Palestine Post-ings

April, 1948: How the Arabs left Tiberias

2007-04-24T03:50:00.001-04:00

In March, 1948, on the eve of Israeli independence, the Jews and Arabs of Tiberias forged a cease-fire:

Unfortunately, the truce was short-lived. Within weeks, Arabs started firing at the Jews, and the Haganah fought back:

Soon, the Jewish forces were proven superior again. And after the Jews defeated the Arabs, details emerged about what had happened earlier.

It seems that the Tiberias Arabs didn't want to fight the Jews, but Arabs from the outside infiltrated and attacked the Jews from the local Arab homes. Local Arabs even fought against the invading Arabs, but in the end they were forced to leave - by the invaders. Not for the first time, the larger Arab community cynically used the local Arabs who had no real quarrel with the Jews in order to achieve a political gain - that ended up hurting the Arabs themselves.

Evidence of this can be seen by the immediate aftermath of the Jewish victory, where the Jews themselves safeguarded the abandoned Arab homes from Arab looters. See also how the Jews, protecting the homes of their Arab neighbors, clearly want to see those neighbors return to their homes:

An opinion piece in the Palestine Post elaborated on how Tiberias' Arabs had turned into pawns as well as how the Jews, as a whole, had no interest in kicking out the Arabs from their nascent state.

In 1949, a very articulate Haifa Arab wrote a remarkable letter to the Palestine Post (2/6/49) in which he laid the greatest share of the blame for the Arab refugee crisis on the British, and he claimed that the British were the ones who forcibly moved the Tiberias Arabs to Transjordan:

The Editor, The Palestine Post
Sir, — Mr. Bevin appears to
hold the Jews responsible for
the flight of the Palestine Arabs.
Although the Israel military
forces destroyed certain Arab
villages and carried out wholesale
transportation of their occupants,
yet the primary responsibility
for the panicky
flight of the Arabs is the British
Government's. Whether intended
or not, there can be no
doubt that the mischief originat -
ed from the conduct of the
British, and not from the attitude
of the Israeli Government.

There is ample evidence
for this statement.

The sequence of occurrences
showed that the British Government
had no intention or
desire to enforce law and order,
and that Palestine Administration
was labouring to create an
atmosphere permeated with fear
and alarm. No effective measure
was adopted by the authorities,
civil and military, to ensure
safety. On the contrary, they
encouraged disorder and disobedience
of the law, and countenanced
insubordination. They
allowed a large force of armed
Arabs to infiltrate into the country,
and to roam about with
impunity. Palestine was virtually
converted into two antagonistic
armed camps under the
eyes and nose of the Mandatory
Power. Huge quantities of arms
and ammunition were openly
smuggled in, and recruiting and
drilling of combatants became
conimonplace events. ...

Secondly, the idea that the
Arabs should quit their homes
was advanced, sponsored and
propagated by the British. The
Government of Palestine granted
its officers three months' pay
in advance, and facilitated the
departure on leave of Arab of -
ficers to adjacent territories.
British companies, such as the
Iraq Petroleum Company, and
Steel Bros. & Company, unnecessarily
transferred a part
of their offices and the majority
of their Arab employees to the Lebanon.
And generally, the at -
titude of the responsible British
authorities was such as to infuse
into the minds and hearts of the
Arab population a feeling of
consternation and the belief that
their departure was a logical
necessity , or, at least, a prudent
precaution.

Thirdly, it was the British, and
not the Jews, who first put into
effect the dislodgement and deportation
of the Arab popula -
tion. When conditions in Tiberias,
where the friendly relations
between Arabs and Jews formed
a bright illustration of the
possibility of the two communities
co-operating, became acute,
the British authorities forcibly
transported the Arab inhabitants
en masse to Trans-Jordan. They
did not take any action
toward pacification and restoration
of peace and order. It was
their evident duty to do so;- but
instead of discharging their obligation
with honesty and dignity
they discarded it with
ignominy, and compelled the
Arabs to abandon their homes
and belongings and seek refuge
in the contiguous Arab territory.

Yours, etc.
E .N. KOUSSA

I don't know how accurate Mr. Koussa's claims are, but they make a certain amount of sense. Even so, the British didn't act in a vacuum, and they were almost certainly acting in ways that their Arab allies wanted them to.

What is clear, though, is that (as in Haifa,) the Jews did not drive out the Arabs of Tiberias and the people who claim a pre-meditated ethnic cleansing are simply liars.

Palestinian Arabs killing each other - in 1938

2007-01-06T20:58:00.000-05:00

The hundreds of murders of Palestinian Arabs by other Palestinian Arabs that I have been documenting for the past six months is nothing new. A very similar situation occurred from 1936-39.

The Arabs of Palestine tried on a few occasions in the 1920s and 1930s to rise up and destroy the Jews of Palestine, and things were very bad in 1936. Yet no matter what they did, the Jewish influence on the area kept increasing, Jews kept arriving and Jewish institutions thrived.
They then started killing each other in earnest. I'm not sure why - perhaps it was frustration at their impotence, perhaps because an entire generation had been raised to praise Arab murderers as heroes and therefore bloodshed itself became considered desirable, or maybe they simply started misplacing their hatred for Jews and the British onto any Arab that was too Western for their tastes. Nationalism and religion seems to have played a part but more as excuses rather than as root causes.

Either way, the amount of lawlessness that ensued looks very familiar to those of us who have been following "clan clashes" and the Fatah/Hamas civil war. Especially notice how many Arabs were killed for not wanting to join in with the terrorists, or for speaking out against the terrorists. Also note the left column, dealing only with the terror crimes of the previous day.

There are three more columns of dead Arab victims of Arab violence I didn't reproduce.

Whatever psychological reason one wants to hypothesize, one thing is the same then as now: the most extreme elements of Arab society are not dealt with adequately by more moderate Arabs (either out of fear or out of ideology.) This apathy is treated as carte blanche to accelerate the terror.

This could explain why so many Arab societies are either chaotic messes or autocratic dictatorships. There seems to be no real internal mechanism within Islam or Arab thinking to limit the influence of the terrorists, so either go the route of Egypt/Syria and repress everybody, or go the route of the PA and Somalia and let the foxes run the henhouse.

New Year 1937 Eve: Toscanini and the Palestine Orchestra

2007-01-06T20:57:00.000-05:00

1936 was a rough year for the Jews of Palestine. There were Arab riots, strikes and many terror attacks.

But the Jews did not whine nor did they quit. They fought mightily to live their lives to be as normal as possible even in situations where a bullet could come from anywhere and end any of their lives.

In one representative article in the Palestine Post, we see that Hebrew University was going forward with plans to expand even though students and faculty had been murdered by Arabs that year (All articles here are from the December 31, 1936 Palestine Post):

In the end of the year, the famed conductor Arturo Toscanini came to Jerusalem (at his own expense) to conduct in what was considered a hugely important cultural event to the Palestinian Jews as the coming out of the Palestine Orchestra. (Notice thatneither the ads nor the articles even mention Toscanini's first name; he was that well-known and revered that it was simply not necessary.)

Sadly, the bulk of the article is not available in the Palestine Post archives, but it is clear that the concert series was a smashing success. (One letter writer to the Post did complain about the actions of the press photographers at the previous week's concert, though.)

The Haifa concert on New Year's Eve was sold out:

Haifa residents could enjoy a traditional New Year's party afterwards:

And due to popular demand, an additional concert was scheduled for Jerusalem:

TIME magazine described one concert:

As a full Palestine moon rode one evening last week over Tel Aviv, exclusively Jewish city, the Hebrew Sabbath ended and thousands of Jews began to move toward the Levant Fair Grounds. There they packed the Italian Pavilion to capacity to hear great Arturo Toscanini lead Palestine's first civic orchestra through its first performance. Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, the British High Commissioner, brought with him a party of notables. Open-shirted German immigrants gathered in rowboats on the adjacent Yarkon River. A few Arab fishermen paddled quietly toward shore, listened respectfully outside the pavilion walls which are still pitted by Arab bullets.

Inside those walls Arturo Toscanini was proving again his art, and allaying the fears of those who had heard the orchestra rehearse. A week prior it had been ragged, particularly in winds & strings. But the great master made the Brahms Second come out so clear and controlled. Schubert's Unfinished Symphony sing with such freshness that the audience could forget the flocks of frightened sparrows which swooped and twittered above their heads. There was no raggedness when, partly as a taunt to Nazi Germany, he led them through a scherzo by Jewish Felix Mendelssohn.

The Palestine symphony was grateful to Toscanini for coming all the way to make its debut a success. But all Tel Aviv knew and did not forget that Violinist Bronislaw Huberman was the man who made its debut a possibility. Touring Palestine in December 1935. Huberman, a Polish Jew, was impressed by the attendance and enthusiasm of natives & exiles who came to hear his violin concerts. He determined to build for them an orchestra at Tel Aviv, their brave new cultural capital, and resigned his Vienna teaching post to do so. Already in Palestine, or easily available all over Europe, were scores of refugee Jewish musicians. It was easy to get, as permanent administrators of the new orchestra's trust fund, such influential Jews as Financier Israel Sieff of London, Belgian Industrialist Dannie Heineman. Palestine's Lieut. Col. Frederick Hermann Kisch. Palestine's top-notch lawyer, Solomon Horowitz. Dr. Albert Einstein took the honorary presidency of the U. S. branch of the organization.

The Palestine Symphony Orchestra now numbers 72. Germans make up about half the number, the rest are Poles and Russians. Six are natives of Palestine which has several competent music schools but welcomes the new orchestra as its only permanent symphony. So many first-desk musicians are playing in it that critics expect the Palestine Symphony to rank soon among the first four orchestras in the world. Impresario Huberman is proud to have engaged for the forthcoming season such guest artists as Violinist Adolf Busch and Cellist Pablo Casals. After Toscanini takes the orchestra to Jerusalem, Haifa, Cairo and Alexandria this season, Issay Dobrowen, former conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, Hans Wilhelm Steinberg, onetime director of the Frankfort Opera, and Michael Taube, former leader of famed German ensembles, will replace him on Jewry's proudest podium.

For a people who desire and celebrate life, a few terror attacks will not break their will. In many ways, it makes them more determined than ever to live their lives exactly the way they want to.

For people who are raised in a culture of death, however, one will be hard-pressed to find any similar stories.

