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

Syrian Officials: Keeping Hatred Going Against Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                             
                          
                                     Palestine- Small Notch in the Arab World

Joan Peters wrote in her book, "From Time Immemorial,"  that Arab refugees "have been bred to believe that the fraudulent history they learn by rote is true."  They have been brought up to believe that their identity can only come true at the cost of the destruction of the Jews.  Their dream of their history has been drilled into them wherever they are; in or out of refugee camps; to return to their Palestinian homeland.

Jordan has many Palestinians living there.  Those taken in have citizenship rights now, but Jordan refuses to take in anymore.  Jordan had a Civil war with the Palestinians from September 1970 to July 1971 called "Black September,"  a fight to see who would have control of the kingdom, for the Palestinians, led by the PLO, demanded control of the whole state.  Many feel this is already a Palestinian state.

Syrian officials were interviewed in Damascus in June 1977 and said they wanted Americans to help them develop arable Syrian land.  They themselves did not have a population to develop the land as they all had jobs then, so they were in need of people and technology.   They were even willing to give land to those who would come and work on it.

Joan Peters asked them, "Why not give the land to those Palestinian Arabs who would choose to accept your offer?
One official answered angrily, "  We will give the land to anyone-the Ibos, the Koreans, Americans...anyone who comes---anyone but the Palestinians!  We must keep their hatred directed against Israel!"

Isn't it ironic?  Many of the so called Palestinians actually did come from Syria because when they did, they were looking for jobs and there were none in their own country.  The Jews living all the time in "Palestine" were not the builders, but the Jews that returned in the late 1800's from Russia were, and some did employ Arabs to help with building projects.  The Ottoman Empire was in power over the land then, but had very few Arabs living on the land.  They were getting preferential treatment over the Jews, however.

Levin's book tells about Palestine from the turn of the century around the 1880's to the Balfour Declaration, written November 2, 1917, covering about a quarter of a century of turbulent events.  It said, "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."  Of course, the British themselves were the ones who screwed up the whole deal by practicing favoritism for the Arabs and rejected the Jews. They had also made promises to the Arabs at the same time to establish their kingdom and turn a Sheik into a king.   By doing this they did everything against the Jews to achieve the goal of establishing a national home.   

The first Jewish pioneers that came  had many hardships to endure, comparable to our American pioneers' living.  They had to deal with the Turkish overlords, the relationship between neighboring Jews and Arabs where the wars of the present were foreordained in blood feuds and hatreds of an earlier generation.  The First World War and the Russian Revolution caused great upheavals.  This all helped to create a Jewish fighting force.  The novel's main characters are the Chaimovitch family who had fled Czarist Russia's pogroms who came to their motherland which turned out to be rocky, parched arid land ruled by the cruel Turks and dominated by hostile Arab villagers, disease infested but yet, their Jewish land.

Joan Peters was studying the original documents about Palestine which were a part of Winston Churchill's papers and came across a dynamite statement.  It was the claim that Jewish settlement in Palestine had caused the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Arabs, something they are using today to claim their "right of return."
                                                                         

Churchill said in 1939, when Hitler was closing the door on doomed Jews in Germany trying to get out, and  plotting their massacres with the 2nd most powerful Arab, Sayyid Amin al-Husseini, also known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,   "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."

Because of real people who developed the land from neglect that had become a wasteland made up of sand, rocks and mosquito-infested swamps, we have a beautiful state of Israel today.  The land has returned to it's natural life-fulfilling state from all this hard work, but the Arabs are clinging to their dreamed up  imagined history.  They are clamoring for all of Jerusalem right now.  Tomorrow it is all of Israel as their charters call for as written in Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Arabs like to spread the false information that Ashkenazi Jews are not real Jews.  They keep the fallacy going that only the Jews of the Levant were from the 12 tribes of Jacob.  They should develop the habit of reading more about our history.  Jews, whether they are Ashkenazi (recently from Europe), or Sephardi (recently from Spain and Portugal) or Mizrachi (from Egypt and that area), are all from the same group that survived the Roman Empire's attack in 70 CE.  Even DNA is proving this.  It happens that many Jews were forcefully taken to Rome as slaves, and from there finally were able to break away and went into Germany, and then went northwards into eastern Europe where our Russian Jews fleeing from pogroms finally decided after 2,000 years to return and settle their own land once again.  This is one way they keep trying to stoke the hatred against the Jews.

