A Campaign to Challenge Israeli Apartheid Palestinian Campaign

[Violet_Crumble]

Targeting Jewish National Fund (JNF) Charitable Status in Canada to be Launched on Land Day

by Kole Kilibarda and Hazem Jamjoum
March 31, 2005

On 30 March 1976, thousands of indigenous Palestinians occupied by Israel in 1948 participated in a mass strike against systematic discrimination triggered by the government’s plans to expropriate 5,500 acres of Arab-owned land. The villages of Arraba, Sakhnin, Deir Hanna and other smaller communities in the Galilee – a region of northern Israel with a Palestinian majority – were particularly targeted. The Israeli police responded to the demonstrations with violence, killing six unarmed Palestinian youths, wounding another hundred activists and arresting over three-hundred people.

In the intervening years, these events have become consecrated in Palestinian memory as Land Day and are celebrated on both sides of the ‘Green Line’ (i.e. the 1949 Armistice Line that separates ‘Israel’ from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip). Just as the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960 served to galvanize a whole generation of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, the killings of Raja Abu Rayya, Khader Khalayla, Khadija Shawahneh, Khair Yassin, Mohsen Taha and Ra’fat Zuheiri on 30 March 1976 mobilized a sense of community among Palestinians in opposition to the systematic racism they faced within the Israeli state. The demonstrations were an important moment in the re-invigoration of community activism through organizations like the Communist Party and younger groupings of Palestinian activists such as the Abna-l-Balaad movement (or Sons of the Land).

The massacre also highlighted the Israeli government’s strategy of yehud ha-galil, the project of ‘Judaizing’ the Galilee, which remained a clandestine program until 1976 when it was openly adopted as a slogan of the Israeli Housing Ministry. The rationale for this policy was provided by Israel Koenig - the head of the Israeli Interior Ministry’s Galilee Division - in a report drafted for then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. This report was leaked in 1976. It claimed that the Palestinian citizens of Israel were “a cancer in the Jewish body that had to be curbed and contained” and argued for a policy of “terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.” The Koenig report led to a brutal wave of land confiscations and the establishment of Jewish settlements known as mitzpim (‘lookouts’ in Hebrew) in the Galilee, culminating eventually with the general strikes and protests of Land Day.

Uri Davis’ recent book Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (2004) helps to underline the on-going colonial and racist nature of the Israeli state itself. Davis’ book argues that a central component of Israel’s colonization project continues to be the so-called ‘redemption of the land’ – read: the forcible expropriation of Palestinian livelihood for the purposes of Jewish-only settlement. The slogan of ‘redeeming’ land was used by early Zionists to highlight one of the central goals of the Zionist movement, which was to acquire lands in Palestine for Jewish-only settlement. This slogan was first adopted by early Zionists and entrusted as a task to the Keren Kayemet LeYesrae’l or Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF), which was established during the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 as an executive arm of the Congress. Since then the JNF has continued to acquire lands for Jewish-only settlement, often establishing new communities or ‘natural reserves’ over destroyed Palestinian villages.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=7558

[Hardrada]

1. People should be more aware of this.

[Coastie for Truth]

2. The Palestine Right To Return Group of Canada

http://www.al-awda.ca/ which advocates a single state, Judenrein solution, was the source for the zmag article. I am not denigrating the source, just questioning how fair and unbalanced it is.

And, what about the fact that in the years between 1945 and 1970, nearly one million Jews, indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, were compelled to flee, sometimes brutally, from the lands of their birth. They fled in a hurry and under harsh conditions. They fled Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Aden, Tunisia and Iran. And “on the wings of Eagles”, nearly 36,000 Jews from Ethiopia landed safely in Israel. (My mother-in-law's family are Sephardic; my dad's grand nephew is married to a Sephardic woman) www.jimena.org

And what about three generations of Jewish engineers and chemists who have subjected to racism by the petroleum industry as a result of over eager compliance with the Arab League Boycott Office's directives.

[dameocrat]

6. May have had something to do with things like

the Lavon Affair. I don't think Israel cared whether it's actions caused a backlash against those groups, anyway it was mostly a responce to the creation of Israel itself. Never said Arabs were geniuses. They certainly added to the problem.

[Colorado Blue]

3. I'm shocked that this post has been presented here, in

what we are attempting to make a fair and balanced forum to discuss delicate and painful issues. This is agit-prop, not news.

Why not simply draw an "X" on Israel and say, "Bomb Here!"?

***

It is not news that Israel was created to provide a homeland for the Jewish people, who have lived in diaspora for 2,000 years as well as continuously IN Israel and on the West Bank, and within surrounding Arab states. The need for such a refuge was pressing following the Holocaust and even though Britain, who then controlled the region, began limiting sales of land and withdrawing support for Israel following the war, due to pressure from the Arab majority, the state was created with the blessings of the UN.

However Israel is NOT monolithically Jewish and has many citizens who are Muslim, Christian, Druze, Arab - and could have had many more except that the provisions for a two-state system in Israel, which would also have created an ARAB state, were immediately rejected and war was immediately declared, in 1948.

This post is completely ignoring the genesis of these many decades of war, in the refusal to accept the Jewish presence at all. It is completely ignoring the expulsion of 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jews from Arab lands, beginning the 1940's. It is completely ignoring the decades of war and terrorism that have followed, to this day.

There could have been a Palestinian state, much larger than the one now proposed, in 1948. This could have been a far more cosmopolitan and culturally rich, diverse region, not a war torn area of terrified and divided peoples.

Instead, war was declared on the Jews, numbering about 600,000, by Arab states whose population totaled some 50,000,000, and whose resources were vast. War and terrorism have followed in successive waves, for DECADES.

If territories were lost in that war, and if anger and pain have resulted, why is there now surprise?

Furthermore, labelling Israel "rascist" and "apartheid" is ridiculous. In the first place - and what makes the whole situation even sadder - Israeli Jews and regional Arabs are of the same race, except for those few remnants of far flung tribes who have straggled home from Ethiopia and India. Moreover, Arab citizens of Israel are CITIZENS of Israel, with full rights. This is not a South Africa situation. The Occupied Territories, as the poster well knows, came under Israeli control as a result of armies poised to overrun the state. There are plenty of links to the 6 Day War on this forum. If anybody wants another one I will add one.

If the citizens of the OT territories have been treated like enemies, that is probably because they have been enemies. Only recently, since the death of Arafat, have the Palestinian people shown a clear will to form a democratic state of their own in favor of continuously attempting to destroy their neighbor.

***

As far as to the claims of people being chased away, from everything I've read some people got chased away. However, many Jews were and have been victimized as well. Most of the Arabs who fled the fledgling state of Israel, from what I can determine from OBJECTIVE sources, were from urban areas. The land WAS in disrepair, and had been the property, not of any Arab state, but of the Ottoman Empire, for centuries. Before that, there had been wars, crusades, and Rome.

Meanwhile, Jewish people have been living in Israel, continuously, since Biblical times. Their rights have not always been respected. There were murders of Jewish settlers as well as pressure on Arabs. Indeed, there were gangs of Jewish terrorists as well as gangs of Arab "fedayeen", who victimized Jews.

Meanwhile, land was PURCHASED by Jewish settlers. More would have been fairly purchased, had not the British, at a particularly horrible time in Jewish history - following WWII and the Holocaust - decided to stand in the way of such land sales, lock Jewish refugees from the horrors of Europe in concentration camps and prevent them from emigrating to Palestine - the one place in the world where they were wanted.

Indeed, I don't think the British role in stirring up hatred for Jews among the Arab population can be underestimated. The powerful Arab Legion, headquartered in Transjordan, was heavily armed and led by an Englishman.

What was at stake? A powerful and independent set of states in the Eastern Mediterranean, who would have challenged British hegemony in the area - gateway to the Orient and to the all-important oil fields. Meanwhile, Arab discrimination against Jews was exploited. Arab ownership of oil carried a lot of weight. War might have been hard to avoid in any case, given nascent Arab nationalism. With interference from the Great Powers and the oil companies, it was practically guaranteed.

One could go on and on. In modern times, one could mention Darfur, for example, because it is pointless and blinding to look at Israel and NOT look at the Middle East and surrounding regions, as a whole. It is irresponsible to look at I/P and not look at the violence within the Arab community, as well, and it is historically inaccurate not to accept that this violence has had a cause and effect dynamic in Israel.

One could also point out that language like that presented in the article is quite similar to language used to justify war in Iraq: Saddam Kills His Own Citizens, and so forth.

***

The person who posted this presents herself as an objective individual whose ideal is to see two peaceful and democratic states living side by side: Israel and Palestine. Indeed, efforts are underway to disentangle the two, end six decades of war, withdraw from the settlements in the O.T. and smooth the path to peace. Even now, violent militias in surrounding states as well as within Palestine threaten the process.

Given that warfare and terrorism have been practically constant since the 1940's, and that Arab leadership in surrounding states as well as within Palestinian regions has been geared both to talking about war and waging war up until quite recently, I think it's a miracle we even retain the humanity and the tolerance to try and work this out.

Beyond the obvious historical flaws in the presentation, how is such unbalanced invective supposed to support that goal?

***

Sometimes I wonder, what the hell's the point? No matter how hard one tries, if the other side really feels this way, why bother trying to make peace?

[Violet_Crumble]

4. Yeah, why can't we use fair & balanced stuff like Campus Watch?

:shrug:

Tis absolutely disgusting that Land Day even be mentioned in this forum!! And for the authors of this article to even utter the thought that the JNF may act in a racist and discriminatory way is something that all us fair and balanced folk MUST counter by trotting out the Israeli narrative of Israel's history. In that narrative Israel is never to blame for anything - everything that happens to the Palestinians and Israeli-Arabs, while unfortunate, is what they brought on themselves with their hatred of Israel. There is only room for one good guy in this narrative - and that good guy is Israel. Move over everyone else! And after I've talked for a bit more about how evil everyone else was, and bemoan the fact that those Palestinians just don't seem to have wanted peace and use flimsy excuses like the stealing of their land and the killing of their children to hate us for what we are, not what we do, then I'll hope that no-one's noticed that what I said wasn't entirely correct as it had huge chunks missing and was markedly slanted, had bugger all to do with the JNF and its policies, nor did it have anything else to do with Land Day....

[Colorado Blue]

5. Violet - balanced means presenting BOTH sides, not just

one.

Naturally, in response to an unbalanced presentation, one must attempt to redress the imbalance by presenting the other POV. That is why this is a discussion board and not a billboard.

People are not going to react positively, nor are hardline supporters of EITHER side, going to modify their positions, in response to articles or headlines or posts that are intended to start fires, or cause pain, or continuously present one side or the other in the worst possible light.

Indeed, since you are an advocate of the Palestinian cause, I can suggest many ways of helping supporters of Israel see their POV. This ain't it.

How would you, or even more pointedly, how would a Palestinian person feel, if I were to cruise the net looking for articles written in such a way as to make the Palestinian people, or their nascent nation, or their history, look cruel or bad? You know there are plenty of sites out there that one could search, which could provide inflammatory and hurtful material.

However, making people MORE divided would be the result. And that is NOT my purpose.

Were you a right-wing Jewish person, with a hatred and contempt for Arabs, I'd be arguing hard for the humanity of the Arabian people. I would be trying to make you see that European culture isn't the ONLY culture with something to offer the world. I'd be arguing hard for a culture of mutual respect, and for the rights of Palestinian people. I would be pointing out the difficulty of their recent past, the wars, the poverty of life under the Ottomans. In other words, I would be fighting to present their humanity.

And believe me, I have done just that - many, many times.

What I would NOT do, is AGREE WITH YOU. Nor will I agree with you when you present an article like the above, making accusations, definitely causing great pain.

I think it would be interesting to discuss Land Day, or any number of issues, but if confronted by 24 point headlines screaming "RACIST" and "APARTHEID" and offering a threat to try and cut off very necessary assistance, then I am going to try and offer an alternative POV.

In that way, we can start healing, and start coming together.

Presenting hot-button issues, with banner headlines screaming "racism" and "apartheid", is only going to cause pain and reinforce fear. It actually serves to empower the forces of hatred and darkness. It does nothing to heal, and actually serves only to harden positions against the people you want to help, not to soften them.

[dameocrat]

8. I don't believe you are all that balanced in your views

so why should they have to be?

[Colorado Blue]

12. It's one thing to have a POV, it's another thing to present

smear campaigns. It's one thing to argue your point of view, it's another thing to empower broad-brushed attacks.

There's a big difference; I'm sure one can see that?

Right?

[dameocrat]

15. In this thread you published an article claiming the

Palestinian resistence leaders helped Hitler plan the final solution. Is that fair or balanced. I would call that a ridiculous demonization of a movement toward political autonomy from Israel. You are attempting to turn them into Nazies. I believe that the settlements on the West Bank are apartheid. The settler only roads are proof. So does the Israeli organization Btsleem.

[Colorado Blue]

22. The article does NOT accuse the Palestinians of this.

Nor is it supposition. It is fact. Nor did I say Palestinians planned this. It came from outside, from other Arab states.

One must remember, the Germans had control of much of the Arab world, and Turkey as well, during and preceding the War. There really was a Nazi presence in the region. I'm sure you've read about WWII in Africa and the Middle East?

Their disease, their bigotry, infected the Arab world.

Arab demagogues MANY years before the birth of Israel were speaking out violently against Jews, threatening and advocating a "final solution" in the M.E. Their attitude lead DIRECTLY to the inability of Palestinians to accept at face value the offered extension of citizenship to ALL within the new state. Those long-ago speeches, that hatred, damaged, for all these many decades, the possibility for Israelis and Arabs to live in peace.

Moreover, the speeches by the Egyptian mentioned in the article, threatening the Middle Eastern Jews should Israel be formed, hastened and reinforced the absolute NEED for Israel. It was apparent that the expulsions would occur long before the actual War of Independence, and long before the Palestinians had lost a single acre of land.

