William Tyler
English Arabists and Zionists
William Tyler - English Arabists and Zionists
- Well, good evening everyone. You’re probably wondering what on earth I’m doing with William, apart from the fact I very much admire him. I’m here for a special reason. Today is Wendy Fisher’s birthday and Wendy, of course, is really the founder of Lockdown University, and I know how much it’s meant to so many of you. I’ve just moved house and I’ve bumped into so many people who I don’t even know who come up and talk about Lockdown. And I think particularly when we were all going through COVID, it helped us tremendously. And of course, this is just a tiny fraction of the incredible work that Wendy Fisher does. I’ve known Wendy for many, many years, and I’ve become very close to her over the past five. And she is one of the most exceptional women I have ever known. In fact, when I’m putting the programme together with my colleagues, I’m looking at it, it’s a bit flat. I phone her up, she can sprinkle stardust. I call her the stardust lady. And what I’d like to do now, come, I just want to play a very short video of colleagues, our colleagues, giving Wendy a birthday message. And then I’m going to turn back to William. And I promise you, you’re not going to lose extra time out of this, because he’s promised to add on at the end. So, can we see the birthday video please?
Dearest Wendy, happy birthday, many happy returns. The work you’re doing supporting Lockdown University is so important in this age of disinformation. Long may you live in good health and happiness, happy birthday
Wishing you a very happy birthday. And I hope you have a wonderful day with family and friends. Sending lots of love.
Hi Wendy, I want to wish you a very, very happy birthday. I want to thank you for all your kindness and support. And of course, as always, I want to thank you for all the good that you do in this world.
Hello, Wendy, and a happy birthday to you. I hope you have a wonderful one. Love, William.
Hi Wendy, happy birthday. Wishing you health and happiness. Many more birthdays to you and your family. Thanks so much for everything, always.
All I can say is I hope Wendy hears that. And in the meantime, over to William on an incredibly contentious subject, and nobody can do it better than him. And again, Wendy, we love you all. God bless you. Bye.
Thanks, Trudy. Well, yes, it is me. On a contentious subject, that’s a terrible line to introduce someone to, but I’ll do my best. 1908. 1908 was the year that Britain first became politically interested and involved in the Middle East. Not in the Ottoman Middle East, but in Persia. The reason is perhaps not hard to guess. It’s a three-letter word which has come to dominate Middle Eastern politics through the 20th and 21st centuries. Oil. Oil. The British needed oil to fuel their huge fleets all around the world. And thus, in 1908 was formed the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. In 1914, as war came, Britain took the majority share and stake in that company. So, it was oil that got us involved in the Middle East rather than straightforward politics. It’s the economics that has involved us in the Middle Eastern story. But Britain’s involvement went up another notch as it was the leading allied force to face the Ottomans in the Middle East during the First World War, as we saw last week. And Britain’s involvement became total after the end of the war, as it took over various League of Nations mandates to govern the region. Again, a story we shall pick up in future weeks. But this week’s story looks at the internal division in Britain between those who were pro-Arab and those who were pro-Jewish. A division that people who are British listening tonight well know continues in different forms to this very day in the Israeli-Hamas war. Let me begin with the Arabists.
A quick definition of an Arabist is someone who becomes interested in Arabic culture, maybe even learning the language, and who, like Lawrence during the First World War, argued then for an Arab nation in the Middle East to replace the Ottoman Empire as rulers in the Middle East. And these people, including Lawrence, saw that new Arab Middle East being led by the Hashemite family of Hussein of Mecca. But the earliest European Arabists were not English, but perhaps inevitably Spanish. Inevitably because there were Muslims living in the south of Spain between the 7th-8th century through to the 15th century. In the 12th century, Spanish scholars began translating Arabic texts into Latin. Into Latin because Latin was the lingua franca of Western Europe. And they translated mainly maths, astronomy, and very importantly medicine tracts and texts from the Muslim world. In 1143, a rather important Englishman called Robert of Ketton made the first Latin translation of the Quran, and he did so in Spain. In England itself, Robert of Chester also made a large number of translations into Latin from Arabic in that same 12th century. The 12th century is a little bit of an early renaissance in parts of Western Europe, not least here. In the 16th century, after the Muslims had been thrown out of Spain, there was a decline of interest in Arabic literature, and texts, and maths, and so on right across Western Europe. But in the 17th century, English interest was stimulated first by the creation of a chair in the Arabic languages in the University of Cambridge in 1632, followed by Oxford creating a similar chair four years later. So that the study of Arabic, the language, and of Arabic culture was being taught at our two universities. England only had two universities in the 17th century. At our two universities before the Civil War of the 1640s.
But English and British Arabism really took off in the early 19th century with a very famous man called Richard Burton, not the actor. Richard Burton went up to Oxford to study the Arabic language in 1840. But in 1853, he undertook the pilgrimage, the Muslim Hajj, to both Mecca and Medina. This was a very, very difficult thing for a Westerner to do. He had to adopt various disguises, including that of an Afghan Pathan. Now he had been in Afghanistan, so that was something that he could do reasonably well. But he also did it because if he misspoke in Arabic, he could always point out that he wasn’t speaking Middle Eastern Arabic, he was speaking Afghani Arabic. But he had to learn all the Islamic ritual of going to Mecca and Medina, and the minutiae of Eastern Arabic manners and etiquette, very different from Western Europe. It was a very, very difficult journey. In fact, his caravan was attacked by bandits, not an unknown event in those days, but he survived. And coming back to Britain in 1855, he published his account of his journey under the personal narrative of a pilgrim to Medina and Mecca. And it was sensational. People were really interested in this whole issue of the Arab world and culture. And he became, really overnight almost, a Victorian celebrity. Today he would have appeared on all the chat shows on television, and there would have been pictures of him in Arab dress and all the rest of it. He was one of those great Victorian heroes that the Victorians loved to talk about and elevate. But there’s another word in addition to Arabism that we must look at, and that is the word Orientalism. Orientalism. In brief, Orientalism is the adoption of aspects of the Arab Middle East into English literature and into English or British art, and indeed in Western Europe as a whole, but we’re talking about it’s the adoption of Oriental, in this case Arab, themes in literature and in art. It is a desire of the Western world for the exotic.
