Trudy Gold
The Mandate Unravels

Trudy Gold | The Mandate Unravels | 06.30.21

- [Judi] Right Trudy, I’m going to hand over to you, and welcome everybody, Wendy is just having some connection issues, so she’ll try and get on as soon as she can. So over to you, Trudy. Welcome, everybody.

• Well, good afternoon everyone from Cornwall. And actually, I’m going to start this presentation with the beginnings of an article by Danny Finklestein, which is in the London Times Today, because I think it’s quite pertinent to what I’m going to be discussing. “From the moment of it’s creation, and Israel was first seriously considered, Israel has proved to be a problem for the Labour Party. The British were pushed this way and that by their desire to ingratiate themselves with Americans, their wish to retain British influence in the Middle East, their humanitarianism over the refugees, the nationalist aspirations of the Arabs, and the antisemitism of Ernest Bevin.” Now that’s a subject I will be discussing with you later, and may I thank Raphael Langham, who’s done so much work on that for alerting me to his papers on that.

So, let’s go back to 1945, last week I looked at the DP camps, and the absolute horror story that awaited many of the survivors when they attempted to go home, and the latest figures of those murdered. I mean, in Poland alone you’re talking about over a thousand murdered between ‘45 and '46, and isn’t it fascinating just as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the whole issue of Palestine, is now dominating a British by-election, so the issue of the Jews in Poland is again dominating the news. Robert Wistrich said of the Arab-Israeli conflict, “Why is this fight different from all other fights?”

Because what we also discussed last week is that in 1945, as the full horror of the camps were released, and how were they released, of course, it’s in the Movietone News, it’s in Pathe News, even though, and I spent a lot of time on this over the past few weeks, the evidence was there, the documentation was there, there were articles in the newspapers, there were reports, there were Allied declarations, I mean, if you think of the inter-governmental declaration of January the 17th, 1942, but it’s actually the revealing of the liberation of the camps, where people were sick in the cinemas, where it really hit home, and the other thing that had happened, the Zionists themselves, their attitude had changed.

Please don’t forget that the Zionist movement has always been divided, and up until 1939 it was very much divided on how you deal with the British. Weitzman, right up until the White Paper, had hoped that Britain would come through, and even in the war years, he had faith in Britain, don’t forget he lost his son fighting for the British. Ben-Gurion was becoming far more militant, Ben-Gurion who was now head of the issue, Ben-Gurion of course made that extraordinary speech that I read to you a couple of weeks ago, where he says, “There’s going to be a state, because only then can we be in charge of our own destiny, and it’s the fact that we are stateless, that is what has allowed the world to do what they’ve done to us.”

Because he just doesn’t point to what the Nazis and their allies, and their willing executioners did, he also points to the fact what the Allies didn’t do. And please don’t forget at the Biltmore Hotel in May, 1942, the Zionists all came together to demand statehood now. And then, of course, at the end of the war, the Arab’s, of course, as we discussed, and Lin Julius is going to be talking more about that, next week, what happened to the Jews in the Arab world. There were pogroms, the fact that the Arabs, in the main, had sided with the Nazis. There’d been pro-nazi uprisings in Iraq, Cairo was a hotbed of intrigue, so, from a Zionist point of view, what side had we been on?

We tried so hard to join the British army, you didn’t let us at first because of parity, but look how useful we were to you, and more and more is actually coming out, particularly on German and Austrian Jews and their part of the war effort. I was invited to a meeting at the Cavalry Club, of all places, to discuss with some military people, they’re trying to put a museum together, of really, I suppose spies, etc. And they’re talking about the Jewish contribution to the British war effort. So, they played their part, and at the end of the war, of course, there was an army, the Jewish Army of Palestinian Jews, where? In Italy.

And these people were moving into the camps, because it’s in the DP camps that were set up after the war, as people went home, they were met with the most appalling hostility and antisemitism, they could no longer go home. And in fact, if you look at the Jews of the west, if you look at the Jews of France, the Jews of Holland, a pitifully small number survived Holland, Belgium, about 75% of those who survived went home, but for the Jews of Eastern Europe, it was over. And, in the camps as we discussed a few days ago, they set up all sorts of study centres, they set up really universities to prepare themselves for immigration, and the Zionists, Ben-Gurion made an extraordinary visit to Landsberg DP Camp, sort of saying to them, “You now are the biggest weapon we have.”

But there had been a hope that the British would open the gates to Palestine. Now, the end of Churchill’s period of Prime Ministership, I’m going to be dealing with in a lot of detail, because, as those of you who listen online regularly will know that William’s starting talking about Churchill, he’s going to do three sections, and I’m going to deal with Churchill and the Jews. And, we’re going to discuss the whole issue of Churchill and Zionism, it was the assassination of Lord Moyne, that had such an impact on Churchill, that even though he was Prime Minister at the end of the war, he refused to see weitzman and his retort was that Lord Moyne was actually reconsidering his position, and the British were considering the Peel Commission Plan of 1937.

But, now we have a new Labour government in power, and the Labour government, traditionally, was pro-Jewish. Now, this is the response in the Jewish Chronicle, because I think it’s quite important to remember that Anglo-Jewry between 1945 and 1948 are going to be in a very difficult position. We talk about dual loyalty here. It’s always a canard that’s thrown against the Jews, and now we have a real issue. Actually before that, I should mention what the Jewish Chronicles Palestinian correspondent wrote: “When the first flush of exhilaration over Labor’s victory in Britain faded, many members of Ishuv, of whose 600,000 souls at least a third hold strong socialist views, turned to a more sober appreciation of the prospect of the materialisation of Zionist aspirations, which with the first announcements of the Labour landslide, was generally regarded as a foregone conclusion.”

