The Times of London jumps the gun with its headline reporting on the visit to Israel of British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
While Israeli President Reuven Rivlin did extend an official invitation to the Royal Family, it has not been officially accepted yet even if the signs are relatively positive.
But the main problem with this story is an accompanying video that attempts to squeeze the history of the birth of the modern state of Israel into a one and a half minutes of footage and a series of captions.
The Times, to its credit, evidently attempted to highlight the British role in the creation of the state of Israel in a story that references the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Unfortunately, it is impossible to accurately portray complex history in this way and The Times singularly fails. Let’s take a look at some of the captions:
The video makes no mention of any historical Jewish connection to the land of Israel. Instead, history for The Times begins in 1922 (with not even a mention of the Balfour Declaration) with the British Mandate for Palestine. An uneducated viewer may get the false impression that Jews started moving to the area in 1922.
Jews have been indigenous to the region for 3,500 years.
In addition the caption above should refer in correct English parlance to “immigrate to” rather than “emigrate to.” One normally emigrates from somewhere.
Again, with no proper context, the video states that increasing Jewish immigration sparks the Arab Revolt of 1936-39. It fails to mention that 5,000 Arabs died during this period due to British actions. There is also no mention of the 415 Jews killed by Arabs nor the fact that Arab riots also took place in the preceding period during the 1920’s, including the 1929 Hebron Massacre.
While mentioning that the British restricted Jewish immigration in 1939, The Times’s history jumps to 1945. The genocide of six million Jews in the Holocaust and the desperate situation of Jewish survivors wishing to enter Israel is simply erased from the timeline.
After Britain withdraws from Mandate Palestine in 1947, according to The Times, the UN “puts forward a three-state solution.” While we hear plenty about a two-state solution and even a one-state solution, someone at The Times evidently cannot count.
There is no mention that the UN’s Partition Plan to create separate Jewish and Arab states (where is The Times’ third state?) is rejected by the Arab side. According to The Times, a civil war simply breaks out in Palestine and David Ben-Gurion declares an independent state in May 1948.
Simple, right?
Wrong. This video is an insult to historical truth and accuracy. We’ve requested that The Times remove the video in its entirety given its clear deficiencies or until it is updated to include the relevant and vital context that is currently missing.
© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