Palestinians could have lived within Israel as citizens, and they could have had a state in 1948, had they only NOT LISTENED - but they did.

Nevertheless, it wasn't really up to them, as the combined nations attacked the new state from all directions. So even if the Palestinians HAD listened, and wanted to stay and live either within Israel or along side it, the demagogues from the surrounding states wouldn't allow that to happen.

Even now, threats of violence from armed groups such as Hamas, outside of and within the Palestinian territories, threaten all.

***

I agree that the people living in the OT should have their freedom.

But calling for damage to Israel isn't going to bring that about, nor is blindness about the role of Arafat and the outside agitators in prolonging the agony and creating an atmosphere in which no progress could occur. Nothing good will occur as long as cries for Israel's blood resound.

That will only empower the people who hate, the people whose fear has blinded them to the humanity of the Palestinian people.

[Violet_Crumble]

26. Yeah, why won't people understand Israel was the only Good Guy in all this

?

It was all anyone else's fault! The Zionists at the time didn't do or think anything wrong! They extended their hand in peace to the Jordanians offering to split up the proposed Palestinian state between them so that there would be no new Arab state. And what gratitude do they get from the Palestinians? Nothing! Ingrates! Arafat was bad and Sharon is good! There. I think I've got it just right with the balance now, eh? ;)

btw, claims that any Arab states helped Hitler plan the Final Solution don't make a whole lot of sense. The Nazis kept the Final Solution a secret to the German people (reality was that many Germans worked out what was going on, but the Nazis wouldn't openly state that's what they were doing), but freely shared the news with the Arab states? As with any other claim that (insert name of group to be vilified here) were in thick with Hitler on the Final Solution, this one originates from rather vile and empty minds who prefer to bypass historical evidence when it comes to the Nazis secretiveness regarding the Final Solution. What next? Hitler admired Arabs and thought they were equal to his 'Wonder-Aryans'?


Violet...

[Lithos]

32. No

The Nazis kept the Final Solution a secret to the German people (reality was that many Germans worked out what was going on, but the Nazis wouldn't openly state that's what they were doing

The Wannsee Conference, 1942. The German Nazi High Command openly admitted to the "ausrotten" version of the Final Solution to non-Nazi civilian leaders. However, by that time, the Einsatzgruppen had operated for about a year and half in Poland and the occupied portions of the Soviet Union and many Jews in Germany/Austria had already been either Ghettoized or moved to the camps. The die had already been cast by the time it was admitted at Wannsee.

Also of note is that the "Final Solution" was a functional outcome of a very deliberate focus laid out well in advance by Hitler and his group starting with the 1930's and possibly earlier if you count Mein Kampf. Hitler didn't care if the Jews, Gypsies or Gays lived or died - they were non-people to him, so long as they were out of the area he had reserved for himself. By 1940 and the start of Operation Barbarossa, this meant extermination.

Even from the 1930's, Hitler and Mussolini's comments struck some very sympathetic chords with several Fascist- Arab leaders who were politically attracted as a way to counter Anglo-Franco colonialism and because they too were also attracted to the usual Fascist claptrap about establishing some sort of homogeneous nation where tolerance for others is minimal. In this case it fit nicely as Jews (and Christians) had already long been considered second-class citizens and more recently agents of Anglo-Franco colonists.

Fascists almost always admire other Fascists.

L-

[Violet_Crumble]

33. The Final Solution was kept a secret by the Nazis...

At times it was a clumsily kept secret, but it was never publicly admitted to in Germany or elsewhere. The Nazis didn't feel any shame over what they were doing, but they didn't trust the German people to understand why it was happening, and they were almost obsessive about public opinion at the time. While participants at the Wannsee Conference would have been in no doubt about what was to happen, the non-Nazi civilian leaders would have been a reasonably small number of high-level civil servants who passed the orders down the line to their underlings...

I know less about Italy under Mussolini than I should, but I thought Mussonlini's form of fascism wasn't nearly as fanatically racist as that of the Nazis. While nasty creatures, not all fascists were into genocide. And the Final Solution was genocide and not just the persecution and discrimination that fascists were renowned for. What I object to and what is historically inaccurate is the recent posts in this thread accusing Arab leaders of being in cahoots with the planning and/or execution of the Final Solution. Admiring fascism would be a claim I think would be sound, but to claim assistance in the Final Solution is something totally different...

There's a book I read last year called 'The Terrible Secret' by Walter Laquer. It gives an excellent look at how and when people found out about the Final Solution, what the reaction was to what they were hearing, and what if anything was done. He covered the German people, neutral and occupied European countries, Britain, the US, and Jewish communities outside of Europe. I don't recall him covering Arab countries, but I was kind of focused on some of the other ones I mentioned, so I probably missed entire chunks of book in the process...

Violet...

[Lithos]

39. Mussolini, etc.

At times it was a clumsily kept secret, but it was never publicly admitted to in Germany or elsewhere. The Nazis didn't feel any shame over what they were doing, but they didn't trust the German people to understand why it was happening, and they were almost obsessive about public opinion at the time. While participants at the Wannsee Conference would have been in no doubt about what was to happen, the non-Nazi civilian leaders would have been a reasonably small number of high-level civil servants who passed the orders down the line to their underlings...

There were quite a few others who knew what was going on. But yes, it was never formally broadcast to the public. But for the most part, the man (and woman) in the street would have known, maybe not the scale, but known something was up. Max Schmeling, for instance, used his position to protect Jews during Kristalnacht.

As for the world, knowledge of the Holocaust was known in the Yeshiva while it was happening. They were also known of by the Allied command. FDR personally prohibited the bombing of concentration camps as it was felt that the lack of precision capabilities that would have caused tremendous loss of life on the ground coupled with the need to keep focused on German industrial targets made such an operation non-necessary.

I know less about Italy under Mussolini than I should, but I thought Mussonlini's form of fascism wasn't nearly as fanatically racist as that of the Nazis. While nasty creatures, not all fascists were into genocide. And the Final Solution was genocide and not just the persecution and discrimination that fascists were renowned for. What I object to and what is historically inaccurate is the recent posts in this thread accusing Arab leaders of being in cahoots with the planning and/or execution of the Final Solution. Admiring fascism would be a claim I think would be sound, but to claim assistance in the Final Solution is something totally different...

It depends on how you view this. Agreed, Mussolini's form of fascism was violent and oppressive towards internal opposition, it was not especially racist initially. However, it was extremely violent, oppressive and racist to the colonies.

You see Mussolini subscribed to one of the fascist standby's, Social Darwinism, and felt that the Italians by stent of their heritage and natural worth were superior and entitled to reestablish a Second Roman Empire. Concentration camps and massacres of civilian populations in Libya and Ethiopia were the norm under his period of Italian control. While the number I've heard varies, anywhere from several hundred thousand up to 1.5 million Muslims died in Libya and anywhere from 20-40,000 Ethiopians died during the short period of control.

But by the early 40's, once the die had been cast with Hitler, Mussolini did enact and enforce some rather strict anti-Semetic laws which did result in the death of many of Italy's Jews.

L-

[Jdemsindiana]

76. The Mufti

The Mufti actually visited several concentration camps in order to design one near Nablus

[Violet_Crumble]

81. Oh, well. If you say it, it must be true...

And then the Grand Mufti travelled back by magic carpet to Nablus where he was welcomed with open arms by the British, who realising their mistake in expelling him, sat down to tea and cucumber sandwiches and hatched a post-war plan to really bugger things up by handing the British Mandate over to the nasty and evil soon-to-be UN ;)


No links, no nothing. Please explain why the Grand Mufti was let into Hitler's confidence when many other leaders weren't. Or don't we need to have things explained to us in any rational or logical manner?



Violet...

[Colorado Blue]

38. Please see the posts I'm appending below. There is ample

documentation which should interest you, as a student of these events.

[Name removed]

70. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[dameocrat]

9. Actually it wasn't until the churches started threatening

Israel with boycotts and the International Court told Israel to move the damn wall, that I noticed any movement on their part. Ideed they didn't start Oslo until Bush I threatened them. Then when they got the Israeli friendly Clintons in there they started disobeying the Oslo accords.

[Yosie]

10. Maybe a mirror image--->

Was it Arafat's death that moved the peace process off of "dead" center?

Or was it three law suits in three nations against Shell Oil for illegal payments (i.e., "protection") to terrorist groups in the Philippines and Indonesia -- or was it several more law suits against Shell for stock fraud ("deliberately" overstating "proven" reserves) --- or was it the resignation of Shell's former CEO - for authorizing these payments, --- was it any or all of these -- which had the effect of reducing money available to give to terrorist groups for "charity" and "protection?"

Could have been any or all of the "single causes" -

"the churches started threatening Israel with boycotts" -- been going on with the Arab League Boycotts of all manner of Israeli products and all manner of countries that deal with Israel or that employ Jews since 1948 --

"the International Court told Israel to move the damn wall" -- about as effective and valid as Gingrich's impeachment of Clinton.

Nope - I think it was Arafat's death -- and the shrinkage of the protection money -- and a crack down on the terrorists by the Saudis after the terrorists turned on the Saudi protectors.

[Violet_Crumble]

19. Completely off-topic request

I noticed that both you and Coastie for Truth have a tendency to both use underlining in yr posts among other things. While underlining's great for other things, on the web it looks like a different coloured link. For the love of all that is good and pure in web formatting, can you think about using something else to emphasise words, like italics or a different coloured font?

Thanks muchly

Violet...

[Violet_Crumble]

17. I see...

So Campus Watch is now on an equal par with Zmag?? btw, I didn't spot Campus Watch in this thread in response to the article I posted. I'm sorry if the words racism and apartheid upset you so much, but it's quite silly to equate that with the poison and nastiness espoused by fascist groups like Campus Watch. I don't get it. It's okay to point out when racism occurs in other states and to call it what it is, but it's not when it comes to Israel?

I'm not interested in discussing issues like Land Day with folk who will trot out the predictable excuses and say that any responses on the part of the Israeli govt are logical and understandable and okay.

Why is it not okay to call things what they are and to have to speak in gentle and subtle ways about Israel when this is an example of the crap that gets trotted out about Palestinians: 'If the citizens of the OT territories have been treated like enemies, that is probably because they have been enemies. Only recently, since the death of Arafat, have the Palestinian people shown a clear will to form a democratic state of their own in favor of continuously attempting to destroy their neighbor.' Yep, it's okay to empower the forces of hatred and darkness and cause great pain against the Palestinians, obviously...

Violet...

[dameocrat]

7. Maybe you are ignoring that those expulsions

occurred after the expulsion of Palestinians to create a majority Jewish state.

[pelsar]

11. or....

perhaps the expulsions started with the romans? when they destroyed the original state and kicked out the jewish inhabitants and changed the name?....where shall we start with the history/culture/tradition?

[Violet_Crumble]

18. Pelsar...

There was no original state. States didn't exist back then. This isn't aimed at you, but I'm finding a lot of this 'waaah! but it was done to us first!!' stuff really silly. Either something is wrong or it isn't. Sometimes it seems to me that it's found okay by some depending on who does it. If their Team does it, then there's an endless stream of justifications and assurances of the eminent logic and fairness of the entire thing...

Violet...

[Colorado Blue]

25. This isn't a matter of "waaah". It is a fact, whether you

consider ancient Israel to have been a state or NOT, that the people of Israel have been living in the region since approximately 3,000 BC. Our language, religion, written and legal tradition are indeed ancient.

We are linked to this place.

[Violet_Crumble]

28. There's nothing difficult to understand about this...

Prior to 1948 Israel wasn't a state. Calling ancient Israel a state is as inaccurate as calling ancient Greece a state. There was no nationalism because nothing like that existed back in those times...

Oh. And Palestinians haven't been living in that region since nearly forever and aren't linked to 'this place'? That's why comments that continually go on and on making out that one group has more right to live there than others really provide nothing in the way of constructive or realistic discussion, but are divisive, as far as I'm concerned....

Violet...

[Colorado Blue]

36. I am not a political scientist. I do not understand the

technical definitions of states. I believe the Greeks had several city-states. Israel, the tribes of Israel, were a nomadic people yet linked, as we still are linked, by language, law, religion and tradition which has continued to grow. They most absolutely founded a nation, with kings, armies, cities, temples, and so forth.

The roots of MODERN nationalism in both Greece and Israel reach back to ancient times.

And, since indeed the Arab tribes have been living in the region for ages, I guess we'll just have to share, right?

It's the POV that ONLY the Arab, Muslim majority has rights in the region that has caused the problem. Christians, Kurds, Assyrians, Zoroastrians, Druze, Jews -- all are part of this ancient land and ALL have rights here.

It's really sad that, in the past, even under the Ottomans to a large degree, tolerance was important. I suspect that population pressures have caused some of the stress? The area is no longer rich although, with enough water, and sharing of resources - intellectual and spiritual as well as physical - it could be once again.

As an American, I herald diversity, I think it's vital to the health of a region.

[Colorado Blue]

13. Wrong! Read the link, please:

Why Jews Fled the Arab Countries
by Ya'akov Meron

Ya'akov Meron holds a doctorate in law from the Faculté de Droit de Paris and is an authority on Islamic law and the law of Arab countries. He was a member of the Israeli delegation to negotiate the peace treaty with Egypt and to solve the Taba issue.

snip

http://www.meforum.org/article/263

This article points out the plans to expel Jews from Arab territories had begun BEFORE there was any "expulsion" of Palestinians. Moreover, threats of "final solutions" for Jews living in Arab regions had been declared years before.

