The Balfour Demystification

Fools never differ

So this is the centenary of the famous (some will say infamous) Balfour Declaration.  And these days, anything to do with Zionism and Israel causes a real furore.  Journalists waste tons of hapless ink, activists work themselves into a frenzy and politicians exploit the opportunity to attract a few votes – or at least some attention.

The lines seem to be clearly drawn: if you are pro-Israel, you celebrate; if you are anti-Israel – you mourn, accuse, threaten to sue and demand apologies.  It depends whether one thinks that the birth of the Jewish state was a good outcome – or a very bad deed.

But on one thing everybody seems to agree: that the Declaration was a momentous event, one which set in motion a process leading directly to the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

The none-too-friendly (from an Israeli point of view) The Guardian writes:

The promise by Arthur Balfour, then foreign secretary, led to the British mandate, mass Jewish immigration and eventually to the creation of Israel in the wake of the second world war and the Holocaust, and to the Palestinian ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe).

Israel’s supporters appear to agree (except for the Nakba bit, obviously).  In a recent tweet, Matthew Offord, Tory MP for Hendon, states:

Proud to lead the debate on the Centenary of the Balfour Declaration, a document which led to birth of Israel.

So it’s obvious, ‘innit?  The Balfour Declaration led to the creation of the State of Israel.  Oh wow!  Rarely have I seen more poignant evidence that ‘fools never differ’.  So let’s demolish a few myths here.

What was the Balfour Declaration?

Let’s start with what it wasn’t: it was not an international instrument, an agreement between states.  Or any kind of agreement, for that matter: signed by then Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour and addressed to Jewish magnate Lionel Walter Rothschild, this was a unilateral statement.  Of course, unilateral undertakings can sometimes constitute unbreakable commitments.  Except this one wasn’t unbreakable – in fact it wasn’t even a commitment.  It’s worth reading again the text of the ‘Declaration’:

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Note the ‘woolly’ quality of the terms: “view with favour”, rather than ‘supports’; “will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object”, rather than ‘will secure this objective’.  And what the heck is “a national home” (except, that is, an ill-defined euphemism never used before or since, except in a Jewish context)?

The wording (carefully chiselled over a few months) is designed to obfuscate.  This becomes even more obvious if one examines the evolution of the document through a number of drafts: the clear commitment initially proposed by the Zionists is gradually diluted with each subsequent version – until it morphs into the final ‘woolly’ product.  To give just one example, the term 'state' employed in the early drafts becomes ‘homeland’  and finally turns into ‘national home’.

The Declaration was drafted and re-drafted over several months,
being constantly watered down in the process.

Let’s also point out that the Declaration was bereft of any practical details: it said nothing about how “this object” was to be achieved, or when.  No plan of action reinforced the vague, feeble statement of intention.

In its final, official form, the Declaration was very far from an enforceable commitment; it wasn’t even a clear-cut promise.  In fact, His Majesty’s Government was in no position to promise anything – even if they genuinely wanted to: progressing north from Egypt through the Sinai Peninsula, the British forces had barely reached a front line stretching from the small coastal town of Gaza to the even smaller oasis settlement of Beer Sheba in the Negev Desert.  The bulk of ‘Palestine’ (the populated and fertile landmass, including the major towns) was still under Ottoman control and there was no certainty that it could be taken by the British Army.  But even if that happened, it still was no foregone conclusion that His Majesty’s Government could dispose as they pleased of that (ill-defined) piece of territory.  Like the entire Levant, ‘Palestine’ was subject to some half-baked understandings with the French, as well as – arguably – with the British Empire’s newly-found ally, Hussein the Sharif (Lord) of Mecca.

Campaign map showing the front line near Gaza, on 1 November 1917.

In other words, the British Government was ‘offering’ the Jews something it did not yet possess and that was arguably not in its gift anyway.  But the truth is that the Declaration was not actually offering anything; this was the oldest trick in the book: if you want a dog to run, dangle some prized bait in front of its eager nose.  The Jews were the dog in this instance; but where to exactly were they expected to run?

Why was the Declaration issued?

Much has been written, in the intervening century, about the British government’s motivations in issuing the declaration.  Some of these writings are really touching – but only because of their enormous stupidity.  Take, for instance an article hammered a few years ago by a certain Josh Glancy for the Jewish Chronicle and entitled ‘Chaim Weizmann and how the Balfour Declaration was made in Manchester’.  According to Josh (or, rather, according to the third rate ‘sources’ he recycled), there were three main reasons why the Declaration was granted:

•          David Lloyd George and Balfour were ‘Christian Zionists’ – they wanted to help the Jews out of religious conviction;
•          Chaim Weizmann (who happened to be a talented chemist as well as an ardent Zionist) helped the British war effort by inventing a process to make acetone – a substance used to make high explosives.
•          Chaim Weizmann was a charming individual able to ‘schmooze’ the British political elite into granting him personal favours.

The irony is that the statements above are all basically true – if a bit overstated.  But the notion that hard-nosed British politicians award territories based on messianic impulses, gratitude for services rendered and/or feelings of personal sympathy – that notion is just ludicrous.

In fact, one does not have to use psychoanalysis (nor to recycle fanciful theories) to find the motivations that drove the likes of Lloyd George and Balfour.  The latter explained his reasoning himself clearly enough – for those who, unlike Josh Glancy, bother to read the minutes of the 31 October 1917 meeting of the British War Cabinet, which approved the Declaration.  Those minutes record as follows:

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs [Balfour] stated that […] from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made.  The vast majority of Jews in Russia and America, as, indeed, all over the world, now appeared to be favourable to Zionism.  If we could make a declaration favourable to such an ideal, we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America.

So there we are: the Declaration was motivated by “purely diplomatic and political” considerations.  But what kind of “extremely useful propaganda” was Balfour intent on carrying on?  And why “in Russia and America”, of all places?

Well, it’s 31 October 1917; the world is convulsed by the greatest, bloodiest military confrontation ever known – World War I.  It is a war of empires: the British, French and Russian Empires (the so-called Entente Cordiale) have taken on the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires (a.k.a. the Central Powers).  It’s not just about who fights better, but also about which of the blocs can attract strong allies to fight on their side.  In April 1917, USA formally enters the war.  But it does so gingerly and half-heartedly.  It declares war on Germany, but not on Germany’s allies.  Many American politicians are reluctant to send ‘American boys’ to die in what they see as ‘somebody else’s war’.  In the East, another mighty ally – Russia – is in the throes of revolution; for the new powers that be in Petrograd – and especially for the Bolsheviks – this is also ‘somebody else’s war’.  Britain needs one ally – USA – to fully join the battle; it needs the other ally – Russia – to battle on.  

And in the rather antisemitic minds of ‘Christian Zionists’ Lloyd George and Balfour, Jews hold enormous power in both America and Russia.  Enough power to push the former full speed into the war and prevent the latter from bailing out.

If only, of course, one could dangle a suitable bait in front of those Jewish noses…

How ‘momentous’ was the Declaration?

If we are to believe Ian Black, Middle East Editor at The Guardian the Balfour Declaration “led to the British mandate [of Palestine]”.

Did it, really, Mr. Black?  True, the Declaration was referenced in the text of the Mandate – which would seem to vindicate Mr. Black’s contention.  But only if one ignores the much more ‘momentous’ Sykes-Picot Agreement, which was already being negotiated 2 years prior to the Declaration, under Lloyd George’s and Balfour’s predecessors.  Finally signed in May 1916, the Sykes-Picot Agreement included much of the future Mandate of Palestine in the ‘British Sphere [of influence]’, with the rest an ill-defined ‘International Sphere’ (which, in diplomatic terms of the time, probably meant ‘we’ll see about that later’).

The Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the Levant into 'spheres of influence'.

In reality, European/Christian powers (Britain, France, Italy, as well as Germany and Russia) have long coveted ‘Palestine’ – not for its potential as ‘Jewish national home’, but because of the putative prestige imparted by control of the Christian holy sites.

But by 1917 religion was becoming less important in European politics; and prestige has always been a rather intangible asset.  Britain had a more pragmatic reason: in the minds of early 20^th century politicians, who thought in terms of land and sea (rather than aerial) journeys, ‘Palestine’ sat across the route linking the British Isles with the all-important jewel of the imperial crown – India.  So did ‘Mesopotamia’ (future Iraq) – which is why that territory was also included in the ‘British Sphere’.  In fact, when the British diplomats eventually drafted the mandates, they included ‘Palestine’ and ‘Mesopotamia’ in one document; both were, after all, supposed to serve the same imperial interest.

The British Empire in 1921.  Note how the mandates of Palestine and Mesopotamia
sit on the shortest land & sea route linking Britain with India

Needless to say, nobody bothered to write a Balfour-like declaration concerning Mesopotamia, or concerning any of the other 10 territories wrestled away from the defeated powers and awarded as ‘League of Nations Mandates’ to the victors.

The Balfour Declaration did not lead to the British Mandate; what led to the mandate was imperial interests and the age-old custom of dividing the ‘spoils of war’ among the victors.  A custom for which the League of Nations mandates provided just a modern veneer.

But what about Mr. Black’s next assumption, that the Balfour Declaration “led to […] mass Jewish immigration”?  Unsurprisingly, that statement is also demonstrably false.  What Europeans called ‘Palestine’ the Jews have called, for thousands of years ‘Land of Israel’.  It was frequently mentioned in the Judaic scriptures, traditions and daily prayers.  As individuals and small groups, Jews have always tried to reach ‘Palestine’ and settle there.  But what about ‘mass immigration’?  Historically, there have been 5 waves of Jewish ‘mass immigration’ (i.e. thousands and tens of thousands of people) before the establishment of the State of Israel.  The first such wave (known as the First Aliyah in Zionist chronology) took place between 1882 and 1903 and saw the arrival in ‘Palestine’ of around 30,000 Jews – mainly from Eastern Europe and Yemen.  The Second Aliyah lasted between 1904 and 1914, bringing to ‘Palestine circa 35,000 Jews, mostly from the Russian Empire and Yemen.

Second Aliyah (1904-1914) pioneers 

The Balfour Declaration could not have led to these waves of ‘mass immigration’ – unless, that is, Mr. Black believes that those 65,000 Jews that settled in the Land of Israel between 1882 and 1914 had somehow foreseen the Declaration issued in November 1917.

The “mass Jewish immigration” started long before the Declaration, when ‘Palestine’ was a rather nondescript, under-developed part of the Ottoman Empire.  It practically stopped during the Great War and resumed afterwards.

The Ottomans, by the way, did not lift a finger to stop that immigration.  They could not be suspected of ‘Christian Zionism’; they simply did not share the European obsession with Jews – one way or another.  There was plenty of nationalism which threatened to break up their multi-ethnic, multi-faith empire: Greek, Armenian, Slavic, Egyptian, Levantine and Bedouin-Arab…  The Jewish flavour of it – Zionism – was at the bottom of the Sultan’s long list of worries.

No, Mr. Black: the Balfour Declaration did not lead to “mass Jewish immigration”.  Sorry to disabuse you of the notion that thousands of people move to distant, under-developed territories on the say-so of the British Foreign Office.  Jews immigrated to ‘Palestine’ not because His Majesty’s Government declared the place a ‘national home for the Jews’; but because they (the Jews) felt it was their homeland.

And what about the Mandate?

But didn’t the League of Nations Mandate require the British Government to establish the Jewish National Home and help grow it into an independent state?  It certainly did; but that requirement was simply not fulfilled.  In fact, the British Government repeatedly ignored, deliberately twisted and, ultimately, blatantly violated the terms of the Mandate.

Let us examine the text – and juxtapose the facts.

In its all-important preamble, the Mandate explained that

recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;

‘Historical connection’ and ‘reconstituting’ are key terms here.  This was not conceived as a gift to the Jews – but as restitution of a homeland that had been unjustly taken away from them.  The Preamble also nominated

His Britannic Majesty as the Mandatory for Palestine.

Article 1 of the Mandate gave the Mandatory wide powers – but also curtailed them:

The Mandatory shall have full powers of legislation and of administration, save as they may be limited by the terms of this mandate.

In effect, Article 1 makes the text of the Mandate into a kind of Constitution, curbing the legislative and executive powers of the Mandatory.  Britain was authorised to rule Palestine, but only within the terms of the 'Constitution'.

So what were the main limitations and the rigid requirements included in that ‘Constitution’?

Article 5 required the Mandatory to maintain the territorial integrity of the Mandate:

The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.

Except that the territory of ‘Palestine’ referred to by the Mandate extended on both banks of the Jordan River, i.e. it included today’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

In fact, soon after the Mandate was issued, the British government separated the area east of the River – which comprised three quarters of the Mandate of Palestine – into a different entity called ‘Transjordan’.  It did so by using a provision it managed to sneak into the Mandate precisely for that purpose: Article 25.

In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions…

Note that Article 25 empowers the Mandatory “to postpone or withhold the application” of Mandate provisions, but not to change or violate them; it certainly did not empower it to violate Article 5 – territorial integrity.

The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine included Trans-Jordan. 
But the British Government decided to effect an immediate partition. 
Trans-Jordan was separated from the remaining Palestine. 
Jewish immigration, settlement and land acquisition were prohibited in Trans-Jordan.

In theory, Transjordan was still Mandate; yet in practice the British Government created Transjordan an Emirate and handed it over to the Hashemite family.  In 1946, Britain did away with even the appearance of compliance: Transjordan was given its independence as a separate state.  The British Government not only proceeded to recognise the new Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan (in blatant violation of Article 5); they immediately signed a Treaty of Alliance with it.

But if you think that the mandate provisions were applied at least in the remaining quarter of the Mandate of Palestine – think again.

Article 6 required:

The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

Moreover, Article 24 required the Mandatory to report annually to the Council of the League of Nations on the implementation of Mandate provisions.  No doubt irked by attempts to obfuscate information in these reports, the Council even required specific questions to be answered.  This is fortunate, as the historian is provided with an account (compiled by the British Administration itself) documenting its lack of compliance.

Let’s examine, for instance the Report issued in 1930 – 13 years after the territory passed under British control and circa 10 years into the Mandate regime.

Referring obviously to Article 6, the Council asked the Mandatory:

What measures have been taken to facilitate Jewish Immigration?

And also

What are the effects of these measures?

The response to this question stretches over two pages of the Report – and is therefore too long to reproduce here.  Suffice to say, however, that nothing in that response can be interpreted as ‘facilitating’ Jewish immigration.  At best, the British authorities seemed to understand ‘facilitating’ as merely ‘permitting’: Jews were allowed to immigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine – just as they had been to the Ottoman sanjaks that preceded it.  In fact, the British immigration policy was distinctly more restrictive than the Ottoman one: under Arab pressure, the British Government adopted the principle that immigration to Palestine should be limited to the territory’s ‘economic absorptive capacity’.  This ‘principle’ (never mentioned in the Mandate and not employed anywhere else in the vast dominions of the British Empire) oddly ignored the reality – that Jewish immigration brought economic growth and increased prosperity – in favour of a hypothetic danger.  The Peel Commission report was to conclude, a few years later:

The Arab population shows a remarkable increase since 1920, and it has had some share in the increased prosperity of Palestine. Many Arab landowners have benefited from the sale of land and the profitable investment of the purchase money. The fellaheen are better off on the whole than they were in 1920. This Arab progress has been partly due to the import of Jewish capital into Palestine and other factors associated with the growth of the National Home. In particular, the Arabs have benefited from social services which could not have been provided on the existing scale without the revenue obtained from the Jews.

While on one hand the mandatory limited Jewish immigration purportedly to avoid exceeding the ‘economic absorptive capacity’, on the other hand it allowed non-Jewish immigration – including illegal immigration.  As the Report states, in 1930

6,433 immigrants were admitted to Palestine, that is 3,386 men, 2,116 women, and 931 children, of whom 2,550 men, 1,700 women, and 694 children were Jewish. Included are 695 Jews, 493 Christians, 112 Moslems, and 6 Druze who had entered without permission but were allowed to remain.

But of course, the ‘economic absorptive capacity’ was nothing but a convenient excuse.  The Arab opposition to Jewish immigration was caused by nationalist/religious resentment – not by genuine economic worries.  The British authorities adopted the same excuse, which allowed them to restrict Jewish immigration to try and appease the Arabs, while still claiming to comply with the terms of the Mandate.

Again with reference to Article 6, the League of Nations Council queried:

What measures have been taken in co-operation with the Jewish Agency to encourage the close settlement by Jews on the land (give figures)?  […] What are the effects of these measures?

The response of the Mandatory is most enlightening.  It lists a total of 5 (five) cases in which – in its own estimation – it had fulfilled the mandate requirement to

encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

It is worth examining these cases, one by one:

(1) An area of approximately 45,000 dunums (a dunum is approximately a quarter of an acre), consisting of the Athlit marshes, the Zor Kabbara and Mallaha and the Caesarea sand dunes was leased in December, 1921, to the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association for a period of one hundred years, at a rental nominal at first but subject to reassessment by agreement or arbitration at intervals of thirty-three years.

We are talking here about waste land (marshes and sand dunes), which had never been claimed before – because it was considered unusable and lacking any value.  Yet the lease came with strict conditions:

The lessees, under the agreement of lease with the Palestine Government, were required to complete, within eight years, the drainage of all swamps within the area leased and within a period of twenty years to reclaim and plant the sand dunes.

In other words, the Jews were required to develop the land and make it valuable.  For which efforts they were to be charged a rent “nominal at first but subject to reassessment” (needless to say, the rent could only sharply increase, since the land was being developed).  Still, according to the letter of the Mandate (if not its spirit), it would seem that the Mandatory authorities were doing what they were supposed to.  Until, that is, one notices that this was no new initiative of the British administration.  In fact it was just the completion of a deal already made with the Ottoman government!

In this case an uncompleted concession of a similar nature for part of the area leased had been under negotiation at the outbreak of war by the lessees with the Turkish Government.

But let us proceed to the next case of British compliance with Article 6 provisions:

(2) A grant to the inhabitants of Rishon-le-Zion of an area of 21,000 dunums of sand dunes adjoining the village, on the coast south of Jaffa, was made during the War by the Mejlis Idara (Administrative Council) of Jerusalem. This grant has been confirmed, and the area has been set aside as ‘Metrukeh’ (common) land for the benefit of the inhabitants of the village in common.

Mejlis Idara was the Ottoman equivalent of a County Council.  In this case, too, the British mandatory administration claims credit for a transaction made with the Ottoman authorities that preceded it.

On to the next ‘case’:

(3) A lease for a hundred years to the Township of Tel-Aviv of a plot of land on the seashore abutting on Tel-Aviv for the purpose of erecting a bathing establishment, restaurant and esplanade.

This lease deals with the establishment of a public entertainment facility (a beach) of the type any local government is supposed to provide for its citizens.  Clearly, this is not what the Mandate intended by “close settlement by Jews on the land”.

(4) A lease to the inhabitants of Petach-Tikvah for fifty years, renewable under fixed conditions, of the Bassa swamps adjoining the village land, on requirement to drain the swamps within five years, and cultivate or afforest the land.

Again, we are talking here about land previously seen as unusable and valueless, which the Jews were supposed to make valuable within 5 years.

And finally:

(5) A lease of 6,000 dunums at Tel-Arad, near Hebron, to Jewish ex-soldiers. In this case, lack of water led to the abandonment of the plan of colonization.

“Jewish ex-soldiers” – just to make it ultra-clear – did not mean, in 1930, IDF veterans.  It meant ‘British soldiers of Jewish persuasion’.  The British authorities – emulating perhaps the practices of another empire, the Roman one – rewarded their own soldiers with a piece of (waste) land and tried to portray this as fulfilling the Mandate requirement to “encourage […] close settlement by Jews on the land”.  Except that the land so generously leased proved in this case genuinely unusable.

And that’s it.  In 10 years of Mandatory regime, the British authorities have

•          ‘confirmed’ two transactions already made with the Ottomans;
•          allowed the establishment of a beach facility;
•          leased a swamp under draconic conditions; and
•          leased a totally unusable plot of land to a group of British soldiers.

Over the 1921-1930 decade, that’s the entire extent of the Mandatory compliance with the Mandate requirement to “encourage […] close settlement by Jews on the land”.

But violating the Mandate provisions by omission only is hardly the entire story.  In reality, almost immediately upon being granted the Mandate, Her Majesty’s Government began to adopt policies in complete contradiction first with its spirit and ultimately with its letter, as well.  The more transparent portion of those policies was contained in the so-called White Papers – in effect a series of colonial decrees that (under Arab political pressure stiffened by periodic outbursts of mass violence) grew progressively harsher and departed more and more from the purpose and conditions of the Mandate.

The process culminated with the White Paper of 1939, which:

•          Strictly limited Jewish immigration between 1939 and 1944 and prohibited it completely from 1945 onwards;
•          Prohibited the sale of land to Jews (but not to non-Jews) in the vast majority of the Mandate.
•          In effect, condemned the Jewish community in the Mandate to the status of an isolated ethno-religious and linguistic minority in an Arab Muslim state.

