Centenary of the Balfour Declaration

Jonathan Djanogly Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) on securing this tremendous debate.

In the few minutes I have, I shall explain a little of the reasoning behind the Balfour declaration. It is unusual because it was not a settlement or reaction to any kind of nationalist war or terrorist activity, in the way we are now used to; rather, it had its roots in lobbying carried out in the Parliaments of Europe, mainly by the bourgeoisie and aristocrats. Herzl and Lord Rothschild would have been seen as pretty distant characters to, say, their Polish ghetto co-religionists, who were much more likely to follow the socialist kibbutz-type Zionism that eventually had an important role in the practical settlement of the new state.

What actually happened? What did Herzl do that made such different Jewish characters and political creeds all move generally in the same nationalist direction? Herzl was the first person to explain how Europe’s Jews were not only individually or nationally in peril, but internationally at risk. In less than a decade he persuaded most Jews of most classes and political views that, whether or not they as individual Jews wished to live in Europe, the Jews’ collective future depended on their once again having their own independent nation on their own soil. He suggested that the concept of Jews as a wandering diaspora should be replaced with Jews being allowed to lead the life of normal people, with all the rights, benefits and, indeed, challenges that go with that.

Herzl died in 1904, some 13 years before the declaration, but the dream he created was that of a functioning Jewish homeland, and it was that dream that brought the Jews out of the ghetto culture and mentality and out of the ghetto language of Yiddish, and that brought many of them physically out of the ghettos and into Israel. The dream empowered Jews as human beings; it permitted them to be proud to stand up for their rights with a united destiny, based on shared religious and cultural values, not least the rebirth of the spoken Hebrew language.

It was that Zionist movement that increasingly persuaded world leaders to understand that Jewish homelessness must come to an end and that the solution was down to the international community and world leaders, working together with the Jewish people.

That was the spirit of recognition encapsulated in the Balfour declaration, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne explained so well, was then incorporated into the Sèvres peace treaty with the Ottoman empire and finally the UN resolution that established the state of Israel. It is for this reason that Jews around the world highly valued the Balfour declaration then and it is why I believe it should still be celebrated now by those who understand or accept the then Zionist dream, now reality of a Jewish homeland in Israel.