The Balfour Conspiracy

The Forgotten Truth about the Balfour Declaration

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Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. The Balfour Conspiracy by Ian St. When terrorists transport a ten-megaton bomb across Europe to Bonn, veteran international journalist Harry Brand uses his inside knowledge of Middle Eastern political passions to help world leaders avert disaster. Paperback , pages. Published by Fontana Press first published To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Balfour Conspiracy , please sign up.

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Nov 07, Ian Major rated it really liked it. Very well written thriller. Leaves one guessing to the end who the Bad Guy is. Written in but could be true today. The Israeli connection is very timely for Gary Cann rated it liked it Jun 24, S rated it liked it Jun 21, Karen rated it liked it Sep 23, Henri Moreaux rated it did not like it Apr 07, For Great Britain had no sovereign rights over Palestine; it had no proprietary interest; it had no authority to dispose of the land.

Another approach to downplaying the Balfour Declaration has been to skip straight to the UN General Assembly resolution endorsing the partition of Palestine into two states.

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It is interesting, then, that the late Abba Eban, even though he played a major role in securing the resolution, thought otherwise. And so indeed it has largely been taken.

The Dark Forces Behind the Balfour Declaration — And Its Lasting Legacy

Few of the celebrants or the protesters, however, will have much understanding of what produced the Balfour Declaration—which should not be surprising. In and , the Allied powers Britain, France, Belgium, Russia, Italy, and later the United States were locked in a devastating war with the Central powers Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire and fearful that they might be fought to a draw.

Hence the most documented explanation for the declaration is that the British government hoped to persuade Jews in two wavering Allied countries, the United States and Russia, to insist that their governments stay in the war until total victory. Jewish influence, the British thought, would tilt the debate in Washington and St.

Petersburg and could best be activated by the promise of a Jewish restoration to Palestine. This was married to a misplaced fear that Germany might steal a march on the Allies by issuing its own pro-Zionist declaration. To us today, this seems like a vast exaggeration of the power of Jews at the time. That legend finds its crudest and its stupidest expression in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion [wrote Sacher], but many even of those who reject a forgery and a lie have a residual belief in the power and the unity of Jewry.

We suffer for it, but it is not wholly without its compensations. It is one of the imponderabilia of politics, and it plays, consciously or unconsciously, its part in the calculations and the decisions of statesmen. The second explanation is that the British rushed to embrace Zionism as a means of justifying their own claim to Palestine in the anticipated postwar carve-up of the Middle East. While this explanation differs from the first, it shares with it a straightforward assumption: But in the collective memory of Zionists and Israelis, there is another factor: That telling goes like this: The Weizmann saga unfolds behind the scenes in London drawing rooms, where this Russian Jewish immigrant, having arrived in England only in , succeeds in persuading—some might say, seducing—the likes of Balfour, Mark Sykes, Alfred Milner, and David Lloyd George, who would soon hold the fate of the Middle East in their hands.

The declaration is the personal achievement of one man alone: Four years of patient and calculated work established the link between us and each one of the statesmen in this country. The important people of England speak openly of his personal charm as one of the most effective factors in Zionist propaganda in England. The endorsement of Zionism by most of the Rothschilds in London is also due to his influence. In our history, the declaration will remain linked to the name of Weizmann. In , he published his autobiography, Trial and Error, translated over the next two years into Hebrew, German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish, Italian, and a few years later French.

This work firmly cemented his place in the Zionist pantheon as the man who brought forth the declaration. He died in ; when, in , Israel celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, it issued two stamps, one depicting Balfour, the other, Weizmann. True, when one consults the website of Yad Weizmann, the institute that houses his archives, one discovers that Weizmann was not alone: Their contribution has been largely forgotten. But when the fuller story is told, the Balfour Declaration looks very different. It is no longer a British imperial grab but the outcome of a carefully constructed consensus of the leading democracies of the day.

It is no longer in tension with the principle of self-determination, but a statement made possible by the very champion of the principle. And it is no longer an emanation of secret dealings but one of the first instances of public diplomacy. It is, in short, not a throwback to the 19th century but an opening to the 20th. The key to understanding the fuller story is this: Their policies had to be coordinated. It would have been unthinkable for Britain to have issued a public pledge regarding the future of territory yet to be taken in war without the prior assent of its wartime allies—especially those that also had an interest in Palestine.

