Month: February 2015

The Spirit of Quisling and Chamberlain Live On….

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

 

 The term “quisling” refers to anyone who collaborates with an enemy occupying force. The word originates from the Norwegian war-time leader Vidkun Quisling, who headed a domestic Nazi collaborationist regime during WWII. That era also produced appeasers, such as as former British Prime Minister Arthur Neville Chamberlain, who is most famous for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the German-populated Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany. However, when Adolf Hitler continued his aggression by invading Poland, Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, and Chamberlain led Britain through the first eight months of World War II.

In the 21st century, we are witnessing the rise of a new global threat that threatens to engulf the world—Jihadic Islam, whose express goal is to convert the entire world to their vision of Islam. However, as bad as Quisling and Chamberlain were, they never acted as apologists for the Nazi regime. But Barak Hussein Obama not only combines the qualities of Quisling and Chamberlain, he has emerged as an apologist for the global Jihad movement. The Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen stated in his article, “To the terrorists, Obama is ‘Crusader in chief’.” Thiessen argued that, since ISIS and al Qaeda criticize the American military as crusaders, Obama’s criticism of the medieval crusades gives the terrorists a “propaganda gold mine.”

Does this make any sense to you?

Sure enough, the ISIS literature often invokes imagery from the Crusade’s history, and most recently announced that they intend to unfurl their flag over the Vatican and behead the Pope.

While I think Obama is correct in saying that our conflict is not a war against Islam, I think the President ought to be mobilizing more Arab countries who are willing to take them on rather than using his office to stymie any efforts to prevent the ISIS caliphate from expanding.

That kind of approach demand forceful leadership of our President. He has yet to demonstrate this kind of statesmanship—but fortunately, others are showing us the way.

At the first of the New Year, Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi summoned all the imams and Muslim scholars of his country and called for a “revolution” in Islam to reform the interpretations of the faith entrenched for hundreds of years, which he said have made the Muslim world a source of “destruction” and pitted it against the rest of the world. In his  speech, el-Sissi’s threw the gauntlet in positioning himself as modernizer of Islam. His professed goal is to purge the religion of extremist ideas of intolerance and violence that fuel groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State – and lie behind Tuesday’s attack in Paris on a French satirical newspaper that killed 12 people.

Watching el-Sissi in action is like watching 16th century European history play itself out in the present. el-Sissi’s  has emerged as a modern day “Muslim Martin Luther.” In his Jan. 1 speech at al-Azhar addressing Muslim clerics – held to mark the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday – el-Sissi called on them to promote a reading of Islamic texts in a “truly enlightened” manner to reconsider concepts “that have been made sacred over hundreds of years.”  He also said that the Jihadist thinking is “making enemies of the whole world. So 1.6 billion people (in the Muslim world) will kill the entire world of 7 billion people? That’s impossible … We need a religious revolution.”[1] Continue reading “The Spirit of Quisling and Chamberlain Live On….” →

Living in an a Dystopian America

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Image source: BuzzFeed

Whenever I hear Obama and his minions claim that “Islam is the religion of peace,” I cannot help but think the President is utilizing several concepts drawn from writer George Orwell’s famous book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. In this political parable, he writes about how the people of Oceania are trained from childhood to be vigilant in detecting and persecuting anything that the State considers as “evil.” Simply put, the State defines what is good and what is evil. Succumbing to the Party is considered the greatest good; obedience and complicity constitute the “love” of Big Brother.  The State aims to pursue a merging of consciousness, where the State’s will—as defined by Big Brother—becomes the will of the individual.

Slogans play an important part of  the collective indoctrination of the people. Orwell describes an usually fictional language he calls, “Newspeak,” which is a controlled language that is designed to constrict the freedom of thought. Newspeak aims to eliminate concepts that pose a threat to the regime such as freedom, self-expression, individuality, and peace. Contrarian perspectives are typically regarded as “thoughtcrimes”

Big Brother uses another interesting too to enslave the minds of the people called  “Doublespeak.” Simply defined, it is a language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Wherever one goes in this dystopian society, the citizen always encounters the three slogans of the Party that stand out in bold capital letters: 

  • WAR IS PEACE
  • FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
  • IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Orwell intended to warn us about the dangers of people whose visions for a totalitarian utopias, whether political, economic, social, or theocratic. You can see this kind of “political correctness,” our now-passing rage of liberal conformity today. Often as Jews, we can see how the Left is castigating Israel and demonizing anyone who dares to challenge the status quo.

