Jewish "settlers" in 1932, in Russia

Mr. Medad, are Jews in their historic national homeland termed "settlers"?

That's the language everyone now uses. In the London Times of August 20, 1932, however, Jews from Mandate Palestine going to Birobijan, Russia were also "settlers" and "colonists". Perhaps the word did not possess today's perjorative level.

Go figure it out.

On the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Birobijan, see here. And here. On Menachem Elkind,

Sketch of Elkind by Mendel Gorshman 1933

see this.

P.S. A hint as to Elkind's problem with the Gudud Ha'Avodah:

"After having familiarised itself with the situation in Gdud Avoda, the Eastern Secretariat states a disillusionment with the national chauvinistic frenzy that has arisen in the milieu of Jewish workers in Palestine and also in Gdud, which has overcome its 'theory' of constructive socialism and is taking the path of consistent class struggle."

^

High Commissioner Harold MacMichael and Southern Syria

In mid-1944, Harold MacMichael, the High Commissioner for Palestine, was convinced that an Arab entity of "Palestine" was artificial and was the southern region of Syria.  It had no inedependent history of its own:

The "Cairo Report", the summary of a conference held there over April 6-7, 1944, can be found in F.O. 371/40135 [E2987G].

From this academic article.

^

'Palestine' as Southern Syria 1936-1939

'Palestine', as a geo-political entity, did not exist as a defined country. It was a territory, a region.

During Ottoman Empire rule it consisted, at various times, of different and alterating administrative units such as sanjaks and vilayets.

Several blogs posts I have published (here; and here, for example) detail the usage of 'Southern Syria' into the 1920s by local residents as well as political activists.

I add one more, from a study by Lori Allen of SOAS. It points to the consciousness of Palestine as Southern Syria, not an independent entity, during the 1936-1939 period:

^

Bella Hadid and a Map of Palestine

I came across this picture of Bella Hadid displaying a map of Palestine: 

As to the circumstances or the date of the map, I found this here:

Qatar National Library مكتبة قطر الوطني  · November 2, 2022

We were delighted to welcome Palestinian-Dutch supermodel Bella Hadid to the Library where she was acquainted with the historical items in our Heritage Library

I do not know what she learned from that map, but here are a few others that indicate that the boundaries of "Palestine" were, shall we say, a bit fluid.

One thing I can state with certainty, is that the Land of Israel, termed Palaestina with the Roman conquerors and Filastin by the Arab occupiers, always had the Jordan River flowing within it.

^

There Was a "Third Palestine"?

One could think that one 'Palestine' in more than enough.

A new book has been published. 

Written by scholar Walter D.Ward, it is not at all political but a study on the economics of a region. It "provides a comprehensive examination of the evidence for the economy of the later Roman province of Third Palestine, which roughly corresponds to southern Jordan, the Negev desert in Israel, and the Sinai Peninsula."

Where was that province?

In other words, there were two other "Palestines", all three really weren't one country and it was all Roman.

Some geography from the book:

So, they assertion that "Palestine" derived from the Roman Empire and that "Palestine" of the Arabs was never really a singly unit country is not some 'hasbara' claim but well-grounded in academic research.

As is well-known:

"in 132 CE in the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt the province [of Judea] was expanded and renamed Syria Palaestina. In 390, during the Byzantine period, the region was split into the provinces of Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, and Palaestina Tertia. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s, the military district of Jund Filastin was established."

Filastin is not an Arabic term but the transliteration from the Latin, just a Nablus is actually Nea Polis. Palestine is not Arab not original.

__________

UPDATE

The Arabs referred to as "Palestinians" claim descent from the Phoenicians.

But there's a catch:

"The Phoenicians...crisscrossed the sea connecting a vast geographic area...with an extensive network of settlements...and settled as immigrants"

Settlements?

^

"Palestinians" were Syrians

From MYTHS ABOUT PALESTINIANS by Kathleen M. Christison, (1987) Foreign Policy, (66), 109. 

^

Palestine or Palestine of Syria?

From Emigration from Syria by Najib E. Saliba, Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter 1981):

"Palestine", during the end of the Ottoman period, was not a separate country.

^

What Rabinovich Could Have Said

Back on February 1, 2024, Emily Bazelon moderated at the New York Times a conversation with six participants.  Entitled "The Road to 1948", it was to discuss "how the decisions that led to the founding of Israel left the region in a state of eternal conflict."

Participating were Salim Tamari, sociologist at Birzeit University in the West Bank, Abigail Jacobson, history professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Leena Dallasheh, historian working on a book about the city of Nazareth, Derek Penslar, history professor at Harvard University, Nadim Bawalsa, historian and associate editor for The Journal of Palestine Studies and Itamar Rabinovich, history professor at Tel Aviv University.

It is very instructive not only as regards the historical facts (and non-facts) included but how too many fudge issues and spin them.

One particular statement caught my eye, that of Rabinovich, at the very end. It is illustrative of how an Israeli, with a trump card in his hand, lets it drop from his fingers and, moreover, uses it in a way that is detrimental to Zionism. 

