• cover image     The Balfour Pivot: How 1917 Reconfigured Jewish Relations with Christendom and Islam - Umar Ardo, PhD Further to the discussion of my previous article, let me start this essay by stating that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 on the resettlement of Jews in Palestine as their primary Homeland did not create the Judeo-Christian interfaith dynamics out of nothing; rather, it accelerated and reconfigured trajectories that started earlier in ways that made new alliances and antagonisms politically useful. Specifically, in the 17th century, more concrete shift appeared in England under Oliver Cromwell. Aiming to rubbish the policies of the monarchy that he overthrew, Cromwell officially allowed Jews to return to England after centuries of expulsion. Likewise, the Jacobins who overthrew the monarchy in the French Revolution made an unprecedented move by granting Jews full citizenship of France. Also, after coming to p...

The present conflict in the Middle East, particularly the Israeli wars of terror against the Muslims, is often narrated as an ancient, inevitable clash between Jews and Muslims, with Israel and its Western allies cast as the natural guardians of Jewish survival against a hostile Islamic world. They even coined a new phrase to describe it - Judeo-Christian Civilization! History, however, offers a far more uncomfortable mirror - one that belies this narrative and complicates today’s moral alignments. For much of recorded history, Jewish insecurity was not rooted in the Muslim world - it was a Christian condition! 2. From the early medieval period, Jewish life in Christian Europe was shaped by Christian theological anti-Judaism, rooted in the charge of *deicide*, the belief that Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. This doctrine translated into social exclusion and state-backed persecution that produced a culture in which violence against Jews was rep...