Showing posts with label 1948 terror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1948 terror. Show all posts

Friday, May 05, 2023

There is an interesting thread by Yair Wallach, from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, where he minimizes any threats made by Arabs towards Jews in 1948, and says that Jews exaggerate those threats in order to pursue their goal of Jewish supremacism:

So many people are attached to the "they wanted to throw us into the sea" myth based on extremely flimsy evidence - a couple of dubious quotes. If this was indeed a "genocidal war" against Jews, you'd expect such rhetoric to be easy to find. It isn't. 

There is, in contrast, a considerable corpus of public discussions in Arabic on how to integrate Jews (inc. recent migrants) into the Arab Middle East. Those ideas, unsurprisingly, were unpalatable to the Zionist mainstream. But that's very different to "throwing into the sea".

But it's not enough to say: we had radically different political visions, therefore there was war. No, it has to be "they wanted to push us into the sea". Why?

Because it's a founding colonial myth. Israel is "the villa in the jungle." Arabs are genocidal and violent by nature, always a security risk. So equal rights are out of the question, and a 55 year military occupation is justified - because they want to push us into the sea.
It is true that in 1948, Zionist analysts felt that the war would go their way. It is probably true that some sober Arab leaders did not plan genocide against the Jews and "merely" wanted them to remain despised second class citizens as they had been forever under Muslim rule. But there is a huge leap in logic there to claim that there was no fear of another genocide, and an even larger leap to say that Jewish racism is keeping that myth alive in order to subjugate Palestinians. 

First of all, there were threats - real threats - by Arab leaders promising a massacre of Jews that were recorded in major media, and not difficult to find at all. And they included at least one explicit call to throw Jews into the sea. 

Here's one genocidal threat from November 1947:


Another one was from Abdul Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League. Right before the UN partition vote on November 29, 1947, he publicly threatened not only the Jews of Palestine but all Jews in the Middle East. 

Abdul Azzam Pasha. secretary general of the Arab League, warned today that a United Nations decision to partition Palestine could mean only one thing for Arabs —"war against the Jews." 

In a statement made as the UN general assembly prepared to vote on the explosive issue he declared: "Such a decision would mean the end of the first phase of the Arab struggle to have Palestine become an independent Arab state. The second phase of the struggle will now begin . . . the Arabs will have a long run of victories even it it takes us until 1950 or 1960.

"We have justice, time and numbers on our side—everything but arms— and we shall get them too." 
...
The Arab spokesman said that if Haganah, army of the Jewish agency for Palestine, tries to enforce a partition decision after the British leave and Palestine Arabs seek the help of other Arab states "we shall not hesitate."

He declared: "Every Arab from Morocco to Afghanistan would rise in answer to the call of their Arab brethren." 

He forecast "disturbances" and "persecution" of Jews in neighboring Arab countries "in an atmosphere of hatred and animosity which will prevail in case of trouble." The spokesman added, "Palestine Arabs will not stop to find out who is Zionist and who is not. They will be fighting one enemy--Jews." 
..."If we suffer any defeats in the beginning then the Arabs will rally in huge numbers because it will be a question of racial pride."


Azzam Pasha is saying here that it is a point of pride for Arabs not to accept Jews as equals or victors. He proudly calls Arabs racists against Jews. So even if they wouldn't have literally thrown all the Jews into the sea, all the Arab proposals of what to do with the Jews ensured that Jews would be forever subjugated. 

Now, let's look at what happened in the immediate aftermath of Azzam Pasha's threat. As soon as the UN partition vote ended - -within hours - Arabs in Palestine started attacking every Jew they could find.

Not Haganah members. Jews.

And for months, until the Haganah started going on the offensive, Jews were murdered every day just because they were Jewish.


- 39 Jews massacred at a Haifa oil refinery when 2000 Arab employees ran amok after an apparent Irgun bomb killed six Arabs.

- A funeral procession to the Mount of Olives (for Jews previously murdered by Arabs) was raked by gunfire, killing one of the mourners and a British policeman.

- Two Jews were killed in separate events near Safed.

- One Jew was killed and several injured in sniping from Jaffa to Tel Aviv.

