JAFFA

Sunday, August 3, 2014

JAFFA

Jews have lived in Jaffa, on and off, for thousands of years. It wasn’t until the 18th century when, due to Arab civil wars and plundering, the Jewish community began to decrease. The community finally ceased to exist in 1799 with the invasion of the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. It wasn’t renewed until around 1820 when Yeshayahu Adjiman, a prominent banker from Constantinople established an inn for Jewish pilgrims. The community grew from that point onwards. The First Jewish suburb, Neve Tzedek, was founded in 1887, and in 1909, another Jewish suburb was founded – Tel Aviv. The greater part of the community was expelled by the Turks during World War I, but after the armistice, it began to renew itself. However, the Jews were forced to gradually desert the town following the riots of 1921, 1929, and 1936–39.

Arab riots, 1936

Some of the Jewish owned buildings destroyed by Arabs during the 1936-39 riots

some of the Jewish refugees from Jaffa, 1936

The town was entirely ethnically cleansed due to the Arab pogroms that resulted after the UN recognized Israeli independence at the end of 1947. Only after Israel won the War of Independence did Jews again settle there.

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INTRODUCTION

For the record, I am Jewish, I don’t live in Israel (I’d rather live in a country where the government’s priority is actually to protect me from terrorism). I just want to make that clear.

Ever since the Balfour Declaration in 1917 from which Great Britain supposedly recognized Palestine as the national homeland of the Jewish people, numerous Palestinian Arab riots broke out and many Jews were attacked. These Palestinian Arabs claimed they were protesting the massive Jewish immigration to the country, but if that was true, then why were they also attacking the native-born Palestinian Jews as well?

The popular perception of Israeli history is one of the evil Jews coming from Europe, especially refugees from the Holocaust, settling in Palestine and taking land away from the Palestinians. It's an image that's a culmination of centuries of these types of images as depicted by such literary characters as Shylock, Svengali, and Fagan. Most everybody in the world considers the Arabs of Israel/Palestine to be indigenous to the region because they look indigenous to the region. And the Zionist movement actually helped to spread this type of perception: Jews coming to an empty land after a 2000 year absence, fighting the indigenous Arab marauders, and making the desert bloom.

The problem with that is, both these narratives are lies. Well, at least the Zionist narrative is a half truth – Jews did fight marauding Arabs and make the desert bloom. But let's take a look at the facts. There has never been a 2000 year absence. Jews have lived in Israel/Palestine for almost 4000 years, and those Jewish/Israelite families who have constantly lived in the country since Biblical times, the Mustarabim and the Samaritans, are the indigenous Palestinians.

It took years for the Israeli government to acknowledge that there were Jewish refugees from Arab countries (which was like extracting teeth) but it has yet to acknowledge that there were Jewish refugees from Palestine as well. For decades, Israelis have tried to make peace with the noble and deserving Arabs, while totally ignoring the indigenous and centuries-old Palestinian Jewish communities as if they didn't exist. In the rare cases when they were acknowledged, they were often characterized as lazy sub-humans.

Since no Israeli government or Jewish institution in Israel or the Diaspora has any intention of recognizing these Palestinian Jewish refugees, this blog will be dedicated to that purpose. There simply is no other choice and it’s the moral thing to do.

While one can go back to the 16th and 17th centuries to read about Palestinian Arab intifadas, pogroms, and persecutions causing a Palestinian Jewish refugee problem, this blog will deal with the period since the end of World War I up to today (with emphasis on the Arab intifadas/pogroms of 1920/1, 1929, 1936-1939, and the War of Independence 1947-1949) along with a short history of the various communities before that time. Just click on any community below for a brief description of events.

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