The British Mandate
The British Mandate of Palestine was established on July 24th, 1922.
Jeremy Rosen
It was approved at a private meeting of the Council of the League of Nations at St. James Palace in London. It went beyond the wording of the Balfour Declaration that ‘His Majesty’s Government’ only viewed ‘with favour’ the prospect of a national home for the Jews in Palestine. But this recognised the historical connection of the Jews to Palestine and understood that Zionism meant reconstituting their national home. We have the British to thank for this. But sadly, things went downhill from there.
It is now fashionable in certain circles to regard this as the original sin of the Imperial Colonial powers. Conveniently forgetting all the colonial sins, occupations, and conquests of the anti-Colonialists themselves. Furthermore, the anti-Israel narrative likes to claim that it was the Holocaust that forced the hand of the Western powers to support a Jewish State in 1947. The current narrative blames Israel entirely for the defeat of the Arab armies in 1948 as if Israel declared war.
When I first went to Israel as a teenager in 1958, I was surprised at the ill feeling and resentment towards the British Mandate. The British were still regarded as the enemy, and being British was an embarrassment. Why did Britain swing from supporting the Jews to opposing them? Was Britain the hero or the villain?
Initially, some Arab leaders welcomed the influxes of the twentieth century and promised joint development. Feisal 1st and Chaim Weizmann signed an agreement in 1919 to work together to achieve common goals. It was, sadly, short-lived. Arab supporters were assassinated.
There were riots, attacks on civilians, and the notorious Hebron massacre of Jews in 1929. The British felt they had to appease the Arabs, so they began to restrict Jewish immigration. The Jews were divided between the pacifists and the fighters. The first member of a Jewish underground group, Shlomo Ben Yosef was executed in 1938. The British White Paper of 1939 virtually closed the door on Jewish immigration precisely at the moment when a haven might have saved hundreds of thousands from Nazi barbarity.
Those who did manage to escape Europe were detained in camps in Atlit. Refugee ships were sent back to Europe or redirected to Cyprus or Mauritius. The British army and police force became notorious for their harsh and humiliating treatment of Jews. Indeed, many of the volunteers who joined the British army and police in Palestine had anti-Semitic records.
The post-war foreign secretary of the Labour government was the notorious Ernest Bevin, who was adamantly opposed to the idea of a Jewish State. The outstanding Labour politician Richard Crossman believed he was profoundly anti-Semitic. He pushed the Mandate authorities to take a very hard line and enacted the Defence (Emergency) Regulations which suspended Habeas Corpus, established military courts, and prescribed the death penalty for carrying weapons or ammunition illegally and for membership of illegal organisations.
As diplomacy was not working, extreme Jewish groups such as Etzel (Irgun) and Lehi (Stern Gang) attacked British military and Arab targets. Still, the main Jewish community under Ben Gurion remained committed to cooperation with the Mandate forces and participating in the war effort. Indeed, the Haganah had been working with the British forces to find the extremists as well as captured British soldiers.
In 1946 Michael Eshbal and Yosef Simchon were arrested and sentenced to death. The Irgun began a policy of reprisals. Five days later, they kidnapped five British officers in Tel Aviv, and another one the following day in Jerusalem. Two weeks later, when Eshbal’s and Simchon’s sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, the officers were released.
On April 16, 1947, Dov Gruner, Yehiel Dresner, Mordechai Alkahi and Eliezer Kashani, were executed. In May 1947, forty-one prisoners broke out from Acre Prison. Six of them were killed and seven others were rearrested. Among the organisers, Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weiss, and Meir Nakar were tried by a military court and sentenced to death. All these names are unknown to the vast majority of Israelis today.
The Irgun retaliated by capturing two British soldiers and announced that if their men were put to death, they would do the same to the British soldiers. The High Commissioner Alan Cunningham gave the order and the Irgun men were executed. On July 29th at dawn Haviv, Weiss and Nakar. The day afterwards, the bodies of the two British soldiers were discovered hanging from olive trees. The Irgun admitted the killings. Britain erupted in pious anger. For Jews, they were martyrs.
Ernest Bevin did whatever he could to stop the Jewish State. He plotted with the Jordanians and negotiated “the Portsmouth Treaty” with Iraq (signed on January 15, 1948) undertaking to withdraw from Palestine and ensure a swift Arab occupation of all its territory to destroy the Jewish state. As the British withdrew, they handed over their hardware to the Arabs. And Britain sent army officer Sir John Glubb to establish and train the Arab Legion.
And yet we owe a lot to Britain as the first State to recognise the right of the Jews to their own homeland. We have gone through so many crises, those of us who have long experience. Rarely is a conflict all black and white. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now.
The Bible says, “ The poor will never cease from the land.” And neither will enmity and conflict, whether they are external or internal. I don’t have a solution, only optimism. But the Balfour Declaration and League of Nations were essential elements in establishing a Jewish State after two thousand years. And that I believe is a reason for all of us who care to celebrate.
Rabbi Jeremy Rosen lives in New York. He was born in Manchester. His writings are concerned with religion, culture, history and current affairs – anything he finds interesting or relevant. They are designed to entertain and to stimulate. Disagreement is always welcome.
