The State Department unaware that the US ratified the words of the Balfour Declaration as law in 1924

In the daily State Department press briefing on Wednesday, the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, spokesman John Kirby was asked the official US position towards that document. And his answer was that he has no idea.

QUESTION: And finally, I want to ask you, today marked the 99th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. I am sure you’re aware of the Balfour Declaration.
MR KIRBY: I am. I studied history in college.
QUESTION: Which basically launched this thing into – began this whole process and so on.
MR KIRBY: Yeah.
QUESTION: And I wonder, the Palestinians are going to sort of demand that Britain apologizes for the Balfour Declaration. Will you support them in that effort? Will you support the Palestinians if they go to the UN to say that Britain must apologize for that and must do everything that it can to rectify the wrongs that have been inflicted on the Palestinians as a result?
MR KIRBY: This is the first I’ve heard that there’s an interest in doing that at the UN, Said, so I’m not going to get ahead of proclamations or announcements or proposals that haven’t been made yet at the UN. Look, I’ll tell you, not that I’m saying history is not important. Believe me, as a history major and still a lover of history, I get the importance of history. But I’ll tell you where we’re focused is on the future here. And this gets back to your first question about settlement activity. We want to see a path forward to a two-state solution, and the Secretary still believes that that path can be found. But it requires leadership and it requires a forward vision in the leadership there.
So we are very much wanting to look forward here to a meaningful two-state solution, and I think we’re a little less interested in proclamations about the past. Not that I’m saying the past isn’t important or that we’re not a product of history. I am not at all suggesting that. I’m just saying that we are more focused on moving forward.
QUESTION: So okay, recognizing that --
MR KIRBY: I knew something was coming.
QUESTION: -- does the Administration have a position on the Balfour Declaration – good, bad, indifferent?
MR KIRBY: I don’t know.
QUESTION: They sent a declaration --
QUESTION: You don’t know?
MR KIRBY: I don’t know if we’ve taken a position on the Balfour Declaration or the Treaty of Westphalia or --
QUESTION: I think you think that was good because that established the concept of sovereign immunity.
MR KIRBY: Sovereign states, yeah. I – yes, actually.
QUESTION: How about the Treaty of Worms? That one?
MR KIRBY: I don’t know. I don’t know.
QUESTION: I --
MR KIRBY: Now, see, if I had actually said that we did have a position on Balfour, then I would expect you to list every other treaty and ask me. But I’m saying we don’t have a position on this right now.
QUESTION: How about Versailles? Do you think that was a good thing?
MR KIRBY: Which one? Which one? 1783? We actually like that one a lot.

Brian of London at Israellycool noted that there is an actual convention between the US and Great Britain, the 1924 Anglo-American Convention, that quotes and ratifies the Balfour Declaration:

Convention between the United States and Great Britain in respect to rights in Palestine. Signed at London, December 3, 1924: Ratification advised by the Senate, February 20, 1925; ratified by the President, March 2, 1925; ratified by Great Britain, March 18, 1925; ratifications exchanged at London, December 3, 1925; proclaimed, December 5, 1925

 It includes the exact language of Balfour quoted by the League of Nations, and more- including the right of Jews to settle in all parts of Palestine:
   

WHEREAS by the Treaty of Peace concluded with the Allied Powers, Turkey renounces all her rights and titles over Palestine; and
        Whereas article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles provides that in the case of certain territories which, as a consequence of the late war, ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them, mandates should be issued, and that the terms of the mandate should be explicitly defined in each case by the Council of the League; and
        Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed to entrust the Mandate for Palestine to His Britannic Majesty; and
        Whereas the terms of the said mandate have been defined by the Council of the League of Nations, as follows:

        "The Council of the League of Nations:

        "Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and
        "Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and
        "Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;

Article 2

      The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble...

Article 4

        An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the control of the Administration, to assist and take part in the development of the country.
        The Zionist organization, so long as its organization and constitution are in the opinion of the Mandatory appropriate, shall be recognised as such agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the co-operation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.

Article 6

        The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

Article 22

        English, Arabic and Hebrew shall be the official languages of Palestine. Any statement or inscription in Arabic on stamps or money in Palestine shall be repeated in Hebrew and any statement or inscription in Hebrew shall be repeated in Arabic.

 Or, in the words of the State Department, "I dunno."

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Latest gimmick: Abbas to sue UK over 1917 Balfour Declaration. Sign my petition!

