Friday, July 21, 2006

Lord Balfour and the Middle East

In 1917, Lord Arthur Balfour (seen above, second from the left, visiting Tel Aviv at a later date) issued the "Balfour Declaration," which promised that the British, when they won the current war, would favor "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine..."

It's a pretty famous document.

Imagine then my surprise yesterday as I sat in a London hotel reading the Times, to see a letter on the Middle East crisis signed by "Lord Balfour." His successor, of course, but still...

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