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

The Balfour Declaration: Why It Was So Important

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                     

Finally the Jews had the answer they had worked so hard for.  Britain was for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for Jews.  Arthur James, Lord Balfour (1848-1930) was a British statesman and philosopher who was head of the government with which Herzl negotiated with in 1902-1903.  Later he was very impressed b Chaim Weizmann and his Zionist philosophy.  He was foreign secretary in 1917 when he issued the Balfour Declaration, an official statement from Britain.

                                                                                    Foreign Office
                                 November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
           I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet.

        His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.  

       I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

                           Arthur James Balfour

                           The Balfour Declaration

 This statement finally came about as the result of many long negotiations started by Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow and others shortly after the start of World War I.  Supporting this was Herbert Samuel, Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz, the Haham Moses Gaster and others.  There was a lot of discussion on two things;  the formula of the Declaration and its timing.    The final decision of the British government was expedited by Balfour's visit to the US  in the spring of 1917 when he met with President Wilson who supported the efforts of the American Zionists who were headed by Brandeis.  

There were British Jews who were afraid that this would endanger the Jews in all countries.  This opposition made the government more cautious, and the wording submitted to recognize Palestine as the national home of the Jewish people and for providing a "Jewish National Colonizing Corporation" for the resettlement and economic development of the country was not accepted.  

When the Declaration had been approved by the British cabinet, it was sent to Lord Walter Rothschild who was asked to take it to the Zionist Federation. On April 24, 1920, it was decided by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers at the conference in San Remo that Britain should administer Palestine and be responsible for the implementation of the Balfour Declaration.  

In 1921, Transjordan was detached from the area covered by the British Mandate for Palestine and made a separate Emirate under Abdullah (1882-1951).  First he was an Emir, and then made himself king of Transjordan.  He was the 2nd son of Hussein, sherif of Mecca, so he was from Saudi Arabia.  It was his support of Britain during WWI that led to his nomination as ruler of Transjordan in 1923.  He was credited with a moderate attitude toward Zionism and had negotiated with Chaim Weizmann in 1922, but invaded Israel in 1948 anyway.  His attempts to reach an understanding with Israel were nullified by the growing influence of the Palestinian Arabs, and he was assassinated in Jerusalem allegedly at the instance of the Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini, the person who had gone to Germany and had met with Adolf Hitler.    . 

 It was approved by other Allied governments and incorporated into the Mandate in 1922.  According to Article II the Mandatory Power was responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative, and economic conditions as would secure the establishment of the Jewish national home and the development of self-governing institutions;  also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.  

Other articles provided for the facilitation of Jewish immigration by the Mandatory Power, while ensuring the rights and status of the other sections of the community, and for encouraging settlement of the Jews on the land, including unrequired state and wastelands; for enacting a national laws to enable Jews taking up their residence in Palestine to acquire Palestine citizenship;  the recognition of English, Arabic and Hebrew as the official languages of Palestine; and the recognition of the holy days of the respective communities as legal days of rest.  

Article 25 delimits the borders of the country, excluding Transjordan from Palestine. King Abdullah had  renamed it the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946.  The Palestine Mandate ended on May 15, 1948 with the withdrawal of the British administration.  This is the day Israel was then declared a state with the blessing of the vote in the United Nations.  Right away King Abdullah fought against the new Israel and took over the Arab area of Palestine which was Judah, Samaria and east Jerusalem.  

What the Arab King Abdullah had taken that was to be part of the Jewish Homeland was lost to Israel by his grandson, Hussein, in the Six Day War when all the Arabs had attacked Israel and lost, much to their surprise.  Hussein, born in 1935, succeeded to the throne in 1952.  He removed British officers from his Arab Legion in 1956 and signed a pact with Egypt and Syria but later refrained from joining the fighting during the Sinai Campaign.  His army had to retreat from Eastern Palestine when defeated in 1967.  Then he was threatened by Arab terrorist organizations with whom he had a major showdown in September 1970 with Black September.  In 1988 he renounced claims to the West Bank in view of Arab decisions that the PLO was the rightful authority.  

Transjordan had been the home of some of the 12 tribes of Israel back in c1200 BCE.   Reuben , Gad and half of Manasseh were cattle-keeping tribes and had settled there.  King David (1010-970 BCE)  later had conquered the whole land of what came to be called Transjordan including the rich copper mines of the Arabah.  His son, King Solomon (961-920 BCE)  had lost them or only held temporarily.  W Ammon was held by a Jewish family, the Tobiads for a time.  Then after the destruction of the first Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, it was rebuilt in 538-515 BCE.   The Edomites moved into southern Judah and their place was taken by the Nabateans.   Greek towns were established in hellenistic days. 

In the Byzantine days (70-637 CE) , Transjordan began to decline which was accelerated by the Arab conquest of Mohammad (570-620 CE) .  From the 8th to the 19th centuries, it was mostly left to the Bedouins to occupy except when the crusaders established themselves in Oultre Jourdain.  The first Crusade was in 1096-9.  This is when attacks were made on Jews living in Northern France and especially in the Rhineland where massacres occurred in cites of Mainz, Worms, Speyer, Cologne, etc and other places where Jews had found refuge from the Roman attack in Judah.  Jerusalem was taken by them in 1099 and in that Jews and Karaites were massacred.   Crusades went on with the last being in 1320 with attacks on Jews in southern France and northern Spain.  

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
update: 11:20am http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/10/still-bickering-over-balfour/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=96e25acaf1-Mosaic_2013_10_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-96e25acaf1-41144429

The State Israel Was In Ten Years Ago

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

On December 28, 2003, I noted the following in my speech about Israel.  I noted that there were 44 Muslim states with 1 billion people in an area 672 times the size of Israel, yet the Muslims were having a fit over the creation of the only Jewish state in the world that is in their neighborhood.  They were more than intolerant.  22 large sovereign Arab states are in the Middle East including oil rich Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, who steadfastly refuse to absorb the so-called "Palestinian refugees;" preferring to keep them as political pawns in order to blame Israel for their plight!                                                                            
Arabs are living in Israel and are citizens.  They even have a political group and are in the Knesset.  Yet Jews are not allowed in Arab countries today.  The recent earthquake in Iran called for all people to come to help-except the Jews.

Israel has absorbed millions of Jewish refugees;  from the Holocaust, former Soviet Union, Ethiopian black Jewish community, and more than 850,000 Sephardic or Mizrachi Jews, many of whom were expelled from their homes in Arab lands where they had lived for generations, with no compensation for their property which was confiscated!

