A story before Israel became a state To be edited 17/5/19 again 5/9/19
Gamiel Cohen =Yussef born in Damascus 25 in 1948 Isaac Shoshan =Abdul Karim born in Aleppo 23 in 1948 Havakuk Cohen= Ibrahim born born Yemen 23in 1948 Yakuba Cohen= Jamil born in Jerusalem 23in 1948 1947 November29th UN Partition plan and start of Civil War. 1948 May 14th Israel War of Independence starts Only Isaac Shoshan was alive at 93 to give the author an interview. He arrived as a penniless teenager and was selling peppers at the shuk. We see what was a group of amateurs on a small scale that was the embryo of what later became one of the worlds most formidable intelligence organizations. The Palmach's Arab section the "Black Section" called Dawn which came from the word shachor to become shachar. Jewish leaders had little idea what Arabs were thinking. They would go to Mosques and pray and hear if the preaching was political. In the 1940 9 out of every Jews in Palestine came from Europe. The whole story is from Jan 1948 till August 1949 in Haifa and Beirut. In Haifa then you heard Hebrew English different Arabic dialects as well as Greek Turkish Yiddish Ladino Russian. Now you could not be caught on the wrong sidle of the divide. This was a time and place were Jews were trying to lose their Russian , Polish and Arab identity and create something new. United Nations had no way to enforce the partition plan. The civil war was on amongst Jewish and Arab irregular the Invasion by Arab armies would follow in 4 months once the British had pulled out. Lebanon had Christian's with an affinity to France, Sunnis with an Syrian affinity. there were Greeks, Armenians and communists and Arab nationalists. In Jaffa and Lod 4 Jews were caught posing as Arab and spies- Iraqi or Yemenite. Around this time Holy Jihad detonated a stolen British army truck in downtown Jerusalem flattening building and killing nearly 60 people. The kibbutz was considered the elite of Zionism and the Palmach the elite of the kibbutz. Sa'man had grown up in middle class Bagdad and had a British colonial education, he became the teacher of the spies to follow the most famous spy he trained was Eli Cohen who was born in Egypt to Syrian parents caught in spring 1965. Most Arabic speaking Jews had to learn about Islam and that was Sa'mans job. The Arabic speaking kids would sing Arabic song around the camp fire and were considered unique entertainment by the Europeans but not quite socially part of them, but the Palmach saw their value. Arabs entered Jewish areas in British army uniforms. Germans dropped Arab agents into Palestine in 1944 as Arabic speaking Jews. Jewish immigrant vessels Vrisi sunk in the harbour in Genoa and Pan Crescent disabled in Venice. The Hannah Senesh was beached on the rocks on Christmas eve as it was assumed that British troops were too drunk to deal with this. In summer 1947 President Warfield became known as Exodus. There were Syrian workers in the Haifa port from impoverished Houran region who watched the Exodus crises. Native Arab families were outnumbered by immigrants Arabs from all over the Arab world. In Haifa the Arabs had a lot of guns at the Najada storerooms. In Haifa native Arabs were outnumbered by migrants from the Arab world. Wealthy Arabs were leaving Haifa to wait out in a safer place and the poor said "look at the rich and effendis why should I stay?" Fawzi el Qawugji whose of the Arab Liberation Army had a flag of a maged david with a dagger into that. . There were Arab collaborators willing to work for Jews for money against their political enemies. Sheikh Muhammad Nimr el Khatib (the tiger) a preacher who was organizing fighters. Gamliel heard this Nimr preaching incitement, he praised el Qassam as a hero. Operation Starling was set up to kill him when he returned from Beirut by car, when a Jewish spy in the Haifa phone exchange reported his return and route. They drove after him and shot his guards and wounded him but he got to Haifa survived but left for Lebanon a few months later. Also the Arab military commander in Haifa also fled. Everyone thought that Arab armies would soon arrive to defeat the Jews. These Jewish spies travelled to Lebanon an busses that were taking Palestinian refugees on the way north they saw a well armed Arab army heading south. Jews in Aleppo had from 637 AD taken on Arab culture mista arvim, Sephardim arrived after1492. An English visitor to Aleppo in 1756 described that Jews are held in greater contempt than Christians there. Arabs have a carefully observed etiquette. The teenagers from Arab countries who arrived and were taken in on youth aliya found themselves discriminated against as the other from Europe had a common experience and they worked to become Israeli. Finally when they were wanted for the secret service not to be Israeli's but to be Arabs. On the border in the Jerusalem area General Husseini of Jordon was seen by an Israeli who greeted him in Arabic, thinking he was a British soldier he answered in English and the Israeli shot him. Jewish British cooperation to attack Vichy controlled Lebanon, The Sea Lion carried 23 Jewish fighters but was lost. In the Haifa Arab sector