Here he is:

I want to speak about the destructive power of nationalism. What we have here is the collision between two national movements that were born at about the same time. In 1905, the Lebanese [Maronite Christian] intellectual Najib Azoury published a book in which he said these two national movements would have a destructive effect on the whole region. At the end of World War I, three multinational empires collapsed, the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian. None of them was great at that point. But look at what they were replaced by — mostly ethnic conflicts and the collision between national movements in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Levant.

Rabinovich is quite familiar with Azoury's book, Le réveil de la nation arabe 

(and see here), is, indeed important, as it refers to a Palestine as a country:

La Palestine était donc ouverte de partout aux invasions étrangères 

And, more importantly, it refers to the Zionists:

Les Juifs de nos jours ont parfaitement compris les fautes de leurs ancêtres ; aussi cherchentils soigneusement à les éviter dans la reconstitu¬ tion de ce qu’ils appellent leur ancienne patrie, en acquérant la partie de la Palestine que leurs aïeux n’avaient pu posséder, et en occupant avant tout les frontières naturelles du pays ; voilà deux points des plus importants dans le plan d’action des Sionistes. [The Jews of our day have perfectly understood the faults of their ancestors; they also carefully seek to avoid them in the reconstitution of what they call their ancient homeland, by acquiring the part of Palestine that their ancestors could not have possessed, and by occupying above all the natural borders of the country; These are two of the most important points in the Zionist action plan.]

Azoury also wrote:

"Zionist and Arab nationalist aspirations were likely to come seriously into conflict...two important phenomena are emerging at this moment in Asiatic Turkey. They are the awakening of the Arab Nation and the latent effort by Jews to reconstitute on a very large scale the ancient Kingdom of Israel... They are destined to fight each other continually until one of them wins."

Rabinovich could have used the quotation to indicate that even the Arabs were aware, at the beginning ocf the 20th century, that the Jews were an ancient people in the country and had a Kingdom and additional elements of history, a narrative contemporary Arabs refuse to recognize, denounce and deny.

He could have quoted Azoury regarding demographic figures, page 22:

If we only count the rural population, the West Bank is no more inhabited than the other part of Palestine, despite its larger surface area...From Léontès to the Bir-Sabeh plateau, the rural population hardly exceeds 100,000 inhabitants. By adding the urban population of Hebron, Gaza, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Nablus, Caiffa, Saint-Jean-Acre, Tyre, Nazareth, Tiberias and Safed, we arrive at 170,000 souls. To this must be added the 30,000 nomadic Bedouins of the Bir-Sabeh Plateau, which gives us a total of 200,000 inhabitants. In this number we do not count the Jews who also number 200,000; because we are only considering, for the moment, the population that lives off the ground.

I cannot confirm his data but that is a remarkable accounting.

Azoury possessed a negative view of Jewish aspiration, writing on page 46 of a Jewish "encroachment" (l’envahissement). On page 48, he refers positively to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion ("L’étude approfondie que nous faisons...servira aussi à montrer à ceux qui liront Le Péril juif universel, combien les circonstances présentes sont favorables aux projets des Sionistes dans le pays qui fût le rêve de leurs ancêtres et qui, au¬ jourd’hui encore, excite tant leurs convoitises" - "The in-depth study we make...will also serve to show those who read The Universal Jewish Peril how present circumstances are favorable to the projects of the Zionists in the country which was the dream of their ancestors and which, even today, excites their desires so much").

In other words, given an opportunity to make a firm, uncompromising Zionist statement based on an Arab's writing, and there is much he could have said based on Azoury, Rabinovich 'drops the ball'.

^

Did Israel 'Emerge' in 'Ancient Palestine'?

In a review of Emanuel Pfoh's "The Emergence of Israel in Ancient Palestine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives" by Jeremy Hutton you can find this theory gaining a grip on the academic discourse - and soon to be mass discourse:

...an increasingly vocal contingent has challenged the critical theory (/theories) of historiography employed by traditional historical-critical approaches to the biblical text...Emanuel Pfoh steps into the gap and offers his own terms for peace with this book...itself is a methodologically and theoretically grounded study of how one might begin to write about “the emergence of Israel in ancient Palestine.”

...The author marshals critical historiographic theory, state formation theory, and other anthropological models in an attempt to deal “specifically with Israel’s origins and the question of statehood in Palestine”.  Throughout this introduction Pfoh positions himself as a proponent of “alternative historical explanations of what happened in Iron Age I Palestine in regard to ‘Israel’ ” (emphasis added). This effort comes as nothing surprising in the field of “biblical historiography” (construed loosely as the total combined subsets of biblical scholars, historians, archaeologists, Egyptologists, and Assyriologists who concern themselves with the reconstruction of the history of an ethnic group in the Southern Levant known as “Israel”)...he seeks “to assess the changing historical nature of the entity called ‘Israel’ as a product of contemporary history-writing” through both a review of the various proposals for understanding Israel’s emergence in Palestine (conquest, pastoral infiltration, etc.) and a sharpening of the “minimalist” critique of traditional biblical historiography....of Israel, Pfoh attempts to justify the critical historians’ foundational premise that “we cannot speak of Israel in history without firm evidence, and we cannot base our image of historical Israel on the biblical Israel that dwells in the Old Testament”...

...we have little or no access into the Bible’s meaningfulness within the original social context of its production. Because the historical narratives’ “intention is not historical,” “one cannot deem [them] historiographic” either...