There was very much an interest in the exotic from the 18th century onwards, stirred of course by the growth of the British Empire. The problem with it was it could very easily slip over to a patronising attitude of Western superiority. Edward Syde, who published the great seminal work called simply “Orientalism” in 1978, Syde said this. Syde wrote, “Implicit in this fabrication is the idea that Western society is developed, rational, flexible, and superior. This allows Western imagination to see Eastern cultures, in this case Arab culture, and people as both alluring and a threat to Western civilisation.” So, wrote Syde in 1978. One question that has had a habit of recurring in Britain over the years, since 1914 in particular, is whether in relation to the Arab-Jewish question, the British Foreign Office is biassed and has been biassed towards the Arabs. In fact, on occasions the Foreign Office has simply been called the camel call. Now this alleged bias goes back to the days of Lawrence, even though Lawrence himself had little to do with the Foreign Office and other explorers who were in the Middle East. What was behind this? Well, what’s behind it really was raising the Arab culture to the status of this primitive, undiluted culture, which was in many ways seen by some as a perfect culture as compared to the culture of Western Europe.
I know that doesn’t tie in with feelings of superiority, but that’s one of the many problems of looking at this subject. We have of course the idea of the noble savage, Robinson Crusoe, for example. We have the idea of the noble savage, which goes back a long way, but here is the idea of the noble Arab, the Bedouin of the desert. Oh, if we could only live like that, the world would be a better place, they thought. When James Callaghan British Prime Minister, sorry, when he became Foreign Secretary in 1974, two years before he succeeded Harold Wilson as Prime Minister In 1974, on becoming Foreign Secretary, he told the civil servants in the Foreign Office that a new Labour government, he said, would not, and this is a, “Would not repeat the policy started in Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home speech during the preceding Conservative administration, which had inclined Britain heavily towards the Arabs. The author Geoffrey Morehouse, author of the, somebody’s got their, can somebody not mute themselves?
[Trudy] The whole recording, because on the recording are lots of messages from students.
[Student] Thank you.
Okay, so it’s very difficult to talk if there’s speech going on in the background. The author Geoffrey Morehouse, in a book called "The Diplomats,” wrote that Callaghan was acting on the assumption that the British Foreign Office was, quote, these are Callaghan’s words, “Pro-Arab, pro-Catholic and pro-Europe, almost to a man.” Callaghan was told by the senior civil servants, the office deeply resented the rumour that it fostered an Arabist mafia. But Geoffrey Morehouse, a very respected historian, comments in his book, based on a two-year authorised study of the foreign, of the British Foreign Service, that really confirms Callaghan’s view that it was pro-Arab. Because in 1975, says Morehouse, more diplomats spoke Arabic than any other language. 182 fluent Arabists, compared with 159 Russian experts, and 35 who could speak Chinese. So, there is evidence of this pro-Arab feeling in the Foreign Office. Neil Lockery, in his own book, simply called “Loaded Dice,” published in 2007, about the Foreign Office and Israel, wrote, 25 years ago, as head of the Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office dealing with Israel, I hosted lunch for a visiting Israeli minister at Blooms in Whitechapel, Britain’s most famous kosher restaurant. The Jewish Chronicle reported the event favourably, only commenting a little sarcastically that it was most likely the first time a Foreign Office official had shown any awareness of the existence of Blooms. The comment may have been accurate, but it was also part of a long campaign to depict the Foreign Office as pro-Arab and anti-Israel. But be warned, this book came in for a great deal of criticism over its facts, and criticism over its judgement and analysis.
So, if you want to read it, I wouldn’t recommend particularly reading “Loaded Dice,” but if you do, remember that you need to take it with a bowl of salt by your side. Now, this division of opinion in Britain, pro-Arab, pro-Jewish, rumbles on even today, but in a slightly different form. Today, there are accusations of bias in favour of the Arab position, and indeed Hamas’s position, as regards the reporting by the BBC. Again, you have to make your own judgments about that, but I for one no longer, I no longer have confidence in the BBC news, whether about Israeli-Hamas conflict or about other things, and I choose to take my news from other quarters rather than from the BBC, and I think that is not a peculiar or idiosyncratic position that I hold, but I think a position that many people have come to over recent years. A little pause to say now finally on British Arabism, I would like to highlight two soldiers, two British soldiers, one from the First World War and one from the Second and post-Second World War periods, Lawrence of Arabia and Glab Pasha, P-A-S-H-A, a honorific Arabic title. Lawrence, we spoke about of course last week, he is the archetypal British Arabist that people would point to on being asked to name one. He wore Arab dress, he even wore Arab dress at the peace conference in Versailles to the horror of Lloyd George. He was representing the Arab cause, he was not representing Britain, and Lloyd George was furious. Secondly, he spoke Arabic fluently, and yet as ever, Lawrence remains a conundrum. He’s a difficult man to unravel, as it were. Every time you take a layer off Lawrence, there’s another layer underneath.
Before the First World War and his obvious overt Arabism, which you can read off in his own biography of the war, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” Michael Asher in his biography of Lawrence tells us of Lawrence’s journey through Galilee in 1909, and if you don’t know this might strike you as well. It’s very different than the pro-Arab Lawrence that we find in “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.” And Asher writes this, he meets a, well let me, I’ll put it in his words, I climbed painfully above Capernaum, around an endless series of hairpins, two green meadows full of grey boulders, fat grazing cows and elegant white eagles. This is Michael Asher writing. At Rosh Pina, the air was thick with mist and the road darkened by avenues of stone pines. I halted to drink coffee at a paper shop-cum-cafe, where a very fat man, the proprietor of the place, was sitting at a table reading the sports pages of a Hebrew newspaper. He seemed interested in my search for Lawrence. Lawrence was a friend of the Jews, he told me. He believed in Israel as a national homeland for us. We will never forget him for that. This was essentially true, says Asher. I thought, like many Britons of his day, Lawrence had been excited by the idea of restoring Jews to their ancestral homeland after 2,000 years. The British had seen themselves as secret guardians of time, capable of using their vast wealth and power to replay history. On his first journey through Galilee in 1909, Lawrence had been disappointed to find the country derelict by comparison with the image he had formed of it through his biblical study. Instead of the polished streets, pillared houses, and rococo baths he had imagined, he found a place of dilapidated Bedouin tents, with the people calling to one to come in and talk, while miserable curs came snapping at one’s heels.
