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THE CLIMACTERIC (3) - 3. The Years of Climax...524
THE EPILOGUE...568
APPENDIX - The Torah, The New Testament...572
BIBLIOGRAPHY...574
OTHER WORKS BY DOUGLAS REED, BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES…579
THE AUTHOR
A SHORT LIST OF BOOKS RECOMMENDED FOR FURTHER READING...580
INDEX
Page 524
THE CLIMACTERIC(3)
3. The Years of Climax
The years 1952-1956 brought the peoples of the West ever nearer to the reckoning
for the support which their leaders, through two generations and two world wars,
had given to the revolution and to Zionism. They were being drawn towards two
wars which foreseeably would merge into one war serving one dominant purpose. On
the one hand, they were committed by their politicians and parties to the
preservation of the Zionist state, the declared policy of which was to enlarge
its population by "three or four million people" in "ten to fifteen years"; that
meant war. On the other hand, they were daily made accustomed to
the idea that it was their destiny and duty to destroy Communism, which had
overflowed into half of Europe when the West opened the sluice-gates; that meant
war.
These two wars inevitably would become one war. The calculation is simple. The
territory for the expansion of the Zionist state could only be taken from the
neighbouring Arab peoples; the people for the expansion of the Zionist state
could only be taken from the area occupied by the revolution, because "three or
four million" Jews could not be found anywhere else save in the United States.*
For this purpose the West, in the phase that began in 1952, will have to be
persuaded that "anti-semitism" is rife in the Soviet area, just as it was
persuaded in the four following years that Zionist attacks on Arab countries
were Arab attacks on Israel. Mr. Ben-Gurion (Dec. 8, 1951) officially informed
the Soviet Government that "the return of the Jews to their historic homeland is
the pivotal mission of the state of Israel. . . the Government of Israel appeals
to the Soviet Union to enable those Jews in the Soviet Union who wish to
emigrate to do so". The New York Times two years later, reporting declining
immigration to Israel, said Mr. Ben-Gurion's aim "seems very remote" and added
that "the present pattern of immigration" would only change radically if there
were "an upsurge of anti-semitism" somewhere (at that period, June 26, 1953, the
denunciation of "anti-semitism behind the Iron Curtain" had begun). The New York
Herald-Tribune at the same period (Apr. 12, 1953) said "anti-semitism" had
become virulent in the Soviet Union and "the most crucial rescue job" facing
Israel in its sixth year was that of the "2,500,000 Jews sealed in Russia and
the satellite countries".
Therefore it was clear, in the light of the two world wars and their outcome in
each case, that any war undertaken by "the West" against "Communism" would in
fact be fought for the primary purpose of supplying the Zionist state with new
inhabitants from Russia; that any Middle East war in which the West engaged
would be waged for the primary purpose of enlarging the territory of the Zionist
state, to accommodate this larger population; and that the two wars would
effectively merge into one, in the course of which this dominant purpose would
remain hidden from the embroiled masses until it was achieved, and confirmed by
some new "world instrument", at the fighting's end.
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* The extraction of the Jews from the United States, although essential to the
"ingathering of the exiles", obviously belongs to a later stage of the process
and would depend on the success of the next phase, the "ingathering" of the Jews
from the Soviet area and from the African Arab countries. After that, strange
though the idea will seem to Americans and Britishers today, there would have to
be a "Jewish persecution" in America and this would be produced by the
propagandist method used in the past and applied impartially to one country
after another, including Russia, Poland, Germany, France, Spain and Britain. Dr.
Nahum Goldman, leader of the World Zionist Organization, in October 1952 told an
Israeli audience that there was one problem Zionism must solve if it was to
succeed: "How to get the Jews of the countries where they are not persecuted to
emigrate to Israel". He said this problem was "especially difficult in the
United States because the United States is less a country of Jewish persecution
or any prospect of Jewish persecution than any other" (Johannesburg Zionist
Record, Oct. 24, 1952). The reader will note that there are no countries without
"Jewish persecution"; there are only degrees of "Jewish persecution" in various
countries.
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Such was the position of "the West, fifty years after Mr. Balfour's and Mr.
Woodrow Wilson's first ensnarement by Zionism. I have a reason for enclosing the
words, "The West", in quotation marks, namely, that they no longer mean what The
West meant. Earlier the term signified the Christian area, from the eastern
borders of Europe across the Atlantic to the western seaboard of America and
including the outlying English-speaking countries in North America, Africa and
the Antipodes. After the Second War, when half of Europe was abandoned to the
Talmudic revolution, the two words received a more limited application. In the
popular mind "the West" meant England and America, ranked against the new
barbarism which one day it would extirpate in Europe and thrust back into its
barbaric, Asiatic homeland. America and England, first and foremost, still
represented "the free world" which one day would be restored throughout its
former area and with it, as in earlier times, the hopes of men outside it who
wanted to be free; so the mass mind understood.
Militarily, this was a proper assumption; the physical strength of "the West",
supported by the longing of the captive peoples, was more than equal to the
task. Actually the great countries to which the enslaved peoples looked were
themselves captive of the power which had brought about this enslavement; and
twice had shown that their arms, if used, would not be employed to liberate and
redress, but to prolong the 20th Century's ordeal.
What moral and spiritual values were earlier contained in those two words, The
West, were strongest in the countries abandoned to Communism, and those menaced
by Zionism, where suffering and peril were rekindling them in the souls of men.
In the once great citadels of the West, London and Washington, they were
repressed and dormant.
For this reason America was not truly qualified to takeover from England the
leading part in the world in the second half of the 20th Century and to perform
the task of liberation which the public masses were led to expect from it.
Materially, the Republic founded nearly two hundred years before was prodigious.
The riches of the world had poured into it during two world wars; its population
rapidly increased two hundred millions; its navy and air force were the greatest
in the world and, like its army, were built on that order of compulsion which
its people long had held to be the curse of Europe. In industry and technical
skill it was so formidable as to be a nightmare to itself. Its production was so
vast that it could not be absorbed and the dread memory of the 1929 slump caused
its leaders to devise many ways of distributing goods about the world in the
form of gifts and paying the producer for them out of revenues, so that, for a
while, manufacturer and workmen should be paid for an output for which, in
peace, no natural market offered. Its military bases, on the territory of once
sovereign peoples, were strewn over the globe, so that at any instant it could
strike in overwhelming force. . . at what, and for what?
At "Communism", its people were told, and for the liberation of the enslaved,
the relief of the world in thrall, the rectification of the deed of 1945. If
that was true, the end of the century's ordeal was at least in prospect, some
day, for the hearts of men everywhere were in that cause. But every major act of
the government in Washington in the years 1952-1956 belied these professions. It
seemed more in thrall to "the Jewish power" than even the British governments of
the preceding fifty years. It appeared to be unable to handle any leading
question of American foreign or domestic affairs save in terms of its bearing on
the lot of "the Jews", as the case of the Jews was presented to it by the
imperious Zionists. No small, puppet government looked much more vassal in its
acts than this, which the general masses held to be the most powerful government
in the world: that of the United States under its chief executive, President
Eisenhower, in the years 1953 to 1956.
Like that of a chancellor at a royal birth, the shadow of Zionism fell over the
selection, nomination and election of General Eisenhower. His meteoric promotion
during the 1939-1945 war, from the rank of a colonel, unversed in combat, to
that of Supreme Commander of all the Allied armies invading Europe, seems to
indicate that he was marked down for advancement long before, and research
supports that inference. In the 1920's young Lieutenant Eisenhower attended the
National War College in Washington, where a Mr. Bernard Baruch (who had played
so important a part in the selection, nomination and election of President
Woodrow Wilson in 1911-1912) gave instruction. Mr. Baruch at that early period
decided that Lieutenant Eisenhower was a star pupil, and when General Eisenhower
was elected president thirty years later he told American veterans that he had
for a quarter-century "had the privilege of sitting at Bernard's feet and
listening to his words". Early in his presidency Mr. Eisenhower intervened to
resolve, in Mr. Baruch's favour, a small dispute at the National War College,
where some opposed acceptance of a bust of Mr. Baruch, presented by admirers (no
living civilian's bust was ever displayed there before).
The support of "the adviser to six Presidents" obviously may have helped bring
about Lieutenant Eisenhower's rapid rise to the command of the greatest army in
history. On public record is the support which Mr. Baruch gave when General
Eisenhower (who had no party affiliations or history) in 1952 offered himself as
Republican Party candidate for the presidency. Up to that time Mr. Baruch had
been a staunch member of the Democratic Party, not just a regular Democrat, but
a passionate approver of the party label and an almost fanatical hater of the
Republican label" (his approved biography). In 1952 Mr. Baruch suddenly became a
passionate approver of the Republican label, provided that Mr. Eisenhower wore
it. Evidently strong reasons must have caused this sudden change in a lifetime's
allegiance, and they are worth seeking.
In 1952 the Republican Party had been out of office for twenty years. Under the
pendulum theory alone, therefore, it was due to return and thus to oust the
Democratic Party, of which Mr. Baruch for fifty years had been "a passionate
approver". Apart from the normal turn of the tide against a party overlong in
office, which was to be anticipated, the American elector in 1952 had especial
reasons to vote against the Democrats; the chief of these was the exposure of
Communist infestation of government under the Roosevelt and Truman regimes and
the public desire for a drastic cleansing of the stables.
In these circumstances it was reasonably clear, in 1952, that the Republican
Party and its candidate would win the election and the presidency. The natural
candidate was the party's leader, Senator Robert E. Taft, whose lifetime had
been given to it. At that very moment, and after his own lifetime of
"passionate" support of the Democratic Party (his cash contributions were very
large, and Mr. Forrestal's diary records the part played by such contributions,
in general, in determining the course of American elections and state policy)
Mr. Baruch, the "fanatical hater" of the Republican label, produced an
alternative candidate for the Republican nomination. That is to say, the officer
so long admired by him suddenly appeared in the ring, and Mr. Baruch's warm
commendation of him indicated the source of his strongest support.
The prospect which then opened was that if Mr. Eisenhower, instead of Senator
Taft, could obtain the party's nomination, the Republican Party would through
him be committed to pursue the Democratic policy of "internationalism" begun by
Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman. That, in turn, meant that if
the party-leader could be ousted the American elector would be deprived of any
genuine choice, for the only man who offered him an alternative, different
policy was Senator Taft.
This had been made plain, to the initiated, more than a year before the election
by the Republican leader next in importance to Senator Taft, Governor Thomas E.
Dewey of New York State. Mr. Dewey (who had astonished himself and the country
by losing the 1948 presidential election to Mr. Truman, a classic example of the
foredoomed failure of the "me too" method) stated, "I am an internationalist.
That's why I am for Eisenhower. Eisenhower is a Republican at heart, but more
important than that, he is an internationalist" (Look, Sept. 11, 1951). Among
initiates "internationalist" (like "activist" in Zionism) is a keyword,
signifying many un-avowed things; thus far in our century no avowed
"internationalist" in a frontal post has genuinely opposed the advance of
Communism, the advance of Zionism, and the world-government project towards
which these two forces convergingly lead. Senator Taft, on the other hand, was
violently attacked at this time as an "isolationist" (another key-word; it means
only that the person attacked believes in national sovereignty and national
interest, but it is made to sound bad in the ear of the masses).
