(no subject)

I've been having a number of discussions both online and off
with regards to the history of Israel and the Jewish peole
I found this list at wiki
which I thought I would share with yall

Partial list of events that prompted major streams of Jewish refugees (In reverse chronological order)

1960s-1999 State-sponsored persecution in the Soviet Union prompted more than 1 million Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel, 250,000 to the United States with "refugee" status, and 100,000 to Germany. See also rootless cosmopolitan, Doctors' plot, Jackson-Vanik amendment, refusenik, Zionology, Pamyat.

1948-1958 The Jewish exodus from Arab lands. The combined population of Jewish communities in the Greater Middle East (excluding Israel) was reduced from about 900,000 in 1948 to less than 8,000 today. Some of these communities were more than 2,500 years old. Israel absorbed approximately 600,000 of these refugees, many of whom were temporarily settled in tent cities called Ma'abarot. They were eventually absorbed into Israeli society, and the last Maabarah was dismantled in 1958. The Jewish refugees had no assistance from the UNRWA. See also Farhud.

1935-1945 The Nazi persecution culminated in the Holocaust of the European Jewry. The British Mandate of Palestine prohibited Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel. The Bermuda Conference, Evian Conference and other attempts failed to resolve the problem of Jewish refugees, a fact widely used in Nazi propaganda. See also S.S. St. Louis

1881-1884, 1903-1906, 1914-1921 Repeated waves of pogroms swept Russia, propelling mass Jewish emigration (more than 2 million Russian Jews emigrated in the period 1881-1920). During World War I, some 250,000 Jews were transferred from western Russia. See also Pale of Settlement, May Laws, Russian Civil War.

1744-1790s The reforms of Frederick II, Joseph II and Maria Theresa sent masses of impoverished German and Austrian Jews east.

1648-1654 Ukrainian Cossacks and peasants led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky destroyed hundreds of Jewish communities and committed mass atrocities. Ukraine was annexed by the Russian Empire, where officially no Jews were allowed.

1654 The fall of the Dutch colony of Recife in Brazil to the Portuguese prompted the first group of Jews to flee to North America.

1492 Ferdinand II and Isabella issued the Alhambra decree, General Edict on the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (approx. 200,000), from Sicily (1493, approx. 37,000), from Portugal (1496).

1348 European Jews were blamed for poisoning wells during the Black Death. Many of those who survived the epidemic and pogroms were either expelled or fled.

1290 King Edward I of England issues the Edict of Expulsion for all Jews from England. The policy was reversed after 350 years in 1655 by Oliver Cromwell.

12th-14th centuries France. The practice of expelling the Jews accompanied by confiscation of their property, followed by temporary readmissions for ransom, was used to enrich the crown: expulsions from Paris by Philip Augustus in 1182, from France by Louis IX in 1254, by Charles IV in 1322, by Charles V in 1359, by Charles VI in 1394.

Mid-12th century The invasion of Almohades brought to end the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. Among other refugees was Maimonides, who fled to Morocco, then Egypt, then Eretz Israel.

1095 - mid-13th century The waves of Crusades destroyed hundreds of Jewish communities in Europe and in the Middle East, including Jerusalem.

7th Century AD Muhammad expells the Jewish tribes of Qinuqa and Nadir from Medina, who was founded as a Jewish city. The Tribe Of Oureiza is being slaughtered and the Jewish settelment of Khaybar is ransacked.

135 The Romans defeated Bar Kokhba's revolt. Emperor Hadrian expelled hundreds of thousands Jews from Judea, wiped the name off the maps, replaced it with Syria Palaestina, forbade Jews to set foot in Jerusalem.

70 The defeat of the Great Jewish Revolt. Masses of Jews were sold to slavery across the Roman Empire, many fled.

597 BCE The Babylonian captivity. In 537 BCE the Persians, who conquered Babylon two years earlier, allowed Jews to return and rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple.

722 BCE The Assyrians led by Shalmaneser conquered the (Northern) Kingdom of Israel and sent the Israelites into captivity at Khorasan. Ten of twelve Tribes of Israel are lost.

Israel and Palestine

A brief visual history of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
[in terms of maps showing territorial changes]

I thought I would provide a few maps and some commentary
to show how the situation on the ground has changed over the years.

The first detailed partition plan was the Peel Commission in 1936

It provided for a small Jewish state in the areas with a Jewish majority

( Map )

The Peel report was not liked by either the Jews or the Arabs but the Jews agreed to it (not seeing that they had much choice) and the Arabs decided they had a better choice after all. This better choice became known as the "Great Uprising" which was an extended series of riots and violence lasting from 1936-1939

-

The next plan which came out was the 1947 UN Partition plan. As you can see in the map below, it awarded a substantially larger portion of the land to the Jews than the Peel Commission did.

