Frances E. Newton

Frances Emily Newton (4 November 1871 – 11 June 1955) was an English missionary who lived and worked in Palestine from 1889[1] until 1938, the last 18 years of which saw the country under British rule.

"[5] Described by Norman Bentwich, the first Attorney-General of Mandatory Palestine, as "incurably anti-Jewish ... and a principal supporter of the Arab cause," she also founded the Anglo-Arab Friendship Committee in 1946, with the aim of opposing Zionism.

[10] Newton volunteered to serve as a police officer in Leicester Square during the war, but instead she became the secretary of the Syria and Palestine Relief Fund, which had been set up by Rennie MacInnes, an Anglican bishop in Jerusalem.

She represented the Fund on a committee with the Red Cross and the order of St John of Jerusalem, which led to her recognition by the latter as a lady of grace, and later as a dame of justice.

Rather than wait for the authorities to seize their possessions in lieu of payment, the villagers fled, some of them moving to shelters made of sacks under olive trees in nearby fields.

[7] Newton was criticized for the virulence of her anti-Zionist activity, which stretched to publishing in 1946 a defence of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who had met Adolf Hitler in 1941.

Newton appealed again, pleading that her exclusion affected her ability to safeguard her business interests in the country, and the order was eventually lifted in September 1943.