West Coast Connection Forum
Lifestyle => Train of Thought => Topic started by: J @ M @ L on November 25, 2005, 02:42:37 AM
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - European Union diplomats have said Israel's policies in Arab East Jerusalem are hurting the prospects of a final agreement on the city with the Palestinians, U.S. and British newspapers said on Friday.
The New York Times said a report by EU diplomats in East Jerusalem and Ramallah to the 25-member group's foreign ministers recommended a more aggressive policy toward Israeli actions in East Jerusalem.
The report accused Israel of boosting illegal settlement in and around East Jerusalem and of using the route of its separation barrier "to seal off most of East Jerusalem, with its 230,000 Palestinian residents, from the West Bank" and to create a "de facto annexation of Palestinian land," the paper said.
Israeli policies "are reducing the possibility of reaching a final-status agreement on Jerusalem that any Palestinian could accept," said the report, which the Times said it had obtained "from someone who wanted to publicize it."
Several British newspapers also carried the report.
"Israeli measures also risk radicalizing the hitherto relatively quiescent Palestinian population of East Jerusalem," the Times quoted the report as saying.
The authors of the report recommended that the EU ask Israel "to halt discriminatory treatment of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, especially concerning working permits, building permits, house demolitions, taxation and expenditure," it said.
Commenting on the report, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said:
"We have accepted the principle that there has to be a viable and contiguous Palestinian state and nothing that we are doing excludes the possibility of reaching that outcome."
(Basically saying that it doesn't matter what they do to these people as long as they're working on a Palestinian state)
On the West Bank barrier, he said:
"The security fence (at least now we can cleary once again see why ItoDaGeezy is such a brainwashed tool) is a remarkably successful tool in preventing the penetration of suicide bombers into Israel."
The New York Times said EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday decided not to publish the report and instead asked for a "detailed EU analysis on East Jerusalem to be adopted and made public" at their next meeting in mid-December.
Israel seized East Jerusalem, along with the rest of the West Bank and Gaza, in the 1967 Middle East War and claims the city as its "united and eternal capital." Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state of their own.
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I guess the EU is now anti-Semitic. ::)
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I guess the EU is now anti-Semitic. ::)
You guess correctly!
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niggaz be on some victim shit
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ook so let me get this straight anti-semitic = criticising israels wrong doings? like they are above all laws and exempt from acting with morals
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ook so let me get this straight anti-semitic = criticising israels wrong doings? like they are above all laws and exempt from acting with morals
Unequivocally-Yes, when there is complete disregard of the Palestinian Leadership's and Palestinian militant group's misconduct that, when viewed, explains the coercion in every ostensible Israeli misconduct.
And even more to the point:
Delegitimization and Antisemitism
Is anti-Zionism different from antisemitism?
Israel, as a democracy, is receptive to fair and legitimate criticism. However, all too often Israel is singled out and held up to standards not applied to any other state. Although valid criticism of Israel has absolutely no connection to antisemitism, some of the unreasonable condemnation has its roots in antisemitic attitudes, often disguised as "anti-Zionism." Just as in the past Jews were the scapegoat for many problems, today there are attempts to turn Israel into an international pariah.
"Antisemitism" is the name given to the form of racism practiced against the Jewish people. Though the literal interpretation of antisemitism would appear to denote hostility to all Semitic peoples, this is a fallacy. The term was originally coined in Germany in 1879 to describe the European anti-Jewish campaigns of that era, and it soon came to define the persecution or discrimination against Jews throughout the ages.
Hatred of the Jewish people is an age-old phenomenon, traditionally associated with expressions of xenophobia and religious intolerance. Antisemitism has taken different forms and used various motifs throughout history. In modern times, it has been promoted by extreme nationalistic and even racist ideologies. Severe antisemitism exists in Arab countries today.
Egyptian version (1994) of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"
Egyptian version (2001) of antisemitic tract "The International Jew"
Antisemitism reached its peak in the Holocaust. Over 6 million Jews (one third of the world's Jewish population) were brutally and systematically murdered during World War II.
Modern antisemitism in Europe, after being repressed for decades, has erupted with renewed fury in recent years in a new form: "anti-Zionism," or hatred of the State of Israel.
Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people - an expression of their legitimate aspiration to self-determination and national independence. The Zionist movement was founded to provide an ancient people with a sovereign state of its own, in its ancestral homeland. Israel is the modern political embodiment of this age-old dream.
The goal of anti-Zionism is to undermine the legitimacy of Israel, thereby denying the Jewish people their place in the community of nations. Denigration of Zionism is therefore an attack on Israel's basic right to exist as a nation equal to all other nations, in violation of one of the fundamental principles of international law.
Just as antisemitism denies Jews their rights as individuals in society, anti-Zionism attacks the Jewish people as a nation, on the international level. Similar to the use of "the Jew" as a scapegoat for many a society's problems, Israel has been singled out for disproportionate and one-sided condemnation in the international arena.
Anti-Zionism is often manifested as attacks on Israel in the United Nations and other international forums. Over the years, many a meeting and event of the international community has been exploited as an opportunity to condemn Israel - no matter what the subject matter, no matter how tenuous the tie to the conflict in the Middle East.
Moreover, it is no coincidence that the recent censure of Israel in international forums and the media has been accompanied by a sharp increase in antisemitic incidents in many parts of the world.
As a nation dedicated to the principles of democracy, Israel believes that criticism, whether by other nations or our own people, is a powerful force for positive change. However, there is a clear distinction between legitimate calls for improvement and the attempt to delegitimize Israel by consistently singling it out and holding it up to standards not applied to other states. All this ignores the context in which Israel must strive to survive in the face of violent attacks against its citizens and, all too often, against its very existence.
but since you, as you say:
can't be arsed to read all that
I believe you will maintain the same brainwashed opinion untill it's no longer germane.
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lol that article posted above based on israeli propergander takes alot less time to read than the 11,124 word essay you posted up before!!! quite frankly i got better things to do with my time than read some zoinist propergander that will take an hour to read, but if you post stuff that won't take forever to read i'll happily take a look.
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You're a little bitch. That's all there pretty much is to it. For you to say that it's anti-Semitic to criticize Israel's actions, which are fucking disgusting, is like me saying:
If you criticize the Palestinian leadership you must be racist against Arabs.
Don't blindly support the terrorist state of Israel, and you won't feel like such a retard trying to defend actions that can't be defended, or making stupid comments like "He really must've thought that there were no people living in this land lol" Are you that fucking dumb or should I say brainwashed?
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I guess the EU is now anti-Semitic. ::)
Well, they are the ones who killed 6 million Jews last century.
I think the reason Europe is so anti-Israel is because of the large Muslim population there. They don't want to enrage the Muslims and get a repeat of Madrid, London, and Paris.
It is sad that the US is really Israel's only friend in the world. Unlike Europeans we in the US actually stand for something.....and we will stand up for the only peaceful and democratic nation in the Middle East.
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I guess the EU is now anti-Semitic. ::)
Well, they are the ones who killed 6 million Jews last century.
I think the reason Europe is so anti-Israel is because of the large Muslim population there. They don't want to enrage the Muslims and get a repeat of Madrid, London, and Paris.
It is sad that the US is really Israel's only friend in the world.
They? The EU? What was the Muslim population of Europe in the 1930s? You've got to be fucking retarded to really think it has something to do with that. Do your research on Martin Luther and Hitler's adoption of his anti-Semitic ideals. Martin Luther wrote "The Jews and their Lies"... and Hitler considered him a great reformer in Mein Kampf. This shit goes way back... a good example is the Crusades... where Christians killed thousands of Jews and Muslims...
People are anti-Israel the same way they were anti-Iraq with Saddam... for doing fucked up shit.
The U.S. is Israel's friend... because they see Israel as a tool. Why did the U.S. turn away so many Jews during the Holocaust? Do you know about the historic anti-Semitism in the U.S.? What about the KKK?
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Even in your home country, Poland...
http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw99-2000/poland.htm
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They? The EU? What was the Muslim population of Europe in the 1930s? You've got to be fucking retarded to really think it has something to do with that. Do your research on Martin Luther and Hitler's adoption of his anti-Semitic ideals. Martin Luther wrote "The Jews and their Lies"... and Hitler considered him a great reformer in Mein Kampf. This shit goes way back... a good example is the Crusades... where Christians killed thousands of Jews and Muslims...
People are anti-Israel the same way they were anti-Iraq with Saddam... for doing fucked up shit.
The U.S. is Israel's friend... because they see Israel as a tool. Why did the U.S. turn away so many Jews during the Holocaust? Do you know about the historic anti-Semitism in the U.S.? What about the KKK?
You just backed up what I said: Europeans are anti-Semetic. And the growing Muslim population is only making Europe even more anti-Semetic.
By the way, the US didn't turn away Jews during the Holocaust, we opened up our country to them. You need to educate yourself in regards to history, son.
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The Wagner-Rogers Bill was rejected by the U.S Congress in 1939 that would have admitted around 20,000 jewish refugee kids under the age of 14. That same year the S.S. St. Louis was turned down by the Cuba and U.S, that had 907 regugees
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I know you like to make generalizations because you're a bigot, but not all Europeans are anti-Semitic. Maybe your father and your Polish ancestors were, but not all Europeans are racists or bigots.
It's funny how you chose to ignore the other parts of the post.
You need to educate yourself, my little bitch.
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I know you like to make generalizations because you're a bigot, but not all Europeans are anti-Semitic. Maybe your father and your Polish ancestors were, but not all Europeans are racists or bigots.
It's funny how you chose to ignore the other parts of the post.
You need to educate yourself, my little bitch.
What did I ignore?
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You ignored the part about Martin Luther, but that's another point.... now you chose to ignore this:
By the way, the US didn't turn away Jews during the Holocaust, we opened up our country to them. You need to educate yourself in regards to history, son.
The Wagner-Rogers Bill was rejected by the U.S Congress in 1939 that would have admitted around 20,000 jewish refugee kids under the age of 14. That same year the S.S. St. Louis was turned down by the Cuba and U.S, that had 907 regugees
You're on a losing streak, Pollack.
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What are you talking about? That statement about Luther only proves my point that Europeans are anti-Semetic.
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I guess the EU is now anti-Semitic. ::)
Well, they are the ones who killed 6 million Jews last century.
I think the reason Europe is so anti-Israel is because of the large Muslim population there. They don't want to enrage the Muslims and get a repeat of Madrid, London, and Paris.
It is sad that the US is really Israel's only friend in the world. Unlike Europeans we in the US actually stand for something.....and we will stand up for the only peaceful and democratic nation in the Middle East.
it was germany that eradicated the jews not the eu, we're not particularly anti semitic here and britain is a very tollerant nation, but yes we we speak up against the wrong doings of israel like we do any other country that acts immorally.
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What are you talking about? That statement about Luther only proves my point that Europeans are anti-Semetic.
You dumb skinny malnourished polack. Go away. Why do u still post here?
Your gimmick got old in 2002.
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What are you talking about? That statement about Luther only proves my point that Europeans are anti-Semetic.
Now you're ignoring the point about Jews being turned away from the U.S.
Can you make the connection... Martin Luther, Protestant Church, anti-Semitism,....
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lol that article posted above based on israeli propergander takes alot less time to read than the 11,124 word essay you posted up before!!! quite frankly i got better things to do with my time than read some zoinist propergander
Zionist propaganda? Really....Have you ever heared of Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi?
Muslim Cleric says Intifadah is Contrary to Islam
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MONTREAL - There is no basis in Islam for anti-Zionism and the current intifadah is, in fact, contrary to Islamic law, says an outspoken Italian Muslim scholar, who publicly condemns the Palestinian Authority and its chairman Yasser Arafat for distorting the teachings of Islam for their own purposes.
During his recent visit to Canada, Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi said in an interview with The CJN that the Qu'uran recognizes the Land of Israel as the heritage of the Jews and that the modern State of Israel is the fulfillment of the prophecy that, before the Last Judgment, the Jewish people will return to dwell there.
Those who rise up against Israel in the name of Islam are committing "fitnah," meaning apostasy and sedition, Palazzi said, and those who encourage the ignorant to do so are "terrorist criminals."
He is a harsh critic of Palestinian suicide bombers and what he sees as the sacrifice of children in the current intifadah. No "paradise" awaits those who die this way, Palazzi said. "Islam forbids suicide for any reason."
He accuses "pseudo-Islamic" organizations, like Hamas, of cruelly exploiting the impoverished in refugee camps. "Unfortunately, it is true that their only opportunity for a better future lies in sacrificing their children as suicide bombers, for which they will be paid by these organizations."
The only justification for a Muslim to rebel against the government he or she lives under is if that authority prevents them from abiding by the laws and practices of Islam. That is definitely not the case with regard to Israel and Arabs under its jurisdiction, said Palazzi, who is emphatic that Muslims actually have more freedom in Israel than they do in many Arab states.
Palazzi says there is no need for a Palestinian state and that a nationality known as "Palestinian" never existed before 1967.
"A Palestinian state is inconceivable... It would simply be a time bomb under Israel, Jordan and the whole Middle East," he said. "In two to five years, it would become a basis for terrorism like Afghanistan under the Taliban."
Palazzi thinks the only "realistic" solution is to give the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza autonomous administration, similar to that now extended to the Tyrolean region of northern Italy, where German is the official language.
But first the PLO, Hamas and other terrorist groups should be expelled from the area and "not one weapon" should be allowed to remain.
"There are already two "Palestinian' states: Israel and Jordan. What is being suggested is a third Palestinian state," Palazzi said.
He also dismisses the notion that Jerusalem, because it is the traditional site of Mohammed's ascension to heaven, must be the Palestinian capital. "A city's religious status is not necessary connected to its political role...
Mecca, for example, was never the capital of Saudi Arabia. At the time of Mohammed, Jerusalem was, in fact, under Persian administration."
Palazzi said a "Palestinian" people has never existed in history. Before 1967, the Arabs in the West Bank were Jordanians and those in Gaza were Egyptians, he said. Arafat himself, Palazzi claims, is really an Egyptian.
Palazzi, a Sufi, is the chief imam of Italy's approximately 500,000 Muslims and is director of the community's Cultural Institute, which seeks dialogue with Jews and Christians. His mother's family is originally from Syria.
He has strongly condemned Islamic fundamentalism and the dictatorial regimes in much of the Arab world, and has upheld Israel's right to use military force to defend itself.
He charges that if there had been an uprising "one-tenth" the strength of that which Israel is confronting in any Arab country, it would have been "met with an order of 'open fire' and be over in a week."
Palazzi believes many Palestinians realize they would be better off under Israeli administration than in a PLO-ruled state, but they cannot speak out, fearing for their lives or those of their children. "At least in Israel, an Arab can have a new car and be sure he will not be stopped by the police and told to hand it over because it is needed for the state. That happens under Arafat."
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been "artificially created" to focus attention away from the lack of economic and social progress in most of the Arab world, Palazzi argues. "The Palestinian people have been scapegoats to justify everything that is wrong in the Arab world," he said.
Palazzi is also unsparing in this denunciation of the Saudi Wahhabi regime, which he calls "evil" and accuses of spending millions of "petro-dollars" to support those who commit terrorism against Israel.
His visit to Canada, his first, was sponsored by the Montreal-based Canadian Institute for Jewish Research and the Asper Foundation. He spoke in three synagogues in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg.
Palazzi was denounced by the Canadian Islamic Congress as an "anti-Islamic campaigner." The Waterloo, Ont.,-based organization accused the Asper Foundation of "playing with fire by using Canadian synagogues as platforms..." for his views.
"These are very emotionally charged times," Mohamed Elmasry, the congress' national president, said in a press release. "To bring [Palazzi] into Canada is bad enough, but using synagogues to give [him] public voice during these tense times is simply irresponsible... It is dangerously inappropriate for anyone to exploit such a volatile situation."
Palazzi is unfazed by those who discredit him and says he does not fear for his safety. "Even those who criticize me cannot put into question my religious authority. I have a license to teach from the late Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabi [Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ibn Baz] and I am still invited to the general assembly of Muslim scholars called during the pilgrimage to Mecca."
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/amislam/
And if you're not familiar with the references of the previous article I've posted I'll be happy to link you
http://www.adl.org/css/proto_palestine.asp
For you to say that it's anti-Semitic to criticize Israel's actions, which are fucking disgusting, is like me saying:
If you criticize the Palestinian leadership you must be racist against Arabs.
No... you can actually be an Arab and even a Muslim to criticize the Palestinian leadership, but only as long as you aren't brainwashed or threatened by someone or something. ;)
For me to say it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel's actions is completely credible, WHEN(And I quote myself):
there is complete disregard of the Palestinian Leadership's and Palestinian militant group's misconduct that, when viewed, explains the coercion in every ostensible Israeli misconduct.
What in other words can also be called- 'double standard' and 'propaganda'.
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See the thing is... I already stated I don't know how many times that the Palestinian leadership failed the people.... but that doesn't mean the Zionists didn't already fuck them to begin with.
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"There are already two "Palestinian' states: Israel and Jordan. What is being suggested is a third Palestinian state," Palazzi said.
Palazzi said a "Palestinian" people has never existed in history. Before 1967, the Arabs in the West Bank were Jordanians and those in Gaza were Egyptians, he said. Arafat himself, Palazzi claims, is really an Egyptian.
"The Palestinian people have been scapegoats to justify everything that is wrong in the Arab world,"
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/amislam/
To begin with? I think you should take another look at some of the facts Sheikh Palazzi is stating.^^^I've even quoted some of them for you.
Israel has the basic right to defend itself from factors undermining its existence( And now for the challenged among us: If such factors didn't exist, Israel would have no need to realize its right of self-defence.)
He accuses "pseudo-Islamic" organizations, like Hamas, of cruelly exploiting the impoverished in *refugee camps. "Unfortunately, it is true that their only opportunity for a better future lies in sacrificing their children as suicide bombers, for which they will be paid by these organizations."
*Palestinian Refugees
About 600,000 Palestinian (other estimates range form 500,000 to 800,0000) fled Israel between 1947 and 1949, fundamentally because of the Arab states' rejection of the United Nation partition plan and invasion of Israel. The refugees fled out of fear of war and in response to Arab leaders' calls for Arabs to evacuate the areas allocated to the Jews until Israel had been eliminated. In a handful of cases, Palestinians were expelled. A majority of the refugees and their descendants now live in the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the West Bank. About 360,000 Palestinians fled eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights during and after Israel's defensive 1967 War. Palestinian who fled in 1967 are technically considered displaced persons and do not have official refugee status. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency estimated that 175,000 of these 360,000 Palestinians were refugees from the 1948 War. The May 4, 1994, Gaza-Jericho Accord calls for Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, and Egypt to form a Continuing Committee to discuss the 1967 displaced persons. The problem of the 1947-1949 refugees, on the other hand, is to be left for the “final status” negotiations under the terms of the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles of September 13, 1993.
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been "artificially created" to focus attention away from the lack of economic and social progress in most of the Arab world
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been "artificially created" to focus attention away from the lack of economic and social progress in most of the Arab world
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More on topic.
He also dismisses the notion that Jerusalem, because it is the traditional site of Mohammed's ascension to heaven, must be the Palestinian capital. "A city's religious status is not necessary connected to its political role...
Mecca, for example, was never the capital of Saudi Arabia. At the time of Mohammed, Jerusalem was, in fact, under Persian administration."
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Instead of taking somebody else's opinion... as you can see there are no facts... but then again, you yourself have admitted that you don't have to believe anything factual, so it's quite understandable... for you to actually believe that a conflict was "artificially created"... when you know how many Palestinians have been killed and displaced... is retarded... but here let me show you if a conflict is artificially created or not...
Resolution 106: "...‘condemns’ Israel for Gaza raid"
Resolution 111: "...‘condemns’ Israel for raid on Syria that killed fifty-six people"
Resolution 127: "...‘recommends’ Israel suspend its ‘no-man’s zone’ in Jerusalem"
Resolution 162: "...‘urges’ Israel to comply with UN decisions"
Resolution 171: "...determines flagrant violations’ by Israel in its attack on Syria"
Resolution 228: "...‘censures’ Israel for its attack on Samu in the West Bank, then under Jordanian control"
Resolution 237: "...‘urges’ Israel to allow return of new 1967 Palestinian refugees"
Resolution 248: "...‘condemns’ Israel for its massive attack on Karameh in Jordan"
Resolution 250: "...‘calls’ on Israel to refrain from holding military parade in Jerusalem"
Resolution 251: "...‘deeply deplores’ Israeli military parade in Jerusalem in defiance of Resolution 250"
Resolution 252: "...‘declares invalid’ Israel’s acts to unify Jerusalem as Jewish capital"
Resolution 256: "...‘condemns’ Israeli raids on Jordan as ‘flagrant violation"
Resolution 259: "...‘deplores’ Israel’s refusal to accept UN mission to probe occupation"
Resolution 262: "...‘condemns’ Israel for attack on Beirut airport"
Resolution 265: "...‘condemns’ Israel for air attacks for Salt in Jordan"
Resolution 267: "...‘censures’ Israel for administrative acts to change the status of Jerusalem"
Resolution 270: "...‘condemns’ Israel for air attacks on villages in southern Lebanon"
Resolution 271: "...‘condemns’ Israel’s failure to obey UN resolutions on Jerusalem"
Resolution 279: "...‘demands’ withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon"
Resolution 280: "....‘condemns’ Israeli’s attacks against Lebanon"
Resolution 285: "...‘demands’ immediate Israeli withdrawal form Lebanon"
Resolution 298: "...‘deplores’ Israel’s changing of the status of Jerusalem"
Resolution 313: "...‘demands’ that Israel stop attacks against Lebanon"
Resolution 316: "...‘condemns’ Israel for repeated attacks on Lebanon"
Resolution 317: "...‘deplores’ Israel’s refusal to release Arabs abducted in Lebanon"
Resolution 332: "...‘condemns’ Israel’s repeated attacks against Lebanon"
Resolution 337: "...‘condemns’ Israel for violating Lebanon’s sovereignty"
Resolution 347: "...‘condemns’ Israeli attacks on Lebanon"
Resolution 425: "...‘calls’ on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon"
Resolution 427: "...‘calls’ on Israel to complete its withdrawal from Lebanon’
Resolution 444: "...‘deplores’ Israel’s lack of cooperation with UN peacekeeping forces"
Resolution 446: "...‘determines’ that Israeli settlements are a ‘serious obstruction’ to peace and calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention"
Resolution 450: "...‘calls’ on Israel to stop attacking Lebanon"
Resolution 452: "...‘calls’ on Israel to cease building settlements in occupied territories"
Resolution 465: "...‘deplores’ Israel’s settlements and asks all member states not to assist Israel’s settlements program"
Resolution 467: "...‘strongly deplores’ Israel’s military intervention in Lebanon"
Resolution 468: "...‘calls’ on Israel to rescind illegal expulsions of two Palestinian mayors and a judge and to facilitate their return"
Resolution 469: "...‘strongly deplores’ Israel’s failure to observe the council’s order not to deport Palestinians"
Resolution 471: "...‘expresses deep concern’ at Israel’s failure to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention"
Resolution 476: "...‘reiterates’ that Israel’s claims to Jerusalem are ‘null and void’
Resolution 478: "...‘censures (Israel) in the strongest terms’ for its claim to Jerusalem in its ‘Basic Law’
Resolution 484: "...‘declares it imperative’ that Israel re-admit two deported Palestinian mayors"
Resolution 487: "...‘strongly condemns’ Israel for its attack on Iraq’s nuclear facility"
Resolution 497: "...‘decides’ that Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights is ‘null and void’ and demands that Israel rescind its decision forthwith"
Resolution 498: "...‘calls’ on Israel to withdraw from Lebanon"
Resolution 501: "...‘calls’ on Israel to stop attacks against Lebanon and withdraw its troops"
Resolution 509: "...‘demands’ that Israel withdraw its forces forthwith and unconditionally from Lebanon"
Resolution 515: "...‘demands’ that Israel lift its siege of Beirut and allow food supplies to be brought in"
Resolution 517: "...‘censures’ Israel for failing to obey UN resolutions and demands that Israel withdraw its forces from Lebanon"
Resolution 518: "...‘demands’ that Israel cooperate fully with UN forces in Lebanon"
Resolution 520: "...‘condemns’ Israel’s attack into West Beirut"
Resolution 573: "...‘condemns’ Israel ‘vigorously’ for bombing Tunisia in attack on PLO headquarters
Resolution 587: "...‘takes note’ of previous calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and urges all parties to withdraw"
Resolution 592: "...‘strongly deplores’ the killing of Palestinian students at Bir Zeit University by Israeli troops"
Resolution 605: "...‘strongly deplores’ Israel’s policies and practices denying the human rights of Palestinians
Resolution 607: "...‘calls’ on Israel not to deport Palestinians and strongly requests it to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention
Resolution 608: "...‘deeply regrets’ that Israel has defied the United Nations and deported Palestinian civilians"
Resolution 636: "...‘deeply regrets’ Israeli deportation of Palestinian civilians
Resolution 641: "...‘deplores’ Israel’s continuing deportation of Palestinians
Resolution 672: "...‘condemns’ Israel for violence against Palestinians at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount
Resolution 673: "...‘deplores’ Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the United Nations
Resolution 681: "...‘deplores’ Israel’s resumption of the deportation of Palestinians
Resolution 694: "...‘deplores’ Israel’s deportation of Palestinians and calls on it to ensure their safe and immediate return
Resolution 726: "...‘strongly condemns’ Israel’s deportation of Palestinians
Resolution 799: "...‘strongly condemns’ Israel’s deportation of 413 Palestinians and calls for their immediate return.
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The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs’ inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today.
The problem with this explanation is that it is simply not true, as the documentary evidence in this booklet will show. What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which continues to the present).
The Arab community, as it became increasingly aware of the Zionists’ intentions, strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence of Arab society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist project never could have been realized without the military backing of the British. The vast majority of the population of Palestine, by the way, had been Arabic since the seventh century A.D. (Over 1200 years)
In short, Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist world view that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn’t matter. The Arabs’ opposition to Zionism wasn’t based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people.
One further point: being Jewish ourselves, the position we present here is critical of Zionism but is in no way anti-Semitic. We do not believe that the Jews acted worse than any other group might have acted in their situation. The Zionists (who were a distinct minority of the Jewish people until after WWII) had an understandable desire to establish a place where Jews could be masters of their own fate, given the bleak history of Jewish oppression. Especially as the danger to European Jewry crystalized in the late 1930’s and after, the actions of the Zionists were propelled by real desperation.
But so were the actions of the Arabs. The mythic “land without people for a people without land” was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919. This is the root of the problem, as we shall see.
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Early History of the Region
Before the Hebrews first migrated there around 1800 B.C., the land of Canaan was occupied by Canaanites.
“Between 3000 and 1100 B.C., Canaanite civilization covered what is today Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon and much of Syria and Jordan...Those who remained in the Jerusalem hills after the Romans expelled the Jews [in the second century A.D.] were a potpourri: farmers and vineyard growers, pagans and converts to Christianity, descendants of the Arabs, Persians, Samaritans, Greeks and old Canaanite tribes.” Marcia Kunstel and Joseph Albright, “Their Promised Land.”
The present-day Palestinians’ ancestral heritage
“But all these [different peoples who had come to Canaan] were additions, sprigs grafted onto the parent tree...And that parent tree was Canaanite...[The Arab invaders of the 7th century A.D.] made Moslem converts of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried with them, with the result that all are now so completely Arabized that we cannot tell where the Canaanites leave off and the Arabs begin.” Illene Beatty, “Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan.”
The Jewish kingdoms were only one of many periods in ancient Palestine
“The extended kingdoms of David and Solomon, on which the Zionists base their territorial demands, endured for only about 73 years...Then it fell apart...[Even] if we allow independence to the entire life of the ancient Jewish kingdoms, from David’s conquest of Canaan in 1000 B.C. to the wiping out of Judah in 586 B.C., we arrive at [only] a 414 year Jewish rule.” Illene Beatty, “Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan.”
More on Canaanite civilization
“Recent archeological digs have provided evidence that Jerusalem was a big and fortified city already in 1800 BCE...Findings show that the sophisticated water system heretofor attributed to the conquering Israelites pre-dated them by eight centuries and was even more sophisticated than imagined...Dr. Ronny Reich, who directed the excavation along with Eli Shuikrun, said the entire system was built as a single complex by Canaanites in the Middle Bronze Period, around 1800 BCE.” The Jewish Bulletin, July 31st, 1998.
How long has Palestine been a specifically Arab country?
“Palestine became a predominately Arab and Islamic country by the end of the seventh century. Almost immediately thereafter its boundaries and its characteristics — including its name in Arabic, Filastin — became known to the entire Islamic world, as much for its fertility and beauty as for its religious significance...In 1516, Palestine became a province of the Ottoman Empire, but this made it no less fertile, no less Arab or Islamic...Sixty percent of the population was in agriculture; the balance was divided between townspeople and a relatively small nomadic group. All these people believed themselves to belong in a land called Palestine, despite their feelings that they were also members of a large Arab nation...Despite the steady arrival in Palestine of Jewish colonists after 1882, it is important to realize that not until the few weeks immediately preceding the establishment of Israel in the spring of 1948 was there ever anything other than a huge Arab majority. For example, the Jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total of 1,033,314.” Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
How did land ownership traditionally work in Palestine and when did it change?
“[The Ottoman Land Code of 1858] required the registration in the name of individual owners of agricultural land, most of which had never previously been registered and which had formerly been treated according to traditional forms of land tenure, in the hill areas of Palestine generally masha’a, or communal usufruct. The new law meant that for the first time a peasant could be deprived not of title to his land, which he had rarely held before, but rather of the right to live on it, cultivate it and pass it on to his heirs, which had formerly been inalienable...Under the provisions of the 1858 law, communal rights of tenure were often ignored...Instead, members of the upper classes, adept at manipulating or circumventing the legal process, registered large areas of land as theirs...The fellahin [peasants] naturally considered the land to be theirs, and often discovered that they had ceased to be the legal owners only when the land was sold to Jewish settlers by an absentee landlord...Not only was the land being purchased; its Arab cultivators were being dispossessed and replaced by foreigners who had overt political objectives in Palestine.” Rashid Khalidi, “Blaming The Victims,” ed. Said and Hitchens
Was Arab opposition to the arrival of Zionists based on inherent anti-Semitism or a real sense of danger to their community?
“The aim of the [Jewish National] Fund was ‘to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people.’...As early as 1891, Zionist leader Ahad Ha’am wrote that the Arabs “understood very well what we were doing and what we were aiming at’...[Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, stated] ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly’...At various locations in northern Palestine Arab farmers refused to move from land the Fund purchased from absentee owners, and the Turkish authorities, at the Fund’s request, evicted them...The indigenous Jews of Palestine also reacted negatively to Zionism. They did not see the need for a Jewish state in Palestine and did not want to exacerbate relations with the Arabs.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”
Inherent anti-Semitism? — continued
“Before the 20th century, most Jews in Palestine belonged to old Yishuv, or community, that had settled more for religious than for political reasons. There was little if any conflict between them and the Arab population. Tensions began after the first Zionist settlers arrived in the 1880’s...when [they] purchased land from absentee Arab owners, leading to dispossession of the peasants who had cultivated it.” Don Peretz, “The Arab-Israeli Dispute.”
Inherent anti-Semitism? — continued
“[During the Middle Ages,] North Africa and the Arab Middle East became places of refuge and a haven for the persecuted Jews of Spain and elsewhere...In the Holy Land...they lived together in [relative] harmony, a harmony only disrupted when the Zionists began to claim that Palestine was the ‘rightful’ possession of the ‘Jewish people’ to the exclusion of its Moslem and Christian inhabitants.” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
Jews attitude towards Arabs when reaching Palestine.
“Serfs they (the Jews) were in the lands of the Diaspora, and suddenly they find themselves in freedom [in Palestine]; and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination.” Zionist writer Ahad Ha’am, quoted in Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
Proposals for Arab-Jewish Cooperation
“An article by Yitzhak Epstein, published in Hashiloah in 1907...called for a new Zionist policy towards the Arabs after 30 years of settlement activity...Like Ahad-Ha’am in 1891, Epstein claims that no good land is vacant, so Jewish settlement meant Arab dispossession...Epstein’s solution to the problem, so that a new “Jewish question” may be avoided, is the creation of a bi-national, non-exclusive program of settlement and development. Purchasing land should not involve the dispossession of poor sharecroppers. It should mean creating a joint farming community, where the Arabs will enjoy modern technology. Schools, hospitals and libraries should be non-exclusivist and education bilingual...The vision of non-exclusivist, peaceful cooperation to replace the practice of dispossession found few takers. Epstein was maligned and scorned for his faintheartedness.” Israeli author, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Original Sins.”
Was Palestine the only, or even preferred, destination of Jews facing persecution when the Zionist movement started?
“The pogroms forced many Jews to leave Russia. Societies known as ‘Lovers of Zion,’ which were forerunners of the Zionist organization, convinced some of the frightened emigrants to go to Palestine. There, they argued, Jews would rebuild the ancient Jewish ‘Kingdom of David and Solomon,’ Most Russian Jews ignored their appeal and fled to Europe and the United States. By 1900, almost a million Jews had settled in the United States alone.” “Our Roots Are Still Alive” by The People Press Palestine Book Project.
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The British Mandate Period
1920-1948
The Balfour Declaration promises a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
“The Balfour Declaration, made in November 1917 by the British Government...was made a) by a European power, b) about a non-European territory, c) in flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory...[As Balfour himself wrote in 1919], ‘The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant (the Anglo French Declaration of 1918 promising the Arabs of the former Ottoman colonies that as a reward for supporting the Allies they could have their independence) is even more flagrant in the case of the independent nation of Palestine than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country...The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land,’” Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
Wasn’t Palestine a wasteland before the Jews started immigrating there?
“Britain’s high commissioner for Palestine, John Chancellor, recommended total suspension of Jewish immigration and land purchase to protect Arab agriculture. He said ‘all cultivable land was occupied; that no cultivable land now in possession of the indigenous population could be sold to Jews without creating a class of landless Arab cultivators’...The Colonial Office rejected the recommendation.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”
Were the early Zionists planning on living side by side with Arabs?
In 1919, the American King-Crane Commission spent six weeks in Syria and Palestine, interviewing delegations and reading petitions. Their report stated, “The commissioners began their study of Zionism with minds predisposed in its favor...The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission’s conferences with Jewish representatives that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase...
“If [the] principle [of self-determination] is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine’s population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine — nearly nine-tenths of the whole — are emphatically against the entire Zionist program.. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted...No British officers, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms.The officers generally thought that a force of not less than fifty thousand soldiers would be required even to initiate the program. That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program...The initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a ‘right’ to Palestine based on occupation of two thousand years ago, can barely be seriously considered.” Quoted in “The Israel-Arab Reader” ed. Laquer and Rubin.
Side by side — continued
“Zionist land policy was incorporated in the Constitution of the Jewish Agency for Palestine...’land is to be acquired as Jewish property and..the title to the lands acquired is to be taken in the name of the Jewish National Fund, to the end that the same shall be held as the inalienable property of the Jewish people.’ The provision goes to stipulate that ‘the Agency shall promote agricultural colonization based on Jewish labor’...The effect of this Zionist colonization policy on the Arabs was that land acquired by Jews became extra-territorialized. It ceased to be land from which the Arabs could ever hope to gain any advantage...
“The Zionists made no secret of their intentions, for as early as 1921, Dr. Eder, a member of the Zionist Commission, boldly told the Court of Inquiry, ‘there can be only one National Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish preponderance as soon as the numbers of the race are sufficiently increased.’ He then asked that only Jews should be allowed to bear arms.” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
Given Arab opposition to them, did the Zionists support steps towards majority rule in Palestine?
“Clearly, the last thing the Zionists really wanted was that all the inhabitants of Palestine should have an equal say in running the country... [Chaim] Weizmann had impressed on Churchill that representative government would have spelled the end of the [Jewish] National Home in Palestine... [Churchill declared,] ‘The present form of government will continue for many years. Step by step we shall develop representative institutions leading to full self-government, but our children’s children will have passed away before that is accomplished.’” David Hirst, “The Gun and the Olive Branch.”
Denial of the Arabs’ right to self-determination
“Even if nobody lost their land, the [Zionist] program was unjust in principle because it denied majority political rights... Zionism, in principle, could not allow the natives to exercise their political rights because it would mean the end of the Zionist enterprise.” Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Original Sins.”
Arab resistance to Pre-Israeli Zionism
“In 1936-9, the Palestinian Arabs attempted a nationalist revolt... David Ben-Gurion, eminently a realist, recognized its nature. In internal discussion, he noted that ‘in our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us,’ but he urged, ‘let us not ignore the truth among ourselves.’ The truth was that ‘politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside’... The revolt was crushed by the British, with considerable brutality.” Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”
Gandhi on the Palestine conflict — 1938
“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French...What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct...If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs... As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.” Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in “A Land of Two Peoples” ed. Mendes-Flohr.
Didn’t the Zionists legally buy much of the land before Israel was established?
“In 1948, at the moment that Israel declared itself a state, it legally owned a little more than 6 percent of the land of Palestine...After 1940, when the mandatory authority restricted Jewish land ownership to specific zones inside Palestine, there continued to be illegal buying (and selling) within the 65 percent of the total area restricted to Arabs.
Thus when the partition plan was announced in 1947 it included land held illegally by Jews, which was incorporated as a fait accompli inside the borders of the Jewish state. And after Israel announced its statehood, an impressive series of laws legally assimilated huge tracts of Arab land (whose proprietors had become refugees, and were pronounced ‘absentee landlords’ in order to expropriate their lands and prevent their return under any circumstances).” Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
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The UN Partition of Palestine
Why did the UN recommend the plan partitioning Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state?
“By this time [November 1947] the United States had emerged as the most aggressive proponent of partition...The United States got the General Assembly to delay a vote ‘to gain time to bring certain Latin American republics into line with its own views.’...Some delegates charged U.S. officials with ‘diplomatic intimidation.’ Without ‘terrific pressure’ from the United States on ‘governments which cannot afford to risk American reprisals,’ said an anonymous editorial writer, the resolution ‘would never have passed.’” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”
Why was this Truman’s position?
“I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.” President Harry Truman, quoted in “Anti Zionism”, ed. by Teikener, Abed-Rabbo & Mezvinsky.
Was the partition plan fair to both Arabs and Jews?
“Arab rejection was...based on the fact that, while the population of the Jewish state was to be [only half] Jewish with the Jews owning less than 10% of the Jewish state land area, the Jews were to be established as the ruling body — a settlement which no self-respecting people would accept without protest, to say the least...The action of the United Nations conflicted with the basic principles for which the world organization was established, namely, to uphold the right of all peoples to self-determination. By denying the Palestine Arabs, who formed the two-thirds majority of the country, the right to decide for themselves, the United Nations had violated its own charter.” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
Were the Zionists prepared to settle for the territory granted in the 1947 partition?
“While the Yishuv’s leadership formally accepted the 1947 Partition Resolution, large sections of Israel’s society — including...Ben-Gurion — were opposed to or extremely unhappy with partition and from early on viewed the war as an ideal opportunity to expand the new state’s borders beyond the UN earmarked partition boundaries and at the expense of the Palestinians.” Israeli historian, Benny Morris, in “Tikkun”, March/April 1998.
Public vs private pronouncements on this question.
“In internal discussion in 1938 [David Ben-Gurion] stated that ‘after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine’...In 1948, Menachem Begin declared that: ‘The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognized. The signature of institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel (the land of Israel) will be restored to the people of Israel, All of it. And forever.” Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”
The war begins
“In December 1947, the British announced that they would withdraw from Palestine by May 15, 1948. Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa called a general strike against the partition. Fighting broke out in Jerusalem’s streets almost immediately...Violent incidents mushroomed into all-out war...During that fateful April of 1948, eight out of thirteen major Zionist military attacks on Palestinians occurred in the territory granted to the Arab state.” “Our Roots Are Still Alive” by the People Press Palestine Book Project.
Zionists’ disrespect of partition boundaries
“Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage of their superior military preparation and organization, had occupied...most of the Arab cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948...In contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories reserved for the Jewish state under the partition resolution.” British author, Henry Cattan, “Palestine, The Arabs and Israel.”
Culpability for escalation of the fighting
“Menahem Begin, the Leader of the Irgun, tells how ‘in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive to the offensive...Arabs began to flee in terror...Hagana was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter’...The Israelis now allege that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states’ intervention.” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
The Deir Yassin Massacre of Palestinians by Jewish soldiers
“For the entire day of April 9, 1948, Irgun and LEHI soldiers carried out the slaughter in a cold and premeditated fashion...The attackers ‘lined men, women and children up against the walls and shot them,’...The ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin shocked Jewish and world opinion alike, drove fear and panic into the Arab population, and led to the flight of unarmed civilians from their homes all over the country.” Israeli author, Simha Flapan, “The Birth of Israel.”
Was Deir Yassin the only act of its kind?
“By 1948, the Jew was not only able to ‘defend himself’ but to commit massive atrocities as well. Indeed, according to the former director of the Israeli army archives, ‘in almost every village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes’...Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that ‘every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.’” Norman Finkelstein, “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.”
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Statehood and Expulsion
1948
What was the Arab reaction to the announcement of the creation of the state of Israel?
“The armies of the Arab states entered the war immediately after the State of Israel was founded in May. Fighting continued, almost all of it within the territory assigned to the Palestinian state...About 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled in the 1948 conflict.” Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”
Was the part of Palestine assigned to a Jewish state in mortal danger from the Arab armies?
“The Arab League hastily called for its member countries to send regular army troops into Palestine. They were ordered to secure only the sections of Palestine given to the Arabs under the partition plan. But these regular armies were ill equipped and lacked any central command to coordinate their efforts...[Jordan’s King Abdullah] promised [the Israelis and the British] that his troops, the Arab Legion, the only real fighting force among the Arab armies, would avoid fighting with Jewish settlements...Yet Western historians record this as the moment when the young state of Israel fought off “the overwhelming hordes’ of five Arab countries. In reality, the Israeli offensive against the Palestinians intensified.” “Our Roots Are Still Alive,” by the Peoples Press Palestine Book Project.
Ethnic cleansing of the Arab population of Palestine
“Joseph Weitz was the director of the Jewish National Land Fund...On December 19, 1940, he wrote: ‘It must be clear that there is no room for both peoples in this country...The Zionist enterprise so far...has been fine and good in its own time, and could do with ‘land buying’ — but this will not bring about the State of Israel; that must come all at once, in the manner of a Salvation (this is the secret of the Messianic idea); and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer them all; except maybe for Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem, we must not leave a single village, not a single tribe’...There were literally hundreds of such statements made by Zionists.” Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
Ethnic cleansing — continued
“Following the outbreak of 1936, no mainstream (Zionist) leader was able to conceive of future coexistence without a clear physical separation between the two peoples — achievable only by transfer and expulsion. Publicly they all continued to speak of coexistence and to attribute the violence to a small minority of zealots and agitators. But this was merely a public pose..Ben Gurion summed up: ‘With compulsory transfer we (would) have a vast area (for settlement)...I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it,’” Israel historian, Benny Morris, “Righteous Victims.”
