An Unlikely Hero

The wisdom of Edwin Samuel Montagu

A few days ago, I was idly scanning my Instagram feed whereupon I was presented with an unsolicited video. I almost passed over it but something caught my eye. I am pleased it did because I came to know something I did not know before and that knowledge, I think, is crucial to understanding the current circumstances of Palestine.

The video posed this question: who was the only member of the Cabinet considering the text of Balfour’s letter to Lord Rothschild who objected to it? The answer was a man named Edwin Samuel Montagu, significantly a practicing Jew. Montagu is described as a ‘radical’ Liberal though he may appear now nothing like what the modern considers radical. I think it fair to say his leader, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, almost thought he was radical beyond the pale. Both Balfour and Lloyd George were raised as devout evangelicals. Lloyd George himself admitted that the history of the Hebrews was dominant in his childhood education. Zionism, long associated with evangelism, was especially fervent in Lloyd George’s early life. His background made him receptive, in the early 20^th century, to the persuasion of Chaim Weizman the prominent Russian Jew and committed Zionist.

From the outset of his premiership Lloyd George determined that Britain should control Palestine when the Ottomans were defeated. His unequivocal aim was to establish a Jewish homeland. It was against this backdrop that Balfour drafted his letter. The original draft was modified to reflect Montagu’s contribution but he did not achieve his stated goal. He expressed his views in a memorandum with the title “The Anti-Semitism of the Present Government”. The messages of the memorandum are astonishingly prescient even if the tone is pessimistic even forlorn. I found an easily read and copied version of the memorandum with the link given below. Wikipedia under the entry for Montagu gives a photograph of his memorandum but it is not particularly legible.

Montagu begins apologetically by denying that he is accusing his colleagues of being antisemitic – which they almost certainly were – but by stating that his title refers to his belief the policy behind the Balfour letter will have an antisemitic effect. He begins his assault on the policy by appealing to a sense of British patriotism, something of which he was evidently proud. He then says:

Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom. If a Jewish Englishman … [goes] back to … Palestine, he has always seemed to me to have acknowledged aims inconsistent with British citizenship and to have admitted that he is unfit for a share in public life in Great Britain, or to be treated as an Englishman.

People in the US who make similar statements about split loyalty between America and Israel are now said to be antisemitic as some no doubt are. But Montagu puts it into the context of the origins of Zionism in Russia (where Chaim Weizmann was born):

I have always understood that those who indulged in this creed were largely animated by the restrictions upon and refusal of liberty to Jews in Russia. But at the very time when these Jews have been acknowledged as Jewish Russians and given all liberties, it seems to be inconceivable that Zionism should be officially recognised by the British Government

Basically, he is saying that the aims of Zionism are an inelegant solution to a non-existent problem. He outlines what he foresees as the deleterious consequences in general terms.

I assume that it means that Mahommedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Perhaps also citizenship must be granted only as a result of a religious test.

I am not sure this prophecy, unerringly accurate, is the product of inspirational thought. I suspect he was well aware of the plans of the Zionists, formulated early on, to establish a near exclusive enclave for those people who proclaim Jewish ancestry. The ambiguity of the expression Jewish is evident in his suggestion that there may be a religious test. I say that he may have been very familiar with the machinations of Zionists because his father was a devoted Zionist. Presumably, the semi-covert plans being formulated is the reason Montagu described Zionism as mischievous.

He sets out four principles.

First, he proclaims that there is no such thing as a Jewish nation. He points out that a Christian faith shared between an Englishman and a Frenchman does not create a common nation between the two.

Secondly, he believed that the creation of a Jewish homeland will provide an excuse for expulsion of Jews from their countries of birth. I doubt that the Balfour Declaration and the resultant Mandate were an impetus for the psychosis of the Nazis but it did, perhaps, serve to create the impression of an unbridgeable gap. He asserted that there is no such thing as British Jew but rather there were Jewish Britons. He thought of Zionism as so iniquitous that it should be banned.

Thirdly, he cast doubt upon the proposition that the Jews really had a connection with Palestine. He bases his thought on the fact that the 10 Commandments were delivered in Sinai not Palestine. He then says:

It is quite true that Palestine plays a large part in Jewish history, but so it does in modern Mahommendan history, and, after the time of the Jews, surely it plays a larger part than any other country in Christian history. The Temple may have been in Palestine, but so was the Sermon on the Mount and the Crucifixion. I would not deny to Jews in Palestine equal rights to colonisation with those who profess other religions, but a religious test of citizenship seems to me to be the only admitted by those who take a bigoted and narrow view of one particular epoch of the history of Palestine, and claim for the Jews a position to which they are not entitled.

I suspect Montagu does not have a place in the Israeli pantheon of heroes but he deserves to be seen as cast in a heroic mould by Muslims.

His fourth principle relates to the disproportionate success of Jews in Britain. His father, for example, was a very rich self-made banker. He feared that the establishment of Israel would create the impetus to drive Jews from Britain.

His predictions about mass forced exodus from Britain may not have come to fruition but his view of the malignancy of Zionism and its disastrous consequences for the pre-existing Muslim population have.

Montagu made himself unpopular with Lloyd George, not only because of his opposition to the Balfour Declaration but also for his stance as Secretary for India. In that capacity he tried to resist the dismemberment of the Ottoman empire due to his sympathy (or perhaps empathy) for Indian Muslims. Lloyd George fired him. He went into business in the City of London but died soon afterwards of arteriosclerosis at the age of 45. Perhaps he proves the old adage that only the good die young. Lloyd George lived until he was in his 80s as did Balfour.

I think Montagu deserves to be celebrated.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/montagu-memo-on-british-government-s-anti-semitism