they conquered a little, and war broke out. They did conquer a little more of the West Bank and the north in Galilee, but the much of the West Bank was taken by Jordan, and Egypt took Garza. So I think that’s very important that you know that. So can we go on please, Judi? Thank you.
Now that is Lord Moyne. William and I are going to be co-teaching Churchill. William’s going to talk about Churchill, the man, and I’m going to talk about “Churchill and the Jews.” Martin Gilbert, who wrote a brilliant book called “Churchill and the Jews,” very much believed that Churchill was 100% behind Zionism. I’m going to look at that with you in some depth because it’s controversial area now. However, something happened that really turned him against Zionism, and that, of course, was the murder of his wife’s relative and a very close friend of his, Lord Moyne, and here you see Lord Moyne. Lord Moyne was the minister for the Middle East at the time. He had been against the Zionist enterprise, and he was actually murdered by the Lehi. The reason was because they believed he was deliberately hindering Jewish rescue in Europe.
Now the point was that Churchill was absolutely horrified and never really forgave the Zionists, and Churchill, of course, was prime Minister when the war ended. He refused to see Chaim Weizmann, who he already had a close relationship with, and he did nothing. He never visited the land of Israel. So basically, you have the conservatives in power, and then there is a change of government in England. The Labour government comes to power, and the Labour government had always been pro-Zionist.
Back in 1939 at the time of the White Paper, they’d issued this incredibly strong statement, saying that this was a terrible betrayal, and so the “Jewish Chronicle” actually wrote an article, begging that there’d be a truce in Palestine, and let’s see what the Labour government does. In addition to that, America was becoming quite risky. There’s a president in America, of course, great Roosevelt died in the war, a new president, Harry Truman, and Harry Truman sends an extraordinary young American called Earl Grant Harrison to have a look at what’s going on in the DP camps. Can you show us the picture, please? The next picture, Judi.
This is VE Day. Just remember that incredible feeling in London, but as I said, as far as Ben-Gurion is concerned, what on earth could be done? Those of you who know London will see that that, you see the buses, that, I believe, is actually Piccadilly, isn’t it? It’s absolutely extraordinary. London went mad, and let’s not forget. The British had fought a terrible war for six years, and for the first third of it, they fought alone, and they had a chance, perhaps they had a right to that incredible time of triumph. But think of the words of Ben-Gurion, too.
And also, one of the sessions I’m going to be doing later on is what it was like to be a British Jew in England between '45 and '48 because what’s going to happen is that there’s going to be virtually war between all the Zionists in Palestine and the British government because do you remember when we did the session on the Biltmore Hotel? And I said to you one of the issues of Biltmore was that we really must now, the Biltmore Hotel of 1942, as more and more evidence had come through, they all demanded statehood.
But the first sign is Congress after the war. Weizmann, he’d lost all his prestige because he’d been a great anglophile. Out of respect, no one took over from him. It was left vacant, but the mantle of leadership was very much now passed to Ben-Gurion, who is much more pugnacious. And the old guard, the the old guard, of course, Weizmann’s going to have a very important role to play diplomatically. He was seen as a great statesman, but having said that, he’s never going to have real power, and he’s going to be given the presidency as a gesture to the past. So let’s look at Mr. Earl Harrison because, can we see the next?
Yeah, that’s Earl Harrison. I’m going to talk a little bit after him because Wendy and I, when we chat, she says, “Trudy, give us some heroes,” and Earl Harrison is quite an incredible man. So I’m going to give you a little bit of background. He is going to go to the DP camps at the behest of Truman. What is happening in America? And, of course, we haven’t done enough by any means on American Jewish history. Believe me, we will be covering it. What happens is this. The Irgun in particular have been incredibly active in America, bringing news to the American public.
