Amnesia and willful ignorance seem to be running amok in today’s political arena, especially when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians — mostly due to the desperation for a peace agreement. And it is in this environment that we were introduced to President Trump’s plan to alleviate the economic hardships facing the Palestinian people.
But the uncomfortable reality of the situation is that the conflict is not about economics. Nor is it about two states. This festering conflict fails to cease because one side absolutely refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the other.
Even before being presented with the US plan, the Palestinians rejected it outright. They did not know any details, nor did they come to the table with any counter-proposals. They simply rejected it, just as they rejected the peace plans presented by former Israeli leaders Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert.
And they will continue to reject any proposal that will end the conflict — because right now, they do not want it to end.
Palestinian politicians are masters of intransigence. The peace proposals of the past would have ensured that they gained statehood on the majority of the land they claim to want as their own.
The Palestinians had an amazing opportunity when Israel withdrew from Gaza. They could have put aside their never-ending animosity, and truly experimented with nation building. True, Gaza may not have become a Singapore or a Hong Kong, but the Palestinians could have tried to build a new world for themselves. Instead, they broke down into civil strife and elected a monstrous terrorist organization to rule over them.
Obama closed the speech by asking Congress not to vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force against Assad’s regime. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid postponed a vote indefinitely to the relief of his fellow Senate Democrats. But the crisis was not defused. The Syrian civil war raged, atrocities mounted, ISIS exploded over the border with Iraq, and Obama eventually ordered strikes inside Syrian territory just over a year later. A year after that, he put boots on the ground inside Syria. Obama insisted that this military intervention in a sovereign and adversarial nation was covered by previous congressional authorizations that target stateless terrorists, but that didn’t prevent coalition forces from conducting offensive operations against Assad’s forces. Accidents happen, you see.
Landler’s claim that Obama sought an AUMF against Syria to justify strikes on Iran is betrayed by the administration’s response to Iranian nuclearization in 2009, which was typified by diplomacy, not ultimatums. The same month that Obama backed off his plan to strike Iran’s allies in Syria, he reached out to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani—the first bilateral contact between U.S. and Iranian leaders since 1979. That November, Kerry joined his Iranian counterpart in Geneva to settle on the terms of a precursor agreement to what would become the 2015 nuclear accords.
Unlike Assad, the Iranians “did not cross the red line” according to Landler, which he defines as Sec. Mike Pompeo’s warning to Tehran that it would face retaliation only if American service personnel were harmed. But no one needs to articulate the fact that multiple operations sabotaging commercial shipping in international waters and the direct, claimed attack on an American military asset constitute acts of war. The notion that “Iran’s actions were rooted in” Trump’s decision to partially withdraw from the 2015 nuclear accords suggests that Iran should have put an end to attacks on Americans and their allies when the U.S. was a party to that accord, but they did not.
Landler concedes only that “defenders of Mr. Trump” claim that Obama never truly wanted congressional approval for strikes on Iran but only an excuse not to act. But a judicious review of the administration’s confused messaging and lethargic legislative strategy in the run-up to a strike leave cautious observers with no other conclusion.
Landler’s attempt to rebrand Obama’s legacy on Syria as the product of strategic thinking and gamesmanship derailed only by events beyond his control is unpersuasive. Indeed, these excuses contradict Obama himself, who told The Atlantic’s Jeff Goldberg that he was “very proud” of this mortifying sequence of events. By linking the canceled strike on Syria to Trump’s halted response to Iranian aggression, Landler inadvertently demonstrates how hard it is to defend Obama’s legacy.
President Reuven Rivlin on Tuesday hosted Egypt’s envoy to Israel at an event marking 40 years since the peace treaty between the two countries and urged that the pact serve as an inspiration for reaching a similar agreement with the Palestinians.
He also told Egyptian Ambassador to Israel Khaled Azmi that he would like to meet with Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
Rivlin and Azmi were joined at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem by Foreign Minister Israel Katz and Regional Cooperation Minister Tzahi Hanegbi, according to a statement from the president.
“The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was signed only six years after a terrible war between our countries in 1973,” Rivlin said. “We could never have imagined that only a few years later our leaders would hug and shake hands. This should serve as an inspiration for our efforts to achieve peace with all of our neighbors, and especially our Palestinian neighbors.
“When courageous leaders are willing to end their conflict, and set out on a new path based on reconciliation and mutual respect, peace can be achieved more quickly than we can imagine,” he said.
Members of the diplomatic corps also attended the event, among them Israeli ambassadors who previously served in Egypt and officials who played key roles in the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace accord, signed by prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The pact was brokered by US president Jimmy Carter and formally signed at the White House.
“I want to especially express our appreciation to President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, whose commitment to peace, stability and cooperation has ensured that our relationship stays strong,” Rivlin said.
