Talk:Ruhama

History
In History, after the fifth paragraph stating:
 * "Two subsequent attempts to re-establish the settlement during the period of the British Mandate were curtailed by the Arab riots in 1929 and 1936. The kibbutz was eventually successfully re-established in 1944, and grew to a population of 399."
 * please add a new paragraph as following::
 * "Ruhama uses land belonged to the depopulated Palestinian village of al-Jammama."

Source: All that remains : the Palestinian villages occupied and depopulated by Israel in 1948. Khalidi, Walid. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies. 1992. p. 74. ISBN 0-88728-224-5. OCLC 25632612.

I can't edit by myself due to WP:ARBPIA4 edit restrictions.

Thanks! User:Huldra Bustan1498 (talk) 18:08, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
 * User:Bustan1498: checked and ✅, Huldra (talk) 21:16, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

History 2
I have now researched the history of Ruhama in more detail because I encountered so many different pieces of information. I want to unload it here. I don't know what to make of it, as some information is simply not compatible with each other, but maybe someone else has an idea.

(1) Land purchase and founding:

1a) First of all, it is certainly missing here that the land was unlawfully acquired and unlawfully appropriated. The settlers should not have been allowed to enter Palestine in the first place, and Jewish land purchases were forbidden. Kanaani (see article page) therefore reports in the first section about the difficulties that the land purchase caused, which, as usual with Zionist land purchases in the late Ottoman period, had to be done against the law. I translate:


 * "The land was bought by the Palestine Office and the Jewish Colonization Association after they encountered legal difficulties because Turkish law did not allow the registration of land in the name of foreign nationals. Only after intervention with senior officials in Constantinople could the official transfer be carried out, and the land came into the possession of the Palestine Office."

So, in this case, the land purchase does not seem to have been realized through backdoors as usual, but rather with the help of pressure politics. Furthermore, in Zionist land purchases, it was customary for Palestinian tenants to receive compensation ("... a practice which was always observed by Jewish purchasers in later transactions." ). However, this was not the case in Ruhama; I translate Kanaani again:


 * "There were no financial means to compensate the tenants of the land, and without ownership of the land, it seemed as if it would slip out of Jewish hands. At the end of 1911, the land was plowed to create facts on the ground, but the actual work did not begin until 1912."

1b) What Kanaani reports could be the reason why the founding of Ruhama is variously dated to 1911 or 1912 in the secondary literature (1911 is clearly the majority). However, in the linked Times of Israel article, it is reported that the land for Ruhama was not purchased until 1913; so, in this case, even more may have gone awry.

(2) The referenced article by Velikovsky isn't online any more, but here is the corresponding section from "Days and Years." The claim that Ruhama had the only artesian well the region is apparently fabricated. Ruhama is known for its ; the special thing about artesian wells, however, is that they do not require pumping. Accordingly, Blakely writes instead that Ruhama had the first pumping station of the region. By the way, the water there was not discovered by chance; water had been drawn from the same aquifer in Jemmama since 1890. Thus, the discovery of water in Ruhama seems to have been similarly mythologized as that in Nir Am, where they simply tapped into the Gaza Coastal Aquifer.

(3) The end of Ruhama is told in very different ways. According to most versions, in 1917, someone overcame someone there and subsequently took over a village, which was re-founded by its earlier inhabitants only in 1944. However, this is reported both of the Zionist village and the Ottomans and the Zionist village and the British, as well as of the Palestinian village al-Jammama and the British. What confuses me the most is that Yosi Katz does not mention any destruction or occupation, but rather a bankruptcy, after which Ruhama's owners were dispossessed by the bank, and that after this, the farm came to an end because none of the Sheerit Yisrael moved in. Contrast this with Velikovsky's description:


 * My father could refuse to acknowledge the debt because the Bank had not been asked by the owners to make this loan, and the amount of the loan was but the result of an arbitrary conversion of Turkish pounds into British pounds sterling. My father informed the Bank that he had the interests of the Bank — which he had helped to create as a member of the Second Zionist Congress in Basel — as much on his mind as the interests of the cooperative, and offered to divide the land with them. By this he hoped also to preserve this, the only settlement in the Negeb, because the members of the cooperative had no means, or were not reachable, since the October Revolution in Russia. The Bank agreed, and we had to accept the division as mapped by the Bank — certainly prepared to its advantage. And the day after my arrival I had on me this task.

