Timeless Israel - Support Israel

IDF Captive Soldier Gilad Schalit Finally Comes Home

2011-10-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

After being held captive in Gaza for 1,945 days by Palestinian terrorists, IDF soldier Gilad Schalit finally crossed over into Egypt and into IDF custody and protection. The deal in which Israel made with Hamas, who govern the Gaza Strip, was the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, which included 27 women and scores of "high profile" terrorists who were involved in and responsible for serious terror attacks against Israelis, including the Dolphinarium attack in the summer of 2002, where 16 young people were killed and scores injured; the Park Hotel bombing, with 33 Israelis killed and 160 injured; and numerous other attacks, such as the Sabarro restaurant in Jerusalem (15 killed, 130 wounded) and Maxim restaurant in Haifa where 21 were killed, including 3 young children and 3 Arab restaurant employees.

The agreement called for 477 prisoners to be released immediately to locations in both the West Bank and Gaza, except for 40 high level terrorists who were deported to countries outside of Israel, including Turkey. Another 550 prisoners will be released later.

Upon arriving in Egypt around 9 a.m., and after being greeted by Egyptian military officials, Schalit was met by IDF military officials, who greeted him warmly and gave him an IDF uniform to wear for his entry into Israel. Schalit is still officially in the IDF and was given the rank of Sergeant during his long incarceration. He is expected to receive a number of benefits from both the IDF and the Israeli government, including back pay and possibly a full educational scholarship. Despite looking pale and thin, preliminary medical checkups indicate that Gilad is in reasonably good condition for being in such an ordeal for more than 5 and a quarter years. Reports say he was wearing a Hamas "military uniform" when brought over to Egypt. He was reported as "speaking fluent Arabic" by Egyptian TV broadcasters who filmed the event when Gilad first crossed over to Egypt from Gaza. Schalit's initial remarks as to his treatment by Hamas were: "Hamas treated me well". During an initial interview, Schalit seemed tired and a bit confused and told an Egyptian reporter that he had been kept in isolation. "I didn't see people for a long time, but I began to feel that things might be improving for me a month ago. I only got news about my impending release about a week ago, but I was afraid that things might go wrong" he said.

"Gilad has finally returned home" said the IDF spokesman upon Gilad arriving on Israeli soil.

The deal to release Schalit, involving so many arch terrorists with "blood on their hands" was vigorously protested by members of terror victims families who circulated petitions to the Israel Supreme Court to prevent the deal from being carried out. The Supreme Court later decided not to interfere with the deal that was also voted against by several right winged members of the Israeli cabinet, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warmly greeted the young soldier as he arrived at the Tel Nof air force base in southern Israel. He then was given a long awaited reunion with his parents before returning with them to a reunion with the residents of his hometown, Mitzpeh Hila, in the northern Galilee. The end to this saga may remind some of a song that was recorded a while back by the American ballad singer John Denver:

"The prodigal son he'd been away awhile
He was makin' his way back home now
After many a ragged mile
When he finally crossed the river
And his father saw him near
There was a joyful sound for all the world to hear"
Lyrics from song Gospel Changes by John Denver

Gilad Schalit will need to undergo a lot of physical and emotional healing after his long ordeal. He has become a symbol of hope and is "every Israeli mother's son". His return to Israel, and to freedom, gives all young Israelis the hope that they will not be forgotten by their government and by the people of Israel, should a similar ordeal happen to them.

Israel's 'new' polices towards Syria, War or Peace?

2007-06-13T04:25:00.000-07:00

Syria's President Bashar Assad claims that the Israeli government, especially Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, is sending out "mixed signals" in regards to possible peace negotiations with Syria. Olmert's recent announcement that his government is ready to enter into serious negotiations with Syria involving the Golan Heights, is coming on the heels of both countries preparing for a future military conflict over the territory taken by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.

"We will name the babe Muhammad!"

2007-06-13T04:24:00.000-07:00

Great Britain's Muslim population, particularly Muslims living in greater London, is growing so fast that it is now acknowledged as the most prolific minority group there today. In fact, so fast is this ethnic group increasing in size, one only has to walk through the maternity ward of most British hospitals to see how many babies are being born to Muslim parents.

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Iran would hurt US interests if attacked

2007-06-10T01:18:00.000-07:00

A senior Iranian official on Saturday renewed Teheran's threat to target US interests around the world if the United States attacked the Islamic Republic over its nuclear programme, Fars News Agency reported.

Washington accuses Iran of seeking to develop atomic weapons, a charge Teheran denies. Although US officials insist they want a diplomatic resolution, they have not ruled out military action if deemed necessary.

'In case of an American attack against Iran, the interests of this country around the world and in the region will be endangered,' Mohammad Baqer Zolghadr, a deputy Interior Minister for security affairs, was quoted as saying.

'Today, all American bases in the region are within the reach of our medium-range weapons,' said Zolghadr, former deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

'Today, if the slightest disorder in the region's security and in the security of the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf is created, oil prices will reach $250 a barrel and this will lead to the death of European countries and America in terms of economy and security,' he added.

Worries about any supply disruption from the world's fourth biggest oil exporter, Iran, have been one of the factors helping to prop up oil prices. US crude is now around $65 a barrel.

'Maybe the start of an evil act (could) be in America's hand but its continuation and end won't be (in its hands),' he said.

Iran's highest authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in February the Islamic Republic would target US interests around the world if it was attacked.

Arab armies planned to destroy Israel

2007-06-06T05:08:00.001-07:00

'Arab armies planned to destroy Israel'-6 DAY WAR/JPOST

Those who call the Six Day War a disaster or a Pyrrhic victory are grossly mistaken, because they overlook the fact that Israel wasn't destroyed, historian Michael Oren told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

In an interview on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of war on June 5, 1967, Oren said his research of documents in Arab countries had revealed clearly that the Arabs had planned to destroy Israel.

Although this seems obvious to Israel sympathizers who hold to the traditional story of the Arabs' responsibility for the outbreak of war, the intervening decades have seen the promulgation of a myth that Israel was not really in danger.

"The biggest myth going is that somehow there was not a real and immediate Arab threat, that somehow Israel could have negotiated itself outside the crisis of 1967, and that it wasn't facing an existential threat, or facing any threat at all," said Oren, who is a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at Jerusalem's Shalem Center and author of Six Days of War: June 1967. He noted that this was the premise of Tom Segev's book, 1967: Israel, the War and the Year That Transformed the Middle East. "What's remarkable is that all the people alleging this - not one of them is working from Arabic sources. It's quite extraordinary when you think about it. It's almost as if Israel were living in a universe by itself. It's a deeply solipsistic approach to Middle East history."

What's behind the myth, Oren argued, is "a more pervasive, ongoing effort to show that Israel bears the bulk, if not the sole responsibility, for decades of conflict in the Arab world, and that the Arabs are the aggrieved party.

"It's an attempt to show that Israel basically planned the Six Day War in advance, knowing that it was going to expand territorially. My position is that it was just the opposite. Israel was taken aback by the crisis, unprepared for it and panicked, believing it faced a true existential threat, and did not plan to expand territory.

"It did everything it could to keep Jordan and Syria out of the war. My reading of the Arabic documents show that the Arabs had real plans to attack and destroy the State of Israel."

Oren said Israel's strategic relationship with the US began with the war.

"The United States, which previously regarded Israel as a friendly country but one that impaired its relations with the Arab world, suddenly realized that the Jewish state was in fact a regional superpower," he said. "The US subsequently forged an alliance with Israel that has remained ever since."

The first person to recognize that the war had dramatically changed the geopolitical balance in the Middle East, according to Oren, was US president Lyndon Johnson, who initiated a peace plan later embodied in UN Security Council Resolution 242.

"You can actually see 242 coming out of Johnson's head on June 5, 1967, including the notion that Israel would not have to return to the 1967 borders," Oren said. "Johnson is saying that particularly the West Bank border is not a defensible border; it's only eight miles across to the sea, and Israel should not have to go back to that border."

The war, Oren said, marked "the emergence for the first time of a US-Israel strategic relationship, as the Johnson administration wakes up on June 12, 1967, and says, 'Oh my God, we've got a regional superpower on our hands. We can't afford not to have it as an ally.'"

Oren acknowledged that the Six Day War also led to the establishment of "controversial settlements" in the West Bank and Gaza, to the ongoing conflict over Jerusalem and the relentless debate over Palestinian statehood.

"And yet it was also the 1967 war that inaugurated the peace process," he said. "UN Resolution 242, enacted in its wake, remains the cornerstone of all negotiations and created the conditions for Palestinian self-rule. The current Arab League peace plan calls for 'full Israeli withdrawal' to the June 4, 1967, lines, and the 'road map' plan endorsed by the United States and much of the international community provides for the emergence of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

"None of this would be possible if the West Bank and Gaza were still occupied by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, as they were in 1967, and if the Arab world were still consumed with how best to make war, rather than peace, with Israel."

The war also "vastly enhanced" Israel's relationship with Jewish communities abroad, Oren said.

"Before the war, some of the leading Jewish organizations in the US were reserved, if not distant, in their relationship with Israel," he said. "But as Arab armies massed on Israel's borders, Diaspora Jews confronted the possibility of witnessing a second Holocaust within a single generation, and later reveled in the joy of Israel's success.

"Many were inspired by the reunification of the State of Israel with the biblical Land of Israel, with Bethlehem, Hebron and above all, Jerusalem.

"Contributions poured into Israel, enabling it to strengthen its economy and its ability to absorb new immigrants, and American Jewish organizations lobbied for its defense."

In the war itself, Oren said, Israel had high casualty rates, losing more than 700 soldiers, and "what is widely unknown is that we lost about 20 percent of our planes.

"It was not in any way a picnic, not a walkover, particularly not on the Jordanian-Syrian front," he said. "The territorial outcomes of the war were dramatic in the extreme; Israel almost quadrupled its territorial size."

Arab casualty rates are difficult to gauge, Oren said, but there were probably more than 15,000 dead and 10,000 captured, with about $2 billion of Soviet equipment destroyed on the field of battle.

As a quirky aside, Oren also noted that the Six Day War actually lasted seven days.

"Mount Hermon was actually taken on the seventh day of the Six Day War," he said.

Fred Thompson Justifies Israel Defending Itself

2007-06-03T00:47:00.000-07:00

Fred Thompson Justifies Israel Defending Itself/Fred Thompson Report

Let me ask you a hypothetical question. What do you think America would do if Canadian soldiers were firing dozens of missiles every day into Buffalo, N.Y.? What do you think our response would be if Mexican troops for two years had launched daily rocket attacks on San Diego -- and bragged about it?

I can tell you, our response would look nothing like Israel's restrained and pinpoint reactions to daily missile attacks from Gaza. We would use whatever means necessary to win the war. There would likely be numerous casualties on our enemy's side, but we would rightfully hold those who attacked us responsible.

More than 1,300 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza since Palestinians were given control two years ago. Israelis, however, have gone to incredible lengths to stop the war against them without harming Palestinian non-combatants. But make no mistake, Israel is at war. The elected Hamas government regularly repeats its official promise to destroy Israel entirely and replace it with an Islamic state. Hamas openly took credit for killing one woman and wounding dozens more last week alone.

The Palestinian strategy is to purposely target and kill Israeli civilians. Then, when Israel goes after those launching the attacks, Palestinians claim to be the victims. If Palestinian civilians aren't hurt in the Israeli attacks, they stage injuries and deaths. Too often, they garner sympathy and support from a gullible or anti-Semitic media in the international community.

Israelis, themselves, are often incapable of facing the damage they inflict in self-defense. Knowing this, Islamic extremists are using their own populations as human shields.

I'm beginning to wonder how much longer this vicious plot will work though. International sympathy for Palestinians has diminished as the same Islamofascist extremists have brought havoc to Madrid, Bali, Somalia, London and elsewhere. More importantly, Israelis themselves are suffering so badly, they may be on the verge of losing their sympathy for the people who have sworn to kill them.

Imagine what it would be like to live, knowing that a rocket could fall on you or your children at any minute. Half of those who live nearest to Gaza have fled their homes. Those remaining are traumatized by daily warning sirens and explosions.

