Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: history

Showing posts with label history. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 04, 2018

Wow, Jeremy Corbyn Actually Believes Jews Did Not Immigrate To Then-Palestine Till 1945! (Daled Amos)

Last week, Elder of Ziyon pointed out Jeremy Corbyn's ignorance of history:

Here is the text of what Corbyn said:

I was brought up at school being told, um, that Israel was founded on a piece of empty space, and that they managed to make the desert bloom, and they built things when there was nothing there before. Anybody that studies the history of the region would know, at the end of the Second World War – 1945 to 1948 period – Palestine had media, had industry, had education, had universities, had a relatively high standard of living for the whole region, and was a coherent society and a coherent state. It was a denigration of that which enabled Western opinion to be, um, put together in support of Israel.

Corbyn claims that the infrastructure already in place around 1945 to 1948 proves that Jews contributed little to the land.

But why 1945 to 1948?

Apparently, Corbyn assumes that Jews only started immigrating to then-Palestine starting in 1945 -- as refugees from the Holocaust.

The first major wave of Jewish immigration was during Aliyah Aleph from 1882-1903, followed by Aliyah Bet from 1934-1948, which was a reaction to Nazi Germany. Even Aliyah Bet is broken down into 2 stages: 1934 to 1942, which was an effort to help Jews trying to escape Nazi persecution and genocide; 1945-1949 (the dates Corbyn references), which was an effort to find homes for Jewish survivors.

But Jewish contributions to establishing the infrastructure of Palestine date from over a century earlier.

In his book, Jerusalem: A Biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore notes in passing the condition of the land over 100 years before 1948:

There were no carriages, just covered litters. She possessed virtually no hotels or banks; visitors stayed in the the monasteries, the most comfortable being the Armenian with its elegant, airy courtyards. However in 1843, a Russian Jew named Menachem Mendel founded the first hotel, the Kaminitz, which was soon followed by the English Hotel; and in 1848 a Sephardic family, the Valeros, opened the first European bank in a room up some stairs off David Street (emphasis added) p.360.

Let's take a look at these and other contributions Jews made to the Palestinian infrastructure, leading to the re-establishment of Israel.

Hotels

The Jerusalem Post has an article on Menachem Mendel Kaminitz's background:

He and his wife arrived in Haifa on the first day of Elul [in 1833] and continued on to Safed, where they joined a community of devout disciples of the Gaon of Vilna. This community was founded in 1810, two centuries ago this year [2010], and 138 years before the creation of the state of Israel.

...While in Europe [collecting funding for the Jewish community in Israel] he published what may have been the first guide book for immigrants and tourists to the Holy Land. Titled Korot Ha’Itim (Happenings of the Times), the book documents the hardships incurred by Jews living in the Holy Land, particularly during the Safed riots and the earthquake [1837]. But it also contains useful advice and many positive remarks about the country despite the hazards and the difficulties that Menachem Mendel endured. The book was published in Vilna in 1839. A Yiddish translation was published in Warsaw in 1841, for those people not sufficiently fluent in Hebrew.

Banks

Jacob Valero also immigrated to Israel, over a century before the re-establishment of Israel:

He was born in 1813 in Istanbul, and his family came to pre-state Israel from Turkey. He later became a moneychanger. In 1848, along with a number of other local businessmen, Valero established the bank in a small two-room apartment in the Old City of Jerusalem, near the Jaffa Gate.

...As the bank's operations expanded, it opened two more branches in Damascus and Jaffa.

...Valero became a local hero because of his connections with the Ottoman rulers in Jerusalem and Istanbul and with the global figures who used the services of his bank. He was a noble figure on the local scene, which blossomed in the final days of the Ottoman Empire and received a number of the honors the disintegrating Ottoman government passed out to local dignitaries in regions distant from its center.

Electricity

On the other hand, there is Pinhas Rutenberg, who immigrated in 1919. Rutenberg founded the Palestine Electric Company, which later became the Israel Electric Corporation. In 1921 the British gave him the electricity concessions for both Jaffa and later, Jordan. The Jaffa Electric Company, establish a grid in 1923 that eventually covered Jaffa, Tel-Aviv, the surrounding area and British military installations in Sarafend [located between Rishon LeZion and Be'er Ya'akov]. He received support from then-colonial secretary Winston Churchill.

The Palestine Electric Company Ltd in the early 1920s. Public Domain

Rutenberg also has the distinction of being the first Palestinian citizen under the British Mandate in 1925, when the British enacted a law creating Palestinian citizenship.

Air Travel

In addition, Rutenberg also founded Palestine Airways.

1934 5 seater airplane of the Palestine Airways
Note the name in Hebrew is 'Israel Airways,' similar to the coins and stamps
during the British Mandate that included the abbreviation for Eretz Yisrael in Hebrew

1937 The airline was taken over by Britain's Air Ministry in 1937 until 1940. with the intention of it eventually being transferred back into private hands. It operated from July 1937 until August 1940. Palestine Airways stopped operating then when its aircraft were taken over by the RAF for the war effort.

Potash

While Rutenberg was granted the electricity concession, Moshe Novomeysky - with difficulty - got permission from the British to mine in the Dead Sea area. He immigrated to Israel in 1920 and developed the Palestine Potash Company, which became the Dead Sea Works. Novomeysky made a point of developing good relations with the Arabs in the area. Because of his reputation, kibbutzim he helped established were spared from the anti-Jewish riots of 1936-39.

Monument commemorating Moshe Novomeysky at Dead Sea Works.
Credit: Dr. Avishai Teicher Pikiwiki Israel

Bakery

Angel's Bakery is not the first bakery in Israel - Salomon Angel bought out Trachtenberg Bakery in Bayit VeGan when it went bankrupt in 1927:

"There was a primitive oven, to which the whole neighborhood would come to leave their pots of hamin [a slow-cooked dish for the Sabbath, know by Ashkenazim as cholent], and then argue about which pot was whose," recalled Vicky Angel, Danny's widow, as she reminisced about the first days of the Angel Bakery.

Salomon Angel himself was a seventh-generation Jerusalemite, member of a Sephardi family that traces its lineage back to Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492.

You can begin to get the idea how, according to historian Howard Sachar:

By 1930, 1,500 Jewish-operated factories and workshops were producing textiles, clothing, metal goods, lumber, chemicals, stone, and cement, with a total capital value of about PL [Palestinian Lira] 1 million.

But Jewish contributions did not stop in 1930.

