By Vinod Moonesinghe
On November 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote a letter to Lord Rothschild, promising support for the creation of a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
A week later, the government made public this Balfour Declaration, making it the first public expression of support for the Zionist cause. This caused concern, not merely among Palestinians, but also among the British Jewish community – not least because Balfour was a known anti-Semite.
On September 5, 1918, the New York Times published a letter from US President Woodrow Wilson to Zionist Organization of America Vice President Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, in which he endorsed the Zionist project and effectively supported the Balfour Declaration. In fact, he had given his prior approval to the Balfour Declaration but had kept it secret for nearly a year.
Strong opposition existed to the Balfour Declaration, in the State Departments, and among the US Jewish community. Secretary of State Robert Lansing pointed out to Wilson that the US was at war with Germany, but not with the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Palestine; that many Jews opposed it; and that many Christians would oppose it.
A prominent Jewish Wilson supporter, ex-Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau wrote regarding the Balfour Declaration:
“What an error it would be, at the very time when the primary message to the world of the Jewish people and their religion should be one of peace, brotherhood, and the international mind, to set up a limited nationalist state and thereby appear to create a physical boundary to their religious influence.”
The Central Conference of American Rabbis expressed their dismay at the Resolution, asserting that the Jewish ideal was “not the establishment of a Jewish state – not the reassertion of Jewish nationality which has long been outgrown.”
Several Jewish rabbis formed a “National Committee of Rabbis Opposed to Zionism”, and one of their number, Rabbi Samuel Schulman, said that the Jewish “destiny is not to become a little oriental people in Palestine.”
This sentiment probably reflected their (correct) analysis that the attempt to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine reflected a desire on the part of anti-Semites to rid themselves of an “undesirable” population. In 1921 the US Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which reduced Jewish immigration (and Eastern and Southern European immigration in general) considerably, reducing it even further by the 1924 Immigration Act.
King-Crane Commission
Nevertheless, the Zionist minority proved to have more impact, possibly due to the backing it received from the cosmopolitan Rothschild banking family and other Jewish bankers, as well as from prominent Jewish liberals such as Supreme Court judge Louis D. Brandeis and Christian Zionists such as tycoon William E Blackstone.
Consequently, the commissioners of the King-Crane Commission started out with pro-Zionist ideas. This Commission, officially the “1919 Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey”, grew out of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, as an attempt to reconcile the positions of Britain and France – which sought to extend their empires into the former Ottoman provinces – and the US, which remained suspicious of their aims.
President Wilson appointed theologian Henry Churchill King and businessman Charles Richard Crane to the Commission, the French and British refusal to appoint commissioners leaving them as the only members.
After extensive discussions with all parties, the Commission, noting that “Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine”, and despite its “deep sense of sympathy for the Jewish cause”, recommended:
“… that only a greatly reduced Zionist program be attempted by the Peace Conference, and even that, only very gradually initiated. This would have to mean that Jewish immigration should be definitely limited, and that the project for making Palestine distinctly a Jewish commonwealth should be given up.”
The findings of the Commission were kept secret for years, and were ignored by the Paris Peace Conference, which went ahead with the Anglo-French plans for dividing the Turkish spoils between them. In the US, the report only saw the light of day after Congress voted in 1922 to support the establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
Following intensive lobbying by the Zionists, Republican Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and Republican New York Representative Hamilton Fish III introduced a joint resolution of the US Congress “favoring the re-creation of Palestine as the national home of the Jewish race.”
Although its passing was a foregone conclusion, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives convened a hearing on the subject. Proponents of the resolution disparaged the Palestinians as uncivilized and used the classic colonial “terra nullius” argument, calling Palestine an “underdeveloped and underpopulated” “deserted country”. Some politicians invoked “Manifest Destiny”, equating Jewish settlers to the White settlers of North America, the “nomadic” Palestinians to American Indians.
However, its opponents put up a valiant fight, with Rabbis Isaac Landman of Long Island and David Philipson of Cincinnati opposing Zionism from Reform Judaism’s universalist humanist viewpoint. They pointed out that the Jewish community was deeply divided on the issue (further evidence that electoral politics did not influence elections as much as lobby intrigue).
Two Palestinian representatives and ex-Zionist Yale English Literature Professor Edward Bliss Reed presented the real ground situation, refuting the negative propaganda about Palestinians. Reed, who had been in Palestine, bemoaned the delay in publishing the King-Crane Commission report, echoed by the Palestinians. Their efforts were insufficient to overcome pro-Zionist sentiment, but they did manage to change the resolution to “favoring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
Oil and policy
The King-Crane Commission also (and perhaps unsurprisingly) recommended that “the United States of America be asked to undertake the single Mandate for all Syria.” The Commissioners seem to have been sincere and to have taken a moral viewpoint in drawing their conclusions, but one wonders if geopolitical considerations may not have impinged on their consciences.
In 1919, Standard Oil of New York (Socony, later Mobil) and Standard Oil of New Jersey (Esso, later Exxon) attempted to stake a claim to petroleum concessions in the “Mesopotamia-Palestine” region, but Britain, the predominant power in the Middle East until the end of the Second World War, blocked them. Not until 1928 did US oil companies begin to make inroads in the Middle East, as Socony, Esso, Gulf Oil, and Standard Oil of California (Socal) began exploiting oilfields in Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
These petroleum interests, which depended on the goodwill of the rulers of the various Arab countries, laid down the State Department’s agenda for the region. Hence, the State Department took up a stance against the establishment of a Jewish homeland. This stance remained in place until the end of the British mandate in Palestine.
After World War II, Britain, much weakened and burdened by war debts, could no longer sustain an overseas military presence, and began ceding its “responsibilities” in the Middle East to the US.
