Bravo,
I always say that if both sides in the conflict were Muslims, the Israeli Muslims could have exterminated every last Palestinian and that would be a foot note in the Arab's and our history books. Plus, no one in the west would give a hoot cause it would be Arab Muslims behaving like usual.

Posted by: Dumbo at March 24, 2008 8:47 AM

If the Arabs had had Israel's power, Israel would have been reduced to bloody dust decades ago.

Until they do, they have to play the victim card as a method of confusing the naive world with who is attacking whom.

It has worked, because the need for oil has trumped morality or common sense.

Posted by: profitsbeard at March 24, 2008 11:56 AM

brilliant, utterly brilliant. you can be sure that i'll be sending this 'round to the people that matter.

keep on keepin' on.

Posted by: kefirah at March 24, 2008 12:17 PM

Brilliant writing, and a sympathetic account, but you know the objection: the existence of twenty-two other Arab states does
not change the fact that the Arabs of the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean lost their country, or their lands which should have become their country, to interlopers,
who went over the heads of the natives and used international
authority to establish a country of their own on someone else's property.

Perhaps an illustrative analogy would be: if the native people
of America, or one of them, were driven out of that country during its violent settlement period, and then, centuries later,
became capable of staging their return by imposing themselves
on a part of it (Manhattan Island, say) and appealed to the UN
to grant them that region, no matter what the people of the United States had to say about it.

Sound fair? (I'm asking, really, Just asking).

Posted by: Novalis at March 24, 2008 1:39 PM

I think it would be better than getting the UN to pass resolutions that define a Native American that wants a home country as a racist.

Posted by: Peter_Wiggin at March 24, 2008 1:49 PM

Excellent article.

I am glad that you also brought up some people who have been able to get through the fog of islam and behave as human beings.

The thing is that the muslims don't care and once their job with Israel is over - they will indeed take us on. By that time they are probably figuring that we will be sufficiently infiltrated and fearful of saying anything anti-islam. In the meantime they have other jihadists working in other countries doing their vile deeds.

They have figured out it doesn't take a military as we know it. In fact, they know they cannot beat us militarily, but they are doing a darn good job in this chaotic crud worldwide.

I have stated this before - this is a 'religion' for psychopaths. Abu Sayeff even said the same thing - that he could never get to heaven if it weren't for islam (his reasoning is beyond me - but so is islam as being anything good or 'religious').

Lying, torture, sexual deviance, murder - all good psychopathic traits. Except that the true psychopath might be considered to be having a physical problem in his brain - islam is a chosen problem in the brain. And the children being raised in islam now - so will our children be condemned to it also.

Posted by: R_not at March 24, 2008 4:02 PM

The power of psychological projection in political thinking is compelling.

If you compare what the Arabs accuse the Jews of, with what the Arabs do, you will find an eerie resemblance.

=====================

It is interesting in this connection, that the Arabs are just about the last culture on earth of any size that still keeps a live vestige of killing a scape-goat as part of their official ritual.

I believe the have a ceremony where they all gather around and throw stones at some ritual representation of evil.

Ironically, real people commonly get injured or killed during the conduct of that ritual.

How just. How poetic.

Posted by: joeblough at March 24, 2008 4:14 PM

The Ottoman Empire possessed that land for centuries before finally losing it. The victors chose to disperse it as they saw fit. Israel was denied much of the land it had been promised.

After that, Israel's Muslim neighbors told their own people to move out until they finished slaughtering the tiny, new nation, and then they could move back in.

The only problem for them was, they lost.

Israel has a moral right to its own land.

Posted by: Amillennialist at March 24, 2008 6:22 PM

Has faithfreedoms blog been hacked again? I get an error message when I try to go to the forum.

Posted by: el greco at March 24, 2008 7:02 PM

'novalis'

I recommend that you read James Parkes, who makes it quite, quite plain that eretz Israel was NOT perfectly Judenrein between AD 70 and AD 1880 - NOR was it perfectly Judenrein between the Arab Muslim invasion of the 630s and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1917. He also makes it clear that Muslim treatment of all non-Muslim [Jewish, Christian, Samaritan] native inhabitants of the region which Arab and (later) Egyptian/ Mamluk/ Turkish Muslims violently invaded, occupied, and ruthlessly exploited and ruined was bad by the standards of the times (the Arab Muslims and Turkish Muslims were DREADFUL overlords, corrupt, unjust and incompetent governors- Jewish, Christian AND Muslim ordinary folks did better under the brief period of Crusader rule, for example, than they did under Arab, or Mamluk, or Turkish rule) and absolutely atrocious by modern standards.

There was always a remnant of Jews living in the land of Israel, and always a steady trickle of pilgrims and homecomers - driven by the conviction that it was a mitzvah - a religious requirement, a good deed - to inhabit the land of Israel, and this in grim despite of the ugly truth that Muslim rule over the land of Israel made it a horrible place in which to try to live, subjected to the continual fallout from every imaginable form of internecine Muslim warfare, from village and clan level upwards to the dynastic. The Jewish remnant clung to the land of Israel by their teeth and their toenails. Their brethren in exile subsidised them, supported them and periodically joined them - again, because to live in eretz Israel is a mitzvah, so helping someone else to be there is also a mitzvah.

And in the name of God, go read 'The dhimmi' and 'Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam' and 'Legacy of Jihad' and, if you can read French, Antoine Fattal on the legal status of non-Muslims under Islam. And then decide whether you still want to weep over the suffering of the poor, poor Arabs who have been made to disgorge a tiny, tiny fraction of the enormous lands that they had violently conquered, and whose native peoples they had subjected to a scale and intensity and sheer, petty, viciousness of oppression that ranks right up there with the very, very worst that humans have ever done to other humans, ever.

Or you could try Martha Gellhorn's classic article, 'The Arabs of Palestine', from 1961.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/196110/gellhorn

Here are three very telling passages. Pay attention, please. My apologies to others for the length of this posting: but this is important.

