Have a Great Summer! Be Safe! Have Fun!
See you back in August.
This Week In History: On May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was established, creating the largest refugee population in the world. According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, “Jewish forces expelled over a million Palestinians from their homes at gunpoint, massacred civilians and deliberately destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages”.
Palestinians who escaped persecution from Jewish forces fled to Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank. As a result, there are now 4.5 million Palestinian refugees without the right to return to their homes in the land now called Israel. Many refugees still retain old deeds and keys to homes now occupied by Israelis.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is known as al Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe, and is commemorated on Nakba Day on the 15th of May every year, the day after Israeli Independence Day on the Gregorian calendar.
Throughout its 64-year history, Israel has denied that al Nakba — which happened just years after the Holocaust — ever took place, and last year the government passed a fascist law that allows the denial of state funding to NGOs that participate in Nakba commemorations. In 2009, it banned the use of the term “Nakba” in school textbooks.
Photos: Top: Thousands of Palestinians throng the beach as they are forced out of their homeland / Bottom: An elderly Palestinian couple during the mass exodus, Palestine, 1948 (UNRWA)
German propaganda postcard series “The Faithful.” The text tells of the country’s trumpets calling to war, and the despite how rough the war will be to her loved one, the girl will remain faithful.
(Source.)
Christmas Truce, 1914
British and German troops meeting in No man’s land for a game of football during the unofficial truce
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German and British troops fraternizing, Christmas 1914.
“Men who joined us later were inclined to disbelieve us when we spoke of the incident, and no wonder for as the months rolled by, we who were actually there, could hardly realize that it had happened, except for [the] fact that every little detail stood out so well in our memory.” W. A. Quinton, of the 1st Bedfordshires (Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age).](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwrrr4HV3A1r6y3vao1_500.jpg)
German and British troops fraternizing, Christmas 1914.
“Men who joined us later were inclined to disbelieve us when we spoke of the incident, and no wonder for as the months rolled by, we who were actually there, could hardly realize that it had happened, except for [the] fact that every little detail stood out so well in our memory.” W. A. Quinton, of the 1st Bedfordshires (Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age).
Pictured above: Russian soldiers at the graves of their fallen comrades (gwpda)
“By 1917, the Russian Army’s officer corps was increasingly demoralized by the poor progress of the fighting. Though grossly outnumbered, the Germans had proven to be dangerous and cunning opponents, and the Russian royal family’s unfortunate intervention in affairs did not improve anything. The repeated catastrophes suffered by Russian field armies squelched what patriotism had existed three years earlier, slowly allowing the entire governing system to fall apart. By March of that year, some Army units began ignoring their orders, a situation made worse as growing Communist rebel groups exaggerated reports of minor events such as the revolt of a Russian Guard depot formation at Petrograd (this famous mutiny was carried out by trainees and depot troops, not by fully trained Imperial Guardsmen).
After the Tsar abdicated his throne that same month, a provisional government was formed with Alexander Kerensky at its head. He made a short-lived attempt to uphold Allied obligations by putting General Brusilov in command of another offensive against the German Southern Army in Galicia. But despite his best efforts, Brusilov’s 1917 offensive only cleared a few mutinous Austrian formations out of the way before running into the brick wall of German general’s Hoffman and Hutier, who first held off, then counter-attacked the hesitant Russian troops. This was the last straw for the Imperial Russian Army, which virtually disintegrated as open civil war swept like a wave across Russia.” -(http://www.richthofen.com/ww1sum2/)
(via hayir)
Sailors aboard an Austrian battleship wearing their protective suits and gas masks during the Great War, July 1916.
The Central Powers consisted of the German Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Bulgaria.
This Day In History: January 9th 1905: Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg
On this day in 1905, Russian workers were massacred by Tsarist troops, an event which became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’. The workers were staging a peaceful, unarmed march to Tsar Nicholas II’s Winter Palace to petition him. They were gunned down by the Imperial Guard. The massacre, and apparent…
World War I witnessed the death of hundreds of thousands of military horses. Steven Spielberg’s latest film “War Horse” has brought their exploits and plights to national attention. And these photos, from Simon Butler’s “The War Horses,” reveal the powerful and, at times, terrifying world of equine — and human — life during wartime.
