Israel Investigates Plot On Mosque

[Scurrilous]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/16/world/main695414.shtml

<snip>

"Two Jewish extremists were questioned on suspicion they planned to fire a missile into the Al Aqsa Mosqe, Islam's third holiest shrine, in hopes of disrupting the planned Gaza withdrawal, police said Monday.

A police statement initially said the two were placed into house arrest. However, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby later clarified that the suspects have since been released. Israeli radio stations reported that the two would not be indicted because they never carried out any part of their plan and expressed regret during their interrogation.

A third suspect, a 61-year-old businessman, was questioned about a plan to fly a model plane fitted with a camera over the Al Aqsa Mosque to provoke Muslim worshippers, police said.

The mosque and a second Muslim shrine sit on a hilltop compound captured by Israel when it took Arab east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The compound, where the ancient biblical Jewish temples once stood, is the most hotly disputed site in the Holy Land."

[Decay]

1. It's a fact now?

"The compound, where the ancient biblical Jewish temples once stood". When was this proved exactly? Oh, CBS, never mind.

[Colorado Blue]

2. Of course it is a fact. This really cannot be "spun" or

disputed.

These temples were ancient in Roman times. Jewish people have ALWAYS lived in Jerusulem, from ancient times, and they have ALWAYS worshipped here. The mosque was in fact built on top of it.

We understand the the Mosque is important to Islam. However, the site of the Temple is our ONE and ONLY, holy site. A little respect would be appreciated, at least.

On some things, we need to agree. And the ancient history of the Jews is one of the them. The deep importance of Jerusalem to the Jewish people is one of them. Yhe Koran itself recognizes the importance of this land to the Jewish people.

If we can't even agree to THIS, where are we going to meet?

I am so sad, Decay.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. It has never been under serious question

The first Temple was built by Solomon about 950 BC and destroyed by the Babylonians 586 BC. The second Temple was constructed after the Babylonian Captivity, about 500 BC. It was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. The Western Wall is all that remains of the second Temple.

Its existence at that site is a historical fact.

If the site had not been sacred to the Jews, it would not have been sacred to Muslims. According the Islamic faithful, it is the place from which the Prophet Mohammad ascended to Heaven. Since Islam borrows from Judaism at least as heavily as does Christianity, Jerusalem is a Holy City to Muslims just as it is to Christianity and Judaism.

That Mohammad would ascend to Heaven from the spot where the ancient Jewish Temple once stood is symbolic of Islam's foundation in Jewish teachings.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Colorado Blue]

5. To fill you in, The Ignored Person has questioned the

factuality of the location of our Temples underneath the Mosque in Jerusalem.

[Coastie for Truth]

6. If the "Ignored Person" has problems

with the quoted portion of the Gospel according to Luke, perhaps the "Ignored Person" should take his doubts to the Most Reverend William J. Levada, Archbishop of the Arch Diocese of San Francisco. Archbishop Levada is assuming the position of Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - which historically included the Court of the Inquisition. Perhaps Arch Bishop Levada can straighten out the "Ignored One" and his doubts as to the veracity of the Gospel According To Luke.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Darranar]

8. Israel's political existence is not based on the Bible...

The Zionist arguments for a Jewish state rarely depended on the Bible, as the movement was mostly secular. It took a while for many of the religious communities to come around.

The inhumanity of humans towards one another is not something specific to Zionists nor is it something common to all Zionists.

Zionism is, pure and simple, support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. That did not require expulsion of the Palestinians, and does not require the brutal policies Israel implements against the Palestinians today. Like all nationalist movements radical Zionism can be highly destructive, and it has been, but that does not make the ideology itself evil or racist.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Darranar]

11. That is nonsense...

The 1948-1949 expulsion happened, the testimonies of those who were expelled prove it, as does the evidence that has been collected from IDF records.

As for brutality and aggression, the 1982 Lebanon war comes immediately to mind.

The Occupation was brutal before either Intifada, though it has grown in brutality since.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Colorado Blue]

17. Respectfully, contemporary statements tend to disagree

to a great extent with revisionist history on this matter. To cite just one source, I refer you to Glubb Pasha, commander of the Arab Legions.

Secondly, on the topic of the Lebanese Civil War, I believe the brutality was widespread - as it was in Jordan, during Black September. The Palestinians under Arafat were accused, by human rights groups, of having slaughtered as many as 100,000 Maronite Christians. Other groups raped, slaughtered and brutalized the Christians. No doubt, revenge was taken, often against undefended innocents.

Tens of thousands were killed in Jordan, when Arafat tried to kill the King and effectively started a civil war. When the PLO was evicted, they went to Lebanon and starting terrorizing the Israelis from the north. That was the casus belli that drew Israel into the war.

[Darranar]

38. The Lebanese Civil War was bloody on both sides...

but that is not relevant to the Israeli invasion, which only added a great deal to the carnage.

Border attacks were two-sided, and tended to be indiscriminate on the part of both sides.

[Colorado Blue]

40. Agreed! But the Israeli invasion, with respect, was most

certainly tied to the expulsion of PLO from Jordan and its subsequent terrorizing of Israel from the north - both shellings of farms and people down below, and terrorist attacks.

Also, there was the long-standing alliance with the Maronite Christians, who were being severely hurt.

Let us pray it doesn't flare up again. I've been worried, what with these rockets back and forth, and the drones, etc.

It's SO EASY to start something in this region and I'm quite sure the Big Powers know that!

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Mairead]

32. I'd suggest you check your facts and reasoning.

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Mairead]

34. Check your reasoning.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

52. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Mairead]

57. You were spouting non-sequiturs. They don't merit a response.

[Name removed]

62. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Mairead]

66. I know you think you're being 'perfectly clear'.

But what you're being 'perfectly clear' about are non-sequiturs and irrelevant.

[Name removed]

67. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Colorado Blue]

68. Especially since people are posting comments about

Zionists that reek of bigotry - or at best, ignorance, questioning whether American citizens should have to register as agents of foreign governments, spreading conspiracy theories like butter, accusing the Israeli government and/or Jewish members of the US government and or Jewish/American citizens of starting and/or causing the war in Iraq; when people are saying that Americans Are Dying For Israel -

You bet I don't think we can take it for granted.

I want some outrage here.

This is NOT business as usual. It's scary. And it's happened before. It's already happening to too many Muslims. Racial profiling - hell - Ann Coulter said it should apply to Jews since we are "swarthy".

Has it occurred to anybody that the divide & conquer Rove-sters are setting people up?

[Lithos]

69. Zionism is, pure and simple, support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Thanks for this description. "Homeland" is far more accurate and inclusive to the many different types of Zionism than "nation".

L-

[Name removed]

74. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Coastie for Truth]

13. Assumption and conclusions are way off.

Oil and petroleum politics have been the issues - not "Zionism" -- take a look at these books--

1) Avi Shliam, "War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History"
2) Matthew Simmons, "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy"
3) John Keay, "Sowing the Wind: The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East"
4) F. William Engdahl, "A Century Of War : Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order"
5) "Google" or "Yahoo" "Mark Sykes" and "Sykes-Picot"

6) "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy" By: Matthew R. Simmons

7) "The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century" by James Howard Kunstler

8) "An Introduction to Economic Geology and Its Environmental Impact" By Anthony M. Evans

9) "Beyond Oil : The View from Hubbert's Peak" by Kenneth Deffeyes

10) "Hubbert's Peak : The Impending World Oil Shortage" by Kenneth Deffeyes

11) "Out of Gas: The End of the Age Of Oil" By David Goodstein

12) "Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" by Daniel Yergin

13) Link to

Now let's put it together--

Petroleum Politics and the Petroleum-Political Complex - Some things that you should think about as you plow through this reading list, especially Engdahl, Keay, and Googling "Sykes" and "Sykes-Pact"

1) Rise of an oil economy before WW1.

2) The surgical dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.

3) The deliberate decision by the UK and France to retain hegemony over the Eastern Littoral of the Mediterranean

i) "Protect" the Suez Canal from a rival power
ii) "Divide and Conquer
iii) Protect trade routes to South Asia and the Persian Gulf

4) The "need" for weak countries on the Eastern Littoral of the Mediterranean to accomplish #3, above:

i) A Muslim-Christian Lebanese region - divided and unstable
ii) A Muslim-Christian or Muslim-Jewish region - also divided and unstable.

Don't take my word. I have given you enough that you can easily tear me apart if I am giving you a line of bull - or if you feel that I am hiding the truth.

And, don't dismiss it out of hand without doing some reading.

US Policy In The ME Bush and Cheney do the House of Saud's bidding right and left and up and own and "yes sir" and "aye aye sir" and "by your leave sir" and holding hands in the moonlight.

