Times' columnist Ben Macintyre's Britain's Middle East carve-up is no cause for shame (published in The Australian on July 30) is, as the title suggests, an apologia for British imperialism.* Here are the opening paragraphs:
"Boris Johnson is more a historian than a diplomat... The new British foreign secretary has written books on Churchill and London... He is undoubtedly comfortable in the past. This is just as well because one of the first challenges will be to negotiate his way through exceptionally controversial anniversaries of events in Britain's history that have a continuing impact on the present: the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, which promised a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, falls in November next year; 100 years ago this year, British and French diplomats signed the Sykes-Picot agreement that secretly divided up the Middle East between them; October sees the 60th anniversary of the Suez Crisis, the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in collusion with Israel.
[**The wording of the declaration is actually "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."]
"These events may have lost much of their relevance in western memory but in the Middle East they remain freighted with significance, resentment and pain. The centenary of the First World War has been comparatively plain sailing in commemorative terms but Britain's Middle East diplomacy surrounding that conflict, which paved the way for the foundation of Israel and Arab nation states, is a diplomatic minefield. The letter written by foreign secretary Arthur Balfour in November 1917 pledged British support for a 'national home' for the Jewish people, leading to the Mandate, mass Jewish immigration and the creation of Israel after World War II."
Notice what's missing?
All mention of the 1915 Anglo-Arab treaty negotiated between Britain's high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, which preceded both the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) and the Balfour Declaration (1917), and without knowledge of which the treachery of those two astonishing manoeuvres cannot be fully appreciated.
Whether this is a deliberate omission or a case of ignorance is anyone's guess. In either case, Macintyre's subsequent thesis - partly unveiled in the title of his piece - which I will discuss shortly, is massively flawed. The simple fact is that, in 1915, the British promised the leader of the Arab nationalist movement, Sharif Hussein, an independent Arab state comprising most of today's Arab world (reserving only the northern coastline of Greater Syria) in exchange for an alliance against the Turks, a pact which the Arabs entered into in good faith, and on the basis of which they launched the Arab Revolt against the Turks, but which the British betrayed twice over, first with the French, then with the nascent Zionist movement.**
It should further be noted that, with respect to the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, as it became known, the British even went so far as to suppress all knowledge of its existence, and, when this did not succeed, blatantly attempted to misrepresent its terms. It is therefore only when the British promise of Arab independence is factored into any analysis of these matters that Britain's treachery becomes fully apparent. In any case, with or without the McMahon treaty, Britain had no right to gift Arab lands to others.
Macintyre continues:
"This week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas raised the prospect of legal action against Britain over the declaration. His spokesman insisted that as a result of Britain's 'ill-omened promise, hundreds of thousands of Jews were moved from Europe and elsewhere to Palestine at the expense of our Palestinian people whose parents and grandparents had lived for thousands of years on the soil of their homeland.' Although Israel is gearing up for a Balfour party, the Foreign Office has spoken merely of 'marking' the centenary, rather than lauding it, a cautious position that will displease both sides..."
Which brings us to Macintyre's thesis, which is essentially that the declaration was born of wartime desperation, and hence "no cause for shame."
The centenary of the declaration, he contends, should be "neither eulogised nor bemoaned but dispassionately explored, analysed and understood, a fraught moment in history whose consequences could not have been foreseen at the time. The declaration was prompted by various factors including a genuine desire on the part of the British government to create a Jewish homeland as well as geopolitical interests. Britain was locked in a desperate war with no certainty of victory, Jews had been prominent in the Bolshevik Revolution and it was hoped the statement might encourage Russia to maintain the battle on the Eastern Front. Britain's support for a Jewish homeland might undermine German-Jewish support for the war, it was thought, while encouraging increased financial contributions to the war effort from the American-Jewish community. At a war cabinet meeting in October 1917, Balfour bluntly observed a statement supporting Zionism would be 'extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America'."
The first matter of note here is Macintyre's bald assertion that the "consequences" of flooding an Arab land with European Jews, "could not have been foreseen at the time." It's as though he's never heard of Ireland, let alone the plantation of Ulster.
The second is that an uninformed reader might conclude from Macintyre's piece that the declaration was an all-British cabinet affair. There is no sign in his account of the Russian-Jewish leaders of the Zionist movement in Britain - Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolov - having been involved in the urging and drafting of the declaration. This is another huge omission. The fact is that without constant Zionist pressure, influence-peddling and propaganda such a declaration would never have eventuated. One need only ask where Balfour and Prime Minister Lloyd George got the patently false idea that a declaration in support of the Zionists would have Jewish communities in Russia, Germany and the United States working their supposed influence on the Allies' behalf, and hence making a real, material difference to the war's outcome.
The third is that nowhere in the declaration is there any indication of support for a Jewish state as such.
Macintyre continues:
"Crucially the declaration also states that 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine' - which then made up 90% of the population. Any 'marking' of the centenary needs to acknowledge that while the Jewish homeland envisaged in 1917 has been realised, the promise to protect the rights of the Palestinian people has not been honoured."
While Macintyre correctly highlights the fact that Palestine's population at the time was overwhelmingly non-Jewish, he neglects to mention that that this overwhelming majority was deliberately written off as "existing non-Jewish communities," with no political rights whatever. Colonialism doesn't get much more outrageous than that, Yet here he is warning against using the centenary as "an excuse for political grandstanding," which "will only inflame the situation in the Middle East."
IOW, everyone just lie back and think of what poor old Britain was going through at the time! And Palestinians, whatever you do (and, more importantly, wherever you are) NO GRANDSTANDING next year, OK?
[**Ironically, Macintyre is the author of A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby & the Great Betrayal (2014).]
Showing posts with label Arab Revolt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arab Revolt. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Friday, July 29, 2016
The Aussie Shirtfronter's Guide to History
I doubt failed PM Tony Abbott has ever come across a war he didn't like. (As opposed to actually being in one of course.) And, as a natural-born scrapper and pugilist, it seems to be of crucial importance to him that, in any stoush in which Australia has ever been involved, we land the first punch.
How else to explain this stuff and nonsense from his recent opinion piece published in the incredibly shrinking Sydney Morning Herald, Australians on the Western Front still offer a lesson to us today:
"But Australians didn't just fight at Gallipoli and in France. An Australian battery fired the Empire's first shot in anger to stop a German ship leaving Port Phillip. The Australian Light Horse was the spearhead of the British army that liberated Jerusalem and Damascus." (28/7/16)
Life being too short, I won't burden you with the rest of the paragraph, let alone a discussion of the the entire piece, but that second sentence cannot be allowed to pass as fact. No Australian (or Brit for that matter) ever fought his way into Jerusalem in December 1917 or Damascus in September 1918.
On the 'liberation' of the former, see my 24/4/15 post In the Burning Sands of the Middle East, a response to an earlier attempt by Abbott to peddle this tripe. On the 'liberation' of Damascus, you can read my 13/12/11 post Daley of Damascus.