Radio

The Institute for Palestine Studies has an article on Radio Jerusalem which started in 1936, "only two years after the founding of the first official Arab radio station in Cairo (mid-1934) and one year before the death of the renowned Italian physicist Marconi (1937)." It was established by the British Mandate authorities and broadcast in Arab, Hebrew and English. But 4 years earlier, in 1932, the British had given a license to Mendel Abramovitch. His broadcast became known as Radio Tel Aviv and continued until April 1935, when the British revoked his license in order to prepare for the Palestine Broadcasting Service.

Hospitals

According to an article, "Bedouin Health Services in Mandated Palestine", during Ottoman rule from 1516 to 1917, the Palestinian Arabs

relied mainly on traditional medicine including herbal medicine, bone-setting cauterization, blood-letting, leeching, cupping as well as amulet writers, midwives and male religious healers.

Into this background, the Rothschild Hospital was founded in 1854 in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. When there were too many patients for the hospital to handle, a new hospital with more beds was built outside the Old City. The hospital was directed by Dr. Bernhard Neumann, a native of Warsaw who had studied in Cracow and Vienna. He had been in Jerusalem since 1847. It offered free treatment to all patients regardless of religion or nationality, and in 1918 it was taken over by Hadassah and became Israel's first Hadassah Hospital. The Rothschild Hospital was followed by two others in Jerusalem, Bikur Holim and Misgav Ladach. Another Rothschild-funded hospital was later set up in Zichron Yaakov for the farmers and laborers in the area.

Original Rothschild Hospital nameplate. Credit: Yoninah

Sachar rounds out the picture:

Hadassah’s dedicated mass membership by 1930 had established in Palestine four hospitals; a nurse’s training school; 50 clinics, laboratories, and pharmacies; and an excellent maternity and child hygiene service in most of the cities and in a number of the larger villages. The Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) maintained three infant welfare centers in Tel Aviv

Railway

An article in Middle East Monitor almost sounds like it could have been a source for Corbyn's statement above about Jewish "denigration" of Arab accomplishments. Entitled Israel is gradually eroding both Palestinian infrastructure and any hope for statehood, it claims:

The Jaffa–Jerusalem railway, which opened in 1892 under Ottoman rule, was the first railway to be built in Palestine and one of the first to be constructed in the Middle East. An important economic and social development at the time, the line was operated in turn by the French, the Ottomans and, after World War I, the British who were mandated to administer Palestine. The railway administration was transferred in 1920 to Palestine Railways, a company owned by the British Mandate government.

Actually, while it was opened under Ottoman rule, the truth is that the Turks had little to do with making the railway possible, other than giving permission for others to build it for them. And it was more than merely operated by the French.

The person most responsible for the establishment of the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway was Yosef Navon, a Jewish entrepreneur from Jerusalem. He spent three years in Constantinople to promote the project and in 1888 received a permit from the Ottoman Empire, which included permission to extend the line to Gaza and Nablus. Because he did not have enough capital to move the project forward, Navon went to Europe in 1889 to find a buyer for the concession, and finally found one - in France. A French company, with Navon as a member of its board of directors, built the railway. It started running in 1892 and is considered the first Middle Eastern railway.

A train arriving at the Jerusalem railway station, on the first railway in the Middle East
in the 1890's. Public Domain

This is not an exhaustive list of Jewish businesses and projects, but it does given an idea of the extent of the Jewish contribution to Palestine during the hundred years or so leading up to the British Mandate and the re-establishment of Israel.

After all, as Sachar writes, in addition to the industrial and economic infrastructure,

It [The Yishuv] had developed its own quasi-government, its own largely autonomous agricultural and industrial economy, and its own public and social welfare institutions.

Apparently, one of the problems with Jeremy Corbyn hobnobbing with terrorists is that his statements about Jews and Israel become nothing more than a Corbyn-copy of their narratives and fabrications.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Testimony In British Parliament Proves British Had Advanced Warning of King David Hotel Bombing -- and Laughed It Off (Daled Amos)

On Monday, July 22, 1946, the Irgun set off an explosion that destroyed part of the King David Hotel used by the British military, killing 91 people and injuring 46.

King David Hotel after the explosion. Public Domain

An article in The New York Times in 1981 reported on a reunion of some of those involved in the attack. It gives background on what led to the attack, noting that the Haganah, the Irgun and Lehi all endorsed the plan:

They were provoked by a British Army action against Jewish leaders and settlements on June 29, 1946. On that ''Black Saturday'' about 25,000 troops smashed into homes and kibbutzim, arresting 2,500 Jews and confiscating weapons.

''One search party marched into the dining hall at Givat Brenner shouting 'Heil Hitler!' Mr. Clarke wrote. ''Another party scrawled red swastikas on the walls of the settlement's classrooms. While searching the Bank Hapoalim in Tel Aviv, a British officer shouted at one of the clerks, 'What you need is the gas chamber!'''

This 4-minute excerpt from the documentary "Pillar of Fire" gives more background, both on what led to the bombing of The King David Hotel and the conflicting stories on whether there was any warning given:

The attack and its severity have come to be accepted as proof that Menachem Begin and his followers were terrorists, no better than Palestinian terrorists. In 2006, historian Tom Segev went so far as to write:

The terror attack on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was in its day the equivalent of the Twin Towers.

In his rebuttal of Segev, Yisrael Medad - an unofficial spokesperson for the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria - notices a couple of significant differences:

No civilian casualties were intended.
No suicide mission was planned.

Specifically:

There was a telephoned warning. It was received. Flash grenades and a petard were set off. Phone calls from within the hotel from a signals officer who witnessed the shooting of a British Major were made to three separate security stations. The British troops on the roof opened fire for a few minutes on the escaping Irgun soldiers. Nothing set off alarm bells but we do have testimonies that the Brits all thought it was a bluff. [emphasis added]

One of those testimonies comes from Adina Hay-Nissan, who at the time was a teenage girl with the job of calling in the warning. At the reunion, she recalled that she called up the British command that was stationed in the hotel and warned them, ''This is the Hebrew resistance uprising. We planted bombs in the hotel. Please vacate it immediately. See, we warned you.''

There is corroboration of this, delivered before the British Parliament on May 22, 1979, by Lord Greville Janner. At the time, Prime Minister Begin was visiting England and comments were being made about his responsibility for the King David Hotel attack. Lord Greville addressed Parliament about the issue:

As your Lordships know, I am against terrorism of any kind and for any purpose. But I think we must be fair. I was informed that on a radio interview Mr. Begin a few days ago explained the line that his friends took when he said that under no circumstances did they plan attacks on women, children or civilians.

