Conspiracy on Palestine – Reginald Reynolds (1941)

From ‘War Commentary: For Anarchism’, August 1941, London, UK

In the year 1936 a singular case was heard in The Palestine High Court. An Arab, George Mikhail el-Qasir, sued the Attorney General of Palestine and the District Commissioner of Jaffa to prevent the demolition of his house in the Old City of Jaffa.

An official communiqué had been issued by the Government announcing the projected demolition of “certain existing buildings,” ostensibly for the purpose of “opening up and improving the Old City” This sudden interest in town-planning, occurring, as it did, during the Arab General Strike, and directed against the stronghold of Arab resistance, could not fail to be regarded in quite a different light by Arabs, who were cynical enough to see in it nothing but a punitive, or at the very least a military, measure, directed against themselves. Unsigned handbills from the Government Press confirmed this view by hints regarding resistance and threats of military force in the carrying out of the plan.

In the course of legal proceedings it became apparent from the evidence submitted on behalf of the Government officials that the proposed demolitions were, in fact, to be carried out by the military on instructions from the High Commissioner of Palestine. So far from being anything to do with town-planning, the destruction of these Arab houses had been ordered under an article of the Palestine (Defence) Order in Council of 1931, which said nothing about opening up or improving cities but allowed the High Commissioner to “cause any buildings to be pulled down and removed” (not blown up!) “if he thinks it necessary for the purpose of the defence of Palestine.” The Article referred to Regulations prescribing compensation, though, as the Chief Justice agreed, no such Regulations had in fact ever been made. In spite of this stipulation a notice served on the petitioner, requiring him to vacate his house, informed him that “No claim for compensation in respect of furniture or effects left in your house after that hour” (7 p.m., on June 28th) “will be considered.”

This case was heard before the Chief Justice, Sir Michael McDonnell and the Senior Puisne Judge, Mr. Justice Manning. Though concurring completely in their findings, the two judges prepared separate judgments on the case owing, as the Chief Justice remarked, to its “seriousness and importance.” Whilst giving the judgement against the Petitioner (for the Government had, apparently, a legal “right” to blow up every house in Palestine if it thought fit) the judges “marked their disapproval by doing so without costs” and some memorable observations were made on the administration and its methods.

The Chief Justice said: “The Petitioner, however, has done a public service in exposing what I am bound to call the singularly disingenuous lack of moral courage displayed by the Administration In the whole matter….”

“It would have been more creditable if the Government, instead of endeavouring to throw dust in people’s eyes by professing to be inspired by aesthetic or other quasi-philanthropic motives, such as those concerned with town planning or public health……. had said frankly and truthfully that it was primarily for defensive purposes.”

Mr. Justice Manning was even more explicit. Mr. Kantorovitch, the Junior Government Advocate, had appeared for the defendants and excused the deception, or attempted deception, of the people of Jaffa by explaining that they would have been “misled” if the truth had been told them. The comments of Mr. Justice Manning were caustic in the extreme: “We would have misled them by telling them the truth, so we thought it better to tell them a false hood” — such was his paraphrase of the case for the defence.

The proposed demolition was, in fact, only legal on the assumption that its ostensible excuse was a pack of lies: and Mr. Justice Manning summed up his reason for giving his judgment against the Petitioner in these words:

“I feel bound to accept the statement of the Government that the proposed demolition was always in tended to be carried out under the provisions of the Order-in-Council and that this was concealed from the inhabitants of Jaffa because, not being lawyers, they might not have understood it. This is what Mr. Kantrovitch has said. In this particular instance I can conceive that the inhabitants affected might be bewildered by being told that the destruction of their house was necessary for the defence of Palestine, and that their houses could be blown up when there was power only to pull them down.”

After illustrating from the damage anticipated to neighbouring houses the difference between power to blow up and power to pull down, Mr. Justice Manning concluded with a reference to “a well-known work of fiction which described a Government Department known as the Circumlocution Office… Something similar seems to have found its way into Palestine, but its identity has been carefully concealed.”

