Describing Shiloh in...1898

 

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An Insight into Whether Arabs are Indigenous to 'Palestine'

From "The Nusseibeh Family: Khazraj Roots That Grew and Blossomed in Jerusalem", July 10, 2024:

"The origins of Jerusalem’s Nusseibeh family trace back to the large Banu Khazraj tribe, one of the tribes of Mazin ibn al-Azd, originally from southern Arabia. Along with their cousins from the Banu Aws tribe, the Banu Khazraj supported the Prophet Muhammad and welcomed him and his Muslim followers in Medina after they fled Mecca during the hijra in 622 CE....

The Nusseibehs were named after Nusseibeh bint Ka‘b of Medina, also known as Umm ‘Ammara, one of the earliest women to convert to Islam. During the Battle of Uhud near Medina in 625 CE between the early Muslims and the tribe of Quraysh, Umm ‘Ammara is said to have treated and cared for the wounded at night and fought alongside the Prophet during the day, sustaining wounds herself...

The detailed origins of the family are recorded by Hafiz Abdul Rahim Nusseibeh al-Khazraji in his book The Khazraj Nusseibeh Family: Custodians of History and the Present. Extensively researched and drawing on more than 830 Ottoman documents related to the family, the book traces 600 years of the family’s lineage since the advent of Islam. The sources used to tell these elaborate details also depict the family’s high social and religious status in Jerusalem, owing in large part to its members participating in the Islamic conquest of the city under the leadership of Caliph Umar in 638 CE.

Arrival in Jerusalem

Regarding the family’s arrival in Jerusalem, Hafiz Nusseibeh explains that, among the warriors in Caliph Umar’s army was Abdullah ibn Nusseibeh, the son of Umm ‘Ammara. The Umari conquest of Jerusalem, which included a four-month siege of the city, led to the capitulation of the Byzantines under Patriarch Sophronius. But upon conquering the city, Caliph Umar instructed his Muslim army to protect the churches and other non-Muslim shrines, assigning Abdullah ibn Nusseibeh the responsibility and honor of protecting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre from any attacks by Muslims or others. This was part of a treaty, known as the Pact of Umar, reached in 637 CE between the invading Muslim army and the non-Muslims of the Levant. As part of the pact, non-Muslims were granted security, protection, and rights under Muslim rule in exchange for loyalty..."

"...Jerusalem Story sat down with one of the eldest members of the Nusseibeh family, 70-year-old Wajih Nusseibeh, who has been responsible for opening and closing the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for more than 40 years. We met in his home in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood of Jerusalem, in the presence of a younger family member, Munir Nusseibeh, to recount the family’s enduring presence in Jerusalem for nearly 14 centuries.

Wajih was born in 1949 in the Nusseibeh family home in the Musrara neighborhood of Jerusalem near the Damascus Gate...Wajih described his Khazraj origins, explaining that the Nusseibeh family’s roots go back to Medina, and that their ancestor, Umm ‘Ammara, was a devoted fighter who stood by the Prophet Muhammad. 

“We came to Jerusalem as conquerors during the time of Umar ibn al-Khattab..."

Arabs in 'Palestine' - since the 7th century, as conquerors.

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How Did the Palin Commission View Jabotinsky's Role in the 1920 Defense of Jerusalem?

Extract from the 1920 Palin Report on the "Disturbances" of April 1920 in Jerusalem:

"...A singular incident was the offer by Mr. Jabotinsky and Mr. Ruthenberg to place at the disposal of the local authorities the volunteer bands which had recently been raised by these two gentlemen in anticipation of some such catastrophe as had occurred that day. The whole history of this movement is extremely unsatisfactory. It seems scarcely credible that the fact that these men had been got together and were openly drilling at the back of the Lemel School and on Mount Scopes should have been known as it undoubtedly was, to the population during the month of March - it was organised after the demonstration of the 8th - and yet no word of it reached either the Governorate or the Administation until after the riots. Yet this is what is alleged and this ignorance can only be attributed to the curious defects in the intelligence system which the evidence occasionally reveals. There was no attempt at secrecy. Mr. Ruthenberg actually went to Brig. General Waters Taylor in March and asked permission to arm the force. Brig. General Waters Taylor's answer to this is that he understood Mr. Ruthenberg to be referring to the question of arming outlying colonies of Jews.

