WE REST OUR CASE - Balfour Declaration - Draiman

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WE REST OUR CASE

WE HAVE not hesitated, painful as it is, to attack Great Britain, to call Lord Passfield's White Paper and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's championing of it the Great Betrayal. We believe we have fairly traced the process in administrative methods which in the end require for their justification a declaration of policy that is an inversion of the purport of the Balfour Declaration.

We have not employed any forensic art to prove the justice of a cause that needs no such methods of defense. "Thrice armed is he who bath his quarrel just."

We feel that the Jewish people have been deeply wronged. They are put in this matter in a false position towards the Arabs, and towards the world at large, whose good opinion they value which, listening to the voice of Government, is more than prone to believe that the Jews are claiming too much. They are wronged, too, in the

especial sense that their faith that of all Jews was in England and therefore, if England wrongs them, they are twice wronged.

We accuse Great Britain, in the persons of the Labor Government, of a great betrayal because her contract with the Jewish people was made in the sight of all men, and in agreement with the heads of all British Dominions, and with the Principal and Associated Powers allied in the Great War. The sacredness of all contracts, present

and future, is in doubt, if one great state paper can be scrapped by changing the order and import of its sentences.

These are not words idly composed. When the Arabs, a year ago, in their agitation in this country, demanded the nullification of the Balfour Declaration, we protested to them, pointing out that they had nothing to gain from nullification.

For if one international pledge could be freely broken, no other agreement would be of value to any people. In that sense, we, protesting against this breach of one trust, struggle for the

inviolability of all public and international obligations.

We, lovers of the English people and of English ways, protest against this Great Betrayal of English honor premeditated and propounded by the Labor Government. One hundred and thirty

years ago Sir Sidney Smith made the word of England a bond more rich than gold throughout the Orient. What shall the Orient as well as the Western World say of a government that employs such casuistry as to suggest that it proposes to continue a given policy by reversing the sentences in a state document and so defend, support and champion an inverted and wholly contrary policy?

Are we wrong? Or are we right Have we evolved from our inner consciousness that explanation of what was intended by the

Balfour Declaration and which convicts the Labor Government? The answer is not ours but the hand now stilled in death which penned the Balfour Declaration. We need no better, no clearer, no more complete witness. Against inversions, sophistry and casuistry we quote the full, lucid and complete answer made by Arthur

James Balfour in London, in July, 1920, at the meeting held at the Royal Albert Hall, to celebrate the granting to and acceptance by Great Britain of the Mandate:

"The critics of this movement shelter themselves behind the phrase-it is more than a phrase-the principle of self-determination and say if you apply that principle logically and honestly it is to the majority of the existing population of Palestine that the future

destinies of Palestine should be committed.

There is a technical ingenuity in that plea, on technical grounds, I neither can nor desire to provide an answer. But the man who looking back on the history of the world, who does not see that the case of Jewry in all countries is absolutely exceptional, falls outside all the ordinary rules and maxims, cannot be contained

in a formula or explained in a sentence -the man who does not see that the deep underlying principle of self-determination really points to the Zionist policy, however little in its strict technical interpretation it may seem to favor it, does not understand either the Jews or the principle. I am convinced that none but pedants or people who, prejudiced either by religion or racial bigotry, none but those who are blinded by one of these causes, would deny for one instant that the case of the Jew is exceptional, and must be

treated by exceptional methods."

We rest our case, confident of the verdict of the conscience of mankind.

APPENDIX I

AN ADDRESS delivered by Arthur James Balfour at the Royal Albert Hall, London, July, 1920, before the delegates of the Zionist Conference, at a meeting held in celebration of the

granting to and acceptance by Great Britain of the Mandate:

For long I have been a convinced Zionist. And it is in that character that I come before you today. But in my most sanguine moments I never foresaw, I never even conceived the possibility,

that the great work of Palestinian reconstruction would happen so soon, or that indeed it was likely to happen in my own lifetime . This is one of the great and unexpected results of the world's struggle which has just come to an end -if indeed we dare to say it has completely come to an end . Of infinite evils that struggle has been the parent, but if among its results we can count the re-establishment in their ancient home of the Jewish people, at all events we can put to its credit one great result, which in other circumstances, so far as we can see, could never have occurred at so early a date.

Who would have thought five or six years ago that a speaker in the Albert Hall would be able to count as an accomplished fact that the Great Powers of the world had elected to accept the Declaration to which Lord Rothschild has referred, had consented to give the Mandate to the country which at all events is in the forefront among those who desire to see this policy brought to a successful issue, and that they should already have seen appointed as the High Commissioner of Palestine a man who so admirably joins the double qualifications which Lord Rothschild has already so felicitously expressed?

These are results on which we may all congratulate ourselves . Let us not forget, in our feelings of legitimate triumph, the difficulties

which still lie before us. Those difficulties I have no hesitation in dwelling upon them because I know you will overcome them yet it is worth while to enumerate some of them, not to discourage you, but to raise your courage and resolution even to a higher pitch than they have already reached-among these difficulties I am not sure that I do not rate the highest, or at all events the first, the inevitable difficulty of dealing with the Arab question as it presents itself

within the limits of Palestine. It will require tact; it will require judgment; above all, it will require sympathetic good-will on the part of both Jew and of Arab.

