Jared Kushner's Jobs & Growth Plan

On November 2, 1917, the British wartime cabinet issued the infamous Balfour Declaration. I quote it here in full:

"Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of his Majesty's Government the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the cabinet.

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation,

Yours sincerely, Arthur James Balfour."

J.M.N Jeffries analysis of this document in Chapter XI of his book Palestine: The Reality (1939) is, of course, the definitive account of the document's deceptions and can be accessed on this blog in its entirety under the label JMN Jeffries.

I note only here the following words of Jeffries with respect to the above clause:

"That their religious rights should not be prejudiced, indeed, was satisfactory, though there was not very much in that. Happily, it could be taken for granted. Wherever Britain rules religious rights are preserved.

"The crux arrives with 'civil rights.' What are 'civil rights'? all turns on this point. If civil rights remain undefined it is only a mockery to guarantee them. To guarantee anything, and at the same time not to let anyone know what it is, that is Alice in Wonderland legislation. 'I guarantee your civil rights,' said the White Queen to Alice in Palestine-land. 'Oh, thank you!' said Alice, 'what are they, please?' 'I'm sure I can't tell you, my dear,' said the White Queen, 'but I'll guarantee very hard.'

"If only the Declaration had been as innocent as the text of Alice in Wonderland. Its nonsense is deceptive nonsense, written with vicious intention. The Arabs were guaranteed civil rights, again because to the unalert ear it sounded as though they were being assured a man's normal rights, the freedom to choose the government of his country which every decent man should enjoy, the common political rights of a democratic regime.

"But in fact the Arabs were not assured these at all. The effect, and the aim, of the clause actually was to withdraw from the Arabs (fighting or suffering for us at the time under promise of independence) those very rights of independence for which they had contracted; to say nothing of their natural title to them. By sleight of tongue civil rights were substituted for political rights... As practice went, 'civil rights' was an expression which was left without any interpretation, and so had no existence as a surety or guarantee at all." (p 179)

Now if we turn to the Foreword of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner's slick Peace to Prosperity: The Economic Plan: A New Vision for the Palestinian People document, issued by the Trump White House, we see that the entire panoply of international law upon which the Palestinian case has hitherto rested since the Nakba of 1948 would be swept willy-nilly into the proverbial dustbin of history, and be replaced with the flakiest load of neoliberal economic jargon ever seen since the advent of that malign and soul-destroying ideology (the upper case bolds, btw, are Kushner's):

Kushner's Economic Plan touts three initiatives:

"The first... will UNLEASH THE ECONOMIC POTENTIAL of the Palestinians... The second... will EMPOWER THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE to realize their ambitions.... The third... will ENHANCE PALESTINIAN GOVERNANCE, improving the public sector's ability to serve its citizens and enable private-sector growth."

"These three initiatives," declares Kushner, "are more than just a vision of a promising future for the Palestinian people - they are also the foundation for an implementable plan. Capital raised through this international effort will be placed into a new fund administered by an established multilateral development bank. Accountability, transparency, anti-corruption, and conditionality safeguards will protect investments and ensure that capital is allocated efficiently and effectively. The fund's leadership will work with beneficiary countries to outline annual investment guidelines, development goals, and governance reforms that will support project implementation on the areas identified within Peace to Prosperity. Grants, occasional loans, and other support will be distributed to projects that meet the defined criteria through a streamlined process that will enable both flexibility and accountability."

Note that at no point in the above is Israel itself expected to foot the bill for its decades-long crimes against the Palestinian people. This 'thinking' is the equivalent of Israel wanting Iran crushed, and wanting the Americans to do it for them, mentioned in my previous post Morrison Itching to Attack Iran.

Now the following may seem like something of an historical detour - however, the long history of Palestine matters if we are to understand its present history.

One of the first British intellectuals to be persuaded to visit Palestine in 1919 by the Zionist movement was G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), the prominent writer, philosopher, novelist, essayist, and convert from High Church Anglicanism to Catholicism.

But, unlike so many who have been on propaganda tours to the Holy Land since they were first organised by Britain's political Zionists in 1918, Chesterton was a remarkably independent observer and one not at all afraid to voice his reservations about the contradictions he found between the goals of political Zionism, as represented in the person of Dr Chaim Weizmann (Balfour's interlocutor), and the legitimate fear of the Palestinian Arabs with respect to those goals. The following extract echoes both Chesterton's partiality towards political Zionism as well as his capacity to see things through Palestinian Arab eyes. It comes from his book The New Jerusalem (1920):

"If the Zionists wish to quiet the fears of the Arabs, surely the first thing to do is discover what the Arabs are afraid of. And very little investigation will reveal the simple truth that they are very much afraid of sharks; and that in their book of symbolic or heraldic zoology it is the Jew who is adorned with the dorsal fin and the crescent of cruel teeth... But the case is yet more curious than that. These simple tribes are afraid, not only of the dorsal fin and dental arrangements which Dr. Weizmann may say (with some justice) that he has not got; they are also afraid of the other things which he says he has got. They maybe in error, at the first superficial glance, in mistaking a respectable professor for a shark. But they can hardly be mistaken in attributing to the respectable professor what he himself considers as his claims to respect. And as the imagery about the shark may be too metaphorical... there is not the smallest difficulty in stating in plain words what the Arabs fear in the Jews. They fear, in exact terms, their knowledge and their experience and their money. The Arabs fear exactly the three things which he says they need. Only the Arabs would call it financial trickery and an experience of political intrigue, and the power given by hoards of money not only of their own but of other peoples. About Dr. Weizmann and the true Zionists this is self-evidently unjust; but about Jewish influence of the more visible and vulgar kind it has to be proved to be unjust." (pp 200-01)

IOW, there was never a point in the history of modern Palestine when Palestinians had nothing to fear from the Zionist settler-colonial entity planted in their midst first by the British, and, since the time of US president Truman, maintained, vastly expanded and made infinitely more violent towards the indigenous Palestinians by the United States.

So, in sum, what we have here with Kushner's Plan is a new Balfour Declaration, but one without even the spurious "civil and religious rights" exposed by Jeffries in Palestine: The Reality.

In fact, Kushner's Plan resembles nothing so much as a variation on the Australian Coalition government's oft-repeated mantra, 'jobs and growth'.

Under British Bayonets

Further to my last post, and in particular to Arnold Toynbee's reference to interwar Jewish immigration into Palestine being "imposed on the Palestinian Arabs by British military power until the immigrants were sufficiently numerous and sufficiently well-armed to be able to fend for themselves with tanks and planes of their own," legendary US journalist I.F. Stone's 1946 coverage of illegal postwar Jewish immigration into British Palestine, Underground to Palestine, has some interesting light to shed on this subject.

Far from being the hapless survivors of Nazi concentration camps, many of the East European Jewish immigrants described by Stone were heavily indoctrinated Zionist youth, in short the ideal type to take on the British and/or the Palestinian Arabs militarily:

"As soon as the train began to move, everybody began to sing. The first song whose words I could make out was a Yiddish song written by a young man I was to meet soon. It was called 'Khalutsim, Gretan Zikh Far Eretz Israel' [Pioneers Prepare Themselves for Palestine]. The singing was spontaneous and joyful... Khalutsim means pioneers in Hebrew and is the term for people who have been in training for life in a settlement in Palestine. They are the Zionist elite, dedicated to the building of Palestine. The ten I was with, five boys and five girls, had all trained for several months in the same kibbutz [collective training settlement] in Poland. It was a kibbutz near Lodz called Dror [Freedom], supported by funds of the Poale Zion, the labor Zionist movement." (pp 38-39)

And note here how the immigration process is fully in the hands the leaders of the Zionist yishuv [settlement]:

"We each filled out a blue certificate printed in Hebrew on one side and in English on the other. It was called, 'Permit To Enter Palestine.' We wrote in our name, the names of our parents, the place and date of our birth, and our nationality by birth. The certificate stated that we 'had been found qualified by the representatives of the Jewish Community of Palestine for repatriation to Eretz Israel.'

"The certificate cited four authorities for the Jewish community's action.

"The first was from Ezekiel: 'And they shall abide in the lands that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers abode, and they shall abide therein, even they, and their children, and their children's children, forever.'

"The second was from Isaiah: 'With great mercies will I gather thee.'

"The third was Lord Balfour's Declaration of 2 November 1917, and the last was The Mandate for Palestine." (p 177)

Needless to say, the Palestinian 'natives' and their wishes were nowhere on the minds of Stone's interlocutors.

Britain's Dirty Game in Palestine

One of the best assessments of the origins of the nightmare known as the Palestine problem, and of Britain's responsibility for it, was written in 1968 by the great British historian and philosopher of history Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975):

"The story [of Palestine] is a tragedy, and the essence of this tragedy is that about 1,500,000 Palestinian Arabs have now become refugees as a result of the intervention of foreign powers in their country's affairs. The might of these foreign powers has been irresistible, and the evicted Palestinian Arabs have been forcibly deprived of their country, their homes, and their property without having been allowed to have a voice in the determination of their own destiny.

"Though the facts are public, there is widespread ignorance of them in the Western World and, above all, in the United States, the Western country which has had, and is still having, the greatest say in deciding Palestine's fate. The United States has the greatest say, but the United Kingdom bears the heaviest load of responsibility. The Balfour Declaration of 2nd November 1917 was the winning card in a sordid contest between the two sets of belligerents in the First World War for winning the support of the Jews in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and - most important of all - in the United States.

"In promising to give the Jews 'a national home' in Palestine, the British Government was, I believe, using deliberately ambiguous language. As a citizen of the United Kingdom, I declare this belief of mine with feelings of shame and contrition, but I do believe that this is the truth. Throughout the First World War and after it, the Government of the United Kingdom was playing a double game. Perhaps a lawyer might be able to plead plausibly that there was no inconsistency between the respective pledges that Britain gave to the Arabs and the Zionists, or between the inclusion of the Balfour Declaration in the text of the mandate taken by Britain for the administration of Palestine and the classification of this mandate in the 'A' class - a class in which the mandatory power was committed to giving the people of the mandated territory their independence at the earliest date at which they would be capable of standing on their own feet. Whatever the casuists might say, laymen - Arabs or Jews - would, I think, naturally infer, bona fide, from the British Government's various statements and acts that it had made two commitments that were incompatible with each other.

