Your information is a bit thin and not quite correct. Even Al-Jazeera’s English web site admitted that the man drove past a barrier to a predominantly Jewish neighborhood that had been closed off by the police, with his car sound system at full volume.

This would be similar to a non-Muslim deliberately walking through a Muslim neighborhood during the month of Ramadan eating a large sandwich.

It’s a question of mutual respect, and there’s no doubt that both sides dropped the ball on this one.

However, the incident would have been over with no serious casualties and no riots if an unidentified Arab had not made an announcement over the Muezzin’s loudspeaker that one Arab had been killed and another seriously injured in a jewish neighborhood. The Akko police are searching for this person and intend to charge him with incitement.

His announcement started the riots– the original incident was over and done with before he made his announcement.

Throwing rocks at someone driving on Yom Kippur is wrong, but so is driving through a Jewish neighborhood with your sound system on full blast on that day.

Once again, it’s all about respect, and neither side showed enough respect for the other.

I agree that the reports are conflicting: Mr. Jamal insists he was not playing his car sound system, but eyewitnesses say he was. The police have been quoted in one newspaper as stating he was intoxicated and drove at unreasonable speed through the streets. On Yom Kippur in a Jewish neighborhood, any speed is “unreasonable” for the following reason.

Since I understand that you may not be familiar with traffic conditions on Yom Kippur in Israel, I’ll explain them: there is no traffic in cities except for emergency vehicles, out of respect for the holiday, and after the synagogue services finish, the streets are full of pedestrians. This is well-known to anyone who has been in Israel on Yom Kippur.

Due to the recent incidents of using a vehicle as a terrorist weapon against Israeli citizens in Jerusalem over the past few months, it’s understandable that some may have feared the vehicle speeding through streets crowded with pedestrians may have been another attempted act of terrorism. This does not mean that I approve of the crowd’s reaction towards the driver and his son (I disapprove approve, in the strongest terms—it’s not only against human ethics, but against the tenets of Judaism, as well), but I do understand it.

What I can’t understand is the blatant use of a false rumor to provoke violence intentionally, and the extremely violent reaction this rumor caused. If one unsubstantiated rumor is enough to raise a mob of 200 or more people, armed with axes and clubs shouting “itbah al yahud!” to run wild, then there is something seriously wrong with the culture that allows it to happen. I would say that someone needs some serious anger management counseling.

It seems that you’re not really interested in addressing this particular incident, other than whitewashing the Arab rioting by making invalid comparisons.

The kind of violence exhibited in Akko over the past few days exceeds any recorded settler violence against Palestinians by a factor too great to calculate.

We have seen too many incidents that do not occur in other cultures in anywhere near the magnitude or frequency that they do among Arabs. The ”Danish Cartoons” incident was a prime example and so are the riots in Akko.

Any addict (alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc) will tell you that the first step to recovery is the admission that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. As long as the addict is in denial, they can not be helped. You, sir, seem to remain in denial that the Arab culture is a violent one, willing to revert to mob-ism at the least excuse while justifying it by saying ”well, everyone is like that”. Sorry, but as my grandfather said, ”that dog won’t hunt” (meaning that excuse won’t work).

Even Mr. Jamal, the driver of the original incident disagrees with you. He has agreed to stand trial for creating a public distrubance and the traffic violation of running the barrier, in order to return Akko to its usual calm. He has also apologized (in the Hebrew papers– it has not been translated) and shows both remorse and acknowledges that he was wrong in doing what he did. I can only hope the Jewish and Arab community leaders follow his example.

Sir, if all you wish to do is “play the blame game”, we can discuss this for months and reach neither agreement, a solution, nor even a consensus on “who did what to whom” and when—exactly as the politicians have been doing for sixty years.

You call the CUSTOM (not law, you notice) of not driving in Jewish neighborhoods during Yom Kippur “unreasonable”. Compare this to the LAW in Saudi Arabia, where carrying a Christian Bible openly in the street is a criminal offense. Which example is “unreasonable”?

The custom of not driving through Jewish neighborhoods on Yom Kippur (and even on Saturdays) is not “unreasonable” to the New York City government, which re-routes buses on Yom Kippur and Saturdays around the Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Crown heights, Williamsburg and several other neighborhoods.

It is a question of mutual respect that causes no harm to anyone but can benefit many.

That no one died in the riots is a matter of chance, because the intent was there. The shouts of “itbah al yahud” testify to that. Just for the record, I deplore and condemn the settler violence as strongly as I condemn the Akko riots, and both should be dealt with equally. As for your facts, I’d like to present some of my own:

B’Tselem is presently under investigation by the EU regarding their objectivity and accuracy in reporting, and if they are found to have published false data, which now seems quite likely, they stand to lose their EU funding as a humanitarian organization. However, even their data does not agree with yours. According to B’Tselem, Palestinian deaths for the period of 2000-2008 come to a total 4,789; NOT the 6,000 that you claim. Among these deaths you will also find the names of homicide bombers listed as “civilian casualties”, as well as 577 Palestinians killed outright by other Palestinians and Palestinians killed by “work accidents” while dealing with explosives in populated areas (including innocent bystanders not involved in the work).

If we are to judge cultures, don’t forget to mention that over the past 60 years, Israeli culture has made thousands of contributions to the world in the fields of medicine, economics, education, electronics, agriculture, commerce, science and communications and won more Nobel prizes in the various fields than the entire Arab world has won since the Nobel prize was established in 1901. The Pentium 4 computer processor that you use was developed at Intel Israel, large portions of Windows XP and Vista are products of Microsoft’s Israeli R&D department and your third-generation cell phone was developed in the Motorola (Israel) R&D division, just to name a few. Could you tell me exactly what benefits to humanity the Arab world has developed during the same period?

I can understand your objections to Israel’s existence, and you obviously would have preferred that the Arab armies had won the War of Independence, but I have to view this simply as being a sore loser, since you certainly would not give a thought to the Jews murdered by Arabs if that had been the case. The establishment of Israel could have been peaceful if the Arab Higher Committee (now the Arab league) had accepted UNGA Resolution 181 instead of rejecting it and attacking it with the declared intent of “throwing the Jews into the sea”. I also find it strange that the Palestinians claimed neither the West Bank nor the Gaza Strip when they were under Arab rule (Jordan & Egypt, respectively) as their country, but only after it came under Israeli control (see http://middleeast.about.com/od/israelandpalestine/f/me080519a.htm). (What is the PLO?: about.com)

Another instance of this attitude is the focus on the 600,000 Palestinians who became refugees, compared to the 900,000 Jews expelled from Arab states for the simple crime of being Jewish, and who were never recognized as refugees at all (see http://www.jimena.org JIMENA)

While I hold no brief to claim that Israel is blameless, in the interest of objectivity, I must point out that the Arab world is in denial of any blame for the conflict, the refugees or the harm that the Arab-Israeli conflict has caused to humanity in general. It’s all the fault of “the Zionists”… a classic tactic of dictators to find a scapegoat and blame all their ills on someone else, rather than taking responsibility for their own failures.

As for your additional comment, I will condemn this, if you will condemn the repeated sermons in mosques defining Jews as “the offspring of apes and pigs”. It seems that you have no objection to that, just to having the insult returned.

sorry, ”I do condemn” is what I meant to say.

Just for the record:

Israel Nobel Prize Laureates
1) Robert Aumann, Mathematics, 2005
2) Aaron Cienchanover, Chemisty, 2004
3) Avram Hershko, Chemistry, 2004
4) Daniel Kahaneman, Economics, 2002
5) Yitzhak Rabin, Peace, 1994
6) Shimon Peres, Peace, 1994
7) Menahem Begin, Peace, 1978
8) Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Literature, 1966

Arab Nobel Prize Laureates
1) Mohammed al-Baradei, Peace, 2005
2) Ahmed H. Zewail, Chemistry, 1999
3) Uasser Arafat, Peace, 1994
4) Naguid Mahfouz, Literature, 1988
5) Anwar Sadat, Peace, 1978

Considering the fact that there are about 7,500,000 million Israelis, including Arabs, Druse, Chirkassans, Bedouin and more, while there are over 300,000,000 Arabs in the Arab league countries, the disparity should be apparent—even if you had been right about five instead of eight. In light of the population disparity, Arabs should have been able to win over 300 Nobel prizes… everything else being equal.

FYI, one of the most common statement made by anti-Semites starts with, “Some of my best friends are Jewish…”, just as one of the most common phrases of a racist is “Some of my best friends are black…” Ask any black person how much they hate to hear that phrase. (Do not take this personally, it is just a statement of fact. Just as not all Muslims are terrorists, not all those who make these statements are racist or anti-Semitic.)

Unfortunately, we hear of the anti-Semitic comments made regularly in mosques, but rarely, if ever, hear of any Muslims condemning them.

The establishment of the “Zionist land” was made by purchasing land, not stealing it. Purchases were often made at highly inflated prices. See the following quotes:

‘When John Hope Simpson arrived in Israel in May 1930, he observed: “They [the Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay.”’

‘The Jews were paying exorbitant prices to wealthy landowners for small tracts of arid Land. “In 1944, Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per acre in Israel, mostly for arid or semi-arid land; in the same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre.”’ (“From Time Immemorial”, Joan Peters, Harper & Row, 1984)

The Zionist pioneers came with farm tools, not weapons, and bought the land they worked on, purchased legally from the owners of record. At the moment of purchase, such land should have ceased being “Arab land”, shouldn’t it?

I do think a protest is “uncalled for” when the protesters are protesting to the very existence of the factor that has raised their standard of living, lowered their infant mortality rate, elevated their standards of employment, education and healthcare and generally improved their quality of life. This is akin to a neighbor dumping his rubbish in your yard, then telling you that your yard is filthy.

Believe it or not, I don’t blame the Palestinians. I place the blame on the Higher Arab Committee, later known as the Arab League, since until after 1967, there was no real Palestinian nationalist movement.

Answer these questions before you decide who to blame:

1) Who initiated the Anti-Jewish riots of 1921, 1929 and 1936-9?

2) Who spent WW II supporting Adolph Hitler and raising 3 Muslim SS divisions that were involved in War crimes and considered himself a “Middle East partner in the ‘Final Solution’ with the Nazi regime?

3) What countries refused to accept the UNGA Resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine?

4) Who invaded which country on 14 May 1948?

5) Who refused to negotiate for peace after 1948?

6) What countries forcibly divested, disenfranchised and expelled 900,000 citizens whose heritage in those countries went back in history for as much as 2,600 years?

7) Who confined the Palestinians in “refugee camps”, denying them even the basic human rights of employment, healthcare and education?

8) Who has a history of threatening which country with annihilation since before its declaration of statehood?

When you can answer these questions honestly, we can discuss any other “historic injustices” you might have in mind.

Lastly, I do not condone settler violence any more than I condone Palestinian violence. Both should be treated with the utmost severity that the law allows. Murder is murder and violence is violence, no matter who perpetrates it. I often wish that the Palestinian Authority felt the same way, but their actions have proven that they don’t.

First of all, please do not put words in my mouth. I did NOT say “the Zionists bought ALL the land”, I said that they bought land, and developed that land, while Palestinian Arabs were sitting on their asses around their shesh-besh games with their nargillas complaining how hard life was, instead of getting up off their collective behind and doing something to improve their lives.

While it is true that at the time of partition, Jews owned 7% of the Mandate land west of the Jordan River, I’d like to point out that local Arab landowners owned approximately the same amount of land. Almost 80% of the Mandate land west of the Jordan River was state-owned land, in the hands of the British Mandate Authority since the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, and belonging to neither Jews nor Arabs. The remainder of the land (around 6-7%) was owned by absentee Arab landlords who did not live on their land, but in Damascus, Beirut, Cairo and Istanbul for the most part.

You say “Palestine is not to be divided into any number of states, but remain whole as one secular state”. Unfortunately for this argument, historical Palestine (as a department of various defunct empires) included what we now call the Kingdom of Jordan and the Golan Heights, so “Palestine” has already been divided. As a matter of fact, the borders of “Palestine” were only defined after the First World War; prior to that, the name “Palestine” was used to cover an indeterminate geographical area with no political connotations whatsoever. Politically, the area had been divided into a number of districts (sanjacs) under the Ottoman Empire, and extended into Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and Iraq.

In 1922, the British carved off all the Mandate land east of the Jordan River and “presented” it to Abdallah, who became King Abdallah I of Jordan. Jews were prohibited from buying land or settling in this area. This removed 78% of the total area of the Palestine Mandate from the jurisdiction of that mandate (and was not ”officially” ratified until the UN voted on the creation of the Kingdon of Jordan until 1946). In 1926, fulfilling the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Britain ceded the Golan Heights to France, which held the League of Nations Mandate for Syria and Lebanon. This carved another 2% (more or less) of the land from the Mandate. Therefore, when you speak of “Palestine” and claim 55% of it was “stolen” by “the Jews”, in reality, you are talking about 20% of the Palestine Mandate. Will Palestinian Arabs also claim the remaining 80% from Jordan and Syria?

