Churchill’s Challenges

A curious fact about the clashes between Islamist fanatics and the State of Israel is that they still lay claim to Israel as an opportunistic land-grab by spreading lies and disinformation, when the historic truth of the situation is already well known and contrary to claims by Palestinian extremists. Author and historian John Harte clearly lays out the true story in detail once again in Churchill’s Challenges, published in May 2024 by Pen & Sword in the UK.

The areas falsely claimed were, in fact, clearly demarcated in 1921 by a team of British Arabists led by Winston Churchill, who had been appointed colonial secretary by Prime Minister Lloyd George, since the Middle East was in lawless chaos after the failing Turkish Empire led by German army officer, was defeated by the Allies in 1918, at the conclusion of World War 1. Churchill’s team of experts included Lawrence of Arabia, and Major Gertrude Bell who mapped out new and equitable frontiers. Israel was short-changed when allocated only about a third of its historic territory. That was because Britain sought strong leaders for the sake of world security, by allocating Transjordan to Emir Abdullah and crowning him king, when it had previously been part of Israel’s territory

Harte describes how Emir Faisel was chosen as leader by Lawrence of Arabia and crowned by the British, since it was considered essential to ensure peace in the Middle East that both monarchs should be descended from the Prophet Muhammad. Feisal was crowned king of a new country named Iraq.

“Since Colonel T.E. Lawrence viewed the Jews as the ‘natural importers of Western leaven so necessary for countries in the Near East,’ he had taken the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann to see the Emir Feisal in the desert in 1918.. Feisal had no problems with their ambition. He “accepted the possibility of future Jewish claims to territory in Palestine.” It had been their homeland as the two kingdoms of Judea and Israel before they had been annexed as a province of Rome in 63 BCE. Feisal agreed that Palestine could absorb “ four to five million Jews without encroaching on the rights of the Arab peasantry.” As a consequence of years of hardships by Jewish farmers, a deserted malarial wilderness was converted into the flourishing State of Israel of today.

The only opposition came then, and even now, from mobs of illiterate and superstitious peasantry who always vied with their leaders for supremacy, and opportunistic nationalists who whipped up the masses into hysterical frenzies with lies and disinformation.

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