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Chapter 43
Deir Yasin, for a little while, solved the Zionists' problem. The partition of Palestine had been achieved, by force. At the same time the event revealed (to the Arabs, if not then to the West) the nature of Dr. Weizmann's "abyss into which terrorism leads". From April 9, 1948 the West itself stood on the brink of this abyss, dug by the acts of two generations of its politicians.
Thus the situation changed completely between March 19, 1948, when the American Government decided that partition was "unworkable" and reversed its policy, and April 9, 1948, when terrorism effected partition. Dr. Weizmann must still have been haunted by his fears, but now that the territory for the Jewish state had been cleared he would not or could not withdraw from "the abyss". The aim now was to achieve a second reversal of American policy, to gain an expression of approval for what had been done by terrorism, and to this end, once more, Dr. Weizmann bent all his efforts. At the first reversal of American policy he had been urgently summoned from London to Lake Success by letters, cables and telephone calls, and the day before it was announced he was again closeted with President Truman. As the days passed, and the news from Deir Yasin flickered briefly over the tapes, he laboured tirelessly at his supreme task: the winning of "recognition" for the Jewish State set up by the terrorists at Deir Yasin.
Dr. Weizmann's energy was extraordinary. He conducted a one-man siege of the entire "United Nations" (of course, he was everywhere received as the representative of a new kind of world-power). He was "in close contact", for instance, with the delegates of Uruguay and Guatemala, whom he calls "the ever gallant defenders" of Zionism, and with the Secretary General of the United Nations, at that time a Mr. Trygve Lie from Norway. In mid-April, with the tidings from Deir Yasin rising to its very nostrils, the General Assembly of the United Nations met. The American vote was clearly to be decisive, and Dr. Weizmann remarks that he "began to be preoccupied with the idea of American recognition of the Jewish state". In other words, American state policy, formed in the constitutional process of consultation between the Chief Executive and his responsible Cabinet officers, was once more to be reversed at the demand of Chaim Weizmann.
Dates are again significant. On May 13, 1948 Dr. Weizmann saw President Truman; the contest for the presidential nominations then lay immediately ahead and the presidential election a few months beyond, so that this was the ideal moment to apply "irresistible pressure". Dr. Weizmann informed President Truman that the British mandate would end on May 15 and a provisional government would then take over "the Jewish state". He urged that the United States "promptly" recognize it and the President acted with zealous alacrity.
On May 14 (Palestine time) the Zionists in Tel Aviv proclaimed their new state. A few minutes later "unofficial news" reached Lake Success that President Truman had recognized it. The American delegates (who had not been informed)
"were incredulous", but "after much confusion" they made contact with the White House and received from it Dr. Weizmann's instructions, transmitted through the President. Dr. Weizmann forthwith repaired to Washington as the President of the new state and President Truman received his guest, thereafter announcing that the moment of recognition was "the proudest of my life".
Eight years later President Truman in his memoirs depicted the circumstances in which his "proudest moment" came about, and his account may appropriately be cited here. Describing the six-month period (from the "partition-vote" in November 1947 to "recognition" in April 1948), he says:
"Dr. Chaim Weizmann. . . called on me on November 19 and a few days later I received a letter from him". Mr. Truman then quotes this letter, dated November 27; in it Dr. Weizmann refers to "rumours" that "our people have exerted undue and excessive pressure on certain" (United Nations) "delegations" and, speaking for himself, says "there is no substance in this charge". Mr. Truman comments, "The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White House, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders - actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats - disturbed me and annoyed me. Some were even suggesting that we pressure sovereign nations into favorable votes in the General Assembly."
The "political threats" mentioned here obviously related to President Truman's approaching re-election campaign; this is the only reasonable interpretation of the words. Mr. Truman (according to Dr. Weizmann) promised, at the interview on November 19, "to communicate at once with the American delegation" and the United States vote was then given, on November 29, to the "recommendation" that Palestine be partitioned. Thus President Truman's anger (as recorded in his narrative of 1956) at the methods used in no wise delayed his capitulation to them in 1947 (if that were not made plain the reader of his Memoirs might gain a different impression).
Mr. Truman (in 1956) recorded the outcome of the "solution" (the partition recommendation) supported by him in November 1947: "every day now brought reports of new violence in the Holy Land". He also found that his capitulation of November and Dr. Weizmann's disclaimer of "undue pressure" had no effect at all in the months that followed: "The Jewish pressure on the White House did not diminish in the days following the partition vote in the United Nations. Individuals and groups asked me, usually in rather quarrelsome and emotional ways, to stop the Arabs, to keep the British from supporting the Arabs, to furnish American soldiers, to do this, that and the other" (Disraeli's picture of "the world being governed by very different persons from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes").
The President sought refuge in retreat: "As the pressure mounted, I found it necessary to give instructions that I did not want to be approached by any more spokesmen for the extreme Zionist cause. I was even so disturbed that I put off seeing Dr. Weizmann, who had returned to the United States and had asked for an interview with me". Mr. Truman, in 1956, evidently still held the postponement of an interview with Dr. Weizmann to have been so drastic a measure as to deserve permanent record. He was then visited (March 13, 1948) by an old Jewish business associate "who was deeply moved by the sufferings of the Jewish people abroad" (this was less than a month before the massacre at Deir Yasin) and who implored him to receive Dr. Weizmann, which President Truman at once did (March 18).
This was the day before American support was withdrawn from the partition recommendation (March 19). Mr. Truman says that when Dr. Weizmann left him (on March 18) "I felt he had reached a full understanding of my policy and that I knew what it was he wanted". Mr. Truman then passes over the bloody weeks that followed without a word (he does not mention Deir Yasin), except for an incidental statement that "the Department of State's specialists on the Near East were, almost without exception, unfriendly to the idea of a Jewish state. . . I am sorry to say that there were some among them who were also inclined to be anti-Semitic". He resumes his narrative two months later (May 14, after Deir Yasin and the accompanying bloodshed) then saying, "Partition was not taking place in exactly the peaceful manner I had hoped, but the fact was that the Jews were controlling the area in which their people lived. . . Now that the Jews were ready to proclaim the State of Israel I decided to move at once and give American recognition to the new nation. About thirty minutes later, exactly eleven minutes after Israel had been proclaimed a state, Charlie Ross, my press secretary, handed the press the announcement of the de facto recognition by the United States of the provisional government of Israel. I was told that to some of the career men of the State Department this announcement came as a surprise".
