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The imperialist exploitation of West Asia that accelerated after the First World War has never ceased. The effects on the region have been disastrous\u2014wars, conflicts, ecocide and ultimately genocide.\u00a0\u00a0They have left deep scars on the people and the land.<\/p>\n
Palestinians are among those most deeply affected.\u00a0\u00a0And despite the onslaught of British, Israeli and American militaries, they have endured.\u00a0\u00a0Their struggle has been exemplary; their courage steadfast; and their quest to reclaim their stolen land legendary.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
Palestine must remain in the forefront of global concern, as Israel seeks to deflect the world\u2019s attention from its heinous atrocities in occupied Gaza and the West Bank, as well as expansionist ambitions in Lebanon and Syria.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
History not only provides context for the present, it can act as a disinfectant, an antidote to the evil it explores and poison left behind.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
In this crucial time in history, as Palestinians fight for survival, it is important to look back on the cynical document that set in motion the racist colonial adventure and legacy of violence so brazenly displayed by Israel today.\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
The ordeal of the Palestinian nation\u2014the Nakba (catastrophe)\u2014did not begin on 7 October 2023.\u00a0\u00a0Their 108-year anguish began on 2 November 1917 with a carefully worded guileful policy statement of the British government\u2014the Balfour Declaration.\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
Although it had no sovereign rights over the land, then Secretary of State for\u00a0<\/u><\/u>Foreign Affairs, Arthur James Balfour, conveyed in a letter to British Zionist, Lord Walter Rothschild, that the British government would sponsor and facilitate the establishment of a \u201cJewish national homeland\u201d\u00a0in Palestine.<\/span><\/u><\/u><\/p>\n Conspicuous in the declaration is the arrogant presumption that the British government had the right to give away one people\u2019s land to another. The infamous\u00a0short letter<\/a>\u00a0that has caused so much misery for Palestinians, reads as follows:<\/p>\n Letter from Balfour to Rothschild<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The phrasing of the\u00a0Balfour agreement<\/a>, a classic colonial document, implied that the majority Palestinian population had no name, nor rights, and no voice. They were referred to as the existing \u201cnon-Jewish communities,\u201d while the minority Jews were identified as a \u201cpeople.\u201d\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n The letter was imbedded with ambiguities. Its British authors, for example, eschewed the word\u00a0\u201c<\/span>state,\u201d using the more obscure phrase \u201cestablishment of a\u00a0\u00a0national home.\u201d In the\u00a0initial draft, Zionist leaders\u00a0<\/a>pushed for the phrase \u201cthe national home of the Jewish people,\u201d to imply prior residence and to ensure that the whole of Palestine would be exclusively Jewish.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n The phrase establishment of a home \u201cin Palestine\u201d could be understood to mean a community, settlement or something else; not the entire area.\u00a0\u00a0The extent of the proposed Jewish homeland was never made clear.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n While Balfour\u2019s public pledge was written on behalf of his government, it was approved in advance by Britain\u2019s wartime allies\u2014France, Italy, the Vatican and the United States\u2014whose consensus gave it international legitimacy.\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n It is important to note that America\u00a0shares responsibility<\/a>\u00a0for the Balfour letter. President Woodrow Wilson\u2019s advanced approval of the document had a decisive effect on the judgment of the British cabinet.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n The 69th U.S. Congress, in June 1922, passed the\u00a0Lodge-Fish joint resolution<\/a>, favoring a home for Jews in Palestine. The joint resolution, which employed language nearly identical to the Balfour letter, was introduced by Rep. Hamilton Fish III (R-NY) and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA), and signed on 21 September 1922 by President Warren G. Harding.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n The United States, in 1924, bound itself further to the principles of the Balfour Declaration by signing the\u00a0Anglo-American Convention.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0The U.S. endorsed the treaty in order to protect American interests and rights under the British mandate of Palestine, that had been approved by the newly created League of Nations in 1920.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n The Balfour Declaration became a formidable instrument in the hands of European Zionists in their effort to transform a religion into a nation.