What to Keep in Mind Regarding the Altalena Incident

The Hagana in Europe was aware early on that the Irgun had purchased a ship and were preparing it for sailing to Israel with arms and men/women to fight early in 1948.

At one point, given the expense of keeping the Altalena in port (rental fees, etc.), the Hagana was offered to purchase it from the Irgun.

On June 16, a meeting was held in Tel Aviv between the Irgun High Command and Yisrael Gallil, Levy Eshkol and other Defense Ministry officials to arrange its arrival.

The arrival location, Kfar Vitkin, was a Mapai moshav.

Defense Minsitry officials were update on Saturday night, June 19, that the Altalena had reached the area off of Tel Aviv and would be proceeding to the off-load area near Kfar Vitkin.

The talks broke down on the beach at Kfar Vitkin over the division of the arms and Begin was given 10 minutes to stand down his men. The people who were there with whom I spoke insist it were the IDF soldiers under Moshe Dayan's command who first fired on those on the beach.

On June 22, the day the Altalena reached the Frishman Street area of the Tel Aviv shoreline, where subsequently it was fired upon, the Palmach arms ship Inaco slipped into Jaffa Port indicating that the excuse that the Altalena should not have set sail as the UN Truce had begun was only applied to the Irgun, not the Palmach.

^

The Temple of Solomon and Alfred Mond's Near Doom

As published in Fathom Journal entitled

The Roots of the ‘Al Aqsa is in Danger’ Myth: Alfred Mond and a Speech Distorted

I have added photographs, illustrations and newspaper clippings.

______________

In 1921 British politician Alfred Mond, visiting Palestine, said ‘our sanctuary, our Temple, we will construct as an everlasting building’. Yisrael Medad shows how, although Mond was plainly talking figuratively not literally, expressing his hopes for the rebirth of a nation. Arab political entrepreneurs, most notably the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin Al-Husayni, seized upon these remarks and throughout the 1920s employed them as a successful aid to political mobilisation, as fodder for anti-Zionist propaganda, and as a goad to violence. Still today, Mond’s remarks form part of the false narrative that ‘Al-Aqsa is under threat from the Jews’.

INTRODUCTION

Today, one often hears the false charge that Israel is ‘building tunnels under the Temple Mount‘, or that, ‘The Al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger of being bombed and destroyed. This is a true and serious Zionist threat’. There are dire warnings about how the ‘Jews invade the Mosque’ and even that Jews are ‘injecting chemical substances into the walls of the mosque in order to cause its corrosion’.  This article examines one of the lesser-known origins of these myths and legends: remarks of the British politician Alfred Mond in 1921 which, though he subsequently clarified them, were purposefully distorted by the Arab leadership as a justification for violence for decades after.

WHO WAS ALFRED MOND?

Sir Alfred Moritz Mond (1868 – 1930), industrialist, plutocrat, politician and philanthropist, knighted as the 1st Baron Melchett, was born to parents who had immigrated to Great Britain from Germany. Although both his parents were born of Jewish parents, they did not consider themselves practicing Jews and he was not raised as a Jew. His wife, Violet (sister of the Foreign Office muralist Sigismund Christian Hubert Goetze), was also of Jewish heritage but her parents had converted. They were married in the Anglican Church and the children were raised as Christians.

Mond’s father, Ludwig, was a chemist and had emigrated from Germany to England in 1862. He developed a process for processing soda ash and later, another for extracting nickel. After founding a chemical engineering firm he became extremely wealthy in that he discovered that adding 3.5 per cent nickel to steel greatly increased its strength. Alfred was a director in his father’s businesses and expanded them. In 1926, he brought about the merger of four separate companies to form Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), one of the world’s largest industrial corporations at the time and became its first chairman. He was one of the wealthiest Englishmen at the time.

He involved himself in politics and sat as Liberal Member of Parliament from 1906 to 1923, becoming a member of David Lloyd George’s government as First Commissioner of Works from 1916 to 1921 and Minister of Health (with a seat in the cabinet) from 1921 to 1922. He then switched party and sat in Parliament from 1924 to 1928. Upon his death the obituary of The Times noted he had triumphed over ‘a bad voice, a bad delivery, and a presence unimpressive to all but the caricaturists’.

Although not identifying as Jewish, nevertheless, Mond was frequently the victim of antisemitic attacks in Parliament. T.S. Elliot’s poem, ‘A Cooking Egg‘, published in 1920, includes these lines: ‘I shall not want Capital in Heaven, For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond: We two shall lie together, lapt / In a five per cent Exchequer Bond,’ and he was targeted by Henry Hamilton Beamish (an early promoter of the Madagascar Plan for Jewish deportation to that island of the east coast of Africa) and his The Britons group which, in a poster, ‘The Jews’ Whose Who’, attacked Mond as a traitor to England.