...Pfoh attempts to deconstruct the putative relationship between the various “Israels” known from the ancient epigraphic texts. Pfoh dismisses as skewed any archaeological interpretations of the data that may be linked to the biblical text (e.g., A. Faust’s connection—hardly new with Faust—between
“the absence of pig bones in the Iron I highlands” and Israelite identity; 165; cf. 166–67).  Instead, Pfoh argues that the name “Israel”—if that is in fact what the Mernepta Stela says—“had survived afterwards in the territory and was adopted—from the ninth century on—by people living in the highlands” (172). Moreover, because “[e]thnic consciousness is… "retrospective” and “historiography … defines and creates ethnicity,” we have no access to the identity of early Judaism’s namesake Israel. There follows an outline of what we can know (from epigraphic remnants) or reconstruct (on the basis of archaeology and social-scientific theory) about the genesis and organization of the earliest known polity in the Iron Age II southern Levant: the Bīt-Humriya. This history, however, is not accessible through the biblical text, since “it is during the later periods of however, is not accessible through the biblical text, since “it is during the later periods of ancient Palestine’s history, the Persian and the Graeco-Roman, that we find the proper context in which biblical Israel was created”.

In his “Concluding Reflections” (188–94), Pfoh wraps up a number of independent lines of argumentation that have been touched upon through the course of the study. In a few pages, Pfoh defends himself (and implicitly his congeners) from charges of anti-Semitism and nihilism. But the more salient threads of this short summary are tied together around the theme of epistemology: comparison of the historical reconstruction and the biblical text proceed “only at the final stage of research, but such an endeavour must never aim to achieve a harmonization or an historical corroboration of ancient mythic images,” since doing so “simply misses the point of the original intention [of the biblical text] because of the mixing of logical categories”. “Mythic traditions are rationally unfalsifiable, they just cannot be tested, not because they may not be confirmed by historical or archaeological data—which they are sometimes!—but because they are
created by a different mentality, by another episteme, which never should be confused or blended with our own”...

Was 'Palestine' Actually Syria?

Let's check on that way back when:

"In 1917, Ramallah-born New York surgeon, Fuad Isa Shatara, and N.A. Katibah founded the Palestine Antizionism Society. It was among the organizers of an anti-Zionist rally on November 8, 1918 in Brooklyn. Besides the two founders, the young Lebanese Orientalist Philip Khoury Hitti made an appearance as a speaker at the event. The rally passed a resolution, describing the Arabs at risk of being dominated by “a race rendered more powerful and wealthy through contact with the western civilization thus applying might against right” and protesting the “artificial importation of Zionists flooding the country against its natural capacities and thus forcing an emigration of the rightful inhabitants.”227 Thus, by 1918, the anti-Zionist Arab-American movement had already found both its central arguments and its leaders. Rihani, Hitti and Shatara would shape the movement over the next two decades. The Arab Americans worked to influence the State  Department and other influential elements of the foreign policy strata. Fuad Shatara of the Palestine Antizionism Society wrote two letters to Secretary of State Robert Lansing in November 1918 and February 1919, arguing that Zionism was in contravention to Wilson’s Fourteen Points.228 In December 1918, Hitti and George Khairalla established the New Syria National League. The group lobbied for the establishment of a Greater Syria under American protection, reaching from the Sinai to the Euphrates.229 These groups intensified their activities in light of the upcoming peace conference in Paris. Shatara and Hitti reached out to John Huston Finley, the chief of the Red Cross Commission in Palestine, asking Finley not to detach Palestine from Greater Syria.230 During the conference, Hitti’s New Syria National League also sent a telegram to Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau advocating an American protectorate over Syria. 231"          

227 “Untitled,” New York Times, November 9, 1917; cited in Davidson, “Debating Palestine,” 230; see also Knee, “The King-Crane Commission of 1919,” 204. 228 Davidson, “Debating Palestine,” 231. 229 The Formation of Modern Iraq and Syria (Routledge, 2013), 147. 230 Knee, The Concept of Zionist Dissent in the American Mind, 1917-1941, 205. 231 The Formation of Modern Iraq and Syria, 147.

From this thesis.

^

Sharif Hussein ibn Ali and "Palestine"

Sharif Hussein ibn Ali was an Arab leader from the Banu Hashim clan, Sharif and Emir of Mecca from 1908 and, after proclaiming the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire with Lawrence of Arabia, King of the Hejaz from 1916 to 1924 and, quite briefly, Caliph in 1924. With the Hejaz invaded by the Saudis, he had to flee and be exiled. He claimed he was a 37th-generation direct descendant of Muhammad, as he belonged to the Hashemite family.

His son was Abdullah I and his great-great-grandson, Abdullah II (son of Hussein, son of Talal), is the current King of Jordan.

In January 1924, he arrived in Amman, then TransJordan, here seen received by Lt.-Col.  Frederick Peake Pasha, the British Resident Representative (and creator of the Arab Legion):

and another picture during that time:

On March 11 he received pledges of fealty from local Arabs, Arabs from west of the Jordan River and neighboring Arab countries.

But what did he think of "Palestine"?

