Eugene Rogan’s Theory ‘Neither Pro-Zionist nor Pro-Arab but Pro-Empire’ whitewashes the role of the British in Palestine
The
Balfour Project was formed
in January 2017 during the 100th year since the Balfour Declaration.
Its purpose was to counter the Zionist celebrations. Much of the material it
produced was excellent. In any event the Zionist celebrations turned sour very
quickly.
Jeremy Corbyn, in one of his few principled actions
as leader, refused
an invitation to attend a Zionist celebratory dinner and sent Lady Emily
Thornberry in his place. Her Ladyship believes that ‘Modern Israel is a beacon of
freedom, equality and democracy".
Formally the
Balfour Project’s objectives are
‘the advancement of education, human rights,
conflict resolution or reconciliation’, by ‘a process of education, to advance public understanding of Britain’s
role in the Middle East in the 20th Century, and thereby to seek to advance
reconciliation in Israel and Palestine’.
Suppressing the Palestine Revolt
Whenever I hear the term ‘conflict resolution’ and
‘reconciliation’ I reach for my pistol!
The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians wasn’t a ‘conflict’ and the word
‘reconciliation’ is another word for ‘surrender’ by the Palestinians. ‘Conflict
resolution’ assumes that if only well meaning people gather together in one
room then any little problems like the eviction of Palestinians in Sheikh
Jarrar can be resolved within the existing Zionist paradigm of settler
colonialism.
What is the purpose of the Balfour Project? The
centenary has gone but under the baleful influence of Sir Vincent Fean, a minor
diplomat and former Consul-General in East Jerusalem, it would seem that the BP
has settled on rewriting the history of British crimes in Palestine.
On 3rd June Eugene Rogan, an American
academic at Oxford University, gave a lecture on Britain’s
role during the Mandate, ‘Neither
Pro-Zionist nor Pro-Arab but Pro-Empire’.
Nial Ferguson - right-wing British historian
Rogan’s
thesis was that throughout the Palestine Mandate Britain was neither
pro-Zionist nor pro-Arab but it was solely concerned with maintaining the
Empire (which, in one of those deceptions for which imperialism is famous, the
Mandate system was officially not part of the Empire).
Kipling's 'The White Man's Burden'
Suffice
to say that as I listened I grew more and more restless at this attempt to
rewrite the history of the Mandate. Rogan’s thesis was a revisionist one, on a
par with the attempts of British conservative historians such as Andrew Roberts
and Nial Ferguson,
to rehabilitate the reputation of the British Empire and pretend that it was,
in the words of Rudyard Kipling, the ‘white man’s burden.’
Sir Herbert Samuel
On
3 June I wrote to Diana Safieh of BP making the following points:
1.
Eugene Rogan's thesis, that the
British were honest brokers, holding the ring in Palestine, is not a new one.
Nicholas Bethel's. 'The Palestine Triangle', Yiga Hurewitz's 'Struggle for
Palestine' and Christopher Sykes 'Crossroads to Israel' plough the same furrow.
Eugene's argument was a Tory version of history, an attempt to sanitise the
British Empire.
2.
Eugene made no mention of the Woodhead Commission
that reversed the Peel
Commission proposal for partitioning Palestine. He made no mention of the Hope Simpson
Report which is required reading for anyone seriously interested in the
mechanics of Zionist colonisation.
3.
Quite remarkably Rogan made no
mention of Sir
Herbert Samuel, the first High Commissioner and father of the Balfour
Declaration.
Irregulars fighting in the Arab Revolt
4.
There was no mention of the Arab
Revolt 1936-39 which saw the British create the Jewish Settlement
Police which was controlled by the Zionist terror group, Haganah. There was
no mention of the Special
Night Squads or of their commander Col. Orde Wingate, a
highly influential Christian Zionist officer.
5.
The suggestion by Rogan that the
idea of a Jewish state only originated during the latter stages of the First
World War, that dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, the 'sick man of Europe' began
then, is remarkable. Christian Zionism had existed for nearly a century,
indeed longer. Palmerstone, Shaftesbury, Disraeli, Ernest Laharanne, Napoleon I
and III to mention but a few. Discussions about a Jewish State in Palestine began
as early as January 1915 when Weizmann met Lloyd George with Samuel (see
Chapter 8 ‘Weizmann, Samuel and Lloyd George’ in Leonard Stein’s The Balfour Declaration.