Thus Mr. Eisenhower offered himself at the Republican Party convention at
Chicago in 1952 in opposition to Senator Taft. I was an eye-witness, through
television, and, although no novice, was astonished by the smoothness with
which Senator Taft's defeat was achieved. This event showed, long before the
actual election, that the nomination-mechanism had been so mastered that neither
party could even nominate any but a candidate approved by powerful selectors
behind the scene. The outcome of the presidential election itself is in these
circumstances of relatively little account in America today, nor can the
observer picture how the Republic might escape from this occult control. It is
not possible for either party to nominate its party-leader, or any other man,
unless he has been passed as acceptable to "the internationalists" beforehand.
The supplanting of the veteran party-leader, on the eve of his party's return to
office, was achieved through control of the block votes of the "key states".
Population-strength governs the number of votes cast by the state-delegations,
and at least two of these preponderant states (New York and California) are
those to which the Jewish immigration of the last seventy years had evidently
been directed for this purpose.* In 1952, when I watched, the voting for the two
men was running fairly even when Mr. Dewey smilingly delivered the large
package-vote of New York State against his party's leader and for Mr.
Eisenhower. Other "key states" followed suit and he received the nomination,
which in the circumstances of that moment also meant the presidency.
It also meant, in effect, the end of any genuine two-party system in America for
the present; the system of elected representatives which is known as "democracy"
sinks to the level of the one-party system in non-democracies if the two parties
do not offer a true choice of policy. The situation was so depicted to Jewish
readers by the Jerusalem Post on the eve of the election (Nov. 5, 1952), which
instructed them that there was "not much to choose between the two". (Mr.
Eisenhower, Republican; Mr. Stevenson, Democrat) "from the point of view of the
Jewish elector" and that Jewish interest should be concentrated on "the fate" of
those Congressmen and Senators held to be "hostile to the Jewish cause".
Immediately after the new President's inauguration (January, 1953) the British
Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill hastened to America to confer with him,
though not to Washington, where Presidents reside; Mr. Eisenhower suggested that
they meet "at Bernie's place", Mr. Baruch's Fifth Avenue mansion (Associated
Press, Feb. 7, 1953). Mr. Baruch at that time had been urgently recommending the
adoption of his "atom bomb plan" as the only effective deterrent to "Soviet
aggression" (his remarks to the Senate Committee were quoted in an earlier
chapter). Apparently he was not so suspicious of or hostile to the Soviet as he
then seemed, for some years later he disclosed that the notion of a
joint American-Soviet atomic dictatorship of the world had also appealed to him:
"A few years ago I met Vyshinsky at a party and said to him. . . 'You have the
bomb and we have the bomb. . . Let's control the thing while we can because
while we are talking all the nations will sooner or later get the bomb' " (Daily
Telegraph, June 9, 1956).
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* This is essential to the electoral strategy laid down, though presumably not
originally devised by Colonel House. The spanner-in-the-works problem posed by
it is the subject of many allusions earlier quoted, i.e.: ". . . Our failure to
go along with the Zionists might lose the states of New York, Pennsylvania and
California; I thought it was about time that somebody should pay some
consideration to whether we might not lose the United States" (Mr. James J.
Forrestal); "Niles had told the President that Dewey was about to come out with
a statement favouring the Zionist position and unless the President anticipated
this New York State would be lost to the Democrats" (Secretary of State James J.
Byrnes); "The Democratic Party would not be willing to relinquish the advantages
of the Jewish Vote" (Governor Thomas E. Dewey).
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General Eisenhower's election as the Republican candidate deprived America of
its last means of dissociating itself, through electoral repudiation, from the
Wilson-Roosevelt-Truman policy of "internationalism". Senator Taft was the only
leading politician who, in the public mind, clearly stood for the clean break
with that policy, and evidently for this reason the powers which have
effectively governed America in the last forty years attached major importance
to preventing his nomination. Some extracts from his book of 1952 have enduring
historic value, if only as a picture of what might have been if the Republican
voter had been allowed to vote for the Republican party leader:
"The result of the" (Roosevelt-Truman) "Administration policy has been to build
up the strength of Soviet Russia so that it is, in fact, a threat to the
security of the United States. . . Russia is far more a threat to the security
of the United States than Hitler in Germany ever was. . . There is no question
that we have the largest navy in the world, and certainly, while the British are
our allies, complete control of the sea throughout the world . . . We should be
willing to assist with our own sea and air forces any island nations which
desire our help. Among them are Japan, Formosa, the Philippines, Indonesia,
Australia and New Zealand; on the Atlantic side, Great Britain of course . . . I
believe that an alliance with England and a defence of the British Isles are far
more important than an alliance with any continental nation. . . With the
British there can be little doubt of our complete control of sea and air
throughout the world . . . If we really mean our anti-Communist policy . . . we
should definitely eliminate from the government all those who are directly or
indirectly connected with the Communist organization . . . Fundamentally I
believe the ultimate purpose of our foreign policy must be to protect the
liberty of the people of America . . . I feel that the last two presidents have
put all kinds of political and policy considerations ahead of their interest in
liberty and peace. . . It seems to me that the sending of troops without
authorization of Congress to a country under attack, as was done in Korea, is
clearly prohibited" (by the American Constitution). . . "The European Army
project, however, goes further . . . It involves the sending of troops to an
international army similar to that which was contemplated under the United
Nations Charter. . . I was never satisfied with the United Nations Charter. .
.it is not based on an underlying law and an administration of justice under
that law . . . I see no choice except to develop our own military policy and our
own policy of alliances, without substantial regard to the non-existent power of
the United Nations to prevent aggression . . . The other form of international
organization which is being urged strenuously upon the people of the United
States, namely, a
world state with an international legislature to make the laws and an
international executive to direct the army of the organization . . . appears to
me, at least in this century, to be fantastic, dangerous and impractical. Such a
state, in my opinion, would fall to pieces in ten years . . . The difficulties
of holding together such a Tower of Babel under one direct government would be
insuperable . . . But above all, anyone who suggests such a plan is proposing an
end to that liberty which has produced in this country the greatest happiness. .
. the world has ever seen. It would subject the American people to the
government of a majority who do not understand what American principles are, and
have little sympathy with them. Any international organization which is worth
the paper it is written on must be based on retaining the sovereignty of all
states. Peace must be sought, not by destroying and consolidating nations, but
by developing a rule of law in the relations between nations. . ."
These extracts show that Senator Taft saw through today's "deception of
nations"; they explain also why his name was anathema to the powers which
control "the vote of the key states" and why he was not allowed even to run for
president.* The entire period of Mr. Eisenhower's canvass, nomination, election
and early presidency was dominated by "the Jewish question"; he might have been
elected president only of the Zionists, so constantly were his words and deeds
directed towards the furtherance of their ambition.
Immediately after the nomination he told a Mr. Maxwell Abbell, president of the
United Synagogue of America, "The Jewish people could not have a better friend
than me" and added that he and his brothers had been reared by their mother in
"the teachings of the Old Testament" (Mrs. Eisenhower was a fervent adherent of
the sect of Jehovah's Witnesses), and "I grew up believing that Jews were the
chosen people and that they gave us the high ethical and moral principles of our
civilization" (many Jewish newspapers, September 1952).
This was followed by ardent professions of sympathy for "the Jews" and for
"Israel" from both candidates on the occasion of the Jewish New Year (Sept.,
1952); during this festival, also, American pressure on the "free" Germans in
West Germany succeeded in extorting their signature to the agreement to pay
"reparations" to Israel. In October came the Prague trial, with the charge of
"Zionist conspiracy", and Mr. Eisenhower began to make his menacing
statement s about "anti-semitism in the Soviet Union and the satellite
countries".
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* Whether Senator Taft, had he become president would have found himself able to
carry out the clear, alternative policy here outlined is a question now never to
be answered. In the particular case of Zionism, which is an essential part of
the entire proposition here denounced by him, he was as submissive as all other
leading politicians and presumably did not discern the inseparable relationship
between it and the "world state" ambition which he scarified. A leading Zionist
of Philadelphia. a Mr. Jack Martin, was asked to become Senator Taft's
"executive secretary" in 1945 and records that his first question to Mr. Taft
was, "Senator, what can I tell you about the aspirations of Zionism?" Taft is
quoted as answering, in Balfourean or Wilsonian vein, "What is there to explain?
The Jews are being persecuted. They need a land, a government of their own. We
have to help them to get Palestine. This will also contribute incidentally to
world peace . ." The contrast between this, the typical talk of a vote-seeking
ward politician, and the enlightened exposition given above is obvious. Mr.
Martin, who is described in the article now quoted (Jewish Sentinel, June 10,
1954) as Senator Taft's "alter ego" and "heir", after Taft's death was invited
by President Eisenhower to become his "assistant, advisor and liaison with
Congress". Mr. Martin's comment: "President Eisenhower is ready to listen freely
to your opinion and it is easy to advise him".
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The charge of "anti-semitism" was deemed to be a vote-getter in the election
itself and was brought by the outgoing president, Mr. Truman, against Mr.
Eisenhower, who told an audience that he was overcome by the insinuation: "I
just choke up and leave it to you". Rabbi Hillel Silver of Cleveland (who
threatened the Soviet Union with war on the count of "anti-semitism") was called
into conclave with Mr. Eisenhower and on emerging from it exonerated the
aspirant from all anti-semitic taint (Rabbi Silver had offered a prayer at the
Republican Convention which nominated Mr. Eisenhower; at the new President's
inauguration, and at Mr. Eisenhower's request, he offered the prayer "for grace
and guidance".) Among the rival campaigners the outgoing Vice-President, a Mr.
Alben Barkley, excelled all others. Of a typical statement by Mr. Barkley ("I
predict a glorious future for Israel as a model on which most of the Middle East
might pattern itself") Time magazine said; "The star of the speech circuit is
Vice President Alben Barkley, who for years has drawn up to $1 000 for each
appearance. Barkley is a paid platform favourite for Israel bond-selling drives.
Many Arabs think. . . that this fact has had an influence on United States
policy in the Middle East; but not many Arabs vote in U.S. elections".
A few weeks after the inauguration the West German tribute agreement was
ratified, a German Minister then announcing that the Bonn Government had yielded
to pressure from America, which did not wish to appear openly as the financier
of the Zionist state. In the same month (April 1953) Jewish newspapers, under
the heading "Israel Shows Its Might", reported that "The whole diplomatic corps
and the foreign military attaches who watched the Israel Army's biggest parade
in Haifa, with the Navy drawn up offshore and units of the Air Force flying
overhead, were duly impressed and the parade' s aim, to demonstrate that Israel
was ready to meet a decision in the field, was achieved".
In these circumstances, with various new "pledges" and undertakings given and
noted for the future, with Stalin dead, Israel ready for "a decision in the
field" and the "free" half of Germany toiling to pay tribute, one more
presidential term began in 1953. A curious incident marked the great
Inauguration Day parade in Washington. At the tail of the procession rode a
mounted man in cowboy dress who reined in as he reached the presidential stand
and asked if he might try his lariat. Obediently Mr. Eisenhower stood up and
bowed his head; the noose fell around him and was pulled taut; the moving
pictures showed a man, with bared head, at the end of a rope.
The new president many have thought to utter simple platitudes when he said,
"The state of Israel is democracy's outpost in the Middle East and every
American who loves liberty must join in an effort to make secure forever the
future of this newest member of the family of nations". In fact, this was a
commitment, or so held by those to whom it was addressed, like similar words of
Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Woodrow Wilson. Eight years after Hitler's death the new
state, where
Hitler's very laws held and whence the native people had been driven by massacre
and terror, was "democracy's outpost" and all who "loved liberty" must (the
imperative) join to preserve it.
