BLOOD IN EXCHANGE FOR LAND
“Abdul Hamid was the sultan during the time of the creation of the Zionist movement by Theodor Herzl in 1896. In 1901, in response to Herzl’s request for Palestine, it was narrated that sultan Abdul Hameed told Herzl’s messenger: “while I am alive, I would rather push a sword into my body than see the land of Palestine cut & given away from the Islamic Caliphate.”
He was even offered a lot of money. He rejected the offer saying ‘I will not sell a single inch of the country, because it is not mine, it belongs to all the Muslims. They paid for this empire with their blood. And we will redeem it with our blood. Let the Jews keep their millions. If the empire is partitioned, they can get Palestine for free, but that will happen over our dead bodies.’
Herzl himself visited the Sultan and reiterated the offer, to which Sultan replied, ‘Even you paid me the weight of the Earth in gold, I would never agree. I would never bring shame upon Muslims. If you want to buy Palestine, know that the price is the blood of all the Muslims. I have no enemies, other than the enemies of Islam and the Muslims.’”
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Now, let’s consider, who exactly paid his blood for the right to live in Palestine:
Jerome Vermlin:
«When the Crusaders came to Palestine after 460 years of Arab and non-Arabic Moslem rule, they found an Arabic-speaking population, composed of a dozen races (apart from Jews and Druzes), practicing five versions of Islam and eight of heterodox Christianity.
«At this time, a full thousand years after the fall of the Jewish state, there were Jewish communities all over the country. Fifty of them are known to us; they include Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea, and Gaza.» Bahat wrote: «Jewish communities along the coast, such as those at Rafah, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea, flourished during this [11th] century and maintained cultural relations with Egypt,» citing documents found in the Cairo Genizah.
6.2 Crusader Conquest of Palestine and its Jews
«A contemporary Crusader account of the conquest of Jerusalem acknowledges the valor of the Jewish fighters: ‘And here, in front of us, were the foreigners, Jew, Turk, and Arab, fighting for their lives with sling stones, with catapults, with fire and venom . . . and when the end came upon the foreigners, they withdrew from one battlefront, only to find a second battlefront facing them. And though there was a terror on all sides, none put down his sword; the Turk, the Arab, and the Jew were among the fallen. The Jew is the last to fall.»
And not in Jerusalem only. Katz wrote: «The Jews almost single-handedly defended Haifa against the Crusaders, holding out in the besieged town for a whole month (June-July 1099).»…… Archeologist Bahat backed this up by citing «several chronicles» relating «the acts of heroism which the Jews of Haifa had been roused…
My note:
https://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/_1099_-_1291
“Simultaneously with the conquest of Jerusalem, the crusaders embarked on conquest missions throughout the country. In July 1100, they carried out a military attack on the urban settlement in Haifa (in the Bat Galim neighborhood). According to the research literature, a large Jewish community lived in Haifa at that time. Historian Benzion Dinur emphasized his image: «The city is a Jewish city … its citizens — Jews (the Saracens /Muslims are only in the garrison!), Its defense — the defense of the Jews, and its victory — the disgrace of the Christians. … The Jews of the city rejected the demands of the Crusaders to surrender and convert, and even left the city walls and attacked the Crusader forces and their siege towers. In order to conquer the city, Tancred, the prince of the Galilee, was forced to bring to Haifa many forces both at sea and on land. Naval forces that moved about 200 vessels to Haifa, came from the Republic of Venice. The Jewish residents joined the small Fatimid garrison; «They stood firm on their souls,» until the Crusader forces gave up and withdrew. [6] When the onslaught of the crusaders returned, the Jews and the Muslims stood «in their faces with unabated heroism.» [7] After a lull, the Crusader conquerors returned and used strong assaulting forces. And after 27 days of siege, the «Haifa Fortress» as its Hebrew name, or Castellum Caiphas, fell under the Latin name, by the Crusader conquerors. [8] Some of the inhabitants fled to Caesarea and Acre, the rest of the inhabitants, who did not manage to escape, were murdered by the Crusaders. Historian Benjamin Ze’ev Kedar notes that «this was the last time before the appearance of the Jewish Legion in World War I that a Jewish force took part in a military campaign on the land of Palestine.» [9]
Conquest and mass murder took place one after the other in the coastal cities of Caesarea and Arsuf in 1101 and Acre in 1104. The same happened in some of the Galilee villages, which were conquered without resistance as early as 1089. The Crusaders did not conquer the cities of Tire and Ashkelon during the wars of the summer of 1099, Which were controlled by the Muslims, and the Jewish communities continued to flourish there.”
