Perfidious Albion?

Notes on the British, Palestine, Jordan, and the State of Israel in ca. 1948 (19 December 2016, 19 Kislev, 5777)

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Contents:
1. Introduction
2. How to Explain British Anti-Semitism
3. Instinctive Feeling of Wanting to Settle in Israel or at least have some Control of it.?
4. The British Plot to Give the West Bank of Palestine to Jordan
Source: Extract from, "The Debate About 1948" by Avi Shlaim
5. The Overview
6. Some More Sources
7. The End Result in 1948.
8. Personal Anecdotes
(a) Grandfather among those saved by British officer in Jordanian Army.
(b) Avi Osdoba and Ben Gurion
9. What Should be Done?

1. Introduction
"Perfidious Albion" is a nickname given to Britain by French critics. It means literal "Treacherous Britain."  The question is how appropriate was this cognomen in connection to the Jews when they fought for their very existence in 1948?
Recently the question of the British and their attitude to the Jews in Palestine (before it became Israel) has come to the fore. We have written several articles on this subject. The whole matter is however quite complex and requires much more study than we have so far managed to dedicate to it. The British ruled Palestine (ca. 1917-1948). Their rule was converted (in 1922) into a Mandate from the League of Nations which was a forerunner to the UN. Before the British came there were already quite a few Jews in the country. The Jews comprised both religious and non-religious secular elements. The secular forces were dominated by socialist left-wing types though the  equivalent of right-wingers were also present. Under the British the Jewish population and Jewish control of the country greatly increased. There was opposition including armed hostility from Arab Muslims inside and outside of the land. The British themselves wavered from one extreme to the other. Our impression is that overall the British were far more positive to the Jews than anything else. There were however exceptions. There were British personnel who were anti-Jewish and at the end there were British soldiers in the Arab forces. This has to be taken into account alongside acknowledgment of the British help and support that also existed.
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2. How to Explain British Anti-Semitism?
First of all the British are sometimes accused of things they were not really guilty of. We have to get the facts straight. It cannot be denied however that in some cases some of the British were against the Jews and did harm to them.
We identify the British as from the Ten Tribes. We are sometimes challenged concerning anti-Jewish actions or attitudes the British were guilty of.

If they were the long-lost brothers of Jews how could they act negatively towards them?

In reply we do not say that all the British are descended from Israeli only a portion of them. These however from a Biblical point of view have had a significant influence. Nevertheless, Edomites and other foreigners are also present in the British  population and at times these may have the main say.  Israelites themselves are not always as righteous and as fraternally inclined as they should be. Religious and cultural influences have an effect. The British on the whole are not aware of their Israelite ancestry. Those few who do have knowledge of Hebrew origins are sometimes negatively influenced by anti-Jewish propaganda spread by low-lifes and assorted scum. They accuse the Jews of being Edomites thus testifying as to what they themselves evidently may well be.
Historically the British were not above being quite harsh towards their own people (such as the Americans in 1776),  or to near relatives like the Irish through much of their history.
The two halves of Israel, Joseph and Judah, were often antagonistic towards each other in Biblical times. It was prophesied that some degree of fiction would continue right up until their ultimate reconciliation and reunion.

[Isaiah 11:13] THE JEALOUSY OF EPHRAIM SHALL DEPART, AND THOSE WHO HARASS JUDAH SHALL BE CUT OFF; EPHRAIM SHALL NOT BE JEALOUS OF JUDAH, AND JUDAH SHALL NOT HARASS EPHRAIM.

[Isaiah 11:14] BUT THEY SHALL SWOOP DOWN UPON THE SHOULDER OF THE PHILISTINES IN THE WEST AND TOGETHER THEY SHALL PLUNDER THE PEOPLE OF THE EAST. THEY SHALL PUT FORTH THEIR HAND AGAINST EDOM AND MOAB, AND THE AMMONITES SHALL OBEY THEM.  

The above expression   BUT THEY SHALL SWOOP DOWN UPON THE SHOULDER OF THE PHILISTINES IN THE WEST is better translated as saying, "They shall fly the Palestinians to the west."    We understand this to mean that together Ep[hraim and Judah will co-operate in transferring the Palestinians to some place to the west of Israel possibly to Latin America. This, in our opinion, should already have been done but better late than never! 