And it's sickeningly bi-partisan and non-partisan and a-partisan. And Israel is about a third level down below oil. (Except it has gotten much worse and much more obvious with Bush) See Craig Unger's House of Bush: House of Saud. Every President since Eisenhower - except Carter - jumped to do the Saudi's bidding - and make us ever more dependent on the Saudi's.

Well, now we are looking at a major depression (See Peak Oil, below) worse then the Great Depression of the 1930's - because we didn't want to piss off the Saudis and the Iranians and even Saddam (until 1990) and we were afraid raising CAFE might piss off the Macomb County auto workers (the dudes who killed Vincent Chin).

Bush IS Prince Bandar's "man in Washington" - his lobbyist. The Saudis say "JUMP!" and that's what this group of traitors tends to do. No increase in CAFE, no synthane, no syngas, no oil shale development, no tar sands development, pennies for photovoltaics, caving on EV's. I am in the industry. I see it every day.

Hydrogen fuel cells - yeah - 20 years from now. BFD.

The Saudis and Bush/Cheney; out to destroy the world, one "junk bond" rated Ford or GM at a time. Dismantling American one company at a time. When does GM unload its pensions on FPBGC?

Israel is a diversion from the Petroleum Politics show in the center ring.

Peak Oil - PEAK OIL IS THE ISSUE and we are unprepared. Bush's only answer to "Peak Oil" is military hegemony over oil lands.

I am telling you - as somebody in the energy industry for over 30 of my over 40 years in industry-- you have been sold a bill of goods--->
by the same people who brought you $50/barrel plus oil and $2.50/gallon plus gasoline.

I have spent my entire adult life playing with "berl saddles" and "raschig rings" and "Plug Flow Tubular Reactors" and "Continuous Stirred Tank Reactors" and "Height of Theoretical Units" and "Number of Theoretical Units" and "Zeolites" and "Murphree Plate Efficiency" and "Light SWeet" and "Heavy Sour" "hydrodesulfurization" and all of that other chemical engineering happy horse crap --

The bulk of global middle east policy is in fact decided in HOUSTON, TEXAS, not in Washington, not in Moscow, not in Brussels, and most definitely not in any of the Arab capitals.

Why do you think CAFE hasn't been moved up in decades. Why do you think the junk bond rated "Big Three" could brazenly lobby for no limits on SUV's and no increases in CAFE, and brazen killing of electric vehicles (don't get me started on that one - I froth at the mouth and bounce off of walls, and kick puppies and kittens on the subject of straight electrics) and why do you think every administration since Carter has let Big Oil and the Big Three do it to the US.

Peak oil is coming - it's going to hit us between the eyes - and all of Bush's Hummers and all of Bush's soldiers and all of the NeoCons and their PNAC ideas aren't worth the powder to the blow them away.

Conclusion - As an American, I'm totally sick of foreigners trying to dictate US policy especially US energy policy, and micromanaging US energy companies. Maybe we should put sanctions on Saudi Arabia and make them stop jerking us around on $55/bbl crude oil.

We know for sure that they have an "in" at the White House and in Crawford TX - even holding hands lovie dovie with Bush--- and buy the book.

We know they are pushing American oil companies in their and designed to protect American citizens

One of the scams the Saudis pull is that they set the OPEC price for crude just a few pennies below the "break even" price for alternatives like synthetic gasoline from coal, synthetic natural gas from coal, shale oil, and tar sands - to deliberately discourage investment in these technologies.

The Saudis should really piss off every real American. While the US is not the police force of the world, we used to be (when I was a kid) the engineers and scientists of the world. But the Saudis have so intimidated the oil companies and BushCo that we can't even "engineer" our way out of the $55/barrel pickle we are in.

The isolationist - America first side of my brain says the Devil with the Saudis and Iranians and Iraqis -- conserve and engineer, and become "Energy Independent" -- No More American Blood for Saudi or Iraqi or Iranian Oil - and let's not get screwed up in Nigeria or Venezuela or the Asian former republics of the former USSR.

[Malikshah]

14. Interesting list

Although Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall tends to point to the fact that Zionism, at least in its revisionist form, has played an important role.

As ever, it's a complex issue.

[Coastie for Truth]

15. Many people ignore the "Petroleum Political Complex" issues

which (as an engineer and entrepreneur in the alternative/renewable/green energy industry) is missing the forest for the trees. You really have to taste the Saudi flavor of "K Street" - with the "Big Oil" flavor - and the "Big Three - Gas Guzzler" aroma to get the look and feel of where the power is.

I grew up in a staunchly left - LEFT - LEFT household, staunchly LABOR ZIONIST where Jabotinsky and Begin and Revisionist were not names - but cuss words followed by a symbolic "hocker" spitting gesture and sound.

I think Engdahl plays it down the middle. Possibly a bit anti-British. Haven't really tried to classify Keay.

Although - and I admit, I am biased and prejudiced as all heck about the mineral exploitation of the Arab proletariat by the oil potentates -- and I think the oil potentates - drawing maximum effect from the hand dealt them by the Brits and French after WW1, have screwed the Israelis, the Palestinians, and their own proletariat - while maximizing their own wealth and power. And, I think that arrangement serves the short term profit maximization interests of the oil barons.

And, IMHO - Israel and Palestine are much lower on the US, the Brit, the Big Oil, and the Oil Potentate priority list then most political activists realize. It's all about OIL.

The Israelis, the Palestinians, the Lebanese Christians, and the Lebanese Muslims were positioned after WW1 to war and feud like the Hatfield's and McCoys - to divert local attention from the real game - OIL (and, at one time, protecting the Suez Canal).

[Colorado Blue]

16. SAY WHAT? Oh, please. The settlers, when they first

came, the Ottoman Empire was in charge of the region. It was very sparsely populated - even at the time of the Balfour Declaration many years later, the HIGHEST population estimate I've seen is about 450,000 in a region that now supports some 9 million.

The settlers bought their land at exorbitant prices. I have documentation on this if you need it. It was a feudal system at the time, some landlords were absentee Turks, others were local, wealthy Arabs.

After WWI, when the Ottoman Empire was destroyed by the British, the League of Nations declared that the region, to be called "The Palestine Mandate" was to be given to the Jewish people for a homeland. This was primarily because of horrible persecution in Europe. Even then, it was becoming genocidal and people really didn't know where else to go.

However, apart from the logical religious and historical connections, there WERE and HAD BEEN, Jewish populations living in the region continuously even after the Roman eviction. And there were large populations all throughout the Middle East, which were forcibly expelled after 1948, lest you think the Naqba was one-sided.

Moreover, Arabs immigrated into the region, and both their numbers and incomes increased, along with the Jews. The Jews brought money and enterprise, as the Emir Faisal had hoped.

Unfortunately, the British appointed, against Palestinian wishes, Haj Amin al Husseini, to be Mufti of Jerusalem. At that point all hell broke loose. If you want documentation on that, go to this Islamic website and read the Imam's message and his statement:

http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/

As a fellow DU'er, a liberal and progressive human being, I would appreciate a little more knowledge and lot more compassion, before you judge us so harshly. Because the fact is, most of us DO support the state of Israel, and cannot help what happened in 1948, and nor do we accept the blame for the brutal attack by 5 armies, with genocidal intent, that attacked the day the State of Israel was declared, let alone all the subsequent wars and acts of terror.

If you believe the occupation is brutal, look back into history for your answers. And like Coastie says, ask why the British would have put a man like al Husseini into power, instead of a uniter.

But even more importantly - if you reject the idea that Jews should try to be practical, own land and defend a state - that in order to be good Jews we should keep our little heads down and live as second class citizens wherever we can find - for awhile - a safe haven, then I think you are wrong. That idea got us persecuted for 2000 years, until half our number was exterminated in WWII.

The challenges of trying to establish and defend a modern nation state, during a century in which the world went from horses to airplanes and two horrible World Wars and the Holocaust shattered reality for everybody, may have made us less than pristine.

That doesn't mean we aren't good people and we do not deserve your blame and your scorn.

Thank you.

PS: Naturally, I can document all claims made above. There is a great deal of revisionist history being taught today, which seeks to delegitimize not only the state of Israel but the history of the Jewish people. So I check and counter check what I say.

[Englander]

18. Have you seen this?

"A note on sources:

* Please use discretion when referencing obviously biased or factually questionable material. Vanity websites are generally not as credible as the New York Times, the Washington Post or the UK Guardian and are likely to be locked. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself is the author readily identifiable and likely to be cited by the mainline world press or encountered in an alternate format (mass-published book, academic journal, newspaper article, radio or TV show).