Because the Labour Party had made all sorts of Pro-Zionist declarations, and now, surely they’re going to come through with it. And, this is Davar, the moderate Palestinian Jewish paper, “The victory of the Labour Party is a clear victory for the demands of the Zionists in British public opinion.” And it must be said, in the street, there was a deal of sympathy for the Jews, particularly in the working class areas. You know, the Labour Party always loved an underdog, and as those pictures were revealed of the camps, the Jews really were the underdog.

Now this is the Jewish Chronicle, “It must be borne in mind that the mere attempt to start a Jewish Vote is almost as mischievous as if the attempt had succeeded. We present the consideration to any feather-headed individual Jews who may already be busy with the Jewish vote, criminal stupidity.” It’s fascinating, isn’t it? When Jews first were elected to Parliament, the Jewish Chronicle was terrified. They said, what would happen if some of these people are bad men?

It’s going to reflect on the whole of the community, and this is the Jewish Chronicle then, because back in 1944, this is what the Labour executive had announced: “there is surely neither hope nor meaning in a Jewish national home, unless we are preparing to let Jews, if they wish this, to enter this land in such numbers as to become the majority. There was a strong case before the war, there is an irresistible case now, after the unspeakable atrocities of the Nazi plan to kill all the Jews of Europe.”

Now this is in '44. Remember, the minute silence in the House of Commons was in December 1942, and as I said to you, even though it maybe wasn’t realised at gut until you have those terrible pictures of the liberation, nevertheless, enough was known that the Labour Party feeling very strongly that we’re going to open the gates of Palestine. And, let’s think about the groups in Palestine. If you think of the Haganah, which was by far the largest group, that is the military arm of the Yishuv, the much smaller Irgun, and the Lehi. Now, as I’ve said to you many times, the Lehi, after the White Paper of 1939 was issued, the Lehi, or the stern as it was called then, began to blow up British installations, basically, according to Abraham Stern, the British were as bad as the Nazis.

Because what are they doing, they’re stopping Jewish rescue. So basically, they continued the fight against the British. The Irgun, the larger of the revisionist groups, worked against the British until war broke out, then the Irgun, along with the Haganah, volunteered for the army, and as many of you know, their leader, David Raziel, died fighting for the British in Iraq. So, having said that, last week I mentioned that Begin, who later took over the Irgun, Begin begins the war again against the British in February '44. After the Labour Party election, all the groups decided that they would have a cease-fire, they would have a truce to find out what would happen, because they did believe that Bevin, who was made Foreign Secretary, he was made Foreign Secretary and I’ll be talking about his biography in a minute, he was made Foreign Secretary because Attlee had to keep all his warring leaders at bay, and in fact, he had a huge enmity with Morrison, and there were all sorts of problems, so that is why Bevin became Foreign Secretary when it wasn’t really his forte, and, that’s going to mean he’s going to be very much, be I’m not going to use the word “stoolie”, but he’s going to be hugely influenced by the civil servants around him, who I’m going to spend a lot of time talking about later.

So, but on the 6th of September, 1945, Bevin makes his first public statement, announcing his decision to maintain the tenants of the 1939 White Paper, and to review the matter again after six months. Now, this is when we come to the problem. Yellen, who takes over the Lehi, he says, “We are at war with the British, there is no other way. The British are determined that Palestine should never become a Jewish state, and we are equally determined that it will.”

This is what the Board of Deputies had to say, the representative body of Anglo-Jewry: “As the representative body of Anglo-Jewry, and therefore in a special relationship to the mandatory power, and fully aware of those aspects of the problems which are connected with the British position in the Middle East, we urgently appeal to His Majesty’s Government to make it possible for the remnants of Jewry who so wish to settle in Palestine, so the Jewish survivors can rebuild their lives, and join with their fellow Jews for the reconstruction of a New World Order. The White Paper should be immediately abrogated, and that permission be granted immediately for 100,000 Jews who survived to enter Palestine.”

And don’t forget also, that we began to talk about America. The new President, Harry Truman, had sent, if you recall from last time, he’d sent Earl Harrison to look at, particularly at the DP camps in the American zone, and it was Earl Harrison who came back, basically horrified, and separated Jewish prisoners, yeah DPs, Jewish DPs, with whom, they’re with other Germans, German Jews are with Germans in DP camps, Polish Jews are with Poles in these camps, he has them separated, and he allows the Joint, with Schwartz, Joseph Schwartz, one of the most important figures in the Joint, visited Germany with Harrison, and what happens is, they allow the Joint to begin to send food, medicines into the camp, to really try and bring the survivors back to life.

So Harry Truman, much against the advice, ironically, of the State Department, more about that later on in another section, he is getting sympathy also because, well there are various reasons, I would think that one of the most important reasons is his close friend Jacobson, he’d been Truman’s old business partner, he had total access to the White House, Chaim Weizmann, even though on one level, Chaim Weizmann has lost his power, he still, in many ways, is their greatest weapon. He got to Jacobson, who got to Truman, and in the end, he met with Harry Truman, and really pleaded the case, plus, the Jewish Lobby in America. We talk about Jewish Lobbies and how powerful they are, I think American Jewry really begins to find it’s feet during the war, after the knowledge of what’s happening in Europe finally comes through.

And the other thing that the Zionist in Palestine are doing where, they played a game of PR that was almost unrivalled in modern history. When you think of the image of Israel today, and we go back to what they were up to between 1945 and 1948, to put it mildly, they played an extraordinary, they played one of the most extraordinary, it, look, I’m not going to call it a game, because it was so serious. But it really managed to attract the sympathy of the world, and that’s the bringing in of the illegals, because, if Attlee’s government, with Bevin as Foreign Secretary, is saying, “I’m not going to allow more Jews into Palestine”, what can we do? We must try and get them in illegally.

Now, this has been going on since 1934, the Brihah movement, which was a movement for, really, not long after Hitler came to power, to bring more Jews into Palestine, above and beyond the quota. Now, tragically, the majority of the ships that were captured were sent to internment camps, and I’m going to give you one or two examples of it. You see, the American sector in Germany was by far the freest, it imposed no restriction on movement in and out of the camps, and we also know that American officials, and French and Italian officials, because if you’re going to bring refugees to Palestine by boat, where are they going to come from?

