Submitted by Caribbean Against Apartheid (CAAP)
On Saturday 29th November 2014 the Barbados based group “Caribbean Against Apartheid in Palestine” [CAAP] will be observing the sixty-seventh anniversary of the United Nations resolution to partition Palestine between its residents who had lived there for countless centuries, and recently arrived Zionists from Europe, with the majority of the land going to the minority recently arrived Zionists.
In an exclusive comment, CAAP Secretary, Attorney-at-law Mr. Lalu Hanuman, said: “This despicable and racist resolution has directly led to contemporary global security and civil liberty concerns, from chaos in the Middle East, to 9/11, to increased Airport Security, to erosion of our basic civil liberties, to ISIS today. We are all victims of this insidious United Nations’ resolution, but the biggest victims are the Palestinian People who have had their land stolen from underneath their feet, and who have had to live for generations in squalid refugee camps, or under Zionist military occupation, while the Zionists have been subsidised with huge annual financial and military Western grants.
This is not about religion, this about fundamental human rights. We in the Caribbean who have endured oppression in all its nefarious forms, from chattel slavery to indentured slavery, should be in the forefront of solidarity actions with our Palestinian brothers and sisters”.
This free public event will start with a film at 7 p.m. in UWI’s ALT room, and then have a panel discussion, and a Q&A session, followed by free refreshments.
Further information from 420-2022.
Dated 21st October 2014.
137 responses to “Caribbean Against Apartheid to Observe 67th Anniversary of United Nations Resolution to Partition Palestine”
[…] Caribbean Against Apartheid to Observe 67th Anniversary of United Nations Resolution to Partition Pa… […]
Facts become credible facts, when there are warranted to the relevant degree of certainty. The Jewish people’s sovereign claim to their ancient homeland, cannot be disputed historically, for over 3,000 years.
First, there is NO* Apartheid in Israel, all citizens have the same rights, Arab, Jew, Christian, et al; so the very name (Apartheid) is a down right lie, and utterly false accusation.
Fact Sheets:
The Racist Accusation that Israel is an Apartheid State
(Updated November 2006)
“We do not want to create a situation like that which exists in South Africa, where the whites are the owners and rulers, and the blacks are the workers. If we do not do all kinds of work, easy and hard, skilled and unskilled, if we become merely landlords, then this will not be our homeland.”
— David Ben-Gurion
Even before the State of Israel was established, Jewish leaders consciously sought to avoid the creation of a segregated society.
Since the United Nations Conference on Racism in August of 2001, anti-Semites and racists have tried to delegitimize Israel by calling it an apartheid state. Their hope is that this false equation will tar Israel and encourage measures similar to those used against South Africa, such as sanctions and divestment, to be applied to Israel.
The comparison is malicious and insults the South Africans who suffered under apartheid.
The term “apartheid” refers to the official government policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in South Africa. The whites sought to dominate the nonwhite population, especially the indigenous black population, and discriminated against people of color in the political, legal, and economic sectors.
Whites and nonwhites lived in separate regions of the country.
Nonwhites were prohibited from running businesses or professional practices in the white areas without permits.
Nonwhites had separate amenities (i.e. beaches, buses, schools, benches, drinking fountains, restrooms).
Nonwhites received inferior education, medical care, and other public services.
Though they were the overwhelming majority of the population, nonwhites could not vote or become citizens.
By contrast, Israel’s Declaration of Independence called upon the Arab inhabitants of Israel to “participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”
The 156,000 Arabs within Israel’s borders in 1948 were given citizenship in the new State of Israel. Today, this Arab minority comprises 20% of the population.
It is illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race and Arab citizens of Israel are represented in all walks of Israeli life. Arabs have served in senior diplomatic and government positions and an Arab currently serves on the Supreme Court.
Israeli Arabs have formed their own political parties and won representation in the Knesset. Arabs are also members of the major Israeli parties. Twelve non-Jews (10 Arabs, two Druze) are members of the Seventeenth Knesset.
Laws dictated where nonwhites could live, work, and travel in South Africa, and the government imprisoned and sometimes killed those who protested against its policies. By contrast, Israel allows freedom of movement, assembly and speech. Some of the government’s harshest critics are Israeli Arabs in the Knesset.
Arab students and professors study, research, and teach at Israeli universities. At Haifa University, the target of British advocates of an academic boycott against Israel, 20 percent of the students are Arabs.
Israeli society is not perfect — discrimination and unfairness exist there as it does in every other country. These differences, however, are nothing like the horrors of the apartheid system. Moreover, when inequalities are identified, minorities in Israel have the right to seek redress through the government and the courts, and progress toward equality has been made over the years.
The situation of Palestinians in the territories is different. While many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip dispute Israel’s right to exist, nonwhites did not seek the destruction of South Africa, only of the apartheid regime.
Unlike South Africa, where restrictions were racially motivated, Israel is forced by incessant Palestinian terrorism to take actions, such as building checkpoints and the security fence, to protect its citizens. Israel has consistently demonstrated a willingness, however, to ease restrictions when violence subsides.
Beyond limits placed on their ability to attack Israel, roughly 98% of the Palestinians in the territories are governed by the rules of the Palestinian Authority, which do not permit freedom of speech, religion, assembly or other rights taken for granted by Westerners — and guaranteed in Israel.
If Israel were to give Palestinians full citizenship, it would mean the territories had been annexed and the possibility of the creation of a Palestinian state foreclosed. No Israeli government has been prepared to take that step. Instead, Israel seeks a two-state solution predicated on a Palestinian willingness to live in peace.
The clearest refutation of the calumny against Israel comes from the Palestinians themselves. When asked what governments they admire most, more than 80 percent of Palestinians consistently choose Israel because they can see up close the thriving democracy in Israel, and the rights the Arab citizens enjoy there.
@ Zoe | October 24, 2014 at 7:37 AM |
Zoe, where have you been? Hiding in your bat cave like poor Adam in the garden?
You are needed where the Muslim apologists, spearheaded by MistaBlack and the zombie Dompey, are winning the propaganda battle on BU.
You are needed to tell them the Biblical truth about the cursed race of the illegitimate Ishmael whose slave-mother Hagar was sexually molested by Abraham who was already married to Sarah.
Now go like a real Judeo-Christian jihadist and join the Muslim debate raging on the thread:
‘Islamic States Must Clamp Down on Extremism Mr.Bulbulia”
BTW, Zoe do you think the Ebola virus is a plague sent by Jehovah-Jireh to punish the wicked black people who refuse to obey his laws?
Pre-State Israel:
Jewish Claim To The Land Of Israel
by Mitchell Bard
Pre-State Israel: Table of Contents | Origin of “Palestine” | Origins of Palestinians
A common misperception is that the Jews were forced into the diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years. A national language and a distinct civilization have been maintained.
The Jewish people base their claim to the land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham; 2) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 3) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people and 4) the territory was captured in defensive wars.
The term “Palestine” is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what is now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century A.D., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word “Filastin” is derived from this Latin name.
The Twelve Tribes of Israel formed the first constitutional monarchy in Palestine about 1000 B.C. The second king, David, first made Jerusalem the nation’s capital. Although eventually Palestine was split into two separate kingdoms, Jewish independence there lasted for 212 years. This is almost as long as Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States.
Even after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in Palestine continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the ninth century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.
Many Jews were massacred by the Crusaders during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed, Jerusalem and elsewhere during the next 300 years. By the early 19th century-years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement-more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel.
When Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers in 1882, fewer than 250,000 Arabs lived there, and the majority of them had arrived in recent decades. Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.” In fact, Palestine is never explicitly mentioned in the Koran, rather it is called “the holy land” (al-Arad al-Muqaddash).
Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: “There is no such country [as Palestine]! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”
The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said “Palestine was part of the Province of Syria” and that, “politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity.” A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.”
Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel’s capture of the West Bank.
Israel’s international “birth certificate” was validated by the promise of the Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of Joshua onward; the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the United Nations partition resolution of 1947; Israel’s admission to the UN in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and, most of all, the society created by Israel’s people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence.
Sources: Moshe Kohn, “The Arabs’ ‘Lie’ of the Land,” Jerusalem Post, (October 18, 1991); Avner Yaniv, PLO, (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Study Group of Middle Eastern Affairs, August 1974), p. 5; Encyclopaedi
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org
Israel is practicing Apartheid against the Palestinians. The land belongs to Palestinians…end of story. The Zionist agenda is so entrenched that some people can’t see the forest for the trees.
Chapter 3: Partition
MYTH
“The United Nations unjustly partitioned Palestine.”
FACT
As World War II ended, the magnitude of the Holocaust became known. This accelerated demands for a resolution to the question of Palestine so the survivors of Hitler’s Final Solution might find sanctuary in a homeland of their own.
The British tried to work out an agreement acceptable to both Arabs and Jews, but their insistence on the former’s approval guaranteed failure because the Arabs would not make any concessions. The British subsequently turned the issue over to the UN in February 1947.
The UN established a Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) to devise a solution. Delegates from 11 nations* went to the area and found what had long been apparent: The conflicting national aspirations of Jews and Arabs could not be reconciled.
When they returned, the delegates of seven nations—Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, The Netherlands, Peru, Sweden and Uruguay—recommended the establishment of two separate states, Jewish and Arab, to be joined by economic union, with Jerusalem an internationalized enclave. Three nations—India, Iran and Yugoslavia—recommended a unitary state with Arab and Jewish provinces. Australia abstained.
The Jews of Palestine were not satisfied with the small territory allotted to them by the Commission, nor were they happy that Jerusalem was severed from the Jewish State; nevertheless, they welcomed the compromise. The Arabs rejected UNSCOP’s recommendations.
The ad hoc committee of the UN General Assembly rejected the Arab demand for a unitary Arab state. The majority recommendation for partition was viewed as a more just solution and subsequently adopted by a vote of 33–13 with 10 abstentions on November 29, 1947. 1
“It is hard to see how the Arab world, still less the Arabs of Palestine, will suffer from what is mere recognition of accomplished fact—the presence in Palestine of a compact, well organized, and virtually autonomous Jewish community.”
— London Times editorial 2
MYTH
“The partition plan gave the Jews most of the land, including all the fertile areas.”
FACT
Proposed Partition
The partition plan took on a checkerboard appearance largely because Jewish towns and villages were spread throughout Palestine. This did not complicate the plan as much as the fact that the high living standards in Jewish cities and towns had attracted large Arab populations, which ensured that any partition would result in a Jewish state that included a substantial Arab population. Recognizing the need to allow for additional Jewish settlement, the majority proposal allotted the Jews land in the northern part of the country, the Galilee, and the large, arid Negev desert in the south. The remainder was to form the Arab state.
These boundaries were based solely on demographics. The borders of the Jewish State were arranged with no consideration of security; hence, the new state’s frontiers were virtually indefensible. Overall, the Jewish State was to be comprised of roughly 5,500 square miles (about 55 percent of Palestine), and the population was to be 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs. Approximately 92,000 Arabs lived in Tiberias, Safed, Haifa and Bet Shean, and another 40,000 were Bedouins, most of whom were living in the desert. The remainder of the Arab population was spread throughout the Jewish state. The Arab State was to be 4,500 square miles with a population of 804,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews. 3
Critics claim the UN gave the Jews fertile land while the Arabs were allotted hilly, arid land. To the contrary, approximately 60 percent of the Jewish state was to be the desert in the Negev while the Arabs occupied most of the agricultural land. 4
Further complicating the situation was the UN majority’s insistence that Jerusalem remain apart from both states and be administered as an international zone. This arrangement left more than 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem isolated from their country and circumscribed by the Arab state.
