british and israeli flag with face and declaration superimposed

Nothing learnt: Balfour and Britain’s generosity with other people’s lands

On November 2, the UK will unapologetically celebrate 100 years since the Balfour Declaration — in which it began the process of stealing away the Palestinian homeland. Bilal Cleland reports.

THIS YEAR, on 2 November, the world commemorates the centenary of the Balfour Declaration — the granting by the British Government of a homeland for the Zionist movement in a land already occupied by Muslim and Christian Palestinians, in a territory still part of the centuries old Ottoman Empire. It was in the midst of the most terrible slaughter the world had ever witnessed.

Such generosity with the lands of other peoples was a mark of European imperialism. That is how the lands of the First Nations people of Australia became British territory. It was how West Africa, North Africa, Indo-China and several islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific became “French.”

 

Read the full article by Bilal Cleland at Independent Australia.