Proper use of certain words:

* Do not compare Middle East regional leaders and parties to Hitler or the Nazis. Use of these terms is considered inflammatory and should be avoided."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x21970

[Colorado Blue]

24. Are you suggesting that al Husseini WAS NOT a person

who spent the war years working with Hitler?

OK, from Wikipedia, some background on the war years and subsequent events.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_the_Jews#Arab_and_Islamic

During the Holocaust, the Middle East was in turmoil. Britain prohibited Jewish immigration to the British Mandate of Palestine. In Cairo the Jewish Lehi (perhaps better know as the Stern Gang) assassinated Lord Moyne in 1944 fighting the British closure of Palestine to Jewish immigration, complicating British-Arab-Jewish relations. While the Allies and the Axis were fighting for the oil-rich region, the Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni staged a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq and organized the Farhud pogrom which marked the turning point for about 150,000 Iraqi Jews who, following this event and the hostilities generated by the war with Israel in 1948, were targeted for violence, persecution, boycotts, confiscations, and near complete expulsion in 1951. The coup failed and the mufti fled to Berlin, where he actively supported Hitler. In Egypt, with a Jewish population of about 75,000, young Anwar Sadat was imprisoned for conspiring with the Nazis and promised them that "no British soldier would leave Egypt alive" (see Military history of Egypt during World War II) leaving the Jews of that region defenseless. In the French Vichy territories of Algeria and Syria plans were drawn up for the liquidation of their Jewish populations were the Axis powers to triumph.

The tensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict were also a factor in the rise of animosity to Jews all over the Middle East, as hundreds of thousands of Jews fled as refugees, the main waves being soon after the 1948 and 1956 wars. In reaction to the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Egyptian government expelled almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews and confiscated their property, and sent approximately 1,000 more Jews to prisons and detention camps. The population of Jewish communities of Muslim Middle East and North Africa was reduced from about 900,000 in 1948 to less than 8,000 today.

snip

A further note: I use the Imam's site because people flat do NOT BELIEVE ME about al Husseini and the effects of Hitler on the Middle East, even if I quote encyclopedia sources. I have been called "delusional" and "brainwashed" for mentioning this history.

The fact that a MUSLIM supports the simple fact of this history has been beneficial in showing that the history of al Husseini isn't a ZIONIST PLOT but actually happened.

[Englander]

41. No,are you?

Any more ridiculous questions?

It's not all about "Islamo-Nazis",y'know.

And who said anything about a "ZIONIST PLOT"?

:shrug:

[Colorado Blue]

50. Mr. Englander - with respect, I am well aware of what you

say.

But there are people here in the United States who are completely unfamiliar with the history of the Jewish people, or of the modern Middle East, or of the interaction between big business, specifically Big Oil, and WWI and WWII, let alone the war in Iraq.

These people are demonizing Jewish people and/or the State of Israel, attempting to put the blame for the war on Iraq on us, and spreading Jewish Conspiracy Theories all over the 'net.

Any attempt to counter their claims is met with yet another conspiracy theory. Even 9/11 is regarded by quite a few people who post on DU, as having been a Jewish charade - the planes weren't there, the building collapsed because of explosives put there by the (Jewish) owner of the Twin Towers, etc. etc. This of course was done at the direction of Israel and/or the Jewish members of PNAC, who are primarily academics so go figure - in order to get us into a war with Iraq, all of which is done to benefit the Jews, who want to Control All The Oil And Dominate The World, and so on.

The opposing theory, that of the Jewish Art Students, says the Jews KNEW about 9/11 since Israeli agents, posing as art students, were spying on the Al Qaeda terrorists, but didn't do anything to warn Bush. As if Bush didn't have DOZENS of warnings already, but that's a little detail that is somehow getting lost in the conspiracy madness. In any case, of course, this was all done to benefit the Jews, who are plotting to Control All The Oil And Dominate The World.

It's impossible. One conspiracy theory feeds another. The fact that these two cancel each other out seems to have escaped people.

So, knowing history and knowing the horrible toll taken because people actually believe Jewish Conspiracy Theories, I'm both angry and concerned that they are becoming common currency in these threads. They crop up again and again, whether discussing AIPAC, Iran, Iraq, the war on terror, 9/11, you name it.

And they're overlapping now with people's perception of the I/P struggle, which really has nothing to do with those things, except for one common link: oil, and the way the policies of Empire, back in the 19th century, affected the shape of the world we live in today.

Our only hope is that people read history, and learn something. Otherwise we're in for big trouble. And the Muslim world will be - in fact IS - being victimized as well.

It is frightening. So I'm using the weapons I have: books.

[Mairead]

20. " Naturally, I can document all claims made above."

Good. Why don't you have a go at that, since your first four claims are, shall we say, 'incomplete'.

And while you're at it, perhaps you could speak to the issue of how each of your points legitimises what was done to the Palestinian Arabs?

I'll seed the discussion: if I get a corrupt judge to deed to me your home, and a couple of corrupt cops to come help evict you so I can move in, have I become the new legitimate owner of your home?

[Coastie for Truth]

22. Why don't you just skim through the first few books in Append 13

Here's the list again--

1) Avi Shliam, "War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History"
2) Matthew Simmons, "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy"
3) John Keay, "Sowing the Wind: The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East"
4) F. William Engdahl, "A Century Of War : Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order"
5) "Google" or "Yahoo" "Mark Sykes" and "Sykes-Picot"

Engdahl is very well foot noted with an extensive bibliography.

And let me repeat the study guide I gave in Append 13 --

Petroleum Politics and the Petroleum-Political Complex - Some things that you should think about as you skim through this reading list, especially Engdahl, Keay, and Googling "Sykes" and "Sykes-Pact"

1) Rise of an oil economy before WW1.
2) The surgical dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.
3) The deliberate decision by the UK and France to retain hegemony over the Eastern Littoral of the Mediterranean

i) "Protect" the Suez Canal from a rival power
ii) "Divide and Conquer
iii) Protect trade routes to South Asia and the Persian Gulf

4) The "need" for weak countries on the Eastern Littoral of the Mediterranean to accomplish #3, above:

i) A Muslim-Christian Lebanese region - divided and unstable
ii) A Muslim-Christian or Muslim-Jewish region - also divided and unstable.

Don't take my word. I have given you enough that you can easily tear me apart if I am giving you a line of bull - or if you feel that I am hiding the truth.

And, don't dismiss it out of hand without doing some reading.

[pelsar]

23. corrupt?

is it by definition: selling land to jews must mean that they are corrupt?...is this similar to when palestenians sell land to israelis...they are corrupt as well.

this should be interesting....and dont forget that your "definition" of corruptness" should work all around the globe, for that period-as that was the culture at that time.

(consistency for all...) go for it!

[Mairead]

29. Yes: when a government is the power behind theft, it is corrupt

Because governments exist to prevent theft, not to make it easier or prevent the victim from resisting. When a government plays the role of thief, its principal officials at the time are meant to be hanged, per the principles established at the international war-crimes tribunal at Nürnberg in 1946.

Under the UN Charter, indigenous people have title to their land regardless of any formalisms arising out of colonialism.

The only exception--an unaknowledged one--to that was to be Palestine, where, because of the colonialist Balfour Declaration, the Diaspora Jews were to be given half the country based on tribal mythology and ya boo sucks to the ragheads!

This charming exception was to be made in despite of the fact that the Diaspora Jews hadn't lived in Palestine since about 300 CE, were no longer genetic Semites to any meaningful degree (whence the oft-repeated 'Jews look like everybody else'), and technically weren't even Jewish! (Halachically Jewishness is passed through the mother, and the Diaspora men, by taking non-Jewish women as wives on their way north, made their descendents non-Jews and broke any legitimate thread that could possibly have connected them to Palestine.)

The Zionists, as Ben Gurion admitted in private, were incomers who had no right to Palestine (see Shabtai Teveth's biography). By 1948, they had legal title to about 6% of the land, and --mostly through post-war immigration-- had increased to 30% of the population. But they were to be given 51% of the land under 'Partition'. (The better 51%, too)

Where did the US and UK get the right to give away land to which the Palestinian Arabs had clear title under the UN Charter? The same place they got the right to invade and take over Iraq, killing its citizens and stealing their oil: they took it.

The Nazis tried to assert that their actions were legal under their laws. They were hanged for them anyway. Nixon tried to assert that if the President does it, it's not a crime. He would have been sacked anyway, had he not resigned.

The rule of law says that freely made agreements about what the law is always take precedence over any person's or state's claim to exceptional privilege. The establishment of Israel on Palestinian land was a crime against humanity. The fact that no one has yet prosecuted that crime or made just restitution to the Palestinian people does not make the theft not-a-crime, it only makes it a scandal.