"COORDINATING A PROGRAM OF EXPULSION

In a key address before the Political Committee of the U.N. General Assembly on November 14, 1947, just five days before that body voted on the partition plan for Palestine, Heykal Pasha, an Egyptian delegate, made the following key statement in connection with that plan:

The United Nations . . . should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in the Moslem countries. Partition of Palestine might create in those countries an anti-Semitism even more difficult to root out than the anti-Semitism which the Allies were trying to eradicate in Germany. . . If the United Nations decides to partition Palestine, it might be responsible for the massacre of a large number of Jews.
Heykal Pasha then elaborated on his threat:

A million Jews live in peace in Egypt and enjoy all rights of citizenship. They have no desire to emigrate to Palestine. However, if a Jewish State were established, nobody could prevent disorders. Riots would break out in Palestine, would spread through all the Arab states and might lead to a war between two races.1
Heykal Pasha's thinly veiled threats of "grave disorders," "massacre," "riots," and "war between two races" did not at the time go unnoticed by Jews;2 for them, it had the same ring as the proposition made six years earlier by the Palestinian leader Hajj Amin al-Husayni to Hitler of a "final solution" for the Jews of Arab countries, including Palestine. But the statement appears to have made no lasting impression, to the point that a historian of the Jews in Egypt has described Heykal Pasha as "a well-known liberal."3"

snip

Thank you in advance for reading this article.

Here's a link to another article, broadly on the history of the British Mandate in Palestine, which hints at some of the complexities involved in the modern history of the region, and briefly indicates the conflicts even within the various communities:

http://www.answers.com/topic/british-mandate-of-palestine

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Coastie for Truth]

16. You need to read a little bit of history

I would start your "education" with any good history of Britain's Imperialism and Petroleum Diplomacy. A good start is A Century Of War : Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order by F. William Engdahl -- and try Goggling "Sir Mark Sykes" and "Sykes-Picot Agreement."

What is going on was British policy - to preclude a Muslim state in the Eastern Mediterranean (that would threat "their" Suez Canal lifeline). The whole concept of a Christian-Muslim "Balance of Power" in a weak and military ineffectual Lebanon and a Jewish-Muslim "Balance of Power" in an equally military ineffectual Palestine was a deliberate move to assert British hegemony over the Eastern Mediterranean.

British duplicity antedated Weissman and the Balfour Declaration - and had its roots in the British financing of the Suez Canal, British colonization of India, and the discovery of oil in Iraq (just as the Royal Navy was converting from coal to oil).

British foreign policy was built on two bedrock principles:
1. Great Britain has no "friends" - only "interests."
2. "Balance of Power

As to your statement that "By the way the state of Israel was in the making by 1919 and most Palestinians knew it wouldn't include them, and that it would require expulsions since Hertzle had said so repeatedly." - I would change it to "By the way British creation of small, weak, unstable, multi-ethnic states in the Eastern Mediterranean was in the making at least as early as the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and most Palestinians, Maronites, and Jews knew it would place them into eternal conflict."

Read some history - read it widely.

[Colorado Blue]

23. Please read the following:

"On the date of British withdrawal the Jewish provisional government declared the formation of the State of Israel, and the provisional government said that it would grant full civil rights to all within its borders, whether Arab, Jew, Bedouin or Druze. The declaration stated:

We appeal ... to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
Thus, upon creating the state - any inhabitants inside the newly formed State of Israel, whether Palestinian Jews or Palestinian Arabs, became Israeli."

This is from the second of the links provided above.

Why the people of the region couldn't simply take this as meant I'll never understand.

[Violet_Crumble]

27. I can help you understand...

Possibly because that sort of declaration was intended for international consumption. Those on the ground knew the reality was already far different. And considering a rather large number of Palestinians either fled or were expelled from Israel AFTER that date, and that declaration states that they were Israelis from that date onwards, it puts Israels refusal to allow Israeli citizens to return to their own country in a whole new light...

Violet...

[Coastie for Truth]

31. You need to read Engdahl's book

and Yergin's book and Unger's book -- or anything about Britain's "Balance of Power" policies or "International Petroleum Politics" especially in the immediate period surrounding the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Zionists and Palestinians were pawns sitting on the sidelines in a Big Power (France, United Kingdom) "Balance of Power" charade to preserve western (British, French) hegemony over a strategic region of weak, divided, multi-ethnic states. This was to "protect" the Suez Canal and the OIL.

As long as oil is strategic - and as long as the Suez Canal is strategic - it is in the Big Powers' advantage to keep a level of division burning in the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean (Lebanon, Israel, Palestine).

I think that Her Majesty's government just (deliberately? callously?) under estimated the level of animosity between Maronites and Muslims in Lebanon, and between Zionists and Palestinians in Israel-Palestine --- just as they underestimated the level of animosity between Boers and English in South Africa, and between Francophones and Anglophones in Canada, and Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs in India-Pakistan.

In our history the British colonialists created the "Triangular Trade" and left us with the institution of slavery and racism -- and then took the side of the Confederacy in our Civil War.

[Violet_Crumble]

34. I might put them on my list...

Would you like me to give you a list of books you need to read?

Violet...

[Coastie for Truth]

35. Yes.

[Violet_Crumble]

47. You might have already read these ones...

Sowing The Wind: The mismanagement of the Middle East 1900-1960 by John Keay

and this one I can't vouch for cause I haven't gotten past the first chapter yet...

God, Guns and Israel: Britain, the First World War and the Jews in the Holy Land by Jill Hamilton

Violet...

[Coastie for Truth]

48. I ordered them both

from www.half.com (the local public libraries do not have them - and it was cheaper to buy them from Half.com then to buy a new Stanford Univ Libraries Guest Pass)

[Coastie for Truth]

52. Just got an e-mail from www.half.com

"Sowing the Wind: The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East", by John Keay is "in the mail" and I can expect it by April 14.

[Violet_Crumble]

58. Hope you enjoy it...

I thought it was a good read and worth buying...

Violet...

[Englander]

62. I like the sound of the John Keay book;

Other books that deal specifically with ME or I/P that I'm either reading,are in the post, or are on a to-get list include;

"The Iron Wall:Israel & The Arab World" by Avi Shlaim,

"Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within" by Uri Davis,

& "The Gun & The Olive Branch" by David Hirst.

[Violet_Crumble]

67. The Iron Wall...

Is that one of the ones yr reading now? I think that's one of the best books on the conflict that I've read...

Violet...

[Englander]

68. Yes,it's an excellent book;

I've got as far as the early 60's & the end of Ben-Gurion.

I was just looking for a review,& found this from
the Guardian,which, I think,is the Guardian at it's best;

"Saturday February 24, 2001
The Guardian

The Iron Wall
Avi Shlaim
(Penguin, £10.99)

Israel's founders and their successors, Shlaim argues, have adhered to Ze'ev Jabotinsky's 1920s "iron wall" strategy, based on building up military strength to force the Arabs to negotiate from a position of weakness - but Jabotinsky's expectation of eventual coexistence with the Palestinians was rejected by later hardliners such as Netanyahu. Ending with Barak's election in 1999, this compellingly myth-busting history of Zionism reminds you how many of today's personalities and issues have been around since the Jewish state's infancy. Ariel Sharon makes his first appearance as a commando general in 1953, slaughtering 69 civilians while obliterating a Jordanian village."

Guardian Unlimited

[Colorado Blue]

37. One indeed wonders if it was deliberate. Brits refer to

the whole M.E./Central Asian situation as "The Great Game". The degree of misery caused by The Catastrophe - the Greek invasion of Turkey in 1920 - was enormous: total expulsion of all Greek-speakers from Turkey in 1922 and the torching of Greek cities in Asia Minor. Of course, before that revolution - Greece from Turkey - was fomented by the Brits and they later fomented civil war on Cypress.

It seems obvious to me that they were playing all hands against each other in the eastern Med and beyond, in order to weaken the region and prevent its assuming a regional character and power that would challenge hegemony.

Beyond that, though, there is the need for oil. Oil is the underlying cause, of course, of so many problems.

I've spent years wondering, why did WWI actually begin? It doesn't make sense that Sarejevo would have spiralled into such a catastrophe. My books indicate, well, there were all these treaty agreements and once one was breached, and Germany mobilized, there was no choice but for all the allies of the allies to join and start a war.

But - what if the whole thing was a cover for Britain to dispatch the Ottoman Empire once and for all and gain access to the M.E. oil fields?

My books came today, maybe there's more in there.

[Colorado Blue]

49. I think the failure to accept the Israeli overtures, then and

later, has a lot more to do with the spread of hate, fear and propaganda, than with any rational response to the situation.

Unfortunately, it had been advertised, that the Jewish state would be destroyed in short order and therefore there was no need to stay and become a citizen.

Subsequently, the people who fled were replaced with incoming refugees. Moreover, those who fled came to be seen as enemies.

[newyorican]

20. THE JEWS OF IRAQ

I write this article
for the same reason I wrote my book:
to tell the American people,
and especially American Jews,
that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate
willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave,
Jews killed Jews; and that,
to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands,
Jews on numerous occasions
rejected genuine peace initiatives
from their Arab neighbors.
I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called "cruel Zionism."
I write about it because I was part of it.

<snip>

About 125,000 Jews left Iraq for Israel in the late 1940s and into 1952, most because they had been lied to and put into a panic by what I came to learn were Zionist bombs. But my mother and father were among the 6,000 who did not go to Israel. Although physically I never did return to Iraq-that bridge had been burned in any event-my heart has made the journey there many, many times. My father had it right.

Read more...

[Lithos]

30. Sorry

I disagree with the implications on three levels.

First, in the case of Iraq, what Israel did was far from sufficient to have caused an exodus of so many. Granted they may have exploited it with a few operations, those operations themselves were insufficient to have caused the emmigration of such a large number.

Why for instance in the 1940's and 1950's were a handful of progressive Iraqi Muslims risking all by hiding Jews from Muslim mobs during periods of unrest? Consider this which describes the situation up to the establishment of the State of Israel.

By 1920 The British declared the establishment of a constitutional democratic state in Iraq and Faisal was declared King. King Faisal, a moderate ruler, was sympathetic to the Jews. They, in turn, served his kingdom faithfully. Relations between Jews and Moslems were excellent. Following his death in 1933, King Faisal was succeeded by his son Ghazi who had less favorable attitude towards the Jews. He gave a free rein to the extreme elements in the country which invited anti-semitism and Nazi propagandist, stimulating hatred of the Jews. These developments caused a decline in the economic condition of the Jews in Iraq, In 1939, King Ghazi was killed in a mysterious traffic accident. In 1941, the pogrom and riots began against the Jews lasting two day where more than 300 Jews were killed in the streets of Baghdad, 2118 people wounded and 6558 homes damaged. The pogrom of 1941 shook the Jews of Iraq, shattering their hopes for a future in that country, yet ... we still survived.

These events rekindled the ancient attachment to Palestine. The Zionist movement was revitalized. The society set itself three objectives: the study of the Hebrew language, self-defense, and the organization of immigration to Israel. Several movements like the Halutz and the Hashura were formed to meet these objectives. The largest phase of the illegal emigration took place between 1948 and 195 1, where more than 15,000 Jews, including most of our parents, crossed into Iran.

By 1945 anti-propaganda in Iraq intensified. Zionism became an unforgivable crime. Sale of land to Jews was forbidden. The government of Iraq called the Jews of Iraq "hostages", and imposed restrictions on the exit of Jews. During 1947 Iraq suffered a drought and the population was threatened by famine. The government diverted public's attention by directing its anger against the Jews. In May 1947 Jews were accused of giving Arab children poisoned candy and were accused of contaminating the drinking water with the colera bacteria. It was a very difficult time, yet we still survived.

On November 1947, the General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State. The Arab population was outraged and called for jihad (holy war). Demonstrations were encouraged against the Jews. On May 14, 1948 - the eve of the official declaration of the State of Israel - the headlines in Iraq read the fate of the Jews will be either the grave or the sea." The prime minister of Iraq announced the participation of the Iraqi army in war against Israel, aimed at destruction of Israel. Zionism was added to article 51 of the Criminal Code in Iraq with death as the punishment. Many Jews were falsely arrested, tortured and killed. Homes of the Jews were confiscated. Jews were forbidden to engage in foreign trade, and their business's boycotted. At this time there were almost 1500 Iraqi Jews in prison. yet, we still survived....

http://www.bjcny.org/our.htm

Second, this comment lacks any evidence to suggest or imply that the Jewish exodus from all Arab countries was not done from fear of rising anti-Semitism. It is a single point in a tapestry of facts many of which do not agree with the implications the author is making.

The understanding of the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, like the expulsion of Palestinians is an equally complicated situation. Both require the understanding of a convergence of facts, not cherry picking elements.

Third, this author is writing from a reflective viewpoint. Note the phrase ... "came to learn"... This point would be equally true of many Palestinians who left Palestine during the Nakba.

Unfortunately, the author uses it to pass judgement. It also doesn't answer the question of what would have happened if they had stayed?

The real issue is what happened to both groups when they left. Why is really incidental to the problem except to understand fully the great fear involved and the motives of those who shut the door.

Both groups had a door shut on them from their ancestral homes, their lives and families uprooted often with only the clothes on their backs. And as strangers in a strange land, both received discriminatory treatment in their host countries.

[Jdemsindiana]

75. Hey New York Rican

Two things one I checked your source its from a radical Islamist site in the UK second its well documented that the Iraqis actively through out its ancient Jewish community.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Violet_Crumble]

29. Uh, yes it is...

"Those links are simply HISTORY, Violet! You can't ignore the fact that it happened! Is this Yahoo material? I don't think so!"