Mr. Truman does not in his Memoirs recall his statement of 1948 that this was "the proudest moment of my life", or explain why he felt it to be so; after many months of such "pressure" and "political threats" at the beleaguered White House that at one moment he was led to deny himself, if only for a short time, even to Dr. Weizmann! For the purposes of this narrative he now virtually passes from the story, having served his turn. He was elected president six months after his proudest moment and at the date of this book looks fit to live another twenty years, a dapper, hearty man on whom the consequences of the acts with which his name is identified apparently had as little effect as the fury of the ocean cyclone has on the bobbing cork. (In 1956 he joined the company of those who have been awarded an honorary degree by the ancient University of Oxford, a woman don there raising a lonely and unheeded voice against its bestowal on the Chief Executive whose name is best known from its association with the order to atom-
bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima).
After President Truman's proud recognition of what had been done in Palestine between November 1947 and May 1948 the debate at the "United Nations" lost importance and Dr. Weizmann (who in his letter to President Truman of November 27, 1947 had warmly denied the use of "undue pressure") set to work to muster other recognitions, so that the issue should be put beyond doubt. He learned that Mr. Bevin, in London, "was bringing pressure to bear on the British Dominions. . . to withhold recognition", and he at once showed who was the greater expert in applying "pressure".
Historically regarded, this was a moment of the first importance, because it showed for the first time that Zionism, which had so deeply divided Jewry, had divided the nations of the British Empire, or Commonwealth; what no warlike menace or danger had ever achieved, "irresistible pressure on international politics" smoothly accomplished. Suddenly Zion was shown to be supreme in capitals as far from the central scene as Ottawa, Canberra, Cape Town and Wellington. .
This gave proof of superb staffwork and synchronization; miracles of secret organization must have been performed, in a few decades, to ensure the obedience, at the decisive moment, of the "top-line politicians" in Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. These countries were remote from Palestine; they had no interest in implanting the fuse of new world war in the Middle East; their Jewish populations were tiny. Yet submission was instantaneous. This was world power in operation.
The great significance of what transpired may need explaining to non-British readers. The bonds between the British island and the overseas nations sprung from it, though they were intangible and rested on no compulsion, had in emergency repeatedly shown a strength, mysterious to outsiders. An anecdote may illustrate:
The New Zealand Brigadier George Clifton relates that when he was captured in the Western Desert in 1941 he was brought before Field Marshal Rommel, who asked, "Why are you New Zealanders fighting? This is a European war, not yours! Are you here for the sport?"
Brigadier Clifton was perplexed to explain something which to him was as natural as life itself: "Realizing he was quite serious and really meant this, and never having previously tried to put into words the, to us, self-evident fact that if Britain fought then we fought too, I held up my hand with the fingers together and said, 'We stand together. If you attack England, you attack New Zealand and Australia and Canada too. The British Commonwealth fights together'."
That was true, in respect of people, but it was no longer true in respect of "topline politicians". Through them, the conspiracy from Russia had found the chink in the armour. The "pressure" in Wellington (and the other capitals) was as powerful and effective as it was around the White House. In this particular case
(New Zealand) a typical figure of that time and group of helots was a Mr. Peter Fraser, Prime Minister of New Zealand. None could have had less cause to hate, or even to know anything about Arabs, but he was their implacable enemy, because he had somehow become another captive of Zionism. This poor Scottish lad, who went to the other edge of the world and found fame and fortune there, apparently picked up the infection during impressionable youthful years in London (when it was spreading among ambitious young politicians there) and took it with him to the new country, so that decades later he applied all his energies and the power of his office to the destruction of harmless folk in Palestine! When he died in 1950 a Zionist newspaper wrote of him:
"He was a convinced Zionist. . . He was busy leading the United Nations delegation of his country at the Paris Assembly, but gave much time and attention to the Palestine issue. . . sitting day after day at the Political Committee when Palestine was discussed. He never left the room for one moment; no detail escaped his attention. . . He was the only Premier on the committee and left it as soon as Palestine was dealt with . . . Time and again Peter Fraser found himself voting against the United Kingdom, but he did not care . . . He remained a friend until his last day".
A man with this alien ambition in his heart certainly thought quite differently from Brigadier Clifton and his kind, and had he known how his Prime Minister felt Brigadier Clifton might have been much more puzzled to know how to reply to Field Marshal Rommel. Being so much preoccupied with Zionism Mr. Fraser could not be expected to be wholehearted in his country's interest and New Zealand went into the Second War all unready, so that when he met New Zealand survivors from Greece and Crete at Port Said in 1941 they were "haggard, unshaven, battle-stained, many of them wounded, all badly worn both physically and mentally, all worried by the loss of so many good 'Cobbers'; Mr. Fraser was responsible, in part, for this" (Brigadier Clifton). With this man as prime minister, New Zealand's quick recognition of what had been done in Palestine was assured, little though the New Zealanders knew it.
In South Africa, Dr. Weizmann, in his moves to discomfort Mr. Bevin, turned at once to General Smuts, whom the reader met long ago. By chance I was in South Africa at that moment. A well-known Zionist emissary came speeding from New York by air and when I read of his arrival I foresaw what would follow. (This man appeared before a Zionist audience and told it that "the Jews need not feel themselves bound by any frontiers which the United Nations might lay down"; the only remonstrance against this, seen by me, came from a Jewish objector, who said such words boded ill for future peace).
