Israel bans use of word "Nakba" in textbooks

[Marc39]

Of course "Nakba" means the creation of Israel. You can't commemorate the expulsions and taking of the land without referring to the creation of Israel. To deny this is ridiculous.

To deny the above is doing so in the interest of historical accuracy.

Middle East historian and scholar Bernard Lewis...

Between 1947 and 1949 a large part of the Arab inhabitants of the territories included in the new state of Israel left their homes and took refuge on the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, and in the neighboring countries. The Israelis claim that they left at the instigation of their own leaders, who told them to go so as not to interfere with the movements of troops, and promised them that they would return in the wake of the triumphant Arab armies very shortly. The Arabs maintain that they were driven out by the Israelis. Both arguments are true; both are false. Some were undoubtedly told to go by their own leaders; some, notably in the strategically vital corridor between Jerusalem and the coast, were ordered to leave by the advancing Israeli troops. The great majority, like countless millions of refugees elsewhere, left their homes amid the confusion and panic of invasion and war—one more unhappy part of the vast movement of populations which occurred in the aftermath of World War II. As the Poles fled from the eastern areas seized by the Russians, as the Germans fled from East German territories annexed by the Poles, as millions of Muslims and Hindus fled from India to Pakistan and from Pakistan to India, so too did great numbers of Arabs flee from Palestine to the neighboring Arab states while large numbers of Jews, most of them previously unaffected by Zionist ideology, fled from the tensions which had arisen in the Arab states to the relative safety of Israel. At the time it was hoped that this problem would be resolved, like the refugee problems in Eastern Europe and in the Indian subcontinent, and that the Arab refugees would be partly resettled in the Arab countries, partly returned to their homes. This did not happen, and with the exception of Jordan, the Arab governments made a point of not according citizenship to the refugees and of opposing their resettlement.

 

[Marc39]

Uhm, you acknowledge that the term Nakba refers to a historical fact.

Nakba is a subjective Arabic word denoting disaster. When applied to the legally established and internationally recognized sovereign state of Israel, it is not a "historical fact," it is a libel.

Now for a Skeptic it might be unpopular to hush up historic facts

Ahistorical junk, such as the so-called nakba merits being "hushed up" Thrown in the trash is even better.

by deleting common terms referring to those facts, but you would be in favor of it nevertheless.

Opinionated slurs, not facts.

Funny enough, if Germany would ban the term Holocaust in the name of peace, you would be the first one going ape and whining about it all year long.

The Holocaust was an historical fact. The nakba is not.

Double moral standards, Pardalis.

Double ignorance. of history.

Not to mention that the banning of Nakba actually fuels the conflict, not the other way around.

Quite the opposite. Allowing the use of the ill-conceived term nakba furthers Arab hatred and resentment towar Jews, which inspires more violence and terrorism.

And I assume that people learning from Nakba-free history books will stumble about Nakba on the internet and think: "What the .. , why did I never heard about that before? ... Jewish Conspiracy!".

Because the nakba is malicious Arab propaganda that doesn't belong in reputable school books, nor, in intelligent Arab society.

 

[Thunder]

The Holocaust was an historical fact. The nakba is not.

BS. The genocide of 5 million or so Jews in Europe did take place. As did the expulsion of 750,000 Arabs and the Israel failure to allow them to return to their lands and their homes.

The Nakhba PALES in comparison to the Holocaust. But it was still a tragedy and a disaster for the Palestinian people.

this whole stupidity of "my pain is worse then your pain...my suffering is worse then your suffering" needs to end.

 

[Thunder]

To deny the above is doing so in the interest of historical accuracy.

Middle East historian, scholar, and ardent Zionist Bernard Lewis...

fixed that for ya.

 

[Pardalis]

Uhm, you acknowledge that the term Nakba refers to a historical fact. Now for a Skeptic it might be unpopular to hush up historic facts by deleting common terms referring to those facts, but you would be in favor of it nevertheless.

Funny enough, if Germany would ban the term Holocaust in the name of peace, you would be the first one going ape and whining about it all year long.

Double moral standards, Pardalis.

Not to mention that the banning of Nakba actually fuels the conflict, not the other way around. And I assume that people learning from Nakba-free history books will stumble about Nakba on the internet and think: "What the .. , why did I never heard about that before? ... Jewish Conspiracy!".

Complete gibberish as expected.

 

[Pardalis]

To deny the above is doing so in the interest of historical accuracy.

But from their point of view this is what happened, and this is what they are taught, this is what that word has come to mean for them, regardless of how accurate or true it is.

