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Share DZ Season 058 Part 19. Israel. The Man for the Job of Getting the Jewish Homeland Established - but the British didn't want to get the job done
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DZ Season 058 Part 19. Israel. The Man for the Job of Getting the Jewish Homeland Established - but the British didn't want to get the job done
The British Mandate over Palestine didn’t give England the same control as they had over one of their colonies or Dominions of the British Empire. The British, who had conquered the Middle East from the Ottoman Empire, and whose Lord Balfour had come up with the inspired idea of creating a homeland for the Jews in their traditional home, the Promised Land that God had given them, were put in charge of running Palestine. The Ottoman rulers were gone - forever. Someone had to run Palestine. That someone was the English.
They were put in charge of Palestine by the League of Nations. The job of the British was to make it easy for Jews to migrate there. To stop Muslims and other peoples from anywhere else in the world moving in there. The end-game was to see the Jews make up the majority of the people living in Palestine, and then to give them their independence.
Palestine, when England was given the Mandate, was mostly a run down uninhabited country. It was a wasteland. But that had begun to change from about the 1880s but only because Jewish immigrants had started to arrive and set up farming estates. These Jews were very successful in transforming the land. The Muslims were largely a nomadic people, looking for opportunities where they could make a living. The Muslims weren’t entrepreneurs they were just labourers. The Jews paid their farm workers really well. So the more Jews who arrived in Palestine and set up farms, the more Muslims came too.
Muslim countries entirely surrounded the British Mandate and every other country within cooee of Palestine was Muslim too. In these programmes I’ve used the word Muslim and not Arab. Arabs are a particular race and there aren’t that many of them in the area of Palestine. Of Muslims there are many, but they’re made up of all sorts of other races, including Persians in Iran and the Asiatic Turks in Turkey. Mostly everyone calls them Arabs, but that’s misleading.
So ideally Jews were supposed to be able to rock up to Palestine and walk straight in, and Muslims, who were not living in Palestine ideally might be allowed in temporarily to help with harvests etc, but then were supposed to return home. Most ideally of all no more Muslims from other countries should have been allowed into Palestine from the time the British mandate started in July 1922.
But that wasn’t how it was working out. Increasingly the British were dramatically slowing down legal Jewish immigration. Totally stopping illegal Jewish immigration. At the same time they did nothing to prevent all, except the most outrageous examples of Muslims entering Palestine from other countries, staying there. This has given the Muslims so much chance to cause so much trouble ever since making claims about having lived on the land from time immemorial – that aren’t true.
Generally far more Muslims entered Palestine illegally than Jews who entered legally or illegally. Since there were more Muslims there to start with than Jews, if this kept up there would never be a Jewish homeland. That actually seems to have been the goal of the British Middle East Department that had been given the job of bringing the Jewish state into existence. So I’d better talk about Colonel MacKereth because he should have been a giant of a figure in establishing the Jewish homeland – and that before World War 2. So many of the Jews who perished in the holocaust, would have been able to escape to Palestine if the British had done their job the way Colonel MacKereth was urging them to.
Tag words: British Mandate; Palestine; British Empire; Ottoman Empire; Lord Balfour; League of Nations; Muslims; Arabs; British Middle East Department; Colonel MacKereth; Anthony Eden; WD Battershill; Grand Mufti; George W Rendel; Head of the Eastern Department; Chaim Weizmann; Lord Ormsby-Gore; Palestine Royal Commission;
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By Paul FordyceThe British Mandate over Palestine didn’t give England the same control as they had over one of their colonies or Dominions of the British Empire. The British, who had conquered the Middle East from the Ottoman Empire, and whose Lord Balfour had come up with the inspired idea of creating a homeland for the Jews in their traditional home, the Promised Land that God had given them, were put in charge of running Palestine. The Ottoman rulers were gone - forever. Someone had to run Palestine. That someone was the English.
They were put in charge of Palestine by the League of Nations. The job of the British was to make it easy for Jews to migrate there. To stop Muslims and other peoples from anywhere else in the world moving in there. The end-game was to see the Jews make up the majority of the people living in Palestine, and then to give them their independence.
Palestine, when England was given the Mandate, was mostly a run down uninhabited country. It was a wasteland. But that had begun to change from about the 1880s but only because Jewish immigrants had started to arrive and set up farming estates. These Jews were very successful in transforming the land. The Muslims were largely a nomadic people, looking for opportunities where they could make a living. The Muslims weren’t entrepreneurs they were just labourers. The Jews paid their farm workers really well. So the more Jews who arrived in Palestine and set up farms, the more Muslims came too.
Muslim countries entirely surrounded the British Mandate and every other country within cooee of Palestine was Muslim too. In these programmes I’ve used the word Muslim and not Arab. Arabs are a particular race and there aren’t that many of them in the area of Palestine. Of Muslims there are many, but they’re made up of all sorts of other races, including Persians in Iran and the Asiatic Turks in Turkey. Mostly everyone calls them Arabs, but that’s misleading.
So ideally Jews were supposed to be able to rock up to Palestine and walk straight in, and Muslims, who were not living in Palestine ideally might be allowed in temporarily to help with harvests etc, but then were supposed to return home. Most ideally of all no more Muslims from other countries should have been allowed into Palestine from the time the British mandate started in July 1922.
But that wasn’t how it was working out. Increasingly the British were dramatically slowing down legal Jewish immigration. Totally stopping illegal Jewish immigration. At the same time they did nothing to prevent all, except the most outrageous examples of Muslims entering Palestine from other countries, staying there. This has given the Muslims so much chance to cause so much trouble ever since making claims about having lived on the land from time immemorial – that aren’t true.
Generally far more Muslims entered Palestine illegally than Jews who entered legally or illegally. Since there were more Muslims there to start with than Jews, if this kept up there would never be a Jewish homeland. That actually seems to have been the goal of the British Middle East Department that had been given the job of bringing the Jewish state into existence. So I’d better talk about Colonel MacKereth because he should have been a giant of a figure in establishing the Jewish homeland – and that before World War 2. So many of the Jews who perished in the holocaust, would have been able to escape to Palestine if the British had done their job the way Colonel MacKereth was urging them to.
Tag words: British Mandate; Palestine; British Empire; Ottoman Empire; Lord Balfour; League of Nations; Muslims; Arabs; British Middle East Department; Colonel MacKereth; Anthony Eden; WD Battershill; Grand Mufti; George W Rendel; Head of the Eastern Department; Chaim Weizmann; Lord Ormsby-Gore; Palestine Royal Commission;