I think the House is entitled to know some facts that I came across in the course of some professional inquiries I have been making in respect of what happened at the time of the King David Hotel incident. I came across them not very long ago; I am saying this with the consent both of the people who have been in touch with me and also of the doctor concerned. I want to wipe away the suggestion that no warning was given. I propose to read a letter from a Dr. Crawford in Bournemouth. I quote:

"It was very kind of you to phone me today and I sat down at once to write to you".
I met Dr. Crawford at another venture of Israel which is well known to many people—the Magem [sic] David, which is the Shield of David Ambulance and Health Services. I happened to meet him at a conference held in Bournemouth. Casually he told me that he knew something about this.

He says in his letter:

Further to our recent conversation in Bournemouth, I am writing to confirm that the officer"— he spoke about an officer whose name, I am sure, is known to those who were in Palestine— who wrote to me in 1946 concerning the King David Hotel 'incident' was Major-General Dudley Sheridan Skelton, CB, DSO, FRCS, formerly DGMS in India, Hon Physician to HM The King and to HE the Viceroy of India. He retired from the forces about 1937"— I think that it is of great importance that this attack should be properly and effectively met— when he was given the rank of Brigadier and was ADMS in the SE Command. It was in this area that I met him in the course of my duties as Assistant Medical Director of the Emergency Medical Services Hospital at Preston Hall Sanatorium, Maidstone, and I worked with him until my transfer to Bournemouth as Medical Superintendent of Douglas House Sanatorium in 1943, but we remained in contact with each other for some years. In 1946, he was head of a hospital in Palestine near Jerusalem and was a frequent visitor to the King David Hotel; apparently he was there on the very day of the explosion and he wrote me that 'a warning' was passed on to the officers in the bar in rather jocular terms, implying it was 'Jewish terrorist bluff'. But despite advice to 'ignore the bluff' he decided to leave and thus was out of the hotel when the explosion took place. I kept his letter for many years, but unfortunately, after the death of my wife in 1970 and my own severe illness in 1971, I sold my house and went into a flat and because of limited space I unwisely threw away a lot of my accumulated papers and correspondence, so the letter is no longer available; and Brigadier Skelton has long since died. I hope these facts will be of some help to you. Many of my friends knew this story at the time but few have survived; my sister-in-law will remember it clearly as she was friendly with the Brigadier and lived with us at the time. If you think it worth-while, I could contact her" [emphasis added]

— I did ask him to contact her and she wrote a letter confirming what Dr. Crawford said.

As your Lordships are well aware, I do not approve of terrorists of any kind. The Prime Minister of Israel explained a few days ago what happened and I hope that the letter I have read out now will, in all fairness, answer the accusation that has been made about this incident. I am very grateful for the attention the House has given me...

Lord Janner of Braunstone. Source: Gibnews

In his book "Palestine Investigated: The Criminal Investigation Department of the Palestine Police Force, 1920-1948," Eldad Harouvi writes that Chief Secretary John Shaw, who claims in the video above that there was no warning, was blamed by some for the casualties:

In his book, Harouvi reveals some interesting facts: First, the CID had intelligence showing the Hotel as a possible target for attack by the Irgun in December 1945 – 6 months prior to the attack. The CID asked to raise security in the hotel, including putting armed soldiers at the 'Regence' restaurant at the entrance of the hotel. The Chief Secretary refused to consider these suggestions, with the justification that there were not many places for recreation and fun in Palestine, and he did not want to foreclose another. He continued to refuse to take action (or even to pass on the information to the High Commissioner of Palestine) when the CID approached him again with newer information on the attack plan (the CID had the plan of attack, but did not know exactly when it would be carried out).

Second, another fact that is not common knowledge is that the Irgun carried out a diversion bombing minutes after the bombs were planted in the King David Hotel, in which a wagon with explosives was blown outside shops next to the hotel. The CID's assessment was that this second bombing (which broke windows, but did not hurt anyone) was intended to cause panic and encourage evacuation of the building. One of the CID officers Harouvi interviewed for his book flatly blames Shaw for the death of so many, since he could have evacuated the building on time (pages 293-297).

This photo, described by Wikimedia Commons as "the explosion of a second bomb at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem," could be a photo of the first bomb that served as the diversion.

There were claims that Shaw not only knew about the warning but deliberately refused to act on it. Nothing was ever proved. In 1948 both a newspaper and a book repeated the accusation -- and in both cases were forced to retract and apologized because of lack of proof. Begin repeated the accusation in his book "The Revolt," but Shaw did not sue him on the advice of lawyers that since Begin did not refer to him by name but instead to a "high official" there was not enough basis for a claim of personal defamation.

Here is a letter to The Jerusalem Post, indicating that warning was given, while also supporting Shaw's claim that there was never any warning. [Hat tip: Yisrael Medad]

Yet years later, neither the letter that Lord Janner read, back in 1979, nor the other facts about the advance warning and possible negligence by the British themselves have made a dent in the efforts of those who want to tar Menachem Begin as a terrorist on a par with the Palestinian terrorists who target unarmed men, women and children.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Historically, Jews Prayed on the Temple Mount When Muslims Controlled it -- So Why Not Now? (Daled Amos)

Today, we regularly hear about tensions on the Temple Mount, where either the Waqf or other Muslims accuse Jews of violating the "permission" granted to Jews by the Arabs to go to the Mount by praying there.

Historically, though, Jews have prayed on the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Second Temple -- including when the area was under Muslim control.

In an article, The Mounting Problem of Temple Denial, David Barnett writes that denial of the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount by Palestinian Arabs makes no sense, considering the fact that classical Islamic literature clearly recognizes the existence of the Jewish Temple and its importance to Judaism:

Sura 17:1 of the Koran, the “Farthest Mosque” is called the al-masjid al-Aqsa.
The Tafsir al-Jalalayn, a well-respected Sunni exegesis of the Koran from the 15th and 16th centuries, notes that the “Farthest Mosque” is a reference to the Bayt al-Maqdis of Jerusalem (nearly identical to the Hebrew "Beyt Ha-Miqdash")
In the commentary of Abdullah Ibn Omar al-Baydawi, who authored several prominent theological works in the 13th century, the masjid is referred to as the Bayt al-Maqdis because during Muhammad’s time no mosque existed in Jerusalem.
Koranic historian and commentator, Abu Jafar Muhammad al-Tabari, who chronicled the seventh century Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, wrote that one day when Omar finished praying, he went to the place where “the Romans buried the Temple [bayt al-maqdis] at the time of the sons of Israel.”
Eleventh century historian Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al-Maqdisi and fourteenth century Iranian religious scholar Hamdallah al-Mustawfi acknowledged that the al-Aqsa Mosque was built on top of Solomon’s Temple.

