#(Jerusalem is very British)

[nonbinary-vents]

Saw a post recently from @jewish-sideblog recently about how people view the scope of the shoah and it kind of solidified something that's been bothering me for a while now. I think one thing that goyim fundamentally don't understand about the shoah is that it had huge effects on Jewish communities in the whole world, not just Europe, and not just during the genocide itself. Like, two of my grandparents were born and grew up in the British mandate. Amin Al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem at the time, literally met up with Hitler to discuss the implementation of the shoah and a possible final solution in the Arab world. He also barred Jews from escaping to the mandate. If the shoah had just gone on a little longer, that part of my family would probably have been murdered

The shoah had gigantic ripples in the Middle East. Without it, the Mirzachi expulsion wouldn’t have been able to happen. And the expulsion still affects Mizrachim today. Most of us have bad family stories, most of us can't even visit the places we spent the diaspora in. The highest number of Jews in Islamic MENA countries is 10,000 in Iran, the place my family is from, where there used to be 100,000. In the Arab states it is so much worse, with the highest being around 1,00, but most countries having less than 50

That’s just one example, but there’s many more. This stuff went so far as to affect Ethiopia, which expelled its ancient community of Jews (or, at the very least, banned them from practicing or teaching Hebrew). Even years after the shoah, it caused so much suffering for Jews everywhere, wether Nazi countries or not. Frankly, it’s kind of baffling to realise that most people think it was a self contained event, when it was literally the climax of thousands upon thousands of years of violent and vitriolic Jew hatred— of course it would ripple. The shoah was an earth shattering event that changed Jews forever, it is something that every Jew, even ones who thankfully had no ancestors murdered because of it, feels so horrible deeply. Everyone, everyone, not just the Nazis, not just the Axis, was a part of it

[chanaleah]

So this is a great example of a fundamental misunderstanding of history!

In 1948, the land that is now Israel/Palestine was controlled by the British Empire. It wasn't owned by either Jews or Arabs in its entirety, and additionally there had not been an independent state in the land since the Jewish Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Roman Empire in 63 CE.

Secondly, the pre-State of Israel agreed to a UN partition partition plan in 1947 that guaranteed an Arab state and Jewish state in the borders shown on the map below:

On May 14, the State Of Israel declared independence within the borders shown in blue on the map. Rather than accepting an Arab state and a Jewish state, the armies of surrounding Arab states, including Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, attacked the nascent State Of Israel with the intention to destroy it in favor of an Arab state in the entirety of the former British Mandate of Palestine.

Before it was attacked, the State Of Israel had no intention to fight the Arab states or hurt the Arabs living in the borders of Israel. This is shown clearly in Israel's Declaration of Independence.

WE APPEAL — in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months — to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions. WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

Direct quotes from Israel's Declaration Of Independence.

However, during the 1948 War* the majority Palestinians living in Israel fled out of fear or were kicked out. Similarly, all of the Jews living in Judea & Samaria/the West Bank were kicked out by the Jordanian army.

Massacres were committed by both sides during the war, including the Deir Yassin massacre, in which many Palestinians were killed by right-wing Zionist militias and the Gush Etzion massacre in which many Jews were killed by the Jordanian army.

Both Palestinians and Jews had to flee/were kicked out of places in which they had resided for centuries - some examples being Lydda/Lod (for Palestinians) the Old City of Jerusalem, specifically the Jewish quarter which was later looted by the Jordanian army (for Jews).

Israel ended up winning the war -- and winning more territory than had originally been given to them. This was what the map looked like after the Armistice Agreement at the end of the 1948 war:

At the end of the war, Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan occupied Judea & Samaria/the West Bank. There was no Palestinian state.

During and in the aftermath of the 1948 War, 700,000 Palestinians became refugees from Israel, and between 17,000 and 40,000 Jews became refugees from Judea & Samaria/the West Bank and Gaza, and about 1 million Jews became refugees from the rest of the SWANA region.

This post is in no way an exhaustive or authoritative history, but it shows clearly the history of the 1948 War is much more complicated than "forcefully took that land from them".

If you would like me to make a post about history pre-1948 I can do that as well.

*I chose to call this war the 1948 war so as to be impartial as possible. Other names used include the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Israel's War Of Independence, and the 1948 Palestine War.

Keep reading below the cut for sources.

SOURCES:

[girlactionfigure]

Why are there Palestinian refugees?

In the months before the British abandoned its mandate & Israel declared independence, civil war raged as Arab factions tried to prevent the Jewish state from being born.

Of course, had the Arabs agreed to the UN's partition plan, they would have had yet another state & there would have been no war in 1948. 

But their goal was not another Arab state; it was to ensure there would be no Jewish state. 

Meanwhile, 5 #Arab armies amassed on the borders & waited for the British to leave so they could push the Jews into the #Mediterranean Sea.

As Secretary-General of the Arab League Azzam Pasha put it on the day of the Arab #invasion: 

"This will be a war of extermination & momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."

Or as the then war #criminal & fugitive #Nazi Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini put it during the invasion:

"Murder the #Jews. Murder them all!"

But before the invasion began, & starting as early as Dec 1947, Arab officers began ordering Arab residents of specific villages to flee. 

Their reasoning? Arab citizens not involved in active fighting could only: (1) "treacherously" abide the creation of a the Jewish state &/or even become citizens of same; or (2) be in the way of Arab #military deployments & potentially get caught in the crossfire.

And so, for example, on this day (March 8) in 1948, the Arab Higher Committee ordered all Arab women, children & elderly to leave Jerusalem. The order continued, "Any opposition to this order ... is an obstacle to the holy war ... & will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts.” 

In fact, the Arab Higher Committee ordered the evacuation of dozens of Arab villages between April & July of 1948 (see photo of Arab citizens fleeing below).

Meanwhile, on April 19, 1948, Jewish forces secured Tiberias, which had a population of ~6,000 #Arabs - all of whom chose to leave. In fact, they left under British military supervision.

The Jewish Community Council immediately issued a statement regarding Tiberias' Arabs: 

"We did not dispossess them; they themselves chose this course ... Let no citizen touch their property."