"At the same time when the mandate was drafted, offered, and accepted, the Arab Palestinians amounted to more than 90% of the population of the country. The mandate for Palestine was an 'A' mandate, and, as I interpret the Hussein-McMahon correspondence, Palestine had not been excepted by the British Government from the area in which they had pledged themselves to King Hussein to recognize and support Arab independence. The Palestinian Arabs could therefore reasonably assume that Britain was pledged to prepare Palestine for becoming an independent Arab state. On the other side, the Zionists naturally saw, in the British promise of 'a national home' in Palestine, the entering wedge for the insertion into Palestine of the Jewish state of Israel which was in fact inserted there in 1948.

"To my mind, the most damaging point in the charge-sheet against my country is that Britain was in control of Palestine for 30 years - 1918-1948 - and that during those fateful three decades she never made up her mind, or at any rate never declared, what her policy about the future of Palestine was. All through those 30 years, Britain lived from hand to mouth, admitting into Palestine, year by year, a quota of Jewish immigrants that varied according to the strength of the respective pressures of the Arabs and the Jews at the time. Those immigrants could not have come in if they had not been shielded by a British chevaux-de-frise. If Palestine had remained under Ottoman Turkish rule, or if it had become an independent Arab state in 1918, Jewish immigrants would never have been admitted into Palestine in large enough numbers to enable them to overwhelm the Palestinian Arabs in this Arab people's own country. The reason why the state of Israel exists today and why today 1,500,000 Palestinian Arabs are refugees is that, for thirty years, Jewish immigration was imposed on the Palestinian Arabs by British military power until the immigrants were sufficiently numerous and sufficiently well-armed to be able to fend for themselves with tanks and planes of their own. The tragedy in Palestine is not just a local one; it is a tragedy for the World, because it is an injustice that is a menace to the World's peace. Britain's guilt is not diminished by the humiliating fact that she is now impotent to redress the wrong that she has done.

"As an Englishman I hate to have to indict my country, but I believe that Britain deserves to be indicted, and this is the only personal reparation that I can make." (From the Forward to The Palestine Diary by Robert John and Sami Hadawi, 1970)

Churchill's Twisted, Colonial Logic

Further to my previous post on Churchill, I thought some of his other answers to questions put to him in March 1937 by the Peel commissioners might prove instructive.

Remember, as you read them, that the Palestinian Arabs - Muslims and Christians - constituted over 90% of Palestine's population when the Balfour Declaration, giving British backing to a Jewish National Home in Palestine, was issued in 1917, and that, despite the mass immigration of European Jews into Palestine from 1918 on, under the protection of British bayonets, they were still the overwhelming majority in their ancestral homeland in 1937.

Remember, also, that despite Britain's other myriad colonial crimes, stretching from the very beginnings of the empire 'upon which the sun never set and the blood never dried', no other colonised people that I am aware of were subjected to anything like the Kafkaesque nightmare of having their independence indefinitely postponed by a ruling colonial power with the express purpose that they would one day be superseded by another, 'superior' people, bent on the formation of an exclusive, ethnocratic, settler-colonial state.

Behold the Churchillian 'logic' behind this cruel experiment (or as one of the commissioners put it: 'a thing unheard of in history').

Q: What was the meaning and aim of the Jewish National Home?

A: The conception... was that, if the absorbtive capacity over a number of years and the breeding over a number of years... gave an increasing Jewish population, that population should not in any way be restricted from reaching a majority position.

Q: What arrangements would be made to safeguard the rights of the new minority - the Arabs?

A: That obviously remains open, but certainly we committed ourselves to the idea that some day... subject to justice and economic convenience, there might well be a great Jewish State there, numbered by millions, far exceeding the present inhabitants of the country and to cut them off from that would be a wrong... We said there should be a Jewish Home in Palestine, but if more and more Jews gather to that Home and all is worked from age to age, from generation to generation, with justice and fair consideration to those displaced... certainly... it was intended that they might in the course of time become an overwhelmingly Jewish State.

Q: When you said [in your 1922 White Paper] that the Jewish National Home in Palestine... may become a centre in which the Jewish people may take a pride, what did you mean??

A: If more Jews rally to this Home, the Home will become all Palestine eventually, provided that at each stage there is no harsh justice done to the other residents.

Q: Would this not constitute an injustice to the Palestinian Arabs?

A: Why is there harsh injustice done if people come in and make a livelihood for more and make the desert into palm groves and orange groves? Why is it injustice because there is more work and wealth for everybody? There is no injustice. The injustice is when those who live in the country leave it to be a desert for thousands of years.*

Q: Isn't continuing Jewish immigration a creeping invasion and conquest of Palestine spread over half a century, which is a thing unheard of in history?

A: It is not a creeping invasion. In 1918 the Arabs were beaten and at our disposition. They were defeated in the open field. It is not a question of creeping conquest. They were beaten out of the place. Not a dog could bark. And then we decided in the process of the conquest of these people to make certain pledges to the Jews. Now the question is how to administer in a humane and enlightened fashion and certain facts have emerged.

I could go on, but I'm sure you've got the idea.

[*Shades of Tony Abbott's words of 15/11/14: "As we look around this glorious city, as we see the extraordinary development, it's hard to think that back in 1788 it was nothing but bush."]

A Modern Witch Hunt

Over 100 years ago, political Zionism unobtrusively entered British politics with the deceptively worded, thoroughly deceitful, Balfour Declaration, which declared that "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people..." Who at the time could possibly have imagined that, as a direct consequence of that disastrous foreign policy blunder, Britain today would be witnessing (in addition to the protracted agony of the Palestinians) the deplorable phenomenon so lucidly analysed below by British journalist Jonathan Cook?

"'McCarthyism' is a word thrown around a lot nowadays, and in the process its true meaning - and horror - has been increasingly obscured. McCarthyism is not just the hounding of someone because their views are unpopular. It is the creation by the powerful of a perfect, self-rationalising system of incrimination - denying the victim a voice, even in their own defence. It presents the accused as an enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is prostration before their accusers and utter repentance. McCarthyism, in other words, is the modern political parallel of the witch hunt.

"In an earlier era, the guilt of women accused of witchcraft was tested through the ducking stool. If a woman drowned, she was innocent; if she survived, she was guilty and burnt at the stake. A foolproof system that created an endless supply of the wicked, justifying the status and salaries of the men charged with hunting down ever more of these diabolical women. And that is the Medieval equivalent of where the British Labour Party has arrived, with the suspension of MP Chris Williamson for anti-semitism.

"Williamson, it should be noted, is widely seen as a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn, a democratic socialist who was propelled unexpectedly into the Labour leadership nearly four years ago by its members. His elevation infuriated most of the party's MPs, who hanker for the return of the New Labour era under Tony Blair, when the party firmly occupied the political centre.

"Corbyn's success has also outraged vocal supporters of Israel both in the Labour Party - some 80 MPs are stalwart members of Labour Friends of Israel - and in the UK media. Corbyn is the first British party leader in sight of power to prefer the Palestinians' right to justice over Israel's continuing oppression of the Palestinians. For these reasons, the Blairite MPs have been trying to oust Corbyn any way they can. First through a failed re-run of the leadership contest and then by assisting the corporate media - which is equally opposed to Corbyn - in smearing him variously as a shambles, a misogynist, a sympathiser with terrorists, a Russian asset, and finally as an 'enabler' of anti-semitism.

"This last accusation has proved the most fruitful after the Israel lobby began to expand the definition of anti-semitism to include not just hatred of Jews but also criticism of Israel. Labour was eventually forced to accept a redefinition, formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that conflates anti-Zionism - opposition to Israel's violent creation on the Palestinians' homeland - with anti-semitism.

"Once the mud stuck through repetition, a vocal group of Labour MPs began denouncing the party for being 'institutionally anti-semitic', 'endemically anti-semitic' and a 'cesspit of anti-semitism'. The slurs continued relentlessly, even as statistics proved the accusation to be groundless. The figures show that anti-semitism exists only in the margins of the party, as racism does in all walks of life. Meanwhile, the smears overshadowed the very provable fact that anti-semitism and other forms of racism are rearing their head dangerously on the political right. But the witchfinders were never interested in the political reality. They wanted a never-ending war - a policy of 'zero tolerance' - to root out an evil in their midst, a supposed 'hard left' given succour by Corbyn and his acolytes.

"This is the context for understanding Williamson's 'crime'. Despite the best efforts of our modern witchfinder generals to prove otherwise, Williamson has not been shown to have expressed hatred towards Jews, or even to have made a comment that could be interpreted as anti-semitic. One of the most experienced of the witchfinders, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, indulged familiar McCarthyite tactics yesterday in trying to prove Williamson's anti-semitism by association. The MP was what Freedland termed a 'Jew baiter' because he has associated with people whom the witchfinders decree to be anti-semites.

"Shortly before he found himself formally shunned by media commentators and his own parliamentary party, Williamson twice confirmed his guilt to the inquisitors.

"First, he dared to challenge the authority of the witchfinders. He suggested that some of those being hounded out of Labour may not in fact be witches. Or more specifically, in the context of constant claims of a Labour 'anti-semitism crisis', he argued that the party had been 'too apologetic' in dealing with the bad-faith efforts of those seeking to damage a Corbyn-led party. In other words, Williamson suggested that Labour ought to be more proactively promoting the abundant evidence that it was indeed dealing with what he called the 'scourge of anti-semitism', and thereby demonstrate to the British public that Labour wasn't 'institutionally anti-semitic'. Labour members, he was pointing out, ought not to have to keep quiet as they were being endlessly slandered as anti-semites.

