Acknowledgements
To Benjamin H. Freedman, who committed himself to finding and telling the facts about Zionism and Communism. and encouraged others to do the same. The son of one of the founders of the American Jewish Committee, which for many years was anti-Zionist, Ben Freedman founded the League for Peace with Justice in Palestine in 1946. He gave me copies of materials on the Balfour Declaration which I might never have found on my own and encouraged my own research. (He died in April 1984.)
The Institute for Historical Review is providing means for the better understanding of the events of our time.
Attempts to review historical records impartially often reveal that blame, culpability, or dishonor are not to be attached wholly to one side in the conflicts of the last hundred years. To seek to untangle fact from propaganda is a worthy study, for it increases understanding of how we got where we are and it should help people resist exploitation by powerful and destructive interests in the present and future, by exposing their working in the past.
May I recommend to the Nobel Prize Committee that when the influence of this organization’s historical review and search for truth has prevailed the societies of its contributors — say about 5 years or less from now — that they consider the IHR for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Regrettably, some of the company in that award would be hard to bear!
The Balfour Declaration may be the most extraordinary document produced by any Government in world history. It took the form of a letter from the Government of His Britannic Majesty King George the Fifth, the Government of the largest empire the world has even known, on which — once upon a time — the sun never set; a letter to an international financier of the banking house of Rothschild who had been made a peer of the realm.
Arthur Koestler wrote that in the letter “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.” More than that, the country was still part of the Empire of a fourth, namely Turkey.
It read:
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.[1]
It was decided by Lord Allenby that the “Declaration” should not then be published in Palestine where his forces were still south of the Gaza-Beersheba line. This was not done until after the establishment of the Civil Administration in 1920.
Then why was the “Declaration” made a year before the end of what was called The Great War?
“The people” were told at the time that it was given as a return for a debt of gratitude which they were supposed to owe to the Zionist leader (and first President of Israel), Chaim Weizman, a Russian-born immigrant to Britain from Germany who was said to have invented a process of fermentation of horse chestnuts into scarce acetone for production of high explosives by the Ministry of Munitions.
This horse chestnut propaganda production was not dislodged from the mass mind by the short bursts of another story which was used officially between the World Wars.
So let us dig into the records and bury the chestnuts forever. Continue reading →
