The British White Paper: 80 Years Later - by Larry Domnitch

This move by the British came as the culmination of over 20 years of intermittent waves of Arab terror, and at the end of three years of devastating Arab riots in British Mandatory Palestine.

Larry Domnitch..
Algemeiner..
19 May '19..

Eighty years ago, an ominous and devastating policy was enacted by the British government that would wreak severe destruction upon the Jewish people.

The MacDonald White Paper, named after the colonial Foreign Secretary Malcolm MacDonald, was proposed on May 17 and ratified on May 22, 1939. That week, British commitments to facilitate a Jewish state under the terms of the 1917 Balfour Declaration were essentially nullified. The White Paper also denied Jews desperately needed refuge as the Nazi threat emerged.

On November 9, 1938, the British government announced its intention to invite representatives of the Arabs in Palestine and nearby countries to confer with Jewish representatives at a London conference in search of a solution to the vast differences between them. The proposed meetings were a futile venture, as the Arabs refused to even sit with the Jews. Separate meetings were held, and they ended predictably with no resolution.

Under the MacDonald White Paper, the Peel Commission’s 1937 recommendation of the partition of the land of Israel was rejected. Jewish immigration would be restricted to 15,000 per year over the next five years, and land purchases by Zionists would be severely restricted as well. Any further immigration after the five years would be determined by the Arab majority, which would essentially terminate the Zionist enterprise.

This move by the British came as the culmination of over 20 years of intermittent waves of Arab terror, and at the end of three years of devastating Arab riots in British Mandatory Palestine.

The fact that the British Mandate over Palestine was a responsibility granted by an outside party, the League of Nations at San Remo in 1922, and therefore did not exclusively grant carte blanche to the British to act as they pleased, meant little since that organization was now of minimal importance. Anyway, who would hold the British accountable when their respective nations also had imposed severe quotas on Jewish immigration?

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(Excellent) The Making of the Land:They Learned How to Farm and How to Fight - by Douglas Feith

If your child came home from college and said she was challenged by a classmate who claimed that Palestine is Arab land stolen by the Jews, could you provide her with a response?

Douglas Feith..
Tablet..
24 October '18..

Last autumn was the Balfour Declaration’s hundredth birthday. This month marks a hundred years since Britain’s General Allenby completed his World War I conquest of Palestine and Syria. These centenaries relate to the most important–the most basic–argument that anti-Zionists use against Israel today.

It’s the assertion that Palestine is Arab land and the Jews had no right to steal it from the Palestinian Arabs. In its somewhat more sophisticated form, the argument is that British imperialists had no right to steal the Palestinians’ country and give it to the Jews.

If you had a child in college and she came home and said she was challenged on this point by a classmate, could you provide her with a response?

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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If There Hadn't Been a Balfour Declaration, the PA Would Have Had to Invent It - by Itamar Marcus

...The PA has transformed the Balfour Declaration from recognition of Jewish history in the land, into the starting point of Jewish history in the land. Without Balfour, the PA has no hook upon which to anchor its warped reality. Had there been no Balfour Declaration, the PA would have had to invent it.

Itamar Marcus..
Opinion/JPost..
02 November '17..
Link: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Had-there-been-no-Balfour-Declaration-the-PA-would-not-have-been-invented-513217

Every year, the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration passes by quietly in Israel with hardly any notice. Only this year it is being noted and celebrated — because it is the 100th anniversary.

However this is not true of the Palestinian Authority. Ever since Palestinian Media Watch has been monitoring the PA, the date of the Balfour Declaration was among the most important days on the PA calendar. Each year, PA schools would have special sessions discussing Balfour.

In 2011, for example, the PA organized a letter writing campaign from schoolchildren to the Queen of England “to mark the 94th anniversary of the cursed Balfour promise.”

Why is it that Israelis, who are the direct beneficiaries of the Balfour Declaration, have been ignoring it, while for Palestinians it is so important?

Who Would've Thought? BBC report on UK Balfour dinner follows standard formula - by Hadar Sela

...As we see from this report and others, BBC coverage of the Balfour Declaration centenary has conformed to a standard formula focusing on unquestioning amplification of PA/PLO messaging while completely erasing the part of the document relating to “the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country” and the topic of Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
07 November '17..

