The Right To Destroy Jewish History

[Billo_Really]

Billo, It was never Palestine when the Israelites had their Monarchy there, 3000 years ago. It was Israel. And then, Judea. And there were definitely no big number of Arabs, much less Arab nations who called themselves Palestinians.

You are claiming that it is a Jewish only area. The reality is that IT IS the Ancient homeland of the Jews, and NOT of the Arabs, Palestinians or by any other name.

The Greek, Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans, Byzantine, Muslims, Crusaders, Ottoman, British, they all attest to the fact that it was the Ancient homeland of the Jewish People/Nation and that the Jews would have every right to regain sovereignty over that land if they could.

Just like any other indigenous people of any other place on the planet.

Palestinian"s are the direct decendents of the Isrealites.

 

[Billo_Really]

And at best, Jews owned 30% of that land!

That's a lot more than the Arabs owned.

Wrong! Arab's owned 70%.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Wrong! Arab's owned 70%.

Can you show proof?

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ Here is a new one. World class inventors of incitement against Jews. One lie sounds better than the next for ignorant people ]

 

[Billo_Really]

Can you show proof?

I already did. And you know I did.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

I already did. And you know I did.

On this thread?

 

[Sixties Fan]

In July 1948, the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine submitted a memorandum to the United Nations titled "Jewish Atrocities in the Holy Land." It is a hate-filled piece of antisemitic propaganda filled with the most obscene lies about the Jews of Palestine.




This example of pure antisemitism is still available in the UN archives online.

It was turned into a pamphlet to be distributed widely, and a copy of that can be seen at the Library of Congress.

The Arab League Information Bureau in Cairo issued an updated version in March 1949, which is now available in the online Palestinian Museum Archive, naturally.

Here are excerpts from the 1949 version, which leaves no doubt as to the pure Jew-hatred of these documents.

They start off with Holocaust inversion and Jewish media control:

The world has only just been shocked by the disgusting revelations of the horrible, sadistic cruelties practised by the Nazis in the infamous camps of Belsen and Dachau. In these instances, a great number of the victims were Jews; and their more fortunate compatriots saw to it that their sufferings were made known all over the world. Their powerful and far-reaching propaganda machine enlisted the sympathies of every decent man and woman on behalf of the “poor, downtrodden Jew.”

Now we have once more to hear the horrible tale of sadistic cruelties and wanton brutalities perpetrated against an innocent population, mainly composed of women, children and old men. But this time the aggressors are those very Jews who were lately so loud in their outcry against the Nazis.

After elaborating on how depraved the Jews are, we are told that the Arabs had welcomed them with open arms as they fled pogroms:

...The Zionists are actively and savagely oppressing an innocent people and are actually rendering hundreds of thousands of harmless and peaceful human beings homeless wanderers. This is a poor way of showing gratitude for the sympathy so lately shown to Jewish sufferings in Nazi Germany and to those who gave them shelter and abode !

After some Biblical quotes on how Jews wantonly and thoroughly destroy their enemies, the pamphlet goes on to say that this is especially bad because the Jews are rich and cultured:

When reading of these atrocious acts, one unconsciously thinks of their perpetrators as being untaught savages, or barbarians of the remote past. Yet these same Jews have for centuries, by virtue of their moncy-massing activities, gathered to themselves the cream of culture and refinement of whatever country they have settled in. The.wealthy, educated Jew, surrounded by all the culture and art that his riches can command, has been a long familiar figure in civilized society. How superficial that veneer of culture really is, is shockingly revealed in the following pages....

Then comes example after example of completely fictional stories of Jewish atrocities. For example, we are told that Jewish doctors stole the blood of Arabs.

At Haifa and Jaffa, Arab men were captured and forcibly bled in order to provide blood for the treatment of Jewish wounded. These unfortunate victims were not only bled beyond their strength, but were neglected by the Jewish doctors and nurses, who left them in such a dangerous state of weakness that only the strongest could possibly survive.

The Deir Yassin section goes into lurid detail - and it sounds almost exactly like what the Jews in Hebron suffered in 1929. Just that was true.

On April 10, 1948, the village of Deir Yasin, in the suburbs of Jerusalem, was attacked by the Zionists, who rounded up most of its 600 inhabitants. Having looted everything of value in the village, the Zionists next turned their attention to their human booty, slaughtering men, women and children without mercy. On this occasion, about 250 Arabs were butchered. Among these were 25 pregnant women, whose bodies were deliberately ripped open with bayonets, and fifty-two mothers with babies at the breast, as well as about sixty other women and young girls. Little children were cut to pieces under the eyes of their mothers. Some of the unfortunate Arab women and girls were captured, stripped of all their clothing, and herded into open trucks. They were then paraded through the streets of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, where they were subjected to the insults of the populace, and were forced to submit to being photographed stark naked.

The pamphlet goes on to accuse the Jews of waging biological warfare, and being behind cholera epidemics in Egypt and Transjordan.

The propaganda is clearly written towards a Christian audience. The pamphlets emphasize how Jews supposedly attacked Christian holy places and killed members of the clergy, and even more disgustingly claimed that Arabs had treated Jewish holy places with utmost respect. (50 synagogues were destroyed in Jerusalem alone.)

Today's Palestinian propaganda is very similar, just they are more careful in English to say "Zionists" rather than "Jews." But anyone who claims that the underlying antisemitism is not the same is fooling themselves.

