Someone Had It Right in 1921

June 14, 1921,
House of Commons,
London:

From Colonel Josiah Wedgwood's speech -

...I naturally subscribe to everything that the Noble Lord opposite and the right hon. Gentleman have said about Sir Herbert Samuel. Both the right hon. Gentleman and the Noble Lord have imbibed in their stay in Palestine some of the atmosphere of that country. No doubt since the Armistice, or perhaps before it, the military atmosphere there was anti-Jew and pro-Arab. They moved in the society of the effendis, the ex-Turkish officials owning large acres; the old lords of the country. They liked them. They got on with them. They listened to their views, and when the Noble Lord and the right hon. Gentleman get up in this House and tell us what are the views of the Arabs about the Jews, how bitterly hostile they are, they are voicing the views of the Arab effendis, the old officials of the Turkish Government. These people hate the Jews, and for a perfectly good and sufficient reason. The Jews go in from Rumania, Russia, Poland, and go in not only as Jews but as outposts of Labour ideals, of Western ideas of civilisation, they plant themselves down in Palestine. The first thing the Jew does is to start a trade union. The next thing he does is to try and get the uneducated and unskilled Arabs to join him in raising wages. There is nothing on earth that any governing class hate more than the ignorant, stupid, slavish proletariat getting ideas as to what wages it ought to get. These wretched Jews, these Bolshevik Jews, start telling the Arabs they ought to get more wages when they are working on Government contracts. Hitherto the effendis have had the time of their lives, getting the Arabs to work for them and swindling them of their pay. This sort of thing has gone on in these Eastern countries for countless centuries. Now that the westernised Jews go into the country and teach that this is not what the working classes ought to put up with the effendis do not like it. They pass it on to the Noble Lord (Earl Winterton) at dinner. The officers of the British Army burn with zeal when they think of it. Naturally, of course, they, like the effendis, like to get their labour cheap; they do not like these new ideas; their life becomes more expensive.

Sir F. BANBURY Do not the Jews get their labour cheap in Russia at the present time: they pay nothing at all?

Colonel WEDGWOOD The right hon. Baronet does not understand. The Jews here are an Eastern race. The Jews in Palestine are the pioneers of Western civilisation, breaking in upon the immemorial slumber of the ages. It is these horrible new Europeans that are the victims of the pogroms! It is not the Arab cultivator that hates them. He works in with the Jews quite nicely, is good friends with the Jews and does not quarrel with them. The Noble Lord, I think, really ought to know that most of the Arabs are pastoral, not cultivators. They wander to and fro on the earth, and are not likely to be injured by close connection with the Jewish element. It is not the poor country Arab at all who counts for much. The people who count are these financial Arabs who have been in the custom of swindling the inhabitants of Palestine. They hire the cheap labour, and are in favour of killing off the new agitators and emigrants. All these things work up together, and the effendi uses, them for his own purpose to stir up the low class Arab into murdering the Jews—and that is the history of pogroms all over the world.

§Mr. ORMSBY-GORE The hon. and gallant Gentleman refers to the Levantines.

§Colonel WEDGWOOD The Levantine in a red fez. He stirs up the "black hundreds" to butcher the Jews, and on the first occasion of these riots the Government immediately stopped the influx of more Jews into Palestine. That is the worst possible policy to pursue. That is putting a premium on the pogroms. If you stop more Jews going in, that is exactly what the effendis want—to keep Palestine a preserve for the old ideas. When you give these people what they want in return for murdering the Jews you are likely to require more than 5,000 troops there. Unfortunately, Sir Herbert Samuel gave in to the Arabs. I hope if he has to choose again he will pay a little less attention to the evidence that is being concocted to prove that Jewish agitators 309and Bolsheviks came straight from Lenin at Moscow.

There is one way in which you can protect the Jews without throwing any administrative charge upon the revenues or the taxpayer of this country, and without increasing the garrison of 5,000 English troops; and that is by simply allowing the Jews to form a defensive force of their own. They had an excellent regiment during the War. That regiment did admirable service. At the end of the War the military administration, as it then was in Palestine, immediately disbanded it. Let them form their own regiments. The Palestinian Jews and the Zionist organisation are perfectly prepared themselves to find the money for the equipment for the troops. Give them a chance to defend their own settlements and we shall hear much less of this danger spot in the East. It is not necessary to fear that they will attack the Arabs. The Jews are a most peaceable people. They know the minority is always unwise to attack the majority. At the present time all the police of that country are Arabs. These Arab police stimulate others to assist in massacring the Jewish inhabitants. The danger for the Jews is very real. I submit to the Government they should take every step they can to assist in the formation of territorial forces to protect the Jews, and at the same time to relieve the taxpayers of this country from an expense which otherwise will fall upon their shoulders. Meanwhile the right hon. Gentleman has my blessing. I could wish that years ago he had been appointed to the Colonial Office instead of the War Office. We might have saved millions at both offices. Wherever he is he becomes the stormy petrel for his own department, and I cannot help thinking that it would be well that the rest of the Government should come to take his new view, that after all, peace is the principal necessity for the inhabitants of this country.

^

A Letter Sent But Not Published

To the Jerusalem Post Magazine:

There is a pitfall is writing a negative letter about a book based only on a review column while not even leafing through the book and I fear Marion Reiss has taken a tumble (Letter, Dec. 20). She is angry at Janet Levy for noting Rafael Medoff's charge against President Roosevelt that he was antisemitic, Reiss calling it "gratuitous" and without "substantiation". 

But Medoff's The Jews Should Keep Quiet does indeed prove it from FDR's own writings and decisions. It's all in the book and he has published portions of his factual proof in columns even in the JPost which she also seems not to have read.

Worse, she discounts the claim based on one act of kindness Eleanor Roosevelt did for her aunt. Mrs. Roosevelt was her own person and often disagreed with her husband's policies, especially regarding Jews and Israel. is Moreover, Reiss surely knows FDR was a philanderer who carried on an affair with his secretary Lucy Mercer. There was Marguerite 'Missy' LeHand and Dorothy Schiff as well. Is that the type of person an Orthodox woman really would presume couldn't be an anti-Semite?

Can I suggest Reiss be civil, cease hurling epithets and search out historical accuracy by at least reading Medoff's book?

BTW, Marion Reiss is a frequent letter-to-the-editor writer at the paper.

^

How Helpful was the British Mandate?

I have just managed to read the introductory chapter of  Matthew Hughes' "Britain's Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab Revolt, 1936-1939 (Cambridge Military Histories) and discovered the name  el-Asi, the nom de plume of Assistant District Commissioner Aubrey Lees. He served in various administrative offices during 1929-1938 in Haifa, Gaza, Hebron and Jaffa dealing with matters of land settlement.

Lees was kicked out of the Mandate administration for his too pro-Palestinien Arab views and for criticizing the Palestinian Government's attitude towards alleged Jewish atrocities and he was eventually imprisoned by Britian during World War II as a fascist. In 1939 he was accused of expressing anti-Semitic views and refused a reappointment back in Palestine and he continued his anti-Semitism in England.

Hughes, quoting an internal US Consulate General report from January 11, 1930 (867N.00/77-330 [Reel M#1037/1], NARA II), notes there were many British Mandate officials who had 'no real sympathy' for Jewish claims to Palestine and felt an injustice was being donw to the local Arabs. That is a repeat of the 1918-1920 period when British Military Government officers, before the Mandate was in place, almost succeeded in sabotaging the Jewish national home project at its start, including prodding Arabs to riot and kill Jews.

^

The Quran and the Jewish Temple

Did you know that the Quran confirms the existence of the Jewish Temples?

Here, at Sura 17:7

Whenever you did good, it was to your own advantage; and whenever you committed evil, it was to your own disadvantage. So, when the time of the fulfillment of the second promise arrived, (We raised other enemies that would) disfigure your faces and enter the Temple (of Jerusalem) as they had entered the first time, and destroy whatever they could lay their hands on

And here are excerpts from a commentary,:

The historical background of the second degeneration and its chastisement is as follows: The moral and religious fervor with which the Maccabees had started their movement gradually cooled down and was replaced by love of the world and empty external form. A split appeared among them and they themselves invited the Roman General, Pompey, to come to Palestine. Pompey turned his attention to this land in 63 B.C. By taking Jerusalem he put an end to the political freedom of the Jews. But the Roman conquerors preferred to rule their dominions through the agency of the local chiefs rather than by direct control. Therefore, a local government was set up in Palestine which eventually passed into the hand of Herod, a clever Jew, in 40 B.C. This ruler is well known as Herod the Great. He ruled over the entire Palestine and Jordan from 40 to 4 B.C. On the one hand, Herod patronized the religious leaders to please the Jews, and on the other, he propagated the Roman culture and won the goodwill of Caesar by showing his loyalty and faithfulness to the Roman Empire. During, his reign, the Jews degenerated and fell to the lowest ebb of moral and religious life.

