| Brief
History of the Israeli and Palestinian Conflict
For some readers, particularly Jewish, traditionally, and even the metaphysically
inclined, the words of the Master D.K. have often been accused as anti-semitic.
This is a reactionary attitude, as it can be seen by those students
who care to read his comments about races and nations in general, that
he treats all with equanimity, delivering praise and criticism where
due. “The
personality ray, the material form ray of the Jewish people, is the
third ray. Their egoic [soul] ray is the first. Their astrological sign
is Capricorn [Sun], with Virgo rising. Mercury and Virgo play a prominent
part in their destiny.” (EP1-394) Hence
the Jewish Race is conditioned at a soul level by the first ray of Will
or Power: “Their history [Jews] is symbolic of the history of all aggressors, rationalising themselves into the belief that they are carrying out divine purpose, wresting away from people their property in a spirit of self-defense and finding some reason, adequate to them, to excuse the iniquity of their action. Palestine was taken by the Jews because it was "a land flowing with milk and honey," and the claim was made that the act was undertaken in obedience to divine command.” (EH263-4. Author’s italics) Of
course there were probably many massacres by both sides in those days.
Other acts of infamy were in the day of Joshua, “Son of Nun”, (who some
students of the Ageless Wisdom will recognise in another guise): “And
it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants
of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and
when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were
consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with
the edge of the sword. And so it was, that all that fell that day, both
of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.
For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear,
until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.” (Joshua 8:23-26) ”Joshua
returned to the camp at Gilgal, master of half of Palestine. He defeated
the Canaanites under Jabin king of Hazor. In six years, six tribes,
with thirty-one petty chiefs, were conquered.” (Smiths Bible Dictionary)
Israel/Zionists
The
Zionist movement was based in creating a Jewish state in Palestine.
It was an outgrowth of hundreds of years of nationalist sentiments about
returning to the ancient homeland of the Jews. Around
the 16th and 17th centuries some Jewish leaders
urged return to the homeland, yet in the 18th century the
Jewish Haskala urged assimilation into European culture. Eventually,
because of a rising anti-semitism
in Europe and Russia, Haskala died out. Paradoxically, Haskala’s values
on the study of Jewish history and Hebrew language merged with Zionism,
a movement at the opposite end of the spectrum. At
the end of the 19th century, assimilation was regarded by
some Zionists as most desirable, but because of anti-semitism, impossible
to achieve. Hence Jews could only lead normal lives if they all lived in one
land, and in 1882 the first Zionist settlement was established in Palestine. There
followed the convening in 1897 of the first Zionist Congress at Basel,
Switzerland, whose stated intention was “to create for the Jewish people
a home in Palestine secured by public law."
Some of the most powerful Zionists were based in Austria and
Germany, the base of the future persecutors of the Jews en masse. Request
for Palestinian autonomy was eventually found in Great Britain, who
in 1903 offered them a large tract of land in Uganda which was refused
by the Zionists. Gradually,
as a result of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and associated Jewish
represssion, many Russian Jews emigrated as pioneers to Palestine. The
population of emigrants built up gradually, until by 1914 there were
90,000 Jews in Palestine. Then
Zionist leadership passed to two Russian Jew leaders living in England,
who in 1917 were instrumental in securing the Balfour Declaration from
Great Britain. It promised support for a Jewish state in Palestine
and made it into Britain's League of Nations mandate over Palestine
in 1922. Zionists
continued to build up Jewish settlements in Palestine, consolidating
Jewish cultural life, and by 1925 the Jewish population in Palestine
was around 108,000. By 1933 it had risen to about 238,000, about one
fifth of the Palestine population. With the rise of the Nazis in the
1930’s, Jewish immigration increased ever more so, right up into the
early 40’s, the start of the Holocaust in Europe. The
Arabs The
Arabs never wanted a Jewish state and vehemently opposed it from the
start. They all voted against partition and wanted Palestine to achieve
independence and autonomy as an Arab state. There
were several Arab revolts in 1929 and 1936-39. When the State of Israel
was declared on May 14 1948, several Arab states attacked Israel, but
were beaten in a few months. Israel ended up with 50% more land than
it had been allocated by the UN, and the 800,000 Arabs who were driven
out by the Israelis became known as Palestinians. As a result, Israel
has been surrounded by hostile Arab nations and terrorist groups ever
since. Britain, the United States and the United Nations bear
much of the responsibility for the formation of Israel just after World
War II. Britain
“After
World War I, Palestine was administered by Great Britain under a mandate
of the League of Nations; the mandate incorporated the Balfour Declaration
of 1917, which obligated the British government to establish a national
home for the Jewish people in Palestine (west of the Jordan River).
