Lord Balfour and his king, George V, are proudly commemorated all over Israel. Balfour is given full credit for Britain's historic declaration, in a letter to Baron Rothschild on November 2, 1917, of the Jewish right to a national home in Palestine. "Churchill and the Jews," a new book by the renowned historian Sir Martin Gilbert, reveals that Winston Churchill (1874-1965), the legendary British prime minister who led his people and the Allies to victory over the Nazis, also played a part in laying the cornerstone for a Jewish state. In this fascinating book, Churchill is portrayed as a staunch supporter of Zionism and an avowed friend of the Jewish people from his earliest days in public life until his death. Unlike Balfour and then-U.S. president Harry S. Truman, however, Churchill has never been recognized as such in Israel.
Gilbert is Churchill's official biographer, and his opus includes an eight-volume life of his subject, as well as dozens of history books, several of them on Israel and the Jews. Thus it seems only natural for his two great loves to come together in one volume. In this book, we learn of Churchill's special affinity for the Jews, unusual in England at the end of the 19th century. This affection, we are told, he absorbed from his father, Randolph, who had maintained personal and business ties with some of the leading British Jews of his time, particularly Nathaniel Rothschild, head of the banking dynasty in Britain. They respected the father, and later embraced the son, helping him through the trying periods when he was bounced out of politics.
The historic turning point was Churchill's election to Parliament in 1904, standing for the Manchester North-West constituency, a third of whose voters were Jewish. Churchill, aged 27, and his wife, Clementine, caught a glimpse of the life of the Jewish community and were smitten: They discovered an organized, tightly knit population that cared for its poor, sick and elderly. From then on, Churchill took pains to express his great appreciation for Jewish community life. "The Jews are a lucky community because they have that corporate spirit, the spirit of their race and faith," he once said.
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Churchill's eyes opened to the existential fears of the Jews, to the anti-Semitism, pogroms (including in Kishinev, in 1903) and massive flight of the Jews from Russia, Moldovia and Ukraine. The young leader was especially captivated by the dream of the Jews to return to their historical homeland. He won hearts among his constituents with his stubborn parliamentary battle against attempts to restrict entry of Jewish refugees to Britain. In 1908, he already alluded in his writings to the need for a territorial solution to alleviate the hardship of the Jews, specifically mentioning Palestine, and called for comprehensive plans to be drawn up to address the problem. In 1921, less than half a generation later, historical circumstances led to his appointment as secretary of the colonies, placing him in charge of carrying out the British Mandate for Palestine and the Balfour Declaration.
According to Gilbert, Churchill was the first real implementer of Zionism as articulated in the Balfour Declaration; to the point where Lord James de Rothschild wrote to him decades later, after the establishment of Israel, to proclaim that, "You laid the foundations of the Jewish State."
On Churchill's first visit to Palestine, in 1922, in the company of the first high commissioner, Herbert Samuel, and Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as Lawrence of Arabia), he made his position clear to representatives of both peoples. His visit inspired great hope among the Jews, while leaving the Arabs sorely disappointed. The Arab opposition to Jewish immigration was racist, he said, whereas the Jews had brought prosperity, growth and economic development that were also enjoyed by the country's Arab inhabitants.
Churchill's White Paper, of that same year, endorsed Jewish immigration at a rate commensurate with the country's absorptive capacity, and thus enabled over 300,000 Jews to settle in Palestine over the next 14 years. The White Paper clarified that Jews were entitled to immigrate to Palestine by historical right, not sufferance, and stated, even back then, that when the Jews developed the proper instruments of government, they would be able to establish an independent state.
Aversion to racism
Throughout his political career, Churchill repeated these views, although they were not always popular in Britain. Thus it is not surprising that in January 1949, after Israeli air force planes clashed with Royal Air Force bombers above the Sinai border during a reconnaissance mission, Churchill, then head of the opposition in Britain, called upon his government to recognize the State of Israel and expressed his belief in the country, its fortitude and its future.
But Churchill's special feelings for the Jewish people and the Zionist movement had motives beyond those cited here. First of all, he is portrayed in the book as a fierce opponent of racism. This was a primary reason for his aversion to Adolf Hitler and refusal to have any contact with him. He maintained ties with Jews throughout his lifetime, some of whom helped him in personal matters. If anyone uttered a remark near him that smacked of anti-Semitism, he was always quick to dissociate himself.
He surrounded himself with Jewish friends and advisers, including Holocaust survivors and Jews from Eastern Europe with foreign accents. Contrary to expectations, this member of the British aristocracy attributed no importance to such things. Churchill also was cognizant of the age-old suffering of the Jews, something he constantly touched upon in his speeches. Second, contrary to the perceived historical perception, Gilbert describes how, when the news first broke of the mass murder of Jews in Eastern Europe, he took the matter seriously, in contrast to the U.S. administration.