According to British statistics, more than 70 percent of the land in what would become Israel belonged to the mandatory government. Those lands reverted to Israeli control after the departure of the British. Another 9 percent of the land was owned by Jews and about 3 percent by Arabs who became citizens of Israel. That means only about 18 percent belonged to Arabs who left the country before and after the Arab invasion of Israel. 5
MYTH
“Israel usurped all of Palestine in 1948.”
FACT
Nearly 80 percent of what was the historic land of Palestine and the Jewish National Home, as defined by the League of Nations, was severed by the British in 1921 and allocated to what became Transjordan. Jewish settlement there was barred. The UN partitioned the remaining 20-odd percent of Palestine into two states. With Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank in 1950, and Egypt’s control of Gaza, Arabs controlled more than 80 percent of the territory of the Mandate while the Jewish State held a bare 17.5 percent. 6
Peel Commission Map
MYTH
“The Palestinian Arabs were never offered a state and therefore have been denied the right to self-determination.”
FACT
The Peel Commission in 1937 concluded the only logical solution to resolving the contradictory aspirations of the Jews and Arabs was to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. The Arabs rejected the plan because it forced them to accept the creation of a Jewish state, and required some Palestinians to live under “Jewish domination.” The Zionists opposed the Peel Plan’s boundaries because they would have been confined to 1,900 out of the 10,310 square miles remaining in Palestine. Nevertheless, the Zionists decided to negotiate with the British, while the Arabs refused to consider any compromises.
In 1939, the British White Paper called for the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine within 10 years, and for limiting Jewish immigration to no more than 75,000 over the following five years. Afterward, no one would be allowed in without the consent of the Arab population. Though the Arabs had been granted a concession on Jewish immigration, and been offered independence—the goal of Arab nationalists—they repudiated the White Paper.
With partition, the Palestinians were given a state and the opportunity for self-determination. This too was rejected.
MYTH
“The majority of the population in Palestine was Arab; therefore, a unitary Arab state should have been created.”
FACT
Partition Map
At the time of the 1947 partition resolution, the Arabs did have a majority in western Palestine as a whole—1.2 million Arabs versus 600,000 Jews. 7 But the Jews were a majority in the area allotted to them by the resolution, and in Jerusalem.
The Jews never had a chance of reaching a majority in the country given the restrictive immigration policy of the British. By contrast, Palestine’s Arab population, which had been declining prior to the Mandate in 1922, grew exponentially because Arabs from all the surrounding countries were free to come—and thousands did—to take advantage of the rapid economic development and improved health conditions stimulated by Zionist settlement.
The decision to partition Palestine was not determined solely by demographics; it was based on the conclusion that the territorial claims of Jews and Arabs were irreconcilable, and that the most logical compromise was the creation of two states. Ironically, that same year, 1947, the Arab members of the United Nations supported the partition of the Indian sub-continent and the creation of the new, predominantly Muslim state of Pakistan.
MYTH
“The Arabs were prepared to compromise to avoid bloodshed.”
FACT
As the partition vote approached, it became clear little hope existed for a political solution to a problem that transcended politics: the Arabs’ unwillingness to accept a Jewish state in Palestine and the refusal of the Zionists to settle for anything less. The implacability of the Arabs was evident when Jewish Agency representatives David Horowitz and Abba Eban made a last-ditch effort to reach a compromise in a meeting with Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha on September 16, 1947. Pasha told them bluntly:
The Arab world is not in a compromising mood. It’s likely, Mr. Horowitz, that your plan is rational and logical, but the fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won’t get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps, get something, but only by the force of your arms. We shall try to defeat you. I am not sure we’ll succeed, but we’ll try. We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But it’s too late to talk of peaceful solutions. 8
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
Oh dear…now it’s all down to the UN…oh sorry Israel….oh sorry US aid….oh sorry whites from eastern Europe…Jesus
Miller
“Winning the propoganda battle..”..Your choice of words is cloudy…..you mean the “mere propoganda” battle? It’s hardly a compliment..
Israeli Jews and Christians call for action vs. persecuted believers in the Middle East
by Nicole Schiavi Jansezian, Travelujah—
While Christians and other ethnic minorities face brutal persecution and even death across the Middle East at the hands of Islamic terrorists, Israel is the safest country in the region for followers of Jesus.
And despite a war that ravaged Israel all summer, a record number of Christian tourists came to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles this past week during the weeklong Sukkot holiday.
The ICEJ’s Feast gathering drew nearly 5,000 Christians from more than 80 countries this year, making it the largest Feast attendance in seven years. Prominent leaders of Jewish and Christian organizations took the occasion to call for action on behalf of the region’s persecuted people.
Dignitaries including World Jewish Congress President Ron Lauder and Co-chairman of the Empowered21 Global Council and President of Oral Roberts University William M. Wilson joined ICEJ Executive Director Dr. Jürgen Bühler in signing a letter addressed to 120 world leaders.
“This letter gives an important voice to Christians who are being persecuted and even killed for their faith around the world, especially in the Middle East,” Wilson said. “Most Christ followers in these difficult situations will not respond with violence and therefore need global governmental authorities to stand with them against these injustices.”
Lauder has been outspoken about Jews needing to lend their support to persecuted Christians. Read on…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, less than 24 hours after a terrorist plowed through a crowd of Israelis at a Light Rail station, “Jerusalem is under attack.” He added, “United Jerusalem was and will always remain the capital of Jerusalem. Every attempt to harm its people will be met with a stronger response. We will return peace and security to Jerusalem.”
He continued, “Jerusalem is not the only city under attack by terrorists; other cities across the world are, as well. But the offensive in Jerusalem is supported by the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Abu Mazen, who glorifies the murderers and embraces the group they belong to – Hamas.” Netanyahu went on, “Against these acts we face international flaccidity. But there is no such weakness here. We will stand strong for our rights and our obligations to protect our capital.…If they could, the murderers would eliminate all of us – and this simple truth must guide the entire international community.”
God says: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.”…“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.”…“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: May those who love you be secure. May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels. For the sake of my brothers and friends, I will say, ‘Peace be within you.” (Psalm 137:5-6; Isaiah 49:15-16; Psalm 122:6-8)
The Jerusalem Connection says: Without question, Jerusalem will experience unprecedented tribulation, devastation and pain in the near future, but God has the final exhilarating word for Jerusalem, “In the last days the mountain of Yahweh’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills and peoples will stream to it.… The law will go out from Zion, the Word of Yahweh from Jerusalem.” (Micah 4:1-2)
Quotes from all over the place can be cut and paste to the blog’s comment section…all day… every day. Does not change the fact that Zionists stole the land from Palestinians and are murdering these people day in and day out while the world watches. The U.N. is a joke.
For the benefit of Zoe … funny how Christians and Jews are NEVER considered terrorists, when the US and Israel are singularly and collectively responsible for far more loss of civilian life than all of the Arab states combined
This cryptic anniversary is a testament to the UN’s direct complicity in the disenfranchisement and suffering of Palestinian people at the hands of Zionists. 67 years and counting without a lull in the stealing of Palestinian land. I hope there is a large turn out.
FACT: There was NEVER any Land area called ‘Palestine’ historically, until Emperor Hadrian in 135 A.D., dispersed the Jewish people from Jerusalem, he hated the Jews, and decided to call their Ancient homeland ‘Palestine’ for the first time.
FACT: There was NEVER any people called Palestinians, the so-called Palestinians ARE factually from Syria, Egypt, Jordan, et al Arab Nations.
The Islamic nations, et al, who in the face of INDISPUTABLE documented historical EVIDENCE, of Israel’s SOVEREIGNTY over Judea, Samaria and the Golan, as agent and assignee of the Jewish people, persist in referring to those areas as ‘disputed,’ ‘un-allocated,’ and most offensively, ‘occupied,’ territories, nohing could be further from the TRUTH. Dr. Howard Grief’s magnum opus, ‘The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under international Law’, the 660 page masterpiece of ground-breaking research, have SHATTERED every MYTH, every LIE, every DISTORTION and UTTER misrepresentation of FACT employed over the 66 years of Israel’s reestablishment to negate the sovereign RIGHT of the Jewish people to their ANCIENT NATIONAL Homeland.
The word ‘Jerusalem’ IS* mentioned over 700 times in God’s Word the Bible. Note, that Israel and Jerusalem are often used interchangeably in the Bible, to describe both the ‘Land’ and the ‘people’ of Israel.
Interestingly, and conspicuously ABSENT from Islam’s Koran, is the word ‘JERUSALEM’ is is NOT mentioned once in the Koran!.
This topic was debated in the nation some time back, I agree with ZOE 100% let me add Joseph Farah Between the lines
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 millennia earlier, Christian and Jews believe, ON THE DIRECT ORDERS OF GOD.
That’s not to say there wasn’t 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, publish 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 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 crowed into the country and MULTIPLIES TILL THEIR POPULATION HAS INCREASE MORE THAN EVEN ALL WORLD JEWRY could lift up the JEWISH PAPULATION.’
Then came 1948 and the great partition, The united Nation proposed the creation of two states in the region- one Jewish, and 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 power brokers.
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 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-Israel 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 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. ” by JOSEPH FARAH’
IF GOD IS FOR YOU WHO CAN BE AGAINST YOU, THE GOD OF ABRAHAM . WILL ALWAYS PROTECT THE JEWISH PEOPLE, AND MY JESUS
Please don’t send hate mails to him or death threats.
I
@bimlady
@zoe
The tribe of Israel was exiled by god himself fro repeated disobedience and beaking his covenants and were NOT to resettle in any land as a governing body until the return of the Mushiach(messiah) according to the “Three Oaths”. Since they call YOUR messiah jesus a fraud, son of a harlot, a bastard, a womanizer and a wizard then they are still awaiting “the real messiah” to sanction the return. The zionists have simply violated the “Three Oaths”, but that is reasonable anyway since most of them were atheists.
Will Mr Hanuman please try to find another word than “despicable”. His numerous internet postings are replete with it. But he likes dogs so that’s in his favour. On the other hand, being a graduate of the University of East Anglia is not really something I would want to boast about. Which is all another way of saying ‘Who scrutinizes the spin doctors? Where are they leading us? What is THEIR agenda?’
@Bimlady
@Zoe
Sadly, I continue to be astounded at how christians particularly Black christians come to the defense of modern Israel by lapping up and regurgitating zionist propaganda. At the same time:
ISRAEL, god’s shining light on the hill was the ONLY COUNTRY TO REFUSE TO CUT TIES WITH THE RACIST APARTHEID REGIME OF SOUTH AFRICA.
That was a clear indication of the EVIL that was and is APARTHEID ISRAEL.
Yes, the Jews were scattered across many nations of the world, exactly as Almighty God said He would do. However, He also promised over and over again in His Word, the Bible, that He would re-gather them FINALLY, BACK to their Ancient Homeland Israel, and this He DID, in 1948, the ONLY* Nation is history to be BIRTHED in ONE DAY.
And you know what; He also promised that once He re-gathered them, they would NEVER AGAIN be uprooted, NEVER, and the Arab-Islamists haters of Almighty God, and the JEWS, having tried from 1948/49, literally HOURS after the tiny nascent state of Israel, came into existence, and thereafter, to DESTROY Israel from the face of the earth, and annihilate ALL Jews, CANNOT get this done, and never will, NEVER.
