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Arab Refugees - a diffrent perspective
I though this was an interesting article. I know many might not agree with it but I urge you all to read it anyway.
Another Tack: The owners of history
Talkbacks (100)
Photo by: Toldot Milhemet HaKomemiyut
Elements of this travesty are paradoxically consistent. After all, Abbas (Abu Mazen) is nothing if not a consummate counterfeiter, who honed his craft at Moscow’s Communist-era Russian University for Friendship between People (a.k.a. the People’s Friendship University of Russia, also a.k.a. the Patrice Lumumba Friendship University).
As befits Friendship U’s academic ambiance, Abbas specialized in revising history, an endeavor which in 1982 ripened into a PhD dissertation that both denied the Holocaust and yet blamed Zionists for it. Two years later, Dr. Abbas further expanded and embellished his “research.” He never apologized nor retracted a single nuance of his learned treatise. Nonetheless, political correctness stringently prohibits discussion thereof.
The emboldened manufacture of lies is graciously overlooked because it’s too troubling to debunk cock-and-bull chronicles and expose the faithful followers of fanciful fabrications as fools. Harping on misrepresentation is impolite, uncool and so yesterday. Best leave the sham undisturbed or – better yet – enshrine it.
Accordingly, not a peep of protest could be heard anywhere when the “man of peace” diplomatically intoned: “Oh, Netanyahu, you are incidental in history; we are the people of history. We are the owners of history.” Abbas’s “we” refers to Palestinians. Local Arabs – among them itinerant migrants from Syria, Egypt, Libya and the Maghreb – became acquainted with the name Palestine (minted by the Romans to humiliate defeated Judea) when the British Mandate introduced it here. They vehemently rejected the moniker which until 1948 applied to Jews only.
Then tactics changed. King Hussein explained why at the Arab League summit in Amman in November 1988: “The appearance of a distinct Palestinian national personality comes as an answer to Israel’s claim that Palestine is Jewish.” In so many words, said the Hashemite monarch, the Palestinian identity is an artificial propaganda ploy.
But the lie spawned vibrant offshoots of amazing variety and boundless scope for expansion. Hence scholarly Abbas could proclaim a couple of weeks ago that not only do Jews have no history whatsoever in this land (an extraordinary assertion in itself), but Palestinian-Arab history here dates back to 7000 BCE, i.e., 9,000 years! Brazenly trampling chronology and fact, Abbas (on whose capacity for veracity hinge all peace deals) contended in his recentNew York Times op-ed that “shortly after” the 1947 UN Partition Resolution, “Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened.” He himself, he wrote, was forcibly driven out as a child from his native Safed.
The aggrieved victim pose becomes a basic Arab tenet – the crucial justification for terror and for refusing to relinquish the so-called “right of return” by Arabs to what are described as homes which violent interloping Jewish conquistadores usurped. Biased world opinion willingly falls for the Palestinian freedom-fighter fable.
But foolhardy carelessness – or trust that nobody listens to intra-Arab discourse – occasionally pulls off the painstakingly painted mask. On July 6, 2009, Abbas waxed nostalgic on Al-Palestinia TV and inadvertently let the truth slip out.
When he was 13, he recalled, his well-off family made a calculated decision and “left at night, heading to the Jordan river...Eventually we settled in Damascus... My father had money, and he spent his money methodically. After a year, when the money ran out, we began to work.
“People were motivated to run away...They feared retribution from the Zionists – particularly from the Safed ones. Those of us from Safed especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what happened during the 1929 uprising. This was in the memory of our families and parents... They realized the balance of forces was shifting and therefore the whole town was abandoned on the basis of this rationale – saving our lives and our belongings.”
So here it is from the mouth of the PA’s head honcho himself. He irrefutably verifies that nobody expelled Safed’s Arabs.