Sir Ronald Storrs
6.
Sir Ronald Storrs, Britain's
first Military Governor, was explicit as to what Britain's purpose was in
Palestine and it wasn’t a neutral one. Storrs wrote in his autobiography
‘Orientations’ that
the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine “blessed him that gave as well as him that took, by forming for England ‘a little loyal Jewish Ulster’ in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.”
British soldiers engaging in day to day repression of the Arabs
That was the policy of the British from the start. Almost
the first thing Churchill in 1921 was to send
the Black & Tans, from Ireland to Palestine. And it wasn't to suppress the
Zionists.
7.
Of course there was a debate between
the British civil service and the military as to Zionism. It may amaze people
now but both the Daily Mail and the Express opposed Zionism on the grounds
of cost. Politicians were more favourable to the Zionist alliance since they took
the longer view of British imperialism’s interests. I refer for example to Doreen
Ingram’s Palestine
Papers for the debate within the British Establishment.
The Jewish Settlement Police
8. 1. I suggested that with such a contentious title there should have been a debate on the topic not a one-sided, pro-British imperialist thesis. I also remarked on a tendency in the BP to excuse Britain's record with Sir Vincent Fean, a minor former diplomat as its Chair.
2. Rogan's thesis is an attempt to whitewash Britain's role in Palestine and should not go unchallenged in an organisation which is pro-Palestinian.
I
followed up with a second email the following day to Diane saying that I had had a lot
of responses to my original email, all agreeing with what I had said, viz. that
Rogan was engaged in an exercise in excusing Britain's role in Palestine, the
exact opposite of holding Britain accountable as the BP claims to be doing.
I gave as
an example British support for Zionist colonisation. It was the British Police who
when the JNF purchased land then evicted the Palestinian peasants and I referred
to the introduction of the ‘criminal gang
of misfits and cut throats’, the Black and Tans, led by Douglas Duff after
whom 'duffed up' is derived. See e.g. The Irish Times.
Black & Tans
Rogan’s quotes
from British officials, although interesting were out of context and it seemed that
‘the good professor was unable to see the
wood for the trees.’
I also
remarked that the chat facility was disabled during Rogan’s talk which prevented
attendees commenting or making points. This is a Command and Control approach which
inhibits genuine discussion.
Sir Vincent Fean
I
received no reply to this email but having copied it to Eugene Rogan, he
replied. I don’t have his permission to post his replies so I have to
paraphrase them. Rogan’s main points were:
1.
My comments
surprised him as he didn’t think we disagreed!
2.
The British
armed the Zionists in order to make them more ‘reliable’ in upholding the
British Mandate.
3.
That he is a
‘staunch critic’ of both the British and French empires.
My response was that:
1.
By arming the
Zionist settlers you were not making them more reliable but potentially your
own adversaries.
2.
In any event by
arming one side only the British were clearly supporting the Zionists against
the Palestinians much as they had used the Unionists in Ireland against the
indigenous Catholic Irish.
if you go and arm one side then
what you create is not reliability but a rod for your own back and that is
exactly what happened. Orde Wingate effectively created Palmach and
taught the Zionists the rudimentary skills of counter insurgency and they used
them to good effect after 1945.
3.
That the British
denied the Palestinians any semblance of self-government, until the Zionists
were in a majority. This was unlike India where the British conceded majority
control of the provincial assemblies.
4.
Rogan made great
play of the restriction of Jewish immigration in the 1939 White Paper to 35% of
the total population, 15,000 a year for 5 years. However this restriction
wasn’t part of a long term plan to keep the Zionists in the minority but a
necessity brought about by the imminent conflict with Germany. The British
could not afford to keep large numbers of troops in Palestine to deal with
another Arab rebellion.
5.
That the British
allowed almost unlimited Jewish immigration, with the only proviso being the economy’s
absorptive capacity. That it was the Zionists who practiced a policy of selective
immigration, turning away 2 out of 3 immigrants – the poor, elderly, etc. In
fact in 1926 there was a net outflow of Jewish immigrants because of the dire
economic situation.
