Israeli Jews From Ukraine

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Ukraine has been a country where many Jews have lived.  A few of them since the end of the 1800s were able to make it to Palestine and after 1948, to Israel.  

Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky

Born in 1880 in the city of Odessa, Ze’ev Jabotinsky grew up completely assimilated. He had no connection to Judaism until he was an adult. He became a celebrated Russian journalist, filing stories from across Europe.

In 1903, the infamous Kishinev Pogrom changed the course of Jabotinsky’s life. Over three days of rioting, beginning on Easter Sunday, hundreds of Jews in the Moldovan city of Kishinev were attacked, injured, and killed. Their property was destroyed and Jews cowered in fear as the murderous mob rampaged unchecked. Hundreds of Jewish women were violently assaulted. It became clear that Jews had little future in Europe. 

Ze’ev Jabotinsky was the founder of Revisionist Zionism, also established the Beitar youth movement and the Irgun, a paramilitary organization in pre-state Israel.

Jabotinsky was convinced Jews needed a Jewish state to be secure and became an ardent Zionist. He helped found the Jewish Legion to help British forces during World War I, and advocated tirelessly for a Jewish state in the land of Israel. Expelled from the land of Israel in 1929 by the British authorities, Jabotinsky continued to advance the cause of Jewish liberation, not only founding the underground Irgun military force but also  insisting on Jewish statehood. He died in exile in 1940.

Golda Meir

Israel’s 4th Prime Minister was born in 1898 in Kyiv. Her family was destitute. She recalled her father looking for work and having only bread and herring to eat. Golda wrote in her memoirs, “Despite everything, on Friday nights our house was always full of people, members of the family mostly. I remember swarms of cousins, second cousins, aunts and uncles. None of them was to survive the Holocaust, but they live on in my mind’s eye, sitting around our kitchen table, drinking tea out of glasses and, on the Sabbath and holidays, singing for hours - and I remember my parents’ sweet voices ringing out above the others.”

Meir went on to become one of the architects of the Zionist movement. She worked for Israel’s Federation of Labor; after World War II she negotiated with the British authorities to let in desperate Jewish refugees, and conducted diplomacy with Jordan’s King Abdullah I, trying (in vain) to convince him to refrain from attacking a future Jewish state.

Golda Meir was one of the signatories of Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, and served as Israel’s ambassador to Russia, as Israel’s Foreign Minister (she was the world’s only female foreign minister at the time), and in became Israel’s Prime Minister in 1969, serving until 1974.

Natan Sharansky

The famous former Soviet refusenik and Israeli politician was born in Donetsk, Ukraine in 1948. As a young man he worked as an interpreter for the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov. As Natan explored his Jewish identity, he became a spokesman for the Soviet Jewry dissident movement. He became a refusenik in 1973 after his application to emigrate to Israel was denied, and was arrested on trumped-up charges of treason and spying in 1977.

Sentenced to 13 years in a labor camp in Siberia, Natan coped with his imprisonment by focusing on his Jewish life. He later observed that in prison, as he embraced his Jewish identity, he found himself feeling like a free man.

Natan Sharansky was finally allowed to emigrate in 1986. He moved to Israel and later served as President of the Zionist Forum and editor of the Jerusalem Report. He formed a new political party in 1995, and was elected to Israel’s Knesset, eventually serving in various ministerial roles and as Deputy Prime Minister from 2001 to 2003. He served as Chairman of the Executive for the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018

He was the imprisoned Jew my Israeli Hebrew teacher, Sarah-in Haifa,  was writing to, trying to help him learn Hebrew in 1980s.   It must have helped him.     

In 1924, Hayim Nahman Bialik, born in Russia on January 9, 1873, moved to Odessa, Ukraine when 8,  finally relocated with his publishing house Dvir to Tel Aviv at the age of 51, devoting himself to cultural activities and public affairs. Bialik was immediately recognized as a celebrated literary figure. He delivered the address that marked the opening (in 1925) of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was a member of its board of governors. In 1927 he became head of the Hebrew Writers Union, a position he retained for the remainder of his life. In 1933 his 60th birthday was celebrated with festivities nationwide, and all the schoolchildren of Tel Aviv were taken to meet him and pay their respects to him.

