[WCUSP] Joanne's "Roots of the ME Conflict"
yvonne simmons
roweenayvonne at yahoo.com
Tue Jan 16 19:56:23 CST 2007
--- sdyck at hevanet.com wrote:
> From: <sdyck at hevanet.com>
> To: "omesc-1 listserve" <omesc-l at lists.pdx.edu>,
> "Democracy Now!"
> <digest-service at list.democracynow.org>,
> "CAIR" <info at cair.com>, "ADC" <adc at adc.org>,
> "aastudies" <aastudies at yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: Fw: Joanne's "Roots of the ME Conflict"
> Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:28:14 -0800
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Z Alani
> To: Z Alani
> Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 3:39 PM
> Subject: Joanne's "Roots of the ME Conflict"
>
>
> AN EXCELLENT 'REFRESHER'...Especially for those who
> are clueless...!-Z.
>
>
>
> From Al-Sahafa Newspaper
> January 2007 Issue, page 22
>
> Al-Sahafa is available online at
> http://www.al-sahafa.us/
>
>
>
>
>
>
> THE ROOTS OF THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT
>
>
>
> By Joanne McKenna
>
>
>
> Judaism is a religion of the highest ethical and
> moral values. A Semite is a member of any of the
> peoples whose language is Semitic and includes
> Arabs, Hebrews, Phoenicians, Arameans, Canaanites,
> Babylonians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, etc.
>
>
>
> "Zionism", a term coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum,
> is a movement formerly for establishing a Jewish
> National Home in Palestine and now for advancing the
> State of Israel.
>
>
>
> Political Zionism owes its origin to Theodor Herzl,
> an Austrian journalist who died in 1904. Shocked by
> European outbursts of hatred against Jews, Herzl
> developed a philosophy of Jewish nationalism. In
> his Diaries and in his book The Jewish State, Herzl
> proposed that Jews are a superior people whose
> presence causes hatred and hostility. Wherever the
> Jew goes, according to Herzl, he comes into
> competition with gentiles ( goyim) whose response is
> to try to destroy Jews. It was urgent, therefore,
> that Jews establish a Jewish state to which all Jews
> must go or face destruction. Any Jew who did not go
> to the Jewish State was an anti-Semite because he
> preferred living in a gentile world. At first
> Herzl thought that the Jewish State should be
> established in Africa but then decided on Palestine.
> He wrote that the state should be a
> re-establishment of the kingdoms of Solomon and
> David and should extend from the Suez Canal to
> Turkey, including much of Lebanon.
>
>
>
> In 1897, Herzl organized the World Zionist
> Organization and tried to interest Russia, Germany,
> Italy and the Vatican into supporting his dream.
> None was willing to help impose a Jewish State on
> the Arab world. He persisted, saying, "I shall lead
> a people without a country to a country without a
> people." In 1904, a Herzl supporter, Israel
> Zangwill, made the startling discovery that there
> were Muslim and Christian Palestinians living in
> Palestine. Herzl responded, "They are hardly of
> any consequence. We shall simply spirit the
> penniless natives across the borders."
>
>
>
> When Herzl died in 1904, Chaim Weitzmann became the
> leading spokesman of Zionism. Born in Russia, he
> migrated first to Switzerland and then to England.
> He was a brilliant chemist and became known to top
> British officials for his discovery of an acid
> essential to the manufacture of cordite – a
> powerful explosive.
>
>
>
> On July 4, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson published
> his Fourteen Points for future peace. It affirmed
> belief in "the right to self-determination" of all
> native peoples. The Arabs, including the
> Palestinians, looked to the United States as the
> light of the world and the guardian of human rights.
>
>
>
>
>
> In 1915 Great Britain urged the Arabs to revolt
> against the Ottoman Turkish Empire and promised that
> the Arabs could look forward to independence and
> self-determination as their reward. Included in
> the territories promised independence was Palestine.
>
>
>
> In 1916 Britain and France signed the secret
> Sykes-Picot agreement dividing up between themselves
> the Ottoman Empire. France would expand its
> territory to include Lebanon and Syria. Britain
> would include in its domain Palestine and Iraq.