— Ariel Gold🔥☮️ אריאל (@ArielElyseGold) June 24, 2019
Besides misspelling "Kushner" and mixing up "million" and "billion," she seems to have a strange definition of "dignity," which I pointed out in a response and later with a poster:
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Palestinians are on a general strike today in response to the economic workshop in Bahrain.
The Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and a host of other terror groups all released statements denouncing the workshop, and marches are being organized for today and tomorrow.
Stores are shuttered as people are encouraged to attend rallies opposing the plan. The Gaza fisherman's union instructed its members to stay off the water.
Who exactly are they hurting with the strike? Their own people!
Any business or shop owner who would have opened up today would be subject to attack. So, because the PLO and Hamas want to make their political positions known, they are telling their own people who need incomes to go to hell.
Which is as good a summation of their attitude towards the workshop itself as can be.
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I believe that the Bahrain economic workshop was designed to "fail." The Palestinians are playing the roles assigned to them by Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt perfectly.
The Trump team is smart, and they know how Palestinian leaders act - far better than the professional diplomats who kept trying to entice them with more and more Israeli concessions, which only made the Palestinians increasingly intransigent.
Kushner and Greenblatt have been spending lots of time speaking with the Gulf leaders, the people who have been the biggest funders of the Palestinians over the decades. They know quite well what most of the professionals have been pretending isn't true: the rich Arab nations have been sick of the Palestinian issue since even before the Arab Spring.
These leaders have seen the Palestinians turn down offer after offer. They've seen them refuse to even talk with Israel. They've seen how they cannot solve the Fatah/Hamas crisis.
The Gulf leaders never intended to be a permanent welfare source for a dysfunctional quasi-state. They want to invest their money, not throw it away. Over the past ten years, maybe more, they have publicly been pretending to fully support the Palestinians - and have privately been reneging on their pledges.
Other Arab states have been burned by the Palestinians as well. Even before the conference, when the Palestinians went on their full court press to get every Arab nation to boycott the conference, Jordanian media close to the king said that there is no harm in attending the workshop and see what could be on the table. Egypt has been trying to mediate between Hamas and Fatah for years, to no avail but much to Egypt's frustration at the terror group on its doorstep.
The professional diplomats only hear the Arab states say how the Palestine issue is the most important one in the region, a mantra that has been meant to cover up the problems each Arab country has at home and sometimes between themselves. The professionals believed it.
Kushner and Greenblatt know better. They have been able to cut through the bull, helped a great deal by the fact that the Gulf states felt so abandoned by the Obama administration's disastrous tilt towards Iran.
If there is one thing that was a sure bet, it is that Mahmoud Abbas would instruct his government to boycott this conference. And this is exactly what was expected.
The conference is meant to make the wedge between the Palestinian leaders and most of the rest of the Arab leaders explicit. Here is a workshop where some $50 billion in aid is being offered, with no strings attached, as a vision of what could be if Palestinians would just accept Israel, stop haggling over issues Israel will never give up on, and actually accept a state.
Palestinian intransigence, the most reliable force in the region, is what can pave the way for Gulf states to finally drop the linkage between the moribund "peace process" and having closer relations with Israel. The Gulf states know that they need to modernize, to diversify from oil, to invest in education and high tech. They know that Israel would love to help them.
Given a choice of who would help them more, Israel or "Palestine," there isn't even a question.
The US invitation for Palestinian officials to come to the workshop was half-hearted at best. If they would come, great, but if they refuse, even better.
The predictable Palestinian refusal to have anything to do with progress is part of the bigger peace plan that the Trump administration is working on - the real peace between Israel and the Arab world.
The world, and the diplomats of the previous era, have been the victims of the tunnel vision that the only important peace is that between Israel and the Palestinian leaders who have shown time and time again that they don't want peace at all. Not only had the "peace process" turned into a religion, but so had the idea that there was a linkage between the Palestinian issue and all the problems of the Middle East. These myths have driven the US, EU and UN's thinking since before Oslo.
Real peace is not based on artificial and arbitrary demands by a spoiled welfare state that believes that the world owes them unconditional funding and support forever. Real peace is based on shared interests. Real peace is one that all of the parties actually want, rather than one where one party uses the word "peace" as a means to politically pressure and destroy the other.
Israel and the Arab states have already had a de facto peace which has been getting better despite the worsening relations Israel has had with the Palestinian leaders. Linkage has been shown to be a myth.
Only when Palestinians understand that the world has changed and that they can no longer rely on automatic, reflexive support from their fellow Arabs can they even start to consider going back to the table with Israel.
These former diplomats, now pundits, still don't get it. They belittle the economic workshop, saying that "oh, we've already tried that before" and "the document looks like a real estate prospectus." They are still stuck in the past, devoted to their old myths, and not understanding that Bahrain is already a success before it even starts.