The irony is that Israel has the military might to easily win the war that is being waged against them today. They haven't used that might, in the past, out of compassion for Palestinian civilians and because it could trigger a wider regional conflict.

That balance of power is about to change, though. If Iran develops nuclear weapons, the very existence of this tiny nation of Israel will be threatened. The Iranian regime has left little doubt that it intends to see Israel "wiped off the map." Hamas is using the same language, not coincidentally, and has announced it will begin launching missiles into Israel from the West Bank too.

If the world doesn't act to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions, it must be prepared for the consequences of Israel defending itself.

The Origin and Identity of the arabs - Part 7

2007-05-29T01:57:00.000-07:00

Conclusion:

Myths:

Arabs are Ishmaelites: this is not true for the overwhelming majority of them. There are not written records by which not even a single Arab is able prove a direct descent from Ishmael. The alleged genealogies have been invented in Islamic times after some Nabateans converted to Judaism or Christianity discovered the possible link that they had with Ishmael, a name that was completely lost in Arabia and was translated from Greek sources.
Arabs are Semites: This is a relative truth -- the Arabic language is Semitic, because its sources are ancient Semitic tongues spoken by both Sabeans and Nabateans. Also Ghe'ez and Amharic, languages of the Ethiopians, are Semitic, nevertheless the Ethiopian people are Kushites, not Semites.
Arabic was spoken in ancient times: false, it is the most recent of all Semitic languages, and evolved from Nabatean, Sabean, Lihyanite, Safaitic, Thamudic and other tongues. There was not a single document written in Arabic until Roman times.

Facts:

Arabs are primarily Hamitic, with a relevant Semitic contribution.
Ancient Nabateans were mainly Kushitic. Although their forefather was Ishmael, he and his offspring married within the Kushite inhabitants of Northern Arabia, and were regarded as Mušuri (Egyptians) by the Assyrians, who did not recognize Arabs as a Semitic people.
Ancient Yemenites (Sabeans, Mineans and others) were of mixed Semitic/Hamitic stock.
The pre-Islamic Arabs had a Kushitic culture; they were mainly ruled by queens like the Nubians, Ethiopians and other Hamitic nations, and had a female-centred society.
Islam has reversed the original culture into a male-ruled society, yet not adopting a Semitic style but just imposing a system based on applying the opposite patterns to the previous social rules and customs.

Ancient Arabians had a great culture, that might have evolved into a modern civilization and a developed society like other peoples of the Middle East as the Jews or the Armenians, but their original culture was destroyed and their history was replaced by legends.

by Avraham Sándor

The Origin and Identity of the arabs - Part 6

2007-05-27T01:56:00.000-07:00

Unification and transformation

A great amount of historic documents concerning early Arabs have been destroyed in Islamic times in order to annihilate the memory of the original background from which Islam emerged and how did it change the cultural features of the Arabs -- so, it is not a surprising factor that they did likewise with the peoples that they subdued. Only strongly established cultures resisted and were not "arabized" (like Jews, Assyrians, Coptic Egyptians, Armenians, that never surrendered to Islam). Yet, we still have enough elements to reconstruct the facts concerning the pre-Islamic Arabian culture, and it is interesting that it was a female-centred and even a female-ruled society. This characteristic regarded primarily the Central Arabian and also the Northern tribes, not properly the Southern Arabian culture. Therefore, in order to enable a better comprehensibility, in this chapter we will define with the term Arabian or Arab the peoples of the Northern and Central regions, and "Yemenite" those of the Southern kingdoms (the term Yemenite indeed indicates the right hand, meaning the south).

According to the Chronicles of King Ashurbanipal and preceding Assyrian records, the Arabians have been ruled mainly by queens since the dim and distant past, like their Kushite brothers in Africa. Notable Arabian sovereigns like Zabibi and her daughter/successor Shamsi not only were the queens but also the warrior leaders of their own armies which included a large number of women-fighters; even tough they were submitted by Assyrian kings as vassals, these queens were credited for their aptitude for leadership. Subsequently, the King Assarhadon appointed an Assyrian princess over the Arabs according to their custom of having female rulers. It is indeed a very strange tradition for an allegedly Semitic people, but a typical feature among Kushites: on the African side of the Red Sea, kingdoms like Meroë and Ethiopia were traditionally ruled by queens. Also the Amazigh people under their warrior queen Kahena opposed a fierce resistance to the muslim invaders. Undoubtedly, the government system of pre-Islamic Arabians was not Semitic but Hamitic.

There are conclusive evidences that Arabians had a matrilineal succession, the husband entered the wife's clan and lived in her home, and it was generally the woman who decided to divorce. Women were free to choose their partner, and often married younger men. It was also usual that clans had female names, and there are some hints that suggest that even polyandry was practised -- a custom not found among Semites but within some peoples in India and other regions of Asia. Also their religion had the same character, as the worship of the goddesses, the "daughters of Allah" (name of a pre-Islamic moon-god) prevailed over that of the male idols. It is not the purpose of this essay to show the true origin of Islam, yet it is interesting how did it manage to reverse all the Arabians' culture -- it is not the sole event of this kind in history, just consider how Communism took the power over the deeply religious Russians, overturning many of their traditional values. The Islamic doctrines altered the genuine Kushitic nature of the Arabs and imposed the male tyranny, that includes women-beating and other aberrant humiliations like clitoridectomy -- characters that do not help to qualify Islam as Semitic either. The Islamic insistence on the rules that women must obey has not any ethnic connotation but is the result of a reaction against the freedom and power that Arabian women enjoyed when this religion was founded (by someone who experimented such a female "domination" in his own family). In fact, the Kushite cultural heritage lasted much longer in Central Arabia, the cradle of Islam, rather than in the Northern and Southern regions, where the Nabatean and Himyarite civilizations were in contact with the western world and had become quite cosmopolitan.

The Nabateans learnt literature, sciences and arts from their neighbours and were Hellenized up to a certain degree; most of them also converted to Judaism and Christianity. It was in Roman times that they reached their splendour and expanded their influence over Central Arabia; cities like Khaybar, Yathrib and Mekka became important Nabatean centres. Most of the Jews dwelling in Arabia in those times were indeed converted Nabateans, as well as the Christians that settled as south as Najran, in the Yemenite region. Paradoxically, a large number of true Ishmaelites were murdered by the Islamic hordes in the massacres of Jews at Khaybar and Medina. The notions about Jewish and Christian traditions were actually the source from which Nabateans rediscovered their Ishmaelite origin, as the name of Ishmael was completely lost in their own tradition. The Arabic form of this name shows internal evidence that it was translated from Greek or perhaps Syriac. This remote connection with a Biblical figure was enhanced on purpose by the promoters of Islam in order to create themselves a prestigious ancestry, although without having actual proofs of the Ishmaelite descent of Nabateans.

As we have already said, the Arabians were primarily a Kushite people and that is what they were considered by their Semitic neighbours as well; Ishmael's offspring developed as a Hamitic people for many generations. In fact, the only ancestor they remembered was Adnan, whose origin is unknown and maybe legendary, or perhaps a Kushite to whom in Islamic times was ascribed Ishmaelite lineage. It was mainly in Roman times that the Nabateans absorbed some Semitic tribes (Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites and Aramean clans from Syria), that contributed to add an important Semitic element to their ethnicity, nevertheless, none of these Semites was originated from Ishmael!

Concerning the Yemenites, in early times they had been ruled by queens according to the Kushitic tradition. The Semitic Yoqtanites assimilated the original Hamitic tribes and adopted their female monarchy system. Since they did not leave any written account of their own history previous to the Assyrian period, the only available document regarding the Sabean monarchy before the 8th century b.c.e. is recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, that reports the journey of the Queen of Sheva to Jerusalem. The description of the Queen illustrates the daring character of a typical Arabian female ruler; she presented herself to test the mighty King Shlomoh with hard questions and spoke to him openly. The Hebrew expression "she came to Shlomoh" used in the Bible in 1Kings 10:2 and 2Chronicles 9:1 conveys an interesting implication: that she had the explicit purpose of sexual relations with the King, who was not reluctant to accomplish her wishes, as it is written in following verses that "King Shlomoh gave to the Queen of Sheba all her desire, whatsoever she asked", implying that he also satisfied her sexually. This event became the source of many legends suggesting that both sovereigns had a son that founded a Solomonic dynasty that ruled in Yemen (or Ethiopia). There are not reliable proofs that may credit such a possibility, except that about two centuries later the Sabeans had a Semitic-styled male monarchy, and one of the earliest kings mentioned was Yati'amar, which is a Hebrew name (Ithamar).

Since the 3rd century c.e. the Sabean Himyarite Kingdom was enjoying a cultural revival in which the historical Israelite presence played an essential role, so much that even the king Dhu Nuwas adopted Judaism (even though the ancient Sabean religion was still practised by most Yemenites). This new feature was not appreciated by the nominally Christian Ethiopia and the Eastern Roman Empire, that agreed in joining their efforts to overthrow the Himyarite Kingdom. The Yemenite economy was weakened because of the commercial boycott promoted by the rival states that subsequently moved war against the Himyarite Kingdom. Yemen fell under the Ethiopians, that occupied the country and settled their own dynasty in 525 c.e. Yet, the Ethiopian Axumite rule did not last long, the ambitions of Byzantium and Persia to take control over the region resulted in a victory for the Persians, that subjected the whole Southern Arabia around 570 c.e. until the Islamic invasion. The end of the independent Yemen paved the way for their unification with the Nabatean Arabs advancing from the north.

At this point we have got a general description of the ethnic composition of Arabia when the whole peninsula was unified and the Arabic language was defined.

by Avraham Sándor

The Origin and Identity of the arabs - Part 3

2007-05-27T01:50:00.000-07:00

Ancient peoples of the Middle East

Arabs are the most recent of all Semitic peoples according to their appearance in history. In fact, it is not possible to speak about Arabs in ancient times, but only about their ancestors.

Most of the Middle East is now formed by conventionally called "Arab countries", recently invented by the British and French rulers after having defeated and dismembered the Ottoman Empire. They created politic entities without any historic background and assigned some of them to the Arabs instead of the peoples that have legitimate right to those lands. That is the case of Egypt, Iraq and the Israeli territories given to the Arabs. They have as well divided the country that rightfully belongs to the Arabs into different states without any historical or cultural reason and over which they established the rulers. That is the case of Kuwayt, Qatar, Bahrayn, the United Arab Emirates and "Saudi" Arabia, names that are impossible to find in any historic record.

Since Arab nationalist and other biased movements claim an alleged historical right over the whole Middle East, they ascribe the Arab ethnicity to all Semitic and Hamitic peoples that existed in that region centuries before the first Arab was born. Consequently, it is helpful to present a brief historic account of the peoples that originally inhabited the Middle East in ancient times, and which of those peoples generated the Arabs.

In order to make this research more comprehensible, we can divide the Ancient Middle East into three main regions: 1) the "Fertile Crescent" and neighbouring lands, from the Zagros Mounts in the east to the Ararat in the north and the Mediterranean shores in the west (Mesopotamia, Ararat, Syria-Canaan); 2) Egypt; 3) the Arabian peninsula.

Mesopotamia, Ararat, Syria-Canaan: This region was inhabited by Semitic and non-Semitic peoples.

Sumerians, Subarians and Hurrians: these non-Semitic peoples cannot be identified nowadays with any defined ethnic entity, but evolved into several different peoples. Most of them were displaced by the Assyrians and emigrated, contributing to the formation of other peoples in India, Central Asia and Europe. Nevertheless, the Kurds are partially descendant of the Subarian/Hurrians, mixed with other elements, and therefore having right to claim a national home in the area -- but their land was given to others that arrived many centuries after them: Turks and Arabs.

Hittites and Canaanites: these peoples were originally non-Semitic but Mediterranean. While the Hittites dwelling in Anatolia built an empire and subsequently entered the Indo-European sphere, those that remained in Canaan were absorbed by the Canaanite tribes.