As we look in the present era, 2015, we can see how people who criticize Obama are routinely called “racist” and marginalized through shaming and other not-so-subtle techniques of intimidation. In Hollywood, actors who criticize the President’s agenda often do not receive acting jobs. There is an atmosphere of terror and the ghost of McCarthy  is reminding us that liberalism can be just as fascist as any political philosophy of the ultra-right.

This Orwellian phenomenon can be seen in our country’s universities, wretched parodies of what they are supposed to be, are veritable monuments of newspeak and doublethink.  Yet, as we witness the global rise of ISIS and observe how the Iranian mullahcracy continues to threaten both Israel AND the United States, as they stand at the threshold of developing nuclear arms—our President has the temerity to tell us:

  • ISLAM IS THE  RELIGION OF PEACE!
  • THERE IS NO GLOBAL JIHAD
  • BEWARE OF EXTREMISM

Consistently, Obama has never recognized a “global jihad” is shaping up before the entire Western word to see. Now that ISIS is taking over Libya (as Khadafi warned Hillary and Obama), ISIS is threatening Italy and announced, “: “You have seen us in Syria, now we’re right here, just south of Rome…”[1] Continue reading “Living in an a Dystopian America” →

Shirley MacLaine: Aging Without Saging

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

 Shirley MacLaine is a better actress than she is a philosopher or theologian. Jewish groups are justifiably upset with some comments she penned in her new memoir, “What If… A Lifetime of Questions, Speculations, Reasonable Guesses, and a Few Things I Know For Sure.”

The quote that is generating a lot of criticism suggest, the six million Jews and others who died in the Holocaust were “balancing their karma” by paying for sins in a previous life.  But MacLaine did not stop with just the six-million Jews, or for that matter the other eighteen million people killed by one man’s hatred, she also compared  Stephen Hawking to Jesus, writing that just as Jesus chose martyrdom, Hawking “chose to live” with a debilitating disease.

Gee, that must make the Holocaust survivors along with their children really great knowing that somehow, they “karmically” managed to survive. As  a child of an Auschwitz survivor and as a parent of an ALS child, I take great offense to her words.

Let us briefly examine MacLaine’s comments:

  • What if most Holocaust victims were balancing their karma from ages before, when they were Roman soldiers putting Christians to death, the Crusaders who murdered millions in the name of Christianity, soldiers with Hannibal, or those who stormed across the Near East with Alexander? The energy of killing is endless and will be experienced by the killer and the killee.” (pp. 240-241)

Over twenty-years ago, I encountered this kind of muddled thinking once before.  On one occasion I debated a Religious Science minister who said  something almost identical to MacLaine. The minister claimed that if a young child is raped or mutilated, it is I order to clear the child’s soul of his/her “karmic debt.” The Church of Religious Science is an example of a New Age religion sometime ago in the 1980s—based on the metaphysical theosophical thought of Ernst Holmes. Although Holmes never advocated anything that was even remotely similar to what this minister asserted, many of his disciples seemed to developed this idea on their own.

The popular New Age self-help writer, Louise Hay, author of  the NY Times best-seller “You Can Heal Your Life” maintains that every human being is responsible for creating every circumstance that occurs in one’s life. According to her, all disease comes from a lack of self-love and unwillingness to forgive others. This is true regardless whether you have headaches or hemorrhoids—all disease comes from a failure to “love yourself.”

A Pulitzer prize journalist named Michael D’Antonio wrote about a conversation he had with Hay. Her views on Third World nations and AIDS victims prove to be revealing:

  • People starve amid the “abundance of the universe” because of low self-esteem,” said Hay. “A poor self-image is more damaging than one might expect and attracts the kind of experience that seems appropriate. That’s why, she said, women who are raped are responsible for what happens to them. They attract the rapist because they expect and fear an attack. Similarly, the poor of the world are responsible for their plight, as are those afflicted with AIDS…[1]

In another conversation, D’Antonio commented about Hay’s remarks regarding the Holocaust. She mused that the AIDS victims were the reincarnated souls of the Nazis, who were being paid back for “their crimes against the Jews!”

