Professor Clay Answered Abbas Already in 1921

Mahmoud Abbas called them "Canaanites".

So, who are the people who populated the area that would become the Mandate of Palestin in 1921?

Here is Albert T. Clay in The Atlantic Monthly (on Clay):

The inhabitants of the land should be called Syrians — or Palestinians, if Palestine is to be separated from Syria. True, there are many Arabs living there, more, for example, than Greeks, Germans, or Latins, because of the proximity of Arabia; but these are not the real Palestinians, nor do they represent the bulk of the substantial part of the nation. The people whom the Jews conquered when they entered Palestine were called by the general name of Amorites or Canaanites. While many were massacred by the Jews in certain cities, still only a portion of the country was conquered. Even after David took Jerusalem, Amorites continued to live in that city; besides, many foreign peoples, as the Hittites and Philistines, also lived in the land. There can be no question that the blood of the present Palestinian, or Syrian, includes that of the Jew as well as of the Amorite, Hittite, Phoenician, Philistine, Persian, Greek, Latin, and Arab. Such a fusion is not unlike that found in the veins of many Americans whose ancestors have lived here for several generations. When the whole population of Palestine became Mohammedan, there is little doubt that a large percentage of the Jews were also forced to accept this faith; their descendants are now classed by the Political Zionists as ‘Arabs.’ The Yemenites, who we know migrated from Arabia, and who in every respect resemble the Arab in physique, appearance, and bearing, they, none the less, call Jews, because of their faith. Then, also, in such Christian cities as Bethlehem and Ramallah a type is seen that is distinctively European, and doubtless largely represents remnants or descendants of the Crusaders, or of Christians who migrated to the Holy Land in the past centuries. Moreover, the Palestinian or Syrian is a composite race, largely Semitic, which has developed from the association of the different racial elements inhabiting the land for at least five thousand years past. And while the Arabs have in all periods filtered in from Arabia, and the language, as in Egypt and Mesopotamia, is Arabic, it is a deliberate misrepresentation to classify the inhabitants as ‘Arabs’.

 ^

Palestine Arab Rejectionism: The Beginning

The Arabs who resided in the area to become the Mandate of Palestine, intended originally to become, through the historic connection of the Jewish people to that country, the Jewish national home, adopted from the very beginning a diplomatic pose and policy of rejectionism. In essence, the later 1967 Khartoum Resolution adopted by the Arab League, of "no recognition", no peace" and "no negotiations", was the consistent framework of Arabs in their response to Zionism for the past century.

Already in late 1919, April 1920, May 1921 and November 1921, they were agitating, demonstrating, rioting and, of course, employing murderous terrorism, to further their political goals.

In those early years, these were the most prominent examples of that rejectionism.

1922: 

When the League of Nations awarded Great Britain the Mandate to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine, Article 25 separated from the territory the Zionist presumed they would be permitted to settle in in accordance with previous discussions. All the area east of the Jordan River would become an apartheid state for Jews.

Despite a loss of 75% of the land, the Arabs, instead of accepting that first partition, which had excluded much of the area of historic Palestine, denying Jews the right to purchase land there and creating a fake monarchy, instead, they insisted they wanted all the remaining territory west of the Jordan River also to be transformed solely into an Arab state.

The Arabs of Palestine, who preferred to be termed Southern Syrians and demanded that "Palestine" be joined to the French Mandate over Syria, rejected any "territorial compromise" and were unsatisfied with a possible "two-state solution". They wanted the Jews to completely "withdraw".

1923: 

Herbert Samuel, the first High Commissioner, following the Mandate decision to  foster the "development of self-governing institutions", proposed in August 1922 the establishment of a legislative council. It was to be made up of 23 members: 11 British, all appointed, and twelve elected members — eight Muslims, two Christians and two Jews. Despite the fact that this make-up would have doomed Jews to a permanent minority status in any future government, Arabs declared participation in the council as acceptance of the British mandate and Balfour policy as well as considering they should be granted further limitations on Jewish immigration. 

