When Jews Offered the Moon to Arabs and It Wasn't Enough

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

                                                  Chaim Weizmann, 1st President of Israel

Back around 1920, our harassed Zionist leaders made so many concessions in the hope of appeasing the Arabs that it caused an argument between the Zionist schools of Chaim Weizmann and Ze'ev Jabotinsky. 

Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky (1880-August 4, 1940) was a Revisionist Zionist" who were in opposition to the official Zionism.  He along with Joseph Trumpeldor had founded the Jewish Legion of the British Army in WWI.  He established the Zion Mule Corps.   He favored political cooperation with the British.  One of his accomplishments was to organize the Irgun, Beitar and Hatzohar groups.  He must have changed his opinion of the British by 1923 when he resigned from the Zionist Executive board because they failed to oppose the British policy with enough vigor. That was probably due to his imprisonment by the British because he fought against the Arabs in their 1920 attack on Jewish communities.  It was then that he had organized the first Jewish self-defense group which he led.  He did his best to get Polish Jews out of Europe in the 1930's and could see what was happening to Jews and how important a Jewish state was. According to historian Benny Morris, however, documents show that all Zionist leaders of the 20s, 30s, and 40s, including Jabotinsky, favored the transfer of Arab populations if required for establishing a (still-proposed) Jewish state."

Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) was a Jewish scientist who assisted all the allies and especially Great Britain to win WWI with his scientific achievement of improving weapons use.  He brought about the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917 in which Britain made the commitment to establish a Jewish Home out of Palestine, the land The Brits held the mandate on.  He had successful meetings with Emir Feisal,  son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca who was the head leader of all the Arabs.  They had an agreement to create an Arab and a Jewish state.   

Weizmann's ideas had prevailed.   Chaim was chosen to be Israel's first president.  Feisal changed his mind about Israel  when he realized that Great Britain had given  more land than he had expected to the Jews.

Both of these Zionist leaders, Jabotinsky and Weizmann, were Russian Jews  who were tired of pogroms and restrictions on Jews and saw the perils their people were facing, but didn't imagine such a thing as the future Holocaust that would wipe out 6 million of their people.    Their future was bleak and about to become extinct as they saw it in the 20's.  .  

It was the Arab leaders' antagonism which was  inspired, organized  and financed by the British Authority  that did the undoing of cooperation between the Jews and the Arabs.  The Jewish leaders knew how contrived and unrealistic the pretensions of the Arab national movement was.  They knew that there wasn't any burning desire to have their own country when they met them back in the 1880's.  Arabs just wanted jobs.                                                                

                                                    Emir Feisal Ibn ul Hussein, King of Iraq

Concession after concession was proposed to the Arabs.  In the early 1930's the Zionists  offered the Arabs political recognition which would have jeopardized the very foundation of their own independence, but it wasn't accepted.  Parity was the offer made.  This is  constitutional equality regardless of majority and minority,  "the quality or state of being equal or equivalent."   If they disagreed, the vote was to be cast by the British government which the Jews still trusted in those days.  "No reasoned reply was ever made to this offer;  it died in the flames of the pan-Arab attack of 1936.

The next year in 1937, the Zionist leaders made the decision for the sake of peace to share the country with the Arabs by dividing what remained of the original mandated territory of Palestine  after eastern Palestine had been given to the Arabs by the British.  This was a partition scheme proposed by the British Royal Commission and the Jews accepted it even though the  proposed  miniature Jewish state would have been completely indefensible.  They must have been desperate to do that as they saw what was happening in Europe to the Jews.  Our  higher power must have been protecting the Jews from such a bad decision as the Arabs rejected the plan and the British government buried it!  The proposed Israel would have been extinguished faster than the blink of an eye since the Arabs were already meeting with Hitler and plotting the end of the Jews.
                                                                   

A 3rd proposal was made in 1947 after WWII when Hitler was dead.  The Jewish underground had finally forced the British to give up their hold on Palestine.  Their mandate was running out of time anyway as it was up in 1948.  The Zionist leaders announced that they were willing to accept a plan of partition as a way of putting an end to the conflict they were experiencing.  They accepted the UN partition proposal which still included a  ludicrously vulnerable Jewish state by telling themselves again that a heavy sacrifice would win the heart of the Arabs.

