I was born in Palestine in a suburb of Jaffa (later Tel Aviv), on the 31st of August 1935, the first in my family to be registered as a Palestinian citizen under the British Mandate.
My first recollections, although somewhat faded, are of nightly shooting into our windows, facing the neighboring orange groves, and nightfall road curfews to protect us from rampant Arab attacks. During the day, relations with the neighbors were friendly but restrained. Arabs set a weekly shuk in the center of our neighborhood. There, two Arab grocery stores opened on the Shabbott and Arab peddlers on donkeys were roaming the unpaved street declaring their merchandise in a Yiddish singsong.
The Arab revolt was to last from 1936 t0 1939 at the high cost of many Jewish, Arab, and British casualties. Finally the revolt was brutally quashed by the British armies. The Jewish suburbs under strict British supervision were allowed a meager establishment of civil defense and then the World War broke out and the Arab Nationalist (the Jerusalem Mufti) joined with Hitler. The British capitulated to the Arab states putting a stop to Jewish immigration to Palestine and by doing so, sealing the fate of European Jewry.
As one who has lived through this horrendous period, I see it as my sacred duty to set the record straight by establishing the true historical evolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, debarring the means of propaganda in advancing our quest for peace.
A very clever title for a blog. In this age of misleading blogs and websites especially as they pertain to the people and state of Israel - I applaud this great endeavor to get the true information out for all honest people to read and see from a first-hand eye-witness to these pivotal and historical events. Indeed, a Palestinian Jew is a must read for your daily updates on what's going on in the Jewish world today.
ReplyDeleteSo if the Jews who live in Israel cannot dwell in Judea and Samaria -- because president Obama says so, then that's anti-Semitic and racist. I do not see Israel saying to the Arabs "you cannot live where you want to in Israel"
ReplyDeleteThe whole issue is contrived and convoluted to impugn the Jew their natural human right to live in their homeland in peace and dignity.
I think that the PLO and its rival Hamas have no reason for being except to serve as a continuation of the Nazi philosophy --highlighting inhumanity, to the consternation of the people it claims to represent and for the entire civilized world.