The Century-Long Palestinian Effort to Reverse the Balfour Declaration, and Its Implications

With the approach of the 100th anniversary of Britain’s declaration that it favored “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” a Palestinian campaign is underway to obtain an apology from the United Kingdom for this supposed injustice. Alex Joffe explains what the campaign reveals about Palestinian leaders’ aspirations and tactics:

[T]he campaign against the Balfour Declaration [characteristically involves] mistaking symbolism for practical action. Presumably an apology would achieve a partial restoration of Palestinian national honor and constitute another step toward the complete eradication of Israel. However, . . . it is difficult to see what direct value an apology would have in helping to establish a Palestinian state. . . .

The Balfour apology campaign is thus another element in the Palestinian wars against inconvenient historical facts that must be denied, attacked, rewritten, or otherwise assailed, rather than debated, conceded, or shared. This approach accounts for such extraordinary Palestinian claims as [Yasir] Arafat’s denial that there was ever a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem [and] Saeb Erekat’s statement that the Palestinians are descendants of Epipaleolithic inhabitants and thus the “real” indigenous population of the land. . . .

These [preoccupations]—redeeming lost honor, perpetual victimhood, international responsibility, and achieving through guilt what politics and force of arms cannot—are cultural ideas, transmitted endlessly by Palestinian leaders and through their educational system and media. But they are also reflected in Palestinian politics. At every turn, negotiations get to a stage and then stop because compromise would preclude full “restoration” of what never was. Fighting century-old events and hoping to produce another outcome is consistent with this pattern. It is unlikely to build either a stable Palestinian society or peace with Israel.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Balfour Declaration, Israel & Zionism, Palestinians, Yasir Arafat

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa