Hyde Presses U.S. on Israeli Wall

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | J+M+J April 1, 2004 | Robert Novak

[Romulus]

So why did they not leave in droves until after Arafat took over?

Is the Israeli government still refusing access to Bethlehem for visitors from abroad? Refresh my memory.

[rmlew]

I never asked for a bloodbath.

[Siobhan]

Hanan Ashrawi is an Episcopalian like President Bush the elder.

[Siobhan]

Hmmmmm......could it be retaliation bombing by the IDF that struck Christian neighborhoods in Bethlehem instead of Muslim ones?

[rmlew]

Siding with the Arabs for a 1000 years was a survival technique. Convincing themselves that Levantine Christians are Muslims was an act of cultural suicide.

[rmlew]

If the Christian neighborhoods were used by terrorists for attacks, it was the terrorists that made them targets.

[agrace]

Is that a point in her favor or against? Just not sure what, if any, is the relevance of that, thanks.

[Siobhan]

And let's be honest - the Vatican has been in constant support of the Palestinians for quite some time now, signing solidarity agreements with them etc.

That's not honest at all. The Vatican had to work out a new Concordat with Israel and the PA regarding the Holy Sites which has been the Church's concern in the Holy Land for a very long time. The creation of the PA necessitated a basic law that would recognize the Franciscans continued governance of certain Holy Places which had previously been under Israeli control.

[Siobhan]

No. An emphatic no.

If a sniper fires from on top of your house, the government does not have the right to bomb into oblivion your entire neighborhood. No government has that right under any form of justice -- much less that claimed by a government that sees itself as a western democracy.

[Siobhan]

It is a point of clarification. The discussion has been mostly about Roman Catholics, and when you mentioned Hanan Ashrawi it was important to clarify her religious affiliation which has also given her access to others of the Anglican Communion worldwide thus making her a very important person in some Western circles from Buckingham Palace to the White House, from time to time.

[rmlew]

If a sniper fires from on top of your house, the government does not have the right to bomb into oblivion your entire neighborhood. No government has that right under any form of justice -- much less that claimed by a government that sees itself as a western democracy.
The US cannot do this in the US. We can and have done this in foreign countries. AS the world holds that Bethlehem is not part of Israel, then Israel can treat a war zone as such.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

The Christians in Lebanon, for example, had been emigrating long before Israel invaded in 1982. Israel had also been helping the Christians in Lebanon (both militias and civilians) since Lebanon's civil war started in 1975.

The Christians were doing fine before Israel started meddling. Afterwards, Syria came in because of Israeli intervention and installed a Muslim government.

Do you blame Israel for the fate of the Armenian populations in Syria/Turkey/Iran?

Obviosuly not. Could you possibly ask a more stupid and pointless question? Actually, though, I think you are referring to the Armenian genocide in Turkey. The Armenians in Iran and Syria are doing just fine though.

Or that of the Chaldean Christians in Iraq? (I think someone named Saddam had something to do with the depletion their population.)

I think not. There are well over 1 million Christians in Iraq. Saddam had Christians in prominent positions in government, such as Tariq Aziz. You couldn't say that about any other middle eastern state except Syria and Lebanon. Again, I am unaware of a "problem" being face by the Chaldeans. They are busy rebuilding Churches and expanding their presence. Under the Saddam regime, they made a huge influx into Baghdad, which included the construction of many new Churches. There was no Christian persecution then, although certainly, with every Iraqi, they are very much enjoying their freedom now, since the Saddam police state is gone.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

The vast majorities of Arabs who left Israel in 1948 did so at the behest of Arab armies to facilitate the proposed extermination of Jews.

Stop with the propaganda. Its well known that Israel went in and terrorized Arab villages to make accomplished facts on the ground, just as the Arabs did in Hebron during the same war. The Arabs who were expropriated would very much like to go home, but guess who isn't letting them? "Thou shalt not steal."

The war of course, began because the "world community" was about to hand over huge Arab areas that had no interest in being part of Israel because of the lines on the partition plan. Why should the Arabs stand for that? Had the Palestinian Arabs done something wrong that they "deserved" to give up over half their country to the Israeli's, and see the rest annexed by neighboring states?

In fact, they own more private property than Jews, despite being just 20% of the population.

If this is so, which I greatly doubt, it can only be because they own more of the farming land, or they have been left with worthless tracts like the Negeb Desert. I'd like to see proof.

[Fester Chugabrew]

I visit a Holy Site each week that tops anything any wall might try to keep me away from, namely the body and blood of Christ. They can have their wall and fight over it. I'm not interested.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Lebanon was not a "Christian State" but a state where Christians and Muslims shared power in a bizzarre arangement because of the even more bizzare League of Nations/UN mandated borders. Its breakdown in the poisonous post-1948 climate in the Middle East can be seen as quite inevitable, as can the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey.