They’re going to come from the French ports, they’re going to come from the Italian ports, and, where is the main camp? It’s on Cyprus, and we know that a lot of Cypriots, who themselves wanted independence from the British, so, the Zionists are now going to achieve a lot of help from French, from the Americans, the Italians, and the Cypriots. Because if you think about it, this is a movement, a huge movement of funnelling people, they’re funnelling people out of Eastern Europe, over the Alps, think about it, into Italy, back into Germany, mainly into the American zone. The American zone is the zone that is much most, it’s the easiest to infiltrate in terms of in and out, plus America is now really the new sponsor of Zionism, once Bevin makes that announcement, it’s obvious that what we need now is a new sponsor.

So, consequently, we’re going to do everything possible to get America on our side, and one of the great ways of getting America on our side is of course, let’s start running the gauntlet to Palestine. Now, one of the other problems was that the British in 1945, what they did was, they set up more and more armed patrols to prevent immigrants reaching Palestine, so, when I talked about PR disasters, I want you to imagine, Holocaust survivors, this is Pathé News, this is Movietone News, Holocaust survivors trying to enter Palestine on ramshackle boats, all sorts of individuals came to help in the fight. Many of these ships were actually piloted by US Navy men, Jewish, in the main, but there were a few non-Jews who came out to help in the fight.

If you think about British soldiers, British Jewish soldiers, French Jewish soldiers, American Jewish soldiers, many of them actually went out to Palestine to help in the fight, because after '45, the question you had to ask yourself, was armed conflict with the British actually inevitable? So, we know that over 250 sailors from World War Two volunteered to sail those ten ships, ten of those ships that would run the gauntlet to Palestine, look, the majority of them were turned back, but the point, and where did they go? They went into internment camps on Cyprus, sometimes to Aclete, but the point is, some of them made it through, and you are talking about many, many ships, something like over 30,000 people, refugees, from the Holocaust, men, women, and small children, are being run the gauntlet to Palestine, and this is when the Jew really is seen as the underdog.

And of course, in the war itself, there had been the most terrible catastrophes. I should say, not in the war, but from the '30s onwards, sometimes, and particularly after war starts, sometimes, these ships when they’re stopped, people are drowned, and we’ve already talked about the terrible example of the Struma. I’m just gong to give you some figures from 1943, the 12th of February, 1943, 696 passengers on one of those ships, 28th of February, 771, 24th of April, 782, 26th, 553. It’s extraordinary, because Europe, even under the Nazis, is porous. Sometimes people would be bribed, sometimes people helped.

But post '45 it becomes more and more important. You know, during the war, one of the reasons that the Zionists became so hostile to the British, look, I’ve already told you about Lord Moyne being murdered by the Lehi. But I’m going to read you one or two of the statements of Lord Moyne before, according to Churchill, he changed his mind. On the 24th of December, 1941, this is in response to the Struma, he informs Anthony Eden of this, “The landing of 700 more immigrants will be formidable additions to the difficulties of the High Commissioner, it will have a deplorable effect throughout the Balkans in encouraging further Jews to embark.”

February the 7th, 1942: “Any relaxation of our deterrent measures is likely to encourage further shipments of the same kind.” And this is actually in the war cabinet, 5th of March, '42: “all practical steps should be taken to discourage illegal immigration.” Another horrible example, back on the 12th of December, 1940, when the Salvador, it was an illegal ship, it wasn’t seaworthy, it sunk in the Sea of Marmara, over 200 refugees were drowned, and this is T.M. Snow, who was head of the refugee section at the foreign office: “There could be no more opportune disaster from the point of view of stopping this traffic.”

And this is Lord Cranborne after the Struma, the Secretary of State for the colonies: “Under the present unhappy situation in the world, it is inevitable that we should be hardened to the horrors.” There was one extraordinary member of Parliament, Josiah Wedgwood, and I’m going to spend some time, I’m going to look a little at philosemitism. Josiah Wedgwood, a great friend of the Zionist, he said this, in the House of Commons: “This conduct is worthy of Hitler. This conduct is worthy of the middle ages, and it’s being carried out by the British government.” So basically, you have a situation where Bevin has decided that he’s not going to author the white paper. So, shall we have a look at Bevin now?

Yeah, that’s Ernest Bevin. Going to have to talk a little bit about him, and more about the people who actually surrounded him, because one of the issues that we have, why on Earth would Bevin take such a strong line? What was it that, individuals in the Foreign Office were so terrified of? And, I would suggest to you that Suez was the last flickering of the Imperial line, but what we’ve got in government now is a Labour Party, and last time, I spent quite a lot of time talking to you about, aptly, the great Labour Prime Minister and the welfare state, as William brilliantly discussed with you when he discussed Churchill, in many ways it was the dream child of the Tories, but it is Attlee’s government that actually institute the White Paper, beg your pardon, that institute the welfare state, they create a country fit for heroes, in inverted commas, and you’ve got to remember just how bad the situation was in Britain at the time, in terms of the horror of the poverty, the destruction, and at the same time, Britain had a huge empire, and the Foreign Office was not prepared to give up that empire.

It’s falling, apart, yes, but if you look at British interests in the Middle East, under the auspices, really, of the British, an Arab League had been founded in Cairo. The head of the Palestine section of the Arab League was a man that we know very well, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti. Of course he was really now a war criminal, he’d spent the war with Hitler, and Simon Wiesenthal believed he was one of the most important war criminals, we know of the broadcasts he made, he encouraged the Final Solution, and not only that, he was terribly useful to Hitler, reviewing Muslim regiments in the Balkans, which were responsible for murdering Jews.

