Brit-Am Historical Reports (4 March, 2013, 22 Adar, 5773)
Contents:
1. Mark Williiams: Recommendations
(a) Orde Wingate
(b) A Medieval English Colony in Trebizond on the Black Sea Shore!
2. British Support for Jews in Mandatory Palestine
(a) Suppression of the Arab Revolt
(b) Testimony of an Intellectual (but relatively objective) Pro-Palestinian Commentator
3. Ancient Egyptian and Spanish Gold
4. New Holocaust Records
The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking by ERIC LICHTBLAU
5. 50 Interesting Facts Facts About . . . Race and Racism
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1. Mark Williiams: Recommendations
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(a) Orde Wingate
Hey Yair
Shalom sport!
Couple of articles from Simcha Jacobovic's site
http://www.simchajtv.com/who-killed-orde-wingate/
http://www.simchajtv.com/what-wingate-wrought/
Is it me, or does he look ever so slightly Semitic in the first article?
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(b) A Medieval English Colony in Trebizond on the Black Sea Shore!
Shalom Yair
Have you ever heard the story of the first New England?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_%28medieval%29
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2. British Support for Jews in Mandatory Palestine
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(a) Suppression of the Arab Revolt
Mandatory Palestine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine
Extracts:
Following the rejection of the Peel Commission recommendation, the revolt resumed in autumn 1937. Over the next 18 months, the British lost control of Nablus and Hebron. British forces, supported by 6,000 armed Jewish auxiliary police,[17] suppressed the widespread riots with overwhelming force. The British officer Charles Orde Wingate (who supported a Zionist revival for religious reasons) organised Special Night Squads composed of British soldiers and Jewish volunteers such as Yigal Alon, which scored significant successes against the Arab rebels in the lower Galilee and in the Jezreel valley (Black 1991, p. 14) by conducting raids on Arab villages. (Shapira 1992, pp. 247, 249, 350) The Jewish militia Irgun used violence also against Arab civilians as "retaliatory acts",[18] attacking marketplaces and buses.
By the time the revolt concluded in March 1939, more than 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 Britons had been killed and at least 15,000 Arabs were wounded.[19] The Revolt resulted in the deaths of 5,000 Palestinian Arabs and the wounding of 10,000. In total, 10% of the adult Arab male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled.(Khalidi 2001, p. 26) From 1936 to 1945, whilst establishing collaborative security arrangements with the Jewish Agency, the British confiscated 13,200 firearms from Arabs and 521 weapons from Jews.(Khalidi 1987, p. 845)
The attacks on the Jewish population by Arabs had three lasting effects: First, they led to the formation and development of Jewish underground militias, primarily the Haganah, which were to prove decisive in 1948. Secondly, it became clear that the two communities could not be reconciled, and the idea of partition was born. Thirdly, the British responded to Arab opposition with the White Paper of 1939, which severely restricted Jewish land purchase and immigration. However, with the advent of World War II, even this reduced immigration quota was not reached. The White Paper policy also radicalised segments of the Jewish population, who after the war would no longer cooperate with the British.
The revolt had a negative effect on Palestinian Arab leadership, social cohesion, and military capabilities and contributed to the outcome of the 1948 War because when the Palestinians faced their most fateful challenge in 1947-49, they were still suffering from the British repression of 1936-39, and were in effect without a unified leadership. Indeed, it might be argued that they were virtually without any leadership at all.(Khalidi 2001, p. 28)
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(b) Testimony of an Intellectual (but relatively objective) Pro-Palestinian Commentator
Forgotten lessons: Palestine and the British empire
James Renton 19 March 2010
http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/james-renton/forgotten-lessons-palestine-and-british-empire
Extracts:
While the conflict that is the legacy of British involvement in Palestine daily captures world headlines, Britain's foster-role is too often ignored. Such an omission is all the more tragic, James Renton argues, since mandate era misjudgements are being readily repeated.
This admission, as rare as it may be, gives only a very partial picture of what is a largely unacknowledged story. With a mandate from the league of nations, Britain governed the Holy Land from the end of the first world war until 1948. During this time, the political landscape of Palestine was completely transformed. Whilst Arabs and Jews played a fundamental role in the unfolding drama of mandate Palestine, the driving force was imperial Britain. The old myth that Britain was merely 'holding the ring' , trying to keep the peace between two irrational, warring parties , is a gross misunderstanding of history.
In November 1918, Palestine did not exist as a political entity. What became mandate Palestine was carved out of four districts of the Ottoman empire, which had ruled the roost since 1516. In the Jewish world, only a small, though growing, minority were members of the Zionist movement by the end of the Great War. Many Jews were virulently opposed to the idea, though most were indifferent to what was viewed as a utopian movement. In 1918, approximately 10% of the population of the Holy Land were Jewish, of whom many were not Zionist. Amongst the Arab population, there was a growing sense of Palestinian identity before 1914. But this was just one of many competing loyalties at the time. Just after the war, the predominant aim of Arab nationalists in Palestine was to establish independence for Greater Syria, incorporating today's Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestinian territories, and Jordan.
