A short synopsis of
Jewish History and the Arab Israeli conflict r5
Jews have the absolute right for their homeland. Zionism the movement itself
was created during the second half the 1800′s. Jews purchased a substantial
amount of territories in Palestine-Israel (see testimony of the Mufti of
Jerusalem in front of the British Peel Commission - 1937) from local sheikhs
and lords and built settlements there. This dates as early as 1860, that is 79
years before WWII.
During all of this time Jews kept migrating back to their historic homeland
which comprised of two kingdoms: the Kingdom of Israel Kingdom of Judah Kingdom of Israel Kingdom of Judah Israel
Romans conquered Israel Temple
Which was followed by these conquests:
Byzantines in 313; Persian in 614; Arabs Muslims 636 CE; Crusaders 1099; and
the Mamluks in 1291.
Then came the Ottoman Empire in 1517. In 1564 the Ottoman Empire encouraged
and stimulated Jewish immigration which added over 10,000 new Jewish returnees
to Palestine-Israel (The Ottoman land records for Palestine showed that the
government owned over 90% of the land) and the British Rule 1918-1948.
During the time of the Roman rule of Israel Judea
revolted against the Roman rule. The Romans crushed the rebellion, exiled many
Jews out of the country, seized many others and turned them into slaves
deporting them to Rome Palestine
For 600 years or so, Arab Muslims imperialism spread throughout the Middle East from Arabia . Among other conquests, the Arabs conquered Judea-Palestine,
killing many of the local Jewish population, and converting many into Islam.
The story of how the Arabs got to Palestine
During the 19th and 20th century, when Arabs had little to no interest in the land of Israel League of Nations under the San Remo Treaty of 1920 assigned the
British "The Mandate for Palestine Lausanne
The original Mandate territory included what is today Israel Gaza Judea and Samaria Jordan Golan Heights . The
British had their own agenda and divided the country up. They gave to the Arabs
the allocated land which had been Mandated to the Jewish people in violation of
the San Remo Treaty: everything East of the Jordan river . This land which was intentionally given to the
Arabs constituted 80% of the land allocated to the Jewish people. The
British gave the land to the Hashemite Kingdom Golan Heights to the French who ruled Syria Iraq
In the meanwhile a conflict emerged over territorial boundaries between the
Jewish inhabitants and the Arabs. The U.N. proposed a deal to split the
remaining land of the British Mandate for Palestine
The true and detailed facts and history is much more voluminous and complex.
The problems Israel faces is that it is not as quick to explain the 4000+ years
of Jewish history in Israel to counter the Arab lies, obfuscation and
propaganda. Lies are easier to spread. However, upon close examination of
the historical facts, the lies are exposed as baseless propaganda and should be
dismissed as such.
It should be understood that only a small segment of history is being presented
here. I did not enumerate anything about how Arabs used terror and violence
since the beginning of the conflict. I did not mention that before Arab
nationalism and Muslim radicalism took over. The small Arab community was glad
that the Jews were coming back to their ancestral homeland, providing an
economic boost and jobs to the region, (even king Faisal was delighted.) I did
not enumerate or discuss in detail the Arab-Palestinian refugees without telling
how and why they became refugees.
I might also mention that the Arab countries expelled over a million Jewish
people and their children, confiscated their assets, businesses, homes and Real
estate property (120,440 sq. km. or 75,000 sq. miles, which is five-six times
the size of Israel Jordan
YJ Draiman
Jews have the absolute right for their homeland. Zionism the movement itself was created during the second half the 1800′s. Jews purchased a substantial amount of territories in Palestine-Israel (see testimony of the Mufti of Jerusalem in front of the British Peel Commission - 1937) from local sheikhs and lords and built settlements there. This dates as early as 1860, that is 79 years before WWII.
During all of this time Jews kept migrating back to their historic homeland which comprised of two kingdoms: the
Romans conquered
Which was followed by these conquests:
Byzantines in 313; Persian in 614; Arabs Muslims 636 CE; Crusaders 1099; and the Mamluks in 1291.
Then came the
During the time of the Roman rule of
For 600 years or so, Arab Muslims imperialism spread throughout the
During the 19th and 20th century, when Arabs had little to no interest in the
The original Mandate territory included what is today
In the meanwhile a conflict emerged over territorial boundaries between the Jewish inhabitants and the Arabs. The U.N. proposed a deal to split the remaining land of the British Mandate for
The true and detailed facts and history is much more voluminous and complex. The problems Israel faces is that it is not as quick to explain the 4000+ years of Jewish history in Israel to counter the Arab lies, obfuscation and propaganda. Lies are easier to spread. However, upon close examination of the historical facts, the lies are exposed as baseless propaganda and should be dismissed as such.
It should be understood that only a small segment of history is being presented here. I did not enumerate anything about how Arabs used terror and violence since the beginning of the conflict. I did not mention that before Arab nationalism and Muslim radicalism took over. The small Arab community was glad that the Jews were coming back to their ancestral homeland, providing an economic boost and jobs to the region, (even king Faisal was delighted.) I did not enumerate or discuss in detail the Arab-Palestinian refugees without telling how and why they became refugees.
I might also mention that the Arab countries expelled over a million Jewish people and their children, confiscated their assets, businesses, homes and Real estate property (120,440 sq. km. or 75,000 sq. miles, which is five-six times the size of
YJ Draiman
A short synopsis of Jewish History and the Arab Israeli conflict! r2
A short synopsis of Jewish History and the Arab Israeli conflict! r2
Jews have the absolute right for their homeland. Zionism the movement itself was created during the second half the 1800′s. Jews purchased a substantial amount of territories in Palestine-Israel (see testimony of the Mufti of Jerusalem in front of the British Peel Commission) from local sheikhs and lords and built settlements there. This dates as early as 1860, that is 79 years before WWII.
During all of this time Jews kept migrating back to their historic homeland which comprised of two kingdoms: the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. They were driven out of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 720, B.C.E. The Babylonians in 586, B.C.E., drove the Jews out of the Kingdom of Judah, including Jerusalem. Then followed the Persians in 536, and the Hellenistic Syrian Seleucid Rulers in 332 BCE. Jews - The Macabees re-conquered Israel in 166 BCE.
Romans conquered Israel in 63 C.E., and in 70 A.D. destroyed the Jewish second Temple.
Which was followed by these conquests:
Byzantines in 313; Persian in 614; Arabs Muslims 636 CE; Crusaders 1099; and the Mamluks in 1291.
Then came the Ottoman Empire in 1517. In 1564 the Ottoman Empire encouraged and stimulated Jewish immigration which added over 10,000 new Jewish returnees to Palestine-Israel (The Ottoman land records for Palestine showed that the government owned over 90% of the land) and the British Rule 1918-1948.
During the time of the Roman rule of Israel, the Jews in the kingdom called Judea revolted against the Roman rule. The Romans crushed the rebellion, exiled many Jews out of the country, seized many others and turned them into slaves deporting them to Rome and other places. Not only that, they changed the name of the land from Provincia Judea to Palestine to humiliate the Jews.
For 600 years or so, Arab Muslims imperialism spread throughout the Middle East from Arabia. Among other conquests, the Arabs conquered Judea-Palestine, killing many of the local Jewish population, and converting many into Islam. The story of how the Arabs got to Palestine is the story of conquest, imperialism and occupation.
