This week on the Mondoweiss site, they selectively pulled excerpts from a letter Jack Kennedy had written his father, Joseph, from Palestine in 1939, when the future President was a mere but perceptive twenty-two years old. Father Joe was a classic, Catholic reactionary and anti-Semite, close to Pope Pius XII, the wartime Pope who has a polarizing number of detractors as well as defenders for his wartime efforts, or lack thereof in aiding Rome’s Jews during the Nazi and Fascist purge. Remember as well that the Vatican owns extensive property and land holdings in the Holy Land and changes in political structure, a new nation, would impact the value and tax structure they would enjoy; also the impact of Free Masonry as intrinsic to the Zionist project should not be discounted as well, in addition to the support for a Judeo-Christian beachhead in the Region, the larger imperial project…
But in 1948, Robert Kennedy went to Palestine, and by then the tone had changed somewhat…
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote:
“In March of 1948 Robert Kennedy received his A.B. degree [from Harvard]… The next step..was a trip abroad… Robert set forth on the Queen Mary on March 5 accompanied by a college friend”. He met with his father’s friend, Lord Beaverbrook, aboard for dinner at Joe Kennedy’s request. “Robert remarked that he was going to the Middle East. Beaverbrook said that the United States was a ‘subjugated nation to a Jewish minority’. As for Britain, it had become a ‘satellite to the United States’… After [the first] few days in London, Robert and his companion went on to Cairo…
—Buy cheap, and sell high…Churches acquired large amounts of land around Jerusalem as the Ottoman empire went into decline from the early 19th century, long before Israel was founded in 1948.
Now the Vatican seeks recognition of its “historic rights” to tax exemption, and to set rules for protection of religious sites and the return of what it calls lost church property.—Read More:http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel-and-vatican-deadlocked-in-talks-over-holy-land-sites-1.261649 image:http://www.ebay.com/itm/1955-JOSEPH-KENNEDY-POPE-PIUS-XII-WIRE-PHOTO-/150864633802
…“He met a young Jew from Tel Aviv who gave him letters to leaders of Haganah, the Jewish defense organization… The RKO Radio Pictures representative in Cairo, to whom Joseph Kennedy had entrusted the boys, told them they should not go to so agitated a land… On March 26, Good Friday, they flew to Lydda airport and traveled to Tel Aviv by armored car, with Haganah escort… Remembering [he was on] assignment for the Boston Post, Robert talked to everyone he could find –to Haganah soldiers who held the British responsible for everything… He talked to members of the Irgun..that had recently dynamited a British train and the King David Hotel… He visited a kibbutz through the kindness of a Jew who, forty years before, had made speeches in Boston for [RFK's grandfather] Honey Fitz… he talked to a former major in the Russian army who believed that the Russian[s]..’as a whole are more anti-Semitic than the Germans’… He summed up Jerusalem: ‘Firing is going on at all times… More and more horrible stories pouring in… Correspondents all very jumpy…’ [The two] went on to Lebanon…
“[Kennedy] was considerably impressed by the Jews….
Pope in Israel. A personal check of Church property to make sure its still there and there has been no hanky panky in the backwaters…? —Today, many official Israeli buildings sit on leased church land. But agreement on the legal status of these ancient properties has evaded governments and popes for decades.
“The new state naturally inherited the obligation to respect and observe those rights created before it came into being,” said a Catholic expert on church relations with Israel, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Vatican was looking to safeguard its rights under international treaties and customs that date back before the establishment of the modern Jewish state, the jurist said.
One Jerusalem building in dispute stands in a narrow alley outside the Old City walls. Its second storey is the Cenacle where Christians believe Jesus held the last supper. Jewish tradition says the floor below is the burial site of King David.—Read More:http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel-and-vatican-deadlocked-in-talks-over-holy-land-sites-1.261649 image:http://israel-lightontonations.blogspot.ca/2011/04/pope-benedict-xvi-in-jerusalem.html
…‘They are different from any Jews I have ever known or seen..’ The Boston Post ran four articles from its ‘Special Writer’ in the Middle East on June 3-6. The first bore a headline guaranteed to sell papers in Boston: BRITISH HATED BY BOTH SIDES… His second piece revealed his own commitment. The Jews in Palestine, he wrote, ‘have become an immensely proud and determined people. It is already a truly great modern example of the birth of a nation with the primary ingredients of dignity and self-respect’… [He] praised the Jews in Palestine as ‘hardy and tough’, their ‘spirit and determination’ created not only by their desire for a homeland but by ‘the remembrance of the brutal inhuman treatment received..in the countries in Europe.’ He gave a lyrical account of his kibbutz visit… The Jews, he said, had ‘an undying spirit’ the Arabs could never have. ‘They will fight and they will fight with unparalleled courage.’