And these are only the stories about fatal attacks. There were many others that were either repulsed or "only" resulted in injuries.

This is what the paper was like every day. Jewish doctors killed in hospitals. Jews killed trying to help Arabs in trouble. Arab neighbors who had been friends with Jews turned around and started ululating in support of Iraqi troops in their villages. It was open season on Jews.

And  Jewish civilians in the Arab world were also targets at that time - in Tehran and Yemen, in Bahrain and Syria, in Morocco and Egypt.

These are not myths. Azzam Pasha's threats were coming true. 

There was also at least one threat to throw Jews into the sea. In August, 1948, Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Banna told the New York Times, "If the Jewish state be-comes a fact, and this is realized by the Arab peoples, they will drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea." This is referring to the Jews of Arab countries, and the NYT added that  "the Sheikh granted that this was a figure of speech," but later in the article he explicitly said that if it wasn't for politics, the Arab world would have "destroyed the Jews" in Palestine.

Wallach, whose Twitter feed has a number of statements disparaging those who are arguing with him because they are not real historians like he is, apparently found these explicitly genocidal statements against all Jews in the Middle East by Arab leaders too difficult to find. These are not "dubious" quotes - they are explicit calls to wipe out the Jews.

Coming only three years after the Holocaust, why wouldn't Jews take these threats seriously?  More importantly, how can anyone consider these public statements from Arab leaders, backed up by  Arab actions on the ground, not genocidal? The only thing protecting the Jews in Palestine was the Haganah - without them they would have been defenseless. They weren't defending themselves only from armies but from their neighbors. The Hadassah Hospital convoy massacre was not exactly an invitation by Arabs to work out their differences with the Jews.

Wallach's evidence that some Arabs discussed how to not eradicate the Jews and only subjugate them may very well be true, but there was also counter-evidence - the leader of the Arab Higher Committee being a Nazi collaborator, the organized attacks against Jews the previous decade during the Arab Revolt, the 1929 pogroms against Jews throughout the land - these were all fresh memories. Maybe Arab leaders really were against genocide, and maybe they just felt it was not a practical solution, but the Arab leaders throughout the Middle East were inciting their people to murder Jews, whether in the media or speeches to mobs.

No one says that every Arab wanted to kill every Jew. But given the events that followed the partition vote, and the recent history of Arab attacks on Jews, it would have been stupid indeed for Jews to rely on the goodwill of Arabs to keep them safe. 

It is true that things aren't black and white. One can look at the relative strength of the armies and conclude that the Zionists probably wouldn't be destroyed. But at the time, as political winds swirled around - the US changed its position about partition before Truman recognized Israel, the UN meetings on Palestine brought different news every day, the British stumbled between pretending to defend Jews to abandoning them -- there was no room for the Jews to be confident. Thousands of Jews were killed during the war, and everyone knew friends and family who fell. The Jews had no less fear than the Arabs who fled - but the Jews had nowhere else to go. No matter how much Arab leaders insisted they weren't antisemitic, it isn't like the Jews of Palestine could expect safe passage or asylum in the neighboring states.

Wallach the historian also plays fast and loose in order to make his non-historic, purely political conclusion. What do these supposed "myths" of 1948 have to do with the "occupation" that began in 1967? If the "founding myths" were what animates Israel's actions today, then shouldn't they be treating Israeli Arabs the exact same as Palestinians?  

He knows that Israeli Arabs having equal rights destroy his assertions, so he switches contexts to Palestinians who are not citizens, and jumps from 1948 to 1967.

Similarly, if Israel regards all Arabs as genocidal and violent, as Wallach asserts as a fundamental belief, then why did Israel make peace with Arab countries? 

It is so sad when that reality gets in the way of a juicy, anti-Zionist theory.

 Modern historians have the benefit of hindsight, and too often exhibit the proclivity to cherry pick the historic evidence that support their positions and ignore the inconvenient facts that say otherwise. But as we see here, being a historian does not mean being free of bias - on the contrary, it often gives the historian the hubris to discount or ignore the messy facts that don't fit their theories. 

(h/t Nurit Baytch for Hassan Banna quote)



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Wednesday, April 26, 2023




AP reported on the Egyptian and other Arab states' reaction to Israeli independence in 1948: "The weekly Akhbar el Yom said 600 persons, mostly Zionists, were rounded up and sent to concentration camps."