During the 19th and 20th century, when Arabs had little to no interest in the land of Israel, Jews bought massive amounts of land and resettled there. After WWI the Allied Powers, the international community and the League of Nations under the San Remo Treaty of 1920 and confirmed in the 1920 treaty of Sevres, assigned the British "The Mandate for Palestine" as trustee over the land so that a Jewish state would be created in that land. The British had their own agenda in mind and violated the Treaty.
The original Mandate territory included what is today Israel; Gaza, Parts of Sinai, West Bank (Judea and Samaria), Jordan and the Golan Heights. The British had their own agenda and divided the country up, thereby violating the Treaty. They gave to the Arabs the allocated land which had been Mandated to the Jewish people in violation of the San Remo Treaty: everything East of the Jordan river. This land which was intentionally given to the Arabs constituted 80% of the land allocated to the Jewish people. The British gave the land to the Hashemite Kingdom for the Arab population in order to create a new State: Trans-Jordan. The British also traded the Golan Heights to the French who ruled Syria for oil in Iraq. Thus, after already separating the country into one Arab state Trans-Jordan (a new state in history, at the expense of the Jewish people), which is present day Jordan, they intended to break up the remaining Jewish land West of the Jordan River, present day Israel and wrongfully give it to the Arabs.
In the meanwhile a conflict emerged over territorial boundaries between the Jewish inhabitants and the Arabs. The U.N. proposed a deal to split the remaining land of the British Mandate for Palestine (yes, split yet again) into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The Jewish leadership accepted the proposal, provided the Arabs also accept it. The Arabs declined. Thus the 1948 war began. A war in which the Arabs with armies from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and local militias of Arabs, and help on a smaller scale from the armies of Algeria and Libya attacked the new Jewish entity. The Arab coalition had the weapons and a large army and were confident on victory, to the extent, that they asked the local Arab inhabitants to vacate the land while they decimated the Jews. But fate had other plans. Through divine intervention, the Arabs lost that war. Many Arab civilians fled their homes because their Arab leadership told them to. Some were panicked by rumors. There were only a few incidents with civilians. (It is an important fact that during the war of 1948, Jewish settlements that were seized by Arab forces were razed to the ground – Kfar Etzion for example and the remaining population there killed).
The true and detailed facts and history is much more voluminous and complex. The problem Israel faces is that it is not as quick to explain the 4000+ years of Jewish history in Israel to counter the Arab lies and propaganda. Lies are easier to spread. However, upon close examination of the historical facts, the lies are exposed as baseless propaganda and should be dismissed as such.
It should be noted only a small segment of history is being presented here. I didn’t enumerate anything about how Arabs used terror and violence since the beginning of the conflict. The Arabs attacked Jews in Israel as early as 1830's. I did not mention that before Arab nationalism and Muslim radicalism took over, the small Arab community was glad that the Jews were coming back to their ancestral homeland, providing an economic boost and jobs to the region, (even king Faisal was delighted.) I did not enumerate or discuss in detail the Arab-Palestinian refugees without telling how and why they became refugees.
I might also mention that the Arab countries expelled over a million Jewish people, confiscated their assets, businesses, homes and Real Estate (120,440 sq. km. 75,000 sq. miles, which is five to six times the size of Israel and valued in the trillions of dollars). About 650,000 of those Jewish refugees and their children from Arab countries were resettled in Greater Israel. It is time for the Arab countries who expelled the million Jewish people and their children to resettle the Arab-Palestinian refugees in their own countries, and or Jordan, and put an end to this conflict thus end the misery and displacement of the Arab Palestinians. This will bring about peace and coexistence which the people so rightfully desire and deserve. It will bring economic prosperity and an increase in the standard of living for all the people.
YJ Draiman
YJ Draiman for Mayor of Los Angeles 2017
YJ Draiman for Mayor of Los Angeles 2017
It is my understanding that based on our constitution; People "shall have the right to resist any person or persons seeking to abolish their constitutional rights, should no other remedy be possible".
All the governments' authority emanates from the people. The people are not satisfied with the rather poor performance of our government. It is time to elect a new slate of candidates, whose main concern are the people.
A nation's corruptive and corrosive power could only exist by the nation's apathy. Therefore as people of a democratic country, we must rise above this apathy and vote for the right people in public office. We should vote for people who care about the everyday working class, who want what is best for the people.
My main interest is not making money, but building an organization. I am an efficiency expert and a troubleshooter. My goal is to bring Los Angeles back to economic prosperity.
Instinct is no guide to political conduct. Effective leadership is always forced - whatever its motives - to represent itself as a carrier of ideas embodying purposes. All truly great achievements in history resulted from the actualization of principals, not from the clever evaluation of political condition. A good and effective leader must care about the people and address their needs.
For a man to be elected as mayor of Los Angeles, he must have a strong will and the guts to prevail. To become mayor of the people you have to overcome the handicap of the political machine and special interests groups. You must motivate the people to vote for you in order for them to survive in these hard economic times.
If you want to see a transformation of attitudes towards the people of Los Angeles, with the goal to improve economic conditions and a strong and effective government, I urge you to vote for me.
Your humble servant
YJ Draiman
For Mayor of Los Angeles 2017
Draiman Mayoral Candidate Interview - Dec. 24, 2012 ...
Draiman Mayoral Candidate Interview - Dec. 24, 2012 ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAhC83qfFXg
Dec 30, 2012 - Uploaded by YJ DraimanYJ Draiman - LA Mayoral Candidate 2013 TV Interview December 24, 2012. www.draimanformayor2013.com.
18:04Saturday, February 28, 2015
In the whole of the Middle East out of only 1.6 million Arabs, the only Arabs that have complete political and religious freedom All of them live in one Jewish State of Israel.
The Qur'an 17:104 - states the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people
In the whole of the Middle East out of only 1.6 million Arabs, the only Arabs that have complete political and religious freedom
All of them live in one Jewish State of Israel.
In the whole of the Middle East out of only 1.6 million Arabs, the only Arabs that have complete political and religious freedom
All of them live in one Jewish State of Israel.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Layman's Guide to the Middle East Conflict
The Qur'an 17:104 - states the land belongs to the Jewish people
Layman's Guide to the Middle East Conflict
by Steve Maltz
How many times have you been approached by someone and asked the question, "so what do you think about what's happening in the Middle East"? How frustrated have you been with your inability to string together a few coherent words, let alone a solid, robust argument to support your views? You are not alone, hours of study and a Ph.D. are the minimum requirements here for a full understanding of the intricacies and subtleties of a situation that doesn't even have a history that people can agree on.
There is nothing more confusing than the Israel/Palestinian conflict. Millions of words have been written and spoken about it, but how much of it has truly sunk in, how much of it has made sense, how much of it has been untainted by personal opinion or editorial slant? Jews and Zionists will tell you one thing and Arabs and Arabists will tell you the opposite! Surely they can't both be right, surely there can only be one truth, one set of proven historical events that can unravel the whole mess. Unfortunately it isn't that straightforward. The situation is so complex, puzzling and emotionally charged that it is well-nigh impossible to get an objective viewpoint it is difficult to find historical sources with no 'axes to grind', commentators who could be accepted as truly impartial. Nevertheless please indulge me over the next few minutes, while I try to unravel the mystery, sweep away the web of confusion, set my course for the heart of the matter and try to make sense of it all.
There are two main issues to look at. Firstly, who really owns the land, particularly the area known as the 'West Bank' and, secondly, what is the origin of the Palestinian refugee situation?
