#Frances Balfour | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

makethatelevenrings · 6 months

Note

I mean this with ZERO disrespect, I'm simply trying to educate myself on this matter because it impacts us all.

All I can find about the Israel-Palestine conflicts is the fighting. What I want to know is why.

Whats the backstory? Why are they fighting? Why is everyone persecuting one another and who in the government is responsible?

I heard Hamas bombed Gaza and has taken hostages. What brought on this violence? Do all the Palestinians agree with this?

(More personal opinion questions, you don't need to answer these)

Do you agree with Hamas? Do you think that violence was a last resort to free Palestine? Do you think it's justified?

One thing I do hate is people saying "I hate *this group of people*, they are bad." They can't all be bad. So I don't like the titles of Anti-Israel/Anti-Palestine because you're assuming everyone there is on the same side.

In conclusion, people are stupid. The government is messed up. Citizens and families want to live so why won't the government let them?

I’m genuinely grateful that you’re asking because educating ourselves is one of the greatest tools we have. I’ll break it up into sections.

1. What’s the backstory?

In 1918, the Ottoman Empire conceded land they controlled to Britain (this is still an ongoing problem regarding many, many things because the Ottoman Empire controlled many nations that weren’t theirs to control if you catch my drift. Look up the Elgin marbles for a fun wormhole of WTF Britain). The Arab Revolt was backed by France and Britain with the promise that if the Arab fighters could force the Ottomans out of the area of the Levant, they would be granted independence (McMahon-Hussein Correspondence) but, plot twist, France and the UK instead split the region (Sykes-Picot Agreement). The Balfour Declaration of 1917 expressed Britain’s support of the creation of Israel. After they gained control of the region, they established Israel and systematically began to take the land of Palestinians.

Note: Zionism began as a belief in the mid-18th century. Many, MANY Jewish people do not subscribe, encourage, or promote the idea of a Jewish state. I do not view Israel = Jewish because it is antisemitic to imply that the Jewish diaspora all exist under the state of Israel. Especially when many Jewish people disagree with Israel.

Note note: Zionism was created as a response to the numerous pogroms and other antisemitic hate crimes affecting Jewish people. the Holocaust was fucking awful. No ifs ands or buts. Genocide doesn’t justify genocide, however.

Continuing on. So, clearly, the Palestinians are pissed. They were promised independence and instead now have their land taken by a global superpower who has historically fucked over hundreds of countries (another wormhole for you: India under British rule, Ireland and literally all of its history with England, the transatlantic slave trade under Britain, Africa under British rule, Australia and the treatment of Aboriginals under British rule, America and the British, it goes on). Palestinians revolted from 1936-1939 because, again, their home and promise of independence was being stolen. They lost against the British army but then 1939 was a bit of an important year for everyone and they world was sucked into another world war.

With WWII saw the birth of the United Nations, an organization that might sound important but has the moral backbone with the equivalence of a chocolate eclair. The UN said “hey, why don’t we split Palestine and Israel into two different states so maybe they’ll stop fighting” (United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine) and, as a result, the 1948 Palestine-Israel war began. Hundreds died. 700k+ people were forced from Palestine and spread across the world in what is called the Nakba. Israeli colonizers quite literally moved into homes that had been occupied by Palestinians only days before. In 1918, the Jewish population of the region was 8.1%. In 1948, when Israel was recognized as a nation by the UN, the Jewish population of the region was 82.1%.

2. There’s plenty of infographics and videos explaining the next few decades but I’m already writing an essay basically so the gist is: Palestinians keep losing their homes and Israel keeps taking them. Israel forces the Palestinians into smaller and smaller parcels of land until the control virtually everything but a small strip of land (Gaza) and the West Bank. That brings us to 2006.

Hamas was elected in 2006 over rivaling Fatah, gaining majority amount of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council under the promise that they would help end the corruption many Palestinians were frustrated with. Instead they took military control over Gaza and established an autocratic state over millions of people who were already suffering under barbaric policies and practices from Israel. Politicians.

This is where things get a little…messy morally. Do I agree with Hamas? Fuck no. I couldn’t care less about Hamas because they don’t care about Palestinians. Do all Palestinians agree with Hamas? Firstly, you will rarely find a group of people where all agree with some. Secondly, I don’t think they appreciate being bombed by Israel while Hamas leaders chill somewhere else. The people of Palestine are the victims of Hamas and Israel.

Did some Palestinians celebrate Hamas’ actions? Yes. Do I think violence is a last resort? Yes and no. Do I think it’s justified? Yes and no.

Lemme expand on those last two points. I want to be an international human rights attorney someday. The loss of innocent life is always a fucking tragedy that I hope to help prevent or to bring justice for them. I understand violence. I understand why people are so angry. I understand the rage and grief Palestinians feel. 75 years of having their rights stripped away, their homes quite literally occupied, their land and culture chipped away piece by piece, and their children bombed and shot at.

“But how on earth can you think violence is justified if people get hurt!” The American Revolution was an act of violence that got numerous people killed yet you will rarely find someone who won’t justify it. Ukraine defending themselves against Russia wanting their land with no regard to how many Ukrainians they kill is considered justified.

People just seem to focus on the “violence is bad” aspect of things once POC are involved. Yeah, I said it. Americans tired of taxation, of British rule, and of not having their independence causes property damage, argues with soldiers in the streets, and starts a war is okay but when Palestinians do it, it’s a problem? When Black Americans ask to stop being brutalized by the police, it’s a problem? When Black South Africans ask to end an apartheid state, it’s a problem? When Central Americans ask for western nations to stop causing coups that destabilizes their nations, it’s a problem? I could go on.

Yeah, violence is bad. Violence is also the way that a lot of countries are where they are today. Violence is sometimes the only reason why things changed. Violence is enacted on the oppressed everyday yet people only seem to really care once the oppressed fight back.

3. I’m anti-Israel because I don’t agree with the government and the state of Israel. I don’t agree with their 75 years of violent oppression of Palestinians. I don’t agree with their current or past actions. I’m anti-Hamas. I think they’re a vacuous organization that is more focused on getting what they want than considering the consequences of innocent Palestinians.

I’m also really fucking furious at Joe Biden’s insistence that we send aid to Israel. We have given Israel $260 BILLION since 1948. BILLION. And yet we have people dying because they can’t afford healthcare. Students leaving school because they can’t afford tuition. We have 8 year olds in debt because they can’t afford school lunches. The unhoused population is growing rapidly due to the housing crisis. I can sense the unemployment rate creeping higher. I know many people who have lost their jobs this past month alone. We’re days away from another government shutdown and they can’t vote on a speaker.

American politicians would rather send Israel billions more to bomb innocent people than to feed their own citizens. That, in my opinion, is a sort of violence that can never be justified.

#honey.txt #sorry for the essay #but really not sorry #I took a whole class on the global south during the Cold War and it really opened my eyes #granted my specialization is Central America but plot twist #America has been at the center of fucking stuff up there too

36 notes · View notes

lazaefair · 4 months

Text

Read up on the history of European imperialism and Zionism in World War I. I mean it. You have to get it clear in your head that Israel would not exist without Christian European (and later, American) imperialism. Here's a short 5 Facts article, with links to longer lectures (with full transcripts):

Jewish Zionists were just some guys, and would have remained just some guys if the European powers with imperial military might hadn't decided that Zionism conveniently dovetailed with their agenda of maintaining/expanding their colonial empires. That's why (some of) the Jewish Zionists were lobbying for British patronage in the first place.

Excerpt from this lecture (that's also linked in the above 5 Facts article and has a full transcript):

Beginning around the 31 minute mark:

"Now, the saga of 1917 had one final, important chapter. On November 2nd, as British and Australian forces were engaging the Ottomans at the third battle of Gaza, Britain made yet another advance booking for the political arrangement of the postwar Middle East. The Balfour Declaration, which promised Zionists that Britain would sponsor the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Now the proximate origins of the Balfour Declaration traced back to the spring of 1917, when Lloyd George set Sykes the task of working for the addition of Palestine to the British area designated by the Sykes-Picot Accord. Sykes jumped at the chance to revise this accord, and by then Sykes had come to know about Zionism, an ideology at that time, barely 40 or 50 years old, which defined the Jews as a singular nation deserving of political sovereignty - the goal Zionists considered pressing given the incidents of anti-Semitism in the world, especially in the Russian Empire, where most European Jews lived.

