The Architecture of Tragedy: Hubris, Empire, and the 67 Words of Balfour…

109 years ago today, on the 2nd of November 1917, as the mud-mired battle of Passchendaele dragged on, as bankruptcy beckoned, a 67-word declarative statement from the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, was hand-delivered to the banking magnate Lord Rothschild. A declaration meant to become fact on the ground, setting the scene for a tragedy of epic proportions, one that plays out still.

In one definition of a tragic struggle, that of right against right, the winner must make amends to the loser for resolution to occur. But this advice is rarely followed. As we know all too well in our local inter-communal difficulty.

In Greek drama, ‘tragedy’ is never an unfortunate accident; rather, it’s defined by hubris, or some personal fatal flaw that leads to downfall, carving out paths that seem almost inevitable, predictable.

In such drama, someone is always gifted to foretell the future, even one where unhealed trauma, if taken to a place of refuge or supposed safety, might be visited upon another people, those not responsible for a near two-millennial European-inflicted wound.

The seer, the truth teller in this case, was Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish member of the British Cabinet. His prescient words relevant still. Voicing core values now being rediscovered in the resurgent tradition of Jewish Anti-Zionism – firmly grounded in commitment to the concept of Liberal Democracy based upon Citizenship Rights rather than Ethnic Identity.

On 12 July 1917, an historic turn was set in motion with a draft proposal from the Zionist Organisation to the British Cabinet. A movement in search of a sponsor, a movement that had achieved little traction after multiple lobbies of the Ottoman, German, and Russian Empires, offering not only to clear debts, but to solve the Semitic ‘problem’ of the Jewish presence in Europe.

They urged that ‘His Majesty’s Government, after consideration of the aims of the Zionist Organisation, accepts the principle of recognising Palestine as the National home of the Jewish people and the right of the Jewish people to reconstitute Palestine as their National Home. His Majesty’s Government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss the necessary methods with the Zionist Organisation.’

Prior to this official request, discussions between the Zionist Organisation’s British representative, Chaim Weizmann and members of the Cabinet had taken place on multiple occasions. With a head of steam built up, confidence grew regarding a favourable outcome.

But, over the remainder of the Summer and early Autumn, Montagu raised a series of objections.

Judaism, he contended, ‘was a universal religion and not a nationality; ‘There is no Jewish nation; there was only a Jewish religion and tradition. Palestine is not the National Home for the Jews, for the National Home of every Jew depends on the country he or she belongs to – and of which they are citizens.’

Zionism, he argued, ‘is a creed that tends to shed doubt on the loyalty and patriotism of the Jewish citizens of the United Kingdom. Something inconsistent with British Citizenship.’

Palestine had, of course, ‘played a large part in Jewish history, but it had also played an equally important role in the history of both Christianity and Islam. Its future should depend on the free exercise of the principle of self-determination.’

He questioned the authority of the Zionist Organisation to represent the Jewish people, pointing out that they’d bypassed the British Board of Deputies of Jews, the majority of whom were opposed to what they saw as a schismatic project.

In one memo, he outlined his assumption that the proposed declaration meant that ‘Muslims and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French. Turks and other Muslims in Palestine would be regarded as if they were foreigners, just in the same way as Jews worldwide would be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine.’

Something that Zionism’s founding father, Theodore Herzl, was comfortable with, as his project presented a solution to the Jewish presence in Europe. ‘Antisemites,’ he correctly predicted, ‘will be our greatest supporters.’ And certainly, Balfour and others had ‘form’ on this issue. (See his 1905 Aliens Act, explicitly aimed at keeping East European Jewish migrants at bay.)

However, Montagu recognised that, as the weight of Cabinet consensus was against him, and, as fait accompli hung in the air of smoke-wreathed chambers, he shifted focus towards a damage limitation exercise to amend, rather than strike down the Declaration, by inserting some degree of protection for both the indigenous Palestinian community and world Jewry.

Hence, Palestine should be recognised as a home, not the ‘National Home’ of the Jewish people; and that home would be in Palestine, rather than possessing all of it. He also managed to insert a wording that might offer some degree of protection of the rights of both the indigenous residents of Palestine and Jewish individuals living outside of it:

‘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 final text, below, even with its vagaries, could have been even worse.

November 2nd, 1917. Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“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.” 

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour.

But, as has been pointed out, there is mention merely of the ‘civil and religious,’ but not the political rights of existing Arab communities (Muslim or Christian), their framing only in the negative – as ‘non-Jewish.’

Prior to the publication of the full text in the Times Newspaper on the 9th of November, Montagu submitted a final memorandum to the Cabinet, which remained private and confidential until 1961.

