Posted on 05/04/2008 6:59:10 PM PDT by forkinsocket
It was not one of the celebrated moments of what the Israelis call the War of Independence and the Palestinians call Al Nakba, the Catastrophe. But it is one of the more arresting ones.
In late August 1948, during a United Nations-sanctioned truce, Israeli soldiers conducting what they called Mivtza Nikayon — Operation Cleaning — encountered some Palestinian refugees just north of the Egyptian lines. The Palestinians had returned to their village, now in Israeli hands, because their animals were there, and because there were crops to harvest and because they were hungry. But to the Israelis, they were potential fighters, or fifth columnists in the brand new Jewish state. The Israelis killed them, then burned their homes.
As much as in any other scene in this meticulous, disturbing and frustrating book, the ineffable tragedy of Israelis and Palestinians resides in that brutal, heartbreaking image. On the one hand, the Jews were fighting for a safe haven three years after six million of them had been murdered. Undoubtedly some of those soldiers on patrol that day were survivors themselves, who’d lost their entire families in Europe and been handed rifles after washing ashore in Haifa or Tel Aviv.
And then there were the Palestinians, who had watched in horror over the past 75 years as these aliens first trickled, then poured, into their homeland. Were he an Arab leader, David Ben-Gurion once confessed to the Zionist official Nahum Goldmann, he, too, would wage perpetual war with Israel. “Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?” he asked. “There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hang end there guys....its worth fighting for...
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I hate the NYT.
If it’s from the NYT it’s probably propaganda. This author is not very generous towards Israelis. I’m sure that was his original aim.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I didn’t read it all but I didn’t see any names, not of people or units or towns. No details other than the Israelis killed palistinians out of hand because they are evil jews. What tripe. Even if true, which I seriously doubt, I guess muslims can kill jews but jews are supposed to just take it in the shorts huh?
I’d like to read the NYT synopsis of the American Revolution. Actually, I wouldn’t, but here’s how it would go: “Given slavery and the racism it engendered, given the near anihilation of the aborginal population, given the jingoism and imperialism of the 19th and 20th Centuries, given McCarthyism and Cold War hysteria, given brutalization and degradation of women, given the indifference to the AIDS epidemic and the gays who suffered from it, given the phony ‘War on Terror’ and the torture and abuse it spawned, given the environmental destruction that has brought us to the brink of the Apocalypse, given all these things one must ask: was the Revolution worth it?”
Only the NYT could call Jews "aliens" with a straight face and get away with it....
Oh wait, their circulation is down 17% and they are laying off editorial staff for the first time....
Now, apply to a current Israeli.
once owned Jews, then by Philistines, then by Jews, then by the Romans, then by Christians, then by Muslims, then by politicians, then by the New York Times. I’d give it to Hilary.
Acelt.
When the Palestinians demand the land we returned to the *Turks*, and give back all of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq at the same time, then they can start talking about things once owned by people. *Arabs* haven't controlled Palestine in about 800 years.
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