|
Trending Topics
|
The British Left's Pro-Zionist Origins
(Spectator-UK) Jake Wallis Simons - In the beginning, the Guardian was a friend of the Jews. Or rather, those Jews who believed that after millennia of persecution in exile, they deserved the right to live freely in their ancestral homeland. The overwhelming majority, in other words. The Zionists. The Labour party liked them, too. Three months before the Balfour Declaration in 1917 - Britain's key declaration of support for Jewish national aspirations - Labour compiled a memorandum of policy priorities. "Palestine should be set free from the harsh and repressive government of the Turk," it said, "in order that the country may form a Free State, under international guarantee, to which such of the Jewish People as desired to do so may return, and may work out their salvation, free from interference by those of alien race or religion." In the years leading up to the Balfour Declaration, C.P. Scott, legendary editor of the Guardian (then the Manchester Guardian), formed a close friendship with Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the Zionist Organization, and lobbied on behalf of the Jewish cause. Scott wrote: "From the first day that I discussed the Zionist project with my old friend Dr. Weizmann, I was convinced of its value, not only for the Jewish people but for other nations."