How Britain Became Anti-Semitic

Nadene Goldfoot   
   
Britain was chosen to rule over Palestine for 30 years with the mandate.  It would end in May 1948, having started May 1918.  Britain had expulsed Jews from their own land in 1290 and hadn't let them back in till 1655!  During that whole time the only Jews allowed in England were physicians, and at that only a few for desperate titled gentlemen.                                                                           

                                                   

1949 after Israel's War of Independence November 29, 1947
to Armistice signed in 1949. 

 Look at these facts:  Jews were an unwanted people constantly thought of as scapegoats.  There existed some Jews who had not wandered all over the face of this earth.
They remained in Palestine.The time had come when other Jews decided to join them because of being tired of attacks.                
                                                      

The League of Nations Council was originally designed to have nine members: the five great powers (Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States with permanent seats, as well as four temporary rotating members (the first four were Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and Spain). However, despite an ardent cross-country campaign by US President Wilson, which eventually contributed to his debilitating stroke, the isolationist Senate failed to ratify the treaty and the United States never officially joined the League. Thus, the Council consisted of eight members until 1922, when two additional small states were added. In 1926 the Council was further increased to fifteen members, including Germany.

 

League of Nations January 16, 1920-April 20, 1946
42 founding members, about 34 pictured here
The territories were governed by mandatory powers, such as the United Kingdom in the case of the Mandate of Palestine, 

The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective together with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920.

The League of Nations, the world's first try of a United Nations, a world organization of getting the consensus of the world to unite against wars thinking wise heads could prevent them, had decided to choose policemen to oversee Palestine after the First World War.  Enough wars, they they thought.  Britain was selected to police or rule over the country, a country once ruled for 400 years by the Ottoman Empire, a Turkish ruled empire.  The Ottoman Empire had sided with the Axis during WWI, the German-led side of the war and they had lost.  This meant that the Ottoman Empire lost their land to the Allies of the world.  Now it was in their hands; a western people handling Middle-eastern people.  


                                                       

William Shakespeare 1564-1616

The only way people knew anything about Jews was through Shakespeare's rendition with Shylock.  "Shylock is a character in William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice (c. 1600). A Venetian Jewish moneylender, Shylock is the play's principal antagonist. His defeat and conversion to Christianity form the climax of the story." 
                                                      

Shylock After the Trial by John Gilbert (late 19th century)

He's made out to be a very bad person in the play.  Being a money-lender is another story.  Christianity had taken a position of not allowing Jews to make a living in any other way other than the despicable underhanded advocation of being a money-lender, something beneath Christian society.  Jews couldn't own land, couldn't farm, so had this as a profession along with peddling.  

Joshua leading former slaves into Canaan (now Palestine)
Moses started with 603,550 people.
They lost 1,820 after 40 years of travel

The world's 1st Israel was settled by 601,730 Jewish slaves of Egypt led by Moses to the Promised Land which was actually Canaan, the land their forefather, Jacob and his band of 70 had left during a famine.    This happened over 3,000 years ago.  It took them 40 years to reach it.

Obstacles like lions and persuasive women tantalizing the men to stop,  and hostile people they encountered,  made the trip dangerous.  Feeding this many was also a problem so they were given Manna to eat.  

In 1948, Israel was born again in the same land, now called Palestine, named by the Romans for the Jews' enemy, the Philistines, with a population of 650,000 Jews.  They also had a great need to possess their own homeland after 3,000 years of wandering.  
                                                        

Do you see why we love our Torah?  How did this happen that Israel had broken apart when King Solomon died into 2 parts;  Israel of the north and Judah of the south,  only to come together again and go through a tough rebirth on May 14, 1948?  The only problem was the the map didn't give the Jews their original Judea and Samaria!  This was called the West Bank by Jordan.  
 

Herzl, 1860-1904

The Twentieth Century was a turn-around for Jews.  In 1897, Theodor Herzl, Hungarian newspaper reporter,  organized in Basle, Switzerland, the 1st Zionist Congress and founded the World Zionist Organization.  (Zion is another name for Jerusalem and for the entire land.)  Zionism came about as an answer to severe events of continued oppression and outbreaks of persecution (pogroms) in Eastern Europe within severe Jewish poverty.  The goal was the return of Jews to the Land and the revival in it of Jewish national iffe; socially, culturally, economically and politically.  As we say during Purim (Passover): Enough already!  Jews started returning.  

King Hussein of the Hejaz, wrote: "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,  23 March 1918.  George Antonius, ARAB AWAKENING, p. 269.)

                                           World War I-1914-1918 
                                  A War between the Allies and the Axis
                                                             

Allenby entering Jerusalem during WWI

The British succeeded in capturing Beersheba, Jaffa, and Jerusalem from October to December 1917. His forces occupied the Jordan Valley during the summer of 1918, then went on to capture northern Palestine and defeat the Ottoman Yildirim Army Group's Eighth Army at the Battle of Megiddo, forcing the Fourth and Seventh Army to retreat towards Damascus. Subsequently, the EEF Pursuit by Desert Mounted Corps captured Damascus and advanced into northern Syria.
This is why the Brits were given the 30 year mandate to rule.  

