[Errigal]

Here is an interesting quote from The Kennedys at War by Edward Renehan which discusses a letter the future President Kennedy sent in 1939 to his father, the American ambassador in London. It gives a good idea of the generally anti-Zionist mood of both himself and the British he met.

Jack wrote his father from Palestine shortly after the British published their White Paper of May 17. This now notorious document expressed the British intention to eventually set up a single independent Palestine state with limited Jewish immigration to be allowed until 1944, and no further Jewish immigration thereafter except with Arab consent. The plan, Jack told his father, "just won't work." He wrote that he wanted to give his father his impressions of the situation in Palestine while they were still fresh on his mind, "though you undoubtedly, if I know the Jews, know the `whole' story.... During the [First World] war, the British Government, desiring both the assistance of the Jews and the Arabs, made separate promises to both, one in the MacMahon, the other in the Balfour declaration.... In considering the whole question now, it is useless to discuss which has the `fairer' claim."Jack noted the "fundamental objections" to the White Paper in both the Arab and Jewish camps which, "while they are not stated publicly, are nevertheless ... important. On the Jewish side, there is the desire for complete domination, with Jerusalem as the capital of their new land of milk and honey, with the right to colonize in Trans Jordan." For their part, the Arabs "realize their [the Jews'] superiority and fear it." Jack added that the sympathy "of the people on the spot seems to be with the Arabs," in part because "the Jews have had, at least in some of their leaders, an unfortunately arrogant, uncompromising attitude."

A photo of Jack Kennedy with General Richard O'Connor in Jerusalem in 1939: