Unbelievably, one of the most shameful chapters in the annals of British imperialism has been earmarked for celebration.
In an outrageous and grossly insensitive affirmation of Lord Arthur Balfour’s infamous “royal fatwa” of 1917, the Tory government of Theresa May, is set to uncork thousands of bottles of wine and Champagne.
Undoubtedly the celebration to commemorate a century since the Balfour Declaration paved the way for the Zionist movement’s illegal dispossession of Palestine will be recorded as a shameful event.
It will go down in history as a display of bigotry and triumphalism by an elite utterly disconnected from the pain and suffering the victims of Britain’s deliberate manipulation have had to, and continue to, endure.
British legacy in Palestine is so damn ugly that any self-respecting citizen of Her Majesty’s Raj would be expected to not only denounce it but also demand accountability.
Indeed the operative word is accountability. Flowing from there would necessarily be a reversal of the gross injustice perpetrated against the indigenous Palestinian population - both Muslim and Christian.
If there’s a desire and commitment to redress injustice - as in the recent case of South African activist Ahmed Timol, whose death in detention in 1971 has finally been ruled to be murder, and not suicide as was claimed by the apartheid regime - it can be pursued successfully.
This year marks 46 years since Timol was killed at the notorious John Vorster Square police station in Joburg. Until the Pretoria High Court judgment that he was murdered, the official apartheid version - deliberately manipulated - held that he had flung himself out of a 10th floor window. Accountability required a fresh untainted probe for justice to be served.
And just as it would have been gory for the apartheid-era death squads and their masters and backers to celebrate killings of many freedom lovers, so is it utterly reprehensible for opponents of Palestine’s freedom struggle to make merry of the Balfour Declaration.
Not surprisingly, Gideon Levy asserts the following in his latest opinion piece in Haaretz: “British colonialism prepared the way for Israeli colonialism, even if it didn’t intend for it to continue for 100 years and more.”
While much has been written and talked about the Balfour Declaration, a fundamental question that recurs is whether it is compatible with civilised values? That, with the stroke of a pen, the British handed over land which didn’t belong to them, over the heads of its rightful owners, to a people who had no claim to it, confirms that colonialism was and is an enemy of morality.
At the same time, the current debate has yet again opened up fresh opportunities to challenge Israel’s fabricated propaganda. For instance, historians such as Ilan Pappe are quite emphatic that Palestine was not unoccupied when the first Zionist settlers arrived there in 1882.
The crime thus committed by the British in pursuit of imperialism allowed Zionism a free, unhindered passage to colonise Palestine. As attested to by Pappe, Zionism was a settler colonial movement, similar to the movements of Europeans who colonised the Americas, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
In addition, the Balfour Declaration also paved the way for Israel to undertake that which motivates settler colonial projects. It is what a leading intellectual on settler colonialism, Patrick Wolfe, describes as “the logic of elimination”.
Thus to sum up the effect of the notorious Balfour Declaration in one word, “elimination” fits best.
A century of colonialism has not only dehumanised Palestinians, it has robbed them of countless lives and thousands of hectares of land. And, instead of acknowledging these ghastly deeds with a view to reverse the injustice, the British Raj continues to endow Israel with funds, weapons, protection and the free flow of Champagne.
* Jassat is the executive member of Media Review Network.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.