Wrong Accusations About Jews Living in Judea and Samaria

Nadene Goldfoot
American and European press have misled readers and listeners about how Jews happen to be living in Judea and Samaria.  Jews are sticklers for doing the right thing.  Our whole religion is mostly a matter of doing the right thing and that's  something that's pounded into our whole being.  So how would we be out to do the wrong thing and cheat the Palestinians?  Not true.

Israel was brought to life again on May 15, 1948.  Negotiations had been going on with England, who held the mandate for over  30 years. Yucky malaria infested swampy land was bought and paid for.  So was the desert-type land.  Any land was legally contracted. The total land of Palestine was a waste, an unwanted waste of what had once been a Jewish empire originally.   The state went through the UN and was voted on as a state.  Legally, every point had been covered.  Our founding fathers didn't want to be accused of anything illegal.

 Israel has a darned good court system.  They can be in competition with any court in the world for fairness.  When the Israeli government has given its approval for the building of a Jewish village, town, building or home, it has to advertise its intentions in the Arab newspapers and invite any Arabs who have claims to the land to come forward with them.  We do similar things of advertising in our newspapers in the USA.  When there are no claims for at least 6 months, the courts rule and also have a thorough review of facts.  The court system bends over backwards to be fair to all Arab claimants.  The same goes if there is a claim.  Everything is investigated.  The courts have forbidden the Israeli government from confiscating any Arab-owned land since 1980.  The government hasn't authorized any new building since the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" began in 1993.

The state bends over backwards to make sure that building does not take place on Arab-owned land.  Authorized and unauthorized Jewish communities were built on unoccupied, uncultivated and uninhabited "waste land."  No Arab homes were destroyed.  No Arab residents were expelled.  No Arab farmland was taken in creating any Jewish communities.

There are land ownership laws of Judea and Samaria dating to when the land was under Turkish rule (Ottoman Empire) and are respected by all governments since then including Israel.  All the wasteland belongs to the state of Israel, not private owners.  There have been almost no Arab buyers of such land because it involved paying past taxes on it for anyone who bought it.

One of my friends in Safed was an American lawyer who of course would have to take the bar in Israel to practice.  He said it was far more complicated than anything he had ever seen because of the rules left over from the Ottoman Empire that were still in effect.  It was too much for him and he tried  teaching English in the local high school, finding that needed a skill he didn't have as well.

Along comes the far left of Israel, also without any background in legal matters, such as Peace Now and other groups who have been overly zealous in wanting to be fair with the Palestinians about land and obviously not trusting anyone who have challenged any building at all  with their worthy human rights projects without being able to back them up with true facts.  They haven't been able to prove any of their conclusions in the courts.

Both groups want to be fair.  Our Jews are not followers.  Each one is a leader in his own mind.  Israel even has a Freedom of Information law, but the leftists who attack the system haven't been able to come up with one document that supports their claims about Jewish "settlements" on "privately owned Arab land" that's ever been brought to someone's attention.   They allowed themselves to be the victims of hearsay instead of the facts.  Americans think they are the land of the free.  Israel's freedom of speech and writing sometimes undermines itself.  Israelis seem to understand it, but the outside press doesn't and takes advantage of it.  Let any Jewish Israeli say something against their state saying they are wrong and it makes headlines in every paper in the world an hour later.

Judea and Samaria, what Jordan has dubbed "West Bank"  was Jewish land long ago. In 933 BCE  Judea was the Kingdom of Judah of the Jews.  When King Solomon, King David's son was dead, Judah was divided into two parts.  Judah was the southerly of two Jewish kingdoms.  The northern part became the Kingdom of Israel.  This land is precious to Jews, especially to the religious Jews who have moved there to live.  That's why they are there.  The tribe of Judah lived in Judah along with most of the tribe of Benjamin.  They also took in the tribe of Simeon which was isolated in the extreme south.  It had become poor without advantages of exits to the sea and were not on the trade routes.  It was like being a city that the freeway had bypassed.  Jerusalem sat in Judah which means the Temple was there.  It was able to preserve Mosaic monotheism in a purer form than Israel did.  The monarchy was the house of David and it went from father to son peacefully with a few exceptions, like Athaliah 843-37.  There were a few others.

Then along came the Assyrian expansion which overwhelmed Israel in the north but was stopped at the walls of Jerusalem in 701 BCE.  Finally in 586 the Babylonians overwhelmed it and the city and state fell to them.  They took large numbers of Jews and deported them to other parts of the Middle East.  The Jewish exiles in Babylonia continued to keep Judaism alive.  Prophets continued with their work from there and you will find great parts of the Bible that were composed from their exile.  So Judea has special meaning for Jews.

