Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997, Pages 97-98

Point of View

The Zimmermann Telegram and the Balfour Declaration

By Shakir A. Abbas

The chain of events that culminated in the Balfour Declaration started many years before, when it was recognized that the Ottoman Empire (the Sick Man of Europe) was on its deathbed. Everyone, including the Zionists, was well aware of its pending breakup. Therefore, the factors that led eventually to the Balfour Declaration and the partition of Palestine 30 years later were prolonged and complex. The following is an examination of these factors in order of their importance.

The Road to India

India was the resplendent jewel in the crown of the British monarchy, and both Egypt and Palestine happened to be located on the road to India. In the 19th century and the early 20th century, members of the British ruling class thought that their control of India was eternal and therefore it was imperative that they secure the possession of major parts of the Middle East to maintain their hold on the subcontinent. The British Empire at the turn of the century was a great enterprise that covered huge masses of people and extensive territories girdling the earth. The British proclaimed that the sun never set on their empire, and that was no idle boast. The imperialists ruling from London were intent on perpetuating the empire at any cost, acutely aware of external threats posed by countries like France, Germany and Russia. Germany was late in getting into the game of colonization and was determined to get its share.

India was a very profitable investment for the British. It was a great bargain. Not only was India a source of cheap raw materials for their industrial engine, but also a huge market for their products. Their approach to ruling India was entirely racist and regressive. Because of the many ethnic and religious groups that lived on the subcontinent, the British were able to control the population by pursuing the policy of "divide-and-rule." The two major segments of the population, the Muslims and the Hindus, were kept at loggerheads by sowing the seeds of conflict between them.

Introducing the Jews into Palestine was part of the British "divide-and-rule" policy that they have deliberately practiced so well in many places (India, Ireland, Cyprus) and with such tragic results. A national home for the Jews in Palestine would help in protecting India by providing a countervailing force to Arab nationalism, to French imperial ambitions and other unforeseen predators. It could also help them in maintaining a permanent presence near the Suez Canal. Unaware of the true nature of Zionism, the British assumed all along that they could control a docile Jewish population which would be dependent on their good will and power to survive. Later on, the British were in for a very rude surprise when the Jews started attacking them, blowing up their buildings, hanging their soldiers and forcing them to give up the mandate.

Black Gold

In addition to the British concerns about India, there was another factor at work. Although it was unknown to the people of the region, the British were aware of the great abundance of oil in the Middle East. Oil is a source of energy which is quite unique in many ways. It is relatively cheap, easy to extract and there are huge reserves in the Gulf region. Another advantage is the ease of transportation. Being in liquid form it can be pumped through pipes stretched over thousands of miles across deserts, under the sea and over the frozen tundra.

Indeed, in the United States, the Rockefellers' Standard Oil was already transforming the shape of American society, industry and landscape by the exploitation of oil resources. Recognizing that oil reserves are finite, the international scramble for discovering new wells was quite fierce. The British could gain tremendous leverage by being the premier power in the Middle East.

In the early 1900s, His Majesty's Government was already involved with the legendary William Knox D'Arcy in exploring for oil in Iran. The British navy, under the guidance of Winston Churchill and Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher, had already switched from coal to oil as the source of energy for its ships. This was quite a gamble, since coal was available and secure within the British Isles while oil was located in far-away regions that needed to be conquered and controlled. It was important for the British Empire to reconfigure its policies in the light of its dependence on oil. Again the presence of the Jews in the heart of Arab lands was bound to give rise to continuous turmoil and thus enable the British to remain in the region for a long time arbitrating the dispute.

The Second Coming of Christ

The support for Zionism sprang also from an unexpected quarter, namely the evangelical conservative Christians who believed very strongly in the biblical prophesy that once the Jews returned to their ancestral home, it would be time for the Messiah to return and convert the Jews to Christianity and establish the Kingdom of God. For the Christians it would be the second coming of Christ and for the Jews it will be their long-awaited and only Messiah. Advocates of so-called Christian Zionism are well-known religious figures in the United States who had in their heyday as many as 40 million followers. Among them are Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggert, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts and others. Recently some of them have fallen on hard times because of defects in their moral character and un-Christian behavior.

What is perhaps not known is that Christian Zionism is not a recent phenomenon limited to the U.S. It had its roots many centuries ago in Protestant countries like England, where politicians and biblical scholars interpreted Old Testament pseudo-historical narratives to mean that the destiny of the "Jewish race" is to ingather in the land of Palestine. These Christian Zionists felt bound to facilitate the process even if the Jews themselves were not anxious to undertake this uncertain journey. In the Victorian age, leading politicians like Anthony Shaftesbury, William Gladstone and Henry John Palmerston believed in the legend that restoration of Israel meant the second advent of Christ. Politicians in the early 20th century were equally influenced by this equation. Some of these leaders must have felt that by establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine they would not only be doing God's work but also getting the children of God out of their hair.

