Opinion...

The unmasking of an illusion: Britain’s reckoning and America’s last stand

December 19, 2025 

Middle East Monitor 

Palestinians during a demonstration on the anniversary of Britain’s Balfour Declaration in West Bank city of Nablus on 2 November 2017 [JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP/Getty Images]

by Jasim Al-Azzawi


The masks are off. Eight decades of American support to maintain the myth of a virtuous Israel have finally come crashing down. September 2025 marked a new stage in this brutal saga when Britain, the original sinner behind the Balfour Declaration, took a tangible step of admitting its guilt by recognising the State of Palestine.

Britain’s move was not a diplomatic gesture. In reality, this marked a pivotal moment in history. As confessed by Britain’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, “We are acting with ‘the hand of history on our shoulders,’ mindful of Britain’s central role in the 1917 Balfour Declaration,”

One power stands alone in political delusion. The United States, which puts the support of evangelical Christian Zionists above human rights, remains the frantic defender of a nation that, according to international bodies, acts in a manner consistent with genocide. This policy keeps this region in a state of constant instability and renders America an accomplice to a “war without limits,” according to UN officials.

The first grand illusion: ‘A land without a people’

A comforting fiction was offered in place of the truth: “Jews fleeing from persecution settled in a desert land, ‘a land without a people for a people without a land.” This comforting fiction allowed Western countries to sponsor this colonialism without being forced to assess its moral implications or shoulder its guilt.

Palestine was not a land devoid of people. At the time of the Balfour Declaration, the indigenous population already accounted for more than 90 percent of the population. A living culture with a productive peasantry and a history dating back thousands of years existed in this society.

The phrase encapsulates Terra Nullius ideology—the colonial mentality where lands not worked in a “modern” way were deemed to be empty and ripe for colonization. In his 1974 speech at the UN, Yasser Arafat said: ‘It pains our people greatly to see this legend proliferate: “Their homeland was a desert until they were forced to make it bloom with the efforts of settlers from other lands,” a land without a people.”

The Balfour Declaration: Colonial arrogance

Lord Curzon, who sat in the 1917 British cabinet which authorized the declaration, alone predicted a future in which there would be “decades of Arab–Jewish hostility.” Curzon described this commitment “as perhaps the worst which has fallen to our lot in the Middle East and a striking contrast to our publicly declared principles.”

The colonial arrogance embodied in the Balfour Declaration is breathtaking. The document was issued on November 2, 1917, a whole month before British troops occupied Jerusalem on December 11, 1917.

As noted by Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University: “This document not only gave this project the imprimatur of the preeminent international organization of its time but elevated a colonial ambition into a ‘legal document.”

The second grand illusion: Israel as “strategic asset”

The delusion that Israel is a strategic asset has reduced America’s foreign policy to its knees. The reality would be far more incriminating in pointing out that America had a liability in her obligations towards Israel because this relationship has precipitated a great measure of anti-Americanism in the world.

The USS Liberty: Contempt for American lives

The USS Liberty, a US Navy technical research vessel, was deliberately attacked on June 8, 1967, in international waters by Israeli troops, killing 34 Americans and wounding 171. The ship had a US flag painted on it, with its identification numbers prominently displayed. An inquiry conducted by Israel established that their naval headquarters knew of the vessel’s US identification at least three hours before the attack. Such an attack wasn’t a tragic mistake but a blatant act of betrayal by a self-proclaimed friend.


The Pollard Affair: Theft of America’s secrets

Jonathan Pollard, a US Navy intelligence analyst, delivered a variety of state secrets to Israel, including a ten-volume manual on NSA signal intelligence operations and the names of thousands of intelligence cooperators. Based on a 1987 CIA damage assessment, the US intelligence community thought a good part of this intelligence could have gotten into the hands of the Soviet Union. In 1998, Israel admitted paying Pollard.

The 1973 oil embargo

After President Nixon’s plea for emergency assistance of $2.2 billion to aid Israel during the 1973 October War, the Arab members of OPEC imposed an oil embargo, which led to a staggering increase in oil prices from $2.90 to $11.65 per barrel. Gasoline prices rose from 34 cents to 84 cents a gallon. The disastrous oil embargo plunged America into stagflation, with ripple effects that hurt the economy in the latter part of the 1970s.

Marshall’s prophetic warning: “The greatest living American” ignored

Secretary of State George C. Marshall strongly advised President Truman that “grave obligations” in a never-ending war with a hostile state were in store for America if a Jewish state were recognized. At a very contentious May 12, 1948, cabinet meeting, Secretary of State Marshall, “whom Truman considers ‘the greatest living American, advised Truman very directly: “If the President were to follow Mr. Clifford’s advice, and if I were to vote in the election, I would vote against the President.”

Marshall stated, “The transparent dodge to win a few votes would not, in fact, achieve this purpose. The great dignity of the office of the president would be seriously damaged.”

The path forward: Breaking the unholy alliance

The bell rang. The world awoke. Yet the war without limits continues. The acknowledgment by Britain, in tandem with Canada, Australia, and more than 140 other nations worldwide, underscores that a philosophy of American exceptionalism cannot prevent the course of history.

Trump, the last holdout, puts the survival of his political fortunes and those of Christian Zionist evangelicals above the lives of an entire people and the moral credibility of the United States. As for those who have finally seen the light and those whose heads were in the sand but whose eyes have now opened, there can be only one course: an all-out struggle to make up for eighty years of misery and brutal injustice. While the exact timing is uncertain, history suggests the current unholy alliance will inevitably end.

Marshall was right. The alliance he rejected has produced precisely the despair and destruction he foresaw. The question is whether successive U.S. administrations will continue to disregard his counsel and recognize that sound foreign policy can never be made a tool of domestic politics.

History will hold in deep disgrace those nations and institutions that facilitated atrocities recorded by international and human rights bodies as crimes against humanity. The masks are removed; illusions have shattered. What remains is a moral reckoning that cannot be postponed or dodged.

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