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Showing posts with label Britain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Britain. Show all posts

Friday, December 6, 2013

Mandela's View of Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                   

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela died at 8:50 pm  on Thursday, December 5, 2013.  He had been ill with pneumonia and died at the grand age of 95.  The man was an icon in South Africa.  He was born in the village of Mvezo in Transkei, South Africa. It was on the border of the Indian Ocean.  His mother was Nosekeni Fanny, the 3rd of 4 wives of the chief and counselor to 2 successive Xhosa kings.  As a lawyer, he became South Africa's first black president.  His big thing had been fighting apartheid in this country which had been settled by Africaners who were descendants of 17th century Dutch and French settlers.  He had been held in prison for 27 years, first as a terrorist, then just an agitator.  At age 75, he became president of South Africa on May 10, 1994.  The preceding president had been F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president.

Mandela had said  on July 11, 1996 that "racism is a blight on the human conscience.  The idea that any people can be inferior to another, to the point where those who consider themselves superior define and treat the rest as subhuman, denies the humanity even of those who elevate themselves to the status of gods."  Of course he was referring to his own experience in South Africa between apartheid facts between the many blacks and the few whites of a country where whites had ruled.  When I read that I think of the Nazi attitude towards Jews.  Nazis thought they were the superior race and that Jews were sub-human.  Today Iran has taken on the same idea, calling Jews all sorts of animals; apes, or even viruses.  Arab countries have taken on the goal of finishing the Nazi goal of wiping out Jews and now Israel, the Jewish state.

Mandela carried his own relationship with Apartheid  to Israel, where he blamed Jews for practicing apartheid on the Palestinians.  For this he fails my class with a resounding F.  The situation was completely different.

Here we have Jews, who have been treated as he and his people have been by the whole world for a reasoning of religious difference.  Jews were a minority religious group, and many did look a little different from the country they happened to reside in.  Often they even dressed a little different.  One of their differences discovered is that they were a little smarter than others.  They believed in education.  The average IQ of a population is 100.  Theirs is 106.  They have produced such people as Einstein with an IQ of 180.  They have been turned down from entering medical schools because they were flooding the schools who had limitations on Jews accepted.  So even though they met the qualifications, they were Jews and were turned away after a few were accepted.

Jews were treated as 2nd class citizens in the Middle East after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  They were called dhimmis.  So there was apartheid there.  They were denied the education they craved, but had to pay more in taxes, couldn't build higher homes than their Muslim 1st class citizens.  There were all sorts of reminders that they were beneath others in their eyes.

In Italy, they were locked up at night in the first ghettos.  It might have been their only protection from marauding citizens of Rome, but it was humiliation to be living in such a confined manner under conditions unlike others..

The same thing happened in Christian countries.  Often they were reminded of a false fact generally accepted that they were the ones who had killed Christ, so they were treated as the bottom of the barrel people.  The Nazis treated them as a sub-race of people while contrary to this they were the ones who were successful in business.  How could they then be a sub race?  The amazing thing is that out of jealousy, people believed the accusations thrown at them.  They were kikes, a derogatory word.  The worst show of racism was the Nazi near successful attempt at eradicating the world of Jews.  We were of the inferior race, so they said.

Our leadership knew that life of 2,000 years of living under such racism could not go on.  So many of them had been suffering from Pogroms where the citizens of a city would gather together and attack a Jewish village, killing, marauding, destroying everything in sight, usually with the assistance of alcohol.  They gathered together at the end of WWI and talked to Britain about being able to return to their ancient homeland which had been barren since they had left 2,000 years ago.  They could have seriously considered some jungle spot in Africa, but had been praying in their religion to return home, so home it was for them.  Why not?  Nobody really had taken it as a country.  It had gone to pot, as the Americans would  have said.

After many years of meetings, it was decided through the League of Nations and voted upon democratically.  The deal was signed by the nations.  They would have a Jewish Homeland.  Out of guilt for having treated these people so vile, out of growth in their own religious teachings, it was decided that this was the right thing to do.

The plan of the Jewish leaders was to make the land a Utopia, fair for all the inhabitants, even the animals and plants as well as people.  It was planned out by an intelligent group directed by their religious principals.  It was even blessed by Abdullah, head Arab leader of the Middle East since he had also been the leader of Arabs who fought for Britain against the Ottoman Empire.  The Jews had done this also, but in a smaller group, being they were a smaller population.  One of the Jewish leaders was Chaim Weizmann who had invented a chemical which helped Britain have better ammunition of which without this, would most likely have lost the war.  It was like going from a slingshot to the Uzi machine gun.  So Britain made the mistake of making the same promise of land to both the Jews and the Arabs.

Enter the picture, Arabs from the neighboring lands who heard that Jews had returned to their land and were building.  They realized that they could get jobs there, and the word went out.  They came as workers.  Now the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, another Arab leader, was all against the creation of a Jewish Homeland and he agitated his followers who rioted and screamed against the idea, shaking up the British who didn't want to rock the boat and lose out their holdings of land with oil.  So they wound up siding with them.  Oil and money did rule over being nice to Jews, something they were not used to, as they had been cast out of England several times, and there existed lots of anti-Semitism with the English.

Thus, the idea of being a Utopia was fought against by the Arabs in blind rage.  They were from a paternal society that ruled, and that meant that they were easy followers and took direction very well without thinking things out for themselves.  Most were way undereducated and illiterate at that.  So they were dependent on their leadership.

