635 De Balfour Declaration. Robert John.

In 2007 overleed Robert John, 86 jaar oud.
Hij was  een engelse historicus en diplomaat die àlles  wist over de Balfour Declaration.

Er zijn 8 publicaties die over deze periode gaan, en ik zal ze nummeren.


In 1970 publiceerde hij:

1.The Palestine Diary: British, American and United Nations Intervention, 1914-1948. (Amazon)

In 1988 publiceerde hij :
2. Behind the Balfour Declaration.  Britain's Great War Pledge To Lord Rothschild.  (PDF) 

Beide boeken worden geroemd wegens hun goede onderbouwing: allerlei direct betrokkenen wiens dagboeken en brieven als bewijs worden opgevoerd.

Na 1988 heeft Robert John zijn boek over de Balfourt Declaration nog ge-updated, omdat hij als reactie op zijn boek nog extra informatie  kreeg.

3.  HIER is nog een brief van Robert John over die cruciale tijd. ( Heel goed artikel)

4. HIER Nicholas Lysson over de Balfour Declaratie. ( Heel goed)

5. HIER is een artikel op Global Research ( 2013) . (Dit artikel is niet zo helder geschreven. Geen aanrader. )

6 HIER is een artikel over hoe het Zimmermann Telegram met behulp van het Britse Koninklijk Huis tot stand kwam.  ( Heel goed)

7. HIER is de toespraak van Benjamin Freedman ( joods) die de ins en outs vertelt in een toepraak in een hotel in 1961. ( ook deel Nederlands ondertiteld)

8. HIER is een pamflet van Samuel Landman,  waarin hij zegt dat de Engelsen Israel aan de joden moeten geven, vanwege de Balfour belofte.  Hij was bij de onderhandelingen.

Het is alweer enkele jaren geleden dat ik flinke stukken van bovenstaande documenten las, maar in grote lijnen komt het hier op neer:
Het Amerikaanse volk koos Woodrow Wilson tot president en die beloofde dat Amerika zich niet zou mengen in de oorlog  in Europa, WO1.
Joodse bemoeienissen, zeg maar een joodse samenzwering, heeft er voor gezorgd dat Amerika zich wèl met WO1 bemoeide.
De redenen Waarom de joodse krachten de VS in die oorlog brachten zijn wellicht talrijk (*), maar de Balfour Declaration is toch een van de hoofd-redenen.
In die verklaring zegt de Engelse Regering dat ze haar best zal doen om in Palestina een land voor de joden te vestigen.
 

(*) Redenen voor joodse bankiers om de VS in de oorlog te brengen: 
1. Volgens Engdahl groeide Duitslansd zo snel dat het de wereld-hegemonie van Engeland bedreigde.  Londen heeft toen WO1 bekokstoofd.
2. Omdat Engeland en Frankrijk niet konden winnen van Duitsland gaven de Amerikaanse bankiers enorme leningen aan die landen. Daarm,ee waren twee zaken duidelijk:
a  Engeland moest winnen van Duitsland
b. De VS zou voortaan naast Engeland staan, zo niet er boven, als wereldleider.
c.  Als overwinnaars konden de joden Versailles domineren en gebruiken voor hun doelen: Duitsland kapot maken en een soort 'Wereldregering' op porten zetten: de League of Nations.

Over de publicaties:
Ik heb 3) zojuist gelezen, en als ik het goed begrijp dat lees ik dat begin 1918 de Amerikanen de Duitsers hebben verleid tot een wapenstilstand, op basis van mooie beloften.  Maanden later hebben ze de Duitsers gezegd: het is beter om U over te geven dan om over de vrede te onderhandelen.
Dat was de reden dat de Duitse Keizer ( Wiolhelm) en de Keizer van Oostenrijk ( Karl) hun troon op gaven en hun land verlieten.
Beide landen kwamen in een soort chaos terecht. Een machtsvacuum.
Daarvan hebben de joden en de Amerikanmen en ook de gallieerden enorm misbruik van gemaakt. Versailles was een schandelijke vertoning.
Om de volkeren te ontmoedigen werd geschreven dat beide keiers waren gevlucht en hun volk in de steek lieten.
Ik zie hier wel een patroon dat we nu ook zien:  Beloften die niet worden nagekomen. (Vb:  Ambassador April Stevens tegen Saddam: 'Je mag Kuweit wqel bijnnen vallen) . Leiders die worden zwart gemaakt om hun aftreden te bewerkstelligen, waarna in chaos ( denk aan Libië) het land wordt verscheurd en vernietigd.

---------  Toegevoegd in 2023: de documenten --------

Document 3: 

World War I
History

WASHINGTON OR WILSON?

By Dr. Robert John*
ichee@aol.com
www.ichee.com

President Woodrow Wilson has been generally portrayed until recently as a heroic crusader for peace. Driven by the idea of a League of Nations, backed by international bankers and war profiteers, he said that American intervention in World War I would turn it into a war to end all wars. Instead, diplomatic historians are reassessing his contribution to making the 20th century a disaster for western civilization. That World War II was a result, or even a continuation of World War I, is a view supported by some renowned historians. In their analyses, American intervention in World War I, and participation in its aftermath, including the Versailles Treaty, produced circumstances that led to the to the Bolshevik take-over in Russia, the rise of Hitler, National Socialism, and the Second World War. Traditional American neutrality has been turned upside down. Instead, the USA has probably interfered in the affairs of every country in the world.

Editor's note: The U.S. has interfered in the affairs of every country in the world, or certainly betrayed every country.

A guiding principle of American policy toward European conflict prior to World War I was the principle articulated by the first President, of neutrality. American non-intervention in Europe demanded reciprocal non-intervention by European powers in the Western hemisphere, developed as the Monroe Doctrine. But prior to declaring war in 1917, the United States of President Wilson had not been neutral. On 15th May 1915 by Order in Council the British government declared goods of all kinds entering or leaving Germany contraband, a full blockade. Yet the U.S.A. sold war materiel to France and Britain, and virtually supported their food embargo of Germany. William Jennings Bryan resigned as Secretary of State in 1915 on this and other issues and Wilson's neglect of his advice for that of Edward Mandel House.

Wilson, with his new secretary of state, Robert Lansing, and Bernard Baruch, who had set up the finance campaign to elect Wilson, made the decision in 1915 to commit American businesses to extend credit to belligerents Britain and France. When they had sold nearly all their American assets for food and armaments, in 1916 Wilson allowed American banks to fund these credits by lending them more than $2 billion. As Bryan had predicted, these decisions tied American economic destiny to the battlefield fortunes of the Entente powers (Campbell, Craig. Not-So-Strange Career of Charles Beard, Diplomatic History, Volume 25, No. 2, 259).

Early on in the war, Britain had cut the undersea communication cable between the United States and Germany, and therefore had the lead in the propaganda war for American public opinion. Stories of German soldiers impaling Belgian children on their bayonets were hard to counter. Head of the British Military Intelligence Service in the United States, Sir William Wiseman, was successful in bringing much of the American press to support intervention on the side of Britain and France.

Without American partiality, and the expectation of American direct belligerency, the war might have ended in compromise toward the end of 1916, when, according to British Prime Minister Lloyd George's Memoirs of the Peace Conference (p. 726), the Allies had almost exhausted the gold and marketable securities available for American purchases. The saving in lives and suffering would have been enormous. The Bolshevik coup d'tat would have been highly improbable.

As for the peace, America failed to honor President Wilson's Fourteen Points for peace which were announced by him on 8th January 1918, but particularly Wilson's declaration a month later: that there were to be no annexations, no contributions, and no punitive damages. It was on that basis that General Ludendorf had recommended to Field-Marshall Hindenburg that Germany ask for an Armistice. Diplomatic exchanges followed until 23rd of October 1918.

We now know that on 23rd October Wilson, who had become the key player in bringing the Great War to an end, informed the German government "that if the United States had to negotiate with the military masters and monarchical autocrats of Germany now, or if it is likely to have to deal with them later in regard to the international obligations of the German Empire, it must demand not peace negotiations but surrender." (Quoted in Klaus Schwabe, Woodrow Wilson, Revolutionary Germany, and Peacemaking, 1918-1919, Chapel Hill. 1985, 59, translated from German, Diplomatic History, Spring 1992, 175-6. Records of the Department of State, Group 59, 123 M 23/171 ff., National Archives.).

The Kaiser abdicated for his country and people. They were led to believe that he had voluntarily deserted them in their darkest hour. The Berliner Tageblatt of 10 November 1918: reported, "Yesterday morning . . . everything was still there, the Kaiser, the chancellor, the police chief; yesterday afternoon, nothing of all that existed any longer. The March 1917 Menshevik Revolution in Russia was being re-enacted in Germany, with Friedrich Ebert playing the role that Kerensky had played in Russia the year before.

(Negotiations for a series of loans totaling $190,000,000 by the United States to the Provisional Government in Russia of the Jewish leader, Alexander Kerensky, had then begun on the advice of the U. S. ambassador to Russia, David R. Francis, who noted in his telegram to Secretary of State Lansing, "financial aid now from America would be a masterstroke. Confidential.  Immeasurably important to the Jews that revolution succeed."  [U.S. State Dept. Document 861.00/288, 19 March 1917].)

A leading American textbook misinformed generations of readers of the "Kaiser fleeing ignominiously to Holland." (Samuel Flagg Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States, Holt, 5th edition, 1967, 628).

According to the outstanding British military-and geopolitical analyst Major General J. F. C. Fuller (pioneer of coordinated air, tank, and infantry attack. Hitler invited him to watch German military maneuvers in 1937, and to whom I was introduced in the 1950s), although it had held together well throughout the hardships of the years of war, much the same happened to the Austro-Hungarian Empire because Wilson insisted that the complete satisfaction of the Austrian and Hungarian Slavs should be a condition of the Armistice. . . . on 12 November 1918 the Emperor Karl renounced his share in it, after which a republic was proclaimed in Vienna and the ancient Austro-Hungarian monarchy ceased to exist. Thus chaos was planted in Europe." (The Conduct of War, Rutgers, 1961, 182). A former Princeton professor, without reference to the American Congress, with no foreign experience, had ended three centuries of Habsburg rule. Europe needed stability and political evolution. Wilson used American power in the name of peace and democracy, interfering in the local process of political evolution, for revolution.

The Versailles Peace Treaty called for the creation of the League of Nations, as planned by President Wilson and Edward Mandel House. In spite of the Kaiser's abdication, the terms of the Treaty of June 1919 were those imposed by complete surrender.  American perfidy toward Germany is seldom acknowledged by historians. The Treaty formally asserted Germany's war guilt and placed limits on German armed forces. It restored Alsace and Lorraine to France, gave Prussian Poland and most of West Prussia to Poland, made Danzig a free city, put Germany's colonies under the League of Nations, placed the Saar under French administration, called for plebiscites in various territories newly freed from the Central Powers, and called for the demilitarization of the Rhineland. Germany was ordered to pay huge reparations to the Allies, waived by the United States, which had profited considerably from the War. Every shell fired had profited the Guggenheims, who controlled copper. Every ounce of nickel used enriched Alfred Mond who controlled that metal, for example. German investments and corporations in the United States were confiscated and patents appropriated.

Until Germany signed the Treaty, the Allied food blockade of Germany continued for nearly six months after the war had ended. Even the German Baltic fishing fleet, which had augmented German food supplies during the war, was prevented from putting to sea. Estimates are that 750,000 Germans died from disease or starvation as a result. (The Politics of Hunger: The Allied blockade of Germany, 1915-1919. Vincent, C. Paul, Ohio University Press, 1985, and the Kath-Kollwitz lithograph Deutschlands Kinder hungern - Germany's Children are Starving.) This was a precedent for later policy against Iraq and Yugoslavia.

The economy of postwar Germany was such that the Allies could not be paid. In 1923, France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr district with Senegalese and other African colonial soldiers because of German defaults, an act that further embittered the Germans. The outraged Germans countered with passive resistance, and inflation soared. The careful middle class lost their savings and more millions their livelihood. Still unable to pay the debts which the Allies had added to the burden of repairing devastation that Germans had been forced to bear, in January 1932 Senator Copeland suggested to Congress that the United States should keep Germany from financial collapse.
 
This must be known to understand a response by some Germans to Adolf Hitler when in a typical speech he said the country will win back her honor with him as leader. The Nazis emphasized fighting the system, not personalities (N.Y.Times, 28 F. 1932, 18:2).
  
On 30 January 1933 Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor, affirming that he would carry out his obligations without party interests and for the good of the whole nation. The chain of events that had begun with World War I and America's abandonment of neutrality, with President Wilson's insistence on the abdication of the Kaiser and American participation in the intolerable Versailles Treaty, was in train. World War II would follow.

Wilson's Wars
  
Wilson's War to End All Wars "was a commital of a much higher degree of importance than the decision to embark upon the war against Germany, since it involved not merely a single temporary effort but a complete break with American tradition and entrance upon revolutionary paths." (Charles Seymour, American Diplomacy in the World War. Baltimore, 1934, reprint Hamden, 1964, 396, ibid. 128).
        
Proclaiming "Peace," Wilson was the midwife for American participation in the most destructive war in world history, taking his country from neutrality in European affairs, and "hemispheric regionalism to global universalism" (Lawrence Gelfand, Wilsonian Foreign Policy, Diplomatic History Vol. 18, No. 1, 1994, 128).
  
Woodrow Wilson has been commonly portrayed as a staunch moral idealist, an advocate of peaceful resolution of international disputes. Frederick Calhoun has suggested that in this regard, there is a serious paradox, for in Wilson's presidency, there was "a way of war," which Calhoun sought to explain in his book, Power and Principle: Armed Intervention in Wilsonian Foreign Policy (Kent, OH 1986). He writes:

"No other American President before or since used force more often than he. Within four years, from April 1914 to July 1918, Wilson resorted to force twice in Mexico, in Haiti, in the Dominican Republic, in World War I, northern Russia and in Siberia" (Diplomatic History, Vol. 18, No.1, 1994, 128).
  
President Wilson, giving in to "the most fervent pro-allied sympathies" almost as soon as the war began, adopted a policy of "informal accommodation" that "made a mockery of neutrality." Kendrick Clements, on the whole a sympathetic biographer, concludes that if this argument is "overstated," it remains true that "the Americans had let trade reshape their neutrality so that it favored the allies" (Woodrow Wilson World Statesman, Boston 1987). Robert Ferrell states that Wilson never was neutral, he merely waited until public opinion and world events set loose the conditions under which he might lead the nation to war (Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917-1921, NY 1985). If ideals drove Wilson in the abstract, George Schild argues, his ends in any given case were strongly influenced by realpolitik (Between Ideology and Realpolitik: Woodrow Wilson and the Russian Revolution, 1917-1921, Westport, CT., 1996, 100-107).
  
