Posted on 01/23/2005 12:59:01 AM PST by Marguerite
No words could be more accurate.....
Most people do not know the history of the Palestinians and who actually were their oppressors.
The Arabs did not want them, nor did the Jordanians, and if the truth were to be told, it was the U.N. who set the stage for today's conflict between Israel and the Palestinians
Pretty good article ... sad how many today like to twist history to suit their ideas and agenda
Sad but true
Pawns.
Good article.
What Really Happened in 1948-A Palestinian Israeli on the so-called "occupation." [posted 12/28/04]
Excellent article, fascinating perspective. However, I really never read any 'anger' to 'both' sides, i.e. including the Israeli side. This is a keeper though! Thanks for posting.
I thought this might interest you.
Also, looking at the historical perspective, how many other people were refugees in the wake of WWII? Millions and millions. How many other groups are still "stateless refugees" today?
A very good article and perspective, thanks for the ping. I know a certain minister I'm going to send this to.
*evil grin*
bump!
LOL.
I thought that might give you a little ammo.
ping to you Molly
Sorry for the duplicated article.
Several comments of that time:
"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
"The refugees were confident 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."
Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee, the Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub ,August 16, 1948
"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"
Jordanian newspaper Filastin, February 19, 1949
"The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and 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."
New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda, June 8, 1951
"how many other people were refugees in the wake of WWII?"
Twenty million refugees and displaced persons, in Europe.
Sorry, no. The U.N. perpetuated the problem but the conflict started at least 25 years before there was a U.N.
The conflict was started, either unwittingly or deliberately, by the British. It was they who appointed Haj Amin al-Husseini, Yasser Arafat's uncle, as Grand Mufti of Jeruslam. The Grand Mufti is the spiritual leader of the Palestinian Arabs and in those days he was the political leader as well. al-Husseini was a raving anti-Semite who would join with the Nazis and call for the "final solution" to be extended to Palestine. He was convicted as a Nazi war criminal in Nuremberg yet found refuge in Egypt and continued to lead his people.
al-Husseini provoked the conflict. Prior to that King Feisal supported Zionism and saw it as a twin to Arab nationalism with common goals. He wrote:
We are working together for a reformed and revived Near East, and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist. Our movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed I think that neither can be a real success without the other.
People less informed and less responsible than our leaders and yours, ignoring the need for cooperation of the Arabs and Zionists have been trying to exploit the local difficulties that must necessarily arise in Palestine in the early stages of our movements. Some of them have, I am afraid, misrepresented your aims to the Arab peasantry, and our aims to the Jewish peasantry, with the result that interested parties have been able to make capital out of what they call our differences.
I wish to give you my firm conviction that these differences are not on questions of principle, but on matters of detail such as must inevitably occur in every contact of neighbouring peoples, and as are easily adjusted by mutual good will. Indeed nearly all of them will disappear with fuller knowledge.
It was the appointment of al-Husseini that destroyed the goodwill. He repeatedly claimed the Jews would "destroy al-Aqsa" and instigated riots and violence by Palestinian Arabs against Jews. The 1936-37 Arab Riots (a/k/a Arab Revolt) cost 6,000 Jewish lives in the space of one year. That was the bloodiest year of the conflict to day and it predates the creation of the U.N.
The British took advantage of the conflict to try and cement their hold over Palestine. The League of Nations was complicit in reinforcing the mandate as well.
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