A boycott campaign of the council elections, scheduled for February 1923, was launched. The Jews, by the way, had accepted the proposal. The very low turnout dashed the proposal.

The Arabs rejected a possible political resolution of the conflict, based on democratic values.

1926: 

A dampening of the religious element of the focus was possible, one that could have avoided the later 1929 riots, when serious attempts were made to purchase or lease the Western Wall courtyard area. In fact, already in 1919, an offer was made.

As sourced here:

In 1919 Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann approached the British Military Governor of Jerusalem, Colonel Sir Ronald Storrs, and offered...approx. £5m in modern terms to purchase the area at the foot of the Wall and rehouse the occupants. Storrs was enthusiastic about the idea because he hoped some of the money would be used to improve Muslim education. Although they appeared promising at first, negotiations broke down after strong Muslim opposition. Storrs wrote two decades later:

"The acceptance of the proposals, had it been practicable, would have obviated years of wretched humiliations, including the befouling of the Wall and pavement and the unmannerly braying of the tragi-comic Arab band during Jewish prayer, and culminating in the horrible outrages of 1929"

In early 1920, the first Jewish-Arab dispute over the Wall occurred when the Muslim authorities were carrying out minor repair works to the Wall's upper courses...In 1926 an effort was made to lease the Maghrebi waqf, which included the wall, with the plan of eventually buying it. Negotiations were begun in secret by the Jewish judge Gad Frumkin, with financial backing from American millionaire Nathan Straus...However, Straus withdrew when the price became excessive and the plan came to nothing. The Va'ad Leumi, against the advice of the Palestine Zionist Executive, demanded that the British expropriate the wall and give it to the Jews, but the British refused

The Arabs leaders and their followers preferred to run a zero-sum game.  All rejection. No compromise.

They lost.

^

Arabs Meet Jews at the Kotel June 1967

From Childhood Memories of a Jerusalemite by Nazmi al-Jubeh 

As soon as the curfew was lifted for an hour to enable residents to get food supplies,

my father rushed to gather us from all around the house, like a shepherd gathering his

flock, announcing that we will return to our house outside the gates in Wadi Hilwa in

Silwan, amidst the protests and dismay of everyone, horrified by my father’s irrational

and irresponsible decision. My father, however, was ill with worry over his new house

which he had not yet enjoyed, and that is why he insisted on going back. He said that

he would die only in his house and that he would never leave it, and neither he nor any

of his offspring would ever become refugees anywhere. We left my grandfather’s house

quickly to face the unknown. Afraid, we headed slowly and cautiously north towards

Bab al-Silsila Street. We went down the steps, steps we had trodden thousands of times

in the past, and knew so well that we could walk down even blindfolded. We saw nothing

suspicious along our way: we did not see any soldiers or any destruction despite the

sound of bulldozers and explosions that we had heard while at my grandfather’s house.

We did encounter, however, people running silently without uttering a word, with anger

and fear written all over their faces. Some of them were carrying heavy suitcases, while

others were dragging children behind them and even an older woman who couldn’t walk.

Given the circumstances none of this raised our suspicions. As soon as we reached Bab

al-Silsila Street we turned right toward the east, and continued for fifty meters before

turning south to enter Abu Madyan al-Ghawth’s Ascent, where we walked through a

small alley and then began descending down the stairs.

What we saw upon reaching Zawiyat Abu Madyan al-Ghawth, facing east, was

indescribably horrific. Right there, at the bottom of the stairs, we saw soldiers, so many

of them, heavily armed from head to toe, dancing and singing in a language that we did

not understand, and behind them − emptiness. The Moroccan quarter no longer existed.

The fig and pomegranate trees were gone, and so were the alleys I used to walk and

play in. Muhammad, Sa‘id, Si Yusif, Masluhi and his fig tree were not there, the only

thing visible under June’s hot sun was a cloud of dust hovering over a heap of rubble.