MOND AND ZIONISM

In the wake of the Balfour Declaration, he adopted the Zionist cause with fervor even though, according to Edwin Montagu’s October 1917 letter to the Cabinet (NA CAB21/58, ‘The Future of Palestine’), he had been previously opposed or, perhaps, non-supportive. He eventually became President of the British Zionist Foundation, invested in Pinchas Rutenberg’s Electric Corporation and he was a signee on the Keren Hayesod Manifesto, published on 24 December 1920 in the Jewish Chronicle, having been appointed Chairman of the Zionist fundraising instrument at the beginning of the month. At an event in Manchester in the first week of December, he was obliged to address a charge that appeared in the Morning Post that the Zionist was demanding a decisive role in the appointment of the High Commissioner.

Earlier that year, on 8 April 1920, Mond, then Minister of Health, expressing his view on the future of the Jewish national home in Palestine, had declared in a private letter to David Lloyd George that ‘to place a highly civilised world people like the Jews under the sovereignty of the quasi-barbarian and backward Arabs is unthinkable! Nor from a British standpoint, as a question of policy, could such an enhancement of the insatiable lust of domination of Mahomedan Arabs be anything but disastrous’ (David Lloyd George Papers, as cited in Maryanne A. Rhett, The Global History of the Balfour Declaration: Declared Nation, Routledge, 2016) and that it was the responsibility of the state to show the Arabs ‘how to become civilised’.

Moreover, in an earlier letter sent to Lloyd George on 13 October 1919, Mond expressed a similar ‘concern’ regarding the views of the Amir Feisal on Palestine, specifically, ‘the idea that Palestine should be part of an Arab Kingdom in which the Jews will be welcome but will in fact be governed by Arabs. This is so entirely contrary to the expressed policy of the British Government, that I so hope you will impress on him the intention of the Governments of the Allies regarding the Jews and their national home’. He further pressed that ‘there should be no weakening on this question’ which was causing him ‘a great deal of anxiety’.

MOND IN PALESTINE

In early January 1921, Mond and Chaim Weizmann had arrived in Palestine, then still under British military occupation, having left England on 5 January. The purpose of his visit was to tour the land and observe the progress made by the Jewish pioneers — an on-site inspection, as it were. Indeed, his itinerary took him to cities and the kvutzot, from north to south.

On Sunday evening, 30 January, hundreds of guests congregated at the Lemel School in Jerusalem, up from the Bikkur Cholim Hospital and quite near to Meah Shearim. All strata of Jerusalem’s Jewish society were represented. Weizmann spoke and then Mond addressed the guests. Acknowledging that sharp criticism of the Zionist leadership had been conveyed to him, he asked that the assembled understand that he has full faith in their ability and requested that unity be the goal. Mutual recriminations can only have a negative effect on the Zionist work that needs to be done. World Jewry need be harnessed to assist the financial needs of the Yishuv.

According to press reports, Mond was planning, as soon as the League of Nations mandate over Palestine was confirmed, to raise a loan for the development of the country. He was impressed by the ‘unbounded enthusiasm’ displayed by Jews, some of whom were walking across Europe to get to their homeland even over a period of eleven months. It was a country of ‘mineral oil … phosphates and asphalt’.

MOND'S REMARKS ABOUT THE TEMPLE

According to the Hebrew language report of Haaretz on 1 February, he then said ‘our sanctuary, our Temple, we will construct as an everlasting building. Strong stones we will lay at its foundation. We are a stiff-necked people, even stubborn, in work and aspiration, and we will not lose hope’. The crowd, as the paper noted, reacted with applause, and he added, ‘the fourteen million Jews worldwide have one hope and will give their all to assure that our national home become a fact’. As it developed, that reference to the ‘Temple,’ symbolising the return of the national glory in a metaphorical sense, would almost be his doom. Incidentally, Mond’s biographer, Hector Bolitho, note in Alfred Mond, First Lord Melchett, that when Mond arrived at the Western Wall, he exclaimed:

‘My God, I should like to blow it up. It is terrible! It is terrible! It is the symbol of their humiliation and of the death of their pride. It is not in this way that they will build a nation or a people. In this is only further destruction: not escape.’

Back home, Mond, in a speech in London before the Palestine Foundation Fund [the Keren HaYesod] on 21 March 1921, repeated his appeal for a new ‘edifice’ to be erected ‘that would testify to the legacy of Solomon’s Temple’ as reported in the Daily Telegraph. Mond declared he would dedicate his remaining energies to the construction of a steadfast structure ‘on the site on which Solomon’s Temple once stood’.

