The "Nakba" Myth

[allanb]

It is easy to say that Israel has the right to exist, but where? I think its right to establish itself in Palestine is exactly as good as its right to establish itself in (for example) one of the American states, or a county in the UK.

If Israel established a nation in Massachusetts or Yorkshire, building settlements wherever it wanted to, and asserting the right of border controls against the surrounding natives, how do you think the displaced locals would react? Don't you think it is just possible that they would use violent means to get their country back? Should we advise them to "forget about the 'disaster' already and move on"?

PS: On reflection, maybe New Hampshire would have been a better example than Massachusetts. The state slogan of NH, if I remember correctly, is "live free, or die" - which could well be adopted by the citizens of Gaza.

 

[Lamafarmer]

FACT: in 1947 there were 1.3 million Arabs in the territory of present-day Israel. In 1949, there were 200,000 Arabs. Many of there Arabs left on their own, the rest were forced out by the various Zionist military and paramilitary forces.

NONE of these Arabs, were ever allowed to return.

Yeah, well, sucks to start a genocidal war, take the wrong side, and then lose it, doesn't it? Do you happen to know where this text is from?

WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

 

[Thunder]

Yeah, well, sucks to start a genocidal war, take the wrong side, and then lose it, doesn't it? Do you happen to know where this text is from?

I didn't realize that the Arabs of Palestine started the war.

You do you feel such a loathing for human rights with all peoples, or just Arabs?

Now, mind you, the Jews of the Arab world also took the sides of the Zionists and Israel. I guess this means they should stop bitching and moaning about reperations for lost property in the Muslim/Arab world....ay Lamafarmer?

 

[Thunder]

Let if be known, that I do NOt consider all the Arab "refugees", to really be refugees.

The first generation who actually were sent packing and not allowed to return after 1949? Sure, they are refugees. But their children and grandchildren, born outside of Palestine, are not.

Its not Israel's fault, that the Arab world has sadisticly used the refugees as political pawns, and kep them in pitiful conditions for more than 50 years.

When Benes kicked the Germans and Hungarians out of Czechoslovakia, the Germany settled them and they never looked back. The Arabs should have and could have done the same thing.

The true refugees from Israel, deserve the right to return to their former homes and lands, if they want to. Or stay where they are and get compensation from Israel.

But their descendants, are not refugees. They are prisoners in the countries where the reside.

 

[WildCat]

that is the meaning you nail to it.....so what...

No, it's the actual literal translation from Arabic. As was clearly stated...

 

[dudalb]

It is easy to say that Israel has the right to exist, but where? I think its right to establish itself in Palestine is exactly as good as its right to establish itself in (for example) one of the American states, or a county in the UK.

If Israel established a nation in Massachusetts or Yorkshire, building settlements wherever it wanted to, and asserting the right of border controls against the surrounding natives, how do you think the displaced locals would react? Don't you think it is just possible that they would use violent means to get their country back? Should we advise them to "forget about the 'disaster' already and move on"?

PS: On reflection, maybe New Hampshire would have been a better example than Massachusetts. The state slogan of NH, if I remember correctly, is "live free, or die" - which could well be adopted by the citizens of Gaza.

What do you want to do with the Five Million Jews now in Israel?
I have never got a good response from the Anti Israel crowd on that one.

 

[Skeptic]

It is easy to say that Israel has the right to exist, but where?

It's easy to say that you have a right to breathe, but where?

 

[Skeptic]

If Israel established a nation in Massachusetts or Yorkshire, building settlements wherever it wanted to, and asserting the right of border controls against the surrounding natives, how do you think the displaced locals would react?

Quite apart from the inaccuracy of the analogy in general, perhaps you should ask the American Indians this question. Are you leaving the USA soon? After all, you've just proven it has no right to exist.

 

[dudalb]

Quite apart from the inaccuracy of the analogy in general, perhaps you should ask the American Indians this question. Are you leaving the USA soon? After all, you've just proven it has no right to exist.

The poster lives in France, buy your general point is well taken.

 

[Lamafarmer]

the Arabs of Palestine

What's this Palestine you speak of? Could it include lands from which the armies of those who waged war against the newly founded Israel came?

You do you feel such a loathing for human rights with all peoples, or just Arabs?

What's that?

Now, mind you, the Jews of the Arab world also took the sides of the Zionists and Israel.

Your language betrays you.

 

[Thunder]

What's this Palestine you speak of? Could it include lands from which the armies of those who waged war against the newly founded Israel came?