The idea did not come to them to really want their own state until after the 1967 war with Israel of which all Arab nations attacked and lost.  It was embarrassing for them.  They lost face.  Anger only festered.  At the same time, they were walking bombshells against Israel and Jews.  Though the war was over, danger was everywhere for the Jews.  Now, for the past 65 years, there is no peace treaty signed except with Egypt and Jordan, the 2 closest neighbors.  The PLO's have gone through a change of calling themselves Fatah, and a group broke off from them to call themselves Hamas.  Hamas kicked out Fatah from Gaza and have been shooting at Southern Israel ever since  2001.  Fatah took over Judea and Samaria, the 2 oldest Jewish centers in Eretz Israel.

To this day, Apartheid has not  been practiced against the Arabs who maintain their hatred and fight against Israel at every opportunity and then some.  Their weapons are not only real ones, but they also use lies and create terrible propaganda that such people as Mandela has bought.  Because now for the first time they are people without a nation, they are looked upon as the blacks of Africa being ruled by the whites, or Israelis.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Mandela reacted violently when Israel won in 1967 against its huge enemy.  He hadn't bothered to read about this history so he was against Israel's control of the territories it was "occupying" and urged Israel to concede land to the Palestinians and Syrians, just like they had done with Egypt for the sake of peace.  The difference is that Egypt reacted wanting peace and the others didn't, but he ignored or refused to learn this fact.  His view was still the simple-Israel is occupying Arab lands and wanted them to withdraw from all the areas.

State
Entry
Exit
Total Forces
Losses
Egypt
1967
1967
400,000
10,000
Iraq
1967
1967
250,000
2,000
Israel
1967
1967
200,000
776
Jordan
1967
1967
60,000
5,000
Syria
1967
1967
300,000
1,000

This chart from the Jewish Virtual Library shows why Egypt and Jordan decided to make peace with their neighbor.  In 1948 Israel started with 650,000 .  By 1968 it had a population of 2,841,100.  So losing almost 800 soldiers was a lot for this little country.   Today it has grown to 6 million Jews and 1.7 million Arabs.  Remember, it was the Arabs who had attacked Israel.  They could not imagine such a great force losing against former dhimmis.
                                                                     
Mandela finally visited Israel for 2 days when he was 81 in 1999.  He had held it against Israel that they had worked closely with the South African apartheid regime.  He didn't realize that for some time South Africa was one of the few countries for their own reasons who were friendly with Israel.  It wasn't like Israel had a lot of choices, so they had a military relationship with  South Africa.  Mandela won a Nobel peace prize for his attitude in South Africa of burying his bitterness against the whites and working for the future with them.  When he became president in 1994 he worked against apartheid crimes against its victims and families in earnest.

When Mandela went to work as a lawyer, his first job was with a Jewish law firm in Johannesburg.  Some of his best friends were Jews as a result.  When he needed advice or money, he went to them.  Many Jews in South Africa supported him.  Arthur Goldreich gave him refuge on his farm in Rilvonia.  However, Mandela passionately supported the PLO which he took as a liberation movement like his own ANC.  He had mixed emotions, also supporting Israel right to exist as a democratic Jewish state.  He just didn't understand what the Jews were under in order to continue existing.  If he had bothered to read the platforms of Israel's Arab enemies, he would have seen that their goal was to completely destroy Israel and carry out the goal of the Nazis, to kill off all the Jews along with their state.

The Sabeel movement, founded through Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, both of South Africa, is still throwing "apartheid" accusations at Israel. It's a Christian organization in Jerusalem founded by a Palestinian Anglican priest who are partners with the Presbyterian Church and are enforcing BDS practice against Israel.  The Methodists are also into BDS movements and finally voted in 2012 against divestment from the Caterpillar  company for doing business with Israel.   This is so unrealistic as all its history shows that Israel is the most un-apartheid state in the whole world.  Arabs have all the rights that Jews have in Israel.  They are not dhimmis as Jews were in Muslim countries.  The only thing they are not included in is having to serve in the armed forces if they don't care to.  They are relived of this responsibility because it would be asking them to fight against fellow Arabs of their own religion, and Israel is being overly aware of this.  In the USA, Italians had to fight in the army, and so did Germans.  Japanese fought as well for the USA.  But the USA is a huge country and Israel is one of the tiniest, the size of the smallest of USA states.  To them it would be like expecting Iranian Jews to fight against Israel.

To sum it up, Mandela had an ambivalent relationship with Israel.  It could have been improved upon with more curiosity as to the history of Israel and how it differed from South Africa.  Even finally visiting for all of 2 days hadn't warranted further research evidently.  For that I'm disappointed.  He never once told the Palestinians to make peace with Israel or to take on a different attitude.  He maintained a 2-state solution but told Israel not to be a bi-national apartheid state when they weren't practicing apartheid in their own one state of Israel and an Arab minority.  He thought there was danger in Israel becoming an international pariah like apartheid South Africa had been.  That showed he knew nothing at all about Jews, Judaism or Israel.
                                                                         
                                             Michelle Obama and Nelson Mandela 

It doesn't make a lot of difference in the world if one person harbors such feelings of anti-Semitism, but when a leader does, it's almost impossible to re-educate people.  Mandela made a huge impression on  USA's President Barack Obama who said that "he was one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela's life.   My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was  a protest against apartheid.  I studied his words and his writings.  The day that he was released from prison gave me a sense of what human beings can do when they're guided by their hopes and not by their fear."  

In October 1999, during his 2 day visit in Israel when he also visited Iran, Syria, Jordan, and the "Palestinian territories", Mandela showed that he was naive and overly trusting everyone but Jews evidently because after visiting Iran, had felt that the Iranians would be free and fair about the trial of 13 Iranian Jews who had been arrested in July 2001 earlier that year on charges of spying for the "Zionist regime"  It wasn't until February 19, 2003 that the trial was over with 5 of them released.    Iran was backed by terrorist groups targeting Jews and the Jewish state and was not about planning on giving Jews a fair hearing.  This came up when Mandela spoke with Foreign Minister of Israel, David  Levy at the Foreign Ministry.  He thought that being the new president was Khatami and had become more moderate. Khatami was president from 1997 to 2005.

