These are some of Winston Churchill’s most racist, arrogant, imperialistic statements and actions …

"[I] created Jordan with a stroke of a pen one Sunday afternoon." — Winston Churchill, who did it without consulting any of the millions of Arabs whose lives would be impacted for generations by his hasty, ill-advised, white supremacist proclamation

The picture above was taken at a Government House reception in Jerusalem on March 28th 1921. From the left to right on the front row: Emir Abdullah I of Transjordan, Sir Herbert Samuel, Winston Churchill, Clementine Churchill and T. E. Lawrence.

T.E. Lawrence (above) was the most influential delegate at the Cairo conference, which convened formally on the morning of Saturday, March 12, 1921. Winston Churchill had arranged the conference without inviting a single Arab. So much for “democracy”!

So why did Churchill decline to invite a single Arab to a conference where their fates would be ordained?

Churchill's beliefs about race may be summed up in this Hitleresque statement: “I do not apologize for the takeover of the region by the Jews from the Palestinians in the same way I don’t apologize for the takeover of America by the whites from the Red Indians or the takeover of Australia from the blacks. It is natural for a superior race to dominate an inferior one.”

The statement above was no accident, as Churchill told the Palestine Royal Commission: "I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

We get a clear picture of Churchill’s disdain for Arabs in his 1899 book The River War, in which he wrote: "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia [rabies] in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

And it wasn’t just Arabs that Churchill disdained. Leopold Amery, the British Secretary of State for India, wrote in his diary that "on the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane" and that he didn't "see much difference between [Churchill's] outlook and Hitler's."

Churchill called Gandhi a "half naked seditious fakir."

"He put himself at the head of a movement of irreconcilable imperialist romantics," Boris Johnson wrote in his Churchill biography. "Die-hard defenders of the Raj and of the God-given right of every pink-jowled Englishman to sit on his veranda and… glory in the possession of India."

Churchill sounded suspiciously like Hitler when he said that his country's "Aryan stock is bound to triumph."

Churchill sounded like the KKK when he said that "Keep England White" was a good slogan.

Churchill believed in racial hierarchies and eugenics, according to John Charmley, the author of Churchill: The End of Glory. In Churchill's view, white protestant Christians were at the top, followed by white Catholics, while Indians were higher than Africans. Charmley observed that "Churchill saw himself and Britain as being the winners in a social Darwinian hierarchy."

Churchill confessed his grotesque racism and imperialism with his own pen — writing in his autobiography, for example, that he never consulted Arabs before making decisions that would impact their lives and their children’s and grandchildren’s. In Churchill’s white supremacist mind, evidently, democracy was only for people with lighter skin. As a result, Palestinians in particular are living through hell on earth.

Churchill’s saving grace, if one can call it that, was that Hitler was worse. If not for Churchill’s stand against Hitler, the great British hero would have a lot to answer for. But history has largely let him off the hook.

Yes, Winston Churchill stood tall and spoke eloquently during England’s darkest hours. But he created many dark hours, and dark decades, for people with darker skin.

Warren Dockter, a Churchill scholar and author of Churchill and the Islamic World, has pointed out that “Churchill literally created the kingdom of Jordan, for example, and the original Palestinian mandate. He is largely responsible for how Jordan and Iraq were divided up.” Yes, and he divided things up with no thought for democracy.

I first became aware of Churchill's "dark side" when I studied his words and actions during his stint as British Colonial Secretary from 1921 to 1922. At that time, just after World War I, the British Empire had peaked in size with the addition of territories taken from its vanquished enemies. Approximately one quarter of the world's land and population fell within the spheres of British influence. As Great Britain’s Colonial Secretary, Churchill had enormous power. Unfortunately, the man's hubris and insensitivity to the rights of people with darker skin was astonishing. As Churchill himself recalled, he "created Jordan with a stroke of a pen one Sunday afternoon," putting multitudes of Jordanians under the thumb of a throneless Hashemite prince, Abdullah, whose brother Faisal was awarded another arbitrary patch of land that became Iraq. Faisal and Abdullah were war buddies of Churchill's pal T. E. Lawrence, the famous "Lawrence of Arabia" (who was called "the wild ass of the desert" by some of his detractors). Lawrence would later call the 1921 Cairo conference his finest hour, because he was able to fulfill his promises to the Hashemite king Hussein and his sons. But the lines drawn in the sand by British imperialists were hardly stable, as large numbers of Jordanians, Iraqis, Kurds and Palestinians were denied anything resembling real democracy. The huge zigzag in Jordan's eastern border with Saudi Arabia has been called "Winston's Hiccup" or "Churchill's Sneeze" because Churchill allegedly drew the expansive boundary after a generous lunch. — Michael R. Burch

