“Churchill, a Zionist, was first to call for the creation of  Israel in 1905.” Where and when in 1905 did he say that? —G.H., New York City

A: Date undetermined

Churchill was probably a Zionist by 1905. Reader Gene Kopelson (Comments, below) notes Michael Makovsky’s evidence of young Winston’s early respect for Jews and many Jewish friends. This didn’t make him a Zionist per se, but he certainly had become one by the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. But I can find no public statement calling for an independent Israel until 1948. Until then he called for a “Jewish National Home.” With his characteristic optimism, he believed Arabs and Jews in Palestine could coexist. He pointed to the talent of the Arabs. And he praised the Jews for their horticulture and irrigation projects. Indeed in today’s Israel, Arabs comprise 20% of the population.

Cairo, 1921

Headed by Churchill in 1921, the Cairo Conference set the borders of the modern Middle East. There he opted for the Zionist idea, what he called a “Jewish National Home” within Britain’s Palestine Mandate, roughly coinciding with what is now Israel. The rest of the Palestine Mandate became the Arab state of Jordan. To a delegation of Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem on 28 March 1921 Churchill declared for a Jewish National Home:

And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated? (Churchill by Himself, 175)

Churchill’s impressive achievement at that time was to convince two Arab potentates, King Abdullah in Jordan and King Feisal in Iraq, to tolerate a Jewish Homeland in their midst. This situation prevailed until Britain gave up the Palestine Mandate (without resolving the tensions) after World War II. In the 1948 war Israel secured independence.

A world war later…

…on 10 December 1948, Churchill spoke in the House of Commons. He regretted that Britain and the West had lost the opportunity to make a permanent settlement in the Middle East. This is the first admission that I can find that he accepted partition and an independent Zionist state:

I always had in my mind the hope that the whole question of the Middle East might have been settled on the largest scale on the morrow of victory and that an Arab Confederation, comprising three or four Arab States—Saudi-Arabia, Iraq, Transjordania, Syria and the Lebanon—however grouped, possibly united amongst themselves, and one Jewish State, might have been set up, which would have given peace and unity throughout the whole vast scene of the Middle East. As to whether so large a policy could have been carried into being I cannot be sure, but a settlement of the Palestine question on the basis of partition would certainly have been attempted, in the closest possible association with the United States and in personal contact with the President, by any Government of which I had been the head. But all this opportunity was lost. (Churchill by Himself, 176-77)

Hopes and regrets

Churchill supported the Zionist state, declaring in the House of Commons in 1949: “…the coming into being of a Jewish State in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand, two thousand or even three thousand years.” (Churchill by Himself, 175)

But in 1951 he deplored British policies after the Second World War. These, he said, “led to the winding up of our affairs in Palestine in such a way as to earn almost in equal degree the hatred of the Arabs and the Jews.” (Churchill by Himself, 439).

Many who still have hope for Churchill’s optimism accept a “two state solution” for Palestine and Israel. But the two separate Palestinian entities, Gaza and the West Bank, subdivide the latter’s population. A solution with a chance of success might contemplate a shift of peoples to create a contiguous state. No one seems to want to grasp that nettle (which caused havoc in India in 1947). Even in 1948, Churchill recognized that it would not be easy.

Further reading

“How Winston Churchill Preserved the Dream of Israel, July 1922” (2018)

“Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia: A Conjunction of Two Bright Stars” (2020)

Q: On creating Transjordan

What is the veracity of this alleged quote by Churchill, which has many versions? “In his later years, he liked to boast that in 1921 he created Transjordan (6/7ths of the British Palestine Mandate, today’s Kingdom of Jordan, ‘with the stroke of a pen, one Sunday afternoon in Cairo.’” The source cited by The New York Times is “Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation-State,” edited by Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen, page 189.)

I ask because versions of this quote are repeatedly cited by anti-Churchill wallahs as proof for when they indict him as the culprit for the state of the Middle East today. Their point is that Churchill created artificial states to (pick your poison) steal oil, perpetuate British control, create pro-Western dictatorships, keep the Muslim world in a state of constant unrest etc. They never mention that Jordan is comparatively an oasis of serenity relative to its neighbours.  —A.M., Delhi

A: Unproven, but not out of character

Churchill occasionally rattled off some provocative remark to tease oversensitive colleagues or see how they reacted. Comments such as “Indians breed like rabbits” or the supposed Tory campaign slogan “Keep England White” (both hearsay with only one source) were at best wisecracks. Lacking much provenance, they are nevertheless accepted by the ignorant as formal proclamations of Churchill’s deeply held beliefs.

Churchill might well have let the “stroke of a pen” remark fly to a colleague. But we can find no published source relative to Transjordan, or the Kingdom of Jordan. Of course, Jordan was a creation of the 1921 Cairo Conference, presided over by Churchill. Good accounts are in David Stafford, Oblivion or Glory: 1921 and the Making of Winston Churchill (2019) and Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 4, World in Torment 1917-1922.