Calhoun similarly blends these two influences by posing an ongoing dialectic within Wilson between ideals and a penchant to use force. Wilson's ideal was peace, yet "he had no principled aversion to compelling others to accept his views;" he sought democracy, but the means he employed "military intervention--denied others the opportunity to develop in their own way."
  
As suggested by Clements, a major factor must be the money that was to be made from war, and not from neutrality. Britain and France were selling their investments in the U.S.A. to buy armaments. Germany's industrial assets there would eventually be sequestrated. The copper in every shell the Allies fired enriched the Guggenheims, who controlled copper; every use of nickel enriched Alfred Mond who controlled that metal, for example.
  
Wilson's closest adviser, Colonel E. M. House wrote to Wilson on 16 June 1915, "I need not tell you that if the Allies fail to win, it must necessarily mean a reversal of our entire policy." (Charles Seymour, The Intimate Paper of Colonel House, Houghton, 1926, 469). House had performed services relating to Federal Reserve and currency legislation for Jacob W. Schiff and Paul Warburg (ibid. 161, 174). House, not Secretary of State Robert Lansing, was appointed by Wilson to sit in the president's place in the inner group or Council of Four at the Versailles Peace Conference when he left, that really dictated its terms. Wilson openly rejected Lansing's advice with the remark that he did not want any lawyers drafting the treaty. (D. Lazo, Lansing, Wilson, and the Jenkins Incident. Uses Lansing's Papers. Diplomatic History Vol. 22, No. 2, 1998,177).
  
British conservative historian Niall Ferguson in his The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (1999) argues that had Britain stayed out of World War I, Bolshevism would never have triumphed in Russia, Hitler and his movement could never have come to power in Germany, and Britain would not have exhausted its substance and undermined its empire. Germany's vague pre-war ambitions do not demonstrate a "plan" to launch an aggressive war for hegemony, and German planning, once the war was under way, was no more or less reprehensible than the Allies' plans to carve up the Ottoman empire, seize German colonies, and break up Austria-Hungary. The difference is that the Allies got to carry out their plans.
           
The supposed "worse case" scenario is one in which the German Empire under Wilhelm I would have dominated much of Europe economically. This seems rather benign compared to the actual history that we got. Since a German-dominated European economic community is what we have now, Ferguson asks whether postponing that outcome for 80 years was worth the price paid.

What is the relevance of all this for American policy and our future? America and Britain starved the people of Iraq for a decade, because the policy makers for America wanted to be rid of Iraq's Kaiser, Saddam Hussein. America led NATO in sanctions against Yugoslavia with the objective getting President Milosevic out of office.  The precedents were made by a revolutionary internationalist, President Wilson.

Should we rather expect our presidents to reconsider the guidance of our first President? The twentieth century world would have been better for that. The fundamental policies of the United States have been moved far out of alignment from the positions on foreign affairs, and limited central power, of its visionary Founders. That formulation on foreign relations, expressed by President Washington as good relations with all, special relations with none, was affirmed by John Quincy Adams: "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own" (1821).

Misdirection and misdiagnosis have been fateful. The most seditious misinformation put out by seducers of America's sovereignty is the canard that Word War II was a result of the U.S.A. not joining the League of Nations. The truth is that Wilson's policy was motivated by the League of Nations idea, and America's intervention in the Great War resulted in the Second World War. In a rare admission in an establishment publication, "America at 200," (Essays by Morris and Graff published by the Foreign Policy Association, 1975, 55) states, "It is today highly dubious whether even with the most vigorous participation by the United States in the League, international relations could have been reshaped. Of course, we will never know." We know that President Washington's vision was clearer than President Wilson's. Let it guide us again.

Few Americans are aware or perhaps care that their government is a prime violator of international law, for which President Washington had considerable regard, particularly with interference in the internal affairs of other countries. Here is just an admitted token:

"The National Endowment for Democracy, created 15 years ago to do in the open what the Central Intelligence Agency has done surreptitiously for decades, spends $30 million a year to support things like political parties, labor unions, dissident movements, and the news media in dozens of countries, including China. . . . In the mid-1980's, it provided $5 million to Polish émigrés to keep the Solidarity movement alive. . . . It provided a $400,000 grant for political groups in Czechoslovakia that backed the election of Vaclav Havel as president in 1990."  $3 million went to Nicaragua in 1990 for "technical assistance," but actually to bolster the presidential candidate favored by the United States.  The U.S. has also meddled in Japanese elections, for example (N.Y.Times March 31, 1997 A1).

Now suppose you are a patriotic candidate for election who does not want to be an American-supported politician.

*Dr. ROBERT JOHN is a leading policy analyst, and diplomatic historian. He is the author of The Palestine Diary: British, American and United Nations Intervention 1914-1948, 1970, 2 volumes, with a foreword by Arnold Toynbee, and Behind the Balfour Declaration: The Hidden Origins of Today's Mideast Crisis, 1988
 
Dr. John has broadcast on the Overseas Service of the BBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Service and on CBS and NBC television. At the 1994 Second Orwellian Symposium in Carlsbad, Czech Rep., partly sponsored by UNESCO, Dr. John was given the Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Award. He was presented with the 1997 FREEDOM AWARD by the International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Analysis in Baden-Baden, Germany, for his outstanding work and contributions towards the fight for human rights, justice, and liberty.

Dr. John is a Life member of the Hon. Society of the Middle Temple, Inns of Court (Law) and the American Political Science Association. He is also a member of the Organization of American Historians, and The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.


My thanks to Michael Santomauro for publishing this article.
http://www.RePortersNoteBook.com
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Document 4

ON THE ORIGINS OF THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
by Nicholas Lysson
May 2006

In the early years of the First World War, Jewish sentiment was solidly with Germany, because the "civilized" Germans were fighting the hated czar. The czarist regime had given its periodic support to anti-Jewish pogroms since the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. That spurred a great Jewish exodus—some bound for Germany, some bound for the United States, a few bound for Palestine—and greatly endangered the lives and property of those who remained in the Pale of Settlement.

Jewish pro-German sentiment, together with the similar views of Irish Catholics, German-Americans, and others of central-European origin, served to keep the U.S. neutral. In April 1915 Jacob H. Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. wrote in the Menorah Journal that ". . . I am a German sympathiser. . . . England has been contaminated by her alliance with Russia. . . . I am quite convinced that in Germany anti-semitism is a thing of the past." See Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 201 (1961). During the czar’s war against the Japanese in 1904-05, Schiff had refused to raise a penny for the Russians, and instead had raised $200 million for the grateful Emperor Mutsuhito. Now, Schiff and other Jewish financiers in New York—many of whom had family connections in Germany—withheld cooperation from Russia’s allies.

According to W.J.M. Childs, in Harold W.V. Temperley, ed., A History of the Peace Conference of Paris, v. 6, p. 172-73 (published under the auspices of the British Institute for International Affairs in 1924):

. . . [T]he German General Staff desired to attach Jewish support yet more closely to the German side. . . . [T]hey seem to have urged, early in 1916, the advantages of promising Jewish restoration to Palestine under an arrangement to be made between Zionists and Turkey, backed by a German guarantee. The practical difficulties were considerable; the subject perhaps dangerous to German relations with Turkey; and the German Government acted cautiously.

It’s hard to envision how the Germans could have induced their allies the Turks to give up land in Palestine that the Turks had already refused to yield for Jewish settlement. The Ottoman Empire had severe nationalities problems with the Armenians (whom the Turks slaughtered in enormous numbers in 1915) and the Arabs (whom T.E. Lawrence was stirring up); it wanted no further such problems.

Actually, says David Fromkin, in A Peace to End All Peace, p. 296 (1989), it was not the German government that took an interest in a pro-Zionist stance, only the German press—a distinction Chaim Weizmann and his group of Zionists in England had little interest in clarifying for the British government.

In 1916, according to Weizmann’s autobiography, Trial and Error, v. 1, p. 185 (1949), the Germans trusted the Zionists to the extent of asking their help in brokering a negotiated peace. Weizmann says the Zionists replied that they would act in that role only if there were to be no territorial adjustments. That Zionist reply seems to have been disingenuous (assuming Weizmann correctly reports it); the very raison d’etre of Zionism was to obtain a particular piece of territory. There was nothing for Zionism in a negotiated settlement—no leverage with which to move a great power capable of turning over Palestine.

By 1916, though, the Zionist dilemma was resolving itself. The czarist regime was in a state of progressive collapse. Rasputin—without whom, it’s said, there could have been no Lenin—was increasingly ascendant. The czar and his shifting cast of ministers controlled less and less. On March 15, 1917, the czar abdicated. As the regime weakened, Schiff’s thinking evolved. See Stein, p. 202.

As events in Russia unfolded, Weizmann and the other Zionists conducted intensive discussions with the British over what became the Balfour Declaration—the letter finally issued on Nov. 2, 1917 in which the British government promised its "best endeavours" to facilitate "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." The Declaration went through many drafts, beginning, according to the Microsoft Encarta online encyclopedia, as early as March 1916.

What did the British get for their promise of "best endeavours"? Stories abound. One (the acetone myth) is that the promise was made in consideration of Weizmann’s service to the British as a wartime chemist. Another is that the British were moved primarily by stories they read in the Bible, and by their religious services. Still another is that the British wanted another client state in the Middle East, in addition to Egypt, to protect their regional interests and their route to India.

According to W.J.M. Childs, however (pp. 173-74) there were more immediate, concrete considerations, and certain obstacles as well. The six-volume semi-official study that includes Childs appears in modern bibliographies, but there’s an apparent unwillingness to report what he says. Accordingly, I quote him at length:

[A] most cogent reason [for the Declaration] lay in the state of Russia herself. Russian Jews had been secretly active on behalf of the Central Powers from the first; they had been the chief agents of German pacifist propaganda; by 1917 they had done much in preparation for that general disintegration of Russian national life, later recognized as the revolution. It was believed that if Great Britain declared for the fulfillment of Zionist aspirations in Palestine under its own pledge, one effect would be to bring Russian Jewry to the cause of the [Anglo-French-Italian-Russian] Entente [thus keeping Russia in the war].

It was believed, also, that such a declaration would have a potent influence on world Jewry in the same way, and secure for the Entente the aid of Jewish financial interests. It was believed, further, that it would greatly influence American opinion in favour of the Allies. Such were the chief considerations, which, during the later part of 1916 and the next ten months of 1917, impelled the British Government towards making a contract with Jewry.

But when the matter came before the Cabinet for decision delays occurred. Amongst influential English Jews Zionism had few supporters. . . . Jewish influence both within and without the Cabinet is understood to have exerted itself strenuously and pertinaciously against the proposed Declaration.

Under the pressure of Allied needs the objections of the anti-Zionists were either over-ruled or the causes of objection removed, and the Balfour Declaration was published to the world on 2^nd November 1917. That it is in purpose a definite contract with Jewry is beyond question.

* * *

[I]t is possible to understand from many sources that directly, and indirectly, the services expected of Jewry were not expected in vain, and were, from the point of view of British interests alone, well worth the price which had to be paid. Nor is it to be supposed that the services already rendered are the last—it may well be that in time to come Jewish support will much exceed any thought possible in the past.

What were "the services expected of Jewry" that were "not expected in vain" and were "well worth the price"? In 1936, Samuel Landman let the cat out of the bag with a pamphlet entitled Great Britain, the Jews and Palestine. Landman had been in Weizmann’s circle during the war—a point easily ascertainable from biographies of Weizmann—and was in a position to know what had gone on between the Zionists and the British government. Landman’s pamphlet is available in full text online—see http://www.itk.ntnu.no/ansatte/Andresen_Trond/kk-f/2005/0036.html—and can be found in the British Library, the New York Public Library, the Harvard Library, and perhaps other collections as well.

Landman’s pamphlet was addressed to the British government. His complaint was that in 1916 there had been what he called a "gentleman’s agreement" between the Zionists and the British government; that the Zionists had fully upheld their own end of the agreement; and that now, 20 years later, the British had yet to deliver Palestine.

According to Landman, the Zionist quid pro quo for the Balfour Declaration was nothing less than to "induce the American President to come into the War" on the British side. Landman complained that this wartime service to the British accounted "in no small measure" for Nazi anti-Semitism, and warned that if the British didn’t deliver a Jewish state in Palestine, the Jews in their despair might try to "pull down the pillars of civilisation."

Landman’s argument was in part that the British, having turned Jews into mortally endangered pariahs in Nazi Germany, had a moral obligation to extricate them. Similar moral-obligation arguments have recently been addressed to the U.S.—for example on behalf of Shiites and Kurds who rebelled against Saddam Hussein in response to American encouragement after the First Gulf War, and then found in the face of mass slaughter that the expected U.S. assistance was a chimera.

Landman’s words about pulling down "the pillars of civilisation," moreover, might have been taken as a threat that the Jews, having brought down two cousins of the English royal house, the czar and the kaiser, would turn next on the Nazi-sympathizer Edward VIII, then in the one partial year of his reign.

Landman’s pamphlet is a tale of double betrayal, first Zionist betrayal of the Germans—on whose side the Jews had first been—and then British betrayal of the Jews. The British had found their promise hard to keep. That was because of entirely understandable Arab resistance, amply forecast by the Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky warned in his famous essay "The Iron Wall" (1923) that there had never been a people who had submitted willingly to colonization of their homeland, and that the Arabs in Palestine would not be the first. Nor was Jabotinsky’s warning new even in 1923. See Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 (1992), and Masalha, The Politics of Denial (2003).

Landman’s pamphlet came just before the British began their suppression of the Arab revolt of 1936-39. According to Shlomo Ben-Ami, briefly the Israeli foreign minister under Ehud Barak, that "brutal" crackdown predetermined Zionist success in 1948. See Ben-Ami’s book, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace (Oxford University Press 2006).

In 1997, John Cornelius argued persuasively in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs that the Zionists—having every incentive to guarantee British victory—brought the U.S. into the war in 1917 by leaking to British intelligence either the plain text of the Zimmermann Telegram or, more likely, the code in which it was encrypted. The Zimmermann Telegram, from the foreign office in Berlin to the German embassy in Mexico City, suggested that if the U.S. came in on the British side, Mexico be encouraged to "reconquer" its "lost territory" of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Cornelius’s argument is available online.

As a proposed grant of land not belonging to the grantor, the Zimmermann Telegram stirred the same outrage in the U.S. that the Balfour Declaration later stirred among Arabs. George Sylvester Viereck lamented that public revelation of the telegram was "the end of pro-Germanism in the United States." See his book The Strangest Friendship in History: Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 190 (1932). Viereck was the father of the historian and poet Peter Viereck, author of Meta-Politics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind (1941 and 1961). In its original form, as the younger Viereck’s Harvard Ph.D. thesis, the manuscript accurately predicted the Nazi holocaust. That prediction was deleted from the first published edition; the book’s editor thought it a set of "unrealistic exaggerations which the pig-headed young author would regret 20 years from now."

