UKLFI Charitable Trust organised a webinar marking the League of Nations Mandate Centenary with Professor Steven Zipperstein, chaired by Jonathan Turner on Thursday 21 July, 2022 . It featured a special introduction by The President of the State of Israel, His Excellency Isaac Herzog.
The Council of the League of Nations (the forerunner of today’s United Nations) in London on 24 July 1922. It mandated the British Government to put into effect the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917.
The Mandate explicitly recognised the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that territory. It transformed the unilateral declaration of the British government into an instrument of international law and provided the legal basis for Britain’s administration of Western Palestine until 1948. Its impact on the development of the Jewish national home into the modern State of Israel cannot be denied, and the rights and obligations set out in its provisions arguably remain relevant today.
The speaker at our special webinar marking this important centenary is Professor Steven Zipperstein, a leading expert on the legal history of the British Mandate. His previous webinars for UKLFI Charitable Trust have received outstanding reviews from our audience.
More about the speakers:
Professor Steven E. Zipperstein is a lecturer at UCLA in the Luskin School of Public Affairs, the Global Studies Program, and the School of Engineering. He also lectures at UC Santa Barbara’s Department of History and is a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Center for Middle East Development, as well as a Visiting Professor at Tel Aviv University Law School.
He is the author of Zionism, Palestinian Nationalism and the Law: 1939-1948 (Routledge, 2021) and Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Trials of Palestine (Routledge 2020). He lectures widely around the world on cybersecurity, advanced technology, and a range of U.S. and Middle East issues.
He is a former U.S. federal prosecutor, and the former Chief Legal Officer of Verizon Wireless and BlackBerry Ltd.
Isaac "Bougie" Herzog is the 11th President of Israel, elected in 2021. He qualified as a lawyer and worked at leading Israeli law firm, Herzog, Fox and Neeman. He served as the Government Secretary under Prime Minister Ehud Barak from 1999 to 2001. He was a member of the Knesset from 2003 to 2018. He held several ministerial posts between 2005 and 2011, including Minister of Welfare and Social Services from 2007 to 2011 under Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu.
He was Leader of the Opposition from 2013 to 2018 and the Labor Party candidate for Prime Minister in the 2015 election.
Jonathan Turner is the Executive Director of UKLFI Charitable Trust and Chief Executive of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), which he co-founded in 2011. . In 2020 he led a submission to the International Criminal Court by UKLFI and other NGOs which analysed the meaning and legal effects of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
He studied law at Cambridge University and European Law at Brussels University before qualifying as a barrister in England, specialising in intellectual property and competition law. He has acted in a number of leading cases and is the author of the textbook “Intellectual Property and EU Competition Law”
Some comments by viewers of previous UKLFI Charitable Trust webinars with Prof Zipperstein:
“Excellent presentation by Prof Zipperstein” – Joe Cohen
“Great seminar!” – Dr Nir Boms
“absolutely marvellous. will certainly recommend it to others” – Stephen Shaw
“I thought Prof Zipperstein was fantastic, even by the extremely high standards of UKLFI events!”
“Today’s webinar was a never before experience, informative, and excellent speaker” – Goldi Steiner
“This was truly an incredible lecture! Thanks for bringing such excellence. I learned so much, and consider(ed) myself quite knowledgeable about this historical period. The photos were amazing” - Karen Stahl-Don
“Wow this was amazing. Thank you” - Eliza Kaczynska-Nay
“Truly outstanding presentation” - Robert Sidi
“So jam-packed with valuable information, I will need to review a 2nd and 3rd time. Todot rabot!” – Jeff Daube
“Excellent talk. Very informative” - Joan Ryan, Director Elnet UK
“Superb. You think you know it all and then even more dots are joined, based on irrefutable evidence” – Dr Irene Lancaster