Peace With Abbas' anti-Semitic Accusation Against Israel ?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                         

Representation of a massacre of the Jews in 1349 Antiquitates Flandriae(Royal Library of Belgium manuscript 13076/77)

The 3rd president of the USA is again trying to bring peace between the Palestinians and Israelis and will fail again.  First it was Bill Clinton who tried to force a peace in his last days in office.  Then it was Bush who tried and failed, and now it's Obama in his last days who along with his co-worker, John Kerry, thinks they are capable of making a deal that will satisfy both parties but will fail.

The problem is this:  The Palestinians belong to a terroristic group of Arabs who swore never to make a deal 68 years ago.  They were first led by Arafat who rejected every offer.  Now it's Abbas, his replacement, who does the same.  They must really not be interested in peace, for their main goal seems to be trying to wipe Israel off the map, and indeed, their maps show no Israel at all, and their schools teach this, also.
                                                                   

 
Even Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has pronounced any peace deal today as currently impossible with a situation of Israel wanting peace and have gone the mile needed for peace, but with the Palestinians now lying about Israel so pronouncedly, that it is a joke.  They are trying to show why they cannot go for peace by accusing Israel's rabbis of calling for the poisoning of Palestinian water supplies, the old accusation going back to the Middle Ages of Jews poisoning the wells.  This is so wild that it makes me choke.  How can one discuss a peace deal with people who think like this?   His people may be ignorant of Jewish history, but I certainly hope that leaders of countries realize where this comes from and the history of anti-Semitism.  Abbas is again trying to bring hatred against Jews, hatred that causes political views to be hated as well against Israel.  He figures that since the world has hated Jews in the past, they will ignore whatever is true about the Palestinians and only remember charges against the Jews, like they have poisoned water of Palestinians.  With their own people, it seems to have worked, since they are being brain-washed against Jews since they enter school, and even before with their parents.

Anti-Semitism was the outgrowth of Christian teaching of hatred for Jews to cause them to convert.  People were taught to hate Jews.  This medieval anti-Jewish prejudice was religious in nature and could generally be obviated by conversion to Christianity.  On the other hand, anti-Semitism has some affinities with the anti-Jewish prejudice in ancient Alexandria and later, against the Marranos in Spain.  Abbas is doing the very same thing, only this goal is to end Israel completely, and one can't make peace with a nation one wants dissolved and destroyed.

We have been accused of all sorts of terrible things, including using human blood in the making of our special bread, matzos.  "When the Black Death raged through Europe (1346–53), the charge was given that the Jews had poisoned the wells.  The only court of appeal that regarded itself as their appointed protector, according to historical conceptions, was the "Holy Roman Emperor."   The emperor, as legal successor to Titus (79-81) , who had acquired the Jews for his special property through the destruction of the Temple in the year 70, claimed the rights of possession and protection over all the Jews in the former Roman empire.  The king at the time of the Black Death was Charles IV, the king of Bohemia, called the German king, born May 14, 1316  in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Similar to accusations made during the Black Plague, Jews were accused of encouraging lepers to poison Christian wells in France. An estimated five thousand Jews were killed before the king, Philip the Tall, admitted the Jews were innocent. Then, Charles IV expelled all French Jews without the one-year period he had promised them, as much of Europe blamed the Black Plague on the Jews and tortured them so they would confess that they poisoned the wells. Despite the pleas of innocence of Pope Clement VI, the accusations resulted in the destruction of over 60 large and 150 small Jewish communities.

Netanyahu has condemned Abbas' incitement saying, "Abbas showed his true colors in Brussels.  Someone who refuses to meet with Israel's President Reuven Rivlin and with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for direct negotiations, and someone who promotes blood libels in the European parliament is lying when he claims his hand is outstretched in peace.

Oh, I know that prejustice develops against countries from the family.  My own Swedish grandmother used to say, 'Oh, those Norwegians!."  That was it.  Her tone of voice showed displeasure towards this rivaling Scandinavian country.  But they were not being used as scapegoats of the world, as Jews have been, someone to pile all the ails of the world upon.  My hope is that everyone is smarter today and realizes that this present accusation of Abbas is showing his true colors and what Israel is up against.  Israel does not have a "normal" situation to deal with in coming to peace terms with another people, because if Abbas has is way, there won't be an Israel.  After 68 years of defending themselves and having been given the OK to be created in the first place by the world politicians, this is not going to happen.


