There are few documents that have been analyzed from as many different angles as the Balfour Declaration. Countless historians have traced the gradual, behind-the-scenescoalescence of British and Zionist leaders, in the midst of World War I, around a proclamation of British support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. They have described at great length each step of this world-straddling process and assessed the roles played in it by all the major protagonists, such as Herbert Samuel, David Lloyd George, Mark Sykes, and Chaim Weizmann, to name just a few. If I am venturing to write yet another essay on this subject, it is not because I think I can shed any new light on the motivations or the actions of these important figures. I believe, however, that the standard accounts tend to overlook, or underestimate, the crucial role played at a certain point by large numbers of American Jews and not just by their leaders.
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