From time immemorial? Who were the 1948 Arab refugees? - by Yoram Ettinger

...Thus, contrary to the myth of the 1948 Arab refugees -- aiming to delegitimize Israel -- Arabs have not been in the land of Israel from time immemorial; no Palestinian people was ever robbed of its land; there is no basis for an Arab "claim of return"; and most of the 320,000 Arab refugees -- who were created by the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel and their own collaboration with the invasion -- were recent immigrants and foreign workers (from neighboring Arab countries) in the land of Israel.

Yoram Ettinger..
Israel Hayom..
03 June '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16307

Contrary to conventional "wisdom," most Arabs in British Mandate Palestine -- and most of the 320,000 1948 Arab refugees -- were migrant workers and descendants of 1831-1947 Muslim immigrants from across the Arab world. At the time, Britain enticed Arab immigration and blocked Jewish immigration.

Thus, between 1880 and 1919, Haifa's Arab population surged from 6,000 to 80,000, mostly due to migrant workers. The eruption of World War II accelerated the demand for Arab manpower by the British Mandate's military and its civilian authorities.

Moreover, Arab migrant workers were imported by the Ottoman Empire, and then by the British Mandate, to work on major civilian and military infrastructure projects. Legal and illegal Arab migrants were also attracted by economic growth generated by the Jewish community starting in 1882.

According to a 1937 report by the British Peel Commission (featured in the ground-breaking book "Palestine Betrayed" by Professor Efraim Karsh), "during 1922 through 1931, the increase of Arab population in the mixed-towns of Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem was 86%, 62% and 37% respectively, while in purely Arab towns such as Nablus and Hebron it was only 7% and a decrease of 2% in Gaza."

Irrespective of occasional Arab emigration from British Mandate Palestine -- due to intra-Arab terrorism, which has been an endemic feature in the Middle East -- the substantial wave of Arab immigration between 1831 and 1947 triggered dramatic growth of the Arab populations in Jaffa (17 times), Haifa (12 times) and Ramla (5 times).

According to Joan Peters' momentous book "From Time Immemorial": "The 1931 census [documented] at least 23 different languages in use by Muslims plus an additional 28 in use by Christian Arabs -- a total of 51 languages. The non-Jews in Palestine listed as their birthplaces at least 24 different countries."

In 1917, the "Arab" population of Jaffa included at least 25 nationalities, mostly Egyptians, but also Syrians, Yemenites, Persians, Afghanis, Indians and Baluchis. The British Palestine Exploration Fund documented a proliferation of Egyptian neighborhoods in the Jaffa area: Abu Kabir, Sumeil, Sheikh Munis, Salame, Fejja, etc. Hundreds of Egyptian families also settled in the inland, in Arara, Kafr Qasim‎, Tayibe and Qalansawe‎.

The 1831-1840 conquest of the land of Israel by Egypt's Mohammed Ali was solidified by a flow of Egyptian and Sudanese migrants settling between Gaza in the south, Tulkarem in the center and the Hula Valley in the north. They followed in the footsteps of thousands of Egyptian draft dodgers who fled Egypt before 1831 and settled in Acre.

In 1865, the British traveler H.B. Tristram, in "The Land of Israel: A Journal of Travels in Palestine," documented Egyptian migrants in the Beit Shean Valley, Acre, Hadera, Netanya and Jaffa.

According to the August 12, 1934 issue of the Syrian daily La Syrie, "30,000-36,000 Syrian migrants, from the Hauran region, entered Palestine during the last few months alone." The role model of Hamas terrorism, Izzedine al-Qassam, who terrorized Jews in British Mandate Palestine, was Syrian, as was Fawzi al-Qawuqji, the chief Arab terrorist in British Mandate Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s.

Does Anyone Want To Really Help Refugees?

...Instead of throwing good money after bad, let’s treat the billions funneled to the P.A. as a long-term option that has, like Oslo, just expired. We’ve much more deserving recipients waiting on deck in Yarmouk, floating on dinghies in the Aegean, crowding train cars in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. True champions of progressive ideals should love everything about this plan: This is what a righteous redistribution of wealth truly looks like.

Liel Leibovitz..
Tablet Magazine..
24 September '15..

Forget the pope: The only truly important dignitary visiting New York for the United Nations General Assembly this week is Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. That’s because Abbas, unlike most of his powerful peers, may actually hold the key to world peace.

