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JewishWikipedia.info
THE
INCREDIBLE
STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
In 1917 the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, issued the Balfour Declaration (See ‘A Line in the Sand’ by James Barr and Behind the Balfour Declaration by the Institute for Historical Review)
WAS THE BALFOUR DECLARATION A NEW IDEA?
1799 NAPOLEON Bonaparte during his invasion of the Levant invited all Jews to settle in Palestine. He was defeated by the British and with it the French version of the Balfour Declaration
1841 British letter was sent from Damascus to Moses Chaim the leader of the British Jewish community for Jews to settle in Palestine. First settlements from 1860 but remained almost empty. Planned stalled. British Foreign Office convinced time was not then. Christian zionists from France, Germany, Russia and the USA were establishing settlements. American Christian Zionist, William E Blackstone, led to a conference in Chicago, 1890
1891 Petition to American President Benjamin Harrison saying ‘Palestine Must Return to the Jews’. Never issued
1896 ‘The State of the Jews’ by Theodore Herzl
1898 German Balfour-Like Declaration by Kaiser who wanted Jews to emigrate discussed with the Sultan who turned down the idea.
1903 Russian Balfour-like declaration in a letter to Herzl
1903 British plan by Arthur Balfour (then PM) to resettle Jews in Kenya/ 6th Zionist Con ference approved the Plan. Failed but provided a precendent that the British were willing to provide transport and a home for the Zionists.
Beginning of WW! British idea to help Jews to emigrate to Palestine who would provide support in a strategically important area and the biblical idea God to expedite salvation and the return of Christ
1917 France issues Declaration
1917 British Balfour Declaration endorsed by major world powers and the Pope.
NOTE
The nearest the British came to implementing the Declaration was the Peel Commission in 1937 which split Palestine between the Jews and Arabs. This was rejected by the Arabs. After WW2 the Brish decided to end its mandate and passed what would happen next to the United Nations who came up with their own plan to split the country between the Jews and Arabs. This was accepted by the Jews and rejected by the Arabs and saw the Arab - Israel War
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION:
ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES
History, by James Renton,
Senior Lecturer in History at Edge Hill University,
and an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London
The Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 is commonly regarded as a seminal moment in the history of Zionism, Palestine and the Middle East. The letter sent by A.J. Balfour, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to Lord Rothschild, the Anglo-Jewish figurehead, stated that the British Government viewed with favour ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’, and that it would ‘use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object’. Soon after, on 9 December 1917, British imperial forces captured Jerusalem. Ending just over four hundred years of Ottoman rule, Britain occupied the rest of the country by the end of the war, and was awarded the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1920.
Britain’s commitment to the establishment of a Jewish national home in the Holy Land became the basis of the terms of the Mandate, which was to last for almost three decades. During this formative period of colonial rule, the foundations of the Jewish State, and the Zionist-Palestinian conflict, were firmly established.
The reasons behind the Declaration have been a matter of controversy ever since it was issued. At the time, British policy-makers were at pains to emphasise their sympathy for the plight of the Jewish people and their intention to restore the Jewish nation to its homeland. This supposed act of benevolence stemmed, it was claimed, from a longstanding tradition of British philosemitism and support for the Zionist cause.
Although this myth has been of continuing influence, historians have tended to emphasise the political and diplomatic motives behind the Declaration. One reason for supporting Zionism was that it would help secure post-war British control of Palestine, which was strategically important as a buffer to Egypt and the Suez Canal. This was certainly the view held by some in favour of the Declaration, such as Prime Minister David Lloyd George. For others, their interest in Zionism had nothing to do with Britain’s strategic interests in the Middle East. Balfour did not even consider that Britain should control Palestine after the war, let alone use Zionism to that end.
The single motive uniting all of the makers of the Declaration was the desire to harness Jewish support for the war effort, particularly in Russia and the USA. With the threat of revolution in the former and the need to ensure the full support of the latter, Jewish influence in these countries was thought to have been important for the British cause.