Let's first go back to the 19th Century and look at the 'lie of the land'. Palestine, as it was called then (a name given by the Romans in the 1st Century in an effort to remove any Jewish associations with the land) was a poor country, ruled by absentee Turkish landlords, as part of the crumbling and corrupt Ottoman empire. By all accounts the land was largely barren and uninhabited, its population was either nomadic or largely involved with agriculture, despite the poor environment. Sir John William Dawson, writing in 1888, said, "no national union and no national spirit has prevailed there. The motley impoverished tribes which have occupied it have held it as mere tenants at will, temporary landowners, evidently waiting for those entitled to the permanent possession of the soil" (Modern Science in Bible Lands - New York 1890 - pp. 449-450). In 1835, Alphonse de Lamartine wrote, "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw indeed no living object, heard no living sound, we found the same void, the same silence …" (Recollections of the East, Vol I (London 1845) pp 268).
Thanks to the Turks, the land had been totally neglected. Hundreds of years of abuse had turned the country into a treeless waste, with malaria-ridden swamps, a sprinkling of towns and an unliveable desert in the south. This was the position in 1880, and this is incontestable fact.
But now we start to get discrepancies. How many people DID live in the land at that time, and WHO were they? Jewish sources put the figure at between 100,000 and 250,000. Arab sources put the figure at about 480,000 (456,000 Arab, 24,000 Jewish). And who were these Arabs? Arab sources would simply say that these were indigenous people, Arabs who have lived in this land for generations. Jewish and independent sources say otherwise. They would point to immigrations from Egypt (to escape heavy taxes), Algeria, Turkey and elsewhere. There are suggestions that up to 25% of the Moslem population of Palestine in the 19th century were immigrants.
A final word here from the author of `Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn". According to the American author Mark Twain's independent eye- witness account in 1867, "The Innocent's Abroad", the land was barely populated, just a collection of small villages in a dry, barren land. This complete book is available on the Internet, so you can check it for yourself. Here's his summary.
"Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince … It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land … Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies … Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago … Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village … Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth … Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?" …" (The Innocents Abroad (New York 1966) - summary of Palestine visit)
Palestine was simply an outpost of the corrupt and decaying Turkish Ottoman Empire, a part of Greater Syria. It was not a country or a state in the manner of, say, an England or Germany at that time. It was simply a collection of villages that happen to exist within the geographical region known as Palestine. Although many Arabs did own their own homes, the majority were the poor "fellahin", who worked as hired hands for the landowners. There was no nationalism in the land, no feeling of belonging to a "people", loyalty was to the local clan or village. Arabs did not see themselves as "Palestinians" and often referred to their homeland as Southern Syria.
Jews had lived in the land right from biblical times, though, in the 19th century, they were very much the minority. The first major wave of Jewish immigration started in the 1880s and, by the end of the 19th century, Jewish population had tripled to over 80,000 (Arab sources).
This included the foundation of the Jewish settlement of Rishon-le- Zion, where 40 Jewish families settled - followed later by more than 400 Arab families from Egypt and elsewhere. This was a community that worked and was at peace. The Arabs saw the benefits of what the Jews were doing to the land and joined them. Between 1882 and 1914 pioneering Jews started, slowly, to transform the land. They worked on the swamps and the undrained rivers. Life was tough, if you didn't die of malaria, you could be killed by Bedouins. Soon Jewish villages were springing up all over, and the towns of Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed and Haifa started to grow. In 1909 they founded the first modern Jewish city, Tel Aviv. Life was still tough, although disease wasn't so much the problem. Attacks by Arab neighbours increased, even though, through the efforts of these Jewish pioneers, life for all in the land was improving - including the Arab neighbours.
Newspapers and other media sources today give the impression that Israel "occupy" land once owned by people living in a "Palestinian state". But evidence is to the contrary. For a start, the Arabs in no way saw themselves as "Palestinians". When the First congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919, the agreement was that "we consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria". The only people who considered themselves "Palestinians" in the first half of the 20th century were the Jewish inhabitants! Even the Jewish national newspaper was called "The Palestine Post" (now called "The Jerusalem Post").
The other point concerns ownership of the land. Did Jewish immigrants seize it or was the land acquired legally? Land settled in by these first immigrants in the 1880s was bought from the absentee Turkish landlords, who were eager for the extra cash. The land initially settled in was the uncultivated swampy cheap and empty land. Later on they bought cultivated land, some of it at exorbitant prices. In his memoirs, King Abdullah of Jordan wrote "… the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping". Up until 1948, with the formation of the State of Israel, no land was seized or acquired in any way other than through legal means.
In the 20th century, Arabs as well as Jews were immigrating into Palestine, mainly from Egypt, TransJordan, Syria and Lebanon. Between 1922 and 1931, when the country was administered by the British, illegal Arab immigrants (i.e. extra to the agreed quotas) comprised almost 12% of the Arab population. The Hope Simpson Report acknowledged in 1930 that there was "uncontrolled influx of illegal immigrants from Egypt, TransJordan and Syria". The rate of immigration increased during the early 1930s, which was a period of prosperity in Palestine. The Syrian Governor of Hauran admitted in 1934 that 30,000-36,000 people from his district entered Palestine that year and settled there. In 1939, Winston Churchill said "Far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied until their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up (increase) the Jewish population". This is an important (though much contested) point, because it dispels the myth that the Palestinian people have lived there for generations.
When we talk about Palestinian refugees, displaced as a result of the formation of the State of Israel, consider how many of them would have been as recent to the land as the Jews themselves! So now we reach that magic date, 1948, the formation of the State of Israel. And the major point of contention the Palestinian refugees. This is where objectivity flies out of the window and we get the sharpest divide in people's perceptions of actual historic events.
In a nutshell, what happened was that the day after Israel became a country, it was invaded by Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Within 2 weeks, against all odds, Israel was victorious, resulting in an expansion of territory and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who had been living in Palestine. As a result of these events not one but two refugee situations were created.
Just under 750,000 Arabs (U.N. estimate) lost their homes. These became the `Palestinian' refugees. They lost their homes through two main reasons. Some were driven out by the Jewish (Israeli) army, others fled after being told to do so by Arab army commanders, expecting an eventual victory (i.e. when the Jews would be driven out of the land), at which time people could return to their homes.
Apart from extremists on either side, people generally accept these as the main reasons, though the proportions (i.e. what percentage were driven out or told to leave) would vary wildly, depending on your viewpoint. The Palestinian website, http://www.palestinehistory.com/palst.htm concedes that "about half probably left out of fear and panic …", which is a grudging concession to the Jewish view. The quote continues "… while the rest were forced out to make room for Jewish immigrants from Europe and from the Arab world". This leads us to examine the second refugee situation, the lesser known and the largest one.
Up until 1948, Jews had lived in most of the Arab Muslim countries of the Middle East. In most cases they had been there over 1000 years before Islam even existed. From 1947 hundreds of Jews in Arab lands were killed in government-organized rioting, leaving thousands injured and millions of dollars in Jewish property destroyed. In 1948 Jews were forcibly ejected from Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, who confiscated property from the fleeing Jews worth tens of billions in today's dollars. Of the 820,000 Jewish refugees created by this situation, 590,000 were absorbed by Israel.