6.
That the British
wanted another White Dominion along the lines of Canada and Australia. Of
course the Zionists had other ideas but at no stage had the British chosen
neutrality.
Rogan
followed this up with one final email of 22nd June in which he made
the following points:
1.
He was not an
Anglophile but an Irish-American!
2.
He now accepted
that we did have some disagreements. He also accepted that British officials
were aware of Zionism before WW1 but queried whether they had ever contemplated
‘wrenching it’ from the Ottoman Empire to give to the Zionists.
Of
course it is true that the British had not intended to ‘wrench’ Palestine from
the Ottoman Empire, not least because up till 1914 the British saw it as a
bulwark against French expansion from Syria to the Suez Canal. And not only
France but Germany too. There is though an intriguing comment of Julian Amery
MP to Leonard Stein that ‘the disruption
of the Turkish Empire was a matter of continuous speculation at this time’
(fn. 88, p.25)
3.
The British were
alive to the threat from Mehmet Ali in Egypt to British interests by his attack
on the Ottoman Empire and his invasion of Syria. As Leonard Stein wrote ‘British interests required that everything
possible should be done to prop up the Sultan.’ (p.5) However they also, as
with Palmerstone in 1840, attempted to
interest the Turks into sponsoring a Jewish settlement of Palestine to ward off
the French.
4.
The argument
that the British were not interested in a Zionist settlement of Palestine or
adjacent territories is unsustainable. In 1903 Herzl and Joseph Chamberlain,
the Colonial Secretary, discussed the El Arish scheme.
5.
Rogan suggested
that I should not overstate the influence of Herbert Samuel’s paper The Future of
Palestine present to the British Cabinet in January 1915. That is arguable
however it clearly won over Lloyd George.
6.
Rogan asked why,
if the immigration restrictions in the 1939 White Paper were only a war-time
necessity, why then uphold these limits after the war to the extent of turning
back shiploads of refugees and holocaust survivors. The answer is of course that
circumstances had changed.
The Haganah, the Zionists' semi-official army
The
Irgun had declared war on the British in February 1944. They were joined by the
main Zionist terror organisation, Haganah in Autumn 1945. The Zionists wanted a
Jewish state not a British Dominion. The centre of gravity in the Zionist
movement had shifted during the war from Britain to the United States. Ben Gurion
represented the alliance with the United States and Weizmann the orientation
towards Britain. It was the consequences
of the 1939 White Paper that led to the Zionist breach with the British. But
throughout the war the British and Haganah had cooperated very closely with the
British effectively arming Haganah and creating a Jewish Brigade at the end of
1944.
Of
course the British were intent on retaining their foothold in Palestine as they
were in the Middle East as a whole but they never, at any stage, contemplated
arming the Palestinians in the same way as they had armed the Zionist militias.
This is similar to the American War of Independence when the British refused to
contemplate arming the Black slaves in the South in order to bolster their own
forces. The fight between the British and the Zionists was an inter-imperialist
fight not unlike the Boer Wars. It was a sacred principle that Britain would
not arm the indigenous people. Hitler also foreswore the idea of arming the
natives against British imperialism which is why talk of a Nazi-Arab alliance is
rubbish.
British wanted posters for the Irgun
7.
On the positive
side Rogan liked my comparison between the Boers and the Zionists and agreed
that many Britons supported Zionism for anti-Semitic reasons. But he argued
that this did not mean that Britain was going to sacrifice the interests of the
Empire for the sake of Zionism.
I
agree. Of course the British were primarily interested in maintaining the
Empire. However up till 1945, despite disagreements, they saw their alliance
with the Zionists as one way of doing this. At no stage did they think of
forming an alliance with the Palestinians.
In a short rejoinder I
pointed out that there were some British politicians, the most notable of whom
was the future Labour Cabinet member Richard Crossman MP, but also the Tribune
group of Labour MPs, who did support the Zionist militias against the British
army.
We also had a short
exchange on Irish Republicanism but I will desist from copying it here. Suffice
to say we agreed on that subject at least!
Tony Greenstein
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