Samaria was the capital of Israel in the north.  It was founded in 880 BCE by King Omri who bought it from from Shemer (I Kings 16:24).  The site is about 7 miles NW of Shechem, today's city of  Nablus on a slight elevation that dominated the countryside.    It was made up of 25 acres and royal palace.  The biblical patriarchs camped under its walls.  It had been marked as the territory for the tribe of Ephraim and was picked as a city of refuge and the center of the House of the tribe of Joseph.  Joseph is buried there.  Finally it became a Roman city with people being the Samaritans.  In 1967 the population was 44,000 of mostly Moslems and has become the center of fanatical Arab nationalism.  A small Jewish community had existed there in Shechem.   Samaria is also the name to the entire northern region of the central highlands.  I believe that is what is referred to when they say Judea and Samaria or "the West Bank", which Jordan named it as it is land west of the Jordan River.

1967's War against Israel lasted 6 days with Israel being the winner.  This area had been in Jordan's hands, but since they were one of the attackers, lost it to Israel.  Before that, Jordan didn't allow Jews to even be in East Jerusalem.  I remember when the war was over that the solders were able to dance and pray at the Western Wall for the first time and how everyone cried in joy.

The PLO was founded in 1964.  At that time this area of Judea and Samaria and Gaza were under Arab rule.  The PLO wanted to liberate the land, not Judea and Samaria and Gaza which they already had, but Israel! They were talking about Israel within the 1967 borders.  Their official PLO insignia is on the map including all of Israel.  The Muslims speak of their religious savior coming to take all the land and of course they hate Jews.  They hate this well known remnant of the 12 tribes of Israel, Judah and Levi, born when Jacob had 12 sons, "the traditional division of Israel into 12 tribes: Reuben, Simeon (Levi), Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Ephraim, and Manasseh."  They don't even have a reason to hate us, except that there is the remnant of us who refuse to convert to Islam, which is not a good reason to hate a people.  The land they are living on in their eyes must be "Judenrein", free of all Jews.  They are not tolerant such as Americans and Israelis are.  There are 1.4 million Arabs living in Israel who are citizens.

Resource:  FrontPage Magazine http://frontpagemag.com Are Jewish Settlements built on Arab Land?  by Rachel Neuwirth and John Landau, Daily Mailer.FrontPage
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0020_0_20039.html

Greek Jews? What is Happening to Them? Greek Priest Blames Jews-Anti-Semitism Arises

Nadene Goldfoot
With all the talk about Greece being pivitol concerning our economic crisis, I started wondering whether there were any Jews living in Greece.  Out of their population of 11,329,618 I found there are about 5,000 remaining there.  However, the reports from other places have stated number from 1,000 to 100,000 or 1.5% of the population .  There are at least 2 synagogues.  In 1902 there were 62,000 Jews living in Thessaloniki, or 49% of that population, but today there are only 1,000.

Athens has the largest Jewish community with 3,000 Jews.  They have a synagogue, school and museum to support.  There are 6,000 members in the country's Jewish community.  They are hurting in this crisis and will not be able to  pay their bills due in 2013, so are asking for help from other Jewish communities now, reports Benjamin Albelas.

A senior Greek Priest, the Metropolite of Piraeus Seraphim, was on the largest TV station, Mega TV, spouting anti-semitic diatribes.  He blames Jews for Greece's financial problems.  He said it was world Jewry, international Zionism that is destroying family values and who promotes one-parent families and same sex marriages as well.  It's all a zionist conspiracy to enslave Greece and Christian Orthodoxy.  Then he went on to blame Jews in banking and in using Hitler as a way to establish Israel.  Benjamin Albelas reported that he was sickened to hear him say these things. 

When we were freed by Cyrus, the Persian King during our Babylonian Exile of 586-539 BCE, we met Greeks for the first time.  Ezekiel wrote about them being people who traded slaves and worked with bronze.  Herodotus called Jews the Palestinian Jews, as both Arab and Jew were called Palestinians after 132 CE by the Romans.    The first Jewish community there was established in 400 BCE. 

Many Jews have the history of living on the island of Rhodes which goes back to 300-250 BCE. The first Jew known was Moschos, son of Moschion the Jew, a slave.  This was found on an inscription going back to 300 BCE found in Oronos, a coastal town between Athens and Boeotia.   Hyrcanus was a Jew honored with a statue from their Jewish community of Athens.  Josephus wrote about a meeting between Aristotle who lived in the 4th Century BCE and a Jew of Asia Minor, from Coele, Syria, which would be the Syria of today.  He could speak Greek well as well as think like Greeks, the comment was. 

Jews in Greece go back in history over 2,000 years ago.  Greek Jews helped to develop Christianity.

We have had confrontation between the Greeks and the Jews.  There was the Maccabean Revolt of 167-164 BCE which we remember with our holiday of Chanukkah.  The Seleucid King Antiochus IV imposed rules and restrictions on Jews that were impossible, such as installing Greek G-d statues in our temple, and trying to force people to eat pork.

