Proof of the Legal and Moral Right of Israel to Exist as a Sovereign State
by Jeremy James
This paper demonstrates that the modern
state of Israel was constituted
on valid legal and moral grounds and that the
Arab-Palestinian problem has been deliberately engineered
by radical Islam in order to destroy
it.
1. The Plight of the Arab-Palestinians
Hardly any
fair-minded person would deny that the treatment of the Arab-Palestinians has been
deplorable. There are some 2,345,000 living in the West Bank and
1,416,000 in the
Gaza Strip, all in circumstances inimical to their economic viability, their security and their dignity. Many live in conditions of abject poverty, while
unemployment is extremely high - around 40%
in Gaza. How could
such a situation have arisen?
Demographics
Most westerners
are bombarded with information about the plight of the Arab-Palestinians, but have little
knowledge of their history. Worldwide about 12 million people describe themselves as Arab-Palestinian.
Most are Muslim, but a small proportion, about 6%, are Christian.
In addition to the Arab-Palestinians
living in the West
Bank and Gaza, there are about 1.3 million living in ‘green line’ Israel where they comprise 17.5% of
the total population.
Other geographical regions in the Middle East with a significant Arab-Palestinian
population include Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia:
Arab-Palestinians
Jordan 2,700,000
Syria 435,000
Lebanon 405,000
Saudi Arabia 327,000
National Percentage
Population Arab-Palestinian
6,316,000 42.7%
21,900,000 2.0%
4,224,000 9.6%
25,700,000 1.3%
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These figures
immediately prompt three important questions:
- Why
are so many Arab-Palestinians living peacefully in Israel if they are
supposed to be enemies?
- Why
don’t neighboring Arab countries absorb a larger proportion
of the Arab-Palestinians currently confined to Gaza and the West Bank?
- Why
is the Arab-Palestinian population of Jordan so high (42%)?
Please keep these three questions in
mind as we proceed since the answers shed remarkable light on the entire Middle-Eastern situation.
2. The History of Palestine
The Jews entered the land of Canaan, today’s Israel, and established a home
there around 1500 BC. In the thousand year period after Solomon, a number
of different empires - Assyrian,
Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman - conquered or claimed sovereignty over all or part of this
territory.
The Diaspora
After the fall
of Jerusalem in 70 AD a
large proportion of the Jewish population was evicted en masse
from their homeland by the Romans. This policy was pursued with equal vigor after the Bar Kokhba
Revolt in 132-135 AD. Only a small number of Jews,
mostly the poorest of the poor, were allowed to remain. This massive
dispersion, known as the Diaspora, was not reversed to any
significant extent until the Jews began to return to their homeland in the mid
19th century when the territory, then known as Palestine, was under Ottoman rule. The
literature and culture of the Jews during
the entire period of the Diaspora reflected a desire to return to their
homeland,
but social, economic and military impediments prevented them from doing so.
Successive Empires
With the slow
disintegration of the western half of the Roman Empire, Palestine came under the administration of Byzantium, the largely autonomous eastern
half, in 324 AD. The invading Muslims took it over in 638 AD and the locus of
administration switched from Byzantium (today’s Istanbul) to Damascus (under the Umayyad’s)
and then to Baghdad (under the Abbasids).
In 1096 AD, during the First Crusade, Jerusalem fell to the
Christians. The Crusaders were finally driven from Palestine by the Mamelukes -
a powerful Islamic dynasty based in Egypt - in 1291 AD.
When the Mamelukes were defeated in turn by the Ottomans in 1517 AD, the
administration of Palestine was directed
thereafter from Constantinople (yet again)
and remained under Ottoman rule until their empire collapsed after the First
World War.
Two important
points should be noted in this historical review. Firstly, while the land of Canaan had, for over
1,500 years, been identified exclusively with the indigenous Jewish population until the first
century AD, with its capital in Jerusalem, it had ceased to have a distinct
political identity thereafter. Instead it became a small province within a
series of extensive empires. Furthermore, with the expulsion of most of its
Jewish population in the Diaspora, the land was neither irrigated nor cultivated
in a systematic manner thereafter and eventually deteriorated to the point where it was of little agrarian value. It was used
mainly by wandering Bedouin, a very small population of urban dwellers, and as
a trading route between Africa and Asia.
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Secondly, for the duration of the Ottoman Empire, and long before, geographical areas
were distinguished mainly by reference to tribal boundaries, proximity to large
towns, or by inclusion in an administrative district for taxation purposes. The
empire itself was the only sovereign entity in the Middle East and nation states as such did not exist.
The Post-War Carve-Up
This system was
completely obliterated with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. For the first time in 1,800 years these
vast tracts of land were without an internationally recognized political identity.
This is why the western powers acted quickly to reconfigure the Empire,
either as a number of sovereign states or as a group of autonomous regions overseen by Britain and France.
The British had already envisaged
this outcome when, in 1916, they made a secret draft agreement with France - known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement -
which specified how the Ottoman Empire would be carved up between them when the
war was over.
There had long been sympathy among a
segment of the British aristocracy for the establishment
of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. This segment
happened to have sufficient
political influence around this time to extract a commitment from the British
government to create such a homeland. This was given effect through the famous Balfour Declaration when, with Cabinet approval, the
British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, sent a letter of intent
to one of the most powerful men in the world at that time, Baron Lionel Walter
Rothschild. Dated 2 November 1917, it
read as follows:
"His Majesty's government view with
favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best
endeavors to facilitate
the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall
be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
Never has a
single sentence been more controversial.
The British
government was almost certainly influenced in its decision by a desire to retain
favor, under wartime conditions, with the Jewish element of the
international banking system. It is likely that, at a critical
juncture in its conflict with Germany, the British offered Palestine to the Zionists in return for a
Jewish commitment to bring America into the War. Their attitude was to
change, however, when it became increasingly
apparent that, in pursuing this policy, the British were alienating the
Arab world.
The role of a ruthless, dynastic
institution like the Rothschilds in the creation of the state of Israel, and their
involvement thereafter in aspects of its development, would suggest that they had long-term
plans, within the Illuminati framework, for this new nation state which had nothing whatever to do with
the welfare of the Jewish people. While
this is undoubtedly an important theme, it goes beyond the remit of this
paper and will not be examined
further.
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The Arab Reaction
The Arabs had
put considerable pressure on the British to secure control over as much Arab-populated territory in the
former Ottoman
Empire as
they possibly could. In doing so they were prepared to make concessions
regarding a Jewish homeland in Palestine if it would guarantee the transfer
of the vast majority of the remaining territory
into their hands. They had been subject to Turkish control for more than
four centuries and were
extremely anxious to take maximum advantage of the changes that were now taking place.
The Arabs based
their claims on their contribution to the British war effort in the so-called Arab Revolt against
the Turks. This contribution involved occasional disruptions to traffic along
the Hedjaz railway by a rag-tag Bedouin force of only
600 men. While probably not big enough to be called a sideshow, it was
exaggerated shamelessly by
T.E.Lawrence in
his self-promotional work, The Seven
Pillars of Wisdom.
Paris Peace Conference 1919
At the hastily
convened Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the international community hammered out a
detailed agreement regarding the disposal of the vast territory of the former Ottoman Empire. A further
meeting of the Allied Supreme Council was held in San Remo in 1920 to resolve residual matters,
including the creation of a Jewish homeland
in Palestine. Then, in June
1922, the League of Nations formally
assigned Britain the Mandate for
Palestine.
