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

[Sixties Fan]

Bazman Hazeh, the Miracles of Modern Israel: My 2019 Yom HaAtzmaut lecture (audio with notes)

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

In 1937, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee to the British Peel Commission, Awni Abd al-Hadi stated: “There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented.” I came across this quote at a Club Z session. We were learning how to confront the deceptive map called “The Shrinking Map of Palestine,” a crafty piece of propaganda used in anti-Israel campaigns.

It has now become commonplace to encounter maps of the Middle East where the modern country of Israel is labeled as “Palestine” in numerous textbooks at schools. It is disturbing that even after seventy-two years since the Jews declared statehood and thousands of years of persecution, Jews today must fight for basic recognition of Israel.

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And thus, in the beginning of the 20th century, Palestine became closely associated with Zionism— a cause of great fury for Jew-hating Arab leaders. In a desperate attempt to make certain Jews would not be granted a country of their own in response to the 1937 Peel Commission, Anwi Abd al-Hadi tried to deny all Jewish ties to the land of Israel by (accurately) denying the existence of a nation called Palestine.

But as the State of Israel blossomed into reality in 1948, there was no more use for the secular word Palestine to refer to the Jewish homeland. But as Jews forgone the use of “Palestine”, Arab Muslim leaders seized the word to describe an Arab entity that never existed. They rebranded it. Inverted it. Flipped it inside out. The word that spoke of the dreams of the Jewish liberation became repurposed as the narrative of an Arab nation unjustly oppressed by the Jews.

(full article online)

Palestine: The History of the Word Will Surprise and Liberate You

In 1937, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee to the British Peel Commission, Awni Abd al-Hadi stated: “There is no such country as Palestine.

jewishjournal.com

 

[P F Tinmore]

Drs. Rabab Abdulhadi and Linda Quiquivix speak on the Nakba at UCLA

 

[rylah]

Ask Halawa: Did an Arab Palestine Exist?

The second episode of Ask Halawa answers the questions, what about the Arab & Islamic history of Palestine

 

[P F Tinmore]

 

[rylah]

 

[rylah]

Any historian who starts with: "the conflict has no roots in ancient religious hatred",
and blames Zionists for "erasing all history from the 7th century until 1948",
while himself starting at 1917, to evade any facts about Arab pogroms
that initiated Zionism - is a hypocrite propagandist.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Exactly one hundred years ago, in April, 1920, marked the opening shot of the Arab Israeli conflict. It was a pogrom against Jews in Jerusalem and its surrounding areas. The pogrom, also called by some the Nebi Musa riots, took place between Sunday, April 4, and Wednesday, April 7, 1920. It cost the lives of five Jews, and 200 others were injured. The violence was instigated by the British occupation administration and led by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who later became Hitler’s ally. The Jaffa riots a year later (May 1-7, 1921) killed 47Jews and wounded 146. Much like these days, the Arab-Palestinian terrorists used knifes to kill vulnerable Jews, such as women, children, and the elderly. A British investigative commission called the pogrom “cowardly, and treacherous.”

The pogrom was not a mere criminal affair, it was motivated by religious and nationalist sentiments that denied Jewish rights to sovereignty anywhere in the region. The Arab (the term Palestinians didn’t exist at the time, and Jews were actually called Palestinians) attackers carried such slogans as “Death to the Jews”(Atbach al-Yahud), “Palestine is our land, and the Jews are our dogs.” The Jaffa riot was proceeded by the August, 1929 riot, which wiped out the ancient Jewish community in Hebron, and killed 133 Jews. Known as the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, it was led once again by Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. This time the death toll was much greater, estimated by historian Benny Morris to be about 300 Jewish dead.

The pogrom of April 1920 occurred at a confluence of several historical and political events. In Syria, the Hashemite Emir Feisal, son of Hussein the Sharif of Mecca, was ensconced in Damascus, awaiting with his Arab tribesmen army for the fulfillment of British promises. Under the Mc Mahon-Hussein Correspondence, an Arab state in the Levant, including the native Arabia, was promised by the British to Hussein. At the same time, Britain and France, in 1916, concluded the Sykes-Picot Agreement which divided the former Ottoman Empire between them. The British government had also come out with the Balfour (at the time British Foreign secretary) Declaration in 1917, that promised a National Home for the Jewish people in their ancestral home - Palestine. The Balfour Declaration promises were confirmed at the San Remo conference in April, 1920.

Immediately upon entering Syria, the French army encountered local Arab revolts. In March, 1920, Feisal was proclaimed King of Syria. A month later, the League of Nations allocated Syria (and Lebanon) to be a French Mandate. The French then kicked out Feisal and his Arab army. On March 1, 1920, before the Jerusalem pogrom, Shiite Arabs from southern Lebanon attacked Tel-Hai in the northern Galilee, in which the Jewish hero Joseph Trumpeldor was killed along with five fellow defenders of the Jewish community. The pogrom in Jerusalem was also part of an Arab nationalist campaign which considered Palestine to be part of Southern Syria. In addition, it was anti-Jewish, and an anti-Jewish Immigration act in which Islamic and Arab nationalist sentiments were stressed.

