[Dave Hunt, 'The Battle For Jerusalem, Chapter 6 of 'The Gathering
Storm', Mal Couch Gen Ed, 21st Century Press, Springfield, MO, 2005, p. 129]:
"Events transpiring in the Middle East relative to Israel Israel
In one of the most awesome and frightening prophecies for the
future, God declares, 'I will gather all the nations [and He means all] against
Jerusalem
[Hunt, cont.]:
"God declared that as the end drew near He would make Jerusalem Israel
It is Islam - not in existence until 1,200 years after this
prophecy and 2,000 years after the birth of Israel Israel
The dispute is over ownership of Jerusalem Israel Ur Canaan .
In fact, there never was a Palestinian people, nation, government,
language, religion, culture, economy or history! This claim by Semitic Arabs of
being descendants of a non-Semitic people who allegedly lived for thousands of
years in a land called Palestine is a blatant hoax intended to delegitimize the
Israelis and claim the land of Israel for themselves. Yet the world accepts
this fraud, and all of the peace plans for the Middle East are founded upon it!
Both sides agree that God gave the land of Canaan Israel
From those facts, the Arab descendants of Ishmael sound like the
legitimate heirs. However, there was no such land as 'Palestine' in Abraham's
day and thus no such people as 'Palestinians' from whom any of today's Arabs
could claim descent. In fact, Ishmael's descendants settled in the Arabian Peninsula hundreds of miles from the land God gave
Abraham.
God brought Abraham into the 'land of Canaan ...and the Canaanite [not the
'Palestinian'] was then in the land' (Gen 12:5-6). God gave that land by an
everlasting covenant to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - not to
Ishmael. In obedience to God, Abraham 'settled in the land of Canaan 13:12 ). It was then inhabited by Canaanites,
Kenites, Kenizites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaims, Amorites,
Girgashites and Jebusites' (Gen 12:6; 13:7; 15:18-21; 23:10; etc.). If today's
'Palestinian' Arabs are descended from the original inhabitants of the land of Canaan Canaan have survived to this day.
The word 'Palestinian' is never found in Scripture. The term 'Palestine 15:14 ); Isaiah 14:29 , 31; Joel 3:4) but never as synonymous
with either the land of Canaan land of Israel Philistia (Psalms 60:8, 87:4, 108:9), the land of
the Pelishtee, or Philistines. It was in the area of the Gaza Gaza Ashdod Gath
Those who currently claim to be Palestinians are Arabs who moved
in from surrounding countries to feed off the prosperity of the returning Jews,
who had turned desert and malaria-infested swamps (at the cost of many lives)
into prosperous farms. Even today the 'Palestinians' mostly look to Israel
Nor can any descendants of Ishmael claim that land. God rejected
Abraham's desire for Ishmael to be the son of promise. Rather, he was the
product of Sarah's and Abraham's unbelief and conniving. God insisted upon
giving a son called Isaac to Abraham by his wife, Sarah - and He did so, naming
him as the sole heir, a fact that the Bible makes very clear (Gen 17:19, 21).
Thereafter, God referred to Isaac as Abraham's 'only son' (Gen 22:2).
Biblically, there is no question that God selected Isaac to be the
heir to the Promised Land. That fact is stated not only in Genesis 17 but
repeated throughout both Old and New Testaments. Twelve times the God of the
Bible is called 'the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob [Israel Israel
Furthermore, God clearly tells Abraham (Gen 15:13-16) that his
heirs to whom the land will be given will be afflicted by another nation for
400 years and only then will they be brought into the Promised Land. It is
indisputable history that this slavery happened to the Jews in Egypt Israel
(1) At the time of God's promise to Abraham,
the wickedness of the Canaanites was not yet so great as to justify destroying
them - but in 400 years it would be.
(2) Isolated in Egypt, the Israelites, as
despised slaves, did not intermarry with the Egyptians but became an
established ethnic group to be led en masse into the Promised Land - and we
know who they are today.
In contrast, the descendants of Ishmael were a nomadic people
prone to intermarry with those with whom they traded. The Bible records at
least three groups with whom Ishmael's descendants intermarried: the Midianites,
to the extent that sometimes the Midianites are called Ishmaelites and
sometimes the Ishmaelites are called Midianites (Judg. 8:1, 22, 12, 24); and
Esau's Edomite descendants (Gen 28:9), who had already intermarried with the
Hittities (26:34-35). Far from being taken by God into Canaan , they settled in the Arabian Peninsula , where they became known as Arabs.
Although 'Jerusalem Palestine Canaan .' Moreover, the Qur'an agrees with the
Bible that the land was given to Israel Red Sea :
'We made a covenant of old with the Children of Israel (Surah 5:70); We brought the
Children of Israel across the [Red] sea, and Pharaoh with his
hosts pursued them...and we verily did allot unto the Children of Israel a
fixed abode (10:91, 94); we favored them above all
peoples (45:16); [Pharaoh]wished to scare them from the land, but
we drowned him and those with him [in the Red Sea] all
together. And we said unto the Children of Israel Israel Holy Land which Allah hath ordained for you (95:20-21); etc.
Yet in spite of these clear declarations in the Qur'an, Muslims
insist that this land belongs not to the Jews as descendants of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, but to the Arabs as descendants of Abraham and Ishmael. Therefore, Israel Jerusalem Palestine
In A.D. 130, the Romans, who had destroyed Jerusalem Israel Palestine Palestine
In World War II, the British Army had a volunteer brigade called
'The Palestinian Brigade.' It was made up of Jews; the Arabs were fighting on
Hitler's side. There was the Palestinian Post, a Jewish newspaper, and the
Palestinian Symphony Orchestra, a Jewish orchestra. In fact, Arabs refused to
be called 'Palestinians.' For example, to the 1946 Anglo-American Committee of
Inquiry, Arab historian Philip Hitti declared, 'There is no such thing as Palestine
In 1956, Ahmed Shukairy testified to the UN Security Council, 'It
is common knowledge that Palestine Syria Palestine Cairo August 4, 1929 . What was the PLO going to 'liberate' in
1964? East Jerusalem and the West Bank were held by Jordan, while Egypt Gaza Israel
Always the problems between Israel Israel
The 'Fifth International Conference of the Sabeel Ecumenical Palestinian Liberation Theology Center Jerusalem April 14-18, 2004 , was typical. It drew more than 600
participants from over 30 countries. Speakers such as Archimandrite Attallah
Hanna of the Greek Orthodox Church (outspoken supporter of suicide bombers)
trashed the Scriptures, rejecting all of God's promises to Israel Rau Kahikatea Anglican Theological College New Zealand land of Israel
Israel is presented at such conferences, as it is at the United
Nations and in world media, as the aggressor, a land grabber illegally
occupying 'Palestinian' land taken from its rightful owners by brute force. As
we have seen, those who call themselves 'Palestinians' (a name taken from the
Philistines, Israel's ancient enemy, a heritage claimed by Arafat), claim to be
descended from the original inhabitants of 'Palestine.' This bold scam, honored
as truth, is foundational to world opinion about the Middle East . The Philistines were not a Semitic
people. They invaded Canaan across the Mediterranean from Crete and Asia Minor and displaced certain Canaanites, just as they were eventually
displaced by Israel
The truth is suppressed that UN Declaration 181, November 29,
1947, gave Israel only about 18 percent of the land that the League of Nations
in its 1922 Declaration of Principles set aside for a Jewish homeland. Unhappy
with being given only 82 percent of what didn't belong to them, and demanding
it all, six Arab nations attacked the new state of Israel
To the world's astonishment, the united Arab armies were soundly
defeated by poorly armed Jewish settlers, and most of those who heeded the
warning and fled were never able to return. War is like that - and it was a war
the Arabs started. Arabs who did not flee, but honored Israeli pleas to remain,
have, with their descendants, full rights as citizens and comprise about 16
percent of Israeli voters. Some are even members of the Knesset. In contrast,
no Jew can set foot in Saudi Arabia Israel
In that 1948-49 war, Jordan East Jerusalem and the so-called West Bank , while Egypt Gaza Israel
Zechariah's prophecy and its precise fulfillment are all the more
remarkable when one considers that the Arab/Muslim nations surrounding Israel
have 650 times the land mass (rich in minerals and oil, of which Israel has
almost none), 50 times the population, armed forces far outnumbering Israel in
men and equipment and the backing of huge oil revenues. Yet in spite of these
impossible odds, that miniscule nation has been exactly what God said it would
be: '...a torch of fire in a sheaf [to] devour all the people round about...'
(12:6). Israel
Zechariah also said that God would make Jerusalem Jerusalem Jerusalem Israel Israel
How heavy is this 'burdensome stone?' The United Nations has
consumed one-third of its time deliberating over Jerusalem Israel Israel Israel
Yet not once has the UN reprimanded those who have without
provocation waged four wars against Israel Israel Israel Israel
On March 25, 2004 , the United States Israel Israel
The frequent condemnations of Israel
Satanic hatred of Jews did not end with Hitler but is growing in
intensity, not only in the Muslim world but also in Europe and in America Palestine Israel
Muhammad said, 'The last day will not come until the Muslims
confront the Jews, and the Muslims destroy them. In that day Allah will give a
voice to the rocks and the trees and they will cry out, 'Muslim, there is a Jew
hiding behind me, come and kill him!' No clearer declaration of Satan's passion
could be made. Here we see the true face of Islam, the religion of 'peace'!