There is little trace here of the later Arabophile, says Asher. Lawrence believed that Palestine had been a decent country in Roman times could be made so again. He wrote himself, the sooner the Jews farm it, all the better. Their colonies are bright spots in the desert. Well, that hardly ties in with Lawrence’s very pro-Arab stance during the 1914-18 war. In the midst of the war, fighting alongside Faisal and the Arab army, Asher writes of Lawrence in this way, Lawrence was obliged to reassure them that the Arabs were fighting for independence and not to further allied objectives in the near east. This had been easy in the Hejaz. The Hejaz is part of what is today the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which would almost certainly receive independence, he said to them, if the allies were victorious. But Lawrence was less able to convince himself of the honesty of his preaching here in Syria. He was quite aware of the Sykes-Picot agreement, which we will talk about next time, and that Britain and France intended to carve up the region between them after the war. He actually despised Arab nationalists who believed in development modernization because he had fallen in love with the old Syria and hated the thought of change. He wanted the east to remain the mystical, romantic land he’d encountered in 1909, but without the oppressive government of the Ottomans. He admired the Bedouin and the semi-nomadic. These, he thought, were real Arabs. The fat, greasy, his words, Lawrence’s, the fat, greasy townsmen of Syria and Palestine were, he considered, of a different race, despite the fact that they were linguistically, culturally, and racially homogeneous. He perceived the east to a set of highly romanticised and therefore ethnocentric ideas. So, we are left with complications with the British view.
He had this view of what I talked about before, the noble Arab of the desert. He had nothing to say good about the tradespeople, shall we say, of Lebanon and of Syria. He fantasised of a past, maybe you might argue a past that never existed, but a past that existed in British imagination since, well, the early 19th century and a fantasised past that was believed in by many in the British foreign office. So, a mix is Lawrence. Lawrence would be an ideal subject for a psychiatric interview. He really is quite muddled in many ways, not least on the Arab-Jewish question. And then my final person to speak of is Glubb Pasha, a more modern version, if you like, of Lawrence. He was an evangelical Christian. Indeed, his adopted Arab son was at my evangelical Christian public school here in England in the 1960s. And Glubb Pasha himself came to inspect the cadet corps whilst I was a schoolboy. And he came wearing, inevitably, his trademark Arab headdress. In the Second World War, Glubb commanded the Arab Legion, which was under British command because it was the mandate that we held in Palestine. And we created an Arab Legion and Glubb led it. Why were we concerned in the Second World War? No prizes. It’s that three letter word again, oil. Oil. Wherever you go in the Middle Eastern story, dig a little bit. Oil. After the war, Glubb took office as the commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion. You might say he became more Arab than the Arabs.
His views on Israel are interesting. This is Glubb’s own autobiography. It’s on my blog. It’s called “The Changing Scenes of Life” by Sir John Glubb. And Glubb writes this about Israel. If I will find it quickly, I will read it to you. He says this. Jews, etcetera, are not a race, but the followers of the religion of Judaism, one of the world’s most noble religions, and that from which Christianity sprang. The leaders of Israel in the 40s and 50s were not in general the descendants of the biblical children of Israel, but were East European Jews who had themselves suffered undeserved persecution in Germany, Poland, and Russia. Their brutality and ruthlessness, for I can use no milder words, were not therefore the product of Judaism, but of Nazism or Russian autocratic methods under which they themselves had suffered. You could say, as with Lawrence, that Glubb’s views were confused. Like Lawrence, he also was an evangelical Christian. He goes on to say this. I do not, however, think that there can be any doubt that the state of Israel has been built on reliance on force and a disregard of either humanity or justice. My experience of 84 years of life has convinced me that this is a mistaken line of action, even from a purely worldly point of view. Kindness, generosity, and neutral understanding have always produced vastly better results than violence. Sometimes, when others use violence against us, we are obliged to resist, but only to defend persons who are under our protection. But as soon as we get to know our attackers and can talk to them, we should endeavour to reach an understanding with them. Now, you could say that such a view was optimistic. You could say that such a view was naive. But you have to remember that in the case of the Foreign Office in the early part of the 20th century, you have to think in the view of Churchill, but of Lawrence, and of Glubb, that they were the children of the empire.
And they saw things in that way. In fact, Glubb wrote in the final chapter of his book, in the first paragraph, when I was a child, I used to pray, O Lord, I beseech thee that Britain may always be the greatest power in the world, and the greatest power for good in the world. Britain before 1914 was indeed the greatest power in the world, and I think also a very great power for good. Her decline in the last 70 years has been due to her moral weaknesses, not to external circumstances. Now, you could very easily criticise that and show up how false it is. But the thing is, they believed it. That’s what they believed. And so, he finds himself in love with Arab culture, the wearing of a headdress. There’s something about dressing up with the English upper classes that goes down well. He is in love with the Arab culture. He’s in awe of the royal house of Jordan. Very loyal to it, he is, to the end of his days, even though he was sacked in the aftermath of Suez in 1956. He is an extraordinary man. But when he’s critical of the Jews, and remember that the British had faced Jewish violence at the end of the 30s and immediately after the war, you can see where that comes from. But what he’s saying is, what Churchill said in a different way, jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Now, no one disagrees with that, but as he himself said, if you or someone you’re protecting, in Israel’s case, its civilian population, are attacked, you really can’t just sit back. And as the United Nations Charter says, despite what the United Nations itself might say today, the Charter is very clear, you can take action against those who have acted against you. All it says to me is that the whole question of Arab-Jewish relations is a fraught one. It’s like the Irishman who was asked, how do I get to point A?