Gellhorn is conversing with an Arabised, thoroughly dhimmified Christian, inside the land of Israel, in 1960:

"At this point, I decided to make one long, determined stand to see whether there was any meeting ground of minds on a basis of mutually accepted facts and reasoning.

""Please bear with me and help me," said I. "I am a simple American, and I am trying to understand how the Arab mind works, and I am finding it very difficult. I want to put some things in order; if I have everything wrong, you will correct me.

"In 1947, the United Nations recommended the Partition of Palestine. I have seen the Partition map and studied it. I cannot tell, but it does not look to me as if the Arabs were being cheated of their share of good land. The idea was that this division would work, if both Jews and Arabs accepted it and lived under an Economic Union. And, of course, the Arab countries around the borders would have to be peaceful and cooperative or else nothing would work at all.

"The Jews accepted this Partition plan; I suppose because they felt they had to. They were outnumbered about two to one inside the country, and there were the neighboring Arab states with five regular armies and forty million or more citizens, not feeling friendly. Are we agreed so far?"
"It is right."
"The Arab governments and the Palestinian Arabs rejected Partition absolutely. You wanted the whole country. There is no secret about this. The statements of the Arab representatives, in the UN are on record. The Arab governments never hid the fact that they started the war against Israel.

"But you, the Palestinian Arabs, agreed to this, you wanted it. And you thought, it seems to me very reasonably, that you would win and win quickly. It hardly seemed a gamble; it seemed a sure bet. You took the gamble and you lost. I can understand why you have all been searching for explanations of that defeat ever since, because it does seem incredible. I don't happen to accept your explanations, but that is beside the point. The point is that you lost."
"Yes." It was too astonishing; at long last, East and West were in accord on the meaning of words.

"Now you say that you want to return to the past; you want Partition.

"So, in fact you say, let us forget that war we started, and the defeat, and, after all, we think Partition is a good, sensible idea.

"Please answer me this, which is what I must know.

"If the position were reversed, if the Jews had started the war and lost it, if you had won the war, would you now accept Partition? Would you give up part of the country and allow the 650,000 Jewish residents of Palestine -who had fled from the war--to come back?"

"Certainly not," he said, without an instant's hesitation. "But there would have been no Jewish refugees. They had no place to go. They would all be dead or in the sea."

'He had given me the missing clue. The fancy word we use nowadays is "empathy"--entering into the emotions of others. I had appreciated and admired individual refugees but realized I had felt no blanket empathy for the Palestinian refugees, and finally I knew why--owing to this nice, gray-haired schoolteacher.

'It is hard to sorrow for those who only sorrow over themselves. It is difficult to pity the pitiless. To wring the heart past all doubt, those who cry aloud for justice must be innocent.

'THEY CANNOT HAVE WISHED FOR A VICTORIOUS REWARDING WAR, BLAME EVERYONE ELSE FOR THEIR DEFEAT, AND REMAIN GUILTLESS.

'Some of them may be unfortunate human beings, and civilization would collapse (as it notoriously did in Nazi Germany) if most people did not naturally move to help their hurt fellow men. But a profound difference exists between victims of misfortune (there, but for the grace of God, go I) and victims of injustice. My empathy knew where it stood, thanks to the schoolteacher."

Now for the second passage. The Christian schoolteacher referred Gellhorn to his Muslim friend, also a schoolteacher.

'But all the refugees should return [said the Muslim] and Israel should be partitioned'. I put the same proposition to him as to his Christian colleague; if the Arabs had won the war, would they accept Partition?

"No, never, of course not. We would let some few Jews live here as immigrants but not be masters, not in any part of Palestine."

[Note well, 'novalis': And that’s the point: ARABS, especially MUSLIM ARABS, CANNOT ENDURE FOR JEWS TO BE FREE AND SOVEREIGN, or even to be treated as equals to Muslims and to Arabs, IN ANY PART OF JEWISH ANCESTRAL LAND].

And finally, Gellhorn spoke with an Italian priest in Acre, who had lived a long time in eretz Israel, observing Arab Christians and Arab Muslims:

" he told me that the [Muslim] Arabs said, 'First we will finish with the Shabbaths, and then with the Sundays'. They never changed their ideas. They went around looking at the women and the houses they would take when they managed to get rid of the Jews and the Christians." (So much for the dhimmi Arab Christian schoolteacher Gellhorn spoke to earlier, parroting the lies of his muslim overlords!).
Now, see what she found out next!
"I asked about the Eichmann trial and the reaction of his Roman Catholic parishioners.
"Well, his Christian Arabs thought Eichmann was right, because the Jews were the enemy of the German state. They were always the enemy of the state; the Pharaohs had to drive them out of Egypt, the Persian King tried to clear them out, Ferdinand and Isabella kicked them out of Spain. No one could live on good terms with them, so Eichmann was right.

(Horrified, really horrified, I said, "Surely that is not a Christian attitude to the most appalling murders we know about?" He found it terribly funny that I should expect a Christian attitude from Arabs.)"

There is more. Follow the link, read the whole thing.

Still think, novalis, that those poor dear little innocent lambs, the Arab/ised Muslims of Palestine (many of whom are descended from Muslim Bosnians, and Bulgarians, and Circassians, and North Africans, and god alone knows what else, who were moved into the country by the Ottomans in the 19th century) and their dhimmified Christian janissaries, busily nursing murderous hate-filled dreams of once more being able to grind their boot upon the faces of the accursed Jew, are worthy of your pity and your aid?

And here, 100 times more relevant even today than it was in 1961, is the political and moral analogy that Gellhorn saw, in 1961:

"Long bleak memories will recall the Sudetendeutsch and Czechoslovakia. In a new setting, Palestinian refugees assume the role of the Sudetendeutsch. Israel becomes Czechoslovakia.

"Propaganda prepares the war for liberation of "our brothers." Victory over a minor near enemy is planned as the essential first step on a long triumphant road of conquest. A thousand-year Muslim Reich...may be a mad dream, but we have experience of mad dreams and mad dreamers. We cannot be too careful. The echo of Hitler's voice is heard again in the land, now speaking Arabic."