“The third piece was sharply critical of British policy for its ‘bitterness towards the Jews’. As for the United States… We failed because we had been taken in by the British… The final piece dismissed the notion, then prevalent, that a Jewish state might go Communist. ‘That Communism could exist in Palestine,’ Robert Kennedy said, ‘is fantastically absurd. Communism thrives on static discontent… With the type of issues and people involved, that state of affairs is nonexistent. I am as certain of that as of my name.’ …If a Jewish state were formed, it might be the ‘only stabilizing factor’ in the Middle East. ‘The United States and Great Britain before too long a time might well be looking to a Jewish state to preserve a toehold in that part of the world… The United States, through the United Nations, must take the lead in bringing about peace in the Holy Land.’
…”He did not evidently share his father’s view that the United States should stop minding other peoples’ business.” [pages 73-81, Robert Kennedy and His Times, by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 1978] Read More:http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/jfk-conspiracy-con-ii/
—Two Rabbis conference with Arab Legion soldiers. June 1948. John Phillips
Found this comment on some Israeli forum about this photo:
“The Rabbis of Jerusalem Rabbi Israel Mintzberg, my grandfather, head of the old city Jewish Court and the Sepharadi Rabbi is
i Hazan. Both went in self-sacrifice with a white flag to surrender despite the Haganah commanders objecting and even firing at them because the heads of the [Jewish] government wanted the fate of the people of the Jewish quarter to be that of the people of Masada, that they all will die”. Read More:http://benatlas.com/2009/07/life-in-israel-in-1948-part-1/
(see link at end)…The Arabs living in the old city of Jerusalem have kept the age-old habit of procuring their water from the individual cisterns that exist in almost every home. The Jews being more “educated” (an Arab told me that this was their trouble and now the Jews were going to really pay for it) had a central water system installed with pipes bringing fresh hot and cold water. Unfortunately for them, the reservoir is situated in the mountains and it and the whole pipe line are controlled by the Arabs. The British would not let them cut the water off until after May 15th but an Arab told me they would not even do it then. First they would poison it.
…Within the Old City of Jerusalem there exists a small community of orthodox Jews. They wanted no part of this fight but just wanted to be left alone with their wailing wall. Unfortunately for them, the Arabs are unkindly disposed toward any kind of Jew and their annihilation would now undoubtedly have been a fact had it not been that at the beginning of hostilities the Haganah moved several hundred well-equipped men into their quarter.
—Morey Altman comments: Yehuda Margalit points out, it was on Friday, May 28, 1948 the Arab Legion succeeded at controlling the main Jewish street of the Quarter; they immediately destroyed the Hurva Synagogue (in anticipation of the arrival of King Abdullah) and began burning and looting Jewish shops. The International Red Cross had – to their credit – been trying to convince the Legion, at the request of the Haganah, to permit women and children to leave. The Legion repeatedly refused, demanding that there be a complete surrender of all Jews. All attempts to stop the Legion had failed, and with fighting now raging along a 20-mile front between Latrun and Ramallah, reinforcements were unavailable.
“At 11:00am on Friday, Rabbis Reuven Hazan, 70, and Israel Mintzberg, 83, walked from one of the Jewish positions toward the Arab lines. They carried a white flag made out of a bit of once-festive tablecloth tacked to a stick. Although he was shot and wounded by a sniper, Rabbi Hazan called out in Arabic, ‘Good morning. We have come to talk to you, and we want to see your commander.’” Mitzberg was held hostage while Rabbi Hazan retrieved the Haganah representative to negotiate the surrender.—Read More:http://benatlas.com/2009/07/life-in-israel-in-1948-part-1/
…This inability to make any long range military maneuvers because of the presence of the British has been a great and almost disastrous handicap to the Jews. If the brief but victorious military engagement on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road had not taken place, the Jewish cause would have suffered such a setback as to be virtually lost. If the Haganah had waited for May 15th and the withdrawal of British troops, there would be few alive in Jerusalem today. Strong units of that body had moved into the hills on either side of that strategic road and repelled Arab counterattacks long enough for several hundred truckloads to make the 40-mile trip into the city, and then, only after threats from the British commander to use force against them, had withdrawn from their positions. As a Jew said to me at the time, “This is our battle of the Atlantic.” The maneuvers had to take place and took place despite the British.
The Arabs in command believe that eventually victory must be theirs. It is against all law and nature that this Jewish state should exist. They trace expectantly its long boundary and promise that if it does become a reality it will never have as neighbors anything but hostile countries, which will continue the fight militarily and economically until victory is achieved.
…The Jews on the other hand believe that in a few more years, if a Jewish state is formed, it will be the only stabilizing factor remaining in the Near and Middle East. The Arab world is made up of many disgruntled factions which would have been at each other’s throats long ago if it had not been for the common war against Zionism. The United States and Great Britain before too long a time might well be looking to a Jewish state to preserve a toehold in that part of the world. Read More:http://robertkennedyandisrael.blogspot.ca/
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