00:00 Roland Rance: … recently, because of course it's the hundredth anniversary. 2nd of November 1917 was the day that Balfour sent the letter to Lord Rothschild. But we have to remember that the Balfour Declaration was not the only momentous event that happened in November 1917. There's a couple that I want to mention. First, on the very day that Balfour sent the letter to Rothschild, the British Army under General Allenby started the Third Battle of Gaza, which broke the back of the Turkish army and led to the British occupation of Palestine.
00:30 Bernard has outlined how British imperial policy demanded the occupation of Palestine, demanded — [inaudible] was based on and hoped for the establishment of a loyal colony in Palestine. I'm reading this book at present and I'm finding it fascinating, because many of us for years have looked at British policy in Palestine and, with the benefit of hindsight, have said British policy was to protect the Suez Canal, to protect the oil pipeline, to divide the Arab world. One of the fascinating things about Bernard's book is that he has gone back to the Cabinet discussions, to the documents of the time, and shown that this was actually a deliberate policy. So that it's not only now, with the benefit of hindsight, that we can say this, but thanks to Bernard's book, also with the benefit of foresight, we can say that this was a deliberate policy of the British government: to divide the Arab world, to set up a colony — unlike other colonies, not peopled by people from Britain — but a colony that would owe [?] its interests to the British Empire.
01:34 Now of course, the other momentous event of November 1917 was the Russian Revolution, and that impacted — in fact, on the very day that Balfour [?] wrote the Declaration, the Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet had its first meeting to plan the seizure of power later in the month. So again, it was an important date, and it had huge impact not only on Palestine but on the whole of the Middle East. For instance [?], the Russian Revolution undercut the whole British system of alliances. Crucially, the Bolshevik government published the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which Bernard has referred to.
02:06 Now, people often refer to British policy as duplicitous. In fact, that's too kind, because duplicitous suggests it's two-faced. In fact it was triple-faced, because Britain made separate promises to the Zionist movement, to the Arab national movement and to the French. And they were very clear from the start that no matter what promises they made to Hussein and to the Arab movement, they had no intentions of carrying it out. In fact, I'm quoting [?] here Balfour in 1919, to Lord Curzon: "In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country." And he then went on to explain [?] why Zionism was in British interests. But they were very clear to themselves: they were not going to take into account the interests of the Palestinians, all of the promises that they made.
03:08 One of the key elements behind Britain's issuing of the Balfour Declaration, I would argue, was the British government — British imperialists — shared the common antisemitic belief in an overwhelming Jewish power that they could use in their interests. They were egged on in this and fostered in this by the Zionist movement, which represented a very small minority of Jews at the time. But if you look back at all the key players, you can see what they wanted, apart from anything else, was to keep Jews out of Britain. Bernard has mentioned that Balfour, who was the Foreign Secretary and issued the Balfour Declaration, some years earlier, as Prime Minister, had introduced the first Aliens Act, designed to keep Jews [out of] Britain. In a speech in the House of Commons, what he said — he spoke of [?] "the undoubted evils that had fallen upon the country from an immigration which was largely Jewish". It was very clear that we did not want Jews here.
04:09 It's also [?] notable [?] Balfour was Prime Minister at the time of the British offer to the Zionist movement of an area in what's now Kenya — but because Britain didn't care about borders [?], it's called the Uganda scheme, normally. Britain actually offered territory [?] for a Jewish homeland in Uganda — in Kenya — in 1904, 1905. Herzl, who founded the Zionist movement, wanted to accept this. When he wrote his seminal book *The Jewish State* in the 1890s, he actually wasn't committed to Palestine as the homeland. He had a chapter, "Palestine or Argentina?", because he believed that the Jewish state could be established in Argentina. When the British offered Kenya, he was gung-ho for it; he wanted to accept it. The Zionist movement turned it down, and it split: a group called the territorialists split off and sought a Jewish state anywhere but Palestine.
05:11 But it's not only Balfour who was significant there. For instance, the Minister of Munitions at the time of the Balfour Declaration was Winston Churchill. There's [?] been a very interesting article recently on openDemocracy [?] by [inaudible], where he looks at the antisemitic motivations of the British government at the time. But [inaudible — gap in captions]
06:14 basically Churchill said that there was a war within the Jewish community between Zionism and Bolshevism, and it was in the interests of the British government to foster Zionism among Jews, because otherwise Bolshevism would win. These people had a very deep belief that Jews control the world, and that supporting Zionism, supporting the Zionist movement — which, as I said, was a very small minority among the Jews — would further Britain's imperial [?] interests.
06:44 Now, at the time of the Balfour Declaration the Prime Minister was David Lloyd George. It's worth noting Lloyd George again shared the antisemitic prejudices of most of the British ruling class at the time. But Lloyd George was also the person who, as the lawyer for Chaim Weizmann [?], the Zionist leader in Britain — he actually drew up the charter for granting Kenya to the Zionist movement. From very early he was, again, for antisemitic motives, keen on [?] establishing — supporting the establishment of a Jewish state anywhere, which would serve the British imperial interests. And again, there has been discussion — there was a Cabinet discussion about how settling Jews in Kenya would enable them to control the natives, to keep them down — exactly what they tried to do in Palestine.