So it is not surprising that historically, Jews have been granted access to the Temple Mount by the Muslim rulers of the time to not only ascend to the Temple Mount, but also to pray there.

In his Jerusalem: The Biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore writes

Jews, many of them from Iran and Iraq, settled in the Holy City, living together south of the Temple Mount, retaining the privilege of praying on (and maintaining) the Temple Mount. But in about 720, after almost a century of freedom to pray there, the new Caliph Omar II, who was, unusually in this decadent dynasty, an ascetic stickler for Islamic orthodoxy, banned Jewish worship--and this prohibition would stand for the rest of Islamic rule. p. 195

The source for this is the book Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to the Beginning of Modern Times.by F. E. Peters. Peters quotes Salman ben Yeruham, a Karaite writing in about 950.

Peters goes on to write that this would have been during the earliest days of the Muslim occupation, probably before the construction of the Dome of the Rock by Abd al-Malik and the consecration of the Temple Mount as the "Noble Sanctuary." According to Peters, the construction of the Dome would have changed the nature of the area.

F.M. Loewenberg, in an article on the Middle East Forum website, Did Jews Abandon the Temple Mount? goes further. He writes that 50 years after Omar had conquered Jerusalem in 680, a struggle broke out with a rebel dynasty in Mecca. In order to damage the Meccan economy, the Umayyads decided to build a competing pilgrimage site in Jerusalem to siphon off Mecca's revenue. That was accomplished with the building of the Dome of the Rock:

Thus, a political strategy designed to fight mutineers in far-off Mecca transformed Jerusalem's Temple Mount into a Muslim holy site with far-reaching implications to this day.

As Sebag Montefiore writes in explaining the 40 year silence of the Muslim world when the Arabs lost Jerusalem during the Crusades, "as so often in Jerusalem's history, religious fervour was inspired by political necessity."

But according to Lowenberg, this in itself did not put an end to Jewish access to the Temple Mount. Basing himself on the same Salman ben Yeruham, he writes

Soon after the Muslim conquest, Jews received permission to build a synagogue on the Temple Mount. Perhaps the wooden structure that was built over the Foundation Stone was first intended for a synagogue, but even before it was completed, the site was expropriated by the city's rulers [as the site for the Dome of the Rock]. The Jews received another site on the mount for a synagogue in compensation for the expropriated building. Most probably there was an active synagogue on the Temple Mount during most of the early Muslim period. [emphasis added]

After the Fatimids conquered Jerusalem in 969, a Temple Mount synagogue was rebuilt and used -- until the Jews were then banished by Caliph al-Hakim in 1015. That decree was rescinded by a later ruler and Jews were again allowed to worship there until the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders.

But even then, Jews were able to go up to the Temple Mount. The Rambam wrote in a letter in 1165 that he "entered the Great and Holy House [and] prayed there."

Portrait of The Rambam. Public domain

The Jewish traveler, Benjamin of Tudela, visited Jerusalem between 1159 and 1172, and writes there were Jews praying "in front of the Western Wall [of the Dome of the Rock], one of the [remaining] walls of what was once the Holy of Holies." Loewenberg notes that the Western Wall described by Benjamin of Tudela could not be the current Western Wall because it did not become a site for prayer until the sixteenth century, but instead the reference is to the ruins of the western wall of the Second Temple building on the Temple Mount.

Even after Saladin captured Jerusalem back from the Crusaders in 1187, and even though the Temple Mount was re-consecrated as a Muslim sanctuary, Saladin still allowed Jews access not only to Jerusalem, but also to worship on the Temple Mount. Later, though, Saladin forbade Jews from praying there. From the late thirteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, the Temple Mount was basically off-limits to Jews, though occasionally they were allowed access.

The chief rabbi of Jerusalem, David ben Shlomo Ibn Zimra (Radbaz, 1479-1573) wrote that the city's Jews regularly went to the Temple Mount in order to view the entire temple ruins and pray there and that "we have not heard or seen anyone object to this."

After the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem in 1516, Sultan Suleiman I encouraged European Jews, especially those expelled from Spain and Portugal a generation earlier, to resettle in Jerusalem. He instructed his court architect to prepare a special place for Jewish prayer in an alley at the bottom of the Western retaining wall of the Temple Mount in compensation for prohibiting all non-Muslims from entering any part of the Temple Mount. He issued a royal decree guaranteeing Jews the right to pray at this Western Wall for all time.

So much much for Jews not being allowed to pray on the Temple Mount under Muslim control. Halachic issues are one thing, but that Israel today allows the Arabs, who were defeated by Israel in 1967 when Jerusalem was reunified, to continue to have the power to dictate to Jews what they can and cannot do on the Temple Mount is mind boggling.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Jews Have Also Been Holding Onto Their Keys (Daled Amos)

One of the issues of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the refugee problem resulting from those Arabs who left the land during the 1948 War - how many left due to the encouragement of promises from the Arab world, how many out of fear of the chaos of war and how many from other reasons is a question for another time.

Today there is a symbol used to represent this refugee problem: a key.

Art by a teenage Bethlehem artist, entitled Resolution 194,
a UN resolution. The keys symbolize those kept as mementos
by Palestinians who left their homes in 1948

It is a poignant symbol - but apparently, Arabs have been known to hold onto their keys before.

In 2005, Spain passed a law granting the right of citizenship to Sephardic Jews who were descendants of the Jews who in 1492 were given a choice of either converting or going into exile. Two years later, descendants of Muslims who had been expelled from Spain in the seventeenth century asked for the same treatment. Mansur Escudero, the head of Spain's Islamic Board, representing Spanish Muslims explained at the time:

"It would be more of an emotional, moral gesture, a recognition of an historic injustice," he told Reuters, adding that some "Andalusian" families still preserved keys to houses they left behind four centuries ago. [emphasis added, p. 143]

But as it turns out, Arabs are not the only ones to hold onto their keys to remember home.

