By Barry Rosenfeld
In part 1 of this blog we described how the Messiah’s prophecy in the New Testament Book of Matthew regarding the destruction of Jerusalem, came to pass, how the Jewish people were scattered, and how in the 19th century with the modern rise of the national Zionist movement, the Jews began to return to their land.
During the 1920s, under the League of Nations’ British Mandate, immigration to the Land continued to increase. At this point riots began to break out within the Arab population. The first riots occurred in Jerusalem during the Passover week of March 1920. Other attacks on Jewish life and property occurred in Jaffa and other communities in May of 1921. Forty-seven were killed and 140 wounded. Conditions remained peaceful until the end of the decade when violence again broke out over access by Jews to the Western Wall in Jerusalem. A seven day riot occurred throughout the Land in August of 1929 in Jerusalem, Motza, Hebron, Safed, Jaffa, and other parts of the country. All told 133 Jews were killed and 300 wounded. An Arab uprising took place between 1936 and 1939 against British rule and Jewish immigration. Prior to the revolt Jewish immigration had been greatly on the increase due mostly to the oppressive conditions in Nazi Germany. The Peele Commission was set up by the British in 1936 to investigate the causes of what had started as an Arab general strike. In a first case of what was to become a pattern, the Commission suggested partition with the formation of a Jewish enclave, a proposal that was rejected by the Arabs but accepted by the two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion. A British White Paper published in 1939 restricted Jewish immigration to 15,000 annually just as the Nazi Final Solution was about to be put into practice.
With the onset of the 1948 Arab-Israel war on up until the early 1970s, between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Jews left, fled, or were expelled from their homes in Arab countries. Many left with nothing. By the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the majority of Jewish communities throughout the Arab world no longer existed. The November 29th, 1947 UN partition vote was met by pogroms in such Arab communities as Aden where 82 were killed, and in the Syrian city of Aleppo where 75 died and hundreds were wounded. Immediately over half the community fled. Also between 1947 and 1948 about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs left their homes and fled to neighboring Jordan and Lebanon. Many of the refugees had been encouraged by their leaders to leave for the safety of neighboring countries with the understanding that they would return after the combined Arab armies had destroyed the nascent state. Others left out of fear for their safety. In October 1948 the British publication the Economist reported with regard to the Arab exodus: “There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit… It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.”
All of this forms the basis for the conflict that exists today when the total number of so-called Palestinian refugees has now grown to an estimated 5,000,000 plus, including the descendants of the original families that fled, or seven times the original number.
For over 65 years the Arab countries have refused to take in these refugees many of whom have languished in camps, while their children and their children’s children are taught to hate Jews and that the greatest honor is to give your life as a Shaheed, a human bomb. For over 65 years and through five major wars, these Palestinians have attacked and killed Jewish mothers and their children, only to be taken captive and later released as part of some deal. For over 65 years, time and time again, the Palestinian leaders have refused even the most gracious settlements, granting them as much as 98 percent of the land they have requested only to return with ever-increasing unreasonable demands. For over 65 years these Palestinians have taught their children that there is only one country between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and that is Palestine, emblazing this on all of their maps and official emblems. Now the State of Israel is again under pressure to continue its suspended participation in so-called peace talks, and has already released scores of prisoners with blood on their hands. The most recent efforts have been “rewarded” with the abduction of the three innocent yeshiva students, who went missing over two weeks ago and about whom no word has been received. Meanwhile a massive manhunt continues in Judea and Samaria and scores of Hamas terrorists are being taken into custody.
(To be continued)
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