TOI reports:

The Palestinian Authority is preparing a lawsuit against the British government over the issuing of the 1917 Balfour Declaration that paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel.

The PA’s Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki told Arab League leaders gathered in Mauritania Monday that London is responsible for all “Israeli crimes” committed since the end of the British mandate in 1948.

Signed by British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour in 1917, the declaration was seen as giving the Zionist movement official recognition and backing on the part of a major power, on the eve of the British conquest of the then-Ottoman territory of Palestine.

The decision, al-Malki said, “gave people who don’t belong there something that wasn’t theirs.”

Interestingly, Hamas had called for Great Britain to apologize for Balfour back in 2010.

Similarly, the "Palestine Return Center" started a petition to the UK Parliament to apologize for Balfour and compensate all Arabs of Palestinian descent. It compared the "nakba" with the Holocaust. It received 1,278 signatures in six months, far short of the 10,000 required for the UK Parliament to respond and the 100,000 required for Parliament to debate the issue.

This is Abbas' latest gimmick. He wants to make it appear to his people as if he is actually doing something but everything he does is symbolic.

For an honor/shame society, where appearances are more important than facts, this can play well. But the rest of the world is more and more impatient with Abbas' adamant refusal to do anything positive for the peace process or for his people.

Of course, two can play at this game.

I started an online petition demanding that the PLO and PA apologize for over a century of terror attacks aimed at Jews.

The Palestinian Authority, as the self-appointed leader of the Palestinian Arab people, must assume responsibility for the historic crimes done against Jews in the region known as Palestine in the 1800s and 1900s.
These include attacks in Rishon LeTzion in the 1880s, the Nebi Musa riots in 1920, the Jaffa and Jerusalem attacks in 1921, the massacres of 1929, the violent riots between 1936-39, the many attacks in 1947 and 1948, as well as the terror attacks that have occurred nearly continuously since 1948 including the Munich massacre that was financed by Mahmoud Abbas and the wave of suicide bombings in the 21st century. Constant antisemitic incitement from Palestinian leaders and official media since the 1920s must be apologized for as well.
Only by the Palestinians accepting responsibility for its part of the conflict can the conflict be solved.

Sign it and show that both sides can do useless gimmicks as PR stunts.

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Pal newspaper: Balfour Declaration worse than Holocaust (which is fake anyway)

Palestinian news site Amad has an op-ed about the Balfour Declaration, saying that it is far worse that anything that happened to Jews in the 20th Century:

The British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour's promise to the Jews to give them a homeland in Palestine is worse than the alleged Holocaust against the Jews in Germany in the Nazi era,

Balfour was advocating the displacement of an entire people and the extermination of any political, economic and social rights of an entire people. He granted the establishment of a homeland for Jews and Zionists and racists from all over the world in Palestine.

A comparison between these most prominent incidents in the twentieth century, the Balfour Declaration and the Holocaust:

Before Balfour, Jews were not more than 5% of the total population of Palestine, and the result of that declaration their numbers increased from fifty thousand immigrants to six hundred and fifty thousand of more than seventy nationalities coming from all over the world and depriving the Palestinians from their homeland amid the silence of international community and denial of indigenous land owners.

The second event was the Holocaust of Jews at the time of the Nazi movement, which saw the destruction of a large number of the Jews of Europe during World War II, according to Jewish story. This story has been employed by Jews on a large scale as a means of sympathy for them, and they are exaggerating and amplifying this incident so much so that the United Nations issued a 2005 decision to commemorate it on 27 January of each year, despite denials by many historians that dispute the facts and evidence of the gas chambers which are alleged by the promoters of the Holocaust.

The Germans encouraged the Jews to emigrate to Palestine in the 1930s, and the Jews had the sympathy of the whole world and provided assistance and support to them, setting up the Israeli state in Palestine, and Germany paid compensation to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and the State of Israel and still Israel blackmails Germany and the world with this Holocaust which is unconfirmed historically.

COmpare that with the racist the Balfour Declaration, which was approved by the United States, France, Italy formally as well as Japan, and in 1922 and approved by the League of Nations Council on the draft mandate, and the consequent disastrous consequences inflicted on the indigenous Palestinian people people of the land, displacing and killing them and torturing them and alienating them in all around the ground and thousands of Palestinian refugees who found that many countries closed their doors in their faces, ...