Behind this policy were two erroneous assumptions. The first was the misconception that Jews held a powerful influence in Russia, the USA and elsewhere. The second was the belief that publicly advocating Zionism was the best way to curry Jewish favour. Despite the marked growth of the Zionist movement during the war, the majority of Jews were far from being committed Zionists.
The idea that world Jewry wielded tremendous influence, as believed by Balfour, Lloyd George and others in the Government, derived from widespread antisemitic prejudice within the British Establishment. Similarly, the belief that the Jews were a nation in and of themselves came in part from antisemitic views of the Jews as a clannish people. Antisemitism was, however, only one part of the picture.
The Balfour Declaration belonged to a wider phenomenon of British propaganda policies during the First World War towards ethnic groups, or ‘races’ as they were called at the time, particularly in the USA. These policies were driven by similar mistaken assumptions.
The financial and material support of the United States was of critical significance for the European war effort, and as such it became the centre of the propaganda war between the Allies and the Central Powers. As part of this wider struggle, the British attempted to win the backing of a number of minority groups — in particular Poles, Jews and Irish — who were thought to wield influence in American society and politics. It was commonly felt by policy-makers that the promise of national freedom was the key to winning over the supposed power of these Diasporic communities. Indeed, such was the importance placed on Irish-American opinion, that it propelled efforts by Lloyd George to obtain — unsuccessfully — an agreement on one of the most controversial issues facing the British empire: Home Rule for Ireland.
Seeking to capture the loyalty of the Arab world, the British also supported Arab nationalism, a policy which began in earnest with the infamous McMahon-Hussein correspondence of 1915 and 1916. Similarly, in the final year of the war, encouragement was given to movements for national self-determination in Central and Eastern Europe. In all these cases, ‘races’ were wrongly thought to be cohesive groups that could be inspired to support the Allies by an appeal to their nationalist identities. In reality, nationalism — whether Jewish, Arab, Polish or Irish — was not the all-consuming passion for these communities that it was thought to be in Whitehall.
The Balfour Declaration was not, however, simply the by-product of mistaken perceptions in the British Government. These perceptions were turned into policy through the tireless efforts of Jewish activists. Faced with the many challenges of war, the British Government was reactive in its dealings with Zionism. Although their perceptions of Jews predisposed members of the Government to a pro-Zionist policy, they had to be persuaded and coaxed into action.
From the end of 1915, a number of politically-engaged Jews successfully identified and manipulated the British Government’s misconceived pre-occupation with securing Jewish influence, eventually convincing the Government that a pro-Zionist agenda was the best means by which to do so. These individuals included Horace Kallen, an American academic; Lucien Wolf, the journalist and political lobbyist; Moses Gaster, the religious head of the British Sephardi community; Vladimir Jabotinsky, who was agitating for the creation of a Jewish Legion; and Chaim Weizmann, who, with Nahum Sokolow, was the official Zionist conduit with the Government from the beginning of 1917.
In addition to these individual efforts, the leaders of the Zionist movement in the United States and Russia made a significant contribution to persuading British policy-makers by driving the expansion of the organisation. The growth of the Zionist movement in these countries provided important evidence for policy-makers, confirming their belief that Zionism was a popular cause throughout world Jewry.
What was the result of all these efforts? There are those who have argued that the Declaration was intended by the British Government to lead to nothing less than the creation of a Jewish state. In fact, there was no agreement by the Cabinet when the Declaration was approved regarding Britain’s post-war policy towards Zionism, nor were there any discussions as to how, exactly, the Government might ‘facilitate’ the ‘establishment in Palestine of a national home’. The primary concern of the Cabinet was not, after all, the future of Zionism and Palestine, but gaining Jewish backing for the Allies.
By the war’s end, the future for Palestine, like much of the Middle East, remained unclear. Not only did its fate have to be agreed upon by the Great Powers, but the British themselves had not formulated a clear post-war Zionist policy. The great achievement of the Zionists was during this post-war period, when they managed to obtain the final terms of the Mandate. It was only then that the British became committed to secure — not to facilitate, as was stipulated in the Declaration — the establishment of the Jewish national home, to cooperate with a Jewish agency to that end, and to facilitate Jewish immigration and settlement on the land. It was on this basis that the Zionist movement was able to establish the foundations of what would eventually become the Jewish state.
