Truth and Self-Reliance

 It is now Day #16 .....

Mark Twain once stated;

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

Now I know I had said I would go live 'everyday". However, on Shabbat -Saturday, when I tried to sleep, my head was very heavy from not getting what is called REM -(Rapid Eye Movement sleep) -deep restful sleep and I just laid in bed and let the two old guys continue to fight it out between themselves as they argued over everything.

In the end I awoke and sat on the edge of my bed and had to force myself to get up to let out (my nemesis) Marley the 12-year-old family dog downstairs to let out "Momma's Baby" aka the "Terror Dawg of Kitty Kats" to our backyard-his potty.

 And as he was outside, I took my medicines and insulin and put on the Tami4 water bar to heat up water and turned on the TV. As I stood making my cup of coffee, I was flipping between the news in Hebrew on our stations to be updated. Once my cup of coffee was made, I changed to see what is being said in the "Western world" news media- CNN BBC MSNBC NBC.

I let the dog in and sat drinking my coffee flipping through the channels as I watched the news....I was grew sick.

ALL you saw was: Gaza devastation, Gaza refugees, Gazans "murdered" by Israeli bombing, destroyed homes, “broken lives, "murdered children and babies" -Pallywood falestinian dezinformatsiya at its best. News coverage that would have made Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) overjoyed!

And then I saw the focus on American college/university students demonstrating together with BLM activists and Arab/Moslem Immigrants who have flooded the world.

ALL of them marching, chanting; "From the river to the Sea, Palestine will be free!" Screaming and accusing us in Israel of being "Genocidal Occupationalist Settler's members of an Apartheid regime” totally brainwashed by mendacious lies from "UNWRA recipients-read descendants- of the self-inflicted Castration and Fantasia of Nachbaland™.

 I sat there in total amazement of how there are major network news reports with "pro-Palestinian guests" who are free to blatantly lie and complain that we have the "Iron Dome" system to prevent our Israel civilian population from being shot at and murdered.

Nary a word of how the vast majority of the Israelis are running to bomb shelters as rockets rain down.

What they readily show is OUR retaliatory strikes against launch sites, which can be seen in the videos in crowded residential areas using ordinary Gaza residents as "Human Shields", as a "Blatant War Crime"!

 Then I see members of the US House of representatives, Senate and celebrities also regurgitating the same.

"THE" most disgusting news item that I witnessed was the JINOs who took over the Rotunda in the US House of Congress to demand that Israel "ceasefire". God forbid they should contemplate that we in Israel are under indiscriminant mortar and rocket fire.

These pseudo-Jews -who explicitly for "effect" wore Jewish ritual prayer shawls, wore Kipot and were seen blowing shofars to "emphasize that they were "Jews". Members of the notorious anti-Israel "Jewish Voice of Peace" (read Kapo's Inc.) under the auspices of the six Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives known as the "Squad":  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri.

These brainwashed and hate filled fools made this "publicity stunt" were calling for an Israeli "ceasefire" and the "genocidal murder" of the people of Gaza.

The JVP -an oxymoron - are infamously famous for their "Not in my Name", "As a Jew", anti-Israel and anti-Zionist. These Jews in name only (JINOs) are especially overly extremely hateful of Jews who have returned to our ancestral lands in Judaea.

Nary a time have they ever acknowledged the fact of the reasoning for the creation of the Jewish State and the historical background of Israel's creation.

They are oblivious to the historically document truth of the ethnic cleansing of 900,000 of their fellow Jews, who had lived for generations in Arab lands who "cast out" deprived of all they possessed who were absorbed as full citizens in the one Jewish State.

They consistently ignore the barbarity of terrorism and lies.

Why?

I can only deduce it is caused by profound Parasitic Ostrich Syndrome which is associated Kumbayaism and (RBDD) - Rectal Brain Displacement Disorder.

In all these news broadcasts I watched and the coverage of the massive demonstrations, nary one word is mentioned of how all this began nor of the continual launching of indiscriminate explosive laden rockets, mortar rounds, anti-tank missiles and attempts to infiltrate from Gaza and Lebanon to murder and butcher Israeli civilian citizens as was done to 1400 Israelis on Saturday October 7th -Jew and Arab alike.

And then yesterday I saw the report of the brutal murder of Samantha Woll, the president of the board of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, which is in downtown Detroit and was a staunch supporter of Rashida Tlaib!

As I did my "due diligence" I saw where Tlaib posted on her Facebook page that she was a friend of #SamanthaWoll but she conveniently left out the fact that Samantha was Jewish and the President of a local synagogue in her district.

Given Rashida’s recent inflammatory comments and lies about Israel, Rashida Tlaib has Woll's blood on her hands.

As one news guest on MSNBC stated; "Peace will come when the "Jewish" State of Israel is eradicated and replaced by a "Democratic Palestinian State".

As a Jew, a father and grandfather what I see is a world once more indifferent to the plight of Jews. Once again, a world oblivious to the truth brainwashed with hatred and despicable mendacious lies.

The momentary sense of guilt of the world in the aftermath of World War II, as I mentioned in a recent post. Of how only by the courage and bravery of Dwight D Eisenhower to call for the truth of the barbarity of abject hatred of Jews to be recorded for posterity is Holocaust denial dampened.

How in a momentary lapse of humanity and righteousness the members of the UN voted that fateful Novemebr of 1947 on "Partition" allowing the recreation and rebirth of our indigenous homeland.

How at the cost of nearly every Jew in Europe and Russia only then when confronted with the photographic and well documented eyewitness -by non-Jews (like we are experiencing now) did the world awaken to the cost of world apathy to the plight of Jews.

What awoke the world in 1945 was the truth of horrific anti-Semitism that was allowed to occur in a "modern country" that turned on its Jewish citizens and then to ethnically cleanse most of Europe and Russia in a highly organized and well planned and laid out scheme to exterminate the ENTIRE "Jewish race".

The so called "journalists" and TV news people of the world blatantly continue to turn a blind eye to the well documented historical facts. Nary a word is ever mentioned of the complicity of the "Arabs of the Mandated Area of Palestine" with the Nazi regime and the pressure brought upon the British "The Mandatory" that led to the closure of the gates to our promised "Jewish Homeland" in the British "White Paper" thereby condemning Jews to death as the world joined in by collectively closed the gates

As I wrote in one of my blog entries of Britannia had made a "Declaration" to win the hearts and minds of the Zionists believing in the "ability" of the Zionists to gain influence and sympathy of "World Jewry" as that expressed in the nefarious "Protocols of the Elders of Zion".

How England used its influence and power to gain the "Stewardship" over the previous Ottoman Turkish areas for their own nefarious reasons.

How upon being granted the "Mandatory" they turned around and paid off their WWI Arab ally by giving over 2/3rd of the territory assigned them by the League of Nations EAST of the Jordan river with the added stipulation that it be "Jew Free".

How the British used the idea of "Perfidious Albion" or treachery of the "Balfour Declaration" to gain the Mandate over "Palestine" to use it as a forward military bastion to guard the Suez Canal. 

How the British readily acquiesced to the Arabs every demand and only gave up when they were bankrupt at the end of WWII and had lost their far eastern holdings in India and were no longer in need of the Suez Canal and the once formable British Navy was downsized.

Yes, we Jews especially we Israeli Jews have learned the "hard way" that when it comes to WHO to depend on. We appreciate deeply the help from the USA. However, when it comes to our survival we will need to do so alone. 

“If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.”- Napoleon Bonaparte

 

 

 

Peace and the lessons of The Treaty of Hudaybiyya

 I made a recent post regarding the words of General Dwight D Eisenhower and President Biden which was intended to show of the extremity that is required by "our side -read the Jews- whereby the testimony of actual world leaders is needed to confirm the truth that what happened to our people actually happened.

THEN (in 1945)

"But the most interesting -- although horrible -- sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they [there] were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda'."
Letter, DDE to George C. Marshall, 4/15/45 [The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years IV, doc #2418]

"We continue to uncover German concentration camps for political prisoners in which conditions of indescribable horror prevail. I have visited one of these myself and I assure you that whatever has been printed on them to date has been understatement. If you would see any advantage in asking about a dozen leaders of Congress and a dozen prominent editors to make a short visit to this theater in a couple of C-54's, I will arrange to have them conducted to one of these places where the evidence of bestiality and cruelty is so overpowering as to leave no doubt in their minds about the normal practices of the Germans in these camps."
Cable, DDE to George C. Marshall, 4/19/45 [The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years IV, doc #2424]

"When I found the first camp like that I think I never was so angry in my life. The bestiality displayed there was not merely piled up bodies of people that had starved to death, but to follow out the road and see where they tried to evacuate them so they could still work, you could see where they sprawled on the road. You could go to their burial pits and see horrors that really I wouldn't even want to begin to describe. I think people ought to know about such things. It explains something of my attitude toward the German war criminal. I believe he must be punished, and I will hold out for that forever." commander of Allied Forces Europe Dwight D Eisenhower Press conference, 6/18/45 [DDE's Pre-Presidential Papers, Principal File, Box 156, Press Statements and Releases, 1944-46 (1)]

NOW

“Rape, beheadings, bodies burned alive — Hamas committed atrocities that recall the worst ravages of ISIS,” Biden said, “unleashing pure, unadulterated evil on the world. There’s no rationalizing it.”
"For me as the U.S. president there's no higher priority than the release and safe return of all these hostages," he said of the fate of those abducted by terrorists.
“They will never be truly gone,” he said of those over 1,400 who perished in the massacre, which he linked with the Nazi Holocaust. “There’s something that is never fully lost, your love for them and their love for you."
Yet the present crisis will be nothing like the Holocaust, Biden said, because among others the Jewish people have the backing of their American allies.
“We will not stand by and do nothing again. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever,” he said.
“The State of Israel was born to be a safe place for the Jewish people. While it may not feel that way today… Israel must again be a safe place for the Jewish people.”
President Joe Biden's speech in Israel 18th Oct 2023

How this same message was echoed in the words President Bill Clinton expressed in his keynote address at the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C., on April 22, 1993:

“those of us here today representing the nations of the West,”(who) …” must live forever with this knowledge--even as our fragmentary awareness of crimes grew into indisputable facts, far too little was done.”

Even now after the murderous barbarity of the 7th of October the empathy of the world is focused on the "Palestinians" and their "plight".

It is beyond belief how many major sources for control over the "minds of men" are siding with the "Palestinians" where ONLY after actual visual proof is given even words are not believed.
It is sickingly beyond belief how the word social media is bamboozled and brainwashed with a false narrative, flooded and focused on the stories of the lies behind the misery of the poor people of Gaza.

Historically documented facts of how we Jews, who are indigenous to the land and have one place to call home are blatantly ignored.
How a totally false narrative of how Jews and Arabs lived side by side in peace prior to the arrival of the "Zionists" has been spread.

Nary a word is given regarding the denial that the "Arabs of the Mandated Areas"are those who began this entire conflict by rejecting the UNR 181 Partition which “recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States".

So what truly is the issue? As Gavin Kadey recently posted in his article entitled; "What The West Doesn’t Get About the Middle East" is that it all stems from from the Moslem conquest of our homeland by the forces of Islam in 635CE making iy the territory of Islam (Dar al-Islam).
For the "Palestinians" -Hamas- Israel belongs to the territory of war (Dar al-Harb – the area controlled by infidels), due to its conquest of what have historically been viewed as Islamic Palestinian lands. This idea, which relies on al-Qaradawi ruling that Israel is an enemy of Islam and the Muslim nation (against which a jihad must be fought).
The laws of jihad or holy war if necessary and there is no other choice then one can take a break, agree to a "Hudna" ceasefire or sign an agreement all based on "The Treaty of Hudaybiyya" between Muhammad, son of Abdullah, and Suhail, son of 'Amr [the envoy of Mecca] in 628CE.

In his article "Islamic Peace Treaties," John F. Schmidt argued that a Muslim "makes a peace treaty with an opponent with the sole purpose of suddenly destroying his treaty partner in an overwhelming surprise attack."

In an article entitled "I Believe Arafat," Dr. Mordechai Kedar wrote about Yasser Arafat's (May 15, 2002) address to the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah on the occasion of the 54th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba.
Dr. Kedar had this to say about Arafat's position:

"I do indeed believe Arafat's message: He does wish to come to an agreement with the Israelis, but, as he points out to his followers, any agreement with non-Muslims… is simply a modern version of Hudaybiyya. As such, in accordance with Islamic principles which form the basis of the political culture in the Arab sphere, such a commitment may (or must) be broken at the right time."

Like Kedar, Schmidt draws the conclusion that Arafat's reference to al-Hudaybiyya is intended to rally Muslims behind the Oslo Accords, only to betray them later on:

John F. Schmidt stated that treachery was the expressed goal of Yasser Arafat, and the so called "Palestinian Authority" in the signing of the Oslo Accords. We glean this fact from Arafat's reference to "al-Hudaybiyya" in explaining himself in numerous public appearences before his Islamic supporters.

In all the attempts that we Israelis have attempted to make "Peace" with the "Palestinians" in which they have shown the world a false front to elicit support by those naive and unknowning of the Islamic Arabic culure and society.

Western leaders who are NOT educated in the intricacies of Islam will never understand with whom we are dealing with.

The Mandated Area of Palestine and Jordan

"IF" the world were "JUST" and upheld REAL DOCUMENTED agreements, the whole fallacy of the "Fantasia" of Arab "Palestine" would be clear to one in all. 

And it "IS" what is called Jordan today. 

After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the geographical region known as "Palestine"  became a no man's land following the July 1920 Battle of Maysalun.

This area was administered within OETA East (Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA) was a joint British, French and Arab military administration over Levantine provinces). 

After the British withdrawal in 1919, this region gained de facto recognition as part of the Hashemite-ruled Arab Kingdom of Syria, administering an area broadly comprising the areas of the modern countries of Syria and Jordan. 

This vast area became a no man's land following the Battle of Maysalun in July of 1920, during the period that the San Remo conference -as part of a peace treaty with the Ottoman Turkish Empire established the "Mandate for Palestine" and gave the United Kingdom of Great Britain the status of the "Mandatory Power" over the entire region. The "Mandate for Palestine" was a "League of Nations" (forerunner to the United Nations today) "stewardship" given to the United Kingdom (British) to  administrate the territories of the geographical area collectively known as "Palestine". The part west of the Jordan river became designated as "Palestine" and the area EAST of the Jordan river became known as Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I in 1918. 

The mandate was assigned to Britain by the San Remo conference in April 1920, after France's concession in the 1918 Clemenceau–Lloyd George Agreement of the previously-agreed "international administration" of Palestine under the Sykes–Picot Agreement. 

In the meantime Abdullah I had entered the region in November 1920 and to Amman on 2 March 1921. Later in the month a conference was held with the British during which it was agreed that Abdullah bin Hussein would administer the territory under the auspices of the British Mandate for Palestine with a fully autonomous governing system. As part of the agreement Britain  withheld those articles of the Mandate concerning a Jewish national home and relegated all the area East of the Jordan river as "Jew Free" and the Amirate of Trans-Jordan, was a "protectorate" created by the British on 11 April 1921. 

(Pictured here are T E Lawerence King Abullah I and General Edmund Allenby in Jerusalem 1919) 

On 2 March 1921 a conference was held in Amman with the British during which it was agreed that Abdullah bin Hussein would administer the territory under the auspices of the British Mandate for Palestine with a fully autonomous governing system. As part of the agreement Britain negated those articles of the Mandate concerning a Jewish national home and relegated all the area East of the Jordan river as "Jew Free".

On 21 March 1921, the Foreign and Colonial office legal advisers decided to introduce Article 25 into the Mandate for Palestine, which brought Transjordan under the Palestine mandate and stated that in that territory, Britain could 'postpone or withhold' those articles of the Mandate concerning a Jewish national home.

The "Mandatory Power"-Great Britain according to Art 25 of the Mandate, chose to avoid the conflict with the Hashemites in "Transjordan" and "ceded" any definite connection between it and the area of "Western Palestine" therefore creating on April 1921 the "British protectorate" officially known as The Emirate of Transjordan (Arabic: إمارة شرق الأردن‎ Imārat Sharq al-Urdun lit.).

ART. 25.

In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions, provided that no action shall be taken which is inconsistent with the provisions of Articles 15, 16 and 18.(* see below) 

In the British White Paper of June 1922, orchestrated by the Secretary of State for the Colonies Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell and TE Lawrence (pictured to the left) it states: 

"the terms of the (Balfour)  Declaration referred to, do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded `in Palestine.'"...

"Further, it is contemplated that the status of all citizens of Palestine in the eyes of the law shall be Palestinian,(meaning Jew and Arab alike)"

When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride. 

But in order that this community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance. 

That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed, and that it should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection."

In a letter dated the 24th October, 1915, from Sir Henry McMahon, His Majesty's High Commissioner in Egypt, to the Sharif of Mecca, now King Hussein of the Kingdom of the Hejaz. The United Kingdom / Great Britain (holder of the Mandate from the league of Nations), agreed to an "independent national government" to be established in the Mandated Palestine Territory EAST of the Jordan(river). 

As to the remainder of the Mandated Palestine Territory, "west of the Jordan",it is intended by the League of Nations and the Balfour Declaration to be converted into a Jewish National Home and was, "...thus excluded from Sir. Henry McMahon's pledge."

The Hashemite dynasty ruled the protectorate, as well as the neighbouring Mandatory Iraq and, until 1925, the Kingdom of Hejaz to the south. On 25 May 1946, the emirate became the "Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan", achieving full independence on 17 June 1946 when in accordance with the Treaty of London ratifications were exchanged in Amman. In 1949, it was constitutionally renamed the "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan", commonly referred to as Jordan.

Articles from the Mandate For Palestine

ART. 15.

The Mandatory shall see that complete freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, are ensured to all. No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language. No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.

The right of each community to maintain its own schools for the education of its own members in its own language, while conforming to such educational requirements of a general nature as the Administration may impose, shall not be denied or impaired.

ART. 16.

The Mandatory shall be responsible for exercising such supervision over religious or eleemosynary bodies of all faiths in Palestine as may be required for the maintenance of public order and good government. Subject to such supervision, no measures shall be taken in Palestine to obstruct or interfere with the enterprise of such bodies or to discriminate against any representative or member of them on the ground of his religion or nationality.

ART. 18.

The Mandatory shall see that there is no discrimination in Palestine against the nationals of any State Member of the League of Nations (including companies incorporated under its laws) as compared with those of the Mandatory or of any foreign State in matters concerning taxation, commerce or navigation, the exercise of industries or professions, or in the treatment of merchant vessels or civil aircraft. Similarly, there shall be no discrimination in Palestine against goods originating in or destined for any of the said States, and there shall be freedom of transit under equitable conditions across the mandated area.

Subject as aforesaid and to the other provisions of this mandate, the Administration of Palestine may, on the advice of the Mandatory, impose such taxes and customs duties as it may consider necessary, and take such steps as it may think best to promote the development of the natural resources of the country and to safeguard the interests of the population. It may also, on the advice of the Mandatory, conclude a special customs agreement with any State the territory of which in 1914 was wholly included in Asiatic Turkey or Arabia.

"Perfidious Albion" and the Mandate for Palestine

 In replying to a comment by a friend on Facebook who wrote: 

"I honestly don't understand how they drew the border between Jordan and Iraq up north, Jordan's shape makes no sense to me."

Why England demanded the Mandate over Palestine 

As a (highly paid Oh, how I wish!!!) Hasbarnik and "historian", I wanted to draw everyones attention to historically recorded facts and the nefarious act of "Perfidious Albion", used by the British.

I especially want to point out British Imperial interests in the 

events surrounding the "Balfour  Declaration" and the creation of the League of Nations and the eventual division of the Ottoman Turkish Empire as outlined in the De Bunsen Committee report on 30 June 1915 that called for the creation of a decentralised, federal Ottoman state in Asia.

Background:

What initially drove the British to control the area of "Palestine" was the guarding of the "Gateway to India".

Since the opening of the Suez Canal on 17 November 1869, the Middle East had become the gateway to India, so who controlled the lands adjacent to the canal, and what happened there, was of vital importance. It had long been obvious that the Ottoman Empire – the famous “Sick man of Europe” – would eventually collapse. The burning question was what would succeed it. 