But just to underline what fantastic bullshit Abbott is feeding us mushrooms here, let me focus again, using a different source this time, and at greater length, on the circumstances in which the 'liberation' of Damascus from Turkish control occurred:
"What a British army, much superior in numbers and arms and enjoying the goodwill of the Arab civil population, did to a Turkish army, much inferior in equipment, ill-fed and ill-clad and moreover operating in a hostile country has been well told in the official history [by Captain Cyril Falls, 1930]. All that is proposed to chronicle here, if only very briefly, is the part played by the Arabs in the victory and the whole campaign. The three Turkish armies in Palestine to the east and west of the River Jordan were supplied by the Hijaz railway running from Damascus to the junction at Dir'a from which one branch fed the forces in the western sector and the other those in the eastern. It was of vital military importance to cut off these connections before the British offensive was launched. The task was entrusted to Faisal [leader of the Arab Revolt]. A mobile column of 5,000 Arabs, who on the 17th and the 18th of September 'emerged like phantoms from the desert', blew up the railway to the north, south and west, shutting off Turkish supplies and cutting off lines of retreat. The few available British aeroplanes struck at Turkish army headquarters, telegraph, telephone, and road junctions. In the words of the historian, [British commander General Edmund] Allenby's victory was thus facilitated by 'two comparatively novel tools - aircraft and Arabs'.
"Once the Turkish lines were pierced to the north of Jaffa the fate of the two [Turkish] armies to the west of the Jordan was sealed. They offered such resistance as was necessary to cover the retreat northwards. The Arabs threw themselves across the line of retreat of the army to the east of the Jordan, hindered its retreat, captured prisoners and inflicted heavy casualties. Thus Allenby's victory was assured long before his forces reached Magiddo, the official name of the battle for Palestine and Syria. Limon von Sanders [the German commander of the Turkish forces], like British official historians of the war, stressed the importance of the aid given to the British forces by the Arab civil population. He cited the specific example of his headquarters at Nazareth, into which the British forces were led by Arab scouts along tracks.
"Confidence in victory was so high that barely 24-hours after the breakthrough [of] the Turkish lines Allenby despatched [T.E.] Lawrence by plane with a message to Faisal in these terms: 'I send Your Highness my greetings and my most cordial congratulations upon the great achievement of your gallant troops at Dir'a, the effect of which has, by throwing the enemy's communications into confusion, had an important bearing upon the success of our operations. Thanks to our combined efforts, the Turkish army is defeated and is everywhere in full retreat.'
"After the capture of Nazareth, von Sander's headquarters, the advance on Damascus was a speedy combined operation: the British army swung north-east inland along the ancient highway that forded the Jordan at Jisr Banat Ya'qub and straight to Qunaitira; the Arabs along, and mostly to the east of, the Hijaz railway. There was no 'fall' or 'surrender' of Damascus in the military sense. Politically the four centuries of Turkish rule came to an end at 2 pm on 30 September when, while the senior Turkish and German commanders were still in the city and offering no resistance, a provisional Arab government was proclaimed and the Arab flag was hoisted on the Town Hall. During the night of 20 September an advance force of the Arab Camel Corps entered the city, apart from many irregulars. Next morning at 7.30 am, Sharif Nasir rode, accompanied by Nuri Sha'lan, into the city to the Town Hall, soon to be followed by Lawrence.
"Here it is relevant to dispose of a myth that the city 'surrendered' to an Australian force and that the Arabs were not the first to take it. An advance guard of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade was ordered to block the road from Damascus to Hims to prevent the Turkish retreat. But on account of the terrain in the Barada Gorge it was necessary to pass through the northern outskirts of the city. This the Brigade did unobtrusively early on the first of October. To magnify this episode and to represent it as evidence that the Arabs were not the first to enter Damascus is absurd. As stated above the city was under an Arab government from the afternoon of the previous day. There was no significance, military or political, in the passing of the Light Horse Brigade even through its centre. Allenby himself put it in the right words in a report to London: 'When my troops [Arab, Australian and British] entered the city an Arab administration was in being and Arab flags were flying from government buildings.' He described his own entry into the city as merely a 'visit'." (Anglo-Arab Relations & the Question of Palestine 1914-1921, A.L. Tibawi, 1977, pp 294-96)
PS: This very evening, while browsing in a bookshop, I happened upon a just-published 'history', The Last Fifty Miles: Australia & the End of the Great War, by Adam Wakeling. I couldn't help but note that Wakeling - *sigh* - peddles the very myth alluded to by Tibawi.
How else to explain this stuff and nonsense from his recent opinion piece published in the incredibly shrinking Sydney Morning Herald, Australians on the Western Front still offer a lesson to us today:
"But Australians didn't just fight at Gallipoli and in France. An Australian battery fired the Empire's first shot in anger to stop a German ship leaving Port Phillip. The Australian Light Horse was the spearhead of the British army that liberated Jerusalem and Damascus." (28/7/16)
Life being too short, I won't burden you with the rest of the paragraph, let alone a discussion of the the entire piece, but that second sentence cannot be allowed to pass as fact. No Australian (or Brit for that matter) ever fought his way into Jerusalem in December 1917 or Damascus in September 1918.
On the 'liberation' of the former, see my 24/4/15 post In the Burning Sands of the Middle East, a response to an earlier attempt by Abbott to peddle this tripe. On the 'liberation' of Damascus, you can read my 13/12/11 post Daley of Damascus.
But just to underline what fantastic bullshit Abbott is feeding us mushrooms here, let me focus again, using a different source this time, and at greater length, on the circumstances in which the 'liberation' of Damascus from Turkish control occurred:
"What a British army, much superior in numbers and arms and enjoying the goodwill of the Arab civil population, did to a Turkish army, much inferior in equipment, ill-fed and ill-clad and moreover operating in a hostile country has been well told in the official history [by Captain Cyril Falls, 1930]. All that is proposed to chronicle here, if only very briefly, is the part played by the Arabs in the victory and the whole campaign. The three Turkish armies in Palestine to the east and west of the River Jordan were supplied by the Hijaz railway running from Damascus to the junction at Dir'a from which one branch fed the forces in the western sector and the other those in the eastern. It was of vital military importance to cut off these connections before the British offensive was launched. The task was entrusted to Faisal [leader of the Arab Revolt]. A mobile column of 5,000 Arabs, who on the 17th and the 18th of September 'emerged like phantoms from the desert', blew up the railway to the north, south and west, shutting off Turkish supplies and cutting off lines of retreat. The few available British aeroplanes struck at Turkish army headquarters, telegraph, telephone, and road junctions. In the words of the historian, [British commander General Edmund] Allenby's victory was thus facilitated by 'two comparatively novel tools - aircraft and Arabs'.
"Once the Turkish lines were pierced to the north of Jaffa the fate of the two [Turkish] armies to the west of the Jordan was sealed. They offered such resistance as was necessary to cover the retreat northwards. The Arabs threw themselves across the line of retreat of the army to the east of the Jordan, hindered its retreat, captured prisoners and inflicted heavy casualties. Thus Allenby's victory was assured long before his forces reached Magiddo, the official name of the battle for Palestine and Syria. Limon von Sanders [the German commander of the Turkish forces], like British official historians of the war, stressed the importance of the aid given to the British forces by the Arab civil population. He cited the specific example of his headquarters at Nazareth, into which the British forces were led by Arab scouts along tracks.