Six weeks after Woodrow Wilson published the text of the Zimmermann Telegram, the U.S. declared war against Germany, but not against its allies. As a result of American entry into the war, the Germans got not a negotiated peace, nor even Wilson’s Fourteen Points, but the catastrophically punitive terms Britain and France imposed at Versailles. John Maynard Keynes analyzed those terms in The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1920). At p. 33, Keynes wrote: "[T]here is nothing very new to learn about the war or the end it was fought for; England had destroyed, as in each preceding century, a trade rival." At p. 268, he added: ". . . [V]engeance, I dare predict, will not limp."

Cornelius says that Barbara Tuchman’s book The Zimmermann Telegram (1958) contains "disinformation," and that "it is remarkable that Tuchman’s book continues to be read and believed more than 30 years after hard evidence has become available that the story is false." Cornelius’s charge against a most distinguished historian gains credibility from Tuchman’s enthusiastic review of Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial (1984), which Tuchman surely knew was a hoax. Peters’s book is the one that purports to prove that Palestine lacked any substantial Arab population before the Jews began to arrive, and that the Arabs swarmed in only later to partake of the Jewish economic miracle. Apparently, Tuchman’s work was of the highest standard only when it didn’t involve Zionism.

Samuel Landman’s pamphlet, being addressed to the British government, would not have alleged an agreement—and a form of performance—which that government knew to be mythical. Landman’s account of the "gentleman’s agreement" of 1916 is broadly consistent with a speech David Lloyd George gave in the House of Commons on June 19, 1936, which is excerpted in Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East 366-67 (2005). Lloyd George’s account implies, however, that bargaining for the Balfour Declaration began not in 1916, but in early 1917, when in his words:

. . . [T]he French army had mutinied; the Italian army was on the eve of collapse; America had hardly started preparing in earnest. There was nothing left but Britain confronting the most powerful military combination that the world has ever seen. It was important for us to seek every legitimate help that we could get. The Government came to the conclusion, from information received from every part of the world, that it was very vital that we should have the sympathies of the Jewish community. . . . They were helpful to us in America to a very large extent; and they were helpful even in Russia at that moment because Russia was just about to walk out and leave us alone. . . . The Jews, with all the influence that they possessed, responded nobly to the appeal that was made.

Lloyd George may have had a reason for fudging the date of the "gentleman’s agreement" from 1916 to 1917. His own accession as prime minister, replacing H.H. Asquith on Dec. 7, 1916, may itself have been a product of that agreement—a point he’d be at pains not to advertise. Lloyd George, Roberts & Co. had been lawyers for the World Zionist Conference since 1903, and had also represented Marcus Samuel’s Shell Oil Co. Installation of their own man as prime minister, in other words, may have been one of the Zionists’ demands.

On taking office as prime minister, Lloyd George immediately launched a campaign to take Jerusalem, an objective attained a year later. Lord Kitchener, as secretary of state for war, had opposed any such campaign as a mere diversion. (See Fromkin, above, p. 83.) On June 5, 1916, Kitchener drowned when the British naval ship taking him to Archangel hit a mine and sank. Fromkin (p. 217) says the British naval commander, Adm. Sir John Jellicoe, unaccountably ignored warnings from naval intelligence that Kitchener’s route was mined. Those warnings came to light only in 1985. If, as the Encarta encyclopedia has it, discussions on the Balfour Declaration had begun three months before, in March 1916, Kitchener’s death may be a relevant piece of the story, the removal of an obstacle.

Lloyd George’s 1936 speech in the House of Commons was reported verbatim in the next day’s Times of London. It would thus have been read almost immediately in Berlin. W.J.M. Childs’s chapter in the six-volume Temperley study was in libraries, and had thus been available to the Germans since 1924. The 1936 Samuel Landman pamphlet was also probably available to the Germans, if not from libraries then from intelligence sources. (In assessing opportunities for German intelligence, recall that in 1936 much of the English aristocracy, not just the king, had Nazi sympathies.)

So the German intelligence services read W.J.M. Childs’s statement that "the services expected of Jewry [in the war] were not expected in vain, and were, from the point of view of British interests alone, well worth the price which had to be paid."

They read Lloyd George’s statement that "the Jews, with all the influence that they possessed, responded nobly to the appeal that was made."

They read Childs’s statement that "it may well be that in time to come Jewish support [for Britain] will much exceed any thought possible in the past."

They probably read as well Landman’s admission that it had been the Jews who brought the U.S. into the war to crush Germany. Likewise, Landman’s remarkably infelicitous threat about pulling down the "pillars of civilisation"—which might have seemed to them a complete confirmation of Nazi ideology. Likewise again, Landman’s statement that "the New Zionist Organisation is pro-British to the core."

Nazi and Zionist propaganda were in close agreement that the Jews were unassimilable in Europe. See Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), available online. It’s against that background that the Germans read W.J.M. Childs’s conclusion—actually no surprise to anyone—that:

Russian Jews had been secretly active on behalf of the Central Powers from the first; they had been the chief agents of German pacifist propaganda; by 1917 they had done much in preparation for that general disintegration of Russian national life, later recognized as the revolution.

The Nazis no doubt took that to mean that Germany, as well, had to protect itself against the secret activities of its Jewish citizens, and that Jews would give their real allegiance—or at least assistance—to whatever power could deliver Palestine. That power, of course, was Great Britain, although in Jan. 1941, at the height of Nazi success, the Stern Gang actually tried to enlist Germany as its patron. See Avishai Margalet, "The Violent Life of Yitzhak Shamir," New York Review of Books, May 14, 1992.

None of the material cited above, from 1936 or before, told the Nazis anything they hadn’t already believed, at least since the peace conference in 1919. But such material surely tended to confirm their view about a "stab in the back." While there’s no gainsaying that the Nazi leaders were psychopathic, their obsessions didn’t come altogether out of Wagnerian mythology about dark Hagen and blond Siegfried.

In 1936, Winston Churchill either did or did not tell the New York Enquirer (forerunner of the National Enquirer) that American entry into the war had been a disaster, without which there would have been no Nazi Germany and perhaps no Soviet Union either. Churchill denied the statement—so vehemently that the journalist who’d reported it sued Churchill for defamation. (Letting the statement stand would have been profoundly embarrassing to Churchill if, as proved to be the case, he had to solicit American involvement in a second war.) Before testimony was taken, though, the U.S. was already in World War II and the suit was dropped.

Landman’s account, Childs’s, and Lloyd George’s seem to confirm at least some parts of a fiery speech (available online) that Benjamin Freedman—the principal owner of the Woodbury Soap Co.—gave to a far right-wing audience at the Willard Hotel in Washington D.C. in 1961. Freedman is not the most attractive witness; and his speech has become a favorite of some very unsavory types. But he gives a lot of factual detail that should be checkable, and that I’ve never seen refuted. He tells, for example, for whom he worked during the 1912 Wilson campaign (Henry Morgenthau, Sr. as his "confidential man" and liaison with Rolla Wells), some of the meetings he attended in the Wilson administration and at the peace conference, and what he personally saw and heard. He says that in Oct. 1916 Jewish leaders en masse switched their support from Germany to England "like a traffic light that changes from red to green."

Freedman agrees with Keynes, above, as to Britain’s war aim in 1914-18 being the destruction of a trade rival. Freedman and Landman both say that the Zionist wartime agreement with the British was discussed in the Jewish press of the time. Freedman says of the Zionist leaders that "the press was filled with their statements." It’s not clear how much of that discussion—if any—survives today. It would make interesting reading.

Perhaps Freedman belongs in the same vile category as those who for years circulated rumors about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings—rumors that DNA testing now appears to confirm.

  -------------------

Document 5

Nakba History and the Origins of the Jewish State : the Role of the Balfour Declaration

By Karin Brothers

Global Research, June 09, 2013

Theme: History, Religion

In-depth Report: PALESTINE

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The Balfour Declaration, issued on November 2, 1917, committed Britain to set up Palestine — then part of the Ottoman Empire —  as a Jewish homeland; it was an extraordinary letter from the Government of Britain to a member of the banking house of Rothschild. 

As Arthur Koestler noted, ” One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third”  — a  country that then belonged to a fourth country, namely Turkey!

The reason for the creation of this document — the British obligation to perform such a service to Zionists — has not been well understood.

Robert John’s booklet “Behind the Balfour Declaration” uses sources provided by the late US activist Benjamin Freedman to provide the fascinating background for this history.

Freedman’s passionate 1961 address has the benefit of firsthand observations but some of his perspectives were not borne out by John’s evidence.  According to Freedman, Zionists approached Britain at a crucial point of World War I with the offer of badly needed financial help in exchange for a commitment to secure Palestine as a future Zionist state; the deal required the entry of the United States to give Britain the ability to deliver Palestine from the Ottoman Empire.  Freedman claimed that Germany’s post-WW I resentment against the Jewish community stemmed from what they regarded as the betrayal and complicity of German-Jewish financiers in their defeat.

The following excerpts of John’s booklet attempt to make his information more accessible; the full document has been made available by the 2013 Institute for Historical Review at URL: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p389_John.html   Footnotes embedded in the excerpts can be referenced in the original document.

The early Zionists who wanted to establish a Jewish homeland faced what looked like an impossible task at the turn of the 20th century.  Most Jews were unsympathetic to the establishment of a “homeland”, and the Zionist community itself was divided between those — like founder Theodore Hertzl — who believed that a pragmatic choice in Africa would be adequate and those determined to obtain Palestine.  The Ottoman Empire refused to release Palestine to the Zionists and European leaders were — while often sympathetic– unhelpful.  Hertzl claimed prophetically that they would obtain Palestine “not from the goodwill but from the jealousy of the Powers.” [112]

The conflicts gripping Europe in 1916-1917 created the fertile ground for Zionist aims in Palestine.

The start of World War I saw the Allies of Britain, France, Italy and Czarist Russia facing off against the Entente: Germany, Austria- Hungary and the Ottoman Empire of Turkey.  The human losses were staggering, and by 1916 the Allies were running short of money and credit.

To quote excerpts of John’s description of the situation and a key encounter:

 1916 was a disastrous year for the Allies. “In the story of the war” wrote Lloyd George, “the end of 1916 found the fortunes of the Allies at their lowest ebb. In the offensives on the western front we had lost three men for every two of the Germans we had put out of action. …”

 As for paying for the war, the Allies at first had used the huge American debts in Europe to pay for war supplies, but by 1916 the resources of J.P. Morgan and Company, the Allies’ financial and purchasing agents in the United States, were said to be nearly exhausted by increased Allied demands for American credit. [91] …

[And, given the uncertainly of the outcome of this conflict, funding was not forthcoming.]

Into this gloomy winter of 1916 walked a [well-connected] new figure. He was James Malcolm, [S] an Oxford educated Armenian [T] who, at the beginning of 1916, with the sanction of the British and Russian Governments, had been appointed … to take charge of Armenian interests during and after the war. …. He was passionately devoted to an Allied victory which he hoped would guarantee the national freedom of the Armenians then under Turkish and Russian rule.

Sir Mark Sykes, with whom he was on terms of family friendship, told him that the Cabinet was looking anxiously for United States intervention in the war on the side of the Allies, but when asked what progress was being made in that direction, Sykes shook his head glumly, “Precious little,” he replied.

James Malcolm now suggested to Mark Sykes that the reason why previous overtures to American Jewry to support the Allies had received no attention was because the approach had been made to the wrong people. It was to the Zionist Jews that the British and French Governments should address their parleys.

“You are going the wrong way about it,” said Mr. Malcolm. “You can win the sympathy of certain politically-minded Jews everywhere, and especially in the United States, in one way only, and that is, by offering to try and secure Palestine for them.” [96]

What really weighed most heavily now with Sykes were the terms of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement. [Not to mention Britain’s 1915 promise to the Arabs!] He told Malcolm that to offer to secure Palestine for the Jews was impossible. “Malcolm insisted that there was no other way and urged a Cabinet discussion. … Malcolm pointed out the influence of Judge Brandeis of the American Supreme Court, and his strong Zionist sympathies.” [97]

 In the United States, the President’s adviser, Louis D. Brandeis, a leading advocate of Zionism, had been inducted as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on 5 June 1916. That Wilson was vulnerable was evident, in that as early as 1911, he had made known his profound interest in the Zionist idea and in Jewry. [98]  … Wilson had been blackmailed for $40,000 for some hot love letters he had written to his neighbor’s wife when he was President of Princeton. He did not have the money, and the go-between, Samuel Untermeyer, of the law firm of Guggenheim, Untermeyer & Marshall, said he would provide it if Wilson would appoint to the next vacancy on the Supreme Court a nominee selected by Mr. Untermeyer. The money was paid, the letters returned, and Brandeis had been the nominee. [Wilson was also surrounded by the pro-Zionist Col. E. M. House, who he had made his effective Secretary of State, and Brandeis’s nephew, Felix Frankfurter.]

In December 1916, Lloyd George, formerly counsel to the Zionists, was named Prime Minister of Britain, with Arthur Balfour his Foreign Minister.  Lloyd George planned to pursue the war more aggressively than had the preceding Asquith government.  Germany, so far the winner in the conflict, offered generous peace terms in January 1917, according to Freedman, which were “status quo ante,” giving Germany no benefit for its lead in the conflict.

But Britain had other ideas at that point, and the situation in Russia, with the approaching success of the revolution in March of 1917, was a positive development.  Lloyd George’s memoirs noted that:

Russian Jews had been secretly active on behalf of the Central Powers from the first; they had become the chief agents of German pacifist propaganda in Russia; by 1917 they had done much in preparing for that general disintegration of Russian society, later recognised as the Revolution. It was believed that if Great Britain declared for the fulfilment of Zionist aspirations in Palestine under her own pledge, one effect would be to bring Russian Jewry to the cause of the Entente.

It was believed, also, that [an agreement to obtain Palestine for a Jewish homeland] would have a potent influence upon world Jewry outside Russia, and secure for the Entente the aid of Jewish financial interests. In America, their aid in this respect would have a special value when the Allies had almost exhausted the gold and marketable securities available for American purchases. Such were the chief considerations which, in 1917, impelled the British Government towards making a contract with Jewry. [189] …

John noted that:

  The reports reaching England of impending dissolution of the Russian state practically removed the need for Russian endorsement of Zionist aims, but made French and Italian acceptance even more urgent. This at any rate was the belief of Sykes, Balfour, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, who, as claimed in their subsequent statements, were convinced that proclaimed Allied support for Zionist aims would especially influence the United States. Events in Russia made the cooperation of Jewish groups with the Allies much easier. ….