It is important
to note that Emir Feisal, the principal Arab representative at the Paris Peace Conference, had earlier signed
a formal agreement with the principal Jewish representative, Chaim Weizmann,
which confirmed that the Arab people welcomed the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It opened as
follows:
“His Royal
Highness the Emir Feisal, representing and acting on behalf of the Arab Kingdom
of Hedjaz, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, representing and acting on behalf of the Zionist
Organization, mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between
the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realizing that the surest means of working
out the consummation of their natural aspirations is through the closest
possible collaboration in the development
of the Arab State and Palestine, and being desirous further of confirming the good understanding which exists
between them, have agreed upon
the following...” -
Feisal-Weizmann Agreement, 3 January 1919
The various Articles which followed
addressed such matters as the rights of Arabs living in the Jewish state
of Palestine, the creation of a commission to
define the boundaries of such a state, and the implementation of such
measures as may be necessary for the
effective implementation of the Balfour Declaration.
Arab Acceptance in Principle
It is clear from the Feisal-Weizmann
Agreement that the Arabs had no problem in principle with the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and that they
did they not see any difficulty with Arabs living in such a state.
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The San Remo Resolution of April 1920,
which was confirmed by the League of Nations, incorporated the Balfour Declaration. However the precise boundaries of the territories
to be allocated to the Jewish state were still not determined.
Interestingly,
the Jewish proposal at the Paris conference was
based, not on a claim to the entire Mandate of Palestine, which comprised territory
corresponding to both Israel and Jordan today, but only
to the land west of the Hedjaz railway - see
map on next page. This left plenty of territory for the Mandate’s small Arab
population. The first British census of Palestine in 1922
revealed a total population of 757,000 across the entire territory of the Mandate
(which comprised some 35,000 square miles). Of these, 78% were Muslim, 11%
Jewish and 10% Christian. Arabs were to be allowed to live in the
proposed (but as yet undefined) Jewish homeland, though seemingly not in such numbers
as to constitute a significant minority.
Arab and British Abrogation of Agreements
However, once the Arabs got what they
wanted in the Ottoman carve-up, they reneged on their commitment to recognize
and live peacefully with the proposed Jewish
state in Palestine. Instead they
worked closely with the British, who bowed to Arab pressure,
to frustrate Jewish immigration into their proposed new homeland and to greatly
increase the number of ‘indigenous’ Arabs living in western Palestine.
What is more the British reneged, at
least in part, on their Balfour / San Remo commitment
and unilaterally divided Palestine in two? The
region west of the
Jordan River would
henceforth constitute the territory from which the proposed Jewish homeland
would be formed, while the region east of the Jordan River (the country known today as Jordan), which comprised no less
than 73% of the Mandate, would be surrendered exclusively to the Arabs and no Jews
would be allowed to settle there.
By any reckoning, this was a
remarkable triumph for the Arabs. Not only had they succeeded in acquiring
control over the vast majority of the Ottoman territory, but they had left the
Jews with significantly less than they had been guaranteed by the British and
her allies. Furthermore, the question of how much of the remaining Mandate
territory would fall to the Jews was still far from settled. The Arabs reckoned
that, if they put even more pressure on the British, the proposed Jewish homeland could be whittled down even further,
even to the point where it would be strategically indefensible.
Their intransigence worked and the
Foreign Office in London began to obstruct Jewish immigration into the only part of Palestine that the Jews
were still allowed to enter, namely the portion west of the Jordan River. This, too,
was in contravention of the Mandate conditions approved by the League of
Nations.
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Map showing the boundaries of the
proposed Jewish state, as outlined by the Zionist representatives at the
1919 Paris Peace Conference, super-imposed on modern boundaries.
Thus, from a situation where they
could reasonably expect a sizeable slice of the original Mandate territory
(which was 35,126 square miles in extent), the Jews were being confined to an area of only 10,429 square
miles, with the real prospect that this could be reduced even
further. As World War Two approached and tensions grew between Britain and Germany, the Foreign Office was increasingly
guided by the need to retain favour with the Arabs. Despite the appalling
persecution of Jews in Europe during the 1930s, the British continued to make it as difficult
as possible for any more Jews to enter
West Palestine (They were
already banned from entering East Palestine). The British supplemented this strategy by violating
the legal terms of the Mandate and allowing virtually unlimited Arab
immigration into West Palestine -
which was supposed to become the Jewish homeland..
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British Duplicity and Arab Terrorism
In addition to
this, the Arabs were engaging in an ongoing programme of harassment against the Jews in West Palestine, committing a long series of
terrorist atrocities
during the 1920s. These culminated in the
murder of 67 Jews living in Hebron on 23-24 August 1929 (To their credit,
nineteen local Arab families hid some 435 Jews, at
risk to their own lives). The British army did nothing to prevent this
massacre, even
though it could easily have intervened. Any remaining Jews had to be evacuated
for
their own safety.
This atrocity
made it abundantly clear to the Jews that the British were prepared to
let the Arabs wipe
them out, so they substantially enhanced their own paramilitary defense organization, the Haganah.
The Arab
terrorist attacks continued all through the 1930s and reached their zenith
in what history describes as another ‘Arab Revolt’ (1936-1939). This was an
organised
campaign of violence directed by senior figures in the Arab community,
purportedly
in protest at the continued immigration of Jews into West Palestine. The irony is
that
the actual number of Jewish immigrants, whose influx was very tightly
controlled by the
British, was only a fraction of what it should have been under the League of
Nations Mandate. On the other hand, Arabs continued to migrate in large numbers
into West
Palestine.
In order to disguise this influx, the British recorded Jewish
immigrants only, not Arab. They also put
pressure on other European countries not to allow their Jews to
emigrate to Palestine. It is reckoned that more than a million
additional Jews would have emigrated to Palestine from Europe during the
1930s had
they been allowed (Most of these were subsequently murdered by the Nazis).
Not only did the British make every
effort to restrict Jewish immigration, but they
confined those who were admitted to
designated areas. This meant that, if and when a Jewish homeland
was ultimately established, the Jewish claim, which would relate
largely to areas settled by Jews, would be further constrained. And this is
exactly
what happened.
In order to break the spirit of
Zionism and to win favour with the Arabs, the British Government published
a White Paper in 1939 which completely overturned the Balfour Declaration and promised to create
an Arab state in West Palestine within a short time. The fact that this was in
complete violation of international law did not seem to matter to the British.
UN Resolution, 1947
After World War
Two, when news of the Holocaust became widely known, there was a renewed international impetus to
resolve the plight of the Jews and create a
homeland for them in West Palestine - the only part of Palestine that was still
available. Weakened by the war and losing
confidence in their ability to deal with the Palestine question, the British passed the
entire matter to the United Nations for
decision. When the Jews were finally offered
nationhood by the UN (Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947), the frontiers of their new state were determined
mainly on the
basis of the land they already inhabited - just as the British had intended.