And the Jews? Well, they too deserved their “karmic fate.” [2]

For Jews, this is nothing new. We have been accused of karmic crimes for a long time. Unfortunately, many of the Christian world’s greatest theological minds—ancient and modern—expressed  ideas that also resonated with MacLaine’s view of karma. After the night of  Dietrich Bonhoeffer became famous for saying on the night of Kristallnacht, ““If the synagogues are set on fire today, it will be the churches that will be burned tomorrow.” But who would imagine him, saying only minutes later to one of his colleagues, “that the Nazis were merely giving what was owed to the Jews. After all, “they nailed the Redeemer of the world to the cross,” they had been forced to bear an eternal curse through a long history of suffering, one that would end only “in the conversion of Israel to Christ”?[3]

Here is one more example of Bonhoeffer’s animus against the Jews:

  • The Church of Christ has never lost sight of the thought that the “chosen people” who nailed the redeemer of the world to the cross must bear the curse for its action through a long history of suffering…. But the history of the suffering of this people, loved and punished by God, stands under the sign of the final homecoming of Israel [the Jews] to its God. And this homecoming happens in the conversion of Israel to Christ…. The conversion of Israel, that is to be the end of the people’s period of suffering. From here the Christian Church sees the history of the people of Israel with trembling, as God’s own, free, fearful way with his people, because God is not yet finished with it. Each new attempt to solve “the Jewish question” comes to naught…[4]

Deicide is not a new accusation, it goes back to the earlier period of Christian history.[5] All of these attempts to explain the suffering of the Jews ignores what I believe to be the only truth worth discussing: Karmic reasons play no role whatsoever in why one people  suffers and not another. When looking at the real causes of human suffering, one thing is clear. Human beings are responsible for the moral evil they perpetuate against other people. Continue reading “Shirley MacLaine: Aging Without Saging” →

Elie Wiesel’s Words of Admonition: Let Netanyahu Speak to Congress

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Holocaust Museum Founding Chairman Elie Wiesel speaks a ceremony commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Museum in Washington April 29, 2013. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

 This past week, I came across a very interesting video  by Ben Shapiro, who is one of the main editors of Breitbart News on the Internet. Shapiro is a Modern Orthodox Jew and his perspective on the issues of today offer  a refreshing alternative opinion—even if a reader does not  necessarily agree with his arguments.

In his latest podcast, Shapiro raised a question that I think many people have asked—Jew and non-Jew:  “Why do American Jews vote with the anti-Israel Left?” His examples are striking:

  • In 2008, American Jews voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. Even though Obama had spent large segments of his prior life hobnobbing with vicious anti-Semites like Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi, even though he had staffed his campaign with anti-Semites ranging from Zbigniew Brzezinski to Robert Malley, Jews turned out in droves for him. Sarah Silverman harangued young Jews into telling their grandparents that they were racist if they didn’t vote for him; Jeffrey Goldberg, Obama’s designated court Jew – a role he has never relinquished — informed Jews that they were racist if they feared Senator Obama’s positions on Israel.[1]

American Jews voted 78 percent for Obama in 2008.

  • After he was elected, Obama proceeded to undermine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, force Netanyahu to humiliate himself before thugs like the Turkish government, publicly condemn Israel’s defense of itself during the Gaza war against Hamas while funding the Hamas unity government, repeatedly leak vital national security information that would have allowed Israel to strike Iran, and sign a deal with Iran that essentially foreclosed any possibility of Western attempts to stop Iran from going nuclear.[2]

Shapiro has neatly summed up some of the issues that the Jewish communities in the United States ought to be debating—but in many instances they are not because these are polarizing topics that many Jews would rather avoid discussing because of the tartness and potential rancor such debates might cause.

According to Shapiro, he blames the problem on assimilation. Simply put, he claims that the majority of American Jews has not been to Israel and are generally ambivalent about their religious identities as Jews.  He adds further:

  • Again, according to the Pew poll, 73 percent of Jews said it was about remembering the Holocaust. Just 19 percent said it was about observing Jewish law, and only 28 percent said it was about being part of a Jewish community. Jews, in other words, are not religious. They are secular leftists who don’t want to be labeled white people because they like being diverse and being able to enjoy the in-jokes in Woody Allen films.[3]

While Shapiro brings up a lot of interesting statistics that seem to prove his case, this writer feels that there is an alternative way of looking and perhaps solving the problem that he poses for all of us.

