FALSE HISTORIES

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A B-BBC reader informs me that whilst doing a bit of research on the internet he found a fascinating photographic comparison of how the City of David, just outside the southern walls of Jerusalem looked in 1915 and how it looks today as the Arab village of Silwan:

As is clearly evident from the 1915 photograph, no “ancient” Palestinian village existed on the this site, which was virtually empty, as was much of the land of Israel, prior to the return of the Jewish people to re-settle & develop their ancient homeland in modern times.

Now see this BBC story (from 2010) about this very same location, which faithfully follows the false Palestinian narrative, stating, “About 40,000 Palestinians live in Silwan. Some families have been here for generations.”  The BBC’s wording gives the false impression that the Arab residents of Silwan had lived there for “generations” and are thus the rightful owners of the land.  Plus ca change?

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14 Responses to FALSE HISTORIES

  1. Biodegradable says:
    April 17, 2012 at 11:26 am

    Par for the BBC course: Bias by omission!

       4 likes

  2. Teddy Bear says:
    April 17, 2012 at 1:42 pm

    Here’s some quotes from Mark Twain who visited Palestine in 1867 and wrote a book about his travels – The Innocents Abroad.
    Stirring senses… occur in this [Jezreel] valley no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent — not for thirty miles in either direction. There are two or three clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles, hereabouts, and not see ten human beings.
    On Galilee
    These unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of bareness that never, never, never, do shake the glare from their harsh outlines…; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum: this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under six funereal palms. … A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. … We reached [Mount] Tabor safely. … We never saw a human being on the whole route.
    Other areas:
    Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today, even as Joshua’s miracle left it more than three thousand years ago. … [Bethlehem,] the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sand “Peace on earth, good will to men,” is untenanted by any living creature.
    Jerusalem under Muslim rule
    Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one word of but one language apparently—the eternal “bucksheesh.” To see the numbers of maimed, malformed and diseased humanity that throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might suppose that the ancient days had come again, and that the angel of the Lord was expected to descend at any moment to stir the waters of Bethesda. Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here.

    Most of the Arabs who came to the area did so from neighbouring States following the Jewish immigration in the 20’s and the subsequent building programme undertaken by them. They then enjoyed the highest standard of living of all the neighbouring Arab States.

    I can guarantee the BBC will never make these facts of history public knowledge.

       7 likes

    • Biodegradable says:
      April 17, 2012 at 3:00 pm

      The Arabs who went to Palestine in the ’20s were encouraged by the British while at the same time the British limited Jewish immigration, even while the Holocaust was in progress in the ’30s and ’40s, and known to be so.

      Many of those Arabs went to work for the first Jews who arrived to set up their communities and reclaim the desert. Those who claim now to be “Palestinians” in fact are descendants of immigrant Egyptians (Arafat was born in Cairo), Libyans, Syrians etc.

      The real Palestinians are the Jews!

      See: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/04/welcome-to-palestine.html

         2 likes

  3. Jim Dandy says:
    April 17, 2012 at 4:42 pm

    I see that the 1922 consensus records 1699 Muslim families in Silwan. Given that a generation is commonly understood to represent 25 years, there is no Inaccuracy in saying they have lived there for generations. They clearly have.

       0 likes

    • Jim Dandy says:
      April 17, 2012 at 4:43 pm

      Sorry, 1699 Muslims not ‘families’.

         0 likes

      • Biodegradable says:
        April 17, 2012 at 6:24 pm

        Those would be the Muslims who drove the Yemenite Jews out during during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt

        You should read the link from the EofZ link in the original post:
        http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/06/kfar-hashiloach-silwan-1891-and-1932.html

        You should also read the link David Vance provided:
        http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/06/kfar-hashiloach-silwan-1891-and-1932.html

        In 1882, a group of Jews arrived from Yemen. Initially, they lived in tents. Later, when the rainy season began, they moved into the ancient burial caves on the east side of the valley.[12] In 1884, the Yemenites moved into new stone houses on the eastern slope of the Kidron, north of the Arab village, built for them by a charity called Ezrat Niddahim. This settlement was called Kfar Hashiloach or the Yemenite Village. Construction costs were kept low by using the Shiloach as a water source instead of digging cisterns. An 1891 photo shows the homes on an otherwise vacant stretch of hillside.[13] An early 20th century travel guide writes: In the “village of Silwan , east of Kidron … some of the fellah dwellings [are] old sepulchers hewn in the rocks. During late years a great extension of the village southward has sprung up, owing to the settlement here of a colony of poor Jews from Yemen, etc. many of whom have built homes on the steep hillside just above and east of Bir Eyyub,”[14]

