Winston Churchill about the Palestinians, in 1937:
“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”
Source: Page 9, Samar Attar (2010) Debunking the Myths of Colonization: The Arabs and Europe, University Press of America. Page 156, Makovsky Michael (2007) Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft, Yale University Press.
We’re the good guys right? Right?? Just keep telling yourselves that.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
12 comments
May 5, 2014 at 6:07 am
john zande
Oh Winston, really…. :(
(Perhaps we should remind him of his utter failures in the Dardanelles…)
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May 5, 2014 at 8:06 am
Anonymous
Yes indeed.
Change the language to German and you have a page straight out of “Mein Kampf”.
Funny how the difference between an hero and a devil all depends on who won the war.
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May 5, 2014 at 10:51 am
The Arbourist
@JZ
This is what we’re fighting against John. Whether it be deeply ingrained religiosity or deeply ingrained racism, this is the shit that is holding us back – it’s not so blatant now – but it is the steady drum beat that continues to pump out narratives that blind so many to relevant historical truth.
Assaulting comforting narratives is, at its very base, a struggle for establishing basic facts that do not concur with the dominant paradigm.
The RAF gassed Arabs just before and during the war. The Arab struggle against colonialism is there, you just have to *look* for it. It paints us in not such a nice light; we need so much more of that bitter medicine because we keep making such crap decisions now.
Grrr. :/
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May 5, 2014 at 10:54 am
The Arbourist
@Anon
Exceptionalism and the rewriting of history benefits no one. Historical narratives, accepted without criticism and thought, are dangerous.
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May 5, 2014 at 11:00 am
marcdhall
“Whether it be deeply ingrained religiosity or deeply ingrained racism”
Nationalism and Neo-libralism are religions far more dangerous and insidious than any Abrahamic religion if only for the simple fact that no-one realises they are religions.
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May 5, 2014 at 11:08 am
The Arbourist
@Marcdhall
Agreed, ideologies that blind people to basic historical facts and that deny empathy are incredibly dangerous to the welfare of all.
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May 5, 2014 at 11:19 am
john zande
Winston was the product of his time and class. The best parts of that time and class are today embodied in the likes of Stephen Fry… the worst in the likes of David Cameron.
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May 5, 2014 at 12:49 pm
VR Kaine
Churchill was a very much a proven racist, yet the context of this quote seems to be that he was actually being pro-Jewish, making a case for giving Jews the right to self-govern in Palestine after fleeing Nazi Germany? I get this here (http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=40602) from a blog where the authenticity of the quote is questioned.
Odd that being racist seems to have put him on the right side of sentiment towards Jews, pushing (I think in the only way that he could) for a noble for a pro-Jewish state – even if he thought Palestinians were “barbarous peoples” with an “aboriginal propensity to kill.”
As for the “keep telling ourselves we’re the good guys” stuff, am I going to use some racist quote from almost a hundred years ago to pile on some white liberal guilt on here and now? Nah – I’ll leave that to the hypocrites – but it does certainly question whether the guy should be hailed as a “hero” by anyone to be put up on a pedestal (or made into a bust!)
I knew he was racist but I wasn’t aware of the direct quote. Thanks for sharing.
The quote about the context is below.
“Steve Eisenberg:
Well, it turns out that Churchill did say it. It’s on hardback page 120 of Sir Martin Gilbert’s eleven pages of quotations from, and discussion of, Churchill’s secret testimony before the 1937 Peel Commission on the future of Palestine. The context was that Churchill was being pressed on the question of why Palestine, which at the time had a population only 27 percent Jewish, shouldn’t be self-governing. He was accused of only being in favor of democracy in Palestine when there was a Jewish majority. Given the widespread anti-Jewish pogroms in Palestine at the time, I think the answer is obvious: a self-governing Palestine would then have stopped immigration of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, been massively discriminatory against Jews in other ways, and might even have resulted in the wiping out of Palestine’s Jews. A self-governing Israeli state, while imperfect, treats its minorities much better. Of course, this is hardly complementary to Palestinian Arabs as a class, and some might like it no more than they like Churchill’s racist explanation.
In his testimony, Churchill did make the point that Jews fleeing the Nazis would be stopped by a Palestinian democracy.”
I admire some of Churchill’s quotes (example: “If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another”), but at the end of the day he really was an asshole.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html
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May 5, 2014 at 12:56 pm
Anonymous
The Arbourist:
”
Exceptionalism and the rewriting of history benefits no one.
”
That, of course, is utterly false. To the victor go the spoils of war.
In an ideal world, your statement would be true.
But, sadly, we do not live in such a world.
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May 6, 2014 at 11:10 am
The Arbourist
@Anon
Well, I would agree, but only to a certain extent.
Victorious cultures *do* rewrite their own history but in doing so it greatly increases the chance that they will make mistakes in the future due to hubris and referring to nothing but their ‘exceptional’ history.
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May 6, 2014 at 11:17 am
The Arbourist
@Vern
I’m not particularly interested in white liberal guilt. What I am interested in is the abuse and rewriting of history by the political classes of today to further their own mendacious blood soaked agendas. There are reasons why white people are at the top of the heap at the moment and not owning our actions in the past and/or candy coating them for present day consumption is crappy educational/societal policy.
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May 7, 2014 at 12:22 pm
VR Kaine
“not owning our actions in the past and/or candy coating them for present day consumption is crappy educational/societal policy.”
The past? We don’t even own our actions in the present. :) “Delay, Deny, Defend” is the policy of pretty much everybody it seems. Nobody can admit or be honest about anything anymore and everything gets spun to suit the spewer.
Being an educator, you’re in a good position to change that, I suppose?
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