When Conflict in 1920 Began in Palestine For The Jews, Turning Into Pogroms, Part III i

Nadene Goldfoot                                                

In a new town in northern Palestine, Joseph Trumpeldor ate breakfast on March 1, 1920,  when he heard that nearby in Tel Hai, Jews were being attacked by Arabs.  He saw his own gate open, so ran outside, and was shot and killed at age 40.  Arabs retreated, but attacks had started after the cooperation of Emir Feisal and the Balfour Declaration.

Feisal admitted that Arab who approved of Zionism were "especially the educated among us."  By 1920, they had given up hoping for peace, as they felt betrayed by England, France, and the Jews.

                                            

The OTHER reason for England having issued the Balfour Declaration betrayed even Balfour himself.  Britain was at war and this gained Jewish support for the BRITISH CAUSE.  Britain also wanted Arab support because they made up mover half the population of the Ottoman Empire, so they offered independence to Arabs so they would fight the Turks.  The Jews and Arabs had been used.  Now, just what did INDEPENDENCE mean?  To Arabs, it meant Arab control of Palestine.  They wanted the whole pie, not a slice of it.  

Then, the British secretly agreed with the French to divide control of the Middle East.  England took Palestine and Iraq, and France took Syria and Lebanon.  All the agreements that Feisal had made with Weizmann were forgotten, as all this made Feisal furious.  Now the Arabs demanded total control of the Middle East.   

The League of Nations refused to GIVE Palestine to Great Britain. Instead, they gave them THE DUTY TO DEVELOP PALESTINE AS A JEWISH HOMELAND, and called it THE BRITISH MANDATE.  

Why did Jews need a homeland?  The League of Nations knew the history of the Jews, that they had been ousted of their native homeland in the year 70 by the Romans, and that they prayed 3 times a day since then for the return to their ancient homeland.  Jews had been waiting for 1,850 years for this moment. 

 Between you and me, the Palestinian Arabs had never had a country called Palestine anywhere!  They were Arabs, not native people, from Arabia, and had roamed into Palestine.  They had been living in the surrounding countries as their citizens, and came into the Jewish towns when they heard they were building, such as Tel Aviv, looking for better paying jobs.  

If, if, if---If Britain had fulfilled the duties under the Mandate, the Middle East might have known peace.  Instead, Britain and France made a tragic mistake.  They decided to keep control of the whole Middle East, except for PALESTINE--- which they would give, as a gift, to the Arabs.

                                                   

Here's the rub.  Even before the terms of the Mandate were final, British Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, split off all of Palestine east of the Jordan River and gave it to the Hashemites, a powerful family from the Arabian Peninsula.  this was 4/5 of the land that was to have been the Jewish homeland. This new Arab country was known as Transjordan until 1949, and then became the Kingdom of Jordan.  Today the 1/5 left for Jews has been divided again, called the West Bank, but contains Judea and Samaria.  Jews got the Negev Desert and a little northern coastland and Jerusalem.    

Many Palestinian Arabs made this new country their home.  the 1st British High Commissioner for Palestine was SIR HERBERT SAMUEL, an English Jew.  He established law and order.  The years under his government were fairly peaceful.  Even so, sir Herbert was under orders to make peace with the Arabs and to do as little as possible toward creating the promised Jewish National Home.  I'm afraid that following those rules shows that he was more of a Hellenized Jew.  

By 1921, the 1st Palestinian Arab riots against the Jews began, mainly in Jerusalem and Safed.  These were poorly organized, and were contained by British authorities.  Tell that to the Jews who suffered in them, though.  Sir Herbert left Palestine in 1925, and British favoritism toward the Arabs became  more open.  By 1929,the Arabs decided to show their power.  Riots in Jerusalem, Hebron and Safed went on longer, and were more brutal, than in 1921.  

Rioters didn't attack the armed Jews of the kibbutzim.  They attacked the unarmed in the cities.  133 Jews were massacred.  Several hundred were wounded.  Jewish property was destroyed.  It was a true pogrom!  

The British did nothing to punish rioters, or to prevent more riots.  Naturally, the Arabs became even bolder.

Years of violence reached a climax in 1936.  A symbol of  Arab success was the holy city of Hebron(Kiriath Arba) which lies 18 miles south of Jerusalem.  The Jews there were killed or driven out.  Once it was King David's capital.  Hebron is the burial place of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs---the fathers and mothers of the Jewish people---Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob;  Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah.  Now, for the first time in thousands of years, there were no Jews in Hebron.  

Back in Europe in 1936, Germans were getting very bold.  WWII was about to break out in 3 years.  Jews had been feeling anti-Semitism a lot. 

1935

• May 31: Jews barred from serving in the German armed forces
• September 15: "Nuremberg Laws": first anti-Jewish racial laws enacted; Jews no longer considered German citizens; Jews could not marry Aryans; nor could they fly the German flag.
• November 15: Germany defines a "Jew": anyone with three Jewish grandparents; someone with two Jewish grandparents who identifies as a Jew.                        
•                                            1936

• March 3: Jewish doctors barred from practicing medicine in German institutions.
• March 7: Germans march into the Rhineland, previously demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty.
• June 17: Reichführer SS Himmler (chief of the SS units) appointed the Chief of German Police.
• July 12: Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens.
• October 25: Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis.

