Friday, October 31, 2014

Palestine? Who Lived There? Edward Robinson Can Tell You Who

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                     

It was the American biblical scholar and archaeologist,  Edward Robinson in 1838, who announced that hundreds of place names of villages and sites in Palestine, who they thought were Arab names, were found to be Arabic renderings of translations of ancient Hebrew names, biblical  or Talmudic. Edward, born in Connecticut, though he was raised on a farm, attended Hamilton college in Clinton, NY and graduated.  He not only studied Hebrew but aided Moses Stuart in preparing his 2nd edition in 1823 of his Hebrew Grammar and translated it into English in 1825.  He became Professor Extraordinary of sacred literature at Andover Theological Seminary in 1830-33.    He was born on April 10, 1794 and died on January 27, 1863 in Brooklyn, New York, and was not from the Jewish Robinsons.  He's called Father of Biblical Geography and the Founder of Modern Paletinology due to the work he achieved.

Robinson had traveled to Palestine in 1838 with Reverend Eli Smith which led to the publication of biblical Researches in Palestine in 1841.  Imagine what it must have been like.  This was 29 years before Mark Twain's famous visit found in his book, " The Innocents Abroad."He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1842.  Robinson, together with Smith, made scores of identifications of ancient places and the work created his enduring reputation as a Founder by setting the compass of future archaeological field work.  Examples from Jerusalem include the Hezekiah tunnel, and Robinson's Arch in the Old city, named for him.                                  

In Jerusalem, one can find Robinson's arch on the south-western flank of the Temple Mount,which  once supported a staircase which led to the Temple.

The Arabs have never even had a name of their own for this country which they claim.  Filastin is the Arab transliteration of Palestine, the name Romans gave the country after 135 CE and their fight with General Bar Kokhba of the Jews who kept them on the offense for 3 years in trying to retake Jerusalem.  Romans had used this name thinking to obliterate the presence of the Jewish people with it, the name of their biggest adversary.

Today they've even found that some Arabs who are living with such names over their doorposts are long lost Jews who had been forcefully converted to Islam.
                                                                   
                                         Jerusalem, City of David

The truth of the matter is that there was never a Palestinian Arab nation.  Those who had lived in Palestine within the Ottoman Empire found it a good place to plunder and destroy.  There were only a few who lived within its boundaries and may have had a liking for their village while they made war on the next one.  They lived in clans which fought for the right of local tax-gathering, or even for their town.  Theyi were not conscious of any relationship to the land of Palestine.  If they knew of it as a land, they learned this from the Jews and their stories of living here for so many long years.

Palestine is mentioned only once in the Koran as the "Holy Land"--holy, that is to Jews and Christians; not to the Muslims.  This is why Jews and Christians were referred to as "people of the book."

People visiting the Holy Land in the 19th century felt that the country had been waiting for the return of its lawful inhabitants as it was in dire condition, mostly of weeds, swamps and desert inhabited by mosquitoes.  This attitude was significant compared to the Arabs living in the land.  In 1200 years they had lived here of which 400 were under the Ottomans, they had built only a single town, Ramleh, built as the local subprovincial capital in the 8th century.

In the 10th century, Arab writer Ibn Hukal wrote: "Nobody cares about building the country, or concerns himself for its needs."  This was showing the ruination of a country treated like this for hundreds of years.  The handful of Arabs who lived there were downtrodden subjects of a disinterested ruler.  The remote authority in Constantinople took their sons for soldiers and the local tax farmer sucked them dry.  The village over the hill and the rival tribe had to be guarded against or fought in a cycle of mutually destructive getting even for a past strike.  The Bedouin nomads tore up their olive trees, destroyed their crops, filled their wells with stones, broke down their cisterns, took away their livestock, but were sometimes useful as allies to help fight the next village.

Such was Palestine welcoming in tourists to see a treeless waste with a sprinkling of emaciated towns, malaria-ridden swamps in its once-fertile northern valleys, and the once thriving South Negev  that had turned into a desert, with a population in Palestine that had dwindled to almost nothing.  Neither Arab nor Jew were in enough numbers to turn all this around and fight the carousing marauders on their camels.
                                                                 
And then came in the reinforcements--for the Jews--the First Aliyah in 1881.  .
                                                                               
Edward Robinson, (William, Ichabod, John, Samuel, William, John Robinson, whose line I've traced back to  John Robinson b: 1588 in Barton St. David, Somerset, England and who died in 1693, is my half 4th cousin 6 times removed from my mother's side of the family, the Robinsons.  That is, if I didn't get too mixed up in all the Robinsons of New England, he's on my tree.  You see, my mother converted to Judaism when she married my Jewish father. Her maiden name was Robinson.   Coincidently, my mother's brother was Kenneth Edward Robinson, and their grandfather was Abiathar Smith Robinson.  There's a Robinson-Smith connection if I ever saw one!   Here I am, Jewish and holder of dual citizenship with Israel and the USA.

Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Aliyah
Battleground, fact and fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz, p. 114
Update: http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/07/palestine-that-unwanted-backwater-that.html
  mentioning Robinson and Smith in Palestine and their findings.

How Religious Freedom Came to Jews in America

Nadene Goldfoot                                                            

Pilgrims sailed to the New World (America) in 1620 from Holland.  They were Puritan refugee Englishmen who had left England in pursuit of finding freedom to worship as they chose and not how the country of England had chosen for all its people.  They had traveled to Holland and found that their children were turning into little Dutchmen, which is not what they had hoped for, so they felt they had to leave.
"These Puritans viewed their emigration from England as a re-enactment of the Exodus.  They felt that England was like Egypt, the king was Pharaoh, the Atlantic Ocean was the Red Sea, and America was the land of Israel and later when they found the Indians, that they were like the ancient Canaanites.  These Puritans actually saw themselves as the new Israelites who had entered into a new covenant with G-d in a new Promised Land.   It must have helped them to survive their first harsh winter when at least half of them died.
It was John Robinson, Reverend, who sent his congregation over from Holland but he stayed, seeing off the last of the people, and then died there.  However, his son, Isaac came over.
Descendants of JOHN (Rev.) Robinson

1   JOHN (Rev.) Robinson b: Bet. 1575 - 1576 in Sturton Nottinghamshire, or Lincolnshire, England
.. +Bridget White b: 1579 in Sturton Nottinghamshire, England
. 2   John Robinson b: Bet. 1606 - 1609 in Norwich, Norfolk, England
. 2   Bridget Robinson b: 1608 in Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
. 2   Isaac Robinson b: Bet. 1610 - 1620 in Reusel-de Mierden, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands, Leiden, Holland
..... They settled in New England.  Pilgrims are people who journey in alien lands;  or one who travels to a shrine or holy place as a devotee, one of the English colonists founding the first permanent settlement in New England at Plymouth in 1620. Today, "Robinson" is the 16th most popular surname in the United States.  Robinsons came from England at various times  in the history of this nation and settled for various reasons.

