ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one of the more intriguing arguments disseminated by members of the British pro-Arab elite involved in groups like the Palestine Information Centre as they attempted to influence policy circles managing the mandate in its final decade: the Khazar theory. During 1941, discussions between senior Zionists and Colonial Secretary Lord Moyne, Namier rejected any territorial alternative to Palestine as a way of solving the Jewish problem on exactly these grounds. The historian Walter Laqueur has argued that before 1948 there was only a limited number of Zionist and anti-Zionist arguments in the battle over Palestine. Critics of Britain’s role in Palestine, and the wider Middle East, during the mandatory era commonly viewed Baggallay as a cunning, shadowy mastermind of anti-Zionist obstructionism in Whitehall. Cecil Hourani’s claim is backed up by an internal Foreign Office assessment of Arab interactions with Jewish anti-Zionist activists that also noted Freedman’s role in promoting the Khazar theory in Arab policy-making circles.
