{"id":86799,"date":"2017-02-13T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=86799"},"modified":"2017-02-12T18:42:31","modified_gmt":"2017-02-12T18:42:31","slug":"lord-rothschild-discusses-cousins-crucial-role-in-miracle-balfour-declaration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/02\/lord-rothschild-discusses-cousins-crucial-role-in-miracle-balfour-declaration\/","title":{"rendered":"Lord Rothschild Discusses Cousin\u2019s Crucial Role in \u2018Miracle\u2019 Balfour Declaration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking ahead of the 67-word letter\u2019s centenary, Jacob Rothschild describes the historic declaration which paved the way for Israel\u2019s existence.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lord Rothschild<\/p><\/div>\n

8 Feb 2017 – <\/em>The current and fourth Lord Rothschild has described the Balfour Declaration that helped pave the way for the creation of Israel as a \u201cmiracle\u201d and revealed new details about his cousin Dorothea\u2019s crucial role.<\/p>\n

Speaking ahead of the 67-word letter\u2019s centenary, they are his first ever public comments on the show of support from then-foreign secretary Lord Balfour to the second Lord Rothschild, his eccentric uncle Walter, and were made in a rare TV interview with former Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub as part of the Balfour 100 project.<\/p>\n

Jacob Rothschild, 80, head of the family\u2019s banking dynasty, said the declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine went through five drafts before finally being penned on 2 November 1917, adding: \u201cIt was the greatest event in Jewish life for thousands of years, a miracle\u2026 It took 3,000 years to get to this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The way it was achieved was extraordinary, he said. \u201cIt was the most incredible piece of opportunism. You had an impoverished would-be scientist, Chaim Weizmann, who somehow gets to England, meets a few people, including members of my family, seduces them, he has such charm and conviction, he gets to Balfour, and unbelievably, he persuades Lord Balfour, and Lloyd George, the prime minister, and most of the ministers, that this idea of a national home for Jews should be allowed to take place. I mean it\u2019s so, so unlikely.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Lord Rothschild being interviewed by ex-ambassador Daniel Taub.<\/p><\/div>\n

The letter \u201cchanged the course of history for the Middle East and the Jewish people,\u201d said Taub, who interviewed Rothschild at Waddeston Manor in Buckinghamshire, a country pile bequeathed to the nation by the family in 1957, where the Declaration is kept.<\/p>\n

It was written to Walter Rothschild, a naturalist and collector, who was first and foremost interested in ornithology (the study of birds), said Jacob, and a \u201cdeeply eccentric man who rode around Tring Park on giant tortoises and whose carriage was pulled by zebras.<\/p>\n

Walter only became interested in Zionism in later life, but Rothschild said he had been \u201cdeeply committed to Israel since the 1960s and have been there every year since\u201d.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tk8g9GIIiuQ<\/p>\n

However, he said his family at the time was divided on the idea of Israel, noting that some members \u201cdidn\u2019t think it was a good thing that this national home be established there\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also revealed for the first time the role of his cousin Dorothy de Rothschild, who acted as a critical go-between while still in her teens. Describing her as \u201cdevoted to Israel,\u201d Rothschild said: \u201cWhat she did, which was crucially important, was to connect Weizmann to the British establishment, and extraordinarily, she told Weizmann how to integrate, how to insert himself into British establishment life, which he learned very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her letters, which are stored at Waddeston, detail her later dealings with a range of Zionist leaders, and her advice on the organisation of the Zionist Conference, and Rothschild said she had a profound effect on him, introducing him to Israel and the family\u2019s philanthropic foundation in 1962.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________<\/p>\n

Stephen is the<\/em> Jewish News’ Foreign Editor.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 timesofisrael.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Feb 2017 – The current and fourth Lord Rothschild has described the Balfour Declaration that helped pave the way for the creation of Israel as a \u201cmiracle\u201d and revealed new details about his cousin Dorothea\u2019s crucial role. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}