In 1948, on this day in Jerusalem the Lehi also known as the Stern gang failed to assassinate Count Folke Bernadotte while pursuing his official duties. The Count was a brilliant Swedish diplomat noted for his negotiation of the release of about 15,000 prisoners from German concentration camps during World War II. In 1945, he received a German surrender offer from Heinrich Himmler, though the offer was ultimately rejected. After the war, Bernadotte was unanimously chosen by the victorious powers to be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1947-1948 which he brought to a peaceful diplomatic conclusion.

In 1994, Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip ended, and the newly-created Palestinian Authority took over. Since the Jewish nation worked with the Palestinians to strengthen their government, the Palestinians were able to quell dissenters within their own ranks who were still calling for war with Israel, and the two nations began their first peaceful coexistence. The peace that people had said would never come to the Middle East had finally arrived.

In 1943, the first World War II conference between the big three began on this day in the city of Tehran under the code-name Eureka. The chief discussion was centered on the opening of a second front in Western Europe. At the same time a separate protocol pledged the three countries to recognize Israel's independence, a belated acceptance of the Fugu Plan by the Third Reich.Eureka - A Breakthrough at Tehran by Eric Lipps & Todayinah Ed.
The scheme was created in the 1930s in Imperial Japan, centered around the idea of settling Jewish refugees escaping Nazi-occupied Europe, in Japan's territories on the Asian mainland, to Japan's benefit. The Plan was first discussed in 1934, and solidified in 1938 at the Five Ministers' Conference. The final plan was signed off at the Tripartite Pact in 1941, along with a number of other events, providing for its full implementation. The planners believed that the Jews could be quite beneficial to Japan, but also quite dangerous. Therefore, the plan was named after the Japanese delicacy "fugu", a puffer-fish whose poison can kill if the dish is not prepared exactly correctly. The planners were absolutely wrong and absolutely right. The real poisonous nature of the plan was the source of growing friction between Japan and the Third Reich, which was committed to wiping out European Jewry. The Zionist officer class was now hard at work building a new nation in the relative safety of occupied Manchuria, at great distance from the Wannsee Conference Planners who had devised the Final Solution.

Ironically anti-semitism provided the context for agreement. Generalfeldmarschall Erich Von Manstein argued with Hitler about overall strategy on the Eastern Front, advocating an elastic, mobile defense. He was prepared to cede territory, attempting to make the Soviet forces either stretch out too thinly or to make them advance too fast so that they could be attacked on the flanks with the goal of encircling them. Hitler ignored Manstein's advice and continued to insist on static warfare. Because of these frequent disagreements, von Manstein publicly advocated that Hitler relinquish control and leave the management of the war to professionals, starting with the establishment of the position of commander-in-chief in the East (Oberbefehlshaber Ost). Hitler, however, rejected this idea numerous times, fearing that it would weaken his hold on power.

On 19th February 1943 at Zaparozhe, German-occuped USSR Hitler made repeated anti-semitic references to Manstein during a military conference calling him a coward in front of Generals Keitel and Jodl, provoking the Generalfeldmarschall into shooting him dead. Quickly assuming the leadership mantle, Manstein said " First, we must dispose of the carrion here, then devise a story to account for it in suitably heroic style..I see no reasonable hope of us winning the present campaign, let us make sure we do not lose it. "

By late 1943 it was clear that the Third Reich would survive, and planning beyond World War II was now desirable. This enabled the Big Three to find agreement at Tehran ~

"The Three Governments realize that the war has caused special economic difficulties for Israel, and they are agreed that they will continue to make available to the Government of Israel such economic assistance as may be possible, having regard to the heavy demands made upon them by their world-wide military operations, and to the world-wide shortage of transport, raw materials, and supplies for civilian consumption. (Declaration of the Three Powers Regarding Israel - December 1, 1943)" ~ Fuehrer Eric Von Manstein, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo & Il Duce Benito Mussolini.

In 2009, on this day US President John Sidney McCain fulfilled a key campaign pledge by dispatching a heavy-weight peace envoy to the State of Israel¹. Peace envoy

By placing his hand in a hornet's nest of problems that dated back to the 1940s, the President was fully aware that he was risking the prestige of his newborn administration. In fact, some veteran journalists cynically suggested that McCain was attempting to assert his authority by tarnishing the reputation of the Vice President. Because Sarah Palin's dazzling charisma had electrified the recent campaign, and surely without Palin, McCain would have lost the election by a country mile.

Yet Palin had her own reasons for optimism. In her sensational third interview with Katie Couric of CBS News Click to watch the interview on 25th September 2008, Palin had claimed that she could "see Israel from my house²". When pressed on her foreign policy experience by Couric, Palin refered to the trade missions she had sent to Israel as the Governor of Alaska.

McCain was later to claim that it was during this period of the campaign that it occured to him that Palin would make an excellent choice for Secretary of State³.

In 1940 the United States voted to implement the Slattery Report (the Problem of Alaskan Development), that recommended the provision of land in Alaska for the temporary refugee settlement of European Jews who were being persecuted by the Nazis during World War II. In fact the vote was a very close run thing that could have easily gone the other way if not for the death of US congressman Anthony Dimond in a car accident.