"Confidence in victory was so high that barely 24-hours after the breakthrough [of] the Turkish lines Allenby despatched [T.E.] Lawrence by plane with a message to Faisal in these terms: 'I send Your Highness my greetings and my most cordial congratulations upon the great achievement of your gallant troops at Dir'a, the effect of which has, by throwing the enemy's communications into confusion, had an important bearing upon the success of our operations. Thanks to our combined efforts, the Turkish army is defeated and is everywhere in full retreat.'
"After the capture of Nazareth, von Sander's headquarters, the advance on Damascus was a speedy combined operation: the British army swung north-east inland along the ancient highway that forded the Jordan at Jisr Banat Ya'qub and straight to Qunaitira; the Arabs along, and mostly to the east of, the Hijaz railway. There was no 'fall' or 'surrender' of Damascus in the military sense. Politically the four centuries of Turkish rule came to an end at 2 pm on 30 September when, while the senior Turkish and German commanders were still in the city and offering no resistance, a provisional Arab government was proclaimed and the Arab flag was hoisted on the Town Hall. During the night of 20 September an advance force of the Arab Camel Corps entered the city, apart from many irregulars. Next morning at 7.30 am, Sharif Nasir rode, accompanied by Nuri Sha'lan, into the city to the Town Hall, soon to be followed by Lawrence.
"Here it is relevant to dispose of a myth that the city 'surrendered' to an Australian force and that the Arabs were not the first to take it. An advance guard of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade was ordered to block the road from Damascus to Hims to prevent the Turkish retreat. But on account of the terrain in the Barada Gorge it was necessary to pass through the northern outskirts of the city. This the Brigade did unobtrusively early on the first of October. To magnify this episode and to represent it as evidence that the Arabs were not the first to enter Damascus is absurd. As stated above the city was under an Arab government from the afternoon of the previous day. There was no significance, military or political, in the passing of the Light Horse Brigade even through its centre. Allenby himself put it in the right words in a report to London: 'When my troops [Arab, Australian and British] entered the city an Arab administration was in being and Arab flags were flying from government buildings.' He described his own entry into the city as merely a 'visit'." (Anglo-Arab Relations & the Question of Palestine 1914-1921, A.L. Tibawi, 1977, pp 294-96)
PS: This very evening, while browsing in a bookshop, I happened upon a just-published 'history', The Last Fifty Miles: Australia & the End of the Great War, by Adam Wakeling. I couldn't help but note that Wakeling - *sigh* - peddles the very myth alluded to by Tibawi.
Friday, April 24, 2015
In the Burning Sands of the Middle East
Life can be very confusing and sooo complicated. We're lucky, then, we have Tone around to guide us through its complexities. I mean where would we be without such helpful shortcuts as these?
Climate science=crap
Australia before the White Man=nothing but bush
Australians=Israelis
The war in Syria=baddies vs baddies
What more do you need to know about those 4 issues after that?
Thankfully, Tone's come up with a newie: The Middle East=sand
"In the sands of the Middle East, Australian soldiers fought with skill and determination alongside British troops to capture Jerusalem and Damascus." (Worst of times brought out the best in Anzac troops, Tony Abbott, The Sydney Morning Herald, 22/4/15)
That being the case, the Australian War Memorial's website cannot be allowed to get away with the following any longer:
"Unlike their counterparts in France and Belgium, the Australians in the Middle East fought a mobile war in conditions completely different from the mud and stagnation of the Western Front. The light horsemen and their mounts had to survive extreme heat, harsh terrain, and water shortages." (awm.gov.au)
Hello, where's the bloody sand, AWM? You have until April 25 to fix it, OK? Better get moving!
As for Australian soldiers fighting [up-to-their-undies, or at least knee-deep, through the burning sands of Palestine ie, before Israel made the desert bloom!] alongside British troops to capture Jerusalem, the following from Roger Ford, author of Eden to Armageddon: World War I in the Middle East (2009) my heretofore trusty guide to boots on the ground in the burning sands of Palestine in World War I, is going to have to revisit this:
"In fact, in keeping with Falkenhayn's instructions, the Turkish defences around Jerusalem were withdrawn during the early hours of 9 December [1917]. The first the British knew of this was a report from two mess cooks of the 2/20th Londons, wandering in search of water, who stumbled into the southern suburbs and upon a party led by the Mayor of Jerusalem, looking for someone to whom he could surrender his city. They declined to accept, and returned to their lines. Next the mayoral party happened upon two sergeants of the 2/19th Londons, on outpost duty, but they likewise declined the honour. Next it came upon two officers from the 60th Division's artillery, who promised to telephone the news to their headquarters but respectfully refused to take a more active part in the proceedings... Finally the mayor made contact with the commander of the 303rd Brigade, RFA, himself out on a reconnaissance mission, and managed to convince him of his bona fides. Lt.-Col. Bayley sent back for additional personnel, and was eventually joined by Brig.-Gen. Watson, the 180th Brigade's commander. Some while later Shea arrived and formally took the surrender in Allenby's name. British troops were henceforth confined to the suburbs, outside the city walls, until the commander-in-chief had made his own entrance. He did so - on foot, with no pomp and little ceremony - on 11 December." (p 359)
Not happy, Roger! Where are our Aussie diggers? And how about a bit of bloody action, mate? I want this passage Toned up, NOW, OK?
As for Australian troops fighting [again through the burning sands]... alongside British troops to capture... Damascus, I refer you to my 13/12/11 post Daley of Damascus, upon the reading of which, I'm sure you'll agree, that that uppity dune-coon George Antonius needs a thorough whipping.
Climate science=crap
Australia before the White Man=nothing but bush
Australians=Israelis
The war in Syria=baddies vs baddies
What more do you need to know about those 4 issues after that?
Thankfully, Tone's come up with a newie: The Middle East=sand
"In the sands of the Middle East, Australian soldiers fought with skill and determination alongside British troops to capture Jerusalem and Damascus." (Worst of times brought out the best in Anzac troops, Tony Abbott, The Sydney Morning Herald, 22/4/15)
That being the case, the Australian War Memorial's website cannot be allowed to get away with the following any longer:
"Unlike their counterparts in France and Belgium, the Australians in the Middle East fought a mobile war in conditions completely different from the mud and stagnation of the Western Front. The light horsemen and their mounts had to survive extreme heat, harsh terrain, and water shortages." (awm.gov.au)
Hello, where's the bloody sand, AWM? You have until April 25 to fix it, OK? Better get moving!
As for Australian soldiers fighting [up-to-their-undies, or at least knee-deep, through the burning sands of Palestine ie, before Israel made the desert bloom!] alongside British troops to capture Jerusalem, the following from Roger Ford, author of Eden to Armageddon: World War I in the Middle East (2009) my heretofore trusty guide to boots on the ground in the burning sands of Palestine in World War I, is going to have to revisit this:
"In fact, in keeping with Falkenhayn's instructions, the Turkish defences around Jerusalem were withdrawn during the early hours of 9 December [1917]. The first the British knew of this was a report from two mess cooks of the 2/20th Londons, wandering in search of water, who stumbled into the southern suburbs and upon a party led by the Mayor of Jerusalem, looking for someone to whom he could surrender his city. They declined to accept, and returned to their lines. Next the mayoral party happened upon two sergeants of the 2/19th Londons, on outpost duty, but they likewise declined the honour. Next it came upon two officers from the 60th Division's artillery, who promised to telephone the news to their headquarters but respectfully refused to take a more active part in the proceedings... Finally the mayor made contact with the commander of the 303rd Brigade, RFA, himself out on a reconnaissance mission, and managed to convince him of his bona fides. Lt.-Col. Bayley sent back for additional personnel, and was eventually joined by Brig.-Gen. Watson, the 180th Brigade's commander. Some while later Shea arrived and formally took the surrender in Allenby's name. British troops were henceforth confined to the suburbs, outside the city walls, until the commander-in-chief had made his own entrance. He did so - on foot, with no pomp and little ceremony - on 11 December." (p 359)
Not happy, Roger! Where are our Aussie diggers? And how about a bit of bloody action, mate? I want this passage Toned up, NOW, OK?
