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Sunday, June 28, 2020

The Differences Between the Israeli and the Palestinian As Well As Similarities

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                    
Jacob and his soon to be 12 Tribes
We're the only ones left, from Judah, the Jews

We Israelis were and are a people.  We have a common language and religion.  We are a remnant of  a once vital Empire and are still returning.  The fact that makes us so unique is that we have spoken to and have had conversations with G-d since the beginning of our existence. We produced the Prophets.   Our religion, Judaism, is the parent religion of Christianity and Islam.  Today we make up only 0.02% of the world population.  We were exiled from our own country, Judah, the southern part of ancient Israel, by force, not by our own decisions.  Jerusalem was sacked and burned down including our 2nd Temple.  We fled for our lives because we were forced to do so,   not because we were looking for jobs,but a remnant did remain,.    Israel is our refuge.  We are not only a people but a very unique one at that.  The fact that we are a surviving people from such a past is unique in itself.    
                          



We come from an ancient culture; an ancient people.  Because we have not changed our religion and haven't converted to either Christianity or Islam, we had become a pariah to those parts of the world.  Not only have we been wandering through the world for 2,000 years, but have been doing so because of the unacceptence of Jews in this world, not because we wanted to. How many Christians and Muslims have gone through the hellish experience of a Holocaust whereby the Nazis, a political group, managed to kill off almost all of the Jews of Europe?  We lost 6 million Jews who were family members to much of the rest of us.  This has left indelible marks on our psyche.  We were used to being the scapegoats of the world and now were marked for ultimate death.     

The Palestinians, on the other hand, started coming to Palestine, the new name for our former land of Judea,  after 1880, in the hopes of procuring jobs with the newly arrival of Russian Jews who were escaping pogroms in Russia.  A few family lines were even born here.   The majority of them probably came from Syria, but according to Joan Peters, author, came from all the surrounding areas looking for work.  Those who were natives of the land wanted to sell their land to the Jews and they did so, leaving for better places such as Paris and Damascus.  The Ottoman Empire claimed the land and had held it for the past 400 years.  That was what it was, just land called Palestine.   Ottoman Turks would go through and collect their high taxes that the farmers couldn't pay.  The soil was nothing but dry desert land or marshes with mosquitoes galore in them.  The land was waiting for the Jews to return and make it bloom again.  Since 1929, they have been enemies, attacking and killing Jews.  This still continues but now with rockets, missiles and mortars, even fire bombs on kites.  
                                                                          
Do Palestinians know of their past history?  I don't think so.  They have been fed stories that spin a different tale and I hear them say that this is their land as if it was and has been since time began, and that just isn't so.  Some of the homes they live in show signs of having been Jewish homes with Hebrew near the doorway still.  Arab children send their children to Arab schools in many cases, and this history is  reinforced there . 
                                                     
Joan Peters (b: April 29, 1936-d: January 2015, Chicago,
illinois) reporter,
 1984 book, From Time Immemorial, in which she argued that Palestinians are largely not indigenous to modern Israel and therefore do not have a claim to its territory. As a reporter, she had started with the premise that Palestinians
were indigenous to the land but her findings showed her differently and she,
unlike others, was able to shift gears to show the world what she had uncovered.
 Peters also served as an adviser to the White House on American foreign policy in the Middle East during the Carter administration. I don't believe
Carter accepted her book, since his was quite opposing.  Joan was a 
 a freelance writer for publications like Harper’s Magazine. She became "fascinated by the Middle East while covering the Yom Kippur War as a freelancer for CBS in 1973"..
 
 How many have read Joan Peters' report, her book called FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL?  THE ORIGINS OF THE ARAB-JEWISH CONFLICT OVER PALESTINE?   She was a favorite with our White House, but not with 2 Jews, Noam Chomsky and his sidekick, Norman Finklestein who defended the Arabs despite the book.  They'd rather ignore her facts since hers muddles up their theories. 

