This letter is the second half of my response to the latest anti-Israel diatribe by a long-time Israel basher, which appeared in this newspaper about a few weeks ago.
The habitual Israel basher had admitted in his latest letter that Jews always lived in the land of Israel – throughout thousands of years.
However, then he tried to downplay and deny the significance of the enduring, millennia-old presence of the Jewish people in Israel – and ignored the belated arrival of much of Israel’s Muslim Arab population.
One of the “big lies” constantly reiterated by anti-Semitic propagandists is that the Arab population in Israel is indigenous while the Jewish population is a bunch of late-to-the scene interlopers.
In fact, the Arabs came late to the scene. Here is a brief chronology:
Jews settled in Israel in the 13th to 12th centuries B.C.E. A Jewish monarchy under King Saul was established in 1020 B.C.E.
The land of Israel flourished during the hundreds of years of ancient Jewish rule.
After King Solomon’s death in 930 B.C.E., northern Israel was ruled for another 200 years by a succession of 19 Jewish kings, and southern Israel (Judea, whose capital was Jerusalem) was ruled for another 350 years under a different 19 kings descending from King David.
A Jewish presence continued through all the subsequent conquests by foreign nations – by the Assyrians (722 B.C.E.), Babylonia (586 B.C.E.), Greeks (332 B.C.E.), Romans (63 B.C.E.-313 C.E.), the Byzantine Empire (313 C.E.-636 C.E.), Persia (614-636 C.E.), Arab Caliphates (636 C.E.-1099 C.E.), Crusaders (1099-1291 C.E.), Mamelukes (1291-1516 C.E.), Ottoman Empire (1517-1917 C.E.), and the British Mandate (1918-1948).
Moreover, there were periods of Jewish independent rule or autonomy in the midst of many of these periods of foreign rule.
In addition, many Jews who had been exiled by foreign conquerors returned to Israel during such periods. For instance, in 515-538 B.C.E., Persia’s King Cyrus the Great permitted Jews who were in captivity in Persia to return to Israel to rebuild the Second Temple in Jerusalem on the site of the First Temple which had been destroyed in 586 B.C.E. 50,000 Jews returned to Israel from Persia initially in 538 B.C.E., and more Jews followed in subsequent years.
When the Greeks (Alexander the Great) conquered Israel in 332 B.C.E., Jewish semi-autonomy continued in Israel.
As a result of the Maccabbees’ revolt against Hellenistic restrictions on Jewish worship (166-160 B.C.E.), Jewish autonomy and an independent Jewish kingdom (the Hasmonean dynasty) was achieved for about 80 years (142-63 B.C.E.). After the Persian invasion of 614 C.E., Jews were granted administration of Jerusalem for several years.
During Ottoman rule, Safed became a thriving Jewish center of intellectual and religious activity.
The Code of Jewish Law was published in Safed in 1564. Visitors to the city can still see synagogues dating back to the 1500s.
While the land of Israel thrived under Jewish rule, the constant warfare by one group of conquerors after another rendered much of the land a malaria- and locust-infested, desolate, sparsely inhabited wasteland, ruled from afar.
In modern times, Jewish and Muslim populations in Israel increased during virtually the same time period, during the last 180 years.
The Jewish efforts to make the barren desert bloom brought waves of Egyptian and Arab immigrants from other nations.
During the 1800s and first part of the 1900s, Egyptian and other Arab laborers continued to arrive to work together with Jewish laborers on Jewish reclamation projects. These Arab workers then remained in Israel.
Massive recent Muslim immigration from other nations into Israel in the 1800s through mid-1900s also occurred for other reasons.
Waves of Egyptian Muslims fled to Israel to evade Egypt’s onerous draft in about the 1820s-1830s.
Based on sources in Cairo, French scholar M. Sabry wrote that in just one year alone, 1931 and one city alone, “more than six thousand fellaheen” came from Egypt and settle in the city of Akko (in Israel), and the governor of Akko allowed the Egyptians to stay.
Egyptian General Ibrahim Pasha then brought many more thousands of Muslims to settle empty stretches of land in Israel, when Pasha invaded and ruled parts of Israel (1831-1840).
