The NEWER Official Discussion Thread for the creation of Israel, the UN and the British Mandate

[Sixties Fan]

From The Palestine Post, January 11, 1948, referring to events from the previous Friday, January 9:

Eleven Jews were killed in a planned massacre when Arabs attacked a party of 23 unarmed agricultural workers on Friday morning as they went to work in Jewish orange groves near Sukreir village .

After killing the Jews, the Arabs stripped them of their clothing and decapitated one of the bodies.

The dead so far identified are all of Rishon Le Zion ; Zvi Hayn, 33; Yechiel Danziger, 23; Yoel Weisseltier , 22 ; Michael Abrahamov, 18; Josef Okashi, 18; Pinhas Kaufman, 22 ; Zeharia Tabib, 18 ; and Avraham Feldklein, 18 . The bodies of the other three men are still missing.

During Friday night, well motors in four Jewish orange groves near Sukreir were blown up .

It looks like the dead were not orange grove workers but a Haganah patrol. There is a garden in Rishon LeTzion in their memory (sign above.)

In Benny Morris' Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, he reports that the Haganah leveled the village of Sukreir (Suqrir) on January 11 in retaliation after the entire village evacuated.

75 years ago: Another forgotten massacre of Jews

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[P F Tinmore]

Rashid Khalidi Colonial war on Palestine​

 

[Hollie]

Rashid Khalidi Colonial war on Palestine​

What about your Treaty of Lausanne fantasy?

 

[P F Tinmore]

What about your Treaty of Lausanne fantasy?

That is what makes Israel illegal.

 

[Hollie]

That is what makes Israel illegal.

Your conspiracy theories are funny.

 

[P F Tinmore]

Your conspiracy theories are funny.

I get mine from actual documents.

You get yours from Israeli bullshit.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

I get mine from actual documents.

You get yours from Israeli bullshit.

Now that you got that out of the way, how large is your Palestinian state?
How large is Israel? At this rate, Palestine will soon be smaller than Liechtenstein.

 

[P F Tinmore]

Now that you got that out of the way, how large is your Palestinian state?
How large is Israel? At this rate, Palestine will soon be smaller than Liechtenstein.

Palestine has international borders.

Israel has no defined territory.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Palestine has international borders.

Israel has no defined territory.

Palestine has international borders.

Any other imaginary countries have international borders?

What are the international borders of Narnia?

 

[rylah]

Rashid Khalidi Colonial war on Palestine​

 

[Sixties Fan]

Sharif Hussein ibn Ali was an Arab leader from the Banu Hashim clan, Sharif and Emir of Mecca from 1908 and, after proclaiming the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire with Lawrence of Arabia, King of the Hejaz from 1916 to 1924 and, quite briefly, Caliph in 1924. With the Hejaz invaded by the Saudis, he had to flee and be exiled. He claimed he was a 37th-generation direct descendant of Muhammad, as he belonged to the Hashemite family.

His son was Abdullah I and his great-great-grandson, Abdullah II (son of Hussein, son of Talal), is the current King of Jordan.

In January 1924, he arrived in Amman, then TransJordan, here seen received by Lt.-Col. Frederick Peake Pasha, the British Resident Representative (and creator of the Arab Legion):




and another picture during that time:




On March 11 he received pledges of fealty from local Arabs, Arabs from west of the Jordan River and neighboring Arab countries.


But what did he think of "Palestine"?

As this article, "Sharif Husayn ibn Ali and the Hashemite Vision of the Post-Ottoman Order: From Chieftaincy to Suzerainty", details, he seemed to think it shouldn't exist:




So, it isn't that some pro-Israel/Zionism advocates think an 'Arab Palestine' wasn't and shouldn't be.

Sharif Hussein ibn Ali and "Palestine"

Sharif Hussein ibn Ali was an Arab leader from the Banu Hashim clan, Sharif and Emir of Mecca from 1908 and, after proclaiming the Great Ar...

myrightword.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

From the Palestine Post, January 19, 1948:


This is not just killing a Jew. This is taking delight in murder. This is a ritual. Not just stabbing him to death, but burning his body afterwards - they didn't want to merely murder but to quench a bloodlust of hate for Jews.

