Summary
Secretary of State for India and the only Jewish member of the British Cabinet in 1917, described in the United Nations study as the foremost Jewish critic of the Balfour Declaration in the British Government (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 333-341).
Details
- The study believes the Declaration’s second safeguard — protecting “the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country” — was the outcome of Montagu’s apprehensions over the Declaration’s repercussions on Jews who chose to remain in their own countries; the safeguard had not been proposed by the Zionist Organization (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 303-315).
- Chaim Weizmann compared the text approved by the Foreign Office and the Prime Minister with the text adopted on 4 October 1917 “after Montagu’s attack”, calling the second a painful recession that introduced the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 291-301).
- Montagu’s dissent, in the study’s account, stemmed from his conviction that Judaism was a universal faith distinct from nationality and that in the era of the modern nation-State the Jewish people did not constitute a nation; he questioned the Zionist Organization’s credentials to speak for all Jews (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 333-337).
- In secret memoranda later made public, quoted in the study, Montagu called Zionism “a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom”, assumed a Jewish national home meant Mohammedans and Christians making way for the Jews and Jews being treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine, denied that Palestine was “properly to be regarded as a fit place for them to live in”, and warned: “Palestine will become the world’s ghetto” (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 337-345).
- The study records his view as very much a minority view in the British Government (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 345-349).
Related pages
Balfour Declaration, Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I)