General Smuts received this airborne visitor and then announced "recognition" at once, being beaten in promptness only by President Truman and the Soviet dictator Stalin, (who in this one question were perfectly agreed): This was, I believe, General Smuts's last political act, for he was defeated at an
election two days later. His son strongly warned him against recognition, holding that it would lose him votes. General Smuts brushed the advice aside (rightly, from the electioneering point of view, for his opponents no doubt were ready to bid for the Zionist vote and South Africa contained no Arab voters).
General Smuts's renown throughout the British Commonwealth (and his unpopularity with most of his fellow Boers) rested entirely on the popular belief that he was the architect of "Anglo-Boer reconciliation" and a champion of the great-family concept. In this one question he deserted the hard-pressed government in London with the unquestioning obedience of long-instilled discipline. I achieved an old ambition to meet him at that time. His days were ending and he too now disappears from this tale, but before he died he, like Dr. Weizmann, had seen "the abyss" which he had helped dig: "in the problem of Palestine" (he told his son later in the same year, 1948) "there is tragedy at our doorstep . . . No wonder Britain is getting sick and tired of it all. Failure in Pa!estine will not only be a British failure. Other nations have also taken a hand, including America, and they have also failed. Pa!estine . . . is one of the great problems of the world and can have a great effect on the future of the world . . . We have thought to let the Arabs and Jews fight it out, but we cannot do that. Power is on the move, and Palestine lies on the road".
So he spoke privately, but not publicly. Apparently politicians, like the clown in the opera, feel they must ever wear the mask in public: Like Mr. Truman, he did what Dr. Weizmann commanded without delay and even in 1949, for the benefit of a Zionist audience, said he was "happy to have been associated with at !east one thing in my life which has been successful".
The retreat from London became a rout. Dr. Weizmann records that the New Zealand representative, Sir Carl Berendsen, then "won support from Australia", and soon the "top-line politicians" in Canada followed suit. When the British Dominions followed Mr. Truman and Generalissimo Stalin the smaller states thronged to give "recognition"; they could not refuse to tread where these great ones had rushed in, and thus "the Jewish state" took shape "de facto", the fact being the massacre at Deir Yasin.
Although he became its president, this is in truth the point at which Dr. Chaim Weizmann passes from the narrative, after fifty years of an activity, essentially conspiratorial, in which he encompassed the capitulation of all political leaders of the West and left "tragedy", like a foundling, on its common doorstep. I would not know where to look for a more fascinating life and another writer might be able to depict it in heroic tones. To me it seems to have been given to a destructive purpose and Dr. Weizmann, whose years were nearly done when he reached his triumph, found triumph a bitter, perhaps a lethal cup.
So I judge, at all events, from his book, the last part of which is of absorbing interest. It was published in 1949, so that he could have brought his account to the point now reached by this one, at least. He did not. He closed it in 1947. Now,
why did he do that?
I think the answer is obvious. In 1946 he had warned the World Zionist Organization against "terror" and depicted "the abyss" into which "the old evil" must lead, and had been deposed in consequence. Then he had become president of the new state set up by "terror". I think he wished to leave his warning to Jewry on record and could not bring himself to discuss the deeds of terror and assassination in which the new state was born, so that he pretended to have ended the manuscript before they occurred.
He put the date of completion as November 30, 1947, the day after his triumph at Lake Success (when President Truman, at his prompting, telephoned the American delegation to vote for partition). Evidently he wished the book to end on that note. The reversal of American policy, and the deeds against which he had uttered warning, soon followed, and as the book was not to appear until 1949 he had plenty of time to express his opinion of them. All he did was to add an epilogue in which he did not even mention the determining deed at Deir Yasin, the contemptuous answer to his warnings. Moreover, he again went out of his way to say that this epilogue was finished in August 1948; this saved him the need to make any reference to the next determining deed of terrorism, the assassination of Count Bernadotte, which occurred in September 1948. Obviously Dr. Weizmann quailed. He had identified himself with both massacre and murder by accepting and retaining the presidency of the new state.
For that reason his earlier warnings are of the greatest significance; he could have deleted them before publication. For instance, he charged "the terrorists" (into whose hands he delivered the future of Palestine, and of much more than Palestine) with trying to "force the hand of God". This, obviously was the heresy of Zionism, and of all those who supported it, whether Jew or Gentile, from the very start, and of Dr. Weizmann more than most others. He added, "the terrorist groups in Palestine represented a grave danger to the whole future of the Jewish state; actually their behaviour has been next door to anarchy". It was anarchy, not neighbour to anarchy, and Dr. Weizmann's life's effort was anarchic. Even in this argument he was not moved by moral recoil; his complaint was not against the destructive nature of anarchy itself, but merely that it was inexpedient, "because the Jews have hostages all over the world".
On the very day after his triumph at Lake Success he returned to his new theme: "There must not be one law for the Jew and another for the Arabs. . . The Arabs must be given the fee1ing that the decision of the United Nations is final, and that the Jews will not trespass on any territory outside the boundaries assigned to them. There does exist such a fear in the hearts of many Arabs and this fear must be eliminated in every way . . . They must see from the outset that their brethren within the Jewish state are treated exactly like the Jewish citizens . . . We must not bend the knee to strange gods. The Prophets have always chastised the Jewish people with the utmost severity for this tendency, and
whenever it slipped back into paganism, whenever it reverted, it was punished by the stern god of Israel. . . I am certain that the world will judge the Jewish state by what it will do with the Arabs".
Thou sayest! Here Dr. Weizmann put on the robes of an Israelite prophet, or perhaps the crown of Canute bidding the tide retreat. When these words were published the Arabs had already been driven from their native lands, the Jews had "trespassed" on territory outside the boundaries earlier "recommended", the Arabs were not being treated "exactly like the Jewish citizens" but were homeless and destitute fugitives. Dr. Weizmann pretended not to know all that! He ignored all that had happened and said it must not happen. As an example of published hypocrisy this can hardly be excelled even in politics. The probable explanation is that he still could not bring himself to denounce what had been done but, as his death approached, felt he must point out its consequences; those consequences to which his life's work from the start was bound to lead, if it were successful. At the last he cried "Back!", and all in vain.