In Zionism, Sykes saw an opportunity to nullify France's portion in an internationalized Palestine. He saw that a Jewish enclave in Palestine could function as a buffer protecting British, Egypt and the canal from imperial competitors. Sykes was encouraged when he learned that, for their part, the Zionists were interested in British patronage, without which they would be powerless to fulfill their dream.

But like the Hashemites, the Zionists didn't know anything about the Sykes-Picot Agreement. They had assumed that there would not be any type of conflict with any power.

There were, of course, other motives that prompted Sykes and British statesmen to support Zionism. One of these had to do with the belief among many British backing - who backed the Jewish territory, that the Jewish territorial nationalism might encourage Jews in the wavering countries of the United States and Russia to fully engage in the war until total victory. At the time, Russia was in a state of unrest and it wasn't certain to what extent the United States would sort of engage in the war.

There was this idea among the British that, you know, backing a Jewish homeland in Palestine would mobilize the power of Jewish financiers in the United States. But, of course, the idea that world Jewry acted as a bloc was an exaggeration of its unity and its ability to influence opinion. There are actually very few Zionists among the Jewish population in Europe or America.

Yet the idea of international Jewry was a common one, and it reflected the genteel and sometimes vociferous anti-Semitism that was current among the British upper class. But I must say that this was not an idea that the Zionists’ lobbyists in London made efforts to nullify. They saw that there is utility in this idea of a Jewish bloc, you know, heavily in favor of Zionism.

Yet another factor leading to British support for Zionism had to do with the visceral, romantic and religious sensibilities of these same British statesmen. Despite this defense advisory note that I was just talking about that dissuaded the media from religious pronouncements, men like Sykes, Lloyd George, Leo Emery and Foreign Secretary Balfour - whose name was appended to the declaration - shared with the people of Britain a pietistic instinct and were attracted to the idea of having a hand in the return of a people of the Bible to its ancestral homeland.

Lloyd George, the former chapel boy from North Wales, famously quipped that he knew the map of the Holy Land better than he did that of France. During his 1904 trip to Jerusalem, Sykes wrote, quote, 'Imagine how picturesque and interesting a walk in the city would be if the children of Israel retained their ancient and handsome dress.'

Sykes' mission to sabotage the Palestine portion of the French-British Agreement turned out to be rather simple and straightforward. During meetings in London, he convinced Zionism's leading lights Chaim Weizman and Nahum Sokolow to go directly to Georges-Picot and other French officials and argue their case. Sykes, in the meantime, would take care of the introductions and quietly reinforce the Zionist case at functions and over dinner drinks.

In the end, I think, due as much to Weizman and Sokolow's charm as to their arguments of justice and repatriation for the Jewish people, the French were won over agreeing that the plan for Palestine's internationalization should be rescinded. But then again, with no troops in the region, the French would have been powerless to make a contrary case. It's at this point that the Zionists got wind of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

They got wind of this agreement in April 1917, just prior to the final dotting the I's and crossing of the T's. And they were shocked to see that Palestine, which they assumed was going to be theirs, was, according to the Sykes-Picot agreement, going to be internationalized. And thus they pressed Britain for the Balfour Declaration to make some sort of official pronouncement on the matter.

The declaration itself went through many revisions, every word in it was significant. The authors avoided the word 'state,' choosing the more ambiguous phrase 'national home.' Nor was the extent of this Jewish homeland made clear. It was to be somewhere in Palestine.

And although reference was made to the protection of the civil and religious rights of the indigenous native Arab population, the declaration said nothing about the Arabs’ political rights. In addition, the declaration promised that with the establishment of the homeland, no harm would come to Jews in any other country, meaning the Jews of Great Britain and other Western countries.

And here the intended target of this phrase were Jews belonging to the British establishment who were amongst the declaration's most vociferous opponents. Men like Edwin Montagu, a cabinet minister, feared that Zionism might lead some or even many within British society to call his and others’ patriotism into question, even accuse them of dual allegiance: are you loyal to the Crown or to the Jewish national home? And the declaration takes pains to make the point that this will not happen.

So in 1917 [...] Britain's conflicting agreements were finally exposed to the harsh lights."

#palestine #history #imperialism #world war i #wwi

25 notes · View notes

loneberry · 7 months

Text

Notes on Palestine

The geopolitical situation right now is extremely unstable. In such moments it always feels like incentive structures are such that all parties are pushed toward war and escalation. I saw how this all unfolded with 9/11; it left an indelible mark on my psyche–to observe the world careening, the hysteria, the march toward endless war. The Iran hawks in the US are out calling for war with Iran (US intelligence and even the IDF have said Iran did not help *plan* the Hamas attacks, though the idea that Iran was behind the attacks is being presented as fact).

Days before the Hamas attacks, I was in an article + podcast rabbit hole focused on Iranian nuclear politics, Saudi-Israeli relations, and the current situation in the “Middle East” (I prefer the term “South West Asia and North Africa”/SWANA but will use “Middle East” for readability). I had also been reading that the US’s attempts to broker a US-Saudi-Israeli deal would piss off the Palestinians. It filled me with immense grief—nobody, not even Muslim Arabs, seem to care about Palestinians anymore. The international community has failed. Now it seems that the world has consented to a protracted genocide of Palestinians. It used to be the case that Arab countries would not considered normalizing relations with Israel without Israel making concessions to the Palestinians. The sad reality is that since the Arab Spring, the resolution of the Palestinian issue has become a low priority for many countries in the Middle East, many of whom have their own feud with Iran and see pivoting toward Israel as a path toward greater security. Of course I’m talking about the Abraham Accords, the so-called “peace deal” brokered by the Trump administration that enabled the normalization of relations between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain, yet excluded any input from Palestinians. That event had brought me so much grief. It really felt like any hope for the Palestinian cause was dying. There seems to be little political will from any side to put pressure on Israel.

In moments of crisis like these I try to be sober and pedagogical, but such a task feels nearly impossible when it comes to the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. People say the conflict is “complicated” and rooted in hundreds of years of religious hatred. It is really not that complicated and only requires basic knowledge of 20th century history. Prior to WWI, the territory of Palestine (and much of the Arab world) was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for over 400 years. The Allied Powers (Britain, France, Russia, and others) were at war with the Central Powers (Germany, Austro-Hungary, the Ottomans, etc). The Brits saw Palestine as a crown jewel and coveted Jerusalem in particular. They recruited Arab assistance in the war by whipping up hundreds of years of resentment against the Ottomans and promising the Arabs that they would break up the Ottoman Empire and help the Arabs create their own nations (see theMcMahon-Hussein correspondence). Yet the Brits were also keen on recruiting Jewish support on the side of the Allied Powers. In 1917 the British government made a declaration (the Balfour Declaration) that announced British support for the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. At the end of WWI (which, as you likely know, ended in Allied success), the European empires on the winning side sought to expand their empires while Woodrow Wilson believed more in self-determination. The compromise was the “mandate” system, where the Europeans on the winning side took administrative control of territories lost by the Central Powers—France and Britain carved up the Middle East. Enter the British mandate for Palestine. The Arabs had been betrayed by the Allied Europeans (no surprise there). One form of colonial rule was swapped for another.

Prior to the end of WWI, the Zionist movement was gaining momentum, partly as an answer to the perennial problem of European anti-Semitism and partly because of the 19th/early-20th century discourse around nationalism. The idea of creating a Jewish state in Palestine began in the 19th century, but it was really in the 1890s that modern political Zionism began with the figure of Theodor Herzl. European Jews began to immigrate to Palestine to form settlements. Yet when the mandate was established, the Jewish population was still relatively small—around 9%. While the territory was under British rule, the Brits facilitated a dramatic increase in European Jewish immigration to Palestine. Between 1922 and 1935, the portion of the population that was Jewish grew to 27%. It’s hardly surprising that violence broke out between Arabs and Jews, as well as Arabs and the Brits (see the Arab Revolt of 1936-39).

