Part II When Arabs Came Into Palestine and How They Did It

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

                                      Beduin Tent in Palestine 1930

Background:  From 1845 to 1863, a group of prominent Muslim landholding families lived in Jerusalem and used their money to gain control of "all the municipal offices."  They held certain villages or groups of villages in a type of serfdom."  By the end of the 1800s, they held the political power and had names like al-Husayni, al-Khalidi and al-Nashashibi.  They had the lands from the indebtedness of their fellahins, so had huge landholdings which they never sent anyone  to see and never farmed.  Such landowners later sold their land to Jews who had to pay exorbitant prices they had asked for, but they paid as the land meant everything to the Jews. The landowners made out very well and the fellahin wasn't likely to do that  in the first place.

While the first wave of Jewish immigration from Russia took place in 1882 in the 1st Aliyah, the fellahins' travels  had not changed  When debts got too big, the fellah would take his bundle of bedclothes, his cooking pan and water can, a small water jug and his shoes and load them all on his one ass and wife and leave at night when it was dark.  He would cross the Jordan valley until he reached Hauran in Syria or Ajlun in Jordan, where he would find a good place to hide from people he owed money to..  Many became the Bedouin to escape the indebtedness to become a member of a nomadic tribe.  The land was left without owners, workers, and became mahlul, a type of state-owned land.

The Bedouins plundered and and stole whatever they could.  The Ottoman Empire's government was very corrupt along with its feudal system.  A German historian, Doughty, who wrote of his travels in the region, wrote that in 1876,  he had found a desert that was devoid of but a few human lives at the time that the Jews had begun to build their settlements on the semi-abandoned territory where one day the Arab propaganda would claim that Jews had crowded out and displaced  the Arabs,  rendering  the Palestinian Arabs landless, which was just not true to facts at all.

 These Arabs  who roamed in the 1800's were not indigenous to the land and didn't stay on the land, yet they were called the original settled Arabs when the arriving Jewish immigrants united with Jews who never had left their land.

The former Jewish land once called Judah, then Judea, and even later called Palaestina and Southern Syria, a once fertile land that had become barren and swampy,and  laid waste for ages, held a  people who had died off with few recalling the great Jewish history.   Many of these Muslims were imported from Turkey and other lands who the Turks had brought to protect against the wandering Bedouin tribes, like landed pirates who would attack the settled multi-ethnic populace.  Each new conqueror brought his own population with him as a police force while other thousands went in and out from lands as far away as the Caucasus.  Sometimes it was the government who imported immigrants.  For instance, the Circassian and other colonists were planted on the frontier of settlement from 1870 and afterwards.

In 1860 about 200 tents of the Wulda tribe came across the Euphrates River and settled about 30 miles south of Aleppo, Syria.  Kurds, Turkomans, Naim, and others arrived in Palestine around the same time as the Jewish immigration waves began.  18,000 tents of Tartars, the armies of Turks and Kurds, whole villages came in 19th century of Bosnians and Moors and Circassians and Algerians and Egyptians.  It wasn't just the Syrian Arabs entering the land, but the whole surrounding areas looking for jobs and a chance to get rich off of the Jews.

Later, Circassians, who are Muslims,  were hired by the Jews to help guard their land from the nomadic invaders. They were said to be good horsemen.   Circassians and Jews were in my 9th grade English class in Israel.

This whole group which was a mixed bag of nationalities, and were then counted as original settled Muslims in Palestine by the British, when in fact they were new immigrants themselves.  The families would then say they had family ties for thousands of years there. that was historically very inaccurate.

The land called Palestine was never a nation at all and was not these migrants' ancestral homeland.

Resource: From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajlun_Castle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Russia
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/118238/Circassian

Part I When Syrian Arabs Came Into "Palestine" Before 1948

                                  

Nadene Goldfoot
Setting the Scene:  During World War I of 1914-1918, the Ottoman Empire, who had held Palestine for the past 400 years, entered the war on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and they were defeated.  The Ottomans had carried on Genocide on the Armenians and Assyrians.  This had impacted northern Syria.  In the middle of the war, 2 diplomats, the French Picot and the British Sykes, secretly agreed on the post-war division of the Ottoman Empire in 1916.  For starters, they separated 2 territories by a border running a straight line from Jordan to Iran, but oil was discovered in Mosul just before the end of the war. Mosul lay in northern Iraq.  "The city's fortunes revived with the discovery of oil in the area, from the late 1920s onward. It became a nexus for the movement of oil via truck and pipeline to both Turkey and Syria." Now France decided in 1918 to cede this region to Zone B or the British zone of influence.   When Syria became a League of Nations mandate in 1920 this border was recognized.  The French held the mandate over Syria and Lebanon.  The British had Palestine. 

At the same time in 1920, the independent Kingdom of Syria was established under Faisal I of the Hashemite family, the same family that had Trans-Jordan granted to them by the British out of  the land to be the Jewish Homeland.   Faisal had worked with Chaim Weizmann and had agreed to the idea of a Jewish Homeland, thinking he would get his fair share, too.  After all, he and his men had fought with the British against the Ottoman Empire and helped them as much as the Jews and Chaim Weizmann had, he  figured.  Faisal wasn't as lucky as King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan, however, as his rule lasted only a few months.  There was the Battle of Maysalun when the French troops occupied Syria later that year after the San Remo conference (see references below).  That was when it was proposed that the League of Nations put Syria under a French mandate.  That didn't stop Sultan al-Atrash in 1925 who led a revolt that was engulfing the whole of Syria and parts of Lebanon.  He won several battles against the French who sent thousands of troops from Morocco and Senegal until 1927.  The Sultan was sentenced to death but he escaped to Transjordan and was later pardoned.  He returned to Syria in 1937 after signing the Syrian-French Treaty.  Atassi then became the first president elected in September 1936, but the French refused to ratify it.  Then France fell in 1940 during WWII, and Syria came under the control of Vichy France until the British occupied the country in July 1941.  The French finally left in  1946 and Syria was again independent.  
                                                                       

It was Chaim Weizmann and others who finally were able to see that the League of Nations  passed the law of making Palestine the Jewish Homeland  in 1921, and in the Balfour  Doctrine  of 1926  The British held the mandate over Palestine and were given the job of seeing to it that it became as such.  However, suddenly the Arabs from Syria and elsewhere were coming in illegally and the count by the British was not being kept.  The Arab population in "Palestine" had remained static for 200 years and now was suddenly increasing.