Resource: CUFI Action Fund  garybauer@cufiactionfund.com  ; Palestinian Lies, Here We Go Again
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Middle_Ages
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-IV-Holy-Roman-emperor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death_Jewish_persecutions
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=18247

Madagascar Finally Has a Jewish Neighborhood

Nadene Goldfoot                                                               

Hitler spoke with Arab leaders before WWII.

Islamic leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini,
Sherif of Jerusalem, wanted Jews out
of Palestine.  

Hitler in the 1930's blamed all the economic depression Germany was suffering from on the Jews.  Everything was their fault.  It was a rehappening of events that had been occurring for the past 2,000 years to Jews.  They had been in Germany after losing Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 CE, and they had even served in WWI two thousand years later in 1914-17.

Germany wanted France to get rid of their 10,000 Jews and be Judenrien, so on December 9, 1938, the French Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet, informed the German foreign Minister, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, that to do that they would have to ship them out somewhere, and where?  The Final Solution of the Germans had not yet been thought of, but were thinking along the lines of mass emigration somewhere.
                                                                     

Madagascar along the coast

Three months later  on March 5, 1938, Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of researching and creating a plan to give to the chief of the Security Police (SIPO)'s Reinhard Heydrich with a "foreign policy solution as it had been negotiated between Poland and France called the Madagascar Plan.   Then it was forgotten about and not thought of till summer 1940 after the fall of France.

A little earlier, Captain Dryfus of France  was the cause of a political scandal that from its beginning in 1894 divided France until it was finally resolved in 1906. He was accused of treason, acting for the Germans and was innocent, but suffered anyway by being found guilty. Dreyfus was imprisoned on Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent nearly five years. The conviction was a miscarriage of justice based upon faulty espionage and blatant antisemitism, as well as a hatred of the German Empire following its annexation of Alsace and part of Lorraine in 1871  .It caused Jews to realize that they needed their own country.  They thought of Africa, but disbanded the idea.  There was no burning desire to live there, but there was for their ancient homeland that had now been called "Palestine."  
                                                                           

Madagascar, a huge island nation off the southeast coast of Africa, is home to thousands of animal species – like lemurs – found nowhere else, plus rainforests, beaches and reefs. Near the busy capital, Antananarivo, is Ambohimanga, a hillside complex of royal palaces and burial grounds, as well as the “Avenue of the Baobabs,” a dirt road lined by massive centuries-old trees.  It is the 4th largest island in the world made up of 587,041 km²(226,658 sq mi)

The island of Madagascar had colonization possibilities he found from the French Colonial Office.  He included his evacuation plan for 4 million Jews to be shipped there over a period of 4 years.  It would be financed by a special bank that would be managing confiscated Jewish property and by contributions exacted from world Jewry, or blackmail.  He had also advocated creating a police reserve as a giant ghetto, much like the Pale of Settlement was only much worse.

The plan included compensating the 25,000 French citizens living on the island already.  The control would be transferred to Germany under a mandate.  The ports were to become German naval bases if the German navy desired.  Suitable areas of the country would be excluded from the Jewish territory and made Judenterritorium for the construction of air bases..  A German Police Governor under the administration of the Reichsfuehrer SS would be in charge of the island. Apart from this, the Jews would administer their part of the land and have their own mayors, police, postal and railroad administration.  The Jews would be jointly liable for the value of the island.  This plan was a Mandate and Jews would not get German citizenship, but those deported there lose their citizenship of European countries from the date of deportation and would be residents of the Mandate of Madagascar.
                                                                       

Tower of David in Jerusalem 

The whole idea was to prevent Jews from creating a Jewish state in Palestine.  They wanted Jerusalem to be out of the hands of the Jews and only be for the Christians and Islamic people.  American Jews would see that Jews on the island were kept alive only by the good behavior of American Jews.

Gossip caused the plan to leak out and it was published in Italy in July 1940.  by August, the 3rd Reich endorsed the plan.  The American Jewish Committee was much alarmed and they published by May 1941 a special report about this that sought to demonstrate that Jews couldn't survive the conditions on the island.

By summer 1940, the Nazis had already come up with their novel idea of a different Final Solution; their extermination program. So, by February 10, 1942, the Madagascar Plan was officially shelved and replaced with the evacuation to the East of Jews.  They expected to get all Jews out of Europe so they could control it all.  Rademacher had signed the agreement in Berlin on July 3, 1940.   Instead, they slaughtered 6 million Jews in the most despicable ways, and the utter horrid thing is that they were helped by many Europeans.