And further, the promised re-gathering into Israel, (1948) was NOT predicated in any prophecy on Jesus’ return before the re-gathering. It is AFTER the re-gathering that Messiah, THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, will make HIS GLORIOUS Second Advent, SOON, real SOON, the Season is HERE!
Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Son of man, your brothers, your relatives, your fellow exiles, and the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those to whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, ‘Go far from the Lord; this land has been given us as a possession.’ Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God, though I had removed them far away among the nations, and though I had scattered them among the countries, yet I was a sanctuary for them a little while in the countries where they had gone.’” Therefore say, “Thus says the Lord God, ‘I shall gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries among which you have been scattered, and I shall give you the land of Israel. When they come there, they will remove all its detestable things and all its abominations from it.’”
– Ezekiel 11:14-18
The modern state of Israel is under attack like never before since her 1948 founding from all sides throughout the world. Recently a secular Israeli said shortly after this summer’s war (2006) with Hezbollah, “Every year they hate us more.” No matter what Israel does, whether good or bad, it is viewed by most of the world as a provocation that justifies the world’s hatred toward God’s covenant nation.
“Lapping up Zionist propaganda”
This is the true Black…anti-Jew, anti-Israel…no longer wrapped up in spin about Afghanistan and origins.
By what right does Mr Hanuman claim his organization, likewise anti-Jew, anti-Israel, is ‘Caribbean’? Does it square with voting for the Resolution in 1948?
@zoe
(And further, the promised re-gathering into Israel, (1948) was NOT predicated in any prophecy on Jesus’ return before the re-gathering. It is AFTER the re-gathering that Messiah, THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, will make HIS GLORIOUS Second Advent, SOON, real SOON, the Season is HERE!)
The above is taken from the millennial christian theology, a fatalistic bunch of christian zioinists, to a point. The point is that while supporting the re-gathering/in-gathering of Jews back to Israel with the sole purpose bringing on the 2nd coming of Jesus so that they will be all together to be annihilate if their refuse to accept him as messiah.
This has been a conundrum for Jewish Zionists and traditional Jews who abhor this movement which encompasses another hated group, “Jews For Jesus”.
You may say that the returning of the Mashiach(Messiah) was not prerequisite to the return to Israel as a ruling people, but for over 2000 years that has been an integral part of Jewish theology.
It would nice if you credited some of your excerpts with appropriate links. Particularly the last paragraph, which was taken word for word from a christian millennial website. There is nothing wrong with copying and pasting, just link it!
man are rummeragers.they rummage to “backup’ to “control! to Prove! to disapprove ! to appoint!to disappoint ! to present and to misrepresent! having an aire of authority, for all it is worth man sucks is a product of his own undoing can’t be right for the many times being wrong, contrary ! contradictory! impulsive! and repulsive! reclusive ! and exclusive.for all that it is worth how can any one trust man.
@ac
Well said Sir!
…and pride is his undoing !
@robert ross
Let’s get on with it. (Mr Hanuman) It’s Black, MrBlack or finally MistaBlack and when you include the spa_ce it is the same as Mr Hanuman.
Yes and I’m definitely anti-Israel anti-zionist NOT anti-Jew.
Why did the state of Israel refuse to cut ties with the RACIST apartheid regime of South Africa when the rest of the goyim world did?
Was it the diamonds, gold, nuclear weapons tech, weapons trade?
That justify god’s chosen couldn’t care less about the subjugation of Black goyim?
for all that it is worth Zoe is a “cling rummager’ rummagimg through antiquated and outdated articles with views and doctrines that have man moving backward rapidly in time and clinging to a past ,hoping against all hope, relentless with unseasonal determination! non -inspirational ! sifting and shifting through uncharacteristic writing and theories called prophesies taking us into a time where all this madness began ,clinging oooh so aimlessly heading in the opposite direction, never stopping to take a pause to think out aloud and breathe a breath of reality as to how all this craziness came about, clingers never let go but hold fast ;bound with a determination that causes death and destruction .never ceasing ! always looking back , looking for answers with stride and gusto all in the wrong place .
@ ac | October 26, 2014 at 7:08 AM |
Ac, isn’t your submission a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black?
You are the archetypical political equivalent of Zoe. Zoe might be the quintessential Zionist yard-fowl and apologist but you, ac, are the thoroughbred of big-breed yard-fowls and who is so blinded with false loyalty is predestined to follow an absentee leader whose political party is about to take your once proud country over the cliff of social and economic destruction.
You are always harping back to wrongdoings, failures and economic mismanagement under some 14 years of BLP maladministration. If you want to live in the past, why not include the period 1991-94 and live a life of déjà vu?
When are you going to stop blaming everyone else but the current corrupt cabal of incompetents and liars masquerading as the inheritors EWB’s legacy?
When are you going to get rid of the BLP/OSA and now MIA bugbear monkeys off your back and get on with the people’s business?
Black
Are you claiming affinity with the monkey god too?
BU is a marvelous place. We have Pacha claiming (and probably rightly) to be Queen Yoni. Now HanUman, claiming to have had his jaw dropped (probably rightly too).
BTW – does Mr HanUman still operate out of ‘Synagogue Chambers’ and does he sleep at night?
Which is why, ac, I also think you are spot on. Ah what strange bed fellows. Is there hope?
miller @ac
Ac, isn’t your submission a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black?
You are the archetypical political equivalent of Zoe.
You are always harping back to wrongdoings, failures and economic mismanagement under some 14 years of BLP maladministration.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
yeap ! you are absolutely correct sir EXCEPT with all intents and purposes not to repeat those mistakes from the past, a past entered but bound and determined having learnt, never to reenter or repeat again,,unlike ZOE who use history and all the mistakes as a navigator of moving forward and taking us ALL rapidly backward to a place where all the madness began.,.
Really not interested in those kind of “Zoe-istic ” movements and acquired unrealistic qualities of life
Also neither Yours and the other BLP yardfowls still looking and demanding govt hand outs.
ac
Facts as boring as they are simply don’t become “antiquated”. Theories do. Scientific explanations do. Despite all Black/HanUman’s whining and your wailing, two and two will continue to make four.
Will you please pinpoint specifically where Zoe’s article on the history of the partition proposal is (a) “antiquated” and/or (b) misrepresentation.
Since apartheid can really only operate within a unitary state, would you agree that what Mr HanUman is really saying is ‘Israel should not exist’? And then would you agree that if there was no State of Israel but only a single Palestinian State, the apartheid would operate against the Jews?
In other words, would you agree that ‘Caribbean against Apartheid’ as applied to the partition proposal and using South Africa as the metwand of apartheid is total nonsense?
Black
Israel and South Africa as bedfellows…..Black and ac……you Black of all people as a social, religious and political pariah should understand why. Indeed, you might even think of it as a compliment.
Ross why do you keep dragging ac into this unholy bed of evil alliances, allowed me this time to have a ‘Right to Special Privilege” FACTS! THEORIES call it what YOU MAY all have relevance to time and change NOT BORING AT ALL as a matter of fact very deep rooted and self centred ,that is why WE find ourselves buried deep in this quagmire with no end in sight., singing the same mantra “IF YOU ARE NOT WITH ME ! YOU ARE AGAINSTME!
The ‘issue’ crux of the matter, apex of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict since 1948, has NEVER been over ‘Land’ a state, for these so-called Palestinians, NO! NO NO! It has ALWAYS been, and continues to be, the UTTER DESTRUCTION, ANNIHILATION, of the State of Israel, and ALL Jews; as openly reflected in the PLO, and Hamas charters, as well as Hezbollah, Ian and other Islamic Jihadists.
Now, the poor Arab people, who by the way were from Syria, Jordan, et al Arab nations, then called ‘Palestinians’ who wandered aimlessly throughout Palestine, which remained an utterly dead, dry, barren land mass, UNTIL the Jews returned to their Ancient, historic Home land, were USED deceitfully, and wickedly by their Arab brothers, who EXPLOITED them, THEN 1948/49, and CONTINUE to USE them,up until TODAY, for devious political purposes, in order to get close enough INSIDE Israel, with a so-called two-state solution, NO!NO!NO! A viscous LIE, the SOLE object is to someday, with enough military might, to ANNIHILATE the State of Israel from the face of the earth.
There was/IS enough land among the Arab Islamic nations, who surround TINY Israel, to CREATE a dozen states for these so-called Palestinians, but they will NEVER do this, because their EVIL, wicked agenda, to ANNIHILATE Israel as the ‘occupier’ of their land, would quickly EVAPORATE! Get it!?
Britain Gives Away 75 percent of the Jews Mandated Land.
THE REAL PALESTINIAN STATE.
“The historical footnote to the Arab-Israeli conflict serves to SHATTER another Muslim MYTH. The modern-day Royal Kingdom of Jordan WAS and IS* clearly an independent PALESTINIAN-Arab state. Geographically it spans most of the land once called Palestine. Its population is largely made uo of so-called “Palestinians.” Abdullah and other Arab leaders admitted as much in 1048 prior to launching their WAR of aggression against the new state of Israel.” (THE EVERLASTING HATRED, THE ROOTS OF JIHAD, p.198, Hal Lindsey) Emphasis added.
“It wasn’t long, however before Abdullah, brother of Feisal ibn Hussein, decided he should have Transjordan as his Kingdom. He protested to the British who UNILATERALLY decided to CARVE out of the Jewish Palestine 75 percent of its mandated territory, then known as the Transjordan, and hand it over to Abdullah. Abdullah argued the British gave his brother Feisal Ibn Hussein both Syria and Iraq, but gave him nothing.the British Foreign Office quickly scrambled to offer him the MAJOR part of the land they were bound by the League of Nation Mandate to give Israel. Recall, this was done on the basis of the fictional T.E. Lawrence story that asserted
Abdullah had significally helped Britain defeat the Ottoman Turks in the Middle East.”
“The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine REMAINED unchanged even though Britain had UNILATERALLY altered its map and its purpose. The Mandate included Transjordan until 1946, when that land was declared an independent state. Transjordan had FINALLY BECOME the de jure Arab state in Palestine just two years before Israel gained its Jewish statehood. in the remaning one-quarter of Palestine. Transjordan comprised nearly 38,000 square miles; Israel, less than 8,000 square miles.” (Ibid. p.196) Emphasis added.
Over 35,000 square miles of the Mandated League of Nations land for the state of Israel were GIVEN to Arabs ( 80% of their promised land was lost). (Ibid, p. 197).
And this TINY state of Israel, has endured for 67 YEARS, the utter MYTHS, LIES, DISTORTIONS, leveled AGAINST it, by the Arab Islamists HATERS of its RIGHT TO EXIST, on its INDISPUTABLE, HISTORIC Homeland.
The TRUE Palestinian State IS* modern day Jordan, as the majority of its population ARE these so-called Palestinians, in fact all Jordanian pass-ports read: Jordanian/Palestinian.
here we go again zoe is back to a starting point which started out WRONG and with the most likely result THAT WE WILL END UP WRONG,> how SMART CAN ALL OF US BE< OR IS IT JUST THAT WE ARE ALL GENUINELY WRONG.
ANYHOW AS ZOE WOULD ATTEST <THERE IS AN AFTER LIFE WHERE WE ALL WOULD SIT AND EAT COOKIES AND MILK SINGING CUM BA UH , OH THERE IS ONLY ONE GATE TO ENTER, NOW THAT WILL BE INTERESTING DEPENDING ON WHO IS THE GATE KEEPER,
@robert ross
(Israel and South Africa as bedfellows…..Black and ac……you Black of all people as a social, religious and political pariah should understand why. Indeed, you might even think of it as a compliment.)
