Brit-Am Historical Reports
Contents:
1. Karaites in Poland.
2. Amnon Goldberg: Video. Yishmael and Arabia in the Torah.
3. Australian Aborifigines Linked to Ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq)?
4. A Muslim Aliyah Paralleled the Jewish Aliyah: Part I
5. Who Ruled the Land of Israel?
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1. Karaites in Poland.
The Disputed Origins of Poland's Smallest Ethnic Minority
by Wojciech Oleksiak
https://culture.pl/en/article/the-disputed-origins-of-polands-smallest-ethnic-minority
Extracts:
Polish Karaites acknowledge Turkic provenance only, denying entirely their being descendants of Jewish people from the Middle East.
Even though the latter is suspected to be a 19th-century reaction to the anti-Semitic ideologies that were spreading in Europe at that time, the discussion of the ethnogenesis of the Polish Karaites remains unresolved.
Military affairs remained a traditional occupation of Karaites in the early 20th century. Until 1917, many Karaites were officers of the Imperial Russian Army and took part in World War I, so during the Civil War they sided with the Whites. Their defeat, according to Oleksandr, caused a demographic crisis.
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2. Amnon Goldberg: Video. Yishmael and Arabia in the Torah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzZFtMnzCjI
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3. Australian Aborifigines Linked to Ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq)?
https://www.academia.edu/123039566/Noachic_Flood_Ark_Mountain_First_Writing?email_work_card=title
Ian Wilson, exploring the Lost World of the Kimberley (2006), the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia, has pointed out striking similarities between art figures of the Mesopotamian - Ubaid culture and the Kimberley's aboriginal art figures. The Australian Aboriginal languages apparently have some affinity with ancient Sumerian: http://www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/cser.pdf
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4. A Muslim Aliyah Paralleled the Jewish Aliyah: Part I
By
Daniel Pipes
Excerpts.
"So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country [Palestine] and multiplied till their population has increased."
Winston Churchill in 1938.
"[T]he Arab immigration into Palestine since 1921 has vastly exceeded the total Jewish immigration during this whole period."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939.
Many invaders brought new cohorts of settlers, thereby adding new strata of population. For example, after Egypt's conquest of Palestine in 1831, 6,000 Egyptian peasants moved to Palestine.
The German Philip Baldensperger, a long-time resident of Palestine, observed in 1913 that 'we find entire villages of Egyptians all along the plains of the Philistines, from the river of Egypt [i.e., the Nile] to Jaffa, descendants of those of 1831, and who continue unmixed.' In 2013, Israeli scholars Gideon Kressel and Reuven Aharoni noted that their descendants still 'have not assimilated entirely into the local Arab population.' The same applies to several other communities, notably the Circassians.
The German historian Alexander Schoelch estimates that during the 1850s, Palestine had a population of about 350,000, roughly 85 percent of whom were Muslim, 11 percent Christian, and 4 percent Jewish.
Second, European Jews began to immigrate. At first, they focused on religious activities, spurring only modest economic activity. Starting about 1870, modern Zionists brought capital and modern skills to the region. They purchased land, improved it, applied scientific agricultural methods, improved sanitation, opened factories, built infrastructure, and engaged in international trade. Many of these activities required labor by non-Jews; by 1900, the Jewish philanthropist Edmund de Rothschild appears to have been the largest employer of Palestinian labor. Even that did not suffice, however, as Arieh L. Avneri of the Tabenkin Institute explains: 'Palestine attracted not only Jews who came because of national motivation but also Arab immigrants from neighboring countries who hoped to find easier ways to earn a living than prevailed in their native lands.'
Muslim immigration was not entirely spontaneous. Fearing another Western-oriented, non-Muslim population like the Armenian one, Ottoman rulers encouraged Muslims to move to Palestine. Sultan Abdulhamid II (r. 1876-1909), once commented that 'We cannot view Jewish immigration favorably. We could only open our borders to those who belong to the same religion as we do.'