BALFOUR DECLARATION, UNITED KINGDOM [1917]
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 6-29-2010
Balfour Declaration, (Nov. 2, 1917), statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” It was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild (of Tring), a leader of British Jewry. Though the precise meaning of the correspondence has been disputed, its statements were generally contradictory to both the Sykes-Picot Agreement (a secret convention between Britain and France) and the Ḥusayn-McMahon correspondence (an exchange of letters between the British high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, then emir of Mecca), which in turn contradicted one another (see Palestine, World War I and after).
The Balfour Declaration, issued through the continued efforts of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, Zionist leaders in London, fell short of the expectations of the Zionists, who had asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as “the” Jewish national home. The declaration specifically stipulated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The document, however, said nothing of the political or national rights of these communities and did not refer to them by name. Nevertheless, the declaration aroused enthusiastic hopes among Zionists and seemed the fulfillment of the aims of the World Zionist Organization (see Zionism).
The British government hoped that the declaration would rally Jewish opinion, especially in the United States, to the side of the Allied powers against the Central Powers during World War I (1914–18). They hoped also that the settlement in Palestine of a pro-British Jewish population might help to protect the approaches to the Suez Canal in neighbouring Egypt and thus ensure a vital communication route to British colonial possessions in India.
The Balfour Declaration was endorsed by the principal Allied powers and was included in the British mandate over Palestine, formally approved by the newly created League of Nations on July 24, 1922. In May 1939 the British government altered its policy in a White Paper recommending a limit of 75,000 further immigrants and an end to immigration by 1944, unless the resident Palestinian Arabs of the region consented to further immigration. Zionists condemned the new policy, accusing Britain of favouring the Arabs. This point was made moot by the outbreak of World War II (1939–45) and the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.
CONFIRMATION OF THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
(See ‘British Mandate of Palesine’)
In early 1921, prior to the convening of the Cairo Conference, the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office set out the situation as follows which confirmed the Balfour Declaration:
Distinction to be drawn between Palestine and Trans-Jordan under the Mandate. His Majesty's Government are responsible under the terms of the Mandate for establishing in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people. They are also pledged by the assurances given to the Sherif of Mecca in 1915 to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs in those portions of the (Turkish) vilayet of Damascus in which they are free to act without detriment to French interests. The western boundary of the Turkish vilayet of Damascus before the war was the River Jordan. Palestine and Trans-Jordan do not, therefore, stand upon quite the same footing. At the same time, the two areas are economically interdependent, and their development must be considered as a single problem. Further, His Majesty's Government have been entrusted with the Mandate for "Palestine". If they wish to assert their claim to Trans-Jordan and to avoid raising with other Powers the legal status of that area, they can only do so by proceeding upon the assumption that Trans-Jordan forms part of the area covered by the Palestine Mandate. In default of this assumption Trans-Jordan would be left, under article 132 of the Treaty of Sèvres, to the disposal of the principal Allied Powers. Some means must be found of giving effect in Trans-Jordan to the terms of the Mandate consistently with "recognition and support of the independence of the Arabs".
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL: ZIONIST HERO
Jews hold strong views about the man honoured by a new statue in Jerusalem
The Independent, Catrina Stewart Saturday 3 November 2012 01:01
See also Bust of Winston Churchill, Israel's 'Forgotten Friend,' Unveiled in Jerusalem Haaretz Anshel Pfeffer, Nov 04, 2012
Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem was created by portrait sculptor Oscar Nemon. Anthony Rosenfelder, together with MK Isaac Herzog, initiated the process of erecting the bust of Churchill in Jerusalem.