The quote as you state it, however, could be a muddled version of what Churchill actually said in Parliament on 24 March 1934. The venue he named was Jerusalem not Cairo:

I have no hostility for the Arabs. I think I made most of the settlements over fourteen years ago governing the Palestine situation. The Emir Abdullah is in Transjordania, where I put him one Sunday afternoon at Jerusalem.

Churchill did not fancy “nation building,” as we call it today. He had no great hope for democracy in the Arab states he set up in 1921. His highest hope was in what became Israel, which he first referred to as a homeland, not a state. Nevertheless, he thought, the West must do what it could, to use its influence for good. After all, that influence is better than some of the other influences that occur from time to time. Suppose the Soviet Union had reorganized the Middle East in 1921?

Another stroke of a pen: India’s military legacy

Sometimes a chase through the Churchill canon yields unrelated but rewarding results. In searching for “stroke of a pen,” I came across this passage by historian Arthur Herman, in his excellent book Gandhi & Churchill, page 497. It refers to the Indian Army Office Corps, where Churchill also played a part. This will be of interest to you and other Indians laboring in the vineyard in search of truth:

For every disgruntled or discouraged subaltern who joined Japan’s puppet Indian National Army, a dozen KCIOs and VCOs served with distinction on every front in the British war effort, from Burma and Eritrea to North Africa and Italy. And the minister of war who created the KCIOs in 1920 had been Winston Churchill. Without realizing it, he had at the stroke of a pen secured India as part of the future Allied cause and created independent India’s military legacy. Churchill never grasped the full magnitude of what he had done, but Gandhi nearly did. Many times over the years he had spoken of brave Indian soldiers who would defend their country and then return home to carry the future burden of freedom.”

Churchill and Lawrence

If the Almighty dabbles in the creation of individuals, He must have chortled when He conjured up Lawrence of Arabia. For here was the ideal adviser, foil and friend of Winston Spencer Churchill. To paraphrase WSC’s apocryphal quip, Lawrence possessed none of the virtues Churchill despised, an all the vices he admired.

He was “untrammeled by convention,” Churchill wrote, “independent of the ordinary currents of human action.” Arabs loved this fair-haired Westerner who helped wrest their homeland from the Turks in World War I. Then Lawrence wrote a book about it, of the same grandiloquent style as Churchill himself. An admiring Churchill leaned heavily on him after the First World War, and mourned his loss as the Second World War approached.

Lawrence claimed to care not a fig about his reputation, changed his name twice to stop it pursuing him. Yet Churchill thought that “he had the art of backing uneasily into the limelight. He was a very remarkable character, and very careful of that fact.” Lawrence for his part nursed that unqualified admiration for Churchill which was common among WSC’s friends. Churchill’s daughter Mary recalled his romantic image. “He would arrive at Chartwell of an afternoon, a short, nondescript, sandy-haired airman riding a motorcycle. Then he would dress for dinner, presenting himself in the flowing robes of a Prince of Arabia.” God simply couldn’t have invented a person Winston Churchill would have liked more.

Thomas Edward Lawrence…

…was born in North Wales in 1888 and began traveling in the Middle East while still an Oxford undergraduate. Obtaining a first class degree in history in 1910, he engaged in Middle East archeology, exploring the Negev Desert before joining the Geographical Section of the War Office in 1914. When the Arabs rebelled against the Turks, Britain saw an opportunity to secure a vital ally against the Central Powers. Lawrence was seconded to Ronald Storrs as a British representative to the Arabs. He became successively liaison officer, adviser, friend and promoter of the Emir Feisal, whom Churchill ultimately placed on the throne of Iraq. Feisal and his son ruled, unenlightened but in the main moderately, until the revolution of 1958, which ultimately produced Saddam Hussein.

The significance of Lawrence in the Arab revolt is a matter of discussion among historians. What is unarguable is that Lawrence wrote one of the best books to come out of World War I. A classic of English literature, his Seven Pillars of Wisdom was subtitled A Triumph. Among the triumphs were his surprise capture of Akaba in July 1917 and the conquest of Damascus in October 1918.

When he sat down to write the book, Lawrence worked largely from wartime notes. Then he lost the manuscript along with many notes, and began writing anew from memory. In 1926 he issued a private printing to a limited circle of subscribers including Churchill. A commercial edition called Revolt in the Desert followed, but it was an abridgement. Not until after his death did the full unabridged work appear, achieving posthumously his lasting fame.

Advocate for Arab justice

Lawrence accompanied Feisal to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919-20 with strong forebodings. He had for some time doubted Britain’s promises of independence if the Arabs helped win the war. Paris did not alter his doubts. Two years later, Churchill persuaded him to return from seclusion to join the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office.  In 1921, Lawrence joined Churchill at the Cairo Conference, convened to fix the borders of the Middle East. For better or worse, those are the borders we still know today. At Cairo, Churchill argued vainly for a separate Kurdish homeland, “to protect the Kurds from some future bully in Iraq.” The Foreign Office thought his fears groundless.