The riots of 1921, 1929 and 1939 were not “anti-Zionist” riots, as you claim, since few Zionist settlements were attacked. The Jews attacked were those who had lived in Palestine for hundreds of years, in Yafo, Tiberias, Zfat, Hebron, Haifa, Rehovot and Jerusalem. These can be defined as “anti-Zionist” riots only by claiming ”that all Jews are Zionists, a claim that has never been not true, even to this very day. At the same time, there were anti-Jewish riots outside of Palestine in several Arab countries, Egypt and Libya among them. Were these also “anti-Zionist” riots?

More than half of the Jewish population today is descended from the 900,000 Jews expelled from Arab states between 1948 and the 1960s. Many of these Jews had lived in those lands, such as Iraq and Egypt since before the advent of Islam and the Arab conquests of those countries. Why is it that no Arab government or debater admits to the existence of those refugees? Are the Palestinian refugees the only ones who deserve justice?

Ben-Gurion’s “declarations” were made prior to the events of WW II, and before the complicity of the Arab world in the Holocaust was known. The former Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, outlawed by the British for his incitement of anti-Jewish and anti-British riots during the 1920s and 1930s, fled to Germany, where he was a party to the agreement for implementing the “Final Solution” on the Jews, if and when Nazi Germany conquered the Middle East (and was instrumental in raising three SS divisions from among the Bosnian Muslims, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husayni). Additionally, Jews from Morocco, Algeria, Libya and parts of Egypt that the Germans temporarily conquered, were transported to concentration camps in Europe by an enthusiastically cooperative local Arab population. In my opinion, when the Arab world declared their preference for the Axis over the Allies, their “right” to demand anything became rather limited. Losers do not “demand” terms from the winners—just the opposite.

During this “discussion”, it is becoming apparent that you have no interest in answering my questions honestly, as I have been trying to answer yours. So far, you have not addressed a single question asked. Are you afraid of what you might find if you start researching for the answers? I guarantee that you will find many facts that displease you, just as I have found many that displease me. The difference is that I can accept the truth and form my own opinions, without them being drilled into me by propagandists. Can you do the same?

1) Not all Arabs sided with the axis, and not all were complicit in the persecution and Holocaust of Jews, but many were. Here’s an excerpt of an article from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

“There were no death camps [camps with extermination facilities], but many thousands of Jews were consigned to more than 100 brutal labor camps, many solely for Jews. Recall Maj. Strasser’s warning to Ilsa, the wife of the Czech underground leader, in the 1942 film “Casablanca”: ”It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here.” Indeed, the Arab lands of Algeria and Morocco were the site of the first concentration camps ever liberated by Allied troops.

“About 1 percent of Jews in North Africa (4,000 to 5,000) perished under Axis control in Arab lands, compared with more than half of European Jews. These Jews were lucky to be on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, where the fighting ended relatively early and where boats — not just cattle cars — would have been needed to take them to the ovens in Europe.
But if U.S. and British troops had not pushed Axis forces from the African continent by May 1943, the Jews of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and perhaps even Egypt and Palestine almost certainly would have met the same fate as those in Europe.

“The Arabs in these lands were not too different from Europeans: With war waging around them, most stood by and did nothing; many participated fully and willingly in the persecution of Jews; and a brave few even helped save Jews.

“Arab collaborators were everywhere. These included Arab officials conniving against Jews at royal courts, Arab overseers of Jewish work gangs, sadistic Arab guards at Jewish labor camps and Arab interpreters who went house to house with SS officers pointing out where Jews lived. Without the help of local Arabs, the persecution of Jews would have been virtually impossible.

“Were Arabs, then under the domination of European colonialists, merely following orders? An interviewer once posed that question to Harry Alexander, a Jew from Leipzig, Germany, who survived a notoriously harsh French labor camp at Djelfa, in the Algerian desert. ‘No, no, no!’ he exploded in reply. ‘Nobody told them to beat us all the time. Nobody told them to chain us together. Nobody told them to tie us naked to a post and beat us and to hang us by our arms and hose us down, to bury us in the sand so our heads should look up and bash our brains in and urinate on our heads. . . . No, they took this into their own hands and they enjoyed what they did.’

“But not all Arabs joined with the European-spawned campaign against the Jews. The few who risked their lives to save Jews provide inspiration beyond their numbers.”
(For the full article, go to: http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/press/holocaust-s-arab-heroes.3714.htm)

I’d like to correct an error in the article: Yad Vashem has been studying and rectifying the error of not including Arab individuals who did risk their lives helping Jews in the honor roll of “Righteous Gentiles”. Several have been so honored since this article was written two years ago, and more are under study.

It would be hard to “minimize” the complicity of certain Arab countries such as Iraq and Egypt, who openly declared their preferences for the Axis, stating that the extermination of Jews was one of the more attractive points of the Nazi position. As opposed to that, the Zionist contacts with the Nazi regime were basically for the purpose of attempting to rescue Jews imprisoned in concentration camps by that regime. Do you consider the person paying the ransom for a kidnap victim an accomplice of the kidnapper? There was some contact about collaboration with the Nazis against the British by the Stern Gang and Etzel, but these were organizations outlawed by the Zionist movement of the time, and even they eventually decided that the Allies were the lesser of two evils, never collaborating with Germany in any real sense.

Haj Amin al-Husseini was declared a war criminal by Yugoslavia, which requested his extradition from Egypt a number of times and always refused. Raising an army of more than 20,000 soldiers who were complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Yugoslavian Jews (and others) is no small thing, and it would be hard to maximize it.

With all due respect, Tom Segev belongs to the group that Ilan Pappe does, a self-declared “historical revisionist”. Pappe has already admitted that his books are his interpretations of history, not necessarily what actually happened. It’s easy to look back after 50-60 years and say, “well, maybe they weren’t so bad after all…”, but the truth is that the Nazi regime conducted a holocaust against more than “the Jews”. 3 million (non-Jewish) Poles, 1 million Gypsies, 20 million Soviet military and civilian prisoners of war and hundreds of thousands of civilians from the various Nazi-conquered countries totaling several million for no other reason than being considered “sub-humans” by that regime is no small project—it is a crime almost unparalleled in human history. To minimize or trivialize the murder of over 30 million people in less than a decade is nothing short of criminal in itself.

2) You state: “I do believe that Jewish victims who were forced out of Arab land should be compensated, but not if they left on their own accord or at the invitation of Zionists. Zionist leaders strongly urged Jewish in Arab lands to migrate to Israel, there is a difference between being forced out and leaving willingly.”

There are several implications to your statement:

First, the same criteria should apply to those Palestinians who left their homes before the fighting began, since they left at the urging of the Arab Higher Committee. Objective sources state that fully 68% of the Palestinian refugees never saw an Israeli soldier, and were never under direct threat when they left.

Secondly, it would be very difficult to determine which Jews “deserve” compensation, due to the anti-Jewish laws passed in most of the Arab states. For example, my ex-wife’s family (from Iraq) did immigrate to Israel “voluntarily” in 1950, after anti-Jewish laws were passed that prevented them from selling any assets before leaving. They were allowed to leave with one suitcase and $100 each, in spite of the fact that my ex-wife and her brother inherited the documentation for over $4.5 million (in 1949 dollars) in family assets. How “voluntary” is emigration when the laws do not allow a person to practice their religion, educate their children, hold employment or realize their assets? It has already been calculated by economists far more knowledgeable than I that the Jewish refugees’ assets for compensation are between double and triple the value of the largest estimate of compensation coming to the Palestinians. Are you sure you want to start calculating this?

Third: some of your “corrections” have been about as inaccurate as your initial statements and do not clarify anything, but only serve as contradictions that do not stand up well under scrutiny. There are many points that deserve objective examination, since there is right and wrong on both sides, something the Arab governments seem to have a great deal of trouble admitting.

See my second response below regarding your letter about the Palestinian refugees to this anonymous scholar.

Believe it or not, I agree with everything you write, up to the point of the “right of return”.

Unfortunately, the 20th century saw the creation of over 100 million refugees. This is a historical fact beyond debate. It is also beyond debate that the Palestinians are the only group of refugees that has not only demanded a “right of return”, but has consistently refused any other solution. The refusal of Arab countries (except Jordan) to absorb those refugees is also a fact—a very sad one, especially when viewed in contrast to Israel’s reaction to the 600,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands that came to Israel with the remainder going mostly to western Europe, the Americas and Australia. (The very enactment of anti-Jewish laws and their expulsion of Jews make the Arab countries the leading violators of anti-Apartheid concepts, de-legitimizing any accusations they make about Israel being an “Apartheid state”.)

If a tiny country with a population of about 1 million could absorb 600,000 refugees, not without great difficulty, I might add, then the Arab states, with a land area almost 1,000 times greater, with their oil incomes, certainly could have absorbed the 600,000 Palestinian refugees—if the desire to do so existed.

The Arab League decision to NOT absorb the Palestinians, by its own admission, is a political one rather than a decision considering the welfare of those affected by that decision.

There is no precedent in history that justifies any refugee “right of return”. When Czechoslovakia expelled 2 million ethnic Germans from the Sudentenland after WW II for siding with the Nazis, there was no question of any right of return, or even of compensation. The Sudeten Germans were simply escorted to the German border and forced to cross. When India was partitioned into India and Pakistan, the two-way population exchange, Hindus from Pakistan to India and Muslims from India to Pakistan, numbered in the tens of millions. No one demanded a right of return. There are other historical examples, none of which support any concept of a “right of return”.

The Arab states actions in expelling and divesting 900,000 Jews while demanding a right of return for 600,000 Palestinians is, to say the least, hypocritical. Is a separate “justice” demanded for the Palestinians? If so, why should there be a separate justice? This seems, at the very least, to be a one-sided and discriminatory position to take.

Independent of the above, the real number of Palestinian refugees is difficult, if not impossible, to determine. UNWRA admits that many people were registered as “refugees”, even though they had been residents of the West Bank and Gaza prior to 1948 (and therefore, not refugees at all). Estimates vary from 450,000 to 750,000, while some propaganda claims put the 1948 number in the millions. Personally, I believe the median number of the various more or less “reputable” estimates, 600,000 is fairly accurate, although even if we accept the highest number, there were less Palestinian refugees than Jewish ones. Of that number, determination is still difficult due to the UN criterion of a mere two years of residence in pre-1948 Palestine to “qualify” for refugee status. I can find no other instance in history where the criterion of residence was so lenient, generally requiring decades or generations of residence to receive refugee status. The issue is even further clouded by the fact that many of the residents never owned the land they lived on or the houses they lived in (which brings the issue of compensation into question).

From the beginning of the first Zionist settlements, and increasingly from the start of the British Mandate, there were employment opportunities available in Palestine that were not available in many Arab countries of the time, encouraging a movement of Arabs from as far away as Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, Libya and Algeria towards Palestine, “following the money”.

A Syrian daily paper, “La Syrie”, ran a story on August 12, 1934, saying that, “30,000-36,000 Syrian migrants (Huranis) entered Palestine during the last few months alone”. The claim that these migrant workers, and others like them, were refugees in 1948 would be very dubious, indeed. At best, they could have been considered illegal immigrants.

The matter of property is even further clouded by multiple claims on the same properties—often several branches of the same family claim sole ownership of a particular property or home. Logic would dictate that the real claims have to be separated from the false and even frivolous claims. An example of this would be the late Prof. Edward Said’s claim to being a Palestinian because his mother’s brother owned a home in Jerusalem, while his own birth certificate plainly states that he was born in Cairo and school records in Egypt support that.

There is no simple answer, and certainly there is no solution that will leave everyone satisfied. Those who owned no property are going to have to accept that the compensation will be equal to the property owned, that is, zero. Those who were not “genuine refugees” might find themselves in the position of being required to repay the valued of the refugee relief they received over 60 years, or even indicted for the criminal charge of Fraud.

“As a general principle, I think you would be wise to head the words of Mashari Zaydi who wrote not that long ago that ‘Arabs are torn by a struggle between two world-views; one uncompromising, absolutist and aspirational and the other realist, compromising and practical. While the latter does not wins us everything we want the former could cost us everything we have.’”

Mr. Zaydi is right. The problem with adopting an “all or nothing” approach is the risk that you might gain nothing. Entering any negotiation with inflexible demands is a practical guarantee that that negotiation will fail.

Ideally, a solution would be reached that would satisfy everyone, but that is a practical impossibility in any situation, not just this one. The world is not an ideal place.

I don’t think Palestinians should be prosecuted for falsely claiming refugee status. I do not believe that such cases exists. No one wants to be a refugee. These Palestinians have to undergo enormous troubles even in Arab countries. For instance, a Palestinians refugee teaching at AUC he to travel from Damascus to Cairo every several odd months to once again receive a tourist visa, if she were, say, a Tunisian should could teach there without his difficulty. If some Palestinians are historical, say, Syrian. Then they are unaware of this or otherwise they would have by now claimed Syrian citizenship.