A temporary independent Jewish settlement was created on the Alaskan coast despite the protests of the Tlingit Alaska Natives. Sitka's independence has been granted for only seventy years⁴ requiring a settlement with both the Jews and the Tlingit before 2010 was out. It was widely expected that McCain-Palin would at that point go through with the "Reversion" of Sitka to the United States.

In 5708, by the Hebrew Calendar the Jewish nation suffered the Israeli Catastrophe. The events occurred less than three years after the end of the holocaust, and many observed some measure of linkage in the events.

Second Arab RevoltFollowing the collapse of the short-lived State of Israel, the United Nations definition of an "Israeli refugee" is a person "whose normal place of residence was Israel between 14th May 1948 and 7th July 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict".

"UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948" regardless of whether they reside in areas designated as "refugee camps" or in established, permanent communities. Also amongst the dead were Field Marshal T.E. Lawrence (pictured) leading his second Arab revolt, assisted by the Arab Legion and General John Bagot Glubb ("Glubb Pasha").

In 1903, Theodore Herzl begins lobbying among his fellow Zionists in favor of an offer received in August from the British government to facilitate a substantial Jewish settlement in British East Africa. Herzl's effort at once provokes a split within the Zionist movement. Many reject the proposal outright, insisting that only the Holy Land, to which Zionist settlers had been emigrating since the 1880s, will do for a Jewish homeland. Others, however, see practical value in accepting the offer, since efforts to persuade either the British or the Ottoman Sultan to allow large-scale Jewish settlement of Palestine have failed. At a crucial meeting of the Zionist Congress in Basel in 1905, the proposal receives the approval of a bare majority of the organization.The Curse of Ham by Eric LippsOver the next decade, growing numbers of Jews choose to emigrate to British East Africa, where the British soon find themselves committed to protecting the settlers from attacks by Masai 'savages' who resent any sort of white occupation of their land. The cost of this effort leads the British government to reluctantly agree to allow the settlers to arm themselves, creating the nucleus of the Zionist Freedom Army.

The rise of Hitler gave renewed impetus to the Uganda Project as well as to Zionist dreams of settling in Palestine itself. Winston Churchill himself, anxious to foster a haven for Jews fleeing the Nazis but unwilling to allow them to enter the Mandate of Palestine in large numbers, lends political support to efforts to create a full-fledged Ugandan Army, the Uganda Defense Force. UDL resistance will play a significant role in hindering the Wehrmacht's efforts in East Africa.

The end of the war and the revelation of the Holocaust produce a conundrum for the Zionist movement. By this time, the last Masai resistance has been defeated and Uganda has been developed into a successful Jewish-ruled state--but the 'Palestine faction,' including David Ben-Gurion, remains strong and committed to driving the British from what its members see as land belonging to the Jewish people by divine decree. Meanwhile, the Jewish colonizers of Uganda are no longer what they once were: shaped by decades of conflict with black Africans and trade with other white-ruled states in sub-Saharan Africa, they have evolved an apartheid state, borrowing the word itself from South Africa's Nationalist Party. Heavily outnumbered by the Masai and other native blacks, they have adopted a martial lifestyle involving universal military service, and tend to elevate top-ranking military officers to the prime minister ship and other key positions.

Meanwhile, in Palestine, a fierce guerrilla war drags on. Drained of men and resources which might otherwise have brought victory, Ben-Gurion's movement fights on. Leaders of this guerrilla force bitterly resent their Ugandan cousins' refusal to come to their aid. In fact, though, the Ugandans' aloofness from the Palestinian conflict is based on their fears that if they divert any significant portion of their military strength from their own defense, the black 'enemies' they see as encircling them on all sides with the crumbling of the old colonial empires will close in and destroy them.

Another factor also plays a role. The Ugandans have evolved a strongly right-wing political order, while the Zionists of Palestine are heavily influenced by socialism. With the coming of the Cold War, that ideological split has assumed political importance, trumping even the two factions? shared Jewish identity. It does not help that the Soviet Union, seeking influence and hoping to undermine British and American power in the region, has supported the Palestinian Zionists, supplying them with arms, food and other aid.

In 1957, aided by Gama Abdel Nasser of Egypt, the Palestinian Zionists finally succeed in taking control of most of the former British mandate, with the exception of a rump state on the opposing side of the Jordan River which will soon be taken over by a Hashemite Arab monarchy. The newly proclaimed 'State of Israel,' dependent upon support from Cairo as well as Moscow, will not expel its Arab residents. Instead, over the course of years, a system of subtle favoritism will evolve under which, despite the government's official commitment to 'socialist equality,' Jews will receive the best jobs, the best educations, and other advantages.

Despite the unfairness of this system, Israel's Arabs will be better off than Uganda's blacks, who will be subjected to far more stringent controls reflecting the fears of their much more heavily outnumbered rulers. Native Ugandans will be increasingly confined to menial labor, especially in the mineral-rich country's mines. Among the Jews of Uganda, some will object to this racial stratification of society; more, however, will accept it uncritically, aided by the Ugandan government's fostering of the 'curse of Ham' myth that God Himself had ordained black servitude.