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.
* 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.
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 unavowed 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
* 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).
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).
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 . . . appeares 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
* 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".
statement s about "anti-semitism in the Soviet Union and the satellite countries".
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 aboutface, 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 praisemakers, 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
* See footnote on page 537
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
* 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).
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.
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:
*, **, *** See footnotes on page 539
"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
* 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.
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".
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
* 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.
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).
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 comprizing 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.*
* 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".
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 offcially 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-clection year, and Sir Anthony's crisis, began. TheZionist 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
* 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".
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.
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
* 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).
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 aboutface 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.
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 wellworn pat h 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
* 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.
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?"
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 unterminated 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 mis-information 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 climactic 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 manoeuvre 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
* 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.
in the chief office he might conceivably produce a sanative effect on American policy and foreign relations.
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
* 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 Deparlment, 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).
** See footnote on page 556.
public multitudes to accept it. This was a gift from heaven, releasing "The West" from both its dilemmas. 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".
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 fairmindedness 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, itn 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
* 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.
offered by the simultaneous events in Sinai and Hungary was thrown away, apparently through a series of miscalculations unprecedented, I should think, in history.
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
* See footnote on page 558.
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 calculated 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.**
* 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 on the consent of the governed. . . that reign of law can exist only when there is the force to maintain it . . . which is why we must continue to insist that any agreement on the control of atomic energy and disarmament be accompanied by ironclad provisions for inspection, control and punishment of transgressors' ".
** Correspondents of The Times, Reuters and other newspapers and agencies subsequently reported that they had seen French aircraft and French air officers in uniform on Israeli fields during the invasion, and at the "victory party" given in Tel Aviv by the Israeli air force, when the Israeli commander, General Moshe Dayan, was present. These reports agreed in an important point: that the French Air Force was present to "cover" or provide "an air umbrella" for Tel Aviv if it were attacked by Egyptian aircraft. Reuters reported that same French air officers admitted attacking Egyptian tanks during the Sinai fighting. As far as the French were concerned, therefore, the pretence of a descent on the Suez Canal to "separate" the belligerents was shown to be false. French officers and aircraft having been seen behind the Israeli lines in Israel and Sinai during the fighting. The Times correspondent reported "an undertaking on the part of France to do her best, if war broke out between Israel and Egypt, to prevent any action against Israel under the terms of the tripartite declaration of 1950 and to see that Israel had appropriate arms with which to fight". The 1950 declaration pledged France impartially "to oppose the use of force or threat of force in that area. The three governments, should they find any of these states were preparing to violate frontiers or armistice lines, would . . . immediately take action. . to prevent such violations".
In England the Government (up to the time of concluding this book) has refused the demand for enquiry into the charge of collusion, which cannot be established in the British (as distinct from the French) case. There does seem a possibility that the British action was a sudden one, taken on the spur of a moment deemed to be favourable. In that case, it was a titanic miscalculation, for when the British and French "ultimatum" was launched the United States had already called an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council and presented a resolution censuring the Israeli attack and demanding that the Israelis withdraw from Egyptian territory (Oct. 29).
Thus the only effect of the British and French attack was to divert the reprobation of the world from Israel to themselves and by November 7 (after a second resolution calling on Israel to withdraw) an overwhelming majority of the General Assembly had duly transferred the weight of its censure to "Britain and France", Israel then appearing in the third place among the parties told to withdraw.*
By that time the military fiasco was as clear as the political one; English ears had had to listen for nearly five days to the reports of British bombing of Egyptians, the Suez Canal was blocked by sunken ships, President Nasser was more popular in the Arab world than he had ever been, and the British Government was gradually retreating from "no withdrawal" through "conditional withdrawal" to "unconditional withdrawal".
President Eisenhower and his administration, made the most of these events. What was coming was evidently known in Washington, (as the attack on Pearl Harbour had been foreknown). American residents had been told to leave the danger zone some days before the attack, and in the two days preceding it President Eisenhower twice admonished Mr Ben-Gurion, once in "urgent" and then in "grave" terms; the only answer he received was a radio message, delivered to him during an aeroplane trip from Florida to Virginia, telling him that Mr. Ben-Gurion had launched the attack.