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A clear majority of the Arab world continues to believe that Israel is the main threat in the Middle East and North Africa, a comprehensive BBC poll of 11 Arab countries revealed on Monday.
The poll — which involved interviews with over 25,000 respondents in Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Yemen, Iraq, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria — also demonstrated that a strict social conservatism prevailed throughout the region, exemplified by a violent hatred of homosexuality.
Opposition to women holding positions of power and influence, as well as sympathy for the practice of “honor killings” — the execution of female relatives for allegedly shaming their families — remains widespread as well.
The poll, conducted for the British broadcaster by the Arab Barometer research organization, showed that residents of the Palestinian territories were more resistant to liberal democratic values than are their neighbors in several respects.
Only five percent of Palestinian respondents — the lowest number in all the countries surveyed — regarded homosexuality as “acceptable.”
Israel Advocacy Movement: Verified antisemitism on Twitter
Twitter is drowning in antisemitism. We’ve uncovered dozens of VERIFIED accounts posting anti-Jewish racism. This video will shock you, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Follow us on Twitter as we highlight an account a day.
Last Thursday was World Refugee Day. And according to the United Nations page devoted to this commemoration, every minute 20 people leave everything behind to escape war, persecution or terror. I am one of those people, declares Miriam Shepher in this JTA piece. (With thanks: Ralph)
In 1948, when I was 6 months old, my mother risked everything to escape Tunisia with my siblings and me in search of a better life. My father stayed behind until he could meet us years later at our final destination. We crammed into a ship called the Negba and endured a difficult journey to France. We waited for a year until it was our turn, at last, to enter the land that my mother had always considered our home: Eretz Israel.
I am just one of 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran who left, fled or were expelled from the countries where they had lived, in many cases, since the Babylonian period. In the years that followed the independence of the State of Israel, Jews in Arab countries suffered unbearable discrimination and acts of violence that led to their forced expulsion. Jews were forced out of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and later Iran. They left behind their property and belongings, carrying only necessities as they escaped to safety.
Entire Jewish communities were wiped out, and centuries of religious customs, traditions, culture and music vanished from the Middle East and North Africa. Like my family, nearly half of these refugees settled in Israel. Our stories remainlargely untold. Many still do not know of our collective trauma.
In the novel Children of the Ghetto: My Name Is Adam—recently published in English translation—Elias Khoury tells the story of a Palestinian who fled the city of Lydda during Israel’s war of independence and takes as its theme the “silence” of members of that generation. The subject of a fawning review in the New York Times, the book employs as its central conceit an exercise in Holocaust inversion (made clear by the title), comparing the plight of the Palestinians to that of the Jewish victims of Nazism. But the supposed massacre perpetrated by the Haganah at Lydda—which had a formative impact of the protagonist of Children of the Ghetto—never happened, as Martin Kramer demonstrated in Mosaic in 2014:
Lydda, along the route from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, was an Arab city of some 20,000, swollen by July [1948] to about twice that size by an influx of refugees from Jaffa and neighboring villages already occupied by Israeli forces. The 5th Infantry Company of the Transjordanian Arab Legion (approximately 125 soldiers) was deployed in the city, supported by many more local irregulars who had been making months-long preparations for battle.
On July 11, . . . the 3rd Battalion of the [Haganah’s] Yiftaḥ brigade moved into southern approaches to the city. . . . By the next day, as Israeli forces were strengthening their hold on the city, two or three armored vehicles of the Arab Legion appeared on the northern edge and began firing in all directions. This encouraged an eruption of sniping and grenade-throwing at Israeli troops from upper stories and rooftops within the town, and from [what was known as] “the small mosque” only a few hundred meters from the armored-vehicle incursion.
Israeli commanders feared a counterattack by the Legion in coordination with the armed irregulars still at large in the city. The order came down to suppress the incipient uprising with withering fire. The Great Mosque and the church, [crammed with male Arab civilians], were unaffected, but Israeli forces struck the small mosque with an antitank missile.
In short, a fierce battle took place, and Israeli troops fired on a mosque that had become an enemy outpost, but, as Kramer goes on to prove, there is no evidence of a massacre.
Dozens of journalists demonstrated Monday morning in Gaza City, condemning the Bahrain conference.
They demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the Red Cross in Gaza, for some reason, to protest what they called the normalization of information about the workshop in Bahrain.
"The demonstration today is to denounce the attempts to normalize the workshop in Bahrain," said leader Ahed Farwana.
The word "normalization" now doesn't only mean to treat Israel and Israelis as human beings, but even to cover stories that somehow can be perceived as benefiting Jews and Israelis!
Farwana called for the boycott of Israel and its media and to criminalize any journalist who participates in the workshop, noting the decisions of the General Union of Arab Journalists, which criminalized normalization with Israel.
When Western media uses Arab stringers, or reports on Gaza news sources, they never mention that the people they are dependent on actually oppose any kind of journalistic standards. To them, politics is more important than truth.
