by The New X
Sunday, Sep. 28, 2003 at 9:05 AM
history
To all those pro-Israeli Americans, I ask a simple question.
If you people were living in 1948, would you have agreed to give up the state of New York so that the Jews could have a homeland?
If not, how can you expect the indigenous population of palestine (mostly Arab Muslims) during the early 19th and late 20th century to give up their land so that the Jews could have a homeland?
Here are a few quotes that would shed light on the attitudes of early zionists
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Michael Bar-Zohar (one of Ben-Gurion's official biographers)
"Whatever became of the slogan: A people without a land returns to land without a people? The simple truth was that Palestine was not an empty land, and the Jews were only a small minority of its population. In the days of the empire building, the Western powers had dismissed natives as an inconsequential factor in determining whether or not to settle a territory with immigrants. Even after the [1st] world war, the concept of self-determination . . . . was still reserved exclusively for the developed world."
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In October 1882 Ben-Yehuda and Yehiel Michal Pines, few of the earliest Zionist pioneers in Palestine, wrote describing the indigenous Palestinians:
". . . There are now only five hundred thousand Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country if only we do it through stratagems [and] without drawing upon us their hostility before we become a the strong and papules ones."
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In 1891 Ahad Ha'Am opened many Jewish eyes to the fact the Palestine was not empty, but populated with its indigenous people when he wrote:
"We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed ..... But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains .... are not cultivated."
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In 1891Ahad Ha'Am similarly wrote of the Palestinians:
"If a time comes when our people in Palestine develop so that, in small or great measure, they push out the native inhabitants, these will not give up their place easily."
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In 1914, Chaim Weizmann attempted to lay down the foundations of realizing Zionism, and to start with he has asserted that Palestine is empty and its inhabitants have no say in its fate:
"In its initial stage, Zionism was conceived by it pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country? The owners of the country [the Ottoman Turks] must, there for, be persuaded and conceived that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the [Jewish] people and for the country, but also for themselves."
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In 1923, Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote of how Palestinians really felt of their attachment to Palestine:
"They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true favor that Aztec looked upon Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. Palestine will remain for the Palestinians not a borderland, but their birthplace, the center and basis of their own national existence."
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In April 28, 1930 Menachem Ussishkin stated in an address to journalists in Jerusalem:
"We must continually raise the demand that our land be returned to our possession .... If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land. We have a great and nobler ideal than preserving several hundred thousands of [Palestinian] Arabs fellahin [peasants]."
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Summary:
Early Zionist leaders knew what they were doing. They fully anticipated conflict with the Arabs. Their sole aim was to create a Jewish National Homeland, even if it were at the expense of the indigenous population.
Now today, the Israelis act as if they are the victims - that the Palestinians are the unreasonable party. How can they say that when Israel's founding fathers felt it was only natural for the Palestinians to react in a hostile manner to their actions?
Please do not allow Fresca to cloud your minds with her barbarism and sadism. The Palestinians ARE a people. They DO exist. And they had homes in the major cities of today's Israel. They had homes there before they were expelled.
Don't let religious bigots like Fresca lead you to believe that the only reason the Palestinians don't accept Israeli presence is because the Israelis are Jews. I assure you, had any other group of people - Buddhists, Uprooted Africans, Indians etc... attempted to establish a state in Palestine, they would have faced the same resistance. People like Fresca use their own religious bigotry to justify injustices.
I do not advocate the expulsion of Jews. I do not seek anything other than a two-state solution. I merely wish to demonstrate that the hostility felt towards Israelis by Palestinians are a direct result of the arrogance of Zionism and Zionistic actions.