What Churchill Thought About the Palestinians and Jews

in this video I want to discuss Winston Churchill uh Palestine and the Palestinians and the Jews now Winston Churchill is a fascinating character historically uh a few years ago the BBC did a poll uh called 100 greatest Britain and in this TV poll um Winston Churchill came top uh of all of Britains throughout time he beat Shakespeare and Darwin and Isaac Newton Elizabeth first uh Oliver Cromwell he was number one of course he was Britain's uh prime minister during the second world war he's actually prime minister twice and uh is a hero uh to many

many people but uh to other people uh he is a much more darker figure and just recently I I got up hold of this uh interesting book Winston Churchill his times his Crimes by TK Ali who's a British writer and he's very critical and there's awful lot of dirt unfortunately uh about Winston Churchill is not very widely known and um he says on the back cover I think summing up very well the way many people see him the modern Churchill cult is out of control closing down historical debate and encouraging support for 21st century Wars

the man has become a houseold God for many preserving an Antiquated vision of Britain tck Ali audits Churchill's crimes both globally and at home and shows the celebrated wartime leader to be Britain's most Shameless imperialist and uh this book covers many many of his crimes and some of them T Ramadan calls them war crimes and indeed it seems to be entirely appropriate description and I'm just going to read though from a section of the book uh subtitled Churchill Palestine and the Jews now some of what I'm going to read is to Modern ears indeed to

many people in the past highly offensive so U just there a health warning before uh you listen any further and one of the things he doesn't cover in too much detail in the book I think um is the bombing raids on Germany in the second world war where Churchill as the Prime Minister uh authorized indeed directed uh that bomber Harris you know the head of the RAF Target Civ Ians civilian cities Berlin Hamburg dresen Etc uh for bombing and over a million uh Germans were uh men women children civilians were obliterated burnt to death they

were bombed uh and this was uh a war crime obviously and actually the Britain did it to Germany first Germany didn't do it to us despite what most people seem to think uh but the historical evidence suggests otherwise and there's interesting uh book also the bomb ing War Europe 1939-45 by Professor Richard ovaries professor of history at exitor University who meticulously documents how Britain came to decide fairly early on in the war that it would bomb um German cities targeting civilians and Britain did this first and then Germany reciprocated and bombed London Birmingham Manchester Liverpool

Etc uh but most people don't know this now of course Churchill made decision so that's one of his most famous or inFAMOUS war crimes but there were others and I'm not going to go through them all because there's quite a lot of them uh but I just want to focus on his attitudes to the Palestinians to non-white people this is a really key Point uh and to the Jews and to Israel and Palestine because what church said what he stood for still matters today he's he was cited Winston Churchill was mentioned in a recent TV

interview you might might uh well have seen it where the interviewer Piers Morgan I think cited him as one of the great if not the greatest British Heroes uh and this uncritical uh what Ty Ramadan will call you know um Cult of Churchill is why he wrote this book and the evidence is uh to put it mildly horrific anyway this uh this book is still published last year I think uh and is still useful background reading to the current attack on the Gaza because Churchill's name is still used by many people to justify this anyway

I'm just going to read the section then church of Palestine and the Jews starting on page 357 it gives a bit of background to Churchill uh historical context um and then we will move on to his views about non-white people and why he thought it was perfectly justifiable to remove Arabs blacks and so on from their land for reasons which will become quite clear uh shortly so uh T Ramadan uh sorry T Ramadan tarck ali uh writes as follows in the in the post first world war period no this after 1918 the states to be

carved out of former German Ottoman and austr Hungarian possessions were characterized by the newly created League of Nations like the UN of the day as being either Advanced Nations brackets white populations or nations that could not yet stand up for themselves in other words nonwhite populations and so required imperialist Tage they had to be looked after like children in other words within the latter category a further distinction was made between those closest to self-rule and those furthest away way in the Middle East the top category included Palestine Syria Lebanon and Iraq hence these were listed

as states that would ultimately be granted self-rule very kind of the West to grant them self-rule of course Palestine on this description was not empty land but a functioning Province until self-rule was granted these states would be governed by mandates from the leag of Nations awarded to Britain and France so these vast areas were awarded to European imperial's powers the British had already created Iraq because many people don't realize that the modern Iraq is is created by Britain itself it didn't exist before to this day Lebanon remains what it was at the time of its

