THIS year, Israel will be celebrating the 75th anniversary of its establishment, while the Palestinian people bear painful witness to yet another year of tragedy — a tragedy set in motion by the criminal abuses of colonialism in the embers of World War I.

British culpability for the Nakba of 1948 is well-documented and rooted in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 in which Britain pledged to establish a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The subsequent British Mandate of Palestine precipitated a rapid rise in immigration by Jewish people, mainly from Europe, to Palestine — with the resident population forced from their homes while the colonial authorities watched on.

Zionist terrorist gangs soon turned on their imperialist handlers and committed horrific raids and massacres in Palestinian villages and towns, displacing large parts of the population into exile in neighbouring countries where many continue to live as refugees.