juli 17, 2025 · 11:59 am

Note 20/THIEVES AND VILLAINS

[20]
WIKIPEDIA
A LAND WITHOUT A PEOPLE FOR A PEOPLE WITHOUT A LAND
DECOLONIZE PALESTINE
A LAND WITHOUT A PEOPLE FOR A PEOPLE
WITHOUT A LAND

“A land without a people for a people without a land”

It is almost impossible to acquaint yourself with scholarship on Palestine, or be involved in Palestinian activism to any extent without coming across a variation of the above. Sadly, despite all the meticulous scholarship of Palestinians and others on the topic, variations of this talking point remain a prominent feature of Israeli propaganda. But how could such a ridiculous and thoroughly debunked claim still exist to this day? Wouldn’t disproving it be as simple as a quick internet search?

Indeed, all it takes is a glance at the Nüfus (Ottoman population registry) or the much later British mandate census data to see that the land has never been empty. Additionally, inspecting these numbers tells quite a clear tale of a minority settler population growing next to a large native majority. I will not be going into the details of population numbers, but if you are at all interested in the minutiae of census and population information in Palestine, then I would recommend obtaining a copy of Justin McCarthy’s The population of Palestine: Population history and statistics of the late Ottoman period and the Mandate.

Even the earliest of proto-Zionists knew this was not a factual statement. Some of the earliest Zionist ‘pioneers’ that settled Palestine before Zionism even had its first conference wrote condescendingly about their experiences with the natives. I imagine it would be quite difficult to document your interactions with a people who do not exist.

So why does this slogan persist?

This slogan persists to this day because it was never meant to be literal, but colonial and ideological. This phrase is yet another formulation of the concept of Terra Nullius meaning “nobody’s land”. In one form or the other, this concept played a significant role in legitimizing the erasure of the native population in virtually every settler colony, and laying down the ‘legal’ and ‘moral’ basis for seizing native land. According to this principle, any lands not managed in a ‘modern’ fashion were considered empty by the colonists, and therefore up for grabs. Essentially, yes there are people there but no people that mattered or were worth considering.

There is no doubt that Zionism is a settler colonial movement intent on replacing the natives. As a matter of fact, this was a point of pride for the early Zionists, as they saw the inhabitants of the land as backwards and barbaric, and that a positive aspect of Zionism would be the establishment of a modern nation state there to act as a bulwark against these ‘regressive’ forces in the east [You can read more about this here].

A characteristic feature of early Zionist political discourse is pretending that Palestinians exist only as individuals or sometimes communities, but never as constituting a people or a nation. This was accompanied by the typical arrogance and condescension towards the natives seen in virtually every settler colonial movement.

That the early settlers interacted with the natives while simultaneously claiming the land was empty was not seen as contradictory to them. According to these colonists, even if some scattered, disorganized people did exist, they were not worthy of the land they inhabited. They were unable to transform the land into a modern functioning nation state, extract resources efficiently and contribute to ‘civilization’ through the free market, unlike the settlers. Patrick Wolfe’s scholarship on Australia illustrates this dynamic and how it was exploited to establish the settler colony.

This becomes exceedingly clear when reading the discussions of early Zionists, such as Chaim Weizmann, who when asked about the inhabitants of Palestine responded with:

“The British told us that there are there some hundred thousands negroes [Kushim] and for those there is no value.”.

You can clearly see the influence and internalization of racist European colonial rhetoric. This attitude would become a cornerstone of Zionism as a political and colonial movement. This is why there is an emphasis in the Zionist narrative on how supposedly desolate and backwards Palestine was before their arrival. This same logic animates the ‘making the desert bloom’ myth that remains central to Israeli Hasbara efforts [You can read more about this here]. The underlying message being: We deserve the land more than its natives, they have done nothing with it, and we can bring it into modernity.

Perhaps one of the most widely quoted texts used to support this argument is Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad (1869) in which he chronicled his travels through Europe and the Middle East. Naturally, his unflattering descriptions of the ‘Holy land’, both people and land, are what draw attention, as he found Palestine to be a “..hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land“. He then concludes that ‘Palestine is desolate and unlovely.’

Twain’s account is taken as definitive proof that Palestine was a lifeless, empty husk before the arrival of the Zionist colonists. But as usual, in order to present and sustain this talking point, context must be completely ignored and any evidence to the opposite omitted. Even if we are to take Twain’s commentary at face value, one would be remiss not to investigate the circumstances of his visit.

Indeed, once some very basic research is done it becomes clear that Twain visited Palestine in September, which meant that it was at the end of the summer season and the land had not seen any rain for months. In addition to this, his visit happened to coincide with a drought, meaning that this was an exceptional case of dryness even for September. And finally, his visit also coincided with the American civil war, which disrupted the cotton trade the region depended upon. That meant that the whole area, not only Palestine, was undergoing a significant economic downturn and increase in poverty, which pushed many a peasant to abandon their farms.

But let us say you are unconvinced by this, what have others who visited Palestine had to say?

Twain is far from the only traveler to visit Palestine in the 19th century. Another such traveler is David Roberts, a Scottish painter who visited Palestine in 1839. He wrote describing his travels that the way from Jaffa to Jerusalem lay..

“..across the plain of Sharon, through a richly-cultivated country. The ground is carpeted with flowers—the plain is studded with small villages and groups of palm-trees, and, independent of its interesting associations, the country is the loveliest I ever beheld.“

Siegfried Sassoon also visited Palestine during the first world war and chronicled his journey:

“March 11, reached Railhead (Ludd) at 2.30 pm. Olive trees and almond orchards. Fine hills inland, not unlike Scotland. Last night we went through flat sandy places. About daybreak the country began to be green. Tents among crops and trees all the way up from Gaza. Weather warm and pleasant, with clouds. A few Old Testament pictures of people and villages. Inhabitants seem to live by selling enormous oranges to the troops on the train.”

On page 94 of his digitized journal, which you can access fully (here), he wrote describing the flowers growing in Palestine:

“Came back through a tangle of huge golden daisies -knee deep solid gold, as if Midas had been walking here among the almond trees and cantaloupes.”

So, what is the truth? Was Palestine a desolate, backwater wasteland, or a paradise with golden daisies and green hills akin to those in Scotland?

Both Roberts and Sassoon visited Palestine in the spring, at the end of the rainy season in years with no droughts. It makes sense, then, that the land would be green and the trees and flowers would be blooming.