However, the British government did not officially inform the President (or even the Dominion Governments) of its intention, and Mr, Eisenhower was able to present a face of patient suffering to his people when he appeared on the television screen with the words, "We believe it" (the attack) "to have been taken in error for we do not accept the use of force as a wise or proper instrument for the settlement of international disputes". This was an irreproachable statement,
* From that moment, following the example set by the American President, the weight of censure was by stages shifted from "Israel" to "Israel, Britain and France", then to "Britain and France", and in the last stage to "Britain" (thus recalling the transformation earlier effected in the case of Hitler's persecution of men, which began as "the persecution of political opponents", then became "the persecution of political opponents and Jews", then "Jews and political opponents" and, at the end, "of Jews").
A characteristic public comment of this period was made by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, who was generally accepted in America as the voice of her husband, the late President. She said at a news conference three days before the presidential election (she was campaigning for the Democratic nominee), "I do not consider that Israel is an aggressor; she acted in self-defence . . . I believe Britain and France were technically guilty of aggression", (New York Times, Nov, 4, 1956).
against a background of culpability (the American-prompted supply of French, British and Canadian arms to Israel all through the summer). If the British Government counted on "Zionist pressure" in Washington, it was deceived at that moment. There is always a margin of error in these things and Mr. Eisenhower was ensured of election; in any case, the opportunity to divert his wrath to Britain spared him the need to spend any more of it on Israel (which, for that matter, had got what it wanted). A harsh word to England, moreover, has been a popular thing in America since the Boston Tea Party; is it conceivable that a British government did not realize that?
The British action seems to be accountable only in the context of the entire Zionist delusion. If the thing was to be done at all, the only hope lay in a swift and massively efficient operation which would have gained possession of an intact canal and have confronted the world with something accomplished. The British undertaking was slow from the start and very soon showed all the signs of second thoughts. After the fiasco The Times (Nov. 16) reported from the British base at Cyprus, "The British Government's decision to intervene in Egypt was taken without the advice of nearly all its senior diplomatic representatives in the area. It was continued against the warnings of most of them about its probable effects on the future of British relations with the Arab nations. . . When details of the British ultimatum to Cairo and the decision to intervene militarily against Egypt were first learned in British Embassies and Legations in the Arab countries the reactions in nearly all of them appeal' to have ranged from frank disbelief to talk of its being potentially a disaster. . . Many were incredulous or aghast when the form of this direct action appeared to associate British policy with that of Israel and France" (this passage vividly recalled to me the feeling I found in "British Embassies and Legations" throughout Europe at the time of Munich).
So much for the political decision; next, the military execution of it. The Times (Nov. 17) reported that among the military commanders in Cyprus "There was a nearly unanimous feeling that if it were done it had best be done quickly. The failure to allow them to complete the job has produced a sense of frustration and confusion among many senior officers here, as well as among many of their subordinates". The eminent American military writer, Mr. Hanson Baldwin, later discussing "A Confused Invasion" which was "likely to become a famous case study in the world's military staff colleges", said that under the confused direction from London "the multiple political, psychological and military objectives became inextricably confused; the result was no clearcut purpose, or at least no objective that military force could achieve, given the limitations imposed on it".
It soon became apparent that something was indeed delaying and deterring the British and French governments in carrying out the enterprise. To the French this mattered little, for the reasons previously given; for the British, reputation, honour, the hope of prosperity, the cohesion of the great British family were all at
stake. Already, in the stress of those days, the Canadian Prime Minister had given warning that such actions might lead to the dissolution of the Commonwealth. In the United Nations Britain stood in the pillory with Israel and France, a sorry sight indeed. Against huge adverse votes, only Australia and New Zealand remained at its side, and that possibly from dogged fidelity more than conviction.
What caused the hazardous undertaking, so vaingloriously announced, to be delayed until it fizzled out? The "vigorous and emphatic protest" from President Eisenhower and the United Nations resolution presumably caused the first reconsideration in London. Then there was the agonizing coincidence of events. As soon as the British and French began to bomb Egyptians the Moscovites turned back into Hungary and began to massacre Hungarians. Then at the united Nations the spokesmen of East and West began to shout "You're another" at each other; while British and French aeroplanes bombed Port Said the British and French delegates accused the Soviet of inhuman savagery; while Soviet tanks murdered the Magyars the Soviet delegates accused the British and French of naked aggression. These exchanges began to show something of the professional mendacity of peddlers in a Levantine bazaar.