As for Australian troops fighting [again through the burning sands]... alongside British troops to capture... Damascus, I refer you to my 13/12/11 post Daley of Damascus, upon the reading of which, I'm sure you'll agree, that that uppity dune-coon George Antonius needs a thorough whipping.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The Sarafand Massacre
"The story of Australia's extraordinary military contribution to the ending of Ottoman rule in Palestine in World War I is an epic rivalling Gallipoli in feats of courage and endurance, but is far less well-known. The military story is intimately connected to the publication by Britain of the Balfour Declaration in November 1917 supporting the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. This was the first official step on the long road to the attainment of Jewish statehood in May 1948." (Australia & Israel: A Pictorial History Celebrating 60 Years of the Australia-Israel Bilateral Relationship)
I've already posted (Myth In-formation, 1/5/08) on the Australian Zionist lobby's shameless appropriation of the charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba in 1917 as some kind of quasi-metaphysical prelude to the transformation of Palestine into Israel. With the publication of Beersheba: A Journey Through Australia's Forgotten War, Sun-Herald columnist Paul Daley reminds us that our 'heroes' (cum Zionist conscripts) - or at least some of them -had, subsequent to their taking of the Turkish defences guarding Beersheba, gone on to blot their copy books in a manner that would have done the later Zionist terror gangs of the Haganah, the Irgun and the Sternists proud.
Here's an edited extract from Daley's book:
"After the armistace in November 1918, Australians and New Zealanders from the Anzac Mounted Division... were camped near the Jewish settlement of Richon le Zion, close to the Mediterranean, not far from present-day Tel Aviv... The Australians' commander-in-chief - as it had been in Beersheba - was the formidable but well-respected British cavalryman General Sir Edmund Allenby. The small Arab village of Surafend stood close to Richon. The local Arabs quickly began stealing from the Anzacs once their camps were established, and the soldiers, who had tolerated the Bedouin for years, had exhausted their patience. They saw no difference between town and village Arabs and the Bedouin. To the Anzacs they were all trouble. The resentment against the Arabs was fuelled by the fact that the Anzacs' mostly British commanders had an informal policy of turning a blind eye to the misdeeds of the natives. It was part of a strategy to engender Arab support for British rule of Palestine. Late on the chilly winter's night of December 9, 1918, 21-year-old trooper Leslie Lowry, a machine-gunner from the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, slept in his tent. The local Arabs had been thieving from the Anzac camp night after night and, like many Anzacs, Lowry used his kitbag as a pillow so he'd wake if the barefoot robbers tried to pinch his valuables. Sure enough, the young New Zealander stirred just as someone was tugging his kitbag. The robber bolted, and Lowry sprang out of bed and chased him through the line of guards around the camp* and into the nearby dunes. Lowry grabbed the robber, who, using a revolver, shot the trooper through the chest... Nobody actually saw Lowry's attacker... According to Trooper Ambrose Stephen Mullhall of the 3rd Australian Light Horse Regiment, Lowry 'told his comrades before he died the thief... was a Bedouin and that he had gone to the Bedouin village'. True to Lowry's word, the attacker's footprints were tracked to a hole in the fence near Surafend... [The Anzacs] wanted revenge, and they took it. How many people they killed and exactly who was involved has, however, always been hotly contested. By most Australian accounts, the New Zealanders led the attack on the village while the Australians at best stood by and watched or at worst participated, albeit in vastly smaller numbers.
"[Henry] Gullett deals with the Surafend massacre in 4 pages of his 844-page history [Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, 1923]: 'They were angry and bitter beyond sound reasoning. All day the New Zealanders quietly organised for their work in Surafend, and early in the night marched out many hundreds strong and surrounded the village. In close support and full sympathy were large bodies of Australians. Entering the village, the New Zealanders grimly passed out all the women and children and then, armed chiefly with heavy sticks, fell upon the men and at the same time fired the houses. Many Arabs were killed, few escaped without injury; the village was demolished... The Anzacs, having finished with Surafend, raided and burned the neighbouring nomad camp, and then went quietly back to their lines.' While both the New Zealanders and the Australians were quick to mount official inquiries into the killings, the inquiries were a farce. The Australians blamed the New Zealanders or claimed they were unaware of what had happened. The Kiwis blamed the Australians or feigned ignorance... The war diary and intelligence summary of the 2nd Light Horse Brigade, commanded by Sir Granville Ryrie, is an example of military obfuscation, and can be interpreted as the point at which the Surafend cover-up began... The diary neglects to mention that when Allenby stood the entire Anzac Mounted Division to attention that day... he told them that they were a bunch of 'murderers' and, with that, he wiped his hands of the Australian light-horsemen." (One bloody secret, Good Weekend, 25/7/09)
[*Why didn't the camp's guards manage to keep would-be thieves out?]
This was followed by 3 letters on the subject in Monday's Sydney Morning Herald. Peter Wertheim (Darling Point), a former Jewish Board of Deputies president and ardent Zionist (you can read his profile at holocaust.com.au), predictably advocated for the war criminals: "The atrocity was in reprisal for the murder of a New Zealand trooper." Oh - so that's OK then? A hundred eyes for an eye. How very Zionist! And anyway, he went on, Allenby shared responsibility because, "in a misguided attempt to win over the Arab population," he allegedly "refused to apprehend the culprit."
Malcolm Murdoch (Fisher, ACT), also bent over backwards to find excuses for our boys: "Well before Surafend, many Anzacs were critical of their British commanders for the way they needlessly sacrificed their troops, and the refusal to allow the Arabs to be punished for their misdeeds." Murdoch even resorted to that hoary spinner of bush yarns Ion Idriess (1889-1979)* to the effect that "the Anzacs quickly found that leaving a wounded soldier temporarily on his own in the desert often resulted in the man having his throat slit and his clothes and equipment stolen." While understanding the Anzac's desire for "justice," Murdoch at least baulked at their "methods."