The Canaanites were culturally conquered by the Arameans, adopting their Semitic language and therefore are generally regarded as a Semitic people. They developed in two different areas: the "coastland Canaanites" are best known in history as Phoenicians, the "mountain Canaanites" were assimilated by the Israelites and disappeared as an identifiable people around the 8th century b.c.e. -- when the Assyrians took the Hebrews into exile they did not make any difference because the Canaanites were already Israelites. Canaanites were NOT Arabs.

Today the ancient Canaanites are represented by two nations: the Phoenicians are Lebanese, while the Yevusites, Hivvites, Amorites and other mountain tribes are now Jews. Lebanon is erroneously considered an "Arab" country, since the Lebanese themselves do not agree with such classification. In the Lebanese constitution the term Arab is not mentioned, except in the article 11 that states that Arabic is the official language (as well as the Argentine constitution establishes that Spanish is the official language, but this does not mean that the inhabitants are to be considered Spaniards). Lebanon's official name is "Lebanese Republic", a western-style denomination, without the word "Arab" that is essential in the official designation of every Arab state.

Philistines: the Philistines were not Semitic peoples, and unlike the Canaanites, they were not autochthonous but a confederation of invaders from the Aegean Sea and the Anatolian areas. They are known in history also as "Sea Peoples". The Philistines are extinct and claims to alleged links with them are utterly false as they are historically impossible to establish. In any case, claiming a Philistine heritage is idle because it cannot legitimate any land in which they were foreign occupants and not native dwellers. Philistines were not Arabs, and the only feature in common between both peoples is that in Israel they should be regarded as invaders, Philistines from the sea and Arabs from the wilderness.

Akkadians, Assyrians and Arameans: These are the only peoples in this region that were fully and originally Semitic. The term Akkadians refers to the early historic period of the peoples that later were identified as Hebrews in Canaan and Assyrians in Mesopotamia, while the Arameans constituted the western branch of the same stock. Assyrians eventually split into two branches, of which the southern is more commonly known as Chaldeans or Babylonians. These peoples were NOT Arabs.

The Assyrians became Christians in the first century c.e. and did never accept Islam, so they have been persecuted and the largest majority of them are still in exile, though there has been a permanent Assyrian presence in the area. They speak their own ancient language and their homeland is until now usurped by an Arab entity called Iraq. Consequently, since Assyrians still exist and are not Arabs, the Arab nationalists cannot ascribe an Arab identity to the ancient Semitic peoples of Mesopotamia.

The Arameans are the only of these peoples that have in some way been related to the original Arabs, as they have intermarried and mixed with the Nabatean tribes, becoming the present-day Syrians, that are the most Semitic of all Arabs. Therefore, even though the ancient Arameans cannot be regarded as Arabs, they are among the ancestors of the northernmost branch of the Arabs, namely, the Syrians.

Egypt:

The ancient Egyptians were a Hamitic people and even though they have been in some way involved with the origin of the Ishmaelite Arabs, they remained a distinguishable people that has not been assimilated by the Arab invaders. The Egyptians became Christians in the first centuries c.e., and their genuine descendants are the Copts, who are not Arabs. Even though at present they are a minority in their own homeland, the Arab majority is anyway the result of a foreign invasion performed in the Middle Ages, when the Arabs made of Egypt the outpost for the conquest of Africa.

Arabia:

The Arabian peninsula is undoubtedly the Arabs' homeland, and the peoples that inhabited it in ancient times are to be regarded as the ancestors of the modern Arabs. Now, the query consists in establishing how Semitic these peoples were and up to what amount did the Ishmaelites contribute to the formation of the Arab identity.

In the most ancient records the whole Arabia was commonly designed under the generic name of "Kush", which was extended throughout the entire region comprised between Southern Mesopotamia in the north and the White Nile Basin in the south, that is, including both sides of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Subsequently, there has been a clear distinction between Northern and Southern Arabia since early times, distinction that endured for centuries. The Arabs are the result of the progressive fusion of both entities developed over the original Kushite background.

Southern Arabian peoples:

Seven Kushite peoples: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Ra'mah, Sabtekha, Sheba and Dedan.
Twelve Semitic tribes (Yoqtanites): Almodad, Shelef, Hatzarmawt, Yerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diqlah, Obal, Abima'el, Shaba, Hawilah and Yobab.

Northern Arabian peoples:

Early Kushite population: Kûsh, Mušuri, Hawilah, Makkan.
Eight Semitic tribes (Midyanites/Lihyanites): Zimran, Yoqshan, Medan, Midyan, Yishbaq, Shuwah, Sheba and Dedan.
Twelve Ishmaelite tribes: Nebayot, Qedar, Adbe'el, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadar, Teyma, Yetur, Nafish and Qedmah.

The characteristics of these peoples are exposed under the next title.

by Avraham Sándor

The Origin and Identity of the arabs - Part 5

2007-05-25T01:53:00.000-07:00

Arab myths concerning the Patriarchs

Historic and archaeologic evidences show that the ancient Arabian peoples did not leave any written testimony of themselves before they received the influence of Assyria, around the 8th-7th century b.c.e., and all what we know about them until then has been recorded by external sources and accounts of eyewitnesses. The peoples of Arabia had no records of their own genealogies, which have been artificially invented in Islamic times as well as the alleged pre-Islamic history without any real knowledge concerning location and period, besides the imaginary character of the events. There are many examples that show the inaccuracy of Islamic traditional concepts, based on hearsay from unreliable sources. Just to mention a couple of them, one is that the qur'an identifies Miryam the sister of Aharon with Miryam the mother of Yeshua as if she was the same person, when actually there are about 1400 years that separate the two Miryams; another is that in sura "al-qasas" (38), Haman is said to be Pharaoh's vizier, mistaking both time and place, because actually Haman was a minister of the Persian king when there was no longer any Pharaoh in Egypt. The same sura asserts that Pharaoh intended to build a tower, a story based on Josephus' account about Nimrod (Antiquities, I: 4). There are hundreds of resounding errors like these which are not to be listed here since it is not the intention of this essay to make any process to religious conceptions, but only to present the historic truth.

Concerning the two Arabian forefathers, we can say that Qahtan may be well identified with the Biblical Yoqtan, but Adnan seems to be rather legendary, and as allegedly is only one of Ishmaels' descendants -- not even one of his twelve sons -- he cannot be the ancestor of all the Northern Arabians. The geographic distribution of the Ishmaelites indeed leave a vast "empty" space between them and the Yoqtanite peoples, namely, the whole Central Arabia. The southernmost Ishmaelite tribe was Teyma', whose capital was located about 400 kilometres north from Yathrib (Medinah). Yet, Arab traditions assert that Ishmael was with his father Avraham in Mekka (that is more than 700 kilometres south of Teyma'), a claim that is utterly groundless, without the least hint of possibility to find any historic support.

The only existing written record concerning the person of Ishmael is found in the Bible, witnessing that he dwelled in the region of Paran, north of Midyan. This account was written by Mosheh, who spent half of his life in the very land where Ishmael lived and had undoubtedly more accurate information than the Arab writers that invented the tales about Avraham and Ishmael more than 2000 years after Mosheh. The Scriptures as well describe Avraham's movements in a very accurate way, from his departure from Ur haKashdim to Haran, then to Canaan, his journeys to Egypt and Gherar, his expedition to rescue his nephew, and every place where he sojourned -- none of them is in Arabia. He kept attached to his Akkadian family settled in Northern Mesopotamia and not to any allegedly sacred place in Arabia. Having described all Avraham's movements in detail, would Mosheh not mention a trip involving a distance over 1000 kilometres away from Canaan (and the same length for the way back)? And supposing, for the sake of argument, that Avraham actually travelled to Mekka, if Mosheh ignored such a journey it undoubtedly means that it was completely irrelevant, without any Divine purpose.

The fact is that the name of Ishmael was unknown in Central Arabia in pre-Islamic times, and the Arabic form Isma'il, beginning with an aleph shows that it passed through the Greek and is not directly derived from the Semitic/Aramaic original name Yishmael, with an initial yod -- the change of a consonant/semivowel into a vowel is explained only if a Semitic name has been translated into a western language and then from the western form into another Semitic tongue, which is the case of Hebrew into Greek and then into Arabic. Indeed, there is no mention of Avraham or Ishmael in any ancient Arabian inscription, neither Sabean nor Minean, nor Safaitic, nor Lihyanite, nor Thamudic and not even Nabatean.

The Arabs got acquainted with the existence of Avraham and Ishmael only through the Jewish and Christian sources from which Islam drew its own scriptures. Therefore, according to overwhelming historic, archaeologic, scriptural and scientific evidence, neither Avraham nor Ishmael have ever been in Arabia from Midyan southwards.

Central Arabia was for many centuries left aside from the organized kingdoms of the South and also from the tribal states of the North, keeping its original Kushite population. It was regarded by both parts mainly as a passing-through territory for the caravan routes, which were not far away from the sea coast. The Yemenite kingdoms concentrated their population in their own cities and had no real interest in annexing the desert central region. The Sabeans were like the Phoenicians outstanding seafarers and used mainly the maritime routes; they traded with far away countries like India and established commercial settlements along the whole eastern coast of Africa -- even to reach Mesopotamia and Israel they preferred the sea routes. The only important caravan way they employed was the "Incense Road" that connected Yemen with Midyan across the peninsula along the Red Sea coast.

On the other side, the Semitic empires of the Middle East, namely Assyrian and Babylonian, were not much concerned in conquering the Arabian tribes and only imposed tribute on them, eventually placed vassal kings of their choice in order to keep a sort of organized administration, but did not establish colonies. After the fall of Babylon, the Nabateans got in touch with the Persian and Greek cultures and sought to expand themselves towards the northwest. In this period, they absorbed some Semitic peoples whose kingdoms were ruined since long time like the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites and some Aramean tribes, which contributed to the formation of the Arab identity. These Arabs are those that in Roman times settled in the central region, slowly and merging with the local Kushite inhabitants.

Map showing the distribution of the Northern and Southern Arabian peoples: notice that Central Arabia was primarily a Kushite territory, in which both Northern and Southern Arabians converged in a later period

by Avraham Sándor

The Origin and Identity of the arabs - Part 4

2007-05-23T01:52:00.000-07:00

The Arabian Kush and the Ishmaelite Myth

Even though the name Kush is usually associated with Ethiopia because of the Greek translation of that name, Kushite peoples were in early times the inhabitants of the whole Arabia, Southern Mesopotamia, Elam and a branch of them reached India as well. Indeed, in ancient records the term Kush may have different meanings and often it can be understood only by the context, and it is possible to distinguish at least four different lands which in some periods were known as "Kush": Sumer, the Horn of Africa, India and Arabia. The same happens with the term Havilah, that was a Kushite tribe -- they should not be mistaken for the Semitic Havilah, that is identified with Khawlan in Yemen. This people was originally settled in Northern Arabia, between Egypt and the Euphrates, and their land was later inhabited by Yishmaelites (Bereshyit 25:18) and Amalekites (Shmu'el I, 15:7). From their original land, different branches of the Kushite Havilah emigrated to Elam, India and Africa because of the Semitic expansion in the Middle East, making it difficult a precise identification of the land which the ancient documents call by such name.

The Assyrian records mention Kûsh and Mušuri in reference to the Northern Arabian peoples conquered by Asarhaddon, as a different event from his conquest of Egypt, and the same peoples are mentioned as tributaries by earlier Assyrian kings, who have not conquered Egypt.

These names recall the Biblical brothers Kush and Mitzrayim, namely Ethiopia and Egypt, very closely associated in ancient times but obviously located in Africa. Therefore, we find both names also on the Arabian side of the Red Sea, which is attested by several Assyrian documents. For instance, in the black obelisk of Salmaneser III he mentions in detail the tribute received from different lands, and concerning Mušuri it consists in "camels having double humps" and other animals. Such kind of camel is Asian and not Egyptian, and what is more, Egyptians usually did not even employ the African kind (dromedary, with one hump). Later, other Assyrian kings like Tiglath-Pileser III and Ashurachiddin (Assarhaddon) received camels as part of the tributes paid by different kingdoms in Arabia and Persia, but not any camel is mentioned among the booty taken after the conquest of Egypt. Consequently, Salmaneser's "Mušuri" is different from Egypt, yet having the same name.