Ethnic cleansing — continued
“Ben-Gurion clearly wanted as few Arabs as possible to remain in the Jewish state. He hoped to see them flee. He said as much to his colleagues and aides in meetings in August, September and October [1948]. But no [general] expulsion policy was ever enunciated and Ben-Gurion always refrained from issuing clear or written expulsion orders; he preferred that his generals ‘understand’ what he wanted done. He wished to avoid going down in history as the ‘great expeller’ and he did not want the Israeli government to be implicated in a morally questionable policy...But while there was no ‘expulsion policy’, the July and October [1948] offensives were characterized by far more expulsions and, indeed, brutality towards Arab civilians than the first half of the war.” Benny Morris, “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949”
Didn’t the Palestinians leave their homes voluntarily during the 1948 war?
“Israeli propaganda has largely relinquished the claim that the Palestinian exodus of 1948 was ‘self-inspired’. Official circles implicitly concede that the Arab population fled as a result of Israeli action — whether directly, as in the case of Lydda and Ramleh, or indirectly, due to the panic that and similar actions (the Deir Yassin massacre) inspired in Arab population centers throughout Palestine. However, even though the historical record has been grudgingly set straight, the Israeli establishment still refused to accept moral or political responsibility for the refugee problem it — or its predecessors — actively created.” Peretz Kidron, quoted in “Blaming the Victims,” ed. Said and Hitchens.
Arab orders to evacuate non-existent
“The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) monitored all Middle Eastern broadcasts throughout 1948. The records, and companion ones by a United States monitoring unit, can be seen at the British Museum. There was not a single order or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine, from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948. There is a repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to the civilians of Palestine to stay put.” Erskine Childers, British researcher, quoted in Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
Ethnic cleansing — continued
“That Ben-Gurion’s ultimate aim was to evacuate as much of the Arab population as possible from the Jewish state can hardly be doubted, if only from the variety of means he employed to achieve his purpose...most decisively, the destruction of whole villages and the eviction of their inhabitants...even [if] they had not participated in the war and had stayed in Israel hoping to live in peace and equality, as promised in the Declaration of Independence.” Israeli author, Simha Flapan, “The Birth of Israel.”
The deliberate destruction of Arab villages to prevent return of Palestinians
“During May [1948] ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence to the Palestinian exile began to crystallize, and the destruction of villages was immediately perceived as a primary means of achieving this aim...[Even earlier,] On 10 April, Haganah units took Abu Shusha... The village was destroyed that night... Khulda was leveled by Jewish bulldozers on 20 April... Abu Zureiq was completely demolished... Al Mansi and An Naghnaghiya, to the southeast, were also leveled. . .By mid-1949, the majority of [the 350 depopulated Arab villages] were either completely or partly in ruins and uninhabitable.” Benny Morris, “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.
After the fighting was over, why didn’t the Palestinians return to their homes?
“The first UN General Assembly resolution—Number 194— affirming the right of Palestinians to return to their homes and property, was passed on December 11, 1948. It has been repassed no less than twenty-eight times since that first date. Whereas the moral and political right of a person to return to his place of uninterrupted residence is acknowledged everywhere, Israel has negated the possibility of return... [and] systematically and juridically made it impossible, on any grounds whatever, for the Arab Palestinian to return, be compensated for his property, or live in Israel as a citizen equal before the law with a Jewish Israeli.” Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
Is there any justification for this expropriation of land?
“The fact that the Arabs fled in terror, because of real fear of a repetition of the 1948 Zionist massacres, is no reason for denying them their homes, fields and livelihoods. Civilians caught in an area of military activity generally panic. But they have always been able to return to their homes when the danger subsides. Military conquest does not abolish private rights to property; nor does it entitle the victor to confiscate the homes, property and personal belongings of the noncombatant civilian population. The seizure of Arab property by the Israelis was an outrage.” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
How about the negotiations after the 1948-1949 wars?
“[At Lausanne,] Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians were trying to save by negotiations what they had lost in the war—a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Israel, however... [preferred] tenuous armistice agreements to a definite peace that would involve territorial concessions and the repatriation of even a token number of refugees. The refusal to recognize the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and statehood proved over the years to be the main source of the turbulence, violence, and bloodshed that came to pass.” Israeli author, Simha Flapan, “The Birth Of Israel.”
Israel admitted to UN but then reneged on the conditions under which it was admitted
“The [Lausanne] conference officially opened on 27 April 1949. On 12 May the [UN’s] Palestine Conciliation ,Committee reaped its only success when it induced the parties to sign a joint protocol on the framework for a comprehensive peace. . Israel for the first time accepted the principle of repatriation [of the Arab refugees] and the internationalization of Jerusalem. . .[but] they did so as a mere exercise in public relations aimed at strengthening Israel’s international image...Walter Eytan, the head of the Israeli delegation, [stated]..’My main purpose was to begin to undermine the protocol of 12 May, which we had signed only under duress of our struggle for admission to the U.N. Refusal to sign would...have immediately been reported to the Secretary-General and the various governments.’” Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, “The Making of the Arab-Israel Conflict, 1947-1951.”
Israeli admission to the U.N.— continued
“The Preamble of this resolution of admission included a safeguarding clause as follows: ‘Recalling its resolution of 29 November 1947 (on partition) and 11 December 1948 (on reparation and compensation), and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the ad hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions, the General Assembly...decides to admit Israel into membership in the United Nations.’
“Here, it must be observed, is a condition and an undertaking to implement the resolutions mentioned. There was no question of such implementation being conditioned on the conclusion of peace on Israeli terms as the Israelis later claimed to justify their non-compliance.” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
What was the fate of the Palestinians who had now become refugees?
“The winter of 1949, the first winter of exile for more than seven hundred fifty thousand Palestinians, was cold and hard...Families huddled in caves, abandoned huts, or makeshift tents...Many of the starving were only miles away from their own vegetable gardens and orchards in occupied Palestine — the new state of Israel...At the end of 1949 the United Nations finally acted. It set up the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA) to take over sixty refugee camps from voluntary agencies. It managed to keep people alive, but only barely.” “Our Roots Are Still Alive” by The Peoples Press Palestine Book Project.
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The 1967 War and the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
Did the Egyptians actually start the 1967 war, as Israel originally claimed?
“The former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman, regarded as a hawk, stated that there was ‘no threat of destruction’ but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that Israel could ‘exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies.’...Menahem Begin had the following remarks to make: ‘In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.’“ Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”
Was the 1967 war defenisve? — continued
“I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to The Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it.” Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s Chief of Staff in 1967, in Le Monde, 2/28/68
Moshe Dayan posthumously speaks out on the Golan Heights
“Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland...[Dayan stated] ‘They didn’t even try to hide their greed for the land...We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot.
And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.’” The New York Times, May 11, 1997
The history of Israeli expansionism
“The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan; one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today. But the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.” David Ben-Gurion, in 1936, quoted in Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”
Expansionism — continued
“The main danger which Israel, as a ‘Jewish state’, poses to its own people, to other Jews and to its neighbors, is its ideologically motivated pursuit of territorial expansion and the inevitable series of wars resulting from this aim...No zionist politician has ever repudiated Ben-Gurion’s idea that Israeli policies must be based (within the limits of practical considerations) on the restoration of Biblical borders as the borders of the Jewish state.” Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, “Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3000 Years.”
Expansionism — continued
In Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharatt’s personal diaries, there is an excerpt from May of 1955 in which he quotes Moshe Dayan as follows: “[Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no — it must — invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge...And above all — let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space.” Quoted in Livia Rokach, “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism.”
But wasn’t the occupation of Arab lands necessary to protect Israel’s security?
“Senator [J.William Fulbright] proposed in 1970 that America should guarantee Israel’s security in a formal treaty, protecting her with armed forces if necessary. In return, Israel would retire to the borders of 1967. The UN Security Council would guarantee this arrangement, and thereby bring the Soviet Union — then a supplier of arms and political aid to the Arabs — into compliance. As Israeli troops were withdrawn from the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank they would be replaced by a UN peacekeeping force. Israel would agree to accept a certain number of Palestinians and the rest would be settled in a Palestinian state outside Israel.
“The plan drew favorable editorial support in the United States. The proposal, however, was flatly rejected by Israel. ‘The whole affair disgusted Fulbright,’ writes [his biographer Randall] Woods. ‘The Israelis were not even willing to act in their own self-interest.’” Allan Brownfield in “Issues of the American Council for Judaism.” Fall 1997.[Ed.—This was one of many such proposals]
What happened after the 1967 war ended?
“In violation of international law, Israel has confiscated over 52 percent of the land in the West Bank and 30 percent of the Gaza Strip for military use or for settlement by Jewish civilians...From 1967 to 1982, Israel’s military government demolished 1,338 Palestinian homes on the West Bank. Over this period, more than 300,000 Palestinians were detained without trial for various periods by Israeli security forces. “Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation,” ed. Lockman and Beinin.
World opinion on the legality of Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza.
“Under the UN Charter there can lawfully be no territorial gains from war, even by a state acting in self-defense. The response of other states to Israel’s occupation shows a virtually unanimous opinion that even if Israel’s action was defensive, its retention of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was not...The [UN] General Assembly characterized Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a denial of self determination and hence a ‘serious and increasing threat to international peace and security.’ “ John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”
Examples of the effects of Israeli occupation
“A study of students at Bethlehem University reported by the Coordinating Committee of International NGOs in Jerusalem showed that many families frequently go five days a week without running water...The study goes further to report that, ‘water quotas restrict usage by Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, while Israeli settlers have almost unlimited amounts.’
“A summer trip to a Jewish settlement on the edge of the Judean desert less than five miles from Bethlehem confirmed this water inequity for us. While Bethlehemites were buying water from tank trucks at highly inflated rates, the lawns were green in the settlement. Sprinklers were going at mid day in the hot August sunshine. Sounds of children swimming in the outdoor pool added to the unreality.” Betty Jane Bailey, in “The Link”, December 1996.
Israeli occupation — continued
“You have to remember that 90 percent of children two years old or more have experienced — some many, many times — the [Israeli] army breaking into the home, beating relatives, destroying things. Many were beaten themselves, had bones broken, were shot, tear gassed, or had these things happen to siblings and neighbors...The emotional aspect of the child is affected by the [lack of] security. He needs to feel safe. We see the consequences later if he does not. In our research, we have found that children who are exposed to trauma tend to be more extreme in their behaviors and, later, in their political beliefs.” Dr Samir Quota, director of research for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, quoted in “The Journal of Palestine Studies,” Summer 1996, p.84
Israeli occupation — continued
“There is nothing quite like the misery one feels listening to a 35-year-old [Palestinian] man who worked fifteen years as an illegal day laborer in Israel in order to save up money to build a house for his family only to be shocked one day upon returning from work to find that the house and all that was in it had been flattened by an Israeli bulldozer. When I asked why this was done — the land, after all, was his — I was told that a paper given to him the next day by an Israeli soldier stated that he had built the structure without a license. Where else in the world are people required to have a license (always denied them) to build on their own property? Jews can build, but never Palestinians. This is apartheid.” Edward Said, in “The Nation”, May 4, 1998.
All Jewish settlements in territories occupied in the 1967 war are a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has signed.
“The Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to change the existing order as little as possible during its tenure. One aspect of this obligation is that it must leave the territory to the people it finds there. It may not bring its own people to populate the territory. This prohibition is found in the convention’s Article 49, which states, ‘The occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”
Excerpts from the U.S. State Department’s reports during the Intifada
“Following are some excerpts from the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices from 1988 to 1991:
1988: ‘Many avoidable deaths and injuries’ were caused because Israeli soldiers frequently used gunfire in situations that did not present mortal danger to troops...IDF troops used clubs to break limbs and beat Palestinians who were not directly involved in disturbances or resisting arrest..At least thirteen Palestinians have been reported to have died from beatings...’
1989: Human rights groups charged that the plainclothes security personnel acted as death squads who killed Palestinian activists without warning, after they had surrendered, or after they had been subdued...
1991: [The report] added that the human rights groups had published ‘detailed credible reports of torture, abuse and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees in prisons and detention centers.” Former Congressman Paul Findley, “Deliberate Deceptions.”
Jerusalem — Eternal, Indivisible Capital of Israel?
“Writing in The Jerusalem Report (Feb. 28, 2000), Leslie Susser points out that the current boundaries were drawn after the Six-Day War. Responsibility for drawing those lines fell to Central Command Chief Rehavan Ze’evi. The line he drew ‘took in not only the five square kilometers of Arab East Jerusalem — but also 65 square kilometers of surrounding open country and villages, most of which never had any municipal link to Jerusalem. Overnight they became part of Israel’s eternal and indivisible capital.’” Allan Brownfield in The Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, May 2000.
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The History of Terrorism in the Region
Editor’s Note: We believe that the killing of innocent people is wrong, in all cases. Thus, we cannot condone the use of terrorism by some extreme Palestinian groups, especially prevalent during the 1970s. That being said, however, it is necessary to examine the context in which such incidents occurred.
We hear lots about Palestinian terrorism. How about the Israeli record?
“The record of Israeli terrorism goes back to the origins of the state — indeed, long before — including the massacre of 250 civilians and brutal expulsion of seventy thousand others from Lydda and Ramle in July 1948; the massacre of hundreds of others at the undefended village of Doueimah near Hebron in October 1948;...the slaughters in Quibya, Kafr Kassem, and a string of other assassinated villages; the expulsion of thousands of Bedouins from the demilitarized zones shortly after the 1948 war and thousands more from northeastern Sinai in the early 1970’s, their villages destroyed, to open the region for Jewish settlement; and on, and on.” Noam Chomsky, “Blaming The Victims,” ed. Said and Hitchens.
Terrorism — continued
“However much one laments and even wishes somehow to atone for the loss of life and suffering visited upon innocents because of Palestinian violence, there is still the need, I think, also to say that no national movement has been so unfairly penalized, defamed, and subjected to disproportionate retaliation for its sins as has the Palestinian.
The Israeli policy of punitive counterattacks (or state terrorism) seems to be to try to kill anywhere from 50 to 100 Arabs for every Jewish fatality. The devastation of Lebanese refugee camps, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, and orphanages; the summary arrests, deportations, house destructions, maimings, and torture of Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza..these, and the number of Palestinian fatalities, the scale of material loss, the physical, political and psychological deprivations, have tremendously exceeded the damage done by Palestinians to Israelis.” Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
The U.S. Government and media bias on terrorism in the Middle East
“It is simply extraordinary and without precedent that Israel’s history, its record — from the fact that it..is a state built on conquest, that it has invaded surrounding countries, bombed and destroyed at will, to the fact that it currently occupies Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian territory against international law — is simply never cited, never subjected to scrutiny in the U.S. media or in official discourse...never addressed as playing any role at all in provoking ‘Islamic terror.’” Edward Said in “The Progressive.” May 30, 1996.
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Jewish Criticism of Zionism
“Albert Einstein — ‘I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State. Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State,with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain’...
“Professor Erich Fromm, a noted Jewish writer and thinker, [stated]...’In general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable by confiscation of property, and by being barred from returning to the land on which a people’s forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse...I believe that, politically speaking, there is only one solution for Israel, namely, the unilateral acknowledgement of the obligation of the State towards the Arabs — not to use it as a bargaining point, but to acknowledge the complete moral obligation of the Israeli State to its former inhabitants of Palestine’...
“Nathan Chofshi — ‘Only an internal revolution can have the power to heal our people of their murderous sickness of causeless hatred...It is bound to bring complete ruin upon us. Only then will the old and young in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought here from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruits of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we robbed we put up houses of education, charity, and prayer, while we babble and rave about being the “People of the Book” and the “light of the nations”’...
“In an article published in the Washington Post of 3 October 1978, Rabbi Hirsch (of Jerusalem) is reported to have declared: ‘The 12th principle of our faith, I believe, is that the Messiah will gather the Jewish exiled who are dispersed throughout the nations of the world. Zionism is diametrically opposed to Judaism. Zionism wishes to define the Jewish people as a nationalistic entity. The Zionists say, in effect, ‘Look here, God. We do not like exile. Take us back, and if you don’t, we’ll just roll up our sleeves and take ourselves back.’ ‘The Rabbi continues: ‘This, of course, is heresy. The Jewish people are charged by Divine oath not to force themselves back to the Holy Land against the wishes of those residing there.’” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
Jewish Criticism — continued
“A Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression [is] not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education, and good will, [is] worth a great deal even though the attempt should fail.” Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, quoted in “Like All The Nations?”, ed. Brinner & Rischin.
Martin Buber on what Zionism should have been
“The first fact is that at the time when we entered into an alliance (an alliance, I admit, that was not well defined) with a European state and we provided that state with a claim to rule over Palestine, we made no attempt to reach an agreement with the Arabs of this land regarding the basis and conditions for the continuation of Jewish settlement.
This negative approach caused those Arabs who thought about and were concerned about the future of their people to see us increasingly not as a group which desired to live in cooperation with their people but as something in the nature of uninvited guests and agents of foreign interests (at the time I explicitly pointed out this fact).
“The second fact is that we took hold of the key economic positions in the country without compensating the Arab population, that is to say without allowing their capital and their labor a share in our economic activity. Paying the large landowners for purchases made or paying compensation to tenants on the land is not the same as compensating a people. As a result, many of the more thoughtful Arabs viewed the advance of Jewish settlement as a kind of plot designed to dispossess future generations of their people of the land necessary for their existence and development. Only by means of a comprehensive and vigorous economic policy aimed at organizing and developing common interests would it have been possible to contend with this view and its inevitable consequences. This we did not do.
“The third fact is that when a possibility arose that the Mandate would soon be terminated, not only did we not propose to the Arab population of the country that a joint Jewish Arab administration be set up in its place, we went ahead and demanded rule over the whole country (the Biltmore program) as a fitting political sequel to the gains we had already made. By this step, we with our own hands provided our enemies in the Arab camp with aid and comfort of the most valuable sort — the support of public opinion — without which the military attack launched against us would not have been possible. For it now appears to the Arab populace that in carrying on the activities we have been engaged in for years, in acquiring land and in working and developing the land, we were systematically laying the ground work for gaining control of the whole country.” Martin Buber, quoted in “A Land of Two Peoples” ed. Mendes-Flohr
Israel’s new historians now refute myths of the founding of the state
“Since the 1980’s,.....Israeli scholars [have] concurred with their Palestinian counterparts that Zionism was...carried out as a pure colonialist act against the local population: a mixture of exploitation and expropriation...
“They were motivated to present a revisionist point of view to a large extent by the declassification of relevant archival material in Israel, Britain and the United States. [For example,]...
Challenging the Myth of Annihilation — The new historiographical picture is a fundamental challenge to the official history that says the Jewish community faced possible annihilation on the eve of the 1948 war. Archival documents expose a fragmented Arab world wrought by dismay and confusion and a Palestinian community that possessed no military ability with which to frighten the Jews...
Israel’s responsibility for Refugees — The Jewish military advantage was translated into an act of mass expulsion of more than half of the Palestinian population. The Israeli forces, apart from rare exceptions, expelled the Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some cases, this expulsion was accompanied by massacres [of civilians] as was the case in Lydda, Ramleh, Dawimiyya, Sa’sa, Ein Zietun and other places. Expulsion also was accompanied by rape, looting and confiscation [of Palestinian land and property]...
The Myth of Arab Intransigence — [The U.N.] convened a peace conference in Lausanne, Switzerland in the spring of 1949. Before the conference, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution that in effect replaced the November 1947 partition resolution. This new resolution, Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948, accepted [U.N. Mediator] Bernadotte’s triangular basis for a comprehensive peace: an unconditional return of all the refugees to their homes, the internationalization of Jerusalem, and the partitioning of Palestine into two states. This time, several Arab states and various representatives of the Palestinians accepted this as a basis for negotiations, as did the United States, which was running the show at Lausanne...Prime Minister David Ben Gurion strongly opposed any peace negotiations along these lines...The only reason he was willing to allow Israel to participate in the peace conference was his fear of an angry American reaction...The road to peace was not taken due to Israeli, not Arab, intransigence.
Conclusions — The new Israeli historians...wish to rectify what their research reveals as past evils...There was a high price exacted in creating a Jewish state in Palestine. And there were victims, the plight of whom still fuels the fire of conflict in Palestine.” Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe in “The Link”, January, 1998.
“It is no longer my country”
“For me, this business called the state of Israel is finished...I can’t bear to see it anymore, the injustice that is done to the Arabs, to the Beduins. All kinds of scum coming from America and as soon as they get off the plane taking over lands in the territories and claiming it for their own...I can’t do anything to change it. I can only go away and let the whole lot go to hell without me.” Israeli actress (and household name) Rivka Mitchell, quoted in Israeli peace movement periodical, “The Other Israel”, August 1998.
The effect of Zionism on American Jews.
“The corruption of Judaism, as a religion of universal values, through its politicization by Zionism and by the replacement of dedication to Israel for dedication to God and the moral law, is what has alienated so many young Americans who, searching for spiritual meaning in life, have found little in the organized Jewish community.” Allan Brownfield, “Issues of the American Council for Judaism”, Spring 1997.
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Zionism and the Holocaust
The U.N. decisions to partition Palestine and then to grant admission to the state of Israel were made, on one level, as an emotional response to the horrors of the Holocaust, Under more normal circumstances, the compelling claims to sovereignty of the Arab majority would have prevailed. This reaction of guilt on the part of the Western allies was understandable, but that doesn’t mean the Palestinians should have to pay for crimes committed by others—a classic example of two wrongs not making a right.
The Holocaust is often used as the final argument in favor of Zionism, but is this connection justified? There are several aspects to consider in answering that question honestly. First, we will examine the historical record of what the Zionist movement actually did to help save European Jewry from the Nazis.
Shamir proposes an alliance with the Nazis
“As late as 1941, the Zionist group LEHI, one of whose leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, was later to become a prime minister of Israel, approached the Nazis, using the name of its parent organization, the Irgun(NMO)..[The proposal stated:] ‘The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian Pd bound by a treaty with the German Reich would be in the interests of strengthening the future German nation of power in the Near East...The NMO in Palestine offers to take an active part in the war on Germany’s side’...The Nazis rejected this proposal for an alliance because, it is reported, they considered LEHI’s military power ‘negligible.’ “ Allan Brownfield in “The Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs”, July/August 1998.
Wasn’t the main goal of Zionism to save Jews from the Holocaust?
“In 1938 a thirty-one nation conference was held in Evian, France, on resettlement of the victims of Nazism. The World Zionist Organization refused to participate, fearing that resettlement of Jews in other states would reduce the number available for Palestine.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”
Main goal of Zionism — continued
“It was summed up in the meeting [of the Jewish Agency’s Executive on June 26, 1938] that the Zionist thing to do ‘is belittle the [Evian] Conference as far as possible and to cause it to decide nothing...We are particularly worried that it would move Jewish organizations to collect large sums of money for aid to Jewish refugees, and these collections could interfere with our collection efforts’...Ben-Gurion’s statement at the same meeting: ‘No rationalization can turn the conference from a harmful to a useful one. What can and should be done is to limit the damage as far as possible.’” Israeli author Boas Evron, “Jewish State or Israeli Nation?”
Main goal of Zionism — continued
“[Ben-Gurion stated] ‘If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second — because we face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people.’ In the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, Ben-Gurion commented that ‘the human conscience’ might bring various countries to open their doors to Jewish refugees from Germany. He saw this as a threat and warned: ‘Zionism is in danger.’” Israeli historian, Tom Segev, “The Seventh Million.”
Main goal of Zionism — continued
“Even David Ben-Gurion’s sympathetic biographer acknowledges that Ben-Gurion did nothing practical for rescue, devoting his energies to post-war prospects. He delegated rescue work to Yitzak Gruenbaum, who [stated]...’They will say that I am anti-Semitic, that I don’t want to save the Exile, that I don’t have a varm Yiddish hartz...Let them say what they want. I will not demand that the Jewish Agency allocate a sum of 300,000 or 100,000 pounds sterling to help European Jewry. And I think that whoever demands such things is performing an anti-Zionist act.’
“Zionists in America...took the same position. At a May 1943 meeting of the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, Nahum Goldmann argued, ‘If a drive is opened against the White Paper (the British policy of restricting Jewish immigrants to Palestine) the mass meetings of protest against the murder of European Jewry will have to be dropped. We do not have sufficient manpower for both campaigns.’” Peter Novick, “The Holocaust in American Life.”
Main goal of Zionism — continued
“The Zionist movement...interfered with and hindered other organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish, whenever it imagined that their activity, political or humanitarian, was at variance with Zionist aims or in competition with them, even when these might be helpful to Jews, even when it was a question of life and death...Beit Zvi documents the Zionist leadership’s indifference to saving Jews from the Nazi menace except in cases in which the Jews could be brought to Palestine...[e.g.] the readiness of the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, to absorb one hundred thousand refugees and the sabotaging of this idea — as well as others, like proposals to settle the Jews inAlaska and the Philippines — by the Zionist movement...
“The obtuseness of the Zionist movement toward the fate of European Jewry did not prevent it, of course, from later hurling accusations against the whole world for its indifference toward the Jewish catastrophe or from pressing material, political, and moral demands on the world because of that indifference.” Israeli author Boas Evron, “Jewish State or Israeli Nation?”
Main goal of Zionism — continued
“I have already gone exhaustively into the reason for our being here, reasons that I as a pioneer of 1906 can affirm have nothing to do with the Nazis!...We are here because the land is ours. And we are here because we have again made it ours in this time with the work we have put into it. Nazism and our history of martyrdom abroad do not concern our presence in Israel directly.” David Ben-Gurion, “Memoirs.”
In hindsight, it is easy to say that the millions of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust could have been saved if Palestine had been available for unlimited immigration. The history of this period is not so simple, however. First, keep in mind that other realistic resettlement plans were proposed but actively opposed by the Zionist movement. Second, the great majority of Jews in Europe were not Zionists and did not try to emigrate to Palestine before 1939. Third, after the start of the war, as the Nazis occupied various countries, they refused to let the Jews leave, making emigration virtually impossible. And Palestine, as we have shown, was already occupied; the indigenous Arabs had more valid reasons than any other country for wanting to limit Jewish immigration. Read on:
Emigration to Palestine before World War II
“In 1936, the Social Democratic Bund won a sweeping victory in Jewish kehilla elections in Poland...Its main hallmarks included ‘an unyielding hostility to Zionism’ and to the Zionist enterprise of Jewish emigration from Poland to Palestine. The Bund wished Polish Jews to fight anti-semitism in Poland by remaining there...The Zionist goal was also opposed, as a matter of principle, by all the major parties and movements among pre-1939 Polish Jewry...”Elsewhere in eastern Europe...Zionist strength was weaker still.” Prof. William Rubinstein, “The Myth of Rescue.”
Emigration to Palestine before World War II — continued
“In fact, Zionism suffered its own defeat in the Holocaust; as a movement, it failed. It had not, after all, persuaded the majority of Jews to leave Europe for Palestine while it was still possible to do so.” Israeli historian, Tom Segev, “The Seventh Million.”
Emigration during World War II
“[With the start of the war, Nazi] edicts forbidding emigration followed in all countries under direct Nazi control: after 1940-1 it was in effect impossible for Jews legally to emigrate from Nazi-occupied Europe to places of safety...The doors...were firmly shut: by the Nazis, it must be emphasized.” Prof William D. Rubinstein, “The Myth of Rescue.
Palestine was not necessarily a safe haven either
“In September 1940, the Italians, at war with Britain, bombed downtown Tel Aviv, with over a hundred casualties...As the German Army overran Europe and North Africa, it appeared possible that it would conquer Palestine as well. In the summer of 1940, in the spring of 1941, and again in the fall of 1942 the danger seemed imminent. The yishuv panicked...Many people tried to find a way out of the country, but it was not easy...Some...were taking no chances; they carried cyanide capsules.” Israeli historian, Tom Segev, “The Seventh Million.”
In any case, Palestine was not Britain’s to give away; it was already occupied.
“We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish, state here...Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages...There is not a single community in the country that did not have a former Arab population.” Israeli leader, Moshe Dayan, quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi’s “Original Sins.”
Already occupied, continued
“One can imagine an argument for the right of a persecuted minority to find refuge in another country able to accommodate it; one is hard-pressed, however, to imagine an argument for the right of a peaceful minority to politically and perhaps physically displace the indigenous population of another country. Yet...the latter was the actual intention of the Zionist movement.” Norman Finkelstein, “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.”
The use of the Holocaust for political gain
“[In 1947] the U.N. appointed a special body, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), to make the decision over Palestine and UNSCOP members were asked to visit the camps of Holocaust survivors. Many of these survivors wanted to emigrate to the United States, a wish that undermined the Zionist claims that the fate of European Jewry was connected to that of the Jewish community in Palestine. When UNSCOP representatives arrived at the camps, they were unaware that backstage manipulations were limiting their contacts solely to survivors who wished to emigrate to Palestine,” Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe in “The Link,” January March 1998.
Political gain — continued
“Inside the DP camps, emissaries from the Yishuv organized survivor activity — crucially, the testimony the DPs gave to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry and the UN Special Committee on Palestine about where they wished to go...The Jewish Agency envoys reported home that they had been successful in preventing the appearance of ‘undesirable’ witnesses at the hearings. One wrote his girlfiend in Palestine that ‘we have to change our style and handwriting constantly so that they will think that the questionaires were filled in by the refugees.’” Peter Novick, “The Holocaust in American Life.”
Roosevelt’s advisor writes on why Jewish refugees were not offered sanctuary in the U.S. after WWII
“What if Canada, Australia, South America, England and the United States were all to open a door to some migration? Even today [written in 1947] it is my judgement, and I have been in Germany since the war, that only a minority of the Jewish DP’s [displaced persons] would choose Palestine...
“[Roosevelt] proposed a world budget for the easy migration of the 500,000 beaten people of Europe. Each nation should open its doors for some thousands of refugees...So he suggested that during my trips for him to England during the war I sound out in a general, unofficial manner the leaders of British public opinion, in and out of the government...The simple answer: Great Britain will match the United States, man for man, in admissions from Europe...It seemed all settled. With the rest of the world probably ready to give haven to 200,000, there was a sound reason for the President to press Congress to take in at least 150,000 immigrants after the war...
“It would free us from the hypocrisy of closing our own doors while making sanctimonious demands on the Arabs...But it did not work out...The failure of the leading Jewish organizations to support with zeal this immigration programme may have caused the President not to push forward with it at that time...
“I talked to many people active in Jewish organizations. I suggested the plan...I was amazed and even felt insulted when active Jewish leaders decried, sneered, and then attacked me as if I were a traitor...I think I know the reason for much of the opposition. There is a deep, genuine, often fanatical emotional vested interest in putting over the Palestinian movement [Zionism]. Men like Ben Hecht are little concerned about human blood if it is not their own.” Jewish attorney and friend of President Roosevelt, Morris Ernst, “So Far, So Good.”
Victimology
“Jewish proponents of the ‘victim’ card are aware not only of its social effectiveness but of its usefulness as a means of insuring Jewish solidarity and, hence, survival. If we were forever hated by all and are doomed to be forever hated by all, then we’d best stick together and make the best of it...Personally, I have never found this view of the eternally-hating gentile to have any resemblance with reality. It seems a myth, pure and simple, and an ugly one at that.
“Is it a good means of social control? Perhaps, but at what cost? It strips the faith and history of Jew and gentile alike of all but their months of antagonism. It wallows in evil imagery and postulates a forever morally superior Jew, victimized by the forever morally inferior ‘goy’..I have spent most of my adult life among Hasidic Jews, almost all of whom were Holocaust survivors, and I’ve heard almost nothing of the of the relentless harping on victimology and our need to forever memorialize it...(Victimology) allows Jews to bypass their own faith and offers the national allegiance of Holocaust/Israel in its place.” Rabbi Mayer Schiller, quoted in “Issues of the American Council for Judaism,” Summer 1998.
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General Considerations
Israel has sought peace with its Arab neighbor states but has steadfastly refused to negotiate with Palestinians directly, until the last few years. Why?
“My friend, take care. When you recognize the concept of ‘Palestine’, you demolish your right to live in Ein Hahoresh. If this is Palestine and not the Land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who have lived here before you came. Only if it is the Land of Israel do you have a right to live in Ein Hahoresh and in Deganiyah B. If it is not your country, your fatherland, the country of your ancestors and of your sons, then what are you doing here? You came to another people’s homeland, as they claim, you expelled them and you have taken their land.” Menahem Begin, quoted in Noam Chomsky’s “Peace in the Middle East?”
More from the horse’s mouth
“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs, We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?” David Ben-Gurion, quoted in “The Jewish Paradox” by Nathan Goldman, former president of the World Jewish Congress.
More from the horse’s mouth
“Before [the Palestinians] very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived...We are the generation of colonizers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home.” Israeli leader Moshe Dayan, quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel”
More from the horse’s mouth
“The Arabs will be our problem for a long time,” Weizmann said, “It’s not going to be simple.One day they may have to leave and let us have the country. They’re ten to one, but don’t we Jews have ten times their intelligence?” Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in 1919 at the Paris peace conference, quoted in Ella Winter, “And Not To Yield.”
The international consensus on Israel (a very small representative sampling)
“[In the early 1950s] Arab states regularly complained of the reprisals to the UN Security Council, which routinely rejected Israel’s claims of self-defense...
“In June 1982 Israel again invaded Lebanon, and it used aerial bombardment to destroy entire camps of Palestinian Arab refugees, By these means Israel killed 20,000 persons, mostly civilians...Israel claimed self-defense for its invasion, but the lack of PLO attacks into Israel during the previous year made that claim dubious...The [UN] Security Council demanded ‘that Israel withdraw all its military forces forthwith and unconditionally to the internationally recognized boundaries of Lebanon’...
“The UN Human Rights Commission, using the Geneva Convention’s provision that certain violations of humanitarian law are ‘grave breaches’ meriting criminal punishment for perpetrators, found a number of Israel’s practices during the uprising [the intifada] to constitute ‘war crimes.’ It included physical and psychological torture of Palestinian detainees and their subjection to improper and inhuman treatment; the imposition of collective punishment on towns, villages and camps; the administrative detention of thousands of Palestinians; the expulsion of Palestinian citizens; the confiscation of Palestinian property; and the raiding and demolition of Palestinian houses.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”
From the 1970s until the 1999 Israeli High Court decision forbidding torture during interrogation (theoretically), hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were subjected to inhuman treatment in Israeli prisons.
“Israel’s two main interrogation agencies in the occupied territories engage in a systematic pattern of ill-treatment and torture — according to internationally recognized definitions of the terms...The methods used in nearly all interrogations are prolonged sleep deprivation; prolonged sight deprivation using blindfolds or tight-fitting hoods; forced, prolonged maintenance of body positions that grow increasingly painful; and verbal threats and insults.
“These methods are almost always combined with some of the following abuses; confinement in tiny, closet-like spaces; exposure to temperature extremes, such as deliberately overcooled rooms, prolonged toilet and hygiene deprivation; and degrading treatment...Beatings are far more routine in IDF interrogations than in GSS interrogations. Sixteen of the nineteen detainees we interviewed [detained between 1992 and 1994] reported having been assaulted in the interrogation room. Beatings and kicks were directed at the throat, testicles, and stomach. Some were repeatedly choked; some had their heads slammed against the walls...
“Israeli interrogations consistently use methods in combination with one another, over long periods of time. Thus, a detainee in the custody of the General Security Service (GSS) may spend weeks during which, except for brief respites, he shuttles from a tiny chair to which he is painfully shackled; to a stifling, tiny cubicle in which he can barely move; to questioning sessions in which he is beaten or violently manhandled; and then back to the chair.
“The intensive, sustained and combined use of these methods inflicts the severe mental or physical suffering that is central to internationally accepted definitions of torture. Israel’s political leadership cannot claim ignorance that ill-treatment is the norm in interrogation centers. The number of victims is too large, and the abuses too systematic,” 1994 Human Rights Watch report, “Torture and Ill-Treatment: Israel’s Interrogation of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories.”
The use of “force’ — continued
“Amnesty International also observed that, when brought to trial, most Palestinian detainees arrested for ‘terrorist’ offenses and tortured by the Shin Bet (General Security Services) ‘have been accused of offenses such as membership in unlawful associations or throwing stones. They have also included prisoners of conscience such as people arrested solely for raising a flag.’ On a related point, Haaretz columnist B. Michael noted that there wasn’t a single recorded case in which the Shin Bet’s use of torture was prompted by a ‘ticking bomb’ scenario: ‘In every instance of a Palestinian lodging formal complaint about torture, the Shin Bet justified its use in order to extract a confession about something that had already happened, not about something that was about to happen.’” Norman Finkelstein, “The Rise and Fall of Palestine.”
The 1997 U.N. Commission Against Torture rules against Israel
“B’Tselem estimates that the GSS annually interrogates between 1000-1500 Palestinians [as of 1998]. Some eighty-five percent of them — at least 850 persons a year — are tortured during interrogation...
“The U.N. Committee Against Torture,..reached an unequivocal conclusion:...’The methods of interrogation [used in Israeli prisons]...are in the Committee’s view breaches of article 16 and also constitute torture as defined in article 1 of the Convention...As a State Party to the Convention Against Torture, Israel is precluded from raising before this Committee exceptional circumstances’...The prohibition on torture is, therefore, absolute, and no ‘exceptional’ circumstances may justify derogating from it.” 1998 Report from B’Teslem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, “Routine Torture: Interrogation Methods of the General Security Service.”
Some arguments used to justify Zionism
“There is clearly no need to justify the Zionist dream, the desire for relief from Jewish suffering...The trouble with Zionism starts when it lands, so to speak, in Palestine. What has to be justified is the injustice to the Palestinians caused by Zionism, the dispossession and victimization of a whole people. There is clearly a wrong here, a wrong which creates the need for justification...
[E.g., the inheritance claim] The aim of Zionism is the restoration of a Jewish sovereignty to its status 2,000 years ago. Zionism does not advocate an overhauling of the total world situation in the same way. It does not advocate the restoration of the Roman empire...[In addition,] Palestinians have claimed descent from the ancient inhabitants of Palestine 3,000 years ago!...
[Jewish suffering as justification] It was easy to make the Palestinians pay for 2,000 years of persecution. The Palestinians, who have felt the enormous power of this vengeance, were not the historical oppressors of the Jews.
They did not put Jews into ghettos and force them to wear yellow stars. They did not plan holocausts. But they had one fault. They were weak and defenseless in the face of real military might, so they were the ideal victims for an abstract revenge....
[Anti-semitism as justification] Unlike the situation of Jews persecuted for being Jews, Israelis are at war with the Arab world because they have committed the sin of colonialism, not because of their Jewish identity...
[The law of the jungle justification.] Presenting the world as naturally unjust, and oppression as nature’s way, has always been the first refuge of those who want to preserve their privileges...The need to justify Zionism, and the lack of other defenses, has made it part of the Israeli world view...In Israel, one common outcome is cynicism, for which Israelis have become famous...
[The effect on Israelis]Israelis seem to be haunted by a curse. It is the curse of the original sin against the native Arabs. How can Israel be discussed without recalling the dispossession and exclusion of non-Jews? This is the most basic fact about Israel, and no understanding of Israeli reality is possible without it. The original sin haunts and torments Israelis; it marks everything and taints everybody. Its memory poisons the blood and marks every moment of existence.” Israeli author, Benjamin Beit-Hallahami, “Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel.”
Zionism’s ‘historical right’ to Palestine
“Zionism’s ‘historical right’ to Palestine was neither historical nor a right. It was not historical inasmuch as it voided the two millennia of non-Jewish settlement in Palestine and the two millennia of Jewish settlement outside it. It was not a right, except in the Romantic ‘mysticism’ of ‘blood and soil’ and the Romantic ‘cult’ of ‘death, heroes and graves’... “The claim of Jewish ‘homelessness is founded on a cluster of assumptions that both negates the liberal idea of citizenship and duplicates the anti-Semitic one that the state belongs to the majority ethnic nation. In a word, the Zionist case for a Jewish state is as valid as the anti-Semitic case for an ethnic state that marginalizes Jews.” Professor Norman Finkelstein, “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict,”
How about the Zionist argument that Jordan already is the Palestinian state?
“It is often alleged that there was, in fact, an earlier ‘territorial compromise’, namely in 1922, when Transjordan was excised from the promised ‘national home for the Jewish people,’...a decision that is difficult to criticize in light of the fact that ‘the number of Jews living there permanently in 1921 has reliably been estimated at two, or according to some authorities, three persons.’” Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”
Why doesn’t Israel, “the only democracy in the Middle East,” have a constitution?
“The abstention from formulating a constitution was no accident. The massive expropriation of lands and other properties from those Arabs who fled the country as a result of the War of Independence and of those who remained but were declared absent, as well as the confiscation of large tracts of land from Arab villages who did not flee, and the laws passed to legalize those acts — all this would have necessarily been declared unconstitutional, null and void, by the Supreme Court, being expressly discriminatory against one part of the citizenry, whereas a democratic constitution obliges the state to treat all of its citizens equally.” Israeli author, Boas Evron, “Jewish State or Israeli Nation?”
“The only democracy in the Middle East?” — continued
“The 1989 Israel High Court decision that any political party advocating full equality between Arab and Jew can be barred from fielding candidates in an election...[means] that the Israeli state is the state of the Jews...not their [the Arabs’] state.” Professor Norman Finkelstein, “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.”
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Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel
The fundamentalist wing of the Jewish religion, while certainly not representative of Judaism as a whole, is influential in Israel, and is the ideological basis of the settler movement in the West Bank and Gaza (except for “Greater Jerusalem” where many secular Jews have moved because of cheap, subsidized housing) The following quotes show the racism inherent in this world-view and why its influence should be opposed by all rational people.
Ideological basis of racism in Israel
“The Talmud states that...two contrary types of souls exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from the Satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness...Rabbi Kook, the Elder, the revered father of the messianic tendency of Jewish fundamentalism said, “The difference between a Jewish soul and the souls of non-Jews...is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.’” Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky’s “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel”
Racism — continued
“Gush Emunim rabbis have continually reiterated that Jews who killed Arabs should not be punished, [e.g.]...Relying on the Code of Maimonides and the Halacha, Rabbi Ariel stated, ‘A Jew who killed a non-Jew is exempt from human judgement and has not violated the [religious] prohibition of murder’..The significance here is most striking when the broad support, both direct and indirect, for Gush Emunim is considered. About one-half of Israel’s Jewish population supports Gush Emunim.” Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky’s “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel”
Jewish fundamentalist rationale for seizing Arab land
“They argue that what appears to be confiscation of Arab owned land for subsequent settlement by Jews is in reality not an act of stealing but one of sanctification. From their perspective the land is being redeemed by being transferred from the satanic to the divine sphere...To further this process, the use of force is permitted whenever necessary...Halacha permits Jews to rob non-Jews in those locales wherein Jews are stronger than non-Jews.” Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky’s “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel”
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Intifada 2000 and the “Peace Process”
The flaws of the Oslo Accords
“The United States has been a terrible ‘sponsor’ of the peace process. It has succumbed to Israeli pressure on everything, abandoning the principle of land for peace (no U.N. Resolution says anything about returning a tiny percentage, as opposed to all of the land Israel seized in 1967), pushing the lifeless Palestinian leadership into deeper and deeper holes to suit Netanyahu’s preposterous demands.
“The fact is that Palestinians are dramatically worse off than they were before the Oslo process began. Their annual income is less than half of what it was in 1992; they are unable to travel from place to place; more of their land has been taken than ever before; more settlements exist; and Jerusalem is practically lost...