We have not yet reached the End times. Some antagonism between Ephraim and Judah still exists.           
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3. Instinctive Feeling of Wanting to Settle in Israel or at least have some Control of it?
The Lost Ten Tribes once lived in the Land of Israel. They worshipped other gods, followed pagan practices, and were expelled as a punishment (2-Kings 17:5-23). In the future they will return, re-unite with Judah and settle in the Land of Israel,
cf.

Ezekiel 37:
22 I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. There will be one king over all of them and they will never again be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms. 23 They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and vile images or with any of their offenses, for I will save them from all their sinful backsliding, and I will cleanse them. They will be my people, and I will be their God.
24 My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd. They will follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees. 25 They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob, the land where your ancestors lived. They and their children and their children's children will live there forever, and David my servant will be their prince forever.

It may be that elements among the British wished to see British control over at least part of the land continue. This may explain why they appear to have contrived to keep the West Bank apart. Consider this possibility in the light of the extract below.
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4. The British Plot to Give the West Bank of Palestine to Jordan

Source: Extract from,
"The Debate About 1948" by Avi Shlaim
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 27:3, 1995, 287-304.
Reprinted in Ilan Pappe, ed., The Israel/Palestine Question (London: Longman, 1999).
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/The%20Debate%20About%201948.html

(1. British Policy

The first bone of contention concerns British policy in Palestine between 29 November 1947 and 14 May 1948. Zionist historiography, reflecting the suspicions of Zionist leaders at that time, is laden with charges of hostile plots that are alleged to have been hatched against the Yishuv during the twilight of British rule in Palestine. The central charge is that Britain armed and secretly encouraged her Arab allies, and especially her client, King Abdullah of Jordan, to invade Palestine upon expiry of the British Mandate and do battle with the Jewish state as soon as it came into the world. For Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary in the Labour Government headed by Clement Attlee, is reserved the role of chief villain in this alleged conspiracy.
Ilan Pappe [Pappe, Britain and the Arab-Israeli-Conflict; Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan; and Avi Shlaim, 'Britain and the Arab-Israeli War of 1948', Journal of Palestine Studies, 16:4, Summer 1987]  using English, Arabic and Hebrew sources.... The key to British policy during this period is summed up by Pappe in two words: Greater Transjordan. Bevin felt that if Palestine had to be partitioned, the Arab area could not be left to stand on its own but should be united with Transjordan. A Greater Transjordan would compensate Britain for the loss of bases in Palestine. Hostility to Hajj Amin al-Husayni, who had cast his lot with the Nazis during the Second World War, and hostility to a Palestinian state, which in British eyes was always equated with a Mufti state, were important and constant features of British policy after the war. By February 1948, Bevin and his Foreign Office advisers were pragmatically reconciled to the inevitable emergence of the Jewish state. What they were not reconciled to, was the emergence of a Palestinian state.

The policy of Greater Transjordan implied discreet support for a bid by Abdullah, nicknamed 'Mr Bevin's little king' by the officials at the Foreign Office, to enlarge his kingdom by taking over the West Bank. At a secret meting in London on 7 February 1948, Bevin gave Tawfiq Abul Huda, Jordan's Prime Minister, the green light to send the Arab Legion into Palestine immediately following the departure of the British forces. But Bevin also warned Jordan not to invade the area allocated by the UN to the Jews.  An attack on Jewish state territory, he said, would compel Britain to withdraw her subsidy and officers from the Arab Legion. Far from being driven by blind anti-semitic prejudice to unleash the Arab Legion against the Jews, Bevin in fact urged restraint on the Arabs in general and on Jordan in particular. Whatever sins were committed by the British Foreign Secretary as the British mandate in Palestine approached its inglorious end, inciting King Abdullah to use force to prevent the emergence of a Jewish state was not one of them.

If Bevin was guilty of conspiring to unleash the Arab Legion, his target was not the Jews but the Palestinians. The prospect of a Palestinian state was pretty remote in any case because the Palestinians themselves had done so little to build it. But by supporting Abdullah's bid to capture the Arab part of Palestine adjacent to his kingdom, Bevin indirectly helped to ensure that the Palestinian state envisaged in the UN partition plan would be still-born. In short, if there is a case to be made against Bevin, it is not that he tried to abort the birth of the Jewish state but that he endorsed the understanding between King Abdullah and the Jewish Agency to partition Palestine between themselves and leave the Palestinians out in the cold.

