Dutch War Crimes
Sep 9th, 2008, in History, Opinion, by LairedionLairedion on the Dutch state being sued over war crimes at Rawagede, West Java.
Dutch State sued by Indonesians
On Monday 8 September 2008 10 Indonesian survivors of Dutch post WWII violence have sued the Dutch State for the assassination of their family members during the First Police Action (Agresi Militer Belanda I) after WW II. They want financial compensation, explanations and recognition for their suffering, as announced by their lawyer Mr. Gerrit Jan Pulles.
According to Pulles it is for the first time Indonesian victims of the fighting of 1945-1949 hold the Dutch State responsible. Mr. Pulles acts on behalf of ten villagers from Rawagede, West Java. They survived the bloody attack of the Dutch Army on 9 December 1947. According to the Dutch Honorary Debts Foundation, 431 (almost all the male) villagers were slaughtered. According to the Dutch Indulgence Note from 1969 150 people were killed. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced they will study the matter.
Well into 2008, 63 years after Indonesian independence, the Dutch, due to their stubbornness, ignorance and patronizing behaviour, are being haunted again by their crimes in the aftermath of Soekarno’s declaration of 17-8-45 and they rightfully should. Only just being liberated themselves from the Germans the Dutch wanted to continue the situation as it was before WWII and re-occupy their former territories now being declared independent and bearing the name Republik Indonesia.
Rawagede is one of the most notorious events in the history of Indonesian struggle for independence against the Dutch. On 9 December 1947 Dutch forces raided the West Javanese village to look for weapons and Indonesian freedom fighter Lukas Kustario who often spent time in Rawagede. They didn’t find any weapons neither did they find Lukas.
Survivors of Rawagede remember (full version of documentary linked in footnotes).
Apparently dissatisfied by their lack of success the Dutch commander directed all males to be separated from the rest in order to execute all of them, despite the fact there were some young males of 11-12 years old among them. Indonesian leaders reported the mass killing to local UN officials. The UN made an inquiry and concluded the killings were “deliberate” and “ruthless” but failed to prosecute and to have the Dutch punished and sentenced for these obvious crimes against humanity and this is still the situation today!
Last month Pulles (of mixed Indo-Dutch blood like yours truly) visited Rawagede together with people from the “Yayasan Komite Utang Kehormatan Belanda (KUKB)”, including its chairman Jeffry Pondaag, to collect witness accounts and endorsements from survivors in order to hold the Dutch State responsible.
A protest outside Dutch embassy in Jakarta.
While financial compensation is sought after it must be noted that most survivors only want the Dutch State to take moral responsibility and offer official apologies to the Indonesian people. Furthermore they do not seek punishments for the people directly involved in the killings. One survivor just wants the Dutch not to forget what has happened.
At the same time more and more Dutch veterans, haunted by the crimes and horror they experienced, are supportive of the Rawagede survivors’ claim. It is very disappointing to see that of all the Dutch political parties only the left-wing Socialist Party support the claim while the conservative-liberal VVD on behalf of MP spokesman Hans van Baalen even denied Dutch crimes against humanity in Indonesia! 63 years of ignorance and subtle racism have been persistent obviously, a disease many Western nations still suffer from.
It is because of this the KUKB has been founded by Netherlands-based Indonesian Jeffy Pondaag in 2005. They demand the Dutch government:
- to recognize 17 August 1945 as the day Indonesia became independent.
- to offer apologies to the Indonesian people for its colonialism, slavery, gross violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.
The foundation is a non-subsidized independent foundation with branches in the Netherlands and Indonesia and would be happy to accept any donations. They look after the interests of civilian victims who suffered from violence and war crimes committed by Dutch military. Their website have more information on the Rawagede story and on the infamous Raymond Westerling who murdered thousands of innocent people in South Sulawesi.
Back in 2005 Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda, obviously speaking on behalf of the Indonesian people, made it clear Indonesia is not seeking apologies or compensation from the Dutch. This reaction came after then Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot (who is Jakarta-born) expressed regrets and morally accepted the de-facto independence of Indonesia on 17-8-45 while he was representing the Dutch government during the festivities of Independence Day on 17-8-2005. Bot’s remarks were widely criticized in the Dutch media for being insufficient and way too short of a full apology and recognition of 17-8-45.
Of course it is irrelevant if Indonesia is demanding apologies or compensation or not. It should come from the Dutch themselves but their stubbornness and ignorance are still hindering them anno 2008. The Netherlands have constantly refused to express a full apology and recognition but were always quick to raise their finger and lecture its former colony on alleged human rights violations during the Soeharto reign.
I’m fully supportive of the Rawagede villagers and any future similar cases, seeking for Dutch responsibility, recognition and financial compensation. Evidence is clear, witnesses and next of kin are still alive, we’re dealing with war crimes, gross violation of human rights and crimes against humanity and here lies an opportunity for the Dutch to finally deal with its own past by recognizing and helping those poor villagers.
Sources and links:
News article from Dutch daily “Parool” (Dutch) : Indonesiërs klagen Nederlandse staat aan
Website of KUKB (Dutch and Indonesian): Yayasan Komite Utang Kehormatan Belanda
1948 (English) Word document approx. 7.8 MB: Report of the Rawahgedeh observation team
Broadcast of Dutch news show Netwerk with topic on this story: Netwerk 8 September 2008 (witness accounts from survivors (Dutch-Indonesian-Sundanese). Streaming media, requires broadband internet access.
827 Comments on “Dutch War Crimes”
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Ah indeed and this of course was all part of the ultimate plan to take over the Beaconsfield gold mine in the back blocks of Tasmania in 1877 being the natural location for the joowish hq for world domination. Sneaky, sneaky sneaky. We all have heard about the tunnels connecting Jamacia and Tasmania.
Now Pieter (good Dutch name that, are you joowish?) I thought you were going to give us the alternative history from Timdog. I must say you have been weighted and found wanting.
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ET says:
Jewish names are often the source of tragical misunderstandings.
A widowed Jewish lady, still in good shape, was sunbathing on a mostly deserted beach at Ft. Meyers , Florida . She looked up and noticed that a man her age, also in good shape, had walked up, placed his blanket on the sand near hers and began reading a book.
Smiling, she attempted to strike up a conversation with him.
“How are you today?”
“Fine, thank you,” he responded, and turned back to his book.
“I love the beach. Do you come here often?” she asked.
“First time since my wife passed away 2 years ago,” he replied and turned back to his book.
“I’m sorry to hear that. My husband passed away three years ago and it is very lonely,” she countered. “Do you live around here?” She asked.
“Yes, I live over in Cape Coral ,” he answered, and again he resumed reading.
Trying to find a topic of common interest, she persisted, “Do you like pussy cats?”
With that, the man dropped his book, came over to her blanket, tore off her swimsuit and gave her the most passionate lovemaking of her life. When the cloud of sand began to settle, she gasped and asked the man, “How did you know that was what I wanted?”
The man replied, “How did you know my name was Katz?” -
Peter says:
Thanks for the low comedy,guys.I was hoping Timdog or whoever would enlighten (no illuminati pun intended) on on the Java opium trade.He’ll probably say it was harmless and intended to entertain the East Indians.
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Come on Pieter, still awaiting your alternative history of Batavia and the Protocols of Beaconsfield.
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I found a portrait by an unknown master of Jan Pieterszoon Coen and the VOC Board of Directors.
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Arie Brand says:
Peter wrote:
Most of the founders of the VOC … were crypto Jews with Spanish and Portugese names.
