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Zionism | nationalistic movement | Britannica.com

Posted By on June 23, 2015

Zionism,Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews (Hebrew: Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel). Though Zionism originated in eastern and central Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, it is in many ways a continuation of the ancient attachment of the Jews and of the Jewish religion to the historical region of Palestine, where one of the hills of ancient Jerusalem was called Zion.

A brief treatment of Zionism follows. For fuller treatments, see Israel: Zionism; Judaism: Zionism.

In the 16th and 17th centuries a number of messiahs came forward trying to persuade Jews to return to Palestine. The Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) movement of the late 18th century, however, urged Jews to assimilate into Western secular culture. In the early 19th century interest in a return of the Jews to Palestine was kept alive mostly by Christian millenarians. Despite the Haskala, eastern European Jews did not assimilate and, in reaction to tsarist pogroms, formed the ovevei iyyon (Lovers of Zion) to promote the settlement of Jewish farmers and artisans in Palestine.

A political turn was given to Zionism by Theodor Herzl, an Austrian journalist who regarded assimilation as most desirable but, in view of anti-Semitism, impossible to realize. Thus, he argued, if Jews were forced by external pressure to form a nation, they could lead a normal existence only through concentration in one territory. In 1897 Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland, which drew up the Basel program of the movement, stating that Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.

The centre of the movement was established in Vienna, where Herzl published the official weekly Die Welt (The World). Zionist congresses met yearly until 1901 and then every two years. When the Ottoman government refused Herzls request for Palestinian autonomy, he found support in Great Britain. In 1903 the British government offered 6,000 square miles (15,500 square km) of uninhabited Uganda for settlement, but the Zionists held out for Palestine.

At the death of Herzl in 1904, the leadership moved from Vienna to Cologne and then to Berlin. Prior to World War I, Zionism represented only a minority of Jews, mostly from Russia but led by Austrians and Germans. It developed propaganda through orators and pamphlets, created its own newspapers, and gave an impetus to what was called a Jewish renaissance in letters and arts. The development of the Modern Hebrew language largely took place during that period.

The failure of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the wave of pogroms and repressions that followed caused growing numbers of Russian Jewish youth to emigrate to Palestine as pioneer settlers. By 1914 there were about 90,000 Jews in Palestine; 13,000 settlers lived in 43 Jewish agricultural settlements, many of them supported by the French Jewish philanthropist Baron Edmond de Rothschild.

Upon the outbreak of World War I, political Zionism reasserted itself, and its leadership passed to Russian Jews living in England. Two such Zionists, Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, were instrumental in obtaining the Balfour Declaration from Great Britain (November 2, 1917), which promised British support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. The declaration was included in Britains League of Nations mandate over Palestine (1922).

In the following years the Zionists built up the Jewish urban and rural settlements in Palestine, perfecting autonomous organizations and solidifying Jewish cultural life and Hebrew education. In March 1925 the Jewish population in Palestine was officially estimated at 108,000, and it rose to about 238,000 (20 percent of the population) by 1933. Jewish immigration remained relatively slow, however, until the rise of Hitler in Europe. Nevertheless, the Arab population feared that Palestine would eventually become a Jewish state and bitterly resisted Zionism and the British policy supporting it. British forces struggled to maintain order in the face of a series of Arab uprisings. The strain of suppressing the Arab revolt of 193639, which was more extensive and sustained than earlier uprisings, ultimately led Britain to reassess its policies. In hopes of keeping the peace between Jews and Palestinian Arabs and retaining Arab support against Germany and Italy in World War II, Britain placed restrictions on Jewish immigration in 1939. The new restrictions were violently opposed by Zionist underground groups such as the Stern Gang and Irgun Zvai Leumi, which committed acts of terrorism and assassination against the British and organized illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine.