Yes, but make sure they are being guided by a compass made up of good, not of evil intentions, please.  Now my question is that Obama did not deal with apartheid in the USA.  That had been a problem basically of  President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the 60's.  One of the first things Obama did after being sworn in as president on January 20, 2009 was go to Egypt and make a speech on June 4, 2009 at Cairo University  which aroused the Arab Spring.  My paranoia leads me to conclude he is referring to the Palestinian  Israel issue of a 2 state solution, and if he is following Mandela, is blaming Israel as being an apartheid state. Obama has been pushing that Israel must go back to the 67 lines.   After all, Mandela did.

Resource:  http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Mandela-and-Israel-334174
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-sabeel-movement-is-harming-israel.htmlHow Sabeel Movement is Harming Israel, January 30, 2012
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/05/bds-movement-not-impressing-methodists.htmlBDS Movement Not Impressing Methodists, May 3, 2012
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/04/lies-people-tell-about-jews-and-israel.html
Oregonian newspaper, 12/6/2013, page A9
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/casualties.html
Kike by Selzer
Abraham's Children, race, identity, and the DNA of the Chosen people by Jon Entine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Beginning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2012/04/60-minutes-of-bashing-israel-using.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/316504/Mohammad-Khatami
http://archive.adl.org/backgrounders/iranian_jews.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/05/nelson-mandela-was-undeniably-great-but-he-doesn-t-need-a-halo.html
http://theiranproject.com/blog/2013/12/06/major-events-in-the-life-of-nelson-mandela/  dates
Additional 2;48pm http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1213/tobin120613.php3#.UqJT7NJDs8o
Update 12/7/13 http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/12/05/nelson-mandela-and-zionism/
update: 12/9/13 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14199#.UqZ0vtJDs8p
Update 12/10/13 http://www.michaelfreund.org/14121/misrepresenting-mandela

Monday, October 28, 2013

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

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Russian Intervention in Syria Signals A Big Fight

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

                       Russian warships gather in the Mediterranean

Russia is sending several ships that will arrive in a few days in the Mediterranean to protect their interests in Syria.  Two Russian warships and a missile cruiser are coming to strengthen their fleet.  Russia is one of the big FIVE who would not vote for an  intervention attack against Syria since they are Syria's main backer.

In the meantime, talk is discussing back and forth about  a date for the USA to punish Assad and tell him he can't use chemicals while Britain has had second thoughts and is still bantering the matter in their parliament.  Actually, so is the USA, but Obama has already spoken and has said that the USA would take action even without the backing of allies or the UN.  What he had chastised Bush about, he  is now facing a very similar situation.

Obama has meetings in Sweden and Russia to attend.  He's leaving on Tuesday, so it is thought that something might happen before then.  Are we going to hit and then have our Commander in Chief leave when all fireworks can start?

If anyone attacks Syria, their promise is to attack Israel, who is prepared for that.  They of course will immediately answer an attack, and they have been trying to stay out of the Syrian devastation.   Syria's Civil War has been so close that some missiles had even landed in The Golan, which looks down on Syria.  When you live among lions, it's difficult at best to get into the middle of a roaring and fighting  pride.   Assad has threatened Israel with a deadly attack  from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and what is left of their military and a surprise element of devastation.  What?  Atomic rockets from Iran?  More chemicals, no doubt.  Meanwhile, Assad has had time to leave Damascus and is safely hid out in Iran.

Israel is ready with gas masks for any surprise in Assad's retaliation against their tiny nation.  Psalms 108: 13-14 says it all.  "Give us help against the adversary:  for vain is the help of man.  Through G-d we shall do valiantly:  for He it is that will tread down our adversaries."   Israeli's warriors know they cannot run and hide anywhere.  They have nowhere to go.  This is a fight of the likes of the 300 Spartans,  only Israel feels they have help from their outer space guardian.

Thousands of Syrians have already fled to nearby Lebanon to get out of the way of the West's attack.  Not only did they have to worry about a crazed government with chemicals to use on them willy nilly, but now the West's answer to this use of chemicals which is not in the book of allowed war weapons.  The signal these people had of their eventual fate was in how their government treated the Jewish population in their country.  Confined on "Jew Street" and held as captives in a worse condition of any of the other dhimmis of the Middle East, the last remaining ones  were finally rescued by Israel in 1994.  As a country treats its Jewish population, so will the rest eventually wind up as the next scapegoat.  The Christians of Egypt have found that out already with the Muslim Brotherhood's first reprisal being their churches and people.

The Mediterranean will be full of Israeli, American, and Russian ships ready to fire missiles somewhere.  The British might be in the mix as well. At this point, the USA is not sure what the target is to be as the Syrians have been busy moving their arms to high ground surrounding Damascus.

Starting September 4th in the evening and going on into September 5th is the Birthday of the World, Rosh Hashanna, the start of a 10 day period of Jewish High Holidays ending with Yom Kippur, a day they were attacked on October 6, 1973 when everyone was in a synagogue asking for forgiveness from G-d of any sins they might be guilty of.  It is a day of fasting and is the most serious day of the year.  Unfortunately, the whole beginning of this  New Year is now colored with threats from a neighbor of all their lives once again.

On the sidelines of this stage are many Middle Easterners who are chomping on their bits at the thought of taking over Jerusalem.  I say that G-d has been on Israel's side through thick and thin for 65 years since May 14, 1948.  Israelis have been threatened when the odds were completely against them.  What makes the haters of Zionism  think that G-d's protection and direction has evaporated?  It is even miraculous that as a people Jews have continued to exist from the days when Judah, 4th son of  Jacob  and Leah, was born.  King David was from this tribe.  Of all the ancient people, it is only the Jews who have been able to survive, even with Hitler's determination to do Jews in.  The creation of their state once again has been prophesied to the amazement of all people. Just look into the "Old Testament.,"  It takes a lot more than plain luck to live that long in  a world  constantly against them.