Bulldozers, which I had never seen before in my life, were roaring along their metal

chains to the tunes of victory music, completing a job as yet unfinished. That day I saw

Ashkenazi rabbis for the first time; they were there in their black attire and strange hats

(shtreimels), dancing over the rubble … dancing over my memories, over the homes of

my friends and the paths that I so often frequented. For the first time in my life, I saw

the Buraq Wall so huge. It looked unfamiliar, because it had been small, and difficult to

see without going down an alley and through a gate first. But now the wall was in the

center of the scene, and it was even possible to see al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of

the Rock from that point, which had never been possible before, blocked by the crowded

buildings in the Moroccan quarter.

I cannot say that any of us, the twelve people walking in the ruins of the Moroccan

quarter, grasped what was going on, and I still don’t know how it was that no one fainted, other than the fact that we were already expecting the worst. Within seconds soldiers surrounded us, raising their guns to our faces. They forced us to stop and bombarded us with words that we did not understand. Arrogantly, a soldier whose face was blue and indistinguishable from the dust that covered it, inspected us slowly and finally selected my eldest brother, who was in his late-twenties, and pulled him away from us, blindfolded him, and ordered us to continue walking. We walked without my brother, heading towards Bab al-Maghariba, leaving behind us a neighborhood reduced to rubble, dancing soldiers, a huge jarring wall, rabbis swaying their heads in front of it, bulldozers razing what was left of the quarter, and an arrested brother whose fate was unknown. We carried with us our humiliation, disgrace, tears and defeat, glancing back every now and then until the whole scene disappeared from behind us as we descended to the unknown, down the hill to the southern gate to leave the Old City through Bab al- Maghariba. Soldiers were everywhere. 

^

Revisiting "Palestine is Southern Syria; Palestinians are Southern Syrians"

I see Elder of Ziyon has found more interesting material confirming my assertion that "Palestine" was never an independent entity in Arab history (and if it weren't for the Zionists, Palestine would have disappeared from out memory).

He quotes Nazmi Al Jubeh, Bir Zeit University's Associate Professor of History and Archaeology and the director of Birzeit University Museum.

Elder quotes from this article: "Palestinian Identity and Cultural Heritage" and I will limit my quotations to a few excerpts:

The Palestinian people are not different from other Greater Syrian (Bilad al-Sham) peoples. They are the result of accumulated ethnic, racial, and religious groups, who once lived, conquered, occupied, and passed through this strip of land. Wars and invasions have never totally replaced the local population in any period of history; they rather added to, mixed with and reformulated the local identity. The Palestinian people are the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Jabousites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Aramaeans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Turks, the Crusaders, and the Kurds, who once settled, conquered, occupied or just passed through Palestine. [no Jews. or Israelites, or Judahides? In another section he complains that the "treatment of the history of Palestine starts with abstaining from deliberately marginalizing or even erasing the history of others."]

...The artificial division of Greater Syria [after World War One] was imposed on the people. If there had been no Sykes-Picot Agreement, I am not sure that the Palestinian people would have chosen an independent state as a container of their identity...The idea of an independent Palestinian state was raised quite recently; as a matter of fact, the Palestinian national movement continued to market the conflict as an “Arab-Israeli” one and not as a “Palestinian-Israeli” one. The idea of the Palestinian independent state was raised in 1973 in the aftermath of the October War and specific international, regional, and national political developments;...

Oh, and as regards "Palestine" being the name of a country, he notes:

the word “Palestine” is not clear; there are different interpretations of its meaning. (Brug 1985, Deger-Jalkotzy 1983, p. 99-120). As an administrative terminology, it was used since the Greco-Roman period in the first and second centuries BC. It is worth mentioning that Herodotus (ca. 490-430 BC) had already written about Palestine, meaning of more or less the now familiar land of Palestine...Herodotus extends the term “Palestinian Syria” to the entire coastal strip between Phoenicia (roughly today’s Lebanon) and Egypt. The Greek term “Palestine” was then transferred into Latin: “Palestina”. This Latin term, starting from 135 A.D., meant to the Romans the entire province of “Judea” and was introduced in order to erase the use of the term “Judea” after they had put down the Jewish rebellion against the Romans, to challenge the memory of the Jews. Jerusalem was renamed “Aelia Capitolina” (Wilkinson 1975, p. 118-136).

