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HISTORY

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June 5, 1944 Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a speech to U.S. soldiers, the day before the invasion of Normandy.

By on June 4th, 2020

Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force:

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.

In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations1 have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory.

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory.

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

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The Abolitionist anti-Slavery Movement and the Legacy of Moses (Yoram Ettinger’s new video)

By on June 4th, 2020

The Abolitionist anti-Slavery Movement and the Legacy of Moses
4th brand new video in a series of 9 (Facebook, YouTube)
 
“1620-2020: The 400th Anniversary of the Unique US-Israel Kinship”

*”Go Down Moses… tell old Pharaoh to let my people go” are the lyrics of the anti-slavery anthem of black slaves, quoting Biblical verses in the Book of Exodus.

*The legacy of Moses and the Biblical Exodus played a key role in the formation of the Abolitionist anti-slavery movement.
 
*Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and her husband were dedicated students of the Hebrew language.

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80 Years Ago, The Miracle At Dunkirk Gave Hope To The Free World By Joshua Lawson ****

By on June 4th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/04/80-years-ago-miracle-dunkirk-gave-hope-free-world/

In the dark days of WWII, heroic sacrifice, the leadership of Winston Churchill, and good fortune ensured the survival of the Allied resistance to Hitler.

Eighty years ago, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced the successful completion of the largest amphibious military evacuation of all time. Between May 26 and June 4, 1940, more than 338,000 Belgian, British, and French troops fled from Dunkirk, France across the stormy seas of the English Channel to safety, narrowly escaping annihilation at the hand of the Nazis.

Call it chance, destiny, luck, or Providence, the “miracle of the little ships” kept hope alive for the fledging Allied resistance to Adolf Hitler. But it was no sure thing.

At the start of “Operation Dynamo”—the codename for the Dunkirk evacuations—Churchill had been Prime Minister for a mere 16 days. Few Britons wanted the job. Prominent men like Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax were ready to negotiate peace with Hitler.

Yet Churchill never wavered. He assumed the mantle of the British Empire’s protector as if it were made for him. As he went to bed at 3 a.m. on May 11, Churchill later recalled, “I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”

‘Be Ye Men of Valour’

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Today in History: Sword of Islam Conquers Ancient Christian Capital By Raymond Ibrahim

By on May 29th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/today_in_history_sword_of_islam_conquers_ancient_christian_capital.html

Today in history, on May 29, 1453, the sword of Islam conquered Constantinople.  Of all Islam’s conquests of Christian territory, this was by far the most symbolically significant.  Not only was Constantinople a living and direct extension of the old Roman Empire and contemporary capital of the Christian Roman Empire (or Byzantium), but its cyclopean walls had prevented Islam from entering Europe through its eastern doorway for the previous seven centuries, beginning with the First Arab Siege of Constantinople (674–678).  Indeed, as Byzantine historian John Julius Norwich puts it, “[h]ad the Saracens captured Constantinople in the seventh century rather than the fifteenth, all Europe — and America — might be Muslim today.”

When Muslim forces failed again in the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople (717–718), conquering the ancient Christian capital became something of an obsession for a succession of caliphates and sultanates.  However, it was only with the rise of the Ottoman sultanate — so named after its eponymous Turkic founder, Osman (b. 1258) — that conquering the city, which was arguably better fortified than any other in the world, became a possibility, not least thanks to the concomitant spread of gunpowder and cannons from China to Eurasia.  By 1400, his descendants had managed to invade and conquer a significant portion of the southern Balkans — thereby isolating and essentially turning Constantinople into a Christian island in an Islamic sea.

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 Shavou’ot (Pentecost) guide for the perplexed, 2020 Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on May 26th, 2020

1. Impact on the formation of the US

The holiday of Shavou’ot (Pentecost) commemorates the legacy of Moses – the Exodus, the Ten Commandments and the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) -which had a significant impact on the key values and achievements of the Early Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers: the US Revolution, Federalist Papers, US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, etc. 

2. The Liberty Bell  

Shavou’ot is the holiday of liberty/Exodus, as highlighted by the Biblical concept of Jubilee – the cornerstone of Biblical liberty – which is inscribed on the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim liberty upon the earth and unto all the inhabitants thereof (Leviticus 25:10).” The Liberty Bell was installed in Philadelphia in 1752, 50 years following William Penn’s Charter of Privileges, inspiring the 50 States in the union. The Biblical Jubilee is commemorated every 50 years, releasing slaves and returning land property to the original proprietors. Shavou’ot is celebrated 50 days following Passover, and Pentecost – a derivative of the Greek word for 50 – is celebrated 50 days following Easter.  According to Judaism, there are 50 gates of wisdom, studied during the 50 days between Passover and Shavou’ot.

3. The Scroll of Ruth. Honor thy mother in-law…

Shavou’ot spotlights the Scroll of Ruth, the first of the five Biblical scrolls, which are studied during five Jewish holidays: Ruth (Shavou’ot), Song of Songs (Passover), Ecclesiastes (Sukkot/Tabernacles), Book of Lamentations (the Ninth day of Av), Esther (Purim). Ruth was a Moabite Princess, the great grandmother of King David, the son of Jesse and the grandson of Ovad, who was the son of Ruth.