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As we have
already noted, the original Palestine Mandate was 35,126 square miles in extent, but after East Palestine had been handed unilaterally to the
Arabs (known today as Jordan), the western portion comprised just
10,429 square miles. The UN decreed
that 57% of this would be given to the Jews for their proposed homeland - an area
of 6,177 square miles which included the semi-arid and inhospitable Negev Desert (which covered
4,700 square miles!)
United Nations
Resolution on West Palestine, 1947
Arab
population Jewish
population
Jerusalem 105,000 100,000
Jewish
State 325,000 498,000
Arab
State 807,000 10,000
Despite the miniscule size of their
proposed homeland, three quarters of which was desert, the half million or so Jews who lived there were required by the
UN to share it with 325,000 settled Arabs, plus a further 90,000 or
so Bedouin who wandered the Negev. In
contrast, the portion of West Palestine that the UN
offered the Arabs was inhabited by just 10,000 or so Jews. (Under the UN
decision, Jerusalem, which had an equal
mixture of Arabs and Jews, was to be designated an international zone.)
Thus, in the redistribution of the vast
territory of the Ottoman
Empire, an
area of around 1.1 million square
miles, the Jews got less than 1 per cent.
The total number of Jews in the
Empire at the start of the 20th century has been estimated
at 500,000, while that of the Empire as a whole was 20 million or thereabouts.
Had the Empire been redistributed on a pro rata basis to the various ethnic groups living within its borders in 1917,
the Jews would have received a much larger slice of Ottoman territory than they were ultimately awarded through
the UN. (By the same token, the Kurds, another significant ethnic
group, should have been given a homeland of
their own, but their needs were shamefully ignored.)
Even if the Zionist movement had
never pressed Britain, the US and the League of Nations for a Jewish homeland in the late 19th and
early 20th century, there would still have been a
need to set aside a contiguous parcel of land somewhere within the former Empire to enable this scattered and
oppressed ethnic group to relocate for their own protection.
Indeed, the Balfour Declaration was an implied recognition of this fact.
Two Remarkable Surprises
There seemed to be no basis on which
the Jews could accept the UN offer. The amount
of land they were being given was ridiculously small. In addition, they
were expected to share it with an almost equally large Arab
population which, under wartime conditions,
might act as a fifth column. To make matters worse, the proposed territory was divided into three indefensible
segments. For example, the tract of land along the Mediterranean was a narrow
corridor less than ten miles across (See map on next page).
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Map
showing the three small parcels of land approved
by the UN in
1947 to form the state of Israel (in light blue)
and those offered to the
Arabs (in orange).
Jerusalem was defined as an
‘international zone’.
The
blue coastal segment is no more than 10 miles across.
Note
that the Negev
Desert comprises
most of the blue segment below Beersheba .
One
historian noted the contradictions in this ‘solution’ as follows:
The borders
between the Arab and the Jewish states [under the UN Resolution] were a nightmare of
points and lines of friction, of isolated areas lacking in viable
contiguity; and, last but not least, a demographic absurdity characterized the proposed Jewish state where 500,000 Jews were supposed to coexist with an Arab ‘minority’ of close to the same size. - Ben-Ami,
p.34
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The Arabs, on the other hand, were
being made an incredibly generous offer. They already had East Palestine (Jordan) - which was free of Jews - and were
now being given a second autonomous state - which happened to have only a small
number of settled Jews. Not only would they end up with 82 per cent of the
Palestine Mandate, but they could also be confident that, from a strategic
standpoint, the three meager parcels
of land which comprised the Jewish homeland could never pose a meaningful threat to their Arab neighbors.
Against all expectations,
the Jews accepted the UN declaration, but the Arabs rejected it. The perversity of the Arab
attitude, which has asserted itself many times since, was summed up by Ben-Ami as follows:
The Palestinians themselves, in what
became a sad and self-defeating pattern of political behavior, acted as the
worst enemies of their own cause and did
their utmost to prevent the creation of their state. (p.60)
It was clear to all concerned that
the Arab rejection was based on their belief that the fledgling Jewish state
was too small to defend itself against a coordinated military invasion. The
British had reinforced the perception that Israel could be strangled at birth by
providing the Arabs with ample weaponry
and experienced military personnel.
At the same time, they blocked all attempts by the Jews to import arms
for defensive purposes.
The Arabs also expected to weaken Israel in the months leading up to
independence by conducting a vicious terror campaign against Jewish civilian
targets. Many Jews, including women and children, were murdered in a frenzied
attempt to undermine Israeli morale and to incite the local Arab population in
the Jewish-settled areas to rise against Zionism. (As it happened, only 4000
Arabs inside Israel gave support to the invading armies.)
The Foundation of Israel
Despite the
Arab rejection, the UN stood over its decision and the Jews declared the
independent state of Israel on 14 May, 1948. This was the first time since
Sargon II conquered
the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC that a united, self-governing Jewish homeland had existed.
The very next day, 15 May, combined
Arab armies attacked Israel on three fronts.
Their stated aim was the total annihilation
of Israel which,
presumably, would have entailed
the slaughter of all Jews who resisted and the eviction (or worse) of those who were left. Bear in mind, when considering
this scenario that these Arab armies -from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia - were converging on a tiny strip of land which was bound on one side by
the sea. What is more, the invaders already had possession of three
significant strategic assets - the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza.
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It is notable
that the Jordanian army included 48 experienced British officers, led by Major
General John Glubb (‘Glubb Pasha’). It would seem the British
determination to prevent the creation of a Jewish state had not abated
after World War II, despite the slaughter of the Holocaust.
The War of 1948
Even though it was at an enormous
strategic disadvantage, Israel survived the invasion and even
secured additional territory, growing from 6,177 to 7,820 square miles - an
increase of almost 27 per cent. Though still a tiny, vulnerable state surrounded
by formidable enemies, it would now be in a better position to defend itself against a similar attack in the future. But
success came at a price. In the course of the war it lost 1 per cent of its Jewish population - a very high
rate of attrition by international
standards.
Most observers expected the invaders
to destroy Israel. The Arabs, who enjoyed a number of significant - and normally decisive -
military advantages, were supremely confident of victory. As
Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab Leagues, said just prior
to the invasion: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the
Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” .
The shock of defeat, the sheer
humiliation, had a devastating effect on the Islamic psyche. To this day it is
referred to among Arabs as “the Catastrophe” (al-Nakba).
Their defeat reflected, not just on their
military prowess and their deep sense of racial superiority, but on their religion and the
supposed omnipotence of their god, Allah. To lose in such a manner
to a tiny Dhimmi state that was only a day old, having possessed almost
overwhelming strategic advantages from the outset, was truly a catastrophe.
It is impossible
to understand the obstinacy, intransigence and arrogance of the Arab attitude toward
Israel over the past
60 years without recognizing the dreadful loss of face and the
astonishing blow to their pride which came with their defeat in 1948.
Despite two
subsequent wars in 1967 and 1973, in which massed Arab armies again tried to
exterminate the tiny Jewish state, the Israelis prevailed and even strengthened
their position. The war of 1967 gave them Sinai (including Gaza), east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, all of which,
as victors in a defensive war against a genocidal invader, they were
entitled to retain in perpetuity.
Questions and
Answers
Additional historical analysis of the
Arab-Israeli conflict will be presented where appropriate in the remainder of this paper.