Your language betrays you.

That land has been called Palestine by many peoples, since around 135 AD.

In fact, as it comes from the Land of the Philistines, it was called Palestine by some even when it was also known as Judaea.

History. Read.

As as for the Jews of the Arab world, what did I say that caused you frustration?

 

[drkitten]

The first generation who actually were sent packing and not allowed to return after 1949? Sure, they are refugees. But their children and grandchildren, born outside of Palestine, are not.

Its not Israel's fault, that the Arab world has sadisticly used the refugees as political pawns, and kep them in pitiful conditions for more than 50 years.

When Benes kicked the Germans and Hungarians out of Czechoslovakia, the Germany settled them and they never looked back. The Arabs should have and could have done the same thing.

The true refugees from Israel, deserve the right to return to their former homes and lands, if they want to. Or stay where they are and get compensation from Israel.

But their descendants, are not refugees. They are prisoners in the countries where the reside.

This seems like a hypocritical double standards, considering the fuss that Israel has made about property seized by the Nazi's during the Second World War. It's the official policy of Israel (and has been since 1992, IIRC) that all property seized by the Nazis belongs first to the heirs of the person seized, and if there are no heirs (or if it was "public" property), to the state of Israel.

The idea that because the Aunt Rivka is dead, the Germans that illegally seized her property are now the rightful owners and her descendants should just "never look back" would never fly in Israel. But the idea that because Aunt Soraya is dead, the Israelis that illegally seized her property are now the rightful owners makes sense?

 

[Thunder]

This seems like a hypocritical double standards, considering the fuss that Israel has made about property seized by the Nazi's during the Second World War. It's the official policy of Israel (and has been since 1992, IIRC) that all property seized by the Nazis belongs first to the heirs of the person seized, and if there are no heirs (or if it was "public" property), to the state of Israel.

i have never heard of this...please provide some evidence. The State of Israel does not represent the Jewish people, nor the Jews of Europe.

If anything, Jewish property that cannot be returned to former owners or their heirs, should go to the Jewish community of the city, town, or country.

 

[WildCat]

This seems like a hypocritical double standards, considering the fuss that Israel has made about property seized by the Nazi's during the Second World War. It's the official policy of Israel (and has been since 1992, IIRC) that all property seized by the Nazis belongs first to the heirs of the person seized, and if there are no heirs (or if it was "public" property), to the state of Israel.

The idea that because the Aunt Rivka is dead, the Germans that illegally seized her property are now the rightful owners and her descendants should just "never look back" would never fly in Israel. But the idea that because Aunt Soraya is dead, the Israelis that illegally seized her property are now the rightful owners makes sense?

The Palestinians don't want compensation, they want to return to their houses (most of which no longer exist) and bring back 1 million relatives with them. And most didn't leave because they were kicked out, they left so their Arab brothers could carry out their stated aim of killing every Israeli. They couldn't bear to live with Jews.

And it's the position of the US that the property seized by Castro should revert to those it was seized from... funny I don't see the same people bemoaning the fate of the Palestinians likewise bemoaning the fate of those Cubans who lost all their property to Castro, eh?

And can I go claim the land my great-grandparents lost to the French without compensation following WWI?

 

[Pardalis]

i''ll answer your question, when i feel like it. Jeeez.

Whenever you want.

 

[Thunder]

The Palestinians don't want compensation, they want to return to their houses (most of which no longer exist) and bring back 1 million relatives with them.

prove it.

from what I have read, most Palestinians have no interest in living in Israel, as citizens.

maybe 100,000 or so would want to do that. the rest want compensation for lost property, which are they of course entitled to.

if Jews are entitled to compensation for property seized by the Nazis, Communists, or Arab governments, than Arabs are entitled to compensation for property seized by Israel.

 

[a_unique_person]

What do you want to do with the Five Million Jews now in Israel?
I have never got a good response from the Anti Israel crowd on that one.

I don't know if you are including me in the 'anti israel' crowd, but I have stated from day one that the I am in favour of a two state solution. For some reason, that has been ignored from day one, and I am condemned to be known as a person who wants to see all the Jews in Israel killed and thrown into the sea.

