The History Channel sucks as history

By Ted Belman

The History Channel posts a reminder, Nov 29,1947. U.N. votes for partition of Palestine but their article is pure Arab propaganda and gives the lie to history.

    Despite strong Arab opposition, the United Nations votes for the partition of Palestine and the creation of an independent Jewish state.

    The modern conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine dates back to the 1910s, when both groups laid claim to the British-controlled territory. The Jews were Zionists, recent emigrants from Europe and Russia who came to the ancient homeland of the Jews to establish a Jewish national state. The native Palestinian Arabs sought to stem Jewish immigration and set up a secular Palestinian state.


This is wrong historically on so many levels. At that time, the Arabs in Palestine were referred to as Arabs and not Palestinian Arabs. A huge percentage of the Arabs that were there had emigrated to the province known as Palestine because of the commercial activity of the Jews. They had no intention of setting up a “secular Palestinian state”. This was the invention of Arafat.

    Beginning in 1929, Arabs and Jews openly fought in Palestine, and Britain attempted to limit Jewish immigration as a means of appeasing the Arabs.

How the History Channel, in writing the history of the conflict, can leave out the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Resolution of 1920 giving all the land, including Jordan, to the Jews and the Palestine Mandate passed by the League of Nations in 1922 reaffirming the Balfour Declaration and the San Remo Resolution, is beyond me. The Mandate obligated Great Britain to enable close settlement of the land, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, by Jews and ultimately to allow independence of the Jews.

    As a result of the Holocaust in Europe, many Jews illegally entered Palestine during World War II.

This sentence ignores virtually everything that lead to Jewish emigration. The first blame goes to the Nazis who rounded up seven million European Jews and put them in Ghettos. The second blame goes to Gr Britain and the US who wouldn’t let the Jews emigrate to their countries or Palestine, with or without visas. This policy lead to the destruction of six million Jews by the Nazis. The small remnant who survived, had to wait until 1947 to be allowed into Israel. A small number of Jews came to Palestine during the war. Such entry was legal according to the Palestine Mandate. Gr Britain, in 1937 instituted a policy in contravention of the Mandate to limit the number of Jews entering. Only in this sense was their entry “illegal”.

At the same time, also in contravention of the Mandate, Gr Britain facilitated enormous Arab immigration from surrounding lands

    Radical Jewish groups employed terrorism against British forces in Palestine, which they thought had betrayed the Zionist cause.

It is not a matter of what they thought. It is a fact. Britain not only violated the Zionist cause but more importantly, violated international law and their obligations under the Mandate. Thus the Jews fought to chase them out of Palestine.

    At the end of World War II, in 1945, the United States took up the Zionist cause. Britain, unable to find a practical solution, referred the problem to the United Nations, which on November 29, 1947, voted to partition Palestine. The Jews were to possess more than half of Palestine, though they made up less than half of Palestine’s population.

Wrong again. The US did not take up the Zionist cause after or before 1945. The US was not in favour of creating a Jewish state at all and intended to vote against it. Fortunately for Jews, Pres Truman overruled the State Dept and ordered that the US vote in favour. Even so, the US maintained an arms embargo on Israel throughout the War of Independence and expected Israel to be destroyed. To everyone’s surprise, Israel was victorious and gained more land as a result.

Had Britain not prevented Jewish immigration and favoured Arab immigration, both contrary to her mandate, the Jews would have been in majority and would have been entitled to the entire country.

    The Palestinian Arabs, aided by volunteers from other countries, fought the Zionist forces, but the Jews secured full control of their U.N.-allocated share of Palestine and also some Arab territory. On May 14, 1948, Britain withdrew with the expiration of its mandate, and the State of Israel was proclaimed by Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion. The next day, forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq invaded.

The Mandate didn’t expire. Just Britain’s role did. Jewish rights pursuant to the Mandate continued.

    The Israelis, though less well equipped, managed to fight off the Arabs and then seize key territories, such as Galilee, the Palestinian coast, and a strip of territory connecting the coastal region to the western section of Jerusalem. In 1949, U.N.-brokered cease-fires left the State of Israel in permanent control of those conquered areas. The departure of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from Israel during the war left the country with a substantial Jewish majority.

Another thing that the History Channel fails to mention is that during and after the war, 900,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries and their land holdings and wealth accumulated over many hundreds of years, was confiscated. Most of these Jews went to Israel and were absorbed.