07:15 But that wasn't the only view in the Cabinet at the time. At the time of the Balfour Declaration, you can see the extent of Jewish power, because there was one Jewish Cabinet member, Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India. They were so impressed by his views that they completely ignored them. Montagu opposed the Balfour Declaration, and he opposed it in a famous memo he sent the Cabinet, where he described the proposals for a Jewish state in Palestine as the antisemitism of the British government. Montagu pointed out that establishing a Jewish homeland, a Jewish state, in Palestine would not be accepted by the people who lived in Palestine, and would raise questions of dual loyalty of Jews around the world.
08:17 It was because of Montagu's reservations that in fact the formulation — the original that the government proposed was just "views with favour the establishment of a Jewish homeland in [inaudible] Palestine and will work with the Zionist movement to bring this about". As a result of Montagu's intervention, they dropped the commitment — the written commitment — to support the Zionist movement, but added clauses which they never intended to carry out, but added clauses saying nothing will be done that will affect the rights of the present inhabitants of the country — the only way they recognised the Palestinians was as "the present inhabitants of the country" — or of Jews elsewhere around the world. But it was only because the only Jewish Cabinet member actually opposed the Balfour Declaration as antisemitic that it received its final form. Previously it wouldn't even have paid lip service to Palestinian rights.
09:20 And it's in this context that I want to talk to you about another document [?], because Montagu, of course, was just one of countless Jews through history who have opposed the Zionist movement from the start — from the very beginnings, not only a minority movement but opposed by lots of Jewish workers [?] and the Jewish establishment. So 30 years ago, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, I organised publication of a document, the Return statement: "Against the Israeli Law of Return, for the Palestinian right to return". The purpose of it — it was signed by some 400 anti-Zionist Jews. We've moved so far now [that] a similar document now would probably be signed [?] by 10 times that number. But I think the key message of that is still really important: against the Israeli Law of Return, for the Palestinian right to return.
10:24 The Israeli Law of Return is the law that says that anyone with a Jewish grandparent can emigrate to Israel, receive citizenship immediately, and then on the basis of that there's a whole set of other discriminatory laws, which don't specifically say Jews; they say anyone who received citizenship under the Law of Return will get such-and-such aid. I mean, I was quite interested recently reading something to realise that among people who could have benefited from this, [inaudible] had a Jewish grandmother. It's very widespread.
10:56 But basically the Zionist movement has colonised Palestine and has alienated the land from the Palestinian people. Bernard said that the first recorded instance of Palestinian resistance to Zionism was in 1882. That's significant, because most students of Zionism today [date] the modern Zionist movement to 1880 — the start in 1881. So basically from the very start, long before the Balfour Declaration, long before the creation of the State of Israel, Palestinians recognised that what was happening was that the land was being taken away from them, and in a different way than previously. It was being taken away and given to a body called — ultimately to a body called the Jewish National Fund, which by its constitution can only allow Jews to settle on, live on and benefit from the land. And that now applies to some 90% of the land in the State of Israel, and increasingly to land in the territories occupied in 1967.
11:58 The document I wrote also called for the Palestinian right to return, and I think we always have to remember this and keep this in the forefront of our campaigning. Whatever solution, whatever strategic political solution people come up with to the division of Palestine — when we're talking about one state, two states, multiple states, a socialist federation of the Middle East — the simple [?] thing has to be: the Palestinian people have the right to return to their homes, to their lands. And if that is not accepted, if that's not worked towards, then it's not even a question of justice, it's a question of practicality. No solution, no attempted solution, is going to work that does not address this question. So I'd say that [inaudible] the things we came up with in the Return statement thirty years ago are still as vital today.
13:03 The other thing that comes from this is that after the document was published and we started publishing a magazine, we were denounced as antisemites. We were banned from campuses around the country. I was banned from speaking at an NUT [?] conference. There were scare stories in the Jewish press — exactly the things that we're seeing today levelled against all sorts of people, particularly within the Labour Party. They have not changed tactics in the past thirty years. Interesting, in fact: one of the key articles in the magazine that they picked up on was by Moshé Machover [?], who has just won his reinstatement to the Labour Party, and they were accusing him of antisemitism for making various comments about Jews, and then dropped these shamefacedly when they recognised that he was actually directly quoting from the Jewish Chronicle.
13:35 So what I'm coming to is that the land of Palestine has been alienated from the Palestinian people, who — they're prevented; even those who remain on the land, in the homes that their families lived in for generations, are denied equal rights — that this is a direct result of the confluence of interests of the Zionist movement and the British government. The British government had, as Bernard has alluded to, two motives: one, protecting the Empire; two, keeping out Jews.
14:41 And there have been [?] all sorts of calls for Britain to issue an apology. I think this is politically meaningless. Apologies are just words. But we have to start working to undo the deleterious effects of the Balfour Declaration, which after all was — I think it was Arthur Koestler [?] who said the Balfour Declaration was a document in which one state gave away the lands [of] the second state to a third people. We have to work towards undoing that.
15:12 The final thing I want to say is: anyone who is concerned about the charges of antisemitism, and the attempts to use this to prevent free speech on the Middle East — there are leaflets on your seat from the organisation Free Speech on Israel. It has an excellent website, a really useful resource for learning what's going on and the truth [about] many of these allegations. [inaudible] I read this regularly, and do use the information there. Because the history — when you read the history, you see that the dispossession of Palestinians was planned and was intended. You see that Zionism was always a [inaudible] colonialist and a racist movement. You see that Israel from the start had no option other than to be an apartheid state — all the things that they say are antisemitic for raising. They are trying to redefine what antisemitism means, to say that instead of meaning racism towards Jews it means hostility to the State of Israel. We have to reclaim this, and Free Speech on Israel is one of the most important resources for doing so. Thank you.
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