Pages

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

WHEN YOU ARE A PEOPLE WITHOUT A COUNTRY

Nadene Goldfoot                                                   
                                               
       In 1727, the Jews, my people, were expelled from Russia.   My ancestors weren't even allowed to visit Ukraine back in 1550 and again in 1678.  This was sealed in treaties signed by Russia with foreign powers and inserted in clauses.  In this case, Jews had been expelled from eastern Ukraine when it was annexed to Russia.  They had us surrounded by hatred.

It had all started when the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem and burned down our Temple, the 2nd one rebuilt since King Solomon had finished building our 1st one.  This happened in the year 70.  We lost our country of Israel shortly after Solomon had died in 920 BCE, then had our own tribal land of Judah remaining as our country until 597 BCE when Babylonia attacked and took half our population, and then they finished the job in 586 BCE when they took most everyone else away along with all our wealth.  The Greeks have invaded, and then Romans.  Many of us were taken to Rome as slaves, and some got to France.  After that Germany or I should say, the Rhineland became home for many years.  Now our people have had to work northwards up to Russia, and we've been expelled from there as well.  Where else can we go?
                                                 

Orders for Jews were continually being produced for expulsion.  Jews were expelled from Russia again in 1738 and 1742.  By 1753, 35,000 Jews were driven out of Russia.  In 1762, CATHERINE II permitted all aliens to live in Russia except, you know it, THE JEWS.  
                                                        

Russia was always busy fighting their neighbors for their land.  They partitioned Poland in 1772, 1793, and then again in 1795 This was a special year when the great Jewish masses of WHITE RUSSIA,  the Ukraine, Lithuania and Courland became Russian subjects and, for more than a century, the great majority of the world's Jews were under  the reactionary rule of the Czars.  

Things weren't any better for Jews in Persia, either.  This center of Jewish living for Queen Esther and her Uncle Mordecai and all the other Jews who had escaped a Holocaust caused by Haman much much earlier suffered from Islam.  In 1838, the entire Jewish community in Meshed, Persia, were forced to convert to Islam.  So many Iranians may be carrying some Jewish genes today.  I hope it isn't one of the Ayatollas who want to bomb Israel with an atomic missile.  
                                                     
      With all this love coming from the Russians, thoughts of returning to our original homeland, Israel, were inside all of our hearts, as our men, at least, prayed 3 times a day and included in the prayers were to be united again with our land, Israel.  So, a movement began of RETURN TO THE LAND and a revival of Jewish national life.

The 1st phase of this idea was taken by the Yishuv (the Jewish community) already living in Palestine.  In 1860, Jews built the 1st quarter-or neighborhood outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.  In that same year, 2 Hebrew periodicals were regularly published in Jerusalem, both calling for a return to the Land.
                                                           
Pogroms in Russia
Beating up Jews
By 1870, the 1st Jewish agricultural college was established in Mikveh Israel (today on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.)  By 1882 till 1890-750,000 Jews living in Russia were forced to re-settle in the Pale of Settlement.  Russia was to be cleared of Jews.  My ancestors were among these people, most likely because the Goldfus/Goldfoots  were living in Telsiai, Lithuania  and the Jermulowskes were living in Lazdijai, Suwalki, Lithuania/Poland.  The final group of Jews that had been living in Moscow and St. Petersburg were expelled from there by 1891.

Back in Palestine in 1878, Jews from Jerusalem founded the 1st new village in the Land--Petah Tikva (by 1973 a city of 85,000 which was only 10 miles from Tel Aviv.  Other villages were being founded near Jerusalem and in the Galilee.  
                                 1st  Aliya
                               
Kindergarten in Rishon Le-Zion, Palestine  

Jews of Russia had decided to make a run for Palestine.  In 1881 and subsequent years, Jewish immigrants belonging to the HIBBAT ZION (LOVE OF ZION) movement arrived in Palestine from Eastern Europe, which included Romania.  Some joined existing villages, and others founded new ones.  Some of the villages established during the last 2 decades of the century are large towns today---Hadera and Rishon Le-Zion, for example.  These Jews returning to the Land during this period are known as THE FIRST ALIYA.  Aliya literally means going up; ascent.  In practice, it means moving permanently to Israel;  immigrating to Israel.

Those 1st pioneers, for that's what they were, found the most difficult of conditions and deserve medals, all of them.  The population was small and dispersed.  Communications were poor and insecure.  The Land was in complete neglect, as wild as can be from being untouched, possibly since the year 70.  These pioneers found their land of milk and honey had become a land of swamps, weeds and mosquitoes carrying malaria to one and all.  It was extremely hot on top of it all, much hotter than Russia ever thought of becoming.  

The attitude of the Turks there, representatives of the Ottoman Empire administration, was hostile and oppressive towards everyone, both Arabs and Jews.  Life for these pioneers who braved all they had to return to THE LAND, was a continuous ordeal, often filled with raids by Arabs on horses.    The new villages they started survived precariously.  
                                                  
Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania
What were they missing back in Russia?  From 1871 till 1921, the Russians held anti-Jewish pogroms in the towns and shtetles of Russia.  My paternal grandmother had both her legs broken, leaving her permanently bowlegged.  That happened to her as a child!  If you saw FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, you have a good idea of what went on, but you must know it was worse then the movie could show.  Jews grew up with a fixed sense of insecurity branded in their minds from the social ways of their neighbors' treatment of them.  If many grew up with paranoid tendencies, I'm not surprised; people were out to get them--it was their fun and games.  
                                                      
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)
born in Budapest, a Paris reporter for Vienna Neue Freie Presse

What happened in 1897 would change the world.  Theodor Herzl, a reporter, organized in Basle, France, the 1st Zionist Congress and founded the WORLD ZIONIST ORGANIZATION.   Zion is a synonym for Jerusalem, and also means the entire LAND, Eretz Yisrael.  Zionism evolved because of the needs of the Jews at this time:                                                 
Alfred Dryfus

                                                      

   1.  Jews had finally been emancipated after WWI, but like freeing the slaves of the USA after the Civil War, the attitude of the people hadn't changed;  in fact-nothing had changed.  In Central and Western Europe, which had not put an end to discrimination and social ostracism, France had the Dreyfus case-a clear case of baseless discrimination of a fine French-Jewish soldier.  

   2. Continued oppression and outbreaks of persecution by pogroms held in eastern Europe combined with extreme poverty of the Jews by discrimination to be accepted in work.

   3. A growing realization that Jews should follow the path of self-determination taken at that time by other nations, like the Greeks, Italians, Poles.  

Zionism became the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.  Its aims have been:
   1. To carry out the return of Jews to THE LAND and the revival in it of Jewish national life-socially, culturally, economically and politically.  This aim has been fulfilled in the 70 years since its birth on May 14, 1948.

                                   2nd Aliya
                                

A 2nd movement or aliya immigrated to Palestine from 1904 to 1914, the beginning of WWI.  They saw a need to reinforce existing villages and they founded new ones.  The  Yishuv began to organize itself politically, with socialist groups figuring prominently-a learned thing from Russia.   In 1909, the 1st kibbutz, Degania Alef was established on the southern shore of Lake Kinneret.  Also this year of 1909 saw Tel Aviv being founded on the sand dunes outside of Jaffa.  The Hebrew language was becoming the principal language of the Yishuv, with an emerging Hebrew literature.  Life was still harsh, and many of the newcomers left.  But, by 1914, there were 85,000 Jews in the Land.  4 years later, THE LAND was occupied by Britain, which governed it for 30 years with the mandate given to them by the League of Nations at the end of WWI.  Needless to say, they were harsh on Jews, like the Romans had been.  Just ask my cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, also a reporter at the time.  

                  England's Balfour Declaration
                                     

It was 1917 on November 2nd and the British Government issued their famous Balfour Declaration of sympathy with the Jewish Zionist aspirations.  They pledged support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people-in writing-in this declaration for the world to read.  It was a big thing, a huge accomplishment.  You should only know how many meetings it took for our Jewish leaders to have such a miracle to happen.  

The leaders of the Arab national movement were also negotiating with Britain for the recognition of Arab national rights in the former land of the Ottoman empire.  King Hussein of the Hejaz wrote his piece:

"We saw the Jews...streaming to Palestine from Russia, Germnay, Austria, Spain, America....The cause of causes cold not escape those who had the gift of deeper insight:  they knew that the country was for its original sons, for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland"...(Al Qibla, Mecca, No. 183.23 March 1918. George Antonius, Arab Awakening, p. 269)
                                                         
Weizmann and Feisal

This Balfour Declaration was endorsed in an agreement finished on 3 January 1919 between King Hussein's son, Emir Feisal, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann.  Palestine was recognized a a separate Jewish entity, with which the then imminent Arab State would maintain diplomatic relations on condition----that Britain and France met Arab demands in other territories.  And they didn't.  

The League of Nations had given Britain the Mandate for Palestine on July 24, 1922 and it incorporated the Balfour Declaration in it.  So much for contracts, because in that very year, Britain was busy dividing the Mandated territory into 2 sections;  They established an Arab emirate in Trans-Jordan, depriving the Jews of any rights to the Land east of the River.  It was even forbidden to Jews to buy land or settle there.  These Brits were the people who had expelled Jews from England in 1290 and didn't let them back in until 1655.  Oh yes, they did allow a few doctors to stay, favorites of some wealthy lords and ladies, no doubt.  We were good for something.  They had given away 80% of the Jewish Homeland to become eventually-Jordan.  We were left with 20%, mostly desert land, and now of coarse, the world is banging their pots and pans to get us to give 10% or more of that to the Arabs for a Palestine, of which includes our very own Judea and Samaria-original Jewish land.  
                                                           
Between 1881 to 1914, 2 1/2 million Jews left Russia

The end of WWI in Russia caused Jews to be denied the right of national identity.  Jews could not attend synagogues.  Religion for all was denied in what had become an atheist country.  

Unrest and hatred towards Jews in Europe caused Jews to need Palestine badly.  Between 1918 and 1948, waves of immigration of Jews tried to enter.  In the 1920s, most of the immigrants came from eastern Europe.  In the 1930s, many Jews escaped to Palestine from Nazi Germany.  

By 1948, the Yishuv numbered 650,000 persons.  This is an awesome number, as Moses and Joshua entered Canaan with their  rounded off 600,000 that they started off with, finally reaching the land in the last census with 601,730;  1,820 less than they had started with after their 40 year hike.  They were able to easily turn what they had created into a viable independent state.  

The Arabs, having deposed of the friend of the Jews, Emir Feisal, who became a king several times, showed their opposition in putting out the WELCOME WAGON to the Jews.  They erupted into violence in 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936 to 1939, and we can thank the Nazis for the 30s rioting.  These outbreaks were mainly terror attacks against Jewish villages and urban communities.  In 1929, there was the massacre of 67 Jews in Hebron and the destruction of their synagogues put an end to the existence of that city's Jewish community that went back more than 2,000 years of continued Jewish people living there.  517 Jews were killed by Arab attacks between 1936 and 1939.  
                                                         

What did Britain do to stop the Arabs?  They proposed between 1936 to 1938 to repartition Palestine into an Arab and Jewish State with a British enclave.  The Jews accepted it in principle, but the Palestine Arab leadership rejected it, as they continue to do everything.  Who was the undisputed Arab leader?  
                                                          
Here he is inspecting the German army

Why, it was the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, of course, the name in all my previous articles.  During WWII, he had actually joined the Nazis and spent the war years in Berlin.  