I've read this sort of stuff before. This particular stuff is the sort of garbage I'd be ashamed to show anyone with a genuine interest in learning the history of the I/P conflict. Just because something gets said on the internet doesn't make it HISTORY!!! or TRUE!!! I mean, have you actually done any digging into any of this, or do you just believe what is most palatable to yr views? How can you argue that the ME forum isn't neo-con spew? It's one of their 'think-tanks'. Claiming it's anything other is nearly as good as the time one unfortunate and now-departed soul tried to convince everyone that the Jerusalem Post was really a liberal newspaper. Here's a hint and it's how I weed out what's worthy of posting in a forum where I'd like to be taken seriously at least 10% of the time I'm here - if I find an article I'm very careful to check out where it's appearing. If it's from some site that appears to be on the whiffy side, then I go searching to see if I can find the article anywhere else that's more reputable. If I can't then I'm pretty satisfied that the article wasn't particularly credible and wasn't worth posting. And that's why I'm not going to waste any time on the link you posted. If you can find the article at a credible website, then post that link, but I'm sick of clicking links here and finding they lead to Pipes-related crapola.

And a gentle hint before I post a few links to an article about the attempts to equate Jews from surrounding countries with Palestinian refugees - sorry, but you don't have any clue as to my thoughts on Zionism unless you've delved deep into the archives, so please refrain from accusing me of despising Zionism. And trying to tell me what mood I'm in? What's that got to do with the I/P conflict or what's being discussed?

Now for the links. All from reputable sources, and all well worth reading for people who do have a real interest in history rather than political point-scoring...

Hitching a ride on the magic carpet

An intensive campaign to secure official political and legal recognition of Jews from Arab lands as refugees has been going on for the past three years. This campaign has tried to create an analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi Jews, whose origins are in Middle Eastern countries - depicting both groups as victims of the 1948 War of Independence. The campaign's proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a "right of return" on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of "lost" assets.

The idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of history, imprudent politics, and moral injustice.

Bill Clinton launched the campaign in July 2000 in an interview with Israel's Channel One, in which he disclosed that an agreement to recognize Jews from Arab lands as refugees materialized at the Camp David summit. Ehud Barak then stepped up and enthusiastically expounded on his "achievement" in an interview with Dan Margalit.

Past Israeli governments had refrained from issuing declarations of this sort. First, there has been concern that any such proclamation will underscore what Israel has tried to repress and forget: the Palestinians' demand for return. Second, there has been anxiety that such a declaration would encourage property claims submitted by Jews against Arab states and, in response, Palestinian counter-claims to lost property. Third, such declarations would require Israel to update its schoolbooks and history, and devise a new narrative by which the Mizrahi Jews journeyed to the country under duress, without being fueled by Zionist aspirations. That would be a post-Zionist narrative.

Hey, is this the author of the article you posted that's getting a mention further down in this article?

The WOJAC figure who came up with the idea of "Jewish refugees" was Yaakov Meron, head of the Justice Ministry's Arab legal affairs department. Meron propounded the most radical thesis ever devised concerning the history of Jews in Arab lands. He claimed Jews were expelled from Arab countries under policies enacted in concert with Palestinian leaders - and he termed these policies "ethnic cleansing." Vehemently opposing the dramatic Zionist narrative, Meron claimed that Zionism had relied on romantic, borrowed phrases ("Magic Carpet," "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah") in the description of Mizrahi immigration waves to conceal the "fact" that Jewish migration was the result of "Arab expulsion policy." In a bid to complete the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews, WOJAC publicists claimed that the Mizrahi immigrants lived in refugee camps in Israel during the 1950s (i.e., ma'abarot or transit camps), just like the Palestinian refugees.

And then there's some more interesting stuff in this review of Joan Peters book by Yehoshua Porath.

Mrs. Peters puts great emphasis on the claim that during and after the 1948 war an "exchange of populations" took place. Against the Arabs who left Palestine one had to put, in her view, about the same number of Jews, most of them driven by the Arab rulers from their traditional homes in the Arab world. And indeed there is a superficial similarity between the two movements of population. But their ideological and historical significance is entirely different. From a Jewish-Zionist point of view the immigration of the Jews of the Arab countries to Israel, expelled or not, was the fulfillment of a national dream — the "ingathering of the exiles." Since the 1930s the Jewish Agency had sent agents, teachers, and instructors to the various Arab countries in order to propagate Zionism. They organized Zionist youth movements there and illegal immigration to Palestine. Israel then made great efforts to absorb these immigrants into its national, political, social, and economic life.

For the Palestinian Arabs the flight of 1948 was completely different. It resulted in an unwanted national calamity that was accompanied by unending personal tragedies. The result was the collapse of the Palestinian community, the fragmentation of a people, and the loss of a country that had in the past been mostly Arabic-speaking and Islamic. No wonder that the Arabs look at what happened very differently. When Mrs. Peters argues, as many Israeli and pro-Israeli spokesmen once did, that all refugees should live and be rehabilitated in their new countries, the Arabs reply that all refugees should go back to their countries of origin. When, in 1976, they invited former Jewish citizens to return, they did so not only from the mistaken belief that Oriental Jews' attachment to Israel was weak, but also from the need to refute the Israeli argument, now repeated forcefully by Mrs. Peters, that there was a symmetry between the two movements of population.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By stressing and strengthening the claim of symmetry Mrs. Peters plays, at least from an ideological point of view and certainly against her own wishes, into the hands of Arab propaganda. Many Israeli agents in such Arab countries as Iraq, Yemen, and Morocco made courageous efforts to bring about the aliyah (ascendance, the usual Hebrew word for immigration to Israel) of the Oriental Jews of Arab countries. Did this dangerous work count for nothing? Were the immigrants merely ordinary refugees and not people ascending to Zion? By attempting to equate the Arab refugees with the Jewish immigrants, Mrs. Peters, in my view, tarnishes a heroic chapter in Zionist history.

Mrs. Peters's use of sources is very selective and tendentious, to say the least. In order to strengthen the impression that the "hidden hand" of history somehow brought about the reasonable solution of exchange of Jewish and Arab populations, Mrs. Peters evidently wanted to show that the concept had an honorable lineage. She quotes an "Arab leader" who talked of a population exchange in a leaflet distributed in Damascus in 1939, and gives his name as Mojli Amin. I challenge any reader to identify this "leader." He is not mentioned in any of the books on Syria I know of, although I have read many. And if some wholly unimportant writer made such a statement, how can any serious importance be attached to it? But beyond that, I think that the leaflet is a fake. During the spring of 1939 internal dissent was at its most intense among the factions of the militant Palestinian Arabs, which included anti-British rebels, anti-Jewish rebels, and the "Peace Companies," which opposed rebellion. In Damascus, where the headquarters of the rebels were located, faked leaflets were often distributed in order to add to the dissension. I suspect that this leaflet was another example of the same literary genre. If Mrs. Peters had more thoroughly investigated the files of the Arab section of the political department of the Jewish Agency, she would, I hope, have seen why the evidence she cites should be used more cautiously.

And if I wasn't feeling so sleepy right now, I'd not have this mental blank where I'm not remembering the name of the book I read an entire chapter on Iraqi Jews last year. It may have been 1948 And After but I'm not sure. I can find out if you actually are interested...

Violet...

[Colorado Blue]

40. OK, here goes. I've researched all day and have quite a

bit of information, primarily from university and United Nations sites, although there are some others as well. Hopefully you will see that what I referenced above is not Neocon* garbage, but historical fact. It's only a brief portal into the topics mentioned but it's a start.

Of GREATEST importance is the effect of WWII and Nazi ideology during the critical years preceding the formation of Israel. Overlaid on the Jew's already second-citizen status was the virulence of Nazi ideology. It spread throughout the region. Their POV on the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" was absolutely inflammatory within the Muslim world and people, even here, continue to believe this garbage about "Jewish World Domination."

I'm also providing a link about the flight of the Palestinians. It is quoting roughly contemporary sources, primarily within the Arab world. There has been a great deal of revisionist history written about this. We can't possibly ever know EXACTLY what happened. This is from a Jewish source but that doesn't mean it should be discounted.

Briefly, though, I'd like to comment on the questions you raise above, concerning Jewish refugees.

These were not a recent invention, as perhaps you're implying? The expulsion of the Jews was a very real phenomenon. And, while it is true that the Palestinians have experienced a tragedy, the losses of the millions of Jewish refugees can't be taken lightly. In many cases they lost absolutely everything. There were over a million Jews living around the M.E., their numbers outside of Israel are now very few. Worse, their flight was often preceded by pogrom.

OK, I'm going to start uploading. I hope this will help put some perspective on the matter and I'll study your above link more thoroughly, as well as the Columbia links as well, when I have time.

*Define Neocon, please? That's becoming a loaded word.

[Colorado Blue]

43. Jewish Flight and Heykal Pasha, UN Delegate (not a myth)

Here is another article about Arab antisemitism, before and after the creation of Israel in 1948. This article should establish conclusively that antisemitism throughout the M.E. had been ongoing long before the State of Israel was declared.

It also details the extent of the Jewish flight from the region:

“Jews in Arab Countries in 1945 and why they had to leave, often as Stateless Refugees:

In 1945, there lived about 140,000 Jews in Iraq; 60,000 in Yemen and Aden; 35,000 in Syria; 5,000 in Lebanon; 90,000 in Egypt; 60,000 in Libya; 150,000 in Algeria; 120,000 in Tunisia; 300,000 in Morocco, including Tangiers: a total of roughly 960,000 (and a further 200,000 in Iran and Turkey). Of these ancient communities (less than 50,000 Jews remain out of an overall population of 1.2 million), in the Arab world their number is hardly 2,000 remain, under one-half of one percent of the figure at the end of the Second World War.”

snip

http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/b937628287f6269285256cf6006e065e?OpenDocument

This is a UN document so you will see the reference to Haykal Pasha is not a neocon myth.

Also detailed are outrages against Jews throughout the Middle East, dating back to the ‘30’s.

“(24 November 1947), addressing the Political Committee of the UN General Assembly, Egyptian delegate Heykal Pasha, remarked on the Partition Plan for Palestine -- five days before the historic vote : " The United Nations....should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in the Muslim countries . (...) If the United Nations decides to partition Palestine, it might be responsible for very grave disorders and for the massacre of a large number of Jews (...) if a Jewish state were established, nobody could prevent disorders. Riots would spread through all the Arab states and might lead to a war between the two races." (1)

snip

The article points out the attacks on Jews had been going on for decades preceding the War of Independence in 1948:

“Already, in Iraq (1936 and 1941), Syria (1944, 1945), Egypt and Libya (1945), and Aden (1947) – all before the modern State of Israel's independence – murderous attacks had killed and wounded thousands. Here is a description from the official report in 1945 by Tripoli's Jewish community president Zachino Habib, describing what happened to Libyan Jews in Tripoli, Zanzur, Zawiya, Casabat, and Zitlin on 4-5 November 1945: " The Arabs attacked Jews in obedience to mysterious orders. Their outburst of bestial violence had no plausible motive. For fifty hours they hunted men down, attacked houses and shops, killed men, women, old and young, horribly tortured and dismembered Jews isolated in the interior.... In order to carry out the slaughter, the attackers used various weapons: knives, daggers, sticks, clubs, iron bars, revolvers, and even hand grenades." (2)

7. Pogroms and persecutions -- and grave fears for their future -- regularly preceded the mass expulsions and exoduses of the Jews, whose ancestors had inhabited these regions from time immemorial, and over a millenium before successive waves of the Arab conquest and occupation from the seventh century on. Beginning in 1948, more than 650,000 of these Oriental Jewish refugees were integrated into Israel's small area of 20,000 km2 -- even as the country was being threatened with annihilation by its neighbouring Arab League States. (Approximately 300,000 more were exiled and found refuge in Europe and the Americas.)”

This is historically well documented. I'm sure there are any number of sources that reiterate the same material. Again, the situation was complicated by the infusion of European antisemitism into the region.

[Colorado Blue]

41. Tunisia - A Case Study

Case study: The Tunisian Jewish minority in the face of oppression
The end of one of the oldest Jewish Minority in Tunisia, 1881-1967

This link tells the story of the Jewish community of Tunisia, who had lived there continuously since ancient times:

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~shaked/Tunisia/Jews.html

“The testimony of the Jews in Arab countries has gone practically unheard - the more than one million forgotten. This work describes the Jewish minority experience in its search for dignity, equality and national identity, and the kind of Jewish identity that has arisen out of the modern conditions of Tunisian Jewry. It explores how a community with more than 100,000 members disappeared after a Jewish presence exceeding 2000 years, within 10 years after Tunisia’s independence in 1956.

Snip

The article outlines the arrival of the French, who provided the Tunisian Jews with a safety net and a new way to interact with the world, free from the stigmatization of their second-class citizenship under Islam. It details the war years, when Tunisia was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Nazi philosophy spread to the Arab world. Of course, the birth of Israel affected this community as well:

“Many Jews choose another path of emancipation than French emancipation, and concretized ‘Next year in Jerusalem:’ the return to Zion. The 1st Zionist club Agudat Tsion was founded in Tunis in 1910. Between the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and 1954, more than 20,000 Jews made aliya (emigration to Israel).”

The author briefly details the two forms of antisemitism visited upon the Tunisian community: that (some feel is) embodied in the Islamic point of view, and the European variety, which came via the French and reached violent proportions during the Nazi years. According to the article, Tunisian Jews were deported to Germany, were subject to forced labor, execution and the loss of their property.

Key to the eventual, near-total diaspora of the Tunisian Jews, however, was the Six Day War. Violence to the community ensued and it became apparent that departure was mandatory.

The author concludes, “In Tunisia between 1881-1967, antisemitism, French colonialism, Arab nationalism and the creation of Tunisia as a Muslim Arab state converged to create not only a shift of Jewish identity and Jewish condition, but also to bring about a mass exodus of the Jews from the country… in less than a generation, the Jewish community that had been rooted in Tunisia for more than 2,000 years, disappeared…”

Similar conditions prevailed in Algeria and Morocco, where independence from colonial domination and Arab nationalism “ were accompanied by the liquidation of their respective Jewish communities. The Jews of the Maghrib “abandoned their homes, businesses, and possessions and became penniless refugees with no thought of return.”1 North Africa’s Jewish communities that, until the early 1960s, contained one of the largest Jewish populations in the world, disappeared. Irrevocably attached to French culture and values, feeling unsafe, They were torn from their home and the land in which, their ancestors had been the earliest inhabitants.”