So why only focus on the Twain paragraph to the exclusion of others? Is it not intellectually dishonest to present The Innocents Abroad as the definitive description of Palestine when other accounts contradict it? Is this not an irresponsible and deceptive selection of information?

Sadly, this is par for the course, as more often than not these arguments are made in bad faith. Because once again, conveying historical or factual accuracy is not the intended goal of these claims. These claims serve mainly as propaganda to legitimize the colonization of Palestine and to prove that the Zionist movement was more entitled to the land than its natives. This speaks to the insecurity of the settler, as such efforts to justify themselves would not be needed if they did not believe -even if on a subconscious level- that they do not belong.

This is hardly the only example of such discourse, Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial is one of the more shameless propaganda publications masquerading as a history book, full of cherry-picked data and absurd claims regarding the origins of Palestinians [You can read more about this here]. Even though this book has been utterly debunked by a large number of scholars, it remains incredibly popular among Zionists as the definitive version of history. The endurance of this book as a source of information shows that much discourse on the question of Palestine is anything but fact based.

These cases illustrate a central point about Israeli and Zionist propaganda: It is full of selectively chosen data, dubious framing and omissions of inconvenient information. To succeed, it primarily relies on the ignorance of the listener. These talking points do not stand up to scrutiny, and wither away once countered with actual historic literacy. We should strive to challenge these claims wherever they arise, and do our best to set the record straight.

But for argument’s sake, even if Palestine had been truly “desolate” or “unlovely”, does this provide a moral cover for settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing and erecting a reactionary ethnocracy at the expense of the people living there? Of course not. It’s a fruitless argument which only aims to discredit the natives.

END

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· 11:57 am

Notes 17 T/M 19/THIEVES AND VILLAINS

[17]
”On 10 March 1896, Herzl was visited by Reverend William Hechler, the Anglican minister to the British Embassy in Vienna. Hechler had read Herzl’s Der Judenstaat, and the meeting became central to the eventual legitimization of Herzl and Zionism.[42] Herzl later wrote in his diary, “Next we came to the heart of the business. I said to him: (Theodor Herzl to Rev. William Hechler) I must put myself into direct and publicly known relations with a responsible or non responsible ruler – that is, with a minister of state or a prince. Then the Jews will believe in me and follow me. The most suitable personage would be the German Kaiser.”[43] Hechler arranged an extended audience with Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden, in April 1896. The Grand Duke was the uncle of the German Emperor Wilhelm II. Through the efforts of Hechler and the Grand Duke, Herzl publicly met Wilhelm II in 1898. The meeting significantly advanced Herzl’s and Zionism’s legitimacy in Jewish and world opinion.”
WIKIPEDIA
THEODOR HERZL/DIPLOMATIC LIAISON WITH THE OTTOMANS
ORIGINAL SOURCE
WIKIPEDIA
THEODOR HERZL
[18]
WIKIPEDIA
THEODOR HERZL/DIPLOMATIC LIAISON WITH THE OTTOMANS
ORIGINAL SOURCE
WIKIPEDIA
THEODOR HERZL
[19]
HOW THEODOR HERZL FAILED TO CONVINCE THE OTTOMANS TO
SELL PALESTINE
Before the British allowed European Zionists to colonise Palestine, its chief idealogue, Theodor Herzl, attempted to buy the land from the Ottomans.

Long before the controversial Balfour Declaration set in motion the colonisation of Palestine at the behest of the British Empire, one of the leading founders of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, appealed to the Ottoman state for a Jewish country.

Palestine and its people were a constituent part of the Ottoman lands linking the Sublime Port in Istanbul to the wider domains, encompassing Islam’s three holiest sites of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.

Ottoman Sultans were also the caliphs of Islam from which they derived their authority by holding in their possession the holiest places of the Muslim world. But the Ottoman state also had a more worldly problem – debt, and lots of it.

In 1896, Herzl sensed a real-estate opportunity and came to Istanbul with a deal he thought the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II couldn’t turn down.

The Ottoman state was creaking under an accumulated debt burden which by the late 19th century stood at a present-day value of $11.6 billion.

The debt was controlled through a vehicle called the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, which represented European powers such as the British, French, Germans, Austrians, Italians and the Dutch. This gave European colonial powers a level of control inside the Ottoman state that would ultimately prove to be its undoing.

Cash for land

According to one historical account, Herzl offered to pay £20 million, which is around $2.2 billion in today’s currency, to the Ottoman Sultan to issue a charter for Jews to colonise Palestine.

That kind of money would have shaved around 20 percent of the Ottomans’ debt burden. It’s reported that Herzel exclaimed that “without the help of the Zionists, the Turkish economy would not stand a chance of recovery.”

Herzl’s interlocutors with the Ottoman Sultan at the time, Philip de Newlinski and Arminius Vambery, were sceptical that Jerusalem as the third holiest place in Islam would simply be sold, no matter how precarious Ottoman finances were.

They were right. Sultan Abdul Hamid II refused the offer outright in 1896, telling Newlinski, “if Mr Herzl is as much your friend as you are mine, then advise him not to take another step in this matter. I cannot sell even a foot of land, for it does not belong to me but to my people. My people have won this Empire by fighting for it with their blood and have fertilised it with their blood. We will again cover it with our blood before we allow it to be wrested away from us.”

The Sultan’s words were prophetic. Yet while the conflict is sometimes portrayed as an ancient one going back more than 1000 years, its roots are distinctly in the late 19th century.

The idea of Zionism was underpinned by the notion that Jews could be transferred from Europe to Palestine as a means of ridding what Europe called its ‘Jewish problem’.

Many non-Jews and even anti-Semites supported the idea of European Jews being relocated to the Middle East, which would have entailed the disposition of native Palestinians from their homes. Some Jews like Herzl, although not all, bought into this idea which imbued the Zionist idea from its inception as a colonial project.

The historian Louis Fishman in his book ‘Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era’, made the case that the “colonial Jewish project developed within an Ottoman context.”

But Jewish migrations to Palestine also developed against a backdrop of rabid European led anti-Semitism, which Herzl and his Zionist contemporaries realised would never abate – and he was right.

Ottoman Jews vs European Jews

By the turn of the of the 19th century, as ideas of Zionism were spreading amongst some Ottoman Jews, distinct and important differences emerged with their European Zionist counterparts.