Since the moment of its recent birth on May 14, 1948, Israel was attacked by all the surrounding Arab countries.  Israel was then 55 years old, and its future was on the line.

              Let's start with some history about Israel.  

1.  Over 3,300 years ago, Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people.  this biblical kingdom was first ruled by Saul in 1020 BCE.(before the common era.).  King David ruled from 1010-970 BCE and King Solomon ruled from 961-920 BCE.  When Solomon died, the kingdom was split into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.  Then the Romans conquered the area in 70 CE and they renamed the area "Palestine."  To the Jews who never left, it has always been known as Eretz Israel.  Yes, never left.  Though much of the land was decimated, the people taken prisoners or killed, some did remain.  Thus, we have always had a Jewish presence in the land.

2. The first Arabs arrived as conquerors in the 7th century, 2,500 years after the Jews had been there.  

3. In 1917 after WWI, Britain was given the task of supervising Palestine.  The Jews had fought with the British, and the Arabs had fought with the Germans.  Chaim Weizmann developed dynamite for the British, and the Jews were rewarded the homeland they had striven for.  The British promised them a Jewish Homeland; a territory consisting of both present day Jordan, Israel and the administered territories.  This was called the Balfour Declaration.  

Because the British had 2nd thoughts about it and wanted to appease the Arabs, they offered only half of the territory in the end to the Jews, who accepted it.  The other half was offered to Emir Feisal, ancestor of today's King of Jordan.  Then they offered half of Israel's half to the Arabs who rejected it.  Actually, the Arabs had thought of the area as belonging to Syria and wanted it to go back to them.

4. There has never existed, in all of history, an independent Arab state of Palestine.  It has been since Roman times fairly recently belonging to the Ottoman Empire.  The British had the mandate of caring for it.  It has been practically uninhabited, a wasteland made of swamps and desert.  No one did anything with it.  It was as if it was waiting for Israelis to come back and build it again.  

5. In 1922 Britain transferred 2/3 of the mandated Palestine to the Hashemite Bedouins who were driven out of Saudi Arabia by a rival clan.  That became Jordan and no Jews are allowed to live inside it today.   Yet Jordanians came across the bridge to work daily in Israel.  This is how Jordan came to be.  Today Jordan is made up mostly of people called Palestinians.  The king of Jordan is married to a Palestinian woman.

6.  This brings us up to the end of WWII.  6 million Jews were killed due to Nazi Germany.   Those that survived could not longer live in Europe.  People there were still trying to kill them, especially in Poland.  They needed a home of their own to go to.  

Jews had been returning to Eretz Israel in the late 1800's and creating kibbutzim.  They had legitimately bought land, drained swamps and started building towns.  They wanted their homeland back. They worked toward that goal with several Zionist congresses.  They conferred with Arab leaders.  Much of the land was owned by Arab landowners who were living in Europe, and they bought it at high prices, because  it was precious to them.

In 1947 the U.N. partitioned mandated Palestine into Jewish and Arab states which the Arabs rejected and then started war to drive the Jews into the sea the minute Israel was declared a state.  200,000 to 570,000 Arabs needlessly left the area so they would not obstruct the victorious Arab armies in their planned massacre of the Jewish defenders.  Many were told to leave by their own leaders.  The Arabs did not win in their attack on the infant country and did not return.  They settled in refugee camps.  The whole situation is used as a club against Israel.  These people came from the surrounding areas such as Greece and the closer Arab neighbors seeking work with the new immigrants who were building a country.  If they had only been in Palestine for 2 years they were deemed "refugees" by the British who were keeping records, such as they were.

160,000 Arabs stayed in Israel in 1948.  200,000 had left their homes.  Many of the successful Palestinian Arabs are the Christians who live in Haifa.  They are not the terrorists.  Israel has had good relations with the Christian Lebanese who were in trouble in 1981-82.  Major Hadad, their leader, would come to Israel for his R&R.  He also came to our hospital.  We had a deal with him to take care of is family if anything happened to him.  I might add that Arab income is the highest in Israel compared to the rest of the Arab world.  

7.  At the same time, 700,000 Jews who lived in the Arab countries such as Yemen, etc, were driven from their homes and needed to come to Israel.  They came and were settled.

8.  Israel is less than 1/3rd the size of Oregon, or 1/19th the size of California.  It is made of 10,840 sq. miles.  California has 160,222 sq miles.  Without the territories it is only 8,000 sq miles, or 2 1/2 times the size of Rhode Island.  It's slightly smaller than New Jersey with a population of about 6.7 million.  5.4 million were Jewish as of May 2003.  Only 17% of the land is arable.  It's 260 miles long, 60 miles at the widest, 3 to 9 miles at the narrowest.  This is roughly the distance from La Guardia airport to downtown Manhattan.   We're talking about a very small piece of real estate.  In comparison, in the year 2,000, New York City had 8,008,278 people.  

9. Jordan is 70% Arab Palestinian Arabs.  Jordan is made of 2/3 of the original mandated Palestine.  Jordan is an Arab Palestine.  In actuality, they already have their state that is ruled by a Hashemite king, which their political leaders reject.  

Why is it that people call Israel aggressors?  Since its inception, Israel has had to be defensive to exist.  It is constantly being attacked.  We haven't started any war nor do we want their land.  We have always wanted peace.  

The Palestinians and the surrounding neighbors have not accepted a Jewish presence in their Muslim neighborhood.  Their goal has always been to drive the Jews out and take over the land.  Only after the War of 48 (War of Independence) where 6 Arab armies attacked Israel, and the War of 56 and the war of 67 (6 day war) when Israel conquered the Gaza Strip, the vast Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, and also repossessed the provinces of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and the eastern part of Jerusalem, which had been occupied by the Jordanians 19 years earlier when they invaded Israel in 1948, and the war of 73 (Yo Kippur) has Egypt and Jordan, the two closest neighbors, begrudgingly accepted Israel's presence, much to the horror of their Arab brothers.  To make peace with Egypt, Israel returned all the Sinai to Egypt.  Israel has always been prepared to give autonomy to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria and has wanted to keep it for security reasons.  

Israel is one of the smallest countries in the world.  It is the only democracy in the area.  

Since Israel's inception, all men and women are in the army by age 18.  I had to get used to seeing so many soldiers with their guns on the streets when I lived there from 1980-1985.  You get used to it after awhile.  All men serve in the IDF for a month every year until the age of 55.  It's called, "going into the milueem."  that affects wherever they are working.  They just usually don't get replaced.  There are no substitutes, even in school.  