In the 1931 "Palestine" census, 23 different languages were reported in use by the Moslems, and most of those plus an additional 28 were in use by Arab Christians-and these plus 28 more were in use by Arab Christians entering Palestine.  The non-Jews in Palestine in 1931 listed their birthplaces in 24 different countries in addition to the Americas and Europe.  Just in Jerusalem, 20 different places of birth outside the Armericas and Europe were listed by the Moslems.  those plus another 4 countries were listed by the Christian Arabs.

The Mandate Commission reported on August 12, 1934, from Tewfik Bey El-Hurani, governor of the Hauran, (Syrians) that in the last few months from 30,000 to 36,000 Hauranese had entered Palestine and settled there. Syrians from the Hauran district were admitted freely to "Palestine" without any passports or visas from the beginning of the British Mandate after WWI until the 1940's.p. 231   Some Syrians had gone back to Syria  to avoid prosecution for violence in the riotsof 1936.  The British looked away when they entered, and the fact that they managed to settle in the Jewish-settled portions of the country.  One report said, "that more Arabs entered illegally and stayed in Palestine than the total number of Jews for twice that length of time in 1934 who were "approved" to immigrate into their designated "Jewish National Home."  Yet the British report only said that 1934 recorded just 1,784 non-Jews with only about 3,000 as travelers remaining illegally, and those figures supposedly included Arab immigrants from all points into all of Palestine.  False Reporting!!  The Jews, however, had everything about them recorded;  age groups, occupations, amount of capital brought in.  

" Yet, illegal Jewish immigration was fastidiously reported."p. 226.  Being it was to be the Jewish Homeland, I do not see how their entrance could be listed as illegal, but it was, whereas the immigrating Arabs were not listed as illegals.  This showed up when Jews finally tried to enter Palestine through Trans Jordan.  Arabs were coming in that way as well, "but the Arabs were not marked illegal until their detection had become flagrant."

The British Peel Commission report of 1937 said that developing the Jewish National Home had to depend on the rate and volume of Jewish immigration over many years.  The Arabs were watching this immigration and were afraid of being overwhelmed and dominated by the Jewish immigrants.  The British had not made any attempt to count how many Arabs had come into "Palestine" from neighboring Arab lands but they estimated that 9/10s of the growth was due to natural increase and was a growth of over 50% in 17 years.  They realized the the Arab population during the Ottoman Empire of 400 years had remained quite stationary.

In 1938, at the height of the Germans' treatment of their Jewish population as horrific, with all sorts of rules and regulations against them, Palestine would have been the logical place for them to flee.  They couldn't get in.  At first the British blamed the improved health conditions brought by Jews that was extending Arabs' lives, brought on by the appropriation of tax-revenue contributed by the Jews.  They were blaming the increased Arab population on the Jews for helping the indigenous Arabs already existing there.

There had been Arabs going to and from Trans-Jordan.  The Peel report did mention that 4,866 "travellers" who entered Palestine during the year were registered as immigrants.  Of these, 4,114 were Jews and 752 were non-Jews.

By 1939, at the height of German anti-Semitism, when the last ship with Jews left their shores for the USA, leaving many to die soon in the Holocaust, Churchill said, "So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population."  Had the British considered the fact that Moslems could have up to 4 wives at the same time?  The Arabs had been hurling out anti-Semitic propaganda, probably hot off the presses from Germany.  The British then came out with their White Paper of 1939 halting Jewish immigration at the time they needed it the most.  Neville Chamberlain made it clear that Britain would only allow 75,000 Jews to enter Palestine over the next 5 years from 1940 to 1944, the height of the Holocaust period.  Even at that, only 10,000 each year would be allowed in, holding 25,000 spaces in abeyance.  It was almost like they were helping Germany exterminate Jews.  
                                                                       

In 1941, the Arab, Haj Amin al Husseini (1897-1974),  the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem from 1921 to 1948, visited with Hitler in Germany in a meeting of exterminating Jews, thus ending their chances of creating the Jewish Homeland.  He was also on the side of the King Faisal, Hashemite ruler of Syria.  Perhaps that's why his rule ended after a few months.  Husseini was the opposite of Faisal, and was totally against Faisal  making any agreements with Jews.   

Britain left the country when their mandate was up in May 1948, probably glad to get out of there as they felt the Arabs would slaughter the Jews.    David Ben Gurion addressed the world with the voting in the United Nations which said yes to their becoming a state, and minutes later they were attacked by all their Arab neighbors.  The miracle of all miracle happened.  They were able to hear the League of Nations and the new United Nations vote them in as a state, and they won their first of many battles against their Arab neighbors who disagreed with the majority vote.  

When asked who they were, the Arabs would say they were Syrian Arabs.  They never said they were Palestinian Arabs until many wars later in 1967, when they again lost that very serious battle of the Six Day War.  Now the leaders of other Arab nations nudged them to want their own state, after being offered the opportunity since 1947 and many times thereafter, always with the answer of no!  Their leaders were holding out for taking all of Israel.  

Malcolm MacDonald, British secretary of State in 1938 said of the over one million Arabs in Palestine, "The Arabs cannot say that the Jews are driving them out of their country.  If not a single Jew had come to Palestine after 1918, I believe that the Arab population of Palestine today would still have been around about the same figure at which it had been stable under the Turkish rule.
  
In 1934, 42,359 Jews were registered, 1,494 Christians and 290 Muslims.  
In 1938, Britain registered 12,868 Jewish immigrants, 473 Christians and 1,922 Moslems making a total of 15,263.  
In 1939 they registered 16,405 Jewish immigrants, 376 Christians and 1,652 Moslems.  
In 1940, when Jews could not get out of Germany, 4,547 Jews, 390 Christians and 674 Moslems were registered.  .  That's what they showed on the books, but it wasn't the reality at all.  Moslems were getting in illegally without being registered.  1934 was a good example where they only showed 1,784 non Jews entering when they had already listed the 30,000 to 35,000 Hauranis (Syrians) who immigrated to Western Palestine that weren't included in the British calculations.  No wonder so many Arabs, when asked, said they were Syrian Arabs.  They really were!  They were not native Palestinians.  