[Colorado Blue]

42. Nazi Thought, WWII and The Middle East

This link details some of the effects of WWII and the Vichy French and Nazi German occupation of North Africa, on the Jewish communities of the region.

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~shaked/Holocaust/lectures/lec10b.html

For example, “The Jews of Tunisia suffered from the abuses of the Vichy government and the French colonials. ‘In the first weeks of the war, and also after the fall of France in 1940, anti-Jewish incitement increased greatly, with the participation of the Muslim population. ... Jewish houses & stores were attacked. ...

Like the Jews of Algeria & Morocco, Tunisian jewry was seized with a genuine wave of pro-French patriotism when France entered the war. ... the chief rabbi called on the Jews to buy French government bonds. ... Tunisian Jews suffered a bitter disappointment when, like the other Jews of North Africa under the Vichy regime, they were subjected to a long series of racist laws. ... the governor-general, Vice Adm. Jean-Pierre Esteva, ... a devout Christian, was not inclined to put the anti-jewish decrees into practice, and until March 1942 he held up the implementation of the major decrees relating to the Statut des Juifs (Jewish Law). ...”

From this reading it becomes apparent that a concerted effort was made by Vichy France and Nazi Germany to translate their antisemitism to the North African world. Jews suffered internment in camps, stigmatization, deportment to Germany, and other outrages, like those perpetrated upon European Jews.

It is apparent as well, that the local Muslim population participated at least to some degree in the victimization of the Jewish community.

***

Even more disturbing, perhaps, is the link between certain influential Arab leaders and Nazi ideology. Beyond sharing a point of view, some of these men participated directly in the Nazi effort.

The following link traces connections between the ideology of Nazi Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood. A key element in this fusion was the publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A link about the Protocols is attached:

http://www.adl.org/special_reports/protocols/protocols_intro.asp

Here is the main link:

http://www.azanderson.org/anderson_report_geo_political_Global_Nazism_Muslim_Brotherhood_filesjuly_11.htm

German interests in the Middle East date back to the 1830’s or so, according to the article, when Captain Helmuth von Moltke returned from the court of the Ottoman Sultan. The Kaiser Wilhelm II became actively interested in the 1890’s to gain influence in the region. The outbreak of WWI brought about an accelerated effort to stir up trouble against the British in the region:

“Our consuls and agents must inflame the entire Muslim world against this hateful, lying, and unscrupulous nation ”.<4>

The author concludes that, although the war effort failed, the groundwork had been laid for further interaction between Germany and the Arab world, especially when the “Protocols” – a myth that is still around, supposedly detailed Jewish plans for world domination, was published:

“Within the Middle East, the Protocols found fertile ground and an outspoken advocate in the nephew of Musa Kasim Pasha al-Husseini. As one of the most outspoken anti-semitic leaders in the Middle East, and a key leader against the British authorities and local Jewish communities, he made great use of the Protocols. Haj Amin al-Husseini was convicted in absentia after fleeing to Syria for his involvement in the 1920 attack on Jews at the Western Wall. However, despite his involvement and conviction in this deadly attack, he was pardoned by the local British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel and made the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921.<11>

The Grand Mufti- Haj Amin al-Husseini forms one of the major links between the Protocols, Nazism, and the Brotherhood. Beginning in 1933, he regularly met with local Nazi representatives and openly expressed admiration for the ideas of Hitler.<12> During these meetings he served as a liaison for the Brotherhood to the Nazis.<13>
Between 1936-1939, Adolf Eichmann, who was also thought to be behind the Wannsee Conference,<14> oversaw funding from the SS to al-Husseini and his associates to aid their efforts in encouraging a revolt in the region.<15> However, in the late 1930’s al-Husseini openly called for direct aide from Germany to Arab forces and had to flee to Syria. Before leaving the region for Germany, al-Husseini assisted the April 1941 pro-Nazi revolt in Iraq, and attempts by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (Syrian Nazi Party) to prop up this revolt after the British moved to suppress it. ]

Mufti in Berlin

Haj Amin al-Husseini, after arriving in Berlin, met directly with Hitler. He reportedly sought to discourage the further deportation of Jews from Europe and instead encouraged Germany to seek alternate approaches. Some have even suggested that he had a direct hand in the creation of the Concentration Camps.<17> While in Berlin, al-Husseini served as a Nazi propaganda and rallying point for Muslims both in Europe and in the Middle East including regular radio broadcasts urging armed revolts and attacks on Allied and Jewish interests. In addition, al-Husseini served symbolically as the commander of the notorious all Muslim Balkan Hanjar Waffen SS division.”

***

By the time the State of Israel was declared in 1948, the Arab heart was completely hardened against the Jewish cause - yet it was a stab to the heart of Arab Palestine that ultimately was delivered:

"The British commander of Jordan's Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb admitted:

Early in January, the first detachments of the Arab Liberation Army began to infiltrate into Palestine from Syria. Some came through Jordan and even through Amman... They were in reality to strike the first blow in the ruin of the Arabs of Palestine."

On May 14, 1948 David Ben-Gurion read Israel's Proclamation of Independence in Tel Aviv. It included these paragraphs:

We appeal ... to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the building-up of the state on the basis of full and equal citizenship and representation in all its ... institutions.

We extend our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and goodwill, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land.

"The Arabs, inside and outside the territory defined for the State of Israel, gave no consideration to these offers of peace or the many other attempts to negotiate a settlement. Immediately following the declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948 and the departure of the British the next day, the five Arab armies invaded Israel. Their intentions were declared by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League:

This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."


http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_independence_war_start.php

[Colorado Blue]

44. The Mufti Husayni, Heykal Pasha, UN 181

This is another UN document (not a myth).

Here we find another reference to the Mufti Husayni (Husseini), who appeared earlier in the link about the Nazis and the Moslem Brotherhood. The article also briefly delineates the Partition Plan (Resolution 181) and the refusal of the Arab states to accept it. Also created was Trans-Jordan (the Kingdom of Jordan). A quick glance will reveal his opinions of Jewry. And again we find Heykal Pasha.

http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/fe7989175118cda585256d750050cbc9?OpenDocument

“This 1947 Partition Plan was categorically refused by all the Arab League States and also by the Arab-Palestinian leadership, still nominally headed by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, who found refuge in Egypt in 1946 (he moved to Beirut in 1962). Recently praised by Yasser Arafat in an interview, Husayni was declared a war criminal in 1945 after his sojourn in Germany during the Second World War, where he participated in the creation of a Bosnian and an Arab brigade to fight alongside Nazi S.S. units. He was received officially by Hitler on 28 November 1941 "to discuss the Arab-Nazi alliance and the methods to exterminate the Jews "(1). Known for his " ominous role in the extermination of European Jewry "(2), he broadcast genocidal appeals to the Arab world on Radio Berlin, even three months before D-Day: "Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases Allah, history, and religion. This saves your honour. Allah is with you ." (1 March 1944) (3)

3. On 24 November 1947, when addressing the Political Committee of the UN General Assembly, Egyptian delegate Heykal Pasha warned about the Partition Plan for Palestine: "The United Nations (...) should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in the Muslim countries. (...) If the United Nations decides to partition Palestine, it might be responsible for very grave disorders and for the massacre of a large number of Jews (...) if a Jewish state were established, nobody could prevent disorders. Riots would spread through all the Arab states and might lead to a war between the two races." (4)

Finally, here are links regarding the Jewish communities throughout the Middle East, as well as some references to Palestine prior to the establishment of Israel:

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/arabjew.html
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_overview.php

There are good timelines and references to history people might not necessarily be aware of, that happened before 1948, and during the War, etc.

[Englander]

51. Good.Grief.

"Eretz Israel","Palestine facts", & "World Net Daily".

Truly,you are a :patriot: /sarcasm.

[Colorado Blue]

53. These are documented historical facts. If you would stop

being judgemental, please, and do some reading about this era, you MIGHT get another impression about the matter than you apparently possess. To disrespect a source because it is Jewish or Israeli is simply bigoted. Moreover it marks one as unable, intellectually, to LEARN.

MOREOVER, the other sources are from universities and the UNITED NATIONS.

The exodus of the Jewish people from Middle Eastern lands, forced and proceeded by discrimination and violence, is no myth. And for all of those who wound up in Israel, hundreds of thousands more fled with practically nothing, to the New World. There, they were on their own, having lost homes, property, and an age-old heritage.

And yes - I am a patriotic AMERICAN. I was brought up to some degree free of the age-old bigotry of Europe, although not entirely. Unfortunately MANY Americans continue to harbor darkly antisemitic prejudice and it is dangerous and something to be deeply feared.

We also do not, as a nation, truly understand or respect the Arab/Muslim world. But we are learning, even those of us who were brought up in a tradition steeped in fear of Muslims, even in spite of the wars in the Middle East, and 9/11 - we are reaching out and trying to learn.

So I would appreciate it if you would too.

Simply because you do not like history, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

These were real people, influential people of their time. They spoke, and people listened. These were REAL EVENTS.

WWII was a very real phenomenon, my friend, and the efforts of the Nazis to expand their bigotry toward Jews spread throughout the Middle East, where they had influence since the 19th century, and where they and Vichy France had occupational forces.

Take some time and look up some books. This is NOT coming from somebody's mouth who is bent of slandering people or inventing history.

If you are wondering why we are having problems coming together now, you have just illustrated a major point: refusal to LEARN.

And the problems we have TODAY, are rooted in the past.

I am not suggesting that EITHER side in this conflict, is innocent. But you MUST understand the mindset of time, and its origins in antisemitic filth, such as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and in the teachings of antisemites from Europe, and how, in the chaos of occupation and war, evil spread throughout the lands of the East.

[Colorado Blue]

45. Opinions on the Flight of the Palestinians

Finally, having detailed the Jewish exodus from Arab lands as well as antisemitic thought among the Arab community before and during the war of 1948, and since the original topic of this post was the “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinians from their land, I am providing a link to another point of view on this topic. As mentioned above, these quotes are NOT from neocon sources.

http://www.jewishstudentscanada.ca/voice/story10.html

On October 2, 1948, the London Economist reported an eyewitness account of the flight of Haifa's Arabs: "There is little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Arab Higher Executive urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit... And it was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."

snip

On September 6, 1948, the Beirut Daily Telegraph quoted Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, as saying: "The fact that there are those 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..."

On June 8, 1951, Habib Issa, secretary-general of the Arab League, wrote in the New York Lebanese daily al-Hoda that in 1948, Azzam Pasha, then League secretary, had "assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade ... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property, and to stay temporarily in neighbouring fraternal states."

The Prime Minister of Syria in 1948, Khaled al-Azem, in his memoirs, published in 1973, listed what he thought were the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948: " ... the fifth factor was the call by the Arab governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and leave for the bordering Arab countries ... We brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees by calling on them and pleading with them to leave their land."

Snip

[Englander]

50. "these quotes are NOT from neocon sources."

What is a "neocon source"?

As for this one,how can you seriously believe that "jewish students canada"
is going to be a credible historical source?

All they indulge in is zionist polemic;short out-of-context quotes from a book or two, & various magazines/newspapers.

One of the books,"O Jersualem!" by Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre, Simon & Schuster (May 15, 1972)gets a much fairer treatment here;

"OVERVIEW
When Collins and Lapierre published what was to become a minor classic in its genre, Israel was not yet 25 years old and the Six-Day War had only five years earlier restored Jerusalem to Jewish sovereignty after nearly ten centuries. In that context, the authors set about to explore Jerusalem's meaning and its place in recent history. They acquitted themselves admirably and produced a volume that was greeted with wide acclaim. Even Arab delegates to the United Nations found something to commend: An account of the killing of the Arab residents of Deir Yassin by Stern Gang and Irgun forces in the 1948 War for Independence. To this day, Deir Yassin is a call-to-arms for Arabs and an embarrassment for some Jews. For historians, it is a metaphor for the chaos that erupted on the Yishuv (Jews in pre-1948 Palestine) as a coordinated attack by eight Arab nations tried to thwart the will of the world expressed in the 1947 UN resolution to create a Jewish state in Mandate Palestine. That same resolution called for an Arab state (which the Arabs also rejected) in what would have been a further division of land promised to the Jews under the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

The authors believe that the 1948 War of Independence was inevitable. While a good argument can be made for that view, some looked for peaceful implementation of the UN resolution. Their voices drowned in the gunfire that soon became a crescendo and threatened to engulf the nascent Jewish state. Yet, as the authors so dramatically show, it was not a state alone that stood in peril, nor was it the Arab front alone. Communities and families -- ordinary people -- Jews and Arabs, these were the victims and the heroes. The war, initiated by the Arab attack, brought suffering and cruelty to all who were touched by it directly and indirectly.

The authors conducted hundreds of interviews over a two-year period. As journalists, they came fresh to the details, unhindered by historical predilections. They tend sometimes to overdramatize, sometimes to underplay. Yet, because they are journalists and had done this before ("Is Paris Burning?" and "Or I'll Dress You in Mourning"), we have a most readable, fact-filled story of the war that set Israel on its feet, fashioned its myths and assured its future. The personal vignettes are eloquent testimony to the war's impact and the consequences of the battle for Jerusalem, the central effort in that war. Both the larger conflict and the struggle over Jerusalem are still very much with us."

http://urj.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1404&pge_prg_id=14946&pge_id=1148

[Colorado Blue]

54. My purpose was not to present a complete history of the

entire situation.

My purpose was to provide additional documentation about certain demagogues of the time, who advised violence against Jews, and who were instrumental in starting a war, and in driving Jewish people out of Arab land.