But by the end of British rule in May 1948 there had emerged a powerful Zionist movement. It had succeeded in forging the institutions for statehood and independence. Palestinian nationalism had also become deep-rooted in Arab society. But the Arab population suffered from under-development, debt, widespread illiteracy, disillusionment, and the after effects of Britain's decimation of the Palestinian Uprising of 1936 to 1939. These seeds of Zionist victory and Palestinian defeat were the direct outcome of Britain's drafting, interpretation, and implementation of the league of nations mandate for Palestine.
On the rare occasions when Britain's record in Palestine is discussed critically outside of academic circles, many emphasise the mistake of issuing the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917. It often has been thought that this statement committed Britain to supporting Zionism, come what may. As a result, the British were forced to make the best of a bad job. They could not abandon Zionism, as it would undermine Britain's honour and prestige, the perceived beating heart of imperial authority. But this version of events lets the British empire off the hook. It suggests that the Balfour Declaration, the act of a short-sighted government embroiled in the Great War, was the only problem. The Declaration, however, committed Britain to doing very little in Palestine.
By the end of the war, the government had failed to clarify its policy in Palestine. As Britain struggled to cope with the immediate challenges of the post-war peace, the inertia on Palestine continued. The chief concerns were to avoid further alienating the Palestinian Arabs, whilst also satisfying the imagined bogey of Jewish power. Into this policy vacuum stepped the Zionists. With their own plans for Palestine, they persuaded the government to go further than the vague Balfour Declaration. The text of the league of nations mandate for Palestine was based on Zionist proposals. The preamble stated Britain's obligation to put the promise of the Declaration into effect. It also recognised the Jewish people's historical connection with Palestine, and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country. The articles of the mandate went much further. As a legally binding document, it obliged Britain to secure, not facilitate, the establishment of the Jewish national home. To that end, the British administration was to cooperate with, and be advised by, the Zionist Organisation. In addition, the British had to facilitate Jewish immigration and settlement. There were also commitments to safeguarding the rights of all inhabitants, not just Jews, and to develop self-governing institutions.
... With the Empire's continuing backing of Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s, much of the Palestinian elite focused on the liberal path of advocating constitutional change. The constitutional path failed, however, in March 1936, after a Legislative Council, which was to include significant Arab representation, was defeated by a pro-Zionist majority in the house of commons. The Palestinian population erupted, and the first intifada began.
This uprising finally led to a British plan for an endgame to the conflict. The Palestine royal commission reported in July 1937 that the only solution was the partition of the Holy Land into two separate, sovereign states (though areas of strategic interest were to remain in British hands). For fear of alienating the Arab world with an impending war, this option was, however, shelved by the British government. Instead, they attempted to pacify the Arab population with a combination of violence and political concessions. Using tactics such as house demolitions and collective punishments, they crushed the uprising with tremendous force. Most of the Palestinian leadership was arrested or went into exile. In an effort to sweeten the pill, in May 1939 the military campaign was followed by sharp restrictions on Jewish immigration and the prospect of Palestinian independence with an Arab majority in ten years time. But these promises could not mitigate the effects of the violence that had preceded them, nor were they meant to. The Palestinian national movement, which had tried to resist colonial rule, had been fatally wounded. And the Palestinian leadership was no longer viewed by the British as a viable partner. Even in the partition proposals of 1937, the suggested Arab state was to come under the authority of the reliably pro-British King Abdullah of Transjordan.
The two-state solution of 1937 was the one proposal offered by the British government that it was believed could be acceptable to both Palestinians and Zionists. But even here, there was blatant disregard for its impact on the average Palestinian. The Palestine royal commission had suggested that there should be a substantial transfer of Arabs from the Jewish state.
The partition idea, without population transfers, was taken up in 1947 by the United Nations, after Britain had handed it the Palestine problem. This plan promised independent Jewish and Palestinian states. But a bruised and battered Palestinian population had no incentive to accept this agreement, which was decided upon by the UN general assembly. Neither were the Zionists, in the aftermath of the holocaust, about to give in to a defeated Palestinian population, who were opposed to a Jewish state. As a result, Britain's departure was preceded by the outbreak of a civil war in Palestine, and was followed by the first Arab-Israeli conflagration.
The British government did not understand, nor did they want to understand, the concerns of the average Palestinian. Neither did they comprehend the post-holocaust sensibilities of rank and file Zionist Jews.
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3. Ancient Egyptian and Spanish Gold
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/mining.htm
Egyptian gold was pure to a degree of between 17 and 23� carats. The annual production of gold during pharaonic times is thought not to have exceeded one ton. In comparison, Spain, a major producing centre in Roman times shipped 1400 tons of gold to Rome. This amount is based on the quantity of slag left over in Spanish production centres and the assumption that 3 grammes of gold were extracted from one ton of ore.