To the alarm of Britain and France, Russia was keen to extend her influence into the Levant, and the general thrust of British foreign policy was aimed at preventing that happening. Initially, Britain supported attempts to prop up and reform the Ottoman regime, but when it became clear that these were not going to work, the problem became how she could shape the post-Ottoman world to suit her own ends. Balfour and others took the view that if the Zionists were allowed to build up a Jewish “state”, with British support and encouragement, they would be reliable allies in the region.

Allow me to insert here that the highly Machevallian manuvers behind Lord Arthur James Balfour's Declaration, "MAY" have been based or in part influenced by his fundamentalist Christian belief, the culmination of four hundred years of British Christian Zionism prevelant in the British aristocracy and upper class British political establishment. 

At the same time one should note as well as the existence of a vile trope of European antisemitism articulated in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", first published in Russia in 1903, which claimed there was a secret Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world present among many of the British aristocracy and upper class British political establishment.  . 

The extent to which elements of  the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" were a malicious parody of Herzl’s Judenstaat, and the Zionist Congresses were the “reality” behind the alleged meetings of the Elders of Zion.

By issuing the Balfour Declaration, a great power had gone public with its support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as was mentioned in Der Judenstaat (1896), which would form for (Christian) Europe “an integral part of its defensive wall in Asia . . . an outpost of civilization against barbarism”.

Gertrude Bell & TE Lawrence

It should be noted that Britain saw to it that the Declaration: "...in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" was included the terms of the Mandated region that the League of Nations gave it to administer to elicit symapthy supposedly from the "Jewish Cabal".

Once the Mandate was given to Britain suddenly the British Administration began to "back peddle" on their promises. 

Specifically as TE Lawernce, Gertrude Bell-( who openly hated Jews) who was managing

control of Mesopotamia as its Oriental Secretary alongside the Military Governor and Lord Curzon claimed there was; "...uncertainty and unrest among certain sections of the population". 

Because of this, and to sooth Arab emotions, the British Issued the "White Paper of June 1922" where the wording of the Balfour Declaration is reviewed in vague terms; 

"...“a national home” was capable of both statist and non-statist interpretations". 

"the terms of the (Balfour) Declaration referred to, do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded `in Palestine.'

"Further, it is contemplated that the status of all citizens of Palestine in the eyes of the law shall be Palestinian,(meaning Jew and Arab alike)"

When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride. 

But in order that this community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance. 

That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed, and that it should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection."

Pictured to the right; Emir Abdullah receiving the British Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, and his wife Clementine, upon their arrival in Cairo for the conference .  

It needs to be noted that the nefarious "White Paper" also reconfirmed the promise made to the Arabs in a letter, dated the 24th October, 1915, from Sir Henry McMahon, 

"His Majesty's High Commissioner in Egypt, to the Sharif of Mecca, now King Hussein of the Kingdom of the Hejaz agreed to an "independent national government" to be established in the Mandated Palestine Territory EAST of the Jordan(river). As to the remainder of the Mandated Palestine Territory "west of the Jordan" it is intended by the League of Nations and the Balfour Declaration to be converted into a Jewish National Home and was thus excluded from Sir. Henry McMahon's pledge.

As to WHAT drove British Machiavellianism?

From my extensive research of historical records British aims in the Middle East were driven by both the strategic importance of the Suez Canal and to assertain the continual supply of oil from the vast oil fields of Kirkuk and Persia for the Royal Fleet and the British military.

It was these two reasons that drove British demands during negotiations in San Remo for the Treaty of Serves, for the assignment of Mandated regions as outlined in the De Bunsen committee report "Committee of Imperial Defence: Asiatic Turkey, Report of a Committee" which was issued on 30 June 1915. The 

"Concerning Palestine it reported that it would be “...idle for His Majesty’s Government to claim the retention of Palestine in their sphere. Palestine must be recognized as a country whose destiny must be the subject of special negotiations, in which both belligerents and neutrals are alike interested”. 

In case of the partition or zones of influence options then the Committee defined a British sphere of influence that included Palestine while accepting that there were relevant French and Russian, as well as Islamic interests in Jerusalem and the Holy Places."

"Britania rules the waves": 

Regarding the urgent need for secure sources of fuel oil:

When the industrial revolution ended the “Age of Sail,” coal that fired the boilers of steam-powered ships became a major strategic resource. 

Worldwide “coaling stations” were essential for major naval powers like England at a time when oil was little more than a lubricant or a resource for making lamp kerosene.

Oil production began in the United States in 1859, but as Pennsylvania oilfield discoveries continued, Congress in 1866 appropriated $5,000 to evaluate petroleum as a potential replacement for coal to fire the Navy’s boilers. 

The conclusion arrived at by US Admiral George Henry Preble; 

“Was that convenience, health, comfort and safety were against the use of petroleum in steam-vessels,” and that “The only advantage shown was a not very important reduction in the bulk and weight of fuel carried,”

As the leaders in naval, trade and industrial power Great Britain had control of massive local coaling resources which served to strengthen its grasp of power. With supplies of coal on hand the Admiralty in Great Britain also resisted making the coal to oil switch.

What changed the minds of the "world sea powers" about using coal for fuel was the Spanish-American War of 1898.

For the first time, coal-fired war vessels had to fight far from the continental shores. Despite American victories in Manila Bay in the Philippines and Santiago de Cuba, hard strategic lessons were learned by the U.S. Navy about fueling coal-powered battleships. 

Because of this need to change to fuel oil naval ships in a message to Congress by President Taft on December 6, 1910 stated: 

"As not only the largest owner of oil lands, but as a prospective large consumer of oil by reason of the increasing use of fuel oil by the Navy, the federal government is directly concerned both in encouraging rational development and at the same time insuring the longest possible life to the oil supply."

This message to the US Congress of the need to achieve secure sources of oil was heard and understood by British Admirals and the Admiralty in England. The Admiralty had also closely observed the actions of the US Navy during the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the awarness of the American administration to the change realized that: 

“Despite the many advantages that oil held over coal for naval ships (cleaner, easier to refuel, more powerful, etc.), the fact that Britain did not own a supply of oil made the decision to switch painful necessity.”

Thereupon, the British government sought a majority share of the Anglo-Iranian oil company, and the age of ‘petro-politics’ began.”

"THE" major "wake-up call" to instigate the need for a rapid change over from coal to oil in England was the Agadir Crisis of April 1911 which had a profound effect ob Britain's Home Secretary Winston Churchill who "awoke" to the realization that the Royal Navy must convert its power source from coal to oil, to preserve its supremacy. 

In June 1914, Winston Churchill convinced the House of Commons to authorise the government purchase of a 51 percent share in the profits of oil produced by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, to secure continued oil access for the Royal Navy.

Until then, the locally abundant coal readily available Welsh Coal fields was favoured over imported oil from the area of Kirkuk in Persia.)