Don’t laugh. If the strong signals coming from the rais’ office are to be believed, Abbas is likely to take the stage next Wednesday and declare the Oslo Accords dead. This, to all but a handful of sentimentalists, nearly all of whom live in Tel Aviv, is a major opportunity. If Abbas truly believes the age of Oslo to be over, there’s a good argument to be made that he ought to give back every shekel his people have received in international aid for the past 21 years.

If this strikes you as ridiculous or cruel, take a moment to revisit the financial records. That is, if you can find them: In 2013, the European Court of Auditors, an independent E.U. regulatory body set up to monitor the union’s income and spending, discovered that $2.64 billion of European aid investment in the West Bank and Gaza between 2008 and 2012 alone was squandered—lost to mismanagement and corruption. Look back further, to Oslo’s early, euphoric days, and you’ll discover many more billions you just can’t find.

Where did all the money go? Recent leaked documents give two anecdotally instructive looks into the lifestyles of the Palestinian rich and famous, paid for by the kindness of strangers. In one instance, Majdi al-Khaldi, a close Abbas adviser, asked Bahrain’s foreign minister for $4 million to pay for the construction of a luxury gated community for top P.A. officials. This, al-Khaldi wrote, was necessary in order to resist nearby settlements, even though there were no settlements nearby. For Nazmi Muhanna, the general director of the Palestinian Crossing and Borders Authority, the political was personal: He syphoned off nearly $10,000 to send his daughter to a fancy private school in Jordan. Still, he was better than the former leader of Fatah in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, who celebrated the nuptials of his son in Cairo earlier this summer with a modest party that cost $2 million, including an Oscar de la Renta gown inlaid with hundreds of jewels and pearls. Even if you take into account the economic hardships of a society struggling against foreign military presence in its midst, the P.A. has still received, to use a technical term for a moment, oodles of cash, several Marshall Plans’ worth, and has no schools, no roads, and no other forms of infrastructure to show for it. The cash spent on fancy homes and bejeweled designer dresses is now lost to us, but if we do our due diligence, it’s possible we’ll still find much of the foreign money piled, undisturbed, in Swiss bank accounts belonging to Abbas and company.

Creating Refugees Who Insist on the Impossible, and Those Who Encourage Them

...the answer to their problems is not more money for UNRWA and its employees nor for a Palestinian Authority that has no interest in helping them. The only answer is the abolition of UNRWA and its replacement by an agency dedicated to giving Palestinians the same resettlement help other refugees have received. Until that happens, the refugees—still the driving force of Palestinian politics—will ensure peace with Israel can never be achieved.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
21 January '14..

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has a budget problem, and as a result its workers are on strike. As the New York Times reports, that’s bad news for Palestinian refugees in the West Bank who depend on the UN agency for food, services, and employment. But the controversy over the impact of the strike and the refugees’ demands for the Palestinian Authority to step in and pick up where the UN left off doesn’t address the heart of their problem. Instead of arguing over who should take care of them, the Palestinians should be seeking the same resolution that has successfully solved every other refugee problem since the Second World War: resettlement. Instead, they have been allowed to languish in camps to keep the war against Israel alive, doing far more injury to themselves than they have ever done to the Israelis.

The curious thing about the dispute between the refugees and the PA is that while the former demand that the corrupt Palestinian government take care of them while UNRWA is on strike, they are resolutely against being governed by it. Doing so would mean giving up their special status as refugees and taking up the more prosaic identity of Palestinian Arabs living on the territory of the putative independent Palestinian state that, while already recognized by some governments, doesn’t yet exist. Leaving the camps would mean a better life, either in the West Bank or elsewhere. But it would also entail giving up their precious fiction that the descendants of the Arabs who fled the land of what is now Israel will someday return to it and thus erase the Jewish state. Rather than do that, they prefer to stay where they are, living in poverty and condemning each subsequent generation to a futile and destructive quest that makes any peace agreement impossible. Instead of demanding more funding for UNRWA in order to continue to maintain the shaky welfare state operating in the West Bank, Gaza, and other refugee camps around the region, those who actually care about the welfare of the Palestinians should advocate instead for its dissolution.

(Video) Forty-five Seconds of Enlightenment

...To those that make such claims, behind a mask of morality, we should ask: Why should anyone listen to pontifications of people who act as if they know all, but know hardly at all?

Israel Thrives..
by oldschooltwentysix..
07 January '14..

Courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch, this video is for those that claim that all Palestinian Arab refugees, including descendants, have a human right to return to Israel because they were ethnically cleansed from their homes by Jews.



To those that make such claims, behind a mask of morality, we should ask: Why should anyone listen to pontifications of people who act as if they know all, but know hardly at all?

(cross-posted at oldschooltwentysix)

Israel Thrives is a non-partisan political blog for people who care about Israel and want an end to the Arab-Muslim war against the Jews in the Middle East. Mike Lumish, PhD, editor. - mike.lumish@gmail.com - Doodad, Geoffff, Jay in Philadelphia, Oldschooltwentysix, and Empress Trudy, contributors.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out! 
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Can you imagine? Telegraph’s Mid-East reporter grossly inflates the number of Palestinian refugees

...Robert Tait is the Telegraph’s Middle East correspondent, and you’d therefore expect him to have some familiarity with such statistical and historical details

Adam Levick..
CiF Watch..
20 August '13..

The Arab-Israeli War of 1948-49 produced around 711,000 Palestinian Arab refugees, according to official records. (To provide some context to this figure, there were roughly 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries between 1948 and the early 1970s.)

The relevant UN General Assembly document from Oct. 23, 1950 states the following about the Palestinian refugee problem:

The estimate of the statistical expert, which the Committee believes to be as accurate as circumstances permit, indicates that the refugees from Israel-controlled territory amount to approximately 711,000.

While it is estimated that somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 Palestinian Arabs, out of this original refugee population, are still alive today, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) allows the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren (ad infinitum) of actual refugees to continue to inherit their ancestor’s status. So, based on this bizarre formula, there are officially 4.9 million Palestinians who are eligible for “refugee” benefits.

Robert Tait is the Telegraph’s Middle East correspondent, and you’d therefore expect him to have some familiarity with such statistical and historical details.

(Continue)

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Understanding how the Jews felt in 1948 about the Arabs who fled.

...There was sadness that day; the sadness of a deserted village; of destruction; of fellahin torn from their field. But sadness was hardly the predominant emotion. We'd have been saints or liars if we said so. The predominating emotion was relief. Only here on the spot could we realize the horrible potentialities of this “delicate cameo” which had been sniping at us from a height...Our losses were not as the wishful thinking of some Arabs caused them to write then, "Oh Jewish mothers, if you could see the bodies of hundreds of your sons strewn in pieces on the rocks around Zer'in" etc. -— but the number was high for the subordination of a small village whose strength lay in her height.

Elder of Ziyon..
07 May '13..

A couple of days ago a group of Palestinian Arabs visited the ruins of an Arab town that was destroyed in the War of Independence, Zer'in. It was written up in an Israeli Arab newspaper, Panorama.

The article notes that participants in the tour stopped to gaze at ruins of houses demolished and the remaining ruins, especially the mosque and the school and the one house which still exists, "to witness the history of this stricken village."

A writer for the Palestine Post in 1948, Dorothy Bar-Adon, lived near Zer'in. She wrote about it a couple of times - how the snipers from the village would take potshots at the Jews, how the Iraqis took over the village and how the Jews had to counterattack to be able to live. I have mentioned an excellent article of hers beforehand and reproduced it.

This is the complete text version. It is truly a must-read to understand how the Jews felt in 1948 about the Arabs who fled.

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.

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Day of rejoicing, day of self-inflicted disaster

All over the world, tens of millions of refugees have been transferred and resettled in new places, but the Palestinian refugee camps still exist, a reminder of the destruction. Not their destruction, but the hope of ours. Indeed, the day of our rejoicing was the day of their disaster.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
19 April '13..

1. Yet again we are being told the story of the Nakba (Catastrophe) and being tormented for establishing our state.

"It's absurd," said MK Ahmad Tibi. "At a time when Arabs were uprooted from their land, Jews were being brought by ship from their homes all over the world." Indeed, we are guilty of having fought for our independence and not waiting for the rioters' axes. We are guilty of having returned to our ancestral homeland, and we were willing to divide our poor man's lamb with Tibi's ancestors, whose answer was to declare a war of blood on the Hebrew yishuv.

The area where I grew up in eastern Petach Tikvah sits on the land of the Arab village of Faja, which was established in the 1840s by Egyptian farmers who came during the short period of Egyptian rule over Palestine. The name, which was taken from a corruption of the Greek word for "springs," appears in the Mishna with evidence of Jewish settlement. The few farmers arrived in a desolate area and took hold of the land there.