Interestingly enough, in an interview in the local Meraat al-Shark (Mir’at al-Sharq/Mirror of the East) Arabic-language newspaper as quoted in Haaretz on 8 February, there was no mention of Mond’s supposedly inflammatory words. To the contrary, Mond was quoted in this organ of the Nashashibi faction as advancing an appreciation of the centuries-long Arab presence in the country, which needed to be taken into consideration. The country’s culture would be a mixed Jewish and Arab one, Mond was quoted, who also identified a need for joint Jewish-Arab cooperation in economic affairs for the country required an input of finances and a labor force.

QUESTIONS IN PARLIAMENT

On 5 April 1921, Conservative MP for Maidstone Commander, Carlyon W. Bellairs, put a question to the prime minister that was answered by Leopold Amery, his Parliamentary Secretary. Bellairs had asked whether the prime minister’s ‘attention has been drawn to the proposal put forward at a meeting of the Palestine Foundation Fund to erect a great temple on the site of the Temple of Solomon; whether he is aware that the site is now occupied by the Mosque of Omar; and whether, in view of the difficulties which such proposals cause to the Mandatory Powers, he will state that in no circumstances will Mohammedan institutions be interfered with?’

Amery’s response was that those words were a passage ‘in a speech delivered by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health [Mond], to which the hon. and gallant Member apparently alludes. I think it is clear that my right hon. friend was speaking figuratively and did not intend so literal an interpretation to be given to his words’.

He then drew attention to Article 13 of the draft Mandate for Palestine ‘which clearly sets forth the policy of His Majesty’s Government with regard to all holy places, religious buildings, or sites in Palestine’.

The very pro-Zionist MP of Kingston upon Hull Central, Lieut.-Commander Joseph Kenworthy, Baron Strabolgi — who had intervened a year earlier on behalf of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, arrested for the defence of Jerusalem during the Arab riots and who, in November 1928, would attack the newly implemented status quo regulations at the Western Wall as discriminatory towards the Jews — asked a supplementary question:

‘Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that there is no intention whatever of interfering with any mosques by the Palestine Committees, and also that King Solomon is held in equal reverence by Mohammedans, Jews, and Christians?’

Edward Turnour, Earl of Winterton, objecting to any interference with ‘holy places’, then wished to know if Amery will ‘convey to the Minister of Health the un-desirability of making the sort of figurative speech which he did, in view of Mohammedan susceptibilities’? Amery indicated that he could not be ‘responsible for the extent of misinterpretation which may be put on figurative speeches, but it is certainly the case, as my Noble Friend stated, that a guard has been on the Mosque of Omar ever since the occupation, and there is every intention of safeguarding the holy places of every religion’.

ENTER AL-HUSAYNI: A POLITICAL ENTREPRENEUR

According to Nicholas E. Roberts, Mond’s words intersected with the electioneering literature distributed by Amin Al-Husayni in 1921 when on the night of 19 April his supporters pasted up a poster entitled ‘Wake Up Moslems’, accusing his rivals of willingly handing over the Haram al-Sharif to the Jews so that its buildings, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa, might be pulled down and the Temple be rebuilt ‘as stated by Alfred Mond and the president of the Zionist Commission David Eder’ (p. 109).

Back in Palestine, according to Haaretz of 10 August that same year, Mond’s words about a newly reconstructed Temple were still agitating the Arab population. The High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, felt it necessary to request further clarification. The response from the Colonial Office, with assistance from William G. A. Ormsby-Gore, who had just been appointed to the post of British Representative to the Permanent Mandates Commission, was that Mond was using figurative speech as regards the country as a whole and had no intention to relate to any specific area upon which, ‘according to the legend, Solomon’s Temple once stood’.

The Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husayni seized upon these remarks and throughout the 1920s they were employed as a successful aid to mobilisation, as well as fodder for anti-Zionist propaganda. The attempts (see p. 141) made by Zionists to purchase the West Wall courtyard, of Weizmann, Rabbi Kook, Yaakov Thon and others, seemed to confirm what Al-Husayni was saying about Mond’s words. Already on 1 May 1918, Weizmann had written to Ormsby-Gore that a conveyance of the Western Wall to the Jews, currently ‘surrounded by ill-kept, ramshackle buildings’ and ‘the haunt of Arab loafers and vagrants’, for fair market value, reportedly £75,000, would return ‘dignity and solemnity which should attach to this monument of the ancient glories of Israel’ rather than a scene ‘of humiliation and degradation’. As he elucidated, ‘We feel that the present time, when Jewry is looking forward to a revival of its national life, would be of all times the most fitting for the carrying out of this project.’