"On November 2, 1917, the British Balfour Declaration promised to support the establishment of a Jewish national home in Ottoman-controlled Palestine in this letter to Lord Rothschild. 
                
"His majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."  
                                     
                                      Lord Balfour, Foreign Secretary of Great Britain
                                      November 2, 1917
                                 France, Italy and USA officially agreed.  

This was in order to win Jewish support for Britain's First World War effort which was already baled out by the Jewish chemist,  Chaim Weizmann, who created  a special ammunition more powerful than others had for England which won the war for the allies.  The British had also made a promise to the Arabs that a united Arab country, covering most of the Arab Middle East, would result if the Ottoman Turks were defeated.  The Brits broke their promises to both the Jews and the Arabs.  
                                                               

This photo shows Arthur Balfour, center, former British prime minister visiting Tel Aviv in 1925 with Chaim Weizmann, third from the right. Weizmann would become the first president of Israel. Credit:HANDOUT/AFP 

Britain was at war.  Balfour's Declaration gave Jews reason to support them as they were supporting the Jews.  Britain also needed Arab support because Arabs made up more than half the population of the Ottoman Empire.  Britain put themselves in a jackpot by making two opposite promises to these two people. 
The Declaration was approved by the British cabinet and was given to Lord Walter Rothschild to convey it to the Zionist Federation.  It was approved by other Allied governments and incorporated in the Mandate in 1922.   

The 30 year mandate had a hook in it.  The Brits were to help the Jews to create their Jewish Homeland in those 30 years.  That was the promise of the League of Nations.  This hadn't been easy to come by.  It took many meetings of the Jewish leaders  like Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow and others after WWI had started to make contact with the allies to gain such a position.  They had seen a window with possibilities of opening for them after going for 2,000 years without a country for their people.  Yes, they were a people; not just a religion.  They had their own culture, language, family ties and their own religion.  They would have been a proselytizing religion had they not been prevented from doing so by the Roman Christian emperors.  They had once been an empire as well.  They were the only ancient Middle Eastern people who still existed.  
                                                             

1929 massacres In 1929, Husseini and his associates fomented a violent jihad as they called upon Muslims to “defend” their holy places from the Jews. As a result, pogroms were carried out across Palestine. Arab villagers sympathetic to Jews were often targets of murderous attacks by their Arab brethren as well. British forces were sharply criticized for not policing the territory adequately, for sympathizing with the Arabs, and for standing by and allowing havoc to be wreaked upon Jewish communities in Palestine.

Right after the war in 1921 the Arabs rioted against the Jews mostly in Jerusalem and Safed.  The 1st British High Commissioner for Palestine was Sir Herbert Samuel, an English reformed Jew.  He had kept pretty good law and order, but he left in 1925.  Then the British favoritism for the Arabs was more apparent.  By 1929, Arabs were led by  Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,  and rioted in Jerusalem, Hebron and Safed with longer and brutal killings by attacking the unarmed in these cities.  133 Jews were massacred.  Over 200 were wounded.  Jewish property was destroyed.  

The Brits did nothing to punish rioters or prevent more riots.  Violence was the worst in 1936 when Germany was undergoing attacks on Jews.  The Jews in Hebron, a holy city to Jews where Abraham buried his wife, Sarah and one of the cities of cited as a city of refuge as well as once being King David's capital, were
driven out or killed.  After 1,000 years, Hebron had no Jews living there.

The Brits then did a terrible thing.  In 1939, Great Britain issued their "White Paper", stating that England intended to set up an independent state in Palestine in 10 years with a permanent Arab majority.  They were there to be setting up the Jewish Homeland!  This was truly a double-cross.  In 1939 Germany was invading Poland!  Jews had been suffering greatly in the last 3 years in Germany.  My own uncle got out of Germany in May 1939 and may have been the last Jew to do so as the doors closed on them after that.  The Germans had them all as captives, and the doors of Auschwitz were already open-my uncle had been in there!  

The White Paper went on to announce that Jewish immigration would be cut back to 15,000 per year for 5 years;  Then NO MORE Jewish immigrants in Palestine by 1944.  Starting then, land sales to Jews would be restricted or forbidden.  This policy guided British policy behavior in the coming years.  It was the same old anti-Semitism Jews had been enduring for the past 2,000 years!  The Brits had completely turned around 180 degrees in their original responsibility from the world's nations in developing the Jewish Homeland.  The Brit responsible for the White Paper was Neville Chamberlain, who was scared off by the riots from 36 to 39, and he was the  Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement. He is well-known for trusting the Germans not to invade Europe.  
                             
                               Under Ottoman Empire

1880:  saw 25,000 Jews immigrate to Palestine
The first aliya  between 1882 and 1903, brought 20,000 to 30,000 Russians fleeing Czarist Russia’s pogroms. 
Between 1903 and 1914, during the second aliya, 35,000-40,000 more Russians, most of them socialists, established themselves in Palestine.