When the founders of Petach Tikvah arrived in the summer of 1878, the poor villagers enjoyed an economic blessing in working for the Jewish farmers and selling the land they had obtained decades earlier. That did not prevent the people of Faja from treating the fields they had sold to the Jews as their own. I spoke with Amnon Malamud, who grew up during the 1930s in a local neighborhood named Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) that lay east of Route 40 on land that had been purchased from the Arabs of Faja. He told of regular attacks by the villagers against the Jewish farmers. "They used to bring their flocks of goats and sheep to our fields," he said. Complaints to the British police were of no avail.

2. When the British entered the Land of Israel, the village began to grow. From 200 people in early 1920, it grew to some 1,500 people just before the state was established in May 1948. The growth stemmed mainly from the immigration of people seeking work. At the same time, since the riots of 1921, cells of attackers used the village as a departure point, planting bombs and taking part in raids on Jewish communities for the purpose of robbery and murder. The great Arab revolt began in 1936. In addition to strikes, it included many acts of looting and murder. The Arabs of Faja joined the party in August. The newspaper Davar reported: "Many gunshots were fired from various directions on the environs of Petach Tikvah. This is the first time during the riots that the village of Faja, which is surrounded by Jewish-owned fields, has fired on Petach Tikvah. The bullets of Faja reached the outskirts of Ein Ganim, the neighborhood of the Sephardim and Kibbutz Rodges [Kfar Avraham]."

In September, Davar reported: "Last night at 8 p.m., Arabs set ablaze the outermost hut in the Bulgarian section, on the border of the Arab village of Faja." The newspaper added that this was not the first attempt. And on and on it went.

In May 1947, a mother and her daughter were murdered in a neighborhood to the west that abutted Faja's border. The murderer knew the Sephardi families who lived in the neighborhood and had won their trust. That was how he was able to enter the little house so easily and slaughter both women who were there. The tracks led to Faja, and fears rose that with the success of the attack, the Arabs of the village would be motivated to attack further. The Haganah ordered the Palmach to capture the attackers. The unit was led by Shlomo Miller, the first child born on Kibbutz Givat Hashloshah (then in Petach Tikvah). The unit broke into the village's cafe, where the gang members had been spotted earlier. During the break-in, Miller was shot in the forehead and evacuated to Beilinson Hospital, where he died. The Palmach's demolition squad blew up the cafe, which was empty. On Nov. 30, 1947, a day after the U.N. decision to partition the country for the establishment of the State of Israel, two Egged buses were attacked near Faja. Some of the accounts tied the murderer of the two Jewish women to the attack. In any case, the first shot of the War of Independence was fired in Faja.

Hamas to Accept Palestinian Refugees from Syria? Not Likely.

Daniel Greenfield..
frontpagemag.com..
03 January '13..

Just remember, the Israelis don’t care about the suffering of Palestinian Arabs. But Muslims care deeply about their suffering. That suffering is the only reason why they have been conducting a genocidal war against Israel for generations.

They care so much that Kuwait and Iraq both expelled huge numbers of Palestinian Arabs. Syria cares so much that it’s shelling Palestinian Arabs. And Hamas, the official Muslim Brotherhood representatives of Palestinian Arabs, and the most popular group among them, cares so much about them that it refuses to accept their refugees from Syria because it might undermine its campaign against Israel.

According to the report, head of Hamas in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh told UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, that the Gaza Strip couldn’t take in Syria’s Palestinian refugees due to an ideological issue: If they take in the refugees from Syria, Israel could use it against them when it comes to the Palestinians’ demand for the “right to return” to villages inside present day Israel, by pointing out that the refugees no longer need to return to Israel because they have been relocated to new homes in the Gaza Strip.

The Arab states role in creating the refugee crisis of '48

The Arabs’ betrayal of the Palestinians

Robert Werdine..
Times of Israel..
12 October '12..

I have been much moved by Mr. Phillipe Assouline’s most recent contribution here at the Times on the subject of Jewish refugees, much as I have been similarly moved by Lyn Julius’ authorative and thought provoking contributions on the subject. Reading Mr. Assouline’s piece, I see that he has touched on a little-discussed subject that I here develop in a bit more detail: the role of the Arab states in creating and abetting the refugee crisis of 1948.