>
>
>
> Meanwhile, during the darkest days of World War I,
> Chaim Weitzmann and Nahim Solow persuaded the
> British that they could have world Jewish support if
> they would promise to help the cause of Jewish
> nationalism. In November 1917, Britain issued the
> Balfour Declaration stating that "His Majesty's
> government views with favor 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."
>
>
>
> The population of Palestine in 1917 was 8% Jewish
> and 92% Muslim and Christian.
>
>
>
> In September 1918 General Allenby occupied
> Palestine.
>
>
>
> In 1918 President Wilson sent the King-Crane
> Commission to the Arabs to discover their wishes.
> The Commission reported back that 90% of the
> population of Palestine was against the Zionist
> program which was a violation of the principle of
> people's rights. The Commission reported, "A
> National Home for the Jewish people cannot be
> accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the
> civil and religious rights of the existing
> non-Jewish communities in Palestine."
>
>
>
> The Arabs asked that the United States be given
> trusteeship and bring them to independence. The
> 1920 San Remo conference gave the mandate over
> Palestine to Great Britain.
>
>
>
> During the years of the British Mandate over
> Palestine, the British killed about 6000
> Palestinians and the British decision to support
> Zionism against the will of the Palestinians was
> probably one of the greatest blunders in British
> history. It completely destroyed any respect that
> the Arabs had for Great Britain.
>
>
>
> In 1925 Russian born Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky,
> who was converted into an active fighter for
> Zionism by the anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia in
> 1903, established the Revisionist Zionist Alliance.
> The party's principal aim was to change Chaim
> Weizmann's moderate policies toward the British into
> relentless pressure on Great Britain for Jewish
> statehood, with a Jewish majority on both banks of
> the Jordan River.
>
>
>
> The Irgun Zvai Leumi and some members of Lehi (The
> Stern Gang) came from the ranks of the Revisionists.
> The Herut party, a component of the Likud, was born
> of Revisionist Zionism.
>
>
>
> In an effort to calm Arab fears, Britain issued in
> 1939 a White Paper promising to limit Jewish
> immigration to no more than 1/3 the population of
> Palestine. This angered the Zionists and their
> terrorists went on a rampage, assassinating Lord
> Moyne, ambushing High Commissioner McMichael and
> seizing and murdering British hostages.
>
> On July 22, 1946, future Israeli Prime Minister
> Menachem Begin was head of the Irgun Zvai Leumi. On
> his orders, members of the Irgun, dressed as Arabs,
> exploded a bomb at the King David Hotel in
> Jerusalem, which had been the base for the British
> Secretariat. 91 people were killed: 28 British, 41
> Arabs, 17 Jews and 5 others. An additional 45
> people were injured.
>
> Britain gave up and turned the problem over to the
> newly formed United Nations in 1946.
>
>
>
> According to Chapter 1, Article 1, Point 2 of the
> United Nations Charter, the purpose of the United
> Nations is "to develop friendly relations among
> nations based on the principle of equal rights and
> the self-determination of peoples…"
>
>
>
> In 1883 there were 200 Jewish families in the whole
> of Palestine. In 1917, when Great Britain promised
> the favor of a National Jewish Home in Palestine,
> there were 55,000 Jews in Palestine. Jews in 1917
> were 8% of the population and owned 2.5% of the
> land. Muslim and Christian Palestinians were 92% of
> the population and owned 97.5% of the land.
>
>
>
>
>
> In 1947, the United Nations, with strong pressure
> from the Western Powers, recommended that Palestine
> be divided into three parts – a Jewish State, an
> Arab State and an International Zone of Jerusalem
> which would remain under U.N. trusteeship. The
> Jews, now 1/3 the population due to immigration,
> were to have 56.5% of the land. The Palestinian
> Muslim and Christian natives, 2/3 the population,
> were to have 43% of the land. In what was to be
> the Jewish State, there were 498,000 Jews who owned
> 9.4% of the land and 497,000 Muslim and Christian
> Palestinian natives who owned 90.6% of the land, 90%
> of the olive groves, half the citrus groves and
> 10,000 businesses and shops.
>
>
>
> The Palestinians made known their opposition to
> eviction from their own property with rioting and
> strikes.
>
>
>
> It was necessary that these human obstacles be
> removed from the path of Zionist progress and
> nationalism.
