Ahad Ha'am Quotes

The pre WWII Zionists who returned to the Holy Land brought with them, the education, culture, technology, and particularly the modern scientific methods of agriculture and irrigation. The Arabs lived the same way as they had done since 1100 when the Muslim world "closed" to new ideas and change. At that earlier time, the Arabs had the advanced agricultural techniques which Europeans copied throughout Spain and Italy. While advanced for 1100, Arab agriculture was backward by early 20th century standards. Arab farms could mostly just feed the land owning family and produced little surplus, and they wasted huge amounts of water in the process. The returning Jews assumed that the Arabs would welcome these new techniques as well as the public health, medicine, engineering and science. They thought that they were bringing great gifts to the non-Jewish inhabitants of the land. However, even though the Jewish farms improved the quality of the produce and increased the productivity many times with much less water needed, for the most part, the Arabs would not depart from their traditions and religious dictates. One of the reasons Islam had been so successful in its inception was that it prescribed behavior in every phase of life, not just religious. But then it became very difficult to change. So the benefit that the Zionists thought that they were bringing back to the Middle East were not seen as benefits by the Arabs whose various cultures and countries have remained religiously and tradition bound even into the 21st century.

At that time Jews in Palestine were in the minority. The issue of how to obtain the land was hotly debated amongst Jewish groups. Jabotinsky was at one extreme—colonize and take the land just as the Arabs had done to the Jews when there was a Jewish majority. His view did not however prevail. The policy was to buy the land from individual Arabs and Jewish land up to 1948 was obtained that way. In that year the UN partitioned Palestine and 11 Arab armies attacked the new state of Israel and asked the Arab civilians to leave the area so that the Army could cleanse it of Jews. Many did not, and they or their descendants are still on their land or have sold it. The Arabs who left, were suspected of being possible collaborators or terrorists, and they have never been paid for their land or allowed to return. Compensation is still in dispute. At the same time Jews driven out of Arab countries by law and the military have never been compensated or given any right of return either.

It was signed by over 400 American notables—politicians and clergy, Christian and Jewish. Signers included the Mayors of Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, congressmen and editors of most of the leading newspapers of the day. Blackstone’s Memorial predated the Zionist writings of Theodor Herzl by 4 years and Blackstone, thought a Christian, was credited as being the “Father of Zionism” by many of the American Jewish Zionist leaders. See {614859}.

This quote is very important historically as it bears on the two different narratives of the creation of Israel given by the Jews and the Arabs. The Arabs claim that in the 1948 partition of Palestine, the Jew attacked the Arabs and drove them out of the areas in which they had lived for years, The Israelis claim that they urged the Arabs to stay and that all those who did, received full citizenship in the new state of Israel. The Arab leaders pressured and in some cases even forced the Arabs to leave so that the Arab armies could use artillery and other war weapons and not have to worry about hitting Arabs. They promised the Arabs who left that they could return in a few days when the Jews were defeated and pushed into the sea, and the Arabs could have the Jewish property. This report of an impartial actor, tends to support the Jewish view of the happening in so far as the behavior of the Jews was concerned. There was no pressure placed on Arabs by Jews to leave. It was actually, the reverse. There were however, two small rural areas where Jewish radicals did try and drive the Arabs out, but in general the Haifa experience was the norm.

To make matters worse for the Muslims, the tiny foreign entity in their midst—populated by "heathens who do not follow the command of God"—have created a much higher standard of living for their people, improved the land and its productivity in ways that have been far superior to traditional Islamic methods, reclaimed much of the desert that the Muslims could not, and produced a military that has staved off the hostilities of all of Islam, and has done all this without any oil or other natural resources to sell. Israel is a living counter-example to the superiority of Islam and its traditions which is so important to Muslims.

There were Arabs living in Palestine since Roman times. However, there was no concept of Palestinians as a separate people from Jordanians or other Arabs in the Middle East. There had never been a Palestinian government separate from the other Arabs in the region and separate from the Kingdom of Jordan. At the birth of Israel, all the Arab Armies of the region attacked the new state, which managed to defend itself but in the process the Arab governments had told the Arabs of Israel to leave the Area so their Armies would be able to attack all others. After the Arab victory, they could return and could have their land and the Jewish land. The victory never happened and the Arabs who left have been refugees outside of Israel and describe themselves as “Palestinians” which have had a quasi government in the PLO. The Palestinians who stayed in Israel became full citizens of the Jewish State. Other Palestinian refugees left the area and emigrated throughout the Middle East and elsewhere.

This quotation is important because it demonstrates that all Arabs were not in favor of the Nazi murder of Jews in WWII. This claim is often made but is untrue. While major Arab leaders called for the murder of all Jews—see {584354} for Arab murder broadcasts from Berlin—there were other Arabs, more secular, leaders who repudiated the Holocaust. This was the meeting at which the leading Arab states met and formed the League of Arab States.

