גירסה אנגלית של המאמר "מי מפחד מברק אובמה"

מי מפחד מברק אובמה

The Logic in Madness

Column of Zeev Galili

Yes we can  say 'no' to America

In Jewish communities all over the world the question is asked, is the election of Barack Obama to the United States presidency good or bad for the Jews.

Did you lose your mind

Before I provide my answer to this question I would like to bring you this story about the  president George W. Bush. During the negotiation with the Hezbollah for the exchange of two captured and murdered Israeli soldiers for the serial child murderer, Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar and other Lebanese terrorists held by Israel, President Bush called Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and asked him, did you lose your mind? Why negotiate with a terrorist organization about the release of your soldiers who may not be alive? We have many US citizens kidnapped all over the world but we never negotiate with terrorists on principle. Negotiate with terrorists and every US citizen around the world will be targeted for kidnapping. In Iraq, for example, there are hardly any kidnapping. They know they will get nothing from us so they rather kil

An American President, obviously, can be more pro-Israel than our own Prime Minister

Like those old ghetto inmates

Israeli Air Force Commander General Benny Peled once said, "After I die I wish they remember I said the Jews came to their land after 2,000 years, tried to build a State but instead succeeded only in building another Shtetle." And he was right! Recent Israeli governments act like those old ghetto inmates trembling in fear of the world's bullies

Whether Barack Obama is good or bad for the Jews may be irrelevant—something beside the point. The real question should be, when our country will get a pro-Israel Prime Minister to head a Zionist government

Historically American Presidents did much good and very little damage to Israel. Some liked us more than others for sure, but they all acted in America's own interests and during the long cold war with the Soviets this was fine with Israel

The big life-threatening mistakes

The big life-threatening mistakes to our existence here were very much our own misdeeds. No American President forced us into the shameful Oslo capitulation, nor brought Yasser Arafat and his Fatah terror organization into our land. No American president forced us to panic-flee South Lebanon, nor ordered Arik Sharon to leave Gaza and destroy the thriving villages of Gush Katif there. And no American President leaned on the discredited and lame-duck Ehud Olmert to negotiate land concessions with Syria or divide Jerusalem. These disasters and disasters in-the-making were perpetrated by   governments headed by delusional Prime Ministers often to ward off charges of corruption

The Oslo Syndrome

Is there any scientific work to back up General Benny Peled view of Israel's shortcomings? Indeed there is. Kenneth Levin, historian and psychiatrist, in his book The Oslo Syndrome: Delusion of a People Under Siege, wrote that Israeli governments' policies from the signing of the Oslo Agreements to the Second Lebanon War of 2006 are more than failures of good leadership and good government, they are expressions of a national pathology—a delusion, where a delusion is defined as holding on as acceptable truth to a mistaken belief, easily discredited and proven false

Levin goes on and explains that the roots of this delusional view of reality can be traced to thoughts and behaviors learned and adopted by people long exposed to pogroms, prejudices and other gross mistreatment. Jews have always tried hard to convince themselves that a bad situation (e.g. the Holocaust) is not as bad as it seems to be. The notion of self-guilt, or as the Jewish Zaionist thinker, Max Nordau, wrote in the 19th century, "we Jews see ourselves with the eyes of the anti-Semites," did not help clearer thinking in Israel either

Israel's reality of a small nation under siege from its beginning, surrounded by enemies who deny its right to exist, has resulted in distorted, self-delusional thinking as in the extended Jewish Diaspora but with much greater dimensions

"The Eve of a New Dawn".

With this background the elite intellectual strata of Israeli society adopted the belief that Israel is hated because it is guilty as its enemies charged, and what is needed is a change in behavior in order to cast off the siege and end the hostility. Those who need to change, Kenneth Levin explains, are not the evil, racist, and terror-perpetrating Arab governments but democratic and pluralistic Israel.