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at March 24, 2008 8:43 PM

from another blog.

"....you make the same mistake as has been repeated by many gullible journalists in the West. President Ahmadinejad of Iran is a promoter of the DISSOLUTION of Israel, not the destruction. This week was also the 60th anniversary of the formation of the State of Israel. I believe the most compelling criterion to judge the success of its existence is the quality of the relationship it creates with the Palestinian people expelled in 1948 and those in the occupied territories as well as the relationship it has created with its neighbours. On this score it has been a disaster."

Mr Fitzgerald makes the mistake that facts and reason can sway conclusions that have been reached without facts or reason.

Posted by: David Xavier at March 24, 2008 8:58 PM

And here is a Jewish Israeli blogger,

http://www.keshertalk.com/archives/2006/07/richardcohen.php

commenting on a newspaper article, by a self-hating Jew who had called Israel 'a mistake':

"Cohen engages in his own Holocaust denial. He erases the history of the peoples brutally conquered by Islam, and then characterises them as latecomers to a Muslim land.

"This is Orwellian revisionism, propagandized by the radical Islamists to the Western intellectual elite, eventually becoming conventional wisdom by the time it filters down to Cohen.

"Like Pravda airbrushing people out of photographs, the Islamists not only rewrite history books but destroy evidence to the contrary, including their own history.

"They turn remnants of the Jewish Temple into a parking lot, blow up huge Buddhist sculptures and demolish ancient mosques in Mecca and Medina and Bosnia.

"Like all totalitarians, they hate the stubborn persistence of facts.

"These folks could teach David Irving a thing or two.

"Cohen is not nefarious, just ignorant, so somebody please buy him a copy of Andrew Bostom's book. Also the Historical Atlas of the Jewish People; all he has to do is look at the maps. I'm serious...
[ I just wanted to put this up before I went to bed tonight, because I hate this shit. It never ends, and I'm used to hearing it from DU and Indy habitues, but a WaPo pundit reciting it is just a bit too much."

And another blogger adds this postscript:
"PS. A companion piece to this could examine Cohen's [author of Washington Post article arguing Israel was ‘a mistake’] misunderstanding of the deep rage of the Muslim world at the effrontery of a Jewish state in their midst.

"It's not exactly because Israel was forced upon "Muslim land" by the Europeans.

"It's because they know Israel is historically the land of the Jews, they believe Muslims are supposed to rule over Jews (and everyone else), and the existence of a Jewish state where Jews rule themselves in their original homeland which they wrested back from the conquerors is intolerable, and the Europeans enabled this to happen.

"It is exactly the same deep rage and humiliation felt by the former slave-owners in the post-Civil War South toward their former slaves, and toward the Northerners who enabled freed blacks to walk among their former owners. Why anyone wants to defend this attitude is beyond me."

Got that, Novalis? Arab Muslims HATE Israeli Jews in much the same way as a KKK member in the Deep South, immediately post-emancipation, HATED 'uppity Niggers'.

Because all over the Islamosphere, 630s-1948, Arabs could do to Jews whatever they damn well liked, no matter how awful - and they did. Care to wonder why the word 'Jew' was recorded, by William Lane, in the very early 19th century, as being the ultimate Arab swear-word and insult? Or why Arab Muslim lynch mobs yelled 'Itbah al-Yahood' 'KILL THE JEWS!' (non-Arab Muslims, like in Persia or Turkey, were ALSO wont to conduct pogroms against their local Jews) l.o.n.g before the foundation of modern Israel; or perhaps you'd like to reflect on the origins and implications of another pre-modern Arab Muslim slogan, 'The Jews are our dogs!'

And then, all of a sudden, the Jews (whom the Muslims had been used to booting about like frightened dogs, whom they could throw rocks at, and rape, and rob, and kidnap, and spit on, and punch, and sneer at, and trample upon with insufferable arrogance and contemptible cruelty, all day long without the least fear of any consequences) rose up like the Phoenix, seized weapons, seized back Jewish ancestral land out of the claws of the Empire of Islam, and turned into a force to be reckoned with.

The 'humiliation', the whingeing and whining of a ruthless oppressor who has been deprived of what he regards as his lawful and divinely appointed prey, is not worthy of any decent person's sympathy.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at March 24, 2008 9:00 PM

And a further perspective, from the same Jewish Israeli blog site.

http://www.keshertalk.com/archives/2006/07/israelmistake.php

"Israel is not a mistake, but the correction of a mistake.

"Richard Cohen's [in 'Israel is a mistake' article, Washington Post] telling and deliberate omission- the Jews of the Middle East, from Morocco to Iran- points us towards the single most obvious reason why. Without any resort to biblical history, or recounting of the holocaust, the Jews of the Middle East provide Israel with an absolute, irrevocable raison d'etre which follows logically from basic principles. That is why people questioning Israel's existence never mention them.

All people are deserving of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's the foundation of the Declaration of Independence of the United States. Any cultural group, deprived of rights, made into second class citizens, abused by a government and given no right or avenue for redress, is deserving of an independent, free nation.

This applies to Middle Eastern Jews.

The very fact that the nations in which they lived called themselves "islamic" deprived Jewish residents of the most fundamental right of a free person- the right to be considered an equal under the law.

Since, not being Muslim, no Jew could ever participate in the making of law in an Islamic nation- as an equal- he is by definition a second class citizen.

Claims of fair treatment of Jews by Muslims are irrelevant- a well kept house slave is still a slave, and as long as a Jew cannot be a political equal by virtue of his religion, he is not a true citizen- IN HIS NATIVE LAND!

Claims of fair treatment of Jews by Muslims are also false, as made evident by documented, repeated cases of mass violence perpetrated against them, for which the governments offered no protection, and no justice.