In addition to the items relating to the Balfour Declaration centenary already discussed here (see ‘related articles’ below), on November 2nd the BBC News website’s Middle East page carried an article titled “Balfour Declaration: Theresa May hosts Israeli PM for centenary“.

Embedded in that article are two filmed reports by Tom Bateman and Yolande Knell and a link to another article promoting anti-Israel theatricals and amplifying the PA/PLO’s politicised messaging on the Balfour Declaration – all of which also appeared separately on the same webpage.

Comparatively little of this article relates to the subject matter described in its headline but almost 30% of its 538 words (not including the insert of analysis from the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent) are devoted to promotion of the PA/PLO chosen narrative (along with references to “their land”) including – once again – a link to an op-ed by Mahmoud Abbas that appeared in the Guardian.

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The Balfour Declaration at 100 and How It Redefined Indigenous People - by Judea Pearl

...“Professor Khalidi, can you name a Canaanite figure that you are proud of? A Canaanite poem that you enjoy reciting? A Canaanite holiday that you celebrate? A Canaanite leader who is a role model to your children? Replace the word “Canaanite” with “biblical” and you will find four questions that every Israeli child can answer half asleep.

Judea Pearl..
JewishJournal.com..
03 November '17..
Link: http://jewishjournal.com/opinion/226997/balfour-declaration-100-redefined-indigenous-people/

It has been 100 years since the Balfour Declaration – issued by the British government on Nov. 2, 1917 – offered the first international recognition of Jewish national aspirations. In many ways, its importance is obvious: it encouraged some 400,000 European Jews to emigrate to Palestine in the years 1917-1940, and made it possible to lay the groundwork for the State of Israel.

But there is another significance that has not been fully recognized among modern historians, even though it tells us more about the current obstacles to peace than any of the usual explanations. I am speaking of the politico-philosophical precedent set by the Balfour Declaration regarding national identity, land ownership, self determination and the notion of “indigenous people.”

On the surface, the declaration’s text touches on none of these issues. Known as “history’s most famous letter,” this 67-word text actually reads like a holiday greeting card: “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 that civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

A close examination, however, reveals two asymmetries which, by today’s standards, would probably evoke bitter objections. First, the words “people” and “national” are attached to Jews, not to the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, who are referred to as “communities.” Second, the non-Jewish communities are assured “civil and religious” rights, not national rights, let alone a “national home.”

This asymmetry is probably what infuriated Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi who, in an emotional lecture on Sept. 25 this year, reportedly pounded the table and blasted the Balfour Declaration as “a declaration of war by the British Empire on the indigenous population of the land it was promising to the Jewish people.”

The Fisking of Mahmoud Abbas' anti-Balfour article - by Elder of Ziyon

...Why does Mahmoud Abbas, so proud of Palestinian heritage, accept a colonialist definition of Palestine that excludes much of what was considered Palestine before 1917? The answer is he same as to the question of why did the PLO in 1964 explicitly exclude the West Bank and Gaza from areas it claimed as its land. Because Palestinian nationalism was never about creating a state - it was about destroying one.

Elder of Ziyon..
05 November '17..

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas wrote his own article about how Britain should "atone" for the Balfour Declaration.

Even though the article is in English, I can only find it in one Gulf newspaper. The British press seems to have ignored Abbas altogether during Balfour week!

But his article still needs to be exposed - because it is a litany of Palestinian lies that must be answered.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Surprise? BBC’s Bateman amplifies PLO’s Balfour agitprop - by Hadar Sela

...In other words, the ‘protest‘ and messaging given worldwide amplification by the BBC’s Jerusalem Bureau was actually pre-planned political agitprop organised by the Palestinian Authority and the PLO...The BBC, however, failed to disclose to its audiences the background to the political propaganda it chose to amplify.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
05 November '17..

