Judeosphere
18 March '10
Recently, Andrew Sullivan stirred-up a controversy in the blogosphere when he posted the map on his site. Sullivan’s “reliable source” for the map was blogger/pseudo-academic Juan Cole—a guy who once claimed that Israel only wages war in the summertime, because that’s when American and European universities, the “primary nodes of popular opposition,” are closed down. (I mean, let’s face it, nothing strikes fear into the heart of the IDF like the prospect of thousands of anthropology undergrads waving “We are Hezbollah!” signs.)
Anyway, I feel that Sullivan inadvertently performed a public service: By creating a controversy over the map, he encouraged long-overdue public scrutiny. Enter the Economist, which gives the map a royal fisking:
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90% of the land in Mandate Palestine was owned by the British government. This passed onto Israel when it became a state in 1948. Very little land in Mandate Palestine was privately owned - whether by the Jews or the Arabs and this situation remains true today.
ReplyDeleteI always laugh at that map. For anyone who is honest and has actually been to Israel they realize most of it is barren rocks and not inhabited by anyone, save for a few bedouins with some goats and tin shacks.
ReplyDeleteThis is a more appropriate map. I guess nobody wants to acknowledge that Israel has given back MOST of the land it captured in purely defensive battles:
http://i43.tinypic.com/i2o7dw.jpg