A greater man than he cried out in horror and linked the consequences to the deeds, which he did not fear to name. Dr. Judah Magnes was in the direct line of the Israelite remonstrants of old. Born in America in 1877, like Dr. Weizmann he had given his life to Zionism, but in a different spirit. He was a religious Zionist, not a political one, and did not presume "to force God's hand". From the start he had worked for the establishment of an Arab-Jewish binational state and had attacked Zionist chauvinism from its first appearance. He became"Chancellor of the Hebrew University at Jerusalem in 1925 (having strongly objected to Dr. Weizmann's pompous foundation-stone ceremony in 1918), was its president from 1935, and in 1948 was in Jerusalem. He was appalled by the emergence of "the old evil in a new and horrible guise" and left a valedictory lament condemning the Zionists and the Western politicians alike:
"Refugees should never be made use of as a trump in the hands of politicians. It is deplorable, incredible even, after all that the Jews in Europe have gone through, that an Arab problem of displaced persons should be created in the Holy Land".
He died immediately after saying this and I have not been able to discover the circumstances of his death; references to it in Jewish literature are often cryptic and resemble those concerning the breakdown and sudden death of Dr. Herzl. For instance, one such allusion (in the foreword to Rabbi Elmer Berger's book of 1951) says he "died of a broken heart".
In Dr. Magnes another Jewish peacemaker joined the group of responsible men who for fifty years had vainly sought to keep the West (and the Jews) out of the grip of a Talmudic conspiracy from Russia. He founded and left an organization, the Ihud Association, which still speaks with his voice, and even from Jerusalem. Its organ there, NER, in December 1955 said, "Ultimately we shall have to come out with the truth openly: We have no right whatever, on
principle, to prevent the return of the Arab refugees to their soil. . . What should Ihud strive for? To transform the perennial powder keg (which is the State of Israel, according to Minister Pinhas Lavon) into a place of peaceful habitation. And what weapons is the Ihud to use? The weapons of truth. . . We had no right to occupy an Arab house without first paying its price; and the same is true of the fields and groves, the stores and factories. We have had no right whatever to colonize and materialize Zionism at the expense of others. This is robbery; this is banditry. . . We are once more among the very rich nations, but we are not ashamed to rob the property of the fellaheen".
This is a still small voice in Jewry at the present moment (incidentally, Dr. Albert Einstein spoke with the same voice: "My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest; I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain", 1950), but it is the only one which gives Jewry the hope of ultimate salvation from the Zionism of the Chazars. Today the probability, if not the certainty, is that this salvation can only come after the final tribulation in which the wanton adventure in Palestine must involve the multitudes of the West, the Jews among them.
One final point remains to be established about the creation, "de facto", of the Zionist state; namely, that it was the child of the revolution. The revolution enabled the Jews "to become a majority in Palestine", as the British authors of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 had desired, and this transformation in Palestine could not have been effected in any other way, for no large body of Jews anywhere else in the world could have been brought to go there. The mass-movement was only possible in the case of these Eastern Jews who for centuries had lived in close Talmudic regimentation, and the manner of their transportation to Palestine has been shown. In 1951 Israeli Government statistics showed that of the "majority" which had been achieved (about 1,400,000 Jews), 1,061,000 were foreign-born, and 577,000 of these came from the communized countries behind the Iron curtain, where non-Jews were not allowed to move even from one town to another without police and other permits. (Most of the remaining 484,000 were North African or Asiatic Jews who arrived after the establishment of the state and took no part in its violent acquisition).
The invaders, therefore, were the Eastern Jews of Tartar-Mongol stock, but force of numbers alone would not have ensured their success. They needed arms for that. During the war General Wavell had informed Mr. Churchill that the Jews, if allowed to, could "beat the Arabs", and he evidently based this judgment on the arms which, as he knew, the Zionists had then amassed. At that time these could only have been British or American arms, clandestinely obtained from the depots of the Allied armies operating in North Africa and the Middle East (a process at least winked at, if not officially approved, by the political leaders in London and Washington, as has been shown). General Wavell, though his
opinion proved correct, may at the time have overestimated the Zionist strength or have underestimated Arab resistance, for the Zionists, after the event, did not attribute it to the Allied weapons obtained by them. On the contrary, they believed that they owed their victory in the six months of fighting (between the "partition" vote and Deir Yasin) to the arms they received from the revolution. The Iron Curtain, which had opened to let the invaders of Palestine leave, opened again to allow arms to reach them in decisive quantities.
This was the first major consequence of General Eisenhower's order, issued under President Roosevelt's direction, to halt the Allied armies west of the Berlin-Vienna line and allow Czechoslovakia to fall to the Soviet; the arms came from that captive country, where the great Skoda arsenal, as a result of his order, had merely passed from Nazi into Communist hands. A few weeks after President Truman's recognition of the Zionist state the New York Herald-Tribune published this report from Israel:
"Russian prestige has soared enormously among all political factions . . . Through its consistent espousal of Israel's cause in the United Nations, the Soviet Union has established a goodwill reservoir with leftists, moderates and right wing elements. Perhaps of more importance to a new nation fighting for its existence has been a fact less generally known: that Russia provided practical help when practical help was needed . . . Russia opened its military stores to Israel. From the Soviet satellite nation of Czechoslovakia, Jews made some of their most important and possibly their most sizable bulk purchases. Certain Czech arms shipments which reached Israel during critical junctures of the war played a vital role . . . When Jewish troops marched in review down Tel Aviv's Allenby Street last week, new Czechoslovak rifles appeared on the shoulders of infantry soldiers" (August 5, 1948).