Where do you get this from? The initiative to the foundation of the VOC was taken by Holland’s ‘Grand Pensionary’, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, and Count Maurits van Nassau. Other names of people who were involved in this foundation or were important in the Company soon afterwards do not sound very Jewish to me, whether ‘crypto’ or not: Willem Jansz van Loon, Dirck van Os, Johan van der Veecken , Geurt van Beuningen, Cornelis and Jacobus Bicker, Elias Trip, Louis de Geer etc. These are all very Dutch names. An exception is Louis le Maire. He came from Antwerp (a lot of Flemish capital ended up in Holland when Spain kept occupying the southern Low Countries).
The VOC was a joint stock company and the possession of its shares was originally socially wide spread, from artisans to the higher bourgeoisie. In Amsterdam alone there were 1143 share holders.
Jews started mainly to play a role in the Amsterdam stock and capital market in the second half of the seventeenth century when Portugal’s independence from Spain (1640) and the 1648 Peace of Westphalia between, inter alia, the Dutch Republic and Spain, made commercial and capital transactions between the Iberian peninsula and the Low Countries viable.
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timdog says:
I was hoping Timdog or whoever would enlighten (no illuminati pun intended) on on the Java opium trade.He’ll probably say it was harmless and intended to entertain the East Indians.
Actually no; the opium trade was one of the absolute, undeniable, unmitigated evils of European colonialism, something you can always throw back in the face of the misty-eyed empire-lovers who would tell you that we raised the natives from the mud and gave ‘em cricket.
But it wasn’t really anything to do with the VOC.
A certain quantity of opium was, of course, always imported and sold in Java, since long before the first Portuguese, Dutch and British sailors swung by.
However, as a major commercial operation, opium import was not encouraged by the VOC. In fact they regarded it as a major social evil. They did allow the import of a strictly limited amount as a government monopoly. They set the price for this monopoly fantastically high, which turned legal opium into a top-end luxury good, bought and used almost exclusively by a small minority of wealth Chinese (and also for legitimate medicinal purposes).
The VOC did have a problem with smuggling however – opium from the mid-18th century was smuggled into the region by British freebooters, something the VOC were concerned about, not only for commercial reasons but also because they appear to have been genuinely concerned about the effects of the drug on society.Then in 1811 Britain invaded and seized Java (the VOC had already ceased to exist a decade earlier, incidentally).
Opium was a very major part of the British colonial economy. Raffles – who I think I’ve made clear elsewhere I consider to have been an unmitigated bastard – wanted to keep a government monopoly on the drug (as a means of making his Java project pay for itself), but also wanted vastly to up the supply, with more “populist” prices. The invading British fleet of 1811 actually carried a significant quantity of the drug with them.
Unfortunately for Raffles, it turned out the prohibitive Dutch policies meant there wasn’t actually that much demand for the stuff, and his government ended up with a vast amount of opium which they couldn’t sell clogging up their warehouses.
Before Raffles had chance to figure out what to do about this, the private opium barons of Calcutta lobbied the Supreme Government and had Java thrown open to free trade in the drug – they were allowed to ship in as much as they wanted, duty free, and Raffles’ government got none of the proceeds.
It became a buyers’ market, and when the Dutch (crown authorities now; the VOC no longer existed) returned in 1816 they found that in the course of five years there had been an exponential increase in use of the drug.
They decided that a) the horse had already bolted so there was no point in shutting the door, and b) that the horse might make them quite a lot of money, galloping around the green hills of Java.
They reinstated their monopoly, but kept the high volume and the low prices. By the 1820s opium contributed 12% of colonial incomes in Java.It was a bad thing, but it wasn’t the doing of the VOC. And clearly it had nothing to do with cryto-jews, you bloody numpty…
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Percentages
Most of the largest shareholders in the British East India Co were Jewish or crypto Jewish by 1700.There was Solomon de Medina,Francis Pereira and many others I can name.They owned about 30% of the EIC stock.Besides they were the brokers that helped sell the stock.I would imagine the situation would have been similar with the VOC.
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British East India Co
Laugh..