Israeli politicians

• Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, second President of Israel (1952–63), Born in Poltava in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine)
• Shmuel Dayan, Zionist activist, Israeli politician, Born in the town of Zhashkiv in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine)
• Levi Eshkol, Israeli Prime Minister (1963–69), born in the shtetl of Oratov, Lipovetsky Uyezd, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now Orativ, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine).
• Ephraim Katzir, fourth President of Israel (1973–78), born in  Kiev, in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine)
• Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister (1969–74)
• Natan Sharansky, Israeli politician
• Moshe Sharett, Israeli Prime Minister (1954–55), Born in Kherson in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine),
• 
  
• Israeli Athletes

• Alexei Beletski, Ukrainian-born Israeli, ice dancer, Olympian
• Oleksii Bychenko, Ukrainian-born Israeli, figure skater, 2016 European silver medallist, Olympian
• Artem Dolgopyat, Ukrainian-born Israeli, Olympic gold (artistic gymnast - floor) for Israel
• Olena Dvornichenko, Israel/Ukraine, rhythmic gymnastics
• Natalia Gudina, Ukrainian-born Israeli, figure skater, Olympian
• Pavlo Ishchenko ("Wild Man"), Ukraine/Israel, bantamweight & lightweight boxer, 2x European Amateur Boxing Championships medalist, and European Games medalist^[
• Marina Kravchenko, Ukrainian-born Israeli, Soviet and Israel national table tennis teams
• Valeria Maksyuta, Ukraine/Israel gymnast, multiple World Cup medalist, Israeli Olympian, Maccabiah Games champion
• Katerina Pisetsky, Israel/Ukraine, rhythmic gymnast

Israeli military persons[edit]

• Yaakov Dori, first Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) (1948–1949); President of Technion, born in Odessa, Ukraine. The family immigrated to Ottoman Palestine following the anti-Jewish pogrom in Odessa in 1905.
• Tzvi Tzur, sixth Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (1961–1964), born in the Zaslav in the Soviet Union (now Iziaslav in Ukraine) in 1923

In 2020, Zelensky said about his Judaism: “Nobody cares. Nobody asks me about it.”  Now, he’s known as the world’s “Jewish hero.” The highest form of proof against Russia’s claims that Ukraine needs to be “denazified.”

Resource:

https://aish.com/11-famous-ukrainian-jews/ 

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/16-jews-from-ukraine-who-changed-the-world/

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

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

https://jewishunpacked.com/who-are-the-jews-of-ukraine/

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Influential Zionist For Defense From Odessa, Ukraine

 

Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky or Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky (17 October 1880--3 August 1940, was born into an assimilated Jewish family, dying at age 60, and was a writer, orator and Zionist leader of Russian birth in Odessa, Ukraine.    

His father, Yevno (Yevgeniy Grigoryevich) Zhabotinsky, hailed from Nikopol, Yekaterinoslav Governorate. He was a member of the Russian Society of Sailing and Trade.  His mother, Chava (Eva Markovna) Zach (1835–1926), came from Berdychiv, Kiev Governorate. Jabotinsky's older brother Myron died when Vladimir was six months old, and his father died when he was six years old. His sister, Tereza (Tamara Yevgenyevna) Zhabotinskaya-Kopp, founded a private school for girls in Odessa. In 1885, the family moved to Germany due to his father's illness, returning a year later after his father's death.   

Raised in a middle-class Jewish home, Jabotinsky was educated in Russian schools. Although he studied Hebrew as a child, he wrote in his autobiography that his upbringing was divorced from Jewish faith and tradition.  The Hasidic movements originated in the 18th century in Ukraine.  This was a center of Zionism in the 19th and 20th century.  It's always been an anti-Semitic center with pogroms in 1905, and 1918-1920.  

 His mother ran a stationery store in Odessa. and his father was primarily involved in wheat trading.

Jabotinsky dropped out of school at the age of 17 with a guarantee of a job as a correspondent for a local Odessan newspaper, the Odesskiy Listok, and was sent to Bern and Rome as a correspondent. He also worked for the Odesskie Novosti after his return from Italy. Jabotinsky was a childhood friend of Russian journalist and poet Korney Chukovsky.    Ze'ev served as the Rome correspondent for the Odessa newspapers under the pen-name of "Altalena, from 1898 to 1901. While in Rome he attended Sapienza University Law school but didn't graduate.  He spoke  Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew and fluent Italian.                                         

During the period of the British Mandate for Palestine (1918-1948), Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky was imprisoned in Akko (or Acre; now a museum). After the riots in Jerusalem, he, being the organizer of Jewish self-defense, was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor. He was subsequently exonerated.

Back in April 1902 he had been arrested for writing feuilletons in an anti-establishment tone, as well as contributing to a radical Italian journal. He was held isolated in a prison cell in Odessa for two months, where he communicated with other inmates through shouting and passing written notes.                            