...In order to have a correct estimate of the condition of the common Jews and their religious leaders, one should study the criticisms leveled by Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) on them in his sermons contained in the four Gospels...when Pontius Pilate asked these depraved people, which condemned prisoner he should release, according to the custom, at Passover, Jesus or Barabbas the robber, they all cried with one voice Barabbas. This was indeed the last chance Allah gave to the Jews, and then their fate was sealed.

Not long after this, a serious conflict started between the Jews and the Romans, which developed into an open revolt by the former between A.D. 64 and 66. Both Herod Agrippa II and the Roman procurator Floris failed to put down the rebellion. At last, the Romans crushed it by a strong military action and in A.D. 70 Titus took Jerusalem by force. About 133000 people were put to the sword. Sixty seven thousand made slaves, and thousands sent to work in the Egyptian mines and to other cities so that they could be used in amphitheaters for being torn by wild beasts or become the practice target for the sword fighters. All the tall and beautiful girls were picked out for the army of conquest and the Holy City of Jerusalem and the Temple were pulled down to the ground. After this the Jewish influence so disappeared from Palestine that the Jews could not regain power for two thousand years and the Holy Temple could never be rebuilt. Afterward the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, restored Jerusalem but renamed it Aelia. The Jews, however, were not allowed to enter it for centuries. This was the calamity that the Jews suffered on account of their degeneration for the second time.

Jewish history, Jewish sovereignty confirmed.

^ 

An Academic, Betar and the Jews of Shanghai

I asked Steven Hochstadt if in his new book on Jewish life in Shanghai he edited there is mention of Betar and/or the Revisionists.

He replied

I'm not sure if you saw that I replied in the comment space to my article, but here it is again. The new book, A Century of Jewish Life in Shanghai, is a collection of articles about all the Jewish communities in Shanghai. I'm afraid there is nothing about Betar, although I know that a number of younger Jews in Shanghai joined that group before they went to Israel.

Within five minutes of a Google search, I sent him this:

Odd.
The Jews of China: v. 1: Historical and Comparative Perspectives by Jonathan Goldstein and Benjamin I. Schwartz from p. 75
https://dbs.bh.org.il/image/betar-members-at-the-jewish-club-shanghai-china-1934 - picture and summary
https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/harbin/My_China_Chapter_3.htm  - passing mentions
My China: Jewish Life in the Orient, 1900-1950 By Yaʼacov Liberman  p.  122
http://en.jabotinsky.org/archive/search-archive/item/?itemId=101067  - picture
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1146785 - picture
and that's a 5 minute Google search.
Did you search the Jabotinsky Institute archives?

And there's more.

Credit

Much more.

A book (!) on Betar in China.

Sigh.

UPDATE

I think this is amazing:

Danny Rosing
Betar in Sydney, Australia, was started by Betarim from Shanghai and Tientsin who came there from China in the 1950's, after the communist takeover of China. Betar apparently was the only Zionist youth movement in China.

I joined Betar in Sydney in 1953 after meeting some of these Betarim from China at the University of Sydney. 

Since leaving Palestine at the age of 10 I knew I would return one day but I was not a Zionist, most of my friends were not Jewish and I did not feel I had much in common with the Jewish community; but then one day, at the university, I overheard this group of strange students who were discussing what was going on in Israel and they knew more about my country than I did, So I asked them how they knew so much about Israel and they told me they had lately come from China where they grew up in Betar and, if I wanted to hear more, I should come to the Betar meeting on Sunday, which I did, out of curiosity.

The girls were beautiful, there was a heated discussion about whether Yasha Heifetz should have played Wagner in Israel and then we played soccer.

What else could an 18 year old Israeli want?

So I kept coming to the Betar meetings, when 70% of the members were ex Shanghai and Tientsin Betarim

^ 

"Palestine" "Occupied" in a Good Sense

The term "occupation" is applied to Israel's administration of Judea and Samaria (and previously Gaza) to denigrate and to malign. It is used pejoratively.

