The Creation of the Illegitimate Zionist Nation-State of Israel (1917 - 1948)
Judaism, as an ancient monotheistic religion, has a rich tapestry of traditions, beliefs, and practices that have been cultivated over millennia. Zionism, on the other hand, is a relatively modern political ideology that emerged in the late 19th century, propelled by Theodor Herzl among others, allegedly with the objective of establishing a national homeland for Jews in Palestine.
It is crucial to distinguish between legitimate criticisms of a political ideology or state policies (“anti-Zionism”) and prejudicial or discriminatory attitudes towards an entire group of people based on their ethnicity or religion (“anti-Semitism”).
The Zionist Nation-State of Israel’s goal is fourfold: maximize political power, maximize territorial expansion beyond the borders of Palestine, exploit oil & gas fields in illegally occupied Palestinian territories, and commence construction of the Ben Gurion Canal.
Zionists intentionally misinterpret the Torah and the Tanakh to further their agenda. The concept of a homeland for the Jewish people, particularly the Land of Israel, is a recurring theme in the Tanakh. However, the modern political concept of a “homeland” or nation-state, as we understand it in the 20th and 21st centuries, is not directly addressed in the Tanakh. Rather, the Tanakh refers to the land in religious, spiritual, and covenantal terms. Zionists are attempting to translate Jewish scriptures into current political documents. In sum, they are trying to redefine Judaism as nationalism.
The story of the current Israeli-U.S. genocide campaign begins nearly 107 years ago at a location approximately 2,200 miles from Gaza.
1. The Balfour Declaration
On November 2, 1917, Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote a letter addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community. The letter was short - just 67 words. The letter, a significant turning point for the Zionist political movement, is known as the Balfour Declaration. It declared British support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The declaration did not specify borders or size.
The declaration introduced a notion that was reportedly unprecedented in international law - that of a “national home”. The use of the vague term “national home” for the Jewish people, as opposed to “state”, left the meaning open to interpretation.
The 67-word “Balfour Declaration” and the subsequent British Mandate provided a political framework for the establishment of a national home for the Zionists in Palestine. In sum, the “national home for the Jewish people” was born out of an abbreviated political process which finds its footing in some form of consent and assertions of implied and inherent authority on little more than empty air.
While the biblical connection to the Land of Israel was briefly touched upon in the Zionist movement, it was not an influential factor for the establishment of the modern Zionist Nation-State of Israel. The following are the five reasons for the creation of the Zionist Nation-State of Israel.
(1) The British government saw this as a means to gain Jewish support for the war effort and to counter the Ottoman Empire, which controlled Palestine at the time;
(2) Racist, antisemitic Europeans saw this as a means to establish a “homeland” to which Jews could be exiled. In other words, giving Palestine to the Jews would be a solution to the “Jewish problem”;
(3) Britain also desired to maintain control over Palestine to keep Egypt and the Suez Canal within Britain’s sphere of influence;
(4) Britain had to side with the Zionists to rally support among Jews in the United States and Russia, hoping they could encourage their governments to stay in the war until victory; and
(5) Lastly, intense Zionist lobbying and strong connections between the Zionist community in Britain and the British government; some of the officials in the government were Zionists themselves.
In essence, in exchange for its political and financial support, the British government promised the Zionist movement a country where Palestinian Arab natives made up more than 90 percent of the population.
The late Awni Abd al-Hadi, a Palestinian political figure and nationalist, condemned the Balfour Declaration in his memoirs, saying it was made by an English foreigner who had no claim to Palestine, to a foreign Jew who had no right to it.
In 1920, the Third Palestinian Congress in Haifa decried the British government’s plans to support the Zionist project and rejected the declaration as a violation of international law and of the rights of the indigenous population.
Although Britain is generally held responsible for the Balfour Declaration, it is important to note that the statement would not have been made without prior approval from the other Allied powers during World War I.
The Balfour Declaration is widely seen as the precursor to the 1948 Palestinian Nakba - the ethnic cleansing of Palestine - when Zionist armed groups, who were trained by the British, forcibly expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.
2. The British Mandate
After World War I, the League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine, which included present-day Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Jordan. The British were tasked with facilitating the creation of a Jewish homeland, in accordance with the Balfour Declaration, while safeguarding the rights of the non-Jewish communities.
A British Mandate was created in 1923 and lasted until 1948. During that period, the British facilitated mass Jewish immigration. Palestinians were alarmed by their country’s changing demographics and British confiscation of their lands to be handed over to Jewish settlers.
(a) British Zionists Crushed the “Arab Revolt” (1936-1939)
The acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid being committed against Palestinians by the Zionist Nation-State of Israel trace back before May 14, 1948. In fact, as early as 1936, British Zionists began such actions.
