20 Friday, January 23, 1981

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Death of Malcolm MacDonald Recalls End of Balfour Promise

By VICTOR BIENSTOCK

(Editor's note:
Bienstock, former execu-
five vice president of the
Jewish Telegraphic
Agency, covered Great
Britain's Colonial Office
during the tenure of Mal-
colm MacDonald.)
Life — and journalism —
do strange things to the re-
cords men leave behind
them. Malcolm John Mac-
Donald died recently at the
age of 79. His obituary4
the New York Times re-
corded his amazing ability
to walk on his hands and his
readiness to do so under un-
usual circumstances, as at
the court of the King of
Siam.
But that obituary made
no reference to the fact that
it was Malcolm MacDonald,
as Colonial Secretary, who
presided over the saddest
episode in the British-
Jewish relationship: the
British renunciation of the
Balfour Declaration and of
their obligation under the
-League of Nations Palestine
mandate to facilitate the es-
tablishment of a Jewish Na-
tional Home there.
MacDonald, son of Ram-
say MacDonald, Britain's
first Labor prime minister,
became, at 34, the youngest
member of the British
Cabinet with the portfolio of
Colonial Secretary. His ap-
pointment was welcomed by
the Zionist movement to
which he had been most
helpful as a member of Par-
liament. Like his father be
fore him, Malcolm was, in
Chaim Weizmann's words,
"extremely sympathetic to
our cause until he in turn
became Colonial Secretary
— a familiar story, this."
Weizmann had main-
tained a personal friend-
ship with Ramsay Mac-
Donald, and Malcolm,
who greatly admired the
Jewish leader, enjoyed a

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4Ib

relationship
similar
which continued after he
assumed the Cabinet
post. But in the Cabinet,
MacDonald found him-
self under enormous
anti-Zionist pressures
from its senior members,
from the permanent offi-
cials who actually domi-
nated the Foreign and
Colonial Offices, from the
top military brass obses-
sed by the belief that
Britain must win over the
Arabs to its side before
the war with Nazi Ger-
many erupted, from the
Arab diplomats with
whom he had to deal and
finally from the tradi-
tional anti-Semites who
permeated the higher
echelons of the all-
powerful government
bureaucracy.
Did MacDonald change
his views on Zionism or did
he simply bow to these pres-
sures and the exigencies of
the moment? Forty years la-
ter, reflecting on that turbu-
lent era, he insisted that he
had never wavered in his
belief in Zionism but Weiz-
mann died .convinced that
MacDonald had betrayed
the Jewish people and their
friendship.
MacDonald, of course,
was not the architect of
Britain's Palestine policy
and to what extent he could
influence it remains a his-
torical issue. Prime Minis-
ter Neville Chamberlain,
Foreign Secretary Lord
Halifax and the ranking
permanent officials in the
Foreign, Colonial and War
Offices were the final arbit-
ers.
By one of those quirks of
history, Neville Chamber-
lain's father, Joseph Cham-
berlain, then Colonial Sec-
retary, was the first British
statesmen to be receptive to
the pleas of Theodor Herzl,
the founder of the Zionist