"As Jewish Voice for Labour, a Jewish group supportive of Corbyn, noted: 'The flood of exaggerated claims of anti-semitism make it harder to deal with any real instances of antisemitism. The credibility of well-founded allegations is undermined by the less credible ones and real perpetrators are more likely not to be held to account. Crying wolf is dangerous when there are real wolves around the corner. This was the reality that Chris Williamson was drawing attention to.'

"As with all inquisitions, however, the witchfinders were not interested in what Williamson actually said, but in the threat he posed to the narrative they have created to destroy their enemy, Corbynism, and reassert their own power. So his words were ripped from their context and presented as proof that he did indeed support witches. He was denounced for saying what he had not: that Labour should not apologise for its anti-semitism. In this dishonest reformulation of Williamson's statement, the witchfinders claimed to show that he had supported anti-semitism, that he consorted with witches.

"Second, Williamson compounded his crime by publicly helping just such a readymade witch: a black Jewish woman named Jackie Walker. He had booked a room in the British parliament building - the seat of our supposed democracy - so that audiences could see a new documentary on an earlier Labour witch hunt. More than two years ago the party suspended Walker over anti-semitism claims. The screening was to inform Labour party members of the facts of her case in the run-up to a hearing in which, given the current atmosphere, it is likely she will be expelled. The screening was sponsored by Jewish Voice for Labour, which has also warned repeatedly that anti-semitism is being used malevolently to silence criticism of Israel and weaken Corbyn. Walker was seen as a pivotal figure by those opposed to Corbyn. She was a co-founder of Momentum, the grassroots organisation established to support Corbyn after his election to the leadership and deal with the inevitable fallout from the Blairite wing of MPs. Momentum expected a rough ride from this dominant faction, and they were not disappointed. The Blairites still held on to the party machinery and they had an ally in Tom Watson, who became Corbyn's deputy. Walker was one of the early victims of the confected claims of a Labour 'anti-semitism crisis'. But she was not ready to roll over and accept her status as witch. She fought back.

"First, she produced a one-woman show about her treatment at the hands of the Labour Party bureaucracy - framed in the context of decades of racist treatment of black people in the west - called The Lynching. And then her story was turned into a documentary film, fittingly called Witch Hunt. It sets out very clearly the machinations of the Blairite wing of MPs, and Labour's closely allied Israel lobby, in defaming Walker as part of their efforts to regain power over the party. For people so ostensibly concerned about racism towards Jews, these witchfinders show little self-awareness about how obvious their own racism is in relation to some of the 'witches' they have hunted down. But that racism can only be understood if people have the chance to hear from Walker and other victims of the anti-semitism smears. Which is precisely why Williamson, who was trying to organise the screening of Witch Hunt, had to be dealt with too.

"Walker is not the only prominent black anti-racism activist targeted. Marc Wadsworth, another longtime ally of Corbyn's, and founder of the Anti-Racist Alliance, was 'outed' last year in another confected anti-semitism scandal. The allegations of anti-semitism were impossible to stand up publicly, so finally he was booted out on a catch-all claim that he had brought the party 'into disrepute'.

"Jews who criticise Israel and support Corbyn's solidarity with Palestinians have been picked off by the witchfinders too, cheered on by media commentators who claim this is being done in the service of a 'zero tolerance' policy towards racism. As well as Walker, the targets have included Tony Greenstein, Moshe Machover, Martin Odoni, Glyn Secker and Cyril Chilson.

"But as the battle in Labour has intensified to redefine anti-Zionism as anti-semitism, the deeper issues at stake have come to the fore. John Lansman, another founder of Momentum, recently stated: 'I don't want any Jewish member of the party to be leaving. We are absolutely committed to making Labour a safe space'. But there are a set of very obvious problems with that position, and they have gone entirely unexamined by those promoting the 'institutional anti-semitism' and 'zero tolerance' narratives.

"First, it is impossible to be a home to all Jews in Labour, when the party's Jewish members are themselves deeply split over key issues like whether Corbyn is a force for good and whether meaningful criticism of Israel should be allowed. A fanatically pro-Israel organisation like the Jewish Labour Movement will never tolerate a Corbyn-led Labour Party reaching power and supporting the Palestinian cause. To pretend otherwise is simple naivety or deception.

"That fact was demonstrably proven two years ago in the Al Jazeera undercover documentary The Lobby into covert efforts by Israel and its UK lobbyists to undermine Corbyn from within his own party through groups like the JLM and MPs in Labour Friends of Israel. It was telling that the party machine, along with the corporate media, did its best to keep the documentary out of public view.

"The MPs loudest about 'institutional anti-semitism' in Labour were among those abandoning the party to join the Independent Group this month, preferring to ally with renegade conservative MPs in an apparent attempt to frustrate a Corbyn-led party winning power.

"Further, if a proportion of Jewish Labour Party members have such a heavy personal investment in Israel that they refuse to countenance any meaningful curbs on Israel's abuses of Palestinians - and that has been underscored repeatedly by public comments from the JLM and LFI - then keeping them inside the party will require cracking down on all but the flimsiest criticism of Israel. It will tie the party's hands on supporting Palestinian rights. In the name of protecting the Israel 'right or wrong' crowd from what they consider to be anti-semitic abuse, Labour will have to provide institutional support for Israel's racism towards Palestinians.

"In doing so, it will in fact simply revert to the party before Corbyn, when Labour turned a blind eye over many decades to the Palestinians' dispossession by European Zionists who created an ugly anachronistic state where rights accrue based on one's ethnicity and religion rather than citizenship. Those in Labour who reject Britain's continuing complicity in such crimes - ones the UK set in motion with the Balfour Declaration - will find as a result, that it is they who have no home in Labour. That includes significant numbers of anti-Zionist Jews, Palestinians, Muslims and Palestinian solidarity activists.

"If the creation of a 'safe space' for Jews in the Labour Party is code, as it appears to be, for a safe space for hardline Zionist Jews, it will inevitably require that the party become a hostile environment for those engaged in other anti-racism battles. Stripped bare, what Lansman and the witchfinders are saying is that Zionist Jewish sensitivities in the party are the only ones that count, that everything and anything must be done to indulge them, even if it means abusing non-Zionist Jewish members, black members, Palestinian and Muslim members, and those expressing solidarity with Palestinians.

"This is precisely the political black hole into which simplistic, kneejerk identity politics inevitably gets sucked.

"Right now, the establishment - represented by Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6 - is maliciously trying to frame Corbyn's main adviser, Seumas Milne, as a Kremlin asset.

"While the witchfinders claim to have unearthed a 'pattern of behaviour' in Williamson's efforts to expose their smears, in fact the real pattern of behaviour is there for all to see: a concerted McCarthyite campaign to destroy Corbyn before he can reach No 10. Corbyn's allies are being picked off one by one, from grassroots activists like Walker and Wadsworth to higher-placed supporters like Williamson and Milne. Soon Corbyn will stand alone, exposed before the inquisition that has been prepared for him. Then Labour can be restored to the Blairites, the members silenced until they leave and any hope of offering a political alternative to the establishment safely shelved. Ordinary people will again be made passive spectators as the rich carry on playing with their lives and their futures as though Britain was simply a rigged game of Monopoly. If parliamentary politics returns to business as usual for the wealthy, taking to the streets looks increasingly like the only option. Maybe it's time to dust off a Yellow Vest." (The witchfinders are now ready to burn Corbyn, jonathan-cook.net/blog)

The Frydenberg Declaration

As federal environment minister, Lord Frydenberg had reportedly decided to hand Queensland's Moreton Bay wetlands, the ancestral homeland of sundry shorebirds and waterfowl, to the Walker Corporation.

Citing Mammon's ancient promise to the Capitalist people, the Corporation, it seems, had convinced him that, without Capital, the birds would never in a million years have built anything as vibrant as 3,600 apartments, a hotel, a convention centre or a marina, and that the development would "form a rampart of Capital against the natural world, an outpost of civilization as opposed to the barbarism of nature."

The Corporation, moreover, had apparently secured from him a declaration that his government "view with favour the establishment in the Moreton Bay wetland of a national home for the Capitalist people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Capitalist communities in the wetland."

What My Mind Turns to on Armistice Day

In his peerless work on the perfidious Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the appalling consequences for Palestine and its people that flowed (and continue to flow) therefrom, Palestine: The Reality (1939), British historian J.M.N. Jeffries wrote these justifiably angry words:

"The underlying assumption of [a certain line of 'thought' peddled by the Anglo-Zionist establishment of 1920-23] is that the soldiers who fell in Palestine fell fighting to provide there that form of government which [wartime prime minister] Lloyd George installed. The 5th Norfolks, the 8th Hampshires bled so that the Sevres Treaty might not die: the men of the 53rd Division left six hundred casualties on the Samson Ridge so that the nine subterfuges of the Balfour Declaration might pass unchallenged: the Australian Light Horse charged crying, Advance the National Home! Was anything further from the truth? We know why our soldiers died - in loyalty to their country." (p 402)

My first inkling that this old Zionist myth, stripped of course of its British references, was being recycled here in Australia came when I read the following in 2008:

"The ties that bind Jerusalem and Canberra were further cemented with the commemoration last November of the 90th anniversary of the Charge of the Australian Light Horse brigade [31/10/07], when brave Aussie Diggers trounced the Turks at Be'er Sheva, paving the way for the capture of Jerusalem... And it is in Be'er Sheva that Richard Pratt is ploughing funds to build the Park of the Australian Soldier - a permanent memorial to those who died in battle for the Jewish state." (Editorial by Dan Goldberg, Rhapsody: Linking Culture between Israel & Australia, Jan-Mar 2008)

I had stumbled upon what might be termed a 'zombie myth' - long buried, effectively forgotten (but for Jeffries' mention), dug up decades later, dusted off, and re-purposed for another use, but retaining still the core propaganda trope of the original. After all these years, whether with or without external involvement, Pratt Foundation CEO Sam Lipski and his cardboard king (Visy Industries) boss and prominent Zionist donor to the Labor and Liberal parties, the late Dick Pratt, had come up with a neat way of "cementing" - mark that word! - alleged "binding ties" between Israel and Australia when Pratt funded the construction of the Park of the Australian Soldier in Be'er Sheva*. This has now become the point of dissemination of the zombie myth to thousands of clueless Australians, especially politicians, who flock to Be'er Sheva annually.

