No contrition, lots of chutzpah 

By MOSHE ARENS 

(The writer is a former foreign and defense minister.)

(March 27) - British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook paid his first
official visit to Israel 50 years after the British mandatory
administration left Palestine in disgrace, its continued presence
having been made intolerable by the underground fighters of the Irgun
Zvai Leumi and the Stern Group and by the UN partition resolution
that Britain refused to support.

The small Jewish community, already besieged by the regular armies of
the neighboring Arab countries, was left to its own devices, and the
British-officered and equipped Jordanian Arab Legion was preparing to
take a leading role in the invasion of the newborn Jewish state.

This was the sad ending of 30 years of British rule in Palestine, a
rule that began with the Balfour Declaration, committing Britain to
the support of the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine,
followed by the League of Nations Mandate entrusting Britain with
that task. It was to be 30 years of betrayal of trust - from
beginning to end.

The blackest chapter encompassed the years of Hitler's rise to power
and the years when the Jews of Europe were desperately seeking a
refuge from the Holocaust. The war was followed by a continued ban on
the immigration of the remnants of European Jewry and draconian
measures applied to the Jewish community in Palestine in a vain
attempt to suppress the Jewish revolt against British occupation.

Cook chose to begin his visit to Israel by going to Har Homa, the
building site in southern Jerusalem, to demonstrate his opposition to
the Israel government's construction plans in its capital city. He
decided to lecture his Israeli escort, insisting that Jerusalem is
also the capital of the Palestinian state-to-be. Just to rub in his
message, he insisted on shaking hands with Palestinian demonstrators
who had, not accidentally it seems, appeared to welcome him there.

His outrageous behavior might have been tempered somewhat had he
known that the site is adjacent to Ramat Rahel, the kibbutz where 50
years earlier a desperate battle was fought by the Jewish defenders
of Jerusalem, who  halted there the advance of an invading Egyptian
army column that had succeeded in reaching its outskirts.

Only ignorance of the history of British misrule in Palestine can
explain Cook's chutzpah during his visit. Full awareness of that
history should have brought a contrite British foreign secretary here
and suggested an entirely different itinerary for his visit.

He might have started his visit by going to Acre prison and paying
his respects to the Jewish freedom fighters hanged there by British
executioners. His next stop should have been the Jewish quarter of
Hebron, where the Jewish community was massacred by its Arab
neighbors in 1929, while the British police refused to interfere.

Next should have been Haifa harbor, from which the Royal Navy
enforced its blockade of Jewish immigrant ships, and Atlit where
those immigrants that had succeeded in landing were temporarily
interned before being expelled.

He might have concluded his tour by visiting some of the battlefields
where the British-led and equipped Arab Legion fought the fledgling
Israeli army in 1948. After such a visit he probably would have found
that his conversation with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could
have been quite productive and of benefit to both sides.

It took 50 years before some of the countries of Westesrn Europe
began reexamining the role their governments and people played during
the years when six million Jews were being murdered by the Germans
and their accomplices.

The Swiss have admitted to turning back Jewish refugees at their
border, their banks to stealing the accounts of Jewish depositors,
their government to assisting in the German war effort. Their
government has expressed is remorse for these acts.

The French have put on trial Vichy officials responsible for sending
French Jews to the death camps, while President Jacques Chirac has
publicly admitted the guilt of the French nation. This soul-searching
has not even bypassed the Vatican, which in its recent Holocaust
document has at least partially admitted to the complicity of
Catholics in the Holocaust.

It is evidently taking more than 50 years before similar
soul-searching begins in Britain.