How Israel Emerged In the Collapsed Ottoman Empire

A Little History of That Region

I've tried to write a summary of how Israel was founded in the remnants of the collapsed Ottoman empire. The fall of the Ottoman Empire left vast tracks of Middle Eastern land ungoverned. The British Empire stepped-in to establish law and order and established a large territory called the Palestinian Territory.  It was a sparsely populated and mostly nomadic region at that time.  I start with 1) how the Ottoman empire fell apart, 2) how WWII led to establishment of the State of Israel, 3) Endless Conflict of Jews and Muslims.

The Ottoman Empire From 1500 to Collapse by 1922

From Six Reasons Why the Ottoman Empire Fell:

"At its peak in the 1500s, the Ottoman Empire was one of the biggest military and economic powers in the world, controlling an expanse that included not just its base in Asia Minor but also much of southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The empire controlled territory that stretched from the Danube to the Nile, with a powerful military, lucrative commerce, and impressive achievements in fields ranging from architecture to astronomy. But it didn’t last."

"Though the Ottoman Empire persisted for 600 years, it succumbed to what most historians describe as a long, slow decline, despite efforts to modernize. Finally, after fighting on the side of Germany in World War I and suffering defeat, the empire was dismantled by treaty and came to an end in 1922, when the last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI, was deposed and left the capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in a British warship. From the Ottoman Empire’s remains arose the modern nation of Turkey."

"What caused the once awe-inspiring Ottoman Empire to collapse?"

"Siding with Germany in World War I may have been the most significant reason for the Ottoman Empire’s demise. Before the war, the Ottoman Empire had signed a secret treaty with Germany, which turned out to be a very bad choice. In the conflict that followed, the empire’s army fought a brutal, bloody campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula to protect Constantinople from invading Allied forces in 1915 and 1916. Ultimately, the empire lost nearly half a million soldiers, most of them to disease, plus about 3.8 million more who were injured or became ill. In October 1918, the empire signed an armistice with Great Britain and quit the war."

The Path to the Reccognition of Israel (From Trumanlibrary.gov):

"In 1917, the Balfour Declaration transferred rule of the middle-eastern region known as Palestine to the British Empire as a temporary national home for Jewish people. Between 1917 and 1948, Palestine was inhabited by Jewish immigrants who supported the idea of Zionism (the right of the Jewish people to return to the Holy Land) and Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians who had occupied the land for many centuries. Tension began to form between the Arab Palestinians and the Jewish immigrants as both groups tried to take claim over the same portions of religiously-significant land.

In 1948, the Balfour Declaration was scheduled to expire and Great Britain would no longer rule Palestine. The question over what to do with the tumultuous country was turned over to the United Nations who would eventually decide to create the new country of Israel, specifically as a promised homeland for Jewish people. The new country was to be located across the various holy locations in which many events of the Old Testament occurred and, according to the Bible, was promised to the Jewish people by God.

U.S. President Harry Truman was the first world leader to officially recognize Israel as a legitimate Jewish state on May 14, 1948, only eleven minutes after its creation. His decision came after much discussion and advice from the White House staff who had differing viewpoints. Some advisors felt that creating a Jewish state was the only proper response to the holocaust and would benefit American interests. Others took the opposite view, concerned about that the creation of a Jewish state would create more conflict in an already tumultuous region."

Jewish Immigration Before and After Israeli Statehood (From Jewish Refugees During and After the Holocaust)

Really, there is a 1400 year old hatred of Jews thanks to Islam and Muhommad. But we'll focus on the last 100 years or so in the region named Palestine Territory (administered by the British).

"Over 60,000 German Jews immigrated to Palestine during the 1930s, most under the terms of the Haavara (Transfer) Agreement. This agreement between Germany and the Jewish authorities in Palestine facilitated Jewish emigration to Palestine. The main obstacle to emigration of Jews from Germany was German legislation banning the export of foreign currency. 

Immigration to Palestine (aliyah) remained severely limited until the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948. Thousands of Jewish displaced persons sought to enter Palestine illegally: between 1945 and 1948, the British authorities interned many of these would-be immigrants to Palestine in detention camps on Cyprus.

With the establishment of Israel in May 1948, Jewish refugees began streaming into that new sovereign state. Some 140,000 Holocaust survivors entered Israel during the next few years. The United States admitted 400,000 displaced persons between 1945 and 1952. Approximately 96,000 (roughly 24 percent) of them were Jews who had survived the Holocaust."

Palestinians: 100+ Years of Hate (Really Islam's 1400 years of Hate)

The British administered area called the Palestinian Territory was primarily a sparsely populated nomadic area that was left from the collapse of Ottoman administration. There were no named states or sovereign areas in that territory at that time. 