Palestinian Arab leadership at the time the partition was passed in November 1947, such as it was, was mostly localized and tribal, and this accounted for one of the principal factors behind the refugees’ exodus: the flight of so many high ranking Arab functionaries.

Said High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham in the spring of 1948:

“You should know that the collapsing Arab morale in Palestine is in some measure due to the increasing tendency of those who should be leading them to leave the country. . . . For instance, in Jaffa the mayor went on four-day leave 12 days ago and has not returned, and half the national committee has left. In Haifa the Arab members of the municipality left some time ago; the two leaders of the Arab Liberation Army left actually during the recent battle. Now the chief Arab magistrate has left. In all parts of the country the effendi class has been evacuating in large numbers over a considerable period and the tempo is increasing”

Arif al-Arif, a prominent Arab politician during the Mandate, described the prevailing atmosphere at the time:

“Wherever one went throughout the country one heard the same refrain: ‘Where are the leaders who should show us the way? Where is the AHC? Why are its members in Egypt at a time when Palestine, their own country, needs them?’”

This sorry and leaderless state of affairs in Arab Palestine in the months following the partition vote requires some explication. The Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husayni, was widely hated and feared among the Palestinians, and, indeed, it should be pointed out that the victims of the Mufti since the 1920’s were overwhelmingly Arab, not Jewish.

Israel and the refugee problem - Myths and Realities

Adam Mallerman..
The Commentator..
13 September '12..

Five years ago I came to a life changing decision – I was leaving the country of my birth, Great Britain, and I was moving to Israel. You may question whether this was a difficult choice for a Jew and passionate Zionist to make. You might also want to know why I hated life in England so much that I preferred the prospect of living in a war zone. Both would be fair questions.

But for all my love and pride for Israel, and despite the anti-Semitism I experienced intermittently throughout my life previously, I genuinely love Britain too, and leaving was not an easy choice. Sitting here in my office in Jerusalem, as happy as I am, I can honestly say that I'm still a proud Brit and that I miss many aspects of life there, and probably always will.

I support the England Cricket team with a near obsessive passion and stayed up until the early hours willing Andy Murray to win his first grand-slam title this week, not because I'm a big tennis fan, but because I'm British. Some of my favorite places in the world are in the UK: The New Forest, the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales. And I admit that I sat glued to the TV, eating homemade scones, as William and Kate got hitched.

This is despite the fact that I am essentially a second/third-generation immigrant to the UK (although I've never seen myself in those terms): six of my great grandparents were refugees from Eastern Europe, and indeed one of my grandfathers was born outside the UK.

But I was born and educated in Birmingham, England; its customs, accents, culture, food etc. are mine and no amount of eating falafel and speaking Hebrew will erase the imprint onto my psyche that growing up British has made.

I am a lucky person, because I was totally free to choose to move to Israel, which I did for purely ideological and religious reasons. As God said to Abraham (the first Jew), "go to the land I will show you for your own good". I didn't 'make "aliya" (Heb: move to Israel) to escape the UK. I made it because I believe being here is better for me and for my family's future and for the Jewish future. My choice; my decision.

I’m not alone. Thousands of Jews from across the Middle East also love the countries of their birth: Yemen, Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon etc. -- all these have housed Jewish communities for thousands of years, some from even before the Romans destroyed the second Temple.

There was no strong Zionist movement in these communities, largely untouched by Hitler's efforts to eradicate the Jewish people from Europe, but in the 1940s and 50s these Jews were thrown out of the countries that they had considered themselves citizens of since before Islam's birth. They were told that because a little patch of land hundreds or thousands of miles away had declared itself to be a Jewish state, and they shared that faith, that made them enemies of the Arab people. 820,000 Jews were made refugees overnight, with literally just the clothes on their backs as possessions.

It is true that they didn't stay refugees for long, because unlike the Arab world's treatment of "Palestinian refugees", their Jewish brothers and sisters in the new state of Israel welcomed them with open arms and far from hurting Israel, the absorption of these people strengthened it, bringing new cultures, foods, languages and ideas.

I cannot imagine Israel without these people's descendants, who today number around 50 percent of the population. Zionism, the political ideology behind the birth of Israel, believes in the in-gathering of the Jewish people and so these Jewish-Arab refugees' children and grandchildren are woven into the fabric of Israeli society. That does not erase the racist crime that was committed against them by states across the Arab world.

Missing: The two-ton key that rested on top of the entrance to Al Aida

The Mystery of the Missing Palestinian ‘Refugee’ Monument

David Bedein..
frontpagemag.com..
04 July '12..

For the past four years, adjacent to the UNRWA headquarters, the Al Aida refugee facility in Bethlehem hosted a two-ton key rested on top of the entrance to Al Aida, which is shaped in the likeness of a mammoth keyhole.

That mammoth key and keyhole were erected at the entrance to the UNRWA Al Aida refugee facility during a celebration on May 15, 2008, to mark 60 years since the creation of Israel and the displacement of Arabs who consider themselves to be refugees entitled to the “right of return” to Arab villages which no longer exist inside Israel.

This week, however, when a news crew visited the Al Aida refugee facility in Bethlehem, the journalists discovered that the massive two-ton key was missing.

Rather than contact the UNRWA lost and found department, the reporters asked UNRWA residents about the whereabouts of the missing key. They had no idea.

The reporters asked UNRWA officials, who also said that they did not know.

Had there been sudden misgivings about the key to the right of return, the subject that forms the basis of UNRWA education?

Hardly.

Bryen - Counting Palestinians

Shoshana Bryen..
Gatestone Institute..
24 May '12..

Senator Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) has offered an amendment to the FY 2013 funding bill for the State Department that would require the Department to provide two numbers to Congress: 1) the number of Palestinians physically displaced from their homes in what became Israel in 1948, and 2) the number of their descendants administered by the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA). [1]

Palestinians are the only people for whom refugee status passes along through the generations (a condition adopted by the UN in 1965 over the objection of the United States), so they are also the only refugee population that grows exponentially over generations rather than declining as the original refugees pass away and their descendants become citizens of other places. Sen. Kirk seems to think the numbers would provide insight into whether the billions of U.S. tax dollars that have been provided to UNRWA over the years are making the problem better – or worse.

The State Department, naturally, is appalled, believing getting a handle on the numbers is prelude to cutting off the dollars. And further, it appears to believe that how our money is spent is not our business. Deputy Secretary Thomas Nides wrote to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "This proposed amendment would be viewed around the world as the United States acting to prejudge and determine the outcome of this sensitive issue." As if the world's view of the problem is more important than transparency with the American people.

In any event, the U.S. would not be prejudging anything, but only be determining how many people live off our dole.

Tobin - Jews of the Arab World Are Already Home

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
23 March '12..

Do the descendants of Jews who fled the Arab and Muslim world in 1948 want to “go home?” That’s the odd question asked today by Foreign Policy magazine in introducing a photo essay featuring images of the remnants of Jewish life in places like Libya, Iraq and Iran. But while the photos are interesting, the idea that “the uncertain revolutions of the past year may present the best chance for long-exiled Jewish communities across the Middle East to return home” is probably the most bizarre as well as misleading statements published on the topic in some time. Not only are Jews not longing to return to the Arab world, the so-called Arab Spring has unleashed forces of Islamism that makes such an unlikely occurrence even less inviting for anyone foolish enough to believe that Jews are welcome there.

For decades one of the most appalling gaps in knowledge of the modern history of the Middle East is the way even supposedly educated people ignore the fact that what happened in 1948 was an exchange of populations. While hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled the area that would become the State of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Jews were fled, usually for fear of the lives, from Arab countries where Jews had lived for more than a millennium. The difference between the two sets of refugees is that while the Jews were resettled in Israel and the West, the Arabs were left refused homes elsewhere in the Middle East and kept in camps where they were told to wait until the Jewish state was destroyed.

Elder - Deceiving Palestinian Arabs for 63 years

Elder of Ziyon..
18 January '12..




From a report from The [American] Consul at Jerusalem (Burdett) to the Secretary of State, marked "Secret," October 29, 1949 (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Volume VI, page 1457:)

Better informed refugees now realize that repatriation in the sense contemplated by the December 11, 1949 [sic] resolution of the General Assembly is out of the question and they no longer think the United Nations will enforce the resolution. However, no one dares to say so openly for the great mass of the refugees has been nourished on this illusion and a frank statement of the extent of the deception might kindle an explosion. It would certainly eliminate the chances of leadership of the person making the first announcement.

Nothing has changed.

Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon, Syria and around the world are still told the lie that they will one day "return" to land they never lived in, and no one has the ability to tell them that they have been fooled for 63 years and to find another solution for their own children and grandchildren.

Which is why they will remain stateless for the next 63 years as well.

