A general comment and question.
They call this place the Jenin Refugee Camp. Now, when I think of a refugee camp I visualize a place to temporarly house refugees. Usually in tents or leantos, sometimes without shelter at all. In my mind refugee camps usually lack running water everywhere and have very few permanent buildings.
The pictures I've seen of Jenin look like a town, not a refugee camp.
Anybody know what gives? I suspect it's psychological. Call them refugees and you automatically get a subconcious amount of sympathy.
"They call this place the Jenin Refugee Camp. Now, when I think of a refugee camp I visualize a place to temporarly house refugees. Usually in tents or leantos, sometimes without shelter at all. In my mind refugee camps usually lack running water everywhere and have very few permanent buildings."EXACTLY.
"The pictures I've seen of Jenin look like a town, not a refugee camp."
I believe Jenin is considered a city by those who don't consider it a refugee camp.
"Anybody know what gives? I suspect it's psychological. Call them refugees and you automatically get a subconcious amount of sympathy."
You got it! Nail on the head BUMP
With that, I think I'll toddle off to bed and have more nightmares about Mideast piece.
"Anybody know what gives? I suspect it's psychological. Call them refugees and you automatically get a subconcious amount of sympathy." The Jenin refugee "camp" celebrated its Golden Anniversary not long ago.
The maintenance of the "refugee camp" fiction insures that the UNRWA bureaucrats will have jobs. And that the Palestinian Relief scams will continue to enjoy fundraising paydays.
These people are still "refugees" and still living in "camps" for two reasons:
1. They want to.
2. And nobody else (i.e., their Arab "brothers") will have them.
Jenin is in part a "refugee camp" because some of the people living there are "refugees" - stateless people. It started when many Arabs living in Palestine left what is now Israel during the first Arab-Israeli war, the war for Israeli independence.
These people left because the Arab leaders told them to get out of the way of the Arab armies, who would crush the Jews and then claim all of the land. Those people would then move back to their homes.
Of course, that never happened. So these people were left without a state.
But did the surrounding Arab states take them in? No. There are "refugee camps" in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, much like the one in Jenin, and probably many are in worse shape. These people are not citizens of those countries. They don't want them.
Why? Because it keeps the refugees angry, and allows the Arabs another reason to complain about Israel, thereby keeping their domestic populations busy.
There was a good interview on FNC Special Report a couple days ago. Brit Hume interviewed Mark Ginsburg, who was in the State Dept. during Clinton's term. He explained all of this very clearly. They also talked about the Saudis and other rich Arab states doing next to nothing for these people.
In fact, a plurality of the money that supports these people comes from........the United States. The US funds about 30% of the budget for the UN refugee agency that is essentially the government for these people (before the Pali Authority, which really isn't much of a government anyway.) The Euros contribute almost 30%, and the Arabs maybe contribute a couple percent at best.
I wish everyone could have seen it. It might open some eyes in this country.