Section 4 - A bloody conflict

from:- Yona Levy Grosman

Notes and explanations about my work - Exhibition at the Massada National Park 2007

And we are the focus of a bloody conflict that could crush the fate and continued existence of the Jewish people. A conflict in which individual and collective repression and denial and rewritten histories, sometimes through ignorance and sometimes through malice, serve as a tool for adding fuel to the altar of war.

It is very easy to identify with a person holding up an old key and bewailing the loss of the home and homeland that was stolen from him. And if he speaks with conviction, loudly and clearly, what he says is taken as the undisputed truth.

That is how the Palestinians manage to gain sweeping support worldwide. No-one ever checks the validity of their claims and worst of all; Israel’s response is hesitant, conciliatory, trying to gain support by being nice while disregarding historic facts and the desire for the truth.

And so, Israeli propaganda fails, time after time, in face of Arab propaganda. And perhaps this Israeli behavior is the result of continuous ignorance of the history of the Land of Israel.
So vast is the ignorance that Jews, including new immigrants, go up to Arabs in the streets of Jerusalem and apologize for taking away Palestinian land from them.

And a well-known and respected professor, a liberal, at a no less respectable conference, lectured that between 80-90% of those who define themselves as Palestinian are new era immigrants to the Pre-State Israel. Later, out of fear that he may be harmed, he asked for the transcript of his lecture to be stricken from the conference. According to post-Zionism and those who bear its flag, published historic facts and the viewpoint of the general public and the academic world are only permitted if they support the Arab side. Everyone else is denied and the doors, budgets and promotions are closed to those tainted with Zionism.

No, No – we are not talking about Iran or one of the European countries. We are talking about what happens within the jurisdiction of the State of Israel and the institutions of the democratic Zionist state. This is true in the arts, the law and the academic intellectual world.

And since I usually hear from the side that calls itself Palestinian, questions like: “where are you from?”, and “Go back to where you came from” even though 90% of the Jewish population in the country are Jews who have been returning to the land of their ancestors since the end of the 19th century. Respected historians fear for their positions and do not publicize these facts to the public who are not aware of the entire history, nor to the schools where this subject is not taught at all. While I, who have known for years that my work will never be exhibited in the Tel Aviv Museum because I am a Zionist, asked the experts and reviewed the literature to learn about those who claim that I should “get out of here” and I bring what I learned for you to read in this brief summary.
And perhaps here I will be the mouthpiece that will open the discussion on this subject.

Who are the Palestinians?
Are they the descendants of the Philistines? No, not at all.
The United Nations has a universal definition for who is a refugee which states that: a refugee is any person who is forced to abandon his/her permanent home in his/her homeland, native country from time immemorial. Under pressure from the Arab world, the United Nations was forced to expand this definition in one specific instance and this is what is written in the amended definition: Any Arab who left Mandatory Palestine in 1948 and who had lived there for two years previously will be considered a refugee. The Arab league had good reason for insisting on the amendment to the definition.

Two years can never be defined as “from time immemorial” and they also know that they will never be as such. The Arab league would never have made such efforts to change this definition if most of the refugees fitted the universal definition.

But the percentage of refugees who do not meet this definition of the United Nations is so high that most of them would not be able to benefit from the assistance that the United Nations gives to refugees. And why did they insist on two years and not five or ten. Because following World War II the illegal immigration of the surviving refugees to the Holy Land increased. The immigration of the Jews to the Pre-State Israel was considered illegal while the steady stream of Arabs coming in from Syria, Hauran, Egypt and elsewhere encountered no obstacles. This influx increased especially after the call from the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini in 1945.
If we delve deeper we can learn the historic facts about the settling of the Land of Israel.

Since the destruction of the Second Temple, followed by the fall of the Roman Empire, foreign armies usually conquered the Holy Land and were then driven away by others. Each such exchange of hands brought with it extensive massacre of the population until slowly it diminished leaving mostly nomadic Bedouin tribes using is for passing through and not for establishing permanent settlement. And most of these were slaughtered when the land was conquered by Ibrahim Pasha in 1831.

