Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: 1948

Showing posts with label 1948. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Arabic media claim Kfar Saba is purely Arab. A Talmudic-era mosaic says otherwise.

The Palestinian Safa news site writes about Kfar Saba, which it claims is a purely Arab town that had been taken over by Jews who are fabricating a Jewish history there.

I always enjoy researching stories like this, because I learn things - and almost invariably, what I learn is that there is a far deeper Jewish connection to everywhere in Israel than an Arab one.

The most impressive evidence is at the Kfar Saba Museum, where a mosaic floor found in a Talmudic-era synagogue there show the name of the city in easily-readable Hebrew.

There is an irony in Kfar Saba: The Muslims built a shrine a few hundred years ago they say was the Tomb of Benjamin based on an earlier Jewish tradition. Some Jews converted it into a synagogue after the Arabs abandoned the village in 1948. But any tomb of Benjamin, the son of Jacob (Israel), would obviously have more meaning for Jews than for Muslims - yet they claim that this tomb is a Muslim site that the Jews are stealing!

And if it is really a Muslim holy site - why did Muslims burn the shrine in 2022?

The modern Kfar Saba was created when Jews legally purchased land from the Arabs of Kafr Saba nearby in the late 19th century. There were attacks against Jews from the town in 1936 as well as 1948 even though the Arab village signed a truce with the Jewish village in December. Benny Morris writes how the Arab Liberation Army extorted fleeing residents:

The fleeing Arabs left some of their own behind:

So the Jews were there before the Arabs, the Jews purchased the land from the Arabs, the Arabs broke a truce agreement with the Jews, and the Arabs fled the heavy fighting while the Jews stayed.

And now the Arabs claim the Jews stole it from them!

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75 years ago: Just like today: False accusations of Israeli massacres along with real Arab terrorism

From the Palestine Post, August 12, 1948:

There was a different version of the story reported by wire services:

Jews have burned 28 Arab villagers alive at Eltera, near Haifa, according to a telegram which is reported to have been sent to the UN Security Councll by the Secretary-General of the Arab League (Azzan Pasha).
The telegram declared that during the present cease-fire an eyewitness saw Jews saturate villagers' clothing with petrol and set them alight. The names of 14 of the victims are known.

And the lurid, lying accusations sometimes became headlines with no caveats (Caneberra [AU] Times)

Needless to say, this never happened and it is not even clear that the complaint was really sent to the UN Security Council. The accusation was enough to make it into the newspapers and make people think that Jews are monsters, which was the intent.

Just like today, baldfaced lies are an effective propaganda technique, because people simply do not want to believe that someone has the gall to make up such extravagant lies.

Meanwhile, there was real terrorism done by the Arab side, meant to cut off any supply of water to Jews in Jerusalem (August 13):

Arab accusations of Jewish terror were, then as now, projections of their own terror attempts and desires.

Interestingly, the Jews in Jerusalem had planned for such an event, and had built their own small but important emergency alternative water pipeline to Jerusalem

The Jews could not rely on anyone else (especially the UN) to solve any problems, not only the water problem.

Which is something that Israel needs to keep in mind today as well.

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The UN's history of the "Question of Palestine" omits every single Palestinian attack on Jews

The UN has a webpage where it shows a timeline on the "Question of Palestine."

It is biased as hell.

It starts with "1885 – The term 'Zionism' first coined by the Viennese writer, Nathan Birnbaum."

There is no mention of Jewish history in the region for thousands of years. No mention of Jewish kingdoms. No mention of the centrality of Eretz Israel and Jerusalem to Judaism. No mention of the Bible.

But after that, it simply ignores or whitewashes every single act of terrorism by Palestine's Arabs.

It doesn't mention the murderous Palestinian pogrom against Jews in 1929.

It says, "1936/1939 – Palestinian rebellion against the British Mandate and Jewish immigration." But not that Arabs murdered Jews, just that it was a "rebellion."

It doesn't say anything about the Arab League boycott of Jews.

It doesn't mention any Arab attacks on Jews in 1947-48. No outbreak of hostilities hours after the UN Partition resolution, no mention of the constant attacks on Jewish civilians, no mention of the Hadassah Hospital convoy massacre or the many other attacks on Jewish civilians - but it does mention Deir Yassin, and exaggerates the number of dead as "hundreds." .

The UN gets the date of Israel's independence wrong, saying it happened on May 15, 1948.

