Guidance for Teaching Controversial Issues Advice from the National Education Union – Conflict in the Middle East: Issues for Schools. National Education Union (NEU)This guidance identifies challenges which teachers may face teaching this topic and provides guidance on how to approach the topic skilfully. Independence or Catastrophe? Teaching Palestine through Multiple Perspectives Samia Shoman, Rethinking Schools…
A talk given online in September 2020. Alon Liel is a courageous man. He dares to speak truth to power, and knows the cost of this in his own life. While calling for an end to occupation and for equal rights for all Israelis and Palestinians, Liel outlines in this talk some of the current…
Parallel Histories have developed a series of videos for teaching disputed history starting with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They have produced a film ‘Should the British government be praised or blamed for the Balfour Declaration?’. Do watch it. They also have many other videos covering the history of Israel Palestine
A talk given online in August 2020. Tim Llewellyn: Hello, everyone. I want to start by saying two basic things to plan out, to map out my thesis, if you like, about the British media coverage, particularly the broadcasting media coverage of the Israel/Palestine question over the past 40 years or so. The first, the…
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…
Palestine: The RealityThe inside story of the Balfour Declaration 1917–1938 by J.M.N. Jeffries Published: 1939, reissued 2017 Formats: Hardback, paperback ISBN: 9781911072126 £26.99 First published by Longman Green and Co. Reissued by Olive Branch Press and Skyscraper Publications. Paperback £26.99 By John McHugo Many people trying to get to grips with the Israel/Palestine conflict…
A talk given online in June 2020. Andrew Whitley: My thanks to so many of you for taking the trouble today to attend this online talk from the Balfour Project, I hope you will find it stimulating and thought-provoking. It may be a little confusing at times because we’re going to be jumping between Palestine…
Retired Foreign Office Political Director Sir Jeremy Greenstock talked recently with the Balfour Project Peace Advocacy Fellows about British policy on Palestine/Israel, and answered questions about British Government recognition of Palestine, which he supports, and Israeli annexation plans – which he describes as “illegal, wrong, and a poor policy choice” made by Israeli PM Netanyahu.…
Diana Safieh: A question from Sara Apps, is there an opportunity to unlock the blockage on the ICC application? What best can we do to help? Vincent Fean: Palestine joined the International Criminal Court in 2015 after the UN General Assembly in 2012 voted for non-member state observer status for Palestine in the United Nations.…
Q&A Session with Sir Vincent Fean, Chair of the Balfour Project Vincent Fean: It’s a pleasure to be with you. I think it’s important for us to address questions raised by participants at the 2 April talk. We will try and make a habit of that. Diana Safieh: What is the response so far from…
Q&A Session with Sir Vincent Fean, Chair of the Balfour Project Vincent Fean: It’s a pleasure to be with you. I think it’s important for us to address questions raised by participants at the 2 April talk. We will try and make a habit of that. Diana Safieh: Welcome to the new Balfour Project podcast.…
Q&A Session with Sir Vincent Fean, Chair of the Balfour Project Vincent Fean: It’s a pleasure to be with you. I think it’s important for us to address questions raised by participants at the 2 April talk. We will try and make a habit of that. Diana Safieh: During the talk, Michael Goodwin made the…
Miranda Pinch It all started on the evening of April 18, 2017, the day that the date of the next British General Election was announced. I was attending a Balfour Project meeting in the House of Lords. After the meeting a dinner was laid on for invited guests, some of whom were MPs, who because…
Online talk by Sir Vincent Fean, Balfour Project, 2 April 2020 Read the transcript below: Vincent: A welcome to all. Thank you all for joining the Balfour Project today. I think it’s important to have this discussion to keep the spotlight on an issue which only gets worse with neglect. And at this time of…
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.
We have PDF copies of these panels at A1 size. We also have printed copies mounted on polystyrene and suitable for use in an exhibition. If you would like to set up an exhibition and hire these mounted panels or have a set of the pdf copies please email info@balfourproject.org. This is the first of…
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.
We are most grateful to the Times Literary Supplement for allowing us to reprint this review of The Arab Awakening, by George Antonius, published in 1938.
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…
NEW BOOKLET Britain’s broken promise: Time for a New Approach Printed version can be bought here or downloaded here A video of the whole event is now available. A public meeting of 1,200 people at Central Hall Westminster on 31 October heard politicians from all parties call on the British Government to recognise Palestine as…
In ‘Beyond the Balfour Declaration: The 100-Year Quest for Israeli–Palestinian Peace’, Leslie Turnberg has tried to grapple with the difficult problem of achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
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.
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.
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.
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…
Britain in Palestine 1917-1948 investigates the contradictory promises and actions which defined British Mandatory rule in Palestine and laid the groundwork for the Nakba (the catastrophe) and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The roots of the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental landscape of Palestine and Israel can be traced back…
In 2015, historian William Mathew published a book consisting of a series of articles from the Daily Mail of 1923. These presented a hitherto uninformed British readership with details of official promises made to the Arabs in 1915–16 of post-war independence for Palestine in exchange for their support in the struggle against the Ottoman Empire…
This collection of dialectical exchanges between a Jewish academic and a Catholic colleague on the troubled history of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a dense and demanding book.
This highly significant book does not fit easily into any one category, but for those with a special interest in the Balfour Declaration it is the implications and complexities of this that make it unique.
Anti-Zionism in London’s Jewish East End, 1890-1948 A summary of Chapter 6 with this title in Brian Klug’s: Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life, Vallentine Mitchell (2010) Brian Klug, being a philosopher, approaches this subject from a fascinating and very different angle to most historians. He casts a new light on the…
From Brian Klug, Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011, pp. 199-210 There appears to be a conundrum about Arthur Balfour.1 On the one hand, his name is inseparable from the Declaration he signed as Foreign Secretary on 2 November 1917, which read in part: ‘His Majesty’s Government view…
3 January, 1919 Introduction Following the First World War, Emir Feisal, son of Sherif Hussein (Husayn) of Mecca, and the leader of the Arab movement, met in Aqaba with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Zionist Commission to Palestine. Later, at the Paris Peace Conference, the two negotiated and signed the following agreement,…
Lloyd George, David, (First Earl of Dwyfor) 1863-1945 Introduction Because the focus of this website is the Balfour Declaration and its consequences, this biography will be limited to Lloyd George’s career until the end of the First World War, with particular attention to formative influences on him.