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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Let's Talk Turkey About Palestine and Israel

Nadene Goldfoot
Turkey, which was the  Ottoman Empire, was on the German side in WWI and  lost. The Great War lasted from 1914 to November 1918.   French and British mandates were set up to care for the Ottoman Empire property that they had held from 1517 to 1917 without developing Palestine.

The French took over what we know as Lebanon and Syria.  The British got Palestine and Iraq.  In 1926 the borders were redone and Lebanon was separated from Syria. 

Britain was not given any sovereignty in Palestine.  She was there to fulfill the Mandate and answerable to the League of Nations.  Britain put in Emir Faisal, a sheik deposed by the French in Syria as ruler of Iraq.  In 1922 they created the emirate of Transjordan which took in all of Palestine east of the Jordan River so that Emir Abdullah, a family man defeated in tribal warfare in the Arabian peninsula would have a kingdon to rule. 

In 1917 the Balfour Declaration had been created by the British after the war.  Chaim Weizmann had been a chemistry professor and had saved Britain with his invention, the ABE process which made acetone through bacterial fermentation .  This was used to win the war. He was rewarded with  land for a Jewish Homeland. 

In 1939 the White Paper was issued by Britain which restricted the immigration of Jews to Palestine.  This came at a time when Jews were being restricted and harmed in Germany and they wished to get out of there.  My own uncle was one of the last to make it out of Germany in 1939 and came to the USA.  He failed in getting out his parents and 16 year old sister and they died in the holocaust.  There were restrictions on Jewish immigration at that time into the USA.  They had to have sponsors taking all responsibility which my great uncle did. 

In 1947 there were about one million Arabs in western Palestine.  Of this, those  living in the land which became Israel was 561,000.  Not all left when Israel was created.  At the end of the warfare in 1949, there were 140,000 Arabs in Israel.  Those who left amounted to about 420,000.  At the end of May 1948 Faris el Khoury, the Syrian Representative on the UN Security Council said there were 250,000.  Emil Ghoury, an authoritan, said on September 6, 1948, that 200,000 Arabs had fled.  Then Count Bernadotte, the UN Special Representative in Palestine reported on September 16, 1948 that the number was 360,000, including 50,000 in Israel territory (UN document A1648).  After July 1948 there was a fourth group who left of about 50,000 Arabs from Galilee and from the Negev.  They left on their own free will or from the direction of their leaders, not from the Jews. 

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations recommended the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state.  The Jews were given a smaller piece than earlier promised.  They got a little more than half of western Palestine which was about 15,000 square kilometers or 6,000 square miles including the semi-arid Negev desert.

The Arabs got 7/8th of Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River which had been promised to the Jews for the Jewish National Home.  The Arabs refused it.  Why?  They wanted it all, they said.

Existing Arab states at that time were Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Transjordan.  Their leaders wanted to prevent the birth of Israel.  Their land was 230 times larger than what was originally promised as Israel and they had a population 60 times more than its Jewish inhabitants who numbered about  half a million plus.  Their secretary of this confederation of invader states was Azzam Pasha who called to memory the massacres by the Mongols and the Crusaders.  They thought it would be a piece of cake.   After all, the ratio of Arabs to Jews was 7 to 1. 

Thirty years earlier on February 1919 there was only one recognized Arab leader, Emir Faisal, who signed a formal agreement with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, head of the Zionist Organization providing for cooperation between the projected Arab state and Jewish state of Palestine.  Faisal said the Zionist proposals were moderate and proper. 

In 1947 when the Arabs refused to set up their Arab state, the British then refused to carry out the recommendations of the UN to implement the partition plan,  and they worked to prevent Israel's birth.  This turned out to be the start of problems for all.  Perhaps the Arabs knew this was how to throw the monkey wrench into the decision.  Britain had gone along with the Arab decision, most likely because of their need for oil.  Their personal need was to placate the Arabs and they had nothing to gain with Jews:  so much for having saved their own nation. 

Some Jews had always lived in their homeland even though most were dispersed or killed in 70 AD when Rome attacked Judea.  When the British were overseers, they had their hands full.  Attacks of Arabs on Jews were going in in 1921 to 1929.  They were regular pogroms.  1936 saw a big attack led by Haj Amin el Husseini, mufi and president of the Muslem Supreme Council.  Men of the Cairo school were able to carry out a campaign against Zionism using propaganda saying they were bringing Bolshevism, maybe because past Jewish immigrants were from Russia.  Lawrence of Arabia's claim that Arabs had been "let down" by the British was told as "historic truth."  The Balfour Declaration allowing land for the Jewish nation was  twisted in their minds to be a meaningless paper.  The "rights of the Palestine Arabs" was created now and given a fictitious history which they use today for their propaganda to each other.

The League of Nations had become less effective and did nothing to change the attitude of the Arabs towards Jews. Sounds familiar today, doesn't it.  The UN really has done nothing to change the attitude of the Arabs towards Jews.  Iran boasts of their goal of destroying Israel.  What seems like an impossible position, one has to remember that Jews have lasted for the past 2,000 years, something many other people have not been able to do even though Hitler tried his best to kill them all.  It's been forseen that they would take back their land in the bible.  The Ingathering of Jews has already taken place.  What is to be seen now is a final acceptance of their position as an island amid an Arab sea.  Then the world just may experience a time of peace. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace%20Process/Guide%20to%20the%20Peace%20Process/The%20Balfour%20Declaration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Weizmann
Book: Battleground, fact and fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz
Book: Myths and Facts, a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Dr. Mitchell G. Bard and Joel Himelfarb

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