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The Nebi Musa Riots
Fringe History
Zvi Besser
6.4.22
The JTown Times
After a two-week hiatus due to my reserve duty and then followed by my catching COVID-19, we are finally back with a new edition to Fringe History!
Today’s column will be a somber one that fits the current atmosphere in Israel – today we speak about the Nebi Musa Riots.
This day in the year 1920 saw another violent week in Jerusalem, only a month after the Battle at Tel-Hai, disaster strikes again.
April 4, 1920 – It’s the second day of Passover, while simultaneously Muslims are celebrating Nebi Musa, a pilgrimage to the supposed grave of Moses (Musa) according to Muslims. Jews say he has no tomb. Two celebrations are occuring simultaneously.
Only this year the festivities would not pass in peace and quiet.
No one knows for certain what set off this deadly day, but there certainly were catalysts.
Muslim religious leaders delivered passionate speeches against Jews who were returning to Israel, stirring a frenzy in their worshippers. A frenzy so great that it caused them to run out and sack the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City. The riots lasted from April 4th until the 7th, killing 5 Jews and 4 Arabs; while hundreds more (mainly Jews) were wounded.
The bloody week saw a huge setback in Arab, Jewish, and British relations. After the riots a sense of distrust and malice was felt by all sides.
The Arabs and the Jews distrusted the British for essentially abandoning Jerusalem to anarchy. The Arabs and the Jews, given the bloodshed, were set back once again.
At the time, the British Military Governor of Jerusalem was Ronald Storrs, and the following is what he wrote about that fateful week.
“Enough that for the time all the carefully built relations of mutual understanding between British, Arabs and Jews seemed to flare away in an agony of fear and hatred.
“Our dispositions might perhaps have been better (though they had been approved by higher authority), but I have often wondered whether those who criticized us in Europe and America could have had the faintest conception of the steep, narrow and winding alleys within the Old City of Jerusalem, the series of steps up or down which no horse or car can ever pass, the deadly dark corners beyond which a whole family can be murdered out of sight or sound of a police post not a hundred yards away.
“What did they know of the nerves of Jerusalem, where in times of anxiety the sudden clatter on the stones of an empty petrol tin will produce a panic?
“The Police were but partially trained and wholly without tradition. There was no British Gendarmerie: we had not one single British Constable.” (Storrs, Ronald, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs, 1937, p. 348).
The outcome of these riots left profound change on geopolitics of that time. The British had decided that there should be a civilian administration ruling British Mandate Palestine and not a military one, while also promising that they would not let British Mandate Palestine follow suit to a Jewish majority or be submissive to Arab rule.
The Jews in response formed the Haganah, which not only played a major rule in the liberation of our homeland, but is as well the predecessor to the I.D.F.
Today we remember those who needlessly lost their lives in the violence of Nebi Musa 1920, and still over 100 years later our countrymen are being gunned down in the street for the same reasons.
Cheers, good tidings, and keep your head on a swivel; may we see peaceful days soon.
Exclusive: Israeli man alive after encounter with deadly porcupine
The creature can apparently hiss according to an eyewitness and even shoot needles.
Greg Tepper
25.3.22
Be’er Sheva – After a struggle of a few seconds Shmuel Tepper got the scoop. Shmuel is also Greg.
Got the scoop. It’s an old Newsies insider thing.
Greg was not mortally wounded as the Israeli porcupine did not attack him though it did hiss like a snake hiding inside of another snake’s mouth hissing from the tip of its tongue.
These deadly beasts can shoot their needles tipped with poison when threatened.
Or so the old desert fable goes.
MADA emergency services did not have to be called and rush Greg to hospital within minutes of being poisoned to ensure that the poison did not reach his eyes causing them to melt within their sockets and his tongue causing it to turn yellow and his vocal cords causing an inability to speak and only scream like Sam kinison.
The porcupines needles are tipped with the deadliest poisons on Earth.
Or so the legend goes.
Nearly extincting these ferocious rodents was one of the first things the Israeli pioneers had to do in order to turn the arid dry wasteland too hot and unforgiving for even Mad Max into a hospitable the welcoming environment that the Negev desert is today.
At least that’s the folklore told by local old timers throughout Be’er Sheva.
We actually think it was a porcupine and not a hedgehog. But it was dark out and Greg’s first thought and other thoughts and subsequent thoughts and final thoughts were to not get shot with poison needles.
He did not stop and interview the wild animal regarding its preferred species and kingdom.
By final thoughts we do not mean before death rather before removing the threatening predator, which is said to be carnivorous, from his property.
An interesting fact and perhaps one of the few in this article is that the property is actually not his. It is a rented property.
