Legal Facts Verifying Israel's Legitimacy And Right To Be

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

    Praying at the Wall on the Temple Mount, a picture showing the various styles of Jews;  orthodox not serving in the army and orthodox serving in the army-different levels of practicing one's faith.  Most citizens are living in Israel because of their Jewish faith which can be at any level, but Israel means something to them in their soul.  Otherwise they'd never bother to make aliyah and live there among all the enemies.  

Let's start with the bare facts.  Jews are an indigenous people of Palestine.  There's not another nation in on the face of this earth that has proof of being as old a people as they are from the same land they now live in.  Jews being on the Land go back to Moses and Joshua entering Canaan.  Moses died (Jewish date) in 1271 BCE just outside of Canaan, so Joshua led the Exodus to their Promised Land.  That was a good 3,294 years ago.  Their history is all vetted in the Torah (Old Testament), said to be 1st hand account by Moses himself.  Their very first king was Saul, born before 1010 BCE when David, 2nd king,  ruled. David ruled 3,033 years ago so Saul was about 3,060 years ago.  The Romans drove them out in 70 when they burned down Jerusalem and the Temple, and said they'd kill any who returned.  

This happened when many of the world's population were mutating from Neanderthals to Homo Sapiens, while those Jews had already been in existence a few thousand years already in Mesopotamia, reading and writing and debating,  descendants of Abraham and had spent 400 years in Egypt -most of which in slavery already. This is why Jews were invited into other countries;  Jews were literate people, they could read, write and were good in math; a treasure to have so that counties could trade and do business with other countries.  Their own people were not at this level at all.   

Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, Aramaeanites, Horites;  Nabatites, all gone; assimilated, not a people anymore.  

Jews are an ancient people who have not died out and disappeared like so many other tribes.  They are vibrant and believe in life; living, and believe in rules as to how to do it best. They have a culture, a language, foods, and a history also vetted in many other Mesopotamian lands.

USA  was a country in 1776; 247 years ago.  England was a country, say-1066 when William the Conqueror came along with the Norman Conquest.  That was 957 years ago. Their people are a mixture of Vikings and Normans, Saxons, etc. Classical French historiography usually regards Clovis I, king of the Franks ( r. 509–511), as the first king of France.  Some Jews even lived in France before 70 CE, Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor born in about 771, had a lot to do with the birth of countries or not.  So did the Romans. So now all these countries are questioning Israel's right to survive?  

On May 14, 1948, Israel announced their birth and had a population of about 600,000 Jews.  That's the number, actually it was 601,730 that arrived with Joshua on the 40 year Exodus.  They had lost 1,820 from the start of the 40 years.  Israel by 1948 birthed itself after the Holocaust of losing 6 million people.  This was something prophesized in the Bible-the gathering of Jews returning again to Jerusalem from all 4 corners of the Earth.  It's been going on.  We have people living in Israel, Judea and Samaria.  We are the descendants of the Judeans;  the Jews.                                               

                                   Lord Arthur James Balfour(1848-1930) 

Herzl negotiated with him in 1902 , very impressed by Chaim Weizmann.  As Foreign Secretary in 1917, he issued this Balfour Declaration.  He remained outspokenly devoted  to the Zionist ideal.  

1. Balfour Declaration:  On November 2, 1917, the British government issued this document of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, pledging support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.  The Allied Governments were parties to the negotiations and approved the Declaration.  So did some of the principal leaders of the Arab national movement like Emir Feisal who eventually was king of Iraq and Syria. The agreement concluded on January 3, 1919 between King Hussein's son, Emir Feisal, chief Arab delegate at the Paris Peace Conference, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, on behalf of the World Zionist Organization.  The Balfour Declaration was endorsed and Palestine recognized as a separate Jewish entity which the Arab States would maintain diplomatic relations, on condition--ah yes, on condition that Britain and France met Arab demands in other territories other than Palestine.                                        

2. The Palestine Mandate:  The British were given a 30 year mandate by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922 which followed the 1st World War. This incorporated the text of the Balfour Declaration about the Jewish Homeland, even recognizing the historical connection between the Jewish people and the Land and called upon Britain to facilitate the establishment of the national home.                         