I didn’t say they would be, only that it was feasible under the law. In any case, why should a false refugee be allowed to reap the benefits of the highest per capita relief rates in history? The amount of money wrongfully acquired over 60 years would be staggering.

I hardly think that those eligible for citizenship are ”unaware”, I think they were probably disallowed by the hosting governments. Arab governments are notorious for making more difficulties for Palestinians than do the western European or North American countries.

The question is, WHY?

As usual, there is no “easy” or “short” answer or “magic formula” to discuss the Arab-Israeli conflict or the “Palestinian issue” in just a few words. Complex problems are not solved by simplistic solutions…

The amount of money that an average Palestinian refugee family has supposedly received over a period of 60 years is quite staggering, even if you calculate only the cumulative budget of UNWRA, which averages $400 million annually. That little of this actually reaches the refugees is criminal. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but somehow Palestinian organizations have the funds for buying and manufacturing weapons, but don’t seem to have the funds to invest in food, healthcare and education. It’s also a fact that the Palestinian GDP was on the rise between 1967 and the beginning of the Second Intifada, when it began to decline because of the Intifada’s security aspects on Israeli employers. The loss of employment inside Israel was not offset by any efforts of the Palestinian authorities—this is called “cause and effect”.

It is germane to note that the worst conditions are in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas rules. Apparently Hamas has been taking care of its members to the exclusion of ordinary Palestinians.

“Anyway, I think that there has not been much disavowal but they really do see themselves a Palestinians at least by birth.”

This may be so, but it is a manufactured myth, created by Arab politicians. A person can see themselves as anything they are taught to see themselves; this does not mean that their perception has any basis in truth. See these excerpts from “Middle East Refugees,” in Michael Curtis et al., eds., ‘The Palestinians: People, History, Politics’:

Palestinian Refugees, Invited to leave in 1948

“The people are in great need of a ‘myth’ to fill their consciousness and imagination...”
– Musa Alami, 1948

“Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner.... they have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even criminal.”
– King Hussein of Jordan, 1960

“Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees... while it is we who made them leave.... We brought disaster upon... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave.... We have rendered them dispossessed... We have accustomed them to begging... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon... men, women and children-all this in the service of political purposes...”
– Khaled Al-Azm, Syria’s Prime Minister after the 1948 war

“At the time of the 1948 war, Arabs in Israel were invited by their fellow Arabs — invited to ‘leave’ while the ‘invading’ Arab armies would purge the land of Jews. The invading Arab governments were certain of a quick victory; leaders warned the Arabs in Israel to run for their lives.”

In response, the Jewish Haifa Workers’ Council issued an appeal to the Arab residents of Haifa: [See Official British Police Report]

“For years we have lived together in our city, Haifa.... Do not fear: Do not destroy your homes with your own hands ... do not bring upon yourself tragedy by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens.... But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace for you and your families.”

It seems quite obvious that at least some Arab politicians have “owned up” to their intents and actions, although they have done nothing to rectify the results of those actions. The Palestinians have been a pawn in the purposes of Arab politics for too long. While many may consider themselves Palestinians, it is only because of purposeful indoctrination aimed at avoiding the angry backlash of revenge the Arab leaders could expect should the Palestinians ever understand how their own “brethren” misled and abused them.

Others, even some Arab journalists, have begun to understand exactly what was done and are objecting to it. The governments they live under, however, limit the content and volume they can express their opinions with.

In two recent articles in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa, Saudi columnist Yousef Nasser Al-Sweidan argued that the Palestinian refugees’ right of return is an idea that cannot be implemented, and that the only solution is for the refugees to be naturalized in the countries where they currently reside. Here are excerpts from those articles:

The Right of Return - An Idea that Cannot Be Implemented

In the first article, published March 5, 2007 and titled “On the Impossible [Idea] of the Right of Return,” Al-Sweidan wrote: “…The slogan ‘right of return’… which is brandished by Palestinian organizations, is perceived as one of the greatest difficulties and as the main obstacle to renewing and advancing the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians based on the Road Map and a two-state solution.

“It is patently obvious that uprooting the descendents of the refugees from their current homes in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and other countries, and returning them to Israel, to the West Bank, and to Gaza is a utopian ideal and [a recipe for] anarchy. More than that - it is an idea that cannot be implemented, not only because it will upset the demographic [balance] in a dangerous and destructive manner, and will have [far-reaching] political, economic and social ramifications in such a small and constrained geographical area, but [mainly] because the return [of the refugees] stands in blatant contradiction to Israel’s right as a sovereign [state], while the Palestinian Authority lacks the infrastructure to absorb such a large number of immigrants as long as the peace process… is not at its peak…”

The Refugee Problem is the Result of Mistakes By the Host Countries

“Clearly, the refugee problem is mainly the result of cumulative mistakes made by the countries where [the refugees] live… such as Syria and Lebanon, which have isolated the refugees in poor and shabby camps lacking the most basic conditions for a dignified human existence. Instead of helping them to become fully integrated in their new society, they let them become victims of isolation and suffering… Later, the worst of all happened when Arab intelligence agencies used the Palestinian organizations as a tool for settling scores in internal Arab conflicts that probably have nothing to do with the Palestinians…

“The Israelis, on the other hand, were civilized and humane in their treatment of the thousands of Jewish refugees who had lost their property, homes and businesses in the Arab countries, and who were forced to emigrate to Israel after the 1948 war. The Israeli government received them, helped them, and provided them with all the conditions [they needed] to become integrated in their new society…

“The lies of the Syrian Ba’th regime, and its trading in slogans like ‘right of return,’ ‘steadfastness,’ ‘resistance,’ ‘national struggle,’ and all the other ridiculous [slogans], are evident from the fact that, to this day, dozens of Palestinian families [remain] stranded in the desert on the Syrian-Iraqi border, because the Syrian regime refuses to let them enter its horrifying Ba’ath republic and return to the Yarmouk [refugee] camp.

“The Arab countries where the Palestinians live in refugee camps must pass the laws necessary to integrate the inhabitants of these camps into society. [In addition, they must] provide them with education and health services, and allow them freedom of occupation and movement and the right to own real estate, instead of [continuing] their policy of excluding [the refugees] and leaving the responsibility [of caring for them] to others, while marketing the impossible illusion of return [to Palestine]…”
= = =
The Refugees Don’t Need Another 60 Years of Misery

In his second article, published March 16, 2007 and titled “Naturalization is the Solution,” Al-Sweidan wrote: “There is no doubt that the Palestinian refugees in Syria and Lebanon - who have for many long years been fed by their Arab hosts on impossible dreams and on shiny promises that were soon broken - do not need another 60 years of misery, wretchedness and suffering… in order to figure out for the thousandth time that all the talk about the ‘bridge of return’ is [nothing but] nonsense and deceit - a fairytale that exists only in the old, worn-out demagogy of the Arab propaganda…

“In reality, there is no ‘bridge [of return]’… except for the bridge that we now must pass… called the peace process and normalization of relations between the Arabs and Israel.

Undoubtedly, the Arabs cannot continue to avoid the implementation [of the peace process], which brooks no further delay. [Any delay] will have a heavy price for the Arab societies in the present and in the future, considering the sharp strategic changes [occurring] in the Middle East. [These changes] demand an immediate and final solution to the Arab-Israeli conflicts, and [require] the two sides to direct their joint energies and efforts towards confronting the Iranian nuclear threat which imperils us all.”

The Inevitable Solution is to Naturalize the Refugees in the Host Countries

“As the Middle East peace process gains momentum, and as the regional and international forces remain committed to the need to resolve this [conflict]… there is a growing necessity for a realistic, unavoidable and bold decision that will provide a just solution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees by naturalizing them in the host countries, such as Syria, Lebanon, and other countries.

“Even though this is a humanitarian [project], it requires intensive efforts on the legislative, economic, logistic, and administrative levels, in order to integrate the Palestinians organically into the social, economic and political fabric of the Arab societies…

“By every conceivable and accepted criterion, naturalizing the refugees [in the Arab countries] is the inevitable solution to [this] chronic humanitarian problem. The fact that [this solution] constitutes an important part of the overall peace process and of the historic reconciliation between the Arabs and the Israelis will help to reinforce [the naturalization process] and to perpetuate it.”

Irving Cotler, a Canadian MP and human rights attorney, has also written an interesting article:

The double Nakba
By Irwin Cotler

I recently addressed an annual meeting of Quebec lawyers on the topic “The Genocide Convention and Universal Declaration of Human Rights Sixty Years Later: What have we learned? What must we do?”

Following the speech, a lawyer asked why I did not refer to “Palestinian suffering” and the lesson of the “Nakba” of 60 years ago. I told her, “You’re right, the Palestinian people - have - and are - suffering; and, you are correct, they did endure a Nakba 60 years ago, and there is an important lesson there. But the lesson to be learned is not that the Nakba was the result of the creation of the State of Israel. Rather, it was the result of the Palestinian and Arab leadership rejecting the UN resolution calling for the establishment of both a Jewish state and a Palestinian-Arab state.

The Jewish leadership accepted the resolution, but the Palestinian and Arab leadership did not, which they had a right to do. What they did not have a right to do was attack the nascent Jewish state with the objective - as they acknowledged at the time - of initiating a ‘war of extermination.’ The result was, therefore, a double Nakba: not only of Palestinian-Arab suffering and the creation of a Palestinian refugee problem, but also, with the assault on Israel and on Jews in Arab countries, the creation of a second, much less known, group of refugees - Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

IT IS tragic to appreciate that had the Partition Resolution been accepted 60 years ago, there would have been no Arab-Israeli war - no refugees, Jewish or Arab - and none of the pain and suffering since. Indeed, we would have been celebrating the 60th anniversary of both the State of Israel and the State of Palestine.

Moreover, this “double rejectionism,” where Arab leadership was prepared to forgo the establishment of a Palestinian state if it meant countenancing a Jewish state in any borders, not only found expression 60 years ago, but has underpinned the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever since.

Yet the revisionist Mideast narrative - prejudicial to authentic reconciliation and peace between peoples as well as between states - continues to hold that there was only one victim population, Palestinian refugees, and that Israel was responsible for the Palestinian Nakba of 1948.

The result is that the pain and plight of 850,000 Jews uprooted and displaced from Arab countries - the forgotten exodus - has been both expunged and eclipsed from both the Middle East peace and justice narratives these past 60 years.

YET THE United Nations once again commemorated the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947, and continued to ignore the plight of Jewish refugees on this commemorative occasion, thereby indulging and encouraging this Mideast revisionism.

Moreover, this revisionist narrative has not only eclipsed - and erased - the forgotten exodus from memory and remembrance, but it also denies that it was a forced exodus, and one that resulted from both double rejectionism and double aggression. This is the real Nakba - the real double catastrophes.

Simply put, the Arab countries not only rejected a Palestinian state and went to war to extinguish the nascent Jewish state, but also targeted the Jewish nationals living in their respective countries, thereby creating two refugee populations - the Palestinian refugee population resulting from the Arab war against Israel, and the Jewish refugees resulting from the Arab war against its own Jewish nationals.

Indeed, evidence contained in a recent report entitled “Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights And Redress” documents for the first time a pattern of state-sanctioned repression and persecution in Arab countries - including Nuremberg-like laws - that targeted its Jewish populations, resulting in denationalization, forced expulsions, illegal sequestration of property, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and murder - namely, anti-Jewish pogroms. And while the internal Jewish narrative has often referred to pogroms as European attacks on their Jewish nationals, it has often ignored Arab-Muslim attacks on their Jewish nationals.

Moreover, as the report also documents, these massive human rights violations were not only the result of state-sanctioned patterns of oppression in each of the Arab countries, but they were reflective of a collusive blueprint, as embodied in the Draft Law of the Political Committee of the League of Arab States.

This is a story that has not been heard. It is a story that has not yet even been told. It is a truth that must now be acknowledged.

Regrettably, the United Nations also bears express and continuing responsibility for this distorted Middle East and peace narrative. Since 1948, there have been more than 130 UN resolutions that have specifically dealt with the Palestinian refugee plight. Yet, not one of these UN Resolutions makes any reference to, nor is there any expression of concern for, the plight of the 850,000 Jews displaced from Arab countries. Nor have any of the Arab countries involved - or the Palestinian leadership involved - expressed any acknowledgement, let alone regret, for this pain and suffering, or for their respective responsibility for the pain and suffering.

How do we rectify this historical - and sustaining - injustice? What are the rights and remedies available under international human rights and humanitarian law? And what are the corresponding duties and obligations incumbent upon the United Nations, Arab countries, and members of the international community?

What follows is a nine-point international human rights action agenda.

• First, it must be appreciated that while justice has long been delayed, it must no longer be denied. The time has come to rectify this historical injustice, and to restore the plight and truth of the “forgotten exodus” of Jews from Arab countries to the Middle East narrative from which they have been expunged and eclipsed these 60 years.