Subsequently, when asked by Prime Minister H. H. Asquith to become First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill accepted despite his previous views about the need for naval expansion

Winston Churchill as the initiator of the change in the Royal Navy as First Lord of the Admiralty, was convinced that speed and efficiency offered by oil convinced him that "Mastery itself was the prize of the venture." 

As First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill knew that England "MUST" achieve control over the oil fields of Kirkuk in Persia. 

It was this knowledge as British Colonial Secretary at the 1921 Cairo Conference that influenced the manuevers by the British in it's dealing with the Arabs in the designation and control over the specific Mandated Areas assigned by the League of Nations to ascertain the flow of oil through the Trans Arabian Pipeline (TAP line). 

Also known as the Kirkuk/Iraq–Haifa oil pipeline or Mediterranean pipeline it allowed the flow of crude oil from the oil fields in Kirkuk, located in the former Ottoman vilayet of Mosul in northern Iraq, through Transjordan to Haifa in the then Britsh Mandated Area of  Palestine (now in the territory of Israel). 

Instead of the time consuming expensive transfer to ships for a long voyage or by  tanker trucks by land. The oil was piped directly to Haifa where it was distilled in the Haifa refineries, stored in tanks, and then put in tankers for shipment to Europe.

The pipeline was built by the Iraq Petroleum Company between 1932 and 1934, and was operational between 1935 and 1948 during which period most of the area through which the pipeline passed was under a British mandate approved by the League of Nations.

The pipeline and the Haifa refineries were considered so strategically important by the British Government, that what was once a beautiful "natural harbor" with pristine beaches was horribly defaced by the Mandate power (England)  forever solely to provide much of the fuel needs of the British and American forces in the Mediterranean before and during World War II. 

It is highly important to note that in the late nineteenth century the major naval powers began a naval race to construct new types of warships like the HMS Dreadnought of the British Navy launched in 1906, and the USS Texas launched in 1912, also known as Battleship Texas. The Royal Navy had 22 dreadnoughts (another 13 were completed during World War I), Germany built a total of 19 (five completed after 1914) and the United States completed 22 (14 of them after 1914). Japan and Italy built six, while Russia and France each built seven.

Many civilian ships also slowly converted from coal to oil. Since oil has a higher energy density than coal and more energy can be obtained from the same capacity, it was possible to reduce the size of the fuel tank on board and expand cargo space. It also meant a significant reduction in the number of crew members required as it negated the need to load coal and throw coal into the boiler.

The development of internal combustion engines led to the introduction of marine diesel engines, and ships began to convert their main engines to them, which had significantly higher fuel efficiency compared to the external combustion engines such as reciprocating steam engines or steam turbines.

75 year of Arab Rejection

On this 75 Independence Day let the truth REAL TRUTH be known! 

On November 29, 2022 we marked 75 years since the historic move of the United Nations to FINALLY partition the British Mandate of Palestine into two countries, one Jewish and one Arab. 

The historical vote essentially symbolized the release from the treachery and infidelity, in their "Perfidious Albion" or "promise" of the Balfour Declaration, by the United Kingdom.

The infamous "Balfour Declaration" was a Machiavellian promise essentially made to gain the assistance of the "cabal" that is seen in "World Jewry", in WWI and WWII.  

A promise "supposedly" made to help in the rebirth of the Jewish State to Jewish and Zionist leaders anxious to save precious Jewish lives but negated by the British desire for oil and the foiling of Arab revolts. 

A promise, not unlike those secretly made to the Arabs, and repaid with land from the Mandated Area from the "intended future homeland of the Jews".

Throughout history we have see how England had, as it had done throughout the world, used it's colonies only for their needs and interests. 

So too did England use their area, "Mandated" to them by the League of Nations, as a "forward military base" and essential supply depot in World War II.

How factories and industries created by Jews and Zionists supposedly for the building of a country were cyniclly used in the British war effort. 

How the once beautiful and scenic Haifa Bay and surrounding area were despoiled, ecologically damaged and converted into a terminal and refinary of Iraqi oil, piped in from the distant oil fields of Iraq to supply the needs of the Royal Navy.

How during the years of British control, thousands of Arabs from the surrounding countries flocked unrestricted to the "Mandated Areas" whilst Jewish immigration was restricted and the area given across the Jordan River made "Jew Free"!

It was ONLY when England was bankrupt and it lost the sub-continent of India that the "death crasp" of the Empire called it quits and sent the matter to the UN.

Since the 75th Anniversary of the UN vote we are seeing a deluge of false mendacious lies on ALL forms of media regarding the "Legal creation" of the State of Israel.

Cambridge Professor, Sir Eliahu Lauterpacht, past Judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice, a renowned expert on international law, clarified that from a legal standpoint, the 1947 UN Partition Resolution had no legislative character to vest territorial rights in either Jews or Arabs. He explained:

"The coming into existence of Israel does not depend legally upon the Resolution. The right of a State to exist flows from its factual existence - especially when that existence is prolonged shows every sign of continuance and is recognized by the generality of nations."

Reviewing Lauterpacht's arguments, Professor Julius Stone, a distinguished authority on the Law of Nations, added that Israel's "legitimacy" or the "legal foundation" for its birth does not reside with the United Nations' Partition Plan, which as a consequence of Arab actions became a dead issue. Professor Julius Stone concluded:."

 "The State of Israel is thus not legally derived from the partition plan, but rests (as do most other states in the world) on assertion of independence by its people and government, on the vindication of that independence by arms against assault by other states, and on the establishment of orderly government within territory under its stable control."

In the Media posts by the "detractors", HOIZs (Haters Of Israel and Zionism), NONE of them mention the basic fact that there was NO representation by a UNITED "Arab of the Mandated Territory" -those whom have usurped the title "Palestinians" in ALL the discussions and committees regarding Partition.

Also pay heed and note that NOT ONE of the detractors mentions that THEIR leadership was divided in an intense rivalrie that existed between competing Arab leaders; the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini and exiled Iraqi former Prime Minister Rashid Ali. 

The same intense rivalry was reflected in the forces of the Arab Liberation Army (ALA) led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji, who had been awarded the rank of a colonel of the Wehrmacht (German Army) and that of Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, the Nephew of the Mufti, as the commander of the Army of the Holy War (Jaysh al-Jihad al-Muqaddas) .

Just as Fawzi al-Qawuqji had threatened in August of 1947 that: 

"...should the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine vote go the wrong way, “we will have to initiate total war. We will murder, wreck and ruin everything standing in our way, be it English, American or Jewish" and the final purpose is to "rid Palestine of the Zionist plague."  

Even today this same threat is made by Hamas and the "Palestinians! 

In ALL the media stories and reports we nary see any reference to the historical fact -read truth- that the SEVEN Arab League member countries HAD INVADED the Mandated area intending to divide up the mandated areas between themselves!!