Ruth was a role model of loyalty to her Jewish mother in-law (“Your people are my people and your G-d is my G-d”), humility, gratitude, responsibility, reliability, respect of the fellow human beings, faith and optimism. According to the Bible, Ruth, the daughter-in-law, was better than seven sons. Ruth stuck by her mother-in-law, Naomi, during Naomi’s roughest time, when the latter lost her husband, Elimelech (a President of the Tribe of Judah), two sons and property. Just like Job, Naomi bounced back from the lowest ebb of ordeal to fulfilled hope.  Job and Naomi went through family, economic and social calamities, lost their spouses, children and financial assets; both retained confidence in G-d and reconstructed their families; both became symbols of conviction over convenience, faith-driven patience and endurance.

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The Germs That Transformed History For eons, epidemics have caused mass deaths and social upheaval, with far-reaching effects on politics, trade, migration, colonization and conquest By Jared Diamond

By on May 23rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-germs-that-transformed-history-11590159271?mod=hp_featst_pos2

Mr. Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of “Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis,” “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” and “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies,” for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.

The Covid-19 pandemic is an almost unique phenomenon in world history. The only precedent for its rapid spread to every continent, killing people everywhere and devastating both local economies and world trade, was the flu pandemic of 1918-19.

In both cases, the germs behind the pandemic weren’t especially lethal. Covid-19 and the flu both fall within the normal range of mild infectious diseases. Compared with smallpox and Ebola, they kill only a small percentage of their victims, and their person-to-person transmissibility isn’t unusual. What sets them apart—what has made them world-wide pandemics—is modern transportation: fast steamships for the flu, and now jet airplanes for Covid-19.

Of course, there have been a great many “mere” epidemics in human history, diseases that have spread more slowly over large areas, but their effects have been profound. Over the course of recorded history and now in the archaeological record, examples abound of germs producing high death tolls and social and political upheaval, with far-reaching effects on local economies, trade, migration, colonization and conquest.

Will Covid-19 transform our own era, too? Are we entering an age of pandemics? It is far too early to say, but the long history of germs as agents of historical change can provide needed perspective—and perhaps a window into how Covid-19 and its likely successors may shape our destiny, for good and ill.

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Harry S. Truman and Israel, Legacy of a Great Statesman An act of fortitude that will always be warmly remembered by Israelis and Jews worldwide. Ari Lieberman

By on May 14th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/harry-s-truman-and-israel-legacy-great-statesman-ari-lieberman/

May 14, 1948 will mark the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the modern State of Israel. Israel’s War of Independence was arguably its most difficult. Six-thousand citizens out of 600,000 were killed. More than 2,000 of these were civilians.

But the war did not begin on May 14. It actually began on November 30, 1947 one day following a United Nations General Assembly vote in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The following day, Arab brigands attacked two civilian Egged buses on route from Hadera and Netanya to Jerusalem, killing six and injuring several more. That incident marked the beginning of the conflict.

In the first four months of conflict, the outlook for the Jews was bleak. Three successive Arab terrorist bomb attacks targeting high profile Jewish targets in Jerusalem inflicted mass casualties and sapped morale. Two of those attacks – the bombing of the Palestine Post newspaper offices and the Ben Yehuda Street bombing – were facilitated by British soldiers. The topography also favored the Arabs, who held much of the high ground and specialized in ambushing Jewish vehicles heading to isolated outposts.

Making matters worse for the Jews were the British occupation authorities, who openly sided with the Arabs. Right up until the end of their mandate, the British zealously enforced immigration quotas against the Jews but turned a blind eye toward organized Arab infiltration. In addition, they attempted to prevent the Jews from acquiring arms while the Arabs were free to purchase weapons on the open market. In one ignominious incident, four Jewish Haganah operatives were disarmed by British soldiers and released into the hands of an Arab mob where they were promptly lynched.

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Unsung Jewish heroes who helped UK to victory in Battle of Britain finally heard As the battle’s 80th anniversary approaches, London’s Royal Air Force museum seeks to capture the stories of Jews who risked their lives to help repel the massive Nazi invasion By Robert Philpot

By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.timesofisrael.com/unsung-jewish-heroes-who-helped-uk-to-victory-in-

 When British novelist Alan Fenton told a business acquaintance that his two much older brothers had died in World War II, he encountered a surprised response.

After what Fenton recalled as an “embarrassed pause,” his lunchtime companion said: “I didn’t think Jews fought in the war.”

As Fenton later wrote, “Those words were like a blow to the stomach.”

The twins, Basil and Gerald Felsenstein (as the family were then called), volunteered to join the Royal Air Force as aircrew at the war’s outbreak in September 1939. Their horrified father tried to talk them out of it and persuade them to opt for potentially less dangerous options, such as joining the army or RAF ground crew. But the teenagers were adamant and, as Jews, determined to get into the thick of the fight to defeat the Nazis as soon as they could.