He admits that towards the end of March, Colonel Bramley reported that the Jews were drilling on Mount Scopes, but neither of them appear to have associated this with the idea of a defence force. At any rate as the result of his interview, Mr. Ruthenberg appears to have understood that he must not arm his force. After this, Lieut. Jabotinsky asked Colonel Storrs for permission to arm the force - he was at the time drilling daily behind the Lemel School - but he also appears to have left Colonel Storrs under the impression that what he wanted was arms for outlying colonies and to have failed to have made it clear that he had raised a defence force. Dr. Eder in backing this application apparently made it no clearer. The organisers decided to arm their men in spite of the Administration although they were unable to raise more than about thirty pieces - so convinced were they that trouble was coming. It is claimed that the force kept guard in the city on the 2nd, but the police deny all knowledge of this.

On Sunday morning, as soon as they heard of the trouble, Messrs. Ruthenberg and Jabotinsky went to the Military Governor and offered the services of themselves and the force they had raised to assist in restoring order. What actually took place is narrated by Mr. Ruthenberg and as Colonel Storrs admits its general accuracy, it may be accepted. In the course of conversation both men admitted having arms; Mr. Jabotinsky as an ex-British officer - Mr. Jabotinsky was principally concerned in raising the Jewish Battalions which served with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in Palestine - surrendered his arm when ordered to do so. Mr. Ruthenberg was persuaded to give his up and it was not returned to him. A discussion ensued in which Ruthenberg and Jabotinsky refused to surrender the arms their men possessed but asked for the men to be armed by the Administration and used. Colonel Storrs said he must refer the matter to the Chief Administrator and arranged a meeting for the afternoon. At 4 p.m., they again met and Colonel Storrs tried to restore confidence in the Administration by relating the measure taken to protect the Jews. Messrs. Ruthenberg and Jabotinsky approved, but insisted on the Arab police - against whom by this time there were many complaints - being disarmed and the Jewish youth being armed under their responsibility if the Administration considered it necessary.

As a compromise, Colonel Bramley suggested the formation of a body of special constables to which Ruthenberg and Jabotinsky agreed, but Colonel Storrs refused. A number of other propositions were discussed and agreed on. During the evening and night the Jewish leaders made use of their men in a limited way as Colonel Storrs had promised that nobody should be arrested if they did not collect in bands. (It is only fair to state that Colonel Storrs denies giving any such promise), They patrolled the city and collected information. The events on Monday and Tuesday decided the authorities to use the force and on Tuesday Mr. Ruthenberg was summoned to the Governorate and informed by Colonel Storrs and Colonel Beddy, O.O. Troops, that the Administration had decided to use his men and asked how many he could produce. It was explained they were to be used as special constables not armed. Late that night Mr. Ruthenberg was asked for a hundred men to be presented at 8 a.m. the next day. These they succeeded in presenting at the time and place named. Two companies of about fifty men were actually sworn in when the Administration decided to suspend the order and it was not proceeded with. It was Mr. Jabotinsky who selected the men and he was in constant consultation with the officials up to the time of his arrest on April 7th.

On the 18th April, Mr. Ruthenberg writes to Colonel Storrs stating that calm having been restored to the city, he had demobilised the "Self Defence", to which Colonel Storrs replied with the decidedly disingenous letter of the 21st April, asking what was meant by "Defence Corps" as the Administration had no cognisance of such a body. Mr. Ruthenberg admits that in arming the corps "the wishes of the Administration were disregarded for the reasons already alleged - but subsequent events proved we were right". The Administration disclaims all responsibility for Mr. Jabotinsky's arrest and places the onus upon the Military - yet the Legal Officers of the Administration were employed to draw the charges. This Court is unable to extend its mission into an inquiry into the conduct of the subsequent Military Court; but in view of the preceding circumstances into which the Court has been obliged to probe very thoroughly: the undoubted cause for anxiety among the Jewish Community, the admitted purely defensive intention of the organisers of the force, the constant consultation into which both the local officials and the Military entered with its leaders after the disturbances had broken out, the actual enrolment of a portion of the force as special constables with the active help of Mr. Jabotinsky: taking all these matters into account, together with Mr. Jabotinsky's record as the organiser of the Jewish Battalions for the service of the British Army, the Court feels itself obliged to record its opinion that the arrest and prosecution of Mr. Jabotinsky was ungenerous.

No doubt the persistent impression that the Jews were in some way concerned as aggressors as well as the Arabs, in spite of the fact that the Arab casualties were practically negligible, is largely responsible for the attitude of the Military Authorities; and undoubtedly the repeated attempts of the Zionists to take action irrespective of the Authorities was embarrassing and a cause of exasperation, but other and milder methods might well, in view of all the circumstances, have been adopted."