So consequently, this man, the Mufti, and his cohorts, well crossed from the line of anti-Zionism to antisemitism. And another point, the Arab world itself was incredibly divided. What is going to be the key to bringing the Arab world together? Just to give you an idea, Farouk in Egypt loathed the Mufti, they all loathed the Mufti of Jerusalem. Ibn Saud, the King of Saudi Arabia, he was loathed and loathed who? Abdullah of Jordan, and Hussein the Second of Iraq. Abdullah and Hussein came from the same Hashemite family. That family had once controlled the Hejaz. The Saud family had destroyed the family base, and had taken over Saudi Arabia. So, the Arab countries are all at war with each other.

But there’s one rallying cry. And one of the questions that I don’t have the answer to, but I think it’s a question that is really worth you discussing amongst yourselves, at your Friday night dinners or Sunday lunches, or wherever you meet as a family, is was the conflict always inevitable? Please don’t forget that in Palestine, when does Arab nationalism take light? When does Palestinian nationalism take light? Zionism is very much a product of 19th century Europe, and the nationalisms of Europe; when does Palestinian nationalism really set itself alight, and when does Arab nationalism set itself alight? These are questions for you, and the other point to make is what are the rights to the land? Who has the religious right to the land? Is it the Jew? Is it the Arab? Who has the historic right to the land? Is it the Jew? Is it the Arab? Who has the legal right to the land? Is it the Jew? Is it the Arab? Who has the moral right to the land? Is it the Jew? Is it the Arab?

And please never forget that 95% of the countries of the world that have come into being, have come through right of conquest. So, I’m just setting that aside, but this is going to dog all the discussions that we have on the Arab-Israeli conflict, but never forget Robert Wistrich’s words, “Why is this fight different from all other fights?” Anyway, moving on to the British and the Arabs, the Foreign Office very much believed that placating the Arabs was part of British imperial interests. That three letter word oil, and the best trained Arab army in the Middle East was of course Jordan. Colonel Glubb, Glubb Pasha in Jordan, and British interests were very much tied up with the Arab world, or to quote the great Yehuda Bauer, when he said “Why don’t you just face it? The Jews made very bad colonialists.”

But, for whatever reason, and it has to be said that some of the people that were advising Bevin, were characters like Sir Frank Roberts, who becomes his personal private secretary, Christopher Mayhew, who I had the, I was going to say misfortune to meet, and also, just think about the other characters, Arnold Toynbee, Harold Beeley, these were characters in the Foreign Office, and they were interviewed, actually by Martin Gilbert, when he wrote his book “Auschwitz and the Allies” as to how they dealt with the responses of Jews, the begging of the Jews to be helped during the war. I’ve actually shown the tape, so some of you will remember, I showed it when I was looking at “Auschwitz and the Allies”, and I think they crossed the line from anti-Zionism to antisemitism.

So lets have a look at Ernest Bevin, because he was popular. As a leader, can we go back to Bevin please? Thank you. So I’m going to give you, I think we do need to give these people a bit of background, so that you can see how they fit into British history as well. He’s born in Somerset, to a woman called Diana, she describes herself as a widow, very very poor family. Was he illegitimate? Who knows. After his mother’s death in 1889, he moved to live with his half-sister’s family in Devon. He had very little education, he left school when he was 11 years old. And he actually had a very very hard life. Remember, he has no education, he’s very much going to be at the mercy of the civil servants around him. Aged 11, he went to work as a labourer, then as a lorry driver in Bristol.

He joined the embryonic British socialist society, and in 1910, he became secretary of the Bristol branch of the Dockers within the Labour Party, so, it’s important to remember, he was very much one of the working class. He joins the General Labourers Union, and in 1914, he becomes the national organiser. He’s a charismatic speaker, he’s no good at the written word, but he’s very good at the spoken word, and he’s very much a man of the people. In 1922, he’s one of the founders of the Transport and General Worker’s Union, which is Britain’s largest trade union. He really earned his spurs coming up through the ranks, and, he was really their strongest advocate in the Labour Party. He was against communism. He saw it, and this is one of the issues, he saw it as a Jewish plot.

Now, this is of great interest, because the helplessness of the Jew, and yet, alongside it, even in 1945, people could still talk about Jewish power, I told you I believe that the Nazis set up, they set up a department to find the headquarters of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, this is in the middle of the war when they’re murdering them. So, ironically this notion of Jewish power never disappears. The fact that many of the leadership of the communist parties in Europe, and of course in Russia were of Jewish birth, it’s irrelevant to Russian communists. Do you really believe that Trostky saw himself as a Jew?

He did warn Lenin that he couldn’t be Commissar for Home Affairs because he was a Jew, but he’d thrown it all away, never forget the words of the rabbi who excommunicated Trotsky. He said, “Trotsky may believe that we are one people now, the differences will disappear, but one day Bronstein will pay for it.” Well the tragedy of these individuals who have such prominence in the Communist Parties, is that ironically, the Jews did pay for it. And of course, in 1945, one of the issues in Poland which I mentioned to you, and is still an issue in Poland, something like 50% of the leadership of the Communist Party were of Jewish birth, in Czechoslovakia it was even higher. Now, we could spend hours talking about why, and I have in the past given presentations on it, but the point is, here you have a man, he’s on the right wing of the Labour Party, he’s a socialist, but he doesn’t veer to communism, he thinks communism is a Jewish plot.

The 1926 general strike, he was against. He was terrified that revolution would come to Britain. He was part of it, because as a socialist, he felt he had no choice, but he really had reservations. He fought as a Labour candidate for Bristol for Ramsay MacDonald’s government, didn’t get in. He had very bad relations with Ramsay MacDonald, who of course was the first Labour Prime Minster. He did, in the end, get into Parliament, but his real thing was the unions, and he was incredibly popular. One of the things he did, which is really going to resonate with working people, the Holiday Pay Act of 1938, which entitled eleven million workers to paid holidays.