Sadly, too many Western journalists agree with that idea.
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Some bad news hit Oberlin College recently in the form of a $33,000,000 judgement against the school for libel ($11M in compensatory damages, $22M in punitive), a bill that might go higher if the school has to cover the legal fees of the plaintiff.
Legal Insurrection covered (and continues to cover) the Gibson’s Bakery vs. Oberlin case, so I suggest you head over there to get the details of what happened. I bring up the story now not because BDS was specific to events that led to the suit, but because it reminded me that Oberlin might be the third example of the gods punishing bad choices in strange and unexpected ways.
The first example is Evergreen College in Washington State, ground zero in the Northwest for the boycott and divestment “movement.” Evergreen was the school Rachel Corrie attendedwhen she was recruited by activists from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and taught how to sneak into Israel, find her way into a conflict area, and protest by putting herself in harm’s way.
Her death during one of those protests triggered and then anchored anti-Israel activities at the school and beyond for years. As BDS hardened into dogma on that campus, it became clear that anyone with interest in identifying with or supporting the Jewish state should apply elsewhere, and so campus political life became more homogenized and radical.
In fact, the ability to say and do what they wanted without fear of challenge (much less punishment) turned the students of Evergreen into strange sorts of monsters who have been on a rampage in recent years, attacking professors and administrators who do not accept and embrace ever-enlarging lists of required beliefs and associated demands.
Behavior that once turned off any Jewish student who did not adhere to the BDS party line now seems to have turned off anyone not interested in going to a college where they might getthreatened with baseball bats for saying or thinking the wrong thing. Understandably, Evergreen’s enrollment plummeted and budgets were cut to make up for the shortfall. In an era when colleges that can’t make ends meet are closing their doors, it is a very real possibility that Evergreen might one day have to decide whether to continue or close up shop.
One famous school already facing that stark choice is Hampshire College in Massachusetts. BDS-followers will remember Hampshire as the place where modern BDS project got kicked off after the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter created the momentum for campus divestment by claiming the school was the first college to divest from the Jewish state, a hoaxthe boycotters continue to spread today.
In the case of Hampshire, the school did the right thing by denying that divestment had taken place and chastising the students spreading that lie. But that wise choice did not prevent leaders at the school from allowing SJP to make the lives of Israel-supporting students (mostly Jewish) hell for years afterwards.
One amusing element of the whole Hampshire debate was that the school has always had one of the smallest endowments of any college, meaning there was very little to divest in the first place. But that small endowment became less of a joke once the school hit financial difficulties and had no cushion to fall back on. While the demise of Evergreen is speculative, the end of Hampshire is a very real possibility with the current entering class consists of just fifteen students hoping the school figures out a way to bail itself out of the current crisis, possibly through a merger with another institution.
Again, Hampshire’s current crisis has nothing to do with BDS, although I do wonder if the school might have had more good will to draw upon in seeking a partner to save them had they not earned a reputation for thoughtless radicalism through the “heroic” efforts of SJP years earlier.
Which gets us to Oberlin. Like Evergreen and Hampshire, anti-Israel forces have been in the ascendant at that college for years, driving supporters of the Jewish state underground (or causing them to apply elsewhere) and this success may have emboldened students towards even greater radicalism. All of the pathologies we have seen on college campuses: accusations of systematic bigotry (targeting a school that was at the forefront of abolition and civil rights movements no less) and demands for ever more subservience to the radicals have been turned up to eleven at Oberlin, which may explain how the college ended up looking down the wrong end of a nine-figure legal settlement.
While it is impossible to read minds or Tardis our way into the past to attend meetings where decisions were made, it seems likely that administrators at the school thought the most effective way to diffuse student attacks against them as being bigots was to deflect student fire towards an innocent small business that some students were accusing of racial profiling after an African American undergrad was arrested for shoplifting at the store.
That seems to be the storyline that won over the jury, and while the college continues to insist it did nothing wrong, there seems to be no acceptance that the school has a responsibility to use its voice to prevent students from harming others (in this case, harming a hundred-year-old small business that had to suffer days of protests – participated in by both and at least one college administrator – where the family that owned the store was condemned as racists).
The world is too complex to draw a direct line between tolerating intolerance towards one group (Jewish supporters of Israel) to tolerating intolerance generally, but it certainly makes sense that once you have decided to throw one group to the wolves that the wolves might take that as an open invitation to demand more food.
In the case of Oberlin, the food bit back and it remains to be seen if other places where BDS reigns supreme will suffer similar fates as Evergreen, Hampshire and Oberlin, now that we know even seemingly permanent institutions (including colleges and universities, academic associations, even centuries-old churches) might not last forever.
