A look at history assures us that successive British kingdoms/governments up to the present day have a very atrocious history perpetrating brutal terrorism, genocides, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, rapes of women and children, violations of human rights, whole scale destruction, the ugliest racism, betrayals, theft of land and natural resources of all the other countries in the whole world on every continent without any exaggeration. Let us remember that once the sun never set on British colonies.
One out of thousands of these crimes is the illegal creation of the terrorist state of Israel in Palestine violating the rights of the indigenous Palestinians with genocidal crimes, ethnic cleansing and land theft, and initiating successive brutal wars in the Middle East that are still being waged up to this very minute.
This was accomplished by the November 2nd 1917 Balfour Declaration in a letter form to Walter Rothschild; the head of the British Zionists Organization, promising that the British government would bring about “a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine”.
Due to some opposition within the British Cabinet and by some orthodox Jewish Rabbis in Europe to the Zionist program, the document (Balfour Declaration) went through four drafts before its final form. The drafting began under the guidance of Chaim Weizmann (a Russian Zionist leader, who served as the President of the Zionist Organization) to the Zionist drafting team (Jewish Zionist Nathaniel Rothschild and Leopold Amery, and pro-Zionist Alfred Milner, Cecil Rhodes and Richard Haldane.)
The final draft was watered down with intentional ambiguous terms such as “national home” rather than “state”, and “in Palestine” rather than the whole “Palestine”. Balfour’s role was mere signing the document.
The document contained four main clauses. The first two promised to support “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” disregarding the fact that Judaism is a religion rather than a nationality.
The other two clauses were considered safeguard clauses with respect to “the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish [Goyim] communities in Palestine” [negating the political and self-determination rights of the 90% peaceful co-existence Christian and Muslim Palestinian population], and “the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
The British government; a party who did not have any right at all to Palestine, had promised the country that belongs to Palestinians, a second party, to a third party, Zionists, who did not have any relation at all to the land, and who had mis-represented and distorted authentic Judaism to herd Jews; citizens from other countries, into Palestine for the colonial scheme of Greater Israel from Nile to Euphrates.
These Zionists did not hesitate to perpetrate terrorist attacks even against their sponsor; British forces, such as the bombing of King David hotel, in order to achieve their colonial goals. Since the establishment of the Israeli terrorist state the whole Middle Eastern region has been plagued with perpetual destructive wars where the forces of the whole Western world have been deeply involved providing arms and money and sacrificing the lives of their own soldiers for Israel’s sake.
The spitefulness, the immorality, the illegality and the treachery of the Balfour Declaration has been this week the main talk of many politicians and writers. Yet none mentioned the British betrayal of the Hussein-McMahon agreement that is closely related to the same subject.
Unlike Balfour Declaration that was a mere letter from a British official to a British citizen, both aliens to Palestine and had never lived in the country, Hussein-McMahon agreement of 1915-1916 was an official political agreement between the representatives of two countries that had precedence over the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
Hussein-McMahon agreement/correspondence was a series of ten letters, both in English and Arabic, exchanged between Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif (ruler) of Mecca, and Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry McMahon, who was the British High Commissioner to Egypt representing Britain.
The ten letters expressed the British meditated and well-thought of foreign policy and commitment to Sharif Hussein to recognize an Independent Arabia “in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sharif of Mecca” in exchange for launching an Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during WWI. The agreed upon boundaries extended from Syria north to the Arabian Peninsula south, and from the Persian Gulf east to the Mediterranean west.
Considering McMahon’s promises as a formal British agreement, Hussein launched the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Thomas Edward Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, was the British liaison to Hussein, through whom Britain supplied arms to the Arab Revolt.
The Arab Revolt was the British proxy army against the Ottoman Empire and many Arabs sacrificed their lives to free their country from the Ottoman rule. The Revolt was successful in liberation the whole Arabia.
Treacherous, as they had always been and still are, British government in May 1916 entered into a secret agreement with France known as Sykes-Picot Agreement, whereby the two countries would split the Arab World at the end of the war into two parts under their rules. The French would rule Syria, Lebanon and parts of Iraq while Britain would rule the rest of Iraq, Palestine and Jordan.
During the war the German forces penetrated into large areas of France and the Allied forces were not able to force them out of France since they had suffered great losses especially during the battle of the Somme in the fall of 1916. When the Ottoman Empire entered the war siding with Germany, Britain was on the verge of financial collapse.
