Chapter Five PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE 1919: ZIONISTS DEFEAT CALLS FOR SELF-DETERMINATION by Alison Weir

 Chapter Five
PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE 1919: ZIONISTS DEFEAT CALLS
FOR SELF-DETERMINATION
After the war, the victors met in a peace conference and agreed to a set of peace accords that
addressed, among many issues, the fate of the Ottoman Empire‘s Middle East territories. The Allies
stripped the defeated Empire of its Middle Eastern holdings and divided them between Britain and
France, which were to hold them under a “mandate“ system until the populations were “ready” for
self-government. Britain got the mandate over Palestine.
Zionists, including Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, World Zionist Organization officials, and an
American delegation, went to the peace conference to lobby for a Jewish “home”[93] in Palestine and
to push for Balfour wording to be incorporated in the peace accords. The official U.S. delegation to
the peace conference also contained a number of highly placed Zionists.
Distinguished American Christians posted in the Middle East, who consistently supported Arab
self-determination, went to Paris to oppose Zionists. Numerous prominent Christian leaders in the
U.S. – including two of the most celebrated pastors of their day, Harry Emerson Fosdick and Henry
Sloane Coffin – also opposed Zionism.[94] However, as a pro-Israel author notes, they were “simply
outgunned” by Zionists.[95]
The most influential American in the Middle East at the time, Dr. Howard Bliss, President of
Beirut’s Syrian Protestant College (later to become the American University of Beirut), traveled to
Paris to urge forming a commission to determine what the people of the Middle East wanted for
themselves, a suggestion that was embraced by the U.S. diplomatic staff in Paris.[96]

Princeton Professor Philip Brown, in Cairo for the YMCA, supplied requested reports to the U.S.
State Department on what Zionism’s impact would be on Palestine. He stated that it would be
disastrous for both Arabs and Jews and went to Paris to lobby against it.[97]
William Westermann, director of the State Department‘s Western Asia Division, which covered
the region, similarly opposed the Zionist position. He wrote that “[it] impinges upon the rights and the
desires of most of the Arab population of Palestine.” Westermann and other U.S. diplomats felt that
the Arab position was much more in line with Wilson‘s principles of self-determination and
circulated Arab material.[98]
President Wilson decided to send a commission to Palestine to investigate the situation in person.
After spending two months in the area interviewing all sections of the population, the commission,
known as the King-Crane commission, recommended against the Zionist position of unlimited
immigration of Jews to make Palestine a distinctly Jewish state.[99]
The commissioners stated that the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine could be accomplished
only with “the gravest trespass upon the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities
in Palestine,” pointing out that to subject the Palestinians “to steady financial and social pressure to
surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle [of self-determination] and of the
peoples’ rights…”[100]
They went on to point out that “the well-being and development” of the people in the region
formed “a sacred trust,” that the people should become completely free, and that the national
governments “should derive their authority from the initiative and free choice of the native
populations.”[101]
The report stated that meetings with Jewish representatives made it clear that “the Zionists looked
forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine,”
concluded that armed force would be required to accomplish this, and urged the Peace Conference to
dismiss the Zionist proposals.[102] The commission recommended that “the project for making
Palestine distinctly a Jewish commonwealth should be given up.”[103]
Zionists through Brandeis dominated the situation, however, and the report was suppressed until
after the Peace Accords were enacted.[104] As a pro-Israel historian noted, “with the burial of the
King-Crane Report, a major obstacle in the Zionist path disappeared.”[105] The U.S. delegation was
forced to follow Zionist directives.[106]
Ultimately, the mandate over Palestine given to Britain supported the Zionist project and included
the Balfour language. According to the mandate, Britain would be “responsible for putting into effect
the [Balfour] declaration … in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the
Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the
civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine….”[107]
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