NO, not just South Africa but APARTHEID South Africa. And here you reveal your DUPLICITY as you justify Israel’s DUPLICITY.
As a Black Man, Israel’s support for apartheid South Africa was/is a non-starter for me.
Their unity was forged in commonly held nefarious policies.
there u go mista black ,it is the same ole story the same ole arguments,then we keep headbutting ourselves and starting all ova again .sheer madness,.maybe it is about time a little child should lead us.,,pure innocence at last,pure innonence
recently i was browsing through the pages of the bible and while thumbing back and forth i took a quick look at Genesis, read a couple pages and what stuck out was the the men having a special god ordained right to multiple wives first i was in total disbelief that a god would encourage such craziness but then as i continued reading it appeared to me that the madness of god was indeed a brain stormer and a necessary ‘evil” to repopulate the earth and to start the process of nation building, a story began that is taught as truth of biblical history and one that keeps us fighting tooth and nail to this very day,
@ac
Point taken… ground hog day syndrome? but Israel is new for me here. Which I feel centrally contributes to the current and historical instability.
Now when zionists(christians and others) exhaust arguments to obfuscate the cruelty and injustice of the land thievery that is the modern state of Israel, they resort to convoluted chicanery and biblical text.
These same folks are obsess with Sharia Law but have no problem with Talmudic Law.
They are obsess with verses in the quran in reference to war but have no problem with the sanctioned rape, baby killing, genocide in the bible.
I will always call them on their hypocrisy. I’m all about the record, they may obfuscate, misdirect, and outright lie, but I will not let those tools of deceit stand without challenge.
FACTS:
132 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 2053 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000.
1,185 Israelis and at least 9,100 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000.
10,903 Israelis versus 70,121 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000.
0 Israelis are being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 5,200 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel.
0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and 28,000
Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967.(over 45 Palestinian homes destroyed every month for 45 years)
Israel currently has 262 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land.
During Fiscal Year 2013, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8,500,000.00 to $14,000,000.00 Million dollars a day in military aid to
Israel in military aid and $0 in military aid to the Palestinians.
The Israeli unemployment rate is 5.8%(better than US 8%) while the Palestinian unemployment in the West Bank is 22.5% and 27.9% in Gaza.
Israel was the only country who supported apartheid South Africa in opposition to the rest of the world.
All Palestinian groups supported the ANC in their fight to dismantle Apartheid in South Africa.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
get your drift mista black no agrument here, however my best hope is for a little child leading us out of this darkness, for we like sheep have all gone astray being led and being misled . without a starting point which begins with “an innocence: of a past we are all doom to eternal hell.
ac
The little child…yes of course, but it won’t be any of us. But remember ac, you are deep into OT.
‘An unholy alliance’ – but fella you put yourself there along with the deranged hate monger(s).
Of course the Bible is full of shit. Whoever claimed it wasn’t? Point is, however, that the OT is not used by anyone in the 21st century to justify murdering innocents or, on your analysis, to justify multiple spouses. As ever you are playing a very silly game which convinces no-one precisely because you are setting up a comparative standard which no-one seeks to employ – in short simply froth. At least I AM NOT playing Moslem v Christian, Quran v Bible.. However……
you will remember I raised the question whether the Koran needed a NT.
Now please tell where the ‘facts’ in Zoe’s article on partition are (a) ‘antiquated’ (whatever that means) and/or (b) misrepresentation.
Black can help you.
Black
ac in alliance with hate mongering Jihadist Black. Both pariahs. Both arguing different things, It won’t cause me to say ac is beyond recall. Indeed, even YOU might be redeemable.Get it?
Does the following FACTS regarding how the Israeli government treat minority groups, especially Arab/Palestinian Muslims, sound like an Apartheid state? Hardly!
The Case for Israel
Contents:
Minority Rights in Israel
West Bank Economics, People, and Government
Israeli Politics
Minority Rights in Israel
Israel’s Declaration of Independence (1948) states that Israel’s priority is to “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture…”
Arab citizens:
A national 2008 study, conducted in both Hebrew and Arabic, found that:
68% of Jewish citizens support teaching conversational Arabic in Jewish schools to help bring Arab and Jewish citizens together.
A great majority of both Jewish citizens (73%) and Arab citizens (94%) want Israel to be a society in which Arab and Jewish citizens have mutual respect and equal opportunities.
Arab citizens and Jewish citizens both underestimate their communities’ liking of the “other.”
Conclusion: It appears that Arab and Israeli citizens coexist more peacefully than outsiders often assume.
Moreover:
Arabs in Israel can vote for whomever they want – including Arab women. In most Arab countries, women do not have the right to vote.
Arabs in Israel can worship freely – or reject religion, if they so wish (unlike in many Arab countries, where Islam is forced upon all citizens.)
Arabs in Israel have the freedom of speech (unlike in most Arab countries.) They have their own newspapers, and they have the right to peacefully protest.
Arabs in Israel are entitled to the full same state education as all other Israelis.
Arabs are members of the Israeli parliament and ministers in the government. Over 1/10th of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, is Arab. There is even a mosque in the Knesset building for those who are Muslim.
Conclusion: As many Arab-Israeli journalists state, Arab citizens have far more freedom in Israel than they do in Arab countries.
Palestinians are offered Israeli citizenship, but most reject it.
As of today, the Palestinians of the West Bank (East Jerusalem) are still offered Israeli citizenship. Most still reject this offer, viewing it as an act of disloyalty to the Palestinian government.
Nonetheless, the number of Palestinians who accept Israeli citizenship has risen dramatically in recent years.
Today, most Israeli Arabs – about 20% of Israeli citizens – identify as “Palestinian” by ethnicity.
The blue “identification cards” that Palestinian citizens carry are merely to prove that they are permanent residents. They are not “racial identification cards” as anti-Israel activists like to claim.
Palestinians’ rights as “permanent residents” of Israel:
To vote in local elections
To purchase property in Israel
To receive welfare payments from the Israeli government
Eligibility for national health insurance
Disadvantages of permanent residency (vs. citizenship)
Spouses of permanent residents must apply for residency status; it is not automatically granted to them.
The same is true for the children of permanent residents; parents must apply for their children to have official residency status.
Cannot vote in national elections
Comparison with other Arab countries:
In Lebanon, under the Lebanese labor law that governs foreigners, Palestinians are denied 74 forms of employment.
In Lebanon, Palestinians face tight exit and entry requirements.
In Lebanon, Palestinians are not allowed citizenship.
In Lebanon, Palestinians are confined to 12 camps with no medical, social or educational services from the government and are barred in some of those camps from building or even repairing homes.
Conclusions: Palestinians choose not to be Israeli citizens. Meanwhile, although neighboring Arab nations decry Israel for unequal treatment of Palestinians, those nations do not welcome Palestinians either; they would rather keep Israel as their scapegoat.
http://www.stanfordIisraelalliance.stanfordedu.
What is a moslem community practising shariah law round a purpose built mosque with a moslem school other than a self-imposed, self-justifying separate development? Will the ‘Caribbean against Apartheid’ organisation please address this and stop monkeying about.
It is vitally important to have a proper, critical, honest grasp of the FACTS, not MYTHS surrounding what ACTUALLY transpired during the BIRTH of Israel in 1949/49, especially as it relates to the so-called refugee plight, of the so-called Palestines.
MYTH
“One million Palestinians were expelled by Israel from 1947–49.”
FACT
The Palestinians left their homes in 1947–49 for a variety of reasons. Thousands of wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders’ calls to get out of the way of the advancing armies, a handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the cross fire of a battle.
Many Arabs claim that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians became refugees in 1947–49. The last census taken by the British in 1945 found approximately 1.2 million permanent Arab residents in all of Palestine. A 1949 census conducted by the government of Israel counted 160,000 Arabs living in the new state after the war. In 1947, a total of 809,100 Arabs lived in the same area.1 This meant no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become refugees. A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine arrived at an even lower refugee figure—472,000. 2
MYTH
“Palestinians were the only people who became refugees as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
FACT
Although much is heard about the plight of the Palestinian refugees, little is said about the Jews who fled from Arab states. Their situation had long been precarious. During the 1947 UN debates, Arab leaders threatened them. For example, Egypt’s delegate told the General Assembly: “The lives of one million Jews in Muslim countries would be jeopardized by partition.” 3
Corresponding refugees, 1948-1972
The number of Jews fleeing Arab countries for Israel in the years following Israel’s independence was nearly double the number of Arabs leaving Palestine. Many Jews were allowed to take little more than the shirts on their backs. These refugees had no desire to be repatriated. Little is heard about them because they did not remain refugees for long. Of the 820,000 Jewish refugees between 1948 and 1972, 586,000 were resettled in Israel at great expense, and without any offer of compensation from the Arab governments who confiscated their possessions. 4 Israel has consequently maintained that any agreement to compensate the Palestinian refugees must also include Arab reparations for Jewish refugees. To this day, the Arab states have refused to pay anything to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were forced to abandon their property before fleeing those countries. Through 2010, at least 153 of the 914 UN General Assembly resolutions on the Middle East conflict (17 percent) referred directly to Palestinian refugees.5 Even in 2014, the Jewish refugees from Arab countries have not been mentioned in any significant UN resolution.
The contrast between the reception of Jewish and Palestinian refugees is even starker when one considers the difference in cultural and geographic dislocation experienced by the two groups. Most Jewish refugees traveled hundreds — some traveled thousands — of miles to a tiny country whose inhabitants spoke a different language. Most Arab refugees never left Palestine at all; they traveled a few miles to the other side of the truce line, remaining inside the vast Arab nation that they were part of linguistically, culturally and ethnically.
While Palestinians consider the refugee issue to be among the most important issues for them, the Jewish refugees from Arab countries should not be forgotten. Moreover, the basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, UN Security Council Resolution 242, does not mention Palestinians at all and can apply equally to Jewish refugees.
In fact, to that effect, Congress passed a resolution in 2008 about Middle East refugee populations that encourages the U.S. to use its influence and voice to ensure “that any resolutions relating to Middle East refugees, which include reference to the required resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue, must also include a similarily explicit reference to the resolution of the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.” The bill also addresses the need to address the rights of all refugees, including but not limited to Jews and Christians displaced from Middle East countries.
MYTH
“The Jews had no intention of living peacefully with their Arab neighbors.”
FACT
In numerous instances, Jewish leaders urged the Arabs to remain in Palestine and become citizens of Israel. The Assembly of Palestine Jewry issued this appeal on October 2, 1947:
We will do everything in our power to maintain peace, and establish a cooperation gainful to both [Jews and Arabs]. It is now, here and now, from Jerusalem itself, that a call must go out to the Arab nations to join forces with Jewry and the destined Jewish State and work shoulder to shoulder for our common good, for the peace and progress of sovereign equals. 6
On November 30, the day after the UN partition vote, the Jewish Agency announced: “The main theme behind the spontaneous celebrations we are witnessing today is our community’s desire to seek peace and its determination to achieve fruitful cooperation with the Arabs. . . .” 7
Israel’s Proclamation of Independence, issued May 14, 1948, also invited the Palestinians to remain in their homes and become equal citizens in the new state:
In the midst of wanton aggression, we yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions. . . . We extend our hand in peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all.
MYTH
“The Jews created the refugee problem by expelling the Palestinians.”