However, just a valid question is, how was Israel ever supposed to work, when the issues of demographics and a right to self determination for the Palestinians who lived where Israel was to be created were known to throw a spanner in the works even before Israel was created. The non solution was the "iron wall".

http://www.newstatesman.com/200510310019

He pays lip-service to peace and speaks of his country's need for security, but in reality Israel's prime minister is waging a savage colonial war

A quarter-century before the establishment of Israel, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, published an article entitled "On the Iron Wall". In it, he argued that voluntary agreement between Arabs and Jews was unattainable, and that the only way to realise the Zionist project was behind an iron wall of Jewish military strength. Zionism had to be implemented by force and the wall would compel Arabs to abandon any hope of destroying the Jewish state. Once this was achieved a second stage could begin: negotiations with the Arabs about their status and national rights in Palestine.
The iron wall remains Israel's strategy - and until now has been vindicated by history. The 1993 Oslo Accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation marked the transition from the first to the second stage of iron-wall strategy: by signing it, Israel and the PLO agreed to recognise each other and settle their differences by peaceful means. The Palestinians believed that by giving up their claim to 78 per cent of pre-1948 Palestine they would eventually gain an independent state stretching over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with a capital in East Jerusalem. Twelve years on, they are bitterly disappointed.

http://www.mideastweb.org/ironwall.htm

Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.
That is our Arab policy; not what we should be, but what it actually is, whether we admit it or not. What need, otherwise, of the Balfour Declaration? Or of the Mandate? Their value to us is that outside Power has undertaken to create in the country such conditions of administration and security that if the native population should desire to hinder our work, they will find it impossible.
And we are all of us ,without any exception, demanding day after day that this outside Power, should carry out this task vigorously and with determination.
In this matter there is no difference between our "militarists" and our "vegetarians". Except that the first prefer that the iron wall should consist of Jewish soldiers, and the others are content that they should be British.
We all demand that there should be an iron wall. Yet we keep spoiling our own case, by talking about "agreement" which means telling the Mandatory Government that the important thing is not the iron wall, but discussions. Empty rhetoric of this kind is dangerous. And that is why it is not only a pleasure but a duty to discredit it and to demonstrate that it is both fantastic and dishonest.

Jabotinsky was a reactionary even in the context of early 20th century Europe. His writing is replete with unabashed colonialism and racist cliches of the kind that were common enough in an era when paleontology texts speculated that Africans and Australian aborigines were of a different, inferior species, and Jews, Africans and other minorities were ridiculed in popular novels and cinema. He wrote of the Arabs:
Culturally they are five hundred years behind us, they have neither our endurance nor our determination"
He conceived of Zionism as a colonial enterprise, in the same vein as colonization of the United States or Australia:
"My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent."
However, his intentions were to show that the Arabs were not fools, and that like any other people, would not give up their status as a majority without a fight:
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[Thunder]

I don't know if you are including me in the 'anti israel' crowd, but I have stated from day one that the I am in favour of a two state solution. For some reason, that has been ignored from day one, and I am condemned to be known as a person who wants to see all the Jews in Israel killed and thrown into the sea.

some things, get conveniently ignored, here at JREF.

call it....a "senior moment".

 

[dudalb]

BY the "Anti Israel Crowd" I meant those who basically want to Israel eliminated. Most of them say they want a "Secular Palestinian State" in it's place,but anybody with a inch of sense can see that is about as likely to happen as Hell Freezing over.
It was not aimed at you, but at allanb who seemed to imply that Israel has no right to exist.
A lot of Isreali policies are stupid. I always felt the settlement policy was idiotic.

 

[Virus]

Here's a good article. Why I don't care about the Palestinians;

Even if their lives had not been poisoned by the ministrations of a huge welfare bureaucracy, though, I doubt the Palestinians would have got their act together. None of the other Arabs have. Everywhere you look around the Arab world you see squalor, despotism, cruelty, and hopelessness. The best they have been able to manage, politically speaking, has been the Latin-American style one-party kleptocracies of Egypt and Jordan. Those are the peaks of Arab political achievement under independence, under government by their own people. The norm is just gangsterism, with thugs like Assad, Qaddafi, or Saddam in charge. It doesn't seem to be anything to do with religion: the secular states (Iraq, Syria) are just as horrible as the religious ones like Saudi Arabia. These people are hopeless. We are all supposed to support the notion of a Palestinian state. Why? We know perfectly well what it would be like. Why should we wish for another gangster-satrapy to be added to the Arab roll of shame, busy manufacturing terrorists to come here and slaughter Americans in their offices? I don't want to see a Palestinian state. I think I'd be crazy to want that.

http://old.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire050902.asp