I mean, today we take all these kind of things for granted, but if you think about it, I can remember butlins holiday camps, I can remember what it was like in England as a child, take yourselves back, take yourselves back to your parent’s, your grandparent’s time, those of you who were born in England, I mean, it was pretty grim for the working classes, and this is a man who was seen as their hero. Now, he was actually very firmly opposed to fascism, he was against appeasement, and he does become part of Churchill’s coalition government. Churchill’s impressed by him. Churchill is such an interesting man, is he not? He was impressed by Bevin, and he makes him Minister of Labour and National Service.

Bevin is one of the people, he wasn’t even an MP at the time, he’d lost his seat, but, he was given an unopposed seat for the London constituency of Wandsworth, and this is very important, and remember the Emergency Powers act gave him huge power over the labour force and the allocation of manpower, so he’s a very important man in the British government. He diverted 48,000 military conscripts into the coal industry, he understood that Britain need the resources to fight a war, they were known as Bevin’s boys. This is popularity.

He always spent his time trying to improve the conditions of working people. It was he who drew up the demobilisation schemes, and returned millions of military personnel and civilians into a peacetime economy, that’s his main love. But, it’s at this time, because Attlee’s having problems in his own government, instead of keeping him in labour, and keeping him where he’s really confident and popular, he moves him into Foreign Secretary. And at that time, and it’s a very strange choice in many ways, even for a Labour government, because he’s going to be surrounded by the Eton and Oxford characters. So, already we know that he associates Jews with communism and power. He also associates Jews with capitalism.

You know, there’s a whole historiography now on whether Bevin was an antisemite, or whether Bevin really just thought that this policy would be very bad for Britain. I, I’m afraid, come down on the former. This is from Richard Crossman, Richard Crossman who’s later going to be a member of the Anglo-American Commission of Enquiry, which we’ll be talking about in a couple of weeks. He said, “Bevin’s outlook corresponded roughly to 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’.” Now, let’s talk about some of the characters that he surrounded himself with. Can we please see Mr. Harold Beeley?

Yes, Harold Beeley. The of the Foreign Office, his dates are 1909 to 2001, and I’m going to read you about his career, because it’s fascinating. And remember, he’s now working for Bevin, ironically, they rather admired Bevin. He was so different from them, he was rough, he was bluff, he was popular, but these are the men he’s going to really rely on. He comes from a upper-middle-class family of merchants, you know, in England they say, “It’s not a disease to make your money in trade.” He was educated at Highgate School, those of you listening who come from north London, then he went to Oxford, he had an academic career, ironically, he wrote a short biography of Disraeli, not a very good one, by the way.

He had poor eyesight, so he didn’t serve in the war, and he goes to Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, he sets it up with Arnold Toynbee, I’m sure you’ve all heard of Chatham House Rules. Anyway, it was founded in 1920, and then he transfers as a very young man, look, he’s born in 1909, he transfers to the Foreign Office, and he later on helps to design the United Nations Trusteeship Council with Ralph Bunche, so, he’s very respected, he’s an aristocratic Englishman, he was chosen to serve as secretary of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine, which I will be talking about next week.

And he believed that Britain’s relations with the Arabs would be forever ruined by the creation of Israel if Britain in any way compromised, and he was a very noted Arabist, he believed very much in supporting the Arabs, because of the oil, and also because he was really a man of the empire. And, his views, you know, there’s an article in the New York Times saying that very much, he was the man who is the most influence on Bevin. Later on, and I’m going to tell you this so you can see where his politics come from, in 1948, he negotiates something called the Portsmouth Treaty.

Now, as you all know, during World War I, the British reoccupied Iraq after the pro, remember the pro-Nazi coup of 1941, where there was that terrible pogrom. After the British reoccupy Iraq, he is in charge of negotiating a peaceable British withdrawal from Iraq at the end of the war, but, to create a joint British-Iraq Defence Board to oversee Iraq’s military planning, and Britain would still control foreign affairs. He wanted Iraq to be part of a pro-British, anti-Soviet block, and he also was instrumental in convincing Syria and Jordan and Egypt all to join this block. When war breaks out in 1948, a plan was devised that Iraqi divisions, armed with modern British weapons, would sweep through Syria and Jordan and join the Arab League, join the Arab Legion, beg your pardon, of Glubb Pasha, to conquer the planned Jewish and Arab states.

I’m jumping on a bit here, because I wanted to give you a flavour of the man, and I’m sure you all know, that in November 1947 the UN are going to vote to partition Palestine into a separate Jewish state and a separate Arab state. What happens is, Abdullah of Jordan has the best-trained legion, the Arab Legion, and you have this chap, Harold Beely, already planning that the British would really, well, they would control the Iraqi forces that would sweep through and join up with the Jordanians to take over really, the whole of Palestine. The treaty, in 1958, there was a coup in Iraq, and the Faisal dynasty was removed, and the Portsmouth Treaty was repudiated. This is basically the man who is Bevin’s greatest advisor.

Now I’m going to give you more details on the Portsmouth Treaty. These are the words of the Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Fahad Al-Jamam: “It was agreed that Iraq would buy for the Iraqi police 50,000 Tommy Guns. We intended to hand them over to the Palestinian army volunteers for self-defense. Great Britain was ready to provide the Iraqi army with arms, set out in a list prepared by the Iraqi general staff. The British undertook to withdraw from Palestine gradually, so that the Arab forces could enter every area evacuated by the British, so the whole of Palestine should be in Arab hands after the British withdrawal. We were all optimistic about the future of Palestine.”

Now, this is the Iraqi Foreign Minister. Okay, 1955, Beeley gets his first ambassadorship, he’s appointed the ambassador to Saudi Arabia. In 1961, he’s the ambassador to the United Arab Republic. This is when there is a union between Egypt and Syria under Nasser. He later returns to academia, becomes a lecturer, but, in his private life, he’s president of the Egypt Exploration Society until 1988. In 1973, he was chairman of the World of Islam festival. 1981, he was chairman of the Egyptian-British Chamber of Commerce, also Vice Chairman of Middle East International. Okay, let’s go on, shall we, Judy? Shall we see the next one? Here you have the .