There was a groundswell of sympathy for the Jews, and the American Jewish lobby had been founded in the war, and there was a lot of strong Zionism now putting pressure on the American president, and also, the only man who had total access to the White House was a close friend of Truman’s, Jacobson, who’d been his old business partner. And that’s where Weizmann became very useful because Weizmann got to Truman and he said, “Look, America must take the moral leadership,” and the Americans send Earl Harrison to look at the camps.
And this man, he’s an American academic, he’s a lawyer, he’s going to work for the government, and he’s responsible alone to the president. He was born in Philadelphia, he fought in the First World War, he was in the infantry, he was a decorated war hero, he became a lawyer, and he became dean of the Pennsylvania Law School. He was director of alien repatriation at the US Justice Department, and he was commissioner of immigration, and he did everything he could to make things as smooth as possible for people, always fighting the treasury. There was significant reform under his watch.
He transferred from the Labour Department to the Department of Justice. He believed passionately in the rights of the individual, and Roosevelt actually appointed him American representative on the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees. He’s involved with the War Refugee Board, and on June 1945, Truman asks him to inspect the DP counts because what, of course, had happened is once the war is over, 11 million refugees on the move in the American zone, the French Zone, the British Zone, and the Russian zone. DP camps are established, and Jewish victims were put in by nationality.
So Jews will be mixing with Germans, many of whom were Nazis. The same thing was with Poland, and this word is getting back to the joint, and the joint’s putting pressure on, and Earl Harrison goes to visit the DP camps with a man called Schwartz, who’s representing the incredible American joint. So he also, by the way, was director of the Philadelphia branch of the Council of Christians and Jews. He was into reconciliation. He was part of the American Civil Liberties Union, and his report, his report was basically that the Jews living in the camps are under the most appalling situation. They have to be taken out and housed separately. They have to be fed. They have to be clothed. They have to be looked after.
And he moved very, very quickly and which led to the separation of Jew from German, Jew from Pole, and he also insisted, and this is where the joint came in, that the rationing be improved, medication be improved. So he did an incredible amount to actually help the Jews in the camps. His report is going to lead eventually the following year to the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry, but more about that later. Anyway, I’m going to read you his obituary because this is a man who is a real hero. He died in 1955. He was only 56 years old because after the war, by the way, he went back to the law and to being a public servant when necessary, and this is the obituary from the “University of Pennsylvania Law Review.”
This, remember where he worked. “He was a symbol of hope and friendship throughout the world. To the aliens of this nation, to our newly made citizens, to refugees from the rough scourge of war, and to other victims of social injustice. He had sturdy independence, which made him responsive to unpopular causes. He possessed,” I beg your pardon, “an eager expectancy of good, which brought him to the huge rewards of a happy home, friendship, and the joy of living at one’s best,” which I think is a lovely thing to say.
When he wrote to Truman, he put a very, very strong statement in, which I’m going to read to you. “We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis did, but we do not exterminate them.” So basically, this leads to the Anglo-American Commission Inquiry. But what we have to do now is actually look at what happened with the Labour government. So was it a complete surprise that Churchill, the great war leader, within three weeks of the end of the war, in July 1945, there is a new government, a Labour government in England? And as I said, Palestine, “Let’s have a truce. Let’s see how the Labour government operated.”
And now I want to look with you, and we were going to have to spend a bit more time on this next week. I want to look with you at the characters who are both the most going to be involved, and let’s start please with the prime minister, Clement Attlee. Now, Clement Attlee is regarded in Britain as one of the greatest prime ministers of the 20th century. His dates are 1883 to 1967. How the Labour government is going to appear once I’ve told you the whole tale of 1945 to '48 is another story. He was born in Putney, those of you who know Britain. He was the son of a wealthy solicitor. He went to Oxford, you know, very bright, the usual, you know, public school, Oxford, and he became a barrister.
However, he also had a huge social conscience, and remember, he’s born in Victorian England. He did a lot of volunteer work in the East End, which exposed him to the horrors of poverty, the horrors of deprivation, and that made him swing to the left. He was an officer in World War I. He becomes an MP. He enters Parliament. He first becomes the mayor of Stepney, which is a very Jewish area. In 1922, he becomes a mayor for Limehouse, also in the East End of London. He served in the first Labour minority government. Even though there was a landslide against Labour in 1931, he still kept a seat. He’s very popular. He becomes deputy leader of the Labour Party in 1935.
