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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (61577)	12/13/2002 11:53:21 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

...judgements that lean more to one side than the other do not prove lack of evenhandedness. True evenhandedness is shown by impartiality, not by a final judgement that always splits the decision 50/50, regardless of circumstances. Are you saying that the conclusions of the Haycraft Commission are slanted by a pre-existing bias toward one side? What evidence do you have to support this? Certainly if administration of the Colonial office as a whole had any pre-existing bias it was toward the Zionists, as Churchill’s remarks just before the riots (quoted in a recent post to Neocon; I assume you read it) make abundantly clear. What, other than your own retrospective desire to see the blame placed on the Arabs, makes you believe that the Haycraft report is something other than an honest reflection of the Commission's findings? In the case of the Commission's findings on the 1921 riots, my history books tell me that the Colonial office did not seem to agree about the lack of incitement since the British threw Amin al-Husseini in jail for inciting the riots. In that case we must assume that either the Colonial Office knew something that the Commission didn’t know – unlikely, since the Commission was their primary source of information – or they decided that regardless of the Commission’s findings, the violence required that somebody be punished. Given the well-documented pro-Zionist position of the Colonial Secretary at the time, the latter seems more likely to me. If they had expelled him then instead of making him "Grand Mufti" who knows how differently history might have run? Leaders can make a big difference. Just look where Arafat's leadership has left the Palestinians. Leaders matter, but the question of which particular leader gains prominence is generally settled by the mood of those who follow. I don’t think that exiling the Mufti would have made a shred of difference: there were plenty of other aspiring radicals ready to ride the wave. It is all very well to regret that the more moderate Nashishibis could not have gained power during the rebellion of the late ‘30’s, but when has a moderate leader ever gained ascendancy over a people inflamed by long-simmering rebellion? The populace didn’t become radical because the Mufti gained ascendancy over the Nashishibis, the Mufti gained ascendancy because the populace was fired up and wanted a leader with a radical message. Do you think the story today would have been any different if the Israeli’s had “taken out” Arafat sometime back in the ‘70s? I wouldn’t bet on it. The radicals would have just had a new martyr, and a new leader would have very quickly emerged.