Some 250 houses were destroyed in Jaffa, and other buildings were damaged by the explosions. No provision was made for housing those who were rendered homeless, and on this subject a scathing report was issued by the Government Welfare Officer (Miss Margaret Nixon). Whatever affect the High Court Judgment had in restoring confidence in British “justice” was negatived by a policy of whole- sale demolitions throughout the country and other repressive measures, Even the two courageous judges were made to feel the weight of administrative censure for their outspoken comments.

The Chief Justice was offered the choice of an inferior appointment in a British colony or retirement on a pension — he chose the latter. His colleague, Mr Justice Manning, who might have been expected to succeed him, was soon after this transferred, and the post of Chief Justice was filled by the Attorney General, a man named Trusted, who was one of the defendants in this celebrated case and (as the Government’s legal advisor) had been chiefly responsible for the “evasiveness” which the judges had condemned. A final postscript might record the re-appearance of Sir Michael McDonnell, the ex-Chief Justice of Palestine, as Chairman of one of the London Appelate Tribunals for Conscientious Objectors.

It is not within my present scope to discuss why a man who was found too just for Palestine is not considered too just for his present position; but one may remark in passing that it is evidence of the Government’s Intention to avoid filling up its jails by a judicious sorting of objectors. Which shows that even the worst government may find a use for a just judge!

The real importance of this case is that it should be necessary to recall it at all. The reader may judge for himself that such sweeping criticism of a Government by the Chief Justice, in concurrence with a colleague, made in a High Court Judgment. should normally make the case a cause celebre and insure the widest possible publicity. Quite the most interesting thing about this case in that no such publicity followed it. To the best of my knowledge, not a single British newspaper even mentioned it.

The British administration in a British Mandate stood condemned by British judges, in a British Court, of deliberate falsehood and a cowardly attempt at deception, but the people of Britain — the great “democracy” on which there lay the final responsibility for the welfare of that “sacred trust of civilisation” — did not know and to this day still do not know that their officials were convicted of lying and cowardice, Still less do they know that those who found them out were punished and that the man principally responsible for the Government’s policy in this matter was rewarded with high office, so that the future Chief Justice might he less difficult to deal with.

This story aptly illustrates the blanket of concealment and deception which has characterised British administration in Palestine more than any other aspect of British Imperialism. It is in itself a story of attempted deception and it ends with a conspiracy of the entire British press to prevent that story even reaching the British public. It in, in fact, an epitome of our relations with the Arabs — first deceive the Arabs, or try to: then deceive the British public by hushing up the attempted deception of the Arabs.

The story begins with our promises to the Arabs during the last war. There has been endless argument about what those promises actually meant: and though having studied the correspondence — I consider the Arabs’ case to be indisputable, the alternative proposition, which is that our promises were ambiguous, is hardly to our credit. What is even more sinister, and beyond argument, is that the text of that correspondence was never published by the British Government in full until the Palestine Conference in London before the present war. Then at last, forced by crisis and imminent danger in the Near East, the Government yielded to the Arab demand that the full correspondence should be published, with official translations of Arabic texts. For over twenty years successive British Governments concealed that correspondence from British “democracy” and from the outside world, to the best of their ability.

What our government could not conceal, however, were the terms laid down in President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points.” Point 13 stated that “The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development.” (my own italics). The Fourteen Points” were not accepted without reservations by the Allied Powers; but these reservations were explicitly stated is a note from Mr. Lansing (then American Secretary of State) to the Minister for Foreign Affairs at Berne, on November 6th, 1918. Indeed, Mr. Lloyd George, in a speech on War Aims (January 5th, 1918) had already declared that “a territorial settlement must be secured, based on the right of self- determination or the consent of the governed.”

The Palestine “mandate” may therefore be said to have come into existence in defiance of solemn pledges and even in defiance of the Covenant of the League of Nations itself, according to which Palestine, as an “A” Mandate, should have received only such outside advice and assistance as the people required and asked for from a Mandatory Power of their own selection. Instead of this, the country has been governed as a colony, used as a military, air and naval base in time of war, and forcibly subjected to immigration on an unprecedented scale. A country about the size of Wales, without the inhabitants being consulted, has been forced to absorb some 400,00 immigrants, whose most powerful political organisations have bitterly opposed even the most timid moves towards self-government that would allow the Arab majority any real control of their own country and its resources.

