Balfour Declaration of 1917

Arthur James Balfour

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was a typed letter, signed by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, to Walter Rothschild (2nd Baron Rothschild) for onwards transmission to "the Zionist Federation" of Great Britain and Ireland.

It was presumably prepared by, or in association with Chaim Weizmann (President of the Zionist Federation, so he is effectively writing to himself) and Nahum Sokolow (but see "controversies" below). It seems to have been against the wishes of most or all leaders of the established Jewish community in the UK.

Wikipedia distortions

The Wikipedia version of this article is misleading in numerous ways. It describes the supposed recipient, 2nd Baron (Walter) Rothschild as "a leader of the British Jewish community" for which, despite his immense wealth and the fame of his prececessor, there seems to be no evidence. The Wikipedia describes him as an avid Zionist, a claim not even made in the Israeli newspaper which is the sole reference they have offered .

Some of the serious doubts about the issueing of the Declaration are confusingly covered by the Wikipedia but there is nothing on the strong opposition of all the most influential British Jews. Contrary to the impression given, it was not the declared intention of the British Government at any stage for the "homeland" to become an independent state. The British were firmly opposed to ethnic cleansing despite the fact that virtually all Zionists supported it, most of them quite openly. There is a small and misleading section on the opposition of Palestinians.

The Wikipedia article (as at 29 December 2011) covers some of what should really be called opposition to the Declaration but confusingly refers to opposition to the Declaration as "controversy".

The effect is further spoiled by the inclusion of two potentially real "controversies" concerning who really wrote the Declaration. Wikipedia claims that Lord Alfred Milner or Leo Amery could have been the real authors but Wikispooks would in all cases avoid quoting the "Institute of Historical Research" for any "surprising" information. Not only did Leo Amery never claim or admit to being Jewish but his son John joined the side of the Nazis during World War II and was hanged for treason. (His other son, Julian, was a convinced Zionist and became a member of Parliament).

Important wording

All sources agree that this passage (taking up most of the Balfour Declaration) is the important one:

"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.

Mysterious Background to the Balfour Declaration

While it is known that the British Government discussed the issuing of this document (and it declares itself to be "His Majesty's government view") very little is known about how the Balfour Declaration came to be issued. When a new conservative government less sympathetic to Zionism came to power in 1922 and attempted to look into the origins of the Balfour declaration, it found that the colonial office held no such records, and nothing was found foreign office files either.

... Although the colonial office in the end submitted a memorandum on the "History of the Negotiations leading up to the Balfour Declaration", it conceded that the memorandum was "very inadequate', and that the material available could not provide a 'complete and connected narrative". It was nevertheless submitted, to quote the head of the Middle East Department of the colonial office, Sir John Evelyn Shukburgh "as a humble experiment in the art of making bricks without straw".

Dr. Sahar Huneidi, author of "A Broken Trust, Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians" 2001 says:

It is peculiar that merely five years after the Balfour declaration was issued, there was no record of its history in British archives. Were these documents deliberately concealed? Were they destroyed? It is difficult to answer, but tempting to speculate.

Recipient of the Balfour Declaration

Walter Rothschild, raised to "2nd Baron Rothschild" in 1915 is described by the Wikipedia "as an active Zionist and close friend of Chaim Weizmann", but the Israeli newspaper article referenced doesn't even claim that he was "an active Zionist" and the rest of their article on him makes it seem unlikely. There seems to be no evidence for him ever taking an interest in Palestine, or politics after he stood down from Parliament at the General Election of Jan 1910, aged 42. (He had entered Parliament at a by-election in 1899 and won general elections in 1900 and 1906).

Wikipedia states that Walter Rothschild was exceptionally shy and had retired from the family banking at the age 40 in 1908. His passion was zoology, collecting samples in Europe and North Africa while sending other collectors much further afield. He is most famous for naming an African giraffe and collecting 2 million butterflies. It is not obvious that he ever visited Palestine, making it even more strange to call him "an avid Zionist". Weizmann's article at the Wikipedia says nothing of him being friendly with any of the Rothschilds, and it is known that the 1st Baron opposed Theodore Herzl's efforts in 1896 and 1902. This despite the fact that the Baron had been funding settlements in Palestine since 1891, before Theodore Herzl was converted to Zionism in 1895.

Views of British Jews

It is known that most (or maybe all) other prominent British Jews were strongly opposed to Zionism. As the Boston Globe put it in 2006:

When Weizmann secured his goal in 1917, some of the eminences of British Jewry were horrified. David Alexander and Claude Montefiore, presidents respectively of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and of the Anglo-Jewish Association, thought the Balfour Declaration "a veritable calamity for the whole Jewish people" which must "have the effect throughout the world of stamping the Jews as strangers in their native lands, and of undermining their hard-won position as citizens and nationals of those lands."