Among no fewer than eight items concerning the Balfour Declaration centenary that appeared on the BBC News website’s Middle East page on November 2nd was a filmed report titled “Palestinians call for Balfour Declaration apology” (apparently also aired on BBC television) by the BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Tom Bateman.

“The BBC’s Tom Bateman reports from outside the British consulate in East Jerusalem, where Palestinian representatives have delivered a message to diplomats calling on the UK to apologise for the Balfour Declaration.

One hundred years ago, then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour expressed British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine – something Palestinians regard as a historical injustice.”

In his report Bateman told BBC audiences that Palestinians had been dispossessed of “their land” – thereby inaccurately suggesting to viewers that the territory on which Israel was established was ‘Palestinian’. Bateman’s choice of words when describing Jewish connections to that territory is no less revealing.

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How Abbas’ Guardian Op-Ed Illustrates the Dishonesty of the ‘Palestinian Narrative’ - by Adam Levick

...Neither the Jews nor the Balfour Declaration are the cause of the Palestinians’ suffering. The system is not “rigged” against them. The choice of whether to resist the vices of hatred, scapegoating and self-pity, and embark on a path of political, cultural and moral reform, is their’s — and their’s alone.

Adam Levick..
Algemeiner.com..
03 November '17..

PA President Mahmoud Abbas addressing the UN General Assembly in September. Photo: UN.

The Guardian’s efforts to amplify the “injustice” of Israel’s continued existence in the context of the Balfour Centennial went into high gear when they published an op-ed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The op-ed included nearly every distortion and lie within what’s known as the ‘Palestinian narrative.’

Here are some of Abbas’ claims from his missive (“Britain must atone for the Balfour declaration — and 100 years of suffering,”).

Abbas claim:

[Balfour] disregard[ed] the political rights of those who already lived there.

Misleading.

The language used by Abbas (“those who already lived there”) buttresses the broader narrative, advanced repeatedly by Palestinian leaders, in their media and education system, that falsely frames Jews as interlopers with no historical or religious connection to the land of Israel.

In fact, Jews “already lived there” when Balfour was issued. Jews are an indigenous people to the land, and small Jewish communities remained even after their exile in 70 CE, during Byzantine, Muslim and Crusader rule. There has been a continuous Jewish presence in the Land of Israel for more than 3,000 years.

Abbas claim:

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The Balfour Declaration was a landmark in the political life of Britain, nevertheless, Britain went back on its word - Ruth R. Wisse

...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.

Ruth R. Wisse..
Wall Street Journal..
01 November '17..
Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-britain-renewed-the-promise-to-the-jews-1509577957

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.

Independent's Macintyre writes the dumbest Balfour article yet - but for Haaretz - by Elder of Ziyon

...He writes this a day after Hamas was discovered to be building a tunnel into Israel to perform war crimes. War crimes which Fatah condoned. So, Macintyre is saying the best chance for peace is to allow two terrorist groups to unite - and for Britain to encourage it.

Elder of Ziyon..
01 November '17..

Haaretz, apparently thinking it cannot find enough Israel haters on its staff, has a guest op-ed from Donald Macintyre who used to cover Gaza for The Independent:

Mahmoud al-Bahtiti, who has been fixing car and truck engines in Gaza City for the past 50 years didn’t vote in the 2006 Palestinian elections because he trusted neither Fatah nor Hamas.

But on Britain, he has definite opinions – or at least, about Britain circa 1917. He doesn't need a centenary commemoration to bring up the Balfour Declaration with a British visitor.

Last year, his business struggling for lack of customers, he asked me a question. Given that "We [Palestinians] are still suffering as a result" of the Declaration, wouldn’t an apology from the British government be in order?

Mahmoud wasn’t trying to get back what is now Israel. In his words: “The Jewish people took their rights after Hitler committed massacres against them. But who will give us our rights? Britain gave our lands to the Israelis and they never cared to give us our rights."

Obviously, Macintyre thinks that Mahmoud is speaking some deep truth here.

But guess what? The Palestinians could have had a state in 1937. And 1947. And 2000. And 2001. And 2008. And even under the Netanyahu government in 2014!

