think of it as a human dont consider these as an arab or jew

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Permalink Reply by Igor Gonev on April 17, 2012 at 2:39pm

I know some Americans that live 6 months in Canada and 6 months in the USA, as well as some Americans that live 6 months in the USA and 6 months in Israel. As well as USA-Spain, Canada-Portugal. And the beat goes on. What is the gist of your story?

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Permalink Reply by Tim Upham on April 17, 2012 at 9:02pm

The example of the Mizrahi Jews sounds more like a case of either that individual or a member of their family was indicated for some sort of criminal activities.  They wanted to go back to where they originally come from, but the Israeli authorities would not let them leave,  because some type of crime took place within Israel.  That problem has come up within Israel before, go back to where I originally came from, so I will not be indicted by Israeli authorities for committing a crime.  When the Jews emigrated to Palestine, it can be looked upon that they were going back to where they originally came from.  But the driving force behind Zionism was get out from where we are at, because it is so awful here.  That is what prompted Russian Jews to come to the United States in the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries.  It can be claimed that they displaced 700,000 Arabs, but the question is what about the 1,413,500 Arabs living within Israel today?  When you look at the monetary value of property left behind by those 700,000 Arabs who left, it never been fully determined what that value is.  So when you say millions of dollars worth, it could be.  But it is not a definite value that has been determined.  The closest a value has been determined is U.S. $20,000 dollars per individual as held by the United Nations Works and Relief Agency.  Israel contributed U.S. $208,000 to that fund.  So if you were in a court of law, how would you definitely be able to say it was in the millions of dollars?  Itemize the value of their homes, the value of their equipment.  But you cannot say the value of their land, because they did not own the land that they lived on.  So the issue of compensation is actually vanishes into thin air again.  How can you make this to moving towards a peaceful settlement?  A peace settlement will have to be determined by the here and now, there is no other alternative.

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Permalink Reply by Ahmad Hammouri on April 18, 2012 at 12:08am

well let me just say that what your saying is not right  actually when jews commet a crime against arabs they do send them to the land of origin saying that they are in a mental situation  that doesnt allaw them to go  under trial  like a couple of years back when a jewish extremest killed a taxi driver from jerusalem in tel aviv !  then he was sent back to europe! i think  which is the coplete oposit of what you are saying

and palestinians they dont want the mony and who said they never owned the land ! there is papers and document with the names of  the lands owners  while you will not find  any thing related to that to any jjewish  property before the declaration of the israeli state since there was none !

Permalink Reply by Ahmad Hammouri on April 18, 2012 at 12:04am

let me just give you a comment about what you just said ," If they ever went back, they would being going back to a foreign country they know nothing about.  If the Palestinians went back to a place like Tel-Aviv, they too would be going back to a foreign country they know nothing about"

the jews who go back to the country they came from originally wont be going but to the country they knew people in and i tell you so since i had a discution with several of them who said they knew muslims and even religous arab muslims who still live in the same lands of origin , and as for the palestinians if the went back to tel aviv  ,let me put it this way i am a palestinian who lives in jerusalem and since i live in jerusalem   this means i get to go all around the west bank and  israel as well  without being asked a   quastion  techneqally ,what am trying to say is that  i have ben to tell aviv and  still until this day there is arab naighborhoods there ! they are still there  if you dont know look under yafo tel aviv .and yes mizrahi jews are banned to go back to the land of origin they came from .

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Permalink Reply by Tim Upham on April 18, 2012 at 1:04am