Resource:  http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/israel-continues-to-prepare-for-worst-as-russian-warships-set-to-move-in/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=israel-continues-to-prepare-for-worst-as-russian-warships-set-to-move-in
Oregonian newspaper, 8/29/13/ Front page, Evidence, allies slow for strike on Syria, by Deb Riechmann and Kimberly dozier, AP, also page A5

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Syria Threatens Israel If American Coalition Attacks

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

Syria's defensive tactic if the USA and Britain attack its rocket bases is to attack Israel full force, including mystery surprises.  It's like taking a hostage for protection and Israel is the closest to pick on.

This comes from Syria's Foreign Minister, Walid Muallem today.  He mentioned al-Qaeda in in his speech, strange, since it's Hezbollah out of Lebanon who are on the side of Syria along with Iran.  However, he did mention that Israel's attackers would be a Syrian-led mob made up of Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and themselves, the usual countries that have warred against Israel in the past.

Muallem is demanding proof that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against their own people, which have been collected by investigators other than the UN investigators who were delayed beyond the time which would have divulged more facts.  Just the fact that Doctors Without Borders had reported Saturday that about 3,600 patients had been treated at 3 hospitals for symptoms coming from exposure to chemical weapons in which about 300 have died tells the story, but they aren't the Official Inspectors.  The group told Monday that out of their 100 volunteers, 70 who had actually taken care of these patients became ill and one had died.

This has caused the USA with John Kerry citing this evidence to talk about the military response, and we know that Britain's ships are also in the Mediterranean along with 4 of the Americans ready to attack with cruise missiles.   Targets in Syria are the military ones.

In the next few days the USA's intelligence agencies will give Assad the proof he is asking for telling how his forces used chemical weapons.  They have proof from radio or phone calls between Syrian military commanders.  The UN inspectors were to be given free passage by the Syrian government but the lead car in a caravan was hit in the tires and front window and taken out.  They were going into a Damascus suburb.  Kerry was brilliant in his retort to Walid al Moallem on Thursday that if the Assad government had nothing to hide it should provide immediate access to the attack site, which never happened.  They had stalled for 5 days and then attacked the area even more by shelling it and destroying all evidence.

If the Syrian government turns around, this can all be averted.  This has been a moral obscenity and is inexcusable to do to their own citizens of which over 100,000 have already been killed.  Russia is expected to veto an action from the UN.  France might step in to help out the allies.   Is one of the "surprises" intended to harm Israel the Al-Nusra Front, which is an al-Qaida-linked jihadist group?  Assad acts like the chemical weapons cause  is just a front to go in and take over Syria.   Already a top Syrian offical had threatened Israel if Syria were attacked by the West.  This was from Syria's Deputy Information Minister, Half Al-Maftah,  said in Arabic.

Israel has intended to stay out of the conflict,  but if they are attacked, they will not be held back.  They have warned Syria not to retaliate against them.  Of course Israel is being blamed for even thinking Syria would do such a thing.  "A member of the Syrian Baath Party national council, Halef al-Muftah, said that Syria regards Israel as being "behind the aggression".  Israel said the chemical attacks came from outside Damascus in the mountain range where the headquarters is of the 4th Armoured  Division and  is located and commanded by Assad's brother, Maher al-Assad.

A thought:  Could Maher be framing his brother just so he could become President instead?  It wouldn't be a first in the Middle East.

Resource:  Oregonian newspaper 8/27, 13 Front page and p. A4, : US sets stage for Syria action by Michael  R. Gordon and Mark Landler NY Times,
Arutz Sheva news@israelnationalnews.com Syrian FM threatens "Surprises" for Western Forces by Ari Soffer
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11115311

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Three Palestines in the Making

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    
                                          Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Plotting with Hitler to Destroy Jews

Instead of pushing for a democracy, Britain pushed for a monarchy and helped establish Jordan as one in 1923.  They felt they owed Emir Abdullah (1882-20 July 1951), 2nd son of the Sherif Hussein bin Ali,of Saudi Arabia, who asked to be a king for his fighting help in WWI.  After all, he had been a part of the Ottoman Empire legislature's ruling class.  The Brits understand things like that.   Abdullah was pretty clever having been educated in Turkey. He talked his father into become the Grand Sherif of Mecca.  He became the King of Transjordan.

  Britain had also made a deal with Jews through the Balfour Doctrine at the same time who also had helped Britain and her allies to win the war with their fighters, but mostly by Chaim Weizmann's invention of increasing the capacity of their weaponry.  Britain had also taken on the responsibility of creating the Jewish Homeland, something decided through the League of Nations that was signed in agreement by all the countries in the world at that time by accepting the mandate.

Jordan became the pet project of Britain which was under the rule of King Abdullah and assisted them in many ways.  Britain trained military units of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iraq, the Persian Gulf states and Jordan, but Jordan held special status with them and saw to it that they continued the special British pattern well after WWII.  It was British officers who directed Jordanian military and paramilitary units.  Perhaps with Britain's off-stage help, King Hussein and his Royal Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan have managed to survive since Britain acted as their tutor.

Britain had made a private commitment to assist them.  They helped to establish after WWI the Jordanian border patrol which led to create the Royal Jordanian Guard and Arab Legion under Glubb Pasha.  Britain was looking out for their own interests since the oil pipelines from Kirkuk and a later Trans-Arabian Pipe Line from Saudi Arabia put Jordan in the right position for oil exports.  It was also strategically in the  right spot to help Britain defend the Suez Canal and Red Sea zone.  Jordan helped them carry out their Palestinian mandate that way, they told themselves.  This desert kingdom was a very special British client and of  high importance to the British foreign office.

