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

Arabs' Historical Connection With Palestine?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                      

Let's get down to the nitty gritty.  Arabs, who include Palestinian Arabs, originally came from Arabia which is the SW peninsula of Asia.  Arabia is made of 1,027,000 square miles or 2,630,000 square km.    Compare that to Israel's 8,000 sq. miles.  It includes Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Bahrein, Qatar, Trucial Oman on the Persian gulf, Muscat and Oman, and South Yemen.
                                                                     

Mohammad was born in 570 and died in 632 at the age of 62.  He started the new Islamic religion.  Arabs came out of the desert of Arabia with the purpose of conquest and established an empire within 100 years that extended over 3 continents, from the Atlantic Ocean to the border of China.  Early on they had conquered Palestine from the Byzantine Empire (330-1453CE) . It was finally destroyed by the Ottoman Empire's Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror.  
                                                                  ***************

The Byzantium was the Eastern Roman Empire with its capital in Constantinople, Turkey and covered a changing geography depending on the year. They controlled all of the Balkans and Asia Minor, the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, Egypt, and parts of North Africa.  It was the heir of the Roman Empire. They were eastern Orthodox Christians. and they spoke Greek    Up to 637 CE it included Palestine.  Jews lived in this empire from its takeover in the 4th century.  Eastern emperors had their own specific religious attitudes towards the position of Jews and their religious life, which continually deteriorated towards the Jews.  Justinian (527-565) had terrible anti-Jewish laws in his Codes and issued a decree in 533 about synagogue services which interfered with their conduct of such.  Heraclius in 614 issued an edict ordering the conversion of the Jews. Judaism was forbidden by Leo in 723, Basil I in 873-874, Romanus Lucapenus in 932-6, etc.   
                                                       ***********************                                                       

The Muslim Arabs took from the Jews the lands they had held onto for 20 generations after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. 

Arab rule came from Damascus, Syria by the Omayyad /Umayyad dynasty  which lasted a little less than 100 years (661-750).  It was not a stable empire with the Caliphs lasting about 6 years each.  They were in the position of having a huge empire made up of people of many different religions.  Their history, handed down from the Abbasid historians who didn't like them, said they were hard drinkers and pleasure lovers.  Only a few strengthened the empire and advanced its frontiers.Islam was militantly aggressive so that's why they took over vast areas so fast. This was the start of Muslim rule in Palestine for 450 years. The Umayyads had been fairly tolerant in their rule.  

Constantinople had taken away the Arab sons in Palestine, the local tax farmer sucked them dry, the village over the hill of a rival tribe had to be watched or fought in a cycle of mutually destructive retaliation.  Bedouin nomads tore up olive trees, destroyed crops, filled wells with stones, broke down cisterns, took away livestock.  

Arab problems started with establishing who the next Caliph would be as Mohammad had no sons.  Ali died and Mu'awiya took the caliphate as a member of the Quraysh tribe that Mohammad had belonged to. 

As to how Arabs looked upon other new Muslims they had converted in their vast empire, the bottom of the rank and file were the slaves, black, white and yellow.  The next level above slaves were the dhimmi, the Jews, Christians and Sabians.  Later this privileged group that they didn't want to kill included the Zoroastrians of Iran and the Berbers of North Africa.  Next in line above them were non-Arab Muslims they called CLIENTS.  It was they that were problems.  The Arabs were following the leadership of Umar I and interpreted the Koran from a limited point of view with the supremacy of the Arabs and didn't want to share their privileges with converts.  The Arabs didn't know anything else but to handle problems militarily so they asserted Arab national superiority.  

 They were overthrown in 750 by the Abbasids who were their bitter antagonists.  They claimed descent from Abbas, Muhammad's uncle.  They ushered in a new era (750-1258).  Creating a United Arab Empire had failed.  Now the world saw 2 rival empires.  The capital moved from Syria to Baghdad, Iraq and Iran.  Kufa, on the border of Iran, became the new capital.  Non-Arabs felt liberated.  Iranians held the high positions of government.  Arabs were not fashionable anymore, but Islam remained and out of it was to come Iranian, Ottoman and sometimes Indian ideas. The Abbasid dynasty of Turks were growing in anarchy and were also Muslim rulers.The Abbasids  governed for 200 years dominated first by the Persians (Iran), then by the Turks. They were conquered by the Mongols in 1258.   