Madagascar Natives went  shopping, perhaps. 

Today, a Jewish community "was officially born in Madagascar last month when 121 men, women and children underwent Orthodox conversions on the remote Indian Ocean island nation better known for lemurs, chameleons, dense rain forests and vanilla." Of course they were not from the European Jews of WWII, as they never got the chance to live there, despite the almost impossible conditions they would have had to face.  They had a worse situation.  

These people who converted to Judaism on the island were  followers of various messianic Christian sects and had  become disillusioned with their churches and began to study Torah.  The conversions, which took place over a 10-day period, were the climax of a process that arose about five to six years ago.

Through self-study and with guidance from Jewish internet sources and correspondence with rabbis in Israel, they now pray in Sephardic-accented Hebrew and strictly observe the Sabbath and holidays.

The conversions were facilitated by Kulanu, a New York-based nonprofit that specializes in supporting isolated and emerging Jewish communities, but were initiated by the residents. 

" Rabbi Gerald Sussman of Temple Emanuel on Staten Island in New York said that   "“We are in the process of reconstituting the Jewish people, which would have been more numerous had it not been decimated by the Holocaust and had we not lost millions of Jews in Arab lands.”

Resource: http://www.israelandstuff.com/rebirth-madagascar-community-chooses-to-return-to-their-jewish-heritage
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Madagascar.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair

Sephardic and Hidden Jews (Marranos) of Jamaica

Nadene Goldfoot                                                        

                                                                                 
Jews  were living on the island of Jamaica in 1577 and were free to live and work there.  

The English occupied this island of Jamaica in 1655.  It wasn't until the British  took the island in 1655 that Jews were permitted to practice their religion openly and establish a Jewish community, including synagogues and cemeteries. 
                                                                           

Columbus had sailed from Spain in 1492 and bumped into islands that were close to North America.  "He  visited Jamaica on his second trip to the New World and in 1503 claimed it for Spain. The island was granted to Columbus’ descendants as a personal possession."  

 Many believe that Columbus could have been a Marrano Jew of Italy.  He wrote to his son in the Hebrew script.  This was the time that Spain had the Spanish Inquisition starting and Jews had to either leave Spain or convert to Catholicism.  Thus, when a family couldn't afford to leave the country, they hid the fact that they were Jewish;  thus the term, and a negative one it is, of Marrano.  They were hidden Jews.  They went through the pretense of being Catholic.  
                                                                             

Secret Seder in Spain during Spanish Inquisition by Marranos (Anusim) 

By 1655, some Portuguese Marrano were probably already residents on the island.  Many Sephardim of Marrano origin established themselves shortly after 1655, and in the course of the 18th century, when the island's economy was doing very well, the Jewish settlement developed which benefited from the immigration of both the Portuguese Marranos and of the present Jews of that day.   Sephardi as well as Ashkenazi Jews who came from Europe, mainly from England had come here to settle.

"In 1577, Jews were free to live and work on the island, but it wasn't until the British conquered Jamaica in 1655 that Jews were permitted to practice their religion openly and establish a  Jewish community, including synagogues and cemeteries.

Even on this distant island, the Jews were subjected to many restrictions until 1831, and had played an important part in the life of Jamaica.  They filled every public office.

With the decline in the island's prosperity in the 19th century, the Jewish community diminished, and contributed some of the outstanding families in Jewish life in England, like the Henriques.

 The Henriques family that fled Portugal during the Spanish Inquisition in the 17th century are all descended or related to the patriarch of the family, Henriques Dias Milao-Caceres  (1528-1609).   He was a wealthy businessman from Lisbon, who was arrested by the Spanish Inquisition during the Iberian Union on charges of not having paid taxes, having dealings with the Jews, and for having attempted to flee the country before trial.  Most of his family and entourage who had not managed to leave the country on time, had also been arrested and interrogated by the Inquisition. At the age of 82, Henriques Dias Milao-Caceres was sentenced to death, along with his man servant who was believed to have converted to Judaism in secret, and a female member of the family. They were burned at the stake on the 5th of April, 1609. The rest of the family members, whom had had their lives spared, were forced to witness the execution. Those witnesses took on the surname Henriques, in memory of Henriques Dias Milao-Caceres, thus beginning of the Henriques family as we know it today. Those who adopted the surname include Henriques Dias Milao-Caceres' son, Paulo (Moses) de Milao, his daughter Beatriz (married to Alvaro Dinis Yachia Eanes), and his grandson, Reuben Eanes (son of Beatriz).
                                                                                   

