In "After 60 Years, Arabs in Israel Are Outsiders," by Ethan Bronner, the New Duranty Times (thanks to Michael) laments the plight of the Arabs displaced from Israel in 1948.
Not mentioned, unsurprisingly:
1. The fact that most of the Arabs left because they were told to do so by their leaders, with the promise that they would return soon, after the Arab states had obliterated Israel.
2. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from Muslim countries at the same time.
3. The fact that refugee problems in Europe and India in the wake of World War II were settled within a few years, but that the Palestinian refugee problem has been artificially kept alive by the Arab states as a stick with which they could beat Israel -- no Arab state offered the Palestinians citizenship after 1948 except Jordan.
4. The fact that Jews in an Islamic state ruled by Islamic law would be relegated to second-class dhimmi status.
And on and on. Par for the course, really.
The greatest Italian journalist of the twentieth-century, who for the last forty years of his life was the custodian, and public reminder, of that century's history, was Indro Montanelli. It was he who wrote that the "best thing, possibly the only good thing, to come out of the twentieth century was the establishment of the state of Israel."
Unlike the journalists today, who allow themselves to ignore, or never to learn, the real and detailed history of things, and content themselves with commonplaces, idees recues, and accepted opinions that "everyone knows" but that are simply not true, Indro Montanelli stuck to the facts. He was a journalist, but someone steeped in history. There used to be such people, but nowadays, there are fewer and fewer. You want to be a journalist? Fine. There are no special requirements. No examinations on world history, or on the subject on which you will be writing. No attention paid to your prose either, as long as it conforms to the strait-jacket of our House Style. And thus we have...what we have.
Meanwhile, it is good to remember what Montanelli wrote about those "displaced" Arabs:
Ci piace ricordare...
Che i profughi palestinesi siano delle povere vittime, non c’è dubbio. Ma lo sono degli Stati Arabi, non d’Israele. Quanto ai loro diritti sulla casa dei padri, non ne hanno nessuno perché i loro padri erano dei senzatetto. Il tetto apparteneva solo a una piccola categoria di sceicchi, che se lo vendettero allegramente e di loro propria scelta. Oggi, ubriacato da una propaganda di stampo razzista e nazionalsocialista, lo sciagurato fedain scarica su Israele l’odio che dovrebbe rivolgere contro coloro che lo mandarono allo sbaraglio. E il suo pietoso caso, in un modo o nellaltro, bisognerà pure risolverlo. Ma non ci si venga a dire che i responsabili di questa sua miseranda condizione sono gli «usurpatori» ebrei. Questo è storicamente, politicamente e giuridicamente falso.
Dal «Corriere della Sera», Indro Montanelli, 16 settembre 1972
how much of the new yuck times is owned by muslim i wounder
Translation, please, Hugh?
And a pizza!
We like to remember ...
Palestinian refugees are victims of poverty, there is no doubt. But they are of Arab States, not Israel. As for their rights over the house of the fathers,there is none because their fathers were homeless. Property belonged only to a small group of sheikhs, that if they sold joyfully and their own choice. Today, drunk by racist-Nazi propaganda , the sciagurato fedain download on Israel hatred that should turn against those who sent him to sbaraglio. And his pitiful case, in one way or another, we must also resolve it. But it is not to say that those responsible for this condition are 'usurpers' Jews. This is historically, politically and legally false.
Here. without the pizza. Don't know what sciagurato fedain and sbaraglio means though.
Buongiorno, Sheik yer'mami: I hope this helps somewhat;
Fedain (fedayeen - a commando or guerrilla fighter)
Sbaraglio The whole crapshoot.
The Arabs of Palestine risked everything on the promise of the Arab states around them that if they got out of the way, they could come back after beating the Israelis, and so they fled their homes to watch the destruction safely from the other side of Gaza and the Jordan River. They gambled and lost. But Israel lost the momentum by not securing what was rightfully hers. Again and again she does it.
sciagurato fedain = wicked fedayeen. Sbaraglio
The evil fedayeen threw themselves into the fray.
The rest watched from afar and waited for an easy victory.
Because Montanelli was writing in 1972, there are a number of things in his paragraph that need explanation, or some modification. Here is a translation that, out of necessity, takes a few liberties [mostly by interpolation] but remains faithful to the meaning:
=
Of the fact that [some of] the Arabs who left [Mandatory] Palestine have been miserable victims, there can be no doubt. But victims of whom? Victims of the Arab states, not of Israel. As for these so-called rights to their fathers’ houses [about which such a hue and cry is made] they in fact have no such rights, because their fathers, by and large, did not own any property, for [most of the (very small amount) of privately-owned] property belonged to a small class of landowning sheiks, who happily, and of their own free will, sold it [to Jews]. Today, drunk on propaganda of both a racist and Nazi cast [this was in 1972, before things really got going], the wretched fedayin [again, this is 1972 – updated, the word today would be “terrorists”] direct toward Israel the hatred that they should be directing against those who led them on. Their status will have to be resolved one way or another. But no one should say that those responsible for their wretched condition [n.b.: in 1972, Montanelli was unaware of just how many billions were then flowing through UNRWA to those Arabs, or how many more billions would later flow from Infidel tax-payers to the “Palestinian Authority”] are the Jewish so-called “usurpers.” Such a charge is historically, politically, and juridically false.
In spite of its brevity, this is a great and enlightening article.
I would like to see more of these facts relevant to the foundation of Israel.
Is material like this in a comprehensive form cached on the site somewhere?
Novalis,
If you mean by "comprehensive form", Hugh Fitzgerald, then, yes, of course.
Here are a couple of links:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/006537.php#c97940
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/012381.php
Others are available if you Google terms like "Posted by: Hugh" "jihadwatch.org" "Mandatory Palestine", or click on the the link with Hugh's name in the beginning of this post.
Read the article and must say, the writers total and complete lack of context, and his obvious unwillingness to do even the most rudimentary historical research proves once again, the media is no friend of Israel.
And the reaction to this misrepresentation of all that is known about the last 60 years?
.........chirp..chirp............
.........tap tap...hello?....anybody there?....
"Kuffirs of the world, Unite!"
"Islam, abusing women and children since 622AD"
3. The fact that refugee problems in Europe and India in the wake of World War II were settled within a few years, but that the Palestinian refugee problem has been artificially kept alive by the Arab states as a stick with which they could beat Israel -- no Arab state offered the Palestinians citizenship after 1948 except Jordan.
Except Jordan, right. But Jordan borders the West Bank. So why the 400,000 refugees there?
Novalis -
I think I have mentioned it to you already, but for any new readers looking over our shoulders, who may be asking similar questions, I will mention again the redoubtable American journalist Martha Gellhorn's classic, eerily prescient and hard-hitting article, 'The Arabs of Palestine', first published in Atlantic Monthly, 1961, after she had spent 1960 tooling around various 'refugee camps' - including those in Gaza, occupied by Egypt - and also visiting 'palestinian' Arabised Christians and Arab Muslims who had remained within Israel.
Here's the link:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/196110/gellhorn
If the New York Times had any guts at all, any interest in actually educating the public, they could have paid Atlantic Monthly whatever was necessary, in order to be able to reprint Gellhorn's scathing observations.
Atlantic Monthly (I think they're still in business) could always reprint it themselves. It would be a public service if they did.
Indeed, the true public service would be for a scholar of journalism or history to go through Gellhorn's archived papers and transcribe, verbatim, in order to produce what we academically-trained folks call a 'diplomatic edition', every note she ever took down, and every letter and published or unpublished article she ever wrote, on the subject of Israel and the 'palestinian' Arabs.
It would make for raw and confronting reading, and would sit very well on the shelf alongside Magdi Cristiano Allam's 'Viva Israele!'
Adding to the above suggestions, I add the National Bestseller
From Time Immemorial, The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters
Take note of the sources for the following book reviews . . .they were made shortly after the book's release in 1984. How times change.
In addition to this book, there is a video produced in 2004 by Pierre Rehov
Showing on the street interviews displaying unabashed loyalty of the self imposed 'refugee' status with footage documenting various media accounts as events unfolded.
final quote in video, Victimhood
trailer, "Hostages of Hatred"
Thanks, guys. I look at jihadwatch and dhimmiwatch everyday, but I still have a lot of work to do.
Novalis
Also I recommend an author like Tom Segev and his book "The Seventh Million" to give some unsentimental insights into pre-state Israel. That the British hitched their wagon to the Zionist cause only to disavow them later when the Arab oil changed their priorities. And from the get-go it was always about the Zionists getting as much land in the Mandate and as many Jews onto this land as possible. So we had the surreal situation of Polish watch makers , raising geese on a Kibbutz , learning Hebrew and taking on Hebrew names ( part of Hebrew-isation process in readiness for the Jewish State). Of course the local Arabs resisted these 'aliens' from the start.
The Islamists and necro-socialists argue that in 1947 the Jews should have forfeited their national aspirations and joined with the larger Arab population to form to a single Palestinian State.And by not doing this they the Zionists usurped and cleansed the Arab's from their land. Yes there are elements of this , especially after the Jews were attacked as well as preemptively.... but in 1947 ,the period is important, how could the Jews of Palestine place their fate in the hands of openly hostile Arabs. I am sure there is some latin phrase that means " all bets are off , I , as a people , will do what is necessary to survive"...for that is the situation that was ultimately presented to them. I am sure the "left" hates Israel because the Jew's choose life.
In 1947 the Jew's of Israel did the opposite of what the West is doing today...they fought for and earned the right to survive.
Here is the late , great Ofra Haza singing 'Jerusalem of Gold' at a concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of Israel's Statehood. I think this has been posted before , but after all these "interludes" we need something ... what's the right word...GOOD , that's it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlIJOAZ1pak