[Colorado Blue]

36. Bullshit. First, what do you mean about "genetic Semitism"?

DNA testing has linked modern Jewish people, including Europeans, very closely to Palestinian Arabs, and even more closely to Kurds.

I find your comment inappropriate in any case. The Jewish heritage has transcended race and time. Many Jewish people are of African descent and the majority of modern Israelis are of Middle Eastern descent, Mizrachi and Sepharidic Jews.

It was hardly the fault of the settlers and the refugees from European terror that YOU do not find that the political and economic structure of the Ottoman Empire meets your standards. It was the prevailing standard of the day. The settlers acted in good faith. They certainly were not, nor are we today, responsible for the feudal system of the Ottoman Empire OR of the fact that the Brits took over the region.

Arab leadership, it must also be mentioned, ALSO approved of the idea. Please review the Faisal-Frankfurter papers and the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement. The Emir Faisal was no less than a Hashemite, son of the Sherif of Mecca. Although probably you disapprove of him also because he was an aristocrat.

Well, that wasn't the Jews' fault EITHER.

And how the hell do you know how many modern Jews are descended from which father and which mother?

Christ almighty, we have A SEER in our midst, as well as a person who can go BACKWARDS IN TIME and fix the lousy social, economic and political structure of the Ottoman Empire and Mandate Palestine!

Wow!

Maybe you can ALSO go back in time and make it possible for Jewish people to live in Russia and Europe without being persecuted?

But even if you can do that, you CANNOT take away our right to have a homeland, where we don't have to be a minority and take a bunch of crap like THIS.

[eyl]

42. Besides what has already been pointed out to you below,

two things.

1) As Colorado Blue pointed out, the Jews' purchase of land was in full accordance with both the law and the custom at them time. Furthermore, your mention of the Balfour declaration is a red herring; at no point (that I'm aware of) did the British facilitate the purchase of land by Jews, and in fact the British government placed considerable limitations on the ability of Jews to immigrate or to purchase land.

2) You wrote:

"By 1948, they had legal title to about 6% of the land, and --mostly through post-war immigration-- had increased to 30% of the population."

That's (almost) true, but somewhat misleading. Acccording to a British report (the Survey of Palestine) in 1946, Jews owned 8.6% of the total land. However, the implication that the rest of the 91.4% was Arab-owned is false; the amount of land owned by the Arab population was approximately 20%. The rest was state-owned land. Thus, assuming your population figures are correct, the proportion of land owned by Jews out of the total of privately-owned land was approximately the same (~30%) as their part in the population.

"But they were to be given 51% of the land under 'Partition'. (The better 51%, too)"

Have you looked at a map of the partition plan? About 60% of the land allocated to the Jewish state was the Negev Desert.

[Mairead]

45. You're finessing.

the Jews' purchase of land was in full accordance with both the law and the custom at them time. Furthermore, your mention of the Balfour declaration is a red herring; at no point (that I'm aware of) did the British facilitate the purchase of land by Jews, and in fact the British government placed considerable limitations on the ability of Jews to immigrate or to purchase land.

The British facilitated the purchase of land by Jews through their support of Jewish immigration pursuant to Balfour.

And the fact that they did it according to colonialist rules is hardly a get-out-of-jail-free card. All it means is that they helped exploit the Arabs. It's like the claims by the Whites in Rhodesia that they bought the land--they were buying stolen goods. It's just their bad luck that the victims are now in a position to object and claim their property back.

the amount of land owned by the Arab population was approximately 20%. The rest was state-owned land.

Sorry, but 'state-owned' would have meant 'Republic-of-Palestine-owned' had the Palestinians got their rights rather than being forced to suffer Balfour's colonialist theft. It wouldn't have been up for grabs. And your '20%' statement ignores traditional property rights. The Arab farmers, under the UN Charter, acquired implicit title to their traditional lands via the Charter's laws against colonialism. Their titles weren't yet on the books, but they would have been enforceable.

Have you looked at a map of the partition plan? About 60% of the land allocated to the Jewish state was the Negev Desert.

I have a copy of the map, yes. Israel was also to get the two freshwater lakes and most of the seacoast--and all of it for free!--so your point is...?

[eyl]

46. Well...

"The British facilitated the purchase of land by Jews through their support of Jewish immigration pursuant to Balfour. "

Read the British White Papers - they certainly didn't facilitate any such thing.

"And the fact that they did it according to colonialist rules is hardly a get-out-of-jail-free card. All it means is that they helped exploit the Arabs. It's like the claims by the Whites in Rhodesia that they bought the land--they were buying stolen goods. It's just their bad luck that the victims are now in a position to object and claim their property back."

You might have a point if the British were selling the land; which they weren't. The Arab landowners were more than eager to sell.

Let me ask you this, then - under what circumstances would you consider a land purchase by Jews legitimate?

"Sorry, but 'state-owned' would have meant 'Republic-of-Palestine-owned' had the Palestinians got their rights rather than being forced to suffer Balfour's colonialist theft. It wouldn't have been up for grabs."

Their colonial theft from whom? The area was previously an Ottoman province.

"And your '20%' statement ignores traditional property rights. The Arab farmers, under the UN Charter, acquired implicit title to their traditional lands via the Charter's laws against colonialism. Their titles weren't yet on the books, but they would have been enforceable."

Nothing I can see in the UN Charter says that state land reverts to private ownership. Had a State of Palestine been established (IOW, if the Arabs had accepted any of the partition plans) the state-owned territory would have reverted to the control of the government of Palestine. Otherwise, it was up to the UN determined their disposition (as it did in the Partition plan).

"I have a copy of the map, yes. Israel was also to get the two freshwater lakes and most of the seacoast--and all of it for free!--so your point is...?"

A) My point is that the Jews didn't get the "better 51%"
B) What two freshwater lakes?
C) While the Jewish State was allocated a greater portion of the coastline, it was hardly "almost all" - by my admittedly rough estimate, it got between 50-60%.
D) Given that we've just discussed Jewish land purchase, where did you get "and all of it for free!"?

[Mairead]

47. Please quote me more accurately

I said 'most of the seacoast', not 'almost all the seacoast'. As near as I can measure, the Israelis were to have got about 120km; the Arabs about 75km. That looks like 'most' to me--about 62%.

D) Given that we've just discussed Jewish land purchase, where did you get "and all of it for free!"?

I said 'almost all'. When someone's ownership is going to go from 6% to 51% without them having to pay for it, that certainly sounds like 'almost all of it for free' to me.

I got the 6% ownership and 30% population figures from 'Jews For Justice' (http://www.cactus48.com/truth.html), who might have got them from the research of Edward Said (alav hashalom), a well-respected scholar. Where do you get your numbers from?

The lakes are Tiberias and Hula.


When you make such statements as 'Their colonial theft from whom? The area was previously an Ottoman province' when the 'from whom' should be clear from context (the Palestinian people), you leave a sour taste in my mouth. I'm not playing for points. If you are, then have the goodness to say so, okay?, and I'll go do something more productive with my time.

I take a similarly dim view of your attempted sleight-of-tongue here: Had a State of Palestine been established (IOW, if the Arabs had accepted any of the partition plans) the state-owned territory would have reverted to the control of the government of Palestine. Otherwise, it was up to the UN determined their disposition (as it did in the Partition plan).

The UN per its own Charter had no right to give away the land belonging to the Palestinian Arab people. The 'State of Palestine' should have been established as part of the end of the LoN mandate, as Jordan was.

But Balfour openly admitted in 1919 that the needs and wishes of the Palestinian people were going to be ignored in favor of a 'solution' based on Zionist religious and hegemonic mythology:

'For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country...The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land,'

That colonialist plan should have expired with the creation of the UN and ratification of its Charter. That the US and UK went ahead with it anyway was an international crime.

[Colorado Blue]

48. I'd like to make another point, and that has to do with

the severe retrenchment of British support for the Jews in the 30's.

Basically, they hung us out to dry just as Hitler was winding up.

No doubt, the importance of Arab oil had something to do with this. Riots and murders - including those of moderate Palestinian Arabs - broke out again in the '30's - fomented by al Husseini, and this provided the excuse to betray the Jewish community.

Chamberlain expressed British Empire philosophy perfectly when he stated, "If we must offend either the Arabs or the Jews - by all means offend the Jews."

But it must be remembered that the British themselves had put al-Husseini in power: a divider, a radical, who killed or drove away many moderate Palestinian Arabs as well as victimizing Jews.

The White Paper that I believe Eyl refers to, assumed that the region would NOT be industrialized nor would modern farming techniques be implemented. Industrialization and modernization were EXACTLY what the Jews had in mind.