We don't call people living in the United States "Pilgrims" anymore.  We don't call them "Settlers" either.  Neither should Jews be continually called "Settlers" in Judea and Samaria or any other place in Israel. Their ancestors were from Judah and they had returned to their habitat.
                                                                           
Once they arrived from Russia, Romania, Lithuania, etc, and joined their brethren who had never left the land, they built villages that became towns and cities, just like the growth that occurred in the USA. Instead of finding Indians that eventually attacked the new Americans, these Jews found Arabs who were mostly Bedouins attacking them as they tried to grow crops and build homes.  Read "The Innocents Abroad"  by  Mark Twain who personally took a trip to "The Holy Land" starting on February 1, 1867.  The first group of Russian Jews to arrive in what is called the First Aliyah was after that in about 1880.  Twain describes what he found when he arrived there beautifully.  Read "The Settlers" by Meyer Levin to see what their life was like in arriving and struggling to make a home in Palestine, a land under the Ottoman Empire.  Then read From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters.

The Pilgrim who arrived on the Mayflower seeking religious freedom didn't know much about Jews since all Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 and were not allowed back in until 1655, well after the Pilgrims had sailed for America in 1620 and well after a fleet of ships sailed in 1630 for new chances of life.  All the Pilgrims knew was what they had read in their Old Testament.  They admired what they read and studied Hebrew.  They copied the holiday of Succot and turned it into Thanksgiving.
                                                                       
It was first celebrated in 1621, a year after the Mayflower landed and was first conceived as a day parallel to the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.  It was to be a day of fasting, introspection and prayer.

 To them, Jews were evidently people long dead and existed only in their bible.  They didn't realize they probably had met some Sephardic Jews who lived in Holland and were businessmen.  Perhaps they didn't connect the Old Testament Jews and prophets with the New Testament Jews that has caused so many countries to dislike Jews.
                                        Shabbat Shalom means to have a peaceful Sabbath                      
Now, the Spanish disliked Jews for a long time for religious reasons being they were not Christians, and in 1492, the year Columbus sailed to find India and instead discovered America, an edict was issued in which ALL JEWS had to either convert to Catholicism or leave the country.  This was copied by other countries just like a domino affect.  First one, and then the other would issue such statements.

Jews who could not leave hid their religion and were referred to later as Marranos (today's Anusim).  Columbus's interpreter was Luis de Torres, a converted  "Marrano" Jew who was the 1st to set foot on American soil.  .  Marranos settled in Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

When Brazil was under Dutch rule from 1630 to 1654, the 1st Jewish communities were founded by native Marranos and immigrants from Holland.  Also, in 1654 in New Amsterdam, which became New York, more communities were founded.  23 Jewish refugees from Recife, Brazil arrived in New York in 1654. On September 22,  1654, Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of New York, or New Amsterdam as it was called then, tried to banish these Jews from his city. That attempt failed.
                                                                       
It was the first act of anti-Semitism in the new world and was written about by Samuel Oppenheim in "The Early History of the Jews in New York, 1654-1664" published in 1909.

 It was the directors of the West India Company in Amsterdam who rescinded Stuyvesant's order on April 26, 1655.  They told him that "we would like to have agreed to your wishes and request, that the new territories should not be further invaded by the people of the Jewish race, for we foresee from such immigration that the same difficulties which you fear, but after having further weighed and considered this matter, we observe that it would be unreasonable and unfair, especially because of the considerable loss sustained by the Jews in the taking of Brazil and also because of the large amount of capital which they have invested in shares of this company.  After many consultations, we have decided and resolved upon a certain petition made by the said Portuguese Jews, that they shall have permission to sail to and trade in New Netherland and shall not become a burden to the Company or the community, but be supported by their own nation.  You will govern yourself accordingly.

 So it turned out that the governor had tried to prevent the very people who had owned part of the company that put himself and others in business in New York.  Jews hadn't been allowed many professions in Europe and had become money lenders, so this time it paid off for them.  It was the foot in the door to the New World.  Other than that, these religious people looking for freedom for themselves hadn't thought about giving it to others.  Other Jews who were traders appeared along the Hudson River in New York shortly after 1660.  Merchants of Sephardi origin were found there throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.

Jews'   numbers grew slowly in the USA and by 1812 there were only 400.  The Jews, now living in a land of religious freedom, were denied many civic rights and permission to engage in crafts.  It took time to gain these rights.  and the naturalization law only came about till 1715.
                                                                     
 In 1658 15 families came to Newport, Rhode Island and built the Touro Synagogue, named for their first rabbi, Isaac Touro.  They built the synagogue on December 2, 1763.
                                                                         
  At first Jews were not even allowed to erect a synagogue, the first being erected in 1693.  This was the Sephardi congregation of Shearith Israel in New York. The congregation was founded in 1654.   Then the Ashkenazi synagogue of B'nai Jeshurun was founded in 1825.

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Kike!--/Anti-Semitism in America  by Michael Selzer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_West_India_Company
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/colonial/jb_colonial_jewish_2.html
http://shearithisrael.org/history
http://www.jewishpathways.com/jewish-history/jews-and-founding-america





Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Europe Found Court Jews Extremely Valuable: They Could Add and Subtract!

