Defending Israel's Right of Existence: Overview Proving Their Right

Nadene Goldfoot                                                             

Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran, bent on destroying Israel

In 2001, Faisal Bodi,  Muslim journalist, speaker and educator, had said some things I'd like to challenge. I don't think he's changed his mind yet.
                                                                                 

Auschwitz

 He stated in his student's newspaper that the Holocaust was garnishing sympathy that Jews were using to gain a foothold in Palestine.  (I'd like to ask him how many people he knew who were slaughtered to the number of 6 million just because they were Jewish?)  This is the very reason the Jewish leaders forsaw and worked so hard to get back our ancient land.     Jews have almost become extinct!  We're down to 14 million in the whole world.  That's less than 1%.  It's something like 0.02% of the world population.

 Then he had the audacity to say the same things at Leo Baeck College in London.  He felt that Israel had no right to exist and that there was no moral case for the existence of Israel.  This sounds like a page right out the Ayatollah Khamenei's book, or the Ayatollah  took his out of Bodi's.  At any rate, I can see that they cannot accept any facts about Israel's existence in the Middle East.
                                                                           

Golda Meier had made the statement that it was absurd to call Israel's legitimacy into account when G-d Himself called in the Jews to live there as stated in the Bible.  Faisal Bodi finally said, "That biblical promise is Israel's only claim to legitimacy, but he can't accept the boundaries written down that from the Euphrates to the Nile  belong to Abraham's seed, and now this is where Faisal errs big time.

It sounds like he doesn't want to accept the idea that Arabs and Jews are cousins.  DNA is proving that we have a connection, though Jews are closer to the Kurds.   He accuses Jews of taking the land by force and chicanery that was lawfully inhabited and owned by others.  He's bringing up the  Oslo agreement and the Arabs owning the land.  History is not his forte.  The question is ownership.  There were very few owners.  If an Arab shows legal claim to a piece of land, he is awarded this in Israel through the court system.  The land was not taken by force except in the days of Moses.  He does not dispute that day and age.  He's bringing the fight up to date to 1948.
                                                                             

70 CE, destruction of 2nd Temple in Jerusalem

But we must step back to look at history.  First of all, Judah, the southern part of Israel, was still standing when the Romans invaded and occupied Judah over 100 years before Jerusalem was destroyed along with the Temple in 70 CE.  Jews were taken prisoner and marched into Rome as slaves.  Some Jews left town just before that main attack.  Many hid in other parts of Judah.  Some became the Jews who went from Rome to France and Germany who picked up the title of Ashkenazi Jews.  Others headed for Spain and became the Sephardi Jews.  Those who remained in the area  in other countries were the Mizrachi (Middle-eastern) Jews as Mizrachi refers to Egypt.  But mainly, there were Jews stayed in Judah.   Throughout the years, Jews returned either singly, in family groups, or larger groups to the land of their fathers.

 In  the 1880's, anti-Semitism was causing pogroms, attacks that often led to deaths, in Russia and thereabouts.  It drove Russians into returning in 5 groups called Aliyahs starting in 1880.  It was hard living, but they were determined to get along with the few Arabs there and the Ottoman officials.   During this period, Jews bought land, legally bought it according to the law of the land.  They had an angel help who was the banker, Rothschild.  He helped out some of those who made Aliyah until they got on their feet.
                                                                         

Bedouins in their tent

There was no other country who created a state out of the destroyed Israel or Judah.  There were empires who took land through the ages, but did nothing to very little with it.  They were there to collect taxes from people there and that was it.  It was empty wasteland, a backwater nobody wanted to reside in.  The Arabs there were not former citizens of Judah like the Jews.  They were wanderers.  Only a  few had bought land from the former Ottoman Empire and were landowners.

Another poke at Faisal Bodi's argument against Israel existing is that he claims that under international law, the Balfour Declaration was null and void.   Here I go.
                                                                       

The Ottoman Empire, headed by....joined forces with Germany in World War I. "On November 14, 1914, 101 years ago in Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire, the religious leader Sheikh-ul-Islam declares an Islamic holy war on behalf of the Ottoman government, urging his Muslim followers to take up arms against Britain, France, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro in World War I."

 Germany and their partners lost the world-wide war.  The conclusion was that they  lost land they held.  The League of Nations had been created for just such an event in 1920.  "The League of Nations was an international organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, created after the First World War to provide a forum for resolving international disputes. Though first proposed by President Woodrow Wilson as part of his Fourteen Points plan for an equitable peace in Europe, the United States never became a member.Even so, it was always practiced that if you lost a war, you had to make a deal and sign a peace treaty.  The deal was a loss of land.  
The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations (UN) replaced it after the end of the Second World War on 20 April 1946 and inherited a number of agencies and organizations founded by the League."
                                                                     

The League of Nations gave Britain a mandate.  That was a pact of being watchdog over the land for 30 years.  The War was from 1914-1917, and that meant they were taking care of the land until May 14, 1948.  They did a bad job.  They gave TransJordan to Abdullah I and made him king.  It was land that was part of Palestine-meant for the Jewish Homeland.  Then, when Nazi Germany started harming Jews in the 30's, they kept out Jews trying to enter Palestine.  The Sherif of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, started riots in Jerusalem in 1929 that brought death to Jews.  He was a minor leader who was afraid of losing his post given to him by a British Jew!!!  Jews were trying to save Jews during WWII and the Brits were busy catching Jews and hanging them for doing so.
                                                                     

 However, The “Mandate for Palestine,” an historical League of Nations document, laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international law. The “Mandate for Palestine” was not a naive vision briefly embraced by the international community. Fifty-one member countries – the entire League of Nations – unanimously declared on July 24, 1922:
                                                                                

“Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” Then in 1922 they gave 80% of it to Abdullah for a kingdom.  He was from Saudi Arabia and missed out on the chance to become king there, so he wanted to here.  