You learn to never  pick up any trash on the streets.   It could be a planted bomb.  Every building, such as schools, stores, etc., have checkers at the door going through your purse, etc., before entering.  children have to learn this as soon as they learn to walk.  

One time while shopping in the Hadar area in Haifa, I saw the police robot at work.  A box of cookies had been left on the sidewalk.  The police were called, and the robot shot at it.  Luckily, it was only a big box of cookies, but you never know.  It could have been a planted bomb.  I almost picked up a loaf of bread I found outside my school.  That's when I learned that bombs had been planted in such loaves.  This was in 1980.  We learned that bombs were placed in every sort of container imaginable, even toothpaste boxes.  

Our apartment had a bomb shelter in the building, but our German shepherd, Blintz, was not allowed in it, so I decided that I would not go in, either.  

Everywhere you looked you saw young soldiers, both men and women in uniform carrying rifles.  I was told they even have to sleep with their rifles.

We trained for the civil guard and did our duty every month.  We rode in a police van and I took Blintz with me on my tour.  

                                                The 1982 Lebanon War

While going to Haifa to the hospital to check on my crushed elbow that had 6 screws in it, I saw tanks coming up the highway and thought that there were so many of them, and wondered what was going on.  The hospital was empty.  The doctors were in a hurry and couldn't make an appointment for an operation for me to take out the screws.  It was an army hospital, and the doctors knew that we were at war and they would soon be swamped with patients.  Israeli hospitals take in any wounded, Israeli or Arab.  My junior high male students went there and talked to the Arab injured by using English in order to help the nurses and doctors in their care of them.  

People live in high rise apartments.  There are very few homes except in the new towns in Judea and Samaria.  I saw a few homes in Safed.  One belonged to my writer friend, Dov Silverman.  Some had been excavated from an ancient earthquake and were restored as lovely homes.  I visited a friend who lived in one of those.  

This is a very brief summation of the history of Israel.  I suggest the following books for further information:

The Case For Israel by Alan Dershowitz.  it is excellent.  In his summation, Dershowitz doesn't even count the ancient historical claim of the Jews for the land.  He starts with the United Nations charter as a legal state.

Palestinians have constantly been offered a chance to have their own state alongside Israel and  always Israel has accepted the offer and the Arabs have refused it.

The Palestinians want to be able to allow all Palestinians to return to the area.  This would flood the land.  Actually, there were very few original Palestinians (stateless people, migrants as you will) in Israel in 1947-48.  They would want to overpower the area by population in this "return"

Sharon has said he will trade land for peace.  The Arabs do not want to recognize Israel's existence.   Arafat continually made other Arab leaders angry by not accepting offers.  

Another book to read if you're really into it is From time Immemorial by Joan Peters.  It was written by a non-Jewish woman reporter who originally thought the Palestinians were being given a raw deal by Israel.  In her research she discovered just who Palestinians really were.  Peters spent 7 years researching for this book.  The main thesis of the book is that the Palestinians were a ragtag group of workers who came into the area  from the surrounding countries.  The president of the USA thought so much of the book that he had Peters working for him in the White House.  

Read Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad.  It shows just how empty Palestine was at his time in the 1860's.  

Read Myths and Facts-a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Mitchell G. Bard, PhD.  

How German Jews Became Stateless and Tattooed, in Holocaust of 6 Million Jews

Nadene Goldfoot
Chaim  Weizmann was quoted in The Manchester Guardian as saying: "The world seemed to be divided into two parts – those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter."

German Jews were being persecuted by Hitler who called Jews "criminals" when the Nuremburg Laws of 1935  came out making Jewish stateless refugees in their own country.  No one thought they weren't at home in Germany.  German Jews had been soldiers and had fought for Germany.  My uncle's father put on his uniform when he was forced to clean the streets, he, a Jewish sausage maker.  I've traced his family back to 1830 and they were probably there sooner than that.  Jews were in Germany as early as 321 CE in Cologne and elsewhere on the Rhineland.  There had even been Jewish soldiers in the Roman garrisons in Germany.  In the 8th and 9th century the Carolingian royal house had a pro-Jewish policy encouraging the settlement of Jews with the object of developing trade.  So Jews never expected to suddenly be expelled one day.  

By 1938, 450,000 of the 900,000 German Jews had fled to Palestine, held by the British who had the mandate.  Then the White Paper of May 23, 1939  by Neville Chamberlain came out barring most Jews from entering all during WWII.  Only 75,000 were allowed to enter from 1940-1944, the major part of the war.  They had it fixed so only 10,000 could come each year and the extra 25,000 was only for emergencies.  Jews already there were kept from buying land in Palestine.  

March 1938 was when Germany annexed Austria and 200,000 more Jews became stateless.
September 1938 was when Britain and France let Germany occupy Czechoslovakia and by the next year, March 1939, 200,000 more Jews found themselves stateless.  

Doesn't this sound familiar?  "In February 1939, the British held a conference  in London to negotiate an agreement between the Arabs and the Zionists. The Palestinian Arab delegates would only attend on condition that there were no direct meetings with Zionist representatives since this would be recognition of the legitimacy of Zionists claims over Palestine. So the British government held separate meetings with the two sides. The conference ended in failure on March 17, 1939.

"According to David Wyman, "The United States and its Allies were willing to attempt almost nothing to save the Jews."  Anti-Semitism was rampant in the 1920's and even worse in the 1930's.  By 1940 Jews were 3.7% of the national population.  Today there are about 5 to 6 million Jews in the USA making Jews under 2% of the USA population.  About 100,000 German Jews arrived in the 30's.  My uncle was one of the last who arrived  about May 12, 1939 from Boppard Germany through Hamburg's port.  These Jews had strings attached.  They had to be backed by someone in the states who took economic responsibility for them and had to get them jobs first before they could come here.

"The Holocaust was largely ignored by America media as it was happening  We didn't have internet then.  Newspapers didn't report on it.  Our government knew and didn't tell us.  Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, a Reform Jew himself, "kept issues of concern regarding Jews off the editorial page and burying stories about Nazi atrocities against Jews in short items deep inside the paper. In time he grew increasingly out of step with the American Jewish community by his persistent refusal to recognize Jews as a people and despite obvious flaws in his view of American democracy.  Hollywood films and radio with few exceptions avoided questioning Nazi persecution of Europe's Jews prior to Pearl Harbor. Jewish studio executives did not want to be accused of advocating Jewish propaganda by making films with overtly antifascist themes."  Oh, the webs we weave.  By deceiving themselves and not caring for their Jewish brothers they helped Hitler to kill off 6 million by their over-zeal at being an American.