There are 10 Palestinian camps in Syria created from 1948 till 1967 with 3 unofficial ones built from 1955 to 1962.   About 112,550 occupants are in Yarmouk built in 1957, located in Damascus, which is the largest.  The latest reports are that on a Sunday in July Syria gassed people in the camp by bombing it with chemical weapons.   22 were reported dead.  It is still home today to over 100,000 Palestinians.  Syria would rather keep them in  camps on the UN dole than have them work and own land.

Resource: Book:  "From Time Immemorial", by Joan Peters.  copyright 1984- non-fiction, p. 406 paperback
Book: Historical Novel:  "The Settlers" by Meyer Levin, copyright 1972
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_in_Jordan
http://www.timesofisrael.com/syria-accused-of-gassing-palestinian-refugee-camp/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_refugee_camps

Arabs Preach Nazi Hate of Jews in PA Newspaper

Nadene Goldfoot
"Churchill and Roosevelt were alcoholics, and in their youth were questioned more than once about brawls they started in bars, while Hitler hated alcohol and was not addicted to it. He used to go to sleep early and wake up early, and was very organized. 

These facts have been turned upside down as well, and Satan has been dressed with angels' wings."  

  This was published in the  Al-Hayat al-Jadida, March 18, 2013, the official daily newspaper of the Palestinian National Authority.  In other words, it is a Fatah newspaper.  

This shows the mentality of our Arab neighbors.  He goes on to say that had the Nazis won, we would not be thinking highly of these two men.  He is praising Hitler because he didn't drink.  The man was a madman and yet the Arab writer is praising him.  

We know Hitler " for his insatiable greed for power, his ruthlessness, cruelty and utter lack-of feeling, his contempt for established institutions and his lack of moral restraints. "  The fact was that "he secretly admired  Roosevelt to a considerable degree, regardless of what he publicly said about him. Underneath he probably feared him inasmuch as he was unable to predict his actions.

Arabs leaders have been using Nazi propaganda on their people ever since Israel was created on May 14, 1948.   "Nazi propaganda was greatly facilitated by several Arab exiles, prominent among them Hajj Amin al-Husayni and Rashid Ali al-Kaylani, who were not tried after WorldWar II due to British concerns for their position in the Arab world in the post-war period.  Mein Kampf is popular with this population as well as Protocals of the Elder Zion" which is an antisemitic hoax purporting to describe a Jewish plan for taking over the world..

It was the huge Ottoman Empire who had sided with the Germans in WWI, and so many of the Arabs continued and kept siding with them in WWII as well.  Churchill didn't do the Jews any favors by writing off 80% of the Jewish National Homeland, but he did fight the Empire with the Arabs during WWI.  By WWII Churchill was Prime Minister and fighting Germans and won with the USA who had Roosevelt as President.  Thus, the rub about their drinking.  "Churchill  consumed alcoholic drinks on a near-daily basis for long periods in his life, and frequently imbibed before, after, and during mealtimes, although he is not generally considered by historians to have been an alcoholic."  It evidently did not keep him from performing his job well during WWII.   In 1953 he suffered a stroke and resigned in 1955.


Rumors were that  "Franklin D. Roosevelt, victim of infantile paralysis and confined to a wheelchair,   was a big drinker. He always just seemed to find his way around alcohol. One good example was when his doctor put FDR on a low-fat diet, to try to help his hypertension and heart problems. But FDR became underweight, so the doctor told him he'd have to put on weight again. FDR's plan to gain it back? Drinking mass quantities of egg nog.  Yet he was voted in as our President 3 times. He wasn't considered an alcoholic.  


Hitler's father and Stalin have been  described as the "supreme alcoholic",  Both illustrate what happens when addiction is not overcome - particularly, it seems, when the sufferers wield great power.  Most likely Hitler's father played a big part in shaping his mental problems.  He fought constantly with the mother, who was Catholic.  His father spent much time in bars.   Hitler managed to use Jews as his personal scapegoat for all is personal problems, thus had the power to kill 6 million.  This is what these Arab leaders are using as an idol  to follow.