Thank you Prof. Al-Jubeh who, I am positive, I heard at lectures I attended at the Abright Institute (and about which I may have blogged).

___________

P.S.

On the Syria aspect:

The Peace Conference, as a result of the dissatisfaction, appointed [in 1919] an inter-Allied commission to ascertain the wishes of the people. France, who claimed the whole of Syria, which included Palestine, declined to send out her representatives; and her example was followed by England. The work of the Commission, therefore, devolved upon the two American representatives, Ambassador Crane and President King. This Commission held a most impartial and exhaustive inquiry, hearing delegates from almost every town and village. In order to be ready to give useful information before the Commission, branches of the Moslem and Christian League were formed at Jaffa, Gaza, Hebron, Djenin, Nablus, Acre, Haifa, Safed, and other places. All branches worked under a constitution approved by the Military Governor of Jerusalem. It was decided to draw up three resolutions to be presented to the Commission:

1. The independence of Syria, from the Taurus Mountains to Rafeh, the frontier of Egypt.
2. Palestine not to be separated from Syria, but to form one whole country.
3. Jewish immigration to be restricted.

The entire Christian and Moslem population agreed to these resolutions.

And at IV here:

"It should be said here that there is no justification, from an ethnological or geographical point of view, for dividing Syria into the northern part under the French and a southern part, namely Palestine, under the British. This has already been pointed out by the greatest authority on the history and geography of Palestine, Sir George Adam Smith. One race, the Syrian, or Palestinian, is dominant throughout the territory, from Aleppo to Beersheba; and there is no natural frontier that can divide the two halves of this land."

^

A Matter of Origin

The EU guidelines on wine seem to inist on a "region" as the geographical identification unit as to where a product is made where as where the grapes are grown is another matter: 

"For most products, at least one of the stages of distillation or preparation takes place in the region. However, raw products do not need to come from the region". 

You might then ask why then does the EU insist on "Palestine" when "Judea & Samaria", regions, would do?

Well, it doesn't actually.

But in the first instance, those guidelines above refer solely to EU countries.  

In other words, what is good for the EU is not good for other countries.

The official EU position as regards Israel, however, as clarified for me from an official spokesperson, is this

The indication of origin of products from territories occupied by Israel is a technical consumer protection issue, based on the EU recognising Israel within its 1967 border. Goods of origin from these territories, as  other goods for import into the EU, need to be correctly labelled so that consumers in the EU have full clarity where the products come from.  

The EU does not support any elements of the so-called ‘BDS’ approach (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel, and hence also not the boycott of products from Israeli settlements.  

An Interpretative Notice of the European Commission was issued in November 2015 and it provides some clarity on the existing EU rules. The main purpose is to be helpful to a consumer in that an improper labeling would "mislead the consumer as to the true origin of the product".  It demands that the mandatory indication of origin be "correct and not misleading".  As they note

"Made in Israel" used for the products coming from Israeli settlements would mislead the consumer and therefore is inconsistent with existing EU legislation.

And further,

'product from Israel' should not be used for products from the Golan Heights or the West Bank (including East Jerusalem). For products from West Bank or the Golan Heights that originate from settlements, an indication limited to 'product from Golan Heights' or 'product from West Bank' would not be acceptable. In such cases the expression 'Israeli settlement' or equivalent needs to be added

Before we deal with why that instruction is in place, one more element need be emphasized. The EU asserts that the geographical area of origin must be "internationally recognised" and for the EU, Israel was and continues to be internationally recognized as defined by its "pre-1967 borders' so

In line with UNSC resolution 2334 of 2016, the EU considers Israeli settlements in occupied territories as illegal under international law.

Let's deconstruct this.

