In preparation for the centennial of the Balfour Declaration this November, Mahmoud Abbas has been campaigning for Britain to apologize for its 1917 commitment to establishing “a Jewish national home in Palestine,” and has even threatened to sue the United Kingdom for this alleged injustice. Last week, London issued a statement that it remains “proud of [its] role in creating the state of Israel.” Ruthie Blum comments:

In a piece in the Washington Post in October, the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the Balfour Declaration the “symbolic beginning of the denial of [Palestinian] rights.” He failed to mention that it was actually [Palestinian] leaders who have denied the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza their rights. Well before the 1967 Six-Day War, when the term “Palestinian people” was coined, Arabs rejected the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine—the original “two-state solution.” They have been refusing to reach any peaceful arrangement with Israel ever since.

The end result is on display for all to see. Israel has spent nearly seven decades building a booming democratic country, while the Arabs of Palestine have frittered away the time by engaging in acts of destruction. Yes, as the Jewish state marks 69 years since its establishment, 50 years since the reunification of Jerusalem, and 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, the Palestinian Authority is threatening to take Britain to court.

Let Donald Trump be reminded of this before hosting Abbas in the Oval Office and listening to his lies. The rest of us should take a break from discussions of war and peace to toast Balfour—and Israel’s success in a region otherwise characterized by failure.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”