Remember he had worked with Harold Beeley setting up Chatham House. Now, this is the famous Arnold Toynbee, who is best known for his study of history. There was a period in the 19th, early 20th centuries, where historians would try and put a pattern onto history. The Jews were always a problem for Toynbee, because he believed that every civilization, it would go through its spring, its summer, its autumn its winter. The Jews were a real problem, because they were exiled in their summer, but they didn’t go away, so the whole notion of the Jews as fossils, etc etc.

Again, he was part of the English intellectual classes, he won scholarships to Winchester, to Balliol, he worked for the intelligence department of the Foreign Office, he was at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, he was Professor of Byzantian and Modern Greek Studies at UCL. He was an incredibly clever man, he was also a journalist, he was a correspondent to the Manchester Guardian, he was a professor at LSE. In 1936, look, I’m not giving you deep biographies of these people, what I’m trying to do, is to give you a taste of their lives, so you understand why you have this particular confluence of individuals in the Foreign Office, advising a man who is semi-literate but incredibly charismatic. And, this is interesting, in 1936, he addressed the Nazi Law Society in Berlin, he had a private interview with Adolph Hitler, he believed that Hitler wanted a deal with Britain.

Originally, he wasn’t unsympathetic to Zionism, he was quite friendly with a man called Lewis Namier, who was a Polish Jew, and a great historian of the 18th century British aristocracy. When Isaiah Berlin was commissioned to write a book on Marx, he said, “Why are you doing anything to do with the Jews? There’s no such thing as Jewish history, there’s only Jewish martyr-ology.” And he also said something very naughty, and I will repeat it, why not? When he was writing this book on Marx, he said, “Why are you doing this? He was a half-crazed Jew, and got hold of an idea, and did it to death just to spite the Gentiles.”

Anyway, he gradually becomes very, very pro-Arab. Shall we go on, Judy? I’m a bit worried about time. Yes, Sir Christopher Mayhew, what a character. No, I’m going to stop there, because I think he deserves a little more time. So, I think I’ve given you the atmosphere, I’m going to be talking about Sir Christopher Mayhew and Sir Frank Roberts, not next week, because I’m going to be looking at Churchill and the Jews, but the point is, keep it in your heads, because I think it’s quite important. So shall we have a look at the questions, Judy?

• [Judi] Let’s go ahead, Trudy.

Q&A and Comments

• I take it you mean the British mandate, yes? No George, would I be right in thinking the land of Israel was under continuous colonial, no. You see, the problem is, we’ve been online now for a year and a half, more or less. All the previous lectures will be available once the website is up. Basically, the British got involved in the Middle East at the end of the First World War, last week, I went through the maps with you. May I suggest you get hold of “the Arab-Israeli conflict: it’s History in Maps”?

This is John Winlow, “the British are historically parochial, even though they developed international trade, explored the world, and imposed British values. The Jews were regarded with suspicion and veiled hostility.”

And this is Alan, “my grandmother survived the war in hiding.”

Q: “Why is dual loyalty applied only to Jews, and not Muslims and Christians, regardless of their praise of their place of birth?” A: Now that’s a very interesting question, David, and I can’t give you an answer.

John Windlow: “In the main, Islam sees itself as Umar, the collective Islamic world. The British always had a homeland, but the Jews were a people without a tangible homeland, one might say the memory of one.” Well, that’s one way, there’s so many ways of looking at this. Yes, there was a Nazi instigated pogrom of Farhud in Baghdad. Yes, and Lyn Julius talked about that last night, and on Thursday, yeah tomorrow, the extinction of Jewish life in the Arab world.

This is from Sonya: “Our local hero, Robert Hilliard of Sanibel, wrote many letters to President Truman begging for humanitarian action.”

This is from Denise: “Unfortunately, Sonya, it all came so pathetically late. American’s did nothing too long.” Basically, yeah. Oh, I’ve lost it, sorry.

Avega, “Were there different types of Zionism, or just one Zionism ?” Unfortunately, there were many, many, many different types of Zionism, which is something I’ve lectured on a lot. May I suggest you get hold of a book called “The Zionist Idea”, by Gil Troy, “The Zionist Idea”.

Q: “Why do the English not want to allow Jews to Israel?” A: Okay, this is a problem, ‘cause you haven’t heard previous lectures. Because they’d basically, in the end, they believed that British interests are best served by supporting the Arabs.

This is from Jeffrey: “In the book 'The Last Million’ about the DP camps, the author makes the point that Truman supported the creation of Israel because he didn’t want the 200,000 remaining Jews in the camp. There was pressure to let them in.” That, it’s complicated. Truman is very complicated, I think that comes into it. But it’s not the whole story.

And this is from Anna: “Very true, my parents and I had to wait in DP camps more than four years before we received visas.” Look, in the end, you can make the case that, apart from the extraordinary individuals who saved Jews, everyone was found wanting.

This is Marty Cooper: “My relative, one of the founders of Reform Zionist Movement Berl Katznelson, what a great hero, had one of the boats taking Jews to Palestine named after him.” The famous boat, the Exodus, was originally called the President Garfield. I didn’t know this, it was a pleasure boat in Chesapeake Bay owned by Wallis Simpson’s uncle. I know that Mr. Simpson’s grandfather was Jewish, and he was the great benefactor of Plymouth Synagogue.

“My cousin arrived in Haifa on the Exodus, they were sent back to Hamburg, where they remained behind barbed wire for a year.” Yeah, I haven’t talked about the Exodus yet, I’m doing this in short, sharp chunks. It’s so big, and it’s so complicated, and those of you who haven’t been online, who haven’t studied it, please get hold of “the Zionist Idea”, and get hold of Martin Gilbert’s history maps, you’ll get more out of it if you do that.