Their exile was voluntary, propelled by their extreme consciousness of guilt and expectation that Jews would be ruled by the same blood-feud conventions that prevail in Arab culture. Misguidedly, they anticipated that Jews would do to them precisely what Arabs had done to Safed’s Jews. If that was their premise, they indeed had grounds for panic.
The “uprising” Abbas alluded to was one among the serial pogroms instigated by infamous mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who’s still revered throughout the Arab world. An avid Nazi collaborator, he spent World War II in Berlin. The Allies declared him a wanted war criminal postwar.
In August 1929, Husseini rallied Arabs to slaughter Jews on trumped-up allegations of Jewish takeover attempts at the Temple Mount. Sixty-seven members of Hebron’s ancient Jewish community were hideously hacked to death. That was the most notorious massacre, but others were perpetrated throughout the country.
In the equally ancient Jewish community of Safed, 21 were butchered no less gruesomely (a cat was stuffed into one grandmother’s disemboweled abdomen). A child and a young woman due to be married the next day were cold-bloodedly murdered by Arab constables whom British mandatory officers had assigned to watch over the majority of Safed’s Jews when they sought safety in the police courtyard.
The British proposed that all Safed Jews be evacuated “for their own safety,” as was the case in Hebron. The offer was flatly refused. Thereafter, principally during the 1936-39 mufti-led rampages, the Hagana and Safed’s own IZL cells protected the town’s 2,000 Jews.
SUCH WAS the uprising for which Abbas’s kinfolk assumed they deserved just reckoning. Ironically Jews were alarmed by the Arab exodus, figuring it presaged a formidable onslaught by invading Arab armies (which indeed came).
In many areas (Haifa, for instance) Jews pleaded with local Arabs to stay. But Arabs in Safed and elsewhere – heeding their leaders’ exhortations to pull out and hounded by fears arising from their own vengeful traditions (but not Jewish ones) – did what was prudent in light of their surmise that Jews would behave according to Arab codes.
On the eve of the April 16, 1948, British withdrawal from Safed, the mandatory authorities turned over the town’s police stronghold and Mount Canaan’s military fort to the Arabs. They offered to escort all Jews out of town “for their own safety.” As in 1929, the Jews refused unequivocally, though memories of the horrific carnage should have inspired more dread among them than among the fleeing Abbases.
Why wasn’t Abu Mazen’s pivotal testimony accorded due resonance in the media?
Perhaps because it’s too troubling to debunk cock-and-bull chronicles, expose the faithful followers of fanciful fabrications as fools and altogether veer into that undesirable zone of the impolite, uncool and so yesterday. Perhaps preserving the myth of Jewish culpability is too enticingly de rigueur, a hallmark of enlightenment.
www.sarahhonig.com
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=223311
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Sussan on -
As soon as you demonize the enemy, you loose sight of the goal.
Whoever wrote this article is in love with their ability to be witty and clever. They have thereby undermined the message to the point that it is hard to see what they were trying to say.
This total disparagement of Abbas is something all Palestinians would probably agree with, if not for the fact that all Palestinians are thereby mocked for nothing other than their nationality.
It was Israel that chose Abbas, not the Palestinians.
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Permalink Reply by Jeff stern on -
This is not about demonization its about getting some facts on the table that are usually ignored.
Her point was, don't get so high and mighty about the refugee issue- it is not so clear and simple.
As for "It was Israel that chose Abbas, not the Palestinians" - I thought it was elections that chose Abbas.
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Permalink Reply by Sussan on
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The article is mainly a repetition of falsehoods.
Zionists have always been keen to tell the world the Arabs fled of their own free will. This is just cheap propaganda, although, like all propaganda, if it is said often enough, there are many who will swallow it.
This ‘fact’ that the Arabs fled is usually presented in a way that constitutes a gigantic racial slur. If you want to know the truth, you will have to be prepared to question yourself about what really happened. You do not need me to provide the clues.