There were formerly communities in Spanish Town, Falmouth, and Montego Bay, but the only one remaining is that of Kingston where the majority of the island's 300 Jews lived in 1990, and 200 today.  There is little choice for them but to intermarry today.  They have been one of the world's oldest Jewish community, so they will either leave or assimilate.  The island is about 90% Black.  If someone says they had a white great grandfather, he most likely was Jewish.
                                                             

Richard "Dick" Bogle

I was interested in Jamaica when a Black friend of mine from high school, Richard Bogle,  told me about his family's history.  His ggrandfather, Richard Bogle,  had been born on the island to a native woman and a sea captain.  I had started to be very interested in genealogy and soon found a sea captain by the surname of Bogle.  In doing searches, I found many Jewish names.  I believe his ancestor left the island at age 12 and by that time, Blacks were freed, which was way before this happened in the United States.  England at that time was progressive.  His ancestor stowed away on a ship and reached Missouri, hopped on a famous wagon train and got out to California, panned for gold and struck it rich, opened a bank and loaned money.  Dick, my friend, became a policeman, then detective, and wound up as a TV news personality in our town which led to becoming an important member of the city council.  His family genealogy.  was so interesting that I wanted to see it made into a movie.

Resource: http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Jews-of-Jamaica.html?s=mm
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.timesofisrael.com/jamaican-jews-see-intermarriage-conversion-as-their-future/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henriques_family
http://www.heymannfamily.com/Heyman%20Family/Ancestors%20Web%20Pages/The%20Family%20de%20Milao.htm  on Henrique.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/02/dick_bogle_pioneering_african.html

Syria-Palaestina, How It Got the Name of Palestine

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                         

Herodotus, b: 484 BCE in
 Halicarnassus, Caria (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey

When people talked about "Palestine,"  what were they talking about?

From the time of Herodotus, Greeks had been calling the Jewish Homeland "Syria-Palaestina" or as we called it, Palestine from the Philistines, enemies of the Jewish people such as King Saul and King David.  "The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt was in 5th century BC E Ancient Greece, when Herodotus wrote of a "district of Syria, called Palaistinê" in The Histories, which included the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley In the treatise Meteorology . 
                                                                       

The Philistines had been a thorn in the side of the family of Abraham ever since the first period.  They came in waves.   They believed in multiple gods, and Dagon, seen in the form of statue, was the leading one. Others were Astarte and Baal.  The Canaanites of the land were using their gods as well.   Canaanite religion was polytheistic, and in some cases monolatristic. Dagon was also their god.  "

• Dagon, god of crop fertility and grain, father of Ba'al Hadad

1. Pre-patriarchal period and settled south of Beersheba in Gerar where they conflicted with Abraham and Isaac.   Could have been slightly different from the following Philistines that entered later.                                                              

Rameses II 

2. Second period:  They came from Crete (Greek island, probably the biblical Caphtor) after being repulsed from Egypt by Rameses II in 1194 BCE.  They seized the southern coastal area of Palestine where they founded 5 principalities of 1. Gaza, 2. Ascalon (Ashkelon) , 3, Ashdod, 4. Ekron, 5. Gath of which Achish was king, friend of David.  By nature, they were a fighting people.  They dominated parts of Judah in the period of the Judges.  King Saul at first won battles but was ultimately defeated.  King David ended their era of domination and overran Philistia. (Read Samuel I.)

Note: It was in the ancient Egyptian city of Raameses in the Nile Delta where Jacob and his family settled, told in Gen. 47:11, 27.  Their descendants were compelled to build storehouses for the Egyptian king.  Raameses was the point of departure for the Exodus.
                                                                         

Moses and Ten Commandments (5 things to do and 5 things not to do.)
 1-5: one G-d, no other G-ds, G-d name sacred, Shabbat-day of rest; honor parents
6-10: not to murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness,  nor covet anything.
Imagine what people were like before this list of 10 rules to follow.   