[* Here's a taste of Idriess' tall tale-telling: "Then someone shouted, pointing through the sunset towards invisible headquarters. There, at the steady trot was regiment after regiment, squadron after squadron, coming, coming, coming! It was just half-light, they were distinct yet indistinct. The Turkish guns blazed at those hazy horsemen but they came steadily on. At 2 miles distant they emerged from clouds of dust, squadrons of men and horses taking shape. All the Turkish guns around Beersheba must have been directed at the menance then. Captured Turkish and German officers have told us that even then they never dreamed that mounted troops would be madmen enough to attempt rushing infantry redoubts protected by machine-guns and artillery. At a mile distant their thousand hooves were stuttering thunder, coming at a rate that frightened a man - they were an awe-inspiring sight, galloping through the red haze - knee to knee and horse to horse - the dying sun glinting on bayonet points. Machine gun and rifle fire just roared but the 4th Brigade galloped on. We heard shouts among the thundering hooves - horse after horse crashed, but the massed squadron thundered on. We laughed in delight when the shells began bursting behind them telling that the gunners could not keep their range, then suddenly the men ceased to fall and we knew instinctively that the Turkish infantry, wild with excitement and fear, had forgotten to lower their rifle sights and the bullets were flying overhead. The Turks did the same to us at El Quatia. The last half mile was a berserk gallop with the squadrons in magnificent line, a heart-throbbing sight as they plunged up the slope, the horses leaping the redoubt trenches - my glasses showed me the Turkish bayonets thrusting up for the bellies of the horses - one regiment flung themselves from the saddle - we heard the mad shouts as the men jumped down into the trenches, a following regiment thundered over another redoubt, and to a triumphant roar of voices and hooves was galloping down the half mile slope right into town. Then came a whirlwind of movement from all over the field, galloping batteries - dense dust from mounting regiments - a rush as troops poured for the opening in the gathering dark - mad, mad excitement - terrific explosions from down in the town. Beersheba had fallen." (The Desert Column, 1932)]
It took Tom Ruse (Woollahra) to inject some reality into the debate: "My grandfather was a surgeon in the Australian Medical Corps and spent nearly 4 years stationed in the Middle East, much of it in Palestine. From his letters, photographs and recollections, he found the Palestinians to be among the most noble and gracious people he had met."
And speaking of Arabs, British military historian Liddell Hart's summary of their contribution to the defeat of the Turks in Palestine is worth quoting as a corrective to the hyped role of our Light Horse: "In the crucial weeks while Allenby's stroke was being prepared and during its delivery, nearly half of the Turkish forces south of Damascus were distracted by the Arab forces... What the absence of these forces meant to the success of Allenby's stroke, it is easy to see. Nor did the Arab operation end when it had opened the way. For in the issue it was the Arabs, almost entirely, who wiped out the 4th Army, the still intact force that might have barred the way to final victory... The wear and tear, the bodily and mental strain that exhausted the Turkish troops and brought them to breaking point was applied by the Arabs, elusive and ubiquitous, to a greater extent than by the British forces, both before and during the final phase." (Colonel Lawrence: The Man Behind the Legend, 1934, p 303)
The Arabs, of course, had been promised independence by the British (in the form of the Hussein-McMahon correspondence, 1915). For their pains, however, the British gave them the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the Sarafand massacre. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Postscript: You might think that, having discovered the dark side of the Australian Light Horse, a journalist such as Daley might be a little less gung-ho in support of our current 'exploits' in Afghanistan. Not so, I'm afraid. His opinion piece in The Sun-Herald of 26/7/09 is called The path to peace will be long: our mission in Afghanistan remains a vital one. His only concern is with Australian deaths, and the only mention of civilian casualties refers to those caused by the... Taliban!
I've already posted (Myth In-formation, 1/5/08) on the Australian Zionist lobby's shameless appropriation of the charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba in 1917 as some kind of quasi-metaphysical prelude to the transformation of Palestine into Israel. With the publication of Beersheba: A Journey Through Australia's Forgotten War, Sun-Herald columnist Paul Daley reminds us that our 'heroes' (cum Zionist conscripts) - or at least some of them -had, subsequent to their taking of the Turkish defences guarding Beersheba, gone on to blot their copy books in a manner that would have done the later Zionist terror gangs of the Haganah, the Irgun and the Sternists proud.
Here's an edited extract from Daley's book:
"After the armistace in November 1918, Australians and New Zealanders from the Anzac Mounted Division... were camped near the Jewish settlement of Richon le Zion, close to the Mediterranean, not far from present-day Tel Aviv... The Australians' commander-in-chief - as it had been in Beersheba - was the formidable but well-respected British cavalryman General Sir Edmund Allenby. The small Arab village of Surafend stood close to Richon. The local Arabs quickly began stealing from the Anzacs once their camps were established, and the soldiers, who had tolerated the Bedouin for years, had exhausted their patience. They saw no difference between town and village Arabs and the Bedouin. To the Anzacs they were all trouble. The resentment against the Arabs was fuelled by the fact that the Anzacs' mostly British commanders had an informal policy of turning a blind eye to the misdeeds of the natives. It was part of a strategy to engender Arab support for British rule of Palestine. Late on the chilly winter's night of December 9, 1918, 21-year-old trooper Leslie Lowry, a machine-gunner from the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, slept in his tent. The local Arabs had been thieving from the Anzac camp night after night and, like many Anzacs, Lowry used his kitbag as a pillow so he'd wake if the barefoot robbers tried to pinch his valuables. Sure enough, the young New Zealander stirred just as someone was tugging his kitbag. The robber bolted, and Lowry sprang out of bed and chased him through the line of guards around the camp* and into the nearby dunes. Lowry grabbed the robber, who, using a revolver, shot the trooper through the chest... Nobody actually saw Lowry's attacker... According to Trooper Ambrose Stephen Mullhall of the 3rd Australian Light Horse Regiment, Lowry 'told his comrades before he died the thief... was a Bedouin and that he had gone to the Bedouin village'. True to Lowry's word, the attacker's footprints were tracked to a hole in the fence near Surafend... [The Anzacs] wanted revenge, and they took it. How many people they killed and exactly who was involved has, however, always been hotly contested. By most Australian accounts, the New Zealanders led the attack on the village while the Australians at best stood by and watched or at worst participated, albeit in vastly smaller numbers.
"[Henry] Gullett deals with the Surafend massacre in 4 pages of his 844-page history [Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, 1923]: 'They were angry and bitter beyond sound reasoning. All day the New Zealanders quietly organised for their work in Surafend, and early in the night marched out many hundreds strong and surrounded the village. In close support and full sympathy were large bodies of Australians. Entering the village, the New Zealanders grimly passed out all the women and children and then, armed chiefly with heavy sticks, fell upon the men and at the same time fired the houses. Many Arabs were killed, few escaped without injury; the village was demolished... The Anzacs, having finished with Surafend, raided and burned the neighbouring nomad camp, and then went quietly back to their lines.' While both the New Zealanders and the Australians were quick to mount official inquiries into the killings, the inquiries were a farce. The Australians blamed the New Zealanders or claimed they were unaware of what had happened. The Kiwis blamed the Australians or feigned ignorance... The war diary and intelligence summary of the 2nd Light Horse Brigade, commanded by Sir Granville Ryrie, is an example of military obfuscation, and can be interpreted as the point at which the Surafend cover-up began... The diary neglects to mention that when Allenby stood the entire Anzac Mounted Division to attention that day... he told them that they were a bunch of 'murderers' and, with that, he wiped his hands of the Australian light-horsemen." (One bloody secret, Good Weekend, 25/7/09)
[*Why didn't the camp's guards manage to keep would-be thieves out?]