As this article, "Sharif Husayn ibn Ali and the Hashemite Vision of the Post-Ottoman Order: From Chieftaincy to Suzerainty", details, he seemed to think it shouldn't exist:

So, it isn't that some pro-Israel/Zionism advocates think an 'Arab Palestine' wasn't and shouldn't be.

^

When Siegfried Sassoon was in Palestine at the Same Time as Jabotinsky

Siegfried Sassoon (1886 – 1967) was a scion to the wealthy India Jewish merchant family on his father's side with his mother being Anglican, of the Thornycroft farmers whose progeny had turned to becoming sculptors, painters and engineers. He grew up in rural Kent yet his father abandoned the family before Siegfried was five. His education was at Cambridge although he did not formally finish. He played sports, wrote poetry and developed into a homosexual.

He enthusiastically enlisted in the army when war was delcared but his war peorty became predominately critical with biting satire. While convalescing from a wound received at the Arras batle, he came in close contact with a pacifist circle and a protest of his was read out in Parliament in late July 1917 and published in The Times the following day.

And then, he returned to service and

In November 1917, Sassoon was passed fit for service. He was sent to Ireland where he served until February 1918 and was then transferred to Palestine as part of General Allenby’s army. He hated it there and described Jerusalem as ‘not a very holy-looking place’ and referred to the natives as ‘Hebrews’. His vague Jewish connections through his father meant nothing to him. After three months in Palestine, Sassoon returned to the Western Front. 

Sassoon arrived in Palestine on 12 March 1918, some 3 months after Jerusalem had surrendered to Allenby. Sassoon’s unit, the 25th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, was stationed north of Ramalleh, near the Jerusalem–Nablus road; by the time Sassoon reached Palestine the unit was engaged in holding the recently-secured line.

According to Siegfried Sassoon and Palestine, these lines:

On the rock-strewn hills I heard

The anger of guns that shook

Echoes along the glen.

In my heart was the song of a bird,

And the sorrowless tale of the brook,

And scorn for the deeds of men.

were written in Palestine, where he was posted for a little over a month in the spring of 1918. 

The details:

On a warm and pleasant morning in March 1918, Sassoon arrived in Gaza on a cattle truck. He had traveled all night with 12 other officers (of the 25th Royal Welch Fusiliers) from base camp in Kantara, Egypt, and was relieved to escape the ragtime tunes and tiresome ribaldry of the mess. From Gaza, whose “fine hills” reminded him of Scotland, he proceeded through almond orchards and olive trees to Ludd, the railhead where soldiers and war supplies arrived and departed. Ludd’s proper name was al-Ludd, an Arabic name because it was then a Palestinian town full of Arabs...

...From al-Ludd, Sassoon and company continued to their final destination — a hilltop village with “dusky, narrow” streets eight miles northwest of Jerusalem. Captured from “Johnny Turk” barely two months earlier and turned into the division headquarters, it was called Ramallah. There was no sound of artillery here, noted Sassoon, and the silent landscape, “hoary in the twilight,” seemed infused with a sad, lonesome air. Few knew then that the document birthing its violent future had already been written....

Jabotinsky, with his 38th Royal Fusieliers were stationed just north at Abuein. 

Sassoon was perhaps the most widely read soldier-poet in England, famous for poems that attacked the country’s incompetent, rum-flushed generals and described in pitiless detail the plight of millions of soldiers stuck in the “plastering slime” of rat-infested trenches. He was even more notorious for bravely protesting the prolongation of the war in a statement that was read out in the House of Commons on July 30, 1917, and published in The Times...

The 31-year-old Sassoon thus arrived in Palestine flushed with celebrity and notoriety. Palestine, he knew, was a “warm-climate sideshow,” and he smarted at the thought of being shunted to guard duty. By the time he arrived, the three Gaza wars had been fought and Jerusalem stormed and won from the Turks by the famous General Edmund Allenby, who, out of respect, dismounted and entered the holy city on foot. Since the action now was mostly defensive — safeguarding the Suez Canal and the oil deposits of the Persian Gulf — Sassoon spent most of his time mending roads littered with the stinking corpses of camels and trampled to “liquid mud” by ambulances and long lines of gray donkeys loaded with army blankets. It was dull, plodding work. He consoled himself by reading War and Peace, but his heavy cold and the incessant rain only worsened his mood. What he did not foresee was how deeply he would fall in love with the natural beauty of Palestine, and how loath he would be to return to the soul-deadening trenches of France when the “ghastly news” arrived that the Germans had broken through Arras.

Slowly, the landscape revealed itself to him, “and what had seemed a cruel, desolate, unhappy region, was now full of a shy and lovely austerity.” Sassoon’s diary — which has just been published online for the first time by the Cambridge University Library — ripples with mentions of wildflowers and croaking frogs, “rocks older than Jerusalem,” and young green wheat against the reddish, stony slopes. He watched the gurgling brown wadis of Ramallah and the fig trees turn into a “green mist.” He wandered the hills bird-watching, counted over 50 different species, and was thrilled when a bulbul gave him “a charming fantasia on the flute.” One day he saw a gazelle trot quietly away and envied it: “a free creature.” An Arab gardener introduced him to “ascadinias” (loquat), and he tramped through “a tangle of huge golden daisies — knee-deep and solid gold, as if Midas had been walking there.” On one serene ramble outside Ramallah he wrote, “I escaped from the war completely for four hours.”