Nadene Goldfoot                                                          

Obama's administrative official thinks that Netanyahu is chickenshit, without any value.  This must go for all of Israelis and smacks of anti-Semitism.  This is because Netanyahu isn't bending and going along with all this administration wants to do with Israel.  Imagine that!  Not allowing the USA to have their way with Israel.  A democratic country that makes their own necessary decisions and who knows their enemy better than any nation across the waters.

At one time in Germany, some German rulers recognized that though Jews were to be despised as a group, they did have their valuable uses.  This happened as early as the Protestant Reformation of 1517.  The states of the Holy Roman Empire needed men with financial skills, and these skills were found among the Jewish people.  There wasn't any schooling going on in Europe evidently that could handle such things.

The princes of the countries created the "Court Jew."  He was supposed to keep his master supplied with money, but his duties were more than that.  He was in charge of supplies for the army of the prince.  He was used as a messenger in diplomatic and military missions.  He might even serve as one of the leading political advisers of the prince.  It was a demanding task.

By the middle of the 17th century, almost every one of Germany's 300 principalities was served by a Court Jew, even places with no Jews living amongst them.  It was a good job.  The court Jew  gained privileges and wealth.  He was free from oppressive laws like the limits on the number of allowable Jewish marriages to silly requirements that Jews buy specified amounts from a royal porcelain factory.  He could live where he liked and was allowed to enter the ranks of the nobility.  Retaining their religion meant being 2nd class citizens not only in Muslim lands, but eastern Europe as well until the Court Jews were given a good deal.

Being Jewish, it wasn't all that great because he was never truly accepted by the nobles.  Even though he usually urged the causes of his fellow Jews to help relieve their suffering, he was not accepted in the ghetto society of the Jewish masses as a rule.  So his position made his life quite lonely.  As long as he could please his lord and as long as his lord was able to protect him, is was a fairly good life.
                                                                         
Dangers came along for our 30th cousin, Joseph ben Issachar Susskind Oppenheimer, aka Joseph Suss Oppenheimer,  who was born about in 1698 and died in 1738 in Germany.  He had personal charm and financial connections which brought him power and wealth.  He served as the state counselor to the Duke of Wuerttemberg, Carl Alexander as his finance minister in 1732 for 4 years.  He was able to consolidate the duchy's finances and free its ruler from dependence on grants from the estates.  He used modern financial methods but this aroused much opposition from those uneducated and far-sighted while was very pleasing to his Duke.
                                                                           
Then the Duke died in 1737. Joseph was accused of embezzling state finances, and was arrested and charged with treason on the very day the Duke had died.  After an unfair trial, he was hanged at Stuttgart, nominally for having sexual relations with Christian women.  He refused to save his life by accepting baptism.  His body was publicly displayed in an iron cage-an example to any Jews of the risks of entering public life.

The Duke's own people knew little about math, but had the opinion that he was cheating them simply because he was Jewish.  A novel has been written about him by Lion Feuchtwanger called Jew Suss.
                                                                           
An earlier Samuel Oppenheimer born in 1630 and died in 1703 was a philanthropist and also another Court Jew.  He was the first Jew to settle in Vienna after the 1670 expulsion.  This Samuel was Leopold I's agent and financier and helped him finance his wars with the Turks and the War of the Spanish succession.  Leopold I was the King of Germany as well as the Holy Roman Emperor from 1658 to 1705.  .
                                                                           
Then in 1697 he was accused of conspiring to murder his rival and his nephew, Rabbi  Samson Wertheimer (1658-1724) and was imprisoned until vindicated.  Oppenheimer  continued to support the poor, Jewish scholars and Judah Hasid's movement to settle in Palestine.  They probably found refuge in Safed in the northern Galilee.  It is Rabbi Samson Wertheimer who my family finds we share segments of our chromosomes.   Oppenheimer and Wertheimer were German Jewish families that intermarried, so I know that Oppenheimer never murdered his kinsman.  They worked together.

Rabbi Samson Wertheimer was born in 1658 and died in 1724 and was another financier who was born in Worms, Germany.  He went to Vienna in 1684 to join the bank of his uncle,  Samuel Oppenheimer, the man accused of murdering him,  and soon became the court banker.  Together with his son Wolf, they lent large sums to the emperor.  In 1719 Carl VI appointed him chief rabbi of Hungary with judicial authority.  He used his connections to help out Jewish communities and was able to the publication of an anti-Semitic book called Entdecktes Judentum.  

"Generally, Court Jews were agents who arranged transfers of credit rather than possessors of vast capital in their own right; through their far-reaching commercial relationships and their organizing skill, they were able to provide funds more swiftly than most Christian bankers. Because of their specialization in the money business, they were able to furnish the silver for the mints more easily and could better act as army purveyors, once more because of their ability to organize and their network of family relationships. With their entrepreneurial spirit, they contributed in part to the process of industrialization within the frame of mercantilist policies." (1) 

There is much value in having good relations with Israel.  Number one is that it is the only Democratic country in the Middle East.  This tiny state has produced much in the line of medicines that it shares with the world.  It has created  the Iron Dome which stops missiles that they have a relationship with the USA today.  Israelis have much to offer about fighting terrorism that they have learned.  The only thing it does have is that oil is not under its soil, but it has found natural gas in the Leventine Basin and the Tamar gas field, and is sharing already with Jordan.