Britain governed Palestine until 1948; its administration, however,
satisfied neither the majority Arabs nor a growing population of Jewish
immigrants. Weakened
by World War II and eager to decrease its military expenditures, Britain
referred the Palestine question to the United Nations. On Nov. 29, 1947,
the UN General Assembly adopted a recommendation for the establishment
of two separate Arab and Jewish states in Palestine. Soon after, civil
war broke out in Palestine between Arabs and Jews. On May 14, 1948,
shortly after the last British officials had left the region, the State
of Israel was proclaimed.” (Britannica) Because
the main goal of British policy (post WW2) was to secure strategic interests,
cooperation of Arab states was considered essential, hence Britain opposed
Jewish immigration and the foundation of an independent Jewish state
in Palestine. There was also a lot of anti-semitism in Britain, which
influenced government decisions, and the same situation existed in the
USA at the time. Exhaustion
from its WWII victory was the most likely reason that Great Britain
was unwilling to implement a policy that was not acceptable to both
sides and its refusal to share the administration of Palestine during
the transitional period. Hence Britain referred the question to the
U.N., and set May 15, 1948, as the date for ending its mandate. The
U.S. basically supported the British, however President Truman was determined
that Jews dislocated by the war were allowed to enter Palestine. In
1948 the British mandate (of 1917) collapsed, no doubt under extreme
pressure from American Zionists. In
1945, through Foreign Secretary Bevin, the Anglo-American Committee
of Inquiry recommended that Jewish immigration continue at a monthly
rate above previous recommendations. At the same time thousands of unauthorised
refugee immigrants gained entry, much with the assistance of the terrorist
underground forces of the Zionists – the Irgun. Their actions culminated
in 1945 with the blowing up of the King David Hotel in which 91 lives
were lost, many of them British. Of
course there was an urgency and a need for security without persecution,
that pushed the Jewish immigration, fuelled by the recent Holocaust
in Europe. Although
America favoured emigration into Palestine of the Jews, she did not
want to receive any more Jews to her shores at the time of the suggested
Palestine partition. There was also much anti-semitic sentiment in USA,
as in Britain after WW2, despite large scale sympathy for the Holocaust
victims. This seems to be a major factor which could have turned attitudes
of other nations into also receiving Jewish emigrants, and therefore
bypassing the need for a Jewish state. A
UN Special Committee on Palestine recommended the partition of the country
into an Arab and a Jewish state, and a two-thirds majority was adopted
by the UN General Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947. The decision came about
because of partition agreement between super powers United States and
the Soviet Union, but also because of pressure on some small countries
by Zionist sympathizers in the United States. The
United Nations was a young organisation at the time and made some fundamental
mistakes of admitting totalitarian regimes such as Russia. “Today
the Jewish people are engineering trouble, and it is interesting to
note that the main contention … today of the Jews, is territory, thus
evidencing a most distorted sense of values…They were also, during the
years immediately following the war, under the control of a glamour
imposed by the Zionist Dictators, who were attempting (somewhat unsuccessfully)
to be to the Jewish people what Stalin and his group, and Hitler and
his gang, have been to their people.
They
worked through the same methods—terrorising, withholding information,
browbeating their opponents, making false claims and bribing and corrupting.
They were and are a minority, but a powerful minority because
of their great wealth and their being in positions of power. They
are claiming a land to which they have no possible right and which the
Jews have ignored for two thousand years.
Their attitude is perhaps the culminating aggressive action of
the age and marks a climaxing point; it has produced a serious world
tension, but out of this good may come and a "point of emergence
for mankind" be reached. The issue of aggression can be more clearly
seen because of their activities. Very
few lands today are in the possession of their original inhabitants,
and if restoration is made to all original inhabitants (which is not
possible) an impossible situation would be brought about just as legitimate
as the Zionist position. If the Zionist claims are to be considered
(and they have been) they in their turn should realise that (if The
Old Testament is to be believed) they originally took the land of Palestine
away from its original owners nearly three thousand years ago, at the
point of the sword and through an unprovoked aggression. I
have enlarged thus upon the Jewish conflict because it is the symbol
of all past conflicts in human history, based upon universal selfishness
and the greed of undeveloped humanity, and because the crucial test
of the nations and of the United Nations Assembly is to be found in
the decisions which they made and may make concerning Palestine. The
test, as far as the nations are concerned, lies in their willingness
to give refuge to the Jews, and such a refuge would have been offered
if the partitioning of Palestine had been refused.
The unwillingness of the nations to admit the Jews (though many
have willingly offered), and particularly the refusal of the United
States to admit them, is separative, wrong and based upon political
expediency. The test, as far
as the United Nations is concerned, was whether they would endorse partition,
and thus perpetuate the spirit of aggression and territorial greed,
against which the Forces of Light were arrayed in the last war. The
United Nations has already made a major mistake by their original admittance
of Russia—a totalitarian power, as was Germany—to their councils. Now they have made another. In
the first mistake they precipitated into the United Nations the element
of conflict and that spirit of "fanatical imposition" which
is distinctive of the totalitarian ideology; in this second case, through
the endorsement of partition, they perpetuate the ancient technique
of taking what is wanted (with force of arms, if necessary) from the
rightful owners. It
was a test for the United States, for it is the American Jews who have
created the situation, with relatively little help or endorsement from
the Jews of other nations. The United States, urged by expediency, by
the financial weight of the Zionists, and by the strategic position
of Palestine, have thrown the weight of their influence into the conflict
on the side of aggression and of territorial theft.
They could have worked for the Principle of Harmony and permitted
time and the non-separativeness of the nations to adjust and solve the
Jewish problem. This
conflict which the Zionists have precipitated is basic and useful. It constitutes a test case, being based upon physical plane aggression,
being fought with the most violent emotional disturbance and being founded
upon completely illogical premises.
The Jew has ever been (could he but usefully remember it) the
symbol of humanity—evolving, seeking, restless, materialistic, separative
and greedy. He is the symbol
of the mass consciousness, presenting this consciousness in an exaggerated
form; he is ever seeking and searching a home and is the true Prodigal
Son of The New Testament. Curiously
enough, the Jews have never been a fighting race since the time of the
sorry story of the conquest of the early tribes in Palestine; they have
been persecuted and repudiated down the centuries, but have retaliated
simply by moving on—the wandering Jew seeking a home, wandering humanity,
saying always, "I must arise and go to my Father."
The
motive given to the Prodigal Son in the Gospel story is a strictly material
one, and we have here an outstanding instance of the prophetic knowledge
of the Christ.” (RI634-6) |