The work is located in the Yael Garden, below the historic Mishkenot Sha’ananim building, overlooking the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. It was unveiled by Churchill’s great-grandson Randolph Churchill on November 4, 2012 at a ceremony attended by MK Isaac Herzog, British Ambassador to Israel HE Matthew Gould, British Consul-General to Jerusalem Sir Vincent Fean, Israel’s Ambassador to the Court of St James’s Daniel Taub, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, President of the Jerusalem Foundation Ambassador Mark Sofer, Chairperson of Mishkenot Sha’ananim Ruth Cheshin, and Anthony Rosenfelder, a trustee of the Jerusalem Foundation in the Jerusalem Foundation in the United Kingdom.
The bust is identical to the one that stands in Freedom Court at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
Mishkenot Sha’ananim serves three primary roles:
* Leading the way in cultural and artistic programming
* Providing an unbiased space for thought, dialogue, and pluralism
* Managing the unique Mishkenot Sha’ananim campus
Sir Winston Churchill
Jewish supporters of Winston Churchill are to unveil a bust of the British wartime leader in Jerusalem this weekend in what they say is a long-overdue recognition of his staunch and unwavering support of the Jewish cause and their desire for a homeland.
“As a passionate Zionist all his life and a philo-semite, Churchill has been under-recognised,” says Anthony Rosenfelder, a trustee of the Jerusalem Foundation, which is behind the project to commemorate the British leader. He “combined a historical understanding of the Jewish people and what the promised land meant for Jews … with realpolitik”.
It is perhaps ironic that a statue of Churchill should stand just yards away from the King David Hotel, scene of a deadly Jewish terror attack on British military headquarters in 1946 that was to hasten the demise of mandate rule in Palestine.
Sixty-four years after the British exit, Jewish antipathy towards its mandate-era rule of Palestine still remains strong.
Some regard Churchill as a controversial figure whose government turned back Jewish immigrants trying to reach Palestine during the Second World War. Others claim that Churchill was one of the greatest supporters of the Zionist movement. They say he should be acknowledged for his role in helping make real the 1917 Balfour Declaration of British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Nearly half a century after his death, though, Churchill still remains a complex historical figure among Jews. “It’s always important to give history a bit of time to bed down,” says Randolph Churchill, great-grandson of the British leader, a reference to the anger many Israelis still harbour towards the British. “People have had time to reflect and consider [on his role]. I don’t think it’s late after the event.”
Most Israelis will remember Churchill for his role in defeating Hitler, and as the man who set the world against the Nazis, he is much admired. Unlike other British officials who backed the movement, such as Henry Balfour, Sir Wyndham Deedes and David Lloyd George, there is, however, almost no official recognition of his contribution.
“Churchill is not really commemorated here, and for lots of reasons he should be,” says Isaac Herzog, an Israeli politician behind the bust initiative.
Many Israelis will admit scant knowledge of his long alliance with the Jews during the early part of the 20th century, one which spurred a friend to tell his official biographer, Martin Gilbert, that Churchill was not without fault, that he was “too fond of the Jews.”
Indeed, it is Mr Gilbert, himself a Jew, who has proven one of the single biggest champions of Churchill, and whose weighty tome on the subject fired imaginations, including that of Mr Rosenfelder who said the book “switched on a light for me”.
Tom Segev, author of One Palestine Complete, claims that Churchill once told his close friend and an elder of the Zionist movement, Chaim Weizmann, that he would support the Zionists “even if they did horribly stupid things”.
Not everybody is so convinced. Some see his support for Zionism as a matter of expediency. He spoke often of a Jewish conspiracy behind the Bolshevik Revolution, and there are those who believe that his support for a Jewish state arose from a desire to keep the Jews from meddling in the affairs of others.
“His attitude towards the Jews was very complicated,” says Eli Shaltiel, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. “The Jewish state was a way of solving the Jewish problem… Once they had a state of their own, it would serve their very uniqueness. They would be normal like any other nation.”
The question of Auschwitz concentration camp, where thousands were killed daily, also remains a bone of contention. Critics say he put Allied lives before Jewish ones by failing to bomb it in 1944. Although historians concede Churchill did give the order for an attack, he did not make it a priority.