The Arab Higher Commission's disgusting antisemitic propaganda of 1948-49

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 1

I am a forgotten Jew.

My roots are nearly 2,600 years old, my ancestors made landmark contributions from North Africa to the Fertile Crescent — but I barely exist today. You see, I am a Jew from the Arab world. No, that’s not entirely accurate. I’ve fallen into a semantic trap. I predated the Arab conquest in just about every country in which I lived. When Arab invaders conquered North Africa, for example, I had already been present there for more than six centuries.

Today, you cannot find a trace of me in most of this vast region.

Try seeking me out in Iraq.

Remember the Babylonian exile from ancient Judea, following the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE? Remember the vibrant Jewish community that emerged there and produced the Babylonian Talmud?

Do you know that in the ninth century, under Muslim rule, we Jews in Iraq were forced to wear a distinctive yellow patch on our clothing — a precursor of the infamous Nazi yellow badge — and faced other discriminatory measures? Or that in the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, we faced onerous taxes, the destruction of several synagogues, and severe repression?

And I wonder if you have ever heard of the Farhud, the breakdown of law and order, in Baghdad in June 1941. As an American Jewish Committee (AJC) specialist, Dr. George Gruen, reported:

“In a spasm of uncontrolled violence, between 170 and 180 Jews were killed, more than 900 were wounded, and 14,500 Jews sustained material losses through the looting or destruction of their stores and homes. Although the government eventually restored order… Jews were squeezed out of government employment, limited in schools, and subjected to imprisonment, heavy fines, or sequestration of their property on the flimsiest of charges of being connected to either or both of the two banned movements. Indeed, Communism and Zionism were frequently equated in the statutes. In Iraq, the mere receipt of a letter from a Jew in Palestine [pre-1948] was sufficient to bring about arrest and loss of property.”

At our peak, we were 135,000 Jews in 1948, and we were a vitally important factor in virtually every aspect of Iraqi society. To illustrate our role, here is what the Encyclopedia Judaica wrote about Iraqi Jewry: “During the 20th century, Jewish intellectuals, authors, and poets made an important contribution to the Arabic language and literature by writing books and numerous essays.”

By 1950, other Iraqi Jews and I were faced with the revocation of citizenship, seizure of assets, and, most ominously, public hangings. A year earlier, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Sa’id had told the British ambassador in Amman of a plan to expel the entire Jewish community and place us at Jordan’s doorstep. The ambassador later recounted the episode in a memoir entitled From the Wings: Amman Memoirs, 1947-1951.

Miraculously, in 1951, about 100,000 of us got out, thanks to the extraordinary help of Israel, but with little more than the clothes on our backs. The Israelis dubbed the rescue Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.

Those of us who stayed lived in perpetual fear — fear of violence and more public hangings, as occurred on January 27, 1969, when nine Jews were hanged in the center of Baghdad on trumped-up charges, while hundreds of thousands of Iraqis wildly cheered the executions. The rest of us got out one way or another, including friends of mine who found safety in Iran when it was ruled by the Shah.

Now there are no Jews left to speak of, nor are there even monuments, museums, or other visible reminders of our presence on Iraqi soil for 26 centuries.

David Harris republishes 'I am a Forgotten Jew' • Point of No Return

Fifty-five years ago last week, David Harris’s wife, Giulietta, then 16 years old, together with her parents and seven siblings, fled their native Libya. At the time, some Jews were murdered in pogroms, while others hid until they could get safe passage out of the country, never to return...

www.jewishrefugees.org.uk

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 2

2,600 years are erased, wiped out, as if they never happened. Can you put yourself in my shoes and feel the excruciating pain of loss and invisibility?

I am a forgotten Jew.

I was first settled in what is present-day Libya by the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy Lagos (323-282 BCE), according to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus. My forefathers and foremothers lived continuously on this soil for more than two millennia, our numbers bolstered by Berbers who converted to Judaism, Spanish and Portuguese Jews fleeing the Inquisition, and Italian Jews crossing the Mediterranean.

I was confronted with the anti-Jewish legislation of the occupying Italian Fascists. I endured the incarceration of 2,600 fellow Jews in an Axis-run camp in 1942. I survived the deportation of 200 fellow Jews to Italy the same year. I coped with forced labor in Libya during the war. I witnessed local rioting in 1945 and 1948 that left nearly 150 Libyan Jews dead, hundreds injured, and thousands homeless.

I watched with uncertainty as Libya became an independent country in 1951. I wondered what would happen to those 6,000 of us still there, the remnant of the 39,000 Jews who had formed this once-proud community — that is, until the rioting sent people packing, many headed for the newly-established State of Israel.

The good news was that there were constitutional protections for minority groups in the embryonic Libyan nation. The bad news was that they were completely ignored.

Within 10 years of my native country’s independence, I could not vote, hold public office, serve in the army, obtain a passport, purchase new property, acquire majority ownership in any new business, or even participate in the supervision of our community’s affairs.

By June 1967, the die was cast. Those of us who had remained, hoping against hope that things would improve in a land to which we were deeply attached and which, at times, had been good to us, had no choice but to flee. The Six-Day War created an explosive atmosphere in the streets. Eighteen Jews were killed, and Jewish-owned homes and shops were burned to the ground.