The declaration was approved by the British cabinet and no other. It was signed by the British foreign secretary and no other. On the face of it, the declaration was a unilateral British letter of intent.

The Balfour Conspiracy

In truth, in expressing a broad consensus of the Allies, it might even be seen as roughly comparable to a UN Security Council resolution today. To appreciate this, it is necessary to shift the focus away from London to Paris, Rome, and Washington; and away from Chaim Weizmann to a Zionist leader now barely remembered: Most Israelis know a Sokolow Street—several older Israeli cities have one.

But as this short list suggests, Sokolow has been almost entirely forgotten.

Unlike Weizmann, no institute or memorial bears his name, no currency or stamp bears his image. He is buried on Mount Herzl, where he was reinterred in , two decades after his death. Who then was he? Nahum Sokolow was born sometime between and in central Poland and received a traditional rabbinic schooling.

But he taught himself secular subjects and soon gained renown as a prodigy, a polyglot, and a prolific writer on a vast array of subjects. In he moved to Warsaw and later assumed the editorship of the Hebrew journal Hatsefirah , which became a daily in There he contributed a popular column and wrote much of the rest of the paper, so that his fame spread with the spread of modern Hebrew.

Leaving daily journalism in , he became the secretary general of the World Zionist Organization, which was struggling after the death of Herzl two years earlier. Sokolow thereupon threw himself into lobbying, diplomacy, and propaganda, traveling across Europe, America, and the Ottoman Empire.

In , he was elected to the Zionist Executive; in , following the outbreak of war, he relocated to Britain, where he joined forces with the dynamic young Chaim Weizmann in the campaign to win British recognition for Zionist aims. Sokolow is the entry point into the fuller story of the Balfour Declaration. Indeed, at the time of the declaration, many Jews around the world gave him more credit for it than they gave to Weizmann.

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This was partly because Sokolow the Hebrew journalist was better known than Weizmann the biochemist. But Sokolow was also given credit because he accomplished what many thought impossible: How did he surprise everyone, including Weizmann, by his achievement? Why has it been forgotten? And how might its recovery benefit the centennial retrospective on the Balfour Declaration? In early , the Zionists had one objective. There was no doubt that the best prospects for Zionism lay in a total Allied victory over the German-backed Ottomans and the placing of Palestine under an exclusively British protectorate.

Only in Britain did Zionism have sufficient support in governing circles to overcome deep-seated opposition from critics and doubters across Europe, including among influential Jews opposed to Zionism.

And only Britain had the mix of strategic interests, military power, and political will to enforce its writ in Palestine. But the Zionists faced two problems.

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Britain had already promised to share Palestine with its wartime allies. In the spring of , Britain, France, and Russia had finalized a secret agreement to partition the Ottoman empire upon its eventual defeat. Russia was to receive a large swath of eastern Anatolia. But Palestine involved so many conflicting interests that it needed a special status. If the Sykes-Picot agreement had been implemented, it might well have destroyed the prospects of Zionism.

Fortunately for the Zionists, David Lloyd George, who became prime minister at the close of , thought that the Sykes-Picot agreement had given too large a place in Palestine to the French. Britain, after all, would do nearly all of the expected fighting and dying against Ottoman forces in the Sinai and Palestine. Finally a meeting actually takes place and discussions are entered upon. Sykes there met the foremost leaders and sympathizers of the Zionist movement: From the record of that meeting, it is clear that Sykes held out the prospect that Britain might grant the Zionists some form of recognition—on condition.

The French wanted all Syria and [a] great say in Palestine. Some of the Zionists in the room resisted the idea, arguing that Britain should do the work, but Sykes thought otherwise. His handsome appearance, his air of fine breeding, his distinguished manner, his gentle speech, his calculated expression, his cautious action, his well-cut clothes, his monocle, were faithful to a tradition which perhaps is not so highly honored as before the war.

Diplomats and ministers felt that he belonged to their club, spoke their language, and was one of themselves. He practiced their art and was entitled to their privileges. Sokolow made the impression of a statesman, albeit one without a state, and this went beyond his prodigious mastery of European languages. And so Sokolow went forth—first to engage with Picot in London, then back and forth to Paris, with an unexpected detour to Rome, all in close coordination with Sykes.