                        Ze'ev, Anya and Eri Jabotinsky

 While in Odessa, Jabotinsky married Joanna (or Ania) Galperina in October 1907. They had one child, Eri Jabotinsky (1910-1969), who later became a member of the Irgun-affiliated Bergson Group.   Eri Jabotinsky briefly served in the 1st Knesset of Israel; he died on 6 June 1969 at age 59..

 Beginning his Zionist activities to Russia in 1903 at age 23, Ze'ev became a leading force in the struggle for Jewish self-defense units, civic and minority rights, and the revival of Hebrew.  

In World War I that started in 1914, he advocated the recruiting of Jewish regiments to fight on the Palestine front;  this led to the establishment of the Zion Mule Corps in 1915.  

He served in 20th Battalion of the London Regiment in platoon 16 from 1916-1917.                          

     Lt Jabotinsky in the uniform of the Royal Fusiliers

In 1917, the end of the war, the British government consented to the formation of Jewish battalions, in one of which Jabotinsky served.  He organized the 1st Jewish self-defense in Jerusalem and led it during the Arab onslaught in 1920.  For this he was sentenced by the British Military tribunal to 15 years imprisonment but was soon reprieved.Ze'ev jabotinsky served in platoon 16 of the 20th Battalion of the London Regiment between 1916 and 1917.  

He wrote when a lieutenant in the Jewish Legion which he had founded, "Not in Russia nor in Poland had there been seen such an intense and widespread atmosphere of hatred as prevailed in the British army in Palestine in 1919 and 1920.  1920's Spring was like 2022's Spring with Ramadan and Easter and Passover all falling at about the same time.  Attacks on Jews happened then, too, with mobs armed with clubs and knives, first looting shops,  Then they caught and beat up or killed Jews and raped Jewish women.  The Court of Enquiry of Brits said, "Jews were the victims of a peculiarly brutal and cowardly attack, the majority of the casualties being old men, women and children.  As for this year of 2022, "Jerusalem District Police Commander Nati Gur said that the Israel Police is preparing for a "worst-case scenario" on Jerusalem's Temple Mount during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan."

In 1921, Jabotinsky joined the Zionist Executive but resigned in 1923, accusing it of failing to oppose British policy with sufficient vigor.  In 1925, he formed the World Union of Zionist revisionists in opposition to official Zionism and later the youth organization of Berit Trumpeldor-Betar.  

When the Zionist Organization coopted non-Zionists into the Jewish Agency in 1929 and refused to define the aim of Zionism as a Jewish State in 1931, Jabotinsky began to advocate secession;  the "discipline clause,"introduced in 1935, precipitated the formation of Jabotinsky  of a dissident "New Zionist Organization."

From 1936, he urged the speedy evacuation of Eastern European Jewry to Palestine.  Jabotinsky became the spiritual father and nominal head of the Irgun Tzevai Leumi, which was the Jewish right-winged underground movement.   It became in 1936 an instrument of the Revisionist Party, an extreme nationalist group that had seceded from the World Zionist Organization and whose policies called for the use of force, if necessary, to establish a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan.  

It was this very group that Avraham Stern left of which he had been a leader, because of its refusal to continue -British activities in Palestine during WWII.  He formed the Lohame Herut Israel-otherwise known as the Stern Group or the Stern Gang-as the Brits called it.  

When World War II broke out, he again demanded a Jewish army.  Jabotinsky wrote a great deal.  His influence on Israeli politics is profound through his closest protégé Menachem Begin's administration (1977–1983), consolidating the domination of Israeli politics by the right-wing Likud party; and through the administrations (1996–1999, 2009–) of Likud's leader (1993–1999, 2005–) Benjamin Netanyahu, the son of his former personal secretary and historian, Benzion Netanyahu.

           Ze'ev and wife were reburied here in Jerusalem  from New York, where he had died.

In 1964, his body was reburied on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze%27ev_Jabotinsky

https://kids.kiddle.co/Ze%27ev_Jabotinsky

Battleground, fact and fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz, p.60-61

Message From Odessa Rabbi

 Nadene Goldfoot

Forwarded from Cousin Denise Bremridge of South Africa                                              

I am Rabbi Avraham Wolf, Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Odessa and Southern Ukraine, and I’m writing to you with a broken heart.

For over 20 days, we have been under siege under fire, non-stop shelling, and victims of indiscriminate firing upon hospitals and innocent children.

