An
article written by Prof Dr. Mohsen Mohammad Saleh, who heads the
Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations, a Lebanese research
institute that “focuses on the Palestinian issue and the conflict with
Israel as well as related Palestinian, Arab, Islamic and international
developments,” wanted to determine the origins of the so-called
“Campbell-Bannerman document”.
Although his goal was to attempt to authenticate the document, Salah was disappointed:
“In short, I became curious about the issue. In one visit to Britain, I therefore set out to investigate, it but found no trace or source of it!!”
[Website of Al-Zaytouna, Political Analysis: Is the “Campbell-Bannerman Document”: Real or Fake?, Sept. 29, 2017]
In
the article, Salah exposes how Dr. Anis Sayegh (who Salah refers to as
“one of the leading researchers in modern Palestinian history, and head
of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Research Center between
1966 and 1976”) discovered the origin of the alleged document. According
to the account, the document was first referenced after an incidental
discussion between an Egyptian named Antoun Canaan (“the first Arab to
reference the Campbell-Bannerman document in a published work”) and an
unidentified Indian man, sitting next to him on a plane:
In
his account, he mentions when he served as chairman of the PLO think
tank, that he was keen to reach the “important document,” but could not
find a single established source for it in dozens of references and
books citing it, including works by reliable writers such as Buhran
al-Dajani, Munthir Antabawi, Khairi Hamad, and Shafiq Irshidat. Each of
them referenced another in a sort of a circular way.
For
this reason, Dr. Anis Sayegh decided to dedicate time to research the
document in Britain, spending a whole month in the British National
Archives, the British Museum library, and Cambridge University where
Campbell-Bannerman had studied and deposited his entire private
documents collection. Dr. Sayegh also examined the archives of The Times
newspaper covering the period 1904–1907, and found thousands of
references to the imperialist colonial conference, but found nothing
about the document itself.
After
returning empty handed to Beirut, he had the chance to learn that the
first Arab to reference the Campbell-Bannerman document in a published
work was Antoun Canaan. He went to Egypt where Antoun was living, and met him after some time searching and seeking him out. He
was surprised to hear from him that when he travelled from Palestine to
London to study law in the mid-1940s, he met in the plane an Indian man
sitting next him. The man told him he remembers reading about a
colonial conference held in London attended by delegates from several
colonial powers to discuss the partition of the Arab nations, prevent
their reunification, and the establishment of a Jewish state, but the
Indian man did not give Canaan any documented academic material
regarding the document.”
[Website of Al-Zaytouna, Political Analysis: Is the “Campbell-Bannerman Document”: Real or Fake?, Sept. 29, 2017]
While
Salah notes “Our failure to secure the document does not prove its
non-existence in the same or different form,” he adds, “at the same time
we cannot claim something exists, when this is far from being
conclusively established.”
Salah
concludes the article by equating the alleged Campbell-Bannerman
document to the thoroughly discredited “Protocols of the Elders of
Zions” and the so-called “promise of Napoléon” in 1798… cited in some
Arab and Islamic literature without evidence”:
Thus, the
Campbell-Bannerman document is added to the so-called “The Protocols of
the Elders of Zions” and the so-called “promise of Napoléon” in 1798,
which were also never authenticated, yet are still being cited in some Arab and Islamic literature without evidence.
[Website of Al-Zaytouna, Political Analysis: Is the “Campbell-Bannerman Document”: Real or Fake?, Sept. 29, 2017]
The full version of Salah’s article appears below.
While
there is clearly no factual or evidential basis to support the
existence of the alleged Campbell-Bannerman document, this, in true PA
fashion, does not prevent the conspiracy from being repeatedly
referenced by the PA and its officials.
In a sermon explaining how the Quran teaches Palestinians to discern their enemies, PA
Supreme Shari’ah Judge and Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs
and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who recently referred to Jews
as “grazing herds of humanoids… apes and pigs”, answered the question “How will you know your enemy?” by saying:
“The
enemy is the one who trespasses, transgresses, attacks, oppresses,
harms, damages… Anyone who does one of these things to us… is an enemy,
and we must view him only from this viewpoint… They will spare no effort
to attack you in every way and form, and they will ‘extend against you
their hands and their tongues with evil.’”