The picture then took on nightmare shapes. Sir Anthony Eden, the rising young man when he resigned in 1938, received the resignation of Mr. Anthony Nutting, the rising young man of 1956, who as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs "had most strongly advised against British intervention in Egypt", and of other colleagues. To restore his position he had recourse to Sir Winston Churchill, who proclaimed, "Israel, under the gravest provocation, erupted against Egypt. . . I do not doubt that we can shortly lead our course to a just and victorious conclusion. We intend to restore peace and order in the Middle East and I am convinced that we shall achieve our aim. World peace, the Middle East and our national interest will surely benefit in the long run from the Government's resolute action".
This, possibly one of the last of Sir Winston's pronouncements, remains for the future to audit. The British action has strongly Churchillian traits, and his successor was so closely associated with him that, at all events, it is unlikely to have been done without Sir Winston's approval. At that same moment the veteran published the second volume of his History of the English-speaking Peoples, and the New York Times said of it, "The author is proud of the fact that his small island, 'the little kingdom in the northern sea', although possessing when this volume begins but three million inhabitants, should have civilized three continents and educated half the world". Only time can show whether the British attack on Egypt was in that civilizing and educating tradition, or will remain to the discredit of England.
Then came the biggest of the shocks resulting from the British Government's action. The Soviet Premier Bulganin, in notes to Sir Anthony Eden and the
French Prime Minister, plainly threatened them with rocket and atomic attack if they did not "stop the aggression, stop the bloodshed" (the bloodshed, in Budapest continued and the stream of Hungarian fugitives across the hospitable Austrian frontier swelled towards a hundred thousand souls; in Budapest another Bela Kun man of 1919, Mr. Ferenc Munnich, became Moscow's "key man" in succession to Rakosi and Geroe, and began the new terror). More than that, Mr. Bulganin in a letter to President Eisenhower proposed a joint American-Soviet attack "within the next few hours" on Britain and France, a proposal which the White House in a press statement, merely termed "unthinkable".
Is anything "unthinkable" in our time? The Hitler-Stalin alliance of 1939 (an obvious development, which the present writer and others foretold) was portrayed to the masses as something "unthinkable" until it was made and the Second War begun. The New York Times at this period quoted "a senior United States diplomat with long experience in the Arab world" as implicitly approving the suggestion: "Our rejection of the Russian offer as 'unthinkable', without offering to consider it within the framework of the United Nations, is interpreted here" (he was in Jordan) "as meaning that despite whatever we may say we will always side with the West and Israel when the chips are down".
No doubt the proposed joint American-Soviet atomic attack on England was unthinkable at that time, but in fact the two countries were acting together against England in different ways, which combined to produce a massive pressure from two sides. Sir Anthony Eden had embarked on torrential rapids in a frail canoe. There is in America a constant, latent matricidal instinct towards Europe in general and England in particular (it can not be explained but must always be taken into account) which is most easily made active by the charge of "colonialism". The fact that America is the greatest colonial power in the world (for I see no valid difference between oversea and overland expansion)* does not alter this; it is an irrational impulse which has always to be taken into account in calculating the results of any contemplated action involving "American opinion".
However, "opinion" today is a manufactured product and can be produced in any form desired. What was much more important and should not have been overlooked, was that President Eisenhower, quite evidently, was selected, nominated and in effect elected by the "internationalist" group which dominated Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman, and that American state policy, under this direction, has always supported the revolution and taken on an anti-British nature at moments of peak-crisis. The ultimate "internationalist"
* The United States, of course, is the occupant, by conquest or by purchase, of British, Dutch, French and Spanish colonies, and of vast Mexican and Russian territories; Only the virtual extirpation, during the life of the American Republic, of the original inhabitants of this great area produces a present picture differing from that of today's British, Dutch, French and Spanish colonies, with their millions of "colonial peoples ". American's oversea possessions, by conquest or purchase, are few. The Panama Canal Zone, which is under permanent United States sovereignty, is a separate case; if it proves anything, in relation to the Suez Canal and Britain, it proves only the advantages of good "title " and of military adjacency.