If the new president thought he was free to form state policy, after he uttered
such words, he was taught better within nine months of his inauguration. In
October, 1953 the commitment was called, and imperiously. An effort to act
independently, and in the American national interest, in an issue affecting "the
newest member of the family of nations" was crushed, and the American President
made to perform public penance, in much the same way that "Rockland" (Woodrow
Wilson) was brought to heel in Mr. House's novel in 1912.
This humiliation of the head of what mankind saw as the most powerful government
in the world is the most significant incident in the present story, which has
recounted many episodes, similar in nature but less open to public audit. The
series of Zionist attacks on the Arab neighbour-states (listed in the preceding
section) began on Oct. 14, 1953, when every living soul in the Arab village of
Qibya, in Jordan was massacred. This was a repetition of the Deir Yasin massacre
of 1948, with the difference that it was done outside Palestine, and thus
deliberately intimated to the entire body of Arab peoples that they all in time
would suffer "utter destruction", again with the connivance of "the West".
The facts were reported to the United nations by the Danish General Vagn Bennike,
chief of the U.N. Truce Observation Organization (who received threats against
his life) and his immediately, responsible subordinate, Commander E.D. Hutchison
of the U.S. Navy, who described the attack as "cold blooded murder" (and was
later removed). At the subsequent discussion before the U.N. Security Council,
the French delegate said "the massacre" had aroused "horror and reprobation" in
France and reproached Israel, the state founded on the claim of "persecution",
with "wreaking vengeance on the innocent". The Greek delegate spoke of "the
horrible massacre" and the British and American delegates joined in the chorus
of "condemnation" (Nov. 9, 1953). In England the Archbishop of York denounced
this "horrible act of terrorism" and a Conservative M.P., Major H. Legge-Bourke,
called it "the culminating atrocity in a long chain of incursions into
non-Israeli territory, made as part of a concerted plan of vengeance".
When these expressions of horror were uttered Israel had, in effect, been
awarded an American bonus of $60,000,000 for the deed and the American President
had publicly submitted to the Zionist "pressure" in New York. This is the
chronology of events:
Four days after the massacre (Oct. 18, 1953) the American Government "decided to
administer a stern rebuke to its protegé" (The Times, Oct. 19). It announced
that "the shocking reports which have reached the Department of State of the
loss of lives and property involved in this incident convince us that
those who are responsible should be brought to account and effective measures be
taken to prevent such incidents in the future" (these words are worth comparing
with what happened within a few days). The Times added that "behind this
statement is a growing resentment at the high-handed way in which the Israel
Government is inclined to treat the United States - presumably because it
believes that it can always count on domestic political pressure in this
country". It was even reported (added The Times, as if with bated breath) "that
a grant of several million dollars to the Israel Government may be held up until
some guarantee is given that there will be no more border incidents".
Two days later (Oct. 20) the State Department announced that the grant to Israel
would be halted. If President Eisenhower calculated that, with the election a
year behind and the next three years ahead, his administration was free to
formulate American state policy, he was wrong. The weakness of America, and the
strength of the master-key method, is that an election always impends, if not a
presidential election, then a Congressional, mayoral, municipal or other one. At
that instant three candidates (two Jews and a non-Jew) were contending for the
mayoralty of New York, and the campaign was beginning for the 1954 Congressional
elections, when all 435 members of the House of Representatives and one third of
the Senators were to seek election. Against this background, the screw was
applied to the White House.
The three rivals in New York began to outbid each other for the "Jewish vote".
Five hundred Zionists gathered in New York (Oct. 25), announced that they were
"shocked" by the cancellation of "aid to Israel", and demanded that the
Government "reconsider and reverse its hasty and unfair action". The Republican
candidate wired to Washington for an immediate interview with the Secretary of
State; returning from it he assured the anxious electors that "full U.S.
economic aid will be given to Israel" (New York Times, Oct. 26) and said this
would amount in all to $63,000,000 (nevertheless, he was not elected).
Meanwhile the Republican party-managers clamoured at the President's door with
warnings of what would happen in the 1954 election if he did not recant. On
October 28 he capitulated, an official statement announcing that Israel would
receive the amount previously earmarked, and $26,000,000 of it in the first six
months of the fiscal year, (out of a total of about $60,000,000).
The Republican candidate for the New York mayoralty welcomed this as
"recognition of the fact that Israel is a staunch bastion of free world security
in the Near East", and an act of "world statesmanship" typical of President
Eisenhower. The true picture of what had produced the act was given by Mr. John
O' Donnell in the New York Daily News, Oct. 28: "The professional politicians
moved in on him with a vengeance. Ike didn't like it at all. . . but the
pressure was so violent that to keep peace in the family he had to reverse
himself. And the about-face, politically and personally, was about the smartest
and swiftest seen in this political capital of the world in many a month. . .
For a week
the pressure of candidates, seeking the huge Jewish vote in New York City, has
been terrific. . . The political education of President Eisenhower has moved
with dizzy speed in the last ten days". (Nevertheless, the Republican Party did
lose control of Congress in the 1954 election, this being the familiar and
invariable result of these capitulations; and after even greater capitulations
it suffered a still greater setback in 1956, when its nominee, again Mr.
Eisenhower, was re-elected president).
After this the American Government never again ventured to "rebuke its protegé"
during the long series of equally "horrible acts" committed by it, and on the
anniversary of Israel's creation (May 7, 1954) the Israeli Army proudly
displayed the arms received by it from the United States and Great Britain; a
massive display of American and British tanks, jet aircraft, bombers and
fighters was then offered to the view. (The United States had reported Israel
"eligible for arms aid" on August 12, 1952, and Great Britain authorized arms
exports to Israel by private dealers on January 17, 1952).
Two years of relative quiet followed, but it was merely the hush of preparation;
the next series of events was obviously being staged for the next presidential
election year, 1956. In May 1955 (the month when Sir Anthony Eden succeeded Sir
Winston Churchill as Prime Minister in England), the American Secretary of
State, Mr. John Foster Dulles, like Mr. Balfour thirty years before, at last
visited the country which was wrecking American foreign policy, as it had
wrecked that of England. After his experience with the "rebuke", so swiftly
swallowed, he must have realized that he was dealing with the most powerful
force in the world, supreme in his country, of which "Israel" was but the
instrument used to divide and rule others.
Like Mr. Balfour, he was received with Arab riots when he went outside
Palestine. In Israel he was seen by few Israelis, being hurried in a closed car,
between hedges of police, from the airport into Tel Aviv. The police operation
for his escort and guard was called "Operation Kitavo", Kitavo being Hebrew for
"Whence thou art come". The allusion is to Deuteronomy 26: "And it shall be,
when thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an
inheritance . . . and the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar
people, as he hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his
commandements, and to make thee high above all nations which he hath made . . .
that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God". Thus an American
Secretary of State was seen in Zionist Israel merely as a minor character in the
great drama of "fulfilling" the Levitical Law.
Mr. Dulles on his return said he had found that the Arabs feared Zionism more
than Communism, a discovery of the obvious: the Arabs had read the Torah and
seen its literal application to themselves at Deir Yasin and Qibya. He said in a
television broadcast (according to the Associated Press, June 1, 1953), "the
United States stands firmly behind the 1950 declaration made jointly with
Britain
and France; it pledges the three nations to action in the event the present
Israeli borders are violated by any military action" (the famous "Tripartite
Declaration"). I have not been able to discover if Mr. Dulles said this or was
misquoted (the Declaration was supposedly impartial and guaranteed "Middle East
frontiers and armistice lines not "Israeli borders" but this was the kind of
news which always reached the Arabs and in fact the verbal lapse, or
misquotation, came much nearer to the obvious truth of affairs.
Once more the generations were passing, but the lengthening shadow of Zionism
fell more heavily on each new one. Sir Winston Churchill, his powers at last
failing, relinquished his post to the man on whom he had already bestowed it in
the manner of a potentate determining the succession: "I take no step in public
life without consulting Mr. Eden; he will carry on the torch of Conservatism
when other and older hands have let it fall". That being the case, Sir Anthony
presumably inherited Sir Winston's unqualified support for "the fulfilment of
the aspiration s of Zionism" and might well have wished the torch in other
hands, for it could only ruin, not illumine "Conservatism", and England. From
the moment when he reached the office for which all his life had prepared him
his administration of it was bedevilled by "the problem of the Middle East", so
that his political end seemed likely to be as unhappy as that of Mr. Roosevelt
and Mr. Woodrow Wilson.
And, the scribe might add, that of President Eisenhower. In September 1955 he
was stricken down, and although he recovered the pictures of him began to show
the traits which appeared in those of Messrs. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson
towards the end of their terms. The "pressure" which these apparently powerful
men have to endure in this, "the Jewish century", seems to have some effect
which shows in a careworn physiognomy. They are surrounded by the praise-makers,
but if they try to follow conscience and duty they are relentlessly brought to
book. After his first experience the general expectation was that he would not
run a second time.
He was not a Republican and during his first term felt uncomfortable as a
"Republican" president. Indeed, soon after his inauguration his "vexation with
the powerful right wing of the party" (in other words, with the traditional
Republicans, who had wanted Senator Taft) "reached such extremes that for a time
he gave prolonged thought to the idea of a new political party in America, a
party to which persons of his own philosophy, regardless of their previous
affiliations, might rally. . . He began asking his most intimate associates
whether he did not have to start thinking about a new party. As he conceived it,
such a party would have been essentially his party. It would have represented
those doctrines, international and domestic, which he believed were best for the
United States and indeed for the world."* He only gave up this idea when Senator
Taft's death left the Republican Party without a natural leader and when the
Senate, at
the President's personal encouragement, censured Senator Joseph McCarthy of
Wisconsin for the ardour of his attack on Communism-in-government. The public
anger aroused by the exposure of Communist infestation of the administration
under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman was one of the main causes for the swing
of votes to the Republican Party (and its nominee, Mr. Eisenhower) in 1952.
Thus at the end of 1955 a presidential-election year again impended, in
circumstances which the dominant power in America had always found ideal: an
ailing president, party-politicians avid for "the Jewish vote", a war situation
in the Middle East and another in Europe. In such a state of affairs "domestic
political pressure" in the capital of the world's wealthiest and best-armed
country might produce almost any result. The Republican party-managers,
desperate to retain at least a nominal Republican in the White House if they
could not gain a majority in Congress, gathered round a sick man and urged him
to run. **
The real campaign began, as always, a full year before the election itself. In
September 1955 the Egyptian Government of President Gamel Abdel Nasser
contracted with the Soviet Union for the purchase of some arms. The American,
British and French "Tripartite Declaration" of 1950 provided that Israel and the
Arab states might buy arms from the West. President Nasser, in justification of
his act, stated (Nov. 16, 1955) that he had been unable to obtain "one single
piece of armament from the United States in three years of trying" and accused
the American government of "a deliberate attempt to keep the Arabs perpetually
at the mercy of Israel and her threats".
This Egyptian arms purchase from the Soviet produced an immediate uproar
in Washington and London similar to that which was raised in 1952-3 about "the
trial of the Jewish doctors". President Eisenhower appealed to the Soviet Union
to withhold arms shipments to Egypt (the bulk of these came from the Skoda arms
factory in Czechoslovakia, which fell into Soviet possession in consequence of
the Yalta agreement of 1945 and which had supplied the arms enabling "Israel" to
set up house in 1947-8 and to "hail the Soviets as deliverers"). In London on
the same day (Nov. 9, 1955) Sir Anthony Eden accused the Soviet Union of
creating war tensions in the Middle East; the British Foreign Secretary, Mr.
