Books: Too fond of Jews

“I cannot conceive why this martyred race, scattered about the world, and suffering as no other race has done at this juncture, should be denied the satisfaction of having a flag.”
— Winston Churchill, July 26, 1944

By the age of 26, Winston Churchill had fought in several wars, become a hero by daringly escaping prison during the Boer War, been elected to Parliament
and written several popular books (including “My Early Life,” which dramatically recounts his escape). Already he was well on his way to becoming what we now know him to be, the most extraordinary character of the 20th century.

Yet at the conclusion of World War II, while in the hospital for appendicitis, Churchill was voted out of office. “In the twinkling of an eye” he later wrote, “I found myself without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix.” The depression that had plagued him throughout his life (he called it his “black dog”) was partly the product of many genuine setbacks. Few historical figures had as rocky and uncertain a career as Churchill, an unevenness that persisted even after he became simultaneously the historian and hero of the western world.

Almost as variable as his fortunes were his political allegiances. He shifted party affiliation more than once and had his share of political opponents who reviled him as an opportunist. (A famous exchange with a constituent: “Vote for you? I’d rather vote for the devil!” To which Churchill answered, “I understand, but as he is not standing for office at this time, might I count on your support?”)

Yet in the midst of his seeming inconstancy, certain principles were unshakable for Churchill, no matter how unfashionable. One of those is expressed vividly in the story with which Churchill biographer Martin Gilbert begins his newly released “Churchill and the Jews” (Henry Holt and Co., 2007). Interviewing Gen. Sir Edward Louis Spears while working on Churchill’s official biography, Spears, who admired Churchill, confided to Gilbert: “Even Winston had a fault. He was too fond of Jews.”

Not long ago, an anti-Semitic passage written by Churchill made its way across the frictionless terrain of the Internet. Except it was not, in fact, by Churchill, and no reader of the books under discussion would have been deceived in the first place. For though Churchill’s romantic vision of Jewish history and his instinctive affection for the Jewish people was not undiscriminating, it was unwavering. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was known for his friendship with Jews, and even in childhood Churchill would bristle at remarks by adults that could be construed as anti-Semitic.

Throughout the debate over a Jewish homeland, Churchill walked a fine line between encouraging Jewish immigration and declaring a state by fiat. He knew the intensity of Arab opposition and British skittishness. Moreover, Britain was reliant on Egypt for control of the Suez Canal and on Iran for the security of the Anglo-Persian Oil Co.’s production. In the Middle East, then as now, nothing is simple.

Despite his record of powerful support, there were moments when Churchill disappointed his Zionist friends. In 1921, Churchill’s White Paper vaguely encouraged gradual development and growth of the Jewish community in Palestine. That weak and amorphous support, a retreat from the Balfour Declaration, infuriated Chaim Weizmann, then the leader of the World Zionist Organization, and others, but in the end it turned out to be a dispiriting episode in Churchill’s support, not a sustained diminishment of it.

According to Michael Makovsky in “Churchill’s Promised Land” (Yale University, 2007), although Churchill publicly supported the Balfour Declaration, in private his feelings were for a brief while quite different, and he wished Britain could just rid itself of the problem. Speaking of Mesopotamia and Palestine, he said he wanted to “resign them both and quit at the earliest possible moment.” But even this frustration gave way to his fundamental sympathy, and, as Makovsky notes, “There is no record of Churchill privately disparaging the pro-Zionist policy again for the rest of his term as colonial secretary.”

Churchill’s sympathy was tested. When two Stern Gang terrorists assassinated Lord Moyne and his driver, Churchill was stung and furious. Here Makovsky gives a picture of Churchill far more ambivalent than that in Gilbert’s “Churchill and the Jews.” In particular, Makovsky speaks of Churchill’s anger at Jewish attacks on British personnel in Palestine, which led to him tack back and forth after the war in ways that suggest his weariness and frustration.

More than a decade later, with war looming, Churchill proposed a 10-year plan that included limiting Jewish immigration to 30,000-35,000 people a year. Although this was much higher than the usual yearly immigration (in 1937 Gilbert cites a figure of just over 10,000), it was far lower than the Zionists had hoped for. Still, as with previous maneuvers, Churchill did not forget the ultimate goal. In 1939, when the White Paper was adopted, which Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain explained was to ensure that the Arabs would always maintain a majority over the Jews in Palestine, Churchill responded with one of his magnificent rhetorical bursts: “Now there is the breach; there is the violation of the pledge; there is the abandonment of the Balfour Declaration; there is the end of the vision, of the hope, of the dream.”

Chamberlain, by the way, commenting on the persecution of the Jews of Germany, wrote the following charming lines to his sister: “No doubt the Jews aren’t a lovable people; I don’t care about them myself; but that is not sufficient to explain the pogrom.” That was the social world in which Churchill too often moved.

Churchill refused to commit himself to any particular scheme of statehood until the end of the war, when the allies would be victorious and the peace negotiations under way. Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion were bitterly disappointed. Shortly after the end of the war, when the King David Hotel was bombed, Churchill was again personally offended and outraged. Still he tried to calm his colleagues, because he knew that the leaders with whom he had developed a relationship, Ben-Gurion and Weizmann, were in no way responsible for the bombing. As he said in 1948, “I will never forgive the Irgun terrorists. But we should never have stopped immigration before the war.”

Even before the war, Churchill’s support was not motivated only by an historic sympathy, but also by his appreciation for the Jewish achievement in Palestine. “Nothing will stand in your way,” he told the farmers of Rishon Lezion in 1921. “You have changed desolate places to smiling orchards and initiated progress instead of stagnation. Because of our belief in you, we are supporting the Zionist movement.” He called the Zionists “splendid open air men and beautiful women” who made “the desert blossom like a rose.”