At first, he was a great advocate of pacifism, but he becomes very critical of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, and in the wartime coalition, he is part of Churchill’s government. He becomes deputy prime minister from 1942, and in '45, he is the man who leads Labour to a landslide victory, the first ever Labour majority government. This is the government that introduced the National Health Service. This is the government that he promised full employment.
You know, I was born in 1948. I can still remember. My earliest memory’s of about 1951. I had very bad eyes, and my father used to have to take me to Great Ormond Street, which is a children’s hospital, and we used to go by taxi from Victoria Station, and I can remember the prefabs. I can remember the bomb sites. I can remember going shopping with my mother with her wooden shopping basket. You know, you think the things we know today, and we look back on the past, and I remember her ration books. I can remember just how bad it was. These are my earliest memories of childhood, and so basically, he is promising a mixed economy, even though he’s a socialist.
He hates communism. He wants a greatly enlarged system of social service. Let’s stay with him. He thought that social services should be provided by the state. He wanted the nationalisation of public utilities and major industries. He also wanted the enlargement of subsidies for council houses. Remember, we’re going to create a land fit for heroes. All those soldiers coming back, they should have the right to proper homes, and those of you who went to the cinema can remember the cinema adverts of the time are fascinating.
What should every home have? It should have a washing machine. It should have a vacuum cleaner. And he also was very involved in trade union legislation, working practises, looking after the rights of children, a national park system, New Town and Country Act, the creation of new green towns, and as I said, he is regarded as one of the greatest prime ministers of the 20th century. This is from Margaret Thatcher. “Of Clement Attlee, I was an admirer. He was a serious man and a patriot, quite contrary to the general tendency of politicians in the 1990s. He was all substance and no show.”
And what is also true about Attlee is he housed a child refugee in his home, a German Jew, for four months. He never publicly spoke about it. It’s an interesting case. It’s about a Jewish mother who had been married to a German Gentile who became a Nazi, and she had to get out, and she needed a sponsor. And because her children hadn’t been brought up as Jewish, she felt that she couldn’t apply to any of the Jewish organisations. Attlee was a religious Christian, and the request came to his local church, and he took the child in and took an interest in the child for four months until the child was reunited with his mother.
And the child, his name was Paul Willer, in 2018, when he was 90 years old, Paul Willer said, “Attlee was a modest man. He didn’t try and glorify himself in every way.” So basically, the boy talked about the home, how he managed to communicate because he didn’t have English because Attlee’s daughter had basic Latin from school, and Paul Willer from his school in Germany had basic Latin. So basically, they tried to communicate that way. However, what was his attitude to Jews? And what is certainly true, he does this, but he’s going to be ridden over by the foreign office in its attitude to what’s going on in Palestine, and there’s a couple of other things that I want to mention.
Bearing in mind, and we’re going to be covering it later on in the course, civil war’s going to be breaking out between '45 and '48. Christopher Andrew, in his masterly history of MI5, this is what he had to say, and this is under Attlee’s watch. “Discrimination was practised by the security service against potential recruits. It has to be seen within the context of low-level antisemitism, which, even after Auschwitz, was still common in British public life. Attlee, during a discussion on new ministerial appointments in 1951, there were two who were always being recommended as knowing about industry, Mikardo and Austen Albu. But they both belonged, according to Attlee, to the chosen people, and he didn’t think he wanted any more of them. Neither, alas, did the security service.”
And also in jobs advertised at the Ministry of Labour in 1946, this led to a question by the real terrier, Sydney Silverman, because the advert said no Jews required. So you have a prime minister who is a British prime minister who was absolutely extraordinary, but it has to be said under his watch and under his foreign minister, “We’re going to see the most appalling attitude to the Jews of Palestine.” Having said that, they are in armed revolt against the British. So I think because I want to spend a lot of time, let’s have a look at the people we’re going to be talking about. Can we go on please, Judi?