I would imagine
Vividly apparently 🙂 but there is always medication
What ever happened to:
Most of the founders of the VOC … were crypto Jews with Spanish and Portugese names.Pieter, you have missed your calling you should be over on the BO thread, you would feel right at home.
Timdog, Raffles an “unmitigated bastard” perhaps but I must confess having read a number of books on the bloke. The sheer size of his brass balls is absolutely impressive. It never seem to occur to him “hang on you can’t do that”. Time and again I find myself thinking “you have got to be kidding how could he ever hope to get away with that and yet he did”
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Oigal, indeed; he got away with inciting the massacre of a Dutch community in Palembang in an attempt to create a pretext for the British annexation of Bangka in perpetuity. He got away with ordering the kidnapping of Javanese prostitutes, and their shipment to the illegal private fiefdom of a deranged Englishman by the name of Alexander Hare in Banjarmasin. He got away with ordering the sacking and looting of Yogyakarta simply as a demonstration to the Javanese of his own swaggering prowess. He got away with creating a deeply exploitative and non-functioning rent systom which encouraged corruption and forced Javanese peasants into the hands of Chinese loan sharks for the first time. He got away with plagiarising the scholarship of others. He got away with surrounding himself with corrupt sycophants. He got away with meddling in what the British regarded as soveriegn Dutch territory (Palembang post-1816) and setting off a war that cost thousands of Dutch and native lives. He got away with sidelining the man (Farquhar) who probably deserves most of the credit for founding Singapore.
And though he was, by the time of his death, in some form of low-level disgrace, and regarded as a wildly iresponsible failure, posthumously, thanks to the efforts of his ghastly second wife (the first wife, she who is buried in Tanah Abang, was, incidentally, a brandy-sozzled slut), and a High Victorian hero-worshipper named Boulger, he got away with a totally reconstituted and rehabilitated reputation as a “hero”, one that every biographer ever since myopically ran with.
Sh*t, thinking about all that I realise that the f*cker was probably a crypto-jew…
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Sh*t, thinking about all that I realise that the f*cker was probably a crypto-jew
🙂
Don’t mistake being impressed or in one sense admiration for hero worship. As you mention “ordering the sacking and looting of Yogyakarta’ from what I have read the audacity of undertaking was (gee I am going to flounder from a wordsmith failure here) unbelievable. From a legal, logistical, tactical, strategic point of view he should never have got away with it and yet he did.
He was one of the very first to use the excuse sorry the infrastructure in India and Indonesia sucks and I didn’t get that email.
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He was one of the very first to use the excuse sorry the infrastructure in India and Indonesia sucks and I didn’t get that email.
🙂
Very, very true indeed – that’s precisely what he did! And yes, the attack on Yogya (200 years ago this year, incidentally), was utterly outrageously audacious. It does strike me as odd that it is an event so little recalled in Indonesia today, given that it was probably the single most humiliating and traumatic experience for the Javanese in the entire experience of European colonialism.
And Yogya’s default deputy governor today – the head of the secondary Pakualaman court – only exists because Raffles and Crawfurd created his House as part of their divide and rule policy… -
Oigal,put up or shut up.What was the % of shares owned by Jews/crypto Jews in the VOC around 1650 ?
Raffles was a freemason.
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Peter, you are hereby employed as my pembantu.
I’ve been more than patient with Yaser Antone, but he can’t even perform a simple task like ironing my socks, so I’m going to give you a chance instead.
But listen – if I come home early and find you sprawled on the living room floor with you fingers in your mouth staring at TV and watching sinetron at full volume you’ll be out on your ear without further warning…
Now you can start by cleaning the toilet… -
timdog
Your historical accounts often seem contradictory to what is available from mainstream publishings. May I ask what your sources are? -
Oigal,put up or shut up.What was the % of shares owned by Jews/crypto Jews in the VOC around 1650 ?
Sorry Pieter but when did I cross over into reverso world. You are the one telling us the the VOC story and I quote
Most of the founders of the VOC … were crypto Jews with Spanish and Portugese names.