Sympathy with the Jews, persecuted in so many other countries, has completely blinded “left” opinion to this iniquity and helped to wrap the blanket of deceit and falsehood even closer around the problem of Palestine. One would have thought that, in such countries as the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the states of South America and even in Britain, those who felt most strongly the hardships of the Jews would wish to share their own heritage rather than thrust the Jews upon a country which has never asked for them, creating a new problem to solve an old one, saving people from oppression to make them instruments for the oppression of others. But this is not the case.

As recently as May 1941 an article by Middleton Murry was reprinted in The Adelphi which reflects the widespread ignorance in pacifist circles regarding the implications of the Palestine Mandate and of Zionism in particular. Under the title “Meditation on Heine” the writer discusses the Jewish problem in a sympathetic manner to which one can take no exception until he mentions Palestine. The article, it is true, was originally written and published in 1934; but neither then nor now could Mr. Murry’s words show the slightest realisation of what has actually happened in the Much Promised Land. He speaks of “Jewish Palestine in which anti-Semitism finds its “counter-assertion,” which here “takes a noble, creative and regenerative form.”

There is no recognition that Zionism has stirred up more anti-Jewish feeling than all the propaganda of Julius Streicher — I will not say “anti-Semitism,” for the Arabs themselves are Semites! Mr. Murry finds in Zionism “the permanent conquest of a Mediterranean shore for the ‘European’ idea” — and cannot see that this “conquest” (permanent or otherwise) can hardly be welcomed by those who are of the conquered race.

And lest we should imagine that this is indeed a conquest purely of ideas, and not, as it is in fact, a forcible colonization of a foreign country, Middleton Murry even says, “I am heartily glad that this has been done beneath our aegis.”

Our aegis is surely a mild expression for imprisonments and executions, internments without trial, collective fines, the wholesale destruction of houses, martial law and the rest of the reign of terror which has been necessary to curb Arab resentment and make possible the policies of British imperialists and their Zionist allies. But when a distinguished pacifist can write in this way we have conclusive proof of the successful way in which the whole problem has been blanketed.

A final instance must conclude this very brief study of the way in which the facts about Palestine are distorted or suppressed. Years ago I used to say that It was hard to get adequate publicity for the social conditions of our own country, harder still if one linked these facts with any form of socialist criticism, and all but impossible — in most vehicles of news and opinion — if one discussed British imperialism in India or the colonies. The pre-war years offered, in this respect, a marked contrast between the readiness of the press to lap up propaganda directed against German or Italian fascism and the decreasing attention to the worst evils of fascism when they appeared in some part of the British Empire. But at that time I discovered a singular fact — that, hard as it was to obtain a hearing for the wrongs suffered by Indians or Negroes, the hardest thing of all was to obtain the slightest attention to those suffered by the Palestine Arabs. The boycott was almost complete.

I therefore conclude with a copy of a letter which I I sent to the New Statesman on May 4th of the present year. The Statesman is generally ready to publish views, even on the British Empire and the war, with which it is in disagreement That this letter remained unpublished, whilst Zionist letters appeared and remained unanswered may be taken as a typical example of how even the more “left” papers are involved in this conspiracy on Palestine.

I give the text of the letter in full because, apart from the fact that it shows just what was suppressed, the case as I have outlined it here is still urgently relevant to the present situation. It is probably too late now to hope that the catastrophe foreseen by many of us long before the war will be averted, but it is not too late, nor yet too early, to work for a new attitude towards the whole problem of imperialism, of which Palestine is such an outstanding example. The betrayals of the past the deceit and camouflage of the present, should accustom us to expect more deceit and fresh betrayals, to anticipate no more from the flimsy “war aims” of today than we reaped from the perjured promises of yesterday. We must be ready. whatever the upshot of this war, for more fine phrases, as reassuring as those of the late President Wilson — and refusing to be reassured in the least, we must prepare now for the real struggle which this war cannot settle and will only complicate further.

This rejected letter was intended, and is still intended, to throw a little light on at least one corner of tortured world, the history of which has been tragedy and the future of which will be nemesis. Unless we understand our responsibilities for the past we are never likely to face our responsibilities for the future.

My letter to the New Statesman read as follows:

“In your editorial of May 3rd you refer to the Foreign Office having conciliated ‘the reactionaries — The Fifth Column among the Arab magnates of Palestine and Irak’.