This was followed by 3 letters on the subject in Monday's Sydney Morning Herald. Peter Wertheim (Darling Point), a former Jewish Board of Deputies president and ardent Zionist (you can read his profile at holocaust.com.au), predictably advocated for the war criminals: "The atrocity was in reprisal for the murder of a New Zealand trooper." Oh - so that's OK then? A hundred eyes for an eye. How very Zionist! And anyway, he went on, Allenby shared responsibility because, "in a misguided attempt to win over the Arab population," he allegedly "refused to apprehend the culprit."
Malcolm Murdoch (Fisher, ACT), also bent over backwards to find excuses for our boys: "Well before Surafend, many Anzacs were critical of their British commanders for the way they needlessly sacrificed their troops, and the refusal to allow the Arabs to be punished for their misdeeds." Murdoch even resorted to that hoary spinner of bush yarns Ion Idriess (1889-1979)* to the effect that "the Anzacs quickly found that leaving a wounded soldier temporarily on his own in the desert often resulted in the man having his throat slit and his clothes and equipment stolen." While understanding the Anzac's desire for "justice," Murdoch at least baulked at their "methods."
[* Here's a taste of Idriess' tall tale-telling: "Then someone shouted, pointing through the sunset towards invisible headquarters. There, at the steady trot was regiment after regiment, squadron after squadron, coming, coming, coming! It was just half-light, they were distinct yet indistinct. The Turkish guns blazed at those hazy horsemen but they came steadily on. At 2 miles distant they emerged from clouds of dust, squadrons of men and horses taking shape. All the Turkish guns around Beersheba must have been directed at the menance then. Captured Turkish and German officers have told us that even then they never dreamed that mounted troops would be madmen enough to attempt rushing infantry redoubts protected by machine-guns and artillery. At a mile distant their thousand hooves were stuttering thunder, coming at a rate that frightened a man - they were an awe-inspiring sight, galloping through the red haze - knee to knee and horse to horse - the dying sun glinting on bayonet points. Machine gun and rifle fire just roared but the 4th Brigade galloped on. We heard shouts among the thundering hooves - horse after horse crashed, but the massed squadron thundered on. We laughed in delight when the shells began bursting behind them telling that the gunners could not keep their range, then suddenly the men ceased to fall and we knew instinctively that the Turkish infantry, wild with excitement and fear, had forgotten to lower their rifle sights and the bullets were flying overhead. The Turks did the same to us at El Quatia. The last half mile was a berserk gallop with the squadrons in magnificent line, a heart-throbbing sight as they plunged up the slope, the horses leaping the redoubt trenches - my glasses showed me the Turkish bayonets thrusting up for the bellies of the horses - one regiment flung themselves from the saddle - we heard the mad shouts as the men jumped down into the trenches, a following regiment thundered over another redoubt, and to a triumphant roar of voices and hooves was galloping down the half mile slope right into town. Then came a whirlwind of movement from all over the field, galloping batteries - dense dust from mounting regiments - a rush as troops poured for the opening in the gathering dark - mad, mad excitement - terrific explosions from down in the town. Beersheba had fallen." (The Desert Column, 1932)]
It took Tom Ruse (Woollahra) to inject some reality into the debate: "My grandfather was a surgeon in the Australian Medical Corps and spent nearly 4 years stationed in the Middle East, much of it in Palestine. From his letters, photographs and recollections, he found the Palestinians to be among the most noble and gracious people he had met."
And speaking of Arabs, British military historian Liddell Hart's summary of their contribution to the defeat of the Turks in Palestine is worth quoting as a corrective to the hyped role of our Light Horse: "In the crucial weeks while Allenby's stroke was being prepared and during its delivery, nearly half of the Turkish forces south of Damascus were distracted by the Arab forces... What the absence of these forces meant to the success of Allenby's stroke, it is easy to see. Nor did the Arab operation end when it had opened the way. For in the issue it was the Arabs, almost entirely, who wiped out the 4th Army, the still intact force that might have barred the way to final victory... The wear and tear, the bodily and mental strain that exhausted the Turkish troops and brought them to breaking point was applied by the Arabs, elusive and ubiquitous, to a greater extent than by the British forces, both before and during the final phase." (Colonel Lawrence: The Man Behind the Legend, 1934, p 303)
The Arabs, of course, had been promised independence by the British (in the form of the Hussein-McMahon correspondence, 1915). For their pains, however, the British gave them the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the Sarafand massacre. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Postscript: You might think that, having discovered the dark side of the Australian Light Horse, a journalist such as Daley might be a little less gung-ho in support of our current 'exploits' in Afghanistan. Not so, I'm afraid. His opinion piece in The Sun-Herald of 26/7/09 is called The path to peace will be long: our mission in Afghanistan remains a vital one. His only concern is with Australian deaths, and the only mention of civilian casualties refers to those caused by the... Taliban!
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Zionist Myth In-formation
From the folk that brought us such golden oldies as Driving the Jews into the Sea (1948-2008), The Great Palestinian Moonlight Flit (1948), The Greatest Existential Threat Ever Told (1967), Hey Yasser, Have I Got a Deal for You! (2000), and the current chart topper, Wiping Israel Off the Map, comes a little number written exclusively for Australian consumption: The Charge of the Australian Zionist Horse Brigade. At the moment it's literally charging up the Australian charts faster than an Israel lobbyist can get on the blower to a news editor. Just check out these variations and spin-offs:-
"The ties that bind Jerusalem and Canberra were further cemented with the commemoration last November of the 90th anniversary of the Charge of the Light Horse brigade [31/10/08], when brave Aussie Diggers trounced the Turks at Be'er Sheva, paving the way for the capture of Jerusalem...And it is in Be'er Sheva that Richard Pratt is ploughing funds to build the Park of the Australian Soldier - a permanent memorial to those who died in battle for the Jewish state." (Editorial by Dan Goldberg, Rhapsody: Linking Culture between Israel & Australia, Jan-Mar 2008)
"Ninety-one years after the Australian Light Horse captured Be'er Sheva, a group of descendants, veterans, representatives from the Australian Defence Forces and dignitaries will travel to Israel to unveil a monument commemorating the legendary charge. It is likely to be an emotional trip for the 200 men and women who make the journey, not only because of their close links to the battle of Be'er Sheva, but also because the result of the famous victory was the emergence of a thriving, democratic and vibrant nation... just 2 days after Be'er Sheva was taken, another historic event occurred. The first decree which identified the need for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, was signed at a British cabinet meeting. While the two events weren't strategically linked, history has demonstrated that they were both integral to the conception of a Jewish state... The Be'er Sheva monument honouring the Australian Light Horse [by Australian sculptor Peter Corlett] has been erected in the newly built Park of the Australian soldier. The project was undertaken by the Pratt Foundation, which has also worked closely with the Israel Travel Centre to locate and send 60 descendents of the legendary regiments to Israel for the unveiling." (Charge! Memories of the Light Horse, Adam Kamien, Australian Jewish News, 25/4/08)
