History Screws Everyone: the Israeli and Palestinian Conflict

This week's history question comes from deep in the heart of Saskatchewan, from Anna-Maria in Moose Jaw, "I don't get it: why does Israelis and Palestinians fight all the time? What's the history behind all this crazy crap?"

Let's look at one person's artistic interpretation:

A blunt and honest question, Miss Moose-Jaw. Right now, there's a lot of media interest in the area again as Hamas (who is in charge in Palestinian territory which includes the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) and Israel call a brief cease-fire after Israeli air strikes on a Gaza beach kills four Palestinian children. What the media is light on is historical events that have lead to about 2,000 people dying this year already in an area the size of my backyard. 

Not my backyard pictured.

So, gather around and I'll tell you one reason why things are so bad in Israel. Remember, history stories always end with "And a lot of people, Arabs, Jews...everyone - dies horribly and needlessly."

Once upon a time, there was an area called Palestine that was under the control of someone or another all the time: Cannanites, Assyrians, Romans, Crusaders, Mongols, and so forth. Everyone called it something different, but our story begins when this area was controlled by the Ottoman Empire since the 1500s. The people who lived there, mostly Arab Muslims, but Christians, Jews, and other groups as well, were not happy living under the Ottoman Turks because they treated them like lesser beings. You also have the Jewish people and the Pan-Arab movement looking at the area as their historical homelands. So there was a lot of tension. Then things got worse: a world war started.

You can blame a lot of the conflict today on British Imperialism after World War I.

The promise of liberation from the Ottomans led many Jews and Arabs to support the allied powers during World War I, leading to the emergence of widespread Arab nationalism. The British promised that if the Arabs supported then in the war, the British government would support the establishment of an independent Arab state including Palestine, when they defeated the Turks. I can just see an evil old silent film era villain smiling and promising the world to the Arab people.

"We've got other plans for Palestine!"

A revolt, led by T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and the Arab leader's son Faysal, was successful in defeating the Ottomans, and the British took control over the area including modern day Iraq and Palestine in 1917, along with France taking their chunk as well. The Arab people who fought so hard for their independence, were rightly pissed. Then the British decided to promise support for a Jewish "national home" in Palestine. The British sought legitimacy for their continued control of the region, which they got from the League of Nations in 1922. So, not only did the British screw them, but so did the rest of the world. Arab nationalists tried to revolt and created the Arab Kingdom of Syria in 1920, only to have crushed by the French.There was no way the British would give up anything either.

But look, you can have your own flag!

Under the British Mandate for Palestine, the land west of the Jordan River, known as Palestine, was under direct British administration, while the land east of the Jordan was a semi-autonomous region called Transjordan, which got independence in 1946. Jews began to immigrate (Zionist) once they heard of the British plan to create a homeland for them in the millions, and Palestinian Arabs saw this as being screwed out of their own homes. Again. They rioted in 1920, and in 1922 the British government tried to backpedal, saying they were not going to form a Jewish state.That really didn't help much as they knew how good the British were at keeping their word.

Riots broke out between the Jews and the Arabs, all leading to the huge 1936-39 Arab Revolt. Again the British wet their pants and tried to stop all Jewish immigrants. But now we come to the end of the road for many people: World War II and the Holocaust (Shoah) began and the Jews of Europe were being exterminated. The calls for a homeland continued as Jews fought with the British and many fled to Palestine illegally. Failing horribly to end the problems and economically broke from World War II, the British wanted and were informed by the UN to end their mandate over Palestine, and begged off the problem on the United Nations. The UN called for the creation of an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem. Well, that went over like a fart.

Leaders of Jewish Agency declaring the formation of Israel. No farts were reported.

The Arab League said no way, because they were being told again that their country was not under their control and they had to share. But the Jews said yes, because after the Holocaust you can bet they would say okay to anything, even if they had been given a birdhouse and told to live in it.

In 1948, the British gave up the area and the armies of four Arab countries—Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq—entered what had been British Mandatory Palestine, launching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Then things got really complex and that would be a really long story.

And a lot of people died, and continue to die, horribly and needlessly.

A Nazi in Palestine - The Flat and the darkness of family history

"When we start talking about the past, it is impossible to stop" - Arnon Goldfinger

I just watched the fascinating documentary The Flat on Netflix, which focuses over the life long friendship of a Nazi and Jewish couple. When Arnon Goldfinger’s maternal grandmother passed away at the age of 98, she left a mountain of photos, letters, files, and objects: the accumulated ephemera of a lifetime. He admits that his family was not talkative and they know so little of their family's past except that they came to Israel from Berlin before World War II. Like the film maker, I know very little about the Europe pre-World War II. My area was/is China and Aboriginal studies, so I'm learning only now about European History.

In his grandmother's flat Goldfinger finds a crazy relic: a commemorative coin with a swatskita and a Jewish star on the sides. H reads and finds out from a friend that it commemorates the Nazis coming to Palestine. He finds pro-Nazi papers in the house. This mystery deepens until it drag him into an unknown part of his own history. Slowly he begins to uncover a complex story of friendship despite war. political and racial differences.

To understand the coin, let's go back to the 1930s and the "Jewish Question". Where the National Socialists (Nazi party) had not yet worked out a way to get rid of the Jews in Germany, the Zionists, with their ambition to establish a Jewish homeland and their sponsorship of Jewish emigration to Palestine, had an answer. After the boycott of German Jews of April 1st, 1933, and the introduction of the non-Aryan legislation less than a week later, there was no specific policy concerning its solution. Men like SS Officer Leopold von Milderstein wanted to removed all Jews from Germany and were looking for an easy answer. The Zionist had it. Everyone should be sent to Palestine and start their own homeland - which many Jewish pioneers to the region has already begun. So von Milderstein headed to Palestine to see if this was possible.

Goldfinger's grandfather was Kurt Tuchler, an official with the Zionist Federation of Germany, who traveled with von Milderstein. The men brought their wives with them. As they headed on the train Palestine, they all became friends. Goldfinger finds pictures of his grandparents and the von Midlersteins, just a happy set of people looking mightily at their ease on vacation. 

Some expulsions did occur. A central office for Jewish Immigration was created in Vienna, and they deported over 150,000 Jews. von Milderstein who by this time thanks to his friends, became a pro-Zionist, was told the idea was too expensive, and id not fit with the antisemitism of many higher ups. Despite this he remained as far as documents can attest, to be part of the secret service before 1937. He even hired Aldoph Eichmann and was his first boss. He was promoted to working with the media even into 1938.
But why did the Tuchlers resume their friendship even after the horrors of the war and the Holocaust?

Von Mildenstein was an educated and sophisticated man who found in Tuchler his intellectual equal, Goldfinger proposed.  So the SS officer found no contradiction in ordering the expulsion of Jews in the morning, and in the afternoon having a cup of coffee and stimulating chat with Tuchler, though, regrettably, the Jew would have to go in the end. Goldfinger put the same question to a German scholar as part of the documentary, who answered that perhaps Tuchler needed the relationship more than did von Mildenstein.