On the Fakeness of British Imperialism’s »Hostility« to the Zionist Project

Why expelling British troops from Palestine was more important than the partition question

This article is the first in a three-​part series on the background to the Soviet Union’s vote on the partition of Palestine. Part two covers the history of the Soviet vote in the UN. Part three treats the Soviet and Middle Eastern opposition to the Bernadotte Plan.

Introduction: Key for understanding the Soviet vote on the fate of Palestine in 1947 is the relationship between the British Empire and the Zionist movement. Despite the 1914 Balfour Declaration which openly supported the Zionist cause, the United Kingdom nonetheless came to regard its alliance with the Hashemite Jordanian regime no less significant and thus, to make the Jordanian monarchy appear in Arab public eyes as »no longer« in cahoots with the British backers of the Zionist forces, made a stand ostensibly »against« Jewish migration to Palestine. The powerful kibbutz lobby in Israel, hand in hand with the Hebrew proletariat of the Histadrut, picked upon Britain’s ostensible »anti-​Zionism« and forced the MI6-​backed gang of Ben-​Gurion to partially mobilize the Zionist movement against the British. Nevertheless, the British imperialists remained as covert allies to Zionism. This fact is testified not only by the assistance of various British agents to the Haganah but also by the fact that Britain was a closest ally of American imperialism, by then the supreme sponsor of the Zionist movement. Hence, despite the overt-​level »hostilities« between Ben-Gurion’s group and the British imperialists, the two forces remained as covert allies. Such an overt-​level »hostility« between Zionism and British imperialism at the time was to be weaponized by the socialist forces for deepening the wedge between Britain and its Zionist covert allies and to expel the British imperialists from Palestine.

The British Empire’s simultaneous support for the Hashemite monarcho-​fascists in Jordan and the Zionists in Palestine made the Hashemite monarcho-​fascists rightly appear in the eyes of the Palestinian and Jordanian Arab public as criminals colluding with Zionist terror. To stabilize the Hashemite regime, the British imperialists opted to present themselves as ›opponents‹ of Zionism since 1939. Hence, in 1939, the British imperialists practically rescinded the Balfour Declaration and instead published their ›White Paper‹ document, according to which the mass migration of Jews onto Israel will be curtailed.

Aiming to pick upon any pretext to denounce the British colonial presence, the kibbutz cooperativist lobby in Israel reacted very strongly to the White Paper and called for confrontations against the British colonizers. The strong presence of the kibbutz cooperatives in Israel created a powerful class base antagonistic to the bureaucrats running the Histadrut trade union federation, bureaucrats led by Ben-​Gurion and sympathetic to the continued British colonial occupation of Palestine. The pressures of the kibbutzniks as well as the proletarian voter base in the Israeli trade union movement forced the gang of Ben-​Gurion to denounce the British colonial presence in Palestine as well. Thus came the conditions under which the ›Jewish Agency‹ leadership famously declared itself a ›foe‹ of the British imperialist presence. On this conflict, a CIA report stated:

»The British dropped this idea and in 1939, Malcolm MacDonald, the British Colonial Secretary, called for the establishment of one independent state in Palestine by 1949 under Arab domination. MacDonald’s White Paper restricted the total immigration of Jews to 75,000 over the ten-​year period; a move designed to ensure the Arab majority status in Palestine. Zionists regarded the White Paper as a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate itself. In 1945, after the revelations of the Nazi concentration camps and the election of the British Labour Party, Palestinian Jews hoped that the new British Government would abandon the 1939 White Paper. Instead, Prime Minister Clement Atlee and Ernest Bevin, his Foreign Secretary, reaffirmed the restricted immigration policies and, in fact, stepped up measures to keep European Jews out of Palestine.«¹

Nevertheless, the contradictions between Ben-Gurion’s group and the British colonizers remained highly superficial. Behind the scenes, they remained allies. The American imperialist secret service was one of the many covert channels of this alliance. In those years, Britain’s top ally, the United States of America, was openly, explicitly, and directly assisting the Zionist leadership. The American imperialist secret service thus bridged the Ben-​Gurion network’s comprador intelligence institution, Mossad, to the MI6.