Yes, only three years after the Holocaust, Jews were being rounded up again. Reports of Jews in Egyptian and Iraqi concentration camps trickled into the media during 1948.

In August, 18 French Jews who were interned started a hunger strike after efforts by France to free them were fruitless. At the time it was estimated that 3,000 Jews were imprisoned in these camps. British Jews in Egypt were also arrested without charge. (The French internees were finally released in September.)

A large number of Jews, most of whom were born in Egypt and whose families have lived there for generations, were ordered to leave the country this week-end or “face the alternative of imprisonment in desert concentration camps,” the American Jewish Committee reported in a telegram to Acting Secretary of State Herbert C. Hoover, Jr.

The Committee disclosed that leaders of the Jewish Communities of Cairo and Alexandria “have already been placed in concentration camps.” At the same time, it reported that the property of Jews in Egypt has been seized as “enemy property” and placed under the custodianship of the Egyptian government.

And that wasn't the worse thing for Egypt's Jews. They were being murdered in the streets.

22 Jews were killed in a June bombing in the Karaite Jewish quarter of Cairo. 19 more were murdered by another bomb in the main Jewish quarter of Cairo in September. Four Jewish-owned department stores were bombed in July and August.

JTA reported this horrific testimony:

The situation of the Jews in Egypt was termed today as "highly alarming" by a Frenchman who returned from Cairo and gave the first detailed and uncensored report of the pogroms, mob violence, mass looting and terrorism which is now taking place throughout Egypt against the Jewish population.

Egyptian mobs, he revealed, killed three rabbis by splitting their throats, after dragging them into a Cairo slaughter house. He estimated that at least 150 Jews had either been killed or had "disappeared" in Cairo incidents during the last four weeks. A substantial number of Jews had been wounded, he said. The pogroms and anti-Jewish terrorism are tacitly encouraged by the passive attitude of the Egyptian Government, he charged.

The gravest single incident, he reported, occurred on July 20 at one of Cairo’s chief street car junctions, in Malika Farida Placo. An organized group of Egyptians ejected all the European passengers from several trolleys. All passengers suspected of being Jews were savagely killed on the spot, and many had their eyes pierced or were knifed, while non-Jews and Europeans were robbed of all cash and belongings. The police made no effort to intervene, the French visitor emphasized.

Of the large number of Jews in Cairo who have been wounded, he continued, 120 are now undergoing treatment in the Jewish hospital there and an unannounced number are in government or private institutions. Scattered incidents of knifing of Jews are repeatedly reported in various parts of the Egyptian capital, he said. The killing of three rabbis in the slaughter house took place on July 21, he reported.
I haven't seen verification of the specifics, but there are many reports of pogroms in Egypt against Jews and scores were known to have been killed.

Then, as now, the excuse given for antisemitism was "Zionism." Yet then as now, they were attacked because they were Jews.





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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Back in 2010, Palestinians were screaming that Israel planned to build the Museum of Tolerance on top of graves at the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem. How dare Israel disrespect this holy site, with ancient Muslim figures?

They were lying - there were no graves being disturbed;; they had been moved years beforehand. 

At the time, I discovered that the Supreme Muslim Council of Jerusalem had deconsecrated the cemetery in 1945 and planned to build a business park there. So it wasn't sacred in 1945 either.

Afterwards, I found out that in the 1930s the Mufti of Jerusalem had once directed sewage pipes from a hotel he owned into this supposedly "sacred" cemetery.

If you need even more evidence that Palestinian Arabs claim sites that they disrespect themselves become :"sacred" when Jews step foot on them, 75 years ago the Arab fighters in Jerusalem used the cemetery as a base of operations numerous times.

February 8, 1948:



April 22, 1948:




April  24, 1948:


April 25, 1948:


When Gaza terrorists shoot rockets from cemeteries, they are following in the noble traditions of their forefathers in 1948 Jerusalem.




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Heroes Haim Graf and Mordechai Komornik

There were two interesting and related articles in the Palestine Post of March 22, 1948, on events that happened 75 years ago today, that were both about Jewish heroes.

