Opinion Editorials, October 2007
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Arthur James Balfour: A Declaration of War and Injustice on Humanity
By Hassan El-Najjar
ccun.org, November 2, 2007
On November 2, 1917, the British foreign minister, Arthur James Balfour, wrote a letter to the Zionist leader, Rothschild, promising the British government support for Zionists to establish a national home for them in Palestine. That letter became known as the Balfour Declaration, which has been in fact a declaration of war and injustice on humanity.
Israel was established in 1948, as a result of that promise, over the ruins of Palestine and the Palestinian people, contrary to the Declaration claim not to do otherwise.
Palestinians were evicted by the Zionists from their ancestral homeland to live in refugee camps and in exile around the world until today.
Assisted by Western politicians, like Balfour, the Israelis never stopped their aggression and wars of expansion, not only against the Palestinian people but also against the entire region of the Middle East.
In 1948, Zionist Israelis annexed large territories from the Arab state of Palestine, according to the 1947 UN Partition Resolution 181; namely Galilee, most of Gaza Strip, Aujah, and the Jerusalem Corridor . They never allowed Palestinian refugees to return to their villages and cities after the war, in violation of the UN Resolution 194.
Then, they started aggression and expansionist wars of against neighboring Arab states in 1956, 1967, 1978, 1982, and 2006. They brutally waged war against the Palestinian people in the two uprisings of 1987-1993 and 2000-2005. Their supporters dragged the US into war against Iraq in 1991, imposed a regime of sanctions to weaken that Arab state until the final blow through the 2003 invasion and occupation.
Millions of innocent Arabs have been killed and injured, millions have been displaced and became refugees inside and outside their territories, as a result of these wars.
Now, Israelis and their supporters have been inciting the West generally and the US government in particular to attack Syria and Iran. However, they ignore the fact that the Israeli occupation government is the only nuclear power in the Middle East.
The Israeli government continues its threat to world peace by its continuous occupation of the Palestinian and Syrian territories, rejecting any attempts to give the Palestinian people their freedom. Instead, it has built a complex system of Apartheid, as eloquently described by President Carter, to control them while at the same time depriving them of their natural resources, their lands, and their freedom.
Was Balfour unique in history in giving what he did not own to those who were not entitled to?
Absolutely not.
Politicians today are competing on who is the best to serve the Israeli occupation government.
It doesn't matter for them if this leads to more devastating wars that kill millions of people, to the bankruptcy of the United States, and to denying the world the peace it deserves.
It doesn't matter for them if Israelis and Palestinians are destroyed at the end in a possible non-conventional war.
If one Balfour planted the seeds of war and injustice for the last ninety years, how about the Balfours of today?
What seeds are they planting?
God Help us!
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Text of the Balfour Declaration:
Foreign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's
Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist
aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
"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"
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of
the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
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