Actually, "belligerent occupation" is a simple technical term in international law meaning territory obtained as a result of armed conflict. It is not that the occupation is inherently belligerent but rather that it came about through hostilities. In the case of 1967, Israel's war was one of self-defense and it had been a legitimate response in the face of Egyptian aggressive acts and intentions as well as those of the Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964, which had begun terror incursions of Israel from January 1965.

Reviewing historical material on the San Remo Conference, the centenary of which is in three months time, I came across this document in which America's Ambassador to Italy reports on his participation at the conference and read the underlined words:

The session was "occupied with [the awarding to Great Britain a] mandate for Palestine" for the purposes of reconstituting the Jewish national home.

So, occupation isn't always a negative.

^

Monty Python and the Jewish Swastika Star Symbol

Looking for the famous Judean Suicide Squad scene from Monty Python's "Life of Brian", I came upon a claip of deleted scenes, of which I knew not.

And what do I see?

The squad is a Nazi/Teutonic groupos of racists (demanding doing away with all "the scum of non-Jewish people", seeking to Hail the Leader, "The Leader who will save Israel by ridding it of the scum of non-Jewish people, making it pure! No foreigners; no riff-raff; no gypsies" here at 9:15).  

When the commander finds out they faked their suicide he calls them "non-Semitic racially impure".

And on their helmets?

See for yourselves:

Researching, I found another source.

And this, too.

^

Yes, Muslims Occupied Palestine

Just as I have been insisting.

Here:

HT=DChertoff

UPDATE

^

Eliezer Tauber's Treatment of Deir Yassin

My own post on Eliezer Tauber's book on Deir Yassin is here.

I quote from Yoav Gelber's review

"...Tauber deserves every kudo for his meticulous work, which is exemplary for this genre of historiography. He left no stone unturned and used all the available sources, written and oral, Arab, Jewish (Haganah, IZl, LHI, and political), British, and Red Cross. This resolution of microhistoriographic analysis requires a massive use of oral testimonies, extracting the valuable material from the rubbish and a careful scrutiny of the findings. His expertise in Arabic and on Palestinian society equipped him with vital tools for conducting such a study.

In examining the oral testimonies about the battle in Deir Yassin, Tauber has shown how the stories of witnesses on both sides, Arab villagers and IZL and LHI combatants, are close to each other. Of course, each witness speaks from his individual and national perspectives, but it is clear that they all speak of the same battle and that their stories are supplemental rather than contradictory. At the same time, the narratives that were circulated by both sides’ higher echelons immediately after the fighting was over are propagandist and conflicting.

...At that stage of the war, occupying an Arab village was something new, still without precedent. Under the circumstances of the inter-communal civil war overshadowed by waning British sovereignty, it was also impossible to hold people in captivity and POWs should have been either released or killed. This axiomatic assumption forecasted the flight of the non-combatant population at the beginning of the raid. In the case of Deir Yassin, the axiom proved mistaken for various reasons analyzed by Tauber.

Seven IZL and LHI fighters were killed in Deir Yassin. There are various figures of wounded, fluctuating between 10 and 40. Tauber tends to establish the number as a little above 30. There are several estimates and nominal lists of Arab fatal casualties. Arab informers for the SHAI (Jewish intelligence) reported from the beginning on 100 to 110 killed. The conquerors boasted that they killed 240 Arabs and the foreign press as well as the Haganah adopted this figure for polemical or political reasons of their own. This figure was generally accepted, though Arab propagandists inflated the number up to 400. In the 1990s, the anthropologist Sharif Kan’ane published the findings of his research that put the number back at 107, based mainly on Arab lists and survivors’ testimonies. After reviewing all the existing lists and comparing them, Tauber compiled his own list that includes 101 names and is probably the closest to the real number.

Although the onslaught on Deir Yassin was not a glorious operation by any standard, a wide gap separates what happened in the village and the rumors that spread at the time and have persisted to the present. It was a bloody battle fought in the midst of the civilian population, but in 1948 there were bloodier encounters such as the fall of the Etzion Block and the conquest of Lydda. In Deir Yassin there was no pre-planned, deliberate massacre as the prevalent Arab narrative, backed by Israeli radicals, naïve or ignorant, has claimed ever since. Tauber skillfully disproves the massacre myth and refutes the allegations of atrocities such as rapes or executions.