Even fewer mention that the poor execution, carrying out /performance and ignomius defeat by the "Arabs of the mandated areas" during the course of the 1948 war was marked by the personal, family, and political rivalry between al-Qawuqji (who fought mainly in northern Palestine) and al-Husayni, who fought mostly in the Jerusalem area.

Some facts regarding UNGA Resolution 181 November 29th 1947:

The following telegraphic response; to UNGA Resolution 181 November 29th 1947, was sent by the Arab Higher Committee and was received by the Secretary General of the United Nations on January 19th,1948:

(The) Arab Higher Committee is determinded presist [persist] in rejection partition and in refusal recognize UN[O] resolution this respect and anything deriving therefrom[there from]. For these reasons it is unable [to] accept[the] invitation.

The UN Palestine Commission's February 16th,1949 report (A/AC.21/*) to the Security Council noted that Arab-led hostilities were an effort:

"To prevent the implementation of the General Assembly's plan of partition, and to thwart it's objectives by threats of acts of violence, including armed incursions into (Mandate) Palestinian territory.

On May 17th, 1948 - after the invasion began, the Palestine Commission designed to implemant 181 adjourned "sine dine"-Latin for without determining a date after the General Assembly appointed a United Nations Mediator in Palestine,which relieves the United Nations Palestine Commission from the further exercise of its responsibilities.

Denying the Jewish people's right to a state of their own, the Arab countries openly declared their intention of preventing the creation of the Jewish State by all means. 

A wave of violent attacks was launched against the Jewish population and when Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, five Arab armies invaded the new state the same night, seeking its annihilation and some 800,000 Jews (refugees) were expelled from Arab countries, finding refuge and were absorbed in Israel. 

The Arab population of the Mandate territory also suffered as a result of the Arab refusal to accept the partition plan. Some 700,000 heeded their leaders' calls to flee or left after being caught up in the fighting. The large numbers who stayed in Israel became full citizens, with equal rights, while their brethren were kept by their Arab hosts in perpetual refugee status to serve as pawns in the political struggle against Israel. 

Furthermore, a July 30th,1949 working paper of the UN Secretariat entitled; "The future of the Arab Palesine and the Question of Partition" noted further that:

"The Arabs rejected the United Nations Partition Plan so that any comment of theirs did not specifically concern the status of the Arab section of Palestine under Partition but rather rejected the scheme in its entirety."

The refusal by the leadership of the Arab population of the mandate territory to accept UNGA Resolution 181 demonstrated that they WERE NOT interested in establishing their own state if it meant allowing the existence of a Jewish state. 

This opposition to acknowledging the right of a Jewish state to exist still lies at the core of the conflict until this very moment!

HaYehudim - We the Nation and People of Israel

Ever since I first started doing "Hasbara" on the Internet in 2005  I have witnessed the spread and "trend" of ignorance and "revisionist anti Israel / anti-Zionistic" rhetoric and teachings. 

In my research I have found that this has been going on now since 1967 ever since Israel successfully defended itself and liberated the areas of Judaea and Shomron, which we were unable to do so in 1948.

This trend is also due to the total neglect and abandonment of the field of "Hasbara" by successive Israeli Governments and clarity of Israel's stance regarding the fate of our Indigenous homeland. 

As for many Jews in the Diaspora, our greatest failure was caused by our parents overwhelming desire to "blend in" and assimilate to negate "Zionism" - to be "faithful citizens" in reponse to the latent anti-Semitism that exists in the world. 

How during the post World War II / Holocaust rush to identify as  "faithful citizens" our parents negated and hid their Jewishness and rushed to embrace secularization. 

There are countless stories, but what stood out to me the most was the volunteer work I did in the summer of 1970 in New York when we would deliver food to elderly Jewish couples -the parents of children who fled New York City to the neighboring states and the wealthy suburbs leaving some of their parents in rat infested decrepit apartment buildings!

Though many of the apartment buildings were utterly disgusting, once you entered the apartment of the elderly mother or father. you entered a lost world, a world of Yiddishkite. As an 18 year old, totally "Driving Miss Daisy" Southern reform and secular Jew I was dumbfounded. You could not "just deliver" the packages of food we brought! My two fellow volunteers would be immersed in such warmth and love of grandparents from a world we never knew, the world of the Shtetl of Galicia. The Jews of the "Old Country". I was embarrased, for I knew nothing, no Hebrew no Yiddush. Even the basic terminology of Jewishness of religious ceremonies to "daven" "Mincha" "Tefliah" or even what a "Tallit" was! 

One can vividly see today the outcome of how our non-Orthodox parents, failed or out right refused to teach their children nor adhere to even the basic rudimentaries of Judaism, are responding! 

In Israel, our greatest success was in the liberation of our indigenous homeland in the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War and our two greatest failures were the failure to "stop" the local Arab populace from fleeing and our establishment of control over the Temple Mount!

Our secondary failure was the makeup of the post 1956 Sinai War  Israeli political system that allowed the spread of the "soul searching among comrages" inspired by those Israeli communists of Mapam and Matzpen who were at a loss when Stalin broke and purged the Jews from the "Party", as part of the embarassment of the defeat of the Soviet Armed Armies.

This "soul" searching spread throughout the "Leftist" -read Labor Party, reached it's peak in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967. When those "Labor Party affiliated" Israeli leaders rejected outright any Israeli attempt to annex or cease control over or settlement -read "occupation" of the liberated areas and allowed the void to be filled with the "Big Lie". The "Lie" of Palestine!! 

Israeli leaders failed then to relay the HISTORICAL TRUTH! That Judaea and Shomron ARE (still) part of the Balfour Declaration designated "Homeland" of the Jewish People enshrined by the League of Nations "Mandate" that was given to the British to rule over 

That the Arabs who claim today to be "Palestinians" said zilch, nada to King Abdullah I of Jordan when he invaded and conquered the area in 1948! Nor when he tried to Annex the area.

Israel was a society "drunk" with the financial victory of the Post Six Day War and the control over expansive territory in Sinai, the Golan and the "Disputed Territories" of Judaea and Shomron.  Israel suddenly had a large pool of cheap laborers. Jews from "Arab lands" who had been neglected and held in destain suddenly went up the ladder in society from being the street cleaners and laborers to the "managerial" positions. 

We -those who ARE NOT of the Knitted Kipa modern Orthodox -have failed to impress upon our "secular youth" what life was like as stateless people, and how daily life was prior to the Six Day War!! We need to teach and impress upon each and everyone of them how precious it is to have a "country/home" of our own. 

That as Jews WE CAN BE a "moral nation" and people- a true "light upon other nations", but we must be totally aware of the very real and malicious world we live in!

Though the Nazis were "THE" most "efficient" and most "successful" in their attempt to eradicate us -and when I say US I mean ALL Jews! The very real hatred and despisal known as anti-Semitism is still whispered behind our backs or shouted in our faces, or passed out in leaflets, or posted on Social Media. Anti-Semitism the hatred of Jews exists openly throughout the "Western" "Enlightened World" and it is spreading thanks to OUR failure to unite as one to push back! 