[Official PA TV, Sept. 9, 2022]
Al-Habbash continued:
Who
are the ones who ‘extend against you their hands and their tongues with
evil,’ and they wish we would abandon our religion, our values, and our
principles… who are they?...
Not
only those who are imposing the occupation on us directly are enemies.
They are enemies, the occupation is an enemy, it has no other name, the
occupation is an enemy; but not just the occupation, rather the
forefathers of the occupation as well, the founders of the occupation
who established it and helped in its establishment more than 100 years
ago.
[Official PA TV, Sept. 9, 2022]
Preparing
his reference to the Campbell-Bannerman document, Al-Habbash then
embellished the incidental story of the unidentified Indian man, into an
entire conspiracy about the western counties foreseeing their demise,
their replacement by “the civilization to the east and south of the
Mediterranean Sea” and their plot to counter that possibility:
“More than 100 years ago, at the start of the 20th
century, the colonialist forefathers of the Zionist project convened,
the forefathers of the project of ‘Israel,’ which occupies our land and
steals our rights. They met and convened and said that their culture –
the aggressive imperialist culture of colonialism that is based on
materialism, oppression, profit, and cruelty – this civilization, if it
can be called that, is about to collapse. And who is the candidate to
take its place, to lead the world, and to raise the flag of justice and
goodness?
Those
who convened, who were prime ministers and ministers of the European
colonialist states, and also thinkers, historians, and advisors, they
met in London at the start of the 20th century in 1902 or
1903, and said that their culture is about to collapse, and the one who
will take its place is the civilization to the east and south of the
Mediterranean Sea…
But
the oppressive attacking colonialists do not want this. They said: In
order to prevent this, we must prevent the progress of this region. We
must leave it divided, disintegrated, split, conflicted among itself. We
must spread hatred, grudges, and conflicts among them. [We must leave
the region] backward, We must prevent the region from progress, the
capability of initiative, and the foundations of identity. And more than
all of this, we must plant in the heart of this region an isolated
entity, a people that is foreign to them and their lands, that will be a
friend to us – and they will be the Jews (sic., an abundance of
evidence proves Jewish history in Israel). This is what they wanted,
they only used the Jews. They used them to realize colonialist desires
of expansion, aggression. They and the occupation are two faces, two
ugly faces of one coin, two ugly faces of an even uglier coin…
[Official PA TV, Sept. 9, 2022]
Al-Habbas then concluded:
“They
are the ones who convened together against us, and then they issued
what was known in history as ‘the Balfour Promise’ (i.e., Declaration).
They are an enemy. They attacked us, oppressed, stole our rights, gave
our well-rooted and permanent rights to those who are not worthy of
them, and they deserve none of them… The Quran did not mention
Balfour by name, and it did not mention the report- the plot that
preceded him, which we noted earlier, and which was known in history as
the British Prime Minister [Henry] Campbell-Bannerman plot, or document,
or plan. The Quran did not mention the names of these criminals, but it noted their character traits and their descriptions…”
[Official PA TV, Sept. 9, 2022]
This
was not the first time Al-Habbash told the invented story, arguing that
the goal of implanting the Jews in the Middle East was to leave the
residents of the area “divided, backward, and fighting among themselves”:
“More
than 100 years ago, a few leaders of the west met in London, in 1905,
and discussed the status of Europe, colonialism, and the world. Their
conclusion was: Their civilization is about to fall. The culture of the
West, the culture of wild capitalism, and the culture of aggression,
imperialism, and colonialism, are about to fall. And the [inhabitants of
the] area that would inherit its place was the [inhabitants of the]
area south and east of the Mediterranean Sea thanks to its advantages of
geographic unity, large natural resources, and a unified language and
religion, 'and in order to prevent this area from leading the nations,
we must leave this area and its residents divided, backward, and
fighting among themselves.’”
