Violent and anti-Semitic actions by the British during the Mandate period reverberate today in the relations between Israel and the UK, two British journalists said at an event on Sunday marking the 96th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
The conference at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem featured the Hebrew premiere of a documentary about British policy from the period between the publication of the declaration, on November 2, 1917, to independence.
In addition to speeches by British journalists, the former speaker of the Knesset, Shlomo Hillel, and a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem addressed the gathering.
The film screening and speeches largely focused on British actions in the Middle East nearly a century ago. The speakers also discussed how the British “betrayal” of Jews is portrayed in the mainstream British press. While participants did not specifically reference contemporary issues between Israel and the United Kingdom, the event came at a time of increased tensions regarding Iran and accusations that the former British foreign secretary made anti-Semitic comments in Parliament.
“I can speak to you as a British citizen who represents tens of thousands of Christians in Britain who have a very real sense of sorrow and shame of our nation’s betrayal of the Jewish people during the mandate period,” said Hugh Kitson, the producer of the documentary titled The Forsaken Promise. “Our government needs to make a formal apology to the nation of Israel for the handling of the mandate – or really I should say the mishandling of it – and the wholesale suffering it caused to thousands and thousands of people,” he added.
The documentary argued that despite the Balfour Declaration’s assurances of a Jewish homeland, the British government went to extraordinary lengths to impede the creation of a Jewish state. The film accused the British government of obstructing efforts by Jews to flee the Holocaust.
And it said the British did not try to stop massacres of Jews in Hebron and on the convoy route to Hadassah hospital on Mount Scopus.
In addition, the film featured interviews with Holocaust survivors who were denied entry into Palestine following the war. The narrator said that “Britain’s international reputation was in tatters” after the military either detained Jews fleeing Europe or sent them back.
Hillel called the film a “masterpiece.”
“The relationship between Great Britain [and] the British people, and the Jews and Israel, have been very complex and very, very old. It has its ups and downs,” Hillel said.
He paused and then added, “It continues to have its ups and downs, I have to say.”
Melanie Philips, a British author and publisher, said the film told the “story of the utmost treachery and malice, as the British upended their international treaty obligation” under the mandate. She argued that the British public is besieged with anti-Israel propaganda that obscures the history of British action during the mandate.
“It is essential that people understand this history, in order to show them that, contrary to what they believe, Israel stands for law, history and justice,” she said.
Robert Wistrich, a professor at the Hebrew University, concluded the discussion, arguing that “Britain placed every conceivable obstacle in the way of any relief of that suffering,” referring to the Holocaust.
“I can only use a word very much avoided by historians: A sense of ‘evil,’” he said.
“British policy – just looking at the facts themselves and the documents and what we know – is increasingly afflicted by kind of evil design. [It] wasn’t necessarily there at the beginning, but was an absolutely cold and callous disregard for the most elementary human values,” he added.
MK Shimon Ohayon also spoke briefly at the event and noted that, when he was in high school, “everybody was proud to learn [the Balfour Declaration] by heart.”
@ honeybee:
That’s because I have NO obsession w/ gerbils.
But since you claim to have such a hard time understanding what is perfectly plain, it simply occurred to me that even a gerbil would have the brains to explain to you the sense of the observation I had made here, blockquoted above.
In ANY case though, here’s a bit of advice straight from the shoulder, HB:
I suggest you learn to speak strictly for yourself (or not at all) in those moments when the barbs are flying back & forth betw Yamit (or any of his other surrogates) and YoursEverTruly.
You stay out of it, and I’ll leave you out of it.
Because if you continue to run interference for Yamit whenever I’m returning his fire, you’re very likely to find yourself caught in the crossfire. In fact, I may have no choice but to decide, even, that your diversions in his behalf, during those particular exchanges, are tantamount to comments directly FROM him — and proceed accordingly. Think it over, inercent country girl.
@ honeybee:
The Indictment says I refused induction into the Armed Forces of the United States of America (when the govt tried to silence the opposition to the War by drafting those who organized against it).
I think I’ll have it framed some day, or maybe decoupaged.
When the govt came for us, instead of running for cover (deferments & exemptions) or running for the border (Canada) or running underground, we stood & fought — in Court. Even told them where to find us when the time came to arrest. And afterward we did time in Federal joints all around the country.
We were the cutting edge of a movement that put an end to peacetime conscription and galvanized a nation against a crazy war that had been senseless since 1954, before the USA had ever gotten into it.
That’s the short answer to your question.
@ yamit82:
Since you implicitly appoint yourself the judge of what I have or haven’t ‘proved,’ one can hardly find it surpising that you would come to such a ‘conclusion.’
Under the circumstances, I can just as readily announce that you haven’t proved what I have or haven’t ‘disproved.’
You can go on playing these obnoxious skull games strictly with yourself, Yamit; they don’t interest me.
I don’t attempt to ‘cover’ anything. I say what I think, and nothing but. If you don’t like it, ask me if I give a rusty screw what you “disagree with.”