Immediately after signing the Oslo Israel Jerusalem Israel
In A.D. 628, Muhammad had signed, with the Quraish of Mecca
Muhammad declared, 'Allah has commanded me to fight against all
people until all acknowledge there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his
messenger. ' The entire world is divided into Dar al-Islam (the house of peace)
and Dar al-Harb (the house of war) and there is a perpetual Jihad until all
mankind are in submission to Islam and Allah. No Muslim leader has the
authority to bring an end to the Jihad (holy war) between Islam and the rest of
the world. Thus, when Arafat and other Arab leaders speak of 'peace,' they
actually mean a hudna.
President Jimmy Carter persuaded Israel Egypt
Each of the 114 Surahs (chapters) has a heading. The title of
Surah 8 is 'Spoils of War.' The chapter is about fighting, slaughter, and
plunder in the cause of Islam: 'Fight them until... all religion is for
Allah... O Prophet! Exhort the believers to fight... It is not for any prophet
to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land' (8:39 , 65, 67), etc. With great enthusiasm ,
Carter quoted the lone 'peace' verse in the Qur'an, 'But if the enemy incline
towards peace [i.e., surrenders], do thou also incline towards peace' (8:61).
Each of the 114 Surahs (chapters) has a heading. The title of
Surah 8 is 'Spoils of War.' The chapter is about fighting, slaughter, and
plunder in the cause if Oslam: 'Fight them until ... all religion is for Allah
... O Prophet! Exhort the believers to fight ... It is not for any prophet to
have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land' (8:39 , 65, 67), etc. With great enthusiasm,
Carter quoted the lone 'peace' verse in the Qur'an, 'But if the enemy incline
towards peace [i.e., surrenders], do thou also incline towards peace' (8:61).
He should have known that the Muslim has an entirely different idea of 'peace'
from the rest of the world. As Arafat has bluntly said, 'Peace for us is the
destruction of Israel
What naiveté could cause Carter to imagine 'peace' between Islam
and Israel Israel May 20, 1967 , Hafez Assad (at the time Syrian Defense
Minister) declared, 'The Syrian Army with its finger on the trigger is
united.... The time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.' A week
later, President Nasser of Egypt Israel Israel Iraq Israel Israel
Yet the United Nations, European Union, and the Western leaders
persist in pressuring Israel to make 'peace' with an enemy that has sworn to
destroy her. A few days after Yasser Arafat's June 8, 2001 'cease-fire'
declaration, Sheikh Ibrahim Mahdi declared on Palestinian TV, 'Allah willing,
this unjust state [of] Israel will be erased... the United States will be
erased ... Britain will be erased... Blessings to whoever waged jihad for the
sake of Allah. Blessings to whoever put a belt of explosive on his body or his
son's and plunged into the midst of the Jews!'
In spite of such public declarations, which could be cited by the
hundreds, the UN (a veritable center for anti-Semitism and anti-Israel
propaganda and action) continues to rebuke Israel Israel Middle
East .
The latest proposal to end the dispute over Jerusalem June
24, 2002
speech and endorsed by Russian President Putin, the United Nations and European
Union. The so-called road to peace, so long in process, and paved with one Arab
betrayal after another, would be a joke had it not cost so many lives. Hope is
always renewed by another dream, only to be shattered as must be the case when
dealing with Islam.
Arafat has never kept one provision of any agreement. Anything he
signs is not worth the ink in his signature. In the 10 years before the Oslo Israel Jerusalem Israel
God said, 'The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is
mine' (Leviticus 25:23). But in exchange for 'peace' with an enemy that has
sworn its extermination, Israel Israel
As a people worldwide, the Jews have forsaken God and have been
under His judgment. Nevertheless, Scripture says of Israel
It is astonishing that anyone would dare to defy the Creator of
the Universe, but this is what those who interfere with His plans for Israel Israel
God warns the world: 'I will gather all the nations... to the valley of Jehoshaphat Israel Israel
[Martin Gilbert, Exile and Return, The Struggle for a Jewish
Homeland, J. B. Lippincott Co, Phila & NY, 1978, pp. 3-12]:
"The Jews were living in Canaan three thousand years ago. They were first
parted from their land in 722 BC with the Assyrian conquest of the northern
Jewish kingdom of Samaria Mesopotamia ....
Less than 150 years later the Babylonians conquered the southern
Jewish kingdom of Judea Jerusalem Temple of Solomon Euphrates ....
From that moment, Jewish existence was threatened in every decade,
both for those who continued to live in the Land of Israel
From the towns and villages of these first dispersions, the Jews
traveled throughout the known world. From the Land of Israel, too, they ventured
in search of a livelihood to all the ports and market towns of the civilized
world, first to those of Egypt and of the Persian Empire, then to Alexander's
Macedonian domains, then to the scattered City States of ancient Greece, and to
the maritime emporia of ancient Carthage....
In Jerusalem Temple
In 40 AD the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria Temple
Following the eclipse of Egypt Greece Carthage Land of Israel Judah
Despite the military power of Rome Judea rose in revolt, holding out in several
towns and fortresses for more than four years. But, the power of Rome Temple
The Roman vengeance was indeed terrible. Tens of thousands of Jews
were killed, many villages razed to the ground, and thousands of Jews sold into
slavery, some even pitted against wild animals in the arena, as 'sport' for
their captors. The destruction of the Temple
In 115 AD it was the Jews of the Diaspora who rose in revolt...
the Jews of Judea also took part in it... within two years it had been
crushed.... in 132 AD the Jews of Judea, Samaria and the Galilee rose in revolt
once more.... the suppression of [this] revolt was completed by 135 AD.... The
Romans even changed the name of Judea , hoping to eliminate all Jewish memories
and links: henceforth it was known as Syria Palestine
By 150 AD, despite the ferocity of Roman persecution, the Jews
were living scattered, but with their faith intact, in a vast region stretching
from the Straits of Gibraltar to the borders of India; from the Black Sea to
the Red Sea; from the river Loire to the river Indus. Those who were allowed by
the Romans to remain in the Land of Israel, although refused entry to
Jerusalem, set up communities both in the coastal plain and in the Galilee; at
Jabneh, on the coastal plain south of Jaffa, scholars and rabbis gathered after
the fall of Jerusalem, and for nearly a century Jabneh remained a centre of
rabbinical scholarship.
Numbering at least three millions, the Jews of the Roman Empire constituted more than 5 per cent of the
Empire's population, and followed a wide variety of occupations...
In Palestine Golan heights , at Jericho Jordan Mediterranean at both Ashkelon and Gaza
With the sudden and whirlwind conquest by Islam in the seventh and
eight centuries, those Jews who lived in a wide arc of lands from Spain India
With the Arab conquest of Palestine Palestine
Within the Muslim world, at certain times, the Jews found
positions of authority, and the chance of prosperity....
Yet even under Islam, the scale of tolerance could quickly turn,
and with grim results. To the Muslim, the Jew was always a 'Dhimmi', or
second-class citizen, and anti-Jewish violence could have terrible results,
particularly when one of the more fanatical Muslim sects was in the
ascendant....
Even under more tolerant Muslim rule, the Jews in every town and
village of the Muslim world, including Palestine
The religious bigotry of the eleventh century expressed itself in
violence and slaughter. Within the course of a few years it left thousands of
Jews dead, and drove thousands more eastwards...
Uprooted by Crusader persecutions, the Jews of Ashkenazi [Jews of Germany Danube .... The map of Europe was criss-crossed by the expulsion of
Jews from country after country: from the Crimea in the eleventh century, from Silesia England France Hungary Austria Saxony and Lithuania
Throughout the Middle Ages the homeless wandering Jew was a
feature of Christian Europe....
The Crusader conquests in the eastern Mediterranean posed a grave threat to the Jews of that
whole area. Reaching Beirut, the Crusaders showed what would be the fate of the
Jews of Palestine when all thirty-five Jewish families living in the city were
massacred.... thousands of Jews were murdered in the Galilee, on the coastal
plain, in Samaria, and Judea... Many of those who were not murdered were either
sold into slavery in Europe , or ransomed to the Jewish community in Egypt
From 1099 to 1187 the Crusaders were sovereign in Jerusalem Jordan
After [that] a further tragedy, the Tartar invasion from central Asia , in which thousands of Jews and
Christians had been murdered , and Jerusalem
[Ibid., pp. 13-25]:
During the thirteenth century the Jews were ferociously persecuted
in Morocco Tunisia
Following the Black Death riots, even more Jews fled eastwards [Poland Lithuania Eastern Europe ], joining those who had fled across the Oder at the time of the Crusader massacres
three hundred years before...
To the west, another tragedy was looming. For the Jews of Spain Portugal Toledo Spain island of Majorca Portugal Spain Palestine Galilee ...
The Jews of Spain Palestine Egypt
The fifteenth century had seen no diminution of the Jewish
presence in Palestine
For Christian Europe, the sixteenth century was one of religious
ferment, with the 'theses' of Martin Luther setting the course for the
Protestant reformation. In 1543 Luther published a pamphlet entitled Of
the Jews and Their Lies. Its tone gives a clear flavor of the anti-Semitic
literature that circulate din Christian religious circles at that time.
[Luther's pamphlet goes on to tell others to burn synagogues, destroy the homes
of Jews, force them to do manual/ menial labor etc., etc.]
Less than twenty years after Luther's anti-Jewish diatribe, a
Turkish Sultan, Suleiman I, made it possible for a large number of Jews to
return to the Holy Land, under the benevolent Muslim rule of the Ottomans. In
1561 Suleiman gave Tiberius, one of the four Jewish holy cities, to a former
'secret' Jew from Portugal Galilee , farming, fishing and trading. Elsewhere
in the Holy
Land in
the sixteenth century, the tolerance of Turkish rule enabled several Jewish
communities to maintain their cultural and spiritual unity: in Jerusalem Hebron Gaza
Ottoman rule gave the Jews a chance of a relatively unmolested
existence throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries....
Throughout the seventeenth century also, one Christian power
enabled the Jews to flourish, trade and live at peace with their neighbors;
this was Holland Holland Germany
Hassidism was a religious movement that appealed to the Jewish
masses. It embodied a belief in the need to rejoice in religion, and to do so
with song and dance, with zeal and study....
Love of the Land of Israel played a major part in the Hassidic
philosophy, so much so that in 1777 a group of several hundred Hassid's, old
and young, set off from Russia for Palestine, then under Turkish rule.... The Hassid's
settled in the Galilee , joining the thriving Jewish community of those whose ancestors
had come from Spain Portugal
[Ibid., pp. 26-34 ]:
"It was therefore the Jews of Greece
Even under Muslim rule, the Jewish condition worsened as the
nineteenth century progressed. In the Persian town of Meshed Meshed Asia , to India Britain Palestine
Throughout the 1860s the Jews of Libya Marrakesh Fez Tunis Palestine
A British Jew, Moses Montefiore... had come to devote his life to
the cause of his persecuted fellow-Jews wherever they might be. On 11
June 1842 ,
a grandson of the Duke of Marlborough, Colonel Charles Churchill, wrote to
Montefiore that, in his view, the Jews ought to promote the regeneration of Palestine Palestine
Charles Churchill felt strongly that the Jews should resume what
he described to Montefiore as their 'existence as a people'. Four years after
his letter, in 1845, a fellow Englishman, George Gawler, published a pamphlet
urging the establishment of Jewish colonies in Palestine
The efforts of Sir Moses Montefiore to encourage Jewish villages
in Palestine were rewarded with success in 1856, when he received an edict from
the Sultan allowing the Jews to buy land there....
In 1819... a virulent outbreak of mob violence, the 'Heb! Heb!'
riots, had shown the depth of popular German anti-Semitism. Throughout Germany
The cry of 'Heb! Heb!' was heard again in Germany eleven years
later, during the 1830 revolution, with the result that tens of thousands of
German Jews decided to seek a new life from fear, in the distant United
States...
As the Jews succeeded in more and more professions, German anti-Semitism
grew....
In May 1867... the Rumanians had turned [against Jews] with savage
persecution....
After 1880... [there was] ill-treatment of Russian Jews...
[Ibid., pp. 35-43]:
"Emancipation brought to European Jewry, for the first time
in more than a thousand years, the myriad opportunities of equal rights and
full citizenship. It made the Jew feel less of an alien, encouraging his
participation, and even his assimilation, into the societies of the west. Many
Jewish families abandoned their Jewish identity entirely and, by intermarriage,
brought their Jewish heritage to an end. No such temptation presented itself to
the vast mass of Russian Jewry. For them, each decade of the nineteenth century
brought further hardship, conjuring up the image of past troubles rather than
the hope of any future easement.
With the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, more than five million Jews
had found themselves within the newly enlarged frontiers of Tsarist Russia
In 1845 Tsar Nicholas conceived the idea of diving the Jews into
two categories, the 'useful' and the 'non-useful'. In the 'useful' category
were to be wealthy merchants, craftsmen and farmers, whose rights would be
respected. The 'non-useful' would include the small tradesmen, the poor, the peddlers
and the unemployed, on whom military service would be imposed....
In March 1881 Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by socialist
revolutionaries, who called on the people of Russia United States of America Palestine Rumania Palestine Rumania Russia Palestine
By the end of 1882 Lovers of Zion Russia Rumania Land of Israel
In 1882 [Leon] Pinsker... wrote his book, Auto-Emancipation,
in which he argued that anti-Semitism was inevitable wherever the Jews were a
minority; that they could only be a majority if they had a homeland of their
own.... The impact of Pinsker's book was immediate.... The Russian-born writer
and journalist, Nahum Sokolov, put forward specific proposals for industrial
development in Palestine Jerusalem village of Petah Tikvah Palestine Edmond Palestine
By 1890, the number of Russian-born Jews who had settled in Palestine Jerusalem
As a result of this protest all Jewish immigration was forbidden
by the Turks in July 1891, but, after a short while, the ban was not enforced."
[Ibid., pp. 44-51]:
"Between 1881 and 1914 more than two million Russian Jews
left Russia Britain France Palestine
In western Europe there was an equally remarkable flowering of the
Jewish genius in the years before the First World War, when Jewish self-help,
Jewish community organization, and Jewish participation in national, political,
cultural and scientific life reached new dimensions of activity and success....
[In Russian on the other hand, there were official 'pogroms' and
secret groups of individuals dedicated to limiting Jewish success, even
fostering anti-Semitism, in spite of increasing emigration - these efforts
broke out in violence and death for many Jews in 1905. Hence the conclusion of
Zionists was constantly reinforced throughout the world: Jews needed a homeland
they could call their own]
1906-1914
[Ibid., pp. 66-76]
"During 1906 there were yet more pogroms in Russian, for the
fifth consecutive year....
In the same 10 years, more than a million Jews reached the United States Russia Jerusalem
In February 1908 the eighteen year old Adolph Hitler arrived in Vienna Austria Vienna Vienna Palestine
1914-1916
[Ibid., pp. 79-91]:
"With the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914, the five million Jews of
Tsarist Russia Britain France Britain
The British conquest of Turkey [was] an opportunity for the
partition of the Ottoman Empire.... in which [was] pressed for some form of
British protectorate over Palestine, in the interest of future Jewish
settlement....
1917
[Ibid., pp. 92-108]:
"The anguish of the Jews when confronted by Christian or
Muslim persecution; their own efforts to rebuild and revitalize Jewish life in
Palestine; and their realization that a British victory over the Turks could
lead to a British sponsored Jewish commonwealth in Palestine, produced, during
1917, the conditions needed to advance the Zionist cause. For Jews all over the
world, the prospect of British troops entering Jerusalem
On March 21 the War Cabinet [of Britain Palestine Palestine Russia Britain Palestine
The Russian revolution of March 1917, with its call for liberty,
'far from weakening Jewish nationalism, did but deepen and intensify the
national aspirations.'...
The official War Cabinet minutes recorded Balfour's words as
follows:
'The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs stated that he
gathered that everyone was now agreed that, from a purely diplomatic and
political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favorable to
the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made. The vast
majority of Jews in Russia America Russia America
He gathered that the main arguments still put forward against
Zionism were twofold:
(a) That Palestine
(b) The difficulty felt with regard to the future position of Jews
in Western countries.'
Balfour's exposition continued:
'With regard to the first, he understood that there were
considerable differences of opinion among experts regarding the possibility of
the settlement of any large population in Palestine, but he was informed that,
if Palestine were scientifically developed, a very much larger population could
be sustained than had existed during the period of Turkish misrule.
As to the meaning of the words' national home', to which the
Zionists attach so much importance, he understood it to mean some form of
British, American, or other protectorate, under which full facilities would be
given to the Jews to work out their own salvation and to build up, by means of
education, agriculture, and industry, a real centre of national culture and
focus of national life. It did not necessarily involve the early establishment
of an independent Jewish State, which was a matter for gradual development in
accordance with the ordinary laws of political evolution.'
The War Cabinet's acceptance of what was to become known as the
'Balfour Declaration', made it clear that two pressing and potentially
conflicting interests were now in harmony: the long-term needs and aspirations
of Zionism, and the immediate, harsh dictates of war.
[Ibid., pp. 109-118]:
"The Balfour Declaration achieved one of the main aims of the
Zionists: the return of the Jews to Palestine United States France Italy Britain Britain Palestine 2 November
1917 ; that
destiny still depended upon British rules and interpretations. It needed, also,
further immigration, land purchase, investment, agricultural and industrial
development, dedication, fair-dealing and the continual thrust of faith in the
Jewish future, and idealism....
Yet on November 6, the day of the fall of Gaza Russia Russia
Lenin's anti-war declaration destroyed the immediate aim of the
Balfour Declaration [in Russia Petrograd until November 29....
British support for 'a national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine Palestine Jerusalem
Scarcely two months after the Balfour Declaration was issued, the
question began to be discussed in London Palestine
Arab unease arose largely due to a misunderstanding of Zionist
aims and intentions.... [for example] ... the Arab belief that Zionism
'involved the expropriation of Arab proprietors and the handing over to future
Jewish tutelage of Christian and Moslem sites'. Both these objections, [it was]
pointed out, 'had been clearly and emphatically disavowed by the responsible
leaders of Zionism.'...
At its meeting on January 19, the Middle East Committee decided to
sent out to Palestine a Zionist Commission, led by Weitzman, to help 'in
establishing friendly relations between the Jews on the one hand, and the Arabs
and other non-Jewish communities on the other'....
Not only did the Zionist Commission carry out its work in respect
of future Jewish developments in Palestine; Weitzman also made a strenuous
effort to reach agreement with Emir Feisal, a son of King Hussein, and
commander of the Arab forces which were about to declare themselves at war with
the Turks....
On October 30... the Turks surrendered to the Allies. Palestine
was firmly under British military control, less than a year after the issue of
the Balfour Declaration....
Meeting in London
Weitzman and Feisal agreed that the boundary between 'the Arab
State and Palestine' would be determined by a commission agreed upon by them
both; in Palestine, the Muslim Holy Places would be under Muslim control; no
law would be made to interfere 'in any way with the free exercise of religion.'
In addition, the Zionist Organization would use 'its best efforts' to assist
the Arab State
[It was reported by Weitzman that] 'The Zionist Organization did
not want an autonomous Jewish Government, but merely to establish in Palestine,
under a Mandatory Power, and administration, not necessarily Jewish, which
would render it possible to send into Palestine 70,000 to 80,000 Jews annually.
The Organization would require to have permission at the same time to build
Jewish schools, where Hebrew would be taught, and to develop institutions of
every kind. Thus it would build up gradually a nationality....
How did the Arab delegation at Paris Palestine
'Our deputation here in Paris
With the chiefs of your movement, specially with Dr Weitzman, we
have had and continue to have the closest relations. He has been a great helper
of our cause, and I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position to make the Jews
some return for their kindness. We are working together for a reformed and
revived Near East, and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish
movement is national and not imperialist. Our movement is national and not
imperialist, and there is room in Syria
Neither Feisal's letter to Frankfurter, nor the earlier agreement
between Weitzman and Feisal, could provide a guarantee of future Jewish-Arab
amity: indeed, in a handwritten note which he added to the agreement itself,
Feisal had stressed that he would only 'carry out what is written in this
agreement' on condition that 'the Arabs obtain their independence' in Syria. By
July 1920 the French had deposed Feisal from the throne of Syria Iraq
1919-1921
[Ibid., pp. 119-134]:
"For the thirty years beginning in 1918, the status of the
Jews already in Palestine
There was certainly no unanimity of pro-Zionist feeling among the
British policy-makers during 1919 and 1920; sometimes the attitude was much
more that of actual hostility....
On 2 July 1919 the Syrian General Congress, meeting in Damascus,
challenged the Emir Feisal's acceptance of Zionism, and, in a strongly worded
memorandum, demanded the union of Palestine with Syria, and an immediate end to
all Jewish immigration...
The British Government, however, felt itself firmly committed to a
pro-Zionist policy. On June 19 General Clayton had telegraphed to the Foreign
Office from Cairo Palestine
The anti-Zionist group [in Britain
On August 1919 an American Commission of Enquiry, known as the
King-Crane Commission... criticized Zionist ambitions, and recommended what it
called 'serious modification of the extremist Zionist program for Palestine of
unlimited immigration of Jews, looking finally to making Palestine distinctly a
Jewish State'...
During 1919, anti-Semitism became more widespread, and was not
confined to Russians or eastern Europeans.... On October 16... a public event
took place in a Munich beer cellar... a speech by Adolph Hitler, then aged
thirty... his denunciations of the Jews held his audience spellbound for half
an hour....
Evidence of the Jewish role in Bolshevik Russia
By the end of 1919, more than 100,000 Jews had been murdered in
the Ukraine Poland
Writing in the Illustrated Sunday Herald on 8
February 1920 , another non-Jew, the British Secretary of State for War, Winston
Churchill, encapsulated the main contemporary attitudes towards both Zionism
and the Jews. 'Some people like Jews and some do not.' he wrote, 'but no
thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all doubt the most
formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the
world.'...
Churchill then appealed to world Jewry to abandon Bolshevism, and
to turn instead to Zionism...
Zionism, Churchill believed, offered to the Jews 'a national idea
of a commanding character'. Palestine
The Prime Minister remained a staunch supporter of the Jewish
people...
The year 1920 was a fateful one for the Jews, for it saw not only
Lloyd George's determination to accept the Palestine Mandate for Britain, but
also in Germany, the evolution of Adolph Hitler's crude anti-Semitic views from
the obscurity of individual prejudice to the publicity of the popular mob....
In Palestine Jordan 8
May 1921 ...
was appointed Mufti of Jerusalem Palestine
In pursuance of his aim to see a Jewish National Home established
in Palestine League of Nations Mandate.
Almost the first letter which Churchill received in his new
Cabinet post was one from T. E. Lawrence, who, on 17 January 1921, reported on
his discussions with the Emir Feisal, who had, Lawrence wrote, 'agreed to
abandon all claims of his father to Palestine'. In return, Feisal wanted both Mesopotamia and Transjordan to become Arab States. This was
accomplished within two years, when Feisal himself became ruler of Mesopotamia , and his brother, Abdullah, ruler of Transjordan . Mesopotamia, as Iraq, became independent
in 1932, Transjordan in 1946. As part of Britain Transjordan , all the Jewish National Home provisions
of the Palestine Transjordan ."
"Churchill visited Palestine Haifa 14
March 1921 .
It read:
'1. We refuse the Jewish Immigration to Palestine
2. We energetically protest against the Balfour Declaration to the
effect that our Country should be made the Jewish National Home.'
In his reply, Churchill stated the case for the Zionists in a
powerful manner. 'It is manifestly right', he told the Palestinian Arab leaders
on March 28,
...that the Jews, who are scattered all over the world, should
have a national centre and a National Home where some of them may be reunited.
And where else could that be but in the land of Palestine British Empire ."
The Arab protest continued, and the violence that followed
Churchill's visit was severe. Arab violence in Jaffa Palestine
The suspension of immigration, made on the authority of Sir
Herbert Samuel, did not entirely impress the Colonial Office, and a telegram
was drafted for Churchill by one of his senior advisers, Major Young, which was
dispatched to Samuel on 14 May 1921 . 'The present agitation', the telegram
read, 'is doubtless engineered in the hope of frightening us out of our Zionist
policy... We must firmly maintain law and order and make concessions on their
merits and not under duress.'
Although the total prohibition of Jewish immigration, which the
Arabs continued to demand, was never acceptable to Churchill, the idea of some
limit to Jewish immigration was discussed between Samuel and the Colonial
Office, and it was decided to set up a limit based on what was described by
Samuel as 'the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine'. This idea of some
limit took rapid shape, and within tow years it had become government policy,
to the dismay of the Zionist leaders, who saw it as an erosion of what they
believed was the principle of freedom of immigration implied in the 'National
Home' phraseology of the Balfour Declaration.
For good or ill, the future of Zionism was not linked to British
policy and British prejudice. But it was still up to the Zionists to take the
initiative, if their numbers were to grow and their efforts to flourish. On
June 4 Arthur Ruppin wrote in his diary: 'It is absolutely clear to me that
Zionism will perish altogether if we do not soon make a start developing Palestine
1921-1922
[Ibid., pp. 135-148]:
"On June 22 Churchill explained the British position on
Zionism to the Dominion Prime Ministers, at a meeting of the Imperial Cabinet.
Among those present were the New Zealand Britain
On July 5 Dr. Weitzman, who had just returned from the United States
Lloyd George and Balfour both agreed 'that by the [Balfour]
Declaration they had always meant an eventual Jewish State'....
One of the principal Middle East advisers at the Colonial Office,
Major Young ....himself favored a policy which, he had written to Churchill on
August 1, involved 'the gradual immigration of Jews into Palestine until that
country becomes a predominantly Jewish state', and he went on to argue that the
phrase 'National Home' as used in the Balfour Declaration implied no less than
full statehood for the Jews of Palestine....
The Cabinet decided to retain the Mandate, for, as the official
minutes recorded, 'stress was laid on the following consideration, the honor of
the government was involved in the Declaration made by Mr. Balfour, and to go
back on our pledge would seriously reduce the prestige of this country in the
eyes of the Jews throughout the world'. Nevertheless, also contained in the
Cabinet's conclusion was the warning that, 'It was not expected that the
problem could be easily or quickly solved, especially in view of the growing
power of the Arabs in the territories bordering on Palestine.'...
Churchill told the Arabs: 'You are not addressing your minds to
the real facts of the case,' and he went to say that he had no power, or
desire, to repudiate the Balfour Declaration. Nor did he believe that the Jews
were in any way a threat to the Arabs:
'I have told you again and again that the Jews will not be allowed
to come into the country except in so far as they build up the means for their
livelihood according to the law. They cannot take any man's lands. They cannot
dispossess any man of his rights or his property or interfere with him in any
way.
If they like to buy people's land, and people like to sell it to
them, and if they like to develop and cultivate regions now barren and make
them fertile, then they have the right, and we are obliged to secure their
right to come into the country and to settle.'
Later in the discussion, Churchill stated unequivocally that Britain Palestine Palestine Palestine Palestine Britain
...During his final speech, he [Churchill] declared:
'The Jews are a very numerous people, and they are scattered all
over the world. This is a country where they have great historic traditions,
and you cannot brush that aside as though it were absolutely nothing. They were
there many hundreds of years ago. They have always tried to be there. They have
done a great deal for the country. They have started many thriving colonies,
and many of them wish to go and live there. It is to them a sacred place. Many
of them go there to be buried in the city which they regard as sacred - as you
regard it as sacred.
Why cannot you live together in amity and develop the country
peacefully? There is room for all as long as they are not brought in great
numbers before there are means of livelihood for them; before the electrical
and other means of power are created which will make waste places fertile;
before the hills have had terraces made upon them; before irrigation and proper
agricultural development. Of course, if they were brought in before these
things were done, you would have reason to complain....
The Jews have a far more difficult task than you. You only have to
enjoy your own possession; but they have to try to create out of the
wilderness, out of the barren places, a livelihood for the people they bring
in. They have to bring them in under conditions which make for the general good
of the population, and which supplant no one, and deprive no one of their
rights and liberties....
Before the Mandate was itself finalized, the British Government
made a major contribution to the development of the Jewish National Home. This
took the form of granting the Zionists a monopoly control over the development
of the electrical resources of Palestine Palestine
The Rutenberg scheme was accepted by the British Government as an
integral part of its Mandate commitment to the Jews....
On May 24 John Shuckburgh sent Churchill the final draft of Sir
Herbert Samuel's memorandum on the future of Palestine Palestine England Palestine Palestine Palestine
Samuel's memorandum went on to state once again that further
Jewish immigration could not be permitted to exceed 'whatever may be the
economic capacity of the country at any given time to absorb new arrivals'.
Samuel's statement was accepted by the Colonial Office as a
guideline for future British policy, and was published as part of the Palestine 30
June 1922 .
The Zionists themselves formally accepted the White Paper. But they were
unhappy about fixing so specific an economic condition on future immigration,
fearing that unsympathetic, and even anti-Zionist High Commissioners in the
future, would abuse the concept of an economic absorptive capacity in order to
halt future immigration.
Churchill spoke in defense of the Zionists on July 4, telling the
House of Commons:
'...anyone who has visited Palestine recently must have seen how
parts of the desert have been converted into gardens, and how material
improvement has been effected in every respect by the Arab population dwelling
around. On the sides of the hills there are enormous systems of terraces, and
they are now the abode of an active cultivating population; whereas before,
under centuries of Turkish and Arab rule, they had relapsed into a wilderness.
There is no doubt whatever that in that country there is room for
still further energy and development if capital and other forces be allowed to
play their part.
There is no doubt that there is room for a far larger number of
people, and this far larger number of people will be able to lead far more
decent and prosperous lives.
Apart from this agricultural work - this reclamation work - there
are services which science, assisted by outside capital, can render, and of all
the enterprises of importance which would have the effect of greatly enriching
the land none was greater than the scientific storage and regulation of the
waters of the Jordan for the provision of cheap power and light needed for the
industry of Palestine, as well as water for the irrigation of new lands now
desolate.'
The granting of the Rutenberg concession did not involve,
Churchill said, 'injustice to a single individual'; it did not take away 'one
scrap of what was there before', and it offered to all the inhabitants of
Palestine 'the assurance of a greater prosperity and the means of a higher
economic and social life'....
Critics of the Rutenberg concession had insisted that it was for
the Arab majority to develop the economic wealth of Palestine
'I am told that the Arabs would have done it themselves. Who is
going to believe that? Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine Palestine Jordan Dead
Sea ....
The House divided at the end of Churchill's speech. His appeal was
successful. Only thirty-five votes were cast against the Government's Palestine
The success of the Rutenberg Debate effectively freed the Colonial
Office from the pressure of the anti-Zionists, and left the way clear for
presenting the final terms of the Mandate to the League of Nations ....
On July 22 the League of Nations approved the Palestine
1923-1933
[Ibid., 149-159]:
"The granting of the Palestine Britain
...Even Jewish settlement in Palestine
'The daily slight frictions between Arab and Jew, whose ideas,
principles, customs and modes of life take dramatically divergent lines
cultivate and solidify hatred between both communities, and there must come a
time when it will accumulate to such a degree as to defy all moral or political
restraints.
It is a gross error to believe that Arab and Jew may come to an
understanding if only each of them exchanges his coat of extremism for another
of moderation. When the principles underlying two movements do clash, it is
futile to expect their meeting halfway.'...
Both Leopold Amery - then Colonial Secretary - and Winston
Churchill - then Chancellor of the Exchequer - supported the proposed Zionist
loan ['for the sole purpose of promoting and expediting close settlement by
Jews on the land']. But the Cabinet rejected it; and, in doing so, marked a
step away from what had earlier been regarded as one of Britain
Arab attacks on Jews spread throughout Palestine
When the attacks ended at nightfall on August
29, 133
Jews had been killed. Eighty-seven Arabs had also died, mostly shot by British
troops and police seeking to halt the violence....
Two weeks later, on September 29, the new [British] High
Commissioner [of British troops in Palestine
'...the latent deep-seated hatred of the Arabs for the Jews has
now come to the surface in all parts of the country. Threats of renewed attacks
upon the Jews are being freely made and are only being prevented by visible
presence of considerable military force.'
That same day, September 29, the President of the Arab Executive
in Palestine Palestine Palestine Syria Transjordan and perhaps Iraq
In March 1930, the Shaw Report [head of the Commission of Enquiry
to examine the causes of Arab unrest] made it clear that British opinion was
swinging slowly but definitely against the Zionists....
Based on [a second official report by Sir John Hope-Simpson, Oct
1930] the [British] Government issued a White Paper intimating that future
Jewish immigration might have to be curtailed even more rigorously than in the
past....
Following Weitzman's protests, Ramsay MacDonald agreed to abandon
the immigration [limiting] clauses of the 1930 White Paper....
On 30 January 1933 Adolph Hitler became German Chancellor,
and anti-Semitism took on an open, official, and hysterical tone....
Hitler predicted with what he called 'absolute certainty', his
name would be honored in all lands 'as the man who once and for all
exterminated the Jewish pest from the world'....
The new German persecutions, combined with the continuing
anti-Jewish feelings in Poland Rumania Palestine
1933-1937
[Ibid., pp. 160-177]
Immediately following the Nazi victory in Germany Palestine
The Jews did not allow themselves to be intimidated or deterred,
but began to augment the arms supplies which, since the riots of 1929, they had
been building up for their own defense....
In the resulting violence.... the Arabs had decided to challenge
both the British and the Jews.....
In 1934 a further 42,000 Jews entered Palestine Palestine
'So far from reducing economic absorptive capacity, immigration
increased it. The more immigrants came in, the more work they created for local
industries to meet their needs, especially in building: and more work meant
more room for immigrants under the '''labor schedule'''. Unless, therefore, the
Government adopted a more restrictive policy, or unless there were come
economic or financial set-back, there seemed no reason why the rate of
immigration should not go on climbing up and up...
The Jews were caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, fearing a
repetition of the Hebron Germany Palestine
The British government still maintained its attitude that Palestine Palestine
The British responded to this Arab violence.... The Jewish Agency
urged the Jews to exercise restraint, and while Jews continued to be killed
throughout Palestine
For the Jews, it was galling to see what little effect the British
protection could have....
On November 18, at the [British Royal] Commission's [to
investigate the cause of unrest in Palestine] first public session, Eric
Mills... informed the Commissioners that on his estimate there were, in
mid-1936, 940,000 Arab and 370,000 Jews living in Palestine, and that 134,000
of the Jews had arrived since Hitler had come to power in Germany three and a
half years before....
On November 24, Lewis Andrews, the acting Director of the
Department of Development for the Galilee District, told the Commissioners that
although he and his officials had made every effort to collect evidence of the
Arab charge that Arab farmers had been displaced by Jews, little evidence had been
forthcoming.....
A) WEIZMANN GIVES THE COMMISION A
SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY OF JEWISH PERSECUTION AND OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE
Weitzman went on to explain to the Commissioners the appeal of Palestine
We have never forgotten it; we have never given it up. We have
survived the Babylonian destruction. We have survived the Roman destruction.
The Jews put up a fairly severe fight and the Roman invasion, which destroyed
half of the civilized world, did not destroy small Judea; and whenever they
once got a chance, the slightest chance, there they returned, there they
created their literature, their colonies, towns and communities, and if the
Commission would take the trouble to study the post-Roman period of the Jews,
and the life of the Jews in Palestine, they would find that there was not a
single century in the nineteen centuries which have passed since the
destruction of Palestine as a Jewish political entity, not one single century
in which the Jews did not attempt to come back..."
On November 30 the Commission examined Moshe Shertok, head of the
Political Department of the Jewish Agency.....
Shertok replied: 'you might call the whole process of settlement
of Palestine
There were cases 'where an Arab peasant takes on a Haurani
[illegal Arab immigrant] as a farm hand, leaving him in charge of the farm,
while he himself goes to a Jewish colony to be employed by a Jewish orange
grower, in view of the difference between the wage he gets from the Jewish
orange grower and the wage paid to the Haurani.'...
Arabs gained by Jewish enterprise. They had found in the Jews and
expanding and profitable market for their produce, they had learnt from the
Jews innumerable techniques of building and irrigation....