Now from what I can see most our learn’d friends here have indicated you are full of sh*t, so seems you would be the one providing names and percentages in the name of crypto credibility and dignity.
I have to confess I am still struggling with a bunch of Joows tunneling from Tasmania to Jamaica in pursuit of world domination.
In all seriousness, I have yet to see where one of your figments has not be exposed as utter factual toss.
Honestly, I would love to agree with you but then we would both be wrong.
Still keep it up, its funny stuff, although I am curious how youse blokes function in daily life.
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Timdog
I don’t watch the Telescreen which is why I know a bit about the real world.
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Idiot
Oigal,you are an idiot.
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Ah lanced by your razor wit 🙂 although one is reminded of the old saying
Never argue with an idiot he will only drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Never the less, thanks for coming it’s been fun 😉 now get back to TD’s socks, he has been having real trouble with those and stop knocking off the loose change.
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ET,
Your historical accounts often seem contradictory to what is available from mainstream publishings. May I ask what your sources are?
Which ones, ET?
If you’re talking in this instance about the stuff on Raffles and the British in Indonesia, and the interactions between the British, the Dutch and the Javanese in the second decade of the 19th century, the sources would be more or less everything ever published on the episode, scholarly and “mainstream”, plus the entire Raffles-Minto manuscript collection in the India Office Records of the British Library, the Bengal Secret and Political Correspondance for the relevant period in the same, the Java Govt Gazette on microfilm in the same, and sundry other manuscript odds and ends, plus a few synopsisisied Javanese manuscript sources.On the more general stuff, a collation of very wide reading, mainstream and scholarly.
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Yaser Antone says:
Oigal,
Its quite interesting to read your posts, I admire the way you express your arguments. I must acknowledge that you are genius, at least amongst members of your freak community ( drunken English teachers ). But forgive me, I really doubt your sanity.
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Joseph de Vega
Joseph de Vega was an Amsterdam crypto Jew who wrote the first book about the first stock market,Amsterdam’s bourse.Isaac Nunes had a mansion in that city that was the subject of a painting by an artist called Hooghe.A lot of the Jews or crypto Jews were buried in the Oudekerk cemetery.
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Peter, nobody has ever doubted that there was a thriving Jewish community in Amsterdam, but the question was to what extent Jews participated in the foundation of the VOC or were even entirely responsible for that (as you claimed).
One of the first economic historians to study the Jewish share in the coming about of modern capitalism, Werner Sombart, claimed in the fourth chapter of his ‘Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben’ that Jews had an important part in the early ventures of merchants in the East. He also claimed that they owned a large part of VOC shares (which is of course not the same claim as saying that they founded the VOC).
I tracked down the source he refers to: Manasseh Ben Israel’s Humble Addresses to the Lord Protector. Ben Israel was a Jew living in Amsterdam who in this memoir to Cromwell was pleading for the readmission of Jews to England. He therefore was concerned to emphasize the commercial advantages of having Jews in residence. About the Dutch trade he says:
In the Low-Countries also, the Iews are received with great Charity and Benevolency, and especially in this most renowned City of Amsterdam, where there are no lesse then 400 Families; and how great a trading and Negotiation they draw to that City, experience doth sufficiently witness. They have there no lesse then three hundred houses of their own, enjoy a good part of the West and East-Indian Compagnies; and besides have yet to set forth their Trafiq such a stock, that for setting a side, onely one duit of every pound Flemish for all kind of commodities that enter, and again as much for all what goes out of this town, and what besides we pay yearly of the rents we get from the East-Indian Compagnie to the reliefe and sustenance of the poore of our Synagogue, that very money amounts ordinarily every year, unto the summe very neare of 12000 Franks; whereby you may easely conceive what a mighty stock it is they trade with, and what a profit they needs must bring into this City.
This seems a bit too meagre to sustain Sombart’s definite claim. And even more so yours.
Sombart was a considerable scholar but he was obviously so entranced by his topic that ultimately he seemed to see a Jew behind every tree. There were according to him many leading Jews in the Indies. Jan Pietersz Coen, he said, was a Jew whose real name was Cohn. I have encountered this claim nowhere else.
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timdog
Which ones, ET?
I didn’t mean anything derogatory with it. As history is seldom written by the losers but usually by the winners or by those whose interpretation may corroborate their political and financial positions, it is always interesting to hear an alternative voice. It only makes me wonder why someone with your obvious literacy and erudition leaves an important historical document like the Koran “gathering dust somewhere on the upper shelves of his library”.
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It only makes me wonder why someone with your obvious literacy and erudition leaves an important historical document like the Koran “gathering dust somewhere on the upper shelves of his library”.
Why thank you mister! 😉
And in answer to your question, well, obviously I’ve read the thing, all of it (which, I must confess, is more than I can say for the Bible, though I have dipped in reasonably extensively). However, as its relevance, if it exists at all, in my areas of specific interest – colonial India, and specificically the top left corner of it, and 18th and 19th century Indonesia, particularly Java – is only as a thing, not as a document… -
A thing? Blasphemy! Watch your head, mister.
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Intrigued by the claim that the founder of Batavia, Coen, was Jewish I searched a bit more and found this entry in a Jewish encyclopedia that dates from before the first World War:
COEN, JAN PIETERSZOON:
Governor-general of Java, and founder of the Dutch colonial system; born at Hoorn, Holland, Jan. 8, 1587; died in 1629. He gained his early commercial experience with the firm of Piscatori in Rome, went to India on a commercial exploration in 1607, and made a second voyage with two ships in 1612. He was appointed director-general of the Indian trade in 1613. As governor-general of Java, he destroyed (1619) the native town of Jacatra, and founded Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies. He died childless in 1629, and his large possessions went for the benefit of orphans in his native town of Hoorn, subject to a bequest in favor of members of his family, which seems to have been some time later successfully claimed.
Coen is said to have been of Jewish descent. The biographies, while printing voluminous details of his career as governor-general, are singularly reticent in regard to his parentage. The name or occupation of his father is not found, though one would have expected these facts to be recorded of so eminent a man. Perhaps as a convert he endeavored to conceal them. His portrait in Valentyn’s “History of Java” and in Müller’s “Golden Age” might well be that of a Jew. Abbing’s “History of Hoorn” gives chiefly negative evidence on the subject of Coen’s Jewish connection. The question of his extraction must be left undecided.
Bibliography:
International Cyclopedia;
A. Winkler Prins, Geïllustreerde Encyclopedie;
Jew. Chron. Oct. 20, 1899, p. 21.Though it mentions the main Dutch Encyclopedia, the Winkler Prins, as a source, my 1975 copy of this does not allude to Coen’s possibly Jewish descent at all – neither does my first edition of the Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch Indie.
Wikipedia mentions that his father was a trader in salt and had the name Pieter Willemsz.It looks as if Sombart’s claim is based on preciously little.
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Coen
The name is a variant of the common Cohen/Cohn/Kuhn handle which means (I think)priest and is exclusively Jewish.Are there many Dutch protestants called Coen ?
The more one digs into the past,the more it appears that it was the Jews that shaped the modern world.
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Coen is a not uncommon name in Holland. The Dutch telephone guide has nine pages of them:
http://en.detelefoongids.nl/tg/-/w-coen/1/
I can’t guarantee that they are all protestants though. I am rather unfamiliar with a view of the world that divides it into Jews and Protestants.
The more one digs into the past,the more it appears that it was the Jews that shaped the modern world.
Yes, if one has some preconceived ideas and is satisfied with the flimsiest of evidence of the Coen – Cohn type.
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The British
It is revealing that the British in 1616 yielded to the Sultan of Banten.This was well before the readmission of the Jews and their best days were yet to come.It took Jewish pilots to get them to Jamaica and Virginia.