Israel, the west and Islam,"
BJ said:
Arabs in possession of land were asked if they held the title deeds to their properties,
they had none as property was been passed from father to son for centuries.
The Zionist settlers had printed deeds, since their occupupation of Israel and
Arabs were dispossessed.
I know this in not a popular subject, and it should have nothing to do
with us!
Unfortunately because of the tricks and deception used we were
drawn into the matter.
Arabs hate us for our part, and our friendly Zionists bombed and killed
our troops including the Hotel St Davids in the years just after WW2
terminated.
-----------------------------------------------------
RESPONSE FROM ............sm
Another fact: Israel has absorbed large numbers of Sephardic Jews
expelled from Africa by the various anti-semitic leaderships at various
times, including from the Sudan, Tunisia and beyond (Uganda too, if
memory serves). The issue has never been their Jewishness, but their
lack of education making assimilation hard IIRC, special adult literacy
programmes were set up for them. Again my memory may be wrong, but at
one point in the 1990s they had to deal with 100,000. Israel only had
then around 4.5m people (about the size of Eire).
expelled from Africa by the various anti-semitic leaderships at various
times, including from the Sudan, Tunisia and beyond (Uganda too, if
memory serves). The issue has never been their Jewishness, but their
lack of education making assimilation hard IIRC, special adult literacy
programmes were set up for them. Again my memory may be wrong, but at
one point in the 1990s they had to deal with 100,000. Israel only had
then around 4.5m people (about the size of Eire).
-------------------------------------
mizrahim many of them probably
those from the deeper arab and oriental world
sephardim are more exactly a "mediterranean" blend of south european and arab
Mizrahi Jews or Mizrahim (Hebrew: מזרחים), also referred to as Adot HaMizrach (עֲדוֹת-הַמִּזְרָח) (Communities of the East; Mizrahi Hebrew: ʿAdot(h) Ha(m)Mizraḥ), are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Babylonian era in the Middle East and the Caucasus (the East as defined during the Middle Ages).
This includes descendants of Babylonian Jews from modern Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Iran, India, Uzbekistan, Kurdish areas and Jews from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yemenite and Georgian Jews are usually included within the Mizrahi Jews group.
Today Sephardic rite make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population, and Mizrahi Jews proper are a major part of them. Before the mass immigration of 1,000,000 from the former Soviet Union, mostly of Ashkenazi rite, followers of the Sephardic rite made up over 70% of Israel's Jewish population
Today, many identify all non-Ashkenasi rite Jews as Sephardic - in modern Hebrew "Sfaradim", mixing ancestral origin and religious rite. This broader definition of "Sephardim" as including all, or most, Mizrahi Jews is also common in Jewish religious circles. During the past century, the Sephardic rite absorbed the unique rite of the Yemenite Jews and lately the Ethiopian Jewish religious leaders in Israel have also joined the Sefardic rite collectivities, especially following rejection of their Jewishness by Ashkenasi and Hassidic circles.
From the onset of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War until the early 1970s, 800,000–1,000,000 Jews left, fled, or were expelled from their homes in Arab countries; 260,000 of them reached Israel between 1948 and 1951 and amounted for 56% of the total immigration to the newly founded State of Israel.[2] 600,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim countries had reached Israel by 1972.[3][4][5] By the Yom Kippur War of 1973, most of the Jewish communities throughout the Arab World, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan, were practically non-existent.
In total it is estimated that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jews were forced out or fled from their homes in Arab countries from 1948 until the early 1970s. Some place the emigration peak to a slightly earlier time window of 1944 to 1964, when some 700,000 Jews moved to Israel from Arab countries and were dispossessed of nearly their entire property.[25]
A body representing the Jewish refugees, the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) estimated in 2006, that Jewish property abandoned in Arab countries would be valued at more than $100 billion, later revising their estimate in 2007 to $300 billion. They also estimated Jewish-owned real-estate left behind in Arab lands at 100,000 square kilometers (four times the size of the state of Israel).[3][9][26][27] estimated by Sidney Zabludoff to be at minimum $700 million in period prices and $6 billion today.[9]
The British were unashamedly pro-Arab at that point:
Internment for Jews arriving in Palestine; arming the Arabs, even
training and running the Arab legion; refusing to get involved to prevent
Arab attacks on Jews and Jewish villages (google "Etzion Bloc" note that
the land was LEGALLY BOUGHT by the settlers in the 1920s, and that the
Kfar Etzion massacre occurred the day before Israel's declaration of independence
and the official outbreak of war).
More detail than I have time to repeat here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947%E2%80%931948_Civil_War_in_Mandatory_P
alestine>
0. Arabs in Palestine historically were never a unified state or people.
For hundreds of years before
There is no "Palestinian" people, nor hasthere ever been
(except the Jews, of course).
That's not to say there haven't been longtime residents of the region,
but there are Druze, Bedouin, Hashemites, even a small number of
Christian Copts, and many other tribes represented in the group known
as "Palestinians".
This partly explains the complexities of Palestinian politics, and, since
many groups loathe each other, the tenacity of refugee camps in southern
Lebanon, the refusal of Jordan to grant West Bank people citizenship,
and so on.
1. During the late Ottoman period, Palestine was an under-developed
backwater, its trade route having largely ceased to be useful with the
advent of the Suez canal, and modern transport.
Relations between Jews,recently arrived settlers (including Zionists),
and Arabs were largely peaceful.
Note too that not all settlers of the time were Zionists in
the C20th use of the term. Theodore Hertzl (1860-1904) didn't really
come to prominence until the 1890s.
2. Much of the trouble started in the 1930s fomented by the then Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem (Haj Amin al-Husseni).
He was a religious/political figure, with a history of anti-colonialism.
He decided political advantage was to be gained by aligning with the Nazis
in Germany, and because the Jews in Palestine opposed him, he focused more
and more on his anti-semitic stance.
Remember this was during the British Mandate.
Although arguments remain as to its importance, Husseni was evidently
rabidly anti-Jewish and an educated man amongst largely illiterate
peasants, who followed his lead.
3. Jordan is an artefact of British pro-Arab interference in the region
(as was its "Arab Legion" with Brits as staff officers).
4. The British were perceived as friends of the Arab cause. Prior to
1947: they endeavoured to stop Jewish refugees from Europe, often with
considerable brutality. They armed and organised the Arabs, including
Jordan (effectively then a puppet state). They abstained in the vote on
the partition plan in the UN (arguably always unworkable anyway, and
designed to make a fledgling Israel indefensible). The US, incidentally
voted for it. The British took active steps to disarm the Jews in
Palestine and were partisan (pro-Arab) once the partition plan passed in
the General Assembly. This explains the terrorist attack on the King
David Hotel by Begin's Irgun gang (note: it doesn't excuse it!).
All of this can be found on Wikipedia and in the numerous accounts of
Palestine's history.
Go google!
S.
PS: Irrelevant fact: There is still a British Mandate post box outside
the Christchurch cathedral compound in the Old City (Jerusalem). It's
still painted red, and the Israeli postal service still empty it:
<http://goo.gl/maps/ZrOrr> TGhe area outside the Jaffa gate,
incidentally was no man's land from 1947 until 1967. The last Jewish
convoy that failed to relieve the Old City in 1947 remained there, and
the Jews were no allowed to retrieve the corpses of those who died
killed for burial. It didn't happen until they finally retook the Old
City in '67.
--
Historians will look back and say, "They did it to themselves!"
sm
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