A Letter That Stole a Country: What Balfour Actually Did
On November 2, 1917, 109 years ago this month, Arthur James Balfour wrote 67 words to Lord Rothschild: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people… it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities…” Rashid Khalidi, in The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (2020), calls this the most consequential colonial deed. Palestine was then 94% Arab. Balfour gave away a country Britain did not own. Ilan Pappe documents that Balfour’s declaration was not an act of charity but a matter of strategy: to secure the Suez Canal, create a loyal settler buffer, and win Jewish support for World War I. The phrase “civil and religious rights” deliberately denied “political rights.” In a context where history is distorted, looking back at the wrongs committed by the dominant is itself a redeeming pedagogy.
As a Tamil Dalit, I immediately see a parallel. Like the 1799 Permanent Settlement, which made Brahmin zamindars the owners of land tilled by Paraiyars, Balfour made the native a “non-Jewish community” in his own homeland, with his identity destroyed and distorted “forever”. Dalit theologian James Theophilus Appavoo called this adharma asthivarams —an unrighteous foundation of existence imposed by deed. Balfour is such an asthivaram . From 1917 to 1948, Britain implemented this policy: the Mandate text of 1922 incorporated Balfour’s declaration verbatim, armed the Haganah while banning Palestinian parties, and crushed the 1936–39 revolt, killing 5,000 people. By 1947, Jews owned 7% of the land, but the UN allocated 55% to the Jewish state. Here, we see the ethical depravity of the UN. On May 15, 1948, the Nakba began, with 750,000 people expelled and 530 villages destroyed. This was the trajectory set in motion by 67 words.
Palestinian Christians and Tamil Dalit Christians
The Palestinian Christian experience matters in this regard. A Cry from Bethlehem speaks to Tamil Dalit Christians, and Palestinian Christians are our communion sisters. In 1917, 12% of Palestine’s population was Christian, with the oldest Church in the world rooted there. Naim Ateek, in Justice and Only Justice (1989), writes that Balfour was a second Crucifixion that Christ and His community had to experience. Mitri Raheb, in Faith in the Face of Empire (2014), calls Balfour the theological origin of Christian Zionism, which continues to be uncritically embraced and justified from altars and pulpits. The Kairos Palestine Document, signed in 2009 by all 13 Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, says: “We were not even named as a people, but as ‘non-Jewish communities’. We refuse to be non-people.”
This connects with Tamil Dalit Christian theology. Devasahayam Pillai, the first Tamil Dalit Christian martyr, was killed by the caste state for becoming Christian. Palestinian Christians are martyred for remaining Christians on their land. Both experiences intersect at the margins.
Children and Women: The Unchilding That Started with Balfour
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, in Incarcerated Childhood and Politics of Unchilding (2019), shows how Zionist settler colonialism turns a child into a non-child and thus makes the child killable. Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are detained yearly and subjected to forced confessions in Hebrew.
Today in Gaza, according to Al Mezan (October 17, 2026), 74,200 children need acute malnutrition treatment by April 2027. Under-five mortality increased from 13.6 to 33.4 per 1,000 between 2022 and 2025. Among pregnant women, 61% suffer from anaemia, and there were 4,000 pregnancy losses in the first half of 2026. Eleven per cent of elderly people go an entire day without eating so that children can eat. This is bureaucratic unchilding: the child becomes a “SAM case” rather than a child.
Lila Abu-Lughod, in Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (2013), critiques the Balfour saviour narrative. Rania El-Hilou documents how women in Gaza run takayas. Forty-eight have been targeted, along with 128 convoys and 64 centres. Women grind animal feed to make sumud bread. That bread is theology.
The Tamil Dalit feminist standpoint understands this. Bama’s Karukku shows Dalit mothers absorbing hunger. In Gaza, an S.D. mother who travelled from Beit Lahia to Nusseirat says, “My children have nothing to eat,” after her husband was taken in the Netzarim Corridor. Anaemia and pregnancy loss are violence in the womb. Brahminism and Zionism both control the womb.
The Eelam Mirror: When Israel and India Armed the Sinhala State Against Tamils
The Eelam mirror deepens the lens of solidarity. Why must Tamil Dalit Christians link Palestine and Eelam? Primarily because the same powers that wrote Balfour armed the war that crushed Tamils in Sri Lanka, and weapons were tested in both places.
