RUTHFULLY YOURS

The rebuilding of the Jewish National Home in Palestine is a project “which merits the sympathy and moral encouragement of everyone,” President Herbert Hoover declared on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration yesterday, in a message addressed to the Zionist Organization of America and made public today by Morris Rothenberg, President of the Zionist Organization.

A similar message lauding the achievements of reconstruction in Palestine as a “tribute to the creative powers of the Jewish people” was received from Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pointed out that the establishment of the Jewish National Home in Palestine was close to the wish of President Wilson, who helped write the terms of the Balfour Declaration into the peace treaty.

The messages of President Hoover and Governor Roosevelt were issued in connection with the celebration by the Zionist Organization of the fifteenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

The message from the President reads as follows:

“On the occasion of your celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which received the unanimous approval of both houses of Congress by the adoption of the Lodge-Fish Resolution in 1922, I wish to express the hope that the ideal of the establishment of the National Jewish

Home in Palestine, as embodied in that Declaration, will continue to prosper for the good of all the people inhabiting the Holy Land.

“I have watched with genuine admiration the steady and unmistakable progress made in the rehabilitation of Palestine which, desolate for centuries, is now renewing its youth and vitality through the enthusiasm, hard work and self-sacrifice of the Jewish pioneers who toil there in a spirit of peace and social justice. It is very gratifying to note that many American Jews, Zionists as well as non-Zionists, have rendered such splendid service to this cause which merits the sympathy and moral encouragement of everyone.”

“Jewish achievement in Palestine since the Balfour Declaration vindicates the high hope which lay behind the sponsorship of the Homeland,” Governor Roosevelt said. “The Jewish development in Palestine since the Balfour Declaration is not only a tribute to the creative powers of the Jewish people but by bringing great advancement into the sacred land has promoted the well-being of all the inhabitants thereof.

“I shall personally watch with deep sympathy the progress of Palestine. I extend to your Organization my sincerest wishes for continued success and achievement.”

In the living room of our daughter’s home hangs a 4-by-6-foot Jewish flag designed by her paternal great-grandfather, hastily sewn from blue and white material in his Montreal dry-goods store. In November 1917, on receiving news that the British government had just given its support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, Nathan Black strung the flag across his storefront and closed for the day. “Haynt iz a yontev,” he told his workers: “Today is a holiday.”

One hundred years ago on Nov. 2, Arthur Balfour, the British foreign secretary, sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild : “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.”

Known as the Balfour Declaration, it represented a diplomatic high point in the history of the Zionist movement founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. Herzl realized that Zionism would have trouble achieving its political objective of establishing “a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law” without support from one or more of the empires laying claim to the Jewish homeland. His attempt to win that support, cut short by his death in 1904, was taken over by others, such as Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow. The latter’s role in securing the Balfour Declaration was recently brought to light by historian Martin Kramer. Other countries, including France and the U.S., were involved in the discussions over the disposition of Palestine, but the credit for this document was Britain’s. At least on that score credit is deserved.

The Balfour Declaration was a landmark in the political life of Britain no less than in the self-determination of the Jews. Brutally expelled from England in 1290 and formally readmitted in 1656, Jews remained the barometer of toleration in the country’s political and private life.

English literature served up sinister characters like Shylock and Fagin that testify to powerful anti-Jewish prejudice. Then, in 1876, the British novelist George Eliot created the title character Daniel Deronda, an Englishman and Jew who determines to make the Jews a landed nation again, “giving them a national center, such as the English have, though they too are scattered over the face of the globe.” The threat to the Jews in Eliot’s novel comes not from violent aggressors but from Englishmen who cannot understand why Jews should remain a nation. Anticipating Zionism and the Balfour Declaration, Eliot interprets the ability of the English to accept Jewish national rights as the touchstone of their political maturity.

Yet Britain went back on its word. Attempting to appease Arab rulers, it rewarded Arab violence in Palestine in the 1930s by preventing Jews from entering land promised to them by the Bible and the British. While the British betrayal did not directly abet Hitler’s war against the Jews of Europe, it signaled a readiness to abandon the Jews to their fate. It certainly spurred the Arab war against Israel, which began where Germany’s war against the Jews left off. Churchill reminded Parliament in 1939 that the pledge of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had been made not only to the Jews but to the world and that its repudiation was a confession of British weakness.

The Jews would have returned to Zion with or without the consent of Europe. This is the people that, despite the murder of millions of potential Jewish citizens, and within Herzl’s predicted timeline of 50 years, recovered and defended its national sovereignty in the Land of Israel that had been under foreign domination for almost two millennia. But most of the Arab world rejected the very principle of coexistence and consequently spiraled into ever-escalating intramural conflicts. For Arab nations, too, acceptance of an autonomous Jewish presence, if and when it occurs, will be the gauge of their political maturity.

Meantime, in Britain’s Daily Mail, a “proud Jewish woman and patriotic Briton” wrote last month that “many of this country’s 270,000-strong Jewish community no longer feel we have a home here.” The immediate cause of her anguish is the emboldened anti-Semitism of the Labour Party, which traditionally included many Jews. This coalition of grievance endangers the democratic future of the country.

Our family’s flag celebrated a landmark in the restoration of Zion but also another great nation’s readiness to coexist with the Jews on an equal footing. That in itself will not bring peace to the world—but world peace cannot come without it.

