Middle East and the West Still Sundered by Balfour Declaration

by Andrew I. Killgore

“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 the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status of Jews in any other country.”

The Balfour Declaration (Nov. 2, 1917)

“I wish to place on record my view that the policy of His Majesty’s Government is anti-Semitic in result and will prove a rallying ground for anti-Semites in every country of the world...It seems inconceivable that Mr. Balfour should be authorized 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 Mohammadans and Christians are to make way for the Jews…”

Edwin Montagu, Cabinet memorandum, Aug. 13, 1917

“We feared that the proposed national home might create far more anti-Semitism than it would cure.”

C.G. Montefiore, The (British) National Review , December 1936

Among any listings of the great Jewish families of Britain in the early 20th century, the Montagus and Montefiores probably would rank at the top. Edwin Montagu was secretary to the British cabinet in 1917 when he argued, as set out above, that the Balfour Declaration, named for Lord Arthur James Balfour, foreign secretary of Britain, would promote anti-Semitism.

C.G. Montefiore argued the same thing. The only effect of their combined position, however, was the change of just one word in the Declaration. The reference to British support for “the” national home for the Jewish people in Palestine was altered to “a” national home. The prescient Montagu perceived that the implication of the Declaration was that the Muslim and Christian Palestinians were to be moved out of Palestine to make room for Jews. This, to him, was “inconceivable.”

As envisaged by Theodor Herzl and other Zionist ideologues of the time, a separate state for Jews would solve what in the 19th century was called “the Jewish problem.” This referred both to the then apparent unwillingness of European societies to accept Jews, and the apparent inability of Jews to join the general population in any case. In his diaries, Herzl put it this way: “They do not let us dissolve into the [larger] population, nor are we able to do so.”

Why did Britain in 1917 promise to support a Jewish state in Palestine against the opposition of leading British Jews when Herzl, the father of political Zionism and ultimately of the Jewish State, had tried mightily and failed a decade and a half earlier to gain the support of any of the Great Powers for such a project?

We may never have the full story, but we do know why Herzl failed. He had nothing to offer in return. He did get one nibble, however. That was from Sultan Abdul Hamid of Turkey.

The Ottoman Empire was disastrously in debt at the time, and when Herzl offered to pay off Turkish debts, Abdul Hamid listened. But when he realized that a Jewish state would take away part of his then realm, the Sultan said no.

Herzl had tried and failed with all the other Great Powers of the day. The Russian czar, the German Kaiser, the Austro-Hungarian emperor and the British government each turned him down.

The seventh World Zionist Congress meeting at Basel, Switzerland in 1903 therefore decided, against Herzl’s passionate opposition, that getting big power support for a Jewish State in Palestine was impracticable. Delegates settled instead on Uganda, in Africa, as the site of a dreamed-of modern Israel. Herzl died the following year, mistakenly believing that his own dream had failed.

The Balfour Declaration now is 79 years old. However, British Foreign Office files that might explain why the Declaration was issued against the arguments of leading British Jewish opinion that anti-Semitism would result remain sealed.

Something to Offer

Now it seems increasingly possible that the files may never be opened. But no files are needed to document the obvious fact that the Zionists, led by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who later became the first president of Israel, had something to offer Britain in 1916 and 1917 while Herzl earlier had nothing. That something was the Zionists’ promise to use Jewish influence in the United States to bring America into World War I on the side of the Allies.

After the Battle of the Somme, which raged from July to November of 1916, proved that the combined French and British military forces could not dislodge the German army from France, Britain’s leaders realized that victory over the Central Powers led by Germany would not be possible unless the United States joined the Allies.

Winston Churchill wrote later that the world had not realized how close Britain was to defeat, and that any straw had to be grasped. Such a straw was the claim that Jewish influence in the United States could help bring the United States into World War I on the side of the Allies. Weizmann made this case with his legendary forcefulness and brilliance. In the words of The Encyclopedia Britannica, Britain “hoped” that Jewish influence in America would tip the balance. One reason for this hope was what has come to be called “the myth of Jewish power.” That dates back to the appearance around the turn of the century of a famous forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, circulated by Czarist Russia’s secret police. The document claimed that Jews and Freemasons sought to undercut Christianity and take over the world.

When Britain and the Zionists were negotiating the wording of the Balfour Declaration in 1916 and 1917, the “myth of Jewish power” was alive and well. It was only in 1921 that the spurious character of the Protocols was revealed by Philip Graves, who demonstrated in the Times of London their obvious resemblance to an 1864 satire, Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, written by French lawyer Maurice Joly.