Most Baby-boomers grew up in the Civil Rights era and saw in Obama’s ascension to power the combination of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.. In short, they collectively fell in love with their projections of what they imagined Obama would be–not with the reality. This happens all the time in relationships where we fall in love with the idealized image of our partner, only to be dismayed when our partner falls far short of the mark. When this happens, we have only ourselves to blame. I believe that many liberal Jews see the flaws of this man and his countless misrepresentations of the truth (from Obamacare to Benghazi and beyond). They are also well aware of how the President has leaned heavily on Israel, diminishing Israel’s importance in the region. I suspect many liberal Jews are also well aware of the pro-Muslim Brotherhood friendship he has cultivated and how the President’s Middle East policies have ravaged several countries and created a dangerous power vacuum for ISIS and the Iranian caliphate to conquer their neighbors. Despite all this—liberal Jews still cannot admit that they were wrong. As is always the case, there is a heavy price we pay for our enlightenment–and in the future, I suspect many of these Jews will eventually admit that Obama is a false god to whom we have been “praying to a deity that cannot save” (Isa. 45:20). He is the antithesis of Harry Truman.

The the sociologist Robert Bellah once wrote that liberalism has become for many people (especially liberal Jews) a secular religion. Yet, do not think that a secular religion is incapable of being dogmatic, rigid, and punitive—just as dogmatic as any theistic faith that refuses to let reason be its guide, or discourages any kind of self-reflective thought.

In any kind of free society, the mutual exchange of contrarian ideas prevents society from becoming homogeneous and boring. Yet, in our politically charged society, anyone who dares to criticize Obama is routinely tarred, feathered and thrown in jail.[4]  Critics of Obama often have their jobs threatened or get hounded until they are verbally or socially beaten into submission. Whistleblowers in particular have been targeted by the Obama administration[5]

The inability of the political left to creatively engage people who have different opinions threatens to make this country into a soft fascism. If left unchecked, the days of McCarthyism will transmute our country into a Stalinesque society where people are terrified to dissent from the political status quo.

One more note:  In some ways the problem Shapiro poses also reflects the dark side of the Enlightenment–the inability to recognize the reality of radical evil. We used to think that civilized man was incapable of retrogessing to a more atavistic state. Nietzche warned us about this illusion… human beings are still as savage as ever. Jews could not accept this during WWII and they still can’t accept it…. Contrary to what President Obama has been saying, Iran has been the world’s most deadliest promoter of terrorism throughout the world. Their regime is evil–plain and simple. Based on their track-record, they cannot be trusted.

Recently, Elie Wiesel—one of our generation’s most important witnesses to the Holocaust announced that he planned to be there in Congress when Netanyahu will give his dramatic speech:

Wiesel said that he plans to attend Netanyahu’s address “on the catastrophic danger of a nuclear Iran.” Awarded the Nobel in 1986, Wiesel asks Obama and others in the ad: “Will you join me in hearing the case for keeping weapons from those who preach death to Israel and America?”[6]

I strongly recommend that President Obama and his party members take Wiesel’s message seriously and be present when the Israeli Prime Minister speaks.

[1] http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/02/12/ben-shapiro-why-jews-vote-leftist/

[2] http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/02/12/ben-shapiro-why-jews-vote-leftist/

[3] http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/02/12/ben-shapiro-why-jews-vote-leftist/

[4] http://benswann.com/obama-has-sentenced-whistleblowers-to-10x-the-jail-time-of-all-prior-u-s-presidents-combined/ see also http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/jake-tapper/cnns-tapper-obama-has-used-espionage-act-more-all-/ see also http://watchdog.org/173721/obama-administration-whistleblowers/ Yet, Obama bragged he would have the most transparent administration.

[5] Since Edward Snowden began disclosing the extent of the NSA’s secret surveillance practices, discussions about whistleblowing and privacy rights have been more important than ever before”

[6] http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Nobel-winner-Elie-Wiesel-lends-support-for-Netanyahus-Congress-speech-390911.