Never have Zionist PR merchants managed anything quite like this in any country, except perhaps in fostering the myth of 'lost Jewish tribes' in many of our South Pacific neighbours.

 For my exploration of this phenomenon, just click on the AIF label below.

[*Of course 'Be'er Sheva' simply did not exist in 1917. Back then it was the Palestinian Arab town of Beersheba. Hopefully, one day, it will return to its old self.]

When Zionists Urge

The "independent, always" Sydney Morning Herald is now almost as much a conveyor belt for Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) propaganda as Murdoch's Australian.

In today's AIJAC emission, Colin Rubenstein, AIJAC's executive director, informs us, essentially, that Iran is a rogue state, run by extremists - a classic case, of course, of the pot calling the kettle black.

Particularly touching is his tender concern for the "long-suffering" people of Iran. What a mensch!

But it's this that really gets me heaving:

"Australia needs a clear and consistent position that should be based on Australia's national interest in robustly addressing the threat posed by a belligerent, expansionist and irresponsible (pot/kettle/black again!) Iran." (Australia must face the new Iran reality, 13/8/18)

A Zionist operative pontificating on the subject of Australia's "national interest"?

Think about that!

Was it not Zionist operatives, otherwise known as neocons, who were instrumental in persuading the Americans that it was in their national interest to invade Iraq in 2003? And, hey, didn't that end well?

And was it not Zionist operatives, in the form of Chaim Weizmann's Zionist Organisation, who persuaded Lord Balfour and his colleagues in 1917 that it was in Britain's national interest to lay the foundations of a Jewish State in Palestine? And, hey, how has that turned out?

And don't forget: when a Zionist operative urges us to "robustly address" a "threat," think what he means by that word 'robust'.

Think Deir Yassin, or Sabra & Shatila. Think operations Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense and Protective Edge. Think death, hell and the grave.

Have a nice day!

Spinning Israel's Jewish Nation-State Law

Editorial commentary in support of each and every Israeli turn of the screw is, to say the least, conspicuous by its presence in Murdoch's Australian, yet on the subject of the apartheid state's latest addition to its 50+ apartheid laws, the nation-state law, The Australian's editor has so far said zip.

Yesterday, however, The Australian published an opinion piece (Illiberalism lies with the critics of Jewish nation-state law, 23/7/18) in defence of the legislation by one, Eugene Kontorovich, described as "a scholar at the Jerusalem think tank Kohelet Policy Forum." (This outfit describes itself on its website as "striving to secure Israel's future as the nation-state of the Jewish people, strengthening representative democracy, and broadening individual liberty and free market principles in Israel.")

Kontorovich would have us believe that:

"... Israel's Basic Law would not be out of place among the liberal democratic constitutions of Europe - which include similar provisions that have not aroused controversy... Consider the Slovak constitution, which opens with the words, 'We the Slovak nation', and lays claim to 'the natural right of nations to self-determination'."

What he omits to mention, of course, is that, unlike Slovakia, there is nothing 'natural' about Israel or its political evolution. Slovakia's emergence as a nation was a natural progression following the breakup of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I and was based on the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination. The same natural process should have been applied to Palestine under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations: "Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice... by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory."

Instead, the Palestinians were deliberately denied their 'natural right to self-determination', first by the British on behalf of the Zionist settlers who were allowed to flood into Palestine from 1918 on, and then by the Zionist settler state of Israel following the military takeover and ethnic cleansing of most of Palestine by Zionist terror gangs in 1948. As Britain's foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour (of Balfour Declaration infamy) wrote in 1919: "The contradiction between the letters of the Covenant and the policies of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the 'independent nation' of Palestine... For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country..."

But there's more. Why are we all up-in-arms about Israeli settlements? After all, they had the blessing of the - wait for it! - League of Nations:

"Another controversial provision of the law declares 'the development of Jewish settlement' to be a national value that the government should promote. It is understood to refer to encouraging population dispersion into the periphery of the country. This essentially restates policy adopted by the international community in 1922 in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which sought to 'encourage... close settlement by Jews'."

More sins of omission:

1) The League of Nations, from its inception, was little more than a rubber stamp in the hands of the two post WWI imperial powers, Britain and France.

2) The Palestine Mandate was given to Britain... by Britain. As to its composition, the great J.M.N. Jeffries revealed: "The Mandate followed the precedent of the Balfour Declaration [which was incorporated into the text of the Mandate]. It was drafted in quiet between the [British] Government and the Zionists, mostly by the Zionists, and then it was issued under the cover of the League of Nations, as though it were the result of the collected debates of the world's lawgivers."  (Palestine: The Reality (1939), pp 522-23)

Note also the angry words of Britain's then foreign secretary Lord Curzon, who said of the draft Mandate: "Acting upon (? against) the noble principle of self-determination and ending with a splendid appeal to the League of Nations, we then proceed to draw up a document which reeks of Judaism in every paragraph and is an avowed constitution of a Jewish state - and the poor Arabs are only allowed to look through the keyhole as a non-Jewish community. It is quite clear that this mandate has been drawn up by someone reeling under the fumes of Zionism." (A.L.Tibawi, Anglo-Arab Relations & The Question of Palestine 1914-1921 (1977), pp 427-28)

The Netanyahu Declaration

On the subject of Israel's latest APARTHEID legislation:

"'We have determined in law the founding principle of our existence,' [Netanyahu] said. 'Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people and respects the rights of all of its citizens'." (More equal than others, David Halbfinger & Isabel Kershner, The New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 21/7/18)

Note the second half of Netanyahu's sentence: "and respects the rights of all of its citizens."

Remind you of anything?

That's right, the Balfour Declaration's utterly hollow, 'safeguard' clause:

"... it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities... "

Moving along, here's a Palestinian Israeli perspective on the new bill, which fleshes out just what it means to live as a non-Jew in a Jewish state, from Yousef Jabareen, MK (Hadash), Israel just dropped the pretense of equality for Palestinian citizens (latimes.com, 20/7/18):

"The Israeli Knesset on Thursday passed into law a bill designed to make a permanent underclass of Palestinian citizens. It threatens to set the country on a course to a full-blown Jewish theocracy. The so-called 'Jewish nation-state' bill formalizes in Israeli law the superior rights and privileges that Jewish citizens of the state enjoy over its indigenous Palestinian minority, who comprise roughly 20% of the population. It demotes Arabic from one of two official languages to a mere 'special' status, deepens racial segregation by directing the government to 'encourage and promote' Jewish settlement, and declares that the right to self-determination in Israel is 'exclusive' to the Jewish people, denying the history and ancient Palestinian roots in this land. It also prioritizes the Jewishness of the state over its democratic character, omitting any reference to 'democracy' or 'equality'.

"The final reading of the nation-state bill took place just days after the Knesset rejected a bill that I, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and Knesset member, had introduced. My bill called for Israel to guarantee full equality for all of its citizens, regardless of religion or race. A similar bill introduced in June calling for Israel to be a country 'for all its citizens' was banned from even being discussed. The fate of these three bills confirms what Palestinians have always known: In Israel, only Jews enjoy the full rights and privileges of citizenship.

"The tension of being a Palestinian citizen of a country that defines itself as Jewish has shaped every aspect of my life, from early childhood to my career as a human rights activist and a member of Israel's parliament today.

"I was born in Umm al Fahem, which pre-dates the state of Israel and is one of the largest Palestinian towns in the country. Although it is bigger and older than the Jewish municipalities that surround it, the residents of Umm al Fahem are denied the same quality of public services that Jewish towns receive, including in healthcare and public transportation.

"I first began to understand the unequal nature of Israeli society when I was 12 years old and started going to school in nearby Nazareth. Because we didn't have a bus station, I had to hitch a ride to and from class every day and witness the stark contrast between the crumbling buildings, roads, and other underfunded public infrastructure in Umm al Fahem and those of the affluent Jewish towns I traveled through.

"Every day, I would also pass by the village where members of my mother's family lived before Israel's establishment, Al Lajjun. They were uprooted and told they could not return. Israel's destruction of Palestinian communities like my ancestral village continues today, in places like Umm al-Hiran, a town in southern Israel facing destruction so that it can be replaced with a city for Jews (to be called 'Hiran').

"The nation-state bill further marginalizes my community and entrenches Israel's regime of racial discrimination and deterioration into apartheid. It will lead to more racist, anti-democratic laws, adding to the more than 50 laws already on the books that disadvantage non-Jewish citizens.

"In contrast, the bill I introduced called for the country to become a democracy that guarantees complete civil and national equality to all who live within its borders. It would have ensured that Israeli law is based on universal values that recognize both Arab and Jewish ethnic groups. The state would have been required to invest the wealth of this land for the benefit of all its citizens, not just a privileged majority. There would be equal status for the Arabic language and culture, and inclusive national symbols, so Palestinian girls and boys would feel welcome in their own country, and no longer have to be represented by a country's flag containing religious symbols that are not their own.

"Like President Trump in the United States and right-wing demagogues elsewhere, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government wish to turn the clock back on humanity's march toward a freer, more just and egalitarian world. Imagine if Trump and the Republican Party passed a constitutional amendment declaring the U.S. to be officially a Christian state, formally subordinating the country's democracy to right-wing, fundamentalist Christian principles, and encouraging American cities and towns to exclude Jews, Muslims and indigenous Americans.

"That is the situation that Palestinians in Israel face today. As we continue our struggle for equal citizenship and the just rights of Palestinians everywhere, we call on our brothers and sisters of conscience in the U.S. and around the world to support our shared vision for enlightened democracy and the well-being of all people, regardless of race or religion."