On December 26 Professor Coupland, one of the members of the Peel
Commission, went to Rehovot to see Dr. Weitzman. Coupland had begun to see a
means of reconciling Arab and Jewish aspirations. He believed that part of Palestine
Coupland's historical research had convinced him that two peoples,
each with a separate sense of national identity, could not live together as equal
partners in a single state. In this way, a Jewish 'mini-State' would come into
being, and the Balfour Declaration be superseded and annulled....
On March 12 Winston Churchill was called before the Commissioners.
In answer to a question from Lord Peel, he declared that the Jewish right to
immigration ought not to be curtailed by the 'economic absorptive capacity of Palestine England
Rumbold took up the questioning [of Churchill]. Was there not, he
asked,' harsh injustice' to the Arabs if Palestine Palestine
The Arabs he [Churchill] said, had come in after the Jews. It was
the 'great hordes of Islam' who 'smashed' Palestine
1937
[Ibid., pp. 178-194]:
"Even before the Peel Commissioners had reached any final
conclusion, the pressures from Arab Governments, and Muslim leaders outside Palestine
Within the Foreign Office, opinion had hardened against the
Jews...
During April, the Government prepared to announce the decision of
the Peel Commission for the establishment of two separate States in Palestine Jerusalem
The Arabs outside Palestine
The Peel Commission Report... [was presented] on June 25...
The Jews... were likely 'to turn every political stone to
undermine Report but unlikely to use force'...
The Peel Commission report was debated in the British Parliament
on July 21....
On July 30... William Ormsby Gore explained the change in British
policy to the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, at Geneva
The Revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky pointed out that 'such
a Jewish State would be destined to be eventually captured by the neighboring
Arab States, the conquest being probably accompanied by destruction and
massacre'....
B) THE
ARABS IN PALESTINE
Ormsby Gore argued, the Arabs in Palestine Syria
In September, in Damascus Palestine Palestine Britain
British troops began an intensive military campaign against Arab
terrorists....
The stage was clearly set for a radical change in British policy,
and for the beginning of the end of the plan of partition. Neither the
continuing flow of refugees from the persecutions in Germany, nor the reviving
anti-Semitism in Poland, affecting as it did more than three million Jews,
could weigh against the threats and pressures of the Arab world. On October 27,
in a Foreign Office memorandum entitled 'Palestine
...we have many enemies in Europe , and there are clear signs that the Arabs
are already turning to them for help against us....
Not only had a British District Commissioner, Lewis Andrews, been
murdered at the end of September, but each week moderate Arabs were being
killed by Arab extremists....
The whole history of the last 20 years in Palestine have made it
abundantly clear that by no other means than terrorism could the Arabs hope to
get what they consider a square deal....
Rendel was now ready to put forward his solution: the scrapping of
partition, and the imposition on the Jews of Palestine
What possible chance had the hopes of Palestinian Jewry, or the
needs of European Jewry, against such arguments, in which the possibility of
the Jews being masters of their own destiny was pitted against Britain's
strategic aims from the Suez Canal to the Straits of Bab el Mandeb; and against
Britain's future relations with four separate existing Arab sovereign States,
including two, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, whose oil was already referred to in the
documents as a vital British need....
1938
[Ibid., pp. 195-215]:
"From the beginning of 1938, British policy focused
increasingly on the very solution which the Jews feared most: the fixing of
permanent minority status on Palestinian Jewry, by means of a severe cut-back,
and eventual ban, on Jewish immigration.....
The pressures which had come from the India
In Palestine
For the Jews of Europe , already the victims of hatreds beyond their control,
March 1938 saw a further deterioration in their hopes of a normal life, for on
March 15 Hitler entered Vienna Austria
Leopold Amery... wrote to Malcolm MacDonald, the new Colonial
Secretary, on 30 May 1938: 'There is no real comparison between the quite
natural resentment of the Arabs at seeing the character of their country
changed, though with material advantage to themselves,
[emphasis mine] and the agony of the Jews of Central Europe, for whom there was
no serious alternative city of refuge'....
The situation of the Jews was becoming desperate. In Germany Austria Poland Rumania Europe , the possibility of Nazi rule, or
pro-Nazi regimes, encouraged and stimulated anti-Jewish feeling. In the Soviet
Union, any attempt to express a specifically Jewish culture was suppressed, and
all Zionist activity stamped out: indeed, several hundred thousand of the more
active Jewish citizens, including all the Jewish Bolshevik leaders who had
roused British hostility in the 1920s, had been wiped out in the Stalinist
purges, then at their height. In Palestine Europe were a constant source of distress for
all Palestinian Jewry....
MacDonald... warned of the danger of any policy that might 'arouse
hostility amongst Moslems in India Britain Palestine
On July 6... an international conference opened in France Evian United States Republic of Santo Domingo
A resolution was passed which stated that 'the countries of
asylum' - such as they were - 'are not willing to undertake any obligation
towards financing involuntary emigration.'...
Since February 1938, with the resignation of Anthony Eden and his
replacement by Lord Halifax as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the
policy of appeasement [of the Arabs] had been actively pursued.... During the
summer of 1938, the British Government moved steadily away from Partition....
In Palestine
The Report [of the Government of Palestine
On August 12, in a secret note to his Cabinet colleagues,
enclosing transcripts of his London Jerusalem
'Great harm had already been done in Palestine by rumors that the
wisdom of Partition had been questioned in the Cabinet, which have encouraged
the Arab terrorists and those behind them to believe that if only they persist
in their campaign they will force us to abandon this policy.'
The extremists were so powerful, MacDonald added, 'that they
virtually dictate Arab policy'....
As 1938 progressed, more and more boats, many of them organized by
the Revisionists, brought Jews from Poland Germany Europe across the Black Sea , through the Aegean Sea , and on to Palestine Europe where their future was clearly bleak. The British Government
responded to this traffic by putting pressure on all the Governments between Poland Palestine
Unprovoked and savage Arab attacks on Jewish civilian settlements
continued unabated.....
Between 1933 and 1939 more than 65,000 German and Austrian Jews,
including many doctors, lawyers and other professional men, found asylum in Britain Palestine
At the end of September 1938 the British Government put pressure
on Czechoslovakia
Leopold Amery... writing... Britain Palestine
Sir Alison Russell.... stated...
'It has been alleged that the Jews have acquired the best land in Palestine
Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, stated bluntly that as 'Palestine Palestine Saudi Arabia Transjordan and the Yemen
On 28 October 1938 the German Government began the
deportation of all Polish-born Jews....
Malcolm MacDonald [British Cabinet]...
'The [British] government had to choose between its commitments to
the world of Jewry and its commitments to the world of Islam. In spite of the
adversities which it was now suffering, the world of Jewry remained extremely
influential. For example, there were said to be 3 million Jews in the United States British Empire itself was to a very considerable extent
a Moslem Empire, some 80 millions of our fellow subjects in India
January-June 1939
[Ibid., pp. 216-235]:
"The crux of the new [British] policy in a secret Cabinet
memorandum on January 18. As the MacDonald memorandum explained:
'We cannot accept the contention that all Jews as such have a
right to enter Palestine
We cannot avoid an eventual clash, if we continue to carry out the
Balfour Declaration, between the forces of persecuted, desperate, brilliant,
constructive Jewry in Palestine Palestine
Arab detestation of the Jewish invasion into Palestine being what
it is, it would be wholly wrong to suggest that this large Arab population
should one day in their own native land and against their will come under the
rule of the newly arrived Jews....'
These paragraphs became the basis of the [British] government's
policy. At the same time, attempts were made to seek the opinions of various
Colonial Governors as to the possibility of at least some small Jewish
immigration elsewhere..... even... to the Soviet Union ...
The Zionists adhered to that very Jewish 'right' to enter Palestine
The Government now made an attempt to persuade Weitzman to abandon
all Jewish rights in Palestine
It was during the Cabinet meeting of January 27, that Malcolm
MacDonald reinterpreted the Churchill White Paper statement of 1922, that the
Jews were in Palestine 'as of right, and not on sufferance'..... [which]
referred only to those Jews who were already living in Palestine Palestine
[Clearly this was not the message of Churchill's White Paper]
During February and March 1939 new decisions were made by the
Cabinet with regard to Palestine Palestine
The British Government were taking active steps to check, and if
possible to halt, the continuing flow of 'illegal' Jewish immigrants fleeing
from central Europe ...... to Palestine
Neville Chamberlain declared... that it was of 'immense
importance' from the point of view of strategy, 'to have the Moslem world with
us', and he added: 'If we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews rather
than the Arabs.'.....
A) THE
1939 PALESTINE
By the end of April 1939, the Palestine Palestine
MacDonald... told his Cabinet colleagues on May 1... certain
points had been inserted to meet Arab pressure and which, perhaps, would have
been omitted if the matter were looked at on strict merits.'.....
The House of Commons debated the new White Paper, against which
Leopold Amery spoke with much force, telling the House that the Government's
watchword had now become 'appease the Arabs', and to do so 'by breaking faith
with the Jews'. Amery went on:
'The [MacDonald] White Paper is a direct invitation to the Arabs
to continue to make trouble. As for the Jews, they are now told that all the
hopes that they have been encouraged to hold for 20 years are to be dashed to
the ground..... all the pledges and promises.. broken...
They [the Palestinian Jews] are a formidable body of people. They
are composed largely of younger men who have undergone military training and
are quite capable of defending themselves.... if only we allowed them....'
Winston Churchill spoke with force and bitterness against what he
believed was both a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration, and a shameful act of
appeasement....