If Looks Could Kill…

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Much has been said about the Netanyahu’s alleged “breach of etiquette” regarding his plans to speak to Congress concerning the Iranian nuclear quest for nuclear weaponry. President Obama is obviously feels that his negotiations may (pardon the pun) “go up in smoke” if the United States imposes greater sanctions on the Iranian mullahcracy. In fact, one senior Obama advisor put it in the blunt terms:

  • “Netanyahu spat in our face publicly and that’s no way to behave. Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price.” [1]   

Regarding “breach of etiquette,” let me point out that Obama has done this on several occasions with respect to Israel. For example, in March 2013, Israel invited the American President to speak before the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament). Past presidents such as Bill Clinton (in 1994) and George W. Bush (in 2008) politely accepted the offer while they were serving their presidency.

However, President Obama declined and chose to speak to some Israeli students from some of the Israeli universities.  Now, based on the political etiquette civilized nations demonstrate to one another throughout the year, you ought to be asking some simple but direct questions:

  • Why President Obama’s rejection of Israel’s invitation was not considered a breach of etiquette?  Not only did he deliberately slight PM Netanyahu, more importantly—he insulted the entire country of Israel.
  • Why did he choose instead to address the students of Israel?
  • More importantly, does Obama have any respect for Israel’s democratic process?
  • Why are some Jews in this country so willing to overlook Obama’s shabby behavior in Israel but are so willing to heap scorn on Netanyahu for insulting the President by speaking about a topic concerning Israel’s welfare and nuclear?

In President Obama’s speech to the Israeli students, he even made a joke about not speaking to the Knesset on Israeli television:  “Any drama between me and my friend, Bibi over the years was just a plot to create material for Eretz Nehederet (an Israeli comedy show”).

Frankly, I am amazed the President went to Israel at all, but while he was there—not only did he insult the chosen democratically elected Israeli leader, he snubbed the entire country.

In my opinion, this is hardly the first time the President has shown a lack of etiquette when it comes to international behavior. His conspicuous absence from the French funeral after the terrorist attack on the  French journalists and the four Jews murdered by Islamic gunmen showed  a complete disinterest in an the world community. Why do Jews in this country accept insulting behavior as if it is perfectly normal when it comes to belittling the Jewish people and Israel?

Then again, at the seventieth year Auschwitz commemoration, not only didn’t the President show up to express the importance of remembering the Holocaust and its legacy—he didn’t send the Vice President or the Secretary of State. When we consider how the Iranian mullahcracy is threatening to wipe Israel off the map in one mighty attack, don’t you think Obama’s presence alone would have sent a powerful message to the Iranians that the United States will not tolerate any threat to destroy Jews living in Israel again?

So, as you can see, I have some very serious problems with the President’s lack of etiquette when it comes to the Jewish people—and the nation state of Israel.[2]

I hope you do too.

Lastly, the President’s official promised there would be a cost exacted if Netanyahu dares to speak to Congress.

Is this how allies speak to one another?

It is time for us to have a reality check.


[1]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/23/1359691/-U-S-Official-Netanyahu-Spat-In-Our-Face-And-There-Will-Be-A-Price

[2] Beyond Israel, President Obama has frequently broken the rules of etiquette in many international settings. For example, “As Barack Obama appeared in the home of Myanmar pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon of Burma, the U.S. president planted a platonic, but very affectionate, kiss on her cheek (to which she appeared to slightly recoil in embarrassment). This act has surprisingly elicited little or no comment in the global press thus far – quite unusual since public displays of affection represent a grave breach of custom in virtually all Asian countries”  http://www.ibtimes.com/obama-suu-kyi-forbidden-kiss-889606;  “President Obama was caught committing a funeral faux pas — snapping a selfie during Nelson Mandela’s memorial service with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and British PM David Cameron,” wrote the New York Daily News. “The threesome smiled as the Scandinavian beauty held her smartphone out to capture the moment but Michelle Obama sat at a distance, as if in disapproval of the digital display.” And the list goes on…

A Contrast in Leadership: King Abdullah and President Obama

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

 

 

Some of us have short memories and some of us have long memories. This writer in particular will not ignore two noteworthy events that occurred in the last six months. Both of these events involved ISIS executing its hapless captives. Both of these events present two very different kinds of responses–as different as day and night.

President Obama took to the podium and said some appropriate remarks for the tragic death of the American journalist Tom Foley.

  • They declared their ambition to commit genocide against an ancient people. So ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just god would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior.[1]

What happened next proved to be more important than anything the President said at the podium.  In short, if a picture could tell a thousand words, the images that ensued within four minutes after the President’s speech could fill ten thousand volumes. Within four minutes after leaving the podium, Obama teed-off and could be seen laughing with friends and fist-bumping them during a five-hour round at Farm Neck Golf Course on Martha’s Vineyard  – his seventh 18-holes in ten days.

