What do the Zionist leaders Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann have in common with the American Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, the pro-Arab Harry St. John Philby, King Abdullah of Transjordan, a British Royal Commission, and the British Labour Party? They all advanced proposals, for the transfer of Arabs from the area then known as Palestine.
This book details and discusses these proposals. The period covered in this book is from the diary entry of Theodor Herzl, one of the founders of the Modern Zionist movement in 1895 to the period of the United Nations decision to establish a Jewish State in 1947 in what was then known as Palestine.
This book was meticulously researched using archival material from 27 archives in countries throughout the world, namely Israel, U.S.A., England and Australia. Many of these documents being extremely rare. This archival material is complemented by information from some 150 books, about 85 newspapers and journals, and in addition the internet and private communications. Altogether the book contains over 1,700 references and is about 660 pages long.
Photocopies have been made of over 400 items of the source material referred to in this book. Readers may put in a request to my e-mail chaimsimons@gmail.com for these photocopied source materials to be sent to their e-mails without charge.
In the course of this book, contemporary arguments both for and against the various plans are discussed, and historical background material is included, with brief biographies of prominent personalities.
One of the things which I discovered during research on this book was that many proposers confined the exposition of their ideas to diaries, private correspondence and closed meetings. In contrast, in public they either ignored the subject of transfer or spoke against it, sometimes vehemently! Even those who did propose various schemes were often reluctant to specifically suggest compulsory transfer. They relied on various euphemistic expressions to convey their intentions regarding compulsion.
I have therefore made it an important aim of this work to ascertain the private views of the proposers on this subject. The wording of their proposals has also been carefully analysed to determine whether the transfer of the Arabs from Palestine was intended to be compulsory or voluntary.
One of the striking things to come to light during this research is the attempt to rewrite history and pretend that the Zionist leaders were completely opposed to the transfer of Arabs, even to the extent of censoring portions of official minutes and the amending of documents where they had proposed transfer! This rewriting is reminiscent of the Russian Encyclopaedia. [After Beria's execution, the publishers of this encyclopaedia wrote to its subscribers, suggesting they cut out the pages dealing with "Beria" and in their place insert the enclosed pages on the "Bering straits" - which had the same alphabetical sequence! - (BERIa, BERIng).]