The mandate covered the land on both sides of the Jordan River but as early as 1922, Britain divided the mandated territory  establishing an Arab emirate in Trans Jordan, which deprived the Jews of any Rights in the Land east of the river.  It was made forbidden to Jews to buy land or settle there.  

British policy towards the establishment of a Jewish national home was highly ambivalent.  At certain times, Jewish immigration to the Land was allowed.  At others, it was severely restricted and land purchase was prevented if you were Jewish.  

3. 1936-1938 British Proposal of Fixing Problem:  Britain; proposed to repartition Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish State with a British enclave.  The leadership of the Jewish community accepted it in principle.  The Palestine Arab leadership rejected it.  

An undisputed leader of the Palestine Arab community at that time was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who, during the 2nd World War, joined the Nazis and spent the war years in Berlin. 

Abba Eban (center) with Israeli PM David Ben-Gurion and U.S. President Harry Truman (1951)

 As Abba Eban said, "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."  

They've since 1967  said, No, No, No when in Khartoum, Africa at a conference with other Arab countries. 

No peace with Israel; 

No negotiations with Israel;  

No recognition of Israel;  and insistence on the rights of the "Palestinian People"-

and may I remind all that Jews were Palestinians too before 1948.  Anyone living on the land, Arab or Jew were called Palestinians, especially on any legal work like passports, etc." in their own country.  Today's Palestinians are not from a country with a president or king or anything like that.  Their heritage comes from an assortment of Arabs from many sources and countries who were looking for work, and the Jews needed workers.  They were rebuilding their ancient country into a modern country.  

  Do you wonder why Israel feels the Arabs are not interested in making peace with them?  It's so obvious.  

4. Buying The land on which Jewish towns and villages were settled was bought and paid for by the Jews, often times individually and a few times by donation money from Jews. 

The Tzedakah (Charity) Box: Pushka Power:  a little box or tin can sitting on a counter somewhere. Every day, a little spare change gets dropped in there, plus a few more coins just before Shabbat. When it's full, it goes to a good cause, whichever the family chooses, or to send to Palestine to buy land.  Most Jews in the diaspora kept a little can, a pushka, with coins in it to buy the land.  

Most Arabs were hurting under the Ottoman Empire and couldn't pay the taxes and weren't doing well as farming goes.  They were only too happy to sell at very exhorbitant prices, but the Jews paid it since the land was so holy to them. So there are land records.  More often, the Arabs need the records for proof of living on the land, and can take their case-if there is one-to the highest supreme court in Israel-now under it's own problems. Israel's laws are the hardest of all countries to follow as some of the laws are on the books and so ancient; ask any American lawyer who tried to work in Israel. There's Ottoman law, still in use; Israel law, etc.     

  Baron Edmund de Rothchild (1845-1934) from a family of financiers and philanthropists  of Frankfort-on-Main in Germany where his ancestors lived from the 16th century onwards.  The "House of Rothchild" became well known.  Edmund was from the French line.  Luckily, Edmund and wife Adele, another Rothchild, was interested in intellectual and artistic pursuits and had a great art collection.  They were attached to Jewish religious traditions.  They had large donations from the few wealthy Jews in the Diaspora, like Baron Edmond de Rothschild.

  The first Zionist pioneers in Palestine appealed to him for financing  in the early 1880s to save them from financial collapse.  He continued to support Palestinian colonization unostentatiously and gradually taking under his protection all the new settlements, which would have had to be liquidated had it not been for his aid.  Altogether, he bought 125,000 acres in Palestine and is to be credited with the settlement of Galilee and Samaria.  In 1900,  he transferred the management of the colonies to ICA, and then from 1924, to PICA.  In his last years, he cooperated with Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow and in 1929 at the time of terrible rioting became honorary president of the Jewish Agency.  He's buried at Zikhron Yaaaov -reinterred, in 1954.                                          

Jewish National Fund (קֶרֶן קַיֶּימֶת לְיִשְׂרָאֵל‎, Keren Kayemet LeYisrael; previously הפאנד הלאומי‎, Ha Fund HaLeumi) is a non-profit organization founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Syria (later Mandatory Palestine, subsequently Israel and the Palestinian territories) for Jewish settlement. By 2007, it owned 13% of the total land in Israel. Since its inception, the JNF says it has planted over 240 million trees in Israel. It has also built 180 dams and reservoirs, developed 250,000 acres (1,000 km²) of land and established more than 1,000 parks.  And we've witnessed the Arabs purposely flying kites lit with fire in order to cause forest fires and fires on farms such as wheat fields. That doesn't cause love for the Arabs.  Israel was attacked

5. Wars Fought to Keep the Land:

  A. The War of Independence from 29 November 1947 to 1949:  Arabs refused to accept its very existence, attacked 5 minutes after announcement of birth. First, units of Arab irregulars crossed into the country from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt to reinforce local Arabs in their attacks upon Jewish localities and in an attempt to block the main roads.  