Harold Macmillan, complained of the introduction of a "new and disturbing factor
into this delicate situation". To the Arabs all these words from the West meant
what they had always meant: that Israel would be given, and the Arabs would be
denied, arms.
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* This significant disclosure comes from a book, Eisenhower. The Inside Story,
published in 1956 by a White House correspondent, Mr. Robert J. Donovan,
evidently at Mr. Eisenhower's wish, for it is based on the minutes of Cabinet
meetings and other documents which relate to highly confidential proceedings at
the highest level. Nothing of the kind was ever published in America before and
the author does not explain the reasons for the innovation. Things are recorded
which the President's Cabinet officers probably would not have said, had they
known that they would be published; for instance, a jocose suggestion that a
Senator Bricker and his supporters (who were pressing a Constitutional amendment
to limit the President's power to make treaties, and thus to subject him to
great Congressional control) ought to be atom-bombed.
** The most significant domestic events of President Eisenhower's first term (in
view of the fact that his election chiefly expressed the desire of American
voters, in 1952, to redress the proved Communist infestation of government and
combat the menace of Communist aggression) were the censure of the most
persistent investigator, Senator McCarthy, which received the President's
personal encouragement and approval; and the ruling of the United States Supreme
Court in 1955, which denied the right of the forty-eight individual States to
take measures against sedition and reserved this to the Federal Government. This
ruling, if given effect, will greatly reduce the power of the Republic to
"contend with sedition" (the "Protocols"). The third major domestic event was
the Supreme Court ruling against segregation of White and Negro pupils in the
public schools, which in effect was directed against the South and, if pressed,
might produce violently explosive results. These events draw attention to the
peculiar position held in the United States by the Supreme Court, in view of the
fact that appointments to it are political, not the reward of a lifetime's
service in an independent judiciary. In these circumstances the Supreme Court,
under President Eisenhower, showed signs of developing into a supreme political
body (Supreme Politburo might not be too inapt a word), able to overrule
Congress. The United States Solicitor General in 1956, Mr. Simon E. Sobeloff,
stated, "In our system the Supreme Court is not merely the adjudicator of
controversies, but in the process of adjudication it is in many ways the final
formulator of national policy" (quoted in the New York Times, July 19, 1956).
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After this the propaganda campaign swelled day by day, in the same way as that
of 1952-3, until, within a few weeks, the memory of the three years of Israeli
attacks on the Arab countries and the United Nations' condemnations of these had
been blotted out of the public mind. In its place, the general reader received
the daily impression that unarmed Israel, through the fault of the West, was
being left to the mercy of Egypt, armed to the teeth with "Red" weapons. At that
early stage the truth of the matter was once published: the leading American
military authority, Mr. Hanson W. Baldwin, speaking of the supply of American
arms to Israel, said, "We are trying to maintain a very uneasy 'balance' between
the Israelis and the Arabs. This is not now, nor is it likely to be soon, a true
balance in the sense that the two sides possess equal military strength. Today,
Israel is clearly superior to Egypt, in fact to the combined strength of Egypt,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq" (New York Times, Nov. 11, 1955).
This truth was not again allowed to reach the newspaper-reading masses in the
eleven months that followed, at any rate in my observation.* They were kept
bemused by the growing clamour about "Red Arms for the Arabs", which set the
note for both election campaigns (for Congress and for the presidency) then
beginning.** All the presidential aspirants on the Democratic side (Messrs.
Estes Kefauver, Governor Harriman of New York State, Stuart Symington and Adlai
Stevenson) made inflammatory statements in this sense.*** At one point an
American Zionist committee considered a "march on Denver" but refrained (the
President was in hospital there after his stroke), and instead approached all
candidates, of either party, with a demand that they sign a "policy declaration"
against the grant of arms to any Arab state. 120 Congressional aspirants signed
forthwith, and the number later increased to 102 Democrats and 51 Republicans
(New York Times, Apr. 5, 1956). This excess of Democratic signatories accounts
for the statement made at the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem on April 26 by
Mr. Yishak Gruenbaum, a leading Israeli politician and former Minister:
"Israel will get no support from the United States so long as the Republican
leadership is in control". This was a public demand, from Israel, that American
Jews should vote Democratic, and the belief of the American party-managers in
the power of "the Jewish vote" there was strengthened, on this occasion, by the
Democratic success in the Congressional election, desired by Mr. Gruenbaum in
Jerusalem.
Against this background of "pressure" on an ailing President through the
party-managers and of one more campaign about "the persecution of the Jews"
(symbolized, this time, by Israel) the year of the presidential election began.
From the start experienced observers saw that it had been chosen (like preceding
presidential-election years) as a year of staged and rising crisis which might
erupt in general war. The basis of all calculations was the "domestic political
pressure" which could be exercized on the American government and its acts.
In the real world the year opened, typically, with one more unanimous
"condemnation" (Jan. 19, 1956) of Israel for a "deliberate" and "flagrant"
attack (the one on Syria on Dec. 11, 1955). This was the fourth major
condemnation in two years and it came at a moment when the propaganda campaign
about Israel's "defencelessness" and Arab "aggression" was already in full swing
in the West. At the same period a "state of national emergency" was declared in
Israel.
The Zionist attack then turned on the core of responsible officials in the
American State Department who (like those in the British Colonial Office and
Foreign Office in the earlier generation) tried to ward off the perilous
"commitments" to Israel. In November 1955 the world's largest religious Zionist
organization, the Mizrachi Organization of America, had declared at Atlantic
City that "a clique" of "anti-Israel elements in the United States State
Department" was "blocking effective United States aid to Israel" (this, word for
word, is the complaint made by Dr. Chaim Weizmann against the British
responsible officials over a period of three decades, 1914-1947).
In the presidential-election year 1956 the man who had succeeded to the burden
in America, was Mr. John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State. Immediately
after the U.N. Security Council's "condemnation" of Israel in January Mr. Dulles
announced that he was trying to gain the agreement of leading Democratic
politicians to keep the Israeli-Arab question "out of debate in the Presidential
election campaign" (Jan. 24, 1956). The New York Times commented, "it is known
that Mr. Dulles has complained that Israeli Embassy
officials here have sought to persuade candidates for congress to take positions
favourable to the Israeli cause . . . The Secretary is eager that neither party
should complicate the delicate negotiations for a Mid East settlement by
discussing the Israeli question for personal or party advantage in the election
campaign . . . Specifically, he is apprehensive lest anything be said in the
Presidential campaign that would encourage Israelis to think that the United
States could condone or co-operate with an Israeli invasion of Arab territory".
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* However, fourteen months later (Jan 4, 1957), after the attack on Egypt, Mr.
Hanson Baldwin, writing from the Middle East, confirmed the continuance of "defenceless"
Israel's military predominance: "Israel has been, since 1949, the strongest
indigenous military force in the area. She is stronger today, as compared with
the Arab states, than ever before."
** "The supply of arms by Soviet Czechoslovakia made Jews in Israel and
elsewhere look to the Soviets as deliverers", Johannesburg Jewish Times, Dec.
24, 1952.
*** "The state of Israel will be defended if necessary with overwhelming outside
help", Governor Harriman, New York Times, March 23, 1955.
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Thus Mr. Dulles was complaining of the "political pressure" recorded by
President Truman in his memoirs,* and was attempting in 1956 what Mr. Forrestal
in 1947 had attempted, at the price of dismissal, breakdown and suicide. He at
once came under attack from the press (equally in America and England) in the
same way as Mr. Ernest Bevin and Mr. Forrestal in the years 1947-8. He received
a reproachful letter from "a group of Republican members of Congress", to whom
he placatingly replied (Feb. 7, 1955) that "The foreign policy of the United
States embraces the preservation of the state of Israel. . . We do not exclude
the possibility of arms sales to Israel". By this time he had further sinned,
for the Jerusalem Post, which in 1956 was a sort of Court Gazette for the
Western capitals, announced that he had committed "a minor but unfriendly act .
. . he received for 45 minutes a delegation of the American Council for
Judaism". **
The American Zionist Council immediately "protested' against Mr. Dulles's
proposal that the Palestine issue "be kept out of debate during the presidential
election; its chairman, a Rabbi Irving Miller, called this "the misguided view
that any particular segment of foreign policy should be withdrawn from the arena
of free and untrammelled public discussion". As to this freedom from trammel,
the following rare allusions to the state of affairs prevailing appeared at that
time in the American press: "Israel's quarrels with her neighbours have been
transferred to every American platform, where merely to explain why the Arabs
feel the way they do is to become a candidate for professional extinction" (Miss
Dorothy Thompson); "A pro-Egypt policy will make no votes for Republicans in New
Jersey, Connecticut or Massachusetts and when one talks to professional
politicians he hears much on the subject" (Mr. George Sokolsky); "The political
masterminds argue that to get the Jewish vote in such critical states as New
York, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania the United States
should go down the line against the Arabs" (Mr. John O'Donnell).
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* In the intervening years another book had appeared. Mr. Chesly Manly's The
U.N. Record, which said that four senior officials of the American Foreign
Service, called from the Middle East to Washington during the congressional
elections of 1946 for consultation on the Palestine question, had presented the
Arab case and received from President Truman the answer, "Sorry, gentlemen, I
have to answer hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism;
I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents". Mr.
Truman's submissiveness to Zionist pressure, when in office, and his complaint
about it, when in retirement, thus are both on record.
* This is an example, in the new generation, of the "outside interference,
entirely from Jews" of which Dr. Weizmann bitterly complained in the earlier
one. The Council feared and fought the involvement of the West in Zionist
chauvinism. It was headed by Mr. Lessing Rosenwald, formerly head of the great
mercantile house of Sears, Roebuck, and Rabbi Elmer Berger. Meeting in Chicago
at this period, it resolved that President Truman's memoirs "confirm that
Zionist pressures - labelled as those of American Jews - were excessive beyond
all bounds of propriety" and "offered a spectacle of American citizens advancing
the causes of a foreign nationalism". The reader, if he refers to earlier
chapters, will see how precisely the situation in England in 1914-1917 had been
reproduced in America in 1947-8 and 1955-6.
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The next development was an announcement in the New York Times (Feb. 21, 1956)
that Mr. Dulles would have "to face an investigation on foreign policy" called
by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "to enquire into the twistings and
turnings of the Administration's arms policy in the Mid East". Mr. Dulles duly
appeared before the Committee (Feb. 24, 1956) and this led to a significant
incident. In the ordinary way the public masses, in America as in England, are
debarred from expressing any adverse opinion about the adventure in Palestine,
so costly to them; candidates for election cannot expect party-nomination unless
they subscribe to the Zionist view, and the press in general will not print any
other. On this occasion the responsible Cabinet officer had an audience
comprising as many Americans as could crowd into the space reserved for
spectators and they gave him ovations when he entered, while he spoke, and when
he left.
The reason for these ovations was plain, and the incident showed how the general
masses of the West would all react if their political leaders ever appealed to
them candidly in this question. Mr. Dulles said among other things, "one of the
greatest difficulties facing the United States in its role of attempted
mediation between Arabs and Israelis is the belief of the Arab world that
Washington's approach would be guided by domestic political pressures" There was
danger that the Israelis might "precipitate what is called a preventive war". If
that occurred the United States "will not be involved on the side of Israel"
because it had commitments with its allies to oppose any nation that started
"aggression" in the Middle East. He "suggested several times that domestic
political pressures were being applied to attempt to force the Administration to
take an unduly and unwisely pro-Israel course in the Middle East".