Neither Forgotten Nor Forgiven

Words such as 'mealy-mouthed', 'circumlocution', and 'prevarication', hardly begin to do justice to this appalling sentence:

"Prince William is visiting a region where three decades of British rule between the two world wars helped establish some of the fault lines of today's Israeli-Palestinian conflict." (Prince on 'delicate' tour of fault lines, AP, agencies/Sydney Morning Herald, 26/6/18)

Helped? Some? You're joking.

The simple fact of the matter is that there were no "fault lines in Palestine" in 1917 when the British issued the Balfour Declaration. The British, without help from anyone else, created them by flooding the country with fanatical Zionist colonisers from eastern Europe, bent on turning the place into a Jews-only, utopian state. Britain, and Britain alone, is responsible for creating today's 100-year-old Palestine problem. It was an own goal.

Britain's exclusive role in laying the foundations for the dispossession of the Palestinian Arab people should never be forgotten. Nor forgiven.

Jordan Peterson & the 13th Rule for Life

I read in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald mag Good Weekend the feature - Toughen up, snowflake - on professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, Jordan Peterson.

Peterson, apparently, is the latest, trending intellectual guru with all the answers - 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos - for the perplexed (and who isn't these days?), so before rushing out to buy his tome, I thought I'd subject him to the infallible guide for sorting the sheep from the goats, the Palestine/Israel litmus test.

It's really quite simple to administer. Just Google the guru's name + 'Palestine' or 'Israel' or both and check out the result.

So I did, and OMFGx10!

Google took me to a YouTube video, beneath which these words appeared:

"Professor of Psychology Jordan Peterson, Professor Salim Mansur, Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and Ezra Levant, co-founder of The Rebel Media give a spirited talk on the historical significance of the Balfour Declaration (May 18, 2017). The event was hosted by Canadians for Balfour 100, a project of the Speakers Action Group in cooperation with The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the Mozuud Freedom Foundation."

The Gatestone Institute? Chaired by John Bolton? That's right! As to the rest... well, life's too damn short.

I proceeded straight to JP's 16-minute contribution, but could barely manage 10. Here's why:

"Maybe even the enemies [ie Arabs] of the Jews [ie Israelis] respect them because they've done so well and it's just annoying."

"Israel's a shining beacon on the hill [in] a God-forsaken part of the world."

"You think about the common complaint that the Western colonialists, say, were responsible for the divisions of the Middle East. I mean, that's one way of looking at it. If you start history at 1917 after the allies won the First World War and took down the Ottoman Empire... you could say, well, England and France had the upper hand and they arbitrarily divided up the Middle East, but you could just as easily say that the Ottoman Empire collapsed and they had to do something with it. It wasn't obvious, and they gave some of it to the Arabs who really didn't have any land to begin with, or not any independent land that's for sure, because they were dominated by the Ottoman Empire, and they decided to give some of it to the Jews. Well, maybe that wasn't the world's best solution either way but they were maybe making the best of a bad lot."

According to our intellectual guru, empires (and presumably, countries too) just collapse - no push, no shove necessary. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, no foreign interference over decades, no foreign interventions, no final British push in Palestine. One minute it's standing, the next it's in a bloody great heap, just begging to be cleared away.

And guess which innocent bystanders just happen to be around at that precise point: 'Blimey, chaps, just look at that! How frightfully messy. OK, duty calls, roll up your sleeves and pitch in! And when we're done, we can give some of it to those Arab blighters, and some to the Jews.' To which latter suggestion said innocent bystanders exclaim as one: 'What a jolly good idea!'

Hey, Jordan, here's a 13th Rule for Life. Put it in your second edition: If you don't know anything about a subject, don't talk about it.

When Doc Evatt Did a Job on Palestine 4

This is the final aspect of the 1947 session which I would like to address. I find it the most significant in terms of what I believe it reveals of Evatt's bias and of the deliberate subversion of proper procedure in this case as a result of his bias.

We have already seen that the case of Palestine was a challenge and a proving ground for the new UNO. However, the partition resolution of 1947 was only a recommendation, although it carried "tremendous moral force" in Evatt's words (Freilich, p 161) and was exploited by the Zionists to lend an air of legitimacy to their future actions in Palestine. The UN of course had no means at its disposal to implement such recommendations, and all participants were well of this fact. The Arabs, for instance, said that they would continue to resist the Zionist settlers regardless of what the UN decided.

In the interests of sustaining this "moral force" it could well be argued that Evatt should not have steam-rolled the partition decision through a weary and often resentful Special Committee in order to finish the deliberations in November. The Jews and Palestinian Arabs had been fighting for two decades anyway, and some tired delegates argued to Evatt that a few more months would make little difference. But Evatt was adamant. (Evatt, p 148)

His opposition to a proposal to put some of the legal problems before the ICJ for a ruling was perhaps part of the unseemly haste which he imposed on proceedings, and worse, perhaps it also reveals his real opinion as to the legality of the proceedings. I can think of no other reasons for this opposition, because Evatt had emerged as one of the leading supporters for a major role for the ICJ in all UN problems.

At the San Francisco conference he had championed the concept that the ICJ must become a key UN institution. In an address given shortly after the conference to the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, he said: "The future working of the world organisation would be greatly helped if access to the ICJ is made possible wherever international disputes of a legal or justiciable character are not disposed of by conciliation or direct negotiation... By such means the Court would be given an opportunity of developing a code of sound international law and practice which could help greatly in balancing the Security Council." (Australia in World Affairs, 1946, p 20)

As Sir Frederic Eggleston commented in 1946: "Dr Evatt advocates not only an expansion of the ambit of international law but also an extension of the power of the ICJ." (26. ibid, Preface)

I have already noted that during October 1947 while Evatt was rushing the Special Committee through its agenda, he found time to deliver lectures at Harvard Law School on Frankfurter's invitation. In these lectures, published soon after, Evatt described his own role in pushing for a more democratic UN structure. One of his nine main objectives had been "to declare that justice and the rule of law shall be principles guiding the actions of the Security Council, and for this purpose to require the maximum employment of the Permanent Court (ICJ) in determining the legal aspects of international disputes." He continued: "Faults have become apparent in the working of the UN. The International Court has so far been denied almost totally the opportunity of working..."

In his third lecture, he repeated this theme: "Article 96 (of the UN Charter) provides that the General Assembly or the Security Council may seek advisory opinions from the Court on any legal question... Yet to date not a single advisory opinion has been sought from the Court... It is clearly necessary to make every effort to ensure the fullest possible use of the functions assigned to the Court. To this end Australia has introduced an important resolution into the present Assembly, seeking a recommendation that each organ of the UN and each specialized agency should regularly review the difficult and important questions of law which have arisen in the course of their activities and which involve questions of principle which it is desirable to have settled." (27. The Task of Nations, p 42)

This resolution, inspired by Evatt, was actually adopted on November 14 by UNGA in plenary session while its sponsor was apparently doing his best to see that the Palestine 'hot potato' did not in fact come before that. august body.

For at one of the late night sittings of the Special Committee in the last week of November, the proposals to refer several matters concerning Palestine to the ICJ came to the vote. Evatt wrote in his memoirs of that occasion: "The only matter on which there was any substantial disagreement was whether the UN itself had jurisdiction to reach a decision as to the future government of Palestine. The voting on this point was very close but the proposal for its reference to the Court was defeated. As to the validity of the action proposed to be taken by the UNGA, I never had any doubt... " (28. pp 155-6)

He himself had decided that some of the points which the Arab delegates wanted to refer to the ICJ were "patently absurd, for instance whether or not the Balfour Declaration was a legally binding declaration. Obviously it was political in essence and in character... " (29. p 157)

Precisely - yet the Balfour Declaration, promising a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, had been explicitly written into the text of of the British Mandate as if it were a legally binding declaration (with the aid of Frankfurter, as we have seen). The policies of British rule in Palestine had been based on the "authority" of the 1917 Balfour Declaration in this way. Evatt himself wrote that one of the main arguments against the Arab proposal for a unitary state was that "the promises of the Balfour Declaration would have been dishonoured."

The ICJ would very likely have handed down a ruling that the Balfour Declaration was legally invalid, and perhaps that the Mandate which imposed Jewish migration on the unwilling indigenous inhabitants was also invalid.. Any such ruling would have been disastrous for the Zionist cause at that time, and would have made the partition vote even harder to swing.

Furthermore, regarding Evatt's pronouncement on the validity of the partition resolution, obviously it was not Evatt's opinion that was being sought by a number of members of the Special Committee, but that of the body designed and set up to give the legal judgements which they felt were needed in order to help them in their deliberations.

A spokesperson for this group was the Pakistani representative, Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, a distinguished lawyer who himself later became a judge on the ICJ. He wrote that by the end of the sittings of Evatt's Special Committee he no longer believed in the good faith of the delegates. He analysed the voting pattern concerning referral to the ICJ: "As to our legal questions, the Committee rejected the resolutions on all the first 7 questions, but on the eighth question, i.e. whether the UN had any legal authority to do what they were proposing to do, the resolution to the effect that it had the authority was passed by 21 votes to 20. It is interesting to analyse those figures. In all, the Committee were 57. Only 21 who gave a positive vote were satisfied that the UN had authority to do what they were proposing to do and 36 were not satisfied." (30. Khalidi, p 716)

Evatt was highly satisfied that the ICJ, the instrument of international law whose 'maximum employment' he so ardently sought in theory, and whose prestige was a matter of such concern to him, was once again bypassed on this occasion. Yet idf ever a learned opinion and a considered judgement by the top legal authorities of the UNO was appropriate, it was in the case of Palestine in 1947.

This brings this paper to its conclusion, though there are other important aspects to consider such as the actual outcome of the decision. Evatt's attitude to the Arabs and the Palestinians, and his double standards on the issue of migration (in the case of Australia, he was a firm supporter of the White Australia policy and the right of Australians to have complete control over immigration policy, a right he wanted to deny to those inhabitants of Palestine who were opposed to Jewish immigration.