Ms. Wisse, a former professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, is the author of “Jews and Power” (Schocken, 2007).

Exactly one hundred years ago, this November 2nd, a public statement issued by the British government during World War I announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman Empire region, reads as follows:
“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors 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.”
This was the Balfour Declaration which was supposed to have created a Jewish state. Of course this was done during the war when England wanted to secure the support of Jews in Russia, Germany and the United States. But promises to Jews are often as long lasting as ice immersed in a boiling glass of coffee. In 1921, with the war over and Jewish influence, whatever it was, no longer needed, the League of Nations and England took away 80% of that land and created Trans-Jordan, now known merely as Jordan. It was not until 41 years after the Balfour fake-out that the Jewish state of Israel was created.
And no thanks to the British, whose troops led the Jordanian army in its attacks meant to destroy Israel in the 1948 war of extermination. We suggest (with little hope it would be done) that Israel demands the return to it, of its original “national home.” Bear in mind, as well, that in the final creation of Israel out of the remaining 20% of its original promised homeland, half of that area was carved out by the U.N. to become another Muslim state led by the likes of Yasser Arafat, the PLO and Hamas. Talk about getting 10 cents on the dollar.
Please note that although Britain stated clearly in its original text to the Jews in 1917 that they would not infringe at all the civil religious rights of non-Jews within its proposed borders, the country of Trans-Jordan was created with no such demands on the Muslims. Today, no Jews are permitted to live in that country. Only foolish Jews who visit Jordan to vacation and sight-see are permitted to spend their money and then board their planes back to wherever.
If there is any celebration of the Balfour Declaration, let those ecstatic, euphoric souls who whoop it up as a day for rejoicing, finally come to the realization that it was nothing more than a fake-out to Jews. Think back to the refusal of Britain during the 1930’s to permit Jews to find safe haven in that land they were promised way back in 1917. How many Jewish lives would have been saved if the promise of the Balfour Declaration had been kept?

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 elicited euphoria among world Zionists. It was to be short lived as a chain of betrayals truncated the land promised to the Jews and limited their immigration.

The 1922 White Paper (also known as the Churchill White Paper) averred that Jews were in Palestine by right, but bowing to Arab pressure, ceded 76 percent –all the land East of the Jordan River–to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah. It was renamed Transjordan, and closed to Jewish settlement. In explanation the British stated:

“England…does not want Palestine to become ‘as Jewish as England is English’, but, rather, should become ‘a center in which Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride.’” (Ironically today Israel is poised to become more Jewish than England is English given the very real prospect that Muslims will become a majority in that nation.)

The Jews of Palestine had no choice but to accept the partition of 1922, but Arab thirst for all of Palestine resulted in murders and terrorist attacks, the Hebron massacre of 1929 and later the 1936-39 “Arab Revolt.”

The British responded with the White Paper of 1939 all but eliminating Jewish immigration to Palestine. This occurred after the infamous Evian conference of July 1938. With the exception of the Dominican Republic, all the participants refused to alter their immigration policies, thereby trapping Europe’s Jews. The Nazis were to kill one of every three Jews in the world.

In 1982, Sir Harold Wilson, who had been a member of Clement Attlee’s Cabinet when Israel became independent in 1948 and served as Prime Minister during the Six-Day War, wrote The Chariot of Israel-Britain, America and the State of Israel in which he described the British actions in 1939 as shameful and inexcusable.

After World War II the British continued their appalling anti-Jewish immigration policies, seizing and firing upon the vessels taking traumatized Holocaust survivors to Palestine.

However, the Jews of Palestine began a sustained effort to push the British out of Palestine and in February 1947 Britain announced its intent to terminate the Mandate, referring the matter of Palestine to the United Nations.

In May of that year the United Nations Special Committee On Palestine (UNSCOP) began deliberations on a “solution” to the Palestine “problem.”

These deliberations included an UNSCOP mission to examine the state of surviving Jews in displaced persons camps in Europe. The members were horrified by the conditions, but cynical enough to exploit the desperation of the refugees by deciding on a further partition of Palestine.

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted 33 to 13 (with ten abstentions) to implement the new partition as Resolution 181. Absent in all the media hailing of the “compromise” was any mention that the Jews of Palestine had already relinquished 75 percent of the area promised in the Balfour Declaration. Media and diplomats alike would declare that the Jews were gaining 53% of “Palestine” when in fact they were left with roughly 12 percent.

Thus, the 25 percent of Palestine left to the Jews for a homeland in 1922 was now to be divided as follows:

There would be an Arab State, a Jewish State and the City of Jerusalem, linked by zigzagging corridors. The Arab state would comprise the central and western Galilee, the town of Acre, the hills of Judea and Samaria, a large enclave in Jaffa, and the southern coast from what is now Ashdod, the Gaza Strip, and a section of desert along the Egyptian border which included Beersheba. The Jews were to have the Eastern Galilee, the coastal plain between Haifa and Rehovoth, most of the Negev and a strip to what is now Eilat.

Jerusalem was to be “international”, a Corpus Separatum which included Bethlehem, with access assured to persons of all faiths.

That was a major betrayal, but the Jews, desperate to have a state, agreed to it.