 On 22 March 1917 Jacob H. Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., wrote to Mortimer Schiff, “… because of recent action of Germany (the declaration of unlimited U-boat warfare) and developments in Russia we shall no longer abstain from Allied Governments financing when opportunity offers.”  …. [emphasis added]

 

  [Thus:] In London, the War Cabinet led by Lloyd George lost no time committing British forces first to the capture of Jerusalem, and then to the total expulsion of the Turks from Palestine. The attack on Egypt, launched on 26 March 1917, attempting to take Gaza, ended in failure. By the end of April a second attack on Gaza had been driven back and it had become clear that there was no prospect of a quick success on this Front. …

In March of 1917 Wilson had unsuccessfully tried to get Congressional agreement to an undeclared naval war against Germany.  On April 2, 1917 — within six months of James Malcolm’s suggestion to Sykes — Wilson called a special session of Congress to declare war. John describes it:

 He asked for a declaration of war with a mission:  for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

That night crowds filled the streets, marching, shouting, singing “Dixie” or “The Star Spangled Banner.” Wilson turned to his secretary, Tumulty: “Think what that means, the applause. My message tonight was a message of death, How strange to applaud that!” …

In July of 1917, Woodrow Wilson sent a delegation to Turkey to examine the possibility of peace negotiations with the Allies; Wilson was concerned about the Armenian genocide which was then taking place.  The mission, which consisted of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. and Justice Brandeis’s nephew Felix Frankfurter, was intercepted by Chaim Weizmann and persuaded to return home [147]  An Allied peace with Turkey would have spelled the end of Zionist intentions for Palestine.

The drafting of the documents to enable the British obligations in Palestine took place in the summer of 1917.  They were not drafted entirely in Britain. According to John:

 Brandeis …  busied himself in particular with drafts of what later became the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine, and in obtaining American approval for them. [149] A considerable number of drafts were made in London and transmitted to the United States, through War Office channels, for the use of the American Zionist Political Committee. Some were detailed, but the British Government did not want to commit itself to more than a general statement of principles.

Brandeis cabled Weizmann on September 23, 1917, that Wilson would be sympathetic to the Declaration [165] although how he had induced Wilson to change his mind was unclear [166].

The letter known as the Balfour Declaration was issued on November 2, 1917:

Foreign Office, November 2nd, 1917

 Dear Lord Rothschild,

 I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty’s Government the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet:

 “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

 I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

  Yours sincerely,  Arthur James Balfour. [1]

It was decided by Lord Allenby that the “Declaration” should not then be published in Palestine where his forces were still south of the Gaza-Beersheba.  Although leaflets containing its message were reportedly dropped over Germany, Austria and “the Jewish belt from Poland to the Baltic “, the German government was not aware of the Balfour Declaration until 1920.  (A German-Jewish society, the V.lJ.O.D. [HH] had approached Turkey in January of 1918 to get support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine but had to be satisfied with an Ottoman promise of legislation by means of which: “all justifiable wishes of the Jews in Palestine would be able to meet their fulfilment.”)

When Winston Churchill asked the House of Commons on July 4th 1922 to keep the British pledge of the Balfour Declaration, a member of Parliament noted that “The House has not yet had an opportunity of discussing it.”  American Congressman Hamilton Fish, who had authored a 1922 resolution modelled on the Balfour Declaration, was horrified at where it led.  He claimed: “As author of the first Zionist Resolution patterned n the Balfour Resolution, I denounce and repudiate the Ben Gurion statements as irreconcilable with my Resolution as adopted by Congress, and if they represent the Government of Israel and public opinion there, then I shall disavow publicly my support of my own Resolution, as I do not want to be associated with such un-American doctrines.” [180]

 Why did Wilson involve the US in WW I?

In examining Woodrow Wilson’s motives for entering WW I, John noted that the 1937 study of Prof. Alex M. Arnett indicated that Wilson had decided to enter WW I on the side of the Allies “many months” before the March 1917 German resumption of U-boat warfare. [182]  Given that Brandeis joined the Supreme Court in June 1916, and the British approaches to Zionist leaders would have taken place in the fall of 1916, Wilson’s decision could have reflected those influences.  Wilson’s peace delegation to Turkey in July 1917, however, indicated that the cause of the Armenian genocide took precedence over Zionist ambitions in Palestine.

Some observations can be made from this study relating to responsibility for WW I and its tragic consequences:

1. Germany, which was forced to accept responsibility for WW I as part of the Treaty of Versailles terms, was the one country that tried to obtain peace in January of 1917 and was recognized by the Allies as the source of “peace propaganda”.  Also, as an ally of Turkey, Germany was not able to offer any part of the Ottoman Empire to attract support. [Turkey was dismissive of all proposals for a Jewish Palestine; the response to a German approach in 1918 was a promise of legislation through which: “all justifiable wishes of the Jews in Palestine would be able to meet their fulfilment.”]
2.  While Jewish financial power and the Zionist agenda were attractive to WW I belligerents, the responsibility for those with the power to make use of them was not attributable to the Jewish community.  Zionist leadership demonstrated callous disregard for the fate of the Armenians and Greeks being slaughtered by Turkey when they waylaid the American delegation sent to work for a peace with Turkey — an effort presumably designed to stop the ongoing Armenian genocide.
3.  The overthrow of the Czar in March of 1917 and the Jewish contributions to the Russian Revolution were significant factors for the subsequent Jewish financial support of the Allies.
4.   The involvement of Justice Brandeis in drafting the Balfour Declaration (as well as the British Mandate for Palestine) along with early Congressional support indicate an American responsibility for the resulting deprivation of Palestinian self-determination that is rarely acknowledged.
5.  The various promises and assurances that Palestinian rights would be respected —  from Chaim Weizmann [140], from the Balfour Declaration, from the UN General Assembly Resolution of 1947 recommending the partition of Palestine, and from dozens of “legally-binding” UN resolutions and conventions– have all proven to be worthless in protecting Palestinian human or civil rights.

To conclude with Robert John’s (and Benjamin Freedman’s) observations: “We should not allow ourselves to be made pawns in the games of others.”

 -----------------------------

Document 6

 

The Hidden History of the Balfour Declaration

By John Cornelius

IN THIS article the author relates what he believes to be the true story of how the British government came to issue what has come to be known as the Balfour Declaration.

The Balfour Declaration took the form of a letter, dated Nov. 2, 1917, from Arthur Balfour, foreign secretary of the British government, to Lord Walter Rothschild, head of the organization of British Zionists. This letter promised that the British government would work to bring about “a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” (See box.)

I have written three earlier articles in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, on this subject, and my views have evolved with the passage of time.^1,2,3 What has not changed is my belief in a British-Zionist trade whereby the Zionists assisted in bringing America into the war and, in return, the British promised them Palestine.

Among the things that have changed is my concept of the timing of the agreement. The earliest article contained a chronology showing that the British received a plain-language copy of the Zimmermann telegram (ZT) a few days after it was sent, encoded, from Berlin to Washington, on Jan. 16, 1917, and that the first formal meeting between British Zionists and the British government took place on Feb. 7, 1917. It now appears that the basic agreement was made several months before that time and what was betrayed to the British was not the text of the ZT, but rather the code in which it was sent.

AUTUMN 1916

The story can begin about halfway through the First World War, in the autumn of 1916. We will examine three components of the situation at that time: the military and naval positions and the status of British Zionist negotiations.

On land, the war began in August 1914 with the German army facing enemies on two fronts. In accordance with a long-standing plan, the Schlieffen plan, Germany attacked France first, hoping for a quick victory there, after which it could turn its full attention to the Russian front. Events did not work out that way. The Germans did advance, through Belgium, deep into France, but they did not succeed in enveloping Paris from the west, as had been the intention. By the end of 1914 a sort of stalemate had developed. A year and a half later the location of the front had not changed greatly, and a continuous line of trenches ran from the Swiss border almost to the North Sea. Both sides mounted offensives from time to time, with heavy loss of life, but the location of the front changed by only a few miles.

The Germans fared better on the Russian front, but that does not concern us here.

By the middle of 1916 the French army was largely exhausted, and the next big Allied offensive was undertaken primarily by the British. The battle of the Somme began on July 1, 1916 and was one of the bloodiest in history. The British suffered 60,000 casualties (19,000 dead) on the first day alone. Total casualties were over a million, more or less equally divided between the two sides. The location of the front shifted by a few miles.

Well before the battle ended, the British must have concluded that they would not be able to drive the Germans out of France by frontal assault.

At sea, the situation was delicate. Early in the war, on Nov. 3, 1914, Britain had declared the whole of the North Sea a theater of war and instituted an illegal blockade of the adjoining neutral coasts and ports. The purpose of the blockade was to starve Germany into submission. The American government protested but took no action.⁴

On Feb. 4, 1915 the German ambassador informed the American government that from Feb.18 a counter blockade would be in force, and the territorial waters of Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, were declared a war area.

On May 7, 1915 the British liner Lusitania, traveling from New York to Liverpool, was struck off the Irish coast by a single torpedo, which provoked a much larger secondary explosion. The ship sank quickly, with the loss of almost 1,200 lives, 128 of them American.

There was strong American reaction to the sinking of the Lusitania, both popular and diplomatic, and the U.S. came close to breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany. A meeting between the German ambassador and President Woodrow Wilson on June 2 had the effect of calming matters for a time, but an exchange of diplomatic notes occurred. The second American note, of June 10, led to the resignation of the American secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, who believed that neutrality required that American citizens be forbidden from traveling on ships bearing the flag of any belligerent nation. And, in fact, Americans could perfectly well have traveled on American, Dutch, or Scandinavian vessels.

Although there had been no settlement of the Lusitania case, feeling died down for a time. Then on Aug. 19, 1915 the British passenger steamer Arabic was sunk off the coast of Ireland, with the loss of two American lives. Once again the possibility of war between the U.S. and Germany loomed. In this case, however, Germany revealed that, following the Lusitania sinking, German submarine commanders had been ordered not to sink liners without warning, and apologized and offered compensation. Although the Lusitania matter still was not settled, following the Arabic apology German-American relations remained tranquil for several months.

The next cloud on the horizon was the “Sussex incident.” On March 24, 1916 the French trans-channel steamer Sussex was reported torpedoed and sunk in the English Channel, with the loss of several American lives. There seems to be some question as to whether the Sussex was in fact torpedoed and sunk at all, but in any case, the American government issued an ultimatum, and the German government was forced to acknowledge that the Sussex had been sunk by a German submarine and to agree that henceforth German submarines would abide by the rules of “cruiser warfare,” a severe restriction which seriously handicapped the submarine as a strategic weapon.

Throughout the war, there were two schools of thought within the German government. One held that the submarine was a major strategic weapon, with the potential of winning the war for Germany. The other held that the continued use of submarines against merchant shipping would lead to continual incidents and ultimately bring America into the war on the side of the Allies, and that therefore the use of submarines against merchant shipping was against Germany’s interest. By the fall of 1916 this issue had not been resolved.

British-Zionist negotiations date back at least to 1903. In that year the sixth Zionist congress took place in Basel. It is referred to as the “Uganda” congress because it dealt with an offer by the British government to make available land in Uganda for Jewish settlement. The offer was seriously considered and was, in fact, approved by a majority of the delegates, but the debate proved to be very divisive, and ultimately the offer was not taken up.

During that period Arthur Balfour was British prime minister, and the Zionists had retained the London law firm of Lloyd George, Roberts and Co. This firm was chosen because one of the partners, David Lloyd George, was an MP and thus in touch with Foreign Office thinking.⁵ Both Balfour and Lloyd George must have given serious thought at that time to the question of what the British government and the Zionists could do for each other.

That Balfour continued to think about this is shown by his statement at what Chaim Weizmann calls their second meeting in 1915 (the first was in 1906): “You know, I was thinking of that conversation of ours, and I believe that after the guns stop firing you may get your Jerusalem.”⁶

British-Zionist negotiations date back at least to 1903.

On the other hand, in her 1983 book, Dear Lord Rothschild, Rothschild’s niece, Miriam Rothschild, states that Balfour and Weizmann had met on several occasions between 1905 and 1915 and had established an excellent rapport.⁷

In any case, it would seem that a pattern of British-Zionist negotiations, and in particular of Balfour-Weizmann negotiations, had been established well before the fall of 1916.

It is interesting to note that the Encyclopedia Britannica states that Balfour succeeded Winston Churchill as first lord of the admiralty in May 1915, whereas in Trial and Error Weizmann states that in March 1916 he was summoned to the British admiralty in connection with a chemical process he had developed and was subsequently brought into the presence of “the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was at that time Mr. Winston Churchill.”

Whatever the truth of the timing may be, Weizmann established a pattern of frequent visits to the admiralty, ostensibly in connection with his chemical process, but which would also have provided the opportunity for frequent, prolonged and secret negotiations between Weizmann and Balfour.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Once it became clear, in the fall of 1916, that the battle of the Somme would not result in the German army’s being forced out of France, the British, with their resources approaching exhaustion, had to consider what to do next.

Herbert Asquith, who had been prime minister since 1908, had begun, reluctantly, to consider a negotiated peace, but negotiations with the Zionists, through Weizmann and Balfour, provided another option for Britain, although not for Asquith. That option was the possibility of a formal, but secret, alliance between the Zionists and the Monarchy, whereby the British Monarchy would undertake to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine and the Zionists would undertake to help bring America into the war on the side of the Allies, thus assuring an Allied victory. An agreement with a British government would certainly be necessary, but British governments come and go, and a commitment from something less ephemeral than a British government would have been required by the Zionists.

It is proposed that such a secret agreement took place. There seems to be no way to date it accurately, but it seems likely to have occurred sometime in October 1916.

Once a formal agreement was in place, the next step was to arrange for several changes in personnel—on both the British and the German sides.

• The first change was in the leadership of Room 40, the name given the British codebreaking organization. Room 40 was destined to play a key role in the vast deception to follow, and it was necessary to have a trusted actor at its head. Room 40 was first set up in the fall of 1914 under the direction of Alfred Ewing, who retained that position until October 1916. At that time Ewing was replaced by Captain Reginald Hall, director of naval intelligence. Balfour found a suitable position for Ewing in academia. See “Five Books,” p. 47.
• In Germany, Gottlieb von Jagow, who had been foreign minister since 1913, resigned in November 1916 over the issue of unrestricted submarine warfare, which he opposed. Speaking of the situation in Berlin at that time, the then German ambassador to the U.S. stated, “the unrestricted submarine campaign was only made possible by the resignation of Herr von Jagow, who was the chief opponent of the submarine campaign,” and “as long as Herr von Jagow remained secretary of state, a breach with the United States was regarded as impossible.”⁸
• Von Jagow was replaced by Arthur Zimmermann, undersecretary for foreign affairs since 1911. Before 1914, Berlin was the center of Zionist activity, and in 1912 the organization which was to become the Technion, or Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa had placed itself under the protection of Germany, and Zimmermann had arranged with the Turkish government for the purchase of land and the erection of a building.⁹ Zimmermann clearly enjoyed good relations with German Zionists and was thus susceptible to Zionist influence.
• In November 1916, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected to a second term as U.S. president with the slogan, “He kept us out of war.” It was understood that Wilson’s aim was to bring about a negotiated end to the war without victory for either side.
• In early December 1916, a political crisis, probably engineered, occurred in Britain, and Herbert Asquith, who had been prime minister since 1908, was forced to resign. The denouement came on Dec. 6, 1916. That afternoon King George V summoned several prominent political figures, including Balfour and Lloyd George, to a conference at Buckingham Palace. Later that same evening, Balfour received a small political delegation, which proposed that the difficult political situation could be resolved with Lloyd George as prime minister, provided Balfour would agree to accept the position of foreign minister, which he did.¹⁰
• Lloyd George then quickly imposed a war dictatorship, and direction of the war was entrusted to a “War Cabinet” of five members, including himself as prime minister and Balfour as foreign minister. Mark Sykes was named secretary.

