The Nation of Israel must be steadfast in protecting its rights and its people r4 - YJ Draiman

The Nation of Israel must be steadfast in protecting its rights and its people r4

Many nations and people are questioning Israel’s control of its liberated territory.

No one is mentioning that the Arab countries had terrorized and expelled about a million Jewish families and their children from their countries, confiscated their assets, businesses, homes and over 120,000 sq. km of Real estate. Many of the Jews terrorized and ejected from Arab countries died while their forced departure from Arab countries, due to hardship, famine and starvation. Many of the expelled Jewish families have lived in the Arab countries over 2,500 years. Most of the Jewish people and their children of these expelled Jewish families and their children were resettled in Greater Israel and today account for over half the population of Israel. The Homes and Land the Arab countries
confiscated from the Jewish people 120,440 sq. km. or 75,000 sq. miles, which is over 6 times the size of Israel, and its value today is the trillions of dollars.

The Jewish people and their children during the over 2,600 years living in Arab countries have suffered Pogroms, Libel claims, beheadings, beatings, false imprisonment and extreme hardship as a second class citizens. They had their businesses and homes pillaged, their wives and daughters raped, sold them as slaves, their houses of worship pillaged and burned, forced conversion to Islam and many were beheaded.

Today over half of Israel's population are Jews expelled from Arab countries and their children and grandchildren.

The Audacity of the Arab countries in demanding territory from the Jewish people in Palestine aka Israel after they terrorized and ejected over a million Jewish families and their children who have lived in Arab land for over 2,700 years and after they confiscated all their assets including Real estate 6 times the size of Israel (120,400 sq. km. - 75,000 sq. mi.), valued in the trillions of dollars.

Now the Arab nations are demanding more land and more compensation.

The Arab countries have terrorized and chased the million Jewish families and their children and now they want to chase them away again, from their own ancestral historical land.

Israel must respond with extreme force to any violent demonstration and terror. Israel's population must have peace and tranquility without intimidation by anyone.

The Jewish people have suffered enough in the Diaspora for over the past 2,400 years. It is time for the Jewish people to live as free people in their own land without terror and violence.

It is time to consider that the only alternative is a population transfer of the Arab-Palestinians to the territories the Arab countries confiscated from the Jewish people and or Jordan which originally Jewish territory, and settle this dispute once and for all. Many Arab leaders had suggested these solutions over the years.

YJ Draiman

PS

Judea and Samaria is Jewish territory - No annexation is required
Let me pose an interesting scenario. If you had a country and it was conquered by foreign powers over a period of time. After many years you have taken back you country and land in various defensive wars. Do you have to officially annex those territories. It was always your territory and by retaking control and possession of your territory it is again your original property and there is no need to annex it. The title to your property is valid today as it was many years before.
Annexation only applies when you are taking over territory that was never yours to begin with, just like some European countries annexed territories of other countries.
YJ Draiman

If you feel it is moral to express your sympathy for those Arabs who colonized and occupy - YJ Draiman

If you feel it is moral to express your sympathy for those Arabs who colonized and occupy all but a sliver of land in the Middle East, those who stone women to death, execute gays and rape little children? Those who kill people indiscriminately, suicide bombers, teach hate and violence to their children! If you believe that making Judaism illegal in every Arab country is OK? Really? The Arabs have also forced most Christians out of their countries. You leave me no choice then, but to assess you moral indignation as meaningless lawless revolting and vile. I laugh in astonishment at what hypocrites and naked bigots you are.

1919: The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement was signed today, by Emir Faisal (son of the King of Hejaz) and Chaim Weizmann as part of the Paris Peace Conference - Draiman