SHEIKH ABD AL-QADIR AL-MUZAFFAR TAKES THE MYTH TO THE MUSLIM WORLD

Sheikh Abd al-Qadir al-Muzaffar, who headed in 1922 the first of several delegations that toured the Moslem world, especially Mecca during the Hijaz season, published manifestos beginning that year which utilised the theme of a Jewish ‘takeover’ of the Haram area. On 23 July, Doar HaYom published a rebuttal to the pamphlet and, inter alia, refuted the claim that Mond had proclaimed he would devote the rest of his life to ‘the restoration of Solomon’s Temple on the ruins of the Mosque of al Aqsa’, a quotation frequently quoted (see below). Roberts describes these delegations of the Supreme Muslim Council as ostensibly raising funds for the renovation of the Dome of the Rock but an added element was a call on Muslims ‘to rally to its defence of the Haram al-Sharif’.

The idea to renovate the Dome of the Rock originally came from a Jew and Zionist, High Commissioner Herbert Samuel. In August 1920, he wrote to Lord Curzon to request that the British government provide funds to renovate the Haram al-Sharif. Correctly foreseeing that if the British repaired the site, Muslims would protest ‘that Britain was taking over an Islamic space’, Samuel, the secretary of state, and the viceroy of India decided that it would be better for Hajj Amin al-Husayni to lead the campaign to repair the site with Britain providing background technical and financial assistance. However, al-Muzaffar and his comrades spread a very different message when visiting Egypt, the Sudan, Iraq, the Hejaz, Kuwait, Bahrain and India. British observers of the next three trips made between 1923–1924 observed the injection of nationalist politics into their fundraising appeal. Quite simply, they added to their message that monies collected ‘would also help to defend the Haram al-Sharif from Zionist takeover’.

While on tour in America in 1928, Mond admitted in a speech on 26 October, as reported in the 9 November edition of Philadelphia’s The Jewish Exponent, that the proposed purchase of the Wall was ‘not feasible now’. But, he added, ‘the Zionist Organization is determined to force the issue and obtain a definite arrangement with the government or parties concerned’ for regular Jewish assemblies to worship at the Wall.

Mond’s utterances were constantly highlighted by Arab spokespersons throughout the 1920s and particularly during the Western Wall dispute of September 1928-August 1929. As Thomas Adam has noted, Mond’s Zionist ‘activities found opponents in the Arab world, and Mond was quickly targeted for plans to destroy Arab religion and culture. In 1928 the influential Cairo newspaper Mokattam accused Mond of having said “I shall devote the rest of my life to the restoration of Solomon’s Temple on the ruins of the Mosque of al Aqsa”’.

In 1930, Emil Ludwig published an article in the New York Times surveying the scene in Palestine. Towards its end, he wrote, ‘Only by mutual understanding can the Arabs and the Jews live together in this country…No prudent Zionist speaks any longer of the Jewish State of Palestine, but all speak of a home in Palestine. The first would be as senseless as the published assertion of the Arabs that Sir Alfred Mond and Einstein wanted to erect again the Temple of David.’ In 1934 David Ben-Gurion, meeting Mussa Alami, then employed in the Legal Department of the Mandatory Government, heard Alami express alarm about Mond’s statement. (See Ben-Gurion’s memoir Zikhronot, 1972, p. 170).

THE MYTH, FROM THE 1929 RIOTS TO TODAY

Disturbances from September 1928 to August 1929 culminated in Arab-instigated riots throughout Mandate Palestine. The notion that a Jewish drive to restore the Temple and erase al-Aqsa must be resisted was central to Arab propaganda throughout this period.

On 8 October 1928, the Mufti submitted a memorandum pointing to ‘the unlimited greedy aspirations of the Jews in this respect, Moslems believe that the Jews’ aim is to take possession of the Mosque of Al-Aqsa gradually on the pretence that it is the Temple, by starting with the Western Wall of this place, which is an inseparable part of the Mosque of Al-Aqsa’ (See the 1929 Commission’s report, p. 31).

On 1 November 1928 a meeting of the new General Moslem Conference was convened and a resolution was passed reading, ‘Whereas we, the population of the Holy Land, have been entrusted by God with the custody of this House and His Temple, we deem it our duty to submit to all our Moslem brethren in the East and West a statement of the danger which threatens this Mosque owing to the ambitions of the Jews to expropriate it from the hands of Moslems.’ Thus were Mond’s words recalled and recycled as part of the propaganda efforts.