I and 4,000 other Jews left however we could, most of us with no more than a suitcase and the equivalent of a few dollars.

I was never allowed to return. I never recovered the assets I had left behind in Libya, despite promises by the government. In effect, it was all stolen — the homes, furniture, shops, communal institutions, you name it. Still worse, I was never able to visit the grave sites of my relatives. That hurt especially deeply. In fact, I was told that, under Colonel Muammar Qaddhafi, who seized power in 1969, the Jewish cemeteries were bulldozed and the headstones used for road building.

David Harris republishes 'I am a Forgotten Jew' • Point of No Return

Fifty-five years ago last week, David Harris’s wife, Giulietta, then 16 years old, together with her parents and seven siblings, fled their native Libya. At the time, some Jews were murdered in pogroms, while others hid until they could get safe passage out of the country, never to return...

www.jewishrefugees.org.uk

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 3

I am a forgotten Jew.

My experience — the good and the bad — lives on in my memory, and I’ll do my best to transmit it to my children and grandchildren, but how much can they absorb? How much can they identify with a culture that seems like a relic of a past that appears increasingly remote and intangible? True, a few books and articles on my history have been written, but — and here I’m being generous — they are far from best-sellers.

Giulia Bouklhobza, aka Mrs David Harris
In any case, can these books compete with the systematic attempt by Libyan leaders to expunge any trace of my presence over two millennia? I repeat, can they vie with a world that paid virtually no attention to the end of my existence?

Take a look at The New York Times index for 1967, and you’ll see for yourself how the newspaper of record covered the tragic demise of an ancient community. I can save you the trouble of looking — just a few paltry lines were all the story got.

I am a forgotten Jew.

I am one of hundreds of thousands of Jews who once lived in countries like Iraq and Libya. All told, we numbered close to 900,000 in 1948. Today, we are fewer than 4,000, mostly concentrated in two countries — Morocco and Tunisia.

We were once vibrant communities in Aden, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and other nations, with roots dating back literally 2,000 years and more. Now we are next to none.

(On a positive note, the tiny Jewish community in Bahrain continues to thrive, while an emerging Jewish community in the United Arab Emirates, populated by Jews from around the world, offers some hope for a brighter future in the region.)

Why does no one speak of us and our story? Why does the world relentlessly, obsessively speak of the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars in the Middle East — who, not unimportantly, were displaced by wars launched by their own Arab brethren — but totally ignore the Jewish refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars?

Why is the world left with the impression that there’s only one refugee population from the Arab-Israeli conflict, when, in fact, there are two refugee populations, and our numbers were somewhat larger than the Palestinians?

I’ve spent many sleepless nights trying to understand this injustice.

Should I blame myself?

Perhaps we Jews from Arab countries accepted our fate too passively. Maybe we failed to seize the opportunity to tell our story. Look at the Jews of Europe. They turned to articles, books, poems, plays, paintings, and film to recount their story. They depicted the periods of joy and the periods of tragedy, and they did it in a way that also captured the imagination of many non-Jews. Perhaps I was too fatalistic, too shell-shocked, or just too uncertain of my artistic or literary talents.

But that can’t be the only reason for my unsought status as a forgotten Jew. It’s not that I haven’t tried to make at least some noise. I have. I’ve organized gatherings and petitions, arranged exhibitions, appealed to the United Nations, and met with officials from just about every Western government. But somehow it all seems to add up to less than the sum of its parts. No, that’s still being too kind. The truth is, it has pretty much fallen on deaf ears.

You know that acronym — MEGO? It means “My eyes glazed over.” That’s the impression I often have when I’ve tried raising the subject of the Jews from Arab lands with diplomats, elected officials, and journalists — their eyes glaze over (TEGO).

No, I shouldn’t be blaming myself, though I could always be doing more for the sake of history and justice.

There’s actually a far more important explanatory factor, I believe.

We Jews from the Arab world picked up the pieces of our shattered lives after our hurried departures — in the wake of intimidation, violence, and discrimination — and moved on. We didn’t stand still, wallow in self-pity, or pass on our victim status to our children and children’s children.

Most of us went to Israel, where we were given a new start. The years following our arrival weren’t always easy — we began at the bottom and had to work our way up. We came with varying levels of education and little in the way of tangible assets. But we had something more to sustain us through the difficult process of adjustment and acculturation: our immeasurable pride as Jews, our deeply rooted faith, our cherished rabbis and customs, and our commitment to Israel’s survival and well-being.

Some of us — somewhere between one-fourth and one-third of the total — chose to go elsewhere.

Jews from the French-speaking Arab countries gravitated toward France and Quebec. Jews from Libya created communities in Rome and Milan. Egyptian and Lebanese Jews were sprinkled throughout Europe and North America, and some resettled in Brazil. Syrian Jews immigrated to the United States, especially New York, as well as to Mexico City and Panama City. And on it went.

Wherever we settled, we put our shoulder to the wheel and created new lives. We learned the local language if we didn’t already know it, found jobs, sent our children to school, and, as soon as we could, built our own congregations to preserve the rites and rituals that were distinctive to our tradition.

I would never underestimate the difficulties or overlook those who, for reasons of age or ill health or poverty, couldn’t make it, but, by and large, in a short time we took giant steps, whether in Israel or elsewhere.

I may be a forgotten Jew, but my voice will not remain silent. It cannot, for if it does, it becomes an accomplice to historical denial and revisionism.

