By October 27, 2008 Read More →

What Mr. Churchill Said in 1939 About the Palestine White Paper: Excerpt

Winston_Churchill_As_Prime_Minister_1940-1945_MH26392 (1)What Mr. Churchill Said in 1939 About the Palestine White Paper – 1939 (12 pages)
Published by the British Association for the Jewish National Home in Palestine

Churchill Condemns of White Paper of 1939

“I say quite frankly that I find this a melancholy occasion…I feel bound to vote against the proposals of His Majesty’s Government. As one intimately and responsibly concerned in the earlier stages of our Palestine policy, I could not stand by and see solemn engagements into which Britain has entered before the world set aside for reasons of administrative convenience or…for the sake of a quiet life…I should feel personally embarrassed in the most acute manner if I lent myself, by silence or inaction, to what I must regard as an act of repudiation. “ p. 2

“There is much in this White Paper which is alien to the spirit of the Balfour Declaration…I select the one point upon which there is plainly a breach and repudiation of the Balfour Declaration – the provision that Jewish immigration can be stopped in five years’ time by the decision of an Arab majority…there is the end of the vision, of the hope, of the dream.” pp. 5-7

“I cannot feel that we have accorded the Arab race unfair treatment after the support which they gave us in the late War (WWI). The Palestinian Arabs…were for the most part fighting against us, but elsewhere over vast regions inhabited by the Arabs, independent Arab kingdoms and principalities have come into being such as had never been known in Arab history before.” p. 8

“Can we…strengthen ourselves by this repudiation? …The triumphant Arabs have rejected it. They are not going to put up with it. The despairing Jews will resist it…What will the world think about it? …Shall we not lose more…in the growing support and sympathy of the United States than we shall gain in local administrative convenience, if gain at all we do?” p. 9

“Yesterday the Minister responsible descanted eloquently in glowing passages upon the magnificent work which the Jewish colonists have done…Now we are asked to decree that all this is stopped and all this is to come to an end. We are now asked to submit…to an agitation which is fed with foreign money and ceaselessly inflamed by Nazi and Fascist propaganda…How can he find it in his heart to strike them (the Zionists) this mortal blow?” pp. 11-12

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