At around this same time, in early & mid-April of 1948, an Arab faction led by Fawzi al-Qawukji was attacking Haifa & attempting to take the city. Then, rumors spread among Haifa's Arab community that Arab air forces were about to bomb the city & ~25,000 of Haifa's Arabs fled.

As U.S. Consul-General in Haifa Aubrey Lippincott noted on April 22, 1948: "local mufti-dominated Arab leaders ... [urged] all Arabs to leave the city, & large numbers did so."

On April 23, 1948, however, #Jewish forces fought back the Arab attack & retook Haifa.

Three days later, on April 26, 1948, a British police report from Haifa noted: 

"[E]very effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe."

What were some of those "efforts?"

Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, sent future Prime Minister Golda Meir to Haifa with the direct instructions to "persuade the Arabs to stay." 

Ms. Meir was unsuccessful, however, as Haifa's Arabs told her they feared that if they stayed, they would be branded "#traitors." 

And so, another ~25,000 of Haifa's Arabs fled. 

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but despite facts on the ground, Arab leaders at the #UN began demanding the end to a fake "#massacre." 

Specifically, #Syria's UN Ambassador Faris al-Kouri, said the Jewish victory at Haifa was a "massacre" that provided "evidence that the '#Zionist program' is to annihilate Arabs within the Jewish state if partition is effected."

The #British were still on the ground, however, & the British Ambassador to the UN, Sir Alexander Cadogan, told the UN the very next day both that the fighting in Haifa had only begun as a result of "continuous attacks by Arabs against Jews" & that the "reports of massacres & deportations [were] erroneous." 

Meanwhile, after Israel declared its independence & was invaded by five Arab armies, the newly established #IDF issued an Order on July 6, 1948, making it clear that non-combatant Arab civilians were not to be harassed or expelled, nor their villages touched. 

But the Arabs were being given a very different message.

#Iraqi #PrimeMinister Nuri Said announced:

"We will smash the country with our guns & obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives & children to safe areas until the fighting has died down."

This used to be known. In fact, Arab leaders for years after the war had no qualms about repeating it.

For example, Syrian Prime Minister Haled al Azm later wrote:

"Since 1948, we have been demanding the return of the #refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave & our appeal to the UN to resolve on their return."

Similarly, #Jordan's King Abdullah wrote: 

"The tragedy of the #Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false & unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs & 400 million #Muslims would instantly & miraculously come to their rescue."

Similarly, Edward Atiyah, Secretary of the Arab League Office in #London wrote: 

"This wholesale #exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic #Arabic press & the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States & the #Palestinian Arabs enabled to re­enter & retake possession of their country.”

Even as the war still raged on Aug 16, 1948, the Arab #Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of the Galilee told #Beirut newspaper Sada al-Janub: 

“The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, & that they would return within a week or two ... Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the ’Zionist gangs’ very quickly & that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.”

A few months later, on Feb 19, 1949, the Jordanian newspaper Filastin confirmed: 

"The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies."

Even many of the Palestinian Arab refugees themselves admitted their reasons for leaving.

For example, on June 8, 1951, Habib Issa admitted to #NewYork Lebanese newspaper Al Hoda:

"Azzam Pasha assured the Arab peoples that the #occupation of Palestine & #TelAviv would be ... simple ... He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers & that all the millions the Jews had spent on land & economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean ... Arabs of Palestine [were told] to leave their land, homes & property & to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.”

Similarly, Asmaa Jabir Balasimah recalled being told by Arab leaders to "evacuate the village & return after the battle is over," & that she & others in her village left all their possessions behind "based on the assumption that we would return after a few hours." 

Again, however (& most importantly), had the Arabs agreed to Partition or even agreed to negotiate different borders with Zionist leaders who begged Azzam Pasha to make any counteroffer instead of invading with #genocidal intent, there would never have been a single Palestinian #refugee.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Today, Israeli forces went into a hospital in Jenin (it's not in Gaza, there is no border fence between Israel and Jenin, there are no security measures other than getting intel and pre-emptively stopping terrorist attacks) in order to eliminate several Hamas terrorists who were hiding in there. Because the operation would require going into a hospital, the intel had to be VERY reliable, the threat huge and immediate, and the IDF's Chief of Staff had to personally approve it. The intel indicated these terrorists were gonna carry out a suicide bombing, that would use an entire vehicle loaded with explosives, rather than a suicide bomber "just" wearing a vest with explosives. The first such terrorist attack that I know of in Israel happened on Feb 22, 1948 (before the State of Israel was established, but after the Arabs started a war against the Jews). It was carried out jointly by rogue (and antisemitic, based on the slurs they used) British soldiers, who did it in the service of the Arabs' war against Jews. They blew up the explosives on a central street (Ben Yehuda) in Jerusalem. This is a partial picture of the damage caused:

Three buildings were completely destroyed, but the impact was much wider (including glass windows shattering across the city). 58 people were killed, 49 of them immediately, while 9 more died in the hospital from their injuries. Hamas itself carried out their first terrorist attack of this type on Apr 6, 1994. A car filled with explosives bypassed a bus driving children back from school, and then blew up right in front of it. When those who were alive tried to get out of the bus, they couldn't because the driver had been killed, and they didn't know how to open the door. 8 people were murdered in total, and 55 injured, almost all kids and teenagers. An extra touch of sickness? That day was the eve of Yom Ha'Shoah, Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day. The headline screamed in Hebrew, "Blood of the Children," while in the top left corner, there's a reminder about the sirens for Yom Ha'Shoah going off at 10, to observe a national commemorative minute of silence.

There's a very nice and well intentioned campaign right now, enlisting American celebs to ask everyone to stand against antisemitism. That's incredibly important due to the global rise in antisemitism we've witnessed since Hamas' massacre, but the bigger issue to me is that so many people are ignorant on what actually constitutes Jew hatred. So in one reblog they can oppose antisemitism (and absolutely believe that this is their own stance), while in another they can help spread antisemitic narratives, including antisemitic dogwhistles, modern blood libels, erasure of Jewish rights, history and pain, and demonization of Jews. I'm not talking about people who are aware that stuff like saying "From the river to the sea" is repeating a genocidal chant against the Jews. I'm talking about people who honestly see a non-Jew posting an explanation on why anti-Zionism isn't antisemitism (even though Judaism IS Zionist, and anti-Zionism absolutely IS a tool for antisemites, and goes hand in hand with classic antisemitism), and they totally believe this, and reblog such a post, that is speaking over the majority of Jews, who are Zionist, and repeatedly try to explain how anti-Zionism hurts ALL OF US, every single Jew.