As Peters wrote in Chapter 10; " We have seen strong evidence that the Holy Land was inhabited only sparsely in the 19th century.  For centuries the non-Jewish, particularly the Muslim, peoples who did inhabit the land had been largely composed of a revolving immigrant population of diverse ethnic origins who could not possibly have constituted a substantial indigenous "Palestinian" population, much less a nation of inhabitants for "a thousand" or "two thousand years."  Rather, the majority of those inhabitant were migrants and peasants originating from other lands, many of whom had been unscrupuluously exploited by feudal or absentee landlords, moneylenders, and corrupt officials of the Turkish government.  They in turn traditionally exploited and preyed upon the oppressed dhimmi Jewish population."    
                                                      

International law Professor Kontorovich stated this time last year that :This week’s U.S.-led Peace to Prosperity conference in Bahrain on the Palestinian economy will likely be attended by seven Arab states—a clear rebuke to foreign-policy experts who said that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the Golan Heights as Israeli territory would alienate the Arab world. Sunni Arab states are lending legitimacy to the Trump administration’s plan, making it all the more notable that the Palestinian Authority itself refuses to participate.
The conference’s only agenda is improving the Palestinian......and they still refuse to talk.                                                

The Palestinians were not a unified people but they all seemed to speak Arabic and they were all Muslims.  There were some Christians sprinkled in since Christian Arabs do live in Israel today.  Their culture allows 4 wives and they do not seem to practice birth control, so their numbers have soared.  

Jews lost their land in 70 CE so have been wandering from country to country for the past 2,000 years.  WWI came along and opened hope's door for Jews to return to their ancient land.  Their only chance of survival has been that of living in the British Isles and in the United States and even there they had to deal with lots of anti-Semitism. Living in Russia meant facing the pogroms and hatred from the people.   To be able to speak and deal with heads of state and receive confirmation by the League of Nations was a wonderful thing.  They were going to be helped in establishing their own Jewish Homeland, and just in time for WWII was about to begin when 6 million Jews would be horribly murdered. The shock was that England kept out Jews but let in Arabs at the height of the Nazi plan.    Today our count is about 14 million living.  We are but a remnant.
                                                           

Our promised Homeland, promised to us after WWI, was cut down by 80% and now our 20% is being cut to allow for a Palestinian Homeland.  Why?  They are not a people but come from the surrounding landscape.  Is it because none of the surrounding countries including their own refused to accept them back in order to cause a problem for the new reborn Israel?  Didn't anyone see through this decision?  They were being used as pawns by the Muslims in order to keep out Jews.  The new world order went along with such a decision.  Seems as if religion causes more hatred than it does love.

Israel has 20% of her population that are Muslim Palestinians.  She told them to stay when the Muslim leaders told them to leave in order for the Muslim soldiers to come in and win the land.  
Those that were obedient to their leaders stayed in the camps created for them and they are still there, for the countries they are in refuse them citizenship or even entrance.  

In the beginning after WWI, Emir Feisal of the Muslim faction was all for Jews to return and build.  He wanted his people to learn something from them and improve their status.  Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Sherif of Jerusalem, ironically given his position by an English Jew, fought against the idea because he didn't want to lose his position.  The English were given a 30 year mandate by the League of Nations and United Nations.   If Palestinians were as gracious as Emir Feisal was in the beginning, it would have been a pleasure to have them as neighbors, but he became a king of 2 neighboring states and they became enemies.  

Why is it that Jews have all their history in their ancient homeland and have lived there for the past 72 years as a nation, and still the world thinks it's okay for a Palestine to be created out of the ancient homeland of Judea and Samaria when they are still shooting at Israel?  They were not a displaced nation.  They were not veteran soldiers being supplemented with land for their service.  What reason is there for such a reward?  If their leaders wanted peace with Israelis, they would be at the peace table, but they still refused to talk.  That's a sign of not being willing to be peaceful if a 2 state solution is created.  
                                                          
Yahya Sinwar (R) the new leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh attend the funeral of Hamas official Mazen Faqha in Gaza city on March 25, 2017. (AFP Photo/Mahmud Hams)
Ismail Haniyeh is in the middle, leader of Hamas
There are supposed to be standards to be accepted as a nation in the UN; one to be friendly with one's neighbors.  They've already been accepted as observers, yet are not a nation.   The leadership, Fatah and Hamas, are friends only in short spurts.  They quarrel about who is the main leader.  Look what happened in Gaza.  Hamas terrorists rule. A mistake like this means a lesson learned and not to be repeated.   

There is the reason that they are squatters and that after 72 years of family life in Judea and Samaria they might stay, but not as enemies, as friendly people such as Canadians and Mexicans have been to the United States, for Americans of this era have never had to live through such terror as Israelis have had to do in order to hold their land today.  That's the hitch.  They have acted like the Amalekites, and still do.  