  The Fatimids finally defeated them and that's when the Arab hadn't had any part in the governing of the empire; not in the capital or in the provinces.  The Fatimids from Cairo were more of persecutors.  Their empire lasted from 750 to 1099 and brought in Shia Islam.  
                                                                 

 The Crusaders (1095-1291) massacred the Jews in the cities.  Yet the surviving Jews held on, survived and worked and fought.  They had fought the Crusaders with the Arabs.  The Crusaders had gathered up Jews, put them in a synagogue and burned them alive.  Jews held out in Haifa against Crusaders and held onto the city from June to July 1099.  At the time there were Jewish communities all over the land.  50 known included Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea and Gaza.  

The Mameluke's (military class Turks taken as slaves) took the reigns of power in 1250 after the Christian Crusaders.  They were a group of slaves that ruled Egypt from 1250 to 1517; 267 years.  Palestine had no existence to them, even as a sub entity.  The Mameluke's exploited its people with hostility and indifference.  Some Arab tribes collaborated with them in some internal struggles that marked their rule, but the Arabs lacked any direct influence in their government.  Arabs were  conquered subjects and were treated this way.  
                                                                         

Arabs had accomplished several things, though.  Throughout out the lands conquered, Arabic became the dominant language and Islam the predominant religion.  People conquered accepted Islam usually was for the social and economic discrimination suffered by a non-Muslim.  So what had happened was a cultural assimilation which brought about the so-called Golden Age of Arabic culture.  Notice that the people who were not assimilated were the Jews.  They could not change from their own deeply rooted religion to one that had none of the same moral and ethical values they loved in their own religion even though it was one that worshipped ONE G-d.  

In the 10th century the Arab writer Ibn Hukal said: " Nobody cares about building the country or concerns himself for its needs. " 

The invaders from the desert brought no tradition of learning, no heritage of culture to the lands they conquered.  Instead, some of them learned from the people they had conquered.  Arabic civilization was not Arabian either in its origins and structure nor in its principal ethnic aspects.  They only contributed their language and their religion.  It was their conquered people who actually contributed their own enlightenment and learning.  

Many conquered people had books of learning and they were translated into Arabic.  Most of the great works in mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy were translated. renditions from others.  Then some original works came along in Arabic on all these subjects and also on alchemy, pharmacy and geography.  These were not from the Arab mind or developed by Arabs but were from the conquered Persians, Egyptians or Arabians, either Christian or Jewish or Muslims.  

Arab literature was not all from Arabs.  They had help from non-Arab people.  Their philosophy, linguistics, lexicography and grammar were primarily Arabian in origin but with outside help.  
                                                                          

During all this period, Palestine was never mentioned.  "The few Palestinian scholars were born and may have died in Palestine, but they studied and worked in either Egypt or Damascus, the hubs of learning for the Arabs.  Palestine was nothing more to them than a forgotten backwater of the empire.  Where all was happening was in Damascus, Baghdad or Cairo.  These were the centers of the Muslim Empire.  Jerusalem, where the Muslims had built a mosque over the site of the ancient Jewish Temple in the act of trying to establish a Muslim Holy Place, never achieved any political or even cultural status.  None of the empires had interest in Palestine except for what they could squeeze out of it for the imperial exchequer or the imperial army.  

Arabs didn't improve under the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922), either.  Even though they all were Muslims, they didn't get any benefits from this fact.  The Ottomans replaced Arabic with Turkish as the language of the country.  Arabs disliked their Turkish rulers just 1 degree less than the Jews did because the Jews were heavily taxed and the Arabs weren't.  
                                                               

The Arabs did one thing to Palestine.  They contributed to its devastation.  Part of this devastation came about through the warring of the previous dynasties;   the Arab, Turkish, Persians or Egyptians, Crusaders and invading hordes of Mongols or Kharezamians, plus by the local Arab chieftains.  They had brought with them internal strife of inter tribal warfare within Palestine.  The Bedouins (Arabs) were always raiding from the neighboring deserts on the populations of little villages.  This had been happening way back during the Byzantine era.  Over 15 centuries they had eroded the face of Palestine.  