 The newcomers were very active in the building of Tel-Aviv and also founded kibbutzim (collective villages).  

On the eve of WWI  1914, the 80,000 Jews of Palestine constituted only a tenth of the country’s total population.

 Moreover, Jewish immigration to Palestine constituted only 3 percent of the transoceanic Jewish migration during that period. By way of comparison, of the 2,367,000 Jews who left Europe then, 2,022,000 established themselves in the US.  
Why?  Palestine was made of deserts, swamps, flies, mosquitoes, malaria and weeds and Turkish police.
           USA was paved with gold and democracy and freedom. 

1914-1918: With WWI and the subsequent famine, Palestine’s total population dropped. Its Jewish community now numbered only  60,000.  

By the end of 1931, 174,600 Jews were living in Palestine, 17 percent of the population. 

By 1948 when Israel was pronounced a state among other nations, the Arab states expelled their Jewish subjects in anger.  Entire Jewish communities were without a country so came home to the new Israel, 
including 121,000 out of 130,000 of the Jews in Iraq,
44,000 of out 45,000 of the Jews of Yemen,
30,500 out of 35,000 of the Jews of Libya, 
165,000 Jews came from Morocco, Tunisia, Poland and others from 1955-1957.
Between 1961-1964, 215,056 Jews came mostly from Eastern Europe and North Africa.  
Since the miracle of 1967's War, Israel had a new wave of immigration from North and South America, Western Europe and the Soviet Union.  
Almost 700,000 immigrants had arrived in Israel, almost half the total, came as destitute refugees from Moslem countries.  
The number matches that of the Palestinian Arabs who became refugees in 1948.

WWII and 6,000,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust

1956:  1,872,400    Population grew in Israel 
1968   2,841,100
1972: 3,164,000 when 200,000 immigrants had arrived.  
2020: 9,152,000 population with 20+% Arabs.  


Resource:
A Young Person's History of Israel 2nd edition by David Bamberger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shylock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia-White Paper
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Allenby,_1st_Viscount_Allenby
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain
facts about israel, division of information, ministry for foreign affairs, Jerusalem
https://www.cjpme.org/fs_181  immigration years, numbers from Canada research
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-britain-s-true-motivation-behind-the-balfour-declaration-1.5462518

Israeli Jews Fighting Western Anti-Semitism Along With The Muslim World

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    

Before WWI was over, the West knew they would be ready to rule Palestine.  "In 1916, Britain and France concluded the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which proposed to divide the Middle East between them into spheres of influence, with "Palestine" as an international enclave."

On November 2, 1917 the Balfour Declaration in essence created the right of the Jews to regain Palestine as the Jewish Homeland because the allies had won WWI and the Ottoman Empire was beaten.  They had sided with the Germans.  It took 31 years for the Jews to be able to announce that Israel was accepted in the United Nations.

"At the Peace Conference in 1919, Emir Faisal, speaking on behalf of King Hussein, asked for Arab independence, or at minimum the right to pick the mandatory.  In the end, he recommended an Arab state under a British mandate. The World Zionist Organization also asked for a British mandate, and asserted the 'historic title of the Jewish people to Palestine'"

Why did it take so long?  England was given the mandate to rule Palestine for 25 years. It was confirmed on England on July 24, 1922.   It started on September 29,  1923 and ended May 14, 1948 at midnight.  That's when the Jews were able to announce the birth of the Jewish state on May 14, 1948.

During the 25 years of waiting to have their own state once again and  being homeless for the past 1,847 years, WWII emerged.  The main victims of this war were the Jews.  Jews are followers of Moses, the people of the "Old Testament."  Since the New  Testament for Gentiles replaced the "Old", the Jews became those repulsed despicable people.  Religion certainly is strange.

Six million Jews were slaughtered in Germany's plan to exterminate them all in the whole world before the allies again won the war.  What they did to deserve being slaughtered was that they were different.  They were not of everyone else's religion. They wouldn't convert.   In Germany they had been residents there since 70 CE or even before when Jerusalem was attacked by the Romans.  They had a long history of being good patriotic citizens even though  they had been  attacked by the Gentile Germans on occasion.  Many had reacted from these attacks by moving into other countries.  They worked their way into the Pale of Settlement held by Russia.  The Nazis of WWII were able to reach all the Jews of Europe and tried to get the ones in Africa before they were stopped.  In 6 years, 6 million civilian  Jews were slaughtered.

WWII ended on May 5, 1945.  Three (3) years separated the end of the war and the birth of Israel.  A whole generation had gone by since it was decided that a Jewish Homeland should be created.  The generation that lived during  the Holocaust must have realized that the waiting period  caused the death of 6 million innocent people.  They could have been saved if they had been allowed to enter Palestine, but the British stopped them from entering.  They even turned back shiploads of Jews who were so close to freedom.  Not the Arabs, though.  They aided and abetted their entrance.  Could be their strong anti-Semitism  of a few thousand years was guiding their decisions?