ambition is the world-government project, to be achieved through the convergent, destructive forces of revolutionary-Communism and revolutionary-Zionism, and it is the essence of this ambition that the two great English-speaking countries on either side of the Atlantic be kept divided, for only through their division can empire be achieved. This ambition dominated the Second War. President Eisenhower first emerged as the third figure in the Roosevelt-Marshall-Eisenhower group. The anti-British nature of General Marshall's proposals in the war years has been earlier shown; he was, in fact, Mr Churchill's great adversary and the man responsible for the fact that (as the official British history of the war recorded in 1956) despite Mr Churchill's worldwide renown and apparently formidable authority, he proved, in fact, unable to shape a single major strategic decision during that war; by the outcome of which the Roosevelt-Marshall-Eisenhower policy must be judged. In the final palaver, at Yalta, Mr Roosevelt's dominant wish was to effect injury on Britain, as the Yalta papers show.*
General Eisenhower, as the commander in Europe, gave the military order resulting, in effect, in the cession of half Europe to the revolution. Against this background, the support of President Eisenhower could not have been counted on by the British Government; the prehistory is too weighty. He was the executor of the Roosevelt-Marshall policy in the war, and seven years after its end was patently selected by powerful backers, in opposition to Senator Taft, as a man who would further pursue the " internationalist" policy. What was unexpected, and cannot be justified, is the length to which he went in publicly humiliating Britain at this time, by enforcing the "unconditional" withdrawal in the most abject circumstances, by virtually ostracizing the British Ambassador in Washington, and generally by displaying a rancour reminiscent of President Roosevelt at Yalta. This display of repugnance (the reproachful mien was seen by the entire country on the television screen) was without moral basis. The "pressure" on Britain to withdraw from the Canal, and the ensuing "pressure" on Britain to join with America in the provocative insult to Egypt, which was the true start of the war-crisis of 1956, originated in the White House. Moreover, this was done while the massacre in Hungary went on and apart from saying that his heart went out to the victims the American President and his administration remained passive in face of that, much graver affair. In this, again, he was consistent with his earlier acts: the dropping of the" repudiation of Yalta" pledge, after his election in 1952, and the order to halt the Allied armies
* "The President said he would tell the marshall" (Stalin) "something indiscreet, since he would not wish to say it in front of Prime Minister Churchill. . . The British were a peculiar people and wished to have their cake and eat it too . . . He suggested the 'internationalizing' of the British colony of Hong Kong and that Korea be placed under a trusteeship with the British excluded. Stalin indicated that he did not think this was a good idea and added that 'Churchill would kill us'. When post-war political questions came up, he often took positions that were anti-British", (New York Times, March 17, 1955).
east of Berlin in 1945. The effect of all these was to continue that "support of the revolution" which was the dominant tenet of American state policy during two wars. One great lesson was learned through the events of October and November, 1956. They showed that, if sufficiently shocked, something like "world opinion " can express itself through the debating society known as the United Nations in New York. The demonstration of repugnance was overwhelming in both cases, those of the attack on Egypt and of the Soviet massacre in Hungary. They showed, further, that as an instrument for giving effect to any such moral censure the United Nations is utterly impotent. In the graver case, that of Hungary, it could do nothing whatever, because the Soviet was in possession and the United States was passive. In the other case, that of Egypt, an immediate result was produced only because both these countries joined against Britain; the one with " measures short of war" (the refusal of oil supplies) and the other with the direct threat of war. In fact, the British withdrawal from Suez was effected by American-Soviet collaboration, and while "the internationalists" are able to control the American selection-and election-machine that will remain a great danger to the world. An Eisenhower-Bulganin pact is not inherently more "unthinkable", in the circumstances of this century, than was the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939; at all events, the professed intention (to crush "Communism") is the same in both cases. If the British Government put reliance on "Zionist pressure" in Washington (and this had effected the British withdrawal from Palestine and the establishment of Israel in 1947-8), this was another miscalculation at that particular moment. It left out of account the shock-effect of the Israeli attack and the greater shockeffect of the British and French one, which turned the eyes of the world chiefly on Britain and much strengthened President Eisenhower in adopting the moral attitude. Thus the British Government found itself between threats of Soviet attack, on the one hand, and a hostility, apparently surprising to it, from the White House, on the other. The "vital lifeline" was blocked, and Britain's oil supplies were blocked with it. Apparently it looked confidently to the American Government to make these good and then learned that it could expect no American oil until it "got out "; by this time the entire brunt of the affair fell on Britain. British representatives in Washington were coldly received and found that no matter of substance would be discussed with them; they were left to understand that they might call again if they wished, in their quest for oil, when Britain had "got out". The American President in those days went much further in the public humiliation of the British Government than he needed to go, and the reason for this must be sought in the anti-British feeling which was shown in the recorded deeds and words of his patron, President Roosevelt. The whole history of
