Page 4 - TORCH #16 - August 2020

CHURCHILL THE ZIONIST
of the nation was so securely founded.”
Drawing parallels between the Exodus and the Zionist movement of his time, Churchill expressed an understanding of the uniqueness of God’s Chosen People:
“This wandering tribe, in many respects indistinguishable from numberless nomadic communities, grasped and proclaimed an idea of which all the genius of Greece and all the power of Rome were incapable. There was to be only one God, a universal God, a God of nations, a just God, a God who would punish in another world a wicked man dying rich and prosperous; a God from whose service the good of the humble and of the weak and poor was inseparable.”
But it was his perception of Pharaoh’s hardened behaviour that Churchill draws an almost chilling analogy. Interwoven between this retelling of the Exodus was a prose that could simply be described as prophetic.
Whether knowingly or not, Churchill made an unsettling connection that linked the oppression of Jews with eventual genocide. Whilst many were repulsed by Hitler’s anti- Semitism, few foresaw that it would lead to the Holocaust.
A ‘prophetic’ view
Churchill was a leader of great foresight. God had raised up a Prime Minister in the United Kingdom to lead this nation with courage and wisdom during its darkest hour. His understanding both of Bible history and God’s covenant with the Jewish people, were foundational to his view of Zionism as well
as his understanding of the implications of
the Holocaust. As storm clouds gathered over mainland Europe, Churchill saw what many others failed or refused to see. Throughout
the 1930s Churchill was outspoken regarding Britain’s need to prepare militarily to counter Hitler. For example, as early as 1933 he predicted an invasion of Poland, six years before it happened. It was with similar foresight that Churchill raised alarm concerning the rising persecution of the Jews.
In his radio broadcast of 24 August 1941, just two months after the Einsatzgruppen killing units began the systematic murder of the Jewish people, Churchill announced that Jews in “whole
districts are being exterminated,” adding, “We are in the presence of a crime without a name.”
Long before the Nazis were systematically killing Jews in extermination camps, Churchill understood that what was yet to be called the Holocaust was something more than mass murder. This “crime without a name” threatened the total extermination of the Jewish people from the face of the earth. Churchill’s grasp of Jewish history meant he was already well versed in identifying what this looked like and why this new enemy had to be defeated.
Early influences
Between 1904-1908, Churchill was MP
for Manchester north where one third of constituents were Jewish. He joined the Jewish soup kitchen and the Jewish tennis and cricket club and regularly visited Jewish institutions such as the hospital and religious school. In 1905, while speaking at the Jewish Working Men’s Club in the Manchester suburb of Cheetham, Churchill praised their community work, saying, “In the work you do in this part of Manchester you have the spirit of your race and your faith. Guard it; keep it; it is a precious thing. It is a bond of union, it is an inspiration and a source of great strength.”
In the same year, Churchill opposed the anti-Semitic ‘Alien’s bill’ which sought to prevent Jews fleeing the Russian Pogroms from coming to Britain. It was through this that he first met someone he was to come to greatly admire, Belarusian-born chemist, Chaim Weizmann, who was a prominent Zionist leader in Manchester. Churchill once described Weizmann as being like “an Old-Testament prophet” and personally helped him gain British naturalisation. Weizmann would later become the first President of Israel.
In his early years, Churchill had been personally blessed by several Jewish associates. In particular, Sir Felix Semon, a friend of his father, helped Churchill overcome a slight speech impediment. In his biography, Dr. Semon commented, “I have just seen the most extraordinary young man I have ever met”. That young man would become Britain’s most famous orator that every lived.
In a speech in January 1908, at a public
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