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This week’s U.S.-led Peace to Prosperity conference in Bahrain on the Palestinian economy will likely be attended by seven Arab states—a clear rebuke to foreign-policy experts who said that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the Golan Heights as Israeli territory would alienate the Arab world. Sunni Arab states are lending legitimacy to the Trump administration’s plan, making it all the more notable that the Palestinian Authority itself refuses to participate.
The conference’s only agenda is improving the Palestinian economy. It isn’t tied to any diplomatic package, and the plan’s 40-page overview contains nothing at odds with the Palestinian’s purported diplomatic goals. Some aspects are even politically uncomfortable for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Given all that, the Palestinian Authority’s unwillingness to discuss economic opportunities for its own people, even with the Arab states, shows how far it is from discussing the concessions necessary for a diplomatic settlement. Instead it seeks to deepen Palestinian misfortune and use it as a cudgel against Israel in the theater of international opinion.
This isn’t the first time the Palestinians have said no. At a summit brokered by President Clinton in 2000, Israel offered them full statehood on territory that included roughly 92% of the West Bank and all of Gaza, along with a capital in Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority rejected that offer, leading Israel to up it to 97% of the West Bank in 2001. Again, the answer was no. An even further-reaching offer in 2008 was rejected out of hand. And when President Obama pressured Israel into a 10-month settlement freeze in 2009 to renew negotiations, the Palestinians refused to come to the table.
After so many rejections, one might conclude that the Palestinian Authority’s leaders simply aren’t interested in peace. Had they accepted any of the peace offers, they would have immediately received the rarest of all geopolitical prizes: a new country, with full international recognition. To be sure, in each proposal they found something not quite to their liking. But the Palestinians are perhaps the only national independence movement in the modern era that has ever rejected a genuine offer of internationally recognized statehood, even if it falls short of all the territory the movement had sought.
The Palestinian Authority also attended a “counter-conference” in Bahrain last week, titled “The Holocaust of the Century in Bahrain… Its Signs, Consequences, and Ways to Deal With It,” bizarrely applying terminology that describes Nazis’ genocide against the Jews to an economic conference with a $50 billion proposed investment.
The boycott and calls for violence rehash the same unproductive methods the Palestinians have used in the past to thwart peace measures, only this time the incoherence of the boycott is made more evident by the fact Israel will not even attend. Palestinian leaders continue to promulgate the notion that the workshop is some devious machination of the West or President Trump or both, despite many Palestinian-Arab neighbors agreeing to attend and host.
If anything, their attendance shows the Palestinian-Arabs’ gradual isolation among the Gulf States, who have grown weary of the Palestinian Authority’s political gymnastics and obsession with destroying their Jewish neighbors. Bahrain will prove another missed opportunity for Palestinian leadership to engage with their neighbors in a significant way. Palestinian leadership sees the political capital to be had in human suffering, so any attempts to mitigate such suffering meet serious skepticism from Palestinian officials.
Since rejecting the suggested partitioning the 1937 Peel Commission, Arab leaders have thwarted the creation of an Arab state west of the Jordan River more than six times, depending on whether one considers refusal to talk to mean refusing the possibility of a state. Thus, if anything is to be gleaned from the Bahrain conference boycott, it is that the Palestinian leadership does not have a genuine interest in bettering the lives of their own people—and perhaps that they are quite unprepared for actual statehood.
The Palestinian strategy is clear: to incite the Arab masses against their leaders and governments. The Palestinian attacks are no longer directed against US President Donald Trump... Now the targets are the Arab heads of state, particularly those who are seen by Palestinians are being in collusion with Israel and the Trump administration.
As the Palestinians were condemning Arabs for agreeing to attend the conference in Bahrain, Palestinian leaders repeated their appeal to the Arab states for financial aid. On the one hand, the Palestinians are condemning Arab countries for attending a conference aimed at boosting the Palestinian economy and improving living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On the other hand, Palestinian leaders have no problem begging their Arab brothers for urgent financial aid.... The Palestinians are asking the Arabs to give them $100 million each month to help them "face political and financial pressure" from Israel and the US administration.
The Palestinians realize that some of the key Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, are no longer prepared to wait for them and have decided to board the train whose final destination is prosperity and economic opportunities for both Palestinians and Arabs.
The decision of six Arab states to attend the Bahrain conference despite the Palestinian boycott call shows that the Arabs have chosen to endorse a new direction – one that will leave the Palestinians to fend for themselves in a hell of their own making. For their choice to thumb their noses not only at the US but also at influential Arab states, the Palestinians are likely to emerge as the biggest losers.
I am pleased that the amazing tweeter American Zionism agreed to write an occasional article for EoZ.
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Arab/Muslim Immigration to the Holy Land
Part 1 - Bosnia, Algeria, Morocco, and
Egypt
We know a lot about Jewish immigration to the
Holy Land because the Ottomans and then the British did such a good job at
keeping Jews out that it became global news. But what about Arab/Muslim
immigration to the Holy Land during the same period. The usual narrative you
will read online is that the Jews arrived in the late 19th & early 20th
century, but that the “Palestinians” had been there since the beginning of
time. Is that true?