Sri Lankan Tamils constitute 12% of the island’s population and have been native to the north-east for hundreds of years. The Sinhala-only state established in 1948, the Sinhala Only Act of 1956, and the 1983 Black July pogrom, in which 3,000 Tamils were killed by state mobs, created a situation of state-made homelessness, much like the Nakba, for people whose lives were deeply connected to the land and its memory. The Tamil armed struggle arose after non-violent Satyagraha failed, just as Palestinian resistance emerged after the Mandate crushed Palestinian political activity.
Israel’s Role: Military Ties, Intelligence and Training
Israel’s role was enormous. Israel-Sri Lanka military ties began in the 1970s under J.R. Jayewardene and deepened after 1983, when India and the West hesitated because of human rights concerns.
Evidence can be seen in the Kfir jets and Dvora boats. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Arms Transfer Database documents that Israel sold 7 IAI Kfir C2 fighter jets in 1995–96, a further 8 Kfir C7 jets in 2000, and 3 Dvora Mk III fast attack craft between 1985 and 1991, followed by 6 Super Dvora Mk II vessels between 1993 and 2000. These were used in operations against Jaffna and Mullivaikal. Kfirs dropped cluster bombs on Tamil civilian areas. Dvoras blockaded food and medicine supplies to Tamil Eelam, much like the Gaza blockade. A 1996 Human Rights Watch report refers to the Kfir bombing of Navaly Church, where 120 Tamil civilians sheltering there were killed.
Further evidence concerns intelligence and training. Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad officer, documents in By Way of Deception (1990) that Mossad ran a training camp for Sri Lanka’s Special Task Force (STF) at Katukurunda, Sri Lanka. Sinhala forces were trained in counter-insurgency methods learned from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Jane’s Defence Weekly reported in 1984 that Israeli advisers in Sri Lanka were advising on a “Jaffna clearance operation” modelled on the IDF’s 1982 operation in Lebanon. Mossad and Shin Bet trained Sri Lankan intelligence personnel in interrogation techniques used on Palestinians. This is documented by C.A. Chandraprema in Gota’s War (2012), which acknowledges the Israeli presence, and by the Tamil Centre for Human Rights.
What an Israeli general called the “pressure cooker” approach in Gaza—encircle, starve and bomb—was taught to Sri Lankan generals as “deep penetration” in Wanni.
During the final war in Mullivaikal in May 2009, the UN Panel of Experts’ 2011 report said that about 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final weeks. Hospitals were shelled, and food convoys were targeted. Three hundred thousand people were interned in Manik Farm. This can be compared with the Al Mezan data today: 128 convoys, 64 distribution centres and 48 takayas targeted.
India’s role is painful for Tamils to narrate, much like the Palestinian Authority’s role is for Palestinians.
India armed both sides while seeking to control the outcome. Under Indira Gandhi, India armed Tamil militants between 1983 and 1987 through RAW in Tamil Nadu, not to liberate Tamils but to control Sri Lanka and counter US-Israel influence. Then, under Rajiv Gandhi, India signed the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord in 1987 and sent the IPKF, comprising 100,000 Indian troops, to disarm the very Tamil militants India had armed.
The IPKF committed massacres in Jaffna, including the 1987 Jaffna Hospital massacre, in which 68 patients and staff were killed, as documented by Amnesty International. India then changed course and provided military aid to Colombo. Operation Pawan cost the lives of 1,200 Indian soldiers. However, after the IPKF left, India supplied radar, patrol boats and intelligence to Colombo to defeat the LTTE because India feared that a separate Tamil state would inspire Tamil Nadu.
The Final War of 2009: A Silent Partnership
SIPRI records show that India supplied 5 Mi-17 helicopters, as noted in WikiLeaks, along with offshore patrol vessels and, crucially, intelligence and naval support for the blockade that cut off LTTE supplies by sea. This was the same sea-blockade doctrine used by Israel.