Q: Could I comment on the refugees trying to get into Europe today in the light of the Jewish experience? A: Mickey, what do we say about this, that the human condition, tragically, how much have we improved since we came out of caves, we’ve got incredibly sophisticated machinery. I think one of the tragedies is that when we feel economically, politically, and emotionally quite secure, we tend not to see the other as the enemy, but when we are insecure, for whatever reason, we become hostile to the other. And who is the other? Who is not part of my tribe, my family, my group. It’s a complicated, very complicated question.

Q: “Who were the individuals who were primary responsible for the partition plan? I read somewhere that Weitzman was told by at least one of the Western leaders that the plan would place the Jews in an indefensible position, if attacked by the Arabs.” A: Yeah, we will be spending a lot of time on that, I promise.

Stephen, you’ve asked a question about Rabbi Stephen Wise. I’m going to be asking an American colleague of mine who’s an expert on Stephen Wise to give a presentation, because he’s an important figure, and, very controversial.

Q: “Have the British government ever revisited their behaviour towards Jewish refugees or acknowledged their wrongdoing?” A: Oh, that’s a very good question. Believe it or not, when I was on the ITF, which is now IHRA, IHRA, on one level, I was kind of an NGO working for the British government, and I had a phone call from someone at the Foreign Office a few years ago, and he said “Do we have to apologise for the Struma? Will you tell me about it?” But that’s just a personal thing. Look, this is interesting, acknowledgement, behaviour, I believe that what happened in South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was quite extraordinary. And, does it help, that’s the question I’m asking, does it help? I think it did in South Africa. Is there anything that could be said? I don’t know. I’m very wary about people apologising for the Inquisition, or whatever, come on. It would actually be a very interesting debate.

Marilyn’s saying, “Land is a very emotional issue everywhere, not only in Palestine.” You see, what I find fascinating is how Palestine is still the issue.

“The question of moral right is not a primary factor in international politics.” Certainly, Anna, but what we can say, certainly in 1947, I think there were an awful lot of people, individuals, in the West, who did believe the Jews had a moral right to a state. And of course, it’s actually something that an Israeli historian devised, making it easy, look at historic rights, look at legal rights, etc. Is it either/or in terms of right to land? I mean, look at America, look at Native population of America, it’s a fascinating issue.

Q: “Would you say that 95% of the states of the world were created by conquest, could you refer us to the sources?” A: You need to look at history books. Look, for example, oh I don’t know where to start on that. And you know what I’m going to do, I think it’s a very interesting question, and I’m going to ask William if he can come up with a suitable title on that, but trust me, that is what happened. I mean, if you look at Britain, 1066, the Normans conquer, before that it’d been the Vikings. England has been quite fortunate because, it hasn’t been conquered since 1066.

Ellie Straus, “That’s a fact. I always refer back to Alsace, conquered by the Germans, and the French inhabitants hated them, but they were never questioned, they won it in war.” Yeah, what’s interesting about Alsace-Lorraine, Ellie, is it kept on changing sides.

“Zionism got it’s motivation with the communist revolution in Russia.” No, you see, Zionism isn’t just a response to antisemitism. It’s also an authentic Jewish nationalism, which says, if you think of the 19th century nationalisms, look, I’m going to be talking more and more about Jewish identity over the next few weeks, I’m going to be looking at Napoleon, and for the first times Jews can, are we a religious group? Now Zionism is made up of three components. It’s a response to modern antisemitism, it’s an authentic Jewish nationalism that says, we have a common history, we have a common culture, we have a common past, what we lack is common land. Now, you might disagree with that, and also, you have the messianic dream, do you not? Yes I’ve learnt how to say Raziel from you, thank you.

Q: “Was there a difference between Lenin and Stalin’s attitudes?” A: Yes Susan, unfortunately I’ve already lectured on that treatment of Jews.

This is Nachman: “Before the British pulled out of Palestine, the police cut the elevator ropes in the hospitals, and destroyed all the equipment in the operating rooms.” It’s a horrible story, isn’t it?

“I have just learned of The Bund, Trudy, could you please tell me how this fits into today’s topic?” Oh, I’ve already done it Tony, oh dear dear dear dear. I guess, the best way of doing it, is once the website is up, we will have to go through all the lectures of the titles, because The Bund was a very important movement in Russia. I’ll be thinking of how to, some of these general questions, we’ve decided that August is going to be a nice light month, so maybe I’ll think about these questions, and think of a way of giving overviews of Jewish history.

Q: “How influential did the British pro-Arabists think the Arab states were in affecting British future?” A: It’s that three-letter word, Romain, oil. I remember the Iraq Petroleum Company, it was so important. Pipeline came out of Haifa.

Yes, Danny Wilson, Harold Beeley’s daughter Vanessa, a well-known Arabist plus Assad supporter tweeted in 2017 “Zionists rule France”, yeah.

Q: “Didn’t Toynbee write that the Jews were too insignificant numerically to have any influence?” A: He said that at one stage, but he also had another stage said the opposite.

Rob Wayner, “With people like Beeley surrounding Bevin, it’s no wonder Begin realised if the state of Israel was ever to be realised, the British had to be defeated and driven out.”

Sorrel, thank you, telling as it is. “Martin’s map books are hard to find”, says Joan. Is that true? Aye. Judy, may I ask you a question?

• [Judi] Oh?

• If I was to, once the website is up and running, maybe this is something we would be able to do, to put some key maps online, is that possible?

• [Judi] I’m sure it would be possible once the website’s up and running, Trudy.

• Thank you very much. So, oh Carol’s saying you can get it online.

There are two books. You want Martin Gilbert’s history atlas book, and “The Arab-Israeli Conflict: it’s History and Maps”, and also he’s done some brilliant books on a tragic subject, the Holocaust, in maps, I’m talking about maps here. The answer is Jew hatred and British hypocrisy.