Folke Bernadotte said in 1950-51, and by then were referring to them all as Palestinians,  "The Palestinian Arabs have at present no will of their own.  Neither have they ever developed any specifically Palestinian nationalism...

Resource:  
"From Time Immemorial" by Joan Peters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
http://www.ifcj.org/site/PageNavigator/sfi_about_war_league
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramallah
Updated: 4/24/14 http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/id350.html San Remo Conference

People that Validate Jewish History From Torah

Nadene Goldfoot                                                             

 One group of Protestants still respect  the Old Testament  who are called "Evangelicals."  James B. Irwin, astronaut on Apollo 10, was active in believing the writings in the Bible, especially after his experience on the moon.  He led an expedition to search for Noah's Ark.  I don't think his not finding it deterred him as he later "founded an evangelical religious organization."  His knowledge of science did not deter his validating the writings of the Torah. 

 What religion should do for a person is to give them that moral fiber to be moralistic. That includes all the good that people should be and how they treat each other.  One look at this world of ours, and we can see we are failing.  People are as crude and rude as they were back in the Neolithic days, ready to kill off most of the planet's population much quicker than the cave men could.  Those that are most ready to do so do not think much of the 10 Commandments, so basic to civilization.   

Christopher Columbus in 1492 could have been Jewish.   Jews in 1492 were hiding the fact to keep from being converted or killed and were called Marranos.  He could have been one, for that matter, though he is listed as a Catholic    He spoke Spanish better than Italian.   He wrote to his son in Hebrew.This was at a time where Spain was telling Jews that they had to convert or leave the country. The New Testament had replaced the Jews' history found in the Old.    The mapmakers he met with when in Genoa were Jews, as Jews had been merchants way before 70 CE and traveled a lot on the seas from Israel and Judah and probably did a lot of charting.  He must have found credible facts to undertake such a voyage, for Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 14 hundred and 92. If he trusted their map making, it also could be that he trusted their history, found in the Christian "Old Testament."  Being he was to become a very famous person, I have included him for representing a time when Jews were suffering the worst and had been forced to leave Spain, then Portugal and finally find other countries to live in such as Syria.

The United States of America was settled by religious people in 1620 who came to Plymouth Rock, the land later to become the state of Massachusetts.  They believed in G-d, and had a  relationship with the Old Testament, which they read. They even studied a little Hebrew.     They had broken off from Catholicism long before in England to become Protestants, and these Pilgrims were a branch of that group who felt they still had no religious freedom of choice, so off they went from Holland, which they had tried to settle in, to the unknown land of America in a little sailing ship called "The Mayflower."  They weren't the first to arrive in North America. English people had sailed to Jamestown much further south and established it with a colony  on May 14, 1607   "The colony gave England its first foothold in the European competition for the New World, which had been dominated by the Spanish since the voyages of Christopher Columbus in the late 15th century ".It later became Jamestown, Virginia.  

Being that the south was not settled by religious people of that day, they saw nothing wrong about having slaves and defied the request from the President and the North  to free them, which England had already done in 1833.   Therefore, the refusal to do so  started   the American Civil War in 1861 and didn't end till 1865. Since then, religion did make its way into the South.  

Religion is losing out in the USA.  Less and less people have any respect for the Old Testament, the part that tells the history of the Jewish people.   They think it is just an Old Wives' Tale, legends, having nothing to do with today's scientific facts.  Bring up borders, boundaries, land, and few heed the information IF it comes from the Bible.  "Oh, I don't believe that stuff.  It's not true."  Little do people realize that this written history is actually recorded history of the Jews, telling of battles and who with and what happened.  It even includes geography and genealogy.  Hebrew texts, material written in Hebrew, date back to the 2nd millennium BCE, when Abraham was living.

Why are Hebrew writings so easy to ignore?  This is history recorded in writing.  At the same time there was writing going on in Egypt, Babylonia and China. Moses (1391-1271 BCE) most likely was schooled in hieroglyphics.  In 1391 BCE Amenkotep III was the pharoah.   People pay attention  to material from those sources.  Why is the Torah not paid respect as a source of history by people other than the Jews?  The Culture, the foods, the animals and plants, all are recorded there.  It's a wealth of information. The Babylonian Empire, which existed at the same time, wrote in the Akkadian language.  That's where Hammurabi came from.  People were writing Akkadian, a cunieform style of writing  in 2,500 BCE.  Sumerians invented it in the 4th millennium BCE.

Jewish people do not use the King James edition of the Old Testament, however.  Translation errors have been made from Hebrew to Greek to English.  Our word for bible is Tanach, so we use The Stone Edition Tanach from the ArtScroll Series which is considered to be the most accurate.  There are people who think that the Torah has changed over the years, and they do not understand the original and continuing care that has been taken to make sure that not one word was changed.  Even pieces found in the Dead Sea Scrolls are proving that they haven't changed since the 1st century for the past 2,000 years.  One can visit the Dead Sea Museum online or in person which is in Jerusalem and view the original findings.  Evidently people like to be told things, like in a preached speech, and personal detective work is awkward for them to do a study on their own.  If they're not told this is it, they don't trust the information that this is not just folk lore.  .

 DNA, another science from geneticists, is giving us a clear cut road map of people, calling this new science population genetics.  Someday, the two must get together and see if they can mesh their findings with what we have known since Moses and his people who existed for over 3,000 years.  One thing about our writings.  They never have been known to put themselves in a better light by leaving out the bad parts.  Egypt was known to do that by covering over hieroglyphics that the next ruler didn't approve of.  They only wrote about their successes.  We wrote about our sins, that of David, especially, and the women in his life.  We learn from from, or try to.
                                                                               

Francis S. Collins, PhD is one of the world's leading scientists who studies genetics.  He was the head of the Human Genome Project.  He's also a man of unshakable faith in G-d and scripture and believes that faith in G-d and faith in science can coexist within a person and be harmonious.  He wrote the book, "The Language of God," which of course is our DNA.   In fact, discovering our DNA has made him more religious.  One of the more interesting chapters in his book is "Genesis, Galileo, and Darwin. Darwin is most interesting to me because the Nazis took his theories and used them to prove they had the right to exterminate all the Jews in the world, of course which was not what Darwin had intended.   

The book, followed up with its own movie,  "Roots," by Alex Haley, set me on fire as far as dabbling into my own genealogy.  He tells of the African custom of reciting their oral history before their family group. He was able to trace his family line to one tribe in Africa through oral history.

