The Zionist Freedom Alliance: Pro-Israel Revolution on Campus

Support the Zionist Freedom Alliance (http://www.zfa.org.il/). Excerpted from INN:

Over the last couple of years, the Zionist Freedom Alliance (http://www.zfa.org.il/) has been slowly taking American college campuses by storm with a message of Jewish rights not heard for many decades. Led by veteran IDF soldiers and activists in Israel, the ZFA presents Zionism to the youth as a revolutionary struggle for national liberation.

Unlike most pro-Israel advocacy organizations that present Israel as a democracy or focus on the Jewish state’s willingness to surrender territory, ZFA speaks of Israel as a Middle Eastern nation with a legitimate moral and historic right to its land.

“We tell young people about the fight for freedom from British rule,” says ZFA leader Yehuda HaKohen.

“And we explain how we are still fighting against nearly the entire world for our right to live freely in the whole of our country. Educating young people to the history of our struggle creates a paradigm shift in how they view our situation today.

If people know two basic facts – that this really is our country and that we fought the British Empire to free it – their understanding of the Middle East conflict is revolutionized. Suddenly the Jewish people are the natives in the story and international pressure to shrink our borders is an act of Western imperialism against an indigenous population.”

For more information, visit the ZFA online at http://www.zfa.org.il/

Historian: Jewish Towns Populated by Arab Late-Comers

The truth always comes out to the side of the righteous. From INN:

Historian Dr. Rivka Shpak-Lissak has embarked on an ambitious project, detailing the history of Jewish towns in the Land of Israel that are now known as Arab. Seven of her articles in this series have appeared on the Omedia website, and she has many more coming.

The bottom line, Dr. Lissak told Arutz-7, is that the Arabs have not been here for thousands of years, as they claim, and that in fact most of the formerly Jewish towns of the Galilee were populated by Arabs only within the last 300 years or so.

"The goal of all the rulers of the Holy Land, from the times of the Romans and onward, was always to rid the Land of the Jews," she said. "Finally, they succeeded. Many Jews simply left the Land rather than convert to Islam."

{ ... }

Other originally-Jewish cities highlighted in the series include Kafr Kana, Biram, Pekiin, Sakhnin, Gush Halav, and Arabeh.

Kafr Kana

The latest article is on Kafr Kana, just north of Upper Nazareth in the Lower Galilee. Some 260 Arab families lived there in 1945, and it now has a population of 18,000 people, mostly Moslems and some Christians - leading many to forget its Jewish past. It was a Jewish city during the period of the First Temple (between 2,800 and 2,400 years ago), as well as under Persian rule during the Second Temple period several centuries later. Josephus fortified the city against the Romans in the year 66 C.E., and after Jerusalem fell, priests from the Elyashiv watch moved to Kana. Talmudic sages lived there, and tradition has it that Rava and Rav Huna are buried there. Remnants of a 4th-century synagogue have been found in Kana.

Kana continued to be a thriving Jewish town in the ensuing centuries, though Christians began to move in as well. Eighty Jewish families were reported to be living there in 1473. Rabbi Ovadiah from Bartinura, whose student visited the town, reported that he heard that its Jews, though by then a minority among Christians, were living there peacefully. Somewhere in the 17th century, Bedouin and Arab attacks, as well as Turkish taxation, forced the Jews out, and Arabs replaced them.

During the War of Independence 300 years later, Arab terrorist gangs from Kafr Kana attacked nearby Jewish towns, until the IDF conquered it in July 1948.

Gush Halav

Another now-Arab town whose roots are Jewish is Jish, north of Tzfat (Safed). Known also by its Jewish name Gush Halav, the town is mentioned in the Mishna as having been walled since the times of Joshua ben Nun - i.e., nearly 3,300 years ago. Gush Halav was the last Jewish stronghold in the Galilee and Golan region during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66-73 CE); its fall was described at length by Josephus.

As was the case with other towns and cities in the Galilee, a dynamic Jewish presence continued in Gush Halav well into the second half of the second millennium C.E. Archaeologists have excavated a synagogue at Gush Halav that was in use from the 3rd to 6th centuries, and a Jewish burial site similar to that at Beit She'arim has been excavated. The Prophet Joel is said to be buried in Gush Halav.

Many Jews continued to live in Gush Halav, but by the 18th century - by which time the town was renamed Jish - their number had dwindled. Maronite Christians then began arriving in Jish, joining the few Jews who still remained. In 1948, most of the population left, but Arabs from nearby villages took their place. Jish-Gush Halav now has a population of some 2,700 - none of them Jews.

(to be continued)

Jerusalem Day on Al-Jazeera TV

Another great Jewish hero, Dr. Mordechai Keidar. Via Jerusalem Day on Al-Jazeera TV:

On Jerusalem Day last week, following reports of Israel's intentions to construct housing in areas of Jerusalem located beyond the 1967 borders, Al-Jazeera interviewed Dr. Mordechai Keidar, a lecturer from Bar-Ilan University's Department of Arabic Studies. Al-Jazeera's top journalist Jamal Rayyan opened with the question, "Is this decision meant to constitute another nail in the coffin of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations?"