What was applauded, then, is clear, and this was the first official and public
allusion, within hearing of a general audience, to the clutch that holds the
West in thrall. The demonstration of public approval did not diminish the
"pressures" of which Mr. Dulles complained. A few weeks later (Apr. 12, 1956) he
was hailed before Congressional leaders to report on the Middle East and told
them "I fear the time may have passed for a peaceful solution". He pointed out
that the two "key factors" in United States policy there were "in conflict",
namely, "Retention of the immense oil resources of the region for the military
and economic use of Western Europe," (these resources are at present in the Arab
countries) and "preservation of Israel as a nation". The Democratic House
leader, Mr. John McCormack then asked peremptorily, "Which policy comes first,
saving Israel, or keeping hold of the oil?" By his answer, "We are trying to do
both", Mr. Dulles showed that the entire West was more deeply than ever
imprisoned in the insoluble dilemma created by Britain's original involvement in
Zionism.
In the vain effort to "do both" Mr. Dulles soon made the matter worse.
Apparently he never had any hope that his original proposal would succeed; he
"gave a bellow of sardonic laughter" when asked, at a press conference at this
time, if he truly believed that he could get the Arab-Israeli issue taken out of
election politics. Even as he spoke to the Senate Committee (would those
spectators have applauded, had they known?) the method was being devised whereby
America could officially announce that it would not supply "arms to the Middle
East" at all, and at the same time would ensure that Israel receive such arms,
enabling it to launch the "preventive war" which the Secretary of State
"feared". The device was similar to that used in the case of West German
"reparations", which were exacted under American pressure and ensured the flow
of money or goods to Israel without this appearing in any American budget.
Immediately after Mr. Dulles's report to the Senate Committee, and apparently in
reply to it, Israeli troops made "a pre-arranged and planned" attack on the
Egyptians in the Gaza area, killing thirty-eight persons (Feb. 27, 1956), and
was condemned for "brutal aggression" by the U.N.M.A.C. Within a few weeks the
columnists then began to hint at the new method of supplying arms to Israel: "If
the United States sold arms to Israel, it would reopen the Communist pipeline of
arms to the Arab States. . . apparently it is felt that the same would not be
true if Britain, France and Canada met Israeli requests for weapons. . . It is
assumed here that if the Allies sell Israel arms, the United States can maintain
its own position of impartiality".
This was "doing both" in practice. Rabbi Hillel Silver (the Zionist leader who
had uttered the prayer for "grace and guidance" at the President's inauguration)
then stated in Israel that "the Eisenhower Administration has not yet said the
last word on arms for Israel" (New York Times, Apr. 4, 1956). Returned to
Washington, he had "a very frank and friendly discussion" with the President.
Then it was revealed that the United States was "discreetly encouraging the
French and Canadian governments to sell arms to Israel" (New York Times, April
1956). Next, these proved in truth to be American-supplied arms, for the French
Government officially announced (May 12, 1956) that the American Government "had
agreed to a delay in deliveries to allow France to make speedily a last delivery
of twelve Mystere IV planes to Israel". These were some of the French aircraft
used in the attack an Egypt five months later; that the French Air Force itself
would take part was not in May disclosed.*
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* Six months later, on the eve of the presidential election and immediately
before the Israeli attack on Egypt, the New York Daily News appealed to "the
Jewish voter" by recounting the following Republican services: "The Eisenhower
Administration has not seen its way clear to supplying Israel with heavy
hardware, because of various touchy international situations. However, the
Administration, last April and May, did help Israel get 24 Mystere jet planes
from France, and last month Canada announced sale of 24 Sabre jets to Israel.
Mr. Dulles was declared by Israeli officials to have actively used United States
Government influence in promoting both the French and Canadian plane sales".
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In explanation: the American Government was financing the purchase of arms for
its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at that time, by placing
orders with the foreign manufacturers. These American-financed deliveries were
diverted to Israel at American "encouragement". Thus the North Atlantic Treaty,
supposed at the start to be an alliance of the West against "Soviet aggression"
and "Communism", also was turned to the purpose of Zionism. Signed in 1949, the
ostensible, original purpose was that the members (America and Canada, England,
France and ten other European countries, and Turkey) would regard any attack on
one as an attack on all and aid the one attacked.
Therefore the American Government, while attacking the Soviet Union for
supplying Egypt with arms and declaring that it would not itself promote "the
arms race" in the Middle East by supplying them to Israel, was in fact procuring
arms for Israel to maintain its superiority over all seven Arab countries. Here
Mr. Dulles operated with a Machiavellian touch which had the effect of oil on
fire. The act of procurement was not even kept secret; as the above quotations
show, it was given publicity and used as a vote-getting vaunt in that election
campaign, from which Mr. Dulles had appealed for the Israeli-Arab issue to be
kept aloof.
A strange side effect on these machinations in the West was that statements
made, on this particular question, by the utterly unscrupulous rulers in Moscow
gained a look of honest respectability. For instance, the Soviet Government,
when the Western uproar about "arms for Egypt" began, sent a note to the
American, British, Egyptian and Czechoslovak Governments stating, "The Soviet
Government hold that each state has the legitimate right to look after its
defence and to buy weapons for its defence requirements from other states on
usual commercial terms, and that no foreign state has the right to intervene".
That was an irreproachable statement of the legal, and even moral position, and
it was echoed by Israel, for while the Western rumpus welled the Israeli Foreign
Minister, then Mr. Moshe Sharett, stated in New York (Nov. 10, 1955) "If driven
to a tight corner and our existence is at stake we will seek and accept arms
from any source in the world" (in answer to a question whether the Soviet had
offered Israel arms). Thus the whole burden of the outcry in the West was in
fact that Soviet arms ought not to go to the Arab states, and for this no moral
or legal argument whatever can be found.
Against this background "defenceless Israel" (Mr. Ben-Gurion) on April 16, 1956
held its anniversary parade with great display of United States, British and
French aircraft and tanks (New York Times, Apr. 17); the Soviet weapons were
presumably withheld from the parade on that occasion in harmony with the
propaganda of that moment in the West. On April 24, in Jerusalem, Mr. Ben-Gurion
once more proclaimed the nationalist and expansionist aim: "The continued
ingathering of exiles is the supreme goal of Israel and an essential
precondition for realization of the messianic mission which has made us an
eternal people."
The subterfuge by means of which the United States procured arms for Israel
while officially refusing to supply them ("Nobody particularly welcomes our
decision not to sell weapons to Israel but to encourage other allies to do so,
and to relinquish earmarked equipment for this purpose", New York Times, May 19,
1956) brought no respite to the American President. Open submission is the
invariable requirement, and the Zionist wrath began to turn against him. On the
eve of his second breakdown in health (in the early summer he had to undergo an
operation for hepatitis) the jeer began to be thrown at him that he was but "a
part-time president". A leading woman Zionist, Mrs. Agnes Meyer, launched it by
telling a Jewish audience in New York that while "the bastion of democracy"
(Israel) was in peril "the President is not at his post in Washington; he is
playing golf in Augusta", and urging him to ask himself "whether this nation can
afford a part-time president". His second illness, which followed almost at
once, stopped this particular attack for the time, but President Eisenhower,
like others before him, was not allowed to forget that the full resources of
Zionist propaganda might at any moment be turned against him if he stepped out
of his predecessors' line.
While he struggled in these toils, across the Atlantic another Prime Minister
seemed likely to be broken on the Zionist wheel. Sir Anthony Eden, in any other
century, would have become a major statesman; in this one, the "commitment" he
inherited was from the start of his premiership a millstone round his neck.
No politician in the world was equal to him, when he took the chief office in
1955, in qualification and experience. He was of the First War generation, so
that the memory of Flanders fields formed the background of all his adult life,
which thereafter was spent entirely in politics. He came of old family with an
inherited tradition of service, and was gifted and personable. He rose to
ministerial rank at an early age and with brief intervals held one high post
after another for over twenty years, during which he came to know personally
every dictator and parliamentary politician in Europe and North America. He thus
gained a unique experience for the testing years ahead; only Sir Winston
Churchill, in the entire world, had a comparable range of aquaintanceship,
negotiation and in general of training in what was once held to be the art of
statesmanship.
He was still young, for the chief office, when Sir Winston yielded to the law of
age and handed on "the torch" to the man he had described as embodying "the life
hope of the British nation" (1938), Mr. Eden (as he was in 1938) gained the hope
of men of his generation through his resignation from the British Government in
protest against the placation of Hitler, which (he rightly judged) was the one
sure road to war. The event of October, 1956 was made harder for his
contemporaries to endure by the fact that his name was given to it.
I knew Mr. Eden, as a foreign correspondent may know a politician, in the years
that led to the Second War, and on the strength of our similar feelings at that
darkling time was later able to write to him at moments when he seemed to
be losing touch with the mind of his generation; and to receive pleasant reply,
acknowledging earlier acquaintanceship and perusal of my books. I saw him, in
1935 emerge, with troubled mien, from a first encounter with Hitler, who in
menacing tones had told him that the German air force (then officially
non-existent) was greater than the English one. I accompanied him to Moscow and
was able to confirm with him something I had heard of his first encounter with
Stalin: that the Georgian bandit had pointed to the little point on the world's
map that represented England and said how strange it was that so small a country
should hold the key to the world's peace (a true statement at that time). Having
these personal memories, I was probably more aghast than most men when I learned
of the deed to which he was misled in October, 1956.
From the start in May 1955 the professional observer saw that he was in truth,
not so much Prime Minister, as Minister for the Jewish Question, in his
generation represented by the Zionist state and its ambition. This meant that
his whole term of office would fall under that shadow and that his political
fate would be determined by his actions in regard to Zionism, not by his success
or failure in matters of native interest. That was shown on the eve of his
premiership, when he was still Foreign Secretary for a few weeks more. The
British Government had concluded an arrangement with Iran and Turkey to ensure
the defence of British interests in the Middle East, the oil resources of which
were vital to England and the Antipodean Dominions. The debate in the House of
Commons ignored this aspect and raged around the effect of the agreement "on
Israel", so that two lonely members (among 625) protested: "This debate is not
about Palestine and the Foreign Secretary must look after world interests and
the interests of Britain, even though they cause annoyance and embarrassment to
other states" (Mr Thomas Reid); "Judging by nearly every speech from hon.
Members on both sides of the House, one might be forgiven for imagining that the
debate was primarily concerned with the effect of a pact on Israel instead of
the improvement of our worldwide defensive system against the threat of Russian
imperialism" (Mr. F. W. Bennett).
To this a Jewish Socialist member replied, "Why not?" In effect, it was by that
time almost impossible to debate any major issue save in terms of its effect for
Israel, and this plainly prefigured the course of Sir Anthony's premiership.
During the remaining months of 1955, as Prime Minister, he continued to struggle
with "the Middle East question", at one time suggesting that an international
force be placed between Israel and the Arab states (the United States demurred)
and at another, that Israel might agree to minor frontier rectifications, having
seized in 1948 more territory than that "awarded" to it by the United Nations
(this brought angry Zionist charges in the New York newspapers that "Britain has
now joined the ranks of Israel's enemies"). Then the presidential-election year,
and Sir Anthony's crisis, began. The Zionist machine went into top gear, playing
Washington against London and
London against Washington with the skill of forty years' experience. In March a
significant thing occurred; unknown to the world, it made an early attack on
Egypt seem a certainty to the diligent watcher of events.
