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

 

  

 

What If Anti-Zionists Had Been Successful? Here's Zionism Exposed

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

   Aluf (General) Bar Kokhba (132-135) holding Jerusalem for 3 years from Romans, holding off world's best army and making them very angry had almost regained their capital city of Jerusalem. Jews had been defeated by the occupying Romans in 70, and Bar Kokhba was the first to put everything he had mustered into regaining their land;  and he failed.  Others would not take his place for another 1,891 years and it would be a movement of Jews called Zionism.  

You could say he was the first Zionist;  and did hold Jerusalem for its people for 3 years.  It was a rarity.  Never had anyone overcome the Romans in battle.  Simeon Bar Kokhba died in 135.  He was believed to be the nephew of Rabbi Eliezar of Modiin and his reputation was of Davidic descent.   He had led the revolt against Emperor Hadrian in 132.  It was in 133 that Rome counterattacked with an army of 35,000 and commander Julius Severus.  The Romans took 50 fortresses and 985 villages; causing 580,000 Jewish casualties while other Jews died from hunger and disease during this time.  Judea fell into desolation.  Jerusalem became a heathen city where Jews were again barred as they were in 70.  

Jews had been returning to Palestine individually all along history though the Romans made it plain that they were to stay away for fear of death.  The land of Judah had been taken over by Romans and called Judea, then after Bar Kokhba held Jerusalem for 3 years from 132 to 135 CE, it was renamed by the victors, the Romans, as Palestine.  No one lived there.  The land suffered, becoming marshy, mosquito-and weed filled.  

 “arid plains, hills”. MARK TWAIN, who took an excursion trip to "the Holy Land, Egypt, the Crimea, Greece, and other points from Brooklyn on February 1, 1867.  This was a journalist who vetted the condition of Palestine and told who was living there.  

"A land of desolate dusty roads, arid plains, hills and mountains, devoid of people and shade, miserable clay houses, pestilential swamps. 

A photo of Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus from 1865 shows a wretched ruin (the Palestinians did not then know that it was one of the Jews' holy sites) in a barren environment. The Arab cities, those to which the Palestinians want to return by virtue of the “Right to Return”, are small settlements – Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Nazareth.                            

 Everything that can be concluded from the map of the British Expedition is apparent, black on white, in actual real-time photographs".

As Jews suffered in the hands of others in different countries, you would see that a few Jews would return to their homeland.  Jews never forgot their homeland, and prayed 3 times a day for their return.  They had their Torah which told of their history and the land that some of them continued to live in, land the Romans overlooked and places in Jerusalem unknown to Romans.   They returned, finding there were still Jews alive and living in pockets that the Romans didn't care about.   

1881 was the date of the First Aliyah, when hundreds of Jews came as a group, immigrating to Palestine. Pogroms, organized massacres of Jews, sweep through the Russian Empire through 1884. This includes the Kiev Pogrom, considered the worst in this wave. Authorities made no attempts to stop the violence against Jews that lasted months. The flow of Jews to cities in the Russian Empire turned into a flood. Jews began to leave the Pale of the Settlement and move to Odessa; many of those Jews then continued onto New York. 

 Eliezer ben Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew, moves to Palestine in 1881 and starts efforts to revive the Hebrew language.  Born Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman, 7 January 1858 – 16 December 1922 in  Luzhki (Belarusian: Лужкі (Lužki), Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Vitebsk Oblast, Belarus) to Yehuda Leib and Tzipora Perlman, who were Chabad hasidim,  he was a Russian–⁠Jewish linguist, grammarian, and journalist, renowned as the lexicographer of the first Hebrew dictionary, and the editor of HaZvi, one of the first Hebrew newspapers published in the Land of Israel/Palestine. He was the main driving force behind the revival of the Hebrew language.

 There were 5 aliyote, 5 groups of Jews throughout the coming years of Jews escaping the pogroms of Russia.                            

                              

Dr. Nathan Birnbaum, 1901. (Courtesy of The Nathan and Solomon Birnbaum Archives, Toronto.) "Ziionism's Forgotten Father"  

In 1893, Nathan Birnbaum (1864-1937) coined the term, "Zionism." Zion was one of the names of Jerusalem going back to the Babylonian Exile of 597 BCE and 586 BCE.  He was a political and philosophical writer born in Vienna of a Hasidic family.  He studied law but had turned to journalism.  By 1882 he was advocating Jewish nationalism, using Zionist in his writing.  Birnbaum was one of the founders of the Jewish students nationalist society "Kadimah" which means "Forward" in 1883.    His writings evolved a basis for Zionist ideology several years before the appearance of Herzl on the Jewish scene.    While most of the people who made up Vienna’s Jewish community of more than 100,000 were anything but Jewish nationalists, the city had for more than a decade been home to a small group known as the Kadimah Society, whose members proudly identified themselves as Zionists. The very word “Zionism” was, in fact, the invention of the central figure in this society, the editor of its newspaper, Nathan Birnbaum.

               

 Benjamin Ze'ev Herzl  was his birth name.  Herzl, Tivadar, then  Theodor Herzl (2 May 1860 – 3 July 1904) was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish lawyer, journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer who was the father of modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine in an effort to form a Jewish state.  To immigrate to the ancient Homeland, now called Palestine, is to make Aliyah.  Aliyah (US: /ˌæliˈɑː/, UK: /ˌɑː-/; Hebrew: עֲלִיָּה ʿălīyyā, lit. 'ascent') is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel, which is in the modern era chiefly represented by the State of Israel.  We in the USA or Europe are living in the diaspora.  We wish to rise , to go up, to live in Israel.  

And if anti-Zionists had been successful and had kept Israel from being created, what changes would have occurred?  What would have caused Theodor Hertzl to stay home instead of attending the first Zionist Congress in 1897?  Nothing could have. 

    In here are Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann, others

 This Zionist Congress established the political aspirations of being the National Home in Palestine guaranteed by the Public Law (Basle Program).  Zionism proceeds from the assumption that the Jews are still a people, a nation, many of whom cannot  or will not assimilate themselves  to other peoples, and wish to retain their identity as a national community.  

 Herzl was a Jewish Hellenist journalist  born in Budapest, studied in Vienna (1878-1884) who devoted himself to free-lance writing from 1885 onward who had achieved success as a social dramatist.  From 1891 to 1895 he was the Paris correspondent for the Vienna Neue Freie Presse.  It was then that he became increasingly interested in the Jewish problem. 

He advocated for assimilation as the solution, but his drama, Das Neue Ghetto  that he wrote in 1894 expressed his reversion from this view. He had seen the errors of his thinking.   He would not be against assimilation, though  it might have stopped Zionism which had a good start.                         

The Jewish plight that was coming to a head at this point in time would have to continue.  Dreyfus's trial in the Dreyfus Affair in 1894 and decision to leave him on the island as his punishment would have continued with no one.   caring.    He had written about his interview with Baron de Hirsch in 1895, afterwards moved to write his Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State,"published in 1896.   showing the French Jews the need for their ancient Palestinian Homeland.  Alfred Dreyfus was a 35-year-old Alsatian French artillery officer of Jewish descent. He was falsely convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, and was imprisoned on Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent nearly five years.  That woke up the French Jews.  

As a writer, he had written the truth, and had defined the Jews as a people whose assimilation was impracticable and whose plight would deteriorate owing to its social and economic position:  the solution was the founding of a Jewish state by international agreement.  He was an amazing Hellenized Jew in that he recognized the problem but solved it only as  Hellenized Jews were thinking, and that didn't reflect the body of the Jewish people.     He admitted that the territory must be chosen by the Jews but even Hertzl himself would vote for Palestine.  He was opposed by  the Hellenized Jews-assimilationists and the ultra Orthodox- who were waiting for the Moshiach to regain their homeland that G-d had first given them, the two extreme end positions.  What they both agreed on was the need for that which they had lost, their G-d given Homeland.  

The Hibbat Zion Movement was founded and produced much literature  which promoted the migration back to our Homeland.  This Return was crystalized with Herzl's movement of Return.  The Bilu Movement of Russian Jewish students was created out of this, and must have been the 1st Alliyah of 1882 who started agricultural settlements in Palestine.  Joining them was the Hoveve Zion who included handicraft production with farming.  

Baron Abraham Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild was born on August 19, 1845, in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, the third son of James (Ya’akov) and Betty (Batya) Rothschild, who headed the Paris branch of the Rothschild banking dynasty. 

By the 1890s, Baron Edmond de Rothchild supported Jewish colonies that were suffering financially, but he caused a lot of friction besides money.  In 1898 Herzl created the Jewish Colonial Trust.  He also created  by 1901 the Jewish National Fund, money to buy land in Palestine as the perpetual property of the Jewish people.  

Edmond became a leading proponent of the Zionist movement, promoting industrialization and economic development in Palestine. The Baron was asked for urgent assistance and he agreed to fund all the expenses of the colonies Rishon Le-Zion, Zichron Ya’akov, and Rosh Pina.  In 1883, he founded a Jewish settlement adjoining Aqir, which he named Mazkeret Batya (“Memorial [to] Batya”), in honor of his mother. In 1894, he bought a large tract of land for Jewish settlement in the Golan.

At the time, it was Turkey of the Ottoman Empire that was ruling over Palestine, and Herzl tried to get them to support his cause.  Ha also tried gain Germany, Britain and Russia to support him in this.  This only caused Russia to be extra cruel to its Jews.  The situation was so bad, that Herzl looked for a temporary solution (NACHTASYL) among other countries.  Settling in Uganda was rejected                      

He was born Benzion Mileikowsky in 1910 in Warsaw, then part of the Russian empire.  In 1933,  23 year old Benzion Miliekowsky wrote the fact that "Racial antisemitism is inciting a global war against the existence of the Jews, as a race that "poisons" human society", a thread that Hitler had used and that the Ayatollahs in Iran have picked up.  "Benzion continued, writing that "if racial antisemitism spread, it will not only endanger Jewish rights" (rights they only just were given by Napoleon) "but the existence of Jewish people everywhere."  Benzion was a Jewish historian, who would father 3 sons of which Benjamin Netanyahu would be the middle son.  Benzion Miliekowsky had made aliyah to Palestine and had changed his surname to Netanyahu.   He died at age 102.  

Meyer Levin wrote a historic novel, THE SETTLERS, about Jews first returning to Palestine and brings it up to WWI. a hardback copyrighted in 1972 of 832 pages. 

Meyer Levin (October 7, 1905 – July 9, 1981) was an American novelist. Perhaps best known for his work on the Leopold and Loeb case, Levin worked as a journalist (for the Chicago Daily News and, from 1933–1939, as an editor for Esquire).

 I was captivated on all pages.  Set in Palestine from the turn of the century to the Balfour Declaration, this novel revolves around a large Russian immigrant family facing a new life in a barren land. It covers over a quarter of a century of turbulent events:  the hardships of the 1st Jewish pioneers, the spasmodic tyranny of the Turkish overlords, the blighted relationship between neighboring Jews and Arabs, in which the wars of the present were foreordained in the blood feuds and hatreds of an earlier generation, the vast upheaval of the 1st World War and the Russian Revolution, the creation of a Jewish fighting force, the triumphant laying of the foundations for a new land.  

Anyone that was important in Zionism had been writers, journalists.  Journalists are so important, creators of our history.  That's why it's terrible when they fall down on the job and become the puppets of dishonest politicians.   The best journalist of all time that I have run across was Joan Peters who wrote "From Time Immemorial-the origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, copyright 1984"  She had started her research actually commiserating with the Palestinian Arabs, but her research proved her wrong and she did not hide it.  It turned her around.  Her book has been ripped apart by dissonants like Norman Finkelstein and his pal, Noam Chomsky. 

Joan Peters was doing her job; going to original sources to find the information she needed, not to others' opinions.  Though the book is largely regarded as discredited in academic circles because of Chomsky and Finkelstein, who sadly, are Jews, it has had a politically significant legacy. Its central thesis, that Palestinians are not actually indigenous to the land, but the descendants of Arab immigrants from surrounding countries, is a common trope in contemporary Israeli  and world politics. In 2004, From Time Immemorial was the subject of another academic controversy, when Finkelstein accused Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz of largely plagiarizing his book The Case for Israel from it.  That shows that Dershowitz was in agreement with Joan Peters.  Joan wasn't Jewish. She had no horse in this race.    She just knew how to go to sources and did it, literally.  She lists all of them at the end of her book. She's an example of an honest journalist. Barbara Tuchman, famous historian,  wrote that the book was a historical event in itself.                                       

The Holocaust:  Jews murdered by gassing,  liquidation

Religious people say that this is the End of Times.  The Messiah will soon make his entrance.  Zionism created Israel.  I don't want to even think what would have happened if Israel had not been re-birthed on May 14, 1948.  

 Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Book:  Bibi by Benjamin Netanyahu

https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1129/zionisms-forgotten-father/#

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/theodor-binyamin-ze-rsquo-ev-herzl

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/baron-edmond-de-rothschild