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The Palestinians - an invented people and 'the criminal Balfour Declaration' by Dr. Reuven Berko

...The declaration, issued on behalf of Prime Minister David Lloyd George's government and with the consent of the allies fighting alongside the U.K. against the Ottomans, made no mention of the Palestinians because at the time there were no Palestinians.

Dr. Reuven Berko..
Israel Hayom..
31 October '17..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-criminal-balfour-declaration/

The Balfour Declaration, issued on Nov. 2, 1917, is usually referred to as the "criminal Balfour promise." Such language looks at this historical document through an operational prism, as a promise that is to be fulfilled – not just a declaration.

Almost 100 years have passed, but the Palestinians are still fighting to eradicate the Jews from the land. They are preparing massive demonstrations, with Israeli Arabs, demanding that that United Kingdom apologize and retract the "criminal promise" and to compensate the Palestinians "just like the Israelis get reparations from Germany." As every objective historian would tell you, the notion that there exists a "historical Palestine" is nothing but a myth.

The land never had a Palestinian government, a Palestinian coin or a Palestinian establishment prior to Israel's existence. The land never had a national Palestinian history with a flag and an anthem, borders, a capital or ancient artifacts that could connect them to the soil.

The Arabs that had been living here prior to the declaration were migrant workers, urban dwellers, farmers, tribesmen and invaders. They were part of Ottoman Syria. As subjects of the empire, like all other subjects, they lacked a national narrative or any special civilian status.

How the Balfour Declaration Has Emerged at the Crux Of the War Against Israel - by Rick Richman

...One hundred years after the Balfour Declaration, and 95 years after the international community endorsed it, the Palestinians are still fighting the recognition of any Jewish sovereignty. They want a Palestinian state, but not at the cost of recognizing a Jewish one.

Rick Richman..
nysun.com..
28 October '17..

One hundred years ago — on November 2, 1917 — the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, issued a letter to the British Jewish leader, Lord Walter Rothschild, pledging British support for “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration was a milestone in the Zionist effort to re-create the Jewish home in the land where, nearly two millennia earlier, it had existed for centuries.

By 1922, the Balfour Declaration had become an established part of international law: endorsed after World War I by the Allies at their San Remo Conference; included in the 1920 peace treaty signed by Turkey’s Sultan Mehmet VI; and incorporated in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922, which expressly recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and their basis “for reconstituting their national home.”

After receiving the League of Nations Mandate, Britain split off the eastern portion of Palestine — known as “Transjordan” — and recognized the Arab emir, Abdullah, as its ruler. Strife between the Arab and Jewish communities in western Palestine led Britain in 1937 to propose a two-state solution: most of western Palestine would also become an Arab state, with a minuscule Jewish state in the remainder.

The Arabs rejected the 1937 partition proposal and also the 1947 United Nations two-state resolution, in favor of a war against the Jews.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Balfour’s greatest of gifts - by Caroline Glick

...The Balfour Declaration didn’t change the whole world. It changed the Jewish world. It didn’t change the Jewish world by creating a state for us. It changed the Jewish world by helping us to believe that we could fulfill our longing to return to Zion. And once we believed it, we did it.

Caroline Glick..
Carolineglick.com..
29 October '17..
Link: http://carolineglick.com/balfours-greatest-of-gifts/

This week Israel’s judo team was harassed and discriminated against by UAE officials when they tried to board a flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul, en route to Abu Dhabi to participate in the Judo Grand Slam competition.

Apropos of nothing, UAE told the Israelis they would only be permitted to enter the UAE from Amman. And once they finally arrived at the competition, they were prohibited from competing under their national flag. Lowlights of the UAE’s shameful bigotry included the forcing Tal Flicker to receive his gold medal under the international Judo association’s flag with the association’s theme song, rather than Israel’s national anthem playing in the background and the sight of a Moroccan female judoka literally running away from her Israeli opponent rather than shake hands with her.

The discrimination that Israel’s judokas suffered is newsworthy because it’s appalling, not because it is rare. It isn’t rare. Israeli athletes and performers, professors, students and tourists in countries throughout the world are regularly discriminated against for being Israeli Jews. Concerts are picketed or canceled. Israelis are denied educational opportunities and teaching positions.

