A quote from the Arab mayor of Jerusalem, 1899 (updated)

A quote from the Arab mayor of Jerusalem, 1899 (updated)

I came across this partial quote by Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, the mayor of Jerusalem, in 1899: "Who can challenge the rights of the Jews in Palestine? Good Lord, historically it is really your country."

 By doing a little research, and playing some games with Google Books snippet view, I was able to find the full quote:

The idea itself is natural, fine and just. Who can challenge the rights of the Jews in Palestine? Good Lord, historically it is really your country. What a wonderful spectacle that will be when a people as resourceful as the Jews will once again be an independent nation, honored and complacent, able to make its contribution to needy humanity in the field of morals, as in the past.

He wrote this in a letter to Zadok Kahn, the chief rabbi of France.

When Benny Morris quotes it in One state, two states: resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict, he distinguishes this quote as an exception to the Palestinian Arab denial of Jewish claims that rose concurrently with the idea of Palestinian Arab nationalism. It is not an exception, however, since the quote pre-dates popular Palestinian Arab nationalism by at least a couple of decades.

But Morris does make a good point:

An apt indication of this denial was provided by the Jerusalem Christian Arab educator Khabil al-Sakakini, when he fulminated in 1936 that the British Mandate's new radio station referred to the country in Hebrew as "eretz yisrael" (the Land of Israel), "If Palestine [falastin] is eretz yisrael, then we, the Arabs, are but passing strangers, and there is nothing for or to do but to emigrate," al-Sakakini jotted down in his diary.

In other words, denial of history is an integral part of Palestinian Arab nationalism. The movement is, to a great extent, predicated on a very basic lie.

Arabs like Khalidi knew Jewish history in the Land of Israel very well, but it became virtually forbidden to acknowledge this history a mere three decades later, because that very fact helps to undermine the entire Palestinian Arab national enterprise.

Yet the British did not have that sensitivity, as the initials for Eretz Yisrael could be seen in Mandate-era coins and stamps in Hebrew even before Sakakini noticed it:

UPDATE: Elder of Lobby tracked a more complete version of the Khalidi quote, from Morris' "Righteous Victims," showing that the mayor was hardly happy about the prospect of Zionism:

"It is necessary, therefore, for the peace of the Jews in [the Ottoman Empire] that the Zionist Movement ... stop.... Good Lord, the world is vast enough, there are still uninhabited countries where one could settle millions of poor Jews who may perhaps become happy there and one day constitute a nation.... In the name of God, let Palestine be left in peace."

Comments:

 The full quote apparently goes further: "It is necessary, therefore, for the peace of the Jews in [the Ottoman Empire] that the Zionist Movement ... stop.... Good Lord, the world is vast enough, there are still uninhabited countries where one could settle millions of poor Jews who may perhaps become happy there and one day constitute a nation.... In the name of God, let Palestine be left in peace."

Morris "Righteous Victims"
It is by and large used as pro-Pal propaganda, to show the early consciousness of trouble to come.

And the Rabbi's name is spelled Zadok Kahn.

Obama's terrorist buddies have roots to the past. Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO spokesperson in Beirut (1982), whose origins go back to Jerusalem before the British mandate, later migrated to Chicago where he was helped to write his radioactive books in the mid 90's, using the home of Bill Ayre, his talent and knowledge, where he got to bond with the useless Obama, who had a book contract, which he could not deliver, handing all the notes to Bill Ayre, to sort out for him. the man behind Obama's books (for more on the subject see : http://www.cashill.com/article..., takes going back to 2008). Obama, terrorism and hot Muslims, all fit together.

It was not only Mayer of Jerusalem that believed that land belong to Jews, but regarding to Koran and Islamic history that mentioned that there is a land on west of Jordan river that land belong to nation of Yahud , things have changed since the British Empire have captured the Meddle east ,the conflict in M,E has been created by British Empire (Divided and role on them )if the British were not involved in M,E Jordan plus entire Israel and Golan heights could be State of Israel with living in peace in all over that area .

karl Marx on Jews in Jerusalem in 1854 [ majority] see last paragraphs

http://www.marxists.org/archiv...