Resource:  : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_gas_field
http://online.wsj.com/articles/israel-plans-to-sell-natural-gas-to-jordan-1409750217
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
My People, Abba Eban's History of the Jews Vulume I.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0005_0_04679.html (1)
Update:  http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/10/29/white-house-distances-itself-from-chickenshit-insult-leveled-at-netanyahu-stops-short-of-apology/

Monday, October 27, 2014

How Syria Lost the Golan Heights to Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  
           Syria's Ba'ath Party Leader from 1966 to 1970-Nureddin al-Atassi
                                                    Hafez al Assad, President and PMof Syria 1970-2000 H



Syria dominated the Golan Heights and used it against the Israeli civilian population that lay below in towns and villages.  Tens of thousands of Israeli civilians' lives were threatened and taken.  It was said in those days that children who were born in the valley under the Golan Heights were children of the shelters because so many people had to run for their bomb shelters. "Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his successors after 1967's 6 Day War offered to withdraw from virtually all of the Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria."  Therefore, after peace was never offered to Israel by the Syrians, Prime Minister Begin proposed the law of Israel to it and it passed.  It was Bashar's father, Hafiz al Assad,  who was a power in Syria when the Six Day War started  but Nureddin al-Atassi  was the president and who had shelling going on from the Golan Heights to the Israelis below.
                                                                         
"From 1948-67, when Syria controlled the Golan Heights, it used the area as a military stronghold from which its troops randomly sniped at Israeli civilians in the Huleh Valley below, forcing children living on kibbutzim to sleep in bomb shelters. In addition, many roads in northern Israel could be crossed only after probing by mine-detection vehicles. In late 1966, a youth was blown to pieces by a mine while playing football near the Lebanon border. In some cases, attacks were carried out by Yasir Arafat's Fatah, which Syria allowed to operate from its territory." (1)
                                                                         
Israel gained the Golan Heights in the 6 Day War and occupied it.  Assad was given time by Israel to change his attitude but he refused for 15 years any approaches of every Israeli government.  Then, in the Fez conference, he really let it be known about how he felt about Israel.  "We Arabs must not put forth any peace proposal.  We must be willing to wait a hundred years and more until Israel's military prowess wanes, and then we shall act."

He said the same thing publicly over the radio and in the Arab press.  Abbas said such things while he extending his domination over Lebanon.  At this time the PLO took over the south of the country of Lebanon.
                                                                                   
                                            View from Golan Heights; Syria's Water

Begin wasn't afraid of the USA's reaction to taking the Golan for their protection.  Begin remarked that Israel was a sovereign state and Israel had an elected government.  Begin wasn't talking about some whim but about their lives and their future as a nation.  No one on earth had a moral right to dictate to Israel about their lives and their future as a nation.  No one on earth  had a moral right to dictate to Israel what to do after they had waited this long; fully 15 years since the end of the 6 Day War, to negotiate peace with Syria when all they have received is to be rebuffed every time by their rejectionism.  And the Golan law was approved and passed in 1981.  The Golan Heights became a part of Israel.
                                                                           
Of the 6 Day War itself, it had a lot of casualties.  "Between 776 and 983 Israelis were killed and 4,517 were wounded.                                                       

                                          1967:   First time at Western Wall since 1948

15 Israeli soldiers were captured. Arab casualties were far greater. Between 9,800 and 15,000[10] Egyptian soldiers were listed as killed or missing in action. An additional 4,338 Egyptian soldiers were captured.] Jordanian losses are estimated to be 6,000 killed or missing and 533 captured, though Gawrych cites a number of some 700 killed in action with another 2,500 wounded.The Syrians were estimated to have sustained some 1,000 killed in action. 367 Syrians were captured.

Then, Israel was faced with another war brought on by Syria on Yom Kippur 1973.  "On October 6, 1973, during Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, a Syrian armored force of 1,400 tanks backed by more than 1,000 artillery pieces and supporting air power began a coordinated assault along the 36-mile-long Israeli-Syrian border in the Golan Heights in the north of Israel. That attack coincided with a similar onslaught by Egyptian forces along the Suez Canal, suddenly forcing Israel to fight a two-front war."


Resource:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Heights
THE PRIME MINISTERS  by  YEHUDA AVNER.p, 580-581.  
http://www.historynet.com/yom-kippur-war-sacrificial-stand-in-the-golan-heights.htm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/golan_hts.html (1)
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/39087/Hafiz-al-Assad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nureddin_al-Atassi

Sunday, October 26, 2014

First modern Jewish agricultural settlements in history of the Land of Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

Jews have been living in Safed (Tzephat) , which is in the upper Galilee, for centuries.  It was mentioned by Josephus as the fortified village of Sepph.  Again, it was mentioned in the Talmud as one of the places where beacons were lit to mark the New Year being it's on top of a mountain with the height of 2,720 feet with the same altitude as Jerusalem, whose Mt. Zion is 2,816 feet high. The Zohar was written in the 2nd century, and Safed's soul included mysticism.   The Crusaders built a fortress there in 1140, and then it became Templar property in 1168.  Baybars destroyed it in 1266.  In Mameluke times, it was an administrative center and Jews already lived there in the 11th century. By the 16th century, it became a most important center of rabbinical and kabbalistic activity.  Rabbi Isaac Luria and his pupils lived here.  So did Rabbi Joseph Caro.

In 1837 there was a great earthquake and people of today have dug out homes from then and have refurbished them and live there.  In 1840 there were only 400 Jews. The Ottoman Empire didn't collapse till the end of WWI in 1917 when Germany lost the war.   By 1948 there were 12,000 Arabs and 1,800 Jews in Safed.  Even so, the Arabs fled after fighting started in 1948. Dov Silverman recorded many stories about that in his book, "Legends of Safed" copyright 1984.  One I love is "The Katushas and the 7 sons of Hannah.  Being that the Lebanese border was only 14 kilometers (8.6992 miles) away, Russian katusha rockets flew towards the city but always fell short.  The story was that Hanna and her 7 sons (who all died in the hands of the Greeks-part of the Maccabee revolt) were buried where katushas pass over and slowed down the rockets so that they fell in the wadi harmlessly.  .  
                                                                               
  Here I am with scarf, apartment building, red Fiat from Italy and my own German Shepherd, Blintz.