There were scores of fedayeen attacks by Palestinian Arabs against Israel in the 1950s and 60s, and hundreds of Israelis were killed. Not one incident is mentioned.

But the UN describes the 1966 As-Samu incident, where Israeli and Jordanian troops battled after a land mine killed 3 IDF soldiers, as a "massacre" of Palestinians. 15 Jordanian soldiers and three civilians were killed. It was not a massacre by any definition.

There is not one mention of Palestinian airplane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s.

It says, "1987 – First 'Intifada' begins in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip." It doesn't mention that the intifada killed hundreds of Israelis. The many terror attacks that occurred during the Oslo process are nowhere to be found.

Similarly, it says, "Ariel Sharon’s al-Haram al-Sharif visit in September 2000 triggers the Second Palestinian Intifada."

Not a word about Palestinian suicide bombings, or bus bombings, or attacks on pizza shops and Passover seders and bar mitzvahs.

And of course no mention later about rockets from Gaza, massacring rabbis or kidnapping and murdering kids. Hamas is not mentioned as a terror group - or even militant group. In fact, the word "terror" is nowhere to be seen. Neither is "Islam," "Muslim" or "Jihad," although Jews are mentioned.

The Holocaust is not mentioned either. There is simply no information on why Jews might want to have their own homeland in the region.

There is plenty of other anti-Israel bias in wording and choice of incidents.

According to this official UN history, Palestinians have not attacked, let alone killed, a single Jew. The only aggression mentioned is from Jewish and Zionist groups.

The UN's anti-Israel bias is unmistakable even in this public document that is pretending to be objective.

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Iraqi radio to Palestinian Arabs 75 years ago against their return: "Choose death over the Jews!"

The Palestine Post, July 26, 1948, reported:

A commentator on the Baghdad Radio strongly criticized the refugees in the Arab States for their complaints about their treatment.

Arabs who said they wished they had stayed in Palestine with the Jews should he shot as spies. he urged.

"The Jews will make you their slaves, if you return to them." the commentator said. "They will feed you only on bread and water. They will force you to sleep in the open. five on one blanket. They will take your wives and daughters from you. Choose death rather than the Jews."

That's how much they supported Palestinian Arabs!

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75 years ago: An Israeli government minister does all he can to help Arabs

From the Palestine Post, July 22, 1948:

Israel had a Minister of Minorities in 1948 whose job as to advocate for the Arab minority population.

This hardly fits in with the narrative of the Israeli leaders doing everything they could to expel Arabs.

The ministry only existed for a year, and its minister had conflicts with other government institutions, particularly the military government. But from all accounts, Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit was an able advocate of Arab rights, respected by the Arab community. A Sephardic Jew, born in Ottoman Palestine, Sheetrit spoke fluent Arabic.

Even during the heaviest fighting of the 1948 war, Sheetrit urged fair treatment of the Arab communities and protection of Muslim holy places.

He was mentioned in the previous Palestine Post as prioritizing the opening of Arab school in the upcoming 1948-49 school year.

And the following week, Sheetrit urged the repair of water systems damaged by the Arab Legion in Lydda during the war.

I'm not saying there wasn't bias against Israel's Arab minority in 1948 and for years afterwards. But there were conflicting opinions on how to work with Israeli Arabs, and the desire to live up to giving Israel's minorities equal rights was a prominent feature in the early days of the State.

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75 years ago: Another Egyptian air raid on Tel Aviv kills 18

From the Palestine Post, July 14, 1948:

By the next day, the death toll reached 18:

This attack is not even mentioned in Wikipedia's list of major attacks on civilians during the war.

Egypt had been bombing civilian areas in Tel Aviv nearly continuously since Israel declared independence on May 14, and the total casualties of innocent Jews was much higher than I had realized. On May 18, Egyptian planes dropped bombs on a crowded Tel Aviv bus station, killing 42 people, including women and children.

These air raids all targeted civilians. They were the 1948 equivalent of Palestinian rocket attacks, with no military goal and only aimed at terrorizing Jews.

The National Library of Israel wrote in 2020 that an estimated 150 were killed in Egyptian air raids and shelling from the sea on Tel Aviv during the War of Independence.

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The British didn't leave Palestine on May 15, 1948 - but on June 30

The last British soldiers did not leave Palestine until six weeks after Israel declared independence.

