“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish People, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” The Balfour Declaration, written in a letter delivered on Nov. 2, 1917, from Foreign Minister Balfour to Lionel, the 2d Baron Rothschild.
“Because it was unpredictable and characterized by contradictions, deceptions, misinterpretations, and wishful thinking, the lead-up to the Balfour Declaration sowed dragon’s teeth. It produced a murderous harvest, and we go on harvesting today.”[1]
by John Ellis
On April 13, 1919, a peaceful crowd gathered in Amritsar, India, responding to Mahatma Ghandi’s urging for Indians to engage in civil resistance by protesting the Rowlett Act. Just a few weeks earlier, on March 18, the Imperial Legislative Council had passed the act allowing the British authorities in India to continue to detain and imprison without a trial any Indian nationalist whom they viewed as a threat. The colonial police were given carte blanche to arrest anyone, at any time. As the protesters gathered, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to block the only exit. He then gave the order to open fire. Called the Jallianwaga Bagh Massacre, the number of people slaughtered by the British troops is still debated. Some reports estimate that upwards of 1,800 people lost their lives that day. In November of that year, the Hunter Committee concluded that 379 people had been killed. The dead, according to the report, “comprised 337 men, forty-one boys and a baby six-weeks old. The Hunter Committee believed that the wounded would have been ‘probably three times as great as the number killed’, and settled for a thousand as a guess.”[2]
The growing nationalist threat in India “played a profound role in the views of Britain and its stubborn intent to hang on to its territories in the Middle East – the gateway to India.”[3] This imperialistic concern was a major driver in England’s foreign policy during World War I as well as throughout the winter and spring of 1919 when the world converged on Versailles to discuss the terms of the treaties that would officially bring the war to an end. A year and a half earlier, the famous Balfour Declaration, seemingly promising to aid the Zionists in turning Palestine into a home for Jews, had been quietly issued, serving notice that whatever happened in Palestine, an England intent on protecting its own interests was going to be the one pulling the strings. The Zionists failed to fully comprehend this. They believed they were the ones pulling the strings. And they weren’t the only ones England duped.
As World War I began, Palestine was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Founded in the penultimate decade of the 13th century by Osman, the son of a tribal chieftain from Asia Minor named Ertoghrul, the Ottoman Empire grew to its zenith in the 16th century under Suleiman the Magnificent. Almost reaching the walls of Vienna at its peak, the once impressive Ottoman Empire was a dull expression of its former glory by the 20th century. In 1909, the triumvirate of Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Ahmed Pasha, the core leadership of the Young Turkey Party (officially named Committee of Union and Progress, or CUP), deposed Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Inspired by the French Revolution, the three Pashas, or Young Turks as they’re often referred to by history, sought to turn the Ottoman Empire into a modernized, secular society. They “promised a new era with talk of a secular, multi-ethnic state.”[4] In 1912, by dissolving Parliament and manipulating a series of elections, the Young Turks were finally able to gain total control of what remained of the Ottoman Empire. The upheaval that naturally accompanies a coup followed by the drastic shift in governance were exacerbated in Turkey by deep ontological concerns that the three Pashas struggled to balance. Lord Kinross wrote of the Ottoman Empire, “What was now its identity? From this turning point in its history, to what nature of civilization was the Turk to belong – that of Islam, or that of the West, or some fusion of both?”[5]
This existential struggle opened the door to nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire, most notably a pan-Arabist movement seeking to create an Arab nation out of the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine. England would exploit these nationalist movements to their advantage during the upcoming war.
Almost as soon as the Sultan had been deposed, “Arabs began to organize against the CUP … aiming at a revived empire that would provide autonomy for Arabs.”[6] Arab nationalism quickly spread throughout the tottering empire. But before England began manipulating those political machinations, it wasn’t a fait accompli that the Ottoman Empire would turn against England and instead side with Germany. But that’s exactly what happened. How it happened is its own fascinating story, and one I’d love to tell but one that would take me too far afield of the subject at hand.[7] What’s important in that story is simply this: The Young Turks threw their lot in with Germany because Talaat and Enver became convinced that Germany would win the war and protect them from further European encroachment, specifically Russia’s encroachment who had lusted after Constantinople ever since Ivan the Great had pronounced himself Czar, derived from the Latin term Ceasar, and married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor.[8] When Turkey joined in the alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, England turned to nationalist elements within the Arab world to foment internal dissension with the hopes that the Ottoman Empire would be defeated from within and be forced to withdraw from the war.