In view of Coastie's comments concerning Sykes-Picot, the LAST thing the British wanted, was modernized, industrialized nation-states in the Middle East. This would have challenged their economic and territorial dominance of the region. And in fact, this resistance to modernization, industrialization and independence was a model for the treatment of the "third world" that holds to this DAY.

In any case, immigration and land sales were severely restricted. During the war, the British imposed a blockade on refugee ships. The "Struma" incident alone cost thousands of lives when she was sunk in the Mediterranean, and remains a bitter scar to this day.

***


As far as the result of the final partition, the shape and size, please consult the Wikipedia article I posted. The war of 1948 is described there also.

Moreover, the British tried to see that the Jews had no arms with which to defend themselves, in the war of Independence. They actually confiscated arms, knowing that the Jewish people would be left helpless - and fighting was already going on! Murders and terrorist incidents and riots had taken a toll on the Jewish community since the '20's and WWII had had a devastating effect on Jewish communities in North Africa.

Yet, the British would have left us helpless.

Arms were acquired from Czechoslovakia. The Jewish fighters were facing FIVE well-equipped armies. One, the Arab Legion, was led by an Englishman, Glubb Pasha.

***

Further, I'd like to know exactly what is "free" about losing 1% of a nation's population? That's what happened in 1948 alone. In America that percentage would be some 30 million human beings.

That's not counting the wounded and bereaved.

[Colorado Blue]

54. Whoops. 1% of US population is +/- 3,000,000. nt

[Colorado Blue]

49. Blood and Oil

"The British promised to create a Jewish state. Instead they served their own Arab-linked interests as millions died in the Holocaust."

Please read the attached article.

Above and beyond any other considerations - the Jewish people were desperate. I do not understand why even a skeptic, with the merest sliver of humanitarian impulse, can't acknowledge this simple fact.

My grandparents WALKED out of Czarist Russia early in the 20'th century. They left everything behind them because they were in absolute fear of their lives.

Many who stayed, are dead, or suffered persecution under Stalin and subsequent Soviet regimes. We all know what happened in WWII, in the lands to the West.

http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhistory/Crash_Course_in_Jewish_History_Part_64_-_The_British_Mandate.asp

snip

The New York Times in its history of Israel (Israel: from Ancient Times to the Modern Nation, pp. 38-39) writes of this time:

"The riots of August, 1929, were ignited in Jerusalem over a rumor spread by Arab leaders that Jews were going to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third most holy shrine. Fighting soon spread throughout Palestine. The worst massacres were in Hebron, sacred to Jew and Muslim alike, where 67 Orthodox Jews - men, women and children - were slaughtered by Arabs and 50 more wounded. Pierre van Paassen, a reporter, described the horror that he witnessed by lamplight in a Jewish seminary in Hebron: 'The slain students in the yard, the dead men in the synagogue, slashed throats and mutilated bodies.' By the time order was restored 133 Jews had been killed, 399 wounded."

The 1930s saw more rioting and more massacres, especially in Jaffa and again in Hebron.

In response, the British convened the Peel Commission which almost totally did away with the Balfour Declaration that had originally promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine on both sides of the River Jordan.

In July of 1937, the Peel Commission issued a report which said that all the Jews should be confined to a tiny state that would include a sliver of land along the Mediterranean coast and a small piece in the north abutting the west side of the Lake Kineret ("Sea of Galilee").

[Coastie for Truth]

55. Your basis

"I got the 6% ownership and 30% population figures from 'Jews For Justice' (http://www.cactus48.com/truth.html ) is a flakey group that is neither Jewish nor for justice and has been thoroughly dissected before.

Ultimately funded by Allison Weir and James Ennes (of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" - remember them) and Paul Findley and Richard Scaife.

Please do your homework.

[Mairead]

56. "Ultimately funded by..."

Says who?

[Coastie for Truth]

61. But of course

Try the "Explosive New Study on TV News Coverage of Israel-Palestine to be Released" in the IP Forum right here on DU at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=90936 with an unreliable analysis by an unreliable Zionist, fascist, militaristic shill, "Costie..." in "Append 2. Interesting" at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=124&topic_id=90936&mesg_id=90944

Of course, I am not reliable or truthful, just a Zionist, Likudnik, unreliable shill for the PNAC and Neocon crowd, and as "Coastie" indicates - a militarist. So, you should read the entire thread, including the links.

Also, Lithos' comments in "21. Locking" at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=124&topic_id=90936&mesg_id=91186 where he says:

"While USNewsWire does release news, its focus is on PR distribution, not independent news gathering.

This makes this an extension of the site www.ifamericansnew.org which in turn is not credible for use as a lead article as it appears to be a vanity front of a single person, Alison Weir with most of the material culled, or cribbed, from other sites.

Lithos
I/P Forum Moderator
Democratic Underground"

Of course, don't rely on anybody's excerpts - read the appends and the links.

I am not trying to be condescending or pompous or arrogant - just trying to answer your question --- and asking you to read the materials and do your own analysis.

[Mairead]

64. "Of course, I am not reliable or truthful, just a Zionist, Likudnik,..."

Thanks for clearing that up. When you don't give people simple answers to simple questions, it's always a temptation to think the worst, so it's nice to have an actual self-assessment as a framework for analysis.

[Mairead]

65. I have to apologise and correct myself

I did say 'and all of it for free'. When I wrote that, the antecedent was the lakes and seacoast. But when I objected later to what I thought was your misquote (I do apologise!) the antecedent had shifted in my mind to the total 51% (or 55% by another estimate), of which 45% ('almost all of it') was what they would have got 'for free'.

And, just to clear something up, I happened to come across the data for that Survey of Palestine. It turns out the oft-quoted 6% ownership figure comes from that document: in 1943, the Jews had paper title to 6% of the land. How many of those purchases would have stood up to scrutiny under non-colonialist conditions and how many would have been treated as sales of 'stolen goods' is a question that can't be answered at this point.

[eyl]

71. In order

"I said 'most of the seacoast', not 'almost all the seacoast'."

OK, looked again, sorry. Still, it's not an overwhelming majority.

"I said 'almost all'. When someone's ownership is going to go from 6% to 51% without them having to pay for it, that certainly sounds like 'almost all of it for free' to me. "

The Arab portion went from 20% to 49%. would you also characterize that as "most all of it free"? Again, you're failing to make the distinction between state- and privately-owned property.

"I got the 6% ownership and 30% population figures from 'Jews For Justice' (http://www.cactus48.com/truth.html ), who might have got them from the research of Edward Said (alav hashalom), a well-respected scholar. Where do you get your numbers from?"

I read the relevant portion of the Survey report and calculated the percentages from the figures therein.

"The lakes are Tiberias and Hula."

Somewhat disingenuous, given that, prior to Jewish settlement, the Hula was a big swamp, not a freshwater lake. Besides that, the Hula was sold tow The Palestine Land Development Company (A Jewih organization) in 1934.

"The UN per its own Charter had no right to give away the land belonging to the Palestinian Arab people. The 'State of Palestine' should have been established as part of the end of the LoN mandate, as Jordan was. "

Once more - show me where the UN Charter prohibits private land sales. Furthermore, the controlling document - the Palestine Mandate - clearly recognizes Jews as having national rights to the area; IOW, the land was held in trusteeship for both Arabs and Jews. So you're contention might be true if the UN brought in a third group; but it didn't. The presence of Jews as well as Arabs predated the Mandate (not to mention the UN Charter). Given that, had, as you suggest, a state been established at the end of WWI (the LoN Mandate didn't end until 1948) then there would still have likely been two states created - the idea of partition didn't originate in 1947.

"But Balfour openly admitted in 1919.."

Balfour can say whatever he wanted. But when it came to actions, the fact of the matter is that the British imposed considerable restrictions on Jews in the Palestine Mandate. No such restrictions were placed on Arab land purchase or immigration.

(From your post #65)
"And, just to clear something up, I happened to come across the data for that Survey of Palestine. It turns out the oft-quoted 6% ownership figure comes from that document: in 1943, the Jews had paper title to 6% of the land. How many of those purchases would have stood up to scrutiny under non-colonialist conditions and how many would have been treated as sales of 'stolen goods' is a question that can't be answered at this point."

As I said, it comes out to 8.6%; do the math. In any event, several things should be noted:

A) The Jewish buyers tended to focus on buying uninhabited land. The Peel Comission report states

The shortage of land is due less to purchase by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population. The Arab claims that the Jews have obtained too large a proportion of good land cannot be maintained. Much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamps and uncultivated when it was bought.

B) The prices payed by Jews when purchasing land from Arab landowners were very high - no "colonial gouging". In 1944, the price Jews payed for (mostly arid or semi-arid) land in Palestine was $1,000 or more per acre; for contrast, fertile black soil in Iowa was going for $110/acre. (Aumann, Land Ownership in Palestine: 1880-1948).

