Facts Arab-Palestinians Would Rather Not Admit About Israel - Draiman

Facts Arab-Palestinians Would Rather Not Admit About Israel

Statue of Maimonides at Cordoba, Spain.

  

In doing my research and writing various articles about the Arab-Israeli Conflict I was asked some pointed questions about my conclusions in some of my recent articles, which dealt – as most of them do – with the history of Israel: biblical, post-biblical and international laws and treaties.

I had stated in one of my articles the following sentence: “Only one people has ever made Jerusalem its capital and only one people ever established their ancestral indigenous and biblical homeland between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea: the Jews.”

I had also added that: “the Jews were the remaining aboriginal indigenous inhabitants of the Land for two millennia before the Muslim religion was even created.”

The commenter, nevertheless, had correctly pointed out that most people, because they have been exposed for such a long time to anti-Israel Arab propaganda, falsely believe that there has not been a continuous Jewish presence in the Land of Israel for the last 2,000 years. Many also have the Miss-conception that the UN created the State of Israel, this is a farce.

The land of Israel has been in existence for over 3700 years and the Modern reconstituted State of Israel was decreed by post WWI international law and treaties executed by the Supreme Allied Powers which allocated the formerly occupied territory by the defeated Ottoman empire and they specified Mesopotamia, Syria and other territories to the Arabs and Palestine, the historical ancestral land of the Israelites to the Jewish people as their reconstituted homeland.

They are thus unaware that the historical territory of the land of Israel was never totally cleansed of Jewish presence. Thus, the Arabs would rather you forget also that Jews lived for two millennia in Mesopotamia and in what became later known as British created Iraq.

Indeed Jews had resided for over 3,200 years in that territory from the Babylonian Captivity 586 CE onwards. It was when International treaties executed by the Allied Supreme Powers in 1920 which incorporated the Balfour Declaration as international law and once the number of Jews in Palestine-Israel became substantial enough to merit the subsequent implementation of those international treaties and guarantees.

Furthermore, due to the haste-full departure of Britain in 1948 and the desertion of its commitment to implement the Mandate for Palestine as agreed by post WWI international law and treaties.

The Jewish leadership declared independence and Israel was re-established in 1948. The UN resolution to advance the sovereignty of the Jewish state, and was only carrying out some of the terms of the international treaties.

The post WWI League of Nations and the post WWII United Nations that took over from the League have no authority to create or modify international treaties.

The UN according to its charter can only recommend its resolutions and the same applies to the ICJ - International Court of Justice, thus, those recommendations must be adopted by the parties, if any of the parties rejects the resolution, it has no affect or validity.

In our case and point, the Arab Israeli Conflict. The Arabs rejected outright the UN resolutions that could of altered the conflict to a peaceful coexistence.

After the Declaration of independence of the Jewish state; the Iraqi Arabs persecuted and drove the Jews from their ancient homes of over 2400 years and confiscated all their assets, turning them into refugees who found sanctuary in Israel; at that time a fledging impoverished country barely able to support them at the time. A great number of Jewish refugees were created that it outnumbered the Arab refugees in a ratio of 2 to 1, as one Arab state after another in the Middle East and North Africa persecuted and drove out their Jewish populations who resided in those countries for over two millennia, while confiscating all their assets. A crime, which hardly is ever recognized.

Arab-Palestinians and their anti-Israel supporters try to delude, deceive and convince the world that the Jews just appeared in the early 20^th century after being dispersed for over two thousand years from their biblical ancestral homeland. That is a flat out lie and flies in the face of factual recorded history. But facts never seem to matter to Arabs and pro-Arabs. So the following brief history lesson will be for them an inconvenient truth.

Let me start by quoting from an article written in The Weekly Standard, May 11, 1998 by Charles Krauthammer:

"Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one today advertising ice cream at the corner candy store."

The Jewish People trace their origin to Abraham, he who is called the Holy Convert, the first Jew, who established the belief in only one God, the creator of the universe. Abraham, his son Yitzhak (Isaac), and grandson Jacob (Israel), are referred to as the patriarchs of the Israelites who lived in what was then the Land of Canaan which today do not exist; later to become known as the Land of Israel. They and their wives are buried in the Ma'arat HaMachpela, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in Hebron, Judaism’s second holiest city. (Genesis Chapter 23).

The name, Israel, derives from the name given to Jacob (Genesis 32:29). His 12 sons were the ancestors of the 12 tribes that later developed into the Jewish nation. The name Jew derives from Yehuda (Judah) one of the 12 sons of Jacob. You will find the names of the tribes listed in Exodus 1:1. Yehuda (Judea) is also the biblical name of the southern region of what the world calls by its Arab name – the West Bank. Shomron (Samaria) is the northern half.

Modern Israel shares the same language, culture, tradition and Jewish faith passed through generations starting with the founding father Abraham and the Jews have had a continuous presence in the land of Israel for over the past 3,400 years.

Menorah plundered from the Temple, depicted on the Arch of Titus, Rome.

In 70 AD, Rome destroyed the Holy Temple and conquered the Jewish nation, yet only part of the population was sent into exile. Even after the Second Jewish Revolt against the continuing cruel Roman occupation, Jews, though banned from Jerusalem, survived for centuries in other Jewish towns including Rafah, Gaza, Yavne, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea as well as throughout Galilee and the Golan. Ruins of synagogues built in post-biblical Byzantine times are found scattered throughout the Golan and an epic act of Jewish resistance to the Roman legions took place at Gamla, high upon the Golan Heights. Here again, the Jewish presence predates the modern Syrian claims to the Heights by two millennia.

