By VICTOR SHARPE—
In Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s book A Place Among The Nations, (Bantam Books, 1993), the Israeli Prime Minister wrote about the pro-Nazi alliance by most of the Arab world before and during World War II:
“In Iraq, in Egypt, and in Syria they (the Arabs) openly allied themselves with the Nazis, flocking to Berlin to enlist in the war effort and lobby Hitler for favors. They even formed an Arab Legion in Berlin that eventually became part of the SS.
“A popular song at the time caught the spirit of the Arab masses as they enthusiastically waited to rid themselves of the detested British and French who were working so hard to win their affection.
“No more Monsieur, no more Mister; In heaven Allah, on earth Hitler.”
The British betrayed their obligations to the Jews as set forth in the League of Nations Mandate which entrusted them with the establishment of a Jewish National Home. Step-by-step the British sold out the Mandate, even preventing Jews fleeing German occupied Europe from reaching Mandatory Palestine. As Col. Richard Meinertzhagen, a Christian whom I have written about in my article, Heroes and Unsung Heroes: Those Who Moved The World, and one of the few Zionists within the political office of the British Palestine administration, wrote on the eve of the Second World War:
“The Nazis mean to eradicate Judaism from Germany and they will succeed. Nobody loves the Jews, nobody wants them and yet we are pledged to give them a home in Palestine. Instead we slam the door in their faces just at the moment when it should be wide open. We even whittle down their home at a moment when we should enlarge it. The action of His Majesty’s Government in Palestine is very near to that of Hitler in Germany. They may be more subtle, they are certainly more hypocritical, but the result (for the Jews) is similar – insecurity, misery, exasperation and murder.”
Yet, the Arabists at the British Foreign Office were intent on wooing the Arabs. Just how unrealistic their policy was became evident in World War II. The enormous difference in the numbers of Jewish and Arab volunteers for the British army is telling.
According to David Niv in his Ma’arachot HaIrgun HaTzvai HaLeumi (Vol. 3, p. 127), “At the end of August 1943, four years after the breakout of war… nearly 23,000 men and women, among them 280 officers and 40 female officers, and also 120 doctors who received officer rank were mobilized. Twenty-five Hebrew army companies stood under the direct command of Jewish officers in the Land of Israel.
“Draft officers and officials of the civil administration (among them high-ranking British officials) toured Arab villages, gathered the notables, lectured at parties and banquets entreating the Arabs to enlist. Up to August 1943, 8,661 Arabs enlisted and of this a great number were Syrians and Lebanese, but the number who served in active service were no more than 4,000.”
The reason any of this matters is that the U.S. pursues essentially the same policy and has done so through administration after administration and by the majority of Secretaries of State. In fact, the U.S. received the policy from the British. As Netanyahu wrote: “British appeasement had yet another pernicious result whose effects are very much alive today: the transmission of British policy preferences to almost every foreign ministry and foreign policy establishment in the world. Britain, after all, was the dominant international power between the two world wars, its diplomats venerated, its policies everywhere emulated.”
The policy of appeasement, no matter it’s obvious failings, always seems to find new adherents. President Obama gave such a policy renewed vigor with his Cairo speech, the first major international speech in his new administration after he assumed the presidency. It arguably unleashed what has been laughable called the Arab Spring but which was guaranteed to usher in disastrous death and destruction in Egypt, Libya, much of North Africa, Syria and Iraq. The speech may also have imperiled a faithful ally – Israel – and strengthened the hand of those bent on global Islamic domination. It is a policy which is weak, naïve and cowardly. It’s also a policy that perhaps has a more sinister agenda.
Charles Crawford, writing in an article first published in PunditWire, suggested that the Cairo speech opened on a weird note. Obama had said, “I’m also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum.”
As Crawford asked, “What? Why is the President of the United States carrying a greeting of peace from U.S. Muslim communities? What does this opening say to non-Muslims in the U.S.A. and in the Middle East alike?”
But then there is a strange incumbent these days in the White House; one who is arguably a dedicated advocate for Islam and debatably no true friend of the Jewish state. And now it is the United States government and its present Secretary of State Kerry who, as Binyamin Netanyahu earlier wrote about Great Britain, is wooing the Arabs, especially those who now call themselves Palestinians; the same Arabs, who in the past affectionately called Hitler, Abu Ali, and who today still praise Hitler and would happily sing again an updated version of: No more Monsieur, no more Mister; In heaven Allah, on earth Hitler.
The inevitable outcome of “peace talks” will involve yet again the execrable idea of “land for peace,” returning Israel, with minor adjustments, to the Auschwitz armistice lines that existed prior to June 4, 1967, and consenting to yet more Arab preconditions such as releasing terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands. This will not bring peace but catastrophe for the people of Israel. But this time, if it comes to pass, it will not be British Mandatory betrayal but a Jewish leadership’s betrayal of every inch of the covenanted Jewish land between the river and the sea while a world watches gleefully as Jews force fellow Jews from their homes.
Let us hope and pray that we do not have to echo the tragic words Richard Meinertzhagen wrote about Britain’s earlier treachery towards the Jewish homeland:
“We even whittle down their home at a moment when we should enlarge it.”
Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer with articles and essays published in FrontPageMag.com, Outpost, American Thinker, Renew America, Family Security Matters, Canada Free Press, Page One Daily, The Jerusalem Connection, Israel National News, the Buffalo Gap Roundup and many other publications. He is also the author of the trilogy Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state, as well as a book of short stories titled, The Blue Hour.