birth the artificial creation of French colonialism a coastal band of greater Syria sliced off from its Hinterland by Paris once it became clear that Syrian Independence was inevitable the French wanted a colony of their own everyone has to have a colony in Europe it seems a regional client dominated by a Marite minority that had long been France's catspa catp in the Eastern Mediterranean uh T Ali here's language is very poetic actually lebanon's confessional checker board has never been permitted an accurate census in other words an an accurate census of the population of Lebanon has never

really happened he says for fear of revealing that a substantial Muslim majority is denied due representation in the political system sectarian tensions have never disappeared the British demanded and got a division of the Palestinian mandate into two two parts the new Jewish Home Inver commers the new Jewish Home and Palestine here was the first example of a colonial partition via an influx of white settlers in Brackets ashkanazi Jews the war of independence used by most official Israeli historians to describe the 1947 to 49 conflict is a misn at best it could be applied to the

three years 46 to 48 when Zionist interest clashed with the Strategic needs of the British Empire in the region Jewish terrorist attacks on the King David hotel and the British casualties brought Churchill close to a break with Zionism but he hung on the official Declarations of Independence were the bow for declaration famously in 19177 and the Mandate of the League of Nations in 1919 without the consistent political economic and ideological support of the British Empire for a Zionist Jewish homeland for over 50 years it is unlikely that the foundations of Israel would have been laid

and a state as it exists at present would have come into existence regardless of the judeo side judeo I think he means the Holocaust so in other words he he's arguing that for 50 years the British Empire's support for this Zionist project was absolutely essential so Britain's role was that key and Churchill's role was that key Churchill was strongly in favor of a Jewish homeland but even before he was born the seventh Earl of Shaftsbury and Evangelical Christian was a Tory MP as well had in 1838 take taking it upon himself to Kickstart the process

of sending European Jews off to Palestine this is happened that early 1838 and suggested as much to paliston the then foreign secretary asking him to ensure great Power Protection Old Testament pities were mixed in with Britain's own strategic needs addressing Parliament a few decades later shury helping to create the myth that the lands were depopulated explained in further detail why a new British colony was almost a necessity for the Empire so this is seen as a British colony this Jewish presence in Palestine and he said as a short quote from his speech Syria and Palestine

will before long become very important the country needs capital and population the Jews can give it both and has not England a special interest in promoting such restoration it will be a blow to England if either of her two Rivals should get hold of Syria does not policy there exort England to Foster the nationality of the Jews and Aid them to return to England then naturally belongs the role of favoring the settlement of Jews in Palestine end quote so the British interest is to populate that part of the world and tar Ali continues as early

as 1891 there's a particularly interesting paragraph this and I'm I'm glad T Ali has mentioned it as early as 1891 the Zionist Pioneer Asher Ginsburg is a Jewish Pioneer visiting Jerusalem at a time when Jewish people as individuals owned less than 1% of the land can you imagine that in 1891 Jews ear less than 1% of the land reported that quote throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sewed only sandunes and stonely mountains that are not fit to grow anything but fruit trees and this only after hard labor and great

expense of clearing and Reclamation only these are not cultivated so there's a picture of a Palestinian land that is heavily farmed all of it virtually all of it as much as humanly possible this is the Zionist Pioneer Asher Ginsburg in 1891 Ginsburg provided a vivid description of settler racism and was farsighted in predicting its likely outcome so now we have a description in 1891 by a Jew himself of Jewish settler racism and of course literally as as we watch this now at this moment we have that going on in the West Bank actively going on

we've seen this on countless news programs Ginsburg said they treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty unscrupulously deprive them of their rights insult them without cause and even boast of such deeds and none opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination we who live abroad in other words Europe in this case are accustomed to believe that almost all erat Israel that's a Hebrew way of saying the land of Israel is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases but this is not true he says it is very difficult to find in the

land cultivated fields that are not used for planting the Arab like all seites is sharp-minded and shrewd for now they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them isn't it interesting Palestinians didn't think that this was a threat to them for now they do the Palestinians do not consider our actions the Jews as presenting a further danger to them but if the time comes that our people's life in erat Israel the land of Israel will develop to a point where we are taking their place either slightly or significantly the natives are