FACT
Had the Arabs accepted the 1947 UN resolution, not a single Palestinian would have become a refugee. An independent Arab state would now exist beside Israel. The responsibility for the refugee problem rests with the Arabs.
The beginning of the Arab exodus can be traced to the weeks immediately following the announcement of the UN partition resolution. The first to leave were roughly 30,000 wealthy Arabs who anticipated the upcoming war and fled to neighboring Arab countries to await its end. Less affluent Arabs from the mixed cities of Palestine moved to all-Arab towns to stay with relatives or friends. 8 By the end of January 1948, the exodus was so alarming the Palestine Arab Higher Committee asked neighboring Arab countries to refuse visas to these refugees and to seal their borders against them. 9
A newly released British document indicates officials were aware of the reason Palestinians were fleeing:
The [Palestine] Arabs have suffered a series of overwhelming defeats….Jewish victories … have reduced Arab morale to zero and, following the cowardly example of their inept leaders, they are fleeing from the mixed areas in their thousands. It is now obvious that the only hope of regaining their position lies in the regular armies of the Arab states.9a
On January 30, 1948, the Jaffa newspaper, Ash Sha’ab, reported: “The first of our fifth-column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere. . . . At the first signs of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle.” 10
Another Jaffa paper, As Sarih (March 30, 1948) excoriated Arab villagers near Tel Aviv for “bringing down disgrace on us all by ‘abandoning the villages.’ ” 11
Meanwhile, a leader of the Arab National Committee in Haifa, Hajj Nimer el-Khatib, said Arab soldiers in Jaffa were mistreating the residents. “They robbed individuals and homes. Life was of little value, and the honor of women was defiled. This state of affairs led many [Arab] residents to leave the city under the protection of British tanks.” 12
John Bagot Glubb, the commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, said: “Villages were frequently abandoned even before they were threatened by the progress of war.” 13
Contemporary press reports of major battles in which large numbers of Arabs fled conspicuously fail to mention any forcible expulsion by the Jewish forces. The Arabs are usually described as “fleeing” or “evacuating” their homes. While Zionists are accused of “expelling and dispossessing” the Arab inhabitants of such towns as Tiberias and Haifa, the truth is much different. Both of those cities were within the boundaries of the Jewish State under the UN partition scheme and both were fought for by Jews and Arabs alike.
Jewish forces seized Tiberias on April 19, 1948, and the entire Arab population of 6,000 was evacuated under British military supervision. The Jewish Community Council issued a statement afterward: “We did not dispossess them; they themselves chose this course. . . . Let no citizen touch their property.” 14
In early April, an estimated 25,000 Arabs left the Haifa area following an offensive by the irregular forces led by Fawzi al-Qawukji, and rumors that Arab air forces would soon bomb the Jewish areas around Mt. Carmel. 15 On April 23, the Haganah captured Haifa. A British police report from Haifa, dated April 26, explained that “every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe.” 16 In fact, David Ben-Gurion sent Golda Meir to Haifa to try to persuade the Arabs to stay, but she was unable to convince them because of their fear of being judged traitors to the Arab cause. 17 By the end of the battle, more than 50,000 Palestinians had left.
“Tens of thousands of Arab men, women and children fled toward the eastern outskirts of the city in cars, trucks, carts, and afoot in a desperate attempt to reach Arab territory until the Jews captured Rushmiya Bridge toward Samaria and Northern Palestine and cut them off. Thousands rushed every available craft, even rowboats, along the waterfront, to escape by sea toward Acre.”
—New York Times, (April 23, 1948)
Syria’s UN delegate, Faris el-Khouri, interrupted the UN debate on Palestine to describe the seizure of Haifa as a “massacre” and said this action was “further evidence that the ‘Zionist program’ is to annihilate Arabs within the Jewish state if partition is effected.” 18
The following day, however, the British representative at the UN, Sir Alexander Cadogan, told the delegates that the fighting in Haifa had been provoked by the continuous attacks by Arabs against Jews a few days before and that reports of massacres and deportations were erroneous. 19
The same day (April 23, 1948), Jamal Husseini, the chairman of the Palestine Higher Committee, told the UN Security Council that instead of accepting the Haganah’’s truce offer, the Arabs “preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings, and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town.” 20
The U.S. Consul-General in Haifa, Aubrey Lippincott, wrote on April 22, 1948, for example, that “local mufti-dominated Arab leaders” were urging “all Arabs to leave the city, and large numbers did so.” 21
An army order issued July 6, 1948, made clear that Arab towns and villages were not to be demolished or burned, and that Arab inhabitants were not to be expelled from their homes. 22
The Haganah did employ psychological warfare to encourage the Arabs to abandon a few villages. Yigal Allon, the commander of the Palmach, said he had Jews talk to the Arabs in neighboring villages and tell them a large Jewish force was in Galilee with the intention of burning all the Arab villages in the Lake Hula region. The Arabs were told to leave while they still had time and, according to Allon, they did exactly that. 23
In the most dramatic example, in the Ramle-Lod area, Israeli troops seeking to protect their flanks and relieve the pressure on besieged Jerusalem, forced a portion of the Arab population to go to an area a few miles away that was occupied by the Arab Legion. “The two towns had served as bases for Arab irregular units, which had frequently attacked Jewish convoys and nearby settlements, effectively barring the main road to Jerusalem to Jewish traffic.” 24
As was clear from the descriptions of what took place in the cities with the largest Arab populations, these cases were clearly the exceptions, accounting for only a small fraction of the Palestinian refugees. The expulsions were not designed to force out the entire Arab population; the areas where they took place were strategically vital and meant to prevent the threat of any rearguard action against the Israeli forces, and to ensure clear lines of communication. Historian Benny Morris notes that “in general, Haganah and IDF commanders were not forced to confront the moral dilemma posed by expulsion; most Arabs fled before and during the battle, before the Israeli troops reached their homes and before the Israeli commanders were forced to confront the dilemma.” 25
MYTH
“The Arab invasion had little impact on the Palestinian Arabs.”
FACT
Once the invasion began in May 1948, most Arabs remaining in Palestine left for neighboring countries. Surprisingly, rather than acting as a strategically valuable “fifth-column” that would fight the Jews from within the country, the Palestinians chose to flee to the safety of the other Arab states, still confident of being able to return. A leading Palestinian nationalist of the time, Musa Alami, revealed the attitude of the fleeing Arabs:
The Arabs of Palestine left their homes, were scattered, and lost everything. But there remained one solid hope: The Arab armies were on the eve of their entry into Palestine to save the country and return things to their normal course, punish the aggressor, and throw oppressive Zionism with its dreams and dangers into the sea. On May 14, 1948, crowds of Arabs stood by the roads leading to the frontiers of Palestine, enthusiastically welcoming the advancing armies. Days and weeks passed, sufficient to accomplish the sacred mission, but the Arab armies did not save the country. They did nothing but let slip from their hands Acre, Sarafand, Lydda, Ramleh, Nazareth, most of the south and the rest of the north. Then hope fled. 26
As the fighting spread into areas that had previously remained quiet, the Arabs began to see the possibility of defeat. As that possibility turned into reality, the flight of the Arabs increased—more than 300,000 departed after May 15—leaving approximately 160,000 Arabs in the State of Israel. 27
Although most of the Arabs had left by November 1948, there were still those who chose to leave even after hostilities ceased. An interesting case was the evacuation of 3,000 Arabs from Faluja, a village between Tel Aviv and Beersheba:
Observers feel that with proper counsel after the Israeli-Egyptian armistice, the Arab population might have advantageously remained. They state that the Israeli Government had given guarantees of security of person and property. However, no effort was made by Egypt, Transjordan or even the United Nations Palestine Conciliation Commission to advise the Faluja Arabs one way or the other. 28
MYTH
“Arab leaders never encouraged the Palestinians to flee.”
FACT
Despite revisionist historical attempts to deny that Palestinians were encouraged to leave their homes, a plethora of evidence demonstrates that the Palestinians who later became refugees were indeed told to leave their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies. In fact, in recent years, more Palestinians have come forward to candidly admit this truth.
The Economist, a frequent critic of the Zionists, reported on October 2, 1948: “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 [refugee] problem was a direct consequence of the war that the Palestinians—and . . . surrounding Arab states—had launched.”
— Israeli historian Benny Morris 29
Time’s report of the battle for Haifa (May 3, 1948) was similar: “The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city. . . . By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.” 30
Starting in December 1947, historian Benny Morris said, “Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants ‘treacherously’ acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments.” He concluded, “There can be no exaggerating the importance of these early Arab-initiated evacuations in the demoralization, and eventual exodus, of the remaining rural and urban populations.” 31
The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following the March 8, 1948, instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes: “Any opposition to this order . . . is an obstacle to the holy war . . . and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts.” The Arab Higher Committee also ordered the evacuation of “several dozen villages, as well as the removal of dependents from dozens more” in April-July 1948. “The invading Arab armies also occasionally ordered whole villages to depart, so as not to be in their way.” 32
Morris also said that in early May units of the Arab Legion ordered the evacuation of all women and children from the town of Beisan. The Arab Liberation Army was also reported to have ordered the evacuation of another village south of Haifa. The departure of the women and children, Morris says, “tended to sap the morale of the menfolk who were left behind to guard the homes and fields, contributing ultimately to the final evacuation of villages. Such two-tier evacuation—women and children first, the men following weeks later—occurred in Qumiya in the Jezreel Valley, among the Awarna bedouin in Haifa Bay and in various other places.”
In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948–49, also admitted the Arab role in persuading the refugees to leave:
“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. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.”33
Who gave such orders? Leaders such as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, who declared: “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.” 34
The Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, wrote in his book, The Arabs: “This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of 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.” 35
“The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two,” Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee told the Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub (August 16, 1948). “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.”
“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,” according to the Jordanian newspaper Filastin, (February 19, 1949).
One refugee quoted in the Jordan newspaper, Ad Difaa (September 6, 1954), said: “The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.”
“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,” said Habib Issa in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951). “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.”
The Arabs’ fear was exacerbated by stories of Jewish atrocities following the attack on Deir Yassin. The native population lacked leaders who could calm them; their spokesmen were operating from the safety of neighboring states and did more to arouse their fears than to pacify them. Local military leaders were of little or no comfort. In one instance the commander of Arab troops in Safed went to Damascus. The following day, his troops withdrew from the town. When the residents realized they were defenseless, they fled in panic.
“As Palestinian military power was swiftly and dramatically crushed, and the Haganah demonstrated almost unchallenged superiority in successive battles,” Benny Morris noted, “Arab morale cracked, giving way to general, blind, panic, or a ‘psychosis of flight,’ as one IDF intelligence report put it.” 36
Dr. Walid al-Qamhawi, a former member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, agreed “it was collective fear, moral disintegration and chaos in every field that exiled the Arabs of Tiberias, Haifa and dozens of towns and villages.” 37
As panic spread throughout Palestine, the early trickle of refugees became a flood, numbering more than 200,000 by the time the provisional government declared the independence of the State of Israel.
