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Balfour Declaration

by MYEUHD on 10/19/23, 8:19 PM with 7 comments

• by SenAnder on 10/19/23, 9:04 PM

  > within two months a memorandum was circulated to the Cabinet by a Zionist Cabinet member, Herbert Samuel, proposing the support of Zionist ambitions in order to enlist the support of Jews in the wider war.

  I'm confused. In 1900, Jews were only 0.6% of the UK population [1,2], and 1.3% of the US population [3,4]. Why was the support of such a tiny fraction of the population so important?

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Jews#Population_size

  [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingd...

  [3] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-population-in-th...

  [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

• by pgeorgi on 10/19/23, 8:52 PM

  Note that as of 1917, the year of the Balfour declaration, Palestine looked approximately like in https://www.edmaps.com/assets/images/autogen/British_Mandate...

• by houseatrielah on 10/19/23, 9:06 PM

  I wonder if the Sykes-Picot would have been different if Britian didn't have India and an interest in the Suez. Maybe it would have made no difference.

• by mjfl on 10/19/23, 8:54 PM

  Britain, you just lion, great job.