an newly painted British Ambulance Truck that was to be a bomb in a Jewish area was blown up by them by driving a bomb car into this garage. The detonator was a ampule of acid that dropped onto a condom and it took 7 minutes for the acid to get through this onto the explosive. It was reported that Germans were working in Arab countries and the best trained Arab explosive skill came from them. A year later in Beirut he met an old Palestinian who said his sons were mechanics and were killed there. These spies if in Palestine could cross the zone to the Jewish section if in danger or put themselves at the mercy of the British but here the had nowhere to find refuge if caught. Kipling's Kim this was a book that many knew well. and Kim Philby were popular code names for spies and Philby father became a Moslem. Lebanese army units were serving with Yugoslavs volunteers. The mood in the Arab armies had changes and they were no longer confident of routing the Jews. When the army took over the Palmach the Arab sector became the Shin Mem18. The Arabs explained that they lost the war because of American money and Czech planes. Israel was a state in the Middle East but had been dreamed up to solve a European problem but half the population were now Jews of origin in Islamic countries. It was easier to get killed due to friction between sects than for being a spy in the Arab world. Gamiel /Yusuf sent up a dress shop and could support himself and just had to wait for information. He had come from the Jewish quarter of Damascus and crossed the border We saw that in the ME all minorities not only Jews were effected. Lebanese PM Sami Solh was so anti Israel that they asked permission to kill him this was rejected but was assassinated by Arabs in 1951 Spring 1949 Transjordan changed its name to Jordan. Abdulla was perceived as collaborating with Israel. Palestinian refugees moved into old Jewish neighbourhoods in Beirut and Damascus. Most of them however were in camps and they reported back that the refugees were offered pity but little help by the Lebanese. International organizations were giving help but it did not reach the most needy. Rumours had been spread of Jews slaughtering and raping. However enthusiasm for the war was flagging. Some Lebanese Christians saw Israel as a potential ally to Christians this part of Islamic world. The also reported that Beirut was undefended against air attacks. They reported what good were arriving at the port including some weapons. The Palmach achieves show they bought a camera and took pictures that they thought might be of military interest. At a later stage Yakuba arrived with enough money to buy an Oldsmobile and got a taxi licence this way they had an income, transport and could find out from fares what was happening. Aviso Grille was Hitler yacht to be used to land in England and when it was seen in Beirut they blew it up with Limpid bombs. In Beirut there was a small Jewish community but a clear line was kept between Jewish agents and Jewish residents. Yussef joined the neighbourhood fascist party and reported back on all he learned about it. A speech by Antoun Saadeh (a Christian )that he heard against the perfidy of the Jews. Thus Christians could be Arabs but not Jews. There was also a higher chance of getting killed for being in the wrong religious sect, than because you were a spy. When the Palmach was disbanded this became part of the IDF Arab section called Shi Mem18 Yussef signed up again with the IDF and spent years in Europe posing as an Arab embassy clerk and later a journalist. Initially the British didn't want to train Jewish soldiers as they thought it would set up a 5th column or a IRA type militia. When the Germans were winning in Al Alamein they set up the Palmach. They even had a German unit speaking living and marching like Nazis made up of German Jews in case of a German invasion. If Rommel invaded from Egypt the Carmel mountains were organized to be the last defense of the British and the Yishuv. A special operations school near Haifa was set up by the British to train Jews, Albanians, Yugoslavs and others. Patrick Lee Fermor who later kidnapped a German General in Crete was one of the trainers. In 1941 a mission was set up to sabotage an oil refinery under Vichy control in Lebanon. A open boat called the Sea Lion set was lost with all 23 including a British observer. 1948 14th May the HMS Euryalus sailed away with governor Alan Cunningham and the Union Jack came down for good. The book end discussing that Israel was set up to solve a problem of Jews in Europe but half the population that arrived were Jews of Arab countries. Today 70 years later the mainstream Israeli music is connected to Arabic, Persian and Ladino tunes. The fact that secularism never caught on in the Islamic world. Judaism has proved more resilient even with secularism. Westerners don't understand that there is no place for the weak in the Middle East and there is no place for any minority in the Arab world today One of todays problems is that the children of the Jews have been brought up speaking Hebrew and not Arabic.
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