Of course it was just an illusion and this acceptance was met with bloodshed. and destruction.  The Arabs of Palestine were in an uproar and the Arab League invaded in 1948 when Israel was declared a state on May 14th.  Still, the Zionist leaders refrained from using their military advantage gained from all the past fighting they had been enduring.   Some feel they could have restored all of western Palestine, but instead they accepted a compromise which left Palestine partitioned and Israel with improved but still strategically weak frontiers.  Israel signed the Armistice agreements with the Arab government counting on peace with their neighbors who breached each clause, one by one.

There hadn't been any movement from the Arabs of Judea and Samaria to make peace with Israel in the cramped lines of the 1949 Armistice.  They continued to think of themselves as people wanting to eliminate Israel.  In May of 1967,  just before the Six Day War that started on June 5th, outbursts of joyful participation could be heard in their general pan-Arab plotting

The Palestinian Arabs have had a very short modern history as they were people who had emigrated to Israel from neighboring states seeking jobs and better living conditions in the 1880's.  Only a few could qualify as native-born Arabs.  Many landowners had long since left and had sold their land to the Jews as they were able to receive very high inflated prices for worn-out land no one wanted except the Jews.  The Arabs leaders who were now dickering for all the land were following the lead from outsiders.  There was no base to them needing or even thinking about having their own state.  "It is no accident nor the result of any overwhelming pressure that they did not establish a state of their own even when it was offered to them on a silver platter by the United Nations."  They said no to an agreement for their own state in 1949 when the war ended.  The Armistice had been signed by Israel, and the Arab army of Transjordan was occupying Judea and Samaria.  What more did they want?

Nineteen years later in 1967, the Arabs hadn't shown any desire for independence nor taken any action to get their own state.   King  Abdullah had created Transjordan in 1946 and made it an independent Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.  He had formally announced the annexation of Judea and Samaria to his kingdom during the 1948-1949 War and the Palestinian Arabs said nothing.  The king renamed the land "Jordan."  The Arabs living there suddenly became Jordanians or even called themselves "West Bankers" and no one complained. There are more "Palestinian Arabs" living there than the original Hashemites.  In reality, this is the Arab "Palestine."   They found out that this move angered other Arab states, but Great Britain and Pakistan recognized this move.

There never was a nation called Palestine.  It was the former Jewish land of Israel and Judah renamed by the Romans.  Arabs living in what was called Palestine were always a fragment of the large Arab world.  The inner desire, and spiritual feeling, the passion of creating a nation hasn't been there without the egging on of the Brits and their Arab brothers of the surrounding nations. They always had thought of themselves as Syrians.   They have really been treated as pawns in a game of chess with the goal of taking over all of Israel from the dhimmis of the past, the Jews.  Their national character has been turned into terrorists who have constantly attacked Jews.  Deep inside of each Arab is more of an attachment to their family, clan, village and city.  Most haven't changed from the people TE Lawrence found in 1918 except for one way;  they are now ready to sacrifice their children's lives to gain the upper hand.

It's been 65 years since Israel was re-established on May 14, 1948.  Israel's heart has been hardened by all wars they have had to fight to keep their tiny country which is only 8,000 square miles.They have lost their naivety.   There needs to be another Emir Feisal to come along and make a peace that both Israel and the Arabs can live with.  Third parties may have their heart in the right place but not their souls.  This must be between the people who must live together.  Israel has continued to offer them the olive branch. Either the Arabs are ready to live as others do, in peace, or not.  The choice is theirs.

Resource:  Battleground-fact and fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz p. 220-225.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze'ev_Jabotinsky
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/weizmann.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan

The State Israel Was In Ten Years Ago

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

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

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

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

              Let's start with some history about Israel.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                                The 1982 Lebanon War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

International Law Favors Israel With Balfour Declaration

Nadene Goldfoot
Throughout the centuries, Jews returned to the Land to join the ones who never had left between 70 CE and 135 CE.  They came in groups and individually.  In the Diaspora, philanthropic assistance for the Jewish community became a tradition.  There were emissaries who went back and forth between the Land and the communities in Europe and elsewhere.  Jews prayed for 2,000 years to not to forget Jerusalem.

