Palestine and Britain's Mishandling of Mandate

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                                

        
The Brits, led by General Allenby,  occupied Jerusalem in December 1917 during World War I.

After World War I, the Middle East, an Ottoman Empire possession, went to the winners of the war.  Britain was given the mandate for Palestine which was to last for 30 years.  They were to police the land and help the Jews create their Jewish Homeland, as Palestine was to go to the Jews.  Jews  had lost their land, Judea and Israel to the Romans in 70 CE  and had been homeless for 2,000 years.  They had been suffering from anti-Semitism wherever they went, so this had been legally arranged.

The Brits, in order to carry out this mandate, chose High Commissioners to govern Palestine.  They were Chief executive officials.  The first man to be appointed was a Jew, Sir Herbert Samuel (1870-1963) whose time ran from 1920 to 1925.  This appointment evoked great hopes among the Jews, especially as he was known to be a supporter of Zionism.  Samuels was the first Jew to be a member of a British cabinet and did so by 1909.  He had held office in the Liberal government from 1905 to 1916.  After being a High Commisioner in Palestine, he was in the national government from 1931 to 1932.  His memorandum to the Cabinet in 1914 influenced the Balfour Declaration.  He became the leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons from 1931 to 1935 and in the House of Lords from 1944 to 1955.

His initial task was complicated by the delay in confirming the Mandate and by Arab violence.  He suspended Jewish immigration, the very thing he was to allow and help to happen.  Why?  Arab violence had started in 1921.  Why did they riot?
                                                                           

One of the first things Samuel did, obviously to get in tight with the Arabs who probably scared him, was to appoint Haj Mohammed Amin el-Husseini (1893-1974) as the Grand Mufi of Jerusalem and if that wasn't enough, also the head of the Supreme Moslem Council in 1921.  Husseini therefore had the title of Sherif of Jerusalem and The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.  Samuel showed Husseini much benevolence.  Was it because he came from a long standing Jerusalemite Arab family that had traced their genealogy back to the grandson of Mohammad?    Why did he do this when he knew that in 30 years it was all to become a Jewish state?
                                                                               

Emir Feisal (1883 Mecca, Saudi Arabia-1933 Switzerland)third son of Hussein bin Ali, the Grand Sharif of Mecca, later King of Syria in 1920, then King of Iraq from 1921-1933, member of Hashemite Kingdom like today's King of Jordan, a descendant from Mohammad

Husseini was in direct opposition and competition with Emir Feisal, who was THE spokesman for all the Arabs.  He was for the Jews' return and had high hopes that they would be able to improve his people just by living there and showing them more modern ideas and ways.                                                                                                                                                                        

Chaim Weizmann

Chaim Weizmann, Emir Feisal 

Emir Faisal's delegation at Versailles, during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

Feisal had had meetings with Chaim Weizmann (1874 Belarus-1952 Israel).  Chaim had helped the English to win the war with his invention that made ammunition far better than the enemy had, and so was being rewarded for this by being heard.  It was all agreed upon.  All except the stone in the mix; Husseini,  who didn't want to give up his position as a very important man in Jerusalem and was afraid this would happen once more Jews moved there  and become a Jewish city once again.  He instigated riots in 1921.

This may have brought about the White Paper in June 1922. which followed a statement by Winston Churchill who was the present day secretary for the colonies.  It stated that the aim of the Balfour Declaration was to establish a Jewish National Home, but not Jewish domination.  He said that the Jews were there by right and not on sufferance.  It also made Jewish immigration into Palestine dependent on absorptive  capacity.  As a direct result of the White Paper, Transjordan was affected.   It detached Transjordan from Palestine and came as a large disappointment to the Jews.  The Balfour Declaration had included the area of  Transjordan.

The Balfour Declaration was part of the legal complexities that Jews had been wading through in order to be able to go back to their original land of Israel and Judea legally.  It was an official statement issued on November 2, 1917 at the end of World War I by the British secretary, Arthur James BALFOUR.  It had declared that the British government favored the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and would 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 (thinking of the Jews of England who would not like to be rooted up from their homes and shipped off to this home.) such as Samuel.  Actually, this was setting up an unrealistic but idealistic Garden of Eden where Arabs would step aside for returning Jews.

This Declaration came about after LONG negotiations initiated by Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow and others shortly after the outbreak of World War I, with the support of Herbert Samuel, Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz, the Haham Moses Gaster, and others.  There was much discussion on the formula of the Declaration and its timing.  Balfour visited the USA in Spring of 1917 and met with President Wilson who supported the efforts of the American Zionists who were headed by Louis Brandeis which expedited the final decision of the British government.