November 27, 2010 | 23 Comments »

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23 Comments / 23 Comments

  1. BlandOatmeal wrote:
    The list goes on and on. None of this gets you one iota closer to God; and if your Judaism doesn’t get you close to God, it is worse than worthless: It is a sham, bringing dishonor to God’s name. Yet it is things like this, that divide Jew from Jew and Jew from Goy. Yes, the divisiveness IS in the religion, the way it’s practiced. That’s why the vast majority of Jews, including you, don’t even bother to call themselves religious; and why others like me, who am rightly honored to be descended from Moshe’s brother Aharon, don’t even bother to call themselves Jews; because it’s simply not worth the bother of being lambasted by a “Holier than Thou” one.

    Oy, veh. If the modern Pharisees apply the “holier than thou” to other Jews, no wonder they so easily extend this to gentiles, as we have seen done over and over again by about five Israpundits who shall remain nameless here.

    I wonder what my friend Mer has to say about all this, as she is obviously honestly struggling with her own personal demons.

  2. yamit82 says:
    December 1, 2010 at 3:04 am

    (quoting me) “…Then the man said, ‘No, it isn’t — every one of those 22 shuls came about because of a split over some trivial matter.’…”

    Interesting, but those are personality idiosyncrasies that have little relationship to Judaism as far as I can see. Again, what has judaism have to do with our divisiveness?

    First of all, Yam, you don’t know that these splits were due to personality idiosyncrasies or to doctrinal matters. Certainly, the Conservative-Orthodox split isn’t over personalities: It’s over whether one should make halacha relevant, as intended, or keep it frozen in the 18th Century (just as an example).

    Secondly, Judaism itself, as formulated over the centuries by the rabbis and sages, IS the root of divisiveness among Jews, or at least pretty far down the trunk. The rabbis piled so many strictures upon strictures, that (1) it’s impossible to actually PRACTICE Judaism to anyone’s expectations (let alone one’s own expectations), and (2) those who DO think they’ve somehow “made it” over the goal line become swelled up with pride and start pointing fingers at others about how they fall short — as you have tended to point fingers at the likes of me, for instance, in the past.

    The divisiveness is built into the religion — not into Torah itself (sans human opinions), but into the attitude that one can somehow “attain” to Judaism, or anything else, for that matter, by force of will and a presumed relationship with God. One cannot get closer to God by eating only turkeys stamped with a circle-K and costing an arm and a leg; one cannot get closer still by not boiling that turkey in its mother’s milk (How do you boil a turkey in its mother’s milk?); one cannot get closer still by eating the turkey 10 minutes AFTER drinking milk instead of 10 minutes BEFORE; one cannot get closer still by waiting an hour after eating the turkey until drinking the milk; closer still by waiting three hours; closer still by applying all the above to cheese as well as milk, in case the cheese spontaneously starts to boil in your mouth (I NEVER boil things in my mouth, by the way); closer still to God if you eat the turkey off of one of TWO complete sets of dishes and out of one of two refrigerators; closer still if out of one of four…

    The list goes on and on. None of this gets you one iota closer to God; and if your Judaism doesn’t get you close to God, it is worse than worthless: It is a sham, bringing dishonor to God’s name. Yet it is things like this, that divide Jew from Jew and Jew from Goy. Yes, the divisiveness IS in the religion, the way it’s practiced. That’s why the vast majority of Jews, including you, don’t even bother to call themselves religious; and why others like me, who am rightly honored to be descended from Moshe’s brother Aharon, don’t even bother to call themselves Jews; because it’s simply not worth the bother of being lambasted by a “Holier than Thou” one.

    Yamit, you’re welcome to your religion and your beliefs. I hope you have a wonderful Hanukkah and a wonderful every other day. When I light my candles, I’ll think of you, and how God has knit us together. Should it matter to you or me, how the other serves the God of the Universe? We’re HIS servants, not each other’s.

    Chag sameach Hanukkah (Happy Hanukkah Holiday)!

  3. rongrand says:
    December 1, 2010 at 2:41 am

    A/E, you just don’t get it.

    Yamit doesn’t hate Christians, he hates those who in the name of Christianity committed crimes against the Jews and now finds it difficult to trust Christians.

    Let’s face it, there is an awful lot of anti-Semitism out there more than I ever realized. A hatred that needs to be eradicated once and for all.