I will speak out because I will not allow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be defined unfairly through the prism of one refugee population only, the Palestinian.

I will speak out because what happened to me is now being done, with eerie familiarity, to other minority groups in the region, including the Christians and Yazidis, and once again I see the world averting its eyes, as if denial ever solved anything.

I will speak out because I refuse to be a forgotten Jew.



(Full article at Letter from a forgotten Jew)

David Harris republishes 'I am a Forgotten Jew' • Point of No Return

Fifty-five years ago last week, David Harris’s wife, Giulietta, then 16 years old, together with her parents and seven siblings, fled their native Libya. At the time, some Jews were murdered in pogroms, while others hid until they could get safe passage out of the country, never to return...

www.jewishrefugees.org.uk

 

[Sixties Fan]

We've discussed Columbia University professor Joseph Massad before and noted his antisemitism and bigotry since this blog began in 2004.

In an article for Arabi21, Massad strongly indicates that he subscribes to the discredited Khazar theory. While it is not the main point of his article, he writes, "The Zionists of European Jews claimed that they are the descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews and that their settlement project is nothing more than a 'return' to their ancient country, Israel....The pan-Jewish nationalism of European Zionism, which sought to re-establish the glories of the 'Jewish' kingdoms of the Palestinian Hebrews (who were appropriated by the Zionists as ancestors of Europeans who had converted to Judaism), was portrayed as 'progressive' and socialist."

This is similar to what he wrote in English for Electronic Intifada in 2017, saying that European Jews were converts to Judaism.

The Wikipedia entry on the genetics of Ashkenazic Jews shows that nearly all studies find their origin is in the Middle East. So Massad, in the 2017 article, makes his argument that most European Jews as converts by calling it "an established historical fact."

That is "proof by assertion."

The usual version of the theory that Jews are converts is the Khazar theory, which has also been repeatedly debunked from genetic, historical, linguistic and other perspectives. It is embraced by Palestinians because their entire claim of indigeneity is destroyed when another people were there first and most Palestinian Arab families proudly trace their ancestry to Arabia. (The Palestinian Christians, on the other hand, seem to be descended from Jews.)

Since the truth is not on their side, they need to push the Khazar lie. And that lie is meant to say that Jews don't have any historic ties to the Jewish homeland.

Denying Jewish history is just as antisemitic as denying the Holocaust.

Columbia professor Joseph Massad espouses discredited - and antisemitic - Khazar theory

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

So Massad, in the 2017 article, makes his argument that most European Jews as converts by calling it "an established historical fact."

If they were converts, that wouldn't count?
Cool, all the Arabs descended from muslim converts have no rights to land.

 

[Sixties Fan]

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: “After 74 years of Nakba (i.e., “the catastrophe,” the establishment of Israel), expulsion, and occupation, has the time not come for this occupation to end, for our people that is standing firm to achieve its freedom and independence, and for the wishes of our young men and women... to be realized in a promising future without occupation?”
[Official PA TV News, July 15, 2022]

Making his intentions clear, Abbas added that the path to destroying Israel starts with creating a Palestinian state:

“In this regard, we say that the key to peace and security in our region begins with recognizing state of Palestine and enabling the Palestinian people to obtain their legitimate rights in accordance with international legitimacy resolutions, and ending all the permanent status issues, including the Palestinian refugees issue.
And the way to that begins with ending the Israeli occupation of our land, the land of state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on the 1967 borders.”
[Website of the White House, July 15, 2022]

Abbas’ speech was a momentary display of clarity and honesty.

On most occasions, when speaking before foreign audiences and leaders, Abbas sticks to the false message that the Palestinians only seek to create a Palestinian state comprised of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem - living beside Israel.

For example, when speaking recently in front of EU Representative to the PA Sven Kuhn von Bergsdorff and other ambassadors of European countries Abbas spoke of “the vision of the two-state solution on the 1967 borders,” a “Palestine” on only 22% of “historic Palestine,” as opposed to demanding “45%” of that area, as allocated by the 1947 UN partition plan for the “Arab country.”

In contrast to the conciliatory messaging designed solely for foreign consumption, domestically, as Palestinian Media Watch has consistently shown, the PA’s messaging to the Palestinian people is clear and unequivocal: Israel has no right to exist; its presence is fleeting; and it will be replaced by the “State of Palestine”.

As Abbas openly declared, establishing the Palestinian state comprised of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, is not the end game that will bring Israeli-Palestinian peace. Rather, from the point of view of the Palestinians, establishing the limited Palestinian state is just the beginning of the path to achieving the real goal of destroying Israel and freeing all the so-called “Palestinian territory” that has been “occupied” for 74 years.

While many people often blame Israel’s actions for the absence of peace, in reality, from the Palestinian point of view, the reason for the absence of peace is Israel’s very existence. Until these Palestinian attitudes change and they accept not only Israel’s de facto existence, but rather Israel’s moral, historical, just and de jure right to exist, no peace will ever be achieved.