England's history with Jews is shameful. Jews lived in England since Roman times, and were noticed as Jews in 1070.   Jews lived in Jerusalem after its attack in 70 CE, but along came the Crusaders led by England in 1099 and massacred their Jewish community.  By 1290 King Edward of  England expelled any Jews from   living there. Jews couldn't return until Oliver Cromwell in 1656 changed that, though there were a few Sephardic Jews there in 1655. Cromwell died 2 years later after the Jewish admission.     In their defense, there isn't a country that didn't treat Jews in the same manner.  England was just earlier than most in being so anti-Semitic.  Cyprus, the Byzantine Empire and  Germany preceded England in their anti-Semitic acts.  France and Spain were close behind, following England.  England was without Jews for 366 years, from the Middle Ages to the Age of Enlightenment.    300,000 Jews were living in England  about 10 years ago, but the 2011 census counted 263,346.

During those 25 years of holding the Palestine mandate, England turned their heads when Arabs were entering Palestine illegally.  The whole world had been suffering from anti-Semitism since the time the Jews lost Jerusalem, anyway because of their own religious reasons.  It wasn't until 1967 when Israel was attacked unmercifully by all their neighbors in a take-over and the massive combined armies lost the battle.  Suddenly the Jews were heroes being they were then the underdogs.  Like a soccer game upset, the little state of Israel overcame all the odds and were the winners.  Their popularity didn't last long and anti-Semitism settled back into the hearts of the world again.  Oh-they are the Jews!

We all know what the Muslim world is doing to drive out Jews from Israel.  Does the western world see how they are in cahoots with such a goal?  Take Amnesty International, supposedly a group promoting universal human-rights principals- evidently for all except for Jews.  Being the most influential NGO in the world,  they're silent when it comes to Jews' rights.  Jewish civilians, young children included, have been severely injured from stone-throwing Palestinians, stabbing attacks, and have been killed in shootings.  Israelis are consistently dehumanized and demonized by Muslims.  

They're first to enter the political scene against Israel.  April 2002, an Amnesty official on BBC confirmed IDF massacre in Jenin, which never took place.  It was a blood libel that continues to be propagated.  In 2009, they were participating in the Goldstone Report which was filled with many false indictments against Israel after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.  They are obsessed against Israel.  Israel of late has been peppered by petrol bombs but Amnesty International says they pose little or no threat to the lives of the IDF.

 How about the BDS Movement?   .  It was started by Palestinians on July 9, 2005 and is still continuing.  It's a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel that is trying to attack Israel's economic growth and development which a state needs to exist.  Almost all American universities as well as European ones are on the bandwagon against Israel on this.

I have news for you all.  Israel's Jews aren't going anywhere.  They've been there, done that in being homeless, something that lasted 2,000 years.  They know what you all are like.  They have faith in their religious belief in that it promotes goodness, something they really have seen very little of in the rest of the world.  They know they're onto a good thing.  Their ancestors told them so, and they see that they were right.  Somebody has to be the light of the world even though the world is throwing a lot of water on their light in trying to put it out.  Like the Burning Bush that radiated without fire, the Jews continue to radiate their goodness in an evil world.  If anti-Semites would only take their blinders off, they might see it.

Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_for_Palestine_(legal_instrument)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
Facts About Israel 1973, Division of information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem.
Book: "From Time Immemorial"  by Joan Peters
Magazine:  The Jerusalem Report, April 7, 2014, Political theater of the absurd by Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_Sanctions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England
http://www.olivercromwell.org/jews.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/15/jews-new-sense-of-identity

What the Fight Between Jews and Arabs Is Really All About

Nadene Goldfoot
Actually, The modern effort to establish a national homeland for the Jewish people began in 1839 with the petition by Sir Moses Montefiore to Sa'id, Khedive of Egypt, for a Jewish homeland in the region of Palestine.


Finally, November 29, 1947 was the day the UN decided to recommend the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state.  The Jewish state would be even smaller than what was later decided by Armistice Lines in 1949, after all the Arab nations had attacked the new-born Israel.   It was only a little more than half of western Palestine, about 15,000 square km or 6,000 square miles and that was including the semi-arid Negev Desert.  In contrast, Egypt has 386,000 sq miles. Today Israel amounts to 7,992 square miles.

 At the time there were already 7 Arab states in the same area:  Egypt, Iraq, Syria Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Transjordan.  The area of land they already had was 230 times larger than the planned Jewish state and had a population 60 times more than the Jews, who numbered about half a million, or pretty close to 600,000.

At this time the Arabs wanted the Jewish land as well.  This is what they fought the Jews about.  There were no "occupied territories" to fight about The Arabs were guaranteed their state out of the Jews' promised Jewish Homeland. There weren't any Arabs living in refugee camps.   In fact, their portion was 7/8 of all of Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River.  All 7 states would invade Israel.  It was a ratio of 7:1.

