A note on WSC

Drudge has linked to an article describing an unpublished 1937 column by Winston Churchill in which Churchill ascribed partial responsibility for anti-Semitism to the Jews themselves. The unpublished column was discovered in Churchill’s papers at Cambridge. The article discussing the discovery is here. Another article on the same subject carries a quote by the authoritative Churchll biographer Martin Gilbert expressing doubt that Churchill wrote the unpublished column in issue.
Unfortunately, neither of the articles notes that in the course of his long public life, Churchill frequently wrote and spoke favorably of the Jews and in support of the creation of a Jewish homeland. In his book Eminent Churchillians, the historian Andrew Roberts pauses in his chapter on Churchill’s politically incorrect statements on race to observe, altogether accurately:

Not all Churchill’s racial characterizations were negative…He 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.

Roberts’s Churchill quote derives from Churchill’s famous essay “Zionism versus Bolshevism.” I tried to summarize Churchill’s lifelong commitment to the creation of a Jewish homeland in “‘Flabergasted’: A note on WSC.” I may well have erred in the historical details, but the point remains unaffected.

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