“Every house demolishment, every expropriated dunum, every arrest and torture, every barricade, every closure, every gesture of arrogance and intended humiliation simply revives the past and reenacts Israel’s offenses against the Palestinian spirit, land, body politic. To speak about peace in such a context is to try to reconcile the irreconcilable.” Edward Said in “The Progressive”, March 1998
The roots of Intifada 2000
“The explosion of Palestinian anger last September 29 put an end to the charade begun at Oslo seven years ago and labelled the ‘peace process.’ In 1993 Palestinians, along with millions of people around the world, were led to hope that Israel would withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza within five years and that Palestinians would then be free to establish an independent state. Meanwhile both sides would work out details of Israel’s withdrawal and come to an agreement on the status of Jerusalem, the future of Israeli settlements, and the return of Palestinian refugees.
“Because of the lopsided balance of power, negotiations went nowhere and the Palestinians’ hopes were never fulfilled. The Israelis, regardless of which government was in power, quibbled over wording, demanded revisions of what had previously been agreed to, then refused to abide by the new agreements. Meanwhile successive governments were demolishing Palestinian homes, taking over Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem for Jewish housing, and seizing Palestinian land for new settlements. A massive new highway network built after 1993 on confiscated Palestinian land isolates Palestinian towns and villages from one another and from Jerusalem, forcing many Palestinians to go through Israeli checkpoints just to get to the next town...
“According to President Clinton and most of the media, Prime Minister Ehud Barak conceded at Camp David virtually everything the Palestinians wanted, and Yasser Arafat threw away the opportunity for peace by rejecting Barak’s offer. In fact Arafat could not accept it. Barak, backed by Clinton, wanted assurance of Israel’s continued strategic control over the West Bank and Gaza, including air space and borders, and insisted that Israel retain permanent sovereignty over most of East Jerusalem, including Haram Al-Sharif. This was a deal no Arab would accept.
“As the protests grew, army helicopters rocketed neighborhoods in several Palestinian cities, destroying entire city blocks and causing scores of casualties. Israeli tanks surrounded Palestinian towns with their guns turned toward the town. Armed Israeli civilians within the Green Line rampaged through Arab neighborhoods destroying Arab property and shouting “Death of Arabs’...Israeli police who were quick to use bullets against Palestinian stone throwers failed to restrain the Israelis and instead fired at Arabs trying to defend their homes. Two Arabs were killed.
“The uprising was undoubtedly fueled by the resentment caused by years of daily abuse and humiliation under Israeli occupation. On September 6, a group of Israeli border police stopped three Palestinian workers as they were returning home from Israel and, for no reason at all, subjected them to 40 minutes of torture. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on September 19 that the policemen punched the three men, slammed their heads against a stone wall, forced them to swallow their own blood, and cursed their mothers and sisters. The incident only came to light because the policemen took photographs of themselves with their victims, holding their heads by the hair like hunting trophies. Israeli human rights workers said such beatings are a common occurance, but they are seldom reported.” Rachelle Marshall, “The Peace Process Ends in Protests and Blood”, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2000.
“Israel has failed the test”
“In the Oslo Agreements, Israel and the West put Palestinian leadership to a test: In exchange for an Israeli promise to gradually dismantle the mechanisms of the occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian leadership promised to stop every act of violence and terror immediately. For that purpose, all the apparatus for security coordination was created, more and more Palestinian jails were built, and demonstrators were barred from approaching the [Jewish] settlements.
“The two sides agreed on a period of five years for completion of the new deployment and the negotiations on a final agreement. The Palestinian leadership agreed again and again to extend its trial period...From their perspective, Israel was also put to a test: Was Israel really giving up its attitude of superiority and domination, built up in order to keep the Palestinian people under its control?
“More than seven years have gone by and Israel has security and administrative control of 61.2% of the West Bank and about 20% of the Gaza Strip and security control over another 26.8% of the West Bank. This control is what has enabled Israel to double the number of settlers in 10 years..and to seal an entire nation into restricted areas, imprisoned in a network of bypass roads meant for Jews only...
“Israel has failed the test. Palestinians control of 12% of the West Bank does not mean that Israel has given up its attitude of superiority and domination...The bloodbath that has been going on for three weeks is the natural outcome of seven years of [Israeli] lying and deception.” Israeli journalist Amira Hass, “Israel Has Failed The Test,” in Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, 10/18/00.
Jimmy Carter’s simple statement of the facts — November 2000
“An underlying reason that years of U.S. diplomacy have failed and violence in the Middle East persists is that some Israeli leaders continue to ‘create facts’ by building settlements in occupied territory...
“At Camp David in September 1978...the bilateral provisions led to a comprehensive and lasting treaty between Egypt and Israel, made possible at the last minute by Israel’s agreement to remove its settlers from the Sinai. But similar constraints concerning the status of the West Bank and Gaza have not been honored, and have led to continuing confrontation and violence...
“[Concerning UN Resolution 242] Our government’s legal commitment to support this well-balanced resolution has not changed...It was clear that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories were a direct violation of this agreement and were, according to the long-stated American position, both ‘illegal and an obstacle to peace.’ Accordingly, Prime Minister Begin pledged that there would be no establishment of new settlements until after the final peace negotiations were completed. But later, under Likud pressure, he declined to honor this commitment...
“It is unlikely that real progress can be made...as long as Israel insists on its settlement policy, illegal under international laws that are supported by the United States and all other nations.
“There are many questions as we contine to seek an end to violence in the Middle East, but there is no way to escape the vital one: Land or peace?” Former President Jimmy Carter in The Washington Post, November 26, 2000.
Oslo and Intifada 2000 — continued
“After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories, Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced a new plan to determine the final status of the region. During these weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including 30 children, often by ‘excessive use of lethal force in circumstances in which neither the lives of security forces nor others were in immminent danger, resulting in unlawful killings,’ Amnesty International concluded in a detailed report that was scarcely mentioned in the US.
“Barak’s plan...ensure(s) that useable land and resources (primarily water) remain largely in Israeli hands while the population is administered by a corrupt and brutal Palestinian Authority (PA), playing the role traditionally assigned to indigenous collaborators under the several varieties of imperial rule: the Black leadership of South Africa’s Bantustans, to mention only the most obvious analagoue...
“It is important to recall that the policies have not only been proposed, but implemented, with the support of the U.S. That support has been decisive since 1971, when Washington abandoned the basic diplomatic framework that it had initiated (UN Security Council Resolution 242), then pursued its unilateral rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that followed, culminating in the ‘Oslo process.’ Since all of this has been effectively vetoed from history in the US., it takles a little work to discover the essential facts. They are not controversial, only evaded,” Noam Chomsky, “Al-Aqsa Intifada”, October 2000, on Znet, www.lbbs.org/meastwatch.
America — An impartial mediator?
“America’s credibility as mediator had long been questioned by Palestinians, and with reason. ‘The Palestinians always complain that we know the details of every proposal from the Americans before they do,’ one Israeli government source told The Independent recently. ‘There’s good reason for that: we write them.’” Phil Reeves in “The Independent” (U.K.), 10/9/2000
Lockstep U.S. Media tell (some of) the facts but not the truth
“Rarely do American journalists explore the ample reasons to believe that the United States is part of the oft-decried cycle of violence. Nor, in the first half of October, was there much media analysis of the fact that the violence overwhelmingly struck at the Palestinian people.
“Within a period of days, several dozen Palestinians were killed by heavily armed men in uniform — often described by CNN and other news outlets as ‘Israeli security forces’. Under the circumstances, it’s a notably benign-sounding term for an army that shoots down protestors.
“As for the rock-throwing Palestinians, I have never seen or heard a single American news account describing them as ‘pro democracy demonstrators.’ Yet that would be an appropriate way to refer to people who — after more than three decades of living under occupation — are in the streets to demand self determination.
“While Israeli soldiers and police, with their vastly superior firepower, do most of the killing...American news stories highlighted the specious ultimatums issued by Prime Minister Ehud Barak as he demanded that Palestinians end the violence — while uniformed Israelis under his authority continue to kill them...
“Like quite a few other Jewish Americans, I’m apalled by what Israel is doing with U.S. Tax dollars. Meanwhile, as journalists go along to get along, they diminish the humanity of us all.” Norman Solomon, “Media Spin Remains In Sync With Israeli Occupation,” from FAIR’s Media Beat, October 14, 2000.
Intifada 2000 — An overview
“There is, in the final analysis, only one way to ‘stop the violence,’ and that is to end the occupation. The desire for liberation will, eventually, always bring an occupied people out into the streets, stones in hand, ready to face the might of powerful armies, preferring to risk death than live in bondage. This is not extreme nation.0 racism or religious fervor. It is the need to be free...
“[Occupation] means a reality of unending violence. It means being surrounded by an abusive foreign army that enforces a social system indistinguishable from apartheid; confiscations of land that is then given to hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in Jewish-only communities linked by Jewish only roads; home demolitions; torture; cities cut off from each other, closed down on a regular basis. It means living in a massive prison...
“Since 1967, there has been only one workable solution to the conflict. The plan is articulated in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which sets up a two-part ‘land for peace’ solution. Part one holds that Israel must withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967. Part two calls for all states in the region to live in peace and security in those borders. The Israeli obligation, withdrawal from the occupied territories, is utterly unfulfilled.” Hussein Ibish, communications director of the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, in the Los Angeles Times, October 18, 2000.
Albright stands the facts on their heads
“With the same deadpan, expressionless, emotionless, glazed look, Madam Albright repeated: ‘Those Palestinian rock throwers have placed Israel undeer siege,’ adding that the Israeli army is defending itself...[But] It is Israel that is the belligerent occupant of Palestine (and not the other way around) Israeli tanks and armored vehicles are surrounding Palestinian villages, camps and cities (and not the other way around). Israeli (American-made) Apache gunships are firing Lau and other missiles at Palestinian protestors and homes (and not the other way around). It is Israel that is confiscating Palestinian land and importing Jewish settlers to set up illegal armed settlements in the heart of Palestinian territory (and not the other way around). The settlers on the rampage in the West Bank and Israelis terrorizing Palestinians in their own homes (and not the other way around)...Israel is committing atrocities against the Palestinians with total impunity, and yet you maintain, ‘Israel is beseiged.’” Hanan Ashrawi, in “The Progressive”, December 2000
What Arafat was offered
“In American coverage of the recent Camp David meetings, the American press obediently followed the Israeli and US government spin that while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made courageous concessions for peace, Palestinian unwillingness to compromise caused the meeting to fail.
“Never mind that Barak’s ‘courageous concessions’ consisted of allowing the Palestinians to have joint administrative responsibility over a couple of remote Arab neighborhoods of Arab East Jerusalem — pathetic crumbs tossed on the floor which Arafat was expected to gratefully pick up.” American Jewish reporter, Eduardo Cohen, from “What Americans Need to Know — But Probably Won’t Be Told — To understand Palestinian Rage” from Palestine Media Watch, www.pmwatch.org
What Arafat was offered — continued
“Barak appears to be asking for only 10% of the occupied territories. In reality, it’s closer to 30%, taking into account the territories he wants to annex in the Jerusalem area and place under his “security control” in the Jordan Valley. But even worse, in the map submitted to the Palestinians, these percentage points cut the country up from East to West and from North to South, so that the Palestinian state will consist of groups of islands, each surrounded by Israeli settlers and soldiers.
“World opinion is always on the side of the underdog. In this fight, we are Goliath and they are David. In the eyes of the world [outside the US], the Palestinians are fighting a war of liberation against a foreign occupation. We are in their territory, not they on ours. We are the occupiers, they are the victims. This is the objective situation, and no minister of propaganda can change that.” Israeli peace activist. Uri Avnery, “12 Conventional Lies About the Palestine-Israeli Conflict” from Palestine Media Watch, www.pmwatch.org.
An Israeli’s “Open Letter to a Friend In Peace Now”
“It has been seven years exactly since I wrote my last letter to you.It was the day after the signing of the Oslo Accords, when you invited me to dance with you in Menorah Square...Permit me to quote for you a few passages from that old letter.
“‘You danced in the square because you were happy about this peace. Not just plain peace, but a blend of peace,security, Palestinian chest-beating over sins committed (renunciation of terrorism), and far-reaching concessions by the other side. A peace that you can be proud of. A peace — so you boast — for which we are giving nothing (“Just a tiny bit,” whispers the prime minister) and gaining much; recognition, greater security, a halt to the Intifada, renunciation of terrorism, being relieved of the Arabs and more. You are happy about this peace, and in its honor you invite me to dance with you. No thank you...You got rid of Gaza, you separated Israelis from Palestinians, you gave them the dirty work and you didn’t even promise withdrawal or a real state. Could peace possibly be bought more cheaply?”
“‘I, by contrast, see peace as an end and not merely as a means, and call for getting out of the Occupied Territories because we have nothing to be there for, even if the occupation did not cost us even one victim or one cent; and I am against shooting children — and adults — simply because it is forbidden to shoot children or ordionary civilians.’
“Since the writing of these lines you celebrated the peace and you became fat and prosperous. The repeated and varied violations of the agreements did not move you, not to speak of any change in our culture of war and occupation, the arrogant tone of those negotiating in our name and their attempts to demand more and more in exchange for less and less...
“What is there to be confused about? A conquering army is using tanks and helicopter gunships to disperse demonstrations. What is so hard to understand here?...There is an occupation and there is a struggle against the occupation. There are demonstrators and there is an army that has received orders to shed their blood. And don’t come to me with the story of the rifles, Your glorious war record qualifies you to understand that even CNN reporters understand, that those rifles do not endanger either Israel or the soldiers if they don’t get too close...
“[From 1993 letter]”peace is a tango that takes two equal partners dancing in unity; it is not a dance of one who drags around his partner at will...In your dance of peace you have no partners, only enemies. For your peace is his occupation, your success is his loss...Peace is still far away because peace demands honesty, because peace demands equality. You want to force them to lie, you want of them a peace of surrender, you are celebrating a peace of master and slave. Under such conditions there will perhaps be peace-and-quiet, but Peace, no. Not until you open your eyes and your heart. Not until we are ready for a peace of partnership and equality.” Michael (Mikado) Warschawski, “The Party Is Over: An Open Letter to a Friend In Peace Now,”, from Znet, www.lbbs.org/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html
“Barak promised peace and brought war, and not by accident.”
“(Barak) promised peace and brought war, and not by accident. While speaking about peace, he enlarged the settlements. Cut the Palestinian territories into pieces by ‘by-pass’ roads. Confiscated lands. Demolished homes. Uprooted trees. Paralyzed the Palestinian economy..Conducted negotiations in which he tried to dictate to the Palestinians a peace that amounts to capitulation. Was not satisfied with the fact that by accepting the Green Line, the Palestinians had already given up 78% of their historic homeland. Demanded the annexation of ‘settlement blocs” and pretended that they amount only to 3% of the territory, while in fact he meant more than 20% would remain under Israeli control. Wanted to coerce the Palestinians to accept a ‘state’ cut off from all its neighbors and composed of several enclaves isolated from each other, each surrounded by Israeli settlers and soldiers...Boasts publicly that he has not given back to the Palestinians one inch of territory...When the intifada broke out, sent snipers to shoot, in cold blood from a distance, hundreds of unarmed demonstrators, adults and children. Blockaded each village and town separately, bringing them to the verge of starvation, in order to get them to surrender. Bombarded neighborhoods. Started a policy of mafia-style ‘liquidations’, causing an inevitable escalation of the violence.” Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery, February 3, 2001, www.gush-shalom.org
A ‘benign’ occupation?
“Israelis like to believe, and tell the world, that they are running an ‘enlightened’ or ‘benign’ occupation, qualitatively different from other military occupations the world has seen. The truth was radically different. Like all occupations, Israel’s was founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation and manipulation.” Israeli historian, Benny Morris, “Righteous Victims.”
What “closure” means
“Just an hour’s drive from Jerusalem, a cruel drama has been underway for the past five months, the likes of which have not been seen since the early days of the Israeli occupation, but the majority of Israelis are taking absolutely no interest in it. The iron grip of the closure in its new format is increasingly strangling a population of 2.8 million people, yet no one is saying a word. . .
“It has to be said starkly and simply: There has never been a closure like this there, in the land of barriers and closure. In the worst of times of the previous Intifada, when the iDF was in eveIJ and curfew reigned supreme, there was not a situation in which a whole people was jailed without a trial and without the right of appeal.
“Israel has split the West Bank by means of hundreds of trenches, dirt ramparts and concrete cubes which have been placed at the entrance to most of the towns and villages. No one enters and no one leaves, not those who are pregnant and not those who are dying. There isn’t even a soldier with whom one can plead and beg. A network of bizarre Burma roads that break through the encirclement are sending an entire people along muddy, rocky routes, with the situation aggravated by a substantial risk of getting caught or getting shot by soldiers who often open fire on the desperate travelers. . .
“Never before has there been distress and suffering on this scale among the Palestinians in the territories. They will engender unprecendented despair and ultimately they will spark violence more cruel and painful than anything seen so far. . . This is the point: the horrific distress of the Palestinians because of the present closure will quickly turn into the distress of the Israelis. . . The current siege, a shamefully appalling operation, must be lifted quickly. This must not be made conditional on the cessation of the violence, because the siege itself is the most effective spur to violence.” Israeli writer, Gideon Levy, in Ha aretz, March 4, 2001
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More on topic.
He also dismisses the notion that Jerusalem, because it is the traditional site of Mohammed's ascension to heaven, must be the Palestinian capital. "A city's religious status is not necessary connected to its political role...
Mecca, for example, was never the capital of Saudi Arabia. At the time of Mohammed, Jerusalem was, in fact, under Persian administration."
LOLLLL... so what happens to "God gave us this land". Why did the Zionists choose Palestine when they were deciding which land to steal?
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Palestinians don't even have the universal human right to return to their homes... and you're telling me about an artificially created problem... talk about brainwashed...
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Myths & Facts Online
MYTH
“The Jews have no claim to the land they call Israel.”
FACT
A common misperception is that all the Jews were forced into the Diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years.
The Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 2) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people; 3) the territory was captured in defensive wars and 4) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham.
Even after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in the Land of Israel continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the ninth century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.
The Crusaders massacred many Jews during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed, Jerusalem and elsewhere during the next 300 years. By the early 19th century — years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement — more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel.1 The 78 years of nation-building, beginning in 1870, culminated in the reestablishment of the Jewish State.
Israel's international "birth certificate" was validated by the promise of the Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of Joshua onward; the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the United Nations partition resolution of 1947; Israel's admission to the UN in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and, most of all, the society created by Israel's people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence.
“Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its 'right to exist.'
Israel's right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel's legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement....
There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its 'right to exist' a favor, or a negotiable concession.”
— Abba Eban2
MYTH
“Palestine was always an Arab country.”
FACT
The term "Palestine" is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C.E., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what are now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century C.E., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word "Filastin" is derived from this Latin name.3
The Hebrews entered the Land of Israel about 1300 B.C.E., living under a tribal confederation until being united under the first monarch, King Saul. The second king, David, established Jerusalem as the capital around 1000 B.C.E. David's son, Solomon built the Temple soon thereafter and consolidated the military, administrative and religious functions of the kingdom. The nation was divided under Solomon's son, with the northern kingdom (Israel) lasting until 722 B.C.E., when the Assyrians destroyed it, and the southern kingdom (Judah) surviving until the Babylonian conquest in 586 B.C.E. The Jewish people enjoyed brief periods of sovereignty afterward before most Jews were finally driven from their homeland in 135 C.E.
Jewish independence in the Land of Israel lasted for more than 400 years. This is much longer than Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States.4 In fact, if not for foreign conquerors, Israel would be 3,000 years old today.
Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not."5
Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.6
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."7
The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria" and that, "politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."8
Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's capture of the West Bank.
MYTH
“The Palestinians are descendants of the Canaanites and were in Palestine long before the Jews.”
FACT
Palestinian claims to be related to the Canaanites are a recent phenomenon and contrary to historical evidence. The Canaanites disappeared from the face of the earth three millennia ago, and no one knows if any of their descendants survived or, if they did, who they would be.
Sherif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic Holy Places in Arabia, said the Palestinians' ancestors had only been in the area for 1,000 years.9 Even the Palestinians themselves have acknowledged their association with the region came long after the Jews. In testimony before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, for example, they claimed a connection to Palestine of more than 1,000 years, dating back no further than the conquest of Muhammad's followers in the 7th century.10 And that claim is also dubious. Over the last 2,000 years, there have been massive invasions that killed off most of the local people (e.g., the Crusades), migrations, the plague, and other manmade or natural disasters. The entire local population was replaced many times over. During the British mandate alone, more than 100,000 Arabs emigrated from neighboring countries and are today considered Palestinians.
By contrast, no serious historian questions the more than 3,000-year-old Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, or the modern Jewish people's relation to the ancient Hebrews.
“...[the Palestinian Arabs'] basic sense of corporate historic identity was, at different levels, Muslim or Arab or - for some - Syrian; it is significant that even by the end of the Mandate in 1948, after thirty years of separate Palestinian political existence, there were virtually no books in Arabic on the history of Palestine..”10a
MYTH
“The Balfour Declaration did not give Jews a right to a homeland in Palestine.”
FACT
In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration:
His Majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The Mandate for Palestine included the Balfour Declaration. It specifically referred to "the historical connections of the Jewish people with Palestine" and to the moral validity of "reconstituting their National Home in that country." The term "reconstituting" shows recognition of the fact that Palestine had been the Jews' home. Furthermore, the British were instructed to "use their best endeavors to facilitate" Jewish immigration, to encourage settlement on the land and to "secure" the Jewish National Home. The word "Arab" does not appear in the Mandatory award.11
The Mandate was formalized by the 52 governments at the League of Nations on July 24, 1922.
MYTH
“The 'traditional position' of the Arabs in Palestine was jeopardized by Jewish settlement.”
FACT
For many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated and widely-neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts and malarial marshes. As late as 1880, the American consul in Jerusalem reported the area was continuing its historic decline. "The population and wealth of Palestine has not increased during the last forty years," he said.12
The Report of the Palestine Royal Commission quotes an account of the Maritime Plain in 1913:
The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts...no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached [the Jewish village of] Yabna [Yavne]....Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen....The ploughs used were of wood....The yields were very poor....The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist....The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert....The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.13
Lewis French, the British Director of Development wrote of Palestine:
We found it inhabited by fellahin who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria....Large areas...were uncultivated....The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals. The individual plots...changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin's lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbors, the Bedouin.14
Surprisingly, many people who were not sympathetic to the Zionist cause believed the Jews would improve the condition of Palestinian Arabs. For example, Dawood Barakat, editor of the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram, wrote: "It is absolutely necessary that an entente be made between the Zionists and Arabs, because the war of words can only do evil. The Zionists are necessary for the country: The money which they will bring, their knowledge and intelligence, and the industriousness which characterizes them will contribute without doubt to the regeneration of the country."15
Even a leading Arab nationalist believed the return of the Jews to their homeland would help resuscitate the country. According to Sherif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic Holy Places in Arabia:
The resources of the country are still virgin soil and will be developed by the Jewish immigrants. One of the most amazing things until recent times was that the Palestinian used to leave his country, wandering over the high seas in every direction. His native soil could not retain a hold on him, though his ancestors had lived on it for 1000 years. At the same time we have seen the Jews from foreign countries streaming to Palestine from Russia, Germany, Austria, Spain, America. The cause of causes could not escape those who had a gift of deeper insight. They knew that the country was for its original sons (abna'ihilasliyin), for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland. The return of these exiles (jaliya) to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually [to be] an experimental school for their brethren who are with them in the fields, factories, trades and in all things connected with toil and labor.16
As Hussein foresaw, the regeneration of Palestine, and the growth of its population, came only after Jews returned in massive numbers.
Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in 1867, described it as: “...[a] desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds-a silent mournful expanse....A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action....We never saw a human being on the whole route....There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”17
MYTH
“Zionism is racism.”
FACT
In 1975, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution slandering Zionism by equating it with racism. In his spirited response to the resolution, Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Chaim Herzog noted the irony of the timing, the vote coming exactly 37 years after Kristallnacht.
Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, which holds that Jews, like any other nation, are entitled to a homeland.
History has demonstrated the need to ensure Jewish security through a national homeland. Zionism recognizes that Jewishness is defined by shared origin, religion, culture and history. The realization of the Zionist dream is exemplified by more than five million Jews, from more than 100 countries, who are Israeli citizens.
Israel's Law of Return grants automatic citizenship to Jews, but non-Jews are also eligible to become citizens under naturalization procedures similar to those in other countries. Approximately 1,000,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs, Druze, Baha'is, Circassians and other ethnic groups also are represented in Israel's population. The presence in Israel of thousands of dark-skinned Jews from Ethiopia, Yemen and India is the best refutation of the calumny against Zionism. In a series of historic airlifts, labeled Moses (1984), Joshua (1985) and Solomon (1991), Israel rescued almost 42,000 members of the ancient Ethiopian Jewish community.
Zionism does not discriminate against anyone. Israel's open and democratic character, and its scrupulous protection of the religious and political rights of Christians and Muslims, rebut the charge of exclusivity. Moreover, anyone — Jew or non-Jew, Israeli, American, or Saudi, black, white, yellow or purple — can be a Zionist.
Writing after "Operation Moses" was revealed, William Safire noted:
“...For the first time in history, thousands of black people are being brought to a country not in chains but in dignity, not as slaves but as citizens.”18
By contrast, the Arab states define citizenship strictly by native parentage. It is almost impossible to become a naturalized citizen in many Arab states, especially Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Several Arab nations have laws that facilitate the naturalization of foreign Arabs, with the specific exception of Palestinians. Jordan, on the other hand, instituted its own "law of return" in 1954, according citizenship to all former residents of Palestine, except for Jews.19
To single out Jewish self-determination for condemnation is itself a form of racism. When approached by a student at Harvard in 1968 who attacked Zionism, Martin Luther King responded: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism."20
The 1975 UN resolution was part of the Soviet-Arab Cold War anti-Israel campaign. Almost all the former non-Arab supporters of the resolution have apologized and changed their positions. When the General Assembly voted to repeal the resolution in 1991, only some Arab and Muslim states, as well as Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam were opposed.
MYTH
“The delegates of the UN World Conference Against Racism agreed that Zionism is racism.”
FACT
In 2001, Arab nations again were seeking to delegitimize Israel by trying to equate Zionism with racism at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. The United States joined Israel in boycotting the conference when it became clear that rather than focus on the evils of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia that were supposed to be the subject of the event, the conference had turned into a forum for bashing Israel.
The United States withdrew its delegation "to send a signal to the freedom loving nations of the world that we will not stand by, if the world tries to describe Zionism as racism. That is as wrong as wrong can be." White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher added that "the President is proud to stand by Israel and by the Jewish community and send a signal that no group around the world will meet with international acceptance and respect if its purpose is to equate Zionism with racism."21
MYTH
“The Zionists could have chosen another country besides Palestine.”
FACT
In the late 19th century, the rise of religious and racist anti-Semitism led to a resurgence of pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, shattering promises of equality and tolerance. This stimulated Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe.
Simultaneously, a wave of Jews immigrated to Palestine from Yemen, Morocco, Iraq and Turkey. These Jews were unaware of Theodor Herzl's political Zionism or of European pogroms. They were motivated by the centuries-old dream of the “Return to Zion” and a fear of intolerance. Upon hearing that the gates of Palestine were open, they braved the hardships of travel and went to the Land of Israel.
The Zionist ideal of a return to Israel has profound religious roots. Many Jewish prayers speak of Jerusalem, Zion and the Land of Israel. The injunction not to forget Jerusalem, the site of the Temple, is a major tenet of Judaism. The Hebrew language, the Torah, laws in the Talmud, the Jewish calendar and Jewish holidays and festivals all originated in Israel and revolve around its seasons and conditions. Jews pray toward Jerusalem and recite the words “next year in Jerusalem” every Passover. Jewish religion, culture and history make clear that it is only in the land of Israel that the Jewish commonwealth can be built.
In 1897, Jewish leaders formally organized the Zionist political movement, calling for the restoration of the Jewish national home in Palestine, where Jews could find sanctuary and self-determination, and work for the renascence of their civilization and culture.
MYTH
“Herzl himself proposed Uganda as the Jewish state as an alternative to Palestine.”
FACT
Theodor Herzl sought support from the great powers for the creation of a Jewish homeland. He turned to Great Britain, and met with Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary and others. The British agreed, in principle, to Jewish settlement in East Africa.
At the Sixth Zionist Congress at Basle on August 26, 1903, Herzl proposed the British Uganda Program as a temporary emergency refuge for Jews in Russia in immediate danger. While Herzl made it clear that this program would not affect the ultimate aim of Zionism, a Jewish entity in the Land of Israel, the proposal aroused a storm at the Congress and nearly led to a split in the Zionist movement. The Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO) was formed as a result of the unification of various groups who had supported Herzl's Uganda proposals during the period 1903-1905. The Uganda Program, which never had much support, was formally rejected by the Zionist movement at the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905.
MYTH
“All Arabs opposed the Balfour Declaration, seeing it as a betrayal of their rights.”
FACT
Emir Faisal, son of Sherif Hussein, the leader of the Arab revolt against the Turks, signed an agreement with Chaim Weizmann and other Zionist leaders during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. It acknowledged the "racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people" and concluded that "the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab states and Palestine.” Furthermore, the agreement looked to the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration and called for all necessary measures “...to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil.”22
Faisal had conditioned his acceptance of the Balfour Declaration on the fulfillment of British wartime promises of independence to the Arabs. These were not kept.
Critics dismiss the Weizmann-Faisal agreement because it was never enacted; however, the fact that the leader of the Arab nationalist movement and the Zionist movement could reach an understanding is significant because it demonstrated that Jewish and Arab aspirations were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
MYTH
“The Zionists made no effort to compromise with the Arabs.”
FACT
In 1913, the Zionist leadership recognized the desirability of reaching an agreement with the Arabs. Sami Hochberg, owner of the newspaper, Le-Jeune-Turc, informally represented the Zionists in a meeting with the Cairo-based Decentralization Party and the anti-Ottoman Beirut Reform Society and was able to reach an agreement. This “entente verbale” led to the adoption of a resolution assuring Jews equal rights under a decentralized government. Hochberg also secured an invitation to the First Arab Congress held in Paris in June 1913.
The Arab Congress proved to be surprisingly receptive to Zionist aspirations. Hochberg was encouraged by the Congress’s favorable response to the entente verbale. Abd-ul-Hamid Yahrawi, the President of the Congress, summed up the attitude of the delegates:
All of us, both Muslims and Christians, have the best of feelings toward the Jews. When we spoke in our resolutions about the rights and obligations of the Syrians, this covered the Jews as well. Because they are our brothers in race and we regard them as Syrians who were forced to leave the country at one time but whose hearts always beat together with ours, we are certain that our Jewish brothers the world over will know how to help us so that our common interests may succeed and our common country will develop both materially and morally (author’s emphasis).23
The entente verbale Hochberg negotiated was rendered ineffectual by wartime developments. The outspoken Arab opposition to the Balfour Declaration convinced the Zionist leadership of the need to make a more concerted effort to reach an understanding with the Arabs.
Chaim Weizmann considered the task important enough to lead a Zionist Commission to Palestine to explain the movement’s aims to the Arabs. Weizmann went first to Cairo in March 1918 and met with Said Shukeir, Dr. Faris Nimr and Suleiman Bey Nassif (Syrian Arab nationalists who had been chosen by the British as representatives). He stressed the desire to live in harmony with the Arabs in a British Palestine.
Weizmann’s diplomacy was successful. Nassif said “there was room in Palestine for another million inhabitants without affecting the position of those already there.”24 Dr. Nimr disseminated information through his Cairo newspaper to dispel the Arab public’s misconceptions about Zionist aims.25
In 1921, Winston Churchill tried to arrange a meeting between Palestinians and Zionists. On November 29, 1921, the two sides met, but no progress was made becaue the Arabs insisted that the Balfour Declaration be abrogated.26
Weizmann led a group of Zionists that met with Syrian nationalist Riad al-Sulh in 1921. The Zionists agreed to support Arab nationalist aspirations and Sulh said he was willing to recognize the Jewish National Home. The talks resumed a year later and raised hopes for an agreement. In May 1923, however, Sulh’s efforts to convince Palestinian Arab leaders that Zionism was an accomplished fact were rejected.27
Over the next 25 years, Zionist leaders inside and outside Palestine would try repeatedly to negotiate with the Arabs. Similarly, Israeli leaders since 1948 have sought peace treaties with the Arab states, but Egypt and Jordan are the only nations that have signed them.
MYTH
“The Zionists were colonialist tools of Western imperialism.”
FACT
“Colonialism means living by exploiting others,” Yehoshofat Harkabi has written. “But what could be further from colonialism than the idealism of city-dwelling Jews who strive to become farmers and laborers and to live by their own work?”28
Moreover, as British historian Paul Johnson noted, Zionists were hardly tools of imperialists given the powers’ general opposition to their cause. “Everywhere in the West, the foreign offices, defense ministries and big business were against the Zionists.”29
Emir Faisal also saw the Zionist movement as a companion to the Arab nationalist movement, fighting against imperialism, as he explained in a letter to Harvard law professor and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter on March 3, 1919, one day after Chaim Weizmann presented the Zionist case to the Paris conference. Faisal wrote:
The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement....We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home....We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is nationalist and not imperialist. And there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other (emphasis added).30
“Our settlers do not come here as do the colonists from the Occident to have natives do their work for them; they themselves set their shoulders to the plow and they spend their strength and their blood to make the land fruitful. But it is not only for ourselves that we desire its fertility. The Jewish farmers have begun to teach their brothers, the Arab farmers, to cultivate the land more intensively; we desire to teach them further: together with them we want to cultivate the land -- to 'serve' it, as the Hebrew has it. The more fertile this soil becomes, the more space there will be for us and for them. We have no desire to dispossess them: we want to live with them. We do not want to dominate them: we want to serve with them.....”
— Martin Buber31
In the 1940s, the Jewish underground movements waged an anti-colonial war against the British. The Arabs, meanwhile, were concerned primarily with fighting the Jews rather than expelling the British imperialists.
MYTH
“The British promised the Arabs independence in Palestine in the Hussein-MacMahon Correspondence.”
FACT
The central figure in the Arab nationalist movement at the time of World War I was Hussein ibn 'Ali, who was appointed by the Turkish Committee of Union and Progress to the position of Sherif of Mecca in 1908. As Sherif, Hussein was responsible for the custody of Islam's shrines in the Hejaz and, consequently, was recognized as one of the Muslims’ spiritual leaders.
In July 1915, Hussein sent a letter to Sir Henry MacMahon, the High Commissioner for Egypt, informing him of the terms for Arab participation in the war against the Turks.
The letters between Hussein and MacMahon that followed outlined the areas that Britain was prepared to cede to the Arabs. The Hussein-MacMahon correspondence conspicuously fails to mention Palestine. The British argued the omission had been intentional, thereby justifying their refusal to grant the Arabs independence in Palestine after the war.32 MacMahon explained:
I feel it my duty to state, and I do so definitely and emphatically, that it was not intended by me in giving this pledge to King Hussein to include Palestine in the area in which Arab independence was promised. I also had every reason to believe at the time that the fact that Palestine was not included in my pledge was well understood by King Hussein.33
Nevertheless, the Arabs held then, as now, that the letters constituted a promise of independence for the Arabs.
Text of Letters
MYTH
“The Arabs fought for freedom in World Wars I and II.”
FACT
Contrary to the romantic fiction of the period, most of the Arabs did not fight with the Allies against the Turks in World War I. David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, noted that most Arabs fought for their Turkish rulers. Faisal's supporters in Arabia were the exception.
In World War II, the Arabs were very slow to enter the war against Hitler. Only Transjordan went along with the British in 1939. Iraq was taken over by pro-Nazis in 1941 and joined the Axis powers. Most of the Arab states sat on the fence, waiting until 1945 to see who would win. By then, Germany was doomed and, since it was necessary to join the war to qualify for membership in the nascent United Nations, the Arabs belatedly began to declare war against Germany in 1945: Egypt, on February 25; Syria, on February 27; Lebanon, on February 28; and Saudi Arabia, on March 2. By contrast, some 30,000 Palestinian Jews fought against Nazi Germany.
MYTH
“Israeli policies cause anti-Semitism.”
FACT
Anti-Semitism has existed for centuries, well before the rise of the modern State of Israel. Rather than Israel being the cause of anti-Semitism, it is more likely that the distorted media coverage of Israeli policies is reinforcing latent anti-Semitic views.
As writer Leon Wieseltier observed, “the notion that all Jews are responsible for whatever any Jews do is not a Zionist notion. It is an anti-Semitic notion.” Wieseltier adds that attacks on Jews in Europe have nothing whatsoever to do with Israel. To blame Jews for anti-Semitism is similar to saying blacks are responsible for racism.
Many Jews may disagree with policies of a particular Israeli government, but this does not mean that Israel is bad for the Jews. As Wieseltier noted, “Israel is not bad for the Jews of Russia, who may need a haven; or for the Jews of Argentina, who may need a haven; or for any Jews who may need a haven.”34
As noted in the fact about criticism of Israel, taking issue with Israeli policies is acceptable if you do so because you believe that a) Israel has the right to exist, and b) that changes will make Israel a better place. In fact, such criticism, by Israelis, can be found in the Israeli media every day. Criticism crosses the line, however, when it delegitimizes Israel and is intended to weaken rather than strengthen its institutions.
“Israel is the only state in the world today, and the Jews the only people in the world today, that are the object of a standing set of threats from governmental, religious, and terrorist bodies seeking their destruction. And what is most disturbing is the silence, the indifference, and sometimes even the indulgence, in the face of such genocidal anti-Semitism.”
— Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler35
MYTH
“Supporters of Israel only criticize Arabs and never Israelis.”
FACT
Israel is not perfect. Even the most committed friends of Israel acknowledge that the government sometimes makes mistakes, and that it has not solved all the problems in its society. The public usually has much less access to Israel’s side of the story of its conflict with the Arabs, or the positive aspects of its society.
Israelis themselves are their own harshest critics. *If you want to read criticism of Israeli behavior, you do not need to seek out anti-Israel sources, you can pick up any Israeli newspaper and find no shortage of news and commentary critical of government policy. The rest of the world’s media provides constant attention to Israel and the coverage is far more likely to be unfavorable than complimentary.
* How many of the references in your article were to Israeli sources?
-
MYTH
"The British helped the Jews displace the native Arab population of Palestine."
FACT
Herbert Samuel, a British Jew who served as the first High Commissioner of Palestine, placed restrictions on Jewish immigration “in the ‘interests of the present population’ and the ‘ absorptive capacity’ of the country.”1 The influx of Jewish settlers was said to be forcing the Arab fellahin (native peasants) from their land. This was at a time when less than a million people lived in an area that now supports more than nine million.
The British actually limited the absorptive capacity of Palestine by partitioning the country.
In 1921, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill severed nearly four-fifths of Palestine — some 35,000 square miles — to create a brand new Arab entity, Transjordan. As a consolation prize for the Hejaz and Arabia (which are both now Saudi Arabia) going to the Saud family, Churchill rewarded Sherif Hussein's son Abdullah for his contribution to the war against Turkey by installing him as Transjordan's emir.
The British went further and placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in what remained of Palestine, contradicting the provision of the Mandate (Article 6) stating that “the Administration of Palestine...shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency...close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes.” By 1949, the British had allotted 87,500 acres of the 187,500 acres of cultivable land to Arabs and only 4,250 acres to Jews.2
Ultimately, the British admitted the argument about the absorptive capacity of the country was specious. The Peel Commission said: “The heavy immigration in the years 1933-36 would seem to show that the Jews have been able to enlarge the absorptive capacity of the country for Jews.”3
MYTH
"The British allowed Jews to flood Palestine while Arab immigration was tightly controlled."
FACT
The British response to Jewish immigration set a precedent of appeasing the Arabs, which was followed for the duration of the Mandate. The British placed restrictions on Jewish immigration while allowing Arabs to enter the country freely. Apparently, London did not feel that a flood of Arab immigrants would affect the country's absorptive capacity.
During World War I, the Jewish population in Palestine declined because of the war, famine, disease and expulsion by the Turks. In 1915, approximately 83,000 Jews lived in Palestine among 590,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs. According to the 1922 census, the Jewish population was 84,000, while the Arabs numbered 643,000.4 Thus, the Arab population grew exponentially while that of the Jews stagnated.
In the mid-1920s, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased primarily because of anti-Jewish economic legislation in Poland and Washington’s imposition of restrictive quotas.5
The record number of immigrants in 1935 (see table) was a response to the growing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The British administration considered this number too large, however, so the Jewish Agency was informed that less than one-third of the quota it asked for would be approved in 1936.6
The British gave in further to Arab demands by announcing in the 1939 White Paper that an independent Arab state would be created within 10 years, and that Jewish immigration was to be limited to 75,000 for the next five years, after which it was to cease altogether. It also forbade land sales to Jews in 95 percent of the territory of Palestine. The Arabs, nevertheless, rejected the proposal.
By contrast, throughout the Mandatory period, Arab immigration was unrestricted. In 1930, the Hope Simpson Commission, sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots, said the British practice of ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan and Syria had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants.8
The British Governor of the Sinai from 1922-36 observed: “This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.”9
The Peel Commission reported in 1937 that the “shortfall of land is...due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.”10
MYTH
"The British changed their policy after World War II to allow the survivors of the Holocaust to settle in Palestine."
FACT
The gates of Palestine remained closed for the duration of the war, stranding hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe, many of whom became victims of Hitler’s "Final Solution." After the war, the British refused to allow the survivors of the Nazi nightmare to find sanctuary in Palestine. On June 6, 1946, President Truman urged the British government to relieve the suffering of the Jews confined to displaced persons camps in Europe by immediately accepting 100,000 Jewish immigrants. Britain's Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, replied sarcastically that the United States wanted displaced Jews to immigrate to Palestine “because they did not want too many of them in New York.”11
Some Jews were able to reach Palestine, many by way of dilapidated ships that members of the Jewish resistance organizations used to smuggle them in. Between August 1945 and the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, 65 “illegal” immigrant ships, carrying 69,878 people, arrived from European shores. In August 1946, however, the British began to intern those they caught in camps in Cyprus. Approximately 50,000 people were detained in the camps, 28,000 of whom were still imprisoned when Israel declared independence.12
MYTH
"As the Jewish population in Palestine grew, the plight of the Palestinian Arabs worsened."
FACT
The Jewish population increased by 470,000 between World War I and World War II, while the non-Jewish population rose by 588,000.13 In fact, the permanent Arab population increased 120 percent between 1922 and 1947.14
This rapid growth was a result of several factors. One was immigration from neighboring states — constituting 37 percent of the total immigration to pre-state Israel — by Arabs who wanted to take advantage of the higher standard of living the Jews had made possible.15 The Arab population also grew because of the improved living conditions created by the Jews as they drained malarial swamps and brought improved sanitation and health care to the region. Thus, for example, the Muslim infant mortality rate fell from 201 per thousand in 1925 to 94 per thousand in 1945 and life expectancy rose from 37 years in 1926 to 49 in 1943.16
The Arab population increased the most in cities where large Jewish populations had created new economic opportunities. From 1922-1947, the non-Jewish population increased 290 percent in Haifa, 131 percent in Jerusalem and 158 percent in Jaffa. The growth in Arab towns was more modest: 42 percent in Nablus, 78 percent in Jenin and 37 percent in Bethlehem.17
MYTH
"Jews stole Arab land."