Jerusalem and the Holy Places are inhabited by nations professing religions: the Latins, the Greeks, Armenians, Copts, Abyssinians, and Syrians. There are 2,000 Greeks, 1,000 Latins, 350 Armenians, 100 Copts, 20 Syrians, and 20 Abyssinians = 3,490. In the Ottoman Empire we find 13,730,000 Greeks, 2,400,000 Armenians, and 900,000 Latins. Each of these is again subdivided. The Greek Church, of which I treated above, the one acknowledging the Patriarch of Constantinople, essentially differs from the Greco-Russian, whose chief spiritual authority is the Czar; and from the Hellens, of whom the King and the Synod of Athens are the chief authorities. Similarly, the Latins are subdivided into the Roman Catholics, United Greeks, and Maronites; and the Armenians into Gregorian and Latin Armenians – the same distinctions holding good with the Copts and Abyssinians. The three prevailing religious nationalities at the Holy Places are the Greeks, the Latins, and the Armenians. The Latin Church may be said to represent principally Latin races, the Greek Church, Slav, Turko-Slav, and Hellenic races; and the other churches, Asiatic and African races.

Imagine all these conflicting peoples beleaguering the Holy Sepulcher, the battle conducted by the monks, and the ostensible object of their rivalry being a star from the grotto of Bethlehem, a tapestry, a key of a sanctuary, an altar, a shrine, a chair, a cushion – any ridiculous precedence!

In order to understand such a monastical crusade it is indispensable to consider firstly the manner of their living, and secondly, the mode of their habitation.

“All the religious rubbish of the different nations,” says a recent traveler, “live at Jerusalem separated from each other, hostile and jealous, a nomade population, incessantly recruited by pilgrimage or decimated by the plague and oppressions. The European dies or returns to Europe after some years; the pashas and their guards go to Damascus or Constantinople; and the Arabs fly to the desert. Jerusalem is but a place where every one arrives to pitch his tent and where nobody remains. Everybody in the holy city gets his livelihood from his religion – the Greeks or Armenians from the 12,000 or 13,000 pilgrims who yearly visit Jerusalem, and the Latins from the subsidies and aims of their co-religionists of France, Italy, etc.”

Besides their monasteries and sanctuaries, the Christian nations possess at Jerusalem small habitations or cells, annexed to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and occupied by the monks, who have to watch day and night that holy abode. At certain periods these monks are relieved in their duty by their brethren. These cells have but one door, opening into the interior of the Temple, while the monk guardians receive their food from without, through some wicket. The doors of the Church are closed, and guarded by Turks, who don’t open them except for money, and close it according to their caprice or cupidity.

The quarrels between churchmen are the most venomous, said Mazarin. Now fancy these churchmen, who not only have to live upon, but live in, these sanctuaries together!

To finish the picture, be it remembered that the fathers of the Latin Church, almost exclusively composed of Romans, Sardinians, Neapolitans, Spaniards and Austrians, are all of them jealous of the French protectorate, and would like to substitute that of Austria, Sardinia or Naples, the Kings of the two latter countries both assuming the title of King of Jerusalem; and that the sedentary population of Jerusalem numbers about 15,500 souls, of whom 4,000 are Mussulmans and 8,000 Jews. The Mussulmans, forming about a fourth part of the whole, and consisting of Turks, Arabs and Moors, are, of course, the masters in every respect, as they are in no way affected with the weakness of their Government at Constantinople. Nothing equals the misery and the sufferings of the Jews at Jerusalem, inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town, called hareth-el-yahoud, the quarter of dirt, between the Zion and the Moriah, where their synagogues are situated – the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins, and living only upon the scanty alms transmitted by their European brethren. The Jews, however, are not natives, but from different and distant countries, and are only attracted to Jerusalem by the desire of inhabiting the Valley of Jehosaphat, and to die in the very places where the redemptor is to be expected.

“Attending their death,” says a French author, “they suffer and pray. Their regards turned to that mountain of Moriah, where once rose the temple of Solomon, and which they dare not approach, they shed tears on the misfortunes of Zion, and their dispersion over the world.”

To make these Jews more miserable, England and Prussia appointed, in 1840, an Anglican bishop at Jerusalem, whose avowed object is their conversion. He was dreadfully thrashed in 1845, and sneered at alike by Jews, Christians and Turks. He may, in fact, be stated to have been the first and only cause of a union between all the religions at Jerusalem.

It will now be understood why the common worship of the Christians at the Holy Places resolves itself into a continuance of desperate Irish rows between the diverse sections of the faithful; but that, on the other hand, these sacred rows merely conceal a profane battle, not only of nations but of races; and that the Protectorate of the Holy Places which appears ridiculous to the Occident but all important to the Orientals is one of the phases of the Oriental question incessantly reproduced, constantly stifled, but never solved.