The reply being, well you don’t start from here. And the problem is, in politics you do have to start from here, wherever here is, and thus it’s very difficult. We all know what the solution should be in the Middle East, we’ve known for decades, but we can’t get there. And now I’ve got to turn to a different subject altogether, and the different subject takes us forward to the talk about Zionists. And I seem to have got so scattered in my paper here that I must just take a break and make sure I’ve got the, yeah, here we are, I’ve missed out page 10. Unlike, you remember, if you’re British, you remember Boris Johnson lost all his papers when he was speaking on one occasion. I always number my pages so that right now when I’ve got lost, I know that I should be on page 10. So, if I can pinch 10, I’m all right. And now I’ve finished with Arabism, there’s a lot more that one could say, but I’m turning now to British Zionism. The key date, the key event, and the success of the British Zionist movement came on the 2nd of November 1917 with the Balfour Declaration, the declaration of Britain’s support at the end of the war for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Now, much more detail of that next week, but there’s a long, long story behind English Zionism. First of all, it isn’t a wish amongst, like the Arabists who worship the Arabs of the desert, there was hardly a wish to embrace either Jewish culture or Jewish language. After all, in Britain itself, full Jewish political emancipation didn’t come until 1871. Rather, it sprung from Protestant Christianity as interpreted by evangelical, some evangelical Christians.
An interpretation of, it takes Christian Bible, of the Old Testament and the New Testament, that Christ’s second coming could only happen when Jews returned to their homeland. That is the basis of British or English Zionism. Long before we reach modern Zionism in the 19th century, this goes right back to the 16th century, 17th century. Only when Jews are back in the homeland will Christ come again. There’s a nasty little PS for those who are Jewish. PS, the British Zionists said, and when they do, that’s when we can convert them to Christianity and Jesus comes again. But the basic belief is that Jews must be in the homeland of Palestine before Christ comes again. The term Christian Zionism wasn’t used until the middle of the 20th century in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Before that, the terminology was Christian restorationism, the restoration of Jews to their homeland. We know, I’m sure all of you know, not even those of you who are British, that Cromwell brought the Jews back or opened the doors for the readmission of Jews at the end of the 1650s. Why? Well, because he needed Jewish monetary contacts in Amsterdam. Why did he need that? Because he had nothing left in the coffers after the civil war. But how did he sell it to people who were anti-Semitic? He sold it to them on the grounds that, a slightly twist on the story I’ve just said, that there must be a Jew in every country in the world if Christ is to come for the second time. And he said to them, but I’ve discovered there are no Jews in England, so we must have them back PDQ.
The real reason politics is a nasty profession was money, and the Jews could open up that money trading with the continent. Cromwell had a secretary, a man called Sadler, and a decade before the Jews were welcomed back into England, Sadler had produced a pamphlet claiming that the British, or in particular the English, were one of the last lost tribes of Israel. There’s a whole oddity about Christian Zionism and of the Puritans. By the late 19th century and the imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire, this again became a, what shall I say, a theme or topic that gained support, particularly amongst evangelical clergy, but it also affected politicians. Two giants of the British political establishment, David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister at the end of the First World War, and Winston Churchill, took the issue of a Jewish homeland on board. Lloyd George was a committed Zionist. Why? Because of his Baptist Christian faith. Jews must be given their homeland or Christ can’t come, but again we meet head-on the British ability, perhaps unsurpassed in the world, for hypocrisy, even if the individual committing the hypocrisy has no idea that they’re doing so. This is from an exhibition in the National Library of Wales about Lloyd George. It said, an improviser of speech and an improviser of policy, he ignored inconvenient truths. He appears to have been driven by his love of the Old Testament and a view of the Jews, which combines sentimentality with anti-Semitism. Judging by his description of Edward Montagu, the only Jew in his cabinet, of Edward Montagu as a dirty coward, men of his race usually are.
Now come on, that is terrible hypocrisy, on the one side being pro-a-Jewish homeland and the other of being anti-Semitic towards someone in his own cabinet. This is at the bottom of the problem with Britain dealing with the issue of Israeli-Arab relations in the second half of the 20th century and in the 21st century. There is not a single view in Britain, political or otherwise, and even if you take an individual like Lloyd George, they can hold opposing views at the same time. The report on this exhibition that was held in the National Library of Wales said, Lloyd George loathed and felt an irrational rivalry with the French and charismatic himself, he fell for the charms of others, especially Hayne Wiseman, the irresistible spokesman of the Zionist cause, and the exhibition noted he also fell for the charisma of Hitler in the late 1930s when he visited Germany. Not someone on a level keel with one clear view. Lloyd George is in the end, well Lloyd George is a flawed individual. I mentioned Montagu who was Jewish and a member of Lloyd George’s cabinet. When Palestine was created in 1922 and Britain received it under a League of Nations mandate to rule, to govern in Palestine, with the intention that in the end there would be a two-state solution, Edwin Montagu said in August 1917, before the final handover to Britain came about in Palestine, Edwin Montagu said in cabinet, forecasted, two consequences. These are direct quotes. When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, you will find a population in Palestine driving out its precedent habitants, taking all the best in the country.
Meanwhile Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Today we could say Israel. For Montagu Zionism was quote a mischievous creed and the British cabinet ignored it. Now I’m not getting involved in inter-Jewish arguments. All I would say is Montagu was speaking not as an Israeli Jew, but as a British Jew. Montagu was highly intelligent and was a convinced Jew. He’s not just, he’s a religious Jew if you like, not Orthodox obviously but he’s, he holds religious faith and he’s British and he’s part of the British establishment, the British elite and in 1917 his forecast of a future Israel isn’t far off the point in terms what Israel faces today, what it’s accused of. This is not a situation where there are any easy answers. If there were they would have been found a long time ago. There doesn’t look to be easy answers, but remember what Glubb said, about what I described as George, or not war and here Montagu said, Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but, and I will swap the word Palestine for Israel, Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Israel. Now you may not like to hear that, but in reality in the Middle East that remains largely the truth and it’s over a hundred years ago that Montagu was warning the British cabinet of the consequences. Now whether it could have done anything different than what happened that is a question only individually we can answer as we see it, but I would just want to emphasise Montagu’s position. Now I’ve got to come to Churchill.