[Official PA TV, March 15, 2019]
Fatah
Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA
daily, Muwaffaq Matar similarly referred to the alleged conspiracy
claiming that the plan was to plant “a pawn on the land of our homeland
Palestine as a site of concentration and taking action to prevent the
awakening of the Arab nation and its unity”:
“We
in the Palestinian liberation movement are going according to the will
and culture of the Palestinian people. We have understood the nature of
the fateful ties with our Arab nation and consider its economic,
political, and social achievements, power, consolidation, unity,
development, and growth and its cultural enlightenment as the strongest
component, after our will power, faith, and struggle, in our fight to
extract our historical and natural right from the claws of the
colonialist states, which decided in the 1905 Campbell[-Bannerman]
document to establish a pawn on the land of our homeland Palestine as
a site of concentration and taking action to prevent the awakening of
the Arab nation and its unity.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 24, 2022]
Omar
Hilmi Al-Ghoul, regular columnist for the official PA daily and former
advisor to former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on national affairs has
also made repeated references to the alleged conspiracy:
“Zionist
fascism is deep-rooted and has existed since the implementation of the
Zionist project began in historical Palestine, in other words, more than
100 years ago – dozens of years before the Nazi Holocaust, which has no
connection to the results of the Campbell-Bannerman Conference in the
years 1905-1907…”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 20, 2022]
“It must be emphasized again that the Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration)… was given for colonialist imperialist reasons that were defined at the 1905-1907 Campbell-Bannerman Conference. This conference consolidated the
ideological, colonialist, political, and economic background for
establishing a foreign body in the middle of the people of the Arab
nation in order to fragment its solidarity, steal its resources, and
prevent its revival…
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 3, 2019]
"The
goal of the establishment of the Zionist project and its physical base,
the colonialist State of Israel, was to eliminate and erase the
Palestinian people from the Arab, regional, and global geopolitics and
to leave the Israeli colonialist state that has no historical roots and
is foreign to the Arab surroundings and to the Middle East in general. This is an unnatural state with no political and anthropological suitability, which the capitalist West established in order to realize its colonialist goals in the Arab homeland
according to the decision of the Campbell-Bannerman Conference, which
was strengthened by the ominous Balfour Promise and its historical
progress and development.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 13, 2019]
PA
TV also interviewed an Egyptologist who also explained how, as part of
the Campbell-Bannerman conspiracy theory, Britain planted Jews in Middle
East to divide Arabs:
Egyptologist Dr. Wasim Al-Sisi:
In 1907, the prime minister of England was a man named Sir Henry
Campbell-Banner… He gathered delegations of European states, and said: “There
is a very wealthy, fertile, and uneducated region and it is the Middle
East region. The most important state is Egypt because of the richness
of its civilization. This region, if it develops, they will strangle us [Europe]...
We want an entity… that we will plant in this region. Its role is to
break them up [the Arab states]. It will not give them the opportunity
to align. For if they align and unite, we will be lost. In return for
this, we will help this entity and strengthen it, as it is a part of
us.”
[Official PA TV, From Cairo, Oct. 8, 2018]
It should be noted, that British Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman did lead an Imperial Conference, the minutes of which disprove claims of a conspiracy theory to undermine the Middle East.
The following is the full text of the article written by Salah:
The
Campbell-Bannerman document has been used as reference by dozens of
researchers in the Arab world, since the mid-twentieth century. They
consider it a starting point for understanding the background of the
emergence of the Jewish Zionist project in Palestine as pursued by the
Western imperialist powers. However, the document has “mysterious”
origins, and its authenticity has not been verified academically and
reliably.
In
the past months, I followed, on many levels, the debate surrounding the
document. A video spread widely, in Arabic, on social media warning
about the content of the document and its dangerous implications.
The
“alleged” document states - according to the first part of the Malaf
Watha’iq Felastin (Palestine Documents Dossier) published by the
Ministry of Culture and National Guidance in Egypt in 1969 (under Gamal
Abdel Nasser), p.121 - that a secret “colonial conference” was held in
London in 1905-1907, at the initiative of the British Conservative
Party. It was attended by prominent historians, sociologists,
geographers, agricultural scientists, petroleum experts, and economists.
The supposed conference allegedly made a series of recommendations in
1907 to then British Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman,
emphasizing the following:
“Establishing
a strong alien human barrier in the land bridge linking Europe to the
old world, and both to the Mediterranean, to form - in the region near
the Suez Canal - a force hostile to the peoples of the region and
friendly to European countries and their interests, is the practical and
immediate implementation of the proposed methods and approaches.”