C) On those occasions where tenant farmers did have to be moved, they were payed compensation in accordance to law, often above what was legally required. Furthermore, there were instances in which squatters who moved onto the territory after purchase but before settlement, which were also bought off; effectively, the Jewish purchasers payed for the land three times in those instances.

[Mairead]

72. By now I should be inured, perhaps, but I'm not

When someone continues to come out with propagandistic irrelevancies like "Still, it's not an overwhelming majority.", and "show me where the Charter prohibits private land sales", I feel personally insulted and a little angry at the lack of respect. That decreases my willingness to be civil toward the one who treats me that way. I think my willingness at this point is exhausted and I'll go spend my time in more productive ways.

[eyl]

73. suit yourself

I feel equally insulted when someone throws out anything opposing his viewpoint, not to mention slurs anyone who dares suggest he's mistaken.

[Coastie for Truth]

43. "Sykes-Picot Agreement"

was a deliberate French-British plan to carve up the Ottoman Empire and create weak divided states on on the Eastern Littoral of the Mediterranean. This was to give the Brits and French a form of hegemony and to "protect trade routes" (i.e., the Suez Canal) - remember the Brits had colonial dominion over South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Kashmir) and Easr Africa). (See Engdahl, referred to previously).

If it hadn't been the Jews - it would have been some other minority dropped into the Littoral - along with the Orthodox Christians and the Maronites.

I realize this does not fit the James Ennes - Allison Weir - Paul Findley model.

[Name removed]

60. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Colorado Blue]

25. First, I've got a questions for YOU.

What exactly justified the torture and murder of innocent settlers and dhimmi Jews, that began in the '20's? Was it the purchase of land, the creation of farms and businesses?

Or did it have something to do with violent incitement from bad leaders? No doubt, there were cultural misunderstandings - all of which could have been handled rationally. But this was something else and it is the root of ALL the problems we've had since:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Palesti...

snip

There was violent incitement from the Palestine Muslim leadership that led to violent attacks against the Jewish population. In some cases, land purchases by the Jewish agencies from absentee landlords led to the eviction of the Palestinian Arab tenants, who were replaced by the Jews of the kibbutzim. The Arabic speakers prior to World War I had the status of peasants (felaheen), and did not own their land although they might own the trees that grew on that land. When Jews, who grew up with European laws, purchased land they did not always realise that the villagers on that land owned the trees. This was often a source of misunderstanding and conflict. The olive tree is particularly important as it can remain productive for over one thousand years.

The British government placed limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine. These quotas were controversial, particularly in the latter years of British rule, and both Arabs and Jews disliked the policy, each side for its own reasons. Tensions led to widespread violent disturbances on several occasions, notably in 1921, 1929 and 1936-1939. The 1929 disturbances were primarily violent attacks by Arabs on Jews (see Hebron). In response to numerous Arab attacks on Jewish communities, the Haganah was formed on June 15, 1920.

Beginning in 1936, several Jewish groups such as Etzel (Irgun) and Lehi (Stern Gang) conducted their own campaigns of violence against British and Arab targets.

snip

With respect to the formation of Irgun, etc. in the mid-30's, it should be noted that this occurred primarily to the restriction on Jewish immigration and land purchases in the Mandate AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME AS HITLER WAS BEGINNING HIS ASSAULT ON EUROPEAN JEWRY. The Jewish people were caught in a trap. They would have settled for life in a Palestinian concentration camp.

Is it possible that some resentment of the Palestinians stems from these times? How many died in the Holocaust as a direct result of the Arab riots in the '30's and the subsequent closing of Palestine as a refuge?

snip

The following article resonates with recent problems concerning al aqsa Mosque and the Wailing Wall, since the following disaster was caused by Jewish assertion that they had rights to visit the wall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riots_in_Palestine_of_1929

The worst atrocities occurred in Hebron and Safed, where massacres of Jews occurred. In Hebron, Arab mobs killed 67 Jews and wounded many others. The lone British policeman in the town, Raymond Cafferata, was overwhelmed and the reinforcements he called for did not arrive for 5 hours (leading to bitter recriminations).
Cafferata later testified that:

"On hearing screams in a room I went up a sort of tunnel passage and saw an Arab in the act of cutting off a child's head with a sword. He had already hit him and was having another cut, but on seeing me he tried to aim the stroke at me, but missed; he was practically on the muzzle of my rifle. I shot him low in the groin. Behind him was a Jewish woman smothered in blood with a man I recognized as a police constable named Issa Sherif from Jaffa in mufti. He was standing over the woman with a dagger in his hand. He saw me and bolted into a room close by and tried to shut me out-shouting in Arabic, "Your Honor, I am a policeman." ... I got into the room and shot him."

Most of the other Jews survived by hiding with their Arab neighbors. The surviving Jews were evacuated from the town.
The other major centers of violence were in Safed, where 18 Jews were killed in a brief attack, and in Jerusalem.
During the week of riots, the fatalities were:
• Killed: 133 Jews, 116 Arabs.
• Wounded: 339 Jews, 232 Arabs.

The Jews were mostly killed by Arabs, while the Arabs were mostly killed by British-commanded police and soldiers.

On September 1, Sir John Chancellor condemned "the atrocious acts committed by bodies of ruthless and bloodthirsty evildoers... murders perpetrated upon defenseless members of the Jewish population... accompanied by acts of unspeakable savagery."
These riots eventually had the net effect of reducing Jewish immigration into the region, and on their abilities to purchase land – resulting in untold deaths in the Holocaust.

snip

It should also be noted that much of the land ultimately settled by the Jews was state or wasteland:

The British placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in the remaining land, allegedly contradicting the provision of the Mandate which said "the Administration of Palestine... shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency... close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes." According to the Israeli side, the British had by 1949 allotted over 8500 acres (34 km²) to Arabs, and about 4000 acres (16 km²) to Jews.

MORE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_the_Jews#Ar...

During the Holocaust, the Middle East was in turmoil. Britain prohibited Jewish immigration to the British Mandate of Palestine. In Cairo the Jewish Lehi (perhaps better know as the Stern Gang) assassinated Lord Moyne in 1944 fighting the British closure of Palestine to Jewish immigration, complicating British-Arab-Jewish relations. While the Allies and the Axis were fighting for the oil-rich region, the Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni staged a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq and organized the Farhud pogrom which marked the turning point for about 150,000 Iraqi Jews who, following this event and the hostilities generated by the war with Israel in 1948, were targeted for violence, persecution, boycotts, confiscations, and near complete expulsion in 1951. The coup failed and the mufti fled to Berlin, where he actively supported Hitler. In Egypt, with a Jewish population of about 75,000, young Anwar Sadat was imprisoned for conspiring with the Nazis and promised them that "no British soldier would leave Egypt alive" (see Military history of Egypt during World War II) leaving the Jews of that region defenseless. In the French Vichy territories of Algeria and Syria plans were drawn up for the liquidation of their Jewish populations were the Axis powers to triumph.

The tensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict were also a factor in the rise of animosity to Jews all over the Middle East, as hundreds of thousands of Jews fled as refugees, the main waves being soon after the 1948 and 1956 wars. In reaction to the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Egyptian government expelled almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews and confiscated their property, and sent approximately 1,000 more Jews to prisons and detention camps. The population of Jewish communities of Muslim Middle East and North Africa was reduced from about 900,000 in 1948 to less than 8,000 today.

[Mairead]

31. As Ben Gurion wrote in his diary, the Jews had suffered desperately

at the hands of the Nazis and their fellow-travellers--but the Palestinian Arabs were IN NO WAY involved in that suffering! They were being victimised by the Jews, who'd been victimised by everybody else.

I'd suggest that you read Teveth's biography of Ben Gurion. It might open your eyes a bit. Or maybe not.

[Colorado Blue]

35. Believe me - I am NOT denying the suffering of the

Palestinian people. Nor am I suggesting they had what to do with antisemitism in Europe.

However, events IN THE MIDDLE EAST during these years most certainly contributed to the suffering of and deaths of Jewish people both in Europe and in the Middle East. This must be accepted. The role of the British and of al Husseini, who with men like him, actively played upon people's fears and fomented deadly riots, can't be swept under the rug. Worse, the incitement to violence and hatred CONTINUES. Is it any wonder it finds an echo in JEWISH extremists?

People must accept the role of the genocidal speeches that continue today, as well as the several wars, in the continuous suffering of the Palestinian people. It must also be accepted that NO CREATIVE SOLUTIONS WHATSOEVER have been put forth by the Arab world, to help the Palestinian people. Their solution is to destroy Eretz Israel and I find that reactionary, undemocratic and unacceptable and I WILL not accept the blame for their cruelty.