Another interesting detail is that Salmaneser does not mention any king of Mušuri, unlike he does regarding the other kingdoms, and it is unthinkable that the Assyrian king would have not been proud of mentioning the Pharaoh among his tributaries. Indeed, the Arabian Mušuri were a confederation of nomadic tribes without any organized state, and this is confirmed by the fact that later Tiglath-Pileser assigned an "Arubu" (Arab?) as governor over Mušuri, whose name was Idiba'ilu, name that may indicate his belonging to the Ishmaelite tribe of Adbe'el.

The absence of monarchy in Mušuri by that time is confirmed by later Assyrian accounts attesting that the royal house of that country was founded as a vassal kingdom of Assyria during the reign of Assarhaddon. Sargon II mentions the king of Mušuri together with those of Aribi (a queen), Sheva, Khayappa, Tamudi and other kingdoms, all of them located in Arabia. It is remarkable that before the Assyrian rule, the sovereigns of these lands were mainly priestess-queens, a typical Ethiopian tradition that seems to have been replaced by the Assyrian-styled male monarchy.

The existence of Kush and Mušuri in Arabia are essential for the identity of the Ishmaelites and in some way also the Midyanites, as it will be shown afterwards.

Now let us consider the table of peoples and tribes of Arabia given above. This distribution is confirmed by the historic sources and show that the Arabs cannot be classified exclusively as Ishmaelites and not even as fully Semitic. Arabs resulted from a complex of tribes gathered into two groups: Southern and Northern Arabian. The ethnicity of these tribes is as follows:

Southern Arabians were originally Kushitic (Ethiopic). The most ancient Sabeans were closely related with Nubians and Abyssinians dwelling on the opposite shores of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Their country roughly coincides with modern Yemen, where the Kushitic Sabeans have left some hints that allow to identify them as tribes that created a sort of organized states or kingdoms, reported in ancient chronicles as Sabatan, whose capital was the city of Shabwah. They transferred some typical Ethiopic features to their Semitic successors, like the female-ruled monarchy, common to all ancient Arabia. These seven Hamitic tribes were partially displaced to the Horn of Africa and Meroë by the Semitic Sabeans (Yoqtanites) that came after them, but a large number intermarried and were assimilated into the new nationalities that emerged from the mixture of both groups.

The identity of the twelve Yoqtanite tribes faded away with the formation of different kingdoms: Sheva, Ma'in, Awsan, Qataban, Hadhramawt and Himayar. The Sabean peoples did not keep history records for centuries, until they had relationships with Assyria, and the first mentions of them come from external accounts like the Hebrew Bible and the Assyrian Chronicles. Since the time when they began to document their own history, the Semitic influence appears evident because they are ruled by kings, not queens. This seems to be the result of a process from the early period in which the Kushitic culture was still dominant and of which the only account we have regards the Queen of Sheva, who is contended by Arabs and Ethiopians as their own queen. The female monarchy seems to have come to an end with the determinant Assyrian hegemony.

Ethnically, the Southern Arabians are roughly two thirds Semitic and one third Hamitic, and not Ishmaelites at all.

Northern Arabians were called mainly after Avrahamic tribes, which apparently would grant them to be classified into the Semitic stock. Nevertheless, the Kushitic character is strongly remarkable since these lands were inhabited by Hamitic peoples (Kush, Havilah and Mušuri) long before the first Semites arrived in this territory and both groups intermarried. The process of Semitization was completed only under the Assyrian rule, around the 7th century b.c.e.

The origin of these Arabian tribes is connected with Avraham's concubines, Hagar and Qeturah, from whom respectively originated the Ishmaelites (or Hagarites) and the Midyanites (actually one of these tribes, whose name was extended to the others). Avraham was an Akkadian that moved first into the land of Hurrians and then into Canaan. His wife Sarah was an Akkadian belonging to his own family, and this fully Semitic couple generated the Israelites and not any Arab people. Avraham traded also in Egypt and acquired for his wife an Egyptian servant, Hagar, with whom he fathered Yishmael. Besides them, Avraham took also another woman, Qeturah, whose origin is unknown and that is the mother of the Midyanite tribes. Consequently, Ishmael was a Semite only on his father's side, but by his mother's lineage he was Egyptian, and the sons of Qeturah were surely Semitic after their father Avraham, but we do not know where did their mother come from. Here we will consider first the ethnic features of the Midyanites before dealing with the origin and culture of the Ishmaelites.

The Midyanites settled in the region of Mount Sinai (by the Gulf of Eylat, in Arabia, and not in the so-called Sinai peninsula). That land was already inhabited by non-Semitic peoples, namely, the Kü and Mušuri of the Assyrian records, and very likely Avraham's children and successive generations married women from the local people, consequently it is correct to assume that the Midyanites were ethnically less Semitic than Hamitic. In fact, they followed the Kushite tradition of having many queens among their rulers: three successive Assyrian kings (Tiglat-Pileser III, Sargon II and Sennakherib) mention seven Midyanite queens: Zabibi, Shamsi, Te'elkhinu, Yati'ah, Tabu'wa, Yapa'a and Bashi. Such a characteristic is not found in any Semitic kingdom, in which the queen was just the king's wife but very rarely the main ruler.

In support of the Kushite character of Midyan, there are some ancient texts that link the land and people of Midyan with Kush, and also the Hebrew Scriptures suggest this connection: It is typical in Hebrew poetry to compose verses repeating the same concept twice but with different words, like the statement written in Havaqquq 3:7 "I saw the tents of Kushan under sorrow; the curtains of the land of Midyan trembled" -- here the Prophet uses the names "Midyan" and "Kush" as synonymous. Such an identification of Northern Arabians with Kushites explains the controversy regarding the Kushite wife of Mosheh mentioned in Bemidbar 12:1; here the question emerges, whether she is to be identified with Tzipporah the Midyanite or not, and some interpreters like Rashi assert that this woman is indeed Tzipporah. If Midyan would have been so clearly distinguishable from Kush, such a controversy would not have arisen. The conclusion that she was not Tzipporah is understood by other elements and not by this ethnic definition. Furthermore, the Biblical land of Midyan is called Kü in Assyrian records.

The Ishmaelites dwelled near the Midyanites, in the region described as follows: "from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Mitzrayim as you go towards Ashshur. He settled before the face of all his brothers" (Bereshyit 25:18); in other words, their territory extended from the coastland by the Persian Gulf next to Southern Mesopotamia [Havilah] up to the border of Midyan [Shur], which is east of Egypt, along the way that leads northwards; the Ishmaelites settled at the east (meaning of the statement "before the face") of all their brothers [Midyanites and Hebrews]. This territory roughly coincides with the land called Mušuri in Assyrian accounts. In Bereshyit 21:21 is written "Yishmael dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Mitzrayim". We have already said that Ishmael himself was half Semite and half Egyptian, now we read that also his wife was an Egyptian, and that he settled in the desert area next to Midyan, which was inhabited by Hamitic peoples. How Semitic can his twelve sons be, then? Only one fourth, and three fourths Egyptian.

Of course, if these twelve sons would have founded their tribes within Assyria or Aram, after successive intermarriage they would have become more Semitic, but they settled in Kushite territory and assimilated the local peoples, and blended with their Midyanite brothers, who were like them a mixed breed. Therefore, Salmaneser's mysterious "Egyptians" (Mušuri) that had no king and from whom he took some double-humpbacked camels as tribute were no other than the Ishmaelites. Establishing a documentary comparison, we find that the Biblical "Midyan and Yishmael" are equivalent to the "Kü and Mušuri" of the Assyrian records. It is natural that from the Hebrew viewpoint they were regarded as Semitic for Avraham's sake, but for the Semitic Assyrians they were just Ethiopic/Egyptian tribes.

The Ishmaelites were associated with Midyanites since early times in such a way that both terms became interchangeable. Their territories were not sharply defined and it seems that only the Midyanites had organized kingdoms and were the leading branch during the first centuries. Progressively, the distinction between both groups vanished by mutual assimilation. Conquered by the Assyrians, the Ishmaelites were not relevant until the Persian period, when the tribe of Qedar assumed the hegemony over the Northern Arabian peoples, but the first true kingdom was founded by the Nabateans, that arose as the leading Ishmaelite tribe in Roman times. The Nabateans extended their dominion up to the present-day Syria under the rule of Queen Zaynab. In that period, they absorbed Semitic cultures like the Arameans and the Idumeans, and the Nabatean language is the oldest one that may be defined as "Arabic", though many scholars disagree.

Taking account of the Hebrew Scriptures and other ancient records, it is possible to establish that the term Arab was originally applied to the Nabateans, that inhabited the wilderness region to the east of Israel, from Edom to Syria (not properly in the mainland of Arabia). Such an identification is confirmed by historians of Roman times like Strabo and Josephus, that used the terms Arab and Nabatean as synonymous. The Nabatean sovereigns were usually called "kings of the Arabs" and their realm was known as Arabia, so that when the Nabatean Kingdom was annexed to the Roman Empire it became the province of Arabia.

The name Nabatean is referred to Ishmael's firstborn son Nebayot, founder of the tribe that prevailed over the northwestern branch of the Ishmaelites and evolved into an organized kingdom, while the southeastern ones kept their Bedouin life-style within the oases of Northern Arabia, of which the tribe of Qedar may be considered the most representative.

The region where the Nabateans settled favoured their development as a Semitic culture that progressively replaced their natural Kushitic character. Intermarriage with Arameans was common and determined the origin of the modern Syrians. In fact, there were no marriage restrictions neither for men nor for women among Nabateans to take foreign spouses, and it is likely that such a practice was even encouraged. Mutual assimilation with the local Semitic population was also decisive in the formation of the Arabic language, whose roots are clearly Aramaic. Unlike present-day Arabs, the Nabateans held women in high regard -- a characteristic common to most of the pre-Islamic Arabian peoples. Women had property and heritage rights, and the Nabatean queens were honoured even more than the kings.

The Nabatean culture experienced a sudden transformation from the nomadic life style and camel breeders to city builders, and it is only since this change happened that the Nabateans have left records of their own culture. Before that time, only some samples of pottery were found, and however not older than the first century b.c.e.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Assyrian Chronicles and other ancient records the first peoples to be identified as Arabs were the Ishmaelite-Midyanite tribes and the same definition is never applied to the southern peoples, who are called by their ethnic name (Sabeans, Mineans, etc.), so how did it happen that the term Arabian was extended to the whole complex of inhabitants of the peninsula? Indeed, the relationships between the northern tribes and the Yemenite kingdoms were rather limited to commercial exchange, but never achieved a solid cultural and political unity in pre-Islamic times.

Such a generalization of the term seems to come from Greek sources: being the Ishmaelites the immediate neighbours of the Persian Empire along the southern border from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, the whole land between both seas was called Arabia after them. In fact it was Herodotus who mentioned Arabians in reference to all the peoples dwelling in the peninsula. It is also well known that the Greeks were not accurate in their geographic and ethnic definitions, as we have many examples of Hellenic names that became widely used even though they are not exact -- like Syria, by which the Greeks intended "Assyria", mistaking both the people and the land.

The different tribes of Arabia did not have any term of their own which would have been recognized by every tribe to identify themselves as "Arabian"; therefore, when the Arabic language took a definitive shape, the geographic names that were widely acknowledged as official denominations were the Greek ones. The term Arab was included into the vocabulary of the Southern languages long time after it was commonly used by the Northern Arabian tribes as self-definition, that means that the word was indeed a foreign term for the peoples settled in the Southern half of the peninsula.