As Jews We -collectively-  cannot afford the luxury of descending into a state of slumber! We must arise -TOGETHER -from the stupor 

We -ALL JEWS MUST remember "WE" -especailly here in Israel,  are surrounded by a people whose basic instincts for utter barbarity are well documented! 

For example here is a portion of transcript from the interrogation of the terrorist Arafat Arfaiah, who murdered 19 year old Ori Ansbacher. In reading it we can learn of the deep hatred and sickness that is taught and exists in the Arabs of "Palestine".

Arfaia: "I made my parents very proud of what I did".

Q: "How do murder and rape cause pride?"

Arfaia: "I didn't just rape someone, I murdered a Jewish woman. You won't be able to understand it because our thinking is different. If you ask anyone if they would be happy to kill a Jew... you will see that I have done everything that Arabs dream of doing".

Q: "Why didn't you just do it a while ago if you so longed for it?"

Arfaia: "This is not what Allah planned for me this murder is the best and most important thing I have done in my life.  If she had stayed alive it would have meant that I had failed in what I had planned and failed in the mission, that was the hardest feeling I felt in my life".

Arfaia: "I planned to enter Jerusalem through the forest to kill Jews ...I wanted to kill multiple Jews and not just one, but when I was there I saw that Allah had sent me the Jewish woman I realized that I had to kill her, this was the fate that Allah summoned me".

"I planned to enter some place to wear a kippa so that they would think I was Jewish and to stab as many Jews as possible to kill them".

"If I hadn't met the girl on the way I would have entered Jerusalem to carry out the attack and murder Jews".

"After I murdered her, I stayed by the body for a while longer, waiting for more Jewish people to come so that I could surprise them and stab them with a knife and kill them...." "If I had died during the attempt to kill more Jews, for me it is a blessed thing because then I would have died as a martyr"

We see by the words of Arafat Arfaiah the deep hatred and sickness within the "Palestinians" the same sickness that is reinforced daily to their children. 

One should take heed and note from this recorded transcript he refers to murdering JEWS and not "Israeli" nor Zionist's nor Settlers as the apologists for falestinian dezinformatsiya claim!

We must live by the words of Zev Jabotinsky, and in the mannerisms of warfare taught to our pre state "Night Squads" by Major General Orde Charles Wingate -A son of missionaries, Wingate carried a Bible wherever he went in pre-state Israel and trumpeted Jewish claims to the land just as British Mandatory policy turned anti-Zionist. 

Wingate, known as the "Known Friend"(Hayedid HaYaduah) strived to remind us of to be like Gideon, Shimeon Bar Kochba and Judah HaMaccabee! To be leaders who are willing to stand boldly -unafraid of death to fight like lions and to be proud Jews.  

Above ALL else we Jews must cease to fight between ourselves! WE all of us must work to stay a people united for only then will AM Yisrael continue to be Alive in Ertzanu!

The phrophetic words of the heathen prophet Balaam

As I was going through, my extensive files of historical writings and information, that I have read and accumulated in my fifty some odd years as a teacher of history, Lately in my "free time" of retirement I find myself drawn to be spokesperson a "Hasbaranik" for Israel. I would define "Hasbaranik" as: "a concientious reader of Social Media News sources who sees the fabrications and mendacious lies of those who post "falestinian dezinformatsiya" and replies to them."

As a very "learned" -educated and knowledgeable from reading ACTUAL historical documents- pro-Zionist Israeli and Jew, I find it my duty to enlighten the passive unknowing "audience" of those who take the "click bait" and are exposed to the utter fabrications and blatant viciously mendacious lies presented by the minions of the "falestinian Nachba Tragedy Tourists™" and their brainwashed and bamboozled sycophants on "Social Media". 

As I was reviewing and reorganizing I came upon this article from several years ago, "The Case for 'Dwelling Alone" by Yehuda Avner who had served on the staff of five prime ministers, including Golda Meir and Menachem Begin.

In light of today's "headlines" of the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as well as the isolation and profound criticism of Israel by the UN, I found Avner's words and quotes of those famous Zionist Israeli leaders quite prophetic. Though long this article is well worth the read:

Golda Meir, Israel's most celebrated model of straitlaced probity, once gave a pep talk to 15 diplomatic probationers at the Foreign Ministry in 1958. Clearly wishing to take our measure, she leaned leisurely into her chair, combed back her bund hair with the fingers of both hands, lit up a cigarette, and eyeing us through the flame of the match, said in a Hebrew filled with Milwaukee-sounding pronunciations, "Are you sure you greenhorns want to join the Foreign Service? 

"Representing the Jewish state can be a very lonely experience. I'll tell you why: When I'm at the United Nations I look around me and think to myself, we have no family here. Israel is entirely by itself in the international community, less than popular, and certainly misunderstood.All we have to fall back on is our own Jewish, Zionist faith."

Whereupon, her tone gritty, her fists balled, she proceeded to ask herself;

 "Why should this be?""Why such solitude?"

"Why is it that we are the one country in the world that is Jewish?

"Why are we the one country in the world whose language is Hebrew?"

"Why is it that we have no independent kith and kin, or any historic relationship with any other state, or group of states, or cultures, or religions, or languages; as do say, the Anglo-Saxon nations, or the Christian nations, or the Muslim nations, or the Nordic nations, or the Slav peoples, or the Francophonic nations, or the Spanish-speaking, or the Arabic-speaking, or the Chinese-speaking peoples?"

Here she paused to rummage inside her copious black leather handbag, from the depths of which she extracted a handkerchief with which she blew her bulbous nose, and then, shoulders stooped, face glum, voice pensive, continued;

 "Everybody in the world has sovereign and cultural family except us. Everybody in the United Nations is grouped into blocs bound by a common geography, or religion, or history, or culture, except us. They vote in solidarity, like family.

We belong to no family. Our most natural regional allies - our Arab neighbors - do not want anything to do with us. Indeed, they want to destroy us. So, we really belong nowhere and to no one except to ourselves, impelled by our own Jewish, Zionist faith."

With that, the foreign minister stubbed out her cigarette and brooded over the ashtray, clearly pondering her next thought. When it came her voice was mulish:

"Since we have no blood ties to stand by us in solidarity, we suffer severe diplomatic consequences. 

Nobody recognizes Jerusalem as our capital city. We have no membership in any international regional alliance. We have no membership in any trade area. We enjoy no international recognition of our national medical emblem, the Magen David Adom. We have no accredited membership in any United Nations regional grouping.

Consequently, we are the only UN member that has no prospect of ever becoming a member of the Security Council.

"Of course," she added with a pious smile, "there is one important exception - our natural blood ties with our fellow Jews in the Diaspora. But everywhere they are a minority, and nowhere do they enjoy any form of national or cultural autonomy, let alone sovereignty."