• Second, remedies for victim refugee groups - including rights of remembrance, truth, justice and redress, as mandated under human rights and humanitarian law - must now be invoked for Jews displaced from Arab countries.

• Third, in the manner of duties and responsibilities, each of the Arab countries - and the League of Arab States - must acknowledge their role and responsibility in their double aggression of launching an aggressive war against Israel and the perpetration of human rights violations against their respective Jewish nationals. The culture of impunity must end.

• Fourth, the Arab League Peace Plan of 2002 should incorporate the question of Jewish refugees from Arab countries as part of its narrative for an Israeli-Arab peace, just as the Israeli narrative now incorporates the issue of Palestinian refugees in its vision of an Israeli-Arab peace.

• Fifth, on the international level, the UN General Assembly - in the interests of justice and equity - should include reference to Jewish refugees as well as Palestinian refugees in its annual resolutions; the UN Human Rights Council should address, as it has yet to do, the issue of Jewish as well as Palestinian refugees; UN agencies dealing with compensatory efforts for Palestinian refugees should also address Jewish refugees form Arab countries.

• Sixth, the annual Nov. 29th commemoration by the United Nations of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People should be transformed into an International Day of Solidarity for a Two-State Solution - as the initial 1947 Partition Resolution intended - including solidarity with all refugees created by the Israeli-Arab conflict.

• Seventh, jurisdiction over Palestinian refugees should be transferred from UNWRA to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. There was no justification then - and still less today - for the establishment of a separate body to deal only with Palestinian refugees, particularly when that body is itself compromised by its incitement to hatred and violence, as well as its revisionist teaching of the Mideast peace and justice narrative.

• Eighth, any bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations - which one hopes will presage a just and lasting peace - should include Jewish refugees as well as Palestinian refugees in an inclusive joinder of discussion.

• Ninth, during any and all discussions on the Middle East by the Quartet and others, any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees should be paralleled by a reference to Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

The exclusion and denial of rights and redress to Jewish refugees from Arab countries will prejudice authentic negotiations between the parties and undermine the justice and legitimacy of any agreement.

Let there be no mistake about it. Where there is no remembrance, there is no truth; where there is no truth, there will be no justice; where there is no justice, there will be no reconciliation; and where there is no reconciliation, there will be no peace - which we all seek.

The writer is the Member of Parliament for Mount Royal and the former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, a professor of law at McGill University and an international human rights lawyer. He has acted as counsel to both Israeli and Palestinian NGOs and written extensively on the Middle East.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1214726165071&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

It’s always a pleasure to have a civil debate with someone. All too often I’ve seen (and occasionally been involved in) online discussions where the posts turned into flame wars or mountains of unsupported rhetoric without thought.

A note: articles quoted are not solely for your benefit, but for the benefit of all who read these blogs. Not everyone reading the blogs has done the research that you or I have done on the topic and they deserve to see both sides of an issue.

About the Saudi journalist: I would assume that Mr. al-Sweidan wrote what he was allowed to write, not necessarily what he may have wanted to write. Government-controlled press tends to have that effect on journalists. In answer to your question, I do use MEMRI and Palestine Media Watch translations, but I run them by my younger daughter first for accuracy. She spent 2 years as an Arabic intercept translator for the IDF and speaks fluent Arabic.

Blaming Arafat’s support of Saddam Hussein as the sole reason for the expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait in 1991 is a mistake in my opinion, since the Palestinians in situ also celebrated and passed out candies on the roads to Iraqi soldiers during the takeover and in many cases collaborated with Iraqi forces in hunting down Kuwaiti soldiers and civilians. I don’t think it was solely for Arafat’s actions that Palestinians were expelled, but for their own actions, as well. Similar behavior in Palestinians elsewhere was seen on news reports every time Scuds were fired at Israel, which took no part in the first Gulf War.

It’s always been my assumption that the Saudis see Iran as a danger to their monopoly as the “Keeper of Islam”, a title they guard jealously. There’s no reason why Israel should do Saudi Arabia’s dirty work for them. However, at various times in history the independent needs of different countries coincide for a short period of time and they may become allied for the purpose of confronting a particular enemy that neither could confront alone, for whatever reasons, putting aside their differences temporarily. A case in point was a plague of rats and the threat of bubonic plague in the Jerusalem area during the 1950s. In spite of the facts that Jerusalem was divided and Jordan and Israel were technically at war, the municipalities collaborated to exterminate the rat population on both sides of the border for their mutual benefit, with the agreement of the respective governments. I do not think that Israel (or any other non-Muslim country) has any place participating in a power struggle between factions within Islam—the point being that Iran routinely threatens Israel, possibly creating a mutual enemy—but Saudi Arabia has made similar threats in the past, too. They should settle their differences between themselves without involving Israel, which would gain no benefit from any Arab country, no matter what it does.

The fact that Iran is apparently behind a number of continuous activities that destabilize the Middle East (support for Hizballah, Hamas and the Assad regime in Syria) makes them a threat to more than Saudi Arabia and Israel, exclusive of their apparent quest for nuclear weaponry. But I believe that Israel and the Palestinian issue are side shows for Iran, at least for now, used as a smokescreen to hide their true intention—taking over from the Saudis as the “Keeper of Islam”.

You certainly have the right to your opinion of the second Lebanon War, its causes and results, and I’m not keen on arguing. I do believe the Israeli response was exaggerated, but I also believe it was exactly the response that Iran wanted. I would ask how you would expect any other country to respond when missiles begin to fall indiscriminately on its territory and its civilians from a neighboring country. If Hizballah had wanted to avoid Lebanese civilian casualties, they would have refrained from storing and firing their weaponry in civilian population concentrations and firing on Israeli civilians. Better yet, Hizballah did not have to kill 7 IDF soldiers and kidnap 2 more either dead or dying IDF soldiers in a cross-border raid on Israeli territory. That’s called “aggression” under international law, which Hizballah broke in many ways. The report on “Lebanon II” by Amnesty International stated as much—a report that Hizballah refused to accept. Why don’t you mention that, if you’re so incensed at the Saudi journalist omitting pertinent facts?

Re quotes by historians: it’s possible to find historians and pseudo-historians to support almost any point of view, but those like Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe and Tom Segev are well-known historical revisionists whose writings often stray from fact to opinion, which they admit freely. They even disagree among themselves. The figure I gave that 68% of the Palestinians left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier comes from a Palestinian study, not a pro-Israel one. On researching Benny Morris’ claim of 228 villages “expelled” by Israel, you will find that he “forgets” to mention (or did not bother to check) that almost half of them had been abandoned for years, sometimes decades, before 1948 (also from a Palestinian study) for reasons totally unconnected to the conflict. Morris also ignores a 1988 Bir Zeit University study (and a 1998 BBC documentary) concluding that Deir Yassin was not a massacre, and continues to claim that it was (as does Ilan Pappe). This is exactly the kind of sloppy research that forces me to disregard Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe and Tom Segev as “serious historians”. It’s also a recurring phenomenon that many of these revisionists quote each other’s work—I can even remember one case where Pappe quotes a passage in one of Morris’s books as support for his conclusions, but all Morris’ book did was quote Pappe’s original content from a previous book. Of course, they’re not unique in this behavior, but it does happen fairly frequently in their works and casts doubts on the historical value of their work in general.

Please don’t mistake this for a denial of the existence of Palestinian refugees, because it isn’t. My point is that blame and compensation to Palestinian refugees must be shared, since the responsibility does not belong solely to one party or the other. Conversely, through their enactment of anti-Jewish laws, discrimination and expulsion, the Arab states ARE solely responsible for the 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands. I also believe that restitution or compensation for property or other claims should be in accordance with the rules of evidence used in courts of law, not dependent on unsubstantiated claims made by refugees from either side. This has a number of implications, the first being the refugee status—if Palestinians are refugees for multiple generations, then the progeny of the original Jewish refugees from Arab lands should have the same eligibility. Another implication is that the frequent clips of Palestinians holding a key for a house in Israel as “proof” of ownership would be disallowed without other, more substantial proof. If I still have a key from a house that my parents sold in New York back in 1965, does this mean that I have any kind of legal claim on that house?

That Israel managed to absorb and integrate 600,000 of those Jewish refugees—a number similar to the number of Palestinian refugees at the time—is a sharp condemnation of the Arab failure to integrate the Palestinians among their 22 Arab states, starting with the denial of citizenship to those who had moved to Palestine for employment as little as two years prior to Israel’s establishment. How is it that Pakistan could absorb 7.25 million Muslim refugees from India in 1951, while the Arab states could not absorb less than a tenth of that number among them all?

I also believe that the UN, in the form of UNWRA, has taken substantial action to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee issue. Can you name any other group of refugees that has an entire UN body dedicated solely to their “welfare”? Why aren’t Palestinian refugees handled by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) like all other refugees worldwide?

Mr. Villa:

As you noted in your own post, it’s not only what is said in articles that is important, what is left UNSAID can also be very important. Take a few cases in point from this particular posting of yours:

1. While there were attempts to convince Jews to move from their homes in Arab states to Israel, these were met with highly limited success even after the enactment of Nuremberg-style anti-Jewish laws in the Arab states. The number of truly voluntary Jewish immigrants from those states was negligible. Unlike the Palestinian refugees, 95% or more of the Jewish “immigration” from Arab lands was forced. Unlike the Arab states, Israel never enacted laws forbidding anyone to own or operate a business, practice their religion, seek education, own property

2. I am opposed to dedicated bodies of any international organization paid for my tax money that provides preferential treatment for any particular group. In addition, actions of this nature are against the terms of the UN Charter, which declares that all countries have equal rights. I would feel the same way if a UN body was established for any group of refugees with the apparent aim of perpetuating that refugee status. We are not discussing some ad hoc committee formed to deal with a particular crisis and disbanded afterwards, but an organization that is in its 60th year of existence and has a rather cloudy record of corruption, discrimination and inefficiency.

Your “facts” about the Second Lebanon War also seem to be in error:

Every description I have read of the Second Lebanon War mentions the firing of missiles by Hizballah into civilian towns in Israel as part of the “diversions” for Hizballah’s cross-border raid to capture two Israeli soldiers. From the New York Times, 12 July 2006: “The conflict began when Hezbollah militants fired rockets at Israeli border towns as a diversion for an anti-tank missile attack on two armored Humvees patrolling the Israeli side of the border fence.” I’m sure this did not appear in many (if any) Arab newspapers, and the NYTimes can hardly be called “pro-Israel”. This, btw, IS called “aggression”.

You ignore the fact that the overflights for the period you mention were an extension of already regular overflights—in other words, nothing new—and this is even noted in the report. Overflights against belligerents have been standard procedure since hot-air balloons were first used for military observation at the Battle of Fleurus in 1794. Even Hizballah sent unmanned observation drones over the north of Israel during that period, by their own admission—something UNIFIL never reported, or maybe they just “never saw it”, just as they “never saw” Hizballah re-arming in violation of UN Resolution 1701, despite the blatant public claims of Hizballah itself that it was, at one point, “twice as powerful as before”. (By the way, in Israel this force is better known as “UNIFutILity”, signifying its track record. Its reports consistently mention Israeli infractions, both real and imagined, but either ignore or gloss over Lebanese ones.) Why does there always seem to be a double standard when it comes to criticizing Israel/”the Zionists” or “the Jews”?

Could you explain exactly which “parts of Lebanon Israel still occupies”? The UN has declared that Israel withdrew from Lebanese territory not once, but twice, in 2000 and again after the 2006 war. I expect you’ll respond that the Shabaa farms are Lebanese, but documentation studied by the UN brought that body to decide that the Shabaa farms are Syrian, not Lebanese. Perhaps Lebanon and Syria should sort out what belongs to who before any bombastic claims are made.

Basing any examination of facts regarding Israel on editorials published in the Christian Science Monitor is just about as effective as using editorials from Israel’s right-wing “Arutz Sheva”. The bias and willful distortion of facts is apparent in both. CAMERA points out some of Prof. Strindberg’s distortions in this article: http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=4&x_article=1178

I can add some of my own comments to certain statements he makes, some distortions and some downright lies:

“The Palestinians are the Indians who refuse to live on the reservation; the blacks who refuse to sit in the back of the bus.”

This sounds impressive, but doesn’t hold up under examination. The Native Americans do not demand all the land outside the reservation from coast to coast, nor do blacks in the US demand ownership of the entire bus company. Slogans and “buzzwords” are easy to manufacture, and their beauty to those who use them is that they don’t even have to be true… they just have to attract attention.

Prof. Strindberg also states: “Neither Hizbullah nor Hamas are driven by a desire to ‘wipe out Jews,’ as is so often claimed, but by a fundamental sense of injustice that they will not allow to be forgotten.”

In this statement, he ignores the fact that both organizations have repeatedly declared that their intent is to “eradicate the Zionist entity”. The declarations of both Hizballah and Hamas themselves make this statement nothing but pure nonsense.