The Zionist charge that Bevin deliberately instigated hostilities in Palestine and gave encouragement and arms to the Arabs to crush the infant Jewish state thus represents almost the exact opposite of the historical truth as it emerges from the British, Arab and Israeli documents. The charge is without substance and may be safely discarded as the first in the series of myths that have come to surround the founding of the State of Israel....

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5. The Overview
Avi Shlaim continues his article. Amongst other matters he raises the opinion that an understanding had existed between King Abdullah of Transjordan (i.e. Jordan) and the leaders (e.g. Ben Gurion) of Israel. Basically the end result was what they had initially agreed to though in the fighting both sides had attempted to displace the other.

In general a rough picture is that the British announced their intention to abandon the Mandate and get out of Palestine. The UN then had a vote and decided to partition Palestine. The Arabs did not accept the partition. Hostilities broke out but were kept under control to some degree by the British. The Jews gained control of most of the area apportioned to them. The British then left. The Jews fought against the Palestinian Arabs and against irregular and regular forces from surrounding Arab countries including Jordan.  The Jordanian Army was commanded by a British officer and included British officers in its ranks.
The Jews beat the Arabs back but were in a difficult situation lacking arms and facing an embargo by the UN enforced by Britain and the USA. There was a ceasefire and the Jews, against the terms of the Ceasefire, replenished their stocks. They received arms, and planes from Czechoslovakia as well as Jewish manpower both from Czechoslovakia and other parts of Eastern Europe. When fighting resumed they were in a stronger position.  Czechoslovakia at that time had a communist government.
Its surplus of arms was due to what was left over from the German occupation (up until 1945) and much that had been given it by the British. This included British Spitfires and Czech imitations of German Messerschmidt planes. There also arrived in Palestine the Czech Brigade. This was "a unit composed of Jewish veterans of 'Free Czechoslovakia', which fought with the British Army during WWII. The Brigade began training in August 1948 at four bases in Czechoslovakia."
The assistance from Czechoslovakia in effect consisted of armament supplied previously by the British and trained soldiers who had just recently been part of the British army.
What were British arms in such quantities doing in Czechoslovakia?
Did the British have knowledge of this?
Did they have any say in the matter?
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6. Some More Sources

Avi Shlaim tells us:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/The%20Debate%20About%201948.html

The heroism of the Jewish fighters is not in question. Nor is there any doubt about the heavy price that the Yishuv [Jewish community in Palestine] paid for its victory. Altogether there were 6,000 dead, 4,000 soldiers and 2,000 civilians, or about 1 per cent of the entire population. Nevertheless, the Yishuv was not as hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned as the official history would have us believe. It is true that the Yishuv numbered merely 650,000 souls, compared with 1.2 million Palestine Arabs and nearly 40 million Arabs in the surrounding states. It is true that the senior military advisers told the political leadership on 12 May 1948 that the Haganah had only a 'fifty-fifty' chance of withstanding the imminent Arab attack. It is true that the sense of weakness and vulnerability in the Jewish population was as acute as it was pervasive and that some segments of this population were gripped by a feeling of gloom and doom. And it is true that during three critical weeks, from the invasion of Palestine by the regular armies of the Arab states on 15 May until the start of the first truce on 11 June, this community had to struggle for its very survival.

But the Yishuv also enjoyed a number of advantages which are commonly downplayed by the old historians. The Yishuv was better prepared, better mobilized and better organized when the struggle for Palestine reached its crucial stage than its local opponents. The Haganah, which was renamed the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) on 31 May, could draw on a large reserve of Western-trained and home-grown officers with military experience. It had an effective centralized system of command and control. And, in contrast to the armies of the Arab states, especially those of Iraq and Egypt, it had short, internal lines of communication which enabled it to operate with greater speed and mobility.

During the unofficial phase of the war, from December 1947 until 14 May 1948, the Yishuv gradually gained the upper hand in the struggle against its Palestinian opponents. ...

IDF's gravest weakness during the first round of fighting in May-June was in firepower. The Arab armies were much better equipped, especially with heavy arms. But during the first truce, in violation of the UN arms embargo, Israel imported from all over Europe, and especially from Czechoslovakia, rifles, machine-guns, armoured cars, field guns, tanks, airplanes and all kinds of ammunition in large quantities. These illicit arms acquisitions enabled IDF to tip the scales decisively in its own favour. In the second round of fighting IDF moved on to the offensive and in the third round it picked off the Arab armies and defeated them one by one. 
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http://referaty.aktuality.sk/czechoslovak-military-aid-to-israel-during-the-war-of-independece/referat-667

After the \"Economic Rehabilitation\" and \"Mutual Trade Agreement\" was signed in December 1947 the USSR had dictated much of the priorities of the Czech economy, this resulted in a transfer from free enterprise to an extremely concentrated system and from production of light consumer goods to heavy industry.