In the book “Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule”, the historians Eyal Geno and Yuval Ben-Bassat noted that for Ottoman Jews, “Zionism was a cultural form of nationalism, an emerging identity which did not clash with their loyalty to the Ottoman state and which did not require moving to the far-off lands of Ottoman Palestine.”

European Jewish Zionists emerged from the context of European global colonisation. If European settlers could ethnically cleanse the indigenous peoples in America or Australia and create a new state on the supremacy of one race, why not European Jews?

Ottoman Jews, on the other hand, had been welcomed into the Ottoman domains by Sultan Bayezid II. The Ottoman state sent ships to help Jews flee from the Spanish Inquisition in 1492.

For many Ottoman Jews, being part of the Ottoman state had allowed them to rise to positions of prominence, and over the centuries, their day to day life would have been free of the pogroms European Jews had to endure.

The Jewish people in the Ottoman state

When Herzl finally met Sultan Abdul Hamid II face to face in 1901, he suggested that Jewish financiers could set up a company in Istanbul and, over time, purchase Ottoman debt from European powers.

In return, some lands in Palestine could be given autonomy and become a destination for Jewish migration. Herzl’s idea was a compromise on independence, however, while Abdul Hamid II was keen on the idea of consolidating foreign debts within the Empire, he maintained that it was a separate deal that would not be linked to the Jewish colonisation of Palestine.

European Jewish migration to Palestine, a trickle at the time, was nonetheless causing tensions with the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants.

The Ottomans, however, struggling to keep its domains in the Balkans and faced with an internal political upheaval as a result of a constitutional crisis, often found itself putting out fires that threatened to overwhelm the Empire.

Yet even against this backdrop, when the question of Jewish migration surfaced in the Ottoman parliament, the Ottoman Jewish parliamentarian Nissim Matzliah made clear that “if Zionism is indeed harmful to the State, then without question my loyalty lies with the State.”

However, the Ottoman state increasingly viewed European Zionism and its ambitions on its domains as part of another colonial attempt to carve up its lands.

In a detailed report to Istanbul, the Ottoman Ambassador to Berlin, Ahmet Tewfik Pasha, wrote, “we must have no illusions about Zionism” the aim he added was nothing short of “formation of a great Jewish State in Palestine, which would also spread towards the neighbouring countries.”

In his memoirs, Sultan Abdul Hamid II remarked that Herzl had attempted to deceive the state about their ultimate intentions over the land. Ottoman suspicions were later confirmed as Herzl, realising that appealing to Istanbul would not get results, ended up allying with the British – and the rest is history.

END

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· 11:55 am

Notes 13 T/M 16/THIEVES AND VILLAINS

[13]
”Political Zionism aimed at establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine through diplomatic negotiation with the established powers that controlled the area.[5] It focused on a Jewish home as a solution to the “Jewish question” and antisemitism in Europe, centred on gaining Jewish sovereignty (probably within the Ottoman or later British or French empire), and was opposed to mass migration until after sovereignty was granted. It initially considered locations other than Palestine (e.g. in Africa) and did not foresee migration by many Western Jews to the new homeland”
WIKIPEDIA
TYPES OF ZIONISM/POLITICAL ZIONISM
ORIGINAL SOURCE
WIKIPEDIA
TYPES OF ZIONISM
[14]
WIKIPEDIA
FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS
[15]
[16]
WIKIPEDIA
WORLD ZIONIST CONGRESS
WIKIPEDIA
WORLD ZIONIST CONGRESS/HISTORY
ORIGINAL SOURCE
WIKIPEDIA
WORLD ZIONIST CONGRESS

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· 11:53 am

Note 12/THIEVES AND VILLAINS

[12]
”In his An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, published in 1855, Gobineau seemingly accepts the prevailing Christian doctrine that all human beings shared the common ancestors Adam and Eve (monogenism as opposed to polygenism). Statements like “nothing proves that at the first redaction of the Adamite genealogies the colored races were considered as forming part of the species”; and, “We may conclude that the power of producing fertile offspring is among the marks of a distinct species. As nothing leads us to believe that the human race is outside this rule, there is no answer to this argument”[56] can be read as intentionally misleading discourse, inserted into the essay in anticipation of contemporary religious critiques.

Gobineau sketched several different races, attributing each with a different level of civility. Unsurprisingly, he placed the ‘European’ in the most developed stage (or l’état lumineux). In a historical context were the dominant idea was that ‘civility’ was developed over time, the different stages of development could imply a separate creation of races, the most developed created first, and the least developed created last (polygenesis). A different interpretation could be that all races were created together, but that the ‘non-European’ races simply stopped developing (monogenesis). Furthermore, Gobineau clarified that he wrote about races, not individuals: examples of talented black or Asian individuals did not disprove his thesis of the supposed inferiority of the black and Asian races. He wrote:

“I will not wait for the friends of equality to show me such and such passages in books written by missionaries or sea captains, who declare some Wolof is a fine carpenter, some Hottentot a good servant, that a Kaffir dances and plays the violin, that some Bambara knows arithmetic … Let us leave aside these puerilities and compare together not men, but groups.”[57]

Gobineau argued that race was destiny, declaring rhetorically:

So the brain of a Huron Indian contains in undeveloped form an intellect which is absolutely that same as an Englishman or a Frenchman! Why then, in the course of the ages has he not then invented printing or steam power?

Gobineau’s primary thesis was that European civilization flowed from Greece to Rome, and then to Germanic and contemporary civilization. He thought this corresponded to the ancient Indo-European culture,[58] or “Aryan“—a common term at the time used to denote prehistorical Indo-Iranians praised as the ancestors of the ‘most developed’, ‘European race’. This included groups classified by language like the Celts, Slavs and the Germans.[59][60] Gobineau later came to use and reserve the term Aryan only for the “Germanic race”, and described the Aryans as la race germanique.[61] By doing so, he presented a racist theory in which Aryans—that is Germanic people—were all that was positive.[62]

WIKIPEDIA

ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU/AN ESSAY ON THE INEQUALITY OF

THE HUMAN RACES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_de_Gobineau#An_Essay_on_the_Inequality_of_the_Human_Races

ORIGINAL SOURCE

WIKIPEDIA

ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_de_Gobineau

”Israel is the product of a colonial settler ideology that has its roots in the racist imperialist practices of the European powers in the 19th century. Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was a great admirer of Cecil Rhodes, the British colonizer of Africa”
MONDOWEISS
THE ”ZIONIST BETRAYAL OF JEWS” FROM HERZL
TO NETANYAHU, BY STANLEY HELLER
14 DECEMBER 2019

Jewish Palestine solidarity activist Stanley Heller’s dynamite short book documents Zionism’s betrayal of Jewish morality exposing as it does initial shameful deals with Nazi Germany up to current relations with anti-Semites and neofascists in Trump’s America.