I cannot recall a president in recent memory who was so oblivious to the pain and shock that the entire nation felt, yet the game of golf had to go on! I can only imagine the European heads of states shaking their heads in disbelief. Putin and ISIS were probably laughing derisively at our President, who forgot about the “optics” of how he looked on camera.

Yes, Mr. Obama, we know why you detest the press.

After discovering how his popularity plummeted in the next several days, President Obama reluctantly admitted, “after the statement that I made, that you know, I should’ve anticipated the optics,” he said.

The second reaction was that of King Abdullah II of Jordan to  news that the Jordanian pilot Lt. Moath al-Kasasbeh, 27, had been burned alive while confined in a cage.

  • Jordan’s King Abdullah, himself a former general, angrily vowed to pursue ISIS until his military runs “out of fuel and bullets,” in a closed door meeting with U.S. lawmakers that followed the release Wednesday of a grisly video showing a captured Jordanian airman being burned alive in a cage by the terrorist army.[2]

Such resolve, such courage! Who would expect little tiny Jordan to act like the mouse who roared while the most powerful leader of the free world got upset that the world did not see him at his best.

Interestingly, King Abdullah II of Jordan was in the United States when ISIS released the video on the Internet. What did he do? The King immediately cut his trip short in order to return to Jordan to comfort the family of the lost pilot.

Can you—the reader—appreciate the difference between Obama’s and Abdullah’s reaction? I do not think for a minute that King Abdullah worried about the optics—his place was with the victims and with his people.

Winston Churchill has never been one of Obama’s heroes. When Obama first took the White House, one of the first things he did while he was in office was to remove the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office and send it back to the British Embassy. The British probably felt surprised at this sign of presidential disrespect, for one never unilaterally returns a gift from a foreign leader!

In retrospect, it is not hard to see why.  Churchill once said: Continue reading “A Contrast in Leadership: King Abdullah and President Obama” →

King Faisal–Weizmann Agreement – When the Arabs asked the Jews to return to Israel

Posted on by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Whenever you hear the Palestinian rhetoric, one would get the impression that Jews were nothing more than a European transplant who came over and seized all the Arab lands they could grab. Needless to say, there is much more history to this narrative than most people realize–including our President of the United States. When people ignore history, they change the narrative into the image of their device. Sadly, this has happened way too much in the last 40 + years, but armed with knowledge–we can change the public misconception about the real Arab and Jewish relationship concerning Palestine (as it was called at that time). Here is a fascinating article I think most of you will find enlightening:

Feisal-Frankfurter Correspondence (March 1919)

Letter from Emir Feisal (Son of Hussein Bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca | Great grandson of the prophet Muhammad) to Felix Frankfurter, associate of Dr. Chaim Weizmann:

DELEGATION HEDJAZIENNE

Paris Peace Conference

March 3, 1919

Dear Mr. Frankfurter:

I want to take this opportunity of my first contact with American Zionists to tell you what I have often been able to say to Dr. Weizmann in Arabia and Europe.

We feel that the Arabs and Jews are cousins in having suffered similar oppressions at the hands of powers stronger than themselves, and by a happy coincidence have been able to take the first step towards the attainment of their national ideals together. The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organisation to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper. We will do our best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through: we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.

With the chiefs of your movement, especially with Dr. Weizmann, we have had and continue to have the closest relations. He has been a great helper of our cause, and I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position to make the Jews some return for their kindness. We are working together for a reformed and revived Near East, and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist. Our movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed I think that neither can be a real success without the other.

People less informed and less responsible than our leaders and yours, ignoring the need for cooperation of the Arabs and Zionists, have been trying to exploit the local difficulties that must necessarily arise in Palestine in the early stages of our movements. Some of them have, I am afraid, misrepresented your aims to the Arab peasantry, and our aims to the Jewish peasantry, with the result that interested parties have been able to make capital out of what they call our differences. I wish to give you my firm conviction that these differences are not on questions of principle, but on matters of detail such as must inevitably occur in every contact of neighbouring peoples, and as are easily adjusted by mutual good will. Indeed nearly all of them will disappear with fuller knowledge.