Resource: http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=8684 by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Hayat_al-Jadida
http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/nazi-propaganda-for-the-arab-world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later_life_of_Winston_Churchill
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/hitlerpsychtoc.html

Daily newspaper Founder Nabil Amro
Hafeth Al Barghouti Editor-in-chief Arif Hijjawi Language Arabic Headquarters Ramallah  Official website http://www.alhayat-j.com

The British 1939 Double Cross

Nadene Goldfoot
Even Churchill had second thoughts on what Britain had done with their mandate in Palestine, though he had helped to draw up the Churchill White Paper of 1922 hindering the Jews in achieving their national home.

   The British  were given the charge to help bring about the Jewish National Home and managed to double cross Chaim Weizmann and the Zionists by reducing the agreed upon allotted land and gave 75% of it to the Arabs instead. The idea that the White Paper tried to induce, that Jews were to be "illegals" in their "Home" was never universally accepted.  This had been about the  White Paper coming down on the Jews' heads keeping them out of the land.  In 1936, Protestant and Catholic leaders in New York said that the British government must uphold its covenanted pledges to the Jewish people and to the world...that the British rescind its illegal, unjust and indefensible partition of Palestine to restore Transjordania to its proper place as part of the Palestine territory and throw it open to Jewish settlement.   Britain disregarded their announcement.  


"I should feel personally embarrassed,"  Churchill said, "in the most acute manner if I lent myself, by silence or inaction, to what I must regard as an act of repudiation."  The breach, he explained, was the 1939 White Paper (McDonald's) declaration drawn up by Britain after the agreement they accepted of taking on the responsibility of the mandate to help bring about the Jewish National Homeland.  

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the USA, questioned the legality of the White Paper's policy, but the State Department supported it.  Later, the State Department acted the same way with Truman.  There was a clique of secret John Foster Dulles supporters inside the administration and were paying more attention to the British views than Truman's.  James  Forrestal, a manic, ambitious and very right-wing investment banker called the "boy wonder" of Wall Street with reservations about Palestine,  lunched with Loy Henderson, his ally and was told about the views of Ernest Bevin, the notoriously anti-Semitic British foreign secretary.  Bevin was out to get arrangements with Washington to keep London's role in the Middle East as the important one.  Bevin had described the president's support for Jewish immigration to Palestine as a "crude desire for votes in New York," and therefore was not one of Harry Truman's favorite people.  They were part of a clique against Truman ever  voting for the Jewish state.

Others shared Churchill's outrage.  A member of Parliament, Herbert Morrison, reminded the government of the aid being given by Hitler and Mussolini to the upper-class Arab leaders in Palestine ever since British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had shown his partiality to the Arabs.  The White Paper had the audacity to give the Arabs the veto over Jewish immigration.  This was 1939, when Jews were passionately trying to enter their "Jewish National Homeland."  or die in Europe.  Countries either had small quotas for Jewish immigrants or didn't allow them in their countries at all.  The USA wouldn't even extend their Jewish quotas in this dire time of need.

Morrison begged his colleagues to stop this evil thing being done.  ..I ask them to remember the sufferings of these Jewish people all over the world.  I ask them to remember that Palestine, of all places in the world, was certainly the place where they had some right to expect not to suffer or to have restrictions imposed upon them.  Look at the extent of the country---this little patch of territory.  Transjordan has been taken away.  (Transjordan was included in the Jewish National Homeland but given to the Arabs).  

Nevelle Chamberlain (18 March 1869-9 Nov 1940) should have been thinking about the encroaching  Nazis.   "I believe the persecution arose  of two motives", he wrote to his sister in a letter:  A desire to rob the Jews of their money and a jealousy of their superior cleverness.  No doubt Jews aren't a lovable people;  I don't care about them myself---but that is not sufficient to explain the Pogrom."

Chamberlain believed in appeasement of an enemy.  The White Paper of 1939 reinforced his belief.  A year earlier was the agreement in Munich that sacrificed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis to gain "Peace in our time," as he put it.  Perhaps he thought that with the White Paper the Arab Revolt would die down.  Actually it must have encouraged what George Antonius, an Arab writer and representative called a "substantial advance towards the recognition of Arab rights" and what the Jews called "a surrender to Arab terrorism" which I say is still going on today at the UN.

Resource:  From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters, pages 346-349.
The Secret War Against the Jews by John Loftus and Mark Aarons p. 161
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_White_Paper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Morrison





.