Nor are they the first - not by a long shot.

While reading Simon Sebag Montefiore's Jerusalem - A Biography, I came across this last week about the Bar Kochba rebellion:

The Jews retreated to the caves of Judaea, which is why Simon [Bar Kochba]'s letters and their poignant belongings have been found there. These refugees and warriors carried keys to their abandoned houses, the consolation of those doomed never to return. [emphasis added]

In fact, it appears Jews who were forced out of Spain did the same thing.

According to The Routledge Book of Contemporary Jewish Cultures:

The exhibit on display at a small Jewish museum in Bejar [Spain], near Hervas, concludes with a wooden trunk full of keys. According to legend, when the Jews were expelled from their homes, they retained their keys in exile and across generations, occasionally returning to try them in their doors. A placard by the trunk explains that the keys "symbolize the memory of the homes which the Jews had to abandon...It may be that some of these keys had traveled with them to their new place of refuge. Even if this is not actually the case, this chest gives us a reason to imagine this."

While writing this post, I found that I am not the first to notice that holding onto keys goes back as far as the Bar Kochba rebellion. In an anonymous guest post on Israellycool, The Curious Case Of The Key, someone writes

I remembered reading a book by Yigal Yadin by the name of �Bar-Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Last Jewish Revolt Against Imperial Rome,� an interesting book about the discovery of the Cave of Letters and how the artifacts inside shed light on the revolt. One of the items found in the cave was this:

Source: Israel Museum.

Sebag Montefiore gives this book by Yigal Yadin as his source.

For Jews, keys have been no less a symbol of the desire to return home - in our case our indigenous, ancestral home where we have been living for over 3,000 years.

We have returned home.
And we are home to stay.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Let Abbas Know: The Eternal Capital of "Palestine" Isn't Jerusalem, It's Damascus (Daled Amos)

According to Mahmoud Abbas, Jerusalem is the “eternal capital of the State of Palestine.” Then again, Abbas is the Palestinian Arab dictator whose term in office ended in 2009. Not only do Abbas and the Palestinian Arabs know that Jerusalem is the capital of "Palestine" -- they also think they have a pretty good idea of just what "Palestine" looks like.

Here is the logo of the Fateh Youth Movement. The boundaries of what they call "Palestine" are basically the borders of Israel, except that they also include Gaza and the West Bank.

Not surprisingly, that map bears little resemblance to reality -- not because they are trying to co-opt the State of Israel, but because there was no country called Palestine that corresponds to that map.

For example, in his article "Palestine: On The History and Geography of a Name," Bernard Lewis writes about the borders of the area that bears that name. And those borders were forever changing:

During the later Roman and Byzantine periods a number of changes were made, in the course of which Roman Palestine was extended by the annexation to it of neighbouring territories and then subdivided. Under Diocletian, the province of Arabia, founded by the Emperor Trajan in the year 105, was attached to Palestine, but in 358 this area, consisting of the Negev and southern Transjordan, was constituted a separate province and named Palestina Salutaris. In about 400 ad, Palestine proper was split into two provinces known respectively as Palestina Prima and Palestina Secunda, while Palestina Salutaris was renamed Palestina Tertia

How convenient: three Palestines!

Source: Wikipedia. Uploaded by Haldrik

In this setup you had:

o Palestina Prima - included Judaea and Samaria, including Edom and extending east into Transjordan. Its capital was was Caesarea.
o Palestina Secunda - included the valley of Esdraelon, Galilee, northern Transjordan, and the Golan area, Its capital was in Scythopolis (Beth Shean)
o Palestina Tertia - included the Negev, southern Transjordan, and part of Sinai. Its capital was at Petra

Three Palestines - but no capital in Jerusalem.

After the Muslim invasion and conquest of the area, there were some changes made.

Lewis explains:

After the Arab conquest in the seventh century, the new masters of the country seem substantially to have retained the existing administrative subdivisions; Palestina Prima and Palestina Secunda remained but with new names and new capitals. The first became Filastin, an obvious Arabic adaptation of the Roman name, and was administered first from Lydda and later from Ramla. Palestina Secunda was called Urdunn, that is, Jordan, after the river, and had its capital at Tiberias. Jerusalem, which in the earliest Arabic texts is referred to by its Roman name of Aelia, was not a provincial or even a district seat of government [emphasis added].

Bottom line, during this period of Muslim rule, there was still no capital in Jerusalem, and no independent country called Palestine either:

In early medieval Arabic usage, Filastin and Urdunn were subdistricts forming part of the greater geographical entity known as Syria or, to use the Arabic term, the land of Sham.

This subservient status of Palestine existed not only under the Romans but also under the Byzantine Empire and Muslim rule as well - until the Crusaders conquered the land. Then that changed:

During the period of the Crusades, the name Palestine or Filastin fell into disuse. The Muslims no longer administered it, and the Crusaders preferred to call the country which they had conquered the Holy Land and the state which they had established the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Finally, Jerusalem got some recognition -- but it was not by the Muslims.

Later, after the Muslims recaptured the land back from the Crusaders, there were still more re-divisions of the land.

After the Muslim reconquest, the names Filastin and Urdunn disappear from administrative usage. Under the successors of Saladin and still more under the Mamluks who ruled from the mid-thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, the country was redistributed in new territorial units, usually known by the names of towns which were district administrative centres. [emphasis added]

That last point is important: From this point going forward, there was no Filastin or Palestine.

The name Filastin or Palestine...had never been used by Jews, for whom the normal name of the country, from the time of the Exodus to the present day, was Eretz Israel. It was no longer used by Muslims, for whom it had never meant more than an administrative sub-district and it had been forgotten even in that limited sense.

So who did use the word 'Palestine'?

The word became widely adopted in the Christian world. During The Renaissance, there was a revival of interest in classical antiquity and as a result, the Roman name Palestine became the common word used to describe the country in most European languages. And under the British, the word was again used to refer to that area bordering on both sides of the Jordan River - for the first time since the early Middle Ages.