Thus, Alan Dowty of Notre Dame University explains:
The influx of European settlers, even in small numbers, galvanized the Ottoman government also to move to increase the Muslim dominance in the population. The sultan purchased some lands in his own name and brought in Muslim settlers from places as diverse as Algeria, Egypt, Bosnia, and the Caucasus. If it were to develop into a demographic war, the Turks were not going to lose by default.
In contrast to Jewish immigrants, resented as foreigners and conspicuous as non-Muslims, Egyptians and other Middle Easterners were welcomed for their part in increasing the Muslim population.
Booming Zionist economic activity attracted yet more Muslim workers, employed mostly in agriculture, building, and services.
C.S. Jarvis, British governor of the Sinai in 1922-36, noted the illegal Arab immigration coming not only 'from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria.' The price of real estate soared, with the British-sponsored Peel Commission reporting in 1937 that a 'shortfall of land is, we consider, due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.'
Winston Churchill concurred:
"Why is there harsh injustice done if people [Zionists] come in and make a livelihood for more and make the desert into palm groves and orange groves? Why is it injustice because there is more work and wealth for everybody? There is no injustice. The injustice is when those who live in the country leave it to be a desert for thousands of years."
Provenance of immigrants: The authoritative Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911, written by Irish archeologist Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister, lists no less than 23 ethnicities under the 'Palestine' entry: Afghan, Algerian, Armenian, Assyrian, Bedouin, Bosnian, Canaanite, Circassian, Crusader, Egyptian, German, Greek, Italian, Jewish, Kurd, Motawila, [1] Nowar, [2] Persian, Roman, Samaritan, Sudanese, Turkish, and Turkoman. Long as this list is, Macalister missed a number of ethnicities (including the Arabian, Chechen, Ethiopian, Iraqi, Lebanese, and Yemeni). He further found that 'no less than 50 languages [were] spoken in Jerusalem as vernaculars.'
Arabians are particularly conspicuous. The Jerusalem family called Al-Husseini claims to be descended from Hussein, the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, implying roots in Arabia; the two dominant Palestinian politicians of the twentieth century, Amin al-Husseini and Yasir Arafat (birth name: Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini) belonged to this family. Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian negotiator, belonged to the Huweitat clan from the vicinity of Mecca.
For example, in 1942, Egyptian labour was brought into southern Palestine by civilian contractors to the military forces without any agreement with the civil administration; these contractors were employed on the construction of camps and aerodromes. No estimates are available of the numbers of foreign labourers who were so brought into the country by contractors or who entered individually in search of employment on military works.
In a 1948 report from Mandatory Palestine, future U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy (who twenty years hence would be assassinated by a Palestinian) concurred: 'The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs, in the 12 years between 1932 and 1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state.'
To spread these novel ideas, the PA has sponsored historical reenactments such as one in Sebastia on the West Bank in 1996, witnessed by Israeli journalist Ehud Ya'ari:
"Young people in flowing robes tailored especially for the event, decorated with Canaanite motifs, on light wooden chariots built according to specifications from drawings found in the Megiddo excavations, made their way through Sabastia's narrow alleyways to a stone stage in the center of the village. There, they recreated the legend of Ba'al, the supreme Canaanite god, and his struggle with his brother Mut, god of the underworld. In the end, Ba'al emerged victorious with the help of his sister Anat, the goddess of war. The narrator of the text put special emphasis on the warning against the 'Habiru' tribes (the Hebrews), who were moving into the land."
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5. Who Ruled the Land of Israel?
by
Ambassador Dror Eydar
Dror Eydar is Israel's ambassador to Italy.
https://aish.com/who-ruled-the-land-of-israel/?src=ac
Extracts Only:
Towards the end of the 13th century BCE, the People of Israel crossed the Jordan River from the east, settled in the land, and conquered it. At first, they lived as a federation of tribes, gradually uniting into a single kingdom over the course of centuries. As the Kingdom of Israel weakened and split into the Kingdom of Judah (the Southern Kingdom) and the Kingdom of Israel (the Northern Kingdom), the Jews gradually lost control over the land. In the 7th century BCE, the Assyrian Empire took over much of the Land of Israel, destroying the northern kingdom in 722 BCE and exiling the ten tribes.