Jewish towns and villages sat on land that the Jews had bought and paid for.  Many Arab land-owners were asking sky-high prices for bad land but the Jews paid it, and the Arabs left for Paris and Damascus, places of life and excitement after living in land they couldn't manage.


The Arab communities grew right along with the Jewish communities, for Jewish immigration brought economic prosperity.  In 30 years the Arab population almost doubled.   

However, the Jewish community of Baghdad was attacked in 1941 by Muslim mobs leaving 180 Jews dead.  
                                                            

                                              THE HOLOCAUST
                                   1939 to 1945
1. Europeans were preached hatred towards Jews. Some collaborated with Nazis. 
2. Germany and other countries denied equal rights to Jews.  
There always loomed the anti-Semitism, which grew and grew-with the government taking away the rights of Jews.
3. Nazis planned a genocide against the Jews. 
                       They called it their FINAL SOLUTION.  
                                  6 million slaughtered
4. Britain and the United States might have helped to organize the escape of Jews from Europe but deliberately avoided doing anything until almost the end of the war.  Any escape plans were done by the Jews themselves helping Jews.  
Denmark did take boatloads of Jews to Sweden.  Those that did this had a boat but were poor people themselves.  I know.  My neighbor's father was one of them.
                                                                             
Jewish volunteers during WWII from THE LAND joined the British army and a Jewish Brigade Group fought against the Germans in Europe.  At the end of the war, they could see that the British policy continued to oppose the Jewish National Home's Establishment in Palestine despite what the League of Nations had ordered them to do.  This made a struggle between the Jews and the Brits.  The Jews hoped to get the Brits to give up the Mandate and to allow Jewish refugees to reach THE LAND and escape the gas chambers.  The Jewish resistance group was THE HAGANA.  2 other underground groups were IZL and Lehi, who acted independently, as they saw the need.  In 1947 Britain turned the problem over to the United Nations, a new formation of the old League of Nations.  

A UN Special Committee on Palestine, made of statesmen and jurists from 11 member States, recommended partitioning of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, linked in an economic union, with Jerusalem under international control.  On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly approved this recommendation by more than the needed 2/3 majority.  Both the USA and the Soviet Union voted for it.  It was then accepted by the Jewish Agency, but rejected by the Arab Governments and by the Palestinian Arab leaders.  
                                                      
6 months was left of the British Mandate and the Arabs were violent against the Jews.  They interrupted communications between Jewish towns and villages, and tried to isolate and conquer Jerusalem.  In May 1948, the regular Arab armies invaded the land to fight the Jews.  Before their entry, not a single Jewish town or village was captured.  The Brits helped the Arabs by handing over to them the military bases and equipment they had.  British officers led the Transjordan Arab Legion.  
                                                           
Hagana's job was to maintain a corridor to Jerusalem and beat back the Arab assaults on the new western city.  

Britain withdrew its last fores from Palestine on 15 May 1948. Then Israel announced to the world that they were a state, and accepted into the family of Nations of the UN with the USA's President Truman voting yes.

At the same time, from 1948 to this very day, Arab countries have persecuted Jewish communities and have held mass expulsions with the birth of Israel.  As many Jews were expulsed from their homes as there were Arabs in Palestine who left the new state of Israel when ordered to do so by their own leadership.  
                                                        
A park in Ashkelon, Israel
This ended the spell of more than 1800 years during with THE LAND  had been governed by aliens.  

When you are a people without a country, you wait 2,000 years and see if you can remain a people but live in all the parts of the world without losing your spirit, and if it is impossible, you return when the time is right; and at the end of WWI, it was THE TIME TO RETURN.  No one wanted Jews and no one wanted their land.  They returned to it and it was waiting for them to blossom once again.  

Resource:  facts about israel: published by the division of information, Ministry for foreign affairs, Jerusalem
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia


         



















No comments:

Post a Comment