FACT
Despite the growth in their population, the Arabs continued to assert they were being displaced. The truth is that from the beginning of World War I, part of Palestine's land was owned by absentee landlords who lived in Cairo, Damascus and Beirut. About 80 percent of the Palestinian Arabs were debt-ridden peasants, semi-nomads and Bedouins.18
Jews actually went out of their way to avoid purchasing land in areas where Arabs might be displaced. They sought land that was largely uncultivated, swampy, cheap and, most important, without tenants. In 1920, Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion expressed his concern about the Arab fellahin, whom he viewed as "the most important asset of the native population." Ben-Gurion said "under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them." He advocated helping liberate them from their oppressors. "Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement," Ben-Gurion added, "should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price."19
It was only after the Jews had bought all of the available uncultivated land that they began to purchase cultivated land. Many Arabs were willing to sell because of the migration to coastal towns and because they needed money to invest in the citrus industry.20
When John Hope Simpson arrived in Palestine in May 1930, he observed: "They [Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay."21
In 1931, Lewis French conducted a survey of landlessness and eventually offered new plots to any Arabs who had been "dispossessed." British officials received more than 3,000 applications, of which 80 percent were ruled invalid by the Government's legal adviser because the applicants were not landless Arabs. This left only about 600 landless Arabs, 100 of whom accepted the Government land offer.22
In April 1936, a new outbreak of Arab attacks on Jews was instigated by a Syrian guerrilla named Fawzi alQawukji, the commander of the Arab Liberation Army. By November, when the British finally sent a new commission headed by Lord Peel to investigate, 89 Jews had been killed and more than 300 wounded.23
The Peel Commission's report found that Arab complaints about Jewish land acquisition were baseless. It pointed out that "much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased....there was at the time of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land."24 Moreover, the Commission found the shortage was "due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population." The report concluded that the presence of Jews in Palestine, along with the work of the British Administration, had resulted in higher wages, an improved standard of living and ample employment opportunities.25
In his memoirs, Transjordan's King Abdullah wrote:
It is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping (emphasis in the original).26
Even at the height of the Arab revolt in 1938, the British High Commissioner to Palestine believed the Arab landowners were complaining about sales to Jews to drive up prices for lands they wished to sell. Many Arab landowners had been so terrorized by Arab rebels they decided to leave Palestine and sell their property to the Jews.27
The Jews were paying exorbitant prices to wealthy landowners for small tracts of arid land. "In 1944, Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per acre in Palestine, mostly for arid or semiarid land; in the same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre."28
By 1947, Jewish holdings in Palestine amounted to about 463,000 acres. Approximately 45,000 of these acres were acquired from the Mandatory Government; 30,000 were bought from various churches and 387,500 were purchased from Arabs. Analyses of land purchases from 1880 to 1948 show that 73 percent of Jewish plots were purchased from large landowners, not poor fellahin.29 Those who sold land included the mayors of Gaza, Jerusalem and Jaffa. As'ad elShuqeiri, a Muslim religious scholar and father of PLO chairman Ahmed Shuqeiri, took Jewish money for his land. Even King Abdullah leased land to the Jews. In fact, many leaders of the Arab nationalist movement, including members of the Muslim Supreme Council, sold land to Jews.30
MYTH
"The British helped the Palestinians to live peacefully with the Jews."
FACT
In 1921, Haj Amin el-Husseini first began to organize fedayeen ("one who sacrifices himself") to terrorize Jews. Haj Amin hoped to duplicate the success of Kemal Atatürk in Turkey by driving the Jews out of Palestine just as Kemal had driven the invading Greeks from his country.31 Arab radicals were able to gain influence because the British Administration was unwilling to take effective action against them until they finally revolted against British rule.
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, former head of British military intelligence in Cairo, and later Chief Political Officer for Palestine and Syria, wrote in his diary that British officials “incline towards the exclusion of Zionism in Palestine.” In fact, the British encouraged the Palestinians to attack the Jews. According to Meinertzhagen, Col. Waters Taylor (financial adviser to the Military Administration in Palestine 1919-23) met with Haj Amin a few days before Easter, in 1920, and told him “he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world...that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine Administration but in Whitehall and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols [Chief Administrator in Palestine, 1919-20] and General Allenby [Commander of Egyptian Force, 1917-19, then High Commissioner of Egypt] would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.”32
Haj Amin took the Colonel’s advice and instigated a riot. The British withdrew their troops and the Jewish police from Jerusalem, allowing the Arab mob to attack Jews and loot their shops. Because of Haj Amin's overt role in instigating the pogrom, the British decided to arrest him. Haj Amin escaped, however, and was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in absentia.
A year later, some British Arabists convinced High Commissioner Herbert Samuel to pardon Haj Amin and to appoint him Mufti. By contrast, Vladimir Jabotinsky and several of his followers, who had formed a Jewish defense organization during the unrest, were sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment.33
Samuel met with Haj Amin on April 11, 1921, and was assured “that the influences of his family and himself would be devoted to tranquility.” Three weeks later, riots in Jaffa and elsewhere left 43 Jews dead.34
Haj Amin consolidated his power and took control of all Muslim religious funds in Palestine. He used his authority to gain control over the mosques, the schools and the courts. No Arab could reach an influential position without being loyal to the Mufti. His power was so absolute “no Muslim in Palestine could be born or die without being beholden to Haj Amin.”35 The Mufti’s henchmen also insured he would have no opposition by systematically killing Palestinians from rival clans who were discussing cooperation with the Jews.
As the spokesman for Palestinian Arabs, Haj Amin did not ask that Britain grant them independence. On the contrary, in a letter to Churchill in 1921, he demanded that Palestine be reunited with Syria and Transjordan.36
The Arabs found rioting to be an effective political tool because of the lax British attitude and response toward violence against Jews. In handling each riot, the British did everything in their power to prevent Jews from protecting themselves, but made little or no effort to prevent the Arabs from attacking them. After each outbreak, a British commission of inquiry would try to establish the cause of the violence. The conclusion was always the same: the Arabs were afraid of being displaced by Jews. To stop the rioting, the commissions would recommend that restrictions be placed on Jewish immigration. Thus, the Arabs came to recognize that they could always stop the influx of Jews by staging a riot.
This cycle began after a series of riots in May 1921. After failing to protect the Jewish community from Arab mobs, the British appointed the Haycraft Commission to investigate the cause of the violence. Although the panel concluded the Arabs had been the aggressors, it rationalized the cause of the attack: “The fundamental cause of the riots was a feeling among the Arabs of discontent with, and hostility to, the Jews, due to political and economic causes, and connected with Jewish immigration, and with their conception of Zionist policy....”37 One consequence of the violence was the institution of a temporary ban on Jewish immigration.
The Arab fear of being “displaced” or “dominated” was used as an excuse for their merciless attacks on peaceful Jewish settlers. Note, too, that these riots were not inspired by nationalistic fervor — nationalists would have rebelled against their British overlords — they were motivated by racial strife and misunderstanding.
In 1929, Arab provocateurs succeeded in convincing the masses that the Jews had designs on the Temple Mount (a tactic that would be repeated on numerous occasions, the most recent of which was in 2000 after the visit of Ariel Sharon). A Jewish religious observance at the Western Wall, which forms a part of the Temple Mount, served as a catalyst for rioting by Arabs against Jews that spilled out of Jerusalem into other villages and towns, including Safed and Hebron.
Again, the British Administration made no effort to prevent the violence and, after it began, the British did nothing to protect the Jewish population. After six days of mayhem, the British finally brought troops in to quell the disturbance. By this time, virtually the entire Jewish population of Hebron had fled or been killed. In all, 133 Jews were killed and 399 wounded in the pogroms.38
After the riots were over, the British ordered an investigation, which resulted in the Passfield White Paper. It said the “immigration, land purchase and settlement policies of the Zionist Organization were already, or were likely to become, prejudicial to Arab interests. It understood the Mandatory’s obligation to the non-Jewish community to mean that Palestine’s resources must be primarily reserved for the growing Arab economy....”39 This, of course, meant it was necessary to place restrictions not only on Jewish immigration but on land purchases.
MYTH
"The Mufti was not anti-Semitic."
FACT
In 1941, Haj Amin al-Husseini fled to Germany and met with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and other Nazi leaders. He wanted to persuade them to extend the Nazis’ anti-Jewish program to the Arab world.
The Mufti sent Hitler 15 drafts of declarations he wanted Germany and Italy to make concerning the Middle East. One called on the two countries to declare the illegality of the Jewish home in Palestine. Furthermore, “they accord to Palestine and to other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries, in accordance with the interest of the Arabs and, by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.”40
In November 1941, the Mufti met with Hitler, who told him the Jews were his foremost enemy. The Nazi dictator rebuffed the Mufti's requests for a declaration in support of the Arabs, however, telling him the time was not right. The Mufti offered Hitler his “thanks for the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches....The Arabs were Germany's natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely....the Jews....” Hitler replied:
Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine....Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle....Germany's objective [is]...solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere....In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. The Mufti thanked Hitler profusely.41
In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS, who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary. He escaped from French detention in 1946, however, and continued his fight against the Jews from Cairo and later Beirut. He died in 1974.
MYTH
"The Irgun bombed the King David Hotel as part of a terror campaign against civilians."
FACT
The King David Hotel was the site of the British military command and the British Criminal Investigation Division. The Irgun chose it as a target after British troops invaded the Jewish Agency June 29, 1946, and confiscated large quantities of documents. At about the same time, more than 2,500 Jews from all over Palestine were placed under arrest. The information about Jewish Agency operations, including intelligence activities in Arab countries, was taken to the King David Hotel.
A week later, news of a massacre of 40 Jews in a pogrom in Poland reminded the Jews of Palestine how Britain's restrictive immigration policy had condemned thousands to death.
Irgun leader Menachem Begin stressed his desire to avoid civilian casualties. In fact, the plan was to warn the British so they would evacuate the building before it was blown up. Three telephone calls were placed, one to the hotel, another to the French Consulate, and a third to the Palestine Post, warning that explosives in the King David Hotel would soon be detonated.
MYTH
"The British helped the Jews displace the native Arab population of Palestine."
FACT
Herbert Samuel, a British Jew who served as the first High Commissioner of Palestine, placed restrictions on Jewish immigration “in the ‘interests of the present population’ and the ‘ absorptive capacity’ of the country.”1 The influx of Jewish settlers was said to be forcing the Arab fellahin (native peasants) from their land. This was at a time when less than a million people lived in an area that now supports more than nine million.
The British actually limited the absorptive capacity of Palestine by partitioning the country.
In 1921, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill severed nearly four-fifths of Palestine — some 35,000 square miles — to create a brand new Arab entity, Transjordan. As a consolation prize for the Hejaz and Arabia (which are both now Saudi Arabia) going to the Saud family, Churchill rewarded Sherif Hussein's son Abdullah for his contribution to the war against Turkey by installing him as Transjordan's emir.
The British went further and placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in what remained of Palestine, contradicting the provision of the Mandate (Article 6) stating that “the Administration of Palestine...shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency...close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes.” By 1949, the British had allotted 87,500 acres of the 187,500 acres of cultivable land to Arabs and only 4,250 acres to Jews.2
Ultimately, the British admitted the argument about the absorptive capacity of the country was specious. The Peel Commission said: “The heavy immigration in the years 1933-36 would seem to show that the Jews have been able to enlarge the absorptive capacity of the country for Jews.”3
MYTH
"The British allowed Jews to flood Palestine while Arab immigration was tightly controlled."
FACT
The British response to Jewish immigration set a precedent of appeasing the Arabs, which was followed for the duration of the Mandate. The British placed restrictions on Jewish immigration while allowing Arabs to enter the country freely. Apparently, London did not feel that a flood of Arab immigrants would affect the country's absorptive capacity.
During World War I, the Jewish population in Palestine declined because of the war, famine, disease and expulsion by the Turks. In 1915, approximately 83,000 Jews lived in Palestine among 590,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs. According to the 1922 census, the Jewish population was 84,000, while the Arabs numbered 643,000.4 Thus, the Arab population grew exponentially while that of the Jews stagnated.
In the mid-1920s, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased primarily because of anti-Jewish economic legislation in Poland and Washington’s imposition of restrictive quotas.5
The record number of immigrants in 1935 (see table) was a response to the growing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The British administration considered this number too large, however, so the Jewish Agency was informed that less than one-third of the quota it asked for would be approved in 1936.6
The British gave in further to Arab demands by announcing in the 1939 White Paper that an independent Arab state would be created within 10 years, and that Jewish immigration was to be limited to 75,000 for the next five years, after which it was to cease altogether. It also forbade land sales to Jews in 95 percent of the territory of Palestine. The Arabs, nevertheless, rejected the proposal.
On July 22, 1946, the calls were made. The call into the hotel was apparently received and ignored. Begin quotes one British official who supposedly refused to evacuate the building, saying: "We don't take orders from the Jews."42 As a result, when the bombs exploded, the casualty toll was high: a total of 91 killed and 45 injured. Among the casualties were 15 Jews. Few people in the hotel proper were injured by the blast.43
In contrast to Arab attacks against Jews, which were widely hailed by Arab leaders as heroic actions, the Jewish National Council denounced the bombing of the King David.44
For decades the British denied they had been warned. In 1979, however, a member of the British Parliament introduced evidence that the Irgun had indeed issued the warning. He offered the testimony of a British officer who heard other officers in the King David Hotel bar joking about a Zionist threat to the headquarters. The officer who overheard the conversation immediately left the hotel and survived.
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Both of our sources are Jewish :)
If you read the article, there are Zionists(terrorists) directly quoted...
I could make my own myths and facts up...
Myth: You're right.
Fact: You're wrong, and you just can't admit it even when you see it. You have no credibility after stating that Palestinians are in no way victims of Zionism (that's the most retarded thing I've ever heard... even the dumbest Zionist would argue that yeah they're victims but they brought it upon themselves or something retarded you usually say), and then you said that the "Land without People for a People without a Land" was REALLY BELIEVED.... LMAO... you're so brainwashed.
If you want to know the truth... ask yourself a simple question... who is on whose land? Who is the occupier and who is the occupied? It's that easy really.
P.S. How about some myths and facts about the UN resolutions? I'm guessing those are myths... that never happened either huh? LOL fucking brainwashed tool...
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The desire for peaceful relations between Jews and Arabs sometimes leads people to overlook public comments by Arab officials and media publications that are often incendiary and sometimes outright anti-Semitic. Frequently, more moderate tones are adopted when speaking to Western audiences, but more accurate and heartfelt views are expressed in Arabic to the speaker's constituents. The following is just a tiny sample of some of the remarks that have been made regarding Israel and the Jews. They are included here because they demonstrate the level of hostility and true beliefs of many Arabs and Muslims. Of course, not all Arabs and Muslims subscribe to these views, but the examples are not random, they are beliefs held by important officials and disseminated by major media. They are also included because one of the lessons of the Holocaust was that people of good will are often unwilling to believe that people who threaten evil will in fact carry out their malevolent intentions.
Anti-Semitism
Blood Libel
Fabrications of Abuses
Holocaust Denial
Peace
Phased Plan & the Destruction of Israel
Sanctioning Violence
Anti-Semitism
“They [the Jews] try to kill the principle of religions with the same mentality that they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Mohammed.”
— Syrian President Bashar Assad at May 5 welcoming ceremony for the Pope
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, May 6, 2001
“It is not a mistake that the Koran warns us of the hatred of the Jews and put them at the top of the list of the enemies of Islam. Today the Jews recruit the world against the Muslims and use all kinds of weapons. They are plundering the dearest place to the Muslims, after Mecca and Medina and threaten the place the Muslims have faced at first when they prayed and the third holiest city after Mecca and Medina. They want to erect their temple on that place....The Muslims are ready to sacrifice their lives and blood to protect the Islamic nature of Jerusalem and al-Aksa!”
— Sheikh Hian Al-Adrisi,
Excerpt of address in the al-Aksa mosque, September 29, 2000
“The Jews are Jews, whether Labour or Likud, the Jews are Jews. They do not have any moderates or any advocates of peace. They are all liars. They are the ones who must be butchered and killed. As Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them.' Allah will torture them by your hands and will humiliate them and will help you to overcome them, and will relieve the minds of the believers. ... Our people must unite in one trench, and receive armaments from the Palestinian leadership to confront the Jews. ... Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Whenever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them — and those who stand with them — they are all in one trench, against the Arabs and the Muslims — because they established Israel here, in the beating heart of the Arab world, in Palestine. They created it in order that it be the outpost of their civilization — and the vanguard of their army, and to be the sword of the West and the Crusaders, hanging over the necks of the Muslim monotheists, the Muslims in this land. They wanted the Jews to be the spearhead for them...”
— Dr Ahmad Abu-Halabia, a member of the "Fatwa Council"
appointed by the Palestinian Authority and the
former acting Rector of the Islamic University in Gaza,
delivered in the Zayd bin Sultan Nahyan mosque in Gaza
on October 13, 2000, the day after the lynching of the Israeli
reservists in Ramallah, and carried live on Palestinian television
“Thanks to Hitler, blessed memory, who on behalf of the Palestinians, revenged in advance, against the most vile criminals on the face of the earth. Although we do have a complaint against him for his revenge on them was not enough.”
— Columnist Ahmad Ragab
Al-Akhbar (Egypt), April 18, 2001
“All weapons must be aimed at the Jews, at the enemies of Allah...whom the Koran describes as monkeys and pigs, worshippers of the calf and idol worshippers. Allah shall make the Moslem rule over the Jew, we will blow them up in Hadera, we will blow them up in Tel Aviv and in Netanya in the righteousness of Allah against this rif-raff.....We will enter Jerusalem as conquerors, and Jaffa as conquerors, and Haifa as conquerors and Ashkelon as conquerors...we bless all those who educate their children to jihad and to Martyrdom, blessing be he who shot a bullet into the head of a Jew.”
— Sermon broadcast on Palestinian Authority television, August 3, 2001
“All signs unequivocally prove that the conflict between the Jews and the Muslims is an eternal on-going conflict, even if it stops for short intervals.... This conflict resembles the conflict between man and Satan.... This is the fate of the Muslim nation, and beyond that the fate of all the nations of the world, to be tormented by this nation [the Jews]. The fate of the Palestinian people is to struggle against the Jews on behalf of the Arab peoples, the Islamic peoples and the peoples of the entire worlds.”
— Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda quoted in The New Republic Online, October 30, 2001
“O God, the Jews have transgressed all limits in their tyranny. O God, shake the ground under their feet, pour torture on them, and destroy all of them.”
— Sheikh Abd-al-Bari al-Thubayt, June 7, 2002, sermon at the Holy Mosque of Medina, broadcast on official Saudi television
“The Jewish nation, it is known, from the dawn of history, from the time Allah created them, lives by scheme and deceit.”
— PA Communications Minister, Imud Falouji
Palestinian television, August 8, 2002
“We know that the Jews have manipulated the Sept. 11 incidents and turned American public opinion against Arabs and Muslims....We still ask ourselves: Who has benefited from Sept. 11 attacks? I think they (the Jews) were the protagonists of such attacks.”
— Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef in Assyasah (Kuwait)
translation from Saudi magazine 'Ain-Al-Yaqin, November 29, 2002
“They succeeded in gaining control in most of the [world's] most powerful states, and they — a tiny community — became a world power. But 1.3 billion Muslims must not be defeated by a few million Jews. A way must be found....The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews are in control of the world via their proxies. They lead others to fight and die for them....If we are weak, no one will support us. The Israelis respect only the strong, and we must therefore all unite.”
— Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Mohammad
at the opening of the Organization of Islamic States summit
October 16, 2003
“O God, strengthen Islam and Muslims, humiliate infidelity and infidels. O God, destroy your enemies, the Jewish and crusader enemies of Islam.”
— Shaykh Jamal Shakir
Sermon from King Abdallah mosque in Amman
Amman Jordan Television Channel 1 in Arabic
March 5, 2004
“Here are the Jews today taking revenge for their grandfathers and ancestors, the sons of apes and pigs. Here are the extremist Jews demanding their rights. Some extremists even demand their rights in Medina....This is the extremist tendency of Jews. They are extremists and terrorists who deserve death, while we deserve life, since we have a just cause.”
— Shaykh Ibrahim Mudayris
Gaza Palestine Satellite TV (official PA station)
March 12, 2004
“The Prophet said: the Jews will hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!. Why is there this malice? Because there are none who love the Jews on the face of the earth: not man, not rock, and not tree everything hates them. They destroy everything they destroy the trees and destroy the houses. Everything wants vengeance on the Jews, on these pigs on the face of the earth, and the day of our victory, Allah willing, will come..”
— Shaykh Ibrahim Mudayris
Palestine Authority TV
September 10, 2004
“We are waging this cruel war with the brothers of the monkeys and pigs, the Jews and the sons of Zion The Jews will fight you and you will subjugate them. Until the Jew will stand behind the tree and rock. And the tree and rock will say: oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
— Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim Maadi
Palestine Authority TV
September 12, 2004
“The Zionist attempts to transmit dangerous diseases like AIDS through exports to Arab countries.”
— Al-Manar (Hizballah TV)
November 23, 2004
“The Jews are a cancer spreading in the body of the Arab nation and the Islamic nation, a cancer that has spread and reached the Arab institutions, the villages and the refugee camps.”
— Sermon by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris
Palestine Authority TV
January 7, 2005
“The Jews are the cancer spreading all over the world...the Jews are a virus like AIDS hitting humankind...Jews are responsible for all wars and conflicts....”
— Sermon by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris
Palestine Authority TV
May 13, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blood Libel
“The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity.”
— Saudi Arabian delegate Marouf al-Dawalibi
before the UN Human Rights Commission
conference on religious tolerance
December 5, 1984
“During this holiday [Purim], the Jew must prepare very special pastries, the filling of which is not only costly and rare –– it cannot be found at all on the local and international markets....For this holiday, the Jewish people must obtain human blood so that their clerics can prepare the holiday pastries....Before I go into the details, I would like to clarify that the Jews' spilling human blood to prepare pastry for their holidays is a well-established fact, historically and legally, all throughout history. This was one of the main reasons for the persecution and exile that were their lot in Europe and Asia at various times....during the holiday, the Jews wear carnival-style masks and costumes and overindulge in drinking alcohol, prostitution, and adultery.....”
— Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faysal University
Saudi government daily Al-Riyadh, March 10, 2002
“Christian Europe showed enmity toward the Jews when it transpired that their rabbis craftily hunt anyone walking alone, [tempting] him to enter their house of worship. Then they take his blood to use for baked goods for their holidays, as part of their ritual.”
— Columnist Dr. Muhammad bin S’ad Al-Shwey’ir, Al-Jazirah
(Saudi Arabia), September 6, 2002
“With the establishment of the State of Israel, the entire Muslim nation was lost because Israel is a cancer that spread in the body of the Islamic nation; because the Jews are a virus similar to AIDS, from which the entire world is suffering.”
— Sheikh Ibrahim Mudayris
PA TV sermon, May 13, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fabrications of Abuses
“[Israeli doctors] use Palestinian patients… for experimental medicines and training new doctors.”
— PA Health Minister, Riyadh Al-Za'anoon
Al-Ayam, July 25, 1998
"Israel carries out a clear policy of annihilating our people and destroying our national economy by smuggling spoiled foodstuff… not fit for human consumption, into PA territories…. Israel did not change its strategy, which aims to kill and destroy our people, rather it began counting on means other than bombs, missiles and planes. These measures are distributing and smuggling spoiled foodstuffs… into the PA territories."
— PA Deputy Minister of Supplies, Abd Al-Hamid Al-Qudsi
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 22, 1998
“Our people have been subjected to the daily and extensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children.”
— Suha Arafat, wife of Yasser Arafat
November 11, 1999, during a Gaza appearance
with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holocaust Denial
“...Lies surfaced about Jews being murdered here and there, and the Holocaust. And, of course, they are all lies and unfounded claims. No Chelmno, no Dachau, no Auschwitz! [They] were disinfection sites... They began to publicize in their propaganda that they were persecuted, murdered and exterminated... Committees acted here and there to establish this entity [Israel-Ed.], this foreign entity, implanted as a cancer in our country, where our fathers lived, where we live, and where our children after us will live. They always portrayed themselves as victims, and they made a Center for Heroism and Holocaust. Whose heroism? Whose Holocaust? Heroism is our nation's, the holocaust was against our people... We were the victims, but we shall not remain victims forever...” [emphasis added]
— Dr. Issam Sissalem, history lecturer, Islamic University Gaza,
PA TV broadcast, November 29, 2000
“The issue of the holocaust rises again. It defies disappearing over its half-century because the Zionist propaganda has converted it into a means to produce political and economic benefit, besides exploiting it for the advancement of occupation and settlement...”
“A recently published book by an American researcher, discusses the holocaust. Employing scientific and chemical evidence, it proves that the figure of six million Jews cremated in the Nazi Auschwitz camps is a lie for propaganda, as the most spacious of the vaults in the camp could not have held even one percent of that number.”
— Hiri Manzour in the official Palestinian Authority daily,
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 13, 2001
“One of the Jews' evil deeds is what has come to be called 'the Holocaust,' that is, the slaughter of the Jews by Nazism. However, revisionist [historians] have proven that this crime, carried out against some of the Jews, was planned by the Jews' leaders, and was part of their policy...These are the Jews against whom we fight, oh beloved of Allah.”
— Sermon broadcast on Palestinian Authority television, September 21, 2001
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Peace
“Unless the Palestine problem is settled, we shall have difficulty in protecting and safeguarding the Jews in the Arab world.”
— Syrian delegate, Faris el-Khouri,
New York Times, February 19, 1947
“The Arab world is not in a compromising mood. It's likely, Mr. Horowitz, that your plan is rational and logical, but the fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won't get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps, get something, but only by the force of your arms. We shall try to defeat you. I am not sure we'll succeed, but we'll try. We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But it's too late to talk of peaceful solutions.”
— Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha,
September 16, 1947
“[A]ll our efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Palestine problem have failed. The only way left for us is war. I will have the pleasure and honor to save Palestine.”
— Transjordan's King Abdullah,
April 26, 1948
“The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight.”
— Jamal Husseini before the Security Council,
April 16, 1948
“This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”
— Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League,
May 15, 1948
“I am not solely fighting against Israel itself. My task is to deliver the Arab world from destruction through Israel's intrigue, which has its roots abroad. Our hatred is very strong. There is no sense in talking about peace with Israel. There is not even the smallest place for negotiations.”
— Egyptian President Nasser,
October 14, 1956
“Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united....I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.”
— Syrian Defense Minister Hafez Assad,
May 20, 1967
“Arab policy at this stage has but two objectives. The first, the elimination of the traces of the 1967 aggression through an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories it occupied that year. The second objective is the elimination of the traces of the 1948 aggression, by the means of the elimination of the State of Israel itself. This is, however, as yet an abstract, undefined objective, and some of us have erred in commencing the latter step before the former.”
— Mohammed Heikal, a Sadat confidant and editor of the semi-official Al-Ahram,
February 25, 1971
“The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.”
— PLO spokesman Mahmud Abbas ("Abu Mazen"),
Falastin a-Thaura, March 1976
“Saddam, you hero, attack Israel with chemical weapons.”
— Palestinians marching in support of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait,
(Associated Press, August 12, 1990
“Let us work together until we achieve victory and regain liberated Jerusalem.”
— Yasser Arafat,
Baghdad Republic of Iraq Radio Network, November 16, 1991
“I have always rejected normalizing relations with (Israeli) women....They always invite me to their functions and I categorically refuse because I hate Israel.”
— Suha Arafat, wife of Yasser Arafat,
Saudi Arabian women's magazine, Sayidaty, quoted by AP, May 3, 2001
“We will not give up a single grain of soil in Palestine, from Haifa, and Jaffa, and Acre, and Mulabbas [Petah Tikvah] and Salamah, and Majdal [Ashkelon], and all the land, and Gaza, and the West Bank....”
— Dr Ahmad Abu-Halabia, a member of the "Fatwa Council"
appointed by the Palestinian Authority and the
former acting Rector of the Islamic University in Gaza,
delivered in the Zayd bin Sultan Nahyan mosque in Gaza
on October 13, 2000, the day after the lynching of the Israeli
reservists in Ramallah, and carried live on Palestinian television
“We will not arrest the sons of our people in order to appease Israel. Let our people rest assured that this won't happen.”
— Chief of the PA Preventive Security in the West Bank, Jebril Rajoub,
Islamic Association for Palestine, June 9, 2001
“...Allah willing, this unjust state...Israel will be erased; this unjust state, the United States will be erased; this unjust state, Britain will be erased...Blessings to whoever waged Jihad for the sake of Allah...Blessings to whoever put a belt of explosives on his body or on his sons' and plunged into the midst of the Jews...”
— Sermon by Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi
a few days after Yasser Arafat's cease-fire declaration
PA Television, June 8, 2001
“We said from the beginning that there is no ceasefire for the settlers.”
— Fatah leader, Ziad ibu-Aid,
International Herald Tribune, June 20, 2001
“Didn't we throw mud in the face of Bill Clinton, who dared to propose a state with some adjustments? Were we honest about what we did? Were we right in what we did? No, we were not. After two years of violence, we are now calling for what we rejected.”
— Nabil Amr, ex-minister in the PA cabinet,
Quoted in the Jerusalem Report, October 21, 2002
“Just as Ramallah, Gaza, Nablus, and Jenin are Palestinian cities, so are Haifa, Nazareth, Jaffa, Ramle, Lod, Beersheba, Safed, and others Palestinian cities....The Zionist Jews are foreigners in this land. They have no right to live or settle in it. They should go somewhere else in the world to establish their state and their false entity...They must leave their homes...We do not believe in so-called 'peace with Israel' because peace cannot be made with Satan. Israel is the greatest Satan.”
— Palestinian Christian cleric Father 'Atallah Hanna,
sermon in the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Jerusalem, January 19, 2003
“Our position is clear: all of Palestine. Every inch of Palestine belongs to the Muslims.”
— Mahmoud Zahar, senior leader of Hamas,
Quoted in the Jerusalem Post, November 14, 2003
“Hamas will keep its weapons in its hands and will defend any part of the homeland....Our national problem is not related only to the West Bank, Gaza, and al-Quds...but to Palestine, all [the territory of] Palestine.”
— Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar
al-Hayat al-Jadida, July, 5, 2005.
“Oh Allah, liberate our Al-Aqsa Mosque from the defilement of the occupying and brutal Zionists… Oh Allah, punish the occupying Zionists and their supporters from among the corrupt infidels. Oh Allah, scatter and disperse them, and make an example of them for those who take heed.”
— Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis,
imam of Islam's most holy mosque, Al-Haram in Mecca
Sermon on Saudi Channel 1, July 15, 2005
“Al-Qassam warriors, rain rockets on the settlers! Don't let any Jew sleep!
The Al-Aqsa Brigades will make you tremble in Haifa and Tel Aviv; they will strike you in Safed and Acre.
Because we do not distinguish between [Jewish] Palestine and [Arab] Palestine.
For [as] Jaffa is the same as Gaza, Tel-al-Zuhour [Tel Aviv] is the same as Rafah, and the Galilee is the same as Hebron.
We make no distinction between the parts of the earth of the homeland.”
— Song broadcast on Hamas radio station Sawt Al-Aqsa
August 16, 2005
“We will continue our martyrdom operations inside Israel until all our lands are liberated, by God's will....We won't lay down our weapons as long as Jerusalem and the West Bank are under occupation.’
— Muhamemd Hijazi, commander of a Fatah- affiliated militias in the Gaza Strip
Jerusalem Post, September 12, 2005
“We will not rest and will not abandon the path of Jihad and martyrdom as long as one inch of our land remained in the hands of the Jews.”
— Raed Saed, a senior Hamas leader
Ynet News, September 19, 2005
“First of all this Palestinian land, and all the Arabic nation, is all part of the same area. In the past, there was no independent Palestinian state; there was no independent Jordanian state; and so on. There were regions called Iraq or Egypt, but they were all part of one country....Our main goal is to establish a great Islamic state, be it pan-Arabic or pan-Islamic.”
— Mahmoud A-Zahhar, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip
The Media Line, September 22, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phased Plan & the Destruction of Israel
“The Palestinian people accepted the Oslo agreements as a first step and not as a permanent arrangement, based on the premise that the war and struggle on the ground [i.e., locally against Israeli territory] is more efficient than a struggle from a distant land... for the Palestinian people will continue the revolution until they achieve the goals of the '65 revolution...”
— PA Minister of Supply Abd El Aziz Shahian,
Al Ayaam, May 30, 2000.
[The "65 Revolution" is the founding of the PLO
and the publication of the Palestinian covenant that
calls for the destruction of Israel via an armed struggle.]
“Our people have hope for the future, that the Occupation State ceases to exist, and that it makes no difference [how great] its power and arrogance...”.
— PA Minister of Communications, Amad Alfalugi,
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, November 18, 1999
“When we picked up the gun in '65 and the modern Palestinian Revolution began, it had a goal. This goal has not changed and it is the liberation of Palestine.”
— Salim Alwadia Abu Salem, Supervisor of Palestinian Political Affairs,
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, January 20, 2000
“I want to say that this is our Palestine, from Metulla [Israel's northernmost city] to Rafiah [Southern border] and to Aqaba [Israel's southernmost point], from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea; whether they want it or not.”
— Dr. Jareer Al-Kidwah, advisor to President Arafat,
PA TV broadcast, November 29, 2000
“If we agree to declare our state over what is now 22 percent of Palestine, meaning the West Bank and Gaza, our ultimate goal is the liberation of all historic Palestine from the River to the Sea...We distinguish the strategic, long-term goals from the political phased goals, which we are compelled to temporarily accept due to international pressure.”
— Faisal al-Husseini,
Al-Arabi, June 24, 2001
“Israel is much smaller than Iran in land mass, and therefore far more vulnerable to nuclear attack.”
— Former Iranian President Ali Rafsanjani,
quoted in Jerusalem Report, March 11, 2002
“We defeated the Crusaders 800 years ago and we will defeat the enemies of Islam today.”
— Nazareth Deputy Mayor Salman Abu Ahmed,
quoted in Jerusalem Report, March 4, 2002
“...we shall return to the 1967 borders, but it does not mean that we have given up on Jerusalem and Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramla, Nayanyah [Al-Zuhour] and Tel Aviv [Tel Al-Rabia]. Never. We shall return to every village we had been expelled from, by Allah's will....Our approval to return to the 1967 borders is not a concession for our other rights. No!..this generation might not achieve this stage, but generations will come, and the land of Palestine...will demand that the Palestinians return the way Muhammad returned there, as a conqueror.”
— Sheikh Ibrahim Mudyris,
Friday sermon, February 4, 2005
Hamas would “definitely not” be prepared for coexistence with Israel should the IDF retreat to its 1967 borders. “It can be a temporary solution, for a maximum of 5 to 10 years. But in the end Palestine must return to become Muslim, and in the long term Israel will disappear from the face of the earth.”
— Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar
Yediot Ahronot, June 24, 2005
“Our brothers in Jerusalem and the West Bank, I am sure that Gaza is just the beginning of the process… In the next phase, we will defeat the occupation [in your area]… Residents of Occupied Palestine of 1948, in my name and in the name of all Gaza Strip residents, I ask you for your assistance to us and to our Jihad… We shall not rest until our entire holy land is liberated….”
— Muhammad Deif,
Commander of the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassem Brigades,
the military wing of Hamas,
August 27, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sanctioning Violence
“The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aksa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.”
— The fatwa (religious edict) issued by Osama bin Laden in 1998
"We decided to liberate our homeland step by step... this is the strategy... we say: 'should Israel continue – no problem. And so we honor the peace treaties and non-violence, so long as the agreements are fulfilled step-by-step. [But] if and when Israel says 'enough,' namely, 'we will not discuss Jerusalem, we will not return refugees, we will not dismantle settlements, we will not withdraw to the borders,' in that case it is saying that we will return to violence. But this time it will be with 30,000 armed Palestinian soldiers and in a land with elements of freedom. I am the first to call for it. If we reach a dead end we will go back to our war and struggle like we did forty years ago."
— PA Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Nabil Sha'ath,
interview with ANN television (London), October 7, 2000
"Violence is around the corner, and the Palestinians are willing to sacrifice even 5,000 casualties."
— PA Justice Minister Freih Abu Middein,
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, (PA) August 24, 2000
"The Intifada will continue until the achievement of our national goals."
— PA Finance Minister Muhammad Al-Nashashibi,
Al-Ayyam, October 10, 2000
"The Intifada is a means of popular struggle in which all parts of the people take part in order to realize the internationally recognized legitimate rights of the Palestinian people... This is the goal of the Intifada... The use of violence, the struggle and martyrdom... used by people to achieve their rights."
— PLO representative in Washington, Hassan Abd Al-Rahman,
TV MBC, October 10, 2000
"The Intifada should be continued and escalated."
— The head of the Fatah organization in the West Bank, Marwan Al-Barghuthi,
Al-Jazeera TV (Qatar), October 11, 2000
"The Palestinian people are in a state of emergency against the failure of the Camp David summit. If the situation explodes, the Palestinian people living in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority are ready for the next fierce battle against the Israeli occupation. ... The next Intifada will be more violent than the first one especially since the Palestinian people now possess weapons allowing them to defend themselves in a confrontation with the Israeli army. ... the Lebanese experience of wiping out the Israeli occupation from southern Lebanon gave the Palestinian people the needed moral strength and added to their spirit of armed struggle."
— A "senior security figure" in the Palestinian Authority,
Kul Al-Arab, July 14, 2000
“The issues of Jerusalem, the refugees and sovereignty are one and will be finalized on the ground and not in negotiations. At this point it is important to prepare Palestinian society for the challenge of the next step because we will inevitably find ourselves in a violent confrontation with Israel in order to create new facts on the ground. ... I believe that the situation in the future will be more violent than the Intifada.”
— Abu-Ali Mustafa of the Palestinian Authority, July 23, 2000
“Hamas has tens of martyrs who are willing to carry out attacks against Israeli targets. An operation of such martyrs exceeds that of the Arab armies who fought the Hebrew state. The importance of the weapons of such martyrs is no less than the importance of nuclear weapons.”
— Khaled Mash'al, head of the Hamas Politbureau,
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), June 24, 2001
“We are teaching the children that suicide bombs make Israeli people frightened and we are allowed to do it....We teach them that after a person becomes a suicide bomber he reaches the highest level of paradise.”
— Palestinian “Paradise Camp” counselor speaking to BBC interviewer,
quoted in Jerusalem Post, July 20, 2001
“I promise that the number of shootings at the occupation will increase to 500 to 1,000 shooting [incidents] per day....The Palestinians have trained themselves to attack the Israeli tanks and explode their bodies that will be loaded with a belt of explosives, as part of the preparations for a possible Israeli attack in the Palestinian territories....The current intifada differs from the previous one because it is armed and the Palestinians are fighting inside their territory and from it.”
— Deputy Commander of Force-17, Muhammad Dhamrah (a.k.a., Abu Awdh),
Al-Hayat, August 17, 2001
“The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of their noble predecessors...the Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson in [Lebanon]....These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history....They are the most honorable [people] among us.....”
— Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), June 24, 2001
“I do not think that a Muslim would let an Islamic homeland like Palestine, and Jerusalem, remain in the hands of the Zionists, who plunder it and damage its holy sites, without the owners of the land having the right to defend themselves. All I said is that this oppressed people that was expelled from its home has the right to become a human bomb and blow himself up inside this military society.”
— Sheikh Yussef Al-Qaradhawi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood,
Al-Jazeera TV (Qatar), September 16, 2001
“Our efforts to continue the Intifada and resistance will persist until we achieve our right of return, and our independence, with Jerusalem as the capital.”
— Ahmad Sa'adat speaking at a press conference after becoming leader of the PFLP,
Jerusalem Post, October 4, 2001
“Resistance is legitimate and those who give up their lives do not require permission from anyone....We must not stand in the way of the intifada and jihad [holy war]. Rather, we must stand at their side and encourage them.”
— Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Akrameh Sabri,
Al-Hayat, December 7, 2001
“With God´s help, next time we will meet in Jerusalem, because we are fighting to bring victory to our prophets, every baby, every kid, every man, every woman and every old person and all the young people, we will all sacrifice ourselves for our holy places and we will strengthen our hold of them and we are willing to give 70 of our martyrs for every one of theirs in this campaign, because this is our holy land. We will continue to fight for this blessed land and I call on you to stand strong..”
— Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat,
speech at a rally in Ramallah, December 18, 2001
“O God, destroy the tyrant Jews. O God, deal with the Jews and their supporters. O God destroy them for they are within your power.”
— Saudi Sheikh Usamah bin-Abdallah Khayyat
sermon from the Holy Mosque in Mecca broadcast on Saudi government television, July 12, 2002
“We have examined our options and our path, and we have chosen the path of slaughter, by acts of Jihad, Istshahad (suicide) and resistance of every form, side-by-side with our brothers in the Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and all the other Palestinian resistance groups, until the liberation of Palestine and the return of the refugees.”
— Part of a warning posted on the web site of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades,
the military arm of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization, August 7, 2002
“If they go from Sheba'a, we will not stop fighting them. Our goal is to liberate the 1948 borders of Palestine...[Jews] can go back to Germany or wherever they came from.”
— Hezbollah spokesperson Hassan Ezzedin
New Yorker, October 14, 2002
“If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”
— Hezbollah leader Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
Lebanon Daily Star, October 23, 2002
“The Jewish-Crusader coalition will not be safe anywhere from the fighters' attacks. We will hit the most vital centers and we will strike against its strategic operations with all possible peaces.”
— Attributed on Al-Jazeera TV to al-Qaida spokesman SuleimanAbu Gheith
December 8, 2002
“The jihad and suicide bombings will continue — the Zionist entity will reach its end in the first quarter of the current century. It is therefore up to you [Muslim holy fighters] to be patient — the Hamas takes upon itself the liberation of all Palestinian land from the sea to the river in the Rafah [in the south] and until Rosh Hanikra [in the north].”
— Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
Al-Ayyam, December 28, 2002
“Find what strength you have to terrorize your enemy and the enemy of God.”
— Speech by Yasser Arafat
VOA , May 15, 2004
“There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world....Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury (while) any (Islamic leader) who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world....As the Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] said, Israel must be wiped off the map.”
— Speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
AP , October 26, 2005
“We affirm our support and backing for the positions of the Iranian president toward the Zionist state which, by God's will, will cease to exist.”
— Leaflet distributed by Aksa Martyrs Brigades
supporting Ahmadinejad's call to wipe Israel off the map
November 6, 2005
-
*If you want to read criticism of Israeli behavior, you do not need to seek out anti-Israel sources, you can pick up any Israeli newspaper and find no shortage of news and commentary critical of government policy. The rest of the world’s media provides constant attention to Israel and the coverage is far more likely to be unfavorable than complimentary.
* How many of the references in your article were to Israeli sources?
correlates with
Both of our sources are Jewish
If you read the article
lol...And why do you think I asked you this rhetorical question my challenged friend? Unlike you I don't simply disregard your statements, so with this I adressed your article.
-
MYTH
“Arabs cannot possibly be anti-Semitic as they are themselves Semites.”