    Hi, Ron. Good to see you again.

    If what you’re saying is true, then Yamit shouldn’t hate me. My only ancestors who had significant dealings with the Jews were Jews themselves and those who married them.

  4. rongrand writes:
    A/E, you just don’t get it.

    Yamit doesn’t hate Christians, he hates those who in the name of Christianity committed crimes against the Jews and now finds it difficult to trust Christians.

    Am I supposed to believe you, or him? Every bigot has their own twisted reason for being bigots. Sane people do not only obsess on the negative. Who the hell do you think defeated the Nazis, Fascists, Imperialists and Communists if not Christians for the most part? Whose taxes have gone to support Israel for decades if not Christians for the most part. Who else will come to your aid in an all out war? There is no excuse for bigots. They are allways part of the problem – never part of any solution.

    Yamit is like a Jewish equivalent of the Muslim radicals who refuse to accept Israel. They will also give you reasons for why they feel this way.

    Yamit asks:
    Are you sure you are Indian and not German or Pole?

    I have a far better suntan than any Pole or German.

    Yamit asks:
    Again, what has judaism have to do with our divisiveness?

    Judaism has nothing to do with your divisiveness. No religion can be held responsible for what people do in its name. People like you, who KNOW you are right even when you are wrong, are the ones responsible for your divisiveness.

  5. BlandOatmeal writes:
    Thank you for the concise and informative lessons. I did not know as much as you about Indian Moslems; although I will add that the Sikhs, who are a small minority in India, also hold positions of importance (Whenever you see pictures of Indians with large turbans, they are probably Sikhs): The Current President of India is a Sikh, along with others with the name “Singh”.

    Minor corrections. Manmohan Singh is the Prime Minister of India, not the President. Muslims are 14% of the population of India. Hindus are 80%. Christians are 2 1/2%. Sikhs are probably 2%. Balance would be mostly Buddhists.

  6. You’re joking, or talking foolishness. At our shul, we once had a visitor from Baltimore. He informed us that in Baltimore, there are 22 synagogues. My rabbi said this was good to hear! Then the man said, “No, it isn’t — every one of those 22 shuls came about because of a split over some trivial matter.” Get rid of the goiim, and the Jews will be divided. When they finally get down to only individual Jews, all considering themselves to be God’s one and only, they will all cut themselves in half.

    Interesting, but those are personality idiosyncrasies that have little relationship to Judaism as far as I can see. Again, what has judaism have to do with our divisiveness?

  7. I have no idea why he hates Christians with such a passion because mostly Christian America has stood firmly behind Israel for decades now.

    Are you sure you are Indian and not German or Pole?

  8. A/E, you just don’t get it.

    Yamit doesn’t hate Christians, he hates those who in the name of Christianity committed crimes against the Jews and now finds it difficult to trust Christians.

    Let’s face it, there is an awful lot of anti-Semitism out there more than I ever realized. A hatred that needs to be eradicated once and for all.

  9. American Eagle,

    Thank you for the concise and informative lessons. I did not know as much as you about Indian Moslems; although I will add that the Sikhs, who are a small minority in India, also hold positions of importance (Whenever you see pictures of Indians with large turbans, they are probably Sikhs): The Current President of India is a Sikh, along with others with the name “Singh”.

    One difference between Indian Moslems and their Arab and Persian cousins, is that they largely share the culture and history of their neighbors. Even the Bengali Moslems of Bangladesh, for example, use the same Bengali language, written in the same Bengali script, as their Hindu brothers in India. In the Hindi parts of India, the Moslems use a variant of Hindi called “Urdu”, which is written in Arabic script. Besides Bengal, the state which was most divided by religion was Punjab: The Pakistani half writes Punjabi in the Arabic script, as they do Urdu, Pakistan’s official language. Indian Pakistan, on the other hand, is nearly all Sikhs — a monotheistic religion which was founded in Eastern Punjab in direct opposition to the Islamic occupation. I believe there is no love lost between those two peoples. Indian Panjabis use their own script (akin to Hindi script), which is quite ancient.

    Kashmir is a special situation. When Pakistan and India were both formed, the princely state of Kashmir (with a Sikh ruler) chose independence from both. The Moslem Pakistanis immediately attacked, and Kashmir appealed to the Lord Mountbatten of the UK for help. He agreed, only on the condition that Kashmir join India. In 1952, Kashmiris in the Indian half chose in a referendum to remain in India, despite the fact that most of them were Moslems. Even while under Indian rule, there was an incident wherein over 250,000 Hindu Kashmiris were driven from their homes into India proper. On the Pakistani side of the border, moreover, Moslems from elsewhere in Pakistan have flooded into Kashmir, altering the ethnic composition there. Recently, Moslems from Pakistan have stirred up unrest again on the Indian side.

  10. BlandOatmeal writes:
    You’re joking, or talking foolishness.

    Keep reading what Yamit writes and you will be left with no doubts that he is as serious as a heart attack, or needs to be fitted for a straitjacket.

    When they finally get down to only individual Jews, all considering themselves to be God’s one and only,

    Yamit already KNOWS he is God’s one and only:-)) He wrote recently that he cannot be a bigot because whatever libels and calumnies he writes about Christians is true. I have no idea why he hates Christians with such a passion because mostly Christian America has stood firmly behind Israel for decades now.

  11. Yamit, you said,

    Why do you blame the cause of our divisiveness on Judaism?

    I think getting rid of the gentiles might do the trick and it would be easier to accomplish.

    You’re joking, or talking foolishness. At our shul, we once had a visitor from Baltimore. He informed us that in Baltimore, there are 22 synagogues. My rabbi said this was good to hear! Then the man said, “No, it isn’t — every one of those 22 shuls came about because of a split over some trivial matter.” Get rid of the goiim, and the Jews will be divided. When they finally get down to only individual Jews, all considering themselves to be God’s one and only, they will all cut themselves in half.

  12. Someone wrote:
    Judaism seems to have an intrinsic divisiveness, that turns Jew against Jew. Get rid of that, and you’ve solved the problem.

    Yamit responded:
    Why do you blame the cause of our divisiveness on Judaism?

    I think getting rid of the gentiles might do the trick and it would be easier to accomplish.

    Yamit,

    Wake up, man. The original comment was about Jews, not Judaism.

    The 78% of American Jews who voted for Obama were not voting based on Judaism, but on moronism. Alan Dershowitz did not vote for him based on Judaism, but on stupidism. Mort Zuckerman and Ed Koch did not vote for Obama based on Judaism, but on delusionism.

    Getting rid of gentiles will still leave you to drive a wedge between Israel and its only real patron and ally, the USA.

  13. Judaism seems to have an intrinsic divisiveness, that turns Jew against Jew. Get rid of that, and you’ve solved the problem.

    Why do you blame the cause of our divisiveness on Judaism?

    I think getting rid of the gentiles might do the trick and it would be easier to accomplish.

  14. Yamit wrote:
    Selective Bullshit.

    Here we see Israpundit’s primary purveyor of cow cakes, Yamit, proving once again that he has very little real useful knowledge of what is happening in the world around him.

    Catarin asks:
    If some Muslims chose not to move to Pakistan from India, and it now is causing trouble, could Muslims be required to move there?

    Catarin,
    India has more Muslims than any other country except Indonesia, approx. 150 million. This is hard for most Israelis to understand but Indian Muslims are quite unlike the radical Muslims you are used to. This is why, even though they could have moved to either Pakistan or Bangladesh which are both essentially ethnically cleansed Muslim countries, they prefer to live in a secular India as a 14% minority. Indian Muslims believe they practice Islam according to its best precepts.

    For example, Indian Imams publicly condemn and issue fatwas against any Muslim who targets innocent civilians for any reason. When 10 Pakistanis attacked Mumbai a few years ago and 9 were killed, Indian Muslims refused to allow them to be buried in any Muslim cemetery in India on the grounds that they were heretics and not Muslims. The Police Chief in Mumbai who led the counter-atttack is a Muslim.

    Three of India’s Presidents have been Muslims. One of these was a REAL rocket scientist and is considered the father of India’s locally developed intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads. Three of India’s top ten Bollywood film stars are Muslims, as are several of India’s international sports stars. India’s women’s tennis champion is a Muslim woman who dresses like any western tennis player. One of India’s richest men is a Muslim and the founder of IT giant Wipro. The main heroic character in the Indian hit movie Slumdog Millionaire was a Muslim as were several of its villains. The Music Director for this film who personally won two Oscars, is a Muslim. The point I am making is that they are part and parcel of the Indian fabric of society, are patriotic Indians and have no allegiance to any outside Muslim entity. They keep their religion and politics separate. The jihadis among them are few and far between. Thus asking them to leave is not an issue.