These views of the elite intellectual strata blinded generations of Israeli governments to believe that legitimate Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria are the cause of Arab hatred and their desire to annihilate Israel.  Thus the slogans of "peace process", "end of occupation" and "land for peace" were born. Collectively it was called the "The Eve of a New Dawn

Some Israeli members of the elite strata, like left wing politician Shulamit Aloni and writer Amos Oz described their new Utopia as one where soldiers do not get killed and their parents "…will walk behind their coffins no more", and "…death will not ambush Israelis again."

To this Levin brings Winston Churchill's famous comment: "Chamberlain had to decide between surrender and war. He chose surrender and got war

.To say 'no' to the American

United States contribution to Israel's security is significant. Without doubt, Israel depends on the United States for military aid and political support, but does Israel have to follow America's wishes to the letter? The answer is a definite 'no'. Generally America's and Israel's interests are similar but not identical. America, too, makes mistakes, like letting Iran fall into the Ayatollahs clutches by President Carter. Israel is still paying a price for that blunder. Israel needs a government that knows to say 'no' to mistakes

The last government to say 'no' to the Americans was the one headed by Yitzhak Shamir. President Bush the father, no great friend of the Jewish state, tried to dictate Israel's policies. Shamir said 'no', and what happened? Nothing, the sky did not drop from the heavens

Yes, it is sometimes okay to say 'no' to America because Israel contributes more to America than America contributes to Israel. Noted Israeli scientist Ezra Zohar studied the aid issue and demonstrated that the value of the military and political intelligence Israel provides to the United States national security exceeded, in dollar terms, the value of the American aid to Israel.

Prime Minister Shamir steadfastness to American pressure is not the only example of Israel saying 'no' to America. Zachi Shalom in his book, Between Dimona and Washington: The Struggle Over Development of Israeli Nuclear Option, 1960—1968, reviews the development of Israel's nuclear option—a top Israeli national interest

When the U2 spy plane discovered the Dimona nuclear facility President John Kennedy viewed the development of the Israel's nuclear option as a strategic threat to the United States and demanded American unconditional control over the Dimona nuclear reactor. The pressure put on the Ben Gurion government at the time was meant to terminate the project. However, when the Americans realized the supreme value with which Israel viewed the project, Zachi Shalom concluded, the Americans relented knowing Israel will not give up the development of its nuclear option. Eventually, a compromise was struck and the Dimona project remained the centerpiece of Israel's nuclear option

The point to remember now, as new American enters the WHITE HOUSE, is that in the matter of its supreme national interest Israel will not budge. And if by choice, the West Bank, known in Israel Judea and Samaria, would be viewed by our government as a supreme national interest, would Israel have to lock horns with America? And isn't an undivided Jerusalem a supreme Israeli national interest? And the control of the Jordan Valley is it a supreme national interest to the discredited current government of Ehud Olmert

"We would never force our opinion"

Robert McNamara Kennedy's Defense Secretary

It is of interest to mention here what Robert McNamara, President Kennedy's Defense Secretary, reaction was when he heard of Moshe Dayan, Israel's Defense Minister Say, "Of course the City of Hebron is personally significant to me, but if the Americans insist I will give it up." Secretary McNamara summoned Reserve General Yosef Geva, the Israeli military attaché in Washington for a small lecture. "Let me explain to you, and I would be happy if you would convey my words to your colleagues back home. We in the United States have a firm opinion of what shape the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict take should, but we would never force it on any party. If we force our own views the solution will explode in our face and we will have to become physically involved. We can not guarantee your existence—it is your responsibility

leadership with a long term vision

In Proverbs 29, 18, the wise king Solomon said almost three millennia ago, "Without a prophetic vision a people become unruly". We live in a period when our leadership must have a long term vision, even a prophetic vision. In a modern sense a prophetic visionary is a person who can hold within himself myriad incalculable possibilities and intuitively decide upon the right one; a tall order indeed. Since its beginning the State of Israel had one such leader, David Ben Gurion. In the state's early days, when Israeli industry could hardly produce a bicycle, Ben Gurion envisioned an industry that can produce nuclear weapons and rockets.