He later provided a copy to Hezekiah Niles, February 5, 1819 which is the source of the quotation since Henry never mentioned it.

The recommendation for partition was the basis of the decision of the United Nations in 1949 to partition Palestine.

The “Mandatory” was Great Britain who received the “Mandate” from the League of Nations to administer Palestine for the purposes set forth, and the methods specified, in this document. This together with {624531} are very important historically for two reasons. First, the San Remo Conference established the responsibility of the British for the Governance of Palestine. Second, it refutes an argument that some people make that the establishment of Israel by the United Nations in 1947 was a sudden act of guilt by the world over the Holocaust, thereby making the Muslim Arabs pay for the sins of the Christian Germans. What these quotations show is that the original mandate to the British by League of Nations, as early as 1920, envisioned the Jews as having a homeland in Palestine and provided specific methodologies and cautions regarding such an establishment. The world’s nations had decided the issue of the Jews in Palestine almost 20 years BEFORE the start of the Holocaust and more than 25 years earlier than the UN Resolution recognizing the nation of Palestine.

At the time the Arabs, anticipating an English pullout of Palestine, were engaged in constant acts of terror to drive the Jews out with the British. The Jews however wanted to create a Jewish state within Palestine but had few men and weapons, needing to depend on the British for protection which was spotty at best. Wingate persuaded his superior to allow him to set up and train a Jewish Defense Force which was the origin of the Israeli Army.

There are two movements ongoing:

No sooner had the UN voted the state of Israel into existence than many Arab Armies attacked the Jewish civilian population. The Arabs had all the advantages of men, weapons, position, and logistics. Yet the Israelis fought them off and prevailed.

Olmert was speaking for a significant minority of Israelis who believe that God consecrated the land of Palestine to the Jewish People and all other peoples who controlled it did so by conquest. So their logic is for those who do not believe in the Bible and give no modern credence to God’s will, the Jews have no taken back the land by conquest which is the way the Palestinians and all of the many peoples had controlled that land. For believers, the Jews have the highest right; for non-believers, their right of conquest is no weaker than any of the others.

This quotation has great historical significance for its logic and perception as much as for its content, The Jewish population that the British admitted plus those already in Israel was a small fraction of the Arab population then and a tiny proportion of the Jews and Arabs now inhabiting Israel with a very high standard of living. This included over 1 million Russian Jewish immigrants, The perception of the capacity of land to support a population has always been underestimated, The Arabs simply extrapolated assuming no modernization, no technology, and every family having a small farm. Given Arab traditional perceptions of societal development, modern Israel could not possibly function, much less thrive as it does. This is one of the reasons that the Arab nations have been so reluctant to absorb more Palestinian Arab refugees. A backward view of society and assumption that the Arab status quo was then the optimum society prohibited the Arabs from modern developmental possibilities.

The advocacy of the Jewish Return to the Holy Land was not first suggested or stated by European Jewish Zionists. Brightman was not only the first Christian to urge the return of the Jews, but the secon person of any faith to suggest it. He was only preceded by a Jewish refugee from the Spanish Inquisition--Joseph Nasi in 1561.

This statement hardened the Israeli population away from anything that would bring Hamas more power. The PLO leader had, for ALL the Palestinian people, recognized the right of Israel to exist {633062}. Now Hamas was not only reneging on the Arafat declaration, but also would not even use the term “Israel” and instead calls the nation which in less time than the Palestinians have had, has developed a modern, industrial, democratic state far in advance of the Palestinians or any of the Arab nations for that matter. Yet it is relegated to a “project” with the great hope of having it come to an end—the destruction of Israel. The Israelis observe that this is a de facto declaration of war, and hence treat Gaza and Hamas as an enemy force to be reckoned with. See {635338} for another alarming reneging of the recognition of Israel.

Wilson was a descended from a line of fundamentalist Presbyterian Ministers who believed firmly that God ordained the Holy Land for the Jewish People. Even though the WWI peace was the main topic of the Versailles Treaty negotiations, because the Turks made the poor judgment to ally themselves with the Germans and the Ottoman Empire was to be broken up. There was much lobbying by Zionists of many countries and many Arab groups even then.

Some Palestinians and other Arabs either ignore or are delusional about history as the Jews had been in the Area for 5 thousand years, and when Christ was born and died and Christianity born, the Jews were the majority population in the area of Israel and Palestine. Even in the Muslim Controlled Ottoman Empire, Jews were living in the area and are described on thousands of Ottoman legal and historical documents. The reason that this quotation is so important is that Abbas was supposed to be the most reasonable of the Arab leaders regarding a two state solution, and here in 2014 he argued that the Jews to not belong in the area and have no roots there. The other Hamas Arab leaders required in their charter the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews anywhere in the world. Who then, many conservative Israelis ask, can Israel reasonably negotiate with as no state will negotiate for its own existence—especially the most democratic, most developed, and has the highest average standard of living for its citizens and the most freedom for Arabs of any nation in the Middle East.