According
to the alleged document, this means that “Western experts” see the
establishment of an alien entity, namely the subsequent Israel, in the
Eastern Mediterranean (especially in Palestine) a way to create a
forward base to protect Western interests, weaken the region, and
prevent its reunification. Several researchers argued that whether or
not the document is fake, this is what has happened in reality.
The
author, like other researchers, have encountered this document in
otherwise respectable Arab sources and references, used by renowned
writers known for their accuracy, and in the Palestine Documents Dossier
published by an official Egyptian body supposed to pursue a high level
of academic scrutiny. As a result, the author has used this document in
his writings and lectures, before becoming aware of the problems it
raises.
Around
14 years ago, I met with Munir Shafiq, who urged me to verify the
document from original British sources, especially after he learned of
my specialization focusing on such documents, with my PhD dissertation
relying primarily on unpublished British documents kept in the British
National Archives, previously the Public Record Office, which I
continued to consult from time to time for my academic work.
Dr.
Anis Sayegh, one of the leading researchers in modern Palestinian
history, and head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
Research Center between 1966 and 1976, also drew my attention to the
document. He told me of his own experience researching the document and
his doubts about its authenticity.
In
short, I became curious about the issue. In one visit to Britain, I
therefore set out to investigate, it but found no trace or source of
it!!
What
raised doubts further is that the Palestine Documents Dossier—and other
sources - did not provide citations for the document, which has no
entry in the British archives, with a date, serial number, and
classification under the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, War Office, or
the Prime Minister’s Office files (PREM), etc.
Dr.
Anis Sayegh’s story with this document is both interesting and bitter.
He summarized it in his Arabic memoirs Anis Sayegh on Anis Sayegh, pages
279-281. In his account, he mentions when he served as chairman of the
PLO think tank, that he was keen to reach the “important document,” but
could not find a single established source for it in dozens of
references and books citing it, including works by reliable writers such
as Buhran al-Dajani, Munthir Antabawi, Khairi Hamad, and Shafiq
Irshidat. Each of them referenced another in a sort of a circular way.
For
this reason, Dr. Anis Sayegh decided to dedicate time to research the
document in Britain, spending a whole month in the British National
Archives, the British Museum library, and Cambridge University where
Campbell-Bannerman had studied and deposited his entire private
documents collection. Dr. Sayegh also examined the archives of The Times
newspaper covering the period 1904–1907, and found thousands of
references to the imperialist colonial conference, but found nothing
about the document itself.
After
returning empty handed to Beirut, he had the chance to learn that the
first Arab to reference the Campbell-Bannerman document in a published
work was Antoun Canaan. He went to Egypt where Antoun was living, and
met him after some time searching and seeking him out. He was surprised
to hear from him that when he travelled from Palestine to London to
study law in the mid-1940s, he met in the plane an Indian man sitting
next him. The man told him he remembers reading about a colonial
conference held in London attended by delegates from several colonial
powers to discuss the partition of the Arab nations, prevent their
reunification, and the establishment of a Jewish state, but the Indian
man did not give Canaan any documented academic material regarding the
document.
Thus,
Dr. Sayegh returned frustrated. Neither the Indian man nor Canaan had
examined the original document, and had any academic citation for it.
Dr. Sayegh thus decided to bar anymore referencing or quoting of it in
studies published by the Palestinian Research Center. As for me, I also
decided to do the same, after not having found any evidence
authenticating it.
After this overview, we may highlight some remarks and points as follows:
1.
The convening of imperialist colonial conferences in that period was a
fact. British documents include hundreds of dossiers and entries about
them. However, the text of the so-called Campbell-Bannerman document
does not exist in those documents.
2.
Our failure to secure the document does not prove its non-existence in
the same or different form. However, at the same time we cannot claim
something exists, when this is far from being conclusively established.
3.
The fact that we don’t have the document in our hands denies us the
ability - academically speaking - to use it as a reference, especially
given its sensitivity and serious implications. Furthermore, the results
Dr. Sayegh reached after his extensive research cast serious doubt on
its authenticity.
4.
According to the research of the author of this article in the British
archives for many years, and based on his inquiries to the archivists
there, British documents are usually divided into categories:
•
Archives to be published: Most of these documents are published after
thirty years, with some may be delayed to fifty, seventy five, or even
one hundred years.