Then on May 14, 1948, day of birth, Israel was invaded by the regular armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and a Saudi-Arabian contingent.  General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha,  said, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and Crusades."  

 B. the Sinai War from 29 October until 5 November 1956

 C. The Six Day War from 5th to 11th June 1967

 D. The War of Attrition from 1968 to 7-8 August 1970-never peaceful, with forays into Israel, engaging in acts of terrorism and sabotage.   Clashes along frontier lines with Arab terrorist organizations (fidayun) who was supported by Arab governments.  

 E. Yom Kippur War, 6 October to 26 October 1973.  Hit on Jewish holiest day of year, people in synagogues on a 25 hour fast...Israeli soldiers at their weakest.  

Besides all out wars, there have been so many attacks that Israel has had to enter Gaza to stop them. 

Despite it all: all the tsuris that has hit this teeny country, they have made a name for themselves giving the world some of their talent showing they are a people worth keeping. 

  

Resource; 

Facts About Israel, published by the Division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem.  1973.

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

 

  

 

1947 Palestine And All The People Living There: Life Before Israel's Birth

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Last Days of the 30 Year Mandate of the British in Palestine

If you were born in 1947, you are 76 years old.  Most young people have no idea of what was going on in Palestine then.  

For the past 1,877 years, from 70 to 1947 CE, the Land was ruled by foreign governments and never by the people who lived in it. 

In a span of  400 years, from 1516 to 1917, the Land was ruled by the Ottoman Empire by dividing it into separately administered districts called Sanjaks or Vilayets.  The Ottomans had no name for the Land as a whole. 

In the past 29 years, from 1918 to 1947, the Land was ruled by the British who called the Land Palestine which had been called this after the Jewish General "Aluf" Bar Kokhba took back Jerusalem in 132 from the Romans, held it for 3 whole years at the embarrassment of the Romans, then died in 135 in the great battle.  Rome was so mad that they named the Land for the Jews' worst enemy, the Philistines.  

Originally, the 30 year British Mandate over Palestine extended to both sides of the River Jordan.  In 1922, Britain partitioned the Mandated territory into Palestine (west of the Jordan) and Transjordan (east of the Jordan.)  The Land in Hebrew is "Eretz Yisrael".  

                            Arab guerrillas

Hajj Mohammed Amin el-Husseini (1893-1974) in 1921 was a big Arab leader, called the Sherif of Jerusalem and the Grand Mufti, appointed by the British, the only Jew-Sir Herbert Samuel, who also chose Husseini for chairman of the Arab supreme Council.   (Oy gavolt!)  He was afraid of losing his high position if Jews entered the country.  So he organized the Arab riots (nicely called 'the Palestine disturbances by the Brits).  For these, he was sentenced to exile in 1937.  He fled to Lebanon, and during WWII, participated in Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup in Iraq before going to Europe where he assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in the Moslem areas of Bosnia.  In 1946 he escaped to Egypt.  After 1948's Israel birth, he set up a short-lived "Palestine Government " in Gaza-which moved later to Cairo, Egypt.  

During the 2nd half of the 19th century, both communities---Arabs and Jews---began to grow.  By 1914, the population of the Land (west of the Jordan) was estimated at 680,000 of whom 85,000 were Jews.  

In 1917, in order to win Jewish support for Britain's First World War effort, the British Balfour Declaration promised the establishment of a Jewish national home in Ottoman-controlled Palestine.  However, the British had also promised Arab nationalists that a united Arab country, covering most of the Arab Middle East, would result if the Ottoman Turks were defeated.