1919: The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement was signed today, by Emir Faisal (son of the King of Hejaz) and Chaim Weizmann as part of the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 settling disputes stemming from World War I. It was a short-lived agreement for Arab-Jewish cooperation on the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East. Weizmann first met Faisal in June 1918, during the British advance from the South against the Ottoman Empire in World War I. As leader of an impromptu "Zionist Commission", Weizmann traveled to southern Transjordan for the meeting. The intended purpose was to forge an agreement between Faisal and the Zionist movement to support an Arab Kingdom and Jewish settlement in Palestine, respectively. Weizmann and Faisal established an informal agreement under which Faisal would support dense Jewish settlement in Palestine while the Zionist movement would assist in the development of the vast Arab nation that Faisal hoped to establish. Weizmann and Faisal met again later in 1918 in London and soon afterwards at the Paris peace conference. In their first meeting in June 1918 Weizmann had assured Faisal that "the Jews did not propose to set up a government of their own but wished to work under British protection, to colonize and develop Palestine without encroaching on any legitimate interests". The day after they signed the written agreement, which bears their names, Weizmann arrived in Paris to head the Zionist delegation to the Peace Conference. It was a triumphal moment for Weizmann; it was an accord that climaxed years of negotiations and ceaseless shuttles between the Middle East and the capitals of Western Europe and that promised to usher in an era of peace and cooperation between the two principal ethnic groups of Palestine: Arabs and Jews. The main points of the agreement were:

• The agreement committed both parties to conducting all relations between the groups by the most cordial goodwill and understanding, to work together to encourage immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale while protecting the rights of the Arab peasants and tenant farmers, and to safeguard the free practice of religious observances. The Muslim Holy Places were to be under Muslim control.
• The Zionist movement undertook to assist the Arab residents of Palestine and the future Arab state to develop their natural resources and establish a growing economy.
• The boundaries between an Arab State and Palestine should be determined by a Commission after the Paris Peace Conference.
• The parties committed to carrying into effect the Balfour Declaration of 1917, calling for a Jewish national home in Palestine.
• Disputes were to be submitted to the British Government for arbitration.

Weizmann signed the agreement on behalf of the Zionist Organization, while Faisal signed on behalf of the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz.

Two weeks prior to signing the agreement, Faisal stated:

The two main branches of the Semitic family, Arabs and Jews, understand one another, and I hope that as a result of interchange of ideas at the Peace Conference, which will be guided by ideals of self-determination and nationality, each nation will make definite progress towards the realization of its aspirations. Arabs are not jealous of Zionist Jews, and intend to give them fair play and the Zionist Jews have assured the Nationalist Arabs of their intention to see that they too have fair play in their respective areas. Turkish intrigue in Palestine has raised jealousy between the Jewish colonists and the local peasants, but the mutual understanding of the aims of Arabs and Jews will at once clear away the last trace of this former bitterness, which, indeed, had already practically disappeared before the war by the work of the Arab Secret Revolutionary Committee, which in Syria and elsewhere laid the foundation of the Arab military successes of the past two years.The areas discussed were detailed in a letter to Felix Frankfurter, President of the Zionist Organization of America, on March 3, 1919, when Faisal wrote :

The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper."The boundaries of Palestine shall follow the general lines set out below: Starting on the North at a point on the Mediterranean Sea in the vicinity South of Sidon and following the watersheds of the foothills of the Lebanon as far as Jisr el Karaon, thence to El Bire following the dividing line between the two basins of the Wadi El Korn and the Wadi Et Teim thence in a southerly direction following the dividing line between the Eastern and Western slopes of the Hermon, to the vicinity West of Beit Jenn, thence Eastward following the northern watersheds of the Nahr Mughaniye close to and west of the Hedjaz Railway; in the East a line close to and West of the Hedjaz Railway terminating in the Gulf of Akaba; in the South a frontier to be agreed upon with the Egyptian Government; in the West the Mediterranean Sea. The details of the delimitations, or any necessary adjustments of detail, shall be settled by a Special Commission on which there shall be Jewish representation. Faisal conditioned his acceptance on the fulfillment of British wartime promises to the Arabs, who had hoped for independence in a vast part of the Ottoman Empire. He appended to the typed document a hand-written statement:

"Provided the Arabs obtain their independence as demanded in my [forthcoming] Memorandum dated the 4th of January, 1919, to the Foreign Office of the Government of Great Britain, I shall concur in the above articles. But if the slightest modification or departure were to be made [regarding our demands], I shall not be then bound by a single word of the present Agreement which shall be deemed void and of no account or validity, and I shall not be answerable in any way whatsoever." The Faisal-Weizmann agreement survived only a few months. The outcome of the peace conference itself did not provide the vast Arab state that Faisal desired mainly because the British and French had struck their own secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 dividing the Middle East between their own spheres of influence, and soon Faisal began to express doubts about cooperation with the Zionist movement. After Faisal was expelled from Syria and given the Kingdom of Iraq, he contended that the conditions he appended were not fulfilled and the treaty therefore moot. St. John Philby, a British representative in Palestine, later stated that Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca and King of Hejaz, on whose behalf Faisal was acting, had refused to recognize the agreement as soon as it was brought to his notice. However, Sharif Hussein formally endorsed the Balfour Declaration in the Treaty of Sèvres of 10 August, 1920, along with the other Allied Powers, as King of Hedjaz. The United Nations Special Committee On Palestine did not regard the agreement as ever being valid while Weizmann continued to maintain that the treaty was still binding. In 1947 Weizmann explained:"A postscript was also included in this treaty. This postscript relates to a reservation by King Feisal that he would carry out all the promises in this treaty if and when he would obtain his demands, namely, independence for the Arab countries. I submit that these requirements of King Feisal have at present been realized. The Arab countries are all independent, and therefore the condition on which depended the fulfillment of this treaty, has come into effect. Therefore, this treaty, to all intents and purposes, should today be a valid document". According to C.D. Smith the Syrian National Congress had forced Faisal to back away from his tentative support of Zionist goals

The Mandate for Palestine aka Greater Israel as it Pertains to Jerusalem and the Old City -YJ Draiman

The Mandate for Palestine aka Greater Israel as it Pertains to Jerusalem and the Old City:

The rights granted to the Jewish people in the 1920 San Remo Conference were confirmed by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres and Lausanne.  Furthermore, said rights were adopted and incorporated by the Mandate for Palestine relating to the establishment of the Jewish national home, and were to be given effect in all parts and regions of the Palestine territory. No exception was made for Jerusalem and its Old City; nor were they singled out for special reference in either the Balfour Declaration, the 1920 San Remo Treaty, or the Mandate for Palestine, other than to call for the preservation of existing rights in the Holy Places. As concerns the Holy Places, including those located in the Old City, specific obligations and responsibilities were imposed on the Mandatory.

It follows that the legal rights of the claimants to sovereignty over the Old City of Jerusalem similarly derive from the decisions of the Principal Allied Powers in the 1920 San Remo conference, and from the terms of the Mandate for Palestine adopted and approved by the Council of the League of Nations. In evaluating the validity of the claims of Israel relating to the Old City, the Council decision is of great significance from the perspective of the rights and obligations that it created under international law which the UN cannot supersede or modify without the consent of the parties.

The League of Nations and the UN can only recommend a resolution. In order for a resolution to be binding it must be agreed to and executed by the parties concerned. Since the Arabs rejected outright the partition and most other resolutions, all those resolutions are void and have no standing whatsoever.

In the view of Oxford international law professor Ian Brownlie, “in many instances the rights of parties to a dispute derive from legally significant acts, or a treaty concluded very long ago”.  As a result of these “legally significant acts”, there are legal as well as historical ties between the State of Israel and the Old City of Jerusalem.  The Faisal Weitzmann agreement of January 3, 1919 stated and agreed that the Jews would have Jerusalem and that the Muslim places of worship would be protected.

The intellectual ties were further solidified by the official opening of the Hebrew University on 1 April 1925 in Jerusalem. It must be noted said opening was attended by many dignitaries, including the University’s founding father, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Field Marshall Allenby, Lord Balfour, Professor William Rappard and Sir Herbert Samuel, and many other distinguished guests. According to Dr. Weizmann, addressing the dignitaries and some twelve thousand other attendees at this memorable event, the opening of the University in Jerusalem was “the distinctive symbol, as it is destined to be the crowning glory, of the National Home of the Jewish people which we are seeking to rebuild”. 

In addition to the legal, historical and intellectual heritage, in the words of Canadian scholar Dr. Jacques Paul Gauthier: “To attempt to solve the Jerusalem / Old City problem without taking into consideration the historical and religious facts is like trying to put together a ten thousand piece puzzle without the most strategic pieces of that puzzle”.  In his monumental work entitled "Sovereignty Over the Old City of Jerusalem: A Study of the Historical, Religious, Political and Legal Aspects of the Question of the Old City", Dr. Gauthier offers an exhaustive review of these historical/spiritual/political/legal bonds, emphasizing the “extraordinary meaning” of the Old City of Jerusalem and the temple to the Jewish people.