FACT
The term "anti-Semite" was coined in Germany in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr to refer to the anti-Jewish manifestations of the period and to give Jew-hatred a more scientific sounding name.1 "Anti-Semitism" has been accepted and understood to mean hatred of the Jewish people. Dictionaries define the term as: "Theory, action, or practice directed against the Jews" and "Hostility towards Jews as a religious or racial minority group, often accompanied by social, economic and political discrimination."2
The claim that Arabs as "Semites" cannot possibly be anti-Semitic is a semantic distortion that ignores the reality of Arab discrimination and hostility toward Jews. Arabs, like any other people, can indeed be anti-Semitic.
“The Arab world is the last bastion of unbridled, unashamed, unhidden and unbelievable anti-Semitism. Hitlerian myths get published in the popular press as incontrovertible truths. The Holocaust either gets minimized or denied....How the Arab world will ever come to terms with Israel when Israelis are portrayed as the devil incarnate is hard to figure out.”
— Columnist Richard Cohen
Washington Post, (October 30, 2001).
MYTH
“Modern Arab nations are only anti-Israel and have never been anti-Jewish.”
FACT
Arab leaders have repeatedly made clear their animosity toward Jews and Judaism. For example, on November 23, 1937, Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud told British Colonel H.R.P. Dickson: "Our hatred for the Jews dates from God's condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus) and their subsequent rejection of His chosen Prophet." He added "that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew ensures him an immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty."3
When Hitler introduced the Nuremberg racial laws in 1935, he received telegrams of congratulation from all corners of the Arab world.4 Later, during the war, one of his most ardent supporters was the Mufti of Jerusalem.
Jews were never permitted to live in Jordan. Civil Law No. 6, which governed the Jordanian-occupied West Bank, states explicitly: "Any man will be a Jordanian subject if he is not Jewish."5
The Arab countries see to it that even young schoolchildren are taught to hate Jews. The Syrian Minister of Education wrote in 1968: "The hatred which we indoctrinate into the minds of our children from their birth is sacred."6
After the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israelis found public school textbooks that had been used to educate Arab children in the West Bank. They were replete with racist and hateful portrayals of Jews:
"The Jews are scattered to the ends of the earth, where they live exiled and despised, since by their nature they are vile, greedy and enemies of mankind, by their nature they were tempted to steal a land as asylum for their disgrace."7
"Analyze the following sentences:
1. The merchant himself traveled to the African continent.
2. We shall expel all the Jews from the Arab countries."8
"The Jews of our time are the descendants of the Jews who harmed the Prophet Muhammad. They betrayed him, they broke the treaty with him and joined sides with his enemies to fight him..."9
"The Jews in Europe were persecuted and despised because of their corruption, meanness and treachery."10
A 1977 Jordanian teachers' manual for first-graders used on the West Bank instructs educators to "implant in the soul of the pupil the rule of Islam that if the enemies occupy even one inch of the Islamic lands, jihad (holy war) becomes imperative for every Muslim." It also says the Jews plotted to assassinate Muhammad when he was a child. Another Jordanian text, a 1982 social studies book, claims Israel ordered the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila during the Lebanon war, but does not mention the Christian Arabs who were the perpetrators.11
“We have found books with passages that are so anti-Semitic, that if they were published in Europe, their publishers would be brought up on anti-racism charges.”
— French lawyer and European Parliament member Francois Zimeray
commenting on Palestinian, Syrian and Egyptian texts
Jerusalem Post, (October 16, 2001).
According to a study of Syrian textbooks, "the Syrian educational system expands hatred of Israel and Zionism to anti-Semitism directed at all Jews. That anti-Semitism evokes ancient Islamic motifs to describe the unchangeable and treacherous nature of the Jews. Its inevitable conclusion is that all Jews must be annihilated."12 To cite one example, an eleventh grade textbook claims that Jews hated Muslims and were driven by envy to incite hostility against them:
The Jews spare no effort to deceive us, deny our Prophet, incite against us, and distort the holy scriptures.
The Jews cooperate with the Polytheist and the infidels against the Muslims because they know Islam reveals their crafty ways and abject characteristics.13
An Arabic translation of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf has been distributed in East Jerusalem and territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and became a bestseller.14
Occasionally, Arab anti-Semitism surfaces at the United Nations. In March 1991, for example, a Syrian delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission read a statement recommending that commission members read "a valuable book" called The Matzoh of Zion, written by Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas. The book justifies ritual murder charges brought against the Jews in the Damascus blood libel of 1840.15 (The phrase "blood libel" refers to accusations that Jews kill Christian children to use their blood for the ritual of making matzoh at Passover.)
King Faisal of Saudi Arabia uttered a similar slander in a 1972 interview:
Israel has had malicious intentions since ancient times. Its objective is the destruction of all other religions....They regard the other religions as lower than their own and other peoples as inferior to their level. And on the subject of vengeance — they have a certain day on which they mix the blood of non-Jews into their bread and eat it. It happened that two years ago, while I was in Paris on a visit, that the police discovered five murdered children. Their blood had been drained, and it turned out that some Jews had murdered them in order to take their blood and mix it with the bread that they eat on this day. This shows you what is the extent of their hatred and malice toward non-Jewish peoples.16
On November 11, 1999, during a Gaza appearance with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Suha Arafat, wife of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat stated: "Our people have been subjected to the daily and extensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children." Similar specious allegations have been made by other Palestinian officials.17
The Arab/Muslim press, which is almost exclusively controlled by the governments in each Middle Eastern nation, regularly publish anti-Semitic articles and cartoons. Today, it remains common to find anti-Semitic publications in Egypt. For example, the establishment Al-Ahram newspaper published an article giving the "historical" background of the blood libel tradition while accusing Israel of using the blood of Palestinian children to bake matzohs up to the present time.18 Anti-Semitic articles also regularly appear in the press in Jordan and Syria. Many of the attacks deal with denial of the Holocaust, its "exploitation" by Zionism, and a comparison of Zionism and Israel to Nazism.
Egyptian Daily Al-Ahram, (May 23, 1998)
In November 2001, a satirical skit aired on the second most popular television station in the Arab world, which depicted a character meant to be Ariel Sharon drinking the blood of Arab children as a grotesque-looking Orthodox Jew looked on. Abu Dhabi Television also aired a skit in which Dracula appears to take a bite out of Sharon, but dies because Sharon's blood is polluted. Protests that these shows were anti-Semitic were ignored by the network.19
The Palestinian Authority's media have also contained inflammatory and anti-Semitic material. A Friday sermon in the Zayed bin Sultan Aal Nahyan mosque in Gaza calling for the murder of Jews and Americans was broadcast live on the official Palestinian Authority television:
Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them and those who stand by them they are all in one trench, against the Arabs and the Muslims because they established Israel here, in the beating heart of the Arab world, in Palestine.... 20
Even Palestinian crossword puzzles are used to delegitimize Israel and attack Jews, providing clues, for example, suggesting the Jewish trait is "treachery."21
“Syrian President Bashar Assad on Saturday [May 5] offered a vivid, if vile, demonstration of why he and his government are unworthy of respect or good relations with the United States or any other democratic country. Greeting Pope John Paul II in Damascus, Mr. Assad launched an attack on Jews that may rank as the most ignorant and crude speech delivered before the pope in his two decades of travel around the world. Comparing the suffering of the Palestinians to that of Jesus Christ, Mr. Assad said that the Jews ‘tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad.’ With that libel, the Syrian president stained both his country and the pope....”
— Washington Post editorial, (May 8, 2001)
MYTH
“Jews who lived in Islamic countries were well-treated by the Arabs.”
FACT
While Jewish communities in Islamic countries fared better overall than those in Christian lands in Europe, Jews were no strangers to persecution and humiliation among the Arabs. As Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis has written: "The Golden Age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam."22
Muhammad, the founder of Islam, traveled to Medina in 622 A.D. to attract followers to his new faith. When the Jews of Medina refused to recognize Muhammad as their Prophet, two of the major Jewish tribes were expelled. In 627, Muhammad's followers killed between 600 and 900 of the men, and divided the surviving Jewish women and children amongst themselves.23
The Muslim attitude toward Jews is reflected in various verses throughout the Koran, the holy book of the Islamic faith. "They [the Children of Israel] were consigned to humiliation and wretchedness. They brought the wrath of God upon themselves, and this because they used to deny God's signs and kill His Prophets unjustly and because they disobeyed and were transgressors" (Sura 2:61). According to the Koran, the Jews try to introduce corruption (5:64), have always been disobedient (5:78), and are enemies of Allah, the Prophet and the angels (2:97-98).
Jews were generally viewed with contempt by their Muslim neighbors; peaceful coexistence between the two groups involved the subordination and degradation of the Jews. In the ninth century, Baghdad's Caliph al-Mutawakkil designated a yellow badge for Jews, setting a precedent that would be followed centuries later in Nazi Germany.24
At various times, Jews in Muslim lands lived in relative peace and thrived culturally and economically. The position of the Jews was never secure, however, and changes in the political or social climate would often lead to persecution, violence and death.
When Jews were perceived as having achieved too comfortable a position in Islamic society, anti-Semitism would surface, often with devastating results. On December 30, 1066, Joseph HaNagid, the Jewish vizier of Granada, Spain, was crucified by an Arab mob that proceeded to raze the Jewish quarter of the city and slaughter its 5,000 inhabitants. The riot was incited by Muslim preachers who had angrily objected to what they saw as inordinate Jewish political power.
Similarly, in 1465, Arab mobs in Fez slaughtered thousands of Jews, leaving only 11 alive, after a Jewish deputy vizier treated a Muslim woman in "an offensive manner." The killings touched off a wave of similar massacres throughout Morocco.25
Other mass murders of Jews in Arab lands occurred in Morocco in the 8th century, where whole communities were wiped out by the Muslim ruler Idris I; North Africa in the 12th century, where the Almohads either forcibly converted or decimated several communities; Libya in 1785, where Ali Burzi Pasha murdered hundreds of Jews; Algiers, where Jews were massacred in 1805, 1815 and 1830; and Marrakesh, Morocco, where more than 300 hundred Jews were murdered between 1864 and 1880.26
Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in Egypt and Syria (1014, 1293-4, 1301-2), Iraq (854-859, 1344) and Yemen (1676). Despite the Koran's prohibition, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in Yemen (1165 and 1678), Morocco (1275, 1465 and 1790-92) and Baghdad (1333 and 1344).27
The situation of Jews in Arab lands reached a low point in the 19th century. Jews in most of North Africa (including Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Morocco) were forced to live in ghettos. In Morocco, which contained the largest Jewish community in the Islamic Diaspora, Jews were made to walk barefoot or wear shoes of straw when outside the ghetto. Even Muslim children participated in the degradation of Jews, by throwing stones at them or harassing them in other ways. The frequency of anti-Jewish violence increased, and many Jews were executed on charges of apostasy. Ritual murder accusations against the Jews became commonplace in the Ottoman Empire.28
As distinguished Orientalist G.E. von Grunebaum has written:
It would not be difficult to put together the names of a very sizeable number Jewish subjects or citizens of the Islamic area who have attained to high rank, to power, to great financial influence, to significant and recognized intellectual attainment; and the same could be done for Christians. But it would again not be difficult to compile a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms.29
The danger for Jews became even greater as a showdown approached in the UN. The Syrian delegate, Faris el-Khouri, warned: "Unless the Palestine problem is settled, we shall have difficulty in protecting and safeguarding the Jews in the Arab world."30
More than a thousand Jews were killed in anti-Jewish rioting during the 1940's in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Yemen.31 This helped trigger the mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries.
MYTH
“As 'People of the Book,' Jews and Christians are protected under Islamic law.”
FACT
This argument is rooted in the traditional concept of the "dhimma" ("writ of protection"), which was extended by Muslim conquerors to Christians and Jews in exchange for their subordination to the Muslims. Yet, as French authority Jacques Ellul has observed: "One must ask: 'protected against whom?' When this 'stranger' lives in Islamic countries, the answer can only be: against the Muslims themselves."32
Peoples subjected to Muslim rule usually had a choice between death and conversion, but Jews and Christians, who adhered to the Scriptures, were usually allowed, as dhimmis (protected persons), to practice their faith. This "protection" did little, however, to insure that Jews and Christians were treated well by the Muslims. On the contrary, an integral aspect of the dhimma was that, being an infidel, he had to acknowledge openly the superiority of the true believer — the Muslim.
In the early years of the Islamic conquest, the "tribute" (or jizya), paid as a yearly poll tax, symbolized the subordination of the dhimmi.33
Later, the inferior status of Jews and Christians was reinforced through a series of regulations that governed the behavior of the dhimmi. Dhimmis, on pain of death, were forbidden to mock or criticize the Koran, Islam or Muhammad, to proselytize among Muslims, or to touch a Muslim woman (though a Muslim man could take a non-Muslim as a wife).
Dhimmis were excluded from public office and armed service, and were forbidden to bear arms. They were not allowed to ride horses or camels, to build synagogues or churches taller than mosques, to construct houses higher than those of Muslims or to drink wine in public. They were forced to wear distinctive clothing and were not allowed to pray or mourn in loud voices — as that might offend the Muslims. The dhimmi also had to show public deference toward Muslims; for example, always yielding them the center of the road. The dhimmi was not allowed to give evidence in court against a Muslim, and his oath was unacceptable in an Islamic court. To defend himself, the dhimmi would have to purchase Muslim witnesses at great expense. This left the dhimmi with little legal recourse when harmed by a Muslim.34
By the twentieth century, the status of the dhimmi in Muslim lands had not significantly improved. H.E.W. Young, British Vice Consul in Mosul, wrote in 1909:
The attitude of the Muslims toward the Christians and the Jews is that of a master towards slaves, whom he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep their place. Any sign of pretension to equality is promptly repressed.35
MYTH
“Muslim schools in the United States teach tolerance of Judaism and other faiths, and promote coexistence with Israel.”
FACT
While it is well-known that many Muslim schools in Arab and Islamic countries indoctrinate students with hatred of Jews and Israel, it was only recently revealed that similar teachings are prevalent in the United States. Islamic schools in Virginia, for example, have maps of the Middle East in their classrooms that are missing Israel. On one map, Israel was blackened out and replaced with "Palestine." An 11th grade textbook teaches that one sign of the Day of Judgment will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say, "Oh Muslim, Oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him."36
The attacks are not only against Jews, but also Christians. Students are taught, for example that the Day of Judgment won't come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross, and converts everyone to Islam.
The private schools are legally allowed to teach whatever they want as long as they meet state requirements.
A Los Angeles Muslim foundation insinuated similar hateful views into the public schools. The Omar Ibn Khattab Foundation donated 300 copies of a translation of the Koran that contained footnotes describing Jews as “arrogant” and “people without faith.”37 After discovering the anti-Semitic passages, the books were removed.
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Did you answer my questions? Who colonized the land? Who is the occupier and who is the occupied? Do those people that were driven out have the universal human right of return to their homes?
All which translates into: Palestinians are victims of Zionism. I'm right. You're wrong. Live with it.
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And if you read the UN Resolutions... you'll see that someone is the victim... yeah, no surprise...
I could pull up websites that say the Holocaust never happened... and list a bunch of "myths and facts"... but unlike you, I'm not a brainwashed tool.
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AS FOR THE UN since you asked, and as for disregarding facts and resorting to brainwashed one sided opinions.
MYTH
"The United Nations has long played a constructive role in Middle East affairs. Its record of fairness and balance makes it an ideal forum for settling the Arab-Israeli dispute."
FACT
Starting in the mid-1970s, an Arab-Soviet-Third World bloc joined to form what amounted to a pro-Palestinian lobby at the United Nations. This was particularly true in the General Assembly where these countries—nearly all dictatorships or autocracies—frequently voted together to pass resolutions attacking Israel and supporting the PLO.
In 1974, for example, the General Assembly invited Yasser Arafat to address it. Arafat did so, a holster attached to his hip. In his speech, Arafat spoke of carrying a gun and an olive branch (he left his gun outside before entering the hall). A year later, at the instigation of the Arab states and the Soviet Bloc, the Assembly approved Resolution 3379, which slandered Zionism by branding it a form of racism.
U.S. Ambassador Daniel Moynihan called the resolution an “obscene act.” Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog told his fellow delegates the resolution was “based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance.” Hitler, he declared, would have felt at home listening to the UN debate on the measure.1
On December 16, 1991, the General Assembly voted 111-25 (with 13 abstentions and 17 delegations absent or not voting) to repeal Resolution 3379. No Arab country voted for repeal. The PLO denounced the vote and the U.S. role.
As Herzog noted, the organization developed an Alice-In-Wonderland perspective on Israel. “In the UN building...[Alice] would only have to wear a Star of David in order to hear the imperious ‘Off with her head’ at every turn.” Herzog noted that the PLO had cited a 1974 UN resolution condemning Israel as justification for setting off a bomb in Jerusalem.2
Bloc voting also made possible the establishment of the pro-PLO “Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People” in 1975. The panel became, in effect, part of the PLO propaganda apparatus, issuing stamps, organizing meetings, preparing films and draft resolutions in support of Palestinian “rights.”
In 1976, the committee recommended “full implementation of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including their return to the Israeli part of Palestine.” It also recommended that November 29 — the day the UN voted to partition Palestine in 1947 — be declared an “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.” Since then, it has been observed at the UN with anti-Israel speeches, films and exhibits. Over the objections of the United States, a special unit on Palestine was established as part of the UN Secretariat.
Israel is the object of more investigative committees, special representatives and rapporteurs than any other state in the UN system. The special representative of the Director-General of UNESCO visited Israel 51 times during 27 years of activity. A "Special Mission" has been sent by the Director-General of the ILO to Israel and the territories every year for the past 17 years.
The Commission on Human Rights routinely adopts disproportionate resolutions concerning Israel. Of all condemnations of this agency, 26 percent refer to Israel alone, while rogue states such as Syria and Libya are never criticized.3
The U.S. has reacted forcefully to efforts to politicize the UN. In 1977, the U.S. withdrew from the International Labor Organization for two years because of its anti-Israel stance. In 1984, the U.S. left UNESCO, in part because of its bias against Israel, but announced in September 2002 it would return to the organization. From 1982-89, the Arab states sought to deny Israel a seat in the General Assembly or put special conditions on Israel's participation. Only a determined U.S. lobbying campaign prevented them from succeeding. In 2001, the U.S. joined Israel in boycotting the UN World Conference Against Racism when it became clear that it had become little more than an Israel-bashing festival.
While the Arab-Israeli peace process that was launched in Madrid in 1991 is structured on the basis of direct negotiations between the parties, the UN constantly undercuts this principle. The Oslo Agreements are predicated on the idea of bilateral talks to resolve differences between Israelis and Palestinians. The General Assembly routinely adopts resolutions, however, that attempt to impose solutions on critical issues such as Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and settlements. Ironically, UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 proposed the bilateral negotiations that are consistently undermined by the General Assembly resolutions.
Thus, the record to date indicates the UN has not played a useful role in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.
“What takes place in the Security Council “more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.”
— former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.4
MYTH
"The Palestinians have been denied a voice at the UN."
FACT
Besides the support the Palestinians have received from the Arab and Islamic world, and most other UN members, the Palestinians have been afforded special treatment at the UN since 1975. That year, the General Assembly awarded permanent representative status to the PLO and the UN established the “Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.” The panel became, in effect, part of the PLO propaganda apparatus, issuing stamps, organizing meetings, and preparing films and draft resolutions in support of Palestinian “rights.”
In 1976, the committee recommended “full implementation of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including their return to the Israeli part of Palestine.” It also recommended that November 29 — the day the UN voted to partition Palestine in 1947 — be declared an “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.” Since then, it has been observed at the UN with anti-Israel speeches, films and exhibits.
In 1988, the PLO's status was upgraded when the General Assembly designated the PLO as “ Palestine.” Ten years later, the General Assembly voted to give the Palestinians a unique status as a non-voting member of the 185 member Assembly. The vote in favor was overwhelming, 124 in favor and 4 against with 10 abstentions. The countries opposing the resolution were Israel, the United States, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.
Palestinian representatives can now raise the issue of the peace process in the General Assembly, cosponsor draft resolutions on Middle East peace and have the right of reply. They still do not have voting power and cannot put forward candidates for UN bodies such as the Security Council.
MYTH
"Israel enjoys the same rights as any other member of the United Nations."
FACT
A breakthrough in Israel’s fifty-year exclusion from UN bodies occurred on May 30, 2000, when Israel accepted an invitation to become a temporary member of the Western European and Others (WEOG) regional group. While only temporary, this historic step could finally end the UN’s discrimination against Israel and open the door to Israeli participation in the Security Council.
Israel has been the only UN member excluded from a regional group. Geographically, it belongs in the Asian Group; however, the Arab states have barred its membership. Without membership in a regional group, Israel cannot sit on the Security Council or other key UN bodies.
The WEOG is the only regional group which is not purely geographical, but rather geopolitical, namely a group of states that share a Western-Democratic common denominator. WEOG comprises 27 members: all the West European states; and the "others" — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
Israel’s membership in the WEOG is severely limited. Every four years Israel will have to reapply for membership, since its status is only temporary. Israel was not allowed to present candidacies for open seats in any UN body for two years and is not able to compete for major UN bodies, such as the Economic and Social Council, for a longer period. Also, for the first two years, Israeli representatives were not allowed to run for positions on the UN Council.
Besides these restrictions, Israel is only allowed to participate in WEOG activities in the New York office of the UN. Israel is excluded from WEOG discussion and consultations at the UN offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Rome and Vienna; therefore, Israel cannot participate in UN talks on human rights, racism and a number of other issues handled in these offices.
In February 2003, Israel was elected to serve on the UN General Assembly Working Group on Disarmament, its first committee posting since 1961 (after 1961, the UN split the membership into regional groups and that was when Israel became isolated). An Israeli representative was elected as one of the group's three vice-chairmen and received votes from Iran and several Arab states. On the other hand, during the same month, an Israeli candidate was defeated for a position on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. The year before Israeli candidates also lost votes for positions on the UN Human Rights Committee, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and the UN Racial Discrimination Committee.4a
In the future, Israel still hopes to gain membership in the Asian group.
MYTH
"The United Nations and its affiliate institutions are critical of Israeli policies, but never attack Jews or engage in anti-Semitic rhetoric."
FACT
The UN has condemned virtually every conceivable form of racism. It has established programs to combat racism and its multiple facets — including xenophobia — but had consistently refused to do the same against anti-Semitism. It was only on November 24, 1998, more than 50 years after the UN's founding, that the word "anti-Semitism" was first mentioned in a UN resolution, appearing near the end of GA Res. A/53/623, "Elimination of Racism and Racial Discrimination."5
Since the early 1970s, the UN itself has become permeated with anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist sentiment. The following examples illustrate how ugly the atmosphere has become:
“Is it not the Jews who are exploiting the American people and trying to debase them?”— Libyan UN Representative Ali Treiki.6
“The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity.” —Saudi Arabian delegate Marouf al-Dawalibi before the 1984 UN Human Rights Commission conference on religious tolerance.7 A similar remark was made by the Syrian Ambassador at a 1991 meeting, who insisted Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make matzos.8
On March 11, 1997, the Palestinian representative to the UN Human Rights Commission claimed the Israeli government had injected 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus. Despite the efforts of Israel, the United States and others, this blood libel remains on the UN record.9
MYTH
"The 1991 repeal of the resolution libeling Zionism proves that the UN is no longer biased against Israel."
FACT
The vote did not signal an end to the UN's bias against Israel. The same month the General Assembly approved four new one-sided resolutions on the Middle East. On December 9, 1991, Israel's handling of the intifada was condemned by a vote of 150-2. On the 11th, it voted 104-2 for a resolution calling for a UN-sponsored peace conference that would include the PLO and voted 142-2 to condemn Israeli behavior toward Palestinians in the territories. On December 16 — the very day it repealed the Zionism measure — the UN voted 152-1, with the U.S. abstaining, to call on Israel to rescind a Knesset resolution declaring Jerusalem its capital, to demand Israel's withdrawal from “occupied territories,” including Jerusalem and to denounce Israeli administration of the Golan Heights. Another resolution expressed support for Palestinian self-determination and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
The repeal vote was marred by the fact that 13 of the 19 Arab countries — including those engaged in negotiations with Israel — Syria, Lebanon and Jordan — voted to retain the resolution, as did Saudi Arabia. Six, including Egypt — which lobbied against repeal — were absent.
The Arabs “voted once again to impugn the very birthright of the Jewish State,” the New York Times noted. “That even now most Arab states cling to a demeaning and vicious doctrine mars an otherwise belated triumph for sense and conscience.”10
There is ample justification for the conclusion of Professor Anne Bayefsky of York University, Canada, writing of the UN Human Rights system: "It is the tool of those who would make Israel the archetypal human rights violator in the world today. It is a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. It is a sanctuary for moral relativists. In short, it is a scandal."11
MYTH
"Even if the General Assembly is biased, the Security Council has always been balanced in its treatment of the Middle East."
FACT
A careful analysis of the Security Council's actions on the Middle East shows it has been little better than the General Assembly in its treatment of Israel.
Candidates for the Security Council are proposed by regional blocs. In the Middle East, this means the Arab League and its allies are usually included. Israel, which joined the UN in 1949, has never been elected to the Security Council whereas at least 16 Arab League members have. Syria, a nation on the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism, began a two-year term as a member of the Security Council in 2002 and served as president of the body in June 2002.
Debates on Israel abound, and the Security Council has repeatedly condemned the Jewish State, but not once has it adopted a resolution critical of the PLO or of Arab attacks on Israel. Emergency special sessions of the General Assembly are rare. No such session has ever been convened with respect to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, the slaughters in Rwanda, the disappearances in Zaire or the horrors of Bosnia. For nearly two decades, these sessions have been called primarily to condemn Israel.
MYTH
"The United States has always supported Israel at the UN and can be counted upon to veto any resolutions that are critical."
FACT
Many people believe the United States can always be relied upon to support Israel with its veto in the UN Security Council. The historical record, however, shows that the U.S. has often opposed Israel in the Council.
In 1990, for example, Washington voted for a Security Council resolution condemning Israel's handling of the Temple Mount riot earlier that month. While singling out “the acts of violence committed by Israeli security forces,” the resolution omitted mention of the Arab violence that preceded it.
In December 1990, the U.S. went along with condemning Israel for expelling four leaders of Hamas, an Islamic terrorist group. The deportations came in response to numerous crimes committed by Hamas against Arabs and Jews, the most recent of which had been the murders of three Israeli civilians in a Jaffa factory several days earlier. The resolution did not say a word about Hamas and its crimes. It described Jerusalem as “occupied” territory, declared that Palestinians needed to be “protected” from Israel and called on contracting parties of the Geneva Convention to ensure Israel's compliance. It was the first time the Security Council invoked the Convention against a member country.
In January 1992, the U.S. supported a one-sided resolution condemning Israel for expelling 12 Palestinians, members of terrorist groups that were responsible for perpetrating violence against Arab and Jew alike. The resolution, which described Jerusalem as “occupied” territory, made no mention of the events that triggered the expulsions — the murders of four Jewish civilians by Palestinian radicals since October.
In 1996, the U.S. went along with a Saudi-inspired condemnation of Israel for opening a tunnel in "the vicinity" of the al-Aksa mosque. In fact, the tunnel, which allows visitors to see the length of the western wall of the Temple Mount, is nowhere near the mosque. Israel was blamed for reacting to violent attacks by Palestinians who protested the opening of the tunnel.
The United States did not cast its first veto until 1972, on a Syrian-Lebanese complaint against Israel. From 1967-72, the U.S. supported or abstained on 24 resolutions, most critical of Israel. From 1973-2003, the Security Council adopted approximately 100 resolutions on the Middle East, again, most critical of Israel. The U.S. vetoed a total of 37 resolutions and, hence, supported the Council's criticism of Israel by its vote of support, or by abstaining, roughly two-thirds of the time.12
In July 2002, the United States shifted its policy and announced that it would veto any Security Council resolution on the Middle East that did not condemn Palestinian terror and name, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade as the groups responsible for the attacks. The U.S. also said that resolutions must note that any Israeli withdrawal is linked to the security situation, and that both parties must be called upon to pursue a negotiated settlement (Washington Post, July 26, 2002). The Arabs can still get around the United States by taking issues to the General Assembly, where nonbinding resolutions pass by majority vote, and support for almost any anti-Israel resolution is assured.
MYTH
"America's Arab allies routinely support U.S. positions at the UN."
FACT
In 2004, Jordan was the Arab nation that voted with the United States most often, and that was on only 30 percent of the resolutions. The other Arab countries, including allies Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, voted against the United States 80 percent of the time or more. As a group, in 2004, the Arab states voted against the United States on just under 80 percent of the resolutions. By contrast, Israel has consistently been America's top UN ally. Israel voted with the U.S. 100 percent of the time in 2004, outpacing the support levels of major U.S. allies such as Great Britain, France and Canada by more than 30 percent.13
“The UN has the image of a world organization based on universal principles of justice and equality. In reality, when the chips are down, it is nothing other than the executive committee of the Third World dictatorships.”
— former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.14
MYTH
"Israel's failure to implement UN resolutions is a violation of international law."
FACT
UN resolutions are documents issued by political bodies and need to be interpreted in light of the constitution of those bodies. They represent the political viewpoints of those who support them rather than embodying any particular legal rules or principles. Resolutions can have moral and political force when they are perceived as expressing the agreed view of the international community, or the views of leading, powerful and respected nations.
The UN Charter (Articles 10 and 14) specifically empowers the General Assembly to make only nonbinding "recommendations." Assembly resolutions are only considered binding in relation to budgetary and internal procedural matters.
The legality of Security Council resolutions is more ambiguous. It is not clear if all Security Council resolutions are binding or only those adopted under Chapter 7 of the Charter.15 Under Article 25 of the Charter, UN member states are obligated to carry out "decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter," but it is unclear which kinds of resolutions are covered by the term "decisions." Regardless, it would be difficult to show that Israel has violated any Security Council resolutions on their wording and the Council has never sanctioned Israel for noncompliance.
MYTH
“The United Nations has demonstrated equal concern for the lives of Israelis and Palestinians.”
FACT
While the UN routinely adopts resolutions critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, it has never adopted a single resolution unequivocally condemning violence against Israeli citizens. One of the most dramatic examples of the institution’s double-standard came in 2003 when Israel offered a draft resolution in the General Assembly for the first time in 27 years.
The resolution called for the protection of Israeli children from terrorism, but it did not receive enough support from the members of the General Assembly to even come to a vote. Israel had introduced the resolution in response to the murder of dozens of Israeli children in terrorist attacks, and after a similar resolution had been adopted by a UN committee (later adopted by the full Assembly) calling for the protection of Palestinian children from “Israeli aggression.” Israel's ambassador withdrew the proposed draft after it became clear that members of the nonaligned movement were determined to revise it in such a way that it would have ultimately been critical of Israel.16
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So you don't agree with the UN when it comes to resolutions... but you do when it comes to allowing Zionists to keep the land they stole? LOL
On top of that, wars are waged on places like Iraq for violating such resolutions...
Alright ask yourself this... your ancestors probably came from some place in Europe about 50 years ago... maybe even 100... and you're living there now... there are Palestinians who have homes they're not even allowed to go to... people whose ancestors have been living there for centuries... while Israelis were going around burning villages in the 40s, and any Arabs that left before a certain date to save their lives, weren't allowed to come back and denied their basic human right....
Just think about that.. I don't even want an answer... you're too brainwashed of a tool who'll come with:
Myth: Palestinians have been living there for centuries
Fact: Jews lived there before, who cares if my ancestors came from Europe, I'm still Jewish, and God gave us this land.
So just save it. You're done with.
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I could pull up websites that say the Holocaust never happened
Why when you can simply quote Abu Mazen the current Palestinian leader expressing his opinion on the Holocaust.
As for your question: again you keep ignoring the FACT :
Palestinian Refugees
About 600,000 Palestinian (other estimates range form 500,000 to 800,0000) fled Israel between 1947 and 1949, fundamentally because of the Arab states' rejection of the United Nation partition plan and invasion of Israel. The refugees fled out of fear of war and in response to Arab leaders' calls for Arabs to evacuate the areas allocated to the Jews until Israel had been eliminated. In a handful of cases, Palestinians were expelled. A majority of the refugees and their descendants now live in the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the West Bank. About 360,000 Palestinians fled eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights during and after Israel's defensive 1967 War. Palestinian who fled in 1967 are technically considered displaced persons and do not have official refugee status. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency estimated that 175,000 of these 360,000 Palestinians were refugees from the 1948 War. The May 4, 1994, Gaza-Jericho Accord calls for Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, and Egypt to form a Continuing Committee to discuss the 1967 displaced persons. The problem of the 1947-1949 refugees, on the other hand, is to be left for the “final status” negotiations under the terms of the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles of September 13, 1993.
And since you're such a fighter for justice compare it to these causes, figures and circumstances:
Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands
Prior to the establishment of Israel, more than 850,000 Jews lived in Arab countries. After Israel achieved independence, many of these Jews were persecuted by their governments and compelled to leave, despite having lived in some of their communities for more than 2,500 years. Between 1948 and 1972, 820,000 Jews left Arab countries, 586,000 were resettled in Israel at great expense, and without any offer of compensation from the Arab governments who confiscated their possessions.
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"There are already two "Palestinian' states: Israel and Jordan. What is being suggested is a third Palestinian state," Palazzi said.
Palazzi said a "Palestinian" people has never existed in history. Before 1967, the Arabs in the West Bank were Jordanians and those in Gaza were Egyptians, he said. Arafat himself, Palazzi claims, is really an Egyptian.
"The Palestinian people have been scapegoats to justify everything that is wrong in the Arab world,"
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/amislam/
To begin with? I think you should take another look at some of the facts Sheikh Palazzi is stating.^^^I've even quoted some of them for you.
Israel has the basic right to defend itself from factors undermining its existence( And now for the challenged among us: If such factors didn't exist, Israel would have no need to realize its right of self-defence.)
He accuses "pseudo-Islamic" organizations, like Hamas, of cruelly exploiting the impoverished in *refugee camps. "Unfortunately, it is true that their only opportunity for a better future lies in sacrificing their children as suicide bombers, for which they will be paid by these organizations."
*Palestinian Refugees
About 600,000 Palestinian (other estimates range form 500,000 to 800,0000) fled Israel between 1947 and 1949, fundamentally because of the Arab states' rejection of the United Nation partition plan and invasion of Israel. The refugees fled out of fear of war and in response to Arab leaders' calls for Arabs to evacuate the areas allocated to the Jews until Israel had been eliminated. In a handful of cases, Palestinians were expelled. A majority of the refugees and their descendants now live in the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the West Bank. About 360,000 Palestinians fled eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights during and after Israel's defensive 1967 War. Palestinian who fled in 1967 are technically considered displaced persons and do not have official refugee status. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency estimated that 175,000 of these 360,000 Palestinians were refugees from the 1948 War. The May 4, 1994, Gaza-Jericho Accord calls for Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, and Egypt to form a Continuing Committee to discuss the 1967 displaced persons. The problem of the 1947-1949 refugees, on the other hand, is to be left for the “final status” negotiations under the terms of the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles of September 13, 1993.
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So you don't agree with the UN when it comes to resolutions... but you do when it comes to allowing Zionists to keep the land they stole?
I could say something like this to you (being that you've evaded the question each time I asked you as for the way in which you view the UN) in fact!
So you agree with the UN when it comes to these resolutions but you think Israel(UN's decision) should've never existed to begin with!
I ,on the other hand,have never expressed my support or lack of support toward the UN,neither did I use its resolutions as an approval for my argument like you did,since I believe the UN(in it's current format) to be a futile institution for as long as it allowes totalitarian regimes to take part in democratic votes on global issues, which is straight up hypocrisy, why don't they let Bin Laden be a member of the Security Council.
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So you don't agree with the UN when it comes to resolutions... but you do when it comes to allowing Zionists to keep the land they stole?
I could say something like this to you (being that you've evaded the question each time I asked you as for the way in which you view the UN) in fact!
So you agree with the UN when it comes to these resolutions but you think Israel(UN's decision) should've never existed to begin with!
I ,on the other hand,have never expressed my support or lack of support toward the UN,neither did I use its resolutions as an approval for my argument like you did,since I believe the UN(in it's current format) to be a futile institution for as long as it allowes totalitarian regimes to take part in democratic votes on global issues, which is straight up hypocrisy, why don't they let Bin Laden be a member of the Security Council.
These totalitarian regimes are supported by the same government that supports Israel... the U.S....
And you still haven't answered the questions... LOL.. didn't expect you to, but at least we now both know the truth :)
I'm glad you're finally able to see the truth, even if you don't want to admit it.. at least I've shown you, son.
"A Land without a People for a People without a Land" ... hilarious
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How to approach a person that is defending a pattern despite every bit of logic he's being confronted with:
PALESTINIANS ARE VICTIMS OF ZIONISM:
The Fate of Palestinian Moderates
Arafat's thugs don't murder only Jews.
(http://www.iacnet.org/league/pa/lynch.jpg)
(http://www.iacnet.org/league/pa/westbank-1.jpg)
PALESTINIANS ARE VICTIMS OF ZIONISM:
Emir Faisal also saw the Zionist movement as a companion to the Arab nationalist movement, fighting against imperialism, as he explained in a letter to Harvard law professor and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter on March 3, 1919, one day after Chaim Weizmann presented the Zionist case to the Paris conference. Faisal wrote:
The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement....We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home....We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is nationalist and not imperialist. And there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other (emphasis added).
PALESTINIANS ARE VICTIMS OF ZIONISM:
Emir Faisal, son of Sherif Hussein, the leader of the Arab revolt against the Turks, signed an agreement with Chaim Weizmann and other Zionist leaders during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. It acknowledged the "racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people" and concluded that "the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab states and Palestine.” Furthermore, the agreement looked to the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration and called for all necessary measures “...to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil.”22
PALESTINIANS ARE VICTIMS OF ZIONISM:
In 1921, Haj Amin el-Husseini first began to organize fedayeen ("one who sacrifices himself") to terrorize Jews. Haj Amin hoped to duplicate the success of Kemal Atatürk in Turkey by driving the Jews out of Palestine just as Kemal had driven the invading Greeks from his country.31 Arab radicals were able to gain influence because the British Administration was unwilling to take effective action against them until they finally revolted against British rule.
Let's add your question to the mix as well: Who is the occupier and who is the occupied?
PALESTINIANS ARE VICTIMS OF ZIONISM:
As the spokesman for Palestinian Arabs, Haj Amin did not ask that Britain grant them independence. On the contrary, in a letter to Churchill in 1921, he demanded that Palestine be reunited with Syria and Transjordan.
and let's also add Sheikh Palazzi:Before 1967, the Arabs in the West Bank were Jordanians and those in Gaza were Egyptians
so who was who: Who is the occupier and who is the occupied?
PALESTINIANS ARE VICTIMS OF ZIONISM:
Haj Amin consolidated his power and took control of all Muslim religious funds in Palestine. He used his authority to gain control over the mosques, the schools and the courts. No Arab could reach an influential position without being loyal to the Mufti. His power was so absolute “no Muslim in Palestine could be born or die without being beholden to Haj Amin.”35 The Mufti’s henchmen also insured he would have no opposition by systematically killing Palestinians from rival clans who were discussing cooperation with the Jews.
PALESTINIANS ARE VICTIMS OF ZIONISM:
The Arabs found rioting to be an effective political tool because of the lax British attitude and response toward violence against Jews. In handling each riot, the British did everything in their power to prevent Jews from protecting themselves, but made little or no effort to prevent the Arabs from attacking them. After each outbreak, a British commission of inquiry would try to establish the cause of the violence. The conclusion was always the same: the Arabs were afraid of being displaced by Jews. To stop the rioting, the commissions would recommend that restrictions be placed on Jewish immigration. Thus, the Arabs came to recognize that they could always stop the influx of Jews by staging a riot.
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All I gotta do is post quotes from people like Benny Morris... what's that gonna prove?
If you had any common sense, you would've been able to see that it's the Zionists that came and caused all this... the Palestinians didn't come from anywhere... they were living there... your European ancestors somehow felt they had a claim to the land.
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LOL @ I to the geezy quoting outright lies and the same falsehoods and fabrications the jewish community has been spreading for decades
this guy is too brainwashed to EVER get it....israelis are stupidly nationalistic in the same veins as americans
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Was Arab opposition to the arrival of Zionists based on inherent anti-Semitism or a real sense of danger to their community?
“The aim of the [Jewish National] Fund was ‘to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people.’...As early as 1891, Zionist leader Ahad Ha’am wrote that the Arabs “understood very well what we were doing and what we were aiming at’...[Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, stated] ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly’...At various locations in northern Palestine Arab farmers refused to move from land the Fund purchased from absentee owners, and the Turkish authorities, at the Fund’s request, evicted them...The indigenous Jews of Palestine also reacted negatively to Zionism. They did not see the need for a Jewish state in Palestine and did not want to exacerbate relations with the Arabs.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”
Inherent anti-Semitism? — continued
“Before the 20th century, most Jews in Palestine belonged to old Yishuv, or community, that had settled more for religious than for political reasons. There was little if any conflict between them and the Arab population. Tensions began after the first Zionist settlers arrived in the 1880’s...when [they] purchased land from absentee Arab owners, leading to dispossession of the peasants who had cultivated it.” Don Peretz, “The Arab-Israeli Dispute.”
Lies Tech? The fact you'd reckon pure FACTS that don't suit your view as LIES while disregarding blatant lies lol...aight, look at this...If you read that article I brought a while back about inaccuracies in matterial written on this conflict you could actually notice this. You guys should check the glowy part on the first paragraph and then the glowy part on the second paragraph(both out of Jamal's article).
notice:
Nathan Birnbaum wrote "Selbstemanzipation" (Self-Emancipation) in 1890.... this is the first time he or anyone for that matter had used the word Zionism.
LOLLLL now just shut the fuck up
Notice any problem with the order of events?
these Zionists in the 1880's predated Theodore Herzel's "political role" as the "catalyst" of Zionism(or whom Jamal's article calls the founder of Zionism), and Ehad Haam's statement. They even predated the formal term of Zionism, even Jamal knowes that! So how could their actions be based on what Theodore Herzel said only years later? and how could that make for Propaganda? lol This otherwise well written article (with influences of the radical Israeli left wing "Gush Shalom"- people who live in Israel and think it shouldn't exist) would be perfect Propaganda if it didn't contradict itself.
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LMAO.. you have just proven how retarded you are... maybe it's not ignorance on your behalf as I had assumed, but lack of common sense...
It said Zionists first settled the land in the 1880's.
It said that the TERM Zionism was first used in 1890.
Now I know this may be very difficult to understand, but something can exist before a name is ascribed to it... the reason it says "Zionists settled in the 1880's" may confuse you because you will think "OMG how can they settle in the 1880's if they didn't even exist until 1890.. Jamal must be a liar"... but then I'll come here and tell you how dumb you are, and that the term Zionist used in the present to refer to those people back then is a possibility.. yeah, I know this is unbelievable, but it's true. People can hold on to a certain set of beliefs and ideologies before a name is ascribed... I'm really hoping you understand this because if you don't and try to justify your stupidity, I'm going to pity you even more than I already do.
Let's see how this works... "America didn't exist before it was named".
LOL get the fuck outta here... I've been arguing with you this whole time?
LOLL start thinking on your own chump... a bunch of propaganda quotes aren't going to help you or your thinking process... read, educate yourself, and use common sense, then come back and try talking to me, son.
