Shavua Tov: Driving the Jews out of Israel

Yafo port

(IsraelNN.com) A group of five Jews was attacked in Jaffa (Yafo) on Saturday night near an ice cream shop. The ... four women and one man, are all IDF soldiers, but they were not wearing their uniforms or carrying weapons. They stopped for ice cream after a day at the beach, they said, and were set upon by ten Arab youths with sticks.

The Arabs began hitting the front windshield of their car and attempted to forcibly drag one person from the car. The Jewish victims managed to drive away, but not before their vehicle sustained damage from the attack.

“They won’t go to Yafo anymore, not for the ice cream, not for anything,” said Yitzchak Cohen, the father of one of the soldiers. Cohen said that the group was attacked because they are Jews, and said that others should know what is happening in Yafo.

Jews in Yafo, which borders southern Tel Aviv, have been complaining of Arab bullying which has resulted in Jewish emigration from the city. Arabs assaulting Jews, threatening them, and spitting upon them are as commonplace as Hamas and PLO flags fluttering from Arab windows.

'Yafo is where modern Zionism began. It was Tel Aviv before Tel Aviv became Tel Aviv'

"All the Jewish residents who could afford to leave Yafo have already left," says Yisrael Zeira, head of Rosh Yehudi, a Tel Aviv-based organization for promoting Jewish education and values.

He says the Islamists recently held a rally in Yafo in which they reaffirmed that taking over the city and driving the Jews out was a strategic aim.

Looking for a map to show you the location of Yafo, I came across this website called PalestineRemembered. It has all kinds of information about "Jaffa - The Bride of Palestine, ethnically cleansed 21,527 days ago." Obviously, you may need to brace yourself for what follows:

Jaffa and Haifa ports were considered to be the major ports in Palestine, and both were publicly owned and operated by the Government of Palestine.

Huh? The what?

Under the heading, "Industries," we are told that

Since Israeli still maintains and enforces the "Law Of Absentees", all Jaffa's industries, farms, buses, cars, railroads, cattle, real states, ... etc. have been looted and became the property of the "Jewish state"....

The question which begs to be asked is :- Are the Palestinian people entitled for compensation for their looted properties?

Not only is there no such thing as this "Law of Absentees" (insofar as I can tell), the whole site gets worse and worse the further down you scroll.

Refugees' migration route: The mass majority of Jaffa's inhabitants, numbering at least 50,000, were pushed into the sea. Similarly, Haifa's population, numbering at least 35,000, suffered the same fate on the May 23rd, 1948....

Ethnical (sic) cleansing: The mass majority of Jaffa's population were ethnically cleansed. Out of the 70,000 Palestinians who used to call Jaffa home, only 3,650 were allowed to stay. The remaining Palestinian population were boxed in al-'Ajami neighborhood, where their movements were severely restricted until 1966.

Casualties on both sides: According to Manachem Bagen, IZL has taken at least 1,000 casualties (either killed or injured), and unknown number for Haganah's casualties. On the Palestinian side, they suffered over 1,300 killed including 20 Yugoslavian Muslim Mujahideens.

Yugoslavian Muslim Mujahideens? They must mean Bosnian.

Checking Answers.com for, well, answers, I was alarmed at first, as they describe Yafo as "a former city of west-central Israel on the Mediterranean Sea."

A former city? Had Answers.com bought the Palestinian propaganda? No, thank Gd, they're just referring to the fact that since 1950, the city has been officially melded into the larger metropolis: Tel Aviv - Yafo, or T.A.Y. Whewf.

An ancient Phoenician city, it was taken by the Israelites in the 6th century A.D. and later fell to the Arabs (636), Crusaders (12th century), and Ottoman Turks (16th century). Yafo was inhabited mainly by Arabs until the state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948.

Wikipedia fills in some more blanks, here and here.

Jaffa ... is an ancient port city located in south Tel Aviv, Israel on the Mediterranean Sea.

It is mentioned four times in the Hebrew Bible, as

• one of the cities given to the Tribe of Dan (Joshua 19:46)
• the place whence the prophet Jonah embarked for Tarshish (Jonah 1:3)
• [and twice as] port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon for Solomon's Temple (Ezra 3:7) (2 Chronicles 2:16).

It was also an important city in the Arab Middle East.

During the Crusades, it was ... a stronghold of the [Christian] Kingdom of Jerusalem.

[.....] Tel Aviv was intended only to be a suburb, a bedroom community, with the workers commuting to Jaffa.

Auction ceremony for lots at founding of Tel Aviv, 1909

However, disputes between the Jews of Tel Aviv and the Arabs of Jaffa in 1921 led the inhabitants of Tel Aviv to create a new central business district. The master plan for development of the city, based on a framework of central routes and boulevards, was designed in 1925 by Patrick Geddes and adopted by the city council under Meir Dizengoff. Owing to its proximity to the port of Jaffa, and its status as the first Jewish community that immigrants saw when coming into the country, Tel Aviv quickly grew to become the centre of Israeli urban life, which it remains to this day.

You'll note that what Wikipedia calls "disputes" between Jews and Arabs in 1921, they elsewhere refer to as riots. In fact, the "Jaffa riots" get their very own entry.

On May 1, 1921, fighting began in Tel Aviv-Jaffa between rival groups of Jewish activists: Bolsheviks, carrying Yiddish banners demanding Soviet Palestine versus Socialists parading on May Day. The Socialists had police permission, while the Communists did not and, when fighting broke out, the police chased the communists back into the Tel Aviv.

Hearing of the fighting, the Arabs of Jaffa feared they were under attack by the Jews and went on the offensive. Fighting went on for several days and spread throughout Palestine.

Fatalities were: 45 Jews, 48 Arabs.
Wounded: 146 Jews, 73 Arabs.

Note: Arab casualties resulted from clashes with British forces attempting to restore order.

After the riots, thousands of Jewish residents of Jaffa fled for Tel Aviv, and were temporarily housed in tent camps on the beach.

.... The British administration made some arrests. After international outcry, the arrested Jews were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.

Oh, and here's that map I promised.

Comments

[Mordechai Y. Scher]

When Jews made aliyah in the centuries before the founding of the State of Israel, it was often (mostly?) through the port of Yaffo. Yaffo was an important Jewish port in biblical times (Yonah/Jonah anyone?). Yaffo was an important and established Jewish community before Tel Aviv was built. Rav Kook was the rabbi of Yaffo before his ascent to Jerusalem and position as Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land of Israel.

[Term Papers]

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