That is Ernest Bevin, and, of course, he’s going to be foreign minister under Attlee, and I want to look at the people around him because he relied very heavily on some very unusual, interesting individuals. Harold Beeley. Can we see Harold Beeley? Yep, the of the foreign office who was an Arabist, and can we see the, yeah, there you have Arnold Toynbee, who was the sort of intellectual guru of the foreign office, and the other one was Sir Frank Roberts, the personal. There you have Christopher Mayhew. I’m sure many of you who have heard of Christopher Mayhew and Sir Frank Roberts. These are the characters who are surrounding Bevin, and they were all Arabists. But I’m not going to rush this because I think it’s much too important, so we will save it for the next session.
So let me have a look at the questions, if you don’t mind, Wendy, and I think we’ve got quite a few of them. Yep. Let’s have a look.
Q&A and Comments
Oh, this is people just saying hello to us, Wendy. I think the first 12 questions are saying how much they like us chatting.
This is Susan Freeman asking if I’m covering the internment camp on the Isle of Man. I might have a colleague look at that because some of the characters on the Isle of Man, like Klaus Moser, really, they were so important. Syria, Palestina. Palestina, thank you.
“I have the atlas but can’t find the page.” Myrna, this was actually from the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This is from Jonathan. “I recommend 'A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East.’” Yes. What we’ve been saying, Jonathan, I think this is important. Once the website is up, we will put together a bibliography for you.
Yes, this is from Victoria. “According to historians working on this today, the number of Jews murdered in Poland is at least 1,000, probably many more, not 500.” No, I said 500 between ‘45 and '46. You are right. We don’t know the accurate numbers. It’s thousands in Eastern Europe.
“Note '37, the entire Kineret is in British territory.” Yes, of course, it is, Adrian, but the point is, yeah, yeah, yes, you are right.
And this is Adrian. “Britain told Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey to close their,” yes. One of the things we’ve already looked at is how the British didn’t want refugees into Palestine beyond the quota, and this is one of the things that led to this terrible controversy.
This is from Edith. “William Tyler explained how the British messed up the division of the Indian subcontinent. It seems that Colonial Britain is also to blame for confusion and messy decisions to divide up the Middle East into Jordan, Iraq, Syria.” Look, Edith, what can I say to you? Colonialism all over the world has led to the most appalling mess, we know that. I mean, we could spend the whole of two years looking at what happened at the end of the First World War. Just thinkable the countries that were created, some artificially, some trying to keep national boundaries, but what I’m saying is this is what we live with. I don’t think we give Britain a free pass. I think what we are trying to do is come to as much understanding as possible.
Q: “How did the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Versailles Treaty affect the division of the Middle East?” A: Ralph, I spent at least two lectures on that, and all the lectures will be released once the website is up. So basically, the Sykes-Picot Treaty was when the British felt that they had to do something with the French because they weren’t doing too well in the Dardanelles campaign, and the French demanded something. So they basically took a line north of Acre. Basically everything to the north will be French. Everything to the south will be British.
And this is from Melvin.
Q: “Had Britain not installed Hajj Amin al-Husseini as mufti, how would you speculate relations would’ve developed between the Arabs and the Jews?” A: Melvin, this is one of the great tragedies. When Herbert Samuel appointed Hajj Amin al-Husseini mufti of Jerusalem, he gave position of power to a man who was already violently against any Jewish immigration into Palestine. In fact, Hajj Amin al-Hussein had been with the Emir Faisal in Iraq, in Syria. He’d fought in that army with the British. He’d been part of the forces that were destroyed by the French. He had wanted an Arab empire, but when the French took Syria and Iraq was given as a British mandate to Hussein, he turns his attention to Palestine. You see, these are all artificially created entities.