They even refused to recognize the Jewish claims to the land.  That hasn't changed as we saw on the Geraldo show last night that Palestinian legislator, Dr. Hanan Ashrami vehemently denied Jews any history to Jerusalem or the land at all.

Palestine was quite a large piece of land as known at the time of the British Mandate of 1918 at the end of World War I.  In the map above you can see the Dead Sea.  February 1919 Emir Faisal, the recognized Arab leader of his day was also  in the act of striving for  the creation of an Arab political independence in Syria where he was a king for a brief time and Iraq where he ruled for 40 years.  He signed a formal agreement with Dr. Chaim Weizmann for cooperation between the two over the projected Arab state and the projected reconstituted Jewish state of "Palestine"  Faisal saw the borders proposed as moderate and proper.  The Zionists included what became Mandatory Palestine on both banks of the Jordan as well as NW Galilee up to the Litany River, later included in S. Lebanon, part of the Golan Heights, later included in Syria and part of Sinai.  

What the League of Nations was establishing was separating the  "state of Palestine" from Syria. They had the mandate over the Ottoman Empire that had lost the World War I.  Britain saw that Palestine would control its own source of water power and irrigation on Mount Hermon in the east to the Jordan.  This was of great importance since the success of the new state would depend upon the possibilities of agricultural development. " The mandate formalised British rule in the southern part of Ottoman Syria from 1923–1948."


 " It was recommended the the Jews be invited to return to Palestine and settle there, being assured by the Conference of all proper assistance in so doing that may be consistent with the protection of the personal (especially the religious) an the property rights of the non-Jewish population, and being further assured that it will be the policy of the League of Nations to recognize Palestine as a Jewish state as soon as it is a Jewish state in fact. "


The League of Nations Report said:  "It is right that Palestine should become a Jewish state, if the Jews, being given the full opportunity, make it such.  It was the cradle and home of their vital race, which has made large spiritual contributions to mankind, and is the only land in which they can hope to find a home of their own;  they being in this last respect unique among significant peoples."


Instead of following Emir Faisal's wishes which would have had a good outcome for all, the Arabs followed the advice of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and attacked the Jews instead.  The Grand Mufti was in cahoots with Germany.  " as shown in a memo written November 2, 1943 from Heinrich Himmler to an anti-Balfour Declaration meeting: 


"To the Grand Mufti:
  "The National Socialist Movement of Greater Germany has, since its beginning, inscribed upon its flag the fight against world Jewry.  It has, therefore, followed with particular sympathy the struggle of the freedom--loving Arabians, especially in Palestine, against the Jewish interlopers....." 


The British had compounded the Jewish efforts by doing everything in their power to keep them out of the area.  It was truly a miracle that Israel was pronounced a state as the British Mandate was up and they left on May 14, 1948.


Reference: http://www.colostate.edu/orgs/ESA/general.html
Book: Battleground, Fact and Fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Israel
Book:  From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_for_Palestine_(legal_instrument)

The Epic That Is Israel

The Epic of Jews in the Promised Land goes back 3,700 years.  

Nadene Goldfoot
Not many states have been created because of a directive from the Bible, but Israel was. In his last years as a leader Moses (born 1400 BCE)  had entered Canaan and with the younger generation fought the Amorites, Moabites, Midianites and Bashan who were in what would be Transjordan.   Joshua, of the tribe of Ephraim and the 600,000 entered the Promised Land when Moses could no longer continue on the 40 year Exodus trek, dying at age120. Joshua captured what would be most of the the Land of Israel.   Jews, given monotheism and the laws to be a Holy nation and a model for others by him,  settled and cities grew.

Jerusalem was the capital of Israel sitting in the center of the Judean Mountains.  Joshua's conquest was 1320 BCE and the king of Jerusalem was Adoni-Zedek who was defeated,  but the city remained as an independent town  between the tribal areas of Benjamin and Judah.  King David captured it in 1010 BCE, dealing leniently with the Jebusites while adding to the city.  It became the religious center of Israel and the capital of his empire that reached from the Red Sea to the Euphrates.  Solomon, his son, (970-930 BCE) enlarged the city.  He built the Temple.  Jerusalem remained the capital of Judah and of the Davidic dynasty.

After the destruction of the 2nd Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE by the Romans, many of the wealthier Jews of leadership were taken away as slaves, but still many remained.  Their national language of Hebrew continued.  They maintained their own unique civilization with their special laws.  Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the 9th century.

 In the 11th Century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.  However, along came the Crusaders starting in 1096-9 bringing war led by Christian rulers to take back Palestine from the Moslems and massacred many Jews. In their zeal they slaughtered Jews in N. France and in the Rhineland, Prague and Salonica, capturing Jerusalem in 1099. During the 12th century  of 1147 the 2nd Crusade began again, .A 3rd Crusade of 1189-92 brought in England who attacked Jews in York, England. 1320 saw another attack in France and Spain. Though dangerous to live anywhere, it seems that Palestine was the safest place to be in those days.  Jews were not safe outside of their own land.    