A Commission of Inquiry arrived in the country in October 1929. As its report accepts, ‘the Mufti or any educated Moslem might — genuinely and not without reason —have feared that, if at some future time the Jews became politically dominant in Palestine, they would not be content to leave the old Temple Area in Moslem ownership. No declaration by the Zionist Organization could remove such a fear.’ (p.73)

When the Mufti presented evidence before the Shaw Commission on 2 December 1929, the issue of Mond’s remarks were part of his cross-examination and correspondence dating to July 1921 was reviewed (p. 498). The follow-up International Commission report on the Western Wall of December 1930 specifically included Mond in its summary entitled ‘The real intentions of the Jews’:

‘Lord Melchett (then Sir Alfred Mond) has declared in public (1922) that the day of the reconstruction of the Temple was very near.  Jabotinsky, Zangwill [who had written of the rise of a ‘new Cyrus’ who would pave the way for a ‘new Nehemiah’], Professor Klausner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and other prominent Jews have expressed themselves to the same effect. Pictures to be found in sundry Jewish papers also show it to be the intention of the Zionists to rebuild the Temple at the spot that is now occupied by the Haram-esh-Sherif.’

The Mufti conducted a pan-Islam World Islamic Congress in Jerusalem in 1931 and again, Mond’s words and the theme of replacing the Haram al-Sharif with a Third Jewish Temple was played up. Since then, and until today, the theme of ‘Temple-Replacing-Mosque’ and the ‘Judaisation of the Temple Mount’ fill the Palestinian Authority media and their diplomatic initiatives and the UN and additional international forums incessantly, consistently and constantly.

And so is the historical example of a calumny.

---------

And a follow-up:

The current Lord Reading is taking steps to assume Israeli citizenship. His grandmother, Eva Mond, married the second Marquess of Reading and — though raised in her mother’s Christian faith — became an active Zionist and even converted to Judaism in 1933.

She held court at a beautiful building on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, a house which became known as Villa Melchett. Eva’s father was the first Baron Melchett. 

^

I Am Interviewed in Italian

I was text interviewed for an Italian outlet. I received an email, responded, was asked two additional questions of clarification and here I am: (translation via ChatGPT)

[For text of the full correspondence, see at end]

Israeli settler: “The violent ones? Three hundred young men”

Journalist Medad even denies the Palestinian question: “We have the right to live here”

Rome, August 17, 2026 — First he uses international law as his argument. Then, when it is pointed out to him that the League of Nations has not existed for quite some time, he moves onto the terrain of history. Yisrael Medad, an Israeli journalist, settler from Shiloh and a historian who supports the settlements in the West Bank, has one virtue: clarity. He finds surprising analogies between the Holy Land and our own country. And, according to him, the solution to the Palestinian question is “Italian” as well.

Medad, on what basis does an Israeli claim the right to live and build in the West Bank, which much of the international community considers occupied Palestinian territory?

“The fact that the international community considers Judea and Samaria occupied territories does not mean that they are. In 1922, fifty-five countries of the League of Nations recognized the right of the Jews to reestablish their historic national homeland.”

But the UN Security Council subsequently stated that settlements in territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity, and in 2024 the International Court of Justice ruled that the settlement policy is contrary to international law.

“I do not base the rights of the Jews on the League of Nations or on the UN Security Council. The right exists and is applicable even without recognition. It is based on three thousand years of Jewish presence in the land of kings, priests and prophets, psalms and revolts, olive trees and vineyards.”

If this right applies to Israelis, what equivalent right do you recognize for Palestinians who have lived there for generations?

“Arabs, like Druze and anyone else, can live there. But they do not have the right to carry out terrorist acts against Jews, which they have been doing since 1920.”

Terrorism: the same term used to describe the siege of Qusra by the American ambassador to Israel. Do you think the definition should change if the aggressor is Israeli?

“It should not change. Anyone who attacks civilians is a terrorist. Huckabee, however, is wrong in how he characterizes certain incidents; one has to have a sense of proportion. I checked, for example, the statistics on sexual violence in Italy: would it be justified to call Lombards ‘sexual terrorists’ because many cases are reported in Lombardy? No.”

But Palestinians repeatedly report assaults, arson and attacks on villages.

“All violence is wrong. But there is much more violence perpetrated by Arabs against Jews, and it is also more lethal. I am surprised that the world's attention is so one-sided.”

When Palestinian villages are attacked, don't you think that the settler movement bears political responsibility?

“No. That violence is the result of the failure of the education provided by parents and religious authority. I must, however, emphasize that Arab violence is tolerated and even praised, especially in Europe, by ‘progressive’ forces. This makes it difficult to explain here to these 300 young men that violence does not work.”

You speak of Judea and Samaria as part of the Land of Israel. Does that mean that, in your view, there should not be a Palestinian state in the West Bank?

“Exactly. I am convinced that the real objective of the Palestinians is not to have their own state, which they could have had in 1937, 1947 and 1967, but to deny the Jews a state.”

But if you reject the two-state solution outright, what is the concrete alternative for millions of Palestinians?

“We could try autonomy and see what happens.”

Can Israelis and Palestinians really coexist in the same territory without having the same rights?

“If there were no terrorism and incitement to violence, there would be no restrictions. In Italy, for example, millions of foreigners live without Italian citizenship.”

