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• Wednesday, January 7, 2009 06:41 AM

  In 1920, as I've already pointed out, Lord Curzon was concerned about the one-sidedness of

  British policy in Palestine in favouring outsiders (Jewish settlers) in predominantly Arab land. He had an even greater concern and it bears repeating: "They not only claim the boundaries of the old Palestine but they claim to spread across the Jordan into the rich countries lying to the east and indeed there seems to be very small limit to the aspirations which they now form". It's hardly necessary to point out that these expansionist notions existed long before the Holocaust that took place for five years during the evil reign of Germany's Third Reich.

  You'd wonder why Britain's foreign policy was so sympathetic to a few thousand immigrant Jews, as Curzon pointed out. I suppose the answer is the same as it's always been "Follow the money" and the Middle East provided the oil for an increasingly mechanised world. The British elite was never anything if not cunning and bankers such as Rotschild financed the British in the Peninsular War against Napoleon who was stirring up Europe with ideas of republicanism. The same British administraton that showed so much compassion to immigrant Jews in 1920 was sadly lacking in that virtue in Ireland. 1920 was a year in which Irish people fought a war with the forces of the British Crown in an effort to gain an independent country without ties to a monarch and dynasty which was foreign to us.

  —maureenodonnell Read maureenodonnell's other letters
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