In 1948, the UN had tried to get the Arabs to accept their partition of Palestine and establish their own state like Israel was doing, but the Arabs refused, intending to take all of Palestine eventually, not settle for half of it.  It's possible the Brits were backing off from seeing the   Palestinians create  a Palestinian state headed by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,  Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, born in Jerusalem in 1893, son of the Mufti of Jerusalem, the richest and most powerful clan in the Ottoman Empire. He was an Arab who was from the land for several generations.    "In the lead-up to the 1948 War against Israel, Husseini opposed both the 1947 UN Partition Plan and King Abdullah's designs to annex the Arab part of British Mandatory Palestine to Jordan.  He and King Abdullah were related to each other but opponents.  

The Grand Mufti, Al-Husseini,  was a new militant Palestinian Arab with nationalism in his being which was a new feeling among the Arabs.  Once he was in power, he began a campaign of terror and intimidation against all opposed to his rule and policies.  He killed Jews at every opportunity, and also eliminated Arabs who didn't support his violence.  He wouldn't negotiate or make any kind of compromise in the name of peace. He later went on to make pacts with Hitler against the Jews.    

Originally the UN had planned to make Jerusalem an international city, but King Abdullah I of Jordan went ahead and on his own without anyone's permission, annexed half of Jerusalem and all of the Palestinian highlands many call the West Bank, which are part of the original Jewish lands of Israel and Judah of which Samaria was the capital and surrounding land of Israel after the creation of Judah and was part and parcel of their promised Jewish Homeland.  When the king did this illegal act, the UN just looked the other way.  By doing this, he had added this fertile land of the West Bank of the Jordan River to his Hashemite Kingdom and more importantly,  increased the population of Jordan by one million people.

Now Jordan became physically very close to the new state of Israel since the border between the two was a haphazardly drawn one in the countryside and the streets and alleys of Jerusalem.

Two-thirds of the population of Jordan were now Palestinians.  There was a difference between them and the Bedouin Arabs, nomadic desert dwellers,  who lived on the East Bank of the Jordan River, for the Palestinians  were better educated and more politically aware of their position.  The Palestinian Arabs saw how King Abdullah manipulated and took land and they then thought how they could do the same thing.  So in July 1951, one of the Palestinians assassinated King Abdullah while he was in the Mosque of Aqsa in Jerusalem.  This was a case of jealousy of what Jordan's king had accomplished and he and his people coveted it.  After, all, there was this class difference between them, and they couldn't let nomads take over and be so successful.

Talal, Abdullah's son stepped into the kingship position but then abdicated due to illness which allowed his 18 year old son, Hussein to become king.  He had his hands full of strife between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jordanian Bedouins.  Then Nasser of Egypt rose to power,  and everyone thought he would overpower the Israelis so that they could take over their land.  Hussein found his position was not that easy and decided not to join the United Arabs or make peace with Israel without being dethroned by his angry coveting subjects.  He became afraid of being attacked by the UAR (United Arab Republic) which would be the open door for Israel to get their West Bank back.  At the same time, Hussein was taking money for military and economic aid from the USA which the Palestinian Arabs resented but without it, couldn't stay in power for long.

The Iraqis had a revolution in 1958, putting Hussein in more danger.  He cried out to his friend, Britain and 2,000 British troops came to protect Jordan against the other Arab nations.

The Arabs of UAR (heads of the Arab States) met in Cairo in 1964 and approved making the Palestinians a political entity and called them the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).  This was a conglomeration of factions with the biggest being Fatah under Yasser Arafat who became their leader.  Others were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DPELP).  The Arab nations supported them by giving the PLO the funds to work with.  Most all the Palestinians were actually living right in Jordan which made 2 armies within its borders; one led by King Hussein and the other by Arafat.

This made Jordan the staging area for the many attacks on Israel's land, just like Gaza assumed today.  This resulted in Israeli retaliations, of course.  There was a Palestinian village called Karameh on the east bank of the Jordan River that had become a terrorist stronghold. In March 1968 Israel retaliated and hit it resulting in the UN blaming Israel but not the Palestinians who were attacking Israelis from there.  The Arabs used this "blame the victim" as a cause celebre, a psychological and a military victory for the PLA who were defending the village.  Now the PLO's prestige skyrocketed and this led to more of the same; airplane heists, political murders like killing the Israeli athletes in the 1976 Munich Olympics.  The Palestinian Arabs now concluded that only a disaster or an armed confrontation would make Europeans and Americans feel sorry for them.  Violent deeds were the key to their success!

The world didn't really seem to join their thinking so they went onto 1970's Black September in Jordan. It was then that King Hussein had had enough of their free-wheeling control of Amman, his capital.  They had actually taken over Jordan, he felt.  The king had the superior armed forces and the assistance of Britain and the USA.  Syria and Egypt were silent, so he went about crushing the PLO leadership.  In the act, hundreds of Palestinians were killed  and thousands fled to Lebanon and Syria.  The king had decided to win back his kingship powers and he closed the door to anymore cooperation with them.

At any rate, the Arabs of the Middle East again attacked Israel on their most sacred holy day, a day when they were fasting and attending a whole day in the synagogue asking G-d for forgiveness, Yom Kippur in October 1973.  Israel begged Jordan not to join in, but they weakened and wound up playing a rather passive role this time.  This angered Egypt and Syria who also held against King Hussein the fact that he played an active part in crushing the Marxist-Leninist Dhofari uprising against the Sultan of Oman so why didn't he fight more against Israel!

 A Rabat Conference was held in October 1974 making the sole rep of the Palestinians conferred upon Arafat.  Arafat, now with too much confidence, pleaded brazenly in the UN in November 1974. He wound up with observer status for his state he had not yet accepted.