What is the political objective of the settler movement?

“To guarantee the continuity of the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria.”

The problem is how. Imagine that your political vision were fully realized: twenty years from now, who would govern the territory between the Jordan and the Mediterranean?

“Israel will be the sovereign power. An Arab could be an Israeli citizen, or a resident without citizenship, or could once again become a Jordanian citizen. Or perhaps we could learn something from South Tyrol.”

“If he says so.” [Se lo dice lui — the journalist's closing, slightly ironic, comment.]

And here are a couple of nuances in the Italian (added by ChatGPT)

There are a few places where the Italian framing is somewhat sharper than your actual answers:

• “nega persino la questione palestinese” literally means “even denies the Palestinian question.” That is the journalist's characterization; your answer itself does not deny that Palestinians exist or that they have rights to live there.
• “I violenti? Trecento ragazzi” is a headline, roughly “The violent ones? Three hundred young men.” It refers to your statement that it is difficult to explain to “these 300 young men” that violence does not work.
• “colono” means “settler.” It is not necessarily derogatory in Italian, but colono israeliano is the terminology the newspaper chose.
• Your South Tyrol/Alto Adige analogy is particularly interesting because it invokes a model of territorial autonomy within a sovereign state rather than partition into two sovereign states.

Also, the headline “abbiamo diritto a vivere qui” (“we have the right to live here”) is not actually a verbatim quotation appearing in your answers as reproduced below it; it is the newspaper's headline characterization of your position.

P.S. My final line to him was:

"Of course, I have kept my replies short and concise but the issue is quite complicated."

I do not think I convinced him of the practicality that a democratic, binational society in which Jews and Arabs live together without ethnic domination cannot exist.

-----

I found there this interview too: (translation via ChatGPT)

West Bank, No Other Land activist: “An ethnic-cleansing campaign is underway”

Huraini, Palestinian reporter: “There is no everyday life there; Israeli settlers continue with complete impunity.”

Rome, August 17, 2026 —

“On the 19th of last month, late at night, more than 40 masked Israeli settlers broke into At-Tuwani. I was with my cousins when we heard desperate screams coming from my house: they were my sisters. They were sleeping when the settlers began smashing the windows in order to throw gasoline inside. They wanted to burn my family members alive.

For the first time in my life I felt completely helpless: I was alone against forty of them, and the only ‘weapon’ I had in my hand was my camera. My neighbor lost the baby she was carrying because of the terror of those scenes.”

It is through his own story that Mohammad Hesham Huraini, a Palestinian reporter and activist from Masafer Yatta, describes the West Bank today. Huraini collaborated on No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary.

“A huge campaign of ethnic cleansing is being carried out by Israeli settlers with complete impunity.”

What is everyday life like there?

“There is no everyday life. We wake up in the morning to demolitions and in the evening we witness pogroms. We cannot even move from one village to another because of army and police roadblocks and the continuous attacks by settlers. Going to the doctor or buying food is an ordeal.”

How do the people who live there make a living?

“Securing an income is complicated. Since October 7, 2023, most of the people who worked inside ‘48”—in Palestinian terminology, the Israeli territory within the Green Line—“have lost their jobs and no one has been able to return there.”

Are you more afraid of violence, or of gradually being forced to abandon those lands?

“The greatest fear is facing the daily threat of death.”

U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee has called those responsible for the siege “Israeli terrorists.” Can words like these really make a difference?

“They are important, but they are not enough. Real pressure is needed from the European governments and the United States.”

Israel will go to the polls again on October 27. Do you hope the election can change anything?

“For the Palestinians, little or nothing will change. The settlers are taking advantage of the election period: they know that the government needs their votes, so they attack knowing that they will never be stopped.”

Do you still believe that Israelis and Palestinians can live together?

“Every time a solution has been proposed, Israel has destroyed it because it does not believe in peace, but only in the displacement of Palestinians. We are human beings, not numbers.”

After the Oscar, it seemed that the world had become aware of No Other Land. Do the people who live there feel that anyone is still watching?

“Precisely after that recognition, the filmmakers became the principal targets of attacks, arrests and detentions. The 96 minutes of the documentary showed our past life; the reality we have been experiencing from October 7 until today is even more insane and brutal than what was shown in the film.”

You mentioned October 7. Beyond the horror, don't you think that massacre caused enormous political and moral damage to the Palestinian cause?

“I prefer not to answer this question because the issue is not about October 7: the occupation already existed beforehand, as did the attacks, pogroms and killings of Palestinians.”

And ChatGPT added

A couple of points worth noting

The Italian interviewer uses “pogrom” (pogrom) in the questions/description as well as Huraini using the term in his answer. I have retained it rather than softening it to “attacks.”