Lebanon, 1946

2006-08-07T21:49:00.000-04:00

Here is an article from the Palestine Post in 1946 that shows how far Lebanon has fallen since its early days of independence.

A Christian's arguments for a Jewish state, 1946

2006-06-19T15:13:00.000-04:00

A fantastic and very long article, from the February 22, 1946 Palestine Post, that could have been written today. It was written by Raimondo de Ovies, "Dean of Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta, Georgia" but I have not found out anything else about him. It is well worth reading in its entirety.

The author lays out the moral, logical, legal and historic reasons why a Jewish state should be established in Palestine, including how such a state helps the Arabs themselves. It shows how even in 1946, some of the most clearheaded and passionate Zionists were Christians.

The Refugees of Zer'in

2006-06-06T11:36:00.000-04:00

During Israel's War of Independence, the Palestine Post published occasional dispatches from Dorothy Bar-Adon called "Emek Diary" showing the human side of the war from her perspective.

In this amazing article, Bar-Adon describes the close relationships between her village's Jews and the Arabs of Zer'in (now Jezreel), who lived in a town overlooking much of the valley. The town's strategic position made it ideal for shelling and sniping at the Jewish villages below, and for months the Jews lived in fear of being shot in their houses or fields.

An Iraqi general and his troops arrived in Zer'in and built up fortified positions to attack from. It is unclear when exactly the residents of Zer'in left the town; most of them apparently left when the Iraqis arrived and before the Jews conquered the hill. But as this article makes clear, the Israeli soldiers could hear the Arab women of the village - neighbors and friends of the Jews in years past - shout out war cries during the first unsuccessful attempt to take the town.

Bar-Adon shows that she is in a position to be far more sympathetic to the Palestinian Arab refugees of Zer'in than the international community who were (and still are) insisting on allowing the Arabs to return: she knew them intimately, she celebrated happy times with them, she ate with them. But, as she explains, to allow Arabs to go back to Zer'in is unthinkable, knowing that they chose their sides, they waxed lyrically hoping and expecting the deaths of hundreds of Jews around Zer'in, and that they would choose sides again against the Jews if they are given a chance.

See Palestine Post-ings for a larger version of the article.

United Press on the Palestinian Arab refugee problem, 1948

2006-05-31T23:09:00.000-04:00

I have written previously about the origins of the Palestinian Arab refugee problem, talking specifically about the Arabs of Haifa and the Mufti's interest in creating and perpetuating the problem. I started tackling the Palestine Post sources on the birth of the Palestinian Arab refugee problem of 1948. It is actually a huge amount of research, but I found today an interesting article that was published in the Palestine Post but was written for United Press (now UPI).

The author's thesis is that Israel was using the Arab refugees as a bargaining chip in getting Jews out of Arab countries. Of course, this never happened, so the author's analysis is wrong, but the facts that he mentions surrounding the Arab refugees seem to be on target.

United Press' Robert Miller says explicitly that the Jews bent over backwards to stop the Arabs from fleeing ("the greatest concessions were made to the Arabs if they would remain in Jewish territory...The Arabs refused to listen.")

And then, he says that Israel started encouraging the Arabs to flee (he got the reasons wrong, as mentioned above.) But what is the worst that the Jews did?

"They pointed out that the Arabs were welcome to remain, but that the Jews couldn't furnish food. The Jews offered to provide trucks to take the Arabs to the front lines."
Here is the Israeli crime, as of August 1948: telling Arabs that if they wanted to leave, they would help them.

The article does not spell out why the Arabs left, whether it was out of fear or because they were encouraged to, but it does say explicitly that Jews did not force Arabs out of their homes. Not that this never happened - in the course of a war bad things happen and things are always a lot more muddled while they are happening. But so far I have found no contemporaneous evidence of it, although there were plenty of accusations to that effect by the Arab leaders at the time as they tried to demonize the Jews while they grappled with the undeniably huge refugee problem that was dropped on the doorsteps of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.

Interestingly, Saudi Arabia refused to accept any Arab refugees, claiming that they had no money for them, but offered to pay for fighting Jews:

See also Palestinian Media Watch where real Palestinian Arabs admit what happened in 1948.

May 29, 1939: Palestine at the World's Fair

2006-05-31T23:07:00.000-04:00

In May, 1939, Britain issued the infamous White Paper which overturned previous British policies of partitioning Palestine into two separate Jewish and Arab states. The White Paper itself is a remarkable read, as it shows the mindset of capitulating to Arab terror clearly, as well as the implicit idea that since Jews don't make as much trouble as Arabs, it is better to capitulate to Arab demands at the expense of Jewish lives.

The White Paper limited Jewish immigration for the entirely absurd reason that Palestine could not possibly economically support so many people without impacting the existing population - even as it admits that the Jews that immigrated so far has had no problems integrating and growing the economy. It is a wonder that the population of the area is increased many times over since then and yet somehow Israel hs a better economy than its more-roomy neighbors. Imagine that.

The White Paper also infamously capitulated to the Arab demands that Arab land sales to Jews be limited, in an amazing bit of enshrined political bigotry.

Unsurprisingly, the White Paper does not address the huge amount of illegal Arab immigration into the country. Only Jews are deemed a threat to the area.

In reality, of course, the reason is more clearly indicated here:

The lamentable disturbances of the past three years are only the latest and most sustained manifestation of this intense Arab apprehension [...] it cannot be denied that fear of indefinite Jewish immigration is widespread amongst the Arab population and that this fear has made possible disturbances which have given a serious setback to economic progress, depleted the Palestine exchequer, rendered life and property insecure, and produced a bitterness between the Arab and Jewish populations which is deplorable between citizens of the same country. If in these circumstances immigration is continued up to the economic absorptive capacity of the country, regardless of all other considerations, a fatal enmity between the two peoples will be perpetuated, and the situation in Palestine may become a permanent source of friction amongst all peoples in the Near and Middle East.

In other words, Arabs riot and murder and rampage when Jews move in, so if we have a choice of saving millions of Jews from certain death in Europe or upsetting Arabs who are quick to riot, it is much better to let the Jews die. Jews don't make as much trouble.

The fact that Palestine's economy was almost entirely the result of Jewish immigration is ignored. Economic reasons are the fig leaf of British fears of Arab terror, and Arabs then as now used terror to manipulate Western fears and policies, something I recently called the diplomacy of fear.

Against this backdrop. the World's Fair opened up in New York. The official British government of Palestine had no interest in exhibiting there, so the Jews of Palestine created their own exhibit. It is instructive to read Chaim Weizman's radio speech to the attendees, as it lays out the Jewish reaction to the bigoted and ultimately genocide-friendly White Paper. He makes the points that while the White Paper is immoral, it will not stop the ultimate rebirth of a Jewish state, that it was Jewish sweat that built Palestine up from an ignored slum to a major player in the Middle East.

Notice also Chief Rabbi Yitzchok Herzog's address, which was written before the White Paper, emphasizing how the Jewish return to Palestine has ecomonically benefited their Arab neighbors. Rather than talking about displacement and colonization, as is commonly charged nowadays, the Jewish leadership of Palestine always and consistently spoke of a win-win situation where Arabs and Jews both prosper.

The Arab leaders always pretended that Palestine was a zero-sum game, and the British White Paper codified that thinking. The Jews and the facts bore out a completely opposite conclusion - Palestine could and did turn into an economic powerhouse, benefiting hundreds of thousands of ordinary Arabs who moved in to take advantage of the Jewish-built economy.

Then, as now, outsiders pretend that they know the best solution to the Jewish "problem", and they come up with sometimes well-meaning plans to solve this problem. And then, as now, if their ideas end up accidentally resulting in the mass murder of Jews, they can say "oops - but we meant well."

Building an economy under fire - The Jews of 1939

2006-02-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

The Hamas victory has put the spotlight on the Palestinian Arab-administered areas, especially how the Arabs will be able to maintain their economy when a huge percentage of their budget is in the form of welfare handed over from the West.

The Palestinian Arab economy is very interesting. It is wholly dependent on the one nation that it wants to destroy. According to the CIA World Factbook, when the second intifada started 100,000 Palestinian Arabs lost their jobs. Since they have no independent economy, the Palestinian Arabs went to the West begging for funds to pay for bogus "policemen" and pay them off to pretend to no longer be interested in terror.

No one seems to ask the question: why have the Palestinian Arabs, who have been there for decades, failed to build up any sort of decent independent infrastructure and economy on their own?

Many would answer that Israeli military actions have devastated any chance that Palestinian Arabs may have had to build such an infrastructure. This theory assumes that it is impossible to build something permanent in uncertain times, that one cannot expect people to think far ahead when they have to worry about today.

Let me introduce you to the Palestinian Jews of the 1930s.

During the 30's, the Jews (and many Arabs) of Palestine were under relentless attack by bands of Arab terrorists. I have documented this situation in many other postings here; check out this posting about a single day in 1938 and this one about 1936 Arab incitement to terror with predictable results, as well as an article on a 1936 massacre in Atarot.

And yet the Jews who were under attack, for whom going to work was dangerous in itself, continued to do what was necessary to build their land. As the Palestine Post reported in 1937:

Even as more Jews managed to move in, they had no skills in agriculture. Yet they managed to obtain jobs and pitch in despite the uncertain pre-war atmosphere, despite the constant terror attacks, despite the fact that the future was very unclear.

And without any nations contributing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Then as now, a main beneficiary of the nascent Middle East economic powerhouse was the local Arab populace. Indeed, this is the major reason that so many Arabs moved to Palestine (often illegally) during the 1920s and 30s. The Jews would make money, the Arabs would get the trickle-down benefits of jobs and markets for their own goods.

The difference between how the Palestinian Jews and Arabs acted during times of trouble is highlighted in this article from 1939. The Jews kept growing the economyduring the worst of the terror, the Arabs fled.

To be sure, the Zionists of the era had a lot of monetary help from their Jewish brethren across the world, especially the US. But a significant amount of this help was in the form of private investments - Jews who expected (and realized) financial gains from investing in the Zionist project.

One cannot help but wonder: where are the major Arab investors in a Palestinian Arab future? Why do we not see any mutual funds specializing in Palestinian Arab industry or agriculture? Where are the Palestinian Arabs who are looking ahead to building their possible future state and setting the groundwork now? Why do we see Saudi telethons for terrorist families and not for building towns and parks?