( Map )

As with the Peel Commission report, the Jews accepted the UN plan and declared statehood based upon those borders, the Arabs however still felt they could do better and shortly after May 14th, 1948, approximately 1,000 Lebanese, 5,000 Syrian, 5,000 Iraqi, 10,000 Egyptian and 4,000 Transjordanian troops invaded the newly-established state. They were aided by corps of volunteers from Saudi Arabia, Libya and Yemen.

On May 15th, 1948 the Arab League Secretary-General, Abdul Razek Azzam Pasha, said, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades".

Fortunately for Israel, the outcome turned out a little differently, and the borders were set in a 1949 armistice see map below)

( Map )

Unfortunately the Arabs still felt violence was the best way to obtain their goals. This would lead to the 1967 war, commonly known as The Six Day war. In the Six Day war 50,000 Israeli troops (and 214,000 reservists) and 197 combat aircraft battled against 280,000 Allied Arab troops and 812 combat aircraft.

The result was a resounding Arab defeat and Israel had seized the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank of the Jordan River (including East Jerusalem), and the Golan Heights.

Overall, Israel's territory grew by a factor of 3, including about one million Arabs placed under Israel's direct control in the newly captured territories. Israel's strategic depth grew to at least 300 kilometers in the south, 60 kilometers in the east and 20 kilometers of extremely rugged terrain in the north, a security asset that would prove useful in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War six years later.

On June 19, 1967, the National Unity Government [of Israel] voted unanimously to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in return for peace agreements. The Golan would have to be demilitarized and special arrangement would be negotiated for the Straits of Tiran. The government also resolved to open negotiations with King Hussein of Jordan regarding the Eastern border.

Later at the Khartoum Arab Summit, Arab leaders announced what came to be known as "the three nos" of Arab-Israel relations.

1. No peace with Israel
2. No recognition of Israel
3. No negotiations with Israel

What followed next was called the " War of Attrition" fought from 1968 to 1970 between Israel and Egypt It was initiated by Egypt as a way to regain territory lost to Israel in the Six Day War. A ceascease fire signed in 1970 with the borders at the same place as when the war started in 1968.

The Arabs still felt that violence was the solution to their designs, despite repeated Israeli offers to trade conquered land for a negotiated peace. This would lead to the 1973 War, commonly referred to as the "Yom Kippur War" in which a coalition of armies including Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq launched a surprised invasion of Israel.

The invasion was launched on October 6th, 1973 which was the Jewish Holiday of Yom Kippur. For those unfamiliar with the holiday, it is known as the "Day of Atonement" an annual holiday on which Jews fast for 25 hours (sunset the evening before to sunset of the day itself) and attend prayer services in atonement for their sins.

During the first 24-48 hours, the situation looked very grim for Israel, as the Arab armies gained substantial ground. In the Golan, 188 Israeli tanks fought a holding action against 2000 invading Syrian tanks. In the end, Israeli forces held against repeated assaults and drove forward capturing additional Arab land.

On the Syrian front, Israeli forces took another 20 square miles of Syrian Territory coming within 25 miles of Damascus.

On the Egyptian front, Israeli forces retook nearly all of the Sinai, and established a substantial beach head on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal. In doing so, they cut off the entire Egyptian 3rd Army. At this point the US intervened on behalf of the Egyptians in order to prevent the Israelis from destroying the Egyptian 3rd Army. (see map below, the Egyptian 3rd army was entirely cut off and surrounded in the lower of the two red areas).

( Map )

The US saw this as an opportunity to push the Egyptians out of the Soviet sphere of influence, and they were correct. The US was able to extend their influence in Egypt and negotiate peace between Israel and Egypt.

The peace agreement signed at Camp David in 1978 provided a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, formal diplomatic recognition and ties (Egypt became the first Arab country to recognize Israel and establish an embassy there, and was the only Arab country to do so until Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994, an event which I was present in Israel for). The price for peace was a return of all Egyptian lands conquered by Israel in 1967 & 1973.

The borders after the Camp David Accords are essentially the current borders that we see today (see map below)

( Map )

The first four of these maps show the result of Arab attempts to use violence to solve the Israel-Arab conflict. In every case it resulted in the loss of Arab lands to Israel.

The last two maps show the results of peaceful negotiations with Israel.

So I ask you, if you were an Arab leader -

Which approach do you think is most likely to achieve the goals of your people?

Which approach would you use?

Violence or Negotiation?