The “anger of guns” he refers to in the sonnet quoted above, which he titled “In Palestine,” was more distant soundtrack than immediate menace. Fashioned after Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality,” its first stanza tells of thyme-scented hills and rills going their way. It may not be one of his best poems, but it fuses his prewar melodic pastoral style with his bitter contempt of war. Before the war, Sassoon had been, in his own description, “a brainless fox-hunter,” who played cricket and self-published his mediocre poetry. It was the horrors of the Somme that gouged the treacle from his verse and honed him into a fine poet. Though he faced no direct fighting in Palestine, everywhere around him was the grim business of war. “C’est la guerre — in an Old Testament environment,” he noted drily.

...In Sassoon’s scorching parable, Adam stands in for the cynical old politicians who watch their young kill one another. Described as “a brown old vulture in the rain,” Adam ponders over the character of his two sons. He admires Cain, who is “Hungry and fierce with deeds of huge desire,” and despises Abel, “soft and fair — / A lover with disaster in his face.” Adam even justifies Cain’s murdering his own brother because even murder is more tolerable than weakness: “Afraid to fight; was murder more disgrace?” In the end, murder only begets murder, and the vulture finds both his “lovely sons were dead.” What makes this poem a moral grenade is its self-awareness. Sassoon knew that there were bits of Cain and Abel tussling inside him. At the start of the war, he had been a soldier filled with bloodlust, and made quite a reputation for himself for his revenge killings of Germans. But he had also sickened of the slaughter and campaigned for it to stop. In Sassoon’s case, Abel finally won, but the current war, with its far more ancient and complex metabolism, is inevitably stamped with the mark of Cain.

^

On the "Demise of Israel in 2020"

Seems that some of the recent violence may be based on a "prophecy" by a Sheikh assam Jaber. I red about it here, p. 34 - 39.

So I searched. Translations via Google.

1.

When the establishment of the state of "Israel" was announced in 1948, an old Jewish woman entered the mother of Muhammad al-Rashid, crying. This country will last 76 years.

This story from Baghdad was recorded by the Palestinian Islamic researcher Bassam Jarrar in his book (The demise of Israel 2022.. Quranic prophecy or digital coincidences?), published in the early nineties of the twentieth century, quoting from a lecture written by the Iraqi writer Muhammad Ahmed Al-Rashed entitled (The New World Order), so the researcher concluded that the The 76 years mentioned in the lunar calendar used by the Jews, which correspond to 1443 in the Hijri calendar and 2022 in the Gregorian calendar, and this tale is the beginning of the story of the book and the prophecy.

And based on the book and the prophecy found in it, and its content is the demise of “Israel” in 2022 AD, a large number of people believed in the prophecy, and they preached it as if it were a divine promise of definitive proof and significance, not just mathematical calculations, speculative evidence and significance, and a speculative numerical interpretation of the verses of the Holy Qur’an, in a clear confusion between Prophecy in its prophetic or Qur’anic sense and its human concept; The prophetic and Qur’anic prophecy is transmitted from God Almighty through the revelation of the Prophet – may God’s prayers and peace be upon him – and is found in the prophetic or Qur’anic text, and it is certain of proof and significance, such as the prophecy of the Roman victory over the Persians in a few years and the prophecy of the conquest of Mecca. As for human prophecy, it means telling about the unseen that exists in the future ahead of its time, as speculation and speculation, such as the researcher’s prophecy of the demise of “Israel” in 2022 AD, and the fulfillment of the promise of the afterlife mentioned in Surat Bani Israel, and documented in his book (The demise of Israel 2022.. Quranic prophecy or digital coincidences?) .

The first chapter of the book is the interpretation of the Qur’anic prophecy in Surat Al-Isra, related to the demise of “Israel”, known as (The Promise of the Hereafter) in two verses: “So when the Promise of the Hereafter comes, they will offend your faces,” and “Then they will come to you.” That the first Israeli corruption and exaltation took place before Islam after the reigns of David and Solomon - peace be upon them both - and that the other Israeli corruption and transcendence began with the establishment of the state of “Israel” in 1948 AD, and that we are on the verge of the stage of the promise of the hereafter to destroy the Israeli corruption and exaltation, represented by the abolition of the Jewish Zionist state. This rational vision, committed to the rules of Quranic interpretation, was the first mujtahid in it, the Azhari scholar Abdel Moez Abdel Sattar in the sixties of the twentieth century, and Dr. Muhammad Sayed Tantawi recorded it in his book (The Children of Israel in the Qur’an and Sunnah).

The second chapter of the book is the subject of digital interpretation to confirm the credibility of the Qur’anic prophecy, and to determine the date of the fulfillment of the prophecy. On the number (19), the problem started with the two numbers (76-19), so the researcher wrote two studies about the miracle of the number (19), during which he discovered that the number (19) is the basis for a historical equation related to the history of the Jews and the demise of their state, so he wrote a third study and predicted through Numerical calculations and numerical mathematics, derived from the verses of Surat Al-Isra, that the demise of "Israel" in 1443 AH corresponding to 2022 AD, using the method of converting letters into numbers according to the ancient historical sentence system in the numerical (abjad haws) order.