        The Yemenite Jews fled for their lives from Silwan during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and non-Jewish Arabs moved into the vacated buildings.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silwan

        Biblical sources describe Shiloah area as “the waters of Shiloah go softly” (from the Gihon spring) (Isaiah 8:6) and “the Pool of Siloam” (Nehemiah 3:15) watering King Solomon’s Royal Garden and later a staging area for Jewish pilgrims during the festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot wherein the spring-fed pools were used to wash and purify the supplicants who ascend the Great Staircase to the Temple Mount while singing hymns based on Psalms.

        Talmudic sources describe Shiloah as the center of Eretz Israel (Zamib i 5). On Sukkot water was brought from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple and poured upon the altar (Suk v. 1.) and the priests also drank of this water (Ab. N. R. xxxv).

        The village is built atop and around the necropolis of the Biblical kingdom.[12][13][14] The necropolis, or ancient cemetery, is an archaeological site of major significance. it contains fifty rock-cut tombs of distinguished calibre, assumed to be the burial places of the highest ranking officials of the Judean kingdom.[12] Tomb inscriptions are in Hebrew.[12] The “most famous” of the ancient rock-cut tombs in Silwan is finely carved, the one known as the Tomb of Pharaoh’s daughter.[12] Another notable tomb, called the Tomb of the Royal Steward is now incorporated into a modern-period house.[12] The ancient inscription informs us that it is the final resting place of “”…yahu who is over the house.”[12] The first part of the Hebrew name is effaced, but it refers to a Judean royal steward or chamberlain.[12] It is now in the collection of the British Museum.[12]

        All of the tombs were long since emptied, and their contents removed.[12] A great deal of destruction was done to the tombs over the centuries by quarrying and by their conversion for use as housing, both by monks in the Christian period, when some were used as churches, and later by Muslim villagers.[14] “When the Arab village was built; tombs were destroyed, incorporated in houses or turned into water cisterns and sewage dumps.”

        […]

        In the mid-1850s, the villagers of Silwan were paid £100 annually by the Jews in an effort to prevent the desecration of graves on the Mount of Olives.[21] Jewish visitors to the Western Wall were also required to pay a tax to the inhabitants of Silwan, which by 1863 was 10,000 Piastres.[22] Nineteenth century travelers described the village as a robbers’ lair.[23] Charles Wilson wrote that “the houses and the streets of Siloam, if such they may be called, are filthy in the extreme.” Charles Warren depicted the population as a lawless set, credited with being the most unscrupulous ruffians in Palestine.”

        […]

        In 1881–1882, a group of Jews arrived from Yemen as a result of messianic fervor.[25][26] Based on a numerological interpretation of the biblical verse “Let me climb the palm” (Song of Songs 7:9), in which the numerical value of the Hebrew word “palm” – 642 – corresponded to the Hebrew year 5642 (1881/82), Yemenite Jews began leaving Sana’a for the Holy Land. It was an arduous journey and they arrived in Jerusalem destitute. After living in the Old City of Jerusalem for several years, they moved to the hills facing the City of David, where they lived in caves.[27] Initially shunned by the Jews of Jerusalem due to their unfamiliar customs, they received some support from the Christians of the Swedish-American colony, who called them Gadites.[28][25][26] To end their reliance on Christian charity, Jewish philanthropists purchased land in the Silwan valley to establish a neighborhood for them. By 1884, the Yemenites had settled into new stone houses at the south end of the Arab village, built for them by a Jewish charity called Ezrat Niddahim.[29] Up to 200 Yemenite Jews lived in the newly built neighborhood, called Kfar Hashiloach (Hebrew: כפר השילוח‎) or the “Yemenite Village.”

        […]

        In the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine the Yemenite community was removed from Silwan by the Welfare Bureau into the Jewish Quarter as security conditions for Jews worsened.[31] and in 1938, the remaining Yemenite Jews in Silwan were evacuated by the British authorities.[32][33][34] According to documents in the custodian office and real estate and project advancement expert Edmund Levy, the homes of the Yemenite Jews were occupied by Arab families without compensation.

        So who exactly, apart from some Muslims, have lived there for generations?

           12 likes

    • David Preiser (USA) says:
      April 17, 2012 at 4:53 pm

      Yes, it’s accurate, but the impression given is that they, not the Jews, are the rightful residents. One assumes that the British Occupation of sovereign Palestinian territory in 1922, and before that, Ottoman rule, and from 1948 to 67, Hashemite Jordanian occupation, were all equally as evil and unjust as Israeli occupation, right? And the BBC reporting indicating that it was Jordanian territory and not Palestinian can be found…..where? The BBC reporting that the concept of Palestinians as we know it was invented in the early 60s can be found….where? The BBC reporting indicating that the Palestinian homeland was unjustly occupied by the Ottomans for centuries can be found…..where?

      Narratives are trick things. The BBC one is that this was sovereign Palestinian territory before 1967, which it wasn’t.

         8 likes

  4. Adi says:
    April 17, 2012 at 5:18 pm

    I thought it was “times immemorial”. Now it’s “generations”. Go figure.

       2 likes

  5. chrisH says:
    April 17, 2012 at 8:56 pm

    My Old Testament tells me that the Semitic tribes were there as were the Israelites, way back.
    Yes, a lot of wars; toing and froing went on….but the Jews as they became known have been there in the Middle East right from the very start.
    My limited knowledge tells me that Israel came into existance as a result of the Turks etc losing the Ottoman Empire…but both Jews and Arabs were already there.
    The influx of Jews came about through persecutions in Europe as well as a zeal to create a safe and prosperous haven…it`s the only plot on Earth that the Jews have-size of Wales-and NOT too much to ask is it?
    The surrounding Arabian peninsula and its allies have plenty room and money, but would rather Palestinians(an artificial Roman construct) stay in hovels and angry as proxies to drive Israel out of existance.
    Jerusalem and Abrahams area has F***all to do with Islam in any way-and Muslims need to know that. That is sacred ground to Jews and therefore to Christians too.
    Israel is going nowhere…and the sooner the left and Islamic nutters decide to stop their dance of death, the quicker we`ll get peace.

       5 likes

  6. Ariadne says:
    April 17, 2012 at 10:19 pm

    Well said, chrisH!

    A little additional information.

    There were almost 1m Jewish refugees from Arab countries after the state of Israel was declared. Israel absorbed most of them.

    Not one penny has been paid in restitution to those Jews although the Arabs who drove them out benefited from land alone 4 times the area of Israel. No UNRWA or dynastic refugeehood for Jews though plenty for Arabs, mainly driven out by other Arabs, from Mandatory Palestine. And for the scammers who joined them. The Arabs are so far from being indigenous that the UN accepted as a “refugee” anyone who had lived in Mandatory Palestine for two years and was Arab.

    Palestine – Provincia Syria Palaestina – was indeed named by the Romans to destroy theJewish connection. They were also reverting to an earlier Greek name. Now Arabs claim that they were originally the Philistines and the Canaanites. But they are Arabs and speak Arabic while Hebrew is closely related to Canaanite.

    I could go on but in view of the subject matter I would like to recommend two sites:

    A history of plumbing in Jerusalem. Fascinating!

    Daily historic photographs from Israel which speaks for itself.

       1 likes

  7. uncle bup says:
    April 25, 2012 at 10:32 am

    Defence Lawyer: Mr. Cogburn, did you find a bottle with a hundred and twenty-five dollars in it?

    Prosecution Lawyer: Objection your Honor, Leading

    Judge Parker: Sustained. Rephrase the question.

    Defence Lawyer: What happened then?

    Rooster Cogburn: I found a bottle with a hundred and twenty-five dollars in it.

    …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

    Now compare and contrast.

    BBC Droid: Are they still in your opinion two posh boys who don’t know the price of milk?

    Nadine Dorries: Yes

       0 likes