The name of the area of what is now Israel was Judea in Roman times. Thus is the scriptural and actual basis for Jewish homeland claims. After the Roman sacking of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem by 70 AD, Jews fled their homeland (including the Jews who were part of the "Jesus" movement within Judaism after the death of Jesus. They later formed the Christian Church.)

Those ousted Jews fled to Greece and Turkey--thus the New Testament writings from Paul to Ephesus, Galitians (Turkey), Thessalonians (in Greece). 

From Biblicalarcheology.com "Galatia refers to a region in north central Turkey; Ankara, the capital of modern Turkey, was once a major Galatian city (Ancyra). The name of Galatia is derived from the 20,000 Gauls (the western region that we know as modern France) who settled in the region in 278 B.C.E. The New Testament is written in Greek language."

The Romans tried to rid the Jewish aspect of that region entirely--having expelled them in several purges. The name "Judea" was dropped and substituted eventually with the word "Palestine" which, in turn, was derived from the Greek word, Philistia, which dates to Ancient Greek writers' descriptions of the region in the 12th century B.C. The Arabs in that region know that region as Palestine. So, from Muslim's perspectives, the region called 'Israel' is Palestine.

Arabs Again Took the Side of Germany In WWII

There is a long history of Jew hatred and self-inflicted misery by the Arab people in the area formerly known as Palestine. The current Palestinian movement, founded in the 1920s, has a sordid history including an alliance with Hitler and European fascism. In a recent book review of Sol Stern's book A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism in Real Clear Politics website, Siegel writes:

At the center of his account is the neglected and little known -- yet central -- figure of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Haj Amin al-Husseini. As the grand mufti of Jerusalem, he was the leader of the Palestinian movement from its inception in the 1920s in the wake of the British Balfour Declaration, into the 1950s, after which he was succeeded by his nephew Yasser Arafat......

Like Arafat and Abbas after him, time and again the mufti rejected any compromise. Driven by a sense of Islamic entitlement and Arab resentment of the West, insensible to the economic growth made possible by the relative prosperity of the Jews, the mufti urged his followers to embrace implacable hatred.

Siegel writes about the book:

In the Arab revolt of the late 1930s, Islamist crowds stormed through the streets of Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter shouting slogans such as “Muhammad’s religion was born with the sword.” The mob killed, looted and burned. Two years of low-level war left the Jews stronger than ever and the local Arab economy in ruins, a scene that has recurred time and again. But the mufti saw hope for his cause in Hitler’s war against the allies and the Jews.

The Mufti of Jerusalem joined the Nazi's in Berlin during World War II and that by 1948, the British left the region and the state of Israel was founded, the:

Arab Muslims living in that region were joined by Nazis, Polish reactionaries, Yugoslav Chetniks, and Bosnian Muslims flocked [into Palestine] for the war against the Jews to exterminate them. In the wake of the 1948 war, the West Bank now claimed by the Palestinians became part of Jordan and Egypt took Gaza. But there was no thought in Egypt or Jordan or the larger Arab-Islamic world of creating a Palestinian state.

Conclusion

After the war, hundreds of thousands of survivors found shelter as displaced persons in camps administered by the western Allies in Germany, Austria, and Italy. In the US, immigration restrictions were still in effect, although the Truman Directive of 1945, which authorized priority to be given within the quota system to displaced persons, permitted 16,000 Jewish DPs to enter the US.

Jews who fled Germany before and after the holocaust found very few options for places to emigrate. British strictly limited Jewish migration to the area called the "Palestinian Territory" after the War.  Once the State of Israel was declared in 1948, most displaced Jews, of course, went to Israel to once again fight for their lives. Muslims and radicals had gathered in the region to fight and kill Jews before and after WWII. There is not too much change as of today.  Hatred rules.

So, Muslim hatred has a 100 year history in this particular conflict, but of course, there is a 1400 year history of Muslim hate. Compromise is an anathema to these people. Muslims are known for multi-generational hatred and supremacists. This of course is the very opposite of "forgiveness," "turn the other cheek" and "do not resist the Evil One" in Christianity.

Any opportunity to make peace with Israel, in recent history, has ended in failure with Palestinian intransigence.

Palestinians are bound by official agreements to negotiate directly with Israel and that they have twice in the last decades refused the very state they’re now asking for from the U.N. In 2000 and 2008, Israel agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state with virtually all of the territory it had before the 1967 war. Unfortunately, Palestinian leaders have never been, and are not now, prepared to permanently give up the claim to all of the land first laid out by their Islamist leaders in the 1920s.