 

[a_unique_person]

The education ministry made a positive move to ban the use of this term. If one wants to use the term, there are plenty of outlets to do it outside of schools, from writing books for general circulation to visiting Ramallah, and browsing the TV channels and bookstores there. Sure there are plenty of package deals with books regarding the 'naqba' and the 'Protocols of the elders of zion' or the favorite translation of 'Mein Kampf' into Arabic.

So hoorah for this move.

Are you equating the Nakba with The Protocols and Mein Kampf?

 

[Marc39]

Are you equating the Nakba with The Protocols and Mein Kampf?

An apt analogy. I also equate the idiotic "nakba" with Jews drinking the blood of Arab children. The only historically true nakba that happened involving Arabs is when Arab countries expelled 900,000 Jews from their homes, merely for being Jewish, during the 1940s and 50s, leaving behind property estimated at $300 BILLION in today's dollars.

 

[Marc39]

But from their point of view this is what happened, and this is what they are taught, this is what that word has come to mean for them, regardless of how accurate or true it is.

OK, but, based on propaganda, not fact. Let's look at the facts.

The Palestinians were offered statehood in 1947 by the UN, along with statehood for Israel, that would, presumably, not have been "catastrophic" or "disastrous" for them. They rejected statehood. A Palestinian state would not have suffered from any loss of land and, indeed, would have resulted in a net gain of land since very little land was privately owned, in general, and by Arabs, in particular. What little land Arabs owned privately was sold to Jews during Ottoman rule and the Mandate years. The property transactions are well-documented, from the poorest bedouin to the wealthiest of the Arab aristocracy---Arabs lined up to sell Jews their land holdings. The Jewish National Fund's lament was that they did not have sufficient capital to buy more land eagerly made available by Arab landowners.

The facts are that by rejecting Palestinian statehood by rejecting UN Res. 181 and proceeding to go to war with Israel shortly after the issuance of UN Res. 181, the Arabs sealed their own fate in uprooting their population and losing an important historic opportunity to exercise self-determination, a direct consequence of the war they started. There was no Israeli government policy of expelling Arabs. UN 181 entailed an Arab population in Israel.

Millions of pages of files have since been declassified by Israeli, British and American archives and no records of any such plan for Arab expulsion have been found. Historian Benny Morris, who has researched the '48 War extensively, has acknowledged no such plan existed. There was no reason for mass expulsion of Arabs since, as mentioned, UN Res. 181 accorded a state for the Palestinians. 1.5 million Israeli Arab citizens today are living proof of no Israeli policy of Arab expulsions.

That the Palestinian "refugees" (Not really refugees, descendants of refugees who, themselves, are not refugees) have been used as an open wound against Israel by the Arab League by instituting a policy of denying them citizenship, and, in Lebanon, denying them employment and healthcare, is on the heads of Arab leaders.

Today, anyone with insight into Israeli society and with Arab interests at heart would counsel Arabs against promoting the nakba pity parties. First, it's regressive and historically invalid, for reasons stated. Second, such nakba nonsense only serves to further alienate Arabs in mainstream Israeli society. Arabs are already ostracized for a variety of reasons, including opting out of military service (with exceptions) and, generally, choosing not to participate in other forms of national service. Further, the "Palestinization" of Israeli Arabs, to borrow from Benny Morris, has further distanced Arabs in mainstream Israeli society. Israeli Arabs are choosing to identify more with Arab nationalism than Israeli nationalism. The nakba stuff further hampers Arab progress in Israel.

 

[FireGarden]

An apt analogy. I also equate the idiotic "nakba" with Jews drinking the blood of Arab children. The only historically true nakba that happened involving Arabs is when Arab countries expelled 900,000 Jews from their homes, merely for being Jewish, during the 1940s and 50s, leaving behind property estimated at $300 BILLION in today's dollars.

What's 300 billion divided by 900,000?
333,000 dollars each, on average. I guess Jews did quite well in Arab lands until Israel was founded. Would that average at a million dollars per family? That would imply a small family size. How does that compare to Arab families from those countries?

Your Nakba denial makes all your claims seem suspect. That said, the claim is quoted at wiki,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_lands
so you didn't make it up. I would like to see how the figure is generated, however.




I can certainly see why Jews wanted to leave Syria -- but they were forced to stay until 1992 when America pressured Syria to change the law and let them leave. Jews are allowed to return.

http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/2005/10/jews-of-syria-by-robert-tuttle.htm

On a Sunday night in February 1975, the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes broadcast what would become one of the most controversial episodes ever aired. Titled “Israel’s Toughest Enemy,” Mike Wallace traveled to Syria just a year after the Yom Kippur War and was permitted to film interviews with members of Syria’s then roughly 4,500-strong Jewish community.