 Our oral history has accompanied our written history as well.  We Jews probably did the same thing, recite this history of ours, telling of things left out when Moses set down his 5 books, another thing that modern people of today want to pooh pooh.  We have since printed the oral history before we forgot it.  It's called the "Mishnah."  So we have 3 sources of importance, The Torah or 5 books of Moses, the Talmud and the Mishnah.  Rabbis have been discussing our writings since the fall of Jerusalem of 70 CE with Rashi being the most famous commentator (1040-1105 CE)

Jews in Israel depend on the Torah for their strength.  I've known of soldiers who used its geography descriptions of the terrain to get themselves out of harm's way when confronting the enemy.  It worked!  They found paths, ancient, but still usable for them.  The description of Eretz Yisrael giving the boundaries and the description of it is found in the Tanakh.

King David (1010-970 BCE)  is said to be the author of Psalms.  I found #62 that is most prophetic. He speaks for all Jews of today.   The first stanza goes like this: and is addressed to the wicked, murderous schemers.  One must never allow the power and ill-gotten wealth of the oppressor to erode one's trust in G-d and faith in His justice.

For G-d alone my soul waits silently,
    my salvation comes from him.
He alone is my Rock and my  salvation
     my stronghold,
   I shall not falter greatly. 
 ------------------------------------------------
To falter-means to stumble, to hesitate.
-------------------------------------------------
You'd think someone wrote that today, knowing how many have tried to convert us since the many Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition and people ringing our door bells.  For us, G-d remains that unseen force that created everything.  Could it still be that anti-Semitism, because Jews have not converted to others' religions, is the cause of not wanting to believe anything written by Jews?  It most likely goes like this:  since Jews are wrong about G-d, their book has to be all wrong, too.  They ignore that their Savior was a practicing  Jew.  
                                                                               

Therefore, when we give testimony of our former history in Eretz Yisrael, people can hoot and holler all they want.  They just show me that they have read but very little history.  The archaeologist just beginning in their professions seem to be one of the worst in reading about our history, thinking they can know all the history from the few remains they find after 3,000 years. Of course the findings are fantastic and  validate our history, but somehow there are those who still hold out that our Torah is just stories for children. "Oh no", they say, "It can't be." I'd say they are in denial, like an alcoholic.  They want to ignore the findings that do prove our existence and story.  For instance, an ancient 4th century CE Samson Mosaic  was found in a synagogue in Israel in September 2013. A stone altar was discovered in November 2013 dating back to the Israelite kings at Shiloh from 1010 BCE.  "Three complete cooking pots and a small ceramic oil lamp were uncovered in June 2013 inside a small cistern in a drainage channel that runs from the Shiloah Pool in the City of David to Robinson’s Arch near the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City that were at least 2,000 years old.  A 2nd Temple period ritual bath was located  in April 2013 in the  Qiryat Menachem quarter of Jerusalem, a rare ritual bath - known as a mikvah in Hebrew." So, young archaeologist, pay attention to what has been going on in the archaeology areas in Israel before you say nothing is found to prove our existence there or our facts thereof.  

Christopher Columbus updated: 2/19/14.

Resource:  http://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/america-did-not-start-with-the-pilgrims/
http://www.historyplace.com/civilwar/
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/talmud_&_mishna.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Irwin
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/10/us/james-b-irwin-61-ex-astronaut-founded-religious-organization.html
http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpapers/fp009_navigation.htm
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=883&dat=19651105&id=46ccAAAAIBAJ&sjid=smEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3959,4986769 (Columbus)
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/egyptian.html
http://judaism.about.com/od/jewishhistory/a/Hebrew-Language-Origins-History.htm
https://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/akframe.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/archdiscovery2013.html
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/09/archaeologists-stunning-find-ancient-treasure-trove-at-temple-mount-is-a-once-in-a-lifetime-discovery/

Could Iraqis Have Jewish Roots?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

The Assyrians took Samaria, the capital of Israel, in 721 BCE.  27,290 Israelites were taken to Assyria and Media, and replaced them with Syrian and Babylonian prisoners.

Jews have been taken away in several exiles to Babylon.  Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylonia from 605 to 562 BCE, had a victory over the Assyrian-Egyptian alliance in 605 BCE at Carchemish.  He had conquered all the lands from the Euphrates River to the Egyptian frontier, including Judah, the Jewish state.

8 years later, in 597 BCE, after Judah revolted, he sent contingents of soldiers who captured Jerusalem.  They replaced the young King Jehoiachin (597 BCE at age 18, reigned for 3 months and 10 days  before he was removed).  with Nebuchadnezzar's choice, Zedekiah (597-586 BCE who became king at age 21, swearing allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar) , and then exiled 8,000 of the local aristocracy to Babylon.  Zedekiah's real name was Mattaniah and took the name of Zedekiah when he was appointed King.  He was the son of King Josiah who had been king of Judah from 637-608 BCE when his father, King Amon (638-637 BCE) , was murdered.
                                                                         
Nebuchadnezzar's account of these events is preserved in the British Museum.  8 years later, Zedekiah rebelled against them.  11 years later, Nebuchadnezzar's forces, led by Nebuz-Aradan, invaded Judah again and re-captured Jerusalem in 586 BCE.  This time they destroyed the Temple and the cities were laid wasted.  Then they exiled masses of the population.  Since so many were already exiled Jews, they probably were again moved somewhere else, maybe farther away .  Young king Jehoiachin was taken to Riblah, in Babylonia where Nebuchadnezzar had him killed.  Jehoiachin was the son of King Jehoiakim.

The Lost 10 tribes of Israel had been also taken to Babylon in the Assyrian Empire attack in 721 BCE.  Now descendants must have mingled with the new exiles, even after Cyrus permitted them to return to Israel.  Towns in Babylon that had entire Jewish populations were Nehardea, Nisibis and Mahoza.  The Babylonian Jews remained in touch with the Jerusalem Jews and even supplied some of their leaders such as Hillel, who was born in Babylon.  He was one who moved to Judah.  He wrote "The Golden Rule in its negative form:  Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you."   