Even Jordan’s King Abdullah, writing in his memoirs, blamed Palestinian leaders for the refugee problem:
The tragedy of the Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false and unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs and 400 million Muslims would instantly and miraculously come to their rescue. 38
These accounts have been bolstered by more recent statements by Palestinians who have become fed up with the phony narrative concocted by some Palestinian and Israeli academics. Asmaa Jabir Balasimah, for example, recalled her flight from Israel in 1948:
We heard sounds of explosions and of gunfire at the beginning of the summer in the year of the “Catastrophe” [1948]. They told us: The Jews attacked our region and it is better to evacuate the village and return, after the battle is over. And indeed there were among us [who fled Israel] those who left a fire burning under the pot, those who left their flock [of sheep] and those who left their money and gold behind, based on the assumption that we would return after a few hours. 39
An Arab resident of a Palestinian refugee camp explained why his family left Israel in 1948:
The radio stations of the Arab regimes kept repeating to us: ‘Get away from the battle lines. It’s a matter of ten days or two weeks at the most, and we’ll bring you back to Ein-Kerem [near Jerusalem].’ And we said to ourselves, ‘That’s a very long time. What is this? Two weeks? That’s a lot!’ That’s what we thought [then]. And now 50 years have gone by. 40
Mahmoud Al-Habbash, a Palestinian journalist wrote in the Palestinian Authority’s official newspaper:
. . . The leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the “Catastrophe” in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those “Arkuvian” promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events . . . [“Arkuvian” is a reference to Arkuv, a figure from Arab tradition known for breaking promises and lying.] 41
Another Palestinian journalist, Jawad Al Bashiti, explained the cause of the “Catastrophe”:
The following happened: the first war between Arabs and Israel had started and the “Arab Salvation Army” came and told the Palestinians: ‘We have come to you in order to liquidate the Zionists and their state. Leave your houses and villages, you will return to them in a few days safely. Leave them so we can fulfill our mission (destroy Israel) in the best way and so you won’t be hurt.’ It became clear already then, when it was too late, that the support of the Arab states (against Israel) was a big illusion. Arabs fought as if intending to cause the “Palestinian Catastrophe.” 42
“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, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.”
— Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas 43
MYTH
“The Palestinian Arabs had to flee to avoid being massacred like the peaceful villagers in Deir Yassin.”
FACT
The United Nations resolved that Jerusalem would be an international city apart from the Arab and Jewish states demarcated in the partition resolution. The 150,000 Jewish inhabitants were under constant military pressure; the 2,500 Jews living in the Old City were victims of an Arab blockade that lasted five months before they were forced to surrender on May 29, 1948. Prior to the surrender, and throughout the siege on Jerusalem, Jewish convoys tried to reach the city to alleviate the food shortage, which, by April, had become critical.
Deir Yassin after the attack
Meanwhile, the Arab forces, which had engaged in sporadic and unorganized ambushes since December 1947, began to make an organized attempt to cut off the highway linking Tel Aviv with —the city’s only supply route. The Arabs controlled several strategic vantage points, which overlooked the highway and enabled them to fire on the convoys trying to reach the beleaguered city with supplies. Deir Yassin was situated on a hill, about 2,600 feet high, which commanded a wide view of the vicinity and was located less than a mile from the suburbs of Jerusalem. 44
On April 6, Operation Nachshon was launched to open the road to Jerusalem. The village of Deir Yassin was included on the list of Arab villages to be occupied as part of the operation. The following day Haganah commander David Shaltiel wrote to the leaders of the Lehi and Irgun:
I learn that you plan an attack on Deir Yassin. I wish to point out that the capture of Deir Yassin and its holding are one stage in our general plan. I have no objection to your carrying out the operation provided you are able to hold the village. If you are unable to do so I warn you against blowing up the village which will result in its inhabitants abandoning it and its ruins and deserted houses being occupied by foreign forces. . . . Furthermore, if foreign forces took over, this would upset our general plan for establishing an airfield. 45
The Irgun decided to attack Deir Yassin on April 9, while the Haganah was still engaged in the battle for Kastel. This was the first major Irgun attack against the Arabs. Previously, the Irgun and Lehi had concentrated their attacks against the British.
According to Irgun leader Menachem Begin, the assault was carried out by 100 members of that organization; other authors say it was as many as 132 men from both groups. Begin stated that a small open truck fitted with a loudspeaker was driven to the entrance of the village before the attack and broadcast a warning for civilians to evacuate the area, which many did. 46 Most writers say the warning was never issued because the truck with the loudspeaker rolled into a ditch before it could broadcast the warning. 47 One of the fighters said, the ditch was filled in and the truck continued on to the village. “One of us called out on the loudspeaker in Arabic, telling the inhabitants to put down their weapons and flee. I don’t know if they heard, and I know these appeals had no effect.” 48
Contrary to revisionist histories that say the town was filled with peaceful innocents, evidence shows that both residents and foreign troops opened fire on the attackers. One Irgun fighter described his experience:
My unit stormed and passed the first row of houses. I was among the first to enter the village. There were a few other guys with me, each encouraging the other to advance. At the top of the street I saw a man in khaki clothing running ahead. I thought he was one of ours. I ran after him and told him, “advance to that house.” Suddenly he turned around, aimed his rifle and shot. He was an Iraqi soldier. I was hit in the foot. 49
The battle was ferocious and took several hours. The Irgun suffered 41 casualties, including four dead.
Surprisingly, after the “massacre,” the Irgun escorted a representative of the Red Cross through the town and held a press conference. The New York Times’ subsequent description of the battle was essentially the same as Begin’s. The Times said more than 200 Arabs were killed, 40 captured and 70 women and children were released. No hint of a massacre appeared in the report. 50
“Paradoxically, the Jews say about 250 out of 400 village inhabitants [were killed], while Arab survivors say only 110 of 1,000.” 51 A study by Bir Zeit University, based on discussions with each family from the village, arrived at a figure of 107 Arab civilians dead and 12 wounded, in addition to 13 “fighters,” evidence that the number of dead was smaller than claimed and that the village did have troops based there. 52 Other Arab sources have subsequently suggested the number may have been even lower. 53
In fact, the attackers left open an escape corridor from the village and more than 200 residents left unharmed. For example, at 9:30 A.M., about five hours after the fighting started, the Lehi evacuated 40 old men, women and children on trucks and took them to a base in Sheik Bader. Later, the Arabs were taken to East Jerusalem. Seeing the Arabs in the hands of Jews also helped raise the morale of the people of Jerusalem who were despondent from the setbacks in the fighting to that point. 54 Another source says 70 women and children were taken away and turned over to the British.55 If the intent was to massacre the inhabitants, no one would have been evacuated.
After the remaining Arabs feigned surrender and then fired on the Jewish troops, some Jews killed Arab soldiers and civilians indiscriminately. None of the sources specify how many women and children were killed (the Times report said it was about half the victims; their original casualty figure came from the Irgun source), but there were some among the casualties.
At least some of the women who were killed became targets because of men who tried to disguise themselves as women. The Irgun commander reported, for example, that the attackers “found men dressed as women and therefore they began to shoot at women who did not hasten to go down to the place designated for gathering the prisoners.” 56 Another story was told by a member of the Haganah who overheard a group of Arabs from Deir Yassin who said “the Jews found out that Arab warriors had disguised themselves as women. The Jews searched the women too. One of the people being checked realized he had been caught, took out a pistol and shot the Jewish commander. His friends, crazed with anger, shot in all directions and killed the Arabs in the area.” 57
Contrary to claims from Arab propagandists at the time, and some since, no evidence has ever been produced that any women were raped. On the contrary, every villager ever interviewed has denied these allegations. Like many of the claims, this was a deliberate propaganda ploy, but one that backfired. Hazam Nusseibi, who worked for the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1948, admitted being told by Hussein Khalidi, a Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate the atrocity claims. Abu Mahmud, a Deir Yassin resident in 1948 told Khalidi “there was no rape,” but Khalidi replied, “We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews.” Nusseibeh told the BBC 50 years later, “This was our biggest mistake. We did not realize how our people would react. As soon as they heard that women had been raped at Deir Yassin, Palestinians fled in terror.” 58
The Jewish Agency, upon learning of the attack, immediately expressed its “horror and disgust.” It also sent a letter expressing the Agency’s shock and disapproval to Transjordan’s King Abdullah.
Arab radio stations broadcast accounts of what happened over the days and weeks that followed and the Arab Higher Committee hoped exaggerated reports about a “massacre” at Deir Yassin would shock the population of the Arab countries into bringing pressure on their governments to intervene in Palestine. Instead, the immediate impact was to stimulate a new Palestinian exodus.
Just four days after the reports from Deir Yassin were published, an Arab force ambushed a Jewish convoy on the way to Hadassah Hospital, killing 77 Jews, including doctors, nurses, patients, and the director of the hospital. Another 23 people were injured. This premeditated massacre attracted little attention and is never mentioned by those who are quick to bring up Deir Yassin. Moreover, despite attacks such as this against the Jewish community in Palestine, in which more than 500 Jews were killed in the first four months after the partition decision alone, Jews did not flee.
The Palestinians knew, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, the Jews were not trying to annihilate them; otherwise, they would not have been allowed to evacuate Tiberias, Haifa or any of the other towns captured by the Jews. Moreover, the Palestinians could find sanctuary in nearby states. The Jews, however, had no place to run had they wanted to. They were willing to fight to the death for their country. It came to that for many, because the Arabs were interested in annihilating the Jews, as Secretary-General of the Arab League Abd Al-Rahman Azzam Pasha made clear in an interview with an Egyptian newspaper (October 11, 1947): “Personally, I hope that the Jews will not force this war upon us, because it will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.” 59
References to Deir Yassin have remained a staple of anti-Israel propaganda for decades because the incident was unique.
MYTH
“Israel refused to allow Palestinians to return to their homes so Jews could steal their property.”
FACT
Israel could not simply agree to allow all Palestinians to return, but consistently sought a solution to the refugee problem. Israel’s position was expressed by David Ben-Gurion (August 1, 1948):
When the Arab states are ready to conclude a peace treaty with Israel this question will come up for constructive solution as part of the general settlement, and with due regard to our counter-claims in respect of the destruction of Jewish life and property, the long-term interest of the Jewish and Arab populations, the stability of the State of Israel and the durability of the basis of peace between it and its neighbors, the actual position and fate of the Jewish communities in the Arab countries, the responsibilities of the Arab governments for their war of aggression and their liability for reparation, will all be relevant in the question whether, to what extent, and under what conditions, the former Arab residents of the territory of Israel should be allowed to return. 60
The Israeli government was not indifferent to the plight of the refugees; an ordinance was passed creating a Custodian of Abandoned Property “to prevent unlawful occupation of empty houses and business premises, to administer ownerless property, and also to secure tilling of deserted fields, and save the crops. . . .” 61
The implied danger of repatriation did not prevent Israel from allowing some refugees to return and offering to take back a substantial number as a condition for signing a peace treaty. In 1949, Israel offered to allow families that had been separated during the war to return, to release refugee accounts frozen in Israeli banks (eventually released in 1953), to pay compensation for abandoned lands and to repatriate 100,000 refugees. 62
The Arabs rejected all the Israeli compromises. They were unwilling to take any action that might be construed as recognition of Israel. They made repatriation a precondition for negotiations, something Israel rejected. The result was the confinement of the refugees in camps.
Despite the position taken by the Arab states, Israel did release the Arab refugees’ blocked bank accounts, which totaled more than $10 million, paid thousands of claimants cash compensation and granted thousands of acres as alternative holdings.
MYTH
“UN resolutions call for Israel to repatriate all Palestinian refugees.”
FACT
The United Nations took up the refugee issue and adopted Resolution 194 on December 11, 1948. This called upon the Arab states and Israel to resolve all outstanding issues through negotiations either directly, or with the help of the Palestine Conciliation Commission established by this resolution. Furthermore, Point 11 resolves:
that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which under principles of international law or in equity should be made good by Governments or authorities responsible. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of refugees and payment of compensation . . . (emphasis added).