One of them seems to be fantasizing here, and I would definitely bet my money on Velikovsky.

(4) Afaik, only Avneri writes about both destructions of 1929 and 1936-1939, but doesn't seem to know anything of a British occupation. Avneri is purely a propagandist and not a good historical source; however, the destruction around 1929 is also reported by Kellerman, who does not seem to know the 1917 or 1936 destructions, and the one around 1936-1939 by Kark, who does not seem to know the 1929 destruction. Only Kark provides a source, namely herself ("History of Jewish Frontier Settlement in the Negev"; not accessible to me); so I can't explain these different chronologies. In newspapers from 1946, yet another chronology is reported: when the British found an illegal weapons cache in Ruhama in 1946, a resident excused it by saying that they needed the weapons for self-defense because Ruhama already had been destroyed twice — once in 1921 (!) and once between 1936 and 1939. This might be the source for the "1936-1939" destruction, which is then not very reliable. Does anyone have access to Kark's History of Jeiwsh Frontier Settlement in the Negev? DaWalda (talk) 16:34, 1 July 2024 (UTC)


 * A large amount of contemporary information is available in the Historical Jewish Press. Probably some of these questions are answered there. Zerotalk 04:05, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks again. Well... Based on what can be reconstructed from newspaper articles, the story of Ruhama yet again appears quite different. I'm not sure if any of the following can be used at all; this is all primary source original research, which contradicts much of what can be gathered from the secondary literature I cited above.
 * 1) First, it is important to know that the village of Jemmama did not cease to exist after Ruhama was built; Kanaani reports that the residential area remained untouched (Source: see article page).
 * 2) Ruhama did not become a village but remained a farm. Kanaani reports that in 1915, only 12 workers were employed there; the same can be inferred from a newspaper note from 1919; an article from 1924 reports 13 workers (see below) - so, Ruhama does not seem to have grown any further after 1915.
 * 3) Josi Katz appears to be telling the truth, and by the end of the war, Ruhama had accumulated significant debt. This newspaper article mainly elaborates the ongoing mismanagement of the farm, which led to its losses, and then tells that the bank took the farm away from Sheerit Yisrael. Also during the war – apparently in 1917, see the secondary literature – the workers were transported to Jerusalem by the Ottomans through indirect routes. The settlement itself was first taken over by the Ottomans and then captured by the British.
 * Up to this point, this can still be corroborated by secondary literature (> Kanaani's and Katz's essays), but beyond this, it cannot:
 * 4) Still during the war, presumably in late 1917 or early 1918, the farm had already passed to a new owner (this directly contradicts the Velikovsky, see above), under whom the aforementioned 12 workers of 1919 were employed. This settlement phase lasted at least until 1924. But without external investment from Moscow, the work on the farm was not profitable; therefore, farmland had to be leased to the residents of Jemmama, the Jewish workers were replaced by Palestinians, and in 1925, the Jewish residents of Ruhama were on the verge of completely abandoning the farm.
 * 5) An article from 1938 also alludes to an attack around 1929 (see Avneri and Kellermann); however, I have not found a report about the attack itself, only about attacks on the Jerusalem quarter "Ruhama." An article from 1929 about Beer Tuvia mentions nothing about any recent events in Ruhama, stating that it was abandoned some time ago. Perhaps there was some confusion between the settlement and the Jerusalem quarter here? Alternatively, I am not sure whether the attack in 1938 happened in the Jewish settlement; the attack around 1938 and thus also the 1929 attack might have taken place in Jemmama instead of Ruhama (see below) and this is the reason why I can't find anything.
 * 6) I do not understand what happened between 1932 and 1939. According to Avneri, Ruhama should have been re-established in 1932; however, I again only find reports from that year about the Jerusalem quarter with the same name. This article from September 1932 explicitly states that Ruhama remained abandoned. Avneri's 1932 statement is supported by another newspaper article from 1946. However, the first date of this article now seems to be firmly contradicted by the evidence cited in (4), and against the second date (which is also supported by Myerson's interview, see above) I have now also found conflicting evidence. If I interpret this evidence correctly, the attacks cited in 1946 by Myerson and the last article to justify the possession of weapons both appear to be fictitious and merely pretexts to explain this possession:
 * 7) In contrast, an article from 1938 reports that Zionists voluntarily abandoned Ruhama some years ago (see the contrast of Shechem, Beersheba, and Ruhama vs. "in recent years: Hebron") and withdrew to areas with a higher concentration of Zionists.
 * 8) Yet again in contrast, even after 1936, there are still mentions of Ruhama and shootings there (note that the last one also doesn't know of any destruction between 1917 and 1921).   If this refers to the Zionist Ruhama, it already contradicts Avneri and Myerson. However, since Ruhama was apparently abandoned by Zionists before 1937, it seems that these instances refer to Jemmama, which has also been called "Ruhama" since 1921 (in the following article, for example, it is almost certainly Jemmama that is being referred to ), which would also explain why, besides the "Last Jew", only Palestinian residents and actors are mentioned. DaWalda (talk) 11:36, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Palestine Post 14 February 1944: "On the occasion of its settlements at Ruhama, a neglected Jewish village in the Gaza District, the 'Heamal' Hashomer Hatzair group celebrated its move at the amphitheatre here last night". Does this contradict the claim that it was reestablished by its former inhabitants? Zerotalk 13:09, 3 July 2024 (UTC)