Here, Prof. Strindberg compares apples to iron when he says: “If Israel, like its former political ally South Africa, has the capacity to come to terms with principles of democracy and human rights and accept egalitarian multiracial coexistence within a single state for Jews and Arabs, then the foundation for resentment and resistance will have been removed. If Israel cannot bring itself to do so, then it will continue to be the vortex of regional violence.”

The implied comparison of South Africa and Israel as “Apartheid states” is not new… and is about as false as can be. If an Apartheid comparison can be made, the real Apartheid states are the Arab states, with their repression of non-Muslims, their anti-Jewish laws and discrimination of Christians, Bahais, Druse, Bedouins, Jews and others—yet he ignores these facts completely.

No, I’m not saying that Israel is a paradise for Arabs… but how many Jews are members of parliament, government ministers, ambassadors, consuls and senior police or military officers in the Arab states? How many of the few Jews remaining in Arab states have the right to vote, to practice their religion and protest peacefully without repression by the authorities? Only recently there was an article that Bahrain had appointed the first Jewish Ambassador ever to represent an Arab state. Now you tell me: who is the “Apartheid state”?

These and other “misrepresentations” turn Prof. Strindberg’s article from an honest opinion piece into a biased and misleading representation of “The World According to Prof. Strindberg”. An additional attempt by Prof. Strindberg to justify Hizballah and Hamas can be found in the September 11, 2006 issue of “The American Conservative”: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2006/sep/11/00009/

After reading both articles, I can only conclude that Prof. Strindberg has decided to put his full support behind Hizballah and Hamas and against Israel due to his own personal opinions. Not the person I would choose as an objective source for anything involving the Arab-Israeli conflict, any more than I would consider the late and unlamented (by me, at least) Rabbi Meir Kahana or his disciple, Baruch Marzel an objective source.

“Furthermore, Hezbollah’s actions were justified given that hundreds of Lebanese and thousands of Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, a great deal of them are innocent.”

Another blatant lie; as of the “prisoner exchange” this past summer, when four Lebanese prisoners were released, there is not one single Lebanese citizen imprisoned in Israel. There have never been “hundreds of Lebanese prisoners” held by Israel except in the minds of Hizballah propagandists. The innocence or guilt of Palestinian prisoners has, for the most part, been decided by Israeli civil or military courts. Naturally, you have the right to agree or disagree with those verdicts. Can you explain to me, though, exactly what court convicted the two IDF reservists lynched in Ramallah during the second intifada? How many Palestinians have been lynched by other Palestinians for being SUSPECTED of collaborating with Israel without ANY kind of trial?

As long as we’re on the topic of prisoners, perhaps you’d like to explain why Arab prisoners in Israel enjoy all the rights and privileges required by international law, while Israeli prisoners have none? Samir Kuntar, a murderer convicted in court on four counts of murder married, had conjugal visits and even studied for and received a B.A. in Social Sciences from Israel’s Open University. In contrast, Hamas refuses to provide third-party inspections of Gilad Shalit’s conditions, or even confirmation by a third party that he is alive. The forensic evidence of the two Hizballah hostages, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, shows that they died either during Hizballa’s cross-border raid into Israel or shortly afterwards, but negotiations for their return never mentioned that it would be the return of two coffins, not live humans. Hizballah also refused to grant the third-party inspections of prisoner conditions required by international law. Both these cases are examples of blatant violations of international laws, yet you take no notice of them.

Just as we have both noted, what you DON’T say can be just as important as what you DO say…

A simple note: If you truly believe that the UN had no right do partition Palestine, allowing the creation of the state of Israel (and the potential creation of a Palestinian state at the same time), then you have to refute the right of the UN to create any other country that came into being as an independent state under its auspices since 1945. Before you decide, take note that the countries created this way include, among others, the following member states of the Arab League, all created after 1945: Algeria (1962); Bahrain (1971); Comoros (1975); Djibouti (1977); Jordan (1946); Kuwait (1961); Libya (1951); Mauritania (1960); Morocco (1956); Qatar (1971); Somalia (1960); Sudan (1956); Syria (1946); Tunisia (1956) and the UAE (1971).

”Israel has left Arabs no other choice.”

What choice did the Arabs give Israel in 1948? Everyting stems from those actions of the Arab states to destroy Israel before it began.

O’ yeah, one more things. I should inform you about the MEMRI and PMW, if you think you’re getting a representation of Arab media through these institutions, you’re not. Not even close. They specialize in dubious translations of either some obscure fundamentalists in some obscure channel (there are 300 Arab satellite channels) or some obscure pro-Bush pundit. MEMRI and PMW give you 5% of Arab media writings and pontifications. Most Arabs reject both Bin Ladin and Bin Bush.

My information comes from sources such as Encyclopedia Britanica and other reputable reference books, both hard copy and online. Self-declaring a state is easy, recognition and ratification, another thing entirely. Virtually all the Arab countries controlled by the British or French after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire until the end of WW II are states just as “artificial” as Israel. So was the partition of India into India and Pakistan. The difference is that I know where you take your information from.

If you want to talk about “immigration projects”, Arab migration to Palestine subsequent to the establishment of the Mandate was legion, following the “money trail” to employment without the intent of establishing a state and often illegal. Turkish censuses from 1850 onwards (long before the Zionist movement’s establishment) show that the Jerusalem sanjac had a Jewish majority, with significant Jewish minorities in Hebron, Jaffa, Tiberias, Zfat and other locations. Historically, the homeland of Arabs is the Arabian Peninsula—all other “Arab” countries were the result of the Muslim conquests of the first millennium.

No, Palestinians killed in military actions never saw a judge, but neither did any Israeli or Jew killed by a Palestinian terrorist. I think “honors” are even on that side, with Arab terrorism pre-dating Israeli statehood and even the Zionist movement (1880s) by far, going back to massacres of Jews all over the Muslim Empire, as far back in history as Mohammed’s massacre of Jews and Christians when he conquered Mecca in 630 CE.

Samir Kuntar is far from the only example. Marwan Barghouti completed his master’s thesis in an Israeli prison and many others have achieved educations while in Israeli prisons. You ignore the mentions of the three Israelis and their fates… have you no excuses?

As I said, Israel is not a paradise for Arabs, but the fact that few of those living in Israel are willing to fall under Palestinian control due to shifting borders in final negotiations should say something. When East Jerusalem (Arab) neighborhoods and the Arab triangle were offered by Ehud Barak at Camp David to offset certain areas of the West Bank, the offer was met by massive protest demonstrations by residents of Taibe and Tira. Do you suppose they know something that we don’t?

Again, it seems that the papers don’t agree with you—the proposed “night club” is actually a youth center, situated on land where a youth center once stood, land defined as near, but not on, an Arab cemetery that has not been in use for almost 100 years (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3611932,00.html). Compare this to the deliberate Jordanian destruction of 58 synagogues and the removal of thousands of headstones from Jewish cemeteries in East Jerusalem between 1949 and 1967, where the headstones were used to pave military access roads, floors and even public urinals (http://www.sixdaywar.co.uk/gloria-report-jerusalem-compared.htm).

Yes, I can see how you would want to consider the “Al-Quds” newspaper (largest distributed daily newspaper in the Palestinian Authority), Al-Ayyam (official Palestinian Authority newspaper) and Al-Hayyat Al-Jadida (another official PA newspaper) as not being “representative” of the Palestinian press… likewise, Al-Aqsa TV (official Hamas TV channel), TV1 (Iran – official Iranian government TV channel), Palestinian Authority TV (official PA TV station), LBC-TV (Lebanon’s leading private TV station), Al-Arabiyya (Dubai/Saudi Arabia – major Arabic-language competitor of Al-Jazeera) and Al-Jazeera itself are certainly “obscure channels”… you’re pulling my leg (teasing me).

That neither MEMRI nor PMW provide translations of all material aired or printed is a given—they would need many times their present resources to come even close. Do you consider people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (President of Iran), Ismaiel Haniyeh (Hamas Prime Minister), Mohsen Rezai (Secretary of the Iranian Expediency Council) and Hizballah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah “obscure fundamentalists? (Now pull my other leg…) Sorry, but this claim is a joke in bad taste and deserves only ridicule.

While some of the articles are about minor Islamic officials and their statements, the fact that such media organs print or broadcast the statements of these “obscure fundamentalists” automatically catapults them out of obscurity into legitimacy in the Arab world.

More seriously, as a professional translator (Hebrew>English>Hebrew), I can state that it’s a given fact that no two translators will translate a text the same word for word. Ask any professional. Translation is not an exact science, but it takes a really bad translation to mangle the gist of any text. My daughter, who is a professional for Arabic>English/Hebrew translations, disagrees with you on the “dubious” comment. You may not like or agree with some of the word choices of the translators, but I doubt you’ll claim that the translations significantly distort the message of the original text.

The additional fact that several of the TV stations noted have aired items complaining that MEMRI TV translates some of their articles indicates that the translations worry them.

Believe it or not, I also reject George W. Bush as the worst US president in history, and that says a lot, but few surveys have found any significant unconditional rejection of Osama bin Laden—most Arab respondents claiming disagreement don’t approve of his fundamentalism or his methods, but do not condemn him outright for his actions.

What I don’t see in your post is any reference to the Apartheid policies of Arab states or any real acknowledgement of any Arab fault in the conflict at all, and that saddens me… because just like any other addiction, the first step on the road to recovery from hatred is the admission of the addiction to oneself—something that the Arab world has never done, always blaming others for their faults and misfortunes while remaining addicted to their hatred.

Take a photo tour of Israel

http://marcovilla.instablogs.com/entry/take-a-photo-tour-of-israel/

Mr. Villa, kindly spare us the racist comments. Arabs are just as “white” as any Scandinavian, Brit or Russian. Race does not enter into the equation, but culture does. Can you deny that the Arab culture has stagnated for hundreds of years? Arab educators don’t deny it. If you feel that sources like encyclopedias, almanacs and history texts written by experts in their fields are not acceptable sources, we really don’t have much to talk about, do we? From your references, you seem to prefer self-declared revisionists such as Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe, who have been caught in fraudulent “research” more than once and forced to admit to their frauds publicly. Ilan Pappe was not fired from Haifa University because of his opinions, but because he approved a student’s doctorate thesis that treated Deir Yassin as the massacre initially reported and ignored the Bir Zeit University study and the BBC documentary that revealed the “massacre” as an Arab propaganda ploy.

The NII (National Insurance Institute = Israeli Social Security) statistics for Israeli civilian deaths by terrorism in the 1970s stands at 361. So according to your claim, Israel killed 36,100 Palestinians during the same period. Can you prove this figure or do you want to retract the statement now?

Yes, Israel IS killing more Palestinians than Palestinians are killing Israelis… chalk that up as much to the inefficiency of the Palestinians as it is to the efficiency of the IDF. However, more Palestinians have been killed by Palestinians since Hamas took over Gaza than Palestinians killed by Israel. Apparently Palestinians are better at killing each other than they are at killing Israelis. (A look at the PHRMG – the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group - will bear this out: http://www.phrmg.org/resources.htm.)

“As for the 3 soldiers, what I am supposed to feel sorry for Israeli occupation troops who no doubt have harmed if not killed Lebanese and Palestinians? Their fate is well-deserved.”

So you exempt Arab bodies from conforming to international conventions even while you cry “Foul” at every real or imagined infraction by others… This is not about the three individual soldiers, but about the principle of abiding by international laws and conventions… at least if you desire legitimacy and membership in the eyes of the rest of the world. Before you condemn individuals, find out what their service records were. Do you condemn these soldiers to death without evidence, solely on opinion? What about the killings in Darfur? Are these also an example of such opinionated judgments?

“Also, one more thing. It is not the Arabs who committed the Holocaust, pogroms, Inquisition, etc... Jews were occasional killed, and sometimes it was unjustified but not always.”

I suppose that the term “dhimmi” means nothing to you. Islam has discriminated not only against Jews, but against any non-Muslim since its inception. While it’s true that there were local periods of calm and relative freedom, these were due more to the actions of the particular local rulers than to the general policies of Islam. This “tradition” has a history as long as Islam itself. Arabs may not have committed the Inquisition (although I’m interested to know what would you call conquering foreign lands and forced conversions to Islam), but there IS a history of riots and murders of “infidels” covering hundreds of years (a pogrom by another name… since “pogrom” is a Russian word) and the Arab support and participation in the Holocaust is a proven fact.

Throughout history, losers were enslaved by the winners of battles and wars, not massacred as the general rule. The policy of massacring survivors on a mass scale after a battle can be traced directly to Mohammed’s battles with non-Muslims. I guess that in your opinion, anyone who resists Arabs “has it coming” but when Arabs are beaten, they don’t “have it coming”… you can’t have it both ways.