But it is a nice vid, so here:

The president of the Israeli Bar-Ilan University said at the Knesset (Israel's parliament) today that they are trying to deal with thousands of students who come to study, but are suffering from post-traumatic symptoms that impair them psychologically and cognitively, whether from the events of the Hamas massacre, or the fighting in Gaza. He mentioned that these symptoms harm every skill needed for academic work, even for people who are exceptionally gifted. BIU is the university with the fourth biggest number of students in Israel (according to 2021 numbers).

In connection to this subject, in the US, charges have been filed against a man who has threatened to blow up a local synagogue and kill Jews, following the war in Gaza.

New Zealand is another country now suspending funding to UNRWA, the UN agency whose members were found to be complicit in the Hamas massacre. The intel was reliable enough that the UN fired some of these employees, rather than suspend them pending a hearing. I first wrote about the news here. NZ is the 15th country to do this, though it should be noted that Switzerland froze its funding to this UN agency even before this latest intel, because of past antisemitism and terrorism encouragement that UNRWA was regularly responsible for. There is a continuously updated list of who's suspending its UNRWA funding at UN Watch.

This is 76 years old Menucha Cholati with her husband Israel.

On Oct 7, they each hid separately from the Hamas terrorists who invaded their community, kibbutz Kissufim, for hours on end. When Israel was finally rescued by Israeli soldiers, he asked to see his wife. He was advised that it's better not to, but he insisted. Holding on to a bag for all his and her meds, which had been pierced by bullets, he got to see his wife, only to discover that the terrorists burned her alive. May her memory be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[gusty-wind]

CHILLING REPORT FROM HOLLAND'S Prime Minister Geert Wilders

Every word in this paper has deep thought-provoking effects.

Dear friends,

Thank you very much for inviting me. I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself. It is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States was the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.

First, I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.

The Europe you know is http://changing.You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration. All throughout Europe, a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders, if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I can not read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe . These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe , street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, and city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe . With larger congregations than there are in churches. In every European city, there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam , Marseille, and Malmo in Sweden . In many cities, the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighbourhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities.

In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore'. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.

In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin . The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.

In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels , because he was drinking during the Ramadan.Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya , Israel . I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization. A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live.

San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening  if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate.

[thatdebaterguy]

Astoundingly flawed logic

So riddle me this, if Israel is committing genocide with the intent to kill all Palestinians

And has one of the best global militaries, with a budget surpassing Palestine's entire gdp

And even has nuclear weapons

Then how is Palestine still here, how is Gaza still here, how are millions of Palestinians in one of the most densely packed areas of the entire world, all still here. It literally does not fit the definition. There isn't intention to kill. It's the opposite, they've warned Gazans before bombing.

Whether in some cases they haven't warned, or if the civilians just lied, it's a war, they have no obligation to warn for bombing, the Brits and Americans sure as hell didn't warn Dresden, a bombing that killed 20,000 in a single strike, which is very close to the Palestinian civilian death toll, and yet Dresden wasn't a genocide too. Wanna know why? We didn't want to kill every single German. One interesting thing though, when Israel was founded and invaded by the Arab nations around it, what were their intentions? To block the existence of Israel.

Most likely by eradicating all Israeli civilians and soldiers in the area, to remove any possible claim Israel had over the area. Speaking of claims, Jewish people who founded Israel had lived in the area long before some of the Arab settlers had. Some of the Islamic Caliphates are regarded as the most successful settler colonial efforts in history, spreading to Spain, Morocco, the Turkic Steppes, and settling the region of Palestine too, and this all happened after the Jewish people who had founded the city of Jerusalem. There were I think around 400,000 Jews living there before Israel was created, maybe a bit less but around there. It's not a colonial state, in fact it was freed after being a British colony, no different to the way other British colonies were freed. South Africa used to include modern Namibia, but those two states separated, yet I don't hear anyone bickering about Namibia's right to exist. I know it goes vastly deeper than that comparison, but it still somewhat works.

Anyway, let's say you're living in modern Afghanistan as a woman, where your rights are being actively crushed by a group who used to be designated as a terror group before ruling the country. Are you going to try live your life peacefully and avoid being executed over the simplest things, or going into the streets, protesting, then getting beheaded. I think 99% of people would rather keep living to fight another day, than die a martyr. That's why they're Martyrs, they're the rare 1%, people like the ones who helped hide Anne Frank, or hid Jewish people in their homes. I strongly oppose Hamas, but you don't see me flying over to Palestine protesting against them, same way you don't go over to Israel to protest the Israeli government, or go live with Palestinians to show solidarity. Knowing something is evil and wanting it to end without knowing how, and acting against that evil, are both being against it, one is just activism, the other is opposition. Not many people wanna be activists when the crime is death. Is that enough proof for you?

[eretzyisrael]

Sixty-seven Hebron Jews were massacred 95 years ago

It’s another tragic anniversary: 95 years have passed since the Hebron massacre, which claimed the lives of 67 Jews. Unable to protect its Jewish inhabitants, the British mandate authorities evicted them from the city. It remained judenrein until 1967, when Israel took control. The World Jewish Congress has a useful summary:

On 23-24 August 1929, over 60 Jews were murdered in what became known as the Hebron Massacre, which would go down in history as one of the bloodiest slaughters of Jewish civilians during British rule of Mandatory Palestine.

Hebron is one of the most ancient cities in the Land of Israel and is the resting place of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs. Jews had been living peacefully in Hebron among their Muslim and Christian neighbors for hundreds of years prior to the massacre. A steady flow of religious students traveled to Hebron from the around the world to attend its yeshivot (religious seminaries) in the city.