The United Nations (October 24, 1945)  was an outgrowth of the League of Nations(January 10, 1920) . On 15 November 1920, 41 members states gathered in Geneva for the opening of the first session of the Assembly. This represented a large portion of existing states and corresponded to more than 70% of the world's population. A UN Special committee on Palestine composed for statesmen and jurists from 11 member states, recommended the partitioning of Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab States, linked in an economic union, with Jerusalem under international control.  Both times, the Nations voted for Israel to be created.  

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly approved this recommendation by more than the required 2/3 majority.  Both the USA and the Soviet Union supported the resolution. 

The decision of the United Nations was accepted by the Jewish Agency.  It was rejected by the Arab Governments and by Palestinian Arab leaders.  

The 6 months until the termination of the British 30 year Mandate were marked by Arab violence against the Jewish community.  The Arabs attacked to interrupt communications between Jewish towns and villages and, above all, to isolate and conquer Jerusalem.  

Prior to the entry of regular Arab armies into the Land in May 1948, not a single Jewish town or village was captured.  

The British authorities aided the Arabs by handing over to them military bases and equipment.  British officers led the Transjordan Arab Legion.  (The Brits were given the 30 year mandate with the command to help the Jews created their Jewish Homeland.)They saw it differently.  They kept Jews out and allowed Arabs in.                   

The main effort of the Jewish Haganah (meaning defense in Hebrew) was to maintain a corridor to Jerusalem and beat back the Arab assaults on the new western city. This was a secret organization kept from the British for Jewish self-defense because the Brits were not doing it.  It grew out of Ha-Shomer in 1920 and existed until 1948. 

Intensive efforts to strengthen the Haganah followed the 1929 Arab riots which resulted in a British policy of appeasement of the Arabs.  In 1931, the Haganah split and the minority, chiefly right-wing groups, formed a separate organization;  these reunited with the Haganah in 1936 but certain elements remained outside and formed the nucleus of the Irgun Tzevai Leumi. 

      Avraham Stern (December 23, 1907-February 12, 1942, born in Suwalki, Poland-or Lithuania where my Bubba was born. When 18 in 1925, he migrated alone to Palestine. He died at 35.    

Avraham Stern (1907-1942) left the Irgun in 1939-1940 of which he had been a leader, because of its refusal to continue anti-British activities in Palestine during World War II.  He formed an underground organization later known as Lohame Herut Israel.  The British called it the Stern Gang. My 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, was the Chief of Intelligence for it.  They carried out acts of sabotage, etc. Stanley was a writer; wrote "A Letter to the World." Stern was killed by the British police while being arrested. 

Stern spent the rest of the 1930s traveling back and forth to Eastern Europe to organize revolutionary cells in Poland and promote immigration of Jews to Palestine in defiance of British restrictions (this was therefore known as "illegal immigration").

Stern developed a plan to train 40,000 young Jews to sail for Palestine and take over the country from the British colonial authorities. He succeeded in enlisting the Polish government in this effort. The Poles began training Irgun members and arms were set aside, but then Germany invaded Poland and began the Second World War in 1939. This ended the training, and immigration routes were cut off. Stern was in Palestine at the time and was arrested the same night the war began. He was incarcerated together with the entire High Command of the Irgun in the Jerusalem Central Prison and Sarafand Detention Camp.  

The Haganah wasn't idle;  and was strengthened during the 1936-1939 disturbances by the establishment of the Supernumerary Police Force which number 20,000 in 1939.  This force was recruited by the Haganah command and operated as far as possible under its instructions.  

Major General Charles Orde Windgate In September 1936, Wingate was assigned to a staff officer position in the British Mandate of Palestine, and became an intelligence officer. From his arrival he saw the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine as being a religious duty, and immediately put himself into absolute alliance with Jewish political leaders. Palestinian Arab guerrillas had at the time of his arrival begun a campaign of attacks against both British mandate officials and Jewish communities.  Too bad Britain didn't have his outlook.  

 Yitzhak Sadeh (Hebrew: יצחק שדה, born Izaak Landoberg, August 10, 1890 – August 20, 1952), was the commander of the Palmach and one of the founders of the Israel Defense Forces at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel.

At this period, the "special Field companies" were raised by Yitzhak Sadeh and the "Night Squads" established by Charles Orde Wingate (1903-1944). Wingate was a British soldier.  While serving during 1936-1939 in Palestine, he organized formations of Jewish volunteers, known as the Special Night Squads, to defeat Arab terrorist activity.  A keen bible student, Windgate remained an ardent supporter of Zionism to the end of his brilliant military career.  Sadeh (1890-1952) assisted Trumpeldor in founding the Russian He-Halutz movement in 1919 and the following year settled in Palestine.  He became an Israeli labor and military leader. I taught with one of his descendants-a teacher of English in Safed in 1981.

 Joseph Trumpeldor (1880-1920) was going to be a dentist, but volunteered for the Russian army and lost an arm during the fighting in 1904-1905 while a Japanese captive.  He was made an officer and settled in Palestine in 1912.  During WWI he was in Egypt working with Jabotinsky for the establishment of a Jewish unit to fight with the British against the Turks in Palestine.  He helped raise the Zion Mule Corps but this was dispatched to the Gallipoli.  As an ex-Russian officer, Trumpeldor was excluded from the Jewish Legion.  In 1917, he went to Russia to organize Jewish settlement groups for Palestine and from his activity the He-Halutz movement emerged.  In 1919, he returned to Palestine as leader of a pioneer group and unsuccessfully tried to reconcile the antagonisms between the various workers' political parties inside the country.  He organized volunteers to protect exposed Jewish settlements in Upper Galilee and was killed in defense of Tel Hai. 

      Haganah 1942  

The Haganah also executed settlement operations  (Stockade and Tower), organized "illegal" immigration, and even set up its own secret plant for manufacturing equipment. 

The ship, St. Louis, was refused landing in USA in 1939.  The more than 900 passengers of the M.S. St. Louis were denied entry by immigration authorities in multiple countries in the lead-up to the Holocaust.  As the M.S. St. Louis cruised off the coast of Miami in June 1939, its passengers could see the lights of the city glimmering. But the United States hadn’t been on the ship’s original itinerary, and its passengers didn’t have permission to disembark in Florida. As the more than 900 Jewish passengers looked longingly at the twinkling lights, they hoped against hope that they could land.

Most of the ship’s 937 passengers were Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany. Though World War II had not yet begun in the USA, the groundwork for the Holocaust was already being laid in Germany, where Jewish people faced harassment, discrimination and political persecution. But though the danger faced by the passengers was clear, they were turned down by immigration authorities, first by Cuba, then the United States and Canada. For many on the St. Louis, that rejection was a death sentence.

The world’s refusal of the St. Louis’ desperate refugees was a death sentence for 254 refugees—approximately half of the number who had returned to the European continent in 1939. Many who did not die were interned in concentration camps, like Max Korman, who built on lessons learned on the ship to help organize inmates of the Westerbork concentration camp in the Netherlands.

      Haganah 1946-1947:  The ship, Exodus 1947 was formerly the "President Warfield" which carried 4,554 Jewish refugees to Palestine under Haganah auspices.  It was seized by the British in the Mediterranean after a battle in which 3 Jews were killed in July 1947.  The refugees, returned forcibly from Haifa to Port de Bouc, France, refused to land there;  in spite of their resistance they were disembarked at Hamburg, Germany by British soldiers.  The incident did much to swing world opinion against Britain's Palestine policy. 

In 10 months, Israel was born-May 14, 1948.  They died short of 10 months more and then they would have been in Israel.                                                     

      Haganah 1947 

In these conditions, Britain withdrew its last forces from Palestine on May 15, 1948. This ended the spell of more than 1,800 years during which the Land had been governed by aliens.  

1947 was the last year under such dictatorship.   

   Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/film/british-soldiers-deport-exodus-1947-passengers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Sadeh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orde_Wingate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)

https://www.history.com/news/wwii-jewish-refugee-ship-st-louis-1939

https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/conflict-Palestine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avraham_Stern

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Trumpeldor

Professor Alan Dershowitz vs Professor Kontorovich, My Two Favorite Authorities, Debate Each Other--Best Debate in Town

 Nadene Goldfoot                                     

                     Professor Alan Dershowitz, born September 1, 1938, 85 years old in 2 days, US Lawyer sin 1967, professor at Harvard.  He has been a leading spokesman for civil rights and has acted as counsel in many key cases involving civil liberties.  He was the US lawyer for Anatol Shcharansky, and wrote many books, one of which is his autobiography, Chutzpah.  Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz puts Israel’s judicial reforms into proper perspective in this discussion.  

Eugene Kontorovich (born 1975), age 48,  is a legal scholar, specializing in constitutional and international law.  Professor of Law Eugene Kontorovich is one of the world’s preeminent experts on universal jurisdiction and maritime piracy, as well as international law and the Israel-Arab conflict. He is also the Director of Scalia Law School's Center for the Middle East and International Law. Professor Kontorovich joined the Scalia Law School from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law where he was a Professor of Law from 2011 to 2018 and an Associate Professor from 2007 to 2011. Previously, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago from 2005 to 2007 and an Assistant Professor at George Mason School of Law from 2003 to 2007.

Retired US attorney Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz debated Eugene Kontorovich, professor at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia School of Law, specializing in constitutional and international law, and Director of the International Law Department at Kohelet Forum, about Israel’s judicial reform. While Dershowitz starts out critical of the reform, as Professor Kontorovich gives him examples showing him the true situation not being reported by the media, Dershowitz ends up agreeing with most of the reform. As Dershowitz said himself:

Interestingly, Dershowitz highlights the only reason there are protests at all in the streets of Israel is because the reforms were brought up by this Bibi Netanyahu, right-wing government. Had these same reforms been brought up by any other Israeli government, as previous governments have brought them up, there would be no massive protest movement.

Dershowitz admitted that the protests against judicial reform are a surrogate for “we don’t like Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir” and he even criticized American Jews for getting involved in this issue.

Dershowitz also admits that most people protesting the 

judicial reforms have no idea what they are even 

protesting against.

As I have written about previously here, here, here and here the Jewish/Israeli public is being fed outright lies by the media and the unhinged political leaders of the left. They are creating a tremendously dangerous social situation in Israel, that is totally avoidable if our leaders and media would be responsible. Instead, they are being irresponsible creating social tension by spreading the overall lie that these judicial reforms are a coup that will destroy Israeli democracy and turn Israel into a dictatorship.

Even Dershowitz recognizes that those are all lies, totally 

misrepresenting the actual judicial reform.

Resource:

update: 8/30/23-after losing much of what I had written earlier..problems with blogging

https://www.israpundit.org/alan-dershowitz-debates-judicial-

reform-with-eugene-kontoovich/

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-734600

https://www.jewishpress.com/news/left-vs-right/dershowitz-vs-

kontorovitch-on-judicial-reform-a-surprising-agreement-not-a-

debate/2023/03/16/    update 8/30/23   NEW

Libya, The North African Country Wanting Nothing To Do With Israel

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

       Foreign Minister of Israel   Eli Cohen and  Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush of Libya

Libya's internationally recognized government dismissed Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush on Sunday after a meeting she held with her Israeli counterpart sparked an uproar in the country. Israel's foreign ministry announced on Sunday night that the meeting had taken place in Rome last week. Libya denied it all, saying it was just an accidental meeting, and now Najla has fled for her life to Turkey. She's been fired.  

Evidently Libya hasn't heard of the Abraham Accords.  If they have, they'll have no part of it, and who would want them?  Libya has a terrible reputation with the terrible President Gadafi, especially with Entebbe .  

Libya has fallen into chaos since a NATO-backed uprising overthrew former ruler Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The country has been split into two rival governments, one in Tripoli and one in Benghazi, since 2014.The parliament backing the eastern-based government denounced Mangoush’s meeting with Cohen and called for a “harsh punishment.” Mangoush was Libya’s first female foreign minister-possibly the last, now.  Libya has no diplomatic relations with Israel. 

In ancient history, Jews lived in the land that is Libya when it was called Cyrenaica and Tripolitania. The Berbers were the earliest recorded inhabitants of Cyrenaica. Remnants of the Berber languages spoken by their ancestors are still found in the Awjila language of the oasis of Awjila. The ancient Berbers founded a number of cities and settlements, both on the coast and in the inland oases. The native Berbers, who had inhabited the area locally for centuries before the arrival of the Arabs, established their own native Hafsid dynasty over Ifriqiya in the 13th century, and would control the region until it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, who established Ottoman Tripolitania as a distinct province. Tripolitania became an Italian colony in 1911.