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Guttersnipe Antisemitism Masquerading as Political Commentary

Candace Owens

Max Blumenthal

Nick Fuentes

Tucker Carlson to be uploaded soon.

Why do mainstream/legacy media outlets ignore the content of their remarks, what they portend in a socio-political sense as hate speech?

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UPDATE

"Now that Trump has allied with Israel in a war for Iranian regime change, there’s no made-up story wild enough for the anti-neocon gang to pretend that either Trump is “with them” or neocons are in despair. They feel boxed out, and they’re enraged.

Tucker Carlson has called Operation Epic Fury “absolutely disgusting and evil.” Marjorie Taylor Greene responded by saying that the Trump administration was packed with a “bunch of sick f--king liars.” Nick Fuentes instructed his simian audience to vote for Democrats in the midterms. Blackwater founder Erik Prince said, “I don’t see how this is in keeping with the president’s MAGA commitment.” And on and on it goes...they’re lost in their own fantasy roleplay game where motives are disguised or inverted, double agents are showing their faces, and state-backed cabals wield wizardly powers of influence—you know, it’s the Jews’ fault. Megyn Kelly simply confessed, “This feels very much to me like it is clearly Israel’s war.”...Vance, after all, once assured a groyper at a live event that “Israel doesn’t control this president.” And in downplaying the rise of the right-wing Jew-haters he was courting, he claimed that the whole issue of anti-Semitism on the right was made up by pro-Israel conservatives to distract Americans from discussing the supposedly problematic U.S.-Israel relationship.

Three days ago, that relationship showed the world the most successful single day of warfighting in history...the real question is how Vance tries to explain to the hate-peddling right his own involvement in the most ambitious U.S.-Israel military effort we’ve ever seen. Another is how he tries to justify his association with the hate-peddlers to the rest of us. This is a dilemma of his own making. Vance thought he could court the right’s Tucker wing without losing conservatives. And he thought he could distance himself sufficiently from Trump’s pro-Israel stance to keep the Tucker wing happy. 

The war in Iran could turn in any number of directions. At the moment, it looks far more promising than Vance’s battle for the future of the right.

Abe Greenwald,  the executive editor of COMMENTARY.

What to do about Jerusalem's "Holy Places" - 1918

With the conquest by British military forces of Jerusalem in December 1917, both British diplomatic and political figures, as well as Zionists, began to plan for the future administration of the territory. The Balfour Declaration made it a clear government policy that the country would develop into a homeland for the Jews. Nevertheless, as the Sykes-Picot negotiations had shown, there were multiple interests that needed to be attended to including economic, strategic and religious in natre.

In December 1918, Ze'ev Jabotinsky penned a long essay and part of it discussed the issue of the Holy Places. It follows in its original form, with Jabotinsky's editing and crossing out:

          A few words chaned the choice of the protecting Powers “Trustee” – the protecting Power to be put by the peace conference in charge of Palestine. This choice is a matter to be decided by international agreement.

          The Holy Places should be carefully

          We suggest

          Whether this scheme of government, when applied, would leave any real and genuine need for special arrangements safeguarding the Holy Places of the New Testament, of Christianity Holy Places is a question to be decided in the first place by Christ the Christians Powers themselves. As outsiders we can only say that, with a Christian Power holding the supreme authority over Palestine, there does not seem to be any need for proclaiming them “extra territorial” “ex territorial”. The intersects of the different Churches into which Christianity is divided could be protected by placing certain localities, town-guarders, or holding under special joint Boards representing all the sections concerned. However, Zionists never intended to put forward object even to extra exterritorialization provided it should be strictly limited to places where really constitutional areas which really and palpably constitute places of Christian pilgrimage and worship.

          As to the holy places the Old Testament, their exterritorialization from a Jewish “National Home” would of course be out of the question. We fully admit the and appreciate the interest right of all monotheistic religions to consider them as our and their common property are entitled to, take in them, but it would be really monstrous to deny that Jews’ connection with them is incomparably the most intimate. Here again joint Boards could be instituted to secure Christian and Mohammedan as well as Jewish representation, but the places themselves should remain for even incorporated into the Jewish national patrimony.

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Jabotinsky's 1935 'Band Wagon'

This is the first of a series of three articles by Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Revisionist leader, written specially for the Jewish Daily Bulletin. The second of the series will appear in tomorrow’s Bulletin.