  The Palestine communities rebounded in the 13th and 14th centuries.  Many rabbis and Jewish pioneers immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee.  Famous rabbis started communities Safed, Jerusalem and other places during the next 300 years.  

By the early 19th century, before the birth of the modern Zionist movement, more than 10,000 Jews lived in what is today-Israel.  We've had 78 years of nation-building which began in 1870.  The end goal was the reestablishment of the Jewish state which came to fruition May 14, 1948.

The Balfour Declaration was the promise of the Jewish Homeland through the British who had the mandate after the World War I in 1917.  This was the international clincher to be a nation again among nations. 

                                                             Ashkelon 2012

The League of Nations Mandate gave Britain the responsibility to carry out the decisions to fullfill the Balfour Declaration, but they managed to give away most of the land to the Arabs and saved but a sliver for the Homeland.

The UN partition resolution  of 1947 was accepted by the Jews and rejected by the Arabs that would have given the Arabs most of the land for a state of their own.  Already a huge chunk of the land had been given over to Arabs who created Transjordan-called Jordan today. Israel was announced as a state May 14, 1948 and the next day was attacked by all the surrounding Arabs.   Israel was admitted  to the UN in 1949.

Resource: Myths and Facts by Mitchell G. Bard and Joel Himelfarb
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.jewfaq.org/moshe.htm  Judaism 101
http://www.jnf.org/assets/pdf/gibborim_timeline.pdf

Balfour Declaration 1922 Concerning Israel in Palestine

 Acknowledges Our Rights to Israel

In League of Nations

from Mitchell Bard, PhD.
Nadene Goldfoot, comments on
Mitchell Bard does an excellent job of writing about this piece of legislature that was accepted as a legal binding statement. I merely am commenting and expanding some of the facts he presents.

In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration: Britain had the mandate, which means they were responsible for governing and taking care of the land taken over from the Ottoman Empire, which was Turkey. The Turks had sided with Germany in WWI and had lost to the Allies.


His Majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors 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.

The Mandate for Palestine included the Balfour Declaration. It specifically referred to "the historical connections of the Jewish people with Palestine" and to the moral validity of "reconstituting their National Home in that country." The term "reconstituting" shows recognition of the fact that Palestine had been the Jews' home. Furthermore, the British were instructed to "use their best endeavors to facilitate" Jewish immigration, to encourage settlement on the land and to "secure" the Jewish National Home. The word "Arab" does not appear in the Mandatory award.11

The Mandate was formalized by the 52 governments at the League of Nations on July 24, 1922.

As soon as the Arab governments started complaining, and they had oil, Britain themselves started backing down.

A Two-State Solution on Both Sides of the River Jordan

by Victor Sharpe

Very few people understand why Israel is now balking at a two-state solution and are against Obama's plan. This is an excellent explanation of why and what has been happening to the area. -Nadene Goldfoot

The phrase "Two State Solution" has been embraced by politicians and journalists alike, repeated endlessly, and touted as the panacea for a "just and equitable" solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

It has assumed the repetitious role of a muezzin's call to Islamic prayer. But it is based on erroneous geography and history; on a mixture of wishful thinking, naiveté and a brilliant Arab propaganda campaign of disinformation and falsehood. To understand why, it is necessary to learn a small but vital chapter of Middle Eastern history.

Shortly after the conclusion of the First World War and the total defeat of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which had ruled most of the Middle East for 400 years, Britain was made trustee by the League of Nations for the whole of the geographical area known as Mandatory Palestine.

Incorporated within the Mandate was the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which specifically referred to the historical connections of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the moral validity of reconstituting within it a Jewish National Home.

The British Mandatory power, however, arbitrarily tore away 80% of the Palestine Mandate in 1922, giving it to the Hashemites, a Bedouin tribe with links to Mecca. Only the land west of the River Jordan remained from the original territory promised to the Jewish people as a National Home.

Jewish residency was immediately forbidden in all the lands east of the River Jordan, which in time became known as Trans-Jordan and then the Kingdom of Jordan.

The U.N. Partition Plan of 1947 created two states, Jewish and Arab, which were roughly equal in size. But these two states were to occupy only the remaining western geographic area of Mandatory Palestine - from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan - barely 50 miles wide and a mere 20% of what now remained of Mandatory Palestine.

This plan was accepted by the Jewish leadership with deep reservations but as a pragmatic solution to the plight of the 850,000 Jewish refugees who were being driven from Arab lands at the time of Israel's rebirth.
The miniscule size of the state was also reluctantly accepted in order to facilitate the absorption of the surviving Jewish remnant still languishing in European refugee camps following the Holocaust.
The State of Israel, thus reconstituted in part of its ancient and biblical homeland in May, 1948, was immediately invaded by seven Arab armies in order to completely destroy it and drive the surviving Jews into the sea.
The Jordanian Arab Legion, led by British officers, occupied the eastern half of Jerusalem along with Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), driving the Jews out of their towns and villages. In the south, the Egyptians occupied the Gaza Strip, similarly driving the Jews from their homes.