Paradoxically, modern Arabian ethnologists consider the Southern tribes as the original Arabs (but historically they never defined themselves as Arabs in ancient times, while the first tribes that have accepted such denomination appear to be the Ishmaelites). The Arab scholars distinguish Arabians as descending from two different stocks: the "original" Arabs ('aribah), whose forefather was Qahtan -- Yoqtan -- and are the Yemenite group of tribes, and the "arabized" peoples of the north (musta'aribah), whose forefather is said to be Adnan, allegedly an Ishmaelite. Undoubtedly, there is a glaring contradiction in what the same Arab ethnologists declare: that the Ishmaelites are actually arabized and not the original Arabs; hen they claim that all Arabs are Ishmaelites...

by Avraham Sándor

The Origin and Identity of the arabs - Part 2

2007-05-21T01:48:00.000-07:00

Definition of the term Arab in historic sources

The word Arab is of uncertain meaning; when and by whom this people (or these peoples) began to be called Arabs is unknown.
The earliest sources where the term Arab appeared the first time are the Hebrew Scriptures of the post-exilic period, namely, during the rebuilding of the Temple under the Persian Empire (Nehemyah 2:19 -- 5th century b.c.e.), and is applied in a vague manner probably to some Nabatean tribes.
In the same period, also the Greek historian Herodotus mentions the Arabs, apparently in reference to the Yemenite tribes.
There are some earlier records, Akkadian and Assyrian sources that mention the "Aribi", a tribe of the desert that may be connected with the Ishmaelites, but there is not any certainty that such term has even any relationship with the word Arab.

Indeed, the term Arabia is Greek, as well as Egypt, Syria, Libya, etc. and its probable etymology may be of Semitic origin: 1) 'arabah = steppe, wilderness; 2) 'ereb = mixture of peoples.
Both terms are appropriate to them. Wherever Arabs have conquered, the lands became deserted; the Arabian peninsula itself was not so dry, and Yemen had an irrigation network that allowed the land to be fruitful before Northern Arabs invaded and subdued the Sabean kingdom.
Spain and Sicily were fertile lands in Roman times; they became dry during the Arab occupation.
Only Eretz Yisrael recovered fertility after hard work done by Jews -- the pieces of land still occupied by Arabs remain arid. The second term is also suitable to define Arabs, as they are indeed a mixture of different peoples. Arabs themselves recognize to come from two unrelated patriarchs: Qahtan (Southern Arabs) and Adnan (Northern Arabs), to be respectively identified with a Sabean and an Ishmaelite ancestor.

It seems that the name "Arabia" was applied to the whole peninsula only around the first century b.c.e., as defined by Diodorus of Sicily in his Bibliotheca Historica and by Strabo in his Geography, yet it is rather a geographic definition, not closely related with the actual ethnicity of the inhabitants, whom they declare to be of several kinds and call them by their own tribal names.

by Avraham Sándor

The Origin and Identity of the arabs - Part 1

2007-05-20T01:42:00.000-07:00

In general, the term Arab in modern times is applied to a large group of different peoples that share in common the Arabic language, which for the overwhelming majority of them is not their original one but the tongue imposed to their forefathers by the Arabian conquerors.

Such a definition is ethnically unsuitable, in the same way as it would be inappropriate to call "Spaniards" to all Spanish-speaking peoples or "English" to all those non-British folks whose primary language is English.

It is true that the Arab countries have not only language in common but also most cultural features as well, yet, this is the result of the colonization and subsequent annihilation of the original pre-Arabic culture. Therefore, it is more correct to speak of them as "Arabized" peoples rather than Arabs.

From the ethnic viewpoint, the term Arab is roughly equivalent to "Arabian", namely, in reference to the only people considered to be Arab since the beginning and identified as such by themselves and by their neighbours.

It happens frequently that the word Arab is misused on purpose for political strategy:
1. by applying this term as an ethnic definition to the Arabized peoples (mainly North-Africans), in order to increase the number of the Arab population.
2. in a quite improper way, by calling "Arab" to ancient peoples that existed in the Middle East in order to claim historic rights and legitimate the Arab occupation.

So, it is necessary to reach a clear definition in two directions: which peoples are Arabs and which are not. Concerning the origin, the most widespread myth is that Arabs are Ishmaelites, what in the case of all the Arabized peoples is not true at all, and regarding Arabians is only partially true.

The original Arab culture has been lost and the most reliable information we have about it comes from external sources, because Islamic revisionism has produced a legendary account in replacement of the scientific truth, and so one of the most fascinating cultures of the past is now missing.

The Arabian myths have been created in order to legitimate the "pre-existence" of Islam by ascribing fanciful tales allegedly happened in Arabia to Hebrew Patriarchs and Prophets. Through these legends turned into "history", Arabs claim an Avrahamic origin through Yishmael, who was only the forefather of some tribes that intermarried with many other peoples that were already settled in Arabia much earlier than him and within which the Ishmaelite lineage was largely assimilated.

Therefore, the equation Arab = Ishmaelite is a myth, because Ishmael was not an Arab, nor the forefather of all Arabs; actually, his descent contributed to the formation of the peoples that came to be known as Arabs some centuries later.

Connected with the alleged Ishmaelite identification, the Semitic identity is taken for granted, yet, this is also a half-truth because the Arabian ethnicity and culture arose from an original Kushite stock that was subsequently assimilated by the Semitic tribes that came after them, and even the Ishmaelites were a mixed group with a strong Hamitic component, as we will see in this essay.

by Avraham Sándor

This Tuesday is Jerusalem Day.

2007-05-13T02:28:00.000-07:00

The day we celebrate the miraculous military victory in the Six-Day War, 40 years ago.

The IDF reclaimed Jerusalem, and more specifically the Old City and the Western Wall, as well as what we know today as Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Israeli leaders always promise they will maintain a “united Jerusalem.”

read more...

Palestinian leader: 'Kill every American and Jew'

2007-05-06T00:59:00.000-07:00

Every American and Jew in the world must be killed, demanded Ahmad Bahar, the speaker of the Palestinian Authority parliament in a televised speech, explaining the U.S. is on its way to collapse.

"Allah, take hold of the Jews and their allies, Allah, take hold of the Americans and their allies. ... Allah, count them and kill them to the last one and don't leave even one," said Bahar last week in a speech broadcast on official PA television, which is controlled by PA President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party.

Bahar, a Hamas member, is a senior figure in the Hamas-Fatah unity government headed by Abbas.

His speech was translated this week by Palestinian Media Watch, which provided a video excerpt that can be seen here.

Bahar declared the U.S. has been defeated.

"Be certain that America is on its way to disappear. America is wallowing [in blood] today in Iraq and Afghanistan, America is defeated and Israel is defeated, and was defeated in Lebanon and Palestine. ... Make us victorious over the infidel people.

"This is Islam, that was ahead of its time with regards to human rights in the treatment of prisoners, but our people was afflicted by the cancerous lump, that is the Jews, in the heart of the Arab nation."

Fatah and Hamas in February forged a unity government that grants Hamas veto rights over any agreement with Israel. The U.S. backs talks with the Palestinian government and last month brokered bi-weekly meetings between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert meant to eventually lead to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Earlier this week, a Hamas leader stated in an Arabic language interview Abbas does not have full authority to engage in negotiations with Israel, and Hamas will block any deal reached during talks with Olmert.

"These meetings are pointless and do nothing to further the Palestinian cause," said Muhammad Saleh Taha during an interview last week with Al-Alam, an Iranian TV channel.

"We will not accept any negotiations with the occupier on the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights. [Hamas leaders] stressed that they had reservations about giving [Abbas] full authority in the negotiations," Taha said in the interview.

"In the strongest of terms, we oppose such negotiations and everything that will come out of it. We, the Hamas movement, will not agree to it. ... The government platform is not the platform of Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement. ... Hamas will not relinquish its platform of resistance," said Taha.

When asked to clarify whether the Hamas movement would oppose any agreement reached between Abbas and Olmert, Taha replied: "Definitely."

Honeybee die-off threatens food supply

2007-05-03T04:10:00.001-07:00

Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

Honeybees don't just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.

In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program.

"This is the biggest general threat to our food supply," Hackett said.

While not all scientists foresee a food crisis, noting that large-scale bee die-offs have happened before, this one seems particularly baffling and alarming.

U.S. beekeepers in the past few months have lost one-quarter of their colonies — or about five times the normal winter losses — because of what scientists have dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. The problem started in November and seems to have spread to 27 states, with similar collapses reported in Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe.

Scientists are struggling to figure out what is killing the honeybees, and early results of a key study this week point to some kind of disease or parasite.

Even before this disorder struck, America's honeybees were in trouble. Their numbers were steadily shrinking, because their genes do not equip them to fight poisons and disease very well, and because their gregarious nature exposes them to ailments that afflict thousands of their close cousins.

"Quite frankly, the question is whether the bees can weather this perfect storm," Hackett said. "Do they have the resilience to bounce back? We'll know probably by the end of the summer."

Experts from Brazil and Europe have joined in the detective work at USDA's bee lab in suburban Washington. In recent weeks, Hackett briefed Vice President Cheney's office on the problem. Congress has held hearings on the matter.

"This crisis threatens to wipe out production of crops dependent on bees for pollination," Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in a statement.

A congressional study said honeybees add about $15 billion a year in value to our food supply.

Of the 17,000 species of bees that scientists know about, "honeybees are, for many reasons, the pollinator of choice for most North American crops," a National Academy of Sciences study said last year. They pollinate many types of plants, repeatedly visit the same plant, and recruit other honeybees to visit, too.

Pulitzer Prize-winning insect biologist E.O. Wilson of Harvard said the honeybee is nature's "workhorse — and we took it for granted."

"We've hung our own future on a thread," Wilson, author of the book "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth," told The Associated Press on Monday.

Beginning this past fall, beekeepers would open up their hives and find no workers, just newborn bees and the queen. Unlike past bee die-offs, where dead bees would be found near the hive, this time they just disappeared. The die-off takes just one to three weeks.

USDA's top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis, who is coordinating the detective work on this die-off, has more suspected causes than time, people and money to look into them.

The top suspects are a parasite, an unknown virus, some kind of bacteria, pesticides, or a one-two combination of the top four, with one weakening the honeybee and the second killing it.

A quick experiment with some of the devastated hives makes pesticides seem less likely. In the recent experiment, Pettis and colleagues irradiated some hard-hit hives and reintroduced new bee colonies. More bees thrived in the irradiated hives than in the non-irradiated ones, pointing toward some kind of disease or parasite that was killed by radiation.

The parasite hypothesis has history and some new findings to give it a boost: A mite practically wiped out the wild honeybee in the U.S. in the 1990s. And another new one-celled parasitic fungus was found last week in a tiny sample of dead bees by University of California San Francisco molecular biologist Joe DeRisi, who isolated the human SARS virus.

However, Pettis and others said while the parasite nosema ceranae may be a factor, it cannot be the sole cause. The fungus has been seen before, sometimes in colonies that were healthy.

Recently, scientists have begun to wonder if mankind is too dependent on honeybees. The scientific warning signs came in two reports last October.

First, the National Academy of Sciences said pollinators, especially America's honeybee, were under threat of collapse because of a variety of factors. Captive colonies in the United States shrank from 5.9 million in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2005.

Then, scientists finished mapping the honeybee genome and found that the insect did not have the normal complement of genes that take poisons out of their systems or many immune-disease-fighting genes. A fruitfly or a mosquito has twice the number of genes to fight toxins, University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum.

What the genome mapping revealed was "that honeybees may be peculiarly vulnerable to disease and toxins," Berenbaum said.

University of Montana bee expert Jerry Bromenshenk has surveyed more than 500 beekeepers and found that 38 percent of them had losses of 75 percent or more. A few weeks back, Bromenshenk was visiting California beekeepers and saw a hive that was thriving. Two days later, it had completely collapsed.

Yet Bromenshenk said, "I'm not ready to panic yet." He said he doesn't think a food crisis is looming.

Even though experts this year gave what's happening a new name and think this is a new type of die-off, it may have happened before.

Bromenshenk said cited die-offs in the 1960s and 1970s that sound somewhat the same. There were reports of something like this in the United States in spots in 2004, Pettis said. And Germany had something similar in 2004, said Peter Neumann, co-chairman of a 17-country European research group studying the problem.

"The problem is that everyone wants a simple answer," Pettis said. "And it may not be a simple answer."

Israel's population reaches 7,150,000

2007-04-25T02:51:00.000-07:00

Israel's population increased by 121,000, or 1.8 percent, since last year's Independence Day, reaching a total of 7,150,000.

The Central Bureau of Statistics released the data ahead of Independence Day, which starts Monday evening.