It is not only difficult but probably impossible to bring home to American Jews the intensity of Zionist feeling in the Zone of Jewish Distress—Eastern and Central Europe. That is a terrible and cruel intensity; it looks irrational, for there is the impression that Palestine (they now call Palestine simply “certificate,” for short) is wanted at once and for every single individual out of a crowd of several millions, and yet it is realistically wise because there actually is no other way out for all those millions but Palestine. During my present tour I have many a time thought of trying somehow to convey to the American audiences this tangible, immediate mass hunger - but had to renounce the attempt for fear of dropping into sob-stuff.

So it probably will have to be accepted as inevitable - that the largest and most powerful of Jewish communities should remain in a state of just sympathetic aloofness while the zone of distress across the ocean is traversing a period of acutest mass agony.

Some readers may here feel shocked by the term “sympathetic aloofness,” they may find it unjust, may claim that theirs is much more than mere “sympathy,” and the claim may be true: but I cannot help it - compared with the tremendous immediacy of that painful “certificate-hunger” out there the American attitude strikes me as condolence by remote well-wishers, rather skeptical as to all those stories about a “frozen stampede” to Palestine.

This is probably also why American Jews can play with pink leftism just at a moment when all the Jewish “middle class” in the zone of distress is up in revolt against the present left wing hegemony in Zionism. What is fanning that revolt into real white heat is, naturally, the monopoly over “certificates.” The “mittelstand” (eighty per cent of the whole ghetto) can no longer afford to renounce them for the benefit of “halutzim;” it needs them for itself, too.

No Jew of the “mittelstand” imagines that Palestine can absorb shopkeepers or luftmenschen: he knows that, apart from people with money, only laborers are wanted; but he is himself, in many cases, an artisan, and in any case believes himself fully capable of becoming a laborer, and quite rightly so in most cases. Yet he is debarred from even asking for a “certificate” because he does not belong to the monopolist party and (being a man above 25, probably already married) cannot go to a “hachsharah” place (where, as everybody by now admits, they learn nothing of any use). He realizes, moreover, that there are too few “certificates” to go round, that it is a lottery with hardly one lot for 10,000 applicants -  but for him there is even no lottery ticket, and resents it bitterly; and as conditions grow worse his bitterness threatens to degenerate into hate.

There is, of course, also the ideological controversy about “class war;” even without the “certificates” complication it has ever been an irritant. The ordinary poor shul-goer who, as long as he could spare a cent, has been feeding the funds that fed the Halutzim and has made the Histadruth what it now financially is, feels profoundly insulted being treated as white trash by those very Halutzim. The small and medium capitalist whose initiative, since 1925, has endowed Palestine with hundreds of factories providing work for 20,000 Jewish workers, stands bewildered in discovering that even in Zion he is nothing else but a class enemy, an exploiter, and altogether a social nuisance. All that has long been causing a great deal of resentment; but now, added to the non-admission of the “mittelstand” to that “lottery,” it makes people see red.

American Jewry is also mittelstand, but their life is paradise in comparison, they do not feel that searing pain, and sears can never be “explained.” So they have chosen just this moment for getting infatuated with the party whose domination is gall and wormwood to four-fifths of distressed European Jewry, chosen this moment for no other reason, I fear, than a purely local coincidence - the fact that just now “Labor” catchwords happen to be popular in America.

American Zionists are under the impression that this is a very noble and very liberal spiritual departure. I see in it something quite different. There was no trace of such infatuation when Palestinian labor was poor and helpless, in those days of the “stone breakers” when Halutzim were really “pioneers” in the heroic sense of the term, suffering untold material privations and ready to stand even more the glory of Zion. Yet in those days American Zionism, though generous with its money for the improvement of their position, never dreamed of accepting their ideological leadership. Today Palestinian left wing labor gets wages that would make English working men envious; they have abandoned en masse the agricultural colonies, partly even the Dead Sea, because they are better paid in towns; a quarter of the membership of the left-wing Histadruth either live in neat little houses of their own, or else are already listed to get such houses as soon as donations from the bourgeoisie will permit it.

The Histadruth cooperatives employ hired Jewish labor just like capitalist enterprises do: at last year’s Histadruth convention a special report on this painful subject was read by a Mr. Garfinkel from which we learned some really piquant facts, e.g., that more than 50 per cent of those Histadruth members working for Histadruth employers get wages of “from one to six pounds” a month (the Trade Union minimum in Palestine is seven pounds a month); or that some of those cooperatives, whose shares originally cost 100 to 200 dollars, now refuse to sell them, owing to the boom, for less than “two to three thousand dollars.”

