This assertion is woefully inadequate for a scholar: "But how
could a mass influx of Jews into Palestine not prejudice the
"civil and religious rights" of existing non-Jewish communities
there? The Balfour Declaration stands, along with the partition
of India, as an icon to the micawberish policies of the British
Empire at the start of its decline." How? By they becoming
citizens of the Jewish state which is what happened to the Arabs
that stayed in the borders of Israel after 1948, preferring not
to run away nor fight in a war of aggression in violation of the
UN recommendation that indeed a Jewish state be established.
That the state was to be Jewish was not in doubt; its borders in
the end depended on Arabs losses after they sought to eradicate
the nascent state. "Civil and religious rights" are quite
obviously not national nor political rights. The Arabs (actually
the non-Jews, since that is the term used; Arabs never even
being mentioned and that was purposeful) were not to gain such
rights but only civi