Nadene Goldfoot
Anyone into history knows that the Romans occupied Jerusalem for years, then took it and burned it down in 70 CE after starving the Jews, who were then taken as slaves to Rome.
Then in 135 CE, the Romans called the land, Palestine, out of meanness. They named it after the Jews' worst enemy, the Philistines. There was no government then, and many people trampled over it, thinking it was theirs for a while. Finally, Turkey-who became the OTTOMAN EMPIRE, held it from 1516 until the end of World War I in 1918, with the exception of a nine-year period between 1831 and 1840 when Egypt's Muhammad Ali captured the region. They were not Palestinian Arabs.
Those Palestinians who managed to buy some land sold it to returning Jews at very high prices, but the Jews bought it anyway, all legally. They had left Europe and pogroms going on there against Jews.
During the war, the British captured Palestine from the Ottomans, who were allied with the Germans and were on the verge of defeat. That's how the Arabs lost the land; by losing in World War I.
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If the Ayatollah in Iran is trying to drive people like me, who know their Middle East history, most angry, he is succeeding, for I am sick and tired of hearing his lies about Palestine and Jerusalem being places belonging to the Palestinian Arabs.
The book by Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), is the best piece of journalism. Joan was not Jewish or Islamic, but was an excellent journalist who went to original sources for information. She said she started her research actually sympathizing with the Arabs, but changed after finding factual information.
This monumental and fascinating book, the product of seven years of original research, should change the terms of the debate about the conflicting claims of the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East, but there seems to be a shortage of people with the patience to go through her many pages of facts minus pictures.
The weight of the comprehensive evidence found and brilliantly analyzed by historian and journalist Joan Peters answers many crucial questions, among them: Why are the Arab refugees from Israel seen in a different light from all the other, far more numerous peoples who were displaced after World War II?
Why, indeed, are Palestinian Arabs seen differently from the Jewish refugees who were forced, in 1948 and after, to leave the Arab countries to find a haven in Israel?
Who, in fact, are the Arabs who were living within the borders of present-day Israel, and where did they come from? They came from nearby countries and were looking for work. At the time, Jews were building and could use the manpower.
Joan Peters' highly readable and moving development of the answers to these and related questions will appear startling.
Peters demonstrates that Jews did not displace Arabs in Palestine-just the reverse: Arabs displaced Jews;
that a substantial number of the Arab refugees called Palestinians in reality had foreign roots;
that for every Arab refugee who left Israel in 1948, there was a Jewish refugee who fled or was expelled from his Arab birthplace at the same time-today's much discussed Sephardic majority in Israel is in fact composed mainly of these Arab-born Jewish refugees or their offspring;
that Britain, the Mandatory power, winked at and even encouraged Arab immigration into Palestine between the two World Wars;
that by disguising the Arab immigrants as "indigenous native Palestinian Arabs," the British justified their restrictions on Jewish immigration and settlement, dooming masses of European Jews to destruction in the Nazi camps.
Israel went through all the legal steps of becoming a state on May 14, 1948. The Palestinians did nothing of the sort. At midnight on May 14, 1948, the Provisional Government of Israel proclaimed a new State of Israel. On that same date, the United States recognized the provisional Jewish government as de facto authority of the
Soon after President Truman took office, he appointed several experts to study the Palestinian issue. In the summer of 1946, Truman established a special cabinet committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Henry F. Grady, an Assistant Secretary of State, who entered into negotiations with a parallel British committee to discuss the future of Palestine. In May 1946, Truman announced his approval of a recommendation to admit 100,000 displaced persons into Palestine and in October publicly declared his support for the creation of a Jewish state. Throughout 1947, the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine examined the Palestinian question and recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. On November 29, 1947 the United Nations adopted Resolution 181 (also known as the Partition Resolution) that would divide Great Britain’s former Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states in May 1948 when the British mandate was scheduled to end. Under the resolution, the area of religious significance surrounding Jerusalem would remain a corpus separatum under international control administered by the United Nations. With Arabs attacking, that was no longer viable. Arabs showed there would be no peace. They cooked their own goose.
Later, as the date for British departure from Palestine drew near, the Department of State grew concerned about the possibility of an all-out war in Palestine as Arab states threatened to attack almost as soon as the UN passed the partition resolution.
Despite growing conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews and despite the Department of State’s endorsement of a trusteeship, Truman ultimately decided to recognize the state Israel. It has lasted 70 years and 3 months.
Am Yisrael Chai !!! The people of Israel live!!!
Israel's secret weapon: We have nowhere else to go - comment
Golda Meir’s words are as relevant as ever today, and the past
weeks of another "mini"-war with Hamas and the accompanying spike
of antisemitism have only further proven her point.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/creation-israel
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