The method of numerical interpretation and numerical interpretation of the Holy Qur’an, on which the prophecy of the demise of “Israel” in 2022 AD was based, is a method tainted by a lot of confusion and confusion, and leads to results: always speculative, often many errors, and sometimes contradictory; This is because this method is not subject to specific scientific standards or specific research controls, and is used in a selective manner directed by the researcher’s will. And sentences, and between numbers and numbers, in a speculative way, some of them reach a kind of mathematical sorcery and mathematical tricks. And the use of this approach in the process of anticipating the future and predicting the events of the unseen is more troublesome and problematic, especially if this foresight and prediction are related to a major central issue such as Palestine, and in particular determining the time of the promise of the afterlife and the demise of the supreme entity and the Israeli corruption.

2.

Bassam Jarrar identifies the three months of 2022, which he expects to witness the “most important events” that will “lead to the demise of the state,” according to his belief.

“The probability of it being fulfilled is more than 90%,” Bassam Jarrar says in an interview with the Ultra Palestine website, stressing that he is not worried that the prophecy will not be fulfilled. Jarrar identifies the three months of 2022, which he expects to witness the "most important events" that will "lead to the demise of the state," according to his belief.

According to Jarrar, "the prophecy of the demise of Israel in 2022" was launched from a story he heard in a lecture by Muhammad Ahmed Al-Rashed, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq, in which he says that a Jewish old woman told his mother on the day the establishment of "Israel" was declared that this state would not last more than 76 years. year.

This story motivated Jarrar to research the possibility of the validity of this hypothesis, to announce his “prophecy” in “Marj al-Zohour” in southern Lebanon, when the Israeli occupation authorities expelled him there with cadres and leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, before he later published his book. The demise of Israel 2022, a prophecy or a digital coincidence.

Jarrar says that his new job is not limited to Surat Al-Isra, but rather "in verses and surahs related to it."

Basically, this “prophecy,” according to Jarrar, was based on numerical calculations related to the story of “the children of Israel were corrupted twice on earth” at the beginning of Surat Al-Isra, which is Surah 17 of the Noble Qur’an, and begins by talking about the journey of the Prophet Muhammad to Al-Aqsa Mosque, And it ends at the end of the seventh verse, which announces “the demise of the Israeli state,” according to Jarrar’s interpretation.

In his speech, Jarrar says that his new work is not limited to Surat Al-Isra, but rather "in verses and surahs that are related", the most recent of which were 4 lectures that were published in the month of Ramadan/2021, which include new issues in this context.

Jarrar points out that the numerical miracle (on which this prophecy is based) is based on mathematical systems, describing it as "purely scientific" and rejecting it as a metaphysical matter.

He says that the research he has "conclusive" the issue that 2022 is the year "the demise of the state, that is, the authority, and not the demise of the Jews."

Jarrar explains that the announcement of this "prophecy" came "surprisingly" at the time, due to the absence of previous research based on what he calls "the numerical miracles in the Qur'an," noting that the announcement gained great popularity among Lebanese and Arab newspapers at the time.

In response to a question about his feeling of responsibility for the disappointment of those who are convinced of what he says in the event that the “prophecy” is not fulfilled, he replied that this “prophecy” gave people hope for liberation, and thus not to accept the loss of their rights in light of “attempts to liquidate

The case" that was taking place at the moment of declaring the "prophecy", adding that "it is not excluded that there will be work in order to be the person on whose hand this prophecy will be fulfilled," according to his saying.

3.

Ramallah - “Al Quds Al Arabi”: YouTube data indicates nearly 160,000 views of the documentary film, “The Complete Story 2022” (64 minutes), five days after its launch on the “Islam Noun” page of the Noun Center. For Quranic research and studies run by Sheikh and Islamic thinker Bassam Jarrar, who prophesied the demise of Israel in 2022.

The film, which Al-Quds Al-Arabi learned that one of the 48 regions of Palestine was based on, came to increase the heated Palestinian and Islamic debate, in addition to an old case of controversy between parties supporting this prophecy and others opposing it, in light of the fact that the date of its realization has become very close.

According to Palestinian Sheikh Bassam Jarrar, director of the center, the end of the occupation state is certain, and that is “95% of the time” in light of all indicators supporting this, which is what he learned from what he calls the numerical miracle of the Holy Qur’an.

During the past five days, links to the film were exchanged on social networks, and it was commented on in the dialogues and discussions of supporters and opponents.

The most prominent criticism directed at the film was that it was a “propaganda” of the Sheikh’s prophecy, and he lacked objectivity, as he explained and elaborated on the Sheikh’s statements and his justifications, and comfortably commented on the overall criticism directed at him, as he brought in guests who either supported the Sheikh’s statement or rejected it, but “softly”, and that Although there is a large group of sheikhs and religious scholars who view this prophecy as heretical and blasphemous.

Islamic scholar Sari Orabi, who appeared in the film as holding a position rejecting Sheikh Jarrar’s prophecy, wrote a clarification on his private page on Facebook, trying to clarify his position on the film and the Sheikh’s statement, where he said: “I received many questions after the documentary was broadcast… and my approval or disagreement with this thesis.” It does not change anything, and its owner is the most able to discuss the matter with his supporters and opponents.”