Violet had apparently decided that she didn't believe Haykal Pasha existed, etc, due to the fact that the article was apparently posted on a site she decided was Neocon, although I don't understand why. This was a speech given at the UN, and the opinions of the Mufti are well known, as is his service with the Nazis. Violet implies, I think, that the author of the paper I first posted, is a neocon, although I don't see how - he's an expert on Arab law. Also, this is a spillover, I think, from the Columbia antisemitism thread, in which some direct quotes of Prof. Massad were posted in a paper Violet says is far-right and "neocon".

Nobody has refuted the quotes, however, and I've been asking if Massad has been misquoted, to please tell me out of fairness to him. I want to know and if I find out he has been misquoted, that he did NOT make those quotes in the speech/conference cited, then I will personally write to the paper who published them and give them an earful.

My POV is that, as I read al-Jazeera, etc., and employ critical judgement and try to cross-check with other sources, so I read OTHER papers, and employ my brain and critical judgement. What I do NOT do, is dismiss out of hand, information BECAUSE a Jewish or Neocon source may have produced or posted it.

***

I am trying to provide some balance to the totally UNBALANCED and inflammatory article originally posted, and to point out that the "ethnic cleansing" most definitely occurred all over the M.E. and to Jews as well as to Arabs.

And, as to the "apartheid" issue: the apartheid experienced by the Jews throughout the Middle East, for many long centuries, was very real. Jews were separate, lived in separate quarters, had different clothes. And, if you want to discuss apartheid, this should be mentioned. Jewish people are NOT regarded in the same light as Muslims, in Islam or in folklore. This is also true in Christian regions of M.E., like Greece (formerly Ottoman) and bigotry against Jews is extreme in the Balkan regions.

Compared to the bigotry of Europe, the Muslim, even the Greek world, was tolerant.

BUT - that began to change, early in the 20th century, when slanderous antisemitism began to spread via European colonial powers, into the region. Simultaneously, Jewish settlers arrived.

It was a potent mixture.

***

Also, the quotes about the flight of the Palestinians are from REAL PEOPLE, and are not made up, and can be verified. I didn't have time and I no longer have a huge library but the books exist. The involvement with Nazi philosophy MUST be considered, I'd actually forgotten it - how I don't know - but I'm sort of obsessed with the Brits and with oil - that actually puts things in an even more dramatic light.

I fear that certain violent philosophies still extant in the region, owe their sources to the Nazis, and not to anything whatsoever, in Islam or in Arab tradition. This would be an excellent research topic, in fact.

***

A great deal of ambiguity exists about those days, about the War of 1948, and also a great deal has been written. Quite a bit of revisionist history too, as we used to call it when I was in school, attempting to reframe events - look at Stalin in WWII, for example. He was a Hero. Later he was The Devil. Now, he is quietly returning to a point somewhere in the middle - he was, after all, a bit of both.

I am familiar with the source you cite, I will re-read it, thank you.

***

As a general observation: when one is presented with a completely one-sided and inflammatory article, such as the original post, one goes harder to the OTHER side to try and form a counterbalance. I tried to avoid doing this, but since zMag and al Jazeera are routinely used as sources on DU, you can expect me to start posting papers from Jewish and Israeli sources as well. That is only fair and it is only right. I read the Arab papers, even seek them out on the 'net, and I expect people posting here to read Jewish and Israeli papers also.

The Jewish people are ancient residents of Middle East and have lived there, continuously, in large numbers. That fact alone, regardless of any spiritual, genetic, or religious factors, ie Zionist theory, illustrates the absolute right of Jews to live in the region. The articles about the Jewish communities that existed prior to their dissolution in the 20th century, are absolutely required reading.

To regard Jews as interlopers, as colonials, is a false and disturbing POV that is being used to cause hatred and war.

***

As far as the Irgun, they're a whole 'nother thing and I will be posting more about them later. I know you and I have talked about them and I know that YOU know that I think they were horrible, they were evil terrorists. They committed atrocities.

But - there had been atrocities committed against Jews too, terrible ones, in Palestine and throughout the Middle East.

I don't know how much of a role Irgun and the Stern Gang played in the war itself and I will most certainly read more. Especially of interest TODAY, is the fact that they apparently did not respect the Partition and believed Israel should extend to the Jordan. As you know there are elements of Israeli society, and Christian society, who still believe that. Managing them is a problem for the Israeli government.

It is here that Ariel Sharon is possibly unique, in his ability manage all these factors. He will probably need force to contain the situation. One hopes not - but the fact that is is already being planned for should give pro-Palestinian readers here an inkling of the difficulty in helping the Palestinians get their state, and the degree of commitment the Israelis are actually putting on the table.

There ARE no peace agreements in place. The armed factions are refusing to disarm. A missle was fired just yesterday. Hizbollah and similar groups continue to promise the destruction of Israel.

Yet, the Israeli peaple are preparing to do violence on their own people, and Israeli people will lose their homes also, in the interests of justice and peace.

[Englander]

55. First things first; I will answer some of the points you....

raise,in the 1st & last paragraphs. I would humbly ask of you,
to please try and keep your answers as short as possible;
to try and comment on the topic of the thread,
not to speculate on the motives or intentions of other posters,
or to include an attempt at condensing the Complete-&-Unabridged-History-Of-The-World,
since the Dawn of Time. ;)
I do not appreciate being given a 500+ word lecture,&
it does not help in your attempts to persuade me
of the merits of your arguement;I say again,please
keep your answers as concise & to the point as you possibly can.

So;

--"Violet had apparently decided that she didn't believe Haykal Pasha existed,"

What do you mean by this? Are you refering to post #29,and the comment about "Mojli Amin"?
That's the only mention I can find of a non-existant historical character.

"Mrs. Peters's use of sources is very selective and tendentious, to say the least. In order to strengthen the impression that the "hidden hand" of history somehow brought about the reasonable solution of exchange of Jewish and Arab populations, Mrs. Peters evidently wanted to show that the concept had an honorable lineage. She quotes an "Arab leader" who talked of a population exchange in a leaflet distributed in Damascus in 1939, and gives his name as Mojli Amin. I challenge any reader to identify this "leader." He is not mentioned in any of the books on Syria I know of, although I have read many. And if some wholly unimportant writer made such a statement, how can any serious importance be attached to it?"

The above quote is from this review;
New York Review of Books
Post #29 here;
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x88712#88813

--"My POV is that, as I read al-Jazeera, etc., and employ critical judgement and try to cross-check with other sources, so I read OTHER papers, and employ my brain and critical judgement. What I do NOT do, is dismiss out of hand, information BECAUSE a Jewish or Neocon source may have produced or posted it."

Well,we can all agree with that;I don't dismiss any source
without looking at it,
exploring the site,reading some articles,going through the links
to other sites,& reading articles on those sites.
I am then able to judge whether the source is (imo)
worthy of merit,or to be used as a credible source of info.

If someone's critical judgement led them to believe that Campus Watch,
or WND,or Jewish Students Canada, or Eretz Yisrael,&tc,&tc
was an impartial or non-rw source,then I'd be concerned
about that person's "critical judgement".

Anyway,there are other points to made,& they can wait.
This is enough to be going on with.

And,please do keep any reply,to this post,or any other,
as concise as possible.
Thank you.

[Colorado Blue]

56. Sorry about the lecture, and if I sounded snippy. This is

partially hangover from a message to me from Violet that got deleted (among other things that have happened), in which the post about Haykal Pasha, plus other information about the years during and just after WWII and the subsequent eviction of the Jews from Arab lands, were dismissed as neocon garbage. I found that extremely offensive and upsetting and if I snapped at you I apologize.

***

OK, on the topic of sources:

The documentation of history contained in the websites I linked to, that you mention, with the exception of the one on Prof. Massad on the Columbia University antisemitism thread, which I've asked people to challenge, and which nobody HAS challenged, can all be independently verified, and from old sources.

That's the ONLY one, the DIRECT QUOTES from Massad, which has ANYTHING to do with Campus Watch (I gather this is a right-wing group of papers). None of the other documentation linked here has anything to DO with Campus Watch.

The assertion that this history is "neocon garbage" is biased and is blinding to our attempts to make a good situation in the M.E., plus it really made me very, extremely, hugely, ANGRY.

A great part of our problems is the refusal of the two sides to see the other's story. Let's get past that, OK? The original post about Haykal Pasha was written by a Jewish scholar of impeccable credentials - an expert in Arab law. Why that is neocon garbage I'll never know. So I verified the quotes and found them in the archives of the United Nations. Which I posted.

***

The stuff about the Middle East: this is very old news. It relates to matters that happened since roughly the early 20th century, from the time the "Elders of Zion" crap was disseminated through the last of the expulsions of the Jewish people from their homes in Middle Eastern communities. As I said above, it is not a COMPLETE history, OK?

***

It is going to be impossible, when discussing Jewish and Israeli history, to avoid Jewish and Israeli sources.* First place, we are the experts on these topics. We've been at it for going on 5766 years now.

Secondly, who else gives a shit? Thirdly, there are less than 13 million of us in the world. The rest of y'all are busy with your own problems and/or trying to get rid of us:)

Meanwhile, the core sources of my argument are which are university and UN papers. The others merely back them up.

***

I reject out of hand that Jewish sources about Jewish history should be considered inaccurate. In fact, we are always arguing with each other, contradicting each other, trying to find "the truth", as if there IS only ONE TRUTH.

I find the attitude, that we should reject Jewish sources out of hand, reprehensible. Not lecturing YOU, OK? But for the record. There is a dangerous amount of antisemitism entering the intellectual world these days, and I'm concerned about this. It has seeped even into reviews of Saul Bellow's literature, and so forth. Let's not let that stop us from reading history!

***

I know NOTHING about the stuff to which Violet refers. As far as I'm concerned they have bubkus to do with the history I posted. In fact, I ran across some of that in my research and rejected it out of hand. I didn't post from her writings (Peters) because it made me nervous, intellectually, just at a glance, and because it has a POV, rather than just being history. It isn't what I'm trying to do, which is present history, and hopefully inspire some people to study it more.

I'm not trying to prove there's anything "honorable" about these "exchanges of population." They just HAPPENED. In fact, had the Jewish populations in Arab lands remained unharmed and unevicted, the overall picture of the situation would be very different if only from a demographic standpoint. From a standpoint of philosophical discourse and diversity WITHIN the Arab community - it would have made a huge difference had the Jews not been evicted.

But, they were harmed and they were evicted, and that's changed things, within the Arab world and within Israel and the Palestinian territories.

***

What I posted, that stuff happened, the wars - WWI and WWII - happened and their influence on the region was terrific. The influence of European antisemitism and the involvement of Husseini with the Nazis, is documented fact. The expulsion of Jews from Arab lands is documented history. There were over one million, some 800,000 went to Israel and the rest went elsewhere - without home, job, property or community.

***

*(Incidentally, we also very interested in ARAB history and culture, myself included.)

[Colorado Blue]

57. Part II

On the subject of long posts, for which I apologize:

I am not trying to bury you in words! Indeed, I wish it were possible to discuss this in SHORT words. But, whereas it is easy to start a fire with a 24 point headline, it isn't so easy to put it out, and make something grow from the ashes, in a paragraph or two.

***

I'm trying to point out that refusing to believe in history is an aspect of bigotry, and that moreover not learning it in the first place, or refusing to believe it when it's presented, is hurting the cause of peace and fueling the fires of war. Big time.

I'm not saying this is YOU. I am, however, referring to the certain post to which I referred above, but also the refusal, in this forum to say the very least, not to mention the Left in general, of the proArab side to see the Jewish side, at ALL.

Unfortunately that is reflected in the actions, just not the words, of the states and militias who have waged war upon us all these long, sad decades.

It is beyond discouraging. It is also driving people into the arms of the Right.

***

This goes for people who can't see the Arab side, as well.

Obviously, that side exists, opposes, is interwoven with, the Jewish POV. But they are the several sides of the one rubric cube - you can't take one without the other!

But in very great part, in deed and not just in word, the Jewish history is being lost here, not considered in the proPalestinian discourse.

The corrolary, seeing the BIG picture, can shed a whole different light on things. I/P did not emerge, whole, from a vacuum.

[Englander]

61. Oh well,I guess it's a road well travelled......

from being a peacenik,saying "peace this,& peace that,
peace on & peace off :) "

to "bigotry,European antisemitism,& the anti-Jewish left".

Until the next time,good day to you.

[Colorado Blue]

63. I'm a little confused. I'm not throwing out dialectic. That's

a cop-out as far as I'm confused.

What I am trying to do is unsnarl some of the history of this region, that has led us directly to where we are today. A lot of people, reading the paper today, have NO CLUE about the past. Even if they have some idea about WWII, and most of the young people are no experts, few have any idea about the effects of the War and the events leading up to it, on the M.E.

As far as trying to trace the evolution of a political movement, or the effects that a charismatic leader can have on the discourse of his time, that is an honorable and challenging part of understanding the world we live in.

This past few days has been enlightening to me also, I'd forgotten, or never known, about a lot of this stuff. It's electrifying, to really be learning something and to be able relate issues, political movements, and history and try to see things from a different perspective, including that of the Arab people who were alive at the time. That's hard, I wasn't there, but I can TRY.

I'll spent several days now, glued to the computer. I have literally PAGES of links, and will be going forward with this effort to increase my own understanding.

So I'm kind of confused, and sorry, that my efforts are being misunderstood here. My hope is that people will use these tools as a means of opening the door on the past, and perhaps learning about a whole world of history that is being forgotten about, yet which is vitally a part of the world we live in today.

[Englander]

64. No,your efforts are not being misunderstood...

I understand fully your views & your perspective,& your
take on the situation; the comments & links posted make that
crystal clear.

--"I have literally PAGES of links"

Good,feel free to make use of them,& post them if you are
so inclined. Although if they're of the same quality as PalestineFacts, et al,
then don't waste yer time showing me;
I've seen such links before, & am not interested in looking
at such biased shite. I hope I am wrong in assuming that what you've
found is similar to previously posted links,but you never can tell.