American governmental machinations in the matter, during his presidency, deprived him of ground for the posture of honest indignation. Unhappily, the British humiliations were earned. The attack on Egypt was disastrous in every major point: in its plain appearance of complicity with Israel, in its delivery at the very moment of Soviet defeat in Hungary, and in its indecision and ineffectiveness, once begun. Sir Anthony Eden, worn down by the strain and politically ruined, retired to Jamaica to recuperate. " Unconditional withdrawal" (of the British and French, not of the original aggressor, Israel) began. An " international force", hurriedly assembled by the United Nations, appeared on the Suez Canal and hung around, wondering what it was supposed to do. President Nasser's renown soared in the Arab world; the Canal remained blocked; Egypt declared that it would not give up an inch of Egyptian territory; Israel began to complain about " anti-semitism" in Egypt. Three weeks after the attack the drunken Kruschev, the Soviet Communist leader, jeered at the British and French Ambassadors at a Polish Embassy reception in Moscow: "You say we want war, but you now have got yourselves in a position I would call idiotic. . . You have given us a lesson in Egypt". Who could gainsay him? A week later the New York Times summed up the balance: "Britain and France have gambled and appear to be losing disastrously . . . Israel has so far emerged from the crisis in a somewhat better position" (Nov. 25).* The same issue prominently reported the remarks of a member of the Israeli Parliament, a Mr. Michael Hazani: "Mr. Hazani expounded his theory that the failure of Britain and France to clinch their Suez Canal objective was a lucky thing for Israel. . .The Israelis feel less isolated today than before their October 29 thrust into Sinai which alienated friends and raised the hackles of enemies around the world . . . Israelis revelled in their newly developed friendship with France which supplied the tools which enabled their forces to whip the Egyptians . . . A few weeks ago Israelis had a fright when they feared they might have brought the world to the brink of a thermonuclear war. The initial scare has worn off, the threats are regarded as tactics in a war of nerves. . . Some Knesset members said that Israel too could play that game. . . so they ask why Israel should not exploit her current nuisance value to induce the great powers to press Egypt and the other Arab states to negotiate peace". These sentences may show the reader how little hope of respite the world has until the Zionist adventure is liquidated. Fiasco is the inevitable fate of all who associate themselves with it because its own inevitable end is fiasco, but the brunt of each disaster must and always will fall on these associates, not on the original authors of the mad ambition. Today it cuts across all rational relationships between nations, antagonizing those which have no reason for discord,
*Two weeks later, after this chapter was finished, the same newspaper dismissed Britain as henceforth "a second class power".
misleading some to undertakings which cannot possibly bring them good, and prompting others to threats of world war. In the case of England, which by this act was reinvolved in the morass from which Mr. Ernest Bevin had extricated it in 1947-8, the penalties on this occasion were so heavy that, if the entire process of involvement in Zionism be likened to thirteen steps to the gallows, this may be said to have been the twelfth step; the only worse thing that could befall England through it would be final calamity. Already, on this occasion, the warning about the disintegration of the Commonwealth was heard from the highest place outside the British island itself, and on no earlier occasion had that been even a remote peril. It was put in the dock, beside Israel (and France) before the world and rebuked like a miscreant. It suddenly found alarming menaces arising on all sides. None of the aims announced were achieved, its fighting forces were not allowed to complete even a repugnant task, nothing but discredit remained. At the end higher taxation, deprivation and hardship fell on the land, as the price, and this was in truth further tribute to Zion. In all this, one thing is clear: none of it could have happened but for the state set up in 1948. If general war had come, it would have been begun by Israel; if it should yet come out of this affair (and that is still an open possibility as this book is ended) it would have been begun by Israel. Speaking for myself, if I could have persuaded myself that the British attack on Egypt was truly prompted by concern for any British interest, I would have accepted it in the belief that the British Government knew things, unknown to me, which somehow justified what seemed by all outer appearance indefensible and foredoomed. I cannot persuade myself of that. This was but