Under Arab rule, the area kept being divided and re-divided. Just to give you an idea of the state of flux in the area:

o At one point the areas on the two banks of the Jordan were divided into six districts with their capitals in Gaza, Lydda, Qaqun, Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus, all six districts forming part of the province of Sham, with its capital in Damascus. (Jerusalem was finally a capital - a district capital - with the actual capital in Damascus.)
o  At certain times Gaza and Lydda became separate provinces.
o  During the late Mamluk period, most of Palestine seems to have been divided into the Niyabas (lieutenancies) of Gaza and Safed. The Niyaba of Safed included much of what today is south Lebanon, with the districts of Tyre and Tibnin. All these were still under the rule of Damascus.
o  After the Ottoman conquest in 1516-17, the country was divided into the Ottoman administrative districts (Sanjak) of Gaza, Jerusalem, Nablus, and Safed west of the Jordan and Ajlun in Transjordan. An additional district, Lajjun on the west bank, was later added. All these again were subject to the authority of Damascus.
o  These districts were from time to time subdivided and rearranged during the four centuries of Ottoman rule.
o  In the last phase, before the British took over, the center and north of the country were part of the vilayet of Beirut, while the Transjordan was made part of the vilayet of Damascus and the rest of "Palestine" became the indepedent district of Jerusalem -- independent in this case meaning it was directly dependent on the capital in Damascas, but not subject to any of the Pashas of the surrounding provinces.

By 1887-1888, the map of the area looked like this:

Source: Wikipedia. Map by Tallicfan20 based off of Efraim Karsh's Palestine Betrayed

There was never a sovereign country called "Palestine" matching the maps that Abbas and Fatah like to parade around. In the end, there was a district called Jerusalem, taking up a portion of what the Palestinian Arabs claim as their state.

As far as capitals go, there were so many -- usually subject to the authority in Damascus -- that if anything, instead of being the eternal capital of "Palestine," Jerusalem was the ephemeral capital of a very truncated district in an area in part of Palestine.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Herzl, Uganda and the "First" Balfour Declaration (Daled Amos)

History records that Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, came before the Sixth Zionist Congress on August 26, 1903, and presented the "Uganda Plan," suggesting that Jews accept a place other than then-Palestine as their national home. It was voted down.

Not surprisingly, there is more to the story.

Theodor Herzl; photo by Carl Pietzer. Public domain

In his book, A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, David Fromkin writes that as an assimilated Jew, Herzl's knowledge of politics far outstripped his knowledge of Judaism. After witnessing the backlash against the Jews in France following the Dreyfuss affair, Herzl recognized the need for a Jewish state, but was not picky about the location.

At first.

Herzl created a Jewish organization through which to negotiate with various European governments. As he started plan, Herzl came into contact with the Jewish leaders and organizations that sponsored and supported Jewish settlement in Palestine. It was then that he realized the special appeal Palestine held for Jews around the world -- an appeal that would make his efforts more successful.

However, finding a government to support his plan was more difficult. After meeting with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and finding him unresponsive to his arguments, Herzl began to look for other, more sympathetic governments.

In 1902, Herzl met in Great Britain with Joseph Chamberlain, the powerful Colonial Secretary (and father of Neville Chamberlain). Chamberlain was sympathetic not only to the idea in general, but also to its location. Herzl suggested a long-term strategy, where Jews would originally settle nearby either in Cyprus or El Arish at the edge of the Sinai until Palestine became available. While Cyprus and El Arish were considered part of the Ottoman Empire, they were both occupied by the British at the time. Chamberlain turned down the idea of Cyprus, but did offer to help Herzl get approval for El Arish. Towards that end, Herzl hired the lawyer David Lloyd George, who later went on to become the British Prime Minister, 1916 -1922.

Joseph Chamberlain. Public domain

However, by mid-1903, Herzl was informed that Al Arish was considered impractical.

It was then that Joseph Chamberlain suggested Uganda as a substitute to Herzl. Actually, Alona Ferba writes in Haaretz that the land in British East Africa offered to Herzl was 15,500 square km territory in today's Kenya. The idea was supported by the British Prime Minister at the time -- Arthur James Balfour.

Arthur James Balfour, public domain

Lloyd George drafted a Charter for the Jewish Settlement, which was submitted to the British government for approval. According to Fromkin:

In the summer of 1903 the foreign Office replied in a guarded but affirmative way that if studies and talks over the course of the next year were successful, His Majesty's Government would consider favorably proposals for the creation of a Jewish colony. It was the first official declaration by a government to the Zionist movement and the first official statement implying national status for the Jewish people. It was the first Balfour Declaration. [p. 274]

We know that is was not the last, just as we know that Uganda/Kenya was rejected by Jews as a state.

After all, Uganda could never truly become a Jewish state. It was not the national Jewish homeland. Uganda was not the indigenous home of the Jews. There were no historical, religious, and culture ties binding the Jews to any place other than the one the Western World refered to as Palestine. So even though Herzl rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest and influential British politicians of the time, in the short term - he failed.

But Herzl was successful in harnessing the pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist feeling that existed in the British government at the time. In doing so, Herzl set in motion forces that a over the following years would grow and snowball, leading to the Balfour Declaration and the eventual recreation of the Jewish State of Israel.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Abba Eban's address to the UN on UNSC 242, November 22, 1967

The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, has an article that claims that Israel is violating the terms of UN Security Council resolution 242 which was passed on November 22,1967. It is nonsense, but that's never stopped them before.

The most contentious piece of the resolution is, of course, the deliberate omission of the word "the" from the call of "Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict."

Interestingly, it includes an Arabic translation of the resolution that accurately translates that part without the "the."

In the debate before and after the vote, delegates to the UN Security Council were quite aware of the missing "the" and the implication that Israel would not have to withdraw from all the territories. The Syrian representative denounced the resolution for exactly that reason. The Russian and French delegates said that they choose to interpret it as if the "the" was there. The British delegate, Lord Caradon, who drafted the resolution, was insistent that the resolution's wording was exactly what was intended.

Here is what Israeli foreign minister* Abba Eban said. It is remarkable how much of it applies today.

I regret that this meeting should have begun with the statement that we heard from the representative of Syria. On his interpretation of the resolution I have nothing to say, but on his comments on my country's policy I must say a few words.

The Syrian utterance speaks for itself; it was a hymn of hate and aggression trumpeted by the Government which, more than any other, was responsible for disrupting the tranquility of the Middle East in 1966 and 1967. The Syrian representative has repeated the revolting attempt to hang the odious Nazi label on the only people that sustained the full brunt and fury of Nazism without interruption or compromise for all the twelve Nazi years. What a sorry spectacle it is to see a tribunal of peace thus transformed into an arena of hate.