And all property in Israel is said to only be owned by the owner for a maximum of 99 years after which time property is returned to the state because in Israel you don’t mess with the state.
Or so they say.
The kissing porcupine, thought to be deadly, was scooped in a shovel then by The JTown Times Staffer before being dropped over a low fence.
The editorial staff italicized thought as Greg was acting out of fear. He never put too much thought into porcupines though they make a delicious snack in certain Latin American countries.
Or so he’s heard.
The porcupine’s life was not endangered and in any case they can bounce and roll from tall heights.
Or at least they are claimed to be able to buy a fringe internet page Greg found on a Google search and is now citing but cannot remember the name of or the web address.
Shmuel, who is also Greg, but in the way a person has several names rather than personalities, was concerned it might fire it’s needle arsenal at him so the operation was lickety split and successful.
By concerned we mean he was crying to God in fear.
If it is a hedgehog, which legend has it can burrow underground surviving the temperatures of Earth’s core which rumor has it exceed that of the sun, it, like the T 800, will be back.
And we hope you will be too, dear reader. This has been a Friday no news for Jews in Israel night update.
Because sometimes it’s not the news that tells you what happened that makes it news but us telling you what didn’t happen that makes it not.
Shabbat shalom.
Fist with Me, Comrade
JTown Times Opinion: Raise your clenched hand and fist with me. Or are you racist?
Greg Tepper
22.3.22
“If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight.” – Tommy Smith, 1968 Olympics
Do you know propogandist populist fist as a political statement originates with Marxist rebellion and the destruction of the capitalist system. It was both inspiring to action and threatening to those not of revolutionary thought.
But ofcourse every good revolutionary must threaten he who threatens the revolution.
Remember the Mexico City Olympics, 1968? Or at least learning about it? American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos won gold and bronze. They bowed heads during the anthem and raised fists in protest of the plight of the “Negro” in America.
It is important to be knowledgeable of terminology used and when it changed to understand social currents and era timelines.
The athletes also used symbolism in socks and zipper and adorning jewelry to remember black Americans, blue collar workers and those murdered in the Middle Passage.
“If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight,” Smith said.
Smith spoke of understanding during a time of great American social unrest and confusion as a generation raised in racism rebelled against those maintaining it, utilizing civil disobedience and non-violence as taught and endorsed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Australian Peter Norman also took part though not fist raising. He, like his fellow Olympians, wore a human rights badge. Rights were seen as human.
The three did not signal moral superiority by virtue nor scream racism at every hurdle as is so common in today’s climate.
Black Lives Matter uses fist symbolism differently and does use intimidation tactics. This isn’t surprising in understanding it’s ideological roots.
BLM cofounder Patrisse Cullors publicly announced that she and cofounder Alicia Garza are Marxists who were trained in ideological theories.
She told Dazed in a 2018 interview that she spent a year , “reading, anything from Marx, to Lenin, to Mao,” at the Labor Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles.
Wonderful human beings to emulate considering the tens of millions they murdered.
The LCSC states on it’s site that it works, in part and through developed intersectional targeting to “develop campaigns and demands that help build a revitalized world united front that can stop the rising tides of war, racism and imperialism, the ecological crisis and the growing police state.
Our work often challenges both major political parties and takes on the organized Right.”
It’s director is Eric Mann, a member of the 1970s revolutionary group Weather Underground.
The Weather Underground was a division of SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. First known as The Weathermen the group worked against perceived American imperialism. It was founded in 1969 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
In 1970, under the name “Weather Underground Organization” it declared war on the United States of america. It conducted violent attacks against interests of the United States government and was declared a terrorist organization by the FBI.
Their attacks included bombings of the United States capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department.
An admitted leftist organization even if with omission of such admittance, one must give credit to the organizations for its honesty and Cullors for hers as well in stating influences, ideology and policy goals.
Why is this important? A generation three removed from Vietnam may be ignorant of who Tommy Smith is, who the Black Panthers, a Marxist-Leninist Black power organization founded by Bobby seale and Huey P. Newton, was.
The Black Panthers had political goals ensuring protection of black Americans, which today would be considered equal protection under the law, from police brutality.
They utilized open carry patrols and had community outreach programs to feed children and assist the sick and were operational until the early 1980s. They also promoted class struggle in the true spirit of the dialectic.
The generations today who one can assume to be uneducated about struggles of the 1960s and ’70s could find in Black lives matter hope in ending what is called “systemic racism” through political activism.
The problem is the mantra often espoused on social media and through other voices that if you are not with black lives matter you are a racist.
The linguistics of the discussion today very much match those so well known by anyone who has read The Communist manifesto and studied history and ideology.
