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But in a larger context isn't it blaming the Jews for what was an inevitability ever since British imperialism decided to rid Europe of them no matter the cost? I'm puzzled by this. When did "British imperialism" decide to "rid Europe" of its Jews? I'm not slow to acknowledge the faults of the British Empire, but at what point exactly did that Empire decide it would be expedient to get rid of all Europe's Jews? When was this even a possibility? Britain, in fact, was a notable safe haven for European Jews from the 17th century until the present day - among them my own ancestors, who migrated to the East End under the Protectorate, and remained there even under Hitler's Blitz. If you are thinking of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, that was a vague accession of the British government to the demands of European Zionists to the effect that it might be an okay idea to set up a Jewish nation state in Palestine so long as the rights of the Arab population were protected. (This last proviso is often forgotten both by fans and critics of Balfour.) But Britain did not invent Zionism, and it agreed to hand over part of Mandate Palestine to the nascent Jewish state only after a vicious and bloody campaign of nationalist and anti-Arab terrorism. The British Empire was not always barbarous, and its opponents were not always notably heroic. So far as I can tell it is not the case that the British Empire "placed the Jews in an untenable position." (Which Jews? Whose Jews??) What imperial Anglophone colonial societies did - among them the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand - was to set an example for the Jewish colonial settler society in Palestine. Ethnic nationalism, patriotic ethnic cleansing, a forgettable genocide. This is how colonies used to be obtained. The cost was considered acceptable, at leastto the settlers. Who remembers the Armenians? Who cares? The problem for Israel is that it is trying to do in the 21st century what these impetuous colonies - largely frowned-upon if not openly discouraged by the imperial authorities - mostly got out of the way in the 19th. Back then, the imperial government could express misgivings but basically turn a blind eye to Australian settlers slaughtering as many blackies as was convenient. These days, of course, it is harder for avaricious settlers motivated by an officially-approved ideology of racial hatred to avoid public notice. And it's easy for those of us living on long-ago-stolen land or living off its profits to deprecate the hideous crudeness of these foul-mouthed Israeli racists and their crass apologists. Don't they know what century they're living in? Why couldn't they have said and done all those terrible things 150 years ago like us decent folks? But none of this is directly the fault of the British Empire. And the Jews are not straightforwardly history's victims - not least because many Jews (including many of the smartest and most conscientious ones) did not feel they were forced by events into accepting a nation state. New histories of the Bund, for instance, continue to reveal how contentious Zionism was among Jewish communities even after 1945. The State of Israel was an historical contingency. There was nothing necessary about it, much less a necessity created by "the British Empire." It does European Jews - and in fact the State of Israel - little honour to suggest that it was just another product of British perfidy. |