The history of the Jews in Libya stretches back to the 3rd century BCE, when Cyrenaica was under Greek rule. The Jewish population of Libya, a part of the Sephardi-Maghrebi Jewish community continued to populate the area continuously until the modern times. During World War II, Libya's Jewish population was subjected to antisemitic laws by the Fascist Italian regime and deportations by Nazi German troops.

 After 1948 when Israel was re-born, over 30,000 Jews left Libya for Israel.  At the time of the Six-Day War in 1967, there were demonstrations against the country's 6,000 remaining Jews who all left shortly thereafter. 

Muammar Gaddafi ((c. 7 June 1942 – 20 October 2011) was president and prime minister of Libya.  

In Uganda 47 years ago,  is the airport that was the scene of Operation Entebbe, a hostage rescue on 4 July 1976, when soldiers from the Sayeret Matkal, Paratroopers Brigade and Golani Brigade units of the Israeli Army freed over 100 hostages following a hijacking by a group of Palestinian and German militia.   Entebbe was an operation to rescue hostages held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda in 1976. 102 of the 106 hostages were rescued, but Yonatan Netanyahu, the leader, was killed in action—the only IDF fatality during the operation. He was Benjamin Netanyahu's older brother.  He was the only Israeli soldier killed during the raid (along with three hostages, all of the Revolutionary Cells members, all of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine members, and dozens of Ugandan soldiers). The commonly accepted version of his death is that Netanyahu fired on Ugandan soldiers, and was shot in response by a Ugandan soldier from the airport's control tower. The family refused to accept this verdict, and insisted instead that he was killed by the German commanding the hijackers. Netanyahu was shot outside the building being stormed, and would soon die in the arms of Efraim Sneh, commander of the mission's medical unit. The operation itself was a success, and was renamed as Mivtsa Yonatan ("Operation Jonathan" in English) in his honor.

Israel’s operation was the end of a saga that had started on June 27 with the hijacking of an Air France Airbus A300 en route from Tel Aviv to Paris. Palestinian and German terrorists, exploiting the then-laxer Greek security procedures, boarded the plane during its Athens stopover, and took control of the aircraft shortly thereafter.

The hijackers first diverted the plane to Benghazi, Libya where they were welcomed by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. From there, the terrorists took the aircraft to Entebbe, where Ugandan strongman Idi Amin likewise offered the hijackers succor, and as was pre-planned, additional terrorists joined the original hijackers.

Entebbe resulted in the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya and United Nations–imposed economic sanctions. From 1999, Gaddafi shunned pan-Arabism, and encouraged pan-Africanism and rapprochement with Western nations; he was Chairperson of the African Union from 2009 to 2010. Amid the 2011 Arab Spring, protests against widespread corruption and unemployment broke out in eastern Libya. The situation descended into civil war, in which NATO intervened militarily on the side of the anti-Gaddafist National Transitional Council (NTC). Gaddafi's government was overthrown; he retreated to Sirte only to be captured and killed by NTC militants.

Then again, 11 years ago, the 2012 Benghazi attack was a coordinated attack against two United States government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, by members of the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Sharia. On September 11, 2012, at 9:40 pm local time, members of Ansar al-Sharia attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi resulting in the deaths of both United States Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith.

File: Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid al-Dbeibeh in Rome, Monday, May 31, 2021 (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, Pool, File) an interim position but elections have been postponed-evidently indefinitely.  He is the cousin and brother in law of Ali Ibrahim Dabaiba, previously the mayor of Misrata and head of state-owned development contractor LIDCO during the Gaddafi era, who was in 2012 on a list of sanctioned officials, subject of an Interpol red notice and arrested in 2014. He is estimated to have embezzled as much as $7 billion at 2011 rates from contracts LIDCO had issued under his leadership, per Suisse secrets.

Do the Abraham Accords need Libya?  They are about the 29th largest Arab population with 6,173,579 in 2011, at that time 97% Sunni Muslims Islam is a state religion with a military power then of 76,000.  

Resource:

https://www.standwithus.tv/videos/jewish-refugees-in-the-middle-east/the-jews-of-libya/

JBS News on YouTube

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/28/middleeast/israel-libya-minister-dismissed-intl/index.html#:~:text=Libya's%20internationally%20recognized%20government%20dismissed,place%20in%20Rome%20last%20week.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muammar_Gaddafihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Hamid_Dbeibeh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-711503

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entebbe