Now we get to the real point of this article. All the facts presented so far are from an endlessly contested history. People have argued about these facts until the cows come home and have got nowhere in the process. So I'm now going to ask you to move on from the murkiness of endless debate and into the light of certainties. And the certainty is as clear cut as they come. You can witness it with your very eyes. It is a fact that cannot be contested.
Palestinian refugees still exist, in camps, on the West Bank, in Gaza and elsewhere. Have you ever wondered why?
The 820,000 Jewish refugees who were forcibly ejected from Arab countries where they had often lived for thousands of years were all welcomed and integrated into Israel or the Jewish world elsewhere, where they became full citizens. There are no Jewish refugee camps. The 750,000 Arab refugees who were displaced in 1948, were placed into squalid refugee camps by fellow Arabs who had just gone to war (and lost) on their behalf but were unwilling to pay for the consequences. Incredibly, over 50 years later, over a million of these poor people are still in these camps, despite billions of dollars of relief paid by rich Arab states, the United Nations, the EU and others. Where on earth has this money gone and why on earth are they still in camps and not integrated into Arab society?
Palestinian Arabs are no doubt a peaceful, welcoming and gifted people, but they have been the greatest victims of the whole sorry affair, pawns in a wider struggle orchestrated by their powerful Arab brethren. For reasons known only to their political and religious masters they have lived for two or three generations within the bounds of these camps. Isn't a refugee camp meant to be a temporary home, as it has been for millions of refugees in other situations, until the people could be relocated to homes of their own? Not so here. Palestinians were never allowed to be "ordinary" refugees. They have been kept in a form of forced captivity for a sinister purpose. A purpose that has succeeded in transforming a peace-loving gentle people into terrorist pariahs and has provided an atmosphere where it is considered holy and noble to send your young men and women out as living weapons of destruction to blow up other young men and women. What must this do to their national psyche, when suicide is seen as a positive ideal? Let's be honest here and consider who is really responsible for this tragedy. It is not Israel. Can't they see who their real enemy is?
"But they lost their homeland", you may say. This is true, though, as I have suggested, many would have been recent immigrants to the land, rather than having lived there for generations, as suggested by the propaganda. And, of course, they were surrounded by oil-rich neighbours who shared their race, culture and religion. A homeland in Jordan, for example, would have been perfectly possible and logical. But let's look at it in a wider context. When I walk the streets and look around I see people of every hue and shade, I hear accents ranging from the Russian Urals to the Hindu Kush. These are not people who have been born in my country, these are people who have relocated here, many as refugees. There is nothing unique about Palestinians! Let's look at other recent refugee situations. Quoting from Encyclopaedia Brittanica,
"The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the postrevolutionary civil war (1917-21) caused the exodus of 1,500,000 opponents of communism. Between 1915 and 1923 over 1,000,000 Armenians left Turkish Asia Minor, and several hundred thousand Spanish Loyalists fled to France in the wake of the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. When the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, more than 2,000,000 Chinese fled to Taiwan and to the British crown colony of Hong Kong. Between 1945 and 1961, the year that the communist regime erected the Berlin Wall (opened 1989), over 3,700,000 refugees from East Germany found asylum in West Germany … The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 resulted in the exchange of 18,000,000 Hindus from Pakistan and Muslims from India--the greatest population transfer in history. Some 8,000,000-10,000,000 persons were also temporarily made refugees by the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 … During the 1980s and early '90s, the principal source of the world's refugees was Afghanistan, where the Afghan War (1978-92) caused more than 6,000,000 refugees to flee to the neighbouring countries of Pakistan and Iran. Iran also provided asylum for 1,400,000 Iraqi refugees who had been uprooted as a result of the Persian Gulf War (1990-91). The breakup of Yugoslavia, for example, displaced some 2,000,000 people by mid-1992."
Then, of course, the Jews themselves, over the last 3000 years, have been `relocated' more times than you could count.
And what of the "West Bank" or the occupied West Bank, as it is more often known? It is true that Israel "occupy" the land, since gaining it as a result of the victory in the Six Day War in 1967, but who did they occupy it from? Well, believe it or not, the West Bank itself was illegally seized by Jordan after 1948. After doing so, they made it an area forbidden to Jews can you imagine the fuss there would be if Israel adopted this same attitude with Arab settlers! So who did Jordan take the West Bank from? Before 1948 the West Bank was part of the area administered by the British as part of the British Mandate. It didn't belong to them, they were just caretakers. Before that, the West Bank called Judea and Samaria by the Jews - was just the eastern part of Palestine, occupied by whoever happened to live there, Jew or Arab. It was not land owned by any state, as Palestine was just a neglected province of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. So, in reality, the West Bank has not legally ever belonged to any State in modern history. So when Jewish settlers make their home there, they are doing so on land that has been legally bought, not seized from anyone else, whether a State or individuals.
The crisis in the Middle East is over a strip of land the size of Wales, a hoped-for safe haven for a people with historical links to the land going back over 4000 years, a people who have not, in truth, been welcome anywhere else in the world. The fact that this land is surrounded by over a dozen nations gripped by a religion characterized by military conquest and subjugation is one of those tragedies of history that make you realize that there's more than meets the eye in the affairs of man. Israel is surrounded by nations that hate it intensely because its very existence is an affront to their religion. And try as they might, with whatever tactics they have at their disposal even if this includes the callous exploitation of a whole people, the Palestinians they will do their best to "right" the situation. They have failed to date, but they won't give up.
Layman's Guide to the Middle East Conflict
by Steve Maltz
How many times have you been approached by someone and asked the question, "so what do you think about what's happening in the Middle East"? How frustrated have you been with your inability to string together a few coherent words, let alone a solid, robust argument to support your views? You are not alone, hours of study and a Ph.D. are the minimum requirements here for a full understanding of the intricacies and subtleties of a situation that doesn't even have a history that people can agree on.
There is nothing more confusing than the Israel/Palestinian conflict. Millions of words have been written and spoken about it, but how much of it has truly sunk in, how much of it has made sense, how much of it has been untainted by personal opinion or editorial slant? Jews and Zionists will tell you one thing and Arabs and Arabists will tell you the opposite! Surely they can't both be right, surely there can only be one truth, one set of proven historical events that can unravel the whole mess. Unfortunately it isn't that straightforward. The situation is so complex, puzzling and emotionally charged that it is well-nigh impossible to get an objective viewpoint it is difficult to find historical sources with no 'axes to grind', commentators who could be accepted as truly impartial. Nevertheless please indulge me over the next few minutes, while I try to unravel the mystery, sweep away the web of confusion, set my course for the heart of the matter and try to make sense of it all.
There are two main issues to look at. Firstly, who really owns the land, particularly the area known as the 'West Bank' and, secondly, what is the origin of the Palestinian refugee situation?
Let's first go back to the 19th Century and look at the 'lie of the land'. Palestine, as it was called then (a name given by the Romans in the 1st Century in an effort to remove any Jewish associations with the land) was a poor country, ruled by absentee Turkish landlords, as part of the crumbling and corrupt Ottoman empire. By all accounts the land was largely barren and uninhabited, its population was either nomadic or largely involved with agriculture, despite the poor environment. Sir John William Dawson, writing in 1888, said, "no national union and no national spirit has prevailed there. The motley impoverished tribes which have occupied it have held it as mere tenants at will, temporary landowners, evidently waiting for those entitled to the permanent possession of the soil" (Modern Science in Bible Lands - New York 1890 - pp. 449-450). In 1835, Alphonse de Lamartine wrote, "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw indeed no living object, heard no living sound, we found the same void, the same silence …" (Recollections of the East, Vol I (London 1845) pp 268).