On the eve of the Jewish Passover the mysterious "Voice of America" broadcast a
commemoration, laden with explosive topical allusions, of "the escape of the
Jews from the Egyptian captivity". Considered in its obvious relationship to the
propaganda bombardment of Egypt which was then in progress in Washington and
London, this plainly portended violent events before the next Passover. The
American people in general know nothing of what "The Voice of America" says, or
to whom it speaks. Even my research has not discovered what official department
is supposed to supervise this "voice", which to listening peoples far away is
taken to express the intentions of the American Government. I was able to learn
that its funds, budgetary and other, are immense and that it is largely staffed
by Eastern Jews. It appears to work in irresponsibility and secrecy.*
From this moment the whole weight of Western propaganda was turned against
Egypt. The events which followed might be considered in the light of Secretary
of War, Henry Stimson's diarial note in the period preceding Pearl Harbour, to
the effect that the aim of President Roosevelt's administration was
to manoeuvre Japan into "firing the first shot". Subsequent events had all the
appearance of being designed to manoeuvre Egypt into firing the first shot.
Egypt did not do this. Then the world found that the firing of a first shot was
no longer necessary to qualify as an aggressor; the country in question could be
dubbed the aggressor while it was being invaded, and even before that; so far
had the resources of mass-propaganda developed in the 20th century. All the
"condemnations" of Israel on the score of aggression had meant nothing.
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* During the Hungarian uprising against the Soviet in October-November 1956,
several American correspondents, returning from the shambles, and Hungarian
fugitives attributed a large measure of responsibility for the tragedy to this
"Voice". The Americans had found the Hungarian people confident of American
intervention; the Hungarians complained that, although the word "revolt" was not
used, the "Voice" in effect incited and instigated revolt and held out the
prospect of American succour. At the same time President Eisenhower told the
American people, "We have never counselled the captive peoples to rise against
armed force". Similar criticisms were made against "Radio Free Europe", a
private American organization which operated from Germany under West German
Government license.
One of the first Hungarian refugees to reach America complained that the Voice
of America and Radio Free Europe for years "picked at us" to revolt, but when
the national uprising came no American help was given (New York Times, Nov. 23,
1956).
The West German Government ordered an investigation into Radio Free Europe's
broadcasts during the Hungarian uprising (it operated from Munich) after
widespread charges appeared in the West German press that it had, in effect,
played a provocative part; as example, a script prepared on Nov. 5, 1956, while
the uprising was in progress, told the Hungarian people that "Western military
aid could not be expected before 2am tomorrow", an obvious intimation that it
would come at some moment (N.Y.T., Dec. 8, 1956). The gravest implication of a
provocative purpose was contained in statements made by Mrs Anna Kethly, head of
the Hungarian Social Democratic party, who escaped during the brief liberation
of the country. She said that while she was in jail in 1952 Radio Free Europe in
a broadcast to the captive countries said "that I was leading the underground
liberation movement from my jail and quoted the names of several leaders of the
alleged movement. I was taken out of the jail where I had been in complete
seclusion since 1950 and confronted with hundreds of former militants of the
Social Democratic party and the trade unions. All of them were tortured by the
political police to confess their participation in the non-existent
anti-Communist plot. There was absolutely no truth in the Radio Free Europe
report; I had lived in complete seclusion since my arrest and had met nobody.
Radio Free Europe has gravely sinned by making the Hungarian people believe that
Western military aid was coming, when no such aid was planned" (N:Y.T., Nov. 30,
1956).
Thus America spoke with two voices, those of the President addressing himself
officially to the world, and of the "Voice" speaking in more dangerous terms
over the head of the American people to the peoples of the world. At this period
the New York Times described the official line: "High officials have made clear
privately that the Administration wants to avoid being identified solely with
Israel and thus surrendering the Arab countries to the influence of the Soviet
Union". The Arab peoples, if they ever heard of these "private" intimations,
could not be expected to believe them, in view of what they heard from "The
Voice of America" about the liberation of the Jews from "the Egyptian
captivity".
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This crisis-period began on March 7, 1956 (just before the "Voice of America's"
Egyptian-captivity broadcast) when Sir Anthony Eden again faced the House of
Commons on the eternal question. By that time his Socialist adversaries (despite
the many "condemnations" of Israel) were furious in their demand for arms for
Israel and "a new treaty of guarantees for Israel"; like the New York
politicians, they saw the hope of office in new submissions to Zion. The Prime
Minister "was subjected to a storm of vituperation and abuse beyond anything
heard in the House of Commons since the last days of Neville Chamberlain's prime
ministership" (the New York Times); "It was a scene which, for a time, seemed to
shock even those who had caused it; the Speaker himself had to intervene to
plead that the House should give the Prime Minister a hearing" (the Daily
Telegraph). Sir Anthony vainly protested that he had thereto been heard with
courtesy "for over thirty years" by the House. At that moment he might have
hoped for American support, for on the same day President Eisenhower said it was
"useless to try to maintain peace in the Middle East by arming Israel, with its
1,700,000 people, against 40,000,000 Arabs" (the American procurement of arms
for Israel was then under way).
In England Sir Anthony found all hands against him. The Daily Telegraph
(ostensibly of his own party) might in its news reports appear shocked by his
treatment in the House, but editorially it said the case for giving Israel arms
was "incontrovertible", a word which always spares the need for supporting
argument. His opponents, the Socialists, cast off all restraint in their
eagerness to overthrow him by way of Israel. The leading leftist journal, the
New Statesman, in two successive issues said that England had no right or means
to wage war in any circumstances whatever and should lay down all arms
("Effective defence is now beyond our means and disarmament is the only
alternative to annihilation", March 10) and that England should arm Israel and
pledge itself to go to war for Israel ("War is less likely if Israel is supplied
with up to date arms and the Labour Party is correct in urging that Israel must
now have them . . . The problem is not so much the undesirability of
guaranteeing a frontier which has not yet been formally established . . . but
the military problem of assembling and delivering the necessary force . . . Is
sufficient naval strength available in the Eastern Mediterranean? Does Mr
Gaitskell (the Socialist leader) "even feel sure that the British public would
back him in going to war, probably without the endorsement of the United
Nations, in defence of Israel?" (March 17).
The endless effects of the original, apparently small commitment to Zion may be
studied in such quotations. Sir Anthony Eden on this occasion appeared to be
trying, in unison with the United States Government, to stem a lunatic tide, but
he gave a "warning to Egypt" which was not then justified and was ominous, as
events proved. At that moment both the British and American Governments were
(officially) courting Egyptian friendship in the hope of helping to pacify the
Middle East. To that joint end England, "under American pressure" was preparing
to withdraw its troops from the Suez Canal.*
Why Sir Anthony Eden yielded without security to "the pressure" to let go of
what, immediately after, was proclaimed to be "the vital lifeline" of the
British Commonwealth is of those questions which politicians never answer.
"Pressure" from Washington in matters related to the Middle East has in the last
four decades always been Zionist pressure, ultimately; and about this time an
Egyptian journalist, Mr. Ibrahim Izzat, was cordially received by the Premier,
Foreign Minister and Labour Minister of Israel who told him "Israel and Egypt
had the identical aim of opposing British influence in the Middle East" (Ros el
Youssef, May, 1956; New York Times, May 20, 1956).
The effect of this submission to pressure very soon became clear: it was to be
war, involving England in a great humiliation and fiasco. The British withdrawal
was supposed to be one-half of a larger, Anglo-American arrangement for "winning
the friendship of the Arabs", and the American half had yet to be performed.
This was to join with the British Government and the World Bank in providing
$900,000,000 for the construction of a dam on the Nile at Aswan (the offer had
been made to Egypt in December 1955).
The chronology of events again becomes important. The British troops withdrew
from the Suez Canal in June 1956, as undertaken. On July 6, 1956 the State
Department spokesman told the press that the Aswan Dam offer "still stood". A
few days later the Egyptian Ambassador in Washington announced that Egypt had
"definitely decided that she wanted Western help for the dam". On July 19 the
Egyptian Ambassador called on Mr. Dulles to accept the offer. He was told that
the United States government had changed its mind. In London the day before the
Foreign Office spokesman had announced that the British share of the offer
"still stood". On July 19 the spokesman informed the press (not the Egyptian
Ambassador) that the British offer, too, was withdrawn. The spokesman declined
to give reasons but admitted to "continuous consultation between Whitehall and
Washington".
Therefore the "pressure" to infuriate the Egyptians by this contemptuous affront
came from the same quarter as the "pressure" to mollify them by withdrawing from
the Suez Canal. The British Government was left far out on a
limb, in the American phrase; if the first submission was made in reliance on
President Eisenhower's announcement of February (that he wanted "to stem the
deterioration in relations between the Arab nations and the United States" and
"restore the Arabs' confidence and trust" in America), the about-face in the
Aswan Dam offer should have warned it, and it would then have saved much if it
had resisted the "'pressure" in the second case.
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* The fact that this "'pressure" was used is authentic. It was everywhere
recorded in terms of an American success by the American press, for instance,
"Secretary of State Dulles was confident that he could win the friendship of the
Arabs, as when he brought pressure on the British to get out of Egypt, while
retaining that of the Israelis, (New York Times, Oct. 21, 1956).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I cannot remember any more calculated or offensive provocation to a government
with which "the West" was ostensibly seeking friendship. Such behaviour by the
Washington and London governments has only become imaginable since they fell
under the thrall of Zionism. American withdrawal of the offer, and the manner of
withdrawal (its imitation by London is beyond comment) were clearly the true
start of the war crisis of 1956, but the original source, the "pressure", was
not "American". "Some Congressmen feared Zionist disapproval", discreetly
remarked the New York Times of the withdrawn offer to Egypt; and this was
election year.
Within the week President Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal and at
once the air was filled with war-talk, as in 1952-3 during the episode of "the
Jewish doctors". From that moment President Nassser received the "wicked man"
treatment; this is the sure sign of the imminence of war. I have seen many
"wicked men" built up in my life, and have observed that this propaganda can be
turned on and off as by a tap, and infused with toxic effect into the public
mind:
Cursed juice of hebenon in a vial;
And into mine ear did pour
The leprous distilment . . .
My early childhood was clouded by the wickedness of The Mad Mullah (a Muslim
leader now universally forgotten) and of a respectable old Boer called Paul
Kruger. Of all the figures in this Chamber of Horrors, built around me as I went
along, I now see that nearly all were no better or worse than those who called
them wicked.
Even before the war-talk reached the "wicked man" stage, and long before the
unprecedented provocation of July 19, (which still provoked no warlike act from
Egypt), President Nasser had been declared the aggressor in a war yet to begin.
In March Mr. Ben-Gurion stated at Tel Aviv that early delivery of arms to Israel
alone could prevent "an attack by the Arab states within the next few months"
and added that the aggressor "would be the Egyptian dictator Nasser". On April
13 Sir Winston Churchill emerged from a year's retirement to tell a Primrose
League audience that "prudence and honour" demanded British aid for Israel if it
were attacked by Egypt. Sir Winston expressed implicit, but clear approval of
the Israeli attack on Egypt which the "activists" in Israel were then demanding:
"If Israel is dissuaded from using the life force of their race to ward off the
Egyptians until the Egyptians have learned to use the Russian weapons with which
they have been supplied and the Egyptians then attack, it will become not
only a matter of prudence but a measure of honour to make sure that they are not
the losers by waiting". This was followed in May by an Israeli attack on
Egyptian troops in the Gaza area in which about 150 men, women and children were
killed or wounded. Nevertheless, the outcry about the "wicked man" and "Egyptian
aggression" grew ever louder in the West.