“Zionist Betrayal of Jews: From Herzl to Netanyahu” is especially timely coming out as it did on the eve of Netanyahu’s indictment for fraud and corruption. As Heller shows convincingly, despite its self-promotion, Israel is not the moral legatee of the victims of the Holocaust, much less of the prophets of the Hebrew people. The history of Zionism is a sordid one. By stripping it of its moral authority it will help all of us fighting for the human rights of Palestinians against Zionism‘s ongoing genocide.

Israel is the product of a colonial settler ideology that has its roots in the racist imperialist practices of the European powers in the 19th century. Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was a great admirer of Cecil Rhodes, the British colonizer of Africa. After the horrific 1903 Kishinev pogrom Herzl had the gall to meet with its instigator, Russian Interior Minister Vyacheslav von Plehve. They came to an understanding. Von Plehve wanted to get rid of Jews and Herzl wanted the Jews to go to Palestine. This set a pattern and practice valid to this very day.

The book points out that many western Jews including the banker Jacob Schiff were seeking to sanction and punish Czarist Russia for its treatment of Jews.

The Czar never relented and the outrages against Jews continued, but Schiff never backed down. He started the American Jewish Committee and, even though more and more Russian Jews were killed, Schiff didn’t call off the boycott. As [author Edwin] Black puts it “the Committee held that the anti-Semitic outrages of one regime could spread infectiously if not quarantined.”

Heller writes about members of the Zionist movement who undercut Jewish resistance to the Nazis as early as 1933. At the time there were large mobilizations against Nazism in the United States. The World Zionist Organization sabotaged world Jewry’s promising and nearly successful attempt to boycott and severely damage the Nazi economy. These Zionists made a deal with the Nazi regime whereby the Zionists purchased goods from Germany and sold them in Palestine in return for Germany allowing their Jews to meet capital requirements to enter British Palestine. Heller quotes pro-Zionist writer Edwin Black as writing the effect was to “pierce a stake through the heart of the Jewish-led anti-Nazi boycott.”

He writes about Israeli historian Tom Segev’s conclusion that the Zionist leadership in Palestine was “less than compassionate” in its attempts to assist Jews in Europe during the Holocaust and of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s broken-hearted feelings upon learning about this. Heller includes some quotes from David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, that are truly shocking. For instance, Ben-Gurion told a meeting of “left“ Zionists in 1938 in England: “If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I would opt for the second alternative.”

At the same time, Heller is emphatic that the claims that Zionists aided Nazi extermination efforts are antisemitic:

There is an idiotic and Jewish-hating claim that goes round in modern neo-Nazi circles that the Zionists or “the Jews” actively participated in the Holocaust, actually killing Jews so that the world would be manipulated into creating Israel. This moronic nonsense is utterly false. Even the most stupid Zionists (the Stern Gang) took no part in any such “plot”.

In the 1980’s the American Jewish Commission on the Holocaust, made up of the leaders of the Jewish community, rejected the draft of an analysis written by its staff, because they thought it was too critical of the Jewish leadership. The New York Times reported in January 1983 that “In retrospect, one incontrovertible fact stands out above all others: in the face of Hitler’s total war against the Jews of Europe, The Jewish leadership in America at no stage decided to proclaim total mobilization for rescue.“ It said that the Zionist “exclusive concentration on Palestine as a solution” made them unable to work for any other alternative.

After the war and the establishment of Israel in 1948 its leaders developed good relations with rightist governments across the globe, even selling arms to the dictatorships in Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina, which had a particularly vicious anti-Semitic dictatorship in the 1970s.

In 2019 Israel’s relation to right wing nationalist racist dictators has not changed. Netanyahu is particularly close with the Hungarian president Victor Orban, who calls himself an “illiberal“. Orban glorifies Admiral Miklos Horthy, the Hungarian head of state in the 1940s, who was responsible for thousands of Jewish deaths. Trump has opened the door to all kinds of hatred. He hired Steve Bannon as his campaign manager and subsequent presidential adviser. Bannon had transformed the Breitbart network into a platform for racism and was “masterful at publishing articles filled with coded anti-Semitism.“ Trump also hired Sebastian Gorka as his counterterrorism advisor. Gorka wore a pro- Nazi medal to Trump’s inauguration. Weeks later the Zionist Organization of America honored Bannon at its annual gala.

Heller shows that Trump and some rightwing Israelis fostered the antisemitic portrayal of George Soros as a controlling mastermind.

The Soros-monster theme soon spread to Italy, Poland, to the Trump campaign (his closing ad in his 2016 presidential race featured Soros and other Jewish enemies) and worldwide. Netanyahu hates Soros for being a liberal, but Orban knew how to make the hate more effective. He used dog whistles to remind Hungarians that Soros was a Jew. In [a] Buzzfield article Hannes Grassegger… writes, “If you search today for Soros, you will immediately find images of his head with octopus tentacles, another classic anti-Semitic motif. Even Netanyahu’s son Yair posted an anti-Semitic meme in 2017 showing Soros and reptilians controlling the world.

This hasn’t bothered Netanyahu one bit.

Netanyahu also has done little to deplore the growth of white nationalist antisemitism in the United States, or Trump’s encouragement of it:

Netanyahu was mostly silent about Charlottesville and Trump’s statements. Netanyahu didn’t make a speech about the incident. He issued one tweet, “Outraged by expressions of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and racism. Everyone should oppose this hatred.” He said nothing about Trump’s “very fine people” statement. His caution was noted by the Israeli press and the New York Times.

In 2018 when Trump moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as Netanyahu and his right wing Likud party wanted, the benediction at the dedication was given by Reverend John Hagee, a “Christian Zionist.” Hagee believes that when the “End Times” comes the Jews will all be gathered in Israel and Jesus will return to the earth. The Jews would then either convert to Christianity or go to hell. Heller observed that “ Whatever consequence Christian Zionists and their alliance with the Republican Party may have for American Jews is evidently not Netanyahu’s problem.” Netanyahu defends Trump, sacrificing larger Jewish interests to the Israeli government.