Depending on the balance of power as determined by the extent of the development of the productive forces, two or more imperialist powers can be rivals or can be allies. The Anglo-​American imperialists, however, had strictly convergent finance capital interests at the time and were united against Soviet power. Greatly mistaken are they who believe the widely propagated myth that the British were to seriously oppose the American agents running the Haganah. Rather, the Anglo-​American imperialists made pretensions of ›disagreement’ on the question of the Ben-​Gurion network. The Americans were to keep their image favourable in Israel, whereas the British aimed to keep their image less unfavourable in Jordan, so that both Jordan and Israel-​Palestine would be controlled by the Anglo-​American imperialists.

Not just by dialectics, but by empirical evidence, can such an alliance between the Mossad and the MI6 be articulated. So much for the Anglo-​Hashemite ›hostility‹ to Zionist settler-​colonialism, the Anglo-​Hashemites stabbed the Arab armies in the back during the 1948 War. In that war, General Glubb, a British commander who directly oversaw and directed the Hashemite Jordanian army, ensured that clashes with the Haganah would be minimized. For one evidence among many, I shall hereby present the remarks of the Saudi King Faysal, who years after the 1948 War, in a conversation with Gamal Abdel-​Nasser, recalled the stab in the back made by the Hashemite monarcho-​fascist regimes of Iraq and Jordan, regimes whose armies were directed by the British:

»Other armies like Jordan, Iraq, and others did nothing. They did nothing! They stopped.

That Glubb was a pig! At the time, he was preventing the Jordanian army from moving further. Even Abdullah wanted to be with him. He would stop them, and he had instructions from the British to not go beyond the boundaries of the division.

The Iraqi army remained in the triangle area there and did not move. Its forefront reached as far as Latrun, between Haifa and Tel Aviv, and then they withdrew it. Of course, the battle, you know it better than me because you experienced it.«²

Throughout most of the years of the colonial occupation of Palestine, the British Empire pretended to ›oppose‹ Zionist migration and Zionist settler-​colonialism. The Israelis and the British launched ›wars‹ of words against each other. Yet, that same Britain opened up Palestine for Zionist migration even during the years in which it ›denounced‹ Zionist projects. Never mind that ›White Paper restricted the total immigration of Jews to 75,000 over the ten-​year period‹, as the previously-​cited CIA document stated. Arnold Toynbee, who worked for an intelligence department of the British Foreign Office, stated that decades of British military rule over Palestine is what led to Zionist migration to that territory, whereas an independent state in Palestine would have prevented the flooding of Palestine with Jews:

»Arnold J. Toynbee who, before becoming recognized as an eminent world historian had dealt directly with the Palestine Mandate in the British Foreign Office, wrote in 1968:

›All through those 30 years, Britain (admitted) into Palestine, year by year, a quota of Jewish immigrants that varied according to the strength of the respective pressures of the Arabs and Jews at the time. These immigrants could not have come in if they had not been shielded by a British chevaux-​de-​frise. If Palestine had remained under Ottoman Turkish rule, or if it had become an independent Arab state in 1918, Jewish immigrants would never have been admitted into Palestine in large enough numbers to enable them to overwhelm the Palestinian Arabs in this Arab people’s own country. The reason why the State of Israel exists today and why today 1,500,000 Palestinian Arabs are refugees is that, for 30 years, Jewish immigration was imposed on the Palestinian Arabs by British military power until the immigrants were sufficiently numerous and sufficiently well-​armed to be able to fend for themselves with tanks and planes of their own. The tragedy in Palestine is not just a local one; it is a tragedy for the world, because it is an injustice that is a menace to the world’s peace.‹«3

The British imperialists actively collaborated with the American-​Israeli intelligence agency JDC, the financier of the Mossad, during World War II:

»According to [OSS official] Koenig, ›the various British Intelligence Services freely used the emissaries of this section [i.e. the Jewish Agency] for penetration, intelligence and DA [double agent] purposes. The representatives of the AJDC acted as a liaison with the Allied intelligence services and eventually financed this courier-​cum-​intelligence service.‹«4

See the previous sections for more details on the JDC.