The Jews coming to Israel were not rejecting a "dhimmi" role, but were attempting to found a Jewish Zionist state in the midst of an Arab populace uninterested in that outcome. That was the avowed goal, correct? It was to include all Palestine, plus the east bank of the Jordan originally. On the other hand, the Arabs were under the impression that having shed their blood to remove the Turks, they would be given their own united Kingdom, which of course, they were not, quite treacherously too. Against this backdrop of western betrayal, comes the European Jews to meddle, and eventually stir up the pot enough to cause the expulsion of the Sephardi, who until then had peaceably lived amongst the Arabs for 1500 years.

[eddiespaghetti]

The Christians were doing fine before Israel started meddling. Afterwards, Syria came in because of Israeli intervention and installed a Muslim government.

That is wrong, plain and simple. The Syrians came into Lebanon in 1977 -- five years before the Israelis went in. They did it for their own reasons -- to keep the PLO from getting too powerful.

What "meddling" was there pre-1977?

[eddiespaghetti]

Yes, fair enough.

I find it interesting, though, that the founders of the Ba'ath Party were Christian Arabs, as was the "founder" of pan-Arabism (IINM, George Antonius). Perhaps it was an attempt to forge a common identity based on language and culture, rather than religion.

[Romulus]

Well be careful what you ask for, because there are dire consequences to everything over there. Please.

[agrace]

Are you denying that the Vatican has been consistently sympathetic to the Palestinian cause?

[agrace]

Much thanks to Kay Soze - this is from a two-year old post of yours that I kept on file.

"I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem." -- Emil Ghoury (Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee), as quoted in the Daily Telegraph, September 6 1948 (Beirut)

"The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies." -- Editorial, Falastin, February 19, 1949 (Amman) "It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem." --Broadcast by the Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station on April 3 1949 (Cyprus)

"We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down." -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, as quoted by Nimr el Hawari (the former Commander of the Palestine Arab Youth Organization) in his book 'Sir Am Nakbah' ("The Secret Behind the Disaster"), 1952 (Nazareth)

"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country." -- Edward Atiyah (Secretary of the Arab League Office in London), as quoted in 'The Arabs', p. 183 (London 1955)

"The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade... He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down." -- Habib Issa, in the daily US-published Lebanese newspaper Al Hoda, June 8 1951 (New York)

Abu Mazen wrote in an article entitled "Madha `Alamna wa-Madha Yajib An Na`mal" [What We Have Learned and What We Should Do], published in "Falastineth-Thawra" [Revolutionary Palestine], the official journal of the PLO, Beirut, March 1976, "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland...The Arab States succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people."

Khaled al-`Azm, who served as Prime Minister of Syria in 1948 and 1949, wrote in his memoirs (published in Beirut, 1973), that among the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948 was "the call by the Arab Governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and to leave for the bordering Arab countries, after having sown terror among them...Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave...We have brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees, by calling upon them and pleading with them to leave their land, their homes, their work and business..." (Part 1, pp. 386-387).

On 6 September 1949, the Beirut Telegraph carried an interview with Mr. Emile Ghoury, Secretary of the Palestine Higher Committee, in which he said: "The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish State."

The Jordan daily Falastin wrote on 19 February 1949: "The Arab States which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promises to help these refugees."

As late as 12 October 1963, the Cairo daily Akhbar el-Yom, recalled:
"15 May 1948 arrived...on that very day the Mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead..." ,

In Haifa, on 27 April 1948, the Arab National Committee refused to sign a truce, reporting in a memorandum to the Arab League Governments: "when the delegation entered the conference room it proudly refused to sign the truce and asked that the evacuation of the Arab population and their transfer to neighboring Arab countries be facilitated...The military and civil authorities and the Jewish representatives expressed their profound regret. The mayor of Haifa (Mr. Shabtai Levi) adjourned the meeting with a passionate appeal to the Arab population to reconsider its decision..."

"The first group of our fifth columnists consists of those who abandoned their houses and business and go to live elsewhere... At the first sign of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle." -- Editorial, Ash Sha'ab, January 30 1948 (Haifa)

"The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, evidently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa." -- London Times, May 5 1948.

"The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the "Zionist gangs" very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile." -- Msgnr. George Hakim (Greek Catholic bishop), as quoted in Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948 (Beirut).

"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit... It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades." -- The Economist, October 2 1948 (London)

Abu Mazen wrote in an article entitled "Madha `Alamna wa-Madha Yajib An Na`mal" [What We Have Learned and What We Should Do], published in "Falastineth-Thawra" [Revolutionary Palestine], the official journal of the PLO, Beirut, March 1976, "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland...The Arab States succeeded in scattering thePalestinian people."

"The Arab exodus, initially at least,was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea." -- Kenneth Bilby (an American journalist, covering the area before and during the war), in his book 'New Star in the Near East', pp. 30-31 (New York 1950)