WWI had just come to an end.(July  28, 1914-November 11, 1918)  The Allies won and Germany, Austria/Hungary, Bulgaria  and the Ottoman Empire lost. Italy had been siding with the Axis but in 1915 joined up with the Allies, instead.   The League of Nations had given a mandate to Britain to carry out the creation of the Jewish National Home.  The mandate for Palestine was written up on July 24, 1922.  There were 28 Articles for Britain to carry out.

The mandates for Palestine and Syria came into force together on September 29, 1922.  Here the League of Nations recognized the "historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and the "grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."  

Britain was responsible for putting this into effect the declaration made on November 2, 1917 in the Balfour Declaration by the Government of His Brittannic Majesty and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might 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;

and....Now this part was a joke.  Jews everywhere, and especially in Europe, were not only suffering from anti-Semitism, shown to the Jewish leaders plainly in the Dreyfus Affair in France, but also in the multitude of pogroms going on in the Pale of Settlement, where Jews were kept to live, not being desirous enough to walk on Russian soil.  This was the whole reason why our Jewish leadership felt the need finally, of getting back our own country, and here was the opportunity.  Our old stomping grounds was desolate and virtually empty after 2,000 years of negligence by other ruling powers.  Nobody wanted our ancient land.  Nobody, but us, that is.

Our leadership had no intention of harming any of the but few Arabs that lived on our ancient land. They planned for a Utopia where all would live in peace and comfort.   Most were very poor people as the Arab landowners lived on other continents, usually Paris, France. Theodore Herzl wrote the pamphlet, Der Judenstaat in 1896 of just such a Utopia.  In 1902, he published a Utopian novel about the Jewish state, Altneuland (old-new land) a vision complete with monorails and modern industry. The novel concludes, "If you will, it is no legend."  "The Old New Land is the classic Utopian novel published by Theodor Herzl, who is in effect the father of Israel. A very well-written work of fiction, it also outlines Herzl’s progressive vision for a Jewish state in the Land of Israel."

Under the 400 years of Ottoman rule, and especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, conditions of insecurity and oppression prevailed in the Land.  Marauding Bedouin tribes made incursions.  There was internal strife between rival local alliances of Arabs.  The number of villages was reduced by about one half between the 16th and early 19 century.  The population of the Land dwindled and at the beginning of the 19th century did not exceed 250,000.  In the 2nd half of the 19th century, both Arabs and Jews began to grow.  by 1914, the population of the Land (west of the Jordan) was estimated at 680,000 of whom 85,000 were Jews.  That means that there were 595,000 Arabs in Palestine at that time.

An agreement was reached with King Husseins' son, Emir Feisal, chief Arab delegate at the Paris Peace conference, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann. King Hussein was of the Hejaz, and they were also negotiating with Britain for the recognition of Arab national rights in the territories of the Ottoman empire throughout the Middle east.   Feisal endorsed the Balfour Declaration and Palestine was recognized as a separate Jewish entity, with which the then imminent Arab State would maintain diplomatic relations, on condition that Britain and France met Arab demands in other territories.  This Mandate extended over both sides of the river Jordan, but in 1922, Britain divided the mandated territory in half and established Transjordan, depriving the Jews any rights to the Land east of the river which was not in the agreement.  Now Jews faced a ruling that they could not purchase land or settle there.

The Brits interpreted the Articles of the agreement to fit their national desires.  It wound up that at certain times, Jewish immigration to the land was allowed but at other times, it was severely restricted and land purchase was prevented.   On the other hand, they allowed Arabs to enter illegally and didn't even bother to include them in the count.  They were truly showing their bias from long ago when Jews were kept out of England for over 200 years.  At the start of WWII, Jews were prevented from entering Palestine, and instead had to return to their host country and face death in the Holocaust.  My thought is that Britain purposely was trying to sabotage the Balfour Doctrine so that they could take over the whole land themselves, hoping for oil to be found.  It's weird, but of all the places of the Middle East, oil has not been found in what is today's Israel.

Between the Sherif of Jerusalem, who was the opposite of Feisal, and the Brits, Arabs were goaded into attacking Jews living in Palestine by this time, and they were easily roused.  All the good plans of Chaim Weizmann to live in a peaceful land together had to be laid aside in order to survive at this point.  Jews were attacked, whole Jewish communities were rubbed out.  The Jews did everything in their power to carry out the legalities of the Balfour Doctrine and tried to establish a Jewish state that would be fair to the Arabs there as well.  They did not count on them attacking for no reason.