It was a daunting mission. On the face of it, both propositions should have seemed preposterous to the French. Yet Sokolow managed not only to disarm suspicion of the Zionist program; he even succeeded in extracting statements of support. Most books on the Balfour Declaration do devote a chapter to the story. After two preparatory meetings with Picot in London, Sokolow headed for Paris. In two separate rounds of talks punctuated by a trip to Rome , he thrice met Jules Cambon, secretary-general of the foreign ministry and one of the great French diplomats of the day, and the second time around had an audience with Prime Minister Alexandre Ribot.

To Picot in London, Sokolow had expressed an open preference for British protection, and Picot pushed back. So in Paris he instead emphasized the feasibility of the Zionist project and how it animated Jewish opinion in Russia and America. Two leading historians of French policy, Christopher Andrew and A. And he received it. The Cambon letter, almost as forgotten as Sokolow, was addressed to him and is worth quoting in full:. You were good enough to present the project to which you are devoting your efforts, which has for its object the development of Jewish colonization in Palestine.

The French government, which entered this present war to defend a people wrongly attacked, and which continues the struggle to assure the victory of right over might, can but feel sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which is bound up with that of the Allies. The letter bound Zionism to the cause of all the Allies, and made no reference at all to the rights of non-Jews. France, however, had neither any assurance of Zionist support nor any prospect of obtaining one.

It was not only the Cambon letter that Sokolow secured during his continental sojourn. The visit to Rome had been urged upon Sokolow by the French and facilitated by Sykes. They had hoped that he might win over the government of yet another ally, Italy. But the Catholic Church was no smaller prize: The Italian government also gave Sokolow an assurance of its goodwill and sympathy. The history of these efforts has been researched and analyzed in great depth. Here, too, Sokolow played a major role, drafting numerous documents, including the proposed formula for the declaration submitted by the Zionists to Balfour.

But a crucial portion of the story unfolded not in London but in Washington. For just as Britain would never have moved on Palestine without the prior consent of its European allies, so it would not have acted without the agreement of President Woodrow Wilson. In April , the United States declared war on Germany although not on the Ottomans , making itself a major player in the anticipated post-war settlement. One more ally had to be persuaded before Britain could move.

Here, too, Sokolow had an effect, if only because he had recruited Louis D. Brandeis to the cause. This occurred during a whistle-stop visit by Sokolow to America right before the war, in March He was the Columbus, so to speak, who discovered Louis D. The American policy establishment was entirely hostile to Zionism: On the first ask, in September , Wilson had withheld his approval.

Only the second time around in mid-October, when Wilson received the proposed text from London, did he change his mind. I do, and would be obliged if you would let them know it. If the French, the Americans, or perhaps even the Italians had thrown cold water on the Zionist project, that would have broken the momentum in London, leaving the Zionists without a British declaration.

And so the triumvirate of Sokolow, Weizmann, and Brandeis left nothing to chance. Thanks to their efforts, when the crucial moment came in the British war cabinet, Balfour could claim the assent of the Allies: Balfour then read a very sympathetic declaration by the French Government which had been conveyed to the Zionists, and he stated that he knew that President Wilson was extremely favorable to the Movement.

The Cambon letter proved indispensable. Despite appearances, then, the Balfour Declaration was more than the chess move of a single power. Behind it stood the Allies, each of whom gave it some push forward. It is not for us to predicate that England has spoken and acted in concert with her Allies, but we are justified in believing that England, ever working in closest cooperation with her Allies in the war, will in the day of peace find herself not only supported by France and Italy, but above all by the American government and people.

The British issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, The Balfour Declaration thus opened another chapter, in which the Zionists worked to persuade each Allied government to endorse it openly. Here, too, Sokolow played the lead on the continent, and it was no small task.

The French had cooled; America was now well in the war, and Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of November was out, so Jewish opinion in both countries no longer mattered much assuming it ever had. And there had been a change of government in France since the Cambon letter. In January and February , Sokolow returned to Paris, this time with the aim of securing a public French declaration in support of the Balfour Declaration. But Sokolow asked for a formal statement: American Jews would appreciate it, Sokolow assured Pichon, and this would help France at the peace conference.

So Pichon delivered an endorsement, and it was published on February 10, So he pleaded with Pichon to use that phrase; on February 14, Pichon sent Sokolow another letter that did just that. The Zionists collected other endorsements, some outright, some with emendations. The most important came from Italy and Japan—the two states that, along with Britain and France, would participate in the San Remo conference and become permanent members of the Council of the League of Nations.

The Zionists brought of all these endorsements to the peace conference in Paris in February In the era before the United Nations and the League of Nations, there existed no higher international forum than this.

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