It was the Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini who incited the blood libel that the Al-Aqsa mosque was in danger from the Jews who wanted to destroy it. This gave impetus to the rise of the Arab-Palestinian nationalist movement, which planted the Palestinian Arab conception that Jews can only be tolerated as “Dhimmis” (protected and subjugated people), but a Jewish people cannot be recognized as eligible for a sovereign state. Thus, the Palestinian Authority today, under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, still does not recognize Israel as the national state of the Jewish people.

The 1920 April pogrom in Jerusalem was an “eye opener” for many naive Jews who believed at the time that the quarrel with the Arabs was just about the newcomers, immigrants from Europe, and that nothing would happen to the old Jewish residents who were actually a majority in Jerusalem. It was dispelled by the wholesale murders and attempted murder of Jews, whether ‘old settled ones’ or newcomers, Sephardic or Ashkenazi, secular or religious, rich or poor, all that mattered was that the victim was a Jew.

(full article online)

The Pogrom That Started the Palestinian Arab-Israeli Conflict | Frontpage Mag

Exactly one hundred years ago, in April, 1920, marked the opening shot of the Arab Israeli conflict. It was a pogrom against Jews in Jerusalem and its

www.frontpagemag.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Here are some quotes from Arab leaders in 1948 around the War of Independence. (They were compiled by the late Ami Isseroff, whose MidEast Web site is an encyclopedic and accurate source of information.)

Encouragement by Arab Leaders and Rumors - A study by Childers, which examined British monitoring of Arab broadcasts during that period, did not find any evidence that Arab leaders called on Palestinians to leave their homes. However, considerable evidence and testimony exists that at different times, Arab leaders encouraged refugees to flee. This issue has been inflated beyond its actual importance. It has no real significance in international law, except to counter or support the Palestinian claims of expulsion by force.
During a fact-finding mission to Gaza in June 1949, Sir John Troutbeck, head of the British Middle East office in Cairo and no friend to Israel or the Jews, found that while the refugees "express no bitterness against the Jews (or for that matter against the Americans or ourselves) they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states. "We know who our enemies are," they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their home. . . ."
The Economist, reported on October 2, 1948: "Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit....It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."
Times Magazine (May 3, 1948) reported: "The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city....By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa."
Edward Atiyah, the secretary of the Arab League Office in London, wrote in his book, The Arabs: "This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to reenter and retake possession of their country."

It is hard to square the actual atmosphere among Arabs in 1948 and the current narrative of Jews ethnically cleansing them. The “nakba” was and remains a problem created by and for Arabs, but pride and politics does not allow Palestinians to blame anyone but the Jews.

The narrative they say today is a lie. To know the truth, look at what they said in 1948.

(full article online)

1948 Arab quotes shows the only “nakba” is that they didn’t slaughter the Jews

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

This account of how a frightened Arab prisoner was treated while the newly reborn State of Israel was fighting for its life tells you all you need to know about the differences between how Jews treat their enemies and how Arabs treat theirs, no matter what the circumstances.

From the Palestine Post, May 17, 1948:

How Arabs were treated in Israeli prison, May 1948

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

This article by Malka Shulewitz published by JTA in September 1977 is not available in the JTA archives as far as I can tell; I saw it in The Sentinel (Chicago). It is one of the best, succinct articles I’ve ever seen about how Jews have been treated in Muslim lands as well as explaining why. I transcribed it from the original facsimile.

_________________________________

ALGERIA — Mostaganem, May. 1897: Sacking of synagogue marks beginning of widespread anti-Jewish violence throughout Algeria.​

MOROCCO— 1833-1912: Moslem riots in Casablanca. Tana and Fez. Many Jews killed and injured; women, girls and boys abducted, raped then ransomed.

YEMEN — 1922: A special law orders forcible conversion to Islam of all Jewish orphans under 13 even when the mother is still alive —a common Muslim law reimposed.

SYRIA — Damascus. 1936-39: Work at anti-Jewish propaganda headquarters intensified after visit by Nazi officers from Germany. Jews frequently stabbed on the streets.

LIBYA — Benghazi, 1942: During German occupation Jewish quarters sacked and looted, among 2000 'Jews deported acmes the desert, as many as a fifth died.

IRAQ — Baghdad. Festival of Shavuot. 1941: During riots following the collapse of Iraq's pro-Nazi government of Rash Ali, 175 Jews were killed and 1000 injured. Many Jews were tortured and there was much looting of Jewish property.