The population growth was mainly a product of a high birthrate. Some 148,000 babies were born in 2006, and 18,400 new immigrants arrived.

According to the latest CBS figures, out of 24,000 Israelis who left the country in 2004 for a period of more than 12 months, 10,000 have returned.

Israel's 5,415,000 Jews and 310,000 "others" - mostly non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union or those whose Jewish status is undetermined - make up 80% of Israel's population. The Arab and Druse population numbers 1,425,000, or 20% of Israel's citizens.

The country's five largest cities, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Rishon Lezion and Ashdod, account for a quarter of the population, or 1,810,300 people. Another 462,200, or 6%, live in small towns, while just 119,700 - less than 2% - live on kibbutzim.

Approximately 47% of the population would, if born again, prefer for that to happen somewhere other than Israel, according to an "alternative survey" conducted by the Geocartographic Institute's iGeo subsidiary.

The survey, conducted in early April among 500 Israeli Jews, found that 70% of Israelis from the FSU would prefer to be reborn outside Israel, 19% of them specifying Russia as their country of choice and 15% the US.

Among wealthy local-born Israelis, 62% said they would like to be reborn abroad, 18% in the US or Canada, 8% in Switzerland and 6% in Sweden.

The survey revealed surprising findings from pensioners; 59% said they would rather live abroad. Twelve percent would choose the US, 9% Switzerland, 6% Australia and 3% would seek retirement in New Zealand.

Among the poor, 58% would have preferred to be reborn abroad, a figure close to that among the wealthy, which stands at 52%. Most in both groups mentioned the US and Canada as their chosen alternative homeland.

In contrast, 83% of the modern Orthodox sector, 80% of those living in rural towns and kibbutzim, and 65% of Israel's well off pensioners said they would choose to be reborn in Israel.

According to Prof. Avi Degani, president of iGeo, similar studies in India and China reported that 89% of Indians would choose to be reborn in India, apparently for cultural and religious reasons. Among the Chinese, 64% said they wished to be reborn elsewhere.

Not all the news was so dire, however. A poll carried out by the Geocartographic Institute for the Immigrant Absorption Ministry found that olim were proud Israelis.

Eighty percent of immigrants said they felt "at home" in Israel, while 7% did not; half said they felt Israeli in every way. Sixty-eight percent said they primarily followed Israeli news, while 23% followed mainly international news. These figures are not so different from those for native-born Israelis, 81% of whom followed primarily Israeli news, while 8% mostly followed international reports.

Over 70% of immigrants from the FSU said they felt more Israeli than Russian (or any other FSU nationality), and 70% defined themselves as Jewish. Of the remaining 30%, only 2% referred to themselves as Christian, with the rest saying they were atheist.

Still, only a third of immigrants from the FSU reported having native-born friends.

Perhaps most importantly, 72% of immigrants from the FSU said that, if given the chance, they would repeat their decision to come to Israel.

Khatami tells Israeli reporters to 'go to hell'

2007-04-25T02:49:00.000-07:00

Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami has called for peaceful dialogue with the West, but last week cursed Israeli journalists who approached him at the sixth Eurasion Media Forum in Kazakhstan.

Khatami reiterated that Iran had a right to a peaceful civilian nuclear energy program and that it did not intend to develop nuclear weapons. "We want to use atomic energy for peaceful purposes only," he claimed.

Khatami added that his country was not striving for war, and quoted Albert Einstein, who said that no matter what weapons were used in World War III, "World War IV [would] be fought with sticks and stones."

Iran's former president also said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was overseeing Iran's nuclear activity, and pointed out that Iran was a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while "other states in the Middle East" were treated differently.

"Why do other countries have the right to atomic energy, and we don't?" he asked, noting that "pressure should be applied to [the] Middle East states that already possess nuclear weapons."

While talking informally with former US Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrook on Thursday, Khatami said that once a new administration was elected, he was ready to travel to the US to discuss Iran's nuclear program.

Nevertheless, despite his calls for "dialogue," Khatami refused to speak to the Israeli reporters present at the talks.

Channel 10 later reported that Khatami, heading for his suite, had cursed them, saying, "Go to hell!"

On Friday, Khatami decided to skip the scheduled panel on Iran's nuclear program because an Israeli representative was slated to speak.

While commenting on the "double standards" allegedly applied to nations' possession of nuclear weapons, president of Israel's Council of Peace and Security Maj.-Gen. (res.) Danny Rothschild remarked that Khatami's absence was a sign that his calls for dialogue on Iran's nuclear program were mere words.

Today is Memorial Day, 5767 (2007)

2007-04-23T02:06:00.000-07:00

Commemoration of Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Memorial Day for its fallen soldiers and terrorism victims, will began at 8:00 Sunday evening with a country-wide siren and minute of silence.

The opening ceremony took place at the Western Wall, with the participation of Chief Rabbis Amar and Metzger.

A second siren will be sounded Monday morning, at 11 AM, once again bringing all activity to a standstill and marking the beginning of memorial ceremonies at the 43 military cemeteries around the country. A Knesset Member or government official will speak at each ceremony.

A special ceremony will also be held in memory of Jews murdered by terrorists and anti-Semites around the world. Some 200 such Jews will be remembered at Monday's ceremony at Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem. The event is being organized by the Jewish Agency, the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish National Fund, and the UJC of North America. A monument with the names of the victims will be unveiled.

The names of all Israel's fallen soldiers and terrorist victims will be broadcast on Israel's public television channel Sunday evening and Monday, one after the other, for 4-5 seconds each.

The somber day comes to an end Monday with the onset of Israel's 59th Independence Day.

Both Remembrance Day and Independence Day are commemorated one day later than usual this year, by order of the Chief Rabbinate, in order to prevent the Sabbath desecration that would have resulted from having Remembrance Day begin on Saturday night.

The number of soldiers and security personnel who have fallen since November 29, 1947, when the United Nations accepted the partition, thus mandating the creation of a Jewish State, is 20,526. The struggle to re-create a Jewish homeland, beginning in the year 1860, when Jews began to move outside Jerusalem's Old City walls, claimed an additional close to 1,500 victims.

The War of Independence was Israel's costliest war, with more than 6,000 dead, one percent of the Jewish population at the time, and 15,000 wounded. The war consisted of 39 separate operations, fought from the borders of Lebanon to the Sinai Peninsula and Eilat, and was fought for about a year, until 1949.

Then followed seven years of relative quiet - during which there were "1,339 cases of armed clashes with Egyptian armed forces, 435 cases of incursion from Egyptian-controlled territory, and 172 cases of sabotage perpetrated by Egyptian military units and fedayeen in Israel," in which 101 Israelis were killed, as Israeli Ambassador to the UN Abba Eban explained to the Security Council on October 30, 1956. Eban gave these statistics the day after Israel began the Sinai Campaign - its military response to Egypt's violation of international agreements by sealing off the Israeli port of Eilat, effectively stopping Israel's sea trade with much of Africa and the Far East. A total of 231 Israeli soldiers died in the fighting. In March 1957, after receiving international guarantees that Israel's vital waterways would remain open, Israel withdrew from the Sinai and Gaza - yet the Egyptians still refused to open the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping.

The Six-Day War broke out on June 5, 1967. Despite the stunning victories, over 770 Israelis were killed.

Then began the period of the War of Attrition, which claimed 424 soldiers and more than 100 civilians. A ceasefire was declared on August 8, 1970.

Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, 1973. The IDF ultimately emerged victorious, but a total of 2,688 soldiers were killed.

In June 1982, in response to continued terrorist attacks from across the Lebanese border, as well as an assassination attempt upon Israel's Ambassador to Great Britain Shlomo Argov, Israel attacked the terrorists in Lebanon in what was known as Operation Peace for Galilee. Close to 460 soldiers were killed between June and December 1982, and another 760 in daily ambushes against Israeli forces over the next two and a half years.

Between December 1987, when the first Arab "intifada" broke out, and the signing of the Oslo Accords in late 1993, 90 Israelis were killed.

Between the Oslo signing and the beginning of what became known as the Oslo War (seven years), 251 Israelis were killed.

Another 1,287 have been felled by Palestinian Authority terrorists and gunmen since September 2000.

In the year 2000, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote to the bereaved families,
"We visit today the rows of graves that extend to infinity... we still refuse to believe and we refuse to be consoled. Because there is no consolation. Heavy, maybe too heavy, is the price we bear for our independence and building the 52 years of the State of Israel."

In contrast, the late Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the first Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces and the man who was responsible for setting the date of Remembrance Day, explained the day's significance differently:

"We view the warriors who fall in battle as those who sprout forth life. The life of a nation grew out of this blood... This day must be more than mourning: We must remember, we must grieve, but it must be a day of mourning, majesty, and vision."

Interestingly, Barak himself took a similar tone when he spoke at the Mt. Herzl ceremony in 2000, saying,

"...their deaths are the precious price of freedom and our re-establishment. It is my hope that a strong and secure State of Israel will be, with the help of G-d, the consolation of the bereaved families."

Rabbi Goren explained, in a 1974 speech, how he came to set Remembrance Day just before Independence Day:

"The merit of doing this fell in my lot.. We first thought of setting Remembrance Day on Lag BaOmer, the day that historically symbolizes the Bar Kokhba war, and that which is still celebrated by Jewish children as the day of Jewish strength. In this way, we thought that we could combine the heroism of our early ancestors with that of our own children in this generation. But doubts crept in. Would we not cause harm to the general significance, shrouded in mystery as it is, of that historic day?

"One of the Fast Days, or during the Three Weeks in which we remember the destruction of Jerusalem and the Holy Temples, was then proposed. But we could not accept the fact that the Day of Remembrance would be solely a day of mourning. It was felt that this day must be more than that. We must remember, we must grieve, but not only that - it must [also] be a day of... majesty and vision.

"We realized, therefore, that we could not assign this day to any existing holiday. But the first Independence Day was rapidly approaching, and so we did what we did - without announcing it formally and without setting any specific format for the day. I went to Voice of Israel studios on the day before Independence Day and read aloud the Chief of Staff’s Daily Military Order, which he wrote according to my request. And so I became the narrator and the one who set Remembrance Day on what became its date."

Yom HaAtzmaut and Yom Hazikaron

2007-04-22T03:44:00.000-07:00

The entire Jewish world will honor the memory of our fallen Israeli Soldiers & terror victims.

Please pray for the souls of our fallen brave soldiers who died in the combat of defending the state of Israel & the victims of Arab terrorism.

Thanks to our dear soldiers, every Jewish person in the
world has Israel as his/her homeland.

Ever since 1948 (the foundation), the state of Israel
was forced to defend itself from attacks by it's neighbors, and time after time Israel has prevailed.

We all wish for true peace in the region and for no more fallen soldiers.

In Israel, the Independence Day is celebrated on the next day of "Yom hazikaron" to remind us all the price of our freedom and to honor the fallen soldiers who thanks to their bravery the state survived.

This year we will be celebrating the 59th Independence Day with many more to come!

Everybody must wave the Israeli flag with big proud
Am Israel Chai!

Holocaust Survivor, Professor Killed Helping Students Escape

2007-04-18T02:05:00.000-07:00

A 76-year-old professor who survived the Holocaust was shot to death while saving his students from the Virginia Tech assailant, students said.

Liviu Librescu, an internationally respected aeronautics engineer who taught at Virginia Tech for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by barricading his classroom door before he was gunned down in the massacre, according to e-mail accounts sent by students to his wife.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," his son, Joe Librescu, said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."

The gunman, identified as 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui, an English major and native of South Korea, killed 32 people before committing suicide, officials said, in what was the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

On campus, students spoke of Librescu's bravery.

"He should be recognized as a hero," Virginia Tech graduate student Philip Huffstetler said. "We should be in such great debt to his family for the rest of our lives."

"He is the reason that the student could not get inside and shoot more people," said Asal Arad, a Virginia Tech student. "Obviously, he is a hero."

Librescu had known hardship since childhood.

When Romania joined forces with Nazi Germany in World War II, he was first interned in a labor camp in Transnistria and then deported along with his family and thousands of other Jews to a central ghetto in the city of Focsani, his son said. According to a report compiled by the Romanian government in 2004, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were killed by Romania's Nazi-allied regime during the war.