Individual members of the left wing Histadruth also employ hired labor - the proletarian “boss” working for high wages in town, but letting his vegetable plot in a nearby colony to be tended by another proletarian for a lower wage; after which, of course, he will sell those vegetables to the bourgeoisie and pocket the profit. In short, belonging to the left wing Histadruth is nowadays rather a comfortable social position.

The Histadruth itself, and the “Mapai” (the Socialist Party) which dominates it, are also very “comfortable:” in proportion to membership, probably one of the richest trade unions throughout the world. Beside the ordinary Keren Hayesod sources, and the “Gewerkschaft” campaigns, the Histadruth now also enjoys a nice steady clean income from the Transfer Agreement between some of its organs and Hitler’s government, helping Germany to import her wares into our Holy Land. This is why left wing labor has at its disposal such a mighty war chest for sending delegations across all the oceans, and for election campaigns to Zionist Congresses.

This is the moment when America’s middle class intelligentsia has chosen to . . . to jump on the band wagon.

_____

This is the second of a series of three articles published in the JTA by Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Revisionist leader, written specially for its Jewish Daily Bulletin. 

Foreign words should be used with a bona fide knowledge of what they really mean. Fasces was the Latin term for a bunch of rods with an axe in the middle. Roman “lictors” used to carry them ostentatiously, to remind the citizens that if they don’t obey orders they will be beaten, or their heads chopped off. Fasces was the symbol of coercive discipline, of the State’s resolve and power to enforce obedience on all dissenters, no matter whether wicked criminals or honest conscientious objectors. Italian Fascism is an attempt to reaffirm the principle that the State has the right and the duty to "coerce” and the actual power, too.

Right or wrong, all this can have no application to Jewish social phenomena. There is no Jewish government, and no Jew can be administratively “coerced” to obey orders issued by any Jewish leader or committee of leaders. Jewish political organizations are voluntary associations and can be nothing else. Should one of them conceive the whim of imposing on its membership the strictest kind of “compulsory” discipline, that would simply mean that all its members choose to agree to this kind of game: all of them, for if you or I suddenly cease to agree we can simply walk out of that organization and cannot be “coerced.” When a minority of that membership say “We submit to the will of the majority,” they simply mean that they voluntarily condescend to submit. The doctrine of Fascism is rooted in the opposite principle; the individual will be made to agree whether he agrees or not. In Jewish life this doctrine is simply unreal, as unreal as “depth” in a two-dimensional oil painting.

As to the very old principle that the interests of a nation should supersede those of an individual, a family, or a “class” - to describe this idea as “Fascism” is silly. This is everyman’s view, including ninety-nine per cent of all Socialists, probably also of all Communists if ever put to the test.

The really “Fascist” addition to this world-old idea is, again, only that thoroughness of coercion which Fascism applies to social relations. It refuses to rely on the workers or the employers’ own patriotism: it simply commandeers all the workers and all the employers, treats them as battalions of the State, orders, forbids and punishes. This again, cannot be initiated in our Jewish life. When we Jews speak of “compulsory” arbitration in Palestine, what we mean is a free pledge by all concerned to renounce voluntarily any other method of settling industrial disputes and to accept (voluntarily) the arbitrators’ judgment however unpalatable.

Whether such a covenant is a possibility (as I believe) or a dream (as pessimists affirm) is beside the point: the point is that this program is the reverse of Fascism. Fascism says to both Labor and capital: “I don’t ask you to be patriotic, you may go on feeling selfish: but you will have to accept the State’s ruling or go to jail - and even if you do go to jail, it won’t help you, for the State’s ruling will be enforced in your enterprise all the same.”

There is, on the other hand, also this difference - that, while in Fascism any concrete form of “class war” is only verboten, in Zionism (where nothing can actually be “verboten”) the very idea of “class war” is immoral. The national funds which support the proletarian Halutzim are being provided by the. bourgeoisie. That bourgeoisie is being daily urged to leave the Galuth and come and build factories in Palestine, because there “you can be among your brethren. When a bourgeois starts a workshop in Palestine, he is being urged to employ expensive Jewish labor instead of cheap Arab labor - because “the Jewish workmen are his brethren.”