The large-scale extermination of European Jews by the Nazis led many Jews to seek refuge in Palestine and many others, especially in the United States, to embrace Zionism. As tensions grew among Arabs and Zionists, Britain submitted the Palestine problem first to Anglo-U.S. discussion for a solution and later to the United Nations, which on November 29, 1947, proposed partition of the country into separate Arab and Jewish states and the internationalization of Jerusalem. The creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, triggered an invasion by the neighbouring Arab countries that was soundly defeated by the Israeli army. (See Arab-Israeli War of 194849.) By the time armistice agreements were signed in 1949, Israel held more land than had been allotted to it under the UN partition plan. About 800,000 Arabs had also fled or been expelled from the area that became Israel. Thus, 50 years after the first Zionist congress and 30 years after the Balfour Declaration, Zionism achieved its aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, but at the same time, it became an armed camp surrounded by hostile Arab nations, and Palestinian organizations engaged in terrorism in and outside Israel.

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UN Report On Gaza: Both Sides May Be Guilty Of War Crimes

Posted By on June 23, 2015

JERUSALEM (AP) A much-awaited United Nations report into the 2014 Gaza war released Monday found that both Israel and Palestinian militant groups may have committed war crimes during the conflict.

Both Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers quickly rejected the report's findings, which said Palestinian militants targeted civilians in their rocket attacks, while Israeli forces likely used "disproportionate" force in civilian areas of the Gaza Strip both identified by the U.N. committee as potential war crimes.

While Israel long has had a contentious relationship with the United Nations, the stakes now are much higher as Palestinians have joined the International Criminal Court and are pursuing war crimes charges against Israel. Monday's report could play a key role in the case against Israel.

"The extent of the devastation and human suffering in Gaza was unprecedented and will impact generations to come," said Mary McGowan Davis, the chair of the commission. "There is also ongoing fear in Israel among communities who come under regular threat."

The war started July 8, 2014, after the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank, as well as the subsequent kidnapping and burning alive of a Palestinian teenager in an apparent revenge attack. Israel responded to the teens' kidnapping by arresting hundreds of Hamas members in raids in the West Bank, prompting militant groups in Gaza to step up their rocket attacks.

More than 2,200 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, were killed during the fighting, according to U.N. and Palestinian officials, while 73 people, including six civilians, died on the Israeli side.

Israel preemptively criticized the report as biased. In particular, Israel took issue with the U.N. Human Rights Council that commissioned the inquiry, saying it is stacked with countries that focus disproportionate attention on Israel while having poor human rights records themselves.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that throughout the conflict Israel acted according to international law and he criticized the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday as a body that does "everything but worry about human rights."

"Israel does not commit war crimes. Israel defends itself against a terrorist organization that calls for its destruction and carries out many war crimes," Netanyahu said. "We will continue to act forcefully and determinedly against those who seek to harm our citizens and we will do this according to international law."

Hamas was similarly defiant, with senior official Ghazi Hamad telling The Associated Press the U.N. report created a false balance "between the victims and the killers." He said Hamas rockets and mortars were aimed at Israeli military sites, not at civilians.

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Sephardic law and customs – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted By on June 22, 2015

Sephardic law and customs means the practice of Judaism as observed by the Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, so far as it is peculiar to themselves and not shared with other Jewish groups such as the Ashkenazim. Sephardim do not constitute a separate denomination within Judaism, but rather a distinct cultural, juridical and philosophical tradition. Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities generally maintain a comparable level of religious observance and halakha to Ashkenazic Orthodoxy (including Modern Orthodoxy), and have not undergone any split comparable to the Reform movement in Judaism.

Sephardim are, primarily, the descendants of Jews from the Iberian peninsula. They may be divided into the families that left in the Expulsion of 1492 and those that remained as crypto-Jews and left in the following few centuries.

In religious parlance, and by many in modern Israel, the term is used in a broader sense to include all Jews of Ottoman or other Asian or North African backgrounds, whether or not they have any historic link to Spain, though some prefer to distinguish between Sephardim proper and Mizrai Jews.