One cannot overstate the extent to which the 1939 White Paper violated the provisions and the very purpose of the Mandate.  But the consequences of that draconic decree should not be seen only in the cold light of the law.  Let us remember, instead, that this was May 1939: six months after Kristallnacht, four months before the Nazi invasion of Poland.  The vast majority of the Jewish immigrants that His Majesty’s Government was so determined to keep out of Palestine were in effect refugees fleeing Nazi persecution and who had nowhere else to go.  We will never know how many of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust (including my maternal grandmother’s entire family) could have been saved – had the White Paper not been issued; but it is not unreasonable to assume that that number would have been in the hundreds of thousands.

Many things changed after the Holocaust, of course; but not the Mandatory attitude.  The Jewish community in ‘Palestine’ may have contributed to the Ally war effort – not in the least by enrolling in the Jewish Brigade; conversely, the Arab world – initially at least – sympathised with the Axis.  But there were many Arabs and much fewer Jews – and the British Government continued to prioritise perceived interests over commitments and humanity.

Europe was heaving with ‘displaced persons’ – a euphemism that, when it came to Jews, mostly meant concentration camp survivors.  Many were still kept in overcrowded camps, others were roaming like ghosts upon war-devastated lands.  There was overwhelming evidence that a huge majority of these wretched survivors wanted to join the Jewish National Home; they did not wish to stay in Germany or Poland; nor did they wish to return and live among former neighbours who had delivered them to be slaughtered.

A 'protest meeting' held by survivors at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in November 1945 sent the British Government the following desperate message:

We assembled Jews former inmates of Concentration Camps demand that the British Government do not prolong our bitter existence in Camps.
Give us the possibility to live free lives in our home in ERETZ ISRAEL (Palestine).
We shall not rest until the White Paper restrictions be removed.
We shall enter ERETZ ISRAEL by any means.
Enough Jewish blood has been shed.
You will bear the responsibility for those innocent victims who will fall as a result of your cruel decree if you do not open widely the gates of Palestine.
We wish to return to a peaceful creative life upon our own soil in ERETZ ISRAEL and this is our only possible way.

But the British government had no interest in the desires of Jewish survivors; its prominent ministers advocated the ‘resettlement’ of those ‘displaced persons’ in Europe – though not in Britain of course  – or even their transportation to South America.  Excerpts from a 31 July 1946 contribution to a House of Commons debate, by Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morisson:

[B]y assisting to reestablish political and economic stability in Europe, we should continue to contribute to the restoration of those basic conditions which will make possible the reintegration in Europe of a substantial number of displaced persons, including Jews. [...]
But, when all that is possible has been done in Europe, it is clear that new homes must be found overseas for many whose ties with their former communities have been irreparably broken.  [...]
Plans are in preparation, in cooperation with the nations concerned, for resettling large numbers of displaced persons in Brazil and other South American countries.

Many Jewish refugees were, however, reluctant to rely on the tender love and care of Mr. Morisson's colleagues.  They did not wait to be shipped off to South America, but instead tried to reach the Mandate of Palestine illegally.  They were hunted down and, if caught, interned in detention camps.  By May 1948, there were tens of thousands of Jews detained in British camps in Cyprus, Jews guilty of trying to illegally enter the Jewish National Home…

British detention camp in Cyprus.  These were not concentration camps. 
Still, conditions were harsh.

Meanwhile, the ‘Jewel of the British Imperial Crown’ – India – was in the process of gaining its independence.  By 1947, from the point of view of British interests, the Mandate of Palestine had outlived its purpose and His Majesty’s Government swiftly and unceremoniously dropped it in the lap of the newly-formed United Nations Organisation.

But in November 1947, when the UN voted on a solution to the conflict, the United Kingdom abstained.  The Partition Resolution was nonetheless adopted.  This was no mere Declaration: it sketched a practical implementation plan, including the formation of a UN Commission charged with organising and managing the transition between the Mandate and the two independent states.  To enable that, the UN Resolution required the Mandatory to cooperate with the UN Commission:

The [British] administration of Palestine shall, as the mandatory Power withdraws its armed forces, be progressively turned over to the Commission, which shall act in conformity with the recommendations of the General Assembly, under the guidance of the Security Council. The mandatory Power shall to the fullest possible extent coordinate its plans for withdrawal with the plans of the Commission to take over and administer areas which have been evacuated.
In the discharge of this administrative responsibility the Commission shall have authority to issue necessary regulations and take other measures as required.
The mandatory Power shall not take any action to prevent, obstruct or delay the implementation by the Commission of the measures recommended by the General Assembly.

But the mandatory Power did nothing of the kind.  Far from cooperating with the Commission, it did not even allow it to enter the territory.

In January 1948, Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, bluntly informed the UN Commission that

His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom would not regard favourably any proposal by the Commission to proceed to Palestine earlier than two weeks before the date of the termination of the Mandate.

The Commission protested bitterly:

… the proposal of your Government that the Commission should not proceed to Palestine earlier than two weeks before the date on which the Mandate is to be terminated is entirely unacceptable.
The Commission is convinced that this limitation on its arrival in Palestine would make it impossible for the Commission to discharge the responsibilities entrusted to it by the resolution of the General Assembly. The Commission has been informed that the Mandatory Power proposes to relinquish its responsibility for the Government of Palestine as a whole and not piecemeal. In consequence, the Commission, in two short weeks in Palestine, would he required to prepare itself to assume responsibility, under most difficult circumstances, for the full burden of a complex administrative structure and for maintaining law and order in the country.

But the protests were met with contempt; faced with what was obviously an impossible task, the Commission adjourned sine-die and disappeared in the ample archive of failed UN projects.

We will never know whether full cooperation by the Mandatory administration with the UN Commission could have prevented the war and (at least some of) the human suffering that followed.  But one thing is clear: given the situation on the ground, the British administration’s sabotage of the Commission’s role rendered violence in Palestine unavoidable.

On the diplomatic front, the British government of the time attempted to surreptitiously overturn (or at least subvert or make ineffective) the Partition Resolution; among other things, by lobbying the US administration to withdraw its support from the Resolution.

Finally, it attempted (both by omission and commission) to influence the outcome of the military confrontation to the detriment of the Jewish community and the nascent Jewish state.

Thus, the British administration in Palestine did nothing (in either diplomatic or military terms) to prevent or stop the infiltration of ‘irregular’ Arab forces from Iraq, Syria and Egypt into Palestine.  That infiltration started as early as December 1947 and continued in 1948.  Although formally not part of the regular armies of the Arab states, these ‘volunteers’ were typically armed, trained and officered by those states.  The presence of the ‘irregulars’ – who did not just attack Jewish settlements and traffic themselves, but often bullied local Arab villages into joining such attacks – had a huge destabilising effect and exercised a major aggravating influence on the extent and intensity of violence.

The conduct of the British administration and army during the last months of the Mandate was far from neutral.  Officially, the overriding aim was to maintain ‘peace and order’ – at least to the extent necessary to maximise the safety of British withdrawal.  In practice, however, various officials and officers followed their own political preferences.  And, given the clash between the Jewish Yishuv and the British administration that characterised the previous months and years, those sympathies, more often than not, tended to favour the Arab side.  Numerous instances are documented in which British troops failed to intervene or were slow to intervene when Jews were attacked ‘under their noses’; strategic positions evacuated by the withdrawing British army were handed over to Arab irregulars.  There were even cases when Jewish guerrillas were captured by British soldiers, disarmed and handed over to Arab irregulars or villagers, who promptly lynched them.