In August 1929, violent rioters brutally attacked the Hebron Jewish community after the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, a notorious antisemite, claimed that Jews were endangering Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount.

The massacre began on 23 August when local Arabs began staging small-scale attacks. American Jewish immigrant Aharon Reuven Bernzweig, who was visiting Hebron with his wife at the time, later wrote to his family, “We had forebodings that something terrible was about to happen—but what, exactly, we did not know.” He added, “I was fearful and kept questioning the local people, who had lived there for generations. They assured me that in Hebron there could never be a pogrom, because as many times as there had been trouble elsewhere in Eretz Israel, Hebron had remained quiet. The local population had always lived very peacefully with the Arabs.”

By the next day, the violence had escalated, and mobs went door to door screaming, “Kill the Jews.” The angry crowd broke into Jewish houses and castrated, raped, and murdered the inhabitants. Many Jews went into hiding, and some were saved by Arab neighbors who hid Jewish friends until the violence had ended.

In his letter, Bernzweig described an Arab family who had protected him and dozens of other Jews: “Five times the Arabs stormed our house with axes, and all the while those wild murderers kept screaming at the Arabs who were standing guard to hand over the Jews. They, in turn, shouted back that they had not hidden any Jews and knew nothing.”

Read article in full

More about the Hebron massacre

[ugisfeelings]

Perhaps it’s apt that a dying political ideology seeks redemption in a dead discipline. As the Israeli government and public become ever more vocal and defensive about their daily practice of abuse and murder, as another Nakba is initiated with impunity and in fact legally sanctioned, liberal Zionists continue to dwell in what Saree Makdisi has called a “culture of denial.”[1] Purportedly aghast at what their Israel has become, some intellectuals—rather than honestly reckoning with the past—resort to desperate exercises in obfuscation. A new book edited by Stefan Vogt, Derek Penslar, and Arieh Saposnik, Unacknowledged Kinships: Postcolonial Studies and the Historiography of Zionism(2023), seeks both to rescue Zionism from its history of violence in Palestine and delegitimize efforts for Palestinian liberation. 

"Complexity” is the order of the day. A history of colonialism that has become clearer by the hour, both because of its increasing desperation on the ground and the efforts of committed scholars to carefully expose its methods and rhetoric, is made opaque. Devoting all their energies to language, to the cherry-picked utterances of one or another Zionist, at the complete exclusion of the material reality of Zionism in Palestine or Israel’s insidious role in the Arab world or across the three continents, is the basis of this endeavor. The editors claim—as Penslar has done since his well-known and widely criticized 2001 article “Zionism, Colonialism and Postcolonialism”—that Zionism cannot be understood as “colonial” because it was both an anti-colonial nationalist movement (even “subaltern”) not a colonial enterprise projected from a metropole and a postcolonial, developmentalist, state like so many others.[2] And if one must reluctantly claim Zionism as colonialism and Israel as colonial, that can only be done in reference to the events of 1967 and after (and even then, with extensive hand-wringing, or in the case of Johannes Becke’s contribution to the volume, tendentious comparison). The colonial project in Palestine explicitly initiated at the end of the nineteenth century by European Zionist settlers, facilitated by the British Empire in the 1920s, accelerated in the 1930s, consecrated in 1948, and continuing to this very day, is rendered irrelevant.

For the editors and a number of the contributors, “postcolonialism” refers principally to the work of Homi Bhabha and his notion of “the in-between.” The binary of colonizer and colonized is deemed insufficient for understanding Zionism by the editors, and Bhabha’s writing on the “hybridity” and “instability” produced by colonialism is taken as a guiding gesture.[3] Recourse to Bhabha and the wielding of his work explicitly against that of the anti-colonial Edward Said—Unacknowledged Kinships foil from its first paragraph onwards—has its origins in the reception of Anglo-American postcolonial theory in Israel during the 1990s. The journal Teoria ve Bikoret, founded in 1991 in Jerusalem and edited until 1999 by the Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir, was the principal forum for post-colonial theory in Israel. “Academic and journalistic texts” Ella Shohat writes of this period, “have fashioned a kind of folk wisdom that posits Homi Bhabha as having surpassed Said.” “Without engaging in any depth Said’s oeuvre,” Shohat continues in an indispensable 2004 article for the Journal of Palestine Studies “or the varied debates around postcolonial studies, the facile recital of the Bhabha-beyond-Said mantra has come to be an entrance requirement for ‘doing the postcolonial’ in Israel.”[4]

Thirty years later, the editors of Unacknowledged Kinships seek novelty. The reasons for which are political, they argue. The collaboration of postcolonial studies and Zionist historiography, the editors hope, “could help overcome the destructive competition that often exists between the struggles against racism and the struggles against anti-semitism, in favor of a joint effort to confront past and present forms of exclusion, subordination, and persecution” (5). What the editors clearly mean is that they would prefer if anti-colonial and anti-racist organizers and intellectuals would desist from criticizing Zionism and Israel on anti-colonial and anti-racist grounds. The editors are explicit later in the introduction when they claim that postcolonial scholars’ support for Palestinians and BDS is partly due to their “sometimes insufficiently complex view of the conflict” (15). The editors take ambiguity—the other keyword that dominates the book—as “the very foundation of postcolonial studies” (15). Ambiguity, they argue, must be reaffirmed. [...]

[todaysjewishholiday]

16 Menachem Av 5784 (19-20 August 2024)

The 16th of Av in 5645 saw the death of a great leader within the Jewish community of Great Britain— and indeed, all of Europe and the Mediterranean. This giant was not a rabbi or a sage but a financier, statesman, and philanthropist, who had spent the first half of his life doing his best to assimilate into the upper echelons of British society, and the remainder very deliberately reasserting his Judaism and doing all he could for global Jewish welfare. He died nine months into his hundredth year of life, having witnessed a full century of historical and social transformation at the height of the Industrial Revolution.