The Romaniotes (name from time of being in the Roman Byzantine) were Greek Jews that were Sephardic and lived mainly in Thessaloniki which they called the Mother of Israel and was also called Salonika.  . They spoke Yevanic, which was a dialect of Greek but is a dead language today. Today most all live in either Israel or New York.

In 70 CE Jews were taken as slaves from Jerusalem and shipped to Rome by ships but some ran aground in the Ionian Sea near the Albanian Coast and the survivors were able to settle there in what became Ioannina.

By the 12th Century Benjamin of Tudela wrote of seeing large Jewish communities that were in the garment industry:  dying cloth, weaving, and making silk clothing. 

Sephardim Jews had settled in Greece after 1492 when they were expelled from Spain.  Most of the Jewish population died in the Holocaust of 1941-1945.   

The prevailing religion of Greece is the Eastern Orthodox Christianity.  They also have a Muslim minority and Ethnic Turks who are also schooled in Turkish.  A movement started in the 1990's is the reconstruction of the ancient Greek religion, which is polytheistic.  It revolves around the Greek Gods of the 12 Olympians including their Hellenic values and virtues.  They have 2,000 followers. 

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenic_Polytheistic_Reconstructionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Greece
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Greece.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/greece1038.html
http://www.umass.edu/judaic/anniversaryvolume/articles/30-F3-Bowman.pdf
http://www.jpost.com/FoodIndex/Article.aspx?id=211945
http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=69834
http://greece.greekreporter.com/2011/11/04/greek-jewish-community-asks-for-financial-support/
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/senior-greek-priest-blames-jews-for-greece-s-financial-problems-1.332131

Russian Jews Get the Blame For Provoking Arab Attacks in Israel

Nadene Goldfoot
Yossi Klein Halevi recently wrote:   Perhaps the most bitter moment of this bitter week was provided by Bill Clinton, precisely because he’s a friend "Clinton  blamed the one million Israeli citizens who came from the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s. “You’ve had all these immigrants coming in from Soviet Union, and they have no history in Israel proper, so the traditional claims of the Palestinians have less weight with them.” "

What Bill Clinton doesn't understand about Israel is this is exactly what the purpose of Israel is all about.  It was to be a place where Jews that had been persecuted could come and live, at the time of creation in 1948, now and in the future-G-d forbid that there will continue to be this need.  Jews in Russia are just as Jewish as Jews in Israel or anywhere else.  They had not been allowed to practice their religion under USSR dogma.  Many were put in jail for doing so.  Synagogues were closed. 

I met many Russian Jews ins Israel when I made aliyah in 1980.  I was in a teaching program with them to teach English, of all things.  They had been teaching English in Russia.  We went through a 10 month training program together to learn Hebrew and teaching skills for Hebrew speakers to learn English.  My Hebrew teacher was a very famous lady who not only was the author of the two books we used but  had been corresponding with Russians secretly and teaching them Hebrew through the mails.  They were intent to learn Hebrew well and the political facts going on in Israel.  Russians embarrassed me and other Americans by learning Hebrew so much faster than we were.  Studying languages was something they all did in Russia whereas we are English centered and many do not learn other languages.  They knew exactly what to do to study.  Their English was usually lousy, but they certainly could pick up languages easily. 

There were programs for them to learn about their Jewish religion.   I remember Passover there.  We were in a very large dining room.  Russians were given the Hagadah in Russian and Hebrew.  Truly, it was the return of exiles to Israel as having been prophesized.  I guess the Clintons hadn't heard about this. 

My own ancestry is that  my father's parents were born in Lithuania.  Grandfather was from Telsiai and Grandmother was from Lazdijai, Suwalki.  We have distant ancestors who were related to the Vilna Gaon, a very famous Rabbi in Lithuania.   This was part of the Pale of Settlement, a section of Russia  where Jews were forced to live.  You had to have a special pass of importance to enter the mainland of Russia. 

Russian Jews were involved in the First Aliyote to "Palestine" in the 1800's and before that in 1808.  There are many Russian Jews who carry the J1 dna haplogroup showing that they are from the Cohen line of Aaron and Moses, and are Cohens, first to be called to the bimah to read from the Torah.  In fact, I just helped a relative of a cousin check on his dna who was a Cohen but not by surname.  He turned out to be a J1, just as I predicted.  His family came from the Ukraine, another place in the Pale of Settlement.
Hillary, Bill's wife, is adamant about not recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which to Israelis, it is.  Jerusalem as been in our religion since King David made it his capital.  There is nothing about Jerusalem that says it is a part of importance in Arab history other than they have built a Mosque over the site of the First and Second Temples of Jewish history-most likely on purpose.  Arab empires have come and gone in Zion but have never been a country, only overseers.  They just trampled over it and it became wasted.  Because Mohammed happened to go to heaven on his white horse from Jerusalem is not enough reason to give away the whole eastern section as a capital for Abbas's Palestine. 

