APRIL 25TH, ANZAC, THE JEWISH LEGION AND A FRIEND OF MINE FROM DOWN UNDER WHO IS UP FRONT AND TOP
ON ANZAC MEMORIAL DAY, THE JEWISH LEGION AND MY FRIEND STEVE BARBER FROM DOWN UNDER WHO IS REALLY UP FRONT AND GREAT.
First: Steve’s note to me today:
Hello Ruth have a good one!
It’s our ANZAC Day Memorial here today (our Memorial Day), commemorating the birth of the ANZAC legend at Gallipoli in 1915 and don’t forget it was the Australian Light Horse Brigades which liberated Jerusalem and Gaza from the Turks in 1917 (and my Grandfather and his cousins were there to do it personally– and in fact took part in the historic Charge on Beersheeba, which opened up the way to Gaza – pretty famous as the last, and completely successful, charge of mounted cavalry against artillery in military history! But you already knew that, right?
I think you know, I’m a leader of the Foreign Policy, Defense and Counterterrorism Policy Committee here for the conservative opposition coalition parties in Australia, and I’ve been a long supporter of the old Howard-era Quadrilateral Alliance (USA, Australia, Japan, India) which our China-centric current Labor Party government put the knife into. I’ve long argued that Israel should be part of that alliance to round it out to 5, since that combination as a free-trade zone and military alliance would make a very effective counter to the Islamic world, Russia and China, not to mention, would comprise the most powerful block of democratic populations, manufacturing capability, natural resources and energy base, food production and internal trading markets in the world with that 5-fold alliance, we could together counter all the bad guys and leave them in the dust. For this reason, I want to push this as part of our Opposition foreign policy (including leaving the UN as a longer-term wish list item!), but to do that, we firstly need to regain government here (which I anticipate not this election cycle, but the next, due by 2013), and you guys need to jettison Obama/Pelosi/Reid.
But I think we’ll get there as part of the longer game – any help you can give on this would be appreciated.
Cheers
Steve
ANZAC and the Jewish Legion and April 25th
April 25th is Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand to honor the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who fought in Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I.
The ANZAC Mounted Division was a mounted “light horse†infantry division formed in Egypt in 1916 after Gallipoli and for the remainder of the War they served in the Middle East, in the Sinai, in Syria and in Palestine.
The Third Battle of Gaza was fought in 1917 in southern Palestine and when British General Edmund Allenby broke the Turkish resistance and Beersheba was captured by the Australian Light Horse Units.
The Australian 4th and the New South Wales 12th light Horse charged across 4Â miles of open terrain through machine gun fire. They took the Turks by surprise and were successful with few casualties.
Equally important to the war effort ANZAC liberated water reservoirs in Beersheba offering immediate relief for soldiers and their horses.
It was this victory, and others that followed, that ultimately led to the Allies winning the war against the Turks and played a significant role in the restoration of the Israel as a Jewish homeland.
And here is a footnote in history: The day that Beersheba was captured the British War Cabinet agreed to the terms of the Belfour Declaration.
In Beersheba’s Commonwealth War Cemetery lie 1250 soldiers, many of them Australian, who died in the Battle for Beersheba. They are of blessed memory as is Steve Barber’s grandfather.
April 25 is also a memorial day for Zionists and Jews. On April 25, On April 25, 1915, together with the British, French and ANZAC troops, the Jewish Legion landed on Gallipoli peninsula. Joseph Trumpeldor was Second-in-command and and Zeev Jabotinky served as an officer. The initial unit, known as the Zion Mule Corps, was formed in 1914-1915. They too, served with bravery and honor.
By August of 1917, after much British resistance, a Jewish regiment was announced and the 38th and 39th Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers was made up almost entirely by Jews from Great Britain, The United States, Russia and Canada and fought the Turks in Palestine.
The rest is, as they say, history.
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| Jabotinsky (L) and Trumpeldor in uniform. | |
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| Jabotinsky (L) and Trumpeldor in uniform. | |
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