Resource:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89vian_Conference
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/nurlaws.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia: Germany

Jews, The Original Sons of the Land; from King Hussein of the Hejaz

Nadene Goldfoot
Jews came from Israel and Judea which they lost by 135 CE after being there with Moses and entering the land called Canaan in 1271 BCE.  That's almost a 1,500 year history of living there.  Since then, they've not had a homeland for 2,000 years and had lived in misery and suffered from anti-Semitism.  People have lived in America for only 413 years and we know how we feel about our land.

The Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine from 1517 to 1917.  They were on the side of the Germans in WWI which started on July 28, 1914 and ended on November 11, 1918.  Germany greatly influenced the Arabs throughout WWII as well.  Already in 1916 the Ottoman Empire's southern region was to be mandated by France and Great Britain under the Sykes-Picot Agreement.  France was given the mandate over the  land mass  that became Lebanon and Syria,  and Britain was given the mandate over the land mass that became Trans-Jordan, then Jordan, Israel and Judea-Samaria.

On November 2, 1917, the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration.  This document pledged support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.  They were in sympathy with the Jewish Zionist aspirations and had met many times with the Jewish leaders.  All the allied governments were parties to the antecedent negotiations and approved the Declaration.

 So did some of the main leaders of the Arab national movement such was Emir Feisal, born May 20, 1885,  who is an ancestor of the present day King of Jordan.   He became King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria or Greater Syria in 1920, and was King  of Iraq from 23 August 1921 to 1933. He was a member of the Hashemite dynasty. On January 3, 1919 an agreement was reached between Emir Feisal, also the chief Arab delegate at the Paris Peace Conference and the son of King Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of  Mecca, the Grand Sharif of Mecca which means he was a descendant of Mohammad,  and Dr. Chaim Weizmann of the World Zionist Organization.  This is when he endorsed the  Balfour Declaration  and Palestine was recognized as a separate Jewish entity.  The Arab State would maintain diplomatic relations with them on condition  that Britain and France met the Arab demands in other territories.   The mandate the Britain held was to see to it that this was carried out.

The Mandate extended over both sides of the river Jordan.  Judea and Samaria had existed there.  As early as 1922 Britain divided the Mandated territory in half and established an Arab emirate in Trans-Jordan. Winston Churchill, then the British colonial secretary,  negotiated this in 1922.   This deprived the Jews of any rights to the land east of the river.  Then Britain made it forbidden to Jews to buy land or settle there as well, clearly against the Mandate rules.

At the same time, leaders of the Arab national movement were negotiating with Britain for the recognition of Arab national rights in the former territories of the Ottoman empire throughout the Middle East. Not only did Emir Feisal want to be king of a large piece of the empire but his brother, Abdullah did also.

 King Hussein of the Hejaz, Hussein bin Ali,  was born in 1853 in Istanbul as the eldest son of Sharif Ali ibn Muhammad and his wife, Salha Bani-Shahar. He was the last of the Hashemite rulers over the Hejaz to be appointed by the Ottoman Sultan. As a Hashemite, he was highly respected in the Islamic world. It was his "noble" lineage which granted him the status he maintained in the Hijaz. As a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, even the British, during his period as Emir, recognized this special status. He wrote the following:

"We saw the Jews...streaming to Palestine from Russia, Germany, Austria, Spain, America...The cause of causes could not escape those who had the gift of deeper insight;  they knew that the country was for its original sons, for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland."  (Al Qibla, Mecca, #183, March 23, 1918;  George Antonius, Arab Awakening. p. 269)

The British were most ambivalent as to their policy.  At times they allowed Jewish immigration and at other times it was severely restricted and they prohibited Jews from even buying land at other times.  This was pre-holocaust era when European Jews needed to enter Palestine.  It meant life or death.

Today I see college history professors giving the Balfour Declaration a slight glance, telling students that it was not a serious document giving rights to the Jewish people which is completely incorrect.  All the nations, and they belonged to the League of Nations at that time, the precursor of the United Nations, had agreed that the Jews were to have this Homeland and to the land which was involved.  The Jews wound up with only 20% of the  original land promised because of the British finagling.

Chaim Weizmann, Zionist leader, had helped the British to win the war against the Ottoman empire in 1917-1918 with his organic chemical invention relating to the fermentation of acetone-butyl which improved the weaponry used by Britain.  Without it, no matter how many weapons were used, they could have lost the battle.

At any rate, Jewish political rights were restricted.  Arab objectors were often favored if not fostered.  Immigration of Jews were limited.  Jews went ahead anyway and founded new villages,  towns and cities, drained swamps, and planted forests.  Tel Aviv was expanded.  Arabs enjoyed the advantages they were receiving from all this.  However, by 1936 Arab rioting started in which was stimulated by the German and Italian Fascist governments who wanted to embarrass England in the Middle East.  Jews developing the country continued anyway without interruption.  The reaction of the British was to restrict immigration and the rights of Jews.  In the 1920s most of the Jews came from Eastern Europe.  In the 1930s, many Jews had escaped to Palestine from Nazi Germany.

By 1936 there were 384,000 Jews and 983,000 Arabs in Palestine. By 1948 the Yishuv numbered 650,000 Jews.  This was an awesome number as Moses had gone into Canaan with 600,000 men.   Had immigration been more open for Jews, the number would have been much higher.  Most of the Jews lived in the Tel Aviv area which is on the seacoast.  November 1947 was when Britain turned to the new United Nations who said to divide Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states.  Jews said yes to their piece and Arabs said no and have been saying no ever since.  They won't settle for half; they want the whole piece.

Leaders of the Palestinians refused to recognize any Jewish national rights in the land and wanted complete Arab control over all.  They erupted into violence in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936-39 when 517 Jews were killed  in  terror attacks against Jewish villages and towns.  In 1929 they massacred 67 Jews in Hebron, destroyed their synagogues. Jews had lived there for 2,000 years.  The most influential Arab dissenter was the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.   During WWII, he joined up with the Nazis and spent the war years in Berlin.

