“The foundations of Israel were laid in London. In November 1917, Arthur James Balfour, then Britain’s foreign secretary, signed a letter that was just three sentences long. The brevity of the document did not detract from its impact. Addressed to the aristocrat Walter Rothschild, it was a letter of support to the British Zionist Federation. It declared that the government viewed ‘with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ and promised assistance to realize that goal. Through this declaration, Balfour set in motion a process in which colonizers would be treated as superior to the native population. A caveat – that ‘nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine ‘ – was really an insult. While Jews scattered across the world were accorded the status of belonging to a nation, Arabs living and farming on the land under discussion were merely described as ‘non-Jewish communities’. The idea that they could constitute a nation was not entertained.”
“The declaration’s supporters have, however, long propagated the myth that Balfour was acting benevolently in offering a haven to persecuted Jews. Far from being a benevolent individual, Balfour was a man of imperial violence; that was proven by his stint as chief secretary in Ireland between 1887 and 1891. When a protest was held in Mitchelstown, County Cork, against the prosecution of the political leader William O’Brien, Balfour ordered police to open fire. Causing three deaths, the incident earned him the nickname ‘Bloody Balfour’.
“Once they had captured Jerusalem, the British set up the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration South. An official serving with that inelegantly named body put his thoughts about the prevailing mood on paper in 1919:
‘At the moment, Palestine is in turmoil owing to the Zionist menace. All elements of the population, Christian and Muslim alike, are organizing themselves together to resist what they regard as the greatest injustice ever known under British rule, namely, the discrimination in favor of the hated Jewish minority that is involved in Mr. Balfour’s declaration regarding Zionism, and the overruling of the vaunted ‘rights of small nations’. We shall have difficulties in keeping the peace.’
The official had pinpointed how the Balfour Declaration was perceived as an existential threat by Palestinians. The antipathy against Jews to which he referred was not, as many Zionists would claim, the result of an innate prejudice. Palestine had a Jewish minority for centuries before the Balfour Declaration was conceived. While it would be naive to think there was never any tension between people of different faiths, the relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims were generally cordial. It was not unusual, by some accounts, for Muslims and Christians to take part in the celebrations of Jewish holidays. Those cordial relations were ruptured by waves of European Jewish settlement from the 1880s onward, later under the direction of the Zionist movement, and with direct support from the British government.” Source: David Cronin in his book ‘Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel’ [PlutoPress] 2017, pages 4, 5, 13-14
And What Happened Next Is Now History, As This Video Testifies.
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