100 Years After Balfour by Independent Jewish Voices

FREE EVENT, BOOK HERE

'100 Years After Balfour', a new talking heads film made by Independent Jewish Voices, a campaigning network, challenges the notion that this year's centenary is cause for celebration.

On 2 November 1917, a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour was transmitted to the Zionist Federation, promising British support for 'a national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine.

The film explains how the decisions of the British government in 1917 are linked to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, its fifty-year occupation of the West since 1967, and to gridlock today. It is introduced by journalist Jon Snow, and includes contributions from the historian Avi Shlaim, the critic Jacqueline Rose, and several other Jewish academics, commentators and activists.

Professor Shlaim said: 'This autumn, many in the Jewish community as well as the UK government are celebrating this centenary. This new film by Independent Jewish Voices shows that a significant minority of Jews in Britain take a different view, seeing this as a time to reflect on the profoundly negative consequences of the Balfour Declaration, especially for the Palestinians.'

Following the screening of 100 Years After Balfour there will be a panel discussion consisting of Antony Lerman, co-founder, Independent Jewish Voices, writer and commentator, author The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist, and editor­, Do I Belong: Reflections from Europe; Jacqueline Rose, Professor of Humanities and Co-Director of Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities,co-founder Independent Jewish Voices, author The Question of Zion, and The Last Resistance; Miri Weingarten, Israeli journalist and human rights activist, former editor of JNews, past Director of Occupied Territories for Physicians for Human Rights. The panel is chaired by Adam Fagan, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of London, leading researcher on the post-conflict Balkan states.

We invite to all guests to join us for a wine reception after the screening.

100 Years After Balfour by Independent Jewish Voices, a screening sponsored by Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image, Birkbeck Institute for Humanities and Raphael Samuel Centre.