The Jewish state astonished the world by surviving the Arab aggression. The Arab states, however, totally rejected the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East and an uneasy armistice remained in force routinely broken by acts of Arab terror.

In June, 1967, the Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians, launched a new aggression against Israel with the avowed intention of annihilating it. Israel defeated her Arab enemies in six amazing days and in so doing liberated the eastern half of Jerusalem, along with Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), from the Jordanians. At the same time, Gaza was freed from Egyptian occupation.

Despite subsequent and repeated offers by Israeli governments to give away territory in return for a true and lasting peace with the Arab belligerents, the Arab world continued to support terror and refused to accept a Jewish state within the Middle East.

Interestingly in April, 2009, the Holocaust denying leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's supposed peace partner, rejected any willingness to accept Israel as a Jewish state; a sure indication of the falsity of any Arab claim to live in full and lasting peace with Israel.

True, a peace exists today between Israel and Jordan and between Israel and Egypt but it is a frigid, cold and precarious peace with neither Jordan nor Egypt truly interested in full and mutually beneficial relations. Thus ends the history lesson.

The creation of a Palestinian Arab state within the mere 50 miles separating the Mediterranean and the Jordan River is a recipe for war and for the piecemeal destruction of the Jewish state. Such an Arab state will more than likely soon fall under the control of the Islamist Hamas movement, itself a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks a worldwide Islamic Caliphate. Gaza, and what it has become, is living proof.

The Iranian mullahs, perhaps soon armed with nuclear weapons, will have a command and control base within the territory given away to the Arabs. They will be ensconced in Gaza on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, determined upon launching ever more lethal terror against what is left of Israel and threatening Europe itself.

Israel will again be reduced to a nation a mere nine miles wide at its most populous region. When President Bush was still Governor of Texas he flew over Israel's tiny waist and remarked, "...why, in my state we have driveways longer than that."

That is the most likely outcome of the current proposed Two State Solution west of the Jordan River, which the Obama Administration is pushing with the flawed zeal of a misguided zealot. But to truly create a just and equitable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I propose a Two State Solution on both sides of the River Jordan.

To repeat: The present day Kingdom of Jordan occupies four-fifths of geographical Palestine. This territory consists of the land east of the River Jordan, extending north to Syria, east to Iraq and south to Saudi-Arabia.

Compared to Israel, it dwarfs the Jewish state yet it originated in an act of unprincipled perfidiousness by the British government of the day and remains an Arab state that has from its inception forbidden Jewish habitation within its borders,

This is even though it includes territory promised in Britain's 1917 Balfour Declaration and by the League of Nations as a Jewish National Home.

Jordan's population is currently made up of 75% Arabs who call themselves Palestinians with the remainder being Hashemite Bedouins. As it is exists on land originally forming four fifths of Mandatory Palestine, and as the population is three fourths Palestinian Arab, it follows that the "just and equitable" solution to the creation of a Palestinian Arab state should be within the present day Kingdom of Jordan and, therefore, east of the River Jordan.

The Arabs who call themselves Palestinians and who choose to remain in Judea and Samaria should be required to end all terrorism against Israel - hardly an onerous demand - and by finally living in peace could flourish within an Israel whose territory would now formally extend west from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. That would still only be a distance of barely 50 miles at its widest. The United States in comparison is some 3,000 miles wide.

Israel would now formally give up 80% of the originally mandated territory but would now possess all of her biblical and ancestral Jewish lands - with the exception of biblical Gilead east of the Jordan River, which is in present day north-western Jordan.

If there is a desire within the international community to truly arrive at a "just and equitable" solution, then this would be it. Of course, if this was a perfect world, it would satisfy historical, geographical, religious and ethnic considerations. But, alas, it is anything but a perfect world and the fanatical desire among so many Arab and Muslim nations to wipe out all vestiges of a Jewish state is, perhaps, insurmountable.
Nevertheless, it can do no harm to raise it in the corridors of power and promote and articulate it forcefully as a truly "just and equitable" solution.

When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu arrives for his fateful meeting with President Barak Obama on May 18, 2009, it is unlikely that this solution will be raised. That is a shame because the accepted wisdom, now exercising the minds of Obama, the neo-libs who surround him, his problematic advisors, and the legions of people around the world who have succumbed to the churning mills of the Arab propaganda machine, is that there exists a people called Palestinians with a distinct history who lived in an independent Arab state called Palestine.

It is a lie, perhaps one of the greatest scams in history, swallowed in direct proportion to the amount of times it has been repeated. It is a fraudulent history of a fraudulent people in a fraudulent land.
Indeed, there has never in all of recorded history existed an independent, sovereign Arab nation called Palestine.

Here are the words of a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, speaking in 1937 before the Peel Commission, which was considering partition of the Palestine Mandate, west of the River Jordan:
"...There is no such country as Palestine! ...That is a term the Zionists invented! ...There is no Palestine in the Bible."

