The Arab League called on Britain to apologize for the 1917 Balfour Declaration calling for the reestablishment of the Jewish national homeland. They were echoing the annual demand from acting-President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas that Britain formerly apologize to Palestinian Arabs “for the catastrophes, misery and injustice this declaration created and to act to rectify these disasters and remedy its consequences, including by the recognition of the state of Palestine.“
Maybe Israel should come up with an apology list of its own.
From Jordan
Jordan was established with almost three-quarters of the land that was allocated by international law to the Palestine Mandate. Even though the mandate specifically stated that no one should be excluded from living anywhere in the mandate because of their religion (Article 15) even if the area east of the Jordan River is split off into a distinct territory (Article 25), that is precisely what Jordan did, banning Jews from living there.
In 1948, Jordan attacked Israel in a war that went on for over a year. At war’s end, Jordan seized additional territory and expelled all Jews from the land that it went on to annex in 1950. In 1954, Jordan granted “any person who, not being Jewish” (Article 3) in the illegally seized lands Jordanian citizenship, in a blatantly anti-Semitic edict.
Jordan attacked Israel again in 1967 in support of Egypt and Syria which had bound together to try to destroy the Jewish State once again. Fortunately, that time, their plans against Israel failed.
From the British
After Palestinian Arabs killed dozens of Jews in their homes and synagogues in the city of Hebron in 1929, the British “evacuated” (read expelled) all of the remaining Jews from the city, considering that their lives in jeopardy from Arab mobs. Rather than defend the Jews and punish the Arabs, the British punished the Jewish victims, teaching the local Arabs the valuable lesson which they would employ over the next hundred years – terrorism pays, and will get the Jews to leave the places where they were living peacefully.
In November 1938, as Kristallnacht was effectively launching the Holocaust in Europe, the British leaders in Palestine met with local Arabs to decide to limit Jewish immigration to just 75,000 people over the next five years. Britain slamming the door on millions of Jews running for their lives facilitated the genocide of European Jewry.
Malcolm MacDonald, the British Colonial Secretary said after Kristallnacht: “When we promised to facilitate the establishment of a national home for Jews in Palestine, we never anticipated this fierce persecution in Europe. We have made no promise that that country should be the home for everyone who is seeking to escape from such an immense calamity, and even if there were no other population in Palestine, its rather meager soil could not in fact support more than a fraction of those Jews who may wish to escape from Europe. The problem of the refugees in Central Europe cannot be settled in Palestine.“
From the United Nations
The UN has evolved into a blatantly anti-Israel organization. It was headed by a former Nazi, Kurt Waldheim, from 1972 to 1981, when the General Assembly passed the infamous Resolution 3379 declaring Zionism is a form of racism. The UN has members which openly call for the destruction of Israel, another member, to a chorus of silence.
The UN Human Rights Council reserves item 7 on its agenda every session to lambast Israel. The Secretary General appointed a special coordinator for Mideast Peace who has a long history and particular loyalties only to Palestinians. The global body prioritizes the stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) over actual refugees fleeing wars to faraway lands, donating billions of dollars into a specialized agency, UNRWA, which has a history of teaching anti-Semitism and being a harbor for Arab terrorists. It encourages the SAPs that the United Nations is the pathway to grandparents’ homes in Israel.
From the United States
While the USA has long been Israel’s greatest supporter, the Obama Administration put Israel at greater risk on the world stage. It allowed UN Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass which made it illegal for Jews (the law says Israelis, but no one considers an Israeli Arab) to live in Judea and Samaria. This was despite assurances from President Bush that with Israel’s leaving Gaza, there would be US support for staying in such lands. Obama also negotiated the Iranian nuclear deal, the JCPOA, which gave Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism which had called for Israel’s destruction, a legal pathway to nuclear weapons in ten years.
Jews moved to Palestine at a rate of over 6 times the rate of Muslims BEFORE the Balfour Declaration (and at a similar rate afterwards), but the narrative of Abbas and the Arab League is that the British created the very desire and notion for Jews to move to Arab land, when in fact the British PREVENTED Jews from settling the land. Perhaps it is time for the Jewish State to demand its apologies.
Related First On Through articles:
A Response to Rashid Khalidi’s Distortions on the Balfour Declaration
From the Balfour Declaration to the San Remo Conference
{Reposted from the FirstOneThrough blog}