NOVEMBER

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02/11/1917

Balfour Declaration.

In his capacity as Foreign Secretary of the crown, Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930) - who had supported the 1905 Aliens Act to bar Eastern Jewish immigration into the UK – wrote the following to Lord Rotschild – chairman of the Zionist Federation:

“His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish People, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.

Since the UK had no sovereign rights over Palestine, the Declaration should be regarded as no more than a statement of British intentions and not in the least did it give any international legitimacy to the Zionists’ plot. Indeed sympathy towards Zionism coincided with the interests of the British Empire of the time who needed to secure the Suez Canal to ship to India upon which depended much of the British economy;

The rightful owners Palestinians were dismissed as “existing non-Jewish communities” and not consulted while their land was to be offerred for colonisation. Lord Balfour later explained: "Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder important then the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit the ancient land";

The Balfour declaration was a dangerous precedent and its spirit was integrated in the Mandate (July 24, 1922). Edward Mandell House, US President Wilson's aid, was clear-headed about what the implementation of the Declaration would bring about: "It is all bad and I told Balfour so. They are making [the Middle East] a breeding place for future war".

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03/11/1956

Khan Yunis Massacre.

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04/11/1923

Jabotinsky’s article “the Iron Wall” was first published in Rasswyet (Dawn) - a Russian-language journal in Western Europe. It is considered the manifesto of Revisionist zionism and its present relevance makes it a read-must piece of literature for those interested in understanding the conflict.

In that article Jabotinsky poured scorn in his own brilliant style on those who naïvely believed or hypocritically wanted to make it believe that the Zionist objective of a Jewish sovereignty in Palestine could be concealed from the Arabs: “Colonization itself has its own explanation, integral and inescapable, and understood by every Jew and Arab with his wits about him. Colonization can have only one goal. For the Palestinian Arabs this goal is inadmissible. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible”.

He insisted that the Zionist enterprise must be backed by armed force, either directly by a Zionist Jewish militia or army, or indirectly by a patronising foreign power: “Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population”.

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04/11/1995

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed by a hardline Zionist of Yemenite origin hostile to the short-lived “peace process”.

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06/11/1944

Lord Moyne (1880-1944) British Minister of State assassinated by the Stern gang in Cairo. The two perpetrators were condemned by the British colonial justice in Egypt to capital punishment and were subsequently hanged at the insistence of the British government. In 1975 their bodies were transferred to Israel where General Yitzhak Rabin, personally gave them a military funeral of the type usually reserved for men of distinguished valor.

“The [Palestinian] Arabs who have lived and buried their dead for fifty generations in Palestine, WILL NOT WILLINGLY surrender their land and self-government to the Jews” said Lord Moyne on June 9 1942.

Read more in English at: www.egy.com/landmarks/00-06-08.shtml

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10/11/1975

The United Nations General Assembly passed resolution 3379 concluding that Zionism is a form of racism, after recalling

previous resolution on racism and racial discrimination and notably nº3151 which “condemned the unholy alliance between South African racism and Zionism”;

"international co-operation and peace require the achievement of national liberation and independence, the elimination of colonialism and neo-colonialism, foreign occupation, Zionism, apartheid and racial discrimination in all its forms, as well as the recognition of the dignity of peoples and their right to self-determination" (Declaration of Mexico 1975);

and a resolution of the Organization of African Unity which considered "that the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regime in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a comon imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure and being organically linked in their policy aimed at repression of the dignity and integrity of the human being".

The resolution was repealed on 16/12/1991 through UNGA 4686.

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11/11/1973

Egypt and Israel signed a cease-fire agreement sponsored by the U.S.

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13/11/1995

Israel began pulling its troops out of the West Bank city of Jenin, provisionally ending 28 years of occupation.

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15/11/1988

Palestinian Declaration of Independence.

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19/11/1977

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel.

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22/11/1967

Resolution 242 is perhaps the most controversial ever issued by the United Nations Security Council:

Its purpose was to put an end to the 1967 Six Days’ War and it focusses only on the warrying parties, namely Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Not once the Palestinians’ rights on Palestine are mentioned, they are only referred to as a side aspect: “Affirms further the necessity (…) for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem”;

It emphasized on "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and demanded the “withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”, these being the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai desert. It must be noted that resolutions from the Security Council have a compulsory nature in contrast to the UN General Assembly who is only entitled to issue observations and suggestions;

The only territory restituted by Israel was the Sinai peninsula through the 1978 Camp David agreements under pressure from the USA. Although they attacked first, the Israelis claim that the Six Days’ War was fought in self-defense and that conquest of territory is hence legitimate.

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27/11/1874

Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) was born near Pinsk, Byelorussia.

He was a very skilful Zionist politician and later Israeli statesman, often able to win over the great powers of the world to the views and plans of the Zionists, convincing them that a “Jewish” European state in Palestine would work to their benefit. His philosophy was classically colonial in this regard as much as it was about the native Palestinian population which he dismissed in a racist fashion as “the rocks of Judea, as obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path”.

He knitted close ties with the British governants through his scientific cooperation – he engineered a way of producing acetone from Indian corn which was needed for the production of artillery shells. His acquaintance with top Allied leaders in World War I helped him to bring the government of the crown to issue the Balfour Declaration. He was at the head of the Zionist delegation to at Versailles Peace Conference in early 1919 and became the chairman of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) in 1920.

Dr Weizmann was unsuccessful in his endeavours to prevent the 1939 White Paper through which among other issues, the British stopped to foster Jewish immigration to Palestine in order to keep things in their control.

During WWII Weizmann clearly sided for the Allied camp but like his fellow Zionists leaders, he opposed all Allied endeavours to rescue the European Jews to safe countries because this was a distraction from the colonising enterprise in Palestine.

Chaim Weizmann is furthermore regarded highly responsible for the Partition Plan sanctionned as UNGA 181 in 1948 and US recognition of the state of Israel, of which he was the first President until he died.

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29/11/1947

UN General Assembly 181 resolution partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Arab land and the Jerusalem/Al Qods area to remain under international administration. The Arabs and Palestinians are sometimes blamed for rejecting UNGA 181. However:

Under the chart of the UN the GA can only issue non-binding recommendations and requests for the SC to act upon. It is an argument used by the Israelis and their Zionist supporters to counter the many GA resolutions to their disadvantage;

Nowhere in the UN's charter was there the power to partition any country, especially based on racial or religious grounds. Why ask the Palestinian people to concede 60% of their land in favor of an ALIEN foreign minority?  

The WZO had turned down a partition plan in 1937 known as the “White Paper”;  

The US bribed or threatened countries to support the partition, a circumstance that lifts legitimacy to the present resolution and many others;  

The Zionist leadership’s decision to accept the 1947 UN GA Partition plan was never endorsed as a permanent arrangement but as a a hardstep to get international recognition and to plan the further territory expansion which they achieved through the 1948 war.

Full text in English of the Declaration at the UN website