In the first instance, we need be clear there were no "borders" prior to 1967. They were, as defined in an internationally recognized Armistice Agreement and those lines were specifically categorized in Article II that being demarcated,

no military or political advantage should be gained

Furthermore there,

no provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine question

In other words, Israel and Jordan could both put forward territorial claims beyond those lines. Indeed,

The basic purpose of the Armistice Demarcation Lines is to delineate the lines beyond which the armed forces of the respective Parties shall not move

Nothing political but rather a simple marking at which point the military forces had stopped operations.

Moreover, those lines were temporary in the extreme, with no permanancy as per

Article XII 3 which reads

The Parties to this Agreement may, by mutual consent, revise this Agreement or any of its provisions, or may suspend its application, other than articles I and III, at any time.

Jordan, invading Israel in June 1967, effectively put an end to the legitimacy of those lines.

To sanctify, as it were, the "pre-1967 borders" is an act of nonsense.

Now, between you and me, everyone knows Israel has extended its administrative rule to those regions of the Land of Israel that were under British Mandate rule until 1948, a rule quite legal and internationally recognized. That is the meaning of "belligerent occupation", that it si the rrsult of military engagement. Israel, in an act of self-defense, thwarted the intentions of the invaders and assumed administrationn over Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza.

Those regions were geographically part of the area of 'historic Palestine' the League of nations awarded to the Jewish people to, among other purposes:

encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency. referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews, on the land, including State lands and waste lands

From 1922 until 1967, no recognized country or state legally ruled those areas except the Mandate. In Hebrew, the Mandate was translated as "Land of Israel". Jordan was an illegal occupier. 

All this leaves us with a simple solution for the requirement of the EU to note the origin of the product: the Land of Israel.

^

The Neo-Yevsektsyists

As I have blogged previously, the involvement of American Jews in anti-Zionist and anti-Israel activities preceded claims of an "illegal occupation" by over a half-century.

Many groups were involved. From assimilationists to Reform rabbis. The American Council for Judaism. Bundists and other various socialists and communists. Then Breira. On on to today's IfNotNow, JVP, et al.

One group I left out, mainly because I felt uneasy including them because of the immoral actions they were involved in and the operations they themselves initiated against the their fellow brethren was the Yevsektsyia.  It was founded in 1918 and abolished in 1930, when their appointed task was achieved - the destruction of the traditional framework of Jewish life.

The Tarbuth Hebrew educational system was suppressed while Yiddish was elevated. Zionist activity was prohibited. Immigration to Mandate Palestine was severely restricted. By the way, it was for a Hungarian non-Jewish communist, László Rajk in 1949, that the phrase 'international Zionism' was coined.

At the Yevsektsiya's second conference in July 1919, it demanded that the Zionist organisations be dissolved. After an appeal from the Zionists, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree in that the Zionist organisation was not counter-revolutionary and its activities should not be disrupted. The campaign continued, however. In 1920, the first All-Russian Zionist Congress was disrupted by members of the Cheka and a female representative of the Yevsektsiya. At its third conference in July 1921, the Yevsektsiya demanded the "total liquidation" of Zionism.

David Collier has noted the parallels between then and now as regards a renewed Yevsektsyia phenomenon. 

I just hope these neo-Yevsektsiyists remembered that the Communists eradicated the old ones, usually through torture, show trials and hangings.

^

Move Over Cordoba, Here Comes Reccopolis

You know of my posts regarding Cordoba, where Muslims are attempting to take back a mosque built on a church that the Spanish reestablished as a cathedral.

Now, I have been alerted, there's an earlier mosque in Spain.  From the article:

Finally, the orientation of several buildings appears to be influenced by ideological considerations....One large (approximately 20 × 40m) newly discovered feature is certainly oriented quite differently from the palatine church (Figure 3.6); indeed, it is the only building with this particular orientation so far discovered. What appears to be its broad side faces towards the south-east (Figure 5a–b). In light of the site’s early Islamic phase, this feature requires further exploration. 

