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by John Campbell |
August 17th, 2006
British foreign policy is the root cause of the problems in the Middle East.
Mr. Prime Minister,
So far as the Muslim Groups' open letter asserts that British foreign policy is the root cause of the current problems in the Middle East, we are in agreement.
Yet we suspect that we may differ about the actual policies which have caused and are causing the problems.
The notion of a Palestinian people, or nation, is a fiction created by Britain in collaboration with Muslim and Arab states to abort the birth of a Jewish state and, lately, to be used as an instrument in the destruction of the newborn state of Israel.
In 1922 Britain was given the League of Nations Mandate to help establish a Jewish National Home in what is now Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, and the Golan Heights. Article 6 on the Mandate required Britain to "facilitate Jewish immigration" into the Jewish National Home, and Article 5 prohibited Britain from disposing of any of the territory of the Jewish National Home. The Mandate specifically recognized "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstructing their national home in that country."
In breach of Article 5 of the Mandate, Britain handed that part of the Jewish National Home that is now Jordan to a certain Sheikh Abdullah from Saudi Arabia. At a stroke three-quarters of the Jewish National Home was lost. Britain subsequently 'traded' what are now the Golan Heights to Syria (then still under French Mandate).
At the same time, at the instigation of their Arab and Muslim 'friends,' Britain established "quotas" as a device to circumvent the facilitation of Jews into their National Home, while encouraging and facilitating illegal immigration by Arabs, and indeed anybody else who would go there – except Jews.
In 1938 President Franklin D. Roosevelt called an international conference at Evian, France, to help Jews being persecuted under the Nazis. The British refused any Jewish representation at the conference even though Nazi observers where allowed. Hitler knew the deep-seated hatred of Jews in Europe and taunted Roosevelt: "We, on our part, are ready to put all these criminals [Jews] at the disposal of all these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships."
Even though Santo Domingo offered to take 100,000 desperate Jews, the British could not find room for any Jews in any of its colonies, and the Jewish National Home was not even mentioned because Britain had already declared that "the absorptive capacity" was "full."
The result? SIX MILLION Jews sent to the gas chambers.
And while the Jews were being gassed in Nazi extermination camps, the British refused them sanctuary in their own Homeland. US Treasury Secretary Morgenthau vented his anger in a letter to Roosevelt in 1944 like this: ". . . in simple terms, the British were apparently prepared to accept the probable death of thousands of Jews in enemy territory . . ."
In the meantime Muslim "leaders" were collaborating with the Nazis to prevent any from Jews "escaping" Germany and going to their National Home. In 1944 Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini castigated the Nazi Ribbentrop for "exchanging" Jews in Germany for "Palestinian Germans." This, said the Mufti, "would be incomprehensible to the Arabs and Moslems" who shared a common goal with the Nazis – the "destruction of the so-called Jewish National Home."
Even after the Second World War, when the full horrors of the Holocaust were known, Britain still restricted the entry of Jews into the Jewish National Home. Jews were whipped back onto ships and even sent to "camps" in remote places like Mauritius.
In 1947, the United Nations again, under Arab and Muslim pressure, partitioned what remained of the Jewish National Home. What was left, they assumed, would be easy to destroy.
Not surprisingly, the Jews had had enough. They had lost some eighty percent of their National Home to Britain's deceit and collaboration with Arab and Muslim friends. Britain had also facilitated Arab and non-Jewish immigration to the Jewish National Home which created what they then termed the "Palestinian people."
The indigenous Arab population of the "Palestinian people" is tiny. Prior to the creation of the Jewish National Home, the population of that area was negligible. Even the British Consul in Palestine said in 1857 that "the country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants." In 1867 Mark Twain too recorded, during his travels there, that "there is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent . . . There are two or three clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation."
So yes, we agree, British foreign policy is the root cause of the problems in the Middle East. They sought to collaborate with their Arab and Muslim friends to destroy the Jewish state before it was created. Between them, they created a "Palestinian people" from places as far away as Spain and Russia. They prevented Jews from entering their National Home, even while they were being marched into Nazi death camps.
And now, the "Palestinian people" are nothing more than convenient pawns earmarked as human fodder in the ongoing struggle of the Muslim and Arab people, in collaboration with the Europeans, to extinguish the Jewish state of Israel.
Lastly, Mr Prime Minister, a word about terror. There is only one reason for the proliferation of terror in the world today. The championing, by the Europeans, of the PLO "cause" (the elimination of the Jewish state), and elevating Yasser Arafat (yesterday's Osama bin Laden) to world "statesman," in return for the PLO agreeing to direct its terror solely at the Jews. A deal made in hell. In short, terror paid.
