Winston Churchill was one of the founding fathers of the modern Middle East.
There is, therefore, a solid basis for claiming that he helped create the world's main disaster zone, and then passed it on, as a barrel of fiery explosives, to US responsibility. John F. Kennedy was the first to say that America guaranteed Israel's security. Many would blame the British. - and first and foremost Churchill - for creating the territorial confusions that required such a guarantee.Was he guilty? If not, who is to blame?
As I write these words today, Israel is bombarding Arab positions in Gaza.
Hamas fires rockets at Israel.
The death toll in Syria is rising.
Fundamentalist fanatics have occupied large parts of northern Iraq.
Churchill's fingerprints are on the entire map.
Take a look at the map of Jordan - what do you see? The most surprising thing about it is this strange triangle, a protrusion nearly 650 kilometers west of Saudi Arabia into modern Jordan. Some say that this geographical fact can be attributed to one of Churchill's alcohol - saturated lunches, and to this day this triangle is called "Churchill's hiccup." This story may or may not be true. But no one denies Churchill's role in this border painting. Strange or not, it has lasted ever since.
Churchill was an integral part of the creation of the modern state of Israel. And he realized, in the formative moment of her appearance, that an attempt should be made to put logic and order into the disgraceful inconsistency in the commitments of the British government. He was the man who decided there should be a political entity called Iraq. He was the man who put together the three great Ottoman administrative districts - Basra, Baghdad and Mosul: Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish. If you want to blame one person for the suffering of modern Iraq, if you want to blame someone for the current explosion, of course point the finger at George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Saddam Hussein. But if you want to understand the root of the problem of this unfortunate country, you will have to examine the role of Winston Churchill.
His immense career intersected with the crystallization of the Middle East at several key points (and let’s not forget that the very term “Middle East” is attributed to him);
But most important is his role as colonial minister.
He was a little surprised when he was offered the job, in the late 1920s;
But it is understandable why Prime Minister Lloyd George thought he was the right man for the job.
Churchill displayed immense energy and dynamism in his role as Minister of Armed Forces - equipping Britain with tanks, aircraft and other technologies that helped it win the war.
As Minister of War, he ruled with a high hand in the process of liberation from the army, and soothed rebellions when he promised that those with the most seniority in the army would be the first to unite with their families.
He demonstrated his magic skills and persuasive ability in conversations about Northern Ireland.
And these skills will be required in the Middle East at their best.
World War I left some very serious problems, especially in the Middle East.
• • •
The post of colonial minister may sound less important than that of foreign minister - a position still held by the most senior man, George Nathaniel Curzon. But only if one forgets the size of the British Empire in 1921. World War I was not meant to be a war of conquest; Britain entered into it with the express intention not to expand the borders of the empire. But as Walter Ride noted, between 1914 and 1919 British-controlled world territory increased by nine percent.
When Churchill seized the reins of the Colonial Office, he stood at the head of an empire that ruled 58 lands over an area of more than 36 million square miles, and was responsible — in one way or another — for the lives and hopes of 458 million people.
It was the largest empire in the world ever, at a considerable distance from others - six times larger than the Roman Empire at its peak under the rule of Trianus.
The British flag hovered over more than a quarter of the earth's surface, and there was hardly a sea or ocean that did not have tours of the powerful British navy - a navy that Churchill improved and became more modern.
When you think about it this way, it's perhaps less surprising that Churchill got into the role altogether.
He surrounded himself with the best and most famous experts - the most prominent of whom were the Arabists Thomas Edward Lawrence and Gertrude Bell.
He studied in depth matters that until then had been meaningless (for him), such as the difference between Shia and Sunnah.
In the compound of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Right: Clementine Churchill, Winston Churchill, High Commissioner Herbert Samuel, King of Jordan Emir Abdullah and Mrs. Samuel,
The first step he took was to convene a conference in Cairo, and he conducted it with brilliant talent.
The press was skeptical about this initiative.
Churchill was said to want a "Darbar" - an impressive and ceremonial gathering of the imperial court people.
Accused him of wanting to dominate "on an oriental scale."
But the truth is that someone had to take command, because the situation in the Middle East was a complete mess.
Out of the best intentions and motives, Britain made some promises in World War I, and now it seemed that they did not reconcile with each other, and certainly not with the reality on the ground.
One might perhaps take it a little easier and say that these were promises made by a country in severe distress, whose population was in danger of starvation due to the attacks of the German submarines on the maritime supply lines.
