Separated by 100 years, two Davids – Prime Ministers Lloyd George and Cameron – made decisions which in one case certainly, and in the other case almost certainly, changed the course of history. In 2015, David Cameron offered that referendum – to win over members of UKIP, a fringe nationalist political party. Back in 1917, David Lloyd George offered Palestine as a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ – to win over Zionism, a minority, fringe, national, political movement. Both Davids were short-sighted, careless, and too clever by half.
Lloyd George endorsed Zionism, in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, initially as a war measure designed to persuade Jews in Russia and the USA to redouble their support for the Allied war effort. Ultimately, supporting Zionism made no difference to the Allied cause. After 1918, Lloyd George decided not to break this promise, and incorporated the Balfour Declaration into Britain’s mandate for ruling Palestine. His decision - to retain this commitment in peace-time - was far more significant than his decision to issue it during the war.
The main criticism of Lloyd George’s post-war commitment to Zionism is that it was undertaken in the face of all the facts, arguments and prophesies that cautioned against it – before 1922, when the mandate was awarded. For example, Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the cabinet, forecast in August 1917 two likely consequences. ‘When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home … you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country’. Meanwhile, ‘Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine’. For Montagu, Zionism was ‘a mischievous creed’. His concerns were brushed aside.
