The Turks Defeated the British in Gaza 95 Years ago, April 17, 1917. Republishing an earlier posting
In the early 1900s, the British Empire relied on the Suez Canal to maintain communications and trade with India, Australia and New Zealand. And that was precisely why Germany encouraged Turkey to challenge British rule over Egypt and British control of the Suez Canal.
Turks prepare to attack the Suez
Canal, 1915
In early 1915, the Turkish army in Palestine crossed the Sinai and attacked British troops along the Suez.
The British army beat back the attacks, took the war north into Sinai and pushed the Turkish army back to a defense line stretching from Gaza, located on the Mediterranean, to Be'er Sheva, some 40 miles inland.
Great Mosque of Gaza (circa 1880) 
The Mosque after the fighting (1917)
In March and April 1917 the British army attempted to push through Gaza in battles that involved as many as 60,000 soldiers. British and French ships fired on Gaza from the Mediterranean. The British used poison gas and deployed newly developed British tanks.
And the British suffered a disastrous defeat.
Ruins of Gaza, believed to be after the 1917 battles
British trenches in Gaza. After the
defeat, the British army switched to more
mobile tactics.
British tanks destroyed in the Gaza fighting
The British campaign for Jerusalem would be stalled for six months. It would be led by a new commander, a large number of reinforcements, and a new strategy that took the war in a new direction, east toward Be'er Sheva.
British Prisoners of War,
captured in Gaza 1917
Click on pictures to enlarge. Click on the captions to view the originals.
Footnote: History records Jews living in Gaza for thousands of years. [View the mosaic depicting King David from a 6th century synagogue in Gaza.]
Mosaic of King David
(Israel Museum)
Ottoman tax records showed dozens of Jewish families in Gaza in the Middle Ages. One of the most famous Gazan Jews was Rabbi Israel Ben Moses Najara (16th Century) who composed prayers and Sabbath zmirot (songs) popular to this day. He was buried in Gaza.
Jewish families fled Gaza in the 1929 pogroms. Population records still showed Jews living in Gaza until 1945.
Kfar Darom, named for a community mentioned in the Talmud, was a Jewish kibbutz established in the Gaza Strip in 1930 that was abandoned in the 1948 war. Kfar Darom was reestablished in 1970 but evacuated by Israel in the 2005 "disengagement."
"Yitz" and "Menachem" sent the following comment and photograph:
The caption reads "Central Relief Committee at the White House"
I actually have an original of photo of Rabbi Kook and his committee including my Great-Grandfather who served as a translator outside the White House after meeting the President. I had never seen this image until recently when I found it among his son's possessions when I cleaned out his apartment.
Thank you Yitz and Menachem. I'm not sure I can identify Rabbi Kook in the photo under any of the top hats. If you have more photos please send them! Please let us know who in the picture is your great-grandfather.
Was your grandfather Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum who played an important role in the meeting, according to this account?
At the meeting, Rav Kook thanked the President for his government’s support of the Balfour Declaration, and told him that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land will benefit not only the Jews themselves, but all mankind throughout the world. He quoted the Talmudic sages as saying that no solemn peace can be expected unless the Jews return to the Holy Land, and therefore their return is a blessing for all the nations of the earth. Rav Kook also expressed the gratitude of Jews throughout the world towards the American government for aiding in relief work during the war. He said that America has always shown an example of liberty and freedom to all, as written on the Liberty Bell, and that he hoped that the country will continue to uphold these principles and render its assistance whenever possible.3View comments
Part 2
Rabbi Kook, Chief Rabbi of Palestine
(Central Zionist Archives,
Harvard Library)
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the Chief of Rabbi of Palestine, began his journey to America in March 1924. Joined by two prominent rabbis from Lithuania, the delegation was met in New York with great respect and ceremony.
See previous posting on Rabbi Kook's meeting with President Coolidge in the White House.
Rabbi Kook's boat was met in the New York Harbor by hundreds of Jewish leaders. The rabbis were escorted to a meeting with New York's Mayor John F. Hylan by a "squadron" of police motorcycles and a 50-car procession.