Between 80 to 90 percent of the people calling themselves Palestinian are new era (19th century) settlers resettling the Holy Land. The start of this significant resettlement began after the land was conquered by the Egyptian ruler,
Ibrahim Pasha, in 1831 when, for political and economic reasons he settled the land with Egyptian peasants. These were later joined by soldiers who deserted their posts with the withdrawal in 1841, leaving behind them scorched earth and massacred Jewish and Arab inhabitants in places such as Hebron.

These were the first waves of new era immigrants. Another wave came after the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 when Egyptian peasants who had worked on digging the canal could not return to their homes and their land, as it was given to their brothers who remained at home.

In 1857, when the Ottoman rulers came to realize that the outlaying areas of their empire were uninhabited attracting hostile incursions, they called for people from throughout the empire to settle the land. Hence, the land was settled by Algerian refugees such as the al-Husseini family who fled their homeland following a bloody struggle against the regime there and Chechen refugees who fled their motherland following its occupation by the Russians. And Bosnians who lost their battle against Austria, and of course also the Templars and others.

The Ottoman regime gave the settlers land and financial support, contrary to the difficulties that the Jewish settlers of that era encountered because only the Jews had nationalistic aspirations for the Land of Israel. And those who did manage to reach the Land of Israel were forced to buy land which was not suitable for settlement at that time, among other reasons, because of malaria, at exorbitant prices.

Additional waves of Arab settlers arrived at the height of British rule during the period of the White Paper laws preventing Jews, fleeing the Nazi upsurge in Europe, from escaping to the land of their forefathers while allowing only Arabs from Egypt, Hauran and other Arab countries to immigrate and settle the land at the request and invitation of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj. Amin el-Husseini. Nevertheless the British, on their own initiative, also brought in tens of thousands of Egyptians to Mandatory Palestine to work in factories, and these in turn brought their families and settled the land.

In addition to these waves of immigration, Pre-State Israel was always a focus of attraction for Arabs because of the money that the Jewish communities around the world sent to support the Jews who lived there. This money powered some sort of economy in an area stricken with famine and disease. The renewed Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel also became a source of livelihood drawing immigrants from the neighboring countries (similarly to what is happening today in Western Europe and North America).

And finally, I will share one of my thoughts with you. Where are the keys to the homes of the families who perished in the holocaust? And where are the keys to the homes of the Jews murdered in Hebron in 1928? And where are the keys to the homes of the 250 Jewish families who fled for their lives from Gaza that same year?

The State of Israel absorbed mainly refugees, where are all the keys of all the homes of all the Jewish refugees who arrived from all the Arab countries and from Europe? Have you ever thought about when we have the keys of our homes with us? When we flee for our lives? or perhaps when we are slain in our own homes?
Usually I take the key to my home with me when I go out and lock up properly!

All this information is just a short summary and anyone wishing to learn more
is welcome to read about it in:

1.    Middle East Diary by Richard Meinertzhagen who was General Allenby’s
       Chief Intelligence Officer.
2.   From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters
3.   Arab Demography and Jewish Settlement by Prof. David Grossman
4.   The Encyclopedia of the History of the Land of Israel, Volume 8, the end
       of the Ottoman empire.
5.   The Beginnings of the Israeli-Arab Conflict by Eliezer Beeri
6.   The Kings Highway, 1994, by Donnan, page 151 about Chechenya
7.   Katedra 2 1937 by Eli Yahav about the people of Houran
8.   Aaron Aharonson’s Diary, edited by Yoel Efrati about the Armenians
9.   Bedouin Society in the Negev, 61 by Emanuel Marcus about the Kushites
10. Teva Vaaretz (The Society of the Protection of Nature magazine) 66, page 48,
       about the Christians who immigrated
11. to the Galilee because of persecution in Lebanon.
12. The New East, magazine, Issue 77/1 page 20-51
13. Etmol, 109 page 19 the immigration of the Bahai’s
14. Bedouin in the Land of Israel, 171 by Ashkenazi
15. Horizons and Geography, issue 11, 12 1984 . about the Americans
16. Jameah, issue 12, page 201-245

Yona Levy

Grosman

יונה לוי גרוסמן

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