„The greatest crime” „A sin” „The cursed promise” „A mark of shame upon humanity”
„An ominous sign, [bringing] disasters upon the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the nations of the region and the world.” „Historical injustice” „Balfour will continue to turn in his grave”
The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 was a letter from the British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild of the Zionist movement, which expressed Britain’s support for „the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” A few years later, on July 24, 1922, the League of Nations confirmed the letter and selected Britain as „the Mandatory for Palestine.”
Every year on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Palestinian Authority leaders and official media issue harsh statements attacking it. According to the Palestinian narrative, Jews have no history in the land and therefore have no right to exist as a state. Consequently, Israel exists only because of the Balfour Declaration.
This year, the PA Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Culture organized a workshop for high school girls in Tulkarem in cooperation with the city’s Education Administration. The girls wrote „letters of sorrow and pain to the Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II, and to the British Foreign Minister, William Hague, since it was the letter by that country’s Foreign Minister Arthur James Balfour, which has caused the Palestinian people ongoing suffering,” reported the official PA daily.
One girl wrote to Queen Elizabeth:
PA leaders and official media have published claims on many occasions that the establishment of Israel was a European plot to get rid of the Jews in Europe because the Jews were a burden on European society. The Balfour Declaration is cited by many Palestinians as proof that Zionism was not a Jewish idea but a colonialist idea, and it was this idea that the Palestinian girl was expressing in her letter.
Another girl wrote to the Queen:
The official PA daily also reported that PLO Executive Committee member Zakaria Al-Agha demanded that:
Fatah member Faiz Abu Aitah called the Balfour Declaration „the greatest crime that the international community is responsible for.”
Official PA TV News referred to „the cursed Balfour promise” as „a promise that brings a mark of shame upon humanity.”
The following are some of the many PA attacks on the Balfour Declaration that appeared in the PA press this year. Despite the PA’s claims in English to the international community that it recognizes Israel, the PA openly continues to indoctrinate its people with significant historical revision, to reject and deny Israel’s right to exist.
PA TV News broadcast
Interview with Fatah member Faiz Abu Aitah, speaking about the vote on accepting Palestine into UNESCO:
„The world must correct part of its sin – thus concurred national figures and bodies which published announcements yesterday on the occasion of the 94th anniversary of the Balfour promise [Balfour Declaration, 1917] … Member of the PLO Executive Committee Zakaria Al-Agha demanded that the United Kingdom vote at the Security Council in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital… In a press release yesterday, Al-Agha demanded that Britain assume its responsibility towards the Palestinian people and make amends for its mistakes, since it is the main culprit for its suffering, and to admit its grave mistake against it in allowing the Jews, by means of the cursed promise, to seize control of the Palestinian land and to estab`lish their state on the Arab ruins and the Palestinian villages which were destroyed in 1948. … The PLO Department of International Relations demanded that the international community assume its historical, moral and human responsibility towards the Palestinian people… This was said in a press release by the department yesterday, on the 94th anniversary of the promise which Britain gave to the Jews, to give them a national home in Palestine, which has caused our people suffering, oppression and injustice continuing to our own times… The PA Ministry of Information said that the usual condemnations are not an effective prescription for [addressing] this great sin, in which [Britain] gave a land which was not its own to a nation which had begun to claim it [the land] was part of itself [the nation]. [Britain] must apologize and make amends for this sin, and acknowledge to the world that the result of the words of its Foreign Minister – no more than sixty words – are still having their effect.”
PA TV News broadcast
Reporter: „This is the Balfour promise, in which the British Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour, gave the Jews a national home in Palestine, in 1917. This was the promise which approved of Jewish immigration to Palestine. They [the Jews] took the place of the original inhabitants, conquered their land, and turned them into refugees throughout the world. A promise that brings a mark of shame upon humanity because it [humanity] ignored the colonialist frenzy – not only in Palestine but in the Arab homeland, from east to west…
„Today is the 94th anniversary of the cursed Balfour promise [The Balfour Declaration of 1917], by which Britain awarded the Jews the right to establish a national home in Palestine, based on the false slogan, ‘A land without a people for a people without a land’. … This promise represented the first step taken by the West on the road to establishing an entity for the Jews on the land of Palestine, in accordance with the wishes of World Zionism, at the expense of a people which had been rooted in this land for thousands of years. This promise was given as a declaration on the part of the British Foreign Minister at the time, Arthur James Balfour… to Lord Rothschild, one of the leaders of the World Zionist movement, following three years of negotiations between the British government and the Jews of Britain and the World Zionist Organization, in which the Zionists managed to persuade Britain concerning their ability to realize its [Britain’s] aims and to protect its interests in the region… The Jews made successful use of the piece of paper published by Arthur Balfour, known for his friendship with the Zionist Movement, and later the [British] Mandate and the 1947 resolution by the [UN] General Assembly concerning the Partition of Palestine: They realized their dream of establishing [the State of] Israel on May 15th, 1948, and this entity earned membership in the UN thanks to pressure by the super powers. Israel became the first country in the history of the global political system which was established on land belonging to others, and which receives international aid which has caused it to behave arrogantly in the region – expanding, swallowing more Palestinian and Arab territory, and behaving violently and mercilessly towards those among the Palestinian people who remain upon their land.”
The promise declared by British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour, on Nov. 2, 1917, constitutes a great political crime and sin, leading to the uprooting of the Palestinian people and the theft of its land, and causing wars and great conflicts which still continue in the region.'”