The earliest mosques in Iberia date to the eighth century...The two eighth-century mosques in Iberia at present identified archaeologically correspond to the first phases of the Umayyad Great Mosque of Cordoba (AD 785–788; Ewert 1995) and the Great Mosque of Zaragoza (Hernández Vera 2004: 75). The tendency in Islamic Iberia was to orient mosques between south-east and south (Rius 2000: 105).Insofar as can be discerned from the geomagnetic data, the plan of the large structure at Reccopolis recalls those of Umayyad mosques in the Levant, particularly that at Jerash, Jordan...Although the geomagnetic survey is inconclusive, the Reccopolis structure might also indicate a three-aisled hall (Figure 5b); such features are characteristic of Levantine Umayyad mosques—notably the Great Mosque of Damascus, the newly discovered mosque in Tiberias, and that of Khirbat al-Minya (Figure 5d), 14km north of Tiberias (CytrynSilverman 2009: 49–51, 2012).

But getting back to church-mosque-cathedral and its relevance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, I was astounded to read this about Cordoba:

Moors created an inclusive and pluralistic society where religion was important but did not dictate public policy.

If that is true, why cannot Jews share the Temple Mount with Moslems? 

And by the way, that Islamic Professor, S. Amjad Hussain in the article writes

By 1492 all the Moor-controlled areas had been wrestled back by Christian kings. Muslims and Jews were given the choice of either converting to Catholicism or leaving the country. Hundreds and thousands of Jews and Muslims took refuge in Morocco across the Straits of Gibraltar. Countless others were burned at stake for refusing to convert.

Did that burning-at-the-stake relate to Muslims as well?

So I asked an expert and received this reply:

Muslims, who ruled a portion of the Iberian peninsula until the demise of the Kingdom of Granada (Eastern Andalusia) in January 1492, were expelled from the Kingdom of Castile and the Catalan-Aragonese confederation in 1609 (mainly in order to crush the economy of the latter and substitute the Muslim population by Castilian nationals), but normally no Muslims were burnt at the stake. After 1492, no Jews remained in Spain...Some of them were indeed burnt at the stake, as Christian apostates (in fact all of them were Jewish apostates), were burnt at the stake. According to their own laws, Christians cannot burn Jews. 

This article tries to substitute the Jews with a mix of Jews and Muslims, and, in addition, it adds a spin of a Spanish imperialistic idea (that the three cultures lived together in harmony). In fact, when the Almohad Berbers invaded the Iberian peninsula in the second half of the Twelfth century CE, Jews were harshly persecuted. The Jewish community of Lucena, which once was called "the Jerusalem of Al-Andalus", totally disappeared, and the Rambam had to flee with his family from Cordova, like many others. In the Iberian peninsula, according to Jewish Chronicles, good places for Jews were Cordova (between the Seventh and the Eleventh centuries), Toledo (between the Eleventh and the Twelfth centuries, Gerona and Barcelona (between the Ninth and the Fourteenth centuries) and Narbonne (in France today, but also within the Jewish concept of Sepharad, during all the Middle Ages until the end of the Thirteenth century).

^

Abbas Goes Crazy for Canaan

As published:

Abbas Says Palestine For Canaanites...Outsiders Will LeaveSunday, 11 August, 2019 

Ramallah - Kifah Ziboun
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday that outsiders will be deported from the Palestinian land to the "dustbin of history" because this land is for the Canaanites.

“We are the Canaanites,” he stressed.

Addressing the crown in Jalazone refugee camp in Ramallah, Abbas said the Palestinians will remain “steadfast, patient and resilient.”

“We will remain in our homeland, and the outsiders on this land has no right in this country. The land is for its inhabitants, this land is for the Canaanites who were here 5,000 years ago, and we are the Canaanites.”

Abbas’s rhetoric was sharp compared to his usual diplomatic speeches...Abbass added that Jerusalem will remain Palestine’s capital, stressing that all Palestinians and Islamic and Christian Arab nation will visit this capital one day.

Screenshot:

[and now at PMW]

So, what do we do with Saeb Erekat's Natufian theory from 2014?