Notice also that the victim was not a "European invader." He came from Yemen, spoke Arabic - supposedly one of the Jews whom Arabs were not prejudiced against. But on the contrary, Menahem Manmuni was deliberately subject to mutilation because he was supposed to be a meek, weak dhimmi and didn't play the role assigned to him by Muslim supremacists.

The next day, other Jewish civilians were murdered as well.









Here is an interesting Arab analysis of the future of a Jewish state in the region, and the Arab prediction that eventually, terror attacks will wear down the Jews.






Which remains the strategy of Palestinian terror groups today, 75 years later, to the detriment of their own people.

75 years ago: Palestinian Arabs delight in murdering Jews

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

75 years ago: "Kill the Jew!"​

From the Palestine Post, February 12, 1948:






Notice the Arabs didn't shout "Kill the Zionist." They shouted "Kill the Jew."

75 years ago: "Kill the Jew!"

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Palestine Post, February 13, 1948, describes a despicable war crime in Jerusalem that has been all but forgotten.

A group of four Haganah members in Jerusalem were arrested by a British Army patrol that was manned by Arabs.

Hours later, their bodies were found, riddled with bullets.


Their names were Eliyahu Kessler, Shimon Nissani, Naftali Schul and Shalom Leon.

This is really a double war crime. One is that the Arabs effectively used their British army uniforms to perform an illegal attack, and the other one was to slaughter prisoners in custody.

75 years ago: A forgotten Arab war crime

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Starting in 1947, the Arab Legion was placed in Jewish areas by the British. They used this opportunity to attack and murder random Jewish civilians.

From the Palestine Post, February 16, 1948:



A particularly horrific story happened the next day. Three Jews were shot at in their car, injured, forcibly pulled from their car - and then executed.

From the Palestine Post, February 17, 1948:




More details of this crime were revealed in the next day's paper. The British knew about the execution ahead of time, and essentially colluded.




These are all war crimes by any definition. And no one even remembers this.

75 years ago: War crimes by the Arab Legion, with full knowledge and encouragement of the British

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

These civilians were not "slave labor" - they were paid and treated better than they would have been as civilians in a war zone!

The paper notes in passing that it was legal to give POWs work under the 1929 conventions, although not related to military work.

The Sitta/Rempel paper briefly quotes a New York Times article datelines October 12, 1948, about the civilians and POWs. But it ignores the bulk of the article, where the reporter goes on at length about how well the prisoners are treated, as well as their civilian status:

JALIL, Israel, Oct. 12-About half of the 5,000 Arab prisoners captured by the Israeli Army since May are held in a tent camp hastily thrown up on the sand and scrub of a little valley beside this former Arab village. With the exception of a few officers they are as unlikely looking a group of soldiers as any war might produce. In fact, not even the camp authorities are certain how many of them actually were soldiers in the Arab armies. The process of sorting them out is now taking place.

About 250 prisoners are Egyptian. Trans-Jordan. Syrian or Lebanese regulars whose status as prisoners of war .has been marked by painting a large blue diamond on their uniforms. There are seven young former British Army men who dispute the authorities' assertion that they fought on the Arab side. The rest are Palestinian Arabs, most of whom were picked up after the fighting for Arab villages within the new state had ended. These will probably be released when the sorting out process has been completed.

Israel Ginsburg, a former British intelligence officer and now second in command of the camp, showed a group of Israel Red Shield (Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross) representatives and this correspondent about the camp recently.

...Mr. Ginsburg readily conceded that camp conditions were not perfect but explained that "we have had no experience in this sort of thing and we have had to learn and improvise as we went along." Except for two Egyptian fliers-the "elite of the camp" as one guard described them-there were no serious complaints from the prisoners. Like prisoners of war everywhere, most of those in camp complained about the boredom of detention and the monotony of the diet.

There are separate compounds for each group of nationals and for their officers. One Oxford-educated Sudanese major named Zhir had a huge tent to himself. No one was quite sure, but either he had refused to mix with the Egyptians or the Egyptians had refused to live with him. The :seven Britons had at first been placed with the Arabs but the Arabs asked for separate quarters. The Egyptian fliers, both about 25 years of age, looked spruce and fit in their blue-gray uniforms with the bars of flight lieutenants.