Edward Luttwak, a Washington-based scholar writing a book about Churchill, is even more uncomplimentary. Even as the full horrors of the extermination camp became more widely known, , he claims, Churchill wilfully ignored the plight of Hungarian Jews.
He points to events in early 1944, when Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary all ceased to cooperate with Nazi Germany in deporting their Jewry, but Britain continued to enforce rigorously stiff immigration quotas to Palestine to appease the Arabs during a time of war. He claims they denied many European Jews safe passage by either declining or issuing out-of-date visa documents.
“The Romanians survived, the Bulgarians survived, the Hungarians did not. That’s on Churchill’s conscience,” says Mr Luttwak. “In 1944, Churchill, lifelong friend of the Jews, became Hitler’s remaining Holocaust ally.”
By then, Britain’s Palestine policy was increasingly under attack from the Jews. The Struma incident two years earlier – where a ship carrying Romanian refugees trying to reach Palestine via Turkey was turned away, only to be sunk by a Soviet submarine, killing 768 people on board – had rallied opposition to the British: Churchill himself was to become a target.
Newly declassified MI5 papers reveal that in 1944, the British feared that the Stern Gang, a Jewish terrorist group determined to oust the British from Palestine, was plotting to kill Churchill, as well as the unpopular politician Ernest Bevin.
In the end, it was not Churchill who died, but his close friend Lord Moyne, who was assassinated by the Stern Gang in Cairo in November 1944. Mr Segev writes that the bloody act “lost the Zionists one of their most important supporters, Winston Churchill”.
In an address to the House of Commons, Churchill made clear the depth of his dismay: “If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins’ pistols and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past.”
But by then the wheels had already been set in motion, and the Jewish state was only a few years from becoming a reality.
THE CHURCHILL WHITE PAPER OF 3 JUNE 1922
Wikipedia (go to link for gull analysis)
The Churchill White Paper of 3 June 1922 (...sometimes referred to as "British Policy in Palestine". The official name of the document was Palestine Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organisation. It was made up of nine documents and "Churchill's memorandum" was an enclosure to document #5.[1]) was drafted at request of Sir Winston Churchill partly in response to the 1921 Jaffa Riots. While maintaining Britain's commitment to the Balfour Declaration and its promise of a Jewish national home in Palestine, the paper emphasized that the establishment of a national home would not impose a Jewish nationality on the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. To reduce tensions between the Arabs and Jews in Palestine the paper called for a limitation of Jewish immigration to the economic capacity of the country to absorb new arrivals. This limitation was considered a great setback to many in the Zionist movement, though it acknowledged that the Jews should be able to increase their numbers by immigration as of right and not on suffrance. ….............
In a lecture given at the UN[12][13], Rashid Khalidi noted that the Palestine reaction to the declaration was delayed by the continuing closure of newspapers for two years and the dismal post-war circumstances of the country. The military administration had decided not to publish the Balfour Declaration for fear of the consequences. After the appointment of Herbert Samuel was known, on 28 April 1920 in Acre, General Bols informed the "representatives of all communities" that the mandate and declaration would be included in the peace treaty with Turkey. The Palin Commission speculated that, in view of all the later "misunderstandings", it might have been wiser to have published the declaration in the first instance and avoid the confusion. It was not until May of 1920 that the text of the Balfour Declaration was read out in Nablus by Sir Louis Bols
The Balfour Declaration, 2 November 1917: A Fateful Improbability Centenary Lecture to the History Group, The Norfolk Club, 14 September 2017 by William Mathew
Churchill: Walking with Destiny, Andrew Roberts 4 Oct 2018
History of the Balfour Declaration Jewish Virtual Library
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Was the Balfour Declaration a New Idea ? |
THE INAUGURAL ANNUAL
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL LECTURE
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
Mishkenot Sha'ananim, Jerusalem,
11 Nov 2015 (1.09.36)
SOWING THE SEEDS OF
JEWISH STATEHOOD: BRITAIN AND PALESTINE, 1909-1922
Marrtin Gilbert
BenGurionUniversity 2011 (21.50)
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Confirmation |
THE BRITISH BALFOUR DECLARATION 1917