No to the imperialist US-Israeli “Deal of the Century!” End Israeli occupation of Palestine!

Defend and support the Palestinian people’s heroic resistance to occupation!

– Statement of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), January 31, 2020 –

The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) resolutely condemns “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People,” put forward by President Donald Trump on January 28 as a provocation and act of violence against the Palestinian people. It is aimed at extinguishing their rights, particularly the right of return, a collective right which has been affirmed year after year by the United Nations General Assembly. By proposing that the more than 7 million Palestinians, including those in Gaza and the West Bank, be settled in what will be a bantustan in Gaza, in the countries where they are now living or in some other state that the U.S. will generously broker, the aim is to extinguish the historical memory of the Palestinian people and their decades-long struggle for their rights so gloriously expressed in the “Great March of Return” in Gaza in 2018 to 2019.

101st anniversary of Balfour Declaration

Join Palestinians in demanding the implementation of the right of return! End the Zionist occupation of Palestinian lands!

Mississauga picket on 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, November 2017.

November 2 marked the 101st anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a 1917 letter sent by the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to a prominent British Zionist leader promising land in Palestine for foreign settlement.

About the Balfour Declaration

Setting Off by Amin Shammout | Photo by Tony Seed

By Dr. ISMAIL ZAYID*

We are reproducing below an excerpt from the essay by Dr. Ismail Zayid titled “Ethnic Cleansing and Dispossession,” reprinted from the Dossier on Palestine (Halifax: New Media Publications, 2002), and originally presented as a lecture at the Conference on Palestine, Vancouver, May 23, 1998.

Winston Churchill sent the infamous Black and Tans from Ireland to Palestine

The Balfour Declaration’s purpose was to form a “little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism”, according to Ronald Storrs, “the first military governor of Palestine since Pontius Pilate” (his words). Not everything went to plan… | DAVID CRONIN*

“The Birth of the Irish Republic” by Walter Paget

100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration: Palestine – Ethnic cleansing and dispossession (Excerpt)

By Dr. ISMAIL ZAYID*

Click to enlarge.

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

[…]

It was the second of November 1917 when Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, issued his infamous declaration in the form of a letter written to Lord Rothschild. It read:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

It is interesting to note that the four-letter word “Arab” occurs not once in this document. To refer to the Arabs who constituted, at the time, 92 per cent of the population of Palestine and owned 98 per cent of its land, as the non-Jewish communities is not merely preposterous but deliberately fraudulent. I do not need to tell you that this letter has no shred of legality, as Palestine did not belong to Balfour to assume such acts of generosity. Dr. Arnold Toynbee described the British role, in issuing this document, accurately:

“We were taking it upon ourselves to give away something that was not ours to give. We were promising rights of some kind in the Palestinian Arabs’ country to a third party.”

Similarly, the well-known Jewish writer, Arthur Koestler, summed it up aptly when he described the Balfour Declaration as a document in which “one nation promised a second the country of a third.”

The Balfour Declaration and the creation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Soldiers in the Arab Army during the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918, carrying the Arab Flag of the Arab Revolt and pictured in the Arabian Desert.

By Nu’man Abd al-Wahid*

The covert alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the Zionist entity of Israel should be no surprise to any student of British imperialism. The problem is the study of British imperialism has very few students. Indeed, one can peruse any undergraduate or post-graduate university prospectus and rarely find a module in a Politics degree on the British Empire let alone a dedicated degree or Masters degree. Of course if the European led imperialist carnage in the four years between 1914 – 1918 tickles your cerebral cells then it’s not too difficult to find an appropriate institution to teach this subject, but if you would like to delve into how and why the British Empire waged war on mankind for almost four hundred years you’re practically on your own in this endeavour. One must admit, that from the British establishment’s perspective, this is a remarkable achievement.

A Balfour curse

Demonstration in Damascus, Syria against Balfour’s visit to the region in 1925.

Balfour. The name is synonymous with the declaration that helped create the state of Israel and with it the untold agony and suffering of a people who to this day – more than 50 years on – have yet to recover from one of history’s worst political and moral injustices. On a journey by ship and train in 1925 to Egypt, Palestine and Syria, Balfour was met by protests and demonstrations which shook streets and capitals. From the pages of the Egyptian periodical Al-Ahram, Dr Yunan Labib Rizk* takes an in-depth look at the man and a trip that made headlines.

The most infamous act

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was then, and continues to be the most infamous act of the British empire. Writing on the occasion of the anniversary, Stuart Littlewood points out that this declaration “began the still-ongoing colonisation of Palestine and sowed the seeds of an endless nightmare for the Palestinian people, both those who were forced to flee at gunpoint and those who have managed to remain in the shredded remains of their homeland under Israel’s brutal military occupation.”[1]

Stuart Littlewood substantiates the events which set the stage for a century of ethnic cleansing and denial of Palestinian rights. TML Weekly provided an extract of his account of how this tragedy “was allowed to overtake the Palestinians.”

How Britain destroyed the Palestinian homeland

The Road to Nowhere by Ismail Shammout 1930-2006. He was expelled from Lydda in 1948. The plight of the refugees is depicted in many of his most famous paintings. (Displaced Palestinians)

By RAMZY BAROUD*

When I was a child growing up in a Gaza refugee camp, I looked forward to November 2. On that day, every year, thousands of students and camp residents would descend upon the main square of the camp, carrying Palestinian flags and placards, to denounce the Balfour Declaration.

Truthfully, my giddiness then was motivated largely by the fact that schools would inevitably shut down and, following a brief but bloody confrontation with the Israeli army, I would go home early to the loving embrace of my mother, where I would eat a snack and watch cartoons.

At the time, I had no idea who Balfour actually was, and how his “declaration” all those years ago had altered the destiny of my family and, by extension, my life and the lives of my children as well.

Balfour Declaration: New Statesman editorial, November 1917

Painting of the Suez Canal by Albert Reiger (Click to enlarge)

“The British Government’s declaration in favour of Zionism is one of the best pieces of statesmanship that we can show in these latter days. Early in the war the New Statesman published an article giving the main reasons why such a step should be taken, and nothing has occurred to change them. The special interest of the British Empire in Palestine is due to the proximity of the Suez Canal. The present war has killed the idea that this vital artery ought to be used as a line of defence for Egypt, and there is a general return to the view of Napoleon (and indeed of history long before his time) that Egypt must be defended in Palestine.

99th Anniversary of Balfour Declaration: Join the Balfour Declaration Centenary Campaign!

Ramallah, Palestine, November 2, 2016

November 2 marks the 99th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a 1917 letter sent by the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to a prominent British Zionist leader promising land in Palestine for foreign settlement. This criminal act of the British Empire to “give” the land of another people usurped during the First World War for colonial settlement created the conditions for countless atrocities against the Palestinians, as well as the subsequent proclamation of a Zionist state and the ongoing genocide and seizure of Palestinian land. Work is underway in many countries to prepare for the centenary in 2017.