Middle East #4: The Formation of Israel

With World War II over, Charles de Gaulle was determined to prove that France was still a “great power”, writes James Barr in A Line in the Sand. One step in that effort was to deny Syria independence or greater autonomy – France wasn’t so weak that it would have to give up its colonies. As a betrayed Syrian populace revolted, France tried to put down them down brutally.

 

Britain was in a bind – they weren’t keen to stay on in most of the Middle East, but they’d look weak if they gave independence while the French held on to their colonies. But military action against France in Syria wasn’t practical – the US and USSR were openly anti-imperialism; and Britain, like all of Europe, needed American money to rebuild after the war’s destruction. So they covertly supported Syrian rebels, who eventually managed to evict France from Syria.

 

A furious and humiliated France wanted revenge – they decided to go pro-Zionist. Hurting the British in Palestine was now official French policy. Another reason for France’s pro-Zionist stance was that a Jewish victory in Palestine would show the growing Arab League in poor light. And a weakened Arab League was critical for France – else, the wave of independence movements might spread to French colonies in north Africa.

 

At the same time, more and more of the displaced Jews from across Europe increasingly felt that they couldn’t ever be safe in Europe. If Palestine was an option, why not go there? The Zionists and the Jews of Palestine actively encouraged this trend. Even better, from the Zionists’ perspective, many of the refugees hated Europeans – they were willing to kill anyone who prevented Jews from going to Palestine. Most European leaders felt it was “morally and politically indefensible to impose obstacles” on Jews wanting to go to Palestine, after the horrors of the concentration camps were out in the open.

 

But of course, this was unacceptable to the British who controlled Palestine. They didn’t want to aggravate the Arabs, and they definitely needed a friendly regime in Palestine to keep the Suez secure. Jewish terrorist gangs arose in response all over Palestine – their target were both the Arabs and the British. Even as the British tried to retaliate, support in the US for Jews began to increase, and Britain was soon getting squeezed by the Americans to let more Jews into Palestine. Where did the Jewish terrorists get their weapons? From whoever would sell them, and the French were willing to look the other way wrt any weapons being routed through France. Anything to spite the British.

 

British efforts to prevent shiploads of Jews from disembarking in Palestine became a publicity nightmare, as you might imagine. Eventually, Britain decided to give in, calling for a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab regions. Once that happened, the state of Israel was announced, and the US immediately recognized it. A benefit of this was that arms sales to Jews/Israel was now legal (yes, France would be the biggest arms supplier), something the Jews used to ensure the Arabs were chased/killed out of the region.

 

A long tale indeed, with double-crosses abounding, and everyone stabbing everyone else in the back. Since it all started with the dismantling of the fraying Ottoman empire and culminated with the beginning of the end of the British empire, Barr rightly says:

“(The whole Middle East mess is) a thirty-year long last gasp of empire that aggravated the conflict that remains unsolved today.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more