 * According to Kanaani, members of Hashomer Hatzair joined the first settlers as early as 1916, which means they indeed belonged to the first generation and the 1944 generation of settlers. DaWalda (talk) 17:36, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Removing Velikovsky
Immanuel Velikovsky is known as a writer of pseudoscientific nonsense, so I was surprised to see him used as a source. Moreover, the source is a letter to the editor, which is a type of source rarely acceptable since the newspaper takes no responsibility for its accuracy. In addition: (1) Velikovsky says his father was the founder of the settlement but I have not seen this name mentioned anywhere else (has anyone?). (2) Velikovsky says that Ruhama was the British army's main water supply in the Negeb, but when I tried to validate this by looking at contemporary military maps I didn't find this place marked at all (this is hard to research and deserves further study). (3) Velikovsky says Ruhama was repeatedly mentioned in the House of Commons but I can't find any. Anyway, I have my scalpel out. Zerotalk 03:51, 2 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Ad (2): Blakely (p. 156) shows a photo (Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Images A01989A-A01989D) in which EEF troops are watering horses at the well at Ruhama in 1917, so this could be true. Something similar is also reported in this newspaper article from 1919. The first half deals with the continuous mismanagement of Ruhama; from the second half, I will translate the relevant passage:
 * When the British entered the scene, during the last days of the Turkish rule, government officials came and arrested almost all the workers in Ruhama, along with the work manager, and took them to Beersheba. Upon arriving in Beersheba, they found the British capturing the city, and they were sent further to Jerusalem and then to Damascus. Eventually, they managed to escape and return to Jerusalem. Only one worker remained at the site, who was working at the well supplying water for the army. On the last day, when the British attacked Ruhama while pursuing the retreating Turks, he hid in a prepared pit in the beehive area, waited for the danger to pass, and met the British upon their entry into Ruhama.
 * So it seems more accurate that both the Ottomans and the British sourced water from the well. DaWalda (talk) 05:56, 2 July 2024 (UTC)