(full article online)

Abbas calls to end “74 years of... occupation" - Israel - at press conference with US President Biden | PMW Analysis

Abbas calls to end “74 years of... occupation" - Israel - at press conference with US President Biden

palwatch.org

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Abbas spoke of “the vision of the two-state solution on the 1967 borders,”

Palestine didn't have any borders in 1967.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Posted on 15 December 2009

In much discourse about the Middle East, there is a widespread myth that Jews are interlopers from Europe and the US – white westerners who came to ‘colonise’ and ’steal land’ from the ‘native’ Palestinian people to whom it rightfully belongs. This myth, drawing on Marxist terminology, gained increasing legitimacy after 1967 when Israel annexed East Jerusalem and ‘conquered’ the West Bank. The notion of ‘occupation’ and the use of the word ‘settlers’ reinforce the concept of Israeli ‘colonisation’ of ‘Arab’ land.

Aside from assuming that the Palestinians must be the true natives because they look authentically ‘brown’, the colonialism myth supports another myth: Jews are not a people, deserving of the right to self-determination, but a religion. Thus anti-Zionists habitually talk about of US citizens of the Jewish faith, Germans of the Jewish faith and even Arabs of the Jewish faith. At the time of the French Revolution, Clermont-Tonnerre said of the emancipation of Jews: “We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals.” The Jewish community would somehow disappear, leaving only French citizens of Jewish religion or ancestry.

Lately, the notion that Jews are not one people but a motley collection of converts has been given a boost by Tel Aviv Professor Shlomo Sand, whose bestselling book, The Invention of the Jewish People, is now out in English. Sand’s theories build on the work of Arthur Koestler, who popularised the idea that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Turkic tribe, the Khazars. Both men undermine the legitimacy of Israel by inferring that Jews have no link to Palestine. Genetic studies, however, discredit Koestler’s theory: they find that Jews from East and West have more in common with each other, and are genetically closer to non-Jews of Middle eastern origin – the Kurds in particular – than they are to the non-Jewish populations they lived amongst.

Last June President Obama articulated another myth: Israel was created as a penance for the Holocaust in Europe. This myth obscures the truth that every Arab state is equally a creation of western colonialism. It also ignores the fact that the institutions of a Jewish state-in-waiting were established decades before Ben Gurion read out Israel’s declaration of independence.

We often hear or read about Israel being populated by pork-munching non-Jewish Russians and settlers from Brooklyn. But these groups are marginal. We almost never hear that 40 percent of Israel’s Jews trace their ancestry from Muslim and Arab lands. The vast majority of these Jews merely moved from one corner of the ‘Arab’ world to that Middle Eastern coastal sliver known as Israel.

Until their expulsion 50 years ago, Jews had been settled in Iraq, for example, since the Babylonians exiled Jews from Jerusalem almost 3,000 years ago. In the early 20th century, Baghdad was the most Jewish city in the world, after Salonica and Jerusalem. The Jews can be said to have as legitimate a claim on Baghdad as Palestinians on Jerusalem.

The Arabs are relative newcomers to the region; the ‘Arab’ world is a misnomer. By the time the Arabs had conquered land largely inhabited by Jews and Christians in the 7th century, the Jews had been settled there for 2,000 years. People in the West tend to apply a common misconception to all Jews, borrowing the Christian notion that Jews have been punished to wander from land to land with no country to call their own. But not only have Jews always lived in Palestine, there was continuity of Jewish settlement in the Middle East and North Africa for 2,000 years. If only native inhabitants are titled to political rights, the Jews are as indigenous as any people living in the Middle East can be.

That Jewish presence came to an end in the last 50 years. The Arab League determined to wreak revenge on defenceless Jewish citizens in Arab lands if the partition of Palestine went ahead. On the day when five Arab armies invaded the new Jewish state, the Arab League secretary, Azzam Pasha announced :”This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades”.

The Arab governments actually declared two wars in 1948. The military war against the fledgling Jewish state of Israel they lost, but they declared a second war, against a million Jewish citizens. This war they won easily, through a policy of intimidation, repression, persecution and sporadic outbreaks of violence. The result is that only 4,500 Jews are left in Arab countries.

Jews ‘stealing Arab land’ is an offensive inversion of reality. Jews in 10 Arab countries were stripped of their rights and in most cases dispossessed of their property. The World Organisation of Jews from Arab Countries estimates that Jews in Arab countries lost many more billions of assets than the Palestinians, and four times as much land as the size of Israel itself.

Seen in these terms, Arab antisemitism created Israel no less than the Holocaust. The Arabs owe the Jews big-time. It’s time the world stopped viewing the conflict through a distorted, Eurocentric lens.

The myth of Jewish colonialism • Point of No Return

In much discourse about the Middle East, there is a widespread myth that Jews are interlopers from Europe and the US – white westerners who came to ‘colonise’ and ’steal land’ from the ‘native’ Palestinian people to whom it rightfully belongs. This myth, drawing on Marxist terminology, gained...

www.jewishrefugees.org.uk

 

[Sixties Fan]

By popular demand I have tried to explode some of the more common myths about Jews from Arab countries.

1.While some Jews were expelled from Arab countries, many left of their own free will and were fervent Zionists.

Although Jews in Muslim lands have a long tradition of Zionism, – and Israeli politicians such as Ran Cohen(who arrived in 1950 as a 13-year old refugee), Yisrael Yeshayahu and Shlomo Hillel, who arrived before Israel was born, are on record as saying they came as Zionists, not refugees – this myth, supported by radical Marxist academics such as Yehouda Shenhav,conveniently whitewashes all the push factors that together made life uncomfortable for the great mass of Jews living under Arab regimes after 1948 – murderous riots, anti-Jewish incitement, discriminatory laws and restrictions. As early as November 1947, the Arab League contemplated passing a lawthat would have treated all Jews of Arab countries as enemy aliens. Although this law was never passed, aspects were adopted by individual regimes. Once Zionism had been outlawed it was easy for Arab governments to scapegoat their Jewish citizens as spies or traitors.

