On this day—September 7, 1941
The British appeased the Arabs, cancelled the Jewish national home, and locked the last remaining door before the storm.
That day, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden wrote the quiet part down: “If we must have preferences, let me murmur in your ear that I prefer Arabs to Jews.”
His private secretary recorded the same month that Eden “loves Arabs and hates Jews.” Two years earlier, Chamberlain had already given the order: “If we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews rather than the Arabs.”
That preference became the lock on the door.
The 1939 White Paper capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 over five years, then handed the Arab leadership a veto on anything after that. No Arab consent meant no more Jews. It also meant there would be no Jewish state, just another Arab-majority country with a Jewish minority under a leadership that had already denied Jews any right to live there. When the Peel Commission asked the Mufti in 1937 what should happen to the roughly 400,000 Jews then in the country if Britain simply handed him the keys, British officials in the room understood the answer: expulsion or worse. The 1936–39 Arab revolt was rewarded. The Mandate’s purpose was cancelled. The last sanctuary was closed.
What the policy looked like:
September 2, 1939: a British cutter opened fire on the Tiger Hill ship and her 1,400 Jewish refugees. Zvi Binder and Dr. Robert Schneider were killed. The rest were interned.
July 1941: British codebreakers began reading German police traffic from the East proving mass shootings of Jews with body counts in the thousands. The Holocaust by Bullets was not just a rumor inside the government. The White Paper stayed in force.
February 1942: the Struma. A converted cattle barge left Romania with about 790 Jews fleeing the killings, 103 of them children. The engine died. The ship sat for weeks in Istanbul. Britain refused to issue certificates for Mandate Palestine. Turkey towed the unseaworthy hulk into the Black Sea and cut it loose. The next day, a Soviet submarine sank it. One passenger survived. The rest drowned. London already had the shooting reports for seven months. It still said no.
August 1942: the Riegner telegram reached the Foreign Office informing the British of what came to be known as the “Final Solution” — a plan to industrialize the murder millions of Jews in German-controlled Europe with poison gas.
December 1942: the Allied governments publicly acknowledged the mass murder of the Jews of Europe. The quota did not move.
1945: the camps were liberated. The world saw the films of what Allied soldiers found inside. The policy still did not move.
1946–49: the Royal Navy intercepted more than 50 ships. Most of the refugees were sent to internment on Cyprus. They put 52,000 Holocaust survivors behind British wire. Guards still shot escapees after Israel declared independence. One ship was singled out to make an example. In July 1947, 4,515 survivors on Exodus 1947 were boarded in international waters, beaten, transferred to prison ships, and sent to Germany (!!).
Britain did not merely “restrict immigration.” It fired on the ships, interned the remnant, and returned people to the country that exterminated their families.
They did not learn it in 1945 and then close the door.
They had the mass shooting reports before the Struma went down.
They had the industrialized extermination warning while the war was still on, and kept the veto anyway.
After the proof was on film, they still stopped the ships.
The file is not a misunderstanding. It is Eden’s handwriting.
@NewsHour Kudos on Ali Rogan's segment, "The Future Is Peace." Unlike the anti-Zionist ipicac you serve up almost daily, this was a contribution toward peace and understanding, rather than violence and hatred. Dump the biased Leila Molana-Allen for Ali Rogan.
@NewsHour Tonight's broadcast just ended and the very first thought I had - completely spontaneously: "Wow An entire hour of the NewsHour and no cringe-wortht, infuriating, biased anti-Israel segment!" That tells you just about all you need to know.
@NewsHour What in the WORLD makes you think, Geoff, thats ok to INSIST to a guest that the State of Israel TARGETS journalists? Your attempt to be "tough" showed AGAIN the Newshours' anti- Israel BIAS. You don't speak to ANYONE ELSE that way. I'm done. No more $ for you.
NEW:
"What we've seen is a disaster under your leadership"
Republican @SenThomTillis rips into DHS Sec. Kristi Noem.
-Concerns over innocent people detained
-FEMA (Helene recovery)
-Minneapolis
-NC Border Patrol operation
#ncpol@SpecNews1RDU
Making his 1st NBA All-Star appearance... Deni Avdija of the @trailblazers.
Drafted as the 9th pick in 2020 out of Israel, Avdija is averaging 25.5 PPG, 7.2 RPG and 6.7 APG for the Trail Blazers this season.
@Leila_MA Enough. You have single handedly -- that's not true; it's you and your editors, with more than a wee bit of help from @IAmAmnaNawaz - have driven me to quit watching the @NewsHour, after loyal 30 years. Your bias is too much to stomach. #nomoredonationsforyou
Now that Israel's attacks on Gaza have ended but large scale violence is continuing-- perpetrated by Hamas--I will be watching to see how much concern is expressed by pro-Palestine groups. If there is none, it will confirm my suspicions about underlying antisemitic motivations.
@Leila_MA You set a standard in bias. Commenting on medical staff taking care of Israeli hostages, you comment on "physical injury from Israel's aerial bombardment" but fail to mention physical injury from Hamas's torture, starvation, beating?! What is WRONG with you?