Israel’s long-term success depends on the American taxpayer.

So British leaders may well have believed the assurances of Dr. Weizmann that Jews in America could help rally opinion to the side of the Allies. Weizmann himself may have believed it at the time.

The United States did enter the war on the side of Britain, France and the Allies, thus assuring the defeat of the Central Powers led by Germany. But America’s entry into the war had little or nothing to do with any Jewish machinations.

In the medieval German legend, Dr. Faustus, or Faust, “sold” his soul to the devil. He gained in return only knowledge of magical tricks. In the Balfour Declaration, Britain bargained its reputation for integrity and good sense by selling out the Palestinians, against whom it had no complaint, and Jews who were worried that increased anti-Semitism would result. Britain gained nothing in return. By the time the Balfour Declaration actually was signed—after more than a year of negotiations—the U.S. already had been at war with Germany for seven months.

Faust made a bad bargain, but he hurt only himself. The Balfour “bargain” brought misery on four parties mentioned in the Declaration, and on the fifth unmentioned party, the United States, whose entry into World War I Britain “hoped” to achieve. The four mentioned parties were Britain itself, “the Jewish people” who were promised a state of their own in Palestine, “Jews in any other country” (presumably people like the Montagus and Montefiores who thought Zionism a dangerous idea), and “the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” meaning the Palestinians.

The Palestinians became a whole nation of Biblical Jobs who had done nothing to merit their continuing agony. Three-quarters of a million of them lost their homes and property in 1948 and 1949 as the result of Israeli massacres and terror. Another 250,000 were forced out of Palestine at gunpoint in 1967 when Israeli forces seized the West Bank and Gaza, along with Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan Heights. About half of the current total of 6.5 million Palestinians now live outside their ancient homeland. None have been compensated for their losses.

Britain seemed to suffer the least. However, its departure from the Middle East, and probably from the British Empire as a whole, was hastened as it eventually dawned on residents of other British colonies that, rather than shepherding the Palestinians along to self-government, as required by the terms of Britain’s League of Nations “mandate” for Palestine after World War I, London had heartlessly sacrificed the Palestinians to advance its own imperial interests.

If the Palestinians were the big losers, the Jewish citizens of the State of Israel, “the Jewish people” of the Balfour Declaration, appear to be the big winners 79 years after the Declaration was issued. But it is perhaps still too early to be certain. Instead one might bear in mind the words of the late Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse Tung. When asked in the 1970s what he thought of the French Revolution more than a century and a half earlier, he replied, “Let’s wait and see how it turns out.”

At age 48 this year, the State of Israel is militarily dominant in the area. But to became so it has fought seven military contests against the Arabs.

The first three wars, in 1948-1949, 1956 and 1967, were brilliant Israeli successes. But Israel “won” the last four wars—the 1969-1970 War of Attrition with Egypt, the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria, the 1982-1983 invasion of Lebanon, and the 1987-1993 Palestinian intifada—only in the sense that it avoided defeat. The results were much messier and less certain, and no further territory was conquered.

Israel is militarily secure in the area and its per capita domestic product stands at about $14,000 a year, but both accomplishments depend on some five billion dollars a year in U.S. military and economic assistance. Israel’s long-term success, therefore, depends on the American taxpayer, who doesn’t like foreign aid at all.

Four other problems pose serious threats to the long-term viability of the State of Israel. Two of these are endemic to Israeli society. The first is the split between European or Ashkenazi Jews and the Oriental or Sephardic community. The latter predominate in numbers but feel themselves, correctly, to be in an inferior position in society. Thirty years ago this seemed to be Israel’s most serious problem.

Now, the secular-religious split seems even more serious. When I was Consul in Jerusalem 35 years ago, Israeli friends told me of their deep concern that the split might eventually destroy the state. Instead of easing with the years, it has worsened, as symbolized by the assassination on religious grounds of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a secular Jew of European ancestry, by Yigal Amir, a religiously Orthodox Oriental Jew. The bitterness of the secular-religious issue is suggested by the comment of Rabin’s widow, Leah, that she would rather her grandchildren grow up as Arabs than as religious Jews.

An Existential Threat

But the existential threat to Israel stems from its inability to achieve reconciliation with the Arabs. In Israel, both Jews and Palestinians hold Israeli citizenship. But since Palestinians do not have the all-important “Jewish nationality,” they are ineligible for many benefits that the government bestows only on Jewish citizens. This second-class citizenship obviously affects how much loyalty Palestinian citizens of Israel, who according to recent reports number “nearly a million,” feel toward the state.