The myth that these were Zionist immigrants has been fuelled inadvertently by the Israeli government. For ethnocentric reasons, Israel discouraged the Jews from seeing themselves as ‘refugees’, but rather as immigrants returning to their ancestral homeland.

2. Zionist agents set off bombs to scare Iraqi and Egyptian Jews into leaving.

In his book The Gun & the Olive Branch, David Hirst describes in detail covert Israeli operations to scare Iraqi and Egyptian Jews into fleeing their homes for the “sanctuary” of Israel. Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former CIA operative, wrote about the ‘Zionist crimes’ against Arab Jews in Iraq (Feuerlicht, The Fate of the Jews, 231).The writings of the disaffected Iraqi Jew Naeem Giladiare frequently invoked to support this myth.

The Egyptian bombs of 1954 were indeed the work of a pro-Zionist group, but there is no causal link with the exodus of 25,000 Jews two years later. In the Iraqi case no one will ever know for certain who planted bombs in 1950 -51, but three of the five episodes occurred after the vast majority of the Jews had already left or were leaving – and caused no casualties. The Israeli ‘new’ historian Tom Segev has produced evidence blaming the only fatal bombing on Iraqi nationalists. In his book Une si longue presence, Nathan Weinstock makes the point that only the Iraqi police possessed the no. 36 high potential grenades used in the bombings. Besides, the two Zionist ‘culprits’ executed in January 1952, whose confessions were extracted under torture, were never accused of the fatal bombing of 14 January 1951.

Moshe Gat (The Jewish exodus from Iraq, p 18) points out that the beginning of the Arab revolt in 1936 marks the onset of physical attacks on Jews. Nobody has suggested that the 10 Jews murdered and the eight instances of bombs thrown at places where Jews congregated was the work of ‘Zionists’.

In any case undue focus on the ‘bombs’ distracts from the overwhelming evidence of official antisemitism in Arab countries, and does not explain the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Jews from Yemen, Syria, Libya and other countries.

3. In any case, the Palestinian refugees did not expel Jews from their homes in Arab countries.This argument is often brought up to refute the idea that the Palestinian refugees and Jewish refugees constitute ‘an exchange of refugee populations.’ It is often forgotten that the ‘Palestinian cause ‘ began life as a pan-Arab cause. Five Arab armies fought an aggressive war in the name of the Palestinian Arabs. The Palestinians who fled their homes, no less than Jewish refugees, have good reason to hold Arab governments responsible for their plight. (An Arab League law passed in the 1950s even ensured no country except Jordan would give citizenship to Palestinians.)The main difference is that one set of refugees fled as a result of war, the other persecution. Both sets of refugees deserve justice as part of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement.

Nonetheless, the Palestinians were far from hapless victims. Palestinian Arabs fought against the Jews between November 1947 and May 1948. From the 1920s onwards, the Mufti of Jerusalem was agitating against the Jews of Palestine and in the Arab world, inciting terrorist attacks and riots. An ally of the Nazis, he was responsible for a great deal of the anti-Semitism that cost Jewish lives (he helped plan the Rashi Ali coup which led to the Iraqi Farhoud in 1941) and ultimately caused the Jews to flee from the Arab world.

4. The governments of Morocco, Egypt, Iraq and Yemen (unlike Israel) have always stated that those Jews who left are welcome to return.A cynical propaganda exercise: Jews have not exactly been falling over themselves to return to the tyrannies which persecuted them. The one Jew who returned to Iraq in 1971 (see comment 17) vanished, presumed killed.

5.The expulsion of some Jews was a natural reaction to the ‘stealing of Palestinian land and establishment of the Zionist entity’.

The idea that Arab states were justified in taking revenge against their peaceful Jewish citizens is bizarre. Would it have been understandable if Americans had gone on the rampage against Muslims after 9-11?

Even if one assumes the whole of the land now constituting Israel to be ‘stolen’ the Jews of Arab countries are reckoned to have lost far more in land and assets.

This myth also whitewashes the fact that Arab antisemitism, xenophobic nationalism and Islamism predated the establishment of Israel.


6. The creation of Israel is expiation for European antisemitism and the Holocaust. The Jews are a European question and Israel is a colonialist European implant.This popular leftwing myth ignores the fact that half the Jewish population of Israel are Jews indigenous to the Middle East. In many cases Jewish communities in Arab countries go back to Biblical times and predate Islam by 1,000 years. This myth posits that Arab antisemitism began in 1948 and that relations between Jews and Muslims before the creation of Israel were harmonious or even idyllic.

The truth is that Jews are an Arab questionas much as a European. Relations between Jews and Muslims were unequal and historically precarious. Even the Andalusian Golden Age in medieval times may not have been the idyll it is often described.

The Jews were not the only victims of modern Arab Muslim nationalism. Other minorities have suffered persecution and ethnic cleansing. Indeed, non-Muslims constitute a useful distraction from their domestic failures for the failed and dysfunctional autocracies of the Arab world.

