An insightful history of Churchill's lifelong commitment―both public and private―to the Jews and Zionism, and of his outspoken opposition to anti-Semitism Winston Churchill's commitment to Jewish rights, to Zionism, and ultimately to the State of Israel never wavered. In 1922, he established on the bedrock of international law the right of Jews to emigrate to Palestine. During his meeting with David Ben-Gurion in 1960, Churchill presented the Israeli prime minister with an article he had written about Moses, praising the patriarch. In between these events he fought harder and more effectively for the Jewish people than the world has ever realized. Drawing on a wide range of archives and private papers, speeches, newspaper coverage, and wartime correspondence, Churchill's official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, explores the origins, implications, and results of Churchill's determined commitment to Jewish rights, opening a window on an underappreciated and heroic aspect of the brilliant politician's life and career. “Gilbert's deep, lifelong scholarship and knowledge of his subject lend his book both authority and accessibility.” ― Kirkus Reviews “A must-read for those interested in Churchill and in Jewish history.” ― Publishers Weekly Sir Martin Gilbert is Winston Churchill's official biographer, and a leading historian of the modern world. He is an Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a Distinguished Fellow of Hillsdale College, Michigan. From 2009 to 2012 he served as a member of the British Government's Iraq Inquiry. He is the author of more than eighty books, among them the single-volume Churchill: A Life , his twin histories First World War and Second World War, a comprehensive History of Israel, and his three-volume work, A History of the Twentieth Century . His book The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (published in the United States as The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War) is a classic work on the subject. Churchill and the Jews A Lifelong Friendship By Gilbert, Martin Holt Paperbacks Copyright © 2008 Gilbert, Martin All right reserved. ISBN: 9780805088649 Chapter One  EARLY YEARS: ‘THIS MONSTROUS CONSPIRACY’ Churchill had no Jewish ancestry; his claim to an exotic origin came from a possible American Indian ancestor. But from his early years the Jews held a fascination for him. As a schoolboy at Harrow, the stories of the Old Testament were an integral part of his education and imagination. One of his earliest surviving essays was ‘Palestine in the time of John the Baptist’. Writing about the Pharisees, Churchill asked his reader – in this case his teacher – not to be too censorious about that ‘rigid’ Jewish sect. ‘Their faults were many,’ he wrote, and went on to ask: ‘Whose faults are few?’ At the age of thirteen he could himself be forgiven for describing the ‘minarets’ of the Temple of Zion.1 In Churchill’s family circle, his father Lord Randolph Churchill was noted for his friendship with individual Jews. The butt of a popular club land jibe that he only had Jewish friends, he was even rebuked by members of his family for inviting Jews to dine with him at home. On one occasion, when a guest at an English country house, Lord Randolph was greeted by one of the guests, a leading aristocrat, with the words: ‘What, Lord Randolph, you’ve not brought your Jewish friends?’ to which Lord Randolph replied: ‘No, I did not think they would be very amused by the company.’2 Churchill, a devoted son eager for his father’s approval, took his father’s side in this pro- and anti-Jew debate. The Jews whom his father knew and invited to dine were men of distinction and achievement. One was ‘Natty’ Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, the head of the British branch of the Rothschild banking family, who in 1885 became the first Jew to become a member of the House of Lords. Another was the banker Sir Ernest Cassel, born in Cologne, a close friend of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. When Churchill’s father despaired of his son succeeding in the army examination in 1892, he wrote to Churchill’s grandmother that if the boy failed again in the examination, ‘I shall think of putting him in business.’ He was confident that he could get the young Churchill ‘something very good’ through Rothschild or Cassel.3 Shortly before Churchill’s nineteenth birthday, his father took him to Lord Rothschild’s country house, Tring Park. The visit went well. ‘The people at Tring took a great deal of notice of him,’ Lord Randolph wrote to Churchill’s grandmother.4 It was just before his eighteenth birthday that Churchill had reported to his mother how ‘young Rothschild’ – Nathaniel, second son of the 1st Baron Rothschild – had been playing with him at Harrow School, ‘and gorged eggs etc some awful sights!’5 Fifty years later, the son of ‘young Rothschild’, Victor Rothschild, who succeeded as third baron shortly before the Second World Wa