William Ormsby-Gore, a Conservative member of Parliament who had been favorably impressed with Aaron Aaronson, the Jewish spy leader in Palestine, cabled British War Cabinet member Mark Sykes (of Sykes-Pico fame) May 4:
"I think we ought to use pogroms in Palestine as propaganda. Any spicy tales of atrocity would be eagerly welcomed by the propaganda people here, and Aaron Aaronsohn could send some lurid stories to the Jewish papers."
Aaronsohn gave Sykes the names of 50 Zionist leaders throughout the world, urging him to spread the word of the "dire threat" against the Jews of Palestine. Soon, The New York Times printed its story with this headline: "Cruelty to Jews Deported in Jaffe."
The Turkish government was slow to respond to the false accusations, including one that claimed, falsely, that all the Jews had been evacuated from Jerusalem.
Finally, facing worldwide condemnation based on Jewish propaganda which spread rapidly, Dejaml Pasha pointed out that the entire population of Jaffe, 40,000 residents, had been evacuated, only 10,000 of which were Jewish and 4,000, Christians.
Scott Anderson concludes his account of the successful misinformation campaign surrounding Jaffa's Jewish population in 1917: (p. 304)
"Spain, Sweden and the Vatican, all neutral entities in the conflict, sent envoys to investigate what had happened [in Jaffa]. Both the Spanish and Vatican envoys quickly concluded that the reports of Jewish massacres and persecutions were without foundation, while their Swedish counterpart went even further.
"'In many ways,' he wrote, 'the Jewish community of Jaffa had fared far better -- and certainly no worse -- than the resident Moslem population in the evacuation.' Shortly afterward, the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem also reported that the accounts of violence against the Jaffa Jews were 'grossly exaggerated.'
"It didn't matter, of course. In war, truth is whatever people can be led to believe and Dejaml Pasha had just handed his enemies a 'truth' that would change Middle Eastern history... The fiction of what happened in Jaffa in 1917 -- a fiction repeated as act by most historians writing on the period since -- would now become the ur-myth for the contention that the Jewish community in Palestine could never be safe under Muslim rule, that to survive it needed a state of its own."
Pope Francis does not have to make a gift to Netanyahu of either the Vatican 1917 Jaffa report or Scott Anderson's book, should the two leaders meet in Tel Aviv. What he can do is prepare for his meeting by reading both the Vatican document and Lawrence In Arabia.
Having read the document and the book, he will be prepared to confront the Prime Minister with some hard truths about a history that is more recent, and certainly more pertinent to this moment, than the 15th century Spanish Inquisition.
The picture above of Scott Anderson, is from The New York Times .
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