‘Less than three years after the Jews of Europe – including members of my own family – were ghettoised and ethnically cleansed for being Jewish, the people of Palestine were ethnically cleansed and ghettoised for NOT being Jewish.’
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The Balfour Project opposes all forms of racism, bigotry and discrimination, including antisemitism. We commend the recent Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism; one year in the making, by international scholars in antisemitism and related fields from Europe, the USA, Canada and Israel. The Declaration is intended as a response to the Working Definition on Antisemitism adopted…
Thank you all for joining us. I’m privileged to speak to you and address this really important and relevant topic of Christian Zionism as an imperial theology. The impact and influence of Christian Zionism have been manifested, especially in the last four years during the Trump presidency, and it was evident to everyone how influential…
An interview with Banjamin Balthaser, published on Jacobin The roots of modern Zionism are in colonialism. This was the foundation of the Jewish left’s opposition to Zionism in the 1930s and ’40s, on the grounds that it is a form of right-wing nationalism and imperialism that is fundamentally opposed to working-class internationalism. Israeli Prime Minister…
By Robert A. H. Cohen, published on Mondoweiss, 30 July 2020 Progressive rabbis in the UK have written to the Israeli embassy in London to express their concern over the Israeli government’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank. The letter has been sent from British Friends of Rabbis for Human Rights, an organisation…
A live online talk given in July 2020 Welcome everyone. Sarah Helm was a staff correspondent for The Sunday Times and a foreign correspondent for The Independent and she’s written two books, most recently, If This is a Woman about the Nazi concentration camp for women. And she has also written a play about the…
One State? An alternative, authentic Jewish voice By Peter Beinart, Published in on Jewish Currents 7th July 2020. WHAT MAKES SOMEONE A JEW—not just a Jew in name, but a Jew in good standing—today? In Haredi circles, being a real Jew means adhering to religious law. In leftist Jewish spaces, it means championing progressive causes.…
Washington Report, November 2005, pages 44–50 Special Report by John Cornelius IN THIS article the author relates what he believes to be the true story of how the British government came to issue what has come to be known as the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration took the form of a letter, dated Nov. 2,…
League of Nations 30 November 1937 C.495.M.336.1937.VI.Geneva, November 30th, 1937. LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATES P A L E S T I N E ——– REPORT of the PALESTINE ROYAL COMMISSION presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the United Kingdom Parliament by Command of His Britannic Majesty (July 1937) Distributed at the…
By Joseph Massad in Middle East Eye The Nakba, Palestinians’ loss of their lands and homes, arguably began in the 1880s with the arrival of the first Zionist Jewish colonists, who evicted Palestinians from land the colonists had purchased from absentee landlords. The Nakba is an ongoing calamity that continues to define the Palestinian condition…
In an unprecedented letter to Israel’s UK ambassador, prominent British Jews warn that annexation ‘poses an existential threat to the traditions of Zionism in Britain, and to Israel as we know it’ The following letter was sent by leading members of the UK Jewish community to Israel’s Ambassador to the Court of St James’s, Mark…
One of the many merits of the book is the way Khalidi uses his family and his own life experience to tell this tragic, yet-to-be-righted, story of the Palestinians.
Bernard Regan shows us what Britain did (and what Britain thought it was doing) by issuing the Balfour Declaration, by incorporating it into the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, and by governing Palestine in a way intended to implement it.
An eloquent account of the disastrous course and consequences, still with us, of Britain’s 31 years’ ownership of and faltering rule in Palestine.
During the Arab Revolt of 1936-39 the British carried out brutal military attacks on Palestinian civilians in rural areas, forerunners of what seems to be Israel’s latest policy of emptying the camps of the northern occupied West Bank of their refugee population.