But things are changing in America. In the last 10 years the Jewish community has begun to realize this saying that the Zionists don’t speak for us.

Stanley Heller concludes with this thought: “Zionism has been a modern False Messiah. It has betrayed world Jewry again and again. It created a gilded ghetto that says that salvation is joining an alliance with imperial overlords and brutish anti-Semitic forces all over the world. In fighting anti-Semitism, the alternative to Zionism is to join anti-racist groups that embrace the world’s best and most universal values. For Jews a place to start is with Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, and other proud Jewish anti-racist organizations.”

END

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· 11:50 am

Note 11/THIEVES AND VILLAINS

[11]

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

ISRAEL’S APARTHEID AGAINST PALESTINIANS”A CRUEL

SYSTEM OF DOMINATION AND A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

1 FEBRUARI 2022

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/

Israeli authorities must be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, Amnesty International said today in a damning new report. The investigation details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights. This includes Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as well as displaced refugees in other countries.

The comprehensive report, Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity, sets out how massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all components of a system which amounts to apartheid under international law. This system is maintained by violations which Amnesty International found to constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.

Amnesty International is calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT and calls on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.

“There is no possible justification for a system built around the institutionalized and prolonged racist oppression of millions of people. Apartheid has no place in our world, and states which choose to make allowances for Israel will find themselves on the wrong side of history. Governments who continue to supply Israel with arms and shield it from accountability at the UN are supporting a system of apartheid, undermining the international legal order, and exacerbating the suffering of the Palestinian people. The international community must face up to the reality of Israel’s apartheid, and pursue the many avenues to justice which remain shamefully unexplored.”

Amnesty International’s findings build on a growing body of work by Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, who have increasingly applied the apartheid framework to the situation in Israel and/or the OPT.

Identifying apartheid

A system of apartheid is an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination by one racial group over another. It is a serious human rights violation which is prohibited in public international law. Amnesty International’s extensive research and legal analysis, carried out in consultation with external experts, demonstrates that Israel enforces such a system against Palestinians through laws, policies and practices which ensure their prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment.

In international criminal law, specific unlawful acts which are committed within a system of oppression and domination, with the intention of maintaining it, constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid. These acts are set out in the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute, and include unlawful killing, torture, forcible transfer, and the denial of basic rights and freedoms.

Amnesty International documented acts proscribed in the Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute in all the areas Israel controls, although they occur more frequently and violently in the OPT than in Israel. Israeli authorities enact multiple measures to deliberately deny Palestinians their basic rights and freedoms, including draconian movement restrictions in the OPT, chronic discriminatory underinvestment in Palestinian communities in Israel, and the denial of refugees’ right to return. The report also documents forcible transfer, administrative detention, torture, and unlawful killings, in both Israel and the OPT.

Amnesty International found that these acts form part of a systematic and widespread attack directed against the Palestinian population, and are committed with the intent to maintain the system of oppression and domination. They therefore constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid.

The unlawful killing of Palestinian protesters is perhaps the clearest illustration of how Israeli authorities use proscribed acts to maintain the status quo. In 2018, Palestinians in Gaza began to hold weekly protests along the border with Israel, calling for the right of return for refugees and an end to the blockade. Before protests even began, senior Israeli officials warned that Palestinians approaching the wall would be shot. By the end of 2019, Israeli forces had killed 214 civilians, including 46 children.

In light of the systematic unlawful killings of Palestinians documented in its report, Amnesty International is also calling for the UN Security Council to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel. This should cover all weapons and munitions as well as law enforcement equipment, given the thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been unlawfully killed by Israeli forces. The Security Council should also impose targeted sanctions, such as asset freezes, against Israeli officials most implicated in the crime of apartheid.

Palestinians treated as a demographic threat

Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued a policy of establishing and then maintaining a Jewish demographic majority, and maximizing control over land and resources to benefit Jewish Israelis. In 1967, Israel extended this policy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, all territories controlled by Israel continue to be administered with the purpose of benefiting Jewish Israelis to the detriment of Palestinians, while Palestinian refugees continue to be excluded.

Amnesty International recognizes that Jews, like Palestinians, claim a right to self-determination, and does not challenge Israel’s desire to be a home for Jews. Similarly, it does not consider that Israel labelling itself a “Jewish state” in itself indicates an intention to oppress and dominate.

However, Amnesty International’s report shows that successive Israeli governments have considered Palestinians a demographic threat, and imposed measures to control and decrease their presence and access to land in Israel and the OPT. These demographic aims are well illustrated by official plans to “Judaize” areas of Israel and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which continue to put thousands of Palestinians at risk of forcible transfer.

Oppression without borders

The 1947-49 and 1967 wars, Israel’s ongoing military rule of the OPT, and the creation of separate legal and administrative regimes within the territory, have separated Palestinian communities and segregated them from Jewish Israelis. Palestinians have been fragmented geographically and politically, and experience different levels of discrimination depending on their status and where they live.

Palestinian citizens in Israel currently enjoy greater rights and freedoms than their counterparts in the OPT, while the experience of Palestinians in Gaza is very different to that of those living in the West Bank. Nonetheless, Amnesty International’s research shows that all Palestinians are subject to the same overarching system. Israel’s treatment of Palestinians across all areas is pursuant to the same objective: to privilege Jewish Israelis in distribution of land and resources, and to minimize the Palestinian presence and access to land.

Amnesty International demonstrates that Israeli authorities treat Palestinians as an inferior racial group who are defined by their non-Jewish, Arab status. This racial discrimination is cemented in laws which affect Palestinians across Israel and the OPT.

For example, Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied a nationality, establishing a legal differentiation from Jewish Israelis. In the West Bank and Gaza, where Israel has controlled the population registry since 1967, Palestinians have no citizenship and most are considered stateless, requiring ID cards from the Israeli military to live and work in the territories.

Palestinian refugees and their descendants, who were displaced in the 1947-49 and 1967 conflicts, continue to be denied the right to return to their former places of residence. Israel’s exclusion of refugees is a flagrant violation of international law which has left millions in a perpetual limbo of forced displacement.

Palestinians in annexed East Jerusalem are granted permanent residence instead of citizenship – though this status is permanent in name only. Since 1967, more than 14,000 Palestinians have had their residency revoked at the discretion of the Ministry of the Interior, resulting in their forcible transfer outside the city.