Israeli brands are boycotted and Israeli shops are picketed from Montreal to Brooklyn to Johannesburg.

The simple act of purchasing Israeli cucumbers has become a political statement in countries around the world.

And of course, there is the world of diplomacy, where the nations of the world seem to have flushed the news of Israel’s establishment 70 years ago down the memory hole. The near-consensus view of UN institutions and to a growing degree, of EU institutions, not to mention the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, is that the Jewish exile should never have ended. The Jews should have remained scattered and at the mercy of the nations of the world, forever.

In the face of the growing discrimination Israelis suffer and rejection Israel endures, how are we to look at the centennial of the Balfour Declaration, which we will mark next Thursday? One hundred years ago, on November 2, 1917, Arthur Balfour, foreign secretary of Great Britain, detonated a bomb whose aftershocks are still being felt in Britain and worldwide.

That day, Balfour issued a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, the leader of the British Jewish community.

The letter, which quickly became known as the Balfour Declaration, effectively announced the British Empire supported an end of the Jewish people’s 1,800-year exile and its return to history, as a free nation in its homeland – the Land of Israel.

In Balfour’s immortal words, “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.”

Balfour: The ideal that moves me - by Dror Eydar

The handful of lines that make up the Balfour Declaration ushered the Jewish people into a new age • Between a home and a state, between a dream and reality: eight comments on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

Lord Edmund Allenby, Lord Arthur Balfour
 and Sir Herbert Samuel in Jerusalem in 1925

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
27 October '17..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/2017/10/27/the-ideal-that-moves-me/

The handful of lines that have come to be known as the Balfour Declaration ushered the Jewish people into a new age. For the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. and the failed Bar Kokhba revolt 65 years later, an international body with some authority officially recognized the practical possibility of the Jews' return to Zion. The declaration was vague, but it contained the hope that ultimately, at the end of a long process, a Jewish state would be established.

The Jews were so impressed with the declaration that people started marking the declaration's date, Nov. 2, 1917, like a birthday. The comparison to the Cyrus Cylinder was almost immediate, and the expression "Atchalta de'geulah" (Aramaic for "The beginning of the redemption") was omnipresent. Children born around that time were given names having to do with the redemption.

To this day, historians still debate the reasons – diplomatic, military, political, religious - that led Britain to issue the declaration. It is hard to say specifically what prompted it, because it is still shrouded in mystery and has not been fully understood. In many respects, the declaration was unprecedented, because it promised the Jewish people a state in a geographical location where the vast majority of them did not live.

2.

It is worthwhile to take a close look at the wording of the declaration. The introduction clarifies that it is not a balanced diplomatic document, but rather expresses the "sympathy" of the British government for "Jewish Zionist aspirations." The conclusion of the document also asks Lord Walter Rothschild, to whom the document is addressed, to "bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation." The reference is to the federation of British Jews, but still, it amounts to the recognition of the Zionist movement as a diplomatic body, capable of engaging in negotiations.

The body of the declaration is the long sentence between the introductory and concluding paragraphs: "His Majesty's Government view with favour …" – the initial wording proposed by the representatives of the Zionist movement was "adopts the principle," but the British, as they tend to do, took a less committed approach – "... the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people ... ." It did not say "the" national home, although everyone knew it would be the only national home. The word "state" was deemed too provocative. But what exactly is a "national home"?

Professor Aviva Halamish says that as early as the First Zionist Congress, in 1897, it was declared that "Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law." The architects of the Basel program did not use the word "state" mainly to avoid the wrath of the Ottoman rulers, although they clearly meant it. But did the British government also mean that the Jews' national home would eventually become a state?

In 1937, the Peel Commission investigated the topic. It pored over secret documents and heard testimonies, including from British Prime Minister Lloyd George. Its conclusion was that the British government meant (or at least did not rule out the possibility) that a Jewish state would ultimately be established in the historic land of Israel. The condition for the establishment of a state was a Jewish majority, and the declaration states that Britain would "use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object."