Churchill whose own writings confirm that Lloyd George was both his political hero and mentor and prior to the First World War Churchill accepted the romance that the biblically based Lloyd George believed in that Jews must be allowed back into their homeland. Churchill does not have a religious belief about that, very important to know. He followed Lloyd George because Lloyd George said it, so he hadn’t really in a sense thought it out. Again, it’s the uncertainty of the British political situation. As the First World War came to its conclusion in 1918 Churchill opposed partitioning the Ottoman Empire into European mandates. He thought that it was better to have an Arab state which would be a bulwark against Russian expansionism. Remember he was immensely worried that Stalin would further continue the war against the West and the Middle East might well be somewhere that Stalin would aim for. We’ll look at what he actually did as the war ended next week, but he was pushed towards an Arab position by Lawrence, a man he admired deeply but hugely. But when Churchill travelled to Cairo in 1921 to formalise an agreement, he changed his opinion for the Arabs and came to regard the Jewish people as allies in the mission to civilise the world. In Mrs Thatcher’s terminology he saw the Jews as one of us and the Arabs as the other. He had for a moment departed from his pro-Jewish view taken from Lloyd George because of the influence of Lawrence in particular, but now faced with the actual position of having Jews and Arabs in the same conference. And so on he is convinced that the Jews are our allies in what he called very Churchillian phrase in the mission to civilise the world and he remained for the rest of his life pro-Jewish.
I said to Trudy before I began that I was going to say something about all of that, and I’m well aware that if I ever mention Churchill and the Jews I come in for a lot of criticism. Now this is not me this I’m going to quote from Sir Martin Gilbert himself a Jew but the greatest authority there’s ever been and, in my opinion, ever likely to be on Churchill. Sir Martin Gilbert was an outstanding historian an outstanding scholar, you cannot dismiss his views, and when he writes of Churchill and Judaism, or Churchill and the Jews he knows about both sides so his opinion must be taken very seriously indeed. In a review of a book about Churchill in Israel, which he lambasted, in this review Sir Martin wrote, “Churchill always urged the Jews to be good citizens while retaining their faith and culture. His advice to his Manchester Jewish constituents in 1907 was, ‘Be good Jews.’ He explained that he did not believe a Jew could be a good Englishman unless he was a good Jew. A year later, at the first public meeting he attended with his wife a few weeks before their marriage, he told those gathered to open a new wing of the Manchester Jewish Hospital that he was very glad to have the experience of watching the life and work of the Jewish community in England. There was a high sense of corporate responsibility in the community; there was a great sense of duty that was fostered on every possible occasion by their leaders. The concept of duty is integral to an understanding of Churchill,” Martin Gilbert goes on. Churchill recognised Zionism quote as a very great ideal writing in 1920.
It was made well there should be created in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a Jewish state under the protection of the British crown which might comprise three, or four million of Jews. An event would have occurred in the history of the world which from every point of view would be beneficial. Antisemitism Martin Gilbert goes on to say was anathema to Churchill. In a letter to his mother he described the French antisemitic campaign against Dreyfus as a monstrous conspiracy. His main criticism of the conservative government’s aliens bill in 1904 was that the proposed immigration controls could be abused by an antisemitic Home Secretary. Following the King David Hotel Jewish terrorist bombing in 1946, at a time of strong anti-Jewish feeling in Britain, Churchill told the House of Commons, I am against preventing Jews from doing anything which other people are allowed to do. I’m against that, and I have the strongest abhorrence of the idea of antisemitic lines of prejudice. That, I think, would have been the speech Churchill would have made today in the House of Commons. I am against preventing Jews from doing anything which other people are allowed to do. Goodness knows, that’s what Churchill would have thought of the United Nations. Now you’ll be glad to know that I am coming towards the end, but there’s one other person I want to introduce you to. On the opposite side of the coin to the Arabist Glubb Pasha stands Ord Wingate. Wingate’s name is forever linked in Britain to the World War II campaign in Burma and his so-called Chindit contingent.
He died as the war ended in a plane crash, yet before World War II, he had served in British Palestine, British mandated Palestine, from 1936 to 1939 during the Arab uprising against the British and against the Jews. He was a Christian Zionist. He belonged to a very fundamentalist evangelical group in Britain called the Plymouth Brethren. Now, when you use the word fundamentalist, it has nasty overtones today. It was fundamentalist only in the sense that it had strict adherence to the Bible, and a rejection of ritual, and a rejection of priests. It isn’t weird it’s Plymouth Brethren. There are strict Plymouth Brethren who are a bit weird, but the normal Plymouth Brethren are not weird in any way, and because of that, Ord Wingate embraced the Christian Zionist view that Christ could not come again unless Jews were back in their homeland. Moreover, he regarded it as his Christian duty to ensure that the Jews in 1936 had the support of Britain against the Arab insurrection, the Arab rising, which was against the Jews as well as against the British mandate. In a military piece on the internet, it reads Wingate actively disliked Arabs, once shouting at Haganah fighters after a June 1938 attack on a village on the border between Palestine and Lebanon.
I think you’re all totally ignorant in your training since you do not even know the elementary use of bayonets when attacking dirty Arabs. How can you put your left foot in front? Emphasis he uses the terminology dirty Arabs. He goes on to say he befriended Haganah leaders and especially Yushtat Sader. Yushtat was commander of the Jewish settlement police, who when the 1936 to 39 Arab revolt in Palestine began had established the wandering troop patrol unit in Jerusalem that confronted the Arabs in their villages and bases. Wingate approved the decision to found field companies known as Foch as the commander arm of Haganah and of Sader’s demand that his troops initiate military operations despite Haganah’s long-held political restraint in the face of Arab aggression. In June 38 the British commander in Palestine, a man called General Hayner, gave Wingate permission to create a special night squads armed groups formed at first from British soldiers later recruiting Haganah members. As the Jews were officially allowed to use weapons, there was no problem there. The Jewish agency helped pay salaries and other costs of the Haganah personnel that Wingate trained. Wingate accompanied his men on their patrols. The units frequently ambushed Arab saboteurs who attacked oil pipelines of the Iraq Petroleum Company and raided border villages. The British Empire has lots of buts. Reading that, you can see why many Israelis regard Orde Wingate as a hero, and indeed he was. He trained units, which were efficient.