I look forward, and my people with me look forward, to a future in which we will help you and you will help us, so that the countries in which we are mutually interested may once again take their places in the community of civilised peoples of the world.

Believe me,

Yours sincerely,

(Sgd.) Feisal

Letter of reply from Felix Frankfurter to Emir Feisal:

Paris Peace Conference

March 5, 1919

Royal Highness,

Allow me, on behalf of the Zionist Organisation, to acknowledge your recent letter with deep appreciation.

Those of us who come from the United States have already been gratified by the friendly relations and the active cooperation maintained between you and the Zionist leaders, particularly Dr. Weizmann. We knew it could not be otherwise; we knew that the aspirations of the Arab and the Jewish peoples were parallel, that each aspired to re-establish its nationality in its own homeland, each making its own distinctive contribution to civilisation, each seeking its own peaceful mode of life.

The Zionist leaders and the Jewish people for whom they speak have watched with satisfaction the spiritual vigour of the Arab movement. Themselves seeking justice, they are anxious that the just national aims of the Arab people be confirmed and safeguarded by the Peace Conference. We knew from your acts and your past utterances that the Zionist movement — in other words the national aim of the Jewish people — had your support and the support of the Arab people for whom you speak. These aims are now before the Peace Conference as definite proposals by the Zionist Organisation. We are happy indeed that you consider these proposals “moderate and proper,” and that we have in you a staunch supporter for their realisation.

For both the Arab and the Jewish peoples there are difficulties ahead — difficulties that challenge the united statesmanship of Arab and Jewish leaders. For it is no easy task to rebuild two great civilisations that have been suffering oppression and misrule for centuries. We each have our difficulties we shall work out as friends, friends who are animated by similar purposes, seeking a free and full development for the two neighbouring peoples. The Arabs and Jews are neighbours in territory; we cannot but live side by side as friends.

Very respectfully,

(Sgd.) Felix Frankfurter

PART 3

Agreement Between Emir Feisal and Dr. Weizmann

Faisal–Weizmann Agreement

3 January 1919

His Royal Highness the Emir Feisal, representing and acting on behalf of the Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, representing and acting on behalf of the Zionist Organization, mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation of their natural aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab State and Palestine, and being desirous further of confirming the good understanding which exists between them, have agreed upon the following:

Articles:

Article I

The Arab State and Palestine in all their relations and undertakings shall be controlled by the most cordial goodwill and understanding, and to this end Arab and Jewish duly accredited agents shall be established and maintained in the respective territories.

Article II

Immediately following the completion of the deliberations of the Peace Conference, the definite boundaries between the Arab State and Palestine shall be determined by a Commission to be agreed upon by the parties hereto.

Article III

In the establishment of the Constitution and Administration of Palestine, all such measures shall be adopted as will afford the fullest guarantees for carrying into effect the British Government’s Declaration of the 2nd of November, 1917.

Article IV

All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil. In taking such measures the Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their rights and shall be assisted in forwarding their economic development.

Article V

No regulation or law shall be made prohibiting or interfering in any way with the free exercise of religion; and further, the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed. No religious test shall ever be required for the exercise of civil or political rights.

Article VI

The Mohammedan Holy Places shall be under Mohammedan control.

Article VII

The Zionist Organization proposes to send to Palestine a Commission of experts to make a survey of the economic possibilities of the country, and to report upon the best means for its development. The Zionist Organization will place the aforementioned Commission at the disposal of the Arab State for the purpose of a survey of the economic possibilities of the Arab State and to report upon the best means for its development. The Zionist Organization will use its best efforts to assist the Arab State in providing the means for developing the natural resources and economic possibilities thereof.

Article VIII

The parties hereto agree to act in complete accord and harmony on all matters embraced herein before the Peace Congress.

Article IX

Any matters of dispute which may arise between the contracting parties hall be referred to the British Government for arbitration. Given under our hand at London, England, the third day of January, one thousand nine hundred and nineteen

Chaim Weizmann Feisal Ibn-Hussein

Reservation by the Emir Feisal

If the Arabs are established as I have asked in my manifesto of 4 January, addressed to the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, I will carry out what is written in this agreement. If changes are made, I cannot be answerable for failing to carry out this agreement.

What happened then?
http://www.factualisrael.com/root-cause-conflicts-middle-east/

Kudos to factualisrael.com for their excellent article.