However, in 1948 the export of arms become its main source of income. The Czech government, in order to survive the post-war economic difficulties, intended to sell not only what they had produced, but also weapons given to them by Britain during WWII, including armored fighting vehicles and 72 Spitfire aircraft . According to British reports, based on inside information from within the Czech Government, the total Czech dollar income from export of arms and military services to the Middle East in 1948 was over $28 million, and Israel received 85% of the Czech foreign military aid, the Arabs received the remainder.
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http://canadafreepress.com/article/israels-allies-in-1948-the-ussr-czechoslovakia-american-mainline-churches-a
At first, a 'Skymaster' plane chartered from the U.S. to help in ferrying weapons to Palestine from Europe was forced by the FBI to return to the USA. By the end of May the Israeli Army (IDF) had absorbed about 20,000 Czech rifles, 2,800 machine-guns and over 27 million rounds of ammunition. Two weeks later an additional 10,000 rifles, 1,800 machine-guns and 20 million rounds of ammunition arrived. One Czech-Israeli project that alarmed the Western intelligence was the, so called, Czech Brigade, a unit composed of Jewish veterans of 'Free Czechoslovakia', which fought with the British Army during WWII. The Brigade began training in August 1948 at four bases in Czechoslovakia.
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A Drop in the Ocean?  Czechoslovak Troops in the Middle East during WWII
http://www.mzv.cz/warsaw/en/news_and_events/a_drop_in_the_ocean_czechoslovak_troops.html
About two and a half thousand soldiers went through the service in the Czechoslovak troops in the Middle East during the three years of its existence. In total, more than half were Jewish refugees. .....
In Great Britain, the Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade was founded at the beginning of September 1943, being deployed a year later during the siege of Dunkerque, a port in northern France, which it commanded until its capitulation on the 9th of May 1945.

See Also:
"Who did what for Israel in 1948? America did nothing"  by Norman Berdichevsky
http://www.sullivan-county.com/islam/israel1948.htm

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7. The End Result in 1948.
The Jews won the War of Independence. Many Palestinians fled, left of their own free will, or in some cases were pressured to leave. Others stayed. Some were encouraged to stay. It varied fron one place to another. Jordan had control of East Jerusalem and the West Bank of what had been Palestine. The Jordanian control of the West Bank was recognized by Pakistan and Britain but by no other nation. It ended in 1967 when the Jews took the area back in the Six-Day War.
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8. Personal Anecdotes

(a) Grandfather among those saved by British officer in Jordanian Army.
Gush Etzion is a group of Jewish settlements north of Hebron. It was beseiged by irregular Arab and Jodanian regular forces. In the end it was taken by the enemy. Many were killed while others were taken prisoner.
"The Arab Legion took 320 persons as prisoners of war and held them in Jordan for a year before releasing them."
See:
Gush Etzion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gush_Etzion

When the Brit-Am office was in Jerusalem there was a time when we employed an assistant for office work for a few hours each week.
She herself was quite critical of the British but she also told us her grandfather had been among the defenders of Gush Etzion. The family is quite well known. She said that at one stage the Arabs intended to kill all the prisoners but were stopped by a British officer.

(b) Avi Osdoba and Ben Gurion.
Avi Osdoba, may he rest in peace, passed away some years back. Avi was a personal friend of Yair, attended Brit-Am meetings and helped represent Brit-Am.  He also helped us with research.
Avi told us that in right-wing Jewish circles the opinion existed that Ben Gurion had deliberately let the Jordanians take East Jerusalem.
The intention was to re-create the Jewish People but with a weakened Biblical consciousness. Old Jerusalem and the Western Wall would have been in the way. We do not believe this though there may have been a tendency in that direction amongst some left-wing circles that were influential at the time.
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9. What Should be Done?
According to the sources:
The Ten Tribes will help the Jews re-settle and rebuild the Land of Israel.
They will help rebuild the Temple.
They will help transfer the Palestinians elsewhere.
They will resettle in the areas of Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, as well as to some degree in Samaria.
Recognizing who they are and supporting Brit-Am/Hebrew Nations is a first step in this direction.