Winston Churchill Timeline

• On January 8, 1921, a month before formally becoming the Secretary of State for the British Colonies, Churchill decides to cut the budget for the Middle East in half. Churchill wanted to create regional governments that would not make "undue demands" on Britain. Despite his many orations about democracy, Churchill opined that Western political methods "are not necessarily applicable to the East, and basis of election should be framed".

• In February the new Colonial Secretary plans to visit Egypt for a conference in Cairo. Lord Milner warns Herbert Samuel, the British High Commissioner in Palestine, that Churchill is "too apt to make up his mind without sufficient knowledge."

• On March 12, 1921 the Cairo conference begins. The British "experts" include T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), Sir Percy Cox and Gertrude Bell. Churchill described the meeting as one of "Forty Thieves" and spent his leisure time practicing his new hobby of oil painting. During a break he did paintings of the pyramids. Churchill slashes the region's budget and sets up friends of T. E. Lawrence as puppet rulers of the artificially created nations of Jordan and Iraq. These hasty, ill-advised, imperialistic decisions would lead to many serious problems, including ever-escalating hostilities between Zionists and Palestinians.

• On March 23, 1921 the conference moves to Jerusalem. Churchill promises the just-appointed puppet ruler of Transjordan, King Abdullah, that the rights of Palestine's non-Jewish population would be protected, that no Arabs would be dispossessed. Was Churchill deliberately lying, or was he so naive that he didn't understand the real goals of the Zionists? In either case, the statement was as false as false can be.

• On March 29, 1921 at a Jerusalem ceremony, Churchill plants a tree at the site of the future Hebrew University and promises that Palestine will be happy and prosperous, a "paradise." More lies, or incredible naïveté.

• On March 31, 1921 the impetuous Churchill rushes to catch an Italian ship leaving for Genoa. In less than three weeks he has done damage that will last a century, or longer.

• On May 31, 1921 the great orator and proponent of democracy announces during a cabinet meeting that he will suspend the development of "representative institutions" (i.e., democracy) in Palestine.

• On June 14, 1921 in a speech before the House of Commons, Churchill insisted that Arab fears of being dispossessed of their land were "illusory." But of course their fears were entirely valid. Only eight days later, Churchill told the Canadian Prime Minister that if the Jews became the majority they would "naturally take it over." But there was nothing "natural" about the Zionists creating an artificial Jewish majority by ethnically cleaning hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, which is what would happen just a few years later, in 1948.

• On November 12, 1921 after riots that left five people dead, Churchill told his advisers not to forget that "everything else that happens in the Middle East is secondary to reduction in expense." Churchill cared more about money than the lives of Palestinians and Jews. But when there were riots in Ireland, Churchill was very concerned about reconciling the hostile factions.

• On July 4, 1922 while Americans were celebrating their independence, Churchill was lobbying the House of Commons to deny Palestinians any chance of real democracy or independence, as he supported the creation of Jewish National Home in Palestine. Even worse, he supported the Zionists having a monopoly over the development of water power in Palestine, even though Palestinians were much more numerous than Jews. Once again, Churchill was willing to throw democracy out the window in the Middle East. Churchill had his way, and another nail was driven into the coffin of Palestinian rights. A few months later, in October 1922, Churchill would lose his appendix and office in quick succession. But he certainly did a lot of damage during his short stint as Colonial Secretary.

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