I already told you that Nam did not threaten me physically (nor in any other way).
And actually I’ve done quite a LOT of jail time for blockading abortuaries. Helped to shut down many of them, or cut back substantially on their “business.”
I’m an intensely practical person, and neither of those kinds of actions is ever politically effective — usually counterproductive, in fact.
BTW, a facility explicitly dedicated to guaranteeing that one out of every two persons entering it comes out very, very dead may hardly , w/ any kind of justice, be rightly called a ‘clinic.’
— Abortuary comes a lot closer to the spirit.
Moi? — hardly.
When it comes to moral relativism, that’s strictly your baby. Anybody who genuinely thinks he can ‘interpret’ his way around the commandment forbidding the bearing of false witness against one’s neighbor to mean he can slander anyone he can get away with defining as “not a Jew” (and particularly on the specious grounds that a non-Jew isn’t his “neighbor”) has got to be a Past Master of Moral Relativism.
— Somehow, though, I rather doubt that the Voice which spoke that Commandment at Sinai is amused w/ such antics.
It isn’t; the attendant is a friend, sometimes while he’s closing, he lets me stay a few minutes more.
@ dweller:
@ yamit82:
@ bernard ross:
Just for you my Darling boys!!!!!!!!!!!!: sorry didn’t go through
bernard ross Said:
Bernard Darlin,Who Me, I am just an inercent country girl. Dweller,Yamit82 and you, Bernard have led me astry.
honeybee Said:
you naughty girl. I think I know where you are going with this. 😛 😛 😛
dweller Said:
I don’t understand your obsesion with girbils??????? Sugar
yamit82 Said:
Darlin, what did you do????/
@ dweller:
Say what !!!!!!!! Sweetie
@ dweller:
You have disproved Nada. I disagree with your creative attempts to cover- error and false conceptions in everything you write whether it has to do with theological argument, morality and law you invariably attempt to cover and obfuscate instead saying something or even disagreeing does not prove you either correct or incorrect. I doubt the original framers of the American constitution would recognize much in American Law today as complying with the document they birthed. There is More Marx than Locke or Jefferson in American law today as determined by the SCOTUS over the years. Is Obama-care really a TAX? Is Roe v. Wade the Law? Is it constitutional? Of course it is even if you don’t like it or disagree. Is it moral? Depends on whose morals doesn’t it? If it were overturned today would you also say that since 1970 it was not the legal law of the land?
Since it’s been challenged many times one might consider that by any standard except yours, it is the law and as legal as any other statute binding upon every citizen unless you want to overturn law by force of rebellion and or revolution against the very government empowered and responsible for it’s enforcement.
Why do you not sit in Prison today for actions similar to what you claim you did against Nam. What’s the difference? Except Nam threatened you physically and Roe VS Wade doesn’t. At least you could be burning down abortion clinics and murdering abortionists??
You seem to be a moral relativist where only that which is personally threatening gets you off your fat ass to action. 😉
How come the Library is open so late? 😉
@ yamit82:
No excitement. A quiet, calm, summing up of the crank whose imbecilic remarks I had just finished refuting in post #8, this page.
You’re begging the question: assuming facts not in evidence.
Ad hominem is “against the man” INSTEAD of against the argument.
I had already addressed your comments BEFORE I went after you. That was not ad hominem argumentation.
Oh-ho! YOU’ve made THAT abundantly clear.
Oh, really? — then let’s hear all those ‘reasons’ not to.
dweller Said:
Are you exhibiting some anger here? Some emotion? Your use of ad hominem against me would certainly indicate that you have lost control. I suppose I touched on some truths about you that rattled you. Like liar. traitor coward!
“That’s an ironclad fact, confirmed by the court record — and it’s precisely WHY my conviction was overturned by SCOTUS.”
Anyone can say anything and there is more reasons not to believe you than to believe you so, provide links corroborating your fantastic claims.
@ honeybee:
Too loudly for what, Sweetie?
Actually it wasn’t a “protest” at all — let alone, a loud one — but simply a note at the very END of my comment.
If anybody WAS protesting over-loudly, it was the tiresome, twerpy creature whose post had prompted the observation.
You left off the remainder of my remark, HB:
“… and anybody w/ the brains God gave a gerbil can SEE it without straining.”
Obviously it’s you who are in kindergarten.
— Maybe there’s a gerbil in there who can explain for you what a protest actually consists of?
dweller Said:
thou doth protest way to loudly, Sweeite!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What are you ,,,,,,in kindergarten!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ CuriousAmerican:
Not the Mandate Council, but the Permanent Mandates Commission.
The 7 international PMC members present at the Geneva hearings throughout June of that year: the French, Portuguese, Belgian, Dutch, Norwegian, Swiss & Brit commissioners unanimously took note of the naked perfidy reflected in the White Paper, although the language of their rebuke was more bland in observing the violations.