The year before, France, feeling entitled to spoils of victory, had acquired League of Nations “mandates” in Syria and Lebanon. “Mandate” was polite shorthand for opportunistic colony grabbing, but Churchill sympathized. A nation “bled white by the war,” as Churchill put it, would tolerate nothing less. Britain received mandates in Palestine and Iraq. Though Iraq gained nominal independence in 1932, Britain continued to reap the benefit of the vast Iraqi oil fields. France, by contrast, ruled her mandates with her customary iron hand into World War II. Some analysts of French resistance to the 2003 Iraq War traced France’s attitude back to 1920, which left France with Syria, Lebanon, and no oil.

“The old men took our victory”

Lawrence never lost faith in Churchill, and thought he had addressed most Arab desiderata at Cairo. He was, however, profoundly disappointed by the Paris Peace Conference. A new world had beckoned, he wrote. Then “the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew.” Embittered, he rejected an honor by King George V at the moment of its presentation. Churchill rebuked him. It was “unfair to the King as a gentleman and grossly disrespectful to him as a sovereign.”

Lawrence renounced his past, enlisting in the Royal Air Force as “J.H. Ross” in 1922. A year later he joined the Royal Tank Corps as “T.E. Shaw.” In 1925, still as Shaw, he rejoined the RAF. He retired in 1935, shortly before his death on his Brough Superior motorcycle near his bungalow, Cloud’s Hill in Dorset. Visitors will find the cottage lovingly maintained by the National Trust, and a Lawrence Society exists to keep his memory.

Lawrence in retrospecct

Reflect on the time, now nearly a century ago, when he and Lawrence set out for Cairo. Their simple mission was to settle affairs in the Middle East. Today with clear hindsight we judge the mistakes and failures of that mission. It was not so clear at the time. Churchill wrote in Great Contemporaries:

…we had recently suppressed a most dangerous and bloody rebellion in Iraq, and upwards of forty thousand troops at a cost of thirty million pounds a year were required to preserve order. This could not go on. In Palestine the strife between the Arabs and the Jews threatened at any moment to take the form of actual violence. The Arab chieftains, driven out of Syria with many of their followers—all of them our late allies—lurked furious in the deserts beyond the Jordan. Egypt was in ferment. Thus the whole of the Middle East presented a most melancholy and alarming picture.

The modern equivalent of £40 million is $2 billion. The U.S. alone spent $750 billion in Iraq between 2003 and 2010. The UK spent £4.6 billion. Many more than 40,000 soldiers have been involved, and the picture is still melancholy and alarming. Arab chieftains, many our late allies, lurk furious in the deserts. President Harry Truman reflected: “the only thing that’s new is the history you don’t know.”

What may we learn…

…from Lawrence’s and Churchill’s ardent but ultimately failed efforts to promote Middle East peace? That those who ignore the lessons of the past are doomed to relive it? That Arabs are not the stereotyped gaggle of cutthroat fanatics some proclaim them to be? That some yearn for justice and a peaceful life? That the Twice-Promised Land—Lawrence to the Arabs, Balfour to the Jews—is a burden history has thrust upon us?

All of these, assuredly. But there is something more. And that is the innate decency and sense of fairness which animated Churchill and Lawrence. Some of that may glimmer in the recent Israel-UAE and Israel-Bahrain peace agreements. Those are qualities which will be needed in our statesmanship, if the lands Lawrence loved are ever to be placid and free.

“He was not in complete harmony with the normal”

The reader should turn now to Churchill’s Lawrence essay in Great Contemporaries. I will not quote it at length, because such beautiful writing deserves to be savored as a whole. But Churchill’s summary view is appropriate and true:

Those who knew him best miss him most; but our country misses him most of all, and misses him most of all now. For this is a time when the great problems upon which his thought and work had so long centred, problems of aerial defence, problems of our relations with the Arab peoples, fill an ever larger space in our affairs. For all his reiterated renunciations, I always felt that he was a man who held himself ready for a new call. While Lawrence lived one always felt—I certainly felt it strongly—that some overpowering need would draw him from the modest path he chose to tread and set him once again in full action at the centre of memorable events.

It was not to be. The summons which reached him, and for which he was equally prepared, was of a different order. It came as he would have wished it, swift and sudden on the wings of speed. He had reached the last leap in his gallant course through life.

“All is over! Fleet career,
Dash of greyhound slipping thongs,
Flight of falcon, bound of deer,
Mad hoof-thunder in our rear,
Cold air rushing up our lungs,
Din of many tongues.”*

* From “The Last Leap” by the Australian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870), who died by his own hand, nine years younger than Lawrence.