Wikipedia has a fairly extensive entry discussing the Haycroft commission:
Jaffa riots
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
On May 1, 1921, a scuffle began in Tel Aviv-Jaffa between rival groups of Jewish Bolsheviks, carrying Yiddish banners demanding Soviet Palestine, and Socialists parading on May Day.
The neighboring Arabs who witnessed the incident, took this opportunity to attack Jewish shops and homes. They were joined by armed Arab policemen. The pogroms continued until May 7 and spread as far as Petah Tikva, Kfar Saba, Rehovot and other Jewish communities.
Fatalities were: 47 Jews, 48 Arabs. Wounded: 146 Jews, 73 Arabs.
After the riots, thousands of Jewish residents of Jaffa fled for Tel Aviv, and were temporarily housed in tent camps on the beach.
The newspaper Kuntress whose author and co-editor Joseph Chaim Brenner was one of the victims, published an article Entrenchment: "on May 1 the age of innocence had ended."
The administration has made some arrests. After international outcry, the arrested Jews were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.
The Arab leaders submitted a petition to the League of Nations in which they expressed their grievances.
The high commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine Sir Herbert Samuel established an investigative commission headed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court in Palestine Sir Thomas Haycroft. Its report has confirmed the Arab policemen's participation in the riots and also has deemed the actions taken by the authorities adequate. The report angered both Jews and Arabs: it placed the blame on the Arabs, but said that "Zionists were not doing enough to mitigate the Arabs' apprehensions".
In his speech on the occasion of royal birthday in June 1921, Samuel stressed the Britain's commitment to the second part of the Balfour Declaration and declared that Jewish immigration would be allowed only to the extent that it did not burden the economy. The Jewish immigration was suspended.
The Britain's policy regarding promise to establish Jewish National Home in Palestine, the reason behind the Mandate given them by the League of Nations, has changed by "fixing by the numbers and interests of the present population" the future Jewish immigration. A popular contemporary comment was that Samuel had revised the Balfour Declaration to mean the Jewish National Home had become the Arab National Home.
New bloody riots broke out in Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem on November 2, 1921, when five Jewish residents and three Arab attackers were killed.
Tel Aviv had been a bedroom community at the time of the Jaffa riots, with its workers commuting to Jaffa. However, when Jews started perceiving Jaffa as a hostile place due to the riots, they decided to develop a business district in downtown Tel Aviv, which eventually became renowned for its Bauhaus architecture.
en.wikipedia.org
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I think we are really drifting from the original discussion. I asserted that while Palestinians have been painted as terrorists, most Americans don't know or understand the history of Zionist Israel. Specifically, that the early terrorist organizations were the future leaders of Zionist Israel, that the first terrorist bombing was by Zionist terrorists at the King David Hotel, that there were several large massacres of innocent Palestinians in the refugee camps, and that the Arabs who were living peacefully in Palestine had their lands and property stolen from them, and were shunted into refugee camps. I also asserted that if most Americans knew these things, I thought the majority pubic feeling might possibly be different than it is.
You have turned the discussion into an argument for Israel's existence, based on historic discrimination against the Jews. I don't dispute the level of tragedy they have suffered, but I don't believe they had the right to drive another people out of their homes because of it. Now another society is in tatters, and its people have been irreparably harmed. You also seem to believe that even though there are plenty of places for Jews to live now without discrimination or danger, they are still entitled to Israel. I understand your argument, even though I don't agree with it, but it is far afield from where we started.
All of your protestations about Arabs killing Jews and strife between Arabs and the early Zionists are true, but they are the same sort of thing as Native Americans uprising against the invading white man. It is perfectly normal to defend your way of life and your property. The invaders--the Zionists in Israel and the colonials, settlers and pioneers in America--came violently, and it is not unexpected that there would be a violent reaction. That does not make one a savage.
My primary point stands--the modern leaders of Israel were Zionist terrorist leaders. Sharon was condemmed by an Israeli court for his role in a Palestinian massacre. There are huge, continuing human rights abuses of the Palestinians by the Israelis. I really doubt that most Americans know about this history, and I think they would be appalled if they did. it serves our interests to have everyone believe that the Palestinians are evil terrorists, and we hear none of the background. The American government supports Israel because it is militarily strategic for us--a friend in the hostile, Arab Middle East, where we can land our warplanes, etc. Unfortunately, our long-term support of Israel has made the Middle East into sort of a bomb waiting to go off. It really has very little or nothing to do with America being the friend of the Jews. The enemies of our enemies are our friends. |