I get the message: you don’t like MEMRI. I just wonder if it’s because the content of the items translated is “inconvenient” for your purposes, or an honest objection to the quality of translation… and I am told by Arab-Israeli translators that the articles on Al-Jazeera’s web site in English are much less inflammatory than the Arabic versions.

“Pioneers of terrorism”? Look to Haj Amin al-Husseini for that “honor”. What were the riots he incited in 1920-21, 16 years prior to the first Jewish terrorist bombing you record, if not terrorism?

Have a look at the Israeli Foreign Ministry site for a list of Arab attacks on Jews from 1920 to 1999: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2000/1/Terrorism+deaths+in+Israel+-+1920-1999.htm

Here’s the list for the period of 2000-2007: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Palestinian+terror+since+2000/Victims+of+Palestinian+Violence+and+Terrorism+sinc.htm

Statistics are according to NII data, which pays social security and handicap benefits to the victims. So my answer remains that “honors” are about even.

Try this article by Ephriam Karsh in “Commentary”: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/1948–israel–and-the-palestinians–annotated-text-11373

You might even read Walter Laqueur’s book, “Voices of Terrorism”, too: http://www.amazon.com/Voices-Terror-Walter-Laqueur/dp/1594290350

I reiterate my initial contention: to even have any hope of achieving a just and lasting peace, the Arab world is going to have to stand up and admit its responsibility and culpability for its part in the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. Attempts to blame Israel alone will not lead to any kind of equitable settlement—but that’s not what the Palestinians want, is it? As far as their opinion goes (and maybe yours, too), the only “equitable” settlement is the eradication of Israel… the creation of 7-plus million refugees to appease 4 million refugees, the creation of a country with no achievements against the destruction of a country with a fairly good record of achievements benefitting humanity. Is this what “Arab Pride” is worth?

“And let’s not forget Israel’s collective starvation of the Palestinians of Gaza. Hitler would be proud of this collective punishment.”

Yes, let’s look at Lauren Booth in “concentration camp” Gaza, buying some refreshments… after comparing Gaza to Auschwitz. You know, somehow I find it hard to believe that there were soft drinks and candies in concentration camps, and they certainly didn’t take MasterCard (note the MC sticker in the upper left of the shop window)… the lie exposed!
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/09/12/lauren-booth-in-gaza/

Notice how empty the shop is and how bare the shelves…

Do you have the temerity and native dishonesty to compare that to this (Caution: Graphic material, viewer discretion advised):

http://www.deathcamps.info/Auschwitz/Album1.htm

You may rant about “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinians, but the Palestinian Authority census itself belies the claims. Between 1995 and 2005, the Palestinian Arab population increased by more than 30%, an annual increase of over 3%, The IndexMundi web site gives the birth rate for the Gaza Strip as 38.38 per 1,000 (# 26 out of 221 countries and territories worldwide) while the West Bank is given at 30.35 per 1,000 (# 50) see: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?t=0&v=25&l=en. You must believe that Israel is the world’s most inefficient ethnic cleanser in history, since the object of ethnic cleansing is to reduce the target population, not allow it to increase.

P.S.: I retract what I said about being able to have a civilized debate… without the ability to respond logically, you revert to propaganda, rhetoric, invective and one-sided photojournalism. Shall I publish similar photos of Israeli victims? Will you respect our dead as you demand respect for yours, or will you pass out candies and dance in the streets like the Palestinians in Gaza?

“Arabs have not behaved in the most decent manner in the conflict, but nothing changes the fact that the first injustice was by the Zionist movement against the Palestinians, everything else derives from that and the on-going occupation.”

It’s nice of you to admit that “Arabs have not behaved in the most decent manner”, at least. Rather than using the buzzword “injustice” like a club, can you explain what “injustice” was visited on the Arab residents of Palestine by a population that raised the life expectancy, lowered infant mortality, provided employment, social benefits, education, healthcare and modern infrastructure?

Where is the injustice in clearing malarial swamps, planting trees where none existed, building cities where there were only deserted villages or sand dunes, sowing crops never before cultivated in the land and building hospitals, schools, universities and homes where there had been none?

Where is the injustice in purchasing unused land from its owners (often at highly inflated prices) and turning that land into an active, functioning economy by virtue of hard work and investment of resources?

Where is the justice in attempting to destroy that which was built by others who chose to change the state of a land that had stagnated for more than 1,000 years? Without “the Zionists”, the territory known to the Ottoman Empire as “Mediterranean Syria” would almost certainly have remained a primitive, stagnant, malaria-ridden British colony to this day. Where is the justice in that?

“Everything else derives”, in part form the Arab refusal to accept any progress in any form of human endeavor that is not Arab. The ”ongoing occupation” is, at least in part, also derived from the Arab position of being unable to accept the idea of making peace under any circumstances.

Ghandi’s statement on Palestine is marred by one basic misconception, namely that “Palestine belongs to the Arabs just as England belongs to the English or France to the French.” Today’s English and French were not the conquerors of an indigenous people in the lands where they live, while Arabs were the conquerors of not only Palestine, but Syria, Armenia, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Portugal, Spain and more… (For a complete list, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests [redirected from “Arab Conquests”].) In no way can Arabs be considered “indigenous” to any geographical area other than the Arabian Peninsula.

“No, the conflict will not end until Zionists account for what they have done to the Palestinian people.”

When will the “Palestinian people” (Arabs who are culturally indistinguishable from other geographically located Arabs, NOT a separate or distinct national-ethnic group) be required to account for that they have done to… not “the Zionists”, but “the Jews”?

“And yes the Palestinians are victims of ethnic cleansing, how nice of you to selective site the figures from 1995-2005. What do you call the forced eviction of 300,000-800,000 Palestinians in 1948?”

Forced eviction? Then how do you explain these statements, all from non-Jewish sources?

“The Arab exodus, initially, at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem exiled by the British for siding with the Germans in WWII, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea.” Kenneth Bilby, an American correspondent covering Palestine during the war. (1940- “New Star in the Near East”, New York, 1950, pp. 30-31)

“The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and they would return in a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the “Zionist gangs” very quickly and there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.” Monsignor George Hakim, then the Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee (a leading Christian personality in Palestine) to a Beirut newspaper, Sana al Janub, August 16, 1948.

“I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously, and they must share in the solution of the problem.” Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leader of the Palestinian Arabs, in a Beirut newspaper, also reported in the Daily Telegraph on September 6, 1948.

“...The occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade… the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean... advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down…”
(General Secretary of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha as related by chief spokesman for the Arab League, Habib Issa — (Al Hoda, June 8, 1951 - A NY Lebanese daily newspaper).

“The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.” (Jordan Daily Newspaper, Ad Dijaa, September 6, 1954.)

“The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce . . . they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did.” (UN Security Council Official Records - Third Year N. 62, April 23, 1948, p 14)

“The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war.” General Glubb Pasha (the British officer who helped build the Transjordanian Army) wrote this in the London Daily Mail (August 12, 1948).

Alexander Galloway, a former director of the UNRWA activities in Jordan said, “The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”

“Since 1948 Arab leaders have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes.” King Hussein of Jordan (1960)

The Palestinian Authority knows the truth about the “forced eviction”, even if you don’t:

The following are four statements corroborating that Arabs fled Israel under the instruction and the encouragement of Arab leaders:

1. Journalist writing about the events of 1948

Mahmud Al-Habbash, a regular writer in the official PA paper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, indicates in his column “The Pulse of Life” that the Arabs left Israel in 1948 only after political Arab leaders persuaded them to do so by promising the Arabs a speedy return to their homes in Palestine:
“…The leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the ‘Catastrophe’ (the establishment of Israel and the creation of refugee problem) in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those ‘Arkuvian’ promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events…” (Term ‘Arkuvian,’ is after Arkuv – a figure from Arab tradition - who was known for breaking his promises and for his lies.).”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, December 13, 2006]

2. Woman who fled Israel in 1948

“We heard sounds of explosions and of gunfire at the beginning of the summer in the year of the ‘Catastrophe’ [The establishment of Israel and the expulsion from the land in 1948]. They told us: The Jews attacked our region and it is better to evacuate the village and return, after the battle is over. And indeed there were among us [who fled Israel] those who left a fire burning under the pot, those who left their flock [of sheep] and those who left their money and gold behind, based on the assumption that we would return after a few hours.”
[Asmaa Jabir Balasimah Um Hasan, Woman who fled Israel, Al-Ayyam, May 16, 2006]

3. Son and grandson of those who fled in 1948

An Arab viewer called Palestinian Authority TV and quoted his father and grandfather, complaining that in 1948 the Arab District Officer ordered all Arabs to leave Palestine or be labeled traitors. In response, Arab MK Ibrahim Sarsur, then Head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, cursed the leaders who ordered Arabs to leave, thus, acknowledging Israel’s assertion.

Statement of son and grandson of man who fled:
“Mr. Ibrahim [Sarsur]. I address you as a Muslim. My father and grandfather told me that during the ‘Catastrophe’ [establishment of Israel in 1948 and the expulsion from the land], our district officer issued an order that whoever stays in Palestine and in Majdel [near Ashkelon – Southern Israel] is a traitor, he is a traitor.”
Response from Ibrahim Sarsur, Head of the Islamic Movement in Israel:
“The one who gave the order forbidding them to stay there bears guilt for this, in this life and the Afterlife throughout history until Resurrection Day.”
[PA TV April 30, 1999]

4. Article by senior PA journalist

Fuad Abu Higla, then a regular columnist in the official PA daily Al Hayat Al Jadida, wrote an article before an Arab Summit, which criticized the Arab leaders for a series of failures. One of the failures he cited, in the name of a prisoner, was that an earlier generation of Arab leaders “forced” them to leave Israel in 1948, again placing the blame for the flight on the Arab leaders.

“I have received a letter from a prisoner in Acre prison, to the Arab summit:
‘To the [Arab and Muslim] Kings and Presidents, Poverty is killing us, the symptoms are exhausting us and the souls are leaving our body, yet you are still searching for the way to provide aid, like one who is looking for a needle in a haystack or like the armies of your predecessors in the year of 1948, who forced us to leave [Israel], on the pretext of clearing the battlefields of civilians... So what will your summit do now?’”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, March 19, 2001]

Conclusion

It is clear from these statements that there is general acknowledgement among Palestinians that Arab leaders bear responsibility for the mass flight of Arabs from Israel in 1948, and were the cause of the “refugee” problem. Furthermore, the fact that this information has been validated by public figures and the media in the Palestinian Authority confirms that this responsibility is well-known – even though, for propaganda purposes, its leaders continue to blame Israel publicly for “the expulsion.”

Please feel free to forward this bulletin, crediting Palestinian Media Watch

It would seem that these references put a somewhat different light on your claim of “forced eviction” being solely Israel’s responsibility…

Please spare us your attempts to hide under the cloak of “anti-Zionism” when you practice anti-Semitism. See what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had to say about “anti-Zionism”:

“Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism” - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“. . . You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely ‘anti-Zionist.’ And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God’s green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews—this is God’s own truth.

“Anti-Semitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionist is inherently anti-Semitic, and ever will be so.

“Why is this? You know that Zionism is nothing less than the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land. The Jewish people, the Scriptures tell us, once enjoyed a flourishing Commonwealth in the Holy Land. From this they were expelled by the Roman tyrant, the same Romans who cruelly murdered Our Lord. Driven from their homeland, their nation in ashes, forced to wander the globe, the Jewish people time and again suffered the lash of whichever tyrant happened to rule over them.

“The Negro people, my friend, know what it is to suffer the torment of tyranny under rulers not of our choosing. Our brothers in Africa have begged, pleaded, requested—DEMANDED the recognition and realization of our inborn right to live in peace under our own sovereignty in our own country.

“How easy it should be, for anyone who holds dear this inalienable right of all mankind, to understand and support the right of the Jewish People to live in their ancient Land of Israel. All men of good will exult in the fulfillment of God’s promise that his People should return in joy to rebuild their plundered land.

“This is Zionism, nothing more, nothing less.

“And what is anti-Zionist? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the Globe. It is discrimination against Jews, my friend, because they are Jews. In short, it is anti-Semitism.

“The anti-Semite rejoices at any opportunity to vent his malice. The times have made it unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being the case, the anti-Semite must constantly seek new forms and forums for his poison. How he must revel in the new masquerade! He does not hate the Jews, he is just ‘anti-Zionist’!

“My friend, I do not accuse you of deliberate anti-Semitism. I know you feel, as I do, a deep love of truth and justice and a revulsion for racism, prejudice and discrimination. But I know you have been misled—as others have been—into thinking you can be ‘anti-Zionist’ and yet remain true to these heartfelt principles that you and I share.

“Let my words echo in the depths of your soul: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews–make no mistake about it.”

From M.L. King Jr., “Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend,” Saturday Review XLVII (Aug. 1967), p. 76.