At that time the Zionist and Zionist-controlled press throughout the West began explicitly to identify "anti-Semitism", with "anti-Communism" (the attribution of Jewish origins and leadership to Communism had long been denounced as the mark of the "anti-Semite"). The Jewish Sentinel of Chicago, for instance, in June 1946 had already declared, "We recognize anti-Sovietism for what it really is. . . Did you ever hear of any anti-Semites anywhere in the world who were not also anti-Soviet? . . . We recognize our foes. Let us also recognize our friends, the Soviet people". In the schools of the new state itself the flag of the revolution was flown and its hymn sung on May Day, an ostentatious acknowledgement of affinity if not of parenthood. In January 1950 the Tel Aviv correspondent of the London Times reported that Czechoslovakia was still the source of arms supply for the Zionist' state.
So much for the birth of "Israel" and the pains it caused to others. No offspring of political illegitimacy was ever ushered into the world by so many sponsors; the "recognitions" poured in and the peacemakers were everywhere discomfited. Mr. Bevin continued in office for a few years and then resigned, soon
to die; General Marshall and Mr. Forrestal were dropped at the first opportunity, obviously for the discouragement of others who might take their responsible duty seriously.
Within a few weeks the new state took another step towards "the abyss" of "the old evil". The "United Nations", having accepted the accomplished bisection of Europe and recommended the bisection of Palestine, showed a tardy concern for "peace" and appealed to Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden to go to Palestine and mediate between the parties. Count Bernadotte had always given himself to the mitigation of human suffering, particularly to the relief and rescue of Jewish victims during the Second War. He worked in the sign of the Cross (the red one) and was killed at the very place where the Cross first became a symbol of faith and hope. No deed can be more atrocious than the murder of an accepted peacemaker and mediator by one of the combatant parties, and within four months of its creation the Zionist state added this second symbolic act to its calendar.
Count Bernadotte (like Mr. Forrestal) kept a diary, published after his death. This records that, after accepting the mission of peace, he passed through London and was visited by Dr. Nahum Goldman, then vice-president of the Jewish Agency and the Zionist state's representative, who told him that: "the state of Israel was now in a position to take full and complete responsibility for the acts committed by the Stern Gang and the members of Irgun".
These were the killer-groups whose deed at Deir Yasin effected the clearance of territory for the Zionists and was implicitly "recognized" by the West. They were the "activists" against whom Dr. Weizmann had uttered warning at the Zionist Congress of 1946. Deir Yasin had shown that they had the power, by calculated acts of terrorism, to change the whole course of world affairs, irrespective of anything said by Zionist leaders, by politicians in the West, or by the "United Nations".
They have this power in 1956, and will continue to have it. They can at any time precipitate the world into new war, for they have been placed in the most inflammable spot in the world, rightly described as "the powder keg" by an American Secretary of State, a British Foreign Secretary and the Zionist Premier himself. Up to the time when Dr. Nahum Goldman made the above-quoted statement to Count Bernadotte a pretence had been kept up that they were beyond the control of the "responsible" Zionist leaders, who deplored their acts. Dr. Goldman's assurance was presumably meant to convince Count Bernadotte that his work of mediation would not be wantonly destroyed by any such act as that of Deir Yasin. The terrorists then murdered Count Bernadotte himself, and in the sequel (as will be shown) the Israeli government took responsibility for them and their deeds.
Count Bernadotte, after hearing these reassuring words, set out to pacify. In Egypt he saw the Prime Minister, Nokrashi Pasha, who said he "recognized the
extent of Jewish economic power, since it controlled the economic system of many countries, including the United States, England, France, Egypt itself and perhaps even Sweden" (Count Bernadotte did not demur to the last statement). Nokrashi Pasha said the Arabs did not expect to escape that domination. However, for the Jews to achieve economic domination of the whole of Palestine was one thing; what the Arabs would not accept, and would resist, was the attempt by force and terrorism, and with the assistance of international Zionism, to set up a Zionist state based on coercion. After this King Farouk told Count Bernadotte that if the war continued (it has not yet ended) it would develop into a third world war; Count Bernadotte agreed and said he had for that reason accepted the task of Mediator.
He also mentioned that in the war he had had "the privilege of rescuing about 20,000 persons, many of them Jews; I myself had been in charge of this work". He evidently thought this would qualify him for Zionist respect, and was wrong. Within a few days he had persuaded the Arabs (on June 9, 1948) to agree unconditionally to a cease-fire, but then read a fanatical Zionist attack on himself for "having forced the truce on the Jews". "I began to realize what an exposed position I was in . . . the friendliness towards me would unquestionably turn to suspicion and illwill if, in my later activities as Mediator, I failed to study primarily the interest of the Jewish party but sought to find an impartial and just solution of the problem".
Irgun (for which the Zionist government through Dr. Goldman in London had claimed "full and complete responsibility") then broke the truce (June 18-30, 1948) by landing men and arms. Count Bernadotte and his observers "were unable to judge the number of Irgun men landed or the quantity of war material unloaded" because the Zionist government refused to allow them near the spot. In the first week of July "the Jewish press made very violent attacks on me". The defamationist method (used against Mr. Forrestal) was now employed and Count Bernadotte's efforts to rescue Jewish victims during the war were turned against him; the insinuation was made that his negotiations with the Nazi Gestapo chief, Heinrich Himmler, towards the war's end about the liberation of Jews had been of dubious character. "It was unjust to cast aspersions on me", (the innuendo was that Count Bernadotte was "a Nazi") "my work having been the means of saving the lives of about 10,000 Jews".
That meant as little to the Zionists as Alexander II's and Count Stolypin's efforts to "improve the lot of the Jews" forty years earlier; Count Bernadotte's mortal offence was impartiality. Between July 19 and August 12 he had to tell Dr. Joseph, Zionist military governor of Jerusalem, that according to his observers' reports "the Jews were the most aggressive party in Jerusalem". On September 16, on the historic peacemaker's path "to Jerusalem" (the title of his book) Count Bernadotte in effect wrote his own death warrant; on that day he sent his "Progress Report" as Mediator from Rhodes to the United Nations, and within
twenty-four hours he was murdered.