There were three British promises. The first was to the Arabs, from 1915. It was a series of flattering letters written by Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner to Egypt, to Hashemite King Hussein - a bearded and respected elder, a descendant of a family who claimed a direct connection to the Prophet Muhammad. The gist of the letters was that the British government was very supportive of a large new Arab state that would stretch from Palestine to Iraq as far as the Persian border, and that Hussein and his family would sit on its throne. And his hope was that this promise would encourage the Arabs to revolt against the Turks, who were then allies of the Germans. The letters helped, and indeed there was such a revolt: a strategically worthless affair, which was greatly exaggerated in the film "Lawrence the Arab."
The next promise was to the French, who suffered many casualties on the Western Front.
He thought it would be politically correct to paint them a future of French glory as soon as the war was over;
And under the terms of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, France was to have an area of influence from Syria to northern Iraq, which included Baghdad;
It is interesting to note that this is an area that largely coincides with the "caliphate" declared by ISIS zealots in 2014.
It was not at all clear how this secret commitment to France could coexist alongside the more public commitment to the Arabs - and in truth, it was indeed not possible.
The third promise that was inconsistent with the others, in the most tragic-comic of all, was the so-called Balfour Declaration.
It was a letter from Lord Arthur J. Balfour to Lord Rothschild, dated November 2, 1917, containing this refined masterpiece of the State Department that tried not to say anything explicit:
"His Majesty welcomes the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine and will make every effort to facilitate this achievement, with a clear understanding that nothing will be done that could infringe on the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the political rights and status of the Jews." In any other country. "
Another way to put it is to say that the British government welcomes the idea that Jews should eat a cake, as long as nothing is done to infringe on the rights of non-Jewish communities to eat that cake at the same time.
What made this statement?
Among other things, idealism.
Since the terrible pogroms in Russia in the 19th century, there has been a growing movement aimed at finding a national home for the Jews.
At one point the British even toyed with the idea of finding them a place in Uganda.
But Palestine, the land of the Bible, was the required place. It was still very sparsely populated at the time, and to some extent Balfour only added the official British voice to the choir that sought to give "a land without a people to a people without land."
There may also have been some more practical matters added to Balfour's system of considerations: in World War I there was great fear that the Jews would turn their kindness to Germany, because that was the best way to repay the Russians for their anti-Semitism before the war.
As Churchill himself later admitted, the Balfour Declaration was intended to secure Jewish support, especially in America - and the chaos it provoked stemmed from the counter-desire not to alienate the millions of Muslims (including in India) who manned the ranks of the British Empire.
Looking at these three promises together, there is no doubt: Britain has sold the same camel three times.
• • •
It was the dirt that Churchill had to clean up.
In March 1921 he summoned all the major players to the magnificent Smirmis Hotel in Cairo - which was also, of course, an integral part of the British Empire.
The walls soon echoed with cries of excited Arabists.
Churchill went inside to hear the protests of several Arabs outside, some carrying posters that read in French "Contempt for Churchill."
He was holding a easel, followed by one of his assistants, carrying a bucket containing a bottle of wine.
Churchill settled in the garden and burst into a burst of creative activity, which was enough to produce enough paintings for his own exhibition.
But the biggest and most dramatic canvas of all was the political landscape of the Middle East.
At one point in the process he organized a journey to the pyramids, and the whole group was photographed on camels before the Sphinx.
Although he was a talented rider, Churchill managed to slip off the camel hump.
The guide thought his senior tourist was in danger, and suggested he continue the tour on horseback.
"I started on a camel and I will finish on a camel," he replied, and so we see him today in the picture - riding with full force on the saddle - as he was throughout the course of events.
By the end of the Cairo conference, he had managed to pour some meaning into McMahon-Hussein's letters.
Of King Hussein's four sons, Faisal received the monarchy in Iraq (the French expelled him from Syria) and Abdullah received the monarchy across the East Jordan, now Jordan - where his family remained on its throne.
Lawrence thought the summit was a huge success, and 11 years later wrote to Churchill that it had already created more than a decade of peace: not bad.
At a memorial service for British soldiers from WWI in the British cemetery on Mount Scopus, Photo: Courtesy of MyHeritage
Churchill's work was not completed.
He now had to see if he could put into words the inconsistency with the Balfour Declaration.
The next stop was Jerusalem, and in his meetings there he conducted his version of a complete sentence, the wisest of all men.
He met with two groups in a row, first with the Arabs, and then with the Jews.
The first group to come and see him was the "Executive Committee of the Arab-Palestinian Congress."