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4D-•• • • •

political movement and, in
fact, offered him Uganda as
a place for Jewish settle-
ment — an offer the Zionist
movement rejected.
Chamberlain and
Halifax used MacDonald
as the point man first in
repudiating a decision in
favor of partition of
Palestine into Arab and
Jewish entities, then in
seeking Zionist acquies-
cence of a successively
more unfavorable series
of proposals limiting
Jewish immigration and
land acquisition and fi-
nally in convening the
1939 St. James's Palace
"roundtable conference
on Palestine" during
which the British made
clear their intention to
scrap the Balfour Dec-
laration and to work for a
Palestine state with an
Arab majority. Jewish
immigration would
cease, except with Arab
consent, after 75,000
more Jews had been ad-
mitted, and Jewish land
purchases would be re-
stricted to certain limited
areas.
The policy was formally
proclaimed in the Mac-
Donald White Paper soon
after the St. James confer-
ence, but it had been worked
out in all but a few details
long before the conference
was to sit. It was on learning
of this that Weizmann be-
came convinced of Mac-
Donald's duplicity,.
The conference was not a
round-table affair; the
Arabs refused to sit with the
Jews and the pro-Mufti
majority refused to sit with
the Nashashibi faction led
by Fabri Nashashibi,
nephew of the mayor of
Jerusalem.
MacDonald and his aides
met with the Arabs at the
palace in the morning and
with the Je_ws in separate
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session in the afternoon. 'A
Colonial Office representa-
tive delivered the minutes
of the morning session each
afternoon to Nashashibi at
the Carlton Hotel where he
tossed them over to me to
read. In the light of what
MacDonald told the Arabs
in the morning, as repofted
in those minutes, and what
he told the Jews in the af-
ternoon, I was convinced
then, as were many of the
non-British Zionist partici-
pants, that MacDonald was
not playing square and that
the Jews were, in fact, being
double-crossed.
Lord Halifax indicated
pretty clearly to Weiz-
mann at the time that the
Palestine question was
not going to be resolved
on its merits or in a spirit
of redressing ancient
Jewish wrongs or in the
light of the dire need of
European Jews to find a
refuge from Hitler.
He told Weizmann, as
Weizmann relates in his
autobiography, that "there
are moments in the lives of
men and groups when expe-
diency takes precedence
over principle" — a piece of
reasoning he subsequently
used on several occasions,
although in different,
phraseology, to justify the
British abandonment of
principle.
Weizmann could never
forgive MacDonald for the
part he played. Against the
advice of his friends, he
went to a house party at
MacDonald's country home
a few days before the White
Paper was to be released to
make a vain plea to Mac-
Donald to modify or with-
hold it. Forty years- later,
MacDonald recalled that
still painful episode and de-
scribed it to the British his-
torian, Lord Bethell. In his
words, as quoted by Bethell:
"It was 18 months after
my father died and he
(Weizmann) knew my deep
affection for him, but he
said. 'Malcolm, your father
must be turning over in his
grave at what you're doing.'
Now I'd sympathized with
every other argument he
had put, but this was -a bit
much. I realized he had
come to hate and despise
me.
" 'What had been a close
friendship on both sides had
become on his side, enmity.
I absolutely respected him
for hating me and never lost
my admiration for him. But
it was very sad.' "
Within a week, Bethell
reported, MacDonald
had another traumatic
experience. "Baffy (Mrs.
Blanche) Dugdale (the
niece of Lord Balfour)
called on him in the Colo-
nial Office to tell him that

Herzog to Speak
at ORT Banquet

NEW YORK — Chaim
Herzog, former Israeli am-
bassador to the United Na-
tions, will be the featured
speaker at the "Second Cen-
tury Inaugural Banquet" of
the American ORT Federa-
tion, tomorrow night at the
Sheraton Center.

he had broken the love
and the loyalty of the
Jews, which she had
thought unbreakable,
and ruined the fair name
of Britain. Like Weiz-
mann, she referred him to
his father's record of
support for Zionism and
to his own role in amend-
ing the Passfield White
Paper.
"At this point, according
to her diary entry, Mac-
Donald leaned his arm on
the table, hid his face, gave
out sounds like groans and
said: 'I have thought of all
that.' "
The outbreak of war
brought a temporary- espite
in the Arab-Jewish fighting
in Palestine and indications
that both sides were sup-
porting Britain. British of-
ficials cited this as proof of
the fact that the White
Paper had been the correct
procedure.
"I'm not saying the White
Paper was right," Mac-
Donald told Bethell in re-
trospect. "All I am saying is
that this was the reason for
it and I'm damned if I can
see what else could have
been done. From the
Zionists' point of view, they
were right to oppose me, but
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I was not a Jew or a Zionist
and my first thoughts had to
be for Britain and the cause
of democracy in general."
The only point over
which he criticized him-
self, he said, was in not
having held out for a
higher figure for Jewish
immigration, but, he
added, "Honestly, I did
my darndest." In the
back of his mind, he said
was the idea that "if we
won the war and I stayed
in office, I would then
able to give the ZionistS
better deal. It would have
meant abandoning the
White Paper, yes, an-
other change of policy,
but that's nothing new is
it? Politics change as cir-
cumstances change."
MacDonald never had the
chance to carry out these
good intentions. When
Winston Churchill moved
into No. 10 Downing St., he
took MacDonald out of the
Colonial Office and sent
him to Ottawa as High
Commissioner. MacDonald
subsequently held many
posts in the Empire and
Commonwealth service
until his retirement in 1969
but never returned to politi-
cal life.

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