Turkey didn’t really pose much of a threat to England during the war.[9] What Turkey did possess, though, was a back door entrance to Germany. Conquer the Dardanelles, the narrow strait connecting the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas with the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, and the Allies would have a direct path to push the war into Germany’s flank. Early on in 1915, England had tried and failed to secure the straits.[10] That embarrassing failure created a need to look elsewhere. Their gaze soon landed on the Sharif of Mecca and Emir of Hejaz, Hussein ibn Ali.
Hussein’s title of Sharif was owed to his being a (purported) descendent of the Prophet Mohammed. As Emir, Hussein ruled the Hejaz region, including Mecca, for the Ottoman Empire. After the CUP deposed Abdul Hamid II, they installed his brother as a puppet Sultan who then appointed Hussein as Sharif and Emir. Hussein was close to the new Sultan, which meant he was considered dangerous by the Young Turks, whose program of centralization was at odds with the Muslim forms of governance that the Ottoman Empire had utilized for over six-hundred years.[11] Seeing his position threatened on multiple fronts, including competing interests among pan-Arab nationalists[12], the Sharif tentatively reached out to England, who had already been in contact with his eldest son Abdullah (future king of Jordan and grandfather of Jordan’s current king). Thus began a series of communications between British Secretary of War Lord Kitchner’s agents and the Hussein family.[13] After it became clear that the Young Turks planned to get rid of him, and after he was armed with assurances and monetary payoffs by the British, Sharif Hussein gave his sons the green light to organize and lead an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire.[14]
During the back and forth between the Husseins and England, the Sharif urged his sons to exercise caution moving forward until they had received written guarantees from England that once the fighting was all over, the European empire would “abstain from internal intervention in Arabia.” As it turns out, Sharif Hussein should’ve been more precise with his language. As Jonathan Schneer points out, “The indeterminate term was crucial: By ‘Arabia,’ did he mean not merely the Hejaz but the entire Arabian Peninsula? Did he even perhaps mean Mesopotamia and Syria too, including Palestine? He did not specify.”[15]
As it turns out, the Sharif meant it all: the entire Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine. “In July 1917, [T.E. Lawrence] interviewed [Sharif] Hussein and became painfully aware that the latter misunderstood British intentions for Mesopotamia, as well as French plans for the Syrian coastal region.”[16] Hussein’s lack of precision in his language was owing in large part to the reality, put simply, that he was not a diplomat; he definitely wasn’t a diplomat in the 20th century European understanding of the term. For their part, the British exploited the Sharif’s often indeterminate language even when they understood his expectations and intent. This exploitation sits at the center of the ongoing controversy over the McMahon-Hussein letters.
During the spring of 1915, the Sharif’s son Feisal, later King of Iraq, helped pen the Damascus Protocol, “the lodestar of the Arab Revolt”[17] against the Ottoman Empire. The boundaries for Arab independence were spelled out, clearly encompassing the entire Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine. After several weeks of debating with his sons their next move, Sharif Hussein sent a letter on July 14, 1915, to the British asking them to approve the Damascus Protocol. He “warned that if they did not, ‘we will consider ourselves free in word and deed from the bonds of our previous declaration.’”[18] After some back and forth with London, Sir Arthur Henry McMahon responded. Dated August 30, 1915, the letter assured Hussein, “we confirm to you the terms of Lord Kitchener’s message, which reached you by the hand of Ali Effendi, and in which it was stated clearly our desire for the independence of Arabia and its inhabitants, together with our approval of the Arab Khalifate when it should be proclaimed. We declare once more that His Majesty’s Government would welcome the resumption of the Khalifate by an Arab of true race.” But McMahon then added, “With regard to the questions of limits and boundaries, it would appear to be premature to consume our time in discussing such details in the heat of the war.”[19]
In his reply, Hussein pushed back on England’s reluctance to discuss “the questions of limits and boundaries,” insisting, “I am confident that your Excellency will not doubt that it is not I personally who am demanding of these limits which include only our race, but that they are all proposals of the people, who, in short, believe they are necessary for economic life.”[20] The response from McMahon includes the phrase that has been argued over for one-hundred plus years now. After assuring Hussein that England took the question of boundaries seriously, McMahon stated that England accepted the terms of the Damascus Protocol with the exceptions of, “The two districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo which cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the limits demanded. With the above modification, and without prejudice to our existing treaties with Arab chiefs, we accept those limits.”[21]
Hussein agreed to the exclusion of the districts of Mersina and Alexandretta but argued for the Arab status of Aleppo and Beirut. McMahon gently pushed back by placing the blame for the exclusion of Aleppo and Beirut in France’s lap who had their own imperialistic goals in mind for Syria. The Sharif agreed to lay aside the matter of Aleppo and Beirut until after the war, which was not to be read as capitulation on his part, and England and Hussein ibn Ali and his sons reached an agreement. The Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire officially began.