If the goal is a Palestinian state, the absence of these factors is puzzling. If the goal is the destruction of Israel, then it all makes perfect sense.

May 28, 1936: Chaim Weizmann predicts peace while Arabs destroy trees

2006-01-09T22:29:00.000-05:00

Dr. Weizmann may have been a very wise man, but he underestimated Jew-hatred - even when it was happening under his nose. In the same issue of the Palestine Post, the major headline was "Armed Hooligans Fire on Jewish Settlements."

Another interesting story that May was this one:

Today, Palestinians as well as the Israeli Left and even acting premier Ehud Olmert are accusing Jews of destroying Arab olive trees. The settler movement hotly denies any involvement, and in some cases it was proven that Arabs and leftists in fact lied about these charges.

We've touched on this topic before - Arabs have destroyed fruit trees in Palestine, and in much greater numbers, way before any Jews allegedly destroyed Arab trees.

But the accusations and lies have remained constant now for 70 years. Dr. Weizmann's prediction, unfortunately, did not come true - because the "political agitation" that he downplayed in fact became Arab policy vis a vis Israel.

Note also the last paragraph of the first story - the fact that Arabs were immigrating to Palestine in huge numbers in the 1930s shows that a large percentage of today's Palestinian Arabs in fact origin

September 1943: No Jewish children left in Poland

2005-12-27T21:41:00.000-05:00

In response to the new fashion of Holocaust denial sweeping the world, I have here a tiny article buried in the September 3, 1943 Palestine Post, one of hundreds of contemporaneous articles that documented the methodical murder of European Jewry.

The prophet of 1949

2005-12-20T12:31:00.000-05:00

An absolutely amazing Page One editorial from the Palestine Post of March 9, 1949. The author, David Courtney, was a non-Jewish British journalist who penned Column One in the 40s and 50s for the Palestine/Jerusalem Post.

The column could have been written today.

1946-1947 Arab boycott of Jewish goods hurts Pal Arabs much more than Jews

2005-12-11T23:04:00.000-05:00

One of the recurring themes in the history of Palestinian Arabs is the incredible number of times they've been screwed - by their fellow Arabs. From at least the 1940's, the Palestinian Arab leadership and especially the leaders of other Arab countries have not hesitated to use Palestinian Arabs as pawns in their maniacal desire to rid the Middle East of Jews in non-dhimmi roles.

The earliest example of this that I have found occured in late 1945. The Arab League, alarmed at the acceleration of the movement towards Zionist statehood, hit upon a formula that they have repeated many times since then - the boycott of Jewish products (sometimes called "Zionist" products, but as can be seen below, the word "Jewish" was used interchangably with "Zionist" at the time.)

Ain't Arab solidarity grand?

Almost immediately, there were concerns among Palestinian Arabs about the impending boycott and how it would affect their livelihoods:

Notice the outspokeness of the real Arab street about how this would hurt them. "Those in the Arab League who decided on a strike don't worry about us."

Of course, this doesn't stop the Arab leaders, who always know best. On January 1, 1946, the boycott starts as planned. Immediately, there are problems with compliance.

So, the wise Arab leaders decided to extend the boycott to not only Jewish goods but also to Jewish services. No longer could Palestinian Arabs go to Jewish doctors or Jewish-owned movie theaters! That will teach those uppity Jews! (Notice that here is one case where the boycott is explicitly called against "Jews", not "Zionists." The almost inescapable conclusion is that the Arabs were reading from the Nazi playbook, where boycotts of Jewish goods preceded the Holocaust.)

It is also interesting to note that the non-compliance by Palestinian Arabs here in late January is becoming more of a concern to the leaders of the boycott. Not that they were consulted or anything.

The months flew by and the boycott became less and less relevant. Palestinian Arab leaders passed yet another of their many anti-Jewish resolutions at yet another meaningless meeting in August, and called again for their people to abide by the boycott that was still being roundly ignored.

Meanwhile, the Jewish economy was booming as never before! As this October article shows, the Zionists adjusted their economic models to sell more to non-Arab countries. Any effect that the boycott may have had was more than offset by their business in new markets.

As 1946 became 1947, and as Israel became closer to becoming a reality, the Arab leaders refused to believe that the boycott was an abysmal failure. Someone had to be at fault - and that someone was, of course, the Palestinian Arab businessman who refused to go along.

The solution was simple. Bomb the Palestinian Arab businessmen!

Just bombing them in Jerusalem was not enough. This had to become a national event.

It appears that dozens of bombs were set off in Arab businesses by other Arabs as 1947 wore on, putting Palestinian Arabs in the position of either losing their businesses by adhering to a bizarre failure of a boycott, or losing their businesses to the bombs of their leaders who couldn't possibly be at fault themselves.

One at least one occasion, the targeted businessmen had had enough of this.

A "cycle of violence" was now established! But even with the thuggish tactics of the terrorist Arab "leaders," the boycott was still ignored and Jewish businesses were not hurt at all.

The only ones hurt were the ones that the boycott was officially supposed to benefit.

I don't know if this is the first time that Palestinian Arabs were treated like dirt by the people who pretend to champion their cause, but it was certainly far from the last.

The war already began: Palestine Post, December 9, 1947

2005-12-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

Here is a snapshot of the first page of the December 9, 1947 Palestine Post:

Israel's friends like to say that the combined Arab nations all attacked Israel as soon as she declared her independence. But it is not quite true: they attacked much earlier than that, and the between the time of the UN Partition decision and May, 1948, the Arabs already started attacking Jews all the while gearing up for the much larger war to come. And the British pretty much gave up on any pretense of protecting the Jewish citizens of Palestine.

Iraq wanted to position it's troops in Transjordan:

Arabs attacked and burned Jewish homes, murdering women and kidnapping babies:

Jews lived together with the enemy - no wall, no security, and no interest by the British to keep the peace. At any moment there could be sniper fire, and many Jews were killed just doing their normal day-to-day activities.

The Arab countries continued to criticize the Partition plan but were confident of their ability to kill the Jews who actually thought they had a right to live in peace in the land of Israel - making it a religious obligation to join the war against the Jews: (page 2)

So the time period between Partition and independence was hardly peaceful. The war already started, and it was by no means clear (within a few years of the Holocaust) that any Jews would survive, let alone that Israel would win.

Arab pressure on Intel based on another lie

2005-12-06T14:04:00.000-05:00

Intel is opening up a state-of-the-art chip manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat, and the Arabs are mad.

No, Kiryat Gat is not in "occupied" territory. But the Arabs are claiming that it was built on the ruins of a town called Iraq al-Manshieh. They demand:

* Intel abandon its investments in Israel. The company’s proposed expansion site is located on land confiscated from the Palestinian village of Iraq Al-Manshiya.
* Israel forced out the original inhabitants of Iraq Al-Manshiya and the nearby village of Al-Faluja after the 1948 war ended contrary to international law and an armistice agreement sponsored by the UN and which Israel signed.

What really happened is that in the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Egypt and Israel, the Arab residents of Iraq al-Manshiyah and Al-Falujja were given a choice - either stay or evacuate. The pro-Palestinian site Cactus48 has the text of the agreement, although they seem to be incorrect as to whether the agreement was actually part of the Armistice or an adjunct.

At any rate, the implication from the terrorist sympathizers is that Israel forced the residents of Iraq al-Manshiyah to leave. But as is clear from the articles at the time in the Palestine Post, the Arab residents of the area all wanted to leave, the world was quite aware of their situation, the Arab League didn't want to take them in, and in fact the evacuees complained that the evacuations were too slow!

Not only that, but the Jewish community of Gath which Kiryat Gat was named after was not built on top of anything, but was under siege itself during 1948, and was evacuated under Egyptian fire - three months before the state of Israel was declared.

So you may want to email to Intel, the way that Al Oufok wants you to, but to thank them on their smart business decision to continue to create world-class technology in Israel.

As Al Oufok says:

Call and write to :

Craig R Barret, Chairman of the Board
Email : Craig.R.barrett@intel.com
Phone : 480-554-5977

Paul Otelline, President and CEO
Email : Paul.Otellini@intel.com
Phone : 408-765-5551

Please cc your correspondence to alerts@al-awda.org . I'm sure they'll be happy to read your emails!

There really was once a Palestinian Arab state - sort of

2005-12-06T13:57:00.000-05:00

A little-known footnote in history that could be an accurate indicator of how any future Palestinian Arab state would be:

In 1948, the Arab League was upset at King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan for his territorial designs on the West Bank. Under their prodding, the notoriously anti-semitic ex-Mufti of Jerusalem set up his own "government" in Gaza in September 1948.

Abdullah was adamantly opposed to this "Gaza Government" and the issue caused a major rift between Transjordan and the rest of the Arab world.

The actual wishes of Palestinian Arabs do not seem to have entered the equation for either party!

The democratic nature of the nascent nation was soon apparent...

Also look at King Abdullah's objection - that creating a Palestinian state was like accepting Partition! (Note also the article in the middle!)

And what is a country without a flag?

Tensions mounted between Transjordan and Iraq over this issue:

Alas, as soon as Israel launched an counter-offensive against Egypt later in 1948, the Gaza government ministers (who no doubt had a great love of the land) fled bravely to Cairo. And then their ministers started quitting, one by one. By March, the "government" was in tatters:

The New York Post published an interesting analysis on the situation back in October 1948:

Rift in the Arab Front

Abdullah and the British Are Isolated
in the Middle East

By OBSERVER

Behind the Arab front there is a rift. The Arab League has set up a government in Gaza comprised of the followers of the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem. Abdullah of Transjordan has not recognized this government. Hilmi Pasha, who commanded the Arab forces on the Jerusalem front, was elected head of the Gaza government. Abdullah then stripped Hilmi Pasha of his authority as commander on the Jerusalem front and placed the Old City of Jerusalem under a new commander. The Gaza government is on the territory occupied by the Egyptian army.

Abdullah’s legion has done more fighting than the forces of any other Arab state on Palestinian soil. Abdullah hoped to have the entire country for himself, but since Israel successfully defended its territory, he now counts on the annexation of at least the Arab part of the country to Transjordan. His rival is the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem. They are carrying on an old feud.

* * *

The British planned that Abdullah’s legion—their own creation—should conquer all of Palestine for Abdullah, which means for them. So they supplied him with officers, money, ammunition and even spies.