Just to be fair, since I'm such a nice guy and don't want to make a complete fool out of you, if that's still possible... I'll point out that your stupid theory does prove correct on one point... Israel didn't exist before 1948. :)
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Was Arab opposition to the arrival of Zionists based on inherent anti-Semitism or a real sense of danger to their community?
[Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, stated] ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly’
I never said they didn't exist you did, should I remind you?
Zionism didn't actually become a movement until the late 19th century.
Theodor Herzl was one of the first of the movement
In fact, it is their existence prior to Herzel's statements that reinforce my point. In your reply you suddenly decided to disregard(yet again) the context in which Herzel's quote was used in your article, what was the question your article had raised and what point had been made, since you're having hard time here I'll simplefy : "There was a real sence of danger to the Arab community due to Zionism, look what the 'founder of Zionism' had to say about them" when it is evident that the Zionist settlers arrived prior to these statements, and operated years before the 'reason to the real sence of danger' (according to the article) even appeared. Meaning there are two BLATANT LIES HERE.
correction:
1.Herzel was not the founder of Zionism 2.These statements had no affect due to the already existing Zionist movement in Eretz Yisrael years before these statements were made.
And much later(Years after Herzel's statement):
Quote
Emir Faisal also saw the Zionist movement as a companion to the Arab nationalist movement, fighting against imperialism, as he explained in a letter to Harvard law professor and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter on March 3, 1919, one day after Chaim Weizmann presented the Zionist case to the Paris conference. Faisal wrote:
The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement....We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home....We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is nationalist and not imperialist. And there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other (emphasis added).
p.s I'm not even talking about some writer speaking on behalf of the Jewish community in Palestine as if it was a unanimous voice or about the negative portrayal of eviction of people from land that wasn't theirs to begin with ("purchased from absentee owners"), purchased by Zionists.
While writing Judenstaat Herzel knew very little about the situation in Eretz Yisrael or the already active Zionist movement in Europe, it's a fact. A utopian novelist, a spokesman for Zionism, but he never had any practical impact on the Zionist activity in Eretz Yisrael.Herzel wasn't the founder of Zionism(talking about lies). On this note, the writer of this article could've talked about "Altneuland" an enlightened society Herzel envisioned in the future Jewish state where all religions lived side by side in harmony but that wouldn't have served the writer's needs as well .
and as for his followers:
"Land with no people"- Land that did not belong to a people
not a land without people( as in Human Beings, persons) living on it.
Quite an ambiguous statement and that's why I think it is inaccurrate( since it may be taken both ways).
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ahahah jamal man u too much....lol...
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I dont get why jewish people act like this in palestina. They of all people now best how it feels occupied and all that shit. And they still do this. Im starting to really hate them because of how they are acting.
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Im starting to really hate them.
Yeah I bet you're just starting....
It's great when through submsision to Anti-Israeli propaganda people can find an outlet to their anti-semitic views under a politically correct flag.
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^ aww shut up
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^ aww shut up
Truth tickles, my man. ;)
And I will in fact shut up if that's what you guys want, you can go on reinforcing each others misconceptions for as long as you like, I think everybody is entitled to an opinion(far fetched as it may be), after all we're not in Iran,Syria and neither are we in the Palestinian Autonomy-no one is going to kill you because of your views (maybe only except for those whom you're defending) unlike the many Muslims who died because they tried to oppose the totalitarian regimes under which they lived ,so please, don't be bothered by my occasional comments, keep going.
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Was Arab opposition to the arrival of Zionists based on inherent anti-Semitism or a real sense of danger to their community?
[Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, stated] ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly’
I never said they didn't exist you did, should I remind you?
Zionism didn't actually become a movement until the late 19th century.
Theodor Herzl was one of the first of the movement
In fact, it is their existence prior to Herzel's statements that reinforce my point. In your reply you suddenly decided to disregard(yet again) the context in which Herzel's quote was used in your article, what was the question your article had raised and what point had been made, since you're having hard time here I'll simplefy : "There was a real sence of danger to the Arab community due to Zionism, look what the 'founder of Zionism' had to say about them" when it is evident that the Zionist settlers arrived prior to these statements, and operated years before the 'reason to the real sence of danger' (according to the article) even appeared. Meaning there are two BLATANT LIES HERE.
correction:
1.Herzel was not the founder of Zionism 2.These statements had no affect due to the already existing Zionist movement in Eretz Yisrael years before these statements were made.
And much later(Years after Herzel's statement):
Quote
Emir Faisal also saw the Zionist movement as a companion to the Arab nationalist movement, fighting against imperialism, as he explained in a letter to Harvard law professor and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter on March 3, 1919, one day after Chaim Weizmann presented the Zionist case to the Paris conference. Faisal wrote:
The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement....We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home....We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is nationalist and not imperialist. And there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other (emphasis added).
p.s I'm not even talking about some writer speaking on behalf of the Jewish community in Palestine as if it was a unanimous voice or about the negative portrayal of eviction of people from land that wasn't theirs to begin with ("purchased from absentee owners"), purchased by Zionists.
While writing Judenstaat Herzel knew very little about the situation in Eretz Yisrael or the already active Zionist movement in Europe, it's a fact. A utopian novelist, a spokesman for Zionism, but he never had any practical impact on the Zionist activity in Eretz Yisrael.Herzel wasn't the founder of Zionism(talking about lies). On this note, the writer of this article could've talked about "Altneuland" an enlightened society Herzel envisioned in the future Jewish state where all religions lived side by side in harmony but that wouldn't have served the writer's needs as well .
and as for his followers:
"Land with no people"- Land that did not belong to a people
not a land without people( as in Human Beings, persons) living on it.
Quite an ambiguous statement and that's why I think it is inaccurrate( since it may be taken both ways).
YOU ARE RETARDED.
People hold on to a set of beliefs and ideologies.
In the case of Zionism, there was some "settlers" prior to the ascription of the name to the movement, and prior to there being organizations that promote these ideologies.
There isn't "one founder" of Zionist ideology... Herzl is considered by some to be one of the forerunners in the movement, and others do consider him the founder... but in the sense of making it an organized movement.
Another myth... not all of the land was purchased... in 1948, the Zionists owned barely about 6% of the land of Palestine.. there was a continue of illegal "buying" within the 65% of the total area restricted to Arabs... and after Israel announced its terrorist statehood, there were laws passed to take more Arab land... by calling those that left before a certain date "absentee landlords" so Israel can take the land, and those people don't have a right to return... and we won't even get into the ethnic cleansing... that's beside the point... I don't even need to say much else... you already fucked yourself.
LOL @ purchased from absentee owners.... HOW WAS IT PURCHASED IF THE OWNERS WEREN'T THERE? YOU FUCKING TOOL... The fucking Zionist terrorists started going around burning villages... and people fled out of fear.. and then Israel is like "oh well looks like they're not coming back, the land is ours"...
and I'm still LMAO @ your retarded ass... "these Zionists in the 1880's predated Theodore Herzel's "political role" as the "catalyst" of Zionism(or whom Jamal's article calls the founder of Zionism), and Ehad Haam's statement. They even predated the formal term of Zionism, even Jamal knowes that! So how could their actions be based on what Theodore Herzel said only years later?"
You're one of the dumbest fuckers alive
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^ aww shut up
Truth tickles, my man. ;)
And I will in fact shut up if that's what you guys want, you can go on reinforcing each others misconceptions for as long as you like, I think everybody is entitled to an opinion(far fetched as it may be), after all we're not in Iran,Syria and neither are we in the Palestinian Autonomy-no one is going to kill you because of your views (maybe only except for those whom you're defending) unlike the many Muslims who died because they tried to oppose the totalitarian regimes under which they lived ,so please, don't be bothered by my occasional comments, keep going.
Since you care about Muslims who have died.. don't forget the many Muslims that died fighting the Zionist colonialist terrorists... and still to this day die fighting this occupation...
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I never said they didn't exist you did, should I remind you?
Zionism didn't actually become a movement until the late 19th century.
Theodor Herzl was one of the first of the movement
Herzl = late 19th century.
1880s and 1890s both = 19th century.
LOLLL... YOU RETARD.
In fact, it is their existence prior to Herzel's statements that reinforce my point. In your reply you suddenly decided to disregard(yet again) the context in which Herzel's quote was used in your article, what was the question your article had raised and what point had been made, since you're having hard time here I'll simplefy : "There was a real sence of danger to the Arab community due to Zionism, look what the 'founder of Zionism' had to say about them" when it is evident that the Zionist settlers arrived prior to these statements, and operated years before the 'reason to the real sence of danger' (according to the article) even appeared. Meaning there are two BLATANT LIES HERE.
correction:
1.Herzel was not the founder of Zionism 2.These statements had no affect due to the already existing Zionist movement in Eretz Yisrael years before these statements were made.
Their existence... prior to Herzl making it an organized movement. Are you really this fucking dumb? The ideology already existed... the beliefs in this mission were already there... it was just organized into a movement a little later... I honestly can't believe you're this dumb. So all you're trying to tell me is that there was already a terrorist Zionist movement before Herzl? What did I say? LOL... is that what you're arguing? You're really out of shit to say after you fucked yourself in that other post huh? LOLLLL poor thing... I'm really feeling sorry for you...
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It's also understandable.. how after you fucked yourself with that retarded shit... you try to bring up new points over and over again... dancing in circles... but you keep tripping and falling trying to dosie-doe with me.
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many Palestinians realize they would be better off under Israeli administration than in a PLO-ruled state, but they cannot speak out, fearing for their lives or those of their children. "At least in Israel, an Arab can have a new car and be sure he will not be stopped by the police and told to hand it over because it is needed for the state. That happens under Arafat."
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^ LMAO... you're done... do yourself a favor and save yourself the embarassment...
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Since you care about Muslims who have died.. don't forget the many Muslims that died fighting the Zionist colonialist terrorists... and still to this day die fighting this occupation...
Is this your way of referencing the so called 'Palestinian Freedom Fighters'?
Because most of these guys kinda like to kill themselves.
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Since you care about Muslims who have died.. don't forget the many Muslims that died fighting the Zionist colonialist terrorists... and still to this day die fighting this occupation...
Is this your way of referencing the so called 'Palestinian Freedom Fighters'?
Because most of these guys kinda like to kill themselves.
Yeah... like that 10 year old girl who got capped 17 times... you've been done with, you made yourself look like a retard, it's over, don't keep embarassing yourself... go buy yourself something at the local falafel stand
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Since you care about Muslims who have died.. don't forget the many Muslims that died fighting the Zionist colonialist terrorists... and still to this day die fighting this occupation...
You mean the ones who blow up discos filled with teenage kids?
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Since you care about Muslims who have died.. don't forget the many Muslims that died fighting the Zionist colonialist terrorists... and still to this day die fighting this occupation...
You mean the ones who blow up discos filled with teenage kids?
Yeah... those and only those...
Anyways, you're way beneath my level... as I've proven numerous times.. so just go watch your interracial porn and hate the world for your small dick
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don't forget the many Muslims that died fighting the Zionist colonialist terrorists...
Yeah... like that 10 year old girl who got capped 17 times
And I thought we were talking about Muslims that died fighting! Again your statements are amazingly correlated!
Suddenly a 13 year old girl that surprisingly wasn't used by terrorists to transport explosives(like at previous times) and was killed due to unjustifiable malpractice(even under such circumstances under which the IDF was forced to operate due to unjustifiable support of terrorism on behalf of the Palestinian leadership like my sig states) EQUALS to Pallestinian Suicide bombers that intentionally infiltrate Israeli territory to kill as many civilians(and children among them to which you seem to have much less sympathy) as possible...Please go on, insult me if that's how you blow off steam due to the inner tensions raised while defending your pattern(of misconceptions), I don't dislike you or anything man, I just think you're a sad dude.
You've once again admitted that such concepts as terrorism and justice are synonymous to you while even daring to equalize an innocent girl to a suicide bomber<<this is what I call propaganda.
I wish you all the luck with your views.
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Their existence... prior to Herzl making it an organized movement. Are you really this fucking dumb? The ideology already existed... the beliefs in this mission were already there... it was just organized into a movement a little later... I honestly can't believe you're this dumb.
The ideology and the movement existed prior to Herzel, your article claimed that the so called 'founder of Zionism' had an agenda against the Arab population, in other words(Again since you're not willing to logically connect two pieces of disinformation you yourself brought) it said:'Zionism was against the Arab population from its start' which is propaganda bullshit and the Problem is:
1.Herzel wasn't the start(or 'founder') of Zionism 2.His statement had no affect on a movement that existed prior to his political role and this statement.
(*Herzel did contribute to coordination between Zionists throughout Europe at the end of the 19th century but in no way was he the idealogical blackboard of Zionism nor was he the one to set tactical goals, in fact, Theodore Herzel knew very little about what was going on in Eretz Yisrael at his time. Zionist movements existed prior to Herzel. Even later Zionism would never become a monolithic movement but was, in fact, diverse and democratic.)
Educated local Arabs years later would define Zionism as "a companion to the Arab nationalist movement".
Last try to clarify. You can go back to clouding the discussion now.
P.S 1. Should we quote a few practical people now that held themselves responsible for Palestinian Self Determination? Should we maybe look at the Phased Plan again?
2.In case you don't know, Absentee Landlords(As distinguished from the refugees' Absentee properties issue...lol) -Wealthy Arabs from Egypt,Syria etc that owned land within Eretz Yisrael\Palestine, what's the problem in purchasing land from them?
3.The local Arab farmers, that were employed by these wealthy Arabs, never owned any of the land and never purchased any, Jews did.
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Since you care about Muslims who have died.. don't forget the many Muslims that died fighting the Zionist colonialist terrorists... and still to this day die fighting this occupation...
Is this your way of referencing the so called 'Palestinian Freedom Fighters'?
Because most of these guys kinda like to kill themselves.
Yeah... like that 10 year old girl who got capped 17 times... you've been done with, you made yourself look like a retard, it's over, don't keep embarassing yourself... go buy yourself something at the local falafel stand
Go look up the word sarcasm in the dictionary... or at least quote the entire thing...
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Their existence... prior to Herzl making it an organized movement. Are you really this fucking dumb? The ideology already existed... the beliefs in this mission were already there... it was just organized into a movement a little later... I honestly can't believe you're this dumb.
The ideology and the movement existed prior to Herzel, your article claimed that the so called 'founder of Zionism' had an agenda against the Arab population, in other words(Again since you're not willing to logically connect two pieces of disinformation you yourself brought) it said:'Zionism was against the Arab population from its start' which is propaganda bullshit and the Problem is:
1.Herzel wasn't the start(or 'founder') of Zionism 2.His statement had no affect on a movement that existed prior to his political role and this statement.
(*Herzel did contribute to coordination between Zionists throughout Europe at the end of the 19th century but in no way was he the idealogical blackboard of Zionism nor was he the one to set tactical goals, in fact, Theodore Herzel knew very little about what was going on in Eretz Yisrael at his time. Zionist movements existed prior to Herzel. Even later Zionism would never become a monolithic movement but was, in fact, diverse and democratic.)
Educated local Arabs years later would define Zionism as "a companion to the Arab nationalist movement".
Last try to clarify. You can go back to clouding the discussion now.
P.S 1. Should we quote a few practical people now that held themselves responsible for Palestinian Self Determination? Should we maybe look at the Phased Plan again?
2.In case you don't know, Absentee Landlords(As distinguished from the refugees' Absentee properties issue...lol) -Wealthy Arabs from Egypt,Syria etc that owned land within Eretz Yisrael\Palestine, what's the problem in purchasing land from them?
3.The local Arab farmers, that were employed by these wealthy Arabs, never owned any of the land and never purchased any, Jews did.
The famous Jewish philosopher Martin Buber related in his memoirs: “When Max Nordau, Herzl’s second in command, first received details on the existence of an Arab population in Palestine, he came shocked to Herzl exclaiming: ‘I never realized this--we are committing an injustice.’”
LOL.. it's just funny how they admit it themselves, yet you try to deny it for them on their behalf... you have issues.
Zionists have themselves admitted that the only way they can accomplish their goal is through force, the removal of the indigenous population, etc... it was a colonialist movement... if you don't think so, look at the present time and the illegal settlements in the occupied territories.. which violate international law... you have nothing to ground your argument on...
It's like me trying to defend the Iranian leader's statements and saying "he didn't mean it.. he was kidding... he doesn't know what's going on"....
You've been over with... why do you keep coming back like an abused wife... you already embarassed yourself with your retarded statements... just go get yourself some falafel... better have it delivered though.
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Since you care about Muslims who have died.. don't forget the many Muslims that died fighting the Zionist colonialist terrorists... and still to this day die fighting this occupation...
Nice way to promote anti-Israeli propaganda and then back down from it as soon as you're exposed, this way you can both say something morally unspeakable and yet remain the politically correct countenance of justice.
Try answering me:
1. Do you support Palestinian 'Freedom fighters'(Name factions and groups)?
2. Who are these Muslims you were talking about in the quote above(the ones that died 'fighting Zionism', according to you)?
3.Are they^ victims of Zionism?
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The famous Jewish philosopher Martin Buber related in his memoirs: “When Max Nordau, Herzl’s second in command, first received details on the existence of an Arab population in Palestine, he came shocked to Herzl exclaiming: ‘I never realized this--we are committing an injustice.’”
Proving my point again.
Do you see where this whole "Land with no people" thing was coming from now? Do you see now how little Herzel knew about the situation in Eretz Yisrael?
You said it yourself. Only that Zionists were already active by that time without being taught as for the "expropriation of the penniless" and without being opposed up untill after the end of WW1 and due to the influence of the Balfour Declaration.
P.S If Palestinian Arabs were so much against colonialism why didn't they proclaim their nationalism throughout the mandates? Don't you find it wierd that some have decided to oppose Zionism
when they didn't mind powerfull empires oppressing them? Don't you realize that the only chance for Palestinian Arabs to achieve national goals was the Zionist movement (they didn't even see themselves as a nation prior to Zionism)?Familiar with the term "Political hitchhiking"-What pushed them from being passive beholders at the mandates to seeking self-determination(Due to which active force?)? Do you understand now the whole- Zionism as "a companion to the Arab nationalist movement"- thing? In other words, those who chose to oppose Zionism were the ones who first used the Zionist movement to proclaim their 'national goals' and the ones that wanted to get rid of it as soon as the Zionists could obstruct the annexation of the land to the rest of the Arab world.
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niggaz be on some victim shit
nigga who the fuck iz u???
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The famous Jewish philosopher Martin Buber related in his memoirs: “When Max Nordau, Herzl’s second in command, first received details on the existence of an Arab population in Palestine, he came shocked to Herzl exclaiming: ‘I never realized this--we are committing an injustice.’”
Proving my point again.
Do you see where this whole "Land with no people" thing was coming from now? Do you see now how little Herzel knew about the situation in Eretz Yisrael?
You said it yourself. Only that Zionists were already active by that time without being taught as for the "expropriation of the penniless" and without being opposed up untill after the end of WW1 and due to the influence of the Balfour Declaration.
LOL. Thank you. Injustice it is. That's all I needed to hear (or not hear... since you are still too blind or dumb to see that it was and to this day is an injustice... even though Zionist leaders themselves have admitted that it is).
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lol... I feel real bad doing this to you but you need to see this:
“When Max Nordau, Herzl’s second in command, first received details on the existence of an Arab population in Palestine, he came shocked to Herzl exclaiming: ‘I never realized this--we are committing an injustice.’”
NEXT TO:
Brainwashed? Coming from the guy who said that the "Land without a People for a People without a Land" was truly believed... LMAO.
So if he first found out there was an Arab population was it("Land without a people...") or was it not truly believed?
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LOL.. you fall into traps too easily...
do some research on Israel Zangwill. :)
hint: google his name along with the phrase "land without people for a people without a land"
Then look into....
Achad Ha-Am:
"Abroad we are accustomed to believe that Israel is almost empty;
nothing is grown here and that whoever wishes to buy land could come here and
buy what his heart desires. In reality, the situation is not like this.
Throughout the country it is difficult to find cultivable land which is not
already cultivated."
... and check what year that was...
You just proved my point... supporters of Zionism were used to propaganda... even Herzl.. surprise surprise.. some things don't change. :)
At least they were later able to admit that it was an injustice.. it's the descendants of European colonialists today who won't...
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you have every reason to feel bad now so go ahead.. feel free to
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LOL.. you fall into traps too easily...
do some research on Israel Zangwill. :)
hint: google his name along with the phrase "land without people for a people without a land"
Double trap my friend
;D...
check this out:
While writing Judenstaat Herzel knew very little about the situation in Eretz Yisrael or the already active Zionist movement in Europe, it's a fact. A utopian novelist, a spokesman for Zionism, but he never had any practical impact on the Zionist activity in Eretz Yisrael.Herzel wasn't the founder of Zionism(talking about lies). On this note, the writer of this article could've talked about "Altneuland" an enlightened society Herzel envisioned in the future Jewish state where all religions lived side by side in harmony but that wouldn't have served the writer's needs as well .
and as for his followers:
"Land with no people"- Land that did not belong to a people
not a land without people( as in Human Beings, persons) living on it.
You honestly think, that like you, I need google to debate? There are things I know, and you've just proven this is the first time you hear of Israel Zangwill.
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1. I don't know if you're blind, or if you can't read... but I stated that Herzl was one of the forerunners in the mobilization and formal organization of the Zionist movement.
2. "Land with no people"- Land that did not belong to a people.
Is that your assumption? And even if it is, does that make it right in any way? All you're saying to me is, "it was injust in a different way". Injustice is injustice. People were living there... Zionist terrorism was one of the factors that drove them out... the people that left are NOT ALLOWED TO RETURN. Do Israelis know anything about International Law?
3. Did you overlook this?
Achad Ha-Am: "Abroad we are accustomed to believe that Israel is almost empty;
nothing is grown here and that whoever wishes to buy land could come here and
buy what his heart desires. In reality, the situation is not like this.
Throughout the country it is difficult to find cultivable land which is not
already cultivated." (1891)
4. You don't need google, you need to educate yourself and then stop lying to yourself.
5. How did I prove that I haven't heard of Israel Zangwill? LOL so you don't need google... you need assumptions?
you're right... double-trap.. you fell into 2 in a row.
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Israel Zangwill FYI: Supported Herzl's Uganda plan and following its rejection, led the Territorialists out of the Zionist organization in 1905. He established the Jewish Territorialists Organization (ITO) whose object was to acquire a Jewish homeland where possible(Not necessarily in Eretz Yisrael\Palestine).
And as for his "Land without people..."(- the ambiguity of this statement reinforced a misconception, the existence of which, both Echad Haam and Herzel confirmed prior to it, something that proves some people believed, in fact, there weren't any people on this land-) it's a fact that there WERE people on this land, and that they weren't A PEOPLE untill the Zionist movement came.
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Did you purposely omit:
"he called for the transfer of Arabs from EretzIsrael to neighboring Arab states"
it's a fact that there WERE people on this land, and that they weren't A PEOPLE untill the Zionist movement came.
The first part is sufficient in explaining the injustice. Thank You for that.. I don't even need to say anything... I should just keep letting you do the talking and prove my point for me.
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Did you purposely omit:
"he called for the transfer of Arabs from EretzIsrael to neighboring Arab states"
No, you're right he did due to the Balfour Declaration, but at that time he was no longer a part of the Zionist movement ;)
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Did you purposely omit:
"he called for the transfer of Arabs from EretzIsrael to neighboring Arab states"
it's a fact that there WERE people on this land, and that they weren't A PEOPLE untill the Zionist movement came.
The first part is sufficient in explaining the injustice.
The second part is sufficient in explaining the ploy which you choose to ignore.
you haven't explained your position on this(I wonder why...lol):
If Palestinian Arabs were so much against colonialism why didn't they proclaim their nationalism throughout the mandates? Don't you find it wierd that some have decided to oppose Zionism
when they didn't mind powerfull empires oppressing them? Don't you realize that the only chance for Palestinian Arabs to achieve national goals was the Zionist movement (they didn't even see themselves as a nation prior to Zionism)?Familiar with the term "Political hitchhiking"-What pushed them from being passive beholders at the mandates to seeking self-determination(Due to which active force?)? Do you understand now the whole- Zionism as "a companion to the Arab nationalist movement"- thing? In other words, those who chose to oppose Zionism were the ones who first used the Zionist movement to proclaim their 'national goals' and the ones that wanted to get rid of it as soon as the Zionists could obstruct the annexation of the land to the rest of the Arab world.
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Did you purposely omit:
"he called for the transfer of Arabs from EretzIsrael to neighboring Arab states"
it's a fact that there WERE people on this land, and that they weren't A PEOPLE untill the Zionist movement came.
The first part is sufficient in explaining the injustice.
The second part is sufficient in explaining the ploy which you choose to ignore.
Actually, the second part is only what justifies an injustice in your eyes... not even the people who committed these injustices are in denial to the extent that you are. It's kinda sad how brainwashed or dumb you are.
you haven't explained your position on this(I wonder why...lol):
If Palestinian Arabs were so much against colonialism why didn't they proclaim their nationalism throughout the mandates? Don't you find it wierd that some have decided to oppose Zionism
when they didn't mind powerfull empires oppressing them? Don't you realize that the only chance for Palestinian Arabs to achieve national goals was the Zionist movement (they didn't even see themselves as a nation prior to Zionism)?Familiar with the term "Political hitchhiking"-What pushed them from being passive beholders at the mandates to seeking self-determination(Due to which active force?)? Do you understand now the whole- Zionism as "a companion to the Arab nationalist movement"- thing? In other words, those who chose to oppose Zionism were the ones who first used the Zionist movement to proclaim their 'national goals' and the ones that wanted to get rid of it as soon as the Zionists could obstruct the annexation of the land to the rest of the Arab world.
The indigenous habitants of Palestine (not your European ancestors) did resist Zionist settlement policies from the start, but the resistance was mainly defensive, and there were no political goals. You have to understand that there were no nations... there's nothing that made the inhabitants of Palestine different from the other Arabs... the British and French just drew lines on a map. Trans-Jordan was created because the British wanted to appease Amir Abdallah who was threatening to attack the French. Draw a fucking line.. and Palestine is divided into Palestine and Trans-Jordan. There was no Jordanian nationalism.
Anyways, Jewish immigration to Palestine began way before the Balfour Declaration... they were trying to install a settler-plantation colony in Palestine at first. The indigenous inhabitants of Palestine (aka not your European ancestors... the people who actually lived on the land before the Zionists' colonialism) did resist Zionist settlements from the start, and yes, they didn't have any political goals. The Palestinian community wasn't organized or unified... but there had been no need because they were citizens of the Ottoman Empire. The Zionists embraced the mandates system, the Arabs didn't... so they didn't organize themselves in a way to take advantage of the mandate. Now you have to understand this very important point... the emergence of identity and nationalism was different in Palestine than it was in the other mandates. Zionist settlement was different from the imperialism that the Syrians and Iraqis faced. The British and French ruled their mandates territories indirectly and didn't steal land. Yeah, Palestinian nationalism therefore developed later than Zionism, and was in response to Zionist immigration and colonization... but does that make Palestinian nationalism any less legitimate? Zionism arose in reaction to anti-Semitic and nationalist movements in Europe... just in the same way that Palestinian nationalism arose in reaction to Zionism... there's a difference though. There were expulsions and other Palestinians were deliberately frightened into leaving (Zionist terrorism... I know I'm using two synonyms in a row here..) example: Dayr Yassin. Zionist leaders have admitted that it was in their aim to remove the Palestinians, and take over. They have also admitted to force being vital. I won't even charge you for this lesson... I'm starting to look at youthe way a father would at his dumb son.
However you want to put it.. and look at it from a historic perspective... there's no way to defend denying the Palestinian people the right to return. And you honestly have to be retarded... I mean that literally... to actually believe that Zionism hasn't victimized Palestinians in any way. I'm not gonna respond anymore because you're no better than people who deny the Holocaust and I'll leave you with: You're a tool, and I pity you.
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In 1922 Britain allocated nearly 80% of Palestine to Transjordan. Thus, Jordan covers the majority of the land of Palestine under British Mandate. Jordan also includes the majority of the Arabs who lived there. In other words, Jordan is the Arab portion of Palestine.
The residents of Palestine are called "Palestinians". Since Palestine includes both modern day Israel and Jordan both Arab and Jewish residents of this area were referred to as "Palestinians".
It was only after the Jews re-inhabited their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria, that the myth of an Arab Palestinian nation was created and marketed worldwide. Jews come from Judea, not Palestinians. There is no language known as Palestinian, or any Palestinian culture distinct from that of all the Arabs in the area. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. "Palestinians" are Arabs indistinguishable from Arabs throughout the Middle East.
So you think Jews should've stayed in Europe I suppose? How many anti-semitic progroms could they have endured? how many holocausts?
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In other words, Jordan is the Arab portion of Palestine.
LMFAO. Please tell me you're joking and really aren't this dumb. The majority of the people in Palestine were still non-Jewish Arabs. That's fact. I honestly can't tell anymore if you're brainwashed, dumb or just str8 up retarded.
The residents of Palestine are called "Palestinians". Since Palestine includes both modern day Israel and Jordan both Arab and Jewish residents of this area were referred to as "Palestinians".
Yes, there was a small population of indigenous Jewish people there. What does that have to do with Zionist colonialism?
It was only after the Jews re-inhabited their historic homeland of Judea and Samaria
LOOOLLLLLLL... "re-inhabited" "HISTORIC HOMELAND"... the fact that you even mention that in an argument is laughable... what claim do European Jews have to that land? Reinhabited? When did European Jews live there? God gave it to them thousands of years ago? Whose ancestors lived there and how long ago? Please keep the bullshit out.
,that the myth of an Arab Palestinian nation was created and marketed worldwide.
Myth? So when the mandates were split up.. and one was called Trans-Jordan and the other Palestine... you have Jordanians and guess what... Palestinians.. referring to the indigenous population... not Europeans.
Jews come from Judea, not Palestinians. There is no language known as Palestinian, or any Palestinian culture distinct from that of all the Arabs in the area. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. "Palestinians" are Arabs indistinguishable from Arabs throughout the Middle East.
Jews came from Judea? Yeah... and there were Jews among the indigenous population... again, what does this have to do with Europeans? No shit there hasn't been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians... there wasn't an Iraq, Syria, Jordan, or Lebanon either... Palestinians are just like all other Arabs... and they were living on that land... what's your point? That they should've left and given up the land to the Jewish colonizers?
So you think Jews should've stayed in Europe I suppose? How many anti-semitic progroms could they have endured? how many holocausts?
What does my opinion have to do with it? I have nothing to do with this, and like I've said before... unlike you, I deal with facts... not bullshit opinions. For example... Palestinians have been victims of Zionism. If you believe otherwise, then prove to me that there wasn't a diaspora of the Palestinian population. Prove to me that no Zionist terrorists have burned down Palestinian villages. Because I can prove those things...Like your own leaders have said... yeah the holocaust happened, but what does that have to do with the Palestinians? All I'm pointing out is the injustice. I can't change what happened... nor do I have an opinion on what should've happened... all I'm saying is that what did happen was unjust... and the injustice continues today...
Anyways, I'm way above your level... and you really don't even deserve to be having a conversation with me. You're lacking knowledge.. and by knowledge I mean truthful knowledge. It's understandable though.. you live in Israel... the state founded on propaganda.
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"The Holocaust never happened" = "Palestinians have in no way been victims of Zionism" = "I Geezy knows what he's talking about"
All three of the statements above have something in common... all three are complete bullshit.
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"The Holocaust never happened" = "Palestinians have in no way been victims of Zionism" = "I Geezy knows what he's talking about"
All three of the statements above have something in common... all three are complete bullshit.
Palestinians=Byproducts of Zionism
Hadn't there been Zionism, there wouldn't be any Palestinians
Palestinian organizaed nationalism or not, doesn't change the fact that the Arab world(ruled by dictators) possesses 10s of times more land than Jews have been allocated with or possess.
Support of a Palestinian state=Support of yet another terrorist state in the middle east
Palestinians need Israel to justefy their existence as a people, No Israel=Arab Autocratic Unity=No Palestinians
Every war Israel had ever had, proves this^
20% of Israel's population is Palestinian with equal rights to those of the Jewish population.
Palestinian claim of the land=opposition to Zionism=Arab Unity as a goal=Victimizing the peacefull native population in on going battles under militant autocratic leadership.
The Arab/Israeli conflict was artificially created to shift focus from social and economic disasters inflicted by autocratic leaders on their subordinates out of greed and thirst for power.
The Palestinian Autonomy was founded on terrorism
Arab states' military frustration in eliminating Israel=creation of a political ploy to eliminate Israel=PLO=PHASED PLAN=Palestinian Self Determination
Israeli Arabs live 100s of times better than Arabs in the Palestinian Autonomy and many Arabs attempt to infiltrate Israel,in many ways, to achieve economic stability.(Running away from
those who made them victims to those who granted Arabs with a stable life)
Israeli Arabs
Arabs who are citizens of Israel, including Palestinian Arabs who chose to stay in their homes rather than flee in 1947-1949, and other Arabs who were allowed to become naturalized citizens. Approximately 20 percent of the Israeli population are Arabs. Israeli Arabs enjoy equal rights with Israeli Jews in Israel. The one exception is that Israeli Arabs are not required to serve in the military, though some, including all Druze, do choose to serve.
Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands
Prior to the establishment of Israel, more than 850,000 Jews lived in Arab countries. After Israel achieved independence, many of these Jews were persecuted by their governments and compelled to leave, despite having lived in some of their communities for more than 2,500 years. Between 1948 and 1972, 820,000 Jews left Arab countries, 586,000 were resettled in Israel at great expense, and without any offer of compensation from the Arab governments who confiscated their possessions.
EXPROPRIATION AT ITS FINEST^
Had Israel's war of Independence ended in the favor of the Arab states what would happen to these people^?. I guess it's easier to focus on what Jews had to say than on what Arab
leaders did, and are still doing to this day(including those in the Palestinian Autonomy).
And as for :
Palestinian Refugees
About 600,000 Palestinian (other estimates range form 500,000 to 800,0000) fled Israel between 1947 and 1949, fundamentally because of the Arab states' rejection of the United Nation *partition plan and invasion of Israel. The refugees fled out of fear of war and in response to Arab leaders' calls for Arabs to evacuate the areas allocated to the Jews until Israel had been eliminated. In a handful of cases, Palestinians were expelled. A majority of the refugees and their descendants now live in the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the West Bank. About 360,000 Palestinians fled eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights during and after Israel's defensive 1967 War. Palestinian who fled in 1967 are technically considered displaced persons and do not have official refugee status. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency estimated that 175,000 of these 360,000 Palestinians were refugees from the 1948 War. The May 4, 1994, Gaza-Jericho Accord calls for Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, and Egypt to form a Continuing Committee to discuss the 1967 displaced persons. The problem of the 1947-1949 refugees, on the other hand, is to be left for the “final status” negotiations under the terms of the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles of September 13, 1993.
Partition Plan(s)
Proposals for dividing Palestine into autonomous areas controlled by Jews and Arabs. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assemly adopted a partition plan that called for the division of Mandate Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.
Who caused 500,000-800,000 Arabs to flee? Who caused a similar amount of Jews in Arab states to leave their homes?- apparently the same factors(Arab Autocracies).
You're saying there were no Political Goals when the entire Palestinian Arabs' Self Determination is in fact a Political Goal and the reason it wasn't as organized in the 19th century was because future autocratic leaders were only in the process of gaining power.
Saying Zionists were fond of the mandates is complete propaganda bullshit! lol@"I'm dealing with facts"
Fact is Zionists were the ones to obstruct both mandates in every way possible as well as their rules unlike the locals who lived under occupation for hundreds of years.
The most major expulsions of Arabs was due to Arab States' threats and actions(those who chose to stay welcomed Zionism and its enterprise and became citizens of Israel).
P.S I guess it's hard for you to see the difference between Europeans and European Jews. The Jewish Europeans you're talking about were slaughtered and discriminated for hundreds of years
in Europe but you choose to present their claim of a national home as merely a colonialist notion, how convenient, much rather grant it to people who were fond of living under occupation for centuries due to lack of national indentity, and who were manipulated by power thirsty Amirs who wanted to become kings into a game of nationalism and self-determination.
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Since you don't accept facts... maybe I'll just give you some opinions... since that's all you're able to give me...
The end of Zionism
Israel must shed its illusions and choose between racist oppression and democracy
Avraham Burg
Monday September 15, 2003
The Guardian
The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just path and an ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any longer. The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that ours will be the last Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state here, but it will be a different sort, strange and ugly.
There is time to change course, but not much. What is needed is a new vision of a just society and the political will to implement it. Diaspora Jews for whom Israel is a central pillar of their identity must pay heed and speak out.
The opposition does not exist, and the coalition, with Ariel Sharon at its head, claims the right to remain silent. In a nation of chatterboxes, everyone has suddenly fallen dumb, because there's nothing left to say. We live in a thunderously failed reality. Yes, we have revived the Hebrew language, created a marvellous theatre and a strong national currency. Our Jewish minds are as sharp as ever. We are traded on the Nasdaq. But is this why we created a state? The Jewish people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programs or anti-missile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto the nations. In this we have failed.
It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents' shock, that they do not know. The countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun.
It is very comfortable to be a Zionist in West Bank settlements such as Beit El and Ofra. The biblical landscape is charming. You can gaze through the geraniums and bougainvilleas and not see the occupation. Travelling on the fast highway that skirts barely a half-mile west of the Palestinian roadblocks, it's hard to comprehend the humiliating experience of the despised Arab who must creep for hours along the pocked, blockaded roads assigned to him. One road for the occupier, one road for the occupied.
This cannot work. Even if the Arabs lower their heads and swallow their shame and anger for ever, it won't work. A structure built on human callousness will inevitably collapse in on itself. Note this moment well: Zionism's superstructure is already collapsing like a cheap Jerusalem wedding hall. Only madmen continue dancing on the top floor while the pillars below are collapsing.
We have grown accustomed to ignoring the suffering of the women at the roadblocks. No wonder we don't hear the cries of the abused woman living next door or the single mother struggling to support her children in dignity. We don't even bother to count the women murdered by their husbands.
Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centres of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated. We could kill a thousand ringleaders a day and nothing will be solved, because the leaders come up from below - from the wells of hatred and anger, from the "infrastructures" of injustice and moral corruption.
If all this were inevitable, divinely ordained and immutable, I would be silent. But things could be different, and so crying out is a moral imperative.
Here is what the prime minister should say to the people: the time for illusions is over. The time for decisions has arrived. We love the entire land of our forefathers and in some other time we would have wanted to live here alone. But that will not happen. The Arabs, too, have dreams and needs.
Between the Jordan and the Mediterranean there is no longer a clear Jewish majority. And so, fellow citizens, it is not possible to keep the whole thing without paying a price. We cannot keep a Palestinian majority under an Israeli boot and at the same time think ourselves the only democracy in the Middle East. There cannot be democracy without equal rights for all who live here, Arab as well as Jew. We cannot keep the territories and preserve a Jewish majority in the world's only Jewish state - not by means that are humane and moral and Jewish.
Do you want the greater land of Israel? No problem. Abandon democracy. Let's institute an efficient system of racial separation here, with prison camps and detention villages.
Do you want a Jewish majority? No problem. Either put the Arabs on railway cars, buses, camels and donkeys and expel them en masse - or separate ourselves from them absolutely, without tricks and gimmicks. There is no middle path. We must remove all the settlements - all of them - and draw an internationally recognised border between the Jewish national home and the Palestinian national home. The Jewish law of return will apply only within our national home, and their right of return will apply only within the borders of the Palestinian state.
Do you want democracy? No problem. Either abandon the greater land of Israel, to the last settlement and outpost, or give full citizenship and voting rights to everyone, including Arabs. The result, of course, will be that those who did not want a Palestinian state alongside us will have one in our midst, via the ballot box.
The prime minister should present the choices forthrightly: Jewish racism or democracy. Settlements, or hope for both peoples. False visions of barbed wire and suicide bombers, or a recognised international border between two states and a shared capital in Jerusalem.
Why, then, is the opposition so quiet? Perhaps because some would like to join the government at any price, even the price of participating in the sickness. But while they dither, the forces of good lose hope. Anyone who declines to present a clear-cut position - black or white - is collaborating in the decline. It is not a matter of Labour versus Likud or right versus left, but of right versus wrong, acceptable versus unacceptable. The law-abiding versus the lawbreakers. What's needed is not a political replacement for the Sharon government but a vision of hope, an alternative to the destruction of Zionism and its values by the deaf, dumb and callous.
Israel's friends abroad - Jewish and non-Jewish alike, presidents and prime ministers, rabbis and lay people - should choose as well. They must reach out and help Israel to navigate the road map toward our national destiny as a light unto the nations and a society of peace, justice and equality.
· Avraham Burg was speaker of Israel's Knesset in 1999-2003 and is a former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Reprinted with permission of The Forward, which translated and adapted this essay from an article that originally appeared in Yediot Aharonot
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I'm not gonna respond anymore because you're no better than people who deny the Holocaust and I'll leave you with: You're a tool, and I pity you.
I'm gonna level with you, doesn't^ make you seem any more credible when you keep coming back!
Avraham Burg is a left winger, I agree with some of the points he makes, but you know what they say "The best way to hide a lie is between truths".
Israeli road blocks are not there because soldiers have too much spare time on their hands, but because acts of terrorism were there before.
Poverty in the Palestinian Autonomy is far from being an Israeli achievement especially due to the billions of support dollars(received subsequently to Oslo from EU and the U.S) that were channeled by the PLO into terrorism funding.
Palestinian terrorism surfaced during peace treaties.
Burg's attempt to hold Israel responsible for Palestinian acts of terrorism is deplorable, and in fact, opposite to reality. So you can see the difference, try finding Palestinian former or current 'politicians' that would admit to Israel's military coercion due to Palestinian terrorism, it is possible that you will only find one statement from Abu Mazen.
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lol.^Eu and Israel... ;D Israel also negotiates with UFOs, you know.
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Let's not the lavon affair.
In 1954, Israeli agents working in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including a United States diplomatic facility, and left evidence behind implicating Arabs as the culprits. The ruse would have worked, had not one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to capture and identify one of the bombers, which in turn led to the round up of an Israeli spy ring.
Some of the spies were from Israel, while others were recruited from the local Jewish population. Israel responded to the scandal with claims in the media that there was no spy ring, that it was all a hoax perpetrated by "anti-Semites". But as the public trial progressed, it was evident that Israel had indeed been behind the bombing. Eventually, Israeli's Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon was brought down by the scandal, although it appears that he was himself the victim of a frame-up by the real authors of the bombing project, code named "Operation Susannah."
It is therefore a fact that Israel has a prior history of setting off bombs with the intent to blame Arabs for them.
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Various Israeli media, such as Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz (citing Reuters as the source) report that the Israeli government has honored several Egyptian Jews who were involved in spying and sabotage in Egypt in the 1950s.
This incident is known as the Lavon Affair, and extensive material on the incident can be found in Israel and Terror in Egypt.
Briefly stated, a group of Jews in Egypt plotted in 1954 to bomb several U.S. and British interests, so as to undermine the newly formed government by the Free Officers coupe d'etat. The blame would fall on Egyptians and cause the British to remain in the Suez Canal area, thus acting a buffer between Egypt and Israel
Note how the incident was denied at the time, so Israel can claim the high moral ground, but later, little by little, the details showed that these men were trained by the Israeli Defense Forces, and Mossad's involvement was acknowledged.
