Interesting. No one yet said that Arabs are merely anti-semitic. They are Semites themselves but that had never stopped anyone.
How long it took us and what we had to fight and how we had to fight, to finally establish that there was a people, my parents among them, the Palestinians who lived where Israel was formed. Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in relative peace for thousands of years in Palestine, before Israel was formed. Israel and its lovers choose to either spend a lot of time denying that there was a Palestinian people, or saying that no one kicked those Palestinians out of there.
Yes, at the end of WWII, the Jews felt that they needed a country where they would be safe. The allies riddled with guilt about the holocaust, contemplated a few options, then decided on Palestine. Here are a few facts, to compel the myths you hear to dispute the original injustice committed against the Palestinians. 1. There was a country called Palestine for thousands of years in what is now Israel. 2. There was a nation there, and hundred of thousands of Palestinians. It was not as the zionists (creators of Israel) put it, "a land without people for a people without land." 3. Nor were the Palestinians a bunch of nomad Arabs. They are Arabs, they are Palestinian Arabs. Just like the Jordanians, the Syrians, etc... their being Arab does not strip them of their particular Arab nationality. They were rooted in Palestine, many in urban settings, even if a few Bedouins by the West Bank, crossed over often in what is now Jordan. 4. Nor did the Palestinians either sell their property to the thousands of Jews flocking into Palestine, nor did they run off. 5. The zionists waged a meticulously planned unforeseen war with massacres against the Palestinian people to evict them from Palestine. The word terrorist was first used by the British for those zionists groups that went around killing Palestinians throughout Palestine.
And the Jews kept coming from everywhere, and the Palestinians kept getting forced out. The West then pressured the Zionists to stop and the Zionists offered half of Palestine to the Palestinians. How grand. The Palestinians refused. To this day, the now baptized Israelis want more land with less Arabs on it. Palestinians for the large part want what is justifiably theirs. The Palestinian Diaspora has been very successful as individuals wherever they went. Palestinians were a highly educated group of people. They knew, however, that pressing for their identity and speaking for their nation, had to become the sole purpose of their life, and would inconvience their host nations. So, quite a few of them, resigned themselves to living quietly as residents, eventually, citizens of their host country. Israel was there to stay, said the Western World, never mind how it was built. Israel would be supported blindly and generously by the new superpower, America (true? why? Not to be discussed here).
But a lot of Palestinians had remained in Palestine. And no one counted on the Palestinians who stayed to actually have the perseverence and patriotic dedication they showed. And a lot of Palestinians who did take other nationalities still spoke up for Palestine at the cost of putting up with discrmination.
Initially, the world stood with them, few countries recognized Israel. The Zionists attributed it to anti-semitism, shaming the countries that condemned Israel. It so happens, the Jews did wrong in Palestine but there was and had been horrific anti-semitism for the Jews to play upon. Gradually, since 1948, and with a lot of growing influence over the world, the Zionists saw that the majority of the world recognizes the right of Israel to exist.
In the meantime, the Palestinians who either remained in Palestine or lived scattered in refugee camps got poorer and poorer. Their resources to fight were being destroyed. Gradually, they turned to brutal violence to be heard. Gradually, they turned to religious extremism to satisfy the need to believe that there will be justice because a Higher Power cannot permit what was happening to them.
Some Arab leaders have either sold out, or simply got tired of the war, or wanted to distance themselves from the growing islamism and/or Palestinians killing civilians.
Most Palestinians cannot turn their eyes away. To this day, racism, violence, harassment, inhumane conditions continue to be practiced against Palestinians in Israel and the other occupied territories that have not yet officially become part of Israel. What would you do if you were Israel and want to be and remain a Jewish nation and expand to what your God told you belonged to you? Anything to get those Palestinians out of your hair.
Most of the Arab people, the masses if not the governments, support the Palestinians, and those governments cannot blatantly go against the public sympathy for the Palestinians. Whence the continued fighting. The other Arab nations fight Israel because Arab masses do have a common bond. Unlike what everyone says, they are not that divided, certainly not when it comes to Israel. No Arab, Muslim or Christian, none, has a different version on how the Palestinians were stripped of their homeland. The injustice and the violence which continues daily against the Palestinians by the Israelis never cease to horrify the Arabs.
My father and his sister, a very small family of orphans, were outside of Palestine in 1948. My aunt was married to an English man and living in England. My father was simply away on business, he was an International lawyer. Neither of them could ever go back after 1948. On my mother's side, two of her brothers stayed in Palestine, fighting for their home. Their mother, my maternal grandmother put the other younger kids on a truck, scared by the stories of violence committed against civilians by the Zionists, and ran off to Lebanon.
So both my parents are Palestinian. I have deeds to their homes. But I cannot enter Palestine, or for those amnesiacs out there, Israel. Every Jew, on the other hand, wherever he or she lives, and has had ancestors living, whatever his nationality, may become an Israeli citizen. He or she apparently has a "birth" right to be there. Some people are in my home saying they have a birth right to it, but I don't.
I am an American citizen. I have always lived in cities, on the East Coast, with highly educated people, and Democrats, so you're guessing, very many of them are Jewish. It baffles me that despite their suffering, despite their open-mindedness, they look at the fighting Palestinians, the so-called terrorists, without ever consciously going to 1948 and the years leading to it, in what is now Israel.
If you want peace, work for justice.
2006-06-29 13:01:41
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answer #1
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answered by browneyedgirl 6
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