Ask yourself, why were the houses of the Arab people looted, and then bulldozed? Why are there reports from Israeli soldiers who say they entered houses and found the table set for dinner, complete with freshly cooked food that had been hastily abandoned, or a coffee pot with the coffee still warm? Ask yourself, WHAT WERE THOSE ISRAELI SOLDIERS DOING IN THOSE HOUSES? Why were these Arab people never allowed to return when the UN made it so clear this was necessary; and ask yourself, why was the UN negotiator who was insisting on the return of the refugees assassinated by the Irgun?
Jeff, you do not need me to tell you what happened, all you need to do is read more widely, with a more contemplative attitude.
What happened to Palestine will eventually be exposed as one of the BIGGEST cover-ups of the 20th Century. It will definitely vie with the Holocaust when it comes to international ignorance of the truth.
Think about this.... the UN has been providing financial assistance to Palestinian refugees for over 60 years, and no one knows anything about it! What does that tell you about the UN?
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Permalink Reply by Jeff stern on
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I have said it in teh past there were definately Arabs thrown out of their home as well as many who left to stay away from the violence - I beleive that is teh middle road. The strange thing is why these refugees still exist. No other refugees frm that time are still refugees and there were dozens of millions. The Jewish refugees, thrown out of Arab countris were settled in Israel... This would be a non-issue if the Arabs also settled their own but for political purposes, its worth while to make people suffer.
When it comes to international ignorance of the truth I would say the the Jewish refugees is a much bigger coverup, as you said Palestinians have been funded by the UN for 60 years - Jewish refugees got none.
As for your comments regarding racial slur .. I hope you read the quote from the president of the Palestinian, I think that shows that there is more than a bit of truth to this slur.
"When he was 13, he recalled, his well-off family made a calculated decision and “left at night, heading to the Jordan river...Eventually we settled in Damascus... My father had money, and he spent his money methodically. After a year, when the money ran out, we began to work.
“People were motivated to run away...They feared retribution from the Zionists – particularly from the Safed ones. Those of us from Safed especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what happened during the 1929 uprising. This was in the memory of our families and parents... They realized the balance of forces was shifting and therefore the whole town was abandoned on the basis of this rationale – saving our lives and our belongings.”
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Permalink Reply by Autistic socialist on
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My Personal Opinion is that you should ask him were the Translations came from. You should also ask can he explain plan Dalet and other Zionist documents on the expulsion as well why every time Israel declassifys files that it yet does reveal that more of the Israeli side is a lie or why don't zionist leaders admitting to the Nekba can not be used as counter argument.
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Permalink Reply by Neri Bar-On on -
Jeff ask "The strange thing is why these refugees still exist. "?
These refugees still exist because the solution for the palestinian people is not within Syria. Lebanon or Jordan.
The people who lost all their property and livelihood were not fighters and deserve human respect and a solution.
with that I note that the people who give only one solution that it they will return to the territory of what is Israel today are people who do not care that these people are still refugees. the solution can be within a Palestinian state and this is where we should go
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Permalink Reply by Jeff stern on
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I disagree, of the 40 million refugees that existed 60+ years ago a large majority were re-settled outside their homes. Look at the Jewish refugees from the Holocaust and Arab countries, how many "went home". They were also "people who lost all their property and livelihood were not fighters and deserve human respect and a solution"
The could have and should have been resettled 60 years ago in their "host" countries, but instead they have been used as pawns for political gain. That is the reason they exist today, as to what to do with them now, that is a different question.
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Permalink Reply by Sussan on
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Jeff, your suggestion that there were 40 million refugees is bizarre, to put it mildly. There is no way the world could have coped with such large numbers.
At the end of WW2, most displaced people returned to the places where they lived before. Some walked for days. It was a kind of event that went for about 2 weeks. Everyone living in Europe was fully aware of it at the time. I remember a friend still talking about it in the 1980’s – giving vivid a description of 1000’s and 1000’s of people passing through his town, all on foot, day after day, from dawn to dusk.