The British continues to control Haifa's port until June 30, when they finally left and Israel took over.

And within hours of the withdrawal, Israel introduced its new navy. (London Daily Herald, July 1 1948)

It was so small that United Press put the word "navy" in scare quotes.

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In the middle of a Haaretz article on humanitarian issues in Jenin, we see:

Another resident of the camp, who prefers to remain unnamed, refused to leave his home with his family of eight. "We will not leave our home even if it falls on our heads," he said. "Our forefathers left in 1948 and were told to come back after a week, and that week has been 75 years. We will not make the same mistake; our generation is ready to sacrifice for its homeland."

The idea that Arab leaders had instructed the residents to flee so they would be free to enter and quickly defeat the Jews has gone out of fashion in recent decades, as many historians cannot find too much primary source material for it. And even among those who accept that it happened, there is much controversy about how many Arabs may have left at the urging of their leaders.

But here is a Palestinian "refugee" who is not ashamed to say that his own ancestors indeed fled because they were instructed to.

Given that most Palestinians are conditioned to push the narrative of being forcibly evicted even when it is provably false, and the current mindset that it would have been shameful to have voluntarily left their homes, it is significant that a Palestinian admits (without allowing his name to be used) that this was in fact what happened to his family in 1948.

(h/t kweansmom)

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Arabic media has been calling Israel weak and about to disappear since 1948

You can see daily articles in Arabic-language media about Israel's weakness and imminent demise, often with graphics like the one above.

This has been a theme since 1948.

The June 23, 1948 Palestine Post has two articles that discuss how Arab claims on the weakness of the new Jewish state spread quickly, even to the West, and how they were all baseless.

The first comes from an Australian reporter, Douglas Brass. Note that this was written during the first cease fire of the 1948 war (a cease fire that was repeatedly violated by Egypt and Syrian troops.)

The other was in a report from Dorothy Bar Adon, who was a very amusing columnist for the newspaper:

This continued through the beginning of the Six Day War with reports of huge Arab victories - such reports may have induced Jordan to join the war, which led to its losing the Old City of Jerusalem and the entire west bank of the Jordan.

The irony is that the sources for the modern versions of "Israel is weak:" comes from Israelis who are sounding alarms for potential issues to be addressed by Israeli society. In other words, the self-criticisms that show the strength of Israeli society are seen by Arabs who have no such concept as evidence of weakness.

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How the Haganah fought in 1948 (from an embedded American war correspondent)

Keith Wheeler, a Chicago Sun-Times correspondent, reported on how the Jews fought War of Independence in this article published by the Palestine Post on June 14, 1948.

He found that the Haganah soldiers were very informal with their own officers; rank meant little besides authority. Most Arab towns at that point were captured with very little fighting; the Arab fighters would run away after a short firefight and then the residents would follow. Only one town, from which the residents would shoot at convoys, was mentioned as being destroyed (to avoid anyone using those buildings as cover again.)

The Jews "are distinctly not looters. "

WITH THE HAGANAH ON THE LEBANESE BORDER, June 5. — From the G.I’s point of view, this war seems about like any other war — 99 percent griping and waiting and one percent action.

During the last two days, I have ranged most of what—for lack of better name—can be called the Lebanese front. The trip has Carried us northward from captured Acre through the scenes of four recent battles, along the border where Jewish and Arab soldiers watch one another politely at pistol point. ‘This was one of those waiting periods, In 48 hours, I failed to hear a single shot fired in anger.

Meanwhile, however, I enjoyed the opportunity to Iearn something about the techniques of this perplexing war and the personalities of the Jewish G.I.s.

One discovers that the Jewish soldier resembles any other soldier. He loves to brag. He holds his enemy in vast contempt. He collects souvenirs as ardently as a United States marine. On the slightest provocation, he whips out snap-shots of children, wives and sweethearts, He is hospitality personified.

He is distinguished from other soldiers by several singular differences. He doesn’t want his name in the papers. By habit of many years, he yearns almost pathologically for anonymity. He is completely without rank consciousness and if so moved, never ‘hesitates to call a company commander “fathead” in his presence.

There is no “brass” in the Haganah, which seems to account for the lack of class distinction between officer and enlisted man. Nobody salutes anybody and nobody wears any insignia of rank. Indeed, no hard, fast classification appears to exist between enlisted men and officers. To an outsider, soldiers refer to themselves vaguely as “bren gunner,” “sniper” or “commander”. Such tags as private first class, sergeant or colonel just don't exist. Commanders and G.I.s eat together, bunk together and on leave drink in the same bars.

