Joint List lawmakers will not be attending today’s ceremony in the Knesset to mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration which was issued on November 2, 1917. Exactly a century ago today, then-UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour conveyed in writing to UK Jewish leader Lord Walter Rothschild that the British government views “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
“Naturally we will not be participating in the event commemorating the Balfour Declaration,” said Joint List MK Youssef Jabareen (Hadash), in a statement he made last week. In the declaration, “British imperialism promised land that did not even belong to it… ignoring its original inhabitants and without even asking them,” he said.