Countries today created out of the Ottoman Empire include more than just all the Middle East countries.  Algeria, Bahrain, Cyprus, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian Territory, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Republic and Yemen were part of the empire.  Arab countries occupy 640 times the land mass as does Israel.  The Arabs outnumber the Jewish state of Israel 50 to 1.  In the world of 6.7 billion people, 1.48 billion are Muslims.  That's 1/4 of the world population.  Jews number 12.9 million which is 0.2% of the world population.  Arabs aren't in any danger of being wiped out, except by each other.  Israel is a tiny but important state that must be recognized by the Arabs as having the right to exist in their ancient land.  

The Jews lived up to their part of the deal with the Balfour Declaration but the British did not.  Emir Feisal had also turned against the Jews, but not because of any action on their part.  Feisal Ibn Hussein  was the eldest son of Hussein, sherif of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.  He had led the uprising of Arabs against Turkey (Ottoman Empire) from 1916 to 1918.  He had been sympathetic to Zionism and hoped to receive help in building his future kingdom from the Jews this way.  Later, after meeting with Weizmann, he was expulsed in 1920 from Syria by the French, who also held the mandate on that part of the Ottoman Empire.  His brother, Abdullah, became King of Iraq on April 1,  1921, so he was rewarded right away by the British.  This Abdullah is the gggrandfather of the present day King of Jordan.  The other Palestinian leaders, influenced by the Germans, who the Ottoman Empire supported in WWI, then influenced Emir Feisal who turned against the Zionists.  Thanks to the French-British connection, all the good plans fell apart that had been reached by Weizmann and Feisal.

When Jordan attacked Israel in 1967, they kissed good-bye to their hold on Judea-Samaria and east Jerusalem.  They had lost that war along with all their Arab neighbors. Israel didn't kick out any Palestinians but Israelis felt freer to move to Judea and Samaria, holy places to Jews.  Since when do countries keep land when attacking another and losing?  Israel gained rights that they should have had in 1948 .  What would have happened to Israel if she had lost that war?  What was the purpose of the Arab's attack in 1967 if not to end Israel?  What is the purpose of the Palestinians not sitting down to make peace with Israel  for 65 years and establish their Palestine in an acceptable manner?

Resource: http://www.masada2000.org/historical.html excellent with maps
Facts About Israel 1973, division of information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/his_transjordan.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kings_of_Jordan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire
http://www.lookisrael.com/files/justbig.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_bin_Ali,_Sharif_of_Mecca
http://www.jrtelegraph.com/2011/01/ruth-wisse-arabs-and-muslims-demand-6401-odds-over-jews.html by Ruth Wisse.  Ruth R. Wisse is Peretz Professor Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature.

Revealing Facts About Sherif Hussein's Sons' Involvement Against Establishing Israel

Nadene Goldfoot
Sherif Hussein was the father of Abdullah, and Sherif had supported Zionism.  He must not have figured that this would lead to a completely independent Jewish state, though.  However, Abdullah's elder brother Emir Faisal had promised Chaim Weizmann his support in 1918 at the end of World War I. when Weizmann had visited him in his desert camp.  He had told him he would support the Balfour Declaration but did not mention conditions.  He thought Jews were very influential in the world and would help him achieve his coveted goal:  World sanction for an independent Greater Syria which he would head.  

Faisal didn't consider the Balfour Declaration to be the British rejection of earlier promises to the Arabs to support the establishment of an independent Arab world in the Middle East when the Ottoman Empire was gone.  After all, they had supported the British with an Arab military uprising against the Turks.  The promises to the Arabs were in vague terms by the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry MacMahon, in correspondence with Hussein.

Sherif Hussein was the ruler of the Hedjaz area that later became known as Saudi Arabia.  He had assured D.G. Hogarth, a British representative in 1918 that he would support the Balfour Declaration---if it did not mean the establishment of an independent Jewish state. He lost the chance to be king of Arabia to Ibn Saud.

Saudi Arabia had never been as opposed to Zionism as most other Arab states.  Harry St. John Philby, a British adviser to the first king of Saudi Arabia, a Bedouin,  King  Abdulaziz b: 1876-d: 9 November 1953, otherwise known as Ibn Saud, wrote that he suggested to Weizmann a plan where all Palestine would go to the Jews, who would give Saud 20 million pounds to resettle the Palestine Arabs.

Weizmann, in referring to this plan, said that Winston Churchill favored such a solution, under which Saud would become "Lord of the Middle East.'  According to Philby, Saud waited for Churchill and Roosevelt to make the first move, but they didn't.  Then, Saud showed an uncompromising attitude towards the Jews in conversations with Roosevelt following the Yalta conference while on a cruiser on February 4-11, 1945. He had grown afraid of the other Arabs' reactions.    Roosevelt decided then to take no action which might prove hostile to the Arab people.  When  Truman came into office, this was thrown up to him as a reminder.  He rejected it, and did vote for Israel's statehood.  

Abdullah was in his Amman Shuneh Palace on December 17, 1947 reading a report about the partition plan to divide the 20% that was left of the Jewish Homeland between the Arabs and the Jews.  The Mufti of Jerusalem's plans were to arm his supporters to be ready when the British troops left on May 14, 1948.  They had collected 10,000 rifles and other light arms to give to the Palestine Arabs and were recruiting about 3,000 volunteers ready to be trained and organized.  Abdullah  was against this and wanted the intervention of the regular Arab armies to enter as the Arab Legions was the only modern well-trained regular Arab force.  With them, he could occupy the area allocated by the UN to the Arabs in accordance with his secret proposal to the Jews.

The Muft of Jerusalem, Syrians and Egyptians feared the Arab Legion would then occupy Arab Palestine.  Saudi Arabia was against arming the Palestinians and also bringing in the regular armies.  Iraq's rulers, Hashemites like Abdullah, would not cooperate with Transjordan.  They were trying to get a defense agreement with Britain and wanted to counter protests at home that the government was soft on imperialism and Zionism.  The premiers decided to implement the secret decisions of the Bludan Conference.

June 1946 in Bludan, Syria, the Arab States had up to now paid only lip service to anti-Zionism.  They were too busy in their own problems to move against the Jews of Palestine.  The Anglo-American Commission recommended that 100,000 Jewish refugees be allowed to enter Palestine immediately.  This need was that the Holocaust was over and survivors had no place to go.  They were being placed in detention camps in Cyprus, for one.