“The only difference is authority, and that is never questioned,” the commander of an outfit on the border told me while lunching on macaroni and liberated Arab chicken in his abode, a house once occupied by an Arab pasha.

In this talent for liberating such enemy captives as chickens and donkeys, the Jewish soldier likewise resembles his colleagues in other armies.

The kind of war they have been fighting leaves remarkably little destruction in its wake. Except for the Arab village Assumeria [al-Sumayriyya], straddling the road north of Acre, there is scarcely a dented building in all of Northern Palestine. The Jews got sore at Assumeria because its denizens persistently ambushed Jewish convoys and shot up drivers. And as soon as they captured the place, they systematically blew it up with dynamite leaving only the mosque standing out of the town’s hundred buildings.

Acre town itself and such Arab border towns as Azzib and Bassa show hardly any scars of battle except for a weird air of desertion.

The Haganah is remarkably shy of discussing weapons or tactics.

Nevertheless, one gathers that the average village attack runs something like this: Jews open up on the town with small mortars, rifles, Sten-guns and machine-guns in the middle of the night. Generally, they have the defenders previously spotted in such buildings as police stations. A few hours of. this commonly serves to discourage the defenders, who then take to the hills followed by the entire population except the cats and dogs and those humans too sick or old for walking.

One may be pardoned for suspecting that the Haganah —-especially the top commanders-— are inclined to exaggerate the enemy's strength. The Area Commander, for example, solemnly swore his soldiers drove 1,500 fanatic Iraqi warriors out of Bassa. More realistic Jewish soldiers on the actual scene guessed the enemy at. around 300.

Except for small portable souvenirs, such as daggers and abandoned tarbushes, Jewish soldiers leave captured towns pretty much intact. They are distinctly not looters.

It should be said, however, that the average Jewish soldier regards the enemy as fearfully unsanitary as well as unheroic, There is very little an Arab leaves behind that the averape Jew would touch with a ten foot pole.

With the possible but unlikely exception of Jerusalem, there his been no battle anywhere in this war which could compare in any way with the intensity, weight of weapons, destruction or wholesale death as, for example, the most insignificant Pacific Island battle of the recent world war. On the other hand, this observation is not meant as a reflection on the quality of this war. To the soldier fighting it, the biggest war is no bigger than the bullet which hits him.

’

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75 years ago: Arab leaders considered Palestinian refugees in 1948 to be "fifth columnists"

During the War of Independence in 1948, on a few occasions the Palestine Post could not publish the newspaper properly. The editors nearly always managed to get something out, even if it was typewritten.

That is what happened on June 7, 1948.

But one of the stories includes an important quote that I have not seen elsewhere, possibly because of the newspaper looking the way it did.

"ARAB REFUGEES ARE FIFTH COLUMNISTS"

The Arab radio stations are broadcasting appeals to Arab refugees from Palestine to return to their homes. The Arab authorities are offering financial support to those who come back, while men of military age are promised exemption from duty.

In Cairo, Azzam Pasha [secretary general of the Arab League - EoZ] has stated that the refugees constituted a fifth column in the Arab states, where they are spreading despondency and alarm.

The closest I could find was a second hand quote from Aharon Cohen, in his book "Israel and the Arab World" (1964), where he says that Arab leaders were very critical of "fifth columnists and rumormongers" behind the flight from Israel.

The juxtaposition of the two reports in the newspaper shows the contempt that the Arabs leaders had for Palestinian Arabs and how much they wanted to rid their countries of them.

Which is still true today.

The only difference is that soon after 1948, the Arab leaders came up with a better sounding plan. They still wanted to get rid of the refugees whom they considered cowardly and a threat to their own stability - but they started couching their desire to rid themselves of them as being "pro-Palestinian" because they supported "return" and avoided naturalization - ostensibly for the Palestinians' own good.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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75 years ago: Arab propaganda claims Jews would be safe under their rule - while they oppress their Jews

The Palestine Post reported on June 1, 1948 that Arab airplanes were dropping propaganda leaflets on northern Israel urging Jews to surrender and assuring them that Jews are treated wonderfully in Arab countries - better than anywhere else in the world.