Churchill drew attention to... the large Arab as well as Jewish
immigration into Palestine Palestine
The MacDonald White Paper - known henceforth to the Jews as the
'Black Paper' - led not only to widespread distress among world Jewry, and
strong protests throughout the Jewish community in Palestine, but also to a
widespread feeling among the majority of Jews both in Palestine and beyond that
henceforth the future, not only of Jewish immigration into Palestine, but of
the whole nature of a future Jewish entity there, depended first and foremost,
not upon the British with whom power lay, but upon the renewed efforts,
struggles and perseverance of the Jews themselves. By making the possibility of
Jewish statehood more remote, and even impossible... the MacDonald White
paper... had the reverse effect to their intentions, by stimulating and
sharpening the Jewish goal of statehood and full independence....
JULY-DECEMBER
1939
[Ibid., pp. 236-251]:
"During the summer of 1939 the number
of Jewish 'illegal' immigrants seeking to reach Palestine Palestine
During the autumn of 1939 the British
Government made several attempts to influence United
States
In his article [NT Times writer] Levy
wrote...
'Under normal conditions illegal immigrants
constitute the best constructive elements for the country, since those whose
entry is effected with the approval of national Jewish organizations are
previously trained for Palestine life and labor conditions.
But groups organized by the Revisionists
are based on the wider assumption that any Jew willing to go to Palestine
It is no secret that the Jewish population
of Palestine
It is interesting to note that even the Palestine
...To show its displeasure at the
continuation of 'illegal' immigration, the Government had decided 'a short
while ago' to suspend all legal immigration... At the same time, 'illegal'
immigrant ships would still be intercepted and turned back...
Jewish refugees were being denied entry
into more and more countries... [many other countries] were tightening their
entry regulations and frontier controls....
On September 1 [1939] the Germans invaded Poland Poland Poland
For the Jews of Palestine
[Churchill, now First Lord of the
Admiralty urged Parliament to form a Jewish army in Palestine
'It might have been thought a matter for
satisfaction that the Jews in Palestine
Churchill was not successful.... [There
was fear of] repercussions throughout the Muslim world... This same War Cabinet
of 12
February 1940 discussed the 1939 White Paper decision
to limit Jewish land purchase in Palestine
Despite this setback to their position in Palestine
Early in November 1940 two ships....
reached Haifa Indian
Ocean island of Mauritius
[But Churchill raised an objection]:
"Churchill's telegram was decisive...
the Patria deportees were allowed to remain in Palestine
[But in response to this] the British
Government suspended the quota for legal immigration for three months...
Subsequently, the quota for April to September 1941was also suspended...
[and there were punitive measures for
those Jewish immigrants on the Patria]:
...conditions of the detention of the
deportees 'should be sufficiently punitive to continue to act as a deterrent to
other Jews in Eastern Europe '...
As the war continued, the Zionists were
appalled by the mounting campaign of terror against the Jews of Poland, and by
the continuing refusal of the British Government to modify in any way the
immigration of land purchase restrictions of the 1939 White Paper....
1939-1942
[Ibid., pp. 252-257]:
"From the moment that the Germans
marched into Poland
Only a tiny remnant of the Jews of
German-occupied Russia
[Ibid., pp. 258-271]:
"Following the Wannsee Conference of January 1942, the Nazis
began the systematic deportation and murder of Jews from all over Europe . Their destination was the death camps,
most of which had been set up on Polish soil....
By the time of Germany
Haj Amin, the Mufti, had gone to Berlin Germany
Sir Harold Macmichael, rejected [Iraqi Jewish immigration in view
of persecution in Iraq
Under a previous War Cabinet decision of 27 November 1940, all
'illegal' immigrants who had been detained would have to be deported to the
Indian Ocean island of Mauritius... and held there until the end of the war,
when they would be released, on condition that they then went elsewhere than Palestine....
On 6 May 1942 an Extraordinary Zionist Conference... in
New
York
'We have certainly treated the Arabs very well, having installed
King Feisal and his descendants upon the Throne of Iraq and maintained them
there; having maintained the Emir Abdullah in Transjordan and having asserted
the rights of self-government for the Arabs and other inhabitants of Syria.
With the exception of Ibn Saud and the Emir Abdullah, both of whom
have been good and faithful followers, the Arabs have been virtually of no use
to us in the present war. They have taken no part in the fighting, except in so
far as they were involved in the Iraq
In the British House of Commons, pressure continued to try to
create an Allied open door for those refugees who did manage to escape.....
Despite his pre-occupations with the conduct of the war, Churchill
had continued to support the idea of an eventual Jewish National Home in Palestine
Inside Palestine Britain Palestine Israel
Jewish terrorism... had broken out against the British in Palestine Cairo
[On the other hand] The deliberate murder of Europe 's Jews was reaching its terrible climax,
with more than five million Jews having already perished, and hundreds of
thousands more being murdered each month. For the British policymakers,
however, the overriding concern still seemed to remain that of the Jewish
refugees seeking to reach Palestine
From Palestine
....compared with the total of 9,000 Arabs.... long before the end
of the war, this total was reduced by at least one-half through desertions and
discharges...
The Jewish death toll will never be fully known. Among the million
and a half children who were murdered were many whose names were never
recorded. Hundreds of thousands of individuals, whose names are found before
the war in lists of doctors, nurses or teachers, students or lawyers, writers
or poets, disappeared without trace.
In the Nazi lists of those deported by train to the concentration
camps, tens of thousands from as far away as France Belgium Italy Greece
1945-1946
[Ibid, pp. 272-298]:
"With the end of the war in Europe on 8 May 1945 , Jews all over the world hoped, and
expected, that the doors of Palestine
On 22 May 1945 , two weeks after the German surrender,
Dr. Weitzman wrote direct to Churchill, to ask that Jewish immigration be
resumed. But in his reply on June 8, Churchill informed Weitzman that there
could be 'no possibility of the question being effectively considered' until
the proposed Peace Conference. Weitzman was appalled by this decision to delay
what was, for the survivors of the holocaust, a matter of urgency. On June 13
he replied to Churchill that the contents of Churchill's letter had come 'as a
great shock' to him....
President Truman's wish that the survivors of the concentration
camps should be allowed into Palestine India
The
exodus of Polish Jews did not end at Berlin Europe , Zionist emissaries were organizing
'escape' routes to Palestine
A struggle now began, in Palestine Europe , between the British Government and the
Jews: a struggle marked by increasing bitterness and extremism on both sides.
The British, determined to halt the now swelling tide of 'illegal' immigration
from liberated Europe to Mandatory Palestine, went so far as to return captured
immigrants from the waters of the eastern Mediterranean to which they had
sailed, to the displaced camps in Germany from which they had fled. In Europe itself, at the frontier crossings between
Austria Italy Adriatic , and to Palestine
Inside Palestine Palestine
Since the beginning of 1945, the newspaper [Manchester
large numbers of Polish Jews are in fact succeeding in leaving Poland Germany Austria Italy Palestine
The great majority of the Jews wanted to leave Poland Palestine
Despite British efforts to prevent the Polish Jews from setting
out on the hazardous road to Palestine Poland
Nine months had passed since V-E day and their [the Jews'] British
and American liberators had made no move to accept them in their own countries.
They had gathered them into centers in Germany Palestine
The hunger strike [by Jews on two ships] was, in fact, successful,
and on May 8, the Dov Hos and the Eliahu Golomb sailed
for Palestine, their 1,014 passengers having been granted immigration
certificates from the month's quota....
The Anglo-American Committee published its Report on 1
May 1946 .
Among its recommendations were the end to the land purchase restrictions of the
1939 White Paper, and the immediate grant of 100,000 immigration certificates
to the Jewish survivors. The Jews of Palestine
Frustration now overcame, and indeed almost overwhelmed, the Jews
of Palestine Haifa
On June 29 the British retaliated... sealing... buildings....
arresting three thousand Jews.... including most of the senior members of the
Zionist Executive...
Meanwhile, the pogroms in Poland Poland Kielce Poland Palestine
In Palestine King David Hotel Jerusalem
"Britain, said Churchill, should not be 'in too great a
hurry' to give up the idea that European Jews 'may live in the countries where
they belong' and he continued:
'I must say that I had no idea, when the war came to an end, of
the horrible massacres which had occurred; the millions and millions that have
been slaughtered. That dawned on us gradually after the struggle was over. But
if all these immense millions have been killed and slaughtered, there must be a
certain amount of living room for the survivors, and there must be inheritance
and properties to which they can lay claim.
Are we not to hope that some tolerance will be established in
racial matters in Europe , and that there will be some law reigning by which, at any rate,
a portion of the property of these great numbers will not be taken away from
them? It is quite clear, however, that this crude idea of letting all the Jews
of Europe go into Palestine Europe or to the problem which arises in Palestine
Churchill then referred to the King David explosion. 'It is
perfectly clear', he told the Commons, 'that Jewish warfare directed against
the British in Palestine will, if protracted, automatically release us from all
obligations to persevere, as well as destroy the inclination to make further
efforts in British hearts.' And yet, Churchill added, 'we must not be in a
hurry to turn aside from large causes which we have carried far'.
