Political history of Israel 1917 to 1947
The British government decided to endorse the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine. After discussions within the cabinet and consultations with Jewish leaders, the decision was made public in a letter dated November 2, 1977, from Lord Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild. The contents of this letter became known as the Balfour Declaration.
His Majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
This declaration was drafted in consultation with President Woodrow Wilson and it was endorsed on September 21, 1922 by the US congress:
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled.
That the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which will prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected. (PR No. 73, 67th Congress, 2nd Session).
The British Mandate
The League of Nations has given Great Britain the mission (mandate) to establish a national home for the Jewish people (July 24, 1922). Since this historical document has been key in establishment of the State of Israel we will include here the salient parts of this document:
The Council of the League of Nations:
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing nonJewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have selected His Britannic Majesty as the Mandatory for Palestine; and
Whereas the mandate in respect of Palestine has been formulated in the following terms and submitted to the Council of the League for approval; and
Whereas His Britannic Majesty has accepted the mandate in respect of Palestine and undertaken to exercise it on behalf of the League of Nations in conformity with the following provisions; and
Whereas by the aforementioned Article 22 (paragraph 8), it is provided that the degree of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the Mandatory, not having been previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, shall be explicitly defined by the Council of the League Of Nations; confirming the said Mandate, defines its terms as follows:
ARTICLE 1. The Mandatory shall have full powers of legislation and of administration, save as they may be limited by the terms of this mandate.
ARTICLE 2. The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of selfgoverning institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
ARTICLE 3. The Mandatory shall, so far as circumstances permit, encourage local autonomy.
ARTICLE 4. An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised as a public body for the purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the control of the Administration to assist and take part in the development of the country.
The Zionist organization, so long as its organization and constitution are in the opinion of the Mandatory appropriate, shall be recognised as such agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the cooperation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.
ARTICLE 5. The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.
Contrary to claims of Arab propaganda repeated by some “history” professors on American campuses, this document shows that Great Britain never “gave” “Palestine” to the Jews. The land of Israel was never a British colony. The 1917 Balfour declaration and the League of Nations mandate are legally binding documents, endorsed by President Wilson and the American Congress. The Brits received a mandate to reestablish a politically recognized homeland for the Jewish people in its ancient homeland. That mandate was temporary by definition. It required eventual transfer of the land to the Jewish people. Consequently, the “establishment” of the State of Israel in 1947 by the UN was just an endorsement of the 1917 Anglo-American commitment to the Jewish nation. These little known facts are crucial for realizing the absurdity of the Arab claim that the UN made a “mistake” in 1947 “establishing” the State of Israel.
The original British mandate included the territory of what became later the Arab Emirate of Transjordan, the State of Jordan of today. It is noteworthy that the formation of the Emirate under Arab violent political pressure (the Arab riots of 1921-22, the forerunner of contemporary Arab terrorism) on ¾ of the territory of original mandate shortly after the mandate was instituted, was in flagrant violation of Article 5 of the Mandate.
The next two maps depict the boundaries of the original British mandate and the boundaries of the “amended” mandate that gave the Jewish nation less than half of the original mandatory territory. Notice also that in 1923 Great Britain conceded to Syria (then under a French mandate) a major part of today’s Golan Height territory that was originally designated as an integral part of the Jewish homeland. Like many other historical details this is a little known fact. The proposed establishment of another Arab state west of the River Jordan would be a second subdivision of the original Jewish homeland under the British mandate.
The Palestinians
The residents of the territory under the British mandate that was named “Palestine” were called "Palestinians". Since Palestine includes both modern day Israel and Jordan both Arab and Jewish residents of this area were referred to as "Palestinians". They all had British Palestinian passports and for sure more than one hundred thousand Jews born in the Land of Israel before 1948 had Palestinian Birth Certificates. These Israeli Jews have by far more right to be called “Palestinians,” if they wish, than Yassir Arafat, an Arab born in Egypt. The main Jewish newspaper in the English language was name “Palestine Post” and only in 1948 was renamed “Jerusalem Post”. The postage stamps used in the Land of Israel between 1922 and 1948 were marked in Hebrew letters “Palestina A’I” with “A” standing for Aleph of “Eretz” and “I” standing for “Y” of “Yisrael” i.e., Israel.
Jews are named after “Judea,” while “Palestina” is the name of the Roman province that replaced the Jewish name of the land after the Bar Kokhba revolt. The defeat of Judea in 72 AD, when the Second Temple was destroyed, was celebrated by the Romans in coinage marked with “Judea Capta,” i.e., “captured Judea”. Before the British named the land “Palestine” it was known in the Ottoman Empire as “Southern Syria”. Because the Jewish people include all the descendents of Jacob (renamed “Yisrael”) the Zionist leadership adopted the biblical name “Eretz Yisrael,” i.e., the land of Israel, “There weren't any blacksmiths in the whole land of Israel.” (1 Samuel 13:19) for its desired homeland, and it later became the name of the independent Jewish state.
It was only after the Israeli Jews declared their political independence in their historic homeland in 1948 and named it “The State of Israel” that the myth of an exclusively Arab “Palestinian” nation was created and marketed worldwide. Up to date the term “Palestinian” has no ethnic connotation. There is no language known as Palestinian, there is no Palestinian religion or any other feature of Palestinian culture distinct from that of all the Arabs in the Middle East. There has never been a land known as “Palestine” ruled by Palestinians. There has never been a Palestinian Arab capital. There is no Palestinian coinage, the classical symbol of an independent nation. (cf. Judean Hashmonean coinage or Bar Kokhba coinage). The administrative center of the Land of Israel during its occupation by Muslims was Damascus, while the Muslim Caliphates that ruled the Land of Israel were in Baghdad, Cairo or Istanbul. The Arabs who today call themselves “Palestinians” are Arabs indistinguishable from Arabs throughout the Middle East. In fact, The Palestinian National Charter adopted by the PLO in 1968 (after the 1967 war!) states this fact in its first article: “Article 1: Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.” Thus the political leadership of these Arabs did not claim a distinct “Palestinian” national identity as late as 1967.
From a political historical standpoint, the area called Palestine included the territories of present day Israel and Jordan. Under the Lausanne agreement of 1923 Turkey transferred all claims to Palestine to mandatory power Britain. In 1922 Britain allocated nearly 80% of Palestine to Transjordan. In 1947 UN partitioned this remaining land into two states, a second Arab state, Palestine, and Israel. The great majority of Arabs in greater Palestine and Israel share the same culture, language and religion. The Arabs in the area began identifying themselves as part of a “Palestinian people” only in 1967, as a political ploy after the second attempt to eradicate the Jewish state of Israel by force has failed. However, following the Oslo accords of 1993, 95%+ of all Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza enjoy complete autonomy under the rule of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is unfortunately controlled by the PLO, a terrorist organization established by the Arab League in Egypt for the purpose of eliminating the state of Israel.
The ideological grounds of the Arab-Israeli conflict
The preamble to the State of Israel’s Declaration of Independence (Issued at Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948) is “Eretz Yisrael was the birthplace of the Jewish people…. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world.” If one wants to understand the root cause of the Arab-Israel conflict it is the Arab refusal to recognize this basic historical premise. Furthermore, even if some educated Arabs (not Yassir Arafat told President Clinton the existence of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem is a “Zionist myth”) admit that the Land of Israel was Jewish in ancient history, Jews have lost all their rights to this land when it was conquered by the Arabs in 639 AD. There are two religious Islamic premises and two alternative false excuses for this claim:
1. According to the Islamic law any land conquered by Muslims becomes part of Islamic land (Dar al Islam) and belongs to the Islamic nation (the Umma) for perpetuity; if recaptured by the former owners or by anyone else it is the religious obligation of all Muslims to help reconquer it. Since the Land of Israel was conquered by Muslims in 639 AD, it must remain in possession of Muslims for good, and all Muslims are obliged by their religion to eradicate the Jews who usurped it (“stole” it in Arafat’s lingo). The “liberation of Palestine” is, therefore an Islamic religious directive, camouflaged in a Western connotation “liberation”.
2. Islam superceded Judaism and Christianity, consequently Jews have no sovereign rights to this land, which was occupied by Muslims for centuries, just as they have no legal rights to own land under Islamic law in any country that follows that law.
3. Today’s Jews are not the descendents of the biblical Jews but descendents of European pagans who converted to Judaism, so their claim to ownership of the Land of the Bible is invalid.
4. This land is inhabited by an Arab nation “the Palestinians” (that never existed before 1948) that deserves world recognition like the Egyptians or the Syrians, and the land of this “nation” must now be “liberated” from the Jewish occupiers. This excuse, which like #3 hides the Islamic religious reason under a Western façade, is typical of Muslim aggressive PR strategy that is highly effective in manipulating public opinion in the democratic West.
A Brief History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
The history of the Arab-Israeli conflict goes back to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. The establishment of new Jewish villages and towns before that date did not constitute any Islamic religious problem, since Jews lived all over in the Land of Israel under Islamic Ottoman rule for centuries. It were the Balfour Declaration and the international commitment to legitimize the existence of an independent Jewish state in the Jewish national homeland (temporarily under a British mandate) that have caused the Islamic uproar and violent reaction of the Arabs. Arab terrorism used as a political tool did not start in 1967 or 1948, it started in 1920 with the random murder of Jews in Palestine by religiously incited Arab mobs, even before the British mandate was signed and implemented on July 24, 1922. These Arab “riots” prompted a British White Paper in June 1922 (even before the mandate was legally established) that retracted from some essentials of the Balfour declaration: “…so far as the Arabs are concerned are partly based upon exaggerated interpretations of the meaning of the [Balfour] Declaration favouring the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, made on behalf of His Majesty's Government on 2nd November, 1917. … They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded `in Palestine.'”
Consequently, already in 1922, the British conceded to Arab political pressure and gave them the lion’s share of the Palestinian territory, without authorization of the League of Nations, the grantor of the British Mandate, and thus created the Emirate of Transjordan, still under British mandatory rule.
The success of 1922 encouraged the Arabs to try and get rid of the intended Jewish state by additional terrorism. That culminated in the Islamic religion-incited massacres in the Old City of Jerusalem and in Hebron. The centuries old Jewish populations were either murdered or expelled (Jews returned to Hebron only after 1967). The acquiescence of the British to those atrocities (they did not try to help the Jews to return to their homes and repair the tens of desecrated and burnt down synagogues -- most of these were rehabilitated only after 1967), lead to additional Arab political pressure associate with Muslim religion-induced terrorism (the Arab “riots” of 1933 to 1939).
While the British tried half-heatedly to protect the Jewish population (a 1000 out of a total of 400,000 Jews were still murdered in those “riots” under the “protection” of the British authorities) they conceded to the Arab demands and ruthlessly curtailed Jewish immigration to Palestine. This was in flagrant violation of the mandate that stated “The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land…”. The 1939 British White Paper on Palestine states:
“If immigration … has a seriously damaging effect on the political position in the country, that is a factor that should not be ignored. Although it is not difficult to contend that the large number of Jewish immigrants who have been admitted so far have been absorbed economically, the fear of the Arabs that this influx will continue indefinitely until the Jewish population is in a position to dominate them has produced consequences which are extremely grave … [Consequently] Jewish immigration during the next five years will be at a rate which, if economic absorptive capacity permits, will bring the Jewish population up to approximately one third of the total population of the country…. For each of the next five years a quota of 10,000 Jewish immigrants will be allowed on the understanding that a shortage one year may be added to the quotas for subsequent years, within the five year period, if economic absorptive capacity permits.
During the same period, Haj Amin al Husseini (1893-1974), the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (who claimed to be a direct descendent of Mohammad’s son Hussein and is said to have been Yassir Arafat’s uncle; Arafat’s full name is Rahman Abdul Rauf Arafat al-Qudwa el-Husseini.) was the religious leader of the Palestinian Arabs. Al Husseini used the Islam to incite the 1920-21, 1929 and 1935-39 anti-Jewish atrocities (“Arab riots’ in the British lingo) in Palestine and was responsible to the murder of hundreds of Jews. Then in 1941, during the war, he went to Berlin to persuade Hitler to extend the Holocaust to the Middle East and help the Arabs to exterminate the Israeli Jews, as part of the NAZI “final solution.”
Right after the 1942 Allied victory at El Alamein, when it was clear that the Germans would not conquer Palestine, he took to the airwaves and broadcast in Arabic from Berlin. "Arise, o sons of Arabia," he exhorted his avid pro-Nazi followers. "Fight for your sacred rights. Slaughter Jews wherever you find them. Their spilled blood pleases Allah, our history and religion. That will save our honor."