Although the Mossad and the MI6 pretended to have ceased cooperation since 1945, that claim is completely implausible for so many reasons. It is anti-​dialectical to assume that the British imperialists were simultaneously (1) genuinely allied to the American imperialists and (2) genuinely opposed to the regime of Israel, the ally of American imperialism. It goes against another of the dialectical laws of history: the tendency for two states/​organizations to form an alliance with each other if there is a state/​organization that is allied to these two states/​organizations. The alliance of the British with the Americans and the alliance of the Americans with the Israelis would have meant that the British too were allied to the comprador tendency dominating Israel, despite the outwardly pretensions of ›hostility‹between the British and the Israelis. The outwardly pretensions of ›hostility‹ actually was an excellent propaganda and intelligence weapon of the MI6, the CIA, and the Mossad, because it gave the Anglo-​Israeli intelligence agents in Eastern Europe the required excuse to support the comprador forces dominating Israel so to assist them in ostensibly ›fighting‹ the British imperialists, when in fact the comprador-​dominated State of Israel was going to fight the Arab progressive forces instead of the British Army.

Throughout the subsequent sections of this book, many more examples of Britain’s alliance with the Zionist regime will be shown, hence to demonstrate the fakeness of the British colonial ›hostility‹ to the Haganah leadership. That is not to mean that a real anti-​colonial resistance movement in Israel did not exist, however. The Palmach, arising out of the kibbutzim and the Israeli proletariat, launched resistance against the British forces, Israeli fascists, and Arab Nazis alike. The pressures of the kibbutzniks and proletarians forced the Ben-​Gurion network, the agents of imperialism, to cut ties with the British colonizers and to pretend that Zionism is at war with British imperialism.

Nevertheless, this superficial contradiction between the Zionist leadership and the British imperialists could be maximally exploited. ›What could better than a clash between Zionism and British colonialism?‹, was the rhetorical question inevitably arising. Indeed, the revolutionary forces maximally exploited this superficial »conflict.« This would have a key impact upon the Soviet voting in the UN, on the partition of Palestine and the expulsion of the British colonizers. As the British imperialist occupation forces in Palestine were covertly the allies and auxiliaries of the comprador Ben-​Gurion faction dominating the Haganah, the removal of the British imperialist occupation forces from Palestine constituted de facto cuts in the auxiliary troop count of the Haganah, the reduction of the military strength of the Haganah-​led coalition. Such a cut in the Israeli bureaucrats’ stock of the means of violence, such a cut in the bureaucrats’ military power, materially weakened the parasitic class tendency that was pushing for the ethnic cleansing of the Arabs of Palestine. Even if at the cost of the partition of Palestine, the troop count of the Haganah-​led coalition had to be reduced, so to minimize the colonial damages and impacts in the region. Even if at the cost of the partition of Palestine, the British forces unofficially reinforcing the Ben-​Gurion gang had to be removed.

