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Israel is a Jewish State first and foremostReader comment on item: Israel's Arabs, Living a Paradox Submitted by YJ Draiman (United States), May 22, 2016 at 01:06 Israel is a Jewish State; it has a certain obligation as part of its foundation to observe the Jewish traditions. That will never change. The truth – not the fantasy – is that there was never an independent, sovereign Arab state called Palestine. Israel is "the only nation in the world that is governing itself in the same territory, under the same name, and with the same religion and same language as it did 3,000 years ago." Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab polity in all of recorded history. Only one people has ever made Jerusalem its capital and only one people ever established their indigenous ancestral and biblical homeland between East of the River Jordan and West to the Mediterranean Sea: the Jews. Remember, the word Palestine was the name the Romans renamed Israel. The Mandate for Palestine over the territory was granted under international law and treaty by the League of Nations in 1920 to Great Britain with the express duty and obligation of re-establishing within it a Jewish homeland as agreed to in international treaties executed after WWI. At that time, the Palestine Mandate covered all of what is Israel – including Judea and Samaria, or what is erroneously called the West Bank – and present day Jordan. But Britain violated international treaties, thus, it reneged on its duty and obligation to the Jews and tore away four fifths of the Mandate territory in 1922 – that is all the land east of the Jordan River – and arbitrarily gave it away as a new Arab State to the Hashemite Bedouin tribe. Immediately Jews were forbidden to live in what became Trans-Jordan and eventually the Kingdom of Jordan: An early example of ethnic cleansing and Arab apartheid. All Jewish property East of the Jordan River was confiscated and any Jews expelled. Interestingly, Arabs and their leaders had rejected any notion of a separate Palestinian identity. For them, Palestine was merely a part of Greater Syria and the Arabs were indistinct from their neighbors. Indeed, the Syrian dictator, Assad, still plots for the return of Jordan, Israel and the disputed territories. As far as Palestine was concerned to those Arab absentee landlords of the early years of the 20th century, living in the fleshpots of Cairo, Damascus and Beirut, the land was worthless: desolate, barren and malarial infested. Then the Jewish pioneers returning in the late 19th century began to purchase the wasted and barren land at exorbitant prices – much higher than fertile land in Iowa and Idaho – drained the swamps and redeem again the ancestral ancient beloved Jewish homeland. Jewish development of the centuries old desolate and neglected land, restored in familial love through blood, sweat and tears, ironically these brought into the territory hundreds of thousands of illegal Arab aliens who found livelihoods that were unavailable in the stagnant and corrupt neighboring Arab societies. Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". Reader comments (90) on this item
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