By 1881 Jewish immigrants made aliyah to Israel and created communities and did farming.  They came mostly from Russia's Pale of Settlement, where life was absolutely intolerable.  They were Socialists who knew what it was like to live under a yoke of submission.  By 1897, Theodor Herzl formed the World Zionist Organization and the age-old yearning of the Jewish people to return to its land was the topic.  It became our national liberation movement of the Jewish people and they had 2 goals:
1. To carry out the return of the Jews to the Land and the revival in it of Jewish national life, socially, culturally, economically and politically.
2. To get a publicly recognized, legally secured home for the Jews where they would be free of persecution and free to evolve their own life and identity.

 Palestinian Arab murdered over 1,000 Jews between 1920 and 1967, and they ethnically cleansed all Jewish communities from the areas they captured during the 1948 war, including the West Bank, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem, and that's why they had fallen into Arab hands.  The pattern of terrorism simply continued after Israel's victory in its 1967 defensive war.  Yasser Arafat organized 61 Fatah   military operations from the West Bank in the few months after the war, and 162 Israelis were killed by terrorists between 1968 and 1970.

Whether is has been in Gaza or Judea-Samaria or East Jerusalem, since 1967, when they regained these places, Israel has set out all kinds of helps for the Arabs.  They have returned the kindness with bombs, mortars, missiles and suicide bombers.

Israel is now made up of 6 million Jews and 1.4 million Arabs.  In 1973 Israel said she will continue to seek peace within secure boundaries between itself and its Arab neighbors.  Until a negotiated peace becomes possible, Israel will continue to pursue the policy of peaceful co-existence with the Arabs in the administered areas. That was declared 40 years ago.  Israel is still waiting for a negotiated peace treaty which must recognize Israel right to exist and to be there.  International Law says that Israel has the right to be in the land and to rule over Judea, Samaria, and east Jerusalem.  It came to them legally by the Arab nations attacking and losing.  Let that be a lesson to them.  Might does not make right.  

Reference: http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2012/12/legally-are-new-apartments-fatal-blows.html with internatonal lawyers Eugene Rostow, Julius Store, David Phillips and Alan Dershowits
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/01/international-law-professor-eugene.html with Eugene Kontorovich
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/The+Mandate+for+Palestine.htm
http://www.aish.com/jw/me/The-Dishonesty-of-The-Gatekeepers.html telling about Palestinians treatment of Jews.
http://www.amazon.com/Old-Land-Altneuland-Theodor-Herzl/dp/1463587333/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362872202&sr=1-1&keywords=Altneuland+by+Theodore+Herzl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Nebi_Musa_riots

The Return of Jews to the Homeland: In the Beginning

Nadene Goldfoot
Though many of the most elite Jews had been killed or taken captive at the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, many men and women also remained and continued to live in Eretz Israel, and were known as the Yishuv.  They built the first quarter outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.  As a little girl, we used to put our pennies in the Karin'ah meen Box, also known as Tzedakah or the Pushke box  at Sunday school for the poor Jews living in "Palestine".  A blue and white pushke box was for the Jewish National Fund, which shows that thousands of little Jewish children also helped to pay for land bought through this fund.

 A new movement had started in the 19th century of a revival of Jews returning to the promised land.   In the 1860's, 2 periodicals published in Jerusalem called for the return to the Land.  Mark Twain visited Palestine on a trip he set out on from Brooklyn, February 1, 1867 and wrote in his book, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, just how desolate the land was. In 1870 the first Jewish agricultural college was established in Mikveh, Israel (today outside of Tel Aviv).  In 1878 Jews from Jerusalem, one of which was Yehoshua Stampfer, Rabbi Stampfer's father of Portland, Oregon,  founded the first new village in the Land--Petah Tikva (1973 had a population of 85,000) ten miles east of Tel Aviv. By 2009 the population had grown to 209,600.  Other villages were founded near Jerusalem and in the Galilee, but Safed had always been there with legends back as far as Noah himself.   