At that point, all necessary changes in personnel had been accomplished.

• On Dec. 18, 1916, the American ambassador to Britain conveyed an “offer of peace” on behalf of the Central Powers to the Allies.
• On the following day, David Lloyd George, in his first speech to Parliament as prime minister, heaped scorn on the peace proposal and vowed that Britain and its allies would fight on until victory.

In retrospect, it seems clear that this speech was a bluff and was meant to goad the Germans into resuming unrestricted submarine warfare.

That this was indeed the case is indicated by a series of messages from the U.S. ambassador to Britain, Walter Page, to President Wilson and the secretary of state, written in June 1917.¹¹ These messages make it clear that Britain was on the verge of financial collapse, and that only American support could avert disaster.” These messages were made public only in 1925 and are, in my opinion, too little known.

• On Jan. 9, 1917 the German government made the fateful decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare at the beginning of the following month.
• Date unknown—What would come to be known as the Zimmermann telegram was concocted in London. My source for this information is a letter to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, written in response to my first (1997) article, by author Russell Warren Howe.¹² Howe stated that he had been taught at Cambridge that the ZT was “concocted in London to encourage Washington to join the Allies against the Central Powers.” My first reaction to this letter was doubt—because Zimmermann subsequently accepted responsibility for the ZT. But of course he had to, because he was responsible, even if the idea came from someone else.
• Date unknown, possibly before the previous two entries—The key to German code 7500 (in which the ZT was to be sent) was provided to Room 40 by an informant. Howe states that Britain broke code 7500 (he calls it 0075) “a few weeks before the ZT.” By “broke,” he presumably means “acquired.”
• Date unknown—One Herr von Kemnitz, an East Asia expert in the German foreign office and presumably a Zionist agent, presented Zimmermann with the text of a proposed telegram, the ZT, that he had supposedly drafted but had more likely received from London.¹³ Against the opposition of some of his colleagues, he persuaded Foreign Minister Zimmermann to send it.
• On Jan. 16, 1917, two telegrams were sent sequentially, by cable, from Foreign Minister Zimmermann, in Berlin, to the German ambassador in Washington, Count Bernstorff. The first, which both Zimmermann and Bernstorff considered to be by far the more important, informed Bernstorff of the decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare on Feb. 1, 1917, and gave him instructions on when and how to inform the American government. The second was what has come to be known as the Zimmermann telegram. (See box on facing page.) This second telegram was relayed to the German Embassy in Mexico City on Jan. 19, 1917.
• The British intercepted the ZT on the day it was sent and promptly decoded it.

It should be noted that Zimmermann sent the ZT on his own authority. Neither the Kaiser nor Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg knew anything of it until it was made public in America.

After seeing these cables, Bernstorff attempted to have the German government rescind the unrestricted submarine warfare decision, but was unsuccessful.

• Jan. 31, 1917—Bernstorff informed the U.S. government that unrestricted submarine warfare would commence the following day.
• Feb. 3, 1917—The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, and Bernstorff was told to leave the U.S.
• Feb. 7, 1917—The secretary of the War Cabinet, Mark Sykes, met with Weizmann and other Zionist leaders in London, in what is widely, but incorrectly, believed to have been the first contact between the British government and the Zionists during the war. It is doubtful that Sykes himself had any knowledge of the October 1916 British-Zionist agreement.
• Feb. 14, 1917—Bernstorff left New York on the Danish steamer Friedrich VIII to return to Germany. Safe conduct had been granted by the British.
• Feb. 16, 1917—The Friedrich VIII entered Halifax, Nova Scotia harbor. Bernstorff remained incommunicado for almost two weeks.
• Feb. 26, 1917—The State Department received a telegram from the American ambassador in London containing the plain language text of the ZT.
• Feb. 27, 1917—Friedrich VIII permitted to sail from Halifax.
• March 1, 1917 —Text of ZT published in U.S.
• March 15, 1917—Czar Nicholas II abdicated, following the first of two 1917 revolutions in Russia. A provisional government was formed, later headed by Alexander Kerensky. Democracy appeared to have taken hold in Russia.
• April 2, 1917—President Wilson addressed Congress. He spoke of the “wonderful and heartening” events in Russia, stated that “the world needs to be made safe for democracy,” and asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
• April 6, 1917—Congress declared war on Germany.
• Aug. 6, 1917—Zimmermann replaced as foreign minister in Germany.
• Early November 1917—The Bolshevik revolution took place in Russia. The promise of democracy disappeared. The ex-Czar and his family were subsequently put to death. Kerensky was removed from power but came to no harm.
• Nov. 2, 1917—Arthur Balfour sent a letter, including what has come to be known as the Balfour Declaration (BD), to Lord Walter Rothschild. For a number of years it was not known that the BD took this form. Lord Balfour’s obituary in The New York Times of March 20,1930 stated that the BD was the text of a speech delivered by Balfour on Nov. 4, 1917. See box p. 44.
• March 8, 1918—Weizmann had a private and secret audience with King George V. According to Weizmann’s account in Trial and Error, the meeting consisted of an exchange of pleasantries, and one must wonder whether the meeting did not have some unstated purpose. One wonders, for example, if Weizmann did not emerge from the meeting in possession of a document signed by the King of England, possibly committing to more than did the BD.
• Nov. 11, 1918-World War I ended.

FIVE BOOKS: HOW THE BETRAYAL OF GERMAN CODE 7500 TO THE BRITISH WAS COVERED UP

To establish that German Code 7500 was obtained by the British in 1917 by means other than codebreaking, it is instructive briefly to review five publications. These will be examined in the order in which they were published, which—because book three was first published classified and later declassified—is different from the order in which they were made public.

Our first book is The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page by Burton J. Hendrick.¹⁴ Walter Page was a long-time (since 1881) friend of President Woodrow Wilson and was appointed by him to be U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, serving from 1913 until his death in 1918.

Volumes I and II of this three-volume work have a common index and were both published in 1922. Volume III deals largely with Page’s correspondence with President Wilson and Secretary of State Robert Lansing and was published in 1925, after Wilson’s death. It is important to remember that these volumes were written not by Page himself, who died in 1918—less than two months after the end of World War I—but by his biographer, Hendrick, who assembled the letters from many sources. We are concerned here only with Volume III.

Hendrick relates that in late February 1917 Balfour personally handed Page a copy of the document which has come to be known as the Zimmermann telegram. This document can be found in the box at right, and is referred to there as ZT-2. It is the version of the telegram that was forwarded by the German Embassy in Washington to the German Embassy in Mexico City on Jan. 19, 1917. Balfour stated that the telegram had not been obtained in Washington but had been bought in Mexico City.

Two other versions of the Zimmermann telegram may also be found in the box at right. These are ZT-1, the original telegram as cabled from Berlin to Washington on Jan. 16, 1917, and what we may call ZT-Hendrick. ZT-Hendrick appears nowhere else than in Hendrick’s book. It seems to be something the British gave Page, with an indication that it was an early, partial, decipherment of ZT-2 made sometime before Page was given the completely deciphered version. It is evident, however, that ZT-Hendrick is derived from ZT-1, not ZT-2.

ZT-1 and ZT-2 are, of course, English translations of German originals. There is no German original of ZT-H.

Some people in the U.S. government must have learned in early 1917 that ZT-1 and ZT-2 were sent encrypted in two different and unrelated codes. This did not become public knowledge, however, until F&M (see Book 3, below) was declassified in 1965.

It is difficult to see how the national interest was served by hiding from public knowledge for 48 years the simple fact that ZT-1 and ZT-2 were encrypted in different codes.

It was fortunate for the British that Page died when he did in 1918. Page was clearly an anglophile and eagerly accepted everything Balfour told him. Nevertheless, had he learned that the two versions of the ZT had been sent in different codes and that ZT-Hendrick could only have been derived from ZT-1, he would surely have realized that he had been deceived.

The second book is Arthur James Balfour by Lord Balfour’s niece, Blanche Dugdale, published in two volumes in 1936 (London) and 1937 (NY).¹⁵ This is a lengthy work, covering Lord Balfour’s entire life and political career. We are concerned here only with Chapter 10 of the second volume, in which the following significant paragraphs appear. The year referred to is 1917.

Ever since the middle of January, however, a piece of information had been in the possession of the British Government, which would move, if anything could, the vast populations behind the Atlantic seaboard States, who still read of the European War with as much detachment as if it had been raging on the moon. This was the famous telegram from Zimmermann, the German Foreign Minister, to the German Minister in Mexico, instructing him, if and when the United States should enter the War on the Allied side, to propose to Mexico an alliance which would restore to her, when peace came, her “lost territories in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.”

The method by which this information had reached the British Intelligence Service made it impossible for some time to communicate it to the United States Government. Therefore for over a month Balfour read his dispatches from Washington of the slow wakening of the American will to war, but could do nothing to hasten the process. Till—at last—information about the Mexican plot reached London through channels which enabled the Intelligence Service to cover up the traces of how it had first been got.

This appears to open the possibility that the British government obtained either the Zimmermann telegram or the code in which it was sent from an informant, rather than by code-breaking, and in any case indicates that the British possessed the full text of ZT-1 shortly after it was sent.

The third work to be examined is a U.S. Army Signal Corps Bulletin, The Zimmermann Telegram of January 16, 1917 and its Cryptographic Background, by William F. Friedman and Charles J. Mendelsohn (F&M).¹⁶ This work was published, classified, in 1937 and was declassified in 1965. The senior author was born Wolfe Friedmann in Kishinev, Russia in 1891 and ultimately became known as the Father of American Cryptanalysis.

Friedman and Mendelsohn (F&M) undertake to determine how the British were able to intercept the Zimmermann telegram and how they were able to decipher it.

They reveal that the ZT (ZT-1) was first transmitted by submarine cable from Berlin to the German ambassador in Washington, Count Bernstorff, on Jan. 16, 1917, encrypted in German code 7500, and that Bernstorff then relayed it (ZT-2) as a Western Union telegram encrypted in German code 13042, to the German legation in Mexico City on Jan. 19. Two different codes were used because the German legation in Mexico did not possess code 7500, and the ZT had to be relayed to them in an older and less secure code.

The texts of the two versions of the ZT, the Berlin-to-Washington (7500) version and the Washington-to-Mexico City (13042) version, were identical, but they had different preambles. The preamble of the 7500 version was “For your Excellency’s personal information and to be forwarded to the Imperial Minister in Mexico by a safe route.” The preamble of the 13042 version was simply “The foreign office telegraphs on January 16.” (See “Three Versions” box on previous page.)

Code 7500 was a new and difficult code, only recently delivered by submarine to the U.S., and it is the professional judgment of F&M that the British would have been able to make, at best, a very rudimentary decipherment of the ZT by the time they made the verbatim text of the ZT available to the U.S.

F&M’s explanation of how the British obtained the text of the ZT is that, after making a meager beginning in deciphering the 7500 version, they were able to obtain a copy of the 13042 version, after which decipherment was soon accomplished. This fails to explain, however, how the British were able to obtain the text of the preamble of the 7500 version of the ZT, which they did.

The more likely explanation of how the British were able to obtain a verbatim copy of the original 7500 version of the ZT is that, at the time the ZT was sent, the British already possessed the key to that code.

Although F&M reproduce the Dugdale quotation given above, they are remiss in having failed even to consider the obvious possibility that the British might have obtained the text of ZT-1 (or code 7500) through an informant rather than by code-breaking. The possibility must be considered that this failure was by design rather than through oversight.

The fourth book to be considered is The Zimmermann Telegram, by Barbara Tuchman.¹⁷ This work first appeared in 1958, and a second edition appeared in 1966, i.e., after F&M was declassified in 1965.

The first edition of Tuchman’s book states that the British picked up the encoded ZT by wireless on Jan. 16, 1917, and found it to be in code 13042, which was related to codes the British already had deciphered. They were thus able, in short order, to produce a nearly complete copy of the decoded ZT.

In fact, the ZT was transmitted by cable, not radio, and encrypted in code 7500, not 13042.

Normally, the second edition of a book provides an opportunity, and also the duty, for the author to correct errors in the first edition. That did not happen with this book. The text is unchanged, but a “Preface to New Edition” has been added. In it, Tuchman reports the declassification of F&M and acknowledges that it “appears to modify my account”—a gross understatement. She acknowledges having been aware of the existence of F&M and acknowledges having been in contact with Friedman but professes to have been unaware of the content of the book.

The heart of Tuchman’s book is the de-tailed story in Chapter 1 of how the British deciphered the ZT in code 13042 on Jan. 16, 1917. A reading of F&M makes it clear that this story is false. It is conceivable that Tuchman believed this story when she first wrote it, but it is not possible that she still believed it when the second edition of her book was issued. It is the belief of this writer that Tuchman fabricated a false story of how the British obtained the text of the ZT in order to conceal the fact that they obtained it by betrayal rather than by codebreaking.

It is remarkable that Tuchman’s book continues to be read and believed more than 30 years after hard evidence has become available that the story is false.

The fifth and final book on our list is The Codebreakers, by David Kahn, published in 1967.¹⁸ This a lengthy work of 26 chapters and over 1,000 pages. We are interested primarily in Chapter 9, entitled “Room 40.” About half of that chapter is devoted to the ZT. A second edition appeared in 1996, but it does not alter Chapter 9.

Kahn’s explanation of how the British were able to decipher the ZT in code 7500 (which, like Tuchman but unlike F&M, he calls 0075) is that “somehow” the British obtained enough material in code 7500 to make a start at breaking it. Kahn quotes an incomplete version of the ZT as being what the British were able to produce. This same incomplete version is referred to by F&M as the “Hendrick version,” of which they say: “When all is said and done, the decipherment of the 7500 version of the Zimmermann telegram, even to the degree given in the Hendrick version, approaches the unbelievable.” Note that, unlike Kahn, who is a writer on cryptography, F&M were professional cryptographers.