But arguably the most blatant British intervention was related to the so-called Arab Legion.  Established in the 1920s by British ‘advisors’ to the Hashemite court, the Legion became in 1946 Transjordan’s official, regular army.  It was armed, trained and at least partially funded by Britain.  The upper commanding echelon was staffed with British officers, including the Commander-in-Chief, General John Bagot Glubb.  The latter nominally reported to Transjordan’s monarch, but in reality often got his marching orders from London.  Although modest in numbers, the Legion was by far the most effective Arab force in terms of training, discipline, command-and-control and weaponry.

Gen. John Bagot Glubb with King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan.

As the army of Transjordan – an Arab state rejecting the Partition Resolution – the Arab Legion was, from the point of view of the Jewish Yishuv, a hostile force.  Yet the British administration had deployed this force across Palestine, ostensibly as an auxiliary to the British army.  It was withdrawn from Palestine very late in the process and only under heavy American pressure.  It re-entered Palestine on 16 May 1948 as part of the coordinated Arab attack on the newly-declared State of Israel and engaged with it in some of the toughest, most costly battles of the 1948-1949 war.  It was the Arab Legion that besieged Jerusalem; it managed to occupy the eastern neighbourhoods of Jerusalem including the Old City.  It even conquered the Jewish Quarter and expelled its civilian population.  All the while using British weapons and munitions and under the command of British officers.

In conclusion: it is absurd to claim – as the Middle East Editor at the Guardian did – that the British Mandate led to the creation of Israel.  In reality, the random twists and turns of history caused the winds of British imperialism to blow into the sails of Jewish nationalism – for just a short, fleeting moment.  They soon veered however and turned into headwinds; far from contributing to the creation of Israel, the British governments in the late 1920s, 1930s and 1940s did everything in their power to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.

Why does this ‘ancient history’ matter now?

One of the most intractable challenges related to the Arab-Israeli conflict is the stubborn refusal of the Arab side to recognise the connection between the Jewish people and ‘Palestine’ or the Land of Israel.  For those like me, who do not believe that people can coexist in close proximity in peace and freedom, while believing in diametrically opposed narratives, this is the major obstacle to peace.  Because, whatever else occurred, a 3000 year-long connection with that land implies – at the very least – some obvious moral rights.  And once the conflict comes to be seen as one of right-vs.-right (rather than right vs. wrong), it becomes amenable to solutions based on reason and accommodation.

Now, I have no doubt that Arab leaders – at least some Arab leaders – understand that connection.  But they see mileage in denying it, both to gain external support and stiffen the internal one.

But if there is no connection between Jews and the Land of Israel, how does one explain the six and a half million Jews who live there?  Simply: it’s the work of external factors.  It’s not love of Zion that drove Jews to dream up Zionism and settle in Rishon-le-Zion; it’s the Balfour Declaration; it’s British colonialism, American imperialism, European racism – anything but Jewish nationalism, because to admit the latter is to admit that ‘the other’ is but a mirror image of one’s own humanity.

Blaming ‘external factors’ (especially when those factors already have a poor reputation) is a magic strategy.  It is easy to grasp; it is just as convincing for the illiterate fellah in the Nile Delta as it is for the Middle East Editor of The Guardian: the former had no opportunity to study history; the latter is too lazy to bother.  Like any conspiracy theory, the ‘externality explanation’ can be embraced both by fanatics animated by hate and by scholars perpetually in love with their own intellectual phantasms.

Just google ‘Zionist settler colonialism’ and you’ll find hundreds of thousands of articles, web pages, blogs and social media hubs claiming that Jewish settlement in places like Tel Aviv and Zikhron Yaakov is entirely similar to the European colonisation of Australia, Africa and the Americas.  That is a very handy and attractive explanation, having only one tiny downside: that it’s untrue.

But discovering the truth takes some dedication, patience, honesty and intellectual curiosity – commodities that are in short supply in Guardian Editors, in many of our politicians and – let’s face it – in your average Joe on the street.

Which makes the clear and uncompromising enunciation of that truth even more imperative.  But when stupid Israeli ‘diplomats’ and hapless pro-Israel MPs wish to ‘celebrate Balfour’ (with or without ‘pride’), they inadvertently reinforce that most toxic anti-Israel narrative.  The one that not only denies the legitimacy of the State of Israel, but denies the morality of making peace with it.

I can understand the desire to showcase legitimacy, especially when it is under attack; I get the craving for friends and allies – especially when they are scarce.  But this is counter-productive.

States are not created by imperial Declarations; nor by League of Nations Mandates or by UN Resolutions.  Recognition by the ‘international community’ (whatever that oft-used cliché means) is usually post-factum; it acknowledges the reality, it does not create it.

The only thing that creates a state is the will of a nation.  What gives a state legitimacy (and enough social solidarity to make it stable and successful) is the national aspiration upon which it is built.

The Balfour Declaration was not a philanthropic gesture – nor was it motivated by noble ethics; it was an act of political expediency, which only coincidentally served a higher purpose.  The same can be said about the British Mandate for Palestine.  Don't get me wrong: there is nothing particularly evil in either, in the context of the time.  In issuing the Declaration and engineering the Mandate, the British Government did what most governments did then (and still do most of the time these days): pursued their own country’s selfish interests, as perceived by them at a particular moment in history.

Neither the Declaration nor the Mandate created (or, in deceitful journalistic jargon, ‘led to the creation of’) the State of Israel.  What ‘created Israel’ was an age-old longing preserved through generations in the Jewish people’s faith, culture and identity.  That was the itch that ‘created’ the scratch.  Of course, like any other historical process, the re-emergence of Jewish statehood did not happen in a political vacuum; on the contrary, it happened in the midst of political tumult.  And, out of the thousands of historical acts and events that interacted with that process, some helped it along, others hindered it.  There is as little point in ‘celebrating’ the former as in ‘mourning’ the latter.  They are but collateral, incidental externalities.

The State of Israel exists in the Jewish ancestral homeland; it’s once again populated by Jews who speak Hebrew, pray to the One God and further develop their own culture, their particular flavour of humanity.  All that did not happen because of the Balfour Declaration, or because of the British mandate, or because of UN resolutions; but because of Jewish collective longing, because of treasured national memory, because of perennial desire for freedom and human dignity.  And that is what we should celebrate.

The Balfour libel

Forget Herzl -- it's Lord Balfour;
"If you declare it, it is no dream!"