All this is absolutely fair: they are brethren, and partners in the great enterprise of building the Homeland, and comrades in Zionist ideology: brethren, partners, comrades in a sense incomparably more intense and more concrete than it can be said of capital and labor in any other country. That is why it is unfair and immoral to import “class war” ideas into Palestine - even though it cannot be “verboten.”

Fascism is wholly and organically inapplicable to any aspect of Jewish lfe; it is therefore simply dishonest to call any Jewish party “Fascist.” In many cases, it is even akin to hitting under the belt. In liberal or democratic countries Fascism is looked upon as politically subversive, governments have been known to take active measures for suppressing it by police action, and may have to do so in the nearest future with considerable severity. In view of all this, decent opponents should be very chary of stamping a Zionist party as “Fascist.” It is just as indecent as calling Socialists “Communists,” and likely to lead to the same kind of outside interference.

In countries like Austria, where the term “Marxist” is equally dangerous, we Revisionists have instructed our followers never to apply that term to left-wing Zionists, quite regardless of whether that would be scientifically true or untrue; and, though we officially disbanded our German branches when we decided to join the boycott movement, that wing of Zionists in Germany who share our Herzlian views also know that “Marxist” is a word never to be used in Polemics.

_____

And I finally figured out to find the third section, here.

When a man in America says, “I am not a Republican,” it means that he is an adherent of some other party, probably a Democrat. When a man says the same thing in England, it means that he is a Monarchist. Which is a reminder that the same term can often cover quite different phenomena: another example is the word “petition.”

The officially prescribed way in which a private group or individual in Palestine can approach the Permanent Mandate Commission in Geneva, is by sending their request or memorandum through the High Commissioner: and the document thus forwarded is called “petition.” It may bear many signatures or one only: the Revisionist memorandum was signed by Mr. A. Weinshal on behalf of the Palestinian Revisionists.

This has nothing to do with the “Petition Movement” initiated by the Revisionists a year ago. That movement demands signatures en masse: between April and June, 600,000 signatures were collected, and this year we intend to raise the number up to several millions. The mass petition is not addressed to the Mandate Commission or to the League of Nations: its four different texts are explicibly addressed (a) to his British Majesty, (b) to the British Parliament, (c) and (d) to the government and parliament of the country where the petitioners reside. And, in fine, this mass petition has not yet been “presented” either in London or in any other capital, but will only be presented after many preliminary manifestations, culminating probably in a World Congress of the petitioners themselves.

Those who are genuinely interested should, therefore, remember that anything that may have happened in Geneva to Dr. Weinshal’s memorandum, officially described as “petition,” or may subsequently happen to his next memorandum to Geneva, has no bearing whatsoever on the progress of the real petition - the mass movement petition.

The two have also different aims. The mass petition is primarily meant to register all those who actually and personally want and need repatriation to Palestine. Secondly, - to impress upon the governments of those countries where the Jewish distress has become a grave local problem that it is in those governments’ interest to start a friendly talk with the British Mandatory about facilitating Jewish immigration. Thirdly, - to bring home to British Jews’ suffering, and to British public conscience the discrepancy between a pledge and a reality.

The memorandum to the Mandates Commission had another aim, to “draw” that body into a discussion on that all-important subject: what is the true meaning of a “national home” -  is it a Jewish State or just a new Jewish minority?

I know, of course, that there are people who consider such a discussion undesirable. We Revisionists consider it necessary and intend to go on promoting it until we obtain the inevitable final result: an admission, on the part of the League’s organ supervising the Mandates, that “a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine” means Palestine transformed into a self-governing commonwealth with a Jewish majority; that this was the intent of the Balfour Declaration and of the Mandate. As I said, such an admission is inevitable provided there is a discussion: wherefore, we will see to it that the discussion should continue.

In forwarding to Geneva Mr. Weinshal’s memorandum we knew, of course, that the first reaction of the Mandates Commission would be negative. For the last seven years or more I have been quoting in my public addresses a proverb current in one of the Mediterranean countries: “In politics, just as in true love, it is only after the seventh ‘no’ that you can hope to hear the bashful ‘yes.’ No important political advance has ever been reached in any other way but via several preliminary refusals: the first very dry and curt, the second probably angry. This is how the Jewish Legion was formed: the story began with Kitchener’s “no.” The same applies to the story of the Balfour Declaration, or to any political story worth telling. Whoever fears that preliminary cold drop had better renounce all hope of ever getting anywhere.

