Even before the centenary this year of the outbreak of the World War I, British people seemed to be making an ever greater emotional investment in remembering their war dead. The official days of Remembrance, Nov. 11 and the adjacent Remembrance Sunday, have become part of an extended autumn ritual during which millions of Britons wear poppies to signify their mindfulness of those who sacrificed their lives for Britain in two world wars and in recent conflicts.

This year, a spectacular ceramic installation at the Tower of London prompted by the World War I centenary and comprising 888,246 poppies — one for each fallen British soldier — has been a magnet for visitors from all over the UK, as well as for tourists.

Not everybody cared for it. In a letter to the Independent newspaper, an outraged British citizen of dual nationality protested that the equation of one fallen British serviceman with one poppy betrayed a lack of perception of the true meaning of war. Slain soldiers and innocent victims of war, declared Agustin Blanco-Bazan, should be remembered together. One might add that the installation was also compromised by its failure to pay tribute to the great numbers of British imperial subjects, Indians, Africans, Australians and others, who died fighting for the Britain.

What seldom figures in the remembrance of Britain’s wars is the issue of what they have meant for other peoples. On the weekend of Remembrance Sunday, a ground-breaking two-day international conference took place in London on the impact of the World War I on Palestine. Organized by Palestine Return Centre in conjunction with Al-Jazeera Centre for Studies, the conference was inspired by a concern to promote public understanding of the decisive part that imperial Britain played in nurturing the Palestine-Israel conflict — through the 1917 Balfour Declaration pledging British support for a national home in Palestine for Jews and through the less then even-handed British Mandate administration of Palestine from 1922 to 1948.

Speakers on the second day of the conference focused on what can be done to right the historic wrong suffered by the people of Palestine. The British human rights lawyer, Mark MacDonald, argued that the US was no longer credible as a Middle East peace broker and that the UK must join with other European countries, in bringing pressure to bear on Israel to make the concessions that it has so persistently refused to make.

MacDonald’s message was that if a Labour government were elected in the general election of May 2015 it would follow the example of Sweden and grant full British government recognition to a Palestine state.

It is, it must be said, a big “if,” for Miliband has been contending with plunging opinion poll ratings and struggling even to remain leader of his own party. Zionists have not been slow to capitalize on his difficulties, with highly publicized Jewish defections from the Labour party following the Palestine recognition vote — not to mention rumored withdrawals of financial backing.

Nearly 100 years after the Balfour declaration, the Zionist lobby that inspired it is as zealous as ever. However, there is at last an effectual pro-Palestinian lobby in British politics. And for all the selectivity of British remembrance, there is growing awareness of the special historic restitution that Britain owes to the Palestinian people.