The ex-Mufti planned that Abdullah should conquer the country for him. His own “Army of Liberation” under Kaukaji proved to be good only on the run.

Egypt is not at all interested in increasing the British sphere on its border; for many years the entire policy of Egypt has been directed toward getting rid of the British, in Egypt proper, in the Sudan, in the Suez Canal zone. The Egyptians think that if the British should dominate Egypt from the Negev, they would never leave the Suez Canal zone or the Sudan.

Egypt would therefore like to have southern Palestine for itself. Opposition to Zionism is artificially intensified; the Egyptians make war against Israel but they regard the British as their real enemy and Abdullah as a British stooge. Said one of the Egyptian delegates at the Paris Conference, quoted by the United Press correspondent in his dispatch of October 2: “Britain is now considered the Arabs’ number one enemy.”

The entire enterprise fell apart, without ever having governed anybody (but that didn't stop many Arab countries from recognizing it.) The cynical nature of the effort was emphasized in 1950, when the Arab League tried to resurrect the Gaza Government again for purely political gain, as is mentioned in this good overview from the Palestine Post then:

A few notes of interest:

The entire episode was so embarrassingly inept, no Palestinian Arab advocate today ever mentions this as an example of historical Palestinian sovereignty. They prefer the myth of a nation called Palestine to the reality of a short-lived aborted vanity enterprise.
Not once can I find that any of the parties showed the slightest interest in what is best for the Palestinian Arabs that they were pretending to help.
The "government" ran away and abandoned it's supposed subjects at the earliest sign of fighting.
Should such a state have succeeded, it would have been just another Arab dictatorship - in this case a theocracy under the Mufti.

Hebrew slang - now and then

2005-11-17T10:48:00.000-05:00

Hebrew slang - now and then

A funny AP article on a new Hebrew slang dictionary. There are so many examples that I am quite surprised to have found this in the China Post.

(The beautiful and talented Daughter of Ziyon told me the other day that "l'hitpajaim" means "to put pajamas on" in modern Hebrew.)

The English "spin" becomes "speen," plural "speenim."

The language of Moses has also absorbed "blind date," "under control" and "hacker" (pronounced hah-cker), along with some 10,000 other words and expressions that have been compiled in a dictionary of Israeli slang, a bestseller since it came out this fall.

The hefty hardcover tome reflects the onslaught of foreign words in the age of globalization and the struggle of modern Hebrew _ revived as a spoken language just a century ago _ to adapt an ancient vocabulary to modern times.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, for one, doesn't like the trend. A while back, on Hebrew Language Day, he complained that the once ubiquitous Hebrew farewell "shalom" has largely been replaced by "yalla, bye," an Arabic-English hybrid. He also chastised the satellite and cable TV companies "Yes" and "Hot" for choosing foreign names.

The guardians of proper Hebrew don't seem to be overly worried.

Hebrew is flourishing and has proven its adaptability, said Avraham Tal, deputy director of the Academy for the Hebrew Language _ ironically known in Hebrew as the "academia."

Seeking to stem the use of foreign words, experts at the academy have been inventing Hebrew alternatives for words such as "sensatia" and "conditioner." From time to time, the nation's top linguists present their creations to the academy's plenum, where favorites are adopted by vote, often after stormy debate. A few times a year, the academy publishes a list of new words and asks state radio and TV to use them.

Ruth Almagor-Ramon, the language adviser at Israel Radio, said it's easy enough to introduce words in news casts and other programs, but that doesn't always mean they'll take hold.

"Every word has its fate," said Tal, acknowledging quite a few of the academy's creations have fizzled, such as Hebrew substitutes for "video" and "jingle." A belated effort to get the public to accept a Hebrew word for shampoo seems doomed from the start.

Almagor-Ramon said politicians and ad copy writers are among the worst language offenders.

"There is no way to correct them," she said, noting that in a recent radio ad a Labor Party legislator refused to use the formal Hebrew substitute for "primaries," arguing that no one would understand him.

Journalists don't seem to be far behind in the list of culprits. In a recent front-page article, political commentator Ben Caspit complained about what he said the foreign minister's manipulation of the press and his habit of posing for photographers in faraway "locationim."

The author of the "Comprehensive Slang Dictionary," Ruvik Rosenthal, said Hebrew's relatively small vocabulary _ around 150,000 words, a fraction the size of English _ encourages borrowing.

Rosenthal, who writes a weekly language column in the Maariv daily, mined some 800 Web sites, hundreds of books as well as TV and radio broadcasts for his dictionary. He also consulted with specialists on subcultures _ criminals, youth, computer nerds, the ultra-Orthodox and soccer fans.

The biggest contributors to slang are English, Arabic and Yiddish. "These three are competing without casualties," said Rosenthal.

Arabic rules emotional expression _ "ahla" (great), "walla" (true), "sababa" (cool), "ashkara" (for real) _ as well as the most emphatic curses. With the rise of Oriental culture in Israel after decades of European domination, Israelis feel at ease using Arabic words, despite their ongoing conflict with much of the Arab world, Rosenthal said.

Some of the Arabic already found its way into Hebrew in the 1930s and 1940s, absorbed by children of Zionist pioneers who wanted to blend into the region and distance themselves from their parents' Diaspora upbringing.

English dominates computers, high-tech, dating, fashion and sports. "Yesh lo touch," (he has the touch) a sports commentator has been heard saying of a talented soccer player.

Car mechanics use mangled English, a throwback to British rule when cars first came to the Holy Land: brakes become "breksim," a back axle is a "back ax." Following a strange logic, a front axle is a "back ax kidmi," literally a front back axle.

German still rules in construction, going back to 1920s and 1930 when builders and architects immigrated from Germany to pre-state Palestine. Today, Palestinian and Chinese construction workers communicate on the job with words such as "kabel" (cable), "stecker" (plug) or "spachtel" (spatula).

Yiddish, still a strong source of slang with about 1,200 words in the book, offers some of the juiciest insults, such as "freier" (sucker), "shtinker" (informer) and "nudnik" (pest). However, some of the words are fading away, or are now used only by ultra-Orthodox Jews, Rosenthal said.

Literal translations of phrases from other languages are also popular. "Ma bo'er?" (from the Yiddish "was brennt?" or "what's burning"); "mi pi hasus" ("from the horse's mouth").

In a gray zone between slang and standard Hebrew, some foreign words are squeezed into the corset of Hebrew conjugation: to subsidize becomes "lesabsed," to zap TV channels is "lezapzep," to discuss is "ledaskes," to torpedo is "letarped."

Most Israelis know the boundaries between slang and standard Hebrew, and there's nothing wrong with the flourishing of slang, said linguist Rafael Nir. "It's definitely a sign of how alive the language is, not necessarily a sign of the deficiency of the Hebrew language."

"Slang gives it (Hebrew) something extra," he said.

This is clearly not the first time someone tried to research this phenomenon; check out these two articles from the Palestine Post in 1945:

The Gap in Jihad

2005-11-01T16:42:00.000-05:00

In light of the recent talk about "truces" from various terror groups, which usually don't last beyond the next news cycle, the following article is instructive - especially the last paragraph.

The words could have been written today by the vast majority of Arabs - even the most "moderate" will say frankly that Israel's existence is just a temporary blip on the road to Muslim domination. Only the "hardliners" will speak these words where Western ears can hear them, however. (This is one of the reasons why the whole Iranian president kerfuffle was so funny - most "moderate" Arab leaders agree with him; his crime was just saying his thoughts out loud.)

Ahmadinejad's inspiration to wipe out all Jews

2005-10-28T16:40:00.000-04:00

Ahmadinejad's inspiration to wipe out all Jews

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seems to have interesting company in his desire to wipe Israel off the map, as this article from the March, 29, 1939 Palestine Post explains.

People at the time didn't take the Nazi pronouncements seriously, either.

"Yussuf" Goebbels told sheikhs that Nazis converted to Islam

2005-10-07T10:40:00.000-04:00

An astounding article from the Palestine Post in 1939, claiming that the Nazis told a delegation of gullible sheikhs in Nuremburg in late 1938 that the Germans (and the Italians) had converted to Islam and were ready to wage Jihad.

I have been unable to corroborate this claim, although it is known that the Nazis actively pursued the Arab leadership as allies, and did not hesitate to use promises to support Arab claims on Palestine against Jews to get their support. There is also evidence that Nazis actively encouraged anti-Semitism in Arab countries (and funded the nascent Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) that had previously been much less antagonistic towards Jews.

Even so, it is a fascinating and somewhat plausible historical footnote to the body of literature about Nazi/Arab ties before WWII. The details in this letter, such as the Nazis promising to "return" India to Islamic rule and sharing war plans with the Arabs, are not far-fetched.

January 22, 1933: Arabs protest Jews leasing land in Transjordan

2005-09-26T16:38:00.000-04:00

This small story from 1933 illustrates, more than anything else, the root of the "conflict" between Israel and the Arab countries.

Arabs do not want Jews to own or control land in the Middle East.

Everything else - pretending to care about Palestinian refugees, or about "war crimes", or "international law" or "UN resolutions" - are all lies, window dressing to cover the naked bigotry that stands behind all the bluster. Arab Muslims cannot stomach the weak dhimmi Jews owning any tiny bit of land that was ever under Muslim control. No matter how legally it is acquired, Arabs would be just as livid at the thought of Jews owning land as they are today about "occupation."

Jews are OK as long as they subject themselves to living as second-class citizens in Arab countries, paying their jizya. But once they actually try to act as if they have any real rights, well, that is not acceptable to the mentality of the vast majority of Arabs.

The root of the conflict is pure bigotry against Jews.

It is not even clear if any Jews were interested in leasing (not buying!) the land mentioned in this article, or if it was only a rumor. This doesn't slow down the vitriol, as thousands of Arabs rally against the possibility of Jews controlling any land in sacred Muslim territory.

Notice how at that time the Arabs are not shy in saying their opposition is to Jews, not Zionists; that they call the legal transfer of land "robbery" when it is to Jews; and the now familiar method of subtly threatening the West (in this case, Britain) if they don't cave to the Arab demands.

To understand the Middle East today, read this article from 72 years ago very carefully.

In an ironic footnote, one can find one other mention of Ghor Al Kabad in Transjordan in 1939, where Jews help out the Emir who owns land in the controversial area:

Yes, it truly is awful to let Jews touch "sacred Arab land."