These leaders  were eager to see a conflict between Truman of the USA and and the British who were against it.  The British needed "evidence" to show that immigration would lead to bloodshed, so the Arabs called a conference of the Arab League Political Committee in Bludan.  They rejected the American idea of allowing immigration and secretly decided that if the Palestine Arabs went to war, the Arab States would not be able to stop their people from coming to their aid with money, arms and volunteers.

The British were busy instigating Arab rebellion and the British Representatives in Amman asked Abdulla if he would permit volunteers to cross into Palestine from Transjordan.  He was against the crossing himself but agreed.  He could be accused of selling out to the British and Jews.  Bevin himself approved of this idea.  They agreed to have the volunteers pass secretly after midnight so others would think they had infiltrated into Palestine without official Transjordan or British knowledge.  They would move in a group with Arab Legion guards marching to the front and rear until they crossed into Palestine.  They wouldn't stay in Jerusalem, but march to the Nablus area in central Palestine.  It all ended up that Britain would continue to supply arms to Egypt, Iraq and Transjordan.  On January 21, 20 trucks with Syrian license plates carrying over 700 Arab Liberation Army men under Safr Bek, a Syrian officer, raced across the border into Palestine to fight.  However, the British-Iraqi arms agreement was cancelled shortly after it had been drawn up when mobs rioted in Baghdad in protest against British "imperialism."

Resource:  Genesis 1948 by Dan Kurzman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference

How Jews and Arabs in Agreement Were Thwarted by the British and French

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

         1917 Balfour Declaration-After the fall of the Ottoman Empire

1894 was the year of the Dryfus Affair, where a French Jewish Captain was found guilty of treason when he really was innocent.  Anti-Semitism, something very common in Russia,  had now reached this ugly level in France.  It hit many Jews in the heart that they needed their own state and the only desire was for Palestine.  Besides, Russian Jews tired of pogroms had already started going  back to Palestine in the 1880's to establish a homeland with the First Aliyah.  Uganda was suggested but quickly dismissed.  After all, many Jewish prayers speak of Jerusalem, Zion and the Land of Israel.  Jews are told not to forget Jerusalem, the site of the temple, which is a major tenet of Judaism.  The Jewish calendar, holidays and festivals all originated in Israel and revolve around Israel's seasons.  Jews pray toward Jerusalem and say the words, "next year in Jerusalem" every Passover since 70 CE.  The Jewish religion, culture and history make clear that it is only in the land of Israel that a Jewish state can be built.

In 1913 the Zionists realized that they needed an agreement with the Arabs if they were going to live in Palestine.  Sami Hochberg represented the Zionists in a meeting with the Cairo- Decentralization Party and the anti-Ottoman Beirut Reform Society and reached an agreement which led to the adoption of a resolution assuring Jews equal rights under a decentralized government.  He also got an invitation to the first Arab Congress in Paris June 1913.

They were most receptive to Zionist aspiration.  Hochberg was encouraged by they response.  Abdul-Hamid Yahrawi, the President of the Congress said, " All of us, both Muslims and Christians, have the best of feelings toward the Jews.  When we spoke in our resolutions about the rights and obligations of the Syrians, this covered the Jews as well.  because they are our brothers in race and we regard them as Syrians who were forced to leave the country at one time but whose hearts always bet together with ours, we are certain that our Jewish brothers the world over will know how to help us so that our common interests may succeed and our common country will develop both materially and morally."

Yet when the WWI broke out, Arabs were opposing the Balfour Declaration, convincing the Zionist leadership of the need to work harder to reach an understanding with the Arabs.  First Chaim Weizmann met with Said Shukeir, Dr. Faris Nimr and Suleiman Bey Nassif (Syrian Arab nationalists chosen by British as representatives.  He told them of the need to live in harmony with Arabs in a British Palestine.

Nassif said, "There was room in Palestine for another million people without affecting the position of those already there."  Dr. Nimr used his Cairo newspaper to dispel the misconceptions about Zionist aims.

World War I started on July 28, 1914. The Ottoman Empire sided with the Germans.   The Allied nations of Europe were planning the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire.  Along came the very secret  Sykes-Picot Agreement (Asia Minor Agreement) of November 1915  and signed on May 16,  1916 to control Western Asia  that involved Britain and France with the help of Russia for the results after the overthrow.  They would divvy up the land between the British and the French.  Russia later exposed their secret plan after the Russian Revolution in October 1917.  .

The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, saying that the British government favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people was accepted by no other than Emir Faisal (Feisal) ,  a descendant of Muhammed the Prophet, son of Sherif Hussein, the big leader of the Arab revolt against the Turks.  It came about after long negotiations started by Chaim Weizmann,  right after the outbreak of World War I.  In 1918 Weizmann met in Aqaba with Emir Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, the leader of the Arab movement, to discuss prospects of reaching an understanding on the establishment of independent Arab and Jewish states.  President Wilson of the USA supported the American Zionists, headed by Brandeis.  The document was approved by other Allied governments and incorporated into  the Mandate in 1922.  Faisal had signed an agreement with Chaim Weizmann and other Zionist leaders when they had attended   the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.  

He had said, "Mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish People, and realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab states and Palestine."

Here we have the leader of the Arab nationalist movement and the Zionist movement reaching an understanding.  This demonstrates that Jewish and Arab aspirations were not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Evidently the ending of the Ottoman Empire that came at the end of WWI gave several Arab chieftans the inspiration to have their own statehoods, which now would be independent from the Turkish rule.  There was no immediate need for the Arabs like there was for the Jews, who had been suffering nothing but hardships and death by having to wander amongst the nations trying to find a home that never materialized.  The latest cause of the need came from the many pogroms that were happening in Russia's Pale of Settlement, where Jews had been confined.  The Arabs saw the opportunity after 400 years of Turkish rule and decided that they needed a piece of the action as well.  They were instigated by such as "Lawrence of Arabia,' too..

Here we have two plans running at the same time.  "Lord Balfour wrote a memorandum from the Paris Peace Conference which stated that the other allies had implicitly rejected the Sykes-Picot agreement by adopting the system of mandates.  It allowed for no annexations, trade preferences, or other advantages. He also stated that the Allies were committed to Zionism and had no intention of honoring their promises to the Arabs.^"

The agreement looked to the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration and called for all necessary measures "to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants on the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil."

