Muslims Self-Criticism

These are some David Ben Gurion quotes from this site:
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Famous-Zionist-Quotes/Story638.html

Are these quotes inaccurate?

Are these quotes taken out of context so that there meaning is different than what is apparent?

"If we want Hebrew redemption 100%, then we must have 100% Hebrew settlement, a 100% Hebrew farm, and 100% Hebrew port."

"We must EXPEL ARABS and take their places .... and, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places-then we have force at our disposal."

"We do not seek an agreement with the [Palestinian] Arabs in order to secure the peace. Of course we regard peace as an essential thing. It is impossible to build up the country in a state of permanent warfare. But peace for us is a mean, and not an end. The end is the fulfillment of Zionism in its maximum scope. Only for this reason do we need peace, and do we need an agreement."

"The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples. . . We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is MORE than a state, government and sovereignty----this is national consolidation in a free homeland."

"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."

"With compulsory transfer we [would] have vast areas .... I support compulsory [population] transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it. But compulsory transfer could only be carried out by England .... Had its implementation been dependent merely on our proposal I would have proposed; but this would be dangerous to propose when the British government has disassociated itself from compulsory transfer. .... But this question should not be removed from the agenda because it is central question. There are two issues here : 1) sovereignty and 2) the removal of a certain number of Arabs, and we must insist on both of them."

"after the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the [Jewish] state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of the Palestine"

"The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan. One does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today--but the boundaries of the Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them."

"[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state--we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel."

"If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter----because we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People."

"We have to examine, first, if this transfer is practical, and secondly, if it is necessary. It is impossible to imagine general evacuation without compulsion, and brutal compulsion, There are of course sections of the non-Jewish population of the Land of Israel which will not resist transfer under adequate conditions to certain neighboring countries, such as the Druze, a number of Bedouin tribes in the Jordan Valley and the south, the Circassians and perhaps even the Metwalis [the Sh'ite of the Galilee]. But it would be very difficult to bring about resettlement of other sections of the [Palestinian] Arab populations such as the fellahin and the urban populations in neighboring Arab countries by transferring them voluntarily, whatever economic inducements are offered to them."
 
This is an artile from Le Monde Dimplomatique which discusses the Palestinian exodus during the formation of Israel. It cites a number of authors in addition to Benny Morris as sources:

http://mondediplo.com/1997/12/palestine

Mainstream Israeli historians, on the other hand, have always claimed that the refugees (numbering, in their estimation, 500,000 at most) mostly left voluntarily, responding to calls from their leaders assuring them of a prompt return after victory. They deny that the Jewish Agency (and subsequently the Israeli government) had planned the exodus. Furthermore, they maintain that the few (and regrettable) massacres that occurred - particularly the Deir Yassin massacre of 9 April 1948 - were the work of extremist soldiers associated with Menachem Begin’s Irgun and Yitzhak Shamir’s Lehi.

However, by the 1950s this version was already beginning to be contested by leading Israeli figures associated with the Communist Party and with elements of the Zionist left (notably Mapam). Later, in the mid-1980s, they were joined in their critique by a number of historians who described themselves as revisionist historians: Simha Flapan, Tom Segev, Avi Schlaim, Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris. It was Morris’s book, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem", that first prompted public concern (4) . Leaving aside differences of subject, methodology and viewpoint, what unites these historians is that they are bent on unpicking Israel’s national myths (5). They have focused particularly on the myths of the first Arab-Israeli war, contributing (albeit partially, as we shall see), to establishing the truth about the Palestinian exodus. And in the process they have incurred the wrath of Israel’s orthodox historians (6).

This is an article by Nur Masalha on the Palestinian exodus:
http://www.eclipsereview.org/issue8/refugees.htm

The mountains of available evidence show that the Palestinian refugee exodus of 1948 was the culmination of over half a century of efforts, secret (Zionist) plans and, in the end brute force; that the primary responsibility for the displacement and dispossession of three-quarters of a million Palestinian refugees in 1948 lay with the Zionist leadership. Israel was primarily responsible for the 1948 Palestinian catastrophe.
In my work on the subject, which is largely based on Hebrew and Israeli archival sources, I have dealt with the evolution of the Zionist concept of 'population transfer'- a euphemism denoting the organised removal of the Arab population of Palestine to neighbouring or distant countries. I have shown that 'ethnic cleansing' (in current terminology) was deeply rooted in Zionism. It was embedded in the Zionist perception that the 'Land of Israel is a Jewish birthright' and belongs exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and, consequently, that Palestinians are 'strangers' who either should accept Jewish sovereignty over the land or depart. Nearly all the founding fathers of Israel advocated transfer in one form or another, including Theodor Herzl, Leon Motzkin, Nahman Syrkin, Menahem Ussishkin, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Tabenkin, Avraham Granovsky, Israel Zangwill, Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi, Pinhas Rutenberg, Aaron Aaronson, Zeev Jabotinsky, and Berl Katznelson. However, the 'transfer' solution became central to Zionist strategy in the period between 1936 and 1948. During this period the Zionist leadership pursued 'transfer' schemes almost obsessively. 'Transfer Committees' were set up by the Jewish Agency and a number of transfer schemes were formulated in secret. Many leading figures justified Arab removal politically, morally, and ethically as the natural and logical continuation of Zionist colonisation in Palestine.
 