The Bedouin depredations were more intense during the latter phase of the Abbasids and Fatimid era.  Palestine east of the Jordan was laid waste.  In the 13th century with the Mameluke's, ruining the land went on constantly.  It worsened during the Ottoman Empire.  Bedouin raiders plundered livestock and destroyed crops and plantations.  they plagued the life of the farmers of that period.  Bedouin camps dotted the countryside and were bases for highway attacks on travelers or any caravans carrying merchandise and on the cavalcades of pilgrims.  

In 1785, Count Volney described what he saw in Palestine.  He said the peasants were invading each other's lands and would destroy their corn, durra, sesame and olive-trees, carry off their sheep, goats and camels.  The Turks were negligent in repressing this and paid less attention to this happening in Palestine.   since their authority was very precarious.  The Bedouins had camps on the level countryside and were attacking the Ottomans and resisted their authority.  The Palestinian part of Syria (Palestine) was more wretched than that of any other.  this country is indeed more frequently plundered than any other in Syria because it lies open to the Arabs.  
                                                                

                      Russian  Jews of Aliyah clearing the swamps, getting Malaria afterwards

By 1850, hundreds of years of abuse had turned Palestine into a treeless waste where there was a sprinkling of dilapidated towns, and malaria-ridden swamps.  This was where originally there had been fertile northern valleys and a once-thriving South (Negev) now  turned into a desert with a population of almost nothing.  There never was a Palestinian Arab nation. Visitors felt that the country had been waiting for the return of its lawful Jewish people.  In 1200 years the Arabs had built only Ramleh and that was in the 8th century.  The 1880's brought in the 1st Aliyah of Russian Jews who tackled the swamps.  

Culturally, the Arab conquest of the Fertile Crescent and Iran was a barbarian invasion of the advanced civilizations of the Byzantine and Sasanid (Iranians)  empires.  The first group were the conquerors and preached the simple faith of Islam they had brought with them from the desert.  The Umayyads were very close to the primitive Bedouin culture and had to handle civil wars but brought their faith in contact with Christianity and Iranian cultures and raised more questions about faith and the the conduct of Islam.  The Abbasids borrowed from the non-Islamic world and this was all translated into Arabic.  Their creativeness was built upon acquired knowledge from those conquered.  

Resource: Battleground-fact and fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz p. 108-109, p 88.
Middle East Past & Present by Yahya Armajani, Thomas M. Ricks 2nd Edition, College Text
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/465/Abbasid-Dynasty
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Crusader.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatimid_Caliphate
http://www.allaboutturkey.com/ottoman.htm

Palestinian Perversion of Their History

Nadene Goldfoot

So many lies have been told about the Israel-Palestine situation that the true facts have not even reached the UN.  Many follow the path of  least expended energy to find out what the facts are.  

Jews were deprived of their homeland ever since 70 CE because of the Roman Empire invasion.  They suffered from religious persecution for 2,000 years, leading to pogroms in the 1800's in Russia and with the Dryfus Affair in France of 1894, realized they had to return to their native homeland which was up for grabs, being the Ottoman Empire lost in WWI.  The British, holding the mandate and instructed to carry out the promise of establishing the Jewish National Home, double-dealt with them, because they also  were  guilty of this religious anti-Semitism.  

Palestinian leaders have long desired money and power and care little for their people.  It was they who told their people to leave homes in Israel as they were coming to attack the fledgling country and that they'd get their homes back and more when it was over.  They've created such Arabian Nights fairy tales about their history that even they might have started believing it all.  If you believe the following, then you have been duped along with the average Palestinian.