The Brits promised a territory to an oppressed people (the Jews) that was never theirs to give away in the first place. The Arabs were quickly being displaced from their home. All of this would come to a head in WWII, when Europe’s vile anti-Semitism was on full display with the Holocaust. How would Europe atone for the atrocities committed against the Jews? There was much momentum around creating a physical state for the Jews in Palestine. This was also a convenient solution for deeply anti-Semitic Europe, as they preferred that the Jews leave rather than be integrated into their societies. In 1947 the UN voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem coming under international administration. 13 voted against the partition (basically all the countries in the Middle East, plus India and several others). 55% of the land would be set aside for the Jews. War broke out soon after the UN resolution. The (WWII) battle-hardened Zionist paramilitaries (backed by European countries) undertook a campaign of ethnic cleansing and captured additional territory. Between 1947-49, 750,000 Palestinians became refugees—around 40% of the entire Palestinian population. 78% of historic Palestine was taken by Zionist forces. This is the event of settler violence and ethnic cleansing that Palestinians refer to as the Nakba (or catastrophe).

There is so much obfuscation about the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict. What ultimately happened: Europe decided it wanted to create a nation for Jews. It picked the territory of Palestine for this project (other territories were also considered) because the Brits controlled the territory and because of its religious significance. There were already people who lived on the land that was to be used to create a Jewish state. Now Palestinians are stateless and live under a brutal military occupation (the West Bank) and even more punishing blockade (Gaza)—or as refugees. Palestinians were ultimately made to suffer for the sins of European anti-Semitism.

There is a lot more I can say here, about the history of the Cold War and how it relates to the US’s alliance with Israel, about internecine conflicts in Palestinian politics (the split between Hamas and the PLO/Palestinian Authority), about the current geopolitical situation, about contemporary domestic politics in Israel (which currently has the most right-wing govt in Israel’s history) and the Hamas attacks themselves. I see friends gleefully posting about the murder of Israeli civilians. I just can’t get on board with that. Neither can I get on board with Israel bombing hospitals and shelters in Gaza, or calling Palestinians “animals.” All life is sacred, all life is grievable. (People are right to point out that most of the world does not grieve the loss of Palestinian life.)

Events do have a context. Gaza is one of the most unlivable places on the planet. Around 67% of Gaza's population are refugees displaced during the Nakba. It has been under a brutal blockade for 16 years. It’s the 3rd most densely populated place on the planet—over 2.1 million people are crammed into a space half the size of London. The residents have been deprived of electricity, clean drinking water, medical supplies, and food. Nearly half of residents are unemployed and civilians have died by thousands under Israeli bombings (6,407 Palestinians have been killed since 2008). It is referred to as an “open air prison” because the residents are literally hemmed in by a high-tech fence. Given these dire conditions, an eruption of violence did seem almost inevitable.

What I fear: a ground invasion of Gaza. A broader conflagration involving Lebanon and Iran, and potentially the rest of the world. The US going to war with Iran. If the world genuinely wishes to see the end of the “cycle of violence,” Palestinians must be free. Any attempt to bring about “regional security” while ignoring the Palestinian situation is destined to fail.

42 notes · View notes

justineportraits · 1 year

Text

Edward Burne Jones Portrait of Lady Frances Balfour 1880

#edward burne jones #portrait

80 notes · View notes

partisan-by-default · 7 months

Text

The roots of the Nakba stem from the emergence of Zionism as a political ideology in late 19th-century Eastern Europe. The ideology is based on the belief that Jews are a nation or a race that deserve their own state.

From 1882 onwards, thousands of Eastern European and Russian Jews began settling in Palestine; pushed by the anti-Semitic persecution and pogroms they were facing in the Russian Empire, and the appeal of Zionism.

In 1896, Viennese journalist Theodor Herzl published a pamphlet that came to be seen as the ideological basis for political Zionism – Der Judenstaat, or “The Jewish State”. Herzl concluded that the remedy to centuries-old anti-Semitic sentiments and attacks in Europe was the creation of a Jewish state.

Though some of the movement’s pioneers initially supported a Jewish state in places such as Uganda and Argentina, they eventually called for for building a state in Palestine based on the biblical concept that the Holy Land was promised to the Jews by God.

In the 1880s, the community of Palestinian Jews, known as the Yishuv, amounted to three percent of the total population. In contrast to the Zionist Jews who would arrive in Palestine later, the original Yishuv did not aspire to build a modern Jewish state in Palestine.

After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1517-1914), the British occupied Palestine as part of the secret Sykes-Picot treaty of 1916 between Britain and France to divvy up the Middle East for imperial interests.

In 1917, before the start of the British Mandate (1920-1947), the British issued the Balfour Declaration, promising to help the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, essentially vowing to give away a country that was not theirs to give.

12 notes · View notes

vaguelyaperson · 7 months

Text

Once more, the Israeli Palestinian conflict is not an ancient ongoing war between Jews and Muslims, but a very modern conflict resulting from European colonialism in Arabic lands.

Prior to that European colonialization, Jews Muslims and Christians were living relatively peacefully in Jerusalem and surrounding areas, under the Ottoman Empire. Historically, the Ottoman Empire already accepted Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in Europe. But after defeating the Ottoman Empire in ww1, France and England took control of Arabic lands.

Britain promised the land to BOTH Zionists and Arabs. British High Commissioner of Egypt promised Meccan ruler Sharif Hussein that if his forces helped defeat the Ottoman Empire, Hussein would be given rule over Palestine. British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour promised the land to Zionists. But all the while, Britain intended to maintain its own control of the region.

Britain promised Palestine would return to the Arabs, but post-ww1, facilitated immigration of Zionists to the region. Predictably, when the Palestinian region regained its independence post ww2, it immediately erupted into a war.

The conflict has only existed for 80 years. It is not ancient. It is not due to some untenable relationship between Jews and Muslims. It is the direct result of Western Imperialism, and the conflict continues to benefit Western Imperialism (though now that torch is carried by the United States.)

#politics #international politics #israel palestine conflict #history #western imperialism #britain #british imperialism #anti zionisim #ottoman empire

16 notes · View notes

voidami · 6 months

Text

Palestine History and resources.

I didn't add absolutely everything I could have because it would of been too much, just a generalization and resources to help anyone needing to learn or give resources to. feel free to discus, critique or add anything you find relevant.

Prior to the 19th century the region of Palestine experienced 401 years of relative peace from 1517-1917. And everything prior to that is largely irrelevant to the modern issue.

Late 19th Century:

From 1882 onward, thousands of Eastern European and Russian Jews began settling in Palestine; pushed by the anti-Semitic persecution and pogroms they were facing in the Russian Empire, and the appeal of Zionism.

1895-onward- Theodor Herzl: Herzl, an Austrian journalist, is considered the father of modern Zionism. He advocated for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Argentina, Uganda or ultimately Palestine, with what he called transfer (ethnic displacement). On the surface he was doing this to address rising anti-Semitism in Europe but with further reading of his intentions it was more a selfish power grab through a colonial settler project with little concern for "the Jewish question" other than what it could do for him. E.G." I could accept a mass request from the little Jews to lead them out only if all the governments concerned asked me to, promised me their sympathetic cooperation, and gave me guarantees for the peaceful completion of the enormous task, just as I would give them guarantees for an exodus without economic ill-effects. (I don’t know whether I should have this printed in Roman type)." -One such example among many.

In his Diary everything is painted out in detail of his attempts to get huge loans and what he plans to do with the power he gains.

Theodor Herzl, wrote: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. The property-owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. June 12th 1895 Diary Entry"

Herzl was suggesting that two possible Zionist solutions to the problem of a Palestinian majority living in Palestine — separation and transfer — were not necessarily alternatives but rather could be mutually reinforcing. Not only that: he believed, if they were used together, the process of ethnic cleansing could be made to appear voluntary, the choice of the victims. It may be that this was both his most enduring legacy and his major innovation to settler colonialism.

