JERUSALEM (JTA) – In an article about its “worst errors of judgment” from its 200-year history, a Guardian writer implied that the storied British paper’s editorial support of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 — the then-British foreign minister’s approval of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine — was a mistake.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
“The Guardian of 1917 supported, celebrated and could even be said to have helped facilitate the Balfour declaration,” editorial writer Randeep Ramesh wrote in the article published Friday.
“Whatever else can be said, Israel today is not the country the Guardian foresaw or would have wanted,” he added, arguing that the Guardian’s editor at the time, Charles Prestwich Scott, was ignorant about Palestinian rights.
Like many news organizations, the Guardian is reckoning with the ways its past coverage may have offended certain groups, and how some of it is now seen as on the wrong side of history. Other examples Ramesh mentions include the paper’s support of the Confederacy during the Civil War and its opinions on voting rights before women were allowed to vote.
The Balfour Declaration, in which the United Kingdom committed itself to creating a national home for Jews in lands it controlled and today comprise the territories of Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, was an important milestone for the Zionist movement.
YAWN. Maybe their real biggest mistake was supporting and glorifying hitler in the 1930’s. The Zionist program creating Israel has been a success. The evil third reich was not.
Another leftwing rag fully supportive of the terrorists.
The first mistake was giving England the mandate over Palestine. They handles it as if it was theirs to keep and helped the Arabs. We had to kick them out. Mistake #2 : They divided Mandatory Palestine and gave 76% OF IT TO ONE FAMILY FROM ARABIA, THE HASHEMITES. Created Jordan and not a single Jew lives there even though Jews own land there. The connection to the Jewish people was not lost on the league of nations who gave it to the Jews.
Mistake #3 already mentioned, the Chamberlain pact with Mista Hitla… this was an act of groveling that let to more mistakes such as #4 . The white book that stopped Jewish Immigration to Israel and the interception of ships with refugees from the Holocaust and the subsequent transfer of the refugees to camps in Cyprus.
They armed the Arabs, crowned that Bedouin Abdalla King of “Trans Jordania” sold the Supermarine Spitfire 18 and Vampire Jets to the Egyptians. Later Hawker Hunters and Harrier’s to Jordan. Who did they thin they were going to use it against?
These are several of the terrible errors of judgement in recent years. I have not included the public burning of the Jews of York, the expulsion of the Jews from England twice and accepting them back for gold….
Another big mistake is that the Guardian is not a source of news but a biased source of personal opinions. Enough said.
It didn’t take very long for the British gov’t to realize its mistake in issuing the Balfour Declaration. It was a nice gesture but it was not a well-developed policy. It was, to a certain extent, written in the vacuum of of leadership created by WWI.
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the division of spoils between France and England, as well as the historical enmity between those two countries, led to many other poor policies, e.g. Sykes-Picot and the promises to Abdulah.
In the end, mealy-mouthed wording (“looks with favor,” “homeland,” etc.) led to a belief that Britain had promised to create a country for Jews (it hadn’t) while the nascent Arab countries were not able to rule themselves and took a counter-productive stance of stubbornly refusing to address the issue of a Jewish homeland.
So was Balfour a mistake? Yes. But it’s not as simple as the editorial author states.
what do goyishe antisemites and anti-zionist but otherwise observant jews have in common?
Thank heaven Great Britain is now little Britain for how they treated Jews in WW II.
<em>Israel today is not the country the Guardian foresaw or would have wanted</em> because Israel is so much better & amazing than they could have foreseen, burgeoning with ישיבות ותורה ןמצוות