Can you explain to me any flaws in the following article by David Brudnoy
From: "Brudnoy, David B" <brudnoy@boston.cbs.com>
Subject: FW: MidEast history in a nutshell
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 14:26:27 -0400
Friends, this comes from another friend and is accurate. Many people wonder about how things came to the current pass. This is an abbreviated history --dealing with the so-called "refugee" matter and others. What is left out is
this:
For at least 3000 years -- the stuff that is historical in the Hebrew Bible is at least some approximation of reality, though of course much of itis prettied up, as is "history" of all ancient peoples; written by scholars or priests or propagandists or all three in order to tell their people
something glorious about their derivation --Jews have lived in what is nowIsrael and Judaea and Samaria (the West Bank), under their own rule, rule by Persians, Romans, Christians, Muslims, but always there in great numbers.
Like every place else on earth (including the US) that area has been"occupied" by others. Such is life. For a few hundred years before theBritish Mandate (with which this short history here begins) the area was ruled by the Ottoman Empire (headquartered in Constantinople, now
Istanbul).
The Ottomans ruled much of the Arab world, as successors to previous caliphates, from Baghdad and Damascus, empires created, throve, then crumbled, in the years after the Muslim religion was imposed upon (in many cases) and willingly accepted (in many cases) by peoples in those
areas.
Under the Ottoman Empire there was no independent Egypt or Algeria or Tunisia or Turkey or any of the other countries that we know of today.There was no Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, Yemen, and so on.All of these countries were created in modern times, in the 1920s in
most cases, not that societies and cultures hadn't lived there, but the current boundaries of those countries were drawn up on maps by Europeans. Why?Because the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany during World War I and --you
may remember -- Germany lost. And with Germany's loss, so, too, the OttomanEmpire lost; it lost not only the last vestiges of its control of the people in its heartland, what we call Turkey, and but also the vast areas it had
controlled.. The Ottoman Empire unravelled, soon was destroyed from within,modern Turkey was created, and the British and French drew up political lines and created countries, among them those listed above. That's why
Britain had a "mandate" in what is now Israel, Judaea and Samaria,Gaza, and Jordan -- because the League of Nations handed that area to Britain after the implosion of the Ottoman Empire.Britain created Iraq and imposed a monarchy upon it; France created Syria and imposed a monarchy on it. These British victorious countries also created Lebanon (France) and Yemen, then called Aden (Britain), and so
on The House of Saud, an old and important family in the vast deserts, did a good job on their own carving out what today is Saudi Arabia (incidentally,the only country in the world named after the family that rules it -- and as
you know, Saudi Arabia is one of the most despotic countries on earth,ruled entirely by the House of Saud). In any case, without going into all the details, the cental point is this: these countries were manufactured by
Europe, and contrary to the rantings of contemporary Europeans and Americans who know no or little history, Israel is not the only "artificial" countrhin
the region. They are all artificial in the sense of havint their political boundaries drawn by others (much like black African nations) and Israel is not unique in being a modern impositioin, even though Israel, in the biblical sense, is antique in a way that none of these other countries are.That's where this brief illustrated history from my friend starts. I said in a couple of recent articles that 77% of the British mandate of Palestine --
a name derived from the Roman Palestina, and never an independent country,nor were Arabs ever referred to by themselves or by others as Palestinians until they took the term for themselves in the mid-1960s -- was carved out
by Britain and made into Transjordan, now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This 77% of the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine is occupied by Arabs from that region, obviously, who are in the large part indigenous to that region, hence (if you like) "Palestinians," whereas the
Hashemites are from what is now Saudi Arabia. A Hashemite aristocrat was made into king of Transjordan by the British, and he is the grandfather of the current King. The Hashemites are a tenuous minority, actually, in Jordan, hence fear for their throne, hence have mixed feelings about whether the Judaea and Samaria region should be made into a "Palestinian" country. They fear to absorb Judaea and Samaria and make those people citizens of Jordan because
then the Hashemites become an even smaller minority; at the same time, they fear an independent Palestinian country on their west, because it would undoubtedly be a target for Arafat or whichever dictator succeeds him, to predate against, under a banner of "All Palestinians Unite!" or
somesuch.So if you wonder why Jordan is so ambivalent and is not through its leaders screaming at the top of its lungs for an independent Arafatastan (er, Palestine), now you know.There is already a Palestinian country: Jordan, though that's of interest only to those who want to know why this prattling about the disposession of "Palestinians" is so ridiculous. They already have one country, Jordan,and could have had another, in 1947 -- choosing instead their first war to kill the Jews and destroy Israel -- and also in 2000, when Pres. Clinton
squeezed Israel's PM (Barak) to offer virtually everything the Palestinian dictator (Arafat) had demanded to Arafat. The latter refused and began the second intifada -- he said to his confidantes that had he accepted Israel's offer, he would have been assassinated by his own people, because, as
you must know by now, surely, the aim of the people there is to destroy Israel and take all that territory for themselves. There is no "peace" movement among the Arabs, there is only a 'piece" movement -- a piece of Israel
now, another piece later, and other pieces until there is no Israel.Another thing given only a cursory mention in the illustrated history is that Jordan rulled Judaea and Samaria (West Bank) for 19 years not as an incipient Palestinain country but simply as booty from war, and until
the mid-1960s there was no Arab movement to have a separate country there,because such a movement would have been met by annihilation from the Jordanian monarchy. Arabs didn't say they were "occupied" by Jordan. They said nothing. When in the 1967 war the Jordanians lost Judaea and Samara --
that is in the illustrated history -- then suddenly a huge movement began,led by Arafat, to have a separate country. And there we are.And by the way, the European nations never protested Jordan's "occupation"of Judaea and Samaria, not a peep out of those brave Europeans from 1948 to 1967 about "occupation." All of that blather has nothing to do with some vaunted European (0r for that matter leftist American) genuine concern about the poor oppressed Palestinians; it is solely and demonstrably a detestation
of Jews and a desire to see Israel destroyed that motivates these people to go on and on about the "occupation" and such.The short history that you can access at the link below is useful. I regret imposing it on you but I keep hearing from people asking me to give them a synopsis of the history, and now we have one. I swear (or affirm) on my
honor as a trained historian that this is accurate. enjoy. Just click below. david
Click here: conflict <http://www.conceptwizard.com/conflict.html> |