This year’s November 2^nd marked the 96^th anniversary of the so-called “Balfour Declaration” – a letter signed by Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour on behalf of the British Government and addressed to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. It expressed “sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations” and stated that

“His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

It was, by all standards, a short and diplomatically-worded message.  Nevertheless, a veritable blame industry has been built around it – one which attempts to make Brits 'feel bad' and exploit their 'pangs of conscience' to extract sympathy towards 'the Palestinian cause' and (even more, it seems) antipathy towards Israel or 'the Jews'. In the words of the (very pro-Palestinian) Mark Thomas:

“After a week on the West Bank I have decided that I need a T-shirt with the words: ‘Yes, I am British. Yes, I know about the Balfour Declaration.’  Every single day someone, finding out that I am British, will say in a manner intended for all to hear, ‘Ah, British … are you aware that in 1917 Lord Balfour of Britain signed away our land to the Jewish?’ [sic!] […] The Palestinian questioner will then, with varying degrees, blame Britain and, by default, me, for the Palestinian situation.  Facing this question three or four times a day leads me to the conclusion that this is more of an accusation than a question, and I wonder how I should answer.”   [His “answer”, by the way, was in the end to pretend being Scottish and hence not responsible for the misdeeds of the ‘English’ Lord Balfour!].

This is one of the ‘staple items’ of Arab propaganda and is part of a wider narrative aimed at de-legitimising Israel (on one hand) and legitimising Arab rejectionism (on the other).

According to this narrative, Jews have no connection whatsoever to the Land of Israel.  They either are not a people (Arab propagandists often present Jews as ‘a religion’) or they resulted from some later conversion (Arafat attempted at some point to persuade people that modern-day Jews are the descendants of the Khazars and have no ‘blood connection’ to the ancient People of Israel).

Hence, the story goes, Jews neither desired nor deserved a country of their own – and certainly not in ‘Palestine’.  Zionism was, in the words of a Palestinian Solidarity Campaign flyer “a European Jewish political movement which emerged towards the end of the 19^th Century”.

But how come such a movement ever succeeded?  If the Jews did not even desire a country of their own until the end of the 19^th Century, how come they achieved one in the space of just a few decades?  Enter Great Britain, the Balfour Declaration, etc.  Thus, rather than being the result of age-old national aspirations culminating in a struggle for national emancipation, the Jewish State becomes – in the Arab narrative – a mere creature of European colonialism.

Thus, the Jews are portrayed as ‘illegal immigrants’ (at best) and ‘colonialists’ (at worst), intent on ‘stealing Palestine’.  As for Brits like Mark Thomas, they are persuaded of their 'collective guilt': having ‘encouraged the immigration/colonisation’ by Jews of ‘historic Palestine’, they need to 'make amends' by kicking the Jewish State in the shin.

With the likes of Mark Thomas, it certainly works.  But not for anyone who’s concerned with facts.

Zionism – a recent European invention?

To deny the Jewish age-old longing for the Land of Israel is to wilfully close one’s eyes against obvious evidence.  Suffice to open a Jewish prayers book to find clear evidence of that, in prayers written many centuries before “the end of the 19^th Century”.

The ‘Amidah’ (Standing) Prayer, which is recited three times a day, contains the following supplication:

“Sound the great horn for our freedom; raise a banner to gather our exiles, and bring us together from the four corners of the earth into our land.  Blessed are You Lord, who gathers the dispersed of His people Israel”.

For centuries, Jews have sung the words of the Psalmist

"If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither; let my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you, if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour."

For centuries Jews – wherever they were – wished each other, as the conclusion of the Seder meal:

“Next year in Jerusalem!”.

But did they actually try to go there?  Were they a people animated by national feelings and aspirations?  Or was it all talk and no substance?  Here are, in chronological order, a few facts which managed to reach us from the fog of history:

66–73 CE:             “Great Jewish Revolt” against Roman occupation.  After defeat, the Romans demolish the Temple.  Jews are prohibited from entering Jerusalem and are gradually expelled from the Land of Israel.

115–117:              "Rebellion of the Exile".  Exiled Jews in several places in the Roman Empire rise against the Romans and return to the Land of Israel.  They are eventually defeated.

132–135:              “Bar Kokhba revolt”.  Jews rise against the Romans under the leadership of Bar Kokhba.  They regain Jerusalem, proclaim independence, even make coins with the text ‘To the freedom of Jerusalem’.  They are ultimately defeated by superior Roman forces.  Emperor Hadrian prohibits the practice of Judaism.  He prohibits the terms ‘Israel’ and ‘Judaea’ and re-names the country ‘Syria-Palaestina’ after the Philistines, the ancient enemies of the Jews.

351–352:              “Revolt against Gallus”.  Jewish revolt liberates Galilee, before being defeated.

362-572:               Several Samaritan revolts against Byzantine rule.  The Samaritan faith (a sect of Judaism which had survived in the Judean Hills) is outlawed.

602-628:               Persian Jews form an army, join forces with the Sassanids against the Byzantines and reconquer Jerusalem. A semi-autonomous Jewish state is declared, but is ultimately defeated in 628.

636:                       Arab conquest of “Syria” (including the Land of Israel).  Jews are initially allowed back into Jerusalem, but are later prohibited again from entering.  The Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are built on the site of the destroyed Jewish Temple.

1160:                     Revolt of Jews in Kurdistan. Failed attempt to reconquer the Land of Israel.

1198:                     Jews from Maghreb arrive and settle in Jerusalem.

1204:                     Moshe Ben Maimon (Maimonides) dies and is buried in Tiberias, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

1211:                     Around 300 Jews from England and France manage to reach the Land of Israel and settle in Jerusalem.  The majority are killed by the Crusaders in 1219.  The few remaining are exiled from Jerusalem and find refuge in Acre.

1217:                     Judah al-Harizi (rabbi, translator, poet and traveller who travelled from Spain to the Land of Israel) bemoans in his writings the state of the Temple Mount.

1260:                     Having settled in the Land of Israel, Yechiel of Paris (French rabbi) establishes a Talmudic academy in Acre.

1266:                     Jews banned from entering the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

1267:                     Nachmanides (leading medieval Jewish scholar from Catalonia) arrives in Jerusalem; Ramban synagogue established.

1286:                     Meir of Rothenburg (famous rabbi and poet from Germany) is incarcerated after attempting to emigrate to the Land of Israel.

1355:                     Physician and geographer Ishtori Haparchi (born in France and settled in the Land of Israel) dies in Bet She'an.

1428:                     Jews attempt to purchase the Tomb of David; the Pope issues a prohibition for ship captains to carry Jews to the Land of Israel.

1434:                     Elijah of Ferrara (famous Talmudist and traveller) settles in Jerusalem.

1441:                     Famine forces Jerusalem Jews to send emissary to European Jews, asking for help.

1455:                     Failed large scale immigration attempt starting from Sicily.  The would-be immigrants are condemned to death, but the punishment is commuted to a heavy fine.

1474:                     Great Synagogue of Jerusalem demolished by Arab mob.

1488:                     Obadiah ben Abraham of Bertinoro arrives in Jerusalem on March 25, 1488, having commenced his journey October 29, 1486.  When, on the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, many of the exiles settled in Jerusalem, Bertinoro became their intellectual leader. These Spanish Jews presented Bertinoro with a site for a yeshivah (religious academy) in Jerusalem, which he founded.  Considerable support for the maintenance of the yeshivah was given by the Jews of Egypt and Turkey at Bertinoro's written solicitation.

1493:                     Joseph Saragossi travels from Spain and settles in Safed.  He becomes the leader of the local Jewish community and dies in 1507.