Rich history of synagogue desecration by Arabs

2005-09-13T15:36:00.000-04:00

This week's gleeful destruction of Gaza synagogues by Palestinians is a continuation of a long tradition of synagogue destruction, and attempted destructions, throughout time. Just in the decades of the 30s and 40s shows a large number of outrages committed by Arabs towards Jewish places of worship, both in Palestine and in surrounding Arab nations.

The justifications given by Arabs and their apologists are strikingly familiar.

In 1936, Tiberias' Jews were under siege from their Arab neighbors, and their shuls were targets as well:

The situation did not improve, and things got violent again in 1939:

In case you may be wondering whether this was not a deliberate act, the British House of Commons were alarmed enough to address this issue the week after. It is very clear that these are terror attacks against Jews.

But the problem was hardly localized in Tiberias. Here is an account of a synagogue bombing in Jerusalem in 1938.

In Haifa, another synagogue was destroyed, in the wake of Jewish flight from Arab terrorism earlier in 1938:

This was not a localized problem in Palestine. Cairo Jews were victims of two attempted synagogue bombings in 1939, a few days after the Tiberias incidents:

And these were immediately followed by two bombs in Beirut:

World War II brought an apparent respite from synagogue attacks by Arabs - they seem to have left that job up to the Nazis for the war years. But the Arabs learned a lot from the Nazis, as their attacks against Jews intensified and mimicked the Nazi destruction during the Holocaust. This remarkable article shows the details of anti-Jewish riots in Cairo in 1945, including the joy throughout the Arab world at the killing and destruction and the bizarre justification by the Muslim terrorists who were behind it:

As the UN Partition plan was getting approved, the Arab hate for all things Jewish intensified. In Syria, an Arab mob destroyed a celebrated ancient synagogue, along with a priceless manuscript of the Hebrew Bible that scholars have used as a standard reference text.

Not only Aleppo but also synagogues and Jewish communities in Kuwait, Derna and Aden were attacked:

During the 1948 war, the famous Hurva synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem was destroyed in a very public and symbolic manner by the Jordanians.

But that was only the first - in the end, all vestiges of Jewish life in Jerusalem were utterly obliterated by the bloodthirsty and hateful Arab terrorists.

Finally, after the war ended, the Arab hatred of everything remotely connected to Judaism did not end. Back in Damascus, a synagogue bombing killed 11 Jews. The Syrian government appeared to be displeased at this massacre - not so much because of the dead Jews or destroyed synagogue, but because it could have affected the truce talks between Israel and her neighbors. Then as now, morality never seems to enter the picture when Arabs speak out against terror.

"Plastics"

2005-09-07T22:28:00.000-04:00

Israel in 1946 was in that strange state between World War II and statehood. It was still unclear if the world would allow the Jews to establish their own sovereign nation. Jews and Arabs still lived under occupation, and the British had control over both groups in practical day-to-day matters.

But the Jews were always looking towards building their own country, their own infrastructure, their own future - no matter what the politicians or generals or bureaucrats did.

Here is one small example that is not so small.

The Jews realized that they live in a tiny area with practically no natural resources. Anything they would create would have to be made from only the crudest of ingredients together with brainpower. And in the 1940s, twenty years before Mr. Mcguire was to give his famous advice to Benjamin Braddock in "The Graduate", one of the brightest areas of research and manufacturing growth was in...plastics.

The amount of planning necessary to build an entire industry from scratch is immense. To even think of doing it during a time of terror and war could almost be thought of as foolhardy. Yet the Weizmann Institute continued on in its plastics research throughout the decade, as partition and war loomed, threatening the Jewish state before it could even have a chance:

The foresight that a few Palestinian Jews had in 1946, that they kept planning and laying the groundwork for during the War of Independence, allowed them to move from R&D to actual products very soon afterwards:

Two groups of people, both with ostensibly the same aims of their own independent country - yet how they went about actually building it could not be more different. One group chooses terror and hate, while the other just quietly builds what has to be built - no excuses, no whining, just results.

The birth of modern Islamic terror

2005-08-21T22:35:00.000-04:00

An amazing article by John Roy Carlson from October 19, 1948 in the Palestine Post about the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Essentially every point the author makes applies today; eerily so. The graphic format is a little hard to read but it is worth it, especially the parts about the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Azhar University, about liberalism in interpreting the Koran, the various competing Muslim fundamentalist groups, and the affinity they had with Nazism.

Before this point, Arab terror was not primarily religious-oriented; it was more nationalist, anti-Western and anti-semitic. The rise of Muslim fundamentalism changed the game and it is more important to understand the origins today of a movement that is responsible for 9/11.

Kfar Darom, 1946-1949

2005-08-19T09:46:00.000-04:00

Kfar Darom was refounded in 1946 as part of "Operation Negev", an ambitious one-day program to build five settlements on JNF-owned land in October, 1946.

Even though the political implications were clear, the local Arabs welcomed the new Jewish villages, as this Palestine Post article shows:

The village was integral in the 1948 war, repulsing Egyptian attacks even before Israel declared its independence:

And the attacks continued, as Kfar Darom was the first line of defense against the Egyptian army. And the members were nothing short of heroic against a much larger and better-equipped enemy.

Unfortunately, Kfar Darom's isolation made it impossible to hold on to it, and the village was abandoned later in 1948.

But Jews are compared to the moon, where every month it appears to disappear only to come back again. And the members of the 1946 incarnation of Kfar Darom founded a new village a year later in the Negev:

August 9, 1938: The High Commisioner appeals for peace

2005-08-10T16:50:00.000-04:00

August 9, 1938: The High Commisioner appeals for peace

I was looking at the Palestine Post from August 9 and 10, 1938, and saw the usual number of attacks against Jews (perhaps 8 mentioned in those two days), mention of a rare incident against Arabs by Jews (that happened a month and a half earlier), and a few incidents of Arab-on-Arab violence, and at least one case where Arabs attacked the British. But this is no different than a recent post I had done, about a violent 24 hours earlier in 1938.

What was slightly noteworthy was that the British High Commissioner addressed the Jews and Arabs of Palestine
:

A couple of things are interesting about this three-minute speech:

One is that political correctness and "evenhandedness" was as absurd in 1938 as it is today. The vast majority of terror incidents were (and are) done by Arabs, and the ones done by Jews may be reprehensible but they are insignificant in context - in fact, their restraint seems positively admirable. But the British leader addresses both communities as if they were both equally responsible for the violence, as if the Arab claims that the very existence of Jews on what they think of as Arab lands is an affront that is worse than any number of Arab attacks on Jewish civilians.

The second point is the irony of his statement that violence is counterproductive: clearly that is wishful thinking and far from the truth. Violence is very productive. The entire reason that the Palestinian cause ever got the world's attention is because of the terror attacks in the 1970s. The entire reason Muslims can recruit terrorists so easily is because of the "success" of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah and Hamas and Fatah and Islamic Jihad and Black September and all the other terror organizations that can claim victory in the deaths of innocent civilians.

Appeasement is counterproductive. "Measured responses" are counterproductive. Trying to negotiate with those whose only interest in negotiations are as a stalling tactic is counterproductive. Defining a problem incorrectly is counterproductive. Relying on wishful thinking is counterproductive. But violence, unfortunately, is very, very productive.

And usually, the only way to fight violence is with much more violence. It is a shame, but it is also reality.

August 9, 1934: Current tragedy, future tragedy

2005-08-08T21:12:00.000-04:00

A sad headline and a chilling headline in the Augist 9, 1934 Palestine Post that ring alarm bells today.

First is a report of a massacre of Jews in Algeria that was eerily similar to the riots in Hebron in 1929:

While the newspaper blamed "fascists" it is clear that the murderers were Moslems who turned violent on a flimsy pretext, attacking Jews for no reason.

As sad as that was, the following story is scarier:

Once again an "expert" puts millions of lives in jeopardy based on his own hubris and wishful thinking. It shows how we should always take politicians' predictions with a huge grain of salt, as well as how dangerous wishful thinking is in a world where the enemy desires nothing less than genocide and world domination.

August 4, 1935: Persian Crypto-Jews arrive in Palestine

2005-08-04T12:37:00.000-04:00

In 1839, the Muslims in Persia instituted a pogrom against the Jews in Mashad. As a result, the hundreds of Jewish families who lived there were given a choice of conversion or death. Many chose to outwardly convert, but they kept their Judaism not only individually but also collectively, maintaining what is considered a remarkably close-knit community even today as they are spread throughout the world.

Their story is not well-known, and even on the Internet it is not easy to find out details. And it is important to know that while Jews have lived in Persia relatively peacefully for a long time, the Muslim attitude towards Jews before Zionism was not always as benign as some would have you believe.

Friday, July 22, 1938: Another day of Arabs murdering Jews

2005-07-22T02:45:00.000-04:00

The sheer number of terror attacks by Arabs against Jews in Palestine in the 1930s is astounding. The atrocities are reported in the Palestine Post with revulsion but also somewhat matter-of-factly; this day was not particularly unusual for the time period - before "occupation", before "settlements", when most of the land was still empty. The methods are eerily familiar to those who look at current terror attacks. The chaos and lawlessness that we now see daily in Gaza and in Arab areas of the West Bank were happening then - but the targets were mostly Jews.

All these events took place in one day. All of the following articles came from the July 22, 1938 Palestine Post.

The headline was for an especially gruesome act of terror, with the "bandits" murdering women and children at point-blank range while shouting praise to Mohammed.

Meanwhile, an attack against a vineyard resulted in another Jew being killed before the attackers were driven off:

Near the Dead Sea, another attack killed three more Jews doing surveying:

A man who was attacked by a mob in Haifa died of his injuries:

Another Arab Haifa mob attacked Jews as well:

Arabs were stopped while trying to bomb Tel-Aviv:

Of course, Jews weren't the only targets when tolerant, civilized Arabs went wild:

And for some strange reason, even Jews in neighboring countries were considered legitimate targets:

The British had an interesting punishment for Arabs who attacked them. Amazingly, there is not one record of international condemnation for this "crime":

At that time, Jews had a most appropriate response to Arab terror.

It is a shame that today's Zionists don't understand the power of such a move anymore. For those who fell, the early Zionists created a new settlement in their memory.

The only way terror can be fought is to make it counterproductive, and if every terror attack in the name of real estate would have a firm response of "Fine, now you lose more land," it would cease.