[Colorado Blue]

65. Indeed, because of your reservations I am making an effort

to seek out a broad range of documentation.

This is not a matter of bias, or of trying to ram an opinion down people's throats. What it is, is a matter of trying to understand the dynamics of the past, of what HAPPENED back then, how it affected people, how certain philosophies got into the mainstream thinking of the day, and how that has caused events to unfurl as they did.

It's difficult because philosophy unfolds alongside of events, sometimes. I offer the following observations, for what they're worth. They're personal experiences, not history books, so take them for that!

For example: in the '70's, when I was performing with Arabian musicians (I'm a dancer), there WERE no Palestinians. I don't mean in the real, actual sense. I mean in the PERCEIVED sense, and even, in the sense of people's identity, among the individuals that I knew.

The oud and nay and dumbek and kanoon players I worked with did NOT refer to themselves as Palestinians. Seriously.

I worked with Egyptians, with Jordanians, with Lebanese. Some of the very young ones, there was beginning to be an inkling of a Palestinian nationality, if indeed they had been born for example on the West Bank. And some of course WERE from Egypt and Lebanon. But others, who were born in Gaza and on the West Bank, the older men, it was different. Do you see what I am saying? Especially, there was an identity with Jordan.

It may seem as if Palestinian nationalism was ALWAYS this dominant force, among ALL the people of that region, and that Jewish and Israeli people were ALWAYS aware of it, but I think, that wasn't really so. There was Israel, and the Jewish people; and there were the Arab states and the Arabian people.

Incidentally, what WAS there, was quite a bit of resentment toward the rich Kuwaitis and other oil-state Arabian people, for whom we sometimes performed. The younger ones especially, who were starting to feel nationalistic and strong about their Palestinian identity, felt angry and betrayed by them and by their wealth, their aristocratic demeanor, and their apparent lack of concern for the Palestinian cause.

For Jewish people, it's taken a LONG TIME to see the Palestinian people as human and not as terrorists wearing a black ski mask, bent on exterminating us. For me to be advocating the creation of a PALESTINIAN STATE, therefore, and trying to work with the forces of moderation, and advocating the peaceful withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank, and leaving the settlements intact - this is a BIG DEAL, a sea-change in attitude.

And, it's taken a LONG TIME, decades, to see that Palestinian nationalism is a justifiable position, to see that Palestinians might have a sense of identity that isn't just Egyptian or Jordanian, or part of the larger Arab community.

So, if we can change and grow, and look at an EVOLVING phenomenon, and try to mirror that evolution in ourselves, might I ask an objective reading of history, and perhaps a modification in one's outlook on Israel and on the Israeli situation?

Beyond that, we're ALL afflicted by war and terror, and by a force that seeks to rob us of secular thought and open communication. Is that not so?

I'm trying to track that evil back to its original lair, so we can tease it out of the discourse, and meet each other on clean ground. We deserve a chance to meet, free from the evil of the past, free from the evil of the OLD ways of thinking.

Don't you agree?

[Colorado Blue]

66. PS - I don't really think you do understand what I'm trying

to say, at all. And, I wish I could change the past.

So, here is a poem:

Now, When the Waters are Pressing Mightily

Now, when the waters are pressing mightily
on the walls of the dam,
now, when the white storks, returning,
are transformed in the middle of the firmament
into fleets of jet planes,
we will feel again how strong are the ribs
and how vigorous is the warm air in the lungs
and how much daring is needed to love on the exposed plain,
when the great dangers are arched above,
and how much love is required
to fill all the empty vessels
and the watches that stopped telling time,
and how much breath,
a whirlwind of breath,
to sing the small song of spring.

-Yehuda Amichai, 1924-2004
Poet, born in Germany, died in Israel; soldier in four wars.

translated from the Hebrew by Leon Wieseltier

[Violet_Crumble]

59. Englander...

I noticed when I read yr post that my name is coming up in this subthread. I'm sure you may have already worked this out for yrself, but I never claimed or even hinted that someone named Haykal Pasha never existed. What I do recall pointing out is that using the ME Forum as a source wasn't the wisest thing to do if the poster wants what they're posting to be taken seriously. I'd no more post from a source like that than post something from any other extremist site on the other end of the spectrum. I made no comment about anyone talked about in the article, btw...

Violet...

[Englander]

60. Yes,that was my understanding of your post. n/t

[Colorado Blue]

46. A Response to Violet's Above Post

Violet says:

"I've read this sort of stuff before. This particular stuff is the sort of garbage I'd be ashamed to show anyone with a genuine interest in learning the history of the I/P conflict. Just because something gets said on the internet doesn't make it HISTORY!!! or TRUE!!! I mean, have you actually done any digging into any of this, or do you just believe what is most palatable to yr views?"

Colorado says:

Hello? I have grown up studying the history of Israel. The facts are the facts. The man quoted was the Egyptian delegate to the UN. Above you will read other DIRECT quotes from Arab leaders, threatening Jews with extermination. The involvement of The expulsion of Jews from Arab lands and the atrocities within Palestine and within those other states, are well-documented. The link between Al-Husseini and the Nazis is absolute FACT.

There is a lot published on DU, and apparently taught at universities, about the horrors visited upon the Palestinians by the Israelis. It is time people here read about the other stuff. Which is not, sadly, anything but true.

The history of the 20th century was, for the Jewish people, one catastrophe after another. Even the foundation of Israel has brought sorrow and grief. Ones joy in Israel is tempered by the sorrow of the Palestinians, by the continuing strife, and by the ferocity of world opinion against Israel. People are STILL calling for her destruction. We are waiting for the next disaster.

***

Now, as to the campaign to recognize the Jews who fled Arab lands as refugees, many made aliyah voluntarily, but many more were refugees. So?

Does the fact of Arab persecution lessen the heroism of the Aliyah? Of course it doesn't. My grandfather walked out of Russia to save his family and his life. He made Aliyah to Cleveland, Ohio:)

His flight was both generated by persecution AND heroic.

***

I'm not into suggesting that one Arab refugee equals one Jewish refugee. So I don't really want to comment on that part. What I do believe is this: the suffering of both peoples has been huge.

What troubles me is, people don't seem to recognize, or even believe, accounts of Jewish suffering. I am further troubled by a seeming lack of desire, even on the part of intellectuals who should know better like Massad at Columbia, to take any responsibility for ARAB suffering.

Blaming Israel or the Jewish people for the entirety of Arab suffering, started back during the early 20th century and was amplified throughout the time of the Nazis.

It was a falsehood then and it is a falsehood now.

***

No doubt, people will be upset to the references of the Moslem Brotherhood and the Nazis. Unfortunately, they are documented fact, as are the threats against the Jewish populations throughout the M.E., long and immediately before the founding of Israel.

OK, I've done the best I can.

[Jdemsindiana]

69. Is this Propaganda?

I think even the title was designed to start a flame war
lots of words PlO favorites like "aparteid" "Colonial"
"occupation" always compair Israel to South Africa and if that does not piss people off call Israel "Nazis"

[Violet_Crumble]

71. No, it's an article...

Though if you subscribe to the view that anything even the slightest bit critical of Israel is Propaganda, while even the most critical stuff about Palestinians isn't, I guess you don't need to ask the question because you've already decided...

I doubt very much the authors of the article wrote it with the intent of it being posted at DU to start a flame-war, and personally I find nothing particularly gaspworthy about the title: "A Campaign to Challenge Israeli Apartheid Palestinian Campaign". Okay, so they used the word campaign twice by mistake, which is pretty damn outrageous, but anyone who wants to object about the use of the word apartheid should go and read up a bit on what it is and come back and point out why Israel's treatment of the Palestinians isn't apartheid while the treatment of black South Africans was. And note that ignoring the Occupied Territories while focusing solely on Israel itself doesn't make the grade...

Uh, you have a problem with the word occupation? As in 'Israel is OCCUPYING the Gaza Strip and West Bank'. Can I ask why? Would you prefer people use the term 'long-term borrowing of land and assets?' And colonialism is what the Zionist venture in pre-state days was. Why wasn't it?

The article did not call Israel Nazis, and it's just a bit disingenous to use that in the same sentence as the other three words that were used and to imply that all are equally bad. If the article had called Israel Nazis I wouldn't have wanted to have post it, as articles that do that are for the most part a big load of crap...

Violet...

[Jdemsindiana]

72. Its interesting you mention "early Zionists"

Jews never entirely left the area in fact Jews were the majority in a 1840's Ottoman Census of Jerusalem many of the earlier Zionist had different views some were happy with the British Mandate (up until the Holocaust) Others like hashomer Hatzair and martin Buber want a "bi-national" state with the Army Ala Lebanon most want partion
and a state idea that was backed by the UN. Jewish organizations paid out landish amounts of money to Arab landlords. Its interesting that you continue to rant about "aparteid" the REAL aparteid in south Africa was horrible I know people who lived through who have been to Israel to them the analogy is totally false in fact the South African Diplomat to Israel who is Black said that he could not tell the difference between most Jewish and Arab Israelis. The Conflict has NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE! get it.

[Violet_Crumble]

73. It's interesting that you make the terms Zionists and Jews synonymous...

People can be Jewish without being a Zionist and can be Zionist without being Jewish. So mixing up the words Zionist and Jew to pretend that a Jewish presence in Palestine meant there'd always been Zionists there is incorrect. The early Zionists arrived with the First Aliyah...

You haven't explained why what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories isn't apartheid, except for throw an insult aimed at me into the mix and saying REAL apartheid was horrible. That's why I tend to think someone like Desmond Tutu, who lived through apartheid, is a bit more believable on this than you are. Yes, I know it's shocking and unbelievable that someone would listen to Desmond Tutu over you, but there you have it...

Please read what Desmond Tutu has to say on apartheid and try to think about it...

In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.
What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.

On one of my visits to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and homes?

I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: "Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,706911,00.html

Violet...

[Jdemsindiana]

74. Some Religious misunderstandings

First of all Jews have always wished to return to the Holyland
I don't want to get into a theological battle with you but read this
My Heart Is In the East

(Medieval Jewish Poetry
Yehuda Halevi (1086-1145), was the greatest Hebrew poet of his time. He hailed from Toledo, Spain, and in addition to mastering biblical Hebrew, Arabic and the intricacies of the Talmud, Yehudah explored the physical sciences, philosophy and metaphysics.

My heart is in the east, and I in the uttermost west--

How can I find savour in food? How shall it be sweet to me?

How shall I render my vows and my bonds, while yet

Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?

A light thing would it seem to me to leave all the good things of Spain --

Seeing how precious in mine eyes to behold the dust of the desolate sanctuary.)

Thats from 11th century Spain Yehuda Halevi actually moved to Palestine where he died The Amidah the core part of Jewish prayer has a whole line about the "restoration of Zion"

To most Arabs the terms Zionist and Jew both mean the same thing the only difference is that a Zionist does not wish to live as a second class citizen and wants self determination the exact same thing Palestinan nationalists want Desmond Tutu had a rough life but he has no right to make such a false analogy Tutu was close friends with Arafat Tutu does not know and will never know what it is truely like to be a Israeli or a Palestinian his struggle with Aparteid was his peoples struggle and by the way the ANC never intended on call for the end of South Africa as does the PLO and Hamas. The Palestinians will be the first people ever to win a nation by losing conflict aggressive conflict the loser of any war I don't care who it is no nation has ever gotten to dictate issues such as boarders and water resources
Arab world had its chances to destroy Israel if the Palestinans are smart they will give up violence and incitecent and go back to the negotiating table. Palestinans will get more from Israelis from conversation and paper then they will with rockets homicide bombers.

[Violet_Crumble]

77. Zionist and Jew is NOT the same!

Sheez, how hard it that to comprehend?? Political Zionism did not exist until the late 19th century. That has zero to do with theology, which I couldn't give a shit about, being an atheist and all. Why do you think Theodor Herzl holds such an important place in the history of Israel? He wasn't regurgitating some religious thing - he came up with something completely new, which was political Zionism. Likewise, I don't give a shit what someone on an internet forum insists is the Arab understanding of the terms Jew and Zionist. My guess is they know jack-shit about any Arab understanding..

I see. Attack Desmond Tutu because he actually does know what apartheid is and recognises that it's happening in the Occupied Territories. The PLO recognised Israel's right to exist. Refer to the Oslo Accords...

How on earth is it aggressive to be the people that are occupied by a powerful military? It's the Palestinians who are occupied and stateless, not the other way round...

This may come as a rude awakening, but there have been negotiations in the past, and the Palestinians lose more and more each time. And there doesn't seem to be a whole lot happening now in regards to the West Bank except for Israeli garbage dumps sprining up in violation of international law...

Homicide bombers? How Faux! How not surprising! ;)

Violet...

[Jdemsindiana]

79. This begs the question

have you actually read "the Jewish state" by Herzl he talks a lot
about the Jewish religious connection to Palestine you can find it on like at the Jewish virtual library i suggest you actually read it before trying to put words in Herzl's mouth

[Violet_Crumble]

80. Of course I've read it...

Which is why I'm aware that the political Zionism that Herzl created was a reaction to the nationalism in Europe and completely different than the spiritual Zionism that has always been present. Trying to claim that Herzl's claim to fame was that he gave religious Zionism a slight tune-up is ludicrous and shows a complete lack of understanding of what the issues were for Herzl at the time...

btw, on the habit of making out that Jew and Zionist are the same thing, I think you should get familiar with the guidelines of this forum sooner rather than later....

Violet...

[Darranar]

78. Nonsense...

First of all Jews have always wished to return to the Holyland

More or less true, but still a separate issue from Zionism. Zionism is a specific way of doing so, one many Jews, rightfully or wrongfully, reject. It is a political movement, not necessarily religious in character.