During the Roman occupation, the Babylonian Jews rose against the emperor, Trajan.  The Jews of Babylon were under both the Persian and Parthian rule.  They had a certain amount of their own internal autonomy and were led by an exilarch of Davidic descent who was the king's representative.  The community was governed by a council of elders.  The Babylonian Talmud came out of this era and show that the population was into agriculture and crafts.  They were schooled in Jewish studies and had produced Ezekiel, Daniel, and Tobit (a book of the Apocrypha telling of  the blind Tobit, an exile from the tribe of Naphtali, who sent his son , Tobias to Persia to collect a debt.  On the way he met Sarah who he marries and is cured of his blindness-written in 2nd to 1st centuries BCE.

  Babylon was the center in the 3rd Century CE of rabbinic studies.  There were persecutions in the 5th century which led to the Jewish revolt under Mar Zutra II but was finally captured and  killed after 7 years.  The Jews were under difficult conditions until the 7th century Arab conquest in 637 CE.  The Jews helped the Arabs take over because they had been treated so badly by the Sassanid persecutions.  After the Arabs took over, Jews expelled from Arabia settled in Kufa.  For centuries, Iraq was the center of Jewish life.  .  .

Babylon or Babylonia, formerly called Mesopotamia,  was an ancient state of western Asia, known in the Bible as the land of Shinar or of the Kasdim (Chaldees).  It is written in Genesis that it was the cradle of humanity and where the Tower of Babel took place.  Babylonian literature contains a story of the Flood.  Abraham was born in Ur of the Chaldeans, but he moved to Eretz Yisrael where he later had to fight it out with Amraphel, King of Shinar (Gen. 14)  The prophets considered Babylon as a symbol of insolent pagan tyranny, a symbolism that continued to be used by later writers of the Apocalypse and the New Testament.  It seems to me that Iraq has gone from bad to worse these days.

Could the Babylonians of today have Jewish roots?  Possibly, some could, but I believe that they stayed away from the main population when they were taken there.  Being there have been several cities of entire populations being Jewish makes me think that they didn't mix in the general population and the general population left them alone. However, they were taken to Babylon in two time periods.  The 1st wave was 2,735 years ago.  The 2nd wave came 2,611 years ago and the 3rd wave was 2,600 years ago.  That was a very long time ago and a mixing of the 2 cultures must have taken place over time.   Only DNA testing can tell us more about their roots.  The Y haplogroups (male line) found in Iraq today have been E (10.8%), F, G, I, J (58.3%), K (8.6%) and R (2nd largest group).  J1 is the haplogroup of many Arabs and also one branch of it is called the Cohen gene, found in Jewish people of which most are also Cohens in the synagogues.  
" J-12f2 is the most represented in the Iraqi Y chromosomes."  "It has been found that Y-DNA Haplogroup J2 originated in northern Iraq (AncientAssyria)  There are Jews who also have J2.  

Psalm 137 tells the history of the Jews in exile in Babylon the first time ..  "The psalm is a hymn expressing the yearnings of the Jewish people in exile following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The rivers of Babylon are the Euphrates river, its tributaries, and the Tigris river (possibly the river Habor, the Chaboras, or modern Khabur, which joins the Euphrates at Circesium

By the rivers of  Babylon, there we sat and also wept when we remembered Zion.  On the willows within it we hung our lyres.  For there our captors requested words of song from us, with our lyres [playing]joyous music, sing for us from Zion's song!  How can we sing the song of Hashem upon the alien's soil?  If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.  Let my tongue adhere to my palate, if I fail to recall you, if I fail to elevate Jerusalem above my foremost joy.  Remember, Hashem, for the offspring of Edom, the day of Jerusalem;  for those who say, Destroy!  Destroy!  to its very foundation.  O violated daughter of Babylon, praiseworthy is he who repays you in accordance with the manner that you treated us.  Praiseworthy is he who will clutch and dash your infants against the rock.  

We are taught that the memory of Jerusalem must come first, no matter what the occasion of personal joy is.   This is where the custom of a groom at his wedding steps on a glass after the ceremony in memory of Jerusalem.  Is it no wonder, then, that Jerusalem means so much to us?    

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Tanach, The Stone Edition (The Torah/prophets/writings, 24 books of the Bible)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalm_137
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTnspbSjKVc
http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/Al_Zahery.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeogenetics_of_the_Near_East

The Two- Faced Iran Complains About the Two- Faced Negotiations of Kerry

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                

1979, the Shah is overturned and the religious Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned.

Not too long ago, on June 20, 2009, there was a demonstration of the Iranian people who were aroused by the Arab Spring against their rulers, but that has been forgotten since their hard-line factions have seized more power. They were holding protests during their elections, and a beautiful Iranian girl was shot to death by the name of Neda Agha-Soltan, age 26.

Neda, a college student, was forced to quit school because of her dress and appearance of not covering her head and body.  That's why she attended the protest.  "She was shot in the heart by a Basij militia member who insisted he was not trying to kill her. Her death was captured on video by bystanders and broadcast over the Internet and the video became a rallying point for the opposition. It was described as "probably the most widely witnessed death in human history"

This time on Tuesday, millions of Iranians participated in rallies that the government backed which marked the 35th anniversary of the  Islamic revolution in 1979.  That was when on February 11th, Iranian religious revolutionaries declared victory over Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi who was backed by the USA.  Then the Shiite Muslim clerics came to power

The largest rally took place in their capital, Tehran,  where nuclear talks between Iran and and the USA and their allies were recalled, dominating the event.  They had posters and placards given out to the crowd which had slogans referring to John Kerry's recent remarks that, despite the discussions over the nuclear program, the military option remained on the table.   The placards therefore read, "We are eager for all options on the table."  Evidently they noticed a two-facedness from Kerry.  Young families pushing baby strollers were seen shouting, "Death to America!"  Other posters said, "We are ready for the great battle."  Other people called for the deaths of Obama and Kerry.

Back on the home front, Wendy Sherman, under secretary of state in the State Department  for political affairs,  conceded that the US failed to "shut down" Iran's working  on ballistic missiles.  These have long ranges and are the weapon to deliver a nuclear payload.  It's been 6 months of negotiating and they have to address this problem as part of a comprehensive agreement which will not be agreed on for at least another 6 months.  Tehran had a large window to perfect its weapons systems now.