The Mandates Commission has said its first “no.” That important body must forgive me for pointing out that this answer clashes with the Commission’s own attitude with regard to all the problems implied in our question. Logically, the present situation in Palestine can only end in one of the following three ways: (a) the Mandatory withdraws, leaving Palestine a State with an Arab majority; (b) the Mandatory stays on forever and ever; (c) a State with a Jewish majority.

As to the first eventuality - the Permanent Mandates Commission at half a dozen of its sessions, when dealing with the question of a Legislative Council for Palestine has always stubbornly maintained that any kind of majority rule by the Arabs would endanger the Jewish national home, would therefore be contrary to the Mandate, and was therefore inadmissible - which all, and a fortiori, applies to an Arab State.

As to the second eventuality (“the Mandatory strays on forever”) - that would be tantamount to annexation, therefore contrary to the very letter and essence of the League of Nations’ Covenant. Some people in England may desire it, but there is at least one body under the sun which simply cannot admit such a perversion of the Covenant - and that body is (last part couldn't copy text, so here:)

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Jabotinsky's Funeral as Reported in the New York Times

TRIBUTE BY 12,000 PAID JABOTINSKY; 

They Stand Outside Chapel in Second Ave. During Funeral of Noted Zionist Leader; 200 Cantors sing ritual; Thousands Line Streets When Cortege Passes Through East Side After Service; No Eulogies Given; Many Weep as Taps Sound Military Service at Grave

Aug. 7, 1940

TRIBUTE BY 12,000 PAID JABOTINSKY; They Stand Outside Chapel in Second Ave. During Funeral of Noted Zionist Leader 

As more than 12,000 persons stood out in the street, a funeral service was held yesterday for Vladimir Jabotinsky, author, soldier and world leader of the New Zionist Organization, at the Gramercy Park Memorial Chapel, 152 Second Avenue. Mr. Jabotinsky, who died of a heart attack Saturday night at Camp Betar, Zionist youth camp at Hunter, N. Y., was unaware that his son Eri, who had been imprisoned at Acre Fortress in Palestine for nationalist activities, had been released from prison earlier that day. A Zionist holiday was declared in Palestine yesterday in memory of Mr. Jabotinsky. 

Prominent Jewish leaders and representatives of Jewish organizations and the British, Polish and Czech Consulates were among the 750 per- sons invited to the funeral service, at which Rabbis Maurice Rose of Temple Sinai, Brooklyn; Samuel Telushkin of Brooklyn, and H. S. Epstein of St. Louis, officiated. Led by Joseph Ruminsky, Jewish composer, 200 Verband cantors sang an ancient Hebrew ritual chant. 

At the request of Mr. Jabotinsky, there were no speeches, eulogies or instrumental music, based on the precedent of the funeral of Theodore Herzl, founder of modern Zionism. John H. Patterson, D. S. O., British commander of the legion Mr. Jabotinsky fought with in Palestine during the World War, was among the 150 honorary pallbearers, all close associates of Mr. Jabotinsky in his fight for a Jewish nationalist state in Palestine. Other pallbearers were Professor James G. McDonald, former High Commissioner for Refugees of the League of Nations; James Freeman of Ottawa, president of the Canadian Zionist Organization; Colonel A. Ralph Steinberg, Past Master of B'nai B'rith; John Gunther, author; Willard G. Stanton, chairman of the American Friends of Jewish Palestine; William B. Ziff, Chicago publisher; K. B. Friedman, assistant United States District Attorney; Professor Benjamin Akzin of City College, Dr. Joseph E. Braunstein of the Menorah Home for the Aged and Infirm, Colonel Maurice Mendelsohn, past national commander of the Jewish War Veterans; Jacob Landau, editor, and Judge Jacob S. Strahl of the Municipal Court. Mayor La Guardia was represented by his secretary, Stanley H. Howe. The funeral arrangements were made by the New Zionist Organiza- tion under the direction of E. Ben-Horin. 

At the end of the chapel service the coffin, draped with a Zionist flag, was carried from the funeral home, surrounded by an honor guard of fifty boys and girls, mem- bers of the Brith Trumpeldor. Many men and women wept as Martin Winnick, national bugler of the Jewish War Veterans, sounded taps before the coffin was placed in the hearse. Estimated by Inspector John J. De Martino, who directed fifty patrol- men and five sergeants, as one of the largest funerals on the East Side, a throng of 25,000 followed the cortege or lined the route. 