An important footnote in all of this is the quality of the translator’s work with the letters that passed between the two men. Sir Ronald Storrs, an official in the British Foreign Service who was serving in Egypt at the time, wrote in his memoir, “Our Arabic correspondence with Mecca was prepared by Ruhi, a fair though not a profound Arabist; and checked under high pressure by myself.” What Sir Storrs failed to mention is that even though he was the one checking the translations, his own Arabic was barely passable. Historian Schneer surmises, “Conceivably the imbroglio that resulted from this most famous letter can be traced to nothing more than an imprecise rendering of English into Arabic caused perhaps by ignorance or haste.”[22] It could also be added that McMahon was taking advantage of imprecise language to cover England’s bases with Hussein while leaving their options open in the future. In his response to a furious Viceroy Lord Hardinge who was upset that McMahon had apparently given away Mesopotamia to Hussein, McMahon explained, “What we have to arrive at now is to tempt the Arab people into the right path, detach them from the enemy and bring them to our side. This on our part is at present largely a matter of words, and to succeed we must use persuasive terms and abstain from academic haggling over conditions.”[23] Hardinge understood, writing to the secretary of state for India, Austen Chamberlain, that “MacMahon had ‘impl[ied] that the negotiations [over Arabian boundaries] are merely a question of words and will neither establish our rights nor bind our hands in that country.”[24] “MacMahon later wrote that he intended to say that the territories Hussein and the Arabs were not to have were coastal Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, with an eastern frontier somewhere in what is now Jordan. His language can be read that way, but on a more natural reading, he was referring only to Syria-Lebanon here, not Palestine.”[25]
In 1922, the famous war correspondent J.M. Jeffries was sent to Palestine by the Daily Mail, England’s most widely read newspaper at the time, to research and write about the growing conflict in the region that was now under the auspices of the British Mandate. The articles he produced created a firestorm since he found and published the MacMahon-Hussein correspondence for the first time. The British government had kept the letters secret, fearing that accusations of deception and foul play would rain down on them if the public knew what had transpired. As a compilation, the series of articles earned the title The Palestine Deception 1915-1923: The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, the Balfour Declaration, and the Jewish National Home. In the fifth article, “Broken Faith with the Arabs: The McMahon Letters Disclosures”, Jeffries begins with, “Now let us descend into the real depths and watch how the British Government originally broke its word.” With his next two sentences, he asserts, “It did so by publishing that [Balfour] Declaration at all. It had given pledges to the Arabs previously guaranteeing the independence of the country in which it now sought to establish the Zionist ‘National Home.’”[26]
In his next article, Jeffries minces no words in shredding the deception created by McMahon’s words. I quote the damning paragraph in its entirety:
“Where does Palestine lie? Where are Haifa, Nablus, Jaffa, Jerusalem, the cities and towns of Palestine? South, south, far to the south. The decisive line that went westward from Damascus struck the coast between Tyre [sic] and Sidon. … Below it, safe from exclusion are the cities of Palestine, 60, 80, 120 miles below. Besides, does not Sir Henry McMahon only speak of reconsideration where the ‘interests of France are interwoven’? And the Shereef Hussein in his final letter, has he anything more to ask for but ‘the norther parts and their coasts … now left to France’? And ‘France’ stops some 15 miles below Tyre [sic]. All that is south goes, by the word of Sir Henry McMahon, which is the word of Great Britian, to form an independent kingdom for the Arabs. And yet our Cabinet could impose a ‘Jewish National Home’ within these boundaries to the conservation of which it was pledged.”[27]
There are some important and interesting aspects to Jeffries’ articles that support the value and authority of his words. Firstly, as William Mathew points out, “It is important to note that none of the standard anti-Semitic tropes of the period find space in Jeffries’ writings.”[28] Unfortunately, in discussions about Palestine accusations can fly fast and furiously. If you read Jeffries’ articles, and I encourage you to do so, you’ll find that Jeffries’ problem wasn’t with Jews, it was with the British government and its duplicitous dealings. Secondly, when the Colonial Office filed Jeffries’ articles in their archives for its official record, they completely excluded the fifth article and most of the sixth article, the two articles I quoted from above. The Colonial Office found it so damaging to their credibility that they preferred to erase it from memory. Thankfully, in democracies, it’s next to impossible for governments to erase unwanted articles from memory; “Broken Faith with the Arabs” by J.M.N. Jeffries continues to impressively and convincingly speak into the debate, a debate that has only grown more contentious as the decades have rolled by.