The Complete Diaries Of Theodor Herzl - https://archive.org/stream/TheCompleteDiariesOfTheodorHerzl_201606/TheCompleteDiariesOfTheodorHerzlEngVolume1_OCR_djvu.txt

Early 20th Century: Balfour Declaration (1917): Written in 1917 by then UK foreign secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, the Declaration signed away the land of Palestine to the Zionist colonial project. By giving their support to Zionist goals in Palestine, the British hoped they could shore up support among the significant Jewish populations in the US and Russia for the Allied effort during WWI. They also believed the Balfour Declaration would secure their control over Palestine after the war.

Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinian tenants from their lands as Zionists bought land from absentee landlords. Leading Arab and Palestinian intellectuals openly warned against the motifs of the Zionist movement in the press as early as 1908. With the Nazi seizure of power in Germany between 1933 and 1936, 30,000 to 60,000 European Jews arrived on the shores of Palestine.

In 1936, Palestinian Arabs launched a large-scale uprising against the British and their support for Zionist settler-colonialism, known as the Arab Revolt. The British authorities crushed the revolt, which lasted until 1939, violently; they destroyed at least 2,000 Palestinian homes, put 9,000 Palestinians in concentration camps and subjected them to violent interrogation, including torture, and deported 200 Palestinian nationalist leaders. In 1944, several Zionist armed groups declared war on Britain for trying to put limits on Jewish immigration to Palestine at a time when Jews were fleeing the Holocaust. The Zionist paramilitary organizations launched a number of attacks against the British – the most notable of which was the King David Hotel bombing in 1946 where the British administrative headquarters were housed; 91 people were killed in the attack.

In early 1947, the British government announced it would be handing over the disaster it had created in Palestine to the United Nations and ending its colonial project there. On November 29, 1947, the UN adopted Resolution 181, recommending the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

Quotes: Before May 15, some of the most infamous massacres had already been committed; the Baldat al-Sheikh massacre on December 31, 1947, killing up to 70 Palestinians; the Sa’sa’ massacre on February 14, 1948, when 16 houses were blown up and 60 people lost their lives; and the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when about 110 Palestinian men, women and children were slaughtered.

August 1937, "transfer" was a major subject of discussion at the Twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich, Switzerland. Alluding to the systematic dispossession of Palestinian peasants (fellahin) that Zionist organizations had been engaged in for years, David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel's first prime minister in 1948, stated: " You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund's] activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin." He concluded: "Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale."

In June 1938, Ben-Gurion told a meeting of the Jewish Agency: "I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."

In December 1940, Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund's Lands Department, which was tasked with acquiring land for the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, wrote in his diary: There is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps for [the Arabs of] Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [bedouin] tribe. And only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to exist. There is no other solution.

1948 Arab-Israeli War (Plan Dalet & Nakba (Catastrophe) ):Creation of Israel: Israel declared independence, leading to a war with surrounding Arab states. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled, leading to mass displacement and refugee crisis.

Details of Plan Dalet On March 10, 1948, Zionist political and military leaders, including Ben-Gurion, met in Tel Aviv and formally adopted Plan Dalet (or Plan D). The operational military orders specified which Palestinian population centers should be targeted and laid out in detail a blueprint for their forcible depopulation and destruction. It called for: Mounting operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force. These operations can be divided into the following categories: Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state. The Haganah (soon to be Israeli army) launched military operations under Plan Dalet at the beginning of April 1948. Although attacks by Zionist forces against Palestinian population centers actually began a few days after the UN Partition Plan was passed on November 29, 1947, with the adoption of Plan Dalet expulsions accelerated and became systematic, marking a new phase in the conflict in which Zionist and then Israeli forces went on "the offensive," in the words of Israeli historian Benny Morris. Following Israel's establishment on May 14, 1948, the new Israeli government set up an unofficial body, the "Transfer Committee," to oversee the destruction of Palestinian towns and villages or their re-population with Jews, and to prevent displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes. In a report presented to Ben-Gurion in June 1948, the three-man committee, which included the JNF's Weitz, called for the "destruction of villages as much as possible during military operations."

Further reading: https://imeu.org/article/plan-dalet

Results-

By the time the state of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948, more than 200 Palestinian villages had already been emptied as people fled in fear or were forcibly expelled by Zionist forces, and approximately 175,000 Palestinians had been made refugees. By 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians had been made refugees, losing their land, homes and other belongings in what became known as the "Nakba" ("catastrophe"). Their flight was accelerated by massacres such as the one that took place on April 9, 1948, at Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, where approximately 100 Palestinian men, women, and children were murdered by Zionist paramilitaries. Today, refugees displaced during Israel's creation and their descendants number approximately 7.1 million people. Some 400 Palestinian towns and villages, including vibrant urban centers, were systematically destroyed or taken over by Israeli. Most of them were demolished to prevent the return of their Palestinian residents, now refugees outside of what would become Israel's internationally recognized borders, or internally displaced inside of them.

Further reading: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/5/23/the-nakba-did-not-start-or-end-in-1948 https://www.aljazeera.com/program/featured-documentaries/2013/5/29/al-nakba/ https://imeu.org/article/the-nakba-and-palestine-refugees-imeu-questions-and-answers https://www.vox.com/videos/2023/5/15/23723947/palestine-nakba-may-15-protests-israel

Post-1948 Period:

Quotes:

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” David Ben-Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp99

1967- Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights after the 1967 Six-Day War. Jewish settlements were established in these territories, leading to ongoing tensions and disputes.

1973- Yom Kippur War

1987- Hamas formed.

Peace Process and Oslo Accords (1990s):Peace Attempts: Several peace negotiations took place between Israel and Palestine, leading to the Oslo Accords in 1993, which established limited Palestinian self-rule in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Early 21st Century: Second Intifada (2000-2005): A period of intensified Israeli-Palestinian violence and unrest, leading to significant loss of life on both sides.

In 2004, Giaora Eiland, who still is, incidentally, in the inner circle of Benjamin Netanyahu right now as I speak. He described Gaza as, quote, “a huge concentration camp.” That's Gaza.

September 2005- Israel completed implementation of its Disengagement Plan from the Gaza Strip, which included dismantling all the settlements there, evacuating the settlers to Israel and withdrawing the military. After the plan was fully implemented, Israel issued an order declaring the end of its military rule in the Gaza Strip, indicating it was no longer responsible for the safety and well-being of the population in Gaza. But the territory remained under blockade, leading to economic hardship and conflict.

2006-

Here was an election in the West Bank in Gaza, parliamentary elections. Those elections were urged on the Palestinian people by the US administration was that now forgotten moment in the Bush administration called “democracy promotion.” And part of this package called “democracy promotion” was the Palestinians were supposed to participate in those wonderful democratic experiences. And Hamas was urged to participate in those elections, and it reversed itself. Hitherto, it opposed participating in any elections in the occupied territories, because those elections were a consequence of the Oslo Accord. And since Hamas opposed the Oslo Accord, it opposed participating in the elections. But it reversed itself. It ran in a civilian political party. And, much to the surprise of Hamas and everybody else, it won the election. Those were, according to former US President Jimmy Carter, “completely fair and honest elections,” and Hamas won. What did the US and Israel do? It immediately imposed a brutal blockade on Gaza, which brought economic life in Gaza to a standstill. - Norman Finkelstein

*When Hamas was elected, it repeatedly sent out peace feelers to try and resolve the conflict with Israel. It presented on its own, or as speaking for itself, the terms of the international consensus for resolving a conflict, namely two states on the June 1967 border.

June 2007- After Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, Israel further tightened its control of the crossings and rarely allowed Palestinians to enter or leave Gaza, or to import or export goods. Three months after the Hamas takeover, in response to the continued firing of Qassam rockets at Israel, Israel’s security cabinet declared the Gaza Strip a hostile entity and adopted collective punitive measures, including cutting back electricity and fuel supply to Gaza

2008-

June 2008 there was a ceasefire arranged between Israel and Hamas. The ceasefire held, it held in June, it held in July, it held in August, it held in September, it held in October, and it held the first four days in November. And then November 4th came along, that was election day. when everybody's attention was riveted on the presidential election and the first black president being elected in our country's history. And Israel used that moment -- when all the cameras were diverted from it -- it used that moment to attack Hamas in Gaza and broke the ceasefire. Go and read what Amnesty International said.