The response of the Zionists to the beneficence of the Christian adherents of the prophesy was naturally dichotomous. They encouraged the part about the return but were quite contemptuous of the second part. The last thing the Jews wanted to do was convert en masse to Christianity. However, they accepted fully and gratefully the support of the right-wing Christian believers. Menachem Begin was reported to have remarked sarcastically: "I tell you if the Christian fundamentalists support us in Congress today, I will support them when the Messiah comes tomorrow."

Other Contributing Factors

There are other less important contributing factors that influenced the Balfour Declaration. When Winston Churchill in 1922 expressed the opinion that it should not be thought that, with the Balfour Declaration, Britain gave something to the Jews for which she received nothing in return, he was probably thinking of the road to India and Middle Eastern petroleum, and not the Zimmermann Telegram.

The Flamboyant Welshman

The war in Europe was not going well for the Allies in 1916, and as a result, the Asquith government of Great Britain had to resign. It was followed by a coalition government headed by the Liberal politician David Lloyd George. In the words of author David Fromkin, David Lloyd George was a charming but morally lax man.

This appointment was a great stroke of luck for the Zionist activists, headed by Chaim Weizmann, in Great Britain. As it happened, Lloyd George was for many years the lawyer for the World Zionist Congress and also the lawyer for the Shell Oil Company, headed by Marcus Samuel. In collaboration with the powerful House of Rothschild, Marcus Samuel built an oil empire rivaling the Standard Oil of America and the Royal Dutch Company. Whether the Lloyd George connection with Zionism early in his career was fortuitous or a deliberate grooming of an up-and-coming politician who would be indebted to the Jews is not clear. I think the latter might be the case. One must remember that a close political ally of Lloyd George was the powerful C.P. Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian and a "devout" Zionist.

In Lloyd George, the Zionists found an ideal combination of a political opportunist who held deep religious convictions as to the destiny of the Jews, who benefitted financially from his association with the Zionists, and who had become a diehard colonialist betraying his early Liberal upbringing. As prime minister at the most critical stage of the war, Lloyd George was able to thwart French Premier Georges Clemenceau and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and gain sole possession of Palestine for the benefit of Great Britain and his Zionist associates. Without the prodding of Lloyd George, the Balfour Declaration in its present form would not have seen the light of day.

Fuel for the War

Early in the war, the British were desperately short of timber, from which acetone is distilled. Acetone is the key ingredient in the manufacturing of explosives. There was an urgent need to develop a synthetic form of acetone to permit the war to go on. Dr. Chaim Weizmann, an excellent chemist, was recommended by his Zionist friends to be given responsibility for solving this problem, despite the fact that he was a foreigner. Anxious to please the British government and render a much-needed service, he came up with a solution to the problem in a relatively short time. That certainly helped his standing with government leaders and opened a lot of doors for him in his quest for a British commitment on the Palestine issue. This must be considered as a factor of some importance.

Echoes of Distant Wars

There must be some faint reverberations in the British psyche of past wars of the Crusades where they met with ignominious defeats at the hands of the Saracens. There must have been some gleeful rubbing of hands at the thought of payback time. Instead of the brave Christians, it would be the surrogate Jews who would occupy the Holy Land. A story is told of a French general who, after the occupation of Damascus, rode to the tomb of Saladin, knocked on the gate and reported: "Saladin, we have returned!"

Unctuous Chemist

Some credit must be given to the persuasive powers of Chaim Weizmann and his ability to convince people of the righteousness of his cause and his absolute belief that the Zionist pleas were genuine and moral. Every leader he had met from Lord Arthur James Balfour to King Feisal of Iraq to President Harry Truman was impressed by his passion, intelligence and his personality. They seemed unable to detect, underneath it all, the terrible injustice he was seeking to perpetrate.

Role of Racism

This list is not complete without touching on the subject of racism. The British for many years looked down on their brown, black and yellow subjects as inferior and not capable of self-rule. In a way this justified the manner in which they ran their empire. It is ironic that they considered that as the "White Man's Burden." To them it was not such an egregious matter that white European Jews displaced what stay-at-home British politicians imagined to be the few barefoot, camel-herding Arabs running about in what they believed was an almost empty Palestine. It is also ironic that the Zionists had the same racist philosophy. For 30 years the Zionists discussed Palestine without enquiring about the people who already lived there. They propagated the myth of "land without people for people without land."