Professor Philip Hitti, the Arab-American history professor at Princeton, said in unambiguous words before the 1946 Anglo-American Committee:
"...There is no such thing as ‘Palestine' in history, absolutely not."
President Obama has made it crystal clear that he is not prepared to let such inconvenient truths deter him from his strange obsession in forcing through the creation of a terror supporting Palestinian Arab state during his term of office.

He intends to shower the Arab and Muslim world with favors. No favor could be more eagerly snatched at than that of the Israeli democracy abandoned by this American President to the tender mercies of the ever circling mullahs, imams, dictators and oligarchs.And as the President prepares to leave on his strange mission to Egypt to give a speech to the Muslim world he will also no doubt ignore the fact that from the Al Azhar University in Cairo spews forth a constant stream of Islamic hatred towards non-Muslims; those they call "infidels."

Doubly strange that President Barak Hussein Obama should choose Egypt whose government controlled media routinely drips anti-Jewish poisonFor Binyamin Netanyahu, May 18th, 2009 may therefore, to paraphrase Dickens, be the best of times and the worst of times. He may surprise us yet by being a leader not made of petroleum jelly, but one who finally stands up to President Obama and simply says, No.
After all, the stakes are harrowingly high - the very survival of modern Israel. But it is worth doing the right thing, or, as Mark Twain put it:
"... always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

Missed Opportunities for a Palestine: Opting for Terror Instead

Nadene Goldfoot

The so called Palestinians missed many chances to create their own state, but opted instead for terrorizing Israel. That was more important to them. They missed their first chance in 1947 when the UN was partitioning the region and wanted to create two states.

In 1949 through 1967, Egypt and Jordan were the occupiers of Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians did not even try to create their own state then. It probably was not even in their minds to do so.

The Six Day War against Israel occurred in 1967, and Israel offered to withdraw from lands they captured in the winning of that war. The Palestinians refused the offer, and stated: no peace, no negotiations and no recognition of Israel. Thus, the land was in Israel's hands. Up to this time, we had no Israelis in any settlements in Gaza or the West Bank.

From 1968-1979, we see that 6,000 Israelis settled in these areas. Menachem Begin became Prime Minister in 1977. Terror from Palestinians did not deter us. Then we had a peace treaty with Egypt, and Israel removed their Sinai settlers in order to have peace with Egypt. In 1979 the Camp David treaty was created. Israel offered autonomy to the Palestinians, something just short of statehood that would have led to independence. This also allowed Israel to watch their behavior and see if they turned away from terrorism. At this time Israel had 136,109 settlers in the territories, which is about 1/4 the population of Portland, Oregon.

From 1995 to 1999 we had the 2nd Oslo Agreement and we continued to withdraw from territories while terror never stopped. Terror then escalated, and Israel realized peace was not to be with the Palestinians. At this time we had only a slight increase in population to 146,207 in the territories as we stopped withdrawing people from these areas.

In 2000 we had a 2nd Camp David and we probably reluctantly agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and most of the West Bank. We also promised to dismantle most of the West Bank and compromised on one point on Jerusalem; that being that East Jerusalem would be the capital of Palestine. To my great relief, Yasser Arafat rejected the deal without even countering another idea. For him it was all or nothing, no negotiations. At this time we had a growth in the territories to 203,067 Israelis. Ehud Barak was Prime Minister of Israel then.

Two years later in 2002 the Road Map to Peace was created. The Palestinians are asked to fulfill some commitments starting with ending the violence against Israel. Israel's part is to end the settling of the territories. However, the Palestinians just escalated their terror. The Road Map fails. Israel does evacuate all their citizens and soldiers from the Gaza Strip. Palestinians ignore the chance to build a state in Gaza to prove that they are interested in living as peaceful neighbors. Instead, Hamas takes over Gaza and fires over 10,000 rockets and missiles into southern Israel. Israel reels at the reality that they have traded land for terror, and are unwilling to discuss new territorial concessions. Why should they? The Palestinians are not behaving like Egypt did. At this point there are now 253,748 Israelis living in the West Bank. None are in Gaza.

Today Israelis have given up on the idea of trading land for peace for these deadly neighbors. Hamas has deadly rockets that could hit any part of Israel. Now the settlers in the West Bank total 276,000. It would be difficult to move and resettle them. What has stopped the state of Palestine from being created is the people's own rebellion and hatefulness toward their future neighbor, Israel. If the Palestinians would adopt the mind-set of Anwar Sadat, there would be a peaceful Palestine that would not be a threat to Israel. Evidently it is not to be.

Don't blame Israel for settling in the territories. What it was promised originally in the Balfour Declaration was a much larger Israel that was hacked up, until it became very small. If the Arabs don't ever intend on having peace with Israel, Israel is legally free to use the land they inherited from the Arab attacks that failed. That is a lesson; don't mess with Israel and attack it, or you suffer the consequences. Crime doesn't pay off. Somebody seems to be watching over Israel.

Resource: Mitchell Bard #69
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/talking/69_settlegrowth.html