Spare us the argument that “as an Arab, I am a Semite myself, so I can’t be anti-Semitic”. What you demand is not coexistence, but one “ethnic cleansing” to replace another. The term “anti-Semitism” was coined in the 19th century to give a “scientific legitimization” to the hatred of Jews. What you demand for the Palestinian Arabs is exactly what you are determined to deny to “the Jews”—and that is… anti-Semitism.

Spare us, too, the argument that “the Jews can settle someplace else”, thereby demanding yet another “forced eviction” of indigenous people. Where would you have the Jews go? Uganda? What about Ungandans? Do they have any say in the matter? Argentina? Will Argentines agree? Alaska? What will the Inuit people think of that idea? Would you be satisfied if all “the Jews” in the world emigrated to the moon?

The comment was not personal. Many anti-Semites do use “anti-Zionism” as a cloak for their anti-Semitism—enough so that the phenomenon has been noted by many sociologists, historians and even some politicians and journalists.

While I have no objection to honest criticism, I do object to those who use the guise of “honest criticism” to further their agendas solely against one target while excusing the same or worst behavior by other entities that may or may not be favored by them. A fair example of that would be an Englishman who criticizes Israel for its behavior in the territories whole praising the British Army for its actions in Northern Ireland against the IRA during “the Troubles”. Russians trashing the US for Iraq and Afghanistan while justifying the invasions of Chechnya and Georgia by Russia would be another example. (Just for the record, I’m against ALL of them.)

Perhaps you don’t want the ethnic cleansing of Jews, but some parties do, notably both Fatah and Hamas. It’s in their founding documents, the PLO Charter and the Hamas Covenant.

It’s not a well-known fact that the PLO Charter was changed after 1967 (after the 6-Day War) to include the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the land to be liberated. The original Charter stated:

“Article 24: This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.”

This Article was removed in its entirety from the 1968 amended version. Quite simply, it was acceptable to the PLO for Jordan to hold on to the West Bank and Jerusalem and for Egypt to keep the Gaza Strip. Until they came under Israeli administration they were apparently not “part of Palestine” as far as the PLO was concerned. It also makes a mockery of Article 2 in the same version:

“Article 2: Palestine, with its boundaries at the time of the British Mandate, is a indivisible territorial unit.”

The contradiction is greater than it seems at first glance. The British Mandate for Palestine granted by the League of Nations included all of the Kingdom of Jordan, the West Bank, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip and Israel. Somehow, the PLO has convinced the world that the 1947 map is the only “true” map of the Mandate—but the PLO attempted to take over Jordan in 1970, and Syria tried to assist in that takeover. As an IDF soldier in the Golan in 1970, I remember when my armored brigade was moved south-east to the point where the Jordanian, Syrian and Israeli borders meet to interdict a Syrian force moving south to enter Jordan for the purpose of aiding the PLO. Diplomatic messages between Israel and Syria conveyed by a UN representative avoided that confrontation, allowing the Jordanians and the PLO to fight it out without interference. The “Black September” movement was founded to “commemorate” this fighting, and, true to form, did not “avenge” itself on Jordan, but carried out terror attacks against Israel, notably the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, among others.

You can find both versions of the Palestinian National Charter at the Palestinian Observer’s Mission to the UN: http://www.un.int/palestine/plocharter.shtml for study, if you wish. Some of the differences are interesting, but it strongly indicated that the “two-state” concept was never an option for the PLO.

The Hamas Covenant is more specific, although clouded in flowery language with many references to the Qur’an. You can find a copy at: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp

Its essential points are Articles 11 and 13, which not only define Palestine as a single, undividable entity, but demand that it be an Islamic theocracy. Again, a two-state solution is not an option for Hamas, either.

So the options that the PLO and Hamas give are either ethnic cleansing or dhimmitude. As long as both organizations remain stuck on this point, no “just and lasting peace” can be possible.

“…what I do oppose is an effort to create ANY state through the disposition of another.”

Yet this is exactly what the Palestinians propose in the PLO National Charter and the Hamas Covenant. One of the basic problems is this refusal to accept a Jewish state under any circumstances. Bear in mind that there was never any “Palestinian state” prior to 1947, not in recent history and not in distant history. At best, it has been a district or sub-district subordinate to one empire or another since the last Kingdom of Israel, before the Romans. Don’t forget that UN General Assembly Resolution 181 was intended to create two countries, not one (see: http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/5ba47a5c6cef541b802563e000493b8c/7f0af2bd897689b785256c330061d253!OpenDocument). A Palestinian state could have existed since 1948, had the Arab governments accepted this resolution. The fact that neither the Arab governments nor the Palestinians not only rejected the resolution, but attacked the newly-declared State of Israel with the declared objective of “pushing the Jews into the sea” is consistent with the declarations and statements made by Palestinians to this day—that nothing but a single, Arab state is acceptable to them. The one problem with an “all or nothing” attitude towards anything is the risk of losing everything.

“I know you cling to the belief that Palestinian left on their own accord. But, although this is true for some Palestinians, it is not true for all or most.”

Not exactly. I contend that while Palestinian Arabs were expelled, most of them were “expelled” or left under the orders of the Higher Arab Committee or by their own fears, often generated by the Arabic media and only a small portion were actually expelled by Israeli actions, an opinion supported by quotes from Palestinian and Arab persona. While there were (and still are) Jews who supported expulsion or “transfer”, it was never an overall policy and what little expulsion carried out was during wartime conditions in localized strategic areas only. If the Israeli intention was really “ethnic cleansing” of all Arabs, why on earth did Israel allow Palestinians who fled during June, 1967 to return afterwards, until the PLO issued orders not to return?

There is a literal mountain of material, both digital and printed, on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and reading them all would be a life’s work. Unlike many people I’ve discussed the conflict with (both Arab and non-Arab) I have read books, articles and web sites from both sides of the coin. One of the consistent misconceptions that many “debaters” have is the idea that the “Palestine Question” originated only after WW II. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

From the very first days of the British Mandate, Arab residents insisted there “was no such thing as Palestine”, and “no such thing as a Palestinian people”. The quote is not an “Golda original”, but a repetition of declarations expressed since the first meeting convened among Arab leaders in Palestine in 1919, who declared the same thing. Here are some examples:

“Prior to partition, ‘Palestinian’ Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the first congress of Muslim-Christian associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose ‘Palestinian’ representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:

“We consider ‘Palestine’ as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic, and geographical bonds.”

“In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Israel: ‘There is no such country [as Palestine]! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”

“The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the general assembly in May 1947 that said ‘Palestine was part of the province of Syria’ and that, ‘politically, the Arabs of Israel were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity.’”

“On May 31, 1956, Ahmed Shukairy had no hesitation, as current head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in announcing to the Security Council the observation, ‘It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria.’”

“Hafez al-Assad stated on March 8, 1974, ‘Palestine is a principal part of Southern Syria, and we consider that it is our right and duty to insist that it be a liberated partner of our Arab homeland and of Syria.’”

“He also told Yasser Arafat: ‘You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian People, there is no Palestinian entity; there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people. Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people.’”

References can be found in: “The Claim Of Dispossession” (Arieh Avneri, 1982) and in “From Time Immemorial” (Joan Peters, Harper, 1984).

“The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.

“For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.” – Zahir Muhsein, PLO executive committee member, in a March 31, 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper “Trouw”

Quotes like these make me doubt the sincerity of any Palestinian approach toward solving the “Palestinian Question”. Do you really believe that all the persons quoted here did not know what they’re talking about?

Before claiming that these are “old” statements and do not reflect a changed reality, read these statements:

”This is the phased program which we all adopted in 1974 - why do you oppose it?” (Yasser Arafat responding to critics of the treaties with Israel, July 1995).

”The Oslo II Agreement is a delayed realization of a stage in the PLO’s 1974 phased plan” (A-Datsur [Jordanian Newspaper], September 19, 1995).

In a closed meeting with Arab diplomats in Stockholm he made the following statement (which was leaked by one person present and reported by Cal Thomas in the Washington Times, also by the Middle East Digest, March 7, 1996):

”Within five years we will have 6 to 7 million Arabs living on the West Bank and in Jerusalem.... We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. Jews will not want to live among Arabs. I have no use for Jews... We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.”

Less than a year after the signing of the Oslo accords, in a speech delivered in a Johannesburg, South Africa mosque on May 10, 1994, Arafat stated:

”This agreement [Oslo], I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Muhammad and Quraish, and you remember that the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and considered it a despicable truce...But the same way Muhammad had accepted it, we are now accepting this peace effort.”

“Kill a settler every day… Shoot at settlers everywhere… Woe to you if you let them reach their homes safely or travel safely on the roads… I want you to kill as many settlers as possible… Do not pay attention to what I say in the media, the television or public appearances. Pay attention only to the written instructions you receive from me.” Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, addressing his people at a public event, July, 2001.

Another top PLO official, Abdul Aziz Shaheen, Minister of Supplies for Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, has also stated that Oslo is just one part of the Phased Plan strategy for Israel’s destruction. He told the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Jan. 4, 1998): ”The Oslo accord was a preface for the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Authority will be a preface for the Palestinian state which, in its turn, will be a preface for the liberation of the entire Palestinian land.”

And in case more evidence is needed, here are more quotations from Palestinian sources, after Oslo, revealing their true intentions:

”The struggle against the Zionist enemy is not a matter of borders but relates to the mere existence of the Zionist entity.” (PLO spokesman Bassam-abu-Sharif, Kuwait News Agency, May 31, 1996).

”After the establishment of a Palestinian State in all of the West Bank and Gaza, the struggle against Israel will continue” (Knesset Member Azmi Bishara, Ha’aretz weekly supplement, 22 May 1998).

”We may lose or win, but our eyes will continue to aspire to the strategic goal; namely, Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the sea.” (West Bank Fatah chief Marwan Barghouti, New Yorker, July 2, 2001).

The consistency of the intent of a one-state solution to the exclusion of “the Jews” indicates to me that there is no real “partner for peace” among the Palestinians, to my great sadness.

My response mentioning Argentina, Uganda and Alaska was specifically because, at one time or another, each has been suggested as an alternative location. Each of these places was rejected by “the Jews” for one simple reason that no one gives credit to: the historical and religious connection to Israel and Jerusalem. While Muslims lay (doubtful) claim to Jerusalem as its “third most holy site”, it is the one and only holy site for Judaism.

Jerusalem and its synonym, Zion, are mentioned hundreds of times in the Old Testament. At weddings the groom declares, “If I forget thee, oh, Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” The last line of every Passover Seder is “Next year in Jerusalem”. The religious link to Jerusalem and Israel for Jews should be beyond question.

Historically, there are thousands upon thousands of archeological artifacts proving the past existence of a uniquely Jewish nation and heritage in the land. No such evidence exists for a uniquely Palestinian nation. As a result, the historical connection of Jews to the land should also be beyond question.

By the same token, there are ample indications that the Palestinian “affinity” for Jerusalem is a political and tactical one. Ask yourself why, during the 19 years between the War of Independence and the 6-Day War, not one single Arab statesman or one Muslim spiritual leader paid an official state visit (or any other kind of visit) to Jerusalem. If the Dome of the Rock is such a “holy site”, why did the Jordanians use it to site artillery batteries around it and use the shrine itself for ammunition storage (with no objections from the Waqf) prior to the 6-Day War? Somehow I doubt that Islam approves of such uses for its holy sites. Would Muslims stand still for this if the Saudi government used the Kabaa for such a purpose?

“British historian (St. Anthony’s College) Hugh Kennedy takes to task the assertion that Islam spread aggressively, arguing that with such a method, a bunch of Bedouins who never have conquered the known world. See his ‘The Great Arab Conquest’ and, written years ago, ‘The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphate’.”

As a legitimate historian, he should know better. There are too many Muslim records of giving conquered populations the option of accepting Islam, death or exile. What he does point out, and rightly so, is that the Muslim Empire was either fortunate or “divinely led” to conduct its expansion at a time when the older existing empires were at one of their lowest levels of power, influence and ability to resist. Even he doubts that the Muslims would have succeeded if the Byzantines and Egyptians had not been at a low point in their history, and he does note that: “If Muhammad had been born a generation earlier and he and his successors had attempted to send armies against the great empires in, say, 600, it is hard to imagine they would have made any progress at all.”

He also notes: “The Muslim advance was not always painless, as Kennedy reveals in a poignant chapter that gives voice to the conquered. On several occasions, cities that resisted were razed, their inhabitants slaughtered or enslaved. In North Africa, the scale of slave raiding was so large that it sparked a huge Berber uprising.” (From the New York Times book review of “The Great Arab Conquests” by Hugh Kennedy, Jan. 6 2008.)

Nor am I “ignorant” of the Catholic Inquisition and its excesses. Both instances make up a compelling argument for the separation of Church and State.

Most interesting is your comment that the Arabs were “kicked out” of Spain and Portugal, as if you believe they had the right to rule there. Iberians had been present in the Iberian Peninsula since before Roman times… and were certainly an “indigenous people” in ways that the Palestinian Arabs, by their own admissions, did not consider themselves at any time.

“They [the Palestinian People] exist and will always exist. It is so ludicrous to deny such a reality that it almost seems not worthy of response.”

Once again, we seem to deal in double standards. Despite the Palestinians’ own declarations, you continue to insist that there is a “uniquely Palestinian people”. If there is such a thing today, it was forged in recent years as the result of the Arab states and their actions against Israel. A “people” does not spring into existence overnight, and a manufactured history is no history at all, but a work of fiction. The concept of a “Palestinian people” has been a political ploy from the outset, orchestrated by an Egyptian named Yasser Arafat.

“The only thing I think we can agree on now is that regardless of past history there is no option now but a two-state solution. Are you in agreement on that?”

Even here, there is room for disagreement. Look at the League of Nations maps of the Palestine Mandate (This map is from http://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/MAPS/1923-1948-british-mandate.html, the ONLY pro-Palestinian web site I have been able to find any map depicting the pre-1947 definitions of the Palestine Mandate lands. “PASSIA” stands for the “Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs”.)

IF Great Britain had acted in good faith to execute the mandate granted by the League of Nations to create one Arab and one Jewish state, the “ideal” demarcation line should have been the Jordan River in to north and the Negev border to the south of the Dead Sea. This would have provided roughly 80% of the Mandate for the Arab state, and 20% for the Jewish state, which would have been more or less appropriate, especially since more than half the area allocated to the Jewish state in this plan is the Negev Desert.

Be that as it may, this solution would have been (and possibly still can be) an honorable fulfillment of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine: the creation of one Arab and one Jewish state. Now ask yourself, “When did the British Empire act honorably towards any of the indigenous people of ANY area it controlled?”

Whether you like it or not, the 1846 Ottoman census of the Jerusalem sanjak recorded the population as having a Jewish majority, while the “Jewish Connection” to Jerusalem as its one and only “holy place” is indisputable. The Arab claim to Jerusalem is far more tenuous, to say the least, relying on an interpretation of a dream.

However, it’s highly unlikely, at best, that anyone will accept this solution now, so we are left with a mangled “Mandate for Palestine” which now demands the creation of two Arab states and one Jewish one.

I have only one single condition for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and/or Gaza: it MUST not be a terrorist state. Any agreement must include the clause that if and when a Palestinian state is established, all anti-Israel activities must stop. This includes the incitement at mosques both in Palestine and within Israel (for example, speakers in Akko mosques have been threatening more violence over the past few days), the deliberate anti-Israel, anti-Semitic indoctrination of children in the Palestinian educational system, firing rockets into Israel, homicide bombing and all the rest. In return, Israel will not use force unless force is used against it.

I don’t care about “official recognition”… the fact that the country of Palestine will exist is de facto recognition of Israel. What I want is Palestinian self-sufficiency—no more power supplies from Israel left unpaid, no more tax collection by Israel for the PA, no more “goodwill gestures” that get spat upon by the Palestinians… oh, and no more free healthcare. If a Palestinian wants healthcare in Israel, they can either take out insurance or pay for it, the way every Israeli citizen does. Let the Palestinians mint their own currency for the first time in history—stop using the Israeli Shekel. Coining one’s own currency is one of the criteria for a sovereign nation.

If a Palestinian state is to exist and prosper, its efforts have to be turned to developing its economy, infrastructure and political sovereignty to the exclusion of attacking its neighbors, whether those attacks are carried out by the Palestinian government or by “unsanctioned dissident groups”. If a Palestinian government is to truly govern, it will have to take responsibility for the rule of law within its boundaries. Even tacit (silent) government agreement to any such attacks would have to be deemed as an act of war and treated appropriately.

The issue of the settlements will have to be resolved, one way or another. Keep this in mind, though: if the Palestinians demand that Palestine must be “Jew-free”, then by implication, they are agreeing that Israel also has the right to be “Arab-free” if it wishes, and will have to accept the fact Israel might revoke the citizenship of Israeli Arab who declares that he/she is Palestinian and deport them to Palestine. Once again, NO DOUBLE STANDARDS!

Can we agree on that?

“Yes they had a right to rule there, they lived there for over 800 years; in peace with Jews and Christians.”

The only “right” the Islamic Empire had to rule the Iberian Peninsula was the “right of conquest”. If you support this “right”, then you are also supporting the Nazi conquest of France, Holland, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Denmark, et al, the Soviet conquests of all the former Warsaw Pact countries, the Chinese conquest of Tibet, Saddam Hussein’s conquest of Kuwait, the “Coalition” conquest of Iraq and many others, including the Israeli conquest of Palestine. Make up your mind—the “right of conquest” is very much like a woman being pregnant—either she is or she isn’t. Justifying the “right of conquest” can NOT be selective, either it is right for all or it is wrong for all.

As for living “in peace with Jews and Christians”, a look at the Wikipedia article “Al-Andalus” and its references (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus) contradicts what you say. Treatment of dhimmis was always dependent on the whims of the local governors, and there were long periods of time when the Islamic Empire was anything BUT tolerant of the dhimmis:

“Treatment of non-Muslims

“The non-Muslims were given the status of ahl al dhimma (the people under protection), adults paying a ‘Gezia’ tax, equal to 1 Dinar per year with exemptions for old people, women, children and the disabled, whenever there was a Christian authority in the community. When there was no Christian authority, the non-Muslims were given the status of majus.[16]

“The treatment of non-Muslims in the Caliphate has been a subject of considerable debate among scholars and commentators, especially those interested in drawing parallels to the coexistence of Muslims and non-Muslims in the modern world. María Rosa Menocal, a specialist in Iberian literature, has argued that “tolerance was an inherent aspect of Andalusian society”.[17] In her view, the Jewish and Christian dhimmis living under the Caliphate, while allowed fewer rights than Muslims, were much better off than in other parts of Christian Europe.

“Jews constituted more than 5% of the population.[18] Jews from other parts of Europe emigrated to Al-Andalus, where they were treated with dignity, as were Christians of sects regarded as heretical by various European Christian states.[citation needed] Al-Andalus was a key center of Jewish life during the early Middle Ages, producing important scholars and one of the most stable and wealthy Jewish communities. But there is no consensus among scholars that the relationship between Jews and Muslims was indeed a paragon of interfaith relations. Bernard Lewis takes issue with this view, arguing its modern use is ahistorical and apologetic. He argues that Islam traditionally did not offer equality nor even pretended that it did, arguing that it would have been both a ”theological as well as a logical absurdity.”[19]

“Rise and fall of Muslim power
“The Caliphate treated non-Muslims differently at different times. The longest period of tolerance began after 912, with the reign of Abd-ar-Rahman III and his son, Al-Hakam II where the Jews of Al-Andalus prospered, devoting themselves to the service of the Caliphate of Cordoba, to the study of the sciences, and to commerce and industry, especially to trading in silk and slaves, in this way promoting the prosperity of the country. Southern Iberia became an asylum for the oppressed Jews of other countries.[20][21]
“Christians, braced by the example of their coreligionists across the borders of al-Andalus, sometimes asserted the claims of Christianity and knowingly courted martyrdom, even during these tolerant periods. For example, 48 Christians of Córdoba were decapitated for religious offences against Islam. They became known as the Martyrs of Córdoba. These deaths played out, not in a single spasm of religious unrest, but over an extended period of time; dissenters were fully aware of the fates of their predecessors and chose to protest against Islamic rule.[22]
“With the death of al-Hakam III in 976, the situation worsened for non-Muslims in general. The first major persecution occurred on December 30, 1066 when the Jews were expelled from Granada and fifteen hundred families were killed when they did not leave. Under the Almoravids and the Almohads there may have been intermittent persecution of Jews,[23] but sources are extremely scarce and do not give a clear picture, though the situation appears to have deteriorated after 1160.[24]
“During these successive waves of violence against non-Muslims, many Jewish and even Muslim scholars left the Muslim-controlled portion of Iberia for the then-still relatively tolerant city of Toledo, which had been reconquered in 1085 by Christian forces. Some Jews joined the armies of the Christians (about 40,000), while others joined the Almoravids in the fight against Alfonso VI of Castile.
“The 11th century saw Muslim pogroms against Jews in Spain; those occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066.[25][26][27]
“The Almohads, who had taken control of the Almoravids’ Maghribi and Andalusian territories by 1147,[28] far surpassed the Almoravides in fundamentalist outlook, and they treated the dhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many Jews and Christians emigrated.[29][30] Some, such as the family of Maimonides, fled east to more tolerant Muslim lands,[29] while others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms.[31][32] However, the Almohads also encouraged the arts and letters, especially the falsafah movement that included Ibn Tufail, Ibn al-Arabi and Averroes.[28]
“Medieval Spain and Portugal was the scene of almost constant warfare between Muslims and Christians. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Christian Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.[33]”
So, it would seem that your claim of Islam living “in peace with Jews and Christians” is, at best, true only part of the time.

“They were kicked out arbitrarily by the Reconquistadors.”

Much the same argument could be made for the Palestinians in Israel today. If the “Reconquistadores” were not a “legitimate resistance to an oppressive conqueror” then, neither are the Palestinians now. Once again, decide—you can’t have it both ways.

“Europe has never known glory like when Islam ruled over Andalusia.”

This is debatable, but really has no place in this discussion. Identical claims can be made for each of the empires in history, in turn, from the Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Persian and every other “enlightened” empire in history, right down to the British and French and Soviet colonial empires of the 20th century. Empires wax, wane and die, to be replaced by other “civilizations”. Why should the Islamic Empire be any different from all the others?

“They did and will rule there again in time, Europe will be majority Muslim by 2100.”

Now we get to the real “nitty-gritty”—the Arab/Muslim hashish dream of the “Restoration of the Caliphate”.

I believe you won’t find that quite as easy as you seem to think it will be. Already, there are signs of Europe awakening to the dangers the Caliphate presents to their freedoms. Underestimating the willingness of Europe to fight for its freedom would be a grave mistake. For one not-so-hypothetical alternative to a “peaceful Caliphate”, you should read Robert A. Heinlein’s “Revolt in 2100”. Any Caliphate would be oppressive to non-Muslims and would be resisted—read about the resistance movements in the countries Germany conquered during WW II. Even many Muslims already in place would eventually side with resistance against such a Caliphate. Do you really expect that a Muslim Caliphate can do what Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union failed to do? How can a “civilization” unable to maintain its own technology and infrastructure without external assistance be capable of ruling an empire? All you guarantee with this “dream” is years of carnage with high body counts on both sides and a probable return to the Middle Ages or worse.

If the plan is one to hasten the “Day of Judgment”, it just might succeed… but remember what the Chinese say: “Be careful what you wish for… you just might get it.”

What about the Caliphate?

I never said anything about the Caliphate. I do not know why you even brought it up. I said Muslims would rule again because Europe will be majority Muslim by 2100, they will rule by virtue of being the majority. This will not mean that a Caliphate will be established. In case you’re too busy reading anti-Islam books to notice, just because Muslims have a government of Muslims does not mean that a Caliphate exists. No Muslim nation out of over 54 has a Calipha. It’s telling that you would cite an anti-Arab, anti-Islam book that purports to tell us what will happen in 100 years! Eurabia fear-mongering trash. But it finally, am afraid, shows you’re true colors and how you approach Arabs and Muslims.

I know that non-Muslims were not always treated properly. But what’s your point? Back then minority anywhere were not given their full rights. Does the European attacks against Jews means that European history is entirely deprived. Jews had it better for their entire history, absent the years from 1948, in Islam’s domain than Europe. The only reason Europe stated to treat Jews with some respect is due to the simply fact that they felt guilty for Holocaust not because Europeans are embedded with any innate kindness to minorities.

As for the Palestine state; yes it should end incitement against Israel. Obviously, there will always be persons who attack Israel. But PA political leaders should abstain from such rhetoric with the establishment of a state. As for being independent, Palestinians want independence, it is not them that speak about only ”economic independence” (as BiBi does about a Palestinian settlement), but the Palestinians should have plenary sovereignty.

As for Palestinian being Jew-free: the situation it not at all related. Arabs in Israel did not move there, Israel moved to them. But settlers moved to the West Bank and it is not uncalled for to remove them for two reasons. 1) There are their illegally and have no right to remain there (although no doubt most large settlements will be annexed to Israel, something Palestinians have agreed to in the context of a land-swap; so this matters of being Jew-free concerns only a tiny segment of settlers ). Israel’s policy in the W. Bank has been nothing more than an obvious attempt at ethnic colonization since only Jews were allowed to settle in the W. Bank or Gaza.

2) The Palestinian will only be 22% of Mandatory Palestine. It is uncalled for it Israel were to be so selfish as to demand more land for Jewish, when there is already such little land for all the Palestinian refugees that will need new settlement in the new Palestinian state. These will number in the millions. There is plenty of land in Israel for the few settlers (again, must of them will be in Israel’s final borders) in the W. Bank to move to Israel. The Palestinians cannot give up any more living space. They have given enough already.