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4. New Holocaust Records
The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking by ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: March 03, 2013
Extracts:
THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.
What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.
The researchers have catalogued some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler's reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.
"The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought," Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.
"We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was," he said, "but the numbers are unbelievable."
The documented camps include not only "killing centers" but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named "care" centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel.
Auschwitz and a handful of other concentration camps have come to symbolize the Nazi killing machine in the public consciousness. Likewise, the Nazi system for imprisoning Jewish families in hometown ghettos has become associated with a single site - the Warsaw Ghetto, famous for the 1943 uprising. But these sites, infamous though they are, represent only a minuscule fraction of the entire German network, the new research makes painfully clear.
The maps the researchers have created to identify the camps and ghettos turn wide sections of wartime Europe into black clusters of death, torture and slavery - centered in Germany and Poland, but reaching in all directions.
The lead editors on the project, Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean, estimate that 15 million to 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the sites that they have identified as part of a multivolume encyclopedia. (The Holocaust museum has published the first two, with five more planned by 2025.)
The existence of many individual camps and ghettos was previously known only on a fragmented, region-by-region basis. But the researchers, using data from some 400 contributors, have been documenting the entire scale for the first time, studying where they were located, how they were run, and what their purpose was.
As early as 1933, at the start of Hitler's reign, the Third Reich established about 110 camps specifically designed to imprison some 10,000 political opponents and others, the researchers found. As Germany invaded and began occupying European neighbors, the use of camps and ghettos was expanded to confine and sometimes kill not only Jews but also homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other ethnic groups in Eastern Europe. The camps and ghettos varied enormously in their mission, organization and size, depending on the Nazis' needs, the researchers have found.
The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, "Germanizing" prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers.
In Berlin alone, researchers have documented some 3,000 camps and so-called Jew houses, while Hamburg held 1,300 sites.
Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.
"You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps," he said. "They were everywhere."
Eric Lichtblau is a reporter for The New York Times in Washington and a visiting fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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5. 50 Interesting Facts Facts About . . . Race and Racism
Extracts:
The ancient Romans categorized people not on biological race or skin color, but on differing legal structures upon which they organized their lives.
Environment and cultural practices are largely responsible for head shape.
The gene that causes light skin color in Europeans is different from the gene that causes light skin color in East Asians..
Before the African slave trade boom in the 18th century, between one-half and two-thirds of all early white immigrants to the American colonies were non-free laborers. Initially, European settlers in the colonies gave blacks from Africa and Native Americans the same status as white indentured servants. By the 1700s, however, Africans and their children were treated as a different race and were viewed as life-long properties of their masters.
Between 1878 and 1952, state and federal judges issued 52 racial perquisite cases for citizenship in the U.S. In these cases, judges ruled that Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Afghanis, Native Americans, and anyone of mixed ancestries were not white. On the other hand, Arabs, Syrians, and Asian Indians were generally considered white.
In the 1800s, Irish immigrants to the U.S. were considered to be closer to Africans than to the English. Italian newcomers were called Guineas, an epithet reserved for African Americans.
African Americans/Blacks made up half of all new HIV diagnoses and slightly under half of all new AIDS diagnoses in 2009. In 2008, of all the people living with an HIV diagnosis in 40 U.S. states and 5 independent areas, 46% were African American/black, 31.6% were white, 20% were Hispanic/Latino, 1.3% were multiple races, 0.6% were Asian, 0.4% were American Indian/Alaska Native, and 0.04% were Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander.
When darker Egyptian rulers were in power in ancient Egypt, they called the lighter-skinned group 'the pale degraded race of Arvad.' However, when lighter-skinned Egyptians were in power, they labelled the darker people 'the evil race of Ish.'
After pornography, ancestry websites are the most commonly visited on the Internet.
Interracial marriage has been legal in the U.S. since 1967. In 2008, a record 14.6% of all first marriages in the U.S. were interracial marriages. Nine percent of whites, 16% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics, and 31% of Asians married someone whose race or ethnicity was different from their own. White men/Asian women pairings are the most common form of interracial dating and marriage in the U.S.
Statistics show that white wife/black husband marriages are twice as likely to end in divorce than white wife/white husband couples by the 10th year of marriage. However, a black wife/white husband marriage is 44% less likely to divorce than a white wife/white husband couple by the 10th year of marriage.
In 2007, economists Joseph Price and Justin Wolfers argued that their research showed that National Basketball Association referees are more likely to call fouls on players of a different race than themselves.
Research indicates that infants as young as six months old notice racial differences.
According to federal statistics, one in four students reports being a target of ethnic or racial bias in a typical school year.
In California, blacks are more likely to be imprisoned than are other groups
In California, 40% of African American men between 18-25 are either in jail, on parole, or on probation.
Sociologists Simon Cheng and Brian Powell found that parents in biracial families typically devote more time and money to enrolling their kids in activities, such as music lessons and museum trips, not necessarily because they have more money, but most likely to compensate for their marginalized social status.