We had Jews at that time who were afraid of it happening and were against the idea.  They were the presidents of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and of the Anglo-Jewish Association.  DL Alexander and CG Montefiore issued a statement that the Zionist aspirations were calculated to endanger the Jewish position in all countries.  All countries meant the Western of USA and England, evidently, for pogroms and anti-Semitism were going great in France and Russia.  All this rebuttal made Britain even more cautious, so they didn't accept the wording from the Zionists that said:
1. To recognize Palestine as "the national home of the Jewish people"
2. For providing a "Jewish National Colonizing Corporation" for the resettlement and economic development of the country.

The Declaration, after having finally been approved by the British cabinet, was sent to Lord Walter Rothchild who was asked to convey it to the Zionist Federation.  It was approved by other Allied governments and incorporated in the Mandate in 1922.

Samuel did a few helpful things such as erecting the structure of the new Palestine, creating a solid governmental machinery and turning a chaotic country into an organized state, good for England but not for the future of the Jews.  The foundations of the Jewish National Home were  firmly laid down during his term of office.

Lord Plumer was the 2nd High Commissioner from 1925 to 1928.  He, on the other hand, refused to restrict Jewish immigration and displayed much administrative energy.  Under his rule, Palestine citizenship provisos were laid down.  A water supply for Jerusalem was installed.  Public works schemes were inaugurated to meet the threat of unemployment.

Sir John Chancellor was the 3rd High Commissioner from 1928 to 1931.  1929 was a year of much rioting and deaths of Jews, instigated again by the Grand Mufti.  Chancellor condemned the 1929 Arab massacres in outspoken terms.  They had happened when he was away on leave, but later was inclined to temporize.

Sir Arthur Wauchope was the 4th High Commissioner from 1931 to 1937.  He was sympathetic to Jewish aspirations while being scrupulously fair to the Arabs.   I note that Nazis were gaining power in Germany at this time, and by 1937, things were terrible for Jews living there.  They were trying to emigrate from Germany and many wanted to come to Palestine and found it difficult to get in there or to the USA.  During Wauchope's period of office, the stream of immigrants rapidly increased, naturally.

This led to Arab restiveness which he tried to pacify by promising a Legislative Council.  He failed to quell the Arab revolt of 1936, again led by the Grand Mufti and this led to the end of his position.  In 1936, Husseini was chairman of the Arab Supreme Council so  had organized the Palestine disturbances for which he was sentenced to exile in 1937.  He fled to Lebanon.
                                                                             

Grand Mufti meeting with Hitler in Germany-November 1941

Sir Harold MacMichael (1882-1969)  was the 5th High Commissioner from 1938 to 1944. He was 56 when he took the post.  These were the war years.  He was the man in office during the war who refused to admit Jewish refugees from Europe.  This made him very unpopular with the Jewish population.  He was blamed for sending at least 768 Jewish refugees aboard MV Struma to their deaths. It was an "illegal" immigrant ship which left Romania in 1941 for Palestine and reached Istanbul, Turkey but were turned back.  It was MacMichael who had refused them entry into Palestine. The boat floundered in the Black Sea with the loss of all on board.  Seven unsuccessful attempts, mainly by Lehi (Stern Gang/Stern Group) , were undertaken to assassinate him during his sojourn in Palestine. In the last, both he and his wife narrowly escaped death in an ambush Lehi mounted on 8 August 1944 on the eve of his replacement as High Commissioner.

Viscount Gort was the 6th High Commissioner from 1944 to 1945.  He was sympathetic for the Jews, but was unable to make a fundamental change in the British government's policy.

Sir Alan Cunningham was the 7th and last High Commissioner from 1945 to 1948.  On May 14, he and his soldiers left.  He governed the country throughout the eventful happenings which culminated in the British withdrawal from Palestine.  By 1946, the population of Jerusalem reached 165,000 of whom 100,000 were Jews.  The city expanded and the Hebrew University was erected on Mt. Scopus.  This was a period of Jewish resistance to the  British Mandatory government.  The UN partition resolution of November 29, 1947 provided for the creation of an independent area of Jerusalem under the UN administration.  Arab outbreaks which were exactly like warfare were between the Haganah and the Arabs who had developed into the Arab Legion of Transjordan  seemed to put an end to this international scheme.  During that time, the Jewish quarter in the Old City had to be evacuated and was destroyed.  The rest of Jerusalem fell into Jewish hands.  The Arab Legion was shelling and starving the Jews in trying to get them  to surrender, but that was foiled by the fortitude of the Jews and by the opening of the Burma Road which restored the connection between Jewish Jerusalem and the coast.