John McHugo Edited text of speech for the Balfour Project event The Tragedy of Gaza in Edinburgh 17 March 2018 My role is to explain why Britain carries a historic responsibility to the people of Palestine generally, to the people of Gaza in particular, and also, I must stress, to the people of Israel. I…
Part I: Uncertainties See also Part II: U.S. Recognition of Israel, 14 May 1948: Truman’s Belated Support Part III: U.S. Recognition of Israel, 14 May 1948: ‘A Near-Run Thing’ William M. Mathew Abstract Zionism`s two most notable international successes in the 20th century were the U.K. Balfour Declaration, 2 November 1917, and the U.S. recognition…
By Tim Llewellyn This is a dispassionate book, written by someone who knows almost everything, about the tragic progress of Britain’s experiment with Zionism in Palestine to the present day’s existential horror. Black does not make judgments. His careful selection of sources and facts makes a neat footpath through the history. I was particularly interested…
By Ian Portman Abstract Faced with increasing antisemitism in Europe towards the end of the 19th century, many Jews chose to join the great waves of European emigration to the United States. Since the high middle ages, most of the world’s Jews had settled in eastern Europe, under welcoming Polish and later repressive Russian rule.…
By Roger Spooner When talking about the Balfour Declaration with a pastor from Bethlehem, he commented, ‘the problems for the Palestinians didn’t start in 1917, they started in 1840’. Literal reading of the Bible which had developed in the 17th Century took off in the 19th and restorationism gained political power through Lord Shaftesbury. His…
John Richmond Ernest Richmond ETR was a an architect who spent many years in the Arab World and was invited in 1920 by Sir Herbert Samuel to join the Palestine administration. His son has written about some of his writings from that period under the title Prophet of Doom: and published in the Arab and…
Centenary Lecture to the History Group, The Norfolk Club, 14 September 2017 by William Mathew It is argued here that only a special conjuncture of chance and short-term circumstance made it possible for an effective pro-Zionist policy to be successfully pursued by the British government in 1917. Much of this was war-related, and the absence…
An Interview1 in Mr. Balfour’s Apartment, 23 Rue Nitot, Paris, on June 24th, 1919, at 4:45 p.m. Present: Mr. Balfour, Mr. Justice Brandeis, Lord Eustace Percy and Mr. Frankfurter 2 Mr. Balfour expressed great satisfaction that Justice Brandeis came to Europe3He said the Jewish problem (of which the Palestinian question is only a fragment but…
“The BBC Radio Four ‘Sunday’ programme on October 1st included this very fair and balanced report on the forthcoming centenary of the Balfour Declaration. Chris Rose from the Amos Trust, speaking about the unfulfilled promises to the Palestinian people, echoed the call for ‘Equal Rights for All’ which is very much at the centre of…
William M Mathew compares the work of two Jewish historians on the long-term effects of the inter-communal violence and harsh response by British forces which rocked Palestine in 1929. Part 1.
William M Mathew compares the work of two Jewish historians on the long-term effects of the inter-communal violence and harsh response by British forces which rocked Palestine in 1929. Part 2.
This article was part of Robert Cohen’s talk at the Balfour Project conference,’How will we mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration’ in Southwark Cathedral on November 5th 2016: A leading British Rabbi has written: “Zionism and Zionistic activities not only depress Judaism by putting nationality first and religion second, but they injure Judaism by…
This talk was given at the Balfour Project conference in Southwark Cathedral on 5th November 2016 entitled: ‘How will we mark the Centenary of the Balfour Declaration’ By Dr Peter Shambrook Context: it is only in the context of the development of the war that all the promises/agreements that the British government made can be…
Charles Glass, writing in the London Review of Books in 2001, reviewed two books looking at the period of the British Mandate in Palestine. The review is reproduced here by kind permission.
by WILLIAM M. MATHEW Lecture given to the History Group of The Norfolk Club, 14 April 2016 to mark the centenary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement 1916 Abstract These three war-time initiatives are presented as part of a compressed, uncoordinated, two-year sequence set against the changing circumstances of international rivalries, imperial anxieties, and domestic politics. Contradictions …
Dr. Nadia Naser-Najjab finds in Jeffries’ documentations of 1923 a significant mix of parallels and contrasts with current British attitudes and policies towards Palestine.
By Dr William M Mathew Paper given at Balfour Project Annual Conference St. Chad`s College, University of Durham, 31 October 2015 In the limited time available I should like to make three basic points around this specific issue of fragility – and, in the process, move the emphasis away from the usual (and entirely proper)…
The Companion Guide has been professionally written for us, and gives fascinating background to the history introduced in the film. To give you an idea of what is in it see the section on the Balfour Declaration. It has 83 fully-referenced pages together with a detailed list of primary and secondary sources. The Companion Guide…
My dictionary defines Zionism as “a movement for the re-establishment of a Jewish national homeland and state in Palestine.” This was realized in May 1948 when the State of Israel was established. Many Jews are Zionists and committed to the quest for freedom and sovereignty of their people. But the majority of the world’s Zionists…
In 1907 Yitzhak Epstein, a Russian-born teacher who had settled in Palestine, published an article entitled “The Hidden Question” in the Hebrew periodical Ha-Shiloah. Its subject was the attitude of the Jews toward the Arabs of Palestine. “Among the grave questions raised by the concept of our people’s renaissance on its own soil,” wrote Epstein,…