Moses Haim Montefiore was born in 5545 in Livorno, Tuscany to a large Sephardic merchant family with interests spread across Europe. He was named for his paternal grandfather, the patriarch who had relocated the family from Livorno to London forty years prior, and came into the world while his parents had returned to Tuscany on business for the family’s firm. Montefiore left school at a young age to begin work in another trading firm, and at the age of 18 became a trader in the London Stock Exchange. For the next thirty years he expanded his business and focused on attaining markers of social respectability, joining both the Freemasons and the local militia as Britain entered the Napoleonic Wars. Soon, through his own efforts and the good fortune of becoming brother-in-law and then stockbroker to Lord Rothschild, the British representative of the famous banking family, Montefiore’s fortune expanded exponentially. In addition to business, Montefiore devoted himself to the popular social reform campaigns of the era, including the promotion of charity hospitals and the abolition of slavery. In 1827, Montefiore and his wife went on a long voyage throughout the Mediterranean that included a visit to Jerusalem. The visit profoundly altered the course of Montefiore’s spiritual life. While he had always been proud of his Jewish heritage, Montefiore had been casual in his religious practice until his first experience of the holy city. While there, he committed himself to Shabbat and kashrut observance, and to attendance at the Torah readings in the synagogue on the second and fifth days of each week in addition to attendance at Shabbat services. He began traveling with a personal shochet and his own kashered dishes so that even when attending soirées and banquets with wealthy gentiles he would always have kosher food available. He also brought his own minyan of devoutly Jewish staff members and a personal Torah scroll so that his business travels would not interfere with his participation in religious services.

The newly devout business magnate then devoted his full energies, talents, and extensive connections to advocating for the welfare of the Jewish diaspora. He traveled to Morocco, Istanbul, Rome, Russia, and numerous other destinations specifically to use his considerable influence to combat antisemitic policies and pressure government to ensure Jewish subjects the same rights given to other citizens. Time and time again, Montefiore’s interventions were crucial. He also raised funds— and donated a significant proportion of his own wealth— to Jewish causes around the world, and especially for the welfare of the Jewish community in and around Jerusalem.

When his wife died, Montefiore had a replica of Rachel’s Tomb built as a mausoleum for her, and also established a yeshiva in her honor. He lived as a widower for another 23 years, still actively involved in a large number of charitable causes, before he was buried there beside her.

[starburst2000]

A gift for @the-ind1gen0us-jude4n, @spacelazarwolf , @magnetothemagnificent , @atiredjew , @loki-god-of-mischief-13 , @trainqueen379, @mixmangosmangoverse, @aqlstar, @thelast28yearsinohio and @homochadensistm

This is Schlep, the Israeli National Engine. He's based on a Staedler JT 42BW, and he's very strong, hard-working, brave, and caring about his passengers' safety during his trips from Haifa to Jerusalem.

Likes: Super spicy food, Mizrahi pop music (especially Ofra Haza), the sky at sunset.

Dislikes: When his service is interrupted by missile attacks, sandstorms, anyone who beats around the bush.

Schlep is the grandson of Rivka the Palestine Railways P Class, who was the Levantine National Champion back when Israel was still known as "British Mandate Palestine", until she was succeded by Ofir the EMD G12 in 1959.

[girlactionfigure]

1948 as the original sin

MAY 21, 2024

1948 AS THE ORIGINAL SIN

There is only one country in the world whose right to exist is persistently cast into question: the State of Israel. It’s no coincidence that it is the world’s only Jewish state that is subjected to this delegitimization, not only in private conversations, but in university lecture halls, the top newsrooms in the world, and the General Assembly of the United Nations. For centuries, the right of Jewish people to live — the “Jewish Question” — was cast into doubt. Today, the Jewish state is subjected to the very same rhetoric. How is “does Israel have a right to exist?” even considered a legitimate question? Why are we even entertaining it, instead of flagging it for what it is — blatant xenophobia, at best?

The anti-Israel crowd justifies its flagrant bigotry by depicting Israel’s founding as illegitimate, thereby delegitimizing the country in perpetuity. This, of course, is a blatant double standard from the get-go, as hundreds of countries across the globe had bloody establishments. What’s worse, though, is that to delegitimize Israel’s founding, these people push a blatantly false narrative. According to their story, European settler-colonizers with the backing of the European empires, America, and/or the United Nations violently came to Palestine, seized lands, and, in 1948, massacred and displaced Palestinians to establish the Jewish state. Except this is not what happened.

To be sure, Palestinians were massacred and displaced in 1948, with 750,000 fleeing or being expelled from their homes. The displacement of Palestinians completely fractured Palestinian society, and it remains an open wound to this day. 

But the very real suffering of Palestinians should not be used to fuel an ahistorical narrative with the purpose of delegitimizing the Jewish state, and, by extension, the lives of nine million people in it. 

SO WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?

The outbreak of the 1948 war was the culmination of almost three decades of Arab-Jewish violence in Palestine. The first of these violent incidents took place in 1920, during the Nebi Musa festival, when Arab rioters descended upon the ancient Jewish population of Jerusalem, murdering, pillaging, looting, and shouting “Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs!” and “death to the Jews!”

It was this event that first prompted the Jewish community in Palestine to organize a paramilitary. Arab antisemitic violence continued to escalate, with massacres in 1929, 1936, and 1938. In 1936, the right-wing Jewish paramilitary, the Irgun, began carrying out retaliatory attacks against Arabs. 

Given the rapid escalation of violence, in 1937, the British first proposed partitioning Palestine into one Jewish and one Arab state. The Jews accepted the plan reluctantly — to quote future first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist movement was prepared to accept a state “even if it’s the size of a tablecloth” — but the Arabs rejected it, so the plan was scrapped. But it wasn’t only partition that the Arabs were opposed to, seeing that two years later, the British offered the Arabs an entirely Arab state, so long as they could guarantee the rights of a tiny Jewish minority. The Arabs rejected the proposal — they wanted no Jews, period — and would continue to reject such proposals well into 1947. 

In 1947, the British handed the problem over to the United Nations, which voted in favor of partitioning the land. The Jews accepted the plan, while the Arabs infamously rejected it. For months, the Arab states had been threatening genocide of Jews should partition come to pass. After the partition vote, the Arab leadership in Palestine issued a leaflet quite explicitly threatening a second Holocaust in the Middle East, writing, “The Arabs have taken into their own hands the Final Solution of the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will soon be driven out.” 