The irresponsible behavior of the Israeli leadership since the Oslo Accords awakened great misgivings about our ability to survive in the crazy world in which we live now. most part. The old proverb, "Without prophetic vision a people become unruly." Has never been timelier than now.

see also  THE BIG MAP OF THE EMPTY LAND

The Logic in Madness

Column of Zev Galili

Translation by Asher Torren <atorren@msn.com>

Yardeni holding part of the map Tiberia  area

A collector of ancient maps from Ramat Gan Israel,  has an historical, treasure *  A giant map prepared by a British survey mission at the close of the 19th Century, the scale is 1 to 63,000 * The map proves that prior to the first Aliyah [wave of Jewish immigration] the Land was meager and empty * It verifies the Zionist claim: “A people without a land to a land without people”

I have discovered a treasure that the Israeli Minister of Education is invited to examine: a map of the Land of Israel, one of a kind, the biggest map of its era.  This is a map that was prepared by a British research mission, who conducted a survey of the Land of Israel during the period 1871 to 1878.  The scale of the map is 1 to approximately 63,000.  Each centimeter on this map whose size is that of a large room, represents 630 meters in real dimensions.  On the basis of this map one can determine which settlements existed in those years and their size.  According to these details it is possible to estimate the size of the population there. This map is the most important document, to my mind, to prove the Zionist claim:
.“A people without a land to a land without people”

When does history begin

Arthur Koestler, the Jewish author and thinker, wrote in “Promise and Fulfillment” that the question of who is right in the struggle for the Land of Israel depends on the question of what one takes as the starting point of the history of this land.  A believing Jew begins his count with our Patriarch, Abraham and the promise he was given (“For all this land that you see, I will give to you and your descendants forever”).  As to this claim one of the websites of the PLO says that “the Jews claim that in some bible they were promised the land".
”
One can begin the history from the days of the Second Temple.  Then it turns out that the Jewish population in the Land of Israel, according to various estimates, numbered some six million people.  Relative to this claim the Palestinians have already said that the ancestors of the Palestinians – the Hittites and Amalekites – had a prior claim.

For our purposes, it would be important to begin the history precisely from the First Aliyah, and an examination of the question what the Jewish pioneers found here when they began to arrive in 1882.  The claim is that the Zionists did not come to an empty land, as accepted by so many in the Israeli public domain.  Not a few New Left historians and post-Zionists have contributed to this claim, which views the very establishment of the state as the “original sin” which needs to be atoned for.  Even a Zionist historian such as Anita Shapira writes that Herzl was suffering from “color blindness” in his regard of the “native” population, “a view characteristic of European superiority and colonialism"

With this in mind, it is important to know who was here at the time of the First Aliyah and the population estimates.

No Palestinian People

In one of the PLO websites I found the claim that “The Palestinian People” numbered 529,500 souls at the end of the 19th Century.

Really a people?

No way, never was.
According to serious scholars (not PLO propagandists) it is accepted that in that period there was no Palestinian people.  The population then in the Land of Israel was no different from Arab populations in the whole region – not in ethnic terms, not by language, and not culturally.  Only the post-Zionist historian, Baruch Kimmerling (in his book “Palestinians, a People in the Making”) advances the creation of the concept “Palestinians” to 1831.

The rest of the scholars are in agreement that Palestinian nationalism, which differentiates itself from wider Arab nationalism, materialized only in the beginning of the 20th Century.
Who and what did the men of the First Aliyah find when they reached the Land?

A Focus of International Interest

In the second half of the 19th Century the Land of Israel became a focus of international concern.  The 19th Century was characterized by impressive archeological discoveries – the deciphering of the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone by the French scholar Champollion;  the  uncovering of the ancient archway in Jerusalem by the American scholar Robinson (after whom the arch is named); the uncovering of the tombs of the kings in Jerusalem by the French scholar De Sulcy; the discovery of the monument to Mesha, the Moabite king near Nachal Arnon, and more.

All of these turned the Near East, and the Land of Israel, in particular, into a focal point for visiting archeologists, geographers, statesmen, clergymen, and tourists.  Among the visitors were the men of the Palestine Exploration Fund, a British foundation for researching the Land of Israel, which created the map we are talking about.