When you look at people who came from areas such as Yemen, Morocco, and Kurdistan -- today Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria -- but mostly from Iraq, these were people who left during the 1950s.  Going back you can still find people who are still in these countries, that MAY still have known the inhabitants before they left.  I was teaching English as a second language to somewhere who was a Kurd from Iraq.  He told me that when a Jewish family left for Israel, his father bought their house from them.  Which does not means that they can track each other down.  But to do so, they would have to go through a lengthly drawn out process to try to find each other.  I had this happen to me, when I tried to track down my mother's piano teacher in Iasi, Romania.  Why did I do it?  Because there was a personal connection between this piano teacher and I.  Even though she had no idea I even existed, before I met her.  Then when I told her who I was, and showed her a picture of my mother taken during the 1930s, she cried and invited my in.  That is because there was an emotional attachment between this women and I.  The emotional attachment between this Jewish family and this Kurdish men may have not been so strong.  Just the like emotional attachments between the Mizahim and the people they knew in Dar al-Islam may not have been that strong.  When you go to place such as Yafo, do the people there cry and say you are our long lost relative?  With Middle Eastern families being so clannish, that could happen, but with you being born after 1948, what is the likelihood of it happening?  You are both speaking the same language.  You might have relatives there, but are they relatives who say "we have not seen you since 1948."  How could they, you were not born before 1948.  If Mizahim are banned from going back to the countries they hail from, it has to be due to the governments of those countries not allowing them to return.  Because Israel does not have laws forbidding them from doing so.

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Permalink Reply by Sussan on April 18, 2012 at 12:40pm

Ahmad, do you know of the ways in which Mizrahi Jews are blocked from returning to the countries they came from? 

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Permalink Reply by Sussan on April 16, 2012 at 10:23am

Jeff, I happened to show one of my daughters a comment made by Ahmad, and this daughter said she was surprised by how sophisticated Ahmads command of English grammar is - the cross-over from Arabic to English is complex.

When you read what Ahmad has said, imagine he is speaking to you, and using phonetic symbols.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Upham on April 16, 2012 at 10:12pm

Have you ever tried translating Arabic?  I have and did I had my work cut out for me.  The only way I could really use it, was in countries where is it spoken.  First of all, every country has it own dialect, and when I was in Egypt they have three dialects.  The Palestinians will speak it with a lot of "ish" in it.  The language as a whole is so sexual segregated, the grammar that you use for a man, is completely different than what you use on a woman.  People in Arabic-speaking countries, get so much English from business, media, and especially of all, entertainment.  But I had better luck with Hebrew, than I did with Arabic.  The cross-over between English to Arabic is extremely complex.  So I imagine it is not much better the other way around.  We not only have to learn each others language, but also religions too.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Upham on April 15, 2012 at 8:34pm

That is it.  We cannot go in and negate the past.  What has happened, has happened.  We must accept the present, and that present is trying to find a way for both Israelis and Palestinians to co-exist with each other.  One way of doing so, is learning about both of them.  I was outraged over what people said to me about Islam.  I am not a Muslim, so why should I care?  Because Israel is surrounded by Muslims, which means Jews should know something about Islam.  In 2008, at the Islamic Conference held in Mecca, an Israeli rabbi was invited to participate in it.  So when I had people submit things that were so factually incorrect, it just let know how bigoted they really were.  I am Jewish by the skin of the teeth.  I am the product of a Sephardic Jewish mother, who died when I was young, and I was handed over to non-Jews to be raised.  But as an adult, I wanted to know something about my Jewish heritage, just as much as I want to know about my Hungarian Calvinist heritage.  So being the product of a mixed marriage, and not being raised in either culture, has made me be objective about diverse groups of people.  So I learn about Judaism, and I learn about Islam and Christianity.  So it is put aside, "I am belong to these people, and those people OVER THERE as bad."  Because holding on to it, is just creating the poison that is in the long run will be hurting yourself.

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Permalink Reply by Ahmad Hammouri on April 16, 2012 at 2:35pm

exactly ,this war is never going to end if for ech slap a cheeck gets the second one will have  the slaping must stop so we can see whats happening around us .

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Permalink Reply by Igor Gonev on April 16, 2012 at 3:09pm

Jewish history and Israeli history does not permit turning the other cheek as it is a sure recipe  for getting oneself killed. It is not a religious precept but rather a historical one. GAZA anyone?

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Permalink Reply by Tim Upham on April 16, 2012 at 10:39pm

Gaza is an open subject to pertain precisely to not turning the other cheek.  When Representative Michele Bachmann voted for H. Res. 34, she said on the House floor "Hamas has been hurting the Palestinian people, as much as it is hurting the Israeli people.  She was right too.  If you are referring to other groups in Gaza, such as Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees, and especially of all, the Salafists, who have been fighting Hamas, then you have an argument.  But Gaza as a whole has to be taken a part.  If Al Fatah can take control of Gaza after the May elections, they may end up having a headache on their hands.

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