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I'm not gonna respond anymore because you're no better than people who deny the Holocaust and I'll leave you with: You're a tool, and I pity you.
I'm gonna level with you, doesn't^ make you seem any more credible when you keep coming back!
I come back because you say something so dumb and easy to refute with facts, that I just have to point your stupidities out. For example, yes the Zionists weren't fond of the mandates system throughout the whole time, but it was only due to the mandates system that they were able to get a "homeland"... which is why they organized themselves accordingly in order to use the mandates system to their benefit... however, as things progressed, they viewed the mandates system as an obstacle to their goals and that's when attacks were carried out. If you don't know that... and can't accept facts.... then so be it. I'm not here to persuade you, I'm just presenting facts... I know you may not be used to these foreign things called facts, living in Israel and all.
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as things progressed, they viewed the mandates system as an obstacle to their goals and that's when attacks were carried out.
Yet it seems like in your post regarding this^ you chose to omit this fact(promissing not to come back so you wouldn't have to admit it), while I stated it, and somehow I'm the one whose stupidity needs to be pointed out. :D lol
You've just proven that if it wasn't for my remark you wouldn't even mention the fact which lead to the creation of Israel because it didn't serve your portrayal of "The Colonialist Zionism",
Brainwashed?- I think so, this is not the first time you choose to ignore facts that don't suit your views.
There's a difference between using a bad situation to your benefit and being fond of it, and point is, that the locals for centuries did neither. Fact is that the Palestinian People is a byproduct of Zionism and you can't help but ignoring this since it refutes your entire misconception of the freedom seeking peasants who, for some reason, didn't even see a way out untill Jews came into the area to seek national freedom.
P.S You keep contradicting yourself with everything you say.
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Your attempts to dumb down the discussions with a moronic reply about E.U and UFOS only furher underlines the level to which you have been brainwashed into total denial. Tony Blair when interviewed by the Times newspaper said no we arent going to stop supplying Israel with planes, if we stop supplying them it wont change anything someone else will supply them instead.
Britain is part of the EU!
I have great respect for people who try to delegitemize Israel while completely ignoring the legitimacy with which they tend to treat Arab Autocracies and terrorism, it is a sign of determination, I respect determination. Even when determination is harmfull it determines and defines people's agendas. I want you to think of something here, kind of a continuation to my debate with Jamal, you need to see whose interests are being served significantly more when a suicide bomber commits a premeditated murder of civilians, and whose interests are being served significantly more when the IDF unintentionally kills a civilian? Who gains from what?-You'll find it is the same side that gains in both cases. Jamal said that Jews were fond of the mandates mainly bcause they knew how to use a crappy situation to their favour, and now, when the Palestinian leadership does it, Jamal, and you my friend, don't even bother to ask yourselves "doesn't something smell fishy here?" OR "How come murder of Israelis is a catalyst of political profit for the Palestinian leadership and how come ,death of Palestinians, is a P.R boost for the Palestinian Leadership that also assists in promotion of political goals?" >Israel looses both ways because death of Israelis due to terrorist acts does absolutely no good neither to its democratically elected leadership nor to its population and its responses to terrorism also usually add up an international delegitimization of its right for self-defence due to occasional accidents.
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^^^ the point is there not always accidents and the israeli authorities do their best to protect those who take it too far.... and it they also order such things.....
"The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful: we must cause them losses, victims, so that they feel the heavy price" -Ariel Sharon, 5 March 2002.
soon after israel moved into densly populated refugee camps, in particular committing a mascre in jenin then refusing to allow humanitarian aid into the the town for 11 days and they denied investigators access
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^^^ the point is there not always accidents and the israeli authorities do their best to protect those who take it too far
On behalf of the Palestinian side it is NEVER AN ACCIDENT and this is all you need to know.
As long as Palestinian Leaders profit both from terrorism and from death of Palestinians, while Israel doesn't, your logic must be active.
We can't go from house to house asking people "are you by any chance a terrorist?" as long as those who pose themselves as leaders in the Palestinian Autonomy continue to further terrorism, responsibility for the death of Palestinians is theirs and theirs only, Israel does what it can, but as long as Palestinian Power thirsty leaders continue to gain from death of Palestinians,ambivalently, there's not much to do. Hadn't there been Palestinian terrorists, IDF would have no reason to raid their hiding-places.
P.S Unless the grass is cut, the snakes won't show.
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and they also order such things.....
"The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful: we must cause them losses, victims, so that they feel the heavy price" -Ariel Sharon, 5 March 2002.
soon after israel moved into densly populated refugee camps, in particular committing a mascre in jenin then refusing to allow humanitarian aid into the the town for 11 days and they denied investigators access
any comment on the rest of my post??
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israels tactics have always been to intimidate and provoke palestinians in order for them to commit terrorist acts, just so the IDF can justify their reprisals, prolong the occupation and consolidate more land to claim as their own. This is abundently clear and your just in denial!
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and they also order such things.....
"The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful: we must cause them losses, victims, so that they feel the heavy price" -Ariel Sharon, 5 March 2002.
soon after israel moved into densly populated refugee camps, in particular committing a mascre in jenin then refusing to allow humanitarian aid into the the town for 11 days and they denied investigators access
any comment on the rest of my post??
Yes, I would like you to quote a few Palestinian leaders/Terrorists as well because you're trying to demonize the Israeli side without explaining that such statements,like Sharon's, come in response to terrorist acts, if we're into quotes now, you can simply view one of the previous pages of this thread where I quoted a few for you.
And as for densely populated areas- Terrorism will be hunted down anywhere it originates. Fatah has better knowledge as for locations of terrorists but it doesn't move a finger to stop it, instead, through ignoring terrorism, it coerces IDF to stop it.
I've been to the territories and the only times when humanitarian aid is not allowed is when it may obstruct an operation, again, had Fatah dealt with terrorists, it would be up to the Palestinian Leadership, but Fatah and the Palestinian Leadership gain from it, is it so hard to understand?
Palestinian anti-Israeli terrorism claiming the land and denying Israel, surfaced after 1967(after the 6 day war). When West Bank and Gaza were under Egypt and Jordan you didn't see anyone hollering "occupation!" because there was no such thing as "Palestinians", how come it's so easy for you to disregard this?
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"The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful: we must cause them losses, victims, so that they feel the heavy price" -Ariel Sharon, 5 March 2002.
like Sharon's, come in response to terrorist acts
sharon was not singling out terrorists, he simply said palestinians!!
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"The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful: we must cause them losses, victims, so that they feel the heavy price" -Ariel Sharon, 5 March 2002.
like Sharon's, come in response to terrorist acts
sharon was not singling out terrorists, he simply said palestinians!!
So?
Do you know what "Itbah al Yahud" iz? Ask Jamal, I bet he'll tell ya! :)
Didn't the U.S refer to the USSR during the cold-war as "Russians"?
A war is a generalization, that's why it's so bad!
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i think u'll find the cold war is completely different, israel is the occupying power and its leader openly stated his intention to make the occupied subjects suffer!
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i think u'll find the cold war is completely different, israel is the occupying power and its leader openly stated his intention to make the occupied subjects suffer!
Israel is not an occupying power but a state surrounded with terrorist states and terrorist power structures, therefore,Israel is to do whatever is in its power to defend its existence.
Palestinians have a leadership- an autonomy trying to undermine a state that supplies it with electricity, employment, weapons, support money etc ....Israel did not capture this land from the Palestinians, but from Jordan and Egypt, which do not claim the land.
As long as they are fond of militias doing whatever the hell they want to obstruct Israel's existence, preachers calling for mass murder of Jews, suffering is what they expect....Read my sig...."When you choose a demeanor you choose the consequences"
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why don't u read my sig theres another sharon quote for ya
“What is to become of the Palestinians?” Churchill asked. “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them,” Sharon said. Churchill responded, “What?” “Yes, we’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
i think that clearly shows israel colonisation ambitions.....
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why don't u read my sig theres another sharon quote for ya
“What is to become of the Palestinians?” Churchill asked. “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them,” Sharon said. Churchill responded, “What?” “Yes, we’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
i think that clearly shows israel colonisation ambitions.....
Yea because Sharon said it, right....! What year was it?
When Palestinian preachers yell "Itbah al Yahud" you don't seem to be as conclusive.
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Something on Dair Yasin for yall:
When the onslaught of the local Arabs had been in progress for over four months, and a month before the planned invasion by the seven Arab states, about half the population still remained in the area mapped out by the United Nations as the Jewish state. Now began the fantastic phase of the exodus. A large part of the population panicked. Suddenly the countryside was filled with rumours and alleged reports of Jewish "atrocities." A highly coloured report of a battle near Jerusalem became the driving theme. At the village of Dir Yassin, one of the bases of the Arab forces maintaining pressure on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road, an assault by the "dissident" Irgun Zvai Leumi and the FFI (Stern Group) had continued for eight hours before the village was finally captured, and then only with the help of a Palmach3 armoured car, which arrived on the scene unexpectedly. The element of surprise having been lost, the Arab soldiers could turn every house in the village into a fortress. Jewish casualties amounted to one third of the attacking force (40 out of 120). The Arabs, barricading themselves in the houses, had omitted to evacuate women and children, many of whom were thus killed during the attack.
The Arab leaders seized on the opportunity to tell an utterly fantastic story of a "massacre," which was disseminated throughout the world by all the arms of British propaganda. The accepted "orthodox" version to this day, it has served enemies of Israel and anti-Semites faithfully.4
The Zionist establishment of 1948, in its eagerness to blacken the dissident underground, helped the libel along. Only years later did the Israeli Foreign Office correct the record (in Israel's Struggle for Peace, Israel Office of Information, New York, 1960) and in an extensive statement entitled "Dir Yassin," published on March 16, 1969. An earlier Arab eyewitness account is a stunning refutation of the libel. On the fifth anniversary of the battle, Yunes Ahmed Assad of Dir Yassin wrote in the Jordan daily Al Urdun (April 9, 1953): "The Jews never intended to hurt the population of the village but were forced to do so after they met hostile fire from the population which killed the Irgun commander." The effect of the story was immediate and electric. The British officer who had done most in the years before 1948 to build up the Transjordanian Army, General Glubb Pasha, wrote in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948: "The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war." And the refugee from Dir Yassin, Yunes Ahmed Assad, has soberly recorded that "The Arab exodus from other villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews" (At Urdun, April 9, 1953).
Another quarter of a million Arabs thus left the area of the State of Israel in the late spring and early summer of 1948.
Where they had the opportunity, the Jews tried to prevent the Arabs' flight. Bishop Hakim of Galilee confirmed to the Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, that the Arabs of Haifa "fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel."5 This episode is described in a report by the Haifa District HQ of the British Palestine Police sent on April 26, 1948, to Police HQ in Jerusalem.
"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe." The Jewish effort was in vain. The police report continues: "A large road convoy, escorted by [British] military -- left Haifa for Beirut yesterday. -- Evacuation by sea goes on steadily." Two days later, the Haifa police continued to report. The Jews were "still making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to remain and to settle back into their normal lives in the towns"; as for the Arabs, "another convoy left Tireh for Transjordan, and the evacuation by sea continues. The quays and harbour are still crowded with refugees and their household effects, all omitting no opportunity to get a place on one of the boats leaving Haifa."
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Kenneth Bilby, one of the American correspondents who covered Palestine for several years before and during the war of 1948, soon afterward wrote a book on his experience and observations. In it he reported:
The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighbouring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea. [New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31]
After the war, the Palestine Arab leaders did try to help people -- including their own -- to forget that it was they who had called for the exodus in the early spring of 1948. They now blamed the leaders of the invading Arab states themselves. These had added their voices to the exodus call, though not until some weeks after the Palestine Arab Higher Committee had taken a stand.
The war was not yet over when Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, stated in an interview with a Beirut newspaper:
I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem. [Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948]
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The seven Arab states in existence in 1947 -- Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Transjordan (see Map No. 4) -- whose leaders decided to prevent the birth of Israel, contained an area 230 times larger than the projected Jewish state and a population 60 times that of its Jewish inhabitants who numbered only a little more than half a million.
The Arab appetite would be satisfied with nothing less than the remainder. It was, moreover, characteristic that the Secretary of this confederation of invader states, Azzam Pasha, in forecasting the success of the invasion, invoked the memory of the massacres by the Mongols and the Crusaders.
Such was the attitude of the Arabs in 1947, when they had in their hands all, and more than, the territory they are now demanding from Israel. At that time, they violently refused to share 'Palestine with the Jews in a territorial ratio of seven to one. They refused to recognise the Jewish claim to the country or to the smallest part of it; to acquiesce in the international recognition of that claim; or to abate this one jot of their designs on the whole of the area that had once been the Moslem Empire in Asia.
Less than thirty years earlier, the "historic rights" Of the Arabs to Palestine, allegedly existing for a thousand years, had not yet been discovered. In February 1919, the Emir Faisal, the one recognised Arab leader at the time, then still striving for the creation of Arab political independence in Syria (of which he was briefly king) and Iraq (over which he and his house subsequently ruled for forty years), signed a formal agreement with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, representing the Zionist Organisation. This provided for co-operation between the projected Arab state and the projected reconstituted Jewish state of Palestine. Borders were still to be negotiated, but Faisal had already described the Zionist proposals as "moderate and proper." The borders proposed by the Zionists included what subsequently became Mandatory Palestine on both banks of the Jordan as well as north-western Galilee up to the Litany River-later included in southern Lebanon -- part of the Golan Heights -- later included in Syria -- and part of Sinai -- left under British administration in Egypt
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After a series of compromises, partitions and whittling away of the original plan -- and 1/2 of Europeans Jews had been exterminated, due in part to Britain's ruthless refugee policies -- on November 29, 1947 the United Nations Assembly decided to recommend the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state.
At that time there were no Arab refugees. The area allotted to the Jewish state was much smaller even than that established by the Armistice lines of 1949 (which lasted until June 5, 1967), to which Israel is now urged to withdraw. At that time, Israel had no "occupied territories" from which to withdraw.
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IGeezy, simple question... How do you explain that whole region Palestine/Isreal, being inhabited and dominated by well over 90% Arab people less than 100 years ago... To the situation we we have now where Jews rule over the whole region and the Arabs have no state/country or authority in the region?
Not only that, the Arabs are even today, still the large majority in the region, but they are being ruled over by a small minority of Jews. This is nothing less than aparthied.
Explain to me how this is any different than the South African aparthied where you had minority whites ruling over majority black South Africa.
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one thing igeezy has never responded to is the denial of the universal human right of return... zionists have no ground for their arguments...
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OK, let's go step by step.
First Infinite:
Jews rule over the whole region and the Arabs have no state/country or authority in the region?
Arabs have no state? Are you sure? Because I think can name a few....the region known as middle east is still inhabited by an Arab majority,
so based on your logic China(Since there is a Chinese majority in the world) should rule the world. So far we live in a world with borders.
This is interesting :
Explain to me how this is any different than the South African aparthied where you had minority whites ruling over majority black South Africa.
So based on this logic something needs to be done,fast, with all Arab/Muslim autocracies in the middle east being that they are all ruled by minorities over majorities :) yet you don't seem to oppose any of these states and you choose to address Israel. Please read:
"Israel's treatment of Palestinians is similar to the treatment of blacks in apartheid South Africa."
Even before the State of Israel was established, Jewish leaders consciously sought to avoid the situation that prevailed in South Africa. As David Ben-Gurion told Palestinian nationalist Musa Alami in 1934:
We do not want to create a situation like that which exists in South Africa, where the whites are the owners and rulers, and the blacks are the workers. If we do not do all kinds of work, easy and hard, skilled and unskilled, if we become merely landlords, then this will not be our homeland.6
Today, within Israel, Jews are a majority, but the Arab minority are full citizens who enjoy equal rights. Arabs are represented in the Knesset, and have served in the Cabinet, high-level foreign ministry posts (e.g., Ambassador to Finland) and on the Supreme Court. Under apartheid, black South Africans could not vote and were not citizens of the country in which they formed the overwhelming majority of the population. Laws dictated where they could live, work and travel. And, in South Africa, the government killed blacks who protested against its policies. By contrast, Israel allows freedom of movement, assembly and speech. Some of the government's harshest critics are Israeli Arabs who are members of the Knesset.
The situation of Palestinians in the territories is different. The security requirements of the nation, and a violent insurrection in the territories, forced Israel to impose restrictions on Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that are not necessary inside Israel's pre-1967 borders. The Palestinians in the territories, typically, dispute Israel's right to exist whereas blacks did not seek the destruction of South Africa, only the apartheid regime.
If Israel were to give Palestinians full citizenship, it would mean the territories had been annexed. No Israeli government has been prepared to take that step. Instead, through negotiations, Israel agreed to give the Palestinians increasing authority over their own affairs. It is likely that a final settlement will allow most Palestinians to become citizens of their own state. The principal impediment to Palestinian independence is not Israeli policy, it is the unwillingness of the Palestinian leadership to give up terrorism and agree to live in peace beside the State of Israel.
Despite all their criticism, when asked what governments they admire most, more than 80 percent of Palestinians consistently choose Israel because they can see up close the thriving democracy in Israel, and the rights the Arab citizens enjoy there. By contrast, Palstinians place Arab regimes far down the list, and their own Palestinian Authority at the bottom with only 20 percent saying they admire the corrupt Arafat regime in 2003.
Now to my man VIrtuoso, I understand that you have been misinformed but dayuuum:
Israel is a secular society for the most part and Jews who are married to non-Jews get automatic citizenship.
Israel is not Iran, we don't live in 100% accordance with the laws of religion, yes, it is true that a non Jewish person(Any non Jewish person...funny how you say " wed to a Palestinian") can't wed to a Jewish person in a religious Jewish wedding, just like you can't marry a Catholic to a Jew in a Church wedding but there is no law that prohibits life together or a non-Jewish wedding.
Palestinian workers from the Autonomy are one of the ways in which Israel supllies employment to the Arafat abused-terrorim funding-fucked up economy- Palestinian Autonomy. The Palestinian workers are not Israeli citizens and are in fact citizens of the autonomy, they have homes and families in the autonomy.
Many Palestinians who want to live within Israel's borders attempt to wed Israeli Arabs to receive citizenship. But let me ask you something, why would they want to be Israeli citizens if Israel, or as you call it,occupied territories is so bad for them?- lol I guess you kinda answered yourself.
Now to my good friend Jamal that for some reason sayes I've never addressed the refugee issue, please read:
Arab Refugees, and the "Right of Return"
Only a George Orwell or a Franz Kafka could have done justice to the story of the Arab refugee problem. For twenty years, the world has been indoctrinated with a vision of its origins, its scope, the responsibilities for its solution. The intent of this picture is, roughly, that in 1948 the Jewish people launched an attack on the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, drove them out, and thus established the State of Israel. The number of innocent peace-loving Arabs thus turned refugee was -- here you may insert any figure that occurs to you, such as a million, one and a half million, two million. Justice demands that the refugees be restored to their homes, and until that day, the world (everyone, that is, except the Arab people) must care for their upkeep.
The Arabs are the only declared refugees who became refugees not by the action of their enemies or because of well-grounded fear of their enemies, but by the initiative of their own leaders. For nearly a generation, those leaders have wilfully kept as many people as they possibly could in degenerating squalor, preventing their rehabilitation, and holding out to all of them the hope of return and of "vengeance" on the Jews of Israel, to whom they have transferred the blame for their plight.
The fabrication can probably most easily be seen in the simple circumstance that at the time the alleged cruel expulsion of Arabs by Zionists was in progress, it passed unnoticed. Foreign newspapermen who covered the war of 1948 on both sides did, indeed, write about the flight of the Arabs, but even those most hostile to the Jews saw nothing to suggest that it was not voluntary. In the three months during which the major part of the Right took place -- April, May, and June 1948 -- the London Times, at that time [openly] hostile to Zionism, published eleven leading articles on the situation in Palestine in addition to extensive news reports and articles. In none was there even a hint of the charge that the Zionists were driving the Arabs from their homes.
More interesting still, no Arab spokesman mentioned the subject. At the height of the flight, on April 27, Jamal Husseini, the Palestine Arabs' chief representative at the United Nations, made a long political statement, which was not lacking in hostility toward the Zionists; he did not mention refugees. Three weeks later (while the flight was still in progress), the Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, made a fiercely worded political statement on Palestine; it contained not a word about refugees.
The Arab refugees were not driven from Palestine by anyone. The vast majority left, whether of their own free will or at the orders or exhortations of their leaders, always with the same reassurance-that their departure would help in the war against Israel. Attacks by Palestinian Arabs on the Jews had began two days after the United Nations adopted its decision of November 29, 1947, to divide western Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. The seven neighbouring Arab states-Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Egypt -- then prepared to invade the country as soon as the birth of the infant State of Israel was announced. Their victory, was certain, they claimed, but it would be speeded and made easier if the local Arab population got out of the way. The refugees would come back in the wake of the victorious Arab armies and not only recover their own property but also inherit the houses and farms of the vanquished and annihilated Jews. Between December 1, 1947, and May 15, 1948, the clash was largely between bands of local Arabs, aided in diverse ways by the disintegrating British authority and the Jewish fighting organisations.
The earliest voluntary refugees were understandably the wealthier Arabs of the towns, who made a comparatively leisurely departure in December 1947 and in early 1948. At that stage, departure had not yet been proclaimed as a policy or recognised as a potential propaganda weapon. The Jaffa newspaper Ash Sha'ab thus wrote on January 30, 1948:
The first group of our fifth column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere-- At the first sign of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle.
The weekly As Sarih of Jaffa used even more scathing terms on March 30, 1948, to accuse the inhabitants of Sheikh Munis and other villages in the neighbourhood of Tel Aviv of "bringing down disgrace on us all" by "abandoning their villages." On May 5, the Jerusalem correspondent of the London Times was reporting: "The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, evidently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa."
As the local Arab offensive spread during the late winter and early spring of 1948, the Palestinian Arabs were urged to take to the hills, so as to leave the invading Arab armies unencumbered by a civilian population. Before the State of Israel had been formally declared -- and while the British still ruled the country -- over 200,000 Arabs left their homes in the coastal plain of Palestine.
These exhortations came primarily from their own local leaders. Monsignor George Hakim, then Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, the leading Christian personality in Palestine for many years, told a Beirut newspaper in the summer of 1948, before the flight of Arabs had ended:
The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the "Zionist gangs" very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile. [Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948]
The exodus was indeed common knowledge. The London weekly Economist reported on October 2, 1948:
Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit. -- It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.
And the Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station from Cyprus stated on April 3, 1949:
It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem.
Even in retrospect, in an effort to describe the deliberateness of the flight, the leading Arab propagandist of the day, Edward Atiyah (then Secretary of the Arab League Office in London), reaffirmed the facts:
This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country. [The Arabs (London, 1955), p. 1831
Kenneth Bilby, one of the American correspondents who covered Palestine for several years before and during the war of 1948, soon afterward wrote a book on his experience and observations. In it he reported:
The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighbouring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea. [New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31]
After the war, the Palestine Arab leaders did try to help people -- including their own -- to forget that it was they who had called for the exodus in the early spring of 1948. They now blamed the leaders of the invading Arab states themselves. These had added their voices to the exodus call, though not until some weeks after the Palestine Arab Higher Committee had taken a stand.
The war was not yet over when Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, stated in an interview with a Beirut newspaper:
I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem. [Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948]
In retrospect, the Jordanian newspaper Falayfin wrote on February 19, 1949:
The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.
Nimr el Hawari, the Commander of the Palestine Arab Youth Organisation, in his book Sir Am Nakbah (The Secret Behind the Disaster, published in Nazareth in 1952), more specifically quoted the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said. Nuri, he wrote, had thundered: "We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down."
Equally specifically brought to public notice was the part played by the chief spokesman for the combined Arab states, the Secretary General of the Arab League himself. Habib Issa wrote in the New York Lebanese daily newspaper At Hoda on June 8, 1951,
The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade... He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean. -- Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighbouring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.
As late as 1952, the charge had the official stamp of the Arab Higher Committee. In a memorandum to the Arab League states, the Committee wrote:
Some of the Arab leaders and their ministers in Arab capitals -- declared that they welcomed the immigration of Palestinian Arabs into the Arab countries until they saved Palestine. Many of the Palestinian Arabs were misled by their declarations... It was natural for those Palestinian Arabs who felt impelled to leave their country to take refuge in Arab lands -- and to stay in such adjacent places in order to maintain contact with their country so that to return to it would be easy when, according to the promises of many of those responsible in the Arab countries (promises which were given wastefully), the time was ripe. Many were of the opinion that such an opportunity would come in the hours between sunset and sunrise.1
Most pointed of all was the comment of one of the refugees: "The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in"2
When the onslaught of the local Arabs had been in progress for over four months, and a month before the planned invasion by the seven Arab states, about half the population still remained in the area mapped out by the United Nations as the Jewish state. Now began the fantastic phase of the exodus. A large part of the population panicked. Suddenly the countryside was filled with rumours and alleged reports of Jewish "atrocities." A highly coloured report of a battle near Jerusalem became the driving theme. At the village of Dir Yassin, one of the bases of the Arab forces maintaining pressure on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road, an assault by the "dissident" Irgun Zvai Leumi and the FFI (Stern Group) had continued for eight hours before the village was finally captured, and then only with the help of a Palmach3 armoured car, which arrived on the scene unexpectedly. The element of surprise having been lost, the Arab soldiers could turn every house in the village into a fortress. Jewish casualties amounted to one third of the attacking force (40 out of 120). The Arabs, barricading themselves in the houses, had omitted to evacuate women and children, many of whom were thus killed during the attack.
The Arab leaders seized on the opportunity to tell an utterly fantastic story of a "massacre," which was disseminated throughout the world by all the arms of British propaganda. The accepted "orthodox" version to this day, it has served enemies of Israel and anti-Semites faithfully.4
The Zionist establishment of 1948, in its eagerness to blacken the dissident underground, helped the libel along. Only years later did the Israeli Foreign Office correct the record (in Israel's Struggle for Peace, Israel Office of Information, New York, 1960) and in an extensive statement entitled "Dir Yassin," published on March 16, 1969. An earlier Arab eyewitness account is a stunning refutation of the libel. On the fifth anniversary of the battle, Yunes Ahmed Assad of Dir Yassin wrote in the Jordan daily Al Urdun (April 9, 1953): "The Jews never intended to hurt the population of the village but were forced to do so after they met hostile fire from the population which killed the Irgun commander." The effect of the story was immediate and electric. The British officer who had done most in the years before 1948 to build up the Transjordanian Army, General Glubb Pasha, wrote in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948: "The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war." And the refugee from Dir Yassin, Yunes Ahmed Assad, has soberly recorded that "The Arab exodus from other villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews" (At Urdun, April 9, 1953).
Another quarter of a million Arabs thus left the area of the State of Israel in the late spring and early summer of 1948.
Where they had the opportunity, the Jews tried to prevent the Arabs' flight. Bishop Hakim of Galilee confirmed to the Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, that the Arabs of Haifa "fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel."5 This episode is described in a report by the Haifa District HQ of the British Palestine Police sent on April 26, 1948, to Police HQ in Jerusalem.
"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe." The Jewish effort was in vain. The police report continues: "A large road convoy, escorted by [British] military -- left Haifa for Beirut yesterday. -- Evacuation by sea goes on steadily." Two days later, the Haifa police continued to report. The Jews were "still making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to remain and to settle back into their normal lives in the towns"; as for the Arabs, "another convoy left Tireh for Transjordan, and the evacuation by sea continues. The quays and harbour are still crowded with refugees and their household effects, all omitting no opportunity to get a place on one of the boats leaving Haifa."6
This orderly evacuation took place as the outcome of truce negotiations after the Jewish forces had broken the Arab offensive and taken control of the city. The Arab military delegates, refusing the truce, asked for British help in transferring the Arab population to the neighbouring Arab countries. The British provided facilities, including trucks.
The voluntary nature of the evacuation was proclaimed a virtue by the leader and chief spokesman of the Palestinian Arabs. While it was in progress, Jamal Husseini, Acting Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, told the United Nations Security Council:
The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did7
Most of the Arab evacuees did not go so far as the neighbouring Arab states. Many went to towns in Judea Samaria and remained there under Transjordanian rule. Others stopped at Acre, where they could look across the bay at their hometown and wait patiently for the day, a month later, when they would make their triumphant way back in the wake of the victorious Arab armies. The victorious Arab armies never arrived; instead, Acre was won by the Jewish forces, and the evacuees moved on again. Only now they were to be called "refugees."
The Arab National Committee of Haifa, in a memorandum two years later to the governments of the Arab League, recalled frankly that "the military and civil authorities and the Jewish representative expressed their profound regret at this grave decision [to evacuate]. The [Jewish] Mayor of Haifa made a passionate appeal to the delegation to reconsider its decision."8
When the Arab onslaught on Israel failed and the Arab leaders' promise of an early return and a take-over of Jewish property was revealed as an irresponsible, malicious miscalculation, the theme of Israel's responsibility for the flight and the plight of the Arab refugees developed.
The transfer of blame to the Jews was first of all a natural act of self-exculpation by the Arab leaders. It soon became a powerful propaganda weapon in the general war against Israel. Even sophisticated Arab apologists, pressed at times by the courtesies of debate to meet the challenge of the facts, parry the question. Thus, Albert Hourani, in an article in the London Observer on September 3, 1967, talks of the "myth that the Arabs left willingly under orders from their leaders." "No more than the most tenuous evidence was produced for this," writes Mr. Hourani. How many of his readers would know the facts, would know that Mr. Hourani's own words represented an act of collaboration in a monstrous fraud perpetuated by the Arab leaders responsible for the refugee problem?
The fraud developed. Its next feature was the inflation of the numbers of the refugees. Mr. Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee during the war, is a typical purveyor. In his 1960 speech at the United Nations, he set the number of "expelled"' Arabs at two million. The Arab spokesmen who succeeded him in the debate presumably considered this figure too high. On November 25, the Lebanese representative, Nadim Dimechkie, declared that "more than one million Arabs have been expelled." Four days. later, the spokesman for Sudan struck an average, speaking of the "expulsion of one and a half million Arabs." These speeches are characteristic; ever since the policy of falsification was adopted, the figure used by Arab spokesmen has never fallen below a million. The misrepresentation may be epitomised in a comparison of two, of Emil Ghoury's statements.
Emil Ghoury to the Beirut Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948
I do not want to impugn anybody, but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem.
Emil Ghoury in a speech at the United Nations Special Political Committee, November 17, 19609
It has been those [Zionist] acts of terror, accompanied by wholesale depredations, which caused the exodus of the Palestine Arabs.
In 1947, there were approximately one million Arabs in the whole of western Palestine. (British figures, certainly inflated, put the number at 1,200,000; independent calculations claim 800-900,000). Of these, the total number actually living in that part of Palestine which became Israel was, according to the British figure, 561,000.10 Not all of them left. After the end of hostilities in 1949, there were 140,000 Arabs in Israel. The total number of Arabs who left could not mathematically have been more than some 420,000.
At the time, before the policy of inflation had been conceived, these were the commonly stated proportions of the problem. At the end of May 1948, Faris el Khoury, the Syrian representative on the UN Security Council, estimated their number at 250,000. The even more authoritative Emil Ghoury (who twelve years later talked of two million) announced on September 6, 1948, that by the middle of June, at the time of the first truce, the number of Arabs who had fled was 200,000. "By the time the second truce began (July 17)," he said, "their number had risen to 300,000"11 Count Bernadotte, the UN Special Representative in Palestine, reporting on September 16, 1948, informed the United Nations that he estimated the number of Arab refugees at 360,000, including 50,000 in Israeli territory (UN Document A/1648). After July 1948, there was a fourth exodus of some 50,000 Arabs from Galilee and from the Negev.
The inflation may at first have been accidental. The United Nations at once provided the refugees with food, clothes, shelter, and medical attention. There was no system of identification; any Arab could register as a refugee and receive free aid. Immediately a large number of needy Arabs from various Arab countries flocked to the refugee camps, were registered, and thenceforth received their rations. Already by December 1948, when their total could not yet have reached the maximum of 425,000, the Director of the United Nations Disaster Relief Organisation, Sir Rafael Cilento, reported that he was feeding 750,000 refugees. Seven months later, the official figure had increased to a round million in the report of W. de St. Aubin, the United Nations Director of Field Operations.
The inflation of the numbers was helped not only by the understandable readiness of needy and greedy people to take advantage of free upkeep. The International Committee of the Red Cross pressed the United Nations Relief headquarters to recognise as refugees any destitute Arab in Palestine and to let him have refugee facilities in his own home. The Red Cross Committee made no effort to conceal its purpose; it claimed that it was becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate levels of need "between the refugees and the residents, as the Arab-occupied areas do not produce sufficient food or saleable goods to nourish. more than a small percentage of the resident population." If this fraudulent addition of 100,000 to the rolls for food and medical care was feasible, it would indeed be "senseless," as the Red Cross communication noted, also to force them "to abandon their homes to be able to get food as refugees." At least 100,000 ordinary Arab citizens in this category thus became refugees de luxe.
To round out the picture, both the Jordanian authorities and the Egyptian administration in the Gaza Strip insisted that the refugee rolls include any Arab who would be described as needing support as a result of the war of 1948. Though the United Nations Relief and Works Administration made gestures of protest, it finally accepted this situation, thus becoming a major partner in the deception. Moreover, it submitted to the decision of the host governments to deny it any opportunity to investigate the bona fides of claimant refugees. It was never possible to establish even whether the names on the relief rolls were those of living people or of persons long since dead.
Nor were the relief organisations permitted by the host governments to investigate or to take steps to combat the large-scale forging of and trading in ration cards, which had become a major well-known "racket" throughout the Middle East.
"There is reason to believe," reported the UNRWA Director as early as 1950, "that births are always registered for ration purposes, but deaths are often, if not usually, concealed so that the family may continue to collect rations for the deceased" (UN Document A/1451, pp. 9-10).
Nine years later, the UNRWA Director’s report for 1959-1960 equally laconically records that its figures of Arabs receiving relief -- 1,120,000 --do not necessarily reflect the actual refugee population owing to factors such as "the high scale of unreported deaths, undetected false registration, etc." (UN Document A/4478, p. 13). In October 1959, the Director had admitted that ration lists in Jordan alone "are believed to include 150,000 ineligibles and many persons who have died."
The result has been the creation of a large, amorphous mass of names, some of them relating to real people, some of them purely fictitious or relating to persons, long since dead, a minority relating to people without a home as a result of their or their parents' leaving Palestine in 1948, the majority relating to people who, whatever their origins, are now living and working as ordinary citizens but continuing to draw rations and obtaining medical attention at the expense of the world's taxpayers -- all of them comfortably lumped together in official United Nations lists as Arab refugees and vehemently described as "victims of Jewish aggression."
The economic interest of the individual Arab in the perpetuation of the refugee problem and of his free keep is backed by the accumulating vested interest of UNRWA itself to keep itself in being and to expand. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is thought of as some Olympian, philanthropic body directed and operated by a band of dedicated humanitarians, devoted exclusively to the task of helping suffering refugees. The fact is that the organisation consists of some 11,000 officials of whom all but a handful are Arabs who are themselves inscribed on the rolls as "refugees." They perform the field work; they, that is, hand out the relief. The remaining handful consists of some 120 Americans and Europeans who man the organisation’s central offices. Since UNRWA itself is thus a source of livelihood for some 50,000 people, no one connected with it has the slightest interest in seeing its task end or in protesting the fraud and deception it has perpetuated for over twenty years. The myth continues to live and to thrive, feeding on itself.
A strict examination of the reports of UNRWA itself will show that the facts of the fraud are essentially not concealed, rendering the misrepresentation in definitions and figures all the more deliberate. It is a misrepresentation that has been publicly exposed by diligent independent investigators. The American writer Martha Gellhorn publicly made these charges. Somewhat earlier, a detailed analysis of every aspect of the problem, the fruit of study year after year, had been published by Dr. Walter Pincer, who was consequently able to confront the international authorities with the facts and to publish them in two books.12
The UNRWA, disregarding its own reports in 1966, set the number of refugees at 1,317,749. In fact, the number of real refugees, as calculated by Dr. Pincer, was 367,000.
The difference of over 950,000 is roughly made up as follows:
Unrecorded deaths 117,000
Ex-refugees resettled in 1948 109,000
Ex-refugees who became self-supporting between 1948 and 1966 (85,000 in Syria, 60,000 in Lebanon, and 80,000 in Jordan) 225,000
Frontier villagers in Jordan (non-refugees) 15,000
Self-appointed non-refugees (pre-1948 residents of "West Jordan" and the Gaza Strip registered as refugees) 484,000
Of the real refugees, nearly half were in the Gaza Strip-155,000 out of 367,000. The reason is simple. Control of the Gaza Strip was in the hands of Egypt While Jordan, Lebanon, and even Syria did not restrict the movement of refugees or obstruct the efforts of the refugees themselves to rehabilitate themselves (provided they did not give up their status as "refugees"),13 the Egyptian authorities maintained a strict separation between "refugees" and the ordinary population of the area. The Gaza Strip, wrote Martha Gellhorn, "is not a hell-hole, not a visible disaster. It is worse. It is a jail" (Atlantic Monthly, October 1961).
The outline of the refugee problem is sharp and clear-cut. Many of them in the parts of western Palestine annexed by Jordan in 1950, in Syria, and in Lebanon, took affairs into their own hands and became more or less self-supporting though, like many hundreds of thousands of their neighbours who had never been refugees in any sense, they continued to supplement their earnings by the free food, free medical supplies, and even the free, if inferior, shelter provided by UNRWA.14
The remainder -- either unwilling or unable to work or forcibly prevented (in Gaza) from establishing themselves -- together with their progeny numbered less than 400,000 on the eve of the Six Day War.
Having established the image of a major problem, the Arab governments maintained and projected it. The fact that the vast majority of the Arabs who had actually left the Israeli part of Palestine had integrated into the life of their host country (or had emigrated to seek prosperity in Kuwait or elsewhere) did not disturb the myth. The governments had only to block any official scheme for resettlement of the refugees, so that the relief rolls never decreased, and to ensure the continued existence of camps that could be photographed, showing people labelled "refugees" living in circumstances of various degrees of sordidness and squalor.
In the early years after 1948, Arab governments did from time to time pretend to consider plans for the integration of refugees put forward by the United Nations. In 1952, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria all signed agreements with UNRWA for the execution of a plan for integration that was to cost the United Nations $200 million. The plan was adopted by the General Assembly of the UN on January 26, 1952. However, they never took any steps to implement the plan. Not a single one of the projects it envisaged was ever launched.
In the years that followed, other schemes were proposed. Any plan that involved resettlement of the refugees was automatically rejected. The Arab states agreed on one form of aid only -- charity, the annual United Nations grant for relief, most of which was spent on people who had no need of it or who had never in any sense been refugees.
If there had in fact been even as many as a million refugees, their integration could have been effected in a few years. In this period, vast international experience accumulated in integrating and resettling refugees. Since the Second World War, there have been some forty million refugees in the world. The vast majority were either driven physically from their homes -- where in some cases their families had lived for hundreds of years -- or fled under the immediate threat of physical danger or political oppression.
Immediately after the Second World War, some twelve million Germans were physically driven into Germany -- West and East -- from Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Romania. They left all their property behind. The transfer from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary was carried out with the prior approval of the three great powers participating in the Potsdam Conference -- the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States -- in the summer of 1945. The expulsion under these international auspices was carried out in such a way that many hundreds of thousands of refugees died in the process.15 Their property was confiscated; nobody even suggested paying them compensation. The territory of Germany had been reduced by some 20 percent; now its population was forcibly increased by 20 percent.
In the months of chaos that followed the end of the war in Germany, when hunger and suffering predominated, there was for a while some talk of returning at least part of the refugees to Poland and Czechoslovakia. Liberal President Eduard Bene's of Czechoslovakia replied on May 9, 1947: "If somebody should get the idea that this question has not been definitely settled, we would resolutely call the whole nation to arms."' Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov was no less explicit. "The very idea," he said, "of involving millions of people in such experiments [of reversing the process of eviction of Germans from Poland] is unbelievable, quite apart from the cruelty of it both toward the Poles and the Germans themselves."
The French Foreign Minister, Georges Bidault, added his government's opinion. "Poland's new frontier and the transfer of population are accomplished facts," he told the Council of Foreign Ministers in London in November 1947, "and it is no use thinking they can be reversed now."16
The West German government, confronted with gigantic physical, political, and psychological problems of reconstruction, did not hasten to accept the long-term implications of absorbing millions of refugees. Even five years after the end of the war, voices were still raised in the West from time to time, complaining of tardiness in their resettlement. Thereafter, the German government set in motion vast housing, education, and labour programs for the reintegration of fellow Germans into the national economy and society. It received no outside help; no international fund was set up; the United Nations Organisation never sought, nor was it asked, to deal with the deliberate uprooting- sometimes forcible, always against their will -- of twelve million human beings or with the problems attendant on their rehabilitation.
When, at the other end of the world, India was partitioned in 1947, fourteen million people became refugees within a few months. No international agency showed any sign of agitation at the terror-stricken flight of eight million Hindus from Pakistan and of six million Moslems from their homes in India. The Indian and Pakistani leaders made vain appeals to their peoples to stay where they were. They were certainly not to blame for the two-way exodus or for the bloody riots that preceded it. But both the Indian and Pakistani governments at once set about giving the refugees succour and homes. They first of all used the homes forsaken by the refugees who had fled in the opposite direction.
The exchange of populations in itself came to be viewed on all sides as a perfectly natural-indeed, as the best-solution to the problem of communal relations in the two states. Neither Pakistan nor India are wealthy countries, and the efforts of both peoples to solve the problem of absorption and integration went on for years. They received no international help; no special funds were set up to help them.
In 1947, after the Second World War, Finland was compelled to give up almost one eighth of her territory and at the same time to receive nearly half a million Finnish refugees expelled by the Soviet Union. In 1950, the Bulgarians expelled 150,000 Turks with whom they had last fought a war two generations earlier. These refugees, their property confiscated, were allowed to take personal belongings up to a value of two dollars when they were sent across the frontier into Turkey. The Turkish government, neither the richest nor most efficient government in the world, planned and carried out an absorption program that was completed in two years.
Tens of millions of refugees were thus absorbed by their own people, speaking the same language, with basically similar cultural backgrounds. Some were absorbed by foreign countries that owed them nothing except common humanity. A minority-rather more than a million-was settled in a variety of countries through the efforts of the International Refugee Organisation.
The perpetuation of the Arab refugee problem by the Arab states has the same central purpose as its creation: to bring about the destruction of the State of Israel. No Arab leader has ever tried to hide or obscure this aim. All have repeatedly made it clear that their refusal to absorb refugees into their large, empty, and population-hungry territories stems from their insistence on the right of the refugees "to return to their home," a "right" held to be identical with the right of the Arab people to Palestine. A natural corollary of this right is the destruction of Israel as a state. The perpetuation of the "refugee problem" is part of the same policy that refuses to concede Israel’s very right to exist.
"Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem not based on assuring the refugees' right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason," stated a resolution of the Refugee Conference held at Homs, Syria, in 1957. "If Arabs return to Israel -- Israel will cease to exist," Gamal Abdel Nasser himself said in an interview in Zibicher Woche, September 1, 1961.
The Arab states hoped to achieve the right to introduce into Israel an army (labelled refugees) to blow it up from within as they have failed to destroy it from without.