So when the Muslim groups talk of Britain's policies being "ammunition to extremists," what they mean is that Britain must suspend all support for Israel and continue as before in the connivance with Arab and Muslim states for the destruction of the Jewish people.
And on this constant threat of the "radicalization" of the Arab and Muslim street, I should remind the Muslim groups, and indeed Muslim countries and communities around the world, of Dryden's warning — "beware the fury of a patient man."
It is the Arab and Muslim "street" that should be worried about the peoples of the West becoming "radicalized" by the incessant provocations and support for the murder and terror inflicted on the Jewish people in particular, and the West in general.
The Arab and Muslim "street" would do well to remember the words of Admiral Yamamoto after the Japanese attack on Pearl Habor: "I fear we have awoken a sleeping giant and have instilled in him a terrible resolve."
– John Campbell
johncampbell@theliberalwilderness.com
Visit their website at: http://www.theliberalwilderness.com/
Responses to "Open Letter to Tony Blair from the Silenced Majority"
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Bravo! I am currently reading Eurabia by Bat Ye'or.This account of betrayal by the European powers should be required reading in all Western Civilization classes, but alas Western Civ is no longer "Politically Correct"… only it's destruction from within remains so…
Comment by Randy Kemp | August 17, 2006
Mr. Campbell is to be applauded for a succinct and brilliant citing of British complicity, not only by with acting acting in concert with the Jew hating Arabs to deprive the Jews of the extent of the homeland promised, but but by their direct actions encouraged Arab Jew hatred to become even more intense.
While not all British are anti-Semites, there are more anti-Semites in Britain, the British government and the British bureaucracy than you can shake a stick at and they are hard at work honing their swords for the Jews and for Israel.
I would be most interested to know what if any reply Mr. Campbell receives from the British government.
Comment by Bill Narvey | August 17, 2006
This should be published in every major newspaper in the world. Sounds extreme, yes, but most people are ignorant of the facts as described in this well-written article. More and more Muslims are immigrating to the West, and with them they bring their hatred of the Jews and Israel. Anti-semetism is increasing in the West in part because some of these Muslim immigrants become outspoken propagandists for the "Palestinian" cause. The result is that Jewish citizens become targets of Muslim hatred in our cities, our universities and our government. It is intolerable.
Comment by sgi | August 17, 2006
Shalom !
Thank you for telling these truths, the time has come to separate the wheat from the chaff, i.e. good from the evil. May western intellectuals like you be blessed, you are the just among the nations.
Comment by Roni Ben-David | August 17, 2006
Yes, thank you for this article. I've been looking for a history of what is insisted on as a "Palestine nation," and this answers many of my questions. The liberals in America are as ignorant about this history as I was, and I think they should all be reminded of what really happened.
Comment by Anna | August 18, 2006
Bravo!!
What a wonderful and enlightening article, and I agree with the post above, it should be in every newspaper. I really do hope the sleeping giant is awoken because Israel cannot rid the world of this terrorist cancer by itself.
Comment by Fiona | August 18, 2006
I am speechless.
We here in Israel refer to it as "Protection Fee". The whole policy of Europe in the middle east. That's all it ever has been ever since Me or my parents can remember, anyhow.
That's how we see the rising of terror these days in Europe. It is just the next scene in any C class Mafia film.
I can't believe how clear you explain it. I'm happy I got to come across this, you have definitely added some years to my life… I can feel myself breathing better.
Comment by Israeli | August 18, 2006
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6019699987160996228
a little childish link, but I guess it's one way to cope with the frustration.
Comment by Israeli | August 19, 2006
This has not been taught in our schools in England and ought to be.
I am fed up to the back to teeth of our Government in the UK pandering to the Islamic minority. What's worrying is the EUssr and countries are actually worse.
It has gone too far here. We have National TV stations (BBC) banning words such as Islam and Dhimmi for fear of offence, political correctness gone so far as to refuse a passport application of a five year old girl. Her offence was having bare shoulders which could cause offence in muslim countries. Police and security services having to work with community elders to keep the community happy. Knife crime going through the roof at the same time unchecked immigration took place.
The ordinary people on the streets are unhappy and that discontent is growing. We may take time to be angrered but by God when we are we are nigh on unstoppable.
