Editing Arnold J. Toynbee (section)

===Middle East===
His stance during World War I reflected less sympathy for the Arab cause and took a pro-Zionist outlook. Toynbee investigated [[Zionism]] in 1915 at the Information Department of the Foreign Office, and in 1917 he published a memorandum with his colleague [[Lewis Namier]] which supported exclusive Jewish political rights in Ottoman Palestine.<ref name = "Fried">{{cite journal |last1=Friedman |first1=Isaiah |title=Arnold Toynbee: Pro-Arab or Pro-Zionist? |url= http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/israel_studies/v004/4.1friedman.html |date=Spring 1999 |journal=Israel Studies |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=73–95 |doi=10.1353/is.1999.0019 |access-date=11 April 2014}}{{subscription required}}</ref> He expressed support for Jewish immigration to [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]], which he believed had "begun to recover its ancient prosperity" as a result.<ref>{{cite book|author= Arnold Joseph Toynbee|title=Turkey: A Past and a Future|url=http://www.fullbooks.com/Turkey-A-Past-and-a-Future.html|publisher=Good Press|year=2017|quote=Under this new Jewish husbandry Palestine has begun to recover its ancient prosperity.}}</ref> Historian Isaiah Friedman felt Toynbee had been influenced by the Palestine Arab delegation which was visiting London in 1922.<ref name = "Fried" /> His subsequent writings reveal his changing outlook on the subject, and by the late 1940s he had moved away from the Zionist concept taking into account the Palestine Arabs' tenure. Toynbee maintained that the Jewish people had neither historic nor legal claims to Palestine, stating that the Arab "population's human rights to their homes and property over-ride all other rights in cases where claims conflict." Toynbee did concede that Jews, "being the only surviving representatives of any of the pre-Arab inhabitants of Palestine, had a further claim to a national home in Palestine," but even so Toynbee felt the [[Balfour Declaration]] had guaranteed that such a claim was valid "only in so far as it can be implemented without injury to the rights and to the legitimate interests of the native Arab population of Palestine."<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |date=1961-12-01 |title=Prof. Toynbee Rebuked by U.S. Scholar for Renewed Attack on Jews |url=https://www.jta.org/archive/prof-toynbee-rebuked-by-u-s-scholar-for-renewed-attack-on-jews |access-date=2022-04-14 |website=Jewish Telegraphic Agency |language=en-US}}</ref>

Although not the official view of Chatham House which discussed numerous opinions on the then evolving situation,<ref>Thomas G. Fraser, ‘Chatham House and the Palestinian Question, 1920-1939’, in Bosco and Navari, op. cit., p.187-203 </ref> Toynbee came to be known, by his own admission, as "the Western spokesman for the Arab cause."<ref name="Fried" /> The views Toynbee expressed in the 1950s continued to oppose the formation of a Jewish state, partly out of his concern that it would increase the risk of Middle East conflict with the Jews and Arabs and could lead to a nuclear confrontation.Toynbee in his article "Jewish Rights in Palestine",<ref>{{Cite journal|jstor = 1453271|title = Jewish Rights in Palestine|journal = The Jewish Quarterly Review|volume = 52|issue = 1|pages = 1–11|last1 = Toynbee|first1 = Arnold J|doi = 10.2307/1453271|year = 1961}}</ref> challenged the views of the editor of the [[Jewish Quarterly Review]], historian and talmudic scholar [[Solomon Zeitlin]], who published his rebuke, "Jewish Rights in Eretz Israel (Palestine)"<ref>{{Cite journal|jstor = 1453272|title = Jewish Rights in Eretz Israel (Palestine)|journal = The Jewish Quarterly Review|volume = 52|issue = 1|pages = 12–34|last1 = Zeitlin|first1 = Solomon|doi = 10.2307/1453272|year = 1961}}</ref> in the same issue. 
However, as a result of Toynbee's debate in January 1961 with [[Yaakov Herzog]], the Israeli ambassador to Canada, Toynbee softened his view and called on Israel, by then established, to fulfil its special "mission to make contributions to worldwide efforts to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war."<ref name="Fried" /><ref>{{Cite news |title=This is how we ruined Toynbee's theory |url=http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/this-is-how-we-ruined-toynbee-s-theory-1.210993|newspaper=Haaretz |access-date=19 December 2014|date=2007-01-24}}</ref>