Note: Moses led the Exodus from Egypt at age 80 for 40 years, about from 1311 BCE to 1271 BCE and so entered Canaan in 1271 BCE, superceding the 2nd wave of Philistines by some 77 years by my math.  Philistines were not native Canaanites, but had been a Mediterranean people, thought to have originated from Asia Minor and Greek localities.

3. Third period: Persian and Greek Periods; foreign settlers from the Mediterranean islands, overran the Philistine districts.
                                                                                 

Herod, selected by the Romans to be King of Judea

4. Fourth Roman Period from 63 BCE. Roman invaded and took Syria.  " Herod the Great, Antipater's son, was designated "King of the Jews" by the Roman Senate in 40 BCE: "  So Roman soldiers were in the city of Jerusalem and thereabouts.  Judea had been overcome by Rome for a good 130 years before it fell to them in 70 CE.  That's at least 5 generations of Jews living under oppression.  They could only talk about their own state of Judea in their great great grandfather's days.  It would be like Jews in 1950 talking about their great great grandparents of 1820.  Note how time had changed between just 130 years!  From covered wagons to automobiles and planes for us in this time change, but for our biblical ancestors, not much could have changed except their thinking.

From 6 CE, Rome had become the administrators of Judea, Samaria and Idumea.  .

Judah's " revenue was of little importance to the Roman treasury, but it controlled the land and coastal sea routes to the bread basket Egypt and was a border province against the Parthian Empire because of the Jewish connections to Babylonia (since the Babylonian exile). The capital was at Caesarea (Maritima), not Jerusalem."
                                                                       

Roman Emperor Hadrian (117-138 CE) gave the name officially to the former land of Judah in 135 CE after fighting General Bar Kokhba for 3 years who had re-taken Jerusalem.  He did this out of anger to get even with the Jews.  He also renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina. This emperor decided to Hellenize the land and had outlawed circumcision amongst other things,  which brought on the rebellion of the Jewish General (Aluf) Bar Kokhba and the war from 132-135.  After winning against the Jews, he received the title of Imperator.  Judea was made a consular province called SYRIA-PALAESTINA.  .  The ruins of Jerusalem were re-built into a pagan city and a statue of Hadrian was erected on the site of THE HOLY OF HOLIES , the inner sanctum which was the most sacred place in the temple, meant only for Aaron and following Cohen  priests.
                                                                       

1920 Palestine

A state of Palestine?  Never.  At the time of the end of World War I in 1917, the Ottoman Empire, who fought against the allies with the Germans, were the losers, and thus lost all their land to the allies.  This was a WORLD-WIDE WAR, and the allies had already decided to give this land to the Jews who had been in meetings with them about it.  Most of the land had no value to anyone.  It was hot there, and either swampy, full of weeds, or a dry desert.  Not many people lived there.  There were Jews whose ancestors had never left after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  Then there were more recent Jews who had come mainly from Russia in the 1880s and on, who were building up the land and creating Tel Aviv.   There were Bedouins riding camels and horses, the Princes of the desert, who were mainly raiders of others, and only a few bedraggled landowners who had had a hard existence with the Ottoman Empire representatives who picked up tax money from them.
                                                             

Mehmed VI, last Sultan of Ottoman Empire
from 1918 to 1922

Who were Palestinians?  From the end of WWI to May 14, 1948 when Israel was announced as being born, both Jews and Arabs were Palestinians.  Jews had lost Judea and Arabs had lost nothing but the Ottoman Empire's holdings, and they were only subjects of the Ottoman Empire.  It was the Turks who were working for the Empire and had been for the past 400 years.  .

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines (religion).
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_(Roman_province)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Canaanite_religion#Pantheon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_VI
Update: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_name_%22Palestine%22#cite_note-FOOTNOTEJacobson1999-9
Read:  THE Settlers by MEYER LEVIN,  an epic novel following a family's return to the Jewish homeland-once Palestine, now Israel, always Eretz Yisroel.  Set in Palestine at the turn of the century to the Balfour Declaration, covers 1/4 of a century.  Turkish overlords, Jewish pioneers, Arabs.