For the purposes of this article there is no need to distinguish the two groups, as their religious practices are basically similar: whether or not they are "Spanish Jews" they are all "Jews of the Spanish rite". There are three reasons for this convergence, which are explored in more detail below:

Jewish law is based on the Torah, as interpreted and supplemented by the Talmud. The Talmud in its final form dates from the Sassanian period and was the product of a number of colleges in Babylonia.

The two principal colleges, Sura and Pumbedita, survived well into the Islamic period. Their presidents, known as Geonim, together with the Exilarch, were recognised by the Abbasid Caliphs as the supreme authority over the Jews of the Arab world. The Geonim provided written answers to questions on Jewish law from round the world, which were published in collections of responsa and enjoyed high authority. The Geonim also produced handbooks such as the Halachot Pesuqot by Yehudai Gaon and the Halachot Gedolot by Simeon Kayyara.

The learning of the Geonim was transmitted through the scholars of Kairouan, notably Chananel Ben Chushiel and Nissim Gaon, to Spain, where it was used by Isaac Alfasi in his Sefer ha-Halachot (code of Jewish law), which took the form of an edited and abridged Talmud. This in turn formed the basis for the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides. A feature of these early Tunisian and Spanish schools was a willingness to make use of the Jerusalem Talmud as well as the Babylonian.

Developments in France and Germany were somewhat different. They too respected the rulings of the Geonim, but also had strong local customs of their own. The Tosafists did their best to explain the Talmud in a way consistent with these customs. A theory grew up that custom trumps law (see Minhag): this had some Talmudic support, but was not nearly so prominent in Arabic countries as it was in Europe. Special books on Ashkenazic custom were written, for example by Yaakov Moelin. Further instances of Ashkenazic custom were contributed by the penitential manual of Eleazar of Worms and some additional stringencies on sheitah (the slaughter of animals) formulated in Jacob Weil's Sefer Sheitot u-Bediqot.

The learning of the Tosafists, but not the literature on Ashkenazic customs as such, was imported into Spain by Asher ben Yeiel, a German-born scholar who became chief rabbi of Toledo and the author of the Hilchot ha-Rosh - an elaborate Talmudic commentary, which became the third of the great Spanish authorities after Alfasi and Maimonides. A more popular rsum, known as the Arba'ah Turim, was written by his son, Jacob ben Asher, though he did not agree with his father on all points.

The Tosafot were also used by the scholars of the Catalonian school, such as Nahmanides and Solomon ben Adret, who were also noted for their interest in Kabbalah. For a while, Spain was divided between the schools: in Catalonia the rulings of Nahmanides and ben Adret were accepted, in Castile those of the Asher family and in Valencia those of Maimonides. (Maimonides' rulings were also accepted in most of the Arab world, especially Yemen, Egypt and the Land of Israel.)

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What Is “Jewish?” – About Judaism: Its History, Traditions …

Posted By on June 22, 2015

Judaism is not a race

Judaism is not a race because Jews do not share one common ancestry. For instance, Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews are both "Jewish." However, whereas Ashkenazi Jews often hail from Europe, Sephardic Jews often hail from the Middle East. People of many different races have become Jewish over the centuries.

Although today Israel is often called the Jewish homeland, being Jewish is not a nationality because Jews have been dispersed throughout the world for almost two thousand years.

Hence, Jews come from countries all over the world.

Being Jewish means that you are part of the Jewish people, whether because you were born into a Jewish home and culturally identify as Jewish or because you practice the Jewish religion (or both).

Cultural Judaism includes things such as Jewish foods, customs and rituals. For instance, many people are born into Jewish homes and are raised eating blintzes and lighting shabbat candles, but never step foot inside a synagogue. A Jewish identity is automatically bestowed on babies of Jewish mothers (according to Orthodox and Conservative Judaism) and of Jewish mothers or fathers (according to Reform Judaism). This Jewish identity stays with them throughout life even if they don't actively practice Judaism.