This Government needs to start thinking about the silent majority before it is too late
Comment by merciancrusader | August 19, 2006
The 1922 mandate did not include Jordan as part of the Jewish homeland. The League of Nations clarified this in September 1922.
By the time Britain took control in Palestine, Jewish migration was already well under way. The current conflict would probably have happened even if Palestine had still been controlled by the Ottomans.
I'm sick to death of both the pro and anti Israel factions blaming Britain for the conflict. Britain should persue whatever foreign policy is in the interests of its people at the time. At the moment, that favours support for Israel. That might change someday in the future. If that upsets Muslims or Jews, I couldn't care less.
Comment by Steve | August 19, 2006
#10: Don't flatter your self… There hasn't been any Israeli asking you to do anything other than what any other nation does: what's best for itself at a given time.
You give yourself way too much credit. This article was not written in the name of Israelis, and I can assure you you aint gonna see the day Israelis will appeal to your sense of decency/sympathy.
It's not that we don't face horrors ahead, it's just that if we were (Has Vehalila) not to prevail them, I don't envy you.
Comment by Israeli | August 19, 2006
Why did Britain give Israel the help it needed to make an atomic bomb, in 1958, by selling it 20 tonnes of heavy water?
Could it be that once again an 'intellectual' conservative is talking crap?
Comment by Max Godwin | August 21, 2006
I rarely respond to comments on my articles, but in the case of comments 10 and 11, I shall make an exception.
Germany under Hitler and the Nazis acted in Germany’s interests leading up to WW II. They were destroyed. The Japanese acted in Japan’s interests by wreaking havoc in the Far East to secure natural resources, then attacking Pearl Habor. They were destroyed.
Britain acted in its own interests when Chamberlain proclaimed “peace in our time”, and Churchill was ridiculed as a “warmonger”.
American blood had to save the Europeans for the second time in half a century from pursuing their own “interests”.
Britain’s appeasement of terror has brought terror to its own doorstep, and that of the world – in its own interests?
Jordan was included in the Balfour declaration, and the Mandate. It was only the exact delineation of the far eastern border that was finalized in 1922 by the L/N.
Is #12 seriously suggesting Britain assisted Israel in acquiring nuclear weapons? Heavy water has many uses, including nuclear energy, as we have recently been told by Iran.
John Campbell
Comment by John Campbell | August 27, 2006
I am an educated female naturalized US citizen from Central America. I was born and raised Catholic. As odd as it may sound to you the plight of Israel, for whatever reasons, is important to me and I wholeheartedly support their pursue of a peaceful lot of “promised” land. I have recently completed the reading of three books on the conflicts of the Middle East, one by an Israeli Jew, one by a Palestinian living in the US (Pro-PLO) and one by an American Journalist, in an effort to get more than one perspective. I came across information (regarding the Brits' responsibility in the creation of this monster now inhabiting the Middle East) that as stated by many of the contributors in previous comments, warrants all the awareness we can generate in books and in all main newspapers. I am completely blown away by the power and efficiency of the Arab propaganda machine which has a twin sibling in that liberal stronghold we call the mainstream press.
It's time to turn the tide around and use their same tactics to erode and destroy the Middle Eastern Web of lies that permeate the general perception on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and that feeds the hatred of the Middle Eastern Muslim nations towards all things Western (except our dollars!). Get the truth out. To me it's as simple as this: Why is a group of nations that occupies 640 times the land mass of Israel, has 60 times its' population and all the OIL, so intent in Israel’s annihilation and so focused in the attack of our own American Soil? Religious freedom? Greed? Social Justice? Ignorance?
Even if you found any possible reason, nothing justifies the brutality, the repression and the spread of an ideology that threatens life and peace in the progressive West. As many defects as we may have, I have great respect for a place where Christian, Jew, Buddhist, man or woman, black, yellow, or white, can interact fraternally, express their ideas and sentiments, w/out fearing death, isolationism, and prosecution.
SO PLEASE KEEP THESE IDEAS, RESEARCH AND CONCEPTS CIRCULATING. THE BLOGOSPHERE MAY YET PROVE TO BE A POWERFUL AND INFLUENTIAL INSTRUMENT FOR GENUINE PEACE AND DEMOCRACY.
Comment by Lin-Dai Kendall | August 28, 2006
dear Mr. John Campbell, I saw you responded my comment & #10's.
