The Enduring Bond Between Wales and Zionism – and Its Bitter Unravelling

Sir Afilonius Rex in Tel Aviv. Monday 24^th February 2026.

In the misty valleys of Wales, where chapel bells once echoed with the thunder of Old Testament prophets, a profound affinity for Judaism and Zionism took root. This connection, woven from scripture, sympathy, and the shared fire of small nations, has long pulsed through Welsh history. It speaks in lyrical cadences, alliterative and incantatory, evoking green hills and golden psalms By that rolled like the sea in miners’ lungs. Here, the Bible burned brighter than coal seams; children learned of Jerusalem before their own rivers, with Jordan flowing through hymns and Zion a living heartbeat.

From these Nonconformist cradles emerged a fierce advocate: David Lloyd George, the “Welsh Wizard,” raised on biblical poetry and the ache of an ancient, oppressed people. He saw in the scattered Jews kin to his own – small nations singing against the wind, green and defiant. As prime minister in 1917, he presided over the Balfour Declaration, pledging a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This was no imperial whim; it stemmed from chapel dreams of restoration, viewing Jews not as conquerors but as brothers in exile, reclaiming a promised land. Both peoples, he believed, embodied self-determination – Wales’s aspirations mirroring Zion’s.

Lloyd George spoke with measured moral seriousness, emphasising nationhood, language, and spirit. “Wales is a historic community, a nation with its own language and soul,” he might have said, drawing parallels to Jewish struggles against assimilation and empire. This sympathy was bred in Nonconformist heritage, steeped in Hebrew Scriptures, not mere sentiment, but recognition of parallel destinies. When others wavered, his voice, forged in prophets’ fire, declared biblical justice aligned with modern principles. The rights of nations, he insisted, are indivisible; moral spirit can topple Leviathans.

Wales supported Zionism as an act of solidarity, seeing it as another small nation reclaiming its heritage, much as Wales demanded self-government, language preservation, and integrity. It was a bond of the denied asserting their place in the sun, innocent, perhaps biased, and naïve in hindsight.

In the defiant, folk-protest style of Welsh ballads – rousing, repetitive, rooted in survival – this endures: “Er gwaethaf pawb a phopeth, r’yn ni yma o hyd” (“Despite everyone and everything, we’re still here”). Jews, scattered and scorned, clung to tongue, faith, and Zion’s dream; in Welsh chapels, their story sang alongside ours. Both kicked by empires yet refusing history’s night.

A voice from the valleys – Bible in pocket, fire in belly – stood in London: “Let there be a home for the Jewish people.” Not for the empire’s gain, but knowing the ache of voiceless nations. Like Welsh signs painted green, fighting for Cymraeg against the tide, they battled for Hebrew and homeland. We’re still here, despite odds, and so are they, in reborn Israel.

Yet, why has this dream of freedom soured? How did independence and absence of fear twist into an amoral tale, depraved and degenerate? What excuses genocide, infanticide, the impunity laced with conceit and evil?

The affinity, once poetic, now confronts harsh realities. Wales’s solidarity was for the oppressed; it cannot extend to oppression. The moral factor that once decided fates demands scrutiny: spirit unyielding must yield to justice indivisible. Er gwaethaf pawb a phopeth, Wales remembers, and sings for every small nation refusing to die, without crushing another in the process.

Thank you for reading.