The Egyptians' argument with Mr. Ginsburg and other Israeli officers about the relative merits of Israeli and Egyptian treatment of prisoners was conducted in the best possible humor. The same cordiality between prisoners and guards, particularly Palestinian Arabs, who personally knew many of the soldiers before the war, was evident throughout the camp. The relationship was far more friendly than in any prisoners' camp that this correspondent had visited on the Western Front during World War II.

The prisoners are not compelled to work and the majority don't, although work volunteers receive extra pay.

Most of the Palestinian Arabs had heard that soldiers were tortured on being .captured, Mr. Ginsburg said, as they always asserted their civilian status when brought to camp. "When they saw that we observed the Geneva Convention and that the International Red Cross inspected the camp periodically and that the soldiers actually were slightly better treated, about 400 of them owned up to having been in the fighting forces," Mr. Ginsburg said.

These two independent reports are completely at odds with the assertions of the authors. And other contemporaneous reports support the idea that these prisoners were well treated.




I cannot speak to how accurately the authors quoted the ICRC documents, or whether they took quotes out of context. They liberally and uncritically quote former POWs who say lurid stories of torture and how the Israelis would shoot them for no reason.

However, given that they did not mention the NYT article's description of the camp being at odds with their thesis, and they did not mention any of the other reports from the time that contradict their assertions, one must conclude that they were more interested in publishing an anti-Israel academic paper than in describing the facts behind a little-known aspect of the 1948 war.


(full article online)

Did Israel put Arab civilians in concentration camps in 1948?

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

From The Palestine Post, February 20, 1948:


From JTA, February 19, 1948:

New York City’s effort on behalf of the $250,000,000 national United Jewish Appeal campaign was launched today by 2,500 community leaders at the annual Women’s Division rally held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Speakers included Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, former Governor Herbert H. Lehman, Max Lerner, and Mrs. Jerome I. Udell, chairman of the Women’s Division in the 1948 campaign.

Mrs. Roosevelt, a member of the American delegation to the United Nations, told the gathering that “we must ask our government to allow the importation of arms into Palestine and to raise its embargo.” The added that “the Arab leaders have done themselves a great harm in saying that they would fight a decision of the United Nations.”

I cannot find the transcript of her speech to the United Jewish Appeal. However, she also spoke there in 1946, where she described the conditions of Jews in the displaced persons camps of Europe, and said:

On the day that I was in the Jewish camp, the main meal was some powdered eggs—scrambled eggs. The people have such a longing to create a sense of home that they would take the powdered eggs from the kitchen and take them back to the one little room that they might have.

You feel a kind of desperation about the dignity of the individual, the right to some privacy. They have done such pathetic things. The remnants of the families try so hard to make a home. I looked at these powdered eggs that were going to be carried back, and I thought, "Oh, Heavens, how horrible—the eggs will be cold when they get them back to their rooms." And yet, they would take them back, simply because—even though you ate and you slept and you sat in the same little place—that little place was home.

There is a building in this camp where children are kept who have wandered in off the road and have no older people with them. One little boy sang for me; he sang a Jewish song. Of course, these children are much smaller than they should be for their age. This little, tiny, curly-haired thing was ten years old, but he didn't look much more than six or seven. The director told me that this little boy had just wandered in with a younger brother one day, and they had been at the camp ever since. He said that this little boy always sang for them. They called him their "singer" in the camp. But he had all the appearance of a worried, old man, because the care of his younger brother and himself weighed on his shoulders.

What those children have gone through is just indescribable.

There was one old woman there whom I don't think I will ever forget, because you looked at her and you felt that this was the end of life, and that life must have been so terrible to bring one at the end to what this poor old thing faced.

It is true they want to go back to Palestine. They want to go back because that represents to them some roots.

75 years ago: Eleanor Roosevelt urges the world to allow Jews in Palestine to get arms

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

https://www.thejc.com/life-and-culture/all/the-aboriginal-leader-who-spoke-up-for-the-jews-2Qau4wtNEPTDqDzvzx7x3O