The state of servitude into which England had fallen at this period was shown by
two symbolic events. In June 1956 the "Anglo-Jewish Community" held a banquet at
the Guildhall to commemorate "the three hundredth anniversary of the
resettlement of the Jews in the British Isles"; the young Queen's consort, the
Duke of Edinburgh, was required to appear in a Jewish skullcap. In September the
"Cromwell Association" held a service at the statue of the regicide and butcher
of Drogheda to celebrate this same fiction (that he "restored" the Jews to
England three hundred years before). In his speech the president of this body, a
Mr. Isaac Foot, recommended that the young Prince Charles, when he reached the
throne, take the name of "Oliver II", because "We don't want Charles III". *
After President Nasser's seizure of the Suez Canal the war cries from the West
rose to a high note. "Nationalization" in itself was not startling or shocking
enough, in 1956, to account for it. America had accepted the seizure of
foreign-owned oilfields, Mexico agreeing (as President Nasser agreed) to pay the
going price for the property; domestically, America, through the Tennessee
Valley Authority, was already treading this well-worn path to impoverishment; in
England the Socialist Government had nationalized railways and coalmines. A
valid legal or moral ground for violent denunciation was not easy to find,
although shades of difference, admittedly existed between President Nasser's act
and the many precedents and his action was obviously one of protest against
provocation, not of rational policy.
In any case, the only effective answer, if his act was intolerable, was to
reoccupy the Canal forthwith, and that was not done. Instead, all the oracles,
as if reading from a long-prepared script, began to dub him "Hitler". Premier
Ben-Gurion began with "dictator", which soon became "Fascist dictator", and the
French Prime Minister (a M. Guy Mollet at that instant) changed this to
"Hitler". Thereafter the campaign followed the lines of the one against Stalin
in 1952-3. Dictator-Fascist Dictator-Hitler: the inference was plain; President
Nasser was to be depicted, and punished if he were punished, as an enemy of the
Jews.
When Sir Anthony Eden again rose in the House of Commons (Aug. 9, 1956) to
grapple with that monster of his dreams, "the Middle East question", the
Socialist leader, Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, said, "It is all terribly familiar. . . It
is exactly the same as we encountered with Mussolini and Hitler before the war".
Another Socialist speaker, Mr. Paget Q.C., (events having altered K.C's) baited
him thus: "This weekend technique is just what we got from Hitler. Are you aware
of the consequences of not answering force with force until it is too late?"
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* The same shadow was with deliberate intent cast across the coronation of Queen
Elizabeth in 1953. As part of the festival the newly-crowned queen reviewed at
Spithead a great assembly of war vessels from every country that could send a
ship. Among the many craft, between the lines of which the Queen's ship passed,
was one alone, the crew of which did not cheer (a mistake, the later explanation
asserted). This Soviet ship was the Sverdlov, named for Yankel Sverdlov, the
assassin of the Romanoff family, in whose honour the town where they were
butchered, Ekaterinburg, was renamed Sverdlovsk.
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The Socialists were deliberately prodding Sir Anthony to use force (they shouted
"Murderer" at him when he used it) by these taunting allusions to his political
past. He was the man who resigned in 1938 in protest against the placation of
Hitler, and his resignation was immediately vindicated by Hitler's invasion of
Austria. That was "force", long foreseen, and Mr. Eden of 1938 was right. In
1956 the case was different, and no comparison was possible. Egypt was not a
great military power but a very weak one. Egypt had not been "appeased" after
the British withdrawal, but subjected to provocation by public humiliation.
Egypt was not a proven aggressor; it had been the victim of attack and Israel
had declared that it would make war on Egypt.
Therefore the comparison with "Hitler" was absurd, unless it was intended solely
to denote that the Zionists held Egypt for their enemy. Nevertheless Sir Anthony
Eden yielded to this fiction (perhaps the memory of 1938 had too strong a hold
on him) for he alluded to President Nasser as "a Fascist plunderer whose
appetite grows with feeding", which was just the language he and Mr. Churchill
had rightly used about Hitler eighteen years before. I must add that I do not
find these exact words in the text of his speech but this is the form in which
they reached "the mob" through the New York Times and that is what counts, as
Prime Ministers should know. For the rest, Sir Anthony based his attack on
President Nasser on the argument that the Suez Canal "is vital to other
countries in all parts of the world. . . a matter of life and death to us all. .
. the canal must be run efficiently and kept open, as it always has been in the
past, as a free and secure international waterway for the ships of all nations .
. ."
But President Nasser had not closed the canal, only nationalized it. It was
"open" to the ships of all nations, with one exception. In those five words lay
the secret. The only country which was denied full freedom of passage was
Israel, with which Egypt was still technically at war; Egypt had been stopping
ships bound for Israel and examining them for arms. This was the only case of
interference; ergo, Sir Anthony represented only that case; not any British one.
However, he concluded: "My friends, we do not intend to seek a solution by
force".
In the following weeks, while "a solution" was sought at various conferences in
London and Washington, the press informed the masses that "the Egyptians" would
not be able to run the canal, where traffic would soon break down. In fact, they
proved able to operate it and shipping continued to pass without hindrance, with
the one exception. By clear implication, therefore, the case of Israel was the
sole one on which Sir Anthony's Government could rest its increasingly angry
protest. This was soon made clear. On August 22, 1956 Mrs. Rose Halprin, acing
chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, stated in the New York Times that
"the only legal case which the Western powers have against Egypt in terms of the
contravention of the 1888 convention is Egypt's denial of the canal to Israel
ships and the strictures on ships bound for Israel".
Mrs. Halprin's statement of the legal position is correct. If the whole dispute
rested on a point of law, then the only case which could be invoked was that of
Israel; and that would open the whole question of the legality of the creation
of Israel itself and of the un-terminated state of war between Israel and Egypt.
Therefore any government which joined in the uproar against President Nasser was
in fact acting on behalf of Israel and Israel alone, and was prejudging all
legal questions in favour of Israel.
By October Sir Anthony Eden had gone further in presuming Egyptian aggression. I
have not the text of this speech but the version distributed by the Associated
Press, and therefore reproduced in thousands of newspapers all over the world,
says, "Prime Minister Eden predicted tonight that President Nasser would attack
Israel next if he got away with seizure of the Suez Canal. Sir Anthony hinted
that Britain would go to Israel's rescue with arms if necessary" (Sept. 13,
1956).
Thus the British Prime Minister was sliding on a slippery path. Within the space
of six weeks the "vital lifeline" and "matter of life and death" theme had
become subordinate and the world faced the menace of war based on something that
the Egyptian president would do if something else happened. From this point on
"the mob" was fed with news of an impending Egyptian attack on Israel (the
"interference with international navigation" theme was dropped, as it could not
be maintained) and in time this took on so definite a note that many casual
readers, I fancy, must have thought that Egypt had already attacked Israel. I
give one of many examples (from the London Weekly Review, September 1956, a few
weeks before the Israeli attack on Egypt): "We can be absolutely certain that
the Arabs, encouraged by Russia, will attack Israel. This is now beyond all
doubt and should form the basis of our calculations".
In writing this book I have been chiefly impelled by the hope of giving the
later reader, in what I hope will be a more rational time, some idea of the
astonishing condition of the public prints during the 1950's. He will certainly
be unable to comprehend the things that happened unless he is aware of this
regime of sustained misinformation and of the boundless lengths to which it was
carried. The last statement quoted came after years of repeated Israeli attacks
on the various Arab neighbours and of repeated United Nations condemnations of
these acts.
In the way I have summarized above the ground was prepared, during the first
nine months of the presidential-election year, for the c1imactic events of
October. Arms continued to move into Israel from the West. After the seizure of
the Suez
Canal Sir Anthony Eden announced that "all arms shipments to Egypt had been
stopped"; in the same month (July) two British destroyers were delivered to
Israel. Throughout the spring and summer months France, under American
"pressure", supplied jet fighters and other weapons to Israel. In September
Canada, at the same prompting, agreed to send jet aircraft to Israel, the Ottawa
Government announcing that it had "consulted with the United States before the
decision was made" (New York Times, Sept. 22, 1956).
All this time the presidential-election campaign continued. The Democrats, eager
to regain the White House, exceeded all past performances in their bids for "the
Jewish vote" (the Mayor of New York demanded that Israel should receive arms "as
a gift"); the Republican incumbents were slightly more reserved. However, when
the rival nomination conventions were held (the Republican at San Francisco, the
Democratic at Chicago, both in August) there was little to choose between the
submissions which each party made (so that the Jerusalem Post might have
repeated, and perhaps did repeat its dictum of 1952, that for the Jewish voter
there was "little to choose" between the presidential aspirants).
The only passage of any vital meaning in the "foreign policy programmes" adopted
by the two parties related, in each case, to Israel; the other foreign policy
statements were platitudinous. The commitments to Israel were in both cases
specific.
The Republican Party programme, on which President Eisenhower was unanimously
elected candidate, said: "We regard the preservation of Israel as an important
tenet of American foreign policy. We are determined that the integrity of an
independent Jewish state shall be maintained. We shall support the independence
of Israel against armed aggression".
The Democratic Party programme said: "The Democratic Party will act to redress
the dangerous imbalance of arms in the area created by the shipment of Communist
arms to Egypt, by selling or supplying defensive weapons to Israel, and will
take such steps, including security guarantees, as may be required to deter
aggression and war in the area". (The phrase, "dangerous imbalance of arms",
reflected the propagandist fiction that Israel was "defenceless" and the Arab
countries strong; the truth, a little earlier established by Mr. Hanson Baldwin
was that Israel was stronger in arms than all seven Arab countries together).
These two policy statements gave the picture of a world in the Zionist thrall,
and complemented the statements then being made by the British Government. They
had no relation to any native American interest but reflected simply Zionist
control of the election-machine, or the unshakeable belief of the party-managers
in that control. (On this occasion events appeared to justify that belief; the
Democratic Party, the higher bidder, captured Congress, although the nominal
"Republican" was re-elected President).
The only other event of importance in the two conventions was one which may
appear to have little bearing on the theme of this book, but in the later sequel
might prove to be of direct significance; the re-nomination of Mr. Richard Nixon
as President Eisenhower's running-mate (and in effect as Vice-President). Mr.
Eisenhower's state of health made the Vice-Presidency more important than usual,
and the possibility that Mr. Nixon might succeed to the Presidency between 1956
and 1960 was evidently regarded as a major danger by the powers that govern
America today, so that a supreme effort was made to prevent his nomination. That
was not remarkable, in this century; what was remarkable is that the attempt
failed. At some time men will obviously emerge who will break the thrall that
lies on American and British political life, and this failure was a portent of
that coming liberation, so that the person of Mr. Richard Nixon gains a symbolic
importance in our day, even though he, if he became President, might find
himself unable to break the bonds.
The reason for this powerful enmity to Mr. Nixon is that he is not an
"internationalist". Far from it, he played the decisive part in the unmasking
and conviction of Mr. Alger Hiss, the Soviet agent in Mr. Roosevelt's
administration. This is the true reason why he has ever since had a uniformly
bad "press", not only in America but elsewhere in the Western world. Having that
black mark against him, he is held to be a man who, in the chief office, might
conceivably rebel against the constraints to which American Presidents and
British Prime Ministers, almost without exception, have submitted in the last
fifty years and which Vice-President's automatically incur. *
Hence a campaign of great force and ingenuity was begun to prevent his
nomination. A member of the President's own political household (and nominal
party) was released from duty for some weeks to conduct a nationwide "Stop
Nixon" offensive, with committee-rooms, placards and meetings. This had no
effect on the general public, with whom Mr. Nixon appears to be popular. Then,
for his particular discomfiture, new tactics were introduced at the convention
of the rival, Democratic party. Instead of the elected nominee (Mr. Adlai
Stevenson) choosing his own vice-presidential "running mate" as on former
occasions, the selection of a "running mate" was thrown open to vote and of
various competitors Senator Estes Kefauver (an exceptionally zealous Zionist)
received the nomination as vice-presidential candidate.