The USA knows that Iran is going to launch 3 new satellites into space in the next few weeks.  This technology is like those used for ballistic missiles.  Leading experts are saying that Iran's space program is a cover for its ballistic missile work.  Iran's year ends on March 20th and they feel one of them will be launched by then.

Kerry and Wendy left all these problems unsolved.  They didn't address the delivery mechanism, the militarizing of nuclear arms.  Iran had breached a threshold everyone acknowledges and now they can build a bomb.  Senator Bob Corker, Republican from Tennessee, the committee's ranking member, asked them why this had happened.  Iran already has advanced centrifuges.  The situation had been left so that Iran is allowed to continue to perfect their nuclear delivery mechanism.  Few countries in the world possess both   the capability to enrich uranium to high levels and also have an advanced ballistic missile program.  Iran is now a nuclear power.  All they have to do now is to ramp up their uranium production.
                                                                         

Sherman said she is depending on the US to successfully convince Iran to give up its nuclear program.  In her opinion, Iran doesn't need to continue its work at Fordow or any need to the partially constructed heavy water reactor at Arak.  She has no doubt that Iran will have to scale back the number of nuclear centrifuges it is operating.  The question remains as to what will force them to do such a thing.  They are impervious to Kerry's suggestions.
                                                                         
Rouhani, the President of Iran, criticized the US threats against Iran already.  He said that if the negotiators respected Iran's rights, they would get a positive and appropriate answer from Iran, but he also warned that threats would only bring down the nuclear talks to a halt.  He didn't like the way they approached him in the past and doing so had put their nations, region and global welfare and stability in jeopardy.

The rally included re-enactments of scenes from the 1980s war between Iran and Iraq.  That war was so bad that children were serving as soldiers on both sides.
                                                                         

Remember when Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, warned the UN of how close Iran was in being able to make atomic weapons on September 27, 2012?   "Iran is 70 percent of the way there and ... well into the second stage," Netanyahu said while displaying the chart. "By next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and moved on to the final stage. From there it is only a few more weeks before they have enriched enough for a bomb."  Everyone pooh-poohed him.  Now the window of opportunity is shut for Israel to halt their progress.  Kerry didn't comply with his warnings at all and now he can't call back the steps taken get Iran to the table to talk in the first place.  Everyone is just too eager to sell them their products being they have come into money.  What was working has been undone by the negotiators.

The Cuban missile crisis  happened when Russia and the USA were at odds.   "After the US had placed nuclear missiles in Turkey and Italy, aimed at Moscow, and the failed US attempt to overthrow the Cuban regime, in May 1962,  Nikita Khrushchev proposed the idea of placing Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter any future invasion attempt. During a meeting between Khrushchev and Fidel Castro that July, a secret agreement was reached and construction of several missile sites began in the late summer."  Luckily that was averted. 

North and South Korea were going at each other just last year.   " It began because of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2087, which condemned North Korea for the launch of Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 Unit 2. The crisis was marked by extreme escalation of rhetoric by the new North Korean administration under Kim Jong-un and actions suggesting imminent nuclear attacks against South Korea, Japan, and the United States.  North Korea denounced sanctions UNSC imposed under UNSC Resolution 2087. on the January 23 the government of North Korea announced the continuation of their tests not only devoted to missiles, but clearly with an effort to facilitate nuclear weapons purposes. Moreover, North Korea directly threatened the U.S., announcing that they could launch long-range missiles against that country.

Cuba and North Korea are enough to give the USA a headache as they are the opposite of such a Democratic country, but they are not in any way having a war of religion.  It's territory.  As with Iran, a Shiite country, this is a war of religions, and is much more serious.  Kerry doesn't seem to understand this.  Iran sees the end of the world coming and sees them in the power seat with the return of the 12th Iman.  It means to destroy Israel.  You can't put Iran in the same basket with Cuba and North Korea.  Netanyahu warned that you can't trust  Rouhani.  The negotiators did just that.  

Re: Oregonian newspaper, 2/12/14 page A7, Rallies back Iran's regime, draw millions, by Thomas Erdbrink, NY Times News Service
Act for America actforamerica@donationnet.net, Wendy Sherman/AP 2/4/14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Korean_crisis
http://www.dw.de/eleven-days-in-february-the-iranian-revolution/g-17423004
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/netanyahu-red-line-cartoon-twitter-202454562.html

Could Saeb Erekat be a Canaanite and Not a Palestinian?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

Playing "Can you top this,"  Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator with Kerry and Israel, asserted over the weekend at a Munich conference while on a panel discussion,  that  his ancestors lived in the region 5,500 years before Joshua had his battle with Jericho. Is he assuming that his ancestry has been there without any change for the past 5,500 years to its beginnings as a Neolithic settlement?   Jericho is a unique city.  It lies 825 feet below sea level and is one of the oldest settlements in the world.  It goes back to its beginnings to 5000 BCE.  People did live there through the Chalcolithic and Canaanite times until it was destroyed by Joshua.  It was revived during the reign of King Ahab of Israel (876-853), about 870 BCE by Hiel, the Bethelite (I Kings: 16:34).  In the times of Herod, the city was transferred from its former position near the spring to another, further south.  Jericho was destroyed by the Romans in 68 CE and later rebuilt in its present location.  3,000 people lived there in 1946.  Arab refugees moved there in 1948, of which Erekat's parents or grandparents  could have been among them.  61,000 people lived there in 1961.  Most fled to Jordan before Israel's IDF arrived in 1967 so that 8,500 lived in Jericho then.

Erekat was born in Jericho in 1955 when it was under Jordanian rule since 1948 illegally.   The Palestinians are having a hard time accepting who they are and that there never was a state of Palestine. In 2012 he had a heart attack and was hospitalized in Ramallah.
                                                                         

                                             Archaeologist studying areas of Jericho.

He lacks knowledge of history.  Canaan,  a group of city states, was overtaken by the Israelites.  There is documentation of this in the book of Joshua, Joshua 6:  1-27.  Joshua took the city in his first battle during their conquest of the land.  According to the story, the walls of Jericho fell after Joshua's Israelite army marched around the city blowing their trumpets.  The vibration caused by the noise was enough to bring those walls tumbling down.

Canaanites were all killed or assimilated into the Israelite population.  There were none left.  This took place after Moses died, which was in about 1271 BCE.  Moses knew he wasn't going to enter the land at age 120 but was dying, so made Joshua the leader to take his place.