I conclude with a brief postscript.

Evatt was elected to the Presidency of the UNGA for the 1948 session, which was held in Paris.

In Palestine itself, violence had erupted almost immediately after the UNGA vote was announced.

In India, where partition was actually being enacted as the Special Committee was sitting, 225,000 people had been killed by inter-communal violence by October, 1947. Mahatma Gandhi believed that generations to come would continue to pay the price for the mistake of partition.. By the same token he came out strongly against the partition of Palestine: "... Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct... The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred... As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them." (31. Khalidi, p 367)

By the middle of 1948 there were already over 800,000 homeless Palestinian refugees and the state of Israel had been proclaimed. The UN-appointed Count Bernadotte, a patrician Swedish idealist, as its mediator in Palestine. His brief was to recommend final border plans for Israel, which had already occupied more land than had been allotted to it in the partition plan. He reported to the UN that "it would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish emigrants flow into Palestine." (32. David Gilmour, The Dispossessed, p 74)

On September 17, Count Bernadotte and his aide, Colonel Serot, were assassinated by members of the Stern Gang in Palestine. This occurred on the very day on which Evatt commenced his reign at the UN. At this fateful moment, "the flag-draped coffins of Count Bernadotte and Colonel Serot, gunned down in Jerusalem, arrived at the airport on the day that the President of France handed over the golden key of the Palais de Chaillot and declared it United Nations territory for the time of the Assembly. The two coffins lay at the airport, a reminder of what came of the United Nations intervention." (33. Tennant, p 232)

The Trump Declaration

A very comprehensive and insightful essay by Nada Elia on Trump's formal embrace of a Greater Israel. It hits just about every nail on the head:

"It is 'the morning after,' and the world, with few exceptions is denouncing Trump's declaration that the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. With those few exceptions, politicians globally are making vapid statements about the 'dangers' of that declaration, namely that it would lead to an escalation of violence, and jeopardize the 'peace process.' There seems to be little recognition of the relentless violence of Israeli settler-colonialism, and the complete violation of the Geneva convention and international law by both Israel and the US president.

"There is something to be said about Israel's deeply-seated need for 'recognition,' of its right to exist, its right to 'defend itself,' and its claim that Jerusalem is its capital city. That need betrays the (sometimes repressed) knowledge that Israel is a usurper, that Jews globally do not have a 'right' to become settlers, and that what Israel is 'defending' is an illegal occupation. Specifically, in the case of Jerusalem, the city is illegally annexed, with a clear system of apartheid privileging one socio-political ethnicity over the indigenous people. It is no wonder a president, Trump, who openly aligns himself with white supremacy as home, would naturally favour Jewish supremacy in historic Palestine. This is his 'Lord Balfour moment,' in which, in a gesture of imperial largesse, he presumes to hand over land that is not his, to another people. Britain's gambit did not work out so well 100 years ago, and neither will Trump's gesture. It may satisfy his own ignominious hubris, his ambition to conclude 'the deal of the century,' but it cannot bring about justice.

"And yet Trump's announcement does not jeopardize the peace process. This is because 'Oslo' was still-born, it just has not been buried yet. Rather, for the past 20 years, it has been on life-support, with no chance of survival. And there has been no 'peace' during the 'process,' only growing injustice, more disenfranchisement of the indigenous people, ongoing ethnic cleansing, and a genocidal siege on two million Palestinians in Gaza. This is the 'process' that led to two intifadas, and created the political context of global grassroots solidarity in the form of BDS.

"And still politicians continue to prop up this cadaver. The European Union, for example, holds on to the chimera of a two-state solution, and 'negotiations' that will determine the fate of Jerusalem. 'There is a UN resolution on this issue and the issue of Jerusalem must be raised in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians,' the EU ambassador to Israel, Emanuele Giaufret, said as he announced that the EU will not be moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"Trump's decision to declare Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has finally unplugged the useless apparatus. Whether the US embassy is moved or not - and that is yet to be determined, and cannot possibly be accomplished in under two to three years - what Trump has achieved is the formal recognition that the US has never been a fair mediator, a 'neutral broker,' but rather that it has always supported Israeli settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. Democrats have been more hypocritical about it, consistently increasing their financial aid to Israel even as they criticized the settlements as an obstacle to peace. Trump lacks any and all diplomacy, and if there is anything he is good at, it is his unabashed embrace of various oppressive systems. His national base is white supremacists, his global base is Zionism, another form of ethnic supremacy.

"The mask has come off. Both in the US as well as in Israel, which is open about its desire to keep on expanding. 'From the river to the sea' is not only the Palestinian dream of liberation, since all of historic Palestine is liberated, it is also the Zionist vision of Greater Israel, which the settlers have been slowly but surely making a reality, with the 'facts on the ground.'

"If any pain is felt today,and in the coming weeks, it is the pain that comes from removing a band-aid that has long covered up a festering wound. The wound will certainly heal better now. And the rage is an expression of the people's recognition that there seems to be no end to imperial hubris in sight. Yet now is not the time to glorify the 'sumoud narrative,' the pain, the rage, the outrage are too raw. Palestinians, especially in Jerusalem, will pay a very high price for for Trump's declaration. Yet we persist, because we must.

One of the earliest Zionist visionaries, Vladimir Jabotinsky, remains relevant today. In his 1923 treatise, The Iron Wall, where he laid out his vision for settler colonialism, he explains, with impressive foresight: 'It may be that some individual Arabs take bribes. But that does not mean that the Arab people of Palestine as a whole will sell that fervent patriotism that they guard so jealously, and which even the Papuans will never sell. Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of 'Palestine' into the 'Land of Israel.'

"No, Trump's declaration has made clear that, just as with South Africa last century, the US government is on the wrong side of history today. And just as with apartheid South Africa, the people of the land, along with the global community, will determine the outcome. Apartheid, or one democratic state?

"Even in the searing pain of 'the morning after,' as we look around and see a clearly-demarcated strategy of resistance, and take in the multiple expressions of global solidarity with the Palestinian people, we know we will overcome, someday." (Trump's 'Lord Balfour moment' is formal recognition the US was never an honest broker, mondoweiss.net, 7/12/17)

Section 44 (i) & Israel's Law of Return

Section 44 (i) of the Australian Constitution famously reads:

"Any person who - Is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power... shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives."

It of course has implications for any Jewish MPs and senators who take seriously the Zionist presumption that Israel is the state of all Jews, wherever they reside, and are entitled to automatic Israeli citizenship through Israel's Law of Return (1950).

The following news report is the first time, however, so far as I am aware, that Israel's Law of Return has been invoked in media commentary on the impact of Section 44 (i) on the eligibility of many of our parliamentarians to sit in federal parliament:

"A government citizenship hit-list suggests more than 25 Labor MPs and senators could be under a constitutional cloud because of dual nationality, as Parliament prepares for a new disclosure regime to kick in next week. The West Australian has obtained a comprehensive spreadsheet prepared by Coalition staff members, which presents research into the heritage of all sitting Labor parliamentarians [...] The document also suggests that Victorian Labor senator Kim Carr could have inadvertently obtained Israeli citizenship automatically granted to spouses under the Law of Return before 1999. It is unclear whether Senator Carr's spouse Carole Fabian holds Israeli citizenship, with the document saying the potential split allegiance 'has not been looked into'." (Coalition Government draws up hit-list of Labor pollies under dual-citizenship cloud, Sarah Martin and Nick Butterly, 25/11/17)

By drawing attention to Israel's Law of Return in this way, the Turnbull government has potentially unsheathed a two-edged sword, raising the prospect of  its environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, to give but one example, coming under pressure to formally reject his 'right' under Israeli law to become a citizen of Israel.

It is worth remembering here that it was only the principled opposition of Britain's anti-Zionist Jewish establishment to the Zionist project in 1917 that ensured the inclusion of the following guarantee  - "... nothing shall be done which may prejudice... or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country" - in the Balfour Declaration. What an irony then that Israel's Law of Return could conceivably prejudice the rights of Australian Jews to stand for election to Australia's federal parliament.

The Balfour What?

In a month rich with historical anniversaries, namely the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation and the centenaries of the Bolshevik Revolution and Balfour Declaration.  The first two, of course, are done and dusted, history if you like. But the Balfour Declaration, just keeps on keeping on, a grinding, slo-mo genocide of the Palestinian people - for anyone with eyes to see.

Now here's the thing. Whenever of late I've tuned in to the ABC's Radio National, never religiously I might add, the Protestant Reformation and the Bolshevik Revolution seem to be under discussion in one context or another. But of the Balfour Declaration... nothing.

OK, thought I, maybe I simply missed instances of RN chatter on the Balfour Declaration.

So I thought I'd conduct a little experiment. I typed each event into the ABC search bar, selecting mentions over the preceding 3 month period. (Keep in mind that these mentions could have been anything from a news item to an entire program.) Here's what I found:

Protestant Reformation - 21
Bolshevik Revolution - 5
Balfour Declaration - 3

Go figure...

Corbyn on Balfour

On November 2 this year, the moral and intellectual void at the helm of the British Conservative Party, PM Theresa May, declared for the Zionist entity in Palestine, just as, 100 years earlier, the wartime cabinet of David Lloyd George and Arthur James Balfour declared for the Zionist movement's statist designs on Arab Palestine.

Unfortunately, the British Labour Party's sole representative in the cabinet, George Barnes (Minister without Portfolio), concurred, laying the foundation for a century of bipartisan British support for Zionism, both in its pre- and post-state forms.

The current leader of the Labour Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, however, is (or appears to be) breaking ranks. Here's his official position on the Balfour centenary, delivered on November 2:

"Today marks the centenary of the British government's Balfour Declaration, which has shaped the modern history of the Middle East.

"The fact that this promise by what was then colonial Britain is celebrated by one side and commemorated as a disaster by the other reflects the continuing tragedy at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

"Balfour promised to help establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine while pledging that nothing would be done to prejudice the rights of its 'existing non-Jewish communities', a reference to the Palestinian Arabs who then made up 90% of the population.

