Winston Churchill a friend of Jews and a Zionist

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a British politician, writer, historian and artist. The content of the article is limited to the Churchill’s activities and attitudes on subject of the Jewish immigration to Palestine at the time of British Mandate and his support of the Jewish people during unhuman treatment of Jews by the Nazi regime.

Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary in the David Lloyd George coalition, on November 2^nd of 1917 in the letter to the Lord Rothschild, who represented the Zionist Federation, declared: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object”. Britain was given a Mandate of Palestine on April 25, 1920 at the San Remo conference and on July 24, 1922 the mandate was approved by the Council of League of Nations. The Article 2 of the Mandate made the British responsible for creating “political, administrative and economic conditions as will (that will) secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home”. The Article 6 demanded that Palestine administration should facilitate Jewish immigration and settlement of Jews on the land.

In response to the tensions between the Arab section and the section of the Jewish population of Palestine, which were caused by the Arab’s interpretation of the Balfour Declaration that the whole of Palestine will be given to the Jews the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill prepared a White Paper in 1922. The document reaffirms that the Arab’s angst is unfounded because Balfour Declaration does not imply that whole Palestine to be converted into a Jewish National Home, but only that this Home should be in Palestine. The Zionist Congress in Carlsbad in September 1921 in the resolution stated “the determination of the Jewish people to live with the Arab people on terms of unity and mutual respect, and together with them to make the common home into a flourishing community”.

For Zionists aspirations of having a home for Jewish people in Palestine, the immigration of Jews to Palestine was of the most important factor.

The Jewish population of Palestine in 1922 was 83, 794 and by 1939 it increased to 449, 000. It shows that the Winston Churchill’s White Paper was favorable to the Jewish immigration to Palestine.

The White Paper of 1922 was also favorable to the ideas of Zionism- to have Jewish National Home in Palestine.

Growing up and living some part of my adult life in the communist country, where the Western politicians were depicted as imperialists, warmongers and abusers of people in their own countries, it was impossible to hear a positive remark towards politician like British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The first time I heard the name of Winston Churchill with positive connotation attach to it was in Soviet Union from the co-worker, Janis. I think that during our interactions Janis noted commonality in the political views and was speaking his mind without the fear of being reported to the authorities. Janis told me that in his opinion Winston Churchill was the greatest politician of modern times who saved the Western civilization from the Nazis barbarism and who forewarned the Western countries of the Stalinist Communist Soviet Union threat to the free world.

In 1929 and during the 1930^th Palestine was rocked by Arab’s ferocious revolt against Britain and Jewish Zionist settlers. The British answer to these outbursts of Arab’s savagery was the White Paper of 1939. The document’s main idea was to downgrade the Jewish existence in Palestine to minority status in favor of the future majority Arab state. It was done to stop the Arab’s brutality in Palestine and to placate the Arab leaders in countries of the region. “No further Jewish immigration was to be permitted unless the Arabs of Palestine were prepared to agree to it”. This policy of restricting the Jewish immigration and limiting the purchasing of land in Palestine by the Jews was in force from 1939 to 1948, when Britain gave up their Mandate of Palestine to United Nations.

Winston Churchill was a Prime Minister of Britain from May 10, 1940 to July 26, 1945, the time when draconian anti-Jewish policy of the White Paper of 1939 was in force. Why did not he try to repeal this document? The Zionists were asking him to prevent the 1939 White Paper policy from becoming a law. Churchill stated his objection to the White Paper of 1939 calling it a betrayed of the principles of Balfour Declaration. However, the document became a law by the vote of 268 to 179 in the House of Commons on May 23 of 1939. The Conservatives were stressing that it is Churchill duty to conduct the matters of war and not “carry out a retrospective, even a vindictive, attitude towards the policies he as a maverick, as a outsider, had opposed”.

The Prime Minister was declaring his sympathy for Zionism on many occasions.  Churchill’s undeniable belief in the ideas of Zionism evident at his speech at the site of the uncompleted Hebrew University on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem on March 29, 1921:” My heart is full of sympathy for Zionism. I believe that the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine will be a blessing to the whole world, and a blessing to Great Britain”. In March of 1941 during the meeting between Dr. Weizmann, the leader of the Zionist organization and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Churchill provided assurances that Palestine would become a Jewish State. Dr. Weizmann uttermost responsibility as a Zionist leader was to ensure that with all the suffering the Jews were experiencing they will have a safe place to live after the Nazis are defeated.

Winston Churchill was an advocate of human rights and, in particular, the rights of Jewish people.

In November of 1935, as a private citizen, Churchill wrote an article in which he highlighted the horrible fate of the Jews in Germany. “No past services, no proved patriotism, even wounds sustained in war, could procure immunity for persons whose only crime was that their parents had brought them into the world. Every kind of persecution, grave or petty, upon the world famous scientists, writers, and composers at the top to the wretched little Jewish children in the national schools, was practiced, was glorified, and is still practiced and glorifies”.

During his WWII premiership, Churchill strongly disapprove the restrictive policies on Jewish immigration to Palestine of the White Paper of 1939. On Christmas Day in 1939 in a speech to the Cabinet he told:” that with the world in flux and life of every European nation and the Britain handing in the balance we ought not to say that the sole fixed immutable fact in the world is that Jewish immigration into Palestine must cease”. Vey often Winston Churchill did not have information regarding the implementation of the restriction on Jewish immigration in Palestine. When he complaint and asked for the pertinent to the issue of Jewish immigration to Palestine information to be delegated to him the bureaucratic apparatus of the Cabinet ignored his request. An illustrative example of above is when his son, Randolph and not a civil servant, let his father know about the ship with the Jewish immigrants being intercepted by the British authorities with the intention to deport the Jewish people to the British Indian Ocean colony of Mauritius. As a result of Churchill’s intervention all on the board of this ship were allowed to settle in Palestine. When Winston Churchill introduced guidelines to his War Cabinet to treat people who are fleeing from persecution humanely it was rejected by almost all members of the Cabinet.

In December 1942, while receiving news of the successful rescue of 4500 Jewish children and 50 accompanying adults from the Balkans, Churchill wrote ‘Bravo’. This operation to save Jewish kids was earlier approved by Churchill himself.

The Prime Minister was looking for the ways to stop the Nazi atrocities. He suggested to the War Cabinet to let the German officers and Nazi Party members, who participated in the atrocities, massacres and executions of innocent people, know that they will be taken back to the countries were the crimes were committed for judgement and punishment. The Allies had announced on November 1, 1943 a Moscow Declaration of the punishment for the crimes committed by Nazis. The Declaration followed almost word for word the Churchill’s proposal at home.

In March 1944 the Prime Minister had removed the restriction on Jewish immigration to Palestine and the new rule allowed any Jewish refugee to take a train from Istanbul to Palestine, disregarding the quota.  Thousands of Jewish lives were saved because of this agreement.

In July of 1944 the Jewish leaders, after received information from two escapees from Auschwitz concentration camp regarding the purpose of the gas chambers there, made Churchill aware of this seemingly unbelievable account of mass murder. The Prime Minister responded:” There is no doubt this is the most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilized men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races of Europe”.

The activities and attitudes stated above confirm that Winston Churchill was a friend of Jewish people and a Zionist. It is also unquestionable that my co-worker, Janis from former Soviet Union, was right considering Winston Churchill as the greatest politician of modern times who saved the Western civilization from the Nazis barbarism and who forewarned the Western countries of the Stalinist Communist Soviet Union threat to the free world.