All vehicular traffic was stopped on Second Avenue as the hearse and guard of honor went north on Sec- ond Avenue to Fourteenth Street, east to First Avenue, south to Thirteenth and then west again to Second Avenue. Proceeding south on Second Avenue, where Jewish theatres and homes had hung out mourning drapes, the cortege stopped be- tween Tenth and Ninth Streets in front of the funeral chapel, where the cantors sang a Jewish mourn- ing song and the Jewish national anthem. At Houston Street and Second Avenue, a salute of honor was giv- en the hearse, and then a motorcade of fifty cars and eight buses left for the New Montefiore Ceme- tery at Farmingdale, L. I., where a military service was held. 

Burial was in the cemetery's Nardau Circle. It is expected permanent burial will take place in Palestine when the war is over. The military guard of honor was formed by the Jewish War Veterans, East Side Post No. 4, and led by A. Propes, leader of the Zionist youth movement in Poland, and Jeremiah Halpren, leader of the Marine League of Zionists. Other Jewish organizations represented were the Nardau Circle of the Zion- ist Organization of America and Young Israel.

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Israel's Reform Movement and Crime in the Arab Sector

On January 8 this year, the Israel Religious Action Center - IRAC posted a "Public Statement".

It addressed, on behalf of the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism and the Council of Reform Rabbis in Israel, the issue of murders in Israeli society. While claiming that the "number of murders in Israeli society has reached unimaginable proportions', even they could not escape the reality that "the overwhelming majority of the victims are Palestinian citizens of Israel" yet added, "the harm is to Israeli society as a whole."

The statement reads - and I quote in full:

After more than 250 people were murdered in 2025, 11 people were murdered in the first week of 2026 alone. This violence is not an inevitable fate, but rather the result of neglect, selective enforcement, and a governance vacuum into which criminal organizations have entered. The police are not adequately addressing this horrific phenomenon, creating a reality that would be unthinkable in Jewish localities. Israel's rate of solved murder cases in Arab society stands at only 15%, compared with 65% in Jewish society. The message conveyed is that the lives of Arab citizens are worth less than the lives of Jews. This is a message that must not be accepted in a Jewish and democratic state.

This shocking reality cannot be accepted. Jewish tradition sanctifies the life of every human being, expressed in the teaching: “Beloved is humanity, for it was created in the image [of God].” It teaches us that “whoever destroys a single life is considered as though they destroyed an entire world, and whoever preserves a single life is considered as though they preserved an entire world” (Sanhedrin 4:5). It also teaches us that it is our duty to be responsible for the lives of every person, and when we fail to do so, we transgress the commandment, “You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:16).

Maimonides writes on this matter: “Anyone who is able to save and does not save transgresses ‘You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.’ Likewise, one who sees their fellow drowning in the sea, or bandits coming upon them, or a wild animal attacking them, and is able to save them personally, or to hire others to save them, and does not do so… and all similar cases—one who does these things transgresses ‘You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor’” (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Murder and the Preservation of Life 1:20).

From the ritual of the heifer whose neck is broken (‘Egla Arufa’), we learn of the obligation of leadership to take responsibility for the blood of the murdered, as well as the duty to protest. As the sages taught: “Anyone who could have protested against the members of their household and did not do so is held accountable for the members of their household; against the people of their city and did not do so is held accountable for the people of their city; against the whole world and did not do so is held accountable for the whole world” (Shabbat 54b).

The government, and the Ministry of National Security in particular, are obligated to protect all citizens of the state, without distinction of religion, nationality, or race. Indeed, this is a complex issue, but if there is will and commitment to the safety of Palestinian citizens of the state, it can be solved. The proof is the dramatic decline in the number of murders during the tenure of the previous government, which placed the issue at the top of its priorities and formulated a multi-year national emergency plan called “Safe Path.”

We call on the Government of Israel to place the fight against crime in Arab society at the top of its priorities, to allocate sufficient resources to address it, and to immediately formulate an effective plan to deal with the phenomenon, in dialogue with the leadership of the Arab public in Israel.

My comments:

1. To adopt the terminology of "Palestinian citizens" is purely fanciful political "correctness" with no legal legitimization. Moreover, it has nothing to do with the issue they are addressing except to blur the matter as if they are not Israelis.

2. No responsibility or agency is awarded to the "Arab society" mentioned. Not to the immams. Not to the Armayors of Arab localities. Not to educators. Not to politicians. It's all the fault of the Jews.

3. No criticism of Israel's Attorney-Gneral and others who have stymmied attempts of the government to treat the issue through the GSS with authorized intelligence-gathering usually applied to terrorists.

In short, a politicall diatribe.

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