For many Jews, Churchill's speech, and in particular his remark
about the absurdity of allowing the holocaust survivors to go to Palestine
The history of British hesitations with regard to the war crimes
trials reveals the extent to which the Jews, despite the enormity of their sufferings,
were not considered either a nation, or a people who, having suffered as such,
deserved the support of the existing Allied states....
In October 1946 eleven new Jewish settlements were established in
the Negev in a single night, aimed at ensuring that
the Negev would be included within the boundaries
of the State. Two weeks earlier, on October 1, Weitzman had gone to see Bevin
at the Foreign Office, to ask Bevin to agree to some form of partition, as
first put forward ten years earlier by the Peel Commissioners. But Bevin
replied: 'The Arabs would not accept partition. Was he to force it on them with
British bayonets?' Bevin also spoke of the growing anti-Semitic under the skin
as there exists now'.
The 22nd Zionist Congress opened in Basle on 9 December
1946 . The
new Negev settlements, Weitzman told the delegates,
'have, in my deepest conviction, a far greater weight than a hundred speeches
about resistance - especially when the speeches are made in New York Jerusalem Britain
'Whenever a new country was about to come under Gestapo rule, we
asked that the gates of the National Home be opened for saving as many as
possible of our people from the gas-chambers. Our entreaties fell on deaf ears;
it seemed that the White Paper was more sacred for some people than life
itself.
Sometimes we were told that our exclusion from Palestine was
necessary in order to do justice to a nation endowed with seven independent
territories, covering a million square miles; at other times we were informed
that the admission of our refugees might endanger military security during the
war.
It was easier to doom the Jews of Europe to a certain death than to evolve a
technique for overcoming such difficulties. When human need, the instinct of
self-preservation, collided with the White Paper, the result was the 'Struma ', the 'Patria' and Mauritius
These were stern words, describing a situation which many of the
delegates regarded as a justification for armed resistance....
1947-1948
[Ibid, pp. 297-309]:
"For six years, from 1939 to 1945, the Jews had been caught
between the evil designs of those who sought to destroy them, and the
indifference of those who had no special desire to help them. Six million had
been murdered; not only Jewish lives, but Jewish life, had been blotted out.
Traditions, possessions, culture, the natural evolution of future generations
of many more millions: all had been destroyed, more than one third of the whole
of world Jewry. No longer could the Jews entrust their fate to others; the
Holocaust was a bitter, final culmination of two thousand years of persecution.
By the winter of 1946 the arguments in favor of Jewish statehood were, for the
Jews, of overwhelming clarity.
In Palestine 29
December 1946 the Irgun seized a British major and three sergeants, and flogged
them in retaliation. With the opening weeks of 1947 the violence increased: on
January 1 and Irgun group, in attacking a British police post, killed a
policemen. The British Press began to urge partition, and a British withdrawal.
The British Government was coming close to the end of both its
patience and its self-confidence. On 1 January 1947 , at a meeting of the Cabinet's Defense
Committee, it was agreed 'that to continue this policy in Palestine
Such Arab hostility was well known. But on the morning of January
7 a new factor was introduced into the Middle East discussion, which made Arab goodwill even
more essential. For on that day a 'top Secret' memorandum.. was circulated....
The Middle
East ,
[it] stressed, was likely to provide 'a greater proportion of the total world
increase of production than any other oil-bearing region'....
.... went on to warn of the grave risks involved in offending the
Arabs 'by appearing to encourage Jewish settlement and to endorse the Jewish
aspiration for a separate State'....
The certainty of Arab hostility to partition is so clear...
The Cabinet now came to a decision which marked a turning point in
the history of the British Mandate. Failing 'an agreed settlement' between Jews
and Arabs, the Cabinet minute recorded, 'any solution of this problem would
have to come before the United Nations.'...
On February 14... Bevin announced that Britain
On May 15 the United Nations set up a Special Committee on Palestine
Four of the eleven [UNSCOP] committee members [went] to Haifa
The Jewish refugees [coming from Germany Europe [to face continued and deadly
persecution] with docility. If any one had wanted to know what Churchill meant by
a 'squalid war', he would have found out by watching British soldiers using
rifle butts, hose pipes and tear gas against the survivors of the death camps.
Men, women and children were forcibly taken off the prison ships, locked in
cages below decks and sent out of Palestine
When the four members of UNSCOP came back to Jerusalem, Eban
recalled, 'they were pale with shock', and he added: 'I could see that they
were preoccupied with one point alone: if this was the only way that the
British Mandate could continue, it would be better not to continue it at
all.'...
The Empire Rival was sent [to Europe with the refugees]... Forced by British
troops to disembark on the hated German soil from which they had already fled,
these 'illegals' were sent to a Displaced Persons Camp at Poppendorf.....
On July 4 David Ben Gurion appeared before UNSCOP....
'An unbroken tie between our people and our land has persisted
through all these centuries in full force,'...
The homelessness and minority position make the Jews always
dependent on the mercy of others... they are never masters of their own
destiny; the are entirely defenseless when the majority of people turn against
them.
What happened to our people in this war is merely a climax to the
uninterrupted persecution to which we have been subjected for centuries by
almost all the Christian and Moslem peoples in the old world..
The Jews do not want to stay where they are. They want to regain
their human dignity, their homeland, they want a reunion with their kin in Palestine
Moses... acted from divine inspiration. He might have brought us
to the United States Jordan Mississippi
For the establishment of the Jewish National Home, Weitzman told
the Committee... the time had come for the 'home' to evolve. Partition would,
he believed, be the best evolution in the current circumstances...
The UNSCOP deliberations continued to a background of violence....
[between the British and the Irgun and Stern gangs ]...
Bitterness poisoned all hope of a return to any form of normal
relations while British rule continued.
UNSCOP held its last meeting on August 31. Its majority report...
proposed the creation of two separate and independent States, one Arab and one
Jewish, with the city of Jerusalem
The Arab Higher Committee rejected [it]... The Jewish Agency
accepted....
On 29 November 1947 the General Assembly of the United
Nations voted on the UNSCOP proposals, which were accepted by thirty-three
votes to thirteen, with ten abstentions.... Britain
From the moment of the United Nations vote, Arab terrorists and
armed bands attacked Jewish men, women and children all over the country....
[and all over the world]..
Arab attacks rose in viciousness during the first four months of
1948, as Jewish Jerusalem
The British announced that they would withdraw from Palestine
Many of the Arabs involved in these military acts, and in the
sniping and killing of Jewish civilians, were regular soldiers from outside Palestine Syria Iraq
During April and early May, every isolated Jewish village was
subjected to a massive attack..
Despite the Arab attacks, the Jews were determined not to be
driven out of their promised 'mini' State. In the full scale battles that
developed during April between the Arab and Jewish armed forces, Tiberius, Haifa Acre , Safed and Jaffa Jerusalem
As May 15, the day of the British withdrawal, drew near... four
well armed Arab armies, those of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria and the Lebanon were
massing on the southern, western and northern borders, preparing to invade at
the very moment of the British withdrawal...
On the morning of May 14 the last British High Commissioner left Jerusalem Britain Israel
The coming into existence of the State of Israel Arab State Mediterranean . More than 550,000 Palestinian Arabs had
fled from the area which became Israel; more than two-thirds of them fled to
other areas of Palestine - the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - which had been
allocated under the United Nations Partition Plan to Arab sovereignty, areas
which were at once occupied by Transjordan and Egypt respectively...
Between 1948 and 1952, more than half a million Jews from Arab
lands as far apart as Morocco and the Yemen, flocked to Israel, and rebuilt
their lives without the stigma of second-class citizenship... more than 120,000
Jews... in the decade after 1967, reached Israel from the Soviet Union.
Many nations and people are questioning Israel
No one is mentioning that the
Arab countries had ejected about a million Jewish people and their children
from their countries, confiscated their assets, businesses, homes and Real
estate. Many of the Jews ejected from Arab countries died while their forced
departure from Arab countries, due to hardship, famine and starvation. 650,00
Jewish people and their children of these expelled Jewish people and their
children were resettled in Greater Israel. The Land the Arab countries
confiscated from the Jewish people 120,440 sq. km. or 75,000 sq. miles, which
is over 5-6 times the size of Israel
The Jewish people and their
children during the over 2,000 years living in Arab countries have suffered
Pogroms, Libel claims, beheadings, beatings, false imprisonment and extreme
hardship as a second class citizens. They had their businesses and homes
pillaged, their wives and daughters raped, sold them as slaves, their houses of
worship pillaged and burned, forced conversion to Islam.
Today over half of Israel
The Audacity of the Arab
countries in demanding territory from the Jewish people in Palestine after they
ejected over a million Jewish people and their children who have lived in Arab
land for over 2,000 years and after they confiscated all their assets and Real
estate 5-6 times the size of Israel (120,440 sq. km. - 75,000 sq. mi.), valued
in the trillions of dollars.
Now the Arab nations are
demanding more land and more compensation.
The Arab countries have
chased the million Jews and their children and now the want to chase them away
again, from their own historical land.
The Jewish people have
suffered enough in the Diaspora for the past 2,500 years. It is time for the
Jewish people to live as free people in their own land without violence and
terror.
It is time to consider that
the only alternative is a population transfer of the Arab-Palestinians to the
territories the Arab countries confiscated from the Jewish people and settle
this dispute once and for all. Many Arab leaders had suggested these solutions
over the years.
YJ Draiman
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