Maurice Samuel’s 1924 tract, “You Gentiles,” is cherished by antisemites and Zionists alike because it says that a Jew can never mix successfully in a non-Jewish world because the Jew’s concerns are more serious, and the gentile’s more playful, so the Jew will always be “a source of unhappiness to himself and to those around him.” Samuel’s book insists on the impossibility of Jews and non-Jews living in stability and respect, and thus, the necessity of Jews living in their own land.

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.”