The policy of the Israel Government and nation remains as it was when I formulated it in the Security Council on 13 and 16 November [1375th and 1379th meetings], namely that we shall respect and fully maintain the situation embodied in the cease-fire agreements until it is succeeded by peace treaties between Israel and the Arab States ending the state of war, establishing agreed, recognized and secure territorial boundaries, guaranteeing free navigation for all shipping, including that of Israel, in all the waterways leading to and from the Red Sea, committing all signatories to the permanent and mutual recognition and respect of the sovereignty, security and national identity of all Middle Eastern States, and ensuring a stable and mutually guaranteed security. Such a peace settlement, directly negotiated and contractually confirmed, would create conditions in which refugee problems could be justly and effectively solved through international and regional co-operation.

Those are our aims and positions. They emerge from five months of international discussion, unchanged, unprejudiced and intact. It is now understood as axiomatic that movement from the cease-fire lines can be envisaged only in the framework of a lasting peace establishing recognized and secure boundaries.

The time has come to adapt the Middle Eastern situation to the general principles and concepts which regulate the international order. Let us be done, after nineteen years, with truces, armistices and "demarcation lines based on military considerations" which leave territorial problems unsolved. The relations between States in the Middle East for nineteen years have been fragile, anomalous, indeterminate and unresolved. The hour is ripe for building a stable and durable edifice within which the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean can pursue their separate national vocations and their common regional destiny. The tensions and rancours of the past cannot be ended overnight, but if the relations of States in the Middle East are contained in a permanent and contractually binding framework the patient task of reconciliation can go forward.

The Security Council, like the General Assembly, has consistently refused to endorse proposals which would have sought a return to the ambiguity, vulnerability and insecurity in which we have lived for nineteen years. It has now adopted a resolution of which the central and primary affirmation is the need for "the establishment of a just and lasting peace" based on secure and recognized boundaries. There is a clear understanding that it is only within the establishment of permanent peace with secure and recognized boundaries that other principles can be given effect. As my delegation and others have stated, the establishment for the first time of agreed and secure boundaries as part of a peace settlement is the only key which can unlock the present situation and set on foot a momentum of constructive and peaceful progress. As the representative of the United Kingdom indicated in his address on 16 November, the action to be taken must be within the framework of a permanent peace and of secure and recognized boundaries. It has been pointed out in the Security Council, and it is stated in the 1949 Agreements, that the armistice demarcation lines have never been regarded as boundaries so that, as the representative of the United States has said, the boundaries between Israel and her neighbors: "must be mutually worked out and recognized by the parties themselves as part of the peace-making process" [1377th meeting, para. 65].

We continue to believe that the States of the region, in direct negotiation with each other, have the sovereign responsibility for shaping their common future. It is the duty of international agencies at the behest of the parties to act in the measure that agreement can be promoted and a mutually accepted settlement can be advanced. We do not believe that Member States have the right to refuse direct negotiation with those to whom they address their claims. It is only when they come together that the Arab States and Israel will reveal the full potentialities of a peaceful settlement.

There were proposals, including those submitted by three Powers and then by the Soviet Union, which failed to win the necessary support because they rested in our view on the wrong premise that a solution could be formed on the basis of a return to the situation of 4 June. We hold that that premise has no logical or moral international basis. Similarly, the failure to understand that Israel's action last June was a response to aggression has prevented certain Governments from keeping pace with the development of international thinking. Israel notes, however, that recent Soviet statements and drafts reflect an understanding that the establishment of peace requires, amongst other things, an explicit respect of Israel's national identity and international rights.

I also note that the Soviet text [S/8253], like that of the United States [S/8229], included a reference to the need for curbing the destructive and wasteful arms race. I hope that the absence of this provision in the text on which the Council has voted does not mean that that objective will be lost from sight.

The termination of this debate takes us into a new phase, of which the center lies not here in New York, but in the Middle East. What will henceforward be decisive is not the particular words of an enabling resolution, but the spirit and attitude and policies of the Middle Eastern States. One of the points most strongly emphasized around this table and in all the exchanges which I and my associates have been privileged to have with representatives of Member States is that the only peace that can be established in the Middle East is one that the Governments of the Middle East build together. Peace can grow by agreement. It cannot be imposed. Our Governments in the area must look more and more towards each other. For it is only from each other that they can obtain the satisfaction of their most vital need, the need of peace.

I reiterate that in negotiations with our neighbors we shall present a concrete vision of peace. Before saying what that vision is, I should like to make one comment on the course of this debate with special reference to the remarks of the Indian representative. The establishment of a peace settlement, including secure and recognized boundaries, is quite different from what he had been proposing, namely, withdrawal, without final peace, to demarcation lines. The representative of India has now sought to interpret the resolution in the image of his own wishes. For us, the resolution says what it says. It does not say that which it has specifically and consciously avoided saying.

Thus, if the representative of India is in any predicament, he should not escape it by reading into a text adjectives and place-names which do not occur in the text. He must know that the crucial specifications to which he referred were discussed at length in consultations and deliberately and not accidentally excluded in order to be non-prejudicial to the negotiating position of all parties. The important words in most languages are short words, and every word, long or short, which is not in the text, is not there because it was deliberately concluded that it should not be there.

I have said that we would, in peace negotiations, present a vision and a program of peace. I draw attention to the ideas which I proposed to the General Assembly at its 1577th meeting on 3 October 1967 under the heading of an "agenda for peace". In direct negotiation, we would seek the discussion of juridical problems, including the establishment of peace treaties instead of cease-fire or armistice lines; security and territorial problems, including the establishment of permanent and agreed frontiers of peace and security; population problems, involving regional effort and international co-operation to resolve the problems of displaced populations created by wars and perpetuated by belligerency; economic questions, including the replacement of blockades and boycotts by intense economic co-operation; communications problems, including the opening of the Middle East to a free and normal flow of commerce; cultural and scientific problems, involving an attempt to substitute the best traditions of Arab-Jewish co-operation for the recent tensions and disputes, thus ending the epoch of alienation and hostility.

These are the horizons to which we shall address ourselves. For all the States and peoples of the Middle East, they hold the promise of a new and better age.

