Balfour at the Gymnasium

Image from the book: Jewish Palestine: A Celebration of the Yishuv

In the spring of 1925, Lord Balfour travelled to the Yishuv to attend the official opening of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was warmly welcomed not only by the Jewish population but by significant numbers of Arabs too. To be sure, the Arab leadership, which at this time still included pragmatists too, many of whom the radicals later slaughtered during the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939, called a general strike, and the Arab papers were published with black borders to mark Balfour’s arrival. Yet the strike was a limited success and, as The Times put it, “to-day’s Arab protests have been more in sorrow than in anger”. When Balfour visited Nazareth, he “was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd, many of whom were Arabs, who had come from Beisan, the Jordan Valley, and even from Transjordan” (Jewish Chronicle). Welcoming Balfour to Rosh Pina, “the Arab sheikh Mohamed Ali stressed that the Arabs of the Galilee, who have been cohabiting peacefully with the Jews for 25 years, yearned for nothing more than the preservation of this peace. During the festive banquet, several other sheikhs spoke in the same vein.” (Jüdische Rundschau). Not until Balfour went on to visit Syria, was he met with any meaningful hostility. Indeed, as the New York Times headline put it, he eventually had to be “spirited out of Damascus as mob seeks life”.

Edition Moshe Ordmann, Tel-Aviv, Palestine.