1.  Palestinians identified with the land for over  thousands of years.  
No:   There were very few Arabs living there that were natives.  Most landowners had sold out and were living in Damascus, Paris, and other nice places.  During 19th and 20th centuries Arabs/Arabic-speakers that were migrants wandered searching for food and jobs all over the Middle East.  Palestine was wasteland and peasants had left.  Nothing was there for them.  But, there were also poor Jews who had remained in Palestine even though many left after 70 CE during the Roman conquest.  Jerusalem was still populated by Jews and remained so.

2. Jews returned after 2,000 years in 1948 to displace Arabs because of their new state of Israel.  
No:  Palestine was the former Empire of Israel,  held by the Ottoman Empire for the past 400 years and included land east and west of the Jordan River.  It originally was to be the new Israel according to the British Mandate but had then been pared down to 20% of the land.  The plan was not to displace the Arabs but to live together in harmony.

3.  But it was Arab land.  Arabs were there first.  
No:  There were few Arabs living in Palestine and they thought of themselves as Ottomans, Turks, southern Syrians, Arab people, but never as "Palestinians."  Effendis and the Mufti tried to create Nationalism in them but it didn't take.  T.E. Lawrence tried it also, and he failed as well.  It was an alien idea.  The only non-Jews that were there first were people that Joshua had conquered when the Israelites entered Canaan in about 1270 BCE, people like the Hittites.  They were all killed, but any survivors were emerged with the Israelite people.

4. Jews stole the Arab lands.
No:   After the Dryfus Affair, Jews formed groups to ask Britain about creating a Jewish National Homeland out of the land held by the Ottoman Empire who lost WWI.  It was decided affirmatively in the League of Nations.  Britain held the mandate and were told  to carry it out.  Arabs living there at the time were included in the plan of being citizens along with the Jews.

5. Jewish terrorists forced the peaceable Arabs to flee from Palestine.
No:  Arabs were fed with religious prejudice, so Muslims of Palestine erupted into anti-Jewish violence many times when Muslim leaders called for it which the British called "Nationalism."

6.  Palestine is Israel, and Israel makes up all of Palestine meaning that in 1948 Palestine became Israel.
No:  The bulk of people living in Palestine that were not Jewish were  from east Palestine, Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian and others who were already landless because of feudal type life styles, natural disasters, over-taxation by the Ottomans and loan sharks (people who loan money).  The British gave away state domain lands already designated to be the Jewish National Home to these landless Arabs screaming that they had been displaced by Jews in western Palestine.  Israel got only 20% of land promised to become the Jewish National Home.  That 20% contained mostly all Jews to start with.

7.  Arabs were natives of the land but Jews had to immigrate into Palestine.
No:  Only a few Arabs were natives of the land.  The bulk were poor landless peasants looking for work who came from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon and further.  Jews had always remained in Palestine and their ancestors were  there when Joshua entered Canaan.  Jews had been coming back to the land through the ages, but noticeable groups started in 1880 with the 1st Aliyah from Russia which continued to bring in Jews suffering from religious persecution.  With European immigrants and the end of the Ottoman Empire, there was opportunity in Palestine for jobs, so Arabs came.

8. There are no places for homeless Palestinian refugees to go.
No.  For 64 years, refugees have been living in refugee camps in Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria which in fact are the homelands of most of these Arabs.  .  The UN has been feeding them and supporting them, even keeping them in UN refugee jobs which enables them.  They are pawns in the fight against Jews held in this condition by their leaders.  They've been brain-washed to remain in this state.  This means 3 generations have lived this way.   Transjordan had taken land illegally meant for the Jews and it was from there that homeless people wound up in refugee camps as well.  Surrounding Muslim states refused to grant citizenship to these Arabs who had left Israel. Jordan had a war with them and did take in many but not all. King Hussein's son, Abdullah II married one.   Today Obama and Netanyahu are planning to have a summit meeting about Jordan being involved with the West Bank where Fatah's PA rules over Arab communities.