Religious Judaism includes the beliefs of the Jewish religion. The way a person practices the Jewish religion can take many forms and partially for this reason there are different movements of Judaism.

The main denominations are Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist Judaism. Many people who are born into Jewish homes affiliate with one of these branches, but there are also those who do not.

If a person is not born Jewish, s/he can convert to Judaism by studying with a rabbi and undergoing the process of conversion. Merely believing in the precepts of Judaism is not enough to make someone a Jew. They must complete the conversion process in order to be considered Jewish. Though the different branches of Judaism have varying requirements for conversion, it is safe to say that the conversion process is very meaningful for whomever decides to undertake it.

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Anne Frank | biography – German diarist | Britannica.com

Posted By on June 21, 2015

Anne Frank,in full Annelies Marie Frank (born June 12, 1929,Frankfurt am Main, Germanydied February/March 1945,Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Hannover),young Jewish girl whose diary of her familys two years in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands became a classic of war literature.

Early in the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, Annes father, Otto Frank (18891980), a German businessman, took his wife and two daughters to live in Amsterdam. In 1941, after German forces occupied the Netherlands, Anne was compelled to transfer from a public to a Jewish school. Faced with deportation (supposedly to a forced-labour camp), the Franks went into hiding on July 9, 1942, with four other Jews in the backroom office and warehouse of Otto Franks food-products business. With the aid of a few non-Jewish friends, among them Miep Gies, who smuggled in food and other supplies, they lived confined to their secret annex until August 4, 1944, when the Gestapo, acting on a tip from Dutch informers, discovered them.

The family was transported to Westerbork, a transit camp in the Netherlands, and from there to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland on September 3, 1944, on the last transport to leave Westerbork for Auschwitz. Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred to Bergen-Belsen the following month. Annes mother died in early January, just before the evacuation of Auschwitz on January 18, 1945. It was established by the Dutch government that both Anne and Margot died in a typhus epidemic in March 1945, only weeks before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. In 2015 scholars revealed new research, including analysis of archival data and first-person accounts, indicating that the sisters might have perished in February 1945. Otto Frank was found hospitalized at Auschwitz when it was liberated by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.

Friends who had searched the familys hiding place after their capture later gave Otto Frank the papers left behind by the Gestapo. Among them he found Annes diary, which was published as The Diary of a Young Girl (originally in Dutch, 1947). It is precocious in style and insight and traces her emotional growth amid adversity. In it she wrote, In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.

The Diary has been translated into more than 65 languages and is the most widely read diary of the Holocaust, and Anne is probably the best-known of Holocaust victims. The Diary was also made into a play that premiered on Broadway in October 1955, and in 1956 it won both the Tony Award for best play and the Pulitzer Prize for best drama. A film version directed by George Stevens was produced in 1959. The well-received play was controversial and was challenged by screenwriter Meyer Levin, who wrote an early version of the play (later realized as a 35-minute radio play) and accused Otto Frank and his chosen screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett of sanitizing and de-Judaizing the story. The play was often performed in high schools throughout the world and was revived (with additions) on Broadway in 199798. A new English translation of the Diary, published in 1995, contained material that had been edited out of the original version, making the revised translation nearly one-third longer than the first. The Frank familys hiding place on the Prinsengracht, a canal in Amsterdam, has become a museum and is consistently among the most-visited tourist sites in Amsterdam.

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anti-Semitism | Britannica.com

Posted By on June 21, 2015

anti-Semitism,hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group. The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns under way in central Europe at that time. Although the term now has wide currency, it is a misnomer, since it implies a discrimination against all Semites. Arabs and other peoples are also Semites, and yet they are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood. The term is especially inappropriate as a label for the anti-Jewish prejudices, statements, or actions of Arabs or other Semites. Nazi anti-Semitism, which culminated in the Holocaust, had a racist dimension in that it targeted Jews because of their supposed biological characteristicseven those who had themselves converted to other religions or whose parents were converts. This variety of anti-Jewish racism dates only to the emergence of so-called scientific racism in the 19th century and is different in nature from earlier anti-Jewish prejudices.

