#141 – Dirty Idle Wasters

When the British finally captured the Middle East from the Ottomans in October 1918, under the command of General Edmund Allenby, with the support of TE Lawrence and his Sharifians, Hussein and Faisal, the British immediately tried to walk back on the Sykes-Picot agreement.  They figured they did all the hard work, so fuck the French.

Most British officials believed that the Arabs could be persuaded to live with Zionism.  As Lawrence put it: “There would be no difficulty in reconciling Zionists and Arabs in Palestine and Syria, provided that the administration of Palestine remained in British hands.”

In April 1918 Allenby established the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA), headed by Major-General Sir Arthur Money, with Brigadier G. F. Clayton as chief political officer.

As you’d expect, they looked down on both Jews and Arabs. Money, for one, said the Jews of Jerusalem were “bringing up the rising generation in their schools to be dirty, idle wasters.… Their men turn out more idle wasters and their women more prostitutes than the rest of the population put together.” And he regarded the Jews “as a class inferior morally and intellectually to the bulk of the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the country.”

HOW TO LISTEN

If you are seeing this message, it means you aren’t a subscriber (or aren’t logged in).

If you haven’t heard any of the series and want to know if you’ll like it before you sign up, you can listen to the first 20 episodes totally free. You might want to start with Episode 1.

Sign Up or Login to listen to our premium episodes

If you haven’t already, join our Facebook page and you’ll be in the running to win prizes in our regular “Share The Love” and other competitions.

If you’d like a chance to win a prize, write a funny or insightful review on iTunes.