by Shlomo Cesana
Former Foreign Ministry Director General Dore Gold attends House of Commons event in defense of the Balfour Declaration • Gold says recently launched campaign against historic letter part of "Palestinian refusal to accept the rights of the Jewish people."
MP Michael Gove speaking at
the event in the House of Commons Tuesday
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Former Foreign Ministry Director General Dore
Gold and Israeli Ambassador to the U.K. Mark Regev spoke at the House of
Commons in London on Tuesday at an event called "Refuting Balfour's
Detractors."
The event comes 99 years after British Foreign
Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour wrote his historic letter stating
that his government views "with favor the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people."
Gold, who has resumed his work as president of
the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, attacked the Palestinian
efforts to cast the letter in a negative light.
"The campaign waged by Hamas and the
Palestinian Authority against the Balfour Declaration is part of the
political warfare waged against the State of Israel; it is unacceptable
that groups that are associated with Hamas are allowed to use the
British Parliament as a venue for undermining the legitimacy of the
State of Israel," Dore said, referring to a event held in the House of
Lords in October.
During that event, a pro-Palestinian group
accused of having links to Hamas announced the relaunch of the Balfour
Apology Campaign, "which asks the U.K. government to officially
apologize for its past colonial crimes in Palestine."
Gold said that the "ongoing attacks on the
Balfour Declaration are part of the continued Palestinian refusal to
accept the rights of the Jewish people, including the right to have a
national home. The Palestinian leadership's opposition to the Balfour
Declaration shows once again that it seeks to do the exact opposite [of
recognizing Jewish rights]."
Media figures and members of parliament took
part in the event Tuesday, as did Professor Andrew Roberts, a historian
and journalist, and Alan Baker, the former Israeli ambassador to Canada
who served as legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry. Baker said the
Balfour Declaration was a "seminal legal document that cannot nullified
or apologized for." He further stressed that "the Oslo Accords include
an article that mentions the historical and legitimate rights of the
other side, and therefore the Palestinians are now hypocritical [by
demanding an apology]."
The event was chaired by Michael Gove, a member of
parliament and a former justice minister, who called for moving the
British Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing the city as Israel's
capital. This is the first public statement to that effect from a
Conservative member of parliament. "Let's be clear, anti-Zionism is
anti-Semitism; Britain must stand for the State of Israel," Gove said,
according to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Shlomo Cesana
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=38425
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