Thus spoke this extraordinary woman, then in her early sixties, making no attempt to answer her own earth-shattering question: why, indeed, was the Jewish state without any sovereign kith or kin in the family of nations? Why was Israel the odd state out?

Years later, when she was prime minister and I a member of her staff, I discovered she had an aversion to analytical, conceptual discourse of any sort. A tough character with a domineering streak, Golda Meir knew to ask the right questions but was wont to simplify the most complex issues and go straight to the crux of the matter for a practical answer. Impatient with the convoluted theorems favored by academics and seasoned career diplomats, she wanted bottom-line answers. And, for her, "Jewish, Zionist faith" was a bottom-line answer.

This enigma, of Israel's diplomatic solitude, once came up for discussion at the Bible study circle which Menachem Begin regularly hosted at his home when he became prime minister in 1977. Every Saturday night 20-odd people, among them Bible scholars of repute, would seat themselves comfortably around the couch on which Mr. Begin sat, and for an hour or so would zestfully delve into an attention-grabbing biblical text.

On the Saturday night in question the chosen text was from the Book of Numbers,chapters 22 to 24, in which the Bible records how, 38 years after the children of Israel embarked on their Exodus from Egypt and two years before entering the Promised Land, the heathen prophet Balaam was coaxed by the Moabite king Balak to curse the advancing Israelites and thereby devastate them. However, Balaam, impelled by God's command, and much to Balak's fury, found himself involuntarily blessing them profusely instead.

The discussion that evening centered primarily on the evocative verse nine of chapter 23, in which Balaam foretells with remarkable prescience the future destiny of the Jewish people, predicting that "this is a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations."

Reading the verse out loud, prime minister Begin fixedly peered at the page of his Bible as though studying a museum manuscript and, sounding a mild chuckle, said, 

"One does not have to be a mystic for the imagination to be stirred by such an improbable vision of a nation 'dwelling alone.' What Balaam said is a startlingly accurate prophecy of our Jewish people's experience in all of history."

Professor Ephraim Urbach, a rotund, semi-bald scholar of refinement, wit, and brilliance, cited classic commentators to suggest "dwelling alone" really meant voluntarily setting oneself apart. In other words, the Jewish nation distinguished itself from other peoples by virtue of its distinctive religious and moral laws, and by the fact that it had been chosen by God as the instrument of a Divine purpose within the family of nations.

A woman in her fifties raised a finger for attention. She was fairly tall and lean, her face equine, her dress an unfussy nut brown, her beret a plain gray, her shoes sensible, and her eyes brilliantly intelligent. This was Nehama Leibowitz, famous for her profound biblical scholarship and for her immensely popular weekly Torah discourses, composed in a comprehensive and highly comprehensible style, graspable even to laymen.

Deftly, she drew attention to the verse's grammatical structure, elaborating upon and reinforcing Professor Urbach's comment, explaining that the verb yit'hashav, generally translated in English to mean reckoned - "this is a people that shall not be reckoned among the nations" - was here rendered in the reflexive form [hitpa'el], meaning, "this is a people that does not reckon itself among the nations."

As an aside, she pointed out that this form of that particular Hebrew word - yit'hashav - occurs but once in the whole of Scripture.

Professor Ya'acov Katz, a slight figure with dour features and a deeply analytical disposition, broke in to refer to the eminent talmudist Marcus Jastrow. Citing Jastrow's talmudic sources, Katz showed the hitpa'el of the root word hashav, ["reckon"] signifies "to conspire," meaning that Israel "is a people that dwells alone and does not conspire against other nations."

Another participant, whom everybody knew simply as Srulik - a ginger, bushy-haired archeologist and Bible prodigy in an emerald-green yarmulke which he had picked up at the door - provocatively remarked that whatever which way one interpreted Balaam's prophecy it stamped the Jewish people as an eternally abnormal nation within the family of nations. This flew in the face of the classic Zionist creed which expounded that Zionism's aim was to normalize the Jewish people so that it should become a goy k'chol hagoyim - a nation like other nations.

Indeed, the central thesis of the Zionist theorists and thinkers of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries was that once Jews possessed what every other normal nation possesses - a country of their own - they would automatically become a normal nation within the international community. And the consequence of that, so the classic Zionist theory went, would be that anti-Semitism would wither and die.

To which Dr. Haim Gevrayahu, chairman of the Israel Bible Society, and involved in one way or another in many high-profiled Bible study circles throughout the country, added words to the effect that, in making their confident predictions, one wondered in hindsight what led those brilliant secular Zionist founding fathers of yesteryear to believe that Jewish self-determination would, of itself, lead to national normalization and put an end to anti-Semitism. 

Indeed, were Jews to become a normal people they would cease being Jewish. But that could never happen because nothing could ever put an end to anti-Semitism. In fact, one thing to be learned from the biblical portion under review was that the so-called prophet Balaam was the archetype anti-Semite. His whole intent was to curse the Jews, not to bless them. The blessing was God's doing, not his.

This triggered off a firestorm of controversy because some of the scholars present took the Bible as a paradigm of God's own writing, while others related to it secularly as a piece of extraordinary literature.

Listening attentively, Mr. Begin lowered the temperature by saying in an earnest voice that it could hardly be denied by any reading of the text that the Jewish people did, indeed, live separate, apart, and often alone. And to prove his point he picked up a volume called A People That Dwells Alone. 

This was an anthology of the utterances of Dr. Ya'acov Herzog, confidant of several prime ministers, and universally admired for his remarkable gifts as a diplomat, philosopher, Talmudist, and theologian. Scion of a famous rabbinic family, he was the son of Israel's first chief rabbi, Yitzhak Isaac Halevy Herzog, and younger brother of Chaim, who was to become Israel's sixth president. He died in 1972 at the age of 50. To me, (Yehuda Avner)-he was a mentor, counselor, and tutor.

The prose of Ya'acov Herzog's anthology reads like a great rolling stone, accumulating intellectual threads and philosophic concepts as it gathers momentum and accelerates deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Jewish identity and eternity. And it was one such concept that Menachem Begin chose to quote that night to the members of his Bible study circle. He read:

“The theory of classic Zionism was national normalization. What was wrong with the theory?

It was the belief that the idea of a "people that dwells alone" is an abnormal concept, when in actuality, “a people that dwells alone" is the natural concept of the Jewish people.

That is why this one phrase still describes the totality of the extraordinary phenomenon of Israel's revival. If one asks how the ingathering of the exiles, which no one could have imagined in his wildest dreams, came about, or how the State of Israel could endure
such severe security challenges, or how it has built up such a flourishing economy, or how the unity of the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora has been preserved, one must come back to the primary idea that this is "a people that dwells alone." More than that, one must invoke this phrase not only to understand how the Jews have existed for so long; one must invoke it as a testimony to the Jewish right to exist at all in the land of their rebirth.”

"So, there you have it," concluded Begin, closing the book with a resolute air. "Cease 'dwelling alone' and you cease to exist. What a conundrum!"