(Read full "Deceiving Palestinian Arabs for 63 years")

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
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Reilly - Why "Invent" the Palestinians?

Robert R. Reilly..
crisismagazine.com..
17 January '12..
H/T Daphne Anson..


This month, in Amman, Jordan, Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators met for their first time in 15 months to try to restart the “peace process.” Meanwhile, the Palestinian group that rules in Gaza, Hamas, has repeated its declaration: “The battle for the liberation of Jerusalem is closer than ever and, God willing, we will win.” Which is it to be, peace or war?

Perhaps this question should be considered against the background of the recent ruckus Newt Gingrich caused in December by saying, “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. We have invented the Palestinian people, who are, in fact, Arabs and are historically part of the Arab people. . .” The entire political spectrum took umbrage. A critique from the right came from Elliott Abrams, a former Bush deputy national security adviser, who said: “There was no Jordan or Syria or Iraq, either, so perhaps he would say they are all invented people as well, and also have no right to statehood. Whatever was true then, Palestinian nationalism has grown since 1948, and whether we like it or not, it exists.”

This critique seems to confuse two things. Palestine, of course, has never been a state. In 1920, Palestine was carved out as a territory by the British, against the wishes of the Arabs living there who thought of themselves as inhabitants of Greater Syria. When it was within their power the Arabs never thought to create Palestine as a country, nor did the Ottomans. Were it to become one, it would have to be “invented,” just as have been all other states, like Jordan, Syria or Iraq, all of which are 20th-century creations. In this respect, Abrams is correct.

However, states are human constructs; peoples are not. Peoples exist according to ethnic and linguistic distinctions. For instance, the Kurds are a distinct people, as are the Berbers. So are the Arabs. They were not “invented”; they simply are. Ignore them at your peril. Their existence, however, does not translate automatically into a right to Kurdish, Berber or Arabic statehood. For that, other things are needed, including viability.

Never having possessed a state, do the Palestinians nonetheless exist as a people? Are they distinct linguistically or ethnically from the sea of Arabs in which they live? The answer is no. In this Gingrich is right. There is no such thing as a Palestinian people and to speak of them as such is clearly an “invention.” The real question that needs to be asked is why have they been “invented”? The answer to this can be suggested by an analogy that removes us from the immediate passions of the Middle East in order to see this situation more clearly.

Fresnozionism - The Sherman plan

Fresnozionism.org
25 December '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/12/the-sherman-plan/

I would rather listen to a Hamas spokesman talk about Israel than President Obama or almost any European Union leader. This is because Obama and the Europeans insist that they are concerned with Israel’s security, and then try to force Israel to adopt policies that will wreck it. They cling to the idea that Israeli withdrawals will bring about peace, contrary to historical precedent or reasonable estimates of the intentions of Israel’s enemies. They make my head hurt.

The Hamasnik, on the other hand, does not pretend to care about Israel or Jews, except as targets, and honestly admits his intentions.

What both the Westerner and the Hamasnik don’t realize (or just don’t care about) is that while their policies haven’t resulted — yet — in the demise of the Jewish state, they have created a long and unmitigated disaster for another group that they pretend to be concerned about, the Palestinian Arabs.

The fact that the majority of the descendents of those Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 have been kept in concentration camps since then is not Israel’s fault. It is directly attributable to the inhuman plan of the Arab nations, aided and abetted by the West, who have paid for the unique institution of UNRWA, the UN agency dedicating to perpetuating the ‘refugee problem’. Since this can’t possibly help the ‘refugees’, the only reason for it is to hurt Israel.

Martin Sherman explains:

Phillips - The algorithm of malice

Melanie Phillips
Daily Mail
09 December '11

http://phillipsblog.dailymail.co.uk/2011/12/the-algorithm-of-malice.html

Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, has just released the third of his little information videos setting out certain essential facts about Israel and the Arabs to counter the lies of the delegitimisation campaign. You can watch it here. Those who dismiss this as just more Israeli propaganda should think again. For it states truths which are absolutely fundamental to the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, but which have been turned on their heads and replaced by equally fundamental lies (the kind of lies absorbed and regurgitated by all too many who post comments below this blog).