To most Arabs the terms Zionist and Jew both mean the same thing

True or not, utterly irrelevant to the discussion.

the only difference is that a Zionist does not wish to live as a second class citizen and wants self determination

So what does that make Jewish anti-Zionists? Self-hating?

What if someone is opposed to a Jewish state but still supports equal rights?

The Palestinians will be the first people ever to win a nation by losing conflict aggressive conflict the loser of any war I don't care who it is no nation has ever gotten to dictate issues such as boarders and water resources

The Palestinians are not going to dictate borders and water resources.

I am not aware that they have lost yet, and they do not seem to be aware of it either.

[Jdemsindiana]

82. Its a matter of disrespect

first of all the feelings of the majority of the Arab world towards zionist do count if you don't think so then you must not read Al Jazeera? Most people misunderstand even the meaning of Zionism
Basically its Jewish Nationalism why is it demonized? when noone
gives Arab pan-nationalism a second thought? Thats right Jews want to have a State Armenians have a State East Timorese why not Jews?
Or I guess you believe that Jews can live without a refuge again when
the next major Pogrom happens somewhere in the world? If not I guess you really only care about Human rights when it does not apply to Jews. The vast majority of the Jewish world believe that a state is needed for self defense. Without Israel Jews behind the Iron Curtain would have disapered and Jews in the Middle East would have remaind second class segregated underlings of Brutal middle eastern dispotic Leaders. Equal Rights means giving Jews rights as well and the right that Jews want most is self determination. Jews had a few Choices
continue to be oppressed or do something about it. Now that Jews stand up for themselves they are treated with the same contempt.
In the Words of the late great rodney dangerfield "CAN I GET SOME RESPECT?"

[Violet_Crumble]

83. I think that what Darranar was saying was irrelevant...

Is that YOU were stating that Zionism and Jew is the same thing, but when corrected on it, used a claim that Arabs think this way as an excuse for what YOU stated. In that respect what anyone else thinks IS irrelevant, as it's about what YOU think. Is that clear enough?

In case this has slipped yr notice, the Jewish people do have a state. It's called Israel. I've got no idea why yr going on in yr post about Jews not having a state...

Violet...

[Darranar]

85. Um...

first of all the feelings of the majority of the Arab world towards zionist do count if you don't think so then you must not read Al Jazeera?

To the contrary, I do, though not in Arabic, which I do not know.

Who the Arab World thinks are Zionists is not relevant to who actually are Zionists; if what the Arab World considered to be Zionism actually was Zionism, I think most decent people would oppose it outright.

Basically its Jewish Nationalism why is it demonized? when noone
gives Arab pan-nationalism a second thought? Thats right Jews want to have a State Armenians have a State East Timorese why not Jews?

Both the Armenians and the East Timorese created a state where they actually lived. Israel, however, received most of its population through immigration. This is a significant difference, especially because the land the immigrants came to was already occupied.

Could Zionism have been realized without massacres and ethnic cleansing? I think this point is one where both views are legitimate, and neither approaches the anti-Semitism that some accuse anti-Zionists of harboring.

There are other arguments against Zionism, too. Every situation is different, and one is wise or moral in one case is not necessarily so in another.

Or I guess you believe that Jews can live without a refuge again when the next major Pogrom happens somewhere in the world? If not I guess you really only care about Human rights when it does not apply to Jews.

Most certainly, the Jews can live without a Jewish state. For two thousand years it was done; even the Holocaust, a vicious crime far exceeding all the others, did not destroy the Jewish people.

If a Jewish state could just pop into existence with no harm to any non-Jews, then I would strongly support one. In the current situation, it is probably wisest to preserve one. But I do not know what I would answer, if I lived in 1947 but I knew all I knew now, to the question of my support for a Jewish state.

The vast majority of the Jewish world believe that a state is needed for self defense.

This may be. It does not necessarily mean that it is so. Truth is not a matter of popularity.

Without Israel Jews behind the Iron Curtain would have disapered and Jews in the Middle East would have remaind second class segregated underlings of Brutal middle eastern dispotic Leaders.

Another possibility is that the relative freedom from intolerance experienced by Jews in Arab lands before World War II would have continued. Admittedly it may not have though, but certainly the creation of Israel contributed greatly to that intolerance, though it also provided a destination for the Middle Eastern Jews fleeing it.

Equal Rights means giving Jews rights as well

Quite clearly, unless rights are denied to everybody else.

the right that Jews want most is self determination.

Assmuing you mean Jewish statehood, I highly doubt that, considering that the reasons most Zionist Jews want self-determination have to do with the violations of other rights in states not controlled by Jews.

If every state in the world was tolerant of Jews and gave them full rights, I don't think there would be very many Jewish advocates of Zionism.

Jews had a few Choices continue to be oppressed or do something about it.

Which does not mean that Zionism was, or is, the only solution.

Now that Jews stand up for themselves they are treated with the same contempt.

That is a good indication of the success of Zionism, isn't it?

[Colorado Blue]

91. A couple of thoughts. First, regardless of book definitions,

great numbers of Israeli citizens came there after WWII, after the Holocaust, and after the expulsion of Middle Eastern Jewry between 1948 and the late 1960's. More could have been saved from the Holocaust had the British not actually interdicted refugee ships. People were willing to live in camps, just to LIVE.

Theoretical and religious Zionism and the sheer necessity of a refuge have intersected here.

What is clear, is that nobody, in the early 20th century, could have foreseen - let alone controlled - the genies that would be released by two World Wars, the vast expansion of industrial might, the world's thirst for oil, television, films, air power, the atomic bomb, conflicting philosophies like communism and fascism and radical Islamism. Human populations have exploded. Environmental pressures, lack of food and water, disease and desertization have challenged all forms of life. We've lived under clouds of total war for generations.

***

The early Zionist settlers had NO clue, and no control, over what would happen subsequently, when they landed on Eastern soil.

When they dreamed their dreams, and when their movement was born, the world was a different world. It is pointless to look back at them, from where we stand today, and say they were wrong. They had a good idea, an idea to live as free people, side by side with the people of the Middle East. They wanted to go HOME.

Nobody could possibly have known the future, or the forces of destruction and hatred and change, that would be unleashed, and which had molded the world we live in today.

No more could the settlers of the US have come to these shores, imagining what would ensue on the high plains, or in the pueblos of the Southwest. People didn't come here to hurt other people. They came because they NEEDED to, because they were miserable at home, for a new start. They came because huge migrations of human populations are the rule, and not the exception, throughout our history. At no time, in the history of the world, have people NOT moved, have borders and regions of influence, NOT changed.

***

People coming across the borders from Latin America are not entering these lands to hurt "white people" and steal their jobs. Zionism was not and IS not, an intentionally brutal or bad philosophy. And one MUST not underestimate the situation of Jewish people around the world. Being regarded as a dog in Arab lands, for example, may have seemed, compared to Nazi Germany, acceptable. Was it really? Jewish people did "unclean" jobs, were frequently very poor, living in medieval conditions.

It is easy to say, oh, they weren't being shot so it was acceptable, and since the Jewish people have managed to survive we don't NEED a home - from our safe vantage point in the US, that might be a reasonable thing to say.

I'll tell you something though. My grandfather ran for his life, with nothing but his clothes and his paint brushes, from Czarist Russia. Where did he go when he could finally afford to go someplace? He was in his eighties. He went to Israel. He went where he felt he wouldn't be a hunched-over little housepainter, hiding from powerful people, careful not to offend. It took him a lifetime, but he went where he could FINALLY stand up.

***

As far as having an indigenous population - WAIT AWHILE. It takes TIME to produce generations. This is a very new state, hopefully it will survive to be a very OLD state.

***

We're looking, in real time, at something that has happened countless times in history, and which we've only, as students of history, been able to read about in books. NOTHING on this planet happens easily, or without pain. Movements LIKE this are happening all over the world. Many states have been created in the recent past, many populations have shifted. There have been border wars and ENORMOUS genocides, all over the world, and they are ongoing as we speak.

No child on this planet is born, without pain. No nation is born, no tribe shifts its centre, without pain.

***

I think we should be patient, and have hope, and try to find CREATIVE solutions to the problems confronting the people of the region. That means, the destruction of Israel is NOT on the table. It DOES mean, CREATIVE help from the neighbors for the people who are refugees. This means land, jobs, opportunities, not weapons and rhetoric and terror and war. There is money in the Middle East, vast land and vast opportunity. Yet, great movements exist - to go BACKWARDS, and unleash yet more agony.

All this hell has poured forth, revenge has been taken on the Jewish people throughout the Arab world, revenge has been taken on the Israeli people time and again, and retaliation has followed outrage, and more retaliation; and it can't be put away. And worse, the blood-drenched song of Abu Ali still beguiles, all over the world: Allah in Heaven, Hitler on earth.

It is our curse, apparently, to live embattled.

***

Let's nevertheless go forward from this point, and try to do the best we can in the world we live in now, for the all the people of this region and this planet, in the 21st century.

There is no point, anyhow, in trying to go backwards.

[Colorado Blue]

84. Might I venture an opinion? I think, jdems was trying to

say there is a spiritual dimension to the "zionist" cause, entirely beyond and actually driving, the "Zionist" movement of recent times.

This ISN'T irrelevant at all and it isn't nonsense. It's historical, it underlies the political movement.

Isn't it a mistake to try and discuss modern Israel merely in terms of textbook definitions of "Zionism", or in terms of "colonialism", or other socio-economic terms utterly unrelated to what most Jewish people thought - and think - about the creation of modern Israel?

Putting terms like "colonialism" or narrowly defining "zionism" to mean the 19th/20th century political ideology, is useful to some degree - for example in a classroom setting or in a political salon like this one - but it is misleading in another sense, that which was conveyed eloquently in the poem.

I think, there most absolutely IS a lack of knowledge about these issues.

Am I making sense here? If not, can we discuss some more?

***

I'll agree also, there is a profound lack of respect from certain quarters, as well as a profound lack of knowledge, about Jewish history, spirituality, and also the precarious state of the collective Jewish rear end, in the physical sense, that is frustrating at times.

This past couple of weeks, the research I've been doing, has frightened me. We're not dealing here with a simple problem that can be discussed in simple, classroom terms. There is hatred, real hatred, that pre-existed the creation of Israel, and that is on-going and violent.

Changing that is going to be like climbing 100 Mount Everests. This is beyond the means of mere political dialectic.

Maybe, the only answer can be found in a poem.

[Darranar]

86. I do not think religion was a driving force for Zionism...

it was more of a reinforcement, and a large part of the reason Palestine was insisted upon.

Certainly there is a Jewish desire to return to Zion, but that is distinct from Zionism.

There are strong Jewish ties to the land of Israel. But that poit, I think, is an irrelevant one when it comes to the political question of Zionism's legitimacy. I don't think Zionism would be morally different if the Jews had chosen some other place to make their state, with the exception of Eastern Europe.

You are right about people's knowledge of these matters - it is extremely frustrating when somebody, especially somebody I tend to agree with, misuses the term Zionism, not because they are anti-Semitic, but because they do not know or do not accept its actual meaning.

The way Zionism was carried out does not necessarily delegitimize Zionism itself, and all too often this is not seen.

As for anti-Semitism - the levels of it are disgustingly and shockingly high, and it is something that should be fought furiously. But Zionism clearly hasn't solved the problem.

[Coastie for Truth]

87. Wrong

Where does the crushing of the wine glass at the end of the wedding ceremony come from? From the Roman destruction of the Temple and the eternal wish to return to Jerusalem.

Have you ever heard the "Hashanah B' Yerushalayim" after festival services (Next year in Jerusalem)?

It is an emotional, spiritual thing.

Don't YOU tell me about MY FAITH and ITS PRACTICES and HISTORY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Both of my grandfathers were Rabbonim.

[Darranar]

88. Actually...

I was aware of both of those, and of the ones jdemsindiana cited, and of many others. (For what it's worth, your faith happens to be mine as well, which is why I do.) With enough time hundreds of examples could probably be found. But you are totally ignoring what I actually said in my post:

There are strong Jewish ties to the land of Israel. But that poit, I think, is an irrelevant one when it comes to the political question of Zionism's legitimacy. I don't think Zionism would be morally different if the Jews had chosen some other place to make their state, with the exception of Eastern Europe.

Since you seem to have missed it, I reiterate: There are strong Jewish ties to the land of Israel.

If you could find fifty billion it wouldn't change the point I was making.

[Coastie for Truth]

89. Birobidzhan?

My one Grandfather who raised me (who while an orthodox Rabbi, was also, shall we say,"To The Left of Center, in the Classical Litvak and Lower East Side, and ILGWU, and Workingmens' Circle tradition"; one of his other grand kids ran as a Peace Now candidate for the Knesset, and has a son who obtained conscientious objector status from the IDF) used to say that but for the mythic, spiritual, emotional ties to the Land, Birobidzhan would have been better - since "WE" wouldn't be displacing Palestinians.

Birobidzhan was forest wilderness - until OIL and NATURAL GAS were discovered. Dayanu. WE would have had oil too.

[Colorado Blue]

90. It figures:) So nu, why did we have to be so attached to

a DESERT?

With people in it yet. And NO OIL.

Oy.

[Jdemsindiana]

92. Yes what a dumb idea

lets let all Jews live in Stalins gulag zion

[Coastie for Truth]

94. Birobidzhan was where the Czarists

sent my granddad - really was a Gulag.

As an energy engineer - Birbidzhan is worse then Midland-Odessa-Crawford TX (even with the neighbors in Crawford)

[Jdemsindiana]

93. your statement does not hold water

why eastern Europe? why did jews have to stay in Eastern European Ghetto's If Jews did not start settling Palestine the effects of the Holocaust would have been total. Why should Jews stay in in eastern Europe thats like saying that black people fleeing the klan in the 30's should not have fled to northern cities because other people were living in those cities poor arguement