A couple of superb posts on the Lawrence of Cyberia blog:
Predicted what?
Predicted that forcibly establishing a Jewish state in Palestine against the wishes of its pre-existing non-Jewish majority – a state which would be surrounded by 200 million Arabs and one billion Muslims who are overwhelmingly sympathetic to the plight of the pre-existing population, and which would require for its continuing existence the repeated involvement of those Western powers who engineered its creation in the first place – would turn out to be a source of perpetual grievance and escalating instability that threatens regional war involving the countries of the entire Mid East and far beyond…
In the second article, the author quotes from the King-Crane Report, an official United States government report by the Inter-allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey in August 1919:
Here’s a small sample:
For “a national home for the Jewish people” is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State; nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission’s conference with Jewish representatives, that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase.
In his address of July 4, 1918, President Wilson laid down the following principle as one of the four great “ends for which the associated peoples of the world were fighting”; “The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery.” If that principle is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine’s population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine – nearly nine tenths of the whole – are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed than upon this. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted, and of the people’s rights, though it kept within the forms of law.
It is to be noted also that the feeling against the Zionist program is not confined to Palestine, but shared very generally by the people throughout Syria as our conferences clearly showed. More than 72 per cent – 1,350 in all – of all the petitions in the whole of Syria were directed against the Zionist program. Only two requests – those for a united Syria and for independence – had a larger support. This general feeling was only voiced by the “General Syrian Congress,” in the seventh, eighth and tenth resolutions of the statement.
The Peace Conference should not shut its eyes to the fact that the anti-Zionist feeling in Palestine and Syria is intense and not lightly to be flouted. No British officer, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms. The officers generally thought that a force of not less than 50,000 soldiers would be required even to initiate the program. That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program, on the part of the non-Jewish populations of Palestine and Syria. Decisions, requiring armies to carry out, are sometimes necessary, but they are surely not gratuitously to be taken in the interests of a serious injustice. For the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a “right” to Palestine, based on an occupation of 2,000 years ago, can hardly be seriously considered.
It is not that there haven’t been intelligent, fair-minded people in the western world, at every stage of the Zionist project, who saw what was being planned and didn’t warn against it. There were and they did.
The problem, then as now, is that these voices have generally been ignored.
When fair-minded policies prevailed, misfortune all too often eventuated in short order, frustrating these rare outbreaks of official sanity.
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Afternote: Decipher the beginning!
In 1945 – the same year two atom bombs were dropped on civilian populations and the world formally entered the ‘atomic age’ of mass destruction – some ancient scrolls were unearthed in Upper Eygpt at Nag Hammadi.
When translated, they were found to include texts written in the coptic language from the early days of Christianity, including the remarkable ‘Gospel of Saint Thomas’.
Here’s a short extract:
“The disciples say to Jesus: Tell us what our end will be. Jesus says: Have you then deciphered the beginning that you ask about the end? For where the beginning is, there shall be the end. Blessed is the man who reaches the beginning; he will know the end. . . .”
—Gospel of St. Thomas, Saying 18.
That’s it, in a few words.
Resolution of conflict in Palestine requires accurate appreciation of the conflict’s origins.
Likewise, to achieve world peace, we must understand the origins of world wars.
