This cartoon was published in the Israeli newspaper Davar on November 3, 1938 in recognition of the twenty-one years that had passed since the Balfour Declaration. The cartoon, created by the cartoonist Aryeh Navon, criticises the British Mandate’s immigration policy.
The central figure in the cartoon is a poor Jewish refugee dressed in rags, crying to be allowed to enter Palestine, which is fenced in by a gate with the word פלשטינה (א"י) (Palestine, Eretz Yisrael) written on it and surrounded by barbed wire. Behind the gate and peering through menacingly at the would-be immigrant is a British soldier, armed with a rifle. The refugee’s body consists of a rolled-up copy of the Balfour Declaration, thus depicting the Declaration as proof of the Jewish right to move to Palestine; a right which was being denied by the immigration laws of the British Mandate.
The cartoon reflects the Jewish community’s dissatisfaction and frustration with the British government's immigration restrictions. British immigration policy, already impacted by Churchill’s 1922 White Paper, had hardened further during the Arab Revolt (1936-39) in an attempt to appease the Arabs who were demanding an end to Jewish immigration.
Zionist leaders saw these restrictions as a violation of the Balfour Declaration which stated that:
His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Israel, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this goal.
According to many people, not only was Britain no longer facilitating this, but had now begun to actively obstruct such a goal.
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Aryeh Navon - Aryeh Navon (1909-1996) was Israel’s first cartoonist and received the Israel Prize for the Performing Arts in 1996.
