NOT UNDERSTOOD

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23387, 19 December 1945, Page 4

NOT UNDERSTOOD

Balfour Declaration No Promise To Jews There have been serious mis-state-ments of the meaning of the Balfour Declaration, says Professor William Ernest Hosking in an article in the “New York Herald-Tribune.” The matter is one of simple fact; but it has been obscured by the misrepresentations with which the United States has been flooded for two years past. The Balfour Declaration does not contain any promise of a Jewish National State. It w 7 as carefully worded to exclude this expectation; for in the negotiations leading to the declaration in November, 1917, certain Zionist leaders had urged “the reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish State.” and this had been definitely rejected. The declaration pledges the British Government to “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," providing carefully that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” No Proposals for Jewish State Neither here nor in the mandate under the League nor in the approving act of the United States Government is there any proposal that Palestine should become a Jewish State. This position was restated in 1922 in two White Papers, one by Mr Churchill and one by Lord Passfield, in which it is reiterated that the special position of the Zionist executive “does not entitle it to share in any degree in the government." The Zionist community was to be within Palestine, and the positions and interests of Moslems and Christians—still there —were to be an equal charge of the mandatory Power. It would be natural now for the British Government to reconsider the limitations on Jewish immigration into Palestine established in the White Paper of 1939. in the light of many new conditions including among other things, the tremendous growth of Soviet influence in the Near East. / Irrelevant Conclusion

But Britain may well hesitate to act while subject to pressure from the United States on the ground of a wholly non-existent promise, inconsistent with its own commitments and

with those of the U.S_A. The American conscience is indeed concerned. It is moved by the terrible fate of European Jews, and it seeks a prompt course of action. It is easily hurried to the irrelevant conclusions: “Therefore they must have Palestine: and those who raise questions are persons of ill will.” But this same conscience would be revolted if it could see the United States becoming through its sympathies the tool of what I consider a Zionist imperialism, tending to absorb and subordinate to its own ambitions the claims of a great peonle. resident for 1300 years on Palestine soil. having an equal concern in the new national growth opening to all peoples and equally recipient of Allied promises. To give ourselves to a plausible but insufficiently examined policy which may involve the practical expropriation of a people militarily defenceless endangers a truly considerate solution of the problem of Jewish resettlement, which is a United Nations problem.