                                                                                     

United Nations 1948

The United Nations took a vote and accepting Israel as a nation was passed.  So they had to stand a double vote upon themselves and go through that stress after all that had been done to them.  But Faisal Bodi stated that Palestine had belonged to Turkey, not Britain-and he accepts the fact that this is under the pact of the League of Nations.  No Mr. Bodi.  They lost land because they lost the war.  Palestine was in the hands of the League of Nations to decide what to do with it.  The lesson here is that one should not be the aggressor and try to take other people's land.  When you do you lose your holdings instead.  Germany had the same thing happen to them.  They invaded land in Europe.  Those countries declared war on Germany in return.
Japan invaded Pearl Harbor.  Look at their lesson.  They were hit with 2 atom bombs.

Jews were not welcomed with a welcome wagon on their return to their land even though they had the blessings from Emir Feisal, the most important Arab leader of the day.  He realized the handicap they were under, no education, no skills, and was hoping they would benefit from the Jews' presence.  At the same time, he wanted land for himself because his main concern was selfish.  He wanted to be a king.  Neither the Jewish leaders or Feisal were told by the Brits that they were in competition for the same pieces of land.  Feisal went on to become king of Syria and then king of Iraq.  Either country would have been in better shape under his rule.
                                                                                 

War of Independence 1947-1949

The moment the Brits left on May 14, 1948, the Jews claimed statehood.  Before that Jews had been shot at and attacked by the Arabs who were aroused by their leader, Husseini in Jerusalem.  My own 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, was involved as he had been chosen as the Chief of Intelligence by the Stern Group, a group created that was tougher then the main defenders of land led by the Jewish leaders, the Haganah.
                                                                           

King Abdullah II of Jordan

It isn't our religious birthright that keeps us in a never-ending cycle of conflict, Mr. Bodi, which you say.  It's the constant refusal of making peace coming from the Arab leadership.  For 67 years, your people refuse to accept the fact that Jews are back.  Egypt finally made peace.  Jordan finally made peace.  In fact, you could call Jordan the Palestine, but King Abdullah II wants none of that.  He's a Hashemite-from Arabia, and that is his kingdom now.  He refuses to take in any more Palestinian Arabs.  You say, "Rightful inhabitants are Palestinian Arabs?  Most came in following the Jews of the Aliyahs in search of jobs.  There were only a few who were landowners.  They were Bedouins, wanderers.  Hamas refuses to make peace.  They are terrorists and that's what they want to do; drive Israel into the sea. They never have wanted peace.
                                                                       

Israel:  a country with a 9 mile width

As for your idea of one state for Jews and Arabs, it already exists.  Israel has 6 million Jews (the amount lost in the Holocaust) and 1.7 million Arabs.  I would not want to see what happened to Lebanon happen to Israel.  The Christian minority in Lebanon has been slaughtered by their own Lebanese Muslims and by ISIS.  Major Hadad, Christian Militia, was a great friend of Israel.  He saw it coming.  A certain segment of Muslims have followed those that sermonize hatred and killing, which is just ruining the Middle East.  They've taken their own religion and have bastardized it for the peaceful followers of Islam.  Israel was created as a Jewish country.  2,000 years have gone by and we have been guests and citizens where citizenship was taken away because of being Jewish.  Israel is the only Jewish country in the world.  You have 48 Muslim majority countries in the world without having a Palestine.

You should now lecture and practice what you are preaching, in that justice has to be restored instead of stepped up as Muslims are going wild in Jerusalem today attacking Jews with knives and guns.  As it turns out, many of the terrorists are from Judea and Samaria-the West Bank.  The Hadassah Hospital is close by, and those terrorists are attacking the Hospital.  1/3 of the Arabs in the community nearby are the terrorists.  So much for a one-state solution.

Sderot, constantly hit from Gaza

                                                                       

Ashkelon, Portland, Oregon's sister city, hit from Gaza with missiles, mortars, rockets, with the hospital in danger forcing doctors to operate underground.  

Israelis have turned the other cheek so often it makes my head spin in the onslaughts against them.  When they reach the point of knowing it's enough and have warned and responded, they hear from the other nations because they are not returning rocket, mortar and missile fire with David's slingshot.  No, they are trying to keep their small and almost extinct population alive.  First the Nazis set about to kill all Jews in the world. No, I take that back.  The first was Haman in  Persia in Queen Esther's day.  He plotted to kill all the Jews in the Persian Empire, which was huge!  Now the Arabs and the ancient Persians named the Iranians are plotting to do it again.  Well, we're all stubborn.  Be nice to Jews and Jews will be nice to you.  Try to kill Jews and they won't sit for it.  They will defend themselves.   Jews are in no hurry to die.

Mr. Bodi's views were too strong for the BBC who let him go for that reason.  My fear and reason for writing this article is that all too many Muslims believe as he does to an even worse extreme.  He was for a one state solution and accepted the word of G-d as Mohammad had also been impressed once.  Muslims are to have a reverence of some of the Jewish Biblical persons.  However, there are parts of the Koran that are very negative towards Jews, and that part is being used by the Ayatollah to bring down even more than plain hatred upon them.
                                                                           

Ankara, Turkey

The Ottoman Empire was lucky in that they were left with their own country, Turkey  What they lost is what they had taken from others in their empire building.  They did not get to keep Palestine.

Edited with additional maps and comment: 11/9/15
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.htm
.Resource:  comment@guardian.co.uk
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Islam/2001/06/BBC-Allegedly-Fires-Muslim-Journalist-Under-Pressure.aspx
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ottoman-empire-declares-a-holy-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/league
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/study-finds-close-genetic-connection-between-jews-kurds-1.75273














.