Now that’s not to say there wasn’t a settled population, and it’s not to say that they weren’t great cities like Damascus, Beirut, as I said before, but the point is the divisions that were made were artificial divisions. Don’t forget that, between 1958 and 1961, Nasser created the union the United Arab Republic. They were Arabists. They wanted pan-Arabism. And also don’t forget that the mufti was at horrible loggerheads with the other Arab countries, and I’ll talk about this when we come to 1948. The other great land-owning family, the Mousabea, you could perhaps have done a deal with them, but the issue you always have to ask yourself, was the conflict always inevitable? And, you see, you’ve got two peoples who both claim a historic right to the land, a religious right to the land, a legal right to the land, and that incredibly tenuous moral right to the land. There is another right to the land that has brought 95% of the nations in the world into being, and that, of course, is right of conquest.
Oh, I beg pardon, Les. Begin didn’t escape from Soviet imprisonment. That’s right. Polish prisoners and Soviet camps were given the option. Yes, of course. That was silly of me. Thank you for that. You know, I really, really love this course because whenever I get anything wrong, there’s always someone there.
Oh, Sandy’s saying that the subtitles are fun today. Okay.
Yes, Romaine, I’m looking at Churchill separately. Yes. “Growing up in Israel, my dislike as well as that of most of my friends of the Hebrew University was very negative. My father, a rabbi and Tillman Scholar, had to watch the soldiers throw all his books on the floor, looking for arms. I will never forget the look on his face. However, in the 50s, I visited England and discovered that, at home, they are civilised.” Esther, that’s adorable. That’s lovely. Yes, you know, this is the problem, isn’t it? And can you imagine what it was like for Anglo Jews?
Oh, this is Margaret. “Bottom right is outside the National Gallery. My parents were there outside Buckingham Palace.”
Melvin. “According to Martin Gilbert, Lord Moyne had a change of heart about Zionism and advised Weizmann to meet him.” Yes. Now this is interesting. It did seem, according to Churchill, that Lord Moyne was about to accept the Peel partition plan. We’ll never know, will we? We’ll never know.
The man I was talking about, Ellie, it’s Earl Harrison.
Q: “Why do you think that Churchill lost the election in '45 after he was such a hero to the British people?” A: He was a brilliant wartime leader, you know, but you’ve got to remember, people coming back, women have gone to work. Women have the vote now, and also, men coming back, they wanted a new kind of England. I suppose when you think about Churchill, he really was a Victorian, you know. He was born in 1874, and look, they did bring him back though in '52, didn’t they? So it was a slap in the face to the grand old man. You know, he is the great hero of England, but his record on the Jews is not quite as white as Martin Gilbert’s led us to believe because Martin adored him.
“The Last Million.” This is Carol Shapiro recommending a book. There are people who are being very passionate about this.
Q: “Can you say something about the battle in which Diane lost his eye?” A: Yes. He lost his eye fighting for the British, I’m afraid. I’ve already covered this. Useful Jews, and he’d been in the Parliament, remember, trained by Wingate. He was involved. Look, you got to remember. Beirut, Lebanon, and Syria were under Vichy France for awhile, and the British had all sorts of raids in there, and that’s when he working for the British. Dina.
Q: “Why did they stay in support? Why did the British government support the Arabs when Arabs had blatantly supported the Nazis?” A: Ah, I think it’s a three letter word. Oil. British interest. You see, this is a fascinating question, Dina, and I talked about it last night.
Q: Do we accept the same kind of morality from our countries as we do from the private individual? A: I lost my place. That’s why I’m skimming up and down. Look, America and Russia, the Cold War, Britain was still trying to keep her place as a colonial power. India was falling apart. Think about what’s happening in Africa. Many of you come from South Africa. The British Empire is falling apart. The war changed everything, and Britain’s no longer top nation. But there have huge vested interests in the Middle East and in oil. The best trained Arab army in the Middle East was Glubb Pasha, Colonel John Glubb in Jordan.
