Britain’s enthusiasm for Militant Zionism was seriously questioned by leaders of her Anglican Church community, even prior to her ‘League of Nations Mandate formulation’. For as early as 1919, their Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem (Rennie MacInnes) spoke of the unanimously bitter opposition of all the indigenous Christian and Moslem Communities therein: to any Jewish Settlement proposals.
And accordingly in 1936, as a general Arab Community Strike ensued over the Jewish Settlement topic, Mabel Warburton (as founder of the Jerusalem Girls School) felt impelled to write: It should never have come to this . . . Of course the (Jewish) immigration should have been suspended long ago, now it is being made a most serious issue.
In 1936 also: a new Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, George Francis Graham Brown, also opposed all talk of ‘a Jewish National Home within Palestine’. Through his recognition that Christ’s teachings were/are clearly contrary to all politically nationalistic sentiment. (Graham Brown’s opposition evolved shortly thereafter to a point where in 1938, he was moved to question also, the colonial authorities policing practices. Describing them as ‘representing terrorism’.)
And as to the Partition proposals mooted in the Peel Commission proposal, Graham Brown’s response was: “Such a proposal would be regarded as inequitable, unpractical, illogical, anti-religious, and a violation of the status quo.” Fortunately this, Brown’s late appeal bore fruit – when Mandate Power’ Britain’s White Paper of 1939 (a policy paper issued by the government under Neville Chamberlain) re-affirmed how any creation of a Jewish state would indeed be contrary to the interest and to past promise made to the peoples-as-a-whole. This 1939 ‘White Paper’ limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 for the next 5 years – ruling that beyond that date, any such immigration levels were to be determined by the Arab majority.
Accordingly, Alain Alameddine speaks for both The Truth and The Law- in interesting times. For sadly and wrongly, the USA continues to hold the key to Palestine’s future – as a gerontocratic Biden Presidential Administration prepares to hand over to an embittered, reactionary and equally gerontocratic Presidential Trump.
Thank you Alain, for your insight.