A descendant of Lord Arthur Balfour said during a visit to Israel that his ancestor’s 1917 declaration about favoring a Jewish state was “humanitarian” in nature.
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Roderick Balfour, the 5th Earl of Balfour, said Thursday at an event in Jerusalem celebrating British-Israeli ties and the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, in which the British government vowed to help establish a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel without jeopardizing the rights of other area inhabitants.
The declaration followed several drafts and extensive negotiations between Zionist leaders and British officials including Arthur Balfour, the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary at the time. But it did not say why the United Kingdom viewed favorably the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine.
This led to a still-ongoing debate on whether the declaration was a humanitarian gesture following pogroms in Eastern Europe, the result of a political calculus on Britain’s part during world War I or the expression of a scripture-based belief that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people.
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