The aim of the maneuvre was to force the Republican Party's convention to
follow this "democratic procedure" and also to submit the choice of the
vice-presidential candidate to vote. It did so and Mr. Nixon, like Mr.
Eisenhower, received a unanimous vote. This event, and his deportment during
President Eisenhower's illnesses, made Mr. Nixon's prospects of becoming
President in his own right one day much better than they had ever been deemed
before. His story up to now makes him a hopeful figure (as Mr. Eden appeared to
be in 1938), and
in the chief office he might conceivably produce a sanative effect on American
policy and foreign relations.
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* The inevitable twin-reproach, of "anti-semitism", was also raised against him
during the election campaign. A rabbi who knew him well came forward to defend
him against it.
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After the nominations America sat back with relief, for Mr. Eisenhower's
re-election was held sure and he had been given a rousing build-up in the press
as "the man who kept us out of war". The phrase was reminiscent of similar
phrases used about Mr. Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and Mr. Roosevelt in 1940, but by
1956 a respite of three years was held to be a boon and he was given credit for
this period of "peace", such as it was.
I was a witness of this election, as of the one in 1952, and realized that in
fact war, localized or general, was near. I felt that a respite, at least, would
be gained if election day (Nov. 6) passed without the eruption in the Middle
East which for months obviously had been preparing (once the election is over
the Zionist power to exert pressure diminishes, for a little while). I remember
saying to an American friend on October 20 that if the next seventeen days could
be got over without war the world might be spared it for another three or four
years.*
On October 29, eight days before the election, war came, by obvious
predetermination of the moment held most suitable to cause consternation in
Washington and London. From that moment events swept along on a tide of
elemental forces let loose and only much later will mankind be able to see what
was destroyed and what survived. For Britain and the family of oversea nations
offsprung from it, this was nearly ruin, the foreseeable end of the involvement
in Zionism.
On October 29, 1956 the Israeli Government announced that it had begun a
full-scale invasion of Egypt and that its troops had "advanced 75 miles into
Egypt's Sinai Peninsula".**
The news, coming after the long series of earlier attacks on the Arabs and their
repeated "condemnation" by the United Nations, sent a shock of repugnance round
the world. At that very moment the Hungarians were fighting and winning their
people's war against the Communist revolution. The two destructive forces
released from Russia in October 1917 stood self-condemned by acts equally
brutal. They were destroying themselves; there was no need to destroy them. At
this instant great counter-forces of universal reprobation were released which
would have been too strong for them. Not even the "Zionist pressure" in New York
could make this deed appear to be "Egyptian aggression" or induce the
public multitudes to accept it. This was a gift from heaven, releasing "The
West" from both its di1emmas. It only needed to stand aside and, for once, let
"world opinion" do the work; for on this occasion there was world opinion,
produced by deeds that could not be hidden, disguised or misrepresented by "the
press".
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* I had in mind what is known to American politicians as "the Farley law". Named
after an exceptionally astute party-manager, Mr James A. Farley, who was held to
have contrived the early electoral triumphs of Mr. Roosevelt, the essence of
this "law" is that American voters have decided by mid-October for whom they
will vote and only their candidate's death, war or some great scandal between
then and November 6 can change their minds. The morning after the Israeli attack
on Egypt Mr. John O'Donnell wrote, "Spokesmen in the worried State Department,
Pentagon" (War Office) "and headquarters of both parties agree that the Israelis
launched their attack on Egypt because they were convinced that the United
Slates would take no action in an Israeli war so close to the Presidential
elections. . . Word came through to political headquarters that American
Zionists had informed Tel Aviv that Israel would probably fare better under a
Democratic administration of Stevenson and Kefauver than under a Republican
regime of Eisenhower and Nixon" (New York Daily News).
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Within twenty-four hours the golden opportunity was cast away, The British and
French Governments announced that they would invade the Suez Canal zone "unless
Israeli and Egyptian troops agree to stop fighting and withdraw ten miles from
the canal within twelve hours", As this would have left the Israeli troops
nearly a hundred miles inside Egyptian territory, the demand obviously was not
meant to be accepted by Egypt. Thereon the British and French air forces began
intensive bombing of Egyptian airfields and other targets and by destroying
Egypt's air weapon gave unchallenged victory to the invader.
The future reader will hardly be able to imagine the feelings of an Englishman
of my kind, who heard the news in America. Shame is too small a word, but as it
is the only word I use it to express something I felt more deeply than even at
the time of Munich, when I resigned from The Times as the only protest (a stupid
one, I now estimate) I could make. I shall always remember the fair-mindedness of
Americans at this moment. Incredulous, shocked and bewildered, none that I met
gave way to the glee over a British discomfiture which is instinctive, though
irrational, in many Americans. Some of them realized that American policy,
twisting and turning under "the pressure", had mainly caused this calamitous
denouement and shared my sense of shame. These were the ones who understood that
the shame was that of all "the West", in its servience, not particularly of
England or America.
However, the blame, as distinct from the shame, at that moment was Britain's.
The consequences of this act reach so far into the future that they cannot be
estimated now, but one thing will always be clear: that the glorious opportunity
offered by the simultaneous events in Sinai and Hungary was thrown away,
apparently through a series of miscalculations unprecedented, I should think, in
history.
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* At the very moment of the invasion of Egypt another massacre of Arabs was
carried out inside Israel and at a point far removed from the Egyptian frontier,
namely, the frontier with Jordan, on the other side of Israel. 48 Arabs, men,
women and children, of the village of Kafr Kassem, were killed in cold blood.
This new Deir Yasin could only be taken by the Arabs, inside or outside Israel,
as a symbolic warning that the fate of "utter destruction. . . man, woman and
child . . . save nothing that breatheth" hung over all of them, for these people
were of the small Arab population that stayed in Israel after Deir Yasin and the
creation of the new state. The deed was officially admitted, after it had become
widely known and was the subject of an Arab protest en route to the United
Nations (where it seems to have been ignored up to the date of adding this
footnote), by the Israeli premier, Mr. Ben-Gurion six weeks later (Dec. 12). He
then told the Israeli Parliament that the murderers "faced trial", but as the
Arabs remembered that the murderers of Deir Yasin, after "facing trial" and
being convicted, had been released at once and publicly feted, this was of small
reassurance to them. Up to the time this footnote (Dec 20) I have not seen any
allusion, among the millions of words that have been printed, to the fate of the
215,000 fugitive Arabs (U.N. Report, April 1956) who were huddled in the Gaza
Strip when the Israelis attacked it and Egypt. The Israeli Government has
announced that it will not give up this territory: earlier, it had announced
that it would under no conditions permit the return of the Arab refugees to
Israel. Therefore the lot of this quarter-million people, which at any earlier
time would have received the indignant compassion of the world, has been
entirely ignored. Presumably they are referred to in the only statement I have
seen on the subject, the letter of eleven Arab states to the United Nations of
Dec 14, stating that "Hundreds of men, women and children have been ruthlessly
murdered in cold blood", but there seems small prospect of impartial
investigation or corroboration, and the Arab letter. itself says, "The whole
story will never be told and the extent of the tragedy will never be known".
However, in the particular case of Kafr Kassem the facts are on authentic
record.
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I aim to show here that merely as a political gamble (surely it cannot be
considered as an act of statesmanship) this was like the act of a man who might
wager his entire fortune on a horse already withdrawn from a race. By no
imaginable turn of events could it have benefited England or France).
Of the three parties concerned, Israel had nothing to lose and much to gain: the
world's instant reprobation glanced off Israel when England and France dashed in
to snatch the aggressor's cloak and win its war; it was left deep in Egyptian
territory, cheering its "conquest". France had no more to lose, unhappily, than
the lady in the soldiers' song who "lost her name again": France was left by its
revolution the land of the recurrent fiasco, ever unable to rise out of the
spiritual despondency where it lay. During 160 years it tried every form of
government conceivable by man and found reinvigoration and new confidence in
none. Its prime ministers changed so often that the public masses seldom knew
their names; shadowy figures, they seemed indistinguishable even in appearance,
and the French politician acquired a tradition of venality; the American
comedian said he went to London to see the changing of the Guard and to Paris to
see the changing of the Cabinet. A country rendered incapable, by a series of
corrupted governments, of resistance to the German invader of its own soil in
1940, in 1956 invaded Egyptian soil in the service of Israel. But this was only
an episode in the sad story of France since 1789 and could not much affect its
future.
England was a different case, an example, a great name and a tradition of
honourable dealing not less in hard times than in good ones. England had a soul
to lose, in such company, and no world to gain. England had shown wisdom in
applying the lessons of history. It had not tried to petrify an empire and to
ward off the tides of change with bayonets. It had accepted the inevitability of
change and successfully ridden those tides, successively transforming its Empire
of colonies, first into a Commonwealth of independent oversea nations and
colonies, and next, as more and more colonies attained to self-government, into
a great family of peoples, held together by no compulsion at all, but by
intangible bonds which, as the Coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth showed in
1953, were, if anything stronger than ever before, not weaker. The avoidance of
any rigid organization based on force, and the ever-open door to new forms of
relationship between these associated peoples, made the family of nations sprung
from "England" and "the British Empire" a unique experiment in human history, in
1956, and one of boundless promise, if the same course were continued.* The
outstanding result of the apparent weakness of this elastic process was the
strength it produced under strain; it yielded, without collapsing, to stresses
which would have snapped a rigid organization based on dogmatic
rules, and became taut again when the strain was past.
Thus England had the whole achievement of British history to imperil, or lose,
in 1956 by any act which, in fact or even in appearance, reversed the policy, or
method, which had gained it so great a reputation and produced, on balance, good
material results. In that light the British Government's action of October 30,
1956 has to be considered.
If the Suez Canal was "vital" to it, why had it ever withdrawn? If a friendly
Egypt was vital after the withdrawal, why the ca1culated affront in July? If
British ships were freely using the Canal, why the pretence that it was not
"open" and that "the freedom and security of international shipping" were
endangered? If any vital British interest was at stake, why did it wait until
Israel attacked Egypt and only then attack Egypt?
The question may be turned and scrutinized from every angle, and always the same
answer emerges. This cannot have been done for the sake of Britain or France;
the moment chosen is incriminating. It would not have been done at all, had
Israel not existed; ergo, the humiliation which England (and France, if the
reader will) suffered was in that cause. The involvement begun by Mr. Balfour
fifty years before produced its logical consequence, and by this act its
continuance was ensured when release from it was at last at hand.
If any rational calculations of national interest prompted this foolhardiest of
Jameson Raids, they will one day appear in the memoirs of men concerned;
personally, I doubt if it can ever be justified. At this moment it can only be
examined in the light of four weeks' developments, which have already seen the
great fiasco.
The enterprise was evidently long prepared between two of the parties at least,
Israel and France, evidence of that soon appeared.**
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* This method is the exact opposite of that by which the world would be ruled
under the "world-government" schemes propounded from New York by Mr. Bernard
Baruch and his school of "internationalists". Their concept may in fact be
called that of "super-Colonialism" and rests entirely on rigid organization,
force and penalty. Speaking at the dedication of a memorial to President Woodrow
Wilson in Washington Cathedral in December 1956, Mr. Baruch again raised his
demand, in the following, startlingly contradictory terms: "After two world wars
. . . we still seek what Wilson sought, 'a reign of law based |
