Balfour Declaration

Ordinarily I skip over anything "Israel/Palestine" related as contentious, complicated, controversial and simply too scary for me. But as I scrolled through the list of the day's petitions I saw two new ones side by side:

• Apologise to the Palestinians for the Balfour Declaration of 1917
• Honour the Balfour Declaration of 1917

An interesting contrast to the usual problem of duplication, no?

It's worth noting, perhaps, that I feel an urge to mock the first of the petitions, not for its content, but for its petitioner's inability to do maths. The explanatory notes for the petition start:

"At a time when the Prime Minister is apologising for the slave trade, we think it appropriate that on this 100th anniversary of Lord Balfour's historic letter to the Zionist Federation, he apologise to the Palestinian people for the suffering caused to them by Balfour ..."

Um. I hate to break it to you, but 2007 is not the 100th anniversary of 1917 ...