"The Amalekites, descendants of Amalek, were an ancient biblical nation living near the land of Canaan. They were the first nation to attack the Jewish people after the Exodus
 from Egypt, and they are seen as the archetypal enemy of the Jews. The nation of Amalek is long gone, but they live on as the internal enemies that we each battle on a daily basis."  The Palestinians sure seem to fit the bill."
                                                                      
Judea-Samaria, Gaza in red, Israel in yellow
Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon in purple
The unusual geography puts all Israelis within rocket range
without worrying about Syria's missiles or Iran and their long-distance missiles
that may soon hold atomic level bombs

No one has addressed the fact that our prophecy includes the return of the northern tribes as well, the Israelites who were taken in 721 BCE, who were
part of Jacob's children.  There is a move on to gather them up for the
return as well if they so feel the need.  Most of them now live in Afghanistan
and Pakistan and are practicing Muslims, called the Pashtuns.  Actually, some have already been
returning and have been identified but returned as Jews.  That may be it.  

Having said my piece, there are Palestinians and Israelis who are friends and are working together towards a day of peace.  Anyone living in Judea and Samaria certainly should as by July 1, Netanyahu is planning on accepting the larger towns and cities created by the Israelis as being part of Israel.  It's not a perfect plan, but a better one than exists today.  There has been enough of the Palestinian attacks killing families, enough killing school children from Yeshivas.

The book, COMING HOME TO JERUSALEM, A PERSONAL JOURNEY by Wendy Orange, a young clinical psychologist from Cambridge, Massachusetts and director of a master's program in psychology in Burlington, Vermont, is a perfect example of a Jew discovering her roots and making aliyah to Israel and getting involved first thing with the Palestinians.  On page 138 she and a Palestinian compare similarities that they have found to have:  that they share many other traits, such as ingenuity for navigating life under oppression.  Both our peoples have been forced into agility;  both have developed street savvy to circumvent physical, psychological and economic constrictions.   We  both know how to outmaneuver those in power, though, we agree, laughing, that Palestinians are far too patient and Israelis often too impatient.  "  Both were educated people; male and female, which may help in the long run.  
                                                        
Neveh Shalom Synagogue, Portland, Oregon

6 million Jews live in Israel.  6 million live in the USA.  2 million are still scattered throughout the world in England, South Africa, etc.  about a 14 million total.  That's us;  a remnant of an ancient empire that lived on the most desirable piece of real estate since everyone wanted to dominate it, and we're back.  We're an industrious people, an inventive people, a creative people, a peaceful people who don't believe in killing but do believe in defending oneself, a people that finds its rewards are in doing good in the world, who are not ashamed in putting up the  10 Commandments on their synagogue walls; who must work within these confines when dealing with Palestinians and others for the betterment of all.  I think my psyche says that we just ask for respect from our enemy who hasn't accepted us  in the community and keeps on hoping to drive us into the sea, but at the same time expects to buy that big home next door to us without being friendly.  And I am thinking, wait, bud, we have relatives coming over and we're going to need that home for them.  Go find some large home further away from us that you do like.  Why demand this one?  
                                                        
Ariel, 42 years old that started in 1978, (Hebrew: אֲרִיאֵל; Arabic: اريئيل‎) is an Israeli city organized as a city council in the central Judea-Samaria, part of the Israeli-occupied territories, approximately 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of the Green Line and 34 kilometres (21 mi) west of the Jordan border.  I believe it's in Samaria.   Ariel is adjacent to the Palestinian Authority town of Salfit and southwest of Nablus. It is approximately 30 kilometres (19 mi) east of Petah Tikva, and 42 kilometres (26 mi) east of Tel Aviv to which it is connected by the Highway 5 and 60 kilometres (37 mi) northwest of Jerusalem, to which it is connected by Highway 60. It's the 4th largest city  in Judea-Samaria.  Strangers call it a settlement.  That's a hot-potato of a political term that's not very nice.  It's a city.   

There are 48 Muslim  majority countries in the world including Palestinian's  own native land but just this one little itty bitty one that is a Jewish majority state. This neighborhood includes us, so if you don't approve, don't move here.  Don't cry to us about moving.  We've been doing it for the past 2,000 years already.  Stay and be peaceful and learn to live with us, not to be against us.  Change your vote from the 1967 Kartoum Conference with your 3 NO's of to never make peace.  Do it now.       


Resource:

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3942715/jewish/Who-Were-Amalek-and-the-Amalekites.htm    
Statehood:  https://arno.uvt.nl/show.cgi?fid=121942
Kontorovich on 2 state solution:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/take-the-palestinians-no-for-an-answer-11561316980
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-political-shift-new-hamas-leadership-holds-first-meeting-in-cairo/ 


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