Having set the scene as it were, we
will now focus on the principal questions that most westerners appear to have regarding the legitimacy of the state of
Israel and its treatment of the Arab-Palestinians, both before its foundation
in 1948 and thereafter.
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1. Surely the Arabs who had already settled
in West
Palestine, and who had
been there for generations (“time
immemorial”), were equally entitled to the land and should have been given a state of their
own?
There
are four major assumptions embedded in this question.
Firstly, the question assumes that West Palestine was continuously settled for centuries
by a substantial population of Arabs, just like the surrounding regions (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan). However this is not the case. The
land was significantly under-populated
during the Ottoman period. Having been neglected for so long, the soil had
deteriorated to the point where it was of little agrarian value. Visitors to
the Holy
Land in the
19th century, such as Mark Twain and Karl Marx, were greatly surprised by the emptiness of the terrain, the
barrenness of the soil and the tiny size of the population. The
indigenous people, mostly Arabs, Jews and Christians, were confined in the main
to a few towns, where living conditions were primitive. The Ottomans had not invested in the country and there
was no infrastructure to speak of.
Secondly, the Jews had continuously
maintained an unbroken presence in Palestine since the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. The numbers were not
large, but a remnant always remained. Whether the land was controlled by the
eastern Roman empire, the Ummayad, Abbasid or Fatimid empires, the Christian
Crusaders (who butchered many Jews), or the Ottoman Turks, the Jews continued
to maintain a sufficient presence in the
land to be recognized by these conquerors as an indigenous people.
They also
continued to migrate into West Palestine, albeit in
small numbers, during the entire period of the Diaspora. As Katz noted:
In spite of bans and prohibitions, in
spite of the most improbable and unpromising circumstances, there was
never a period throughout the centuries
of exile without Jewish immigration to Palestine. (p.95)
Thirdly, the
question assumes that the Arab-Palestinians were never given a state of their own. As we
have already seen, this assumption is completely false. The British gave the Arabs
the entire Mandate region east of the Jordan River (77% of Palestine) in 1922 and called it Trans-Jordan -
presumably to disguise the fact that it was actually
Palestine. They did this
unilaterally, in violation of the April 1920 San Remo
agreement and
international law. Furthermore, Jews were forbidden to settle in this new Arab-Palestinian state.
Finally, the question assumes that
the Arabs in West
Palestine -
who could have relocated to the new Arab-Palestinian state of Trans-Jordan -
were denied sovereign entitlement to part of West Palestine. As we have seen the UN offered the
Arabs a state of their own in West
Palestine in 1947 (in addition to the
one they had already been
given in East Palestine) but they refused it, almost certainly on the basis
that they expected to overrun and destroy
the fledgling state of Israel the following year, murder or evict the entire
Jewish population, and claim the whole of Palestine, East and West, as their own.
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Much misunderstanding has arisen,
even among those who ought to know better, from a failure to recognize these unfounded assumptions.
2. But many Arab families lost their homes in West Palestine after the Jews forced them out. How could this be fair?
When the Jews first began to return
to Palestine in large numbers in the mid-19th century,
they were obliged to pay exorbitant prices for the land sold to them by
the effendis, the absentee Arab landlords living in Aleppo, Damascus, Amman and elsewhere. These prices were often 4-5 times the fair value of the
property.
Many of these
Jews were driven from their homes in other Arab countries, for which they received no compensation. (In
1945 there were about 990,000 Jewish families living in Arab countries. Today
that figure is a mere 8,000.) It has been estimated that the number of Jews who
lost property in this way was at least double the number of Arabs who left West Palestine 'temporarily' in 1947-1948 and lost
property as a result.
It is also
assumed that the Arabs had been settled in West Palestine for
generations, but
this is not the case. A significant number, at least 300,000, arrived in the 20th century,
attracted by the prospect of employment by Jewish immigrants who were redeveloping the land and producing crops where
none had grown for generations. It was worth their while to
relocate since the Jewish farmers were offering better pay and conditions of
employment than the same Arab workers would have enjoyed in their own countries. And this is why Arab-Palestinians
continue to live in Israel today - their overall living conditions and
their general treatment is better than they could expect to enjoy in any neighboring Muslim state.
3. That may be so but it does not excuse the
fact that many Arabs left West Palestine because they
were effectively driven out by Jewish threats. Surely this cannot be justified?
One must
consider the magnitude of the threats to which the Jews in West Palestine were themselves
subject. As Ben-Ami noted:
It was then
[just prior to the Arab invasion] that the Jews really felt they faced slaughter should they be
defeated and that the survival of the incipient
Jewish state hung by a mere thread. (p.56)
Despite having initially facilitated
the creation of a Jewish homeland, the British thereafter had consistently obstructed all attempts to create a Jewish
state, while the Arabs had been committing atrocities against Jewish settlers
on a fairly regular basis from the start of the 20th century.
These attacks had increased in frequency and intensity
after the Hebron massacre of
1929 and numerous Arabs leaders, including the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem, had called for
the total annihilation of the Jews in West Palestine. This was not empty rhetoric. The
Grand Mufti had advised Hitler on the mass slaughter of Jews in Europe and had even requested that large
numbers of European Jews be forcibly
transferred to Poland lest any
migrate to West Palestine. He knew well the
fate that awaited them in Poland, where millions
died at the hands of the Nazis:
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"The Mufti of
Jerusalem was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European
Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the
execution of this plan...He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the
extermination measures." -
Dieter Wisliceny (Eichmann’s deputy) giving
evidence at the Nuremburg Trials [Wisliceny was hanged as a war criminal in 1948]
After the Holocaust, the Jews of West
Palestine knew only too well that the Arab threat of genocide was very
real. As a result their fears translated in some instances into actions
which cannot be justified. However, the popular claim that the Arabs were driven from West Palestine by Jewish
threats and aggression do not stand up to scrutiny. Here is how Samuel Katz described it in his tightly
argued book, Battleground:
Fact and Fantasy in Palestine (1973):
The fabrication can most easily be detected by the simple
circumstance that at the time the alleged expulsion of the Arabs by Zionists
was in progress, nobody noticed it. Foreign newspapermen abounded in the
country...even those most hostile to the Jews saw
nothing to suggest that the flight [of the
Arabs] was not voluntary. In the three months that the major part
of the flight took place, the London Times, a newspaper most notably hostile to Zionism,
published 11 leading articles on the
situation in Palestine, in addition to
extensive news reports. In none was there even a remote hint that the Zionists were driving Arabs from their homes...Even more
pertinent: No Arab spokesman made such a
charge. At the height of the flight, the Arab-Palestinians' chief
U.N. representative, Jamal Husseini, made a
long political statement (on April 27, 1948) that was not lacking in hostility toward the Zionists;
[but] he did not mention refugees...The secretary-general of the
Arab League, Azzam Pasha, made a fiercely
worded political statement on Palestine; it contained not a word about refugees...When, four months
after the [war began], the
prospect of the flight lings' returning "in a few weeks" had
faded, there were some recriminations. Emil Ghoury, a member of the
Arab-Palestinians' national leadership, said in an interview with the Beirut Daily Telegraph: "The fact that there
are these [Arab] refugees is the
direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states
agreed upon this policy unanimously,
and they must share in the solution of the problem."
The author was
a member of Irgun and served for a time as advisor to Prime Minister Begin. No doubt his enemies would have taken considerable satisfaction in disproving his sources and refuting his analysis
had they been able to do so.