The New York Times'
coverage
The Mayor welcomed "the distinguished Jews from the old world.... We are privileged," he continued, "to greet teachers and spiritual leaders whose intellectual achievements are in themselves worthy of special recognition."The Canadian Jewish Chronicle reported on May 2, 1924 on the rabbis' pending visit to Montreal:
"Rabbi Kook and his companions have undertaken the long and fatiguing journey to the United States and Canada to deliver in person a message to their co-religionists [that] unless the Jewish schools and seminaries in Eastern Europe and Palestine continue to receive ... the support of the American Jews, hundreds of ...educational institutions will have to be closed in 1,300 Jewish communities in the war-stricken lands of Europe. A half a million children... will grow up without religious and secular education..."
"Rabbi Kook of Palestine... is a man of rare mental attainments. He is a renowned theologian, poet, philosopher and humanitarian. At the age of 18 he had already several books on ethical and philosophical topis to his credit for which he received a doctorate degree from the Berne University. From his youth Rabbi Kook was enamored with the Holy Land. At the outbreak of the world war Rabbi Kook happened to be in Switzerland. Owing to his pro-ally sentiments, the Germans refused him permission to return to Palestine... When General Allenby liberated Palestine, Rabbi Kook returned to Palestine and was immediately elected Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land and officially installed in this high office by the High Commission, Sir Herbert Samuel..."
British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel and Rabbi Kook
visiting a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem (1925). In the
white suit is the mysterious Mendel Kremer, the subject of a
future posting. (Central Zionist Archives, Harvard)
H/T Challah Hu Akbar6View comments
- APR10
Newly found pictures show Deir Yassin's commanding position on the road to Jerusalem Republishing one of our first postings, on the anniversary of the battle of Deir Yassin
The Arab village of Deir Yassin is the subject of one of the biggest controversies of Israel's 1948-49 War of Independence. The village, situated on the road immediately outside of Jerusalem, was part of the Arab vise putting Jerusalem under siege.
View from the trenches looking west toward
the Kastel stronghold and Tel Aviv beyond, 1917. The
caption on a similar photo reads "Kastel and Jaffa Road
from Deir Yesin Redoubt."
American Colony collection caption (1931): "Deir Yasin Turkish war trenches. West of Jerusalem,
commanding the Jaffa road." See jagged defense lines on the mountain topsIsrael's detractors portray the village as a pastoral, innocent victim of Jewish atrocities and ethnic cleansing in April 1948. Jewish fighters (Israel had not yet been founded) claim that Arab combatants were in the village. New research and Arab interviews confirm today that the civilian casualties of Deir Yassin were far fewer than claimed by Arab spokesmen.
The aerial pictures from the Library of Congress collection were taken in 1931, and possibly earlier, and show the village's strategic location. They show Deir Yassin commanding the road between Jerusalem and Jaffa - Tel Aviv as well as the Turkish-built trenches and fortified defense lines.
Another view of the trenches of Deir Yassin.
Labeled "1917?" but probably also taken in 1931
Click the pictures to enlarge, click on the caption to see the originals.0Add a comment
- APR3
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, One of the Most Influential Rabbis of the 20th Century. Did He Visit the White House 88 Years Ago?
Part One
The caption reads "Rabbi Dr. Abraham I. Kook, 4/15/24"
Where was this picture taken?
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) was a renowned Talmud scholar, Kabbalist and philosopher. He is considered today as the spiritual father of religious Zionism, breaking away from his ultra-Orthodox colleagues who were opposed to the largely secular Zionist movement.
Born in what is today Latvia, Rabbi Kook moved to Palestine in 1904 to take the post of the Chief Rabbi of Jaffa. He appears in many of the historic pictures taken by the American Colony photographers, usually as a bystander, without being identified. One photograph, from the Library of Congress' larger collection, identifies the rabbi, but the surroundings do not appear to be in the Land of Israel and actually look incredibly like a street scene in the United States.
Evidence suggests that the picture was taken in Washington DC before or after Rabbi Kook met with President Calvin Coolidge in the White House.
It's a historic fact that Coolidge was in Washington on April 15, 1924, the same day Rabbi Kook's photo was taken. Coolidge threw out the first ball at a Washington Senators baseball game where Walter Johnson shutout the Athletics. Coolidge also spoke at the dedication of the "Arizona Stone" in the Washington Monument.
