Nadene Goldfoot
Moses finally reached Canaan with his 600,000 freed Israelites and others, former slaves of Egypt, in 1271 BCE whom he had freed; then he died just outside the land.
After the destruction of the 2nd Jewish temple in 70 CE and the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, Jews have always maintained a presence in Palestine, praying and waiting to establish this Jewish state again. Many other empires held this land and caused the remaining Jews to live under degrading conditions.
For those Jews living outside the land, oftentimes they were treated even worse. The Jews had always been different in their religion being monotheistic in a polytheistic world. Only naked Jewish men were identified by their circumcision up until the year 632 with the introduction of Islam who copied this custom.
Jews in 1880s draining Hula swamps
Ottoman rule of the country lasted without interruption for three centuries, until its conquest by Muhammad Ali's Egypt in 1832. Eight years later, the United Kingdom intervened and returned control of the Levant to the Ottomans in return for extraterritorial rights for Europeans living in Palestine, so the Ottomans held the land for 400 years. Considerable demographic changes happened during the 19th century and with the regional migrations of Druze, Circassians and Bedouin tribes. The emergence of Zionism also brought many Jewish immigrants from Europe, and the revival of the Hebrew language.
Other Jews from Russia fled to Palestine starting in the 1880s in 5 different movements, called making aliyah. By the 19th century, Palestine, which was under the Ottoman Empire Muslim rule, Jews were still under dhimmi ruling. Jews had to walk past Muslims on their left, as the left is identified with Satan, and they always had to yield the right of way to a Muslim, by "stepping into the street and letting him pass." Failure to abide by these degrading customs often provoked a violent response.
This is so much like what Blacks in the United States had to do with their white masters, and even after they were freed in the Civil War in some states. Both Jews and Blacks have known what it was like to be 2nd class citizens, or even a non-citizen.
It was founded in the early 18th century by followers of Judah HeHasid on the ruins of a 15th century synagogue, but was destroyed a few years later in 1721 by Ottoman authorities, for failure of its proprietors to pay back a debt to local Muslims. The plot became known as "The Ruin", or Hurva, where it lay desolate for 116 years until it was resettled in 1837 by members of the Ashkenazi Jewish community, known as the Perushim. In 1864, the Perushim rebuilt the synagogue, and although officially named the Beis Yaakov Synagogue, it retained its name as the Hurva. It became Jerusalem's main Ashkenazi synagogue, until it too was destroyed by the Arab Legion during the fighting in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Jews and Christians in Muslim countries were 2nd class citizens, called dhimmis. In Palestine as elsewhere, Jews had to avoid anything that could remind Arabs of Judaism, so synagogues could be located only in hidden, remote areas, and Jews could pray only in muted voices. At the same period, Jews living in Europe were being treated even worse; not even as citizens of any class.
In addition, even though most Jews were suffering from widespread poverty in Palestine, they had to pay a host of special protection taxes, a form of extortion, one of the things dhimmis all had to do. Jews had to pay 100 pounds a year to the Muslim villagers of Siloam (just outside Jerusalem) not to disturb the graves at the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and 50 pounds a year to the Ta'amara Arabs not to deface the Tomb of Rachel on the road to Bethlehem. They also had to pay 10 pounds annually to Sheik Abu Gosh not to molest Jewish travelers on the road to Jerusalem, even though the Turkish authorities were already paying him to maintain order on that road.
These anti-Jewish laws, taxes, and practices had an intimidating effect on the Jews, psychologically. The British consul, James Finn, who lived in Jerusalem in the 1850s, described in his book, STIRRING TIMES, how "Arab merchants would dump their unsold wares on their Jewish neighbors and bill them, safe in the knowledge that the Jews so feared them that they would not dare return the items or deny their purchase."
Only a few hours after the Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, five Arab countries, the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq attacked the newborn Israel to try to eliminate the ‘Zionist Aggression’. By the Grace and plan of God, The new Jewish state survived.
1948 was the year that Israel was established in this modern world, and we still have seen the Palestinian Arabs' hatred for Jews. As Yeshoshafat Harkabi, a leading scholar of the Arab world's attitude toward Israel put it: "The existence of the Jews was not a provocation to Islam....as long as Jews were subordinate or degraded. But a Jewish state is incompatible with the view of Jews as humiliated or wretched." The call for a Palestinian Arab state in place of Israel is for a state in which once again "Islam dominates and is not dominated."
This hatred of Jewish nationalism was so intense that during World War II, most Arab leaders were pro-Nazi. Among them was the head of the Muslims in Palestine the mufti Haj Amin el- Husseini (who in 1929 had helped organize the large-scale murders of the ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist Jews of Hebron.)
The mufti, a supporter of Hitler, spent much of the war in Nazi Germany at a time when thousands of Jews were being murdered daily, On November 2, 1943, the mufti made a speech:
"The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God's chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other peoples are animals...makes them incapable of being trusted. They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals....The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews."
The Palestine refugee issue was not of Israel's doing but was caused by their Arab leaders. They had been using the Palestinians as pawns in a chess game, keeping them apart in refugee camps for psychological warfare against Israelis. These were the ones who were told to leave their homes in 1947 by their Arab leaders when the Arabs were fighting against the Jews. Some 276,000 moved to the West Bank. By 1949 more than half the prewar Arab population of Palestine lived in the West Bank (from 400,000 in 1947 to more than 700,000). Between 160,000 and 190,000 fled to the Gaza Strip. More than one-fifth of Palestinian Arabs left Palestine altogether. The center of Palestinian life shifted to the Arab towns of the hilly eastern portion of the region—which was immediately west of the Jordan River and came to be called the West Bank.
In reality The West Bank, called that by Jordan, was the ancient Judea and Samaria.
Those who ignored this directive stayed and became Israeli citizens. Albert Memmi, the noted French-Jewish novelist who had grown up in North Africa had noted, that without minimizing the personal difficulties of the Palestinians, "The Palestinian Arabs' misfortune is having been moved about 30 miles within one vast Arab nation." (Jews and Arab, p. 35.)
Resource:
Why the Jews?- the reason for antisemitism by Dennis Prager & Joseph Telushkin. Dennis Mark Prager is an American conservative radio talk show host and writer. He was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. His initial political work concerned Soviet Jews who were unable to emigrate. He gradually began offering more and broader commentary on politics. Wikipedia
https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine/Palestine-and-the-Palestinians-1948-67
https://www.c4israel.org/_teachings/birth-of-the-state-of-israel/?gclid=CjwKCAiAlNf-BRB_EiwA2osbxbhTcVcYHb_Dmf60xPOUvowS0IFADOx3jz5wQi5ESAvBU11i7CEprRoCZoEQAvD_BwE
The Settlers by Meyer Levin, a novel. Excellent. epic novel of one family returning to the Jewish Homeland, once Palestine, now Israel, always Eretz Yisroel. It tells of the tyranny of the Turkish overlords, blighted relationship between neighboring Jews and Arabs...WWI, Russian revolution, creation of a Jewish fighting force...
No comments:
Post a Comment