9. Jews were living in equality and tranquility with the Palestinian Arabs before Israel became a state, just like Jews had lived in peace and benevolence throughout the Arab world.
In individual cases, this was true.  My neighbor, Mimi Padrow,  told me about living in Tel Aviv where they had orange groves and that the Palestinian workers got along well with them.  But there were many times, such as from 1919- 1929 that rioting was instigated by leaders  like the Haj Amin el Husseini which led to the slaughter of Jews. From August 23 -29, 1929, there was rioting that killed 133 Jews and injured 339.   In the Arab world, all Jews were called dhimmis, 2nd class citizens and were forced to pay higher taxes, and follow regulations that others did not that were slanderous.  They were looked down on due to their Muslim teachings.    True, it was a better state than Jews living in many places in Europe experienced.

10. Arab Palestinians, like other Arabs, have nothing against Jews, only Zionism.
Hatred started with the Koran.  Mohammed tried to convert Jews but failed, and in many instances he converted by the sword and if that didn't work he killed whole Jewish communities who were living in Medina.  So we started off on the wrong foot.  Treated as dhimmis showed how they felt about Jews.  Britain abetted their anti-Jewish feelings by their unfair treatment of Jews, such as restricting their immigration at a time Hitler was about to kill the 6 million. Those Brits stationed in Palestine are guilty of treating the land to be the Jewish National Home as Arab land.  They didn't stop Arabs from entering.  They counted as refugees the itinerant workers from neighboring countries.  All the Arab leaders had to do was speak those Holy Words and tell lies about Jews and they felt hatred.  They were afraid the Jews would treat them like they had been treated as dhimmis.  Actually, Arabs were not interested in creating their own state, even though offered their own in 1948.  It wasn't until 1967 after the Six Day War that they wanted what they never developed.   Now Abbas wants his state next door to Israel but has no money.  What money they were given by other Arab states has gone into weapons to use against Israel.  He expects Israel to accept them when they do not recognize Israel after these past 64 years.

Resource:From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters
 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/riots29.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots

Who'd Ever Take a Vacation to Palestine? What You'd Most Likely Find

Nadene Goldfoot

"The Report of the Palestine Royal Commission quotes an account of the Maritime Plain in 1913, the year my mother was born:

The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts...no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached [the Jewish village of] Yabna [Yavne]....Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen....The ploughs used were of wood....The yields were very poor....The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist....The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert....The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants."       

Lewis French, the British Director of Development in Palestine in 1931 wrote the following that simply would not make it in a travel magazine to induce visitors.  "We found it inhabited by fellahin who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria...Large areas...were uncultivated....The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals.  The individual plots....changed hands annually.  There was little public security, and the fellahin's lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbors, the Bedouin." Fellahins are peasants or agricultural laborers in Egypt, Syria and other Arab countries.   Bedouins are nomadic Arabs  of the Arabian, Syrian, or north African deserts.  


That's not much different from Mark Twain's description in 1867 when he took the ship on February 1st for an excursion to the Holy Land, Egypt, The Crimea, Greece and Intermediate points of interest from Brooklyn .  "If ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see fettered around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire.  I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little-not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining -rod or a diving-bell.  The Syrians are very poor, and yet they are ground down by a system of taxation that would drive any other nation frantic.  Last year their taxes were heavy enough, in all conscience-but this year they have been increased by the addition of taxes that were forgiven them in times of famine in former years.  On top of this the Government has levied a tax of one-tenth of the whole proceeds of the land.  ...The plows these people use are simply a sharpened stick, such as Abraham plowed with, and they still winnow their wheat as he did-they pile it on the house-top, and then toss it by shovel-fulls into the air until the wind has blown all the chaff away.  They never invent anything, never learn anything."

"Twain continues.  Palestine is only from 40 to 60 miles wide.  The State of Missouri could be split into 3 Palestines, and there would then be enough material left for part of another-possibly a whole one".  From Dan to Beersheba must be a trying trip a without railroad, he mused.... He spoke of the Bedouins and said he thought "these chaps would sell their younger brothers if they had a chance...They attacked our camp last night, and I bear them no good will.  Here a man rides a donkey (pigmy jackasses) and carries the child, and the woman walks.  The customs have not changed since Joseph and Mary's time.  ..We found water but no shade.  then they found a tree but no water.

