When the U.S. Navy Saved Jews of Eretz Yisrael Exactly 100 Years Ago (October 6, 1914)

...“America was at that time the one country which through its political and financial position was able to save [Jewish] Palestine permanently from going under.”

Lenny Ben-David..
IsraelDailyPicture.com..
06 October '14..

One hundred years ago the Jews of Palestine suffered terribly from hunger, disease and oppression. The territory was ruled with an iron fist by the Ottoman (Turkish) army. The Middle East teetered on the brink of World War I, and in 1914 Turkey abolished the “capitulation” agreements with European powers which granted them elements of sovereignty over their subjects in the Ottoman Empire. For many Jews of Eretz Yisrael their French, British and Russian protectors were gone. The financial assistance they received from their European Jewish brethren evaporated.

In late 1914, the war in the Middle East began with Turkey massing troops in Palestine and the Sinai to move against the British along the Suez Canal. The Turkish army prepared for the attack by forcibly conscripting locals, including Jews, and by looting (so-called “levies”) supplies, food and animals from residents of Palestine.

In a report on the Jews of Palestine in World War I, the Zionist Organization of London related in 1921, “The harshest and most cruel of all the Turkish officials was the Commandant of the Jaffa district, Hassan Bey.”

The report described how “it would suddenly come into his head to summon respectable householders … with an order to bring him some object from their homes which had caught his fancy or of which he had heard — an electric clock, a carpet, etc. Groundless arrests, insults, tortures, bastinadoes [clubs] — these were things every householder had to fear.” [In April 1917, on the eve of Passover, the Turks ordered the expulsion of approximately 8,000 Jews from Jaffa. An unknown number died. The expulsion of all Jews from Palestine was halted by the German commander in Palestine.]

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Lenny Ben-David is the Director of Publications at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the publisher ofwww.israeldailypicture.com.  He served as a senior diplomat at Israel’s embassy in Washington and an arms control consultant in eastern Europe. He spent 25 years working for AIPAC in Washington and Jerusalem.

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Jew-baiting at the Western Wall – an historical vignette

Daphne Anson
05 September '10

Yesterday was marked around the world – by Muslims and anti-Zionists of various stripes carrying pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah placards – as Al-Quds Day, dedicated to liberating Jerusalem from the Israelis – or, as the Iranian satellite news channel Press TV put it last night, demanding an end to “Israel’s 62-year [sic] occupation of Palestine” . The Al Quds Day march in Britain has been described, with good reason, as “the biggest annual Israel hatefest in London” – at yesterday’s ‘"We Are All Hizbolla Now" and "Zionism Equals Racism" were just two of the racist chants. Resistance was provided by a small group of Zionists, a group of Iranian expatriates in London and a group from the EDL. Around 1200 marchers walked from Speakers Corner down Hyde Park Lane, then back up, turning right to congregate in front of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square (the "Great Satan").”’ For a description and links to other accounts and videos see http://www.thejc.com/blogpost/terrorist-supporters-march-freely-through-london


Al-Quds Day was inaugurated by the late Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, the year he took power in Iran. “I ask all the Muslims of the world and the Muslim governments to join together to sever the hand of this [Israeli] usurper and its supporters,” he declared. “I call on all the Muslims of the world to select as Al-Quds Day the last Friday in the holy month of Ramadan ... and through a ceremony demonstrating the solidarity of Muslims world-wide, announce their support for the legitimate rights of the Muslim people. I ask God Almighty for the victory of the Muslims over the infidels.” On the eve of this year’s Al-Quds Day Ayatollah Khamenei stated: "Israel is a hideous entity In the Middle East which will undoubtedly be annihilated." And yesterday, in Teheran, President Ahmadinejad proclaimed: "If the leaders of the region do not have the guts, then the people of the region are capable of removing the Zionist regime from the world scene" and pronounced the peace talks between Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas as "stillborn and doomed."

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