Comments on: Operation Cast Lead

By: themiddle

themiddle — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:19:16 +0000

Interesting article, thanks.

Of course, this committee is lying. All you have to do is go back to the Zionist congresses 10 and 20 years earlier, or the writings of Herzl, to know that Zionism was speaking about a Jewish state long before this “taking advantage.” Smells like a cover-up to me. Don’t forget that you had division in the British government back then regarding which side to support. The PM wanted the Jews to return to their historic homeland, but he had opposition from some quarters in the British government including the leadership stationed in Palestine.

Additionally, this business of “taking full advantage” is quite misleading because it indicates that something improper was being done. In fact, going back almost 20 years, the Yishuv was buying up land and developing communities on that land. This activity precedes the British by well more than a decade and if you ignore organized community funds and just go to individual funds, in the mid-1800s you already have philanthropic Jews buying up land and setting up Jewish communities.

By: wherethewindblows

wherethewindblows — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:13:53 +0000

Typo: JSTOR (not JUSTOR).

By: wherethewindblows

wherethewindblows — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:11:16 +0000

I don’t doubt that for a moment. A particularly interesting article published by JUSTOR: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 164 (Nov. 1932) pp. 108-115 give some extraordinarily interesting statistics and analyses, including the significant rise in living standard amongst ‘Palestinian’ Arabs between 1919 and 1931 . . . that’s the ironic bit (unfortunately you will need log-in rights, which I have, to gain access to the full article). But the Eastern Committee of the British Cabinet, which met on 5th Dec. 1918 had this to say: ‘Now, as regards the facts, they are these. First, Palestine has been conquered by the British, with only very insignificant aid from small French and Italian contingents, and it is now being administered by the British. The Zionist declaration of our Government has been followed by a very considerable immigration of Jews. One of the difficulties of the situation arises from the fact that the Zionists have taken full advantage – and are disposed to take even fuller advantage – of the opportunity which was then offered to them. You have only to read, as probably most of us do, their periodical ‘Palestine’, and, indeed, their pronouncements in the papers, to see that their programme is expanding from day to day. They now talk about a Jewish State. The Arab portion of the population is well-nigh forgotten and is to be ignored. They not only claim the boundaries of the old Palestine, but they claim to spread across the Jordan into the rich countries lying to the east, and, indeed, there seems to be very small limit to the aspirations which they now form. The Zionist programme, and the energy with which it is being carried out, have not unnaturally had the consequence of arousing the keen suspicions of the Arabs. By ‘the Arabs’ I do not merely mean Feisal and his followers at Damascus, but the so-called Arabs who inhabit the country. There seems, from the telegrams we receive, to be growing up an increasing friction between the two communities, a feeling by the Arabs that we are really behind the Zionists and not behind the Arabs, and altogether a situation which is becoming rather critical . . .’ You’ll find this if you look up the 1920 Palestinian Riots. The point is that a) the Arabs didn’t trust the British and b) they were anxious (to say the least) about Zionist designs in Palestine, and this was given as two motives for their subsequent attacks on Jews. As you will have read, the British did little to protect the Jews, in fact set about attempting to disarm them. What is heart warming is that in the 1929 massacres some Arab neighbours hid a number of Jews from the mob (unlike the 70+% support of suicide bombers in this day and age).

By: themiddle

themiddle — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 07:23:30 +0000

Okay, the abstract says, “Immigration of Yemeni Jews to (pre-state) Palestine and to Israel is commonly divided into three major periods: The last decades of the Ottoman rule, during which approximately 5,000 people arrived from Yemen to Palestine, most of them in two peak phases (1882, 1911-1914) ; the British Mandate (1919-1948), when immigration from Yemen (and Aden) amounted to 15,837 ; and the early years of Israeli statehood…”

You’ll notice the 1920s aren’t listed in there. Also, in pure numbers, she lists 21,000 arriving between 1882 and 1948. However, the Jewish population was 600,000 in 1948 and 84,000 in the 1922 census, and increase of 500,000+ in the same period 15,000 Yemenites arrived.

I’m not saying the Yemenites aren’t important, it’s just that they’re not from Russia/Poland/Romania where you have substantial contingents emigrating prior to 1945, particularly from Russia.

Here’s a useful resource although this site tends to lean too pro-Palestinian.

By: wherethewindblows

wherethewindblows — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:12:07 +0000

O wondrous TM, here is one article, and the dates are earlier than the ones I mentioned, but I’m still trying to track down another I read a little while ago.
muse.jhu.edu/l...

By: wherethewindblows

wherethewindblows — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:11:50 +0000

I’ll attempt to track down the source. Being ‘numerically challenged’ it could well be an earlier date, but there most certainly was a period when there numbers were greater and Britain deliberately discouraged further European immigration.

By: themiddle

themiddle — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 07:50:36 +0000

Where did you read that Yemenite Jews were the dominant group to arrive in the 20s? That’s not true. There was a large contingent that arrived in the late 1800s/early 1900s but by the 20s, you’re into European Jews dominating for the next couple of decades when the Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries begin to arrive.

By: wherethewindblows

wherethewindblows — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:51:58 +0000

O TM, I am not for a moment denying that the Arabs who felt both betrayed (by the British and Europe) and fearful of the Jews (particularly the Yemeni as the majority came from there in the 1920s) weren’t involved in the massacres: one can do the most awful things when fear rather than reason prevails (and there wasn’t a great deal of reason in the agitation and response to the political agitation). The other thing is that Zionist dreams of a return to a historical homeland had freely published in America particularly and so the Arabs would have been aware of their long term goals. Personally, I think it was inevitable following the innumerable pogroms over the centuries (as hinted at in the Balfour Declaration), but the Arabs had quite a different perspective, regardless of whether pre 1948 property was bought or not. Intense negotiation rather than murder might have been the way to go in those uprisings and massacres.

By: themiddle

themiddle — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 05:50:51 +0000

The conflict has indeed retained elements of the original issues.

By the way, I’m happy to see somebody actually bother to read up on the history. As you can imagine sources matter so be judicious in what you read. Jabotinsky is hated by the Left and pro-Palestinian crowds so much of what you see about him is quite negative. Ironically, while he is depicted in negative terms, he was actually a champion of democracy. I’m not a fan of the movements created following his philosophies but he was a very astute individual who read the tea leaves correctly on a number of things.

It is also ironic that the people leading the massacres are the ones whom you believe to be the ones feeling under siege. In those years, whenever a Jewish settlement was built – virtually always on purchased land – they perfected a method of constructing the buildings rapidly overnight along with defenses because of the great likelihood of being attacked. This was not a function of perceived weakness but actually of perceived strength and it was a severe miscalculation on the Arabs’ part that has repeated itself time after time, almost always at great cost to the Arabs. Witness 1948, 1967, 1973, 2000-2007 and even Lebanon 2006 and now 2008.

By: wherethewindblows

wherethewindblows — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 01:29:50 +0000

Very interesting. I looked up Jabotinsky, TM, and the Palestinian riots of 1920, the Balfour Declaration and the massacres of 1929. It is quite clear that the Arabs were fearful of being swamped both politically and economically by Jewish emigration and that they felt that the Balfour Declaration was betrayal by the British. On the other hand (having read a 1932 article by a W. Preuss) that the Declaration was motivated by a desire to fulfill ‘the inevitable desire of a people scattered, persecuted and martyred under unbearable conditions all over the world to fashion for itself and abode in the land of its historic origin. This indestructible wish underlines the entire problem in all its aspects’. The same article gives details of immigration statistics which are interesting in themselves. So the essence of the original conflicts between Arab and Jew still remain, and certainly not helped by British equivocation.