Coolidge and Johnson, April 15, 1924
The picture of the rabbi appears in a larger set of unaccredited pictures taken that week of well-known Washington politicians including Coolidge, the White House press corps, Senate leaders William Borah and Burton Wheeler, the Federal Oil Reserve Board, and more.
But why did Coolidge meet Rabbi Kook, and what was the rabbi doing in Washington?
According to an article by Joshua Hoffman in Orot in 1991, Rabbi Kook, then Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi in Palestine, headed a delegation of rabbis to the United States in March 1924 to raise funds for yeshivot in Europe and Eretz Yisrael. He was joined by Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein (pictured left), the head of the Slabodka yeshiva in Lithuania, and Rabbi Avraham Dov Baer Kahana Shapiro, the Rabbi of Kovno and president of the Rabbinical Association of Lithuania. The three rabbis were brought to America by the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering through the War, better known as the Central Relief Committee (CRC).
Rabbi M. M. Epstein,
apparently on a ship
According to Hoffman, "The rabbis had originally planned to stay in America for about three months. However, because their fund-raising efforts were not as successful as had been hoped, they remained for eight months. In the end, they raised a little over $300,000, far short of the one million dollar goal which the CRC had set."
Hoffman described the April 15 conversation between the president and the rabbi: "Rav Kook thanked the President for his government's support of the Balfour Declaration, and told him that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land will benefit not only the Jews themselves, but all mankind throughout the world.... The President responded that the American government will be glad to assist Jews whenever possible."
Part Two: Rabbi Kook with Winston Churchill, the High Commissioner, Lord Balfour, and a Jewish Spy
Rabbi Kook leaving a meeting with Winston
Churchill and Emir Abdullah (1921)
Click on the photos to enlarge.
Click on the captions to see the originals.
Subscribe to receive the Israel Daily Picture via email. Enter your email address in the box in the right sidebar. It's free.1View comments
- MAR31
April 1 -- The Anniversary of Hebrew University's Opening in 1925. Republishing an Earlier Posting
The establishment of the Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus was clearly a momentous event in the minds of Zionist leaders who had dreamt of such a Jewish university since the 1880s. It was also important to the American Colony Photo Department whose collection is housed today at the Library of Congress. Their photographers shot pictures of many of the university's events.
Laying the Hebrew University foundation stone, 1918
[Many of the photographs and negatives of the American Colony collection were deteriorating when the Library digitalized them, and the images were preserved. Some of the photographs presented here show the deterioration and decay.]
The first photograph commemorates the laying of the foundation stone of the Hebrew University on July 24, 1918, just eight months after British forces captured Jerusalem in a major and bloody campaign.
On March 28, 1921, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill visited Jerusalem and planted a tree at the Mt Scopus location of the future university. Standing behind him are the Sephardi Chief Rabbi Jacob Meir and the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Click here to see a previous posting on Churchill's visit to Jerusalem. 
Churchill and rabbis
On April 1, 1925 a ceremony was held on Mt. Scopus to announce the official opening of the university. Lord Balfour and Chaim Weizmann, a Zionist leader who would later become Israel's first president, were among the leaders to speak at the gathering. Lord Balfour, who, serving as British Foreign Secretary, drafted the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917. The document declared, "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
Balfour addressing the crowd with
the Judean Desert behind him
In the picture (right) Balfour is speaking, Weizmann is behind him on the right and the chief rabbis are behind him on the left.. Another historic picture of the event can be found here. The speaker is British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel.
University Opening, from left to right: Lord Balfour
at the podium, next to him British High Commissioner
Herbert Samuel, University Chancellor Judah Magnes,
and Chaim Weizman
Foreign delegates to the university
opening, including Balfour and Samuel
Preparing the Hebew University
amphitheater for the opening, 19250Add a comment
- MAR29
Mystery Rabbi at the American ConsulateGetting a Little Closer to Identifying Him. Can You Help?
The Library of Congress photograph collection contains many mystery photos. Captions are often wrong or just plain missing. That's not surprising considering that the 22,000 photos took a very circuitous journey from the American Colony Photographic Department to the basement of the YMCA in Jerusalem, to the United States and a California old age home, to the Library of Congress in the 1970s and eventually to the Library's digitalized library online.
"American Consulate group" (1898-1946)
This blog has been able to solve some of the photographic enigmas.
