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Britain Went Back on Its Word
(Wall Street Journal) Ruth R. Wisse - The Balfour Declaration of 1917 represented a diplomatic high point in the history of the Zionist movement. Yet Britain went back on its word. Attempting to appease Arab rulers, it rewarded Arab violence in Palestine in the 1930s by preventing Jews from entering land promised to them by the Bible and the British. The British betrayal signaled a readiness to abandon the Jews to their fate. It certainly spurred the Arab war against Israel, which began where Germany's war against the Jews left off. The Jews would have returned to Zion with or without the consent of Europe. This is the people that, despite the murder of millions of potential Jewish citizens, recovered and defended its national sovereignty in the Land of Israel. But most of the Arab world rejected the very principle of coexistence. For Arab nations, acceptance of an autonomous Jewish presence, if and when it occurs, will be the gauge of their political maturity. The writer is a former professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard.