ROOTS OF PALESTINE’S PROBLEM:
My ROOTS ARE DEEP IN PALESTINE
Ibrahim Ebeid
SYKES-PICOT AND ZIONIST TERROR
November 2, 1917: A Day Not to Be Forgotten.
I will never forget the grand betrayal of the Western powers to our cause of unity and liberation. Without Arab help and support, the West wouldn’t have achieved victory over the Ottoman Turks. Sharif Hussein Bin Ali, the ruler of Hijaz and Najd launched the Great Arab Revolt in June 1916 against the Ottoman army during the First World War and sided with the Allies with the hope to unify the Arabs in one independent state as promised.
As soon as the First World War ended a secret agreement between Britain and France, known as Sykes-Picot, to divide the Arab homeland into mini-states under their Imperialist domination was revealed by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
This notorious Sykes-Picot Agreement (15 May 1916) was struck as a prelude to facilitating the creation of the Zionist state in Palestine at Arab expense. The Balfour Declaration, granting a national home in Palestine to the Zionist movement, followed a year and a half later, on November 2, 1917. For this reason, Palestine was carved out of Syria and put under the British Mandate.
The Balfour Declaration treated Palestine as real estate owned by Britain and granted it to the Zionist Jews. It referred to the Arabs of Palestine, who comprised 92% of the population, as “non-Jewish communities of Palestine.” This gave a false impression that the Arabs of Palestine were an insignificant minority occupying a position subordinate to the Zionists. The Arabs were able to diagnose the malicious intention of the British government and understood the real danger behind such a declaration, robbing them of their land and securing it for the Zionists.
Palestine was victimized and partitioned further in 1947. The USSR and the United States played leading roles in bringing about a vote
favorable to the usurpation of our land. Unauthorized US nationals and organizations, including members of Congress, notably in the closing days of the General Assembly, brought pressure on various foreign delegates and their home governments to induce them to support the US position on the Palestine question.
US Ambassador to the UN, Warren Austin, had opposed his country’s position on Palestine. He could not comprehend “how it was possible to carve out of an area already too small for a state still smaller state.” He thought it was certain that such a state would have to defend itself with bayonets forever until extinguished in blood. The Arabs, he said, “would never be willing to have such a small state in their heart.”
Mr. Warren Austin was right; the Arabs will not tolerate such a settler/ colonialist state in their midst. The Western powers and their Zionist allies terrorized the Palestinians and forced them into exile. Injustice will not survive. The Palestinian fighters will continue their struggle by all means necessary to secure the total liberation of Palestine and for the return of the people to their villages, towns cities, and homes.
Terrorist Gangs: a Bit of History
Soon after the end of World War II, there were three basic para-military Zionist organizations in Palestine, working against the Arab people, with the specific purpose of driving Arabs out of Palestine. These were the Haganah, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, and the Stern Gang.
Before the British mandate, the Jewish settlers had formed a group of mounted armed watchmen called “Hashomar” and with the advent of the British mandate, it became the Haganah (Defense). With a membership of 60,000 Zionist Jews, the Haganah had a field army of 16,000 trained men and a unit called the Palmach, which was a full-time force, numbering about 6,000.
The Irgun Zvai Leumi included between 3,000 and 5,000 armed terrorists and grew out of the Haganah and its Palmach branch in 1933. The Irgun was not ready to obey the Jewish Agency which sought to dilute the terror of the Haganah in order not to lose its respectability.
In 1939, one of Irgun’s commanding officers, Abraham Stern, left the parent organization and formed the Stern Gang, numbering some 200 to 300 dangerous fanatics.
Some Zionist Terrorist Activities, 1939-1948
In 1939, the Zionist gangs blew up the Iraqi Refinery in Haifa.
Moshe Dayan was one of the participants in the act. This technique was used again in 1947 at least four times.
From August 20, 1937-June 29, 1939, Zionists carried out a series of attacks against Arab buses, resulting in the death of 24 persons and wounding 25 others.
* November 25, 1940: S.S. Patria was blown up by Jewish terrorists in Haifa harbor, killing 268 illegal Jewish immigrants.
* February 24, 1942: S.S. Struma exploded in the Black Sea, killing 769 illegal Jewish immigrants, described by the Jewish Agency as an act of “mass protest and mass suicide.”
* November 6, 1944: Zionist terrorists of the Stern Gang assassinated the British Minister Resident in the Middle East, Lord Moyne, in Cairo.
* July 22, 1946: Zionist terrorists blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which housed the central offices of the civilian administration of the government of Palestine, killing or injuring more than 200 persons. The Irgun officially claimed responsibility for the incident, but subsequent evidence indicated that both the Haganah and the Jewish Agency were involved.