The reason lay in his proposals. He accepted the "de facto" establishment of the Zionist state but, building on that basis, sought to reconcile and pacify by impartial proposals, as just to each party as the accomplished fact would allow. His chief concern was for the civilian Arab population, driven by the pogrom at Deir Yasin from its native villages and huddled beyond the frontiers. Nothing like this had ever been done under the wing of the West, and Count Bernadotte was fresh from efforts to rescue Jews from Hitler. Thus he proposed:
(l) that the boundaries of the Zionist state should be those envisaged in the "recommendation" of the United Nations on November 29, 1947, the Negev to remain Arab territory and the United Nations to ensure that these boundaries were "respected and maintained"; (2) that (as also "recommended") Jerusalem be internationalized under United Nations control; (3) that the United Nations should "affirm and give effect to" the right of the Arab fugitives to return to their homes.
Having despatched these proposals on September 16, 1948, Count Bernadotte, before they could reach New York, flew to Jerusalem (September 17). He and his party, unarmed and defenceless, drove towards Government House when their car was halted by a Zionist jeep pulled across the road. Their movements were clearly as well known as the contents of Count Bernadotte's report; three men jumped from the jeep, ran to his car, and with sten guns killed him and his Chief Observer in Jerusalem, the French Colonel Serot.
The survivors, in an appendix to his diary, describe the killing in detail. Their accounts show its efficient preparation and execution and plainly point to the identity of the chief organizer. The actual murderers escaped without hindrance, two in the jeep and one across country. None was arrested or charged (report, probably credible, says that a waiting aeroplane removed the murderers to communized Czechoslovakia). The subsequent Israeli enquiry stated that:
"The murder as it was actually carried out and all the preparations that went with it are predicated on the following points: (a) a clear decision to assassinate Count Bernadotte and the elaboration of a detailed plan for its carrying out; (b) a complex spy network capable of keeping track of the Count's movements during the time of his stay in Jerusalem so as to enable those responsible for the operation to fix its place and time; (c) men experienced in this kind of activities or who had received in good time training for it; (d) appropriate arms and methods of communication as well as safe refuge after the murder; (e) a commander well experienced and responsible for the actual perpetration" .
For such men the new state had declared itself "fully responsible". Three days later a French news agency received a letter expressing regret that Colonel Serot, had been killed in mistake for the Mediator's Chief-of-Staff, the Swedish General Lundstrom, he being "an anti-Semite" (General Lundstrom was in another seat of the car). This letter was signed "Hazit Moledeth"; the Israeli
police report stated that this was the name of the secret terrorist group within the Stern Gang.
General Lundstrom announced (September 18) that "These deliberate murders of two high international officials constitute a breach of the truce of the utmost gravity and a black page in Palestine's history for which the United Nations will demand a full accounting". No such demand was to be expected from the United Nations which (as this account has shown) responds only to the strongest pressure exerted behind the scenes. It has (or then had; none can say what wondrous transformation the future might bring) no morality of its own; it was an oracle, worked by a hidden mechanism, and it did not trouble itself about the murder of its Mediator any more than the Washington and London governments had troubled about the persecution of Mr. Forrestal and the murder of Lord Moyne. It ignored the Mediator's proposals; the Zionists took and kept what territory they then wanted (including the Negev), refused to let the Arabs return, and proclaimed that they would not allow Jerusalem to be internationalized (they are implacable in these points today, eight years later). The world-newspapers brought out the editorial which they seemed to keep in standing-type for such occasions ("Incalculable harm has been done to the Zionist cause. . . ") and then resumed their daily denunciations of any who pleaded the Arab case as "anti-Semites". The Times of London even blamed Count Bernadotte for his own murder; it said the proposal to internationalize Jerusalem "undoubtedly incited certain Jews to kill Count Bernadotte", and in the common understanding the word "incite" imputes blame.
In Israel four months later two Stern Group leaders named Yellin and Shmuelevitz were sentenced to eight and five years imprisonment in this connection by a special court, the president of which, in reading the judgment, said there was "no proof that the order to kill Count Bernadotte had been given by the leadership". The two men (according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency) "scarcely paid heed to the proceedings in view of the fact that the State Council was expected to approve a general amnesty", and within a few hours of their sentencing they were released, then being escorted in triumph to a popular reception. The "Commander-in-Chief" of Irgun, a Mr. Menachem Begin, some years later made "a triumphal tour" of Western cities, being received in Montreal, for instance, by "a guard of honour of the Montreal police headed by Rabbis bearing Scrolls of the Law" (the South African Jewish Herald). Speaking at Tel Aviv during an election campaign in 1950 Mr. Begin claimed credit for the foundation of the Zionist state, through the deed at Deir Yasin. He said the Irgun had "occupied Jaffa", which the government party "had been ready to hand over to the Arabs", and added:
"The other part of the Irgun's contribution was Deir Yasin, which has caused the Arabs to leave the country and make room for the newcomers. Without Deir Yasin and the subsequent Arab rout, the present government could not absorb
one-tenth of the immigrants".
Throughout the ensuing years, to this day, Mr. Begin continued to make sanguinary threats against the neighbouring Arab states*, to whom the presence of the Palestinean Arabs within their borders was a con stant reminder of Deir Yasin and of the dire meaning of his menaces. For five years the public pretence was maintained that "the terrorists" had acted without authority at Deir Yasin and then, in April 1953, four Irgun men wounded at Deir Yasin claimed compensation. The Israeli government, through its Ministry of Security, denied the claim on the ground that the attack was "unauthorized", whereon the Irgun commander produced a letter from the official Zionist military headquarters in Jerusalem authorizing the action. By that time the signatory was Israeli Minister in Brazil.
In the city where the "United Nations" had their headquarters, a strong reason offered why no "accounting" for Count Bernadotte's murder should be demanded. When it happened the American presidential election was close at hand. The campaign was at full heat and both candidates (Mr. Truman and Mr. Thomas Dewey) held the Zionist vote to be indispensable to success. They were vying for it and Palestine was a long way from New York. Mr. Truman was the better-qualified aspirant, for he had recognized the new state and proclaimed the act "the proudest" of his life. On another occasion he said it was one guided by "the highest humanitarian purpose". A few weeks after the murder on the road to Jerusalem he was elected president; at the year's end he gave White House employees a bookmarker with the words, "I would rather have peace than be President" .