If the fundamental ethos of Zionism permitted Israel to grant equal rights to all its citizens, and equal status to all religions, reconciliation could follow immediately. But Israel cannot do so and still remain a Jewish State. Thus it remains the perpetual outsider in the Middle East.

Israel’s “peace” with Egypt, now more than 15 years old, is an illustration. Little reconciliation can be detected with even the legendarily easy-going Egyptians, as evidenced by the fact that any Egyptian shop carrying Israeli goods will be boycotted by the Egyptian public and forced to close.

If true reconciliation were possible, the demographic tide running against Israel wouldn’t matter. But at present rates of increase the Palestinians inside Israel, now nearly 20 percent of the total population, may be a third in as little as 20 years. The lower Israeli Jewish natural increase is aggravated by the silent drain of an estimated 60,000 Jewish Israelis per year to the United States. It is simply a matter of time, perhaps within 40 years, before the State of Israel—without either the West Bank or Gaza—has more Muslim and Christian than Jewish inhabitants. All other problems of Israel aside, simple demographics mean Israel cannot survive as a “Jewish” State.

While Edwin Montagu warned of increased anti-Semitism that might flow from the Balfour Declaration, he could not have imagined the disaster for Jews that developed in Germany a decade and a half later. After the ruinous inflation of the 1920s had wiped out Germany’s middle class, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany’s World War I defeat. Although Germany’s Jews had fought as loyally for the Kaiser as had other Germans, Hitler charged the Jews with betrayal. Were the Nazis just looking for a convenient scapegoat, or had they, like the British in 1916 and 1917, fallen for the old myth of Jewish power? Did they really believe that Jewish influence in America had brought the United States into World War I, thus assuring Germany’s defeat?

The historical possibility cannot be dismissed that Hitler’s murderous hatred of Jews, infinitely worse than anything Edwin Montagu could have imagined, was linked to the Balfour Declaration. If that is the case, then the Declaration’s “Jews in any other country” were the greatest losers of all.

How big a loser is Balfour’s “unmentioned” United States? The material cost of Israel to the United States has been $77 billion in “real time” dollars, according to the Washington Report’s latest calculations. If other related costs are added such as compound interest on money borrowed by the U.S. government to give to Israel, lost commercial opportunities, the 1973 Arab oil embargo and aid to Egypt, the figures reach $200 billion or more.

But the material costs of Israel, as gigantic as they are, do not match the drain on the American spirit.

As noted American writer Gore Vidal wrote in his foreword to Israeli human rights activist Dr. Israel Shahak’s book, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, “the…invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the U.S.A., Israel’s unlikely patron.”

Deceptively named pro-Israel political action committees, founded and directed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s principal lobby in Washington, DC, bribe and bully or intimidate Congress into providing Israel with billions of taxpayer dollars every year. AIPAC, in recognition of its corrupting power within the American political system, has picked up such unflattering appellations as “the 800-pound gorilla” and “a night flower” because it flourishes in the protective shadow of a compliant media, but dies in the sunlight.

“Friends of Israel”

“Friends of Israel,” the Department of State’s politically correct term for ardent Zionists, ritually denounce non-Jews and Jews who criticize Israel as “anti-Semites” and “self-haters,” respectively. These brutal tactics have created a psychological “iron curtain” between American Zionists and other Americans that precludes honest discussion, or even any discussion at all, on the Middle East. To observe how this barrier works, note the “automatic shift” in any discussion of the Middle East that occurs when it is joined by a Zionist, or any Jewish person whose views are not known. The conversation smoothly shifts to another subject to avoid controversy that quickly can become emotional. This is the psychological iron curtain in action.

Ironically, the 19th century’s “Jewish problem” has been solved in the Western world—particularly in the United States—by a sea change in attitudes that Theodor Herzl never could have imagined. Jews and non-Jews accept each other in the most fundamental way—by intermarriage. For American Jews the rate of intermarriage exceeds 50 percent. Herzl was wrong about the incompatibility of European and Jewish societies.

By contrast, in the Middle East, the creation of a Jewish state also has created a “Jewish problem,” where none existed before. Many Jewish communities that thrived for centuries in Islamic countries have dwindled to little more than a memory. The problem, unfortunately, will remain unsolved so long as that Jewish state created by the Balfour Declaration remains unable to reconcile with the Muslim and Christian Palestinians whose displacement was rightly described 79 years ago by Edwin Montagu as “inconceivable.”