 Arafat in 1983 tried to consider a possible federation of a joint Palestine-Jordan state. Hussein weakened by going along with the PLO status and like the others, condemned Sadat of Egypt for visiting Jerusalem  in 1977 and the Camp David Accords of 1979.

 This was following the Beirut and Tripoli evacuations. However, even today when approached about taking more Palestinians into his country, the King of Jordan is adamant against the idea.   There are so many Palestinians living in Jordan that it is actually a monarchy run by the Beduin Hashemite kingdom with a population of 5 million mostly Palestinian Arabs.  Today's King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein  has married a Palestinian girl, now called Queen Rania Al Abdullah.

Jordan has been a dependent state since its inception.   The Arab states have been conferring $1.25 billion annually since 1978 but decreased it to $850 million in 1983.    He is trapped and can't act on his own freely.  It's been dependent on the USA militarily for arms.  56 US senators signed a resolution against selling arms to Jordan finally because it has been an enemy of Israel.  Politically, he has been caught between Israel and Syria, one of the major Israel attackers in 73.  Syria gets its weapons from Russia and Israel gets theirs from the USA.

Today, Arafat has been replaced by Abbas of Fatah (formerly called the PLO). He is dickering with Israel and has pledged to stay in for 9 months of talks.  His goal is to create Palestine out of Judah and Samaria and Jerusalem.

We still have his other half left to deal with, the rest of the Palestinians led by Hamas, a declared terrorist group who have sworn never to make peace and who constantly shoot rockets, mortars and missiles into southern Israel, Eilat and anyplace their weapons can reach so far.  

Only a handful of the original Arabs were from Palestine.  Most all came into the area from the surrounding lands looking for work in the 1880's when Jews from Russia came, escaping pogroms and wishing to return to their roots.  Arabs were scarce in the land when  Mark Twain and his contingent toured the Middle East. in  February, 1867.  The average Arab considered themselves to be Syrian Arabs.  They had no burning desire or need for a state of their own, only decent wages.

As Theodore H. White put it, to understand what is happening in the Middle East is to begin with its past.  Joan Peters, in her research, has traced the history to the present with unmatched skill.  I'm afraid this has not been a strong requirement for government involvement from any other country dealing with the peace table and Israel and the Palestinians.  Without in-depth knowledge, drastic mistakes have already been assumed as far as I can see.  Where many men of the West haven't clamored for political positions of ruling, it seems that there is no end to men who have yearned for this position in the East.

Israel is looking at a next door neighbor already made up of Palestinians, a new one taking over the original Jewish lands of belonging to Israel and Judah and a despicable enemy in Gaza who will never make peace.  That's 3 Palestine states!  .  How secure can Israel become against this horde?  For the creation of a state means more money to create more weapons and even more voice in the UN than they have now.  It means the peacock will have brighter feathers and will attract more than the Palestinians number today being they want to take in all other Palestinians who have settled elsewhere.  For Israelis, this should be a nightmare.  There has been no regard among the advisers to alter the hateful attitude of any of the Palestinians.  All they teach is that they will take over Israel and that Jews of Israel are the enemy and are terrible people.  There can be no "peace" between two different people this way.

The Jewish Homeland was originally to include land east and west of the Jordan River.  Israel has had to see it chopped apart where they have received 20% of the original promised land, and now they are expected to give up  land again to the attackers that was Israel's  in the first place won back after being brutally attacked in the 1967 war.  To reward people who attack you with the land they covet just to see you destroyed is a first in this world.  It could only happen to Israel because they are a Jewish country and have been vilified by the losers of the many battles that have gone on since 1948.

Resource: Text: Middle East Past and Present by Yahya Armajani and Thomas M. Ricks
 http://www.alhelalat.8m.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_I_of_Jordan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070905142855AAgf2XY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Rania_of_Jordan
From Time Immemorial, the origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine by Joan Peters, Christian reporter-researcher






Saturday, August 10, 2013

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

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Israel's Objectives Since 1967 Run Smack Against the Arab Objectives

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                     

When the Six Day War concluded, Israel's Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, was "waiting for a telephone call from the Arab leaders."  We're still waiting these past 46 years.  "Three weeks after the conclusion of hostilities, the first major incident occurred along the Suez Canal."  "Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan were the major combatants in the Six-Day War. In addition to these, other Arab countries played smaller roles in the conflict." That meant about 5 million population of Israel was up against 79 million in Egypt, 22 million of Syria and 5 million of Jordan.

Since the Six Day War of June 1967, Israel's main objective has been:

1.  To have peace within secure borders.  Israel has known only armistice lines and cease fire line.  It has been seeking borders which will be defensible.  This means borders that will not be a temptation to an aggressor as did the pre-1967 lines.

Israel has offered to negotiate since 1967 with the Arab Governments a true peace which would also provide for secure borders.  Israel has insisted that it makes no prior conditions, and that everything will be open for discussion in the negotiations.  Of course Israel has a few positions on where the secure borders ought to be.
2. "Israel vowed not to return to the vulnerable armistice lines of 1948 and '49 or to a divided Jerusalem, and yet to be "unbelievably generous in working out peace terms," as Foreign Minister Abba Eban put it. In direct talks with Arab countries, "everything is negotiable," he said."

3. Israel was prepared to return most of the Sinai back to Egypt with positions that it must remain in control of Sharm el-Sheikh so as to prevent Egypt from closing the Gulf of Eilat for a 3rd time.  Sharm el-Sheikh must be linked territorially to Israel.  The remainder of Sinai must be demilitarized.

4. Israel didn't wish to annex a large Arab population but its position was that the River Jordan should no longer be open to crossing by Arab troops and in order to assure this there must be an Israeli foothold in the Jordan Valley.