Operation Cast Lead- Dec 27, 2008 – Jan 18, 2009 https://imeu.org/article/operation-cast-lead

2012-

Operation Pillar of Defense- Nov 13, 2012 – Nov 21, 2012

After Operation Cast Lead, there was a slight relaxing of the brutal blockade of Gaza. The Gaza economy did show some signs of recovery. And there was also money starting to pour in from Qatar. The head of state of Turkey, Erdoğan, was planning on a visit to Gaza. And this annoyed Israel because Gaza was not supposed to prosper. So what did they do? The record is clear. They assassinated a senior Hamas official Ahmad Jabari and six others. Shortly afterwards, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with another 20 air strikes, killing five more people, two of them children, Hamas health minister Mufid Mukhalalati said in a televised press conference at Gaza City’s Shifa hospital.

2014-

Operation Protective Edge-

2,200 Palestinians killed, of whom 550 were children. They demolished 18,000 homes.

2018- Gaza March to return Massacre May 14th

On May 14th 2018 The Palestinian people of Gaza were in continuing peaceful marches Up to the walls imprisoning them with hopes that the apartheid regime of Israel would have some humanity and hear their plea with a right to return, to be given basic human rights as they had been doing since March 30th 2018. Instead of being shown humanity IDF soldiers began an especially discriminatory attack on the peaceful protestors. The causalities for that day alone stood at 2700 injured, including 1,359 from live ammunition and 235 Children. The dead included six children under the age of 18, among them a 15-year-old girl, and a medic and at least 52 adults. The toll increased exponentially through the course of the multiple week protest with numbers in 12,000 plus victims range 1000 of which children and hundreds of medics and journalists in appropriate identifying garb.

Many IDF soldiers have gone on record to brag about their statistics in competition with each other It is callous and bitter but I'll provide a link to some accounts of this .

Further, Shireen Abu Akleh an American-Palestinian journalist was wearing full reporter protective gear and was intentionally sniped in the neck killing her, they then lied about it and admitted to it a significant amount of time later. At her funeral the procession was subject to pogroms by Israeli police not even giving her peace in death.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/gaza-protests-take-off-ahead-of-new-us-embassy-inauguration-in-jerusalem/2018/05/14/eb6396ae-56e4-11e8-9889-07bcc1327f4b_story.html

https://www.unrwa.org/campaign/gaza-great-march-returnhttps://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/5/16/palestinians-great-march-of-return-the-human-costhttps://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-snipers-brag-about-deliberately-crippling-gaza-protestershttps://www.cnn.com/2022/09/05/middleeast/idf-shireen-abu-akleh-investigation-intl/index.htmlhttps://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/14/israeli-police-attack-on-shireen-abu-akleh-mourners-sparks-outcry

Recent Events:

The amount of atrocities are too numerous to list them all here but i would like to list some from September of 2023 at least.

September 2023-

September 5th- Israeli forces killed two Palestinians, including one child, in two operations that involved the exchange of fire in Tulkarm and Jericho. September 9th-Israeli forces killed a Palestinian child in Hebron. September 13th- Five Palestinian were killed in the Gaza Strip as an explosive device went off near Israel’s perimeter fence. On 16 and 17 September, large groups of Israelis, including settlers, entered the Old City of Jerusalem during the Jewish New Year. Israeli authorities deployed police officers and restricted Palestinian movement in and out of the Old City, during which they physically assaulted and injured an elderly Palestinian man and arrested at least two others. On 17 September, Israeli forces restricted Palestinian access to the Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, allowing entry only to those over the age of 50 for the dawn prayers. That morning, about 400 Israelis, including settlers, accessed the compound accompanied by Israeli police, who evacuated Palestinian worshipers to secure the entry of Israelis. On 16 September, settlers stabbed a Palestinian man in the back and threw stones and bottles at Palestinian houses in Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron city, in the Israeli-controlled H2 area.

Prior to October for 2023 Israeli forces killed 181 Palestinians in the West Bank or Israel, exceeding the yearly death toll by Israeli forces in the West Bank since 2005. During the reporting period in September, 173 Palestinians, including at least 58 children, were injured by Israeli forces across the West Bank, including 11 who were hit by live ammunition. Since the beginning of the year, 769 Palestinians have been injured by live ammunition by Israeli forces in the West Bank, nearing the double of the number in the equivalent period in 2022 (460). Over 1,100 Palestinian herders from 28 communities have been displaced since 2022, citing settler violence and shrinking access to grazing land.

More here: https://www.ochaopt.org/poc/5-18-september-2023

October 2023-

October 1st- injury of several Palestinians in a number of attacks by Israeli occupation forces and settlers across the occupied West Bank.

October 4th- Israeli troops killed three Palestinian in West Bank. One of which the IDF said it opened fire at a man who threw a block at an Israeli vehicle. Palestinian health officials said a 19 year old Palestinian man was shot in the chest and killed. The army said Israeli settlers also vandalized Palestinian property. No further details were immediately released. October 5th- Israeli forces killed two Palestinians and wounded dozens more while suffering five injuries as they raided several areas in the occupied West Bank October 6th- Labib Dumaidi, 19, was shot in the heart by an Israeli settler in west bank. October 7th- Hamas launches an attack 1,400 Israelis were killed in the assault, and more than 240 were taken hostage. Israel's immediate response before even tending to the attack is to start bombing Gaza indiscriminately. Multiple survivors and hostage testimony tell Israeli solders opened fire on Israeli citizens and Hamas in hannibal directive. Israel claims 40 babies beheaded and the claim gets parroted all the way up to the president of the united states without a substantiated evidence, another addition in an ocean of lies. Due to the fog of war I'm only writing about statistics here on out.

After math.

Week one- 7,473 U.S. bombs were dropped on Afghanistan in 2019. 6,000 Israeli bombs have been dropped on Gaza in 6 days. 2,383 Palestinians killed half children 9,714 wounded, while in the West Bank, 54 were recorded dead and 1,100 wounded 1.1 Million Displaced.

One Month-

10,000 Palestinians killed 70% children. 25,000 injuries. 1.5 Million Displaced.

War Crimes- Numerous including Genocide, collective punishment, Use of white phosphorus during the offensive and many more…

The UN Genocide Convention lists five acts that fall under the definition of Genocide. Israel is currently perpetrating three of these in Gaza: “1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated with intent to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Recent Quotes-

Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.” Isaac Herzog - "It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians supposedly not being involved is absolutely untrue" Benjamin Natanyahu - "We will turn Gaza into an island of ruins." Daniel Hagari - "We are dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on Gaza. The focus is on destruction, not accuracy." Ariel Kallner - "Now there is only one goal: Nakba. A Nakba in Gaza that will dwarf the Nakba of 1948." Benjamin Nantanyahu - “They are committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world,” Netanyahu said in Hebrew. He then added: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” In the Hebrew Bible, particularly in the Book of 1 Samuel, there is a command attributed to God that King Saul is supposed to destroy the Amalekites entirely, sparing nothing and no one. The exact verse, from 1 Samuel 15:3 (New International Version), states:

"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."

This command, often referred to as the "ban" or "herem" in biblical studies, was a severe form of religious sanction where everything associated with the enemy was devoted to destruction.