So who was going to change their life for the better?  People who were not sympathetic to Jews returning to Palestine were the very ones who believed that the Jews could improve the condition of these Palestinian Arab.  Dawood Barakat, editor of the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram, in 1922 wrote:  "It is absolutely necessary that an entente (international understanding providing for a common course of action) be made between the Zionists and Arabs, because the war of words can only do evil.  The Zionists are necessary for the country:  The money which they will bring, their knowledge and intelligence, and the industriousness which characterizes them will contribute without doubt to the regeneration of the country."

That was  also the initial philosophy of the Zionists who moved to Palestine in the 1880's to build a country.  It cannot be said better.  There were those Arabs that also believed it and were counting on it as well.  But they were not living in a vacuum and the overseers, the British,  the French and the greedy disbelievers had other ideas.  

Resource:  Myths and Facts a concise record of the Arab-Isreli conflict by Mitchell G. Bard PhD and Joel Himelfarb
The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/467/chrncls.htm , article, picture of Barakat
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Arabs_in_Palestine.html

Foreign Rulers of Palestine 70 to 1948 CE: 1878 Years

Nadene Goldfoot
Palestine, named by the Romans,  was ruled by foreign governments but never by the people that lived in it. 

Romans ruled from 70 CE to 395 and had changed the name to obliterate the Jewish identity of the land.  They are the ones who changed the name from Judaea to Palaestina for the long vanished Philistines, who were an aegean people.  Jerusalem's name was changed to Aelia Capitolina.  A large Jewish community was in the Galilee, on the coastal plain and in Judaea.  The Talmud was written in this period and there were more than 400 Jewish villages, etc.  The Mishnah was finished in the 2nd century and the Jerusalem Talmud finished between the 4th and 5th centuries. 

The Byzantines (Eastern Roman Empire)  took over from 395 to 636. Jews became a minority and Christians a majority with languages spoken of Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.  Arabs then ruled from 636 to 1072 with Arabization and Islamization happening.  The majority of the population converted to Islam and spoke Arabic then.  Arab tribes immigrated mainly from Egypt and Arabia  which continued.  The Seljuk's (Turks) from 1072 to 1099.  The land had been divided by the Arabs into 2 military districts on both sides of the river Jordan.  One was called Filastin (Palestine) and the other Urdun (Jordan).  The Arabs built Ramla, the only town founded by them in the land.  It was an administrative center.  

The Christian Crusaders' ruled from 1099 to 1291 and named the land the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Their number never exceeded 30,000 and did not change the population's character.   Then the Mamluks (Rulers of Syria and Egypt) ruled from 1291 to 1516 and destroyed most of the cities and villages on the coast.  They were trying to deter foreign invasion.  It remained empty until Jews came back.  They divided the land into 3 separately administered districts or Mamlaka.  They were Safad, Gaza and Damascus.  They had no name for the land as a whole. 

Finally, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey)  took over from 1516 to 1917 an the land was also divided into administered districts of Sanjaks and Vilayets.  They also had no special name for the land as a whole.  That had really been unimportant anyway as there hadn't been hardly any Arabs living there anyway to call it by name.  There were only poor Jews who lived there near the synsagogues. They had brought insecurity and uncertainty and oppression.  Marauding Beduin tribes wandered about.  Villages were reduced by half between the 16th and 19th century.  By the 2nd half of the 19th Centery, both Arabs and Jews grew in number.  By 1914 the population was estimated at 680,000 of whom 85,000 were Jews. 

The British were given the Mandate after the WWI so ruled from 1918 to 1948, when Israel then was pronounced a state.  They renamed the land Palestine.  The mandate extended to both sides of the river Jordan.  In 1922, Britain partitioned the Mandated territory into Palestine which was west of the Jordan and Transjordan which was east of the Jordan.

Resource: Facts About Israel from Ministry for foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Mamluk+dynasty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire