Before the age of PC

Winston Churchill included this in a speech in 1899

    “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among
    men.

    Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly
    struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

Sir Winston Churchill; (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages
248-50 (London: Churchill saw it coming.

March 30, 2007 | 6 Comments »

6 Comments / 6 Comments

  2. Great stuff Randy.

    Many decades ago I heard a lecture by Martin Gilbert who had just completed a book called Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship.

    Gilbert as you know is one of the great Twentieth Century historians and was selected by Churchill to write his biography.

    Amazon has this synopsis

    CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS covers the whole life of this greatest of Britons — from his youth, when he was shocked by the anti-Semitism displayed during the Dreyfus Affair, to his last meeting with David Ben-Gurion in 1960, when he gave Ben-Gurion an article he had written about Moses. In the intervening years, during which Churchill cemented his place in history, his affinity with the Jews remained undimmed, even though his championing of Zionist issues and interests was often like a red rag to the bull of the British Establishment. One of those closest to Churchill once confided to the author that “Winston had one fault — he was too fond of Jews.” What does this mean? How did this fondness manifest itself? Exploring all aspects of his life and career, CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS sheds new light on a key figure of the twentieth century and how his attitudes affected not just the prosecution of the Second World War but the establishment of a Jewish state that followed it.

    I remember two things from the talk. Churchills father often had Jews to dinner which was frowned upon by his peers. Also when Churchill was a youth he spent summers with the son of Moses Montefiore in France having become friends with him at school.

    Also, I don’t think that even the quote attributed to him doesn’t make him an antisemite. The Jews are exceptional and different as their productivity in government, science, technology and the arts testifies.

  3. Well done Randy. I cannot believe how these libels and slanders have been willfully picked up with the sole purpose of denigrating a great man. i recently had to reply on the same mendacious propaganda, to a rabid leftist website which was keen to paint him as an antisemite.

  5. Churchill had mixed feelings about Jews

    The quote you use attributed to Churchill has been traced to a paper written by a ghost writer and the article was rejected for publication. This was exposed in an article linked to by Israpundit at YNET by Richard M. Langworth entitled Churchill was not an anti-Semite
    [British leader did not write the alleged anti-Semitic article, nor did he publish it. Churchill Center responds]

    Scott Johnson at powerlineblog also pulled together some source links that debunked the accusation in One more note on WSC
    Johnson wrote,

    …In “A Note” I quoted Andrew Roberts on Churchill’s attitude toward the Jews:

    [Churchill] believed the Jews to be “the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.” He felt an instinctive affinity for their genius as well as a historian’s respect for their trials, and he supported Jewish aspirations wherever they did not clash with those of the Empire. He may have inherited his philo-Semitism from his father, but he certainly gave it new lustre in his own life.

    Michael Smerconish has now devoted his Philadelphia Inquirer column to the question of Churchill’s relationship to the column on the Jews allegedly “discovered” by Richard Toye in the Churchill archives. Smerconish quotes Martin Gilbert and seems to comes down on Gilbert’s side dismissing the column as the work of a ghost writer.

    Nevertheless, Smerconish’s column does not adequately address the subject. By far the best treatment of Toye’s “discovery” is the column by Richard Langworth showing that Gilbert himself had included an account dismissing the column in one of the companion volumes to Gilbert’s multivolume authorized biography of Churchill:

    “How the Jews Can Combat Persecution” has not “lain unnoticed since the Second World War.” It was “unearthed” nearly thirty years ago by Oxford historian and Churchill biographer Sir Martin Gilbert, poring through the million documents in the Churchill Archives Centre.

    Twenty-six years ago, Gilbert actually reprinted the letter conveying the draft of this article to Churchill, in Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume V, Part 3, The Coming of War: Documents 1936-1939 (London: Heinemann, 1982), page 670.

    The author of “How the Jews Can Combat Persecution” was Adam Marshall Diston (1893-1956), whom Gilbert’s volume identifies on page 190:

    “Born in Scotland. Served in a Highland Regiment, 1914-18. Joined the Staff of Amalgamated Press after the war; subsequently Assistant Editor of Answers, and acting Editor (1934)…. A Socialist, he joined Sir Oswald Mosley’s New Party in 1931. Unsuccessful New Party Candidate for Wandsworth Central in the 1931 election (where he polled only 424 votes out of a total of 11,647, and lost his deposit); he never stood for Parliament again.”

    Churchill briefly employed Diston to write rough drafts for the popular press. While drafts for Churchill’s weighty histories, such as Marlborough and A History of the English Speaking Peoples, were prepared by distinguished historians such as Bill Deakin and Keith Feiling, Diston drafted some of what Churchill called his “potboilers,” which supplied much of his income in the 1930s.

    At least until the publication of Gilbert’s forthcoming book on Churchill’s “lifelong friendship” with the Jews, Langworth’s column — “Churchill was not an anti-Semite” — is the definitive treatment of Toye’s “discovery.”

    On an off note, Oswald Mosley’s “New Party” was Britian’s fascist party which he headed during the 1930s’. During this time HG Wells was advocating a New World Order and was approached by Oswald Mosley to unite forces for the purpose of launching a global socialist revolution but was rejected by Wells who told him that the what the world needed was more “liberal fascist”.

  6. Churchill had mixed feelings about Jews:
    …These facts must be faced in any analysis of anti-Semitism. They should be pondered especially by the Jews themselves.

    “For it may be that, unwittingly, they are inviting persecution — that they have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer.”

    The article adds: “The central fact which dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jew is that the Jew is ‘different’.

    “He looks different. He thinks differently. He has a different tradition and background. He refuses to be absorbed.”

    Elsewhere, Churchill praised Jews as “sober, industrious, law-abiding” and urged Britons to stand up for the race against persecution.

    “There is no virtue in a tame acquiescence in evil. To protest against cruelty and wrong, and to strive to end them, is the mark of a man,” he wrote.

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