They did not leave a good impression on Churchill;
And it should be remembered that such a feeling had already lamented in him, because the Palestinian Arabs did not join the other Arabs in the revolt against the Turks.
At the heart of the Arabs' argument was that the Jews should overlap.
The Balfour Declaration should be repealed.
"The Jews were the ones who actively caused destruction in many countries ... the Jews are tribal and not friendly to the neighbors, and cannot interfere with those who live in their environment ... a Jew is a Jew anywhere in the world," and so on.
They showed no sign of being willing to compromise, or reach any understanding with the settlers.
Common rule, common law, common sovereignty, a federal solution - none of these were acceptable to them.
Jews out, they said.
As Abba Even later said - "The Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity," and as they began, so did they later.
Churchill listened to them attentively, then responded with practical advice.
He stressed both sides of the Balfour Declaration - the protection it provides for the civil and political rights of the peoples living in the country.
He noted that the declaration referred to some national home for the Jews, and not to a particular national home, and added a vague statement that it would be a condominium and not just Jewish property.
"If one promise is fulfilled, so is the other, and we will be valued according to the way we faithfully fulfill both," he told them, but the essence of Balfour's promise to the Jews must be fulfilled.
There is no way around it.
"This statement was made while the fighting was still going on, with victory and defeat at stake. "A nation where some of them can unite. And where can it be if not in the land of Palestine, to which they have been attached for all their capillaries for three thousand years?"
He then heard from the Jewish delegation.
Their speech, as might be expected, was carefully worded so as to guarantee Churchill's ears.
"Our Jewish and Zionist program particularly emphasizes the establishment of an honest friendship between us and the Arabs," they said.
"The Jewish people are returning to their homeland after two thousand years of exile and persecution, and cannot tolerate the suspicion that they want to deny the rights of another people."
Churchill answered gravely, in the tone of a Roman adviser serving as an arbitrator in an argument.
One tribe may be more advanced, more cultured - but they have a duty to the savage tribes who are in danger of being expelled from their land.
The Jewish settlers must show "caution" and "patience," he warned.
They must allay the fears of others, even if that fear is unjustified.
Later, in a speech he delivered at the compound where they began to build the Hebrew University, he reiterated his message: Jews have a great responsibility;
Indeed, they have an opportunity to create a land flowing with milk and honey, but "every step you take must be for the material and moral good of all the citizens of Palestine."
He was then given a symbolic tree for planting.
Symbolically, the tree did not survive.
Touring Jerusalem with Commissioner Herbert Samuel, 1921,
• • •
Some said that Churchill was innocent in the way he dealt with the Jewish-Arab question, and some said that he acted dishonestly.
In March 1921 he finally decided that the West Bank was not included in the terms of McMahon-Hussein's promise.
He will not be part of the kingdom of Abdullah, Hussein's son.
This was the beginning of the establishment of the national home that Balfour promised to the Jews - and many accused Churchill of making this decision a "tool in the great global Jewish conspiracy."
There will be various and weird lunatics who will tell you that Churchill's mother, Jenny Jerome, was from a Jewish family (she was not. Her father was a descendant of the Huguenots, she may have had Native American blood, but she was not Jewish).
Some would say, and this is a little more plausible, that his views were distorted because of the large contributions he received from Jewish bankers and businessmen: Ernest Kassel, Sir Henry Starkosh, Bernard Baruch.
It is certainly true that Churchill's personal funding would not have passed the critically acclaimed satirical magazine "Private Ai" today.
They would not look good if they were spread on the front page of the Guardian.
He did take money from these people, sometimes quite considerable sums.
But these were completely different times, when MPs and ministers received immeasurably low salaries - and expected to have private income - it was no exception at all that politicians would receive financial support from their fans.
In any case, I do not think that these contributions in any way changed Churchill's attitude towards the Jewish people, nor did they influence his decisions regarding Palestine.
At the base he was philosophical (a lover of Judaism and Jews), like his father Randolph, and such was his whole life.
He admired the Jewish characteristics, which also characterized himself - energy, independence, hard work, family life.
As the newspaper wrote in 1920: "There are people who love Jews and there are those who do not, but no sane person can doubt that they are without a doubt the most amazing and respectable race ever seen in the world."
He was occasionally accused of racist remarks - as in an unpublished article, in which he apparently claimed that the Jewish people were to some extent responsible for some of the resentment he provoked, and for the feeling that they were "blood-sucking Hebrews."
But it is not clear who actually authored the article (claiming which hand disappeared), and of course, it is important to note that it was never published.
