What is more important, however, is the need to examine the
very basis of the travesty that calls itself Jordan. In itself it is an illegality, a travesty of
justice, a robbery of Jewish possessions.
There never was Jordan until perfidious Albion – the British
Colonial Ministry – decided to invent one, and the story is one that more
should know about.
When the Balfour Declaration backed the establishment of a
Jewish national home in Palestine, there was never any country that was known
as Jordan. The historic boundaries of
ancient Israel included the east bank of the Jordan, and Balfour himself made
this clear in a memorandum dated August 11, 1919:
“Palestine should
extend into the lands lying east of the Jordan?”
What happened?
A desert chieftain named Abdullah ibn-Hussein and his
brother Feisal, fleeing the Arabian wrath of Ibn Saud, were offered in 1920 the
thrones of Iraq and Syria, respectively.
Unfortunately for the Arabs, the French, who were given mandatory powers
in Syria by the League of Nations, informed Feisal that he was most unwelcome
in Damascus. The Arab took the Gallic
hint and departed
Since both brothers were British pawns in the struggle by
the Colonial Office to make the Middle East British, Feisal was given the
throne of Iraq by the British Foreign Office, while Abdullah was left holding
an empty kingdom-bag.
Faced with this, Abdullah began to make all manner of
bellicose sounds about marching on Syria and ousting the French. While Paris hardly lost sleep, the British
did not relish the idea of a confrontation between their puppet and the French
and so, in 1921, Winston Churchill met with Abdullah and offered him an annual
subsidy and established a new country to be known as “Transjordan” for Abdullah
to rule.
It little mattered that such a step was illegal and that it
robbed Jewish Palestine of a major share of its land. Whitehall proposed and Whitehall disposed.
Transjordan came into being, a comic-opera illegality, ruled
in theory by Abdullah but in practice by London.
This was the state that on May 31, 1967 signed a defense
agreement with Nasser to destroy Israel; this was the state that declared
through its king, on that same day: “With the help of G-d and the solidarity of
the Arabs we will see the victory of truth over the lie-s of the enemy”; this
is the state whose radio declared during the terrible days of June 1967.
“How long did we wait and prepare for these hours of honor
and for the day the Arabs would advance . . . Be ready to meet on the soil of
eternal Falastin [Palestine].” (June 1, 1967)
“Free citizens, heroic sons of Jordan. The hoped-for moment has arrived. Forward to arms, to battle, to new pages of
glory. To regain our rights, to smash
the aggressor, to revenge.”
“We are living through the most sacred hours of life . . .
Long did we wait for this battle in order to erase our shame.”
“Today the soldiers of Hussein have brought doom to the
Jewish strongholds in Jerusalem . . . They destroyed the Knesset and have
liberated the holy soil from the Zionists.
The heroic soldiers are marching forward towards Tel Aviv.”
“Froward toward your meeting with Rabin in Tel Aviv.”
Rabin was waiting, but the Jordanians never came. They busily were heading in the opposite
direction, where they sit today, and demand the return of a territory that was
never theirs to a state that was illegal from its inception.
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