Joe > What is so astonishing which you'll see in my next book, Churchill and the Jews is that he [Lawrence] was a serious Zionist.
Not astonishing at all, that's if it's true, which I doubt. Dislike for Jews and support for Zionism went hand-in-hand amongst the European leaders during the first part of the 20th century. The reason is obvious -- Zionism presented a way of solving the "Jewish question" permanently and getting rid of the European Jews forever, whether to Uganda, Madagascar or Palestine.
>Sir Martin revealed last night that a series of minutes written by Lawrence, which he uncovered in the National Archive, demonstrated his sympathy with the Zionist cause. Working for Churchill in 1921, for example, he clearly identified "the area of Palestine from the Mediterranean to Jordan" as the "Jewish National Home".
Whatever Lawrence thought or didn't think or whether the alleged minutes are fake or they are not, this "revelation" cannot get away from the fact that Britain signed the Balfour Declaration with British Jews as its part in a contract for them getting the American Jews to "persuade" Woodrow Wilson to bring the US into WW1. There was nothing spontaneous about Britain's gesture -- it was a simple quid pro quo in which Britain promised land which it didn't even own for "services rendered". And what "services" they were, indeed.
Returning to the apparent contradiction between anti-Semitism and pro-Zionism, the most famous Jew-hater, Eichman, was in fact known to be an ardent supporter of Zionism.
palestine-encyclopedia.com
>>Dr. Hannah Arendt, a famous Jewish political philosopher, stated in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem(l963) that "Whatever Eichmann did, he did not do it because he was a confirmed Nazi or a hater of Jews but because he was a firm believer in Zionism and that the Jews themselves contributed signally to their own destruction."
"The whole truth was," she wrote, "that there existed Jewish community organizations and Jewish party and welfare associations on both the local and international level. Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and these leaders, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another with the Nazis."<<
> It seems logical to imagine that working so closely with the minister, he shared at the time Churchill's warmth to the idea of a Jewish homeland, and probably an eventual Jewish state. "Churchill was pro-Zionist," says Professor Rose. "No question."
There are texts which allege Churchill was a fascist and Jew-hater and, if this is true, then the apparent contradiction in a European leader who is both an antiSemite and a pro-Zionist is again par for the course.
But none of these red herrings detract from the real history of the state of Israel. |
