100 years on, leaders admit mistake over Zionism

LEADERS OF Britain’s Jewish community have acknowledged their predecessors were wrong to argue against the creation of Israel.

One hundred years ago, on May 24 1917, The Times published a letter from the then president of the Board of Deputies David Alexander, and Claude Montefiore, president of the Anglo-Jewish Association. In it the two senior figures laid out the reasons not to set up a Jewish state.

They opposed Zionism because it regarded “all the Jewish communities of the world as constituting one homeless nationality, incapable of complete social and political identification with the nations among whom they dwell”.

“Emancipated Jews in this country regard themselves primarily as a religious community,“with “no separate national aspirations”, the letter said. The founding of a Jewish homeland in Palestine would have the effect of stamping the Jews as strangers in their native lands, and of undermining their hard-won position- as citizens and nationals of those lands.”

A century on, the two men holding the same roles have written to The Times to point out that “fortunately, many British Jews and the government disagreed with their predecessors”.

Signed by Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies, and Jonathan Walker, head of the Anglo-Jewish Association, the letter highlights the then government’s decision to establish a home for the Jewish people, as laid out in the Balfour Declaration.

It states: “Israel is the ultimate refuge for Jewish people and a place where Jews can determine their own future.

The two leaders signed off by saying: “A hundred years on, we are proud to celebrate the achievements of one of the UK’s staunchest allies. With the benefit of a century of hindsight, we are certain our predecessors would have come to the same conclusion.”