One’s confidence in Kahn is eroded by the fact that, in discussing the question of why, after the ZT was made public, Zimmermann admitted authorship of it, Kahn states, “to this day no one knows why Zimmermann admitted it” (p. 297). This is disingenuous. Anyone who has looked into the matter knows exactly why he admitted it. The Germans were as much taken by surprise by the publication of the ZT as anyone else and wanted to know if it was genuine. Zimmermann was called on to testify before the Reichstag and had no choice but to admit it.

As an aside, note that Room 40 was the name given to the cryptoanalytic bureau set up in the British admiralty early in the war under the direction of Sir Alfred Ewing. Kahn reveals that Ewing remained the head of Room 40 from the fall of 1914 until October 1916, when he returned to academia, whence he had come. His departure was facilitated by Lord Balfour, and his replacement was Captain Reginald Hall, R.N., director of naval intelligence. We may infer that at this time British-Zionist negotiations were well under way and that Room 40’s role was being broadened from cracking German codes to include pretending to crack German code 7500.

We have examined our five books one-by-one. Let us now relate them to each other.

It is the unproven belief of the present writer that German code 7500, in which the original ZT was sent in January 1917, was obtained by a Zionist agent inside the German government, possibly either by means of photography or a photographic memory, and provided to the British government.

The second book cited, by Blanche Dugdale, is consistent with this belief in that it contains a veiled hint that the British might have obtained the plain language text of the ZT by means other than codebreaking, whereas the three following books totally ignore this possibility. Interestingly, the other three books give different, and incompatible, stories of how the British did obtain the text of the ZT.

It is clear that the authors of books three, four and five were acquainted with each other.

Since it was the first of these three books, F&M, of course, make no mention of Tuchman or Kahn.

In her “Preface to New Edition,” written after the declassification of F&M, Tuchman acknowledges having known of the existence of F&M, though not its content, and having spoken to Friedman. (There was no mention of either of these facts in the first edition.) Also in the same preface, Tuchman states that decipherment of code 7500 (which she calls 0075) will be analyzed in Kahn’s, at that time forthcoming, book. This implies contact between them.

Interestingly, Kahn makes no mention of Tuchman, nor does her name appear in the index, although Kahn’s account of the historical circumstance of the ZT seems to be largely borrowed from her book. Kahn does, however, mention Friedman. In the preface to The Codebreakers. Kahn mysteriously thanks Friedman for “a gift made in 1947, upon my graduation from high school, that was a major step in my cryptographic education.” One wonders if that “gift” might not have been the secret of how the British first obtained German code 7500 and of the need to protect that secret in perpetuity.

“SERVICES RENDERED”

In his seminal work, Arab Awakening (1938), George Antonius points out that in early 1917 three major obstacles stood in the way of Zionist efforts to obtain a commitment from the British government in support of their goals in Palestine.¹⁹ First was the bargain concluded in 1915 with Sharif Husain of Arabia for an independent Arab state whose territory included Pales-tine. Second was the Sykes-Picot agreement, dividing the Middle East between Britain and France and placing the Holy Land under some sort of international administration. And third was the hostility toward political Zionism of an influential group of British Jews.

Antonius then continues:

“Undeterred, however, by those obstacles, Mr. Lloyd George appointed Sir Mark Sykes to open negotiations with the Zionists. What his motives were in wishing to come to an understanding with the Zionist leaders, and what the considerations were which induced the British Government eventually to issue the Balfour Declaration are questions to which the answers have been obscured by a smoke-screen of legend and propaganda. It is alleged, for instance, that the Jews used their financial and political influence to bring the United States into the War on the side of the Entente and that the Balfour Declaration was a reward for actual services rendered. All published evidence goes to disprove that allegation, and one can only infer either that it does not rest on any foundation or, if it does, that the services rendered by international Jewry in that connection were of so occult a nature that they have hitherto escaped the scrutiny of all the historians of America’s intervention.”

The initial meeting between Sykes and the Zionists took place on Feb. 7, 1917, and we can now see why the “services rendered” toward bringing America into the war have hitherto escaped the scrutiny of all the historians of America’s intervention. One would expect that Zionist actions aimed at bringing America into the war would have taken place sometime after the first British-Zionist meeting, but the first acknowledged contact between the British Government and Zionists was the Sykes meeting of Feb. 7, 1917. Yet by that time the Zionist contributions toward bringing America into the war already had largely been accomplished, although it is likely that Sykes himself was unaware of that.

The Balfour-Weizmann agreement of October 1916 was and remains entirely secret.

The Sykes meeting served as a sort of decoy.

In the few months between these two events, the following had taken place:

• The civilian head of codebreaking “Room 40” in London had been replaced by the director of Naval Intelligence.
• Von Jagow, who had served since 1913, was replaced by Zimmermann as German foreign secretary.
• Asquith, who had served as British prime minister since 1908, was removed from power, and a new War Cabinet was formed, in which Lloyd George was prime minister and Balfour foreign minister—both friends of Zionism since 1903.
• The key to German code 7500 was betrayed to Room 40.
• A draft of the ZT was concocted in London and presented to Zimmermann by one of his subordinates in Berlin.
• The ZT was transmitted by cable from Berlin to Washington on Jan. 16, 1917. It was copied by Room 40 and promptly de-coded. Note that this is incompatible with Tuchman’s story but entirely consistent with Dugdale’s account.

Thus, by the time of the Sykes-Zionist meeting of Feb. 7, 1917, the Zionist part of the bargain had been accomplished, and America was as good as at war. All that remained was for the British to find the best time and method for revealing the contents of the ZT to President Wilson and for him to convince Congress and the American people to go to war.

References:

1. Cornelius, John. “The Balfour Declaration and the Zimmermann Note,” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs), Aug./Sept. 1997.
2. Cornelius, John. “Answering Critics of the Theory that Balfour Declaration Was Payoff for Zionist Services in WWI,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Sept. 1998.
3. Cornelius, John. “Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, and Why America Entered the Great War,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Oct./Nov. 1999.
4. Bernstorff, Count Johann Heinrich. My Three Years in America, New York: Scribner’s, 1920.
5. Dugdale, Mrs. Edgar. The Balfour Declaration-Origins and Background, London: The Jewish Agency for Palestine, 1940, pp. 15-16.
6. Weizmann, Chaim. Trial and Error, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1949, p. 152.
7. Rothschild, Miriam. Dear Lord Rothschild, Glenside, Pa.: Balaban Publishers, 1983, p. 341.
8. Bernstorff, pp.310-311.
9. Weizmann, p. 143.
10. Dugdale, Blanche. Arthur James Balfour, NY, Putnam’s, 1937, Vol. II, pp. 127-9.
11. Hendrick, Burton J. The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, NY, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1925, Vol. III, Chap 14.
12. Howe, Russell Warren. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Letters to the Editor, Jan./Feb. 1998, p. 110.
13. Link, Arthur S., Wilson, Vol. 5, Princeton, NJ, 1965, Princeton University Press, pp 433-5.
14. Hendrick, Vol. III.
15. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, Vol. II.
16. Friedman, William F. and Mendelsohn, Charles J. The Zimmermann Telegram of January 16, 1917 and its Cryptographic Background, Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1994.
17. Tuchman, Barbara W. The Zimmermann Telegram. New York: Ballantine Books, 1958, 1966.
18. Kahn, David. The Codebreakers. New York: Macmillan, 1967, 1996
19. Antonius, George. The Arab Awakening. Philadelphia, NY: Lippencott, 1939.

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John Cornelius is the nom de plume of an American with long-standing interest in the Middle East.

 

                 

SIDEBAR

Three Versions of the Zimmermann Telegram

ZT-I as sent in code 7500 from Berlin to Washington on Jan. 16, 1917

Source: German Hearings

Telegram No. 158.

Strictly confidential.

For your Excellency’s exclusively personal information and transmission to the Imperial Minister at Mexico by safe hands:

Telegram No. 1.

Absolutely confidential.

To be personally deciphered.

It is our purpose on the 1st of February to commence the unrestricted U-boat war. The attempt will be made to keep America neutral in spite of it all.

In case we should not be successful in this, we propose Mexico an alliance upon the following terms: Joint conduct of war. Joint conclusion of peace. Ample financial support and an agreement on our part that Mexico shall gain back by conquest the territory lost by her at a prior period in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Arrangement as to detail is entrusted to your Excellency.

Your Excellency will make the above known to the President in strict confidence at the moment that war breaks out with the United States, and you will add the suggestion that Japan be requested to take part at once and that he simultaneously mediate between ourselves and Japan.

Please inform the President that the unrestricted use of our U-boats now offers the prospect of forcing England to sue for peace in the course of a few months.

Confirm receipt.

ZIMMERMANN

ZT-2 as sent in code 13042 from Washington to Mexico City on Jan. 19, 1917

Source: Friedman and Mendelsohn, translated from the German version

The Foreign Office wires (telegraphiert) January 16:

No. I.

Absolutely confidential.

To be personally deciphered.

It is our purpose on the 1st of February to commence the unrestricted U-boat war. The attempt will be made to keep America neutral in spite of it all.

In case we should not be successful in this, we propose Mexico an alliance upon the following terms: Joint conduct of war. Joint conclusion of peace. Ample financial support and an agreement on our part that Mexico shall gain back by conquest the territory lost by her at a prior period in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Arrangement as to detail is entrusted to your Excellency.

Your Excellency will make the above known to the President in strict confidence at the moment that war breaks out with the United States, and you will add the suggestion that Japan be requested to take part at once and that he simultaneously mediate between ourselves and Japan.

Please inform the President that the unrestricted use of our U-boats now offers the prospect of forcing England to sue for peace in the course of a few months.

Confirm receipt.

ZIMMERMANN

ZT-Hendrick, date unknown

Source: Hendrick found among Ambassador Page’s papers

Zimmermann to Bernstorff for Eckhardt W. 158.

I6th January, 1917

Most secret for your Excellency’s personal information and to be handed on to the Imperial Minister in ? Mexico with Tel. No. 1...by a safe route.

We purpose to begin on 1st February unrestricted submarine warfare. In doing so, however, we shall endeavor to keep America neutral....? If we do not (succeed in doing so) we propose to (? Mexico) an alliance upon the following basis:

(joint) conduct of the war

(joint) conclusion of peace

Your Excellency should for the present inform the President secretly (that we expect) war with the U.S.A. (possibly) (...Japan) and at the same time to negotiate between us and Japan...(indecipherable sentence meaning please tell the President) that...our submarines...will compel England to peace in a few months.

Acknowledge receipt.

ZIMMERMANN

 

 

 

                SIDEBAR 2

Mr. Morgenthau Doesn’t Go to Istanbul

A little known historical incident took place in the spring of 1917, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I on the side of the Allies. President Woodrow Wilson devised a plan for bringing about an early end to the war by detaching Türkiye from the Central Powers. To this end, he sent a mission to Europe, where it was to meet with representatives of Britain and France in Switzerland and then make its way to Türkiye. The mission was headed by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., who had been American ambassador to Türkiye from 1912 to 1915 and had many contacts there. This story is related in Chapter 17 of Chaim Weizmann’s 1949 autobiography, Trial and Error.

The American mission never arrived in Switzerland, let alone Türkiye. In early June of 1917, Weizmann, who was then in London, received a cable from Louis Brandeis in the U.S., informing him of the mission and suggesting that he contact it. Weizmann immediately contacted members of the British government and learned the nature of the mission. Weizmann was concerned that the Morgenthau mission might result in the war ending with the Ottoman Empire still intact, eliminating the possibility of a Jewish state in Palestine.

A subsequent conference with Lord Balfour lead to Weizmann’s being sent as the official British representative to meet with the American mission and a French representative. This meeting took place at Gibraltar after the American mission disembarked at Cadiz on July 4, 1917.

Weizmann reports that he had no difficulty persuading Morgenthau to drop the whole matter, so instead of proceeding to Switzerland and Istanbul, Morgenthau went to Biarritz, in the South of France, where, he said, he would communicate with General Pershing and await further instructions from President Wilson.

The Morgenthau mission was apparently secret, for Weizmann says he does not know how the story got out. He also says that in 1922, when Congress was looking into the merits of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a senator stated that the leaders of the Zionist movement were unworthy men and that Weizmann, in particular, had prolonged the war for two years by scuttling the Morgenthau mission.

Morgenthau seems to have shown more loyalty to Zionism than to his president or his country.

Interestingly, author Barbara Tuchman was Morgenthau’s granddaughter.

—J.C.

 -------------------------------------------------

Document 7:  een youtube van Benjamin Freedman werkt niet meer.  Maar zal nog wel ergens op internet staan.

   -----------------------------------

Document 8.

               Samuel Landman: Great Britain, the Jews and Palestine (1936)

 

 

The author of this pamphlet is a well-known English Zionist. He was Hon. Secretary of the Joint Zionist Council of the United Kingdom in 1912, Joint Editor of the" Zionist" in 1913-14 and Author of pamphlets on "History of Zionism" and " Zionism, Its Organisation and Institutions" published during the war. From 1917 to 1922 he was Solicitor and Secretary to the Zionist Organisation. He is now Legal Adviser to the New Zionist Organisation.

 

GREAT BRITAIN, THE JEWS AND PALESTINE

AS the Balfour Declaration originated in the War Cabinet, was consummated in the Foreign Office and is being implemented in the Colonial Office, and as some of those responsible for it have passed away or have retired since its migrations from Department to Department, there is necessarily some confusion or misunderstanding as to its raison d' etre and importance to the parties primarily concerned. It would, therefore, seem opportune to recapitulate briefly the circumstances, the inner history and incidents that eventually led to the British Mandate for Palestine.

 

Those who assisted at the birth of the Balfour Declaration were few in number. This makes it important to bring into proper relief the services of one who, owing above all to his own modesty, has hitherto remained in the background. His services however should take their proper place in the front rank alongside of those Englishmen of vision whose services are more widely known, including the late Sir Mark Sykes, the Rt. Hon. W. Ormsby Gore, The Rt. Hon. Sir Ronald Graham, General Sir George Macdonagh and Mr. G. H. Fitzmaurice.

 

In the early years of the War great efforts were made by the Zionist Leaders, Dr. Weizmann and Mr. Sokolow, chiefly through the late Mr. C.P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian, and Sir Herbert Samuel, to induce the Cabinet to espouse the cause of Zionism.

 

These efforts were, however, without avail. In fact, Sir Herbert Samuel has publicly stated that he bad no share in the initiation of the negotiations which led to the Balfour Declaration. ¹ The actual initiator was Mr. James A. Ma1colm and the following is a brief account of the circumstances in which the negotiations took place.