ISIS Out of Mesopotamia In IRAQ And The World Bleeds

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Land of Shinar or Kasdim (Chaldees) - One of 7 Wonders of the World

Iraq was the major part of Mesopotamia.  Who has not heard of Babylon?  "Mesopotamia is a name for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, roughly corresponding to modern-day Iraq, Syria and Kuwait, including regions along the Turkish-Syrian and Iran–Iraq borders.  The tigris-Euphrates Rives is where the Jews were said to have come from that entered Ur, a city in Western Mesopotamia that became Iraq.  
                                                                         
Today Iraq is becoming  the major part of the bloodthirsty  Islamic State, so called ISIS or IS or in Arabic-Daesh.  It had been part of the 400 year old Turk's Ottoman Empire that died with World War I in 1917.
                                                                   

ISIS: Arab and Foreigners  killing Arabs of the Land

Right now a terrific battle is going on as IS slaughters and beheads anyone in their way.  The world leaders have stepped into this with the American Army having a base here that is an operational hub for the US led 66 nation coalition that is "combating" the Islamic State takeover in Iraq and Syria.  They have entered  with their medivac Blackhawk heliicopters along with Army Apache attack helicopters.  They also have as their base their intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft.  A variety of armed special operations aircraft from different military branches are here.
                                                                           

Assyria attacked Israel in 721 BCE and took away  10 Tribes
Babylonia attacked in 597 BCE, then 586 BCE and took away Israelites
There was Israel and Syria, but none of the other states then.  

Why can't a coalition of 66 countries take back one city from ISIS, which is Mosul which lies in northern Iraq?  And what happened to Israel which is erased from this map?  It is hugging the Mediterranean Sea on the West of Jordan.  Mosul has been  occupied by ISIS since June 10, 2014.  It is a city normally holding about 2 1/2 million people. This city, about 250 miles north of Baghdad, " is completely ruled by the Islamic State terror group headquartered in Al-Raqqah, Syria. The current government of Iraq stopped paying salaries soon after the city was overrun by militants  (that ISIL allegedly exploited by stealing a generous percentage)  which it had previously paid to city workers, including nurses and doctors. 

The USA and their coalition personnel coordinate airstrikes against IS to support their Kurdish peshmerga forces.  "Iraq's genocidal war against the Kurds began in the early 1960s and has continue to the present.  The Iraqis have used bombs, napalm and even poison gas against Iraqi Kurdish positions and towns in the struggle to suppress Kurdish nationalism." They've behaved like Saddam Hussein of Syria  towards his own people who went against him, an  Alawite, a slightly different shade of Islam. In 1975, Iraq conducted a relocation of the Kurdish population.  Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been forcibly removed from their rural villages, and Kurdish political and cultural institutions have been savagely suppressed.   Kurdish DNA is the closest to the Jewish people. "Where northern Iraq and Turkey are today, they shared a common ancestor.  This was the northern half of the Fertile Crescent during pre-historic times.  Professor Ariella Oppenheim and Dr. Marina Feirman, who carried out the research at the Hebrew University, said they were surprised to find a closer genetic connection between the Jews and the populations of the fertile crescent than between the Jews and their Arab neighbors.  Most likely, Kurds were descended from Israelites.  Kurdistan was actually the core of the old Assyrian Empire, the one that carried off the Ten Lost Tribes. 
                                                                         

Kurdish Israeli, Shemun Levi 

A note on the Kurds, who are doing most of the face to face fighting in Iraq, is that they originally had their own Kurdistan.  The land is now divided up in Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  The 1st Jewish settlement outside of Israel was in Kurdistan in the days of Ezra of the 5th century BCE.  Kurdish Jews spoke with an Aramaic dialect up to modern times.  It's close to the language used during the makings of the Babylonian Talmud.  Nestorian Christians use this language, also.  12,00 to 18,000 Jews lived in this land by the end of the 19th century.  After 1948, these Jews immigrated to Israel in or near Jerusalem.  Kurds trace their ancestry back 4,000 years and became Muslims but maintain their own language, traditions and tribal leaders.  They have over 15 million with about 3 million in Turkey, and more than 2.5 million in Iran and in Iraq and 500,000 in Syria.   180,000 Kurds have been slaughtered in an Iraqi government campaign against them in the late 1980s.  The Iraqi Defense Minister, Ali Hassan Majid was recorded describing how the Kurds would be dealt with:  "We have gassed them not once;  not twice, but until we get rid of them."