\u00a0\u00a0They were acutely aware that appropriating and colonizing an already populated land could only be achieved through force.\u00a0\u00a0Inevitably, their idealized vision of a Jewish state has emerged as a racist outlaw entity.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n Israeli barbarity was certain. It was evinced early on in the ideology of Russian-born Zionist leader and founder of Revisionist Zionism,\u00a0Vladimir Ze\u2019ev Jabotinsky<\/a>\u00a0(1880-1940). Jabotinsky\u2014foundational ideologue for Israel\u2019s right-wing political bloc, particularly the Likud\u2014argued that morality and conscience could not dictate Zionist policy and that Zionists had to accept the fact that extremism and force were integral to accomplishing Jewish statehood. Hence, the genocidal strategies Israel has practiced for 78 years\u2014the mass displacement and ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians that the Israeli Occupation Forces have described as \u201cmopping up<\/a>\u201d and \u201cmowing the lawn\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n Zionis<\/span>m\u2019s founders also understood that they needed the\u00a0patronage<\/span>\u00a0of an imperial power to fulfill their objectives. With the decline of the\u00a0\u201c<\/span>perfidious Albion\u201d after the Second World War, the United States assumed Britain\u2019s imperial role and patronage of the Zionist colony.\u00a0\u00a0Since that time, London\u2019s Ten Downing Street has essentially subcontracted its foreign policy to Washington, while Israel has become inseparable from the White House and the U.S. Congress.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n Undoubtedly, the 67-word declaration served as a tool for the\u00a0British empire\u2019s interests<\/a>, as has every U.S.-Israeli agreement and accord, masquerading as peace.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s corporate-inspired blueprint for Gaza is simply Balfour repackaged; the latest phase in the 100-year old imperial investment in the Zionist settler-colonial project.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n Gazans have shown the world what courage looks like under brutal occupation. It has also revealed how Israel has grown accustomed to and embraced violence and the sense of superiority it gives.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n Tel Aviv has used\u00a0the siege,\u00a0<\/span>starvation and bombardment of Gaza to erode the individual and collective dignity and strength of the Palestinian people, forcing Gazans to negotiate their dignity to stay alive.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n The Israeli occupiers have stolen the land, lives and freedom of generations of Palestinians.\u00a0\u00a0It has not, however, been able to steal their dignity, strength, pride and resistance.\u00a0\u00a0Kafa Abu Harb<\/a>, a 49-year-old widow and mother of three, living under military occupation in the West Bank, affirmed that, saying: \u201cOur strength is all we have left.\u201d\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n It is the strength and morality of the Palestinian cause that Israel, the U.S. and its minions deem a threat to their structured system of regional and global domination.\u00a0\u00a0Since the 7 October uprising, the world has been witness to the ferocity of the response, the extreme violence they have employed to maintain control.\u00a0\u00a0The endless piles of concrete that once were homes are a testament to that dread.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n No matter how hard they try, however, Washington and Tel Aviv cannot put the genie of truth back in the bottle. Only if it is willing to destroy the entire population, Palestinian nationalism cannot be destroyed through military force.\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n After a century of indifference, the Palestinian liberation struggle has been globalized.\u00a0\u00a0Their pursuit of justice and example of dignity have become humanity\u2019s cause.\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n Israel was born in imperial hubris, aggression and arrogance. Its birth certificate was signed in London and Washington; and with every king\u2019s ransom and lethal arms shipment, they validate their illegitimate offspring.\u00a0\u00a0Today we are led to ask: Will we continue to tolerate an ethnocidal\/genocidal state and the global power that sustains it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n The answer, perhaps, can be found in the historic\u00a0Nuremberg trials\u00a0<\/a>(1945-46) of Nazi war criminals. The International Military Tribunal, created in the aftermath of World War II by the Allied Powers, met to prosecute the perpetrators of the Holocaust and crimes against humanity and peace. Subsequently, the principles of the tribunal established the foundation of present-day international criminal law.\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Balfour_declaration_unmarked-680x895.jpg\")
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