The emphasized words demonstrate that the UN recognized that Israel could not be expected to repatriate a hostile population that might endanger its security. The solution to the problem, like all previous refugee problems, would require at least some Palestinians to be resettled in Arab lands. Furthermore, the resolution uses the word “should” instead of “shall,” which, in legal terms, is not mandatory language.
The resolution met most of Israel’s concerns regarding the refugees, whom they regarded as a potential fifth-column if allowed to return unconditionally. The Israelis considered the settlement of the refugee issue a negotiable part of an overall peace settlement. As President Chaim Weizmann explained: “We are anxious to help such resettlement provided that real peace is established and the Arab states do their part of the job. The solution of the Arab problem can be achieved only through an all-around Middle East development scheme, toward which the United Nations, the Arab states and Israel will make their respective contributions.” 63
“The Palestinian demand for the ‘right of return’ is totally unrealistic and would have to be solved by means of financial compensation and resettlement in Arab countries.”
— Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak 64
At the time the Israelis did not expect the refugees to be a major issue; they thought the Arab states would resettle the majority and some compromise on the remainder could be worked out in the context of an overall settlement. The Arabs were no more willing to compromise in 1949, however, than they had been in 1947. In fact, they unanimously rejected the UN resolution.
The UN discussions on refugees had begun in the summer of 1948, before Israel had completed its military victory; consequently, the Arabs still believed they could win the war and allow the refugees to return triumphant. The Arab position was expressed by Emile Ghoury, the Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee:
It is inconceivable that the refugees should be sent back to their homes while they are occupied by the Jews, as the latter would hold them as hostages and maltreat them. The very proposal is an evasion of responsibility by those responsible. It will serve as a first step towards Arab recognition of the State of Israel and partition. 65
The Arabs demanded that the United Nations assert the “right” of the Palestinians to return to their homes, and were unwilling to accept anything less until after their defeat had become obvious. The Arabs then reinterpreted Resolution 194 as granting the refugees the absolute right of repatriation and have demanded that Israel accept this interpretation ever since. Regardless of the interpretation, 194, like other General Assembly resolutions, is not legally binding.
MYTH
“Palestinians who wanted to return to their homes posed no danger to Israeli security.”
FACT
When plans for setting up a state were made in early 1948, Jewish leaders in Palestine expected the new nation to include a significant Arab population. From the Israeli perspective, the refugees had been given an opportunity to stay in their homes and be a part of the new state. Approximately 160,000 Arabs had chosen to do so. To repatriate those who had fled would be, in the words of Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, “suicidal folly.” 66
In the Arab world, the refugees were viewed as a potential fifth-column within Israel. As one Lebanese paper wrote:
The return of the refugees should create a large Arab majority that would serve as the most effective means of reviving the Arab character of Palestine, while forming a powerful fifth-column for the day of revenge and reckoning. 67
The Arabs believed the return of the refugees would virtually guarantee the destruction of Israel, a sentiment expressed by Egyptian Foreign Minister Muhammad Salah al-Din:
It is well-known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters of the Homeland and not as slaves. With a greater clarity, they mean the liquidation of the State of Israel. 68
The plight of the refugees remained unchanged after the Suez War. In fact, even the rhetoric stayed the same. In 1957, the Refugee Conference at Homs, Syria, passed a resolution stating:
Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees’ right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason. 69
A parallel can be drawn to the time of the American Revolution, during which many colonists who were loyal to England fled to Canada. The British wanted the newly formed republic to allow the loyalists to return to claim their property. Benjamin Franklin rejected this suggestion in a letter to Richard Oswald, the British negotiator, dated November 26, 1782:
Your ministers require that we should receive again into our bosom those who have been our bitterest enemies and restore their properties who have destroyed ours: and this while the wounds they have given us are still bleeding! 70
MYTH
“The Palestinian refugees were ignored by an uncaring world.”
FACT
The General Assembly voted on November 19, 1948, to establish the United Nations Relief For Palestinian Refugees (UNRPR) to dispense aid to the refugees. Since then, more than 150 resolutions have been adopted that refer to Palestinian refugees, roughly 17 percent of all the resolutions on the conflict. 71
The UNRPR was replaced by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on December 8, 1949. UNRWA was designed to continue the relief program initiated by the UNRPR, substitute public works for direct relief and promote economic development. The proponents of the plan envisioned that direct relief would be almost completely replaced by public works, with the remaining assistance provided by the Arab governments.
UNRWA had little chance of success, however, because it sought to solve a political problem using an economic approach. By the mid-1950s, it was evident neither the refugees nor the Arab states were prepared to cooperate on the large-scale development projects originally foreseen by the Agency as a means of alleviating the Palestinians’ situation. The Arab governments, and the refugees themselves, were unwilling to contribute to any plan that could be interpreted as fostering resettlement. They preferred to cling to their interpretation of Resolution 194, which they believed would eventually result in repatriation.
Palestinian Refugees in UNRWA Camps (January 2013) 72
Field of Operations
Official Camps
Registered Refugees
Registered Refugees in Camps
Jordan
10
2,034,641
369,949
Lebanon
12
441,543
238,528
Syria
9
499,189
159,303
West Bank
19
741,409
216,403
Gaza Strip
8
1,203,135
540,515
Agency Total
58
4,919,917
1,524,698
MYTH
“The Arab states have provided most of the funds for helping the Palestinian refugees.”
FACT
While Jewish refugees from Arab countries received no international assistance, Palestinians received millions of dollars through UNRWA. Initially, the United States contributed $25 million and Israel nearly $3 million. The total Arab pledges amounted to approximately $600,000. For the first 20 years, the United States provided more than two-thirds of the funds, while the Arab states contributed a tiny fraction.
For many years, Israel donated more funds to UNRWA than most Arab states. The Saudis did not match Israel’s contribution until 1973; Kuwait and Libya, not until 1980. After transferring responsibility for virtually the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority, Israel no longer controlled any refugee camps and in 1997 ceased contributing to UNRWA.
In 2010, the United States donated $228 million (approximately 20 percent) of UNRWA’s more than $1.23 billion cash budget. Since 1950, the U.S. has contributed more than $4 billion, making it by far the largest donor. Despite their rhetorical support for the Palestinians, only two Arab countries are among UNRWA’s top 10 donors, Nine other Arab states made nominal contributions. Interestingly, the total 2011 budget for the UN High Committee on Refugees (UNHCR), which handles all the world’s non-Palestinian refugees, is only $2.78 billion. 73
In addition to receiving annual funding from UNRWA for the refugees, the PA has received billions of dollars in international aid, most of which has come from Europe, the United States and other countries outside the region.
Given the amount of aid (approximately $1.45 billion in 2009) the PA has received from the international community, it is shocking that more than half a million Palestinians under PA control are being forced by their own leaders to remain in squalid camps. The PA has failed to build a single house to allow even one family to move out of a refugee camp into permanent housing. In the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians had insisted before the disengagement that Israel demolish all the homes of the Jewish settlers so they could build high-rise apartment buildings for refugees. Six years later, not a single brick had been laid.
MYTH
“The Arab states have always welcomed the Palestinians.”
FACT
No one expected the refugee problem to persist after the 1948 war. John Blandford Jr., the Director of UNRWA, wrote in his report on November 29, 1951, that he expected the Arab governments to assume responsibility for relief by July 1952. Moreover, Blandford stressed the need to end relief operations: “Sustained relief operations inevitably contain the germ of human deterioration.” 74 In 1952, the UNRWA set up a fund of $200 million to provide homes and jobs for the refugees, but it went untouched.
Meanwhile, Jordan was the only Arab country to welcome the Palestinians and grant some citizenship (Gazans were excluded). King Abdullah considered the Palestinian Arabs and Jordanians one people. By 1950, he annexed the West Bank and forbade the use of the term Palestine in official documents. 75 In 2004, Jordan began revoking the citizenship of Palestinians who do not have the Israeli permits that are necessary to reside in the West Bank.76
Although demographic figures indicated ample room for settlement existed in Syria, Damascus refused to consider accepting any refugees, except those who might refuse repatriation. Syria also declined to resettle 85,000 refugees in 1952–54, though it had been offered international funds to pay for the project. Iraq was also expected to accept a large number of refugees, but proved unwilling. Likewise, Lebanon insisted it had no room for the Palestinians.
After the 1948 war, Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and its more than 200,000 inhabitants, but refused to allow the Palestinians into Egypt or permit them to move elsewhere. Saudi Arabian radio compared Egypt’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza to Hitler’s rule in occupied Europe. 77
Little has changed in succeeding years. Arab governments have frequently offered jobs, housing, land and other benefits to Arabs and non-Arabs, excluding Palestinians. For example, Saudi Arabia chose not to use unemployed Palestinian refugees to alleviate its labor shortage in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Instead, thousands of South Koreans and other Asians were recruited to fill jobs.
The situation grew even worse in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. Kuwait, which employed large numbers of Palestinians but denied them citizenship, expelled more than 300,000 Palestinians. “If people pose a security threat, as a sovereign country we have the right to exclude anyone we don’t want,” said Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States, Saud Nasir Al-Sabah. 79
“The Arab States do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”
— Sir Alexander Galloway
former head of UNRWA in Jordan (April 1952) 78
Today, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon do not have social and civil rights, and have very limited access to public health or educational facilities. The majority relies entirely on UNRWA as the sole provider of education, health, and relief and social services. Considered foreigners, Palestinian refugees are prohibited by law from working in more than 70 trades and professions.80
The Palestinian refugees held the UN responsible for ameliorating their condition; nevertheless, many Palestinians were unhappy with the treatment they were receiving from their Arab brethren. Some, like Palestinian nationalist leader Musa Alami were incredulous: “It is shameful that the Arab governments should prevent the Arab refugees from working in their countries and shut the doors in their faces and imprison them in camps.” 81 Most refugees, however, focused their discontentment on “the Zionists,” whom they blamed for their predicament rather than the vanquished Arab armies.
“I briefly visited the Balata refugee camp with its 20,000 residents. The camp is inside the West Bank city of Nablus—that is, within the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (PA) . . . Balata’s children, like the children in similar camps in Gaza and neighboring Arab countries, are nurtured on the myth that someday soon they will return in triumph to their ancestors’ homes by the Mediterranean Sea. While awaiting redemption, Balata’s residents are prohibited, by the Palestinian Authority, from building homes outside the camp’s official boundaries.”
— Sol Stern 82
MYTH
“Millions of Palestinians are confined by Israel to refugee camps.”
FACT
By 2011, the number of Palestinian refugees on UNRWA rolls had risen to nearly five million, several times the number that left Palestine in 1948. One-third of the registered Palestine refugees, about 5 million, live in 58 recognized refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The other two-thirds of the registered refugees live in and around the cities and towns of the host countries, and in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, often in the environs of official camps. 83
During the years that Israel controlled the Gaza Strip, a consistent effort was made to get the Palestinians into permanent housing. The Palestinians opposed the idea because the frustrated and bitter inhabitants of the camps provided the various terrorist factions with their manpower. Moreover, the Arab states routinely pushed for the adoption of UN resolutions demanding that Israel desist from the removal of Palestinian refugees from camps in Gaza and the West Bank. 84 They preferred to keep the Palestinians as symbols of Israeli “oppression.”