Also, “inside the ‘48” is Huraini's terminology for Israel within the Green Line. The Italian journalist actually inserts an explanatory parenthesis making this explicit.

One potentially important point for your purposes: the article is not an independent report of the alleged July 19 incident. It is an interview in which Huraini gives his own account and characterization of events. The article does not provide corroborating evidence for his claims about the settlers, nor does it present an Israeli response.

_________________________________

My responses to a questionaire sent by Antonio Del Prete, Responsabile Redazione Interni/Esteri - QN Quotidiano Nazionale, in Bologna, Italy:

Dear Antonio, 

Allow me to respond from my personal/private gmail as I am retired from the Begin Center (although I still do research there) and my opinions are solely mine.

"Let me startt with the fundamental question: why should an Israeli have the right to live and build in the West Bank, in territory that most of the international community regards as occupied? Is that right historical, religious, legal or political?  

That the international community regards Judea and Samaria as occupied does not make those territories so. They may be technically under belligerent occupation but that is but a legal technicality. In 1922, based on the San Remo Conference of April 1920, the right of Jews to reestablish their historic national homeland was recognized in international law by 55 nations of the League of Nations. By the way, at San Remo, Italy played an important part. The official minutes for 25 April 1920, when the Palestine mandate resolution was adopted, list Francesco Saverio Nitti — Prime Minister, and chairman of the meeting; Vittorio Scialoja — Foreign Minister and Italian secretaries: Garbasso, Galli, Trombetti and Lt. Zanchi who were present at the San Remo Conference. That, of course, followed the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty. The right to reside in these areas is the natural, historical, legal and religious right of Jews based on a 3,000 presence in the Land, of kings and priests and prophets, of psalms and revolts, of olives and grapes - and a constant residency even after dispersion and conquest all throughout the centuries, especially in Jerusalem and Hebron.

If that right applies to Israelis, what equivalent right do you recognise for Palestinians who have lived there for generations? When those rights clash, who should decide which one prevails? 

Arabs - and Druze and anyone else - can live there. One right they do not possess is to conduct terror against Jews which they have been doing since 1920.

You speak of Judea and Samaria as part of the Land of Israel. Does that mean that, in your view, there should ultimately be no Palestinian state in the West Bank? 

Yes. I am convinced their utmost goal is not their own state - which they could have had in 1937, 1947, 1967 and so forth - but to deny Jews a state. I do not need to reward them for their failure to eliminate Jews. They could have had autonomy of a condominium with Jordan. It's their choice to keep losing. Besides, the two-state solution is actually a four-state solution as Jordan, separated from the Palestine Mandate in 1922 by Churchill, is properly "Palestinian" (and so is the majority of its population if we want to be exact) and Gaza will never accept rule by the PLO in Ramallah. And besides, why should there be three Arab uni-ethnic states but just one Israel with 20% Arab population?

If the two-state solution is dead, what is the concrete alternative for millions of Palestinians? 

Israeli citizenship with full political rights, limited autonomy, or permanent life without sovereignty? We could try autonomy and see what happens. Unfortunately, after 30 years+ since Oslo they have done abolsutley nothing in state-building.

Can coexistence genuinely exist when Israelis and Palestinians living in the same territory are subject to different legal systems, different restrictions on movement and different levels of protection? 

A. if there was no terror, incitement to violence, there would be no restrictions. 

B. Did you know that as of January 1, 2026, ISTAT (the Italian National Institute of Statistics) reported that 5,560,000 foreign residents with non-Italian citizenship live in Italy, making up about 9.4% of the country's total population? I presume they all have mostly the same rights except for voting and being elected. I am sure similar situations exist all over Europe. It could work in Israel + Judea and Samaria as well. By the way, I am not at all convinced there is a separate, distinct national grouping called 'Palestinian Arabs'.

Palestinians argue that the expansion of settlements, outposts and roads is making territorial separation physically impossible. Is creating an irreversible reality on the ground part of the political objective? 

It should be.

How do you judge violence committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians, and how significant do you believe this phenomenon is today in the West Bank? 

All violence is wrong, immoral and criminal unless exercised by authoritative state agencies. As there is much more violence perpetrated by Arabs against Jews - more deadly, too - I am amazed of the world's attention being one-sided.

When fields are burned, residents assaulted or Palestinian villages attacked, does the settlement movement bear any political responsibility beyond the criminal responsibility of the individuals involved? Directly? 

No. It is a failure of education, parental guidance and religious authority. It is a wrong ideological orientation and immoral. However, I must point out that Arab violence is tolerated and even praised especially in Europe by 'progressive' forces which makes it difficult here to tell these 300 youngsters that violence doesn't work. 

