| Summary/Abstract |
The stated purpose of the Balfour Declaration from November 2, 1917 and the circumstances under which it was published are generally known.1 The most common explanation was that Britain and the Allied Powers were moved by idealism and their interests. At a critical point in the First World War, the British cabinet needed to secure world Jewish support for the Allied cause and hoped at the same time to keep both the United States and Russia on their side. With time, however, the world’s understanding of the Declaration has become the subject of bitter controversy and revisionist interpretation. In fact, the Palestinian Authority of today went so far as to call it a “crime.”2
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