7. Israel’s Ashkenazi ruling class caused the exodus of Jews from Arab countries in order to exploit them as immigrant labour.

A corollary of myth no. 2: the Jews were made to leave by the Zionists and on arrival in Israel became second class citizens. Their natural allies and fellow victims of racism are Arab Israelis/ Palestinians. This myth has been thoroughly debunked here.

The scandal of the ‘ringworm’ children, irradiated by the Ashkenazi establishment in the 1950s, turns out largely to be just another conspiracy theory (with thanks: Franck).

Seven myths about Jews from Arab countries • Point of No Return

By popular demand I have tried to explode some of the more common myths about Jews from Arab countries. 1.While some Jews were expelled from Arab countries, many left of their own free will and were fervent Zionists. Although Jews in Muslim lands have a long tradition of Zionism, – and Israeli...

www.jewishrefugees.org.uk

 

[Sixties Fan]

Faisal Abu Khadra, a member of the PLO’s Palestinian National Council (PNC) and a columnist for the East Jerusalem daily Al-Quds, wrote in a July 5, 2022 column that the Palestinian refugees’ right of return is a “divine right” that the Palestinians will never relinquish. Palestine, he added, is the Palestinians’ homeland, whereas the Zionists originate in northern Germany and are therefore “Aryan, rather than Semitic, in origin.” He criticized the countries neighboring Israel for signing the armistice agreements with it in 1949 without making this conditional on allowing the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes. This is a historic mistake no less grave than the Nakba itself, he said.

The following are translated excerpts from his column:[1]

“The Palestinians cannot conceivably agree to be settled anywhere except in their cities and villages in Palestine. The logic of this is acknowledged throughout the world… No matter what the material and moral incentives, the Palestinians will never accept any [other] proposal, [no matter how] generous, for a very simple reason: Their land is in the grips of an occupation that has no historical roots in it.

“Many Palestinians are nationals of [countries] other than Palestine, but this does not in any way mean that they have forgotten their country, their homeland, and their historical roots in that blessed soil.

“The Zionist leaders said that [the Palestinians of] the Nakba generation will die and their children and grandchildren will forget [Palestine and the right of return]. But those ignorant people discovered that no person of Palestinian origin can conceivably forget his homeland. The Palestinians, thank God, both the refugees and elsewhere, have not forgotten and will never forget their country, Palestine. Successive [Israeli] governments tried and are still trying, along with their ally, the U.S., to abolish UNRWA using every possible trick, thinking that, if they do this, it would eliminate the most important element in the right of return. [But] the Palestinian people, including all its sectors… has never and will never give up the right of return, by any means.

“The Palestinian people respects all the international resolutions [on the Palestinian issue] and will never relinquish them, chief of them the one about the right of return. This is a divine right, and the mere thought of an alternative homeland or of [the Palestinians] living outside historical Palestine is an illusion that exists [only] in the mind of the occupiers and their supporters.

“Every people in the world is entitled to live in its land. So why do the occupiers and their supporters want the Palestinians to live on foreign soil that is not the soil on which their forefathers lived since 5,000 BCE and where they still live today? The ones who built the harbors of Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and Ashdod are our forefathers, the Canaanites.

“[As for] the Zionists, none of them originate in Palestine. Rather, they come from Ashkenaz, which is northern Germany. They are Aryan rather than Semitic in origin. That is why we see that they are all nationals of [the countries] from which they emigrated to Palestine. The notion of the Promised Land is a Zionist invention.

“It is accurate to say that the countries surrounding [Israel] committed a historic mistake against the Palestinian people when they signed a permanent armistice [agreement with Israel] without making it conditional on [actualizing the Palestinians’ right] of return. This is especially [grave] considering that [UN] Resolution 194 was issued in 1949, and in that very same year these countries signed the ceasefire agreement [with Israel] – which is equal [in its gravity] to the Nakba of the Palestinian people.”

Palestinian National Council Member: The Right Of Return Is A Divine Right That The Palestinians Will Never Relinquish; The Zionists Are Aryan In Origin, Not Semitic

In a July 5, 2022 column, Faisal Abu Khadra, a member of the PLO's Palestinian National Council (PNC) and a columnist for the East Jerusalem daily Al-Quds, wrote that the Palestinian refugees' right of return is a "divine right" that the Palestinians will never relinquish.

www.memri.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

What really happened​

In 1912 land was purchased by ‘Hachsharat Hayeshuv’ – the *Zionist* ‘Palestine Land Development Company‘. This was before the British even arrived. The intention was to set up a farming village outside Jerusalem.

The Jews abandoned the first attempt to settle the land during WW1, probably in fear either of Ottoman oppression or military conscription. The Ottomans viewed Jews as ‘enemy’ (as an example Jewish communities in Tel Aviv were expelled at this time).

They returned in 1919 and in 1923 the JNF purchased a further 384 dunams to expand the Moshav. It was named ‘Atarot‘ after a biblical settlement that was believed to have existed in the area.

The British wanted to build a small airstrip near their seat of power in Jerusalem – and they began to expropriate the Moshav’s lands.

In 1926 and 1931 the British uprooted trees, destroyed crops, tore down buildings and restricted any further growth of the Moshav.

The fields and trees they destroyed were part of the livelihood of the Jewish village.