 

During the critical days of 1916 and of the impending defection of Russia, Jewry, as a whole, was against the Czarist regime and had hopes that Germany, if victorious, would in certain circumstances give them Palestine. Several attempts to bring America into the War on the side of the Allies by influencing influential Jewish opinion were made and had failed. Mr. James A. Malcolm, who was already aware of German pre-war efforts to secure a foothold in Palestine through the Zionist Jews and of the abortive Anglo-French démarches at Washington and New York; and knew that Mr. Woodrow Wilson, for good and sufficient reasons, always attached the greatest possible importance to the advice of a very prominent Zionist (Mr. Justice Brandeis, of the U.S. Supreme Court) ; and was in close touch with Mr. Greenberg, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle (London) ; and knew that several important Zionist Jewish leaders had already gravitated to London from the Continent on the qui vive awaiting events ; and appreciated and realised the depth and strength of Jewish national aspirations; spontaneously took the initiative, to convince first of all Sir Mark Sykes, Under Secretary to the War Cabinet,and afterwards Monsieur Georges Picot, of the French Embassy in London, and Monsieur Goût of the Quai d'Orsay (Eastern Section), that the best and perhaps the only way (which proved so. to be) to induce the American President to come into the War was to secure the co-operation of Zionist Jews by promising them Palestine, and thus enlist and mobilise the hitherto unsuspectedly powerful forces of Zionist Jews in America and elsewhere in favour of the Allies on a quid pro quo contract basis. Thus, as will be seen, the Zionists, having carried out their part, and greatly helped to bring America in, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was but the public confirmation of the necessarily secret " gentleman's " agreement of 1916 made with the previous knowledge, acquiescence and/or approval of the Arabs and of the British, American, French and other Allied Governments, and not merely a voluntary altruistic and romantic gesture on the part of Great Britain as certain people either through pardonable ignorance assume or unpardonable ill will would represent or rather misrepresent.

 

Sir Mark Sykes was Under-Secretary to the War Cabinet specially concerned with Near Eastern affairs, and, although at the time scarcely acquainted with the Zionist movement, and unaware of the existence of its leaders, he had the flair to respond to the arguments advanced by Mr. Malcolm as to the strength and importance of this movement in Jewry, in spite of the fact that many wealthy and prominent international or semi-assimilated Jews in Europe and America were openly or tacitly opposed to it (Zionist movement), or timidly indifferent. MM. Picot and Goût were likewise receptive.

 

An interesting account of the negotiations carried on in London and Paris, and subsequent developments, has already appeared in the Jewish press and need not be repeated here in detail, except to recall that immediately after the" gentleman's" agreement between Sir Mark Sykes, authorised by the War Cabinet, and the Zionist leaders, cable facilities through the War Office, the Foreign Office and British Embassies, Legations, etc., were given to the latter to communicate the glad tidings to their friends and organisations in America and elsewhere, and the change in official and public opinion as reflected in the American press in favour of joining the Allies in the War, was as gratifying as it was surprisingly rapid. .

 

The Balfour Declaration, in the words of Professor H. M. V. Temperley, ² was "a definite contract between the British Government and Jewry." The main consideration given by the Jewish people (represented at the time by the leaders of the Zionist Organisation) was their help in bringing President Wilson to the aid of the Allies. Moreover, officially interpreted at the time by Lord Robert Cecil as "Judea for the Jews" in the same sense as "Arabia for the Arabs;" the Declaration sent a thrill throughout the world. The prior Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1916, according to which Northern Palestine was to be politically detached and included in Syria (French sphere), was subsequently, at the instance of the Zionist leaders, amended ³ so that the Jewish National Home should comprise the whole of Palestine in accordance with the promise previously made to them for their services by the British, Allied and American Governments and to give full effect to the Balfour Declaration, the terms of which had been settled and known to all Allied and associated belligerents, including Arabs, before they were made public.

 

In Germany, the value of the bargain to the Allies, apparently, was duly and carefully noted. In his "Through Thirty Years " Mr. Wickham Steed, in a chapter appreciative of the value of Zionist support in America and elsewhere to the Allied cause, says General Ludendorff is alleged to have said after the War, that: "The Balfour Declaration was the cleverest thing done by the Allies in the way of propaganda, and that he wished Germany had thought of it first." ⁴ As a matter of fact, this was said by Ludendorff to Sir Alfred Mond (afterwards Lord Melchett), soon after the War. The fact that it was Jewish help that brought U.S.A. into the War on the side of the Allies has rankled ever since in German - especially Nazi-minds, and has contributed in no small measure to the prominence which anti-Semitism occupies in the Nazi programme.

 

An outstanding consideration, though not forming part of the bargain, was the great potential value of Zionism in future as an instrument of British foreign policy. (In 1917 a Jewish Department was opened in the Ministry of Information and several Zionists were in its service.)

 

But Zionism in its second stage continued to be under the Foreign Office only till 1921, when the Cairo Conference, under Mr. Winston Churchill, transferred the cafe of Palestine to the Colonial Office, no doubt because that Office is the only Government Department with experience of controlling overseas Colonies and fostering their development. It is worth noting here that this is the concern of Great Britain only and the views, if any, of foreign countries in regard to such colonial development are of no great moment. The case of Palestine, however, differs entirely from that of any British Colony, or even of other British Mandated territories. Firstly, by its historical associations, Palestine is of interest to all foreign countries. Secondly, its growth is at all times of intense interest to the Jewish inhabitants of the countries of the world. To-day, in view of what is happening to Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, the speeding up of Palestinian development is of poignant necessity in almost all foreign countries, which the Foreign Office would obviously be better able to appreciate. Thirdly, the constitution of Palestine is sui generis in that Great Britain is the trustee appointed by the League of Nations to administer Palestine for the benefit, not only of the present population, but of the Jewish people as a whole, who are to " reconstitute their National Home." ⁵ There is no precedent in Colonial Office experience for the case of Palestine, and what happens in and about Palestine can, and does, have important repercussions in foreign countries, and it would, therefore, be a very useful step if the Foreign Office could be kept fully informed of such repercussions.

 

Moreover, the fact that the very existence of the future of Jewish Palestine depends, from the point of view of international law, on a Mandate of the League of Nations has powerfully contributed towards making the Jews everywhere into strong supporters of the League of Nations. In France, for instance, it is well known that the Jews are among the leaders of the pro-League policy. In other lands it is equally true, though less well known. For instance, the views of such a man as Dr. Einstein - a convinced Zionist believer in the League - count heavily in the land where he now dwells-the U.S.A.

 

The Mandates Commission of the League has taken its duties of supervising the administration of the mandated territories very seriously. The Minutes of the Mandates Commission relating to Palestine are printed almost in extenso in Zionist periodicals all over the world and carefully studied. The undecided British attitude recorded in these Minutes has had an unfortunate effect on Jewish minds, especially in America. Faith in British promises and in the value of the League has been shaken. The three massacres (1920, 1921, 1929) of Jews in Palestine under British protection have naturally given very severe shocks to Jewish opinion.

 

In 1916 and 1917 the Jewish people were led to expect British help in building up an autonomous Jewish Commonwealth.⁶ This aspiration has been the lodestar of Jewry amidst the gloom of persecution. The Jewish problem, which was already serious in 1897 at the time of the founding of the Zionist Organisation by Theodor Herzl, has since become progressively acute and pressing. The recent letter of resignation of Mr. James G. McDonald from the post of High Commissioner for Refugees (Jewish and Other) from Germany, throws same light on the tragic position of the Jews and urgently calls for infinitely greater effort and facilities for them to go there than the High Commissioner for Palestine would seem to realise or afford. A people numbering sixteen millions cannot be crushed out of existence, but is nevertheless not allowed to live or breathe freely. Political and racial hatred, religious and economic persecution, harass them in the lands where dwell their masses, viz., in Central and Eastern Europe. What is it that keeps them from adopting, in the bitterness of their despair, a Samsonlike attitude and attempting to pull down the pillars of civilisation? Only one thing - the hope of a Jewish Palestine. Remove that hope and millions of Jewish youth may be driven into the arms of Bolshevism, Communism and other forms of destructive activity.

 

The announcement that Palestine, the National Home of the Jews, is to have a Parliament with a statutory Arab majority is profoundly moving and disturbing the Jewish people. They realise that the Palestine Government cannot act without the authority of the British Government. They devoutly pray and rightly demand, therefore, that like the Passfield White Paper of 1930 it might be deferred indefinitely or abandoned in accordance with the spirit and letter of the Balfour Declaration. The letter of Colone1 Wedgwood, M.P., in The Times of January 3rd, 1936,⁷ is an admirable and forceful exposure of the unnecessary yet alarming situation which cannot be remedied by any such device as " cantonisation " of Jews and Arabs recently suggested by Mr. Archer Cust, late Assistant Secretary to the Palestine Government.

 

The projected Legislative Council in the eyes of World Jewry would, on the face of it, certainly lend insidiously and effectively to undermine and sabotage the practical realisation of their high national ideals. Since the promise of 1917 they regard Great Britain as the appointed trustee of Palestine on behalf of the Jewish people all the world over and not only the handful of Jews who were in Palestine at the time. The Jews consider, and properly, that Great Britain promised them in 1917 he1p, not hindrance, facilities, not obstac1es, co-operation, not sabotage, in the rebuilding of Palestine as their National Home. They rightly regard a Parliament with a dominating and openly hostile Arab majority, able to impede the Jewish deve1opment of the land, as probably a thoughtless but undoubtedly a direct breach of trust by the Trustee Government.

 

Mr. L. S. Amery, M.P., who was one of the Under-Secretaries to the War Cabinet, and afterwards Secretary of State for the Dominions and the Colonies, writing on the subject of "A Council for Palestine" in The Times of January 10th, 1936, states :-  

" It is of the essence of the mandate that the Jewish population of Palestine is there, and is entitled to deve1op, as a matter of internationally recognized and affirmed right, and not as a matter of sufferance by the Arab population, just as the Arab population is also there as of right. The two communities are equal in right and, under existing conditions, no system of representation which gives a greater voting power to one community than another is consistent with the spirit and purpose of the mandate."

 

Sir Archibald Sinclair, M.P., from another platform of politics, endorses this view :- "In accepting the Mandate, we undertook the responsibility for establishing the Jewish national home as well as the duty of safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine. To devolve a share of our responsibilities for the government of Palestine upon a Legislative Council, the statutory majority of whose e1ected members would be pledged to do all in their power to hamper the Government in establishing the Jewish national home, would be to open up a dreary vista of racial discord and increasing friction which would endanger, or at least de1ay, the accomplishment of the primary purpose of the Mandate. If any part of our responsibilities under the Mandate is to be shared with elected. representatives of the people of Palestine it surely cannot be right to give a statutory majority on the proposed council to those who repudiate the Mandate and demand its repeal."--,The Times, Feb. 5th, 1936.

 

In a debate in the House of Lords, on 26th February, 1936, the projected Legislative Council was opposed by Lord Snell, The Earl of Lytton, the Marquess of Lothian, Viscount Elibank, Lord Jessel, Lord Melchett, the Earl of Mansfie1d, Viscount Cecil and Lord Marley. It was supported only by the Government spokesman, Lord Plymouth.

 

In the opinion of Lord Cecil and General Smuts, the League of Nations and a Jewish Palestine are the two greatest positive results of the Great War. The two things are interdependent to a large extent. A Government that has let the world understand clearly that Great Britain stands unshakably by the League cannot logically do otherwise with regard to Zionism and Palestine.

 

Having regard to all the circumstances, the New Zionist Organisation ⁸ is convinced that the following measures are indispensable if the Balfour Declaration is to be implemented as intended and solemnly promised:

1. Abandonment or at least postponement sine die of the legislative Council and other proposed legislation contrary to the spirit of the Balfour Declaration ;

2. Strengthening the Department of the Foreign Office dealing with foreign and League of Nations views regarding Palestine, Jews and Zionism.

3. Declaration by His Majesty's Government of their intention to implement fully the Balfour Declaration in order to put art end to Arab agitation by interested parties.

4. A promise of Government facilities for a Plan of Settlement of at least one million Jews in Palestine and Transjordan within the next ten years.

The ultimate aim of all these steps is the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth which could properly seek admission as a seventh Dominion of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

 

To appreciate adequately the above considerations, it may be considered desirable to give a resume of recent developments in Zionist Jewry.

It is not generally realised what devastation the Great War and the post-War economic crisis have brought to the Jewish nation. When mighty Empires have been shaken to their social and political foundations it is not surprising that a weak, scattered and homeless people should have been brought nigh to destruction. The strongest centre of Jewry, Russia, from which for several generations emanated all that was deeply national in modern Jewry, has disappeared. The Russo-Jewish reservoir that provided the intellectual leaders of Jewry in our own time - great Scholars and learned Rabbis, spiritual leaders like Ahad Haam and Bialik, political leaders such as Jabotinsky, Sokolow and Weizmann, and all the pioneers of Palestine Colonisation in the last 50 years - has been destroyed, some say for ever. In the lands of Western Europe and America, it was again the Russo-Jewish immigrants or their children who kept alive the flame of Jewish national urge and who even to-day main1y provide the stream of men and money which is directed to Palestine. In the other lands of Eastern and Central Europe where Jewish masses congregate, the economic crisis has reduced them to a condition of appalling and unbelievable wretchedness.

 

Into this unrelieved gloom, the Balfour Dec1aration penetrated like a beam flood-lighting the vision of a home, the prospect of which has kept the nation alive. It is no exaggeration to say that the Dec1aration of the British Government in November, 1917, that " His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish National Home "- was the sa1vation of Jewry after the War. The subsequent stages of the imp1ementing of this promise, the decision of the Allied Powers in San Remo in 1920, to place in British hands the mandate for Palestine, in order to create the Jewish National home in Palestine, the actual juridical mandate approved by the Council of the League of Nations, in Ju1y 1922, and the growth of the Jewish Settlement in Palestine under British administration in the last twelve years, are familiar enough. What is not so well known however, is the steady growth of profound dissatisfaction among the Jewish masses, during the last ten years, in regard to Zionism and the Jewish National Home.

 

What are the main causes for this profound dissatisfaction ?

First and foremost, the masses feel that their leaders have" let them down," have failed to utilise the wonderfu1 opportunity given them by the British Government in particular and the non-Jewish world in general. Their vision and hope of a National home as outlined first by Dr. Pinsker in his " Auto-Emancipation" (1882), then more c1early by the Founder of Zionism - Theodor Herz1 - in his "Jewish State," in 1896, and finally after the War by the Zionist 1eaders at the Peace Conference, have appeared to fade and in their stead they see the sad spectre of another Jewish minority settlement in Palestine. It is not that they expected a fully equipped Jewish State to have been achieved already. What they cannot forgive however is the acceptance, even though obviously under moral duress, by their leaders of the position in which even the distant prospect of complete national regeneration in a National home seems to have faded out. It was mainly for the acceptance of this situation that Sir Alfred Mond (afterwards Lord Melchett) resigned from the Jewish Agency and that Dr. Weizmann failed to obtain re-election as President of the Zionist Organisation in 1931 and 1933, in spire of his signal services to the movement for twenty years or more. And to-day among the Jewish masses in Poland, hundreds of thousands feel so profoundly that they have been deceived by the Zionist Organisation and its present leaders that they have decided to join the New Zionist Organisation. 713,000 Zionists went to the poll and elected delegates for the Congress held in Vienna, in September, 1935, for this purpose; and the numbers of active supporters are swelling daily; whereas the voters (including plural voters) represented at the Congress of the old Zionist Organisation at Lucerne in August, 1935, were 632,000.