And moreover I repudiate utterly the idea that supporting such destruction is a democratic, liberal or progressive idea.

BILLIONS of dollars in reparations have been offered and they have been refused. I find that unacceptable. I find it unacceptable that the Palestinian people have been used as pawns. I find it unacceptable that their suffering has been made permanent and institutionalized, to be used as a weapon against the West and against the infusion of Western ideas into the region, as well as against Israel herself.

Moreover, the violent philosophies espoused by Muslim Brotherhood and Greenshirts and PLO and Black September and Hamas and Hezbollah, and the repressive Islamist politicians, have also increased the suffering of MUSLIMS in the Middle East and Africa, as well as helping keep the pot boiling in Israel. Their repressive policies toward women have made matters WORSE for women all over the region as the veil has become politicized. They are pressurizing matriarchal groups and women over Africa. Hamas has been found guilty of honor killings in the OT and a girl was recently murdered, a Bedouin, for apparently befriending Israelis. Another recent honor killing in Jerusalem claimed the lives of two young women and badly injured a third.

I find that undemocratic and unacceptable. And I will not take the blame for THAT either. Yet, Israel is accused of rascism and of being an apartheid state.

Indeed, focusing on Israel, blaming the very existence of Israel for all the problems of the Arab world, as was done in a recent report to the UN, has been both the A#1 excuse for the lack of reform in the region, as well as continuing the violence and suffering in that tiny place.

The violence inflicted upon the Palestinian people in the wars and occupation and as retaliation for terrorist acts has been terrible. And so has been the violence inflicted upon the Jewish people. Mutual responsibility for the past years of the Intifada must be accepted. Violent speeches and incitement and the teaching of revisionist history MUST stop. That goes for Israel as well. Jewish extremists must be dealt with appropriately and if they threaten people or hurt people they should go to JAIL.

So, we are now trying to go forward. It would be most helpful if people would respect that this is a complicated situation in which suffering has been incurred by all, and inflicted by all.

And again, if there is a shortage of land for the booming Palestinian population, I suggest that creative solutions FROM ARAB STATES be part of the solution.

Finally, I suggest that a great deal of Palestinian suffering is economic. Decent jobs and the hope of a decent future are absolutely vital if they are to have decent lives. This can't happen in a war zone. It cannot happen if the preachers and the teachers and the terrorists are running the show and inciting violence, and objecting even to the ideas of Jews near the al Aqsa mosque - which after all is built on top of the Jewish temple.

We cannot go forward if Arab maps don't even indicate ISRAEL at all!

So I suggest less blame, less flippancy, less nasty comments and more cooperation to solve these problems RATIONALLY.

[Colorado Blue]

26. More documentation, including some background on

"dhimmi" and other forms of antisemitism in the Middle East, which have and are firing the conflict.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_anti-Semitism

snip

Claims that certain Jews had been transformed into lowly animals

Al-Jahiz (d. 869), a ninth century Islamic zoologist and belles-lettriste who authored The Book of Animals, writes that the mouse, cheetah, eel, white ant (termite), and lizard were originally sinful Jews. (See Al-Jahiz, Omar bin Bahar, Kitab Al-Hayawan. Cairo: Mustafa Al-Bai Al-Halabi and sons (1943), Col. I, p. 309.)

Qur'an 7:163 says that God told a group of Sabbath-breakers living by the sea "Be ye apes, despised and rejected" to punish them for breaking the Sabbath. This verse (interpreted to mean that they were turned into apes) is sometimes used by hostile groups to mock the Jews, on the grounds that these must have been Jews, since the Sabbath is a commandment which (according to Islam) God demanded of Jews but not of his other followers. Thus Hamas says:
"Allah did not mete out the punishment of transformation on any nation except the Jews. The significance of it is actual change in the appearance of the Jew and perfect transformation from human to bestial condition... from human appearance to the form of genuine apes, pigs, mice, and lizards..." (Source: The Hamas monthy publication Falastin Al-Muslima (London), September 1996, series of articles by Ibrahim Al-'Ali, pp. 54-55.)

Similarly, the following quotes are excerpted from a sermon broadcast on Palestinian TV by Dr. Mustafa Najem, Dec. 6, 2002:
"The Jews...are the brothers of monkeys and pigs...Allah has warned us against their evil and their arrogance, and has said: 'You will find that the most brazen among mankind, with hatred towards the believers, are the Jews and the Idolaters.' ...The Jews are Jews, and we are forbidden to forget their character traits even for a moment, even for a blink of an eye. O Servants of Allah! The Jews are those who tried to murder your Prophet in order to expunge the call (to Islam)....Prayer and blessing to the Imam of the Jihad fighters, Mohammed, who waged a Jihad against the Jews...The Jews...are Idolaters, heretics, whose faith is false."

In the Islamic Aghlabid dynasty (9th through 11th century, North Africa) Jews were forced to wear a patch that had an image of a monkey, and were also forced to affix said image to their homes. (For Christians, the image was of a pig.) (F. Viré, "Kird," Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition.)

The following sermon was delivered at the Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan mosque in Gaza. The speaker was Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, an appointed member of the Palestinian Authority Fatwa Council, and is former acting Rector of the Islamic University in Gaza.

"Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill the Jews, the Americans, who are like them, and those who stand by them. They are all in one trench against the Arabs and the Moslems. ... It is forbidden to befriend Israelis or to aid them. Don't love them or enter into agreement with them, don't help them or sign accords with them. Anyone who does this is one of them. This is the word of Allah, blessed be He. They, they are the terrorists. They should be slaughtered. They should be murdered. Such is the word of Allah."

I posted a similar speech, just given the other day, in the P.A., and televised.

The Jews are the cancer spreading all over the world...the Jews are a virus like AIDS hitting human kind...Jews are responsible for all wars and conflicts...." He went on to say, "Do not ask what Germany did to the Jews but what the Jews did to Germany. Through the Zionist movement the Jews incited many nations to start economic war against Germany and boycotted it...True, the Germans killed and burnt Jews but the Jews exaggerate the numbers to gain propaganda advantages and sympathy..."

snip

"This attack comes just days before Abu Mazen's scheduled meeting with President Bush, and during the week the civilized world commemorated the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

"Is this genocidal sermon the kind of peace dividend that the people of Israel can look forward to? The first thing that Abu Mazen should say to President Bush at the White House is that he fired the head of Palestinian Broadcasting and all those associated with the broadcast of this 'big lie,'" Hier and Cooper concluded. Center officials also called on the US government to link funding of Palestinian entities to their actions, not promises.

snip

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/J...

Naturally, THIS post is receiving very little attention in the I/P forum.

[Colorado Blue]

27. Read these, then ask who's been victimizing whom:

More background, a long a well-balanced article, including sub-articles and links.

I suggest for starters, though, a quick look at the map on the opening page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Israeli_conflict

A glance at the MAP will immediately suggest a question to any thoughtful and non-biased viewer: why, with all the land available to the Arab League states, and the TINY size of Israel, hasn't SOMEBODY helped the Palestinian refugees? And if the Palestinian people need more land, since their population has grown enormously, hasn't somebody in the Arab world given them a hand?

Keeping the Palestinian people trapped in refugee camps and inciting the O.T. to violence, awaiting since 1948 the destruction of Israel and the murder of her people, has led only to a bloody series of wars and endless violence.

snip

On May 15, 1948, the Arab League Secretary General Abdul Razek Azzam announced the intention to wage "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." (Benny Morris, Righteous Victims p.219)

snip

I would like to point out that the fear of genocide, coming on top of the Holocaust, was very much a factor in the war of 1948. Threats like this continue to be broadcast throughout the Middle East.

Do you think they might have something to do with the violence of the past few years?

snip

About 2/3 of Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled by Israeli forces from the territories which came under Jewish control (see Palestinian Exodus); Arabs also expelled Jews from the territories which came under their control. In addition, many Arab countries' Jewish populations fled due to anti-Jewish sentiment and, in some cases (e.g. Iraq) legal oppression (see Immigration to Israel from Arab lands). About 700,000 Palestinians (estimates vary from 520,000 to 957,000 <1> (http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/MEPP/PRRN/proverview.html)) and estimated 600,000 to 900,000 <2> (http://www.jimena-justice.org) Jews became refugees. In a few cases, (e.g. in Morocco) local Arab governments encouraged Jews to stay, and some Jewish leaders (e.g. in Haifa) encouraged Arabs to stay. Jewish refugees were absorbed by Israel; Palestinian refugees were neglected by most Arab nations, which by some were blamed for the poverty and hatred prevailing in some Palestinian camps, while others blamed Israel for their expulsion. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East was established to alleviate their condition. The fighting ended with signing of the Rhodes Armistice, but only two states eventually signed a peace agreement with Israel: Egypt (1978) and Jordan (1994).