Further reading:

The Gun And The Olive Branch- David Hirst https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.131536/2015.131536.The-Gun-And-The-Olive-Branch_djvu.txt The Question of Palestine-Edward Said https://archive.org/details/questionofpalest0000said Ten Myths About Israel By Ilan Pappe https://archive.org/details/ten-myths-about-israel-by-ilan-pappe-2017

Documentaries, Films, and Video Essays:

Jenin, Jenin (2002) https://vimeo.com/499672067 Born in Gaza https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZpp8JLkwBw Edward Said - Reflections on Exile and Other Essays https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EvoZ7vgu0A Norman Finkelstein on Israel's BRUTAL Assault On Gaza https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m36CUGA1Ucw&list=PLG9vw8QqgiV86CdFlCcHiSmfKwDytOATJ&index=10 Jews Against Zionism: Rabbi Speaking the Truth About Palestine & Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSEtuckDbpk&list=PLG9vw8QqgiV86CdFlCcHiSmfKwDytOATJ&index=16 Norman Finkelstein RESPONDS to Bernie Sanders statement OPPOSING GAZA CEASEFIRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R49v3K29mM&list=FLUORSml2RTXRf2S9zsXpbOw

#palestine #apartheid #israel #genocide #gaza #settler colonialism #ethnic cleansing #free palestine #History #Nakba

8 notes · View notes

scotianostra · 1 year

Text

Adam Archibald was born on 14th January 1879 at Leith.

Archibald was awarded the Victoria Croos for an act of bravery during Worlad War One near Ors, France.

Adam was the son of Rennie Archibald, a Plasterer, and Christina Archibald, of 24 Shaws Street, Edinburgh. He lived at 53 Balfour Street with his wife and four children, and before he joined the Army in 1916 he had been Outside Foreman with Stewart’s Granolithic Co Ltd of Duff Street. In his younger days he had been a keen footballer and had had a trial with StBernard’s FC, an early Football club that rivalled Hibs and Hearts during the Victorian era. Adam aws also a bowler and at the time of his enlistment he had been President of the Eastfield Bowling Club. Another of his hobbies was gardening and he had won prizes at local flower shows. He was a freemason belonging to the Elgin and Bruce Lodge at Limekilns in Fife,

b. 14/01/1879 Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland. d. 10/03/1957 Leith.

Adam Archibald (1879-1957) was born on 14th January 1879 at Leith, Midlothian, Scotland. He was the son of Rennie Archibald, a Plasterer, and Christina Archibald, of 24 Shaws Street, Edinburgh. He lived at 53 Balfour Street with his wife and four children, and before he joined the Army in 1916 he had been Outside Foreman with Stewart’s Granolithic Co Ltd of Duff Street. In his younger days he had been a keen footballer and had had a trial with StBernard’s FC. He was also a bowler and at the time of his enlistment he had been President of the Eastfield Bowling Club. Another of his hobbies was gardening and he had won prizes at local flower shows. He was a freemason belonging to the Elgin and Bruce Lodge at Limekilns in Fife.

He enlisted with the 7th Durham Light Infantry before transferring to the 218th Field Company, Royal Engineers during the second battle of the Sambre. At the age of 39, he was awarded the Victoria Cross for action while his unit was attempting to bridge the Sambre–Oise Canal.

On 4th November 1918 near Ors, France, Sapper Archibald was with a party building a floating bridge across the canal. He was foremost in the work under a very heavy artillery barrage and machine-gun fire. The latter was directed at him from a few yards distance while he was working on the cork floats. Nevertheless, he persevered in his task and his example and efforts were such that the bridge which was essential to the success of the operations was very quickly completed. Immediately afterwards Sapper Archibald collapsed from gas poisoning.

He received his Victoria Cross from King George V at Buckingham Palace in May 1919. After his discharge he returned to his job with Stuart’s Granolithic Works in Edinburgh, eventually rising to a position as manager of their Duff Street works. He passed away at his home in Leith on 10th Marrch 1957 at the age of 76. He was cremated at Warriston Crematorium, Edinburgh. His name is on the memorial there. His medals are on display with those of Major Waters at the Royal Engineers Museum, Gillingham, Kent.

#scotland #scottish #leither #soldier #world war one #heore #victoria cross #act of bravery #history

15 notes · View notes

bringmemyrocks · 3 months

Text

On November 2, 1917, the Balfour Declaration was made public. It is an historic irony that during the same week, the Russian Revolution reached a definitive stage. Within the same week, Jewish nationalism was thus accorded official recognition and the four million Jews of Russia, in whose name this whole movement had so largely been fostered, started on the road that would emancipate them in Russia and turn them away from Zionism, toward integration... The years between 1917 and 1920 saw the beginnings of a controversy about the meaning of the Balfour Declaration, a controversy that was to widen in scope and deepen in intensity with the passing years. For the document used language without precedent in diplomatic history. The term ‘‘national home” was an innovation in international affairs. Moreover, it sought to satisfy a multiplicity of inharmonious interests. With a single stroke the Balfour Declaration sought to reconcile the following often incompatible groups: Arabs, Zionists, non-Zionists, France, England, Christians, Muslims, Jews. According to Dr. Weizmann, the last sentence was so worded as “to prevent anti-Semites from seizing upon the Balfour Declaration as a weapon whereby to bring about the dis- franchisement of the Jews.” (It is interesting to observe that Weizmann himself, for all the talk of Zionism being a solution to the Jewish problem, was not unmindful of the fact that the realization of Zionist aims might create new problems for Jews)... The Balfour Declaration, for all its ambiguity, was now a part of international law. Palestine and Zionism were now deeply involved in the intricacies of international diplomacy. These intricate diplomacies were the birth pangs of “a Jewish nation.” There was warrant for the statement made two decades later that the “Balfour Declaration was not intended to be an immigrant aid scheme, an effort to open up a new avenue for Jewish immigration” but “a political national act designed to rebuild the national life of the Jewish people in its homeland.” Zionism had never pretended that it was anything else. I have found the greatest difficulty in having the average Jew realize the true character of this document that has projected Jews as a political entity into one of the critical areas of the world. Most Jews, I believe, think of the Balfour Declaration as a generous, charitable gesture, which can do no harm and which may do good. They dismiss the nature of a political commitment made in the name of a “Jewish people.” They overlook the fact that in many ways this document is the Magna Carta of Jewish nationalism, that it has helped create the impression that the aspirations of the average Jew is that of a separate, political entity. I have thus far considered the Balfour Declaration only in terms of the relationship with this “Jewish nation” with political powers. I am not interested in “degrees” of Jewish nationalism, accepting a lesser degree and rejecting a greater degree. The whole premise is medieval and unacceptable.

-Elmer Berger, The Jewish Dilemma, 1945, p 126, 133-134, emphasis mine.

Elmer Berger z’'l (1908-1996) was a Reform Rabbi and lifelong anti-zionist. His 1945 work The Jewish Dilemma confronts and dismantles the idea of Judaism as a race and explains why zionism will only hurt Judaism and the world long-term, from displacing diaspora Jews from their true homelands (Europe, the US, the Middle East and North Africa, etc) and leading to accusations of dual loyalty, thus exacerbating anti-Jewish hatred. Berger never advocated for an end to Judaism, as “anti-assimilationist” zionists claim–he simply refuses to endorse racism or ethnonationalism, maintaining that Jewish safety will be maintained through establishing civil rights everywhere.

I’m posting selections from Elmer Berger because I want to share the history of anti-zionist religious Judaism from the liberal tradition, which has been almost entirely written out of history. Fellow lefty Jews, please learn about Elmer Berger.

I should note that this book was written in 1945, and that antisemitism in Russia/USSR was still a real presence then and throughout Stalin's regime. But it was a tremendous improvement on what Jews had faced under the Tsar, facing constant pogroms and restricted to the Pale of Settlement.

You can read the entire book for free on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.75472/page/n26/mode/1up

#judaism #anti zionism #palestine #elmer berger #jewish anti zionism #history

5 notes · View notes

el-smacko · 5 months

Text

From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.

Look man, I can’t blame Europeans for not knowing “American” history and being unable to draw parallels between the Nakba (oh Apple, you don’t know that word? weird) and the violent dispossession of every indigenous people in the “Americas,” but Israel-Palestine is YOUR history, you dumb fucks. The Hashemite dynasty, ruling the West Asian Sunni world after leading the Arab Revolt against the genocidal Ottoman Empire during the First World War, was betrayed by the Allies, particularly Britain and France. The colonialist empires divided Greater Syria, Palestine, and Iraq into “mandates” (colonies), expressly because they did not think the Arabs were ready to govern themselves.