“You haven’t mentioned the adverse impact of the murder of Ralph Bunche.” I haven’t got there yet, Teddy. You know, this is the problem, I’m creating a mosaic, this is such an important area that I’ve decided to have the luxury of time.

Sorry, Gil Troy’s book is “the Zionist Ideas”, “the Zionist Idea” was written by Arthur Hertzberg, of course, you should get them both. Hertzberg wrote the original, and Gil Troy updated it with great respect to Arthur Hertzberg, and both of them have brilliant introductions.

“And yet, the Torah says ‘Love the stranger’ and ‘Love thy neighbour’, 36 times, and ‘love thy neighbour’ one-”, no, I believe the Torah says twice, “Love thy neighbour”, it’s twice. And how do I know that? Because Robert Wistrich, who was my main mentor, did things like added all these things up.

This is from Allison: “Weitzman never thought of Israel as the only Jewish nation. He thought of world Jewry as a nation, a nation divided into a majority living in the diaspora, and the new minority, which would create the nation-state of Israel, and safeguard the standing and status of the community. That’s from one of Richard Crossman’s lectures.” The other thing you can think of, read biographies of the great Zionist leaders, and honestly, Disraeli said it’s no such thing as history, it’s biography. By reading a good biography of Weitzman, or if possible, there’s an abridged version of his own autobiography “Trial and Error”.

Read Begin’s autobiography, all these characters wrote their stories, and honestly, history is a very difficult discipline in one way, because, if you were to go, if you had the time, after this presentation, to sit down and write about what I talked about, if every one of you online was to do that, I guarantee they would all be very, very different. The only thing we would decide, if my watch is right, the time, the subject matter, the slides that Judy has shown us, and that Judy’s online with me, everything else is commentary. So if you really want to get immersed into these subjects, read biography.

The Balfour Project, Jay, a lot of you are getting very upset about this.

This is from Hazel: “Regarding apologies for historic wrongs, I do think they are meaningful for the ancestors of wronged communities. Recently, the Canadian government apologised to the Italian.” Now that’s interesting, Barbara says Zionism is part of the Jewish tradition from ancient times. Hazel, I don’t know how I jump on this, frankly. I’m going to be terribly cynical, and terribly Jewish, and that means I’m going to be ironic, even though Jeremy Corbyn said Jews don’t get irony, I will never forgive him for that. You know this whole business of statues, there’s a statue of Richard the First outside Parliament.

Now, in Richard the First’s reign, you had one of the worst pogroms in British history. Am I going to demand now that all the statues, anything to do with anyone who’s upset the Jews be removed? Do I want all the stained-glass windows in all the churches which depict the Jews as monsters and demons to be removed? I don’t think it’s going to happen, do you?

“Zionism is a secular version of Judaism”, said John. Not completely, never forget the messianic idea. Any, even secular Jews, tend to have a Seder service, and what do we say as we sit ‘round the table? Next year in Jerusalem. Those of you who go to the synagogue, even if you regard yourself as just religious only, where does the Bimah face? It faces Jerusalem. It’s part of what we are. You know, Elias Canetti said “there are no people more difficult to understand than the Jews.”

I’m getting some lovely thank yous, thank you very much.

Q: “Did the world, especially the British, think the Arabs would win the war of independence, they would say they tried to do something?” A: That’s also a very, very good question. Certainly, in 1948, I think the majority of people thought that the Jews would lose. Today, even Israeli historians, a lot of Israeli historians, you have a revisionist view that said that they thought they’d win. But you see this is the problem. This is one of the most contentious areas in the whole of world history.

“Canadian community for their treatment during World War II, listening to the Italian radio station, it was evident how meaningful this was.” Yeah, maybe that’s true, I don’t know. I really don’t know. Oh, Melvin is telling us the books are on Amazon.

This is from Jonathan Gistetna: “Harry Nathan, who was chairman of our company after my father’s death, gave up his seat in Parliament for Bevin.” Oh Jonathan, what a twist around of history, that is so interesting.

Blancher is saying “Check Amazon, Gilbert’s maps” Oh yes, Jaime is telling us Amazon has the Gilbert map.

This is from Gertrude: “The education of the average Jewish person has little knowledge”, now this is interesting. I am taking a guess that the majority of you online are very well-educated. What is fascinating, and this is very much a product of the diaspora, I think in the main, my South African friends have the best Jewish education, those of my age, by the way, because they tended to go to Jewish schools. I had an English public school education, I admit it. Everything I found out about, I had a very bad history, I knew far more about British history, Moor history, than I did about Jewish history, and when we started in the late '70s, early '80s, we brought Shlichim over from Israel.

Today, there are many faculties where you can study Jewish history. I would suggest, one of the problems is, and this has come up through Lockdown University very strongly, we know far more about the outside world than we do about our own history, and I think it’s something we must teach our young, because, a small contribution is, look at trudygold.com, and with the Kirsh Foundation, we’ve made 16 short films on Jewish history. Actually, those of you who are asking questions, have a look at those films, certainly the ones on Zionism might answer your questions. So trudygold.com.

Oh, Naomi, “Atlas of Jewish-Arab conflict”, yes that’s another one. “Biography rather than autobiography”, says Joan. It depends, you know. I think you can do both, don’t you, if you’ve got the time? And believe me, in lockdown, I’ve got time.

This is from Ralph: “Truman did more to support the creation of the Jewish state than Roosevelt. He showed his strength by putting his foot down with the State Department and their position at the UN.” Yes, that’s in 1948, yes, of course. I think that’s it, Judy.

• [Judi] Thank you, Trudy

• Anyway, thank you very much, Judy, and, tomorrow, it’s Lyn isn’t it?

• [Judi] Yes, Lin Julius, yes, at the usual slot.

• Thank you so much, and, good evening.

• [Judi] Thank you everybody, bye bye.

• [Trudy] Bye.