There are tens of thousands of dead and wounded victims. The situation here is painful and indescribable.

I was left here in Odessa with a few heroes who aren’t ready to give up on any Jew that didn’t manage to escape. We will not abandon them!

We will stay here and not leave until the last Jew is rescued with G-d’s help!

Nearly 2 million people in Ukraine have already lost their homes. The lives of millions more have changed beyond recognition following the Russian invasion. We, the Jewish community of Odessa and the surrounding areas, have never imagined in our wildest dreams that such a war would occur and that we would fall into it, unable to live and unable to leave.

We feel and see death before our eyes every day. We live frozen in fear, with sirens and explosions erupting night and day, surrounded by destruction and devastation.

Our Jewish community in Odessa boasts about 35,000 people. Anyone who could have escaped has already done so. More than half of our community are now refugees. Only those who are unable to leave remain. This includes the sick, the elderly, people who cannot travel, and devoted relatives unwilling to abandon their loved ones. Even people who want and can leave can not always escape. Roads are blocked. Men who reach the border are not allowed to cross with their families.

The city of Odessa is under total siege. Yet, we continue to transport hundreds of families from our community across the Moldovan border close to us. This includes refugee families who managed to escape from Kyiv and other cities, thanks to the heroic efforts of our volunteers and dedicated staff.

Because of the ban on 18-60-year-old men from leaving Ukraine, we are forced to use all sorts of covert means to evacuate them as well and not cut them off from their families and small children! It costs us a lot of money!!

We have so far managed to evacuate 120 children from our orphanage. But there are still 80 orphans left who we have not yet been able to rescue and are in danger of death at any moment.

The lucky ones who managed to escape war-torn Ukraine are now refugees. Homeless children and parents whose only home and security have been taken from them. Thousands of people have lost their property and possessions and suddenly became homeless! 

They were left only with the clothes on their backs which barely withstand the freezing temperatures on the streets of Ukraine. They sleep in refugee camps inside tents with no heating and no money to their name! 

How much longer must they suffer? We have to make arrangements for them and make sure they have the minimum required to recover and survive.

And what about those who are still left behind? Among them are about 100 elderly Holocaust survivors in nursing homes in our community who live again through bombings and destruction, food shortages, and hunger. They lack basic supplies. How can we just let them relive those days of horror?

We can not leave those who rely on us. Either way, we need to stay alive. Our supplies are running low. Soon we will no longer have the most basic food items – flour and water.

We need a miracle. We are praying to G-d! 

In checking this out, I see it is legitimateand under Chabad's umbrella:

ODESSA, Ukraine—Rabbi Avraham Wolff is preparing for war.

He has bought enough sugar, macaroni and canned goods to feed his congregation for a year, he said. He has hired about 20 Israeli security guards in case rioting and looting break out. And if the Russians do invade, he said he has mapped out the city’s bomb shelters and has enough buses on standby to evacuate 3,000 people from the Black Sea port city of Odessa.

“This is why I’m gray at 50,” said Rabbi Wolff, the leader of one of the two main Jewish congregations in Odessa. “God willing, there will be no war, but we don’t have the right to not be prepared.”

Throughout the country, many Ukrainians have been slow to get ready for the gathering threat posed by the estimated 190,000 Russian troops at their borders, partly out of exhaustion from eight years of grinding war with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. But some Jewish communities are alarmed, particularly here in Odessa, where successive waves of violence, from Jewish pogroms in the early 20th century to mass executions by the Nazis in World War II, have left indelible scars.

Update: 3/23/22  Also, Chabad people getting out of Ukraine: https://www.facebook.com/ChabadOrg/videos/1349349885580286/?extid=NS-UNK-UNK-UNK-IOS_GK0T-GK1C

Please donate to support Mishpacha Chabad Odessa:

https://www.mishpachaorphanage.org/emergency

 

Accusations of Arabs About Jews Not Belonging in Israel Can't Stand Up

Nadene Goldfoot                                               

              Palestinian Leadership of Fatah and Hamas

The most common accusation from Arabs against Jews not belonging in Israel is (1) alleged Jewish occupation of Arab lands and (2) the existence of Israeli settlements in the West bank and Gaza Strip. 

 Furthermore, The Arab case against Israel, in the matter of Jewish land purchases, rests mainly on two claims: (1) that the Palestinian Arab farmer was peacefully and contentedly working his land in the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th when along came the European Jewish immigrant, drove him off his land, disrupted the normal development of the country and created a vast class of landless, dispossessed Arabs; (2) that a small Jewish minority, owning an even smaller proportion of Palestinian lands (5 per cent as against the Arabs’ 95 per cent ), illegally made itself master of Palestine in 1948.

                                                   

The accusations have no foundation.  First of all, Zionist pioneers came to Palestine around 1880 onward and joined the local Jewish communities in rebuilding a Jewish homeland.  There has always been a remnant of our former population in Palestine.  Our history goes back to Abraham, and then again to Moses who brought back 601,730 Israelites from Egypt who had been slaves ever since their ancestors had migrated there from Israel because of a dry spell when food was scarce.  The book, "FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL" by Joan Peters dispels any accusations over land. 

1881: was the year people of the 1st Aliyah belonging to Love of Zion (Hibbat Zion)  group entered Palestine. There would follow 4 more groups.

1897:  Theodor Herzl held the 1st Zionist Congress in Basle, and founded the World Zionist Organization.                                            

When these Jewish pioneers returned to their homeland from Eastern Europe, they bought land from the Turkish Crown and from Arab landowners.  They didn't invade.  They were not conquerors. 

                                                

Israel is 60% Negev Desert-The Negev is an arid region that spans the southern part of Israel and occupies almost half of Palestine west of the Jordan River. This region accounts for some 60 percent of Israeli territory under the 1949–67 boundaries. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

 They didn't rob anyone.  If anything, they were robbed by the seller for they charged outlandishly high prices for worthless land to them, but because it was holy land to the Jews, they accepted the deals and bought the land at these extremely high prices.  

Paris, 25 September 1886) depicting mobs destroying attacking Jews and destroying a Jewish home in Nizhni Novgorod, Russia. (Moldovan Family Collection)
 Because they were Jews, they had left Europe to escape from constant POGROMS and anti-Semitism that had been born since the days of the Greek period.  For example:  The 1st Odessa, Ukraine pogrom, in 1821, was linked to the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, during which the Jews were accused of sympathizing with the Ottoman authorities.                          

In the mid-19th century Odessa became a resort town famed for its popularity among the Russian upper classes. This popularity prompted a new age of investment in the building of hotels and leisure projects.

 In 1794, the city of Odessa was founded by a decree of the Russian empress Catherine the Great. From 1819 to 1858, Odessa was a free port—a porto-Franco. World War I took place from 1914 to November 11, 1918.  In 1919, nearly one hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine and Poland in pogroms. These ethnic riots dominated headlines and international affairs of their time as aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions came true. This talk examined how the genocidal violence that engulfed the region right after the revolution laid the groundwork for the Holocaust.  Was there any question as to why Jew were leaving Ukraine and Russia and heading for their homeland? Palestine was their homeland and originally was called Israel, and then Israel and Judah (southern part).  It was the land of the bible, both the old and the new.                                                   

They are a people who follow the teachings of Moses, who Hillel, a 1st century BCE rabbi  had taught to not do to others that which you do not want to happen to you;  so they would not steal the land away.  They are a people of ethics, and are accused of unethical practices.                                     

 Local Palestinian tradition, underwritten by both Ottoman and British law, held that the land belonged to God or the sultan: families could maintain the land but the notion of private property title was alien, despite efforts since 1858 to introduce it. 

Until British rule, which redistributed land to individual family units, village land was held collectively by the hamula or clan. The Ottoman system and all later governments until 1967 acknowledged that the land surrounding the village was for the use of its inhabitants either as common pastures or for the future development of the village. The villagers did not have any need or opportunity to register their lands. They knew among themselves which of the village lands belonged to which families and which were owned in common (mashaa ).

 Customary practice however under the British was reviewed to consider all land within village and town boundaries as no longer miri but mülk.

When the British assumed control over Palestine at the end of 1917 with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, they applied the Ottoman laws of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858 to all inhabitants.

The Ottoman Land Code inherited by the British prescribed that houses were mostly privately owned and called "mulk land" (land vested fully and completely to their owners), while land was viewed as miri (allotted by the state to a village or number of villages and which cannot be private property of individuals), and is only leased to the tenants of indefinite duration, in which the lease is represented by the obligation to pay land taxes and land registry fees. When the miri interest is alienated, the ultimate ownership called raqaba is retained by the State.  (This means that if taxes aren't paid, the land goes back to the state.)

A study of Palestine under Turkish rule reveals that already at the beginning of the 18th century, long before Jewish land purchases and large-scale Jewish immigration started, the position of the Palestinian fellah (peasant) had begun to deteriorate. The heavy burden of taxation, coming on top of chronic indebtedness to money-lenders, drove a growing number of farmers to place themselves under the protection of men of wealth or of the Moslem religious endowment fund (Waqf), with the result that they were eventually compelled to give up their title to the land, if not their actual residence upon and cultivation of it.