>
>
>
> The most accurate and detailed accounts of how the
> Zionists solved this problem can be found in books
> written by authors who have served in the Israeli
> government. The late Israeli Prime Minister
> Menachem Begin was in 1948 the leader of the Jewish
> terrorist group known as the Irgun Zvai Leumi. In
> his book The Revolt he told of the night of April 9,
> 1948:
>
>
>
> "On the 9th of April, our men captured the village
> of Deir Yassin. One of our tenders carrying a loud
> speaker exhorted in Arabic all women, children and
> the aged to leave their homes and to take shelter on
> the slopes of the hill…Because they refused to
> leave, our men were compelled to fight for every
> house to overcome the enemy. We used large numbers
> of hand grenades. The civilians who disregarded our
> warnings suffered inevitable casualties. Panic
> overwhelmed the Arabs…In the rest of the country
> Arabs began to flee in terror even before they
> clashed with Jewish forces…shouting 'Deir Yassin,'
> 'Deir Yassin.' … As a result Eretz Israel was
> cleared of 635,000 Arabs."
>
>
>
> What Mr. Begin does not mention is that the village
> of Deir Yassin was in the International Zone of
> Jerusalem and its people were wards of the United
> Nations. The people of Deir Yassin had been
> friendly to the Jews and were unarmed. The Red
> Cross investigator who went out to see the village
> on April 10 found only one woman and two children
> alive. 254 bodies were pulled from the village
> well and stone quarry.
>
>
>
> Thereafter, vans with loud-speakers were sent to
> other villages warning them of a similar fate.
> Yigal Allon led his troops of the Palmach into what
> was proposed by the U.N. to be the Arab State in
> Palestine. By May of 1948, as quoted from his own
> account: "There were left before us only five days
> before the threatening date, May 15, 1948 (when
> British troops would be withdrawn). We saw a need
> to clear the inner Galilee and to create a Jewish
> territorial succession in the entire area of upper
> Galilee. The long battles too weakened our
> forces…We therefore looked for means which did not
> force us into employing forces in order to cause the
> tens of thousands of sulky Arabs who remained in
> Galilee to flee…I gathered all the Jewish Mukhtars
> (village mayors) who have contacts with Arabs in
> different villages and asked them to whisper into
> the ears of some Arabs that a great Jewish
> reinforcement has arrived in Galilee and that it is
> going to burn all the villages of the Huleh. They
> should suggest to these Arabs as their friends, to
> escape while there is still time…The tactic
> reached its goal completely…wide areas were
> cleared."
>
>
>
> When Israeli President Chaim Weitzmann heard of
> this, he explained to U.S. Ambassador McDonald, "It
> was a miraculous clearing of the land – a
> miraculous simplification of Israel's task."
>
>
>
> The Palmach, the Irgun and the Stern Gang (Lehi) had
> penetrated territory designated by the U.N. for an
> Arab State and were advancing their lines into the
> International Zone of Jerusalem BEFORE May 14, 1948,
> when the last British troops left Haifa. The
> armies of the neighboring Arab States moved into the
> Arab portion of Palestine and the International Zone
> of Jerusalem when Israel announced its independence
> as the Jewish State on May 15, 1948.
>
>
>
> In 1949, when the armistice was called and the
> cease-fire lines were drawn, Israel had expanded
> from 56.5% of Palestine to 77.4% of Palestine and
> there were 750,000 homeless Palestinian Muslims and
> Christians.
>
>
>
> Violence and a war followed when the U.N. voted to
> recommend a Zionist Jewish State in Palestine
> against the will of the majority of the population.
> The State of Israel won the war, expanded its
> boundaries, evicted most of the Palestinians,
> confiscated their lands without compensation and
> "sold" most of the land to the Jewish National Fund.
> In the Charter of the Jewish National Fund, it is
> prohibited for any non-Jew to dwell on, rent or be
> employed on such land. 90% of Israeli agricultural
> land was now "closed" to the native Palestinians.
> According to United Nations statistics, about
> 750,000 Palestinians were evicted from their homes
> and homeland, and denied their human and civil
> rights as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of
> Human Rights.
>
>
>
> In 1956, Israel, Great Britain and France, operating
> in conspiracy, attacked Egypt. Israel occupied the
> Sinai. President Eisenhower declared that
> aggression should not be rewarded and threatened
> sanctions unless Israel withdrew from sovereign
> Egyptian territory. Israel withdrew and a U.N.