"A hundred years on, the second part of Britain's pledge has still not been fulfilled, and Britain's historic role means we have a special responsibility to the Palestinian people, who are still denied their basic rights.

"So let us mark the Balfour anniversary by recognising Palestine as a step towards a genuine two state solution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, increasing international pressure for an end to the 50-year occupation of the Palestinian territories, illegal settlement expansion and the blockade of Gaza.

"As many Israelis and Palestinians believe, there can only be a lasting peace in the Middle East on the basis of a negotiated settlement that delivers justice and security for both peoples and states."

Theresa May's 2 November Speech: Worse than the Balfour Declaration

Forget Sexminster, however diverting; the moral bankruptcy of UK Prime Minister Theresa May's government is nowhere on better display than in her appalling speech to guests attending a dinner in London on November 2, 2017 to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.

That most "discreditable document," to borrow the words of J.M.N. Jeffries, "unlawful in issue, arbitrary in purpose, and deceitful in wording," was at least issued without the benefit of hindsight. However, despite 100 years of escalating genocide for the Palestinians, May's speech indicates that she has learnt ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about her country's starring role in this, the greatest of Britain's colonial crimes. As she makes abundantly clear in her speech, she is in fact "proud" of Britain's part in the creation of the State of Israel. ('Proud' is trotted out 3 times; 'with pride' twice.)

100 years of hindsight. 100 years in which to pause, reflect, learn, acknowledge, apologise and atone, and still she refuses to own the problem which Balfour, Lloyd George, Weizmann and the rest of the Anglo-Zionist cabal of 1917 bequeathed to the world.

May has thus delivered, if anything, a worse-than-the-Balfour-Declaration-speech, and, what's more, at an event heavy with symbolism, delivered it before the current incarnations of Lords Rothschild and Balfour.

Even worse, she's delivered it before a smiling, smirking Benjamin Netanyahu, the current incarnation of the arch-Zionist terrorist Menachem Begin, whose Irgun operatives blew up the seat of British Mandate Palestine's government, the King David Hotel, in 1946, with the loss of 91 British, Jewish and Arab lives. Netanyahu, moreover, is hell-bent, in sync with Irgun ideology, on realising the nightmare vision of an Arabrein Greater Israel, extending far beyond the Balfour Declaration's "national home for the Jewish people... in Palestine."

It's all here: Balfour's alleged "vision of peaceful co-existence," "leadership," and supposed regard for Palestinian "sensitivities" (I kid you not!); Israel's mythical "vulnerability" and "democracy"; the smearing of BDS and anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism; the hollow intoning of the two-state mantra; the faux balancing of illegal Israeli settlements with an alleged "Palestinian incitement"; falsified history; the invocation of Zionism's fictional "2,000-year dream" - with no mention whatever of the Palestinians' all-too-real, 100-year nightmare - and more.

Since PM May's truly shameful address constitutes nothing less than a re-affirmation of the Balfour Declaration, delivered in spite of the kind of hindsight unavailable to Balfour, it should be read in full, rather than in the form of mere media sound-bites. Here, therefore, is the official transcript (PM speech at Balfour Centenary Dinner - GOV.UK). The headings, interpolated comments, and highlightings are, of course, mine:

Lord Rothschild, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Chief Rabbi, distinguished guests, Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am so pleased to be here with you tonight - and to be with you Lord Balfour on this special evening - as we mark the centenary of the letter written by your great-Uncle: which I believe to be one of the most significant letters in history.

A letter which gave birth to a most extraordinary country. And a letter which finally opened the door to helping make a Jewish Homeland a reality. It was a letter that is all the more remarkable when you consider its length, its context and its sensitivity.

First, it was exceptionally concise - just 67 words and one single sentence. In my experience such brevity is not typically a feature of letters from the Foreign Office!

Second, we should consider the context in which this letter was written. Let us cast our minds back to the time of 1917. In an era of competing imperial powers and with Britain still embroiled in the midst of the First World War, the idea of establishing a homeland for the Jewish people would have seemed a distant dream for many; and been fiercely opposed by others. Yet it was at this very moment that Lord Balfour had the vision and the leadership to make this profound statement about restoring a persecuted people to a safe and secure homeland.

[The Balfour Declaration says not a word about Jewish persecution, safety, or security, only the establishment of "a national home." The Zionist drafters of the declaration originally wanted "the National Home of the Jewish people" "reconstituted." They were not humanitarians, but nationalists, who wished to re-create an ancient tribal Israel, more mythology than history.]

Third, this was a letter that remains very sensitive for many people today - but it was not ignorant of those sensitivities. Indeed, Balfour wrote explicitly that: "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, of the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

[Balfour was so "sensitive" that he dismissed 90% of Palestine's population as "existing non-Jewish communities," and, in a 1919 memorandum, cold-bloodedly declared that "Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land."]

Thrice Proud

So when some people suggest we should apologise for this letter, I say absolutely not. We are proud of our pioneering role in the creation of the State of Israel. We are proud to stand here today together with Prime Minister Netanyahu and declare our support for Israel. And we are proud of the relationship we have built with Israel. And as we mark one hundred years since Balfour, we look forward to taking that relationship even further.

As Prime Minister Netanyahu and I discussed in Downing Street earlier today, we want to deepen our links in areas where Israel is leading the world - in areas like agriculture, health, silence, technology and innovation. Israel is the true start-up nation and we are proud to be your partner.

Tears... for Israel

We also remain absolutely committed to Israel's security. For it is only when you witness Israel's vulnerability that you truly understand the constant danger Israelis face - as I saw on my visit in 2014, when the bodies of the murdered teenagers Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah were discovered. So I am clear that we will always support Israel's right to defend itself. And in a world where Britain and Israel increasingly face the same shared challenges and threats, I am just as clear that our security services will continue to deepen their already excellent co-operation to keep all our people safe.

A Great Deal of Pride in All We Have Achieved

So I believe we should gather here tonight with a great deal of pride in all that we have achieved - and all that Israel stands for as a symbol of openness, as a thriving democracy; and a beacon to the world in upholding the rights of women and members of the LGBT community.

But marking this centenary is not just about what has been achieved. We must recognise how difficult at times the journey has been - from the Jews forced out of their homes in Arab countries in 1948 to the suffering of Palestinians affected and dislodged by Israel's birth - both completely contrary to the intention of Balfour to safeguard all of these communities.

[Jews were not forced out of their homes in Arab countries in 1948. This was instead the fate of Palestinians at the hands of Zionist terror gangs in that year . Notice how May, a true Balfourian, euphemistically refers to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 as "affected and dislodged by Israel's birth," as though it were somehow a natural process. As for Arab Jews, they were deliberately uprooted by Zionist agents in the 1950s and brought to Israel so that they could occupy the stolen homes and lands (euphemistically dubbed 'absentees' property') of ethnically cleansed Palestinians.]

Lip Service

And we must, I believe, seize this opportunity to renew our resolve on what is still to be achieved. For sadly, Balfour remains unfinished business - as his fundamental vision of peaceful co-existence has not yet been fulfilled. And I believe it demands of us today a renewed resolve to support a lasting peace that is in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians - and in the interests of us all. So I am delighted to see US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross here with us this evening and, Wilbur, you can be assured of the full-hearted support of the United Kingdom for the efforts that the Trump administration is making to bring the parties together to reach that peace deal. A peace deal that must be based on a two-state solution, with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian State. And let us be honest with each other: there will need to be compromises from each side if we are to have a realistic chance of achieving this goal - including an end to the building of new settlements and an end to Palestinian incitement too.

BDS=Anti-Semitism

But as we work together towards Balfour's vision of a peaceful co-existence we must be equally clear that there can never be any excuse for boycotts, divestment or sanctions: they are unacceptable and this government will have no truck with those who subscribe to them. Neither can there ever be any excuse for anti-Semitism in any form. Just as there is no excuse for hatred against Muslims, Christians, or anyone based on the peaceful religions they choose to follow, the place of their birth, or the colour of their skin. And yes, this means recognising that there is today a new and pernicious form of anti-Semitism which uses criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government as a despicable justification for questioning the very right of Israel to exist. This is abhorrent and we will not stand for it. That is why the United Kingdom has been at the forefront of an international effort to create a new definition of anti-Semitism which explicitly calls out this inexcusable attempt to justify hatred. So let me be clear. Criticising the actions of Israel is never - and can never be - an excuse for questioning Israel's right to exist, any more than criticising the actions of Britain could be an excuse for questioning our right to exist. And criticising the government of Israel is never - and can never be - an excuse for hatred against the Jewish people - any more than criticising the British government would be an excuse for hatred against the British people. Put simply, there can be no excuses for any kind of hatred towards the Jewish people. There never has been - and there never will be.

All Holocaust, No Nakba

And let me say this too. We will never forget where that hatred and prejudice can lead. That is why it is right that the United Kingdom will have a permanent and fitting National Memorial to the Holocaust standing next to Parliament together with a learning centre that will teach the lessons of the Holocaust for society today and act as a voice against hatred in the modern world. And I am delighted that just last week, the cross-party United Kingdom Holocaust Memorial Foundation announced that Sir David Adjaye, Ron Arad and the landscape architects Gustafson Porter and Bowman have won the international design competition for the memorial and learning centre with their evocative concept design for this new national landmark at the heart of our democracy.