Mike Huckabee, who has long been one of the strongest American supporters of the settlement movement, has used the word “terrorism” in relation to violence by Israelis against Palestinians. If the same act were committed by a Palestinian against an Israeli family, it would certainly be called terrorism. Why should the definition change when the attacker is Israeli? 

He was wrong, as he was at the incident in Taybeh [https://tps.co.il/articles/burning-questions-what-really-happened-at-taybehs-church/]. No definition should change. Persons attacking civilians uninvolved in violence are engaging in terror. Of course, there is also perspective and proportion. I checked stats for sexual violence in Italy and found that in 2024, 6,831 rapes occurred in the country. Lombardy was the region with the highest reports nationwide, with over one thousand cases of sexual violence in 2022. Would I be justified in thinking Lombardy people are sexual terrorists? P.S. I wouldn't.

Palestinians also describe a more gradual form of pressure: grazing livestock next to homes, blocking access, intimidation and repeated harassment until families eventually leave. If the result is the depopulation of a Palestinian community, is that not a form of displacement? 

A. As Regavim has been reporting for years, Arabs are being funded to move into Area C and take over state land. There is a counter move on. Almost all of the incidents involve this type of Arab incursion, but not all. 

B. In 1948, some 15,000 Jews were displaced from Jerusalem, its neighborhoods and other communities due to the Jordanian invasion and subsequent illegal occupation. Did they have rights? Why not?

What, ultimately, is the political objective of the settlement movement? To live alongside Palestinians, to incorporate the West Bank permanently into Israel, or to create a Jewish-majority territory in which the Palestinian presence is progressively reduced? 

I would think to assure continued Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria. If I can quote Ze'ev Jabotinsky from 1923: "I am prepared to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone. This seems to me a fairly peaceful credo. But it is quite another question whether it is always possible to realise a peaceful aim by peaceful means. For the answer to this question does not depend on our attitude to the Arabs; but entirely on the attitude of the Arabs to us and to Zionism."

Imagine that your political vision is fully realised. Twenty years from now, what does the map between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea look like? And what status does a Palestinian currently living in Tuba, Qusra or Al-Mughayyir have? 

Israel is the sovereign power there and the Arab in Qusra is either a citizen of Israel, a resident non-citizen or a re-citizen of Jordan (Arabs there possessed Jordanian citizenship until 1988) or perhaps we could learn from South Tyrol?

Of course, I have kept my replies short and concise but the issue is quite complicated.

P.S. 

Oh. And one more thing, a "der Treppenwitz" matter, regarding "settlement". 

It is a legal right guaranteed to the Jews as found in Article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine decision:

"The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes."

And, of course, the territory then of the Jewish historic homeland envisioned was at least from the sea to the Jordan River.

There was a follow-up:

Thank you very much for your previous answers and for taking the time to respond so fully. I would be grateful if you could also answer these two follow-up questions:

You base the legal right of Jews to settle in the West Bank on Article 6 of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. However, the UN Security Council has repeatedly taken a different position: Resolution 446 stated that Israeli settlements in the territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity, and Resolution 2334 reaffirmed that they constitute a flagrant violation of international law. In 2024, the International Court of Justice also found Israel’s settlement policy in the occupied Palestinian territory to be contrary to international law. On what legal basis do you consider a provision of the 1922 Mandate to remain controlling today while rejecting these subsequent UN resolutions and the conclusions of the ICJ?

​A. To be precise: I do not base the Jews' right on the League of Nations nor the UN Security Council. They recognized that right. That right exists and is applicable even without that recognition, or for that matter, non-recognition. I am sure Italians did not need, for example, Garibaldi's One Thousand volunteers in 1860-61 to create a right to a united Italy. 

The same Article 6 that you cite also states that Jewish settlement should be encouraged while ensuring that “the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced.” How do you reconcile that condition with settlement expansion, restrictions on access to land and the displacement of Palestinian communities in the West Bank?

​If you review that entire decision, Arabs are not mentioned once. Not at all. The League of Nations knew of Jews and non-Jews: Arabs, Germans, Armenians, Turks, Italians, Christians (of a half-dozen denominations), Alawites, Bahais, Sunni & Shi'ite Muslims. ​All were "existing non-Jewish communities".  Arabs were awarded after WW One Saudi Arabia, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Syria, Lebanon, Jordan from the former Ottoman Empire, not to mention the later Arab states of today, almost 30 in North Africa and Middle East including a few countries built entirely around oil refineries. There was no "Palestinian people/nation" then for sure.

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Quick Quiz: Did I write 'West Bank'?

Did I write "West Bank"?

Here:

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Palestine is Southern Syria, 1915

"Palestine is Southern Syria"

Ze'ev Jabotinsky
June 30, 1915

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What Did the Temple Mount Floor Look Like?

From this clip illustrating Frankie Snyder's work:

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