Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel

by Gardner Thompson • 2019

The focus is on British imperial motivation, action, responsibility and failure. The unexpected British adoption of Zionism in 1917 (and, more significant, its consolidated commitment in the 1922 Mandate) was neither inevitable nor (at that time, especially) necessary. It was ill-judged and defied argument, evidence, reason, and British interests (and contemporary experience in Ireland). 0As the correspondent John Jeffries noted in 1939, from 1923 there were only consequences. British sponsorship of Jewish colonisation directed towards a Jewish National Home/state in Palestine led inexorably to bitter conflict. Arab revolt and the Peel Commission brought a fatally divided "Israel" into embryonic existence before World War Two.