  15. AE: If some Muslims chose not to move to Pakistan from India, and it now is causing trouble, could Muslims be required to move there?

  16. The fact is that Judaea and Samaria was populated by Jews way before Christ or Mohammad were born. However, because of Persian and Ottoman conquests many of the Jews were dispersed over the centuries until the Brits took over the area by defeating the Ottomans.

    In the Indian sub-continent there were similar invasions and population shifts because of the Muslim invaders.

    It was to settle the competing claims of the various major groups that the Brits came up with their compromise “solutions” by partitioning the Indian sub-continent into India and Pakistan, and by partitioning that part of the middle-east into Israel and Palestine.

    The Indians and Pakistanis and the Zionist founders of Israel all accepted the original partitions. Only the Arabs did not. What is worse, they did not take their grievances to the UN for negotiations – they simply decided to take the law into their own hands and tried to annex Israel by force.

    After some initial mayhem Indians and Pakistanis moved on with their lives. Kashmir was an exception to the original partition and has caused subsequent conflicts between India and Pakistan because Muslim Pakistan tried to annex Kashmir by force, just as the Muslim Arabs tried to annex Israel. This reflects the Muslim culture which immediately turns to violence when they don’t get their way.

    Reflecting the intolerance of most Muslims, Pakistan and all of the middle-east other than Israel have been ethnically cleansed of non-Muslims for the most part. However, India has a 14% Muslim population that chose to live in a secular country as a minority, and Israel has about a 20% Arab population that also chooses to live there.

    The Arabs, other than Egypt and Jordan, have refused to accept israel as a Jewish state, even though they are all Muslim states, and their dominant groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad all have the destruction of Israel as their primary objective.

    This is why any “talks” or “negotiations” with the Arabs is futile unless the Arabs have an epiphany which seems unlikely. Israel has made the mistake of giving up land acquired while defending themselves, without getting any peace in return, except from Egypt and Jordan. They should not give up another inch without air-tight pre-conditions of acceptance as a Jewish state and non-violence, guaranteed by the UN because the Arabs have never held up their side of any agreement so far and thus cannot be trusted to do so because their dominant power groups are all sworn to wipe Israel off the map.

  17. I am a supporter of Israel, and the jewish people worldwide!
    In all actuality, the Promised Land (Israel) as it is called in my Bible has always belonged to the Jewish People.Israel itself was a much larger country, but arabs have taken chunks, and made it their own.All these libels against Israel are not only lies, but betrayal, and inhumane.
    Those who do NOT stand with Israel will be condemned; my beliefs, and God’s Word.

  18. I watch History International a lot. I particularly like the Biblical research, the history of the Romans and other ancient people and science. In the months I’ve been watching it, I haven’t seen anything on the Arabs in Palestine. I don’t watch the ones on UFOs or ghosts because I don’t think they’re real. In the ghost series they profiled Tombstone, Arizona. I once lived nearby, knew people from there, and there weren’t any ghosts there then. But I suppose some people love ghost stories.

    Have you tried writing them and correcting the information they have?

  19. Hi, Ted

    Sometimes my wife turns on the history channel, because she’s interested in the topic; but I can’t remember being able to tolerate it for more than a minute or so. They are so obviously biased and activist, I just can’t stand that sort of pollution in our peaceful home. Your email correspondent points out an important fact, though: It is mainly Jews who are distorting Jewish history. Judaism seems to have an intrinsic divisiveness, that turns Jew against Jew. Get rid of that, and you’ve solved the problem.

  20. email rec’d

    I wanted to say that what you are doing is very very important. So, if you have made these points before, or even over and over, you cannot make them too often.

    I am a supporter of Israel, but I had forgotten several of them. Particularly that there had been immigration by the Arabs into Palestine.

    The Left is attempting to deconstruct core narratives of many countries, including the US of A. It appears that the Brits have lost heart and are allowing their many historical achievements to be denigrated or worse. I hope that does not happen here. I think that the Tea Party movement partly reflects this even though this issue was not articulated in the recent election.

    I gather from what I read that Leftists in Israel, particularly in the universities, are attempting to rewrite the Israel narrative. Defending it is a noble activity.

    Press on!!!

    Illegitimati non carborundum.