The myth was created during the war of propaganda that followed the occupation of the village. The IZL and LHI inflated and glorified their accomplishment. The Haganah preferred the version of the SHAI’s Dissidents Section over the far more accurate version of its Arab Section, and the Jewish Agency panicked because of the possible diplomatic consequences and hurried to condemn the perpetrators and apologize to King Abdullah of Transjordan and to the world in general. The British were apologetic and apparently had some compunctions about their indifference, but they stuck to the plan of evacuation and refused to get involved in combat.

Hitherto, the bulk of the Arab population had looked on the fighting from the sidelines. The local Arab leadership in Jerusalem strove to excite the Palestinians, and bolster up their motivation to fight. This was the main purpose of the propaganda campaign that Hussein Khalidi, the only member of the Higher Arab Executive present in the country, and his associates launched in the following days. They achieved the opposite outcome: instead of inspiring the Arabs’ stamina and will to fight, the inflated numbers of casualties and faked atrocity rumors shocked and intimidated the non-combatant population and considerably encouraged the mass flight.

Nonetheless, I think that Tauber overstates the part of Deir Yassin in causing the Arab mass flight. Before Deir Yassin, about 100,000 Arabs left their homes, huts, or tents and wandered to the neighboring countries or to purely Arab regions in the depth of the country. The Palestinians have tried to minimize the scope of this early wave of refugees and claim that only members of the elites fled, but the flight was more varied and its scope was bigger. The early refugees did not consist exclusively of the elites and included additional categories, such as residents of frontier or mixed neighborhoods in the cities, Bedouins who camped in Jewish areas, or first generation immigrants from the countryside who lost their jobs in the towns and returned to their villages. Deir Yassin and the following propaganda campaign did not cause the mass flight and at most stimulated an already existing process. Indeed, they strongly affected the villages around Jerusalem and the Arab quarters outside the city’s walls, but their impact diminished in more distant villages and was marginal in the Arab and mixed towns from where the majority of the refugees fled.

Tauber is wrong in connecting the Arab armies’ invasion to Deir Yassin. Truly, the news shocked the Arab masses abroad but hardly affected the debates of the Arab League’s Council that convened in Cairo two days later. Hitherto they objected to invasion and relied on the Arab League (or Liberation) Army to defeat the Jews after the end of the mandate. The collapse of the ALA in Mishmar HaEmek and the defeat of the Palestinian militias and ALA detachments in the towns left them no alternative but invasion. The purpose was to save what was left of Arab Palestine rather than “throwing the Jews into the Mediterranean,” but Deir Yassin had little, if any, part in the decision.

One of the explanations of Deir Yassin survivors for the onslaught on their village was the participation of several villagers in the Arab attack on the nearby village of Qastel the day before. This is a lame excuse and probably no one on the Jewish side knew about their participation...

____________

UPDATE

Tauber gave a presentation at the ASMEA conference in November 2021. Recording is here:

^

Rogel Alpher's Sardonic Wit

In what passes for sardonic sarcastic left-wing humor, Rogel Alpher, accusing Israel's right-wing of wanting to end the peace we have with Jordan, writes, inter alia:

Jordan is also bothering [???]* the right on the Temple Mount. Another flood of articles in the right-wing media concerns the desire and right of Jews to change the status quo on the Temple Mount. The most minimal demand is to allow Jews free access to pray there. The maximalist demand is the demolition of the al-Aqsa Mosque and the rebuilding of the Temple. The Jordanian Waqf is in the way – they are also too proud and arrogant. This is another reason to remove the person who is giving the Waqf his backing, King Abdullah, and to revoke the peace treaty that recognizes the special status and role of Jordan on the Temple Mount.

No one wants to revoke the peace treaty. We all would like it to be honored, by all sides, equally.

As Rogel knows (or he may not), Article 9 in the treaty reads - and I highlight the really important themes Rogel should be supporting as a left-wing, liberal humanist:

PLACES OF HISTORICAL AND RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE
Each party will provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance.In this regard, in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.

I think those are worthwhile values to campaign for and if Abdullah II can't fulfill that aspect of the treaty, he should be held accountable. 