In 1935, a sudden arrival of 62,000 European Jews in Palestine aggravated Palestinians, who had long opposed the British-assisted influx of Jewish settlers.
Palestinians made straightforward demands: regulate European Jewish immigration, restrict land sales to Jewish settlers, end the British mandate, and give Palestinians independence like other British colonies. They feared the erasure of their history and identity.
Tensions boiled over into the “Arab Revolt” from 1936-1939. In April 1936, Palestinians launched a general strike, boycotting Jewish goods, and protesting British rule and Jewish immigration. This was suppressed violently by the British, who arrested many, demolished homes, and continued oppressive practices. By late 1937, the Palestinian peasant resistance movement had begun, focusing its aggression on British forces.
The Palestine Mandate, established by the League of Nations, was seen by the Palestinians as another form of British colonialism. As Arthur Balfour noted in 1919, there was no intention to consult the existing inhabitants of Palestine.
The idea of creating a Jewish state in Palestine arose from the wish to address Europe’s “Jewish problem”, pushing the issue onto Palestinians. The British previously labeled Native Americans as “savages”, while the Zionist Nation-State of Israel refers to Palestinians as “human animals”.
To establish a Jewish state, displacing the local population was essential. This goal was allegedly justified through biblical narratives suggesting Jews were merely returning home after centuries in exile.
After suppressing the “revolt”, British Zionists left the Palestinians vulnerable and unprepared. Zionists, on the other hand, morphed into a powerful semi-state force. By 1948, their military strength dwarfed the remnants of Palestinian resistance and Arab armies. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians became a foregone conclusion.
The British aggressive actions against the Palestinians led to a loss of 14-17% of the male adult population through death, injury, imprisonment, or exile. The repercussions were catastrophic, with thousands killed, wounded, or displaced.
(b) Special Night Squads
By the second half of 1939, Britain had massed 30,000 troops in Palestine. Villages were bombed by air, curfews imposed, homes demolished, and administrative detentions and summary killings were widespread. These measures would later be inherited by the Zionist Nation-State of Israel and normalized as state policies against Palestinians.
To crush the revolt while aiding the Zionist enterprise, the British collaborated with the settler community and formed the Jewish Settlement Police, which by 1939 included 21,000 Jewish members.
They also created a British-led “counter-insurgency force” of Jewish militants named the Special Night Squads which, alongside Settlement police, terrorized Palestinian villages. Within the Yishuv (pre-state settler community), arms were secretly imported and weapon factories established to expand the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary which later became the core of the Israeli army.
The Special Night Squads were established in 1938 under the leadership of British Captain Orde Wingate, who was a strong supporter of the Zionist cause. They included British soldiers, Haganah members (the main Jewish paramilitary organization in Palestine at the time), and some Palmach members (the elite strike force of the Haganah). The squads were trained in aggressive patrolling, ambushes, night raids, and counter-insurgency tactics. Their operations often took place at night, aiming to surprise and eliminate the Palestinian freedom fighters.
The experience gained by Jewish members in these squads contributed to the development of the Haganah’s military expertise, which would become crucial in the subsequent years leading up to the establishment of the “State of Israel”.
From 1936 to 1939, 5,000 Palestinians were killed, 15,000 to 20,000 were wounded and 5,600 were imprisoned.
Even before the British Mandate expired on May 14, 1948, Zionist paramilitaries were already embarking on a military operation to destroy Palestinian towns and villages to expand the borders of the Zionist state that was to be born.
The so-called mandate system, set up by the Allied powers, was a thinly veiled form of colonialism and occupation. The system transferred rule from the territories that were previously controlled by the powers defeated in the war - Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria - to the victors. The declared aim of the mandate system was to allow the winners of the war to administer the newly emerging states until they could become independent.
The case of Palestine, however, was unique. Unlike the rest of the post-war mandates, the main goal of the British Mandate there was to create the conditions for the establishment of a Jewish “national home” - where Jews constituted less than 10 percent of the population at the time.
Upon the start of the mandate, the British began to facilitate the immigration of European Jews to Palestine. Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose from 9 percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population.
There is no doubt that the British Mandate created the conditions for the Jewish minority to gain superiority in Palestine and build a state for themselves at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs.
When the British decided to terminate their mandate in 1947 and transfer the question of Palestine to the United Nations, the Zionists already had an army that was formed out of the armed paramilitary groups trained and created to fight side by side with the British in WW II.
More importantly, the British allowed the Jews to establish self-governing institutions, such as the Jewish Agency, to prepare themselves for a state when it came to it, while the Palestinians were forbidden from doing so - paving the way for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Although the Balfour Declaration included the caveat that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, the British mandate was set up in a way to equip Jews with the tools to establish self-rule, at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs.