Therefore, Saeb cannot claim that Palestinians are Canaanites or that he, specifically, had ancestors from Canaan, thus Jericho.  The 2nd reason is that they are not all native to the land.  Most all came from surrounding countries in the 1880's looking for jobs from the Jews that came from Russia at that time and were building.  They were able to get jobs that they couldn't find in their own native countries at that time.  Most all Palestinians said they were Syrians.

Archaeologists have had a field day working in and around Jericho, the city my husband and I  used to drive through on our way from Safed to Jerusalem.  The first scientific investigation of the site of Jericho was done by Charles Warren in 1868 which was just a site-survey.  In 1907-1909 and again in 1911, digging was done by 2 German archaeologists, Carl Watzinger and Ernest Sellin.  They believed that they would be able to prove the Biblical story of Jericho's destruction by Joshua and the Israelites but came to a different conclusion in that they said it was unoccupied at the time of Joshua, which they calculated to be 1400 BCE.

Their results were tested in 1930-1936 by John Garstang at the suggestion of William F. Albright, who was the main archaeologist at that time.  Garstang discovered the remains of a network of collapsed walls which he dated to be from about 1400 BCE, the time he thought the Israelites were on their conquest and thought that the walls had really fallen from some dramatic cause.   So his findings reversed the previous findings.

Albright asked Kathleen Kenyon to excavate at Jericho once more and she dug from 1952 to 1958 and traced the entire history of the city from its earliest Neolithic settlement.  She claimed that Garstang was wrong and the Germans were right.  Jericho had been deserted at the date of conquest.  Now I see we have a discrepancy in dates.  My Jewish encyclopedia differs from the Christian dating that they are going by.

In 1990, another archaeologist whose forte was Canaanite pottery and others thought that the pottery recovered pointed to a destruction date of the city to be 1400 BCE rather than 1550 BCE as concluded by Kenyon.  In 1995, Kenyon's result was corroborated by radiocarbon tests which dated test samples to 1562 BCE plus or minus 38 years with a certainty of 95% from a piece of charcoal sample.  Then it was corrected to 1590 or 1527 plus or minus 110 BCE.

My point is that there was a Jericho back in the time when Joshua was the leader and took Canaan a very long time ago.  If Erekat would take a DNA test to find his haplogroup and do another autosomal test to see who matches up with segments of his chromosomes which hold his genes, it would be most interesting.  The Canaanites, according to biblical genealogy recorded, descended from Canaan, son of Ham.  They were divided into 11 different peoples who lived in the area between the Nile and the Euphrates (Gen. 10: 15-19).  The people of Syria applied Canaanites to themselves.  By origin, the Canaanites seem to have been a mixture of Horites, Hittites, and Hebrews, dating back to the Hyksos period of the 17th century BCE.  They were almost entirely obliterated or assimilated by the Israelites in about the 13th century BCE, and the Philistines along the coast in the 12th century BCE and the Arameans in the north in the 11th century BCE.  The remnants were subjected by Kings David and his son, King Solomon and absorbed this way.  Later, the name Canaanites, was remembered only among the Sidonians and Phoenicians.

My ancestors do not go back 3, 285 years to have lived on the same land of the home my parents lived in in Portland, Oregon, USA.  There is a whole unique history of Indians and  pioneers who may have lived there before us, as well as becoming farmland.  So Erekat really knows nothing of his past heritage until he takes a DNA test, and then he'll have a glimmer,  which is better than a lie.  Already we know that the Canaanites were wiped out and or a few were assimilated.

At best, the Muslims interested in their genealogy try to trace their trees back to the time of Mohammad who was born in 570 CE and died in 632 CE, and some claim descent from him.  Before that, there was no reason to keep track of one's family tree.

Rulers way back then transported people from one place to another. Right off, Jews were enslaved in Egypt and kept there for 400 years working on building.   Other slaves were part of the work force as well.  When Moses left with the 600,000, he took with him the descendents of Jacob and a multitude of others.  Later,  Jews were taken to Babylon from Jerusalem.  Rulers would rather do this than mass murdering people.  People were useful.  They would pay taxes and work for you in many ways.  So the whole population in the Middle East at times were traded about.  Who knows where Erekat's most distant ancestor came from without a DNA test?

Reference:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jericho
http://www.israellycool.com/2014/02/06/saeb-erekat-caught-with-his-pants-on-fire-again/
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeb_Erekat

Oxfam's Part in Boycotting Goods From Israel and Scarlett Johansson's Speaking For Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                                          

                    Scarlett Johanssen, 29 year old movie actress, spokesman for Sodastream, called the sexiest woman alive by Esquire Magazine.  

Israel is being boycotted for deciding to build apartment buildings on their own land in Judea and Samaria.  This is because the Palestinian Arabs want to make a state exclusively for themselves out of this ancient Jewish land.  which would force out all the Jews living there already.  The land came back into Israel's hands when they fooled everyone by winning against the aggressive Middle Eastern countries that that attacked them in force in 1967.

Oxfam is an international group  formed in Oxford, England in 1942.  of 17 organizations working in about 90 countries.  There goal is to find answers to poverty and injustice in the world.  To do this they try to influence the powerful in order to help the poor to improve their lives and jobs and have a say in decisions.  They all work together in this endeavor.  It was originally founded by the Quakers who have turned out to be against Israel for their own religious reasons.  Also among the founders were social activists and Oxford academics.  One of the old missions they worked on was to persuade the British government to allow food relief through the Allied blockade for the starving citizens of the enemy occupation of Greece.  Their overseas unit was created before 1967, taking place in Canada in  1963 and then had a name change in 1965 to OXFAM.  Today they are charged by the owner of Sodastream of funding the boycotting movement of Israel goods because they are against Israel building housing unites in Judea-Samaria.

Movie actress Scarlett Johansson is the representative for Sodastream of Israel.  As soon as she agreed to the multi-million-dollar sponsorship deal, she received tons of criticism for backing an Israeli company.  Avigdor Lieberman, MK of Israel,  was so impressed by her actions that he showered her with praise, and said that she took a brave stand against immoral hypocrites.  He said that the actress has not folded or apologized in the face of these attacks.  She took a clearly principled stand against those who disguise their classic anti-Semitism under false pretenses.  Our Oscar goes to Scarlett !"