By 1948 Colonel House's electoral strategy of 1910 had been developed into a high-precision instrument controlled by the Zionist international; the masterswitch being in New York State. The machine and company-flotation era added a new verb to the English language: "to rig", meaning to arrange or manipulate. Experts are able to "rig" machines. An example is the gambling-or-slot-machine in America. John Doe inserts his coin in the vague belief that the machine is operated by the laws of chance, and that if he is chance' s favourite its entire contents will pour into his hands; in fact the machine is expertly adjusted so that a precisely-calculated proportion of its receipts (probably between eighty and ninety percent) go to the gambling syndicate and the residue goes in small windfalls to John Doe.
The "rigging" of the American electoral system is the determining factor in the events of the 20th Century. A mechanism originally designed to enable John Doe
* Begin Calls For War: Jerusalem. Attack the Arabs smash one weak spot after another, crush one front after another until victory is assured. . . this was the essence of the speech which Mr. Menahem Begin, leader of the Herut Party made last week in Jerusalem. He was speaking from the balcony of a hotel overlooking Zion Square filled with a few thousand persons. 'Our losses in such an action will not be negligible but at any rate they will be much less than when we face the combined Arab armies in the field', he said, '. . . today the Defence Forces are stronger than all the Arab armies combined . . Moses needed ten blows to take the Israelies out of Egypt; with one blow we can throw the Egyptians out of Israel', he said, referring to the Gaza Strip." (Johannesburg Zionist Record, August 20, 1954).
to express his opinion about policies and parties has been adjusted to such a point of nicety, almost precluding error, that he is left without voice in his national affairs; no matter what coin he inserts in which slot, the governing syndicate wins.
The electoral system itself might at the start have been designed to make easy the task of "a foreign group" bent on dictating the course of American state policy. An election always impends: a Congressional one every second, a presidential one every fourth year. No sooner is a Congress or President elected than the "pressure-groups" begin to work on the aspirants for the next election; the party-managers begin to worry about the next contest; and the would be Senators, Congressmen and Presidents start to feel, and respond to, "the pressure". There is no breathing-space in which prudence might prevail and the stranglehold be broken (in 1953, as will be seen, even the struggle for the mayoralty of New York City produced an abrupt, major reversal of American state policy, the issue being "support for Israel". The intensification of "pressure" at these recurrent moments, and the consequent warnings from the party-managers to incumbents in Congress or the White House, bring about these back-somersaults, which upset the whole edifice of policy laboriously erected by responsible ministers and competent permanent officials).
In these circumstances the new "state" set up in Palestine in 1948 was never, and never can be, a "state" in any meaning of the word formerly used in recorded history. It was the outpost of a world organization with special access to every government, parliament and foreign office in the Western world (and most especially to the government, parliament and foreign office of the United States, which in the 1950's was the most powerful country in the world), and its chief function was to exercise control over the American Republic, not to afford "a home" for the Jews of the world. The prospect opened by this state of affairs was that of increasing American involvement in an explosive situation in the Levant, artificially created and pregnant with the danger of world war.
When 1948 ended, thirty-one years after the first triumph of the dual conspiracy (the Balfour Declaration and the Bolshevik revolution) the Zionist state had been set up. Mr. Truman, the pacemaker in "recognition", had been advised by his responsible officers that the partition forcibly effected at Deir Yasin would lead to a third world war; all leading Western politicians had received the same counsel from their responsible advisers. None of the "top-line politicians" concerned can have been in doubt about the shape which their support of Zionism would give to the future, and their public utterances about it cannot have expressed their private knowledge or belief. The American politicians of the 1940's and 1950's, like Mr. Leopold Amery and Mr. Winston Churchill during the earlier decades, evidently were captive to the belief that, for some reason never disclosed, "policy" in this one matter could never "change". The captivity of the London and Washington governments, and the identity of
the captors, even today (1956) is not realized by the American and British masses (though the now apparent danger of a new world war beginning in and spreading outward from Zionised Palestine is for the first time disquietening them). In the rest of the world it has long been understood. As long ago as the 1920's for instance, the Maharajah of Kashmir asked Sir Arthur Lothian (as that British diplomat relates), "why the British government was establishing a 'Yehudi ka Raj' (Rule of the Jews) in India. I demurred to this description, but he insisted that it was true, saying the Viceroy, Lord Reading, was a Jew, the Secretary of State, Mr. Edwin Montague, was a Jew, the High Commissioner, Sir William Meyer, was a Jew, and what more evidence did I want?" Thus a remote Indian Maharajah, thirty years ago, clearly saw the true shape of coming events in the Western world.
I quoted earlier the statement of the Egyptian Prime Minister to Count Bernadotte, that "Jewish economic power controlled the economic system of. . . the United States, England, France, Egypt itself. . ." In the seven years that have passed the leaders of all the Arab states have openly and repeatedly charged that the American government has become merely the instrument of Zionist ambitions and have pointed to their own experience as the proof.
Far on the other side of the world the effect of the "rigged" electoral machine in New York was felt in its other manifestation: support of the revolution. Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese leader, was driven by similar shifts in American state policy from the Chinese mainland (where Communism with American support established itself) to the island of Formosa, where for the time being he again received some measure of American support. A well-known American broadcaster, Mr. Tex McCrary, visited him there and reported back to the listening millions of New York State: "I squirmed with embarrassment when I was told, 'We have learned never to trust America for more than eighteen months at a time, between elections' ".
This control of American state policy, through control of the election machine, led in 1952 to a culminating act of the Talmudic vengeance, wreaked this time on the half of Germany which had been left "free" by the bisection. This half of Germany was forced to pay tribute to the Zionist state, set up three years after Germany's defeat in the Second War!