Keidar answered, "To tell you the truth, I don't quite understand this. Must Israel ask permission from some other authority in the world? It has been our capital for 3,000 years. We have been there since the time your forefathers used to drink wine, bury their daughters alive, and pray to multiple gods." (Keidar was referring to a period which prevailed in the Arab world before the time of Islam.)

Rayyan continued, "If you would like to speak about history, let's talk about the Koran as well." "Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran," Keidar replied. Rayyan stated the verse that, according to Muslim belief, refers to Jerusalem, but Keidar objected. "Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran even once."

Rayyan then asked: "Doesn't this decision oppose the Roadmap, which determines that Israel will halt construction of the settlements in Jerusalem?" "The Roadmap does not mention Jerusalem," Keidar answered. "Jerusalem is outside of negotiations. Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, Period! We cannot discuss Jerusalem in any way. You return to this issue time and again, but Jerusalem is not referred to in the Roadmap. My brother, go and read the Roadmap."

1948, Israel and the Palestinians: The True Story

h/t Thunder Run. Via WSJ:

Sixty years after its establishment by an internationally recognized act of self-determination, Israel remains the only state in the world that is subjected to a constant outpouring of the most outlandish conspiracy theories and blood libels; whose policies and actions are obsessively condemned by the international community; and whose right to exist is constantly debated and challenged not only by its Arab enemies but by segments of advanced opinion in the West.

During the past decade or so, the actual elimination of the Jewish state has become a cause célèbre among many of these educated Westerners. The "one-state solution," as it is called, is a euphemistic formula proposing the replacement of Israel by a state, theoretically comprising the whole of historic Palestine, in which Jews will be reduced to the status of a permanent minority. Only this, it is said, can expiate the "original sin" of Israel's founding, an act built (in the words of one critic) "on the ruins of Arab Palestine" and achieved through the deliberate and aggressive dispossession of its native population.

This claim of premeditated dispossession and the consequent creation of the longstanding Palestinian "refugee problem" forms, indeed, the central plank in the bill of particulars pressed by Israel's alleged victims and their Western supporters. It is a charge that has hardly gone undisputed. As early as the mid-1950s, the eminent American historian J.C. Hurewitz undertook a systematic refutation, and his findings were abundantly confirmed by later generations of scholars and writers. Even Benny Morris, the most influential of Israel's revisionist "new historians," and one who went out of his way to establish the case for Israel's "original sin," grudgingly stipulated that there was no "design" to displace the Palestinian Arabs.

The recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British Mandate (1920-48) and Israel's early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writers and ignored or distorted by the "new historians," paints a much more definitive picture of the historical record. These documents reveal that the claim of dispossession is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. What follows is based on fresh research into these documents, which contain many facts and data hitherto unreported.

Click to find out about the documents which contain many facts and data unreported on the true story about Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

The bahlestinian people

The what?

When "palestinians" say the word "palestine" or "palestinian", they say "bahlestine" or "bahlestinian".

Bah instead of pah. Listen carefully and you will hear the frauds say they are "bahlestinians".

You would think that if the bahlestinian people were actually from the region they claim they are from, they would also be able to pronounce the name of the region they supposedly originally came from. But they don't and they can't.

They don't because they didn't originally come from there. And they can't because the language that they speak is eastern Arabic, and there is no "P" in Arabic. Additionally, there is no distinction in language between what the bahlestinian Arabs speak and what Syrian and Lebanese Arabs speak.

Just another fact about the bahlestinian barbarians that should be passed on.

A JAPANESE VIEW OF THE PALESTINIANS

If you are so sure that "Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history", I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine:

When was it founded and by whom?

What were its borders?

What was its capital?

What were its major cities?

What constituted the basis of its economy?

What was its form of government?

Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?

Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?

What was the language of the country of Palestine?

What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine?

What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.

And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?

You are lamenting the "low sinking" of a "once proud" nation. Please tell me, when exactly was that "nation" proud and what was it so proud of?

And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call "Palestinians" are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over -- or thrown out of -- the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?

I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day "Palestinians" to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here.

The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it "the Palestinian people" and installed it in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the "West Bank" and Gaza, respectively?

The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so called "Palestinians" have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel, and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a nation" -- or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.

In fact, there is only one way to achieve peace in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel's ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?

You are absolutely correct in your understanding of the "Palestinians" murderous motives. I am afraid however that you, along with 99% of the population of this planet have missed the beginning of WWIII (the enemy call it Jihad) quite a few years ago. The siege of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, an event to which the latest Nobel Peace Prize winner had
so miserably failed to respond, can be very well used as the day WWIII stepped out of the pages of the Koran and into the current events. I pray the United States and Israel lead the world to victory in this war.

Come to think of it, there is no choice, be you a Christian, or even, believe it or not, a Muslim. (Attributed to Yashiko Sagamori)