Orabi considered this type of film “not a scientific lesson, and it is not suitable for an explanation of a thesis, but rather a tale of the story, how it began and how it went.” The film certainly falls short of explaining it scientifically and methodically.”

He added: "I tried to present my opinion, which does not notice sufficient material support for this thesis. I see merit in the opinions that do not see material supporters close to the idea, as well as some efforts made by some brothers to try to criticize it from within, and I have tried to mention several aspects of its criticism, some of which appeared In the movie, some others did not appear.

Orabi does not agree with “those who say that the Sheikh’s prophecy is a type of fortune-telling, for this is an exaggeration of prejudice, and takes it out of context in terms of being an attempt to question the Qur’an.”

Orabi believes that rejecting the idea, whether based on internal follow-up and criticism, or political assessment, or simply by standing at headlines and impressions, is a natural thing as long as it is presented to the public domain, and people vary in their viewpoints and the directions of their thought.

Orabi considered that the fear of “the effects of the negative prophecy in the event that reality does not believe it is legitimate and capable, but prejudice and exaggeration of fears is the brother of exaggerating the emotional attachment to this prophecy.”

Orabi adopts a call to reduce prejudice, intensity, emotion and fears, which is reinforced by the film.

The Syrian researcher Ahmed Dadush, who appeared in the film, told Al-Quds Al-Arabi that he found a tendency among the advanced Muslim scholars to block the doors of prediction, as well as the tendency of the contemporary audience to challenge the numerical miracle.

He continued, "However, Sheikh Jarrar was able, in my opinion, to present his discovery with premises worthy of consideration." He added: Sheikh Jarrar put forward his theory as any mujtahid does while he is investigating the truth. He does not claim to reach the truth, nor does any scholar claim that as it is known, so the Sheikh and the film makers left the door ajar, and there is no challenge to the theory itself.

Regarding the film’s objective approach to its own voice and its opposition to this prophecy, as it is far from being fulfilled, Daadoudsh confirmed that the selection of the film’s guests was successful. Years ago, there were many responses to the Sheikh’s theory who lacked the simplest conditions for discussion.”

Iyad Abu Zneit, a researcher at the Yabous Foundation for Strategic Studies, spoke about the 2022 controversy between denial and ratification. Considering that denying the demise of Israel in 2022 is not a departure from the religion, and not infidelity, and the owner of the idea himself believes that it is a coincidence, and opposing the idea or believing it is not a pillar of faith. Here, no global or local event can be linked to the demise of Israel in 2022 with its significance.”

Abu Zneit addressed his words to those who believe that Israel will not last more than 80 years, considering that this is not at all accurate, as our weakness and their work may continue, and believing in the inevitability of demise on a specific date is a dangerous matter that may raise the ceiling of hope and send people down. As for the saying that God, Glory be to Him, changes between a moment and a moment, this is true, but it is dependence and withdrawal, for the Hour may arise in a moment!”

He added: "With the inevitable belief in the demise of Israel and its occupation, but we are still a people who multiply controversy, and are transferred at work, and there is no demise except with tools, and just as the occupation arose with plans and implementation, it will not disappear without that."

Abu Zneit stressed that far from any prophecy, whether it was fulfilled or not, Herzl said to those gathered with him at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897: “If your intention is true, it is not a myth, when they told him that the establishment of the State of Israel is a fantasy.”

He continued: “And Al-Mutanabbi told us centuries before Herzl: “According to the people of determination come wills,” and determination in Arabic is the contract of intention and insistence on action.

According to Abu Zneit, the Arab mind is described as a regressive mind, meaning that it refers confronting its problems to a metaphysical issue that relieves it of the burden of responsibility. The truth is that we are not looking for reasons to confront Israel because it is costly financially, in terms of thinking and sacrifice.” He concluded: "All indications today are that the conflict will continue until 2050."

The journalist, Fares Sarfandi, strongly criticized the sheikh

So, now we know.

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That "Palestine Manhole"

If you ever see a tweet with the picture of this "Palestine manhole", (obviously this is the British Mandate for Palestine-to-become-the reconstituted-Jewish-homeland), that is claimed to prove "Palestine" existed, show them these other pictures with the commercial symbol enlarged and a Palestine Post (a Jewish newspaper) advert.

The manufacturer was Vulcan Foundaries, a Jewish factory. And "Vulcan" is in Hebrew.

Thanks to Sharon Altshul Marks and Lion Hart.
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The Jewish "Palestine Resistance"

When, in 1946, the term "Palestine Resistance" meant the Jewish fight for freedom and liberation from the repressive British mandatory regime:

Source

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Was 'Arab Palestine' Thought of by Arabs As A Separate Country?

Did the idea that "Palestine" for the Arabs was not really thought of as a separate country a 'Zionist plot'?

Or...?

Page 35:

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Syro-Palestine

My blog has multiple posts documenting that the Arabs residing in the territory of what was to become the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine viewed themselves not as "Palestinians" but "Southern Syrians" and did not reognize "Palestine" as a separate geo-political entity.

Have you heard of the 1921 Syro-Palestinian Congress?