"The battle claimed 31 Australian lives but opened the road to Jerusalem and, eventually, Damascus, for the Allies and precipitated the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Two days after the battle, Britain pledged a homeland for the Jews... it was [Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Alan] Griffin's predecessor, Bruce Billson, who put the victory into context when he spoke at the launch of the Park of the Australian Soldier in May last year. 'The Australian victory at Beersheba in 1917 set in train some remarkable events - the liberation of Jerusalem, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate in Palestine and, ultimately, the establishment of the state of Israel'." (Charge of Beersheba, Dan Goldberg, editor of Rhapsody, The Sun-Herald, 27/4/08)
"Australia's Jewish community can be proud the unique Australia-Israel relationship has been an important dimension of Israel's remarkable story. This relationship began in World War I at Gallipoli, where Jewish Zionist volunteers from what was not yet called Palestine fought alongside Australian diggers." (The time for peace has come, Colin Rubenstein, executive-director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), SMH, 29/4/08)
"The park, named the Park of the Australian Soldier, was opened by Governor-General Michael Jeffery and Israeli President Shimon Peres. Five years in the planning, the park is an initiative of the Melbourne-based Pratt Foundation, which has worked with the City of Beersheba council in an effort to produce a facility that taps into the legacy of the Australian campaign and builds on what Mr Peres described as a bilateral relationship 'without any bad weather'." (Light Horseman takes a stand in Beersheba, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 29/4/08)
"The Pratt Foundation set out some 5 years ago to pay tribute to their courage, and to commemorate the ties of war and peace which have linked Australia with Jewish and Zionist history. We chose Be'er Sheva because this is where the Australian Light Horse won a remarkable victory - and this is where the gallant 800 changed Jewish history, and the history of the Middle East. The Australian capture of Be'er Sheva marked the beginning of the end of Ottoman rule in Palestine. And as a moment in history which should command our attention, on the same afternoon of October 31st, that the Light Horse rode towards the Turkish guns and wells, the British War Cabinet signed off on the Balfour Declaration, a critical milestone along the path to Israel's establishment." (Speech by Sam Lipski [of the Pratt Foundation] at the dedication ceremony for the Park of the Australian Soldier, http://www.ajn.com.au/, 29/4/08)
Not everybody is quite in tune of course. Dan for one is all over the place. In his Rhapsody rap, he's got the Australian Zionist Horse literally dying for Israel (see my April post Anzac Day Special: Diggers Die for Israel), whereas in his rendition for The Sun-Herald he's got them dying for Israel, but retrospectively. Then there's a slight question of timing. Adam's got the Balfour Declaration signed off by the Britz 2 days after the charge of the Zionist Horse, but the others reckon that that's when it was issued. And Sam's contradicting Adam, saying it was signed off on the same day as the Light Zionist charge. These guys are all over the place! But worse than all that was that closet Arab-lover Martin who called Be'er Sheva Beersheba! And bloody silly Dan, all over the place as I said, after first calling it by its correct name, Be'er Sheva, goes on to call it Beersheba too! And Colin, what can we say about Colin? Off on a frolic all his own to Gallipoli of all places! So typical of that AIJAC mob.
Seriously though, it's time for a reality check. Try as I might, I can find nothing on the charge of the Australian(?) Light Horse in any of the reputable histories I've consulted. Naomi Shepherd's Ploughing Sand: British Rule in Palestine 1917-1948 - 0. Jill Hamilton's God, Guns & Israel: Britain, the First World War and the Jews in the Holy Land - 0. Sami Hadawi's The Palestine Diary Volume 1, 1914-1945 - 0. George Antonius' The Arab Awakening - 0. I hate to spoil the festive mood, but could it be that the taking of Beersheba by 800 Australians was just a sideshow? That Gaza was actually the main military game?
Here's Hamilton: "While [the British cabinet] sat at No.10 Downing Street [General] Allenby's massive army of over 100,000 men, 50,000 horses and squadrons of aircraft was breaking through the Beersheba/Gaza fortifications. As well as ammunition they had a new weapon, asphyxiating gas... Allenby unleashed the contents of 10,000 shells to float across the formidable trench system and barriers at the third battle of Gaza on 1-2 November 1917... After taking Gaza, Allenby broke through the Turkish lines and on 4 November started up the coast to Jaffa."(p 143)
Could it be that it was the Arab Revolt and their capture of Aqaba that turned the tide against the Turks in Palestine? Here's Antonius: "In its military implications, the move to 'Aqaba caused serious embarrassment to the Turco-German command in Syria at a time when every available man and gun were needed to oppose the British advance on Jerusalem. But its political consequences... were more damaging still. 'Aqaba became the tangible embodiment of the Revolt and a base for the political undermining as well as the military undoing of the Turkish power in Syria." (p 225) And this: "The political action manifested itself in a variety of ways, all of them tending to weaken Turkey by winning the Arabs of Syria over to the Allied side. The principle weapon of propaganda employed was that, thanks to the agreement concluded between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif (now King) Husain, the Allied cause had become identical with the cause of Arab independence; and that the triumph of allied arms would bring freedom to the Arab peoples... Colonel A C Parker... invited Shaikh Furaih abu Meddain, the paramount chief of the Beersheba tribes, to a conference at al-'Arish and handed him an autograph letter from King Husain calling upon all Arabs to aid the efforts of the British forces who were working for Arab liberation. Aeroplanes flew over the Turkish lines and rained copies of King Husein's letter, on the back of which was printed an appeal from the British command asking Arab officers and men in the Turkish army to desert... The tribes in the Beersheba district who had fought on the Turkish side... melted away... and re-appeared further south on the right flank of the British forces advancing on Gaza... the British forces advancing towards Jerusalem found themselves fighting in a friendly country, while the Turks... found themselves fighting in the midst of a decidedly hostile population." (p225-227)
Despite the myth-making and re-writing of history by the hasbara merchants in Israeli PR, the dirty truth is that the diplomatic front was where political Zionism got its foot in the door of Palestine. Israel came with the fall of No. 10 Downing Street to the Zionists. Nothing heroic about it, just a grubby exercise in realpolitik. Behind the closed doors of No. 10, a Christian Zionist in a top hat committed to the handing over of the land of Palestine to the smooth-talking salesman of a European national movement, political Zionism.
And the natives who had been conned by British promises of independence? Lord Balfour wasn't talking through his top hat when he wrote: "Do we mean, in the case of Syria, to consult principally the wishes of the inhabitants? We mean nothing of the kind... The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the 'independent nation' of Palestine than in that of the 'independent nation' of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land... In short, so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate." (Quoted in David Hirst, The Gun & the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, pp 41-42)
No wonder the Israelis and their boosters in this country want to gull us with fairytales.