Lesser citizens

Palestinian citizens of Israel, who comprise about 19% of the population, face many forms of institutionalized discrimination. In 2018, discrimination against Palestinians was crystallized in a constitutional law which, for the first time, enshrined Israel exclusively as the “nation state of the Jewish people”. The law also promotes the building of Jewish settlements and downgrades Arabic’s status as an official language.

The report documents how Palestinians are effectively blocked from leasing on 80% of Israel’s state land, as a result of racist land seizures and a web of discriminatory laws on land allocation, planning and zoning.

The situation in the Negev/Naqab region of southern Israel is a prime example of how Israel’s planning and building policies intentionally exclude Palestinians.  Since 1948 Israeli authorities have adopted various policies to “Judaize” the Negev/Naqab, including designating large areas as nature reserves or military firing zones, and setting targets for increasing the Jewish population. This has had devastating consequences for the tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins who live in the region.

Thirty-five Bedouin villages, home to about 68,000 people, are currently “unrecognized” by Israel, which means they are cut off from the national electricity and water supply and targeted for repeated demolitions. As the villages have no official status, their residents also face restrictions on political participation and are excluded from the healthcare and education systems. These conditions have coerced many into leaving their homes and villages, in what amounts to forcible transfer.

Decades of deliberately unequal treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel have left them consistently economically disadvantaged in comparison to Jewish Israelis. This is exacerbated by blatantly discriminatory allocation of state resources: a recent example is the government’s Covid-19 recovery package, of which just 1.7% was given to Palestinian local authorities.

Dispossession

The dispossession and displacement of Palestinians from their homes is a crucial pillar of Israel’s apartheid system. Since its establishment the Israeli state has enforced massive and cruel land seizures against Palestinians, and continues to implement myriad laws and policies to force Palestinians into small enclaves. Since 1948, Israel has demolished hundreds of thousands of Palestinian homes and other properties across all areas under its jurisdiction and effective control.

As in the Negev/Naqab, Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Area C of the OPT live under full Israeli control. The authorities deny building permits to Palestinians in these areas, forcing them to build illegal structures which are demolished again and again.

In the OPT, the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements exacerbates the situation. The construction of these settlements in the OPT has been a government policy since 1967. Settlements today cover 10% of the land in the West Bank, and some 38% of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem was expropriated between 1967 and 2017.

Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem are frequently targeted by settler organizations which, with the full backing of the Israeli government, work to displace Palestinian families and hand their homes to settlers. One such neighbourhood, Sheikh Jarrah, has been the site of frequent protests since May 2021 as families battle to keep their homes under the threat of a settler lawsuit.

Draconian movement restrictions

Since the mid-1990s Israeli authorities have imposed increasingly stringent movement restrictions on Palestinians in the OPT. A web of military checkpoints, roadblocks, fences and other structures controls the movement of Palestinians within the OPT, and restricts their travel into Israel or abroad.

A 700km fence, which Israel is still extending, has isolated Palestinian communities inside “military zones”, and they must obtain multiple special permits any time they enter or leave their homes. In Gaza, more than 2 million Palestinians live under an Israeli blockade which has created a humanitarian crisis. It is near-impossible for Gazans to travel abroad or into the rest of the OPT, and they are effectively segregated from the rest of the world.

“The permit system in the OPT is emblematic of Israel’s brazen discrimination against Palestinians. While Palestinians are locked in a blockade, stuck for hours at checkpoints, or waiting for yet another permit to come through, Israeli citizens and settlers can move around as they please.”

Amnesty International examined each of the security justifications which Israel cites as the basis for its treatment of Palestinians. The report shows that, while some of Israel’s policies may have been designed to fulfil legitimate security objectives, they have been implemented in a grossly disproportionate and discriminatory way which fails to comply with international law. Other policies have absolutely no reasonable basis in security, and are clearly shaped by the intent to oppress and dominate.

The way forward

Amnesty International provides numerous specific recommendations for how the Israeli authorities can dismantle the apartheid system and the discrimination, segregation and oppression which sustain it.

The organization is calling for an end to the brutal practice of home demolitions and forced evictions as a first step. Israel must grant equal rights to all Palestinians in Israel and the OPT, in line with principles of international human rights and humanitarian law. It must recognize the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to homes where they or their families once lived, and provide victims of human rights violations and crimes against humanity with full reparations.

The scale and seriousness of the violations documented in Amnesty International’s report call for a drastic change in the international community’s approach to the human rights crisis in Israel and the OPT.

All states may exercise universal jurisdiction over persons reasonably suspected of committing the crime of apartheid under international law, and states that are party to the Apartheid Convention have an obligation to do so.

“Israel must dismantle the apartheid system and start treating Palestinians as human beings with equal rights and dignity. Until it does, peace and security will remain a distant prospect for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

REPORT AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

ISRAEL’S APARTHEID AGAINST PALESTINIANS”A CRUEL

SYSTEM OF DOMINATION AND A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/

file:///C:/Users/Astrid/Downloads/MDE1551412022ENGLISH%20(10).pdf

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

ISRAELI APARTHEID: ”A THRESHOLD CROSSED”

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/19/israeli-apartheid-threshold-crossed

In April, Human Rights Watch released a 213-page report, “A Threshold Crossed,” finding that Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. We reached this determination based on our documentation of an overarching government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians coupled with grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem

In the months since, a growing chorus of voices, from former Israeli ambassadors to South Africa and current Knesset members to the ex-UN Secretary General and the French foreign minister, have referenced apartheid in relation to Israel’s discriminatory treatment of Palestinians, in particular in the occupied territory. Yet many in Germany, including those critical of Israeli human rights abuses, remain hesitant to apply the label to Israeli conduct.

Given history, one can certainly understand Germany’s concern for the welfare of the Jewish people, but that should not carry over to an endorsement of abusive and discriminatory Israeli government conduct, especially in the occupied territory. As recognition grows that these crimes are being committed, the failure to recognize that reality requires burying your head deeper and deeper into the sand.

The problem begins with the Israeli government having exercised primary control for more than a half-century over the land between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, encompassing Israel and the occupied territory, where two main groups of people of roughly equal size live. Throughout this area, Israeli authorities methodologically privilege one of the groups, Jewish Israelis, who are governed under the same body of laws with the same rights and privileges wherever they live. At the same time, authorities allocate different baskets of inferior rights to the other, Palestinians, systematically discriminating against them wherever they live and most severely in the occupied territory.

Our sense that our research was not capturing this underlying reality led us to write this report. Reporting on “separate, not equal” schools for Palestinians inside Israel, Palestinians being forced out of their homes in occupied East Jerusalem, the serious rights abuses stemming from the Israeli settlement enterprise in the West Bank, and the crushing closure of the Gaza Strip, we felt that our work captured important dynamics, including entrenched discrimination, in particular areas, but did not capture the full scope of Israel’s discriminatory rule over Palestinians.

We set out in the report to evaluate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territory. As we do in the nearly 100 countries across the world we work in, we began by documenting the facts—drawing on years of our own research, case studies that compared Palestinian areas with predominantly or exclusively Jewish ones, and a review of government planning documents, statements by officials, and a range of other materials.

Across Israel and the occupied territory, Human Rights Watch found that Israeli authorities have pursued an intent to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians. They have done so by undertaking policies aimed at mitigating what they openly describe as the “demographic threat” Palestinians pose and maximizing the land available for Jewish communities, while concentrating most Palestinian in dense enclaves. The policy takes different forms and is pursued in a particularly severe form in the occupied territory. It includes efforts to, as leading Israelis officials have put it, “Judaize” the Negev and Galilee regions of Israel and to maintain “a solid Jewish majority,” as described in government planning documents, in the Jerusalem municipality, which includes the eastern part of Jerusalem, which Israel unilaterally annexed and occupies. It also encompasses efforts to “settle [Jews in] the land between the [Palestinian] minority population centers and their surroundings” in the West Bank, as set out in plans that have guided the government’s settlement, and to pursue “separation” between the West Bank and Gaza. The policy across the board serves the same fundamental goal: maximum land, minimum Palestinians.

Furthermore, we found that Israeli authorities have carried out the grave abuses needed for the crimes of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians living in the occupied territory. It has done so through, among other policies, sweeping restrictions on movement in the form of the 14-year generalized closure of Gaza and the discriminatory permit system in the West Bank; the confiscation of more than a third of the land in the West Bank; and denial of residency rights to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their relatives. Israel has imposed draconian military rule over millions of Palestinians, suspending their basic civil rights, while Jewish Israelis living in the same territory are governed under the permissive Israeli civil law; and imposed harsh conditions in parts of the West Bank that led to forcing thousands of Palestinians out of their homes.

We then evaluated these facts against the relevant areas of international law—in this case, the established law on discrimination—which includes a universal prohibition against apartheid. While the term was coined in relation to specific practices in South Africa, international treaties define apartheid as a universal legal term referring to a particularly severe form of discriminatory oppression.

International criminal law, including the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court, define apartheid as a crime against humanity consisting of three primary elements: (1) an intent by one racial group to dominate another; (2) systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group; and (3) particularly grave abuses known as inhumane acts.

Racial group is understood today also to encompass treatment on the basis of descent and national or ethnic origin. International criminal law also identifies a related crime against humanity of persecution. Under the Rome Statute and customary international law, persecution consists of severe deprivation of fundamental rights of a racial, ethnic, or other group with discriminatory intent.

The ratification by the State of Palestine of these two treaties in recent years has strengthened the legal application of these two crimes in its territory. A ruling by a chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this year confirmed that it has jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity – including apartheid and persecution – committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2014.

Applying the facts to the laws, Human Rights Watch concluded that Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. We found that the elements of the crimes come together in the occupied territory as part of a single Israeli government policy. That policy is to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territory. It is coupled in the occupied territory with systematic oppression and inhumane acts against Palestinians living there.

Sometimes the most important thing someone who cares deeply about you can do is to share hard truths and push you to confront them. The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and leaders of Israel’s closest ally, the US, including former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State John Kerry, warned of the prospect of apartheid if things did not change.

Today, apartheid is not a hypothetical or future scenario. A 54-year-occupation is not temporary. The threshold has been crossed. Apartheid, and parallel persecution, is the reality for millions of Palestinians. Recognizing and correctly diagnosing a problem is the first step to solving it and ending apartheid is vital to the future of both Palestinians and Israelis and the cause of peace. It is by extension Germany’s special relationship with Israel and history that should prompt them to recognize the reality of apartheid and persecution and bring to bear the sorts of tools needed to end these crimes against humanity.

END

REPORT HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

A TRESHOLD CROSSED

27 APRIL 2021

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

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· 11:47 am

Notes 7 T/M 10/THIEVES AND VILLAINS

[7]
DICTIONARY
mag·num opus ˈmag-nəm-ˈō-pəs 
: a great work

especially : the greatest achievement of an artist or writer
[8]
WIKIPEDIA
DER JUDENSTAAT
DER JUDENSTAAT/FULL TEXT
”A JEWISH STATE: AN ATTEMPT AT A MODERN SOLUTION
OF THE JEWISH QUESTION”
[9]
SEE NOTE 8
[10]
”Beginning in late 1895, Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews), which was published February 1896 to immediate acclaim and controversy. The book argued that the Jewish people should leave Europe for Palestine, their historic homeland. The Jews possessed a nationality; all they were missing was a nation and a state of their own.[32] Only through a Jewish state could they avoid antisemitism, express their culture freely and practice their religion without hindrance”
WIKIPEDIA
THEODOR HERZL/ZIONIST INTELLECTUAL AND ACTIVIST
ORIGINAL SOURCE
WIKIPEDIA
THEODOR HERZL

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· 11:45 am

Note 6/THIEVES AND VILLAINS

[6]
”Beginning in late 1895, Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews), which was published February 1896 to immediate acclaim and controversy. The book argued that the Jewish people should leave Europe for Palestine, their historic homeland. The Jews possessed a nationality; all they were missing was a nation and a state of their own.[32] Only through a Jewish state could they avoid antisemitism, express their culture freely and practice their religion without hindrance”
WIKIPEDIA
THEODOR HERZL/ZIONIST INTELLECTUAL AND ACTIVIST
ORIGINAL SOURCE

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· 11:43 am

Notes 3 T/M 5/THIEVES AND VILLAINS

[3]
WIKIPEDIA
THEODOR HERZL
WIKIPEDIA
DER JUDENSTAAT
DER JUDENSTAAT/FULL TEXT
”A JEWISH STATE: AN ATTEMPT AT A MODERN SOLUTION
OF THE JEWISH QUESTION”
[4]
”Herzl himself stated that the Dreyfus case turned him into a Zionist and that he was particularly affected by chants of “Death to the Jews!” from the crowds. This had been the widely held belief for some time. However, some modern scholars now believe that – due to little mention of the Dreyfus affair in Herzl’s earlier accounts and a seemingly contrary reference he made in them to shouts of “Death to the traitor!” – he may have exaggerated the influence it had on him in order to create further support for his goals.[23][24]

Jacques Kornberg claims that the Dreyfus influence was a myth that Herzl did not feel necessary to deflate and that he also believed that Dreyfus was guilty.[25] Another modern claim is that, while upset by antisemitism evident in French society, Herzl, like most contemporary observers, initially believed Dreyfus was guilty and only claimed to have been inspired by the affair years later when it had become an international cause célèbre.”