* October 1, 1946: The British Embassy in Rome was badly damaged by bomb explosions, for which Irgun claimed responsibility.
* June 1947: Letters sent to British Cabinet ministers were found to contain bombs.
* September 3, 1947: A postal bomb addressed to the British War Office exploded in the post office sorting room in London, injuring two persons. It was attributed to Irgun or Stern Gangs. (The Sunday Times, Sept. 24, 1972, p.8).
* December 11, 1947: Six Arabs were killed and 30 wounded when bombs were thrown from Jewish trucks at Arab buses in Haifa; 12 Arabs were killed and others injured in an attack by armed Zionists on an Arab coastal village near Haifa.
* December 13, 1947: Zionist terrorists, believed to be members of Irgun Zvai Leumi, killed 18 Arabs and wounded nearly 60 in Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Lydda areas. In Jerusalem, bombs were thrown in an Arab marketplace near the Damascus Gate. In Jaffa, bombs were thrown into an Arab cafe; in the Arab village of al-Abbassiya, near Lydda. Twelve Arabs were killed in an attack with mortars and automatic weapons.
December 19, 1947: Haganah terrorists attacked an Arab village near Safad, blowing up two houses, the ruins of which were
found the bodies of 10 Arabs, including five children. Haganah admitted responsibility for the attack.
* December 29, 1947: Two British constables and 11 Arabs were killed and 32 Arabs injured, at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem when Irgun members threw a bomb from a taxi.
* December 30, 1947: A mixed force of the Zionist Palmach and the “Carmel Brigade” attacked the village of Balad al Sheikh, killing more than 60 Arabs.
* 1947-1948: More than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were uprooted from their homes and land. Since then, they have been denied the right to return or be given compensation for their property. After their expulsion, the “Israeli Forces” razed to the ground 385 Arab villages and towns out of a total of 475, and obliterated their remains.
* January 1, 1948: Haganah terrorists attacked a village on the slopes of Mount Carmel; 17 Arabs were killed and 33 wounded.
* January 4, 1948: Haganah terrorists wearing British Army uniforms penetrated into the center of Jaffa and blew up the Serai (the old Turkish Government House) which was used as a headquarters of the Arab National Committee, killing more than 40 persons and wounding 98 others.
* January 5, 1948: The Arab-owned Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem was blown up, killing 20 persons, among them Viscount de Tapia, the Spanish Consul. Haganah admitted responsibility for this crime.
* January 7, 1948: Seventeen Arabs were killed by a bomb at the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, three while trying to escape. Further casualties, including the murder of a British officer near Hebron, were reported from different parts of the country.
* January 16, 1948: Zionists blew up three Arab buildings. In the first, eight children between the ages of 18 months and 12 years, died.
* December 13, 1947-February 10, 1948: Seven incidents of bomb-tossing at innocent Arab civilians in cafés and markets, killing 138 and wounding 271 others. During this period, there were nine attacks on Arab buses. Zionists mined passenger trains on at least four occasions, killing 93 persons and wounding 161 others.
* February 15, 1948: Haganah terrorists attacked an Arab village near Safad, and blew up several houses, killing 11 Arabs, including four children.
March 3, 1948: Heavy damage was done to the Arab-owned Salam
building in Haifa (a seven-story block of apartments and shops) by Zionists who drove an army lorry (truck) up to the building and escaped before the detonation of 400 lbs. of explosives; casualties numbered 11 Arabs and three Armenians killed and 23 injured. The Stern Gang claimed responsibility for the incident.
* March 22, 1948: A housing block on Iraq Street in Haifa was blown up killing 17 and injuring 100 others. Four members of the Stern Gang drove two truckloads of explosives into the street and abandoned the vehicles before the explosion.
* March 31, 1948: The Cairo-Haifa Express was mined, for the second time in a month, by an electronically-detonated land mine near Benyamina, killing 40 persons and wounding 60 others.
* On the night of April 9, 1948, the Irgun Zvai Leumi surrounded the village of Deir Yassin, located on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and after giving the sleeping residents a 15-minute warning to evacuate, Menachem Begin’s terrorist groups attacked the village of 700 people, killing 254 men, women, and children and wounding 300 others. Begin’s terrorists tossed many of the bodies in the village well and paraded 150 captured women and children through the Jewish sectors of Jerusalem. Several massacres, equal to Deir Yassin or more heinous, that took place under the eyes of the British army, caused panic and fear among Palestinians who were unarmed and helpless, to flee for safety they never found. Under the gun, they were forced into exile.
* April 16, 1948: Zionists attacked the former British army camp at Tel Litvinsky, killing 90 Arabs.
* April 19, 1948: Fourteen Arabs were killed in a house in Tiberias, which was blown up by Zionist terrorists.