1561:                     Spanish Jews travel to the Land of Israel under the leadership of Don Joseph Nasi.  They settle in Safed.  Joseph Nasi secures permission from Sultan Selim II to acquire Tiberias and seven surrounding villages to create a Jewish city-state.  He hoped that large numbers of Jewish refugees and Marranos (Jews forced to convert to Catholicism) would settle there, free from fear and oppression; indeed, the persecuted Jews of Cori, Italy, numbering about 200 souls, decided to emigrate to Tiberias.  Nasi had the walls of the town rebuilt by 1564 and attempted to turn it into a self-sufficient textile manufacturing centre by planting mulberry trees and producing silk. Nevertheless, a number of factors during the following years contributed to the plan's ultimate failure.  But by 1576, the Jewish community of Safed faced an expulsion order: 1,000 prosperous families were to be deported to Cyprus, "for the good of the said island", with another 500 the following year.  The order was issued as an instrument of extortion: it was rescinded once a hefty bribe was extracted from the Jews in the form of ‘rent’.

1648:                     Jews from Turkey attempt to return as a group to Israel, under the leadership of Sabbatai Zevi.  His arrival in Jerusalem triggers an anti-Jewish pogrom.

1700:                     A group of 1,500 Ashkenazi Jews attempt to travel to the Land of Israel under the leadership of Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid.  A third die on the way.  The Rabbi himself dies within days of arrival.  The survivors settle in Jerusalem.

1764-1850:          Small groups of Jews (between 5 and 500 each) make their way to the Land of Israel under various rabbis.

1812:                     Austrian government issues instructions to the Governor of Galicia to prevent Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel.  Austrian consuls in Odessa and Istanbul are instructed to refuse passports to Austrian Jews who want to travel to the Land of Israel.

1868:                     Judah ben Shalom leads a large movement of Yemenite Jews to Israel.

1882:                     A convention of Jewish "Unions for the Agricultural Settlement of Israel" is held on January 11, 1882 in Focsani, Romania.  A few ships are organised, which take immigrants to the Land of Israel.

1882-1903:          Circa 35,000 Jews from Eastern Europe immigrate and settle in the Land of Israel.

1897:                     First Zionist Congress.  Although held in Europe, it was not a meeting of “Europeans”.  It brought together representatives from all major Jewish communities, including the Americas and the Arab World.

1904-1914:          Circa 40,000 Jews (most from the Russian Empire and Yemen) immigrate and settle in the Land of Israel, which was still part of the Ottoman Empire.

1915:                     A Jewish espionage network called NILI is established in the Land of Israel.  It cooperates with the British in the fight against the Ottomans – the hope being that unlike the Ottomans the British will allow the restoration of Jewish sovereignty.  Several members of the network die: Absalom Feinberg is shot while trying to escape on foot to the British lines in Egypt; Sarah Aaronsohn is captured, but manages to commit suicide after being tortured for four days; Na'aman Belkind and Yosef Lishanski are hanged.  In 1919, the Chief of British Military Intelligence at the War Office Major General George Macdonogh referred to the group in his lecture at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich: “Allenby [the British general who defeated the Ottomans in the Levant] knew with certainty from his intelligence of all the preparations and all the movements of his enemy. All the cards of his enemy were revealed to him, and so he could play his hand with complete confidence. Under these conditions, victory was certain before he began”.

The term ‘Zionism’ is indeed recent.  But it is just a modern name for an age-old yearning.

Was the Balfour Declaration a “crucial” document?

Arab propaganda assigns exaggerated importance to the Balfour Declaration.  The suggestion is that, were it not for the Declaration, there would have been no Jewish state.  Again, this is an attempt to assign the re-birth of Israel to an external, colonial influence and deny that it was the product of age-old Jewish national aspirations.  Such propaganda is aimed both at brainwashing the Arab masses and at fooling Westerners whose knowledge of Middle Eastern history is no match for their naivety.  In the words of a Guardian blogger

“without that declaration, there could not have been the Jewish immigration to Palestine that laid the foundations for the state of Israel”.

It seems that, with some Guardian bloggers at least, lack of real knowledge won't stand in the way of assertively pronounced judgements.  The problem with that particular assertive statement is, however, that by the time the Balfour Declaration was issued (1917), there had already been two large waves of Jewish immigration.  Between 1882 and 1917, close to 100,000 Jews had immigrated and settled in the Land of Israel, despite the fact that it was at the time part of the Ottoman Empire. The Balfour Declaration did NOT cause the Jews to immigrate and settle in the Land of Israel; immigration and settlement started long before the Declaration.

The famous Declaration was nothing but a letter written by a Foreign Minister (Balfour) to a community leader (Rothschild).  Of course, Zionists welcomed it and hailed it as a victory.  But, objectively, the Declaration was not ‘crucial’ in any way.  It was not an international agreement or a contract; it was not even a firm promise.  It did not include any plan of action.  As such, it was nothing but a loosely worded statement of intention, not enforceable in any way.

To understand just how weak the “promise” contained in the Declaration really was, suffice to say that another state-less people, the Kurds, got a much stronger promise: the Treaty of Sèvres (signed in 1920by the official representatives of the defeated Ottoman Empire, as well as by those of Great Britain, France and Italy), promised them a state of their own.  Yet nothing came out of that much stronger promise, as the three Western powers lacked interest in enforcing it... The Balfour Declaration was NOT a legally-enforceable document; it had none of the importance propagandists seek to assign it today.

In the case of Palestine, the relevant legal instrument was not the Declaration – but the Mandate issued by the League of Nations (the precursor of the United Nations) on 22/07/1922.  Recognising “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and [...] the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”, the Mandate earmarked Palestine (including modern-day Jordan) as the National Home of the Jewish people.  The document was approved by the 42 founding members of the League of Nations. Yet the importance of the League of Nations Mandate should also be judged in the context – and not overstated: this was by no means a unique document; the Palestine Mandate was just one of a total of 12 Mandates issued by the League, each dealing with a different piece of territory.

Neither the Balfour Declaration nor the League of Nations Mandate ‘created’ modern Zionism or the State of Israel.  As a national emancipation movement, modern Zionism evolved naturally from the national aspirations of the Jewish people.  It was translated into practice by mass immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel, which started decades before the Declaration and the Mandate.

British ‘support’ for the Jewish cause

An additional myth fabricated by the Arab propaganda machine is that Britain (as the Mandatory Power) ‘encouraged’ Jewish immigration to Palestine and ‘the dispossession’ of Palestinian Arabs.  Hence, the implication that today’s Brits somehow need to ‘atone’, that they owe ‘compensatory discrimination’ to Palestinian Arabs.

These accusations are deliberately vague and never explained, so we are left to wonder: what type of ‘encouragement’ was provided?

One might indeed have expected the British authorities to provide support for Jewish immigration and settlement – that is what they undertook to do under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate.  The Mandate included the following provision:

“ART. 6: The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes”.