As Arabs arrived here from Arabia (h/t IMRA), does he kick out his own people?

I treated that Canaanite twist here ten years ago.

Is he going crazy?

P.S.  This is ridiculous.

UPDATE

The national soccer team of Palestine is nicknamed...Lions of Canaan. And it has Israeli Arabs on the squad.

P.S.S.  He's done this before.

Background.

^

GraphicZionism

^

Comments on Dimitri's Diatribe

The sacrastic, hate-dripping diatribe of Dimitri Verhulst 

Credit

caused some criticism and I bring you some exceprts:

Because God has His darlings and His chosen ones should have their privileges, the Palestinians were driven out of their homes in 1948 in favor of God's little ones. Moses had written it down, the chosen people heard there and nowhere else, so that did count as an argument. 

Serge Gainsbourg, himself with a bloodline where anti-Semitics are going to law their knives, was more laconic about it and said: “Being a Jew is not a religion; there is not a single God who would give His creatures such an ugly nose."*
Talking to the chosen is difficult. As soon as you start talking about Israel and the fate of the Palestinians, they look at you as if you have subscribed to the Holocaust, which is your purest quatsch...The crooked reasoning: I am a racist because I denounce that 2.3 million Palestinians are dependent on emergency aid, and 1.6 million of them are malnourished...[and Israelis in] the last 17 years have killed around 10,000 Palestinians. Israeli bullets don't know ten commandments.
There is no promised land. There is stolen land. There are stolen lives.

*
A Belgian daily that published an op-ed describing Jews as land thieves with “ugly noses” and superiority complexes removed the facial feature reference on Wednesday amid international criticism.


Comments:

1. God loves us so much that he caused the Holocaust is what he is writing? Or, maybe the Arabs of Palestine brought their calamity on themselves? No compromise and constant rejection of diplomatic efforts while terrorizing Jews since 1920, killing many hundreds, 525 between 1936-1939 along? This is not serious thinking or knowledge of the Arab conflict with Zionism.

2. We do have privileges. We have the simple right as all other nations do to live in our national homeland and establish therein a state. Moreover, that right was recognized by the League of Nations in 1922 and by the UN in 1947.

3. Not all Arabs who resided in Palestine, many thousands recent arrivals by the way (as otherwise, why does UNRWA define a Palestine refugee has living but two years in the Mandate area?), were driven out. Most had left by May 1948 before the invasion by seven Arab countries, perhaps to avoid the heavy fighting or maybe even as they knew the Arabs not only were in the wrong, but that they were bound to lose.

4. We Jews don't really need God (although it helps) to convince a non-Jew of our rights. The Mandate was based on the Jewish people's historical connection with that territory, in fact, going back 3000 and more years. A tribal federation, two monarchies, Jews coming to the Land of Israel over the centuries in all sorts of conditions and, a mention in the New Testament and the Quaran. That this Dmitiri is ignorant, besides being boorish and hateful, is not a new discovery of the type of people who hold his views. 

5. And neither was the Holocaust a justification. It proved the need for a state prior to the mass murder.

6. The Arabs are their own worse enemy and it is they, through their rejectionism and goal to eradicate Jews, who obring upon them suffering.

7.  The 'stolen land' is that which Arabs stole from us in the 7th century.

^

A 'Who Said' Quiz

Who said:

We do not believe that there should be a Palestinian nation between Israel and Jordan and some Arabs agree with us privately. The Palestinian entity should have a tie to Jordan so that the radicals cannot build a disruptive military force. 

___________________

Answer:

8791 '2 ʎɹɐnuɐɾ 'ɹǝʇɹɐƆ ʎɯɯᴉſ ʇuǝpᴉsǝɹԀ S∩


^

MacDonald Does In The Jews in 1939

What was the understanding of the phrase "civil and religious rights" contained in the League of Nations Mandate decision of 1922?