Thanks to the Turks, the land had been totally neglected. Hundreds of years of abuse had turned the country into a treeless waste, with malaria-ridden swamps, a sprinkling of towns and an unliveable desert in the south. This was the position in 1880, and this is incontestable fact.
But now we start to get discrepancies. How many people DID live in the land at that time, and WHO were they? Jewish sources put the figure at between 100,000 and 250,000. Arab sources put the figure at about 480,000 (456,000 Arab, 24,000 Jewish). And who were these Arabs? Arab sources would simply say that these were indigenous people, Arabs who have lived in this land for generations. Jewish and independent sources say otherwise. They would point to immigrations from Egypt (to escape heavy taxes), Algeria, Turkey and elsewhere. There are suggestions that up to 25% of the Moslem population of Palestine in the 19th century were immigrants.
A final word here from the author of `Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn". According to the American author Mark Twain's independent eye- witness account in 1867, "The Innocent's Abroad", the land was barely populated, just a collection of small villages in a dry, barren land. This complete book is available on the Internet, so you can check it for yourself. Here's his summary.
"Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince … It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land … Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies … Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago … Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village … Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth … Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?" …" (The Innocents Abroad (New York 1966) - summary of Palestine visit)
Palestine was simply an outpost of the corrupt and decaying Turkish Ottoman Empire, a part of Greater Syria. It was not a country or a state in the manner of, say, an England or Germany at that time. It was simply a collection of villages that happen to exist within the geographical region known as Palestine. Although many Arabs did own their own homes, the majority were the poor "fellahin", who worked as hired hands for the landowners. There was no nationalism in the land, no feeling of belonging to a "people", loyalty was to the local clan or village. Arabs did not see themselves as "Palestinians" and often referred to their homeland as Southern Syria.
Jews had lived in the land right from biblical times, though, in the 19th century, they were very much the minority. The first major wave of Jewish immigration started in the 1880s and, by the end of the 19th century, Jewish population had tripled to over 80,000 (Arab sources).
This included the foundation of the Jewish settlement of Rishon-le- Zion, where 40 Jewish families settled - followed later by more than 400 Arab families from Egypt and elsewhere. This was a community that worked and was at peace. The Arabs saw the benefits of what the Jews were doing to the land and joined them. Between 1882 and 1914 pioneering Jews started, slowly, to transform the land. They worked on the swamps and the undrained rivers. Life was tough, if you didn't die of malaria, you could be killed by Bedouins. Soon Jewish villages were springing up all over, and the towns of Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed and Haifa started to grow. In 1909 they founded the first modern Jewish city, Tel Aviv. Life was still tough, although disease wasn't so much the problem. Attacks by Arab neighbours increased, even though, through the efforts of these Jewish pioneers, life for all in the land was improving - including the Arab neighbours.
Newspapers and other media sources today give the impression that Israel "occupy" land once owned by people living in a "Palestinian state". But evidence is to the contrary. For a start, the Arabs in no way saw themselves as "Palestinians". When the First congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919, the agreement was that "we consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria". The only people who considered themselves "Palestinians" in the first half of the 20th century were the Jewish inhabitants! Even the Jewish national newspaper was called "The Palestine Post" (now called "The Jerusalem Post").
The other point concerns ownership of the land. Did Jewish immigrants seize it or was the land acquired legally? Land settled in by these first immigrants in the 1880s was bought from the absentee Turkish landlords, who were eager for the extra cash. The land initially settled in was the uncultivated swampy cheap and empty land. Later on they bought cultivated land, some of it at exorbitant prices. In his memoirs, King Abdullah of Jordan wrote "… the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping". Up until 1948, with the formation of the State of Israel, no land was seized or acquired in any way other than through legal means.
In the 20th century, Arabs as well as Jews were immigrating into Palestine, mainly from Egypt, TransJordan, Syria and Lebanon. Between 1922 and 1931, when the country was administered by the British, illegal Arab immigrants (i.e. extra to the agreed quotas) comprised almost 12% of the Arab population. The Hope Simpson Report acknowledged in 1930 that there was "uncontrolled influx of illegal immigrants from Egypt, TransJordan and Syria". The rate of immigration increased during the early 1930s, which was a period of prosperity in Palestine. The Syrian Governor of Hauran admitted in 1934 that 30,000-36,000 people from his district entered Palestine that year and settled there. In 1939, Winston Churchill said "Far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied until their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up (increase) the Jewish population". This is an important (though much contested) point, because it dispels the myth that the Palestinian people have lived there for generations.
When we talk about Palestinian refugees, displaced as a result of the formation of the State of Israel, consider how many of them would have been as recent to the land as the Jews themselves! So now we reach that magic date, 1948, the formation of the State of Israel. And the major point of contention the Palestinian refugees. This is where objectivity flies out of the window and we get the sharpest divide in people's perceptions of actual historic events.
In a nutshell, what happened was that the day after Israel became a country, it was invaded by Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Within 2 weeks, against all odds, Israel was victorious, resulting in an expansion of territory and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who had been living in Palestine. As a result of these events not one but two refugee situations were created.
Just under 750,000 Arabs (U.N. estimate) lost their homes. These became the `Palestinian' refugees. They lost their homes through two main reasons. Some were driven out by the Jewish (Israeli) army, others fled after being told to do so by Arab army commanders, expecting an eventual victory (i.e. when the Jews would be driven out of the land), at which time people could return to their homes.
Apart from extremists on either side, people generally accept these as the main reasons, though the proportions (i.e. what percentage were driven out or told to leave) would vary wildly, depending on your viewpoint. The Palestinian website, http://www.palestinehistory.com/palst.htm concedes that "about half probably left out of fear and panic …", which is a grudging concession to the Jewish view. The quote continues "… while the rest were forced out to make room for Jewish immigrants from Europe and from the Arab world". This leads us to examine the second refugee situation, the lesser known and the largest one.
Up until 1948, Jews had lived in most of the Arab Muslim countries of the Middle East. In most cases they had been there over 1000 years before Islam even existed. From 1947 hundreds of Jews in Arab lands were killed in government-organized rioting, leaving thousands injured and millions of dollars in Jewish property destroyed. In 1948 Jews were forcibly ejected from Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, who confiscated property from the fleeing Jews worth tens of billions in today's dollars. Of the 820,000 Jewish refugees created by this situation, 590,000 were absorbed by Israel.
Now we get to the real point of this article. All the facts presented so far are from an endlessly contested history. People have argued about these facts until the cows come home and have got nowhere in the process. So I'm now going to ask you to move on from the murkiness of endless debate and into the light of certainties. And the certainty is as clear cut as they come. You can witness it with your very eyes. It is a fact that cannot be contested.
Palestinian refugees still exist, in camps, on the West Bank, in Gaza and elsewhere. Have you ever wondered why?
The 820,000 Jewish refugees who were forcibly ejected from Arab countries where they had often lived for thousands of years were all welcomed and integrated into Israel or the Jewish world elsewhere, where they became full citizens. There are no Jewish refugee camps. The 750,000 Arab refugees who were displaced in 1948, were placed into squalid refugee camps by fellow Arabs who had just gone to war (and lost) on their behalf but were unwilling to pay for the consequences. Incredibly, over 50 years later, over a million of these poor people are still in these camps, despite billions of dollars of relief paid by rich Arab states, the United Nations, the EU and others. Where on earth has this money gone and why on earth are they still in camps and not integrated into Arab society?
Palestinian Arabs are no doubt a peaceful, welcoming and gifted people, but they have been the greatest victims of the whole sorry affair, pawns in a wider struggle orchestrated by their powerful Arab brethren. For reasons known only to their political and religious masters they have lived for two or three generations within the bounds of these camps. Isn't a refugee camp meant to be a temporary home, as it has been for millions of refugees in other situations, until the people could be relocated to homes of their own? Not so here. Palestinians were never allowed to be "ordinary" refugees. They have been kept in a form of forced captivity for a sinister purpose. A purpose that has succeeded in transforming a peace-loving gentle people into terrorist pariahs and has provided an atmosphere where it is considered holy and noble to send your young men and women out as living weapons of destruction to blow up other young men and women. What must this do to their national psyche, when suicide is seen as a positive ideal? Let's be honest here and consider who is really responsible for this tragedy. It is not Israel. Can't they see who their real enemy is?
"But they lost their homeland", you may say. This is true, though, as I have suggested, many would have been recent immigrants to the land, rather than having lived there for generations, as suggested by the propaganda. And, of course, they were surrounded by oil-rich neighbours who shared their race, culture and religion. A homeland in Jordan, for example, would have been perfectly possible and logical. But let's look at it in a wider context. When I walk the streets and look around I see people of every hue and shade, I hear accents ranging from the Russian Urals to the Hindu Kush. These are not people who have been born in my country, these are people who have relocated here, many as refugees. There is nothing unique about Palestinians! Let's look at other recent refugee situations. Quoting from Encyclopaedia Brittanica,
"The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the postrevolutionary civil war (1917-21) caused the exodus of 1,500,000 opponents of communism. Between 1915 and 1923 over 1,000,000 Armenians left Turkish Asia Minor, and several hundred thousand Spanish Loyalists fled to France in the wake of the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. When the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, more than 2,000,000 Chinese fled to Taiwan and to the British crown colony of Hong Kong. Between 1945 and 1961, the year that the communist regime erected the Berlin Wall (opened 1989), over 3,700,000 refugees from East Germany found asylum in West Germany … The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 resulted in the exchange of 18,000,000 Hindus from Pakistan and Muslims from India--the greatest population transfer in history. Some 8,000,000-10,000,000 persons were also temporarily made refugees by the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 … During the 1980s and early '90s, the principal source of the world's refugees was Afghanistan, where the Afghan War (1978-92) caused more than 6,000,000 refugees to flee to the neighbouring countries of Pakistan and Iran. Iran also provided asylum for 1,400,000 Iraqi refugees who had been uprooted as a result of the Persian Gulf War (1990-91). The breakup of Yugoslavia, for example, displaced some 2,000,000 people by mid-1992."
Then, of course, the Jews themselves, over the last 3000 years, have been `relocated' more times than you could count.
And what of the "West Bank" or the occupied West Bank, as it is more often known? It is true that Israel "occupy" the land, since gaining it as a result of the victory in the Six Day War in 1967, but who did they occupy it from? Well, believe it or not, the West Bank itself was illegally seized by Jordan after 1948. After doing so, they made it an area forbidden to Jews can you imagine the fuss there would be if Israel adopted this same attitude with Arab settlers! So who did Jordan take the West Bank from? Before 1948 the West Bank was part of the area administered by the British as part of the British Mandate. It didn't belong to them, they were just caretakers. Before that, the West Bank called Judea and Samaria by the Jews - was just the eastern part of Palestine, occupied by whoever happened to live there, Jew or Arab. It was not land owned by any state, as Palestine was just a neglected province of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. So, in reality, the West Bank has not legally ever belonged to any State in modern history. So when Jewish settlers make their home there, they are doing so on land that has been legally bought, not seized from anyone else, whether a State or individuals.
The crisis in the Middle East is over a strip of land the size of Wales, a hoped-for safe haven for a people with historical links to the land going back over 4000 years, a people who have not, in truth, been welcome anywhere else in the world. The fact that this land is surrounded by over a dozen nations gripped by a religion characterized by military conquest and subjugation is one of those tragedies of history that make you realize that there's more than meets the eye in the affairs of man. Israel is surrounded by nations that hate it intensely because its very existence is an affront to their religion. And try as they might, with whatever tactics they have at their disposal even if this includes the callous exploitation of a whole people, the Palestinians they will do their best to "right" the situation. They have failed to date, but they won't give up.
20 Quick Facts About Jerusalem and The Arab-Israeli Conflict
The Qur'an 17:104 - states the land belongs to the Jewish people
20 Quick Facts About Jerusalem and The Arab-Israeli Conflict
1. Nationhood and Jerusalem: Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam.
2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E; the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.
4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.
7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.
9. Arab and Jewish Refugees In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.
10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.
11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.
12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.
13. The Arab - Israeli Conflict; The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.
14. The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land. Autonomy under the Palestinian Authority has supplied them with weapons.
15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.
16. The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs: Of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.
17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.
18. The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.
19. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
20. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
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JERUSALEM
By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat,
sat and wept,
as we thought of Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung up our lyres,
for our captors asked us there for songs,
our tormentors, for amusement,
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion."
How can we sing a song of the Lord on alien soil?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither,
let my tongue stick to my palate
if I cease to think of you,
if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory
even at my happiest hour…
(Psalm 137:1-6)
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Why Jerusalem is Not Holy to Muslims
by Leah Bat-Chaim
We often hear the Muslim claim that Jerusalem is their "third holiest city", after Mecca and Medina; and specifically, that this is because our Temple Mount is mentioned in the Koran.
As a result, Muslims are allowed sole control over our Temple Mount - to visit it whenever they choose, to destroy priceless archaeological relics while building additional mosques, etc. - while Jews are only occasionally allowed to visit, and never allowed to utter a prayer there. (Like in the old joke that ends "...but don't let me catch you praying." Except this isn't a joke.)
This situation has always amazed me. Even if Jerusalem and the Temple Mount were truly the "third holiest place" for Muslims, why should that give them more rights than Jews, for whom the Temple Mount is our first holiest place?
But in fact, even the claim of being the "third holiest place" is not true. It cannot possibly be true, for several very logical reasons.
First, the claim of being "the third holiest place" is based on a dream described in the Koran. That's right, not an actual event, just a dream. In the dream, Mohammed "visited" a place referred to as masjid el-aksa, which means "the farthest mosque".
The Arabs claim that this refers to their mosque of that name, located on the Temple Mount.
But the El Aksa Mosque was built about a hundred years after Mohammed. In Mohammed's time, Jerusalem was ruled by the Byzantine Christians, and there were no mosques at all in Jerusalem, not on the Temple Mount or anywhere else. So obviously, Mohammed couldn't have dreamed about a mosque that didn't exist.
Moreover, the very name "El-Aksa" for the imaginary place mentioned in Mohammed's dream proves that the reference could not possibly be to Jerusalem. Because Jerusalem would never be referred to as "the farthest place".
Jerusalem is centrally located. Within the Land of Israel, it is located on the mountain ridge between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. On a larger scale, it is located at the junction point of three continents: Asia, Europe and Africa. We see this shown in ancient maps, such as the Medeba map.
In Mohammed's time (or earlier), "the farthest place" would never refer to Jerusalem. It would refer either to a coastal city, such as Jaffa, Acre or Haifa, or it would refer to the end of the Mediterranean Sea – Spain, Gibraltar or Morocco. We see this in the book of Jonah, where the prophet attempts to flee to the end of the earth by going to Jaffa and catching a boat headed for "Tarshish" (usually considered to be Spain).
So, how did the tradition arise of Jerusalem's "holiness" to Muslims?
It's very simple. It has always been a Muslim policy, when conquering any area, to take over the holy places of the local people and to turn them into mosques. It is a way of putting down the conquered people – to show them that Islam will take away the most important thing to them, and there's nothing they can do about it.
They have done this not only in the Land of Israel, regarding both Jewish and Christian holy places, but also in India (regarding Hindu holy places), in Afghanistan (regarding Buddhist holy places), etc.
So, when the Muslims conquered the Land of Israel in the 7th century, they looked for the holiest place around, and found a Byzantine church that was built on the Jewish Temple Mount. So here we have a no-brainer – an opportunity to take away a holy place from both Jews and Christians at the same time!
In addition, the Muslim ruler of the Land of Israel wasn't happy with the fact that he was stuck with a backwater province. So, to make it more attractive to tourists, he named the new mosque "El-Aksa", and told all the tourists that it was the very same one mentioned in the Koran. Voila! The birth of a "tradition".
It would be the equivalent of Christians believing that the founder of their religion was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, or that he grew up in Nazareth, Texas. Obviously, these places are simply named after the original Bethlehem and Nazareth; just as El-Aksa Mosque was named after the imaginary place described in Mohammed's dream.
It's time that more people were aware of the simple facts and logic involved. Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are not holy to Muslims, and never have been, except as an attempt to take them away from the Jews.
The Jerusalem Covenant
Israel's Right to the Land
Divide Jerusalem?
Jerusalem: Roots and Wings
Why Jerusalem is Not Holy to Muslims
Layman's Guide to the Middle East Conflict
20 Quick Facts About Jerusalem and The Arab-Israeli Conflict
JERUSALEM
By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat,
sat and wept,
as we thought of Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung up our lyres,
for our captors asked us there for songs,
our tormentors, for amusement,
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion."
How can we sing a song of the Lord on alien soil?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither,
let my tongue stick to my palate
if I cease to think of you,
if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory
even at my happiest hour…
(Psalm 137:1-6)
Jerusalem: Capital of the Jews?
Thinking Jerusalem...
Jerusalem Day (2003)
With the Stroke of a Pen
Who Wanted to Occupy the Land?
Battle for Jerusalem
Who Owns the Holy Land?
Seven Reasons Why Israel is Entitled to the Land
Fear vs. Justice at the Temple Mount
Jerusalem: If Not Now, When?
Nazareth and the Temple Mount
On the Holiness of Jerusalem in Judaism and Islam
The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem
"PALESTINE" - Never an Arab Country
ISRAEL'S SACRED PLACES: Why The Arab Thrust To Seize Control of Them
Jerusalem, the Eternal Bone of Contention
An Old Man With His Stone
Destruction in Jerusalem
Open the Mount to Scrutiny
"And The Land Was Filled With The Knowledge Of G-d"
The Bible & The Solution To The Current Battle For Jerusalem
The Spiritual Centre in the Old City has been Found
Jerusalem Day 2001
Jerusalem Day - The March to the Temple Mount
Jerusalem Must Be Liberated Again
Jewish Connection to the Temple Mount
Egypt's Idea of Peace
Jerusalem in My Heart
1930 Moslem Council: Jewish Temple Mount ties 'Beyond Dispute'
The PA Mufti: Jews from Germany Should Return There
Avital Sharansky joins in 'Fight for Jerusalem
Loving and Losing Jerusalem
The Spirit of Jerusalem
500,000 Israelis Swear Faithfulness to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem
Does World Jewry Have a Say on Jerusalem ? The Greatest Lie Ever Told About Jerusalem
The Hanukkah Event of the Temple Mount Faithful on the Temple Mount, Jerusalem and the Tombs of the Maccabees Elections in Israel - a Godly end-time event
Did We Forget Thee, O Jerusalem? Terror Expert General (res.) Meir Dagan warns against dividing control over Jerusalem
Arafat: No concessions on Jerusalem Breaching Jerusalem's Walls
JERUSALEM - 1948, 1967, 2000: Setting The Record Straight Whose Jerusalem? by Daniel Pipes
EYE ON THE MEDIA: Desperately seeking the Temple Mount The Answer to the Jerusalem Question
The Approaching Battle for Jerusalem and the War of Gog and Magog Arabs Building a 5th Mosque on the Temple Mount
The Supreme Islamic Council has published a religious ruling according to which not one centimeter may be given up. Review of plans to divide/"share" Old City of Jerusalem with PA and PA security forces
The Tragedy of the Destruction on the Temple Mount and the Weakness of the Israeli Government to Stop it Continues Jerusalem Day - 2000 - The March of the Faithful to Biblical Jerusalem and the Temple Mount
Israeli Ambassador States Jerusalem Will Remain United and Under Jewish Control The Moslem Direction [Jerusalem's lack of importance over Moslem history]
MK Benny Elon: Our Battle For Jerusalem
Whose "Promised Land"?
It would appear that the casual use of the expression "The Promised Land" has lost its meaning to those who would undo that Promise.
Moshe Kohn - Jerusalem in the Sources
Republicans: US should accept Jerusalem as capital
The Republican contenders for president, debating only days before the South Carolina primary, said the US should recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
WHO OWNS THE LAND?
Should It Be Open For Negotiation? Op-Ed: RECLAIMING JERUSALEM by MK Rabbi Benny Elon
Casearea or Jerusalem?
If you hear that Casearea and Jerusalem are both in ruins or that both are flourishing peacefully, do not believe it. Believe only a report that Caesarea is in ruins and Jerusalem is flourishing or that Jerusalem is in ruins and Caesarea is flourishing. Disney and Jerusalem - Two Government Statements
The pavilion prepared by Disney meets the educational-entertainment character of the center as well as the spirit of the Millennium Village: "To protect the past, present the present and look to the future".
Senior PA Negotiator Sees Jerusalem as Palestine's Capital
Speaking at a Ramallah press conference on Tuesday, senior PLO Authority (PA) negotiator Saeb Erekat stated that he hoped by the September 12, 2000 date by which the current process is to be completed, Israel would agree to eastern Jerusalem serving as the capital of a Palestinian state. The Status of Jerusalem - March 1999
In light of the unique significance that the city of Jerusalem holds for the Jewish people, the Israeli government has consistently reiterated its position that while religious and cultural rights of all the city's communities must be guaranteed -- Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of the State of Israel, undivided, under exclusive Israeli sovereignty.
A Word from Jerusalem
As each month passes, we feel the growing intensity of the battle for Jerusalem. Whether the dispute is over a new Jewish neighbourhood at Har Homa, Israelis moving into a house they have bought on the Mount of Olives, or—as in the most recent case—the announcement of a plan to extend Jerusalem`s municipal boundaries, Israel and her friends watch in amazement as the most powerful governments on earth drop everything to condemn Israel.
Anglican Shenanigan
One may wonder about the sobriety of the suggestion by Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey that Syria is a model of peaceful coexistence between faiths from which "the world could learn."
Can Christians be Neutral or Non-Aligned?
