Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules

[bemildred]

I expect this might as well start out in the dungeon.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's recent revelations that the Israeli government is encouraging Kurdish separatism in Iraq, Iran, and Syria should ring a bell for anyone who has followed the long history of English imperial ambitions.

It is no surprise that the Israelis should be using the tactic of "divide and conquer," the cornerstone policy of an empire that dominated virtually every continent on the globe save South America. The Jewish population of British-controlled Palestine was, after all, victim to exactly the same kind of ethnic manipulation that the Sharon government is presently attempting in Northern Iraq.

Following the absorption of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the British set about shoring up their rule by the tried and true strategy of pitting ethnic group against ethnic group, tribe against tribe, and religion against religion. When British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour issued his famous 1917 Declaration guaranteeing a "homeland" for the Jewish people in Palestine, he was less concerned with righting a two thousand year old wrong than creating divisions that would serve growing British interests in the Middle East.

Sir Ronald Storrs, the first Governor of Jerusalem, certainly had no illusions about what a "Jewish homeland" in Palestine meant for the British Empire: "It will form for England," he said, "a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism."

Guerilla News Network

[bemildred]

1. Kick.

Nobody? We have agonizing discussions over the meaning of the
Balfour declaration and all that shit. Here we have meaningful
context, or is Mr. Storrs just deluding himself? What would he
know anyway? Are the settlers really a cats paw for Israel in
the same way that the Zionists were a cats paw for Britain, and are
now a cat-paw for Uncle Sugar? Is this all just anti-semitic
twaddle? Is it just too scary to think about?

[The Magistrate]

2. The Article Did Interest Me, Sir

My time has been rather broken up of late, however.

It is a good summary of the history of Ireland under English rule. It does not seem to me so good in reference to English policy in the Near East.

Sir Ronald Storrs said a lot of things, and was indeed, to my mind, a pretty engaging fellow. One statement of his that appeals very much to me was "Two hours of Arab grievances drive me into the Synagogue, while after an intense course of Zionist propaganda I am prepared to embrace Islam." That is a feeling many who venture into this forum can probably appreciate. His statement about a Jewish Ulster in the Near East, much trumpeted by the criers up of Arab grievances, does not seem to me able to bear the weight the author of this piece seems to try and rest upon it.

One of the great difficulties with the idea that England supported the Zionist enterprise as a check against rising Arab hostility is that it was precisely England's support for the Zionist enterprise that was the largest cause of that hostility, and what gave it its sharpest edge. The simplest and most efficacious check against Arab hostility to England in the years after the Great War would have been to cease any support for the Zionist enterprise, and indeed, by the late thirties, after the climax of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, that was pretty much the course England embarked on. It did not immediately mollify the Arab Nationalists much, largely because of elements in the world situation that made England seem quite weak against the rising Fascist and Nazi powers, and it was quickly superseded in any case by the advent of World War Two. But had an English government taken similar steps in, say, 1925, or 1930, the effect might well have been decisive in pacifying Arab discontent.

England's policy in the question of Zionism was in fact hugely divided, with major divisions both at the policy level, and between the policy makers and the civil and military officialdom that carried policy out. To take just one example, Gen. Allenby was violently opposed to the Balfour Declaration, and did all he could to avoid and impair its implementation. It was the commonest view among both colonial officials and army officers that support for the Zionists was a great threat to the Empire, since it was such a grievance to their Moslem subjects, who provided a disproportionate quantity of the native military forces on which English rule largely depended in many areas. Many felt so strongly in the matter that they engaged in serious obstruction to the stated official policy of support embodied in the Palestine Mandate.

It seems clear that Mr. Lloyd George, who established the policy, did so in the largely delusional belief that by doing so he was enlisting the "Hidden Hand" of World Jewry on the side of England's empire, and out of a belief based on Bible devotion that the return of Jews to the Promised Land was God's work put in reach of his unworthy hand. Succeeding governments were left saddled with a policy they did not always support by the terms of the Mandate under which they exercised authority in Palestine, and made the best of a bad job with it, since holding Palestine was considered essential as a buffer against French influence at Suez, and to a land route direct to India should some calamity ever sever the sea lanes.

[bemildred]

3. Thank you Sir.

Your views were among those I was interested in.
I found it interesting, but a bit facile, and inclined to see
order where there is none.

I've been away and am exhausted. I may want to poke at this
a bit further when I am rested and have considered your comments
as they deserve, or perhaps not. Regards.

[bemildred]

4. I have considered this at modest length, and I must agree.

And you have said it as well as it needs to be said. Some
interesting history mixed in with a variety of bad analogies.
Neat simple explanations for everything are always wrong.

But interesting.