Some of the people living in countries that became part of the new Soviet bloc, chose to move to the West. These people lived in migrant camps, sometimes for several years. They were not refugees, and they numbered less than 2 million. I had a Science teacher who was very resentful of having to walk through snow for 3 days, to leave Lithuania, and migrate to a country of his choice.
Jeff, maybe you are wondering why these people had to walk. This is what an Uncle told me, many years ago: He was a soldier waiting for a train at a railway station somewhere in Europe. The station was huge, and the platform was full of soldiers from different countries, who were all waiting for connecting trains. It was all part of troop movements and some groups of soldiers waited all day. The soldiers were enjoying meeting soldiers from other places. Every time a train came into the station, everyone on the platform would be keen to find out who was on the train, and where they were going. Likewise, the people on the train wanted to know what was going on in the station. There was no timetable of any kind; the trains had been organized for the purpose of moving large groups of people quickly, over long distances.
A train pulled in that shocked everyone so much that the entire station fell silent. The people on the train were all wounded German soldiers travelling in open cattle trucks (there was a serious shortage of carriages). These soldiers had terrible bandaging on their wounds, and their clothes were also in an awful mess. Everyone just stood staring in silence, and then one of the soldiers on the platform threw a packet of cigarettes into a cattle truck. After a further pause, more soldiers threw packets of cigarettes to the Germans. All those soldiers on the platform would have seen active service, and like my uncle, they had probably seen close friends die on the front line.
I had quite forgotten this story until I started to reflect on the nonsense of Jeff’s 40 million. Well Jeff, it was good to remember. What are your thoughts?
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Permalink Reply by Jeff stern on
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Susan - I would look up facts before I would call something written nonsense:
"Dramatic and horrifying though their plight may be, the boat people represent only a fraction of the world's unwanted exiles. Indeed, the age has been called "a century of refugees," because wars and political upheavals and natural disasters like famine and flood have made so many homeless. At the end of World War II, there were 40 million refugees in Europe alone; perhaps the most pitiable were the Jewish survivors of Hitler's Holocaust. "
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,920455,00.html#ixz...So you going ta answer why teh Palesinians are the only refugees from the late 40's that have yet to be resettled? Do you even have teh courage to say the truth? Or do you still want to talk about "nonsense" - which by the way is quite offensive,
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Permalink Reply by MICHAEL STOLZ on
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Germany lost land to Czechoslovakia, France and Poland and the ethnic Germans living there were expelled (well over 12 million). They were never able to return to the places where they lived for well over a thousand years. The same happened with Hungary and Romania. I am not even including the transfers of people between India and Pakistan.
Only the Palestinians still have refugees and refugee camps for over 60 years.
Sussan, you would do well to learn history before making such outrageous statements as you do
BTW: Jews were housed in DP camps in Europe because the British refused entry to Israel even though this was part of their Mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations.
We have moved on.
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Permalink Reply by Sussan on
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Jeff, your quote does not link to anything about 40 million refugees. The link you added is about refugees, nothing at all about 40 million.
The closest I could get to a quote for 40 million refugees is the lyrics to a song, along with a mad Wikipedia quote that for obvious reasons, had been deleted.
There is no quote anywhere on the internet – other than yours here on mepeace - that says anything about 40 million refugees post WW2. I also checked out Encyclopaedia Britannica, and there is nothing in there either about 40 million, but there are some references to a million here and there in 1 or 2 places at the end of WW2.
The Palestinians are not going to be resettled anywhere but in Israel.
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Permalink Reply by Jeff stern on
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Sussan - click "next page" on the link (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,920455-2,00.html)..... The Wikipedia quote comes from that Time article....
I am assuming Time magazine has some credibility....not as bizarre as you may think...
Regarding your stand on the Palestinians refugees - shows why peace is not coming any time soon. You never did answer - why do you think that while all of the 40 million refugees were resettled they still have yet to be...
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