So far as the Arabs are concerned a great, and interesting, and an attractive race so far as they are concerned, I hope they will remember that while we desire-this assembly and all the Jews

whom it represents-under the aegis of Great Britain to establish this home for the Jewish people, the Great Powers, and among all the Great Powers most especially Great Britain, have forced them, the Arab race, from the tyranny of their brutal conqueror, who has kept them under his heel for many centuries. I hope they will remember it is we who have established the independent Arab sovereignty of the Hedjaz. I hope they will remember it, we who desire in Mesopotamia to prepare the way for the future of a self-governing, autonomous Arab State. And I hope that, remembering all that, they will not grudge that small niche for it is not more geographically in the former Arab territories than a niche being

given to the people who for all these hundreds of years have been separated from it, but who surely have a title to develop on their own lines in the land of their forefathers.

This ought to appeal to the sympathy of the Arab people, as I am convinced it appeals to the great mass of my own Christian fellow-men in this country. This is the first difficulty, that can be got over and will be got over by mutual goodwill.

The second difficulty, on which I shall only say a word, is that the critics of this movement shelter themselves behind the phrase-it is more than a phrase-the principle of self-determination, and say if you apply that principle logically and honestly it is to the majority of the existing population of Palestine that the future destinies of Palestine should be committed. There is a technical ingenuity in that plea and, on technical grounds, I neither can nor desire to provide an answer. But the man who, looking back on the history of the world, and more particularly of the more civilized portions of the world, who does not see that the case of Jewry in all countries is absolutely exceptional, falls outside all the ordinary rules and maxims, cannot be contained in a formula or explained in a sentence the man who does not see that the deep underlying principle of self-determination really points to the Zionist policy, however little in its strict technical interpretation it may seem to favor it, does not understand either the Jews or the principle.

I am convinced that none but pedants or people who, prejudiced either by religion or racial bigotry, none but those who are blinded by one of these causes, would deny for one instant that the case of the Jews is absolutely exceptional, and must be treated by exceptional methods.

The third difficulty is of a wholly different order of magnitude and character. It is the physical difficulty. Palestine, great as is the place which it occupies in the history of the world, is but a small and petty country looked at as a geographical unity, and men ask themselves how in these narrow limits, to be traversed, where there are good roads from Dan to Beersheba by an automobile in an easy day's journey they ask themselves how that can be made physically

adequate to be a home for the self-development of the Jewish people. The problem presents difficulties, it presents no impossibilities. It presents difficulties which I myself should regard as overwhelming were we dealing with another people

and with different conditions. But what are the requisites of such development in Palestine as may accommodate an important section of the great race that I am addressing? What are the

two necessities? One is skill, knowledge, perseverance, enterprise. The other is capital. And I am perfectly convinced that when you are talking of the Jews you will find no want of any one of these requisites . Of skill and knowledge and of what the most modern methods can teach in the way of engineering and agriculture, the Jewish race who have themselves contributed to the results can easily make themselves the master.

And when I consider capital I am not thinking of the great millionaires or the men of vast wealth belonging to the Jewish race I doubt not they will do their duty. It is not of them Lam thinking.

I am thinking of the innumerable Jews in the poorest circumstances I have heard authentic details of the way in which, out of their

poverty, they are prepared to contribute to the success of this movement. The fourth and the last difficulty on which I want to speak is perhaps in some respects the greatest of all. This

movement cannot be carried out except by idealists.

No man who is incapable of idealism is capable either of understanding the Zionist movement or contributing effectually to its consummation.

But idealism, though a necessary element in every great and fruitful policy, has its inevitable dangers.

Your cynic, your man of narrow and selfish views, does nothing ; your idealist does much. But he does not always do the right thing, and the very qualities which make a man sacrifice all that he has for an idea, very often blind him to that cool and calm judgment without which great ideals cannot be brought to a true and

successful fruition. I speak as a man who is not a Jew and necessarily therefore looks at the Jewish question from outside; but I should say that perhaps the danger that besets the Jewish race is not that they lack high idealism, not that they are reluctant to sacrifice everything to life itself, to see that ideal carried into effect, but that they are carried away by the vehemence of their

own views, the depth and strength of their own convictions, and are unwilling to do that without which this and any other great movement cannot succeed, are unwilling to give that wholehearted

trust and confidence in their chosen leaders which, believe me, is necessary.

You are drawn from every nation under heaven. You come to London, or to any other great centre, with ideas absorbed from the

populations among whom you have sojourned; you come, therefore, with many different mentalities, to use a familiar phrase; you come with many different theories as to the methods by which your common objects can be carried out.

It only becomes dangerous by their insistence that the objects should be carried out precisely in the fashion which commends itself to them.

Beware of that danger! I am sure it is the greatest danger which will beset you in the future. Now, I have done with the gloomy task of enumerating difficulties. I have only one more word to say.

We are embarked on a great adventure. And I say "we" advisedly, and by "we" I mean on one side the Jewish people, and on the other side the Mandatory Power for Palestine. We are partners

in this great enterprise. If we fail you, you cannot succeed ; if you fail us, you cannot succeed.

But I feel sure that we shall not fail you, and that you will not fail us . And if I am right and I am assured I am-in this prophecy of hope and confidence, then surely we may look forward with hope, and gaze on a future in which Palestine will, indeed, and in the fullest measure and degree of success be made a home for the Jewish people.

APPENDIX II

THE CHURCHILL WHITE PAPER,