Second file, with the additional infor-
mation, "Heiser, American Consul,
fourth from left"
So we looked at the picture above as a new challenge. While the American seal is evident above the door on the left, there is no information about the group's identity or the year the picture was taken. The only data provided was that the picture, now badly deteriorated, was taken between 1898 and 1946.
Who is the rabbi?
Consul-General
Oscar HeizerBut a search of the Library digital files uncovered a second file, also deteriorated and with a broad range of dates, but with a name in the caption: "Heiser (sic), American Consul, fourth from left."
Presumably, that's Oscar S. Heizer who served as Consul General in Jerusalem between 1923 and 1928.
Earthquake damage in Jerusalem 1927
Heizer held important diplomatic positions in the Middle East at the beginning of the 20th century, including consul in Trebizond, Turkey in 1915 from where he reported on Ottoman atrocities against Armenians in letters to the American ambassador in Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau.
In July 1927, Heizer sent cables reporting on the wide devastation in Palestine caused by a major earthquake. One of cables listed the casualties: "Twenty-five were killed and 38 injured in the Jerusalem district, At Ramleh-19 killed, 28 wounded. At Nablus-15 killed, 250 wounded. At Ramallah District-3 killed. At Hebron-3 killed."Again, who is
the rabbi?So now we have the name and dates of the American consul-general. But who is the rabbi, who, we suspect from his well-tailored suit, was visiting from the United States sometime between 1923 and 1928? Was he involved in distribution of charity funds to the "Old Yishuv" in Palestine? During World War I, the American consulate played a very important role in distributing the "Haluka" funds, bypassing rapacious Turkish officials.1View comments
The Samaritan population in the Land of Israel numbered more than a million people 1,500 years ago, according to some estimates. This ancient people lived in northern Israel and claimed to have been descendants of those tribes of Israel which were not sent out into the Babylonian exile. One line of Samaritans traces their lineage back to Aaron the priest, and they consider their "holy mountain" to be Mt. Gerizim outside of Nablus (Shechem) -- not Jerusalem.
Samarian high priest Yitzhak ben Amram
ben Shalma ben Tabia (circa 1900). View
other pictures of priests here and here
Samaritan family (1899) The Samaritans worship the God of Abraham, revere a scroll comparable to the five books of Moses, and maintain Passover customs, including the sacrifice of the Pascal Lamb. The photographers of the American Colonyphotographed dozens of pictures of the Samaritans' sacrificial service.
Jews ceased the Passover sacrifice with the destruction of the second Temple.
Samaritan synagogue in Shechem
(1899). Also view here
Already in Talmudic days, Jewish authorities rejected the Samaritans' claims to be part of the Jewish people. The Cutim, according to rabbinic authorities, arrived in the Land of Israel around 720 BCE with the Assyrians from Cuth, believed to be located in today's Iraq.
Over the millennia, the Samaritans almost disappeared. Persecuted, massacred and forcibly converted by Byzantine Christians and by Islamic authorities, the Samaritans' community today numbers fewer than 1,000 who are located on Mount Gerizim near Nablus (Shechem) and in Holon, Israel.
Baking matza on Mt. Gerizim
(circa 1900)
This year, the Samaritans will celebrate their Passover on May 4, 2012.
Preparing a lamb (1900) 
"The prepared carcasses
ready for the oven" (1900)
According to Samaritan officials, the community totals 751 persons. Here is the breakdown with the first figure showing the number near Nablus (Shechem) and the second number showing the number living in Holon.
Praying on Mt. Gerizim (1900)
On January 1, 2012, the Community numbered 751 persons [353 in Kiryat Luza-Mount Gerizim, Samaria; 398 primarily in Holon in the State of Israel: 396 males [190:206] and 355 females [170: 185]. These included 350 married persons [158:192], 215 unmarried males [104:111], 153 unmarried females [70:83]; 7 widowed men [4:3]; 23 widowed women [15:8]; 2 Divorced Men [0:2]; 1 Divorced Woman [0:1].
Color photographs of a recent Passover sacrifice on Mt. Gerizim can be viewed here.0Add a comment
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
The Turks Defeated the British in Gaza 95 Years ago, April 17, 1917. Republishing an earlier posting - picture a day
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