The question of to whom the little land of Israel should belong seems to be a matter of constant discussion around the world. Has the Jewish nation the right to possess the area?
Whose Jerusalem? Quotes & Facts
"You (the Jews) have prayed for Jerusalem for 2000 years, and you shall have it."
Winston Churchill, cited in "The Time," London, May 5, 1938.
The Bible Is Our Mandate
"Jerusalem will always be the eternal and undivided capital of Israel."
But in reality, Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem is becoming weaker.
Jerusalem: Whose City
An eminent historian looks at the interests of Jews, Muslims and Christians
Jerusalem - The Capitol of Israel
In June 1967, the concrete walls and barbed-wire fences that had split Jerusalem in half for 19 years were joyfully demolished, reuniting the city and making the Capitol of Israel whole once more.
Menachem Begin's Prayer
On his first visit to the liberated Western Wall, in 1967, Menachem Begin was accompanied by the leaders of Herut and former commanders of the Irgun. He recited the following prayer which he had compiled for the occasion.
Christians Call For A United Jerusalem
FULL PAGE AD IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, APRIL 18, 1997
Har Homa Is Not Calvary
Har Homa is not Calvary. It is part of modern Jerusalem.
Israel Slams UN Emergency Debate
April 1998. It was the first time since 1982 that the General Assembly met in an emergency session, and the fourth time the UN has debated the Jerusalem construction project since the beginning of March.
Jesus Is Returning to Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a spiritual centre not only for the Kingdom of God, but for opposing forces from the kingdom of darkness.
The Jerusalem Covenant
Jerusalem - The historic Covenant of Jerusalem was presented to the Israeli government on Wednesday, May 19, 1993.
A Covenant That Offers A Prayer
The Amana penned by Menachem Elon, the deputy president of the Supreme Court, is an intricate mosaic dealing with the centrality of Jerusalem in Jewish life from the time of Abraham to the present.
3000 years old - Jerusalem: A City for All Time
No experience quite equals that of viewing the old walled city of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, especially for the first time.
Jerusalem: Visions From the Transcendental to the Prosaic
They returned hundreds of times to paint, photograph, or etch this sublime landscape - Jerusalem the mythical, leaping from the temporal to the supratemporal.
The Battle for Jerusalem Has Begun!
Scripturally, Jerusalem is the center of the earth. At some point in the future, it will be the ruling capital of the whole world.
The Meaning Of Jerusalem To Jews, Christians And Muslims
We shall try to understand what Jerusalem has meant to Jews, Christians and Muslims, and what it means to them today.
Jerusalem: The Symbol
To understand the events taking place in the Middle East today, one must understand the history and symbolic importance of Jerusalem to both Jews and Arabs.
Whose Jerusalem ? by Eliyahu Tal Book Review
Just as the world gathers for the great Jerusalem carve-up, in steps Eliyahu Tal to upset the process and unseat the myriad pretenders to the throne over the holy city.
If I Forget Thee: Does Jerusalem Really Matter to Islam?
As it becomes clear that the struggle for Jerusalem will not wait, the outside world must confront the conflicting claims made by Jews and Muslims on the city that King David entered three millennia ago.
A Letter From Jerusalem
The following "letter" by a Jew to the Gentile world first appeared as an editorial in the long-defunct "Jerusalem Times" in 1969. Thirty years later, most the feelings and thoughts it conveys remain uncannily appropriate.
Don't Redivide Jerusalem
The decision to build at Har Homa is not a move that will "impede" the final status negotiations, but a clear signal that the redivision of Jerusalem is not considered negotiable by Israel.
Museum Exhibit That Sums It All Up (Jerusalem)
There's a small museum in the middle of the Cardo in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City which puts the current struggle over Jerusalem in context.
Whose Jerusalem ? Quotes and Facts
Recommend Our Site To Your Friends !
Why Jerusalem is Not Holy to Muslims
by Leah Bat-Chaim
We often hear the Muslim claim that Jerusalem is their "third holiest city", after Mecca and Medina; and specifically, that this is because our Temple Mount is mentioned in the Koran.
As a result, Muslims are allowed sole control over our Temple Mount - to visit it whenever they choose, to destroy priceless archaeological relics while building additional mosques, etc. - while Jews are only occasionally allowed to visit, and never allowed to utter a prayer there. (Like in the old joke that ends "...but don't let me catch you praying." Except this isn't a joke.)
This situation has always amazed me. Even if Jerusalem and the Temple Mount were truly the "third holiest place" for Muslims, why should that give them more rights than Jews, for whom the Temple Mount is our first holiest place?
But in fact, even the claim of being the "third holiest place" is not true. It cannot possibly be true, for several very logical reasons.
First, the claim of being "the third holiest place" is based on a dream described in the Koran. That's right, not an actual event, just a dream. In the dream, Mohammed "visited" a place referred to as masjid el-aksa, which means "the farthest mosque".
The Arabs claim that this refers to their mosque of that name, located on the Temple Mount.
But the El Aksa Mosque was built about a hundred years after Mohammed. In Mohammed's time, Jerusalem was ruled by the Byzantine Christians, and there were no mosques at all in Jerusalem, not on the Temple Mount or anywhere else. So obviously, Mohammed couldn't have dreamed about a mosque that didn't exist.
Moreover, the very name "El-Aksa" for the imaginary place mentioned in Mohammed's dream proves that the reference could not possibly be to Jerusalem. Because Jerusalem would never be referred to as "the farthest place".
Jerusalem is centrally located. Within the Land of Israel, it is located on the mountain ridge between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. On a larger scale, it is located at the junction point of three continents: Asia, Europe and Africa. We see this shown in ancient maps, such as the Medeba map.
In Mohammed's time (or earlier), "the farthest place" would never refer to Jerusalem. It would refer either to a coastal city, such as Jaffa, Acre or Haifa, or it would refer to the end of the Mediterranean Sea – Spain, Gibraltar or Morocco. We see this in the book of Jonah, where the prophet attempts to flee to the end of the earth by going to Jaffa and catching a boat headed for "Tarshish" (usually considered to be Spain).
So, how did the tradition arise of Jerusalem's "holiness" to Muslims?
It's very simple. It has always been a Muslim policy, when conquering any area, to take over the holy places of the local people and to turn them into mosques. It is a way of putting down the conquered people – to show them that Islam will take away the most important thing to them, and there's nothing they can do about it.
They have done this not only in the Land of Israel, regarding both Jewish and Christian holy places, but also in India (regarding Hindu holy places), in Afghanistan (regarding Buddhist holy places), etc.
So, when the Muslims conquered the Land of Israel in the 7th century, they looked for the holiest place around, and found a Byzantine church that was built on the Jewish Temple Mount. So here we have a no-brainer – an opportunity to take away a holy place from both Jews and Christians at the same time!
In addition, the Muslim ruler of the Land of Israel wasn't happy with the fact that he was stuck with a backwater province. So, to make it more attractive to tourists, he named the new mosque "El-Aksa", and told all the tourists that it was the very same one mentioned in the Koran. Voila! The birth of a "tradition".
It would be the equivalent of Christians believing that the founder of their religion was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, or that he grew up in Nazareth, Texas. Obviously, these places are simply named after the original Bethlehem and Nazareth; just as El-Aksa Mosque was named after the imaginary place described in Mohammed's dream.
It's time that more people were aware of the simple facts and logic involved. Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are not holy to Muslims, and never have been, except as an attempt to take them away from the Jews.
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