© WikipediaThe Balfour Declaration
In an editorial published Friday to mark its bicentennial, the Guardian listed the "worst errors of judgment" the British daily has made since its founding in 1821.
These "mistakes" included supporting the 1917 declaration issued by then foreign secretary Arthur Balfour, a document seen as a key milestone in the State Israel's establishment and which the Guardian described as having "changed the world."
"The Guardian of 1917 supported, celebrated and could even be said to have helped facilitate the Balfour declaration," the left-leaning newspaper wrote.
© Wikipedia/Public DomainCP Scott, Guardian editor in 1917
"In 1917 he wrote [an editorial] on the day the Balfour declaration was announced, in which he dismissed any other claim to the Holy Land, saying: 'The existing Arab population of Palestine is small and at a low stage of civilization.' Whatever else can be said, Israel today is not the country the Guardian foresaw or would have wanted," the column stated.
The editorial, which included a copy of Scott's editor from November 9, 1917, carried the byline of Randeep Ramesh, its chief editorial writer.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews denounced the column.
"That the Guardian lists its support for a Jewish national homeland in 1917 among its 'worst errors of judgment' in its 200-year history is breathtakingly ill-considered," Marie van der Zyl, the group's president, said in a statement.
She added: "In its eagerness to disassociate itself in any way from its early support for Zionism, the Guardian chooses not to focus on the simple fact that had such a national homeland existed even a decade earlier than 1948, many millions of Jews - our close relatives - murdered in the Holocaust might still be alive."
Van der Zyl said that "alongside a safe and secure Jewish state," the Board of Deputies also backs the establishment of a Palestinian state, "something the Balfour declaration does not negate." The Balfour Declaration says in regards to supporting a Jewish national home that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
Van der Zyl also accused the Guardian of seeming "to do everything it can to undermine the legitimacy of the world's only Jewish state."
Among other things the newspaper said it got wrong over its 200-year history were being "a proudly imperialist paper," its support of the Confederacy in the US Civil War and its "at times racist" editorials.
Reader Comments
R.C.
RC
"Our close relatives" - WFT that does that mean? - As in nearest hominids, I thought that was the great apes
And the saddest part of all is that these very intelligent, very talented people buy so strongly into these myths that they become self-fulfilling prophecies, extended into the future endlessly, until we arrive at the point where we are today....
:-(
T here's a shift in the works right here...I have my popcorn at the ready, this may be fun!
Lenni Brenner (Zionism in the age of Dictators, and 51 Documents);
Michael Neumann (The case against Israel);
Ilan Pappe (Ten Myths about Israel)
Is there any society on earth which hasn't had these para.... people lie, cheat and bribe their way into the power-structures of government and then take-over and convolute the laws of the land, the better to parasatise the wealth of the host country?
If however, their God did not authorise such terror and cruelties be used to dispossess the Palestinians, then all such terror and cruelties were born out of the evil Jewish Zionist mind, and those "minds" were worshiping other Gods,a consequence of having decided in favour of greed and blasphemy, instead of remaining in the footsteps of the one true God, having led them out of slavery.
This suggests that their terrors are not and will not be protected by their one true God, and just like Joshua, and for the same reasons, all Zionist Jews will leave Palestinian Palestine, alive or dead will be their choice. Amen It Is Written.
The Israelis have broken their part of the Balfour agreement which clearly states; "It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" and as a consequence have lost all claim to the essence of The Balfour Agreement. A World Court needs to now throw these transgressors out of Palestine and return them to their [former] homelands in Eastern Europe. If this is not done these abusers of human decency will stop at nothing to realise their hegemonic wet-dreams in taking over the world. On the face of it the are only 3 countries away from realising this wet-dream.
Netanyahu is Polish, send the fcuker back to Poland, they probably deserve him.