It was founded on August 25, 1921 in Geneva by a group of Arabs from Greater Syrian, including  Palestine and even the Syrian National Society based in Boston, under the auspices of the Syrian Unity Party. The main aim of the congress was to try to influence the terms of the proposed League of Nations mandate over the region that would be awarded to France.

Its formation followed the July 1919 "Pan-Syrian" Syrian National Congress. 

On September 21, after almost a month of deliberations in the Plainpalais Assembly Hall , a public statement to the League of Nations was issued demanding:

Recognition of the independence and national rule (al-Sultan al-Qawmi) of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine; Recognition of the right of these countries to unite in the framework of a civilian government, responsible to a parliament elected by the people, and in association with the other Arab lands; Immediate annulment of the Mandate; Departure of the French and British forces from Syria, Lebanon and Palestine; and the annulment of the Balfour Declaration.

From the New York Times report:

Some of the attendees:

The members of the Interim Executive Committee of the Syro-Palestinian Congress:

Additional source.

An academic review suggests, contradistinctively, that Arabs representing Palestine "desired separate recognition of their cause". The author, Reem Bailony, notes that

in 1922, the Congress collected Palestinian protests against Zionism, the Balfour declaration, and the British mandate, in order to publish them throughout Egyptian newspapers. The Jerusalem branch was run by the Palestinian notable, Haj Amin al-Husayni [Jamal al-Husayni was the acting as secretary of the Jerusalem committee]. It acted as an important linkage between the activists within Syria, and those in Cairo and Europe

As Raja Adal suggests, to former Ottomans like Arslan, Syria meant "greater Syria and included not only the French mandates of Syria and Lebanon but also the British mandate of Palestine".

In other words, throughout the 1920s, the Mufti of Palestine was a pro-United Syria activist. A central figure, Michel Lutfallah, a Greek-Orthodox from a wealthy merchant landowner family of the Syrian community in Egypt, was the driving force and financier of the Congress and was appointed its president, was known for his "steadfast friendship" to the Hashemite family. Just prior to the French bombardment of Damascus in October 1925 responding to the Syrian Revolt which had begun in August, the Congress addressed an appeal to the League of Nations’ General Assembly to inform about ‘the unhappy position of the Syro-Palestinian people’.

For sure, other voices in Lebanon sought a reverse course of complete atomization of Syria into its Moslem Shiite and Sunni, Christian, Druze, Alawite, Ismaili, Kurd and Circassian and other components. Nevertheless, the concept of a 'Greater Syria' was the dominant narrative.

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Butto's Map Illustration

Diana Butto published an op-ed in the New York Times, entitled The Myth of Coexistence in Israelץ

It was illustrated by this misleading map series (yes, misleading):

So, to point out some very basic but important facts, I created another few maps:

And there's more: the diminishing Zionist homeland version (maps from decades ago)

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Lord Curzon Wasn't Really an Anti-Zionist

Promoters of Palestinianism point to Lord Curzon as a possible savior who could have prevented the British Government's pro-Zionism World War One policy. Here is one source.

One of them is Karl Sabbagh who wrote in the Guardian back in 2017

If only Lord Curzon, who succeeded Balfour, had been foreign secretary in 1917 we might have had a very different outcome. He wrote in a private letter to Balfour at the time: “I do not myself recognise that the connection of the Jews with Palestine, which terminated 1,200 years ago, gives them any claims whatsoever.

But in his December 5, 1917 report to the Cabinet he seems quite clear about the future political siutation of Jews in Palestine:    

There will be a national home for Jews in Palestine and it will be equal to the "chance" that the Arabs will have.

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Yet Another Unpublished Letter-to-the-Editor

On March 17, 2021, the UK Guardian published an oped by Salem Barahmeh entitled, "The Israeli and Palestinian elections offend democracy – each in their own way".

I wrote a letter-to-the-editor and it was emailed the following day:

In his March 17 op-ed, Salem Barahmeh, of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, conveniently blames Israel for the lack of democracy in the Palestinian Authority. Israel has never prevented President Mahmoud Abbas, last elected 16 years ago, from initiating elections. The responsibility for the regime Abbas oversees which among other actions severely restricts the freedoms, liberties and rights of its population too numerous to list cannot be assigned to Israel. At some time in their history, the Arabs of Palestine must assume accountability for their own actions or lack thereof.

In bemoaning the fact that upwards of 700,000 Jewish Israelis are living in the territories claimed by the Palestinian Authority, Barahmeh ignores the pre-state period of 1920-1948, when thousands of Jews who were living in those same areas such as Jerusalem's Old City and its environs, Hebron, Gaza, Nablus, Etzion Bloc and other locations then called by the United Nations in its 1947 partition plan as Judea and Samaria, were removed due to both a campaign of terror promoted by the then Mufti Amin El-Husseini and the hostilities Arabs launched after rejecting that internationally supported compromise arrangement which the Jewish community of Mandate Palestine did accept. Had Jews not been targeted in an ethnic cleansing operation, just  as twenty percent or more of Israel's current citizenry are Arab, there should be no reason 20% of Palestine's residents, if not citizens, could be Jewish.

Yisrael Medad

Shiloh, Israel

I waited a few days and I don't see it.

So now it's public here.

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