not going to just step aside so easily end quote W so this was an incredibly farsighted prediction of the likely outcome of Jewish settler uh settling in the land of Palestine and he accurately predicted this in 1891 what would happen in the next Century in the 20th century how amazingly prophetic that was and then T Ali goes on compare this to Theodore herzl's diary entry four years later now Theodore Herzel of course was an Ostro Hungarian Jewish journalist and political activist who was the father of modern political Zionism and he formed the Zionist organization and

actively promoted Jewish immigration into Palestine in other words to form uh a Jewish state so he he he is absolutely key figure in Zionism and in Theodore herz's diary entry just four years later in June 1895 we read where he fantasizes on how the future Zionist state will be created so this is the father of Zionism this is what he said we shall have to Spirit the penulis population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries while denying it any employment in our own country both the process of expropriation and the

removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly so right at the beginning even before Israel existed Zionism envisaged the ethnic cleansing of the inhabitants of that that land the Palestinians quite explicitly in 1895 Theodore Herzel fantasized the Jewish state would have to do that both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out see in other words don't let it be seen very openly try and do it a little bit secretly but get rid of them get these people out of their land we want to live there

instead and that is from uh the complete Diaries of Theodore Herzel volume 1 page 88 to continue at a cabinet meeting in 1919 balfor this is the British F secretary informed his colleagues that the that in implementing the Declaration that bore his name the Bal for declaration there was no need to waste too much time bford said in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of Consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants end quote let me read that again this is B who the author of the B the famous B declaration

said in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of Consulting in other words you know the formality of talking to the Palestinians getting their views getting their input talking to them we do not propose to go through this formality we do not to consult the wishes of the present the present inhabitants so slightly contingent there it's just the present inhabitants not the future inhabitants there was no need for this since quote all the four Great powers are committed to Zionism he said this was of far greater import he said than the

desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs so what really matters was the four Great Powers obviously Britain was one of them that's what really mattered they were all committed to Zionism much more important than the prejudices the views of 700,000 Arabs their views did not matter at all and I would suggest that is based purely or largely on racism the white man British Empire versus the the brown Arab this is very white supremacist language Churchill Amplified this further comparing the Palestinian Arabs to aboriginals in Australia and Native Americans we're going to come here we're going

to come in a second to a quote directly from Winston Churchill which is shocking to Modern ears indeed shock people in his time by the way not just a a modern sensitivity as many say Well church was racism was common place in his day and people didn't object it was It was kind of conventional language but some people didn't object but many did on historical record many were outraged by what he said then anyway T Ali continues the intentions the intentions of Western imperialism were implicitly genocidal from the very beginning of the process so T

Ali is not forward Theodore herz's language is clearly genocidal from the very beginning of the process from the conception from the ideological uh thought itself was genocidal it was the Palestinian resistance prior to and post the NABA that prevented such and occurrence so was actually Palestinian resistance that stopped the complete genocide he says racism was always an integral part of Churchill's political makeup he made no bones about it he didn't he was completely open and shames about it unlike some of his colleagues in all the three parties who prefer preferred to wear a mask so

some kind of hid it behind a mask he viewed Arabs as an inferior race compared to Europeans of any stripe in the case of Palestine he accused the Arabs of behaving like quote a dog in the manger a view he spelled out in his evidence to the peel commission set up in 1936 to report on the Palestinian Uprising then in motion and which had paralyzed the country so this is actually a a very famous um paragraph I'm not going to read uh very very offensive um then and now but it tells us a lot about

the British government's attitude Churchill's attitude to Palestine Zionism Israel Arabs other races non-whites it tells us a lot and uh this is a this is the dominant view in in his in his time he wrote quote I do not agree that the in the manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have laay there for a very long time so even though to decode it even though the Palestinians may have lived there for Millennia they have no right to it just because they've been living there just because it's their land they

have no right to it in his view I do not admit that right he says I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done done to the red Indians of America or the black people of Australia I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race a higher grade race or at any rate a more worldly wise race to put it that way has come in and taken their place and quote and T Ramadan understandably says this is the voice of white

supremacy a view that was reiterated interestingly with remarkable Clarity by Israel's foremost revisionist historian the former paratrooper Benny Morris over half a century later Churchill would have been delighted by such a display of cander which admitted this historian admitted that the the long denied crimes and atrocities committed against the Palestinians in 1948 during the so-called war of independence today this is the common sense of Jewish Israel from top to bottom the ultimate logic of the bow for declaration and a distillation of Churchill's own views so Churchill's views the BF for's views summed up in that

