Posted on 06/05/2002 2:14:21 PM PDT by lucy1
As the most visible Arab-American critic of Yasser Arafat and the phony "Palestinian" agenda, I get a lot of hate mail.
I've even received more than my share of death threats.
Most of those who attack me – at least those who bother to get beyond the four-letter words and insults – say I just don't understand or have sympathy for these poor Arabs who were displaced, chased out of their homes and turned into refugees by the Israelis.
Let me state this plainly and clearly: The Jews in Israel took no one's land.
When Mark Twain visited the Holy Land in the 19th century, he was greatly disappointed. He didn't see any people. He referred to it as a vast wasteland. The land we now know as Israel was practically deserted.
By the beginning of the 20th century, that began to change. Jews from all over the world began to return to their ancestral homeland – the Promised Land Moses and Joshua had conquered millennia earlier, Christians and Jews believe, on the direct orders of God.
That's not to say there wasn't always a strong Jewish presence in the land – particularly in and around Jerusalem. In 1854, according to a report in the New York Tribune, Jews constituted two-thirds of the population of that holy city. The source for that statistic? A journalist on assignment in the Middle East that year for the Tribune. His name was Karl Marx. Yes, that Karl Marx.
A travel guide to Palestine and Syria, published in 1906 by Karl Baedeker, illustrates the fact that, even when the Islamic Ottoman Empire ruled the region, the Muslim population in Jerusalem was minimal. The book estimates the total population of the city at 60,000, of whom 7,000 were Muslims, 13,000 were Christians and 40,000 were Jews.
"The number of Jews has greatly risen in the last few decades, in spite of the fact that they are forbidden to immigrate or to possess landed property," the book states.Even though the Jews were persecuted, still they came to Jerusalem and represented the overwhelming majority of the population as early as 1906. And even though Muslims today claim Jerusalem as the third holiest site in Islam, when the city was under Islamic rule, they had little interest in it.
As the Jews came, drained the swamps and made the deserts bloom, something interesting began to happen. Arabs followed. I don't blame them. They had good reason to come. They came for jobs. They came for prosperity. They came for freedom. And they came in large numbers.
Winston Churchill observed in 1939: "So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population."
Then came 1948 and the great partition. The United Nations proposed the creation of two states in the region – one Jewish, one Arab. The Jews accepted it gratefully. The Arabs rejected it with a vengeance and declared war.
Arab leaders urged Arabs to leave the area so they would not be caught in the crossfire. They could return to their homes, they were told, after Israel was crushed and the Jews destroyed. It didn't work out that way. By most counts, several hundred thousand Arabs were displaced by this war – not by Israeli aggression, not by some Jewish real-estate grab, not by Israeli expansionism.
In fact, there are many historical records showing the Jews urged the Arabs to stay and live with them in peace. But, tragically, they chose to leave.
Fifty-four years later, the sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of those refugees are all-too-often still living in refugee camps – not because of Israeli intransigence, but because they are misused as a political tool of the Arab powers.
Those poor unfortunates could be settled in a week by the rich Arab oil states that control 99.9 percent of the Middle East landmass, but they are kept as virtual prisoners, filled with misplaced hatred for Jews and armed as suicide martyrs by the Arab power brokers.
This is the modern real history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. At no time did the Jews uproot Arab families from their homes. When there were title deeds to be purchased, they bought them at inflated prices. When there were not, they worked the land so they could have a place to live without the persecution they faced throughout the world.
It's a great big lie that the Israelis displaced anyone – one of a series of lies and myths that have the world on the verge of committing yet another great injustice to the Jews.
Thanks those those who made the positive comments -regardless if you agree with the author or not
It seems that some folks can't take an opposing opinion without getting all riled up and making personal attacks, etc.
Neither side is 100% innocent. On the other hand, what Arab country can we really trust -honestly? NO matter what we do to help them, we always get the knife stuck in our backs by them. Sure, there are good and bad among all races. But for some reason, most Muslim nations have those crappy, unpredictable governments.
Sadly, there are no web sites I have found that give a total true view of what went on. You've either got the Arab side or the Israeli side. I started getting my information over 20 years ago when I was doing some traveling for the government. I always liked to research a country before I went there and had both classified and unclassified sources. Surprisingly, much of the "unbiased" information came from open sources. After putting together the information you can debunk or confirm what you have on site.
Don't depend on the internet for factual information. Use all sources available. It takes time, I know. I no longer have the luxury of the kind of research I used to do but I've "been there and done that".
Now, if your argument is "we're reclaiming ancient lands wrongfully taken from us by the Ottomans (or whomever)", that's fine and the line of reasoning has its strengths and weaknesses; however, that is very different from saying "hey, nobody was really using it so it's ours".
Abandon the illegal settlements, build a real wall - seperate the countries just like the United Nations envisioned 50 years ago...peace will come then.
Second, the point is that Palestine is an AREA, not a country. Even during the Ottoman empire it was occupied by Jews, Moslems, and Christians. There was no Palestinian state, hence no one purports to name an historical Palestinian ruler [at least post Herod, who was a Jew!].
Therefore, the argument is not that the land was not in use, but that the claim to a "Palestinian homeland" by Arafat is itself weak.
Furthermore, one should put it in the context of what occurs in any area where the Moslems gain pre-eminence: for instance Egypt, where Coptic Christians are second class citizens or the Sudan where Christians are enslaved. The Jews have a definite stake in maintaining the rule of a Jewish state.
Are you referring to how no Arab nation has allowed these people to be assimilated, but instead forced them into refugee camps so that they could be used a symbol and a political force against Israel?
But the title of the article is "The Jews took no one's land". Well, that's just plain untrue. Now, you can argue that it was RIGHTFULLY taken, but obviously Palestine did not just drop out of the sky in 1948 for the Jews to move in. No matter how unorganized and sparsely inhabited it may or may not have been, the arabs there considered it theirs, and it was taken from them at the point of a gun.
Actually, information on this thread from Farah says: Arab leaders urged Arabs to leave the area so they would not be caught in the crossfire. They could return to their homes, they were told, after Israel was crushed and the Jews destroyed. It didn't work out that way. By most counts, several hundred thousand Arabs were displaced by this war – not by Israeli aggression, not by some Jewish real-estate grab, not by Israeli expansionism.
If this is not true, then refute it.
It is hypocritical not to believe in the right of conquest. Except if you live in Antartica, you live on land that has been repeatedly conquered, and you have no right to be there other than the right conferred by conquest. If the Mexicans can recapture Texas, it will be because we Americans have become so weak we no longer deserve it.
P.S. I'm not sure I'm right about this, but think I am.
Did the Arabs ever have it? Prior to 1917, for centuries, the Turks had it. Although Turks and Arabs are both Moslems, they sure don't tend to like each other. By the way, Turkish rulers spent a lot of their time in Palestine protecting the Jews from local Arabs who would from time to time massacre Jews. Although, during the last few decades of Turkish rule, Palestine's Jews finally began to arise from centuries of lethargy and arm themselves for self-defense.
The people who took Palestine from the Turks, not the Arabs, at the point of a gun, were the British, in 1917. Then the U.N. divided Palestine in 1947 between mostly Jewish areas, which were supposed to go to Israel, and mostly Arab areas, which were supposed to go to the Arabs. Palestine's Arabs have never accepted this concept, leading to everything which has happenned since then.
In any case, as I've said beforee, if the argument is "we're reclaiming land that was wrongfully taken from us", that's fine, we can discuss that issue - however that's very different from the gist of this article which is basically saying that Palestine was vacant, unclaimed and freely available for Jewish settlement.
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