Neither young man survived the war. Gerald — whose role was to lie flat in Halifax bombers and direct the pilot until its explosive cargo was released on enemy targets — died in a raid over Germany in March 1943. Just under two years later, Basil died in a patrol over Japanese-occupied Burma.

Basil Felsenstein. (Courtesy RAF Museum)

“They fought for a cause they believed passionately in. And they died for it. I am enormously proud of them,” said Fenton, who was born seven years after Basil’s death.

Their stories are among those being collected by London’s RAF Museum as part of its new Jewish “Hidden Heroes” project. As the UK prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of the “Battle of Britain” this summer — when the country’s air force successfully repelled a planned German invasion — the program aims to raise awareness about the role played by Jewish personnel in the RAF during WWII.

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The Pogrom That Started the Palestinian Arab-Israeli Conflict The opening shot – exactly one hundred years ago in 1920.

By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/pogrom-started-palestinian-arab-israeli-conflict-joseph-puder/

Exactly one hundred years ago, in April, 1920, marked the opening shot of the Arab Israeli conflict. It was a pogrom against Jews in Jerusalem and its surrounding areas. The pogrom, also called by some the Nebi Musa riots, took place between Sunday, April 4, and Wednesday, April 7, 1920. It cost the lives of five Jews, and 200 others were injured. The violence was instigated by the British occupation administration and led by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who later became Hitler’s ally. The Jaffa riots a year later (May 1-7, 1921) killed 47Jews and wounded 146. Much like these days, the Arab-Palestinian terrorists used knifes to kill vulnerable Jews, such as women, children, and the elderly. A British investigative commission called the pogrom “cowardly, and treacherous.” 

The pogrom was not a mere criminal affair, it was motivated by religious and nationalist sentiments that denied Jewish rights to sovereignty anywhere in the region. The Arab (the term Palestinians didn’t exist at the time, and Jews were actually called Palestinians) attackers carried such slogans as “Death to the Jews”(Atbach al-Yahud), “Palestine is our land, and the Jews are our dogs.” The Jaffa riot was proceeded by the August, 1929 riot, which wiped out the ancient Jewish community in Hebron, and killed 133 Jews. Known as the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, it was led once again by Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. This time the death toll was much greater, estimated by historian Benny Morris to be about 300 Jewish dead.

The pogrom of April 1920 occurred at a confluence of several historical and political events. In Syria, the Hashemite Emir Feisal, son of Hussein the Sharif of Mecca, was ensconced in Damascus, awaiting with his Arab tribesmen army for the fulfillment of British promises. Under the Mc Mahon-Hussein Correspondence, an Arab state in the Levant, including the native Arabia, was promised by the British to Hussein. At the same time, Britain and France, in 1916, concluded the Sykes-Picot Agreement which divided the former Ottoman Empire between them. The British government had also come out with the Balfour (at the time British Foreign secretary) Declaration in 1917, that promised a National Home for the Jewish people in their ancestral home – Palestine. The Balfour Declaration promises were confirmed at the San Remo conference in April, 1920. 

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Blitzkrieg Lessons for 2020 By Taylor Dinerman

By on May 10th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-pandemic-blitzkrieg-lessons-for-2020/

The problem is greater than just a few moments of panic.

  E ighty years ago, on May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill took over as Britain’s prime minister and Hitler launched his attack on Holland, Belgium, and France. The Blitzkrieg, as it became known, was a spectacular military success: In less than six weeks Nazi Germany defeated the Allied armies and occupied the Low Countries and a big part of France while at the same time kicking the British off the Continent.

How the Germans did it has been the subject of numerous books. But one thing that emerges is that, both at the time and later, the Allies, and the then-neutral Americans, failed to understand what really happened. A set of myths developed, many of which were believed and propagated by various military experts and intelligence services.

Most historians put the critical turning point on the morning of May 15, when in a moment of panic the French prime minister Paul Reynaud told Churchill, “We have been defeated.” The panic was based on mostly distorted and inaccurate information from the French army’s high command and from the intelligence services. The offensive was expected, but the location was not, with the attack coming about a hundred miles south of where the allies thought the main thrust would take place. The army’s command structure was unable to adapt quickly enough to the new situation, and this in turn created panic at the highest levels of government.

Today, with the Wuhan coronavirus presenting a completely unexpected challenge to governments all over the world, panic, or something like it, seems to be gripping leaders at all levels. In Michigan and Maine the governors have obviously tried to hide their panic behind masks of authoritarian bluster. In New York, Andrew Cuomo had a very public ventilator-shortage breakdown, though he recovered. The media naturally stuck the tape of his panic down the memory hole.

The problem is greater than just a few moments of panic. It involves the sad fact that some people who’ve been credentialed as experts are incompetent time-servers, men and women who fit the requirements of leading big organizations but lack the imagination and daring to deal with the unexpected. In war it is all too often the case that peacetime generals are just not up to the job. In the current time of plague, few of the public-health experts who are attached to what one might call “top-down” solutions have covered themselves in glory. Political leaders should have learned to be skeptical.

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