WIKIPEDIA

THEODOR HERZL/ZIONIST INTELLECTUAL AND ACTIVIST

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl#Zionist_intellectual_and_activist

ORIGINAL SOURCE

WIKIPEDIA

THEODOR HERZL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl

[5]

WIKIPEDIA
DREYFUS AFFAIR

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· 11:41 am

Note 2/THIEVES AND VILLAINS

[2]

EDWARD I (LONGSHANKS) EXPELLS THE JEWS FROM ENGLAND

In 1290 King Edward I of England (Longshanks)Offsite Link issued an edict expelling all Jews from England.

“Lasting for the rest of the Middle Ages, it would be over 350 years until it was formally overturned in 1656. The edict was not an isolated incident but the culmination of over 200 years of conflict on the matters of usury. The first Jewish communities of significant size came to England with William the ConquerorOffsite Link in 1066. On the conquest of England, William instituted a feudal system in the country, whereby all estates formally belonged to the king, who appointed lords over vast estates, subject to duties and obligations (financial and knights) to the king. Under the lords were further subjects such as serfs, which were bound and obligated to their lords. Merchants had a special status in the system as did Jews. Jews were declared to be direct subjects of the King, unlike the rest of the population. This had advantages for Jews, in that they were not tied to any particular lord, but were subject to the whims of the king. Every successive King formally reviewed a royal charter granting Jews the right to remain in England. Jews did not enjoy any of the guarantees of Magna Carta of 1215.

“Economically, Jews played a key role in the country. The church at the time strictly forbade usury, or the lending of money for profit. This left a hole in the heart of the European economy that Jews quickly filled (canon law was not considered to apply to Jews, and Judaism permits loans with interest Offsite Linkbetween Jews and non-Jews).  As a consequence, some Jews made large amounts of money. However, taking advantage of their unique status as his direct subjects, the King could expropriate Jewish assets in the form of taxation. He levied heavy taxes on Jews at will without having to summon Parliament.  The Jewish community acted as a kind of giant monetary filter: Jews collected interest on money loaned to the people which the King could take at his pleasure.

“Jews acquired a reputation as extortionate money lenders which made them extremely unpopular with both the Church and the general public. While antisemitism was widespread in Europe, medieval England was particularly antisemitic. An image of the Jew as a diabolical figure who hated Christ started to become widespread, and antisemitic myths such as the Wandering Jew and ritual murders originated and spread throughout England; as well as Scotland and Wales.  Jews were said to hunt for children to murder before Passover so they could use their blood to make matzah. Antisemitism on a number of occasions sparked riots where many Jews were murdered, most famously in 1190 when over a hundred Jews were massacred in the city of York.

“The situation only got worse for Jews as the 13th century progressed. In 1218, England became the first European nation to require Jews to wear a marking badge. Taxation grew increasingly intense. Between 1219 and 1272, 49 levies were imposed on Jews for a total of 200,000 marks, a huge amount of money.  The first major step towards expulsion took place in 1275, with the Statute of Jewry. The statute outlawed all usury and gave Jews fifteen years to readjust. However, guilds as well as popular prejudice made Jewish movement into mercantile or agricultural pursuits almost impossible.

“While in GasconyOffsite Link in 1287, Edward ordered English Jews expelled. All their property was seized by the crown and all outstanding debts payable to Jews were transferred to the King’s name. It was a bleak sign of things to come. Edward’s personal views on Jews are something of a mystery. In the glimpses we have of his dealings with them, he seems interested but unsympathetic. His mother, however, does seem to have been anti-semitic. Whatever his personal feelings, by the time he returned to England in 1289 Edward was deeply in debt. The next summer he summoned his knights to impose a steep tax. To make the tax more palatable, Edward in exchange essentially offered to expel all Jews. The heavy tax was passed, and three days later, on July 18, the Edict of Expulsion was issued. One official reason for the expulsion was that Jews had neglected to follow the Statute of Jewry. The edict of expulsion was widely popular and met with little resistance, and the expulsion was quickly carried out.

“The Jewish population in England at the time was relatively small. While population estimates vary, probably less than 1% of England was Jewish; perhaps 3,000 people.  The expulsion process went fairly smoothly, although there were a few horrific stories. One story told of a captain taking a ship full of Jews to the Thames while the tide was going out and convincing them to go out for a walk with him. He then lost them and made it back to his ship before the tide came back in, leaving them all to drown. Other stories exist of Jews being robbed or killed, but the majority of the Jews seem to have crossed the channel in safety” (Wikipedia article on Edict of Expulsion, accessed 02-15-2009).

WIKIPEDIA

EDICT OF EXPULSION

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion

WIKIPEDIA
ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE/MIDDLE AGES
WIKIPEDIA
ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE/16TH, 1TH AND 18TH CENTURIES
WIKIPEDIA
ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE/19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURIES
ORIGINAL SOURCE
ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE

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· 11:39 am

Note 1/THIEVES AND VILLAINS

[1]
WIKIPEDIA
SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA
WIKIPEDIA
COLONIALISM
”Exploitation colonialism refers to the practice where colonial powers extract resources and labor from colonized regions primarily for economic gain, often at the expense of local populations. This form of colonialism typically involves significant social, cultural, and economic disruption in the colonized areas, as the focus is on maximizing profits through resource extraction rather than promoting development or welfare of the local people.”
EXPLOITATION COLONIALISM
WIKIPEDIA
RACIAL THEORIES IN PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (1850-1918)
ORIGINAL SOURCE
WIKIPEDIA
SCIENTIFIC RACISM

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