Taken at random from a booklet of illustrated maps on Jews of Arab lands by Prof. Martin Gilbert of Oxford University, the above facts were chosen not because they represent events more serious than. say, the massacre of more than 6000 Jews in Fez in 1033, or of more than 5000 murdered during the Arab riots of 1066 in Grenada. They even pale beside some of the persecutions and humiliation suffered by Jews throughout the Arab world around 1948.

(full article online)

Jews have never lived as equals in Muslim Arab lands (JTA, 1977)

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Which was preceded by as many as a hundred thousand more illegal Arab immigrants in the late 1920s (with one arguing that the 1922 census




What do all of these people have in common?

They are all considered “Palestinians” today, and to have lived in Palestine for centuries beforehand.

In fact, a significant number of Arabs who lived in Palestine in 1948 were there for far less time than the 72 years since.

(full article online)

British census in 1922 says that lots of Arabs came to Beersheva from Transjordan and Arabia

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Issa Amro, the popular Palestinian protester who gets rapturously profiled in Western media, tweets:




Yes, he is using a British document from British Mandate Palestine to somehow pretend that it proves there was an independent Palestinian state.

We've demolished these arguments before, but...there's no shortage of material we haven't used yet.

Here's some Palestinian history for you:

(full article online)

One more time: British Mandate Palestine has NOTHING to do with today's Palestinians

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Indeed, an extensive review of New York Timescoverage from that period turns up no indication of forced expulsion of Haifa’s Arabs, no Jewish effort to drive them out. Indeed, according to The Timesreports, it was the Arab leadership which opted for the evacuation of the Arab residents of the northern city when the Haganah gained control of the city. The Times’ April 23, 1948 article stated:

Thus, while the article carried the heading “Jews Seize Haifa in Furious Battle; Arabs Agree To Go,” the article itself made clear that the Haganah offered safety to all citizens, while the Arab leadership nevertheless decided to evacuate. The Zionists demanded the deportation only of foreignArab fighters along with Germans and Nazis who had joined the Arab forces.

(full article online)

Contradicting Its Own Archives, New York Times Cites Expulsion of Haifa's Arabs

The Times' assertion that Haifa's Arab citizens 'were forced to leave or escaped' in 1948 is belied by the paper's own coverage from that

www.camera.org

 

[P F Tinmore]

Which was preceded by as many as a hundred thousand more illegal Arab immigrants in the late 1920s (with one arguing that the 1922 census




What do all of these people have in common?

They are all considered “Palestinians” today, and to have lived in Palestine for centuries beforehand.

In fact, a significant number of Arabs who lived in Palestine in 1948 were there for far less time than the 72 years since.

(full article online)

British census in 1922 says that lots of Arabs came to Beersheva from Transjordan and Arabia

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

Not mentioned was the fact that the Palestinian Citizenship Order of 1925 gave Palestinians who were out of country for business, education, employment, etc., 3 years to return to Palestine to claim their citizenship.

 

[rylah]

Which was preceded by as many as a hundred thousand more illegal Arab immigrants in the late 1920s (with one arguing that the 1922 census




What do all of these people have in common?

They are all considered “Palestinians” today, and to have lived in Palestine for centuries beforehand.

In fact, a significant number of Arabs who lived in Palestine in 1948 were there for far less time than the 72 years since.

(full article online)

British census in 1922 says that lots of Arabs came to Beersheva from Transjordan and Arabia

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

Not mentioned was the fact that the Palestinian Citizenship Order of 1925 gave Palestinians who were out of country for business, education, employment, etc., 3 years to return to Palestine to claim their citizenship.

The article is about illegal Arab migration in the period of 1928-1931.

 

[MartyNYC]

Drs. Rabab Abdulhadi and Linda Quiquivix speak on the Nakba at UCLA

Definition of nakba: Arabs choose war against Israel, lose, and flee—and whine about it for almost three-quarters of a century to today.

 

[P F Tinmore]

Drs. Rabab Abdulhadi and Linda Quiquivix speak on the Nakba at UCLA

Definition of nakba: Arabs choose war against Israel, lose, and flee—and whine about it for almost three-quarters of a century to today.

Which Arabs?

 

[rylah]

Drs. Rabab Abdulhadi and Linda Quiquivix speak on the Nakba at UCLA

Definition of nakba: Arabs choose war against Israel, lose, and flee—and whine about it for almost three-quarters of a century to today.

Which Arabs?

According to Gaza govt. Egyptian and Saudi.
With the addition of those from Iraq and Syria as pointed before.
The same Arabs who expelled Jews from allover the middle east came for the same in Israel.

But you already knew this - the dhimmis eventually won big time.

 

[MartyNYC]

Drs. Rabab Abdulhadi and Linda Quiquivix speak on the Nakba at UCLA

Definition of nakba: Arabs choose war against Israel, lose, and flee—and whine about it for almost three-quarters of a century to today.

Which Arabs?

These Arabs

The U.N. Can't Deliver a Palestinian State

The General Assembly vote that created Israel was the culmination of decades of hard work on the ground...

www.hoover.org