Husseini, the Grand Mufti,  participated in Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup in Iraq during World War II before he went to Europe, where he assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in the Moslem areas of Bosnia.  In 1946 he escaped to Egypt.  Now we see Gaza was also affected by him.  After 1948, he set up a Palestine Government in Gaza, but it was short-lived.  Later, he set one up in Cairo, Egypt.  All this power was given to him by Samuel.  Evidently Samuel didn't vet him.

Ressource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/muftihit.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_MacMichael

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

Israeli Talks Centered in Istanbul

                                                                          

Nadene Goldfoot                                                     Omar Sharif in "Lawrence of Arabia": Fighting the Ottoman Empire

Turkey's Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan outraged most of the Western world by calling Zionism a "crime against humanity" at the UN.  At that moment Israeli and Palestinian Authority lawmakers were meeting with each other in Istanbul trying to re-start the peace process.  From being a friend to Israel a few years ago, he has moved towards the Muslim Brotherhood ideals.

On Friday John Kerry, the new US Secretary of State, arrived in Turkey to talk with Erdogan which included some of his strong language.  "At a press appearance in Ankara, Kerry condemned Erdogan’s comparison saying, "We not only disagree with it, we found it objectionable."

I've read an essay from a Turkish newscaster who is as loving and sweet as any young women in my own family.  She tries to answer about the antagonistic stance against Israel that her country has been displaying.  She feels there is a strong bond between the Turkish and Israeli public and hopes that the tension of the last few years is only temporary.  Most of the problem lies with the Mavi Marmara episode when this Turkish ship tried to break the blockade with this ship.  I wish she were president, as she stated that "as the Turkish nation, we want nothing more than the continuance of Israel's existence in peace and tranquility."  Perhaps that's why these meetings took place in Ankara.

Also meeting in Istanbul to discuss Obama's visit was labor MK Yitzchak Herzog. Yitzchak is the son of former president Chaim Herzog and is with the Labor party.  Netanyahu is with Likud.   He was there to speak with PA former official,  Yasser Abed Rabbo.  Neither man is a high official, so possibly took their own initiative to meet together.  Herzog was taped on Israel's Channel 10 News saying that he believes "that there is a chance for peace with their neighbors and we must not give up on it, not even for a moment.  Rabbo was a supporter of the Oslo Accords.  Yet he was promoting the false accusation that Israel had dug mass graves for 900 PA Arabs in Jenin.  He has since been removed from his post as a minister when Mahmoud Abbas took over.  Now he's just an adviser without a title.

If he's so for peace, it's crazy that Rabbo  would be so gullible as to even believe in such a terrible lie.   It's frightening how the Arabs can swallow such lies about Jews, even the intelligent ones in the seat of power. It gets back to the fact that what people would do themselves to others, they think that these others would do to them. It's  sort of like the Golden Rule.  It was not inconceivable to do this to Jews, evidently.  Our beliefs and mores are very foreign to Muslims except for the belief in one G-d. The problem lies on what that one G-d teaches the people involved.    For us to act so differently, the lessons are not understood in the same way.  Evidently this is also true with Christians who even interpret the very same doctrine otherwise.

I suggest that our government get busy and read many books on the subject of the Middle East.  I just read where Kerry read his first book about Islam which was from a very positive and flattering viewpoint.  Now he would be interested in studying about religions if he were not Secretary of State.   He should also read one I've started to read, "The Strong Horse" by Lee Smith.  It's full of insights about the Middle Eastern countries and what they admire in a culture and how they see themselves acting in it.  He's lived in the Middle East and even met Omar Sharif, the Egyptian who played the Jewish gambler, Nick Arnstein in Funny Girl, Barbra Streisand's great love. "His decision to work with co-star Barbra Streisand angered Egypt's government at the time due to Streisand's support for the state of Israel.  She happens to be Jewish. . Streisand herself responded with "You think Cairo was upset? You should've seen the letter I got from my Aunt Rose!" Sharif reprised the role in the film’s sequel, Funny Lady in 1975."  

The culture is so different from our Western culture and it's a challenge to understand this great difference.  According to Smith, Israel is not the big problem of the Islamic countries.  I hope all the talks go on well, just like talks between Barbra  and Omar  did when they worked together.  Oh, those love scenes!  .