Prior to Stalin, the Bolsheviks had had many Jews in their ranks, and why wouldn’t they? The Tsars had dictated the Pale of Settlement and perpetrated extensive pogroms along the Eastern Front because they bought into the dual loyalty trope. The Allies, being monarchists and oligarchs, supported the nationalist resistance of Poland and Ukraine, the latter of which was in the middle of a pogrom. Later, during the Second World War, the Nazis would exterminate a staggering 70% of Ukrainian Jews and 90% of Polish Jews, which would’ve been impossible without the help of nationalist collaborators. Back to post-WWI, the fledgling German socialist movement, with its own popular Jewish leaders, was smothered in its crib by the Allies’ harsh punishment—remember, of course, that the German Kaiser and military command were no longer (and had never been) representative of the German people who bore the burden of this vengeance. Without a corridor to the USSR, the doomed German socialist movement was hijacked by nationalists and purged of any resistance to fascism.

During WWII, Free France operated out of Syria and crushed indigenous resistance, making it rather obvious they considered the territory a colony. The Sunni Hashemite the French had deposed from Syria had been made king of the majority-Shia Iraq, to give you an idea of how flippantly the British governed their “mandate.” Some Iraqis were accordingly susceptible to Axis propaganda, but neither the Axis nor the resistance viewed the other as a long-term ally with any kind of intellectual harmony. This is where a parallel with American history would be useful, because indigenous nations would make alliances of convenience with rival European empires, until a firmly established Anglo colonial monopoly turned the great diversity of indigenous nations into a monolithic enemy race. It’s an old imperial trope of utilizing regional ethnic tension (or fabricating it by heaping investments on amicable minorities) until a substantial foothold enables ethnic cleansing, assimilating the amicable and exterminating the hostile.

Anyway, when the British brutally suppressed Iraqi independence, many Iraqis were even more susceptible to Axis propaganda. Baghdad saw the Farhud, roughly equivalent to the Tulsa race massacre, with some key differences: Iraqi government officials did not participate because they didn’t exist; Jews in Iraq were not living under apartheid, so the violence was unique and localized; the perpetrating Iraqi mob was suppressed by indiscriminate automatic gunfire by the British; the majority of displaced Iraqi Jews returned to the area.

You see, before the British betrayal and subsequent Mandate of Palestine, the Hashemites had accepted the Balfour Declaration. A homeland for the Jews would be established in Palestine expressly without the disruption of the communities already living there. Of course the Arabs would gladly accept the peaceful settlement of Jews, they had been living together for the better part of three millennia as fellow Semites. That’s right: Arabs are Semitic. The cultures of Arabs and Jews exist on a Semitic continuum, but a similar “Judeo-Christian” milieu in the West has not existed since the Apostolic Age almost two millennia ago. Assertions to the contrary are anachronistic, aspirational interfaith outreach at best, but are far more often antisemitic, modern Anglo mythologizing. The safest place on the planet for Jews was the Arab world, especially since their competition was 20th century Europe and the United States, whose ethnic cleansing of the American West and parallel Anglicizing of European diversity was the explicit ideological model for Nazi expansion to its East. Particularly regrettable was Stalin’s antisemitic and anti-indigenous consolidation of power and the subsequent forced secularization, especially since, prior to WWII, Stalin had at least ostensibly been a federalist. The course of the war, however, had logistically essentialized the military and the subsequent Cold War—in which the US constantly signaled it would destroy the planet if communism wouldn’t commit suicide—made the Russian majority suspicious of ethnic or religious minorities, whom the West were constantly trying to cynically leverage against the USSR.

That is obviously not at all to say that any degree of imperialist suppression is ever justified, or that there is ever an excuse for it, whether against Ukraine or Tibet. It is only to say that there is a materialist explanation for the evil perpetrated by an empire, which helps us to avoid it in the future much more than absolutist moral condemnation could. Not to get too far off topic, but this is the ideological core of abolition: crime and punishment only ever plays whack-a-mole with evil as opposed to remedy, which seeks to turn off the machine or at the very least predict the moles’ pattern and do everything short of whacking it to make it not inevitably pop back up.

The relative safety of Jews in the Arab world was compromised, of course, by Europeans and their ideology, which had spent the 19th century without exception finding ways to convince itself of its own supremacy. The British enabled and often participated in the ethnic cleansing of Arabs and then, when it was no longer politically expedient, forbade the practice they had initiated. Then they imagined they could fairly partition the territory after having premised the previous conversation on all for one rivalry with an obvious favorite. Doomed to failure, the British pawned the partition off on a committee in the UN comprised of “neutral states.” Arab authorities boycotted the process because the obvious favor toward partition would not address reparations to dispossessed Arabs and deny the possibility of a federal republic, or even just any kind of harmonious coexistence at all. The minority of states wanting one state included India, whose fraught, enduringly contentious ethno-religious partition after being a British mandate was ongoing, and Yugoslavia, whose UN-mediated post-Soviet partition would feature the genocide of a hundred thousand Muslims. “Neutral states” in favor of the partition were Canada and Australia, who shared a queen with Britain and whose legislatures were almost entirely derived from Anglo oligarchs. Perhaps worse, Czechoslovakia voted for the partition and then, when Israel announced it would own the entire mandate, UN be damned, the country provided arms in the ensuing genocidal war.

The bipartisan, fair partition is a myth that the Israeli government and its allies like to hold over the resistance, the carrot always replaced with a stick, the football Lucy keeps yanking out from under Charlie Brown. The partition plan is worth looking at, to see why it was so egregious and why Arab Palestinians might only ever begrudgingly accept it, if only to ever have a brief respite from ethnic cleansing and apartheid: the Israeli areas, in which Arabs were to be foreigners, were almost entirely places from which Arabs had been removed; the Israelis received a slim majority of the territory—already disproportionate—but received an even more disparate proportion of Mediterranean coastline, as well as access to the Gulf of Aqaba; this not only confirmed the already well signaled intent of the West to normalize relations with Israel as a peer while treating Arabs as subjects, but the border would conspicuously divide the Arab Muslim world in two, North Africa from West Asia. Indeed, the West, usually the United States, succeeded in quashing every attempt at recovering the pan-Arab unity they briefly tasted in the 1920s. Utilizing nationalist elements to undermine federalist socialism has some pretty obvious consequences, though: after several coups and more than one US-facilitated or -perpetrated genocide, Iraq and Syria became fragile military dictatorships and Israel’s “defensive” genocide of Gaza is ongoing.

But let’s talk about Israel. I swear on the soul of my yet-unborn child that I am not being sarcastic or in any way ironic when I say: It is the homeland of the Jews, promised to them by the Most High God. I believe that because I am not an asshole, not because I am convinced of the existence of any god, nor because I think the present actualization of that belief is at all done in good faith. Temple Judaism has been so entirely supplanted by rabbinical Judaism that Jeremiah is a canonical prophet. The Torah is pre-Temple, since Moses had died in the desert. The past two thousand years of Jewish history has been spent trying to find the most benevolent empire they could to wait out the time until the promise of the Song of Songs would come due. I cannot blame any Jewish person ever for believing that the foundation of Israel was a Davidic unification or a Persian liberation (notice that the hyper-Oriental Persians are the uncontested villain in the Western mythology of the Greco-Persian Wars, but Cyrus had been the Messianic restorer of Judaism). Unfortunately, just like Messianism arising from an injection of Indo-European philosophy via the Persians, the Anglos implanted their own interpretations of the original, ancient Israelite settlement of Israel, namely that it conveniently fit the exact model of Anglo colonization.

That is all to say that the state of Israel, contrary to fundamental pillars of historical Jewish thought, pretends to be representative of the global Jewish community. It presumptuously calls its governing body the Knesset, as if it has the authority to dictate Jewish orthodoxy. It compelled and continues to compel Jews to self-deport and be citizens of Israel, which attempts to affirm rather than combat the “dual loyalty” trope (this has entirely uprooted half of all Jewish communities and transplanted them in Israel, where they are not safe, especially since they are subject to conscription). It obfuscates anti-Arab apartheid with the Holocaust and frames any resistance to its apartheid as antisemitic, affirming rather than combatting the “racial guilt” trope. The IDF command is certainly not committed to dispelling the blood libel when by malice or carelessness they massacre Arab children.

Again, I feel the need to say that Jewish sovereignty in Israel is a necessity for a world of justice and peace, but the Israeli state—not the Jewish people of Israel, but the territory’s antisemitic secular government—is manifestly more interested in volatile supremacy than tranquil safety. I always fall back on the story of Moses Maimonides, the stiffest competition Rashi has for greatest Medieval Jewish scholar. He lived in Almoravid Spain until the Almohads compelled him to leave. He went to Egypt and was the personal physician of Saladin, who freed Jerusalem from her oppressive Crusader dynasty. He wrote in Arabic and early attempts at translating his works into Hebrew were characterized by neologizing and Arabic borrowing. He certainly did not emigrate to Europe, where their mythology was invariably either antisemitic or so anti-Moor it was collaterally antisemitic. The Roman Catholic Church didn’t officially absolve the Jews of guilt for the “murder” of Jesus until the 60s. After the “Reconquista,” many Sephardim, that is, Iberian Jews, hid their faith and/or emigrated, like my wife’s family. Despite recent propaganda, Jewish history among Arabs or Muslims generally has been orders of magnitude safer than among Christians ever.

A reconciliation interim government toward the establishment of a one-state republic is the only path open for safety, for beating swords into plowshares, for lion to lay with lamb. This will necessarily involve the overthrow of the apartheid government, which must be done by a popular uprising of Israelis.

10/7 was an act of terror, but so was 9/11. The illusion of safety they shattered was a reflection of the lack of safety for an oppressed people necessary to fabricate that illusion. The over-reliance on cheap oil in the Anglo-dominated global market, embodied in the World Trade Center, necessitated that Anglos keep the Iraqis out of the oil business.

(But wait, I’ve made an error, haven’t I? Iraq didn’t do 9/11. Afghanistan didn’t even do 9/11, it just refused to give up Osama bin Laden without due process—he was eventually killed in Pakistan [the pariah Muslim state after the partition of British India] without the knowledge of the Pakistani government. The US government denied allied intelligence contradicting the supposed danger to itself presented by Iraq and fed the lie to its own people through corporate media, having long ago appropriated and defanged the journalistic activism which had precipitated American withdrawal from Vietnam. Recently, these same corporations tried to sell themselves as nothing less than the vanguard of democracy by… selling Hillary “my unfaithful husband didn’t rape you,” “pan-African and pan-Arab sentiment is undesirable” Clinton as a feminist icon while relentlessly platforming Trump and his supporters until he seemed like a viable candidate. Then, they heroically resisted/platformed Trump until the damage could be done and he could be replaced by his Democrat clone, polite but only a single degree politically to the left, the man who had explicitly been the conservative counterweight to Barrack Obama’s vanishingly mild and already impossibly embattled socialism.)

Regardless of whether it was a deplorable act of terrorism—and it was—the World Trade Center was not attacked because Al Qaeda is evil. It was attacked in a misguided attempt to end or at least protest the subjugation of the Muslim world for Western industry and finance. Regardless of whether it was a deplorable act of terrorism—and it was—10/7 was not perpetrated because Hamas is evil. The “Gaza Envelope” was attacked because its communities are strategic settlements, dotted with military industry, and used to quarter IDF troops. The line between civilian and combatant was not erased by Hamas on 10/7, but by the Israeli government: all Israelis native or immigrant are compelled to serve in the IDF, all Palestinian males are tried as adults in military court, and the constant violation of all proposed treaties with new or expanding settlements utilizes civilians, many of them vulnerable refugees, in paramilitary strategy. Now, “artificial intelligence” targeting and other morally bankrupt modern tactics are being used to pioneer industrial murder in the digital age, even as media enablers cynically pretend it is for the sake of “Never Again.” The Nazis did evil because they were evil, so any similar evil means the perpetrators are Nazis and therefore evil, so: worth exterminating. This line of reasoning is how the US military justified the nuclear ethnic massacres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, each the numerical equivalent of one Bosnian genocide.

Likewise, both Stalin and the British loved this tactic of identifying any nationalist resistance to empire with Nazis to justify a people’s continued repression. No surprise then that Anglo leftists love comparing Israel to the Nazis, which is rather ghoulish, especially since Israel had declared its independence from Britain after years of armed resistance, albeit culminating in the most mild non-Anglo separation.

To allow Netanyahu to be Israel’s Bush Jr. AND Bush Sr. in Palestine is utter folly. If Israelis want to avoid turning Hamas into the next ISIL, instead of their present state of being the IRA, Israelis must end the nationalist project pretending to act on their behalf. The aggression of Russian oligarchs in Ukraine is imperial and genocidal, but the United States has greatly exacerbated the conflict, just like it did Vietnam, Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, to name a very few. Likewise, the conflict in Israel is an essential component of the US military industrial complex, wherein half the funds dedicated to the largest area of public spending end up enriching private entities, that is, mercenaries, industrialists, or the people they trick into giving them money by offering “stocks.”

Yes, allow me to demystify the stock market while I’m at it. A bunch of rich men make a company “public,” which here means “private, but people can donate to it betting that it will do well.” Most rich men sell their stake in the casino now that it’s flush with cash, while the few who remain and the new owners must now pay off this huge investment in addition to providing the original product or service which had been made possible and appealing for acquisition in the first place by crowdfunding, a shit by any other name smelling, etc. Costs are cut and revenue is maximized. In media, safe bets like nostalgia or fan service make art insufferable and projects tend to be cheap and underwritten (or do everything short of not being cheap and underwritten in order to pretend not to be cheap and underwritten) despite having unprecedentedly large budgets. It has become a soul-crushing, mind-numbing chase of “the next big thing” like streaming or VR to inorganically synthesize a dedicated revenue stream to pay down the latest merger or copy the latest challenger. There are three categories to owning stocks, arranged in order of least to most fucked if a company fails: enfranchised board member, disenfranchised subordinate, and gambler. The house always wins, the servile help take the fall, and the vast majority of gamblers bust. It is an evil system integrated into public services so that rich men could further enrich themselves by being tax-farming publicans disguised as casinos, or worse, as charity and vital industry. Booms and busts are inevitable in such a system in which competition is essentialized, necessitating ever more losers and ever stronger—and fewer!—winners.

The United States’ cynical financialization of the national defense creates perverse incentives like militarizing police, pushing a hazardous volume of civilian gun-sales, equipping oppressive regimes, and even starting massive conflicts, all to maximize profit. The industrial murder machine grinds the bodies of friend and foe alike into money. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof have the gall to pretend they are morally vindicated by God or “civilization” to defend industry by any means necessary. Domestically, the market pioneers new societal frontiers to antisocially atomize for maximum porousness to financialization; abroad, peripheral populations are found to exploit as slaves in everything but name, particularly as a way to avoid having to provide even the barest benefits to workers to make up for the retreat of the state and the corresponding privatization (not reduction) of bureaucracy.

Yet again, the deputizing of the Israeli government and IDF command in these repugnant imperial endeavors by the United States affirms antisemitic tropes of greed and conspiracies of a Jewish globalist “cabal.” The United States-Israel nationalist axis, despite its posturing, everywhere affirms antisemitic tropes while denying their ostensible realization. These states advance harmful stereotypes of Judaism while claiming to represent or protect Jews. They purposefully fabricate a narrow definition of antisemitism which conveniently includes any resistance to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and colonialism.

This post is so fucking long because it’s been gestating for almost three months as I grimly watch the Gaza genocide and become increasingly convinced of liberalism’s inability to ever actually depart from its fascist roots. We will not stop genocides, we will not eradicate slavery, and we will not move to renewable energy while the best we can hope is for the next Obama to be “checked and balanced” into negative progress. Half the global Jewish population will not know safety as long as the Israeli government and the IDF pursue victory over diplomacy. An American socialist revolution is far beyond our present scope.

But an Arab-Israeli detente is possible and necessary.

#israel #palestine #tw antisemitism #tw genocide #politics #indigenous #history #socialism #nationalism #gaza

5 notes · View notes