I think we define "best interests of a nation" differently. I don't think Germany was acting in its best interest in the thirties and forties of the previous century. I don't think Britaine was acting in its best interest to "sell" Czechoslovakia, and ignore what was going on with the Jews behind the enemy line. It blew up in Britaine's face then, when they had to pay for their mistake in a much larger wore they might have blocked at the begining, just as the "protection fee" policy god firbid (has vehalila) seems to be on its way to blow it self up on their face or maybe this time from inside their inner organs, that is much harder than an enemy behind the border lines.
That's why I don't define "the best interest of a nation at a given time" as anything else than the decent thing to do. As much as it may sound corny, nations are similar to individuals in that sense: It's never a person's best interest to do any other than the decent thing. As all of us know in our daily lives. In the macroscopic casr of a nation it is even more obvious than in the individual life. Because as an individual you don't always get to see the results of your indecency, you don't always get a clear view of the connection between it and damage done to you. However, in the macroscopic case of nations, the connection is always clear. All throughout history.
From the damage Russia & Japan suffered from collaborating with Hitler, through the vacuum in France after cooporating with the extermination of its Jewry, that was filled with publics which really will challenge the French hypocrisy, in ways I don't dare think of. To ourselves, the Israelis, who are paying for our failure to adopt the decent economic policy towards our poor, which is did create a damage we could see clearly the last war, more than I'd like to elaborate.
Doing what's best for your nation at a given time is doing the decent thing. Especially when dealing with Terror. Because it only starts with us because we seem like the weakest break in the western wall. If you want to break into the other side of the wall, where is the best place to start, other than the weakest break? you pull it of, and the the wall starts to crumble. I heard Italy's FM the other day saying Hamas & Hezb'Allah aren't terror organizations. So you can understand why they thing the west won't give much of a fight in that little break of the wall. The funny thing is while what he is saying is: we don't want to encourage them to join Al Quada and such, we should give them an interest not to slaughter our own soldeirs in Lebanon, and not to activate their cells in Italy that are ready for a reaction to sanctions on Iran; what they are hearing is: I'm afaraid, we can't fight you, we are willing to kid ourselves as long as you let us, until you feel you're ready to engage your agenda against us. He is literaly fueling their certainty that this is the time, that the world is redy for their conquering, literally digging his own people's grave. So he might think he is doing what is in his nation's best interest, but he is doing what is in his nation's worst interest.
The best interest of a nation at a given time is rarely what it does at that time, because of various reasons. But I would rather die by a nuclear bomb, than go through the same path my grandmother had to go through, from believing in the basic human decency of her neighbours and friends in Poland, to loosing her entire family and carring the insult for the rest of her life. When I visited Poland in a school tour to Auschwitz, I couldn't even resent them. I encountered poverty and backwardness that made me realise I don't even have to resent them, they pay for their actions as it is. Who would have thought the news about Jewish survivals who were slaughtered in their home town after the end of WW2, by their Polish former neighbours who were afraid they would have to give them back their property, would look so ironic 50 years later, when they are more poor than the grandchildren of their survivals could ever have imagined possible.
I think the lesson is obvious: if a nation finds it self doing any thing but the decent thing, it means it is a problem. In the Polish case I guess it was laziness, or a black hole in their collective memory which didn't let them rise up on their feet as long as the SU was arround. In the French case it might be hypocrisy, it might be the gap between the way they wish to see them selves as and they that they really are. The point is it's their problem. It isn't my place to tell them what their best interest is, as it isn't Israel's place to tell Britain what its best interest is, even if the direct damage from not seeing it might be to Israel. We have every intention to do everything possible to stay alive. But it won't include breaking the rules history tought us, one side of the lesson is not to put any trust on other nations' decency, just as much as the other side of the same lesson is that staying alive means also maintaining our humanity, under the hardest conditions, just like our past generations never forgot their humanity under the conditions of the holocaust, and never turned to revenge, which was what saved our spirit and ability to not degenerate in hatred but to grow again from the beginig, we now have to remember the best thing we can do is be our best. fight our best, and live our best. what other nations do is outside our reach. If Italy wants to distinguish terrorists who kill Jews (these days, but have killed not less Lebanese and Americans and French) from other terrorists, it's beyond our reach, and just like there's no point in expecting anything from them, there's no point in hating them if they don't provide. What ever they do that might hurt us, will hurt them eventually too. Alive or dead I don't want my people to ever kid themselves again, and that's why we won't apeal to your sense of decency/sympathy. It's your buisness what you want to do. the decent thing is not a favor to us, it is your best interest, so I hope for you you're able to approach that challenge, just as I hope for me we're able to. But it isn't my palce to appeal to your sense of decency.
Comment by Israeli | August 31, 2006