Daniel’s, “How long to the end of these wonders ?” has echoed down the years. It is a question that baffles the most able ; and the wise are content to accept the words, “But of that day and hour, knoweth no man . . .” Many are the victims of human conceit who believed they had access to the Divine secret. Probably the most baffling phase is the present. The eager anticipations which the Balf our Declaration provoked were unrealised. Instead, through a tortuous process of over 30 years, events culminated with the phenomenon of the State of Israel — independent of the provisions of that document.
When the British Labour Party was preparing itself for power, its leader, Mr. (now Lord) Attlee, promised that consideration of Jewish aspirations in Palestine would be in the forefront of his Government’s foreign policy. The hopes of Jewry well might have run high when the electorate returned Attlee to power. The result for Israel was disastrous. The failure to help Israel and the desertion of the Mandate in 1948 coincided (but was it really coincidence, or was this an unworthy Britain losing her wages ? ), with the loss of British power in Egypt and later throughout the world.
The book before us, “A Nation Re-born”, has the sub-title, “The Israel of Weizmann, Bevin and Ben Gurion”. It conveys the substance of the Chaim Weizmann Memorial Lectures given in Israel by R. H. Crossman, an English Labour Member of Parliament, who was, incidentally, not a supporter of his party’s attitude.
lronically, it has been said that Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary of the period, was the real founder of the State of Israel.
His policy left the Israeli with no alternative but to declare their independence. If they did not look after themselves, nobody else would. Whatever allowances might be made for Bevin’s hostility, his prejudices were—like those of his Government colleagues in favour of the Arabs, to whom the British Government went to the extent of handing over the frontier posts when the British forces were evacuated.
Crossman examines the policies of these three men—two Jews and one Gentile.Weizmann, a gentleman in the best sense of the word, the diplomat, in whose affections Britain was second only to Israel; Bevin, the great trade union leader and ardent Socialist; Ben Gurion, a Polish Jew, whose one dominating theme in life was, and is, Israel; a man of the people!
It is pleaded in extenuation of Bevin’s policy that he could have “smashed the Jewish resistance and imposed the British power for another 10 or 15 years” ; although one dreads to think what might have happened had this course been adopted. He chose—and took full responsibility for his decision—to withdraw the British forces and return the Mandate to the United Nations as -unworkable”. In effect he decided to throw this desperate and unprotected people into the furnace of Arab hatred. To the astonishment of the world Israel survived. Out of the great affliction, the nation was re-born, and that without Gentile assistance.
Crossman tells the story well. He brings the history up-to-date, but without the detail of a personal record. He asks the question, as many others have done, “What were the motives that prompted the British Government to issue the Balfour Declaration ?” He does so because there appears to be no satisfactory answer. He describes as the “silliest” answer of all that which says, “Lloyd George was the prime mover and did it mainly as a reward for Weizmann’s services and in order to win over the American Jew.” The British Government may have thought it an expedient move, but in any case we are wiser to fall back on the obvious : that men are unconsciously moved to take certain steps when the plan of God demands it.
There is no doubt that modern Israel can only be understood in the light of the Bible. Weizmann had declared that all Gentiles are latently anti-semitic—a statement that probably is very true indeed. Often brethren have found it is only by sheer determination to be loyal to the principles of the Truth that they can stifle and control their prejudices.
The accomplishments of Ben Gurion’s Israel call for little commendation. Crossman says,
“It is the only democracy I know which could be literally called a people’s democracy . . . it is too young to have created an aristocracy, a ruling class or social elite, and too poor to be ruled by a plutocracy”.
It is of interest to read of a milk and egg surplus in 1959, but saddening to learn that 80% of the population is agnostic.
However nationalistic the Israli may be, Crossman points out that an extension of territory means an additional Arab population to be ruled, with its attendant troubles, and thus argues that Israel presents no threat to the nations around them. Nevertheless, speaking personally, it would cause no surprise to see some further hostilities. Old Jerusalem is in Arab hands, and somehow that position seems out of place.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)