Giving away land for free would appear to have the opposite effect.

1936: Arab incitement, terror, "condemnation." Repeat.

2005-07-17T23:45:00.000-04:00

In 1936, the Arabs of Palestine and neighboring areas intensified their campaign of incitement against Jews moving into Palestine, with the usual lies about Jewish threats to Muslim holy places:

This incitement culminated in a series of murderous terror attacks against Jews by the Arabs in Palestine. Fatal shootings and bombings were everyday occurrences, with the victims invariably innocent civilians.

One particularly horrific day in Jaffa had two Jewish nurses murdered, with a third woman murdered as well while acting as a lookout. In the days surrounding these murders a 7-year old boy was blown up with an Arab bomb, a Jewish college student was shot and killed, a Jewish telephone repairman was murdered, a Jewish taxi driver was shot to death.

This was a few weeks into the Arab terror spree, and the world pretty much ignored Arabs murdering Jews. But the murder of the nurses touched a nerve and there was a measure of worldwide outrage towards this disgusting act of terrorism. So much so, that even an Arab organization decried the murders, as the Palestine Post opinion page that follows shows.

But then, as now, the "condemnation" of terror was hollow, and the Post pointed out the hypocrisy of denouncing a specific act of terror while not bothering to call for an end to the incitement and terror that preceded it.

So, just like today, we have Palestinian Arab leaders who incite their people to murder Jews, who whip up their people into a Jew-hating frenzy, who use their media and their mosques to broadcast the most hateful kinds of bigotry - and then who dutifully parrot their "condemnation" at any murders that occur in the wake of their agitation and who do nothing to stop the terror from continuing.

November 1933: Arabs use Koran for political purposes

2005-07-15T00:18:00.000-04:00

In 1933, the Palestinian Arabs wanted to pressure the British not to allow Jews to immigrate to the area. They chose to use mass demonstrations, as a follow-up to the 1929 riots. The British didn't want to see a repeat of 1929 and made such demonstrations illegal. The Arabs held them anyway, in Jerusalem and Jaffa, and there were a number of injuries that were greatly exaggerated by Arab newspapers.

Anyway, as the following article shows, a month later the Arabs used Islam as an excuse to have the demonstrations. They claimed that Britain, by making their anti-Jewish demonstrations illegal, was infringing on their religious freedom! And they were using Western standards of "freedom of religion" to push their own purely political (and, incidently, bigoted) agenda!

This is perhaps one of the first times that Arabs who despise Western ideals used those same ideals as weapons against the West.

Things have not changed much since 1933.

The Mufti and the Arab refugees

2005-07-12T03:14:00.000-04:00

The Mufti and the Arab refugees

I've been looking through the pages of the Palestine Post to find contemporaneous information about the Arab refugees from Palestine. There are many articles about the issue, I touched upon it specifically for the Arabs of Haifa over here.

Among Zionists, it is an article of faith that the Arab leaders encouraged Palestinian Arabs to leave, and far more left from the urging and rumors caused by Arabs than from anything the Jews did. In the future I hope to put together an article of the number of times that Jews encouraged Palestinian Arabs to stay where they were.

It becomes apparent upon researching the issue that there were a specific set of Arab leaders who consistently encouraged the Palestinian Arabs to flee, but not the entire Arab world - especially not the leaders of Arab countries who were expected to host these thousands of undesirables. It was, in fact, the members of the Arab Higher Committee, which was led by the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, who consistently led the Palestinian Arabs to ruin because of their own narrow political goals. And the Arabs at the time, especially the Palestinian Arabs, knew this quite well.

First, here are the players' positions on the refugee issue in August, 1948:

Now, here is a good analysis of the Mufti's position and motives:

So the Mufti and the Arab Higher Committee once again showed that their interests lied not in their people but only in their own power. Today's Palestinian leadership, from Arafat to Abbas, has shown remarkably similar characteristics. Reading the vitriol from the Mufti in the 40's it is striking how similar it is to the same idiocy spewed out today, and how little it has to do with bettering the lives of actual Palestinian Arabs.

Which was well-known even in 1941 when the Mufti was partying with his pal Adolf: (December 31, 1941)

The power of lies

2005-06-28T14:10:00.000-04:00

A sobering article in the June 28, 1935 edition of the Palestine Post:

Everyone knew what was happening in Nazi Germany. Everyone saw the vile Jew-hatred coming from Europe. (In the same edition of the Palestine Post was an article about how cities in Germany were stripping Jews of their citizenship, even before Hitler's national law disenfranchising Jews took effect.) While they may not have imagined genocide, it was very clear that for the foreseeable future Jews would be heavily persecuted in Europe.

Britain could have saved millions of the Jews by just allowing them to go to Palestine (and Cyprus and Trans-Jordan.) So why didn't they?

The reason is simple. They didn't want to upset the Arabs.

And the Palestinian Arab leaders had no qualms about playing up their "fears" that Jews would destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque, that they would "endanger the Arabs existence" - any convenient lie would do.

As can be seen in the Post on June 28, 1936:

Do these complaints sound familiar? They are the same complaints we have heard for the past 70 years. And they are just as absurd as they were then.

And the British weren't stupid. They knew that the Arabs were liars (also the same issue):

But lies are insidious. When someone hears a lie, even if they know it is false, it still affects them. A little bit of us tends to think, "What if it is true?" Or, more commonly, "Both sides are very passionate and I don't know all the facts - probably the truth is somewhere in between."

Couple that with the fact that the Western mind has a very hard time accepting that someone would lie to our faces. Hitler did it in the 30s, and the "relief" that could be felt in the West whenever he claimed that he was finished his expansionism was palpable. And they were always lies.

The Arabs learned very well from Hitler's playbook. A lie, repeated often enough, tends to be believed. And in this case the Arab lies about their "fears" of their future (rather than the Jew-hatred that was truly the source of their being against Jewish immigration) made the British pause and think that perhaps this year isn't the best time to allow Jews to save their lives - maybe next year, maybe after negotiations, maybe when the Arabs stop rioting and things calm down - maybe then we will do the right thing. But until then, it is easier to close our eyes and believe some of the lies coming out of the mouths of vile bigots.

Westerners are fans of fair play, of the adage that "there are two sides to every story." It is very hard to accept that one side is right and that the other side is lying.

Arab lies and British (and world) apathy helped combine to the destruction of European Jewry. And the Arabs have never stopped their campaign of getting rid of any Jews in positions of power in the Middle East, partially through their incessant repitition of anti-Semitic lies to their own people and to the apathetic West.

Each lie affects us all until they are called out and exposed for what they are. It is a moral responsibility to expose each Arab lie about Israel and Jews and show the liars to be the bigoted scum they are.

And it is the height of stupidity to believe the promises of liars.

June 26, 1936: Ataroth Buries its Dead

2005-06-26T01:26:00.000-04:00

As one reads articles about Arab terror against Jews (and the British) in the 1930s, it is hard not to notice eerie parallels to today's Arab terror.

For months in 1936, the Arabs rioted and terrorized the Jews and British in Palestine, ostensibly in protest of the increased Jewish influence and power in the land. There were shootings, bombings, and destruction of Jewish property and businesses, often parallel to the Nazi persecutions of Jews that were happening at the same time. The British did not treat the Arab criminals with kid gloves.

In the details of the murder mentioned in this article and the one following, notice that then as now, the Arab people closed ranks around the terrorists and criminals. They knew that the British would collectively punish entire villages where the terrorists came from and instead of giving up the criminals, the Arab residents would prepare for the punishment by getting rid of the articles the British would confiscate. The nascent hero-worship of Arab terrorists had already started decades before the current Palestinian idolization of murderers. And, as happens today, ordinary Arabs can be counted to support the worst Arab terrorists rather than appear to be on the Jews' (or West's) side.

Without understanding this history of terror-worship, without learning about how the current Arab culture of death pre-dates Israel's existence, one cannot hope to change anything. Superficial words and assumptions that these Arab murderers and their supporters are "just people like us" who will react positively to acts of goodwill and concessions are deadly miscalculations. At no time in history (that I am aware of) can one say that for Arabs, peace was a goal - when it was desired, it was merely a tactic in a war that spans centuries.

Which means that for any true peace to ever happen, the Arab world needs a complete change of culture - one abhorring violence rather than embracing it, one with a true desire for peace rather than a desire for the concessions that it expects will accompany it. Until then, anything that the West does is just a Band-Aid, and more often than not, counterproductive.

Also, in wake of this weeks attempted terror attack against an Israeli hospital by a Palestinian woman who had received treatment there, here is an article from the same issue about how Arab terrorists would try to use Jewish humanity as a means to kill them:

Arabs helped Titus conquer Jerusalem in 70 AD

2005-06-21T23:07:00.000-04:00

Interesting tidbit (thanks to Emet m'Tziyon). Publius Cornelius Tacitus mentions this in his Histories:
[5.1] EARLY in this year Titus Caesar, who had been selected by his father to complete the subjugation of Judaea, and who had gained distinction as a soldier while both were still subjects, began to rise in power and reputation, as armies and provinces emulated each other in their attachment to him. The young man himself, anxious to be thought superior to his station, was ever displaying his gracefulness and his energy in war. By his courtesy and affability he called forth a willing obedience, and he often mixed with the common soldiers, while working or marching, without impairing his dignity as general. He found in Judaea three legions, the 5th, the 10th, and the 15th, all old troops of Vespasian's. To these he added the 12th from Syria, and some men belonging to the 18th and 3rd, whom he had withdrawn from Alexandria. This force was accompanied by twenty cohorts of allied troops and eight squadrons of cavalry, by the two kings Agrippa and Sohemus, by the auxiliary forces of king Antiochus, by a strong contingent of Arabs, who hated the Jews with the usual hatred of neighbours, and, lastly, by many persons brought from the capital and from Italy by private hopes of securing the yet unengaged affections of the Prince. With this force Titus entered the enemy's territory, preserving strict order on his march, reconnoitring every spot, and always ready to give battle. At last he encamped near Jerusalem.

So while students of the Bible may not be surprised, Tacitus shows that Arab hatred of Jews pre-dates Islam by many centuries.

I imagine that they were only upset by the "occupation" of Canaanite land a millenium earlier, and that they were just trying to help the Romans uphold international law.

June 21, 1938: Why We Need Israel

2005-06-21T16:36:00.000-04:00

It is very scary reading the Palestine Post in the 1930s as it watches the rise of Nazism and yet has no idea of the magnitude of the crimes yet to be committed.