Rogel knows that PM Netanyahu is firmly behind the status quo. Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan likewise supports it although he does allow acts that the courts have permitted in principle but previous ministers have been nervous to allow. He also knows that the numbers of maximalists actually pushing that demolition/rebuilding agenda is small although the dream of a future scenario like that is undoubtedly held by the majority of Jews.

In other words, Alpher is not being funny but using scare tactics and rumor mongering.

________

* The Hebrew term used is מפריעה which in this instance means 'interferes with' or 'disturbs'.

^

That Bansky Work of Art?

My observation:

^

Hanukah Geography

During the period when the Land of Israel was ruled by the Seleucid dynasty of the Syrian-Greek Empire, Antiochus IV came to be the emperor in 174 BCE. He was known as called Epiphanes. He sought to unify his subjects by forcing upoon them a common religion and culture. For the Jews of Judea this meant a suppression of Jewish law. He also interfered in matters of the Holy Temple worship.

Eventually, a revolt broke out, sparked by the actions a priestly family, the Hasmoneans, in Modiin led at first by Mattityahu and then his sons. They became known as the Maccabees and were quite successful in their tactics of guerrilla warfare. The Syrian-Greek occupiers were defeated.  Returning to liberated Jerusalem and led by Judah, they entered the Temple courtyards, removed the idols placed there by the Syrians, built a new altar and dedicated it on the twenty-fifth of the month of Kislev, in the year 139 BCE.

Seeking oil to light the Menorah, they found only a small cruse of pure olive oil bearing the seal of the High Priest Yochanan. It was sufficient to create light for only one day. By a miracle of God, it continued to burn for eight days.

This is, in concise form, the Hanukah story.

But where did the story take place? Where were the battles? Where was the Temple?

What is the geography of Hanukah?

Here is a map of the major sites of the Hanukah story:

Here is another:

Here is a map of the entire period of the Hasmonean reign which continued until 63 BCE or so when the territory controlled expanded across the Jordan River as it was previously from Biblical times:

In other words, if we apply contemporary terms, the main site of the miracle we celebrate by lighting candles for eight days, Temple. is now in... "occupied East Jerusalem".

The major battles the Maccabees waged were:

Battle of Wadi Haramia (167 BCE)
Battle of Beth Horon (166 BCE)
Battle of Emmaus (166 BCE)
Battle of Beth Zur (164 BCE)
Battle of Beth Zechariah (162 BCE)
Battle of Adasa (161 BCE)

Battle of Elasa (160 BCE)

All in what is mistakenly called the "West Bank".

Of course, this would mean that we would might think that we are celebrating a holiday of occupation.

But that would be wrong. In fact, it is the language and rhetoric of "occupation" used today that is what is wrong and incorrect.

What we need is a linguistic revolt, especially among Jews.

Jewish control/administration over Judea and Samaria and all of Jerusalem is not wrong, not immoral but a return to the true geography of the Jewish national home, Judaism and Jewish history.

^

To What State Does that Artifact Belong?

I read that the U.S. – Jordan Cultural Property Agreement was signed on December 16, 2019.  It aims to "restrict the import of Jordanian artifacts to the United States of America, which includes coins, manuscripts, stones, minerals, ceramics, glass, mosaic plates and ancient bones, seashells and human, animal and plant remains, whose history ranges from about 1.5 million years BC to about 1750 AD".  It also stresses the "need to return Jordanian artifacts that was confiscated in the United States of America to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan".  In addition, there is the goal of "increasing awareness of the Jordanian civilizational and cultural heritage".

Far be it from me to interfere with archaeological preservation but I am wondering about a problem.

Up until 1922, the territory of that kingdom by the desert was part, and so it was known, of Palestine. 

If there is an artifact in the US from, say, 1100 BCE, does it belong to Jordan, a future Palestine or, perhaps, Israel, the state that ruled the area at that time? Please recall, it was named Palestine by the Romans only in 135 CE.

This is confounding me.

Did Assistant US Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Mrs. Marie Royce who signed the document or her superiors give a thought about that?

^

Geula Cohen - Geneology

Geula Cohen, who died on December 17, 2019 in the evening, belonged to a large family.