Another article on the withdrawal from some settlements, including a couple which had previously been destroyed in violence and war, and then rebuilt, and which are now to be abandoned to the Palestinians:

Yad Mordechai, Nitzanim, Kfar Etzion and Kfar Darom share much in common. All were lost to invading Arab forces during the vicious existential war imposed on the newborn Jewish state in 1948. All were eventually won back, all resettled and reclaimed from the utter ruin to which unbridled hate reduced them.

The first to fall, and perhaps the most emotively remembered, was Kfar Etzion on the Jerusalem-Hebron road. Its area was purchased by Jews in 1927, but the small settlement founded there was devastated in the 1929 murderous Arab pogroms, which also eradicated Hebron's ancient Jewish community. The settlement was resurrected in 1932 and named Kfar Etzion for the orange grower who owned the holding. It was redestroyed in the bloody Arab insurgency of 1936. The JNF restored it in 1943, when it became a religious (Hapoel Hamizrahi) kibbutz.

Kfar Etzion was defeated on May 14 - the day Israel declared its independence. Its captured defenders were cold-bloodedly massacred.

Next in the tragic chronology came Yad Mordechai, bordering the edge of today's Gaza Strip and named after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising's heroic leader. The Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz straddled the strategic invasion route by which the Egyptian army strove to penetrate all the way to Tel Aviv. It was, therefore, pounded with the full might and ferocity of the Egyptian army.

snip

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/J...

[Coastie for Truth]

21. Thank you for straightening me out

Reference: David I. Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara

Google "Edgardo Mortara", Yahoo "Edgardo Mortara" -- Don't take my word.

I am Liberal, a Progressive, a Democrat, given the privilege of posting on a Progressive, Liberal, Democratic-identified web site.

As a liberal progressive humanitarian Jew - I do not blame the Roman Catholic Church for Pius IX, for burning Torah scrolls, for burning copies of the Talmud, or for the kidnapping, forced conversion, and reported molestation of young Edgardo Mortara. I do not blame the Liberal, Progressive, Leftie "Opus Dei" for seeking the Sanctification Pope Pius IX. I am Progressive enough, liberal enough, humanitarian enough, and forgiving enough to realize this was one aberrational pontiff at one aberrational time in history.

[Mairead]

30. And that means what? (nt)

[pelsar]

39. it means.....

This charming exception was to be made in despite of the fact that the Diaspora Jews hadn't lived in Palestine since about 300 CE, were no longer genetic Semites to any meaningful degree (whence the oft-repeated 'Jews look like everybody else'), and technically weren't even Jewish! (Halachically Jewishness is passed through the mother, and the Diaspora men, by taking non-Jewish women as wives on their way north, made their descendents non-Jews and broke any legitimate thread that could possibly have connected them to Palestine.)....

that your just making up stuff.....my favorite being " by taking non-jewish women"....hmmm any percentages on this one?....or if we follow through, all we have to do is keep out the palestenians long enough (whats that formula?) until their genetic/legit connection is weakened enough and PRESTO...they no longer can lay claim.

I do believe thats what you are saying isnt it?...I mean if it works for the jews...must be work for the palestenians. Anyway...how long is it?

[Name removed]

44. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[pelsar]

51. Mairead...havent traveled much?

You don't find Arabs or non-Diaspora Jews with blond hair and blue eyes. Guess you havent spent much time in the refugee camps of Jabalya or Shati...quite a few blond haired blue eyes there..... but that is hardly the point....your just playing one of those games which try to say: them jews arent really the same as those the romans kicked out because.....

there are other theories along the same lines I've come across, but they're irrelevant as I cant recall coming across any universal laws which state the definition of a jew is by direct descendant of 90% of the genes to Moshe and his kin. (or whatever precentage you deem appropriate.

But of course if we go with your little theory, like I said, all we do is keep the palestenains out, let them breed with others for a couple thousand of years and presto....they're "gone". This of course you will agree to.

Realistically, the cossacks, the nazis, the saudis etc never really bothered with your theory of who is and who isnt a jew......so its quite irrelevant. What is relevant is our culture and religion place our history over here in israel....and given our experiences in the world at large, I really dont think we're going to listen to others about who is and who isnt a jew (unless of course they're trying to figure out who to kill or which synagogues to burn or cemetaries to ruin....-but then according to you those things really arent jewish....)

[Mairead]

58. Okay, you are playing for points. So...go play with yourself

[Colorado Blue]

53. REALLY? Take a gander at a picture of Haj Ami al Husseini.

He had red/fair hair and BLUE EYES.

Maybe that's why Hitler liked him so much.

So nu, genetic purity you're seeking? I'm sure there are a lot of websites where you would feel comfortable!

And BTW we are not playing for "points". For us it is a LITTLE more serious than that.

Finally, there have been a number of studies suggesting that, in the cases of migration, it is frequently IN FACT, THE WOMEN who migrate, and not the men. Daughters are given in marriage - this is typical of MANY groups. They then move to the household of the husband's family. This may be a tent away, or a mile away, or 50 miles away.

There are people in modern Turkey with Chinese genetic markers.

I did a study of this when I was writing extensively about the tribal art of Central Asia, Iran/Caucasus and Anatolia.

Also, it is far more likely to be women who are taken in rape than men.

[Mairead]

59. Since you're another one, I'll tell you what I told your friend

or perhaps sock-puppet: go play with yourself.

[Colorado Blue]

63. I think that's a nischt-nischt! What ARE we coming to?

The socks should be playing with each other? Or worse, with themselves?

They must be conspiring in the sock box.

Oi.

[pelsar]

70. i think i got it......

let me see if I understand correctly: the ottoman empire was not allowed to sell land to the jews since they "stole" the land....I'm assuming that this means they couldnt sell the land to others as well....german christians, russians etc...hmmm how about egyptian arabs? or syrian arabs.....or is selling land now just limited to those who have lived a certain amount of time (how much?) in a certain geographical area and have the lineage to prove it....


gosh this is very confusing..to whom could the turks sell the land?.........or they couldnt sell it at all, does that mean the natives who bought from the turks also have to "return it"...unless they have a certain genetic makeup? Does this little theory work "across the board to include other countires and empires as well?....you know the UK? France etc-or does it just apply in one small part of the globe for some special reason?-thats what I thought....just in one small corner of the globe

this little theory of yours that the jews arent really jews, that the turks had no right to sell the land from their empire sure gets messy if we try to apply it and avoid the problem of it being applied just to the "pseudo jew" (defined as a genetically ill equiped jew who for some psycological reason believes hes a jew)

sounds like "just the pseudo jews have illegal purchases from the ottamon empire. everybody else is ok.............

________________________
what this is, is simply another version of the "protocols of zion" kind of thing. Another way of saying the jews (er pseudo jews) are different and their buying land, living in a certain part of the world, and the subsequent creation of a country is simply illegal, because.....(fill in your theory of choice)

of course such an attempt to single out and define "jews' is full of contradictions-but that never stopped anything or anybody.

[Colorado Blue]

75. I am not sure why, in the 21st century, we are having a

conversation about Jewish genetic composition, especially as versus the supposedly "pure" genetic composition of another group.

Isn't that sort of passe'? I mean, wasn't that sort of a Hitlerian thing, used to justify the extermination of 6,000,000 people?

I find this sad and disturbing. And it is extremely distasteful, not to mention insulting, that the heritage of Judaism is assumed to be some sort of tribal superstition on the one hand, and genetically dependent on the other.

Amazing, after more than 5,000 years of culture, of ideas, of evolving philosophy and accomplishment, that we should thus be limited and defined.

I find it sad and disturbing that a term which means, essentially, the love and need of a people for their homeland, is being deliberately misused and construed as something evil - which in turn, apparently - justifies the persecution of our people.

I find it sad and disturbing that Jews should be denied the ability to buy land and form a government - AGAIN - as we have in so many Diaspora communities. It's really bizarre that THIS attempt is retrospective, back to the 19th century - when the people living then, let alone we, living today, had absolutely NO control over the situation.

I mean, we're pretty sexy but time-travel? Not yet:)

So - maybe you can explain to me why we're talking about this stuff?

I thought the lead topic was the Mosque, which of course it is vital to protect - and yet, which would be so much easier to protect if the very presence of Jewish people in its environs wasn't considered a casus belli - and thus - a target for outside agitators and anybody who wants to start a war!

But then, considering the very first post was questioning whether our temples are, in fact, UNDER the mosques - well, damn. What do we have to do?

As I said - I'm sad and disturbed.