If you have ever spent time on social media
talking about Israel, you may have come across this quote from Robert Kennedy
“The
Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs, in the 12 years
between 1932-1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions
existing in no other Arab state …”
Kennedy, a young, recent college graduate and wise beyond
his years, made the remark after a trip to the Holy Land in March of 1948
- after the UN partition of Mandatory
Palestine and on the precipice of the Israeli War of Independence, which began
in May. The quote appeared in the Boston Post, in a series of articles about
his experiences on the trip. Kennedy was a supporter of the nascient state of
Israel and of the Jewish people and it is what eventually lead to his
assassination in 1968.
I’ve often thought about that quote. I’ve even referred to
it on social media. But, I haven’t seen much in the way of support for that statement. Did Arabs really
immigrate to Palestine to take advantage of the improved living conditions thanks
to the Zionists enterprises? Did they immigrate to Palestine at all? Could I
find any proof of Arab/Muslim immigration to the Holy Land in the 19th or early
20th centuries? I began studying
historic documents to see if Jews were the only people that immigrated to the
land of Israel or if they were joined by Arabs. As conditions in the Holy Land
improved, Arabs/Muslims did indeed come from around the Mediteranean, other
parts of the Levant, Egypt, and even from Europe at the same time as the Jews.
They immigrated, built colonies, and eventually became a component of the
people that would go on to call themselves Palestinians. Here are some of those
stories. This article is part one of what I discovered.
A Bosniak Muslim Colony in
Caesarea
Murray's Handbooks
for Travellers were among the oldest and most respected travel
guides in Europe. Their guides were well researched and revised as needed.
Their first guide on Syria and Palestine appeared in 1858. In the 1903 edition,
they report that a colony of Bosniak Muslims settled in the ancient seaside
city of Caesarea in 1883 (page 202). Later it states that the Bosniak colonists
were engaging in building operations (Page 205).
It certainly doesn’t sound like they were
planning on going anywhere. They were building a society. One question remains
from the passage. Murray’s guide mentions that the colony was ravaged by
malaria and that it might become extinct. Did it become extinct because of
malaria?
If you have ever taken a tour in Europe or
looked for a tour from Europe, chances are you’ve dealt with Thomas Cook. One
of the most well known travel agencies in the world, dating back nearly 200
years, Thomas Cook is a name that people trust. They also happened to produce
travel guides in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1907, four years
after the Murray guide, they published Cook's Tourists' Handbook to Palestine and Syria. In the section under Ceasarea, they also mention that
Bosnian immigrants lived in Caesarea and “have houses among the ruins” of the
ancient city ( page 169).
Baedeker is known around the world for their travel
guides. They are so ubiquitous with international travel that the name Baedeker
came to mean “guidebook” in the dictionary. In the 1912 edition of Baedeker’s
Handbook for Travellers Palestine and Syria, on the section about Caesarea,
they mention that “Bosnians have been settled here since 1884 and can supply
rough nightquarters in case of need.” (page 237) This was nine years after
Murray mentioned them and five years after Cook.
Not only were they still in Caesarea, but they were the
only group mentioned that supplied sleeping arrangements in the city.
Obviously, the Bosnian colony did not become extinct and most likely grew,
eventually to be absorbed into the community that would go on to call
themselves Palestinians.
Colonies from North Africa
The Maghrebins of Jerusalem
In the 1876 edition of Baedeker’s Handbook
for Travellers Palestine and Syria, regarding the population of the city of
Jerusalem, it states “Among the Muslim Arabs is also included a colony of
Africans (Moghrebins).” (page 162) The Maghrebs are Muslim of North Africa,
mostly Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, and are either Arabs or Berbers. They
were previously referred to as Moors by Europeans. In the 1894 edition of
Baedeker, eighteen years later, it repeats the same statement about the Maghreb
colony and mentions that out of 40,000 residents of Jerusalem, 7560 are Muslims
including that community.
The 1907 edition of Cook's Tourists' Handbook to Palestine and Syria it lists the
population of Jerusalem at 50,000 with 12,000 Muslims and among them “a colony
of African’s from Morocco”. (page 65)
The 1912 edition of Baedeker’s also mentions North African
Maghrebins located near the Western Wall in Jerusalem, only this time they’ve
graduated from a colony to residents of the city.
If the colony existed at minimum 36 years and
the members were absorbed into the population at large, there is a good
probability that they eventually became part of the future Palestinian people.
