RABBI RUBENSTEIN
A leader of the Jewish community in Vilna, who took a very prominent part in the incidents that arose when the Poles took possession of the city.
This is exactly the differentiation in meaning between the Balfour Declaration and the claims of those Zionists who profess to see in it British authority for claiming Palestine as the seat of a Jewish nation. The Balfour Declaration very carefully says: “The British Government favours the establishment of a home land for the Jewish people in Palestine.” But this does not say that the Jews shall have the right to dispossess, or to trespass upon the property of those far more numerous Arab tenants whose right to their share in it is as good as that of the Jews and, in most cases, of much longer standing.
Palestine is a country already populated, and the British Government has no intention of evicting the Arab owners of the soil in favour of the Jews. Nor, I may add in passing, have the Arab owners any intention of selling their holdings to the Jews, for they are fully aware of the Zionist programme, are very resentful of it, and intend to use every means at their command to frustrate it.
In February, 1921, this obvious meaning of the Balfour Declaration was made officially explicit, when the complete text of the mandate for Palestine was first made public. After reiterating in the preamble the language which I have above quoted, this official transaction of the Council of the League of Nations proceeds to enumerate the specific terms under which Palestine shall be governed as a mandatary of Great Britain. The very first article of this mandate explodes completely the theory that the Allied Powers had any idea of setting up a Jewish nation. It reads: “His Britannic Majesty shall have the power to exercise as mandatory all the powers inherent in the government of a sovereign state save as they may be limited by the terms of the present mandate.” In other words, not a government of Jews over a Jewish nation, but His Britannic Majesty is declared to be the repository of “the powers inherent in a sovereign state.”
To be sure, these powers are limited by certain specific terms enumerated in the mandate. Space does not permit a quotation of them in full, but I would advise those interested to secure a copy of the mandate and to study it in the light of the claim of some Zionists that the Balfour Declaration recognizes a Jewish State. These so-called “limitations” do not really limit the sovereign power of His Britannic Majesty. They are not limitations; they are statements of the direction in which the British as mandataries pledge themselves to pay especial attention to the interests of the Jews as a part of the body of the citizens of Palestine. Except for these expressions of benevolent intention specifically toward the Jews, every one of the twenty-seven articles in the declaration is just as applicable to every other citizen of Palestine, whether Jew or Gentile, Mohammedan, Arab, or Christian Syriac. They are guaranties of civil liberty, freedom of conscience, equality before the law, and the like.
It was a politic move of the British Government to name a Jew as the first governing head of Palestine when the British began to function under this mandate. But this appointment of Sir Herbert Samuel was only politic, it was not political. It has no general significance.