So, what’s the but? He used torture against the Arabs core. It’s known that he forced sand down villagers mouths until they vomited in order to get information out, and when Arab saboteurs managed to make a hole and a leak therefore in the oil that’s coming through, he took all the men from an Arab village and threw them into a pool of crude oil. War is a nasty thing. Jaw jaw is always better, and good people sometimes do dreadful things in war, as well as dreadful people doing dreadful things in war. Can I defend Wingate on that basis? Of course, I can’t. But can I see his support for Israel as a right thing to do? Yes, I can. All these English or British Arabists and Zionists are, it seems to me, divided in their views, divided in their actions. They can’t quite find a way through. That’s a consistent way through. Okay, Churchill did after the Cairo Conference, but Churchill is Churchill. Other people are lesser, but even great people like Glubb and like Wingate have difficulties in seeing a way forward, and by taking one side against another, inevitably taking one side, there was no way the British could have taken any position in 1936 in Palestine as being anti-Arab. Now, how could they? In the same way that Israel could only take an anti-Hamas position after the 7th of October, But somehow or other with adopting the British are not Jews, the British are not Arabs.
Okay, there are some Jewish Britons, yes, we know, but come on, the real question is: if they choose one side, they find themselves not entirely consistent as they view the other side, whether they’re pro-Jewish but have an inkling of being pro-Arab or they’re pro-Arab and have a commitment to being pro-Jewish. I really don’t understand Glubb because Glubb was one of these born-again evangelical Christians. He seemed mesmerised by the concept of a Bedouin from the desert whom he saw the Hashemite kings of Jordan as the direct descendants. It’s a confusing story. I’m sorry if it’s appeared confusing, but I don’t mean it to be. I mean simply to say that the story is a confusing story, full stop. Don’t expect black and white answers when we look at this question because it isn’t black and white and that is the same position that Britain is in in 2024. Okay, many people, and the government in particular, are committed to Israel, sometimes with a but. We know that many people are committed to Hamas, okay, ignorantly and without knowledge, but we are still divided still. There are people in the British House of Commons pro-Hamas. We find this whole question, everyone finds this question difficult. Is there an answer? One day there will have to be an answer, but that day will be, as Glubb says, when people realise the necessity of talking to the enemy. I think I’ll stop there and say thank you for listening, and I’m sure lots of people got lots of criticisms today, inevitably. Hang on, I’ve lost you. Why have I lost you? Because I pressed the wrong thing.
William, can I interrupt you?
[William] Yes.
I think Wendy’s come on, is that right?
Oh, right, okay, okay.
Is Wendy there? She was. = Oh dear. Oh good. Can we see you, please?
Hi.
I can see you.
Wendy, darling, at the beginning of the video, there was a, can we play again? We come on to William’s questions. Can we play again? A very short video. Everybody wishes you so much joy on your birthday, and what I’d like to do is play that little video again, and then I’m going to ask Dennis to say something, and then we can go back. But Wendy, it’s been a joy working with you over the past five years. As I said to the students before, you’re our stardust. What you do with Lockdown is just a miniscule part of everything you do. So, if you don’t mind, can we just play your birthday video again? This is from the colleagues.
Thank you so much.
Dearest Wendy, happy birthday, many happy returns. The work you’re supporting Lockdown University is so important in this age of disinformation. Long may you live in good health and happiness. Happy birthday.
Wishing you a very happy birthday, and I hope you have a wonderful day with family and friends. Sending lots of love.
Hi Wendy, I want to wish you a very, very happy birthday. I want to thank you for all your kindness and support, and of course, as always, I want to thank you for all the good that you do in this world.
Hello Wendy, and a happy birthday to you. I hope you have a wonderful one. Love, William.
Hi Wendy, happy birthday. Wishing you health and happiness. Many more birthdays to you and your family. Thanks so much for everything, always.
That’s amazing.
Thank you, and thank you, everybody, for listening to it again.
And sweetheart, not only that, when you get the video, you will see that William has very few questions tonight, which is very unusual, and it’s nearly your happy birthday, Wendy. And Dennis, can I ask you just to say a few things? Dennis is Wendy’s partner, and of course, I think knows her better than any of us, so you have the last word, yeah.
I don’t know what she touched.
Okay, here we go.
I just want to wish Wendy, my partner, a very happy birthday and many more. She’s an extraordinary, multi-talented, dynamic, amazing woman. And together with you, Trudy, Lockdown is unbelievable. I know how many hours she spends talking with you and how much pleasure she gets from seeing all the incredible faculty doing an amazing job and doing an incredible job, really, really changing the world for the better. So, I’m proud of her. She does a lot of stuff, and I want to wish her a very, very happy birthday and tell her that I love her very much.
Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Trudy. And, of course, thank you to our incredible faculty. I absolutely love Lockdown University. I love what we do. I love that we’re all learning together. We’re an incredible family. And as I say, together, we’re strong. So, I want to thank you for that beautiful video. Thank you, Trudy. I love working with you, too. And to everybody that makes it happen, all the staff and, of course, all the participants, because without the participants, there’s no Lockdown. So, thank you, William, for your beautiful message. I’m going to hand over to you Trudy.
God bless. Thank you so much, Wendy.
[Wendy] God bless everyone.
Have a beautiful day, God bless you. William.
Yes. It’s back to you, William. Yes, there are. Yeah, you’re right, Trudy. Of course, you were. Arlene and Monica sent happy birthday wishes. Myrna sends happy birthday wishes. Denise, the same. Sharon, Denise, another Denise. Iona, Adele, Hazel, Lynn, David, Myra, Judith. I don’t know who that is. It’s C. Tannen. Sorry, I can’t get another name. Rose, Isa, Thelma, Sally. Oh, no, sorry. Sally’s got a question for me.
