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| The Jews took no one's land national | miscellaneous | news report  Wednesday April 24, 2002 01:03 by Joseph Farah - WorldNetDaily.com As the most visible Arab-American critic of Yasser Arafat and the phony "Palestinian" agenda, I get a lot of hate mail. I've even received more than my share of death threats. Most of those who attack me – at least those who bother to get beyond the four-letter words and insults – say I just don't understand or have sympathy for these poor Arabs who were displaced, chased out of their homes and turned into refugees by the Israelis. As the most visible Arab-American critic of Yasser Arafat and the phony "Palestinian" agenda, I get a lot of hate mail. I've even received more than my share of death threats. Most of those who attack me – at least those who bother to get beyond the four-letter words and insults – say I just don't understand or have sympathy for these poor Arabs who were displaced, chased out of their homes and turned into refugees by the Israelis. Let me state this plainly and clearly: The Jews in Israel took no one's land. When Mark Twain visited the Holy Land in the 19th century, he was greatly disappointed. He didn't see any people. He referred to it as a vast wasteland. The land we now know as Israel was practically deserted. By the beginning of the 20th century, that began to change. Jews from all over the world began to return to their ancestral homeland – the Promised Land Moses and Joshua had conquered two millennia earlier, Christians and Jews believe, on the direct orders of God. That's not to say there wasn't always a strong Jewish presence in the land – particularly in and around Jerusalem. In 1854, according to a report in the New York Tribune, Jews constituted two-thirds of the population of that holy city. The source for that statistic? A journalist on assignment in the Middle East that year for the Tribune. His name was Karl Marx. Yes, that Karl Marx. A travel guide to Palestine and Syria, published in 1906 by Karl Baedeker, illustrates the fact that, even when the Islamic Ottoman Empire ruled the region, the Muslim population in Jerusalem was minimal. The book estimates the total population of the city at 60,000, of whom 7,000 were Muslims, 13,000 were Christians and 40,000 were Jews. "The number of Jews has greatly risen in the last few decades, in spite of the fact that they are forbidden to immigrate or to possess landed property," the book states. Even though the Jews were persecuted, still they came to Jerusalem and represented the overwhelming majority of the population as early as 1906. And even though Muslims today claim Jerusalem as the third holiest site in Islam, when the city was under Islamic rule, they had little interest in it. As the Jews came, drained the swamps and made the deserts bloom, something interesting began to happen. Arabs followed. I don't blame them. They had good reason to come. They came for jobs. They came for prosperity. They came for freedom. And they came in large numbers. Winston Churchill observed in 1939: "So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population." Then came 1948 and the great partition. The United Nations proposed the creation of two states in the region – one Jewish, one Arab. The Jews accepted it gratefully. The Arabs rejected it with a vengeance and declared war. Arab leaders urged Arabs to leave the area so they would not be caught in the crossfire. They could return to their homes, they were told, after Israel was crushed and the Jews destroyed. It didn't work out that way. By most counts, several hundred thousand Arabs were displaced by this war – not by Israeli aggression, not by some Jewish real-estate grab, not by Israeli expansionism. In fact, there are many historical records showing the Jews urged the Arabs to stay and live with them in peace. But, tragically, they chose to leave. Fifty-four years later, the sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of those refugees are all-too-often still living in refugee camps – not because of Israeli intransigence, but because they are misused as a political tool of the Arab powers. Those poor unfortunates could be settled in a week by the rich Arab oil states that control 99.9 percent of the Middle East landmass, but they are kept as virtual prisoners, filled with misplaced hatred for Jews and armed as suicide martyrs by the Arab power brokers. This is the modern real history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. At no time did the Jews uproot Arab families from their homes. When there were title deeds to be purchased, they bought them at inflated prices. When there were not, they worked the land so they could have a place to live without the persecution they faced throughout the world. It's a great big lie that the Israelis displaced anyone – one of a series of lies and myths that have the world on the verge of committing yet another great injustice to the Jews. |
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7I've heard of Holocaust Denial, and so it should come as no surprise that Zionism, which has so much in common with all the other nationalist expansionist -isms, would spawn its own denial. "A land without people for a people without land" But of course! Just erase the Palestinians. Pretend they weren't there in the first place. Anihilate them now. Who knows, at some time in the future we may be able to deny they existed at all!
Pin a medal on Joseph.
He has spoken the truth. The poor Ancient Palestinian people whose history stretches back to 1967. Someone refer to me a book outlining the culture,language and history of the ancient Palestinian people.
The Arabs who fled in 1948 or as the enlightened say were driven from their homes, were mostly migrant workers who had come to Palestine for economic reasons. The Jews had come and brought some prosperity back after 1900 years in exile. They built the land gave jobs to the Arabs and then the Arabs wanted to murder them and drive them into the sea.
If the Arabs had won the war of 1948, Palestine would have returned to dust it was before and the local population would be as free as they are in Saudi Arabia or Syria or any other dictatorship.
The Jews would have suffered a second holacaust within three years. Now the ancient Palestinian are stuck in so called refugee camps, made pawns in this cruel game that also uses Israel to deflect away the abject poverty the Arab peoples suffer under their own autocratic regimes.
The Arab governments have no desire to settle this conflict for when or if is settled would mean the beginning of the end of them, for then their people would inflect towards their own plight and rebel. That day is coming close and will happen very quickly once Saddam Hussein is removed and replaced with an Ameircan backed democracy similar to what happened to Germany and Japan after world war two
The leftis and anti jews fall for this Palestinian cause or ruse which is more accurate.