The Spirit of Balfour Lives On

In saying all of this I do not underestimate the scale of the challenges we face together. The challenge of fighting hatred in all its forms. The challenge of bringing people together. The challenge of fulfilling Balfour's vision of peaceful co-existence. But neither do I underestimate the scale of the prize that is at stake. I saw a glimpse of that prize just last Saturday when I attended a charity concert with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra on London's South Bank - an orchestra that brings together young Israeli and Palestinian musicians as well as those from several other Arab countries to promote co-existence and intercultural dialogue. They were performing together raising money for the Jacqueline du Pre Tribute Fund which helps fund MS research. And through their shared love of music they escaped the divides of their history to come together for a united cause. In their actions, and in many others like it, the spirit of Balfour lives on. So let us tonight be inspired by that spirit. Let us recognise the contribution of Balfour in fulfilling what was once little more than a two-thousand year old dream for a persecuted people. Let us take inspiration from the vision he showed as we work together for that future where Arabs and Jews can live in peaceful co-existence. And as we look to that future, let us mark with pride what has been achieved with the creation of the State of Israel and - in Balfour's words - "a national home for the Jewish people."

100 Years of Balfour = 100 Years of Palestinian Dispossession

Exactly 100 years ago today the British war cabinet issued that most heinous of foreign policy documents, the Balfour Declaration. In its name, Britain unleashed wave after wave of European Zionist settlers (protected by British bayonets) on a defenceless Arab Palestine. This led inexorably to the eventual dispossession, in 1948, of Palestine's Arab inhabitants by Zionist terror gangs, bent on the creation of an exclusively Jewish, apartheid state.

The most relevant book on the subject is, of course, J.M.N. Jeffries' 1939 classic, Palestine: The Reality, thankfully reissued this year by Olive Branch Press in the US. It should be read by all serious students of the Palestine problem. Here is the summary/conclusion which follows Jeffries' forensic analysis of this appallingly racist, viciously colonial, document:

"These were its principal characteristics:

 1. Its publication broke our pledged word to the Arab race.

2. Its object was to establish the Jews in a privileged position in Palestine without the assent of the population...

3. It was written in great part by those who were supposed only to have received it, and was deliberately worded so that the truth might be hidden by it, its guarantees to the Arabs be useless and its promises intangible.

4. It was ostensibly a recognition of Zionist aspirations to return to Palestine under the sanction of historic rights, but in reality it was the published clause of a private bargain by which war-spoils were to be given in payment for war-help.

"There is relief in quitting this subject... But it is a pity that it cannot be lost from sight, and a greater pity that it has not yet been removed from our public records. Unlawful in issue, arbitrary in purpose, and deceitful in wording the Balfour Declaration is the most discreditable document to which a British Government has set its hand within memory." (pp 200-01)

Readers should also know that, in London today, when the prime minister of Perfidious Albion, Theresa May, sits down to dinner with her Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, to celebrate 'with pride' the November 2, 1917 issue of this "most discreditable document to which a British Government has set its hand within memory," they and their entourages will be toasting 100 years of Palestinian dispossession.

UK: No Consensus on Israel

The times they are a changin:

Corbyn and Arkush show how Balfour is marking the end of the British consensus on Israel by Robert A H Cohen, patheos.com, 22/10/17

"This past week Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn snubbed a dinner invitation from the Jewish Leadership Council while Jonathan Arkush, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, sent an angry email to the UK ambassador to the United Nations. Arthur Balfour and his infamous Declaration are to blame for both incidents.

"It doesn't sound like much to get worked up about. But you should do. As the Balfour centenary year approaches its climax on 2 November, we're witnessing in Britain the fracturing of decades of mainstream political consensus over Israel and the gradual isolation of the Jewish communal leadership as it becomes ever more intolerant of Palestinian solidarity.

"Three weeks ago at the annual Labour Party conference, Corbyn's biggest applause line was not about Brexit or austerity but for this: Let's give real support to end the oppression of the Palestinian people, the 50-year occupation and illegal settlement expansion and move to a genuine two-state solution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

"t wasn't only because the 4,000 party members in the hall endorsed the sentiment that they applauded for so long. It was because they were fed up with the intimidation from the Israel lobby in the UK that attempts to turn every expression of Palestinian solidarity into an investigation about antisemitism...

"Corbyn has been a Patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign for many years. So it was hardly surprising that he refused the JLC invitation to celebrate Balfour when Palestinians view the document as an historical betrayal of their rights. It would have been astonishing if the Labour leader had said 'yes'. And the JLC would have known that. That didn't stop the JLC chair, Jonathan Goldstein, from using the dinner refusal to accuse Corbyn of more anti-Jewish sentiment. But that was likely the plan all along: 'I do think it will not have been amiss for Mr Corbyn to understand that the Jewish community will have taken great heart and great comfort for seeing him attend such an event because it recognises the right of Israel to exist.' You can be sure though that Tony Blair or Gordon Brown would have accepted the invite if either of them had still been leading the Labour Party today. So times have certainly changed.

"Meanwhile, over at the Board of Deputies, there's been plenty of pointless bashing and feigned upset going on too in the last few days. The whole stop turns on a tweet sent by a member of the UK's UN Mission in New York which said: 'Let us remember, there are 2 halves of #Balfour, 2nd of which has not been fulfilled. There is unfinished business. @AmbassadorAllen #Israel'

"Whoever composed and sent the tweet was referring to the second half of the Balfour Declaration which follows the promise of a Jewish 'national home' with this reassurance: '... it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine...'

"The 'existing non-Jewish communities' were of course the 90% plus indigenous Arabs living in Palestine who were not considered even worthy of the slightest consultation on the matter. Also worth noting is that this anonymous majority of non-Jews were only being promised 'civil and religious rights' while the Jews were being promised national and political rights.

"President Arkush was furious though. He wasted no time in dashing off an apoplectic email rebuking the UK Ambassador to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, and conveying his 'deep disappointment'. Arkush described the tweet as: 'unworthy, hostile, unbalanced, negative and evidently intended as criticism of the State of Israel'.

"It's worth a moment to examine Arkush's tweet critique because it turns out that: 'unworthy, hostile, unbalanced, negative' is a better description of the Board President than the UK's Mission to New York. Arkush is keen to give Ambassador Rycroft the standard Zionist history lesson in which all blame for the last 100 years of conflict rests squarely, and exclusively, with the intransigent and rejectionist Palestinians: 'First, the "civil and religious rights of all existing non-Jewish communities in [former] Palestine" (the terms used in the Balfour Declaration) are fully protected.'

"Well, that's hardly true in the 60% of the West Bank under total Israeli control for the last 50 years where the lives of Palestinians are administered under an apartheid regime. Nor can it be true for the 1.8m Gazans besieged by Israel by land, sea and air. And while the Palestinian citizens of Israel itself (20% of the population) have freedom of movement and democratic voting rights they are still discriminated against in a host of other ways.

"Arkush attempts another line of attack: 'Secondly, the United Nations offered the partition of Palestine between the Jewish and Arab communities more than once. The Jewish community accepted, the Arabs rejected it outright.'

"But why would the Palestinians have voluntarily offered to partition their land when they were still the majority in numbers and ownership but were being offered less than half the territory?

"Arkush tries again: 'Thirdly, the Balfour Declaration was no more or no less than a British Government expression of sympathy. It came 30 years before the UN vote to establish a Jewish homeland. If an Arab or Palestinian homeland was not established, that cannot be the fault of Israel, which did not exist, but would be a criticism of either the international community, or more fairly the Arab community who repeatedly rejected the notion of establishing their own country.'

"But the original tweet (if you remember that far back) doesn't mention Israel at all. It simply talks about 'unfinished business'. The responsibility to fix this does not rest solely with Israel or the Palestinians. The problem, as Arkush admits, was created internationally. It will need to be solved internationally too. And if the Balfour Declaration was nothing more than an 'expression of sympathy' why has its celebration becomes the touchstone of support for Israel and criticism of it a mark of antisemitism?

"Arkush then blames the Palestinians for all on-going rejection and violence: 'At Camp David the PLO was offered recognition of  Palestinian state on 95% of the West Bank. Yassar Arafat rejected it and responded by starting a cycle of violence which continues to this day.'

Much has been written about the so-called 'generous offer' made to Arafat at Camp David in 2000. It was no such thing...

"Finally, Arkush shows what's really bothering him. It's the mismatch in attitudes between the British Conservative government, on whom he can rely on for support to Israel, and the career diplomats in New York who actually understand what's gone on and have studied a bit of history and read the occasional book on the subject.

"'... the tweet is completely inconsistent with the United Kingdom's declared policy to mark, commemorate and celebrate the Balfour Declaration (all terms used by the Prime Minister and other Ministers in recent weeks). In just a fortnight's time a commemorative dinner is to take place to be attended by the Prime Minister and Prime Minister Netanyahu. It is deeply unattractive for the UK's Mission to the UN to strike a critical note and exposes the UK Government to a charge of hypocrisy.'

"Well, President Arkush, God forbig anyone should be leaving themselves open to a charge of hypocrisy.

"The problem for our Jewish leaders in the UK is that they have put all their Israeli eggs into one Conservative shape basket. And the current chaos of Brexit negotiations hardly makes the Tories look like the 'natural party of government'.

"However, in truth our Jewish leadership's mistake goes back much further. Signing up to be the puppets of the State of Israel's Foreign Ministry is where it all went wrong. The JLC, the Board, and indeed the Chief Rabbi, now look like nothing more than local adjuncts to the Israeli Embassy. Years ago, they should, and could, have taken on the role of critical friend to Israel and developed a nuanced Jewish diaspora position that held Israel to account for its excesses and campaigned for a genuine 2-state solution. But instead they opted to be local sub-contractors for Israeli propaganda. And now it's too late to turn back.

"So the Balfour anniversary year is turning out to be more revealing and significant than I imagined 12 months ago. At a national and political level there is now no agreement over Israel at Westminster. Meanwhile the formal Jewish leadership in the UK are painting themselves into a blue and white corner and looking ever more out of touch with a general public which is beginning to understand that Israel/Palestine is a conflict about human rights and not about terrorism. As for bullying national politicians and career diplomats over Israel that does not look like smart communal politics and certainly nothing like the Jewish traditional championing justice and compassion.

"The final two weeks of the Balfour anniversary year will show up further divisions on Israel across British public life. There are numerous speeches, rallies, marches, celebrations and protests planned across the country. They will prove that Britain no longer has a consensus on Israel."