3. UN Resolution 181 (1947)
In the face of growing tensions between Jewish and Arab communities in Palestine and after the end of British colonial rule, the UN proposed a partition plan (UN General Assembly Resolution 181). The plan proposed dividing Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as an international city. The Jewish side accepted the plan, while the Arab side rejected it.
Under this partition plan:
The Zionist state was allocated about 56.47% of the land.
The Arab state was to comprise about 43.53%.
Jerusalem was to be placed under international administration.
An estimated 376,415 Jewish immigrants, mostly from Europe, arrived in Palestine between 1920 and 1946 according to British records. By 1947, the Jewish population had ballooned to 33 percent of Palestine, but they owned only 6 percent of the land.
The Palestinians rejected the partition plan because it allotted about 56.47% of Palestine to the Jewish state, including most of the fertile coastal region. At the time, the Palestinians owned 94 percent of historic Palestine and comprised 67 percent of its population.
From 1947 to 1949, more than 500 Palestinian villages, towns and cities were destroyed in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic. An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, including in dozens of massacres.
The Zionist movement captured 78% of historic Palestine. An estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homeland. Today their descendants live as six million refugees in 58 squalid camps throughout Palestine and in the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.
4. UN Resolution 194 (1948)
On December 11, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 194, which categorically declared:
“… that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
The Zionist Nation-State of Israel does not believe that it has an obligation to let the refugees return, a view was promulgated by the Israeli leadership even before resolution 194 was adopted. In a cabinet meeting in June 1948 Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion stated: “The Palestinians lost and fled. Their return must now be prevented.... And I will oppose their return also after the war.” Ben-Gurion’s words were echoed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir who in 1992 declared that the return of the Palestinian refugees “will never happen in any way, shape or form.”
The UN has been unable to secure Israel’s acknowledgment of the right of return, and therefore, the Palestinian people have not been able to exercise this fundamental right.
Summary: United Nations Special Committee on Palestine and Resolution 181
The proposal advanced by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to partition Palestine aimed at establishing a Jewish state, flying in the face of the explicit desires of the majority of its residents. This plan allocated over half of Palestine for a Jewish state, despite Jews making up just a third of the population and owning only 6 percent of the land. Essentially, this would mean appropriating Arab lands to benefit the Jewish population. The unfairness embedded in this partition scheme sharply contrasts with the Arab’s proposition for a united, independent Palestine. Their vision promised to honor and protect Jewish minority rights, ensuring their participation within a democratic framework. The partition’s bias against the Arab majority’s entitlements, including their fundamental right to self-determination, is glaringly evident. This bias is even more glaring given that the UNSCOP’s own findings admit the Jewish state’s creation contradicts self-determination principles. The assumption underlying this plan - that Arabs would passively concede their lands and forfeit their majority and self-determination rights - was profoundly flawed and misguided.
The U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 did not legally partition Palestine nor did it grant the Zionist leadership any legal right to declare the state of Israel independently. It merely suggested the adoption and execution of the UNSCOP partition proposal by the involved entities. For such a plan to carry legal force, akin to a contractual agreement, it would have required formal acceptance by both sides, which was conspicuously absent. Furthermore, the General Assembly lacked the jurisdiction to divide Palestine or to endow the Zionist leadership with the legal capacity to establish Israel. When the Security Council reviewed the situation as forwarded by the General Assembly, it found itself unable to reach a consensus on how to enact the partition scheme. Given the evident impracticality of peaceful implementation, the Council dismissed the notion of enforcing the plan through military means. Essentially, the partition strategy was never put into effect. Delegates from various member states, including the United States, deemed the plan unfeasible. They also recognized that the Security Council lacked the authority to enforce such a plan without the explicit consent of the parties involved, consent that was notably missing in this instance.
Although the Security Council possessed the mandate to identify a threat to peace and sanction force to address, maintain, or reinstate peace and security, it lacked the jurisdiction to forcibly enact a partition plan for Palestine that opposed the desires of the majority of its population. Any endeavor by either the General Assembly or the Security Council to overstep this boundary would have constituted a clear breach of the Charter’s core principle: the respect for the right to self-determination of all peoples. Such an overreach would, under international law, be considered invalid and without any legal standing.
To encapsulate, the widespread belief that the U.N. “created” Israel is unfounded, and Israel’s assertion in its declaration of independence that U.N. Resolution 181 provided a legal basis for its establishment, or that it signified the U.N.’s acknowledgment of the Zionist Jews’ “right” to appropriate Arab territory for themselves while negating the predominant Arab inhabitants’ right to self-determination, is categorically deceptive.