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Ben-Ami, who gives a very
uncompromising analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948, stated that
[T]he mass exodus was, however,
inadvertently encouraged by the leaders of the Arab-Palestinian community
when, in their eagerness to trigger
the invasion of Palestine by the Arab
armies, they blew up out of all proportion the atrocities committed against Arab
civilians. The Arab armies came in eventually, but by puffing up the
atrocities, local leaders such as Dr Hussein Fakhri Al-Khalidi, the head
of the Arab National Committee in Jerusalem who gave
explicit instructions to the Arab-Palestinian media to inflate the reports,
helped enhance the magnitude of an exodus driven by fear and hysteria.
[p.44]
Bard
commented as follows:
The Haganah did employ psychological
warfare to encourage the Arabs to abandon
some villages. For example, some were told that a large Jewish invasion force was coming to burn
their villages and that they had better get out...Arab fears were
exacerbated by fabricated stories of Jewish
atrocities following the attack on Deir Yassin. In his memoirs, King Abdullah of Jordan stated,
“The tragedy of the Arab-Palestinians was that
most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false and unsubstantiated
promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs and 400 million Muslims would instantly and
miraculously come to their rescue.”
[pps.128 and 132]
It
is also significant that The Economist reported
as follows on 2 October, 1948:
Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly
lived in Haifa not more than 5,000
or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is little doubt that
the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the
air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit...It was
clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted
Jewish protection would be regarded as
renegades.
A
few years later, the New York Lebanese daily newspaper, Al Hoda, reported:
The Secretary General of the Arab
League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine
and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade...He pointed out
that they were already on the frontiers and
that all the millions the Jews had spent of land and economic development would
be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into
the Mediterranean...Brotherly advice was
given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in
neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down. [Habib Issa, 8 June 1951]
15
Israel is actually a very small state
Katz, who made extensive use of
published Arab sources, as well as reports and dispatches by British reporters
and public servants who were patently hostile to the Jewish cause, drew
attention to the fact that the British government ordered the destruction of a
significant number of official files in order to cover up their complicity in
the Arab campaign against the Jews. In addition to the file series relating to the Haganah and another entitled
‘Propaganda Among the Arabs,’ which dealt with the British policy of inciting Arabs against Jews, Katz noted
that
16
[t]he entire correspondence between
the Palestine administration and its chiefs at the Colonial Office in
London relating to the records of the meetings
of the Executive Council (in effect the Cabinet) of the Palestine government had been “destroyed under statute.”
These files,
had they been available, would have shed copious light on the extent to which the
British had, for almost the entire duration of the Mandate, incited the
Arabs to revolt
against the Jews and had trained and financed Arab terrorists. They even created
the Arab League (in 1945) to stiffen Arab resistance to the creation of the Jewish
state. These deceitful tactics were similar to those adopted by Britain in Kenya, Aden and elsewhere
during its imperial decline. Finally, as we have already noted, the
British published a White Paper in 1939 which completely overturned the
Balfour Declaration and announced that West Palestine would in due
course become an Arab state.
4. If the Arabs countries have made, and continue to make, every
effort to resolve the Arab-Palestinian refugee problem, then why should Israel default on its obligations
in this regard?
This is a common myth. The truth of
the matter is that the nations of Islam have continually
done everything in their power to retain the Arab-Palestinian refugee problem and
to use it as a rod to beat Israel. The United
Nations offered them their own state (in addition to Jordan) in West Palestine in 1947, but they refused the offer.
Then Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1950
(which it had already occupied for two years) and was in a position
to declare a new Arab-Palestinian state in that territory during the following 17 years, before it lost the West Bank
to Israel in 1967. However, it made
no attempt to do so. Here is how Kumaraswamy (2006) put it (Introduction,
p.59):
Even though Israel is normally blamed for the absence
of Arab-Palestinian statehood, at least
until 1967 the Arab states were equally responsible for that failure. Until
then, they occupied most of the territory that was given to Palestine under the UN partition, and their
failure to create a state in
these territories not only weakened the Arab-Palestinian cause but, more importantly, created doubts about their
commitment to Arab unity.
Karsh, among others, has also drawn
attention to the glaring cynicism of the Arab position:
Perhaps the
best proof of British prescience regarding this matter was that neither Egypt nor Jordan ever allowed Arab-Palestinian
self-determination in the parts of Palestine they conquered during the 1948 War: respectively,
Gaza and the West Bank. As the
Egyptian representative to the armistice talks told a British journalist: 'We don't care if all
the refugees will die.
There are enough Arabs around.' More than
half a century later, many of these
refugees still languish in squalid camps waiting for their problem to be solved. (p.92)
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Furthermore, the low population
density of the former Ottoman Empire meant that there was never
any shortage of land to allocate to the refugees, even if the West Bank had not been
available. Nor was there ever a shortage of finances, either from
oil-rich Arab
states or from international organizations and sympathetic western sources, to facilitate their relocation. The reality is that some
of the Arab-Palestinians were evicted from Jordan in 1970 and
from Lebanon in the 1980’s
because of the escalating terrorist activities of the PLO. This ongoing aggression,
orchestrated by radical elements within Islam, made sure that the unfortunate Arab-Palestinian people were
deliberately abandoned by the nations of Islam and exploited in the
most cynical fashion imaginable. They were never
more than pawns in the genocidal plan to destroy Israel.
It should be noted also that the
alleged cultural affinity of the Arab-Palestinian refugees with the land of West Palestine has little or no
foundation since a large proportion are descendants of Arabs who had been
resident in West Palestine for no more than a few decades.
Besides being an open sore for
propaganda purposes, the Arab-Palestinian refugees have long provided convenient
cover for Islamic terrorist groups such as the PLO, Fattah, Hamas and
Hezbollah. That their operations must inevitably result in causalities among Arab-Palestinian
civilians is of no consequence in a society where martyrdom and death in the
cause of Islam are esteemed as the highest good. In such a twisted philosophy, women and children may be used as
human shields, with or without their consent. (For a disturbing
insight into the methods used by Hamas to control its members and sacrifice Arab civilians, read Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef.)
In light of these well-established
facts, it is impossible to see how Israel is under any obligation to solve a problem which extremist,
Jew-hating elements within Islam have deliberately engendered and aggravated over a period of sixty years.
5. Given that Arabs and Jews lived peacefully together for
centuries under Ottoman rule, why can’t they jointly occupy and administer
a unified Arab-Israeli state in Palestine?
This ‘solution’ is part of the
misleading propaganda spread by radical Islamists and their sympathizers. It tries to disguise the fact
that the Jews were always an oppressed minority under Islam, subject to extraordinary mistreatment and abuse.
As unbelievers, Jews were known
as dhimmis, a sub-class with significantly fewer social and political rights than Muslims, very little security, subject
to the prospect of arbitrary assault by any Muslim (against which
they had little or no legal recourse), and
made to pay an exorbitant tax called Jizyah. This tax, which was levied normally on all able-bodied
male infidels, was unusually onerous and could consume up to half of one’s annual
income. In short, dhimmis were
down-trodden serfs whose continued existence was tolerated mainly on economic
grounds. The dhimmi system
also had a major social advantage in that it placed a layer of indigent people
below the Muslim community.