* May 3, 1948: A book bomb addressed to a British Army officer, who had been stationed in Palestine exploded, killing his brother, Rex Farran.
* May 11, 1948: A letter bomb addressed to Sir Evelyn Barker, former commanding officer in Palestine, was detected in the nick of time by his wife.
* April 25, 1948-May 13, 1948: Wholesale looting of Jaffa was carried out following armed attacks by Irgun and Haganah terrorists. They stripped and carried away everything they could, and destroyed what they could not take with them.
A story must be told, from the annals of Palestine about the King David Hotel in Jerusalem massacre.
The King David Hotel explosion of July 22, 1946 (Palestine), which resulted in the deaths of 92 Britons, Arabs, and Jews, and in the wounding of 58, was not just an act of “Jewish extremists,” but a premeditated massacre conducted by the Irgun in agreement with the highest Jewish political authorities in Palestine — the Jewish Agency and its head David-Ben-Gurion.
According to Yitshaq Ben-Ami, a Palestinian Jew who spent 30 years in exile after the establishment of Israel investigating the crimes of the “ruthless clique heading the internal Zionist movement:” the Irgun had conceived a plan for the King David attack early in 1946, but the green light was given only on July first. According to Dr. Sneh, the operation was personally approved by Ben-Gurion, from his self-exile in Europe. Sadeh, the operations officer of the Haganah, and Giddy Paglin, the head of the Irgun operation under Menachem Begin agreed that 35 minutes advance notice would give the British time enough to evacuate the wing, without enabling them to disarm the explosion.
The Jewish Agency’s motive was to destroy all evidence the British had gathered proving that the terrorist crime waves in Palestine were not merely the actions of “fringe” groups, such as the Irgun and Stern Gang, but were committed in collusion with the Haganah and Palmach groups and under the direction of the highest political body of the Zionist establishment itself, namely the Jewish Agency.
That so many innocent civilian lives were lost in the King David massacre is a normal part of the pattern of the history of Zionist outrages: A criminal act is committed, allegedly by an isolated group, but actually under the direct authorization of the highest Zionist authorities, whether of the Jewish Agency during the Palestine Mandate or of the Government of Israel thereafter.
The following is a statement made in the House of Commons by then-British Prime Minister Clement Attlee: “On July 22, 1946, one of the most dastardly and cowardly crimes in recorded history took place. We refer to the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.”
Ninety-two persons lost their lives in that stealth attack, and 45 were injured, among whom there were many high officials, junior officers, and office personnel, both men and women. The King David Hotel was used as an office housing the secretariat of the Palestine government and British Army Headquarters. The attack was made on 22 July at about 12 o’clock noon when offices are usually in full swing. The attackers, disguised as milkmen, carried the explosives in milk containers, placed them in the basement of the Hotel, and ran away.
The chief secretary to the Government of Palestine, Sir John Shaw,
declared in a broadcast:
“As head of the Secretariat, the majority of the dead and wounded were my own staff, many of whom I have known personally for 11 years. They are more than official colleagues. British, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Armenians; senior officers, police, my orderly, my chauffeur, messengers, guards, men, and women — young and old
— they were my friends.
“No man could wish to be served by a more industrious, loyal, and honest group of ordinary decent people. Their only crime was their devoted, unselfish, and impartial service to Palestine and its people. For this, they have been rewarded by cold-blooded mass murder.”
Although members of the Irgun Z’vai Leumi took responsibility for this crime, yet they also made it public later that they obtained the consent and approval of the Haganah Command, and it follows, that of the Jewish Agency.
The King David Hotel massacre shocked the conscience of the civilized world. On July 23, Anthony Eden, leader of the British opposition Conservative Party, posed a question in the House of Commons to Prime Minister Atlee of the Labor Party, asking “the Prime Minister whether he has any statement to make on the bomb outrage at the British Headquarters in Jerusalem.” The Prime Minister responded:
“…It appears that after exploding a small bomb in the street, presumably as a diversionary measure — this did virtually no damage — a lorry drove up to the tradesmen’s entrance of the King David Hotel and the occupants, after holding up the staff at pistol point, entered the kitchen premises carrying a number of milk cans. At some stage of the proceedings, they shot and seriously wounded a British soldier who attempted to interfere with them. All available information so far is to the effect that they were Jews. Somewhere in the basement of the hotel, they planted bombs which went off shortly afterward. They appear to have made good their escape.
“Every effort is being made to identify and arrest the
perpetrators of this outrage. The work of rescue in the debris, which was immediately organized, still continues. The next-of-kin of casualties are being notified by telegram as soon as accurate information is available. The House will wish to express their profound sympathy with the relatives of the killed and with those injured in this dastardly outrage.”
KING DAVID HOTEL PHOTO