As Sir Martin Gilbert made clear beyond any doubt: Churchill admired Jews, employed Jews, enjoyed the company of Jews, and believed in a national home for the Jewish people.
He is not a Zionist, he once said, but he is "connected to Zionism."
All this is true, but that does not mean that Churchill was anti-Arab, and certainly not anti-Muslim.
There were certainly times, both in 1904 and in the 1920s, when his general "Orientalist leanings" led him to act like the Arabist poet Wilfred Squin Blunt, and to dress in an Arab style.
He admired Lawrence the Arab, and as Warren Doctor noted in his historical review, "Winston Churchill and the Muslim World," he never forgot that the British Empire was the largest Muslim power in the world: in 1920 it was home to 87 million Muslims.
Churchill protested the loss of India not only because of the blow to British prestige, but also because he feared the oppression of Muslims by the Hindus.
And since the Muslim soldiers were valuable to the empire, the good will of the Muslims was essential.
He tended to side with the Turks in their struggles with the Greeks, even though the Turks were his rivals in the First World War.
Remember what he did in the mid-1940s, when Britain was desperate for friends: he raised £ 100,000 to build the Regents Park Mosque in London - a gesture the Muslim world was supposed to notice.
Book cover,
• • •
Therefore, when Churchill paved the way for the entry of Jews into Palestine - and his 1922 White Paper encouraged further Jewish immigration - it was because he truly believed that it would be the best thing for this arid and neglected area of the world, and the best thing for both communities.
In his mind's eye he saw Jews and Arabs living side by side.
He imagined Shlomo the technology expert reaching out to the young Muhammad with his tractor, and teaching him the art of irrigation.
He saw orchards blooming in the desert, and abundance for all.
And his vision is even supported by the words of the elderly King Hussein himself, who wrote in his publication "Al-Kibla" that Palestine is "the beloved and sacred homeland of its original sons - the Jews."
The Hashemite king went on to predict exactly the same optimistic prophecy that Churchill had foretold: "Experience has proved their ability to succeed in their energies and hard work....
Unfortunately, that's not what happened.
As the years passed, the tension increased.
Jewish immigration increased, especially with the onset of Nazi persecution.
It turned out that Churchill was too optimistic about the spirit of love and equality of the early Zionists.
They did not tend to employ Arabs on their farms.
The Arabs began to protest and riot, and the poor soldiers of the British Mandate got stuck between a rock and a hard place, were forced to shoot at the Arabs - and many in Britain began to feel that grave injustice was taking place here.
In 1937 the situation worsened to the point where it was decided to set up the Phil Commission to understand what had gone wrong in Palestine.
Churchill testified secretly before the commission - in which we can see exactly what he thought he was doing when he opened the doors to real Jewish immigration and created the homeland on the western side of the Jordan: And economic convenience, there will be a large Jewish state, of millions, much more than the settlers in the country now "(today we see how this vision came true. There are more than eight million Israelis, and more than 75 percent of them Jews).
Of course it would be necessary to protect the Arabs, he told the Phil Commission, and the Jews erred in not employing them.
But he saw the Zionist enterprise as something advanced, enlightened, and fundamentally cultural.
There was no reason to allow the Arabs to sabotage this progress - which would ultimately go well with everyone.
"I do not think that whoever caught the manger first has the exclusive right to the manger," he said, it is like arguing that America should be left in the hands of the Indians or Australia in the hands of the Aborigines.
This is absurd, in his view - an insult to the Wiggle concepts of social improvement.
In any case, he denied importing a "foreign race" into Palestine.
"Not at all," he said, "the Arabs are the occupiers."
Churchill noted that in the time of Jesus the population in Palestine was immeasurably large - and was largely Jewish.
This all changed in the seventh century AD, "when the Muhammad revolution took place in the history of the world, and a great evening of Muslims flooded these places. They destroyed everything, crushed everything. You saw the terraces on the hills that were formerly agricultural fields, and under Arab rule remained desolate."
The committee pressured Churchill: When does he think the situation will return to normal?
When will the Jews be in the majority again?
"The British government is the judge, and it must maintain the ability to be the judge," he replied.
In this case he was too optimistic, if not romantic.
To some extent, he must have known that.
Britain could not remain in control of Palestine long enough to ensure that the game between the Jews and the Arabs remained fair.
• • •
By the end of World War II it was clear that British efforts to remain in Palestine were doomed to failure.
Now it was immoral and impossible to stop Jewish immigration.
The Arab response was as violent as ever, and the British soldiers did their best to uphold the principles of the Balfour Declaration, and to be fair to both sides.