As a successful engineer under the postwar Communist government, Librescu found work at Romania's aerospace agency. But his career was stymied in the 1970s because he refused to swear allegiance to the regime, his son said, and he was later fired when he requested permission to move to Israel.

After years of government refusal, according to his son, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally intervened to get the family an emigration permit. They moved to Israel in 1978.

Librescu left Israel for Virginia in 1985 for a sabbatical year, but eventually made the move permanent, said Joe Librescu, who himself studied at Virginia Tech from 1989 to 1994.

In Romania, the academic community mourned Librescu's death.

"It is a great loss," said Ecaterina Andronescu, rector of the Polytechnic University in Bucharest, where Librescu graduated in 1953. "We have immense consideration for the way he reacted and defended his students with his life."

At the Polytechnic University, where Librescu received an honorary degree in 2000, his picture was placed on a table, a candle was lit, and people lay flowers nearby.

"We remember him as a great specialist in aeronautics. He left behind hundreds of prestigious papers," said one of the professors, Nicolae Serban Tomescu.

Librescu published extensively and received numerous awards for his work.

"His work was his life in a sense," Joe Librescu said

Never Again!

2007-04-15T01:30:00.000-07:00

Today and all Monday, Israel remembered those murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.
6 million innocent men, women, children and babies were murdered and tortured by the Nazi in cold blood only because they were Jews.

Lets take a few minute to remember..

Yizkor-A Holocaust prayer

"God full of mercy who dwells on high
Protector of widows and father for the fatherless
Please be not silent and show no restraint
on behalf of the Jewish blood that has been spilled like water.

But grant perfect rest on the wings of Your Divine Presence
In the lofty abode of the holy, pure and valiant
who shine as the brightness of the heavens
to the souls of our brothers and sisters

Six million Jewish
men, women and children
Who were put to death, slaughtered, burned, starved, buried alive
Or who suffered other forms of unnatural death at the hands of the accursed Nazis
and their associates - may their name be wiped out!

In Auschwitz, Treblinka, Maydanek, Malthausen and in other death camps in Europe
And who gave up their lives in order to Sanctify God's name.
Because we are at one with their memory and we pray for the elevation of their souls

Their resting place shall be in the Garden of Eden.

Therefore, shall the Master of mercy care for them under the protection of His wings for all time
And bind their souls in the bond of everlasting life.
O Earth! Do not conceal their blood and let there not be a resting place for their cry

In their merit shall the remnant of Israel return to its rightful place
And as for the holy ones, their righteousness shall be in front of the Lord as an everlasting memory

They will come in peace and will rest in peace
They will meet their rightful destiny at the end of days
and let us say Amen.

Something... and Half of Something

2007-04-11T04:42:00.000-07:00

Sanctuary!

So, according to the UN, the US has offered sanctuary to 7,000 palestinians from Iraq. Ain't that grand! Just think, no other country in the world will welcome them, but the US is throwing open its doors.

Just forget about all those "Death to America" chants and remember, palestinians are our friends.

In a perfect world, these palestinians would be settled in a blue state, preferably Massachusetts, but this is not a perfect world. Goodness knows where these palestinians might end up, but if you're lucky, it could be your state! And what if it is your state? What changes could you expect?

Well, in accordance with the demands made on Israel when it comes to the palestinians, we can assume that any state offering sanctuary to palestinians will provide the same fair and equitable treatment of palestinians that the world has demanded from Israel. Despite their "repuation" for blowing themselves up in discos and pizzarias and shooting rockets at hospitals and grade schools, you shouldn't worry, and your sensitivity to what has been described as their "natural reaction to oppression" will help them overcome these character flaws.

In accordance with palestinian religious beliefs, one of the first things the palestinians will want to do upon their arrival in your state will be to destroy any and all places of worship already existing in your state and to build a mosque on top of the land where they once stood. All religious books other than the Koran will be burned or otherwise destroyed. The fires are very pretty and will be enjoyed by your entire community.

Any attempt to stop the palestinians from exercising their religious freedom in your state will be considered an act of oppression and result in the immediate declaration of an intifada, and the lives (and the land) of its citizens will be forfeit. The declaration of an intifada means that the palestinians are now allowed to kill as many of your state's citizens as possible, using any and all ways and means available, while the rest of the world cheers them on. In accordance with condemnations of Israel for taking actions to protect her citizens, you can be sure that your state will not make any attempt to deter its palestinians from slaughtering its citizens in great numbers, and will to allow them to do so without any hinderance. In fact, your state will likely provide them with bus passes. Failure to do so will result in the immediate declaration of another intifada.

As a citizen of your state, you would do well to remember that once the mosque is standing, you will not be permitted to enter the grounds, lest you defile such a holy place. Should you, or any citizen who is not a palestinian, ever set foot on the grounds, another intifada will be declared.

Jews and Christians are offensive to palestinians, and your state should immediately relocate any and all Jews and Christians out of the state and to a place far away enough so as not to offend the sensibilities of the palestinians, perhaps the moon. Failure to do so will result in the immediate declaration of yet another intifada.

Once your state gets its intifada(s), the re-education of your children in the fine arts of rock throwing and suicide bombing will immediately commence. The palestinians will then smuggle weapons and arabs from other countries like Jordan and Syria and Iran to support the intifada(s) (which your state will have brought upon itself). Any such arabs who manage to sneak into your state to kill its citizens should immediately be considered just another one of your state's palestinians. Construction of a border fence to keep "future" palestinians out of your state and/or the failure to make these palestinians welcome in your state will result in the immediate declaration of another intifada.

In order to support the intifada(s), safe houses will need to be established to allow for the storage of munitions and the manufacture of suicide bombs, tunnels will need to be dug to transport them from one neighborhood to the next. The destruction of these safehouses and/or tunnels will be considered a massacre of poor oppressed palestinians and will result in the immediate declaration of another intifada. Any palestinians killed in the preparation of bombs will be considered to have been a freedom fighter killed by your state and their deaths will result in the declaration of another intifada.

Of course, eventually, your state should offer its palestinians their own state within your state, since the failure to do so would be considered an act of oppression and result in the declaration of another intifada. In order to establish the palestinian state within your state, your state should forcibly remove a large number of its citizens from their homes and businesses and put those citizens in tents, caravans and/or jail if they resist, in order to provide the palestinians with the free housing they deserve. Failure to do so will also result in the immediate declaration of another intifada.

Yes, there is much to look forward to if your state becomes a sanctuary for palestinians, I'm sure you will enjoy your new neighbors as much as Israel does.

Posted by LindaSoG at April 11, 2007 06:19 AM

Efforts to free Israeli soldier progress

2007-04-11T04:18:00.000-07:00

Israel is reviewing the names of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners that Gaza militants want released in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier, security officials said Sunday, signaling a possible breakthrough in efforts to win the young man's freedom.

However, both Israeli and Palestinian officials said a deal would still take some time.

Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 20, was captured last June by militants linked to the Islamic militant Hamas group who tunneled into Israel from the Gaza Strip and attacked an army post. He has not been seen or heard from since then, but Israeli officials believe he is alive.

The militants holding Shalit have repeatedly demanded a large-scale release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel in exchange for the soldier. After months of deadlock, officials on both sides confirmed Saturday that the Palestinians had submitted a list through Egyptian mediators.

An Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said Sunday that the Shin Bet security service was reviewing the list and would soon give recommendations to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

"It's true that the Palestinian side presented a list of names, but that doesn't mean that the Israeli side accepted it," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, an aide to moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

"I would be very wary ... because there is still a long way to go," Cabinet Minister Yitzhak Herzog told Army Radio.

Israel considers Shalit's release a precondition for any serious progress in peace talks with the Palestinians. A prisoner exchange also could lead to wider acceptance of the new Palestinian government, a coalition of the moderate Fatah party and Hamas.

Abbas, who belongs to the Fatah party, predicted last week that Shalit would be freed soon. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas has also said he would like to see the issue resolved quickly, though he says he has no control over the captors.

Reports varied on the size of the list. A senior Palestinian official said it contained around 350 names, while Israeli newspapers said the Palestinians were demanding the release of as many as 1,300 prisoners, including some "with blood on their hands," a reference to those involved in attacks on Israelis.

Israel currently detains some 9,300 Palestinian prisoners on security grounds, one of the highest totals in nearly 40 years of its military occupation.

The Maariv daily said the list included Ahmed Saadat, the local leader of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah leader serving five life sentences for his role in the killings of four Israelis and a Greek monk.

Olmert has said Barghouti's release is "not on the agenda." But two senior allies of the prime minister recently said Barghouti should be freed to counter the growing influence of Hamas. Though Israel has repeatedly refused to free him, Barghouti is considered the Palestinians' top choice for a successor to Abbas.

Maariv quoted unidentified Israeli officials as saying "murderers" would not be freed, but Israel would be more flexible than in the past. For instance, Israel may consider releasing prisoners accused of minor involvement in attacks.

One security official told the newspaper that while the current list is unacceptable, it could be a basis for negotiations. The report said a special ministerial committee would discuss the names, and the Cabinet would have to approval the final release.

Hamas planned T.A. Passover bombing

2007-04-10T01:16:00.000-07:00

The Shin Bet announced Tuesday morning that in late March it broke up a Hamas cell in Qalqilyah that had planned to detonate a car bomb in Tel Aviv during Pesach, apparently at the time of the seder, on the holiday's first night.

According to the details released by the security service, the driver, a suicide bomber, had managed to cross into Israel in a vehicle laden with about 100 kilograms of explosives. However, once he reached Tel Aviv, and for reasons that are still unclear, he changed his mind and returned to Qalqilyah.

Nineteen members in the cell have been arrested by the security forces. No names of the suspects were released for publication.

"The picture that emerges in interrogations of the members of the cell clearly signals that the Hamas organization in Qalqilyah has shifted from the stage of 'force building' to the operational stage and the carrying out of attacks, including suicide attacks inside Israel. According to information, they continue to work on planning and execution of significant attacks, including ones in the immediate future," the Shin Bet announcement read.

This latest incident has further boosted the evidence that Hamas has resumed its terrorist activities following a long hiatus that began with the cease-fire in the Gaza Strip last November.

Egypt recently arrested a Hamas suicide bomber who was trying to cross from the Gaza Strip into Israel through Sinai.

Hamas militants were also involved in a number of sniper attacks targeting Israelis driving close to the fence separating Israel from the Gaza Strip. In one of the attacks, an Israel Electric Corporation employee was moderately wounded.

It is believed that behind the attacks is Ahmed Jabari, the head of the military wing of Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip, who opposed the establishment of the unity government between his party and Fatah. Jabari is particularly dissatisfied with the fact that he and his men are not being awarded the positions of power they believe they deserve.

The degree to which Jabari and the Qalqilyah-based cell are linked is unclear. During the past two years, most of the Hamas cells operating in Samaria had followed orders originating in the Gaza Strip.

The suicide bomber, a member of the Qalqilyah cell, managed to enter Israel because he holds an Israeli identity card. Although a resident of Qalqilyah, he is married to an Israeli Arab from Taibeh - and received residency status as part of the program of reuniting families. The vehicle he was driving had Israeli license plates, and had collected intelligence on possible targets for an attack.

The terrorist changed his mind, returned to Qalqilyah, and left the vehicle in the backyard of a home. Arrests of suspects began shortly after his return, and then the vehicle exploded. There were no casualties as a result of the explosion.

The Shin Bet has described the explosion as a "work accident," euphemism for a technical malfunction.

The Qalqilyah cell is the largest Hamas grouping to have been exposed in the West Bank in recent years. The last time a Qalqilyah-based Hamas cell carried out an attack in Israel, 21 teenagers were killed in a blast at the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv, in June 2001.

Israeli Army, The Most Humane army in the world

2007-04-04T01:50:00.000-07:00

Israel - through its emergency rescue operations abroad and its foreign assistance missions - strives to realize the Jewish value of "Tikkun Olam", saving lives and making the world a better place for all its inhabitants.