[...] [After complaints of bias in an earlier documentary]

While filming the second segment, Wallace met Dr. Nassim Hasbani, a young, distinguished Jewish physician who ran a successful medical practice in the heart of Damascus. A member of a seven-man committee that governed Jewish affairs, Hasbani was one of just a handful of leaders who spoke publicly for the community.

[...] “Dr. Hasbani,” he said, “If all the Jews of Syria were told they could leave the country, go to the United States, or Mexico, or Israel, or wherever – how many of them would go?”

“I think,” Hasbani replied, “That not more than five percent to, to Israel. And perhaps if they want to leave to the United States, to Brazil, to other… other country, perhaps the number is 20 or 30 percent.”

A decade and a half later, Syria’s Jews were granted permission to freely emigrate abroad. Within a few short years, almost the entire community had left the country, a little less than half for Israel. Out of approximately 30,000 Jews who lived in Syria in 1947, less than 50 remain today, according to community leaders in the United States. All but a handful of those live in Damascus.

Today, most Syrian Jews live in the close-knit neighborhoods of south Brooklyn [...] This is where Hasbani now lives in a modest home he rents with his wife. Now in his sixties, Hasbani is no longer an energetic doctor he was nearly 30 years ago. After moving to the United States in the early 1990s, he stopped practicing medicine and tried unsuccessfully to open a few businesses. He lives on meager savings and suffers a heart problem that limits his movement.

Hasbani prefers to speak in Arabic and smiles wryly when recounting his brief moment of fame on American television. In a community that generally shuns publicity, Hasbani is outspoken, passionate and animated.

In the highly emotive debate over the Arab-Israeli conflict, the true story of Syrian Jewry was more complicated than either Wallace or his critics fully appreciated, Hasbani said.

On the one hand, critics of 60 Minutes were correct to doubt Hasbani’s rosy portrayal of Jewish life in Syria. In a country considered Israel’s most formidable enemy, Syrian Jews had long been subject to special restrictions, mistrust and, at times, outright persecution. In the northern city of Aleppo, Synagogues were burned and vandalized shortly after the United Nations voted to partition Palestine in 1947. In 1949, a bomb was placed in a Damascus Synagogue killing 12 people. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli War - in which Syria lost control of the Golan Heights overlooking the Galilee – armed Palestinian fighters broke into the homes of Jews and pointed guns at family members. No one was shot but the incident was a reminder to the community of its vulnerability.

[...] Hasbani said that his glowing portrayal of Syria was intended to win favors from Syrian authorities. Yet, he added, the 60 Minutes broadcast was not totally false either. Conditions were beginning to improve for Syria’s Jews and would continue to improve in the months and years after Wallace’s visit.

For a man who says he spent most of his years at Damascus University’s Medical School lying about his religion, and whose own brother was stabbed to death by a person who bragged he killed a Jew, Hasbani is surprisingly nostalgic about the land of his birth.

“I live in the past,” he said, which is evident from the reams of newspaper clips, photos and other memorabilia he saves from his time in Syria.

[...] “For us, of course, he [Asad] was like the Messiah,” Hasbani said. Before him “you could not walk for four kilometers [without permission]. You could not buy and sell [property]. Walking in the street, you were afraid to say I am a Jew. There were [Jewish] schools. But there was someone from the government sitting on your head, and capable of doing whatever he wanted.”

[...] Such sentiments about a man long regarded as Israel’s most formidable enemy might surprise some people who follow the pulse of the Middle East. But they are quite typical among the approximately 3,000 Syrian Jewish émigrés who left for Brooklyn and Israel more than a decade ago.

Many complain bitterly about the abuses and discrimination they suffered in Syria during the decades before they were permitted to leave. Like Jews everywhere, many also profess sympathy for the state Israel and its policies. But, in almost the same breath, many credit Asad, the man who built his public persona on upholding Arab honor in a gallant struggle against the Jewish state, as the man most responsible for granting them their freedom.

[...] The 1976, Asad met with Jewish community leaders including Hasbani;

[...] In the months and years that followed, most restrictions on Jews were lifted. The Mossawi stamp was eventually removed from all forms of identification, although not as quickly as Wallace may have been led to believe from his interview with Hasbani. Domestic travel restrictions on Jews were lifted. Businesses that had previously been closed to Jews, such as import-export, were opened. Jews could buy and sell property and the community began to prosper.

The only restriction that remained on Jews was a prohibition against free Jewish emigration abroad with family members, a rule that remained in effect until 1992. [...] many hardships persisted. Jews caught trying to escape continued to be imprisoned. Many complain that they continued to face harassment from Syrian intelligence officers and other low-level officials.

[...]
[Telling the story of Albert Fouerti]

Nearly twenty years passed before the Syrian government finally allowed Jews to emigrate. As Syrian Jews began to sell their homes and businesses and leave for America, Fouerti applied for passports for his entire family so they could travel to the United States. His wish, he said, was to witness the reunion of his elderly mother with her two lost daughters.

[...] [Speaking about Bashar Asad] “It appears that he took his father’s track,” said Hamra, the former chief Rabbi of Damascus who now lives in Israel. “Thank God the stability in Syria remained. His existence in the government and the permanent stable situation in Syria are a proof of his success. It will take time to become as wise as his father.” Hamra spoke in Arabic.

[...] Over the past year, [Syrian ambassador to the United States, Imad] Mustapha has been making rounds in South Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish neighborhoods, introducing himself to members of the community, making friends, and encouraging Syrian Jews to visit their country of origin.

[...] A delegation of a dozen Jews of Syrian origin visited Syria in the spring of 2004, accompanied by Mustapha.

Some American Jewish leaders disapproved of the trip. "It is wrong for American Jews or any Americans to help sanitize the Syrian regime by visiting Syria," said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America.

[...] When the meeting [with Syrian President] was over, Hasbani said the group asked the president if he would invite them back to Syria.

“He said no,” Mustapha said. “They were surprised. He said to them, ‘I can’t invite you back. I can’t invite Syrians back to Syria. You are always welcome.’”

[...] Few Syrian Jew have returned to Syria permanently, but many say that they would like to visit, if only to see the homes in which they once resided, the Synagogues in which they worshiped or the graves of their ancestors. A small, but growing minority are returning to do business and reestablish old ties. Boucai counts at least 10 individuals who are trading with Syria or own businesses there, up from five a few years ago.

This looks like the same article, but you get some pictures:
http://joshualandis.com/blog/?p=656

And the ZOA quote can be found here:
http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=995




The emigration from Morocco was spread over decades, and Jews are allowed to return. Morocco also had a law forbidding Jews from emigrating 1956-63, though relaxed in 1961. wiki.

http://www.forward.com/articles/11792/

In addition to a vibrant Jewish community with several synagogues and schools, Moroccan Jewry can boast of a royal adviser, an ambassador-at-large, candidates for parliament and even a smattering of far-left militants.

While the vast majority of Morocco’s quarter-million Jews left the country between 1948 and 1967 to immigrate to Israel, France or the United States, for the most part they felt they had not been chased out and as a result many retained a strong emotional bond to their homeland.

[...] In recent years, both Israel and American Jewish officials have expressed concern over the safety of Moroccan Jews. But a variety of Jews interviewed here brush off such worries, expressing confidence in the Moroccan security services’ ability to thwart attacks.

Joseph Levy, a furniture maker who was among five Jewish candidates running in last month’s parliamentary elections, said he feels perfectly at ease as a Jew in Morocco. He noted that the Moroccan Jewish diaspora has kept a strong attachment not only to the country, but also to the king, whose grandfather Mohamed V protected Jews during World War II.

Historians from all over the political spectrum -- from Benny Morris to Ilan Pappe -- agree that Arabs were forced out by the Israeli government. Yet you deny this.

And Arabs are not allowed to return. You acknowledge that and celebrate it.

 

[Marc39]

What's 300 billion divided by 900,000?
333,000 dollars each, on average. I guess Jews did quite well in Arab lands until Israel was founded. Would that average at a million dollars per family? That would imply a small family size. How does that compare to Arab families from those countries?

Arab bedouins owned very little, particularly, after Ottoman Tanzimat dispossessed them of what little land they owned. When the British arrived, they observed Arabs so poor, they were eating grass alongside the goats.

The emigration from Morocco was spread over decades, and Jews are allowed to return. Morocco also had a law forbidding Jews from emigrating 1956-63, though relaxed in 1961.

Morocco, I believe, has the largest Jewish population, but, still, the last time I checked, Morocco's Jewish population was around 25,000, which is miniscule. Arab countries generally forbid Jewish citizenship and land ownership. Jordan has had laws making sale of land to Jews a crime punishable by death, which Fatah and Hamas have adopted. Excepting Morocco, all told, less than 10,000 Jews live among 22 Arab states.

Historians from all over the political spectrum -- from Benny Morris to Ilan Pappe -- agree that Arabs were forced out by the Israeli government. Yet you deny this.

Benny Morris has stated in his book on the '48 War, and has acknowledged elsewhere, that there was NEVER an Israeli policy of Arab expulsion, so, you are misrepresenting Morris. Pappe is not a proper historian who openly admits to having a fierce anti-Zionist ideology that colors his accounts of history and renders them biased. I have previously posted Bernard Lewis's account of events, whose scholarship is unequaled, that Arabs fled of their own volition. Numerous accounts exist of Arabs pressured to leave their homes by Arab leaders.

And Arabs are not allowed to return. You acknowledge that and celebrate it.

1.5 million Arabs already live in Israel. There is no legitimate basis for any "return" of Arabs who are not already Israeli citizens.

 

[FireGarden]

Arab bedouins owned very little, particularly, after Ottoman Tanzimat dispossessed them of what little land they owned. When the British arrived, they observed Arabs so poor, they were eating grass alongside the goats.

How does that address the veracity of your claim that Arab Jews left behind 300 BILLION dollars worth of property?

Benny Morris has stated in his book on the '48 War, and has acknowledged elsewhere, that there was NEVER an Israeli policy of Arab expulsion, so, you are misrepresenting Morris.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morris#Selected_book_summaries

In his first The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (1988), Morris argues that the 700,000 Palestinians who fled their homes in 1947 left mostly due to Israeli military attacks; fear of impending attacks; and expulsions. He argues that there was no centralized expulsion policy as such, but expulsions were ordered by the Israeli high command as needed. This was a controversial position when Morris first wrote of it; the official position in Israel was that the Palestinians had left voluntarily, or under pressure from Palestinian or other Arab leaders. At the same time, Morris documents atrocities by the Israelis, including cases of rape and torture.

The book shows a map of 228 empty Palestinian villages, and attempts to explain why the villagers left. In 41 villages, he writes, the inhabitants were expelled by the IDF; in another 90, residents fled because of attacks on other villages; and in six, they left under instructions from local Palestinian authorities. He was unable to find out why another 46 villages were abandoned.

So Morris does indeed agree that Arabs were forced out by the Israeli government -- he simply says the expulsions were commanded "as needed".

An interview with Benny Morris: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=380986&contrassID=2

That book describes in chilling detail the atrocities of the Nakba. Isn't Morris ever frightened at the present-day political implications of his historical study? Isn't he fearful that he has contributed to Israel becoming almost a pariah state? After a few moments of evasion, Morris admits that he is. Sometimes he really is frightened. Sometimes he asks himself what he has wrought.

[...] "The revised book is a double-edged sword. It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves.

"At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages. So that on the one hand, the book reinforces the accusation against the Zionist side, but on the other hand it also proves that many of those who left the villages did so with the encouragement of the Palestinian leadership itself."

Getting women and children out of a warzone is hardly a sin. And leaving a warzone does not remove one's right of return -- even if ordered to leave by ally rather than enemy.

"That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?

"Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]."

[...] "From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created."

So which of us is misrepresenting Morris?
This interview with Haaretz is famous and has been discussed before on this forum. There is no way you can consider yourself to be knowledgable about Morris' opinions if you haven't read the above before.

Pappe is not a proper historian [...] Bernard Lewis's ... whose scholarship is unequaled,

Your opinions on these matters don't matter one jot.

Here's the second half of the interview with Morris:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=380984

No wonder you don't actually criticise Morris. From his answers, he sounds like your kind of guy.

 

[Marc39]

How does that address the veracity of your claim that Arab Jews left behind 300 BILLION dollars worth of property?

This organizzation addreses the claim that Jews left behind $300 billion worth of property, based, in large part, on existing deeds to property...

http://wojac.com/

So Morris does indeed agree that Arabs were forced out by the Israeli government -- he simply says the expulsions were commanded "as needed"

Morris says in his book on the '48 War and has said in interviews there was NEVER an official Israeli gov't policy of Arab expulsion during the '48 War. Such contingency plans were discussed by Israeli officials based on possible heightened Arab aggression, however, no such plans were ever implemented. All militaries have contingency plans for any number of situations.

Morris has said there were instances of Arab expulsion based on Israeli military needs and there were likely isolated cases of Arab expulsions by rogue IDF. However, and Morris is clear about this, there was never an official Israeli policy of expulsion. He would have loved to have uncovered such a plan, as would any of the so-called New Historians, when the archives were declassified, but, none has ever been found, nor, is there evidence such a policy existed.

Getting women and children out of a warzone is hardly a sin. And leaving a warzone does not remove one's right of return -- even if ordered to leave by ally rather than enemy.

This is one POV. Another POV is thousands of Arabs chose to remain in Israel, who are citizens of Israel today and who benefit from the advantages of living in Israel, while, others chose to abandon Israel in a dire time of need. One might even characterize those who left as cowards and traitors. Other Arabs chose to pick up arms and fight against Israel in the guerilla civil war leading up to the War of Independence, in addition to the actual War, itself.

Furthermore, 95% of those "Palestiniains" today concentrated in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon were born outside of Israel, based on demographic analyses. They are not refugees under the correct definition of the term, although, the UN, uniquely, classifies descendants of Palestinian refugees as refugees, which is an incorrect application of the term.

So which of us is misrepresenting Morris?

You are misrepresenting Morris, for reasons I've stated.

This interview with Haaretz is famous and has been discussed before on this forum. There is no way you can consider yourself to be knowledgable about Morris' opinions if you haven't read the above before.

I've read all of Morris's books and have read much else written about him. I've spoken with and have corresponded with Morris. I'm quite knowledgeable about Benny Morris.

Your opinions on these matters don't matter one jot.

Testy!

No wonder you don't actually criticise Morris. From his answers, he sounds like your kind of guy.

Morris has undergone an evolution of thought. One might say he's been shocked into reality, as have many on the Israeli Left. Those, including Morris, who previously viewed the Arab-Israeli conflict through rose-colored glasses, that Pals and Jews could live peacefully, are now deeply disillusioned by the events surrounding the 2000 Camp David peace negotiations, where Israelis believe Barak gave away the store in the interest of peace in the region and, ultimately, the Israelis were met with complete rejection on the part of Arafat, followed by a four-year reign of Palestinian terrorism in the form of suicide bombers, car bombers, etc.

Over 1,000 Israelis were killed and 6,000 wounded and maimed in the intifada. The sense among Israelis that Pals are not interested in peace is further deepened by the events surrounding unilateral withrawal from Gaza by Israel, in a land-for-peace agreement that led to 6,000 rockets fired into Israel from Gaza since the withrawal.

Benny Morris's POV is the prevailing attitude in Israel, IMO.

 

[Thunder]

1.5 million Arabs already live in Israel. There is no legitimate basis for any "return" of Arabs who are not already Israeli citizens.

the first generation Palestinian refugees have a much better case for being able to return to their properties and lands....then do the supposed possible descendants of the ancient Judaeans have to return to Palestine.

 

[The Fool]

This organizzation addreses the claim that Jews left behind $300 billion worth of property, based, in large part, on existing deeds to property...

http://wojac.com/

no it doesn't...not a word on any estimate of value. Nothing....zip.....

Did you think nobody would click the link and check?

 

[The Fool]

The sense among Israelis that Pals are not interested in peace is further deepened by the events surrounding unilateral withrawal from Gaza by Israel, in a land-for-peace agreement that led to 6,000 rockets fired into Israel from Gaza since the withrawal.

Can you site the "land for peace" agreement that you refer to? what was agreed and between who?

you appear to have made it up.......again.

 

[Marc39]

no it doesn't...not a word on any estimate of value. Nothing....zip.....

Did you think nobody would click the link and check?

Your post is confused, as always. I stated the organization has calculated property values, not the link. Contact the organization, itself, for further information.

 

[Marc39]

Can you site the "land for peace" agreement that you refer to? what was agreed and between who?

you appear to have made it up.......again.

When you respond adequately to the series of questions I have posed to you a few posts earlier, in addition to following up on my question to you regarding the various occasions when Palestinians have had the opportunity to secure statehood, which directly relates to the nakba garbage.

 

[The Fool]

Your post is confused, as always. I stated the organization has calculated property values, not the link. Contact the organization, itself, for further information.

Lol... you make a claim...and your total support for it is to point to some organisation and say they have addressed it...go talk to them.

I'll just add it to the list of failed claims eh?

 

[Marc39]

Lol... you make a claim...and your total support for it is to point to some organisation and say they have addressed it...go talk to them.

I'll just add it to the list of failed claims eh?

Go back and respond to my questions. I'm sure we all would like to be enlightened by your scholarly insights into Middle East affairs.