Realities in the Arab-Israeli conflict

Lessons for Canada?

Arthur James Balfour was the prime minister of England from 1902 and 1905 and served as Minister of Foreign Relations from 1906 to 1919. He died in 1930.

On November 2, 1917 he wrote a letter to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community and a Zionist desiring the creation of a Jewish State. The letter recited British government support for the creation of a Jewish state in lands of the former Ottoman Empire under British rule at the time, known as Palestine. The Rothschild’s were the world’s richest family with an estimated wealth of what would be trillions of dollars today and major banking, mining and oil interests. In 1917, there had been no holocaust and Jewish people were prominent members of British society. But the Rothschilds were the most powerful people on the planet by some estimations, and supported Balfour’s Tory party. James de Rothschild served as a Conservative MP from 1929 to 1945.

In 1948, the United Nations relying in part on the Balfour Declaration created the State of Israel but ignored the British pledge to create a second state of Palestine, what today would be called a “two state solution”. Solution to what is the issue?

The claim to the Holy Lands (now Israel and surrounding territory) is based on a work of fiction known generally as the Holy Bible and contradicted by another work of fiction called the Koran, the document most closely resembling the Bible in the Islamic faith. The democratic norm is one of self-determination by popular vote, not decisons of third parties exercised by force. Support for Ukraine is based on this principle.

The creation of the State of Israel did result third parties (Britain, the United States, many U.N. members) compelling the population of the lands now forming the State of Israel to accept massive immigration of Jewish people from Europe and North America and to recognize Israel as a separate democratic state. The immediate response of the five Arab nations surrounding what became Israel was the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The area has been host to violence for the 75 years since.

Lord Balfour’s initiative reflected the value to his political party of the support of the Rothschild family, not some ideological view that the Biblical claim of Jews to the Holy Lands had merit. At the time of the Balfour Declaration, Arabs outnumbered Jews in the area now Israel by a factor of ten to one. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) didn’t exist until 2007, but the underlying principles had been around for decades. The argument as to whether Arabs or Jews were the indigenous people of what is today Palestine is another hotly debated issue. I don’t see any comments emanating from the U.N. regarding how UNDRIP might apply to Israel or Palestine, but plenty U.N leftist rhetoric calling for recognition of Palestine as a state and and “end to the occupation”. The overwhelming majority of U.N. members voted in favor of this blatantly pro-Palestinian resolution.

This article does not draw any conclusion that disparages the creation of the State of Israel or the emergence of Israel as a well-governed freedom loving democracy that has made enormous contributions to advanced in medicine and science with more Nobel prize winners than any other country in relation to population. Rather, the article is a backdrop for a fictional outcome of geopolitics that could have affected Canadians.

Like Palestine, Canada was until Confederation a British controlled territory. The British government passed the British North America Act (BNA) in 1867 creating the country of Canada although it took negotiation among Canadian territories - the provinces - get everyone to agree to join the new nation, with Newfoundland not becoming a part of Canada until 1948, the precise year Israel was formed. B.C. joined in 1871 and Alberta in 1905. One issue that troubled British Parliament to some extent was the effect the BNA had on Canada’s indigenous population, which had as much claim on the lands forming Canada as any claim the Jewish faith had on the Holy Lands. Section 91(24) of the BNA ducked the question and made stewardship of “Indians and lands reserved for Indians” a federal responsibility, predating either B.C., Alberta or Newfoundland coming under “federal” jurisdiction. What authority Britain had to cede lands to anyone in North American is a debatable topic, undoubtedly disputed by Canada’s indigenous population.

If Lord Balfour had not supported the Rothschilds Zionist aspirations, Israel may never have existed. If Lord Balfour and his government instead had turned their attention to Canada, they might as readily have recommended the creation of a new First Nations state in Canada, possibly carving out Alberta as the lands ceded to Canada’s indigenous population. That did not happen, but its historic justification was just as strong or even stronger than the justification for the creation of the State of Israel. Alberta did not join Confederation until 1905 when Balfour was still in power as Prime Minister of Britain.

Had it happened, I muse about how Canadians would react today at having Britain (and possibly the League of Nations or later the United Nations) interfere in political matters of importance to Canadians and carve out the province that has contributed the most economically to Canada since 1905 as a new nation controlled by our indigenous population without compensation to those Albertans displaced? Not well I suspect. Likely there would have been less outcry if instead of Israel Britain had given Zionists what is now Newfoundland or Prince Edward Island as the home for a Jewish state, except among Liberal party leaders who have counted on the votes in those provinces to obtain and retain power in Canada. Why anyone felt it necessary to create a state for a particular faith is beyond my comprehension.

While I am an admirer of the Israeli’s (and of the Jewish faith generally) and the contributions of Israel to society at large, when seen in the context of a fictional outcome in Canada in somewhat similar circumstances, it is hard not conclude the Palestinian population might have a point in expressing concern their homeland was wrested from them without any effort to apply democratic principles of self-determination of nations. I guess those principles are optional.

Mainstream media aren’t doing anything useful to ease the tensions. They conflate geography and faith. For clarity, Judaism is a faith and Israel is a place. Calling the Arab’s desire to end the State of Israel anti-Semitism is ignoring that this is a fight over land, not over faith. Would there be less tension in the mid-East if Lord Balfour’s declaration and the U.N. action had created a new state in the mid-East for Seventh Day Adventists or Jehovah Witnesses or Atheists and pushed the residents out of their homes to accomplish that goal? I think not.

Whatever the historic justification, Israel exists and is a model of democracy worth protecting and preserving. The Israeli’s do themselves no favours by justifying the “settlements” as a God given right or by using their formidable military forces in ways that cause the deaths of thousands of innocent Palestinians, including many children who comprise almost half the population of Palestine. Violence begets violence and while Israel can and must defend itself against terrorists, it must not act in ways that lead to the creation of more terrorists.