This was not the only problem the Jews faced. During the brutal Arab massacres of Jews in 1929, the settlement was attacked, almost destroyed, and the women and children were evacuated to Jerusalem. During the Arab riots of 1936-39, the settlement was attacked several times and five of its residents were killed.

As a side note – In 1936 the airport was renovated by a Jewish engineer and businessman, Pinchas Rutenberg. And as the airport began to take commercial flights – Rutenberg founded ‘Palestine Airways’:



That is no doubt another image that anti-Israel activists can turn into a viral ‘theft’ of Jewish history.

There was no happy ending. In 1948 The Jewish town was attacked, first by locals, and then the Jordanian Legion. As they tried to hold on, a convoy sending supplies in March 1948 was attacked, and 16 Jews were slaughtered. Unable to survive – the Jews were forced to leave in May. Several Jewish neighbourhoods in the area were ethnically cleansed:



*ALL* of the Jewish villages captured by the Egyptian, Syrian or Jordanian forces in 1948 were razed to the ground. And *ALL* of the Jewish inhabitants either fled – or were jailed, expelled or murdered.

The Jordanians destroyed almost all the evidence that the village had ever existed – and used all the available lands to expand and internationalise the airport. It was built on top of an ethnically cleansed Jewish village.

This is the airport the Palestinians are so proud of.

The Palestinian academic narrative​

It would be foolish to think the fake narrative is only the work of social media trolls. This is how this history is described in a piece on the website of the ‘Institute for Palestine Studies’ in the section under ‘Historical Background‘:

“The airport was established by the British Mandate in 1920’s. It was a small military base known by the British as ‘Kolundia Airfield’. In 1948, the British Mandate ended and the West Bank was put under the supervision of Jordan. In the early 1950’s the Jordanians turned the airfield into a civil airport, erected the still existing airport building and named it the Jerusalem Airport.”

They simply wipe the Jewish history out completely.

The inversion of truth​

I often say that the Palestinians probably cannot believe their luck. They can make up any old story – create any fake history, and much of the world is willing to think the worst of the Jews. This was land that the Jews bought – even before the British arrived. They built a village there. For decades they faced British and Arab hostility – had land stolen – people killed, and eventually were expelled completely from the area. And today anti-Israel activists turn it all on its head – pushing lie after lie. Perversely, they even use words like ‘illegal’ and ‘colony’ – as if it is the Jews who have stolen something.

“The Qalandia Airport was a magical place where I first experienced, as a child, the freedom of flying. Like the rest of Palestinian land, it was stolen, violated and deformed, becoming a symbol of oppression and captivity.” – Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)

​

Stealing history​

Very little of what Palestinians claim is true. It is without much doubt one of the most effective and successful propaganda machines ever built. They even make up stories about imaginary dams flooding and European politicians will share the story as if it is true. The Jerusalem Airport story is a microcosm of the conflict and the Palestinian propaganda war against the truth. The Palestinians deny Jewish history and seek to erase it – in order to convince people that once upon a time Palestine was actually a nation. When you literally do not have a history you have to invent or steal one. The Palestinians do both.

(full article online)

Palestinian lies - built upon Jewish blood

The Jerusalem Airport story is a microcosm of the conflict and the Palestinian propaganda war against the truth.

david-collier.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Jewish Agency is in the news:

Russia is threatening to ban a major Jewish nonprofit agency that helps people emigrate to Israel from operating in the country, a sign of the Kremlin’s deteriorating relationship with Israel and of the far-reaching fallout from the war in Ukraine.

Russia’s Justice Ministry is seeking to liquidate the Russian branch of the nonprofit, the Jewish Agency for Israel, which operates in coordination with the Israeli government, according to a notice from a Moscow court.

The article notes:

The Jewish Agency, founded nearly a century ago as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, was instrumental in helping establish Israel in 1948, and has facilitated the emigration of millions of Jews from around the globe.

This is not true. It was originally founded in 1908 as the Palestine Office, part of the Zionist Organization - in Hebrew, המשרד הארץ-ישראלי, HaMisrad HaEretz Yisraeli, "Office for the Land of Israel."

In 1921, the name was changed to the Jewish Agency for Palestine, in Hebrew "הסוכנות היהודית לארץ ישראל", HaSochnut HaYehudit L'Eretz Yisra'el, literally the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel."

Here is a pin that the Jewish Agency used to distribute:



Apparently, the original name in Hebrew stuck for a while though, as this 1936 letterhead from Berlin shows:



Here is an immigration certificate for a lucky Jew from Poland in 1938 that uses both the "Jewish Agency for Palestine" and "Palestine Office" names, but in Hebrew it is always Eretz Yisrael.




After the War of Independence, it was renamed again, to the Jewish Agency for Israel - but in Hebrew, there was no reason to rename it.

Because before 1948, the translation of "Palestine" was "The Land of Israel."

Today's "Palestine" has nothing at all to do with Palestine before 1948. Every map, every reference to it was always to the Land of Israel (or, in English, the Holy Land.) Palestinian Arabs did not want to be called "Palestinian" - but Jews proudly did.

Palestinian Arabs, at least through the 1920s, also had a name for the land. But it wasn't "Palestine." It was "Suria El Jenobia" - Southern Syria.

The only people who wanted an independent Palestine were the Jews. And the Jewish Agency, an organization hated by anti-Zionists, helps prove it.

The Jewish Agency's history destroys the "Palestine was an Arab state" narrative

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com