It wasn’t just threats. The morning after partition, Arab mobs in Palestine attacked Jewish buses, marking the start of the Palestine Civil War, which later turned into the 1948 war, after five Arab states invaded immediately following Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14. 

THE JEWS OF 1948

Contrary to the ahistorical depiction of European settler-colonizers with the backing of European empires, the Jews fighting in 1948 were largely refugees and Holocaust survivors. An international arms embargo had been placed on Palestine, affecting both Jews and Arabs, but the Arabs already had established militaries and even the unofficial support of the British, whereas the Jews had nothing and had to go through incredibly risky lengths to obtain the necessary arms and equipment. 

It’s really important to remember that all this took place less than three years after the end of the Holocaust, which eradicated nearly 70 percent of Europe’s Jewish population. For the Jews of 1948, the Arab threats of extermination felt very much existential. For example, prior to the partition vote, the General Secretary of the Arab League had threatened, “Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades…We will sweep [the Jews] into the sea.”

Imagine this for a second: before World War II, the Jewish population around the world stood at 16 million (to this day, our population still hasn’t recovered). Just six years later, the global Jewish population had dwindled to 10 million. Three years later, the Arabs, outnumbering Jews about a million to one, were threatening to carry out another genocide against the very same people.

Of the Israeli casualties during the 1948, about one third were Holocaust survivors. Many were also Jewish refugees from elsewhere in the Middle East, as the Arab countries expelled some 850,000 Jews from their homes in retaliation for the 1948 war. No country in history has ever had to absorb as many refugees proportional to its total population as Israel did, in such a short amount of time. Because of this, conditions in Israel were dire, with an economy on the brink of collapse and food shortages. This picture is the opposite of that of a powerful foreign empire coming to conquer.

THE SIN OF MORAL EQUIVALENCE

Both the Jews and Arabs — including, yes, Palestinian Arabs — were responsible for expulsions and massacres during the 1948 war. In many cases, events described as “massacres” were actually battles between the two opposing parties. All of this, of course, happened within the context of a war. Framing it otherwise is a blatant distortion of the facts of history. 

Palestinians were not expelled from their homes because of their identities as Arabs or Palestinians; in the cases in which they were expelled, this occurred within the context of the Jewish paramilitaries and later the Israeli army battling with a hostile village, though, of course, innocents were caught in the crossfire and suffered the consequences. Any attempt to frame it as persecution of Palestinians on the basis of them being Palestinian is to try to draw a moral equivalence to the Holocaust, a crime which was entirely unrelated to the German war effort during World War II; in fact, the Nazi extermination campaign of Jews at times hindered the war objectives. The Nazis persecuted Jews because they were Jews, not because they were members of a hostile nation during wartime. 

“Nakba,” just like “Shoah,” the Hebrew word for Holocaust, means “catastrophe.” Constantin Zureiq, the Syrian intellectual who coined the term “Nakba,” described the Nakba not as the tragedy of the displacement of Palestinians, but rather, as the tragedy that “seven Arab states declare[d] war in an attempt to subdue Zionism, then stop[ped] impotent before it, and return[ed] on their heels.” 

The catastrophe, according to Zureiq himself, was notthat innocent people had been displaced from their homes, but that the Arabs had lost the war that they started. 

ERASURE OF ARAB ATROCITIES IN 1948

The anti-Israel crowd depicts the 1948 war as a case of an oppressor (Israel) versus the oppressed (Palestine). In reality, there was was a victor (Israel) and a loser (Palestine), with both sides committing war crimes. As far as who started the war, there is absolutely no question that the Arabs were the aggressors. As always, the true victims of the war were the innocent civilians.

The anti-Israel narrative consistently ignores the Arab atrocities that very much shaped Zionist morale during the 1948 war. The Arabs besieged 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem, depriving them of food and water, and destroying all relief trucks en route to the city. In fact, it was this siege that, four months into the war, prompted the Zionists to go from the defensive to the offensive, and subsequently led to the expulsions and massacres of Palestinians. 

Though the Arabs ended up conquering few Jewish communities, those communities that they did conquer suffered from expulsions and massacres. For example, on December 30, 1947, Arab mobs lynched 39 Jews in Haifa. On April 13, 1948, the Arabs attacked a Hadassah Hospital medical convoy, killing 79 people, mostly patients, doctors, and nurses, and burning most of them beyond recognition. On May 13, 1948, 157-220 Jews were murdered, many execution-style, by the Jordanian and Palestinian Arab forces in Kfar Etzion, with at least one attempted rape documented. When Jordan expelled the entire Jewish population of East Jerusalem, 600 Jews were murdered. The Arab forces also decapitated and paraded the heads of Jewish soldiers, disemboweled pregnant Jewish women, mutilated and dismembered Jewish women and prisoners of war, and more. 

The Palestinian Arabs were not the pure innocent victims of the war. They were the losers of the war. Those are two different things. 

Notably, while Israel has declassified many of its 1948 archives, the Arab countries have not and probably never will. As such, the historiography of 1948 is inherently biased, and the true extent of the atrocities the Arabs committed against the Jews might never be known.

THE EVOLUTION OF NAKBA MEMORY

About 750,000 Palestinians were displaced in 1948. Of these 750,000 refugees, 100,000 or so of wealthy means left Palestine before any documented expulsions. The majority of Palestinian refugees of the war, as is usual during wartime, fled out of fear, with many fleeing their villages before the Jewish forces even captured them. About 5 percent of Palestinians were actively forcibly expelled by the Jewish forces, while some 10 percent were evacuated or encouraged to leave by the Arab forces and/or the British. 

Without downplaying the pain of displacement, it’s really important to note that, unfortunately, every war produces refugees. What happened to Palestinians was sadly not unique. Yet Israel-detractors frame it as such to characterize Israel’s founding, and therefore, its entire existence, as uniquely evil and unjustifiable. If Israel was born out of sin, then Israel’s entire existence is a sin, and therefore, the moral thing to do would be to destroy it. 

As mentioned, the originator of the term “Nakba,” Constantin Zureiq, was describing the Arab military defeat, not a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people. 

Since then, however, the story of the Nakba has been distorted to completely de-emphasize the actual circumstances of the displacement, the genocidal war that the Arabs started.

The allusions to the Holocaust are intentional, beginning with the choice to use the word “Nakba,” a direct translation of the Hebrew word for “Holocaust,”  “Shoah.” In reality, the Nakba and the Holocaust have absolutely nothing in common; a more apt comparison would be the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923 or the Hindu-Muslim population exchange during the Partition of India in 1947. But nothing could possibly delegitimize the Jewish state more than comparing the Jewish state to the Jews’ worst historic oppressors. In fact, many Palestinian writers, such as Edward Said, even depicted themselves as the ultimate victims of the Nazis (despite the Palestinian leadership’s alliance with Nazi Germany). 

rootsmetals

let me tattoo this onto my forehead because people love putting words in my mouth: not a single word in this post is excusing, justifying, denying, or supporting any atrocities committed in 1948. Read that sentence again, please. groups like Hamas attack Israel because they believe that Israel is an illegitimate entity that must be wiped from the map at all costs. This idea rests on the premise that the State of Israel could only come into being through an act so egregious, so inhumane, that it has rendered Israel’s entire foundation, and thus, its entire existence, unacceptable. THAT’s why it’s important to address this distortion and weaponization of history. I’m not writing this to minimize the suffering of Palestinians.

[jewish-vents]

There’s something that has troubled me for awhile…there are a lot of calls online to take Aliyah, and I get it, I really do. I can understand the draw especially with more observant, visibly Jewish people because the targeting has become horrific. The fear is growing, and we are all looking back at history and getting generational Deja vu in a really traumatic fashion. And while I feel zero pressure to move to Israel atm…

But for Jews in the diaspora, I always wonder if there are any that are proud of where they are from, that identify with it as much as they identify being Jewish. We all have been raised to have Israel and Jerusalem in our heart and our soul. But I am as American as I am Jewish. Between both sides of my family, my blood has been in America for close to 150 years (my father’s side is 120, my mother’s side is closer to 150). If you put a picture of any natural landscape in Israel or the skyline of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv with a skyline of my home city and the Adirondacks or the Appalachian mountains, my emotional pull will be towards the latter set of pictures.

I can’t see myself ever moving to Israel. I feel that if my ancestors wanted to go back to our collective roots, they would and they’d brave the tyranny of the Ottomans and the British Occupation along with the genocidal hostility of the Arab nations. But they came to America, so I am American born and bred, as are my parents and my grandparents and my maternal great grandparents.

And I wonder, are there any other Jews that feel this way about their country? Any fellow Americans, any British, Canadian, and Australian Jews? Are there Jews in Europe and South America that feel the same? Where they will always support Israel and its right to exist, but they can never imagine living there and can only see themselves living in the country they are currently from?

I will always support Israel’s right to exist. But I am American as much as I am Jewish, so I will support from across the Atlantic.

anon, I want you to know your feelings are valid, you shouldn't be pressured to make an Aliyah for any reason, just because Israel is a Jewish country doesn't mean all Jews must live there or want to live there.

in Israel, it's a pretty common question to ask people for their ancestry (for like ice breakers), and a lot of people will be able to tell you exactly where their grandparents are from, even if they have a very mixed ancestry. for us, where we came from is not something to be erased, it's a major a part of who we are. we're not just Israeli we're polish, iraqi, yemenite, moroccan, russian, italian, ethiopian, hollandi (dutch?), sabra, etc.

I can't talk for Jews in the diaspora, I believe there would be many people who share your feelings, but I can tell you most Israelis would probably understand your pride in your ancestry.

- 🐬

[opencommunion]

"Kerem Avraham began as a small British colony founded in 1855 by the highly influential British Consul in Jerusalem, James Finn, and his wife, Elizabeth Anne Finn, who was the daughter of a noted English Hebrew scholar and herself spoke Hebrew. ... James Finn combined biblical 'restorationist' Christian thinking and missionary activities with official British civil service. He and his wife Elizabeth were originally members of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. Also crucially, he was also a close associate of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, a prominent Tory MP, a social reformer, a millennialist Christian and a key contributor to Victorian Christian Zionism and back-to-the-Bible revivalism. Shaftesbury was driven by Victorian imperialism and Christian messianic prophecy. He argued that 'Jewish restorationism' to Palestine would bring political and economic advantages to the British Empire and as a biblical prophecy would expedite the second coming of Jesus. In an article in the Quarterly Review (January 1839) Shaftesbury, who invented the myth 'A land without people, for a people without a land,' wrote:

The soil and climate of Palestine are singularly adapted to the growth of produce required for the exigencies of Great Britain; the finest cotton may be obtained in almost unlimited abundance; silk and madder are the staple of the country, and olive oil is now, as it ever was, the very fatness of the land. Capital and skill are alone required: the presence of a British officer, and the increased security of property which his presence will confer, may invite them from these islands to the cultivation of Palestine; and the Jews, who will betake themselves to agriculture in no other land, having found, in the English consul [James Finn], a mediator between their people and the [Ottoman] Pacha, will probably return in yet greater numbers, and become once more the husbandmen of Judaea and Galilee.

With the support of foreign secretary Lord Palmerston, Shaftesbury began promoting Jewish restorationism in Victorian England in the 1830s. Shaftesbury was also instrumental in the setting up of the British Consulate in Jerusalem in 1939. The public activities of Shaftesbury, James Finn and their English 'restorationist' followers—which preceded the founding of the European political Zionist movement by Theodor Herzl by nearly half a century—demonstrate clearly that 'Zionism' began as a distinctly Christian Protestant movement, not a Jewish one."

Nur Masalha, The Zionist Bible: Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory (2013)

[matan4il]

Do we have a name for the time hundreds of thousands of jews were kicked out of the surrounding middle eastern countries in and after the 1948 war? I know that the Palestinians call theirs the nakba, but, is it just that, even though those particular groups of jews had been living there for hundreds or even thousands of years, we as a whole ethnoreligious group have been kicked out so many times we don't name them any more? Or is there a name I don't know?

Hi, lovely Nonnie!

That's an excellent question.

There is a national memorial day in Israel, to remember the at least 850,000 Jews from Arab countries and Iran who were abused, persecuted, and eventually expelled. This is a process that actually started in the 1930's, before the establishment of the State of Israel, but very much intensified in the 1940's. By the 1960's, the Middle East was basically ethnically cleansed of Jews.

Here's a New York Times headline from May 16, 1948 (days into the invasion of Arab armies during Israel's War of Independence):

There was an ethnic cleansing of Jews in the Land of Israel as it existed under the British Mandate, too. For example, a Jewish community on the east bank of the Jordan River was established in 1928 for Jewish workers, and destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948. There were Jewish communities in east Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria (re-named by the Jordanians as 'The West Bank' in 1948, after they occupied that land and tried to cement the Jordanian claim to it), in Gaza... all were ethnically cleansed of Jews between 1929 and 1948.

In Israel, there are also monuments to commemorate the fate of the Jews from Arab countries and Iran. Here's one in Jerusalem:

So, since there's a remembrance day and memorials, you'd think there would be one unifying, easily identifiable term for this event, right? But sadly, there hasn't been one. Different people have used different terms, such as 'the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries and Iran' (the official term), 'the crisis of Jewish refugees from Arab countries' or 'the Jewish exodus from Arab countries,' and so on.

I have also seen people referring to it repeatedly (and of course unofficially) as the Jewish Nakba.

'Nakba' is an Arabic word which means catastrophe, so it's a fitting term for how these Jewish communities experienced what was done to them, I also think it's appropriate since most of them were Arabic speakers before the expulsion, and lastly, I think it is right to remind people that the Palestinian Nakba (a disaster of their own leadership's making, which I'm so sorry for them that they lost their homes, because their leaders rejected the 1947 two state solution) wasn't a one sided case of abuse. There was abuse of Jews in the Middle East, and it started before the State of Israel was even established. And ANY narrative that erases that part, that erases the suffering of Middle Eastern and North African Jews, is inherently antisemitic.

To any Jews who may be reading this, who come from Arab countries and from Iran, I love you, my beautiful brothers and sisters. Your story and your pain deserves to be heard and remembered.

Thank you for the ask, Nonnie. I hope I sort of managed to answer it, and that you have a great day! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[pal1cam]

For all the uneducated white liberal feminists who have the same mindset as Julia Hartley when she said to Dr. Mustafa Al-Barghouthi “Maybe you’re not used to women talking” (assuming that women in his culture and cultural environment are not given any rights or even the right to speak, while she was clearly interrupting him because he made anti-zionist remarks), then you are probably not aware of the fact that Palestinian woman are so very important in Palestinian society and their role in resistance and existence is so deeply embedded in our history and how they are the ones who give the men that strength and mental / emotional support to fight so courageously…

And if you want to know more in specific detail, in the year 1921 in the city of Nablus in the west bank Palestinian women created “The Arab Women Union Society” and that association/organization has been active ever since even under the zionist Israeli occupation… and in later years many other branches of this association were established under similar names such as “The Arab Women Union” in Beit Sahour that was established in 1956, and the one in Jerusalem established in 1929 by Zulaikha Shihabi.

This association participated in many of the strikes and protests against both the British mandate and the zionist Israeli occupation, as well as paying huge support to the protesters, revolutionaries and rebels of the 1936 and 1939 revolts and more.

So who’s “not used to women talking” now ?….

[eretzyisrael]

The October 7 attack and its aftermath have finally brought the disparate elements of this struggle against Jews to the surface, its participants surging into the streets and onto social media—suggesting that Hamas knew something important about the world that many of us didn’t see, or didn’t want to. 

When I was a reporter for an international news agency at the time of the Hamas takeover in Gaza in 2007,  I discovered that it was impolitic to mention what Hamas clearly announced in its founding charter from 1988: Namely, that “our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious,” and the Jews were “behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions, and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.” 

This didn’t sound like “Free Palestine.” But as a rule, on the rare occasions that Western news organizations felt compelled to mention the document, they left those parts out. 

The historical examples from the charter suggest that in the war against Judaism, the ideologues of Hamas understand themselves to be operating in a broad coalition and carrying on a long tradition. This is true. “Islam and National Socialism are close to each other in the struggle against Judaism,” Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem and one of the fathers of the Palestinian national movement, said in 1944. This was in a speech to members of an SS division he helped raise, made up of Bosnian Muslims. “Nearly a third of the Qur’an deals with the Jews. It has demanded that all Muslims watch the Jews and fight them wherever they find them,” he said, an idea that would reappear four decades later in the Hamas charter. When the mufti testified before a British commission of inquiry in 1936, he quoted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Tsarist forgery describing a global Jewish conspiracy, which is also the source for parts of the Hamas charter and remains popular across the Middle East. (I once found the book for sale at a good shop near the American University of Beirut.) The Hamas army, known as the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, is named for one of the mufti’s most famous proteges.

The movement became savvy enough to water down its charter a few years ago, but its leaders have remained honest about their intent. “You have Jews everywhere,” one former Hamas minister, Fathi Hammad, shouted to a crowd in 2019, “and we must attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughter and killing, with God’s will.” 

In the liberal West, no sane person would own up to believing The Protocols. (At least not yet; things are moving fast.) But an Italian can hold a prominent U.N. job, for example, after saying she believes a “Jewish lobby” controls America, and you can hold a tenured position at the best universities in the West if you believe that the only country on earth that must be eliminated is the Jewish one. 

My experience in the Western press corps was that sympathy for Hamas was not just real but often more substantial than sympathy for Jews. In Europe and North America, as we’ve now seen on the streets and on campuses, many on the progressive left have arrived at an ideology positing that one of the world’s most pressing problems is the State of Israel—a country that has come to be seen as the embodiment of the evils of the racist, capitalist West, if not as the world’s only “apartheid” state, that being a modern synonym for evil. 

Jews could no longer officially be hated because of their ethnicity or religion, but can legitimately be hated as supporters of “apartheid” and as the embodiment of “privilege.” The pretense that this is a critique of Israel’s military tactics, or sincere desire for a two-state solution, has now largely been dropped.