Churchill's Jewish Papers

Whether or not "How The Jews Can Combat Persecution." was actually written by Churchill himself or ghostwritten by his ghostwriter who may have been an Oswald Mosley supporter, there is nothing extraordinary about it. It is unfortunately a normative view by a European of the time. Similar and harsher views can be found commonly expressed throughout American and British publications of the time.

Part of the Jewish amnesia toward history is to retroactively transform major historical figures into friendly ones. This is a necessary amnesia for many because it is rather difficult going through a history book, the bulk of whose inhabitants despise you. It is however utterly disconnected from reality.

The attitude of the allied leaders toward the Jews, FDR, Harry Truman, Churchill and DeGaulle ranged mostly from distaste to a general belief the Jews were up to no good. The broad open minded views of a Theodore Roosevelt or a Woodrow Wilson toward the Jews, were not present here. It is a sad testament that of the four leaders listed above, Churchill was undoubtedly the least judeophobic. Certainly well below Truman or DeGaulle. That is the reality of the time.

The concession of European intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th century was to revise the former ecclesiastical view that Jews deserved everything they got, by suggesting that Jews were only partly responsible and thus splitting the difference between the pogromist and the Jew. In an intellectual culture so mixed up that it treated crime and poverty as genetic diseases, your circumstances defined you. If a family was poor, it was a failing that was in the blood. If Jews were persecuted, then clearly it was a failing that was in them. Many still think that way and not just about the Jews.

(Raped women are to blame for being raped. Westerners are thieves because their societies are prosperous and the third world is impoverished. The amount of worldwide hatred for America is treated as proof that America is at fault. After all if so many hate us, clearly we must be to blame. This is the exact same logic that was used toward the Jews.)

When the Nazi persecutions began, the European and American response quite often split the difference. The Nazis were behaving badly, but the Jews had clearly done something to merit it. It was just a matter of determining what. The modern republic beginning with France offered Jews rights in exchange for assimilation. Many Jews had taken that bargain (though of course as in Spain and Germany they found that assimilation did not end anti-semitism, only ushered in a new and deadlier phase) but the Russian immigrants escaping the Czars and the Soviets for the most part had not yet gotten the chance to decide. And so they were held accountable for failing to assimilate.

A generation later their children would be held accountable for assimilating too well and becoming doctors, politicians and lawyers. This is the typical Catch 22 Jews face when dealing with demands produced by the inherent irrationality of bigots who try to peg their bigotry onto something specific, but their demands can never actually be met. If the Jews live apart, then they're clannish. If the Jews integrate, then they're pushy and taking jobs away from the natives and oppressing everyone. If the Jews assimilate, they're trying to pretend to be like us.

Churchill was merely echoing Napoleon and a thousand others before all the way back to medieval times, with a modern day intellectual gloss on it. In the war that would follow, England and America would do their parts to obstruct the Jews escaping Hitler for safety. Their biographers, particularly Martin Gilbert for Churchill, has worked tirelessly to paint Churchill in the most positive light on the matter of Jewish refugees and Israel, but the reality of the British government's policy remained unchanged.

England actually diverted Lend-Lease ships to patrol the waters to make sure Jewish refugees did not reach Israel, as this would upset the Arabs and British colonial plans for the Middle-East. FDR ignored and dismissed information about the Holocaust, calls to condemn it, calls to bomb the rails leading to concentration camps and calls to aid the rescue of Jews, until the war was already all but over. Truman would top FDR by playing for Jewish votes in public and railing at Jewish refugees in private. Idiot Jewish liberals would hail and idolize both men, who wouldn't have let them lick their boots unless an election was coming up.

The simple reality is that FDR and Churchill were both great men (one a liberal and the other a conservative) and in their own way great leaders, though also responsible for great failures. They built a cult of personality around themselves, that was not altogether unmerited, because they saw what most did not and stayed the course in fighting Hitler when it was unpopular and saw the war through to the end. They deserve credit for that and they may well have saved civilization in doing so. As a byproduct they also saved the remainder of the Jews. This was however a mostly accidental byproduct and they had little to no interest in it.

They were great men, but they were not our great friends. They viewed us, much as the world views Israel today, as a nuisance that causes problems which it would be easier for everyone's sake if it simply did not exist. When Churchill stated that the solution to the Jewish problem was the end of an individual Jewish identity, he was repeating an idea that had been long around. In its modern form, this idea states that things would be better off for the Jews and everyone else if Israel did not exist and the violence against them would end. In its form at the time, it stated that things would be better off for the Jews and everyone else if the Jews did not exist, and the violence against them would end. The problem, when it is honestly stated, is not what Jews do, but that Jews continue to exist at all.

Churchill's ideas are not shocking. They were typical. They may still be more typical today than we realize, once you understand the extent to which Israel has come to symbolize a Jewish individual identity and Anti-Zionist has become a politically correct substitute for Anti-Semitism. They date back to virtually every political leader who has ever tackled the Jewish problem. Pharaoh after all complained about a numerous people that were a separate nation within Egypt. In Persia, Haman whispered to Ahasverosh about a nation dispersed among his lands that keeps its own laws. Those same ideas and thoughts recurred from land to land and nation to nation. G-d had set the Jewish people apart and that has never sat well with any prince or leader. "You Shall Be My Servants," G-d had said, and what great political leader has not envied G-d's prerogative?