 

Another factor which has given rise to profound misgivings amongst the Jewish masses is the growth of left wing Socialism in Palestine, with the spread of extreme doctrines. The blame for this is laid in the first instance at the door of the responsible leaders of the Zionist Organisation. ⁹ Since the end of the war they have permitted or fostered, by means of liberal subsidies from Zionist funds, the growth of the Poale Zion, until it developed several most unpleasant hypertrophic features of which Dictatorship of 1abour, class war, and frequent strikes are the most obvious. The predominance of Poale Zion leaders in the present Executive of the Zionist Organisation has undermined the confidence of the Jewish masses - who are far more Nationalist than Socialist at heart.

 

The rise -of Hitler to power in Germany, with its ruthless forms of anti-Semitism, has driven home the Zionism of Herzl and given a tremendous impetus to Jewish national feeling all over the world. A few years ago, the view, adopted by Sir Herbert Samue1 in 1921, that a smallish Jewish model settlement in Palestine living on healthy national lines would provide spiritual sustenance for the vast majority of Jewry outside Palestine still had a good few adherents, but to-day, German anti-Semitism and its repercussions in other lands, has all but given this doctrine its coup de grace. Every Jew now sees c1early that without a physical and political as well as a spiritual centre, Jewry stands very little chance of survival. This conviction has spread much more rapidly than certain Zionist leaders, who have lost touch with the masses, realise. The Jewish land hunger has grown immeasurably and the Jewish masses feel that Palestine without Transjordan is far too small for the urgent and imperative need of Jewish emigration. Transjordan was originally part of the mandated territory of Palestine to which the Jewish National Home applied. Hence one of the other main points in the platform of the new Zionist Organisation is the opening of Transjordan to Jewish immigration.

 

Another factor which has estranged the masses of Jewry from the old Zionist Organisation is its attitude to the Jewish Religion. ¹⁰ The old Zionist Organisation dec1ares that Religion is a private affair of the individual. The masses of Jewry however instinctively feel that this attitude does less than justice to the ideals of social justice contained in the Bible and the Prophets and crystallised in Jewish tradition through the many centuries. This precious heritage they feel should not be thrown away. Was it not their religion which through the ages has been the source of their invincible fortitude and preserved them as a Nation? Moreover, realising that no civilisation is possible without an established form of religion, they have rallied round the New Zionist Organisation which does justice to the Jewish tradition.

 

The New Zionist Organisation has absorbed the Zionist Revisionists. This party was founded in 1925 by Vladimir Jabotinsky to resist the tendencies towards defeatism and decay, to keep alive the Herzlian tradition and to resist the growing dictatorship and arrogance of the Palestine Labour Zionists. The party grew rapidly, and by 1933 at the Zionist Congress in Prague, it was already second in size of the parties within the organisation. The Leader of the Revisionists has naturally become the President of the New Zionist Organisation. This choice indicates recognition by the masses of Jewry that the pressing need of the time is to strengthen the moral and political foundations of the movement.

 

Born in Russia about fifty-five years ago, Jabotinsky threw himself from early youth into the Zionist movement. Almost alone in Russia in 1915, he advocated Jewish support for the Allied Cause (in spite of the terribly unjust treatment of the Jews by the Russians), because he saw in an Allied Victory the hope of a Jewish Palestine. He conceived the idea of a Jewish Legion to fight for Palestine on the side of the Allies and carried it through in the teeth of the strongest opposition, including that of many of his own friends. ¹¹ Had it not been for this opposition it is practically certain that he would have rallied a large army of Jewish soldiers to lead the capture of Palestine and would have been the Jewish Garibaldi. He was in Palestine attached to the Jewish battalion under Lord Allenby and was soon recognised by the British authorities as a fearless Jewish leader and defender of Jewish rights. He resisted the authorities in Palestine during the Arab attacks on Jews in 1920, was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment in the historie fortress of Acre, but was set free after a few months. This episode in his career has naturally endeared him to the masses of Jewry, and the prohibition of his re-entry into Palestine has had a similar stimulating effect.

 

What are the prospects of the New Zionist Organisation? The break-up of the Zionist Centre party Conference at Cracow in 1935 indicates clearly what was already evident to the clear-sighted, viz., that there are only two parties to the struggle in Zionism - the Socialist Left and the Revisionist Right. The Left is now suffering for some of the sins committed during the last ten years under the influence of the heady wine of power and office. Almost every recent Jewish visitor to Palestine has returned thoroughly disappointed with the regime of the Left. A sound Jewish instinct tells them that advanced Socialism or Communism - whatever its advantages in the remoter future - is entirely unsuitable for a nascent Jewish National Home. The New Zionists emphasise the great traditions of England - fair play, recognition of the principle of nationality, free but orderly democracy, and especially respect for those who stand up for their rights. The New Zionist Organisation is pro-British to the core. It is the rallying centre of Jewry in its crisis. It has the Jewish youth on its side, enrolled in subsidiary organisations such as the Betar, named after Captain Trumpeldor, a Jewish hero, who died fighting in Palestine in 1919. Young Jews and Jewesses in Eastern Europe are taught through this organisation to prepare themselves for Palestine not only in Hebrew and agriculture but also in team work, self-defence and obedience to leadership. Reports from Eastern Europe attest the fact that Jabotinsky is acclaimed by hundreds of thousands of Jewish people and indicate that the New Zionist Organisation will be, if it is not already, larger, as well as more truly representative of Jewry, than any other body now in existence.

 

Steps are being taken to convene as soon as practicable a National Assembly of Zionist Jewry representing the larger part of articulate Jewry. Every Jew or Jewess over 20, if in favour of the Zionist solution of the Jewish problem, has the right to vote for the e1ection of de1egates to this Assembly. The franchise is not acquired by purchase but is true to its name, viz., free and dependent on political convictions only. At the same time a well founded plan of large-scale colonisation for settling 1 1/2 - 2 million Jews in Palestine and Transjordan over a period of ten years is being prepared by experts for submission to the Assembly. As the pressure on Jewry grows, the numbers of the New Zionist Organisation will continue to increase, for it is based on the firm conviction that the Jewish problem is a world problem, and that an untrammelled Jewish National Home on both sides of the Jordan is the only and inevitable solution.

 

There is overwhelming evidence that if they were allowed to do so by the British Government, Trans-Jordan Arabs (comparative1y very few in number) are most anxious to sell their surplus and uncultivated lands to Jewish immigrants at very much lower prices than the Palestine Arab proprietors are in the circumstances demanding and obtaining to-day for theirs.

 

The British Empire can afford to wait or hasten slowly; but it will be conceded that in their tragic plight the choice before Jewry is either speedily to rebuild Palestine or slowly to perish in the Diaspora. The words of the traditional Jewish toast - " Next year in Jerusalem" (Leshana Habaa Birushalayim) - are therefore no longer conventional words, but inspiriting and instinct with meaning and action and must assuredly appeal to the sense of humanity and fair play of the British Government and people.

 

---

1. England and Palestine," lecture delivered by Sir Herbert Samuel, published by the Jewish Historical Society, London (February, 1936).

2. History of the Peace Conference in Paris, 1920, volume 6, page 173.

3. Franco-British Convention, December 1920 (Cmd. II9S).

4. Volume 2, page 392.

5. These are the actual words of the Mandate for Palestine - see App. II

6. The Manchester Guardian may be quoted as typical of the interpretation placed on the Balfour Dec1aration. In a leading artic1e of the Ioth November, I9I7, it wrote as follows : " What it means is that, assuming our military successes to be continued and the whole of Palestine brought securely under our control, then at the conc1usion of peace our deliberate policy will be to encourage in every way in our power Jewish immigration, to give full security, and no doubt a large measure of local autonomy, to the Jewish immigrants, with a view to the ultimate establishment of a Jewish State." The views of the leaders of British public opinion were collected and published as a brochure prepared by the Ministry of Information under the title " Great Britain, Palestine and the Jews " in December, I9I7.

7. Reprinted in full on pp. 18--20.

8. Inaugurated at a Congress held in Vienna in September, 1935; attended by 350 Zionist Delegates from 34 countries, representing 713,000 voters,which is the largest number of Jewish voters ever recorded.

9. Thus it was the predominance of the Left at the Lucerne Congress in August, 1935, which secured the election of Dr. Weizmann as President.

10. The Chief Rabbi, Dr. J. H. Hertz, stated (according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency) at a public meeting in London on the 23rd February, 1936, that "religious teaching is being blotted out in the Jewish schools. Thus, while funds which make possible Zionist schools come from Jews alone, these schools and settlements are not Jewish and still, except for the language, lack Jewish spirit and teaching. In fact, in some schools,  Socialism,’ not Judaism, is the object of tuition."

11. If required, thousands of Jews would come forward today under his leadership to serve in the forces of the Mandatory Power.

 

APPENDIX I.

 

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION.

FOREIGN OFFICE,

2nd November, 1917.

 

DEAR LORD ROTHSCHILD,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty's Government the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet:

" His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.”

 

Yours sincerely,

(Signed) ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR.

 

APPENDIX II.

Extract from Preamble to, and Specific Articles of, the Palestine Mandate referring to the Jewish National Home.

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting info effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and

 

Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestineand to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.

 

2. The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, * and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion

.

4. An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters - as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the control of the Administration, to assist and take part in the development of the country.

 

The Zionist organisation, so lang as its organisation and constitution are in the opinion of the Mandatory appropriate, shall be recognised as such agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the co-operation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.

 

6. The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Artide 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, induding State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

 

7. The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.

 

11. The Administration of Palestine shall take all necessary measures to safeguard the interests of the community in connection with the development of the country, and, subject to any international obligations accepted by the Mandatory, shall have full power to provide for public ownership or control of any of the natural resources of the country or of the public works, services and utilities established or to be established therein. It shall introduce a land system appropriate to the needs of the country, having regard, among other things, to the desirability of promoting the close settlement and intensive cultivation of the land.

 

The Administration may arrange with the Jewish agency mentioned in Article 4 to construct or operate, upon fair and equitable terms, any public works, services and utilities, and to deve1op any of the natural resources of the country, in so far as these matters are not directly undertaken by the Administration. Any such arrangements shall provide that no profits distributed by such agency, directly or indirectly, shall exceed a reasonable rate of interest on the capital, and any further profits shall be utilised by it for the benefit of the country in a manner approved by the Administration.

 

22. English, Arabic and Hebrew shall be the official languages of Palestine. Any statement or inscription in Arabic on stamps or money in Palestine shall be repeated in Hebrew, and any statement or inscription in Hebrew shall be repeated in Arabic

.

23. The Administration of Palestine shall recognise the holy days of the respective communities in Palestine as legal days of rest for the members of such communities.

* This phrase rules out any interpretation of " Jewish National Home “ other than as laid down in the Preamble, which speaks of " reconstituting their national home."

 

APPENDIX III

 

The following letter from Colonel J. C. Wedgwood, M.P., appeared in the " Times," of Friday, January 3rd, 1936.

 

SIR,- The plan of the Legislative Council for Palestine has been announced in Jerusalem. There is time to criticise the proposals before any enactment is made by Orders in Council. If this start towards home rule is not to be made on dangerous lines that criticism should come now. The objections of the Jews and their determination to boycott the council may de1ay the scheme. It is the proposals themselves on which I would comment, and from the British point of view.

 

First, one might judge from Egypt that it is a mistake, especially just now, to give the impression that one yields to threats of violence. The results of the 1923 Constitution in Egypt are so manifest that one need not labour the point. The connexion between Egypt and Palestine is so close; the regrets for the Constitution granted to Iraq are so keen. Surrender to bluff is not at the moment popular.

 

Then the proposed machinery gives the impression of having been devised without sufficient regard to practice and experience elsewhere in the Empire. No one who knows community representation in India approves of that method of election; it leaves minorities helpless and encourages racial and religious bitterness. Why impose it on Palestine, where all are agreed that the vital issue is to get Jew and Arab to be more friendly?

 

The essence of the English system is that the M.P. represents all sorts, and is as anxious to please those who might, as he is to please those who do, vote for him. The recent crisis is proof thereof, so anxious were we all to get the liberal vote at the next election - so eager to respond to the protests of our correspondents. This, as Mr. Baldwin has pointed out, is democracy ; and it only works well because, with a common electoral roll, we have to see the other fellow's point of view. With these community rolls, election depends on beating the community drum, and the most vigorous denunciation of the other communities.

 

The position of a statutory minority, which can never hope for posts, preferment, or power, is particularly unfair and quite un-English. Probably Jews object to this obvious result more than to community representation itself; for it is only the Jews of England and America who understand the virtues of the common electoral roll and the vices of community isolation. We have seen from India that once community representation is started, reversion to the unifying English system becomes impossible.

 

In Kenya there is an official majority on the council to preserve the control by the Colonial Office and by Parliament. In Palestine there is to be no official majority. Instead we are to rely on the balancing of the rival communities - so many Moslems, Christians, Jews, officials, possibly Germans. This is "divide and rule "-a "rule" which leads to more inefficiency and exasperation than any other. We had just that " rule " in Cyprus; for 50 years we ruled on the Governor's casting vote; and it only ended when the Christians stormed Government House and the Constitution went up in the flames.

 

Many other questions arise, such as control over the purse, over education, over police, over public works, over loans, over municipalities. These are not matters which solve themselves on the march, and we have had much experience in Colonies both less and more civilized than is Palestine. Malta, Guiana, Newfoundland, Ceylon provide precious evidence on the difficulties that will arise.Would it not be wise to use the time before the Palestine Constitution starts to have on all these matters the mature consideration of a committee, which need never visir Palestine? The practical experience of the British Empire is worth taking into account, worth a little delay, and no reflection upon the necessarily limited experience of those who have framed these proposals.

 

I am, Sir, yours, &c.,

JOSIAH C. WEDGWOOD.

Committee on History of Parliament,  I, Queen Anne's Gate Buildings, Dartmouth Street, S.W.I.

 

 

Palestine, The twice-promised land

 The Jewish Cause

1978, KTO Press, a division of Kraus-Thomson Organization Ltd, Nendeln, Lichtenstein