Anti-Semitism has existed to some degree wherever Jews have settled outside Palestine. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, religious differences were the primary basis for anti-Semitism. In the Hellenistic Age, for instance, Jews social segregation and their refusal to acknowledge the gods worshiped by other peoples aroused resentment among some pagans, particularly in the 1st century bce1st century ce. Unlike polytheistic religions, which acknowledge multiple gods, Judaism is monotheisticit recognizes only one god. However, pagans saw Jews principled refusal to worship emperors as gods as a sign of disloyalty.

Although Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples were practicing Jews and Christianity is rooted in the Jewish teaching of monotheism, Judaism and Christianity became rivals soon after Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate, who executed him according to contemporary Roman practice. Religious rivalry initially was theological. It soon also became political.

Historians agree that the break between Judaism and Christianity followed the Roman destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in the year 70 ce and the subsequent exile of Jews. In the aftermath of this devastating defeat, which was interpreted by Jew and Christian alike as a sign of divine punishment, the Gospels diminished Roman responsibility and expressed Jewish culpability in the death of Jesus both explicitly (Matthew 27:25) and implicitly. Jews were depicted as killers of the Son of God.

Christianity was intent on replacing Judaism by making its own particular message universal. The New Testament was seen as fulfilling the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible); Christians were the new Israel, both in flesh and in spirit. The God of justice had been replaced by the God of love. Thus, some early Church Fathers taught that God had finished with the Jews, whose only purpose in history was to prepare for the arrival of his Son. According to this view, the Jews should have left the scene. Their continued survival seemed to be an act of stubborn defiance. Exile was taken as a sign of divine disfavour incurred by the Jews denial that Jesus was the Messiah and by their role in his crucifixion.

As Christianity spread in the first centuries ce, most Jews continued to reject that religion. As a consequence, by the 4th century, Christians tended to regard Jews as an alien people who, because of their repudiation of Christ and his church, were condemned to perpetual migration (a belief best illustrated in the legend of the Wandering Jew). When the Christian church became dominant in the Roman Empire, its leaders inspired many laws by Roman emperors designed to segregate Jews and curtail their freedoms when they appeared to threaten Christian religious domination. As a consequence, Jews were increasingly forced to the margins of European society.

Enmity toward the Jews was expressed most acutely in the churchs teaching of contempt. From St. Augustine in the 4th century to Martin Luther in the 16th, some of the most eloquent and persuasive Christian theologians excoriated the Jews as rebels against God and murderers of the Lord. They were described as companions of the Devil and a race of vipers. Church liturgy, particularly the scriptural readings for the Good Friday commemoration of the Crucifixion, contributed to this enmity. Such views were finally renounced by the Roman Catholic Church decades after the Holocaust with the Vatican II declaration of Nostra aetate (Latin: In Our Era) in 1965, which transformed Roman Catholic teaching regarding Jews and Judaism.

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Why Israel allows Qatar to support Hamas in Gaza …

Posted By on June 21, 2015

A year after the war that devastated the Gaza Strip, Israel is apparently helping Qatar which does not have official diplomatic relations with Israel partner with the Islamist movement and longstanding enemy Hamas to rebuild the the territory.

"Life is full of contradictions and strange things, Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of research for Israel's military intelligence, told NPRwhen commenting on Israel's recent move to allow Qatar to channel its reconstruction aid through Hamas, which is a US-designated terrorist group.

Israel has always tried to isolate Hamas and has accused Qatar of financing the Islamist movement. Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist, rejects all agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and calls for Israel's violent destruction in its founding charter.

But now Israel is letting a Qatari official channel millions of dollars to help the Palestinian faction rebuild the Gaza Strip, which was heavily damaged during last summer's war with Israel.