Interestingly, early seventh century battles raged between the Persians and the Byzantines over the Land of Israel. The Byzantines were oppressing the Jews and a Jewish general, Benjamin of Tiberius, was able to raise an army of twenty thousand Jewish men from villages and towns in northern Israel to support the Persian cause against the oppressors. This again points to extensive Jewish life in the land well after the erroneous and false Arab claim that Jews had not lived in the land during the last 2,200 years.

The height of Jewish prominence was again achieved in the tenth century. In Tiberius, by the shores of Lake Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, a symbol system for Hebrew vowels was created which eventually gained universal acceptance. But with the advent of the Crusades in Israel during the 12^th century, and the massacres of thousands of Jews in Jerusalem and throughout the land, the Jewish population reached its lowest point. But Jewish populations again revived, strengthened by new Jewish immigrants arriving constantly from the Diaspora. Many such returnees settled in Safed, Tiberius, Hebron and Jerusalem.

These are the four Holy Jewish cities of the Land with Jerusalem, north, south, east and west, the eternal over 3,200 year old Jewish capital and veritable jewel in the crown. Jews traveling from Europe, such as the remarkable medieval explorer, Benjamin of Tudela, had to overcome immense perils while crossing lands at war with one another. They had to avoid death or capture by bandits, or at sea from North African pirates and Crusaders based in Cyprus or Malta. That they came at all, however, remains a tribute to the earliest efforts to keep Israel populated with its aboriginal and ancestral folk and abide by the religious commandments to go up to the land of Israel and reside there.

A brief list of Jews returning to the historical ancestral land reveals a constant arrival of people joining existing Jewish villages and communities, themselves always at the mercy of alien occupiers.

According to the Center for Online Judaic Studies, here are just a few of the names of early Jewish returnees consisting of some Rabbinical leaders:

1075:1141 Yehuda Halevi, poet.

1135: 1204 Maimonides, philosopher.

1210: Settlement in Israel of three hundred French and English rabbis.

1267: Nachmanides arrives in Israel.

1313: Estory Haparchi arrives: The first geographer of Israel.

1538: Renewal of rabbinic ordination in Safed.

1561: Joseph Nasi leases Tiberius from Turkish sultan.

1700: Yehuda HeChasid and his followers arrive in Jerusalem.

1777: Large Hassidic group settles in Galilee.

1797: Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav’s trip to Israel.

1808: Disciples of Elijah, Gaon of Vilna, settle in Jerusalem.

This very partial list of Jewish immigrants, who arrived well before the 20^th century, is an inconvenient truth to the Arab and pro-Arab propagandists who would have you believe their delusions and myth that the Jews only arrived much, much later.

The national coins, the pottery, the cities and villages, the ancient Hebrew texts…all support the empirical fact that Jews always had a continuous presence in that land for over 3,100 years and the fact that Jewish villages and towns were to be found in all parts of the ancient Jewish homeland and throughout all the preceding years, up until the present time, certainly dwarfs and debunks any claims that other people in the region may have; especially the Arabs who came from neighboring Arab countries and today call themselves Arab-Palestinians.

TIMELINE IN ISRAEL aka Palestine 1200 BC to 2015

PHILISTINES, JEBUSITES & ISRAELITES
1200 - 1020 BC

ISRAEL / JUDAH
1020 - 745 BC

ASSYRIANS
745 - 597 BC

EGYPTIANS III
609 - 605 BC

BABYLONIANS
604 - 538 BC

PERSIANS
538 - 332 BC

GREEKS
332 - 140 BC

HASMONAEANS - ISRAELITES
140 - 63 B.C.

ROMANS
63 BC - 300 

BYZANTINES  - Christian
313 - 611

PERSIANS II
611 - 628

BYZANTINES II
628 - 636

CALIPHATES
636 - 661 (1099)

UMAYYADS
661 - 749

ABBASIDS
749 - 877

TULUNIDS
877 - 906

ABBASIDS II
906 - 935

IKHSHIDIDS
935 - 969

FATIMIDS
970 - 1079

SELJUKS
1079 - 1098

CRUSADERS - Christians they killed many Jews and Muslims
1098 - 1187

AYYUBIDS
1187 - 1260

MAMLUKS
1260 - 1517

OTTOMANS
1517 - 1917

BRITISH MANDATE
1920 - 1948

ISRAEL, JORDAN & EGYPT
1948 - 1967

ISRAEL
1967 - 1982 All of Territory west of the Jordan River and Sinai to the Suez Canal

OSLO ACCORDS I & II
1993 - 2000

DISENGAGEMENT, HAMAS OCCUPATION OF GAZA
2005 - PRESENT

How many holidays do the Arabs-Muslims celebrate due to historical events in the land of ancient Israel and Jerusalem.

The Jewish people celebrate most of their holidays and fast days in memory of Jerusalem and Israel since 70 AD (that is over 2,000 years).

Pleading the Jewish goal and aspiration to return to Israel and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem - where it was before it was destroyed and desecrated by the enemies of the Jews. Many of the Jewish prayers for thousands of years recite the love of Israel and the Jewish aspirations to return to their ancestral land and bring back its glory and holiness.

At Jewish weddings they break a glass in memory of Jerusalem and the aspiration to return and build the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

Every day at the end of the meal the Jews recite a blessing and thank G-d for providing sustenance and beseech G-d to return and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.

Most Jewish prayers mention our pleading to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.

YJ Draiman