By 1939, following the Palestinian Revolt, the British began to look into the legitimate concerns of the Palestinians, and sought to limit Jewish immigration. Facing increased Nazi discrimination and violence yet excluded from Britain and the USA by restrictive immigration laws, Jewish refugees flooded into Palestine, boosting the Jewish population by 500,000 by 1946.
Zionist militant groups such as Irgun Tzwai Leumi (Etzel) and Lehumei Herut Yisrael (Lehi) began terrorist campaigns against Palestinians and British alike, being joined after the Second World War by the majority Haganah faction. The terrorists benefitted very much from purchases of US war surplus materials (despite these weapons being used against a US ally), enabling them to carry out attacks on the British and pushing them towards abandoning the region.
The British favored establishing a single Palestinian-Jewish state, since this would not cause conflict with the populations of the Arab nations, which were vital to British strategic interests. They believed U.S. financial and military support was essential for overseeing Palestine, hoping to influence Arab-Jewish coexistence.
However, the US government, following the recommendations of US lawyer Earl G. Harrison, who had looked into the Jewish refugee issue, began pressuring Britain to let 100,000 more Jewish Nazi Holocaust survivors into Palestine.
The British attempted to persuade the US to take at least a portion of these refugees but to no avail. The Zionists, who used the Nazi Holocaust as a bargaining chip to establish a Jewish homeland, preferred delaying their relocation rather than resettling them in the USA. US Jewish opinion, which had opposed Zionism before the War, had hardened due to the Nazi Holocaust, and become more amenable to a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Autonomy or Partition
In an effort to establish shared responsibility with the US for a Palestinian policy and in anticipation of potential Arab resistance to an increased influx of Jewish immigrants into Palestine, the British government proposed a collaborative inquiry. The US decision to co-lead this inquiry may be seen as a strategic move aimed at curbing the influence of political Zionism by framing the situation as a broader Jewish refugee problem.
The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, featuring representatives from both Britain and the United States, convened in Washington, DC in January 1946.
Tasked with examining the political, economic, and social conditions in Mandatory Palestine, its responsibilities extended to evaluating the well-being of the region’s inhabitants, engaging with representatives from the Arab and Jewish communities, and presenting recommendations crucial for both interim measures and lasting solutions to the challenges at hand.
The Anglo-American Committee recommended the immediate admission of 100,000 Jewish refugees into Palestine, which US President Truman welcomed. However, he did not welcome the other recommendations, which included establishing an independent state in Palestine in which neither Jew nor Palestinian dominated, but which protected the rights of all citizens.
A new joint committee, consisting of British Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison and US diplomat Henry F Grady, looked into how the recommendations were to be carried out. In July, they announced the Morrison-Grady Plan, also known as the Provincial Autonomy Plan, for the creation of a federal Palestine, with autonomous Jewish and Palestinian regions, and with Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Negev under a UN-appointed trusteeship.
The Palestinians rejected the plan, proposing instead that a unitary Palestine be created in which the Jewish minority’s rights would be guaranteed. The Zionists rejected it outright, preferring a new plan to partition Palestine.
President Truman initially welcomed the plan, which the State Department backed, but the Zionist lobby mounted a furious campaign against it. Although confessing privately that he preferred the Morrison-Grady solution, Truman backed away from the Palestine issue, leaving it to the State Department to battle the Zionist lobby.
One issue which affected his stance arose from geopolitics: in the midst of the emerging Cold War, the US focused on European defense, and could spare money for Palestine but not troops. Given that neither the Palestinians nor the Zionists would agree to the Morrison-Grady solution, troops would be required to enforce it, and especially to suppress Zionist terrorism.
Partition
Britain now sought to transfer the Palestine issue to the UN to facilitate troop removal from the conflict with Zionist forces. The US government backed a partition plan, and lobbied UN members to pass Resolution 181, which gave 55% of Palestine to the 31% of the population that was Jewish.
On May 14, 1948, Truman recognized the new state of Israel, only minutes after its declaration of independence. Despite the Zionist state annexing a further 22% of Palestine and ethnically cleansing 750,000 Palestinians from the territories it held, the US and its allies continued to back the Jewish Apartheid state.
At the time, Israel had a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of about USD 323 million (equivalent to USD 4.0 billion today). By its capture of Palestinian territories and by expropriating Palestinian property, the new state had anyway garnered considerable wealth. In 2008, McMaster University’s Atif Kabursi estimated that Israeli plunder of Palestinians amounted to USD 3 billion at 1948 values, or nearly USD 300 billion at 2008 prices.
Nevertheless, the US guaranteed Israel USD 135 million (equivalent to USD 1.684 billion today) in aid over three years. This proved to be the first drops in a flood of monetary aid which gushed from Washington to Tel Aviv. Over the next 72 years, the US paid Israel USD 318 billion (adjusted for inflation) in aid. By 2023, the US was giving Israel USD 3.8 billion annually as military aid.
US backing proved essential to the creation of Israel. Unbroken US economic, diplomatic, and military support has continued to guarantee its existence, as well as to underwrite its military adventures and illegal occupation of what remains of Palestine, as well as its illegal occupation of Syrian and Lebanese territories.
Vinod Moonesinghe read mechanical engineering at the University of Westminster, and worked in Sri Lanka in the tea machinery and motor spares industries, as well as the railways. He later turned to journalism and writing history. He served as chair of the Board of Governors of the Ceylon German Technical Training Institute.
Factum is an Asia Pacific-focused think tank on International Relations, Tech Cooperation, and Strategic Communications accessible via www.factum.lk.
The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the organization’s.