> Emergency Force was established to separate the
> combatants.
>
>
>
> In 1967, President Nasser of Egypt requested the
> U.N. to remove the U.N. Emergency Forces. Israel,
> which has never permitted any U.N. forces on its
> side of a cease-fire line, decided to use this
> opportunity to seize the Sinai. According to an
> article in The Cleveland Jewish News of June 23,
> 1972, Israel "no longer maintains that Israel's
> offensive was a reaction to the Egyptians opening
> fire." Other testimony made it clear that Israel
> was in no danger. Jordan and Syria came to the aid
> of Egypt when the latter was attacked on June 5,
> 1967. Israel won the Six-Day War and captured
> territories from all three of the neighboring Arab
> countries, immediately adopting a policy of creeping
> annexation by evicting Arabs from their homes, using
> the "infamous, tyrannical and inhuman" Defense
> Regulations of 1945. (The words "infamous,
> tyrannical and inhuman" were the words of Jewish
> lawyers in 1945 when the same practices were applied
> by the British against Palestinian Jews.) By 1967,
> 385 Palestinian towns and villages had
> disappeared. Between 1967 and 1972 the Israeli
> military destroyed 71 more towns and villages and
> placed Jewish settlements in their place. The
> process of evicting Palestinians and establishing
> Jewish settlements in their place is a violation of
> the U.N. Charter, Security Council resolution 242
> and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 which
> Israel signed but consistently ignores.
>
>
>
> The process of creating facts and expanding Israel
> borders continued in the West Bank of the Jordan
> River, Gaza, the Golan Heights of Syria and the
> Sinai Peninsula of Egypt.
>
>
>
> U.S. contributions, both public and private,
> assisted Israel in this program. Another 300,000
> Palestinians lost their homes and entered the
> refugee camps in 1967, as did 750,000 Egyptians,
> 100,000 Syrians and 50,000 Lebanese.
>
>
>
> On November 22, 1967, the U.N. Security Council
> passed Resolution 242. Its main clauses state that
> acquisition of territory by military conquest is
> inadmissible; that the states involved must
> terminate all claims or states of belligerency while
> respecting and acknowledging the sovereignty,
> territorial integrity and political independence of
> every state in the area and their right to live in
> peace within secure and recognized boundaries, free
> from threats or acts of force. Israel would
> withdraw from areas occupied in 1967 and would get
> right of passage through Arab waterways. There was
> to be a just solution to the refugee problem. U.S.
> Secretary of State Rogers announced on December 9,
> 1969, that the U.S. would support Israel's existence
> but not its conquests. Israel and U.S. Zionists
> denounced the Rogers proposal and it was shelved.
>
>
>
> In 1971, Egypt and Jordan agreed to use U.N.
> representative Gunnar Jaring and U.N. Resolution 242
> as the basis for peace. Israel refused. The U.S.
> abandoned all pretense of even-handedness or
> impartiality and began large scale supplies of
> offensive and defensive weaponry to Israel. The
> U.S.S.R. began large scale shipments of defensive
> military equipment to Arab states. The cost of
> this weaponry was in the billions.
>
>
>
> In July 1972, President Sadat of Egypt expelled
> 17,000 Russian military advisors and sent signals to
> the U.S. that he wanted a peaceful settlement. At
> the same time, he presented the Arab case to the
> U.N. The response from the U.S. was to continue the
> supply of sophisticated weaponry to Israel and to
> block Arab hopes of using the U.N. by employing the
> American veto in the Security Council.
>
>
>
> In the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonot of July
> 14, 1972, Israeli journalist Y. Ben Porath stated:
> "It is the duty of the Israeli leaders to explain to
> the public with clarity and courage a number of
> facts…the first of these is that there is no
> Zionism, no settlements or Jewish State without the
> eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their
> lands."
>
>
>
>
>
> On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched an
> offensive to regain the lands that Israel was
> steadily annexing – thanks to U.S. support and
> inaction. It is to be noted that they engaged
> Israeli troops in Egyptian Sinai and the Syrian
> Golan Heights which were under Israeli occupation.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ###
>
>
>
>
>
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