Clark, Harry F.

Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World, Volume 14, Number 3, 1 September 2020, pp. 266-286(21)

Review of: A Broken Trust: Sir Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians, Sahar Huneidi, foreword by Walid Khalidi (2001) London: I. B. Tauris, 340 pp., ISBN 978-1-86064-172-5, h/bk, out-of-print

The Palestine Deception, 1915‐1923: The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, the Balfour Declaration, and the Jewish National Home, J. M. N. Jeffries, edited and with an introduction by William M. Mathew (2014) Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies-USA, 175 pp., ISBN 978-0-88728-320-8, p/bk, $16.00

Palestine. The Reality. The Inside Story of the Balfour Declaration 1917‐1938, J. M. N. Jeffries, with a new introduction by Ghada Karmi (2017) Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 800 pp., ISBN 978-1-56656-024-5, p/bk, $30

Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict, Walter L. Hixson (2019) Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 324 pp., ISBN 978-1-108-70532-5, p/bk, $29.99

Zionism lobbies the empires

Zionism lobbies the empires  (pdf)

Abstract

The ‘strategic’ view of the relationship between the Zionist movement and Great Britain, and later between the state of Israel and the United States, emphasizes the interests of the great power, while the ‘lobby’ view stresses the power of the Zionist, later Israel Lobby. The 1917 Balfour Declaration expressing British support for a Jewish ‘national home’ in Palestine was criticized by the military, diplomats, and in Parliament; its eventual approval was due to the Zionist lobby. In the 1940s the Zionist, later Israel lobby, overcame US diplomatic and military opposition and secured support for partition of Palestine and establishment of a Jewish state. In the crisis of spring, 1967 the Johnson Administration sought to restrain Israel and avoid war, before assenting to Israel’s attack on June 5, under enormous Lobby pressure. Similar pressure informed the decisions to defer Israeli evacuation of the occupied territories to a general peace settlement, and to sell Israel advanced aircraft. The defensiveness of writers on the Israel Lobby is due to the accusation of antisemitism; the antipode to antisemitism is not the ‘strategic’ and other views that conceal the Lobby, but the classical liberal traditions that rejected Zionism.