In addition, Ibrahim Pasha brought Egyptian slaves with him, who were freed and settled in Israel.
The Belgian company that built the Jerusalem-Jaffa railroad also imported Egyptian workers, who remained in Israel. The same scenario was repeated for Israel’s other rail lines.
In addition, in the decades prior to Israel’s independence, the largest employer in the area, the pro-Arab British Mandatory government (1920-1948) discriminated against Jewish workers (often clashing with the Histradrut Jewish Labor Union).
Although Jews were the largest religious group in Israel’s capital city, Jerusalem from the 1840s onwards, the British severely restricted the numbers of local Jews it would hire.
Instead, the British imported Arabs from Egypt, Syria, and Transjordan to work for the British government in the area that is now Israel.
The old city of Jerusalem (eastern Jerusalem) was a Jewish area.
When Jordan illegally occupied the old city in 1948-1967, Arabs expelled the Jewish population and systematically destroyed 55 synagogues which had been in existence for centuries. (Arabs now claim that “East Jerusalem” is an Arab area.)
The common “Palestinian” Arab names “al-Masri” and “el-Musriya” (translation: from Egypt) reveals the Egyptian origin of many of those who claim to be indigenous “Palestinians” but who really hailed from elsewhere.
The name can be found among the “Palestinian” terrorists swapped for Gilad Shalit.
Another significant Muslim group came to Israel from Algiers, after the French conquered Algiers in 1830, and defeated the long Algerian Arab rebellion that followed in ensuing years. In 1856, the French permitted the leader of the Algerian rebellion, Abd el-Kader el-Hassani and many of his followers (who were called “Mugrabis,” or Westerners) to depart from Algiers. The Ottomans (Turks), who ruled Israel (then called Palestine) at the time, then permitted these Algerians to immigrate into Israel. Hassani settled in Syria, while many of his Mugrabi Moslems followers settled in and around northern Israeli villages and cities including Sefad and Tiberias.
The Turks (Ottoman empire) also permitted Moslems to immigrate to Israel in the 1800s and early 1900s from other areas of North Africa including Tripoli and Morocco (also sometimes referred to as Mugrabis); from Damascus, Syria; from Kurdish areas; and from Persia (Iran).
The common “Palestinian” Arab surname “Mugrabi” or “Mughrabi” reveals the Algerian and North African origins of the bearers of that name.
One bearer of this north African name, Dalal Mughrabi, was the female “Palestinian” Arab terrorist who committed the worst terror attack in Israel’s history, the Tel Aviv Coastal Road Massacre, in which she murdered 37 innocent Israeli civilians including 12 children, and wounded scores more.
Muslims fleeing from Christian-Russian rule in the Caucusus and even from Bosnia also immigrated to Israel in the late 1800s through early 1900s. The Bosnian Muslims settled around Ceasarea, Israel.
Turkoman Muslims also arrived from Iraq. In addition, in 1908, Arab immigrants from Yemen arrived in and settled in Jaffa, Israel.
In sum, a vast number of “Palestinian” Arabs were not indigenous to Israel.
This is also true of the “Palestinian” leadership. The P.L.O. co-founder and murderer of innocent Jewish children, Yasser Arafat was born in Egypt. (The surname “Arafat” hails from a hill near Mecca, Saudi Arabia.)
The leader of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (“BDS”) movement to destroy Israel economically, Omar Barghouti, was born in Qatar.
Interestingly, the Christian population expanded in the same period.
Christian immigrants arrived in Israel, after fleeing from Muslim pogroms against Christians in Lebanon, such as the Deir el-Kamer massacre in 1860.
During the same period, Muslims also slaughtered Christians in 60 villages in the Beirut area, as well as in Damascus, Syria, where Muslims murdered approximately 25,000 Christians.
The Jews of Safed, Israel welcomed, hid and assisted the Christian immigrants who were fleeing from Deir el-Kamer and other Muslim massacres of Christians.
Unlike other countries in the Middle East, the State of Israel continues to be a haven where Christians and persons of all faiths can worship freely.
Liz Berney
Great Neck