McMahon’s playing with words created a firestorm of controversy ever since. The argument centers on where exactly on the map McMahon’s exclusions sit. England and pro-Zionists insist that the agreement between England and Hussein excluded all of Palestine. Arabs argue that there is no way Hussein would’ve surrendered a land that contains some of Islam’s holiest sites. David Fromkin sums up the debate by writing, “For decades afterward partisans of an Arab Palestine argued that if these four geographical terms were properly understood, British Cairo had promised that Palestine would be Arab; while partisans of a Jewish Palestine argued the reverse.”[29] MacMahon’s words can be defined in ways that excludes Palestine and in ways that include Palestine in the land England promised to the Arabs, depending, often, on your a priori attitude. Adding up the lack of precision in the language, McMahon’s admission to Chamberlain, and Sharif Hussein’s later words, it seems clear that England’s primary concern was securing the services of the pan-Arabists during the war while allowing themselves linguistic plausible deniability. England played this deceptive game because while they were making promises to the Arabs, they were also making conflicting promises to several other parties, including to the Zionists.
[1] Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), 370.
[2] Nigel Collett, Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer (New Delhi: Rupa, 2005),263.
[3] David A. Andleman, A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today (Nashville, TN: Wiley, 2014), 67.
[4] Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003), 377.
[5] Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fal of the Turkish Empire (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1977), 585.
[6] Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, 20.
[7] England’s many missteps included believing the conspiracy that CUP was controlled by Jewish Freemasons.
[8] Obviously, it’s more complex than I’ve painted. Among other things/events, in 1911 Turkey approached England about cementing their relationship with a treaty. Viewing Russia as its greatest threat, the Ottoman Empire believed that England offered the best shot at protection. Not wanting to anger Italy, England ignored Turkey. Winston Churchill was the only senior cabinet minister who realized the importance of an alliance with Turkey. His recommendations were shot down. The rest is history, as they say.
[9] The United States never declared war on Turkey.
[10] England’s failure to win the Dardanelles is one of the most fascinating stories from WWI. It involves Churchill’s foresightedness tripped up by a failure on the part of English intelligence. While Churchill was blamed, shamed, and temporarily pushed out of leadership as punishment for England’s failure, history has revealed that the Turkish forts only had enough ammunition to fire on the English ships just once. Churchill was right, the Dardanelles were ripe for the taking. Only a failure of nerves by Admiral Carden (seen as wisdom at the time) prevented England from storming into the Sea of Marmara and then into the Black Sea, possibly ending the war early and altering the course of history.
[11] It should be noted, because he deserves praise for this, during Enver Pasha’s Armenian genocide, Hussein ibn Ali did his best to welcome fleeing Armenians under his protection.
[12] His primary Arab nationalist enemy was Ibn Saud who established Saudi Arabia in 1932, becoming that country’s first king.
[13] The movie Lawrence of Arabia tells part of the story. Granted, the movie is based on T.E. Lawrence’s memoir that is filled with exaggerations and inventions intended to convince everyone else that Lawrence was as special as he believed he was.
[14] It’s important to note that the Ottomans are ethnically Turks and not Arabs. Failures to understand, or care about, the ethnic (and religious) disparity throughout the Ottoman Empire was one of the most consequential mistakes behind the racist, imperialistic Treaty of Versailles.
[15] Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, 37.
[16] Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, 320.
[17] Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, 54.
[18] Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, 59.
[19] Arthur McMahon, “McMahon-Hussein Correspondence” letter dated August 30, 1915, Wikisource, accessed 2/13/2014, McMahon–Hussein Correspondence – Wikisource, the free online library
[20] Hussein ibn Ali, “The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence” letter dated “Sep. 9, 1915”, Wikisource, accessed 2/13/2024, McMahon–Hussein Correspondence – Wikisource, the free online library
[21] McMahon, “The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence” letter dated “Oct. 24, 1915”, Wikisource, accessed 2/13/2014, McMahon–Hussein Correspondence – Wikisource, the free online library
[22] Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, 65.
[23] Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, 69.
[24] Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, 69.
[25] David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: A Holt Paperback, 1989), 183.
[26] J.M.N. Jeffries, The Palestine Deception 1915-1923: The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, the Balfour Declaration, and the Jewish National Home (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2014), 54.
[27] Jeffries, The Palestine Deception, 62.
[28] William Matthew, “Introduction: Context and Consequences 1923,” The Palestine Deception, 4.
[29] Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 179.
Practically Known Theology 