I moved there in 1981 to teach English at the junior high on Eleazar Street. By 1990 there were 16,400 population in the city.  It was known for its air and its mysticism as Tsfat, the mystical city.  This was a summer resort and had an art colony.  I was at home with my hobby of oil painting.  It had fir trees which reminded my of my Pacific Coast home town of Portland, Oregon.
                                                                             
Looking back in its history, I see that Rosh Pinnah is also in the Upper Galilee and was the first Palestinian Jewish agricultural settlement, founded in 1878 by a number of families of the Old Yishuv of Safed. (first Jewish settlers, original ones). Some of them had come from 1492's Spanish Inquisition.   They couldn't cope with the malaria, crop failures and the Arab attacks and finally abandoned the building they had put up and went back to Safed.  It was re founded in 1882 by the new Jewish immigrants called Bilu immigrants who mostly were Romanian Jews.  The Bilu were the first modern Zionist pioneering movement.  There had been a wave of Russian pogroms going on who left in reaction this.  There were several branches of bilu and had 525 members, but only a few dozen eventually went to Palestine.  The 1st group of 15 men and women reached Jaffa in the summer of 1882 and the others later that year.  This was the nucleus of the 1st Aliyah, so they endured many hardships.  Some had settled on the land in various colonies like in Rosh Pinnah.  Others had gone to Jerusalem to master handicrafts.  The came with visions of social reform.  Some settled in Gedera in 1884, helped by Jehiel Michael Pines.
                                                                     
Rosh Pinnah received help from  Baron Edmond de Rothschild who helped financially by paying workers even though they were failing in many agricultural experiments and a had population that had stagnated.  It had become a center for the scattered Jewish settlements in the Upper Galilee and absorbed new immigrants after the Israel War of Independence in 1948.  In 1990 it had a population of 1,590.  Today there are 2,800 people living there.

Needless to say, it was not easy bucking swamps that held mosquitoes and caused malaria.  The pioneers had to plant eucalyptus trees so soak up the water.  Arab attacks didn't help matters, either.  We don't realize all they endured while trying to re-establish Jewish life in Israel.

James Mitchener did, and wrote "The Source".  I loved the chapter of the Saintly Men of Safed, about how in 1600s rabbis lived in Safed and worked.  I wrote a play around it and we in Safed put on plays of which this was one.

Dov wrote on page 15 that "on Yom Kippur 1973, the souls of the people of Safed appeared before the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be judged.  We stood as one before G-d, and we stood as one against our enemies.  On both occasions we proclaimed, "Hear oh Israel, The Lord Our G-d is One."  We must have been heard, as Israel survived that terrible war. Imagine, the Syrian forces were only 12 miles from the city. The casualties were coming into Safed's hospital in a steady stream.  Dov and a friend noticed that little kids kept busy throwing dirt under the cars on the way to the hospital and they asked them why there were doing that.  They explained that there was a hole in the road and they were trying to keep it level so the hurt soldiers on the way to the hospital wouldn't bounce in their cars.  Our souls are good!  

Resource:  The Settlers by Meyer Levin
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
 http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2014/03/portlands-rabbi-stampfer-and-his.html- Peta Tikva
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_Pinna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safed
Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot
http://www.nbn.org.il/component/content/article/1811-rosh-pina.html

Friday, October 24, 2014

How Anti-Semitism Was Fed By Racism

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

       Max Baer, Jewish Boxer (February 11, 1909 in Nebraska-November 21, 1959 in Hollywood)

The needful unity of all races in the story of Creation is found in the bible in Genesis.  We are told of the common origin of all men, coming from Adam and Eve and their sons, Cain and Abel.
                         
By our 19th century, the Western world  realized the existence of the Aryan and Semitic families of languages and this led to the theory of the existence of Aryan and Semitic races.  Later, the Teutons (Germanic or Celtic people) exemplified the Aryan group and the Jews the Semites.  At this time they believed in the theory that Jews were physically homogeneous and that there was a correlation between physical type and mental-cultural characteristic.  They then deduced that Jews and a few other groups were regarded as racially "inferior." The scientists have rejected this theory.  By the end of the 19th century, this became a basic conception of the revived anti-Jewish movement in Germany which, in the new era of tolerance, could no longer base itself exclusively on religion and, moreover was confronted with large numbers of Jews in whose lives Judaism played no part.  This happened mainly in Germany.
                                                                       
                                                   Hitler-in the end committed suicide
                                                (1889 Austria-1945 Berlin, Germany)

This unfounded theory got into the hands of E. Duhring, Wilhelm Marr, H.S. Chamberlain, A. Rosenburg, Hitler, etc. and became a deadly weapon.  It became a fundamental principle of the Nazi movement from the outset.

I have to interject here that it belies all facts, especially in Germany.  From the onset, Jewish rabbis, intellectuals of the highest caliber,  had emigrated to the Rhineland in the year 1,000 CE where they centered in Worms, Germany.  Worms became an intellectual center for Christians afterwards.  Jews have managed to take care of themselves very well when others couldn't find jobs.  This was no mark of inferiority of races but magnified their capabilities.  If anything, the common German could have been feeling jealousy, not thinking of Jews as inferiors.  One thing, they couldn't understand why Jews didn't believe in Jesus, as most Germans were Catholics.

Yet, this unscientific and damning theory became a part of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, where intermarriage was absolutely forbidden between Jews and "Aryans".  New laws were laid down against all persons with 2 or more Jewish grandparents.  Even in Fascist Italy, Germany's partner in WWII, 1938 saw the Italians adopting these laws on its Jews. From 1939 to 1945 during the war, other countries adopted the same laws.  These laws became extermination laws that the Germans carried out against Jews.  They got so carried away exterminating Jews that they even exterminated Christian clergymen and priests who had only the vaguest Jewish connections.  6 million Jews were slaughtered in WWII.  We now have 6 million living in the USA and 6 million living in Israel with 2 million scattered in other countries.

These unscientific theories finally were laid to rest as evidences of racialism where they went by craniometry (cranial measurements).    And I say to anyone who still harbors such ill will towards Jews as being inferiors:  how about who wins all the scientific prizes in this world?  Jews do, showing that Jews are not lacking in brains.  I wonder what they would say if they realized that Neanderthals were covering Europe but none were in Africa?  Germany would have had many of them.
                                                                         
                                                              Gal Mekel from  Israel

We have Jewish football players in National football (NFL) and I can guarantee you that when they took a class, they actually studied and passed it on their own.  We now have learned of so many whose university abetted players in cheating for their grades.  Andrew Kline of the St. Louis Rams is one from 2000 to 2003. We have a lot of coaches and executives, too.  We have Jews in other sports as well.Hank Greenberg (1911-1986) was a famous baseball player and played for the Detroit Tigers and Pittsburgh Pirates ball clubs.  Later he became the manager and owner.   My favorite was Mark Spitz, swimmer. 

 In boxing, my father's sport, we had  Max Baer ("Madcap Maxie"), USA, world champion heavyweight.  He wore a Star of David on his trunks, and was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Baer had to quit school in the 8th grade to help his father on their cattle ranch in Omaha, Nebraska.  He was born in 1909.  Working on the ranch is attributed to be the reason for Baer's strength.  He turned professional in 1929 and won 22 of his first 24 fights; 9 with first-round knockouts  Max died on November 21, 1959.  My father was a boxer.  Morris Goldfoot was called Billy Meshke in Portland, Oregon, USA where he boxed.  He was born in 1908 and died in 1967, boxing when he was in his 20's. Like Max, he had to quit school but in his Junior year of high school and had to give up baseball  in order to support his family.  He didn't like to be hit when boxing, though, so got out and into the meat business.  
       Morris Goldfoot aka Billy Meshke, Jewish boxer, descendant of Rabbi of Worms; RASHI, King David

 Basketball finds playing for the Dallas Mavericks, was Gal Mekel from Israel, NBA's 6'3" point guard.  .So Jews are certainly not afraid of getting into sports.    
                                                                           

I wonder if the Arabs realized the unbelievable compact they had made with Hitler who was acting out of his Aryan superiority belief and the Semites of which they were a part whom the Germans thought were an inferior people.  It was an incongruous union.  

Jews have won many Nobel prizes which perplexes some people who still hang onto the theory of Jews being an inferior people. Richard Dawkins, biologist, author and atheist, was also perplexed.  He said it was " pure religion and culture.  Something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits than Islam. "   At least 194 Jews and people of half-or 3/4 Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize, accounting for 23% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2014.  That's pretty good for a people who make up less than 0.2% of the total world  population.  This year 6 of 12 laureates were Jewish. That's 50%.  

I've just touched on 2 things; Athletics and Nobel prizes  which show that we are not an inferior race by any means, nor are we a pure race, though we started from Abraham's family group.  As it turned out, most people throughout the ages have been kept from intermarrying with us.  Despite that, we have had our own Romeo and Juliet stories through the ages,  especially in Germany and in Eastern Europe,  just like the early TV sitcom of Abie's Irish Rose happening in Brooklyn.  
                                                                         

Getting into Medical Schools has always been very hard.  Since the 20's there had been a rule of only taking in a small % of Jews. Yes, there was a quota on Jewish students.   The facts were that more Jews passed the qualifications than were allowed entrance.  If we could have, every Jewish family would have had a doctor in their family.  We do not have a lack of brains.  Our fathers have told us, "You can only carry away so much of your money if, G-d forbid-tragedy hits like the stock market falling, but you always have your knowledge in your head.  We've been encouraged to go for higher education since the beginning of time.  It's something we can take with us.  

Jews have waited for 2,000 years to return to their homeland, Israel and Judah.  They've  had to metamorphose from scholars into warriors again, but they gained their homeland and have held it for the past 66 years.  They have showed the world that they are no inferior people to be chastised and subjugated.  They're leading the world in many fields today.  

Resource:  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/footballtoc.html
http://www.jewsinsports.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jews_in_sports
http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/10/29/richard-dawkins-perplexed-by-high-number-of-jewish-nobel-prize-winners/

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Hungary Turning Anti-Semitic Again With Popular Political Party, Jobbik

Nadene Goldfoot                                                              

                                Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz where they will be gassed, WWII

History is repeating itself with serious anti-Semitism in Hungary.  It's been 70 years since WWII when more than 500,000 Hungarian Jews out of their 725,000 were murdered by the Germans and their Hungarian allies in the Holocaust.

Now, after Operation Defensive Edge when Israel finally decided to try to stop Hamas terrorists from shooting missiles, rockets and mortars into Israel every day, after years of being under such danger, a popular Hungarian political party, Jobbik, who are the 2nd most popular party in Hungary, is gaining ground and calling for sharp anti-Semitic acts against Jews. Two years ago the deputy parliamentary leader  called for:

1. All 35,000 to 120,000 Hungarian Jews had to be registered.  Shades of the Nazi era.
2. An investigation of Jews serving in the Hungarian government to determine "the potential danger they pose to Hungary." 

It seems to me that the Hungarians themselves pose a danger to the Jews living there far more than the Jews pose a danger to them.  Why on earth would the Jews want to harm them?  

The mayor of Erpatak denounced Israel as a "Jewish terror state" 2 months ago and had effigies of Netanyahu and former President Shimon Peres hung in a mock execution.

There was a photo exhibit this past summer portraying Israel's war against Hamas where a Jobbik member, Krisztina Morvai,  called for the cancellation of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

Jobbik's Marton Gyongyosi compared Israel with Nazis and said, "Israel is now conducting a genocide similar to the one suffered by the Jewry in WWII.

It seems like any other state in the world could defend itself against terror like the PLO and now Hamas has brought upon Israel, except a state that is Jewish.  Our one and only Jewish state can do no right in the eyes of former anti-Semites.  They live off of any chance they find to cast aspersions upon Jews.  In this they are not much different than the rest of the world, we know.

Do not panic and react like we have done something wrong, Israel.  You did you best to protect your people while at the same time Hamas sacrificed their civilians in order to gain just such hatred against you in order to take your land after 2,000 years of waiting for it.  Such people as the Hungarians will never accept us in their midst willingly until the Moshiach comes along or they suddenly get smart and they see the light, and I don't see that happening.

Hungary, now a state with 9.9 million people,  has such a horrid history of behavior towards Jews.  In the 13th century they had decrees of the Lateran Council segregating the Jews from their neighbors and forced them to wear a distinctive badge.   The Pope tried to get rid of them so that by 1349 they were expelled for the first time after having lived in Hungary since the 2nd century CE.  They were allowed to come back but were expelled again in 1360, so they moved to neighboring countries.  Hungary couldn't get along well without them so the edict was revoked in 1364, but you can see they never learn.