Similarly, the one Jew in the British Government in 1917, Edwin Montague, was extremely hostile to the idea (which appeared to have been set in motion without his knowledge). One of his 3 memos on the subject was entitled "Memorandom on the Anti-Semitism of the British Government" and was submitted to the Cabinet, 23rd Aug 1917, which should have been in plenty of time to stop it going out in Nov of that year:

... at the very time when these Jews [referring to Jews in Russia] have been acknowledged as Jewish Russians and given all liberties, it seems to be inconceivable that Zionism should be officially recognised by the British Government, and that Mr. Balfour should be authorised to say that Palestine was to be reconstituted as the 'national home of the Jewish people.' I do not know what this involves, but I assume that it means that Mohammedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews, and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with this English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans [sic] in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine.

Did the British intend an independent state?

At no time between the declaration being made in 1917 and the Independence of Israel in 1948 does Britain seem to have intended the whole of Palestine to become an independent Jewish state and only occasional support for a portion of it to be partitioned off and made a state. It is possible that reference to "a homeland" was intended more in the nature of the Russian Pale or Stalin's prepared Oblast in Siberia.

The partition proposed by the 1937 Palestine Royal Commission report is often quoted in this context but the British government moved swiftly to set up the Woodhead Commission to "recommend an actual partition plan". The new proposals would have given less than 5% of the land area of Palestine to the Jews. The British Government accompanied the publication of the Woodhead Report by a statement of policy rejecting partition as impracticable

Author of the Declaration, Nahum Sokolow, represented the Zionist Organization at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and at the same time denied that a state was intended:

It has been said and is still being obstinately repeated by anti-Zionists again and again, that Zionism aims at the creation of an independent "Jewish State" But this is wholly fallacious. The "Jewish State" was never part of the Zionist programme. The Jewish State was the title of Herzl's first pamphlet, which had the supreme merit of forcing people to think. This pamphlet was followed by the first Zionist Congress, which accepted the Basle programme - the only programme in existence.

Opposition to the declaration

Much significant opposition to the Balfour Declaration is missing from the Wikipedia article and some is very poorly covered. The views of 90% of the population get less than 5% of the article, and are well understated. Israeli historian Benny Morris in his book "Righteous Victims" twice mentions that, on the first anniversary of the Declaration, 2nd Nov 1918, a Balfour day parade was held in Jewish Jerusalem and that there were protests. The much more significant mention is on p.90, where Musa Kathim al-Husseini, Jerusalem's mayor at the time, hands the military governor of Palestine, Storrs, a petition from more than 100 Palestinian notables which stated:

"We have noticed yesterday a large crowed of Jews carrying banners and over-running the streets shouting words which hurt the feeling and wound the soul. They [Zionist Jews] pretend with OPEN VOICE that Palestine, which is the Holy Land of our fathers and the graveyard of our ancestors, which has been inhabited by the Arabs for long ages, who loved it and died in defending it, is NOW a national home for them."

How much was the Declaration driven by antisemitism?

Also completely missing from the Wikipedia is a discussion on the extent to which the Balfour Declaration was driven by antisemitism.

Arthur Balfour himself, despite being a friend of Chaim Weizmann, would almost certainly be considered antisemitic by any modern standard. He had been the main supporter of the 1905 Alien’s Act, restricting Jewish immigration into England after pogroms in Romania and Russia.

Balfour wrote an introduction to the epic book of his friend (and fellow author of the Declaration), Nahum Sokolow, "The History of Zionism, 1600-1918" and says:

If [Zionism] succeeds, it will do a great spiritual and material work for the Jews, but not for them alone. For as I read its meaning it is, among other things, a serious endeavour to mitigate the age-long miseries created for western civilisation by the presence in its midst of a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or absorb. Surely, for this if for no other reason, it should receive our support.

What else do we know about the authors?

Nahum Sokolow claimed (above) in 1919 that it was not the intention of the Zionists to create a Jewish state. Other sources suggest that, at least in 1914, he had been in favour of the ethnic cleansing of the natives, a process then known as "transfer".

Chaim Weizmann was friendly with the likely antisemitic Arthur Balfour and the allegedly antisemitic Sir William Evans-Gordon, another enthusiast for control of Jewish immigration. Chaim Weizmann went "out of his way to paint an extraordinary sympathetic portrait of this bigot":

Sir William Evans-Gordon had no particular anti-Jewish prejudices ... he was sincerely ready to encourage any settlement of Jews almost anywhere in the British Empire but he failed to see why the ghettoes of London or Leeds should be made into a branch of the ghettoes of Warsaw and Pinsk.