Mark Twain in the Land of Israel

Among the many tourists who came to the Land during that period was also the American author Mark Twain.  Twain was here in 1867, fifteen years before the First Aliyah.  He described his impressions in a book as follows:

…We arrived safely at Tabor Mountain…the entire way we didn’t see a living soul… There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country…the Land of Israel sits mournfully in sackcloth and ashes.  Hovering over her is the spell of a curse that has blighted her fields and imprisoned her essence in chains.  The Land of Israel is desolate and deprived of love. The Land of Israel no longer belongs to this world of action.  She is dedicated to poetry and tradition, a land of dreams… Nazareth is forsaken…Jericho is cursed… Jerusalem…a village of the wretched…

After such a description it would seem that there is only one question remaining: who and what was there in the Land of Israel?  Although not so in the view of Benny Morris, the New Historian (who has seemingly reversed his stance) who writes in his book “Victims” that “it is possible that he (Mark Twain) was prone to exaggerate".

If Mark Twain exaggerates then a long list of travelers, Jews and non-Jews, who came to the Land of Israel during that period, are exaggerators and fabricators, since this description repeats itself endlessly,
With this in mind, there is great significance to the   question, who were the inhabitants of the Land in that period and what were their numbers

How Many Were Here

This is not a question of statistics.  Those who accuse us of settling in a land of a non-existent people, or that we dispossessed the “natives”, need to show us how many “natives” were here and where they were.
The answer to these questions is fair game to oriental whimsy and the pseudo-science that serve these visionaries.

Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the former President of Israel, one of the great scholars on the Land of Israel in the Ottoman Period, (in his book “The Land of Israel and its Settlement during the Ottoman Reign”) gives details on a number of populations in the Land of Israel in the first fifty years of Ottoman rule (1525-1573).  He found in the Constantinople archives data that had been gathered by five censuses made for tax-collection purposes.  In these censuses there were 45-50,000 tax-paying households.  According to Ben-Zvi’s estimate these households would amount to about 300,000 souls.

This number says nothing about the population in the last quarter of the 19th Century.  In the three hundred years that passed, the Land experienced quite a few upheavals – earthquakes, epidemics, locust plagues, raids by marauding bandits from the desert, and more.  All of this during the rule of a thoroughly corrupt government that extorted the inhabitants to the very bone while not providing any services at all

Ben-Zvi does not mention any Arab population estimate during the First Aliyah and it is clear that he didn’t have a reliable source for such an estimate.  Benny Morris says that the number was some 400,000 souls.  Morris relies on the German geographer, Alexander Schulz, who wrote a book on the subject based on a variety of methods in order to arrive at a population number, lacking a reliable or authoritative source.  Schulz, himself, notes (in an article he seemingly wrote after the publication of his book) greater numbers yet and small wonder he is a Palestinian favorite, who frequently quote him on their websites.  Morris, in another context, also relies on the Scots scholar, Justin McCarthy, who is also generously quoted by the Palestinians.  McCarthy lists very large numbers.  He determines that in 1860 there were 411,000 Palestinians and in 1890 there were 553,000.  Joan Peters, the author of “From Time Immemorial” estimates that at the beginning of the First Aliyah in 1882 there were about 141,000 non-Jews, and approximately one quarter of them were immigrants who had arrived in the Land in recent years, primarily during the Egyptian conquest.  This occupation lasted from 1831 to 1840 during which the Egyptian conqueror initiated mass immigration from Egypt to the Land of Israel. These immigrants were brought to Gaza, Bet She’an, Nablus, Acre, and Jaffa.

Professor Moshe Maoz arrives at a much smaller estimate for the Ottoman period.  In his article written for the book “The History of the Land of Israel” he notes that as a result of the actions of the Ottoman rulers and the poor hygienic conditions, the population of the Land of Israel was in a constant state of decline and during hundreds of years the number of Arabs did not exceed 100,000.

To summarize: There is, in fact, no well-founded estimate of the number of non-Jews in the Land of Israel at the onset of the First Aliyah, although it is reasonable to assume that the population was small.  If the lowest estimate is correct, i.e., there were about 100,000 Arabs in 1878 (the year in which the survey of the British Expedition ended).