Here is a fairly typical article. showing the increasing criminal acts against Jews in Berlin and Vienna in 1938:

On the same front page is this smaller, far more hopeful item, showing Jews who managed to get out of the ovens of Germany to build a new life in Israel. They built a new town on Jewish-owned land with their own hands and escaped the fate of their doomed families in Germany. They even built their own security fence to keep the inevitable Arab terror attacks from reaching them.

This is the story of Israel and anyone who considers this "immoral" hasn't the faintest idea what the word means.

Cross-posted to Palestine Post-ings.

The Palestinian Arab Refugees in April, 1948

2005-06-17T13:05:00.000-04:00

In April 1948, in one of the battles that preceded Israel's War of Independence, the Haganah decisively defeated the Arab fighters for control of Haifa. The Palestine Post has a few articles that describe the Arab refugees from Haifa during this time period that shed a little light upon the basic question of who created the Arab refugee problem?

This is only about Arabs in Haifa (and Jaffa) in a very small timeframe, but it shows the mindsets of the Jews and of the Arabs at the time and that it would be reasonable to expect that these mindsets remained somewhat consistent throughout the duration of the war.

The first article describes the Arab dilemma of whether they should leave a Jewish-controlled Haifa. Notice that these decisions are being made after the major fighting is over, while the truce is being negotiated. These Arabs, at least, were clearly not leaving because of war.

Notice also how the Haganah is bending over backwards to try to respect the rights of the Arab citizens of Haifa, pledging to protect their property and clearly expecting them to return. This is not the behavior of people who are trying to ethnically cleanse an area.

Meanwhile, Arabs were streaming out from Jaffa. A telling detail emerges in this account of the flight to Egypt: that Arabs were the ones encouraging other Arabs to leave, and other Arabs were upset by this. But no where do they say that Jews are expelling Arabs.

The general sense of panic among the Palestinian Arabs at the time can be seen from the tiny article at the end about the run on banks.

The next week, in a recap of the events that happened in Haifa, we see that it was clearly the Arab leadership who encouraged their people to leave. Interestingly, shortly thereafter most of Haifa's Arabs have returned to their intact homes, safe and sound. This is not the first time that the Arab leadership's treatment of the Palestinian Arabs were at cross-purposes with what the people wanted.

Again note how explicitly the Haganah is trying to keep the Arabs in their homes.

This is only a snapshot in time from a single source, and this is all before the outside Arab armies invaded (although this was considered a fait accompli), but it does show a couple of inescapable facts:

* The Haganah was acting in a way totally inconsistent with the desire to create a Jews-only state.
* The Jews were bending over backwards to respect Arab property and lives.
* The Palestinian Arab people were feeling that their leadership was not acting in their best interests. This feeling was amplified in an article the following week, right before Israel declared her independence:

The analogy to today is clear. Today the Palestinian people remain pawns in the hands of their supposed "leaders" - while the people just want to live and be able to raise their families, their leaders are obsessed with the destruction of Israel and are willing to sacrifice as many of their people as necessary to reach that goal. While the Arabs show no respect for the religion or property of others, the Jews retain respect for the human rights of their declared enemies. While the Arabs create nations that are Judenrein, the vast majority of Israelis have no desire to kick out the Arabs from Israel.

The historical Palestinians: A very simple test

2005-06-15T10:14:00.000-04:00

I don't think that anyone can seriously doubt that today there are a people who could accurately be described as "Palestinian."

But there is an incredible hue and cry whenever people say, accurately, that there were no such people that could be distinguished from the rest of the Arab world until relatively recently.

There is a very simple test that can prove which claim is more accurate, whether the Palestinian people have existed as such historically or not. The test is to look at newspaper archives from before the establishment of Israel and see how they used the word "Palestinian."

Unfortunately, there are not too many free newspaper archives on the Internet that go back that far. One of the best is the Palestine Post, in which Tel Aviv University has done an incredible job of showing articles from the time before Israel was founded in context (ads, too) and one can learn far more from reading these articles about how day to day life was in British Palestine than from any books.

Here is a sampling of articles that show up when doing a search for "Palestinian":

As is clear, at least in Palestine, the word "Palestinian" usually referred to Jews, not Arabs.

But perhaps you would argue that the Palestine Post (now the Jerusalem Post) is a biased source. Despite the fact that the above articles also quote British sources as using the word "Palestinian" to refer to Jews, but we can also look at other sources.

The Washington Post has its archives online as well, although you have to pay to see the full article. But even the abstracts can show interesting results:

Products of Palestinian Art Will Be Shown at Jewish Center; Novel 10-Bay Exhibit of Sculptured and Other Work by the Late Boris Schatz Will Open Tomorrow at 1529 Sixteenth Street.
The Washington Post (1877-1954). Washington, D.C.: Apr 3, 1938. pg. TT5, 1 pgs

Abstract (Document Summary)
Products of the new Palestine art will be displayed in a novel ten-day exhibit, opening at the Jewish Community Center, 1529 Sixteenth street, tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. A number of pieces of sculpture work m relief, bronze, hand-hammered brass, ivory carvings and others of the late Boris Schnatz, founder of the new school of modern Palestinian art, will be exhibited by his son and daughter, ...

Or check this article out, perhaps for a better picture:
Palestinians in France
The Washington Post (1877-1954). Washington, D.C.: Feb 29, 1940. pg. 5, 1 pgs

Abstract (Document Summary)

Somewhere in France, Feb. 28. -- Their past differences forgotten in the common effort, a force of 700 Palestinian soldiers, about three-quarters of them Jews and the rest Arabs, arrived at a French port today to join the British expeditionary force.

Even though this article includes Arabs as being Palestinian, it is the exception that proves the rule: there is nothing inherently Arab about Palestinians, and more often than not, Palestinians when referred to as such were Jews.

So how were the Arabs who lived in the area referred to? Usually just "Arabs", sometimes "Bedouins", and sometimes even "Arab nationalists:"

British Troops To Palestine.
The Washington Post (1877-1954). Washington, D.C.: Sep 6, 1936. pg. B6, 1 pgs

Abstract (Document Summary)

The seriousness at the Palestinian situation is at last being recognized by the British government. No longer are the authorities at London taking the complacent view that the fires lit in the Holy Land by Arab Nationalists some months ago, when they ordered a general strike in protest against further Jewish immigration, would soon burn themselves out.

Note that nowhere are these Arabs referred to as "Palestinians."

This is just scratching the surface. Reading old newspaper archives is fascinating and fun, and little details emerge that show that things were just as messy then as they are now, along with the occasional ad in the Jewish-oriented Palestine Post that may strike you as strange:

So don't take my word for it. Do the research and you will find out that when people claim that there have never been a historic Palestinian people separate from other Arabs, they know what they are talking about.

The New York Times has a similar summary archive service. Check out this article:

PALESTINIAN COUPLE ENROLLS AT FORDHAM
New York Times (1857-Current file). New York, N.Y.: Nov 1, 1947. pg. 5, 1 pgs

Abstract (Document Summary)

Fordham University enrolled yesterday as students a young Palestinian Jew and his wife who hope to make American culture and its techniques play a more dynamic role in the culture of their homeland.

But the New York Times for the most part seems to have been very specific in referring to Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs, usually not "Palestinians."

The first time I am able to find a reference to Palestinian Arabs as Palestinians by default in the NYT is arguably this article from 1959 , a somewhat better reference is here although it can be argued that Jordanian Palestinians are of course Arab by default. The first I am able to find the word used unequivocally to mean Palestinian Arabs is here:
U.A.R. Plans to Draft A 'Palestinian Army'Special to The New York Times. New York Times (1857-Current file). New York, N.Y.: Nov 3, 1963. pg. 5, 1 pgs

So while the word Palestinian as referring to Arabs who lived in the area does seem to predate the 1964 establishment of the PLO, it is not by much - and it seems pretty clear that the impetus towards the establishment of the PLO came from Egypt and other Arab states, not from the Palestinian Arabs themselves.

January 22, 1939 - The more things change...

2005-06-15T10:13:00.001-04:00

January 22, 1939 - The more things change...

I have long held that there is a common denominator in the Arab side of the Israel-Arab conflict: the fact that Arabs do not want Jews to own land in the Middle East.

It is not that they don't want any Jews there, because historically there have been Jews in Arab lands. It is simply that they cannot abide Jews owning land in the area, no matter how legally it is acquired. I believe this is because the Arab Muslim psyche is so heavily invested in the idea that Jews are weak dhimmis, as they acted this way for centuries, and this was some sort of validation of the supremacy of Islam. But for whatever reason, land is the single factor that can explain every Arab action vis a vis Israel since the beginning of modern Zionism. It explains 1948, it explains 1973, it explains Camp David (where Sadat said that he'd rather have war than lose a single grain of sand of the Sinai), it explains the Intifada, the infamous "stages" plan of Arafat, and it explains the entire existence of the Palestinian people as the pawns they became and remain. It also explains the existence of Hamas and Hezbollah.

This fact must be recognized and addressed before any real peace can occur. And, frankly, this would require a complete turnaround of a century of Arab opinion and incitement, something that will not occur any time soon.

Read between the lines: At this point in time, Jews only lived on land they legally bought.

Every single "demand" of the Arabs mean the same thing: Jews should not own land in then-Palestine.

And the doubletalk at the end of the article is well-known to anyone who follows the news: Only when Jews no longer own land will Palestine have "tranquility" again. As in today, those the Arabs declare to be enemies don't actually have to do anything to cause problems - they just have to exist, and when Arabs riot as they did in the early 1930s, it is the fault of the Jews for owning land.

SoccerDad brings this up to date:

The PA passed legislation in 1998 making Israeli ownership of Palestinian real estate a "harm to national security" that constitutes a "crime of high treason" punishable by death. ³³ The murders of five Palestinian land dealers who sold property to Israelis indicated that the Palestinian Authority was not simply using rhetoric.

And an even more egregious example happened quite recently:

The Greek Orthodox church in the holy land, already mired in financial and political scandal, has been accused of secretly selling off a prime Arab area of Jerusalem's old city to Jewish settlers.