So, no matter how badly the Muslims themselves were treated by an oppressive ruling regime, there was always a layer
beneath them that was even more exploited
and oppressed.
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Both the Koran and the Hadith (the sayings of Muhammad)
contain numerous verses which call for the exploitation, and even
the elimination, of Jews. They are described several times as a curse upon the
earth and a subhuman class - “pigs” and “apes” (Many websites list these verses).
Today it is virtually impossible for
anybody other than a Muslim to live safely in some Muslim countries. While immigrant workers are tolerated, they
have no status and may be
expelled at any time. The Christian Copts of Egypt are subject to
dreadful persecution and appear to be a target for annihilation by extremist
groups.
The Muslim
belief in the inferiority of non-believers is demonstrated in many ways, but perhaps the
best known is their insistence on the use of Sharia law in any country where they
possess sufficient political influence to compel its introduction. Sharia
is simply the
codification of Islamic doctrine in all matters pertaining to human behavior.
Applying as it does to just about every aspect of a person’s life; it is far
more sweeping and inclusive than any western idea of jurisprudence. Sharia law
is “above the law,” that is it supersedes the statutes of all western nations
and any law constituted outside the
parameters of Islam.
Arabs resident in Israel (excluding the West Bank and Gaza) number around 1.2
million, 8 times the number in 1948. They
are eligible for full Israeli citizenship and enjoy the same rights
as Jews (except they cannot join the armed forces). They live peacefully with
the Jews, elect representatives to the Knesset, and worship in their mosques. As yet they have not been radicalized by
Islamic extremist philosophy and seem
to be satisfied to remain in Israel (They could
sell up and leave without penalty if they so wished). The prospect of living under a despotic
regime, with a lower standard of living and
fewer civil rights, has not attracted them to countries like Syria or Egypt. In short,
peaceful co-existence between Jews and Muslims is only possible when Sharia law has no political
force whatever - a condition that could never be satisfied in an Arab-Israeli state.
6. Even allowing for these considerations,
surely there is still a case for allowing the Arab-Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to establish their own state? Would that not bring peace?
Many westerners
incline toward this view. There are even many Israelis who think it may be the best
solution. But it is founded on a lie.
Most Westerners
do not understand Islam. They fail to see that it is not just a religion in the accepted sense but an
autocratic political system, where all aspects of the individual’s life are
regulated by the state. It is lawful under Islam to kill a Muslim who converts
to another religion. No religion other than Islam may be preached openly in an
Islamic country. Their holy book espouses violence against Jews and Christians,
as well as other non-believers (infidel) and the concept of jihad -
the
aggressive expansion of Islam - is enshrined in its theology. It is even lawful
for Muslims to deliberately deceive their
enemies in defense of their religion and to sign a ‘peace’ treaty which they
have no intention of honoring. (Muhammad himself set this precedent
when, having made a 10-year treaty with the Jews of Mecca, he returned two years later and wiped them all out.
In effect their code says “Make peace with your enemy until you are strong enough to destroy him.”)
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It is difficult to get an objective
account of any controversial incident in which Muslims were involved since their religion allows them to indulge in
fabrication if it will help the cause of Islam. Such lies are
neither immoral nor displeasing to Allah since
the overall aim, the protection of Islam, is what ultimately counts. This
principle is similar to the Jesuit belief that the end justifies the means, or
the supposedly ethical device, known as mental reservation, which Catholic
bishops use to justify their lies.
Furthermore few Westerners realize
that the Koran is not the only scripture in Islam. The Hadith or
sayings of Muhammad, which are even more intolerant, sectarian
and aggressively anti-Jewish and anti-Christian than the Koran, also carry divine authority.
There is no shortage of verses in either branch of Islamic scripture to
convince radical Muslims that their campaign of hatred and violence is
morally justified. (While it might be
true to say that the majority of Muslims give little weight to
these verses, it is equally true that the views of moderate, peace-loving
Moslems have no effect whatever in a
religion dominated by extremists.)
The nations of Islam will never be
satisfied until every trace of the Israeli state has been erased from the
earth. Never. Even if it was reduced to the size of a postage stamp they would still continue to rage until that
final insult to Allah was obliterated.
Israeli leaders
made some serious strategic errors in the past when they failed to grasp this fact. For example, having
secured a vital buffer zone to the west with the annexation of Sinai, they
gave it back to Egypt for a piece of paper. It would be
a serious mistake for Israel to
surrender any of the
territory that it currently possesses or controls. It holds all such territory by right, as land
acquired in a defensive war against a
genocidal invader.
During negotiations brokered by the
US at Camp David in July 2000, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, offered
the Arab-Palestinians most of the West Bank, all of the Gaza Strip, and East
Jerusalem as the capital of a new Arab-Palestinian state; in addition, all Arab-Palestinian
refugees could apply for compensation for loss of property from an
international fund to which Israel would contribute along with other countries. And, incredibly, the Arab-Palestinian
leadership rejected this astonishing offer!
As Abba Eban
famously observed after the Geneva peace talks in
1973: “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
The Arab-Palestinian
attitude at Camp David shows, if further proof were
needed, that the rulers
of Islam have no intention of resolving the plight of the Arab-Palestinian
refugees and no interest whatever in a negotiated settlement - their only goal
is the complete annihilation of Israel.
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The Arab-Palestinian people have been
used by the leaders of Islam in a most despicable way, as pawns in a vicious
game which they intend to continue playing until Israel is destroyed. These cynical leaders
know the power of international opinion and the sympathy that can be gained for
their cause by the ongoing televised plight of these unfortunate people. They
know that most westerners fall for this type of propaganda, the endless repetition of heart-rending images.
They know that the west will continue to perceive the Arab-Palestinians
as victims - which they are - without seeing that the true architects of their oppression are the Islamic
nations which surround them.
Katz noted (p.163) an article in the
Egyptian journal El Muswar of December 1968 which frankly admitted that “[t]he expulsion of
our brothers from their homes should not cause us any anxiety,
especially as they were driven into Arab countries...The masses of the Arab-Palestinian
people are only the advance-guard of the Arab nation...a plan for rousing
world opinion in stages, as it would not be able to understand or accept a war by a hundred million Arabs against a
small state.”
In his
discussion of the same theme, Karsh stated:
Indeed, had the Jewish State lost the
war, its territory would not have been handed over to the Arab-Palestinians but
rather divided among the invading forces, for the simple reason that none of
the Arab regimes viewed the Arab-Palestinians
as a distinct nation. As the American academic Philip Hitti put the Arab view to a joint
Anglo-American commission of inquiry
in 1946: 'There is no such thing as Arab Palestine in history, absolutely not.' - p.91
Bard is just as
blunt:
The Arab League
created the Arab Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Cairo in 1964 as a weapon against Israel. Neither the PLO nor any Arab-Palestinian groups campaigned for Jordan or Egypt to create an independent
Arab-Palestinian state in the West Bank or Gaza. The focus of Arab-Palestinian
activism has always been on the destruction of Israel. After the PLO was
expelled from Jordan by King
Hussein in 1970, many of its active units went to Lebanon. The PLO seized whole areas of the country, where
it brutalized the population and usurped Lebanese government authority. - p.69
The Arab-Palestinians already have
their own state - East Palestine (Jordan) - but the refugees are kept out by
the Islamic leadership. Through their choice of flag, the Arab-Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza virtually
admit that Jordan is their
homeland - note the remarkable similarities between it and the Jordanian flag:
21
National flag of Jordan Arab-Palestinian
flag
The Arab-Palestinian refugees could
also be accommodated quite easily in another neighboring Arab state, such as Lebanon and Syria, which already have a
significant Arab-Palestinian presence, but they are not allowed
enter these countries. Or they could be given a slice of the vast Sinai peninsula by Egypt or the sprawling sovereign state
of Saudi Arabia, which is one of the most
under-populated countries in the world. In short, the plight of the West Arab-Palestinians
could be resolved in a week by the global
Islamic community if they really wanted to do so.