"The ties that bind Jerusalem and Canberra were further cemented with the commemoration last November of the 90th anniversary of the Charge of the Light Horse brigade [31/10/08], when brave Aussie Diggers trounced the Turks at Be'er Sheva, paving the way for the capture of Jerusalem...And it is in Be'er Sheva that Richard Pratt is ploughing funds to build the Park of the Australian Soldier - a permanent memorial to those who died in battle for the Jewish state." (Editorial by Dan Goldberg, Rhapsody: Linking Culture between Israel & Australia, Jan-Mar 2008)
"Ninety-one years after the Australian Light Horse captured Be'er Sheva, a group of descendants, veterans, representatives from the Australian Defence Forces and dignitaries will travel to Israel to unveil a monument commemorating the legendary charge. It is likely to be an emotional trip for the 200 men and women who make the journey, not only because of their close links to the battle of Be'er Sheva, but also because the result of the famous victory was the emergence of a thriving, democratic and vibrant nation... just 2 days after Be'er Sheva was taken, another historic event occurred. The first decree which identified the need for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, was signed at a British cabinet meeting. While the two events weren't strategically linked, history has demonstrated that they were both integral to the conception of a Jewish state... The Be'er Sheva monument honouring the Australian Light Horse [by Australian sculptor Peter Corlett] has been erected in the newly built Park of the Australian soldier. The project was undertaken by the Pratt Foundation, which has also worked closely with the Israel Travel Centre to locate and send 60 descendents of the legendary regiments to Israel for the unveiling." (Charge! Memories of the Light Horse, Adam Kamien, Australian Jewish News, 25/4/08)
"The battle claimed 31 Australian lives but opened the road to Jerusalem and, eventually, Damascus, for the Allies and precipitated the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Two days after the battle, Britain pledged a homeland for the Jews... it was [Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Alan] Griffin's predecessor, Bruce Billson, who put the victory into context when he spoke at the launch of the Park of the Australian Soldier in May last year. 'The Australian victory at Beersheba in 1917 set in train some remarkable events - the liberation of Jerusalem, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate in Palestine and, ultimately, the establishment of the state of Israel'." (Charge of Beersheba, Dan Goldberg, editor of Rhapsody, The Sun-Herald, 27/4/08)
"Australia's Jewish community can be proud the unique Australia-Israel relationship has been an important dimension of Israel's remarkable story. This relationship began in World War I at Gallipoli, where Jewish Zionist volunteers from what was not yet called Palestine fought alongside Australian diggers." (The time for peace has come, Colin Rubenstein, executive-director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), SMH, 29/4/08)
"The park, named the Park of the Australian Soldier, was opened by Governor-General Michael Jeffery and Israeli President Shimon Peres. Five years in the planning, the park is an initiative of the Melbourne-based Pratt Foundation, which has worked with the City of Beersheba council in an effort to produce a facility that taps into the legacy of the Australian campaign and builds on what Mr Peres described as a bilateral relationship 'without any bad weather'." (Light Horseman takes a stand in Beersheba, Martin Chulov, The Australian, 29/4/08)
"The Pratt Foundation set out some 5 years ago to pay tribute to their courage, and to commemorate the ties of war and peace which have linked Australia with Jewish and Zionist history. We chose Be'er Sheva because this is where the Australian Light Horse won a remarkable victory - and this is where the gallant 800 changed Jewish history, and the history of the Middle East. The Australian capture of Be'er Sheva marked the beginning of the end of Ottoman rule in Palestine. And as a moment in history which should command our attention, on the same afternoon of October 31st, that the Light Horse rode towards the Turkish guns and wells, the British War Cabinet signed off on the Balfour Declaration, a critical milestone along the path to Israel's establishment." (Speech by Sam Lipski [of the Pratt Foundation] at the dedication ceremony for the Park of the Australian Soldier, http://www.ajn.com.au/, 29/4/08)
Not everybody is quite in tune of course. Dan for one is all over the place. In his Rhapsody rap, he's got the Australian Zionist Horse literally dying for Israel (see my April post Anzac Day Special: Diggers Die for Israel), whereas in his rendition for The Sun-Herald he's got them dying for Israel, but retrospectively. Then there's a slight question of timing. Adam's got the Balfour Declaration signed off by the Britz 2 days after the charge of the Zionist Horse, but the others reckon that that's when it was issued. And Sam's contradicting Adam, saying it was signed off on the same day as the Light Zionist charge. These guys are all over the place! But worse than all that was that closet Arab-lover Martin who called Be'er Sheva Beersheba! And bloody silly Dan, all over the place as I said, after first calling it by its correct name, Be'er Sheva, goes on to call it Beersheba too! And Colin, what can we say about Colin? Off on a frolic all his own to Gallipoli of all places! So typical of that AIJAC mob.
Seriously though, it's time for a reality check. Try as I might, I can find nothing on the charge of the Australian(?) Light Horse in any of the reputable histories I've consulted. Naomi Shepherd's Ploughing Sand: British Rule in Palestine 1917-1948 - 0. Jill Hamilton's God, Guns & Israel: Britain, the First World War and the Jews in the Holy Land - 0. Sami Hadawi's The Palestine Diary Volume 1, 1914-1945 - 0. George Antonius' The Arab Awakening - 0. I hate to spoil the festive mood, but could it be that the taking of Beersheba by 800 Australians was just a sideshow? That Gaza was actually the main military game?
Here's Hamilton: "While [the British cabinet] sat at No.10 Downing Street [General] Allenby's massive army of over 100,000 men, 50,000 horses and squadrons of aircraft was breaking through the Beersheba/Gaza fortifications. As well as ammunition they had a new weapon, asphyxiating gas... Allenby unleashed the contents of 10,000 shells to float across the formidable trench system and barriers at the third battle of Gaza on 1-2 November 1917... After taking Gaza, Allenby broke through the Turkish lines and on 4 November started up the coast to Jaffa."(p 143)
Could it be that it was the Arab Revolt and their capture of Aqaba that turned the tide against the Turks in Palestine? Here's Antonius: "In its military implications, the move to 'Aqaba caused serious embarrassment to the Turco-German command in Syria at a time when every available man and gun were needed to oppose the British advance on Jerusalem. But its political consequences... were more damaging still. 'Aqaba became the tangible embodiment of the Revolt and a base for the political undermining as well as the military undoing of the Turkish power in Syria." (p 225) And this: "The political action manifested itself in a variety of ways, all of them tending to weaken Turkey by winning the Arabs of Syria over to the Allied side. The principle weapon of propaganda employed was that, thanks to the agreement concluded between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif (now King) Husain, the Allied cause had become identical with the cause of Arab independence; and that the triumph of allied arms would bring freedom to the Arab peoples... Colonel A C Parker... invited Shaikh Furaih abu Meddain, the paramount chief of the Beersheba tribes, to a conference at al-'Arish and handed him an autograph letter from King Husain calling upon all Arabs to aid the efforts of the British forces who were working for Arab liberation. Aeroplanes flew over the Turkish lines and rained copies of King Husein's letter, on the back of which was printed an appeal from the British command asking Arab officers and men in the Turkish army to desert... The tribes in the Beersheba district who had fought on the Turkish side... melted away... and re-appeared further south on the right flank of the British forces advancing on Gaza... the British forces advancing towards Jerusalem found themselves fighting in a friendly country, while the Turks... found themselves fighting in the midst of a decidedly hostile population." (p225-227)
Despite the myth-making and re-writing of history by the hasbara merchants in Israeli PR, the dirty truth is that the diplomatic front was where political Zionism got its foot in the door of Palestine. Israel came with the fall of No. 10 Downing Street to the Zionists. Nothing heroic about it, just a grubby exercise in realpolitik. Behind the closed doors of No. 10, a Christian Zionist in a top hat committed to the handing over of the land of Palestine to the smooth-talking salesman of a European national movement, political Zionism.
And the natives who had been conned by British promises of independence? Lord Balfour wasn't talking through his top hat when he wrote: "Do we mean, in the case of Syria, to consult principally the wishes of the inhabitants? We mean nothing of the kind... The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the 'independent nation' of Palestine than in that of the 'independent nation' of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land... In short, so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate." (Quoted in David Hirst, The Gun & the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, pp 41-42)
No wonder the Israelis and their boosters in this country want to gull us with fairytales.
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