by Daniel Winston
In my previous article in these pages, I argued that Britain broke its legal obligations to the Jewish people under the Mandate at the very moment those obligations meant the difference between life and death, and that it owes a moral and financial debt it has never acknowledged.
Here is the full accounting. It is a debt no one has ever been asked to pay, and Britain is not the only debtor.
Counting only documented deaths, documented confiscations and formulas that governments themselves have accepted, Britain, seven Arab states and Iran owe the Jewish people and the State of Israel roughly $738 billion.
A fuller accounting of Britain's betrayal runs into the trillions.
Against this stands the Palestinian Arab claim of $400 billion and more for what Arabs left behind in 1948. That number rests on a genocidal war of annihilation the Arabs launched, on an exodus of local Arabs meant to clear the field for it, and on a bill for hurt feelings.
For 75 years the world has read only one set of books, and mostly misread it. It is time to open all of them.
I use three yardsticks, none of them my own invention. I price lives at the value of a statistical life that the United States Department of Transportation applies in its own regulatory work, currently $14.2 million.