That Mandate decision's preamble, in part, reads

the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, 

Let's review the person in charge in 1939, Malcolm MacDonald, the then Colonial Secretary, responsible for the infamous White Paper of that year.  While the new policy radically altered the Mandate's premise, severely restricted Jewish immigration and limited land purchases, MacDonald was confronted by the commission members' questions regarding the obvious distinction made by the original Mandate decision between the rights and privileges of the two ocommunities residing in the country.

Here is from his statement on June 15, 1939 at the Permanent Mandates Commission in Geneva:

The authors of the Balfour Declaration and of the mandate who envisaged duties towards the Jews and duties towards the Arabs, which should be of equal weight, cannot have supposed that those duties would be in conflict, but that they would be mutually reconcilable. They cannot have intended that these two sets of obligations should contradict each other, and meet only in a violent clash. What then are these obligations? On the one hand was the promise of "the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people" and on the other was the assurance that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine"...

But they could contradict as the intentions of the framers was that the country become the Jewish National Home. 

Let me examine these undertakings further. First, the term "National Home" which is used throughout the Declaration and the mandate, is somewhat ambiguous and has been open to various interpretations. It has been claimed that it meant that Palestine should ultimately become a Jewish State. There can be no doubt that the possibility of a Jewish State was not excluded; it was regarded as a definite possibility by some of the leading statesmen who were familiar with the intentions of those who drew up the Balfour Declaration. Thus President Wilson spoke early in 1919 of laying in Palestine "the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth", and General Smuts towards the end of the same year foretold an increasing stream of Jewish immigration into the country and "in generations to come a great Jewish State rising there once more". His Majesty's Government accept that the possibility of Palestine becoming a Jewish State was not precluded.

The obvious become "ambiguous". 

Yet in the Balfour Declaration and the mandate the terms Jewish State and Jewish Commonwealth are not employed. Instead, a term which was without precedent in constitutional charters, a term which lacked clear definition, the term "Jewish National Home" was used. It was deliberately used...Those responsible for the Balfour Declaration and the mandate were aware of these uncertainties hidden in the future, and so they chose deliberately to describe this part of their objective in Palestine by a phrase--"a Jewish National Home"--which might mean either a Jewish State or else something very much less.

Might. 

...From the beginning, the Balfour Declaration recognised certain duties to the non-Jewish population. While promising the Jewish people a National Home, it declared that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". This principle is reflected in the operative clauses of the mandate where--for example, in Article 2--it is laid down that "the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants" are to be safeguarded, and in Article 6 that "the rights and position" of the non-Jewish sections of the population are not to be prejudiced.

However, since nothing comparable to a "national home" was promised to the non-Jewish residents, it would seem obvious that the Jews were awarded a certain political primacy. 

There has sometimes been controversy as to what these phrases were intended to mean. Some exponents have sought to minimise the significance of the words and to suggest, for instance, that "civil rights" meant little more than civic rights. That is an untenable position...

Why untenable? 

And he goes off to discussing an irrelvelant document. Gibberash, actually.

...That assurance to the Arabs [referring to the Hogarth mission] must surely mean that Palestine could not one day become a Jewish State against the will of the Arabs in the country.

He continues to misinterpret the phrase: 

The words of the Balfour Declaration on the matter are strong. "Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities". The mandate says that the Administration "while ensuring that the rights and position of the other section of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate immigration under suitable conditions". The rights referred to are the normal political rights of a people. And, normally, those rights would include the power to have their voice heard against a flow of immigration which threatened to relegate them to a position of virtual inferiority in their own country. It seems to His Majesty's Government that the rights guaranteed to the Arabs in the mandate would be definitely prejudiced if, now that immigration has made the Jewish population a vast proportion of the whole population, and given it a position already of economic dominance, the mandatory Power were to continue to permit indefinitely a flow of further immigration against a strong national protest which is supported by every articulate section of Arab opinion.

Note: immigration of...Jews.  Settlement on the land by...Jews.  Obviously there is a distinction.  The whole idea behind the Mandate was, indeed, to turn it into a Jewish national home.

Perfidious Albion.

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