The Balfour Declaration centenary and a nasty, bigoted, ahistorical piece in the Guardian - by Richard Millett

...While Israel continues to thrive and contribute so positively to the world Macintyre merely offers more of the predictable anti-Israel activism journalism so prevalent in the Guardian.

Richard Millett..
UK Media Watch/Guest Post..
13 October '17..

What a nasty, bigoted, ahistorical piece Donald Macintyre wrote for yesterday’s Guardian. Macintyre is upset that while there is a Jewish state in light of the 1917 Balfour Declaration there is no Palestinian one and, predictably, he blames Israel 100 years later for this and thinks that the best way to resolves this is to destroy Jewish communities living in the West Bank. Macintyre suggests:

“Britain would ideally use the new economic relationship it will have to strike with Israel post-Brexit to exercise leverage on it by deciding on a clear boycott, not of Israel proper, but of trade with and goods coming from the settlements.”

Targeting Jewish communities for destruction resonates for Jewish people. Protagonists have always invented a reason to punish Jewish communities and Macintyre’s reasoning is just the latest fad.

Macintyre tries to back all this up by quoting the Balfour Declaration, which he claims has been breached by Britain because “the rights of ‘existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’” have been prejudiced.

The wording of the Balfour Declaration is pretty ambiguous because it did not define exactly where “in Palestine…a national home for the Jewish people” would be.

That said the original League of Nations British Mandate for Palestine included what is now Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza for Jewish settlement. Then in 1922 Jordan was hived off as an Arab-Palestinian state with the intent that Jewish settlement would be restricted to what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. A future Israel, therefore, lost some three-quarters of its potential land mass in 1922.

Nevertheless, this significantly reduced land mass set aside for future Jewish settlement became part of international law via the League of Nations. Macintyre chooses to ignore this.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The Peel Commission and the 80th Anniversary of the Two-State Solution - by Rick Richman

...Eighty years after the first proposal for a two-state solution, even “moderate” Palestinian Arab leaders still reject its basic premise. They want a Palestinian state, but not if the price is recognition of a Jewish state. On that issue the Palestinian position, to use the language of the Peel Commission report, “has not shifted by an inch.”

Rick Richman..
Mosaic Magazine..
02 October '17..

In this epochal year of Zionist anniversaries—the 120th of the First Zionist Conference in Basle, the 100th of the Balfour Declaration, the 70th of the 1947 UN Partition Resolution, the 50th of the Six-Day War—there is yet another to be marked: the 80th anniversary of the 1937 British Peel Commission Report, which first proposed a “two-state solution” for Palestine.

The story of the Peel report is largely unknown today, but it is worth retelling for two reasons:

First, it is a historic saga featuring six extraordinary figures, five of whom testified before the commission: on the Zionist side, David Ben-Gurion, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann, the leaders respectively of the left, right, and center of the Zionist movement; on the Arab side, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem; and on the British side, Winston Churchill, who gave crucial testimony in camera. Louis D. Brandeis, the leading American Zionist, also played a significant role.

Second, and perhaps even more important today, the story helps to explain why, a century after the Balfour Declaration, the Arab-Jewish conflict remains unresolved.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Surprise? The British Royal Boycott of Israel Continues - by Elliott Abrams

One might have hoped that those ostensibly in charge of the FCO, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and above him Prime Minister Theresa May, would weigh in and ask the “Royal Visits Committee” to explain its decision. If they do not, it will appear that Her Majesty’s Government is happy to tolerate a policy that increasingly seems to be based on sheer prejudice.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
11 May '17..
Link: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2017/05/12/the-british-royal-boycott-of-israel-continues/

I’ve written before, in 2014 and 2016, about the remarkable failure of any British royal to visit Israel except briefly for a funeral. Prince Philip attended Rabin’s funeral and Prince Charles attended that of Shimon Peres, but an official visit–to see and honor the country–appears to be beyond the pale.

This indefensible practice should not, it seems, be blamed on the royal family, but instead on the Foreign Office. The FCO, as it is known, has just done it again.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. Moreover, there will this year be commemorations of the British Commonwealth troops who fell in the Palestine Campaign in 1917.

