Analysis of the Balfour Declaration

letter in modern Jewish history and it begins with three words,

Dear Lord Rothschild.

Dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in

conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty's Government the following declaration of

sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to and

approved by the Cabinet.

Why was it that this letter was

sent by the Foreign Secretary to your great uncle Walter?

It's an interesting question because it was primarily a movement from

Eastern Europe, but they didn't clarify

who was in charge of that movement

and in addition it was after all in Great Britain.

So they felt that the Rothschild family

should be the one to whom it was addressed

and Walter was Lord Rothschild and he was a Zionist

and those rarely are the background reasons.

So Walter received the Balfour Declaration and I have a

copy here and I wonder if I could possibly ask you to read it for us. Yes indeed.

I'm going to put on my spectacles to make sure I read it accurately.

His Majesty's Government

view with favour the establishment of Palestine as 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 shall 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 shall be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of

the Zionist Federation. Yours Arthur Balfour.

And here it is, the Balfour Declaration.

What do you feel when you see it here?

I genuinely feel it's

one of the most extraordinary moments in the history of the Jewish people.

If you think it took 3 000 years to get to this and then you say how did this

miracle happen?

It's the most incredible piece of opportunism.

I mean if you think, you had an impoverished would be scientist, Haim Weizmann,

who somehow gets to England,

meets a few people, including members of my family,

seduces them, he has such great charm and conviction.

He gets to Balfour and he unbelievably persuades Balfour

and Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, and most of the Ministers,

that this idea of the national home for Jews

should be allowed to take place. I mean it's so, so unlikely.

And then he starts to fight a difficult battle with the British Cabinet and

this letter goes through five drafts, as you know, and in the end it comes out

as a rather compromising letter.

I mean the essential point is there for the Jewish community to fasten on to.

You have the first bit,

which promises a national home rather than the national home,

and then you have the bit that nothing that's to be done should in any way

harm the Arab community.

But you come back to the big point,

which is that this is perhaps the greatest event in Jewish life

for thousands of years and it's a miracle.