BACKGROUND BUILDERS
In April of this year I came across an item from the Manchester “Guardian”
which was dated January 2, 2002. It was complied by Derek Brown, and his terse outline
of events in the mid-east have been a great deal of help to me in understanding some of
events taking place in the Holy Land.
The outline, or “time-line”, it may better be called, is something for which I have
been searching a long time. I felt I needed a straight-forward, simple “1-2-3” fashioned
survey concerning the actions of each side - Israeli and Palestinian.
It started earlier than I would have thought it might, with and trend which began
in 1881. I am still looking for such an outline concerning Palestinian history for essentially the
time period. I would, for instance, like to know precisely when, and under what
circumstances, Yasher Arafat came to power. He seems to have been around longer
than most people realize.
So it’s back to 1881 for us, if we wish to known more about events of today in the
Holy Land.
That date marks the beginning of what is called “the great Allya” or the mass
immigration of Jews from all over the world back to the Holy Land. The Jewish population
in the area at that time was very small and they were outnumbered by the Palestinians
deployed all over the larger area. There have been rather sudden immigration spurts
among the Jews intent on getting back to the homeland from time-to-time, but the “the
Allya” seems be the first observable change in that regard.
I think we, sometimes, think today that it all started with the formation of the Zionist
groups, but it is something which had been going on for many decades before that
back-to-the-homeland group came about. Many of the Jews “returned” came back as
a result of opposition and persecution in Russia and Romania, for instance. “Returned”
and “came” or “went back” seem to be incorrect terms when speaking of individuals
who had never actually been there before.
The “great Allya” was, it could be said, the first somewhat “organized” movement
noted. The Jews who returned in that initial movement were called “olim” which, literally
means “ascenders”. Along with those from Russia and Romania escaping pogroms of the
worst type, there were also good many Jews who are said to have migrated from Yemen,
but the reason for their departure is not made clear. Could that have been an Arabic
persecution which caused the Jews of Yeman to go “home?” The present situation is an
Arabic campaign against the Jews of Israel. We may learn something of value if we
examine the reasons for the Jews departure from Yemen in the 1800’s. Was it a voluntary
thing, or a forced movement? Now, in September of 2002, I’m still looking for the reason
the Jews left Yemen in such large numbers. “They just did” is not sufficient reason, in my
way of thinking. I would like to know the real cause of their departure from Yemen’s sandy
shores.
In 1881 the Jewish population in what is now known as the Holy Land seems to
have been about twenty-four thousand. That struck me as being very low, but in the next
twenty years there were more than forty-thousand Jewish immigrants. These figures, it
seems, are from records kept by the Ottoman Turks who possessed the area in three
subdivisions. Just how accurate they are may be questioned, of course. We haven’t
learned yet to take our own census without missing a few million people, so how can we
expect exact figures from the occupying Turks so long ago? Palestine was, at that time,
thought of as a part of Syria and it was not an entity unto itself.
So, as a starting point, let’s all hit the books and sites for information on “the great
Allya” and events from 1881. Let’s look this situation over together. We’ve gotta start
somewhere. Maybe we can make it “make sense”.
A.L.M. September 24, 2002 [c678wds]