“I do not understand this statement or the assertion that we have cold shouldered and neglected the Palestine Jews. Whatever may be said for or against Zionism, it was an immigration carried out without reference to the wishes of the people of the country, and, judging by the history of Palestine under the Mandate, in direct opposition to those wishes.

“From the end of the last war the Arabs have been treated to a hap-hazard mixture of repression and promises, and the demand of Arab ‘reactionaries’ for democratic self-government in Palestine remains unfulfilled.

“On the other hand, the Jewish immigrants, forced upon the country and remaining there under the protection of British bayonets, can hardly complain of their treatment in general. They have successfully opposed even the most timid moves towards representative government and have established a minority interest which has been maintained in defiance of majority rights by such ‘democratic measures as internment of Arabs without trial and wholesale destruction of Arab houses (to mention only two indisputable facts regarding our stewardship.)

“We are told that the Arab leaders are feudal reactionaries. If that he so, then the same could be said of the authors of Magna Carta and of Simon de Montfort (who persecuted the Jews!) whilst Pym and Hampden can be regarded merely as representatives of a reactionary squirearchy. History, however, is right in regarding such men as instruments in a progressive process rather than as individuals with discreditable motives. One would have thought that in the present case, the cause of self-determination was of greater Importance than the conjectures as to the motives of a few leaders.

“If the Arabs today are inclined to listen favourably to Hitler, who’s is the fault? Have they such pleasant experiences of British ‘democracy’ and of British ‘socialists’ (pro-Zionist almost to a man) or of the Jews themselves? Hitler, as the avowed enemy of democracy, Socialism, and the Jews, must inevitably have his attractions in a country where ‘democracy’, socialism and Zionism have been cloaks for imperialist policies. Not only in Palestine, but throughout the Arab world, there are Arabs who feel keenly on these questions. It is no doubt very foolish of them to hope for better things from Hitler, but at least it is understandable, and the blame is on us.

“Mary Arabs are turning to Hitler, just as those other ‘reactionary feudalists’ — the Abyssinians — turned to Britain for help against Italy, or as the Arabs themselves once sought a British alliance against Turkey.

“Unless unforeseen events upset my calculations, the Abyssinians are about to be ‘sold a pup’ by our government, and the Arabs will be cheated as badly by Hitler as they were on the previous occasion by Britain.

“But the fate of the Jews in Palestine is even more certain if Hitler breaks through into that part of the world; and whose fault will it be? Who but ourselves fostered and encouraged the Zionist policy, deliberately creating ‘a Jewish Ulster’, as it was called by Sir Ronald Storrs? Who but the Zionists themselves consistently opposed self-government and, by their policies, made friendly relations on a basis of equality impossible between Jew and Arab?

“I ask these questions deliberately in anticipation of events which may appall public opinion here — not to excuse or justify but to explain Arab resentment.

Again and again the Palestine Jews have been warned that their insistence on their own minority interests as vastly more important than the rights of the Arab majority would lead to their isolation, to a bitter racial feud and to their ultimate extinction. These were not threats — men like Dr. Magnus (himself an eminent Jewish scholar) repeated such statements as sober warnings and solemn prophesies.

“I write today in the consciousness that nothing has been done to avert such a tragedy and that, should my own worst fears be realised, few in England will stop to think how near our own doorstep lies the prime responsibility. So far from having erred by ‘conciliating’ the Arabs. I hold that the double crime of British imperialism in Palestine has been the repression of the Arabs and fostering among the Jews unrealisable hopes which have lured them steadily to their own destruction.”

This article will be denounced by many as “anti-Semitic.” As I have already pointed out, an Arab is also a Semite. My position, in fact, is (oddly enough) that I am opposed to the oppression of anybody by anybody else. And my attitude to Jews, Arabs and every other nation is determined by what those particular Arabs, Jews, Germans or Englishmen happen to be doing.

Sympathy with Indians and indignation on account of their sufferings does not make me a lover of Indian princes — quite the reverse. And that man is a sentimental nuisance who lets his sympathy with persecuted Jews colour his attitude to the oppressive and suicidal policy of Zionism and the gigantic fraud which has so long successfully concealed the operations of British imperialism in Palestine.