The British imperialists were also the allies of the Mufti Haajj Amin Al-​Husseini and his Palestinian Legion of the SS. In the Palestinian Arab zones, the dominant force was not a democratic and revolutionary Arab force but precisely the Palestinian Nazi jihadists led by the Mufti (see The History of the USSR & the Peoples’ Democracies C16S6), a Nazi-​Salafi regime termed as the ›Arab Higher Committee‹. The removal of the British imperialists would have also increased the security of the Israeli kibbutzniks and proletarians, who would later become victimized by the pogroms of the Mufti’s army of terror. The kibbutzim of Israel had become not merely a powerful socio-​economic base but also a mighty military base for the socialist forces in the Middle East. Out of the kibbutzim arose the Palmach, the thousands-​strong commando army of communist-​inspired militants who would wage war against Israeli and Arab fascism, and against Anglo-​American imperialism, for decades to come. Hence, greatly important was the drive to remove the British imperialist presence that bolstered an army so anti-​Semitic, and anti-​kibbutznik, anti-​proletarian, and anti-​Palmachnik as that of the Mufti.

Anti-​Arab and anti-​Israeli chauvinism both arise from the parasitic classes of the Israeli and Arab societies, parasitic classes covertly allied to each other. In fact, as I shall show in another book, the Haganah intelligence service and the Mufti’s network directly cooperated before, during, and after the 1948 War. However, despite the covert alliance, Israeli and Arab chauvinist terrorists were, on the overt level, vehemently ›hostile‹ to each other. The imposition of a bi-​ethnic single-​state would have forced the Palestinian Nazi jihadists and the Zionists, representing two superficially ›contradictory‹ chauvinisms, into a compromise. In the legislative assembly, the Jewish supremacists could help keep the Arab anti-​Semitic policy advances in check and the Arab supremacists could help keep the Jewish supremacist anti-​Arabist policy advances in check. The partition of Palestine, on the other hand, carved out separate states and legislatures for the two ›contradictory‹ chauvinisms, one state being the ›Arab Higher Committee‹ in Palestine run by the Nazi jihadists headed by the Mufti and the other state being run by the trade union bureaucrats of the Ben-​Gurion faction. The partition of Palestine, therefore, prevented the imposition of such a compromise, such keeping in check, between superficially ›contradictory‹ chauvinisms and rather gave these two chauvinist currents separate states of their own for their respective free reins in the generation of terror. As a result of the forcible ceasing of the compromise, Israeli suppressive terror and Palestinian provocative terror rose to new highs, haunting both nations for the decades to come. The Mufti bragged of the fact that his army of Nazi jihadists, the Sacred Struggle Army (Jaysh Al-​Jihad Al-​Moqaddas), struck terror in the hearts of Tel Avivi citizens and burnt down entire Jewish neighbourhoods (see C16S6; more on this will be published in my other book). Such terror gave the Haganah leadership the pretext for further suppressive terror, yielding a destruction so large as to greatly roll back the development of the productive forces in Palestine, hence to roll back the influence of the progressive classes arising from the advancement of the productive forces in Palestinian society. With the rollback of such progressive classes, the parasitic classes, whose cause was spearheaded by the Palestinian Nazi jihadists and out of whom came the army of the Mufti, could then have the Palestinian society under their firm grips.

Still, while preventing the partition of Palestine was necessary for preventing terror against Arabs and Israelis, the priority was to materially reduce the military presence of the colonial power that empowered the Israeli terrorists and Palestinian terrorists in the first place. One shall not compromise the greater gain for the much, much lesser. In no way was the territorial integrity of that land as important as the removal of the British colonial forces sponsoring the terrorists in both local societies. The USSR and the Peoples’ Democracies struggled for expelling the British imperialists as the primary priority and for the bi-​ethnic state in Palestine as the secondary priority.

Sources

Material cited collected in this PDF Sources_​Temuri_​The-​History-​of-​the-​USSR-​the-​Peoples-​Democracies-​Israel

This article is a sub-​chapter taken from Saed Teymuri’s The History of the USSR & the Peoples’ Democracies published at sovinform​.net, revised by the author for publication in MagMa Magazine, format adapted, title changed, introduction added, highlighting removed.

Image: »Arab irregulars, along with a burnt truck on the way to Jerusalem« – The Palmach, Israel Defense Forces – The Palmach Archive via the PikiWiki – Israel free image collection project