The Assyrian Empire eventually fell to the Babylonian Empire, which also took over the Kingdom of Judah. Following a revolt by the last kings of Judah, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and burned down the Temple in the summer of 586 BCE, marking the end of the First Temple period.
In 538 BCE, King Cyrus called on the Jews to return to Jerusalem: "Thus said Cyrus, King of Persia: 'The Lord God of Heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and has charged me with building Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Anyone of you of all His people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem that is in Judah and build the House of the Lord God of Israel, the God that is in Jerusalem'" (Ezra 1:2-3).
The Persian Empire fell to Alexander the Great, who conquered half of the ancient world around 333 BCE. After his early death, the empire was divided among his officers, and the Land of Israel fell to Seleucus (circa 323 BCE). One of his descendants, Antiochus IV (Epiphanes), decided to impose his pagan beliefs on the Jews. This led to the Hasmonean Revolt from 167 to 142 BCE, after which Simon the Hasmonean, (the only surviving son of the five sons of Mattathias) established an independent Jewish kingdom and declared himself "Nasi" (a Prince of President, not a King).
In 63 BCE, following the death of Queen Salome Alexandra (Shlomtzion), her two sons, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, fought over the throne. Their conflict led to Roman intervention and the invasion of the land and Jerusalem. The Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey), who was stationed in Syria, captured Judea and installed Hyrcanus as ruler. This marked the beginning of a partial loss of Jewish independence, although Jewish kings continued to rule under Roman suzerainty.
In 6 CE, the Romans abolished the monarchy and appointed procurators to govern the land, each more oppressive than the last. The final procurator, Gessius Florus, appointed in 64 CE, was particularly brutal. The Jews decided to fight for their freedom, leading to the Great Revolt in 66 CE, which ended in 70 CE with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Titus. The Romans continued to rule the Land of Israel for several more centuries. After the Bar Kokhba Revolt, Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea as "Syria Palaestina" or simply "Palaestina," hoping to erase the Jewish connection to the land and prevent further rebellions. In 324 CE, the land came under the control of the Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Church) until 638 CE.
In 638 CE, the Muslims conquered the Land of Israel... The Muslims ruled the Land of Israel until 1099, when they were defeated by the Crusader army in the First Crusade. During the centuries of Muslim rule, many Jews were forced to convert to Islam and lived as crypto-Jews until they assimilated into Muslim society.... The Crusaders established the Kingdom of Jerusalem and ruled the country from 1099 to 1187, when they were defeated by Saladin at the Battle of the Horns of Hattin. The Crusaders continued to rule the north (Acre) until 1260. They were followed by the Mamluks (of Egypt) who ruled the Land of Israel between 1260 and 1517.
Then came the Ottomans, who ruled the country for 400 years, from 1517 to 1917, until they lost the Middle East to the victorious powers of World War I. The Ottomans signed a document ceding their lands to the superpowers.
The United Kingdom received the mandate to implement the Balfour Declaration in the Land of Israel ("Palestine"), establishing a national home for the Jewish people. Thus, at San Remo, the Balfour Declaration was enshrined in international law and validated within the framework of the League of Nations. This validation did not change with the establishment of the United Nations and remains valid to this day.
In 1947, the UN proposed partitioning the country into a Jewish state and an Arab state. It is important to note that there was no mention of a "Palestinian" state, but rather an "Arab" one. The official name of the country at that time was "Palestine - Land of Israel." The Jews agreed to the partition, but the Arabs refused and initiated a war that came to be known by the Jews as the War of Independence. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was established. The Pillar of Dawn had risen.