Een boek: de Britse 'erfenis' in Palestina

Britain’s poisoned legacy in Palestine

Rod Such The Electronic Intifada 13 January 2020

Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel by Gardner Thompson, Saqi Books (2019)

The recent defeat of the UK’s Labour Party amid a relentless campaign to smear its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as an anti-Semite makes the appearance of historian Gardner Thompson’s Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel especially relevant.

Corbyn likely would have become the first British prime minister to renounce the notorious Balfour Declaration of 1917, which gave Britain’s colonial endorsement to the establishment of a Jewish “national home” in Palestine. The baseless charges of anti-Semitism that dogged Corbyn are wholly hypocritical given the links between Zionism, British colonialism and real anti-Semitism.

Legacy of Empire documents how this strange brew of ideologies and bigotry led to the denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. Thompson covers the period from the birth of Zionism in 1897 to the establishment of Israel in 1948, but the author maintains that “Israel’s origins are properly sought in the period of the First World War” (1914-1918).

Further

https://electronicintifada.net/content/britains-poisoned-legacy-palestine/29281