Part II

Why did the British support the establishment of a Jewish state? Historian Isaiah Friedman said that in 1908, Winston Churchill, then colonial under-secretary, concluded:

The establishment of a strong, free Jewish State astride the bridge between Europe and Africa, flanking the land roads to the East, would not only be an immense advantage to the British Empire, but a notable step towards a harmonious disposition of the world among its peoples.”

Support for Zionism provided the British with a legitimate and respectable justification to be in Palestine where they could pursue their interests in the Middle East. Unquestionably, sympathy toward Zionism was consistent with British compassion for subjugated and oppressed peoples, but the official records show that emotion did not dictate state policy. Had the British Foreign Office and the War Cabinet determined that the Balfour Declaration would not serve British interests, it never would have been promulgated. A confluence of reasons led to the decision, the most important of which was the desire to enlist the support of the world Jewish community—especially Russian and American Jews—toward Britain and the Allies during World War I.

At the beginning of 1917, the British were faced with a number of urgent military concerns, notes political scientist Stuart A. Cohen. General Archibald Murray’s advance into Gaza was halted, heavy losses were sustained at the Western Front, the French military had mutinied, Russian Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated, and the Allies sustained heavy shipping losses in the Atlantic as a result of U-boat attacks. The British hoped their backing might accelerate America’s entry into the war and delay Russia’s departure. Furthermore, Jewish intelligence services in Palestine might be enlisted to assist General Allenby in resisting the Turks.

British determination to secure Jewish support through the Balfour Declaration was also based on the belief that Jews were basically unified, yielded power, were pro-German, and a major influence in pacifist and revolutionary circles in Russia.67 On October 31, 1917, Balfour concluded:

[F]rom a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made. The vast majority of Jews in Russia and America, as indeed, all over the world, now appeared to be favourable to Zionism. If we could make a declaration favourable to such an ideal, we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America.

Winston Churchill, then colonial secretary and cabinet minister responsible for Palestine, reiterated this point in responding to attacks against the Balfour Declaration in the House of Commons on July 4, 1922, historian Martin Gilbert points out. Churchill acknowledged that the “pledges and promises” made during the War had been given “because it was considered that the support which Jews could give us all over the world, and particularly in the United States, and also in Russia, would be a definite palpable advantage.”

After 1917, Balfour often spoke about Zionism publicly. Sometimes he attributed a religious motivation to his decision to support the declaration, but never emphasized it. He expected the movement to solve the problems causing antisemitism. As he noted on September 20, 1918:

Zionism differs in kind from ordinary philanthropic efforts and it appeals to different motives. If it succeeds, it will do a great spiritual and material work for the Jews, but not for them alone… It is, among other things, a serious endeavor to mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body which is too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or absorb.

At a private luncheon on February 7, 1918, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, General Edmund Allenby’s chief political officer, who later became involved in the creation of the British Mandate, asked Balfour whether the Declaration was given as “reward or bribe to the Jews for past services and given in the hope of full support during the war.” Balfour responded, “Certainly not; both the Prime Minister [Lloyd George] and myself have been influenced by a desire to give the Jews their rightful place in the world; a great nation without a home is not right.”

Was this then a “charter for ultimate Jewish sovereignty in Palestine, or are you trying to graft a Jewish population on to an Arab Palestine?” Meinertzhagen asked. After reflecting for a while, Balfour replied, “My personal hope is that the Jews will make good in Palestine and eventually found a Jewish State. It is up to them now; we have given them their great opportunity.”

In his diary entry of December 30, 1917, Sir Francis Bertie, the British Ambassador to Paris, wrote that French diplomat Paul Cambon said “… that Balfour explained his support of Zionism as partly financial and partly political and also sentimental—viz., the necessity to conciliate the American Jews who have gone in for Palestine and who can supply money for loans, and his own feeling that it would be an interesting experiment to reconstitute a Jewish kingdom. Cambon reminded him of the prophecy that a King of the Jews would be the end of the world. Balfour thinks that such a dénouement would be still more interesting!”

Bertie’s own view, entered on June 1, 1919, was that “a Jew State in Palestine would be the gathering together there of all the scum of the Jewish populations of Russia, Poland, Germany, Hungary, and what has been the Austrian Empire—which scum has been active in Bolshevist propaganda and might have to emigrate after Peace.”

In mid-July 1917, Balfour was prepared to inform the Zionists that he would designate Palestine as “the national home of the Jewish people,” except that leading British Jews, particularly Edwin Montagu, then secretary of state for India, feared this might endanger the position of the Jews in England. It would harm Britain’s relationship with other religious and nationalist groups, especially the Arabs. This angst caused a delay in the decision throughout August and September.

Leopold Amery, a Conservative MP, who was British Prime Minister Lloyd George’s political appointee to the War Cabinet secretariat and a dedicated Zionist, rejected Jewish concerns. Once there is a national home, he asserted, English Jews would have nothing more to fear:

“The Jews alone can build up a strong civilization in Palestine which could help that country to hold its own against German-Turkish oppression; and by enlisting their interest on our side in this country, we will gain a great deal. It would be a fatal thing if after the war, the interests of the Jews throughout the world were enlisted on the side of the Germans, and they looked to Berlin as their spiritual home.”

“The ultimate end” of British support, as Amery noted in his diary on July 26, 1928 “…is to make Palestine the centre of a western influence, using Jews as we have used the Scots, to carry English ideal through the Middle East and not merely to make an artificial oriental Hebrew enclave in oriental country. Secondly that we meant Palestine in some way or other to remain within the framework of the British Empire….”

To those who claim that the authors of the Balfour Declaration were oblivious to the hundreds of thousands of Arabs living in Palestine, Amery countered that the historic document “was not issued in haste or lightheartedly. It was not a sudden, happy thought, a piece of propaganda, meant to win the support of American or Russian Jewry; still less was it issued in ignorance of the facts of the case in Palestine.” All pertinent information and issues that might or would arise “from the natural reaction of a primitive population in contact with a new element, separated from it even more by centuries of development than by race and religion—all those aspects were canvassed for many months and were fully understood.”

Authors of the Balfour Declaration viewed the looming dissolution of the Ottoman Empire as a singular opportunity “which could never recur for contributing to the solution of that baffling and tragic problem, the fate of the Jewish people.”

Dr. Alex Grobman, a Hebrew University-trained historian, is senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society and a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.