Balfour, Banksy, Brexit: The Balfour Declaration Centenary in Britain, November 2017
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Issued in November 1917 to pledge Britain’s support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” the Balfour Declaration has had dramatic historical repercussions, paving the way for the founding of Israel in 1948, the Palestinian Nakba, and the persistence of bloodshed. Tracing the complex dynamic of postcolonial guilt, self-exculpation, and amnesia that characterized various British responses to the Declaration over the years, the article examines how this dynamic shaped the numerous events held across the United Kingdom in November 2017 to mark the Declaration’s centenary. These commemorative events – allowing different communities to articulate the relationship between Britain’s historical accountability, Israel’s sovereignty, and Palestinians’ grievances – are read in light of two interrelated “post-postimperial” developments preoccupying Britain in 2017: a new conservative backlash against the seeping British willingness to acknowledge Britain’s colonial crimes, and the Brexit crisis, with its complex resonances of imperial legacies.
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Israel: Attitudes to Israel Israel: Criticism Israel: Jewish and Israeli Advocacy, Hasbarah and Lobbying Israel: Jewish Attachment Israel: Non-Jewish Support, Solidarity and Advocacy Main Topic: Other Palestinian Solidarity and Activism Post-Colonial National Identity
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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent
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Balfour, Banksy, Brexit: The Balfour Declaration Centenary in Britain, November 2017. 2026: https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.1080/14788810.2026.2641988
