History of the Jews

by Paul Johnson

The Jews had a romantic and historical claim to Palestine, but it was a very old one, and by the criteria applied at the Versailles settlement they had virtually none at all. At the time the Declaration was published, there were between 85,000 and 100,000 Jews living in Palestine, out of a total population of 600,000. Almost all the rest were Arabs. If the Arabs as a whole had been properly organized diplomatically during the war–if the Palestine Arabs had been organized at all–there is not the slightest doubt that the Declaration would never have been issued. Even twelve months later it would not have been possible. As it was, Weizmann pulled the Zionists through a brief window of opportunity, fated never to open again. Thanks to Tancred and Daniel Deronda he successfully appealed to the romantic instincts of the British ruling class, and thus received perhaps the last ex gratia gift of a great power, which went clean against the arithmetical spirit of the age. In