But it is not to be, the British tabloid The Sun reports:

Amplifying Balfour agitprop yet again at BBC News - by Hadar Sela

The BBC cannot claim to be providing its audiences with accurate and impartial coverage of the topic of the already redundant – yet ongoing – ‘Balfour Apology Campaign’ if it reports – and amplifies – support for that campaign from certain British parliamentarians without also clarifying to audiences their record on Israel and their links to organisations connected to a Palestinian terror group proscribed by the British government.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
06 April '17..

Last July the BBC News website chose to amplify Palestinian Authority agitprop in an article misleadingly titled “Palestinians plan to sue Britain over 1917 Balfour act” which was discussed here at the time.

Last October the BBC News website gave a whitewashed account of an event at the House of Lords at which veteran anti-Israel campaigner Jenny Tonge hosted a re-launch of the ‘Balfour Apology Campaign’ run by the Hamas-linked ‘Palestinian Return Centre’ (PRC).

In January 2017 the BBC refrained from reporting on related statements made by the Palestinian Authority’s Riyad al Maliki.

“When I met the British foreign secretary, I told him very clearly what we expect. We expect them to apologize, to accept their historical responsibility, to acknowledge [their culpability], and to pay reparations.” [emphasis added]

“So far, we haven’t heard from them. The current escalation on their part makes us consider [possible] Palestinian action with regard to all those issues, including our action with regard to the Balfour Declaration. I won’t be divulging anything by saying that we have made plans for action in the framework of our embassies and our communities in Europe and Britain, and plans to mobilize civil society institutions in Britain and elsewhere.” [emphasis added]

The British government has of course made it clear on several occasions that it has no intention of apologising for the Balfour Declaration.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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British PM Theresa May, the Balfour Declaration and how words matter - by Sheri Oz

...Britain can be proud, therefore, of its part in the re-establishing of Israel, as a modern state, on the lands of our ancient Jewish Homeland. Just let them word it correctly from now on. OK?

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
19 December '16..

How can one small statement, get it so wrong! I am obviously pleased to see the British Prime Minister stand up for Israel and for the historic Balfour Declaration against the ridiculous rantings of Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, calling to sue Britain for having issued the Declaration.

However, language is important. At the Annual Conservative Friends of Israel luncheon on December 12th, Prime Minister Theresa May declared her pride in:

creating a homeland for the Jewish people.

You see, herein lies a major reason for Israel’s problems on the stage of public opinion. The wording.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Apologise for the Balfour Declaration? You are having a laugh. - by David Collier

...It isn’t often that I agree with Ben White, but I will accept his article in one tiny part. The British do need to “reflect on a painful legacy”. Balfour was written in 1917. By 1922 the Mandate was in place. If the British had swiftly finished the job they had been given international license to carry out, just how many Jewish lives could have been saved? Heartbreaking. Closing the doors to Jews running from the holocaust. That indeed does need some British reflection.

David Collier..
Across the Great Divide..
09 November '16..

Suddenly everyone wants to talk about a letter written 99 years ago. As Israelis and Zionists worldwide begin the countdown to the 100-year anniversary celebration of the Balfour Declaration, several campaigns have been launched that seek to persuade the British Government to ‘apologise’.

The Balfour Declaration was a letter, written by the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Walter Rothschild. It is recognised as having started the international process that would be undersigned through the San Remo conference, underpin the British Mandate of Palestine, the 1947 Partition and see the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

One of the ‘apologise for Balfour’ campaigns was launched by the Palestine Return Centre in the House of Lords. It was to give a platform to vile comments and would lead to the suspension and resignation of Baroness Jenny Tonge.

Another of these campaigns, ‘the Balfour Project’ held an event at Southwark Cathedral last weekend. This itself part of a worrying trend of anti-Israel events recently held in Christian places of worship in the UK. Reports from that event suggest the campaign is “yet another vehicle for the vilification of Israel.”

Israel exists. The Jewish home was eventually created (albeit in a circular route), and is without much argument, the most liberal nation in the entire region. So just what should the UK Government apologise for?

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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