Kuperwasser told NPR that letting Qatar help Hamas will be beneficial for Israel in the long run. We believe that better conditions in Gaza would lessen the incentive of Hamas and the population to go again to a war, so in a way, it is helping the deterrence, he said.

He also mentioned that Qatar was the only country willing to help despite a pledge of over $5 billion in aid for rebuilding the Strip in 2014 after the war.

Qatar alone has pledged $1 billion, the USpledged $212 million, the European Union $568 million and the United Arab Emirates and Turkey both committed $200 million. But of February 2015, only about 5% of what had been promised reached Gaza, according tohumanitarian news service IRIN.

Mohammad al-Emadi, a Qatari official, has been traveling between Israel and Gaza to discuss reconstruction projects in Gaza,NPR reported. Qatar does not recognize Israel and the countries have no diplomatic relations.

Nevertheless, al-Emadi met with the Israeli brigadier general in charge of letting goods and people through the country's various crossings with Gaza, according to NPR.

Emadi said that Qatar was there to help Palestinians and not specifically Hamas but that there was no way to achieve that goal in the Strip without Hamas's help. "You have to support them. You don't like them ... But they control the country, you know," Emadi said during a visit to Gaza, according to NPR.

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The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict

Posted By on June 21, 2015

By Jews for Justice in the Middle East Published in Berkeley, CA, 2001 Jews for Justice has made this excellent resource available to people around the world. We have converted their booklet to a more easily copied format. Download it!

As the periodic bloodshed continues in the Middle East, the search for an equitable solution must come to grips with the root cause of the conflict. The conventional wisdom is that, even if both sides are at fault, the Palestinians are irrational terrorists who have no point of view worth listening to. Our position, however, is that the Palestinians have a real grievance: their homeland for over a thousand years was taken, without their consent and mostly by force, during the creation of the state of Israel. And all subsequent crimes on both sides inevitably follow from this original injustice.

This paper outlines the history of Palestine to show how this process occurred and what a moral solution to the regions problems should consist of. If you care about the people of the Middle East, Jewish and Arab, you owe it to yourself to read this account of the other side of the historical record.

The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today.

The problem with this explanation is that it is simply not true, as the documentary evidence in this booklet will show. What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which continues to the present).

The Arab community, as it became increasingly aware of the Zionists intentions, strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence of Arab society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist project never could have been realized without the military backing of the British. The vast majority of the population of Palestine, by the way, had been Arabic since the seventh century A.D. (Over 1200 years)

In short, Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist world view that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didnt matter. The Arabs opposition to Zionism wasnt based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people.

One further point: being Jewish ourselves, the position we present here is critical of Zionism but is in no way anti-Semitic. We do not believe that the Jews acted worse than any other group might have acted in their situation. The Zionists (who were a distinct minority of the Jewish people until after WWII) had an understandable desire to establish a place where Jews could be masters of their own fate, given the bleak history of Jewish oppression. Especially as the danger to European Jewry crystalized in the late 1930s and after, the actions of the Zionists were propelled by real desperation.

But so were the actions of the Arabs. The mythic land without people for a people without land was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919. This is the root of the problem, as we shall see.

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Israelis watch intently as Syrian rebels approach Golan …

Posted By on June 20, 2015

The Israeli early warning station on Mount Hermon, above the cloud line on the Golan Heights. Photograph: STR New/Reuters

The top of Mount Hermon bristles with the golfball antennae, surveillance masts and bunkers that make up Israels northernmost intelligence base. Damascus is a blur in the distance, but the villages on the edge of the Golan Heights are easily visible below, deceptively peaceful in the afternoon sun.

Perched on the windswept 6,500 ft peak, the Israeli army has a birds eye view of what is happening as Syria disintegrates. Hadr, a pro-regime Druze village, fell to rebel fighters on Wednesday. Nearby Jubata al-Khashab is held by loyalist forces. Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, is advancing.

