“Foreign Office. November 2nd 1917.

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Zionist aspirations which have been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which may 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.” I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation. Yours, Balfour.”

 Jewish immigration to Palestine was thus green-lighted and the British Mandate of Palestine became the last major British colonial imposition. The following comment by Winston Churchill (February 8th, 1920) was truly prophetic (with British warships presently in Beirut and British armies in Iraq and Afghanistan) : “ If, as well may happen, there should be created in our lifetime, by the banks of the Jordan, a Jewish State, under the protection of the British Crown, which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event will have occurred in the history of the world, which should be especially in harmony with the truest interest of the British Empire” (see: Max Gordon, “Sir Isaac Isaacs”, Heinemann, London, 1963, p197).

As Indigenous Arabs resisted Jewish invasion in the 1930s, the British position became ambivalent and there was a conflict between the extremes of pro-Jewish Islamophobics such as Winston Churchill and the British Empire Strategists concerned about alienating Muslims in the Middle East and India and thus endangering the British Empire. In 1939 the Strategists won and a White Paper was issued severely constraining Jewish entry to Palestine. As Nazi anti-Semitism ratcheted up, it was very difficult for Jewish refugees to find haven, and particularly so because of both the British White Paper and the Zionist primary objective of “Judaizing” Palestine. Thus Sir Isaac Isaacs (one of the most eminent Jewish Australians and former Governor-General of Australia) supported the British 1939 White Paper banning excessive Jewish immigration to Palestine on the basis of preserving the Rights of the Indigenous inhabitants (as set out explicitly in the Balfour Declaration) (see: Max Gordon’s book: “Sir Isaac Isaacs”). 

Undoubtedly many Jews died because Zionists of the time were primarily obsessed with "Hebraizing" Palestine rather than finding haven for Jewish refugees (see Walter Laqueur, "The Terrible Secret. Suppression of the truth about Hitler's "Final Solution", Penguin, London, 1980 and B. Wasserstein "Britain and the Jews of Europe", Oxford University Press, 1988). Jewish terrorism was directed at both Arabs and the British. The Independencce of Israel in 1948 was associated with horrendous Ultrazionist terrorist ethnic cleansing, 0.7 million Arabs fleeing for their lives. There are now about 6 million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East

The world said an emphatic "no" to Racism and Colonial occupation 50 years ago but Israel defied the trend. In 1956 it colluded with the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt; in 1967 Israel occupied huge slabs of territory of its neighbours Egypt, Syria and Jordan and became a nuclear power. According to some accounts, the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 almost brought about the nuclear annihilation of Egypt (see: here ). After the US-brokered peace with Egypt in 1979, Israel surrendered the Sinai but subsequently invaded Lebanon. Israel wrecked Lebanon, permitted horrendous massacres of Palestinians in Beirut and did not leave until 2000.

The post-invasion avoidable mortality (excess deaths, avoidable deaths) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory totals 300,000 and the post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 186,000 (see MWC News ). In the last 38 years of illegal, war criminal, abusive and traumatizing Occupation, Israeli Zionism  made the transition to politically dominant racist Ultrazionism obsessed with slow genocide of the Palestinians – a slow motion Palestinian Genocide. The obscene, racist, Lebensraum-obsessed Ultrazionist primitivism hearks back to Adolph Hitler in his Obersalzberg speech: "Only thus shall we gain the living space [Lebensraum] which we need. Who after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

The justification for Israel’s 4 decade horrendous imprisonment, killing and traumatizing of Palestinians has been “terror” – but this is revealed as an immense lie. Thus the “annual Israeli homicide rate” is commensurate with that in metropolitan United States and Israelis are responsible for over 80% of the annual homicides in the Israel-occupied Holy Land (see MWC News ). Ultrazionist “terror hysteria” propaganda reached a new pitch after 9/11 and a combination of neocons, lying Mainstream media, the Israel Lobby and Ultrazionist fanaticism fomented Bush’s Islamophobic “War on Terror (in reality a War on Muslim Women and Children). Yet (just as in the Israeli invasion of Gaza and Lebanon with presently some 600 Arab deaths to 30 Israeli), the US-led Western attack on Muslim lands has been horrendously disproportionate.