The Holocaust of Hitler opened to the Jews the doors of the world, and everyone was looking for ways to rectify this alleged Holocaust, and give them a home on the land of Palestine even though their population did not exceed fifty thousand at the time, while the Holocaust of Balfour displaced Palestinian people and prevented them from establishing their home on their own land and the land of their ancestors.

This is the sort of stuff that Palestinian Arabs accept as fact.

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96 years of whining as Arabs mark Balfour anniversary

There were lots of stories in the Arab media about the 96th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration on Saturday.

Some demanded that the Arab world sue Great Britain.

Some note the supposed treachery of the 1919 Faisal-Weizmann Agreement that allowed a Jewish home in Palestine while the entire rest of the Middle East went to Arabs.

Hamas even produced a documentary about how Balfour was the beginning of all Arab woes and problems.

No Arabs, as far as I could tell, blamed themselves for any part of their problems.

I found an interesting article in the Palestine Bulletin from January 14, 1930, which shows that at least some Arabs saw the difference between how Jews were building a nation while Arabs did nothing but call meetings to complain about the Jews.

...The writer of the article contrasts the achievements of Jew and Arab during the last twelve years and complains that "'The Arabs have met seven times. They have sent as many delegations to London, to the Hedjaz, to Iraq. They have broadcast thousands of protests. They have arranged hundreds of memorial meetings and celebrations. But what have all these delegations, all these protests. all these memorial meetings, all these celebrations accomplished?. True, the Supreme Moslem Council has repaired the Mosque. The Supreme Moslem Council has purchased three thousand dunams of land. 'The Supreme Moslem Council has constructed a large hotel which it transferred to a Jew in order that he might better compete with small Arab hotels.. But in the meantime Zionists have managed to bring in 80,000 immigrants, compelling. the Arab to make room for them. They have acquired 1,200,000 dunams of the best lands. They have established .factories whose products we and our Arab brothers in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Transjordan buy, thereby regaining many times over the price they paid to us for lands. They have gained control over commerce. They have built -dozens of colonies. In view of these alarming facts, we would suggest that our delegation remain at home. That instead, we collect funds from Moslem and Arab countries to develop agriculture and industry. If; after we have accomplished these undertakings, we send a delegation to London, it will be able to say for us: We know how to use our lands. We know how to advance civilisation. We know how to build the bridge that is to unite East and West"

The same newspaper, a month earlier, describes a roughly translated Arab children's song:

Nothing has changed. It's been 96 years since the Balfour Declaration, nearly 66 years since the UN partition plan and 20 years since Oslo, and the Palestinian Arabs are still spending more time, effort and money trying to blame Israel than to do anything positive themselves.

Of course, it all makes sense when you realize that their goal isn't the creation of yet another Arab state but the destruction of the only Jewish state.

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PalArabs mourn anniversary of Balfour Declaration

Today is the 93rd anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, and there are a number of articles in the Arabic media about it.

Islamic Jihad released a statement condemning the Declaration and declaring "[we] renew our commitment to our right to recover our entire land without sacrificing an inch of soil. We reject any solution at the expense of principles in our conflict with the Zionists, and we consider any recognition of a "Jewish State" by the Balfour Declaration the most serious trial of our history and the struggles and sacrifices of our people."

Another article in Palestine Today about Balfour illustrates itself with this map of the borders that, they are certain, Israel is really aiming to expand to, from the Nile to the Euphrates:

Which is very similar to a map that Iran once published in their edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

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Anniversary of Balfour declaration

Israel Matzav does a great and thorough job discussing the history and importance of the Balfour Declaration from November 2, 1917.

The Palestine Post had this to say at the 25th anniversary, during the depths of the Holocaust:

Notice how even then, as Jews argued that the immediate establishment of a state would save countless lives from the Nazis, they still bent over backwards to point out that Jewish immigration to Palestine helped the Arab community and did not displace a single person. Notice also that even then it was assumed that the Palestine spoken of in 1917 included Transjordan. (See also my posting on Eastern Palestine.)

In 1947, on the eve of the UN Partition vote, the Arabs decided to strike on this anniversary, As usual, the strike ended up helping the Jews more than it hurt them:

But while the real Palestinian Arab people took advantage of a nice day off by visiting Jewish shops, their self-declared thought-leaders looked at things a little more violently, figuratively bashing Balfour's head with Arab hammers:

The Jewish claim on Palestine does not depend on the Balfour Declaration, of course, but it was an important moment in modern Zionist history that illuminates much about the conflict.

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