In the 15th and 16th century they charged Jews with the old Ritual Murder libel and cancelled all debts owed to Jews.  Life was better for Jews when the Ottoman Empire took over Hungary's rule, but they were subject to heavy taxes for being Jews.  When Hungary was rid of the empire, they again expulsed Jews and excluded them from agriculture and the professions when they were allowed to live there.

There were nobles who  protected the Jews whose numbers were higher now because of refugees coming in from Vienna in 1670.  More arrived from Moravia and Poland in the 18th century.  There was a Maria Theresa who reigned, and she worked on various new methods to exact money from the Jews.

 In 1990 there were still 80,000 Jews living in Hungary.  now there are 48,200.   "The Hungarian Jewish community is the largest in East Central Europe. Most Hungarian Jews live in the capital, Budapest, which has some 20 working synagogues and a plethora of other Jewish institutions, both religious and cultural.  My suggestion is that they all pick up and move to Israel where they are wanted and needed.  There's no use living in a land that doesn't want you.  They think you are posing a danger!  That sucks!  The only danger you could possibly pose is logical thinking.  

There's nothing in the records where Hungarians spoke up in defense of Israel being attacked by Hamas from the rockets, mortars and missiles, and now the underground tunnels found that were used to attack Israelis.  Only when Israel fought back are they in an uproar.  

Menachem Begin (1913-1992)  once asked his friends why the Jewish state so frequently face solitude in the family of nations.  This was way before Operation Defensive Edge.  He continued;  "Is it because we are the only country in the world that is Jewish?  Is it because we are the one country in the world whose language is Hebrew?  Why are there no other Jewish states?  Why are there no other Hebrew-speaking states, just as there are multiple Christian state, Moslem states, Hindu states, Buddhist states, English-speaking, Arabic speaking, French-speaking, Chinese-speaking states?  We have no sovereign kith and kin anywhere in the world.  Why?  They were talking about a piece of scripture where the heathen prophet Balaam was cited in speaking about "dwelling alone." He concluded that the Jewish people dwell alone of its own volition" .  Yes, we seem to be alone, quite alone when whatever happens in the world in our one state, all the other Jews are picked on.  We've had one friend, and that seems to be vanishing as well many times already.  It takes courage to be our friend, and there aren't many with that kind of courage.  Obviously Hungary doesn't have it.  

Moses brought us out of 400 years of slavery but put a huge weight on our shoulders, and that was of being responsible for what he taught us, such as the shockingly hard Ten Commandments, and much more.  We have to dwell alone just like Abraham did when he moved out of Ur and went to Canaan to get away from the environment that believed in worshipping idols.  We should have known that we would always be alone, but are stubborn people, stiff-necked people.  So be it.  We will fight to keep our state.  
Like Begin said to Jimmy Carter, "I say to you, Mr. President, I don't need anybody to recognize my right to exist, and even if that terrorist Arafat were to make such a declaration, I wouldn't believe a word he says.  It would be tantamount to somebody approaching me with a knife and saying, "Take this knife and thrust it into your heart."  I would reply, "But why should I agree to stick a knife into my own heart?"  And he would say, "For the sake of peace.  Please commit suicide for the sake of peace. "You are asking me to consider talking to such a person?  The PLO"s vision of peace is our destruction.  NO!  ABSOLUTELY NO!  

Evidently this is what Hungary and others expect of Israel.  Israel has earned its right to exist and more.  It's not about to commit suicide and die like the world almost let happen in the Holocaust.  .  

Resource:  http://hamodia.com/2014/10/21/resurgence-jew-hatred-hungary/ by Michael Freund
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia-Hungary p. 456-57.
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/hungary-population/
http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/communities/26
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/hungarytoc.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Hungary.html
The Prime Ministers by Yehuda Avner

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

The 1955 Baghdad Pact Expose With John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                

                                                      John Foster Dulles (1888-1959)

As I found out in writing about Iraq and Baghdad I saw that  the Baghdad Pact was brought about by the USA in 1955 which caused Egypt's Nasser to be very angry and he then turned to the Russians for aid.  I thought, "Whoever was the Secretary of State at the time to have made such a mess of it all.  I found out more than I had bargained for which led to me another source of mine; about agents against Israel.  (1)  I've found out that besides the original names of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, Great Britain was included in the pact as well.

 It appealed to its members for very different reasons although the rising influence of the Soviet Union and that of Arab nationalism were widely shared. By agreeing to this treaty, Iraq, as the original opponent of Arab nationalism, goaded Cairo to stand in the way of the pro-Western alliance. Yet, London’s membership, intended to replace its 1930 preferential treaty which was about to expire, disappointed many Arab leaders, especially Gamal ʿAbd-al-Nāsṣer, who hoped for a neutral Arab bloc between the West and the USSR.   Nāsṣer opposed the Pact because he perceived it as a threat to his foreign policy objectives and as a tool geared to serve Western political and economic interests. Cairo also feared that such an alliance would isolate Egypt and strengthen the pro-British regime of Nūrī al-Saʿīd in Baghdad.

It didn't bring peace to Israel. The Sinai War of 1956, the hostile actions which Egypt played a central role reached their climax and the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Eilat were still barred to navigation to and from Israel.  The groundwork for a series of Arab military pacts against Israel was laid down in 1955, with Egypt in the center.  In October 1956, Jordan joined the Egyptian-Syrian pact.   What kind of pact did Britain and the USA create with the Arab states?  