Jerome Vermlin:
“This is not Zionist era propaganda. Bahat quoted a 1719 French priest and historian: «And Haifa, although moderate in size, was strongly fortified, and, perhaps because of this, for a long time it withstood the mighty onslaught of the Prince Tancred, who attacked it from the sea and also from the land, with the help of the Venetians. Although the Jews fought with courage, they were overcome by the might of the invaders.»
The well-known historian of the early Crusades, Albert of Aachen, in his ‘Book of Travels,’» referring to the conquest of Haifa by the Crusaders: «And the city of Haifa . . . which the Jews defended with great courage, to the shame and embarrassment of the Christians.»
My note: Most of Haifa Jews were slaughtered by the Crusaders. Yet additional Jewish settlements of Galilee fought the Crusaders. All Jewish inhabitants were slaughtered by the Crusaders.
The Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, brutally slaughtering its Muslims and Jews in an orgy so gruesome that crimson tales of it chill the blood to this day. Contemporary records indicate that the carnage was not limited to the actual wars of conquest, or to the battlefield: ‘On the third day after the victory, at their commanders’ orders, the Crusaders carried out a dreadful massacre of all the people who still survived in the city. …………
«According to the few refugees who managed to escape from the city, ‘the Franks killed all the Ishmaelites and Israelites in it.’ . . . The Jews were given special treatment: ‘They were assembled inside their synagogue, which was then put to the fire.’» Some Jews, «captured alive in the vicinity of the Temple,» ….. were sold into slavery by Tancred and sent overseas, some being drowned or beheaded on the way. He quoted the bishop: «And thus they [Crusaders] purified the whole city (Jerusalem) of its contamination.»
The Crusaders’ wrath against Jews and other heathens was not confined to Jerusalem. Bahat: The Crusader invasion «led to the expulsion of the Jews from Hebron and also marked the end of the Jewish community in Haifa.” …Prof. Dinur: «The Jewish communities in Judaea and those in the towns and villages near Jerusalem suffered the same fate.
Fragments of a dirge written in this period (incidentally mentioning Haifa as the city of the Sanhedrin) tell of the destruction of Jaffa, Ono, Lydda, Hebron, Usafiya on Mount Carmel, and Haifa.
My note: The Jews mentioned above were largely Arab-speaking Jews of local origin.
An enormously great 12th-century scholar who came to Palestine with his family was Maimonides. But he left «because of the disturbances due to the Crusader invasions,» and settled in Egypt, where «he eventually became Saladin’s court physician,» and «where many of his most important works were written.» «He died in Egypt and, at his request, was buried in Tiberius (engendering dispute with other Palestine Jewish communities, «as each wanted him to be buried within its area»). «His Tiberias tomb has been a center of pilgrimage for Jews ever since.»
Maimonides left this personal testimony: ” just as I was privileged to pray in the Land in its desolation, may I and all Israel live to see its speedy restoration.”
Palestine’s Jews not only survived Saladin’s 1187 Horns of Hattin defeat of the Crusaders but actually improved their situation. Bahat wrote that the Jewish community in Jerusalem grew considerably after Saladin’s conquest. Prof. Dinur, writing in JIL, said that after Saladin conquered Jerusalem, he issued a proclamation for the Jews, especially refugees from the Crusades, to return and that the revival of the Jews’ Jerusalem community encouraged both immigration and pilgrimage.