The cause of the Arab refugees has been maintained with the help of the Western nations and the manipulation of the United Nations Organisation by the Arabs and their supporters. United Nations decisions are based on the quintessence of the, interests of the participating nations or, in many cases, on the simple principle of buying political credit. Where a specific issue does not affect a country's interests directly, it votes for the side from which it expects some political benefit tomorrow--such is the basic law of nations. This circumstance has been exploited to the fall by the Arabs.
Having set up the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the international statesmen received its yearly reports, ostensibly read them, ignored the falsehoods and fraud they reflected, deplored the plight of the refugees, and passed a new vote of funds that served to perpetuate the problem.
Never was a problem less deserving of international aid-certainly not from the governments who have not considered lifting a finger even in charity for the tens of millions of innocent refugees driven or forced from their homes in all parts of the world: from the Finns In 1945, to the Biafrans in-1967-1969, to the Nilotic Negroes in Sudan, and the ten million East Bengalis who fled to India while this book was in preparation. Except for the Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland whom Hitler used as an excuse for war, and who on his defeat were forced into the restricted area of post-war Germany, the Arabs are the only people whose refugees are the product of their own aggression. That aggression, moreover, was designed to nullify a resolution of the United Nations itself. And they are the only people, not excepting the Germans, who deliberately created a refugee problem with the intent to destroy another people.
It was no great problem for the Arab nations, with their vast territory and resources, to absorb the 400,000 Arabs who left Israeli territory in Palestine. Even a million would have presented no insuperable problem. In fact, the vast majority of the refugees have been absorbed. The fantastically wealthy oil state of Kuwait has taken in large numbers of Palestinian Arabs who fled as well as many Arabs who simply emigrated. From Judea and Samaria, the part of western Palestine controlled by Jordan in the years 1948-1967, some 400,000 Arabs emigrated voluntarily, without aid.
The guilt of collusion goes even deeper. The Western statesmen have turned a blind eye to the fact that the Arab states, when they failed to destroy the Jewish state at birth, expelled or forced out large numbers of the Jewish citizens of their own countries. Of 900,000 Jews who were so driven out-and whose property was confiscated-Israel took in and absorbed nearly three quarters of a million.
All these Jews were private citizens, most of them members of families that had lived in those countries for many generations, some of them for hundreds of years before their Arab oppressors. A central ethnic feature of the whole of what is now called the Middle East and of the North African coast for more than 2,000 years has been the continuity there of Jewish life.
At the time of the -rebirth of Jewish statehood in Palestine, approximately one million Jews were living in this area. Arab propagandists usually claim that the Arabs treated "their" Jews with tolerance. This is, generally speaking, untrue. But except in Yemen, it is only comparatively recently that the Arabs became the rulers who could decide on the "treatment" of Jews or of other minorities in their states. That treatment was sad and horrifying. Yet the oppression and discriminatory practices of the period before 1948 are for the most part insignificant in the light of what happened to the Jews of those countries after 1948.
Their agony was not uniform. In Yemen (where Jewish origins are lost in antiquity but certainly go back 2,600 years), the Jews lived for generations as second-class citizens in a primitive, medieval society. Restriction, discrimination, and humiliation had been their lot since the Middle Ages, an era which in Yemen has not yet come to an end. Though they were not expelled after 1948, the danger to their safety was so blatant that the exodus of the whole community was organised from Israel in one large-scale operation in 1949 with the passive consent of Yemeni authorities. Arriving at the transit camps by bus, on foot, or on donkeys, from every comer of the mountainous and ragged kingdom, often after much harassment on the way, 48,000 Jews, most of them emaciated and sick and suffering from endemic eye diseases, were evacuated and flown to Israel in what became known as Operation Magic Carpet.
In other Arab countries, a much more savage tale unfolded. The years 1948-1960 may well prove to have been the blackest period in the annals of the Jewish communities in Arab countries. Humiliation and discrimination were the Jews' daily lot, then violence and looting and murder, then the closing of the borders to prevent their escape, only to have them suddenly opened again to engender the inevitable hasty empty-handed flight; such, in varying degrees of intensity, was the pattern. Most gruesome of all was the Jewish experience in Iraq and Egypt, which people in the West tend to treat as though they were civilised countries.
In Iraq, the range of repression of the Jews, growing in intensity from 1948, compares only with the worse excesses of the Nazi regime in the 1930s: violent searches, wanton vandalism, confiscation of goods, arbitrary extortion, often under torture; frequently, after release, re-arrest and repetition of the process of threat, violence, and extortion. These "processes of law" were covered by the Iraqi Proclamation of Martial Law of May 1948. Its refinements were considerably extended two months later by the simple expedient of adding "Zionism" to the list of capital crimes. Under this amendment to the Iraqi Criminal Code, it was sufficient for two Moslems to swear that they knew someone to be sympathetic to Zionism to render him liable to hanging. Though few hangings were in fact carried out, a wave of terror against the Jews followed. In consonance with the spirit of the time, Jews were ousted overnight from government service, deprived of licenses as doctors, and prevented from obtaining new clerical posts. The schools and universities were "cleansed" of Jewish students. Severe restrictions were imposed on Jewish merchants and banks.
For nearly two years this comprehensive persecution continued. At the same time, any attempt by a Jew to leave the country for Israel was declared a capital offence, Sentences of hanging, long imprisonment, and-in most cases--confiscation of property were imposed on a large number of Jews who were thus caught. To round out the picture, even Jews who had left in earlier years were tried in absentia and sentenced.
Suddenly, in March 1950, the government hastily pushed through the Iraqi Parliament a law enabling Jews to leave the country, provided they renounced their Iraqi citizenship. Emigrants were allowed to take only small cash sums; the property they left behind in Iraq, however, remained legally theirs. This omission was corrected a year later. In March 1951, after all but a handful of the 130,000 Jews of Iraq had registered for emigration and a substantial number had already left the country, the property of all of them was confiscated.
In Egypt before May 1948, the severities of economic repression and the ousting of people from hardly won positions and status in commerce and the professions were only theoretically mitigated for the Jewish community by the fact that in their early stage they were claimed to be directed against all foreigners and minorities. It was mainly Jews, however, who were the sufferers. Then a law was passed enabling the government to take over the property of anyone whose activities were deemed "prejudicial to the safety and security of the state" or who had been placed "under surveillance." Though this regulation could apply to everyone, it was in fact applied almost exclusively to Jews.
Indiscriminate arrest and imprisonment followed as well as pogroms in the streets of Cairo, with their inevitable crop of murder and destruction. Here, too, in order to ensure the maximum impact of terror, the gates were barred to departure and then suddenly opened in August 1949. Repression was relaxed until 1954, when Abdel Nasser, in the second phase of the "Egyptian revolution," took over power and brought down a new black night on the Jews of Egypt.
Thereafter, the regime of oppression, discrimination, and confiscation in a framework of police surveillance spread and deepened. Introduction of the techniques of Nazi Germany was facilitated by the generous employment of former officials of the Nazi regime who had fled retribution. Arbitrary confiscation of property was legalised and emigration was encouraged. The policy was accompanied by automatic sequestration. These measures, too, were directed against a few foreigners, but the victims were predominantly Jews born in Egypt.
A conference of World Jewish Organisations in January 1957 described how Jews were encouraged to leave Egypt:
Large number of Jews of all nationalities have either been served with orders of expulsion, or were subjected to ruthless intimidation to compel them to apply for permission to depart. Hundreds who have reached lands of refuge have testified that they were taken in shackles from prison and concentration camps to board ships. In order to ensure that this deliberate creation of a new refugee problem should not evoke protests from international public opinion, documents proving expulsion were taken away from expellees before departing Furthermore, they were compelled to sign statements certifying that they left voluntarily. The victims of this barbaric process were deprived of their possessions.17
By 1960, some 80 percent of the 85,000 Jews in Egypt had emigrated, leaving most of their property behind.18 Most of the remaining Jews followed before the Six Day War, and a smaller number emigrated after 1967. Israel absorbed about 50,000.
In varying degrees of harshness, some 900,000 human beings were arbitrarily driven or forced out from these and the remaining Arab countries, notably Syria, Algeria, and Morocco. Their number is thus about double that of the Arabs who abandoned their homes in Palestine in 1948. Some 700,000 of them were brought to Israel and were absorbed into the country. Almost all came penniless. Their property, which certainly far exceeded the abandoned property of Arabs in Israel, simply enriched the states that had driven them out.
Could an Orwell or a Kafka really have done justice to the monstrous fiction called the "Arab refugee problem"?
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one thing igeezy has never responded to is the denial of the universal human right of return... zionists have no ground for their arguments...
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lol...Again, you're confronted with facts and once again you choose to disregard them.
Do you know how it's called? ;D
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Lol wtf yes those palestinian are so very well looked after so much so in fact that they arent allowed to actually live within Israel. To get around this problem israeli employers used to lock the workers in the work premises, but then after a series of fires struck in which all of the palestinians inside burned to death as they has no means of escape they had to rethink things. Since that the workers have been forced to endure hundreds of miles worth of travelling each night to return outside of Israels borders. Man you are so brainwashed its the palestinian workers who keep the Israel economy afloat with dirt cheap labour first the israeli government and employers treat them like scum by forcing them out of Israel each night and secondly they are paid an absolute pittance employee rights? thats a joke they have non.. Also of course your countrys economic existence depends on the sickening amount of money that the U.S syphons off its own citizens and gives to Irael as "aid" that same aid is used to purchase yet more WMD'S and to further yet more building of settlements. Yet those lying bitches i mean your government insist "we dont have weapons of mass destruction" its obviously an evil anti semetic lie! ::)
You talk about terrorism and all this other bs, Israel was created by terrorism. Zionists carrying out the massive car bombing of the King George hotel which massacred hundreds of people. Your government says yes we want a settlement whilst all the time building yet more homes and erecting a monstrosity of a wall which btw has completely wiped out some palestinian businesses because it encroaches upon their land. But your right lets ignore all this, terrorism terrorism terrorism and freedom these are the 4 words you must live by as you want to ignore the reality, as a matter of fact since you refuse to accept this is true then to continue disagreeing with you is pointless.
Yes boys lets load up those missiles take on terrorists and stop countries from having nukes because nukes are bad but for us to have them is gooood. ::)
LMAO, mate you should pursue a career in comedy. I mean I understand that you're a misinformed propaganda victim and all, but the way you present your misconceptions is hilarious- so much vigour, so much heart...Very refreshing man, really.
95% of your post is pure disinformation and caricature that has been already refuted prior to this post, the other 5% are the Hotel Bombing which was targeted against the Brits who btw were responsible for deaths and explusions of Jews (out of which many Jews weren't let into Eretz Yisrael and found their deaths in the Holocaust), obstruction of a Jewish state and support of Pan-Arabism but why address this, right?
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confronted with facts? lol u already copied and pasted your info before... i already gave you my replies to your "information"... you zionists don't have any ground for your arguments so you go around in circles hoping you'll catch something you missed before... i don't need an essay you copied and pasted... just answer my question.. IF YOU CAN... why are palestinians denied their basic universal human right... which is the right to return to home...
i'll quote you to respond to you in the most concise way...
100% of your post is pure disinformation and caricature that has been already refuted prior to this post
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My previous post included an answer to your question(and this is not the first time I adress this question) so I don't really see the problem here.
If what you need is a simplification of the stated above, I'll be happy to supply one.
Palestinians who left prior to the declaration of the state of Israel had done so, because:
1. They would be safe from the attack of the Arab countries
2.They would be safe from alleged(and imaginary) 'Zionist atrocities' that were at the time propagated by Arab preachers(At the service of Pan-Arabic interests and due to British support) that wondered from village to village with the intent to cause exodus of Palestinians.[included in my previous post and is a historical fact]
3.They weren't attached to the land.
4.They were promissed by the Arab states that soon Israel would be eliminated and they would have the option return.
[Both 3 and 4 show the wanderer-tribal nature of this population like I have noted before]
Before you start dismissing this as propaganda bullshit here's a thought- where else in the world did you see an indigenous population that left its land voluntarily? I'm not talking about exiles(Like Jewish refugees from Arab Lands that were persecuted or Jews that were exiled from Eretz Yisrael at the begining of the Jewish diaspora) I'm talking about a voluntary leave, despite cases like Haifa where they were nearly begged by Jews to stay, and in fact some did, hence an Israeli Arab population that amounts to 20% of Israel's entire population nowadays.
Thing is, 'refugees' that started flooding hotels in the Arab world were described many times as mostly young people of draft age among which were many armed people.
Now you have to remember this was after the Partition Plan, the indigenous population was allocated with most of what today is Israel, Jews had minimal possession of what today is Israel, in other words, Palestinian refugees through their departure vulantarily cleared the way for the Arab States' Armies to invade Israel, gave them a green light,thus giving up their claim to a sovereign state- instead of fighting for their right to a sovereign state by Israel's side[that accepted the partition plan-thus, the right of the locals to a sovereign state] and against the Arab states.I understand it was hard to believe that a semi-declared state with a minor military infrastructure could actualy win a war against a number of Arab Armies,it's all about taking chances, but you can't expect Israel to give up it's existence(Because that's the thought behind the 'right of return'-Jewish majority jeopardized within Israel->Israeli democracy collapses->Israel disappears) to return a favour to those who helped in an attempt to destroy it instead of taking the peaceful way out.
I hope this answers your question.
And if I may, I want to ask you one. Since anyone who felt like it could write himself down as a REFUGEE:(read)
The United Nations at once provided the refugees with food, clothes, shelter, and medical attention. There was no system of identification; any Arab could register as a refugee and receive free aid. Immediately a large number of needy Arabs from various Arab countries flocked to the refugee camps, were registered, and thenceforth received their rations. Already by December 1948, when their total could not yet have reached the maximum of 425,000, the Director of the United Nations Disaster Relief Organisation, Sir Rafael Cilento, reported that he was feeding 750,000 refugees. Seven months later, the official figure had increased to a round million in the report of W. de St. Aubin, the United Nations Director of Field Operations.
The inflation of the numbers was helped not only by the understandable readiness of needy and greedy people to take advantage of free upkeep. The International Committee of the Red Cross pressed the United Nations Relief headquarters to recognise as refugees any destitute Arab in Palestine and to let him have refugee facilities in his own home. The Red Cross Committee made no effort to conceal its purpose; it claimed that it was becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate levels of need "between the refugees and the residents, as the Arab-occupied areas do not produce sufficient food or saleable goods to nourish. more than a small percentage of the resident population." If this fraudulent addition of 100,000 to the rolls for food and medical care was feasible, it would indeed be "senseless," as the Red Cross communication noted, also to force them "to abandon their homes to be able to get food as refugees." At least 100,000 ordinary Arab citizens in this category thus became refugees de luxe.
being that descendants of those refugees aren't refugees in reality but descendants of poor people along the Arab Wrold, how can you support their right of return if you deny the Jewish right of return based on the theory of some Jews being descendants of Khazzar tribes(If we accept your claim)?
Where's the logic?
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Before you start dismissing this as propaganda bullshit here's a thought- where else in the world did you see an indigenous population that left its land voluntarily? I'm not talking about exiles(Like Jewish refugees from Arab Lands that were persecuted or Jews that were exiled from Eretz Yisrael at the begining of the Jewish diaspora) I'm talking about a voluntary leave, despite cases like Haifa where they were nearly begged by Jews to stay, and in fact some did, hence an Israeli Arab population that amounts to 20% of Israel's entire population nowadays.
Thing is, 'refugees' that started flooding hotels in the Arab world were described many times as mostly young people of draft age among which were many armed people.
Now you have to remember this was after the Partition Plan, the indigenous population was allocated with most of what today is Israel, Jews had minimal possession of what today is Israel, in other words, Palestinian refugees through their departure vulantarily cleared the way for the Arab States' Armies to invade Israel, gave them a green light,thus giving up their claim to a sovereign state- instead of fighting for their right to a sovereign state by Israel's side[that accepted the partition plan-thus, the right of the locals to a sovereign state] and against the Arab states.I understand it was hard to believe that a semi-declared state with a minor military infrastructure could actualy win a war against a number of Arab Armies,it's all about taking chances, but you can't expect Israel to give up it's existence(Because that's the thought behind the 'right of return'-Jewish majority jeopardized within Israel->Israeli democracy collapses->Israel disappears) to return a favour to those who helped in an attempt to destroy it instead of taking the peaceful way out.
lol u think they cud really fight for their land on their own? all the arab states ganged up on israel and still lost what chance did the palestinians have on their own? what chance do they still have? its no wonder they turn to terrorism and gorilla tactics. in general Jews are rich and arabs a poor plus israel is financed and supported by the west particularly america which tips the balance of any fight hugely in their favour.
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2.They would be safe from alleged(and imaginary) 'Zionist atrocities' that were at the time propagated by Arab preachers(At the service of Pan-Arabic interests and due to British support) that wondered from village to village with the intent to cause exodus of Palestinians.[included in my previous post and is a historical fact]
Alleged and imaginary? LOLLLL I honestly don't understand how you can even try to deny this happened when it's FACT that it did... when the Zionists themselves have admitted to it... some were even claiming that ethnic cleansing was their goal... and here you are telling me it's imaginary... it's only as imaginary as the holocaust.... seriously, you've crossed the line from ignorant to str8 up retarded
being that descendants of those refugees aren't refugees in reality but descendants of poor people along the Arab Wrold, how can you support their right of return if you deny the Jewish right of return based on the theory of some Jews being descendants of Khazzar tribes(If we accept your claim)?
Where's the logic?
Are you really this dumb? The descendants of the refugees aren't refugees in reality? LOL.. are you even trying to make sense?
"along the Arab World"... what the hell are you even saying? They are the indigenous people of the land that entails modern-day Israel and the occupied territories.. I can support their right of return to their homes because they have one... I don't support the right of European colonists taking the land of a people... Zionism didn't start in Palestine... it wasn't a movement among the indigenous people... it started in Europe... it was European Jews who came and did what they did... just because they're of the same religion as the 5-10% of the indigenous population gives them the right to "RETURN" (they were never there to begin with)? Or wait... thousands of years ago, Jews ruled that land... and since the European Jews' ancestors converted to Judaism they now have the right to claim the land as theirs since they're of the same religion and God gave them the land...
You know what... at least show some respect by stepping your game up...I feel like Jordan being challenged by some chump on the streets who's airballing the whole time
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I can't believe you simply ignored the quoted Paragraph in my post> It is a fact
The United Nations at once provided the refugees with food, clothes, shelter, and medical attention. There was no system of identification; any Arab could register as a refugee and receive free aid. Immediately a large number of needy Arabs from various Arab countries flocked to the refugee camps, were registered, and thenceforth received their rations. Already by December 1948, when their total could not yet have reached the maximum of 425,000, the Director of the United Nations Disaster Relief Organisation, Sir Rafael Cilento, reported that he was feeding 750,000 refugees. Seven months later, the official figure had increased to a round million in the report of W. de St. Aubin, the United Nations Director of Field Operations.
The inflation of the numbers was helped not only by the understandable readiness of needy and greedy people to take advantage of free upkeep. The International Committee of the Red Cross pressed the United Nations Relief headquarters to recognise as refugees any destitute Arab in Palestine and to let him have refugee facilities in his own home. The Red Cross Committee made no effort to conceal its purpose; it claimed that it was becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate levels of need "between the refugees and the residents, as the Arab-occupied areas do not produce sufficient food or saleable goods to nourish. more than a small percentage of the resident population." If this fraudulent addition of 100,000 to the rolls for food and medical care was feasible, it would indeed be "senseless," as the Red Cross communication noted, also to force them "to abandon their homes to be able to get food as refugees." At least 100,000 ordinary Arab citizens in this category thus became refugees de luxe.
How can you refute something you haven't even read\comprehended, poor people along the Arab world simply wrote themselves down as refugees to receive free upkeep.
And since you need help as for the so called "atrocities":
An earlier Arab eyewitness account is a stunning refutation of the libel. On the fifth anniversary of the battle, Yunes Ahmed Assad of Dir Yassin wrote in the Jordan daily Al Urdun (April 9, 1953): "The Jews never intended to hurt the population of the village but were forced to do so after they met hostile fire from the population which killed the Irgun commander." The effect of the story was immediate and electric. The British officer who had done most in the years before 1948 to build up the Transjordanian Army, General Glubb Pasha, wrote in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948: "The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war." And the refugee from Dir Yassin, Yunes Ahmed Assad, has soberly recorded that "The Arab exodus from other villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews" (At Urdun, April 9, 1953).
p.s not a big sports fan so such puns are completely lost on me mate. ;)
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I didn't disregard your paragraph... when I was making my posts... I was talking about what you stated in point #2... the fact that SOME poor Arabs decided to classify themselves as refugees for benefits all of a sudden means there were no Palestinian refugees?
Anyways.. back to #2...
that's a nice little story... so if I post an account of people telling that what I stated is true... will you accept it as true and realize that you were wrong? or will my quote be simply considered propaganda and disregarded? just tell me what you want... a Muslim source, an arab source, a jewish source, a zionist source... ? you name it, I got it like Sam Goody's...
it's okay if you're not a big sports fan... i could explain to you that it is a person attempting to make a basket and instead just getting nothing but air, not even hitting the backboard... but all you would do is reply with "well it shouldn't be called an airball because the ball does hit the ground afterwards" and then you'd give me an encyclopedia entry on gravity to go off on your tangents... :)
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that's a nice little story... so if I post an account of people telling that what I stated is true... will you accept it as true and realize that you were wrong?
LMFAO...lol...
Man, this one is actually hilarious.
Now as for quoted facts, that's what I've been saying all along(and you were taking out of context,of course-look at your sig)
FACTS- YOU DON'T HAVE TO BELIEVE, FACTS- YOU HAVE TO KNOW
You're right this is not the first time we both quote things, and you're right the other person doesn't have to believe especially not if it's factual (because belief is not going to change a fact)
Do your own research, see for yourself- one can't argue/claim long as facts are unknown.
This is what I needed to hear man.
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that's a nice little story... so if I post an account of people telling that what I stated is true... will you accept it as true and realize that you were wrong?
LMFAO...lol...
Man, this one is actually hilarious.
Now as for quoted facts, that's what I've been saying all along(and you were taking out of context,of course-look at your sig)
FACTS- YOU DON'T HAVE TO BELIEVE, FACTS- YOU HAVE TO KNOW
You're right this is not the first time we both quote things, and you're right the other person doesn't have to believe especially not if it's factual (because belief is not going to change a fact)
Do your own research, see for yourself- one can't argue/claim long as facts are unknown.
This is what I needed to hear man.
Fact: Zionists did fuck up Palestinian villages.
Zionists, including some leaders, have admitted to this. If you want to know what's hilarious, it's you trying to defend them when they themselves admit it. Ariel Sharon wasn't wanted in Belgium for no reason.
If my friend was on trial and he said he was guilty, would me stating that he isn't change anything? You really need to start using some common sense.
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Fact: Zionists did fuck up Palestinian villages.
Zionists, including some leaders, have admitted to this.
FACT: Arab Leaders and Arab wandering preachers where the ones- to cause the so called Palestinian refugee problem and ( the way you'd put it-)to fuck them up.
FACT:Palestinian Arab population was coerced to oppose Zionism by its self-proclaimed leadership.
FACT:Palestinian Arab population was encouraged by the Brits to oppose Zionism
Testimony:
And the refugee from Dir Yassin, Yunes Ahmed Assad, has soberly recorded that "The Arab exodus from other villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews" (At Urdun, April 9, 1953).
Even in retrospect, in an effort to describe the deliberateness of the flight, the leading Arab propagandist of the day, Edward Atiyah (then Secretary of the Arab League Office in London), reaffirmed the facts:
This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country. [The Arabs (London, 1955), p. 1831
And as for Zionist leaders/ politicians admiting to things:
The Zionist establishment of 1948, in its eagerness to blacken the dissident underground, helped the libel along. Only years later did the Israeli Foreign Office correct the record (in Israel's Struggle for Peace, Israel Office of Information, New York, 1960) and in an extensive statement entitled "Dir Yassin," published on March 16, 1969. An earlier Arab eyewitness account is a stunning refutation of the libel. On the fifth anniversary of the battle, Yunes Ahmed Assad of Dir Yassin wrote in the Jordan daily Al Urdun (April 9, 1953): "The Jews never intended to hurt the population of the village but were forced to do so after they met hostile fire from the population which killed the Irgun commander."
1947, and May 15, 1948, the clash was largely between bands of local Arabs, aided in diverse ways by the disintegrating British authority and the Jewish fighting organisations.
Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit. -- It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.
The weekly As Sarih of Jaffa used even more scathing terms on March 30, 1948, to accuse the inhabitants of Sheikh Munis and other villages in the neighbourhood of Tel Aviv of "bringing down disgrace on us all" by "abandoning their villages." On May 5, the Jerusalem correspondent of the London Times was reporting: "The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, evidently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa."
If admitting intentions is an indication of guilt, as you would like to think, there were/are more of these proclamations in the Arab World:
Kenneth Bilby, one of the American correspondents who covered Palestine for several years before and during the war of 1948, soon afterward wrote a book on his experience and observations. In it he reported:
The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighbouring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea. [New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31]
The difference,however, is that Arab leaders mostly thought their admitted intentions(in the destruction of Zionism and it's goal-Israel) were legitimate and therefore presented them as such(even if they had an opposition within the Arab world- who the hell would hear it in a totalitarian regime?) while among the Zionists you could see differenet approaches to the issue, some overly dramatic and apologetic others overly practical. Something that, like in the case of Ben-Gurion, is an indication social sensitivity and justice.
p.s Here's what you guys are a product of:
The transfer of blame to the Jews was first of all a natural act of self-exculpation by the Arab leaders. It soon became a powerful propaganda weapon in the general war against Israel. Even sophisticated Arab apologists, pressed at times by the courtesies of debate to meet the challenge of the facts, parry the question. Thus, Albert Hourani, in an article in the London Observer on September 3, 1967, talks of the "myth that the Arabs left willingly under orders from their leaders." "No more than the most tenuous evidence was produced for this," writes Mr. Hourani. How many of his readers would know the facts, would know that Mr. Hourani's own words represented an act of collaboration in a monstrous fraud perpetuated by the Arab leaders responsible for the refugee problem?
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while among the Zionists you could see differenet approaches to the issue, some overly dramatic and apologetic others overly practical. Something that, like in the case of Ben-Gurion, is an indication social sensitivity and justice.
Thank You... why do you waste your time arguing, if at the end you're going to agree with me and come to the conclusion that I am right...
They wouldn't admit to something they hadn't done... so obviously if some decided to be "apologetic" because of "social sensitivity and justice" then obviously something must've happened.
Thanks again for finally making it clear and admitting that I'm right... I told you.. you can try to dance in circles with me all you want, but you're gonna keep trippin all over the place trying to keep up with me 8)
shalom
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while among the Zionists you could see differenet approaches to the issue, some overly dramatic and apologetic others overly practical. Something that, like in the case of Ben-Gurion, is an indication social sensitivity and justice.
Thank You... why do you waste your time arguing, if at the end you're going to agree with me and come to the conclusion that I am right...
They wouldn't admit to something they hadn't done... so obviously if some decided to be "apologetic" because of "social sensitivity and justice" then obviously something must've happened.
Thanks again for finally making it clear and admitting that I'm right... I told you.. you can try to dance in circles with me all you want, but you're gonna keep trippin all over the place trying to keep up with me 8)
shalom
lol I must say that your aspiration to, somehow, WIN an internet debate is extremely mature.
I like how you ignored the part about Arab Leaders not hiding their agenda as for destruction\murder of Israel\Zionism\Jews in general for all these years.
Also, how you ignored the fact they would have no "apologetic" or "socially aware" opinions aired(if they negate the leadership's interest) from within their states since they are all totalitarian regimes.
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Ok, so you want me to say that Arab leaders are fucked up TOO... there.. does that change anything, add to my/your argument, or take anything away? LOL...
the fact that you already agreed with me and proved my point is enough... do I really need to tell you that "I agree with you on this and this... " if you want some sort of appreciation for the quotes you pulled up.. look elsewhere...
I'm glad you've finally come to realize (or admit) the truth... :)
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Ok, so you want me to say that Arab leaders are fucked up TOO... there.. does that change anything, add to my/your argument, or take anything away? LOL...
the fact that you already agreed with me and proved my point is enough... do I really need to tell you that "I agree with you on this and this... " if you want some sort of appreciation for the quotes you pulled up.. look elsewhere...
I'm glad you've finally come to realize (or admit) the truth... :)
lol... many Jeiwsh takes on the situation have been aired, of all sorts(from left to right), it's a fact- I can't agree or disagree, it's a fact.
Is this new to you?
Primarily one sort of Arab takes has been aired, since we're talking about totalitrian regimes(meaning,if you're against the leadership you aren't heared), also a fact.
Which side is more socially sensitive to the other side then?
Where is the higher amount of objectivity? :)
Don't forget, the argument was not wether those Zionist takes that have been aired, on the situation, were real, it was "The right of return".
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See... you went from denying that Palestinians have been victims of Zionism to asking which side was more "socially sensitive"... that's all I really wanted.. for you to finally admit my initial statement was correct... but to answer your question... yes you're right, the Israeli side is more apologetic... but that's primarily because they have a lot more to apologize for :) As far as the highest amount of objectivity... that would come from the moderates on both sides... it's only too bad that the media often ignores this group from both sides.. and only focuses on the extremists/radicals from both sides.. however, none of this changes the fact that you have finally agreed with me... I'm glad.. not because I'm right and you were wrong.. rather due to the fact that you've finally realized or admitted the truth. :)
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I feel like Jordan being challenged by some chump on the streets who's airballing the whole time
LOOOOOL
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but to answer your question... yes you're right, the Israeli side is more apologetic... but that's primarily because they have a lot more to apologize for :)
Yeah man,I bet it has nothing to do with the fact Arab States are totalitarian ::)
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JML dont count on it.
Well said
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Check out the topical distribution in this article man. Could it be more all over the place?-The common denominator drawn out of this,however, is that Israel is fucked up. :)
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Israel is fucked up. :)
Finally.
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Israel is fucked up. :)
Finally.
The Palestinian Autonomy is great though.
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Israel is fucked up. :)
Finally.
The Palestinian Autonomy is great though.
I'd have to disagree with you on this one... I do agree that Israel is fucked up... but I don't necessarily believe that the occupied Palestinian territories are "great". :)
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Then I guess we agree.
Remember?!
....Understand one thing, my frustration with the conduct of the Palestinian side,while primary and prominent, is always accompanied with criticism toward Israel as well
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Then I guess we agree.
Good job, son... if you use common sense, you'll realize that I've been right all along, and if you agree with me, you too will see the truth. :)
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Then I guess we agree.
Good job, son... if you use common sense, you'll realize that I've been right all along, and if you agree with me, you too will see the truth. :)
lol...."All Along"="The Palestinian People are Victims of Zionism"="Genralization"="B.S"
Everything you were right about I was happy to point out right away, however, it's sad you don't see where you were clearly reciting propaganda.
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Then I guess we agree.
Good job, son... if you use common sense, you'll realize that I've been right all along, and if you agree with me, you too will see the truth. :)
lol...."All Along"="The Palestinian People are Victims of Zionism"="Genralization"="B.S"
Everything you were right about I was happy to point out right away, however, it's sad you don't see where you were clearly reciting propaganda.
Are you honestly implying that no innocent Palestinians have suffered because of Zionism?
If you are, then the discussion is over, and it's official that you're a brainwashed tool. Propaganda... just another thing a supporter of the Israeli government has no room to mention.... the country was established on propaganda..
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Are you honestly implying that no innocent Palestinians have suffered because of Zionism?
No I'm not,people suffered on both sides-fact(that hasn't ever been in question, why are you fixated on something we agreed on?),all I'm saying is that the distance between this and the being of the Palestinian People a victim of Zionism, is too great to make such a statement.
Did you know that Palestinian terrorist prisoners in Israeli detention facilities live 10s of times better than Palestinians in the Autonomy? How does this add up to that generalization of yours?
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Are you honestly implying that no innocent Palestinians have suffered because of Zionism?
No I'm not,people suffered on both sides-fact(that hasn't ever been in question, why are you fixated on something we agreed on?),all I'm saying is that the distance between this and the being of the Palestinian People a victim of Zionism, is too great to make such a statement.
Did you know that Palestinian terrorist prisoners in Israeli detention facilities live 10s of times better than Palestinians in the Autonomy? How does this add up to that generalization of yours?
I didn't state that EVERY SINGLE PALESTINIAN was a victim. Do you get it?
Since you answered NO to my question, you're basically agreeing with me, and confirming that my statement was right all along... next time don't dance around in circles before you come to the realization that I'm right.
Is it wrong to say that Jews were victims of anti-Semitism in Europe during the 1930s? I mean, there were some Jews who were wealthy and well off... do those exceptions make that statement false? Seriously... you really can't be this dumb, stubborn, and ignorant... if you are, then good luck in life cuz you're gonna need it.
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Is it wrong to say that Jews were victims of anti-Semitism in Europe during the 1930s?
First of all the fact of people suffering on both sides has never been in question. Second, I was waiting for this question of yours.
Many Jews had been victims of Anti-semitism that by definition was anti-Jewish(every anti-Semite is anti-Jewish), it does not mean that the Entire Jewish People had been a victim of anti-semitism even though The Jewish People was dwindled due to the holocaust( because large numbers of Jews died). Zionism: 1.by definition is not anti-Palestinian 2.increased the number of Palestinian People from 0 to millions.
And this is exactly why a generalization statement like "The Palestinian People have been Victims of Zionism" is propaganda, because it implies that the entire Palestinian People is a victim of Zionism(of every Zionist) and disregards the fact of Palestinians being victims of their leadership directly and indirectly ( the fact of Palestinians suffering from Zionism as a result of the reaction to the conduct of their leadership and not because of Zionist initiative.)....Check out my sig.
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Zionism: 1.by definition is not anti-Palestinian 2.increased the number of Palestinian People from 0 to millions.
And this is exactly why a generalization statement like "The Palestinian People have been Victims of Zionism" is propaganda, because it implies that the entire Palestinian People is a victim of Zionism(of every Zionist) and disregards the fact of Palestinians being victims of their leadership directly and indirectly ( the fact of Palestinians suffering from Zionism as a result of the reaction to the conduct of their leadership and not because of Zionist initiative.)....Check out my sig.
1. I never stated it was anti-Palestinian by definition; however, Zionist ideology has clearly made Palestinians the victims.
2. Increased the number of Palestinians from 0 to millions? LOLLL are you honestly this fucking ignorant?
Just because Palestinian nationalism emerged as a response to Zionism doesn't mean that there weren't any Palestinian people before the arrival of Zionist. The term used to describe the people may be new, but the people are the same people. When I say Palestinian I'm referring to the indigenous Arab population that was victimized by Zionists. Does the name being applied to the people change anything? No... it's still people dying...
It's like saying Columbus killed Native Americans... and some retard like you responding.. "No that's propaganda. The term Native
American wasn't used until centuries later."
3. I already discussed how the phrase doesn't necessarily apply to every Palestinian. Do you have difficulty comprehending?
LOL @ talking about propaganda and then saying "Zionism increased the population from 0 to millions"... if you really want to believe that, then throw something else into the equation...
Zionism = 0 + Millions - Thousands (killed, removed, etc.)
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I don't know if I should call you an idiot or not... I guess you explained yourself in the most concise way when you admitted that you "don't have to believe something that is factual".... a true Zionist at heart, I must say...
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When I say Palestinian I'm referring to the indigenous Arab population that was victimized by Zionists.
So those indigenous Arab people that welcomed Zionism are not Palestinian in your view? ;D- that's what you've just said.
That's the role of this definition you like to disregard. That's my point exactly, the term 'Palestinian People' is primarily a political ploy definition that implies resistance to Zionism under a self-determination camouflage, you've just admitted that this is how you see it. Those who don't resist Zionism are not even Palestinian in your view- with this axiom I'm not surprised you think The Palestinian People are victims of Zionism.
P.S You can't use the term "Palestinian People" not because such PEOPLE didn't exist by definition before Zionism but because it's a generalization.Being that only those who did not welcome Zionism are Palestinian in your view I see where you're coming from(- Propaganda World).
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^ :loco:
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increased the number of Palestinian People from 0 to millions.
2. Increased the number of Palestinians from 0 to millions? LOLLL are you honestly this fucking ignorant?
Just because Palestinian nationalism emerged as a response to Zionism doesn't mean that there weren't any Palestinian people before the arrival of Zionist. The term used to describe the people may be new, but the people are the same people. When I say Palestinian I'm referring to the indigenous Arab population that was victimized by Zionists. Does the name being applied to the people change anything? No... it's still people dying...
Maybe if you read my post in its entirety, and realize what it was in response to, you'll understand what's being said.
However, if you feel that you're unable to back your argument, then feel free to assume what you like... I'm sorry, sometimes I forget that you're extremely slow, and that I need to break everything down for you step by step....so here we go again for the kid that rides the short yellow bus to school...
1. I stated that the Palestinian people have been victims of Zionism
2. You then stated that there was no such thing as a Palestinian people until after the Zionists established themselves.
3. Then I posted:
"Increased the number of Palestinians from 0 to millions? LOLLL are you honestly this fucking ignorant?
Just because Palestinian nationalism emerged as a response to Zionism doesn't mean that there weren't any Palestinian people before the arrival of Zionist. The term used to describe the people may be new, but the people are the same people. When I say Palestinian I'm referring to the indigenous Arab population that was victimized by Zionists. Does the name being applied to the people change anything? No... it's still people dying... "
4. Then you made your last post to once again show everyone that you have no argument, and need assumptions and tangents to diverge from the argument... you keep wanting to start over and get another round of dancing in circles... you lost the argument, it's not a big deal.. there is no need for you to make yourself look like a bigger retard than you already have... the more you say, the dumber you sound... honestly.. read what my post was in response to... then read your last post... I pity you.
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When I say Palestinian I'm referring to the indigenous Arab population that was victimized by Zionists.
So those indigenous Arab people that welcomed Zionism are not Palestinian in your view? ;D- that's what you've just said.
;D Funny how you totally disregarded the way you gave your propaganda based views out.
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When I say Palestinian I'm referring to the indigenous Arab population that was victimized by Zionists.
So those indigenous Arab people that welcomed Zionism are not Palestinian in your view? ;D- that's what you've just said.
;D Funny how you totally disregarded the way you gave your propaganda based views out.
1. I didn't disregard anything... I clearly explained it in the last post, which you seem to have ignored like every other post that proves you're an idiot.
2. It's not propaganda. The "TERM" Palestinian "TODAY" refers to the same people that the Zionists encountered. You see... it's like calling the Native Americans the indigenous people of the Americas... just because the term wasn't used back then, doesn't make it propaganda to say "Native American"...
3. You really seem to have run out of shit to say... I mean at least give us some propaganda or something, like you usually do.. cuz right now you're not saying anything...
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I didn't disregard anything... I clearly explained it in the last post, which you seem to have ignored like every other post that proves you're an idiot.
But wait didn't you say:
You're a tool man... no joke... I don't even blame you though... I'm not saying you're an idiot, although you've made some retarded remarks
So what are you saying Jamal, each of your posts seems to contradict your previous ones, this is just an analogy you've supplied.
When you've stated that when you say Palestinian you mean that indigenous Arab population that suffered from Zionism, it was a propaganda slip man, showing that you view as Palestinians only those indigenous Arabs who have suffered from Zionism. It's like saying 'when I say Native American I mean those indigenous people that were slaughtered by pilgrims'<again a generalization inferring that anyone who hadn't been slaughtered by pilgrims can't even be called Native American(in the view of the one who sayes it).
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1. If I decide not to call you an idiot once, and call you one later, it makes it a contradiction? Before you were trying to argue in an irrational manner, but now it seems like you've realized that your argument isn't going anywhere.. so you're sounding like a complete idiot... you don't even make sense anymore. What I'm saying is evident from how you've completely side-tracked from the argument.. and instead just started focusing on irrelevant points taken out of context, where the questions you bring up are explained in the lines right after the ones you decide to quote.
2. It wasn't a "propaganda slip"... what you're saying makes no sense. It was the indigenous population... which is now known as Palestinians, by its modern term.
Another example of you being an idiot....
"It's like saying 'when I say Native American I mean those indigenous people that were slaughtered by pilgrims'<again a generalization inferring that anyone who hadn't been slaughtered by pilgrims can't even be called Native American(in the view of the one who sayes it)."
This is your problem. You have trouble comprehending simple English. I don't know if you fuck up trying to translate it into Hebrew or Russian or whatever... but read my post...
"The TERM Palestinian TODAY refers to the same people that the Zionists encountered. You see... it's like calling the Native Americans the indigenous people of the Americas... just because the term wasn't used back then, doesn't make it propaganda to say Native American"
You see how I capitalized the words TERM and TODAY... but you still missed the whole point? LOLLL... maybe glowing text will help you... my post had nothing to do with "native americans being slaughtered and those who didn't get killed can't be called native americans"... if that's the parallel you assumed I was making in my reference to the Palestinian people as the indigenous population living in the land of Palestine... then you're confused.
3. Not only are you confused... but you've brought the confusion upon yourself by trying to diverge from the argument... and trying to bring up something new... it's almost as if you're trying to lose as many arguments as you can within a certain amount of time... well you're on your way to the record books here.
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It's propaganda to say "The Palestinian People had been a victim of Zionism". Think for a sec(Drop the word play mate), what if a person that knowes absolutely nothing of the conflict runs into something like this, don't tell me you don't see it(Well yeah, you're a product and all but try at least)! Suddenly generalization and misinformation are not characteristics of propaganda!. You can post pages over pages man, but you've been exposed in the clearest way possible...It's like saying "The world had been a victim of Judaism for centuries"<<This is something I've actually heared from people.
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It's not propaganda, retard.
It's correct to say that Native Americans were victims of colonization in America, in the same way it is correct to say that Palestinians have been victims of colonization in Palestine.
Just because you're referring to the people as a whole, doesn't mean that EVERY SINGLE PERSON was a victim.
Let me give you another example... since your head works a little slower than others'...
"The people of Sri Lanka suffered because of the tsunami"
Is that propaganda? LOLLL
Get the fuck outta here... you're not on my level man... you need a better grasp on language before you try arguing with me... your Hebrew-English dictionaries won't help you much in situations like this.
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Get the fuck outta here... you're not on my level man... you need a better grasp on language before you try arguing with me... your Hebrew-English dictionaries won't help you much in situations like this.
This is your strongest argument so far man^
All good aside from the fact of the Palestinian People not being victims of Zionism (in any way) but victims of their tribal nature and their pseudo-leaderships. People who lived for centuries under all sorts of occupations were victims long before Zionism showed up in Eretz Yisrael and will remain as such as long as they are ruled by power thirsty leaders who manipulate them into all kinds of shit and then point out the "enemy".
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People who lived for centuries under all sorts of occupations were victims long before Zionism showed up in Eretz Yisrael and will remain as such
I'm glad you pointed that out... Zionism makes a lot more sense now.
"They're victims anyway."
It's like stealing a dollar from a homeless guy and saying "He's poor anyways.. that dollar wasn't gonna change his life around or anything"
But then again... I'm talking to a Zionist here... so you may even agree with that LOL
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You are officially the master of taking statements out of context. I'm glad you see my point though.
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You are officially the master of taking statements out of context. I'm glad you see my point though.
I think you still got the crown... anyways, I didn't expect much more from you.