Syria responded:

Mr. TOMEH (Syria): The test of the success or failure of any major resolution can be measured only by its results. The future will prove whether or not the resolution adopted today will secure the cause of peace in the Middle East
I have listened very carefully to Mr. Eban's statement and his interpretation of the resolution, but not equally so to the acrimonious part about Syria, which is to be expected. His interpretation of the withdrawal only confirms, but in a very roundabout way, the full intent of Israel to consolidate its gains as a result of its aggression, which was amply explained in my statement to the Council. Again, the words spoken are denied by the intent expressed and the deed achieved. I should have liked Mr. Eban to have denied some of the facts and occurrences which I brought out in my statement. However, it is to be noted that the following sentence occurred in Mr. Eban's statement: "Peace... cannot be imposed" [supra, para. 92]. I should like to quote what I said in my statement about peace, which was the following: "A lasting peace cannot be imposed by force. One does not open the way for it by seizing another's property and demanding certain concessions before that property is given back to its legal, lawful Owner." [supra, para. 25.] Mr. Eban went on to attribute aggressive acts and intentions to Syria, I need not go into the details of what happened on 7 April 1967, which we put before the Council when an attack was perpetrated against Syria, and which included seven sorties by the Israel air force, with a battle ensuing that took place over Damascus, the capital of Syria.
Finally and briefly I should like to comment on the description given by Mr. Eban of my statement as a "hymn of hate" [supra, para. 83]. That is really an amazing interpretation because, reduced to its basic principles, my statement invokes two of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not kill"; and "Thou shalt not covet" other people's property. That two of the Ten Commandments should be interpreted as a "hymn of hate" is really beyond my understanding, but the twisting of words and meanings can result in anything. We condemn killing and the stealing of other people's property most strongly and most vehemently, whether it has been committed by Nazi Germany against the innocent Jews, the French, the Danes or the people of any other country which it occupied, just as we condemn it most strongly and vehemently when it is committed by the Israelis against the Arabs--by Dayan and Begin and justified by Mr. Eban.

And Eban responded to him again:

Mr. EBAN (Israel): I do not propose to maintain the discussion with the representative of Syria, except to say that if he is interested in the document of Hebrew literature to which he referred I recommend that he should not stop short with two commandments but should also study the statement "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor", because the quotations which he put in my mouth were not there.
I intervene for another purpose, which is to say that I am communicating to my Government for its consideration nothing except the original English text of the draft resolution as presented by the original sponsor on 16 November. Having studied that text, document S/8247, my Government will determine its attitude to the Security Council's resolution in the light of its own policy, which is as I have stated it.

(h/t zee for correction)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Balfour didn't create the Jewish national home - it was already there and everyone knew it (Daled Amos)

Thursday is the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, yet after 100 years people still argue over it and Abbas is still asking Great Britain for an apology.

What did the Balfour Declaration actually do?
And what did the Balfour Declaration recognize?

The second question is no more settled than the first.

Arthur Balfour. Credit: Wikipedia

We all are familiar with the language of the declaration:

His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

But while the declaration seems to be talking about the future, in The Case For Israel, Alan Dershowitz writes that by the time the Balfour Declaration was published in 1917, that national home already existed:

Even before the Balfour Declaration of 1917, there was a de facto Jewish national home in Palestine consisting of several dozens of Jewish moshavim and kibbutzim in western and northeastern Palestine, as well as in Jewish cities such as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Safad. The Jewish refugees in Palestine had established this homeland on the ground without the assistance of any colonial or imperialist powers. They had relied on their own hard work in building an infrastructure and cultivating land they had legally purchased.

This was an area under Ottoman control until the end of WWI. Even before WWI, there was no sovereign state, just a collection of districts under the control of foreign Ottoman control.

Dershowitz's interpretation is not his own. In the British White Paper of 1922, Winston Churchill wrote about the Jewish National Home that had already been established in Palestine:

During the last two or three generations the Jews have recreated in Palestine a community, now numbering 80,000, of whom about one fourth are farmers or workers upon the land. This community has its own political organs; an elected assembly for the direction of its domestic concerns; elected councils in the towns; and an organization for the control of its schools. It has its elected Chief Rabbinate and Rabbinical Council for the direction of its religious affairs. Its business is conducted in Hebrew as a vernacular language, and a Hebrew Press serves its needs. It has its distinctive intellectual life and displays considerable economic activity. This community, then, with its town and country population, its political, religious, and social organizations, its own language, its own customs, its own life, has in fact "national" characteristics. When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride. But in order that this community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance. That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed, and that it should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection. [emphasis added]

Sir Winston Churchill, by Yousuf Karsh. Source: Wikipedia

The Balfour Declaration was not addressed to a foreign group, giving them permission to enter the land. On the contrary, it was recognition of what Jews -- who have an indigenous connection to the land -- had already accomplished and would continue to develop.

As Dershowitz puts it:

The political and legal seeds were were thus sown for a two- (or three- ) state solution to the "Palestinian problem." This was a perfect example of self-determination at work.

This is more than an abstract theory.

The 1925 Larousse French dictionary had an entry for "Palestine":

Here is a closeup view of the beginning of the entry:

This translates as:

PALESTINE, the land of Syria, between Phenicia in the North, the Dead Sea in the South, the Mediterranean in the West, and the Syrian Desert in the East, watered by the Jordan. It is a narrow strip of land, narrowed between the sea, Lebanon, and traversed by the Jordan, which throws itself into the Dead Sea. It is also called, in Scripture, Land of Chanaan, Promised Land and Judea . It is today [in 1925] a Jewish state under the mandate of England; 770,000 inhabitants. Jerusalem capital.

Already in 1925, before WWII and before the Israeli War of Independence, there was a recognition of a Jewish state called Palestine, a state of 770,000 inhabitants that included both Jews and Muslims. It's capital was Jerusalem, which did not have that designation under Ottoman rule.

Not everyone may have recognized Palestine as such, certainly the Arabs did not, but the ideas expressed by Churchill were more than abstract and had gained a certain acceptance.

Even US President Woodrow Wilson, who was a champion of self-determination and opposed British-French plans on dividing the Ottoman Empire after WWI, saw a Jewish state in Palestine as self-determination:

I am persuaded that the Allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our own government and people, are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish commonwealth.

Woodrow Wilson. Library of Congress.
Source: Wikipedia

The culmination of that self-determination -- with a state for the Arabs -- was prevented by war and a refusal to accept even the presence of Jews on the land.

So, what were the Jews doing in Palestine before the Lord Balfour came out with his famous declaration? They were not waiting around to enter as invited guests. Instead, they worked on a land to which they have a 3,000 year history. Jews with indigenous roots to the land worked to re-establish it as a sovereign state, something it had never been since the time of the Romans.

Jews made a choice.
The Arabs made their own choice too.

Hat tip: EG

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.