the latest misstep in the tragedy of errors which began with the original British commitment to Zionism in 1903; I have traced them all in this book. I think this is clearly implicit in what was said from the Government benches in the House of Commons at the fiasco's end. Sir Anthony Eden being in Jamaica, the task of the apologia fell to his colleagues and one of these, Mr Anthony Head, the Minister of Defence, rested the apologia, not on any British interest at all, but on the claim to have averted "a crippled Israel, a bombed Tel Aviv and a united Arab world " (again, I have not the text and quote from the New York Times; I hold that politicians must stand to what the world understands them to say). Now, the corollary of the achievement claimed is a disunited Arab world, a bombed Port Said and a crippled Egypt (of these three things one was done, the bombing, and the others were not achieved). What British interest is served by disuniting the Arab world and crippling Egypt? What Englishman would have supported the act if it had been put to him in those terms before it was done? When was the case, for supporting " the fulfilment of Zionist aspirations", ever put to the British elector in those terms? In some diseases modern medicine is able to identify the original source of
infection, the primary sore. The primary source of all these troubles, as they culminated in the deeds of October 29 and 30, 1956 is demonstrably Zionism; they could not have happened in that way without it. In the logical sequence to its every act since it took shape as a political force in the ghettoes of Russia some eighty years ago, it led the world to the edge of universal war, and on that, brink none knew which of their friends of yesterday would be the foe of the morrow. Here was "the deception of nations" at the full, indeed. Can time distil good of all this? Clearly it can and will; only for contemporaries is the needless turmoil in which we live infuriating. The first signs of the long-delayed turn for the better begin to show. The nations which lie in the chains of revolutionary-Communism are beginning to throw them off; the Eastern European peoples yet may save themselves by their exertions and the rest of the captive West by their example. I believe the Jews of the world are equally beginning to see the error of revolutionary-Zionism, the twin of the other destructive movement, and as this century ends will at last decide to seek involvement in common mankind.* The events of October and November 1956 themselves supplied the apt concluding chapter for this book.** I believe they also added the conclusive evidence to its argument.
* A development which may have been foreshadowed by a report (if it was accurate) published in the New York Times on December 30, 1956, that "fewer than 900 of the 14,000 Jews who have fled from Hungary. . . have decided to resettle in Israel", the "vast majority" preferring to go to America or Canada. On the other hand, if they follow the example of their predecessors they will swell the mass of "explosive" Eastern Jews there whose transplantation, during the last seventy years, has produced the present situation; the incitement of these against America was shown by quotation from Jewish authorities in the preceding chapter.
** As to the Suez affair, the apt footnote was supplied by President Eisenhower on January 5, 1957 when he asked Congress for standing authority to use the armed forces of the United States against "overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international Communism" in the Middle East. He thus envisaged doing very much what he had censured the Eden Government for doing. An example of "overt" aggression is presumably the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbour; the explosion was "overt " and it was attributed to Spain. Before and after the attack on Egypt the international press began to accuse one Arab nation after another of being "controlled" by international Communism, and President Eisenhower's request to Congress again opens the prospect that the much-heralded extirpation of Communism might prove, in the event, to be an attack on the Arabs, not on Communism. The description, "controlled by Communism", is incapable of definition or proof, and simple to falsify through propaganda. For instance, the New York Times on Dec 2. 1956 published pictures of "Russian tanks captured by the Israelis" during the attack an Egypt. Readers' objections led it to admit that the tanks were in fact American. Whether they were captured from the Egyptians remains open to question; anyone can photograph a tank and write a caption. Israel was originally set up with Soviet arms, but is not on that account said to be " controlled by international Communism". The news of President Eisenhower's act was followed by a sharp rise in various Israel shares on the American Stock Exchange and by sermons of praise in several New York synagogues. A possible reason for this was the fact that the President undertook to act militarily in the Middle East only in response to request from "any nation or group of nations" attacked. As Egypt was widely declared to be "the aggressor" in the attack on itself in October 1956, this proviso again lies open to many interpretations, at need. If the words were earnestly meant, they imply that American forces would have been used, on Egyptian request, to repel the Israeli attack of October, 1956. That is difficult to imagine; to put it mildly, American military intervention in response to a request from any other Middle Eastern state than Israel is hard to picture; however, times change and all things are possible.