Why Was a Nazi Flag Flying from a Jerusalem Hotel FAST in the 1930s? - Jerusalem Pearl Hotel - Draiman

Why Was a Nazi Flag Flying from a Jerusalem Hotel FAST in the 1930s? - Jerusalem Pearl Hotel - Draiman

Why Was a Nazi Flag Flying from a Jerusalem Hotel FAST in the 1930s?

It was replaced by The Jerusalem Pearl Hotel in 1995 by the Draiman family. See picture at the bottom.

Posted: 30 Aug 2015 11:11 AM PDT

We recently published pictures from the British Library's Endangered Archives Program, including this incredible picture of Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem's Old City which we have dated to the mid-1890s. Only in 1898 was the wall near Jaffa Gate breached so that carriages could drive into the city.

Jaffa Gate and A(braham) Fast's restaurant.  (Debbas Collection, British Library)

We wanted to know more about the store on the left with the sign "A Fast. Restauranteur."  Was this a tourist establishment of Abraham Fast, who in 1907 took over a large hotel several hundred meters to the west of the building pictured above and renamed it "Hotel Fast?"

German troops marching in Jerusalem on Good Friday,  April 6, 1917. The building on the left is the Fast Hotel. (Imperial War Museum, UK)

It was a leading hotel with 100 rooms, built around a court yard with Ionic, Corinthian and Doric columns.

Hotel Fast and its kosher restaurantwas a well-known establishment in Jerusalem for decades, and was probably considered by many to be a Jewish-owned establishment because of its Jewish clientele.
Nothing could be further from the truth.  The Fasts were German Templers.

The German consulate in the Fast Hotel, 1933. (Wikimedia, Tamar Hayardeni)

They lived in Jerusalem's German Colony and were exiled by the British after World War I and during World War II because of their support for Germany.

We recently uncovered pictures of German troops marching in Jerusalem streets on Good Friday 1917. Readers were able to identify the building on the left as the Fast Hotel.

Our biggest surprise was finding this picture of the German consulate in the Hotel Fast with the German Swastika flag flying from the building. 


During World War II, the hotel was taken over by the British army command and turned into the Australian army club. 

The Hotel Fast housed Australian soldiers in World War II.  Here they are greeting the Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies and the commander of the Australian troops in Australia,  Lt. Gen. Thomas Blamey in February 1941. The Matson Photo Service, shown on the ground floor, was run by Eric Matson, originally from the American Colony Photographic Department.   Matson left Palestine in 1946 for the United States.  His collection of photos were bequeathed to the Library of Congress where many of the pictures in this  website were found.  (Library of Congress)

The Hotel Fast building was abandoned in 1967 and torn down in 1976 to make way for the Dan Pearl Hotel- Built by the Draiman family in 1995.

A Major 19th Century Photo Collection Rescued and Digitized by the British Library's Endangered Archives Program

A preview of Bonfils' photographs

Three thousand pictures taken by the Maison Bonfils photographers of Beirut from 1867 to the 1910s are part of the private Fouad Debbas collection in Beirut. Last year, the collection was digitized and posted online by the British Library's Endangered Archives Program.  

We have posted several Bonfils' photographs in the past from the Library of Congress,Getty, and New York Public Library collections. But nowhere in the world has such an extensive collection of Bonfils' photographs been collected and made public.  We thank the Debbas family and Ms. Jody Butterworth, the curator of the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme, for their efforts. 
We present here just a preview of this very important collection:



Jews praying at the "Wailing Wall" (Debbas Collection, British Library)

Rachel's Tomb on the way to Bethlehem (Debbas Collection, British Library)

Rachel's Tomb, not the village of Sanur

Elsewhere in the Debbas Collection this picture is captioned "Village of Sanur in the modern-day West Bank."

Obviously, it is another Bonfils photo of Rachel's Tomb.







The bustling Jaffa Gate outside of Jerusalem's Old City. The Hotel Fast was built in 1891. The photo was
taken prior to 1898 when a breach was made in the wall for the German Emperor's carriages.
(Debbas Collection, British Library)

We plan to present more of the collection in coming weeks accompanied by our historical essays.

Click on pictures to enlarge. Click on caption link to view the original.

Posted 1 week ago by Our Mission

Labels: Bonfils British Library Endangered Archives Program Hotel Fast KotelMaison Bonfils Rachel's Tomb Wailing Wall Western Wall