Nadene Goldfoot
“For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own soil” (Ezek. 36:24). The passage continues, “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean…. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:25–26). .
Ezekiel of the 6th century BCE, possibly a member of the priestly family of Zadok, may have even served in the Temple before its destruction in 586 BCE...and was among those exiled to Tel Abib on the river Kebar in Babylonia where he prophesied over a period of at least 22 years. What he said was for his own people, but it fits nicely as here we go again; exiled and wanting to go home.
Prior to dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in 1917, the population of the area comprising modern Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip was not exclusively Muslim. Under the Empire's rule in the mid-16th century, there were no more than 10,000 Jews in Palestine, making up around 5% of the population.
Look at it this way, today, Jews make up 2% of the USA's population. Then in Palestine we made up 5%. Then more came in the future 5 Aliyote.
On This Day of July 5th: Israel passed Law of Return to grant entry to all Jews, 73 years ago. The Law of Return remains controversial in Israel among those on the Right, who think it lets non-halachic Jews make aliyah, and on the Left, who note a double standard for Arabs and Palestinians. This is a shundah that they should argue because Israel was created again for the Jewish people by Jews, and it wasn't an easy thing to do. Think if they could have entered the land during WWII when the Nazis were dead set to kill off all the Jewish people! Whether Jews are religious or not, this was where we were told to live by G-d, who has remained with us in our thoughts ever since Abraham was in our Torah. 
A hill in Judea
Actually, what was prophesized, "The Return" of Jews to their Homeland started in 1881 with the First Aliyah . The First followed pogroms in Russia in 1881-1882. The first group of 14 arrived at port on July 6, 1882. Most of the olim (immigrants) during this period came from Eastern Europe; a small number also arrived from . Members of and , two early that were the mainstays of the First , defined their goal as the political, national, and spiritual resurrection of the Jewish people in Palestine.
In all, nearly 35,000 Jews came to Palestine during the First . Almost half of them left the country within several years of their arrival, some 15,000 established new rural settlements, and the rest moved to the towns.
Life after 70 CE with the Romans burning of Jerusalem and the Temple had horrifying effects on the survivors of this tragedy. They found themselves living in lands where they weren't wanted, and tried for 2,000 years to survive with the Holocaust being the worst attack on them of all. 6 million Jews killed between 1939-1945.
The Israelites who returned to Palestine, their land named by the Romans in 135 for the most serious enemy their people had had, the Philistines, were usually rabbis or learned scholars.
Before the naming the land Palestine, Hillel the Elder of 1st Century BCE was such a man who lived there. He was one born in Babylonia and made his way to Jerusalem to study with 2 famous teachers, Shemaiah and Avtalyon, already there with a school. Hillel learned debate with his partner, Shammai, and they became famous debaters , the last of the pairs doing this called Zugot of scholars. So there were Jews in Jerusalem before the Aliyah had even been thought of.
The name Judea is a Greek and Roman adaptation of the name "Judah", which originally encompassed the territory of the Israelite tribe of that name and later of the ancient
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Returnees angered a bully by the name of Haj Amin al Husseini, the Sherif of Jerusalem, called the Grand Mufti (1893-1974). He was a small fish in a large pond and didn't want to lose the rights he had received. So he got his gang together and attacked the Jews who had returned home.
Beginning in 1920, Great Britain ruled Palestine under a mandate created by the League of Nations. The British were to facilitate the establishment of a modern Jewish homeland. Due to Arab opposition to the proposed Jewish homeland in Palestine, the British initially refused to establish a separate fighting unit of Jewish volunteers from Palestine.
In 1921, the high commissioner for the British was Sir Herbert Samuel, ironically a rare Jew who had gained such a title, had appointed the Arab leader as mufti of Jerusalem and head of the Supreme Muslim Council. In turn, this new mufti organized the Palestine attacks in 1936. For that he was exiled in 1937, but he fled to Lebanon and during World War II participated in a coup in Iraq before going to Europe.
However, wartime manpower requirements and the strategic need to defend the Middle East induced the British to permit the formation of 15 Palestinian Jewish battalions. These units were incorporated into the British army in September 1940.
Haj Amin al-Husseini was one of prominent Palestinian Arabs leaders who fled Mandatory Palestine in 1937 during 1936–1939 uprising and spent World War II period as visiting collaborator of the Axis Powers. Here he is with Hitler. In Germany, he assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in Moslem areas of Bosnia. He cooperated with Hitler on decisions against the Jews. After 1948 he set up a short-lived "Palestine Government" in Gaza, and then later in Cairo.
Numerous German-Arab commando operations were conducted over 1943-1944 from North Africa to Syria and Iraq, in order to collect intelligence, conduct sabotage operations against the Allies, and to foment uprisings.
Operation Atlas was the code name for an operation carried out by a special commando unit of the Waffen SS (Nazis) which took place in October 1944. It involved five soldiers: three who were previously members of the Templer religious sect in Mandatory Palestine, and two Palestinian Arabs who were close collaborators of the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini.
The mission aimed at establishing an intelligence-gathering base in Mandatory Palestine, radioing information back to Germany, and recruiting and arming anti-British Palestinians by buying their support with gold. It also aimed at fomenting tensions between Jews and Arabs, thus creating problems for the British Mandatory authorities.
The Jewish Brigade Group of the British army, which fought under the Zionist flag, was formally established in September 1944. It included more than 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine organized into three infantry battalions and several supporting units. Under the command of Brigadier Ernest Benjamin, the Jewish Brigade fought against the Germans in Italy from March 1945 until the end of the war in May 1945.
Arafat's setbacks included the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan by King Hussein in 1970, and his experience with Black September. It was a conflict fought in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between the Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF), under the leadership of King Hussein, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, primarily between 16 and 27 September 1970, with certain aspects of the conflict continuing until 17 July 1971. Arafat had tried to take over Jordan.
Jordan's king Abdullah II later married a Palestinian, Rania. Rania was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents. She also has Turkish roots on her maternal grandfather's side. Her father, Faisal Al-Yassin (1934–2022) was from Tulkarm in the West Bank, located just inside what's called the Green Line. The
Resource:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-first-aliyah-1882-1903
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Tanakh; Ezekiel:36:24
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat#:~:text=Arafat%20was%20born%20in%20Cairo,Yasser's%20paternal%20grandmother%2C%20was%20Egyptian.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-first-aliyah-1882-1903
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September
https://www.jpost.com/aliyah/article-711225
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-brigade-group
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Line_(Israel)#:~:text=The%20Green%20Line%20refers%20to,United%20Nations%20Truce%20Supervision%20Organization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Atlas_(Mandatory_Palestine)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea#:~:text=The%20name%20Judea%20is%20a,the%20ancient%20Kingdom%20of%20Judah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Jews#:~:text=Prior%20to%20dismemberment%20of%20the,around%205%25%20of%20the%20population.
https://www.chosenpeople.com/is-the-modern-state-of-israel-2/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Rania_of_Jordan
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