By 1881 on, Jewish immigrants from the Hibbat Zion (Love of Zion) movement arrived from Eastern Europe.  Some of the immigrants joined existing villages and others founded new ones.  Hadera and Rishon started off as villages and are now towns.  This first group of immigrants were called the First Aliyah.  Aliyah means ascent, so moving to Israel means going up, spiritually.  The conditions these pioneers lived under were just as bad if not worse than American pioneers,  as the land was in serious neglect and now contained swamps which held mosquitoes that carried malaria.  The Ottoman Empire was hostile and oppressive towards everyone.  New villages were lucky to survive.

In 1897 Theodor Herzl was in Basle, Switzerland and organized the First Zionist congress and founded the World Zionist Organization.  Zion is a synonym for Jerusalem and the entire land.  This came about to start with in France with the Dryfus Affair, where a Jewish serviceman was accused of being a traitor because he was Jewish but was innocent.  The many pogroms in Eastern Europe was enough to drive out the Jewish population.  Self-determination was a movement taken by other nations such as the Greeks, Italians and Poles.  Jews also realized they should follow this path.  Their goal was to allow a return of Jews to their ancient land and revive the national Jewish life in social, cultural, economic and political ways. Jews had been praying 3 times a day since 70 CE that next year they would be in Jerusalem.  It was time to return.

A 2nd Aliyah was underway from 1904-1914 which strengthened villages and founded new ones.  The Yishuv began to organize politically into socialist groups.  They were all highly idealists and were planning a Utopia for all.  In 1909 the first kibbutz, Degania Aleph was created on the southern shore of Lake Kinneret.  I was there visiting a friend.  Also in the same year Tel Aviv was founded on the sand dunes outside of Jaffa.  Hebrew was becoming the language of the Yishuv and they were creating Hebrew literature.  Life was immensely harsh and many pioneers left, but by 1914 there were 85,000 Jews in Eretz Yisrael.

By 1918 the land was occupied by Britain who governed it for 30 years.  This came about with the ending of World War I in 1917, and on November 2nd the British issued the Balfour Declaration which showed sympathy with the Jewish Zionist aspirations, promising support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.  Their allies like the USA were parties to the negotiations and approved of this.  So did some of the principal leaders of the Arab national movement.

  King Hussein of the Hejaz, wrote that they saw these Jews coming in and knew that the country was for them, the original sons, and to them it was a sacred and beloved homeland.  (Al Qibla, Mecca. No. 183, 23 March 1918:  George Antonius, Arab Awakening. p. 269)  However, at the same time, leaders of the Arab national movement were negotiating with Britain for the recognition of Arab national rights in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire throughout the Middle East.

January 3, 1919 was an agreement between King Hussein's son, Emir Feisal, chief Arab delegate at the Paris Peace conference and Dr. Chaim Weizmann of the Zionists.  The Balfour Declaration was endorsed and Palestine recognized as a separate Jewish entity, with which the then imminent Arab State would maintain diplomatic relations, on condition that Britain and France met Arab demands in other territories.  At this time before 1948, both Jews and Arabs were called Palestinians.

Britain was given the mandate on July 24, 1922 which incorporated the wording of the Balfour Declaration regarding establishing in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people.  It recognized the historical connection between Jews and the land and called on Britain to be the facilitators of the Establishment of their national home.  This mandate extended over both sides of the Jordan River.  Britain, however,  turned around and divided the land up in two parts, establishing an Arab emirate in Trans-Jordan and deprived the Jews of rights to the land east of the river.  Not only that but they made the new rule of Jews being forbidden from then on to buy land or live there.  At certain times they allowed Jewish immigration and other times they restricted immigration and even prevented buying land.  They were not following through with the charge they
were expected to uphold but were making up their own rules and favoring who they wished.

 Britain had never been that friendly towards Jews. Here we have a reporter and a chemist trying to  save lives by making some good points with the staid Brits. They wound up with very little of the original promised piece of land which turned out to be the bad sections as well.  They didn't say no, though.  A piece was better than nothing.    The Arabs, who had been offered the biggest and best part, said emphatically and have been since then, NO.

Resource: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qnXQ9_cMjLs
Facts About Israel, Division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petah_Tikva
http://www.safed.co.il/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzedakah