Lord Balfour touring Jerusalem in 1925
For 100 years the British statement, which inaugurated Zionism’s legitimation in the eyes of the world, has been seen as the isolated act of a single nation. The truth is much different.
…when the fuller story is told, the Balfour Declaration looks very different. It is no longer a British imperial grab but the outcome of a carefully constructed consensus of the leading democracies of the day. It is no longer in tension with the principle of self-determination, but a statement made possible by the very champion of the principle. And it is no longer an emanation of secret dealings but one of the first instances of public diplomacy. It is, in short, not a throwback to the 19th century but an opening to the 20th.
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