September 29 marks 100 years since Britain was assigned the role of Mandatory Power in Palestine. Despite a hundred years of bloody conflict and grief, the international community’s obligation to decolonize Palestine continues today.
The Balfour Declaration violated Britain’s legal obligations as set out by the Covenant of the League of Nations. This establishes a legal basis for the Palestinian people to demand reparations from the UK.
The British empire – and particularly the British Labour Party – bears historical responsibility for the Zionist colonization of Palestine which ultimately led to the expulsion of the Palestinians.
Jordan Peterson interviews Netanyahu and allows him to rant against Palestinians and misrepresent history: Israel did not create “a single refugee” in 1948, the neighboring Arab armies did that by telling the Palestinians to flee. This has always been Jewish land, the bible says so; though before Jews returned to it, it was just a “barren dump” and “wasteland” and “ruin.” There was no such thing as Palestinians. They were “southern Syrians” till Zionism built a “miracle” in the desert and they emigrated to the land.
On November 8, 2022 Dr. Salman Abu Sitta spoke at the University of Edinburgh to commemorate the centenary of the British Mandate in Palestine. In his speech he addresses the disgraced British colonial servant Lord Arthur Balfour, and issues a call for repair and justice to the British government today.
Noura Erakat writes in the book, “A Land With a People,” that the volume tackles power head-on, “charting the struggle against Zionism within the Jewish communities that Zionism purportedly serves. Its anti-Zionist Jewish stories are critical to decolonization.” Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh relates that the book traces some of his own history with the organization “Jewish Voice for Peace,” as he struggled to bring Palestinian narratives to a global audience.
Britain’s colonial entanglement in Palestine did not begin with the entry of General Allenby into Jerusalem, nor with the Balfour Declaration. Its roots go back to the era of high imperialism in the mid-nineteenth century.
Jeremy Ben-Ami has a straightforward explanation of the Balfour Declaration: “The British in the course of fighting World War 1 were looking for the support domestically in the U.K. of the Jewish community and there was a desire to offer and to promise to that community something that they wanted.”
Olive branches, a huge Palestinian flag, a large cardboard drawing of Lord Arthur Balfour, and Theresa May cartoons were some of the creative props displayed during the 15,000-strong ‘Justice Now: Make it Right for Palestine’ march and rally in London to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.
The Balfour Declaration was a wartime play by the British government to win international Jewry to its side. This meant the Russian masses in the U.S., and banker Jacob Schiff, who were against American entry into the war. The British may have exaggerated Jewish power, but Zionists lobbied successfully for the declaration by citing such power, marking the entry of the Israel lobby on the world stage.