by The Committee for Truth and Justice www.truthandjustice-online.com

Post-Ottoman era (1917 to 1947)

In the last edition of Reality News, we traced the relationship of Jews and Arabs to Israel/Palestine and found that the Jews had occupied Israel continuously for over 3300 years, had two separate Jewish Kingdoms on the land that spanned about 1000 years, and was ruled by over 50 kings during this time. On the other hand, the Arab Muslims ruled Palestine starting about 1300 years ago for about 400 years as part of a greater Muslim empire, and there was never a state called Palestine. Palestine was always the name of a region of the Levant and always a region within the Arab state of Syria.

In addition, the Jews never voluntarily left Israel, they were conquered by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Romans; and expelled from Israel by the Babylonians and Romans. Although most of the Jews had been expelled some remained, and the diaspora prayed toward Israel and for the return to Israel three times per day. On the other hand, the Arab Muslims prayed to Mecca, allowed Jerusalem to decay, and never honored Jerusalem during these 1300 years. In addition, the Jews always far outnumbered the Arab Muslims in Jerusalem.

With the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of the World Zionist Organization in the late 19th century, the movement to establish a modern state of Israel quickened. This endeavor increased at the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI. Before the end of WWI in 1916, the British and French signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement that gave administration of Syria and Lebanon to the French and that of Palestine to the British when the war ended. In 1917, the British, Lord Balfour, issued the Balfour Declaration for “the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish People” and announced an intent to facilitate the achievement of this objective.

WWI ended in 1918 and the internationally recognized legal disposal of Palestine, the British Mandate for Palestine, was formulated by the League of Nations in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference. The Mandate recognized the “historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine,” called upon Britain to “secure establishment of the Jewish National Home,” with “an appropriate Jewish agency” to be set up for advice and cooperation to that end. The World Zionist Organization was specifically recognized as the appropriate vehicle for establishing this homeland for the Jews in Palestine. Jewish immigration was to be facilitated, while ensuring that the “rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced.” English, Arabic, and Hebrew were all to be official languages.

Feisal Hussein, King of Iraq and Syria agreed to Jewish National Home according to British Mandate in 1918; mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab State and Palestine, and being desirous further of confirming the good understanding which exists between them, have agreed upon the goal of establishing a pan Arab state over most of Arabia and a Jewish state of Israel in Palestine.

Hussein’s hopes of a pan-Arab state with him as its ruler were dashed, however, when the other major Arab clan, the Sauds, militarily took over Arabia. At about the same time the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem fueled hatred of Jews and instigated attacks and massacres of Jews all over Palestine, most notably in Hebron. Forty-seven were murdered, 140 wounded and all of the Jews were expelled from Hebron in 1920 and 1921. The Jews of Hebron were not immigrants as they had lived there continuously for 3500 years. Hebron is the burial site of the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs and it served as the first location of the Judaism’s holy Tabernacle. In response to this conflict, in 1922 the British formulated a new interpretation of the Mandate, i.e., the White Paper, which denied the right of the Jews to a homeland in Israel and it significantly restricted Jewish immigration while allowing full Arab immigration to continue unabated. The White paper also split off 76% of Palestine for a state called Transjordan, and gave it as a consolation prize to the Hussein clan for their assistance in WWI and their loss of the Arabian peninsula to the Sauds. Thus an Iraqi Arab clan was given sovereignty over most of Palestine thereby bypassing the rights of the Palestinian Arabs as well as the Jews. From this point on in 1922 until statehood, the Jews of Palestine had two enemies: the Arabs and the British; and they were forced to fight both.

From the late 19th century until the White Paper many Jews immigrated to Israel from around the world. Most of the land was owned by absentee Arab landlords who lived in Lebanon and Syria and the land was worked by Palestinian Arab laborers. When the Jews came to Palestine, they bought land from the absentee landlords and then worked the land themselves and with the help of Palestinian Arabs. The Jews planted new crops and built the first reservoirs in Palestine. This hard work literally made the desert bloom and as a result Arab itinerant farmers streamed into Palestine for work harvesting the crops. In fact there were as many Arab immigrants into Palestine before Israel’s statehood in 1948 as there were Jewish immigrants.