Faisal had conditions to accepting the Balfour Declaration and that was depending on the British wartime promises of independence to the Arabs.  As he later saw it, these were not kept, though many were rewarded with it, he felt he was not.  He had been planning to receive aid from the Jews in building his future kingdom and had met Dr. Weizmann in Transjordan in 1918 and Paris in 1919 where they had reached an agreement on mutual aid..  Later, because he was ousted from Syria by the French in 1920, and because of influence of the Palestinian Arab leaders, his attitude to Zionism became hostile.

What had happened in the battle of the Arab revolt (Arab Awakening) of June 5 1916 against the Ottoman Empire was that a Thomas Edward Chapman, brilliant but illigitimate son born in Wales in 1888 came on the scene in October 1916  to be known as Lawrence of Arabia.  Lawrence was the son of Anglo-Irish Sir Thomas Chapman b; 1846, 7th Baronet and his partner, Sarah Lawrence, also illigitimate born in 1861,  a Scottish governess,  and was related to Sir Walter Raleigh.  He met with Faisal and then managed to take the ill-disciplined Arabs and turn them into a fighting force of 3,000 against  50,000 Turks and win.  He and his force were under General Allenby in Palestine by December 9, 1917 when they entered Jerusalem. "

In 1919 Faisal led the Arab delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and, with the support of the knowledgeable and influential Gertrude Bell, argued for the establishment of independent Arab emirates for the area previously covered by the Ottoman Empire.

Lawrence accompanied the Arab delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference June 28 1919,  where they fully expected their reward for helping the Allies in the war - full independence. Britain and France carved up the Middle East into their own zones of influence and the French even ejected Faisal from Damascus."

Even the American Congress felt the public support for the Balfour Doctrine and a resolution  approving it was adopted in 1922.  In 1944 both national parties, Republicans and Democrats,  called for the restoration of the Jewish Commonwealth, and again in 1945, a similar resolution was adopted by Congress.

Faisal, or Faisal Ibn Hussein was born in 1885 in Saudi Arabia and died in 1933.    His father, Hussein, was sherif of Mecca, Arabia.  Faisel had dreams of creating pan- Arab nationalism.  Faisal  was the leader of the rising against Turkey from 1916 to 1918 and then became the king of Syria. only to be ousted by the French in 1920 because  Faisal's Arabs and the French fought each other, ending Faisal's reign quickly. The French then held the Syrian mandate.  He  did become king of Iraq in  1921. 

 Iraqi independence came in 1932, but came with lots of persecution of Jews who lived there, mainly in Bagdad.  Hundreds were killed and wounded in a pogrom in 1941.  Iraq had been one of the nations attacking Israel in 1948.  123,500 of the Iraqi Jews then moved to Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.  All their property in Iraq had been taken by the government.  Only 150 Jews were found there in 1991.

The Arab Higher Committee, a central council of the Arab National Movement in Palestine from 1936 to 1948 were led by the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el Husseini.  Their aim was to fight Zionism and the Palestinian Jews.  They were outlawed by the British mandatory  government in 1937 as they organized riots and killings in 1936.  The leaders were exiled to the Seychelles, islands east of Africa.  They re-established in 1945 and again caused riots and killings in 1947-1948.  After Israel was established in 1948 the king of Jordan did away with the committee, but the mufti tried to revive it as the Palestine Government in the Gaza Strip.

Here we had had Chaim Weizmann and his discoveriy and invention to produce acetone. Acetone was used in the manufacture of cordite explosive propellants critical to the Allied war effort.  
Without this, neither the British, French nor Arabs would have won,  along with the extra soldiers provided through Lawrence of Arabia who took Palestine.  Both  the Jews and the Arabs were cheated out of what they had been promised, though the Jews did have a written Declaration over what the Arabs had presumed would be their reward for their outstanding fighting.   In the end the Arabs were given far more of the Ottoman Empire than what they had dreamed of and sooner than the Jews. Suprisingly, they refused more than half of the share offered to the Jews because they wanted it all.

Resource: Myths and Facts by Mitchell Bard and Joel Himelfarb
New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal-Weizmann_Agreement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/lawrence_of_arabia.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/weizmann.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Weizmann
http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Sarah_Junner_Lawrence_(1861-1959)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria
.  

What Jews Did During World War I

Nadene Goldfoot 
World War I started; the axis (Germans, Austrian-Hungary, Ottoman Empire) against the allies the rest of the Western powers, ie Great Britain, USA, etc.)  What was the cause of the war?  Not the Jews.  Long-term causes of the war included the imperialistic foreign policies of the great powers of Europe, including the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, the French Republic, and Italy. The assassination on 28 June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by a Yugoslav nationalist, (Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb)  in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina was the proximate trigger of the war.

 Jews lived in Germany. In 1910 there were 615,021 Jews.   The World Zionist Organization 's center was in Berlin, so they decided at the beginning of the war to have a liaison office in Copenhagen, Denmark, which was neutral.  Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire at that time. In the beginning of the war Jews found themselves on both sides of the war.   The supporters of the allies or "alliance" between England and France were in a minority but included Chaim Weizmann in London and Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who got busy and established a Jewish Legion in the British army.  Pinhas Rutenberg went to the USA to  do the same thing in the American army, Baron Rothschild in Paris and Joseph Trumpeldor, who with Jabotinsky created the first auxiliary unit in the British army and were known later as the Zion Mule Corps.

Chaim Weizmann invented acetone, important in making explosives,  as a chemist which helped Britain to win the war.  The importance of Weizmann's work to the ongoing war effort encouraged Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to issue the Balfour Declaration of 1917 in support of Weizmann's Zionist objectives as Weizmann ascended to the presidency of the British Zionist Federation.


On 2 November 1917 the British government sent a declaration of sympathy with Jewish-Zionist aspirations and approved it and published it as the Balfour Declaration after its author, Lord Balfour.  The government approved the declaration on October 31, 1917, the same day the British attacked southern Palestine which led to the conquest of this area and of Jerusalem within 6 weeks.
In 1917 the British had 2 new Jewish battalions in the army that would fight on the Palestine front:  one from England with Ze'ev Jabotinsky  and the other from the USA by David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.  By 1918 a 3rd battalion was in Eretz Israel.

The Jews in Palestine, called the Yishuv, lost many people and suffered a lot.  The population went down from 85,000 to 56,000 because of people leaving, deportations, economic situation and disease.  Turkey had told all foreign nationals in Palestine to take out Turkish citizenship or leave on October 30, 1914.  That began the Jewish exodus.  The Balfour Declaration was published and that along with the British forces conquering Jerusalem was thought to be a part of the Messiah's coming.