After the war, he confided to his audiences that the leaders of the free world had not known the extent of the horror. As the head of an emergency unity government, he invested great efforts in arranging for thousands of Holocaust survivors to be admitted into Palestine during the war, although British colonial officials did everything they could to torpedo his orders. He corresponded with U.S. president Roosevelt on the subject of the Holocaust, and personally undertook to publicize details of the death camps revealed in intelligence photos that reached his hands.
Friendship with Weizmann
Third, Churchill was clearly influenced by Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization and later the state's first president. The two first met in the early 20th century in Manchester. Later, the relationship was cemented when Churchill, as head of the British admiralty in World War I, urgently needed a supply of acetone for the production of explosives. Weizmann, then a young chemist, came up with an idea, and the energetic, decisive Churchill gave him the green light for a manufacturing process that made a vital contribution to the Allied victory.
Finally, there was Churchill's deep attachment to the Bible. In his oratory, he summoned up biblical events and characters, and it was clear that his admiration for the Jewish people was rooted in the "Book of Books" and its moral codes. It is not surprising that when he met David Ben-Gurion in May 1961, he gave his guest a copy of an article he wrote about Moses as a leader published many years earlier.
So why hasn't Churchill been properly commemorated and given the respect he is due in historical studies of Israel and Zionism? Despite his views and actions, it is possible that Churchill was perceived as a representative of the same British establishment that opposed unregulated Jewish immigration, especially after publication of the MacDonald White Paper in 1939, which imposed strict quotas for a period of five years. Churchill had serious reservations about this policy, but he was not able to mobilize a majority in his government to veto it. The leader perceived as omnipotent found himself in splendid isolation in his own cabinet, and at the same time, responsible for the decrees in the eyes of the Jewish Yishuv and Zionist establishment. Ben-Gurion's statement that the country "would fight the war as if there were no White Paper and fight the White Paper as if there were no war" also created ambivalence toward Churchill that persisted after the establishment of the state.
Although Ben-Gurion regarded himself as a fan of Churchill (and even wrote to tell him so), the two first met only in 1961, when Churchill was already an old man and a retired politician. It is also possible that the complicated relations between Weizmann and Ben-Gurion affected attitudes toward Churchill in the Zionist establishment. When Churchill died, the State of Israel was preoccupied with other challenges, and graduates of the resistance movements gradually took over the Israeli leadership. Those responsible for educating the younger generation turned a blind eye to Churchill's role in the Zionist enterprise, while his colleague, Lord Balfour, became almost synonymous with Zionism and one of its symbols.
Maybe an explanation for this can be found in the following example. On November 4, 1944, Weizmann was invited to dine with Churchill at Chequers, the prime minister's country residence, in order to discuss the Palestine problem. At this decisive meeting, the two dwelled at length on various possibilities for the establishment of a Jewish national home. In practice, the host made it clear to Weizmann that nothing could happen before victory over Germany was assured. Churchill promised to consult with him on every idea or development that arose, thus making him an active partner in the process.
In the course of the meal, Churchill divulged to his guest that a member of his cabinet and close friend, Lord Albert Moyne, the British colonial secretary in Cairo, perceived by the Jewish Yishuv as the major obstacle to establishing a Jewish state in Palestine after the war, had undergone a significant change of mind and was now on Churchill's side. Therefore, he urged Weizmann to hurry and board a plane for Cairo to meet with Moyne. Weizmann willingly agreed. Within 24 hours, before Weizmann even managed to get on the plane, Lord Moyne had been assassinated by two members of the Stern Gang pre-state Jewish underground, Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri. Churchill, despite his shock at losing a good friend, vetoed a proposal to halt Jewish immigration to Palestine. "Will not suspension of immigration or a threat of suspension simply play into the hands of the extremists?" he asked his advisers; a question asked innumerable times since then under different circumstances. "At present," he went on, "the Jews generally seem to have been shocked by Lord Moyne's death into a mood in which they are more likely to listen to Dr. Weizmann's counsels of moderation."
It is not hard to imagine how different history might have been if not for the tragedy and missed opportunity so vividly illustrated by this episode. One thing is certain from Gilbert's book: We have not sufficiently expressed our gratitude to Winston Churchill and his contribution to the rebirth of the Jewish people. As we mark the 90th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, the time has come to find some way of saying thank you to one of the world's greatest leaders for his efforts on our behalf.
Isaac Herzog is the minister of social affairs and services, and the minister for Diaspora affairs and the fight against anti-Semitism.
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