The Arab objectives of 13 Arab states led by Nasser since 1967 have been the three Noes of Khartoum in August 1967 where the Summit Conference of Arab leaders laid down 4 principals.
1. No peace with Israel
2. No negotiations with Israel.
3. No recognition of Israel
4. Insistence on the rights of the "Palestinian people in their own country."

Nasser held out for 12 years and then signed a peace treaty with Israel.  This made the 20 member Arab League so angry that they expelled Egypt from their group.  "The Arab League was founded in Cairo in 1945 by Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria,  Transjordan, then Jordan from 1946), and Yemen, (North Yemen, later combined Yemen).  An additional 15 Arab states and 4 observers were later   admitted. They exclude Israel, so really should call it the Muslim League.  Notice the present list of 22 member states includes Palestine with Jerusalem as their capital.  

    The Palestinian people are not in their own country.  They are not native to Palestine.  Many were in the land only 2 years before the last census was taken.  Most all were recent immigrants.  Very few were old timers with ancestors there before 1860's in which they were land owners.  Before Palestine was named as such, the land was Judah and Israel, taken by the Romans and renamed after the Jewish Bar Kochba rebellion of 135 CE.

This can only be considered for the rights of Arabs since 1948 who call themselves Palestinians in denial of the nearby lands they migrated from. They have become the 1.6 million Arab citizens of Israel.   In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Arabs were wandering in search of subsistence all over the Middle East.  Palestine had become a wasteland of which the remaining Jews had refused to leave.  Arabs there thought of themselves as Ottomans or Turks, or Southern Syrians, or just the Arab people but never once said they were Palestinians.  One thing though, they were full of religious prejudice and would  turn to anti-Jewish violence often, especially at the call of their Muslim leadership long before Israel's 1948 birth.

The land was designated to be the "Jewish National Home" and Britain held the Mandate which meant they had the responsibility to see that this came about back at the end of WWI in 1917.  Instead, the British treated the land as "Arab Land."  They brutally restricted Jewish immigration while Arab immigration was freely permitted which came to be known as the British "system" of immigration.  To appease Arab "discontent," the British violated the international League of Nations Mandate because they facilitated Arab settlement onto Jewish-settled land, and by treating Jews only on sufferance in their own Jewish National Home.  They didn't take any measure of Arab in-migrants and immigrants because the prevalent erroneous assumption was and still is that those Arab migrants had always been there.  Omitting such information facilitated the myth of today.

This came about with the 1939 White Paper restrictions from Britain when Hitler was carrying on a war against Jews.  This White Paper became a death warrant.  The White Paper remained a policy of Great Britain until Israel's birth on May 14, 1948.  England's War Cabinet had declared, in March 1942, that the British would continue to take all practicable steps to discourage illegal immigration into Palestine.  The Struma was sinking and the Grand Mufti declared a holy war against Britain and was demanding that Hitler, Ribbentrop, and the Bulgarian, Hungarian and Rumanian governments keep their promise of the destruction of the so-called Jewish National Home which was an immutable part of the policy of the greater German Reich.  The Nazi allies must do all that is necessary to prohibit the emigration of Jews to Palestine by sending them to the extermination camps in Poland.  So the British went along with these demands with their stopping Jewish immigration and encouraging Arab immigration instead.

They allowed Arabs to swarm into the Jewish settled areas of Western Palestine and take the places that Palestinian Jews were clearing for Jewish refugees, and then charged the Jews with displacing Arab natives in the Jewish-settled areas of Western Palestine.  The Arab found benefits they had never known before and shouldn't be able to claim to have been victims.  John Hope Simpson (1868-1961 British politician serving in Parliament, retired in 1916)  acknowledged in 1930 that the Arab demand for justice was seen instead to be injustice.  He recommended limiting Jewish immigration which went against the Mandate.on October 21, 1930 because there wasn't any agricultural lands for them to work.  This is when the Passfield White Paper was issued.  It was also the same time the Nazis were warming up to their intentions to rid themselves of Jews.

Arab traditional movement was the same migration equal to the situational migration of the Germans, Russians, Czech, Hungarians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Afghan and Lebanese refugees fleeing to become immigrants elsewhere, escaping from persecution, dictatorship or certain death, only they moved into Palestine's Jewish areas looking for work.  They were not the settled inhabitants for millennia.  They were simply shifting to where they thought their brethren were better treated.  They found life much better in the UNWRA camp setting than for the landless impoverished laborers anywhere in the Arab world.  With the Jews they had found better wages and improved living conditions but that wasn't as strong a motivator as the Arab leaders direction not to stay in 1948.  They obeyed leadership and fled with the instigating promise of taking the Jewish homes after their armies won, for the Arab armies didn't want to kill anyone but Jews.  

Resource:  From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hope_Simpson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_on_Immigration,_Land_Settlement_and_Development,_Cmd._3686
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hope.html
http://www.sixdaywar.org/content/khartoum.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_Arab_League


Thursday, April 4, 2013

Part I: Remembering Germany in the Holocaust and the British Kindertransport

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

                                                           Berlin in 1930's  
April 8th is designated as Yom Ha-Sho'ah or Holocaust Day, a time set aside to remember what had happened to us in WWII.  It will be most likely commemorated on the 7th which is a Sunday.

 In January 1933 Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party came to power in Germany.  Little did people know that this meant the near end of the Jews who lived in the world, for he set about to exterminate all.

Jews had lived in the German lands since Roman times when Jerusalem fell to the Romans in 70 CE.  By the 19th century German Jewry finally gained full civic-equality in a united Germany in 1870.  Though there were strong feelings of anti-Jewish prejudice, the political anti-Semitic groups met with failure.  A major part of the German people valued their Jewish citizens and most at least tolerated them.  WWI started in August 1914 and German Jews enlisted to serve the country they loved.  They lost the war, and this outcome changed Germany.