Since there is no avenue for democratic redress, the Jews of the Middle East were entitled, as Human Beings, indigenous to the region, to independence- NO LESS
 than the people represented by the HUNDRED OTHER INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENTS the world has by and large supported over the past century.

So the Middle Eastern Jews [and, one might add, as Hugh has frequently reminded us, for exactly similar reasons, the Egyptian Coptic Christians, the Assyrian Christians, the Maronite Christians, and the Armenians too, before the Turkish Muslims attempted to exterminate them; and various non-Arab minorities viciously suppressed by the Arab Imperial System] have a HUMAN RIGHT to a free and independent state- OR the muslims can alter their governments to allow Jews to function as their political equals. Since the latter is not going to happen, the former is essential."

And I, dumbledoresarmy, say to Novalis that this is why your analogy with the USA will not wash:

[Non-indigenous Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and Yankees can quite consistently support the sovereign Jewish state of Israel – formed by ‘decolonisation’ of a small part of Jewish lands previously invaded & occupied by the Arabian Empire, or Empire of Islam- and yet not feel logically required to also ‘pack up and go home’ themselves, since despite all their flaws and follies THEIR polities, UNLIKE THOSE DOMINATED BY ISLAM, grant to the formerly conquered indigenous peoples 1. Equality before the law and 2. Full citizenship, with the right to vote & to participate in government and have also publicly acknowledged that gross injustices WERE committed, and in some cases, have said SORRY and offered reparations.

Does anyone see the Arab Muslims, or any other kind of Muslims, saying ‘sorry’ or paying any sort of reparations to the Maronites, Copts, Armenians, Assyrian-Chaldeans or Berbers – or Greeks, or Spaniards or Bulgarians or Indians or Thai Buddhists – anytime soon? Let alone revising their laws and practices so as to fully acknowledge and defend the civil and human rights of such non-Muslims, or even of non-Arab Muslims, within Arabised Islamised polities? Excuse me while I fall about laughing. ]
Now, back to our blogger:
"Since the Jews of the Middle East have a right to a free and independent state, IN THE MIDDLE EAST, it is only rational that it be located where, historically, their culture has been centered. Israel.
Since the Jews of the Middle East have a right to a free and independent state, sovereign and autonomous, it follows that they have the right to determine their own immigration policies.
Since they have the right to determine immigration policies, they have the right to invite in anyone they choose, be it an immigrant from Ethiopia or Russia. No nation has the right to tell another who is acceptable as an immigrant.
A naturalized citizen in a free nation has all the rights of a native citizen.
Since they have the same rights, the European immigrant citizens are JUST AS LEGITIMATE as the native Middle Eastern Jews.
So, Israel is not a mistake, not illegitimate, the European Jews have every right to be there, and this all flows from the existence of native Middle Eastern Jews and the refusal of the Muslims to grant them equal rights...And THAT is why no one attacking Israel's existence ever mentions them."

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at March 24, 2008 9:17 PM

dumbledoresarmy,

Thank you for you effort. Your comments and the references therein are classics*.

That should settle the matter for all time. SHOULD, but will not, because the Arab mind and that of those arabized via Islam cannot accept what was made unacceptable by Islam.

_______________________
* They must be preserved and used whenever a defeated Arab Moslem or arabized other starts to whine.

Posted by: unicorns62000 at March 25, 2008 12:37 AM

This is an excellent thread. I very much appreciate Hugh's article, replete with uncompromising passion and relentless exposure of the Great Lies in the media about Israel and the so-called 'Palestinian people'.
And Dumbledore's posts are most inspiring and informative too.We all need ammunition...facts and information...to use against the mealy-mouthed Israel haters that one encounters everywhere these days. Thanks for that contribution. I found this extract from Gellhorn's article particularly powerful and eloquent:

"It is hard to sorrow for those who only sorrow over themselves. It is difficult to pity the pitiless. To wring the heart past all doubt, those who cry aloud for justice must be innocent.

'THEY CANNOT HAVE WISHED FOR A VICTORIOUS REWARDING WAR, BLAME EVERYONE ELSE FOR THEIR DEFEAT, AND REMAIN GUILTLESS."

Posted by: johndoe at March 25, 2008 6:57 AM

If a iddy biddy Arab nation called "Philistine" were surrounded by 22 Jewish nations...the 22 Jewish nations would squabble amongst themselves, probably not come over to one of the other Jewish nations to party on one of the High Holy Days, and stay home and sulk, while maybe one of the other Jewish nations would sit shiva on all of them because they weren't being "jewish" enough, or maybe they were flirting with some form of intermarriage of Christianism with Judaism.
One nation would have all the lawyers, one would have all the doctors, another would have all the violinists and pianists, still another would have all the scientists, one would put on spectacular entertainment, and provide movies for the whole ungrateful world, while Saudi Arabia would be renamed "Gulf Katif" and the botanists there would have found a way to make bug free lettuce grow in sand dunes, with tomatoes and orange groves thriving in salinated water. Tiny little Philistine would be preserved by the one billion or so jews worldwide as an example of what a savage untamable some folk can be in the name of their religion, without the saving graces of Jewish pity and kindness, when they go walking into places with bombs on.
On the whole, I say it's a pretty good idea. Zionists of the World UNITE!!!

Posted by: Jauhara Al-Kafirah at March 25, 2008 1:00 PM

Martha Gellhorn was married for a while to Ernest Hemingway. She was a well-known and adventurous journalist, who may be thought to have done in prose what Margaret Bourke-White did in pictures.

As a tribute to her, and to "dumblesdorearmy" who brought Gellhorn's observations to the attention of readers at this website, a little Interlude that you can imagine as being sung (or listened to) by Martha Gellhorn herslf, at a certain point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqTGLAEeAKs

Posted by: Hugh at March 25, 2008 1:27 PM

Well, that was a lot of reading! A little more than I can handle, in fact, looking at a computer screen. But, as I said, I was asking, not pontificating, and I am grateful for all contributions to my further informedness about this subject.

