Not only did Jews not steal Palestine, they bought it
With the 'Palestinians' selling the world on the notion that the Jews 'stole' Palestine, Daniel Pipes recounts something that is obvious, but only to those of us who grew up with blue and white pushkes in our houses like the one at left: Not only did the Jews not steal Palestine, they bought it (Hat Tip: Daily Alert). Ironically, the building of Israel represents almost the most peaceable in-migration and state creation in history. Understanding why requires seeing Zionism in context. Simply put, conquest is the historical norm. Governments everywhere have been established through invasion and nearly all states came into being at someone else’s expense. No one is permanently in charge; everyone’s roots trace back to somewhere else.So especially those of you who did not grow up with a JNF pushke in your house, read the whole thing, follow the links and learn how the Jewish people - unlike every other people in the World - did not shed blood to win our land.
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Against this tableau of unceasing conquest, violence, and overthrow, Zionist efforts to build a presence in the Holy Land until 1948 stand out as astonishingly mild, mercantile rather than military. Two great empires, the Ottomans and the British, ruled Eretz Yisrael. In contrast, Zionists lacked military power. They could not possibly achieve statehood through conquest.
Instead, they purchased land. Acquiring property dunam by dunam, farm by farm, house by house, lay at the heart of the Zionist enterprise until 1948. The Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine “to assist in the foundation of a new community of free Jews engaged in active and peaceable industry,” was the key institution — and not the Haganah, the clandestine defense organization founded in 1920.
Zionists also focused on the rehabilitation of what was barren and considered unusable. They not only made the desert bloom, but drained swamps, cleared water channels, reclaimed wasteland, forested bare hills, cleared rocks, and removed salt from the soil. Jewish reclamation and sanitation work precipitously reduced the number of disease-related deaths.
Only when the British Mandate of Palestine gave up power in 1948, followed immediately by an all-out attempt by Arab states to crush and expel the Zionists, did the latter take up the sword in self-defense and go on to win land through military conquest. Even then, as the historian Efraim Karsh demonstrates in Palestine Betrayed, most Arabs fled their lands; exceedingly few were forced off.
Labels: Jewish National Fund, land purchases
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:49 AM
2 Comments:
My greatgrandparents, Avraham and Basha Gelman, made aliyah to Eretz Yisrael in 1845 from Grodno. They were founders of the Rothschild colony of Ekron, now the town of Mazkeret Batya. Batya was a midwife, nurse (lost one of her children to an epidemic during which she nursed the ill and , sadly, brought home germs. Batya organized oven builging and matzo baking for all the Jewish settlers of the region. She also was known for having saved the village sheik's son from being captured by Turkish soldiers who were looking to seize young men for their army. She hid the young man in her home and told the soldiers that the Koran forbids them from entering a home where the woman is alone. Basha's story is the story of the religious Jews who left eastern Europe to live with 10 other Jewish couples in the Promised Land. No bloody saga of "occupation",a story of loyalty and faith and helping neighbors. If the Gelmans had gone to America they might have become rich during the Gold Rush of "49, but they were first and foremost Jews.
Shabbat Shalom
Great job @ telling the.actual truth.
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