I found this geneology record and it is being updated:

Geula Esther Cohen was born on January 6, 1925 in Tel-Aviv, Israel, and not in December. See third name below:

Geula's father was Yosef COHEN (1) and her mother was Miriam Rivkah LIBCHAR. (2)  Her paternal grandparents were Shalom COHEN (died in Yemen) and Sarah Awad TAWIL (died in Israel); her maternal grandparents were Yamin LIBCHAR (3) and Ester AROESTI. (4) 

She had six brothers and three sisters, named Shalom, (5) Yokhanan, (6) Aharon,(7) Avner, (8) Yehoyada, (9) Ohali, (10) Judith, (11) Malka (12) and Sarit. (13)  She is the second oldest of the ten children. 

She married Emmanuel Hanegbi (Strassberg) and had two children, Yair (who is no longer alive) and Yitzhak-Tzachi, born on February 26th, 1957. 

Tzachi married Rendy Fran Firpo (1961) and has four sons: Ido (1988), Matan, Stav (twins, 1992) and Liad (2004).

(1)   Yosef was born in 1900 in Yemen.  Yosef's father was Shalom COHEN and his mother was Sarah Awad TAWIL. He had a sister named Shoshana.  He died at the age of 72 in 1972 in Jerusalem, Israel.

(2)   Miriam was born in 1905 in Jerusalem, Israel.  Miriam's father was Yamin LIBCHAR and her mother was Ester AROESTI.  Her paternal grandparents were LIBCHAR and Unnamed; her maternal grandparents were Avraham AROESTI and NEGRIN. She had a brother and a sister, named Avraham and Vida.  She was the second oldest of the three children. She had a half-brother and two half-sisters, named Reuven, Luna and Roza.  She died at the age of 66 in 1971.

(3)   Yamin was born in Israel.  Yamin's father was LIBCHAR and his mother was Unnamed. He had a brother and two sisters, named Shlomo, Rachel and Tamar.

(4)   Ester was born in Monastir, Yugoslavia.  Ester's father was Avraham AROESTI and her mother was NEGRIN. She had two brothers and two sisters, named Izhak, Shmaya, Mazal and Hanah.  She was the youngest of the five children.  She died in 1914 in Tiberias, Israel.

(5)   Shalom was born before 1932.  He was the fourth oldest of the ten children.

(6)   Yokhanan was born on May 14th, 1932 in Israel.  He is the fifth oldest of the ten children.

(7)   Aharon was born on August 10th, 1934 in Tel-Aviv, Israel.  He is the sixth oldest of the ten children. He died at the age of 76 on January 7th, 2011

(8)   Avner was born in 1936.  He is the seventh oldest of the ten children.

(9)   Yehoyada was born in 1940.  He was the nineth oldest of the ten children.  He died at the age of 68 on June 27th, 2008.

(10)  Ohaliav, known as Ohali, was born in 1942.  He is the youngest of the ten children. He died at the age of 72 in December 2014.

(11)  Judith was born before 1925. .  She was the oldest of the ten children.

(12)  Malka was born on February 25th, 1928.  She was the third oldest of the ten children.  She died at the age of 78 in 2006.

(13)  Sarit was born on March 28th, 1938 in Israel.   She is the eighth oldest of the ten children.

^

Dear Secretary of State; Dear Congressman - Settlements on the Hill

The Congressmen's letter:

The Honorable Mike Pompeo
Secretary
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, D.C., 20520

Dear Mr. Secretary:

We write to express our strong disagreement with the State Department's decision to
reverse decades of bipartisan U.S. policy on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank by repudiating the 1978 State Department legal opinion that civilian settlements in the occupied territories are "inconsistent with international law." This announcement, following the administration's decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem outside of a negotiated agreement; its closure of the Palestinian mission in Washington, D.C. and U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem; and its halting of aid Congress appropriated to the West Bank and Gaza, has discredited the United States as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, severely damaged prospects for peace, and endangered the security of America, Israel, and the Palestinian people.

U.S. administrations from both parties have followed the 1978 guidance because
settlement expansion into the occupied West Bank makes a contiguous Palestinian state inviable, jeopardizing Israel's future as a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people. The State Department's unilateral reversal on the status of settlements, without any clear legal justification, therefore has offered a tacit endorsement of settlements, their expansion, and associated demolitions of Palestinian homes. In addition, one day after the Department's decision, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved to advance a bill to annex the Jordan Valley. As annexation and the United States' approval thereof would destroy prospects for a two-state solution and lead to a more entrenched and possibly deadlier conflict, this decision erodes the security of both Israel and the United States.