The first real heroes were two guards, Haim Graf and Mordechai Komornik, who saw smoke coming out of the abandoned vehicle outside the Solel Boneh building in Haifa. They warned scores of people about a truck bomb - and who were killed by that very bomb as they were pushing the truck away from the crowded building.


Unfortunately, four were killed besides the guards, including a father and his five year old son.

The other heroic story was of a different type:


The Jews rushed to save the lives of their armed enemies - and Zichron Mizrahi paid with his life.

Why did the Arab Legionnaires assume that the Jews who were trying to rescue them were attacking them? 

Because that is how Arabs would act! 

Palestinian Arabs have a different idea of what being a "hero" means. They have used the word "heroic" consistently with every single murder of a Jew this year (and every other year) by an Arab.

If you want to know a people, know who they consider their heroes.



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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Monday, March 13, 2023

75 years ago, on March 11, 1948, a huge explosion shook Jerusalem as a car bomb detonated outside the Jewish Agency.

13 Jews were killed, including the head of the Agency, Leib Jaffe, 71, who had attended the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1898.

A Christian  Arab employee of the US Consulate took the car, with the US flag, into the compound and the Jewish Agency guards trusted him.



Arab snipers shot at rescue workers from across an Arab cemetery nearby.

A couple of days later, the Arab Higher Committee published a "Black Paper" listing the imagined crimes of the Jewish Agency and named major Zionist leaders as targets, comparing them to the Nazis.






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Monday, February 27, 2023


Today's news has uncomfortable echoes in the events of 75 years ago.






On February 22, 1948, three trucks filled with explosives were exploded by Arabs in British Army uniforms on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem. Over 50 people were killed, including several children.



The "Army of the Holy War" led by Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni took responsibility for the attack several days later. He was a relative of the Nazi-allied Mufti of Jerusalem. His group was essentially the Hamas of its day. 

Two British Army deserters also participated in the attack. While the Mufti of Jerusalem denied any responsibility, and his Arab Higher Committee distanced itself from it, saying that the attack was "'depravity unfit for the Arab spirit," those British soldiers said that they had been promised a huge reward from the Mufti for their part of the plot. The story is that when they went to claim that reward, the Mufti laughed at them. 

As with yesterday's murderous terror attack, Jewish leaders called for restraint - but many did not listen. The Irgun and Lehi groups, blaming the attack on the British, attacked and killed a number of British soldiers in revenge, while Arab snipers killed several Jews.


The real difference between then and now, of course, is that now the Jews can defend themselves. Then, the British were still responsible for security, and they didn't hold on to their end of the bargain. Even though they knew that their own vehicles had been stolen days before this attack, they didn't inform the Jewish guards in Jerusalem, who let the bomb-laden British trucks into the heart of the city assuming they were safe. (One heroic guard challenged the "British soldiers" and was immediately murdered by them.) 






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

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Monday, February 20, 2023


Starting in 1947, the Arab Legion was placed in Jewish areas by the British. They used this opportunity to attack and murder random Jewish civilians.

From the Palestine Post, February 16, 1948:


A particularly horrific story happened the next day. Three Jews were shot at in their car, injured, forcibly pulled from their car - and then executed.

From the Palestine Post, February 17, 1948:



More details of this crime were revealed in the next day's paper. The British knew about the execution ahead of time, and essentially colluded.




These are all war crimes by any definition. And no one even remembers this. 




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Thursday, February 16, 2023

Palmach soldiers


The Palestine Post, February 13, 1948, describes a despicable war crime in Jerusalem that has been all but forgotten.

A group of four Haganah members in Jerusalem were arrested by a British Army patrol that was manned by Arabs. 

Hours later, their bodies were found, riddled with bullets.

Their names were Eliyahu Kessler, Shimon Nissani,  Naftali Schul and Shalom Leon.

This is really a double war crime. One is that the Arabs effectively used their British army uniforms to perform an illegal attack, and the other one was to slaughter prisoners in custody. 




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, February 13, 2023

From the Palestine Post, February 12, 1948:


Notice the Arabs didn't shout "Kill the Zionist." They shouted "Kill the Jew."





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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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