How the Map was Made

The Palestine  Exploration Fund was  created in 1865 by the elite of the British upper class of the time, Lords, academics, clergymen, and the very wealthy.  The fund set up its goal to conduct researches in the fields of archeology, history, geography, and ethnography in what was then called “Palestine". The expedition numbered several dozens of people, among them expert cartographers, and heading it were well-known people:  [Sir Charles] Warren, [Claude R.] Conder, [Horatio H.] Kitchener' later hero of Britain's war in South Africa.  The project was begin in 1871 and completed in 1878.  The production of the printed map lasted several years, and when it appeared it was the most detailed and precise map of the Land of Israel ever.   Due to its size, the map was printed in 26 separate sections, in four colors, by lithography

Imaginary Maps

Dan Yardeni is the owner of a copy of the map here in Israel.  He is an engineer, manager of a start-up companies, and, in essence, loves the Land of Israel.  He began to collect ancient maps  and rare books, of the Land of Israel in his youth and his workroom looks more like a wing in a museum than the office of a large company’s manager.

Yardeni is a fascinating walking encyclopedia. A collector of an amazing range of maps and Judaica, and thoroughly knowledgeable in the field.  Most of the ancient maps of the Land of Israel, he tells me, are really not maps in the ordinary meaning of the word.  They are not exact, contain lot of artistic  ornamental elements and, quite often, based on imagination.  For instance, he has a map by a cartographer named Hondius from the 17th Century that depicts numerouse scenes of historical events from verious periods

. The cartographers of that time did not really know the land.  Thus, one of the maps depicts a river connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Sea of Galilee.  On another map we see that the Jordan [River] has a source named Dan and another named Jor.  The cartographers assumed that if for one section of the Jordan  river there was a source named Dan, then the second source must be called Jor, which is completely imaginery.
The British Survey map “I acquired in a bookstore in London at a bargain price. They didn’t appreciate its importance or value.  Today it is worth probably few thousands of dollars”, said Yardeni

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What we Learn from the Map

The uniqueness of the map is that the British surveyors marked with great accuracy the borders of every settlement and noted in special colors the populated sections of the settlement.  It is possible through this map to ascertain the size of each settlement in the Land during that period, from the Litani River in the north and as far south as Beer Sheba.
The map represents by cartography what Mark Twain described in a literary form: a desolate arid wilderness, almost  empty. Using a ruler it is a simple matter to determine the size of each settlement.  When examining the villages we see that their areas are tiny.  The largest of them are 150 by 100 meters.  They comprise barely two rows of houses.  The color legend indicates that Acre, for example, was then only partially inhabited.  Entire areas were empty of people, exactly as we had learned in school, and likewise the Jezreel Valley and the Jordan Valley and all the areas that the Jewish pioneers later brought to life. (Benny Morris, in his book, says that the Zionists that redeemed the Jezreel Valley deprived land from the Palestinians for their development)..
Haifa is marked on the map by a rectangle of three by seven millimeters.  Each millimeter represents 63 meters in actual terms.  This means that the Haifa area was  190 by 440 meters in size.  The German Colony is outside the Haifa perimeter, and each house is exactly drawn
Nazareth was then a little larger than Haifa.  Its shape is in the form of a gourd whose longer end is 600 meters and its smaller end some 300 meters.  Even Tiberias is larger than Haifa – 300 by 600 meters.  “Greater” Jaffa was only a little town – 240 by 540 meters. Sheikh Munis, where the Tel Aviv University now stands, was a tiny village 90 by 180 meters. So, also, Usfiyeh, Yehud, and many other villages.

Jerusalem, within its walls, was, in fact, large – 1000 by 1000 meters.  There was nothing outside the walls, and we know (not from the map) that within its walls there  was always a Jewish majority

SEE THE BIG MAP

מפה click

see also : NO PALESTINE NO PALESTINIANS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MldnIxwUJo

Tr: Joseph Schachter.  Items in brackets added for comprehension.  July 6, 2006

The Logic in Madness, Column of  October 15, 2005

Makor Rishon [Primary Source – An Israeli Weekly

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