The problem with Britain’s guilt about Balfour

Britain’s unease about the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, our imperial pronouncement that we ‘view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use [our] best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object’, is not hard to spot. Boris Johnson lauds Balfour as ‘indispensable to the creation of a great nation’ before rueing that its ‘vital caveat…to safeguard other communities – has not been fully realised’. His shadow number, Emily Thornberry, said: ‘I don’t think we celebrate the Balfour declaration. But I think we have to mark it because it was a turning point in the history of that area and the most important way of marking it is to recognise Palestine.’ Jeremy Corbyn has been sharply rebuked for snubbing a Balfour centennial dinner, as if this reluctance to break bread was the first sign that he might have a problem with Jews.