Finally 400 years of Turkish rule came to an end in September 1918.  The British military regime replaced it and the Jews thought that soon, because of the Balfour Declaration, its promises would come to fruition.

On June 4, 1918, Weizmann met with Emir Feisal in south Transjordan to discuss cooperation between the Jewish and Arab national movements.

August 20, 1918, a delegation of doctors and nurses from the Hadassah Organization of America arrived in Eretz Israel with medical equipment to help Yishuv members who needed medical attention from the effects of World War I.

November 11, 1918, end of WWI.  Chaim Weizmann became Israel's first president on February 1, 1949.

Reference: http://www.jewishagency.org/JewishAgency/English/Jewish+Education/Compelling+Content/Eye+on+Israel/120/Chapter+Four+World+War+One.htm
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/wwi-chemist-dr-chaim-weizmann-and-israel/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Weizmann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbs_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina
http://www.edwardvictor.com/GermanyFrame2main.htm  Jewish population in Germany, listed by dates

How the United States Helped to Create Israel

Nadene Goldfoot

Jews never had left "Palestine" since the Romans had taken Jerusalem in 70 CE and had renamed the territory "Palestine, the hateful name of an ancient enemy."   Some had always remained.  That's who our pennies helped out when we Jewish children attended Sunday School and brought out karen-an eem to put in the jar for the poor.

In 1892 Russian  Jews 25,000 to 35,000 immigrated back to "Palestine" in what became known as the First Aliyah.  This immigration pattern continued till 1903.  They all farmed and created cities despite the hardships of mosquitoes and attacking bands of nomadic Arabs. 

 By 1893 there were also about 92,300 Arabs in the primarily Jewish-settled area.  This included settled Arabs and those recently arrived by the time of the Turkish census who came to Jewish settlements looking for work.  The new economic attractions of the Jewish areas had a big pull for the poor peasanat-migrants in the Middle East lands next door to the "deserted" Palestine.  In their own lands there were crushing burdens of confiscatory taxes and extortionate loan practices, Bedouin raids and tribal warfare that they escaped from.  Arab families kept moving and went where they heard people were better treated. 

A journalist who became an activst was Theodore Herzel in 1896, an Austrian-Hungarian secular Jew who saw first hand the anti-semitism that had been growing.  He thought about it a great deal and came up with his solution to such a horror that he had witnessed and published his document, "THE JEWISH STATE."  What evolved was that he had created Zionism and organized the 1st Congress of intellectual Jewish men to come together and bring it about after men had just been praying for it to happen for 2,000 years. 

The World War I commenced in the middle of the planning.  In 1917 there was a Jewish scientist, Chaim Weizmann, who had been instrumental in causing the Allies to win the 1st world war by his invention.  He was also a Zionist and turned out to be a wonderful statesperson for his Jewish people.

He persuaded the British to issue a statement favoring the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine.  The British were holding the mandate which was the outcome of the war being won by the Allies.  The Ottoman Empire had been on the German or Axis side and was now in control of the British and French mandates until it was decided as to what to do with the land.  This statement became the Balfour Declaration and was in fact part of the payment to Jews, mainly Weizmann,  for their support of the British against the Turks in the war.  The League of Nations ratified the declaration and in 1922 appointed Britain to rule Palestine.

Jews were so optimistic and needy for a homeland that they immigrated there from many countries, first from Russia,  but mainly a little later from Germany when Nazi persecution of Jews began in the 20's and 30's.  This made the Arabs aware of the Jews' need for a national homeland.  By 1936 guerrilla fighting broke out between Arabs and Jews. 

"The Palestinian Arabs have at present no will of their own.  Neither have they ever developed any specifically Palestinian nationalism....It would seem as though in existing circumstances most of the Palestinian Arabs would be quite content to be incorporated in Trans-Jordan. (from Folke  Bernadotte, UN Advisor in To Jerusalem, 1950-1951" from Time Immemorial page 234.).   

Britain couldn't keep the peace so issued the White Paper in 1939 restricting Jewish immigration.  The Jews felt betrayed and bitterly opposed this policy, looking to the USA for support.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt played two sides being sympathetic to Jews and assuring Arabs that he would consult both parties.  Nobody knew what his position was.  Harry S. Truman became president after he died and was clear that his sympathy was with the Jews, accepted the Balfour Declaration  saying it was in keeping with President Woodrow Wilson's principle of "self-determination."  He started several studies of the situation and his belief was supported that as a result of the Holocaust, Jews were even more oppressed than in the beginning and were in great need of their own homeland.  The USA Dept. of War and State advised him against US intervention for the Jews because, they said, they recognized the possibilitiy of a Soviet-Arab connection and potential Arab restriction on oil supplies to the USA.

The USA and Britian in April 1946 established the "Ango-American Committee of Inquiry".  They had 10 recommendations on subjects like refugee immigration into Palestine, land policy, need for peace in Palestine, etc. see http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/anglo/angtoc.htm. 

Reactions to the recommendations were not good.  The British reacted badly to Jewish rebellion (of which my 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, was involved and a leader of) and was put in Acco's prison.  Many young men were hung by the British.  By February 1947 Arab-Jewish communications had collapsed.  Britian was anxious to get out of such a problem and formally requested on April 2, 1947 that the UN General Assembly have a special committee on Palestine called UNSCOP who recommended that Britain's mandate end and the territory be partitioned into 2 states.  Jews of course were divided in their feelings about this.  Some wanted control of all of Palestine.  Others went along with partition as their dream of a homeland could still be met, though much smaller.  The Arabs, however, were not agreeable to any point of the plan.  So, by October the Arab League Council told its Arab cohorts to move their troops to the border of Palestine. 

Truman told the State Department to support the UN plan and they did, though reluctantly.  On November 29, 1947 the plan passed in the UN General Assembly.  At midnight, May 14, 1948, Israel 's new provisional government proclaimed a new State of Israel!  Truman recognized the government as de facto authority of the Jewish state (de jure recognition was extended on January 31, 1949.)  Truman had told the press before he told the glum State Dept officials!  What other name did the new government give it but Israel, the name of the original Jewish state that sat in that same territory.   May 15, 1948, the first day of Israeli Independence, turned out to be exactly one year after UNSCOP was established.  On this day the Arab armies invaded Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war began.  They had refused their offer and still do to this very day, for 64 years! 

Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917
National Archives, Seattle, http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/us-israel/
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/ww1.html
From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters, journalist and researcher
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Aliyah