But this will
never happen because the leaders of the Islamic world hate Israel and are fully prepared to bully, oppress,
starve and, if necessary, sacrifice millions of their own people - the Arab-Palestinians - in order to
destroy it.
As Jamal al-Husseini, Vice-President
of the Arab Higher Committee, the effective government
of the Arab-Palestinians, told the UN General Assembly in 1947 as it was about
to cast its vote: 'We are solidly and permanently determined to fight to the
last man against the existence in our country of any Jewish state, no matter
how small it is.'
Former director of the UNWRA, Ralph
Garroway, didn’t mince his words when he stated
in August, 1958 that “The Arab States do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as
an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders
don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.” These three simple
sentences by Mr Garroway sum up the Arab attitude to the Arab-Palestinian
refugees.
The essence of the wider problem, the
survival of Israel itself, is well captured by Ben-Ami:
The
battleground as such was never the only problem for Israel; it was the wider
strategic context of a nation surrounded by an immense Arab hinterland that
could afford, as indeed it did, one defeat after another, yet always recover and be ready for the
next round. This was a luxury - losing a war - the Israelis were always
genuinely, and one should also say
rightly, convinced that they could never afford.
The Islamic
monolith only needs to win once, while Israel needs to win
every time.
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In the end only one Viewpoint matters
For all our opinions and convictions,
and the huge diversity of views that obtain in this matter, at the end of the day only one viewpoint counts, and that
is God’s. And he has expressed
it with remarkable clarity for all to see.
Firstly, he
established a binding agreement with Abraham and all of his descendants around 2000 BC:
And I will
establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an
everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee,
and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger,
all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting
possession; and I will be their God. (Genesis 17:7-8)
Lest anyone
think for a moment that God might not honor his word, he said (around 1500 BC):
God is not a man, that he should lie;
neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he
not do it? or hath he spoken, and
shall he not make it good? (Numbers 23:19)
Then, around 1000 BC he again
reminded his people that he had every intention of honoring his covenant with them:
He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he
commanded to a thousand generations. Which
covenant he made with Abraham,
and his oath unto Isaac; And confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an
everlasting covenant: (Psalm 105:8-10)
What is more,
he said he would honor this “everlasting covenant” even if his people strayed from the
precepts that he had laid down for them:
If his children forsake my law, and
walk not in my judgments; If they break my statutes, and keep not my
commandments; Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless
my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will
I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have I sworn
by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall
endure for ever, and his throne as the
sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven. (Psalm 89:30-37)
About 400 years
before Christ, he again reminded his people that he does not change, that his
covenant will stand, and that those who turn to him in the End Time (“in
that day”) will be spared, as though each man was His own son:
For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore
ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
(Malachi 3:6)
And they shall be mine, saith the
LORD of hosts, in that day when I make
up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth
him. (Malachi 3:17)
23
Jesus confirmed
this promise when he said:
Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the
Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles
be fulfilled. (Luke 21:24)
Jerusalem fell to the Gentiles in 70 AD and
only returned fully into Jewish hands in 1967.
This is a clear sign that the End Time clock is ticking.
Finally, in the Book of Revelation
(around 96 BC), the LORD stated in stunning detail exactly how he intends
to deal with Satan, the enemies of Israel, and the gross apostasy of mankind in the End Time. If you think
for a moment that he did not mean what
he said, think again:
The burden of
the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the
LORD, which stretcheth
forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit
of man within him. Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the
people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people:
all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the
people of the earth be gathered together against it...And it shall come to pass
in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. (Zechariah
12:1-3, 9)
Concluding Comments
When I set out to research this topic
I didn’t expect to end up here. Somehow I imagined
that the Arab cause would have some justification, however tenuous. After all,
there are two sides to every story. So it came as a real surprise to see just
how well defined the main issues really are.
On the one hand we have a small nation under siege, and on the other a
sprawling despotic empire which is determined at all costs to destroy it.
I have based this analysis on facts
which are fairly easy to establish. If you have difficulty with my conclusions, then I would suggest you research the
facts which, in your opinion,
have the greatest bearing on my analysis. I believe it is important that people
establish the actual historical position for themselves and not rely solely on secondhand sources.
This paper does not address the
conduct of the Israeli Defense Force in recent decades, the activities of
Mossad or Shin Bet, the Zionist influence on American politics or the global financial system, the use of Israel as a
flashpoint for World War Three, its role in the Illuminati plan to
create a New World Order, or any similar factor.
It simply sought to establish (a) whether or not the state of Israel (including
the land it currently controls) is constituted on sound legal and
moral grounds – the answer is Yes - and (b) whether or not the state
of Israel is responsible for the current plight of the Arab-Palestinians in the
West Bank and Gaza - and the answer is No.
A summary of
the subject as a whole is set out in Appendix A.
--o--
24
Note on the author
Jeremy James is a graduate in
philosophy and logic from University College Dublin. He has spent over 30 years
in public administration, dealing mainly with computerization policy, fiscal management and
strategic planning. He became a born-again Christian in 2008 and has no affiliation
with Judaism or any Zionist organization. This paper was
written primarily in response to the announcement in early 2010 by the Irish
Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) that it objected to the Israeli treatment of the Arab-Palestinians and supported
the boycott of Israeli goods by Irish consumers. Such a policy, in
his opinion, is based on a serious
misapprehension of the actual historical position and is harmful to the legitimate interests of Israel.
--o--
For information
about the New World Order, the coming global financial collapse, and the Illuminati plan to
foment World War Three as a vehicle for
radical change, visit
www.zephaniah.eu
Published on the Internet, 9 June 2010
Jeremy James 2010
25
www.zephaniah.eu
Bibliography
Bard, Mitchell
Ben-Ami,
Schlomo
Burke, Jason
Fisk, Robert
Gottheil, Fred
Hammond, Peter
Huntington,
Samuel
Karsh, Efraim
Katz, Samuel
Kayyali, A W S
Kumaraswamy, P R
Lewis, Bernard
Lindsey, Hal
MacMillan,
Margaret Maybury, Richard
Morris, Benny
Peters, Joan
Yousef, Mosab
Hassan
Myths and Facts: A Guide to the
Arab-Israeli
Conflict, 2001
Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The
Israeli-Arab Tragedy, 2006
Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam, 2003 Pity the Nation, 1990
The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine,
1922-1931, The Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2003
Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The
Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat, 2008
The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order, 1996
The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948, 2002 Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, 1973 Palestine: A Modern History, 1978
Historical Dictionary of the Arab-Israeli
Conflict, 2006 The Crisis of
Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, 2003 The Multiple Identities of the Middle East, 1998
The Everlasting Hatred: The Roots of
Jihad, 2002 Peacemakers:
Six Months that Changed the World, 2001 The Thousand Year War in the Mid-east, 1999 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War, 2008
From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the
Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, 1984
Son of Hamas, 2010
26
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APPENDIX A
Summary
The main proof
of Israel’s right to
exist and to retain possession of all land currently in her possession (the
Golan, Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank), along with
proof that it is not in any manner responsible for the plight of the Arab-Palestinians
in Gaza and the West Bank, is as follows:
1. The territory covered by the Arab-Palestinian
Mandate (today’s Jordan and Israel) was
significantly under-populated in 1900. Despite its vast size, the total
population of the entire Ottoman Empire was only 20
million or so in 1917. The same area today has a population of about 220 million
(an average annual increase of 2.7%). Not only was the Empire as
a
whole
under-populated, but Palestine was even more
so. Thus the notion
that there was no room for a Jewish homeland in Palestine without
displacing
the indigenous Arab population, such as it was is untenable.