Al Husseini stayed with Hitler until the end of the war, helping the German’s to massacre Serbs with the assistance of the Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims. After the war Haj he found refuge in Egypt together with other NAZI functionaries, because Egypt was sympathetic to the NAZI ideology during the war and after. In his memoirs he wrote: "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours.' "
In an 2002 interview with a reporter of Al Sharq al Awsat (a London-based Arabic daily) Arafat stated:
We are not Afghanistan…We are the Mighty People. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini? ... There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops. (reprinted in the Palestinian daily Al Quds, Aug, 2, 2002)
A Century of Hatred
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem today is Haj Amin’s grandson, Ikrama Said Sabri al Husseini, was appointed by Arafat to this influential religious position. Sabri follows in his grandfather’s footsteps spewing hatred to the Jews. "The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian lands, Sheik Ikrama Sabri, publicized by telegram an Islamic Religious Ruling, in which he emphasizes, that accepting compensation for Palestinian land [land claimed within Israel] is equal to selling it and it is utterly forbidden under religious law. He said: To the receiver of compensation applies the religious ruling that was given in the 1930's. This law utterly forbids the receiving of compensations because the Palestinian land is not merchandise to be sold and bought but blessed and holy Islamic land." [Dec. 2, 2003, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida] This an extremely important political point: It tries to invalidate the legality of any sale of Arab land to Jews anywhere in the Land of Israel. This is the justification of the Arab claim, heard so often, that the Jews Stole Arab land. In other words, the Islamists are trying to delegitimize by a religious decry any Jewish real-estate property in the Middle East, including even that acquired in the 19th Century under Islamic Ottoman rule. According to Arafat’s second cousin, who is the highest Islamic religious authority in the region, the expulsion or murder of all Israelis is mandated by Islamic religious decrees!
Notice that this is a map of persistent conflicts and not of Islamic terrorist activities, which are much wider spread. It also does not include the American – Islamic conflict with Al-Queda or the American incursion into Iraq. Furthermore it does not include the oppression of non-Muslims in Muslim countries e.g. the Copts in Egypt or the Berbers in Algeria. Terrorist attacks are much more widespread worldwide than this map shows (for instance, the 9/11 atrocities are do not appear here) and according to the US State Department statistics more than 90% of terrorist attacks in last 3 years are perpetrated by Muslims against non-Muslim victims. In other words, Islamic terrorism is evidently not confined to the Arab-Israeli conflict although Jews in Israel and elsewhere have been targeted by Islamic terrorism longer than other non-Muslims, with the possible exception of Indian Buddhists and Hindus.
A Double Standard
We cannot end this discussion of the clash between civilizations without referring to the double standard, which is a corollary of Islamic supremacy. Any supremacist ideology, be it NAZIsm or Islam, applies different ethical norms to its adherers versus their “adversaries.” This was true of the treatment of Jews by the NAZIs and of non-believers by Muslims. Muslims who desecrated and destroyed hundreds of churches and synagogues (including those in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1929 and 1948) as well as thousands of Buddhist and Hindu temples, scream murder when a mosque, used as a stronghold and observation post by Muslim combatants, is damaged in battle. Muslim Arabs who send their brainwashed children to blow themselves up in order to indiscriminantly murder Jews, and dispatch highly trained terrorists to murder Jewish babies point blanc in the hands of their mothers (because, to cite Islamic clergy, “if you let Jewish babies grow they will become Zionist occupiers”), will raise hell if an Arab child is injured by an Israeli stray bullet… Capturing of non-Muslim hostages and murdering them when ransom demands are not met or when they happen to be Jewish, like in the case of Daniel Pearl, is in line with Mohammad’s sayings in the Koran. Clearly, Islam teaches its believers that Muslims have an exclusive divine right to kill any non-Muslims they see fit and destroy their places of “reprehensible” worship.
Islamic ethics are diagonally different from Judeo-Christian ethics that command equal rights for believers and alien non-believers “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him” (Exodus 22, 21) 'When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born.” (Leviticus 19:33,34). Denying equal justice to aliens is tantamount to robbery in Judaism: “The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice.“ (Ezekiel 22:29). Amazingly, the bizarre supremacist Islamic ideology, which implies a double standard, has been accepted and even promoted by the many Western liberals whose culture is based on Judeo-Christian ethics.
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