There are two big and connected points made by this little video. The first is that the widely-held belief that the Arabs were the only refugees from the Arab war against the newly reconstituted country of Israel (a war which started in 1948 and continues to this day) is totally untrue. There were many more Jewish refugees from Arab countries. As a result of the 1948 war, some 500,000 Arabs left Palestine – most of them as a result of having been told to do so by Arab regimes certain of destroying the new Jewish state. But some 850,000 Jews were then attacked, stripped of their citizenship and ethnically cleansed from their homes in Arab states -- causing the destruction of ancient Jewish communities in those countries which had well predated the arrival of Islam in the Middle East. And what happened to those refugees? They were absorbed without fuss into Israel, where they form around half of the population, and into other countries.

(Video) The Truth About the Refugees: Israel Palestinian Conflict

Danny Ayalon
Dec 4, 2011

Israel's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon explains the historical facts relating to the issue of refugees in the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The video explains the reason there are still refugees after more than six decades is because of Arab leaders' recalcitrance to accept their brethren and the United Nations which created a separate agency with unique principles and criteria. The video also highlights the issue of the Jewish refugees who were forced out of their homes in the Arab world, and were subsequently absorbed by the State of Israel.



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David Meir-Levi - Palestinian Refugees vs. the Arabs

David Meir-Levi
frontpagemag.com
24 November '11

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/24/palestinian-refugees-vs-the-arabs/

In 2008, during a presentation at a panel discussion on the Middle East conflict at Santa Clara University (Santa Clara, CA), a young Arab-American lady claiming to be a “Palestinian refugee” posed to the present writer the following question:

“Why can any ‘Moishe Pipik’ from Brooklyn go to live in Israel, but I, a child of Palestinian parents living in the USA, cannot go back to my ancestral homeland, Palestine, where our families lived since time immemorial?”

The response to that question may be useful to readers who find themselves confronted with similar questions by friends, relatives, colleagues, or others.

The first thing to note is that “Palestinians” have not been living in Palestine (now Israel) from time immemorial. Turkish and British records are clear that Palestine was flooded with Arab immigrants from the late 1850’s onward due to the salutary effects of British colonial and Zionist developments from the mid-19th century onward. Groundbreaking work on the Arab historical demography of Palestine during the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries has been done by Professor Justin McCarthy in his book The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate (Institute for Palestine Studies Series), summarized here. McCarthy, not a Jew nor an Israeli nor a Zionist, writing for a Palestinian institute, demonstrates that the Arab population of Palestine almost quadrupled from c. 1855 to 1947. Only a tiny minority of Arabs can claim ancestral attachment to this territory, and even those claims are based solely on anecdotal accounts for which there is no empirical evidence.

Then one must recall that the Arab side started the war, and lost the war. Israel accepted the UN partition plan in 1947. The Arab states launched a war. When an aggressor loses a war because the victim country successfully repulses the aggression, and in doing so captures some of the aggressor’s land, the disposition of that captured territory, and its inhabitants, must await a peace treaty between the belligerents. Refugees from the aggressor country have recourse to repatriation only in the context of a peace treaty. Most Arab countries have refused to make peace. It was Arab aggression that started the war. Had there been no war there would have been no refugees, and there would have been a state for the Palestinians since 1947.

Fresnozionism - Israel: Kill UNRWA, end racist treatment of Arab refugees

Students at an UNRWA
 school in Gaza (from
 the film “Palestinian
 Refugee Policy: From
 Despair to Hope”)

Fresnozionism.org
21 November '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/11/israel-kill-unrwa-end-racist-treatment-of-arab-refugees/


Israel plans to ask the UN to terminate the special UN agency for Palestinian Arab refugees, UNWRA.

As everyone knows, there are almost 5 million people who claim ‘Palestinian refugee’ status, although reasonable estimates of the number of Arabs who fled the area that would become Israel in 1948 range from 550,000 to 750,000.

No other refugee population has ever been granted the ability to pass down this special status — and the right to be maintained indefinitely on the international dole — except the Palestinian Arabs.

Think about that: all other refugee problems are by definition temporary. Wars and natural catastrophes create refugees, and the international community does its best to help them weather the crisis. There have been millions upon millions of refugees since the UN was created; Jews, Palestinian Arabs, Iraqis, Hmong, Somalis — the list is endless. What happens to them? Some are repatriated, some are resettled in other places, some die. Their descendants carry on, perhaps in new homes. The US and Europe are full of them.

But the Palestinian refugees are special, in two ways. One, it is forbidden to consider resettlement. The only way to end their refugee status is for them to ‘return’ to what is now Israel. And two, Palestinian refugee status is hereditary.