How Syria's First King Led to Having Presidents

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

Message was sent to Israel's king Ahab who was Israel's 7th king reign of (876-853 BCE) from Ben Hadad, 2nd king of Syria.  

 Ben Hadad:  This name appeared for three different kings of Aram-Dammasek mentioned in the bible.  The first reigned in about 908-886 BCE.  He was an ally of Baasha of Israel, king of Israel (908-885 BCE) who declared himself king after killing Nadab, son of Jeroboam I who was the Ephraimite who acted as a superintendent of forced labor for Solomon to build the Temple,  and killing all his family members. until bribed by Asa of Judah to attack the northern kingdom (I Kings 15:16-21). This was after King Solomon had  died and his son caused Israel to be divided into Israel and Judah. The 2nd Ben Hadad reigned in the middle of the 8th century BCE, and was son or grandson of the 1st Ben Hadad.  He declared war on Israel in 856 BCE but was defeated and captured, then freed by Ahab with whom he allied himself in the war against Shalmaneser III of Assyria (853 BCE).    Hazael of Aram (Syria) (842-808 BCE) was a powerful 9th-century BCE king of Aram-Damascus, known in the Bible for usurping the throne by murdering his predecessor, King Ben-Hadad II, and becoming a formidable enemy of Israel and Judah, expanding his empire and fulfilling prophecies of judgment against them, as detailed in the books of Kings and 2 Kings. In his victorious campaigns he reduced the kingdom of Israel to vassaldom and limited its armed forces.  Joash, king of Judah (836-797 BCE), subsequently saved Jerusalem from attack by paying tribute.   Archaeological evidence confirms his historical existence as a major regional power, but he eventually faced Assyrian dominance, according to Britannica and the Bible Archaeology Report. 

(ܒܪ ܚܕܕ) or Ben-Hadad III (Heb.) (בֶּן-הֲדַד) was king of Aram Damascus, the son and successor of Hazael. His succession is mentioned in 2 Kings (13:3, 13:24). He is thought to have ruled from 796 BCE to 792 BCE, although there are many conflicting opinions among Biblical archaeologists as to the length of his reign.

The title King of Syria appeared in the second century BCE in referring to the Seleucid kings who ruled the entirety of the region of Syria. It was a Macedonian Greek royal family, which ruled the Seleucid Empire based in West Asia during the Hellenistic period. It was founded by Seleucus I Nicator, a general and successor of Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia (356-323 BCE) after the division of the Macedonian Empire as a result of the Wars of the Successors (Diadochi).

At this time, Antiochus III the Great was the sixth ruler of the Seleucid Empire, reigning from 223 BCE to 187 BCE. He ruled over the region of Syria and large parts of the rest of West Asia towards the end of the 3rd century BCE. He settled Babylonian Jews in cities of Phrygia and Lydia and he then conquered Palestine (named by Romans). Through its history, the Seleucid dominion included large parts of the Near East, as well as of the Asian territory of the earlier Achaemenid Persian Empire. A major center of Hellenistic culture, it attracted a large number of immigrants from Greece who, encouraged by the Seleucids, formed a dominant political elite under the ruling dynasty.

It was also used to refer to Aramean kings in the Greek translations of the Old Testament, mainly indicating the kings of Aram-Damascus. Aramean kings ruled various city-states in ancient Syria, notably Aram-Damascus, with prominent rulers including Tabrimmon, Ben-Hadad I, Hadadezer (Ben-Hadad II), Hazael, Ben-Hadad III, and Rezin,** leading powerful kingdoms that often clashed with Israel and Assyria, as detailed in the Bible and Assyrian records from the 9th and 8th centuries BCE. 

Faysal I was the first king of Syria.  Faisal I bin Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi was a Hejazi statesman who served as the King of Iraq from 23 August 1921 until his death in 1933.  A member of the Hashemite family, he was a leader of the Great Arab Revolt during the First World War, and ruled as the unrecognized King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria from March to July 1920 when he was expelled by the French. In 1919 he met Chaim Weizmann and signed an agreement in Paris.  The Agreement: On January 3, 1919, at the Carlton Hotel in London—shortly before the main proceedings of the Paris Peace Conference began—Emir Faisal, representing the Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, representing the Zionist Organization, signed the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement.  

                              Weizmann and Faisal

 In August 1921, in accordance with the decision made at the Cairo Conference, the British arranged for Faisal to become king of a new Kingdom of Iraq under British administration.

 During his reign, Faisal fostered unity between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims to encourage common loyalty and promote pan-Arabism in the goal of creating an Arab state that would include Iraq, Syria and the rest of the Fertile Crescent.  He did not live long enough to think or have PEACE with the new state of Israel, however, and I think he may have done it.  

Here lies Syria problems:  There wasn't a direct successor as King of Syria after Faisal I because the French quickly dismantled his short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria in 1920; instead, France established the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon, and Faisal later became King of Iraq, succeeded there by his son, Ghazi I, after his death in 1933. 

After 1933, Syria was ruled by a series of leaders during the end of the French Mandate, followed by a period of instability and military coups after independence in 1946, and finally by the Ba'ath Party and the Assad family from 1963 to 2024. 

• 1932–1936: Muhammad Ali al-Abid (First president under the constitution of the First Syrian Republic)
• 1936–1939: Hashim al-Atassi (National Bloc)
• 1939–1943: French Administration (Suspension of the constitution, including rule by Bahij al-Khatib and Taj al-Din al-Hasani)
• 1943–1949: Shukri al-Quwatli (First president of independent Syria, 1946)
• 1949: Husni al-Za'im (Staged the first military coup)
• 1949–1951: Hashim al-Atassi (Returned to power)
• 1951–1954: Adib Shishakli (Military dictator)
• 1954–1955: Hashim al-Atassi (Third term)
• 1955–1958: Shukri al-Quwatli (Second term)
• 1958–1961: United Arab Republic (Union with Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser)
• 1961–1963: Nazim al-Kudsi
• 1963–1966: Amin al-Hafiz (Ba'ath Party)
• 1966–1970: Nureddin al-Atassi (Ba'ath Party, with effective power held by Salah Jadid)
• 1971–2000: Hafez al-Assad (Seized power in 1970; solidified Ba'ath Party rule)
• 2000–2024: Bashar al-Assad (Son of Hafez, inherited power)
• December 2024–Present: Rebel/Transition Government (Following the collapse of the Assad regime, Ahmed al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammad al-Golani) emerged as a key figure in the interim) He was appointed by the terrorist groups as the #1 terrorist ruler.
• I suppose you have to seize power but holding it is another matter, especially if someone like Trump is around.  By the way, Trump used the old Democratic recipe, money and voting which must be validated.  Watch out for money donations like who and why and how much. Israel uses a very complicated Democratic method borrowed from England.     

Resource:

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

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203816776-18/faysal-muhannad-salhi

Jews Living in Palestine During The British Mandate period (1917-1948) of 30 Years

 Nadene Goldfoot                                   

             General Sir Edmund Allenby, Viscount (1861-1936)  entering Jerusalem, 1917; commander of Egyptian Expeditionary Force from June to October 1917 launching an attack on Turkish forces in the Gaza-Beersheba sector and on Dec. 9 entered Jerusalem.  Allenby won a victory over Turks near Megiddo on Sept 19.  He with allies conquered Palestine.  Although cool toward Zionist aspirations, later favored them while traveling to Jerusalem in April 1925 to attend the official opening by Lord Balfour of the Hebrew University.                     

                   The man of this British Mandate over Palestine was:  The British High Commissioner for Palestine being  Sir Herbert Louis Samuel [1870-1963] from (1920–1925), the only Jew in office in this liberal government, and leader of the Liberal Party.
        

                                 British Mandate (1917–1948)

  He was not informed about Husseini and his activities, it seems, keeping very busy with other more important matters such as leader of House of Commons from 1931-1935, and House of Lords starting in 1944.  From 1936-height of German atrocities on Jews of Germany, he  as president of Council for German Jews and in 1939, founded the Children's Movement to bring lone refugee children out of Germany to Britain; president of Royal Institute of Philosophy from 1931 to 1956 and author of philosophy, ethics, belief and action and physics.   

• World War I: During World War I, the British occupied Palestine from the Ottomans because the Ottomans had sided with the Axis, the Germans, and they lost.  Many Jews fought in this war from Palestine.  
• League of Nations Mandate: After the war, the League of Nations granted the United Kingdom a 30 year mandate to administer Palestine. During that time the British aided and abetted more Arabs into Palestine while curtailing Jews.  They had agreed to help the Jews create the Jewish Homeland ! 
  
                           As soon as the British left, the Jewish leadership announced the birth of their nation:  ISRAEL.  May 14, 1948 was the birth, and then the Jews were attacked.  
    They went against The Balfour Doctrine which Lord Balfour hadwritten. 
  
         Faisal I was the king of both Syria and Iraq in the early 20th century; he was crowned king of the Arab Kingdom of Syria in 1918 but was forced out by the French and later became king of the Kingdom of Iraq in 1921, leading the country to independence in 1932.   

• In 1920, Britain assumed responsibility for Palestine under a League of Nations Mandate. Mandatory Palestine had a majority Arab population, although more than 100,000 Jews entered the country over the next two decades.

  The British Army's operations in Palestine during this period were mainly directed against militant Arab groups who were opposed to this mass Jewish immigration. Violence reached a height with the Arab Revolt of 1936-39.

• 
  
  
•  Faisal  met with Chaim  Weizmann in Paris in conferences over Palestine and was in favor of the Jews, and hoped they could teach the Arabs some skills.  He lost his power with the Arabs as Husseini had gotten to them, leading them, instead.                                          
• 
          In 1921 Transjordan was detached from the area covered by the British Mandate for Palestine and made a separate Emirate under ABDULLAH who renamed it the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946.   In 1948 he took over the Arab areas of Palestine but these were lost to Israel by hiss grandson, HUSSEIN , in the 6 Day War.                                                                                                                                    
• 
  At the Paris Peace Conference, Chaim Weizmann met and signed the Faisal-Weizmann agreement with Emir Faisal (later King Faisal I of Iraq), not with a King of Iraq at the time, as Iraq was not yet its own kingdom. Signed in January 1919, the agreement proposed mutual respect and cooperation between Arab and Jewish peoples, with Faisal supporting the implementation of the Balfour Declaration and a Jewish homeland in Palestine.  
    
  
                                          Prince Abdullah I(Abdullah bin Hussein;  February 1882 – 20 July 1951) was the ruler of Jordan from 11 April 1921 until his assassination in 1951. He was the Emir of Transjordan, a British protectorate, until 25 May 1946, after which he was king of an independent Jordan.  
• Within 2 years they had given away almost 80% of the Jewish Homeland to Prince Abdullah of Arabia who needed land and people to make him feel like a prince/king.  
  
•                                       1947 UN Partition Plan
  The initial vision for Israel's statehood came from United Nations Resolution 181, passed in November 1947. This plan proposed partitioning the British Mandate of Palestine into three parts:  The resolution recommended the creation of independent but economically linked Arab and Jewish States and an extraterritorial "Special International Regime" for the city of Jerusalem and its surroundings.
• They were dreaming of pie in the sky!  It was an impossibility then just as it is today.  Arabs had been instigated by Husseini, the Arab Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who would not stand to lose his title-had been selected by the only Jew in England's parliament, yet,  who knew nothing of what had been going on with all the riots Husseini and led, etc. 

  
• A typical special Jewish man to me was my 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot who I met in Israel in 1980 in Jerusalem.   Stanley was born  May 1914 in Johannesburg South Africa to Sarah, a descendant of the Mayor of Liverpool, and Shimon, born in Vilnius and a direct descendant of Rabbi Eliahu, the Gaon of Vilna. Stanley has a sister, Rachel. He studied at King Edward School. In 1933 he made aliya illegally. He felt the genetic legacy to realize  Zionism, inherited from the Gaon of Vilna, pushing him to come to Eretz Yisrael. Stanley joined Kibbutz Degania. After two years the authorities discovered his illegal presence, and sent him back to South Africa. He worked in various professions, and was sent to the US on behalf of the South African Government. Stanley did not relinquish his dream of Aliya. In 1945 he returned to Eretz Yisrael. He settled in Jerusalem and worked chiefly as a foreign correspondent for the London Daily Express, Johannesburg Sunday Times, France Soir, and the New York Times. During this period he joined Lehi, and became Chief of Intelligence.   His connections  with journalism and foreign correspondent sources, yielded precious news, invaluable for the underground. After the UN Decision of November 29th, he helped establish a Lehi base at ‘Camp Dror’ Talbiyeh. He participated in the force which attempted a breakthrough of the Old City Walls on July 17,1948. He helped prepare the underground broadcasts in English, meant for the British Army. He participated in the conquest of Deir-Yassin. Later, using funds he raised, he established in that neighborhood the ‘Dvar Yerushalayim’ Yeshiva, in memory of his parents.

  

        Stanley Goldfoot and his first wife and two daughters in Tel Aviv.  When I met him, he was still as slender.  We met at the King David Hotel which held many memories for him. 

  

      Avraham Stern "Yair" (1907-1942) In 1939-1940 he left the group, Irgun Tzevai Leumi where he was the leader because they refused to take risks to continue anti-British acts in Palestine during WWII.  he formed the underground later known as Lohame Herut Israel which carried out acts of sabotage, etc.  He was killed by British police while being arrested.  
• LEHI;also called The Stern Group;   Lehi (Hebrew pronunciation: [ˈleχi]; Hebrew: לח״י, sometimes abbreviated "LHI"), officially the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Hebrew: לוחמי חרות ישראל, romanized: Lohamei Herut Israel) and often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang by the British,  was a Zionist paramilitary militant organization founded by Avraham ("Yair") Stern in Mandatory Palestine. Its avowed aim was to evict the British authorities from Palestine by use of violence, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews and the formation of a Jewish state. It was initially called the National Military Organization in Israel, upon being founded in August 1940, but was renamed Lehi one month later. The group referred to its members as terrorists and admitted to having carried out acts of terrorism.
•  Stanley played an important part in the assassination of Bernadotte, an operation planned in his apartment.  After the assassination he was arrested with other Lehi members and imprisoned in the Jaffa, Akko, and then Jalameh Prisons. After over five months, he was released during the general amnesty. 
• He worked in journalism afterwards, and did business in the US two years. For seven years he co-operated with Dr. Yisrael Eldad  publishing  the Times of Israel, with a circulation of about 50,000 copies in the US and Israel. He published the international edition of Dr. Eldad’s book, The Jewish Revolution. Stanley wrote the fabulous 'Letter to the World"  that has been set to music and pictures as well.  
•  Stanley lives in Jerusalem with his wife Helen, née Milner. He is the father of three daughters and two sons (including those from previous marriages) and grandfather to seven. Little had I first guessed that this Portland, Oregon me had such a cousin in South Africa and Israel.  I'm so very glad we met !!!! We had so much in common, especially that urge to move to Israel and help our people.  
• From 1917 to 1948, the Jews in Palestine, often called Palestinian Jews, were a growing population primarily driven by Zionism and fleeing antisemitism. These immigrants, alongside a smaller number of established Jewish communities, settled in Palestine under the British Mandate, aiming to create a "national home" as promised by the Balfour Declaration. This period saw the organized acquisition of land by Jewish entities and a significant increase in Jewish immigration, fundamentally changing the region's demographics and contributing to the subsequent conflict.  Approximately 110,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine between May and the end of 1948, adding to the existing Jewish population of about 600,000, contributing to a significant doubling of the country's Jewish population in the years that followed.  
• 
  

  

                The refugee ship SS ‘Exodus’ 1947 at Haifa Docks, 1947. They had almost made it !   It carried 4,554 Jewish refugees to Palestine under Haganah auspices in 1947.  It was seized by the British in the Mediterranean after a battle in which 3 Jews were killed.  The refugees, returned forcibly from Haifa to Port de Bouc, France, refused to land there;  in spite of their resistance the were disembarked at Hamburg by British soldiers.  The incident did much to swing world opinion against Britain's Palestine policy. 
• The Outcome: 

  British forces rammed the ship, and after refusing to disembark in France, the passengers were forcibly returned to Germany, where they were placed in displacement camps. 

  They were interned in displaced persons camps in Germany until the United Nations voted to partition Palestine. Most of the passengers eventually immigrated to the newly established state of Israel in 1948. I'm surprised they were not gassed or shot.  

  

  
  
• The 1960 Hollywood movie Exodus,1947 based on Leon Uris's 1958 novel of the same name, dramatically fictionalizes the real 1947 refugee ship SS Exodus. The actual ship carried about 4,500 Holocaust survivors attempting to enter British Mandate Palestine, not 4,000 as stated in the user request, but the core details of the user request match the actual events involving the SS Exodus. 

  

  
  
• The 1960 Hollywood movie Exodus, directed by Otto Preminger, featured a large ensemble cast. The main actors included: 
  • Paul Newman as Ari Ben Canaan
  • Eva Marie Saint as Kitty Fremont
  • Ralph Richardson as General Sutherland
  • Lee J. Cobb as Barak Ben Canaan
  • Sal Mineo as Dov Landau 
  Resource:
• https://lehi.org.il/en/goldfoot-stanley/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fcsH52xbLA
•