After the First War the Western victor powers tried to exact tribute ("reparations") but failed; what was received was merely by book-entry, for it was cancelled out by American and British loans. After the Second War the revolution exacted tribute from captive East Germany by simply helping itself. The Western victor powers made no demand for "reparations" on their own account, but extorted it for Zion.
As the years passed the alarm of responsible men in the Middle East again made itself felt in the State Department. It was constantly reminded by its advisers on the spot that the seven Arab States had never accepted the deed of
1948, that they held themselves still to be in a state of war with the interloping state, and held the United States to be paying for arms to be used against themselves.
Thus the idea was born, several years after the war's end, of making the "free" half of Germany pay "reparations" to a state which had not even existed during the Second War; the continued propping-up of the new state was to be ensured and the true source of its support obscured. The idea was long bruited behind the scenes and (like the judgment of Nuremberg) then was suddenly given symbolic realization on the eve of the Jewish High Holy days in 1952 (or, as Time magazine of New York put it, "In the last week of the Jewish year 5711"). It formed the dominant theme of the ensuing Judaic celebrations, one Jewish newspaper remarking that it was "The finest New Year present for Jewry we could think of".
The Chancellor of occupied West Germany, Dr. Adenauer ("waxy pale") informed the Bundestag at Bonn of "the obligation to make moral and material amends". His Minister for Justice, Dr. Dehler, spoke differently to an audience at Coburg: "The agreement with Israel was concluded at the wish of the Americans, because the United States, in view of the feeling in the Arab countries, cannot continue to support the state of Israel in the same way as heretofore".
The American presidential election of 1952 was then immediately at hand. The West German government was constrained to pay, over a period of twelve to fourteen years, 822 million dollars to Israel, mostly in goods. The picture resulting from this transaction somewhat strikingly recalls Stehelin's summary of passages from the Cabala depicting the Messianic consummation: "But let us see a little after what manner the Jews are to live in their ancient country under the Administration of the Messiah. In the first place, the strange nations, which they shall suffer to live, shall build them houses and cities, till them ground and plant them vineyards; and all this, without so much as looking for any reward of their labour". This picture is not far different from that offered by the British, American and German taxpayers under the different forms of constraint (hidden in the first two cases, open in the third case) to which they have been subjected in the matter of tribute for Zionism.
The Western masses were not informed about the manner in which this payment of tribute was extorted; it was presented to them as an independent act of the West German government, prompted by high moral feeling. Jewish readers, on the other hand, were as well informed as Dr. Dehler's audience at Coburg. To quote two examples: the Jewish Telegraph Agency "revealed that the United States Government has played a very important role in pushing Western Germany to make a decent reparations offer to the Jews; the British government has also done its share, although to a smaller extent"; and the Johannesburg Zionist Herald said, 'The agreement with Germany could not have been possible without the active and very effective support of the United States government in
Washington and of the United States High Commissioner's office in Germany". The entire Arab press reported similarly, and an American newspaperman who sought to make his way in to one of the Arab refugee camps was rebuffed with the words, "What is the use of talking with you? We Arabs know very well that in America no newspaper dares to tell the whole truth about the Palestine question" .
In England the official version was given to parliament by Lord Reading, Foreign Under Secretary and son of the Viceroy mentioned in the Maharajah of Kashmir's question to Sir Arthur Lothian thirty years earlier. Lord Reading's statement was prompted by the usual expedient of a "question", on this occasion from a Socialist peer, Lord Henderson, who began by saying that "over six million Jews were done to death". Lord Reading's answer is of permanent interest; he said that the West German payments to the new state would be: "in the nature of some measure of reparation of moral, even more than material value", and that they would be "based upon the calculated cost of resettlement in Israel of Jews driven out of Europe by the Nazis".
This statement implicitly reasserts the principle that the only Nazi crime morally reparable was the treatment of Jews; none ever suggested that West Germany should pay the cost of resettling Poles, Czechs and all other victims. Its peculiar interest lies in the allusion to "reparation of moral value"; when it was made nearly a million Arabs had been "driven out" of Palestine by the Zionists and their claim to return to their homes had been repeatedly, even contemptuously rejected.
Probably the most characteristic passage in this typical statement is that which refers to "resettling Jews driven out of Europe by the Nazis". Israel is the one place in the world where the numbers of the Jewish population may with accuracy be learned. According to Israeli government statistics, it was about 1,400,000 in 1953, and among these were only 63,000 Jews (less than five percent) from Germany and Austria. These 63,000 were the only inhabitants of Israel who by any stretch of imagination might have been said to have been driven out of Europe and to resettle in Israel. The great mass came from Poland, Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria some time after the war's end (and certainly were not "driven out" as they were protected in those countries by special laws and preference in state employment) or from North Africa.
No moral basis existed for the extortion of tribute from the West Germans for the Zionist state, and if any had ever existed, in respect of the 63,000, it had long been cancelled by the Zionists' "driving out" of nearly a million Arabs. The affair is unique in Western history and proves only the extent of the American and British government's submission to Zionism.
West Germany was compelled to bear a large part of the cost of the new state's armaments and development; therewith the likelihood of another great war was brought nearer and the out look for the Arabs was made much worse. The Zionist
state was at length propped up and the consequences at once began to flow. The exertion of "pressure" on the West German government in this matter was about the last major act of American state policy under President Truman, whose term was about to expire. *
* As a footnote to the West German affair, the Western Powers in Vienna, (on this occasion acting in perfect accord with the Soviet state) at the same bidding humbled little Austria (Hitler's first victim) by vetoing a law of amnesty and restitution which might have benefited some non-Jews. The Austrian government (at that time supposed to be "sovereign" again) protested in writing to the American High Commissioner, specifically accusing him of submitting to the orders of "emigrants from Austria" who were on his staff as "Jewish advisers". No intelligible account of this episode reached the British or American newspaper reader.
http://iamthewitness.com/books/Douglas.Reed/The.Controversy.of.Zion/