The president at that time was Dwight David Eisenhower, and his Secretary of State was John Foster Dulles..  Vice president was Richard Nixon.    Israel's best interests were never in the mind of Dulles.  John Foster had a brother, Allen.  The two were the most powerful men in the world.  Their mother's brother, their uncle, was Secretary of State Robert Lansing, founder of the State Department's first centralized intelligence unit. Their father was a Presbyterian minister.   We know that John Foster became a Secretary of State.  What most don't know is that Allen became head of the CIA during the Eisenhower Administration.  
                                                                                 
Enter Jack Philby, British spy.  "Harry St John Bridger Philby CIE (3 April 1885 – 30 September 1960), also known as Jack Philby or Sheikh Abdullah (الشيخ عبدالله), was a British Arabist, explorer, writer, and colonial office intelligence officer."  Much is written about him as a spy against Zionistic ideals 3 decades before Israel was born.  He had been dismissed from being a civil servant and then recruited by the British secret service, M16 because of his sexual misconduct.  He used his assignment to get even with the British government and secretly joined a fanatical Arab sect led by Ibn Saud, the man who Jack helped to become the first king there.  He's the father of Kim Philby who became a Communist agent when just a college student.  
                                                                                 

                                                    Ibn Saud, 1st King of Saudi Arabia

There had been a secret oil  partnership going on between Ibn Saud, Jack Philby and Allen Dulles.  The threesome were the secret source of oil, money and international influence working behind the scenes that actually put Hitler onto the world stage.  It was these men who fueled the Nazi war machine in the 1930's and were the same ones who sabotaged the Jews' only escape route to Palestine which was deemed to be the Jewish Homeland by the League of Nations.  Jews were being slaughtered by the Nazis and couldn't enter Palestine when they should have been able to.  p. 38.  

It started off with Jack Philby who recruited Allen Dulles in the 1920's as an agent to influence American policy against the Jewish homeland and then as his secret partner in the development of Saudi oil.  Philby helped Ibn Saud, king of Saudi Arabia,  create a partnership with American oil companies who were allied against British interests and in favor of the Nazis.  Philby worked with Nazi intelligence to sabotage international efforts to create a Jewish homeland.   Jack spied on the Zionists with the help of the Dulles brothers.

Anti-Semitism was practiced by the upper-class, Ivy League students attracted to the US diplomatic service.  The State Department hired some bigots who referred to "oily Jews" in official diplomatic reports of both the USA and Britain.  John denied being anti-Semitic claiming he had many Jewish friends and even had Jewish law partners, but their sister fell in love with a Jewish man and the family talked her out of it so much that she later became a devoted Hitlerite.  Her Jewish fiance committed suicide.  Foster was making donations to pro-Nazi isolationists under his wife's name as he curried favor with German clients.  Allen was acting about the same way.  Spies of Jack Philby who went back with him to 1921 swore that the Dulles brothers were unmitigated charlatans whose only interest was in making money.

Philby was made the secret service's head of intelligence for Transjordan in 1921 when he met Allen Dulles who was stationed in Istanbul, Turkey.  Dulles collected information on the potential oil wealth of Arabia in those days as well as about the sticking point of Zionist aspirations.  Philby had great influence over Allen's views about the Jewish Homeland in Palestine.  To Dulles, the use of a Jewish state to the world was zero.  It would just complicate matters in getting American oil companies into the region.
                                                                       
                                          General Reinhard Gehlen, master spy

President Eisenhower was not caught up in the spy rings of Britain, Russia and the USA, but somehow appointed John Foster Dulles as his secretary of  state and Allen Dulles as head of the CIA which was so disgusting to Ben-Gurion that he quit as prime minister of Israel and retired to the desert for 2 years in disgust.  He couldn't deal with the men who had financed Hitler.  He felt the Dulles brothers would rather work with the worst Nazi than ever trust the hated Jews.  The Jews knew what had been going on.  Philby was finally confirmed as a Soviet spy by the code breakers in 1951.  Dulles and another spy, General Gehlen, had to purge themselves of Philby's pet Nazis.  General Reinhard Gehlen was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union (known as the Gehlen Organization) which employed numerous former SSSD and Wehrmacht officers.  

It was the the Dulles brothers who brought American investors into Germany and then impeded  the hunt for Nazi war criminals after the war.  Allen Dulles helped to start the use of Fascist emigres to offset the Jewish vote in the USA.  They were at the height of their power during the Eisenhower Administration.  They went after a number of policies that were hostile to Israel and favorable to its Arab enemies.  The Suez Crisis was the height of their achievements where they achieved 2 goals; the humiliation of Britain and the isolation of Israel.  These events shored up their clients' huge oil interests in the Middle East.                                               

        Ottoman Empire on Germany's side in WWI; Arabs plotted with Hitler in WWII against Jews

A few old American Intelligence officers felt that the Israelis are right, but that no one in the American public would believe why:
1. In early 1950's Israel switched its allegiance to British and French intelligence with Eisenhower administration policies that had been established by the Dulles brothers.
2. During the Eisenhower administration the brothers recruited Nazi war criminals as intelligence agents and sponsored their immigration to the USA.
3.Richard  Nixon was a key figure in the brothers' program who utilized Eastern European Fascists for political purposes.
4. Before and after the 1956 Suez Crisis (Israel's War) the brothers betrayed British, French and Israeli military secrets to the Arabs to gain the dominant role in the Middle East.
5. Eisenhower refused in 1956 to supply weapons to Israel because of the oil lobby.  Israel had no friends in the American government.  Republicans were in, and Jews made up only 3% of the voters.  They usually voted Democratic.  Many US spies either came from the oil companies or ended up working for them.  Sometimes their policy was anti-American as well as being anti-Jewish.  

The secret espionage war against the Jews continues.  Presidents remain naive while all sorts of things are going on behind their backs.  But times have changed.  With Sadat making peace with Israel, Jordan joined in the peace also with their neighbor.  Even Saudi Arabia might be looking to Israel to fight against Iran.  Then, they all have IS to contend with.  We can't forget that people we trusted, however, were spies in disguise.  Now, if we could just taper down in our need for oil.....

Resource: http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/10/baghdad-city-of-ages-threatened-by-is.html
The Secret War Against the Jews by John Loftus and Mark Aarons (1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John_Philby
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Gehlen
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/baghdad-pact
Facts About Israel, Division of Information, Ministry for foreign Affairs, Jerusalem, 1956 war