PMC’s subsequent Report two months later confirmed the Commission’s 4-member, majority opinion—declaring, with reference to the present document’s newest, most severe immigration & land purchase restrictions as well as the White Paper’s plans for a British handover to Arab rule, that “[t]he policy set out in the White Paper is not in accordance with the interpretation which, in agreement with the Mandatory Power and the [League] Council, the Commission has placed on the Palestine Mandate” [i.e., to expedite the creation of a Jewish National Home].
One of them was.
The three-member minority — including the HMG delegate, Lord Hankey — asserted that circumstances might warrant a change of policy — if the League Council would not object to it.
A “clear reading of the Mandate” shows that neither the word “Arab” nor the name of any other, specific, non-Jewish, ethnicity or nationality appears anywhere throughout the text of the Preamble, or any of the 28 articles, of the Mandate Charter; not one single time. If you don’t think that was deliberate
— think again.
The “civil rights” in the subordinate clause to which you refer (orig in the Declaration, then in San Remo) refer to the EXISTING property & religious rights and very limited voting options that all persons (irrespective of background) had enjoyed until the Mandate was enacted. Nothing more.
It doesn’t mean they were to be given any NEW rights that they hadn’t previously enjoyed — only that they wouldn’t lose any to which they’d been accustomed under the Turks. (Yes, the Turks had permitted Palestine residents an attenuated participation in the Ottoman Constituent Assembly, but they’d ruthlessly suppressed any breath of nationalism on the part of any non-Turk.)
@ yamit82:
Enforced, yes.
Legal, no.
If they are, in fact, unconstitutional, then they are NOT law. They masquerade as law.
That’s what it means to be operating “under color of law” (which I see that Wallace has already noted, above).
The point in all this is (yes, your impertinent intrusions DO have a way of diverting a discussion off-point) that the 1939 MacDonald White Paper was NOT in fact lawful, but rather, was issued & enforced under color of law.
And who the f8ck cares what YOU think I think? — Grow up Yamit, you’re long overdue for it.
It’s you who are truly pathetic, still hopelessly hoping to pin some kind of chickenshit ‘pansy’ jacket on me (as if even THAT could have any bearing on the veracity of what I say).
The truth is — just in case the truth matters to a certified dingaling like PresentCompany who’s constantly reinventing reality to fit his fancy — the truth is that there was NEVER anything to “cover” — because the Nam war did NOT, as a matter of fact, “threaten [me] physically.”
I was at NO time in ANY jeopardy whatsoever of being conscripted UNTIL & AFTER I spoke out & organized against the policy.
— That’s an ironclad fact, confirmed by the court record — and it’s precisely WHY my conviction was overturned by SCOTUS.
You are a tiresome, twerpy little man, Yamit, w/ a big mouth and not much of anything else — and anybody w/ the brains God gave a gerbil can SEE it without straining.
@ dweller:
It WASN’T spoken by a jailhouse lawyer. It was taken from a standard legal text: 16th American Jurisprudence. I gave you the reference for it: 16 Am.Jur.2d § 256. (Got a reading problem, or just lazy?)
The holding has been cited & recognized in numerous court cases.
I gave you the answer to that BEFORE I even quoted it:
— I said it “was written explicitly in re a matter of US law, using the US Constitution as its authority. However, the principle would appear to be universal in application to any legislation in relation to whatever is held to be the authoritative standard (in this case, the Mandate) which is specific to it.”
What’s the RELEVANCE of “elasticity or implied powers” to the TIME at which an unconstitutional statute is considered to BE unconstitutional? (That was, after all, the subject of my post.)
Perhaps you should consider retiring for the evening somewhat earlier?
— Staying up till 4:30 in the morning seems to make you even duller and more slow-witted than normal; certainly more prone to errors of both reading AND judgment.
Felix Quigley Said:
Bernard,you and I are still innocents!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m glad I can make you laugh, Dove. Hope you had a good Shabbos.
@ M Devolin:
I always love it when you pop up on this site. Your comments make me laugh!
I have a movie for Curious American to watch, it’s called “Fuck Off And Die.”
The bottom line is this: Arabs got their ass kicked in when they tried to finish the work of the Nazis in 1948 and all wars with Israel since then. I don’t see Britain giving back the Falklands or Gibralter. I don’t see the Americans giving back New Mexico or California. Now the land is Israel’s. Arabs want the land back, come and fight Israel for it. If you don’t want to do that, then shut the fuck up. End of conversation. Curious American, why don’t you piss off and take your anti-Jewish hatred elsewhere.
“Of course, I expect Jew Hating scum like you to hold the opinion that the White Paper of 1939 was LEGAL!!!”
Took the words right out of my mouth, Yamit. Jew hating scum like The Good Doctor contend that all Zionists are bigots. You’re wasting you time with this piece of human excrement. The only thing that works for people like him is a smash in the face. He knows this. This is why he lives his activism behind a blog name, because in the presence of real Jews (or goys like me) he would lose most of his front teeth.