Learn To Forgive

2007-04-01T08:06:00.000-07:00

Consistently happy people are either in one of two conditions. Either no one has ever wronged or slighted them in any way. Or else they have forgiven those who have. Since it is almost impossible not to have been wronged or slighted, if you want to master happiness, you need to learn how to forgive.
Forgiving is like floating on water. You don't need to do anything. You just need to let go. When you were a young child of five or six, you became angry at your brothers, sisters, friends, and classmates. You might have even said, "I won't forgive you." Now when you look back at the vast majority of those situations, you will see that they were trivial. It is at present easy for you to forgive someone for not giving you a bite of their ice cream, not letting you play with their toys, or grabbing your ice cream or toys. Just as you have already forgiven them, you will be able to forgive others for more recent events when you realize that most things are trivial when compared to your emotional and spiritual well-being.

We all need our Creator's forgiveness. By forgiving others we elevate ourselves and render ourselves more worthy of being forgiven. When you find it difficult to forgive, pray with your own words for the strength to forgive

(From Rabbi Pliskin's "Happiness",p.171)

2 Suicide Vests Found in Green Zone

2007-04-01T06:32:00.001-07:00

Two suicide vests were found unexploded in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, a military spokesman said Sunday, less than a week after a rocket attack killed two Americans in the vast central area.

U.S. military spokesman Rear Adm. Mark Fox said the vests were found Saturday and the matter was under investigation.

"It reflects the nature of the security challenge that we're facing," he told reporters, without giving more details.

Two Americans — a contractor and a soldier — were killed in a rocket attack on the Green Zone on Tuesday.

Insurgents and militia fighters routinely fire rockets and mortars into the Green Zone, the nominally secure area in central Baghdad that is site of the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government and parliament. The attacks seldom cause casualties or damage because they are poorly aimed and the zone contains much open space.

Evangelist Beaten to Death by Militant Muslims/ICC-REPOST

2007-03-30T02:33:00.000-07:00

The Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) has just learned that an Ethiopian evangelist named Tedase was beaten to death by militant Muslims on Monday, March 26th, as he and two young women were on a street evangelism assignment in Jimma, Ethiopia. This marks the second time in six months that Christians residing in Southeast Ethiopia have been attacked and killed by extremist (Wahabbi) Muslims.

On Monday afternoon Tedase and two female coworkers were conducting street evangelism on Merkato Street in Jimma, Southern Ethiopia. Merkato Street runs by a Wahabbi Mosque. As the team was walking by the Mosque, a group of Muslims exited the Mosque and began to run after them to confront them. Tedase's female coworkers ran away from the mob but Tedase continued on. The Muslims caught up with Tedase, pulled him into the mosque, and savagely beat him to death. Sources from Jimma reported that Tedase was beaten with a calculated intention to kill him. This was no accident or case of mob frenzy getting out of control. His body was later taken to the hospital for an autopsy and he was buried Tuesday, March 27.

Our sources also reveal that Jimma Christians were conducting an evangelism campaign, and news of the outreach was spreading among Jimma residents as well as militant Muslim groups in the area. The Muslims that belonged to the Wahabbi sect purposefully beat Tedase to death as a message to Christians that they are ready to combat evangelism.

Aftershocks of the September 2006 Pogrom

This most recent incident in Ethiopia confirms ICC's decision to include this country in its Hall of Shame list, which highlights nations where Christians are enduring the most severe persecution. It is important to note that the Muslims who attacked Tedase belonged to the Wahabbi brand of Islam, an extremist sect imported from Saudi Arabia. It is clear that the Christians in Ethiopia are feeling Saudi Arabia's influence, particularly in Jimma, a Muslim dominated area where local authorities are almost exclusively Muslim. It was only six months ago, in September of 2006, that Muslim extremists burned down a number of churches and parishes, as well as Christian homes. As many as 2,000 Christians were displaced by the attack, an attempt to intimidate Christians with the hopes of converting them to Islam.

Evangelical church leaders are fearful that if police ignore Tedase's death, it will be a green light for Muslim groups in the area to attack their Christian neighbors at will and without retribution. We appeal to concerned individuals to contact the Ethiopian embassy in their own countries to ask for an investigation of Tedase's murder.

Iran: Britain must admit navy trespassed

2007-03-29T03:27:00.000-07:00

Iran's foreign minister said Wednesday that Britain must admit that its 15 sailors and marines entered Iranian waters in order to resolve a standoff over their capture by Iranian authorities.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki's announcement came on a day of escalating tensions, highlighted by an Iranian video of the detained Britons that showed the only woman captive saying her group had "trespassed" in Iranian waters. Britain angrily denounced the video as unacceptable and froze most dealings with the mideast nation.

"First they have to admit that they have made a mistake. Admitting the mistake will facilitate a solution to the problem," Mottaki told The Associated Press in an interview in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. "But unfortunately the British have not admitted their mistake."

Mottaki also backed off a prediction that the female sailor, Faye Turney, could be freed Wednesday or Thursday, but said Tehran agreed to allow British officials to meet with service personnel.

His comments were the first confirmation that Iran agreed to a British request for a consular visit with the crew, though he did not specify when. Iran has not said where the 15 are being held.

"We have accepted that (the British request), there is no problem. Measures are underway (to arrange meeting.) They can meet them," he said.

Brothers in arms IDF

2007-03-28T07:15:00.000-07:00

This is an eye-watering video made by the IDF spokes person in dedication to the thousands of soldiers fighting everyday to protect the lives of the Israeli civilians from the terrorists who wish to end them.

Sewage Disaster Caused by Palestinians Stealing Sand

2007-03-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

Further deadly sewage floods are feared after a wave of stinking waste and mud from a collapsed septic pool inundated a Gaza village, killing five people, including two babies.

The collapse has been blamed on residents stealing sand from an embankment.

It highlighted the desperate need to upgrade Gaza's overloaded, outdated infrastructure - but aid officials say construction of a modern sewage treatment plant has been held up by constant Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

However, construction of a new plant did not appear to have been affected by year-old international sanctions on the Palestinian Authority. The Gaza City mayor blamed the collapse on local people digging dirt from an earthen embankment around the structure and selling it to building contractors.

The existing plant in northern Gaza - located just a few hundred metres from the frontier with Israel - stored incoming waste in seven holding basins. But with the burgeoning population producing nearly four times as much waste as the plant could treat, local officials were forced to store the overflow in the nearby dunes, creating a lake of sewage covering nearly 45 hectares, according to the United Nations.

An embankment around one of the seven holding basins collapsed, sending a wall of sewage crashing into the neighbouring village of Umm Naser.

The wave killed two women in their 70s, two toddlers and a teenage girl and injured 35 others, hospital officials said. More than 200 homes were destroyed, health officials said.

"This is a human tragedy," said Public Works Minister Sameeh al-Abed.

Rescue crews and gunmen from the militant Hamas group rushed to search for people feared buried under the sewage and mud. Most residents fled or were evacuated.

Rescuers in wetsuits paddled boats through the layer of brown foam floating on the green-brown rivers of waste. Others waded up to their hips into the sewage.

Angry residents drove reporters out of the area and mobbed government officials. When Interior Minister Hani Kawasmeh arrived to survey the damage, his bodyguards fired in the air to disperse the crowd.

In one house, everything from the television to the sink was covered in muck. The town was filled with the noxious smell of waste and dead animals.

"We lost everything. Everything was covered by the flood. It's a disaster," said Amina Afif, 65, whose small shack was destroyed.

The collapse will force officials to divert the waste into the other six basins, putting those in danger as well. Another collapse could send sewage flooding into Beit Lahiya, a far larger town nearby, local officials said.

Fadel Kawash, head of the Palestinian Water Authority, said the sewage level had risen in recent days, creeping up the earthen embankments.

Gaza City Mayor Majid Abu Ramadan, who leads a council of Gaza municipalities, blamed the collapse on endemic lawlessness.

He accused local residents of stealing the dirt and selling it to building companies for 300 shekels ($A86.80) a truckload.

A 2004 United Nations report warned that the sewage facility, built to service a population of 50,000, was handling waste from 190,000 people, and flooding was inevitable. It warned that the lake created by the overflow from the seven basins posed a serious health hazard, providing a breeding ground for mosquitoes and waterborne diseases.

Umm Naser is about 300 metres from the border with Israel, in an area where Palestinians have frequently launched rockets into Israel and Israeli artillery and aircraft have fired back. The situation worsened after Hamas-linked militants captured an Israeli soldier last June in a cross-border raid, and Israel responded by invading northern Gaza.

The incident underscored the fragility of the overburdened infrastructure in this impoverished and overcrowded coastal strip of 1.4 million people. The West Bank, too, is suffering from eroding sewage and water infrastructure.

IAF successfully tests modified Arrow

2007-03-26T05:56:00.000-07:00

An improved Arrow missile, with modifications to its hardware and electronics, was successfully test-fired at 12:05 p।m. Monday afternoon at Palmahim Air Force Base.

The purpose of Monday's test was to launch the missile in a fly-out (where a missile is fired without intercepting a target) and then gather information on its flight and performance. The data will then be evaluated by the IAI Arrow team and applied to continued development.

Yoav Turgeman, head of the Arrow program at Israel Air force Industries, said that that improvements made to the missile's hardware and electronics not only reduced manufacturing costs - by some 20 percent - but also improved its ability to intercept incoming ballistic threats. The entire test took just one minute.

A senior official said that the Arrow was capable of intercepting ballistic missiles currently capable of threatening Israel, including those in the hands of Iran and Syria.

"The Arrow missile has proven its capabilities time after time," Arieh Herzog of the Homa missile defense agency, told The Jerusalem Post.

"The Arrow protects Israel from all ballistic missiles in the region," Herzog said.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz praised the successful launch, calling it "another stage" in the development of Israel's missile defense system that provided protection against long-range threats to Israel.

Missiles test-fired from Palmahim are programmed to land in the Mediterranean Sea.

War in Lebanon: Destruction of Hezbollah Targets

2007-03-26T05:13:00.000-07:00

Different Values? Or who do we believe?

2007-03-22T05:22:00.000-07:00

Today's present Israeli-Palestinian conflict often makes one wonder which side is most correct in their national goals? Are the Palestinians correct when they accuse the Israeli government, and especially the Israeli military of undue harassment against innocent Palestinians, including women and children? Is Israel's unilateral separation policy, including the building of the separation wall, really a situation similar to apartheid (as noted in former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's new book)? From the Israeli point of view, have the numerous suicide bombing and shooting attacks against Israelis, including Kassam rocket attacks against Sderot and other Israeli communities, reason for Israeli reprisals including "targeted assassinations" of Palestinian militants?

While many observers (especially in other countries) feel that both sides have just reasons for their actions, in order to put the matter into its proper perspective the following points should be noted here:

1. Since their formation, both the PLO and the Islamic Hamas organizations have refuse
to acknowledge Israel's existence. Palestinian school text books make no mention of
the State of Israel, and this subject is not taught in Palestinian schools, except from a
negative standpoint.

2. While human life is sacred to Jews ("he who saves one life has saved the entire
world") Muslims seem to accept martyrdom as not only acceptable but even as a
holy duty. This is why so man Palestinians are so willing to become Shahiddim
or Holy Martyrs, and even Palestinian parents are proud that their children
choose to become human bombs in order to kill their hated enemy.

3. Even 'moderate' Palestinians say there is no place for a Jewish State within their
midst.. This is an unfortunate truth, and until this attitude changes, the chance for
peace between the two peoples will be impossible to become reality.

Those who still blame Israel for being the obstacle to peace should see the situation as it really exists. If Palestinians will stop killing and injuring Israelis, Israeli military forces will make life easier for Palestinians. The so called 'security fence' or wall was only built due to the continuous attacks by Palestinians against innocent Israelis. Before the 1st and 2nd Intifada uprisings thousand of Palestinians worked in Israel. They supported their families, and also shopped and enjoyed Israeli restaurants and other places of entertainment. Now, the Palestinian Authority has an 80% unemployment rate, and Palestinians have great difficulty even going to hospitals within Israel – all because of the strife between the two peoples.

So, which values are more unjust? It depends on which side you are addressing them from.