The problem in giving full backing and support to BLM is that one is also giving their support to an organization run by the far left whose ultimate goal is an overthrow not only of what they call “systemic racism” but also and ultimately of the free market system in the United States.
BLM has spoken about what it defines as a connection between capitalism and racism.
This though not openly stated can be safely assumed, though all assumptions including this one hold they’re very nature nature as assumptions, danger in being incorrect. But what is life without humor?
It is important to remember that the in raising the fist as BLM does one is not only supporting equal protection under the law and fighting racism but is tacitly supporting Marxist leninist anti-American revolutionary organizations.
When social pressure is exerted to affect people’s behavior in sharing imagery such as the Black fist or any other fist or any other imagery then the imagery itself becomes a weapon.
As we see Russia’s aggression in Ukraine we must remember that true communists, true marxist, those committed to ideology are using language and imagery to manipulate.
The next time someone in a position of power in such an organization speaks openly and publicly regarding race and the American system, take out a copy of the Communist manifesto and look back to what we learned in high school and college during and after the Cold War.
Substitute race with class. Substitute identity with proletariat. Substitute intersectional with brotherhood. Play The language game yourself because the educators did not teach us history or language.
And maybe next time someone asks you to display imagery and if you refuse asserts that your refusal means you are a racist, you can be unafraid in responding, “I am not you cowardly Marxist.”
Considering our history and what communists and marxists did to us throughout the 20th century and our beliefs in Freedom and equality of man we Jews must fight Marxism whenever it rears its head and wherever it wages battle.
American Decline and Rise of Empire
JTown Times Opinion: To understand the implications of Russia’s war on Ukraine we look to past geostrategic relationships and understand American weakness
21.3.22
Greg Tepper
Dialectic developments in the war in Ukraine, those unstoppable Communist forces of nature, present an interesting opportunity for nation states and other actors around the world who are traditionally anywhere from luke warm to hostile towards the US to realign with Moscow, the Kremlin.
A realigning of influential power with a Russian sphere of influence expanding from Syria to Iran to Ukraine may bring back the familiar for those of us who remember the Cold War.
Depending on the outcome of the war in Ukraine and the perceived continuing dissolution of American exceptionalism, voices such as Arab and Islamic policy makers, from terrorists to states like Libya, may after the last two decades turn to Russia as it begins to reconstitute old Soviet glory.
Lybia, for example, was left in chaos in the power vacuum created by the 2011 American military campaign ordered by President Brack Obama that resulted in the death of strong man Muammar Gaddafi.
The dictator had shut down his weapons of mass destruction and nuclear programs in 2003 following the American invasion of Iraq ordered by President George W. bush.
The killing of Gaddafi and the Obama administration’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the creator of modern day terror, in its ascent to power in Egypt through elections that brought President Mohamed Morsi to power following the ouster of dictator President Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising, had ripple affects in the region.
Regional perceptions of the US changed and real politic consequences for Waahington’s policy execution and influence in the region would favor a Russian return to influence in the region.
Arab leaders saw an about face in American policy and an unknown future in which the United States may not be the dependable actor it had become during the Cold War, when Arab forces were armed by the Soviets. Both Mubarak and Gadaffi had been US allies in the Global War on Terror.
As certain leftist actors and voices in the West and western media adoringly and, arguably with the “bigotry of soft expectations,” hailed the Arab spring as a moment that would bring the Arab world in alignment with democratic norms and electoral representation.
The instant understanding by talking heads of the complexities of the Middle East seemed to describe a step towards the realization of some kind of Van Jones dialectic caliphate of the brotherhood of man.
Arab leaders took action to quell the uprisings and redesign internal power structures.
From Amman to Riyad to an Egypt controlled in 2022 by President General Sissi who ousted Morsi, changes were taking place with an opinion heard commonly by those listening to this part of the world, that America was changing, an unreliable partner and in decline.
Add to this President Obama’s lack of support for the 2009 Green Protest movement and American influence was in decline.
Policy makers and experts from Israeli government officials to Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon said the motive was securing a nuclear arms deal with Iran.
As described in Solomon’s book “The Iran Wars” and as reported by Bloomberg in 2016, concerns for securing a nuclear arms deal with Iran motivated Obama’s policy.
As well, President Obama’s 2013″red line” for use of chemical weapons by Syrian President and dictator Bashar al-Assad. And the Middle East began to fear a day after tomorrow scenario in which the US was no longer the dependable force of nature it had been.
The deal, later achieved, was heavily criticized by Israel and Arab gulf states. President Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear deal in 2018 to praise from regional leaders from the Saudis to then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Green Movement failed in Iran and Assad used weapons of mass destruction to little American consequence for the dictator. The American “red line” was no line at all.