  By the end of April, the USA had conducted 9,073 airstrikes against IS in Iraq and Syria.  Almost all their military aircraft were launched from bases and Navy vessels outside of Iraq and Syria.  50,000 US military personnel are deployed throughout the Middle East, including Navy personnel at sea.  Yet IS seems to still hold onto Mosul.  If they can rid the city and state of ISIS, al Jazeera points out that then the real challenge is "finding a political settlement that allows the local Sunni inhabitants to address their legitimate political grievances with the central government in Baghdad." Religion is the problem between Sunni and Shi'a run government.  Evidently it's no easy task to rid the city of ISIS from afar.  "Mosul is Iraq's second-largest city, and urban warfare is no easy task as the recent operation to liberate Ramadi has shown.  Ramadi has a population of around 200,000 compared with Mosul's estimated population of 1.8 million (albeit many of them left the city for safer refuge).  Ramadi is still being cleared of booby traps and insurgents even though it was "liberated" months ago."                                       

Terah, from the Tigris and Euphrates River Country in the East,
Father of Abraham 

This land is part of the Crossroads of Civilization.  It was in the city of Ur that Abraham's father, Terah, came from the East and set up a shop making idols.  This is why Abraham left, to escape the environment of people believing in such things..

The Muslim Arabs conquered Babylonia in 637, five years after Mohammad had died.  The Jewish community who lived there helped the Arab conquerors in the hope that they would be better than the Sassanid (Persian Empire)  persecutions against them.  After the Arabs occupied the land, Jews had been expelled from Saudi Arabia because they wouldn't convert to Islam, so they moved  to Kufa (Kufa is a city in Iraq, about 170 kilometres south of Baghdad, and 10 kilometres northeast of Najaf. It is located on the banks of the Euphrates River) and settled there,"  a place they may have originated from originally.   Babylon and what was to become Iraq was the center of Jewish life.  Jews from all over the world went here to settle questions they had about Judasim.
                                                                             

King Feisal of Iraq-1921-1933.  

Ibn and Emir Hussein Feisal (May 20, 1883 or 85--September 8, 1933)was the  prince who had led the Arab uprising against Turkey from 1916 to 1918 and wanted to be compensated and rewarded for their part in the war effort.  He  became king of Iraq from August 23, 1921, apppointed by the Allies who won the 1st World War.  The Brits were holding a 30 year mandate over Palestine and the French had other parts of the Middle Eastern defunct Ottoman Empire they were cutting up.  Feisal was the eldest son of Hussein, sherif of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.  He was a prince who wanted to be a king so needed a country.  He was a leader and an educated man, a rarity in these parts, and was sympathetic to Zionism and the creation of a Jewish National Home.  He admired the Jews to the point of hoping his own Arab people could learn something from them and hoped the Jews would help him build his future kingdom.
                                                                                 

Weizmann and Feisal 

 He met Dr. Chaim Weizmann in 1918 in Transjordan and again in Paris in 1919 where they agreed on mutual aid that was conditional on the implementation of British promises. to the Arabs. Feisal was first made King of Syria.  That didn't work out, so they made him King of Iraq.

Feisal was later expelled from Syria by the French in 1920 and the influence of the Palestinian Arab leaders changed his attitude so that his ideas about Zionism turned hostile in the end.
                                                                         

Husseini and Hitler, quite a pair

Iraq gained independence in 1932 so turned around and persecuted the Jews.  Hundreds of Baghdad Jews were killed and wounded in a pogrom during the revolt of Rashid Ali in 1941, a time reflecting Haj Amin al-Husseini's visit to German Nazis to get help in ridding the world of Jews.

Today, Israel supports the Kurds in their struggle for independence and life.  How do the Iraqis feel?  "
                                                                             

Muqtadā al-Ṣadr is an Iraqi Shia cleric, politician and militia leader. He is the leader of a political party, the Sadrist Movement and the leader of Saraya al-Salam, a Shiite militia.

Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr of Iraq describes American Sec. of State, John Kerry as a terrorist, asserts that Israel is spoiled son of America.  

Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
America's Quiet War in Iraq by Nolan Peterson (National Interest).
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/05/liberating-mosul-solve-iraq-problems-160515065236609.html
http://www.iraqinews.com/baghdad-politics/sadr-describes-kerry-terrorist-asserts-israel-spoiled-son-america/
Myths and Facts by Mitchell G. Bard, Joel Himelfarb
http://www.haaretz.com/study-finds-close-genetic-connection-between-jews-kurds-1.75273
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/11/07/the-assyrians-kurds-and-the-jews/