I confess I am still a bit sceptical about the relevance of things like "threads" of Jewish presence in Palestine (for lack of a better term) through history, or the Muslim mistreatment of minorities, as if that was anything unique!

The really unmanageable thing about the whole issue is the way it is complicated by religion at every point, making concerns like "the self-determination of peoples" (which we westerners would so like to believe in) so much less than the whole story, that at last it seems, compared to religion (read: determination to resume global jihad, starting with the destruction of the Jews) to be hardly relevant at all. A lesson in re-examining your categories, I guess.

Thank you for all references to what I should read. I will try to find the time to do so!

Posted by: Novalis at March 25, 2008 3:41 PM

Firstly, I think from a brief search of the "intertubes" that "fairuzfan", who posted the original message, is Lebanese rather than Jewish. I suggest you all look it up yourselves also.

Secondly: Novalis. I wouldn't compare it to the takeover of land owned by "natives" so much as the return of another set of natives to their ancestral home. It would be like Native Americans of one tribe or nation returning en masse to one of their old territories - it might well be inconvenient for every descendant of the Seneca to pile into the SUVs and descend on New York State demanding their land back, but could you really morally blame them? Our genocide of Native Americans is not dissimilar to the experience of Jewish Middle Easterners in the period 800 - 1900 AD, really. Who could really blame them?

Geoff

Posted by: Geoff at March 25, 2008 8:15 PM

The UN Mandate gave 78% of the Palestinian Mandate to the Arabs, Israel ended up with about 10%........The Palestinians were given their land with the promise that no Jews could live there....the small sliver left to the Jews, Arabs we welcomed. But this was not enough.......the Arabs want it all..............next they will demand Spain back!

Posted by: bebola at March 26, 2008 12:20 AM

I recommend that you read James Parkes, who makes it quite, quite plain that eretz Israel was NOT perfectly Judenrein between AD 70 and AD 1880 - NOR was it perfectly Judenrein between the Arab Muslim invasion of the 630s and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1917.

dumbledoresarmy:

novalis can probably speak for himself, but I'd point out that neither were the Eastern United States entirely free of Indians between the time of the European conquests and today. So now that the analogy is shown to be apt, I presume you have no objection to an aliyah of the Cherokees to western North Carolina or of the Lenapi to Manhattan and adjoining territory, and to the establishment of independent Indian states in those locations. If you prefer, we can partition New York and North Carolina, just as Palestine was proposed for partition under the 1947 U.N. plan. (And I'd note that the Indians were driven out of New York and North Carolina a lot more recently than the Jews were driven out of Palestine, so there is less of a statute of limitations on their claim.)

Posted by: Seamus at March 26, 2008 1:37 PM

So the Middle Eastern Jews [and, one might add, as Hugh has frequently reminded us, for exactly similar reasons, the Egyptian Coptic Christians, the Assyrian Christians, the Maronite Christians, and the Armenians too, before the Turkish Muslims attempted to exterminate them; and various non-Arab minorities viciously suppressed by the Arab Imperial System] have a HUMAN RIGHT to a free and independent state- OR the muslims can alter their governments to allow Jews to function as their political equals. Since the latter is not going to happen, the former is essential.

Except that the latter *was* happening in the Arab world in the immediate aftermath of World War I (when, for example, Sir Sassoon Eskell was one of the founders of the Kingdom of Iraq), before Zionism made Arab Jews appear as potential fifth columnists.

Posted by: Seamus at March 26, 2008 1:47 PM

'seamus'

Your specious justification of what the Islamosphere - in, for example, Persia, or Syria, or Egypt, or Libya, or Algeria, or Morocco, or Yemen - did to its resident Jews (all of whom descended from Jewish communities that had been living in those places for over a thousand years BEFORE said locations were violently and viciously Islamised by the thrice-accursed Arab Muslim imperialists invaded) by the excuse that 'Zionism made Arab Jews appear as potential fifth columnists,' is beneath contempt.

You, sir, are what Hugh has called 'a moral idiot'.

Because what the Muslims did to the Jews under their heel, in places like Yemen, or Syria, or Baghdad (there was a huge pogrom in the early 1940s, don't forget) is just the same as they are on record as doing to them, over and over and over, throughout all the preceding centuries of Muslim domination, in all parts of the Islamosphere.

If you don't believe me, read Andrew Bostom and Bat Yeor and leaf through their historical documents sections - I recall reading, for example, about a mass forced conversion of Jews in Persia long, long before Zionism ever existed, and a huge pogrom against Jews in Afghanistan (are you aware that there ever was a substantial community of Jews in Afghanistan?) - ditto.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at March 26, 2008 6:14 PM

Oh yes...and, 'seamus', as for Muslim Arab (or Turk, or Persian) regimes altering laws, in the mid-late 19th century onward, to allow Jews - or Maronites, or Copts, or Armenians, or any other non-Muslim indigenous minority [fill in blank] - to be their social and political equals, and to permit freedom of conscience...it was not their own idea, at all, at all. Left to themselves, no such thing would have happened.

All moves in that direction were made very, very grudgingly, during the 19th and early 20th century, as a result of major pressure from outside, from non-Muslim states which at that point in history were stronger than the Muslims. The oppressive laws against the Jews in Algeria were only repealed during the French colonial period; and the minute the French left, the repression of Jews resumed and their rights were diminished.

The changes were never consistently or fully observed, made little or no impression on the contempt that the average street-level Muslim felt and practised toward those he regarded as untermenschen - and were reversed, at the first excuse, the moment the Muslims felt themselves strong enough to defy external critique.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at March 26, 2008 7:29 PM

I recall reading, for example, about a mass forced conversion of Jews in Persia long, long before Zionism ever existed, and a huge pogrom against Jews in Afghanistan (are you aware that there ever was a substantial community of Jews in Afghanistan?) - ditto.

If they occurred "long, long before Zionism ever existed," then they occurred long, long before the period I was referring to.