The Algerians of Palestine
Emir Abdelkader was an amazing man. He was an
Algerian religious and military leader who staged a rebellion against the
French occupation of Algeria in the mid 1800s. He eventually failed and was
forced to flee with his supporters to Turkey and then eventually settled in
Damascus, Syria where he lived out the rest of his days. In the 1907 edition of
Cook's
Tourists' Handbook to Palestine and Syria on Page 286, it mentions that part of
the population of Safed in northern Galilee, one of the four holy cities of
Judaism in Israel, contains a large number of Muslims, including Algerians who
followed Abdelkader into exile after the failed rebellion. This episode is
interesting for two reasons. The first is that we have written proof that there
were North Africans who had a community in Safed. The second, is that since
Abdelkader went from Algeria to Turkey to Syria, it would logically follow that
those that settled in Safed came over from Syria. We know from history books
and other travel journals that the Ottoman occupiers of the Holy Land
restricted the number of Jews who could immigrate and live in the Holy Land,
while the same restriction did not apply to other populations and the border
was open to them. This entry supports that claim.
The 1907 Cook handbook lists two other
Algerian colonies in the Galilee. The first was the village of Kafr Sabt, which
is described as an “Algerian colony” (page 274). Kaft Sabt is often noted as a
Palestinian village on the Internet, but in 1907 it was cleary a strictly
Algerian colony.
The third reference to Algerians in the 1907
Cook guide can be found on page 287 and mentions an Algerian settlement near
the village of Ain ez Zeitun.
So far the only references to Algerians
immigrants is in the 1907 Cook guidebook. Are there any other references? In
the 1912 edition of Baedeker’s Handbook
for Travellers Palestine and Syria, it references the village of Kafr Sabt
as being “a village inhabited by Algerian peasants” (page 251) corroborating
the account in the Cook guidebook.
That is at least three separate Algerian
colonies in the Galilee that came from at least two different areas in the
Middle East (North Africa and Syria) and were established in the late 19th
century at the same time as Jews were settling in the area. We can draw some
conclusions. The first being that the Algerian communities did not return to
Algeria. There is no record to suggest it. They undoubtedly became part of the Palestinian people. They
were not a group of people who originated in the Holy Land and whose ancestors
had lived there for thousands of years, but recent North African immigrants.
The second is if it’s true that there were Arab/Muslim colonies established by
Algerians at the same time Jews were establishing colonies, then if you call
Jews “colonists” you have to also call the Palestinians colonists, since part
of the Palestinian collective was composed of recent immigrants that
estabilised colonies and settlements. As we will see, these weren’t the only
Arab/Muslim colonies.
Gaza’s Egyptian Character
and the Galilee’s Egyptian Colony
In 2012, Hamas’ Minister of the Interior and National Security,
Fathi Hammad, speaking from the Gaza Strip, declared on video that
“half the Palestinians are Egyptians and the other Half are Saudis”. Was he
just trying to get money from the Egyptian government when he said it, or did
some Palestiians actually immigrate from Egypt? Gaza is on the border of
Egypt’s Sinai peninsula and the connection between Egypt and Gaza goes back a
thousand years or more, including the Egyptian Mamluk occupation of Gaza in the
14th century and Modern Egypt’s occupation of Gaza between 1948 and 1967. Gaza
has served as a major stop in the trade route between Syria and Egypt, so it
would make sense that over the long history of the two, Egyptians would have
settled in Gaza. But do we have any historical proof to back it up?
In the 1894 edition of Baedeker’s Handbook
for Travellers Palestine and Syria (page 156), it gives a description of Gaza as having a
“semi-Egyptian character”, that the veil of the Muslim women “closely resembles
the Egyptian”, and that the bazaar too “has an Egyptian appearance.”
All three of those descriptions allude to the area being
inhabited by people who came over from Egypt. The 1906 edition of Baedekers
repeats the description of Gaza as having a semi-Egyptian character.
In the 1822 travel journal Travels Along The
Mediterranean Vol.2 by Robert Richardson, a Scottish physician and
travel writer, he writes that the southern half of Gaza below the town of Deir
al Balah (Dair), including Khan Yunis (Hanoonis), pays tribute not to the Pasha
of Acre or Jerusalem, but to the Pasha of Egypt (pages 195-196). Not only does
it seem like Gaza was a distinctly Egyptian area in feel, but part of it may
have actually been part of Ottoman Egypt.
That’s all fine, but it could be argued that the Gazan’s
adopted the looks and customs of the Egyptian traders and that who they paid
tribute to doesn’t reflect who they were. Even if they were Egyptians, who is
to say they didn’t come over during the Mamluk conquest 500 years prior and
remain? Is there any proof that Egyptians came as immigrants during the time
Zionists were cultivating the land? In fact there is, and they didn’t only
settle in Gaza.
In the 1903 edition of Murray's Handbooks for
Travellers it states that Ibrahim Pasha established a colony of Egyptian
peasants in the year 1840 in the ancient city of Bethshan now called Beisan
(page 213). It even states that the village is almost exclusively made up of
the Egyptian colony. What is interesting about this account is the location of
Beisan. It is not located in Gaza or even along the coast. Beisan is in the
Jordan Valley in the North close to the Jordanian border.