An offer of peace was conveyed by the American ambassador to Britain on behalf of the Central powers to the Allies but the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, who was approached secretly by Chaim Weismann, rejected it and vowed that Britain would fight on until victory. Weismann offered to have the Zionist Organization convince the American President, Woodrow Wilson to enter the war on the side of the Allies on the condition that Britain would facilitate the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Backed by Zionist money, Woodrow Wilson, who was re-elected to a second term as the American president under the slogan of keeping America out of war, needed a justification to lead the US into the war. The US was smuggling weapons to the Allies onto passenger ships through the German imposed sea war zone around the UK. The British liner Lusitania was one of these passenger ships. An intentional leak was sent to the German embassy in the US that the Lusitania is carrying a large load of arms to the Allies.
The German embassy, then, placed newspaper advertisements warning passengers of the danger of sailing on the Lusitania. German submarine launched a torpedo at the Lusitania that ignited the smuggled arms shipment, and the Lusitania sank causing the loss of almost 1,200 lives including 128 Americans. This was the justification Wilson needed to enter the war against Germany. The British then issued the Balfour Declaration as a fulfillment of their end of the bargain with the Zionists.
Hussein rejected the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration considering them a British betrayal and a great violation of the Hussein-McMahon agreement. Several British officials; David Hogarth, the head of Arab Bureau in Cairo, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby (known as the Bloody Bull), as well as the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918, misleadingly assured Hussein of the British intent of establishing an independent Arabia with a national government and administration.
Yet, in April 1920 at the Conference of London and the San Remo Conference the Allied Supreme Council ignored the Arab struggle and aspiration for independence, and executed the Sykes-Picot agreement imposing a British mandate and a French mandate on the region.
Hussein did not accept Balfour Declaration nor an independent Jewish state in Palestine as indicated by British Commander David Hogarth, so he needed to be “removed” out of the way. The British supported and armed the Saudi family to fight Hussein, who was eventually exiled to Cypress until 1930, then moved to Transjordan to live with his son Abdullah until his death in 1931.
The British government, British Zionist organizations and Zionist Christians are planning on celebrating the centenary of the Balfour Declaration calling it “God’s Work” establishing state of Israel and returning the Jewish people to their alleged biblical homeland. On the other side Palestinian groups as well as officials from the Palestinian Authority, including Abbas, are demanding a British apology and British recognition of a Palestinian state.
Pro-Palestinian groups launched a petition, signed by more than 13,600 people calling on British government to scrap plans to celebrate this most shameful event and arguing that Theresa May, the Prime Minister, should instead issue an apology.
The British government and Most of the British politicians, instead, expressed their pride of what they called the British role in the establishment of the (terrorist) Israeli state. The British Foreign Office stated “Balfour Declaration is one of the most important letters in history which Her Majesty’s government does not intend to apologize. We are proud of our role in creating the state of Israel.”
Theresa May stated the following statements in different occasions:
“As Prime Minister, I am proud to say that I support Israel. And it is absolutely right that we should mark the vital role that Britain played a century ago in helping to create a homeland for the Jewish people … born of that letter, the pen of Balfour, and of the efforts of so many people, is a remarkable country … We are proud of the role that we played in the creation of Israel and we will certainly mark the centenary with pride” Then she reiterated the meaningless empty British commitment to the dead and impractical two state solution.
Boris Johnson, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs stated vehemently that he is proud that Britain helped creating Israel “… to become a free society with thriving and innovative economy and the same ESSENTIAL VALUES that we in Britain hold dear.” These “essential values” are terrorism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, destruction and theft of land among many other.
It is worthwhile mentioning here that 80% of the British MPs are Zionist puppets, claimed to be signed-up members of Friends of Israel, a membership that is considered a stepping-stone to higher political office. Therefore, one must not wonder that these politicians exhibit this pathological inhumane complete denial of the British colonial crimes and responsibility for occupation of Palestine and the genocide of its indigenous people not mentioning the other multiple crimes around the world.
The British celebration of Balfour Declaration/the establishment of the terrorist Israeli state is also a celebration of Palestinian genocide, ethnic cleansing and continuous suffering, plus all the devastating wars for Israel in the Middle East that Britain is still supporting up till this very minute.
The sought for apology is so meaningless since it does not resolve any issue. What the majority of the people are not cognizant of is that the Balfour Declaration creating the terrorist state of Israel is just another link in the Hidden Hand’s colonial scheme to prevent the establishment of a strong independent Arabia in the most important geostrategic and oil rich Middle East.
To learn more about this specific issue read my last year’s article “Balfour Declaration vs Hussein-McMahon Correspondence”.
About Author: Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab American from a Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine, after the 1948 Nakba when the Zionists stole his family’s property. Then the family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, after the Zionist, again, occupied the rest of Palestine.
To learn more about this specific issue read my last year’s article “Balfour Declaration vs Hussein-McMahon Correspondence”
Uprooted Palestinian 
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