Posted by: Seamus at March 27, 2008 12:02 PM

Any cultural group, deprived of rights, made into second class citizens, abused by a government and given no right or avenue for redress, is deserving of an independent, free nation.

By this standard, Tamils, Inner Mongolians, Tibetans, Hmong, Kashmiris, Ogadenis, Mohammedans in Xinjiang, Chechens, South Ossetians, Turkish Cypriots, Albanian Kosovars, Serbs in Kosovo, and white Zimbabweans, just to name a few, all have a claim to independent statehood.

Posted by: Seamus at March 27, 2008 12:24 PM

In all humility, what I still don't understand is why the historical record of Arab rule, or of Islamic powers generally, has anything to do with the legitimacy of Israel today, or with the right or lack of it to the land on which they have been living as a people for many centuries on the part of "Palestinian" (forgive me, this term is useful shorthand) Arabs.

Crimes and misdemeanors, intolerance and persecution, forced removal of peoples, unjust laws - none of these things is the exclusive property of Arabs or Muslims. Human experience is scored up to repletion with them. Citation of them as is so often done regarding Islamic civilization would deny the legitimacy of just about every country on earth. National and territorial rights are not in general seen as deriving from them, or affected by them. Applying a standard to Arabs or Muslims that is not applied universally is hardly a counsel of enlightenment. Nor is every Arab shepherd in the West Bank responsible for every crime committed by his ancestors.

Arabs are on the ground and in command throughout the Middle East and North Africa because of conquest? That's why Anglo-Saxons are in England.
Arab powers perpretrated cruelties against minorities of several descriptions? The North American example seems relevant there. Some of the original peoples of my own country, Canada, actually ceased to exist because of the depredations committed against them by colonizers.

Islam certainly seems to be as anti-Semitic an ideology as Christianity used to be (more, I suppose, since, like exhortations to violence against unbelievers, contempt for Jews is enshrined in its scripture) but national and territorial rights do not derive from, nor are they derogated by, unadmirable attitudes of mind.
The Protestants of Northern Ireland have long displayed an unfair judgemental prejudice against their Catholic minority, but that doesn't mean that they have for that reason no right to make democratic determinations regarding their own political future. The world isn't a kindergarten. It isn't inhabited only by nice people.

When the Saudi King of the day (I forget his name) said to Harry Truman: "You know Mr President, what Hitler did to the Jews was a terrible thing. But WE didn't do it to them. Why don't you give them part of Germany?" he seems to me to have been speaking sense, whatever else I might think of him, or his religion, or his régime, or his people's history.

Posted by: Novalis at March 27, 2008 4:55 PM

"why the historical record of Arab rule, or of Islamic powers generally, has anything to do with the legitimacy of Israel today, or with the right or lack of it to the land on which they have been living as a people for many centuries on the part of "Palestinian" (forgive me, this term is useful shorthand) Arabs."
-- fro a posting above

Several reasons why the "historical record of Arab rule, or of Islamic powers generally, has anything to do with the legitimacy" of the Arab attempt to destroy Israel, not because of any real interest in those who have been carefully named "Palestinians" but because the Infidel nation-state of Israel (or indeed any other Infidel nation-state, controlled by non-Muslims, or , in the Middle East and North Africa, any state controlled by non-Arabs even if Muslims) matters.

Symmetry matters, in the first place. It does matter if the Arabs already have not one, not two, but twenty-two states. Furthermore, in every single one of the states controlled by Arabs, all non-Arabs are denied rights, autonomy, even cultural and linguistic rights. Look at the Kurds at Iraq. Look at the Berbers in Algeria. Look at the Copts in Egypt. Look at the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Maronites, and the smaller groups -- Yazidis, Mandeans, and so on. Look at Christians in Jordan. And so on.

You may be familiar with the Anglo-American legal notion, the "clean hands doctrine." (If not, merely google it). Something like the "clean hands doctrine" should prevail in international relations.

Given that prior to the 1967 war, not a single Arab ruler or diplomat, not a single Arab newspaper, referred to the "Palestinian people" but always either to the "Arabs of Palestine" or, more rarely, to the "Palestinian Arabs," why is it illegitimate to point out that this construct was created by the Arabs for obvious propaganidstic purposes. Surely you are familiar with the statement of Zohair (or Zuheir) Mohsen about this; if not, simply google his name and find out about how the leader of As Saiqa, one of the constituent parts of the PLO, explained frankly this business of the "Palestinian people." For that matter see the statement about a month ago of the Hamas leader essentially echoing Mohsen, claiming there was no such thing as the "Palestinians" but only Arabs.

But the notion that all of these smaller peoples -- the Jews, the Kurds, the Berbers -- do not have a right to autonomy or independence, in the vast areas that we call, in our modern inaccuracy, the "Arab world" (thereby conceding the entire area to precisely one people, the Arabs) -- is one I think fairminded people will reject.

Obviously, anywhere in the Middle East or North Africa, since there are Arabs everywhere, if one were to create a state for this or that non-Arab minority, there would be Arabs within it. That was true for the "Jewish National Home" that was the whole point of, the reason for being of, the Mandate for Palestine. If, as I hope happens, there will come into being an independent Kurdistan, there will be an Arab minority within it. If there were ever to be an independent Berber state,say in part of Algeria, or in Morocco, it would also include an Arab minority. So what? Are we to conclude that the Arabs should not anywhere have to live as a minority under rule by others? And thus we would deny all the other peoples of the Middle East and North Africa, or those who originated there, from having a state? What sense does that make?

The great Western statesmen -- such men as Clemenceau and Smuts -- who worked for the post-World War I settlement, and those on the Mandates Commission for the League of Nations, knew exactly what they were doing when they set up the various mandates. It is too bad that the indepdnent states promised the Kurds and the Armenians were not achieved; the Armenians have only recently managed to throw off Soviet rule, and to have what can reasonably be called an "independent and free Armenia." The Kurds are still waiting.

Furthermore, you appear to believe that the "Palestiian" Arabs were in that area of the Ottoman Empire since time immemorial. This is a staple of Arab propaganda. But it's false. The area that then made up Mandatory Palestine was largely "ruin" and "desolation." There were Bedouin, and a handful of towns. The only one that had more than a few thousand inhabitants was Jerusalem, which in 1850 had 15,000 inhabitants, a plurality of them Jews. Look at all of the reports, from Lamartine to Herman Melville to Mark Twain, and from others, too, besides well-known writers, who report on the fantastic "emptiness" of the Holy Land. There were many such reports, too many to be denied, though the Arabs have constructed a false history, and the Israelis, so eager to "make peace," have stopped defending themselves, stopped pointing out these home truths.

The more one studies the demographs of the area, and comes to realize that more Arabs entered Mandatory Palestine than did Jews, even though that Mandate was set up (at the same time as the other mandates, for Syria/Lebanon, for Iraq, and for Jordan, which was merely that part of Eastern Palestine, originally to have been subject to the express terms of the Mandate, that was closed off to the express terms of the Mandate, those which specified the intent of "encouraging close Jewish settlement on the land" and "facilitating Jewish immigration.

Many of the Gazan Arabs are just two or three generations removed from Egyptian ancestors; and many Arabs from other Arab states, particularly Iraq, in the period 1920-1940, entered Mandatory Palestine and settled. This is not written about enough -- the migration into Mandatory Palestine, of Arabs, who were attracted by the economic development (and indeed, had been coming from 1900 on, when the Jewish settlers were already bringing greater economic activity to the area).

Start with "Battleground" or "Since Time Immemorial" (the latter has a few mistakes in its claims, but much of it withstands criticism). Both books, however, were written by authors who did not understand, or take into accout, the texts and tenets of Islam. Had they done so, the case would have been even stronger.

You appear to believe that all areas have such checkered histories, that essentially no one can claim a right to anything. I don't agree. I think that there is no substitute for detailed study, but that such study, not limited to a particular conflict but putting that conflict in a larger context (such as the differing fates of Muslim Arab conquerors, seizing so much, destroying so much of what the peoples they conquered had built, and, per contra, the history of Jews exiled from their historic homeland because of Muslim overlords who so mistreated them from 661 A.D. on, and whose fate, at various hands, all educated people know about, and by this point, comprehend.

Posted by: Hugh at March 27, 2008 11:35 PM

Novalis

“….. does not change the fact that the Arabs of the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean lost their country, or their lands which should have become their country, to interlopers, who went over the heads of the natives and used international
authority to establish a country of their own on someone else's property.”

You should be aware that the above is incorrect . The “international authority” i.e. the UN wanted a partition , so the Arabs of the region were indeed assured of a country. The Arabs rejected this and all other proposals and thus Israel was formed while Jordan and Egypt annexed the rest. But lets face it , if Israel ‘ didn’t happen’ , the Arabs of the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean ( as well as the Jews) would not of had a separate country as the region would have been undoubtedly split between Egypt , Syria and Jordon. What’s more , it was Britain who referred the problem to the UN , and it was the UN who decided NOT to ignore the 600,000 Jews who had in the majority settled legally. ( yes I concede the local Arab population had no say in this migration , and this eventually lead to rebellion..The British invested heavily in the Zionist cause) The Jews did not force anybody off their land ( prior to 1948) as the land the Jews held was their own property as it had been purchased or it was settled vacant. And finally the “ international authority” though it provided a legal basis, in reality it established nothing , it was war waged against the Jews ( by members of this same “international authority”) and the Jew’s resisting and holding on to the land that established the final Jewish State.

Posted by: David Xavier at March 28, 2008 9:12 AM

prior to the 1967 war, not a single Arab ruler or diplomat, not a single Arab newspaper, referred to the "Palestinian people" but always either to the "Arabs of Palestine" or, more rarely, to the "Palestinian Arabs,"

But, before 1967, they did refer to the "Palestinian Arab people":
http://www.un.int/palestine/PLO/PNA2.html

Is that supposed to be materially different from the "Palestinian people"?

The great Western statesmen -- such men as Clemenceau and Smuts -- who worked for the post-World War I settlement, and those on the Mandates Commission for the League of Nations, knew exactly what they were doing when they set up the various mandates.

What Clemenceau, Smuts, and the other "great Western statemen" "were doing" when they drafted the Covenant of the League of Nations was to provide that the mandates were to be administered for the "well-being and development" of their inhabitants. Moreover, they grouped Palestine among the Class A mandates, about which they said: "Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory." It's hard to see how carving out a Jewish state from those communities constitutes "the rendering of administrative advice and assistance" to the communities, much less furthering their "well-being and development".

And it's hard to see what the Mandates Commission has to do with any of this, since it didn't set up the mandates, or do much else other than receive periodic reports from the mandatory powers. But perhaps you meant to say the Council of the League, which assigned the Palestine mandate to Great Britain (though it's hard to see how assigning the Palestine mandate to a power that intended to carve out such a state from it constituted was consistent with giving "principal consideration" to "[t]he wishes of these communities"--but perhaps when you say they "knew exactly what they were doing," you meant that they knew they were disregarding the requirements of the Covenant of the League).

Posted by: Seamus at March 28, 2008 11:24 AM

Furthermore, you appear to believe that the "Palestiian" Arabs were in that area of the Ottoman Empire since time immemorial.

No, but they're been there longer than Anglos have been in Texas or California.

Posted by: Seamus at March 28, 2008 11:45 AM

Hmm, okay, I'm getting it. But the signal points seem to me to be: how recent many of the Arab residents of the area were in 1948, the legal standing of Jewish ownership of property, and the insistence by Arab nationalists themselves that there is a Palestinian people when it suits them, and isn't when it doesn't. I'm still not sure what centuries of history have to do with it, other than creating a lien on the land.

Not that you should care, but I would like you people who write so well, Seamus, David Xavier, and Hugh, to know that I ask these questions because I have nothing but sympathy for the Jewish State, and have so badly failed to defend it myself when I was called on to do so, that I feel the need to take a critical view of the matter if I am ever to understand it, and to be able speak up better next time, should there be a next time.

Posted by: Novalis at March 28, 2008 3:32 PM

Start with "Battleground" and "Since Time Immemorial" -- as I noted previously -- but make sure that you now read with an understanding that neither Peters nor Katz possessed about the promptings of Islam. Nothing that happens in the Middle East, or anywhere that Muslims are deeply involved, can be understood if one ignores the texts and tenets and attitudes of Islam.

Is demoraphy destiny, or does it confer right? Do you think that if this or that European country, in twenty or thirty years, has a Muslim majority, that Muslim majority's view of things should prevail? Would you agree that that Muslim majority could close all the museums, so that paintings of humans, and all sculpture, would be off-limits -- or perhaps destroy the contents of those museums? And symphony orchestras? And other forms of music? What about science -- would you agree that that Muslim majority could prevent the non-Muslims from studying science, whenever and wherever it contradicted Islam? Would the Shari'a rules relating to how Infidels are to be treated be welcomed by you, or at least defended, as being supported by the majority?

Keep that in mind, as you seem to be most focussed not on morality, or historic rights, but on numbers, and numbers alone.

Israel is only a small part of the problem, only one victim. Your country, even if that country is the United States, is not immmune, and certainly will not remain unaffected by the Muslim presence in Europe, for Infidels the source of so much that is unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangeous.

Posted by: Hugh at March 28, 2008 11:27 PM

"The “international authority” i.e. the UN wanted a partition , so the Arabs of the region were indeed assured of a country."
-- from a poster above

As the same poster notes, the Arabs refused the partition plan. Having refused it, they are in no position to attempt, through the back door, to resurrect it. That would be akin to someone making an offer, and it being refused, and then twenty or fifty years later, the offeree coming back to the offeror, and saying that now he "accepted that offer" that had been made 20 or 50 years ago. See any basic Contracts course, as to the effect of a rejection by the offeree on the offeror's offer. The situation is no different.

But that same poster overlooks one other thing. The U.N. was not free to meddle with the terms of the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine. That Mandate, set up for the sole, and express, purpose of establishing the Jewish National Home, was a creature of the League, and was accepted by the U.N., as were all the other mandates then in force when the League of Nations dissolved before World War II. The U.N. was not free -- though it behaved as though it was -- to change the terms of those mandates, which it had agreed to take over. That is never mentioned. It should be.

Posted by: Hugh at March 29, 2008 12:03 PM

That Mandate, set up for the sole, and express, purpose of establishing the Jewish National Home, was a creature of the League, and was accepted by the U.N., as were all the other mandates then in force when the League of Nations dissolved before World War II. The U.N. was not free -- though it behaved as though it was -- to change the terms of those mandates, which it had agreed to take over.

The Palestine Mandate was *not* set up "for the sole, and express, purpose of establishing the Jewish National Home." The mandate provided, that "[t]he Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure," not only "the establishment of the Jewish national home [note, not necessarily an independent state]," but also "the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion." It's hard to see how the mandatory could foster "the development of self-governing institutions" while at the same time establishing a Jewish National Home, unless it was going either to expel the Arabs from Palestine (given that allowing them self-government would have put a quick end to the Zionist program) or partition the Mandate to give the Arabs part of it to govern.

(The Mandate, by the way, also provided that "[t]he Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes." There was no way that Britain, the mandatory power, could fulfill this instruction, because facilitating Jewish immigration necessarily prejudiced the position, if not the rights, of "other sections of the population" (i.e., the Arabs), the same way that facilitating immigration of Hispanics into the southwest United States, or Albanians into Kosovo, or Chinese into Tibet, cannot help but prejudice the position of those already living there.)

But in any event, if you want to argue that the U.N. partition plan was illegitimate because it somehow was inconsistent with the terms of the League of Nations Mandate, there are three answers: (1) It wasn't; as reference to the language of the Mandate (quoted above) indicates, partition was almost necessary if the terms of that Mandate were to be carried out. (2) If Palestine were granted independence without partition, then the fact that Arabs constituted two-thirds of the population would have brought an pretty fast end to the Zionist program (assuming the government of the former mandate was to be democratic), the way one-man-one-vote elections in South Africa in 1994 brought a swift end to Afrikaner National Home. (3) The Council of the League had no right, when setting up the Mandate, to deviate from the Covenant of the League, which provided that the "sole, and express purpose" of establishing Class A mandates was "the rendering of administrative advice and assistance . . . until such time as [the existing community is] are able to stand alone" (Covenant of the League of Nations, art. 22). (4) As long as we're talking about the authority of the United Nations, we should note article 73 of the U.N. Charter, which provided that "Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government [which would include Palestine under the Mandate] recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories [not displaced persons or other immigrants into those territories] are paramount."

I must, however, offer a correction to Mr. Xavier on one point: the U.N. was not "the international authority" with respect to Palestine. According to the U.N. Charter, the trusteeship system set up by the Charter was to apply (in relevant part) "to such territories in the following categories as may be placed thereunder by means of trusteeship agreements: a. territories now held under mandate." Since Britain never placed Palestine under the trusteeship system, the U.N. never obtained authority comparable to that of the defunct (as of 1946) League of Nations. The 1947 partition plan was not ordered by the General Assembly, but only recommended, to Britain (as mandatory power) and the other Members of the U.N. That was only appropriate, as the General Assembly has no power to bind members of the U.N. with its resolutions. The partition resolution, however, called on the Security Council to "take the necessary measures as provided for in the plan for its implementation." Resolutions of the Security Council, unlike those of the General Assembly, *do* have binding force, but the Security Council never took the action requested by the General Assembly.

Posted by: Seamus at March 30, 2008 8:02 PM

Er, make that four answers.

Posted by: Seamus at March 30, 2008 8:03 PM