As it happens a large
proportion of the Arabs in West Palestine up to
1947 had arrived after the
first Aliyah (wave of immigration) by the
Jews
in 1880.
2. There were no
national boundaries or nation states within the Ottoman
Empire (which existed
for about 400 years) and thus no national identity, whether among the Arabs of West
Palestine or anywhere else. All identity was a tribal and religious. A
state in Palestine, ruled by
the Arabs, had never existed. West Palestine (Israel) was never more
than a province in the vast territory of Islam and was
traditionally regarded by the Arabs as part of Syria and Jordan. The Arabs
never recognized the Arab ‘Palestinians’ as a separate people or
ethnic group.
3. The sovereign control which the Turks
exercised over the Ottoman
Empire was broken in
1918 and the victors (notably Britain and France)
had full legal discretion under international law to decide how
the
Empire
should be divided among competing interests.
4. Britain and France agreed with
the leading Zionist representatives of the
time to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine (the Mandate territory
known
today as Jordan and Israel).
5. The leading Arab representatives
agreed to the creation of a Jewish
homeland in Palestine on the understanding that the Arabs
would be
given control over the remaining
Ottoman territory, namely Lebanon,
Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Territorial boundaries had not yet
been
agreed.
6. The
leading Arab representatives stated in writing that they welcomed
the
creation of a Jewish homeland.
7. The international community (the Allies and later the League of
Nations)
ratified the understanding
at 5
above and noted the Arab
agreement
at 6 above.
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8. In 1922, in contravention of
international law, Britain divided Palestine
in two, giving
the area east of the Jordan River to the Arabs
(known later as
Trans-Jordan, then the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and finally
Jordan). Jews were completely excluded from this territory. In doing so
Britain summarily reduced the potential area
of the prospective Jewish
homeland by 75%. The rest of Palestine remained under
British control.
9. Britain co-operated in
a clandestine manner with the Arabs by imposing
restrictions on the immigration of
Jews into West Palestine (the proposed
Jewish homeland), contrary to
international law. These restrictions grew
steadily more oppressive in the 1930’s.
10. Britain continued to facilitate the
unrestricted migration of Arabs into
West Palestine, which again was contrary to the
terms of the Mandate approved by the League of
Nations.
11. Britain also continued to support the Arab
cause in West
Palestine
by
restricting the purchase of land by
Jews to specific areas. This was done
with a view to further reducing the territory which the Jews could
ultimately claim as their homeland.
Furthermore, the territory concerned was broken into three enclaves
which would be more vulnerable to a
large-scale military attack than would a
single contiguous parcel of land.
12. At
the instigation of the British, the Arabs continued throughout the
1920s,
1930s and 1940s to carry out terrorist attacks on Jewish civilian
targets.
13. The Arabs
living in West Palestine were led to
believe by the leadership
in the surrounding Arab
states (via radio,
newspapers and word of
mouth) that a large-scale military
invasion would take place around the
time the Jewish state was declared. They were advised to leave West
Palestine temporarily so
as not to constrain the invading Arab armies.
14. Large numbers
of Arabs would leave in any event on foot of the violent
response by their leadership to the
UN Resolution of 29 November 1947. This led to a great escalation of
tensions between the two communities. The numerous atrocities against
Jewish civilians during this period convinced many Arabs that, if the Jews
were ever to obtain the upper hand,
their safety would not be assured.
15. The official Jewish state, approved
by the United Nations in 1947, was
only a fraction of the whole of Palestine (East and West) and only 57% of West Palestine. Furthermore,
a large part, about 75%, consisted of the inhospitable Negev Desert.
16. Had the Jewish people been allocated
a homeland in proportion to their
numbers within the Ottoman Empire as a whole, they would have
received a far larger piece of territory. (The Kurds should have been
allocated a homeland on the same basis but
were cheated by the Arabs.)
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17. The Arabs
of West Palestine were offered their own state by the UN in 1947, but they rejected it.
18. The Jews in the
newly founded state of Israel refused to
allow the Arabs who had
fled in 1947-1948 to return. As a result the refugees lost a considerable
amount of property. However, total Arab forfeiture in this manner was half that lost by Jews who were forced
to flee from various Islamic
states for their own safety.
19. The massive invasion of Israel on 15 May 1948 by the armies of six Arab countries were unsuccessful. This invasion was illegal under international
law and genocidal in purpose. Even though the invaders were attacking on
three fronts and had significant strategic advantages, they were unable to overcome Jewish resistance.
20. The Arab states refused to assimilate
most of the Arabs who departed temporarily
from West Palestine in 1947-1948.
Other countries assimilated far larger numbers of refugees after World War Two,
but the Arab states,
despite the extensive territory at their disposal and their ample revenue from
oil exports, have consistently refused to do so. This unfortunate group of
people, which today number around 3½ million, has
been used by the nations of Islam over the past 60 years as an open sore, a cynical propaganda tool to deceive the
international community, and as a human shield when conducting
terrorist operations against Israeli
civilian targets.
21. With
British approval, Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1950 and
held it
until 1967 when it was taken by Israel in the Six-Day
War. During this entire
period - about 17 years - the Arabs were in a position to declare an independent state for Arab-Palestinians in the West Bank but made no
attempt to do so. Similarly, Egypt could have
donated Gaza when it
was under Egyptian
control. Perhaps these facts, more than any other, demonstrate that the Arabs
have deliberately nurtured the Arab-Palestinian refugee problem for the express purpose of destroying Israel.
22. The
Arab-Palestinian leadership has consistently rejected all reasonable offers of a solution.
As recently as 2000, they were offered Gaza, most of
the West Bank, and East Jerusalem as the capital
of a new Arab-Palestinian state, but they rejected it.
23. The nations of
Islam will never recognize the state of Israel and have no intention
of achieving a lasting peaceful settlement. Israel made a
major strategic error when it returned Sinai to Egypt in 1979. It
should not give away any further territory, for whatever reason. Under
the moral code of Islam, the Arabs are under no obligation to honor a
treaty made with an infidel nation.
24. The goal of
radical Islam, which is heavily financed by Iran and Saudi Arabia, among others,
is the total destruction of Israel and the murder
of her entire population.
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