In practice, however, the British Government did no such thing.  They did NOT ‘facilitate’ Jewish immigration – they barely allowed it (as did the Ottoman government before them). Jews immigrated because they wanted to – not because the British ‘encouraged’ them.  They settled in the Land of Israel, revived their ancient language, helped each other and worked to earn their livelihood.  What, then, is the nature of the ‘encouragement’ offered by Britain? In reality, the British government was not concerned with the welfare of the Jews at all – but with the interests of the British Empire, i.e. maintaining British dominance over an area perceived as strategically important.  The history of the British Mandate of Palestine is one of continuous restriction of Jewish immigration, in contravention to the Mandate provisions. During WW1, the British sought allies against the Ottomans in the Middle East and found one in the person of Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca and head of the Hashemis, a clan of Bedouin Arabs from Hijaz (modern-day Saudi Arabia).

First partition of the Mandate of Palestine;
establishment of the Emirate of Transjordan,
prohibited to Jewish immigration and settlement.

In order to create a country for their allies, the Hashemi clan (which was in the process of being ousted from the native Hijaz by a rival clan – the Ibn Sauds), in 1923 the British authorities decided to take away circa 80% of the Mandate of Palestine and establish on it the Emirate of Transjordan, under Hashemi rulers and British ‘protection’.  Jewish immigration and settlement was prohibitted in the Emirate, leaving only the remainder of territory (between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River) as the Jewish National Home.  This sparsely populated territory (two thirds of which were desert) represented roughly 20% of the original Mandate of Palestine awarded by the League of Nations Mandate to the Jewish National Home.

In reality, even the British authorities’ passive acceptance of Jewish immigration into those 20% lasted only between 1923 and 1939.  By 1939, the British Government (under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain – the one who 'avoided the conflict' by offering Czechoslovakia to Hitler) saw their main interest as appeasing the Arabs.  Hence, in flagrant contravention to the terms of the League of Nations Mandate, they adopted a ‘White Paper’ limiting Jewish immigration to an absolute maximum of 75,000 over the next 5 years and terminating it thereafter.  In effect, the White Paper condemned the Jews in the promised ‘Jewish National Home’ to the status of a minority in an Arab country.  As an aside, it should be mentioned that these draconian restrictions on Jewish immigration were implemented at the very time when the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem’ was being adopted in Nazi Germany and in the territories it occupied.  None of the Western countries (including Britain and USA) accepted Jewish refugees at the time.  Thus, the White Paper closed the last door still open to Jews trying to escape the Nazi extermination machine.  It is impossible today to estimate how many of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust would have been able to save themselves, had the White Paper not been adopted.  But it is not unreasonable to expect their numbers to have been in the hundreds of thousands.  Including, perhaps, some of my own relatives who were eventually gassed at Auschwitz.

But while the British authorities were busy appeasing the Arabs by throttling Jewish immigration, they made little effort to control (let alone restrict) Arab immigration from the neighbouring countries. In 1930, the Hope-Simpson Commission (sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots) said that the British practice of ignoring illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan and Syria had the effect of displacing the Jewish immigrants. C.S. Jarvis, the British Governor of the Sinai between 1922 and 1936 observed:

“This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.”

The Peel Commission reported in 1937 that the

“shortfall of land is, we consider, due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population”.

These Arab immigrants from Syria, Egypt, Transjordan, etc. were to join the ranks of those later called ‘Palestinians’, who – we are so often told – ‘have lived in historic Palestine for many centuries’.

Between World War I and World War II, the Jewish population of the Mandate increased by 470,000, while the non-Jewish population rose by 588,000.

The anti-Jewish immigration restrictions were not lifted after the Holocaust.  Although Europe was full of Jewish refugees who wanted to immigrate to the Land of Israel (many of them survivors of concentration camps), the British Government continued to prevent them (often by force) from entering the Land of Israel.  The case of the ship ‘Exodus’ is well-known and immortalised (in romanticised form) in a famous film.  The ship sailed from the port of Site, near Marseilles, on July 11, 1947, with 4,515 immigrants, including 655 children, on board. As soon as it left the territorial waters of France, British destroyers escorted it.  On July 18, near the coast of Palestine but outside territorial waters, the British rammed the ship and boarded it, while the immigrants put up a desperate defence.  Two immigrants and a crewman were killed in the ensuing battle and 30 were wounded.  The ship was towed to the port of Haifa, where the immigrants were forced onto deportation ships bound for France.  At Port-de-Bouc, in southern France, the would-be immigrants remained in the ships’ holds for 24 days during a heat wave, refusing to disembark despite the shortage of food, the crowding and the abominable sanitary conditions.  The French government refused to force them off the boat.  Eventually, the British decided to return them to Germany, and on August 22 the ship left for the port of Hamburg, then in the British Occupation Zone.  The immigrants were forcibly disembarked and transported to two camps near Lübeck, where they were detained.

The case was not singular, but interning Jewish refugees in a camp in Germany two years after the Holocaust caused a huge public outcry, forcing the British Government to seek other ‘solutions’.  Thereafter, Jewish ‘illegal immigrants’ were interned in British camps in Cyprus.  Approximately 50,000 people were detained in the camps, many of them survivors of the Nazi death camps; 28,000 were still imprisoned when Israel declared independence in 1948.

As for encouraging “close settlement by Jews on the land” (as required by the terms of the League of Nations Mandate), the British authorities gave the Jews no land.  They sold some public land – more to Arabs than to Jews – between 1923 and 1936.  The sales of land (public or private) to Jews were prohibited by the 1939 White Paper in 95% of the territory.  By 1947, Jewish holdings in Palestine amounted to about 463,000 acres.  Approximately 45,000 of these acres had been acquired from the Mandatory Government; 30,000 had been bought from various churches and 387,500 had been purchased from Arab and Turkish landowners.

By 1947, the British Government had lost interest in the Mandate of Palestine.  Their influence in the region seemed secure through the alliance with Transjordan, whose King was British educated and whose army was trained and officered by British personnel.  With the entire British Empire in advanced stage of disintegration, the Mandate had become a mere nuisance.  Hence, Britain reverted to the United Nations (successor to the League of Nations) and dropped the issue in its lap.  A UN team performed an inquiry in the field and recommended the partition of territory between an Arab State and a Jewish State.  The UN General Assembly adopted the recommendation as Resolution 181; Britain abstained at the vote and afterwards made clear that, despite its role as Mandatory Power, it would do nothing to implement the Resolution.  This ‘washing of the hands’ outraged the Jews (who had accepted the Resolution) and pleased the Arabs (who had rejected it).

The independent Jewish State was proclaimed in May 1948, as the last British soldiers were leaving.  The next day, the armies of neighbouring Arab states joined irregular local Arab ‘militias’ and semi-regular ‘volunteers’ in attacking the newly proclaimed State of Israel.  While officially the United Kingdom was neutral in this war, the British-trained and equipped Transjordanian Army (the Arab Legion) included numerous British officers and was commanded by the British general John Glubb.

In the Middle East (as in many other regions of the world) British imperialism caused human suffering and lasting damage.  But the myth of Israel as a ‘creature of British colonialism’ is nothing but a deceitful attempt to re-write history.  Of course, it is in any case ridiculous to imply that today’s Brits are responsible for whatever the British government did then.  It is important, however, to tell the truth: if there is one side in this conflict which was most grievously wronged by the British rule, it was the Jewish side.