PA attacks the Balfour Declaration
which expressed support for
a Jewish homeland in Palestine:
"The greatest crime"
"A sin"
"The cursed promise"
"A mark of shame upon humanity"
"An ominous sign, [bringing] disasters upon the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the nations of the region and the world."
"Historical injustice"
"Balfour will continue to turn in his grave"
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 was a letter from the British
Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild of the Zionist
movement, which expressed Britain's support for "the establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." A few years later,
on July 24, 1922, the League of Nations confirmed the letter and
selected Britain as "the Mandatory for Palestine."
Every year on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Palestinian
Authority leaders and official media issue harsh statements attacking
it. According to the Palestinian narrative, Jews have no history in the
land and therefore have no right to exist as a state. Consequently,
Israel exists only because of the Balfour Declaration.
This year, the PA Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Culture
organized a workshop for high school girls in Tulkarem in cooperation
with the city's Education Administration. The girls wrote "letters of
sorrow and pain to the Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II, and to
the British Foreign Minister, William Hague, since it was the letter by
that country's Foreign Minister Arthur James Balfour, which has caused
the Palestinian people ongoing suffering," reported the official PA
daily.
One girl wrote to Queen Elizabeth:
"The real reasons that caused Balfour to
give his dark promise, first and foremost [the desire] to be rid of the
Jews in Europe and to award them a prize for the genocidal weapons which
they had invented, which helped Britain to annihilate more people."
PA leaders and official media have published claims on many occasions
that the establishment of Israel was a European plot to get rid of the
Jews in Europe because the Jews were a burden on European society.
The Balfour Declaration is cited by many Palestinians as proof that
Zionism was not a Jewish idea but a colonialist idea, and it was this
idea that the Palestinian girl was expressing in her letter.
Another girl wrote to the Queen:
"that she and her contemporaries are
still paying the price of the Balfour promise in blood and tears,
because he [Balfour] 'decided to donate a country which was not his to a
nation [the Jews] which was not entitled to it, with no justification,
since the Palestinian people had not attacked Britain or dreamed of
invading London.'"
The official PA daily also reported that PLO Executive Committee member Zakaria Al-Agha demanded that:
"Britain assume its responsibility
towards the Palestinian people and make amends for its mistakes, since
it is the main culprit for its suffering, and to admit its grave mistake
against it in allowing the Jews, by means of the cursed promise, to
seize control of the Palestinian land and to establish their state on
the Arab ruins and the Palestinian villages which were destroyed in
1948."
Fatah member Fayez Abu Aitah called the Balfour Declaration "the
greatest crime that the international community is responsible for."
Click to view
Official PA TV News referred to "the cursed Balfour promise" as "a promise that brings a mark of shame upon humanity."
Click to view
The following are some of the many PA attacks on the Balfour Declaration
that appeared in the PA press this year. Despite the PA's claims in
English to the international community that it recognizes Israel, the PA
openly continues to indoctrinate its people with significant historical
revision, to reject and deny Israel's right to exist.
PA TV News broadcast
Interview with Fatah member Fayez Abu Aitah, speaking about the vote on accepting Palestine into UNESCO:
"Yesterday we had the [anniversary of
the] Balfour promise - the greatest crime that the international
community is responsible for, and specifically the British government.
The time has come for the international community to repair the sin
against the Palestinian people and to give the Palestinian people today
its right to live like the nations of the world, on its land, within its
independent Palestinian state."
[PA TV (Fatah), Nov. 3, 2011]
Click to view
Headline: "Tubas girls 'judge' Balfour promise [Balfour Declaration, 1917] in their letters"
"Girls from Tubas [in the West Bank]
chose to mark the 94th anniversary of the cursed Balfour promise
[Balfour Declaration, 1917] by writing letters of sorrow and pain to the
Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II, and to the British Foreign
Minister, William Hague, since it was the letter by that country's
Foreign Minister Arthur James Balfour, which has caused the Palestinian
people ongoing suffering. During a workshop held yesterday by the PA
Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with
the city's Education Administration, girls from the Tubas [West Bank]
high school wrote dozens of open letters to politicians and girls in
Britain. Wafa Daraghmeh wrote to Queen Elizabeth, saying that she and
her contemporaries are still paying the price of the Balfour promise in
blood and tears, because he [Balfour] 'decided to donate a country which
was not his to a nation [the Jews] which was not entitled to it, with
no justification, since the Palestinian people had not attacked Britain
or dreamed of invading London.' She ended the letter with thanks to the
United Kingdom for having 'shattered the hopes of the Palestinian
people'. Saja Daraghmeh addressed her words to a girl her age in London,
whom she does not know, but who, she believes, enjoys freedom and has
never tasted occupation. She addressed an open question to the girls of
London: Would they agree for France to grant the Africans a national
home in Wales? ... Amina Muhammad wrote in her letter the real reasons
that caused Balfour to give his dark promise, first and foremost [the
desire] to be rid of the Jews in Europe and to award them a prize for
the genocidal weapons which they had invented, which helped Britain to
annihilate more people."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 3, 2011]
Headline: "On the 94th anniversary of the cursed promise [Balfour
Declaration, 1917] - personalities and bodies called upon the world to
correct part of Balfour's sin by supporting the Palestinian demand at
the UN"
"The world must correct part of its sin - thus concurred national
figures and bodies which published announcements yesterday on the
occasion of the 94th anniversary of the Balfour promise [Balfour
Declaration, 1917] ... Member of the PLO Executive Committee Zakaria
Al-Agha demanded that the United Kingdom vote at the Security Council in
favor of recognizing a Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 borders,
with Jerusalem as its capital... In a press release yesterday, Al-Agha
demanded that Britain assume its responsibility towards the Palestinian
people and make amends for its mistakes, since it is the main culprit
for its suffering, and to admit its grave mistake against it in allowing
the Jews, by means of the cursed promise, to seize control of the
Palestinian land and to estab`lish their state on the Arab ruins and the
Palestinian villages which were destroyed in 1948. ... The PLO
Department of International Relations demanded that the international
community assume its historical, moral and human responsibility towards
the Palestinian people... This was said in a press release by the
department yesterday, on the 94th anniversary of the promise which
Britain gave to the Jews, to give them a national home in Palestine,
which has caused our people suffering, oppression and injustice
continuing to our own times... The PA Ministry of Information said that
the usual condemnations are not an effective prescription for
[addressing] this great sin, in which [Britain] gave a land which was
not its own to a nation which had begun to claim it [the land] was part
of itself [the nation]. [Britain] must apologize and make amends for
this sin, and acknowledge to the world that the result of the words of
its Foreign Minister - no more than sixty words - are still having their
effect."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 3, 2011]
PA TV News broadcast
PA TV News reader: "Today is the
94th anniversary of the cursed Balfour promise [Balfour Declaration,
1917], in which those who had no ownership (Britain) permitted those who
had no right (the Jews) to establish a national homeland for the Jews
in Palestine."
Reporter: "This is the Balfour promise, in which the British
Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour, gave the Jews a national home in
Palestine, in 1917. This was the promise which approved of Jewish
immigration to Palestine. They [the Jews] took the place of the original
inhabitants, conquered their land, and turned them into refugees
throughout the world. A promise that brings a mark of shame upon
humanity because it [humanity] ignored the colonialist frenzy - not only
in Palestine but in the Arab homeland, from east to west...
The promise is not necessarily the right
of humans, in contrast to Allah [who has the right] to promise this
land, which did and still does belong in its entirety to its Palestinian
owners. Balfour will continue to turn in his grave because of the
historical injustice which Britain committed against the Palestinian
people."
[PA TV (Fatah), Nov. 2, 2011]
Click to view
Headline: "Today is the 94th anniversary of the Balfour promise" [Balfour Declaration, 1917]
"Today is the 94th anniversary of the cursed Balfour promise [The
Balfour Declaration of 1917], by which Britain awarded the Jews the
right to establish a national home in Palestine, based on the false
slogan, 'A land without a people for a people without a land'. ... This
promise represented the first step taken by the West on the road to
establishing an entity for the Jews on the land of Palestine, in
accordance with the wishes of World Zionism, at the expense of a people
which had been rooted in this land for thousands of years. This promise
was given as a declaration on the part of the British Foreign Minister
at the time, Arthur James Balfour... to Lord Rothschild, one of the
leaders of the World Zionist movement, following three years of
negotiations between the British government and the Jews of Britain and
the World Zionist Organization, in which the Zionists managed to
persuade Britain concerning their ability to realize its [Britain's]
aims and to protect its interests in the region... The Jews made
successful use of the piece of paper published by Arthur Balfour, known
for his friendship with the Zionist Movement, and later the [British]
Mandate and the 1947 resolution by the [UN] General Assembly concerning
the Partition of Palestine: They realized their dream of establishing
[the State of] Israel on May 15th, 1948, and this entity earned
membership in the UN thanks to pressure by the super powers. Israel
became the first country in the history of the global political system
which was established on land belonging to others, and which receives
international aid which has caused it to behave arrogantly in the region
- expanding, swallowing more Palestinian and Arab territory, and
behaving violently and mercilessly towards those among the Palestinian
people who remain upon their land."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 2, 2011]
"The President of the United States of
America, Barack Obama, expressed the hope of seeing Palestine as a state
in the UN, on Sept. 21, 2011, and we believed him... It has been said
of the Balfour promise [Balfour Declaration, 1917] that it was a promise
by someone who had no ownership [of the land] to those who had no right
[to it]. We said of Obama's promise that it was a promise by someone
who is unable, to those whose right [to the land] it is already.
Balfour's promise to the Jews of Europe - a homeland in Palestine - was a
preventive step, because in his letter he sketched a road map for
freeing his country and Europe of the burden of the Jewish problem, and
of the bases for the spread of Communism in western Europe, which was
led by the poor, the European workers, and the Jews... The Jews of the
Zionist enterprise sought a promise from Balfour, who had the ability,
because they knew that only the strongest power in the world at the time
[Britain] could impose the conditions for the establishment of a state
for the Jews. His promise was an ominous sign, [bringing] disasters upon
the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the nations of the region and the
world."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 2, 2011]
"The Arab League emphasized yesterday
that now, more than ever, there is a need for a serious international
position supporting the right of the Palestinian people to
self-determination and putting an end to the historical injustice done
to it in the wake of the Balfour promise [Balfour Declaration, 1917] and
the continued Israeli occupation. A press release by the [Arab League]
Department for Palestine and the Occupied Arab Lands on the occasion of
the anniversary of the Balfour promise, said: 'This cursed promise was
the main reason for the catastrophe which befell Palestine in 1948, and
it represented the beginning of the tragedy of the Palestinian people,
which has continued for many decades...
The promise declared by British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour, on Nov.
2, 1917, constitutes a great political crime and sin, leading to the
uprooting of the Palestinian people and the theft of its land, and
causing wars and great conflicts which still continue in the region.'"
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 2, 2011]
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