This week in the War, 11-17 May 1942: The Biltmore Program

This week in the war, on 11 May 1942, an extraordinary six-day conference held at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City came to an end. The conference laid out a program, called the Biltmore Program, whose purpose was to lay the groundwork for the creation of the state of Israel.

Over five hundred delegates attended, most notably, David Ben-Gurion, who was then the Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive and would later become the first prime minister of Israel.

The delegates reaffirmed their support of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a letter written by the then British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Britain’s Jewish community leader Baron Rothschild, indicating the British Government’s support in ‘establishing in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people.’ The delegates at the Biltmore also emphasized the need for cooperation with their Arab neighbours.