On the Syrian and Lebanese sides of the border, this eyrie is known as Jebel al-Sheikh. It saw fierce fighting in the 1973 war but for 40 years watched over a quiet front, the peace maintained by Hafez al-Assad. In recent weeks, however, signs have multiplied that the end may be approaching for his son Bashar.

Syria is dead, Moshe Yaalon, Israels defence minister, declared last week. Assad is paid to be president but he only runs a quarter of the country. He can stay in his palace but hes no longer relevant. Hes on the way out.

Syrias Druze community around 5% of the population has been split between supporters and opponents of Assad but has largely managed to stay out of the war. Now they have been targeted by Nusra and Islamic State (Isis). That has alarmed their co-religionists in Lebanon, on the Israeli-occupied Golan and in Israel proper, where, unlike Arab citizens, the minority serve in the armed forces.

Israeli Druze have demonstrated outside the Knesset in Jerusalem, demanding action to save their brethren, but to no avail. Many in southern Syria expect Israel to do something to keep the knives of Isis away from the throats of the Druze, said a supporter, Mordechai Kedar, recalling the fate of the Yazidis in Iraq. Still, the army did send messages to Nusra, via the mainstream Free Syrian Army (FSA), warning the Islamist group not to harm Syrias Druze.

Publicly, Israel insists it is sticking to its policy of staying out of the conflict next door. But that is not the whole story. Ehud Yaari, a well-connected Middle East analyst, wrote last October that some rebel groups were maintaining constant contact with the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) though they had only been given a modest amount of weapons. UN reports have described Israeli troops handing boxes to armed Syrians.

Evidence of links to anti-Assad groups including Nusra meets official silence. In one intriguing case, subject to censorship and a legal gag order, a Druze activist from the Golan and a serving IDF Druze soldier reportedly learned of and filmed a covert meeting between Israeli intelligence officers and Syrian rebels.

Exactly what Israels eyes and ears can glean about its neighbour from Mount Hermon is a closely guarded military secret. But the implosion of Syria has brought new challenges. In terms of knowing the enemy we used to need to know the name of the Syrian president and chief of staff, Yaalon observed. Now we need to know the leaders of every single militia.

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Likud – definition – Zionism and Israel -Encyclopedia …

Posted By on June 19, 2015

Likud - (Hebrew) -The amalgam of right-wing and center Zionist parties that is the successor to the revisionist Herut party and the Gahal party.

Following is a portion of the platform of the Likud (apparently from 1999). Manifestly, much has changed since then.

The Foundations of Peace Peace is a primary objective of the State of Israel. The Likud will strengthen the existing peace agreements with the Arab states and strive to achieve peace agreements with all of Israel's neighbors with the aim of reaching a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Likud will seek to achieve peace and permanent borders in the framework of peace treaties between Israel and its neighbors and will seek cooperation with them on the practical level. The peace agreements will include full diplomatic relations, borders open to free movement, economic cooperation, and the establishment of joint projects in the fields of science, technology, tourism, and industry.

The Arab states' desire for peace will be measured by their efforts to prevent hostile activities by terrorist organizations from their territory and to dismantle the infrastructure of the organizations. This includes closing their headquarters and preventing economic and political warfare and all hostile acts during the negotiations. The Palestinians Declaration of a State

A unilateral Palestinian declaration of the establishment of a Palestinian state will constitute a fundamental and substantive violation of the agreements with the State of Israel and the scuttling of the Oslo and Wye accords. The government will adopt immediate stringent measures in the event of such a declaration.

Settlements

The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.

The Partition of the Negev

Israel rejects out of hand ideas raised by Labor Party leaders concerning the relinquishment of parts of the Negev to the Palestinians. The practical meaning of this plan is that the "Green Line" should no longer be viewed as a "Red Line", which draws us closer to the partition plan of 1947 as it opens the door to the principle that the fate of the Galilee, the Triangle and additional areas within Israel is negotiable. The Likud asserts that such proposals by the Labor Party leadership may literally cause the dismemberment of the State of Israel.

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