We know now that Abbas has not been serious about making peace with Israel.  The goal has always been the one stated in 1948, to drive Israel into the sea.  They have ignored many chances to make peace and have their own Muslim state, but they won't recognize the already created Jewish one and plan to take it over by bringing in millions of Muslims.  If Hamas started hammering Israel in the 1990's, this doesn't mean it's because of new Israeli immigrants,  They weren't even the orthodox Jews who were living in Judea and Samaria.  They settled in Tel Aviv.  They were used to culture.  This is what Israel is all about. 

I think it's out of line to blame the Russian immigration to Israel for causing any political problems involving the Arabs.  Good grief, those that were able to get out felt so lucky to do so.  It had been a nearly impossible endeavor for many.  I do wish that people in government, when dealing with foreign countries and are deeply involved in their existence would study in depth about the history of that country first before making such contrary statements.  Not only does it show their level of stupidity to many of us, but shows they are not really capable of making serious decisions. 

Bill Clinton went on to mention the "traditional claims of the Palestinians".  I'd like to know what those are.  Hamas and Fatah have been so busy trying to destroy any Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the land and ingraining their shaky connections that this traditional claim depends so much on the source of the claim.  As Reed College in Portland, Oregon has aways taught, "what's your source?"   I would like to see the Clintons  take a class that Netanyahu would validate  to learn some real Jewish history.  I would even suggest using some of Abba Eban's work.  Has Bill ever read Joan Peters "From Time Immemorial" ?  She's not even Jewish.  That is a must. 

http://www.tnr.com/article/world/95356/un-general-assembly-obama-clinton-abbas-netanyahu-israel-palestine  by Yossi Klein Halevi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement

Fearful and Awesome 9th of Av Ushered in Evening of August 8th

Nadene Goldfoot

Monday evening in the year of 5771 (2011) will usher in the most terrible of all dates in Jewish history and one wonders how all these horrible things could have happened on this one date. 

Israel's First and Second Temples both fell on this date in the Jewish calendar.  This happened on 586 BCE caused by the Babylonians and then again on 70 CE by the Romans.  "The Temple itself was totally destroyed, though the wall supporting the area upon which the Temple was built was left partially intact and a portion of it remains to this day, called the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall."

Jews remember this date with fasting, praying and withdrawal from any activity that is enjoyable.  It is truly a mourning period of 25 hours.   

A revolt against the Romans occured in 135 CE on the 9th of Av by Simon Bar Kochba.  It was after this that the Romans tried to stamp out the Jewish identity by laying the country to waste.  Hadrian ordered Jerusalem to be plowed over and was renamed Aelia Capitolina.  The name "Judea" was renamed Syria Palestina.  The Roman Empire faced the longest and fiercest revolt they ever had been in.  580,000 Jewish soldiers died in battle then.   The civilians died of starvation and pestilence.  985 Jewish  villages were destroyed.    Jews remaining were banished from Jerusalem, so they  went to the Galilee. 

 Later,  refugees returned.  Jews who had been sold into slavery were redeemed by others.  The creative spirit of Jews blossomed forth once again with the Mishnah being completed and the Jerusalem Talmud was compiled.  Most of the people farmed the land. 

This misfortune happening on 9th Av started with the 12 spies that Moses sent into Canaan.  Only Joshua and Caleb  gave a favorable report.  The others spoke unfavorably about the land causing the charges on the Exodus to cry, panic and bewail having entered in the first place.  Because of their lack of faith, the decree was that this date would become one of misfortune for their descendants. 

It is also said that a Moshiach "Messiah" was also born on the 9th of Av in every generation since the fall of the temple, and that when the time is right, he will appear. 

On 1290 CE, King Edward I caused the expulsion of all Jews from England on this very date.  In 1492 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella caused the expulsion of Jews from Spain on this same date.  Whatever bad has happened seems to fall on the 9th of Av. 

Other tragedies that fell on 9th Ave were the First Crusade in 1095 which killed 10,000 Jews in its first month and destroyed Jewish communities in France and the Rhineland.  On August 1, 1914 (Tisha B'Av) World War I started which set the stage for World War II and the Holocaust.   On 1942's 9th Av eve, mass deportation began of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto on route to Treblinka.   On Monday, July 18, 1994, the 10th of Av or the end of this period, the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires was bombed and 86 were killed with 300 wounded.   The soothsayer said to Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March." and Jews have said, Beware the 9th of Av. 

Resource:  http://www.chabad.org/calendar/view/day.asp?tdate=8/9/2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B'Av

http://www.jewfaq.org/holidayd.htm