‘I wish to place on record my view that the policy of His Majesty’s government is antisemitic, and the result will prove a rallying ground for antisemites in every country in the world.

‘Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous, political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom.

‘When the Jews were told that Palestine is their national home, you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country.

‘I have always felt that to bring the Jews back to form a nation in the country from which they were dispersed, would require divine leadership. I’ve never heard it suggested even by the most fervent admirers that either Mr Balfour or Lord Rothschild would prove to be the Messiah.’

Though not an observant Jew, Montagu’s arguments reflected many core tenets of Rabbinic Judaism: that it was pacifistic, that identity was Torah-defined, and that its central commandment was the sanctity of life. It was a transnational religion, not a nation; a return to the Land must await the Messiah’s appearance and leadership, part of a much wider redemptive programme.

So, as has been lucidly pointed out by Yakov Rabkin, in ‘Israel in Palestine,’ ‘While antisemites yearned to get rid of Jews from European societies, Zionists would encourage them to emigrate. Both, in different ways, envisioned Jewish departure from Europe.’

Perhaps Balfour’s Declaration was the tipping point for the almost Tolkienian-type ‘Long Defeat’ of Rabbinic Judaism. As in Middle earth, there was an encroaching sense of an inevitable slide toward decay, loss, and the rebounding of evil.

Something seen in an ongoing veneration of violence, seemingly everywhere. And mirrored in the ideology of the new ‘Muscular’ secular Jew: militant, militaristic, defined by Eastern European pogroms, who’d heed the injunctions of the Russian Empire’s underground revolutionary societies: to ‘Learn how to Shoot.’

Then came strict adherence to the doctrine of ‘Hafrada,’ separation. Separate Development – from the Palestinian Fellahin. Zionism’s intent, from day one, was not integration, but a drive for majority status and statehood, then expansion, occupation, and eventually, seemingly ‘forever war.’

A transformation exemplified by Josef Haim Brenner, a post-1917 settler in Jaffa, who rewrote the most famous verse in the Jewish prayer book: ’Hear, O Israel, God is our Lord, God is One!’ To become: ‘Listen, O Israel! Not an eye for an eye. Two eyes for an eye, all their teeth for any humiliation.’ The birth, in 1921, of the doctrine of disproportionate response, nearly a century before the ‘Dahiya’ Doctrine of General Gadi Eisenkot, today’s ‘moderate’ Israeli politician.

But, in November 1917, all that lay ahead, from seeds baked into Zionist ideology. For as Yuval Noah Harari recently concluded: ‘It can’t be that you rely only on force. If you see others only as threat. If so, then someday you have to conquer the whole world.’

Perhaps, as Rabbinic Judaism prophetically pointed out, Zionism’s mission to transform a religious identity into a national one had, so to speak, excised its heart, elevating the ‘secular corpse,’ or a version of a Golden Calf, ‘to the throne.’

Yet in any version of The Long Defeat, be it the Liberal, Humane Values of Citizenship Rights over Ethno-Nationalism, or justice-oriented Pacifistic Judaism, none are absolved of the responsibility to struggle to retain or restore some element of the good society – no matter the uncertainty of success. In an often-tragic struggle, the duty was to resist nihilism, entropy ensured when good men do nothing.

Yet, from a place of seeming defeat, a slow turn is occurring: the rediscovery of the two-millennia tradition that rejected Maccabean-styled ethnic-state violence: a Jewish Anti-Zionism (now both secular and religious), reiterating the Post-Holocaust imperative that ‘Never Again,’ meant ‘Never Again – for Anyone,’ and repudiating the State of Israel’s Imperial claim that it represents all Jews. Reminder that the primary values of Torah are justice and the sanctity of all life.

Something in unexpected alliance, in strange symmetry with the values of an unlicensed Galilean Rabbi, who, in his Olivet discourse, also wept over Jerusalem, pleading that they turn from their addiction to violence.

Something in empathy with modern-day prophets such as Yakov Rabkin, Peter Beinart, Benjamin Moser, Illan Pappé, Avi Schlaim, Molly Crabapple, Rabbis for Human Rights, B’Tselem, Moaz Inon, Standing Together, Breaking the Silence, Gideon Levy, The Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress (JAZIC) and countless, countless others.

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But back in 1917, it was no coincidence that just over a month after the Balfour Declaration’s publication in the Times, General Allenby, like every Caesar before him, entered Jerusalem mounted on a war horse, bringing what every Empire brings: self-serving duplicity, contradictory promises, expropriation, and inevitable catastrophe for indigenous populations.