With this great influx of both Arabs and Jews, the anti-Jewish incitement and jihadist tactics and goals of the Grand Mufti, and the ineffectiveness of the British, conflicts among Jews, Arabs and the British escalated. The incitement by the Grand Mufti escalated and resulted in the massacre of 1929. Arab mobs attacked Jews in Jerusalem, Motza, Hebron, Safed, Jaffa, and other parts of the country. The Old City of Jerusalem was hit particularly hard. While attacks on Jews in Tel Aviv and Haifa were thwarted and Jerusalem repulsed by Jewish defenses, there were Jewish deaths in Hebron, where 67 Jewish men and women were slaughtered and Safed, where 18 Jews were killed, as well as scattered other losses totaling 133 Jewish deaths, with more than 300 wounded. The British investigated this massacre and issued the Hope-Simpson Commission report which blamed the British for ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan and Syria and their displacement of the prospective Jewish immigrants.

The Mufti’s jihad continued and after three years of violence and civil strife, the Mufti led a campaign of terrorism against Jewish and British targets. The Arabs began by proclaiming an Arab general strike and boycott of Jewish enterprises and products. The strike quickly led to a campaign of terror against Jewish people and lands. Seventeen Jews were killed the first day, with little action by the British to stop the rioters. Sparked by the Mufti’s agitators, armed bands of Arab terrorists attacked Jewish villages and vehicles, as well as British Army and police forces. By August 1936, responding more to attacks on British assets than to the Jewish losses, the British began a military crack-down on the Arab terrorists. The Arab strike ended in October 1936 and a temporary peace between Arabs and Jews prevailed for almost a year.

The Arab massacre of Jews in 1936/37 led to the Peel Commission which examined the conflict. The Peel Commission attributed the underlying cause of the Arab violence to the desire of the Arabs for national independence and their hatred and fear of the establishment of a National Jewish Home. The Commission recommended freezing Jewish immigration at 12,000 per year for five years and for partition of the land. The Arabs would receive 81% of Palestine and the Jews 19%. The Arabs rejected this offer and the Jews accepted it, and in response the Arabs launched a new wave of terror against the Jews.

Eighty Jews were murdered by terrorist acts during the labor strike, and a total of 415 Jewish deaths were recorded during the whole 1936-1939.

In response to the Arab rejection of a state, the British produced another White Paper in 1939. This document stated that it was not British policy that Palestine should become a Jewish or Arab State, but an independent Palestine State in which Arabs and Jews shared government. In addition, further admission of Jewish immigrants would be limited to 75,000 over the next five years. Despite the heavily pro-Arab nature of the White Paper, the Arabs rejected it and again launched a widespread campaign of violence against the Jews.

WWII began in 1939 and the Grand Mufti went to Germany to enlist the assistance of the Nazis in exterminating the Jews of Palestine. The Mufti soon became an honored guest of the Nazi leadership and met on several occasions with Hitler. Throughout the war, he appeared regularly on German radio broadcasts to the Middle East, preaching his pro- Nazi, anti-Semitic message to the Arab masses back home. The Mufti openly encouraged Muslims to join Nazi units that would be later implicated in genocide and crimes against humanity. In addition throughout the war the British prevented immigration of European Jews to Israel and many were sent back to Europe to die in the gas chambers.

After WWII, while Jews were liberated from the Nazi death camps they were imprisoned in Displaced Persons camps and prevented from immigrating to Israel by the British. Between August 1945 and the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, 65 “illegal” immigrant ships, carrying 69,878 people, arrived from European shores. In August 1946, however, the British began to intern those they caught in camps in Cyprus. Approximately 50,000 people were detained in the camps, 28,000 of whom were still imprisoned when Israel declared independence.

Caught between Arab and Jewish demands and short on funds, the British in 1947 declared their Mandate in Palestine “unworkable” and referred the matter to the UN. The UN created a special committee to study the issues and report its recommendations. The UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) wasthe first truly independent tribunal to examine the Palestine question. UNSCOP’s majority concluded that the League of Nation’s pledge of a Jewish national home had never been fulfilled, as Jewish immigration and land purchases had been artificially restricted by the British Mandate authorities.