Divided Against Zion: Anti-Zionist Opposition to the Creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, 1945-1948 (Israeli History, Politics and Society) [Hardcover]

Rory Miller (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 071465051X | ISBN-13: 978-0714650517 | Publication Date: October 30, 2000 | Edition: 1

Using primary sources, this study of the relationship between three anti-Zionist bodies in Britain in the years that directly preceded the founding of the State of Israel also analyzes the Zionist attitude to the Jewish Fellowship, the Arab Office and the Committee for Arab Affairs.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (October 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 071465051X
• ISBN-13: 978-0714650517
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,179,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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24 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Britain's anti-Zionist roots, September 3, 2001

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Divided Against Zion: Anti-Zionist Opposition to the Creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, 1945-1948 (Israeli History, Politics and Society) (Hardcover)

As Londoner Colin Shindler wrote in the Jerusalem Post last July, Dr. Rory Miller's book about British opposition to a Jewish State from 1945 to 1948 shows that slanders routinely hurled against Israel in the liberal British press are all part of a continuum.

Miller focuses on three anti-Zionist bodies--the Jewish Fellowship, the Arab Office and the Committee for Arab Affairs.

The Fellowship, founded in 1942, included important Anglo-Jewish figures such as Basil Henriques, Viscount Bearstead, Lord Swaythling, and several Jewish Conservative MP--as well as Liberal Synagogue chief Rabbi Israel Mattuck, Sir Leonard Lionel Cohen (the first Jewish Lord Justice) and Sir Robert Waley Cohen, president of the United Synagogue, the flagship of the traditional mainstream. They openly opposed Zionism after Lord Moyne's murder in November 1944. Israel's potential rebirth threatened these semi-assimilated Anglicized Jews, who realized that reports of the extermination of European Jewry did nothing to lessen British anti-Semitism during the war.

They feared an Israel reborn would limit their hopes to become Jewish Britons rather than British Jews and expected accusations of dual loyalty to follow any support for Zionism. They also refused to equate Zionism with Judaism (as had Max Nordeau at the Second Zionist Congress in 1898.)

The Fellowship in no way cooperated with other anti-Zionist bodies such as the Arab Office, whose goal was to promote Arab causes in Britain, or the Committee for Arab Affairs (CAA), neither of which cared a fig about Jewish identity. But the latters' efforts to kill the Jewish state before it was born were equally intense.

The CAA, established in 1945 by Sir Edward Spears (another former Conservative MP) quickly became the vehicle of non-Jewish Arabists and anti-Zionists. Financed via London's Arab Legations, often via the Arab Club's account, the group at its peak successfully lobbied as many as 40 Members of Parliament. Sir Ronald Storrs, the former military governor of Jerusalem following the Balfour Declaration, was a prominent CAA leader. This perceived Middle East expert was badly informed and prejudiced, according to David Fromkin's Peace to End All Peace. According to Miller he was also terribly anti-Zionist. In articles in the Sunday Times, Storrs claimed that the Histadrut had promoted strikes in order to force independent companies out of business so they could be taken over. The charge prompted legal action, and Storrs and the Sunday Times were forced to issue a joint apology, a series of events that mightily miffed Storrs.

Then CAA chief Spears, "the defining personality in the anti-Zionist camp," according to Miller, actively took up his cause on returning to London from a ministerial position in the Levant at the end of 1944. The Jewish Chronicle regarded him as "the Pickwickian fatboy" enslaved to the Arab cause. Spears may have been the first to outlandishly compare Zionism to Nazism. He claimed (equally outlandishly) that the Yishuv supported the Allies during the war for profit. After Israel's establishment, many British anti-Zionists gave up, but Spears continued trying to delegitimize the Jewish state until he died in the 1970s.

Miller provides an excellent window onto the campaign of British anti-Zionists, an important area few others have considered. Alyssa A. Lappen