quote about the dog in the manger but now permeate that Society from top to bottom this is the ideological structure or substructure of the political life of that uh country detaching myths from realities in Palestine became more and more difficult after the ball declaration the Palestinian Arabs paid an exorbitant price and are continuing to do so the myth still persists that Palestine was almost uninhabited that vast tracks of the promised land were thirsting for the new Jewish settlers the principal propagators of this lie were the Zionist leaders of the Yu and their English backers the

fact that Palestinian historians continue to produce books demonstrating that this was not the case is in itself an indication of how deep Zionist ideology remains within Israel and the diaspora Churchill did not write a great deal on his own attitudes uh Zionism and Jewish people in general but from what he did write it's clear that his views on the creation of Israel were not always consistent his reasoning veered from Pure instrumentalism it would be of used to the British Empire in the region filled with such enemies I.E the Arabs to civilizational racism with anti-bolshevism playing

its part as well the Jews were an ancient race the chosen people and iof Factor superior to the Arabs this view was spelled out in what appears to be Churchill's lengthiest pronouncement on the subject an article published on page five of The Illustrated Sunday Herald in 1920 the title spelled out programmatic priorities enshrined in the text Zionism versus bolshevism a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people some people like Jews and some do not Church informs the reader but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that beyond all question they are the most formidable

and most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world end quote on one level this was surprisingly generous since he did not add a qualifi that specified after the English of course or words to that effect more importantly the notion itself is nonsensical and a throwback to Old Testament literalism surely Churchill knew English History well enough why then no mention of the fact that the worst pograms and persecution of the Jews in Old Europe had begun in England German fascists would would be would have been pleased by the fact that in 1218 Henry III

had announced a Royal Decree the Edict of the badge which made it compulsory for Jews to wear a marking badge because that reminds us of course of the Nazi Germany where Jews had to wear a star of David but they were doing they were required to wear something similar in the 13th century in England amazingly 60 years later pograms carried out by thieving Barons led to the killing of over a thousand Jews 500 in London alone the so-called Edict of expulsion was issued by Edward I in 1290 all the Jews were rounded up and expelled

their property looted and the blood liable charge spread with a Zeal that Geral would have envied a classic case of what's ped is prologue some of the Jews fled to France others found a Haven in Muslim Spain and Del Lucia of course where they were large and free where there were large and free Jewish communities participating on every level of the state I'm going to end there I could go on there's much fascinating detail historical detail here but that last sentence here after the pograms and persecutions of Christian Europe because this is the height of

the Middle Ages when people were were God-fearing Christian folk and the church had power total power in England in the 12th and 13th century Jews were persecuted expelled murdered in vast numbers some fled to France but many found a Haven in the Muslim world where there were they were large and free Jewish communities free in the Muslim World participating on every level of the State isn't that interesting the contrast to the way Christian Europe treated the Jews and how the Muslim World treated the Jews anti-Semitism in its proper historic definition is I would argue a

Christian virus we even see it arguably in the New Testament in the Gospel of John for example uh where Jesus speaks about the Jews as if there were some kind of your father Satan you your you Jews your father is Satan very kind of extreme language which of course was picked up later in the church as it became increasingly anti-semitic in the third and fourth centuries the Jewish uh the Muslim world is very different and they welcomed uh Jews and Islam saved jewry to quote from the title of a very famous and celebrated article which

you can Google by an American Professor Jewish Professor who acknowledged how vital uh the Islamic world has been to save the Jews over the centuries and I only stress all this historical stuff because how different it is since uh 1948 when uh anti-Semitism well the relations between Jews and Muslims have taken a very different turn because of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian and the continued attacks on Palestinians up to today and it's just getting worse and worse obviously we know all about this so I do recommend this book Winston Churchill his times his crimes he

was guilty it seems of many terrible war crimes crimes against Humanity in fact and many of them are listed and gruesome detail in this book and his legacy endures and influences politics today attitudes today towards the Arabs towards the Palestinians and towards Zionism so there's really matters that we understand what on Earth's going on with this man Winston Churchill anyway enough said for now until next time