New Assessment Of Role Of Lawrence Of Arabia

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32060, 7 August 1969, Page 5

New Assessment Of Role Of Lawrence Of Arabia

(N.Z. Press Assn—Copyright) LONDON. After remaining secret for half a century, evidence is soon to be published suggesting that Lawrence of Arabia, far from championing Arab freedom, was instead working powerfully behind the scenes trying to establish British control of the Middle East with the help of Jewish finance, writes Peter Hopk i r k, of “The Times.” Months of work on Public Records Office files in London and on official Zionist papers in Israel by a team of investigators has yielded evidence that Lawrence was working secretly to establish Britain’s first “brown ’dominion” in the former Ottoman territories. The results, to be published next month, is a new assessment of Lawrence by Philip Knightly and Colin Simpson, are likely to come as a shock to both Arab and Israeli historians.

Already, proof copies of the book, “The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia,” are reported to be changing hands on the literary black market for several times the publisher’s price. After a thorough study of the evidence in their possession, the authors conclude that Lawrence double-crossed the Arabs he fought alongside.

“Lawrence,” they say, “knew all the time that British policy, which he had a hand in formulating, was directly opposed to the sort of freedom the Arabs wanted, to the type of post-war state they believed they had been promised and were fighting for.”

The authors argue that Lawrence’s influence on the cynical manoeuvring that went on over possession of the former enemy territories is now shown to be considerably greater than has been thought “His strategy for British victory over French, and even Arab, aspirations,” the authors declare, “involved what can only be described as a calculating use of Zionist aspirations.” Among much other pre-viously-unpublished material, they quote a confidential letter, described by Lawrence as “explosive,” that he wrote to one of his closest collaborators in the Arab revolt.

It outlines a plan for easing the French, whom Lawrence loathed, out of Syria, which they had been promised under the Sykes-Picot agreement Instead it would become a “brown dominion” within the British Empire (this was before Australia and Canada had dominion status) supported, in exchange for concessions

from Faisal, by international Jewish money. “Zionists,” Lawrence writes, ‘are not a government, and not British, and their action does not infringe the Sykes-Picot agreement. They are also Semites and Palestinian, and the Arab Government is not afraid of them (can cut their throats or, better, pull all their teeth out, when it wishes).

“They will finance the whole East, I hope, Syria and Mesopotamia alike. High Jews are unwilling to put much cash into Palestine only, since that country offers nothing but a sentimental return. They want 6 per cent.”

The authors comment: “This is what Lawrence was working for, and is the explanation of his readiness to help a union between the Zionists and the Arabs. It was a bold, if cynical, plan the Arabs would provide the land, international Jewry the money at 6 per cent. “It is interesting to speculate on the shape of the Middle East today bad such a scheme succeeded .. . “The ejection of Faisal, the leader of the Arab revolt, from Damascus by French force of arms was, for Lawrence, a humiliating defeat, and one from which he was never really to recover.” The book contains material extracted from many new and previously-closed sources that

is likely to upset national sensibilities in the Middle East and in France.

For instance, in an report by Lawrence in 1916, while he was still nominally a secondlieutenant in intelligence in Cairo, he outlines his views

on an Arab revolt with what the authors describe as “neat, if chilling, precision.” “The action of Husain in raising the revolt,” Lawrence writes, “seems beneficial to us, because it marches with our immediate aims, the

break-up of the Islamic ‘bloc’ and the defeat and disruption of the Ottoman Empire, and because the States he would set up to succeed the Turks would be as harmless to ourselves as Turkey was before she became a tool in German hands.” One man who spent a lifetime studying Lawrence in relation to Zionism is Mr Sidney Sugarman, a writer for the “Jewish Observer and Middle East Review.” After hearing about the new material to be published by Knightly and Simpson, Mr Sugarman commented: “We have been waiting for years for this material to be made available by the Public Records Office. Without examining it in detail, I cannot say whether or not I agree with the authors' conclusions, but it will clearly have the effect of a bombshell among Jews who imagined that Lawrence’s Zionism was of a different order, and among the Arabs who may have thought he was their friend, pure and simple.”

Lawrence's dream for the Middle East, the authors suggest, sprang from the influence of a group of prominent men, including Lionel Curtis and D. G. Hogarth—later to head the Arab intelligence bureau in Cairo—who belonged to the Round Table Movement.