The Odd Case of the Al-Simalni
Tribe
The most fascinating story of immigration from Egypt might
be the story of the Al-Simalni Bedouin tribe in the Galilee. In 1924 the
Mukhtar of the tribe announced that they were secretly Jews and wanted to
officially convert to Judaism. The British were skeptical and determined that
it was probably not true and mostly likely motivated by economics. Whether or
not they went through with the conversion is unknown at this time. What is
known and more important in the context of this article is the background of
the Al-Simalni.
On August 30, 1924, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
ran a story about the Al-Simalni tribe, including an interview with their
Mukhtar Shiekh Mustapha. When asked why they wanted to convert to Judaism, he
explained that the founder of the tribe, Simlon was of Jewish origin and came
to Palestine from Egypt 80 years ago. He married a woman from Transjordan
(Jordan) and had six children. The tribe emerged from that union. What is not
clear is whether he came from Egypt with other Bedouins or he came alone.
What is clear however is that it was a Bedouin tribe in
the Holy Land that was not there since “the time of Abraham” as is often
sensationalized in books and articles about the history of the region, but one
that came from Egypt and Jordan in the mid 19th century! It’s always possible
that they were descendants of a Jew. That we will never know. What we do know
is they were Arab Muslims who came from Egypt and Jordan and became part of
what is know known as the Palestinians.
The story of the Al-Simalni also appeared in the August
31, 1924 edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal.
This by no means is an exhaustive list of Arab/Muslim
immigration to the Holy Land during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
These are just a few examples of Arabs/Muslims that settled in the Holy Land at
the same time as Jews and who became part of the people we now know as
Palestinians. These were not people who had lived on the land from the
beginning of time or biblical time that converted to Islam as so many claim. These
were immigrants who established colonies and built communities just like the
Jews, whether for economic reasons to take advantage of the advances and
technologies brought by the Zionists or for other reasons. You probably didn’t
know about this wave of Arab/Muslim immigration because while Jewish
immigration was restricted, Arab/Muslim immigration was not, so it wasn’t noteworthy and rarely reported. Not all is as
it seems in the news and social media. It is important to search deeper.
In Part 2, we will discuss more settlements of
Arabs/Muslims in the land of Israel from the Middle East, including World War I
refugees and unauthorized immigration.
@americanzionism
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An article published there by writer Abdul Hamid Al-Hamshari spins a fanciful conspiracy theory around the Bahrain conference that involved Jews, Freemasons and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The purpose of this workshop is to market the Jewish state and to impose it as an essential component of the new Middle East, which is being promoted and marketed by the United States, which takes the approach of Ferdinand and Isabella as a way to destroy the Arab-Islamic presence in the Middle East.
Of course, the Jewish state will be the actual leader of the Arab communities in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. In other words, the implementation of what Jehovah's Witnesses promoted in 1887 would be the Jewish state in Palestine, the basic building block of a global civil government that rules the world by the Old Testament.
This workshop enabled the Jews in the hands of the Arab and Muslim Masons to take over the entire Middle East and conduct its affairs according to the Basel Conference in Switzerland in 1897, where the evil will spread to all the Arabs in the hands of the Freemasons who follow the implementation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The settlement of the occupied Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, the end of UNRWA and the annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan to the occupation entity is in preparation for the liquidation of the Palestinian cause all culminates in the Bahrain workshop.
For the last two decades of the last century and the first decade of the current century the goal is to get rid of everything that was believed to be a stumbling block in the implementation of the Jewish state that Zionism seeks. They destroyed Iraq and Libya and Yemen and others, on the same path to describe the atmosphere of Jewish tampering in the region with the support of American Masons.
This workshop is based on Masonry to serve Zionism and global imperialism and to destroy values and morals in the Arab countries, especially from the cradle of the message of Islam to the Arabian Peninsula and to the end of the world. The Arab and Muslim builders are the ones who have the responsibility of promoting the Zionist presence and the ownership of Palestine to the Jews by legislative status. Abdul Hameed al-Othmani was isolated for refusing to allow the Jews to settle in Palestine and then he was destroyed by the Ottomans, the Ottoman state whose tolerance for the embrace of the Spanish Jews had put the snake in its hole that ended its existence.
Nah, nothing antisemitic about that.
This workshop is not aimed at the economic revival of Palestine or the countries of the Middle East. These countries have enough economic resources if there is good intentions and honesty with self to lead the entire world economically and politically and impose their will on it, but their self-destructive tendencies leadthe Arab region to fall and subjugation and humiliation.
This paragraph is hilarious. It shows that the reason the author hates being under the thumb of his imagined Jewish overlords is because he wants the Arabs to be the ones who control the world!
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Tuesday, June 25, 2019
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