Assad remains in power after an eleven year civil war that began during the Arab Spring as a movement to oust the Syrian lader. He remains president largely thanks to Russian a military fighting his war.
The Russians are now staged in Syria and have transferred bombers and modern weaponry to it’s Khemiemim air base in the country, as reported by Tablet on March 2, 2022.
Now according to a March 16, 2022 report by the Times of Israel, up to 40,000 mercenaries and veterans of the 11-year-long war in Syria have signed up to fight in Ukraine at the behest of Moscow in exchange for pay. The fighters are said to include Syrian army veterans, militia fighters and Palestinians.
The Palestinian National Authority, the entity governing Palestinian areas of the West Bank, known as Judea and Samaria, but not Gaza which is governed by the illegal terrorist organization Hamas, had as of a March 9, 2022 Axiom report, not condemned the Russian war against Ukraine.
The Palestinians have historic ties with Russia dating back to the Soviet Union. Current PA President Mahmud Abbas, known as A u Mazen locally, received his doctorate from Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.
There he wrote a thesis called The Connection between the Nazis and the Zionist Movement, in which he claimed the two groups partnered in the execution of the Holocaust.
Abbas is said to have been a KGB agent codenamed “mole” or “krotov” while living in Damascus, Syria.
A 2016 BBC report details Palestinian officials as saying that Abbas was not a secret agent and that the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the terrorist organization that is the parent of the Palestinian National Authority created by the Oslo Accords under President Bill Clinton, was affiliated closely with the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
At least at that point in time, the PLO argued, he would not need to be a Soviet agent to “liaise with it.”
With American foreign influence in decline regional actors and others around the world may see advantage in aligning or realigning with Moscow.
Iran is apparently aided in it’s aspirations for regional influence as it threatens to destroy Israel by a new Biden administration initiative for yet another nuclear deal.
All this as Iran moves towards regaining regional hegemony and a spheres of influence worthy of it’s empirical history.
Russia has good clients in Syria and Iran in arms sales and as the West tries to economically isolate Russia, possibly pushing it towards a nationalized economy and Return to a Communist financial system, it will still have partners around the globe from the Middle East to Latin America to sell arms and energy.
A weak US calling Putin a war criminal and leading efforts to stop Russia that are seen as deemed to fail in other parts of the world means Asian nations possibly aligning with China.
Slumbering forces in Latin America possibly hoping for a successful Russian outcome and remembering the days of counter and anti-Americanism and seeing American society at war with itself may also move closer to the Kremlin.
The prolific adoration of Che Guevara among circles of anti-capitalist American university youth who openly despise their own nation for what they describe as a history of systemic racist exploitation speaks volumes south of the Rio Grande.
There are likely hundreds of millions if not billions of committed Marxist-Leninists who see with the Russian war in Ukraine and Russian warnings to it’s neighbors as well as cooperation from Georgia and Belarus the possibility of a new dawn for their dream of a utopian era of the Communist Brotherhood of Man.
Anyone familiar with the Communist Manifesto knows that the committed Marxist-Leninist Communist believed and most likely still dies that the dialectic is eternal.
The revolution cannot be stopped. Capitalism will fail.
Combine all this with a US that has debt amounting to $30 trillion and a policy move to isolate Russia that may bring about Russian nationalization of it’s economy and a return to Communism and we can understand Soviet imperial strategy may be at play.
While American millennials have been cancelling their own national history they never truly learned, as taught to do by their teachers who were taught by 1960s Communist hippies who “stayed in school” and become tenured professors.
Others, from Israeli Jews to Latin American Marxists to Persians to Muslims and Chinese we’re learning and remembering the lessons of history.
Defector and former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov describes in a 1984 interview how the Soviet intelligence services used such people for a multi-generational demoralization and destabilization campaign in the United States that began by taking over education. The effort, he said in 1984, was unstoppable.
University of Chicago Professor Alan Bloom had it right in his 1987 book, “The Closing if the American Mind.” Students went to university and learned how not to think.
The destruction of the ability to understand and critically analyze and ask questions would begin with the students, he said. And it did.
History in other parts of the world is taught. And what was was not 50 years ago or 300 or 3,000 years ago. It was yesterday. And yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away, as the song goes.
Well prepare yourselves for a return to yesterday and an end to leftist narrative control in the west. The American left may run it’s social warfare media and tech machine on racism.
Racism, though, is not a concern for most of the rest of the world. History is. And so is Russia and the dialectic.
The rest of the world remembers the Cold War. And the horrors of the evils of communism that murdered 10o million people. And America is currently seen by many as in decline as Russia spreads it’s wings.
Cold War, part two, has begun.
Greg Tepper has a BA in political science from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has reported news in Israel and written for nearly 15 years.
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