Resource: Arutz Sheva: Israeli, PA Officials Meet in Istanbul by Chana Ya'ar
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/165798#.UTMTfqI4EaA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Herzog
The Strong Horse by Lee Smith

If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem

Here's an answer to Ben Ehrenreich and his article: The Root of Israel's Problem: Zionism -found in the Sunday Oregonian. I think Ben did forget. Nadene Goldfoot

By Victor Sharpe

Nadene Goldfoot
Jerusalem has been described as the eternal city of the eternal people.Let me quote the words from 1918 of the great Rabbi J.H. Hertz, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, at the thanksgiving service for the liberation of Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks by British forces. He spoke of the nearly 4,000 years of history that bound the Jews to their spiritual and physical capital city and of their fate in defending it against its many conquerors.“Like the Jew, this Holy City of Israel is deathless; fire and sword and all the engines of destruction have been hurled against it in vain.

 The Babylonians burnt it and deported its population; the Romans slew a million of its inhabitants, razed it to the ground, passed the ploughshare over it and strewed its furors with salt; Hadrian banished its very name from the lips of men, changed it to Aelia Capitolina and forbade any Jew from entering it on pain of death. Persians and Arabs, Barbarians and Crusaders and Turks took it and re-took it, ravaged it and burnt it; and yet, marvelous to relate, it ever rises from its ashes to renewed life and glory.”Rabbi Hertz was talking on the very day that 2,080 years earlier, Judah Maccabee, the wondrous Jewish hero who had led his warriors against the Greek-Syrians to liberate the Holy City from its heathen occupiers, entered the Temple and re-dedicated it to the glory of the One and Only God, invisible and indivisible.

 Rabbi Hertz ended his speech by proclaiming the prophetic teaching of the Maccabean festival, we know as Hanukah, in Zechariah, 4:6: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.”It is well to dwell on what has been said by both Jews and non-Jews in the past about Jerusalem for there is a government and a prime minister in Israel today preparing to abandon eternal Jerusalem and give it away to those who hate the Jewish people and have set their face against accepting any Jewish independence or sovereignty in the Land of Israel.

The tireless Zionist leader, Theodor Herzl, wrote in 1897: “The return to Zion must be preceded by our return to Judaism.” We should remember that Herzl knew full well that the word Zion is, and always has been, synonymous with the eternal city of Jerusalem.Mordechai M. Noah wrote in 1824 that “We will return to Zion as we went forth, bringing back the faith we carried away with us.”Again, Herzl wrote in 1898 about the Zionist cause and the restoration of Jerusalem: “One thing is to me certain, high above any doubt: the movement will continue. I know not when I shall die, but Zionism will never die.”

And here is a quote in the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1910. In it Lucien Wolf wrote as follows: “Zionism is the lineal heir to the attachment to Zion, which led the Babylonian exiles under Zerubbabel to rebuild the Temple and which flamed up in the heroic struggle of the Maccabees against Antiochus Epiphanes. The great bulk of the Jewish people have throughout their history remained faithful to the dream of a restoration of their national life in Judea.”One can go back through the mists of time and read the same sentiments in every generation; as far back as the towering words in Isaiah 2:1 and Micah 4:2: “For out of Zion shall come forth the Torah, and the word of God from Jerusalem.”

 These are just two of the 821 times that Jerusalem and Zion appear in the Tanach (Holy Bible) – Jerusalem 667 times and Zion, 154 times.According to the much loved correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, the late Moshe Kohn, “Jewish sources speak of the seventy names by which Jerusalem is referred to in the classical Jewish sources. These include Ariel/lion of God (Isaiah 29:1); Kirya Neemana/Faithful City (Isaiah 1:25); Ir Ha’emet (City of Truth (Zechariah 8:3); Klilat Yofi/Paragon of Beauty (Lamentations 2:15); Yefay Nof/ Beautiful Panorama (Psalms 48:3); and the ancient commentary of Rabbi Akiva in Sanhedrin 58a on 1 Chronicles 29:11 Hanetza/Eternity.”