Scarlett then resigned as an ambassador for the Oxfam charity group, who she had been with since 2007,  because she had to argue with them about her connection to Sodastream, which has a factory in Judea-Samaria at Ma'aleh Adumim.  This factory gives jobs to 1,300 Palestininian Arabs and Israelis who live there.  75% of the workers are Palestinian Arabs with Israeli citizenship or Arabs from Judea-Samaria.

The World Jewish Congress applauded her for "her forthright defense of economic cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians and for standing up to the international bullies" and criticized Oxfam.  Groups that urge boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions against Israel and Israeli goods are cowards and are unprincipled and anti-Semitic.  It is such groups as this that Oxfam has alligned itself.

 Omar Barghouti is the co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural boycott of Israel, which is another way of trying to destroy Israel.  At least everyone has heard of Sodastream now through all the publicity.  It's a little machine that sits on your kitchen counter like a blender that makes your own sodas.  Of course they were very popular in Israel when I lived there from 1980-1985.  It beats having to recycle bottles or cans and you can even use cranberry juice and make very healthy sodas. Sodastream is the largest private employer in Judea-Samaria.

Resource: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.571986
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxfam
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4483740,00.html
http://www.sodastreamusa.com/?gclid=CLTO_bLcsLwCFYhbfgod4zwAnw
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2014/0202/Inside-SodaStream-factory-machines-whir-through-boycott-controversy
http://www.esquire.com/women/the-sexiest-woman-alive/scarlett-johansson-2013-sexiest-woman-alive-photos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarlett_Johansson
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-israel-palestinians-scarlett-johansson-20140203,0,1837092.story#axzz2sI8n5E32

Israeli MKs Turned Off With Kerry's Threats

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                

                                      John Kerry, Secretary of State of USA

"Kerry is a mouthpiece!  What he says amounts to incitement against Israel."  So pronounced Economic Minister and Jewish Home party chairman, Naftali Bennett who evidently used facebook to say this.  He means that Kerry is simply a mouthpiece for someone, and it isn't Israel.   Bennett wrote to Kerry and all his advisers, telling them "the Jewish people are stronger than the threats against them. The Jews in Israel would not, under any circumstances, surrender their land!"  

The right-wing MK's slammed Kerry for threatening Israel with increased boycotts and international isolation.  About 2 weeks ago, Moshe Ya'alon, Israeli Defense Minister, called Kerry "obsessed and messianic" when it came to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

I note that only Israel is ever threatened.  We never hear what he says to the Arabs, if he says anything at all. At the Munich, Germany Security Conference Saturday, he told people and Israel that a delegitimate campaign was going on about Israel.  That also sounds like a threat that he would allow to take place.  Who is starting such a campaign?  Boycotts were not the only  avenue Israel was threatened with in his comment of "other things."  "Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz on Sunday morning said Israel cannot be pressured to negotiate with “a gun against its head” and that Kerry’s remarks were “offensive and unacceptable.”

Bennett explained that security will bring economic stability and not a terrorist state close to Ben-Gurion Airport.  After all, they've been living with this threat for going on 66 years now.  Many had lived in Eretz Yisrael before it became a state as well.  These threats of boycotting Israel are viewed by Jews as anti-Semitic attempts  which are not something friends do to friends.
                                                                         

                                                             MK, Tzipi Hotevely

Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely, said that Kerry's threats of  unprecedented boycotts were attempts to intimidate Israel.  He is trying to impose a dangerous agreement that goes against Israel's government completely.  Any peace agreements that undermine Israel's red-lines would be against Israel's security which is even worse than an economic boycott.  "Tzipi Hotovely (Hebrew: ציפי חוטובלי, born 2 December 1978) is an Israeli politician . She is a member of the Knesset for the Likud party since 2009. On March 18, 2013 she joined the new government of Israel as Deputy Minister of Transportation.

Hotovely is a doctorate student at the Faculty of Law in Tel Aviv University. Hotovely practises Orthodox Judaism and is a self-described "religious rightwinger".^[2] At the age of 34, she was the 18th Knesset's youngest member. She is described as the "ideological voice" of the Likud Party.^[3] She regularly campaigns for improved women's rights, and chaired the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women in the 18th Knesset, before joining the government at the beginning of the 19th Knesset in 2013.^[4]

Kerry said today that Israel's successes are just an illusion.  He threatened that if peace talks fail, Israel will be boycotted.  This came from Uri Ariel, housing and construction minister.  The truth is that the peace slogans Kerry is trying to sell to Israel are illusions.  These slogans of his are used to cover up the threat to the state of Israel.  He said that Kerry is a perfect example of what incitement looks like.  The Palestinians must be overjoyed with their "fair" mediator.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about Kerry's threats at the weekly cabinet meeting today.  These attempts are immoral and unjust.  They will not achieve their goal.  What they are doing is causing the Palestinians to "adhere to their intransigent positions and thus push peace further away."  Pressure will not cause Netanyahu to concede the vital interests of the State of Israel, especially the security of its citizens.  Kerry must have thought that Netanyahu would be a pushover because the Israelis had left Gaza in the name of peace.  Threats of boycotting will not achieve their goal with Israel.  Frankly, I don't think Kerry has been a very good listener.

What is missing here is that Kerry has not given the Palestinians reason to stop warring against Israel.  He's going along with all their demands, which would mean the very end for Israel.  They are people who have been brainwashed for over 66 years to hate Jews and the state of Israel.  Their maps in schools don't even show Israel.  They show Palestine instead.  They are living off of propaganda and Kerry has bought into it, for he's backing all their expectations that they couldn't get in all the past wars against Israel.  Everything he proposes is bad news and against Israel's security.

Resource:http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/john-kerry-threatens-israel-intensified-boycotts/?utm_source=Breaking+Israel+News&utm_campaign=3d70fb1039-BIN+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b6d3627f72-3d70fb1039-83518689

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzipi_Hotovely

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/02/02/john-kerry-faces-new-criticism-in-israel-after-invoking-boycott-threats-to-jewish-state/

http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/07/so-you-want-to-talk-about-six-day-war.html

http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/03/john-kerrys-handling-of-syria-and.html
Update: 2/3/14  http://www.jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain/item/kerry_and_israel_a_warning_from_the_well_intentioned_bully
2/4/14: http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Huge-majority-of-Israelis-Abbas-must-recognize-Jewish-state-340298