The British were still trying to limit the rate of Jewish immigration, and there were horrific scenes in which survivors of Nazi concentration camps were detained in camps set up by the British and not allowed to enter Palestine.
Jewish terrorists began to point their rifles and bombs at the British themselves, at those who had created their homeland.
They murdered Lord Moyne, the British minister in Palestine, on whose yacht Churchill's wife, Clementine, relished on a voyage to the South Seas with the colorful art dealer Terence Phillip.
They killed British soldiers who had just fulfilled their duty, and angered Ernest Bowen, Labor's foreign minister.
Now even Winston Churchill's Zionism has been undermined.
He described the attacks as "terribly good spoons".
His relationship with Haim Weizmann, a native of Manchester, one of the fathers of Zionism, was damaged forever.
In the end, the British simply fled Palestine and left the key under the carpet at the entrance.
The flag was lowered, and a new state was born.
The author.
Incumbent British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Photo: AFP
Such a process also took place in India that year, albeit in a slightly more dignified manner, and it happened all over the world during the Great Depression, which marked the last stage in Churchill's life.
Everywhere in the world he saw the British flag being folded: from Malaya to Malawi, from Singapore to Suez - where America finally landed under the military pretensions of the old dilapidated empire, in 1956.
He must have thought of that when he said bitterly at the end of his life: "I have achieved a great deal, and I have finished with nothing."
This is of course not true, as he probably knew.
Think of his accomplishments in the Middle East only.
Jordan is a very stable country, from the days of Churchill to the present day, even if his hand trembled a little when he drew its borders.
Iraq remained largely British-influenced for another 40 years after the Cairo Conference, and Iraqi oil proved valuable to Britain's survival in World War II.
As for the birth of Israel, where he played the role of midwife - well, your position depends on the essential question of whether or not you believe in the value of a Jewish state.
If you are one of those who believe that the Balfour Declaration is the biggest mistake in British foreign policy, you will surely think that Churchill was wrong when he gave it practical validity.
On the other hand, if you think that in general, there is justice in providing a national home for Jews after two thousand years of persecution, in a place where they lived in the past and which was almost uninhabited at the time;
If you think there was a vision in the hope that their skills would blossom the wilderness;
If you think it's not a bad idea to have at least one democracy, even if not perfect, in this part of the world - you might think that Churchill is to some extent a hero.
He could not have known in the 1920s that in their short-sightedness and selfishness, both sides would betray his vision of a "land flowing with milk and honey."
He cannot be blamed for the shameful way in which Israel treated the Palestinians, nor for Palestinian terrorism, nor for the poor quality of the Palestinian leadership.
Even in what appears to be the dismantling of Iraq, if that is really what is happening now, it is very difficult to blame it.
Churchill certainly understood the dangers of Islamic extremism and condemned it, but he could not be blamed for the failure of the Arab leadership.
Perhaps the only way to bring an end to the inter-ethnic and divisive conflict in the patchwork quilt of the Middle East is to establish a new, violent and ruthless Roman empire, under the rule of a representative commissioner, and a system of binding loyalties to the central government.
But that would be unacceptable for many reasons - and it also did not work who knows what with the Romans (they suffered a crushing defeat near Baghdad).
• • •
It can not be said that Churchill achieved nothing.
Far from it.
His ideals helped him, in practice, to avoid the establishment of the British Empire, and to dismantle it in a respectable and relatively efficient manner.
One of the paradoxes in his life is that his greatest goals, liberty and democracy, were adopted by the children of the empire themselves when they demanded their independence.
And so, standing on the yacht in 1961, it could certainly be argued that Churchill and his country were shrinking.
It was old and fragile, Britain went bankrupt after the war, and its silver and war muscles dwindled greatly - a result that the Americans certainly anticipated and even allowed.
His country now had such a severe shortage of millionaires that he was forced to rely on the reception of the gangster who had ascended the social ladder, Aristotle Onassis.
He stood in the long shadow of the Empire State Building in New York - a tower that dwarfs the Big Ben in London, just as the US defense budget dwarfed the defense budget of Europe as a whole, and Britain as a whole.
He knew that the fate of the world was now in American hands - and he was right.
Today it is the Americans who are forced to try to maintain order in Palestine, to reach an understanding with the Israelis, to try to deal with the best forced volcano in Iraq.
As a British imperialist, he was a complete failure.
As an idealist, he was a success.
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il
The book "The Churchill Effect" is currently being published by Sela Meir.