Remember Jordan, a British mandate becomes independent in '46. You have Faisal, the Iraq Petroleum Company, whose pipeline comes out of Haifa, British interests. So it’s partly self interest, and also, you know, if you were in the foreign office, look, I suppose particularly when we get into the characters of Bevin and Beeley and Toynbee and all the rest of them, yes, they were Arabists. I remember the great Yehuda Bauer once saying, “And the Jews made such bad colonials.”
So basically, yes, they decided it was in their interests not to help the Jews. Then, of course, the Americans are going to put a lot of pressure on the British government, and that’s when the British government begin to squeak because in 1945, America held all the cards in the west. Look, Britain was bankrupt, and then along came martial aid. You know, if Britain wanted any subsidies, Britain was not given, by the way. They lend lease. Britain, I think they only finished paying America back three years ago. If Britain wanted any kind of help, she needed America, and Truman is going to make it quite clear that he needs a solution in the Middle East, so.
Adrian, “General Archibald.” Oh, Rafael Langham’s on board. What have you got to say, Rafael? You’re really good at this. This is one of your specialties. Truly, he’s tried twice to get… Look, this whole notion of Jordan being Palestine is very complicated because the point is it isn’t. It might have been once, but it isn’t now.
Yes, Peter, I think I’ve said this. The issue of Arab oil supplies was one of the main things. Oh yes. Somebody’s recommending “Lawrence in Arabia.”
Q: “Was Glubb Pasha active?” A: Yes, he ran the Arab region.
Teddy, Churchill visited Palestine. Actually, he didn’t go in during the Peel Commission. He went to Palestine in 1921, and he was very impressed, and I’m going to be reading about that.
“He claimed that the Jews could really help the Arabs modernise.” Yes, he did, but the point about Churchill, and, look, if you don’t mind, Teddy, I think I’m going to leave it till I actually speak about Churchill because yes, in many ways, he was pro-Zionist, and he certainly had a lot of Jewish friends, but there were other areas of his life, so.
Q: “What does it mean to be an Arabist in the foreign office?” A: Someone who I think supports the Arab cause.
Q: “Why do you thrive so many British decisions? Pragmatic in the sense of not upsetting the Arabs.” A: Yes, Alan, but the point is, in 1945, the British was still fighting to keep the empire, and, believe it or not, they thought that it would best help them to keep in with the Arabs. It didn’t in the long term work, we know that.
And this, Catherine, “It’s worth reflecting on the fact that India was British and that only India was able to put 2.5 million troops in the war.” And this is from Gene.
“Just an interesting aside. There’s a US naval carrier named The Truman, and the Jewish community of North Virginia, in appreciation, donated a Torah from the Holocaust. It’s in the chapel of the ship.” Yeah. Interestingly enough, the commander had no idea the Torah was on the ship.
Yes, Rafael. Oh yes, Rafael. “When you talk about Bevin, I would like comments on my paper about him. If you have seen it, it was published.” No, I haven’t. I knew you were doing something. Can you get it to me please, Rafael? Rafael is an expert on this period.
Q: Oscar’s asking, “Why was Ernest Bevin appointed foreign minister?” A: It was to do with fighting in the government, but I’ll talk about that when I talk about Bevin.
Now, Melvin, “Did I hear that Toynbee-Herzog fossil debate?” Yes, Melvin, I know about that.
Yes. Sheila’s telling us, “Britain made the final lend lease payment in 2006.” Thank you, Sheila. And I think that’s it, okay? Wendy, are you there or Judi there?
Hi, Trudy.
I think that’s it, isn’t it?
[Judi] I think so. Let’s have a quick look at all the, yes, that’s it. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Trudy. Again, thank you to everybody you’ve joined us.
Okay, and so I will see you again on, I’m seeing you on Monday night, but I’ll be working on this area on Tuesday morning, I believe. Is that correct, Judi?
Yes.
Thank you. All right.
Thanks everybody. Bye bye.