Thursday, May 11, 2023
Elder of Ziyon |
| Arab anti-Zionist demonstration in Jerusalem, 1920 |
The time was now about 10:30. In the Old City, Arab toughs had been brawling in the streets for more than an hour. Gangs surged through the walkways of the Jewish Quarter, attacking whomever they passed; one small boy was injured on the head. They broke into Jewish stores and looted. The Jews hid.Meanwhile, the speeches from the balcony of the Arab Club continued. Someone waved a picture of Faisal, who had just crowned himself king of Greater Syria. The crowd shouted "Independence! Independence!" and the speakers condemned Zionism; one was a young boy of thirteen. The mayor, Musa Kazim al-Husseini, spoke from the balcony of the municipal building; Aref al-Aref, the editor of the newspaper Suriya al-Janubia ("Southern Syria"), delivered his speech on horseback. The crowd roared, "Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs!" In Arabic, that rhymes.No one knew what exactly set off the riots. In testimony given to a British court of inquiry, people said that a Jew had pushed an Arab carrying a flag, or that he'd spat on the flag, or that he'd tried to grab it. In another version, the violence began when an Arab pointed at a Jew who was passing by and said, "Here's a Zionist, son of a dog." Many testified that Arabs had attacked an elderly Jewish man at the entrance to the Amdursky Hotel, beating him on the head with sticks. The man had collapsed, his head covered with blood. Someone had tried to rescue him but was stabbed. People said they had heard gunfire. "The furor almost turned into madness," Sakakini wrote. Everyone was shouting, "The religion of Mohammed was founded by the sword," and waving sticks and daggers.
The hotheads are looking for excuses to attack Jews, rumors and lies about Jewish plots are easily started and believed, all Jews are attacked as a collective with no distinction between civilian and military, violence is fueled by Islamist extremism leavened with centuries-old Jew-hatred, and any Arab who tries to act reasonably becomes as much of an enemy as the Jews, forcing their silence and ensuring that only the most fanatic anti-Jewish incitement is spread.
This is how it was in 1920, it is how it was in the 1929 pogroms, that's how it was during the 1936-39 Arab revolt, that's how it was in 1947-48, and that's how it is in Gaza today.
You cannot look at 1948 in a vacuum. It is just another episode in the century of Arab refusal to accept Jews are having the human right of self determination.
The war that the Arabs started against the Jews didn't start on May 15, 1948. It didn't even start on November 30, 1947, with the UN partition plan. There is no shortage of outrages that preceded the partition vote that no one discusses today, but in particular there were deadly Arab attacks against Jews in August 1947 that caused Jaffa's Jews to evacuate from their homes - just as Jews were forced out of their homes in Gaza and Hebron not that long beforehand.
Yes, thousands of Jews had to flee their homes because of deadly Arab attacks way before a single Palestinian Arab decided to leave.
Historians argue about the exact spark that set off these regular outbreaks of violence, and that remains true today as well. But the constants are the same. The stabbing of random Jews is the same - but now the Arab terrorists have cars and rockets as well to indiscriminately attack Jews. The absolute refusal to accept even the tiniest Jewish state remains the same. The lying and false accusations against Jews to incite violence is the same. The silencing of any Arab opinions that do not adhere to what the self-appointed leaders with guns allow remains the same. The hateful chants are even the same: "From the river to the sea" is merely a restatement of "Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs."
Above all, the willingness of Arab leaders to use their Palestinian Arabs as pawns and cannon fodder in their attempts to destroy Israel is the same as it ever was. The only reason there are any Palestinian "refugees" today is because their leaders insist that the people remain stateless and miserable until Israel is gone.
The residents of Gaza are hostages to Hamas and Islamic Jihad - and Iran - who are all willing to sacrifice their own people rather than accept the reality of Israel's existence. And, yes, the Palestinian Authority also insists of the destruction of Israel, today, using the euphemism of "return."
The catastrophe is not Israel's insisting that Jews have a small refuge in their historic homeland. The catastrophe is that Palestinians have always had leaders who don't give a damn about them and put their energy into destroying Israel instead. And these leaders use violence against their own people to keep them in line.
1920 was not the first anti-Jewish attack in Palestine, but it was the event that set the tone for everything that has happened since. There is a direct line from the hate behind the 1920 attacks and the hate in Gaza and Ramallah today.
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