a_unique_person said:
A military occupation is an act of war. Then they just want everyone to accept a state of peace. The sentiment is not matched by the action.

The military action you're speaking of is the Israeli war of independence?
 
davefoc said:
The reason that this thread digressed, IMHO, is because while you as the initiator of this thread were perfectly willing to celebrate the self-critical writings of some Arabs...
"Celebrate"...classic mischaracterization :D
davefoc said:
....you have been unwilling to acknowledge any facts that demonstrate the huge injustice done by the Israeli Jewish immigrants to the indigenous population of Palestine or the contiuning injustice of the Israeli expansion policies.
This thread is about Muslim self-criticism. If you want to start a thread about Zionist 'crimes' feel free. I started this thread because Abdul rahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television wrote some self-criticism. Yet even in a thread about Muslim self-criticism by an Arab the Axis of Intolerance derails the discussion into blaming the "Israeli Jewish immigrants". Nary a paragraph is devoted to the terrible BLUNDERS and MISTAKES the Arabs have made since that first anti-jewish riot in 1921 - ie: anti-jewish riots, conspiring with Hitler, Islamic fundamentalism, xenophobia, dictatorships, theocracies, lack of free press, illiteracy, terrorism, hijacking planes, suicide bombing restaurants, losing wars again and again against Israel in a endless and futile effort to destroy Israel, keeping fellow Arabs in refugee camps for 50 years...to name a few.

Yet it's always the "Israeli Jewish immigrants" fault.

davefoc said:
Those that have responded to this thread see this as hipocrisy on your part and we have responded by writing about some of those Israeli actions which you choose to ignore...
For a guy who blames everything happening in the Middle East since the 1800s on "Israeli Jewish immigrants" I find that statement funny...:D
 
zenith-nadir said:
"Celebrate"...classic mischaracterization :D
This thread is about Muslim self-criticism. If you want to start a thread about Zionist 'crimes' feel free. I started this thread because Abdul rahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television wrote some self-criticism. Yet even in a thread about Muslim self-criticism by an Arab the Axis of Intolerance derails the discussion into blaming the "Israeli Jewish immigrants". Nary a paragraph is devoted to the terrible BLUNDERS and MISTAKES the Arabs have made since that first anti-jewish riot in 1921 - ie: anti-jewish riots, conspiring with Hitler, Islamic fundamentalism, xenophobia, dictatorships, theocracies, lack of free press, illiteracy, terrorism, hijacking planes, suicide bombing restaurants, losing wars again and again against Israel in a endless and futile effort to destroy Israel, keeping fellow Arabs in refugee camps for 50 years...to name a few.

Yet it's always the "Israeli Jewish immigrants" fault.

For a guy who blames everything happening in the Middle East since the 1800s on "Israeli Jewish immigrants" I find that statement funny...:D

And you thought Ben Gurion so boring you totally ignored him.
 
a_unique_person said:
And you thought Ben Gurion so boring you totally ignored him.
One day a_u_p you will realize that the tone in the middle east was set in the 1920s and 30s by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who turned a national movement into a religious conflict by the use of Islamic fundamentalist movements and cooperation with Hitler to wipe out the jews. There was a long thread about it a couple weeks ago....remember? After Haj Amin el-Husseini came Jamal al-Din 'Abd al-Nasser, after Nasser came Yasser Arafat.

At some point the argument that "Jewish immigrants" are the cause of all evils in the middle east breaks down under honest review.
 
davefoc said:
These are some David Ben Gurion quotes from this site:
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Famous-Zionist-Quotes/Story638.html Are these quotes inaccurate?
Well Dave if quotes from a website that bills itself as;
The Home Of All Ethnically Cleansed Palestinians
...who has a mission statement which states ;
To emphasize that the CORE issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are the DISPOSSESSION and ETHNIC CLEANSING (compulsory population transfer to achieve political gains) of the Palestinian people for the past five decades. In our opinion, the conflict would have been at the same level of intensity EVEN if both parties had been Jewish, Muslims, or Christians.
...can be used as an trusted and unbiased source regarding the Middle East conflict.
 
zenith-nadir said:
One day a_u_p you will realize that the tone in the middle east was set in the 1920s and 30s by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who turned a national movement into a religious conflict by the use of Islamic fundamentalist movements and cooperation with Hitler to wipe out the jews. There was a long thread about it a couple weeks ago....remember? After Haj Amin el-Husseini came Jamal al-Din 'Abd al-Nasser, after Nasser came Yasser Arafat.