What should be of a bigger concern is the plight of all the poor Arabs under autocratic and dictorship rule. Solve this problem and the poor ancient Palestinian problem would fast dissolve into political abyss.
Unfortunately the European anti jews and don't offend the Arabs cause they supply us our oil, are willing to sacrifice morality and justice, They have prolonged this Middle East debacle. One swift and united stance against the Arabs and they will all collapse like a pack of cards and a lot easier than nazi Germany for they are in reality just a bunch of cowards and bullies.
George Bush is bracing for such a fight and the world and especially Europe will sit back and watch. When the smoke clears the Arabs will back down because in reality they are weak and peace will be established in the middle east with the poor ancient Palestinians geting nothing but economic aid and citizenship in Israel or Jordan.
Most of the West Bank will become Israel with some going to Jordan.
Just wait and see!
JOSEPH AND KEITH HAVE AGAIN MADE AN ERROR IN EQUATING JUDAISM WITH ZIONISM.
As a member of a Jewish family i find it damn offensive that anyone would equate being jewish with being Israeli. My family has always been anti-zionist, to us the idea of there being a "Jewish state" is almost laughable. Almost every nation in the world is made up of people that were not there 1000 years ago, never mind two thousand.
Now though, as we realise that the state of Israel will never cease to exist, we must work to make sure it is a fair and democratic state which will give equal status to Arab and Jew alike. The idea of conscription is directly in contradiction to democracy.
Joseph's article is titled "The Jews took no one's land". And pushes the old zionist maxim that no one expelled the palestinians from their homes. This is a bare faced lie, given that Palestinians are STILL being expelled from their homes. I have watched as Palestinians have been thrown out of their homes in the west bank had them bulldozed.
All one has to do is see the string of settlements penetrating the west bank and Gaza to see that "The Jews", as Joseph refers to the Israelis, did and still steal Palestinian land. This IS HAPPENING as i have seen it with my own eyes.
I would also like to say that As a Jew opposed to most of Israel's policies in the west bank and Gaza i have always felt more comfortable in My home in Rammallah than i did in my former home in west Jerusalem, i am not spat on in the street here.
Attempting to deny historical facts such as the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinan people from their own country is really rather stupid and very very bad propaganda. Even if it does not fit in certain Zionist fantasies, it still actually happened just the crimes committed at Deir Yassin, Qana and Sabra-Shatila actually happened.
The racism directed from the "writer" speaks volumes about the nature of the Zionist Ideology.
This pathetic fool reveils his true colors when he makes the same fascist assumption with the title of his crap! He associates ALL Jews with zionism-which is PATENTLY FALSE!
Zionists are racists that use Judaism as a shield for their colonialist atrocities-they are traitors and represent the REAL threat to the Jewish community world-wide, which is why we all must STOP ZIONISM-Jew, Gentile, Muslim, African, European, Asian-EVERYONE! As Latuff has said before-"We are all Palestinian"-including MANY in the Jewish community!
Any jew who is even mildly observant or has any knowledge of the Jewish faith believes the land of Israel including JUDEA and Samaria (West Bank)belongs as an inheritance to the Jewish people, promised to Abraham and his heirs. Before 1948 Jews were known as Palestinians and the Arabs were Arabs.
When the Arabs had the West Bank in 1948 to 1967, why did Jordan not set up a Palestinian State? Why did the Arabs try to murder all the Jews of Israel in 1948? Why did Arabs sell millions of acres to Jews and welcome them willingly. Their money seemed good enough before 1948. When the colonial powers gave 99.9% of the Midde East to the Arabs would it not have been Islamic or charitable to allow the Jews to have a state in their ancestral home, especially after the holocaust? The jews had no desire to uproot the local population. This came about because of an aggressive war by 7 Arab nations. It is a total lie that the refugees were caused by Israeli agression or an attempt to ethnically cleanse. If that were the case why is there 1.2 million Arabs living in Israel, all have a vote and have access to good schools and medicine.
One fact the anti zionists either do not know or choose to ignore is that the Arab population grew by leaps and bounds in the 50 years before Israel was declared a state. Why? because the Jewsish immigrants brought prosperity and economic development which the country had not seen since the time of Solomon. This attracted hundreds of thousands of migrants who were allowed to settle without restriction. The jews by contrast were resticted from migrating by the British. This not only restricted jews from rightfully settling in Palestine but prevented economic development which would have helped both Arab and Jew.
..."promised to Abraham and his heirs". This is the centre piece of zionist fundamentalism and is as absurd as the monroe doctrine or the ideology of 'mutually assured destruction'. better to remember that zionism was granted its mandate by the British Empire rather than Abraham or his brothers or decendants. But Abraham was allegedly told by god that "your decendants will be as multiple as the stars in heaven". He had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. the 12 sons of Ishmael are the ancestors of Arabs (biblically 'Ishmaelites') and those of isaac are Jews. but I cant continue writing about this stuff for, as my nephew says, they are just stories.
at the Palestinian demo in Washington last weekend the stage was graced by a group of Orthodox Jews. these are from a sect who have lived in Jerusalem since long before the state of Israel. their slogan is "No Zionism, no bloodshed" and they assert that there is nothing in the Torah justifying the state of Israel (before the messiah arrives). It is true that Jews and Arabs lived together for hundreds and thousands of years and to announce that one group has a god given right to assert domination over the other is insane. it asserts that states are the only guarentee of identity and security among other abominations. the conflation of Isarael and Judaism serves only the interests of the Israeli state, a genuine terrorist infrastructure. (similar to the way right wing arguments about the north serve the British state)
we concede this point at our peril and the comment to which this responds promotes this fundamentalist interpretation.