The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, has ordered an investigation of the sale of land and buildings in Omar Ibn al-Hitab square, next to the Jaffa Gate, a sensitive area because its future is uncertain in any negotiated settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr Qureia said he suspected the deal was part of a broader strategy by Jewish groups to buy up property and force Arabs out, "all with the goal of making Jerusalem Jewish".

"It is dangerous and a clear indication of the Israeli plan that targets the holy city," he said.

Notice that no one is accusing Jews of buying the land illegally...just the fact that Jews want to buy land in Jerusalem is enough to drive Arabs crazy.

How can anyone think that a true peace is possible when Arabs clearly do not accept the idea of Jews owning or buying the tiniest bit of land in the area?

May 24, 1936 Palestine Post: Response to Arab riots

2005-06-15T10:13:00.000-04:00

May 24, 1936 Palestine Post: Response to Arab riots

Note the "peaceful" protests of the Arabs to the existence of Jews owning land in Palestine. Notice how even then, the Jews stress how they want to live in peace.

Another point mentioned is that Arabs at the time were moving to Palestine "in the thousands" as a result of Jewish hard work in making the land a paradise. And they were specifically moving to the most Jewish areas. A significant percentage, perhaps most, of today's "Palestinians" are descended from these thousands who did not live in Palestine before the 1920s.

Lessons for today from June 2, 1937 - 1935 - 1933

2005-06-15T10:10:00.001-04:00

Lessons for today from June 2, 1937 - 1935 - 1933

The Arabs will not allow any part of the country to be owned by someone other then themselves, neither will they allow the country to be controlled, politically or administratively, by the Jews or anyone else.

No solution which does not meet these demands will ever be accepted by the Arabs and the Moslems throughout the world.

This statement can be seen as a blueprint for Arab-Israeli relations throughout the entire century. Everything that the Arabs have said or done since then, including Camp David and Oslo, has been entirely consistent with this statement. (In my opinion, the Jordanian leadership has been the only exception, and I think the reason is that they hate the Palestinians more than they hate the Jews.) All "peaceful" moves have been with an eye towards the long-term eradication of Jewish control over any part of the area.

Interestingly, on the same date in 1935, there was a review in the Palestine Post of a book about the history of Arabs in Palestine, and it rightly pointed out that Arabs themselves only ruled the area between 637 and 1071. Although this seems comical, it points out another fact that gets lost in today's world of instant news: the Arabs have a very long historical memory, their perceived humiliations from centuries past are still considered fresh wounds (reference Bin Laden's mention of "the tragedy of Andalusia"), and they are therefore patient as to when they will finally acheive their ultimate victory over the world.

Of course, Jews happen to have a historical memory that is quite a bit longer than the Arabs', as can be seen from this page 1 article of June 2, 1933: (Syria should be thankful that Israel doesn't assure its historic rights over Damascus!)

Yet somehow the Jews didn't rely on the very strong Biblical-era reasons that they should remain in the area, but they also worked hard to ensure that they keep their rights to the Land - with a superior claim historically, militarily, politically and legally.

Jew-hatred, however, will always ignore mere facts.

June 7, 1936: Arabs destroy 18,000 trees in 3 days

2005-06-15T10:10:00.000-04:00

June 7, 1936: Arabs destroy 18,000 trees in 3 days

From the whining you often hear from Palestinians about their olive groves (68,000 hits on Google), you'd think that they felt that fruit trees were sacred and not meant to be politicized.

Oh well, another Palestinian Arab myth gone.

June 7, 1938: Thousands of Viennese Jews sent to Dachau

2005-06-15T10:08:00.001-04:00

June 7, 1938: Thousands of Viennese Jews sent to Dachau

Besides its usefulness as a resource in researching the early history of Israel, the Palestine Post is also a remarkable (and often shocking) record of the events leading up to the Holocaust, as it had extensive coverage of the situation of Jews in Europe.

What is perhaps surprising is how widespread the knowledge of the persecutions of Jews were prior to the war. It is often assumed that the Nazis hid their crimes during the war and that the world had no idea such things could be happening. But the world apparently didn't care too much when stories like these came out before the war (it was not even the top story in the Palestine Post in this issue.)

Notice how the newspaper assumes without fear of contradiction that Dr. Paul Schott was murdered by the Nazis on the train to Dachau.

In the same issue was the news that 82-year old Sigmund Freud managed to leave Austria to live in England.

When the British jailed shofar-blowers

2005-06-15T10:08:00.000-04:00

When the British jailed shofar-blowers

In my travels through the Palestine Post archives today, I found something astounding (to me, at least.) I saw that someone was arrested for blowing a shofar at the Western Wall at the conclusion of Yom Kippur:

What was this all about? Why should it be illegal for Jews to do a simple and important religious ceremony?

Throughout the '30s I kept seeing similar stories printed.

And it was only at the Wall, not in synagogues or anything like that. So what the hell was going on?

And the penalty - 6 months in prison for blowing a shofar?

Something was seriously wrong, and soon it became apparent what the problem was.

Ah, now it becomes clear.

A Jew does something that is a religious requirement, that takes a couple of seconds, that disturbs nobody - and Arabs rioted in 1929.

Not just rioted, but they murdered 135 Jews, expelling Jews from communities (like Hebron) that they had lived in for centuries.

And the British blamed the Jews. Because one of the riots started in 1929 after a Jew blowed a Shofar at the Kotel.

In the bizarre logic of genteel anti-semitism, Jews must be punished for the murderous actions of Arabs. And the ironic flip-side of such an attitude is that Arabs are treated like savages who cannot be expected to control themselves.

This is a role that we have seen time and time again the Arabs take advantage of - they themselves have now brought up generations that believe that the Arab world has no responsibility for their actions. The gullible West, wracked with guilt over crimes of colonialism and liberal angst that favors the underdog no matter how deadly they are, do not hold them accountable for their actions.

So we have riots in 1929 that were the fault of a Jewish shofar blower, we have an intifada in 2001 that is the fault of a politician taking a walk on a Jewish holy site nearby, we have deadly demonstrations for the supposed desecration of a printed book.

And who can blame Arabs for acting this way? It has been shown to be a successful strategy! The Western fear of the mythical Arab street has fueled brain-dead decisions like the British made in the 1930s. Arabs daily threaten the West with the "power" of their people who can be whipped up into a frenzy with a single word from a sheikh. And the West slavishly decides, whoa, we cannot risk the wrath of a billion Arabs, we'd better force the Jews do make more concessions instead, because Jews are intelligent and can see reason, unlike the Arab savages whom we are scared of.

It is a winning formula. The 1921 riots, the 1929 riots, the 1936 strike and violence, the 1989 intifada, the 2001 intifada - all are cases where violence by Arabs are rewarded by the West rather than punished. And as long as terror and violence is rewarded and the victims perversely blamed, it is a formula that is guaranteed to be repeated far into the future.

The only ray of hope are the people who truly know the difference between good and evil and who will fight for good no matter what the conventional wisdom is. People like those who, every year in the 1930s and after, made sure that the shofar was still blown at the Kotel.

Those are the heroes.

Early 1948: Arabs recruit Nazis to kill Jews

2005-06-15T10:06:00.000-04:00

Early 1948: Arabs recruit Nazis to kill Jews

Arab countries in 1948 realized that they had natural allies in fighting Jews: Germans who were in British POW camps in the Middle East during World War II.

The Germans had the advantage of real-world combat experience to be able to effectively train Arabs to throw the Jews into the sea.

Soon, it became apparent that there were other Nazi sympathizers who could be called upon to help in this jihad:

And soon, a more organized campaign was started by Egypt and Syria to recruit Muslims who had fought with the Nazis in Europe to act as mercenaries against the Jews in preparation for the upcoming, inevitable war.

Apparently, the International Refugee Organization operating in Europe was at least partially complicit in this plan to allow former Nazi sympathizers to be recruited to try to finish the job that Hitler didn't.

There has been much documented about the collusion of Arabs and Nazis, but the Nazi contributions to the Arab cause in 1948 and the active Arab recruitment of Nazi and Fascist elements appears to be a lesser-known chapter in this wicked partnership.

Palestine Post-ings

April, 1948: How the Arabs left Tiberias

Palestinian Arabs killing each other - in 1938

New Year 1937 Eve: Toscanini and the Palestine Orchestra

Lebanon, 1946

A Christian's arguments for a Jewish state, 1946

The Refugees of Zer'in

United Press on the Palestinian Arab refugee problem, 1948

May 29, 1939: Palestine at the World's Fair

Building an economy under fire - The Jews of 1939

May 28, 1936: Chaim Weizmann predicts peace while Arabs destroy trees

September 1943: No Jewish children left in Poland

The prophet of 1949

1946-1947 Arab boycott of Jewish goods hurts Pal Arabs much more than Jews

The war already began: Palestine Post, December 9, 1947

Arab pressure on Intel based on another lie

There really was once a Palestinian Arab state - sort of

Rift in the Arab Front

Abdullah and the British Are Isolated in the Middle East

By OBSERVER

Hebrew slang - now and then

The Gap in Jihad

Ahmadinejad's inspiration to wipe out all Jews

"Yussuf" Goebbels told sheikhs that Nazis converted to Islam

January 22, 1933: Arabs protest Jews leasing land in Transjordan

Rich history of synagogue desecration by Arabs

"Plastics"

The birth of modern Islamic terror

Kfar Darom, 1946-1949

August 9, 1938: The High Commisioner appeals for peace

August 9, 1934: Current tragedy, future tragedy

August 4, 1935: Persian Crypto-Jews arrive in Palestine

Friday, July 22, 1938: Another day of Arabs murdering Jews

1936: Arab incitement, terror, "condemnation." Repeat.

November 1933: Arabs use Koran for political purposes

The Mufti and the Arab refugees

The power of lies

June 26, 1936: Ataroth Buries its Dead

Arabs helped Titus conquer Jerusalem in 70 AD

June 21, 1938: Why We Need Israel

The Palestinian Arab Refugees in April, 1948

The historical Palestinians: A very simple test

January 22, 1939 - The more things change...

May 24, 1936 Palestine Post: Response to Arab riots

Lessons for today from June 2, 1937 - 1935 - 1933

June 7, 1936: Arabs destroy 18,000 trees in 3 days

June 7, 1938: Thousands of Viennese Jews sent to Dachau

When the British jailed shofar-blowers

When the British jailed shofar-blowers

Early 1948: Arabs recruit Nazis to kill Jews

Abdullah and the British Are Isolated
in the Middle East