A 2009 WikiLeaks cable from the US Embassy in Colombo stated that the Indian Defence Adviser said India provided “pinpoint intelligence for Sri Lankan bombing.” B. Raman, former RAW chief, admitted that India provided radars that tracked LTTE aircraft. M.K. Narayanan, National Security Adviser in 2009, visited Colombo monthly. India did not bomb directly, but it provided weapons, intelligence and diplomatic cover at the UN to block a ceasefire, much like the US does for Israel today.
Food as a Weapon: Identical in Eelam
In 2008–09, the Sri Lankan state declared a No Fire Zone, asked Tamils to gather there, and then shelled the area while preventing the supply of food and medicine. The UN called it a war crime.
In Gaza, Israel declares safe zones and then bombs them. In both places, the destruction of 87% of farmland reflects the same logic: destroy paddy fields in Wanni and olive groves in Gaza.
The destruction of wells follows the same pattern. The Sri Lankan army destroyed wells in Jaffna to force displacement. Israel destroyed 8,700 wells in Gaza. These are acts of ecocide.
Tamil Dalit Christians in Tamil Nadu have experienced both struggles. In 2009, when Mullivaikal was burning, we fasted in CSI churches in Bangalore and Tuticorin, but our Indian state called us anti-national for protesting. The same happens when we protest against the destruction of Gaza today. We are called anti-national. The state that calls itself Vishwaguru funds the same logic.
Why Tamil Dalit Christians Demand One State: From Eelam to Palestine
From this double mirror, we reject a two-state solution and demand one democratic, secular state for Palestine and Eelam.
The Tamil experience proves that partition never solves caste or settler colonialism. The two-state arrangement in 1947 created Pakistan but did not liberate Dalits. The two-state arrangement in Sri Lanka, through the 13th Amendment and provincial councils, achieved nothing; Sinhala colonisation continued. A two-state solution in Palestine would leave Palestinians with 22% of the land in Bantustans, much like Manik Farm. South Africa overcame apartheid not through a two-state arrangement but through the struggle for equal rights in one state.
Historical evidence shows that, before Balfour and before the Sinhala Only Act of 1948, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Tamils and Sinhalese shared villages and markets. The Jaffa orange was a joint Arab-Jewish enterprise. Apartheid is a new development.
Tamil Dalit Christian theology of samathuvam aligns with Kairos Palestine: “We want a state that includes all.”
We demand one democratic state from river to sea, with the right of return for 7 million Palestinian refugees under UN Resolution 194 and for 1 million Eelam Tamils displaced worldwide. It must guarantee equal citizenship to Jews, Muslims, Christians, Tamils, Sinhalese and Dalits, and work towards the annihilation of caste and settler colonialism rather than their legitimation.
What Must the Balfour Anniversary Become?
The Balfour anniversary must become a call for expanded action.
In Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and elsewhere, churches must read the Kairos Palestine Document and hold Mullivaikal remembrance services together on Sundays and other days. Churches must declare Balfour and Mullivaikal sins.
For children: Adopt a Gaza school and a Mullaitivu school through Sunday schools, and fund rooftop gardens with heirloom seeds. Vivien Sansour’s baladi seeds are like our thinai seeds.
For women: Support women running takayas and Eelam widows in Manik Farm camps. Support the 90,000 war widows directly through Al Mezan and the Tamil Women’s Forum, rather than through large INGOs.
For the boycott: Join BDS and boycott Israeli weapons companies, including Elbit Systems and IAI, which sold Kfir and Dvora equipment to Sri Lanka and now sell to India.
As Tamils say, Oru kallil irandu maangai —two mangoes with one stone. But here, one weapon kills two people. Boycott the occupation and its supporters.
Freedom, justice and return are not three dreams. They are one. For Palestinians, for Eelam Tamils and for Dalits.
As Edward Said wrote, Balfour was a European crime against Asians in Palestine for which Palestinians paid. Eelam was a South Asian crime with Israeli weapons for which Tamils paid. The answer is not two states but one justice with one state.
Let Balfour’s 109th anniversary be the last. Let the next anniversary mark the beginning of the anniversary of the Return—from Gaza to Galilee, from Mullivaikal to Myliddy.
Rev. Immanuel Nehemiah, priest (CSI-KCD), activist, poet and writer, Bangalore.
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