The Forgotten Ally

The Forgotten Ally

By Pierre Van Paassen

My plans of a leisurely life of a gentleman reader tucked away in small town Sparta have changed. We sold everything. Most of my books are now in the church library. I brought 9 boxes of books to be divided between my three daughters so I can visit and read as I get older. We left the states at the end of September with 3 large suitcases, 1 small one and two packs. Joan and I are now in Fuzhou, China starting our great adventure. I brought a few books with me, but I will continue to review books I read on my kindle. So here goes.

I signed up for Substack via Berenson, a voice in the wilderness about Covid, only to discover many voices. When the Ukraine war started I found myself not on the right side of the divide. Once again it was the Substack voices (meanings in history) that attracted me. My country, going downhill fast, seems to be building a superhighway for destruction. Many of the writers, honest about Ukraine, tended to have left wing, socialist world views.

When the Hamas attack came I was not carried away with the left wing knee jerk reaction of blame Israel first. I have biblical scruples. I have scrolled down Tic Toc here in China to see about every 5^th video the destruction of the Palestinians, not one of the murder of the Jews. So, I get it. The world is realigning, and America needs to stop supporting Israel and force Israel to make the two-state solution and get on with life.

The unsolvable problem led me to read Paassen’s “The Forgotten Ally”. I guess I should point out that an online investigation of Paassen’s writings will bring out the horror of undocumented statements in his writings. Take that you Jew defending Nazi.

The book was published in 1943 and covers his investigation and understanding of the interwar history of Palestine. He is a socialist. He castigates the British foreign service as an imperialist tool of exploitation. He has a passion for the Jewish plight. He is writing after Chamberlain used the beginning of the war to rush a white paper through that curtailed Jewish immigration to Palestine starting in 1944. Britain was already doing everything it could do reduce and stop Jewish immigration to Palestine. It was the knowledge of Jewish death camps in Europe, that Paassen was aware of, that gave passion to this book. He is writing while the Jews are being gassed and the only hope for many European Jews was Palestine and Britain was doing everything in its power to shut the door.

The first chapter is an impassioned plea to treat the Jews as humans. He is in full blown disgust with the world, Britain and the church. I fall into his chastisement of the church. The church that believes in eternals at the expense of giving its all to the solving of mankind’s problems. His Dutch Calvinism would give way to the humane Unitarian commitment to social justice. He can write. He was a best-selling author and he remained a steadfast defender of Israel until his death in the 60’s. (Might be undocumented, sorry)

He then weaves through the interwar history of Palestine. He visits the Near East and concludes that Lawrence’s exploits were rather meaningless in the prosecution of the war against Turkey. He says Lawrence said as much. He enshrines the Balfour Declaration and names names of the British Foreign Ministers that would do everything in their power to expand Arab influence and diminish Jewish influence.

He describes a worthless Palestine (recall Mark Twain’s recollections) that is beginning to blossom with beauty and prosperity. He describes the price the Jews paid to establish their communal farms. He describes the Arab German connection. The kicker is WWII. He paints the reality of the summer of 1942. The Germans are 70 miles from the Suez Canal, looking invincible. The Germans are taking Stalingrad and will be in possession of the oil just beyond. If you look at a map you realize that this gigantic pincer movement is going to envelop all the near East as well as the struggling Jews of Palestine.

So at this moment of supreme peril where do the Arabs stand? Where do the Jews stand? The Jews choose to stand with Britain. Well we can guess why. He describes an order to build bridges over the Euphrates and Tigris rivers for the soon retreat of British forces to make a stand in Iran. It is a Jewish factory owner who makes it happen. He happened to have built the Berlin subway system. Our author documents the Jewish sacrifices in the war for the allied cause. What he also points out is that all of the news correspondents who are crawling all over the area know about these Jewish sacrifices, yet none report on it. Jewish support for the cause is unreported because it has already been decided what will happen in Palestine and we can’t have any reporting of Jewish heroism that might cloud up the prepared expected end of the Jewish Palestinian venture.

He describes a conference for the Arab leaders to talk about a postwar Near East. The joke was they all had expected to be castigated as traitors for their pro-Nazi stands, instead they are being groomed to take over the prosperous areas of Jewish settlements. Iraq, who sided with Germany, to the point that Britain had to retake Baghdad several times; Joined in just so it could have a say in the dismantling of Jewish life in Palestine. Needless to say you can feel the disgust that our author carries for the world’s attitude toward the Jew.

At the time the world of real politic would squash the aspirations of the Jewish homeland. Sorry about that. Oh well, just Jews. The future is oil and the Arabs have the oil. Our author disappoints because he wants to solve the problem. There is plenty of land. The sliver of land called Palestine is minute. The answer is to throw of the yoke of colonialism, the Arabs have been controlled by the Ottoman Empire for centuries until WWI, and form governments that create prosperity for the common people.

Gee, what to do, sacrifice for the common good or gather everyone around the common cause of hating Jews. Well we know the answer it is the same answer to this day.