But what of now? The modern State of Israel endures a prime minister willing, even anxious to divide Jerusalem again and to give away ancestral and biblical Jewish lands to an enemy led by a Holocaust denier whose own Fatah organization continues to murder Jews and gleefully claim credit for its crimes.This Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is now being investigated on four separate charges of corruption, yet Israelis seem paralyzed and unable to remove him politically from office. Olmert is the Prime Minister under whose watch the Second Lebanon War was grotesquely mishandled and who has recently been blamed for the needless deaths of thirty Israeli soldiers in the waning days of the war. Yet he has not done the honorable thing: resign.This is the Prime Minister who applauded the national shame known under its duplicitous euphemism, the “Disengagement Plan.” In it, Israeli policemen and women were ordered to drag 10,000 Jewish souls from their homes in villages throughout the Gaza Strip, land known as Gush Katif, and to then destroy those homes and their flourishing Jewish farms. This is the man who has allowed the Arabs in Gaza, who have shown their contempt by not creating a civilized society in Gaza but by sliding into 7th century barbarism and Islamism, to rain thousands of missiles upon the Israeli towns and villages adjacent to the terror-infested Arab-occupied Gaza Strip. Ehud Olmert and his regime continue to allow what no other nation on earth would ever tolerate.

And this Prime Minister, under whose reign tens of thousand of Israelis in Judea and Samaria now fear a new deportation will soon descend upon them, is soon to represent Israel at an International Conference in Annapolis called for by the U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.Ms. Rice has made it a personal commitment, even an article of faith, to create a Palestinian state side by side with Israel within the mere fifty miles width separating the Jordan River from the Mediterranean Sea. It is reported that her advisers include men who are not well disposed toward the Jewish State. They include Jimmy Carter, James Baker lll, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski.At this ill conceived Conference, Olmert will likely make far-reaching concessions to the Arabs with nothing in return. That has been the sorry pattern of Israel’s suicidal policy of “land for peace” whereby the Palestinian aggressors receive land from which to launch new terrorism against Israel, but Israel never receives peace.

 This failed policy has been pressed upon Israel by successive American Secretaries of State and Presidents.Olmert and his ministers seem unable to learn any lessons from their earlier futile withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza. Soon, Heaven forbid, the very ancestral homeland in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) will be lost, not by the ravages of an enemy host but, to its eternal shame, from an Israeli government itself. As Frank Gaffney wrote in a recent article, “Condi Rice is demanding that Israel now relinquish the West Bank and east Jerusalem to yet another terrorist organization: Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah.

 The entire Annapolis house of cards is built on the fraudulent foundation that the Palestinian faction established by Abbas’ mentor, Yasser Arafat, is a reliable partner for peace. Only a zealot who has altogether lost any sense or reality could make such an assertion.”So will Olmert sell out Israel’s ability to remain a viable state with an undivided capital city in eternal Jerusalem? Will Israel be able to defend itself after being forced back within pre-1967 borders, which an Israeli statesman, Abba Eban, once described as the “Auschwitz borders?”

 Or will Ehud Olmert, at this eleventh hour, find within himself the spiritual essence and wisdom that has guided so many Jewish leaders before him? Will he remember Zion and not turn his face away from it? Perhaps he will yet turn from the false gods of secularism and find again the still small voice heard so long ago in the words of the great Jewish prophet, Isaiah 42: 6-7. “I the Lord have called thee in righteousness and have taken hold of thine hand, and kept thee, and set thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the nations, to open the blind eyes, to bring the prisoners from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.”

Source: Article submitted by the author, an IHC Featured Writerhttp://www.infoisrael.net/Published 3 December 2007

Israel Hasbara Committee - http://www.infoisrael.netYou can find this article online at www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=4/b/viii/031220071&lang=
on my blog with permission from Mr. Sharpe.

Gay En Dred, World

by Nadene Goldfoot

I am totally disgusted with a world that is turning against Israel. Today I received e-mail telling of over 190 universities that are boycotting Israel. The newspapers are full of articles showing affirmation with the Arab world and against Israel. To me, everyone has gone crazy.

How is it that when Israel suffered for eight years the indecency of being rocketed constantly, all the nations of the world did absolutely nothing about it. When Southern Israel citizens were almost driven crazy by the Russian roulette way of life, wondering if it was their day to die , Condoleeza Rice kept saying, don't react to it. Israel itself reacted finally and told the world first of its intentions before it started defending itself. The world was told and told what Israel would have to do, and so Israel, being a land of lawyers and doctors and such, were scrupulously careful in how they handled their reaction. No other country has ever taken the precautions that they took, but they had to make it clear to the Palestinians to stop endangering the lives of the Jews of Israel! The lies that have been coming out about the IDF's behaviors during Operation Cast Lead are abominable. How horrible it is that people are scooping them up and swallowing them whole, eager to believe the worst of these young Jewish soldiers. Gay en dread!