Journalist Netty Gross visited Gaza and asked an official why the camps there hadn’t been dismantled. She was told the Palestinian Authority had made a “political decision” not to do anything for the more than 650,000 Palestinians living in the camps until the final-status talks with Israel took place.85
The Palestinians have received billions of dollars in international aid since 1993, but have not moved the refugees into permanent housing. The refugees who remain in camps are there only because the host Arab governments and the Palestinian Authority keep them there.
“If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.”
— Gamal Nasser86
MYTH
“The Palestinians are the only refugee population barred from returning to their homes.”
FACT
After World War II, 12.5 million Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia were expelled and allowed to take only those possessions they could carry. They received no compensation for confiscated property. World War II’s effects on Poland’s boundaries and population were considered “accomplished facts” that could not be reversed after the war. No one in Germany petitions today for the right of these millions of deportees and their children to return to the countries they were expelled from despite the fact that they and their ancestors had lived in those places for hundreds of years.
Another country seriously affected by World War II was Finland, which was forced to give up almost one-eighth of its land and absorb more than 400,000 refugees (11 percent of the nation’s population) from the Soviet Union. Unlike Israel, these were the losers of the war. There was no aid for their resettlement.
Perhaps an even better analogy can be seen in Turkey’s integration of 150,000 Turkish refugees from Bulgaria in 1950. The difference between the Turks’ handling of their refugees and the Arab states’ treatment of the Palestinians was the attitude of the respective governments. As the Des Moines Register noted:
Turkey has had a bigger refugee problem than either Syria or Lebanon and almost as big as Egypt has. . . . But you seldom hear about them because the Turks have done such a good job of resettling them. . . . The big difference is in spirit. The Turks, reluctant as they were to take on the burden, accepted it as a responsibility and set to work to clean it up as fast as possible. 87
Had the Arab states wanted to alleviate the refugees’ suffering, they could easily have adopted an attitude similar to Turkey’s.
Another massive population transfer resulted from the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The eight million Hindus who fled Pakistan and the six million Muslims who left India were afraid of becoming a minority in their respective countries. Like the Palestinians, these people wanted to avoid being caught in the middle of the violence that engulfed their nations. In contrast to the Arab-Israeli conflict, however, the exchange of populations was considered the best solution to the problem of communal relations within the two states. Despite the enormous number of refugees and the relative poverty of the two nations involved, no special international relief organizations were established to aid them in resettlement.
“. . . if there were a Palestinian state, why would its leaders want their potential citizens to be repatriated to another state? From a nation-building perspective it makes no sense. In fact, the original discussions about repatriation took place at a time that there was no hope of a Palestinian state. With the possibility of that state emerging, the Palestinians must decide if they want to view themselves as a legitimate state or if it is more important for them to keep their self-defined status as oppressed, stateless refugees. They really can’t be both.”
— Fredelle Spiegel 88
MYTH
“Israel expelled more Palestinians in 1967.”
FACT
After ignoring Israeli warnings to stay out of the war, Jordan’s King Hussein launched an attack on Jerusalem, Israel’s capital. UNRWA estimated that during the fighting 175,000 of its registrants fled for a second time and approximately 350,000 fled for the first time. About 200,000 moved to Jordan, 115,000 to Syria and approximately 35,000 left Sinai for Egypt. Most of the Arabs who left came from the West Bank.
Israel allowed some West Bank Arabs to return. In 1967, more than 9,000 families were reunited and, by 1971, Israel had readmitted 40,000 refugees. By contrast, in July 1968, Jordan prohibited people intending to remain in the East Bank from emigrating from the West Bank and Gaza. 89
When the Security Council empowered UN Secretary-General U Thant to send a representative to inquire into the welfare of civilians in the wake of the war, he instructed the mission to investigate the treatment of Jewish minorities in Arab countries, as well as Arabs in Israeli-occupied territory. Syria, Iraq and Egypt refused to permit the UN representative to carry out his investigation. 90
“The demand that the refugees be returned to Israeli territory must be rejected, because if that were to happen, there would be two Palestinian states and no state at all for the Jewish people.”
— Amos Oz 91
MYTH
“All Palestinian refugees must be given the option to return to their homes.”
FACT
As Secretary of State John Kerry attempts to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has remained unyielding, and rejected most of Kerry’s ideas for advancing the peace process. Worse, he has backtracked on previous positions. During the negotiations, Palestinian intermediaries reportedly were nearing a compromise with Israel over allowing some number of refugees. (Israel said it would take 80,000 to live in Israel and the Palestinians wanted 200,000).
Abbas, however, subsequently set back the talks by declaring that all refugees should be allowed the choice of whether to live in Israel or Palestine.
According to the UN, more than five million Palestinians are refugees. Does Israel have any obligation to take in some or all of those people?
The current Israeli population is approximately 8 million, of which 6,037,700 are Jews. If every Palestinian refugee was allowed to move to Israel, the population would exceed 13 million and the Jewish proportion would shrink from 75% to 46%. The Jews would be a minority in their own country, the very situation they fought to avoid in 1948, and which the UN expressly ruled out in deciding on a partition of Palestine.
It is often forgotten that most Palestinians now live in historic Palestine, which is an area including the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. When Palestinians demand to return to Palestine they are referring not just to the area, but to the houses they lived in prior to 1948. These homes are either gone or inhabited now.
Even respected Palestinian leaders acknowledge that it is a mistake to insist that millions of refugees return to Israel. Palestinian intellectual Sari Nusseibeh, for example, said the refugees should be resettled in a future Palestinian state, “not in a way that would undermine the existence of the State of Israel as a predominantly Jewish state. Otherwise, what does a two-state solution mean?” 92 In leaked cables from the Palestinian negotiating team, PA President Mahmoud Abbas admitted this as well. “On numbers of refugees,” he said, “it is illogical to ask Israel to take 5 million, or indeed 1 million—that would mean the end of Israel.” 93
In the context of a peace settlement, Israel has offered to accept some refugees, as Ben-Gurion said he would do more than 50 years ago. If and when a Palestinian state is created, the refugees should be allowed to move there; however, the Palestinian leadership has shown little interest in absorbing its own people and still believes it can weaken, if not destroy Israel, by overwhelming the country with refugees.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
Of course the Bible is full of shit. Whoever claimed it wasn’t? Point is, however, that the OT is not used by anyone in the 21st century to justify murdering innocents
WRoNG ! WeONG ! WRONG
Literalist used the bible to justify just about everything, one of the most talk about topics in the 21st century has to deal with homosexual rights, even the catholic church has reached out in effort to change some of their theological views on homosexuals most of which where formed through bible principles and practices and and has been taught in the 21st century ,there are many others to do with woman’s right . all which fell under the umbrella of human rights violations in the 21st century, what is there to prove , but then again whether it is BC 1 or 21st century does it give anyone a reprieve from those injustices which were committed in the in the name of god we keep circling the same ole wagon and coming back at the starting point where it began WRONG and will end wrong,
btw u keep revering me to zoe comment, i have not read his comments anyhow my comments on this subject were self appraised are not intended to influence or take away from what others may say
But ac you’re getting dafter and dafter….murdering innocents. Of course we know the nonsense perpetrated in the name of God by anti-gay people. And yes, you can quote Paul to justify repressing women. But it’s a question of scale. I mentioned killing innocents and multiple spouses. Find me where either is justified and practised in biblical terms and then cf what is perpetrated in the name of Islam. There is simply NO comparison.
As for not reading Zoe…well, OK it may just be a headache. But the first post above dispels the myths about partition. To say “my comments were self-appraised” amounts to “I shall compose if it suits my purpose”.
Mistablack your post oct.25,2014 I do not have to defend Jesus, because one day your knee shall bow, and your tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the father.
ALLAH OF ISLAM IS DEFINITELY NOT THE GOD OF THE BIBLE.
LET’S GET BACK TO THE SUBJECT
This notion that Apartheid is subjective to Israeli, lest we the older people in our 60’70’s and 8o’s forget that Barbados had and still have it own APARTHEID POLICY grounded in races and social economics.
No later than the 1960’s that Black skin could not work in Broad Street, children of that same colour could not attend
QUEEN COLLEGE
LODGE
ST GABRIEL’S
ST WINIFREDS
THE URSULINE CONVENT
YACHT CLUB
I am sure if you are a Barbadian your parents can add to the list
This behavior become a breeding ground for underprivileged white from Europe, Canada, and the USA to migrate to Barbados, and take a position of privilege, having overwork, underpaid, maids, gardeners, etc
these people were very disrespectful to the workers, free access to places were dark skin could not enter. Belleville even had a curfew. ALL THE EDUCATION YOU HAVE GET SOME COMMON SENSE AND DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH ON APARTHEID IN BARBADOS, AND LEAVE ISRAELI ALONE, YOU ARE WHAT SPARROW CALLED A FOOL. COME OUT OF ISLAM
ross again i repeat wrong is wrong there is no little sin or big sin,maybe you are the daft one trying to fly under the radar making a preferential judgement call in order to justify a wrong done by another and labeling it as lesser of the two evils. then again you have subjected and stigmatized a mass of people to a life of living hell because of a few extremist, this kind of anti social prejudicial behaviuor should not be tolerated in the 21st century is an example why mankind is continues to reap what we sow,
@zoe
What an imbecilic post! Wouldn’t a link to that contrived diatribe been enough? A concocted saga to make it a little easier, the eradication of a people from their land, THIEVES with a complicated story!
ac – the self-confessed fiddler
‘Flying under the radar”
Wrong fella. You’re thinking about Amused. “This anti-social prejudicial behavior should not be tolerated”. Now rest the hole in your head and give mankind a chance.
Modern Israel was brought about by atheist zionists, socialists, terror groups like the Haganah, Irgun and Stern gangs. One of their infamous acts was the blowing up of the King David Hotel resulting in 92 killed and 58 wounded which included Jews. Acts like this, of sheer brutality and terror made heroes of Chief terrorists like David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and later, Ariel Sharon in god’s chosen state. Begin headed Irgun, and Shamir led the Stern Gang.in the zionist Israeli state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
US State Department and British records document more than five hundred violent or terrorist incidents and massacres against Palestinians and the British occupation between 1939 and 1948 with the sole purpose of driving them from the land.
http://iamthewitness.com/doc/Bunche.Report.on.Zionist.Terrorism.in.the.Near.East.htm
Israel(god’s chosen) is awash of racism, prostitution, child prostitution, trafficking women from slavic countries as sex slaves, ethnic caste system, xenophobia and surreptitious birth control of the Black population.(Now that would make Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor blush)
This short video typifies the cruelty of the chosen:
A place like this would more appeal to the christian/Jewish devil than their god.
@Bimlady
You pointed out that Barbados had its own problems with a form??? of apartheid. There is no comparison to the horrors of Apartheid South Africa, so let’s not return to that idiocy. The zionist state of Israel refused to sever ties with that repugnant state that institutionalized racism as a form of governing.
As god’s chosen nation does Israel get more allowances or latitude than goy nations?
Is god’s covenant unilateral, requiring no reciprocal actions of “righteous” conduct beyond circumcision of the zionist state?
As it relate to the ALLAH of Islam, I believe their concept of ALLAH is much closer to the Jews than your concept of god. Like the Jews they consider your concept of the god-head as polytheistic. The Blood, 3 in 1, 1 in 3. Jesus, the son, the god and the spirit is believe by Jews to be paganism.
And btw Jesus’ mother tongue was Aramaic and he said Alah pronounce Awlah with is identical to the pronunciation of the Arabic ALLAH. So you have to take your dislike for ALLAH up with Jesus.