This State Department decision blatantly disregards Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva
Convention, which affirms that any occupying power shall not "deport or transfer parts of its
own civilian population into the territory it occupies." In ignoring international law, this
administration has undermined America's moral standing and sent a dangerous message to those who do not share our values: human rights and international law, which have governed the international order and protected U.S. troops and civilians since 1949, no longer apply. If the U.S. unilaterally abandons international and human rights law, we can only expect a more chaotic and brutal twenty-first century for Americans and our allies, including the Israeli people.

Given these serious implications, we strongly urge you to reverse this policy decision
immediately.


The response:

The Honorable
Andy Levin
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Mr. Levin:

I am in receipt of your letter of November 21 in which you criticize the State Department's determination that the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not categorically inconsistent with international law - a decision which you contend reverses “decades of bipartisan US policy on Israeli settlements.” You further argue. in conclusory fashion, that this determination “blatantly disregards Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

While  I appreciate your interest in this important issue, I could not disagree more with those two foolish positions. I will briefly respond to your principal points.

First, the State Department's determination did not reverse any policy with regard to Israeli settlements. Rather, the State Department reversed a legal determination by Secretary Kerry. made during the waning days of the Obama Administration, that the establishment of settlements was categorically inconsistent with international law. That determination was made in a failed attempt to justify the Obama Administration's betrayal of Israel in allowing UNSCR 2334 — whose foundation was the purported illegality of the settlements and which referred to them as “a flagrant violation” of international law — to pass the Security Council on December 23, 2016.

Second, Secretary Kerry's determination did not enjoy bipartisan consensus. Rather, it received bipartisan condemnation, including from leading Democrats in both chambers of Congress. Indeed, an overwhelming number of Senators and House Members, on both sides of the aisle, supported resolutions objecting to the passage of UNSCR 2334. Secretary Kerry's statement departed from decades of bipartisan consensus, reverting to an approach last advanced by the Administration of President Carter in 1978 whose position was reversed by the next succeeding president, Ronald Reagan.

While you are free to fixate on settlements as a barrier to peace. you are simply wrong in referring to that view as being subject to bipartisan agreement. No less a Democratic spokesman than the Senate Minority Leader publicly stated at his AIPAC address on March 5, 2018, that “it's sure not the settlements that are the blockage to peace.”

Third, you assert that we have “blatantly disregarded” the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Trump Administration has thoroughly reviewed and analyzed this issue and we respectfully disagree. Among the numerous sources and authorities supporting our view. I commend to you the writings of Eugene Rostow, who left his position as Dean of the Yale Law School to become Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Johnson Administration. Dean Rostow represented the United States in the peace talks that followed the 1967 Six Day War and was responsible for the drafting of UNSCR 242, which even today remains the primary architecture for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Dean Rostow stated in 1983 that “Israel has an unassailable legal right to establish settlements in the West Bank.”

Fourth. US policy with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict largely has been consistent for decades and remains so: we support and seek to facilitate direct negotiations between the parties towards the goal of a just and lasting peace agreement. Regrettably. as many experts concur, UNSCR 2334 and the related self-justifying remarks by Secretary Kerry have saddled the Trump Administration with a significant handicap in advancing the cause of peace by erroneously injecting into the conflict an incorrect and largely irrelevant legal component. This in turn has led to the hardening of positions. especially on the Palestinian side. By way of example. the closing of the Office of the General Delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Washington D.C.. which you criticize, was mandated by Federal statute following President Abbas’ announcement before the United Nations General Assembly on September 20, 2017, that the Palestinian Authority “called on the International Criminal Court . . . to prosecute Israeli officials for their involvement in settlement activities . . . I doubt that President Abbas. with apparent animus towards Israel. would have taken such an inappropriate and unlawful position absent the cover mistakenly granted under UNSCR 2334 and Secretary Kerry's unfortunate speech.

The Trump Administration is committed to working tirelessly to advance the cause of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. We approach the issue pragmatically and diplomatically, but we eschew the erroneous positions of international law that have gained favor in the past decades. The Obama-Kerry departure from America’s historic support of Israel has done nothing to make peace more attainable. The State Department's recent determination that the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se illegal is an important step in the peace process and we are confident that it creates the right platform for further Progress.

We hope this information is helpful to you. Please let us know if we may be of further
assistance.

Sincerely.
Michael R. Pompeo
Secretary of State

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