And of course, the predictable happened. The world turned against not the Arabs who display their hatred for Jews and for Israel and are determined to drive them away, but upon Israel itself for its defensive action. Things haven't changed for two thousand years. It's disgusting.

How few Americans, both Jews and Gentiles have ever studied the history of the Jews and Zionism and of the land of the Middle East? Not very many. I have and of course am a defender of Israel as well as a dual citizen of her and of USA. It's not hard to start reading, people. I fear we are becoming a land of non-readers who only get swayed by companions who also know nothing but are defensive about their hateful positions. It seems to just be popular to be against Israel's right of existence.

Today I just read a disgusting essay in the Sunday Oregonian: The root of Israel's problem: Zionism by Ben Ehrenreich, himself a Jew. What have you ever done for Israel, Ben? What have you read? How do you come to your conclusions? You get my biggest gay en dread! Have you been brought up in some kind of isolation? You know nothing of what has been going on? I am totally in shock after reading your article.

Reference:

3/22/2009 Sunday Oregonian page E5. http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/03/zionism_the_root_of_israels_pr.html.

Jews, an Endangered Species

Nadene Goldfoot                                               

Jews are an endangered species. We have been threatened by Iran who wants to wipe Israel out. Now that they may have atomic energy shortly, this is an even bigger threat. We're a very small group of about 14 million people. More than that make up Mexico City. We've been around since our origins with Abraham in "Iraq" for about four thousand years. We need Israel as our own country simply because we need this sanctuary that we can call our own that was our own once upon a time when Moses passed away in 1271 BCE.  

 If the United States can proclaim certain animals as endangered species, why not the Jews? We're such a small group and so many have been killed in the past just for being Jews and are now being killed because many are living in Israel and Israel is constantly under attack.

For some reason (perhaps it was G-d telling us to live in Israel) we do our best thinking and creating in Israel. Since 1948 tons of inventions have come out of Israel. Many of these have been in the area of medicine and health and the world has benefited by these discoveries. Our intellectuals are turned on by the air there. Even I became extremely creative living in Safed where I wrote plays. Something happens to us in Israel.

I've been reading the book by Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkm called WHY THE JEWS? The Reason for anti Semitism:  and am reminded that we have not been on anybody's popularity list. Part of this reason is that we are different and we haven't mixed in well with other people. We've been rather standoffish. This goes the other way, too.  People have been afraid to get to know us.  

Yet, these are the very reasons that we have continued to exist for all these years. We did not assimilate well. In fact, our host countries aided in this seclusion by keeping us in ghettos against our will many times. In the enlightenment of Germany, we started to think of ourselves as Germans and became enlightened along with all the others which turned out to be for the worst. Many people have tried to change us with forced conversions, but we are an unusual group. We're stiff-necked, which means we're rather obstinate. We're the only religion that is not only an ethic/philosophy of life, but is nationalistic as well. We're an unusual group of people.

There was no country of "Palestine" with a Palestinian government. There was an Israel. This was the land of King David and his son King Solomon. We were in existence with a bigger piece of land than of today. Today we are again a legal country having been sanctioned and blessed by the United Nations in 1948.

Do the Palestinians need Israel? Does Iran need Israel? Are there not enough Muslim countries? None of the few people living on the land had done anything with it. It lay barren until Jews came back to their homeland. We returned after suffering from Russian pogroms, antisemitism everywhere, the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust of the 2nd world war, and even living under dhimmi status in the Middle Eastern Countries who now resent our leaving for our own country. They treated us as 2nd-3rd class citizens when we lived with them, and they are horrified to have us stand in their midst.

We've offered the Palestinians land to create their own state of Palestine next to us and they have refused it since the creation of Israel! The only thing we keep asking is that they recognize us as a legal state and quit shooting at us and this both Fatah and Hamas have refused to do. Why have they continually turned down the chance to have their own state and then cry about not having it? They seem to want the whole area and are not willing to let us have our increasingly shrinking piece.

So, unless people are still siding with Hitler and feel we need to be exterminated as a final solution, we need a protective area in which to live in, and what is better than our original country which we've already been granted in 1948? Israel is our sanctuary.

Jews NEED Israel. Zionism and Judaism are one and the same. We need this land because we are a very small, almost extinct group of  people. Israel is part of our history where our religion was born. We've tried for 2,000 years of living among other nations. It didn't work out very well. The Holocaust was our big wake-up call telling us that we needed a sanctuary. In 1948, Israel was born again and we aim to keep it.

Reference: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Jews_in_Arab_lands_(gen).html