ean efforts of the Jews in Palestine and elsewhere to build a state and to defend themselves, disunity among the Arabs, Britain's decline as a great power, the Allied victory in World War II and the emergence of the United States as a powerful supporter of Israeli independence more directly accounted for the emergence of the State of Israel.
Balfour Declaration and Its Historical Origins
In a letter to Lord Rothschild, dated November 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour declared:
His Majesty's Government view with favour the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for
the Jewish people, and will use their best
endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this
object, it being clearly understand that nothing
shall be done which may prejudice the civil and
religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities
in Palestine, or the rights and political status
enjoyed by Jews in any other country (Sanders xvii).
Altman said that "according to Jewish scripture, God
promised the land that was then called Canaan to the descendants
of Abraham" (13). Under the Roman-mandated diaspora of 70 A.D., the Jews were scattered from Palestine to many corners of the earth; however, at Passover, they chanted "next year in Jerusalem" (13). In Russia, Eastern and Western Europe Jews were segregated in ghettos and subject to persecution and restrictions for centuries. They enjoyed emancipation in civil rights in France in 1791, England in 1858 and in other Western European nations at other times in the 19th century. As, however, their status improved and they assimilated into local cultures, anti-Semitism persisted and took the form especially in Russia after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1882 of pogroms. Between 1882 and 1914, more than two and a quarter million Jews left Russia and Eastern Europe, more than two million of whom emigrated to the United States (Stein 77)...