Resource:

A young Person's History of Israel 2nd edition by David Bamberger

https://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/teacher-resources/holocaust-resources/timeline-of-the-holocaust.html

 

Joseph Trumpeldor Died and Charles Bronson was Born-Tatars and Jews in Ukraine-Crimea

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                      

Charles Bronson, born Charles Buchinsky, was born to a Polish-Lithuanian immigrant father of Lipka Tatar ancestry on November 3, 1921 and died August 30, 2003.  He was the 11th of 15 children and learned to speak English when he was a teenager. He was one of America's favorite movie actors.   "He starred in films such as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Rider on the Rain, The Mechanic, and the Death Wish series. He was often cast in the role of a police officer, gunfighter, or vigilante in revenge-oriented plot lines"

Tatars are a Turkic ethnic group in eastern Europe and northern Asia and are a native people the Volga region of Russia, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.  Most live in the Russian Federation.  There are 5.5 million, which includes 2 million in the republic of Tarstan, 2 million in Bashkortostan and 2.5 million in other parts of Russia.  Many wound up in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Ukraine after  the Soviet Union broke up.  

The inner Crimea around 1420 became a split kingdom.  The Ottomans conquered the Genoese possessions in 1475 and made the inland Tatars vassals.  They were also useful for raiding Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania, and they were protected  from reprisals by the belt of the depopulated steppe.  What happened next was massive emigration and a loss of finances from the land.  The people that stayed were mainly Tatars, which was then a Muslim Turkish-speaking blend under the leadership of the descendants of the Mongol invaders.  

The meeting of Tatars and Jews resulted in problems. When the Russians conquered the Crimea from the Turks, Jews suffered a great deal.  Many Jews left for the Ottoman territory.  In 1783 Russia annexed the Crimea.  At that time there were 469 Jewish families made up of people from the Rabbanite and the Karaite groups living there.  Tatars raided Ukraine and Poland-Lithuania in the 16th centuries.  There was a Tatar alliance with Chmielnicki in 1648, and this brought many Jewish captives into the Tatar hands.  They were usually recovered by their people through ransoms that had to be paid.  

Crimea was a potential Jewish homeland being it became part of the Pale of Settlement, land set aside where only Jews were allowed to live.  Catherine the Great II had taken the Crimea from the Ottoman Empire in 1783 so she encouraged Jews to move there.  By the late 1800s Crimea had become a training center for future Zionist pioneers.  They used this land to test agricultural techniques before they moved to Palestine.  It was Joseph Trumpeldor who once trained potential immigrants  there. 
                                                             

Joseph was born November 21, 1880 in Pyatigorsk, Russia and died March 1, 1920.  He had helped to organize the Zion Mule Corps and to bring Jewish immigrants to Palestine.  He served in World War I for Russia and in the Russian/Japanese War He died defending the settlement of Tel Chai in 1920 in Palestine  and then became a national hero. "  "During World War II the German Wehrmacht temporarily occupied Pyatigorsk. The Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppe D had its headquarters in Pyatigorsk in 1942.  The German occupation resulted in the killing of many Jewish inhabitants of the region.  

Though Russia had become atheistic at one time, they now have Islam as their 2nd largest religion.  Tatars are Muslims." In the middle of the Volga Basin reside populations of Tatars and Bashkirs, the vast majority of whom are Muslims." Sunni, Shjia and Sufi groups make up over 5,000 registered religious Muslim groups.  29,268 registered Russian Orthodox religious group exist since December 2006 and the Muslims make up over 1/6 of all of them.  

There are 2 million people living in Crimea.  15,000 of those are Jews.  300,000 are the Crimean Tatars, descendants of Tatars that Joseph Stalin deported 70 years ago.  That's because he accused them of working with Nazi Germany when Germany occupied Crimea.  There lots of anti-Semitic acts going on right now, reminiscent of the Nazi days.  Old habits die hard.   

"The Tatars are overwhelmingly opposed to the Russian annexation. Bakhchysarai, a town near Simferopol with a Tatar majority, is one of the few places in Crimea where people fly the Ukrainian flag from their homes and cars, despite the large presence of Russian soldiers besieging the nearby Ukrainian Army base."  

Religious minorities of the Crimea do not want to go with Russia.   "Throughout the uproar in Ukraine and subsequent invasion by the Russians, the Jewish population in Crimea has been subject to several hate crimes, including an incident where vandals spray-painted swastikas and "death to Jews" on the only Reform synagogue in Crimea's capital, Simferopol. While there was no way of knowing if the vandalism was done by pro-Russian supporters or local neo-Nazis, one of Ukraine's chief rabbis, Jacob Dov Bleich, accused Russia of staging "anti-Semitic provocations" to discredit the Ukrainian government and create a need for a Russian takeover."

Reference:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Russia
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/.premium-1.578829  
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Crimea.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bronson  
http://www.policymic.com/articles/84543/crimea-s-persecuted-religious-minorities-don-t-want-it-to-become-part-of-russia