Israel’s detractors regularly claim that the establishment of a Jewish state was part of the European colonial agenda, and that it remains nothing more than an outpost of European imperialism. The reality, Jonathan Adelman and Asaf Romirowsky point out, was closer to the opposite:

Consider the convocation of the First Zionist Congress by Theodor Herzl in Basel in 1897. At the congress there was no real involvement of international powers. Before his death in 1904, Herzl met key leaders in Germany, England, Ottoman Turkey, and the Vatican. While achieving some legitimacy for the movement, he failed to make any deals with them. . . . [Even the] 1917 British Balfour Declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine was matched by other British promises of Arab sovereignty in the same area. . . .

The refusal of the British colonial masters of Palestine to allow more than a handful of Jews (75,000 in 1939–1944 and none thereafter) into Palestine while millions were eager to emigrate there was matched by the 1939 British declaration that it supported an Arab state in Palestine. . . . [D]uring the 1945-1948 period, England sent 80,000 troops to Palestine to put down any Jewish moves to create a state.

In the November 1947 United Nations vote for [the creation of] a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine, the British refused to support the resolution. The winning votes were provided by a bloc that could never be considered a Western colonial power—the Soviet Union and its East European allies. . . .

[In short], the notion that colonial and great powers were the main force behind the creation of Israel is not supported by history. It was precisely the great powers and colonial powers who made the Jewish path to the creation of Israel so very difficult.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.