Palestine Quotes
He also expressed his pleasure with the British Balfour Declaration granting the Jews their own country in part of Palestine ({594001}). Wilson had earlier committed himself to support the Zionist claim for Palestine. See {585124}.
There were Arabs living in Palestine since Roman times. However, there was no concept of Palestinians as a separate people from Jordanians or other Arabs in the Middle East. There had never been a Palestinian government separate from the other Arabs in the region and separate from the Kingdom of Jordan. At the birth of Israel, all the Arab Armies of the region attacked the new state, which managed to defend itself but in the process the Arab governments had told the Arabs of Israel to leave the Area so their Armies would be able to attack all others. After the Arab victory, they could return and could have their land and the Jewish land. The victory never happened and the Arabs who left have been refugees outside of Israel and describe themselves as “Palestinians” which have had a quasi government in the PLO. The Palestinians who stayed in Israel became full citizens of the Jewish State. Other Palestinian refugees left the area and emigrated throughout the Middle East and elsewhere.
At the time, some Palestinian Arabs claimed exclusive rights to the territory on the grounds that Arabs had dominated the area for the longest period of time. They gave no credence to the fact that the Jews had dominated the area and it was the center of their kingdom for many years before—that Jews had constantly lived in the area of longer than the Arabs, nor did they give any credence to the fact that the Christians had conquered the area from the Muslims during the Crusades.
The Nazis and most of the Arabs were allies in WWII. The Jews of Palestine—although they were opposed to many of the British policies regarding Palestine—were active in the Allied cause contributing units to the British Army. Although the Germans were brutal to civilians, murdering millions, they refrained from public pronouncements or exhortations to kill civilians in most cases. The Arabs did not. The Mufti was actually given the rank of General in the Nazi SS and had his own SS unit. In this despicable exhortation he actually uses a concept and wording from the Koran. See {584355}. This quotation is important in that it refutes a common claim by some Palestinians that it was only the Germans who were responsible for the Holocaust and the post war Jewish Refugee problem and that the Palestinians had to bear the price rather than place Israel in Europe. This quotation and the other by the Grand Mufti prove that Palestinians were not only complicit in persecution of Jews but took a leadership and advocacy role.
The advocacy of the Jewish Return to the Holy Land was not first suggested or stated by European Jewish Zionists. Brightman was not only the first Christian to urge the return of the Jews, but the secon person of any faith to suggest it. He was only preceded by a Jewish refugee from the Spanish Inquisition--Joseph Nasi in 1561.
Because of the classic historical anti-Semitism and discrimination, Jews were barred from land ownership and as a result few were farmers or had agricultural experience in their families. They were tradesmen, artisans, professionals in Europe. So amongst Jews and non Jews alike the notion of Jews settling the land of Palestine and farming it or trapping, the way the Boers had in South Africa or the French in Canada, was not a very credible image. The Zionists, realizing this potential weakness, placed strong emphasis on agriculture, developed the agricultural kibbutz concept and encouraged Jews to become farmers. The effort was so successful that almost all the leading early Zionist immigrants to Palestine became farmers. When independence came to Israel, the Jewish agriculture was more productive than most of that in Europe and almost on a par with small farms in the United States. The Israelis were known for “making the desert bloom.
At that time Jews in Palestine were in the minority. The issue of how to obtain the land was hotly debated amongst Jewish groups. Jabotinsky was at one extreme—colonize and take the land just as the Arabs had done to the Jews when there was a Jewish majority. His view did not however prevail. The policy was to buy the land from individual Arabs and Jewish land up to 1948 was obtained that way. In that year the UN partitioned Palestine and 11 Arab armies attacked the new state of Israel and asked the Arab civilians to leave the area so that the Army could cleanse it of Jews. Many did not, and they or their descendants are still on their land or have sold it. The Arabs who left, were suspected of being possible collaborators or terrorists, and they have never been paid for their land or allowed to return. Compensation is still in dispute. At the same time Jews driven out of Arab countries by law and the military have never been compensated or given any right of return either.
This was one of the most accurate foreign policy assessments ever made. The next year the first Arab-Israeli war began when the state of Israel came into being. See {624566} for another accurate prediction.
This is the first statement of a Jewish nation since Biblical Times.
Arguing that the Arabs will never agree willingly to a Jewish state:
The Jewish and American perception at the time was that the Arabs of Palestine were nomadic tribes who trekked through the countries of the Middle East without any national allegiance to any nation including the Ottoman Turks who before WWI ruled the area. However, there were also a small number of Arabs who had settled on fixed land, operating farms and olive groves. They were not nomads, and while not attached to a nation were very much attached to the land. Those families, who did not fight the Jewish right to establish a Jewish state, still possesses, work, and live on those traditional lands. Those who fought against the founding of Israel in 1949 and those who followed 14 Arab armies’ military instructions to evacuate their lands so the military could shell and bomb the Jews and were promised the land and goods of the Jews after their defeat, became refugees who would never be integrated by the 14 Arab nations whose requests they followed.
At the time, Palestine was technically Turkish territory. Turkey was one of the defeated axis powers in World War I. England, as part of the World War I peace treaties, had control over Palestine as well as most of the rest of the Middle East.