At some point the argument that "Jewish immigrants" are the cause of all evils in the middle east breaks down under honest review.

The tone for the middle east was set in the years that Jews were persecuted in Europe, and the Zionist movement was created in response.
 
a_unique_person said:
The tone for the middle east was set in the years that Jews were persecuted in Europe, and the Zionist movement was created in response.
So once again, zionists from Europe set the tone in the Middle East and Arab leaders such as Haj Amin el-Husseini, Jamal al-Din 'Abd al-Nasser and Yasser Arafat had nothing to do with it. Whew, glad that is finally settled. Anyways I love to chat more but I gotta go, my community leaders have called for riots today to get rid of all foreigners in my neighborhood...
 
zenith-nadir said:
So once again, zionists from Europe set the tone in the Middle East and Arab leaders such as Haj Amin el-Husseini, Jamal al-Din 'Abd al-Nasser and Yasser Arafat had nothing to do with it. Whew, glad that is finally settled. Anyways I love to chat more but I gotta go, my community leaders have called for riots today to get rid of all foreigners in my neighborhood...

I thought Skeptic had already used all the strawmen, you must have found the last few in the back of the storeroom.
 
zenith-nadir said:
So once again, zionists from Europe set the tone in the Middle East and Arab leaders such as Haj Amin el-Husseini, Jamal al-Din 'Abd al-Nasser and Yasser Arafat had nothing to do with it. Whew, glad that is finally settled. Anyways I love to chat more but I gotta go, my community leaders have called for riots today to get rid of all foreigners in my neighborhood...

Incidentally, here is the question I asked AUP in that thread about Husseini, who he praised for "standing up for his people" and being "prescient" (when he demanded Himmler kill off as many jews as possible):

OK, then.

So:

1). Husseini organized and was the leader of the Muslim SS Hanjar divisions whose main achievement was butchering Serbs, jews, and anybody not of their ethnicity, wherever they set foot.

Was this Husseini "standing up for his own people"?

Or was the Husseini committing genoicde?

2). Husseini, in 1943/44, had persuaded Himmler that, no, they should not let up in the destruction of the jews, and that the SS killing machine should continue to operate at full speed to kill as many jews as possible, even if Germany will lose the war.

Was this Husseini "standing up for his own people"?

Or was this Husseini committing genocide?

Face it, AUP: your "hero" who "stood up for his own people" did most of the "standing up" by demanding, planning, praising, and executing the mass murder of jews and other "undesirables".

His pact with Hitler wasn't "political expediency"--it was a meeting of minds. They both repeatedly said that the jews must be wiped off the face of the earth.

Speaking of "big H", frankly, I don't see what you could possibly have against Hitler--after all, yes, he advocated and executed the genocide of jews, but so did Husseini, and you are praising him.

Hitler, too, was merely "standing up for his people"--the Aryans, you know--to free them from the "jewish yoke". If Husseini's genocide of jews and others was "standing up for his people", worthy of praise, why not Hitler's?
 
Originally posted by a_unique_person
So why all the whining from Israel?

You can't seriously be suggesting that there is more "whining" from Israel than from the Arabs?

Originally posted by a_unique_person
A unilateral declaration of a state backed by force of arms is an act of war on those who inhabit that land who do not agree with that declaration.

Invading armies from five countries is an act of war.

Originally posted by a_unique_person And so it has been, for roughly 60 years. A terrible tragedy for those who have suffered and died. But did it have to be so?

Nothing "had to be so". History is a record of decisions that sets events into motion. Had there been different decisions, there would have been different events. One of the reasons I consider you a bigot is that you only recognize this decision making ability among the Jewish Zionists, ascribing the actions of Arabs to be inevitable reactions. They too are decision makers, and they too have played a role in creating the situation that exists today.

It's my personal opinion that without violent opposition to Zionism, the result would not have been Israel with a majority Jewish population, but the state of "Falistine" with a majority Arab population. There would have been no Peel Commission, no partition plan, no influx of Jewish refugees from Arab states, no war...just large Jewish communities in an Arab dominated area.

It didn't happen that way.
 
Skeptic,
Thank you for bringing up Amin al-Husayni. Wikipedia had an interesting article on the guy here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_el_Husseini

I think to some degree your reference to him goes to the disconnect between those of us that argue against Israeli expansion policies and those of you who seem to see any criticism of Israel's policies as a failure to understand that the violence against Jews in Palestine and eventually Jews in the state of Israel as the root cause of what transpires in Israel today.

I think that actually an area that there is general agreement on here with regards to Jews in Palestine and Jews in general is that in the twentieth century they suffered enormously.

Many of us think that the foundation of the Israeli state was an inappropriate mitigation of that suffering. But that does not mean that we are unaware of the desperate plight of the people that immigrated to Israel.

What we have difficulty understanding is what we perceive as the way in which some of Israel's defenders especially the defenders of the continuing expansion cling to myths about the formation of Israel. Simply the formation of Israel was led by zealots who desired to create a Jewish state on land that was occupied by non-Jews. The notion that Israel's founders wanted some sort of free and open society in which the indigenous population was to be welcomed into the society and culture of Israel is just silly. It is belied by the writings and actions of Israel's founding fathers. It is belied by the simple fact of the establishment of Hebrew as a national language. The only possible purpose of the revival of this ancient dead language was to unite and isolate the immigrating population from the indigenous population.

The very nature of this goal guaranteed that the indigenous population of Palestine would suffer. The people that suffered were not instictively anti-semitic or terrorists. These were people who happened to be living on land that the founders of Israel wanted for Jews.

Now fast forward fifty years or so and we see Israel continuing to expand into territory that is occupied by others, continuing to divide up Palestine into small sections, building bypass roads and checkpoints to control the indigenous population and the justification is always something along the lines that violent actions by some Palestinians justify the continued expansion of Israel. That this is a transparent ruse to justify expansion is obvious. If Israel doesn't want to expand it doesn't have to. Of course expanding into what one group sees as their land will be destabilizing and create more violence against the occupiers. But Israel continues to expand without any long term plan for a resolution of the problem other than a vague hope that maybe the Palestinians will just get tired and emigrate away.
 
Skeptic said:
http://www.palestineremembered.com/...s/Story638.html

Are these quotes inaccurate?


Well, let's put it this way: just look at the name of your web site "source", and you'll have a good idea how likely it is to be fair to Ben Gurion...
The question was if they are accurate or not.....The question is not if they are from one of your favourite neo-con sites or not.....

are they accurate or not? I'll assume you running from this simple question as confirmation that it was just more of your campagn of spreading lies for propaganda purposes.
 
Mycroft said:
You can't seriously be suggesting that there is more "whining" from Israel than from the Arabs?


Totally and completely.



Invading armies from five countries is an act of war.


Yep, war all around. That's often what happens with an invasion.

[/quote][/b]

Nothing "had to be so". History is a record of decisions that sets events into motion. Had there been different decisions, there would have been different events. One of the reasons I consider you a bigot is that you only recognize this decision making ability among the Jewish Zionists, ascribing the actions of Arabs to be inevitable reactions. They too are decision makers, and they too have played a role in creating the situation that exists today.

It's my personal opinion that without violent opposition to Zionism, the result would not have been Israel with a majority Jewish population, but the state of "Falistine" with a majority Arab population. There would have been no Peel Commission, no partition plan, no influx of Jewish refugees from Arab states, no war...just large Jewish communities in an Arab dominated area.

It didn't happen that way. [/B][/QUOTE]

The wars did not start till the state of Palestine was created. Every native population that has been taken over from the dawn of time has resisted with violence.
 
a_unique_person [/i][B] Totally and completely.[/B][/QUOTE] So I guess all those Arab states that sponsor Palestinian-Arab terror said:
The wars did not start till the state of Palestine was created. Every native population that has been taken over from the dawn of time has resisted with violence.

Let's see...

1) The state of "Palestine" hasn't been created. There were opportunities, and maybe there will be opportunities again. Did you mean to say Israel?

2) Every native population? What about the Israeli Arabs? Should we expect these people to be met with violence soon?

3) What exactly does it mean to be “taken over”? Does creating a multi-cultural society where everyone has full legal/religious rights qualify?

4) It should also be noted that the invading armies were from elsewhere. Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.
 
Mycroft said:
So I guess all those Arab states that sponsor Palestinian-Arab terror, refuse to acknowlege that Israel exists, and perpetuate human misery by refusing to grant refugees on their territory basic human rights no matter how many generations they have been there can't be said to be whining.



Let's see...

1) The state of "Palestine" hasn't been created. There were opportunities, and maybe there will be opportunities again. Did you mean to say Israel?

2) Every native population? What about the Israeli Arabs? Should we expect these people to be met with violence soon?

3) What exactly does it mean to be “taken over”? Does creating a multi-cultural society where everyone has full legal/religious rights qualify?

4) It should also be noted that the invading armies were from elsewhere. Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.

The invasion was by Israel. The goal was never anything less than a state that was Zionist.
 

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