At this time there were 600,000 Jews living in Germany which was 1% of their population.  1/3 lived in the capital, Berlin,  making up 4% of the population there.  70% lived in large cities with 100,000+ population.  The rest lived in small towns and villages.  My uncle was born in Westerburg, Hildsheim Niedersachsen, then lived in Boppard.  Nearly 1 out of 5 Jews lived in small towns by 1933.

3/4 of the Jews had jobs in trade, commerce, the financial sector and the professions.  My uncle's parents were sausage-makers and did things like walk a cow to market, something he at age 18 was arrested for.  Jews were 3 times better off than the general population in having a salary coming in.  Jewish firms were outstanding in the department store business and owned 25% of smaller retail outlets and 30% clothing stores.  Non-Jews got the impression that Jews were "everywhere."  In Berlin Jews were the face of commerce, medicine and law but in reality were only 11% of all doctors and 16% of all lawyers in Germany.   In actuality, today Jews make up only 0.02% of the entire world population since the Holocaust slaughtered 6 million of them.

Rural areas had their above average Jews as well.  Jews handled 1/4 of all wholesale agricultural trade and in some districts cattle dealing and grain marketing was largely in Jewish hands.  These Jews were usually better off than the farmers and artisans around them and they often imported modern things and ideas into the countryside.  Several great publishing houses were Jewish-owned.  Jews were above the normal % among writers and journalists, in the theater and in the film industry.  (These areas found Jews in them because for so long Jews have not been allowed to own land, and their talents developed in these fields.) Jews were found to be in the middle class and rather conservative, but in politics they supported the liberal and democratic center parties or the moderate socialist party.

A big section of the German Jewish population was poor.  The depression hit the Jewish community as well. In 1932 over 31.5% of Jewish employees in Berlin were out of work.  1/4 of the Jews were on charity. Of these, most were recent immigrants from Poland and Russia that came between 1880 and the 1920's.  In 1933 these immigrants made up 1/5th of all German Jews.  They were small merchants, itinerant traders, shopkeepers, tailors, artisans and industrial workers.  Most were religiously orthodox.  Most of  the long established  Jews of Germany had belonged to the Jewish Reform movement or the Liberal movements.  German Jews had become less and less religiously observant as they had become integrated into German society.

By the postwar years, 25% of Jewish men and 16% of the Jewish women were marrying outside their faith.  That they had become acculturated and assimilated made the Jews shocked with disbelief by the strength of the anti-Semitism that came along with  Hitler.  We all know the story that 6 million Jews were rounded up and forced into ovens.  People my age grew up with nothing in the newspapers but the progress of American troops fighting in Europe.  Few of us heard about how Britain saved more than 10,000 Jewish children, most being Jewish.  .

Norbert Wolheim and Nicholas Winton were heroic rescuers of children from the Holocaust.  They brought out children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.   Only 25 years old, Wolheim  began organizing the Kindertransport in Berlin.  He acted as an escort on several occasions and returned each time to Germany to continue his work, putting himself in harm's way.  He ended up in Auschwitz with his wife and 3 year old son, and he alone survived.  29 year old Winton was a London stockbroker who visited Prague in December 1938.  He was " horrified at what he saw in the refugee camps, so struggled to bring 664 Czech children to England by flouting British government rules and bureaucratic red tape."  After the war most of the children found out that their parents had been   murdered in the concentration camps.

Lory Cahn nee Lory Gruenberger was born in Breslau when it was still part of Germany.  At age 14 she was slated to leave for England on the Kindertransport but at the last moment her father couldn't bring himself to part with her and at the end of 1941 she and her parents were deported to Theresienstadt where she was confined for 1/12 years before being separated from her parents.  Then she was sent to Auschwitz.  For the rest of the war she was transferred from one concentration camp to another until she was liberated at Bergen-Belsen weighing 58 lbs.  She married and and moved to  the USA.

After living in Germany what seemed to be forever, Germany turned on the Jews.  German Jews could not get out easily.  It took tons of money at a time when marks were worthless and other countries would not take them in because they were Jewish.  Even the USA had a quota with the demand that they be backed up by someone who took the responsibility of their financial situation.  "Most foreign countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain, and France, were unwilling to admit very large numbers of refugees."South American countries only took people with baptism papers.  And so, even in "Palestine," a ship was turned back that was full of Jews by the British!  At a time when we needed a country of our own, we couldn't get into the one designated by the League of Nations to be our Jewish Homeland.  G-d forbid it might upset the Arabs!

It seems to me that the Nazis killed off many of the employers of their country, making their economic situation even worse.  "The Nazis identified Jews as a race and defined this race as "inferior." They also spewed hate-mongering propaganda that unfairly blamed Jews for Germany's economic depression and the country's defeat in World War I (1914-1918)."

What surprises me is that Jews have returned to live in Germany.   However, after this horrific experience, Germany is dead set against its recurrence.  They teach about the holocaust in their schools.  Nazi worship is against the law.  Anything to do with Nazis is illegal today.  Even so, Neo- Nazis are on the rise in Germany.

Resource: Book and Film: Into the Arms of Strangers, stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer
http://www.amazon.com/Into-Arms-Strangers-Stories-Kindertransport/dp/B00005MEPJ/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1365104774&sr=1-2&keywords=Into+the+Arms+of+Strangers starring Judi Dench, Alexander Gordon, Lory Cahn and Kurt Fuchel
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Modern_History/1914-1948/The_Holocaust/Early_Stages_of_Prosecution.shtml
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=134617
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17514394
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/02/are-jews-trying-to-take-over-world.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2007/10/antisemitism-abounds.html