The Forgotten Truth about the Balfour Declaration

Martin Kramer, mosaicmagazine.com

Image from article, with caption: British Lord Arthur Balfour in Jerusalem in 1925.

Excerpt:

On November 2, 1917, a century ago, Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, conveyed the following pledge in a public letter to a prominent British Zionist, Lord Walter Rothschild:

["]His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood 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. ["] ...

The Balfour Declaration, for all its vagaries, constituted the first step toward the objective of political Zionism ...

[The Declaration] 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 Balfour Declaration ... anticipated what later came to be called public diplomacy. ...

It was [from the article: "a Zionist leader now barely remembered: Nahum"] Sokolow who coined the Hebrew term hasbarah (“explanation”), a word that perfectly parallels public diplomacy in its modern sense. Sokolow saw hasbarah as the natural form of Zionist advocacy in the chancelleries of Europe, in editorial boardrooms, and in public speeches. ...