Q&A and Comments:
Oh, dear. I thought I was going to get through with that difficult question. It’s he asked me, dear William, the division between Arab and Zionist is repeated in the U.S. State Department. There are many who try to trip up the establishment of Israel. And it continues today. I heard an interview with Ambassador Charles Freeman, who now lectures at Brown University, and his antagonism toward Israel was palpable.
Sally, thank you for that. I did know that. I simply didn’t bring America into the equation. I could have said that. I didn’t. And thank you for raising it. Clara is happy birthday wishes.
Edwards, Merna, and Monty say Edward Seidler is an apologist for Islam. Yes. Yes, he was. It doesn’t. It doesn’t, in my view, lessen the importance of his book. But that’s for you to judge. Susan wishes happy birthday.
Patricia, Rita, Debbie, Sinet, Myra, Arlene, Jonathan. Oh, no, Jonathan. Jonathan makes a point. Sorry, Jonathan. A fascinating Arabess was Gertrude Bell, who chose to end her own life. Yes, there were a number of important women. Lady Hester Stanhope is another. But in case Trudy was going to do those women, those tough women, I left it to her to talk about if she wanted to. I’m Shelley.
Q: How much of the pro-Arab feeling is because of the late anti-Jewish feeling in Britain because of Christian doctrine?
A: No, I think the pro-Arab feeling is because of this, this belief in the noble Bedouin of the desert. If Christianity plays any role at all, it’s in that pro-Jewish feeling of Christ must come back to the, that Jews must come back to the Holy Land to allow Christ to come a second time. So that’s what I would say. Although, on the other hand, you are right, because the upper classes in Britain, mainly, if we’re talking about the period we’ve been talking about, were anti-Semitic. I was going to put an adverb in front of it and say casually anti-Semitic. Maybe I’m right or wrong to do that.
I think the first wife of King Hussein was the daughter of Dabasha, says Monty, and Monty sends greetings to Wendy.
Sheila says the first president of Israel, in his biography praises Lawrence for his support in the 20s. Oh yes, Lawrence is a confusing character.
Q: Arlene says how pro-Arab is the royal family?
A: I can’t answer that. I don’t know. All I can say is that the King has been, when Prince of Wales and now as King, has been extremely supportive of Britain’s Jewish community. And if any British Jew is listening, they might want to say, type something in support of what I’d say. Now, I’m absolutely sure of that. I’m not sure how pro-Arab he is. He’s interested in Islam. That’s not the same thing. But he’s certainly very pro-the British Jewish community. Daphne says happy birthday.
Q: Why not mention the British officer, Orde Wingate?
A: I did. And there’s an institute, says Monty, named after him. Yes, there is indeed.
Q: Dennis says was Sim Philby, who was an Arabist, the father of the traitor and spy Kim Philby?
A: Yes, he was both the father of the traitor Kim Philby and he himself was an Arabist. Absolutely right. I took him out of my lecture notes because I had too much. Eileen says happy birthday.
Michael says, I’d be interested to know what you think, or feel is the solution that said, we all know what the solution is. Well, the solution has to be is what has been laid down for many decades is a two-nation solution. But I do not understand how that can happen if one of the nations is divided into two. I cannot see how Gaza fits into a two-nation solution. That’s all. The West Bank is a different issue.
Monique and Danny, Glubb Pasha, was in charge of Jordanian Legion when it pushed the Jews out to the eastern old city of Jerusalem. And he decried so-called violent methods of the Jews. He was a de facto participant in war against Israel. Jews and the state of Israel were a problem against the Mackinder-Hartland theory. Did he believe the Jews would convert at the second coming, except for a designated number of Jewish witnesses? I don’t know what Glubb Pasha’s view about the second coming was. Almost certainly, if you push me, I’d say he thought that there was an opportunity to convert Jews to Christianity. He was very evangelical. I remember him preaching in the school chapel. I didn’t warn to him at all. He was a short little man. Can I say that? Like many short people, rather sort of put himself about a bit. He fancied himself. That was very clear.
Q: Did the two-state solution originate with the Peel Commission of 36, 37?
A: Well, in a sort of formalised sense, yes. If full political emancipation of Jews is in 1871, Jews were still considered foreigners in 1917. Yes, there was a lot of problems about the Aliens Act. That’s what Churchill spoke about before the First World War. Montagu and Common, many Jews were aware of how recently Jews had received citizenship in this country. They were living in, probably in their own lifetime, saw Zionism a threat to him personally. I’m not sure that he did. I’m not sure that he did. I think. I think Montagu was too intelligent for that. I know that there was a view that is a view that’s slightly before this date by Jews already in Britain, that they didn’t want working-class peasant Jews coming in to lower their own status. I don’t want to do as one of them. I think Montagu genuinely believe what he said. They’re all says happy birthday.
Another question, Monique and Danny, Jews were treated as foreign element in Europe centuries, certainly including 1920. The existence of Israel merely changed the reason to treat Jews as outsiders for those who chose to do so. Is this. Yeah, okay, but that would require considerable thought to answer that. I’m not I’m not convinced by that.
Q: What would you attribute the BBC’s posture to?
A: Monica, I don’t really know. I don’t know why the BBC has taken that attitude, but it has. And you’re right, it’s not new. And I don’t know the answer to that. If anyone worked for the BBC, maybe they know the answer to that.
Q: Do you think that the recruitment and training processes for foreign office civil servants have advanced to a point where the prejudices and biases have been removed?
A: I guess they have, but many of us feel that the quality of the foreign office civil servants has declined as a result of that, as a result of a more open recruitment. But you put the other case when it wasn’t open. There was a lot of pro-Arab feeling. Ernest Bevin said that Jews would do all in their power to get a Jewish state, and the Arabs would do all in their power to stop the Jews having a Jewish state.
Well, yes, that’s true. Linda, the Arabs of Palestine have a homeland. King Hussein said Jordan is Palestine, and Palestine is Jordan. Well, you, Linda, that is a very important point, and it is a point that I will return to on a later occasion. The Wingate Institute continues to exist in Israel as a global organisation. Bob says he also agrees with me and largely ignores the BBC. He asked me the question I’ve already said, I don’t know the answer to. I really don’t.
Georgina says happy birthday. Madeleine says, oh, Madeleine says thank you to me. Thank you, Madeleine.
Q: Would you care to comment on Lord Beaverbrook’s anti-Semitism? Was it perhaps anti-Zionism?
A: My grandmother, who died in 26, was worried about it. Apparently when some Jews disapproved of the 17 Balfour Declaration, Beaverbrook willingly politicised some Jews into the Jews and insisted the Jews did not support the idea of a state of Israel. Serena, I might come back to that.
Q: Jonathan says: who are the members of the British Parliament who are pro-Hamas? How many are there?
A: I can’t answer that question. There are people who are pro-Hamas, people who’ve stood up and said so. That mainly on the opposition benches that were, that is to say, on the Labour benches, on the Scottish Nationalist Party benches, mainly there, and some of them are members of ethnic minorities. That is to say, some of them are Muslim and some of them are African-Caribbean, and some of them are white. I can’t answer the question more.
Well, Maxine has said Corbyn and his friends. Well, that is true. But it’s, I think, slightly wider than that. Stephen says happy birthday. So, does 847971270 say happy birthday. I hope your prison sentence 847971220 is shortly coming to an end. I can’t help saying I love seeing that number.
Thank you, Marilyn. Thanks to me. Sonny says happy birthday. Lorna says happy birthday. Dawn says happy birthday. Gabriel and Kitty say happy birthday.
Monique and Danny are asking another question. Sometimes talk between enemies comes only after a totally disastrous war in which side dictates or has totally destroyed the enemy. The Nazis made the Jews their enemy, and the Muslim fundamentalists, including Hamas, are like this as well. Lots to unpack there. I can’t unpack in a minute.
Shelley says happy birthday. Donna says happy birthday. Barry says happy birthday. Susan says happy birthday.
Q: Diane says, when will we ever talk to one another?
A: It’s been a long, long time. True.
Salomon says very happy birthday. Liliana says happy birthday. Martin says happy birthday. Cynthia says happy birthday. Marcel the same. Hazel, Rhonda, Alfred and Yonah, Cecile, Amir, Joe.
Maxine added in something about the King. Charles III is patron of WJR. Susan said, thank you, Susan. That’s a nice comment. I appreciate that.
Jonathan, there is an assumption that you can and must be either pro-Jewish or pro-Arab, all the while that conflict is treated as a zero-sum game. There will never be peace. Profound, Jonathan. Does it advance us anywhere towards peace? Rita, thank you, Rita.
Geoffrey Margolis writes, we consider the King a great friend of the Jews. Maxine adds in what’s been added before about the King.
Bethianne says happy birthday.
Geoffrey says King Charles is an exemplary attitude towards the Jewish community. Good. Everyone has agreed with my reading of the situation.
Hi, Nicholas. The King has succeeded his mother as patron of Norwood. He was a patron of World Jewish Relief and Nightingale, Hammerson, old age homes. Thank you, Nicholas. I think everybody who’s British, whether Jew or non-Jew, is well aware of the King’s support for the minority community in Britain, of the Jewish community. Charles is turning out, in the views of many of us, to be an outstanding King. We just hope that he is able to deal with this cancer successfully. The London Review of Books says David has been anti-Israel for years. The London Review of Books is not something I look at.
Helen says happy birthday. Georgina says thanks to me. Thank you, Georgina.
Q: Well, on Linda’s comment, this is the last one, following on Linda’s comment that Palestine is Jordan, why not have them all excommunicated drawn decades ago?
A: Well, yeah, there are questions about movement of peoples. Basic answer is neither Jordan nor Egypt want the Gazans.
Right, I’m going to stop there. Oh, there’s Trudy still there. Don’t listen to William. Everything he said is wrong. Go on, Trudy.
Not at all, William. But I think there are certain things perhaps we will have a debate on. They like it when we debate. But William, thank you so much.
You’re welcome.
I mean, when we decided to look at the Middle East, I turned to William very heavily for support, because obviously we’re probably looking at the most contentious area in modern Jewish history, and pretty contentious in general history. So, thank you. It was so well-balanced, William, as you always are. And I don’t know if Wendy’s still online, but we all love her to bits. I think she realises that. Lots of love, and I’ll see them tomorrow. And perhaps, William, you and I can discuss having a debate about antisemitism in Britain.
The problem with me debating, folks, with Trudy is our ideas and our views are very similar. It’s a one-sided debate, because we’re on the same side. But we could indeed look, and I was asked a question about pro-Hamas MPs. Well, we could look at some of those issues, because there are very worrying issues in terms of who is standing for Parliament in this election. And it will be very interesting. By that, I mean Islamists are standing, unbelievably, as part of the Green Party. Some of them are standing as independents. And it remains to be seen whether in heavily Islamic areas they will win the seats. And that will be the first time we will have faced that problem.
Oh, God. Can you finish on one message of hope, please? One message of hope. Otherwise…
I don’t know what will happen to Israel, but when I’m forced to think about England, I just go back to the very old song, there’ll always be an England, and there’ll always be someone, somewhere to welcome you. Is Wendy wanting to say something?
Yeah, no, I just wanted to say thank you, everybody, for your well wishes. And thank you to both of you. And there’s always tomorrow.
Yes.
It will bring a new dawn. So, we have to have optimism, and hopefully, we will be able to find some resolution to this shocking situation. Actually, global situation.
Absolutely.
So, let’s just put our faith in it. Not the American youth.
I know. Anyway, enjoy whatever happens in this horrible world. You enjoy your birthday.
Global youth, global youth. We just have to show honourable leadership with integrity. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, Wendy.
God bless you, Charlie.
Thank you, Wendy.
Take care. Bye.