• Archives preserved without being published.
• Archives that are destroyed.
This
means that there is a careful process of prior scrutiny of documents in
the archives in which the higher interests of the state and its
sensitive secrets are taken into account, as well as the implications of
publishing such documents on states, institutions, and individuals, and
on enemies and allies. This could allow us to reach the conclusion that
some documents may be destroyed if they are seen as prejudicing state
high interests or providing damning evidence against it.
5.
The British colonialism and colonial powers are generally intelligent,
experienced, and careful enough to keep such documents, should they
exist, away from researchers because of the damning evidence they
contain against their “plotting” as colonial powers. In some cases,
instructions regarding this issue may remain verbal and not written in
documented texts, or are barred from publication and circulation, a
procedure many governments in the present day observe.
6.
The course of events on the ground may corroborate the substance of the
Campbell-Bannerman document, though it is insufficient to establish its
authenticity from an academic point of view. The Balfour Declaration
was issued in 1917 after all, and Britain insisted to directly sponsor
the growth of the Zionist project in Palestine and the establishment of a
Jewish state there. Thus repressing the will of the Palestinian people
and their uprisings for 30 years (1917–1948) until the military,
political, economic, social and administrative infrastructure of a
“Jewish state” was complete.
In
1948, Israel was established in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world.
The survival and prosperity of this state, at least from a practical
point of view, is linked to the weakness, division, and backwardness of
its surroundings. Indeed, projects for genuine unification and revival
expressing the will of the peoples of the region and the entire nation
are inherently hostile and an existential threat to Israel, which—in the
point of view of the people of the area—usurped the “heart” of the Arab
and Muslim nation (Palestine) and dispossessed its people.
7.
There are documents and writings whose substance corroborate that of
the alleged Campbell-Bannerman document. When the founder of the Zionist
movement Theodore Herzl met with then British Colonial Secretary Joseph
Chamberlain in 1902, Herzl told him the Zionist base in Palestine would
be a buffer state, securing British interests. In other words, the
Zionist movement understood well that its project could never be
successful without the sponsorship and protection of a major power, and
had to act in the context of the interests of such a major power.
In
the First World War, writings emerged by non-Jewish British figures
such as Charles Prestwich Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian, and
Herbert Sidebotham, a prolific writer, calling for the creation of a
buffer state in Palestine and claiming the only group suitable for the
purpose were the Jewish people.
Generally
speaking, the strategic factor was a major cause in the minds of those
behind the Balfour Declaration (the Jewish state as a buffer state,
forward base, and a communication and transit point…). We may find such
strategic references in remarks by Prime Minister David Lloyd George and
Lord Curzon, who succeeded Balfour in his post, and others.
Furthermore,
Herbert Samuel, the Zionist Jewish minister in the British government
headed by Herbert Asquith submitted a secret memo to the cabinet in
January 1915, calling for the occupation of Palestine and opening the
door to Jewish migration and settlement so that Jews may become a
majority there, highlighting the strategic advantages of seizing
Palestine.
8.
Finally, the Campbell-Bannerman document cannot be cited academically
nor journalistically until firm evidence is found of its authenticity,
given the implications for credibility and objectivity for using it.
Indeed, this would allow those who are against the Palestinian cause to
discredit, undermine, mock, and damage the other strong evidence and
arguments of pro-Palestine researchers, in a way that far outweighs any
benefits from citing the document with good intentions. Particularly so,
when there is a large corpus of genuine documents and actual colonial
practices on the ground, that expose the extent of colonial support for
the Zionist project, and colonial attempts to head off unification and
revival projects in the region.
Thus,
the Campbell-Bannerman document is added to the so-called “The
Protocols of the Elders of Zions” and the so-called “promise of
Napoléon” in 1798, which were also never authenticated, yet are still
being cited in some Arab and Islamic literature without evidence. The
criteria for credibility and objectivity, verification, authentication,
and the balances of skepticism and adjustment, for which the Muslims
were famous in their history, remain the best “capital” in dealing with
such information or documents.
[Website of Al-Zaytouna, Political Analysis: Is the “Campbell-Bannerman Document”: Real or Fake?, Sept. 29, 2017]