At the time of the British occupation the land tax was collected at the rate of 12.5% of the gross yield of the land. Crops were assessed on the threshing floor or in the field and the tithe was collected from the cultivators. 

In 1925, additional legislation provided that taxation on crops and other produce not exceed 10%. 

In 1928, as a measure of reform, the Mandate Government of Palestine began to apply an Ordinance for the "Commutation of Tithes," this tax in effect being a fixed aggregate amount paid annually. It was related to the average amount of tithe (tax) that had been paid by the village during the four years immediately preceding the application of the Ordinance to it.

In 1936 the Survey of Palestine stated that the State Lands measured 500 sq miles out of Palestine's total area of 10,500 sq miles; at that point 51% of State Domain was occupied by Arabs and 17% by Jews.

                   Construction worker in Tel Aviv-founded in 1909 as a garden suburb of Jaffa.  It grew.  

The population was exiled by the Turks in WWI. Arab riots in Jaffa caused by the instigation of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Sherif of Jerusalem,  forced Jews into Tel Aviv.  By 1921 it was a separate town. This shows that there was no theft because no one complained of any.  No Arabs were driven from their homes.  In fact, the Arab population of the area grew during this period because of the economic development that the 

the Jews' arrival helped to generate. 

                                           

"The Sheik of Araby" is a song that was written by Harry B. Smith, Francis Wheeler and music by Ted Snyder in 1921. It was composed in response to the popularity of the Rudolph Valentino film The Sheik.In 1926, to go with the film "The Son of the Sheik" Ted Snyder worked parts of the melody into a related song with words by Billy Rose: "That Night in Araby". This era was of great interest in Arabs.  Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella, known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States.

                                                  

On November 4, 1922, a team headed by British Egyptologist Howard Carter began excavating the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt.Apr 27, 2021.Carter saw a room filled with gold treasures on November 26. But it wasn't until much later that the sarcophagus containing Tutankhamen’s mummy was revealed. 

The era was so gung ho over the Middle East with all the people BUT the Jews, that it was a wonder anyone paid attention to the Balfour Declaration and its meaning for the Jewish people.

  By 1922 there were over 500 licensed radio stations operating in America, but less than 2 million homes equipped with radios. The population of the USA in 1922 was 110,049,000.                                                  

Balfour Declaration was written on 2 November, 1917 by British in sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations pledging support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people; not in Africa or India or Siberia but in Palestine.  WWI was over on November 11, 1918. The Ottoman Empire lost in WWI being they were partners with Germany, so they lost Palestine and all their other holdings.   Then the LEAGUE OF NATIONS entrusted Britain with the Mandate for Palestine on July 24, 1922. It was good for 30 years.  They were to turn it over to the Jews for their Homeland at the end.  The Brits were very ambivalent about it, sometimes they allowed immigration and other times it was severely restricted and land purchase was prevented.                                                                                

                            A real sheik, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin  

Between 1514 and 1850, the Arab population of the Turkish Empire was more or less static at about 340,000.  It started to increase around 1855, and by 1947 the Arab population stood at about 1,300,000, almost 4 times more than in the last 100 years.  

The book, "THE Settlers" by Meyer Levin, copyright 1972, is an historic novel of 832 pages hardback,  that brings to life this era in Palestine.  It tells of the hardships of the 1st Jewish pioneers, the spasmodic tyranny of the Turkish overlords, and the blighted relationship between neighboring Jews and Arabs and a lot more.  

In 1948, 101,828 Jews immigrated into Israel. The population then was 758,702 Jews and 126,000 non-Jews.  Total:  872,000 in Israel.  

In 1956, 56,234 Jews immigrated into Israel.  The population then was 1,667,455 Jews and 204,935 non-Jews.  Total: 1,872,390 in Israel.

In 1967, 14,327 Jews immigrated into Israel.  The population then was 2,383,600 Jews and 392,700 non-Jews.  Total: 2,776,300 in Israel.

In 1971, 42,000 Jews immigrated into Israel.  The population then was 2,636,600 Jews and 458,500 non-Jews.  Total:  3,095,100 in Israel. 

Resource:

Big Lies: by David Meir-Levi of David Horowitz Freedom Center

https://lessons.myjli.com/survival/index.php/2017/03/26/land-ownership-in-palestine-1880-1948/